5 JRPG to look for in 2016

Hello my friends! It's good to be back and now that I'm here blogging again let's have something for my favorite genre of all, which is Japanese RPG games. I've recently noticed how even some of my friends (who are also hardcore jrpg fans) are kind of lost about what the Japanese role playing game scene will offer to us in the near future, so I've decided to stop my almost non-stop marathon of Xenoblade Chronicles X for a while and make a little guide of whats heading our way in the form of confirmed west side releases.

Note: Although this guide is supposed to be only composed of games that will be released on 2016, I will start it by mentioning one that is coming this month.

Exist Archive

Platforms: PS4, PSVITA

Western release date: December 17, 2015

It still baffles me that not many rpg fans are aware about this game, especially considering that this is in fact the successor of the Valkyrie Profile series, sharing the same gameplay elements and featuring a similar plot involving life beyond death. So far the gameplay footage that the developers have released into the public shows that the game will be a side-scroller, but the fights within the game will be turn based and the story goes around the main character dying and instantly appearing on a strange alternate dimension. What is different between Valkyrie Profile and Exist Archive is that the side-scrolling exploration on this one has a lot more interaction and will probably have backtracking and puzzle elements similar to a "metroidvania" game, which is something that will add a lot to the overall game. This one is coming up soon, so prepare those wallets.

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness

Platforms: PS3, PS4
Western release date: TBA 2016

This one began as a simple tease by Square Enix where they published an enigmatic website sometime ago, but finally after a long stream of trollings and false hopes, a new Star Ocean game was actually announced. If you look at the gameplay video, you can see that the game will take sort of an action rpg-ish style, but at the same time it keeps all of the original goodies that we are accustomed to when we talk about a Star Ocean game. The game has no specific release date for the west, but considering that the Japanese version of the game will be released on February, I'd say we will probably be playing Star Ocean by Summer.

Nier: Automata

Platforms: PS4
Western release date: TBA 2016

The first Nier game was released in 2010 and while it may have passed unnoticed for some, it gained quite a following and had a good reception between those who played it. Now Square Enix joins up with Platinum Games and they are going full force with it's sequel, side named "Automata". This new Nier game seems to be featuring the same action rpg mechanics and open world of the last one, but this time it looks like the game will be a lot more focused and solid. It is also worth noting that this time, the game will jump a little into the futuristic side where the main character has to deal with all sorts of robots and machines in an earth that has been invaded by a mysterious race of mechanical based life forms. No official release date has been announced, but we could try to guess and say this one could be on shelves by late Summer or early Autumn 2016 although we could be surprised with an earlier date as new announcements are made.

Bravely Second: End Layer

Platforms: 3DS
Western release date: Spring 2016

Called by some "the Final Fantasy of these modern times", Bravely Default is known to be the game that brought Square back to the JRPG scene and it's sequel will come to the west in 2016 to the delight of all jrpg fans in this part of the planet. The game promises to have the same goodies that the first one delivered, but a lot of new and awesome things to add up. I expect another epic story and a bigger world than the previous game so this is definitely the one Japanese rpg to have on a handheld console, mostly because real classic JRPG experiences are kind of scarce on that type of platform.

Persona 5

Platforms: PS3/PS4
Western release date: Summer 2016

This one needs no introduction to any JRPG fan and it will (hopefully) be released on Summer 2016. Last thing we knew was that the game had been delayed (again) and while we got a few nice trailers, most of us felt like this was the jrpg to have this Christmas. From what we have seen from the game since it was first announced, it will feature the same mood and atmosphere that the Persona games are famous for, but it will also have an added layer of exploration where you will have to actually run and even jump on things in order to get ahead in certain areas. This one seems pretty strong, so I'm sure that all this waiting game was actually worth it.

Wrapping things up

Well ppl, there you have 5 Japanese RPGs to keep you busy in 2016. It is important to state that this is just the tip of the iceberg, as there are many other games like these coming in 2016 and if I had kept going, the list would had been bigger than planet Mira on Xenoblade Chronicles X, so yeah that's quite big. If you want to see a full list of the JRPG games coming on 2016 you can check it HERE. I know I've been ranting a lot about the lack of this genre in the past, but I think this is it. 2016 is the year of the JRPG and the future looks awesome!

Some Things That The Lizard Squad Situation Can Teach Us

If you tried to play any Xbox360/XboxOne/PS3/PS4 games with an online component on Christmas day or a day later, you may have been one of the many gamers worldwide that found themselves feeling like a modern gaming version of the guy from Cast Away. This is most especially true (and somewhat cruel) if you got some of the hottest new games/consoles as Christmas presents. Now that most of the dust has settled, we have to admit that even though it was hell on earth for some people, there are some good things to learn about this whole DDOS attack fiasco. As you read, look for the lessons in red even though you may disagree with some of them.

First, take a moment to check your entire game library...

If you take some time to look at your library of games, there is a high probability that you have a lot of games that you haven't really touched in a while even though you haven't finished them. You know why is that? It is because those abandoned games are mostly offline and part of you doesn't want that as you are accustomed to playing online and making progress in order to stay in par with your peers be it in aspects like your character level, rank, equipment/items or just the social value of the online experience.

The thing about all this is that competition/cooperative online based gaming is not the only type of gaming that exists and you may have forgotten that even if the online service is off, you are not necessarily stranded as you may have some offline options that otherwise you would be missing out because of the way you pressure yourself to an online only experience. It is good to let go every now and then and enjoy all the games you have even when they are not an always connected (and prone to attacks) experience. Of course before you scoff at the screen and say that The Gamertologist is an antisocial prick, know that this does not imply that you should just become an offline gamer, it just suggests that there are more games out there that you can play to make the best of such a situation where the online service fails because of stuff like the recent DDOS attacks. Well... now that the so called "Distributed Denial of Service" attack has been mentioned, there is another important thing to point out.

A DDOS attack can be more serious than you think...

The first time we saw the explanation of what happened to the two big online gaming networks during the attack, many people classified it as a simple thing that shouldn't take a lot of time to fix, when in fact recovery can be pretty difficult once the attack happens. There isn't a magical instantaneous fix to a DDOS attack and this is because this type of attack is relentless. You can either prevent it before it happens at full force or suffer the consequences.

Picture this, imagine that you have your own small server with a service that accepts let's say 5000 people connected at once. Now imagine that a group of hackers start sending 5000 simultaneous connections to your server and fill each and every one of your available spaces so now your server thinks it is full and doesn't let anybody else in. You then get aware of the situation and you summon your security crew in order to fight back to dismiss those fake connections, but each time your people manage to clear some of them, more keep coming.

This is the equivalent of a handful of knights fighting an endless horde of orcs on a bridge. Unless you somehow close that bridge they will keep coming, but you won't be able to do that unless you can slay a great number of them and win some much needed time in order to been able to run and set the barricades. So once it happens you can only destroy the bridge (shut off the service) and re-build it (bring the service back again) once the battle is over.

But those orcs aren't even supposed to be able to get near you...


O.k we now agreed that the attacks were not as simple as we thought, but what about the companies themselves? Why is their security not strong enough to prevent or at least minimize the impact of these kind of attacks? The Christmas day incident was completely unnecessary in so many ways that it isn't even funny. This is even more disturbing if we consider that Lizard Squad gave a warning almost a month before Christmas day, so they were either too skeptic or just too lazy. All This means that companies are low-balling their online services, attempting to win a million while spending a cent.

If they are acting like this, then we must pressure them to put some more effort into their network security systems, just so that we don't have to live through those types of annoyances on a service that isn't free. Now on the broader side of things,what's really worrying about the situation is that these types of incidents shows a pretty weak side of the so called digital gaming era and this can mean only one thing...

"Online Digital only" total dominance has been set back for a while because of the attacks.

The lizards have managed to make a really nasty dent the iron clad trust that consumers used to have on these services and that means that the online digital only gaming environment is not be the safe happy place we thought it was. It has become a very nice and convenient service yes, but it has shown that if we ever fully dependent on it there is such a high risk that you may wake up one morning and find out that you have lost all of your games because X group of hackers woke up on the wrong side of their beds.

What Lizard Squad did can never be justified, but we can still at least take the few things that we could learn from the situation and give them some thought. It not only makes you a smarter consumer, but also makes you a wiser gamer and a more conscious tech user that wont be swayed by fads or smoke and mirrors. In any way, we as consumers have to be alert, not only in order to be ready for these kinds of happenings, but also to know the underlying causes and fight against them.

The Evil Within - How Mikami Got it Right

Some time ago when Resident Evil's original creator, Shinji Mikami said he was going to take survival horror back to its roots we were hopeful, but kind of felt like "whoa it will be a lot of time until that happens". Well, that "far away" day finally arrived and it turned out really well. The Evil Within has a perfect mix of different game play mechanics and details that make the game to be the return of the old school survival horror we had been waiting for.

First of all, be aware that if there ever were a golden rule for survival horror games that rule would be:

A survival horror game must never be perfect. 

This is because if a game claims to be a survival horror title it must have its share of intentional "defects" so it gives the correct atmosphere or else it will feel too clean and sanitized. The Evil Within has a lot of those "defects" as effects like a grainy image, awkward camera angles, controls that seem to break at some times and even non nonsensical happenings that seem to be glitches at first just to realize a few moments later that it was part of the scene itself. These are the kind of game play elements that made legendary horror games like the old school Resident Evil games or the Silent Hill series and fortunately for us, The Evil Within follows this to the letter.

Will that lump in the end stand up or not? That is the question...

Another aspect in which the vision behind the game was right on the money is the fact that it mixes various type of situations into a horror environment that feels solid. You can find yourself ambushed, racing against the clock, running from an enemy who can kill you with just one hit or just find the occasional enemy while exploring the place, avoiding traps and solving puzzles. You see, this is the kind of environment that comes from the result of good game design. Instead of coming up with a bland "shoot your way through" approach, the people behind this game gave us a game world that is balanced between linearity and dynamic game play. Yes, the game moves through the story line in linear fashion, but the way to survival is entirely up to you by choosing how to explore, engage the enemy and develop your character.

This picture makes it look complex, but it is not.

Speaking of character development, this gaming element as used in survival horror games has become a modern trend that has enhanced the overall experience and The Evil Within implements this very well. As a hardcore survival horror fan you may be thinking that strengthening your character will make the game easy and dull, but that is not the case if such system is made in a balanced way. For example, in this game you can make your character to be stronger in some aspects, but the points required to do it are scarce, so you will never be able to create an invincible warrior. Instead, you will have to carefully upgrade the things you use the most in order to create your own style of playing, like upgrading weapons if you want to use more firepower or enhancing your abilities and item stock if you feel like clever and risky tactics are your thing.

The past design look a little more chaotic, but it felt a lot more real.

The only element in this game that may leave some hardcore horror fans wishing it were different is the game flow. The Evil Within flows in chapters like many other modern horror games and this may be seen as an artificial approach to the exploration aspect of the game. Sure, the chapters are long and the maps are diverse and well designed, but some of us may still be missing the backtracking that characterized the survival horror games of old. An example of this been Mikami's own creation, the old Resident Evil series. Anybody who played those games can remember how one could basically go from the last parts of the game all the way to be beginning without any intermissions or at least been able to roam around the whole place before some turn of events made the place to be destroyed or forced you to escape. The lack of this whole backtracking element is not a deal breaker here, but it poses as a nice thing to have in Mikami's next game.

Puzzles are pretty straight forward in this game, but some are just awesome.

Wrapping it up:
In summary, The Evil Within mixes the best of the old and new to create an excellent survival horror game that lives up to the hype and to all the faith that survival horror fans have on Resident Evil's original creator. The team behind the game did a hell of a job and judging by the nice reception that the game had with the gaming community, it is to be expected to see a lot more from what that came from. If you are a survival horror fan this is a must buy and even if you are not, just give it a chance, you will not be dissapointed.

The Moment That Sega Perfected Sonic, Then Blew it afterwards.

After seen a couple of videos about Sonic Boom (which is not bad, but not great either) I was left to wonder as an all time Sonic fan, what was the time when Sega managed to evolve their famous mascot into its best form. Many say that Sonic stopped been cool after the original Sega Genesis games, but if I had to choose one of the forms in which Sega has chosen to portray their blue hedgehog, it would be the Sega Dreamcast era that included the 2 Sonic Adventure games. Why was this the closest that Sega has ever been to perfecting Sonic? Just continue to find out.

This is where it all started.

We all remember the classic sonic games on the Genesis. At a time when all we knew was Super Mario Brothers, Sonic came as a radical and cooler alternative. The games were fast, stages were interesting and the story was simple but appealing. Sonic itself not only looked different than everything we had seen at the time, but he looked cool and hip, sort of rebellious if you ask me. This gave the blue hedgehog an edge over the Italian plumber that lasted a while and helped Sega to establish themselves as a gaming powerhouse at the time.

The game that could had saved the Saturn.

After that, Sega went through a heavy streak of mistakes and one of those was abandoning Sonic. This caused their next big console which was the Sega Saturn, to lack a definitive Sonic title and all we got was Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic R which were kind of O.K, but not what we were hoping for. After that came project Katana which turned into the Sega Dreamcast and at that time we saw their mascot making a comeback in the form of Sonic Adventure which at the time was the most awesome thing around.

This iconic image from the game made many people to become early Dreamcast adopters.

Not only had Sonic jumped into the 3D graphics era, but the game looked great, the action was fast and the story was once again simple and appealing, just like they did with the classic Sonic games. This time you also had a little more freedom, as you could explore some stages at will, find secrets, do speed runs and find different ways to survive until the end. Sonic itself was not lacking any attitude either. He was know accompanied by some nice alternative rock music (played by Crush 40) and had a cool voice to express himself. He was cocky, confident and easy going even in the worse of situations so most fans fell in love with this version of the Sega mascot as soon as we saw it.

Multi characters for high replay value. Something brilliant at the time.

He was also accompanied by other characters that you could play as such as Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Big the Cat and E-102 Gamma (which was made by Dr. Robotnik). Everybody had something different for the player with Sonic handling the fast paced stages, Tails focusing on his gadgets, Knuckles floating around looking for pieces of the master esmerald, Amy going through alternative versions of Sonic stages using her hammer for a more action oriented approach, Big the cat with his fishing stages and E-102 Gamma with his story about how he escaped from Dr. Robotnik and became one of the good guys. The really cool thing about them is that each of them had their own angle on the main story, so it this wasn't about repeating the same stages with different characters.

Shadow was a nice surprise back then, he is still awesome.

After that came Sonic Adventure 2. This game introduced a couple of villains like Shadow the hedgehog and Rouge the bat with the inclusion of Dr. Robotnik as a playable character. This time the whole thing was to be able to play as both the good side and the bad side as the story progressed. The game looked even better than the original and featured very imaginative stages following a storyline that was both cool and heartwarming at the same time. The greatest thing about both Sonic Adventure games was that their storylines included a little bit or everything from adventurous, funny and cute moments, to confrontations, peril and even tragedy. This may have to do with the fact that the anime series called Sonic X was been transmitted at the time and as we all know, anime can pack quite a punch in story telling terms.

The "Shadow with a gun" thing was kind of weird.

These two great Sonic games came and went, and after the Dreamcast met its demise and Sega became a third party company, the almost perfect Sonic the hedgehog we enjoyed on Sega's last machine was replaced with a couple of experiments that went from so-so to mediocre. At first they made Sonic heroes which was nice and kind of a throwback to the old games with the inclusion of the 3 hero party mechanic that served to solve puzzles and get through the stages in a more strategical way. Other game was Shadow the Hedgehog in which they tried to mix up both speed and action with Shadow using guns and everything.

Pound for pound the weirdest Sonic moment ever.

Then after the next generation in line was about to start (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii), somebody had the "brilliant" idea to bring Sonic as closest to reality as possible and this is where it got ugly. When the Sonic the Hedgehog "next gen" game came to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, what we found was an adulterated version of what we used to love. Not only the game had technical issues like very long loading times, it tried so hard to be a "realistic epic" that it failed miserably at what mattered the most and that was gameplay. Sure, the free roaming aspect was still there, but it felt bland and generic with stages that tried to give that Sonic Adventure vibe, but ended been a lot slower and tedious.

Slow and clunky werewolf.

After that, a whole number of Sonic games began to enter the market, having the blue hedgehog in many different situations that weren't that good. On one of them he could turn into a slow werewolf (Sonic Unleashed), on other he was sort of a knight (Sonic and the Black Knight) and there even was a Wii version of Sonic called Sonic and the Secret Rings which was just an "on rails" game that was kind of fun at first, but after a couple of stages it felt like a hassle. On all of these games the storyline aspect was severely degraded, lacking the passion that the Sonic Adventures games had. Couple that with bad gameplay experiments and then you will know why Sonic isn't as popular on this day and age.

It doesn't look that bad except for Knuckles, I will never get over that.

Wrapping it up:
Sonic Boom is not a bad angle to the blue hedgehog's universe (except for what they did with knuckles which was horrible), but the last Sonic games that were made with real passion and imagination lie on those fateful years after 9/9/99. At that time like the title implies, Sega managed to get Sonic to a near perfect state only to dump it all later when they began making uninspired games just for the sake of making them. I wonder if anybody in Sega has ever found him/herself on a meeting saying, "hey, let's go back to the Sonic Adventure style" only to be ignored or something like it.

Remember Remember 10 Games in September

September is already here and there are a ton of things that gamers around the world should be happy about. Today I'm just going to give you people a small list of 10 games that will release this month. It is a long way from this day to the release of games that are scheduled for a 2015 release, but we are ready to begin the gaming spree that this 4th quarter 2014 will be. We have been waiting a long time for a streak of expected games to come our way so this is some of what we will have this month:

September 2: The Sims 4 (PC)
For all of those Sims fans, comes the official 4th game in the franchise and it comes with a lot of improvements. Some of these are a completely new set of Sims to play with, each with its own personality and traits, the "create a sim" and "build mode" features were completely redesigned, neighborhoods now have a bigger variety of people and last but not least the addition of "The Gallery" which is a place where players will be able to get new sims and homes with the chance of sharing their own. All of these improvements and new things imply that this new Sims game will be a great one, especially if you are long time fan.

September 9: Destiny (multiplatform)
Releasing on the same month and day that the Dreamcast did 15 years ago, comes one of the most expected games this year. Destiny is a sci-fi styled first person shooter with online rpg elements. Those who play it, will embark on a epic journey as one of the warriors called "Guardians" in an effort to drive out the dark forces that linger on our solar system and threaten our existence. In this game you will have the chance to explore different planets while doing story missions, quests or just roaming around the place looking for treasure, all of this making the PVE (player vs environment) part of the game. As for the PVP (player vs player) players will have the "Crucible" where they can go toe to toe with other players in different maps based on each planet. The interesting thing about PVP in Destiny is that you can also win some loot or unlock various items such as weapons and armor by doing certain things while playing against others. So in both PVE and PVP, Destiny promises to be a really fun game.

September 16: Fairy Fencer F (PS3)
The PS3 has been receiving a steady flow of jrpg games and this pattern goes on in September with Fairy Fencer F. Nis America and Compile Heart come with the western version of this jrpg, featuring Yoshitaka Amano as the concept artist and Nobuo Uematsu as the music composer. The story on this game is about a set of legendary weapons called "furies" that were created by the good and evil gods of the past for their soldiers to use in their conflict. Now on moderns times, warriors that can use that sort of weapons are called "fencers" and as warriors go around the world looking for those legendary weapons, the conflict between the gods starts again. From what we can see about this game, it looks like your classic jrpg experience, but considering that part of the Hyperdimension Neptunia team was involved in the development of the game, expect to see a lot of wacky skills and over the top special moves.


September 23:

Natural Doctrine (PS4)
This one is the first jrpg experience the PS4 owners will get and up until now it looks pretty good. Natural Doctine is a very challenging tactic rpg game that tries out tactic mechanics mixed with an exploration approach. The game hasn't sold that well in Japan, but this may had been because of the fierce competition that the game has on the PS3 and PSVITA, coupled with the poor sales that the PS4 has been having in the land of the rising son. In the west it may be another story, because the game is basically running alone in the PS4 library as no other big Japanese rpg games have been released for the platform on this part of the globe. Some people have called this game the Dark Souls of tactic rpgs, so if you like to have some challenge, try this one up.

Gauntlet (PC)
This game can be basically called a remake of the original 1985 Gauntlet. It will feature updated graphics and the same exciting horde style action game play that many gamers have grown to love on this game. The game will feature all the classic character classes and the big randomly generated dungeons. As we have been able to see from the pictures and video that have been shown, it is notable that the new Gauntlet will sort of feel like a simpler version of Diablo 3, with the only purpose been to survive the onslaught and dangers to be found in the dungeons. If you are fan of the original game, or you like to spend some time hacking and slashing your way through, this is your game.

Ar Nosurge: Ode to an Unborn Star (PS3)
The PS3 jrpg love continues with this game coming to the PS3 this month. Ar Nosurge is a prequel to the Ar tonelico series that put you in control of one of two pairs of characters at a time, each with their own point of view in the story. The pairs are characters called Cas and Delta and later on Earthes and Ion. The story of this game goes around some evil outer space lifeform called the "Sharl" who were able to defeat space travelling humans with the use of "song magic". Thousands of years later, some ancient humans appear and they seem to have learned to use song magic so life for humanity changes and a new struggle begins. This game features some classic rpg elements like field exploration and the recruitment of new characters by following their own stories, so it is a quite interesting option for any jrpg fan that wants something closer to the classics of the 90's.  

September 24: Dark Souls II: Crown of the Ivory King (DLC)
This Dark Souls II DLC promises to be even more challenging that the game itself, although not much has been shown about it. Most of the information that has been shown by the media include a winter-like place with a bonfire in it and the words Episode 3: Crown of the Ivory King. Players have been speculating this to be based on the Shrine of Winter, but nothing official has been said about it so if you are a Dark Souls II player, you definitely have to check this one out.

September 26: Hyrule Warriors (Wii U)
This had been a game that has been advertised a lot lately, so now we will be finally able to see if it will deliver. This cross between Dinasty Warriors and Legend of Zelda has been enjoying quite a lot of hype since they started announcing the characters that will be playable in the game. We have gone from Link and Queen Zelda to Impa and even Garuna and Ganondoft himself so the roster is quite big. Based on what has been shown, the adventure mode looks really fun, although it would had been perfect if it would had featured online cooperative play. Dinasty Warriors fans are preparing to play the heck out of this one, while the Legend of Zelda fans are holding their breaths and hoping for the game to live up to their expectations. Will the game pass the ultimate fan test? We will see when it releases.


September 30:

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor (Multiplatform)
This new entry on the Hobbit/LOTR series of games is an action rpg game developed by Monolith studios. On this one you will play as a ranger that has some strange wraith powers, living through the events that happen between The Hobbit and Lord of The Rings storylines. The players will find themselves in an open world where they will have the freedom of advancing at their own pace through the many missions and quests in the game. Shadow of Mordor also features character customization and the "Nemesis System" which is basically a system that "remembers" how you have interacted with different types of characters in the game so they can react to you accordingly when you find them around the world. The game really looks like it is a nice addition not only to fans, but to action rpg players in general.

Forza Horizon 2 (Xbox 360 / Xbox One)
Continuing the Forza series is Horizon 2. This one takes place during the fictional Horizon festival (held all across Europe) where players will explore the region and enter various racing events in order to advance through the ranks, get better rides and above all, earn some respect. This time around, the game will feature day and night mechanics which will make the experience to be a lot more real that on previous titles and it will include over 200 cars to use or race against. There will also be a group of challenges called the "bucket list" and several types of racer to racer online interactions that will make it feel as if you were really part of the racing scene. Up until now if you are racing game fan, this is your best bet yet.

Wrapping it up

There is more from what that came from, but I limited my list to 10 noteworthy games that are coming on this month, so keep with the Gamertologist Zone as new game details are released and get to know a little more about what our wallets should fear.

Source:
Game Informer: 2014 Game Release Schedule

Playstation Now beta pricing is...Not so motivational

Playstation Now seems to be Sony's answer to their fans for the lack of backwards compatibility on the PS4. Since they bought Gaikai (streaming technology) they have been promising that their game streaming service will be the next big thing and while most of the gaming community has remained optimistic about it (except some video game industry analysts), right now it doesn't look that appetizing and it is not because of technical issues, but because of the pricing showed for the Playstation Now beta.

The example that everybody is talking about is Final Fantasy XIII-2. As shown on some popular gaming pages, the pricing for been able to "rent" this game go as follows:

5 dollars for 4 hours of gaming

This is pretty much like paying 5 dollars for a long demo, sort of like the ones found on those classic "Jam pack" demo discs of the PS ONE days, not to mention that those discs could be found on retail stores for like a buck. Only that on this occasion the demo vanishes after 4 hours.

8 dollars for 7 days of gaming

It seems pretty fair if you consider playing the game non-stop for those 7 days like some sort of gaming pilgrimage (including the hand lotion for cramps and the magic bucket like in that south park episode).

15 dollars for 30 days of gaming

It seems like a good deal until you realize that some of these games can actually be bought for a similar price and nobody is going to take them from you after 30 days.

30 dollars for 90 days of gaming

Half the price of a new release for approximately 3 months of gaming. It is very likely that you will be able to finish the game before reaching that time (games are a lot shorter nowadays) and considering that this is an rpg, there not much replay value to talk about. So this is more like "ok I paid 30 dollars I must finish this game no matter what" and there will still be a lot of wasted time/value. 

Wrapping things up

Now keep the game in mind as we see how much it would cost you to buy it online:

Ebay: 16-18 dollars

Amazon: 18 dollars

Gamestop: 15 dollars

This means that actually buying the game is 50% cheaper than renting it, which means that unless prices get a little more competitive, you are better off keeping your PS3. It is important to say that not all games will have the same rental fees, but if Final Fantasy XIII-2 is to be an example, this doesn't look so great. Hopefully Sony will implement some sort of subscription service and that will level the field and make it all worthwhile.There is also the possibility that these are just some test prices for the beta phase and it is subject to change for the official version, so don't count Sony's streaming service out just yet.

Sources: Gamespot, Kotaku