This Is A Linkle/Female Link Post

     A while back we were introduced to a "new" character for the up and coming Hyrule Warriors Legends game for the Nintendo 3DS, Linkle. Up until Linkle's debut she was just a concept art for the Hyrule Warrriors game. She was believed and written to be a female version of Link, the protagonist of the Legend of Zelda series. Now that she's an offical character in the game, Linkle is more of her own established character instead of being the female version of Link. This isn't more about Linkle's, but what she represented before she was made a full fledged character.
    Linkle represented an interesting ideal that whether the protagonist Link in the Zelda could be female. If you are new to the Zelda series the games and the Hyrule timeline spans across years with a new a different incarnation of the main characters Lunk and Princess Zelda. In almost each game you have a different Link and Zelda. This was introduced to the game Skyward Sword where Zelda was the reincarnation of the goddess Hylia and at the end of game both Link and Zelda's souls were destined to be reincarnated whenever Hyrule is in trouble. Linkle leads to a interesting theory that there could be a female incarnation of the

legendary hero. 

     It was a rumor that around Linkle's discovery as a concept art for Hyrule Warriors that the incarnation of Link that would be introduced in the upcoming Zelda Wii U game could possibly be a woman. The question is if Nintendo decided to switch the character of Link, and possibly Zelda, would it be a good decision?

     If Link was a woman in a possible Zelda game, it would be in fact good. Story wise, it would be interesting. It has never been said that the spirit of the hero has to be passed down to a male incarnation. It could add more to the Zelda mythology of the spirit of the hero being passed down to one person to another. It would be great as it would breathe new life to the supposed characters. It would be interested to see a Prince Zel and a female Link interact with the threat that could affect Hyrule.

     It could be important as it could symbolize what the character Link is suppose to be. Link is suppose to represent the link between him and the player. It is apparent that more women are playing video games as a hobby. It would be good for a girl who is new to not only video games, but new to the Zelda series to be able to play as a character that represents her.

What do you think about having a female Link in a Zelda game?

10 Weirdest Video Game Costumes Ever

Let's face it. Some outfits and costumes characters wear in video games are awesome. Some of are inspired to dress up as them this Halloween. When designing these costumes, designers can't do no wrong in making video game characters look totally cool, right? Wrong.

Dairy Bastard (God of War)


If you played God of War, you'd know that it is a very violent and brutal game. You're violently attacking cyclops and Greek gods apart in a quest for revenge. Kratos is a badass. You don't want to mess with him, maybe dressed up as a cow? In this costume, Kratos' blades of chaos are replaced with milk jugs of death? He also has unlimited magic and collects twice the amount of orbs, but his strength is reduced in half. Challenge of the Gods.

Nintendo Outfits (Tekken Tag Tournament 2: Wii U Edition)

You know what's worst than getting your ass kicked by Heihachi? Getting your ass kicked by Heihachi in a Mario costume. These costumes come with the Tekken Tag Tournament for the Wii U which not only your favorite Tekken characters dressed up as Nintendo characters, but it comes with power-ups like Mega Mushrooms which adds a little more strategy to fights, and a little comedy.

Alien Zack (Dead or Alive 5)


Fighting games sometimes offer fun costumes for character to fight in or just to see how . Nothing more fun and outrageous than Zack's alien costume. Zack gets two set of this costume offered as DLC. Zack as a character himself isn't new to outrageous costumes.

Tofu (Resident Evil 2)


When playing Resident Evil 2, you get to play a parody of The Fourth Survivor minigame called The Tofu Survivor where all the players of HUNK are all replaced with tofu. You get this by unlocking The Fourth Survivor and clear the Leon A/Claire B storyline 3 times with an A ranking. The tofu costumes reappear in Darkside Chronicles where the zombies are replaced with tofu.

Donut Drake (Uncharted)


The objective of a master thief is to get your pockets fat by stealing whatever you can. Apparently Drake heard otherwise. You get to play a much fatter version of Drake in Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. You get this skin by .

Evil Panda (Onimusha)

Onimusha is a game where you play a badass warrior. Nothing says badass like a evil panda suit. You get this by collecting 10 Flourites and ending the game.

Princess Heart (Silent Hill 3)


Silent Hill is a scary game made by a Japanese development team. Sometimes Japanese culture can rub off. Princess Heart costume Heather gets to play that is seems straight out of some magical girl anime or something. It even comes with a cute transformation sequence. It's more than just a skin. Heather can use the sexy beam to kill monsters that will try to harm her.

Rainbow Kuma (Street Fighter x Tekken)


This outfit is based off of R. Mika from the Street Fighter Alpha series that Kuma can wear. It's a nice spin not only because of Kuma's moves, but it's also a nice reference to another Street Fighter character, Zangief who Mika not only met and fought with a few time, but also Zangief was known to wrestle bears in his meantime.

Cheerleader Riptor (Killer Instinct)

When Rare rebooted the Killer Instinct franchise it offered some retro costumes as DLC. You get to play as Jago and Orchid in their classic costumes from the original games. You also get this. Nothing says spirit like a raptor in a cheerleader outfit. It seems appropriate since Riptor is a female. I wonder if someone at Rare is a Raptors fan.

Street Fighter Animal Costumes (Street Fighter 4 Ultra)

Again, when developers come up with DLC they tend to make things fun and sometimes outrageous. These costumes are nothing but. I admit these are kinda cool but their weird nonetheless. It's especially funny to see Makoto as a chipmunk and Hikan as a octopus.

What are some weird video game costumes have you encountered?

Goosebumps: Does It Suck?

I haven't done a review in a while, so over the weekend, I went out to see Goosebumps. For those who are new to Goosebumps or who wasn't born in the 90s, Goosebumps was children's horror book series penned by R.L. Stine. The books were scary. Really scary. The books launched a ton of spin-off book series like the Give Yourself Goosebumps books, which were almost as scary since you choose how the story goes, and a TV series, which was just as scary as the books. The books generated a ton or sales and money for R.L Stine and has stuck with a lot of people either as nostalgia or as we're still getting nightmares about evil lawn gnomes. Which is more than an apparent reason why there is finally a movie based off of the books and series, right? At first hearing that there would be a movie, I had two things run into my head. First excitement. I loved reading the books and watching the TV series growing up as a child so it's no shocker I would be stoked for this. Another thing was the notion of whether they would do justice to the series. To many of us, Goosebumps is in a part of of childhood memories. We grew up on this. We would like to see if things were done in a faithful way. Was it? Was it cool, of did it suck?

Story

Let's start off with story. The whole premise of the Goosebumps movie was that all of the monsters in R.L Stine's books are real due to him creating them with his super imagination.They are all unleashed on the town and it's up to him and a bunch of teenagers, who let the monsters out in the first place, to put them back before they ruin the town. The whole plot of the movie is almost like Jumanji for the millennials or better yet a nice little spin on the intro of the TV series. The pacing of the movie is a bit odd. The first half which introduces characters and set up their traits is a bit slow and it does lag on a bit. When the exciting stuff happens in the second half when the monsters are out and the protagonists have to go after them it's quick. I mean really quick. The first half felt longer than the second half. Also, what bummed me out were that there were some famous Goosebumps monsters that reduced to just cameo appearances, some that were used for promo. As many books Stine made you would've figured out that they would featured more than the ones they chose. One example was that they could've shown more of the monsters going on a rampage on the town and one of my favorites, the Haunted Mask, could've been that character making mischief attack people as the run from the chaos kinda like Gremlins. On a positive side there are some Easter eggs in the film. See if you can find them.

Comedy

As I stated earlier, Goosebumps stories were scary. People had nightmares about them. So what do you do when you have some of the scariest books of kid literature ever? You make a comedy out of them. I think you can say that the Goosebumps movie is a form of satire on the series. It pokes of its self. The monsters were portrayed in a sort of comical form as you would think they would be in the books. Overall, there were some jokes that worked and some that didn't and were forced. An example was all the scenes with the main protagonist's (Zach Cooper played by Dylan Minnette) mom played by Amy Ryan. They did try to do the cool mom thing but they couldn't. Perhaps they should watch Amy Poeler in Mean Girls and see how it's done. Jack Black is standard Jack Black, weird fat guy that does something funny once in a while, like in almost every film he's in. Take that as you may. The highlight of the film's comedy was Ryan Lee. He basically stole every scene he was in and was gold.


Final Verdict

Goosebumps was alright for what it was overall, a kids movie. It was good, but it could've been great. Some jokes were great, some could've been better. They had a lot of material to work with and utilized than the stuff they used. Despite that it was sorta enjoyable. Audience beware, you're in for a okay scare. It gets a 3 out of 5.

Pulling the Plug on the PlayStation Vita's Successor Part 2: Should Sony Quit Handheld?

     If you haven't read my post last week, number one, shame on you here's a link and number two I'll give you a brief explanation if you're too lazy to click, again shame on you! It was recently announced that Sony will not be making a successor to the PlayStation Vita. In the last post I gave reasons why the decision was obvious. To keep it short, it all came down to sales, lack of quality games and exclusives, and basically Sony sweeping it under the rug. Yes, Sony is done with making handheld console and games, but should they?  Welcome to part 2.
     Again, the Vita turned out to be a huge bust, but if they wanted, Sony could've tried again with the next system. If you want to look at Sony not giving up and do a successor to the Vita, you can look at it from Sony's rival Nintendo. Nintendo has had its list of failures as well as successes. You can't forget the Virtual Boy which was the company's biggest failure to date. The Wii U and 3DS even started out badly. Both suffered lack of sales compared to their predecessors and a good line of games to play at the start. It wasn't until Nintendo decided to launch a series of campaigns to help turn things around and boost sales did just that. There have been a increase of sales of sales for the Wii U and 3DS in the past year.

     But let's look at things from a realistic view. Sadly there is no place for Sony in the handheld market anymore. Nintendo still dominates the handheld market. Mobile gaming is on the rise. Sony, sadly has become a relic. From a techonlogical stance, there isn't anything Sony can do to keep up. They did try to do something with touch screen technology but it ended up looking and feeling awkward. It is obvious that Sony has decided to focus on other things as well. Again like Nintendo, they could;ve turned things around of they wanted to, but the truth was and is that they didn't and they saw it as pointless to do so and move on.

What are your thoughts on the subject. Should Sony make another handheld system?

Pulling the Plug on the PlayStation Vita's Successor Part 1: Why The Vita Failed

Handheld Gaming. It was and, in some ways due to mobile gaming, is a huge thing. I, myself prefer playing handheld games compared to games on console for the sole purpose that I can go anywhere. From anyplace in the city to anyplace in the house, I can play games. We have come a long way from when the Game Boy came out where we had to play an 8-bit game on a tiny screen, IN PROPER LIGHTING to systems like the Vita with amazing graphics and in 3D like the Nintendo 3DS. It's amazing to see how things can go in the future, except with the Vita...
     If you haven't heard, over the weekend it has been announced that there will be no successor to the PlayStation Vita. As shocking as it seems, not really, there are reasons why it probably wasn't a hard decision as to why Sony decided to pull the plug on making another PlayStation handheld.
     Let's start with the most important, sales. Sales is the huge factor as to why we will not have a successor. When the Vita first came out, it sold over 325,000 units in Japan, which was ok, but sales started to slump in the following weeks. Overall, in the first quarter, February 2012, it has sold 1.2 million units worldwide and over 2 million in software, compared to the PSP's 2.2 million in 2007, but most importantly short compared to the Nintendo 3DS' 3.61 million in its first quarter. Sales continued to go down for the Vita after its first year. As of now, it has sold approximately 4 million from its launch to December 2014 compared to its rival the 3DS' 53 million (17 million in 2014) and its predecessor the PSP's 80 million.
      The second is the probably the second most important, games. The Vita did not have a strong library of games to play. They didn't have that many exclusives that people wanted to play. What they had to offer nobody wanted and what they tried to get they couldn't deliver. What they had you could've played on the console games and were much better versions. Why would you play Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD on the Vita when you can get it in better resolution on the PS4? Having games, importantly a strong exclusive gaming library is important to get people to solely play that system. Nintendo has learned this when the Wii U suffered in its earlier years when it had nothing to play and noticed sales picked up when they finally gave us an abundance of games to play later on.
      Lastly, Sony did not care. They barely did any marketing for the Vita and the games they had to offer. When sales kept plummeting, they barely did anything to help pick things up. At least with Nintendo and the 3DS' sales which were less than the DS's managed to turn things around with doubling down on pushing the system out and giving us better titles to play with. Sony just did nothing hoping that people will eventually play the Vita and just quietly pushed it under the rug when less and less people picked it up.
      We know why it probably was a good decision for Sony to pull out of the handheld game and not make a successor. Another question could be despite how the Vita fared, should they? That's for Part 2. Stay tuned.

     What do you think contributed to the PlayStation Vita's demise?

The (Recent) Delaying of Mighty No. 9: Should We Delay The Outrage?

     Mighty No 9 is a 2D platformer where you are an Android who's mission is to save the world by stopping a number or robots who have been corrupted by a computer virus and find out who is the villain behind all of this. If this sounds like a Mega-Man game it must only be due to the guy who is making this game was also responsible for making the Mega-Man series, Kenji Inafune and his company he founded after leaving Capcom, Comcept. According to Inafune, Mighty No. 9 is a spiritual successor to the Mega-Man games as it mirrors them in terms of story, gameplay, and up until a few early sketches the main character himself.
     With the Mega-Man series being in the state it is now with Mega only making guest appearances in other games and the only news of a new Mega-Man game being made is of Capcom cancelling it, people have been clamoring to play this game. It shows when by how much money people have been throwing money at this game. Since 2013, the game has been funded by the fans and public on Kickstarter not only once, but a few times. The first time it met its $900,000 goal in two days back in 2013. With further stretch goals and donations from Paypal, over $4 million have been donated to the game to be made. It seems undeniable the people are highly anticipating the final production of the game and can't wait to play it, except that they will. It has recently been announced that the game has been delayed and will probably come out in 2016. The delay seems to be based on how to exactly release a proper demo of the game. This is a statement from their website:

"Although the demo had been finished and was ready to go, we ran into some very last-minute and unexpected complications with distributing the demo exclusively to all our backers through Steam. We’ve also been listening to your feedback about preferring to have a demo that is not time-limited. Given the complications with giving you the demo, we came to the conclusion that it would be better to make the demo DRM-free without any time restrictions.

Because this demo is exclusively for you, our backers, we still needed to have a way to get the demo to each of you individually and we’ve been looking into all the options. We’re currently working with our partners at Humble Bundle to prepare the demo for delivery through their service.

Unfortunately this change in our plans means that the release of the demo is going to be slightly delayed as we are currently working on retooling the demo for a DRM-free release. Comcept and all of our partners are working hard to get the demo ready and in our backers’ hands as soon as possible. We sincerely apologize for this delay, but we hope you’ll like the resulting changes!"

     As expected the fans and backers are angry about this sudden news and you can't blame them. They have invested money, literally millions, in this game and so far they really haven't gotten to see the result of their money. They will have to wait even long to play this game that they put their hard earned dollars in. Should they be mad? Again,it is justifiable they should be a bit upset waiting longer to play Mighty No. 9, but in a sense they should expect this.
     It takes a lot of time to make a game. Not just hours but months and even years to not only make it, but to perfect it. People need to realize that there is a lot going into this game with little resources. It takes longer when you don't necessarily have the proper resources to make something and you're doing it with no support from a major company, especially the most important one: money. Other than the donations on Kickstarter, Inafune had almost no support when coming up with the idea to make this game. He understands the admiration people had for the Mega Man series and the wants of playing games like that. That is the reason why he went on Kickstarter to make this game. The fact that Inafune and the production company has to go on Kickstarter in order to fund the game speaks volumes on how passionate they are on making this game. Overall, we need to be patient. We know it's going to be good in the end, hopefully.

What are your thoughts?

Why Watch Video Games When You Can Play Them Yourself?

     Jimmy Kimmel has been under some scrutiny recently. It all began when on his show he made a few jokes about Let's Play videos on YouTube. His comments haven't been kind about it. He stated that he doesn't get why they are popular and why people watch it. He also has said if why watch someone play when you can play it yourself.

     "Watching another person play video games is like going to a restaurant and have someone eat your food for you. If you like 'em, play them."

      The response from the gaming community has not been nice. Gamers have taken to YouTube, Twitter and other forms of social media they could and posted some nasty remark. Some have gone far as to give him threats and even wishing him to get cancer. Whether Kimmel knows it or not after all of the vocal response to his comments towards the gaming community of YouTube and Twitch, there is more to Let's Plays and Twitch streams than just watching other people play.
       People do watch Let's plays as a means to test out the game. They want to see if it is fun or good enough to buy for themselves. It works almost as better than reading a review online or in a magazine. You see the not only the game in action, but you see someone's reaction to playing the game.
      Aside from watching it as a decision to buy the game or not, and most importantly, Kimmel isn't realizing is that Let's Plays are a form of entertainment. People are not mainly watching just to see someone play a game. People watch it as a means of entertainment. It's more about who's playing the game. People love watching other people react playing games as it can be sometimes comical. Watching YouTubers like Pewdiepie and Markiplier react to what's happening in the game is indeed funny. It's more about the person's personality than the gameplay itself. That is the reason why these people have millions of views and subscriptions.
    This isn't an attack to what Kimmel said. This is more of an explanation as to why people watch Let's Plays. Of course it's normal how Kimmel, and others, react to Let's Plays. They don't get it and it's perfectly fine that they don't. It's not for everybody. Of course you would not get it and ask why would people watch Pewdiepie making weird noises playing Minecraft and Markiplier making funny faces everytime he plays Five Nights at Freddy's. The answer would be that people enjoy it and it's more than just watching someone play a game. However they can at least inform themselves and try to understand why it's popular. At least that's what he tried to do when after the outrage he invited YouTube celebrities Markiplier and MissesMae on his show and actually allowed himself to get educated. Whether he changed his views on Let's Plays is up to him.