Remember that last rant? I complained about a lot of bosses but the rant itself was inspired by this dude:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY1JlafpGy8

What's funny is that Jin (the first character used in the vid) is the PERFECT character to kill Ragna. In fact, he can break the AI in the whole game. You wanna know the secret? Low A, B, C, D (Frostbite), repeat. I kid you not. This works on almost everyone. I got a damn PERFECT against Unlimited Rachael by doing the same move constantly. Why? Because the AI is programmed to attack after it's frozen so every time you re-freeze it, it's considered a counter hit. Is this the kind of AI we settle for? Is is ok to make overpowered bosses to make up for crappy AI? Who else noticed this? Now the game isn't hard anymore because I know how the AI behaves. WTF!? :(

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S09FcHCMBG8&NR=1

Seriously, who in their right mind thought it'd cool if Unlimited Ragna was twice as fast as his normal form, had outragous health, and recovered insane amounts of health with his Drive attacks because he's constantly in Blood Kain? That's some SNK-quality crap. He makes Seth look like Barney the Dinosaur. WTF!? I get the feeling character balance was at the end of the to-do list when it came to making BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger. Fighting Ragna just feels.....unfair. He leeches your life for christ's sake. The hell!?

Come to think of it, some other bosses tick me off. Dural from Virtua Fighter plays as if she reads your friggin' mind. Also, if she beats you, it's over. You can't just "Continue" and try again. It's as if she isn't even a real boss because the game doesn't require you to beat her. Not like it matters. Virtua Fighter has crappy unlockables anyway :P

Another pain in the @$$ is Jinpachi. This dude shoots friggin' fireballs! He's fast as hell and is hard even on Easy mode. I know he's like Heihachi's Dad or something (Tekken's story is all over the place) but, damn. I might as well be fighting Omega Shenron or something. I mean, Jinpachi is basically a demon. He has a mouth growing out of his abs. A mouth with fangs! Nuff said.

Of course, last but, not least, a boss bad enough that I had to a blog about him immediately afterwards, there's Seth. Maybe it's just the mechanics in SF4 but, Seth is just cheap. He's weak as hell the first round and then he just snaps out. He has the best moves from ever character. His dragon punch has like 3 extra hits compared to a normal one. He shoots 2 sonic booms at once. He can teleport. He has Zangief's piledriver. It's too annoying to bare. What'sad is that spamming actually works on this guy. He's just a frustrating boss mainly due to fact that his attacks make him powerful enough to comeback even when he's on his last shread of life. That leads to a lot of "close matches" with Dural knock-off. At leastI managed to beat him though. Ragna is just broken beyond belief. -_-

I simply don't understand what brings people to say this game is so good. I can just barely call it game. It's not there isn't an objective but rather, Flower has no real challenge or difficulty. I guess that's why they call it a "zen game" or whatever but, what's so great about that? Why pay $10 to stare at pretty graphics and "relax" with such a "soothing" game? Really? Relaxing? Flower is anything but, relaxing. I got no sense of enlightenment of any kind from this game. I remember one of my Game Informer magazines had a section about this game and said something like "if video games could be poems, Flower is the game to prove it". It's bad enough that stories in video games are shotty as is but, now we have a game being praised for poetic meaning that it either doesn't have or simply doesn't make sense. I guess it has something to do with preserving nature or appreciating nature but, it just isn't entirely clear. I couldn't even bring myself to hate this game mainly because the only thing to worth getting mad at is the pricetag. Since the game barely does anything, it's pretty hard to argue that it did something wrong. Than again, maybe that nothingness IS what's wrong. Some people go as far as to say it's one of the best games this generation. Just anothet overhyped game to throw on the pile if you ask me. I guess my main complaint here is...why? Why is this game considered to be so magically? I really wish someone could explain because I'm not seeing it. :(

For someone who has never been into this series, I'm really surprised by how fun the game is so far. The story and characters are actually good. That's one thing I never thought I'd say about a FF game. I actually enjoy battles in this game. In previous FF games, I always dreaded having to engage in random battles. I honestly don't see why people are complaining. FF13 is fun to play. Then again, we're talking about people who hate the fact that FF13 is a multiplat. People will complain about anything these days. :P

I know how much people love this company and that's understandable but, the games themselves are some of the most frustrating experiences I've had in gaming.

Pokemon: As a kid, I was a real fanatic about Pokemon up to the Johto league. The game was fine until I learned more about how it really played and how unbalanced a lot of the match ups were not just regarding Pokemon types but rather some Pokemon are garbage while legendaries are ridiculously overpowered. One thing I always hated about Pokemon was random chance. Every turn is like playing the lottery. I have to pray the attack won't miss or an on coming attack doesn't do critical damage. To top it off, having legendaries you can't catch is pointless. Why make Pokemon like Celebi who need to be downloaded at an event and can't be captured? If you miss out, you can NEVER get those Pokemon assuming you don't just hack the game. It's just too time consuming for me.

Metroid: I liked Super Metroid though, I can't say I like the series itself. This is mainly due to my experiences with Fusion and the Prime series. Metroid has some of the most asinine backtracking I've ever had to endure. Not to mention that the mapping was never clear as to where to go next. I remember in Prime one that I was searching different areas, constantly running into locked doors I couldn't open. Why even create the illusion of freedom when the game is this scripted? There was like several different paths and only one right path. I simply gave up after a while. The first-person view point and scanning didn't help matters. Fusion was basically the same thing in 2D. This simply isn't fun gameplay.

Mario: Besides the quality police who shove the series down my throat, the spin-offs and Sunshine just make Mario hard for me to love. Mario is more like a brand than a franchise. Mario Kart is like Mario brand racing. Same for tennis, soccer, etc. Mario party, Mario basketball,.....when's Mario bank management coming out? This wouldn't be so bad if these games weren't so horribly lucked based. Mario party and Mario kart rely almost entirely on chance. That makes some sense regarding Mario party but Mario kart is just frustrating chaos. I'll be in the lead and then BOOM!, blue turtleshell or some other BS that comes out of nowhere. The AI is also either really stupid or cheats. I swear Smash Bros. Melee has some of the worst game design choices I've been cursed to witness. Why the hell does the CPU turle on Very Hard? Why is Very Hard just poorly designed all-around to begin with? The way you unlock characters in that game is just stupid. Glad they fixed that in Brawl but, still. Then, of course, there's Sunshine. I'm sorry but, Sunshine simply isn't a good game. The final boss is dissappointing to say the least, story is a ripoff of Sonic Adventure 2's story, that damn boat just had crappy controls, and the overall game is bother to actively play. The graphics and environments are nice but, the game is riddled with missions rather than real levels and I still don't like how Mario jumps in a straight line and can't double jump. Also, FLUDD had no soul. That thing wasn't too bad until it had that near death scene. WTF? It's a water-squirter. A water-squirter that barely qualified as a real character. Not to mention some of the challenges almost made me throw my controller. That Sand Bird crap was annoying and Mario fails at swimming or rather swimming in video games fail. Add on the hype behind Super Mario Sunshine and it's the perfect recipe for a game I can't stand.

So yeah, basically, these are just some of my experiences regarding some of big name Nintendo franchises and I felt like if I ever come off as hating on Nintendo when saying I don't like the Wii or I don't like the Wii's first-party games, this rant might explain why I say those types of things. It's not like I flatout hate Nintendo but, I can't say I'm a Nintendo fan by any means. As always, this isn't meant to offend people, just expressing my thoughts.

What else can I say. I'm on my second playthrough on Crushing and I'm really trying to finish the trophy set for UC2 but, actually playing the game just annoys the hell outta me mainly due to 3 reasons.

1. The "GOTY" status the game has achieve on other sites plus the overall praise of the game. It isn't so bad the first time through that's just it. I'm basically forcing myself through the second playthrough just so I can honestly say I earned the Platinum trophy.

2. It's made by Naughty Dog, one of my favorite developers. If it wasn't made by them, I probably would of skipped Uncharted 2. I don't neccessarily feel betrayed by them rather it's just Uncharted 2 isn't in the same league as any of their past games. Me being a fan of those games just makes Uncharted 2 all that much harder to love.

3. To me, it just isn't all that fun. What blows is I also bought Uncharted 1 under the empression that Uncharted "kicked ass". Really, the story just barely qualifies as original and the characters are forgetable as can be. I wouldn't call Uncharted bad but, it's the first time I played a ND game and was disappointed. If anything, at least it's not like that time I played Resistance. That game made me just want Ratchet over and over again if games like Resistance are IG's idea of a new IP.

I guess I said all that to say I offically hate buying into hype and what kills it for me is that Uncharted 2 is made by ND of all companies. I mean these are the same people who made Crash for crying out loud. One things for sure, I'm not buying anymore "GOTY" titles. :(

Got all Trophies for Sonic Unleashed. This was my first platinum trophy. I have to say that Sonic Team really did overhaul the content in Unleashed. There were tons of extra content and the main story was a pretty decent length as well. You need to dedicate a lot of timeinto this game in order to finish it. Not to menton was pretty hard as well. :P

Battle Fantasia finally reached PSN!

I have to say I was caught completely off guard. It's funny cause I had no idea what to expect from this game yet, I was certain that the vibe of the game (especially considering the main character) would turn me off. It was actually pretty interesting. One thing I really liked was just how fast and fluid the gameplay was. Everything worked amazingly well and the combat was very easy to learn but never felt like pure button-mashing. The style I guess is something I'll have to get used to but it certainly isn't bad. You get some gruesome finishing moves the game that earn bonus points that lead to ranking at the end. The type of medal you earn (bronze, silver, gold, etc.) is determined by score. There was also an option for leaderboards which definitely seems like a plus for this type of game. Pretty much everything I thought about this game changed the minute I played it. I hope the final product really delivers. This should be a good game.

I was sort of surprised to see that I clocked in about 50 hours before reaching the final boss. It's kinda weird too because I didn't think it would end the way it did. Though, through it all, I really enjoyed this game. There is an Encore Mode with harder enemies, extra items, and even a new dungeon so I'm not truly finished with it. I'm happy to know that I actually want to play it again though. That's the sign of a good game. I'll definitely be playing through this again.:)