Tales Of Eternia - The Games I Play

I've been working on this thing on and off, but I've gotten to the point that I want to actually write up a review of it. I'm not all the way finished with it, but I'm a bit afraid that the second disk is a bit scratched or isn't reading correctly because the loading times in the area that I'm at are a bit long, and I'm worried that I won't be able to progress any more.

This is the Tales game that started it off for me. This is the one that I ran into forever ago while playing with Ryan, and I thought it was amazing, and the best part is, is that between then and now the game has kept up really well.

The best part about it, is that it's not stupid impossible difficult like Dark Souls, but it's unforgiving enough that if you make a mistake that it hurts. It doesn't hold your hand, but gives you enough freedom to let you do what you need to do.

For example the game gives you subs. You can go and explore the ocean floor, and you're told to just do it. You don't get directions, you don't get told exactly where or what you have to do, you just have the freedom to do whatever you want and explore whatever you want. Do what you want, and it's okay. The same goes for dungeons and mobs. You can grind out for a long time and be levels ahead of where you should be, but if you get lazy, allow yourself to get attacked in a weird way and don't react fast enough, your over leveled party that used to be cleaning up the dungeon without a second thought, suddenly is going through a tough fight and you're having to struggle for everything.

All of the tools and 'gimmicks' that are part of the game are oddly really well balanced and interesting. For example the summons you can split between two of your characters. Depending on which summon you give to which character they get a different skill set and the summons themselves interact with each other in different ways to unlock specific skills if you level them up. It has the potential to be nice and complicated, but they do it in such a way that it works, even if you hate it.

The only part about the game that makes it cringe worthy, but also lovable, is the writing. I don't know if it can be counted as bad writing, or just amazing ideas to keep things light, but each character has their cliche phrase that they love to spout out. Max's "Yeah!" or Meredy's "Biba!" is either borderline genus (because neither of them are all too smart) or just such bad writing that it's wrapped around from the negatives and somehow looped around to be considered good again.

To me, this is the classic Tales game that I judge all of the other Tales games against. It has smooth game play, interesting characters, a solid plot line, good alternate quests and story lines, detailed fighting system and skills, and just what I want for a game.

Legos For The Digital Age - The Games I've Played

Yup, Minecraft.

I finally got around to playing it, and I TOTALLY get the hype now. It's a nice flow of a game where you can build just about whatever you want, dig to wherever you want, and you find yourself going, "I'll just do one more thing. . ." enough times in a row that you find yourself with a two story mansion lit by lava falls, a herd of cattle, and a pet dog and it's three in the morning and you're trying to convince yourself that you can do just 'one more thing'.

For a game that has no real game, I get the addiction to it.

The thing about this game is that you get lost doing things. While you're doing one thing, thirty other things start to crop up that you also want to do. You start to work on digging out diamonds but then you find a lava tube that opens up to a huge cave that leads into a bigger deposit of minerals that you have to explore. About two hours later you're finally back to where you started trying to dig out some more diamonds.

There is the MINOR and it is a truly minor thing, that the maps are somewhat restrictive. The maps on the ps3 version are small. They are small enough that once I knew where I was going, I could navigate from any corner of my world back to my base in one day cycle avoiding any darkness and monster spawns. Although they are small, you get that small little thing where you have BILLIONS, if not trillions, of maps to play on. Sure, you might know one map like the back of your hand, but just start another random map and hold on because it's going to be a different world. It's a bit frustrating when one map doesn't have what you need (like an end portal) but there's enough maps out there that you can find a variety of things no matter what you want to do.

Then there is creative mode. I'm starting to see where people just sit down and build replicas of buildings, or massive towns, and how you can start doing that. You start with a small little shed, that you call home, and in no time flat you're transforming the land, strip mining entire mountains, and morphing the world into what you want/need. I had to walk away from this game before I hit 100% on the trophies for this very reason. I knew that if I kept playing I would just start going full lego mode and building cathedrals with stained glass windows and other stupid things. I could dump some serious hours into this digital form of legos and not even blink an eye.

Yes, the graphics are horrible.
Yes, there is NO plot line.
But oh, is there still a game in the pixilated square world that is Minecraft. If you have ever spent any time with legos and actually enjoyed it you will love Minecraft for the exact same "I can build anything and destroy anything" feeling.

Thinking With Portals - The Games I've Played

I finally beat it last night.

For how much hype is behind the Portal world and how awesome people think it is, I was sort of whelmed. It wasn't overwhelmed and it was underwhelmed, it was a solid whelming. The biggest thing within this is that it was interesting to play, and there were some cool concepts into the world of puzzle genre, and let us never forget Glados.

She is what makes the game. The puzzles are interesting, and there are some ways that your brain has to work that are pretty cool, but what really makes this game worth playing is the passive aggressive, overly violent, always calm Glados.Without her mocking, without her plotting, and without all of who she is, this game would not be worth playing. It'd be an interesting puzzle game, and people would appreciate it for thinking with Portals, but really it wouldn't nearly be as big a smash as it currently is. Glados is the one thing about this game that makes people enjoy it so much.

This is when I have to praise the writers of the game. The game doesn't involve much dialogue, the protagonist is quiet the entire time, but the simple sentences and quick wit of Glados makes it worth it. If you play this game with no noise or no subtitles, you're missing out on what makes this game as strong as it could be. The only problem that I have with this amazing writing is that it is the only real thing that Portal is hanging it's hat on, and that's a scary idea.

It's a good game, and it was fun to play, but after going through it once, there's nothing making me want to play it more. Nothing inside of the game makes me want to go back and see more. I already found about Glados, I already know about her life, and I already know what is happening to the main character. The puzzles aren't any more puzzling, so I can quickly put it back on my bookshelf and not have to worry about it ever again. It's nice for a single play through, but it's deffinatley not one of those games that was wildly in depth. It's the gamer version of a Saturday morning cartoon. You love it, it's over quickly, and it's full of some cheap laughs.

I'm Sorry, But Who Are You - The Games I've Played

Cross Edge came from the mindset of everyone loves X, Y, and Z, so let's add them together to create one giant monster of a creation where everything comes together that everyone loves!

You know what our audience likes?

Characters - let's put them all in.
Stats - let's put them all over the place.
Crafting - everything is going to be crafted, EVERYTHING.
Menus - our previous games with a few menus were good, so more must be better.

And do you know what our audience hates? Tutorials. No one likes sitting through long drawn out explanations as to what in the world all of the game mechanics actually does, no one has time for that, we just want game play! That is based off of those game mechanics. . . that never get explained. . . and only make sense after you dig through the internet for hours.

The idea behind Cross Edge is a good one. There are three separate franchises that are coming together, with a mix of new, and they're trying to tell a story. The only problem, all three franchisees are in depth RPG power houses, and to mix together their characters into one giant RPG only creates one giant cluster of confusion.

Let's start the list of confusion!

Characters - I'm not that far into the game and I'm writing this review. Normally I wait for a game to be finished before I write a review, but this one is getting to be a tad bit predictable, so it's getting the review now. The character list for Cross Edge is EXPANSIVE. The list of playable, unique, story line characters is huge, and to understand what any of them do takes a long time of trial and error in battles. There's so many people that I feel like I should know, but ultimately I've found myself asking, who are you? What do you do? Why do I care? Who is the healer? I don't know. I don't even know if that's an option. That leads me to the next one -

Skills - Skills are confusing on top of confusing with a side of WTF. Depending on the weapon that you are using you can get different skills. That means that if you upgrade a weapon into something else, you might just loose that one skill that you really liked because your new weapon doesn't even have it. Each skill has a range and area that it works in. That means that if you have your favorite skill that can wreck people in one or two hits, but you're not in range for it, I'm sorry, but you can no longer use it. That means that instead of trying to figure out which people on my team are the most powerful in single hits with limited range, I'm sticking entirely with weak characters that can hit anywhere on the field just because I don't want to have to worry about the whole idea that my skill and me are positioned poorly so I can't do what I want to do.

Crafting - You can only buy the most basic items in the store. The only way you can ever get anything better is by crafting them. The only problem with this is that to get certain items to upgrade other weapons, you first have to level up a weapon or armor up to max level and then destroy the item to hopefully get a crafting item that is used somewhere else. Then you also have to sit around and farm items that drop from enemies. This means that a lot of your time is spent grinding to upgrade and break weapons just to build other weapons, just to break them, to try to build something else. And that entire process is hardly explained to you. There have been times that I've been playing where I stop and do nothing but grind and play around with the messy crafting system because I'm trying to make sure that my characters are strong enough level to make it to the next area. This is not because I just love having to deal with it and it's so great and smooth that I can't put it down, but rather that it takes so much time and is so convoluted that I have no clue what is going on and get tripped up in menus that it takes me that long to get a weapon, armor, and accessory built and leveled up for my four main party members.

Story - By this point int he game, I'm positive that every evil character that I'm currently fighting is going to join my team, because that's how things have been going up to this point. I know that the nameless shadow that currently is hiding from me, is somehow going to be a team mate of mine in a few days of gameplay. Even with knowing this, because of the massive time gaps between key story line episodes where I am forced to grind and play around with the system to make it work how I need it to I don't know what the game is actually about. I am totally confused by the story. I've tried to understand it, and I've tried to even make my own story line up to break even, but I have no clue what's going on with this game.

Menus - The menus in this game are absolutely stop the game stupid hard to fight through. A lot of time that you're trying to do one thing, you instead have to hunt around and make sure that you're in the right area to do the right thing, otherwise you have another list of menus that you're going to have to sort through to make sure that everything is all right.

In general, this game gives you a lot of stuff to work with, but instead of being a polished amount of stuff, it's a lot of poorly created, poorly managed stuff, that does have that possibility to doing amazing things, but frustrating and confusion are the only real things that you're going to find in this game.

How Little Do I Care? - The Games I've Played

I was working on 100%-ing FF13 for quite some time, I put in some serious time and effort to make sure that I got everything, and did everything possible. The bad part about that is that it was a game that I had already played and knew a lot about and even commented on a lot about in here, and so I beat it, and then moved onto a game that a friend gave me, Heavenly Sword.

Unfortunately, it's one of the worst games I've played in a while.

You see, you start out the game, at the end of the game. It's not even en media res, it's en finale res (if we can butcher some Latin, knowing little about grammar or vocabulary considering it's a dead language).

You see, you start out at the main character dying, saying something along the lines of, 'well now, that was fun, but now I've got to die, but it was worth it!'

Okay everyone, gather around for a quick lesson about story telling. I have to tell my freshman students about these rules so I thought I might as well crack open some knowledge and share it with you as well. You see, in the typical story arc, it looks a bit like this.

And in that story arc, there are some great things called introductions, and rising action. There's supposed to be one great high point in the story (the climax, get your head of of the gutter you dirty kid) and then there's a resolution. Unfortunately, because of how the story was created, because I played the first ten minutes of the game, I knew the entire story!

I knew who the bad guy was.

I knew that she killed a lot of people.

I knew that the sword she used to kill people was killing her.

I knew she was about to die.

I'm going to be honest with you. As a person who prides himself in finishing the games that he started, I did not finish this game, because I knew it all. I knew exactly what the story was going to be. I knew exactly what was going to happen. I knew every single second of it, and the ONE solitary plot twist that I thought could possibly happen to twist everything and make it worth playing I had to go onto Wikipedia to figure out if it was ever going to happen because it wasn't worth it to me to sit through an entire game that was boring.

I'm an English professor (I put down person at first, deleted and put major, deleted and put teacher, then finally deleted and put professor, it still hasn't sunk it yet) and I like a good story. I like something that can keep me going and keep me interested. It doesn't take much. It can even be simple, but what I can't stand from anyone is when you spoil the entire story for me in the first 10 minutes of telling me the story, and then expect me to sit through the long winded version. No, that's not what I'm going to do. I don't like it. It's bad story telling, and it's bad game production. Don't do it.

Story aside (and that's a big thing that I just pushed to the side), the game play is horrible. I can deal with stupid game play, but this was just annoying. Remember how I don't like QTE's? That at no point have I ever supported the idea of 'kill someone until they get down to a certain % of their health, then bash buttons when we tell you to so you can kill them in a pre-rendered cut scene and take the actual control of the character from you'? Yeah, that's what this was.

I don't like them. They're stupid and they're lazy. You don't want to fight the guy you're fighting right now? Hopefully you've killed enough guys since the last time that you did this but just press circle and you'll automatically kill any mook in the game. Wait long enough between pressing circle, and instead of just automatically killing one guy, you can wipe the floor of an entire area of mooks (which are politely waiting for you to kill their friend before they try to stab you in the back. It's almost like going to a dance and having a group of people surround two people that are having a dance off, and waiting for their turn to jump in and show everyone just how awesome they are.

There's twenty guys with swords there, and instead of just ganging up and stabbing you, they politely wait their turn for untimely circle usage to automatically die.

Then there is the subtitles.

I play everything late at night when people are sleeping. Volume is at a minimum, so I always have subtitles on just in case I need to read what I can't hear on the volume that is at a 4 when normal Netflix volume is somewhere around 18-22.

There is a general understanding with subtitles. They are there for people to read. And there is a general understanding that it is white text with black outlines, but the black outlines have to be big enough to show separation between the white and the color, if it is too thin it doesn't work.

Heavenly Sword doesn't believe in this.  It doesn't even take the approach of other subtitles making the subtitle area (the bottom of the screen typically) shaded a darker color, just to make sure that the text is even more visible. Nope, they just stick with white text. The problem with this? You'll notice that the main character is wearing white, and is pretty pale as well.

Whenever text goes over her (which is quite often considering she is the main character and all) you can't read whatever is happening. Now, this might not be a problem for people that can hear, but for those of us who are either deaf or are playing while small children are sleeping and don't want them to wake up to the sounds of hoards being slaughtered, get to do a create your own adventure sort of deal with what is being said.

The final deal breaker for me was the complete lack of progression of our main character. Gaming 101, your character that you start out with, should never be how the character is at the end of the game. You get the sword that the entire story is about, and that's it. You've got everything. There's no power ups, no fairies in bottles, no wings of Icarus, no mount, nothing. You've got the sword that the entire game is about, and you've got the sword.

For how much this game plays like a God of War clone, it's sort of missing some key elements. It's like someone said, "You know what God of War needs less of? Story progression!" and created Heavenly Sword. You don't care about the main character because you know she's going to die. You don't find any of the bosses challenging because you know they're going to die. You know exactly how everything turns out, and you know that you're not going to change it so yeah for button mashing and killing the exact same three/four types of army units over and over and over and over and over again.

There is one (yes one) singular exemption from this rule. In honor of this being one of the earlier games on the ps3, they wanted to use all of the cool things that the ps3 could do, like the controller having the ability to notice if you're tilting it. To abuse this, any time that you shoot or throw anything you can go into bullet time and control whatever you just shot or threw. This is a cool idea, but you are forced to tilt your controller like an idiot any time that you're trying to do this.

RIP anyone who doesn't use a normal ps3 controller because you're going to have to plug in one of your approved Sony controllers, because there's no way around it and the game forces you to bend bullets, shields, arrows, or whatever else you can get your hands on to throw, throughout the game. You just smashed the heads together of a small army with excessive amounts of violence, but you really can't seem to open up a simple gate without having to frisbee a shield off of three points while bending it around obstacles just to hit a trigger that no one would normally be able to hit.

This brings me to my last and final point. When creating a dungeon in D&D or doing anything creative of an area in a story, I have to think about the people that made it. Why in their right mind would anyone put in an impassible trap or series of devices just to get to the next area? Why in the world is it required of me to boomerang a shield to bounce off of objects to unlock a door? And also, why, if the people created it this way, did they leave an infinite number of shields sitting in a pile in the EXACT spot that I need to throw them from? Seriously? It's a pretty wicked defense plan, but to put the solution in the exact spot that you need it? Why? Just why? Why is that even a thing?

I don't mind weird traps, or triggers, or even puzzles, if they make sense. If it makes sense to the story, I'm all up for weird elements. But if it's a puzzle just for the sake of a puzzle and you're forced to do it the way that the creator wanted you to just because there's no possible solution outside of that, it gets annoying.

It is a mystery to me how Heavenly Sword could ever score anything remotely as high as it did on any game review. The only thing that has any quality about it, is the fact that the graphics don't suck.

The Games Alicia Play - The Games I've Played

Alicia finally has a game that she likes.

The only problem with this? I'm not allowed to touch it.

From what I can tell, I would love the game, but I'm only watching it while Addison runs around or while Alicia calls me in to help her with one area of one level.

The problem is, Alicia doesn't know how to use a modern controller for a game. She can look (sort of) or walk (sort of) but to ask her to use both joysticks at the same time in unison to look and run, strafe, or do anything like that, is near impossible. This leads to some very . . . interesting, events.

Just like any good game, Portal 2 is on a curve. It starts out trying to teach you the basic elements to the game and then it stretches you one bit at a time, constantly getting harder, constantly making you think and constantly growing to include new things. The problem with this is that because of that constant growth in difficulty, Alicia is constantly trying to menuver herself in a new way that she has never had to, but the bad news about this was that for the first few levels, which should have been the easiest, because she was so new to controllers and understanding how they work, it took a REALLY long time.

Let me clarify. Alicia was doing one of the first puzzles. It was so early on in the game that she didn't even have a portal gun to work with, all she had access to were buttons that would activate the portals. There were four areas - 1 was the large open area where you could press three other buttons, 2 was a sealed off area with a block 3 was an area with a place to put said block to unlock the door in the sealed off area of section 4.

Even written down it seems pretty straight forward. Press the button to get the portal to the block, grab the block, make a portal to section 3, put the block on the spot, make a portal to the door, walk out. Because she was still trying to get used to looking and walking at the same time, she spent the majority of the puzzle fighting herself and the confusion of not staring at the ground all the time, instead of actually fixing the puzzle that she had to deal with.

From the looks of Portal 2, I just might like the game, but as for now, the only person that is gaming in my home isn't me.

Borderlands . . . IN SPACE!!! - The Games I've Played

It's here again, another Borderlands game. The good and bad about it is the simple summary that it is exactly like Borderlands 2.

That's a good thing, but a bad thing all at the same time. Between Borderlands 1 and 2, there were changes in the game. The engine looked different, the story line was updated, weapons systems were created that had never existed before, driving mechanics were polished, and things got better all around the board. Between 2 and the pre-sequel. . . the best that you've got is that it's IN SPACE.

The unfortunate thing is that instead of adding to the fun and chaos that is Borderlands, the space element of the entire thing only ruined it for me. With the space deal, you have to contsantly worry about your oxygen levels. If you don't keep an eye out for it as you're jumping around trying to find where to head next, you can run out of O2 and start dying, which is always a great element of any game, not allowing you to run around and get lost and punishing you for not going where you're not supposed to be. The weird part about this is that some places have atmosphere, where others don't. It's sort of hit and miss. There's some places that you wouldn't expect to have an atmosphere have a solid one, but other places don't have a lick of air. You start jumping in and out of air bubbles so often that you stop worrying about it at some points, and just when you start to enjoy the game and stop worrying about the ever decreasing air bar, your air putters out and you start dying for no other reason than you started to focus on something else besides constantly dying.

Then comes the problem with low gravity. Gravity in space makes your jumps super bouncy. It makes sense. You jump on the moon, you jump further than you would on Earth. Logical, works well, and then you do it in a first person shooter that has monsters, items and everything else in this low, floaty, bouncy gravity. Then, on top of that bouncy gravity, you have booster pads (thank you Mario Kart and every racing game for making those part of our lives for no real reason).

Boosterpads, low gravity, double jumps . . . and a boss.

Just think about that one and all of the bouncy fun you run yourself into. Just when you get the boss in your sight, he drops off of one of the six levels that you're having to jump between, or hits a booster pad that launches him into the sky up to the top level. He's bouncing around like a mad pinball who is always able to locate you no matter where you run to, while you're sitting there trying to understand where each of the jump pads leads to, and by the time you randomly manage to catch a pad that gets you to the same level that he's on, he decides to jump off the ledge and disapear for another four minutes.

With the annoying things out of the way, the story, for some reason, just didn't seem to catch my attention this go around. It was a pre-sequel, which means that it's taking place in that time between the two major stories, and so I knew exactly where it was headed. I knew what Jack was going to become, I knew exactly where things were headed, and the only thing that even seemed slightly interesting was the very last scene after you save the day and someone who you do not expect to be there shows up.

The story is also a quick jaunt through areas, with each map having two or three sidequests in them. Compared to the dozens upon dozens of quests that would come with each area in Borderlands 1 & 2, this made the entire world that it was set in seem bleaker than normal because there was nothing to do. I remember back to Borderlands 2 when I would have a list of 10+ sidequests that I would have to do and I could completly forget about the main story elements for a long period of time as I froliced through the levels doing whatever else was around me that had nothing to do with the actual story, for this one there's never that moment.

The final thing that irks me in a wrong way, was that in Borderlands 1 (and to an extent in 2) there were some minor Easter eggs that were interesting to run into, but most of the "optional" bosses and big things that were out there, were all parts of quests and sub events that you could find at a quest board. They were 'secret' but the game was still nice enough to tell you where they were and give you the option of hunting them down and killing them. Remember back in Borderlands 1 the giant Mothra boss battle? Totally options, totally optional, but at least the game told you about it and tried to add it into the story of the world around you. In this game, the secret bosses are 100% secret. There's nothing that talks about them, nothing that points you in the right direction, and nothing that could tell you that they are there. Without the internet, there is no way that you should ever run into one of the hardest bosses in the game.

You never hear about Iwajira, you don't know he exists, and he's actually hidden in THE FIRST map. He's not even hidden later, or on his own map, or in a weird circumstance like some of the optional bosses that you run into in 1 & 2.At least you knew you were about to get your face wrecked when you were headed on your way to Terramorphous.

Not to mention it's a short game. Compared to it's predecessors, the pre-sequel is a small game. I was about to get angry at it and write it off as just a glorified expansion pack that they wanted you to pay a lot of money for, but then new game plus came in.

The basis for the game is that Athena (remember her?) is trying to tell a story to Lilith (we all remember her) about why she did what she did. You get done with the game, Athena tells her story, and then the best thing ever happens. Brick and Tiny Tina, together again!

The most violent meat head of a man with the most psychotic 12 year old come together, and start to ask Athena questions about her story, and as we learned from Tina's expansion D&D pack in Borderlands 2, everything has to be like it was before, but more awesome.

The entire new game plus is explained by Athena telling the same story to Brick and Tina, but exaggerating the entire thing so that they will like it. In true Brick and Tiny Tina fashion, they love it, but they can't help but interrupt, comment on, and general ruin Athena's story with their side comments.

Just when I was thinking it was going to be a grind to play through the game again (even though a short grind) Brick and Tina show up and tell me to tell the story again, and it's better the second time because I have them to help comment and talk about the story. It's like playing the game with a really weird director's commentary on the entire time.

And then this one gives you some of the good lines from the duo. But that duo makes the game at least 20 times better. It was sort of a lame game, an attempt to add on to some games that are pretty high up on my respected games list that failed, but then it redeemed itself by strapping on the second play through and giving me Brick and Tiny Tina as the voices in my head as the story tries to progress.

Don't get me wrong, it's still a good game. I'm working on my second play through right now, and I'm trying to 100% the entire thing because I don't want to miss a single thing in this game, but compared to the awesome games that were 1 & 2, it just doesn't quite measure up to the creative, amazing bar that was set before it.

Repetition Isn't Funny - The Games I've Played

I started to do endgame stuff for Deadpool recently, and decided at the same time that I was done with the game and didn't want to deal with it any more. You see there's a small problem when dealing with Deadpool, the first time, and even the second time, it's funny, cutting, and a good game to play through. Yes, it's a good game to play through, IF you like Deadpool to start out with.

The problem comes when you get into grinding out points to level up, and do anything other than the story for the first time, because it becomes a grind. The witty cut-scenes are no longer witty because you have to see them multiple times. The quick quips and slap stick humor becomes redundant and dull. Repetition turns the game from a great addition to the Deadpool cannon and is a must have to any Deadpool fan, to something that is anything but fun.

Think of it this way. Let's say your favorite comedian is coming to town for a week, and for some stupid reason you decide to spend money on all seven of their shows, one for each night. On the first night, the comedian is fresh, witty, funny, with great timing and something that you look forward to hearing.

The second night, the comedian does the EXACT same routine. Same order of jokes, same rhythm, same material, and everyone around you thinks that they are hilarious, while you're just starting to wonder about how great the comedian's memory is that they just managed to do an hour and a half monologue without missing a single thing.

Then comes the third night. Same set, same routine, same material, same jokes, and you are now borderline done with what is going on. You get it, there are some moments that are still funny-ish to you, but to be honest, you're starting to get so bored with it, that you want to pull out your phone to check Facebook.

By the end of the week, going into the 7th show, you're telling the jokes to the people in the seats around you before the comedian, and you are pretty sure that you could do the entire routine from memory as well.

That's how this game is. At first playthrough, it's funny and interesting and there's something for you to enjoy, but then when things get difficult and you have to start trying and you start dying you start to see some cut scenes multiple times. The really bad part about this? Some of those cut scenes are skippable, which is a good thing because it gets a little dull the 10th time you die having to hear the same junk from Deadpool about how awesome he thinks he is. The bad part about this? There are some things that you can not skip. There are set lines that you have to sit through, and there are set scenes that you can do nothing about besides looking through for the eleventh time praying that you don't die another time so that you don't have to go through the cut scene yet again.

For those that like Deadpool to start out with, this game is for you. It's exactly what you'd expect out of a Deadpool game. With that being said, if you are not a Deadpool fan, this game is not going to convince you because this game is exactly what you would expect from a Deadpool game. If I was to look at it from a purely gamer point of view and start talking about the gameplay, it's a basic game. There's nothing about this game that in the gameplay sets it apart from any other action game. You button mash opponents with light and heavy strikes, unlock new tools to make things splatter in new ways, and kill things until they tell you to stop killing. It's nothing too novel. The interesting part that would get me to tell you to play this game is that IF you are a Deadpool fan, and you already know that you sort of like his humor, is that the writing and story behind the gameplay is funny and interesting. It's not funny enough to get you past a second or third playthrough, but it's at least interesting enough tat you want to keep playing the first time around to see what happens next and what wild and crazy shenanigans will happen when you're least expecting it.

Tales of Xillia - The Games I've Played

Tales of ____ games have always been a favorite of mine. They're inventive, they have funny story lines, the characters are always unique, but for some reason I feel like they're only getting smaller and smaller, the more that they come out.

Tales of Destiny, Tales of Symphonia, and even Tales of Abyss had over world that you had to walk through and you had an entire world (or two (spoilers!)) to walk through. There were world(s) to walk through, explore, and the story line was just as huge. Xillia, on the other hand, is having a hard time convincing me that it takes up an entire continent and by the time it finally gets to the secondary place (spoiler again, but come on, all Tales games run the same story line, there's always a second world, a second place, or something like that, they don't change the story elements THAT much between games) the story is almost over and there's almost nothing left to do, and on that note, the second world is TINY. 

Sure, they might reference how it's an entire world, and how huge it is, but the parts that you actually get to see, and where you can go to, is super-duper small. Even when comparing it against the first world that you start out in, the second world is a list of one town, three dungeons, and two fields that connect everything together. At least in the other games things are balanced and there is equal time and attention spent on both places, but in this one. . . not so much.

I'm all for the Tales crew doing their thing and mixing things up, and in Tales of Xillia, honestly things are pretty mixed up compared to the normal standards, there's references to the other games, shout outs to everything that they've done, and it keeps things in line with the series, and it's a great addition to the series, but there are a few weird choices that they chose to make.

First, throughout ALL of the Tales games, there are certain things that are cannon. For example, gnome is always the earth elemental summon, ALWAYS. There's also always a person named Maxwell. Sometimes Maxwell is a super big part of the story, and other times he's just a myth that is passed on in the background of sub-events, but Maxwell is always made out to be the master of all elements and typically has an attack along the lines of meteor storm and/or elemental master.

Meet Tales of Xillia's Maxwell -

You'll notice that he's a she.

It makes more sense in the story line (spoilers!) but the real answer of why he's a she doesn't show up until FAR too late in the game when I'm already done with dealing with her.

Just like the other Tales games out there, there are always characters that I avoid in my team and just don't use.

Maxwell in Xillia takes the cake for one of the characters I never touched. I used her (even in her own story line) only when needed, but I avoided her at all costs.

That brings me to one thing within this that was actually a super cool, super origional idea, that SHOULD have been pushed further. In Xillia, there's the idea that there are TWO story lines. One for Jude (the boy main character) and one for Millia Maxwell (as seen above). The concept is unique and interesting, but the reality of the fact is that the difference between the two story lines is minimal at best. The only differences is a slight story separation here and there, but it's not like either story is missing something that the other doesn't have. This concept of two separate stories is actually what made me willing to play through it a second time, because I thought that the reason the maps were so small, and the reason that it seemed to end so quickly was because the second story had the rest of the world to explore and the rest of things to do, or something more to add to the entire game than what I had just played.

I was wrong.

Now, don't get me wrong, although I am picking on this game and saying some things about it, I'm by no stretch of the imagination saying that it is a bad game. In fact, as soon as I get done writing this review my goal is to finish up the last bits of trying to 100% this thing.

It's a great game for all of the reasons that Tales games are great, and a super addition to the series. It keeps all of the amazing things like the free range fighting systems, familiar skills, familiar summons and elementals, but keeps it fresh with new leveling mechanics, new story line, and new characters that are interesting and worth the time to play.

I'm sorry, but if you don't like Elisa and Teepo, then something is wrong with your soul. The two of them were most likely not the BEST choice to be my healer in the end game, but just because I loved them so much as a character duo, they stayed with me as long as humanly possible, the same went for the Conductor.

The leveling system is unique and innovative (although lacking in actual skills compared to some other of the Tales games out there) but allowed progression, but customization. It's an interesting take on the sphere grid of FFX, that results in early and mid game customization to make your characters exactly what you want them to be, focusing stats where you want them to go, but sadly in late game (especially at max level) all characters no matter how you play the game across any save file, will have the exact same skills. Every time I play Jude at lvl 99 will always be the same Jude, no matter how I want to skill build him.

The grade shop was nice, and always fun to have a bonus for NG+, but at the same time a bit annoying because there was nothing there in the game to give me a bonus in the grade or item drops for amping up the difficulty. I could put every monster on impossible mode with NG+ with all of my weapons, but it meant nothing because I got nothing more from unknown difficulty level than I did at easy.

If you haven't played a Tales game before, this is a good introduction into the weird, quirky world of Tales. The odd, yet amazing tools of % based healing gels, no turn based fighting, and the ability to grab a friend (or three) and make the fighting like nothing you've ever experienced before. I wasn't able to do that with XIllia, but the potential of having a person sitting with you playing this game utterly WRECKS the game mechanics in fighting. Fights that I had to stress out about and over level on, if there was a live person next to me to play with, would have made it a cake walk of activating spells and abilities at a stupid rate.

One of the weirdest parts about the game was actually the lack of grinding. On first play through, if you want to be high enough level to kill that chapter's big bad, simply kill everything that you walk by on your way there. Don't dodge fights, and you won't be under leveled. The actual amount of grinding or the need to retrace your steps to make sure you stay alive, is minimal. It's nice, but for a person who likes to sit and grind out levels on levels (I'm weird like that) it's a change of pace.

Great story, memorable characters, and a unique twist on the traditional Tales mechanics that you thought they couldn't change to make something new again.