Ren & Sin's Post Con Preview Collection - Volume 1

Hello beautiful people of the Internet! And not so beautiful ones... hehe. Our sincerest apologies for not writing a post for you last week. (Deal with it.) We've been out at MCM Comicon in London last weekend and it's time for us to share with you some little snippets of the newly released (and of course unreleased) games we got to play out there! So without further ado- Oh just get on with it already!

Persona 4 - Dancing All Night! I'd go ahead and say this is something we've definitely been waiting a long time for. It's been a long time since it's announcement and it's finally almost here, what did you think of the few games we played Sin? Well, I mean it was extremely difficult to play there. Now Sin, the noise of the venue isn't a proper criticism of the game... (I-I know that! I'm not some kind of amateur here!). Regardless of Sin's mindless complaints (What!? Hey hold on I-) the selection of songs is very nice, familiar tunes from all kinds of persona titles. This includes great but more obscure tunes from the franchise such as the theme of Etrian Odyssey spinoff PersonaQ, but these are a welcome inclusion seeing as persona as a whole has a beautiful soundtrack, and sticking with the Persona 4 theme would only serve to limit the game immensely. HEY I wasn't finished talking you know! You all done hogging the limelight at last you pig? W-Well now that was uncalled for... Whatever... anyway from what I can gather the actual selection of songs is only around 30-strong... I'm pretty disappointed... there are many more Persona songs that could have made it in... But Sin 30 is a pretty big roster for a music game... and there's at least three difficulty levels for each. Oh yes of course, but when it feels like 10 of the individual songs are remixes of songs you know so well that they sound COMPLETELY WRONG it's hard to be satisfied by it... Oh...

Oohhh.... Of course... bikini's WOULD be a wearable outfit in this game wouldn't they!?
Well it's a Japanese game I mean it's pretty common for that t- ow!
PERVERT!
What did I do!?

The gameplay though! The controls are great, simple, responsive. You hit all the notes with up, left, right, triangle, circle and X; and the notes consist of single presses, double presses and holds, standard rhythm-game stuff. I just wish playing the game was that standard, I think the layout of the screen is super poorly executed for this. The notes come into the screen from the centre to the outer edges where you hit them, but the Vita's screen is so wide that watching two notes close together on one side of the screen often means you miss a rogue note drifting off the other side and break your combo. The game becomes very difficult off design alone.. but... what I hate more... it suffers from... Parappa The Rapper Syndrome... (Gasp) No... anything but that! But it's true! Ugh it makes me so mad when music games do this! Your performance is measured by some icons at the top of the screen which change colour based on your performance. They range from red to yellow to white, (all of which count as a fail...) to green, and then rainbow, those are passes. Keep hitting notes in a row and you'll go up levels to pass the song.. But what ticks me off is because of this horrible system, even if you get every note perfect up until the very end you'll fail the song if you miss a couple of notes right at the end, especially on hard difficulty, you can kiss that pass goodbye. Oh and of course climbing takes ages so in terms of progress imagine that for every note you miss you have to hit another 30 without fail to get back to where you were and you probaly get the picture and ugh this game could have been so good but I- OKAY MOVING ON!

What's this? Rodea The Sky Soldier? This one was really fun actually... You're kidding? It took you half an hour to get used to those ridiculous controls. Hey that's only because I didn't have a tutorial to teach me and with out that they're very... uh... Unorthodox? Yeah! That! Exactly that! You ascend into the air and use a targeter to lock on and dash towards objects and terrain fast or slow to reach the end of missions. The targeter is fiddly and for once I wish they used motion controls instead of an analogue sick, the reticule slows down towards the edge of the screen as it pans around and gives the reticule itself a laggy and awkward feeling. Oh but it is a beautiful game, and flying through the sky like that feels strangely empowering, even if it's just on screen... Yeah... it seemed simple... but complex, and has a lot of charm to it. I'm still unsure on the quality of the story... It looks... mediocre... but as a game... there's definitely potential... For sure.

It's a game that feels very empty in places...
(Like your heart?)
What did you say!?

D-Disgaea 5... W-Well... It's still Disgaea... So... You know, if you like Disgaea, there's probably a lot of new features in this... and you'll love it, yeah! We never cared for Disgaea. Oh lord no.

Tales of Zestiria though! oh well I mean it's still a Tales game, has that great Tales feel to it. Environments are completely beautiful, characters are unique (well the main character is just as much an over-trusting freaking goody-two shoes as ever... Just like Ren... AGAIN.) You say something Sin? Hm? Oh, no nothing! Ooookay... Well I mean what's amazing about this particular one is how cutscenes and battles transition properly from the gameplay itself, giving the game a very coherent and more realistic feel. There's no shatter-screening or anything to transition into battles so the whole thing feels like part of the adventure. It's only a minor change, sure, but as long running Tales fans something about this little change just makes the experience so much more... Magical... Yeah...

Oh but let's remember this is a Tales game... So it has some strange and difficult to understand upgrade system in the menus right? Yup! I think this one has something to do with elements and like... putting power patches onto equipment or something... but as usual I don't really have any idea. Clueless as always... Hey!

Ladies and gentleman! the cause of the Dodo's extinction!
... Angsty teenagers...?

Well that's it for this week everyone! We hope these little insights of games from the event were worth the wait. We'll be back to our normal schedule starting next week so look forward to it! but until then... Goodbye! And we love you all!