Completionist 2014: Vanguard Princesses

Uhhh... I bought this... In a bundle... Ummm... I don't know how I feel. Part shame. Part tingly in my pants. But mostly shame. Wellllll. Tingly parts. Lets go 50/50 on those.

So I knew this was going to be a fighting game. But I did not realize how... Fan service-y this was going to be. Boy oh boy. Fan service. I actually have to give these guys some credit at how thorough they were with the fan service. You got a "thing" you like? They put it in there. We got Loli's and boobies, tsudere's, yandere's, Maids, skimpy outfits. They got it all! Alright alright. Lets get beyond the "graphics".

As a combat game, the game speed felt different. My background in fighting game is more breadth rather than depth. Playing Vanguard Princess felt more of a simplified Guilty Gear sort of engine. I felt that the fights lacked a bit of *snap* or maybe even speed that you'd find in other 2D fighters, like MVC3 or SFxT. Kinda think they may have focused a bit more on the animations rather than the gameplay. Hey, that's just me. Sayin that. And havin an opinion. Maybe its just me staring at the animations more than I should have. Who knows. The controls have been boiled down 5 buttons: Light, Medium, Heavy, Support, and Parry. Technically parry can be triggered by pressing two attack buttons simultaneously, but I like that its bound to a single button by default.

I had to play the game through on Easy. Why? Because I suck at this game. No really. I'm terrible. There's a reason why I don't pickup too many fighting games. I end up button-mashing till I find a combination that works, then cheese the fuck out of it till I win. Vanguard Princess really doesn't let you do that. Characters have a style of play that you kind of need to stick to in order to be successful. And the AI is very unforgiving during the campaign. There were definitely moments of great frustration, especially if you can't get in the groove of a particular character. Again, this is coming from a fighting noob.

Overall, I will probably never play this game EVAR AGAIN. I just can't do it. Playing the game provided little enjoyment. The fighting engine just isn't my type. The characters are fun to look at, but I can feel society judging me while I do so. The lack of proper game options also majorly killed it for me. I forgot to mention you can't control simple things like, Game sound or resolution. The game runs on a set resolution, but you can played in a windowed mode that has no presets outside of "tiny". Kind of a big thing. Especially when the game starts blasting music at you when it boots. Yeah nope. Glad I was able to beat it with two characters, but that's my limit.

SCORE ++;
>SCORE = -24

*EDIT* Bonus footage!

Completionist 2014: OH GOD MORE BUNDLES

Goddamn you Humble Bundle. After a week of crappy daily bundles, they put out a good one. Son of a bitch.

Humble Daily Bundle: PC & Android bundle 10

• Symphony
• Draw a Stickman: Epic
• Galcon Legends
• Skulls of the Shogun
• Metal Slug 3
• Fieldrunners 2
• Breach & Clear
• ... AND MORE!!! (Fuck if I know what it will be)

Not gonna lie. I mainly bought it for Metal Slug 3. God... I kinda feel like this:

SCORE = SCORE - 7;

>SCORE = -25

Completionist 2014: Beware the Bundles of May

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU... These goddamn bundles are messing with my goal. But... Such good. Goddamnit.

Humble Bundle has a special spring sale going on. They are re-bundling a number of past bundles and putting them up as a daily bundle. So far, the selection has been so-so. But I did pickup the Bundle from Outerspace. It came with the following steam keys:

• Kinetic Void
• X3: Reuinion
• Universe Simulator (Owned)

Granted these aren't the best titles around. But X3 looked very interesting as a space simulator. I've been looking for something to kinda help scratch the itch as I idle around for Star Citizen. Kinetic Void was something I wasn't expecting to pickup, but that was until I saw some gameplay from the Developer. It reminds me of Kerbal Space Program or Space Engineers, with a greater focus on combat ships. I was impressed enough to give it a go. I already had a copy of Universe Simulator. I wouldn't really call it a game. I feel its more of a sandbox for playing with planets and stars etc.

Indie Gala came out with a pretty killer weekly bundle. The entire bundle was a $1 minimum for all the unlocks. It was especially crazy considering one of the games was a Humble Bundle Daily that had a $5 buyout. Here's the list:

• Vanguard Princess
• 99 Spirits
• Human Tanks
• Ether Vapor Remaster
• Duplicity ~Beyond The Lies~ (Desura)
• Heileen (Desura but on Greenlight)
• Bionic Heart (Desura but on Greenlight)
• Eve Burst Error (Desura)

I'm up in the air if I should even count the Desura games towards my goal. I don't really use it, but I do have a few things from it. Part of me doesn't want to add them, because it will hurt my score. But the MAN in me says to add it and take my lumps. FUCK IT. I'm adding them.

Vanguard Princess was on today's Humble Daily Melee Bundle. It was a $4.97 to unlock, so this bundle KINDA saved me $4. I was also reading that someone played the game, sold the Steam Trading cards for Vanguard Princess and basically made money from the bundle. Not bad... Not bad.

Most of the games here are kinda eccentric looking Anime games... Which is what I like. Soooo that really kinda pushed me to getting the bundle even more. Le sigh. My score... It hurts.

SCORE = SCORE - 10;

>SCORE = -18

Completionist 2014: Aces Wild: Manic Brawling Action!

Picked this one up as part of the Humble Coop Bundle. It looked fairly interesting and I liked the cartoony anime style it had. It is a floaty crazy mid-air combo side scrolling beat-em-up. Huh... Did I really string those words together? Mehhhhh that sounds about right. I had a lot of fun, it was very easy to get into but near the end the game seriously ramps up the difficulty. Its a ton of fun comboing and getting groups of enemies caught up in your combos. I only had a few qualms about the game though.

The coop mode of this game is local coop only. I can understand that though, as later on you'll need almost frame by frame like precision for dodging enemy attacks. The character selection is limited, there's only 3 playable characters. The main character, Ace, is the only one with a unique sprite. One of them is a ninja that looks identical to the hundreds of other ninjas that'll come and attack you. So that character tends to get lost in the hoards of enemies. The last character is an identical sprite as the 6th stage boss. This guy uses a sword and is much slower and doesn't dodge nearly as well as Ace or the ninja guy. My biggest gripe would have to be the 6th stage. It has a series of cheap deaths and the final boss of that stage has a difficulty that seems out of place with the rest of the game. It was constant guerrilla hit and run in a combo action brawler. It took me nearly most of my playtime to beat just that one boss. The rest of the game, I kinda blew past and had a lot of fun. But that 6th stage is in my book as the biggest frustration of the game.

SCORE++;
>SCORE = -8

Completionist 2014: Humble Co-op bundle

God... Damnit. Another good bundle. What really drew me to this bundle was that all of these games are Co-op! I'm never as good by myself. I always do better and have more fun when I'm playing with FWIENDS. Alright alright. We're going down!

Humble Co-op Bundle

• Awesomenauts
• Sanctum 2 (Already owned)
• Wanderlust: Rebirth
• Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken
• Orcs Must Die! 2: Complete Pack (Already owned)
• Aces Wild: Manic Brawling Action
• Risk of Rain (Already owned)

SCORE = SCORE - 4;

>SCORE = -9