Yes, that's the only thing wrong with that story ;)

Well, if you were going to spend 50 hours eating a taco then it had better be a damn good taco.

Yeah, there are a lot of subsequent downloads.  But can't you do it on wifi?

College in Japan is difficult to get into (in fact most people spend their whole senior year of high school just studying for entrance exams), but it's a whole different story once you're in it.  I mean, Japanese society is pretty strict in general but college might be the one big exception to that rule.

College is depressing?  I enjoyed it way more than high school...

Yes, it starts very slow.  Which is unfortunate because I imagine a lot of people have tried it and given up before things even get interesting.

So I started playing the Love Live mobile game...I'm not the biggest fan of the show but I had heard that the game was actually pretty good.  Plus it's free, and it's pretty rare to see a game like this released in English.  Yes, there's an official English version.  So I figured why not give it a shot.

As you might guess from being based on an idol show it's a rhythm game at its core.  There are some VN-esque 'story' sequences as well but they seem pretty insubstantial.  But the rhythm game is honestly good.  The songs are about what you might expect from Love Love, pretty standard jpop stuff.  But they're not bad.  The interface is clean and it can be pretty challenging on higher difficulties without ever feeling unfair.

The problem is that this isn't just a rhythm game.  There's a bunch of RPG-esque character growth systems and your performance is determined your characters' stats as well as player skill.  The number of times I performed perfectly only to get a C rank because I'm just starting out and my stats aren't good enough is, well, large.  That might not be so bad if raising your stats didn't feel like such a grind.  This is a game that demands repetition, going through the same songs on the same difficulties over and over to get points and cards to spend on shit.

And that's where the free-to-play BS rears its ugly head.  This game falls into by now familiar model of having a sort of stamina gauge that depletes every time you perform a song and once it runs out you can't do anything.  It regenerates over time but of course you can also spend some limited-use items to replenish it instantly and of course more of those are available for purchase at any time.  So keep in mind what I said in the previous paragraph: The game wants you to play it over and over again to level up but it also restricts you from playing it too much unless you spend money.  Could they be any more transparent?

Honestly, as a rhythm game it really isn't bad.  And if you're at all curious there's nothing stopping you from downloading it and fiddling around with it for a bit.  They make it pretty easy to get into.  But as you start to play it more you kind of wish that things would unlock faster and that they would let you just play it at your own pace.  In other words I can't help but think it would be a better game if you could just buy it and be done with all that nonsense.  Oh well...

I'm not aware of any such rule.  The reason I'm talking about is the fact that the PS3 version uses the PSP remaster system.  There has not been a single PSP remaster released outside of Japan, period.  Basically they're using an emulated PSP environment running on a PS3, but they're not real ports and they don't know anything about the PS3 environment.  Which means there's no way to put trophies in them, which is something SCEA is a lot more anal about than SCEJ.


The hell?  The only 'voices' in this game are friggin battle grunts.  The story isn't even voiced.

Gust being absorbed into Koei Tecmo

Of course Koei Tecmo has owned Gust since 2011, but they nevertheless operated as a largely independent subsidiary.  It sounds like after this Gust as we know it will cease to exist and Gust's staff will be merged into the rest of Koei Tecmo.  There will still be a Gust brand, but it remains to be seen exactly what they're going to do with it.

Are you really dredging up this argument after they announced that they're doing the PS4 version?

That's where you are sticking your head in the sand: nobody is going to release these games physically at this point.  Nobody.  It's a small miracle we're getting them at all.

Also, there is plenty of reason to believe that it's SCEA, not Xseed, that's the real obstacle to releasing the PS3 versions here.

Monopoly really isn't a bad game if you actually play it correctly.  I swear, 99% of people add all these shitty "house rules" that totally break the game balance and make it so that the game never ends.  If you play it by the rules in the rulebook (and nothing else) a game of Monopoly should only take like an hour, tops.

I still wouldn't say it's a great game but that's because it's very luck-based.  Half the game is just where you happen to land on the first trip around the board.

Macs are PCs too.

I'm just saying...

Touché