But, for the good news: Analogue: A Hate Story is getting a sequel called Hate Plus. I will be honest, with just how good Analogue was, the news of this has me basically prepared to run around waving my hands in the air and shouting gibberish at the thought.

It continues on from your Analogue ending, has revamped gameplay, more writing, more story revealed, new art, new costumes, and a new soundtrack. The best news it is is scheduled for summer of 2013. More on it is at Christine Love’s blog.

Really, the only reaction I have is just to shout at anyone selling this to take my money, Analogue was just that good, and if Hate Plus only manages to be as good as Analogue was, then you are still seeing the most probable victor for Game of The Year 2013.

In fact, I’ll predict this: I will be quite surprised if Hate Plus does not meet or exceed Analogue, and quite surprised if something else turns out better in a way that earns the other game Game of The Year 2013.

Other game designers, you now know who to try and beat.

For those unaware, Go! Go! Nippon is a visual novel about a guy who takes a trip to Japan for the first time.

The game is about $15 over at J-List, so I obviously had to check it out, since I was wondering how good it could really be.

The most basic plot is one guy who has a name you get to choose who goes over to Japan to spend some time with a couple online friends. Unlike most online friends, these two were real people who were honest about their names and didn’t stab him to death in his sleep and sell his organs for rent money. No, they were good people in fact, who showed him around various spots in Japan and… Well, that’s about it really.

To say the game is short is an understatement, Darmstadtium has a longer half life than the game lasts or so it feels. Monster Girl Quest requires dedication and a degree of masochism that I lack to go through the game in a reasonable amount of time, while Go! Go! Nippon! can be played through in less than an hour with little difficulty, and it isn’t a bad thing.

The actual plot of the game is simple, you are at the house in Japan and you have a few days to visit places, and six spots you can choose to go see. Naturally, one playthrough can’t cover them all, so a second run is required to check it all out. Endings for the two girls you meet are unlocked by seeing spots with them as opposed to the other girl. Two spots with one girl will unlock her route, and it isn’t really stated who will show you which places, which is sort of nice, since you will most likely unlock one just by playing, and the other by visiting the other places on the next playthrough. It really is that easy.

The game includes some ‘romantic’ dating sim cliches, like accidentally walking into the bathroom on someone. I found those inclusions to be a bit cliche, and to not really add anything to the story or to the purpose of the game.

The main part of the game seems to be showing you some neat places in japan, and I think including another place or two to see instead of a bathroom scene would have been more worth it. The game concentrates on the going to japan aspect of it’s plot, and including such cliches is effort that would have been better spent showing more interesting places or more interesting things about Japan.

For $15 though, the game is a fun little game that is basically saying to you “Look at all these fun places and interesting little facts! You should come here and see them for real!”

And for $15, having a game that has the intention of getting me interested in Japan isn’t a big deal, but I think it would have benefited better without the cliches from dating sims. other than that though, it’s a decent enough game at a good price.

However, if you can’t afford to go to Japan and want to see more of it in pictures, you’d be better off going to various websites and photo galleries, which cover far more stuff and tend to be free. I personally suggest Culture Japan as a good site.

Score: 3/5 not that bad

Pros: shows some cool places in Japan and some interesting factoids about Japan. Visual novel made in Japan specifically for export to other countries.

Cons: very limited in what it shows. Very short overall. Cliched story additions. I can get more true facts, more interesting photos, and see more interesting places for free thanks to Danny Choo. Not a lot to say about the game.

Final verdict: If you have $15 laying around and want to buy a game that shows you a few places in Japan because you’re interested in going, I would suggest reading through Danny Choos’ website. If you want a fairly short introduction to see how interested you are, then I suggest you may as well get the game.

J-List sells Go! Go! Nippon! here.

However, I do have good news to announce:

JAST USA Press Release: Saya no Uta Goes Golden Master

JAST USA, the leading publisher of adult Japanese PC games in English, has announced the Golden Master status of Saya no Uta – The Song of Saya, the highly-anticipated visual novel by developer Nitroplus and Madoka Magica creator Urobuchi Gen. The master has been sent for printing and the game is expected to ship by early May.

Saya no Uta tells the story of a young medical student who receives experimental brain surgery after a traumatic accident. He survives, but is left with warped senses that perceive the world as a hellish wasteland of pulsating flesh and twisted monsters. His salvation is a mysterious girl named Saya, the one entity he perceives as beautiful and pure. Their love has dramatic consequences — not only for them, but for the entire world.

Saya no Uta is the fourth visual novel by acclaimed writer Urobuchi Gen, whose most recent works include the popular anime Madoka Magica and Fate/Zero. It remains one of his most famous works due to its powerful themes and strong storytelling.

JAST USA president Peter Payne said, “Japan has a highly developed visual novel culture full of interesting games, but some games really stand out. One of these is Saya no Uta, a perfect blend of romance and Lovecraftian horror with gorgeous art, haunting music, and stellar voice acting. We are very proud to bring Saya to our customers, and we hope fans will continue to show their support for this unique and outstanding game by picking up the official release!”

Saya no Uta is DRM-free, uncensored, and suitable for mature adults 18 years of age or older. It is available for preorder now on the JAST USA store (http://www.jastusa.com/shop/song-of-saya.html), as well as at JList.com. More information can be found at the JAST USA developer blog, http://www.jastusa.com/.

I wish I had seen this before I put in for the pre-order, this release means the game is coming soon, and I would have waited to pre-order if I had known how long I would have been waiting.
Links go to the websites, I have no control over content on those sites. Viewer discretion advised, some images may not be safe for work or those under 18.

Yeah, no, you aren’t getting any more of the cover art, especially since it’s work safety is debatable and my image editor will not save as any sort of standard file, so you get to enjoy a horrible crop.

Custom Maid 3D is a recently released game from Kiss, who partnered with G Project to develop some new idea for visual novels.

Since this is a preview and not a review (unless Kiss wants to send me a review copy, which is not happening) I’m just going to discuss the good and bad that I see.

The plot involves training a maid in 20 days, and you train her in all sorts of tasks, and whatever you teach her in that time limit is unlocked for use in a free play mode. I wonder where I have seen that before. Well, not exactly the same, but similar enough to say they copied many ideas. However, Custom Maid 3D mixes it up by including a wireless accessory for ‘interaction’ which it completely unlike the wired one seen in a completely different game. It is all original ideas not copied from anywhere for Kiss it seems.

The good: One thing I panned Ai Droid for was the lack of any sort of interaction add-on, which made the free play mode useless for its intended purpose. Weirdly, it seems like someone at Kiss read my review of Ai Droid and 3D Custom Girl and decided that adding the functions of 3DCG to Ai Droid would be a good seller.

In theory, it’s not a bad idea. The wireless accessory also serves as a controller, with selection buttons and what even appears to be a small joystick for scrolling through menus, choices, etc. Kiss knows their audience and what they want, and I must congratulate them on a fairly good idea. In 3DCG, if you want to move the camera or something, you get to go click and drag the mouse, and moving the buttons to something you are already using is a clever simplification.

Compared to the 3DCG controller, it really doesn’t look like a frightening re-creaton of the genitals of a corpse, and the overall appearance of the controller is a bit better. A weird looking black tube versus an even weirder looking oddly shaped white tube. Not much of a win, but the insert does seem to be a visual improvement.

The game engine also seems to be really well done. Running the Benchmark gave me far superior results to 3DCG, and the characters render better, animations are better, appearances are better. Overall, the appearance is vastly improved when compared to 3DCG, and the game runs much smoother and with less visual issues.

The bad: The game, like AI Droid, essentially forces you to 100% the game if there is some specific thing you want. Unlike AI Droid, it gives a limited time, and doesn’t seem to have you balancing emotions and feelings in the maid, meaning it doesn’t seem like you can utterly fail the game by having her not love you enough. The free mode is why people are there, and blocking them out of it until they finish the story and blocking things in free mode because they didn’t do so in the story essentially forces them to play through the story several times to get what they want. I can think of very few games I enjoy playing multiple times, and none of them that I can think of are adult games.

My guess is that the story is pretty short and fulfilling, which is why the need to pad it out by making you unlock stuff in the mode you want by playing the story exists.

The controller is another issue. Sure, I could ask how likely the camera is to not move around while it is in use, but that would be just keeping fingers off the buttons. Nobody wants to get seasick due to a bobbing camera while trying to enjoy their H game.

My big complaint is: why is it wireless? I’m sorry, I have enough things that use batteries. 3DCG uses a USB port and gets power from there, why can’t you? I cna charge my iPod from a USB port, run speakers off of the port, and my PS3 charges its controllers from the USB ports, not to mention the controller can be plugged in and used as a wired control when the battery dies.

And the PS3 controller has two analog sticks, four shoulder buttons, and eight other buttons, while the controller for CM3D has what looks like three buttons, the internal switch, and one analog stick.

Seriously, unless you want to be far enough away from your computer that you can’t see the screen, the wireless function would be better replaced by a wired connection. Plus, it would be cheaper and more reliable, not to mention you can make USB cables quite long, so it isn’t like it is just stuck on the back of the computer case.

Finally, the name. This is really petty to complain about, but it is a slight annoyance. It seems like some ideas were ripped off wholesale from other games, and they tried to mix it up a bit to seem original and new, but the name sort of lacks that. Sure, maids like that disappeared during the Industrial Revolution, and most of the things shown aren’t anything a maid would wear, nor are any of the actions implied anything a maid would do. It isn’t their job.

Ai Droid had a bit more believable story (love robot who also does chores, but isn’t really a maid.) But the name. The name seems like they just flipped around 3DCG and changed one word. Which, well, Custom Maid 3D vs 3D Custom Girl. They took a mixer to it and decided that you didn’t want your choice of girls, you just wanted a maid.

Reading the description of the game basically reads like the 3DCG description as well, with a lot of the exact same features. However, 3DCG has thousands of mods catering to essentially everything, while CM3D doesn’t seem to have any mods, and costs $50 more at J-List.

Given the appearance of the accessory, they may have been better off making the character a robot, since instead of the horrors in silicone route, they went for a featureless and colorless appearance. It’s like a robot necromancer is on the other end. It has the romance of plugging your iPod into a charger. it has the romance of a robot with a robot voice asking you to interface your human genitals with the lower docking port beep beep beep. It’s as romantic as that message being left on your answering machine. At least 3DCG made an effort to look human, and while it isn’t close by any means, it is recognizable, and the proper bits are there.

To be fair, the accessories for both are listed as novelty items, to be used as joke gifts and for humor only. Because they are totally marketed for use as jokes, are affordable enough to be jokes, and are going to be used as jokes.

If it really is a novelty product only, I am sure they would have no problems sending me a review copy. I’m not going to get one, since it isn’t marketed as a novelty, it just has a disclaimer stuck on it.

To Summarize: The ideas are good, and it does seem to have improved the interaction and visuals of the games it is based on. Some features are unnecessary and seem to be included to be different. However, the main reason I thought enough of 3DCG to give it an award was, while the game was there, the fact that it could be easily modded, and modding was encouraged by the company really opened things up and made it a Great adult game.

I personally think that if CM3D has the modability of 3DCG, and the mods appear en masse, it could be quite the improvement. I really do think that the wireless feature is pointless and should be removed. 10M and 20M USB cables exist, there is no reason you can’t just put a 5M cable on one instead of the batteries and wireless units. I have to have something plugged into my computer to receive the wireless signal anyways. Just sell a wired version as a cheaper alternative to the wireless one.

As it stands, your main competition has free play unlocked from the start, more options, open to modding, a simpler wired control, worse visual appearances, and a substantially lower price tag.

Links are to the products (or websites) and may (or may not) contain images that may (or may not) be Not Safe For Work or unacceptable for those under 18.
If you feel like spending $250 on the game, it is here.
If you would rather have the cheaper 3DCG, it is here.
These are all sold by J-List, who was plenty of other games.

The main website of Kiss is here. Since I want to end on a compliment, I really do like their logo. It’s much better than most of the unimaginative blocks of text that is just the company name that other places use. And their portal site for CM3D is here.

Alright, this time I have an extra special treat of a review for you. And by that, I mean a game from a western developer, for various reasons which will be explained after the jump, so as to keep this brief.

Honestly, I found the current anime season on Crunchyroll to be…lackluster, if I want to be polite. So, I am doing what can be called in polite terms ‘writing reviews of other things tangentially related to certain topics while waiting for the next season in hopes it will be better.’ If you want to be honest, this review is basically faffing about, but still delivering you content and things.

Anyways, Dungeons: The Dark Lord is the stand alone expansion to the original Dungeons. If we want to be honest, it’s a sequel. A new game that picks up from where the first left off, runs on it’s own, and is a full length game is not an expansion.

Anyways, it is made by Kalypso Media, and I will admit I initially went into the game with a lot of hesitation, since I thought Kalypso was the developers of Too Human. Thankfully, checking their Wikipedia page showed they have made other good games, none of which was Too Human.

The very first comparison that springs to mind is the Dungeon Keeper series, since that series pioneered the real time strategy game that takes place in a dungeon you tunnel out and build yourself, room by room. It isn’t a bad comparison, either. If you want to copy a game for an RTS, then a DK game isn’t a bad choice. If you wanted to make an FPS, copying Valve would be a good idea.

The second comparison that sprang to mind for me was Overlord. Dungeons: The Dark Lord has the option where you can go into an over the shoulder third person view and control your lord that way, similar to Overlord. But while Overlord concentrates more on the action, Dungeons: The Dark Lord concentrates more on strategy.

And what a strategy it is: you build a dungeon and mine for gold to buy stuff. You then build rooms of things heroes like, such as libraries, armories, and other things. You can also add prestige items around your dungeon that heroes admire, plus they give added bonuses to your lord. When the heroes are enjoying themselves, you then kill them for a soul point bonus, and drag them to your prison, where they are drained of their soul points. Heroes randomly enter your dungeon from entrances you know about, so you need to plan your dungeon carefully, since chasing after one hero and bumping into another means you will end up killing both, and if the one wasn’t happy enough, you wasted potential soul points. This means that building a dungeon is an art form more than a cut and dried strategy.

Let’s compare it to Dungeon Keeper 2. DK2 has you mine out a dungeon and build rooms, but you then capture portals. Your rooms determine what creatures come through your portal. Building a library brings warlocks, and adding a temple to that brings in maidens. These characters do research which advances your spell powers. You can build a workshop, which allows trolls to come through and start building doors, barricades, and traps. Add a guard post, and dark elves come through. Heroes enter randomly through hero gates situated on the map, but it isn’t a continued process. Instead, unless you know where the gates are, they remain hidden, and a hero invasion is actually worrying and a rather bad thing.

While DK2 feels like I am the dungeon keeper, Dungeons: The Dark Lord has me controlling the dungeon lord from an aerial camera, making me less of the lord myself and more of a little voice in their ear giving them suggestions.

I fail to see why the third person camera was added as an option. Given that it greatly restricts the view, the easiest thing to do is stick to the overhead plan view all the time. This gives you the greatest view, plus it allows you to not have to deal with the very annoying move controls for the lord. On the plus side, you can rotate and zoom the camera, as well as go into a full overhead view in Dungeons: The Dark Lord while changing the camera in DK2 requires you to possess a creature, rotate until you have the angle you want, then de-possess them. Didn’t like the angle? You had better try again them, once you have enough mana to cast the spell.

Between the two, I honestly like them both about the same. Managing the paychecks and happiness of the creatures under my command in DK2 was a bit tedious, but the ability to have them do research for me that helped me, as well as the ability to torture heroes for information, turn them into skeleton warriors, or even vampires to fight for me felt a lot more evil then building a dungeon to please heroes that I must then go personally kill, instead of commanding my minions to do so.

As far as characters go, Dungeons: The Dark Lord has four different character who primarily differ visually. However, these characters are for multiplayer mode, and they seem to have no real difference apart from visual. I personally liked the character of Calypso, if only because I suspect there is some additional meaning attached to that character.

One thing the game does is have a sense of humor about it. While it isn’t always quite as funny as DK2, it instead relies a bit more on referential humor, but also comes off as a fairly brilliant satire of RTS games as a whole.

If I wanted one sentence to describe Dungeons: The Dark Lord, it would be this: “Will you walk into my parlor?” Said the spider to the fly.

Dungeons: The Dark Lord really is best described by that whole poem. You build a lair that mostly takes care of itself, lure heroes in and have them enjoy fighting some basic monsters, and right when everything is going well for them, they get slaughtered and their souls drained.

The main plot follows the lord Calypso fighting to gain power and eventually take on her ex for dethroning her. For a game about an evil dungeon lord, the story felt a bit underwhelming. Why revenge? That is a heavily used plot, but I can think of much better plot points for a game about being evil.

I would like to see a sequel to this, and I can think of a bunch of changes I would like to see. Obviously, this is where I suggest them. First: make the game goal about taking over and controlling the world. I’m evil, why not be really ambitious about it? Second: Instead of having heroes wander in through gates, allow me to build a dungeon, then put up entrances for heroes and things to entice them in. Make me entice the heroes to enter, not just entertain them. Third: steal most of the things from Overlord II. I want to feel like the dungeon lord, so either make them never appear on the map and people address me as the lord, or lock me into a third person camera. I’d prefer the camera, as it allows the lord to actually be in the dungeon. Give me the ability to directly command creatures and what they should do. As it is third person, give me a map that I use, not just a minimap, but an actual map I use to plan out where things go and how things should be laid out. Fourth: remove the RPG elements of points, and instead, have me build rooms for creatures under my control to do various tasks that benefit me. I raise my spell ability by having people research new spells. As dungeon space is limited, I could spread my resources between spells, traps, and other things, or devote myself to one primarily. Fifth: sandbox. Give me an open world to conquer. Maybe I want to take over Australia first, or perhaps build a giant, sprawling dungeon under the whole world and collapse it from within at once. Add more dungeon lords, allow me to choose the one I like best at the start, and let me take over the world. Each one can have a separate theme to their dungeon, minions, and spells. Seventh: Take a lot more ideas from DK2. Give me the ability to torture heroes until they join me, or for information or some other benefit. Allow me to take the slain and not just harvest them, but to turn them into undead that fight in my dungeon, or get information by torturing them.

Of those, I would love to see the game go all the way with using ideas from Overlord II, but I would also love to see the ability to directly command my minions. Adding a free mode where I can change everything about the map with the sole goal of building whatever pleases me on whatever scale would be nice.

Either way, I enjoyed Dungeons: The Dark Lord and will most likely buy a sequel. I will pre-order it if they use any of those suggestions. If they take ideas from Overlord II as well, I’d be telling them to take my money as soon as they mentioned the game.

Score: 4/5 good

Pros: of the dungeon games about being evil, it really takes it to a new level. Interesting mechanics really add to the fun to be had.

Cons: story is a bit hard to get into. It can get repetitive at times, but not as bad as many other games.

Verdict: It’s worth getting the demo for and checking out, although the demo doesn’t really do it justice. Get it if the demo seemed interesting, since the demo understates the game. However, if all you have is $20, I would suggest buying something like Antichamber first.

You can get it on Steam through this link.

As far as the story goes, I have been a bit confused about the in game story and the plotline. The tutorial has some characters running from a monster, when the one guy spots a woman playing the piano, and it is a big, startling sight for him. The main plot involves a few ‘Specialists’ who arrive in a city to do things that aren’t really explained, but primarily involve killing things. The origin and intents of the specialists are kept fairly hidden in game, so an air of mystery about these people and their actions exists. The issue with that air of mystery is that the specialists are the player characters, so it is rather hard to create mystery about the actions of a character when someone will be playing that character and thus have their own motivations and actions. In all fairness, Perfect World does a good job with what they can, to the point where the specialists have some in-universe and in-story mystery about them.

The main story of the game is actually fairly well paced, with action sequences making sense in context for the most part. Grind does start to appear when the main plot of a chapter is to clear out the sewers, and then a sub-plot is to clear one section on very hard ten times or something like that. In the context of the main story, however, adventuring through a monster infested sewer looking for something tends to play out quite well and be very believable in its execution.

The biggest issue I have found comes into play here: a surprisingly small number of people play Rusty Hearts, and the game is meant to be, and is best played in a party for dungeons and fights. Sadly, that means with very few players, you will have to go through battles on your own, and they can be quite hard, as they were intended for multiple players. This means leveling up is slower, and as a result, you progress through the story much slower.

The gameplay is quite nice. In dungeons, the arrow keys control movement, and your main keys to fight are z, x, and c as well as a hotbar of special actions and skills. The fixed angle third person camera is like the one in Devil May Cry, only better in execution. In the city area, though, the key mappings change and the camera can be rotated around, but requires button presses or holding down a mouse button to change. Sadly, this means that running around the city to get missions means a lot of changing the camera angle, because it stays where it was last set, and not in relation to the character. Not only that, but it resets to a default after each dungeon, so if you like a top down view (which is arguably the easiest and requires the least changing of the camera) then you need to reset it after each dungeon fight.

The characters are also pretty good. They have a sort of hand-drawn/cell-shaded look, similar to Borderlands but still different. As is typical of Japanese style RPG games, each class is instead a specific character, but each class here has a choice of one of three characters who can each use one of two weapons as their weapon focus. For Swords or Axes, you can choose between Frantz, Roselle, or Leila. The same goes for the various other classes.

Perfect World did mix up the typical class structure a bit, including one class that uses gauntlets or claws, as well as a mage class that uses a sword or a scythe. Plus, there is a ranged class that uses pistols or a musket.

Regardless of class, building combos and power attacks is incredibly intuitive, and part of the after battle scoring system is based on style. And honestly, spin-kicking an enemy into the air, floating them on a hail of bullets, then having the mage turn them to stone and shoot a fireball at them is very fun and surprisingly easy to pull off. Even building massive combos can be a simple enough task. In one battle, I had to build a 30 hit combo in a room full of enemies. With my scythe, I got a 68 hit combo fairly easily. Despite the ease of building such a large hit combo, simply building it was fun in and of itself.

Another thing I want to comment on is the music. Sadly, the battle and fight music gets repetitive, but the rest of the time, such as loading screens, the welcome/login and character select screens, the game plays a very well done piano piece. While it also repeats, I found that the piano on its own, with the song it plays, seems to be far more fitting of the tone that the game as a whole exemplifies. In other words, the piano music fits in perfectly with Rusty Hearts, while the action scene music just feels out of place in comparison. If there is one thing I’d like to see changed, it would be for most of the music to be replaced with more of the piano.

Score: 4/5 good

Pros: A well made and fun game. Playing it is intuitive, the story is well written and well paced, and the overall experience is quite positive.

Cons: Relatively few players can make progression slow. Buttons can be slow to respond, making cancelling a combo to dodge a slow process where you will get hit. Camera control in the city is bad in comparison to in dungeons.

If you want to get the game, you can go to the Perfect World site and get it from them (for free), or you can get it on Steam for free if you have Steam. The Steam version also allows for you to gain achievements to show just how awesome you are, and Steam is free.

Don’t have Steam? You can get that here.

Oh man, just look at Cosmic Break. It has girls and robots, robots who are girls, futuristic swords, laser weapons, guns, and fighting.

A very Japanese mecha game that happens to be free to play. So just how good is it?

The first thing you get when you launch the game is a voice-over happily shouting out the Japanese version of the phrase ‘Cosmic Break!” With the announcer at the start being so excited about the game, this should be an exciting game.

As far as the plot goes, it is various factions that control these arks so they they can eliminate some sort of evil robot group or something like that. It it a blatant excuse plot at best.

The three factions are DOS, WIZ, and BRD. At the start, the leaders of the factions are shown as working together towards one goal, which seemed kind of neat. Perhaps each faction has some sort of benefit. WIZ was explained by the leader to be for robots who plan and think about things, so it would give a boost to your intelligence and would use role warfare in battles to put people on WIZ in a more planning role, where you use tactics over strength.

That isn’t the case. Each faction presents no benefit from joining, although you can fight in faction wars to gain prestige points. Every so often, the faction with the most prestige gets ranked Number 1 for that time period. No rewards are gained from it, or at least, none I was able to discern.

There are three different modes. You can do co-operative quests, co-operative fights, or versus fights.

Quests have you fight through several areas with infinitely respawning enemy robots, and you have to find a gate in each area to take you to the next in a limited amount of time. The quest areas don’t play with map layouts, so a player who knows where the gates are will speed ahead to the gate and quickly make it to the safe area before the boss fight, leaving the lost payers with no clue about where the gate is located. The other players usually never make it to the safe area, and instead end up leaving. You can use the chat, but as the maps aren’t really divided up in any way, knowing your exact location in relation to the gate is essentially impossible, unless you know the map.

Co-operative fights are fairly good. There is one path, and you stop every so often to fight off a group of enemy robots. There is one way to progress, and an arrow shows you where to go when you can progress. You then get to fight one boss, and the fight ends after that.

Versus fights are the bread and butter. While the leaders say the factions are working towards the same goal, and the factions get along, the various factions instead fight over arks and prestige points. Most everyone is playing the versus matches, so if you want to gain levels, you are essentially forced to adventure solo (very hard) or fight in pvp matches. Pvp matches also provide the fastest rank gains as well as the best rewards.

Fights are fast paced action and are actually pretty fun. There are air, land, and artillery mech, each with their own weakness and strength, making a balanced triangle like rock-paper-sciccors. There are also support robots with no real strengths and usually no real weaknesses. The chibi robots have no real attack and no real health points, but they can boost offense or defense of their teammates. Needless to say, getting to the enemy spawn and destroying every support robot is great and unsporting fun, and can really weaken the opposing team.

There is one flaw in Cosmic Break. It has a microtransaction system. While those are not bad by themselves, Cosmic Break committed the mortal sin of pay systems: paying confers in game advantages.

One flying robot can be bought for $10 USD. It has stat boosts in almost every category over the regular one that cna be had for earned points. It had no disadvantages compared to the normal one. The level limit for all robots is level five, but a purchase with real money will raise it to eight, then ten. Then, with that flying robot being level ten, you can buy the Seraph Crimrose upgrade for an additional $10 USD, and upgrade her to level ten as well.

Facing any one of the paid robots with a free robot will result in the free robot losing, unless the paid one was really low on health or something. It takes a miracle to make a paid robot lose in a 1v1 fight against a free robot.

There are some pretty cool robots in the raffle system, but they also require you to pay $1 USD per spin of the thing, or $4USD for five spins. Needless to say, these robots do confer advantages over the regular ones.

You can use earned money to buy the paid money, but the price of the paid money doubles every time you buy ten. And there is no way around that either, no matter how many transactions you break it up into.

Honestly, I can just call it there. Cosmic Break committed the worst of the mortal sins of pay systems.

But it has a couple other flaws. The system to adjust resolution is horrible. There are about two choices, both of which were obsolete back when computers used oscilloscopes for displays. You need to set the game for windowed most to change the resolution, as having it set for full-screen will block off the option of changing the resolution. I wish that were a joke. The textures are flat, the characters are blocky and fairly simple. I can see why HD versions are what they sell for actual cash, the regular ones are pretty awful to look at. An indie developer who makes retro 8 bit games would think that a person helping on their game was moonlighting.

It’s like the game doesn’t know that computer technology has advanced in the last decade. My cheap computer can sit there and run Crysis on reasonably high settings. I don’t expect the game to look like Crysis, but I don’t expect it to look like it was made by the guy Nintendo keeps locked in a cupboard to design Mario games, and who is ignorant of any advances in graphics quality or processing power.

Score: 0/5 very bad

Pros: the gameplay is pretty fun

Cons: it committed the mortal sin of games by having players able to buy an advantage over other players. Cosmic Break is there to make money, and the prices show it.

Verdict: Avoid like the plague, unless you have plenty of disposable income to be able to buy your way onto equal standing with the other paid players. Otherwise, the game will be a miserable experience.

They seem to have been inspired by EVE Online.

You can google the game if you want, I’m not linking to it.

Monster Girl Quest Chapter 1 is the first game in the Monster Girl Quest (also known as Monmusu Quest) series. The most recent game is/will be the third Chapter, supposedly due in February of 2013.

Not only is Monster Girl Quest a game that the developers release for free, but ti is one of the strangest and quite possibly the best adult games I can think of.

The plot starts with the generic hero Luka, who has a dream about an angel (Ilias) telling him to go slay the monster lord. He sets out, narrowly defeats a monster in his village, gets lost in the forest and encounters a lamia named Alice. And thus, a grand adventure is born.

If only it was that simple. I really don’t want to give any more details, since it would be very spoiler heavy. However, what actually begins is a very deep tale of adventure, morality, double crossing, and ethics of actions. Spoiler: It even goes as far as to question the morality of genocide in the name of good (the character advocating genocide of all monsters is the stereotypically good angel), and if such a thing is ethical or still genocide? Does that make the good side evil for committing an evil act? Along with other hard ethical and moral questions. End Spoiler. The game constantly brings forward other details of past heroes and actions and uses that to question the morality and ethics of your actions and the actions of all the other characters.

Chapter 1 is the introduction game of the series, and as such, most of the stuff gets introduced here, although Chapter 2 does a splendid job of building on Chapter 1.

The depth of the story and the questions it brings forth really excited me, since it was, to be frank, masterfully done. Naturally however, the game has its defects too.

The gameplay is really repetitive. Each opponent only has a few attacks, and battles are basically spent trying to figure out what attack to sue when. The problem is, it is so formulaic that the walk-through can tell you what attack to use when, and your battles will rarely stray from the walk-through. In other words, you could still probably beat the fights by reading the walk-through and not paying attention to what is happening.

Because of the sexual nature, most monsters will sue sexual attacks, which for the most part aren’t shown in the image, just as text listing of what you are being attacked by. For those with a monster girl fetish, you only actually have sex with the monsters if you lose the fight. Lose enough fights, and the game starts to point out that you are probably doing so intentionally.

The game has a nice degree of self-awareness. It seems to know when you are losing intentionally, among other things. NPC characters also notice things about you that they wouldn’t in other games. When you get the better sword from Alice (made of a bunch of Angles in an absolutely evil shape, no less) you can go to a weapon shop in a town and the people there will display fear at the sight of the sword. I can’t think of another game where the NPCs actually react to the appearance of the gear you are carrying.

The number of fights is also a bit much. It seems like they wanted to get every type of monster girl they could think of, and between the three games, they did so. Some of then are pure nightmare fuel from appearance, while others are nightmare fuel from actions or speech, and others are fairly normal.

Morally, the game sits in a very gray vs. gray area. Almost every classically evil character has some redeeming values, and the good characters frequently have negative attributes.

The game even has a bit of comedy to it. Luka and Alice adventure together, with Alice serving as a sort of cynical adviser to Luka, as well as the voice of realism. Not only that, but she seems to have a bit of awareness as to reality and fantasy. When Luka says things that are very typical of generic hero wishes, Alice serves to display the irony and failures of the statements. Instead of just being generic snark, Alice actually helps to highlight the failings of a typical hero and helps to build up a better picture of what a hero is.

Combined with certain in game events and the things Alice says, the overwhelmign idea seem to be that while anyone can  call themselves a hero, that doesn’t make them a hero. A hero is someone who does heroic deeds.

Luka isn’t a baptized hero, but he stood up for people in danger in a way baptized heroes didn’t, and as such, other people consider him a hero in preference to the baptized heroes.

Honestly, my biggest complaint is that the story would work just as well in a book or movie format. That would cut out a lot of the fights that seem to just be filler to pad out the length of the game. On the other hand, the excess number of fights also does lend an air of just how hard your task and your adventure really is, and other events and fights encountered really do help to add to the depth and complexity of the story.

Score: 4/5 good

Pros: the story is beyond amazingly good.

Cons: fights are formulaic and there are quite a lot of them.

The developer website is here, but it may not be safe for work.

If you want to read more, the wiki for the game is here.

This review is the big one, the one that gets saved for last. One of the most well known and beloved mech games that exist. The mech game that people eagerly forked over $100+ USD in order to have early access to. The game that people have been waiting years for. The game where people build simulation cockpits on a whole new level. This is MechWarrior.

So, the real question is, how is it?

The plot follows the existing Battletech timeline at a 1:1 scale, so one day in the game is one day in the franchise. The year 2013 is the year 3050, which means that things like the Clan invasion are going to happen soon. That isn’t a spoiler, it is on the official website. This plotline means there are two possible choices. The developer can either follow the existing timeline, which means that every plot change is already known well in advance, or they can diverge from the well established story, which would basically reset the entire franchise and irritate all the players.

Given the massive list of hit games, well-loved games, and critically acclaimed games Piranha has developed (none) that really could go either way, it is a bit too soon to tell.

The gameplay itself it adequate enough. None of the twitchy fast-paced action of Hawken but instead, the slow lumbering simulation based mechs. Buttons exist for several extra features, such as closing weapon doors, turning on the cockpit light, launching an Alpha Strike, overriding the shutdown, and powering on and off besides the regular move and shoot controls.

Certain features are welcomed, like the ability to change weapon groupings on the fly. Unfortunately, you can’t set up things like that between matches or in the countdown phase of a match, so you instead have to wait for the battle to start before you can set up your weapons how you like them.

Most mechs are reasonably balanced, although certain features leave a lot to be desired. The big and heavy mechs can be circled around until they die, the light mechs can be killed in fairly few hits, a mech with nothing but long range missiles is powerless against someone with close range weapons. The main focus of the game is on teamwork, and the difference between victory and defeat is usually as simple as which team can work together.

On the negative aspect, the matchmaking can best be described as in bad need of repair, since it is supposed to match up two teams of similar weight and power. For example, if one team has a 100 ton assault mech, the other team should also have a 100 ton assault mech. That would be nice if that happened reliably, since all too often your team will get stomped by a team comprising of nothing but 100 ton assault mechs with the largest, scariest weapons which is really bad when your team is nothing but heavy and light mechs.

One additional negative is the lack of training. Hawken puts you through a tutorial to get the basic understanding down so you can at least not feel utterly overwhelmed. MechWarrior Online simply drops you into the battle right away. To be fair, there are some tutorial videos where someone voices over what they are doing, but they are less than helpful. A tutorial level and a basic training map with AI opponents woudl go a long way towards eliminating the frustration new players feel. It isn’t as bad as DOTA which can take months to get the hang of, but it will take a lot of floundering that could easily be avoided.

While teamwork is nice to have, the game itself doesn’t really do a lot to encourage it. You join a match, and after the match, you return to the main menu. You don’t get to form up a team and learn to work with them and subsequently go stomp everyone else who dares to face you. Instead, it is essentially the standard public server issue where you get thrown with a group of random people and you need to work together with them to have a chance at victory.

Basically, the one way matches go is called ‘pubstomp’ as one team stomps over the other on a public server. Either you get stomped or you do the stomping, I have yet to encounter any real grey area.

I even joined a faction (House Kurita, given what I do here) since I assumed it would allow me to play something other than the public matches, like faction v. faction warfare or at least, a match where my team is nothing but my faction, no public players. That feature seems to be missing, as none of that has happened.

While I do rather like the simulation aspect, a lot of stuff was left out. You can destroy the limbs of an enemy mech, but you can’t leg them, since that wasn’t added to the game. Melee combat, ramming, and death from above are also notably lacking, despite being common enough in the Battletech franchise. Either Piranha is leaving them out intentionally, they don’t care, or they are just failing to deliver. Given their history of great games like Duke Nukem Forever, I really don’t want to speculate on why a lot of stuff is missing.

I honestly do like the slower paced simulation aspect. it forces you to make decisions and plan out attacks instead of running across the field shooting anything that moves and dodging return fire. The Art of War applies here far more than in other games, and every type of mech is vital to success, unlike other games, where there is no real reason to use certain mechs, since alternatives exist with the same firepower and fewer disadvantages. In MechWarrior Online, every mech has a role and can be vital to the team.

As far as full-scale simulation goes, I still think Steel battalion was the best pure simulator type game of the mech simulator games. MechWarrior Online, in contrast, has some heavy simulator aspects, but due to the random matches, lack of any repairs for the mech, lack of buying ammo, and other such features of a simulator, MechWarrior Online seems to be trying to attract both the hardcore simulator fan and the more casual mech game fan.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much overlap, since a lot of the hardcore fans I can think of returned their Founder’s package and got refunds, while the casual players dislike the lack of third person and other features. If MechWarrior Online decided what group it wanted to appeal to, then it would have a better chance than it does. it could be a fine pure simulator game if it was built specifically for that, and it could be a fine casual mech game if the simulation aspects were removed. Right now, it feels schizophrenic and half-baked.

However, I do have to say one good thing is that it did inspire me to start on making my own mech simulation game, since I think I may be able to do better.

Score: 2/5 not good

Pros: Lots of customization, lots of cool mechs, the gameplay itself is pretty fun

Cons: can’t decide what it wants to be, previous successes of Piranha, lack of any tutorial, complex and unintuitive controls, poor matchmaking

Verdict: Play Armored Core V or Hawken instead. You need to really love MechWarrior to be able to ignore the faults. That said, previous MechWarrior games are being suggested for Good Old Games, and if they get enough support, you will be able to play good examples of MechWarrior games on modern systems.

Hawken doesn’t really have a plot of any sort. Most FPS games have some sort of backstory set up as a reason as to why fights are taking place, Hawken lacks that. The backstories are normally paper thin excuses as to why you should care, but they usually fall flat. Some better games play around with the stories and expand on them a bit, but it really is just an excuse as to why you should shoot that other guy.

The issue with the lack of any backstory is it removes some of the reasons why players should care about the game. Counter-Strike had no real backstory, but some story was explained as the teams were Terrorists and Counter-terrorists, with missions including things like bombing a target. Even though it lacked a backstory, the gameplay itself gave reasons to fight. terrorists are bombing things, Counter-terrorists must stop them.

Gameplay is another big concern in any FPS. The first big question to be asked is if the gameplay itself is inherently fun. As it is a FPS game, the main thing you will be doing is shooting and running around. Movement controls must then be reasonably responsive and fairly simple to grasp, while shooting things should be inherently satisfying. If you get stuck on an inch high transition from a street to a sidewalk, that isn’t fun. If the energy weapon makes a ‘pew pew pew’ noise, it isn’t fun.

Hawken is reasonably good, as far as all that goes. The movement controls are annoying at times, but shooting enemy mechs and getting into fights with them isn’t boring, but it isn’t pulse-pounding excitement, either. The main movement issue is that you will get stuck on walls and things. There is no real easy way to judge the width of your mech, so even experienced players get killed because they scraped along a wall, making them an easy target. The other weird thing is how the boost works.

To boost forward, hold w and shift. To dodge, press shift and a or d while not moving forward or backward. That is a bit strange, but fair enough. To boost backwards, you would think you hold s and shift, since that is the boost and backwards keys. What actually happens is it snaps you around 180 degrees so your weaponless rear is facing the guy shooting at you. It takes a firefight where you wanted to move away from the guy while still shooting at him, giving you a chance at escape or victory into you trying to get away and being turned into a smoldering wreck.

Hawken also includes RPG elements, where you gain levels with a mech by using it in battles, allowing you to get points which can be used for skills, such as a reduced RADAR signature, or additional health. There are three upgrade trees, each with a different specialty, and you can take abilities form each or all in one tree to customize the mech to your playstyle. You can also buy internal components to upgrade the heat capacity or weapon power, defense ability, as well as deployables like turrets, shields, and other useful things.

Customization ends there, however. You can change the primary weapon on your mech, but you get the choice of the primary weapon it came with or the other primary weapon it came with. The ability to put a grenade launcher as the primary of a heavy mech with a sniper rifle secondary simply doesn’t exist. the ability to build a mech doesn’t exist, either. You earn credits by playing matches, and buy pre-built mechs with that. You can change out the internal its, put points into skill trees, and replace your deployable grenade with a rocket turret, but you can’t go build something perfectly suited to your playstyle, unless your playstyle happens to coincide with one of the pre-built models.

Hawken does have that Mek-fu controller that it seems will be released, and I have my comments on that too. What is really neat is that the controller supports tablets and smartphones, and Hawken is going to be on Gaikai, so you can take the controller and your tablet anywhere there is good enough service and play Hawken. Sure, Gaikai requires quite a lot of bandwidth to play, and that requires what can best be described as a ‘perfect’ connection. Streaming anything on a mobile device isn’t cheap, so unless you are using the wi-fi abilities of your tablet, the cost of playing the game will be horrendous.

The other complaint is that the controller has too many buttons. I’m not trying to be some sort of Luddite, complaining how the atari controller was the best, but the Mek-fu has too many buttons. It might be good for MechWarrior, but I haven’t even found enough controls in Hawken to use up all of the buttons the controller has. They keyboard is nice, since it will allow you to use teamchat and allchat while using a mobile device, and means you won’t need your keyboard out as well as the controller.

The biggest issue I have is that it feels like there is nothing really special about Hawken. A mech based first person shooter is fun, and the fact that it is free is quite nice. The gameplay isn’t horrible, but it isn’t anything special, either. I guess what I am trying to say is it feels like it lacks longevity. It doesn’t look or feel like the kind of game we will look back on in a few years and remember fondly. It doesn’t have any really special element about it. As it stands, it feels like they made a mech based FPS game, but forgot to make it anything special. Better mech games are to be found, and better FPS games are to be found.

Score: 3/5 not bad

Pros: Not bad at all

Cons: Nothing really special about it

Verdict: Not bad, but not great either. If I was asked to sum up the game in as short of a phrase as possible, ‘not bad’ or ‘it’s just okay’ come to mind.