Real Name: Haru Matsumura
Age: 19
Birth Date: March 28th
Blood Type: AB-
Gender: Male
Eye Color: Green
Hair Color: Red
Height: 5'11''
Picture:
Occupation: College Student, Game Tester, Media Critic
Hobbies:Haru enjoys writing in his free time. For the most part he makes a living by being a beta tester for various game companies then turning around and writing reviews for said games just as they come out.
One would think that Haru, being a game tester, doesn't like to play video games in his free time but that's quite the contrary. He spends a lot of time playing all kinds of games from Ace Combat to The World to Xenosaga. He's widely considered a game expert. He likes to play a lot of Soul Calibur as Siegfried, which is why he chose the Heavyblade class.
Haru also practices swordsmanship in his spare time between work and pleasure. He considers it to be incredibly relaxing. Haru is an amateur swordsman despite quite a few years learning swordsmanship just because of the sheer amount of types of swords he's learned to handle. Haru can handle a Japanese Katana, a German Zweihander, a Chinese Dao, and a Chinese Jian with competence.
Clothing:Haru, like a normal human being, changes his clothes on a daily basis. He can most often be seen in a white or green shirt and blue jeans. He only wears gloves whenever he's practicing swordsmanship.
Character Name: Flynn
Class: Heavyblade
Character Picture:
Weapon: Steelblade
Armor:Head: Bandanna
Body: Leather Coat
Arm/Hand: Wristbands
Leg/Foot: Sandals
Skills:Calamity (10)
Repth (10)
Gan Zot (20)
Juk Rom (10)
Character Gender: Male
Character Eye Color: Grey
Character Hair Color: Black with white streaks
Character Height: 6'1''
Character Clothing:Flynn wears a gray cloak with an abundance of dark red straps and buckles adorning it. Underneath that he wears an all-black ensemble consisting of combat boots, slops, and a sleeveless shirt, held together with a dark red belt. In order to protect his arms, he wears dark red bracers held with black straps. He keeps the appearance of his sword hidden with an abundance of loose bandages that he is capable of easily unraveling at a moments notice.
Personality:Haru has a bright and playful personality. He has a bit of sarcastic wit to him that's typically characteristic of gamers and critics. In a fight he loves to emulate in his own special way just as his favorite characters in Soul Calibur, Guilty Gear, and Blaze Blue do. As such he has this tendency to sound like he's a voice actor for a fighting game or an Action RPG.
Background Story: I leaned forward in the testing couch, resting my forearms on my knees, my well-trained eyes scanning my newest assignment. It was a free-roaming adventure game set in modern times that was attempting to combine prototype style movement with Mass Effect style combat. I wasn't impressed whatsoever. The game was shoddily programmed, incredibly unintuitive, and incredibly difficult to get used to. As the game went on, the I flitted back and forth between the controller and a clipboard provided to me to give various comments. Behind me stood one of the representatives, sweating bullets. It wasn't like my review and comments were the make-or-break of the game, but my review represented their very target demographic.
It was almost irritating to feel him behind me. I could hear his foot tapping nervously and could almost envision him there, one arm crossed over him just underneath his chest, the other resting on his wrist, biting his thumbnail nervously as he tried to see what notes I was making. Then I felt sorry for him. I was going to give a bad review and itt was going to mean pushing back the release date and sinking more money which they probably did not have into the game to fix what was wrong. I wanted to tell him that the game was fine and ready for launch, but that would probably hurt them even more. Besides, I was a professional, this was what I did and what I was being payed to do.
I finished with their showcase level and sat back to watch the cinematic, raising my clipboard and pen. I made notes about a few inconsistencies and strange looking animations. It was fairly good though, if there was anything the game had under its belt it was graphics. However everything had great graphics, so just that wasn't enough to compete. After the cinematic ended I rose from my seat, stretching. I had been there for a full six hours playing various showcase levels and I was beginning to stiffen. The representative looked at me with blended expectancy and fear.
"Overall out of 10 I'd probably give it a six," I started with my review as I sat back down, looking down at my notes, trying to avoid the representatives crestfallen look. I hated it whenever they got like that, I preferred it when they got angry.
"Let's start with my biggest issue, movement," I said, putting on my professional review tone, "First of all, the character's jump animation seems incredibly stiff and unrealistic compared to the level of grace he exhibits wile running and climbing. Also there seems to be some issues with momentum and gravity in your physics engine. I felt like I was getting far too high or long of a jump for the speed I was moving at, which at first wouldn't really seem possible because the character just moves too fast. It's difficult to control him, and it's barely possible to turn while I'm simply running. Sprinting is almost too much of a nuisance to use since you can't turn at all while using it. I find myself having to stop almost completely when I want to turn any more than about 30 degrees, yet all my enemies seem to be able to make pinpoint 90 degrees turns with little to no loss in speed."
The representative bit his lip and nodded, "Yes, I could see that as well watching you play."
"Furthermore," I continued ignoring his comment, "Your damage to enemy health ratio seems to be out of proportion. I can understand a game being ludicrously difficult, but a lot of fights, especially the boss fights, seem to be more of a battle of attrition than anything... while we're on the subject of enemies, a lot of the AI seems to glitch very easily. I'm sure you saw when I was in levels 2 and 7 and was able to run right past several enemies without them so much as giving a second glance."
He could only nod. Those were incredibly embarrassing programming faults that I had even heard him sigh over.
"Also, something of an issue with sound. All of your impact sound effects seem to be... incredibly muffled. It's almost like there's no real impact at all, and that's a big factor for immersion," I flipped the page at this point to my second set of notes.
"A couple of things I liked though..." I started, not being able to see this poor man fall any deeper into a pit of depression, "The soundtrack... incredibly amazing stuff. The music couldn't have matched any of the scenes or levels any better. Your graphics were on par despite a few strange animations and glitches, and your collision detection was absolutely fantastic. I also thought that your enemy AI, when it wasn't glitching, was top-quality."
Seeing his pride begin to come back, I inwardly prepared myself to unload upon him all the glitches and issues I had.
"Now let's get into a level-by-level analysis... in levels 1, 5, and 6..."
I sat there explaining various faults, likes, and dislikes to that representative for the next hour. Needless to say, I was exhausted by the time I left. Who knew that playing video games was such a straining career. With my personal review notes in my pocket, I left the game designer building and began making my way back home. Wondering what I was going to do when I got back. In my life there were basically two types of gaming: professional gaming, and recreational gaming. At that moment, after a long day of professional gaming, I was ready to do some recreational gaming.
The problem was that I had already beaten everything that I had owned. I pondered playing some Soul Calibur 4 online, but I really wasn't in the mood to deal with lag-tactics and self-righteous idiots so convinced that they were the best players on Earth. I considered replaying an old RPG, but I didn't want to have to wade through a bunch of cinematics to get to the actual gameplay. My options shot, I wandered into GameStop and found my answer in the form of a large cardboard cutout display, an MMORPG. The World to be exact, the single most popular MMORPG to date. I couldn't believe that they were still doing advertising for every major patch that came out that introduced new classes like the Whipmaster and Fist Fighter.
I usually avoided Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. I had heard horrifying stories of people getting so lost in those types of games that they would never come out of their rooms and lost their careers and lives to them. I had even read a few horrifying stories of people literally dying in front of their computers because they were addicted.
However, I had grown older since I first spawned those beliefs and came to the realization that I didn't have an addictive personality. So after mulling it over for a few minutes, I was soon on my way home with a sleek, brand new VR headset and a copy of Cyber Connect Corporation's The World.
When I got home and had everything installed and hooked up I slipped on the VR helmet and switched on The World.
First reaction: Blown away.
I spent a solid hour sitting there and creating my character. The graphics were so real and lifelike, and the interface was easy to navigate and incredibly intuitive. I wasn't even playing yet and I was impressed. The character creation was incredibly in depth, so I spent at least a full hour just dressing and adjusting my character's looks.
I had decided to pick the Heavyblade class. I wasn't ever really paying attention to stats or skills or anything like that, I was a pure newbie when it came to The World. I liked the idea of the Heavy Blade since I used Siegfried in Soul Calibur 4, Jin in Blaze Blue, and Ky in Guilty Gear, so it seemed appropriate to stick to the theme of having a giant sword, "compensating much?" jokes be damned!
"Well let's just see what all the fuss is about..." I muttered to myself, half excited and half skeptical as I entered The World.
