Toki to Towa

No, I'm not playing it, I don't do consoles. However, some interesting elements came up in a review, so I'm going to muse on them even though I haven't played the game. If you're trying to avoid all spoilers, skedaddle.

The storyline involves a guy who dies on his wedding day and his wife trying to change the past to save him. It also happens that she has some kind of split-personality thing going on, so there are two of her with different skills that get switched back and forth between.

However... who, exactly, is the player meant to be empathising with? "Girl tries to save her man" sounds like you'd think she's meant to be the protagonist. Let's look at a few of the bits from the IGN review.

Sidebar text:

You will witness your own death at your wedding before traveling back in time with your wife-to-be in order to track down your killer!

So the sidebar seems to be going for "you're the guy".

However, the gameplay instructions seem clear that you are controlling Toki/Towa.

... Most of the time, anyway. Then there's:

the flimsy dating-sim sequences, in which you assume control of her fiance/dragon

Reviews talk about him as a pervert trying to see multiple girls naked, so I have no idea if these "dating" sections are just interacting with the dual Toki/Towa, or if he's taking a break from his wife trying to save his life to run around and score with other babes.

Nonetheless, the inclusion of this element seems to make it pretty clear who they think the player REALLY is.

Batman games are not generally interspersed with sections where you play Silver St. Cloud trying to decide between the "Batman" and "Bruce Wayne" personas. (Should they be?)

Even the IGN reviewer, who was complaining about this perspective issue, slides a little bit in that direction:

What's more, which of the two you end up with boils down to one ultimate decision anyway, making the smaller ones you make along the way meaningless.

Who you're with. Not who you're playing.

Looking over on Kotaku, they mention that the rest of the cast is pretty much cute girls, and that:

Due to Zack's predicament (namely being trapped in the body of a baby dragon), he is relegated to a computer-controlled support role in battle, while the player fights monsters with gun, dagger, and magic as Toki or Towa. This is an interesting reversal of the normal knight/princess relationship, as it is Zack who must be protected.

Yet it is Zack who is the narrator and player proxy character, not Toki or Towa. He's the only character whose thoughts the player is allowed to hear, and the player is occasionally allowed to choose how he interacts with Toki and Towa as well. And while Zack is the butt of the occasional joke, it is his excellent dead-pan humor in the face of danger that makes him capable of carrying the story—even if he is a bit of a pervert at times.

At its heart, is this game really a standard bishoujo romp with a perverted male lead and a cast of hot babes, faintly protesting "Oh, but the girl is the hero!" as an olive branch to female players / disguise of bishoujo roots from people who fear hentai / sales gimmick to stand out?

Or is it an innovative female-protagonist adventure that got male-pandering elements jammed onto it for marketing reasons?

Or something else completely?

Will those people who scoff that a woman could not possibly be the one doing the saving even notice this thing exists? And if they do, what do they think of it? I can't exactly ask, since it's not like I'd know any of those people!

oh sony

UK gamers can no longer play the same copy of a new PlayStation Store game on more than two devices.

On 18 November Sony cut the number of consoles and handheld devices that users can tie to their PlayStation Network (PSN) account from five to two.

The change only applies to games and other content bought via the PlayStation Store after 18 November.

The limits are believed to have been imposed to stop people sharing games with friends.

Well, at least it only applies to newly-bought content, but really... Is clamping down on legal sharing which only a small number of people were fully taking advantage of (and probably quite enjoying) the best way to go about drumming up business rather than negative feelings?

suckers welcome

So, you know that Sony and the PSN have had a lot of problems in the past year.

Fewer players means fewer problems! So now you have to sign away your rights or you can't use the PSN anymore. That'll shut you up.

so how much do indies earn? part 2

According to this ars technica article, average earnings on Xbox Live Indie Games is less than $4000. Total.

Now, average can mean a lot of things... if a few people are doing hugely well and most people do terribly, the average number is largely meaningless. Also, as usual, how good or bad that money is depends on what time and money you put into writing the game in the first place. Some people are absolutely thrilled to earn a few hundred dollars.

Now that I have to pay rent and feed people, though, a few hundred wouldn't really do me much good. Luckily my projects do generally pull in rather more than $4000 each. :)

I don't really know how this works

So P has a PS3 and plays the New Console Games that I turn up my nose at.

He can wander into the local shop and find a selection of great titles, used or new, marked down to £5 or £10. Big-name things that even I who doesn't USE a PS3 has heard of.

I can walk into the local shop and sigh that every DS game I have any interest in, even a used copy of a game that came out five years ago, is STILL over £20. How the heck does that work?

(Okay, some exceptions. Rhythm Heaven they have cheap because for some reason it's not that popular. I liked it, I already have it. Also Flower, Sun and Rain
because that game was too WEIRD to catch on. If I were desperate to buy something I might have gone for it.)

Really, I buy most of my DS games online, new, and still get a better deal.

... of course part of that is that they tend to cost less in the US, and now we come back around to why I refuse to buy a 3DS :) I do get some British-bought games, though, so just getting a US 3DS still wouldn't help.

welcome to the sour future

Trouble with the playstation network lately...

insert quarter try again

Dear game - You know who you are. You're begging for my attention. You are desperately trying to interest games journalists with how edgy and offensive you are, while swearing that you're not deliberately trying to shock. Sorry. I'm not even going to mention you by name or respond to your shenanigans with anything more than an eyeroll and an "Oh, please."

Catherine

I saw screens and trailers of this and was confused. All the marketing talked about was the story, all the trailer mostly showed was animation, but I was pretty sure nobody was releasing a VN onto the PS3 in English. So what _was_ this? An RPG? A platformer? Something else?

According to wikipedia, it's an "action adventure puzzle platformer". I'm... not sure that actually narrows it down much. :)

As best I can tell, though, it's a game soaked entirely in the mythology of being a guy who is incredibly crap at dealing with women (AND men but in different ways) and yet gets tangled up with multiple crazy gorgeous girls and proceeds to hang out in a bar, get drunk, waffle about fear of commitment, and suck at everything. It's hard for me to be excited about putting myself in those shoes. (Of course, as a console game I can't play it anyway. I wonder if anyone will produce a cutscene-only version of it?)

that passed Nintendo rating boards?

In an apparent attempt to make the Wii seem like the console for sexy sexy adults, Ubisoft has relased a ... thing.

If my raised eyebrow isn't enough warning, this would not be considered safe for many workplaces.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxd96qRa6wY

Now, what little we see of the actual gameplay is not just tame but kinda boring. The same could likely be said of many 'naughty' board or dice games. I dunno, I'm just kinda o.0 trying to imagine the situations in which this game could actually be played as apparently intended. Not my place to judge and if you have that sort of parties, you have fun, but, um, when it comes to getting a bunch of my adult friends together to play games, I think I'll stick with tabletop RPGs.

Ever17 for the Xbox 360?

Unfortunately NOT announced for the English market and I have no idea if a translation is likely. I would guess that the IP owners still care somewhat about the English market, since they haven't allowed it to be sold as a download title for the PC. It's not impossible that it could get an English version, especially since there's already a translation for everthing except the new content, and 999 got great reviews... Don't know how well it sold though.

I don't personally like the new 3d models as shown in screenshot that much, though.

And speaking of...

Sony Could Disable Jailbroken PS3s

Even if you've never signed up for a PSN account, your console will communicate with Sony servers every time it boots up. That initial load process is used to upload error logs, download updates to the "What's New" module, and a list of recently-run applications, including any unauthorized backup manager software.

Sony has yet to ban any consoles for taking advantage of the jailbreak, but the terms and conditions of the PlayStation Network make it clear that Sony has the authority to carry them out. Thanks to the system's constant self-reporting feature, "the company even has the means to irrevocably disable your console should it so wish," rendering affected PS3 consoles unusable, online and off.

Now, I never use the PS3, and the person who does use it has no interest in homebrew or hacking or anything, so it's not a concern... that is, it's not a concern that anything will happen because of anything we've actually done wrong. But it is a concern that someone will simply screw up and poof, there goes your stuff.

PN 03

Okay, I'd never heard of this game, but apparently it was by the same people who did Bayonetta. Which is NOT AT ALL a surprise when you see this:



(Warning - Weirdly sexed-up video game heroine cotained within. I expect I would find that pretty annoying if I were actually playing the game, but out of context and in a music video, it's so ridiculous it's funny. To me. :) )

brutal legend would be improved by...

... health bars. Or at least damage numbers.

The last few stage battles are pretty rough if you've been steamrolling happily through the game until that point. Consulting all kinds of online guides provides strategy advice, but a lot of the things I'm finding out is stuff that would be a lot easier to work out on your own if you could SEE the difference in using different attacks on different targets. As it is, unless the difference is HUGE and the monster goes down in a couple of hits, it's hard to tell what works best. And this leads to a lot of floundering around.

More crunchy data plz!

Brutal Legend

I'm not playing it - I don't do modern consoles - but it's amusing to sit and watch someone else play. The storytelling is generally well-integrated to the gameplay and there's enough shiny things on a big screen that a second person watching and just occasionally pointing 'Over there!' or 'Try X instead!' isn't completely useless. Missions are short and clear and it's easy to carve up into chunks so we can play a little now, stop when I get restless, and come back later.

So it's a share-y thing, unlike most of the games a certain someone has for his PS3 here, which I peer at for only a moment to note the graphics and then get bored.

... I still don't do modern consoles. I haven't appreciated these post-SNES enormous controllers!

(I should note that we're not that far into it now, because I have a limited attention span for sitting on the couch watching someone else do stuff. It may get more grindy and less funny later.)

grumpypants

... why are there BATTLES in my music game?

... why is the cheat code to unlock all songs (so i don't have to deal with the above) SO LONG?

ow, fingers

Hey, look, someone threw out a PS2!

And two guitar controllers!

And a copy of Guitar Hero 3!

And they all work!

Strangely enough, this is true.

Not so strangely - Picking up new game and immediately playing a few songs (on medium) has resulted in my pinky going "OW!"

That being the case, I'm not going to play it any more until we find a memory card so that I don't have to start from scratch every time...

Nyxquest

Cool-looking platformer that's made its way from WiiWare to Mac/PC. I haven't tried it yet (I expect my current computer may not be able to run it) but worth peeking at:

FAIL

So, apparently, if you happen to have a female name, Xbox support automatically assumes that you must not be the actual gamer. Grr.

cute doesn't mean useless

Shiny shiny, if unfortunately on a platform I don't have.

a forwarded whine

Apparently Rock Band is short on songs by female vocalists. Bugger.

... not that I have Rock Band or anything. I like to sing but nobody else around me does, so getting a Karaoke game would be a waste. Singing while someone else played instruments could be fun. But, apparently, not an option...