Persona 4: First Impressions

So I finally got Persona 4 and I am lending a PS2 console from a good friend.As I sit im my chair with a (working) PS2 controller, 2 Power Play energy drinks and a bag of chips I am ready to play this monster of a game.

OK. I am now 1 hour into the game and the one thing that II have noticed is that Persona 4 takes a long time to start and the reason I say that is because in Persona 3 Portable you are thrown right into the fight very early in the game,but in Persona 4 it takes you a whole hour to get your persona. This is by no means a bad thing, I actually prefer Persona 4s method because it has a massive build up and it is amazingly satisfying when you get your first persona and fight your first boss.

Persona 3s method was effective but it wasn't built up so it felt really random. In Persona 4 you spend about 2-4 days just meeting new characters and learning about them.I have met about.....7 main characters, here are the names:

 

Yosuke Hanamura

Chie Satonaka

Teddie

Igor

Yukiko Amagi

Margaret

Nanako

and your uncle whose name escapes me lol

These characters are incredibly interesting and have a lot of depth to them, but probably the most interesting about them is that they are not who they seem to be in the beginning.What I mean by this is that for your "team" members to get their personas, they have to face their TRUE self. example. Yosuke seems like a happy-go-lucky guy that is terrified that people are getting murdered but in actual fact, he is bored all the time,thinks everyone is a pain in the ass and gets exited when the murders start to occur. This adds a whole new layer of depth to the game and its only the first hour of the game, OMG I am soo exited for the rest of this game. Persona 4 is a 60+ hour game that draws you in right from the start.

As soon as I complete the game I will do a review on it for you guys.Remember to check out my youtube channel at XCoalTrainXZA .PEACE.

Why the blog posts are slowing down

From now onwards my blog post will be posted at a slower rate because I'm trying to focus on my YouTube channel. When people watch a YouTube video they don't know how much work goes into making the video ,it takes A LOT of work. So i want to focus on making content for my channel and it takes a lot of time, I will try to add more blog posts but I don't know how much blogs I will be able to post.

 

OK so......what should the rest of this post be about? I want to know what is your anime history. Before you answer the question let me explain, what I mean by "what is your anime history" is what were the animes that got you interested in anime, I don't want to know what was the first anime you ever watched, because almost everyone will say Pokemon, Dragonball Z or Digimon. For me it was One Piece, because I enjoyed it so much that I actually went on the Internet and researched it and discovered a whole new world of anime and it opened my eyes to this world, even though I had watched 5 different animes before this, they never made me actually want to get up and research them. that is also why One Piece is still my Number 1 anime.

I struggling to think of new topics. Oh here's one. I finally got Persona 4 for PS2, but I did not just get 1 I got 2, so what I'm going to keep the second one in its shrink wrap and start ,what I like to call, The Ultimate Persona Collection. I became sooooooo amped when I thought of this idea. As soon as I finish the game ill let you guys know what I think.

OK I need one more topic to talk about. Instead of talking about a topic, I'm going to ask you guys a question. What game do you love soo much that you would buy 2 of them and never take the second one out of the shrink wrap?? I'm looking forward to you answers.cheers guys. PEACE.    

Girl Gamers and My Youtube Channel

The guy that sent this is a fucking idiot

There is a certain topic in the gaming world that has been talked about a lot but never fully understood,that topic is Girl Gamers.Gaming has always been considered something only guys do, but that assumption is completely wrong.Haven't you ever wondered why why girls aren't as interested in gaming as we are? There are multiple answers to this question and I will be discussing a few of them. One of the reasons are the way we treat girl gamers online.using terms such as "make me a sandwich" or "shouldn't you be in the kitchen" has polluted the online community and has made it difficult for girls to play games online,if anyone uses any of these comments online or offline, they are considered a instant dick.Girls can be better than guys at games but we don't want to believe it.

Why would someone send this to a girl???

The second issue is introducing the female audience to gaming and keeping them there.Have you noticed that most of the protagonists in games are guys? this has a surprising effect because this is why girls assume that games are not for them,and even when the protagonist is a girl, the girl is mainly there for the guys pleasure (and what I mean by that is that the female protagonist is a big boobed idiot that makes sexual sounds and moves). When girls see use playing these types of games they are generally put off by this and have a bad image of games in their head. Game industries have noticed this issue and have done what they can to make games a bit more female friendly.

If you think that the average gamer is a 15-30 year old male then your assumption is in some sense wrong, let me explain what I mean by that.Since the rise of casual games,the amount of girl gamers has increased greatly in recent years.All those girls playing Sims,Farmville and Zuma greatly outnumber the amount of people playing Call of duty or Halo. This is NOT a bad thing, its everything but bad, because if girls continue to play these types of games will eventually move on to the Halos, CODs and the Dead Risings.Unfortunately the small majority of girls gamers are very scarce in stores, but you do get those girls gamers that are counting the days till Skyrims release.In some ways these girls are alienated from other girls because of their hobby.Let me give you a example.I was at one of these casual family get togethers and the guys were talking about guy stuff and the women were talking about women stuff, but then a women came over and she was a gamer and a game reviewer. All the men were interested about her job and wanted to talk to her, but then when she wanted to talk to the women they had nothing to say to here and ignored her (btw.this is a true story but it didn't happen in my family)

At the end of the day we would love for women to join us in halo and call of duty matches,it would just make things more fun and would open up more conversation options.If you try to talk to a girl about games thing will get awkward fast.Hopefully all this will change in the near future and there won't be anymore gender lines drawn in the gaming culture.

The last thing thing I would like to talk about in this post is about my youtube channel.I started a youtube channel about me collecting games and gaming/anime swag.The videos have been coming in at a very slow rate and that is because I have no money and no time to actually produce these videos, but I am starting to make more.I currently have 2 videos on my channel, so check them out, and subscribe.Here is a link to my channel XCoalTrainXZA's youtube channel

 To conclude this post I would like to thank you guys for reading my blog.PEACE.

 

Time Management and Money Issues

Ever since this year started I knew that I would not have as much time as I used to have to play games and do all the things I wanted to do, But I never knew that it would be as bad as it is right now.I bought the X-Box 360 game Resonance of Fate almost 5 months ago and I have yet to complete it.When I got the game I was very exited to play it because of its unique and very challenging gameplay.I only managed to complete a small section of the game and it had me wanting to play more, but the fact is that I can't because I was to busy doing other shit that I wasn't able to play anymore of the game.Hopefully I can use this upcoming holiday to catch up on some well deserved gaming.Time management doesn't just effect us gamers, it also effects everyone else that has a specific hobby or something similar. 

My second point is the amount of money issues that a South African gamer faces everyday (or should I say every release date....). I got a friend who's birthday just passed, he managed to gain a large sum of money from friends and family.Now considering the large amount of games releasing between mow and December, The problem is that even though he has money, he still can't afford most of the games that he wants to get before the holiday season. This is a huge problem for South African Gamers because certain games seem to disappear in an instant. A good example of this is the game Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 for the xbox 360, there was only 1 store you could pre-order the game from and one day after the games release it was gone, and it was seriously gone,there was no chance in hell that you would find that game in stores here.I was lucky enough to find this game on Take Alot.com, you might have to go to their UK department and it might cost you a arm or a leg, but if your a dedicated collector like me,you will get this game. 

I managed to do a quick survey at school, asking gamers what they think makes a game good. I was very pleased with the results. The majority of them said that its the story that makes a game good,some said that it was the gameplay and 2 of them said that graphics are what makes a game great.I also think that its the story that makes or breaks a game, because even if the game looks bad you will still want to finish it because the story already drew you in,same goes if the gameplay is bad.If you think back to the NES days and the days of arcades you will understand what I mean,those games looked like shit but were still amazing and kept eating our coins.

I'm going to conclude this post by saying that I have just ordered Persona 4 on Take Alot.com.I will have a review up as soon as possible.

If you have yet to see what Persona 4 looks and sounds like, here is the opening cinematic to the game.Enjoy. PEACE.

Persona!!!! FTW!!!!!!!!

I would like to say one thing before I continue writing this blog. This is not a English test or a English essay, I can type any way I want (yes I am talking to you DuPex...) .Now comes the good part, This blog post will mostly be about some news i read recently about some of my favorite games. I'm going to start with best possible news and when I say "the best possible news" I MEAN IT!!!!! If you didn't know, I LOVE ALL PERSONA GAMES WITH A PASSION and the news was that Persona 5 is in early development, so it will only come out late 2012 or 2013. You can only understand my love for persona once you played it for yourself. The next piece of news is that persona 4 is getting a remake called Persona 4: The Golden for the Playstation Vita. I never had a good reason to get the PSVita but now I'm going to try and get it day 1. The last bit of persona news is probably the best piece of news and it is a Persona 2D fighting game. Atlus studios are going to team up Arc Systems Works (Blazblue and Guilty Gear games ) to create a amazing fighting game. Imagine playing a Persona fighting game at EVO. I got one problem with this news though and that is that I will have nothing to keep me busy for the time that i have to wait for these amazing games. I got a few options for games to keep me busy while I wait. The candidates are Skyrim, Mass Effect 3, FFXIII-2 or the older Persona games, if you got any suggestions please let me know.The following pictures are pictures of the new Persona 4 fighting game.

As you can see, the game looks amazing and if you played Blazblue you can it was made by the same people

The character select screen

The game will include characters for the Persona 3 and Persona 4 universe

If you have never played a persona game, then I cannot recommend it enough to lovers of long RPGs and Pokemon.If you want to know why, check out the review of Persona 4 on Gametrailers or IGN. Cheers, hope you enjoyed the post. PEACE.