DJ Max Fever

This little music-simulation PSP game is kind of obscure, but it's packed with quite a lot of good stuff. When you turn on the game, the menu looks very nice with the techno music in the background. Because this was originally a Korean game, most of the songs are in Korean. Didn't think I liked K-pop, but what do you know. There are quite a few very addictive songs that I liked instantly.

Because I can pass level 5 songs in Beatmania games, DJ Max Fever is a bit too easy. There are 4 keys, 5 keys, or 6 keys, and I passed a 6 key Level 8 song no problem during my first plays. It's either that I'm good or the game is not challenging enough :P

Anyway, there is one interesting concept. It's the same with Beatmania in that you are supposed to hit corrosponding keys when it gets to a red line near the bottom, but in DJMF it doesn't necessarily has to be the right key. As long as you hit a key at the right time, the combo continues, but you only get a fraction of the score for that note.

The visuals in the background are very nice, too bad because unless you are watching someone else play, you probably are too busy to watch those. Heh.

Overall very nice game, well worth the money.

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne

I was playing Final Fantasy XII earlier today and I thought maybe I should play something else because there's only so much of the MMORPG-styled game I can take. So after some digging around in my games pile, I decided to play SMT Nocturne again.

Apparently I left it off after about 10 hours of gameplay, because I encountered a boss that was really hard to beat. After a bit of level-grinding and a few new demon fusions (awesome system btw, just like in the Persona series) I beat him on my first try.

The story is basically about a Japanese high school boy, who was visiting his teacher in the hospital, but due to some mysterious incidents, was turned into a half-demon. Now he has to fight his way to save the world. Or something like that. The whole thing so far is kind of vague, or it's possible that I simply forgot.

So, about the actual gameplay. For those who have never played it or the SMT Digital Devil Saga series, the whole game is basically 95% dungeon-crawling. Whatever time you are not spending in dungeons, you are on the world (not so vast though, more like overall area) map. There are only few rare places in the game without any random encounters, the rest of the places are crawling with monsters. And the encounter rate is really high.

The battle is turn-based, but winning usually requires strategy, and that's what makes this game so challenging and fun. Elemental weaknesses, critical hits, missing the target all contribute to how many actions you get per turn. Sometimes you find yourself making hit after hit, while other times you are unlucky enough to miss a few hits, in which case your turn is over before you know it.

Now for the overall presentation. Nocturne is rated M, and it shows through the monster designs and certain themes. Overall, the colors used in the game are rather bleak, and it really affects the player's mood after a while. Because you are all alone all the time save the demons that you recruit, it really feels lonely and desolate.

That's an image of a typical dungeon. As you can see, the atmosphere is rather desolate. The sound and the unique character design of SMT games all make the game creepy in its own way.

Nocturne has its difficult moments (rather frequently) but it's quite a fun game. Rather rare now, but very well liked among hardcore RPG gamers.

Beatmania IIDX 17 Sirius

Ok, the first game I'm going to mention is the newest one in the popular DJ simulation game series (well, mostly in Japan, here not so much) Beatmania IIDX 17 Sirius. They are currently location testing the arcade game in Japan, so any releases will be far into the future. After all, they have yet to release IIDX 16 Empress on the home console.
Always nice to listen to some nice techno/trance and whatnot.

-Cookie

RAG(ed) Begginings...

Test?

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Edit, Hawks here (aka Guy Gamer of the title);
This was sent from my phone; just to see if I can keep up with Girl Gamer as she will likely post a lot at her work place.

So, this marks the beginning of G3 Rag. G3 Rag (Guy and Girl Gamers Rambling about Games), is a blog about games and electronics. Right now there are two authors;


Guy Gamer aka Hawks.
Hawks is a College student, and loves to play video games; His console of choice is the XBox 360, and he prefers to play FPS, Action, RTS, and occasionally RPG games. When not gaming he freeruns and works.


Girl Gamer aka Um...the cookie that you throw away after it's all charred black? (Well, Cookie is fine I guess)

Also a college student, specifically a Computer Science major, who is hoping to someday do programming for video game companies. Yep. Very ambitious. Hoping to buy a PS3 some time in the future, but currently is occupied by her 2 PS2's (one NTSC one JP). Mostly plays RPGs, strategy, and music simulation. But one never knows.


Together we're gonna write G3 Rag. Here's to Gaming.