The short version: this is a good game. You should go play it. Well-worth paying full price ($30).
The long version: if you liked the original, you will like this. It’s basically the same game. Sure, the graphics are modernized, it’s got keyboard+mouse support, and even has a new mission (it’s a cut mission from the original files that’s been restored), but it’s the same game. They even used the same audio, so it keeps the humor that’s not allowed anymore (there is one line that’s taken out).
You might notice that it doesn’t quite look the same as before, besides the improved graphics and textures. The devs for the remake thought that these cartoony characters worked better for the tone of the game than the original’s more idealized depictions. I don’t really agree, but it’s a minor thing.
For those of you who haven’t played the original, this is a third-person shooter in the classic style. Meaning, this isn’t a cover shooter, there are no real stealth elements, you just go around shooting things. Well, you do more than that – since you have no stealth, you do your non-shooty bits by taking the holographic form of various humans. You can read their minds, which can give mission hints, but mostly they’re just fun (this also recharges your holographic disguise). You can pick up and throw things with your mind. You have a few different weapons (including an anal probe that causes heads to explode). You have a jet pack to do jet pack things. You also have a flying saucer to do more enhanced destruction.
Between missions you can upgrade all this stuff with the DNA currency that you collect. Which you mostly get by stealing people’s brains (thus the anal probe causing exploding heads). There are also hidden alien probes around the maps that also give you DNA. Every map can be revisited after/between missions to gather all the collectibles and do minigames so you can upgrade your stuff. (You can also just plain replay missions, to get optional objectives or whatever.) The game is pretty easy overall, but it’s the upgrades that make it so. (And you’re going to really want those upgrades for the few difficult parts of the game.)
I personally have played a bit over 13 hours to this point. In this time I did all the main missions, and have replayed several of the maps. I haven’t 100% any of them though. I’d really have to get a guide to find the last of the probes on some of those maps. But for now, I’m satisfied. The replayability is a major part of this game – sometimes you just have a need to destroy a town, and you can do that as many times as you want. I really hope this game is such a success that THQ decides to remake the sequel, which is an even better game than this one.
It wasn’t terrible. It’s got that going for it. Of course, Picard also wasn’t terrible in the first episode, and showed some promise.
I went into this thinking it’d be quite terrible. Not only was the art completely uninspiring of confidence in quality (generic calarts garbage), but the trailer was quite attrocious. About 90% of that was in this first episode, but fortunately the worst parts of the trailer weren’t here, and the trailer didn’t deliver the top jokes (though obviously it thought it would). And it seemed like it would be the generic modern comedy cartoon, which is something I don’t want in a Trek show.
It actually was that last thing. I still don’t want that in a Trek show. This didn’t feel like a Trek comedy show, but rather a parody of Trek, like you’d see on Family Guy or Robot Chicken (the similarities to Rick and Morty aren’t just in the art). I don’t like that sort of manic, frantic, silly humor (that still somehow manages to stretch a joke too long much of the time) generally, and I don’t think it fits with the Star Trek aesthetic. Trek has done comedy, sometimes even being funny, so it’s not like Trek has to be serious. But this isn’t it.
All that I could tolerate, though, if it weren’t for the main character. Mariner is by far the most annoying character on the show, but she’s obviously supposed to be sympathetic, at least as far as a modern comedy lead is allowed to be. She’s made out to be a Michael Burnham, but “funny”. But Burnham was a big part of what makes STD bad, and Mariner follows that trend. She’s a headstrong, manic, stubborn woman who’s nevertheless always in the right – she’s only rebelling against the stuffy regulations, after all. She’s contrasted with, and in conflict with, the senior staff, who are all jerkoffs, so you know she’s in the right, even if you’d rather she disappeared from your screen forever. This show might even be decent, if it weren’t for her. I don’t see her get any better.
Since it didn’t completely put me off in the first episode, I’ll give it at least a couple more, see if it turns out. I always hope that these new shows will turn out ok – that they’ve learned from their mistakes, and improved and made something better. My hopes are constantly dashed, but Trek is about hope for a better future. So here I am.
This will be the general review of the game Bang Dream! Girls Band Party! (Yes, the exclamation marks are part of the title; it’s all very exciting, after all). I’m going to be doing a summary of the different bands in separate posts, because I think that’s worthwhile. But this is the sort of thing where I tell you stuff, so you can see if you want to try it out.
First thing you should know, this is a rhythm game. If that turns you off, don’t even bother. In terms of gameplay, it’s essentially the same as Guitar Hero or Rock Band, just with a touch screen: notes fall from the top of the screen, and when they hit the target area, you touch them. Or hold, or slide, whatever. You get a score for each note, depending on your difficulty and accuracy, and your combo count. You also have a life meter, which depletes if you mess up. For the most part, points doesn’t matter a whole lot.
Those pink diamonds are the bane of my life.
I wonder if the obvious similarities to Guitar Hero aren’t deliberate. Because, unlike a lot of mobile rhythm games, the music is mostly rock music. There are some different genres represented, depending on the band – I’ll get into that more when I talk about each band later. The different tracks are all free – you start with a large supply, and augment these through events, completing the stories, or using in-game currency. You don’t have to have the song yourself to play them in multiplayer, just to choose them yourself. In multiplayer each player chooses whatever they want, and then it’s decided randomly.
The second thing to know, is that this is a gacha game. The gacha consists of the various characters, each having several variants. I said above that the score mostly doesn’t matter. It doesn’t, except in multiplayer events. Score is dependent on the stats of your band. And of course, higher-rarity units have better stats. While there are in-game items that boost stats, boosts are naturally higher when the stats are higher to begin with. Also, different units have different abilities that are activated at certain times in a song (indicated by a yellow note), and higher-rarity units tend to have better abilities. But, most importantly to most players, each new unit comes with two mini stories, and often a new costume for the song background. The game is pretty generous with gacha currency, so one could easily save a bunch (especially when you’re new) and roll quite a bit. I personally got about 140 rolls in the first 2.5 months of playing – and I’m not good.
As a big part of the draw to the gacha is the appeal of the characters, it’s important to make them appealing. All events and story things are fully-voiced, at least for the main characters. (There are a few characters besides them that are also voiced, but most npc’s aren’t – this isn’t really a problem, since they aren’t a big part of the story, typically.) All of the character portraits are also animated using Live2D, which works really well for the most part. The voice acting is high-quality, and brings a lot of life and emotion to the characters – which is important, because the stories themselves are generally pretty simple.
Technically, I think this is a pretty demanding game. I have a top-tier Chromebook (at least for last year), and there is stuttering and desynching. However, I always have a large amount of Chrome tabs in the background, which probably doesn’t help things. My tablet, which is also pretty good, has no trouble with those sorts of issues. I think it’s probably more designed to play on phones, though – all the good video of people playing are doing it on phones, and it’s certainly easier to hit all the notes with one hand that way. A garbage phone like mine isn’t going to cut it, for sure, but I’m not sure how good your phone will need to be to play this well.
There are several servers to choose from, though you’ll almost certainly want to stay in your region: Japan, Korea, China (HK), Taiwan, and Worldwide. Your region determines the language of the game, and probably also ping, servers, etc. Thus, I figure anyone reading this will probably want to play on the World server, because that’s the English version. Japan was the original version, and it’s exactly one year ahead of the World version, in terms of events, songs, and gacha. I think the other servers are ahead of the World version, if you can do those languages, and care about that. (I don’t know about the Korean version, but the Taiwan version looks to be only five months behind Japan). The English translation sticks pretty close to the Japanese original, but some of the translation choices are odd, considering that. But it’s not nearly as bad as many other games I play, so I can deal with it.
All that being said, what’s most important: Is this game fun? I have to say it is. I quite like the story and characters, and the gameplay is fun as well. I also quite like most of the music, which is good considering that’s part of the gameplay. (I even bought the Rosellia album that came out a few weeks ago.) I don’t regret the little money I’ve put into it, for sure. I do play it quite a lot, and have improved a ton since I started. However, this game is very skill-based, and you need good reaction times and hand-eye coordination, areas in which I am quite lacking. Hard difficulty is actually hard, which is a little embarrassing to admit when I see most other players in my stats range doing Master no problem. But regardless, I do really like this game, which is why I’m going to be talking about it a lot more in the near future.
Dating Sims on the Holodeck 