Gaming First Impressions: Life is Strange: Waif Hipster Bullshit

I quite enjoyed Telltale's The Walking Dead, both seasons 1 and 2. They were decent adventure games, but I wasn't really playing them for the gameplay. In fact, the gameplay was the worst part. I played them because I loved the decision-based story-driven narrative. Your choices affected things that happened later down the road--well, to an extent at least. It'd be difficult for every choice to make a huge impact on the narrative (if a key choice split the narrative into two notably different storylines, then just one key choice in each of the 5 episodes would result in 32 different endings), so some choices ultimately don't matter to the plot. The real appeal of the choices is that they give players agency over the story.

When Season 2 came out, a friend and I began playing at around the same time. We decided to chat through Steam as we played, reacting as the story unfolded, and then comparing the decisions we made afterwards. Sure, we made a lot of the same choices, but we also disagreed on what the best choice was at times. Being able to argue your choices was one of the most appealing parts of the game for me, because even if your choices don't matter, the act of making the choice in and of itself matters.

Life is Strange is a choice-driven adventure game like The Walking Dead, so the aforementioned friend recommended it to me when it came out and was kind enough to buy me the first episode so that we could share the experience again like we did with The Walking Dead. I played it and while the gameplay is similar to The Walking Dead, it's definitely a different experience. With one episode released and four more on the way, here are my thoughts.

The Plot

Max Caulfield, an 18-year-old student, moves back to her hometown of Arcadia Bay, Oregon after an absence of five years to attend Blackwell High School for its photography program. While in class, she has a strange vision of a storm by a lighthouse. While trying to calm her nerves from the dream in the bathroom, a student enters, exchanges a tense and heated conversation with a blue-haired girl who follows him, and then pulls a gun and shoots her. At this point, Max discovers that she has the power to rewind time and uses her power to stop the incident.

There are also some strange things in general going on at Blackwell. There's the Vortex Club, a group of cool kids with a vague purpose. There's the missing Rachel Amber and the missing person posters of her put up absolutely everywhere. There's the push for an installation of an intrusive surveillance system. And, of course, there's all sorts of general teenage drama added on top of all that.

A note that pretty much everything that follows this is a spoiler for the first episode, but not the rest of the game, so stop here or proceed as you will. I'll be talking about other stuff less specifically in the other sections, but I will still be talking about it.

Max discovers that the blue-haired girl whose life she saves and the person putting up all the posters of Rachel Amber are the same person: her former best friend Chloe, who she had cut off contact with after leaving five years ago. Chloe became close friends with Rachel after Max left, and Max agrees to help Chloe find her.

At the end, Max has another vision of an impending tornado threatening to destroy the town in roughly four days. She explains the vision, as well as her time traveling to Chloe.

The Good

There's a lot to like about Life is Strange. While the models and such have some issues, the art is really nice. The ending scene in particular is beautiful, with Max and Chloe looking out at the town from the lighthouse at sunset while snow begins falling. The game has a nice soundtrack that fits it well, and there are some solid storytelling and characters.

There's also a lot to like about the time reversal system. The ability to undo choices is a good one. Sometimes people make a certain choice expecting it to go a certain way, then find out that there was a disconnect between what the developers were trying to say and what they thought it meant. It also allows for plenty of delicious paranoia-based traps. There were four or five key choices in this first episode, and I think that with maybe a few exceptions, I would always make a choice, rewind time to make the other choice, decide I like my first choice better, and then later think "I should have made the other choice" after it was already too late to change it. It's a unique take on the genre and I really hope the game is able to capitalize on it in later episodes.

The thing that stands out to me most, though, is the themes. In addition to spirals (the tornado and the Vortex Club feature prominently, and the time-travel mechanic interface is shown as a spiral), there seems to be an important theme of security vs. freedom. The principal and Chloe's father both want to control information more through the installation of security systems, one girl early in the game is piloting a drone, and social media and technology in particular are given attention. While social media is obviously just a part of most teen's lives now, particular attention is paid to the dangers. One character asks to sketch Max and then explicitly forewarns her that he posts his sketches on Facebook. Another girl, however, takes a somewhat unflattering photo of Max without her permission and posts it to Facebook. Public and private technology-based discourse and information sharing are brought up in various ways, from sexting to digital piracy.

On the other side of the coin, there are a few free spirits rebelling against the system. Chloe is obviously a very counter-culture character, but one of the teachers at the school is petitioning against the security system. Graffiti, an anonymous form of discourse, is also prominently featured. And then there are the symbols of the birds and the butterflies. Winged animals are often used as examples for freedom, and while the butterfly pulls double duty (since the story deals with time travel it almost certainly alludes to the butterfly effect), near the end Max makes a comment after seeing some birds, envying how free they are. The security vs. freedom conflict is set up subtly enough that someone who isn't used to looking for things like that might overlook it, and it's nice to see that a choice-driven game is setting up a conflict between two opposing sides without being blatant about it.

The Bad

That's not to say that Life is Strange is great, though. I knew literally nothing about the game before going into it, apart from it being episodic and decision-based, and my first thought when it started up was "wow, that wet hair texture looks awful." There's some noticeable failures on the parts of the models like hair clipping into necks at certain angles, and the voice acting isn't always stellar. And while the problem goes away quickly enough, the controls aren't always intuitive. When the game told me to look at a photo in the very beginning, I spent at least a minute attempting to follow the instructions without realizing that I was supposed to click on the word telling me how to interact with the object instead of the object itself. Overall, there weren't too many flat-out problems I had with the game, but there were considerably more things that should have worked better than they did, which I'll get to in this next session.

The Rest
 
A lot of the game swings around from legitimately enjoyable to a bit cringe-worthy (I'm sorry, was I supposed to find those selfie puns funny?), to somewhere in between.

The story is a bunch of stories I feel like I've heard before. It's got the whole "stranger in a familiar land" thing going on, and a large portion of the plot feels like it is literally The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. I'm just waiting for the scene where Warren asks Max on a date and she constantly rewinds time to try to get out of it so she doesn't have to face her feelings, or for when someone asks her "Max...have you been...time leaping?" And of course, it has tinges of absolutely every hipster-based story I've seen.

Then there's the characters. I have no clue how I'm supposed to feel about these characters. Sometimes they feel nuanced and fleshed-out, but sometimes they feel like they're just caricatures. What makes it worse is that some characters feel one way, some feel another way, and some feel like a bit of both. Chloe's father, the principal, and Nathan Prescott are obviously designed to be hated, making them feel two-dimensional. But when other characters are more nuanced, it makes it feel like one group or the other is just poorly written. Chloe is one of the more likable characters, but some of her actions are pretty inexcusable. Are we supposed to like those aspects of her character, or are we supposed to see her as more morally ambiguous? I don't know. It's either good writing or bad writing and it's hard to tell right now.

Most specifically I want to talk about Max because I have absolutely no idea what to make of her. Max almost seems to be designed to pander. It's like one or more developers said "these are things I love that I think that most of the target demographic will love." And they weren't wrong! I might not like photography, but I love a lot of books, anime, games, and TV shows Max mentions! It's probably because she likes things that I don't really care about that I'm able to see through her interests that I do love to the fact that she's very obviously designed to be lovable and/or identifiable. She has a lot of interests, and most people who would play Life is Strange are going to share at least one or two of them, but probably not all of them. I know that this is just how people work on a general level, but there's been so much effort put into making Max into a love letter to the things the developers enjoy and think that their audience will also enjoy that it feels a bit manipulative. Add in the fact that Max is our point-of-view character so we're seeing the entire game through this lens and it makes the whole game feel like--to borrow a phrase Victoria uses to describe Max's public image--waif hipster bullshit. Yeah, yeah, okay, we get it, Max is a socially awkward person who likes things we like. Can we talk about the story and not the merits of The X-Files?

That doesn't mean that it's bad, though. References are not inherently bad and in this case they didn't make me enjoy the game's merits any less. I'll still be playing through the other four episodes when they come out. It just makes it hard to form an objective opinion on the game's quality. Maybe all my griping really means is that I've reached the point of analytic viewing where I can't even turn it off even when I'm enjoying something. Oh well. We'll see in March when episode 2 comes out, I suppose.

Anime First Impressions: Silver Spoon

I’ve been watching a lot of bad anime lately, for some weird masochistic reason. I tried starting a few series, but didn’t really get into them. Then I found out about an anime airing this season called Silver Spoon. “Oh,” I said to myself, “It’s all about agriculture.” As a farm boy, that interested me. It was a familiar concept, yet it’d be a bit unique since it was about agriculture in Japan, rather than America. Then I found out it was written by the same woman who wrote Fullmetal Alchemist (Hiromu Arakiwa), and my expectations for it shot through the roof. So far, they haven’t really disappointed.

In terms of genre, Silver Spoon is about as far from Fullmetal Alchemist as possible. It’s a slice-of-life story about Yugo Hachiken, a guy who, in an attempt to get away from his parents (the exact reasons are unclear at the point I’m at), attends a school far away from his home. This school happens to have an agricultural focus, meaning that this is basically a fish-out-of-water tale about a city slicker among country bumpkins. This gives Arikawa, a farm girl herself, the ability to go into detail about how exactly farms work.

Hachiken has a lot of really sensible attitudes to a lot of the things farmers take for granted. He has a near breakdown when he finds out that chicken eggs come out of the anus. He starts to grow attached to the runt of a litter of pigs, despite knowing it will probably end up as food (which is why he’s advised to name the pig “pork bowl”). He misestimates the importance of daily chores. His reactions to the stranger aspects of farm life are where a lot of humor (and drama!) comes from, but also allow exposition on how exactly that life works.

Arikawa, unsurprisingly, does wonderfully with the portrayal of farmers and farm life. All the farms themselves are different, varying in size and structure, but most all the farmers hold similar values in life. It goes into the details of small family farms and super-sized ones.

The characters themselves are great. Some are a bit nonstandard, like the Buddha-like advisor of the equestrian club or the diminutive principal of the academy. And, of course, Arikawa does hold that, in her own words “Men should be beefy! Women should be vavoom!” Interestingly, the stockiest female character is actually one of my favorites, since she’s so on top of everything. Hachiken himself is a good character, as he’s constantly developing. And, of course, there’s his love interest. Their relationship seems to be developing organically, and Aki is an interesting character on her own. The focus seems to be less on “can Hachiken land this girl,” and more on “will Hachiken become the sort of guy she would see as worth marrying?” There’s been a strong emphasis on how important family is to farmers, and I like seeing a relationship that puts so much emphasis on the future.

Finally, the story has a lot of great themes. The title comes from (and this is from memory) a proverb/legend/tradition that babies are given a silver spoon, so that they will never go hungry. To me, it seems like it’s some sort of metaphor for self-sufficiency. Times will be tough for some of these characters’ families. But they’ll at least have what they need to get by. Another theme is the importance of dreams (in which sense it’s kind of like One Piece if everyone was a farmer instead of a pirate). And finally, there’s a running theme about the paradox of both loving animals and raising them to be eaten. Speaking from experience, it’s really hard to explain or understand. You kind of have to grow up with that mindset, but Silver Spoon attempts to explain it.

Basically, for someone who grew up on the farm, Silver Spoon is an incredibly nostalgic and charming anime. It seems like it’s got a pretty niche audience, and I’m not sure how many people would love it. But hey, if it’s sounds like something you’d like, please check it out!

Anime First Impressions: Attack on Titan

Every now and then there’s a show airing in the new season that anime fans go absolutely wild over.  Sometimes, like with Madoka Magica, they actually end up becoming instant classics. Sometimes, like with Sword Art Online, they end up…well, going downhill really, really hard.  This season, the must-watch anime is Attack on Titan.  That’s what I’ve been watching lately, and after finishing the 8th episode last night, I’m all caught up.

Attack on Titan is about a world (a version of our world, which might be spoilers but I don’t think so) where humanity has been nearly wiped to extinction by giants called Titans that seem to have no purpose other than annihilating humans.  They’ve retreated to a giant civilization within three layers of wall.  When the anime opens, after a long stretch of peace, the Titans attack and completely retake the land behind the first wall.

The story follows Eren, his adopted older sister Mikasa, and their friend Armin as they join the military force in an effort to drive back the Titans.  And so far, the show is really pretty good.

First of all, Attack on Titan pulls no punches.  It hits hard, and it does a good job of actually making you care when it hits hard.  Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is up to interpretation. Yes, Attack on Titan hits hard, but it also likes to drive it in and stomp on it. Once it picks up, there are a few episodes that seem almost dedicated to making you hate the world, with their themes of “only the strong survive” and “the world is cruel.”  It seems to be the overarching theme of the show.

It also feels, in some ways, to be a show I’ve seen before. Our protagonist, Eren, looks really familiar, and the design and colors give me a sort of Sword Art Online feel. And we all know how Sword Art Online turned out, so I’m instantly a bit on guard.  The theme that everyone loves so much gives me some Future Diary and High School of the Dead vibes at points.  I mean, it’s still good, of course, and the theme song is amazing. It just feels like it’s using good visual elements that other shows have already used.

In episode 5, there’s a pretty shocking twist.  And then stuff happens and in episode 8 it explains what’s going on, and I know this is sounding confusing because I’m trying to talk about a few shocking moment without explaining what they are. Long story short, the status quo got upset, and then it may have gotten…reset a bit? Basically, I was shocked about the first move, but once it grew on me, I got hesitant about the next. I’m worried about the future of the show and where it’s going from here as a result, and I’m really going to have to see where it goes.

Overall, I’m enjoying Attack on Titan, even if I am a bit hesitant.  The world they’ve built up is great, with a sort of gritty medieval feel with a few steampunk-ish elements (though it’s definitely not flat-out steampunk).  I’m looking forward to watching where it goes, even if I may not enjoy that. If you’re the sort of person who would watch this sort of show, get in on the hype.

Gaming First Impressions: Assassin’s Creed II

I promised that I’d talk about Assassin’s Creed II in relationship to Assassin’s Creed the First when I got into it some.  And there’s plenty to talk about.

A brief note to start: the graphics are improved.  That’s notable right off the bat.  The whole thing looks more smooth and polished and it’s also less gritty.  That’s all I need to say about them.

But the graphics aren’t what I’m here to talk about, because graphics don’t automatically make a game good or bad.  What issues did Assassin’s Creed have that the sequel fixed?

First of all, we’ve got the protagonist, Ezio Auditore.  Whereas Altair Ibn-La’Ahad, the first game’s protagonist, was a surly, overly serious unlikable character who thought himself above the organization he was part of, Ezio is improved in nearly every way.  He is a charming rogue and while he can be brash and hotheaded, it’s because of his youth and because of his motivation.  You see, while Altair’s motivation basically boiled down to “do what my boss says to regain my rank so that I can do what my boss says from a better position,” Ezio’s tale is one of revenge.  He becomes an assassin to get back at the people who had his father and brothers killed.  Now, while I as a person am really not big on revenge, I as a writer find it to be a far more compelling motivator than promotion.  Well, okay, Altair’s motivation was regaining his lost honor, but it was handled in such a way that it’s basically getting promoted back to his old position.

There’s a new HUD, but I could really take it or leave it.  Really, I don’t have much of an opinion on which is better.  It’s just a little different, and it works.  I’m not going to complain about it, but it’s not like the old HUD needed a lot of changing anyway.  Of course, part of this change is because of a change in the metaplot.

Desmond (the protagonist of the series as a whole) has been broken out of the Abstergo building he was being held hostage in, and made a few new assassin friends.  They decide that they need to train him, and rather than have him play (er, simulate) a more experienced character (er, ancestor), they’d set him up with Ezio, who started off inexperienced like Desmond is. Basically, they’re using it to Matrix the information into his head and give him a lifetime of experience in just a few days.  Interesting metaplot, but I’ve only seen two bits of it: the beginning where he first meets the team, and the bit where he finishes his first session.  I’m waiting for the inevitable twists before I make any final judgments, but so far I’m finding the metaplot less interesting than in the first game—largely because the plot sessions are so much longer.  Rather than being in and out of the animus fairly regularly, I’ve only been out of it twice.  That’s something I don’t like—that it’s not as easily broken up into different sections.

So.  Overall I like the characters and plot more, even if I haven’t seen enough of the metaplot to like it as much.  But what about the gameplay itself?  Well, it is vastly improved.  Assassin’s Creed liked to pretend it was a sandbox game, but Assassin’s Creed II actually is one.  There are the missions that advance the story, of course, but I spend a lot of time hunting down glyphs that reveal some metaplot information, walking through the crowds to casually pick every pocket that I can, hunting down codex pages to use them to create…some vague map of some sort, shopping for upgrades, searching for assassin tombs in challenging platform puzzle segments…overall, the whole thing manages to be fun where its predecessor failed.

The missions also lead into each other much better because there’s more variety.  It’s not “do these tasks and then you are ready to watch a cutscene, assassinate a dude, and then run back to the bureau.”  Instead, you hunt down a few targets across town that you get to in different ways until you get to the climax of that particular arc.  The missions are less formulaic and consequently flow into each other much better.

The battle controls are, for the most part, better.  It’s actually viable to use the hidden blade in combat now since you can actually defend and attack without countering, and combat as a whole just feels vastly improved.  The only difference would be the weapon selection, which requires you to hold a button and select instead of just switching weapons.  While you can select three weapons (hidden blades, sword, unarmed) quickly with the number keys like you could in the original, you’re given a lot of options that you can’t select nearly as quickly.  While you’re unlikely to use the poison much (it’s exactly like the hidden blade, only enemies die more slowly), being unable to quickly select your throwing knives is a bit frustrating.

Basically, Assassin’s Creed was a decent game that could have been really good but had a lot of flaws holding it back.  Assassin’s Creed II took a lot of those flaws out, making it a game that is actually genuinely good.  It’s fun!  I like it when games are fun!  So thank you, Assassin’s Creed II.  Thank you for listening to my complaints about the first game (made five and a half years after the game’s release) and implemented them for me by the time I played the second game (three and a half years after the game’s release).

It’s just also unfortunate that the game still seems pretty long.

Gaming First Impressions: Assassin’s Creed

What?  You mean I actually do “First Impressions” posts that aren’t about anime?  Perish the thought!

When I was building my computer, the graphics card I bought came with a free digital download of Assassin’s Creed III.  Their way of saying “we’re so glad that you bought our product that we’re going to give you a free game with it!”  I had heard some really good things about the series in the past, and I figured I’d play the two (and two halves, i.e. Brotherhood and Revelations) games that came before it before I got around to the third one.

Assassin’s Creed is sort of two stories: the story of Desmond, a bartender (and former assassin?) who’s been kidnapped and has two people going through his “genetic memories” to find something.  The memories they are going through are the memories of Altair, an Assassin during the time of the Crusades.

So I started with the original, and was instantly drawn in by the fun gameplay and assassinating people and what exactly are these sinister people who have imprisoned Desmond and PARKOUR, YEAH!

And then the game stopped being fun and started to suck.

Basically, the game starts out really strong.  It gives you a great mystery, develops a wonderful world, gives you some fun gameplay that’s easy to learn, and sets you off on a quest for redemption.  And for a level, it’s fun.  It’s fun to watch as Altair goes off on his quest for redemption, it’s fun to try to figure out what’s going on with Desmond, and it’s fun to jump around on buildings collecting flags and hunting down targets.

The only problem is that things don’t get more varied than that.  Here’s how the story so far goes:
-Desmond is being held by two people who are probing his memories looking for some Mysterious Thing™
-Altair ends up in trouble with the Brotherhood of Assassins because he is a Cop Assassin Who Does Not Play By The Rules™
-We really start learning controls in a pretty fluid way that’s still fun.
-Altair goes off to some city to find some dude the Brotherhood wants dead.  There are hints to some larger scheme after he’s assassinated.  Altair relearns a skill afterwards.
-Altair goes off to two more cities to find two other dudes the Brotherhood wants dead.  There are hints to some larger scheme after they’re assassinated.  Altair relearns skills after each.
-Desmond learns a bit more about the people who are probing his mind.  There is DRAMA and MYSTERY.
-Altair goes off to different parts of all three cities to  find three more dudes the Brotherhood wants dead.  There are hints to some larger scheme after they’re assassinated.  Altair relearns skills after each.

I don’t know what happens after that since I haven’t beaten the third mission in that last chunk, but you can see why I’m having issues with the game at the moment.  It’s extraordinarily repetitive, and just extends the length of each “memory block”/level by increasing the amount of repetitive missions in it.  Sure, the first mission is fun.  It’s great to jump around the rooftops of Damascus.  It’s less fun when you’re doing the exact same thing in Acre and Jerusalem, though being given archers as hidden blade fodder provides a bit of new entertainment.  But by the time you have to do it again in all three locations, it’s become a chore.  What’s worse, absolutely everything looks the same.  The landscapes and cityscapes aren’t diverse enough to provide enough good landmarks, and you’re better off navigating by the icons on your map.  The sandbox elements of the game (i.e., gathering all the information instead of just most of it, saving citizens, climbing viewpoints, collecting flags, and taking out Templars) are repetitive and take a terribly long time.  I don’t even know what collecting the flags or defeating the Templars DOES, since there are so many of them and there’s no way to find them other than trial and error or an online guide.

What’s more, the story moves painfully slow.  After the first bit, it gets as repetitive as the gameplay itself.  You’re given pieces of the plot through ambiguous hints, but it’s entirely separate from the rest of the gameplay and there’s not enough to keep me interested.  Your reward for an intensely long session of gameplay is a sparse section of story that probably only makes sense once you’ve played through the game twice, but come on.  With a game this long and repetitive, who has time for that (as well as it would fit, I refuse to say “ain’t nobody got time for that” because using memes instead of your own words is dumb and uncreative and stupid and dumb)?

Also, the game controls?  Mostly good, but the combat controls are terrible.  Your hidden blade is useless in direct combat, you have limited throwing knives, and the swordfights are dependent on unforgiving timing.  You’re given enough health that, after you learn how to counter, you can just hold down the defend button and hack and slash your way through the enemies with counterattacks.  But that makes the battles take much longer.  What’s more, swordfights draw attention and once you’ve engaged in one, it’s easier to take out all the enemies in a long, drawn-out fight instead of running, finding cover, inevitably being spotted right  before you dive in, and repeating until you manage to get away safely.  And rescuing citizens, one of the main sidequests, almost always requires a swordfight that can draw dozens of guards in later missions.

Let me take a moment to compare Assassin’s Creed to The Legend of Zelda (i.e. my favorite game series) because they’re both action adventure games.  Let’s look at what they do differently.

-The Legend of Zelda sends you through varied and diverse locations. This usually prevents players from getting lost.  Assassin’s Creed has buildings that all look the same, forcing you to navigate by the (limited) minimap.

-The locations in The Legend of Zelda take different skills to navigate that usually require a short period of thinking before moving.  Assassin’s Creed is more trial-and-error. instead of being able to plot clear, strategic routes to safety, you’re forced to run around a disorienting maze of streets and rooftops until you stumble across one of the three types of places you can hide.

-The Legend of Zelda usually has quick battles that require just a little strategy, like finding the right angle to attack at in Skyward Sword or figuring out how to best get around a dodongo to attack its tail.  The battles in Assassin’s Creed are less dependent on strategy and more dependent on hoping you press the right button at the right time.  The only exception are the boss battles, and even then the strategy consists largely of “chase the target down or go here and wait for the right time to strike.”

-The Legend of Zelda offers a variety of gameplay between dungeons dependent on manipulating the environment.  In Assassin’s Creed, you do the same thing over and over and over again.

-The Legend of Zelda will often (though not always—I’m looking at you, Spirit Tracks) give you a bit more of the story as you’re moving through each new environment.  Assassin’s Creed gives you the gameplay, then the story, then the gameplay, then the story, etc.

You get the point.  And I get that the Zelda series is based around puzzles while the Assassin’s Creed series is based around stealth, so they’re obviously going to be different in some respects (especially regarding combat and how exactly the gameplay works). 

But I could really choose other Action Adventure games.  Let’s take Dark Souls, for example, which I’ve been playing for a class.  Sure, you’ll do a lot of repetitive things in Dark Souls, but it’s usually the same thing because you died.  That’s because, in Dark Souls, combat takes a lot of strategy.  It’s long and often tedious like it is in Assassin’s Creed, but the difference is the health bar.  Dark Souls won’t let you just charge in and attack because that’s a good way to get killed.  You have to wait for an opening to attack and avoid what attacks you can.  It’s not about pressing the right button at the right time, it’s about watching for right time and waiting until then to press the right button.  Dark Souls has diverse architecture and while it’s possible to get lost, the structure of the buildings are diverse enough that you can usually find your way around with ease once you’ve learned the landmarks.  And most all of Dark Soul’s story is told subtly and is integrated into the gameplay.

So what do I think about Assassin’s Creed?  Well, I actually think that it’s a good game, at least in theory.  It’s got great design and world elements a wonderful concept, and it’s fun.  The only problem is, it’s a good game that happens to suck pretty heavily.  The great gameplay and world are marred by repetitive architecture and some wonky combat controls, and you can only play ninja for so long before you start wanting more from the game—though I’m speaking in terms of quality, since I want less quantity.  It’s a concept that deserved to be great, and it wasn’t.  So I feel disappointed.  Disappointed and betrayed.  And really, that’s about the worst feeling possible.  If something’s inherently terrible, I don’t feel as bad.  But when something with great potential doesn’t capitalize on it, it feels like it’s broken a promise.  A promise to be good.

I hear the sequels are better.  I’m really hoping they are.  Because at the moment, Assassin’s Creed isn’t a game; it’s a chore.

Well, I’ve still got about half of the game to go.  It’ll hopefully pick up after this.  And if it doesn’t, well…the rest of those soldier-assailed citizens can just go ahead and suck it.  They probably were thieves anyway.

Anime First Impressions: Fairy Tail

No, “Tail” is not a typo.

So yes, I’ve been watching Fairy Tail lately.  I’m about 15 episodes in, which is a bit lengthy in terms of a “first impression” post, but it’s looking like it’s going to be a long-runner.  I was really hesitant to start another long-running anime after professing that One Piece would be the one and only one I’d bother with, but I’d started seeing Fairy Tail around more recently and figured I’d at least try to give it a shot.

So why this change of heart?  Well, I watched a few episodes of it.  Hulu often has the first two to four dubbed episodes of a show available, especially if it’s a popular one.  I was interested by what I saw, and when I started writing “Warrior, Wizard,” I noticed that I had been drawing some from what I had seen of Fairy Tail, especially in terms of the “guild” structure. That’s what made me give it a shot—seeing if I could draw inspiration from it and/or separate myself from it.

Fairy Tail takes place in the land of Fiore, a land filled with magic.  There are guilds of wizards who take on various jobs.  One of the most famous guilds, and the one that the show focuses on, is the Fairy Tail guild.  It’s filled with a lot of powerful wizards—but also a lot of colorful personalities.  Which is a win-lose in-universe, but definitely a win-win for us!

Basically, there are five primary characters at this point in the show.  There’s the protagonist, Lucy, a celestial wizard.  She uses magical keys to summon different beings, and even has several golden keys, which are extremely rare keys based on the Zodiac.  I don’t know at this point if there are multiples or if there are only twelve of these keys in existence (in which case, how did Lucy manage to get her hands on them? I’m sure these questions will be answered in time), but I like the idea.

Then there are Natsu and Happy, a fire wizard and his friend who happens to be a talking cat that can transform into a flying talking cat (Happy is pretty much just there to serve as the show’s mascot).  Natsu is an ability-type wizard, meaning that he can use fire magic naturally, and he was…personally trained by a dragon or something?

Natsu’s greatest rival is Grey (Gray?  I never know the proper spelling since the color can correctly be spelled both ways), who is also an ability-type wizard, though he uses ice instead of fire.  He also has a habit of taking off his clothes.  Which is, um, actually explained in his backstory, oddly enough.  He and Natsu have a very “red oni, blue oni” relationship.  The term is a mostly Japanese trope concerning a specific foil: the hot-headed, aggressive “red oni” (in this case, Natsu) and the distant, logical “blue oni” (in this case, Grey, though “logical” is a bit of a stretch for anyone in Fairy Tail).  If you’ve ever seen Digimon, it can be explained pretty quickly as “Tai and Matt.”  Anyway, it’s emphasized in Fairy Tail by their “fire and ice” dynamic.

The fifth member the show focuses on is Erza, a woman who uses a type of magic called “requip.”  For those familiar with anime terminology, it’s basically magic hammerspace.  For those who aren’t, it allows her to store weapons and armor in an alternate dimension and quickly retrieve them for whatever purpose she wants.

At the point I’m at, the show’s starting to pick up storywise.  The groundwork has been set and there have been a few short arcs to set up the characters some.  Now it’s starting to go into some character backstories and set up storylines that will probably span multiple arcs.

As for my opinions on it?  Well…I’m not sure.  I’m torn at this point.  It kind of feels like Fullmetal Alchemist meets One Piece (and due to appearance and English voice actresses, Lucy even seems like a cross between Winry and Nami).  That’s not a bad thing, though.  Overall, I’m enjoying it.  It’s got a solid storyline, decent characters, a great world…but it’s just…lacking.  It feels like a shonen anime (i.e., anime targeted at younger boys)…probably because it IS a shonen anime, but it feels like it’s very much part of its genre.  At this point, it doesn’t quite have the emotion I’ve seen from One Piece, though it may grow into it. 

The main issue I have with it, though, is the writing.  I don’t know if this is the fault of the Funimation dub (I refuse to watch long-runners subbed), but it just doesn’t wow me.  It just feels a bit flat.  Not quite to the level of the Hunger Games trilogy—a series I felt had excellent potential that was destroyed by a few terrible writing choices—but still a bit of a disappointment.  I guess that’s to be expected to an extent with shonen, though.  My past experiences with shonen are Shaman King, Rurouni Kenshin, and One Piece, and I felt that the third went terribly downhill and wasted great potential while the latter two had some very mature, solid writing.  The creators of Rurouni Kenshin and One Piece have also worked together in the past, so it’s not too much of a surprise that I’d enjoy the works of both.  Maybe their excellent writing and characters have spoiled me?

Anyway, Fairy Tail is still a very solid series, and I’m going to continue watching it.  I’m just currently holding it to a high standard.  Maybe it’ll improve as it goes along?  Who knows?  These are just my first impressions, after all.

If you’re into shonen or fantasy, and especially if you’re big on worldbuilding, give Fairy Tail a look.  It gives some good explanations of its magic systems (it has multiple magic systems and pulls them off well), and it’s definitely something worth looking into for that.  Of course, if you hate shonen…you’re probably going to hate this, too, since it’s more of the same.

Anime Club 2013: First Impressions

Hey, everyone!  Andy here, AKA DaLadybugMan!  So, as I often do when I’ve started watching something but haven’t seen all of it, I’m going to give some first impressions!  Today, we’ve got a pretty big lineup of the shows my anime club has been watching this Spring Semester.  So let’s get to them!

Ghost Stories

Imagine that someone took a decent but kind of mediocre children’s cartoon, say, Ben 10 (note: I have never actually seen Ben 10 so I have no clue where it falls on the good-bad scale).  They’re trying to sell this cartoon overseas but it’s just not anything that would really stand out.  What do you do?

Well, Ghost Stories was in a similar situation.  The answer they came up with was “mess with the script to make it as hilariously offensive as possible.”  Yes, this is a show where middle-schoolers spout lines like “It would never work out between us—not because you’re a rabbit, but because you’re black” or “I’m too young to die!  The only girl I’ve had sex with is my babysitter!”

As for the story, it follows a girl named Satsuki Miyanoshita who, along with her brother Keiichirou, have just moved to her deceased mother’s hometown.  Along with three friends, she finds out that her mother was a ghost hunter (who ya gonna call?) and the five go around sealing the ghosts that cause trouble every week.  Oh, also they accidentally seal a ghost (demon?) inside her black cat, who he speaks through.  Very episodic so far, but that doesn’t really matter to the dub, since it’s about the jokes instead of the plot.

Basically, it’s a dub that takes great joy in being as audaciously offensive as possible.  So if that’s the sort of thing you like, watch it.  And all you purists who only watch subbed anime…make sure you watch the dub.

Nichijou

Nichijou, aka “My Ordinary Life,” is best described as “slice-of-life meets sketch comedy meets drugs.”  Or, if you’re the type of person who’s already familiar with anime, “Lucky Star or Azumanga Daioh…but on Excel Saga.” 

It follows two main groups of characters.  The first is a group of three ordinary high school girls.  Yuuko is probably the most awkward spazz ever who’s constantly cracking bad jokes to try to get reactions from her friends and who…has issues studying.  Mio is sort of the “straight man” of the trio, though she gets very passionate about food and drawing…particularly some of her, um…revealing drawings of attractive men.  The final member of the three is Mai, a quiet bespectacled stoic who’s pretty much a troll, messing with all the characters (and by proxy, the audience).

The second main group is a bit more eccentric.  You have the Professor, a cute little eight-year-old girl in a lab coat with a fondness for snacks.  Oh, yes, and she definitely is a professor.  After all, she’s the creator of Nano, a robot girl who just wants to be a real boy girl (wheeeen you wiiiiish upon a staaaaaar….).  She’s incredibly self-conscious of the giant screw sticking out of her back, as well as all the random little gadgets the Professor has installed in her.  As a result, her default emotional status is usually “flustered.”  The two are joined by Sakamoto, a black cat who can talk to them as a result of the scarf around his neck—another invention of the professor.  He’s very dignified—or at least acts it.  He is, after all, a cat, and it’s hard to maintain your dignity when chasing your own tail or playing with a blade of grass.

There are some other side characters.  The farmer’s son who acts like an aristocrat and rides a goat to school.  The girl who pulls out guns and explosives whenever she gets angry.  The principal, who wrestles deer.  The boy who sports a mohawk—not because he thinks it looks cool, but because he can’t grow hair anywhere else.

In terms of plot…well, it’s really hard to tell if there is any.  It’s sketch comedy (which means it’s a bunch of short, humorous clips) and it’s a slice-of-life anime (which means that it just sort of follows people doing everyday things…a term I use loosely when it comes to Nichijou).  Though there has been a scene or two where the plot threads of the two main groups have started to cross.  Who knows?  Maybe a story arc will develop in the future.

There’s really only one way to describe this show: strange and absolutely absurd.  It’s such rapid-fire, nonsensical comedy that watching more than one or two episodes at a time gets exhausting.  Do I recommend it?  Well…all I can say is that you should look up a few Nichijou clips on YouTube and, if you’re interested, watch the first episode.  If you like it, watch it.  If you don’t…run.  Run very far away, because it only gets more absurd from there.

Persona 4: The Animation

So I might not get this too much since it’s based on a video game that I’m not familiar with.  As a result, I haven’t been paying too much attention.  Basically, the concept (as I understand it) is that there are these three high school students (two guys and a girl) who start investigating this “midnight channel.”  Every time someone shows up on the channel, they end up getting kidnapped.  So they end up going into the TV to save these people from their shadows—the darker sides of them that they want to hide from everyone.  Once the person faces their shadow, they get a Persona: an avatar that fights for them.

It’s a pretty amusing show and I like the concept.  Not one that I’m crazy over, but it has fun characters, good character development, a good sense of humor, an interesting premise, and a solid dub.  If that sort of sci-fi is your genre of choice, it’s probably worth watching.  Check it out.

Just be wary of the bear puns.  They’re…not pleasant.

Blue Exorcist

I’ll be honest, we’re watching this one subbed and I haven’t really been paying attention to the subtitles.  It’s about a guy who’s the son of the devil but he’s training to be an exorcist or something?  I dunno, it’s probably okay?  Don’t look at me.

Sword Art Online

Also known as “Sword Angst Online” and “Swag Art Online.”  Well not really, but that’s what the people in the club (myself included) call it. 

The premise of the show is that there’s this MMORPG that you hook up to with a full-body simulator.  Oh, and after the launch, it turns out that the helmet can’t be forcibly removed or it kills you, you can’t log out, and if you die in the game, you die for real.  But it’s okay!  You can be free if you beat the game!

Basically, it’s something everyone will get the feeling that they’ve watched before.  There’s very little that’s refreshing or new about its concept.  It’s got good execution, though.  It’s kind of like doing the zombie genre (only in this case, it’s more like a genre that’s a zombie), but doing it with style.

Sword Art Online is one of those wonderful shows that strikes this absolutely beautiful balance.  On the “recognition vs. surprise” scale of entertainment, it falls heavily on the recognition side, but it generally chooses to go with the stuff that usually works.  It doesn’t totally suck, so you can at least be entertained while watching it, but it also makes some questionable choices that make it absolutely RIFE for riffing.  If you’re the type of person who likes to crack jokes about a show or movie as you watch it, watch this now.  Get some like-minded friends together and watch it.  I guarantee that, while you could certainly be watching a better show, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a show that gives you a better viewing experience.  It’s cheesy, it’s cliché, it’s dumb, but in all the best ways.  It’s mediocre without being bad or boring, which makes it the perfect guilty pleasure.

Madoka Magica

I’ve mentioned Madoka Magica in a previous post.  Quite extensively, in fact.  This is my third viewing.  So it’s not exactly like these are “first impressions” for me.  In fact, I can say right now that if you’ve never seen Madoka Magica, watch it now.  Don’t look up anything about it.  Just watch it.  It’s all of twelve episodes.  That’s under six hours.  That’s really not that much time, especially if you spread it out over some time.

However, I can bring up my first impressions of the dub, since I’ve seen four episodes of it now.  My opinion?  It’s…okay.  The Japanese cast was really strong, and the English cast overall just can’t compete.  Admittedly, the first four episodes might not be too good of an indicator.  Maybe they get better later on as they grow more comfortable with their roles, Homura hasn’t gotten much of a chance to truly shine, and Kyoko has had all of maybe two lines (Madoka and Kyubey don’t have as much of an excuse, though).  However, there were two performances that really stood out to me: Sayaka and their teacher.  The teacher’s just a small role, but she brought such energy and the voice fit the character so well that I took notice.  And Sayaka?  Sayaka’s performance was spot-on.

Darker than Black

Okay, so I’ve seen Darker than Black before, too, so I can’t do a “first impressions” thing for it.  I loved it when I first watched it.  And on a second viewing…well, it’s pretty good.  Not as great as I remembered, but I still think it’s worth recommending.  The world of DtB, at very least, is still as wonderful as always, and Yin is an absolutely amazing character.

So those are basically my first impressions (or second impressions?) of the shows we’re watching in anime club.  I may talk about some of them more. Who knows?  We’ll just have to see.

Anime First Impressions: The World God Only Knows

Who doesn't love dating sims?

What?  Lots of people?  Okay, that's fair.  But one the people who doesn't love dating sims isn't Keima Katsuragi.  Keima is a dating sim-obsessed sixteen-year-old boy who is known as "The God of Conquest" on the Internet.  There is no dating sim he cannot beat.  No heroine he cannot conquer.  No challenge that he cannot overcome.

Oh, and also, he doesn't even look twice at real girls.

Yes, Keima states that "reality is a crappy game."  Which is unfortunate for him, considering that he ends up accepting a contract with a cute little demon girl to help capture "loose souls" around the city by entering girls hearts to replace the evil spirits.  The boy who won't look twice at a girl now has to make them fall in love with him.

It's difficult to say how exactly I feel about this show after the first four episodes.  When I heard the concept, I was intrigued and wanted to check it out.  However, it actually seems kind of generic.  While I'm enjoying it, it's just doesn't really have that spark I'm looking for.  The characters aren't particularly memorable, it's not particularly clever, not particularly funny, and not particularly deep.  It's a nice little parody of dating sim tropes, yes, and I like watching how he figures out how to "win" each girl's "route," but I guess I just expected more from it.

It's not bad so far.  I don't know if it'll get better, but I'm going to keep watching for now.