Springtime Gamin'

There's a cafe in Hell, too.

Odin Sphere turned out to be a mildly entertaining game. It's a beat-em-up game with some very rudimentary leveling. The twist is that the experience is gained only minimally by fighting, and the rest by eating at restaurants and cooking.

A friend of mine had told me that Japanese people will almost never claim to have a religion or be religious, yet their cultural attitudes toward food is pretty religious. While America is probably dead last in terms of rich countries' quality of food, Japan is the only country I've traveled to where local food is more expensive than imported food. At the start of the meal, you say a phrase about beginning to eat. Also, it's considered good manners to eat all the grains of rice in your bowl, and if you've ever seen a Japanese lunchbox, you'll know that it's always worth having multiple tastes in a meal, no matter how small. So many of their tv shows have a food segment, and Japanese dishes always strive to have lots of colors. I mention all this because The Japanese respect for food shows up in games, whether it's food to restore HP or some usually-stupid fishing mini-game.

Dad's an asshole in this game, too!

But back to Odin Sphere: it was 5 5-hour campaigns that center around a few events from your characters' different perspectives, but the plot is so littered with predictable tropes that I skipped more than half of the cutscenes. Nevertheless, it was fun to mash buttons and see how many levels I could gain off a good eating sesh.

Next up is Murdered: Soul Suspect. This detective game is more of an interactive story that is very well-told. Great voice acting, slick graphics, and one of my favorite game features: the collectibles unlock content. The extra stories are only a few minutes long, but pretty awesome.

This mode sucks!

Side note, I wanna jaw about the newest Call of Duty. Mop up on Aisle 7, there's been a spill of haterade. Boo on going to World War 2. I said before that Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare was really awesome. I think it's silly that no one played the game because they were sick of the franchise, and then turn around and applaud the series switching back to WW2-era combat. Full disclosure: I am super biased against WW1 and 2 titles because the genre is saturated, I usually can't tell who's who (green vs gray), and the weapons all look and feel the same. CoD should have stayed in the future. It was more like Titanfall than Halo and the next Battlefield could have been that era, following up to 2016's title. The only real way to save the situation for me is if Battlefield's next game was futuristic. Like the franchises trying to one-up each other. Anyhow, that's not going to happen, and I'll probably end up playing it, and hoping to high hell that there is no zombies mode.

Anyhow, last update is that one of the titles on my 2017 Gaming Goals is on sale! I just bought I Am Setsuna for 40% off! I'll get around to it before the summer.