Hypernerd Workbench: Created Souls Females

Soul Calibur 6 has a some nice built-in hotties in Taki, Xianghua, and especially Ivy.  Those with some imagination can create some vicious vixens to do wage war with them on the battlefield or in the looks department.  These are just a few simple designs from the mind of a Hypernerd, complete with backstories.  Enjoy them.

7.  Isala

Isala is a cheerful girl who travels the world simply for experience.  She enjoy partaking in the festivals and cultures of the places she winds up, sharing hers in the process.  Though she is a peaceful person, she can't stand injustice and is quick to draw her weapons on those responsible for it.

One of Isala's rituals is to 

She's a Roman Reigns fan.

The world's deadliest game of leap frog.

6.  Sawa

A cold-blooded assassin, there's no job Sawa won't take for the right price.  Whether her target is good or bad, it doesn't matter.  As long is the money is right, the target is as good as dead.  She does not like having her time wasted, so approaching her with an unworthy offer is something she won't take lightly.

She's got ice-water in her vein.

She uses great skill to quickly.

This is the last thing many of her victims see.

5.  Takako

Growing up as the daughter of a famed instructor, Takako was highly with a sword from a young age.  She watched as her father won numerous duels against those who wished to prove their techniques were superior.  It seemed as though he was unbeatable, until was surrounded and murdered by the students of a rival who was jealous of his fame.  Now, with her father's sword and unbeatable technique, she seeks to avenge his death by defeating the man who had him killed.

Takako trains daily and is in excellent physical condition.

She is a serious, poised warrior.

4.  Misaki

Playful and mischievous, Misaki is a traveling performer who enjoys bringing smiles to the faces of others, especially children.  Her skills aren't just for show, however, as she works as a bodyguard for traveling merchants in between cities, killing many bandits during her travels.

Her cute appearance has deceived many who are no longer among the living.

Her fighting style may look playful...

...but she can show great discipline...

...however she still young and prone to mistakes...

...which is a fact she absolutely detests.

3.  Fiona

Fiona is a huntress who kills monsters for a small fee.  She had a rough upbringing, often teased by other children because they could not tell whether she was a boy or girl.  This confusion continues to this day from adults.  Perhaps because of this, she enjoys living in isolation went she's not killing monsters.

She will fight humans if need be, but will only kill monsters.

Growing up, she always wanted to be like Scorpion.

She meditates before and after every monster hunt.

2.  Torikah

A member of a persecuted race, Torikah was captured at a young age and forced into servitude.  She suffered insults and abuse for many years as the hand of her masters, all while being forced to do their bidding.  Eventually, she summoned up the courage to kill them and escape.  Life has been hard since that day, as she's been forced to live in hiding to avoid the horrible death that awaits her if she as captured.  She lives alone on an island and, in an attempt to keep her location secret, will kill anyone she sees.

She's a crude, intimidating brute.

She bares the mark of the family that enslaved her.

She's wild and refuses to be tamed.

1.  Sandria

A demon noble banished from her kingdom for refusing to wage war with humans, Sandria was forced into a world she had never known.  While being a weaker noble, her subject were loyal, with all 1,000 demons under her command following her out.  With them at her side, she was able the start a nation of her own, growing it into a cultural hub.  Though she prefers diplomacy to bloodshed, she is a fierce warrior who gives no quarter when force into battle.

She is strong, beautiful demon noble.

She is often confused by those who start fights unnecessarily.

She is a charismatic general who has the respect of all of her subjects.

And those are just a few of the characters you can create with a copy of Soul Calibur 6 and just a little imagination.  There's nothing too complex here.  The only thing holding you back are the limited number of items you get.

So, do you have a favorite?  Do you have any Created Souls you're proud of?  Feel to share pictures and backstories.

Nelke & The Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers Of The New World Review (PS4)

It's time to enter the world of Atelier once again.  That means taking the role of a cute, little girl in a cute, little world to fight cute, little monsters and...build cute, little cities?  This is Nelke & The Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers Of The New World.

Nelke & The Legendary Alchemists is a different kind of Atelier game.  You have all the things that define an Atelier game.  A cute protagonist, a cute soundtrack, and cute monsters, are all present and accounted for.  As mentioned above, however, this one adds a city-building element.  In fact, the city-building is the main part of the game.

This stylish girl is Nelke, our cute, little protagonist.

In true Atelier form, there's plenty of time management.  In other words, you have to get your butt in gear if you want to win.  Your father sets Tasks you MUST do within a set length of time or it's game over.  It doesn't matter how happy your people are, if you screw up at ANY point it's the end of the game, no questions asked.  The game isn't particularly hard for Atelier veterans, but if you are new to the series, this game will tear you a new butthole.  And the game over screen is pretty dark.

Make sure to keep an eye on those objectives or you'll be up Turd Creek.

What did they do?  Kill the poor girl?

The game is played in turns that span a whole week.  Each week is composed of two days, Weekdays and Holidays.  On Weekdays, you work on the city itself by plopping down buildings and roads.  You also clear district and open up space to build in those districts.  Finally, you give orders to your workers, telling gatherers where to search for resources, fieldworkers what to grow, alchemists what to make, and store clerks what to sell.  Then, you can sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor in each district.

On a Weekday, you can see the status of your city and see what needs to be done.

Nelke enjoys the smell of construction in the morning.

Holidays are completely different.  Here, you can Visit other characters, go on Investigations, and Research new techs.  Visiting characters will strength friendships so they will perform better, get you requests to help increase your approval rating, or even allow you to build new buildings.  Investigations allow Nelke and a group of characters to go out and procure resources and get kill cute, little monsters.  Research allows you to get new technology, assuming you have the correct characters and items.  You also get a picture of Nelke doing cute, little stuff, such a playing the flute or sleeping in a chair.

Holidays let watch Nelke being cute, among other things.

The title of the game, Nelke & The Legendary Alchemist, should tip you off to what else this game features.  It's a crossover game, featuring characters from past Atelier games.  Fans of the series will enjoy seeing their favorites.  The execution could have been better as they just "poof" into existence.  Past protagonist DO get some backstory on how they wound up in Nelke's city, but others will just randomly materialize in whenever they feel like it.

The characters you know and probably love are all here.

These characters don't just appear, walk into a corner, and be confused.  They actually aid Nelke in her quest to build her city.  They will help the city by working whenever you put them in the workforce.  You can make them farmers to grow resource, merchants to generate income, and alchemists to make items.  You'll have to make sure they're all working in harmony or your city will fail and you will lose.  If you want results, you MUST use these characters, not the generic Hired Help girls.

The proper use of characters is the key to success.

Some can also aid Nelke in investigations, where she leaves the to gather resources herself.  Sadly, it's not the full-blown exploration featured in previous entries.  Heck, you don't even control your characters outside of combat.  They simply walk around talking, occasionally gathering resources and getting into fights.  They do this until you reach the end of the path or until they get tired and decide to go home.  It's lame.  I understand that logically Nelke can't spend days at a time away from the city like previous protagonists because she needs to oversee its development, but it's still lame.  Nelke may also randomly decide she wants to chase bugs or start digging.  If you have the appropriate equipment, you can choose to let her do it or keep walking.

Reaching the end nets you treasure or boss battles...

...while not reaching the end means you have to do it all over again.

Investigations are lame, but Nelke "digs" them.

As for combat, you still get to beat on cute little monsters.  Fights happen randomly during Investigations or when building your city.  Battles are snappy and quick.  Characters are divided into attack (who you directly control) and support characters (who you have minimal control over).  There is a level of strategy to the battles when it comes to item usage as you can only use each item once per Investigation.  Not once per battle.  Once for all the battles across the entire Investigation.  This means things can get pretty tight if the enemies are particularly strong on the map you're investigating.  It can mean the difference between finishing the Investigation or running away to get out of taking an ass-whuppin'.

Now, for the little stuff.  The game has that trademark Atelier look.  Everything is cute.  From the buildings to the most intimidating monsters to Nelke herself, the game oozes cuteness from every pore.

The sound is cute, too.  Cute music and cute sound effects litter the game.  Sadly, the voices are only in Japanese.  English voices would have been nice, but that's the way things shook out.

There are other things to do besides simply playing the game.  Going to the Extras menu enables you to do thing, like listen to the music or ogle your favorite character.

Nelke has more to offer the just gameplay.

In the end, I had a lot of fun with this game.  As a fan of the Atelier series and city-builders, I'm happy to see a game like this exist.  As long as you're not expecting a SimCity-caliber city builder, you should have fun.  There are a lot of things I couldn't touch on to keep the review short, but the experience was enjoyable. A cute, little game.  Play it.

Shadow Tactics: Blades Of The Shogun Review (PS4)

Feudal Japan, stealth kills, and a handful of trained killers.  No, it's not the next Tenchu.  It's Shadow Tactics: Blades Of The Shogun.

I can comfortably say that Feudal Japan is one of my favorite periods in time.  From Samurai Warriors to Nobunaga's Ambition to the aforementioned Tenchu, setting your game in the time of ninja and samurai is a good way to get me to play it.  This game takes a more "tactical" approach to the era.

Shadow Tactics is like Tenchu, but with an emphasis on tactics and teamwork.  Like Tenchu, you hop from shadow to shadow, killing anyone who gets close before the know you're there.  You'll need to decide who kill, when to kill them, where to hide bodies, and have a good sense of timing and understanding enemies patrol routes.  Instead of playing as one super ninja, however, you play as a team of five somewhat less-super warriors.  Each brings their own strengths to the table, making themselves an essential part of the team.  This is where to the tactics come into play.  Surveying the killing field and determining when, where, and how to utilize each character and their unique abilities.

Looking ahead and learning patrol route and sight patterns is the way to win.

Understanding each character's niche is key to success.

Another thing that's similar to Tenchu is the enemies.  No, not the types of enemies, but the fact that they are extremely blind and moderately stupid.  For example, if an enemy can see thirty feet, they will see you if you move within thirty.  But you you're thirty-one feet away, it's like they are staring at thin air.  The same thing happens if move into the edge of their sight and you're ducking and not behind any obstacles.  They'll see you if you stand, but won't see you if you duck out in the open.  To quote a funny YouTube video, "Vision!  Doesn't!  Work That Way!"

Ducking in the shaded sight area is good enough to hide in plain sight.

When things get tricky, you can use Shadow Mode to set up simultaneous ass-whuppings in advance.  For example, you may come across two or more enemies that you must kill before you can continue on.  You have to kill them at the same time or you'll get caught and they'll call for back-up.  This is when to use the Shadow Mode.  In Shadow Mode, you control a "shadow" and can move around freely without being seen by enemies.  You simply move the shadow of the character near the enemy you want to kill and the game will que it up.  Then, when you get everything set up to your liking, simply press the "execute plan" button and watch your babies make you proud.  You DO have to control each character's shadow individually, but it works well enough.

The game says it all.

The controls are tight and responsive.  You'll move exactly when you want to move and kill exactly when you want to kill.  The directional pad does a number of things, including seeing where (and when) an enemy is looking, something you'll want during your first playthrough.  You can also check mission objectives, center the camera (useful for finding your own characters), and activate Shadow Mode.  Everything works well.

Well, now it time to get to the little stuff.  The graphics are fine...unless you actually want to see the characters.  Everyone is so small.  They have different colored highlights to help find them when they're hidden, but that doesn't even help sometimes.  For example, I was constantly losing track of Yuki on her first mission because she blends in with the rocks.  Fortunately, the enemies always stand out.  Also, I came across a really bad graphics glitch where the ground turned blue and stayed that way for the whole day no matter how often I reloaded.  It seems like was just a one time thing, so no biggie.

Hmm...now where did I leave Yuki?

This glitch haunted me for an entire day on the worst possible level, at the worst possible time.

The music is good.  It gets you in the mood to turn Japanese and stealth-kill everyone you can.  If assassins had Ipods in Feudal Japan, this is probably the music they'd listen to.  While it's not pure fire, it is good and atmospheric.  There's also voice acting which is okay, save for the terrible accent Hayato's voice actor is trying to speak with.

You can also try different difficulty settings, obtaining trophies, or beating levels in different ways.  The game is kind of short, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing.  It would have been nice to replay levels with different characters, but it is what it is.  To my knowledge, there's no DLC, so what you see is what you get.  Once again, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Shadow Tactics: Blades Of The Shogun is a neat little game.  There's some strategy involved in beating the levels, especially on your first attempt.  There's a charm and, dare I say, a cuteness to it.  The game could have been longer, but at the same time, it doesn't overstay its welcome.  Check it out.

Seagate 4 TB Game Drive Review

So, you've say you've run out of space on you PS4 and have $120 burning a hole in your pocket.  Well, you're just one trip to the supermarket away from salvation.  It the 4 terabyte game drive from Seagate.

Being a hypernerd, life is hard on my PS4.  As a gamer who just happens to do reviews, I play a lot of games and, as a result, tend to run out of space quite frequently.  That's just simply having the games on the hard drive.  When you factor in video clips and picture, space vanishes quite fast.  One of the beautiful part about the PS4 is that you can delete game apps without deleting the save data.  Still, you have to reinstall games and some of them take a very long time to do so.  A game drive solves that problem because you only have to suffer through the install process one time.

Also, some games are HUGE.  For example, Final Fantasy 15 Royal Edition takes 90 GBs of free space to install.  90!  Lots of bigtime titles, like Valkyria Chronicles and Tekken 7, usually require 20-50 GBs.  Then, you have DLC which eats space like Skittles.  Don't even get me started on pictures and video clips.  To put it simply, even with a 1 TB hard drive, you'll run out of space quickly.  If you're a hypernerd like me, that sucks.

But with this little beauty, you likely never run out of space.  It costs about as much as two brand new games, so it's not cheap by any means.  But if you have a large library, you'll want it.  They also have a 2 TB option for about $50  cheaper if you're strapped for cash, but starving for space.

Just plug this little tadpole into PS4 and watch your space problems disappear.

And that's the Seagate 4 TB.  It's good for the hardcores, the collectors, DLC whores, and especially the hypernerds.  It is an investment, but worth it.  Definitely good if you just can't say goodbye to games.