Phantom Breaker Battlegrounds Overdrive (PS4)

Back in early April of 2013 Mages, and their publisher 5pb released onto the Xbox 360 XBLA library a substitute game for a planned Phantom Breaker 2D fighter. This unsuspected yet brilliantly delivered anime beat 'em up that was "Phantom Breaker Battlegrounds" ended up surprising even me. It turned out to be a game that incorporated deeply involved fighting game elements into a "Streets of Rage" style brawler. It could be played solo, or in the company of friends as a co-op, or competitive game making it all the more intriguing. There was both local, and network play included in the affordable retail cost. The art style that accompanied said gaming experience was of a cutesy chibi-anime design, and was done up in a way that utilized pixels for character builds. One might think that such an odd combination of features would screw with the game's intended quality, but in the end it was the perfect genre blend. When 5pb announced the release of an upgraded version of the same game for the PS4 earlier this year I was once again excited to take that trip down memory lane, and see what changes, if any had taken hold of the original experience. To my dismay I did not notice any real changes other than the inclusion of a former DLC character, and some possible tweaks to the character management system, and modes. Regardless of these possible basic improvements, and the lack of truly new content I still had a blast playing through the game. It definitely lived up to the asking price, and it's former glory.

Weekend Blog Log (July 26, 2015)

For those of you who have followed me this past week on Twitter you'll know that I had a sort of emotional meltdown. For the first time in a long time I had hit rock bottom in my life, and openly so. I think it was a combination of things building up to that point, and not particularly one simple thing. My life is chaos. I endure family drama on a daily basis, and life in general has begun to collapse around me. When a certain friend started making judgmental tweets indirectly about something I had tweeted earlier it sent me even further over the deep end. I felt bad for having lost her friendship, but at the same time knew the ties must be broken. What you have to understand is that I go to Twitter for an escape. Each time I log in I look forward to the positive things my friends have to say whether it's game related, or whatever. For a long time gaming had been that escape for me, but with the quality of online gaming, and gaming in general going downhill I can no longer depend on that hobby to brighten my day. Twitter has once again become my last hope at happiness. Even that is suffering from drama though.