Manga, gaming edition
PostPosted:Mon Aug 11, 2014 3:07 am
Well, these are manga that are related to 'game', not necessarily any real games.
Darwin Game - The real life hardcore MMORPG manga. Unlike most stuff that claims to be like a MMORPG and is drawn by someone who obviously never played one, this is a very good adaption of what a hardcore MMORPG might look like. Right now you got the hero with his small number of lone wolves that aren't part of any guild against the resident massive ganking guild in some kind of deathmatch. People don't level up but they do have special magic like powers. The chapter where the heroes figured out the cash shop grenades can be bought anywhere and have no cooldown is some hilarious vintage MMORPG stuff. It's like 'everyone buy more grenades gogogo'. The fact that the main character is smart enough to know that having more guns is better than learning elemental spells is pretty awesome too. It's like you got this guy with a water shield versus a guy with a machine gun, and the guy with the machine gun actually wins quite easily. The hero also correctly deduced against the guy with the plant power that can block bullets with vines what he needs is a bigger gun. It's a very good adapation of what happens if magic meets machine guns, and so far machine guns are overwhelming better than magic. It's like SaGa Frontier 2 where you got Gustav the Steel who has no magic but he has the Steel that smashes all the magical stuff easily, except here it's guns and grenades.
Liar Game - Final round of the Liar Game, Nao is at her usual "I figured out the guaranteed win strat". I think it'd be funny if she actually does know and swindles everyone for their money and run off with the money. After all, it's pretty clear she's supposed to be the Liar King or whatever.
Fighting Gamers - A manga about Daigo Umehara. It totally sucks but I'm only reading it to see how they'll handle this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS7hkwbKmBM. So far it's just about how Daigo wins 99 games in a row with both hand behind his back or something stupid like that.
High Score Girl - I'm not sure if this is supposed to be representative of anyone, but if it was it's much better done than Fighting Gamers. The main character is Haruo who aspires to be the greatest fighting game player, until he met Akira, who is the namesake girl and is literally the goddess of gaming. The current arc wraps up the second girl who challenged Haruo on the condition that if she beat him in a fighting game then he has to date her, and the final fight in Dark Stalkers has her using an infinite combo character, but Haruo had a 'what would Akira do' moment and started doing crazy stuff to fend off the competition (and then the girl promptly declared she lied so it doesn't matter anyway). Akira actually hasn't done much ever since coming in second place in Osaka regional SF2 while using a broken controller with no punch button working as Zangief (so she literally can't use any special moves or the good throws), though I guess her god-like status is pretty well established at this point of the story. After all Akira beat SF2 on the very first time she ever played a video game as Zangief, and later Haruo saw her beat SF2 in a machine where only the weak kick was working as Dhalsim (this includes movement)!
Alice in Borderland - After beating the King of Clubs, Alice (who is a guy) had sex with Usagi (which means rabbit) and suddenly understand the meaning of life, or something. Meanwhile, the story shifts to Jack of Hearts, which is a game where you've this collar that has a suit symbol behind it and every hour you got to answer what the suit is or you die. If you got it correct the next round continues. There are no reflective surfaces or any kind and obviously you can't see what's on the collar yourself. The objective of the game is to kill Jack of Hearts, who is one of the contestants, before all but 2 of the contestants die (Jack of Hearts win if there are only 2 players left since by then the other guy has to know the identity). Alice in Borderland started out pretty good but these 'hardcore mind game' stuff is getting really lame. The easiest strategy would be to just roll a dice and kill a guy one at a time (Jack of Hearts also cannot see what his own suit is without someone telling him what it is). Note that the contestants are under significant time constrain since there's this orbital death ray that zaps a contestant daily if they don't win, but Jack of Hearts is not under such constrain. Yes I can see it'd be like 'oh no people won't go along with people dying randomly' but the fact that there's an orbital death ray kind of changes thing a lot.
The height of this series was probably 7 of Diamonds, the Blackjack game where the Cheshire is playing against some legendary Blackjack player who is up with a 10 to 1 advantage in chips with a third fodder guy with similar chips as Cheshire. The rule is that if you get caught cheating then everyone else can push this button to get a gun (except the guy who is caught cheating). So the legendary Blackjack player is talking about how awesome he is at Blackjack and there's no way they can come back from a 10 to 1 disadvantage and Cheshire just tear apart his card, so he gets flagged for cheating. The third guy takes the gun and shoots the legendary Blackjack player since there was no way the legendary Blackjack player was going to lose with a 10 to 1 advantage in chips, and Cheshire ends up beating the other guy who has about the same chip as he does (shooting a guy doesn't get you their chips, but it does eliminate them from the game). Now that's actually quite clever.
Darwin Game - The real life hardcore MMORPG manga. Unlike most stuff that claims to be like a MMORPG and is drawn by someone who obviously never played one, this is a very good adaption of what a hardcore MMORPG might look like. Right now you got the hero with his small number of lone wolves that aren't part of any guild against the resident massive ganking guild in some kind of deathmatch. People don't level up but they do have special magic like powers. The chapter where the heroes figured out the cash shop grenades can be bought anywhere and have no cooldown is some hilarious vintage MMORPG stuff. It's like 'everyone buy more grenades gogogo'. The fact that the main character is smart enough to know that having more guns is better than learning elemental spells is pretty awesome too. It's like you got this guy with a water shield versus a guy with a machine gun, and the guy with the machine gun actually wins quite easily. The hero also correctly deduced against the guy with the plant power that can block bullets with vines what he needs is a bigger gun. It's a very good adapation of what happens if magic meets machine guns, and so far machine guns are overwhelming better than magic. It's like SaGa Frontier 2 where you got Gustav the Steel who has no magic but he has the Steel that smashes all the magical stuff easily, except here it's guns and grenades.
Liar Game - Final round of the Liar Game, Nao is at her usual "I figured out the guaranteed win strat". I think it'd be funny if she actually does know and swindles everyone for their money and run off with the money. After all, it's pretty clear she's supposed to be the Liar King or whatever.
Fighting Gamers - A manga about Daigo Umehara. It totally sucks but I'm only reading it to see how they'll handle this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS7hkwbKmBM. So far it's just about how Daigo wins 99 games in a row with both hand behind his back or something stupid like that.
High Score Girl - I'm not sure if this is supposed to be representative of anyone, but if it was it's much better done than Fighting Gamers. The main character is Haruo who aspires to be the greatest fighting game player, until he met Akira, who is the namesake girl and is literally the goddess of gaming. The current arc wraps up the second girl who challenged Haruo on the condition that if she beat him in a fighting game then he has to date her, and the final fight in Dark Stalkers has her using an infinite combo character, but Haruo had a 'what would Akira do' moment and started doing crazy stuff to fend off the competition (and then the girl promptly declared she lied so it doesn't matter anyway). Akira actually hasn't done much ever since coming in second place in Osaka regional SF2 while using a broken controller with no punch button working as Zangief (so she literally can't use any special moves or the good throws), though I guess her god-like status is pretty well established at this point of the story. After all Akira beat SF2 on the very first time she ever played a video game as Zangief, and later Haruo saw her beat SF2 in a machine where only the weak kick was working as Dhalsim (this includes movement)!
Alice in Borderland - After beating the King of Clubs, Alice (who is a guy) had sex with Usagi (which means rabbit) and suddenly understand the meaning of life, or something. Meanwhile, the story shifts to Jack of Hearts, which is a game where you've this collar that has a suit symbol behind it and every hour you got to answer what the suit is or you die. If you got it correct the next round continues. There are no reflective surfaces or any kind and obviously you can't see what's on the collar yourself. The objective of the game is to kill Jack of Hearts, who is one of the contestants, before all but 2 of the contestants die (Jack of Hearts win if there are only 2 players left since by then the other guy has to know the identity). Alice in Borderland started out pretty good but these 'hardcore mind game' stuff is getting really lame. The easiest strategy would be to just roll a dice and kill a guy one at a time (Jack of Hearts also cannot see what his own suit is without someone telling him what it is). Note that the contestants are under significant time constrain since there's this orbital death ray that zaps a contestant daily if they don't win, but Jack of Hearts is not under such constrain. Yes I can see it'd be like 'oh no people won't go along with people dying randomly' but the fact that there's an orbital death ray kind of changes thing a lot.
The height of this series was probably 7 of Diamonds, the Blackjack game where the Cheshire is playing against some legendary Blackjack player who is up with a 10 to 1 advantage in chips with a third fodder guy with similar chips as Cheshire. The rule is that if you get caught cheating then everyone else can push this button to get a gun (except the guy who is caught cheating). So the legendary Blackjack player is talking about how awesome he is at Blackjack and there's no way they can come back from a 10 to 1 disadvantage and Cheshire just tear apart his card, so he gets flagged for cheating. The third guy takes the gun and shoots the legendary Blackjack player since there was no way the legendary Blackjack player was going to lose with a 10 to 1 advantage in chips, and Cheshire ends up beating the other guy who has about the same chip as he does (shooting a guy doesn't get you their chips, but it does eliminate them from the game). Now that's actually quite clever.