Capitalism Ho!

Although Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale came out awhile ago, I only got my hands on it now and I wish I started earlier.

The RPG element of Recettear

The story in Recettear is quite simply. Your dad apparently had a huge loan and ran off, leaving you behind to repay the debt. You, being Recette, is just a little girl and has no idea what to do. Tear, a fairy with the finance company comes up with the idea of opening an item shop and profit form it to repay the debt.

Throughout the game, you'll be playing two roles, one as a shopkeeper and one as an adventurer.As a shopkeeper, you're able to purchase items for resale, interact with other characters and negotiate with customers.

Capitalism indeed

A way to acquire goods is to simply explore dungeons by hiring adventurers. When you do hire someone, you'll play that role for the time being. Loot and items found during your adventure can be easily sold for high profits.


When I first started this game, I felt awkward because it kind of felt like a visual novel (this game was originally Japanese and has a bit of Japanese voice overs) but then we see many aspects of this unique game. Each character also develops throughout the game and it's really hilarious at times to see the naive yet honest personality of Recette. The RPG element of the game seems to be fairly balanced. It offers the player to use multiple characters while equipping a variety of equipment. Overall, I love this game and have yet to finish it and look forward to how it comes to a close.

I do not own or take credit for all of the above images, if you would like them to be taken down, please message me.

 

Have you played Recette? Gone through any visual novels?

Duke Nukem Forever Review (Finally)

Hey guys, I've taken some time off from blogging as I was doing two things. 1. Doing stuff related to post secondary school, as some of you know from a previous post, I will be attending University of Toronto in September! Yay, and there is much preparation, such as course selection. 2. DUKE NUKEM FOREVER (on PC)!

You'll be seeing this a lot,
loading screens that is

Yes, I've been spending the past week playing it out and so far, it has been a fair experience. The following will be my rant/review on DNF. I believe my opinion of it is a bit different from other people as I have not played previous versions of Duke Nukem so I have no idea what to expect in terms of the quality of gameplay, I simply judge what I played.

Well, in DNF, you start off immediately fighting a "boss" monster, only to find out that "you" are actually Duke Nukem, playing DNF (confusing?), and a joke immediate follows. Throughout the game, you'll encounter many odd jokes, some that are actually funny, some that are just lame.
Another thing that you'll encounter are loading screens, and the amount of them. When playing through the first few chapters, you'll be doing nothing more than just navigating through the DNF world, and probably after 5-9 mins of walking around, you'll be faced with a long ass loading screen. And within the loading screen (as you can see above) various tips will be displayed and I'm not sure if these tips are just jokes, or serious tips (see above). "When being shot, try to avoid bullets"...oh really?

That aside, the game really picks up when you get further into the chapters and it really plays out like HL2, in terms of being a puzzle game and a first person shooter at the same time. Your main arsenal consists of a rpg, shotgun, pistol, 2-3 alien guns, shrink ray, freeze ray; a good variety overall. (I've heard though, that these weapons aren't new, as they existed in previous versions, but again, I'm not considering this). The shrink ray is especially fun, as you can shrink your enemies and walk over them, thus squashing them.

Now I'm not sure what DNF is rated (in terms of, pg13, pg18+, adult...etc) but I'll have to give the game an adult rating. There is a chapter in DNF where you start out in Duke's stripper joint and you have to find various items such as a condom, popcorn and well, to keep this more friendly, a female massager toy. And as you navigate throughout the joint, you'll encounter many moments of full female frontal nudity, and scenes that are sexually suggestive.
The adult "moments" not only exists within this chapter though, in one of the starting chapters, (again, trying to make this more friendly), you can go into a bathroom stall, and explore a "hole" which is in the wall separating the two stalls. You can probably  guess what that "hole" is for, and it's not for peeping.

Overall, the game is decent as a fps, but many other things detract from the overall experience such as massive amounts of time spent on puzzles, loading screens with nonsensical tips. I will look forward in completing the game.

Also just a fun little fact about how I play any first person shooter's single player campaign. I like to play on the hardest setting available, because there is no reason to play it on easy modes. Reason being is that you'll probably finish the game in a flash on easy, and you won't replay it because it has no replay value anyways, so I rather play it on harder difficulties and spend more time on it.

I do not own or take credit for all of the above images, if you would like them to be taken down, please message me.


For the people that played DNF, how did you find it? What do you think of the harsh critiques of DNF?

Duke Nukem Forever

Well with all the hype built up, gamers anxiously waited for the release of DNF on June 14, 2001. Personally, I haven't got the game yet, but it seem like lots of other people did, and a majority of them aren't too pleased with it.

Bubble gum sir?

AFter 14 years in develoopment, a lot of hype has been built up. This may contribute to the ultimate downfall of DNF as it hasn't lived up ot everyone's hopes. Now I won't give my opinion on the gameplay itself, but I did make some judgements based on the trailers I was presented with.

For the most part, the trailer makes DNF look like Serious Sam (at least the style of the graphics and mosters do), and some critics slightly agree. They say that the geometric designs of the environment and monsters aren't appealing. There are many other critiques to DNF as the score currently on gamespot is a 5.3 average by critics, and a 6.3 average by fans.

I do not own or take credit for the above picture, if you would like them to be taken down, please message me.

I'll let the rest of you guys decide, and give your feed back on DNF. Until then, I'll have to get my hands on a copy of this and do a proper review.

So for the people that got DNF, how is it? So after all the hype from DNF, what game are you looking forward to now?

Monster Rancher

A cool show I watched as a kid, Monster Rancher

I still have very faint memories of this show. After coming home from elementary school, I'd watch some guy place a disk with a dinosuar like fossil within it and it would spin and some monster would come out.

Based on my above description, you can probably tell that I barely remember anything from it. So I'll just give you the story, as it appears on wiki.

From Wikipedia, 

"Before the world's continents broke up into pieces, a huge disaster hit the world. People prayed to God for help, and God created new life forms. However, new life forms brought new troubles, so God became exasperated and sealed them in "disc stones". Many years have passed since then and God entrusted the humans with the secret of "disc stones". Today people still continue searching for these missing "disc stones" to unlock the lifeforms within.

It is said that the "disc stones" are almost impossible to find among the ancient ruins. It is said that one monster is trapped inside each one. One day a group of workers excavating the ancient ruins happened to dig up one of these mythical disc stones. The worker who first discovered a disc stone took the disc to the Monsters' Temple. There the priests, using the ancient methods, unlocked the monster inside the disc stone. In a place where ranchers and monsters coexisted peacefully, the battle of the monsters began! As time passed these monster battles became extremely popular, and monster breeding became the standard pastime of the land. Eventually disc stones were found around the entire world. Now ranchers across the globe come together and enter unto battle!"

"Monster Rancher." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 19 June 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_Rancher>.

I do not own or take credit for the above picture and synopsis of Monster Rancher, if you would like them to be taken down, please message me.

Have you watched monster rancher before? Any childhood shows you'd like to share?