After a lot of years of badgering from my recent guest blogger, I decided to start Persona 4 on Monday. This required the not inconsiderable action of connecting my PS2 up, since it's space on the component input on my TV was taken by the Xbox when I got Rocksmith to cure the game's lag. Cables duly swapped, I blew out all the dust and fired up the PS2. I'd forgotten how loud it was. Although it is 11 years old now. The game starts and tells me I have no room on the memory card.
Well this is novel.
I swapped it for another and that turned out to be full too. So I swapped it for the third. Also full. With 250gb of memory in the 360, this is an issue I haven't come up against in a long time. Saving stuff nowadays is pretty much fire and forget. How did I squeeze the saves from almost seventy PS2 games into a paltry 24mb? Cue a bit of cursing and then an hour spent cross referencing saves and booting games to see which of the duplicate saves were further along before deleting them and copying from one card to another to free up enough space for a save on Persona.
While doing this I found myself playing SSX 3. Completely by accident.
Persona 4 got started on Tuesday. It's a slow burner, and frankly it looks like ass compared to a lot of late PS2 games, but that really doesn't matter. It's beginning to draw me in. I'm looking forward to continuing it. I did promise I was going to start it after completing Bayonetta.
After slightly fewer years of badgering from my recent guest blogger, I finally got round t0 Bayonetta around a week ago. I used to wax lyrical about Devil May Cry and I knew that Bayonetta would be right up my street. Frankly I don't know what took me so long.
It's extremely Japanese, with all the high camp, overlong cutscenes, nonsensical story, miscellaneous quirks and badass fighting systems that come with the label. It's saddened me to see the proportion of Japanese games that I own on the 360 shrink so much compared to the last generation. Bayonetta is a great reminder of just how good Japanese games can be. The game was difficult, even on normal and when I first started, the high camp, overlong cutscenes, nonsensical story and miscellaneous quirks grated. Eventually though, I stopped caring and let myself get swept along in the silliness of it all. Bayonetta is a great character, hypersexualised yes, but assertive and strong at the same time. She's a woman that's always on top of any situation, whether she's staring down a huge boss, riding a missile in a great Space Harrier tribute or sliding a motorbike under a lorry in my personal favourite section of the game, the Outrun inspired, Afterburner soundtracked Route 666.
The real star of the show was the combat though, balanced, nuanced, precise, yet hyperkinetic, showy and over the top. If I died it was because it was my own bloody fault rather than the fault of the game. It's never cheap, but it is busy. You need to keep track of everything, but there is no attack that cannot be dodged. If you're properly dialled in, you can't be touched.
The game is chock full of Sega references, and I wonder, with Nintendo publishing the sequel as a Wii-U exclusive, what Platinum Games are going to pull out of Nintendo's past to play with. One thing is for certain though, Bayonetta 2 on the Wii - U is going to be interesting.
I suppose this brings me neatly onto the Wii - U, which I had the good fortune to experience over christmas.
First impressions were:
1: It's small. Really small. Around half the volume of my 360.
2: The Gamepad is going to take some getting used to.
3: Oh, I get it now. It's like a giant, superpowered DS
We were playing five player Nintendoland, and I have to say, it was a whole lot of fun. A bit like Mario Party without the hateful boardgame segment. The fact that it was so much fun isn't really all that surprising. Nintendo excel at local multiplayer. Of all the games companies out there today, Nintendo is the only one that doesn't seem to have lost sight of how great getting your mates together around the TV can be. The two best games were variations on hide and seek, Mario Chase and Luigi's ghost mansion, where the player with the Gamepad used the screen to get away from the other players or sneak up on them. Getting one over on your mates without them seeing where you came from is a great feeling.
My only gripes are that there aren't any analogue triggers on the Gamepad and that the touchscreen could have a higher resolution and could be multi touch. But really, these are small issues that won't matter. Even though I've only spent time with one game, I think the Wii - U will shape up to be a really great machine, if the developers can step up to the challenge that the gamepad presents. I'd hate to see it loaded down with shovelware like the Wii was.
And finally, something to get off my chest.
I'll admit to the HMV issue hitting me by surprise, and to having a vested interest. It saddens me to think that they might go under. I have fond memories of the place. If you know me, you'll know my first album was What's the Story, Morning Glory? by Oasis, it was on cassette, but the first actual CD I bought with my own money was Feeder's Echo Park, and I bought it from HMV. While I was at college, HMV was pretty much the sole provider of the soundtrack to my life. A significant proportion of the sixtyish PS1 games I own came from there too. The internet was a pretty new thing back then, I think I was still on Dial Up, and it hadn't begun to eat into HMV's sales in the way that eventually sent it into administration.
After a few years in the wilderness in a rubbish job, I accidentally wound up working for HMV, and I felt like I belonged there. I left last year, but my offices still join to those of my old spot at HMV and I see my old colleagues there all the time, and now I worry for them. Whether you were bothered by the news or you thought HMV had it coming because they were rubbish / too expensive / too corporate, don't forget that real people with bills and houses and children will be losing their jobs if a buyer isn't found. I don't like ending on a downer, but we all know losing your job through no fault of your own is a horrible thing. Nobody likes going to the jobcentre. Let's not wish it on the thousands of people who work for HMV.
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