Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet

For those unfamiliar with the light novel and anime franchise it is based on, Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet may seem weird – First, while there is online multiplayer, the entirety of the game is single player-centric. Additionally, the “sword” in the title may seem like a misnomer because the game revolves around guns. But bear with us, it makes sense in the end.

For the uninitiated, Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet is a 3rd person shooter RPG based on the Gun Gale Online part of Reki Kawahara’s Sword Art Online light novel and anime franchise. Unlike previous Sword Art Online games, Fatal Bullet follows a user-created custom character inside a VR MMORPG game called Gun Gale Online. The user character’s story will intersect with those of the franchise’s main characters Kirito, Asuna, and the rest of their crew.

The Online part of the name pertains only to the faux VR MMORPG. The player gets to roleplay a person who plays the fictional VR MMO called Gun Gale Online. The in-game world’s population of player characters are only computer-controlled AI. The actual multiplayer is limited to a couple of modes where characters either try to duel each other or fight alongside each other against a Boss Monster, competing on who gets to do the most damage before the monster falls.

Story

It is not surprising that the story is decent, given that the game is based on a light novel. Obviously, people who dislike Sword Art Online will not like the game’s story as it is an almost direct adaptation, but SAO fans will definitely love the twists and the game, as far as we know, contains a plot thread that is exclusive to the game. So it is still worth experiencing even if you have already read the novel.

Graphics

Befitting of a 3D anime game, Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet uses a 3D cel-shaded engine that aims to simulate the look of 2D cel-shaded anime. While it is still obviously a 3D game, the visuals do a great job by perfectly showing its characters as inspired by anime visuals, without looking out of place in the 3D environment. Some versions (particularly the PC port) also take advantage of post processing techniques to add more flourish to the visuals, most notably its use of chromatic aberration. This gives the game a slightly blurred but cinematic look.

Gameplay

When it comes to gameplay, Fatal Bullet can be a bit of a hit and miss. There is obvious potential in how the game handles. The characters handle perfectly depending on how you build them (as expected of an RPG, leveling up gives you points that can be invested into different attributes such as agility, dexterity, strength, etc – with each stat affecting different factors such as handling of the character, damage, inventory capacity, aiming efficiency, etc.)

The aiming is also forgiving. There is auto-aim that is functional but will not do as good of a job as manual aiming. This means beginners can rely on the auto-aim at first, until they get accustomed to manual aiming where they can do optimal damage.

The combat is not perfect, though. Some handling issues are present particularly when it comes to the use of two non-gun weapons: the UFC, which is a grappling hook that can be used to climb up places require some getting used to. And the photon swords will require practice to use effectively, because there is no lock-in targeting, you will have to struggle with the camera controls a bit in order to avoid hitting a lot of thin air. Fortunately, the photon swords provide some of the most consistently large damages in the game (bested only by the slow and heavy sniper rifles), and provide the ability to block bullets and lasers, which provides a tradeoff to its limited range and unwieldiness.

The game, we feel, could have also benefited from a cover system. Fortunately, your character is very mobile so the lack of a cover system does not hinder survivability, provided that you can adapt to its more fast-paced gunplay.

Replayability

Another glaring drawback to the game is its length. The campaign is extremely short, and can be finished in one sitting if not for some artificial lengthening tricks such as the need to grind affinity for each of the side characters in order to get the true ending, and the addition of a fourth wall-breaking time-rewind capability to the plot. People who love grinding may find this a plus, but people who just want to go through the story once should read a guide first, so that they can fulfill all the requirements for the true ending on their first playthrough, thus removing the need to rewind and re-grind.

All in all, Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet is by no means a perfect game. There is potential for the game to appeal to people who are not fans of the franchise, but it has glaring flaws that may be dealbreakers for people who are just looking for a good third person shooter. So if you are coming in and looking for an anime version of The Division, you should temper your expectations or else you’ll come out disappointed. Fans of the Sword Art Online franchise, on the other hand, will definitely enjoy this flawed, yet faithful adaptation of the Gun Gale Online arc.

Akiba's Trip: Undead & Undressed

Akiba's Trip: Undead & Undressed is a 3rd person action RPG set in the city of Akihabara and puts players in the shoes of a person who's been turned into a "synthizer," which is basically a vampire, and tasks you with hunting down others of your kind along with a CPU-controlled partner. The main gimmick of the game is that you defeat the so-called synthizers by beating them silly until they are weakened, and then exposing them to the sunlight by stripping items of their clothing.

Despite the seemingly mature premise of the game, kids and parents shouldn't worry because there is no actual nudity. The enemies that get stripped still have their underwear (and in cases that they don't, the naughty bits are conveniently hidden by lens flare) and there are no hyper-sexualized body types - the females have no exaggerated breast sizes or accented curves and in most cases the females and males have similar body shapes.


The biggest point of contention in Akiba's Trip will be the combat. If you're just starting out, you'll find the combat to be sluggish and clunky, but once you find the weapon that suits your playstyle and adjust to the proper timings, the combat system will open up and provide you with a workable - if not decent - gameplay (if you're used to conventional hack and slash games, you'll be at home with sword or glove-type weapons.)

The PC port of Akiba's Trip: Undead & Undressed is available via Steam, and it's a pretty solid port job. The game is pretty well optimized and will run on hardware that doesn't even meet the minimum system requirements (although don't attempt to try and run it on onboard graphics.) There are no specific gamebreaking bugs or glitches outside of edge cases that are pretty much expected on the PC platform.

Pre-orders for One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 Steam Version is Now Open

Bandai Namco Games' PC port of One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 won't be released until August 25, but pre-orders are now open on Steam.  There's no pre-order discount and the bonuses are a little bit on the thin side (four costumes and a pack of additional costumes.) but if you really want a truck-ton of content, you can get the gold edition for a few bucks more in order to get 8 more mission packs and 20 more bonus costumes.

I have preordered the base package, so you can expect a review to appear on this site, but given that it's just a port and the game's console versions were already reviewed by countless others, I'll be focusing on the quality of the PC port - whether it takes advantage of the extra hardware power afforded by the platform or if it's going to be a basic port.

Hopefully, it's not going to be a Batman: Arkham Knight thing. Bandai Namco is known for decent, if not solid, ports when it comes to popular and lucrative properties (like One Piece is), and the developers Koei Tecmo also does fine with their ports - they get panned for crippled content and ridiculous DLC schemes, but in terms of code optimization they're pretty good at their job - in some cases releasing games that can run well even on hardware that doesn't meet their specified minimum requirements.

Phantom Breaker: Battlegrounds (PC)

Phantom Breaker: Battlegrounds is a sprite-based 2D Beat ‘Em Up for the PC (and PS Vita, PS3 and XBLA) that relies on cute, super-deformed magical girls as the main characters. The game is a spin-off of the Phantom Breaker fighting game, but it was a Japan-only title so it’s most likely unfamiliar to many readers of this blog.

The combat in Phantom Breaker: Battlegrounds is a mix of button mashing and strategic combo play consisting of light attacks, hard attacks, blocks, parries, and supers. This means the game is accessible to beginners yet still appealing to hardcore players who wish to explore every nook and cranny of the combat mechanics. The stages are strictly sidescrolling 2D, but have 2 planes that you can switch between with a simple press of a button. In a way, the game is more like a side-scrolling Fatal Fury than a Double Dragon successor, but it could go either way as far as genre conventions are concerned.

Far from being a simple beat em up, the game lets you pick between 4 different characters/classes (5 if you have the DLC) each with its own strengths and weaknesses. There’s also a light RPG system under the hood that allow players to level up and upgrade their characters’ abilities and stats.

The visuals in Phantom Breaker: Battlegrounds are cute and fun to look at, even though they are low definition by choice. The graphics are pixilated, but still extremely detailed and complex. The stages are a little bit constricted, but they provide ample space to run around and beat stuff up. The setting is varied, with locations based on iconic Japanese locales such as Akihabara.

Replayability is what you’d expect from any beat em up – it’s fun to go through once, but after that you’d make do with short bursts. Ideally, you should have a friend over (or online) so you can enjoy the game as a co-op brawler. In this context, the game is a must have especially if you’re a fan of retro-inspired games and the magical girl genre.

One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 and Saint Seiya Soldiers' Soul Coming to PC

So, it seems like Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 Full Burst, as buggy and unoptimized as it is, actually did a lot of good as it finally convinced Japanese devs that there's a lot of money to be made on the PC platform regardless of the piracy problem.

And it's not no-name devs that produce non-licensed games either. We're talking big names here. Bandai Namco has been releasing games for the PC platform since ever, but they're now releasing anime and manga-based games that in the old days would have been exclusive to consoles. OTOH, One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 has been confirmed to be coming out on PC a few months ago, but it's exciting to know that the Steam store page is already live.

We also have the less popular in the West, but generally more popular and iconic Saint Seiya coming via Saint Seiya Soldier's Soul:

So right now we have Dragonball Xenoverse, two Naruto Games, a Saint Seiya, and a One Piece game coming up? It seems like the next couple of years is a good time to be a PC gamer and a manga/anime fan at the same time. That's just the confirmed games, though. Rise of Incarnates, if it's successful, may finally convince BAMCO to bring the Gundam VS games to the PC. And what about Bleach? Surely whoever is the license holder right now will see how successful Xenoverse and the Storm series is even if they're buggy messes? Come on, devs. Our wallets are ready. Get to porting.

Problems with Dragonball Xenoverse (Steam)

Okay, after several more days of playing with the Steam version of Dragonball Xenoverse, the main problems have become apparent. Don't get me wrong, it's still worth the full price - but you may want to lower expectations if you're looking for a competition-friendly, and technically sound multiplayer gaming experience. Off the top of my head, Xenoverse has the following problems:

Balance

Right now, balance is completely borked. Players have learned how to abuse certain races' special abilities to stack the odds in their favor when it comes to PVP (e.g. Saiyans going SSJ and spamming ultimates.) It doesn't make it impossible to beat them using the other races, but it will require more strategy and definitely gives one class a big advantage. Single player is also affected in this case because the CPU opponents that are in SSJ form will not revert to their base form, so they always have infinite ki and are able to spam ultimate attacks. Some parallel quests are almost impossible to beat because you'll be juggled by three SSJs. You can beat them by being really good or by using one of the OP Z-souls, which brings us to another borked aspect of the game...

...some Z-souls are so overpowered that they make the rest useless and turn PVP into a mess. It used to be that the neither kami nor piccolo Z-soul allowed players to be immortal due to the massive HP regen when ki is full - DIMPs at least fixed it. Now the new broken Z-soul is the Bwa ha ha thanks for the energy one, which heals a player back to full every 2nd or 3rd hit.

Technical 

On the technical side, the biggest problem is server availability. You'd have to chalk this one up to the popularity of the franchise, but it's made worse by the fact that even the Single Player mode of the game tries to connect to the servers. IMO, they'd lessen the stress on their servers A LOT if they changed the game so that single player is completely offline, and that the character data is only updated/saved to the servers when people enter the multiplayer. You could understand the online only approach if it's being used as an anti-piracy measure, but I don't think pirates are deterred. In fact, I think people playing the pirated copy of the game are in a better place since they don't need to connect to the servers and will have a much easier way of playing the game.

There's also a minor problem with the fact that the game relies on FPS for timing. The broken Z-souls is one of the side effects, as the ticks in regen/healing seem to be tied to FPS so people playing in 60 fps or more will have ridiculously high HP regen ticks. Some effects also get borked if you're not locked in 30fps - such as the vanishing move or some ki blasts (the former makes you reappear in the same place, while the latter disappears.) Locking the FPS to 30 fixes these problems.

Dragon Ball Xenoverse (PC)

It’s a bit difficult to pigeonhole Dragon Ball Xenoverse into a specific genre. It’s essentially a 3rd person fighting game with MMORPG trappings. If you’re one of the lucky few who managed to experience the short-lived Dragonball Online MMO, Xenoverse is basically that game wrapped around an updated iteration of the Budokai Tenkaichi series.

Gameplay

The game starts by dropping you in the middle of various fights between Goku and the franchise’s main villains – from Freiza to Cell, to Buu – but these are not full fights but a mere sampling of the gameplay you can expect when you get to the meat and bones of the game. It’s a trick that RPGs use regularly (re: start you off with a high leveled, fully-geared character and a strong boss monster before taking everything away and forcing you to fight rats.)

There’s no tutorial yet in this intro, but it’s easy to get a basic idea of the controls since there’s prompts appearing when you push buttons. Long time players of the Budokai Tenkaichi series might be familiar with the control schemes: you have two buttons for attacks, one for ki blast, and another for mobility. Then you have a key for lock-on, one for blocking, and trigger combinations that give you access to special and ultimate attacks.

Official Trailer for Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4

Bamco Games has just released the first official trailer for CyberConnect2's Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 during Jump Festa. The trailer is more cinematic than gameplay footage-y, but considering that the game is known for gameplay that looks like anime scenes, it can be hard to tell. All you should know is that it focuses mainly on the fight between Hashirama and Madara, and judging by their looks and dialogue - it is set during their final duel when they were still alive.

You can check out the trailer after the cut:

Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution (PC)

This covers the Steam release of CyberConnect2’s Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution instead of the console versions because of two very simple reasons: first is that I don’t have an Xbox 360 or a Playstation 3, and second is because the PC port of the previous game in the series had so many technical problems that there may be a lot of readers wondering if the PC port is worth buying this time.

On that note, everyone should relax and be glad that CyberConnect 2 seems to have learned from their past mistakes. Unlike the poorly optimized Full Burst, Revolution works right out of the proverbial box. I’m still using the low-end PC (Pentium G2020, 4GB RAM, nVidia GT240) that had problems running Full Burst in full speed at the lowest resolution, yet Revolution ran like a champ at 1080p with a few dips in fps here and there (as I said, I’m running a PC that would be considered low-end 3 years ago so we shouldn’t be expecting miracles.)

Additionally, it seems like they’re no longer using frame-dependent timing because even at times when my PC struggled to maintain full frame rate (I got dips as low as 25 fps, according to FRAPS), the game didn’t feel slow-motion at all. Maybe they’re properly skipping frames this time around.

Unfortunately for the PC Master race, the frame rate is still capped at 30 fps. You’ll just have to grin and bear it as they’re probably keeping it uniform with the console versions in order to ease porting. Anyway, even at 30 fps the game still feels smoother than Full Burst, owing to a few tweaks in combat (which we’ll tackle later.)

As for a review of the game itself, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution is basically an upgraded version of Full Burst, and is probably using a modified version of its engine so there’s really no point in a standard review of the game. You can refer to the Full Burst review here if you want the basics. Instead, we’ll just outline some of the more noticeable changes (and whether they’re good or bad.)

Presentation

The first change that will hit you is the tweak to the presentation. It’s a minor tweak but helps a ton in making the user experience better – they simply sped up the time it takes for menu items to load. Most of you will remember that Full Burst’s menu required patience as it takes a few seconds too long before you can get it to do what you want. Moving from one section to the next is instantaneous now.

Go Games’ Bleach Online (PC, Browser-Based)

I’ve been seeing Bleach Online pop up in a lot of places these days (including my own site’s ads). Receiving a personal invite from a friend claiming that it’s “similar to Marvel Avengers Alliance, but with Bleach characters” was the straw that finally broke the camel’s back, as I have spent quite a bit of time mucking around with MAA. Bleach Online seems like something that I’d enjoy even if I don’t have enough free time to delve deep into what the game has to offer. I also figured I could post an entry about it given the theme of my site, maybe even help people who want to try the game but aren’t sure if it’s a real game or just a scam. If you're one of these people - it's not a scam. It's a real Bleach game that can be played on your browser.

First Things First: Legal Issues

Now, anybody who’s familiar with Bleach and the handful of anime games online knows that the characters, names, symbols and any other copyrighted IP in the games are being used without permission from the owners. Bleach Online is no different, and this one is particularly noticeable because it uses assets (namely from the audio) from other Bleach games – which is something that a big name developer will not give away freely (and something that is unnecessary for a legitimate online game developer because it’s easy to produce on their own.)

Basically, if you’re going to play this game, don’t expect too much and don’t get attached to your progress as it could disappear anytime, especially since Japan has started bolstering their online campaign against copyright infringement for manga and anime-related properties earlier this month.

Now, let’s get on with discussing the game itself.

Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 Full Burst (PC)

If the title hasn’t made it clear yet, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 Full Burst isn’t the first entry in the series. In fact, it isn’t the 3rd one either as the series goes way, way back as it traces its roots to the Clash of Ninja series on the Gamecube. However, it is worth tackling because it is the first one to be ported to the PC, which is amazing because the PC isn’t the platform of choice when it comes to fighting games and games based on anime/manga franchises. Yet here we are, UNS3FB for the PC, with UNS Revolution reportedly following suit.

The Story

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 Full Burst is a 3D cel-shaded fighting game based on Masashi Kishimoto’s extremely popular shonen franchise, featuring a story mode that takes you from the first appearance of the masked man (spoiler: who claims to be Madara Uchiha but is eventually revealed to be someone else) all the way to the fourth great ninja war.

The progression of the story isn’t linear, as it uses flashbacks to tackle key points from the past (pre-timeskip stories are only addressed in flashbacks.) Additionally, the ending deviates from the story in the manga and anime, probably to give it a proper ending – which it can’t if it tries to remain true to the manga’s (which is still unfinished.)