E3 2016

E3 has been the new Christmas for me as an adult. Once upon a time, I was subscribed to GameInformer and that was how I heard about all the E3 news. However, all that changed when I moved to Arizona.

By E3 2007, I was friends with Adam. At the time, we lived together and shared a room. He introduced me to so much and one of those things was watching the E3 conferences.Now, almost 10 years later, I look forward to watching them each year, especially Sony’s.

I was pleasantly surprised this year, though it will be pretty hard to top last year’s announcement of the FFVII Remake. My favorite is a game called Bound. I love the art style and the movement of the character. It looks like a game I would almost enjoy more watching someone else play.

Of course, I am in love with Detroit: Becoming Human. I’ll play anything by Quantic Dream because I already know it will have an amazing story. Speaking of, I was happy to hear their first game, Indigo Prophecy, will be making its way to PS4. I also own the HD remakes of Heavy Rain and Beyond Two Souls on PS4.

A lot of people are excited about the new God of War. It looks really great, but I have yet to finish any of the original games, so I couldn’t get too excited about it. Another big one was Resident Evil 7. I’m not sure how I feel about it yet. It felt a bit too much like Silent Hill to me and I like that the two horror series had such distinct styles. I do like that it seems to be going back to its horror roots. Overall, I’m cautiously curious about it.

I’m also very happy about the Skyrim remaster coming to PS4, because I never got around to playing it when it first came out. I also almost screamed at work when I heard about the Crash Bandicoot remakes. A lot of people have negative feelings about remasters, but I love them. If I can help the developers put funding towards new projects by repurchasing games I want to replay, but don’t want to play on older systems, it feels like a win-win to me.

Overall, this year I haven’t been as excited about games as I have been in the past. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I am constantly researching games, so by the time I watch E3 conferences, I already know what to expect.

Dead Or Alive Xtreme 3

I platinumed the game the other day. It was one of the easier platinums, though rather tedious and repetitive. I love the Dead or Alive Xtreme series. I don’t know if it is because I’m gay or what, but I absolutely love buying the different swimsuits and seeing how they look on different girls.

I started as a fan of Dead Or Alive on PS2 with Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore. I’m a huge fan of fighting games and I loved the graphics. I’m also, more or less, a Sony fanboy. I was devastated to learn DOA 3 would be exclusive to Microsoft’s new Xbox. So, I purchased one.

By the time I bought one, Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball had been released. I remember my mom was so hesitant to buy it for me (I was maybe 15 or 16 at the time, so I couldn’t buy it myself due to the M rating). I still love the song “How Crazy Are You?” by Meja because of the intro to the first two games. I felt so accomplished when I got ever girl the Venus costume. See, in the first two games, instead of rejecting your gift, as they do in the third, they would just throw it away, and obtaining money took more effort back then.

While playing the third game in the Xtreme series, something hit me like a ton of bricks. I remember there was a lot of controversy about the game. Now, the Dead or Alive series is known for its controversy due to the way the female characters look and dress. There was a lot of fun made over the physics of the second game where the individual breasts had their own creepy movements. Even when the girls stopped moving, their breasts kept going.

This time, the controversy was over not bringing the game stateside. There was some odd statement about how it was due to the issues of sexism in video games going on stateside. But the real reason, at least in my opinion, is the same reason they bumped up the girls ages from 16 to 18 for the stateside releases of the games… It looks a little too much like child pornography for our Western taste.

I remember playing as Marie Rose and thinking, this just looks and feels wrong. There is no way this girl is 18. She is so much smaller than the other girls. It doesn’t help that in anime, even grown adult women tend to have child like tendencies. It just felt wrong to have her in swimsuits other than her own. For the most part, the ones you could purchase as her (as the girls have different collections) were very sweet and innocent. Most of the other characters… not so much.

So, her outfits look weird on the other girls, who are… fully developed, to say the least, and their outfits looks wrong on her because they are skimpy and sexy and she looks so young and childlike. It would have never gone over well stateside. And for good reason. After playing as her to get the trophies I needed to get playing as her, I haven’t used her since because it makes me feel creepy, especially when there are missions where you have to take voyeuristic photos of the girls.

If there were ever to be a release outside Japan and Asia, which I highly doubt at this point, I don’t see how they would do it without completely removing her from the game. Though, in all honesty, I’m not sure why she’s in the Xtreme series game in the first place rather than Lisa, Lefang, Tina and/or Christie.

Final Fantasy XII The Zodiac Age

The time has finally come! I found out around 2am (PST) and I literally gasped and repeated “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” until I could confirm it was true.

It all started with a simple trip down memory lane thanks to Facebook’s “On this Day,” feature. On this day, two years ago, I posted a link to an article about a rumor of FF XII HD possibly being announced at 2014’s E3. I’ve been patiently, well, patiently may not be the best word, waiting for this since I heard of the FF X HD remake (which I own for PS3 and PS4 now). I remember reading somewhere that Square Enix said they’d remake FF XII if FF X/X-2 sold well.

So, I saw that post this morning and commented that I’m still waiting. For years, I’ve randomly googled “Final Fantasy XII HD” hoping for an update with no luck. Something told me to check this morning and I gasped when I saw the announced had been made a few minutes before I searched.

Not only are we getting a remake, but we get the international version.

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t the hugest fan of this game’s story, but I loved playing the game. It felt like playing a MMO offline. It was also one of my first purchases when I moved to Arizona.

The last time I played it was years ago. At the time, I had a 60gb PS3, so I could still play PS2 games. I had started a new game and was maybe halfway when my PS3 died. I couldn’t find another 60gb, so I had to buy a new slim model. I’m excited at the chance to finally beat the game.