Well well well, would you look at that. Like Dark Souls, Dragon's Dogma has a few gamers at it's heels wondering "Where is the love?" for PC gamers.

http://www.change.org/petitions/dragon-s-dogma-for-pc

Someone asked me, "Why isn't Capcom releaseing Draogn's Dogma on PC?", and I answered, "I have no idea.".

It is supposed that Dragon's Dogma is built on something called the 'MT framework' which means it's highly likely that it will have a PC release considering with MT Framework, it would have been designed on the platform. With the burden of proof requested someone shot an email at me which reads:

"MT Framework is an exclusive seventh generation game engine built to be used with "all of the Capcom next-generation games"[citation needed] on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (and later on the Wii and the Nintendo 3DS), as commented by Dead Rising, Lost Planet, Devil May Cry 4, and Resident Evil 5. MT stands for "Multi-Thread", "Meta Tools" and "Multi-Target". Originally meant to be an outside engine, but none matched their specific requirements in performance and flexibility. Games using the MT Framework are originally developed on the PC and then ported to the other 2 platforms."

With the added exclamation that, "Capcom already has a pc version of the game, they just don't want to release it because it will disrupt the console sales."

So, do you think that was the case with Dark Souls, if so - do you believe this will be the same case?

Either way, I've signed the petition as have a few dozen other people now. If you like Dragon's Dogma and you think it's cool, just sign it for that reason. There is no harm in pushing for something - if it's attainable, reach for it.

Do you want to see Dragon's Dogma on PC?
If you do, you can be apart of the push for it.

My review score is lower than most scores written by more prolific individuals who legitimately represent a publication or organization. With that said, I'm glad I didn't start by reviewing Skyrim or something because that would have been a shit storm for me, followed by possibly being shunned by Cblog readers and commenting folks.

So, I felt I had made some silly omissions from my review for SkullGirls. and I thought I would tackle the comments made while also incorporating elaborations and some stuff I might have missed out on saying.

Bulkmailer said:
"6.5 you son of a bitch? i kid i kid."

I'm glad Bulkmailer is joking a bit about the remark, and thanks for commenting. I realize that because many prolific reviewers who legitimately represent gaming websites are giving SkullGirls a higher score, it seems I might be nit picking. So what if I am? The Extras menu has little to no entries, sorry no, it has CREDITS, which is great because then you can see where credit is due and possibly stalk people on twitter or what have you. But aside from Credits, there is only a back 'button' which is redundant if you press B or circle. No cut scenes - because those are basically slide shows for the most part, no sound test or jukebox, no art galleries, nothing except credits and BACK. The menu has descriptive text that reads 'Credits...Art galleries and other various and sundry ephemera coming soon. So wait around for your 'Sundry ephemera', because. Also, 'Unlock Full Game' appears in the main menu and its descriptive text says "Upgrade to the full version of the game', and considering the character count and the fact that it has an extras menu with nothing - it really speaks for itself.



JoeTheProYaKnow said:
"I only played the demo and while I can see the love for it, I agree with your assessment of the controls."

You can see the love with your eyes. It's like watching Felix The Cat and appreciating it for being a cartoon of cartoons, you can see the love for the artform. Here, with SkullGirls you can see a love of fighting games and the technical aspects of fighting games coming through. Here, you can see the love of game creation at work. SkullGirls stands as what a game studio can do when you work (soul crushingly?) hard.

I should have stressed that being able to set the controls to your liking is possible. Yep, you can personalize your inputs. I wouldn't say doing so helps, I think what it is set to at default is the most 'natural' way to go about it. Although two buttons still need to be your short cuts and without a move list to reference it's hard to remember what LK+MP and MK+HP do. LK+MP is apparently 'Ensemble 1' while MK+HP is 'Ensemble 2', but what does that mean? Thanks for the comment.


rokNrolenemyNo1 said:
"The game is definitely made for people who play fighting games. It's a hard genre to break into if you don't have like-minded friends around to play with, and buying a new fighter and playing on your own or online is not an easy way to learn. Hence I get the feedback I've been hearing.

The game is pretty awesome, but I'm not sure I'll be playing it as long as Vampire Hunter or Super Turbo."

While I believe the technical aspects for a great tournament fighter are in place I find that SkullGirls is also a great way to learn more about the technical aspects of fighting games. It's a grass-roots sort of project in many respects, which I find follows through with perhaps fostering new appreciations for fighting games. I perhaps should have stated that it's probably a great place to start in terms of playing fighters. With all of that said and fresh in the mind do you think SkullGirls can stand the test of time? Not if you think about Super Turbo or titles like it, no. But that's comparing a legend to a story you just heard about a guy who something'something'ed and it was pretty cool.

Flamoctapus said:
"Can't say I agree, but good nonetheless. Also, F.HK is forward HEAVY kick, not forward high kick."

Heavy, ok, got that locked down now. Low kick, middle kick, heavy kick. It's high kick dammit!

Mr Andy Dixon said:
"Hate/10"

6 is the number of love. Is it the .5? Thanks for the comment.

Painwheel's introduction is tubes of what look like mannequin torsos floating in green fluid. Then, a character who looks like Lord Zed named 'Brain Drain' says, 'Obey Lab Zero' and Painwheel is suddenly a character. 6 is good and 6 sounds like sex. Sex is good, it can be bad for some I'm sure. I mean hey, I'm not going to write a discourse on people who have received elective or suggested 'gender reassignment surgery' and the ramifications it has had on their sex lives. I mean I would but that would take finding people who have had it and then interviewing them and I can't tell if that would be intrusive or flattering. Because on the one hand it's "I'm interested in your story, please tell me about it." and "I want to exploit the unfortunate chain of circumstances which encompasses your life.". I hope it would be the former.


TheManchild said:
"I never really got the desire for more characters. I know variety is nice, but if the game is polished and well balanced, I am more than happy to be stuck with a small number of fighters in exchange for that. I really like this game, decent review."

I don't want to compare a video game to the preferences people have for crackers while especially stressing that variety of characters would embody the preference for more or less salt on their crispy saltines. So, avoiding that and hoping a vague overview of a shrugged off remark is enough, thanks for saying my review was 'decent'. To me that means 'fair' and 'on point'. Thanks for the comment.

Johann Schmidt said:
"Well just going off the demo here but... Definitely made for people who already know how to play fighting games. Using F+HK instead of you know the actual buttons required to perform the move is crazy. It immediately told me "hey you noob you suck and will never be good at this game so don't even bother." The art was nice though I agree the music isn't very good at least the tracks in the demo weren't though the voices sounded good and of course per fighting game rules the story is so WTF you wonder why they bothered. So yeah 6.5 sounds about right for a mixed bag of a game."

Since you're going off the demo to gauge your opinion I want you to know that doing so is totally legitimated. How and why? A demo is the demonstration of the product, you want to see what it does. It's like info-commercials that spend half the time telling you about the product and the other parts of it telling you what you'll get out of the deal and how it's supposed to work by actually showing dramatizations. Likewise, a great demo will show you pictures of what you'll get in with the deal (buying the game), the meat and potatoes of the game should be on display (the core mechanics at work), and above all do all of this well enough so that you can find out whether it is for you or not. That's what a demo is supposed to do. If it doesn't sell the game by showing you what it is then it isn't a good demo and someone should have egg on their face for making a bad commercial that isn't entertaining, doesn't say what you'll get, and doesn't depict the product at work, so to speak.

A kicker for everything about the tutorial levels, having to want to learn the controls, and having to practice... no trophy for completing the tutorial. Not that this fact factored into my review in any way of course but... something snarky like 'Practice Makes Perfect" and a clue line like "Do it over and over..." would have probably driven it home.


fulldamage said:
"Though I doubt I'll invest in the full experience, I thought the demo was quite entertaining! The tutorials in particular were perhaps the best I've ever experienced in a 2D fighter - they really go in depth in trying to teach you fighting game concepts and how to execute them. (Okay, the 6 button launcher air combo tutorial was about the point where I totally lost interest, but I appreciate that it's there!)"

I like what is in the game, I just don't appreciate how much isn't in it. I don't want to hark on what 'could have been' because it's about what is, what's in, because that's what counts.

StriderHoang said:
"It's like Brawl is a love letter to Nintendo fans, except it's a love letter to the fighting game community but not nearly as accessible. As a consumer package, it's flawed. But it deserves any praise it can get because for the people who know their shit about fighting games, Skullgirls does a lot of things that feel like a rejuvenation of the fighting genre. Though the absence of a move list is a weird oversight."

I like how you made that first sentence sound like Smash Brothers Brawl and SkullGirls are like valentines cards or something. Would you pay $49.99 or $15.99 for a valentines card? Mind you it would probably have pop-ups, slides, pop-outs, and have a little thing that sings a song or something. Would it be worth it?

SkullGirls does a lot of things right when it comes to how it's tackled the genre, for sure.

Ramminchuck said:
"Though the absence of a move list is a weird oversight." I think when WakeUpSRK had Mike Z on he said it was a budget/time thing. If they took the time to put move lists in it would have taken away from some of the more awesome features. I believe it's being patched in though."

The whole possibility of their being cuts because of budget or release schedules retrains, is not a good thing. It means polish is lacking and is well known it's lacking because sacrifices were made to just get the thing to market - and hey, it happens. It happens a lot.

In terms of making sacrifices and weighing sacrifices - pretty sure that's when hard work turns into soul crushing work because you'll feel there are those few qualities lacking, things you could have done different. It's gotta be hard and I'm sure only those who are intimately involved in the industry truly know such sweet sweet sorrow.

---

Thanks for the comments. If I missed anything or you feel like you have something to add, check out my SkullGirls review and leave a comment. I might just update this post and respond.

Why did I do this? Because I don't really feel like I need to explain myself. A review should do that well enough, but I felt there were small details I probably could have touched down on and because it's a lower score and I will not edit a review unless it's a spelling or grammar error, I think commenting on comments is a good idea and people should do it more often.

Technically speaking Skullgirls sets itself up to be a future-proof and feature-packed tournament mainstay. It does well at opening players up to the complex world of fighting games and creates a solid foundation for nearly perfect latency free online multi-player action. The intense one vs. one, two, or three gameplay is exceptionally well balanced, taking away any need for a strictly tag-team mode. It's just too bad that this game tests to see how much patience you have for the genre.

The story of Skullgirls is simple, there is this thing called a 'Skullheart' and you want it because it'll grant you a wish. So each of the eight characters has a back story illustrating their brief history and motivations for the attaining The Skullheart. The story is shown through a set cut-scenes, if you can call them that, which are nothing more than generic slide shows of illustrations and text with very few mildly animated bits peppered in. The back stories are flimsy and the motivations are incredibly vague and obtuse for some characters, which makes it unclear who some of the characters are and why they are doing what they are doing. With that said there admittedly isn't really any solid story other than eight girls whom already appear to have special powers are looking to get a wish granted by getting something called 'Skullheart' from the 'Skullgirl'. Coming out of the story mode I found that each of the eight characters is actually already a Skullgirl, going beyond their art styles and skull motifs. There are a few moments because of this characteristic that it seems the game is going full circle, which grants an illusion or supposition of depth and mystery. Perhaps it's better to allude to the presence of story than to actual articulate it in this case as one of the characters is an undead zombie cat girl who lives with fish people whoes motivation it is to ressurect her 'lost' family, which you'd only have to assume means dead. That's just one character and it's a mess, so really pasting stories for an anthropomorphic pile of demon-goo, some kind of nazi-type nun, and some kind of Voldo creature with their spine attached to a metal wheel which they use as a weapon, pretty damn taxing. Any hope of incorporating these characters into one cohesive story is a pipe dream.

The sound effects and music are forgettable. Although it's clear an effort was made on the characters voices, which all sound like they fit very well with the characters save for a garbled and silly character called 'Double' who is some kind of incomprehensible demon-goo and whoes voice is audible but filtered through a generic 'underwater' effect. What little voice acting there is ,none of it is all too exceptional but it is passable.

Skullgirls leaves it up to the player to better verse themselves with each of the eight characters. Observing each individual characters attacks and abilities is incredibly important as it puts you in a position where can be aware of what is being executed onscreen at all times. You have to want to be good at it and you will not even be half-decent without practice. It is a game you cannot play at all -unless you are willing to put time into preparation and training. The problem with having done this literally destroys any hopes of having decent local matches with anyone who isn't familiar with the game.

The tutorial feels like a challenge mode with four difficulty settings, the first two are a cake walk. The first levels, teaches you basic movement, blocking, and jumping. The second levels move you into understanding chains, combos, and breaks. The third levels move into more technical aspects such as hit confirmation and a few other fighter nuances like breaking combo chains, recognizing open attacks, and seeing prime time to block. The fourth level tutorials can become frustrating very quickly as they are sets of complicated ques pushing the player to link special, jump, crouch, and standing attacks. With these ques being displayed as:

F+HK
Jump Forward
MP
c.lp
c.lk
s.F+HP

To anyone familiar with fighting games you could easily interpret 'F' as forward and 'HK' as high-kick, so that easily makes the first move forward+high-kick,. This leaves players to ask themselves, "What button is high-kick?". The option to display buttons instead of jargon can be testing at times, leaving players to check their button layout. The omission of scrolling input history is an inexcusable training-mode oversight which extends itself into the tutorials. With that said, the tutorial is absolutely necessary to verse yourself with the mechanics of the game and completing it is the only hope to beating anyone online or even getting past the last boss in story or arcade mode.

The tutorial is the only place you will find move lists of any kind. The training-mode allows players the rare opportunity to view hit-boxes which is a nice little detail, but doesn't save face for the omission of move lists or input history which are nothing new to fighting games and there is no excuse as to why these are not in the game. In the Skullgirls menu system, there are suggestions for players to go to the Skullgirls website and download the move list guide. Which upon checking out you will see is a .pdf with some pictures detailing nothing more than character specific move lists, some of which are only three character specific attacks long. Why this .pdf is not pasted into the game is unclear, what is clear though is that asking players to sit down at a computer to download and possible print it for reference, is unnecessary. Moreover, sending players to a generic 'put-files' site is tacky on an almost unprofessional level.


The Three-move-wonderwoman.

Without comparing Skullgirls to any other fighting game that's ever existed or will exist there is really only one defining feature about the game that encompasses all of its charm and any hopes it might have of being relevant latter. All and any of its success is based purely on its animation and on its animation alone. The animators for this title take up much more than half of the credits and with good reason, the polish is exquisite and any fan of 2D or hand drawn animation will be drooling over it, regardless of the characters being a female cast.

Animation is not enough however to save this title from being just another fighter. Even with characters designed to be as charming as a zombie-cat-girl can be, it just isn't enough. With only eight characters and without any move lists Skullgirls falls flat on having hopes of a well executed delivery, and saves itself only on its style and presentation, which carry the entire weight of its faults and imperfections.

6.5/10
Personal notes:

The move list thing is odd. Especially when there is no character with more than a dozen moves. Sure the move lists would have been short, but even more reason to have them in the game. I mean, with lists so short they could have been implemented as an option to be supper imposed into the background like in the tutorials. Which I should mention, covers every characters special attacks even though it might not feel like it.

I have to admit, at first I had a hard time wrapping my mind around the controls. The tutorial took me far too long to finish but I did not finish it begrudgingly either. Sure, it was a little late, I had other stuff going on, other things on my mind, but I was totally into it.

Something that bugs me about this game is that obviously, a lot of attention and detail was put into it, but aside from the animations, you really cannot tell. For instance, the backgrounds are fucking garbage. Some of them literally look like smudged crayon - if this on purpose to make the clean lines of the characters and effects pop out more, I cannot say that a little pastel and some final changes would not have made the presentation better but it would not look like smudged crayon.

Also, all of the animation is glorious, really well done stuff, save for one move that caught my eye. Cerebella has this messed up throw move and it looks really cheaply put together in one spot. The orange hat-arms thing pushes the character onto a blade and it looks like shitty key-framed flash animation, tacky. I mean, they could have put a throbbing vein, or some kind of indication of stress into the muscles of those giant orange arms, but it is nothing. It is a still animation of the arm moving down and then it stops, a little spurt effect, and the arm starts to move again.

Also, only having eight characters and being priced at $15 is fucked when several King of Fighters games are on PSN for less. In fact there are many fighting games on PSN and XBLA which are a lot cheaper and perhaps by rights, better in a lot of ways.


What will have made it better for me:
Better backgrounds, on top of a properly integrated move list for each character and input data during training and the tutorial would have gotten a bit more, and with at least two more characters that truly stand out from the others and have at least as much story mode slides as any of the other eight would have brought this game up by almost a full point. If all of these criteria was in the game it might have received an 8/10 from me.

With all of that aside, I enjoy what there is in Skullgirls. It sounds like there is more on the way for the title - which I did not nor will I factor into this review. This is an as-is basis at launch, this is it, fuck it, it is what it is and I like it, although I find the $15.99 price is a bit steep.

Whowherewhat:
Images taken from: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Characters/SkullGirls

Dante, the character of devil may cry - is an asshole.
What people first enjoyed about the character Dante was that he was kind of a pompous, cocky cock.
The man was a dick, but he was a dick to demons so it was funny.

As a trope the badass archetype, also being an asshole - makes sense and it isn't a bad thing to make an asshole such an outlandish prick that it's hillarious. It brings in a common sense of comedy about the realistic properties of:



If you picture the man laying down as a demon and the man sharting in his face as Dante - it becomes funny, or at least the asshole-badass formula would say so.

Take Captain Sheep Herder from Masseffect, if you pick all the asshole options they're mostly silly, but he's still being a total asshole because a lot of the time he either shoots someone or threatens to shoot them.

Commander Shepard is a Jerk, but would make a pretty good GQ cover model.

Dante is a 2 dimensional character in a lot of ways I find, inspired completely by 'The Vagabond' character Shinmen Takezo, also known historically as Miyamoto Musashi, who to no surprise has been the inspiration for dozens, more realistically hundreds of characters in stories of fiction and fantasy.

See, when Musashi was young and known by the name Takezo, his story illustrates a picture of a man who wants to make something of himself and nothing more, but to no fault of his own he chooses to go to war to make his claim as a man.

Barely surviving his first battle he brands himself a failure and scrambles through the shambles of the battlefield to rescue his friend. They meet two woman, get over their wounds - and then find that these woman are scavenger thieves who take the weaponry and materials from fallen soldiers. As such, a a local gang was in on what these woman did for money and came to collect and raid. Musashi defended himself, killing all of them with the aid of his friend. Soon after he was hunted by the gang boss and then the government.

How does this relate to Dante from Devil May Cry?
When Devil May Cry starts, what is Dante doing? He's a swordsman - getting by, doing his buisness.
A woman shows up, stirs up hell for him, and then one thing leads to another and he's branded a demon and hunted, all the while scoffing at attempts at his life and really just wanting to survive. Both characters have their will to live tested, and what's a cock-sure asshole going to do when he's tested? If he's a swordsman, he's going to cut a bitch.

Also, Musashi had been betrayed by members of his friends family and essentially his entire home town. Why? Because they attacked him, he defended himself and killed several villagers, also in some instances having them kill each other. Which is why the feudal lord of the area at the time, had him hunted.

Now historically, the documented story of Musashi is like many relics 400 years old or older, they're in rough shape, vague around the edges, with chunks missing like an old forgotten stone. The elaborations however - stand only to create familiarity in his legend. Dante is inspired by this legend, making Musashi probably an asshole too.

Samurai Asshole.

The new Dante, the re-imagined, younger, more of an asshole cocky cock - is probably going to be even more deeply set in an IDGAF mentality, and with good reason. If what Dante was - is going to be any indication of what he will be, you can be sure like Musashi, he's probably going to be an asshole.

But it'll be funny so fuck you.

If you want to see some comedy-asshole in action watch Kindergarden Cop. That might help you get it.
If not, play red dead redemption, sit down at poker, and then after one hand, even if you win, stand up and shoot the piano player (or all of the people playing cards if no piano player is present).

Silly. All of it.
Open social media + media tycoon tycoon type + four or five job holding gaming person type = Shit storm of shit.

Nathan shouldn't have done what he did.
No, he probably shouldn't be let back. Why?
He broke a binding contract is why. The guy can't be trusted - obviously.

Jessica's costume was skin, her fault? She made the costume and she's basically sexy sexism with tits and a perky set of personalities, and a perky personality.

Lols and pops chainsaws is only a big deal because a guy who makes art-house-picture videogames created a half naked bitch - and the game has blood and swears (cuses, curses, don't know?) in it.
It's like a highschool version of Bayonetta, which at least had some mythology nods. What's Lollyprop got? Half naked bitch, blood, and surrealism pop-art video game medium person behind it.

So here is my journalism on this subject:
That girl is talented at created costumes, that guy is talented at creating not-commercials and skits. In short, whatever fuck srsly.



Pre-professional to the fucking plinth.

Don't look at any of this on twitter, don't even bother looking at anything anyone says about this. If Holmes or Barnatt bring this up again - just shake your head in disappointment. Maybe Barnatt could be allowed back if he doesn't go in character and promises - in a legally binding way, again, not to interrupt or disrupt panels.

This is gas and it'll pass. It's passing. If anyone brings up how bad it stinks they're only going to pass some more, then everyone will know their shit stinks.

HP Sauce is one of the greatest things you can eat, ever. Why? Because there is nothing else like it. At any time when a person puts BBQ or hot sauce on something they could very well have used HP. HP has a wonderful aroma that fills your senses, the beautifully scented aroma of spices and mystery.

HP Sauce is an adventure. Every time you use it, it's going to be different! It changes food so drastically - every bite is an adventure! Just searching google is an adventure! Such as here: when HP Sauce was searched nude cyclists came up! British nudest cyclists! And they have cameras, look at them, they're out for adventure - bearing it all to the world. Just like HP!



There was a time when HP was rare and only one sort existed, now HP has grown as a brand and the first sort they had is the only one that matters. But the company diversified, for whatever reason - maybe just because they didn't like other peoples mustard? Don't know. Also, HP can be used instead of mustard, or really any kind of spread or sauce. You can put it in soup if you want to. It's versatile brown stuff.

Everytime sauce is posted, I think HP. Everytime someone reaches for the ketchup, the mayonaise, the BBQ sauce, the ranch dressing, a pudding cup - I think HP Sauce.

HP Sauce is one of the greatest condiments ever created by human kind. It's 200 year old recipe has yet to be outdone.

I give it an easy 8/10.
Why an 8? Because even though you can each it by the cup (just one cup), it isn't nutritionally sound to do so. If it was, HP Sauce would get a 9/10.

In my heart it's a 10.
On my food, it's an 11.

Thank you United Kingdom.