Tales of the Abyss

I liked Tales of the Abyss. I really did. The character designs are the best in any Tales Of game other than Symphonia, and arguably the development they get is better...and this game doesn't have Regal's stupid little shirt-thing holding it back. But while the characters are some of the most likeable and multifaceted in the JRPG world, within their series or not, the unfortunate fact is that they're in a bloated, overlong, self-important and really rather dull game, and that is why it has taken me very nearly two years to play this game through. So many other 3DS games became the ones I wanted to play, and I ended up only crawling through Abyss when I wanted a long soak in the tub. 

In a bit of a twist on the usual two-worlds theme of Tales Of games, Abyss deals with a fantasy world in which technology has allowed the perfect replication of not only objects but people and even whole countries. The two worlds thus co-exist, but are divided into real and replica. Well, there's also a vast underground segment of the planet that's a little closer to the more typical Tales Of divisions, but that's the less interesting part. Alongside this idea of replication, the central question of Tales of the Abyss is about free will and predetermination: a series of predictions called 'The Score', discovered through study into the elementary particles of sound, have been so accurate that the world of Auldrant essentially adapted so that all human life adheres to it. The story revolves around those who struggle against this predetermined path and the right and wrong ways to resist a higher will. 

Central to it is Luke von Fabre, initially a very irritating, spoilt young man who has the most effective coming-of-age through guilt and angst that I've yet seen in a JRPG, and believe me, they do that bit of plot contrivance a lot. He is barely tolerable initially, but - symbolic hair-cutting and all - eventually becomes an admirable protagonist, if a little whiny around Asch. He is joined by a very colourful cast: the stony but soft-hearted Tear, adorable and precocious little Anise, handsome but detached Guy and of course Jade, the sarcastic and cold-hearted but quite brilliantly cutting scientist who I have to say is the character I've found most uncomfortably like myself in quite some time. The bad guys were also a good mixture of formidable and ridiculous, and I very much liked the Ion/Sync dichotomy. The voice cast, featuring some of the big names of dubbing (for what that's worth), have fun with their roles and often hit just the right notes, and most of the really hammy performances suit their characters, especially with Dist and Natalia, though Mohs really just sounds absurd. Mieu is intended as an incredibly annoying cutesy mascot, and the balance is just right for a character you love to hate. 

Gameplay-wise, the system builds upon Symphonia's layout, adding the ability to move in all directions. It's nicely playable, though I ended up liking to play Anise the most because (a) she was great at keeping a single target pinned and (b) the AI was a bit less terrible at controlling Luke and Guy than the rest. Plus Anise's fighting style is just far more entertaining than the others'. It's not as polished as Tales of Graces F, of course, but it was totally playable. 

And while more or less a straight, lazy port from the PS3, I very much enjoyed playing on the 3DS. A lot more could have been done than adding some shortcuts to the touchscreen, and the fact the anime cutscenes were 2D was a bit of a slap in the face (as was the fact that the skits aren't voiced as they are in the original Japanese version, but that's down to the original port), but the fact that this whole thing could be squeezed onto a cart was brilliant and it was a game I was very happy to see on a portable console. Really puts the suggestion that the whole One Piece game couldn't fit on the cart with extra translation in place into perspective. 

So with all these positives, why did it take so long to play through? And why don't I ever want to go through it again getting all the extras? Well, the fact is that it just drags on for way too long. There's too much plodding back to some city you've been to a dozen times just to trigger the next part, and what feels like the game's natural ending is actually only about two thirds of the way through the story. The last act devolves into a sequential culling of all the antagonists one by one, soon becoming repetitive and uninvolving, and the story itself is just too full of the convoluted jargon of fonons and hyperresonances for the much more interesting personal journeys to come through. Tales of the Abyss commits the cardinal sin of not refining its story enough to keep it gripping, leading to boredom and the feeling of artificial padding. And for a story-led genre like RPGs, that is crucial. 

Project Diva f

I bought a Vita a tad prematurely. It was a good few months between buying it and there actually being games I wanted to play. But Technika Tune and this game soon put paid to that, and now I’m very happy I own it – even if my 3DS does tend to take precedent.

I had a bit of an obligation to spend a whole lot of time on Project Diva f, because after all it’s the third game in the series I’ve owned – or fifth if you count the Dreamy Theatre extensions. I’ve played all the games except Extend, as I was waiting for Dreamy Theatre Extend when this game appeared. With Project Diva F now bringing the series to Western shores, with a UK release supposedly today (but, crappily, only online) and the game already available Stateside (physical copy), it’s likely I’ll never get around to getting Extend to work. Ah well!

Yesterday, I finally got my platinum trophy for the game, many moons after my purchase, ironically after perfecting every song in the game - what was required for the old gold trophy – when finally one random loading screen popped up and completed my collection. I can firmly say that it’s complete now, and I must say I hesitate to buy the PS3 version if all I’ll be doing is repeating the same songs and having to get trophies for things like stroking Kaito’s cheek for hours.

As an instalment in the series, it’s a good one, but I’m glad it wasn’t my first. The previous games had so many of the big-hitting tracks, including more or less the entirety of the Supercell album – though Black Rock Shooter finally made it with this instalment – that without playing them first I’d feel there was a whole lot missing. The track listing here still had some highlights, though, with ‘Fire◎Flower’ a highlight for me, and ‘Sadistic Music Factory’ graduating to a favourite thanks to the exposure it had here. 

‘Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!’, famous as the ‘Nyan Cat’ song, got included, sadly not in the ridiculous endurance style of the edit mode song I had, but with a strange remix with a variety of style changes I quite enjoyed (but wouldn’t listen too as music!), and more fun with Rin and Len in the form of ‘RimoCon’ and ‘Kagamines’ Hachi-Hachi Flowery Battle’. Oster Project’s chameleon act is represented with the 50s ‘Summer Idol’ and Dixie Flatline’s ‘The Dream Continues’ is a lovely hummable anthem. Meiko’s inclusion was quite enjoyable this time, with the breathy and fun pop of ‘Megane’ and the cool-sounding and utterly hilarious-to-read-the-subtitles-of ‘DYE’. It’s a bit of a shambles for the older-generation Vocaloids, though: Meiko is sadly represented by the screeching ‘Stay With Me’ and equally irritating ‘Nostalogic’, which I managed to make enjoyable only by giving her a hideous mask, making the video much funnier, and Kaito’s voice is notably daft on ‘Acute’ and ‘Ashes to Ashes’, despite two of the best, most over-the-top accompanying PVs. It’s also hilarious how he’s presented in the intro – while the twins are making art or playing guitar and Meiko is onstage performing, Kaito totally looks like he just got on the stage to dance along without anyone asking him to or wanting him there. Bless his idiot heart.

The quality of videos is much-improved. We can now have a number of background characters, much enhancing group songs, and there’s much more scope for moving between scenes. There’s also a clear attempt at variety, with one video mostly in anime style, lovely contrasts between fluffy light idol stuff and some of the darker concepts of the Vocaloids, and even the chance to put Shiteyan’yo on everyone’s heads (mostly Meiko). There are also some adorable little narratives, like the one for ‘Time Machine’, evidently about a brief summer romance between your Vocaloid and the viewer. It’s total fanservice, but the bittersweet goodbye is totally irresistible. Then there’s Ryo’s ‘ODDS&ENDS’, with its oh-so-subtle narrative of ‘this otaku’s life is utterly worthless, but now he’s discovered Vocaloid, started being productive and turned his life around into something wonderful!’ which would be a hideously transparent marketing ploy if it wasn’t preaching to the choir. Still, watching the lovely hi-res graphics is a huge step up from the PSP versions, and a pleasure distinct from playing.

I’m happy I’ve played F, but the tracklisting could certainly have been better, and that’s part of the reason the PS3 version may be on the back burner for me for a while. And I do wonder what’s left for future versions…apart from ‘Trick or Treat’ by Oster Project, there aren’t many songs I’m that keen to see included – though if they surprise me and put in something pervy like ‘Kagamine Len no Bousou’ or something extremely dark like ‘Gomen Ne’, that would be a huge plus. Neither are ever likely to make it, though. I suppose they could start including more peripheral Vocaloids more…

Rhythm Thief & the Emperor’s Treasure / リズム怪盗R 皇帝ナポレオンの遺産 (Rhythm Thief R: Emperor Napoleon’s Legacy)

Sega may be best-known just now for disappointing their somewhat scary hedgehog fandom go through a continuous cycle of being hyped up and then disappointed, and possibly for putting their escapist fantasies about a new console into the somewhat unsettling Hyperdimension Neptunia, but there’s also the legacy of their quietly brilliant Space Channel 5 and Samba de Amigo – damn fine rhythm games that sadly go under the radar for most gamers, including the addictive Vocaloid games in the Project Diva series, and this excellent but sadly rather overlooked title.

The game isn’t the world’s most original. Basically, it takes the Professor Layton series, substitutes France for England and then instead of the puzzles puts in rhythm games – many of them conspicuously similar to those of Rhythm Tengoku. And much as I love the Layton series, the same sort of thing with my favourite portable genre? How could I resist?

Sega are also sure to sneak in references to their previous successes – so expect ‘Up Down Up Down Chu Chu Chu!’ from Space Channel 5 and random Mexicans in Paris persuading you to do some samba. That said, the Samba de Amigo section suffers from one of the game’s huge problems – wanting to use the accelerometer inside the 3DS to add to the gameplay by making you tilt the system. Not only does this make you look extremely stupid if you do it in public (and I mostly play my 3DS on the train), it doesn’t work very well. For someone like me who wants to at the very least get a full combo on every song, that got quite irritating. The games where you had to tilt a particular way to prepare for a note were okay, but ones where the motion itself was the note, the detection was far too unreliable and was a major negative point for gameplay.

That said, I did manage. I played every rhythm game and got a full-combo on them all. There are actually items you can get that mean you either get a full combo or you fail, and I bought a few, but it soon struck me as pointless as you gain nothing but a little crown and I was just re-doing what I’d already done. I did the three extra mini stories and basically did everything the game had to offer except find some hidden ‘sound discs’, because they really didn’t add anything to my experience and just required tapping on every single nook and cranny at the very end of the game.

And though it’s a little derivative and makes such a point of leaving itself hugely open for a sequel that I expected a whole lot more game to be unlocked after the credits, I liked the story of Rhythm Thief a lot. Though Phantom R is the kind of character I normally really dislike – brash, cocky, wise-cracking and smug – the fact that his true self is an unassuming little pretty-boy helped quite a bit, and the minor characters I really grew to love. In particular, I adored reverse-trap Charlie, a silly little tomboy who runs about Paris trying to solve the crimes her inspector father hasn’t managed to wrap up with the help of her glider and football. The rivalry she sets up with Phantom R was already irresistible before the gender-bending reveal endeared her to me forever – and with her voice actress’s deadpan delivery, often wonderfully understated but with some brilliant little yelps, she was leagues ahead of, say, the dull and generic American actor for Raphael or cute love interest Marie, who had a pleasant English voice but was utterly incapable of expressing any emotion at all.

Nicely-presented, fun to play and with a stupid but enjoyable story and cute characters, I certainly feel the title could have been more of a hit than it was, and do hope it managed to get a sequel, even if all has fallen quiet on that front now. It would also have benefited from an advanced mode, because I have to say, fun though things were – especially when they became medleys – I definitely needed more of a challenge. Without the need to do any tilting. 

Professor Layton and the Last Spectre / Professor Layton and the Spectre’s Call

Despite a friend’s name being on the credits (woo!), I have to say that Spectre is the one and only title in the Professor Layton series that I have refused to buy (or, y’know, get someone to get for my birthday present!). I refused to spend money on it, instead waiting until I could borrow it because Nintendo of Europe put me off completely by hacking out a huge minigame included in the title called London Life. So I needed to get the US version in order to play this minigame – which was simple and rather lame, but worth playing – and the UK version in order not to hear that grating voice actor they have for Luke over there. And was I going to buy both? Nope.

So now, having finally revealed the, ahem, epic conclusion of London Life behind some magic wall of happiness in the London sewers in order to stop a meteorite hitting the Earth (and not a tentacle in sight), it’s time to write my thoughts.

Admittedly, we get a slight problem with Luke’s UK voice’s cheeky cockney inflection with this prequel about how he first meets Professor Layton – in his lovely home counties mansion where his father is the very well-spoken and well-respected mayor – which was there in a lesser form when we met his older self in the last game, but at least could be explained away by pointing to elocution lessons. It may seem like a point for the US version that Luke’s working-class London accent has been shown to be inappropriate, but at least it’s still a hundred times more appropriate than that appalling swing-and-miss attempt at a generic British accent that it replaces.

Anyway, in this game, a letter summons Layton and his assistant Emmy to the town of Misthallery, which despite looking like a nice little Cotswolds village (with an odd rope-bridge or two) has a rich history of excavation sites and mines, a huge dam and an abandoned factory. Quite impressive, really. Even more impressive is the town’s problem – it is being terrorised by a mysterious ‘spectre’, rampaging about the town when a thick mist falls and rending great gashes in the walls. Of course, there’s quite another explanation for the mystery, and though when it’s revealed it’s not exactly convincing, it is at least inventive and makes for some classic Layton finger-pointing. And the little animated portions are beyond doubt highlights. Layton thrives more than anything on charm – and there’s never any doubting that it has that by the bucketload.

Uncharted: Golden Abyss

The star of the PS Vita launch, I was distinctly underwhelmed by the Uncharted demo, despite the undeniably gorgeous graphics for a handheld. It felt like I was being baby-walked through the entire thing, not just the initial guides, and ultimately it wasn’t until Gravity Rush and a little spree of imported rhythm games that I felt that anything on the Vita was worth playing.

Yet I’ve rushed through this one. Why? Because it was free. Well, it as free on PS Plus this month, and I had a free membership to Plus, so I thought I might as well!

Ultimately, I’m glad I played it – but also glad I didn’t have to play for it. It was a well-made game, but left me utterly cold, and of course was a bad game to play alongside its spiritual successor The Last of Us, which does everything much, much better and actually has a soul.

The problem here – beyond how obviously the series derives from Tomb Raider – is that I dislike Nate Drake. He’s the kind of character I always hated as a kid and have never grown to tolerate, bombing a dozen people and watching their dead bodies slump to the ground and the getting up to wisecrack, ‘Hot enough for ya?’ or something. I hate people who wisecrack and get smug, unless they’re a bit of a runt to begin with (like Spiderman) or end up taking as much as they give. But Drake just swaggers around being a sarcastic twatface who everyone stands around praising for his skills and knowledge and animal magnetism. Urgh.

The game is also a bit clunky. The story is that archaeological expert and all-around hero Drake is brought in to examine some unexpected remains of Spanish soldiers in Panama, with Visigoth symbols marking their graves. His dodgy partner Dante is revealed to be in league with local ‘generale’ Roberto Guerro, a huge cliché of a Central American drug lord and revolutionary soldier. Also there is the feisty young Marisa Chase, known as Chase, who is as annoying as Drake while also insisting on never using guns until at the end of the game she sees the light and discovers it is wonderful to shoot baddies in the face. As long as, y’know, they deserve it because they’re attacking first because if they don’t the drug lord is going to kill their families. (Probably.)

A mysterious amulet (yes, really) leads the way to Chase’s grandfather’s mysterious dig – which turns out to be connected with the Mysterious Cities of Gold. How original. Of course, they find one, it’s all very beautiful and underground and their security mechanisms still work centuries later, and though the gold is all radioactive, of course the bad guys still want it to flog on the world market.

Drake and his various allies – the only likeable one of whom is grizzly old Sully – either sneak about killing Guerro’s soldiers – and later, Dante’s hired mercs – or just go in all guns blazing, and generally the thing moves at a good old pace. Except when things grind to a halt to show off some gimmick of the PS Vita. You have to rub away at the screen to clean artefacts or take charcoal rubbing, reassemble jigsaws at length, and most annoyingly, to use the accelerometer to stop Drake losing his balance, which looks very stupid if you’re playing on a train (as I was). There’s also one part where you have to hold the Vita up to the light, which is quite cool, though whether the light matters or just the angle I’m not sure. Hmm, apparently it is light-sensitive. Impressive!

Anyway, these gimmicks generally got in the way and broke up the gameplay – which was largely kinda dull. True, it’s better to have all enemies believable real-world thugs rather than, y’know, living statues or mystical beings awoken in the tombs, but things do get repetitive. And it’s annoying how when you finally get your hands on a minigun it’s nowhere near as good for you as it was for your foes.

Ultimately, the experience feels hollow and careless. I don’t know if this is the case for the three games before this one, but in all honesty, after playing this one through I don’t much care to know.  

The Last of Us

When it comes down to it, there isn’t a whole lot of game in The Last of Us. There are only really four types of enemies, you mostly just do the same thing a dozen or so times and though it doesn’t feel like it, it’s every bit as much on-rails as the first half of Final Fantasy XIII but simply more adept at hiding it. If you hate the kind of game that feels mostly like a movie you can minimally interact with, you may not enjoy it that much. But in terms of sophistication, seriousness, a good story and just plain out-shining any Hollywood zombie film for many, many years (especially World War Z), you can’t go wrong with The Last of Us, and it does feel like a bit of a milestone.

On a superficial level, it goes for ‘lots of swearing, deaths that hit hard and plenty of gore must mean the product is grown up’, but it actually does back this up with depth, which is what counts. It explores a whole lot of difficult subjects, from grief to self-sacrifice, and is happy to end on a moral grey area that some could argue is so open because it’s gunning for a sequel, but I prefer to think of as bittersweet, making it clear that despite what Hollywood may tell you, always opting to save the innocent individual whose death may actually save many, many more may not actually have been wise.

Grizzly Joel has survived the zombie apocalypse and is making a living as a tough-guy smuggler, delivering products where they’re needed in the quarantined zones. One day he and his partner get mixed up with smugging a girl named Ellie – who perhaps inevitably may be the key to a cure. Soon he’s left alone with her, and they have to get through a series of difficult spots, brushing with death several times until they can reach the ‘fireflies’, the biggest underground organisation in the infected zones. Getting from place to place involves dealing with zombies, including the blind but fearsome ‘clickers’ and the foul and very dangerous ‘bloaters’, as well as soldiers and other human adversaries, snipers defending their homes and even a group of cannibals who want to make a ‘toy’ out of Ellie. Along the way they make some great allies, including Joel’s brother making his living in a hydroelectric dam, a grizzly but tough-as-nails recluse who may be the most awesome explicitly gay character yet in a video game, and a pair of black brothers who have a very sad story only outdone by the story of the people in the sewers (apparently obliquely referencing a book called Earth Abides) that unfolds only with notes and the clues left behind – including ‘They didn’t suffer’ daubed onto the floor in front of a blanket that doesn’t stop anybody seeing what it covers.

There are very uplifting moments, too – the best of them of course featuring giraffes, which will no doubt be one of the more memorable scenes the game leaves behind. There are some fun little references to other games, too, most obviously Jak and Daxter (Naughty Dog’s previous project), as well as Uncharted, which is this game’s most obvious forebear. There’s  even a newspaper claiming Justin Bieber will be playing Drake! I have to say, it does also continue to amuse me that the very last thing  you do as a player is to jump off a log, too.

This is a much, much better game than any Uncharted, though. It’s serious and demands some thought. Its stealth sections are much trickier and though occasionally frustrating, it always feels well-balanced, at least on the hard setting I played it on (one day I’ll probably tackle ‘survivor’). The only thing is that there’s not a whole lot making me want to replay, because rather than missing the gameplay or the challenge, I have the feeling of satisfaction of watching a brilliant film, though with some challenges along the way. 

Fire Emblem: Awakening

I’ve now finished Fire Emblem: Awakening’s punishing ‘Lunatic’ mode, including getting almost all the characters (one died without me realizing what I was meant to do to recruit her, but oh well), and while the rest of the absurd ‘Lunatic+’ mode will probably tempt me back sometime and the replay value is kept high by all the possible relationship variations available, I don’t think I’ll be playing any more for a while, so it’s time to write up my impressions.

Fire Emblem’s demo was one of the most impressive I’ve played on the 3DS and I was very keen for the full version on the back of it. The aesthetic – despite weird lack of feet – was great, the character designs very cute and the gameplay easy but addictive. I’d never played any Fire Emblem before, but I’d played the similar Final Fantasy Tactics, so I took to it quickly. On the other hand the demo was much too easy so I began the game in Lunatic Mode…and while I don’t regret it because Hard is clearly too easy, that was really chucking myself in the deep end.

You see, the difficulty settings are a bit odd. There really needed to be some intermediate difficulty, because it jumps from so-easy-that-you-can-just-skip-turns-and-the-enemy-kills-itself-trying-to-kill-you to oh-God-if-I-don’t-get-lucky-with-criticals-and-misses-I-die-over-and-over-again-on-turn-one-of-level-one. There are a very narrow set of possibilities that need to happen, some of them based on random number generators, to get you to level 5, where really you need some DLC to make the game playable and to stop you having to just use Frederic for every single turn forever, especially as in classic mode, everyone who dies stays dead forever so you need perfect runs. Luckily I’d got the game as a gift and fancied trying out paid DLC on the 3DS for the first time, so I didn’t mind too much. But normally that’s the sort of thing that puts me right off a title.

Typically of Nintendo – Kid Icarus being a notable exception – the world is strong, the characters are great, the set-up is very interesting, but then the story meanders and ends too abruptly, leaving it to be a bit unsatisfying at the end. This is largely why I don’t think that playing again and again to see how different characters interact will be enough of a pull to be a completeist here. Plus my strategy at the end, when things got even remotely difficult, was just to throw Manaketes at every enemy, who just tore them all apart, two of them even able to heal 50% health just by killing an enemy when their turn came. For a strategy game, it ended up rather lacking in strategy, and it’s not just because Lunatic mode was very unbalanced.

I very much enjoyed playing through the game, and as its real heart is making characters like each other a lot (straight relationships only, I’m afraid, but I can accept that to be part of the depicted medieval-style society and it would muddle the genetics concept to have gay adoption), I grew to regard some characters with great affection. My own avatar Wren was great with his Manakete bride Nowi, their daughter Nah made me smile every time, and I wanted to see Ricken paired with everyone just to see how those relationships could work out. True, my army ended up consisting largely of absurdly powerful kids (and ancient creatures who looked like kids), but that’s J-RPGs in a nutshell.

But ultimately, I liked the game rather than loving it. I want to unlock everything and surpass all the challenges on Kid Icarus (eventually). Getting every single S-rank conversation in Fire Emblem seems an absurd task and to be honest, managing to get through levels 3,4 and 5 of Lunatic+ mode seems enough of a drag with the enemies getting random priority or counter or damage mitigation, so for now this one’s shelved. It is good enough to get down again at some point, though. Just…after a whole lot of other games are done with.

Although I must say some of the other paid DLC is tempting…!

Phoenix Wright

Really, without Professor Layton and the Last Spectre, I probably wouldn't have played Phoenix Wright. Not because of the clear influence from the Phoenix Wright games, nor to be better able to understand the crossover game should it get a Western release, but because I'd started Phoenix Wright a while back, and decided that if I was going to play any other games on the original DS, I'd finish it first. And probably the only game to bring me back to the DS - rather than waiting in hope of a remake - is Last Spectre. So first, I had to finish Phoenix Wright - a fairly lengthy game.

I have to say it's an unlikely hit. A remake of a Gameboy Advance game, until its very final chapter (original to the DS) it really doesn't seem like it belongs on the DS at all. Mostly sprites with limited animation (albeit very nice ones) and some snatches of digitized speech, it most certainly shows its age. It's also a difficult game to translate, being ostensibly rather American but full of Japanese cultural references, from zentai shows to onigiri and very Buddhist-looking spirit mediums - not to mention everyone being out to work on Christmas Day without comment. There are quite a few spelling mistakes - the judge even at one point says 'trail' instead of 'trial' - and I got the impression this being a big hit was as much a surprise to the localization team as anyone else.

But it works because it is very silly and charming - and because of that nice sprite-based art actually being able to make some very attractive anime-style girls. Maya and Ema are two of the sweetest assistants a defense attorney/detective could ask for.

Phoenix Wright is a criminal lawyer who specializes in defense. Or so he aspires to be, at least - the game begins with his first-ever trial, and he's in at the deep end, defending his friend from a charge of murder. In fact, all his cases are defending someone accused of murder, which allows for much hilarious melodrama. His nemesis, Edgeworth, is keen to get his prosecutions, but Wright finds contradictions and clues and slowly the truth is unraveled - and each time, his client is of course innocent. All of the main characters of course have tragic pasts or other events in their childhoods that mean they have particular hang-ups about the law - including Phoenix himself, as well as Edgeworth - and lots of angst comes pouring out to temper the comedy in that very manga-esque way.

The game is really very easy. It's at heart a visual novel with an unusual play mechanic, and as such you are largely just led through the story with no real possibility of failure. Towards the end it becomes annoyingly necessary to press every single statement a witness makes, and sometimes it was very annoying to figure something out but to have it be called irrelevant until some intermediate point was made that allowed you to then proceed to the assertions you wanted to make minutes before, but it all usually gets to the crux at just the right speed to let you work things out. Simple, effective and full of great supporting characters, I had a very enjoyable time with it.

But I can't say I care to check out the sequels. I haven't yet encountered some of the series' more famous characters, like the masked Godot or the upstart Apollo, but nor am I in any great hurry to. If they are remade, I shall probably seek them out, or if I'm really at a loose end for handheld gaming, but likely not before. The world was fun, but I can only see it getting weaker in successive iterations.

DJ Max Technika Tune (PS Vita)

For a while now, it’s been rhythm games that have become my go-to for a challenge, and Technika is what captivated me most, no doubt about it. As a drummer, I tend to take very easily to these games and get slightly obsessive, so have beaten many of the big challenges of the genre – getting through the Dragonforce song on Expert in Guitar Hero, perfect-playing ‘The Singing Passion of Hatsune Miku’ in Project Diva 2^nd – as well as silly things like monopolising the scoreboards of the Taiko drumming game at the local arcade. But Technika is the one that really addicted me when I started it in its first arcade cabinet iteration – the bright colours, the catchy electronica songs, the adorable anime-style background videos, and most particularly the gameplay. In Technika, a line moves along the screen in two sweeps – one per bar – and you have to poke, slide or hold your fingers on different notes along with the music. It starts very simple and gets extremely hard, with all sorts of polyrhythms between hands, crossing wrists over and under one another and very fast tempos to contend with.

I got hooked, I sunk rather too much money into mastering the hardest version of ‘Son of Son’, only for still harder tracks and still harder versions to come out with monthly updates, all of which I happily devoured. I did all the challenges and finished all the sets, at one point reaching the top ten on the international region scoreboards (ie no Korea or Japan and perhaps a few other places) – though that’s because by then many Americans had upgraded to Technika 2 and couldn’t get the last set’s worth of points. Still, I was very good at it and top of the high score tables for my country’s one and only machine for a very long time.

Then the arcade closed down, the other one that got the machine didn’t put it online – making play rather pointless – and in all honesty I breathed a sigh of relief because the game pounded my wallet quite hard over the course of a few months. I put far too many coins into it.

Then came Technika Tune for the Vita, one of two games that transformed it from virtual paperweight to my constant companion, with my poor 3DS left low-priority (along with Project Diva f). I imported it as soon as I possibly could, and though it vied with Project Diva and Kid Icarus for my attention for a while, it soon became completely dominant and I’ve played little else since. Now that the very easy platinum trophy is mine, a very easy one mostly based on playing for a very long time, with the only ones I found tricky ironically being the ones you get for playing badly. I perfect-played all the Lite tracks, got into the top 75 in the other modes (could push that higher if I get the urge) and generally played the thing to death.

My only complaint is the lack of favourite songs. It has ‘Proposed, Flower, Wolf’, but not its second part, and I prefer the original ‘Oblivion’. Why keep the likes of ‘Fate’, ‘Access’ and ‘Y’ when you could have had ‘Sin’, ‘Blythe’ and numerous awesome Clazziquai tracks? Probably so download packs can come later. Of the new tracks (to me), I mostly liked the cute ones like ‘Shining My Boy’ and ‘Hello Pinkie’, and some cooler, faster tracks like ‘Bamboo on Bamboo’ and ‘Renovation’, good complements to the likes of ‘Fermion’, ‘Thor’ and ‘Xeus’, while disliking novelty ones like ‘Song of Sixpence’ (sung by children) and ‘Light House’ (mostly animal noises like those you get on children’s keyboards). I was tearing my hair out at the odd rhythms of Irish jig ‘Emblem’ when perfect-playing. But I definitely missed cute tracks like ‘Shining Shooting Star’ and ‘In My Heart’ and less cheesy ones like ‘Color’, ‘Hexad’ and ‘Supersonic’ – and would have liked ‘Heart of Witch’ from Black Square/Technika 2. Some of the better new songs were based on classical pieces – Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov – but there were also several horrible electronica pieces like ‘Dual Strikers’ and ‘AD2222’, as well as more cringe-worthy hip-hop tracks that make ‘Ruti’n’ sound cool, including one hilariously awful one about Toronto called ‘In the Tdot’. There were also a handful of tunes from Jpop band Kara, which were in general pleasant enough and easy to play. Overall, a very mixed bag with a few chores to play, but not at all bad and with some great tracks I’d not played before and thoroughly enjoyed.

In terms of presentation, the game is excellent, looking stunning on a little screen. It’s somewhat fiddly at first, but I soon got used to it, and though I had kinda hoped there would be held/repeating notes on the back AND front carefully-designed to be possible, once I realised the way they had adapted it, everything made sense and if anything it was easier (except times when a bit of hand would brush the back touchpad and cause an off-time note), plus the note and icon bonuses made it far, far easier to get perfect plays, along with fever – though I must say the vast majority of my breaks came when trying to activate fever and failing.

Definitely one of my favourite portable games – though I have to say, a shaky bus and that jerk when a train comes to a stop can ruin many an attempt at a high score. Highly enjoyable all around.