Corpse Party: Blood Drive (PS Vita) Review

One thing is for sure: when your game is named Corpse Party, you are pretty sure what you are going to get when you play.  In this sequel to Book of Shadows, Blood Drive has the characters once again involved in Heavenly Host Elementary.  Yes, the survivors actually want to go back, and yes, I really wanted to yell at them too.  This entry has a new story with some new characters, which of course will get drawn into the creepy world of grisly death.  Seriously, the game lives up to its name.

The story of Blood Drive follows closely after the events of Book of Shadows, but does very little to recap it.  After starting it up, I felt like I should have replayed the previous game all over again so I could remember who everyone was.  Well, looking back at my review, that might not have helped.  This time, there are pictures of which character is talking as well as chibi versions of the characters so it is much easier to keep track of who is who.  Although the characters do swap between using first and last names, so it is still very possible to get confused.  Really, they needed a more comprehensive recap of the previous game, but instead we get a sentence or two.  Even sticking it in the encyclopedia would have been helpful, but I haven't seen it there.

Last time the game was in first person as you walked around the creepy, decrepit elementary school, but now it is in third person, and you control a little chibi character.  There are a lot of traps around, like weak floors that you partially fall into, sharp objects and trip wires.  Hitting these will deplete some of your HP, which can either be restored with bandages or time.  Admittedly, the hit detection on these traps seems a bit off, since I would try to skirt them and sometimes trip them.  It never killed me, but will keep me from easily getting one of the game's trophies.  I like moving around the areas in this 3D world more than the Wizardry-like presentation of the previous game.

Besides traps, there are occasional malevolent spirits that chase you around.  Most times while running from them, I would step in an environmental trap.  I guess I shouldn't make fun of all the people that trip in horror movies while fleeing from the monster.  If you are carrying a talisman item, the spirit will be destroyed when it gets near you, and sacrifice the talisman.  Otherwise, you have to flee and hide in a cabinet.  This brings up an interesting screen that shows your heartbeat and a colored circle.  When the circle is red, the ghost is nearby and you shouldn't exit.  When it is green, it is much safer to do so.  These ghosts can find you in there, so don't get seen entering one.  Since you cannot see outside while hiding, this is an interesting way to help alert you when it is safe to exit and when you should remain hiding.  Running from them can be a hassle, since you can only run so long before getting tired.  Of course the ghosts don't have this problem.  Combine that with their tenacity and escaping can be very difficult.

Since the world is pretty dark, you get a flashlight (well, it's actually a phone) to help see.  The lighting effects cast from the flashlight are really, really good.  It's better than I thought the Vita was capable of, and that's not an insult to the awesome little handheld.  To add another scary element to the game, the use of the flashlight drains the batteries.  You can find more batteries, or just turn on the endless batteries by pressing the select button.  While I appreciate that there is a way to not have to rely on the batteries, having a button to make it infinite seems silly.  Why even make it limited in the first place?  And why does a phone take double As?

Save for a few parts, the game isn't overly difficult.  You can see most traps if you are paying attention, and you can recover HP just by walking around and not taking damage.  Many spirits hang out near a talisman that can be used to banish them, except Chapter 4.  That part of the game with a few others, like escaping the water and the final boss, are pretty tricky and will likely require a few reloads.  Dying will send you back to the main menu, but many times it is a bad ending that the game keeps track of, so all may not be lost.

However, getting lost sucks.  The game does not provide you with a map, so you need to make/get one or try and remember it.  I also didn't see any place where it tracks what your current objective is, assuming one was even told to you, so many times I would just stumble around and try to find out what to do.  I get the game is creepy and having a golden trail to the objective wouldn't make sense, but I just don't get scared when I'm not making progress; I'm getting annoyed.  Sometimes crucial things you have to examine aren't obvious and you have to start poking everything.  This will build up your 'darkness' and doing it too much will kill you.  So yes, the essentially punishes you when it doesn't tell you what to do next.

There are 10 chapters in the game that can take between 30 minutes to an hour or two depending on reading speed and how lost you get.  There are also some unlockable EX chapters that are just text-based, but help add to the story from other perspectives.  Most of the trophies are for things I would do anyway, like getting all the endings for the chapters and finding the student ID tags.  There are a few crazy ones that I'm not a fan of, like going through each chapter without touching anything you don't need to (so collect the ID tags before hand) and without taking damage from anything.  You would definitely need to replay to get those two.

My biggest drawback to the game would be the load times.  Examining things and picking up items are fairly quick, but just about everything else requires a loading screen.  Changing rooms?  Load screen.  Going to the menu to check your health?  Load screen.  They tend to run anywhere from 4-9 seconds.  While it doesn't sound like much, it feels like an eternity sometimes, and it really adds up over the course of the game.  Plus, exasperatedly sitting through them kills the suspense and creepy feeling a lot of the time.  It also feels like any spirits you are fleeing from gain on you while the game is loading.  I can assume all the loading is because of the lighting physics.  If that is the case, I'm on the fence of if it is worth it.  It slows the game down, and not in a good way.

Corpse Party: Blood Drive is a creepy game with some good visuals and great lighting effects.  Strives have been made to make the characters easier to follow, but it still isn't perfect.  It's easy to get lost and wander around with no idea what you need to do to proceed.  A map would have been nice, but maybe they thought that would make it too easy?  The game is only really difficult in a few spots, and the loading really slows down the game.  Overall, it does play better than the previous game in the series.  If you are a fan of the Corpse Party series, Blood Drive should be played, but you may want a refresher course before you dive in.  New players really need to start at the beginning, and play them back to back or take notes.

Norn9: Var Commons (PS Vita) Review

Norn9: Var Commons starts off in our modern world, but quickly transitions to a fantastical floating ship that contains its own eco-system.  On board are 12 travelers that were assembled by The World, a mysterious entity that will use these people to spread peace to the entire planet.  Most of the people gathered are called espers, who each have a special power, like the ability to create fire or erase memories.  At first I wasn't sure why the story started in the way it did, but without revealing too much, it does make sense at the end.  It also took me a bit to keep straight who was who, but after awhile it sank into my thick skull.  Going through multiple times really helps that out.

After the story gets started on the ship, you will have the ability to choose one of the three heroines as your main character.  Then after a bit more plot, you can choose one of two males (the third is unlockable) to be your partner, with whom you will forge a relationship.  Before this point, they don't show much romantic interest in the possible partners, but that makes sense.  Once you do start down your chosen path, the relationships are much more obvious.  The relationships start a bit quick, but after that the progression is pretty good.  You also get many choices in how to respond to your partner in situations, so you can deepen the relationship or not.

Who you choose will affect your path through the game, but the plot as a whole is relatively unchanged.  There are different endings to the story, though.  And while the core is similar, character interactions and some events are not.  Plus, with using different characters each time, you get multiple perspectives on certain events.  The few parts that are very closely repeated do offer an option to skip those parts, which is pretty cool.  I'm a fan of multiple perspectives in storytelling, so I find the story and character interactions to be really interesting, and I enjoyed them.

Each route takes about 3 hours if you are not just smashing through text.  With three different girls each having three different partners, you get a solid time investment going through all of them.  It's also different for each partner, since how their personalities, pasts and power interact with each other makes for an interesting tale.  Sometimes a particular pair has opposite powers, such as fire and water, and sometimes they seem different, but would work way too well together.  Each story is pulled off very well.  There's even some pretty emotional scenes in the game.

My first run through the game went off without a hitch.  I deepened my relationship, and got the good ending.  My next go around didn't end so well.  This seems to be par for the course for me (see Amnesia: Memories).  I thought everything was going well, and then... pow, it ended.  It didn't even feel like the end of the scene I was in, as I expected something else to happen.  But nope, dialogue finished, and it saved the system data and dumped me at the title screen.  No game over screen, no clue what I did wrong, nothing.  The previous choice was several scenes before this, so I don't even think it was related to that.  Needless to say, it put a damper on my mood, but I just moved on to another guy.  That... sounds weird.  I also switched main characters and resumed playing a different path.  Sadly there was no awesome option to go back to where I had screwed up (see Code: Realize), so I'll just have to go through the route again and try different options.

There are unlockable items the game offers, such as short stories from completed character routes, comics, music and pictures.  They are purchased with points you earn at certain places in the game.  However, to get everything you will have to play the strange mini-game called Norn9 Quest.  I had some trouble finding it at first, since it isn't a traditional menu item (you select the World's ship from one of the extra menus).  In this mini-game, you choose a character, and the computer will choose three opponents.  Then each one play a random scene and gives or takes some points.  At the end, the total is added (or subtracted) from your total.

That's right, you can actually lose points doing this mode.  The silver lining is that you cannot go below zero, so spend what you can before starting it, or just close the game before it saves.  To me it's kind of dumb that they can cost you points, since the whole thing is random and you need to play the game several times anyway if you want to buy the extra stuff.  I'm ok with losing points in the mini-game, but don't take any negative balance from my accrued stock.  That's just silly.  The judges don't take from your savings account if you fail at Jeopardy!.

Despite the sudden end and the randomness of the mini-game, I enjoyed Norn9.  There were several unique characters, and I like the multiple perspectives on many of the events that take place.  The character interactions are good.  There are several different routes through the game and hopefully I can one day finish them all.  Fans of visual novels should definitely check out Norn9: Var Commons.  I also see there is another game in the series, so I hope that gets brought over to the US too!

[Edit: 11/04/15] I have now frequently had the game lock up when exiting the Norn9 Quest.  It just sits on a black screen and I have to exit the game from the Vita's menu.  Now I usually exit after each run through it so I can spend the points I get (since you can lose them), and that may exacerbate the issue.  Hopefully this will be addressed in a future patch.

Darksiders II: Deathinitive Edition (Xbox One) Review

Darksiders II follows up on the original Darksiders, but stars Death as he seeks to gain redemption for his brother War, who was unjustly blamed for the events of the previous game.  I originally played this on the Xbox 360, but now the Deathinitive Edition has been released for the current gen consoles, and bring with it some improvements, the previously released DLC and a cutesy name.

The graphics have improved some, but it isn't a huge jump.  Lighting effects, on the other hand, look much better than I remember.  This is one of the things specifically mentioned as an improvement, and it is obvious.  The game loads a little quicker, although there are parts where it studders a bit while doing so during gameplay.  Also, there were times during cut scenes where the audio was out of sync with the video.  I'm not sure if it's just a problem with the Xbox One version, or if that was present in the 360 version (it was a few years ago that I played it after all).

Combat is action-oriented, but with many RPG mechanics.  The X Button is your main weapon (scythes), and the Y Button is whatever your equipped sub-weapon is, which ranges from claws to giant hammers.  There are a few different combo moves to fill out your arsenal, but I really only stuck to a few I found useful.  Where War (in the previous game) was beefy, Death is much more lithe.  Hence, he dodges instead of blocks.  The timing can be very strict, as many times I was a hair too slow and just ate an attack.  If you dodge too early, most enemies will track your movement and hit you anyway, so you have to be pretty precise.  Sometimes Death didn't want to dodge in the direction I was pressing, which again would lead to me taking unnecessary damage.  Locking on to enemies helps your attacks aim at them, and is especially helpful when using the gun Death gets.  Plus, it will show the enemy's HP.

Besides two weapons, Death can equip a few different pieces of armor on his shoulder, waist, hands and feet.  These can be purchased, found in chest or dropped from enemies, and will show up on his character model.  While most of them will increase stats like defense, some pieces have skills attached to them, like health regeneration.  Also, there are some special weapons that you get when you defeat a boss.  The last special piece of equipment would be the possessed weapons.  These rare items can be fed other pieces of equipment to power them up.  While cool, I rarely used them, as I tended to find better stuff.  I do like the boss weapons, though, since I'm a special item hoarder.

Every kill and completed quest gets you experience, which will predictably level you up after you gain enough.  Besides increasing your stats, you will also gain a skill point to put in one of Death's two skill trees.  There are several active abilities in each, and more upgrades to modify those active skills.  Each "tier" of skills is accessible by leveling up, and you can freely choose to mix and match abilities.  Plus, you can buy a respec from Vulgrim the shopkeep if you want to reallocate your points.  The only part that isn't the most user friendly is mapping the active skills.  You can't do it from the skill tree, but must press down on the d-pad when not in the menu.  Then you can highlight a skill and hold down the Right Bumper and the button that will activate the skill.  Not a huge deal, but can be hard to remember all of that if you want to put on a new ability or change one you have set.

Besides combat, there is a lot of exploration for Death to do.  There are several areas you travel to, and dungeons to overcome.  Each area tends to be connected by narrow canyons that are a perfect time to mount your horse and run through them.  I'm not sure if these areas are so the horse feels useful, or to helps seamlessly load the next area (or both), but ultimately it doesn't matter.  They are just there.  Anyway, there are lots of little side areas that tend to have collectibles in them, or at least an extra chest.  You can also fast travel to many explored areas, which makes  jumping back and forth to dungeons and finishing up side quests much less of a hassle

Dungeons have the most platforming sections, and a fair amount of puzzle parts, too.  The puzzles aren't too hard, mostly pulling switches and placing balls in the right spot, but I do really like the ones that use the golems.  Death can ride around on certain golems, and they can destroy the corruption and fire their fist off on a chain that Death can use to cross some chasms.  They are fun to use.  Death also has some now standard platforming skills at his disposal, like wall running and climbing around specific wall areas.  For the most part the controls for these are spot on, but there are instances where I was trying to run along the wall and the game thought I wanted to run straight up.  Sometimes Death will also do this when you are jumping next to the wall, even if you aren't pushing toward it.

The game has supposedly be re-balanced from its initial release, and some fights did seem a bit easier.  Still, the game isn't too hard on the normal setting, just make sure to have spare health potions on hand, since you will very likely need them.  It's very easy to get hit, especially from off-screen, and the best source to heal yourself is potions.  There are some skills and abilities that will heal you, but it is not near enough to help you in a tough fight.  I did also occasionally get lost in a dungeon and not realize what I had to do to proceed.  It was usually me not noticing an area I could platform to, and not a result of the dungeon puzzles.  Lastly, there are times where the camera won't cooperate during combat.  Sadly, that is par for the course in 3D action games, but it is annoying to take some cheap damage when you can't see what's going on or get your bearing and try to dodge out of trouble.

Content-wise, the game is closer to RPG than action title.  This gives the story over 25 hours, and even more if you are like me and search around for all the extra stuff to do.  Since this version includes the DLC, you will even get another 3 hours or so of extra stuff.  There's also a lot of collectible stuff to pad the length even further.  If you are going for achievements, you will likely go through the game again to get the difficulty related achievements.  Overall, a good length for the cost.

I like Darksiders II: Deathinitive Edition and think it is a very fun game.  It has a few small issues and the combat isn't as tight as, say, a Platinum Games game, but it's still solid.  If you like action RPGs and didn't try out Darksiders II when it was initially released, I would recommend trying it out now on the current gen systems.  It's less worth it for repeat buyers, but if you didn't get any of the DLC last time and would like to go through the game again, it is worth the price of admission.

Samurai Warriors 4-II (PS4) Review

The original Samurai Warriors 4 was really fun.  I loved the new hyper attacks.  However, the story mode was more focused on the factions, which I guess some people didn't like as much.  Instead of an Extreme Legends version, we have the character-focused stories in Samurai Warriors 4-II.  Honestly, I wish they stuck with the previous nomenclature, as mixing numbering systems is... silly to me.

Putting the name aside, let's focus on what actually matters: the game.  As mentioned previously, this entry focuses on more individual stories for the characters introduced in SW 4 and added for this iteration.  For each story, you must use the main character, but then can also choose one other from the list of available people to accompany you into battle.  Switching between them is quick, but it is on the Options button (PS4), which was kind of awkward to hit easily.  There are 13 total story modes, 8 of which have to be unlocked, and each containing 5 stages.

The newest character to join the roster is Naomasa Li.  He is Naotora Li's adopted son who just happens to look the same age.  I don't think it's intentional, but I thought it was pretty funny that it looks in no way like he is Naotora's son, but sure, why not?  He's pretty solid with some good hyper attacks (he is hyper attack inclined) and a few really good charge moves that hit huge areas.  His rage super is also really funny if you watch sentai shows.  The create-a-character also returns, which is always a plus.  All of the costumes are available at the start, but you can only give them weapons of characters you have unlocked.  Coincidentally I made a sentai-looking character, and gave him Naomasa's move set.  Boy was I surprised it was an accidental perfect fit.

Combat is largely unchanged from the previous iteration, with the hyper attacks seemingly less powerful.  You still have your standard attack string with various finishing moves based off when you use the other attack button in the combo.  The biggest addition is the skills you can use in battle.  The d-pad can scroll through skills you learn and then activate them.  These have a variety of effects, from stat buffs to heals to gaining more exp or money from kills.  They are on a cooldown, so use them when you need them.  Plus, you can equip several at once, so there's no reason not to load up when a character unlocks them.

Battle Objectives are still present in SW 4-II.  If you don't know, each stage has a checklist of objectives and bonus objectives for you to try and do during battle.  Normal ones are part of the flow of battle, like defeat some person before they attack your leader and stuff like that.  The bonus ones can range from "make sure no one dies" to "use this character to beat this one" and similar things.  While I like the replayability aspect of the objectives, they are pretty obtrusive when they first come up.  The action pauses and it shows the player what the objective is.  Yes, it is nice that you can't really miss them, but it gets annoying when it stops you mid combo to tell you to beat the enemy you are currently fighting.  In the other games, the bonus objectives tended to give you extra rewards, but it seems like they just give bonus experience now.  It does give you a reason to play the levels in Free mode, though, if you want to clean them up.

Again they have changed how to combine weapons in the Warriors games.  This time, adding a weapons to your chosen base weapon will increase the experience of that weapon.  If it gets enough experience, it will level up and get stronger.  This will thankfully also increase the skills on it.  However, you cannot transfer skills or elements from one weapon to another, so it isn't perfect.  There is a level cap based on the star rating of the weapon.  If you combine two weapons of similar compatibility, there is a chance you will increase the max level.  This system also applies to the mounts, which is cool and kind of silly if you think about it.  (You are merging horses... is that legal?)  Anyway, the system is pretty nice, but I would prefer if there was a way to replace skills or add them to a weapon, so it was easier to make your perfect equipment.

There are now skill trees for each of the characters, laid out on a big hex-based grid.  You have to spend skill tomes that are acquired as battle drops or purchased from the shop.  Each skill costs certain numbers of different color tomes.  Once a skill is purchased, the ones next to it are then unlocked for purchase.  If you buy a skill next to an unlocked and unpurchased skill, then that one receives a discount, which is very nice.  Even more nice is some skills can become free if you surround them with purchased ones.  The skills are either passive ones that will do standard stuff like increasing attack damage or health, or active skills discussed above.  This system is new, and once I got the hang of it, is pretty cool.  The only thing I'm not too keen on is it can be hard to buy a lot of skills, since you don't seem to get many tomes per battle, and I don't want to fork over the cash since I need that for weapon and mount synthesis.

There is also a Survival Mode in SW 4-II.  It feels like a mix of the one from Samurai Warriors 2 and Samurai Warriors Chronicles 3.  Since you only have one character to keep track of, it is much more focused and easier to understand what you are doing.  It's also more fun because of it.  The standard survival is a 100 floor tower that you have to fight your way to the top of.  You have a time limit that gets extended every time you go up a floor.  It's a good way to get some experience, and there are nice bonuses the higher up you go.  However, it's not advisable to push your luck, since dying makes you lose all the stuff you collected.  You can exit on any floor once it is cleared by activating the circle near the stairway up.  There are also really strong versions of the characters that appear on some floors.  They are always pretty obvious since they have blue skin, and they pack a punch!

The survival challenge has four specific battles that have weekly rankings.  While at first I wasn't sure I'd like them, the rewards changed my mind.  These challenges are timed, and task you with a specific task, like killing a lot of enemies or gaining a lot of gold.  Those two are fun, but I'm not too keen on the racing one.  You have to kill standard bearers and run to the exit.  They've had similar racing ones in the Warriors games before, and I didn't like them there either.  Getting high ranks will give you strategy tomes or money.  Every week the rankings will reset and give you another opportunity to get the top spot.  The mode is more fun than I thought it would be, and can be a good source of cash and skill tomes.

At first I wasn't sure there was enough content in the game, but at about 2-3 hours per story mode and 13 stories, that's pretty decent.  The survival and survival challenge modes are more fun than I initially thought as well.  The focus on the characters more than the factions/groups should appeal to those that complained about that in SW 4.  If you are a fan of the Warriors games and somehow skipped SW 4, then I would recommend Samurai Warriors 4-II.  I'm sure fans of the series will also enjoy it, but most of the content is focused on the story, which may not be enough to get owners of SW 4 to buy 4-II.