Criminal Girls review.

Been delving into the Vita for a while now and its pretty obvious that this is going to end up a JRPG machine for me complete with Square Enix token localisation of its biggest hits and the like.  I already have Disgaea 4 and Persona 4 the Golden ( basically an Extended Directors Cut, think of what they did with Persona 3 Portable on the PSP but with even moar content) and Criminal Girls Invite Only.

Criminal Girls.

Two of those games are stone cold classics the other one not so much, and I'll tell you why.
Criminal Girls was originally a PSP game that didn't come to the west during the consoles lifespan.  There's a bloody good reason for it, as its a massively pervy dungeon crawler letting you chastise juvenile delinquents in order for them to learn new skills.  There is a Kotaku review that isn't fit for purpose written by Mike Fahy (sounds like a two bit Evangelist) here or rather where the link is and I'll be riffing off of that while doing a review of it myself.

I remember this being trailed a bit over at Andriasang before it shut up shop (ironically I later moved to Kotaku and found it totally boring, this was ages before GamerGate and accusations of corruption and nepotism so my axe to grind with Kotaku started way back) and though it looked cool.   I did go looking for it on download sites a while back, but when I finally found it had been updated and released for the Vita, I just had to snap it up being a big Nippon Ichi fanboy that I am.

First impressions is that this is totally what I would call a Grindhouse game.  You know a totally insane concept with a healthy dose of good old exploitation and or ultra violence.  If you want to know what makes a grindhouse game, think Hotline Miami Video nasty schlock style or  or Bayonetta 1 and 2, an insane witchcraft kung fu hairstyle / outfit combat style action game.

This is in the same style for those who do not know, you apply for a prison warden job at a prison that is at the depths of hell, overseeing juvenile delinquent girls and helping them atone for future crimes they will go on to commit.  So far so Prisoner Cell block H, especially with the Vinegar tits style warden slapping you around with every misstep, but just who are your charges you may ask.  I don't remember the names of all of them, there is the mad one with massive jugs who tries to lay you out with one punch everytime (She's called Ran), there is Kisaragi who is blonde and the most reasonable of the bunch,  Sato is a loli style character looking for Yuko, though at the moment I don't have a clue who that is (friend / sister / small puppy?) finally there is the dark haired one with the biggest rack of all (she's called Alice and appears to be Psychic).  She doesn't say much and what she does say is accompanied with a weird bleeping sound.   Its also implied that there are 4 more girls to come but at the moment we don't know who they are.

As you may have noted a long while back, this is a top down style Dungeon Crawler reminiscent of those you got on the old PS1, not a rogue like as I previously thought.  Its a pretty much a perfunctory one at that as well.  Its got some generic enemies to fight (yay slugs) and a good dose of H action courtesy of the infirmary scenes.

In fact to do anything in this game you are going to need to spank the living daylights out of any of the girls you own, they won't be able to attack until you do.  Administering strict discipline to your charges will of course open them up for learning various attacks and even let them open up to you as a person.  This is done by defeating the aforementioned slugs in battle and dealing out 'CP' points to your girls in a bizarre touch screen minigame.

There is quite a bit of censorship here which is understandable as they have to sell it to Murica, so you get a pink fog obscuring your view of your jail bait charges, (you don't see anything TBH, its panties and obscured nudity only) and if you do it well you will level them up and unlock some abilities.  Combat is a 4 way affair, you pick the girl that has the most to say (normally, lets go old lady, attack x2 and I wish I was kidding here) and whale on what ever enemy has triggered your random encounter (normally a slug but it could either be a weird looking hog or a raven).  When the creature dies you'll get the traditional cash, XP and boost to your CP points or whatever they were called.  There is an infirmary where you can heal up, save your game and administer discipline and that is about it.

The bottom line here is that despite the whole spanking fetish angle the game isn't that great, I can't think why this was ever a physical title as it would have worked a lot better as a cheap download from the Playstation Store.  Price it at £10 or £15 and you would have something that while not great would be ideal as a cheap curiosity. As it stands as a full price title its not worth your time, but if you can pick it up cheap then its worth delving into it.

PSN and You.

Further adventures in stupidity would be the better question here, not only have I got a brand new charger out of this thanks to the one bundled with it being broken as hell, but have against my better judgement signed up for a PSN account.  I don't have a regular subscription as yet, as there is no way in hell I'm going to register my bank card with them due to Sony's past track record of being hacked.   I'm a bit of a dinosaur when it comes to gaming, being a resolute offline gamer, don't like MMO's or Call Of Duty bullshit (played the Facebook incarnation of Maple Story ages ago shock horror it was terrible) so forgive me if I'm behind the times.

The point of this awkward rambling is this, we did a search for some Disgaea 2 DLC on the Playstation plus store with no luck. I had it downloaded from a number of places that had 'archived' some DLC outside of the PSN but couldn't get my legitimate backed up Disgaea 2 to recognise it, so I decided to do it legit for once and use the PSN to download it to PC and transfer it across to memory card, but apart from a load of stuff that is of fuck all use (extra costumes you pay for that can GTFF) its not up there (or not that I can see, I am noticeably bad about looking for stuff like this).  

Thing is I wouldn't have to pirate if it wasn't deleted and when I do all I get is the U.S version that never works here, I haven't found an EU version that works sadly. I don't know if the Vita can be done the same way and by that I mean transfer stuff from PC to a card or via a cable, not rampant piracy, though god dammit it does need a kick up the arse somehow.  

I don't have Wi-fi as my connection is wired, I know its kinda old fashioned and that but I don't play on line, like I said and get some pretty good speeds as I don't have a myriad devices leaching off it to support (also on fibre optic which is fast). Have to look into this to see what is required of me to get stuff onto and off of my Vita, maybe some of my old PSP games from the Hard Drive / memory card though I doubt that would work.

I'll leave you with this on the impermanence of things from the eminently readable EFF.ORG about how making a proxy server to preserve MMO's was recently shot down by the DMCA.

EDIT: You can buy PSN cards from Wilkinsons though they tend to be high value cards, Game may have them too as well as stuff on card to download.  Non UK residents can erm talk amongst yourselves for a bit.

Emperor's Birthday.

Finally finished scanning SaGa Kaleidoscope and as its my birthday here is a little gift for you, the whole mag as a download from Dropbox.

Edit: Now with a smaller 67MB archive shared via Dropbox, with 52 pages all in Japanese covering the Silver Anniversary of the Romancing SaGa / Saga Frontier series, just to let you know what you are getting yourself into.  While it uploads here is a nice image from one of the pages. Yeah I'm pretty sure it could have been smaller but seeing as its been years since I've had to zip anything

As its finally uploaded you can download the whole thing here.  Enjoy.

Vita(lly) Important

An early birthday present to myself is an upgrade from my much abused PSP (no battery, custom firmware, mains operated) to a shiny used Vita.  First impressions is that its a neat bit of kit and that Sony do not know what to do with it.  For me its a chance to play a few of the later Disgaea games which were PS3 only at present and also gives me another chance to run the Vita loser picture from their promo magazine.

I haz a life honest.

Also as it seems all the best stuff is the downloadable stuff from the PSN store am actually wrestling with the fact of embracing a PSN account. They do top up cards for credit and think at one time it was free sign up with no subscription, though that could have gone by the wayside, we fancy some TXK action and maybe some DLC for Afternoon of Darkness thanks to all the downloads I found of it not running on my PSP.

They bundled with us a nice custom memory card, that reminds me of a M2 card you got in certain old Mobiles (quick look online, its the exact same thing), which really should be a Micro SD slot.  Its a bit thicker and wider than Micro SD, and crucially much more expensive, I suspect they'll be a hack to Micro SD cards in sooner or later.  Even worse they bundled it with some sports games via a scratch of code to download from PSN. I hate sport in nearly all its forms and they have golf and racing including Gran Turismo PSP and Wipeout Future (I have the soundtrack for this and never cared about the game even though it gets rave reviews) along with Motorstorm so will be looking to flog this off.  Wanted the Indie pack with its Team 17 remakes of Alien Breed & Superfrog and Hotline Miami that is the most video nastyesque game evar (sound track on this boss too).   As a bonus I got a new Game card as the old one got lost on the bus and a CEX card so can flog off old games here when my confidence spikes again.

Richie Benaud dead.

Like I say my antipathy of sport extends to most forms, I've blogged about snooker before and the masters (starts next weekend), but cricket I don't much care for.  I only mention this here because my uncle was a massive cricket fan (he moved to Oz when my aunty died to be with his family), and can remember this on his PC sometime in the mid 2000's he had a desktop version of  Richie that told the weather (and did other stuff if I remember) that you could download from Channel 4's website. So far only thing I can find about it is a sub reddit  looking for it as well.  I'll do the old joke of him having a good innings and wish him well.

Election special.

Happy Easter everyone, if you haven't guessed its election time here in the UK, which means its time for broken promises and grandstanding on a huge scale.  It also means the current coalition is going to be a new coalition.  On Thursday there was a massive 7 way orgy debate on TV, where it was supposed to show who you would vote for and who definitely it wouldn't be getting in.

Needless to say I didn't watch it but read a bit through the forums, news and the press.  What I can say is that if they were going out of their way to make them seem unelectable they succeeded.

I give you my own run down in my own inimitable (I.E tiresome and surreal) style on the winners and losers.

David Insincere. Conservative.

To be honest I really don't like him either as a PM or as a speaker. Every word he says comes across as fake and insincere.  I normally vote Conservative due to where I live being a perma labour borough since way back.  You could put a shaved ape in a red rosette where I live and people would still vote for it as their Labour candidate.  Currently whenever I think of a Tory its a privileged buffoon like Mayor Boris or sinister baldie's like William Hague or Ian and Duncan Smith.  There are a few good eggs like Michael Gove who wanted to kick the lefites out of school teaching, but in the end was shunted off to another post.  No currently the reason why they will not get  my vote at this election is due to not understanding what makes the internet great.  

They have been waging a one dork war on smut and filth, one of the main reasons that the internet is such a great place to be.  I've never shied away from the fact that  I love the "pron" and the Tories don't get it that smut made the Internet what it is.  Most of what they are proposing has already come to pass, most adult star sites are age restricted and setting up another layer of bureaucracy to police sites that are mostly hosted outside the UK is going to be a waste of tax payers money.

Ed Mr Bean.  Labour.

I've nailed my colours to the mast as noted above but its a dark day when this actually comes to pass when he is considered an electable , representative of parliament. Labour are typical left leaning which means they range from tiresome cunts such as the socialist wanker party to the smug Islington champagne socialists, I.E everyone you ever saw on the BBC.  Typical weak on the economy, strong on equality, expect them to be the saviour of the NHS, but don't, crucially, expect them to come up with any decent figures of how to pay off our debts and deal with austerity.  They probably won't close the food banks either.

Nick 'Middle Manager' Clegg. Liberal Democrats

Face it there is a certain person who is destined to be middle management, in looks and deeds then its Nick.  The Libs are your typical 3rd place party, typically doing well at a local level but never actually succeeding much beyond a few token seats.  The press have painted him as largely Tyrion Bannister in a sharp suit (i.e a cold, duplicitous weasel, thwarting the brave Prime Minister at every turn).  I don't see it as such but he did shed most of his policies for a shot at power.  The effect is that they have slipped down massively and currently enjoy the popularity normally reserved for swivel eyed racists and Monster Raving Loonies.

 Wee Nicola Fish Scots Nazis.

The Scots National Party are a sort of proper socialist party, kinda like what Labour was, if it thought that those policies would get them elected anymore.  I did have a soft spot for them in the Scottish elections last year but, they seem to be run by a woman who looked like my old form teacher (and held the same views politically).  Will probably do well north of the border where anyone right wing is strangled at birth.

Nigel Farrago. mUdKIP.

Have a soft spot for Nige, but not really his policies.  He comes across as the archetypal pub bore, holding court with pint in hand from either bar or from the saloon.  UKIP, I'm never really sure where they stand, for one they want to do away with the NHS and institue some  hideous American private system.  I wouldn't mind some Australian style system for controlling immigration, and as a population we get no say on immigration thanks to anyone putting up a reasonable debate is immediately branded a racist and all dissent is shut down.  Personally I have some reservations thanks to open borders (you need housing and infrastructure, to deal with an influx, all of which is at a premium, which  is why we want controls, there that wasn't so racist was it) that regardless of my own people are we set up to deal with all these people.

They will probably do quite well at the polls maybe even take a few councils and gain a few seats, but I don't see them lasting, come a by election, they'll be first up against the wall.

Welsh bird Plaid Album. /  Leftie Airhead Green Party

I'm lumping these final two together as they didn't really do much, the greens are your typical protest vote full of wacky policies and environmental nonsense over a thin veneer of Left Wing rubbish.  Plaid are strictly a Wales only party and generally supplant the Tories and Lib Dems for second place. Like the SNP they do not run in England so will not impact much on English stuff.

Green's will probably do well and already run Brighton and Hove (think of the English San Franscisco and you'll be right) maybe a protest vote for all those left wingers disillusioned with Labour kinda like what the right is with UKIP. 

Sylvia's Sainthood

Miracle Worker.

The Vatican Holy See has revealed today that popular porn star Silvia Saint is one step from beatification, thanks to an unlikely miracle.

The miracle in question happened to Owen Jones, 33 a part time firefighter from Cardiff in Wales, who was watching one of her videos at home when he felt his old man begin to rise from the dead.

I'd been off work because of the depression and that and I popped on the video as I knew the missus was out down the bingo and that, and I couldn't believe it when, my old man began to stiffen and rise from the dead.  I knew I had to call the Vatican right there as that's a bloody miracle that was.  Owen who also suffers bad eyesight due to excessive masturbation, called his local bishop, Jonathan Thomas of St David's Church to authenticate the "reserection" of his old man.

I've no doubt that watching Silvia take it hard up the arse by a guy with a dubious moustache, caused this miracle to take place, though to be honest it did nothing for me.  I tried conventional praying for his Percy to revive without success, but it seems the good Lord was listening after all.  I put in the request to the office as he's such a lovely guy and this will do wonders for his life and that.

Owen's partner Sarah 29, and daughter April 1, are both supportive of the whole thing.
We think its wonderful what she did for him, as thanks to the depression and with me putting on weight after the baby and that, I thought he'd lost all interest, but now thanks to her he's got a boner for like, the first time in ages and ages, I can't stop him he's like a different man.

When we contacted the Vatican office they said they couldn't comment on individual cases.