Tuesday, January 22, 2013

And Now For Something (Somewhat) Completely Different



Tonight....tonight was a fairly trying night.  It was made more trying by the fact that my nights haven't exactly been very trying this year just yet.  As such, it was a bit strange, foreign even, and I didn't quite know what to do with it all.  That is a good problem to have, as far as I'm concerned, however - If you don't know what to do with a bad night because you're out of the habit of having bad nights, then you're quite a bit more lucky than you might think indeed.  Though it didn't last for a terribly long time, it was, unfortunately, something that lasted longer than I would have desired and as such, it made it rather difficult for me to sit down, concentrate and figure out something to post about.  So I figured, hey, I'll at least tell about that so it's clear why there isn't a more in-depth post that is about games.

I'm fine now, of course, partly thanks to the above Girls' Generation song, but mostly to some good friends in more ways than one.  It's mostly thanks to these friends that I've been able to stay in a good mood for...well, a really long time, save for a few low spots here and there.  They've made it easy enough that my spirits are naturally a bit buoyant and even when I get down, it's because of that that I can pull out of the funk fairly easily, even if it takes a bit.  Of course, when they're around and helping me directly, that will do the trick also, but that's just making it a bit easy.  Just being able to speak with these people and get that negativity out in a calm, reasonable way goes a long way towards alleviating any problems I might have.

The unfortunate bit is that today was actually a good day.  A really good day.  I completed Binary Domain's campaign mode and found it to be completely delightful throughout for the most part.  I have a couple complaints, of course, but I will deal with them on another night.  For now, I'm simply going to touch on the fact that, honestly for a first attempt at something like this (with an original IP, at least), Yakuza Studios knocked it out of the goddamn park and I almost wouldn't mind seeing them eschew a yearly release of a Yakuza game just to see what else they can do because if Yakuza and Binary Domain are any indicators (I would say they are), the studio knows quality.  Almost.  I still want Yakuza 5 localization news here and then I want some other news and then I want them working on the next Yakuza game or something.  Like, right stat like that.

Following completing Binary Domain's Campaign, I spent a bit of time with the Invasion mode of Mullti-player which I will also speak of on some other night.  Following that, however, I pulled the disk out and popped something entirely different in - my brand-new copy of Persona 4 Arena.  I never really expected that I would pick up the game, but for $20 and especially after my beyond-delightful experience with Persona 4 Golden, I absolutely couldn't pass it up.  I certainly wasn't expecting much since I am not a fighting game person and, in that regard, I'm not disappointed.  It's basically what I expected in that it looks fantastic, plays wonderfully, yet I honestly don't really care all that much.  It is a good game, I can tell that much, but it's not a game that's going to change my opinion on straight-up Fighting Games.  I doubt that there is such a game, or will be, that could do that.

Tomorrow, however, I will put my time into the very last game from 2012 that I'm going to play before I sit down and make the undoubtedly difficult decision of what game goes where on my Games of 2012 list.  I suspect I am going to have to spend quite a bit of time on the thought process behind it since, currently, I certainly cannot say whether I liked Lollipop Chainsaw more than I liked Yakuza:  Dead Souls, nor can I say that I liked Sorcery more than LittleBigPlanet Karting.  Not to mention all of the Vita games that I've played (sadly excluding Persona 4 Golden - it's a wonderful game, but it was released before and no matter how much more wonderful Golden is, which is a -ton-, it's still an updated port, thus not eligible).  It'll certainly be the longest list I've ever considered for a Games of the Year poll and, in a way, that's honestly kind of amazing.  Only a few more days to get the last minute gaming in, however.

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