Danganronpa: Ultra Despair Girls

That was an utter waste of $40 and about 12 hours.

I loved Danganronpa 1 and 2. Aside from a bit of frustration with some of the mechanics in the second game they were solid games. Interesting if a bit annoying with the constant hammering of the words "despair" and "hope". Seriously, it got to the point that the words got thrown about so much I started to forget wtf they even mean...or honestly, to care.
But, if you asked me right now if I liked Danganronpa 1 and 2 and if I would recommend them, my answer would be a resounding YES!
I can't say the same for this new spinoff.

Let's try to see if I can make this spoiler free, shall we?

The game takes place between the events of games 1 and 2 and begins with Komaru Naegi, sister of annoyingly hopeful Makoto Naegi from Danganronpa 1, explaining how she's been a prisoner in an apartment for a year and a half without knowing why or by who. This is interrupted by a killer Monokuma bear ripping through the door and being rescued by some men in black. One of those men in black is self absorbed rich bitch Byakuya Togami, also from the first game. He gives Komaru a megaphone which is actually a hacking gun that shoots code and blows up Monokuma robots...man that is just fucking stupid...anyways he gives her the gun and sends her on her way. Shit happens, crap blows up, people get killed by bear robots and you meet the most annoying little fuckers in creation.

You get captured and brought before the 5 most obnoxious brats in creation and I just couldn't help but wonder..Why the fuck can't I just punt these 5 runts into some walls and call it a day? Game over!
But oh no, that would mean an end to my suffering...can't have that!
So yada yada...bratty kids..evil plot...kill adults make  children's paradise. Why? because adults are evil poopy demons! that's why! My fucking god this is a stupid game. After 20 minutes of boring tirades in high pitched voices...oh and that one kid who is so fucking slow I wanted to throw the vita. I have no idea wtf his deal was cause I skipped all his shit dialogue...after all that, my crying whiny pale faced protagonist got chucked through a trap door and lands  on top of some building where Toko the crazy bitch is waiting.
Toko..I really hated Toko in the first game, I was so not looking forward to any more of this game at that moment.

Toko and crybaby team up to try and get out of the kiddie murder city and a lot of fuckery ensues...anything more would be spoilers so lets move on to the craptastic gameplay.

As I said, Komaru Nag-y has that stupid hacking gun, it looks ridiculous and it IS ridiculous. the game is a straight up third person shooter made by someone who doesn't know shit about third person shooters. The standard monokumas take about 4-5 shots to take down unless you have good aim and shoot them in their stupid glowy red eye. (and with the shit controls...good luck with that).But throughout the game you'll be introduced to a bunch of different monokuma types, like grenade throwing bears and bears with riot shields, you are also introduced to different kinds of bullets with which to tackle the new challenges. Let me be honest, the different kinds of bullets are more a pain in the ass than anything else.
There's a "dance" bullet which you shoot at an enemy and make him..well yeah, dance, then you can shoot him with a regular bullet...5 times...in order to kill him. oh and once you hit him with a regular bullet once the dance effect wears off...so kinda useless really.There's a "knockback" bullet that doesn't do any damage but makes the bears with shields fall over which makes their shields disappear.
All in all there are I think..8 different type of bullets if memory serves.

On top of that you can purchase upgrades called "Bling Bullets" and as far as I can tell they do jack shit. I made sure to buy the ones that were recommended and put them in "excellent" combinations and...I noticed not one whit of difference in gameplay or attack power.
That's one thing...throughout the game you never feel like you progress. you never feel stronger. Enemies are always the same and even if you get a handle on it, they're constantly introducing new enemies and new bullets that just make shit a pain in the ass.

As you level up you get skill points and as you go around you find new skills to use those points on and they are all useless...aside from the nightmare that is auto lock on. seriously, I had to unequip it. It gave me motion sickness. Every time I readied the gun it would whip me around to face every enemy BUT the one I wanted to shoot.

BUT its not ALL bad... as you go through the game you can switch from Bratzilla to Toko and Toko is fun as hell. Toko is strictly melee and wields a bunch of scissors, she's fast, strong and does a lot of damage. She was the best part of the damn game. Unfortunately, this game doesn't believe in fun and so you can only use her in small bursts. She uses a stun gun to become her "other persona" Genocide Jack in order to fight and you can only fight for as long as the batteries last. When the batteries deplete you're stuck with the whiner again. The good news is you can buy upgrades to make Toko time last longer, the bad news is..it still doesn't last long enough to save this game. Boss fights are ridiculously easy and fairly short and you'll have more trouble dealing with the standard enemies than the bosses.

The game does offer some...puzzles but they're more annoyances than anything else.
The puzzles all pretty much have the same set up. You walk into a room with an arcade machine, the arcade machine shows you the next room and you formulate your plan based on the victory conditions. For example, you'll see a room full of regular enemies and a grenade throwing enemy and you'll need to figure out what to do in order to destroy them all in 1 explosion. No worries though, because if you don't complete the objective, just kill them all yourself and you can still get through it, you're rank at the end of the chapter will be lower but that's about the only penalty.

Once you get to the end of the game and everything is explained, you kinda wish it wasn't. The whole thing is just...weak. Actions, reactions, motivations, histories, its all very half assed, I'd love to give you concrete examples but I don't wanna spoil this monstrosity for you. IF you WANT spoilers, well, drop me a line and I'll go into it.

Bottom line is that as a stand alone game this fails, because they drag so much shit from the previous 2 games that it won't make sense without them. However as a part of the Danganronpa universe it fails as well since honestly it brings NOTHING to the table. Nothing from this game will shed any light on the first or second games. Because this game is shoehorned between the other 2 after the fact, nothing from this game affects the other games either.
Even for someone who loved the first 2 games, I can't recommend this and if you just MUST have it...wait for a sale..preferably 50% off or more because this is NOT worth $40 by any stretch of the imagination.

This game truly did make me despair, I lost all hope and joy and happiness while playing this....maybe that was the point? How Meta,

What I've been playing

 Wow, its been ages since I've written anything here. I didn't forget this place I just  couldn't think of anything to write.
I've been going through another "internet burnout" period. Took a time out for a while from my facebook page as well and just recently started posting regularly again.

What have I been doing all this time?

Nacho...pure sexy!

Well, life stuff of course. Family, dogs, gaming. My usual stuff.
We got a third dog and his name is Nacho and he's the sexiest Chihuahua ever! He gets along well with Tater,our scruffy mutt but for some reason he just isn't feeling the love with Meatball (probably because Meatball was the original sexy beast and Nacho is stealing his title). So I spend my time breaking up doggie drama and having a dogtourage follow me around the house. Hard not to feel gangsta with a dogtourage behind me.

I've actually been gaming a lot more lately than I used to, mostly on my Vita.
Just so you know, Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate is like crack. CRACK I TELL YOU! but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Lets see, what have I played lately?

I started playing Hakuoki on PS3 but I ended up getting the worst cold/flu in history and set it aside only to get sidetracked with other stuff. I'll get around to it eventually. I was actually really enjoying the additional stories they added to it since I've already played the basic story 3 times over 3 other games. I think I'm a little Hakuoki'd out for the time being. Though I still love it to bits.

After I set that aside I finally got around to finishing Tales of The Abyss...only took me what? 3 years? Man that was a fabulous game.
I tried to get back into SMT Devil Survivor Overclocked and quickly discovered why I had put it down ages ago. I'm stuck at a really shitty battle, (which is the same reason i stopped playing FFX) some day I SHALL be victorious dammit!

When my Flu hit round 2 I decided to go with Tales of Xillia since I bought Tales of Xillia 2 and kinda feel like I should maybe make an effort to try to get through them both. I think I'm about 2/3rds through Xillia and its really great, except for Milla. I cannot stand the character and I cannot stand the voice acting for her. Everything else is absolutely wonderful.

I probably would have continued playing Xillia to the end if Danganronpa 2 hadn't come out. Burned through that one in a few days. That was an experience. It was just as good as the first one and had just as many annoyances. I know this sounds like a weird thing to say about a game but...I wish it had LESS gameplay.

For those not familiar with Danganronpa its like...Persona 4 and Phoenix Wright had a psychopathic baby...I guess I should explain...

The premise is like this:
You and a bunch of other students are locked in a school with no means of escape. Your captor/headmaster is a sadistic stuffed bear named Monokuma. The only way to get out of this place is to murder someone and get away with it. Which is where the actual gameplay comes in.
You spend your days talking to the other students and giving them gifts in order to get to know them better (like a super simplified version of P4 social links). Eventually someone gets killed and you begin the investigation phase of the game. You question people, look for evidence, the usual type of stuff. Once that's done a class trial begins. You must use the evidence you've gathered to find the guilty party. If the killer is discovered he/she will be punished (executed in a horrible way). the twist is, if the killer is NOT discovered they will go free and the rest of the students will be executed.
This is all well and good but the actual trial mechanics can be a bit of a chore and they bring down the awesomeness of the game/story a bit.

The sequel is much the same except that instead of a school its a group of people on a handful of  deserted islands.

Once I got over the mind-fuck that was Danganronpa 2 I dove straight into Dynasty Warriors 8 Extreme Legends because anyone who knows me knows I fucking LOVE THE SHIT outta DW, Sima Yi in particular (I have no idea why, don't judge). For the record DW 8 is definitely worth the price of admission, I'm actually planning on picking up a ps3 copy eventually because Lu Bu deserves a large screen dammit!
I was in the middle of K.O.ing many many identical dudes when I got Conception  2 in the mail...I seriously need to write a whole 'nother entry just for Conception 2...its just too much to go into now..too much weirdness I mean.

Sadly once you get past the "shock value" of "Classmating" and weirdness the game gets pretty tedious and repetitious and I set it aside in order to finish the last 2 DLCs for Muramasa Rebirth. I managed to complete those the same day Warriors Orochi 3 came out and ever since then its been my crack. I think its been like a month or so since it came out and I've been playing it pretty much every day. Still haven't even touched the mountain of DLC I bought for it.

I also recently started playing Hatoful Boyfriend. If you haven't heard of that one either, I don't blame you, its pretty niche.
Its a VN about a girl who is the only human going to an all bird school. So all the boys you make friends with/romance/whatever are actually pigeons. I know, I know, it sounds beyond bizarre. But honestly, once you get past the whole pigeon thing and the horrible bird puns, its pretty good. So far i've gotten 4 out of 14 endings and i'm looking forward to hopefully answering many of the questions I currently have.

I think thats about it...
Oh wait no.. Last night I started Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA f and realized I have zero hand/eye coordination.

Coming up soon....
I'm thinking of picking up Akiba's Trip tonight though I'm not sure when I'll get around to that and I've pre-ordered  Tales of Hearts R and Persona Q which are both coming out next month.

I did pick up Persona 4 Arena Ultimax recently but I haven't played it yet. I still haven't finished the first one though I did make some progress on it a couple weeks ago. As much as I like Persona Arena I really think it should be called something other than a fighting game. Its more like 20 minutes of text/dialogue punctuated by the occasional 20 second fight. I'm not complaining, its a lot of fun and its interesting but, its not really a fighting game.

Speaking of fighting games, I suck at them and I can't say I like any of them besides Soul Calibur but a while back I bought Injustice: Gods Among Us while it was on sale for Vita and its fantastic. Surprisingly good story and really fun. Even for a spaz like me.

What have we learned today?
That's right, I buy and play too many games and I really suck at them and that's why I never finish any of them.

If I can unglue myself from WO3 long enough and slow my brain down enough to get actual coherent thoughts going I'll probably write a bit about Conception 2 soon, I just didn't want to make this post much longer than it already is...plus its lunch time and i'm hungry!