If My Heart Had Wings Review

If My Heart Had Wings is a tale of youth, and a tale of boys and girls who loved the sky. We follow Aoi Minase the hero, returning with shattered dreams to his wind-swept hometown of Kazegaura. There, atop a hill lined with windmills, he encounters a wheelchair-bound girl Kotori Habane, and a beautiful white glider soaring through the sky. She is a slender girl with long, black hair  but is strong willed and speaks with confidence. Also, a cry baby. Because she transferred to Keifuu Academy for the simple reason that she is unable to move her legs and Keifuu Academy is completely barrier free, she has no interests in classes which teach sspecialityfields. Because of this, she is completely cut off  from those around her. She is also followed by her pet duck, Hat.

Together, they decide to revive their school's defunct Soaring Club in order to ride the 'Morning Glory', a phantom cloud carried on the wind that blows across Kazegaura.

Playing this visual novel is almost like watching a beautiful anime, you get to enjoy relaxing music, semi animations and it is very colourful, you even get glimpses of the hero you played. Another great feature is the Japanese vocals for the other characters which isn't always included in visual novel games.

Its menus are easy to use and easy on the eye, you have the option to straight away to save, load and log off and that is always the first thing to look forward to, as visual novels have a lot of story and you wouldn't want to read through it all again, so saving at apt moments is handy. Another great feature is the 'auto' facility to automatically scroll text like your watching an anime with out continuously pressing the next button.

Unlike other visual novels which have been localised in the past, this is a brand, moe novel, which provides a way for people throughout the world to enjoy themselves. As this brand uses high quality visuals and cinematic, this is what should truly be called 'Visual Novel HD'. All works provided will be released as official localised titles.

Strangely upon looking for information about getting certain girls, I came across restorative patches to get the original Japanese version of the novel with nudity. Perverts, please back away from the game and go indulge in some hardcore hentai. This game can be therefore enjoyed by male and females without the embarrassments of looming CG's to come.

You get to know all the girls attending the Keifuu Academy and they encompass all the different stereotypes ie. large breasted, lolicon (freshman), eccentric genius, tom boy turn popular girl and so forth.

You also get to pick up a few tips on basic aerodynamics, to glider flight and building a glider. Which is crucial to the plot and emotional bond of the characters. That is something you should value, there is no random slice of life, it revolved around a hobby. The only con about the gliders were the 3D models used in the VN, they looked out of place and grotesque in comparison to the beautiful 2D animation.

If My Heart Had Wings is about romance and the sky, appreciating beautiful up to date animation, an engaging story and great voice acting and soundtrack. It is a more luxurious visual novel giving a vibrant feel.

May London MCM Expo 2013: The Games

London MCM Expo is a hub for a wide variety of events, including anime, manga, small press, cosplay, film and gaming. In this article we will be focusing on the latter and mentioning the others in future articles. Exploring all the gaming MCM Expo has to offer, we have broken down some of the most prominent games at the con with our opinions.

 

Time & Eternity

Release: 28/06/13

I came across this beautiful Japanese role-playing games, mixing 2D sprite animation with 3D backgrounds. All the 2D characters are hand drawn by famous Japanese artist Vofan (Bakemonogatari), with Animation studio Satelight (Macross Frontier) and Yuzo Koshiro is responsible for the game’s music.

From the playable gameplay we find that Toki, the main protagonist in action, goes back in time to prevent the assination of her husband to be Zack, who is later revealed as not dead but his soul has been transported into a dragon’s body. If you’re interested so far, Toki has an added pro of having two souls in one body and changes persona to Towa who has different fighting proficiency and hair colour.

From the fighting sequences, the 2D to 3D animations blends in seamlessly and looks brilliant. The high-quality animation blends in very well with its background. Be weary how friendly you get with the ladies, it will affect your ending, and with four possible endings you have a lot of gameplay to get through.

Deadpool the Game

Release: 28/06/13

As we all know the majority of London MCM Expo is about queuing, I spent best of an hour to get to play the demo of the Deadpool game. All Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom fans would be excited about this title as it is dedicated purely to the sarcastic and highly entertaining Deadpool superhero. His hobbies include eating chimichangas, shooting guns, teleporting and women.

The playable demo is an hour long but because of the queues I got to enjoy the game for 15mins, this included watching the begging intro sequence, tutorial and general frolics in the game. The playability is like Tomb Raider, except if you mess up you can teleport back to the last platform you were on.

If you get stuck at any point Deadpool commentates and gives you hints of where to go next and what moves you should be using. Being a ps3 player, it took me a while to adjust to the free view movement and camera. Great animation for all the cut scenes and the voice acting is spot on as they kept the same cast from UMVC3.

Game & Wario Wii U

Release: 28/06/13

Luckily getting to play a few of the mini games that Game & Wario on the Wii U was a treat. You first take photos of the players on the Wii U pad and then edit it creatively with the options given. Personally I loved the mustache stamp, it even recognises the facial expressions and fits the ‘tache correctly.

One game we played called ‘Fruit’ was a strategy game where you choose one player to be the fruit thief. Then he goes into a world and starts stealing fruit, the other players need to watch the screen and guess who the thief’s avatar is. But wait, the virtual environment has lots of people walking around, distractions too. Use man holes to move around and fool the other players. Subtly steal the fruit without being noticed.  A mini game not for the impatient! Timing is crucial.

The second Mii game was a interactive version of Pictionary, where you get a ridiculously hard american words like ‘adhesive tape’ and scramble to draw it. Who ever figures it out needs to shout out. Using the awesome Wii U pad, you can keep track of the score.

Eyri’s Action

Behind the Persona 4 Arena section where people battled the experts to win a free copy of the game, courtesy of Zen United, I came across the Rice Digital stall who were showcasing a few indie Japanese doushin games. Before I carry on, these are normal games, no hentai involved. The whole point of Rice Digital is to promote doushin as a non-taboo game series. They had mostly fighting games in their catalogue, alongside a beat em up and JRPG ’99 Spirits’ just recently released.

Eyri’s adventure was a hard platform game, which is very aggravating to play because it is so difficult. Rice Digital put up a challenge if you completed the first level you could win all the games on their back catalogue.

Bonus: Tales of Xillia demo was playable and if you came to the stall at the right time the creater of the tales series, Hideo Baba!