Character Customization and Reasons why players customized it that way

Hello everybody,time passes so fast that its already the last day of January 2013 already!! Anyway this week I will be talking about Character customization in games and reasons why players customized it that way. The game with customization ability I would like to talk about today would be Tera Online, a MMORPG that recently announced that it will be going to be Free 2 Play in February.

Tera gives a rather wide variety of customization ability to begin with such as races from humans to the lovable race, Elins. Although the drawback is that you are unable fully customize in the way you want it to such as height. The game offers a rather complete set of customization for its time.


In Online role playing games I often pick the female gender and a race that looks decent while ignoring what the race have to offer which could help in my game play as I am the type of player that wants to fully customize the character and enjoy looking at he or she as I will be looking at him or her throughout the duration of my game play hence I choose the opposite gender which is the Female gender. Now most people I know or most people 's common misunderstanding of a guy playing as a girl would be "ahh you must be a pervert, looking at your avatar with such lewd eyes" or "you trying to trick a guy or something in game ?? you sly guy", but for my opinion, as a guy staring at another guy's back view as MMORPGs these days are often in the third person view and normally the camera is showing the character's back. I think its rather disturbing to look at another guy that perhaps look very much better fighting and being cool and heroic and all that but after sometime it does not give the mental motivational feel as your firstly Guy avatars i find in game are rather limited and restricted as well in a medieval MMO setting you don't not see the guy revealing more skin definitely but they will just wear the same armor with extra spikes or details per higher level whereas the female avatar is normally given more revealing or nicer looking armor which shows their figure and all that which I guess its very appealing for the eyes in my opinion.

Now here are reasons why I chose the Elin class and why I chose such hair styles, colors and etc.
- I find the Elin race a rather cute race and after comparing with the other races I believe they look the best as they do seem to bring light to what seems a rather dark game setting in TERA
- The hair I chose for my character is those of long hair but as you can see in the image above the hair is tied up as simply I think that firstly Elin are a female only race and I believe that
having long hair is what I call a treasure for girls only hence the hair used
- The color of eyes cannot be changed unfortunately as there are limited presets to choose under adornments hence I chose the purplish eyes to give a vibrant look to my character to make her look
cheerful looking and full of energy
- The hair color i chose is a dark blue in a greenish tone as first I have 3 other characters that the hair color used are Dark blue, Silverish white and black as I do not really like to use repeated
pattern characters I chose that color
- I did not change any of the preset attributes of the character such as eyes positioning mouth and all those as well I do not want to make my character look like an alien =/

Last before least, why did I chose to present my character this way. I chose the characters presented this way as first, this is a fantasy game and I can do as I please in the game dress them up how i like to and the way I like it without restriction as long it is within the game boundaries but I would like to point out that most of the time my characters are modeled after specific anime characters and sometimes I just want them to look this way so why would I choose the smallest and youngest looking female race is because I like the way they are made and look in the game hence I made them and present this way. The objective of an MMO is for players to gather and although there is no real way to make your character to look a special looking individual unless you have some ultra rare equipment or something I believe it is hard to bring out the individual feel in the game and of course I don't really want to stand out but I would feel much comfortable playing a game with the character that I took my time customizing so that I can present it to the players that I encounter in the game while I aim to reach the highest possible point within my control.
With this I will stop for here today and hope to see you guys another time and thank you for taking your time to read this! ^_^
ps: I wished I could talk more using Phantasy Star Online 2 's character customization but without the game that I uninstalled close to half a year ago downloading it will take ages too >_>

Differences in Mediums of Games

Happy New year 2013 everyone, It's been a long time since I last posted looking back a game genre so sorry about that >w<. Today I will like to say the differences in mediums of games. A first example I would like to use would be Differences in playing Trading card games such as CardFight!Vanguard ,YuGiOh!and many others but I would be using the Japanese Trading Card game named Weiss Schwarz by using the game that was released in the year 2011 Weiss Schwarz Portable ! Weiss and Schwarz edition.
Weiss Schwarz
Weiss Schwarz is a Japanese Anime trading card game that is released by Bushiroad during the year 2008 and have come a very long way to be where it was today which also produces the rising popular CardFight! Vanguard card game too. The Objective of the game is to deal 28 damage to your opponent's clock to make first reach level 4 before you do, Each level consists of 7 damage and the higher your level the closer you are to lose in the game in a sense. I picked up this game at the late 2009 and ever since then I have been playing this game even until today!
If your interested about it more you can check out : http://ws-tcg.com/products/english.html which they have 3 English only Trial decks so far which Disgaea is the one not mentioned in the link

Differences in PSP game VS Playing it with your friends at card shops
In the PSP game, the difficulty in the AI is determined by Easy Normal and Hard however the strength of the AI does not really affect the decks that they uses but their ability to hit you to level 4 first and them not being able to take damage as much is affected However if you were to play the game physically, its more of a luck factor which sort of a 50-50% of whether your attack will do well or not but depending on you r deck builds you could make the odds work better against you with some tricks however as the game has a limited amount of series in the game the amount of tricks you can do is limited as well.

Technical problems: Deck/ Discard management ETC
It is a rule in the game that players may not split their discard pile but can arrange it in the way they like it as the game does not end when the player decks outs hence it is fine to keep track of the number of climax cards which when is triggered when your taking damage, cancel outs the damage done on that attack. Hence experienced players may like to put it at the bottom of the discard pile for easy counting and players may ask of how many cards they have left in the deck and how many climax cards are in their discard pile which could affect their decision of attack. However in the PSP game you may check your discard pile but the cards order is there but cannot be arranged in the way you want it and the number of cards in your deck is written too as part of the interface to keep track but however this does not apply to your AI opponents and shuffling is done for you instead of you deciding how many times would you like to shuffle the deck.

Which is better in my opinion
If the psp game consists of the more recent series is sort of asking too much and I prefer to play with my friends as I play the game as a casual player not of someone that plays the game competitively hence the light atmosphere with friends can give many new experiences for the player to remember which in my Opinion a good thing however the psp game has its own merits perhaps if your travelling on the train with your friends the game has a connection function which works but of course it may not contain the series that you may have wanted but still its at least playable while travelling without disrupting other commuters too.

New year bonus!
Another differences for games , Japanese Mahjong

I learnt how to play Japanese mahjong about half a year ago and I have yet to try playing the Chinese versions of it yet but once I do perhaps I would try and do an explanation but here is what I noticed while playing physically and digitally of mahjong.

Differences in playing the game physically and digitally
In physical game the tiles you start with rarely have as good and decent as the digital version and in addition the digital version has help such as allowing you to get a certain tile easier, amount of tiles left and what tiles are you waiting for to into making the game more friendly for new and old players. Both versions can edit the usual normal rules but the digital version do not allow house rules to be in it.

Although it maybe hard to obtain an automatic table and the special Japanese tiles called Akai dora which gives extra points per tile ( note the red colored tiles in the image above) My friends managed to use their Chinese sets but provided the point sticks which fortunately Japanese have rulings that can be set to whether you would like to include them or not too.

That will be all for this week and I hope you guys would stay tune to my next post next week or something and have a great 2013~

Roots of a Game Genre

Its been awhile since I last posted anything so sorry for that as I was busy with matters requiring my attention and not to mention I just recovered from my fever as well.

Today we would trace back the roots of a game genre and the genre I selected would be Japanese Role-Playing Games( JRPGs in short).

JRPGs was around as early as the early 1980s and the very first dated JRPG game was made by Koei named The dragon & Princess which was where the player required to rescue a kidnapped princess soon after the game in 1983 a game that was said to be the first real action RPG named Bokosuka Wars which also laid the foundations of the subgenre, Tactical RPGs
Gameplay video


Another game also made by Koei was called Nobunaga's Ambition which had an combination of RPGS elements , turn-based strategy and management simulation elements, setting the standard for future simulation RPGs. This continued as a trend for Koei's games even at 1989.

However those games were for the Computer mainly and some of them had ports so now we will talk about JRPGs in consoles.
The early 1980s to 1990
For consoles the first game made for it was called Dragonstomper for the Atari game console in 1982 and bokosuka Wars was ported to the NES ain 1985.
During 1986 Dragon Quest was released and this was one of the games that gave a template for all console RPGS which perhaps one might call it the pioneer for console RPGs.
In 1987, Atlus made Digital devil story: Megami Tensei which was sci-fi JRPG and also in the same year Sega introduced Phantasy star which was regarded as the future of home video game consoles.
In 1988 dragon quest 3 was released that introduced character progression system which allowed players to change the character's class during the game and eventually this are used to games such as Final fantasy 12 etc.
That was pretty much summarised what happened in the 1980s to 1990s. The 1990s did not have much accomplishments but there were more story based which was more developed through the years however there are some games that did some accomplishments such as Final Fantasy IV introducing more interactions and actions to give the realism.

The 1990s were in short known as the Golden years of JRPGs and eventually games we know today which are revolutionised JRPGs like Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk2 , Atelier Ayesha and Mugen souls.
Gameplay / trailers :




However in later years, theres a decline in games by mainly first Japanese to English translations and even if translated sales will not be as good and the companies do not earn as much hence not alot of players also fancy such games which I hope the games will be able to last through for generations.

A game that would still be played in a thousand years from now.

Hello everyone, today I would like to talk about a game that would still be played in a thousand years from now. Video games has come a long way such as starting from Pong to games that are popular known today like Battlefield 3 , Assassin’s Creed & League of Legends. However I would not be stating any of those games but will be saying what type of game that would still be played in a thousand years from now on.

The game that I believe that would still be played in a thousand years from now would be sandbox games. Sandbox games are games that have a world for players to explore and games that implement this are games such as Grand Theft Auto 4, Guild wars 2 and Minecraft. Sandbox games give players a feel psychologically that they are in a new world and they can do what they want with it in that world and also wants them to try things they cannot after knowing how the game works in example in GTA, cars are often stolen by the player to travel around however there also cheat codes to give them more hilarious moments such as flying around in cars etc. In addition to this in some sandbox games like guild wars 2, there are areas where players get to look around the area which are called Vistas and also there are events that happen from time to time at the areas to give the player like a hero on a journey to travel and encounter a town that requires help defending against orcs or centaurs.

Sandbox games are slowly appearing more and more as players wants to know more about the game’s world and wish to explore it in hopes of finding things they could never find in the ordinary game flow hence players would actually be pleased trying it. As technology progresses over time there might be more expanded worlds which could be very huge like for example Elder scrolls: Skyrim which has a very large atlas. Who knows what may happen in the future of Sandbox games with technology, maybe we would be able to control it physically like Kinect where we could actually see the game from our eyes and all but the games that have a sandbox elements will survive and still be played in a thousand years from now on.

An example of what I consider a “good” game and what makes it “good”

Hello everyone, I am back this week to discuss about what I consider an example of a “Good” game and what makes the game “Good”. But first I would like to introduce to you guys a game called Nier, published by Square Enix and developed by Cavia in the year 2010. Which had 2 versions mainly Nier Gesalt & Nier Replicant which the difference would be the main protagonist that you play as named Nier. In Nier Gesalt the player controls a Middle aged man whereas in Nier Replicant you control as a young teenage boy. The reason being having 2 versions are to suit the community or players whereby the players in Japan would play as the teenage boy and the players in outside Japan would play as the middle aged man to appeal to the audience.

The plot is simple whereby you play as Nier where you attempt to cure your daughter (in Gesalt’s scenario) or younger sister (in Replicant’s scenario) named Yonah from a fatal disease known as the Black Scrawl and accompanied with the magical Grimmore Weiss and companions Kaine and Emil to find the cure while trying to understand the true nature of the shadowy creatures named Shades.

What I consider good in Nier:

Gameplay: In the game you control Nier which you can rename him to any name of your choice and players can control the camera in a 360 degree way to examine and look at the environment and players have a freedom of moving anywhere they please as long as the system allows. Players are also allowed to jump and climb ladders in the game too.

In certain battles the camera would be turned form a top view shooting style. In the game the player or Nier, is armed with a sword initially but is later armed to weapons such as a spear and a two handed sword which would be used at different variations of enemies the player would encounter against the shades to maximize efficiency. Players can use Magic from Weiss as ranged attacks such as lances and spikes to keep the enemies at bay too. Whenever an enemy is defeated players gain experience points and money so that they can buy items and other things in their quest which also can be obtained via side quests.

Graphics: For the game’s story and theme the art style and graphics are rather good in my opinion as it fits in rather well although most other reviewers or critics blame the graphics to be very bad which I disagree entirely for a world with civilization that just started anew which are constantly having trouble as time goes by where your daily necessities are getting harder and harder to find if the game didn’t had the full of grim atmospheric art and graphic, the game would seem like describing is all they could do but not bring out however they successfully brought it out to enhance the player’s experience which I believe they did a very good job in terms of graphics.

Sound: Nier has very good sounds where it comes to the swinging of swords to the music soundtracks that could be heard throughout the game. The game has very good sound effects too especially for example against a giant shade boss fight, there would be a loud slam when it hits a surface which made it realistic due to its size and impact it does. One thing that the game definitely well I would say are the soundtracks or background music’s , the music is absolutely beautiful in my opinion which I until today still listen to it although I have completed the game at the beginning of 2011. Many would say a good game with a good plot or dialogue would carry the emotions to the player at times but if the dialogues are perfect and accompanied by the background music, I did say you not only can feel the emotions of what the character is going through but literally in the character’s shoes feeling everything he or she just went through.

Plot: The game’s story is rather well constructed and done as it takes place after our current developed civilization takes place where civilization is back to around the medieval periods where there is no technology and everything was done manually. The Plot may not seem as much in the beginning but at the end of the game. The player would understand not only the plot well but the other characters too such as your companions, Kaine and Emil. The game has 4 different endings where there is 1 ending that deletes your entire progress file but the game would prompt you about 3 to 4 times to ask if you would be 100% sure that you want to do so and after that after your file has been deleted you will not be able to use the character name that you gave Nier in a new game file.

Replay value : The game has quite afew things the player might want to accomplished if they would replay the game such as clearing the side quests which some involve real day time in your console and also there are multiple endings and they require the player to get all the weapons in the game to be able to get the last 2 endings in the game which requires some time but can be achievable in a day or two.

In my personal understanding of what makes a “good” game , “good” is by simply first understanding the whole story of the game by simply beating the game and understanding it in-depth, if the plot is good or interesting I would normally pick it up and complete it so that I can decide if it’s a good game at the end of the day or not. Secondly Graphics, as long as the game shows what I am doing and going I am ok with it but if the game has interesting art style I would be frankly interested in it further. Third but not least will be the Sounds, Sounds play a very important role in determine how the game would feel like and how the player would experience during the game hence its one of the factors that determines if the game would be good or not. So in conclusion I would only determine the game if its good or not by completing it and then thinking of it in depth as each game has a story to tell and it has its own ways of depicting it which are graphics and also accompanied by its melodies hence if the story comes together nicely, the game is good in my opinion and I do not degrade it just by reading reviews as I prefer to experience it personally so that I can judge if it is Good or not.

Now that I just finish state what I consider what considers a “good” game “good”. I would like to state that although there are many variations that can consider a game being good it might be up to personal preferences or liking to the game. But I am sharing what I think is a good game and why is it good so let me know your personally comments or feedback and thanks again for reading this lengthy post ^_^ .

Analysis of "Non-Games" & Games that are "Non-Games" into a "Game"

Hello everyone today I would like to analyse a popular game that most of us would know it as Digivice (the PDA shaped one) however first I would want analyse the game in depth mainly the Objectives of the game, Boundaries, Resources and Outcomes.

The objectives of the Digivice is not really clear as the game is a simple feeding game that works similar to the very first pet keeping game, Tamagotchi .
The Boundaries of the digivice, you can farm food for your digimon by simply feeding food such as oranges, sushi and rice balls in a UFO catcher like game and the digivice does not allow battles in the machine but only allow battles that are only workable via linking 2 digivice to each other by the connectors at the top of the digivice.

The digivice sadly does not have much of a resource aside from food and there are no forms of life counter in the game as even if you lose to a battle against your friend in the game, your digimon will just show a sad expression when you lose hence the only possible resource that I can say that is available in the game is the food you farm via the UFO catcher mini game.

The outcomes of the game are pretty bad to be frankly honest when it comes to connection battle with your friends if they use the swipe card model digivice (some may call it the Digimon season’s 3 digivice whereas this model can be counted as a 3.5), it is a one sided battle and the outcomes are that most of the time the digivice with the swipe card ability will win half the time due to the ability to amplify or intercept an attack to empower the energy shots hence the battle is one sided.

This Non game device can be made into the game into a “game “in my opinon in 3 ways.

Firstly the Objectives should have been like the game in the other digivices to defeat the evil digimon like its always been and as a kid most of us would look up to roleplaying it hence when we complete the game we get to brag it to our friends however as the PDA digivice does not support the movement feature maybe a simple battle marathons till the end to a first boss and a training mode would work so they can prepare their way to beating the game.

Secondly, the resources of the digivice should include Life points and power ups such as probably some DNA data to make your digimon digivolve to stronger type digimons so that you can beat the game easier.

Lastly, the outcomes to the game itself is more or less none as there is no proper outcome in it aside from feeding and perhaps playing the UFO food catching game nut in a Versus battle , to battle against swipe card should be balanced whereby the attacks your digimon uses should be at least on par to those on the swipe card digivice and perhaps give an option to use item to give your digimon an edge to it hence making it a fairer game so that both parties would benefit.

In conclusion by giving the game a more solid objective, giving more resources to the player to manage and also balancing the outcomes in a versus battle to make the digivice to a “game”.