Merry Christmas and happy holidays to you all! Thank you so much for reading my ramblings and giving me a reason to post this horribly cute card that I’ve been hanging onto for years.

I probably won’t be posting anything for a day or two, but I would love to hear how you all are going to spend your time off! What games will you be playing, and what are you hoping might be waiting for you  under the Christmas tree tomorrow morning?

I know for a fact that I’ve got Mario Kart 7 waiting for me, and I’m itching to play! As soon as I get it going I’m going to make an official Chic Pixel community, so I hope some of you can play with me!

I’ve got a huuuuge backlog I would love to get started in on, but I’m at the point where I have so many games I’d like to play that I literally feel stuck and don’t know where to start! Since I just got the Wii, I’d like to dig in to Skyward Sword… But honestly, some comments I’ve been hearing about the 5 hour tutorial and frustrating motion controls have given me slight cold feet. Surprisingly, I’ve been playing a lot of Just Dance 2, which came free with my Wii. Er… Yeah.

Okay, I’m generally not much of an angry gamer, but I may come across as one in this recent article I did at GamerANX about my lack of enthusiasm for Final Fantasy XIII-2. I really don’t harbor feelings of intense hatred for the ultra-linear predecessor to the second direct sequel in FF history, I promise! But I do get a little snarky (and poke fun at the new weird bulbous-headed moogles). Give it a read, if you’re interested!

I did do a bit of research for the article, since I haven’t really been keeping up on the news regarding the title. Once I heard Ezio was going to be a DLC costume for the new male lead Noel, I pretty much threw in the towel. I admit that I probably will purchase the game in the future, because in all honesty, the gameplay looks pretty intriguing, but I’m definitely not in a rush. Even a 40/40 from Famitsu will not sway me (which it did get, by the way, and I’m not sure who really puts much faith in those scores anyway, outside of rabid fanboys).

Well, through my research I did stumble on a couple of character design-related annoyances that I would’ve loved to put in the original article, but they just didn’t fit. When you think of absurd costumes, you think of Final Fantasy, right? I thought X was about as weird as it could get, but check this out:

This is Caius Ballad, the main antagonist of XIII-2 and the character you see fighting with Lightening in the first teaser trailer, as well as the game’s logo. There are so many things about this character design that just rub me the wrong way! Honestly, I don’t even know what to say without digging myself an early grave. I am notoriously a fan of Seymour, after all…

What I liked about Seymour and Final Fantasy X (overall), was that the majority of it didn’t seem to take itself too seriously. I mean, who takes Seymour seriously? Or Kuja, for that matter (another favorite FF character of mine). The problem with XIII, and potentially XIII-2, is that it’s taking itself far too seriously, and yet Tetsuya Nomura is churning out silly character designs like these. [edit: It’s come to my attention that I’m not really articulating my point very well. I think my major beef with Caius stems from the fact that his design seems like one big a big mash of character stereotypes. Or maybe I just think he’s ugly?]

And have you heard of Chocolina? When the name first arose, all that was known about her was that she appeared around the world dressed in chocobo-themed clothing selling goods. Me, being the naive gamer I am… I pictured a dorky little girl dressed in full-body chocobo costume. Instead, we get this:

And of course this single image has already spurred dozens of news articles talking about the “hot new shopkeeper” who’ll make “sexy cosplay.” Yay? I should be excited, right?

Naw, I’m just all-around disappointed and throughly unamused by pretty much everything surrounding Final Fantasy XIII-2 at this point. Maybe I’m just grumpy, maybe I’m stuck harboring some metaphorical ideal of what a Final Fantasy game should be, but either way, this game really couldn’t interest me less at this point. I play RPGs for story and characters above all else, and Final Fantasy just isn’t pushing the right buttons anymore. I’m sure the gameplay will be pretty neat, though.

What are your thoughts on Final Fantasy XIII and XIII-2? Are you excited for the sequel?

Japanese cover for the game. Full title: Corpse Party: Blood Covered… Repeated Fear

If you’ve seen my tweets over the past week or so, you know I’ve been gushing over Corpse Party pretty much nonstop. But what is Corpse Party, and why should you care about it? As I’m in the midst of writing my review, which probably won’t go up for a day or two due to some server transitions happening over at Video Game Writers, I thought I’d take the opportunity to talk a bit about the game here.

Believe it or not, Corpse Party is one of the few games in recent months that got me really excited in anticipation of its release. Even stranger is the fact that I really am not a horror connoisseur by any means, and generally don’t go out of my way to consume any sort of horror-related media. So what is it about Corpse Party that grabbed my attention so throughly?

First of all, Corpse Party is a game I would have never thought would see the light of day in English. In fact, I hadn’t even heard of it before XSEED announced that they would be localizing it. The game they localized actually is a port/remake of the original indie PC game, made with the help of RPG Maker. The original creators got quite a bit of publicity for such an indie title, eventually spurring the remake, multiple manga series, and even a sequel. But what makes people so enamored with Corpse Party?

Just because they’re pixilated doesn’t make the blood splatters any less creepy.

The game starts off innocuously enough: A group of high school students are saying farewell to one of their classmates, who is transferring to another school the next day. One of them suggests they perform a special charm so that they will always stay friends, to which they all agree. They preform the ritual, but immediately afterwards an earthquake suddenly erupts, transporting them to Heavenly Host Elementary School, a school rife with murder and disappearances that was torn down many years before.

Keeping the story relatively vague, as the story is really the heart and soul of the game, I found that the first hour or so was terribly generic and cliche. After the initial introduction, there is even a break in the game to allow you to read each of the nine charaters’ profiles! At first glance, many might be turned off by the seemingly stereotypical characters and premise, but I was pleasantly surprised by how the game developed.

After the initial sequences, your characters are split up into groups, and the overall goal is to guide them to their peers and out of the horrible predicament they’ve found themselves in. There is a lot of character development, and as you play as the different parties, you slowly begin to understand their relationships and histories, which makes it all the more distressing when you find out that anyone can die. That’s right – in Corpse Party, no one is safe from a gruesome and horrible death, either at the mercy of a vengeful ghost or the hands of their own peers. Though some of the characters remained a tad too stereotypical/fanservice-y for my tastes (you’ve got your token panty shots and lesbian who’s in love with her best friend), overall, the story developments and character interactions were extremely enthralling, and were what ultimately made me love the game as much as I did.

I’m not one for fanservice, and unfortunately panty shots like these totally took me out of the moment.

Many people are confused about what kind of game Corpse Party is. The game features decidedly retro graphics, a la RPG Maker, with anime-style character illustrations and the occasional CG cutscene. Described by XSEED as an adventure game, I’d probably most liken it to Sweet Home meets 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. There are no battles, however, and the bulk of the game is spent exploring the haunted school, looking for clues to advance the story. You’ll talk to the occasional ghost, but for the most part the only characters you’ll find are the ones in your party at the time. Decision-making is extremely important, and what you choose will often dictate whether or not you’ll bear witness to one of the game’s decidedly gristly “wrong ends.”

For each of the game’s five chapters, there is one “true end,” which will advance you to the next chapter, and any number of wrong ends. The wrong ends are some of the most disturbing things I have ever seen, but nothing that kept me awake late at night. Even so, I was terribly enthralled by them – the sound direction is amazing in both the music and the sound effects, and every gruesome squish and squelch there, accompanied by the horrified screams of teenage girls (I could’ve done without some of the latter, though). Something about the game made me actually want to go out of my way to view the wrong ends I missed, though I’m not sure what that says about me. Rather than just being mindless gore, by getting players to connect with the characters, every bloody scene is all the more jarring. Perhaps one of the most horrifying moments for me in the game was finding out the identity of the person splattered all over the hallway you’ve been passing by the last 3 hours, and one of the other character’s own reaction to that realization.

I’ll briefly touch on what I didn’t like about the game. In all honestly, Corpse Party is not a great game, but rather a great experience. There are a number of times where the game gives you absolutely no guidance and it’s up to you to wander the halls of the school, investigating everything until you hit the jackpot and are able to advance the game. Some of the puzzles are reduced down to simply mashing x on anything and everything, which isn’t all that fun when you’ve got a ghost on your tail and a drawn-out wrong end awaiting you if you run into them by mistake. The game also does not have a text skip feature for when you have to reply segments over and over again because you keep dying, which means you’re going to be skipping through a lot of death scenes you’ve seen before. Since the game shares a lot of similarities with visual novels, it really would’ve benefitted from some kind of fast-forward button like there is in 999.

All in all, I’d say that if you’re at all interested in the horror genre and experiencing truly unique game experiences, then you owe it to yourself to give Corpse Party a shot (this is really starting to sound like a review!). Even if you generally don’t like scary stories, I’d still suggest the game, though it isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s only available on the Playstation Network for the PSP due to the fact that its such a niche title, but if you can spare the $20 and the download, I highly recommend it. If you’re interested in hearing more about the game, I’ll be posting my full review on Video Game Writers in the very near future. I really hope more people are exposed to this game so that XSEED will be able to release its sequel in the future!

But Thursday wasn’t a normal day for me! Far from it –– this Thursday marked the release of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword in Australia. Well, technically the street date was broken (yet again), so you could pick up the game if you preordered it as early as Tuesday, but I got mine yesterday (don’t get me started on street date breaks in AU).

Pretty sleek, no?

As most of you should know by now, there’s one big hurdle I’ll need to overcome before I can play my copy of Skyward Sword. Namely, I don’t have a Wii! I know, I know, a little late to the party…

It’s not exactly a question of “if” I’ll get one, of course, but more like “when” –– I know there will be some holiday sales soon enough and I can’t decide whether I want to hold out until they roll around in December or not! So many decisions! In the meantime, I asked some of you on Twitter what games you’d most recommend for the console, but I decided I’d like to open the floor up to everyone. First, let’s see what games I’m most looking forward to playing…

Murasama: Demon Blade
Basically, all you have to do is utter the word “Vanillaware” and I’ll be there. The company’s amazing art direction (though the lead artist’s penchant for bubble breasts and thunder thighs leaves something to be desired…) never ceases to take my breath away, even if I’m not always a huge fan of the gameplay. Murasama‘s focus Japanese mythology makes it a must-have in my book.

Resident Evil 4
I’m putting this sucker on the list because I know my husband would quite enjoy it. I saw a significant portion of the game played back when it came out for the PS2, but I’m really just awful at tense games where I’m required to shoot things. I’ve heard the Wii controls really shine in this game, so I would love to see my husband give it a go. Honorable mentions in the category of “games my husband and I can enjoy together” would be Donkey Kong Country Returns (can you believe he’s never played the original?) and maybe House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return.

Chocobo’s Mysterious Dungeon: The Labyrinth of Forgotten Time

I can’t wait for this game

I’ve yet to play a Rune Factory title, and I consider that a crying shame. With my newfound love for the Atelier series and borderline obsession with doing everyday tasks like fishing and furniture purchasing in games like Animal Crossing, Rune Factory, with combined elements Harvest Moon and traditional RPGs, is clearly up my alley. So, of course, I was very excited when I heard there was a Rune Factory game coming out for the PS3. Not only that, but this time it was to feature a female protagonist! Best of both worlds, right?

Unfortunately, a couple of things have come to my attention recently in regards to Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny (also known as Rune Factory: Oceans in Japan). You do get to play as a female, that’s true, but there’s a catch: Azel and Sonia, the male and female protagonists, are trapped in the same body. As such, you’re required to play through the game’s main story as Azel, the male protagonist, before unlocking the ability to switch to Sonia.

Even more frustrating than that is the number of bride to groom options. One of the big draws of Rune Factory, much like Harvest Moon, is the number of potential partner choices available, allowing you to woo the man or lady you choose depending on the gender of your main character. Of course the lack of  a same-sex relationship option is a bit disappointing, even though it’s not surprising. In Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny, though you do have the option to marry while playing as Sonia, the pickings are rather slim: there are only 4 marriageable men in the game, including childhood friend Azel, contrasted by a whopping 10 marriageable women for gamers who choose to play as Azel.

According to Yoshifumi Hashimoto, Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny producer, the decision to keep the number of groom characters low was so that they wouldn’t have to cut into the number of bride characters, given the time it takes to create each one. Mr. Hashimoto, I’m sorry, but that just seems like you’re saying,”we couldn’t really be bothered to make more grooms because we’re really catering this game to men anyway” to me.

Needless to say, I’m a bit disappointed… But that probably won’t stop me from buying the game in the future (Even with all the ladies, that trailer still looks gorgeous). I hope that when Rune Factory 4 comes out for the 3DS, however, they will give gamers wishing to play as the female character an experience that is on par with that of the male equivalent.