If you, like me, are a PSP owner with a love of good RPGs, you've
probably been looking at the PSP game selection with something
approaching despair. On one hand, you have Tales of Eternia, an unobjectionable port of a ageing PSOne game. And on the other, you have Untold Legends and
its sequel, which can be largely summed up using the words "not
completely awful". It's a state of affairs much like that of a starving
man on a desert island who has to choose between eating lychees, bean
curd, or his own severed foot.
So when you saw PoPoLoCrois come
floating into your local game store's inventory, you may have, like me,
made the mistake of purchasing it. Oh, how you will rue that terrible
day.
Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating. PoPoLoCrois isn't the
worst game ever made. It is neither an abomination that should never
have been spawned, nor a crime against God, nature, and gamers
everywhere. It even, dare I say it, caused me to hazard the occasional
smile and moment of enjoyment.
Now I'm done with the good part. On to the bad.
The first warning sign about PoPoLoCrois should
have been all those capital letters. When the ratio of uppercase to
lowercase within a single word is higher than 1:2, you know something's
up right there. And it's not just a logo embellishment - the game
insists on using that bizarre abberration of spelling throughout the
length of its insipid and uninspired story.
PSP PoPoLoCrois is
apparently something of a remix of two quite popular PSOne games that
were previously only released in Japan (called, unsurprisingly, PoPoLoCrois and PoPoLoCrois 2).
Don't worry - you're not getting the full version of either game. Every
last quest throughout each title has been shortened, dumbed down, and
turned into little more than a fetch-and-carry trek across an
eye-gougingly boring countryside. The two plots have been rammed
end-to-end in a mind-boggingly crude way, and have had everything that
may have made them good ripped from them with rusty hooks operated by
brain-damaged lepers.
You may think, "At least it'll be a long
game." And to be fair, it is. It's quite long. It's long in the sense
that, at about the time you're weeping into your pillow and screaming,
"Why won't it end? In the name of all that's holy, why won't it end?",
you'll come to what appears to be the final boss fight - only to
discover in eye-widening gut-clenching horror that you've merely
completed the first story and have still to wade through another whole two major questlines,
each individually longer than the entirety of what you've played so
far. That dedication to packing content onto a tiny little UMD takes a
special kind of genius - to be specific, the cat-stroking Bond-killing
death-rays-from-space kind of genius.
There's a plot, of course,
which should probably win an award for its craftsmanship in taking ideas
from every fantasy epic ever and weaving them into an utterly
unengaging pastiche of young princes, lost mothers, ancient demons, and
dark kings. As you slog through the never-ending story of Pietro,
nauseatingly cheeful heir to the kingdom of PoPoLoCrois, you'll be
joined by a variety of two-dimensonal companions, such as Narcia (a
forest fairy with a love of wimples), Gami Gami Devil (the
self-professed most evil man in the world), and.... uh... White Knight
(no, really, that's his name).
Even the most limpid RPG can
occasionally be redeemed by really satisfying combat or an addictive
levelling-up system, so it's a good thing that PoPoLoCrois doesn't
have either of these, or it would be breaking an otherwise
uninterrupted losing streak. Levelling up is of the straight "gain XP to
get tougher" variety, with no meaningful chance for the player to
direct this linear process. You also have skills, which behave in pretty
much exactly the same way. Not that you'll be using them much, because,
really, they're mostly kind of pointless.
Combat (of which there
is a lot) devolves into a kind of turn-based strategy game, where
you're theoretically supposed to move your characters around to gain
some kind of tactical advantage. Unfortunately, most of the time, you'll
just start each battle with your apocalyptic ranged area-effect attack,
and watch the baddies drop dead before they can even launch into one of
their poorly-animated rejoinders.
Speaking of animation and all things graphical, it's worth pointing out that PoPoLoCrois belongs
to the old school isometric 2D school of design that you might remember
well from your days playing Squaresoft games on your Super Nintendo.
That's not a blot against the game - it suits the gameplay perfectly,
and the graphical style has a really nice anime charm. What is a
horrible brown stain on the game's underwear is the fact that despite
this relatively undemanding visual aesthetic, the game's frame rate still drops
regularly into the single digits, mostly while you're performing such
high-processor-demand tasks as walking places, meeting enemies, or
standing still.
Now, I'm sure all of the above sounds like
exactly your cup of tea, and you're going to run out and buy the game
this second. So it's worth mentioning that you'll only get to see any of the thrilling gameplay I've described during the odd second or two when the game isn't loading. The PSP already has a horrible reputation for sickeningly long load times when reading from the UMD, and PoPoLoCrois takes
this unfortunate trend to entirely new levels. You'll face a good
minute of loading just to get to the title screen. Then you've got
loading your save file, booting the world, a good ten seconds of loading
every time you enter a new area, and - get this - even more loading each and every time you're subjected to a random monster encounter. Which is, in such areas as random encounters occur in, roughly every three or four steps.
Oh,
and in case you see this all as some sort of challenge, designed to
seperate the casual chaff from the hardcore gaming wheat, then it's also
of note that PoPoLoCrois is really, really easy. No, really. Even the boss fights. Really, really easy. Not hard - just long.
So
in short, if you're a newcomer to RPGs, who absolutely must buy one for
your PSP, no matter what the cost to your wallet, love life, and
personal sanity, then I highly recommend PoPoLoCrois. Go nuts.
This review has been edited from one previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 17/08/2006.
Score: 5 out of 20 (A critically flawed game that still holds some interest.)
For fans of the JRPG genre: 4 out of 20
Release date: December 2005
Developed by: Sony Computer Entertainment International
Published by: Sony Computer Entertainment
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (PSP)
There comes a time for all of us when we have to admit that we're just
not going to be bothered finishing the last few levels of a game. For
me, and for GTA: Liberty City Stories on the PSP, that day is now. And thus, it's time for a post-mortem.
I'll start by saying this: GTA: Liberty City Stories is, hands down, the best game available for the PSP today. Easily. There's really no competition.
If you've played a Grand Theft Auto game before, you probably have a good idea what you're in for in the PSP installment. And if you haven't... sweet Jeebers, what have you been doing with your life?
The Grand Theft Auto format sees you freely wandering through a fairly immense 3D rendered city. You have pretty much free reign to explore, find secret areas and power-ups, take on missions, hijack cars, drive around, kill pedestrians, gang members, or police, engage in car chases, drive boats, go nuts with a rocket launcher, pull off stunt jumps, or whatever else takes your fancy. It's a sandboxy kind of half-sim, half-action game that is an absolute ton of fun. It's been aped by almost every developer to some extent or another over the last few years, and for good reason, but GTA still remains the king of its format by simply continuing to be deeper, larger, and better designed than anything in the competition.
Liberty City Stories operates as a prequel to the PS2's GTA III, taking place in Liberty City and featuring Tony Cipriani as the protagonist. The game takes its city design directly from GTA III, with nearly identical street layout and buildings, with only very minor changes relating to the game being set slightly earlier in time. The missions, bonuses, and radio chatter are all new, though.
It's a fantastic technical achievement on developer Rockstar's part that the game looks, feels, and plays almost exactly the same as the PS2 installments in the series. In fact, in some respects, the graphics are actually better than GTA III, thanks to some clever graphical shortcuts mostly involving motion blurring. All the styles of gameplay from GTA III are present, including a range of "plot" missions, side missions, races, time trials, car collection, and the ubiquitous "R3 missions" (although of course the PSP doesn't have an R3 button) which see you driving ambulances, fire trucks, taxis, police cars, and pizza delivery bikes around to make hard cash and upgrade your abilities.
Liberty City Stories also throws in some new elements that weren't present in GTA III. Some, such as the ability to change outfits, and the presence of motorcycles, are developments from later in the franchise that you may already be familiar with. Others, such as the Trashmaster R3 missions, the ability to work as a car or bike salesman, and some optional rail-shooting side-missions, are brand new to Grand Theft Auto. It's notable, though, that Liberty City Stories, unlike its console cousins, has no flyable vehicles or airborne missions (though that won't stop you from taking down plenty of police-operated helicopters from the ground!).
I've mentioned that the game looks great. It also sounds great, or at least as great as any GTA ever has, with a totally appropriate range of sound effects, sound cues, and pedestrian chatter that really fills out the city with a sense of cohesiveness and place. The radio stations from past GTA games also return, although they fall a little flat this time around - the range and quality of the music on offer is poor, and the total amount of radio available to listen to is completely inadequate for a game of this length and depth. By about two thirds of the way through the main plot I'd started turning the radio off more often than not.
All the main characters are professionally voiced, both for cutscenes and for throwaway lines during missions. Sadly, veterans such as Kyle Maclachlan and Michael Madsen don't return to reprise their roles from GTA III, but you won't notice, as the quality of the acting is about as good as you can ask for given the quirky and expletive-laced dialogue the game is fond of. (Watch out for a cameo by Wil Wheaton on the chat radio station!)
The controls are possibly where the game falls down a little. The PSP's single nub-like analogue joystick is a poor substitute for the PS2's twin analogues, and it took me a long time to get the hang of driving smoothy at high speeds without spinning out every time I tried to change lanes. What's more, like most action games on the PSP that use the analogue, playing for long periods results in some nasty cramps through your left hand (though I suppose this is less Rockstar's fault and more Sony's). Luckily, once you adjust, you can play with a fair degree of precision, and I don't recall being frustrated by missions because of the controls more than I was by the mission design.
Speaking of mission design, the quality of the missions throughout the game varies dramatically. Nothing in Liberty City Stories approaches the cinematic thrill of some of the best missions from San Andreas, but by and large they're of appropriate lengths, appropriate difficulties, and seem meaningful. One in particular, "Karmageddon", where you drive a firetruck around aiming for as much damage to other vehicles as possible within a time limit, is so fun that I suspect it'll make a return in GTA IV or Vice City Stories. (The developers obviously realised that, as it's one of the few missions in the game that you can replay again and again after finishing it.)
The ambulance and firetruck missions, notably frustrating in past GTA games, seemed to me a lot easier in Liberty City Stories, although it may just be that I'm well practiced at them now. However, some of the end game missions are not as well done, featuring timers that aren't well explained, multiple stages to the mission, and long lengths, making replaying them after a failure a significant chore. There's also a fair few moments where the plot falls apart, leaving you wondering why you're bothering to do the missions assigned to you and what, precisely, you're going to get out of it. And it's worth mentioning that the third of Liberty City's three islands is just as poorly laid out and frustrating to navigate as it was in GTA III, making the final missions of the game that much more irritating. Myself, I never finished the last four missions. Maybe some day.
Whatever sins the game may have, it makes up for by including, for the first time since GTA 2, a multiplayer mode. You can play wirelessly against other friends who have copies of the game in a variety of game types including deathmatch, king of the hill, and a kind of "capture the flag" variant involving limousines. I've had the chance to play these with two or three players, and they're a ton of fun, that I can only assume gets even better with more competitors. Sadly, there's no option to play over the internet, so you'll have to actually find other people with a copy of the game in real life. It's worth noting that although Liberty City Stories was ported to the PS2 as a budget release, the console version is completely missing this multiplayer option.
All in all, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories is one of those games that's almost good enough to justify your PSP purchase all by itself, and if you already own the handheld, you should definitely have a copy of this on your shelf.
This review has been edited from one previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 09/08/2006.
Score: 13 out of 20 (A good game with some significant drawbacks.)
For fans of the open-world-mayhem genre: 12 out of 20
For fans of the GTA franchise: 14 out of 20
Release date: October 2005
Developed by: Rockstar Leeds, Rockstar North
Published by: Rockstar Games
I'll start by saying this: GTA: Liberty City Stories is, hands down, the best game available for the PSP today. Easily. There's really no competition.
If you've played a Grand Theft Auto game before, you probably have a good idea what you're in for in the PSP installment. And if you haven't... sweet Jeebers, what have you been doing with your life?
The Grand Theft Auto format sees you freely wandering through a fairly immense 3D rendered city. You have pretty much free reign to explore, find secret areas and power-ups, take on missions, hijack cars, drive around, kill pedestrians, gang members, or police, engage in car chases, drive boats, go nuts with a rocket launcher, pull off stunt jumps, or whatever else takes your fancy. It's a sandboxy kind of half-sim, half-action game that is an absolute ton of fun. It's been aped by almost every developer to some extent or another over the last few years, and for good reason, but GTA still remains the king of its format by simply continuing to be deeper, larger, and better designed than anything in the competition.
Liberty City Stories operates as a prequel to the PS2's GTA III, taking place in Liberty City and featuring Tony Cipriani as the protagonist. The game takes its city design directly from GTA III, with nearly identical street layout and buildings, with only very minor changes relating to the game being set slightly earlier in time. The missions, bonuses, and radio chatter are all new, though.
It's a fantastic technical achievement on developer Rockstar's part that the game looks, feels, and plays almost exactly the same as the PS2 installments in the series. In fact, in some respects, the graphics are actually better than GTA III, thanks to some clever graphical shortcuts mostly involving motion blurring. All the styles of gameplay from GTA III are present, including a range of "plot" missions, side missions, races, time trials, car collection, and the ubiquitous "R3 missions" (although of course the PSP doesn't have an R3 button) which see you driving ambulances, fire trucks, taxis, police cars, and pizza delivery bikes around to make hard cash and upgrade your abilities.
Liberty City Stories also throws in some new elements that weren't present in GTA III. Some, such as the ability to change outfits, and the presence of motorcycles, are developments from later in the franchise that you may already be familiar with. Others, such as the Trashmaster R3 missions, the ability to work as a car or bike salesman, and some optional rail-shooting side-missions, are brand new to Grand Theft Auto. It's notable, though, that Liberty City Stories, unlike its console cousins, has no flyable vehicles or airborne missions (though that won't stop you from taking down plenty of police-operated helicopters from the ground!).
I've mentioned that the game looks great. It also sounds great, or at least as great as any GTA ever has, with a totally appropriate range of sound effects, sound cues, and pedestrian chatter that really fills out the city with a sense of cohesiveness and place. The radio stations from past GTA games also return, although they fall a little flat this time around - the range and quality of the music on offer is poor, and the total amount of radio available to listen to is completely inadequate for a game of this length and depth. By about two thirds of the way through the main plot I'd started turning the radio off more often than not.
All the main characters are professionally voiced, both for cutscenes and for throwaway lines during missions. Sadly, veterans such as Kyle Maclachlan and Michael Madsen don't return to reprise their roles from GTA III, but you won't notice, as the quality of the acting is about as good as you can ask for given the quirky and expletive-laced dialogue the game is fond of. (Watch out for a cameo by Wil Wheaton on the chat radio station!)
The controls are possibly where the game falls down a little. The PSP's single nub-like analogue joystick is a poor substitute for the PS2's twin analogues, and it took me a long time to get the hang of driving smoothy at high speeds without spinning out every time I tried to change lanes. What's more, like most action games on the PSP that use the analogue, playing for long periods results in some nasty cramps through your left hand (though I suppose this is less Rockstar's fault and more Sony's). Luckily, once you adjust, you can play with a fair degree of precision, and I don't recall being frustrated by missions because of the controls more than I was by the mission design.
Speaking of mission design, the quality of the missions throughout the game varies dramatically. Nothing in Liberty City Stories approaches the cinematic thrill of some of the best missions from San Andreas, but by and large they're of appropriate lengths, appropriate difficulties, and seem meaningful. One in particular, "Karmageddon", where you drive a firetruck around aiming for as much damage to other vehicles as possible within a time limit, is so fun that I suspect it'll make a return in GTA IV or Vice City Stories. (The developers obviously realised that, as it's one of the few missions in the game that you can replay again and again after finishing it.)
The ambulance and firetruck missions, notably frustrating in past GTA games, seemed to me a lot easier in Liberty City Stories, although it may just be that I'm well practiced at them now. However, some of the end game missions are not as well done, featuring timers that aren't well explained, multiple stages to the mission, and long lengths, making replaying them after a failure a significant chore. There's also a fair few moments where the plot falls apart, leaving you wondering why you're bothering to do the missions assigned to you and what, precisely, you're going to get out of it. And it's worth mentioning that the third of Liberty City's three islands is just as poorly laid out and frustrating to navigate as it was in GTA III, making the final missions of the game that much more irritating. Myself, I never finished the last four missions. Maybe some day.
Whatever sins the game may have, it makes up for by including, for the first time since GTA 2, a multiplayer mode. You can play wirelessly against other friends who have copies of the game in a variety of game types including deathmatch, king of the hill, and a kind of "capture the flag" variant involving limousines. I've had the chance to play these with two or three players, and they're a ton of fun, that I can only assume gets even better with more competitors. Sadly, there's no option to play over the internet, so you'll have to actually find other people with a copy of the game in real life. It's worth noting that although Liberty City Stories was ported to the PS2 as a budget release, the console version is completely missing this multiplayer option.
All in all, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories is one of those games that's almost good enough to justify your PSP purchase all by itself, and if you already own the handheld, you should definitely have a copy of this on your shelf.
This review has been edited from one previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 09/08/2006.
Score: 13 out of 20 (A good game with some significant drawbacks.)
For fans of the open-world-mayhem genre: 12 out of 20
For fans of the GTA franchise: 14 out of 20
Release date: October 2005
Developed by: Rockstar Leeds, Rockstar North
Published by: Rockstar Games
Loco Roco (PSP)
I just finished the last level of Loco Roco for the PSP, and
I'm pretty sure I'm done with it, so all you readers out there can get
the benefit of a post-mortem.
Loco Roco is another of those quirky Japanese games that we seem to be blessed with so many of lately. It used to be that stuff like this was jealously kept from us gaijin by the gaming powers that be, but the combination of a dawning region-free sensibility plus a shortage of competition in the handheld game market have led to more and more of this "only in Japan" craziness making the crossing and landing in our living rooms.
The premise is something a little like a cross between Katamari Damacy and Marble Madness, set in a 2D scrolling landscape. You take control of a Loco Roco, a little blob-like thing that speaks a Simlish-style gibberish. It transpires that the worlds of the Loco Rocos have been invaded by menacing black blobby-things called Mojas, and it's up to you to guide the Loco Rocos through a range of hallucinogenic landscapes, and help them to survive, explore, ... er... breed... and... um... sing. Breeding and singing are a big part of the game, seriously.
The worlds of the Loco Rocos consist of a fair range of scenery. The game starts in some fairly generic grassy hills, reminiscent of first levels of platformers everywhere, but quickly moves on to some significantly more original achievements. Jungles offer fast-flowing rivers that carry your Locos around, vines to swing on, and sticky leaf-layers to hang from like monkeys. The obligatory ice levels are filled with slippery floors and frozen chutes that let your Locos build up amazing speed. And several levels are set inside giant animals, where you must navigate from the creature's mouth, to its... er... lower exit, contending with giant hanging tonsils, spongy internal organs that happen to make fantastic trampolines, and the myriad dangers of peristalsis.
The landscapes have a fantastic organic quality, vibrating and shaking in time to your Loco Roco's motions with the qualities of authentic physics. The "inside the monster" levels are the best example of this, and are fantastic to play. Never have I been more convinced I was in the lower intestine of a ninety-foot penguin.
You don't get to directly control your Loco Roco. Rather than command the blobby protagonists to move, you instead get to tilt the entire world and roll them places. Holding the left shoulder button of the PSP tilts the world left, up to a maximum of about 60 degrees, and likewise the right shoulder tilts it right. This will usually induce your Loco Roco to roll "downhill", which is hopefully the way you want it to go. If this fails, your Loco Roco will usually get the hint anyway in a second or two and try and go in the direction you're indicating.
You can also press both shoulder buttons at the same time to shake the world (which basically makes your Loco Roco jump). Finally, you can press the circle button to split the Loco Roco up into a bunch of smaller versions of itself, to fit through tight gaps and solve other problems. In this state you're vulnerable to leaving some of yourself behind, but luckily you can quickly form up any Locos within sight and reach by holding down the circle button again.
Loco Roco sports some 40-ish levels. Finishing the levels is very easy - in fact, my PSP says I took about seven hours to do it, and that's including a couple of hours I spent messing around with the minigames and the Loco House (more of which later). Getting to the end of the game is never at any stage a real challenge, and feels more like an enjoyable sightseeing tour. It's almost ideal for children, first-time gamers, or those who like their platformers unthreatening (like myself).
However, for those who want to be challenged, the real meat of the game is in finding the bonus items. On each level, you are scored on how many Loco Roco you manage to find (for a perfect score of 20 per level), how many Loco House parts you find, and various other factors including time. Of note is that each level features three tiny golem-like creatures called Mui Mui, who are apparently friends of the Locos. Most of the game's unlockables (such as the minigames and the Loco Houses) are keyed off how many Mui Muis you've found in total, so there's a reasonable incentive to catch these things. You can, of course, repeat the levels as often as you like, and once a Mui Mui is found they stay found, no matter how often you re-try the stage.
I should note that the placement of the secrets themselves is fantastic - you have the clear sense that the level design is by a single mind. Placements of hidden items are fair, reasonably intuitive, and never ask you to, say, jump to what appears to be your doom in order to find them. You'll never be disappointed by the level layout - it's a minor masterpiece. When you discover a breakable wall or a hidden passageway, you never need to wonder whether to go through it - it'll always be worth your while, and if there's hazards along the hidden path, you'll find a handy teleporter-ish thing at the end so you don't have to jump them going back as well.
The art style is adorably simple and cute, making stong use of clean lines, bold primary colours, and a minimum of clutter in the backgrounds. It's distinctive, and perfectly suited to the feel and theme of the game.
But the real star of Loco Roco is the sound. Your Loco Roco is a chatty little creature, and will mutter to itself as it rolls along to inform you of its surroundings. The presence of dangerous spikes on the screen elicits a scared little whimper; nearby enemies cause your Loco to exclaim "Moja!", and when your Loco knows there's one of those little golem things nearby you'll hear a joyful cry of "Mui Mui!".
What's more, your Loco interacts with the soundtrack. Each level features one of a wide range of catchy tunes (think We Love Katamari), which are great all by themselves. What makes them better, however, is that the vocal track is actually sung by your Loco. Each of the different types of Loco Roco (six in all) has a different vocal styling, ranging from child's song, to opera, to the black Loco's deep soul funk voice. As you meander through the level, they'll sing the vocals to the level's music. Split into the multiple mini-locos, and suddenly your vocals are being performed by a choir. It's fantastic to hear, and adds a whole layer of charm and character to the game.
Loco Roco also features several mini-games. The most notable is the Loco House, where you can use "parts" you've unlocked throughout the main game to build a playground for the Locos. It works much in the style of The Incredible Machine, where you're creating elaborate setups to move the frustratingly inane Locos around the screen and collect further unlockables, which are often floating in midair or other such inaccessible locales. It's kind of fun, and the focus of much of the bonus content is on acquiring bigger houses and more parts. Unfortunately, the parts are so useful and the space to build in so small and uninteresting that it doesn't take long before you can do pretty much any task it sets you using the same three or four pieces. It would have been great if this aspect of the game had been fleshed out a lot more.
Myself, I'm not going back to find all the Mui Muis and so forth. Part of the reason is that I'm not really that enthused by what they unlock, but the main reason is jumping puzzles. Superman has Lex Luthor, the Batman has the Joker; I have jumping puzzles. I hates them, as anyone who read my experience with Mega Man: Powered Up already knows. And while you can complete each and every level with nary a tricky jump to be seen, the process of finding the secrets is littered with some of the most frustrating, annoying, maddening jumps I've ever seen in a platformer.
To their credit, they don't kill you if you stuff them up (mostly). But the game's jumping controls are more than a little squirrely, the tilt-based gameplay is disorienting, and squishy surfaces, tilting platforms, and a character that's prone to roll off anything smaller than your thumb go together in a combination that on the later levels will have you wanting to throw your PSP at the wall.
This is a great game; it's original, it's fun, it's charming, and it's fantastic that things like this are being released. But you'll be charged the full premium price for it, and completing the levels won't take you very long at all, so if you're going to buy it, just be sure that you're happy with getting a quality experience instead of an epically long one, or be ready to face some fiendish jumping madness.
This review has been edited from one previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 31/07/2006.
Score: 15 out of 20 (A great game, but not exceptional)
Release date: June 2006
Developed by: Japan Studio
Published by: Sony Computer Entertainment
Loco Roco is another of those quirky Japanese games that we seem to be blessed with so many of lately. It used to be that stuff like this was jealously kept from us gaijin by the gaming powers that be, but the combination of a dawning region-free sensibility plus a shortage of competition in the handheld game market have led to more and more of this "only in Japan" craziness making the crossing and landing in our living rooms.
The premise is something a little like a cross between Katamari Damacy and Marble Madness, set in a 2D scrolling landscape. You take control of a Loco Roco, a little blob-like thing that speaks a Simlish-style gibberish. It transpires that the worlds of the Loco Rocos have been invaded by menacing black blobby-things called Mojas, and it's up to you to guide the Loco Rocos through a range of hallucinogenic landscapes, and help them to survive, explore, ... er... breed... and... um... sing. Breeding and singing are a big part of the game, seriously.
The worlds of the Loco Rocos consist of a fair range of scenery. The game starts in some fairly generic grassy hills, reminiscent of first levels of platformers everywhere, but quickly moves on to some significantly more original achievements. Jungles offer fast-flowing rivers that carry your Locos around, vines to swing on, and sticky leaf-layers to hang from like monkeys. The obligatory ice levels are filled with slippery floors and frozen chutes that let your Locos build up amazing speed. And several levels are set inside giant animals, where you must navigate from the creature's mouth, to its... er... lower exit, contending with giant hanging tonsils, spongy internal organs that happen to make fantastic trampolines, and the myriad dangers of peristalsis.
The landscapes have a fantastic organic quality, vibrating and shaking in time to your Loco Roco's motions with the qualities of authentic physics. The "inside the monster" levels are the best example of this, and are fantastic to play. Never have I been more convinced I was in the lower intestine of a ninety-foot penguin.
You don't get to directly control your Loco Roco. Rather than command the blobby protagonists to move, you instead get to tilt the entire world and roll them places. Holding the left shoulder button of the PSP tilts the world left, up to a maximum of about 60 degrees, and likewise the right shoulder tilts it right. This will usually induce your Loco Roco to roll "downhill", which is hopefully the way you want it to go. If this fails, your Loco Roco will usually get the hint anyway in a second or two and try and go in the direction you're indicating.
You can also press both shoulder buttons at the same time to shake the world (which basically makes your Loco Roco jump). Finally, you can press the circle button to split the Loco Roco up into a bunch of smaller versions of itself, to fit through tight gaps and solve other problems. In this state you're vulnerable to leaving some of yourself behind, but luckily you can quickly form up any Locos within sight and reach by holding down the circle button again.
Loco Roco sports some 40-ish levels. Finishing the levels is very easy - in fact, my PSP says I took about seven hours to do it, and that's including a couple of hours I spent messing around with the minigames and the Loco House (more of which later). Getting to the end of the game is never at any stage a real challenge, and feels more like an enjoyable sightseeing tour. It's almost ideal for children, first-time gamers, or those who like their platformers unthreatening (like myself).
However, for those who want to be challenged, the real meat of the game is in finding the bonus items. On each level, you are scored on how many Loco Roco you manage to find (for a perfect score of 20 per level), how many Loco House parts you find, and various other factors including time. Of note is that each level features three tiny golem-like creatures called Mui Mui, who are apparently friends of the Locos. Most of the game's unlockables (such as the minigames and the Loco Houses) are keyed off how many Mui Muis you've found in total, so there's a reasonable incentive to catch these things. You can, of course, repeat the levels as often as you like, and once a Mui Mui is found they stay found, no matter how often you re-try the stage.
I should note that the placement of the secrets themselves is fantastic - you have the clear sense that the level design is by a single mind. Placements of hidden items are fair, reasonably intuitive, and never ask you to, say, jump to what appears to be your doom in order to find them. You'll never be disappointed by the level layout - it's a minor masterpiece. When you discover a breakable wall or a hidden passageway, you never need to wonder whether to go through it - it'll always be worth your while, and if there's hazards along the hidden path, you'll find a handy teleporter-ish thing at the end so you don't have to jump them going back as well.
The art style is adorably simple and cute, making stong use of clean lines, bold primary colours, and a minimum of clutter in the backgrounds. It's distinctive, and perfectly suited to the feel and theme of the game.
But the real star of Loco Roco is the sound. Your Loco Roco is a chatty little creature, and will mutter to itself as it rolls along to inform you of its surroundings. The presence of dangerous spikes on the screen elicits a scared little whimper; nearby enemies cause your Loco to exclaim "Moja!", and when your Loco knows there's one of those little golem things nearby you'll hear a joyful cry of "Mui Mui!".
What's more, your Loco interacts with the soundtrack. Each level features one of a wide range of catchy tunes (think We Love Katamari), which are great all by themselves. What makes them better, however, is that the vocal track is actually sung by your Loco. Each of the different types of Loco Roco (six in all) has a different vocal styling, ranging from child's song, to opera, to the black Loco's deep soul funk voice. As you meander through the level, they'll sing the vocals to the level's music. Split into the multiple mini-locos, and suddenly your vocals are being performed by a choir. It's fantastic to hear, and adds a whole layer of charm and character to the game.
Loco Roco also features several mini-games. The most notable is the Loco House, where you can use "parts" you've unlocked throughout the main game to build a playground for the Locos. It works much in the style of The Incredible Machine, where you're creating elaborate setups to move the frustratingly inane Locos around the screen and collect further unlockables, which are often floating in midair or other such inaccessible locales. It's kind of fun, and the focus of much of the bonus content is on acquiring bigger houses and more parts. Unfortunately, the parts are so useful and the space to build in so small and uninteresting that it doesn't take long before you can do pretty much any task it sets you using the same three or four pieces. It would have been great if this aspect of the game had been fleshed out a lot more.
Myself, I'm not going back to find all the Mui Muis and so forth. Part of the reason is that I'm not really that enthused by what they unlock, but the main reason is jumping puzzles. Superman has Lex Luthor, the Batman has the Joker; I have jumping puzzles. I hates them, as anyone who read my experience with Mega Man: Powered Up already knows. And while you can complete each and every level with nary a tricky jump to be seen, the process of finding the secrets is littered with some of the most frustrating, annoying, maddening jumps I've ever seen in a platformer.
To their credit, they don't kill you if you stuff them up (mostly). But the game's jumping controls are more than a little squirrely, the tilt-based gameplay is disorienting, and squishy surfaces, tilting platforms, and a character that's prone to roll off anything smaller than your thumb go together in a combination that on the later levels will have you wanting to throw your PSP at the wall.
This is a great game; it's original, it's fun, it's charming, and it's fantastic that things like this are being released. But you'll be charged the full premium price for it, and completing the levels won't take you very long at all, so if you're going to buy it, just be sure that you're happy with getting a quality experience instead of an epically long one, or be ready to face some fiendish jumping madness.
This review has been edited from one previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 31/07/2006.
Score: 15 out of 20 (A great game, but not exceptional)
Release date: June 2006
Developed by: Japan Studio
Published by: Sony Computer Entertainment
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Dr Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain? (DS)
Gaming has a fine tradition of epic battles against disembodied heads. A hidden secret at the end of Doom II allowed players to open fire on the severed head of John Romero. Gamers reaching the end of Star Fox 64 (Lylat Wars)
went literally head to head with the giant floating cranium of Andross.
And who could forget entering the awesome vector-graphic world of the Strong Bad Zone? ("Your Head A Splode!")
So when the geniuses at Nintendo met the esteemed Doctor Ryuta Kawashima, and discovered that he was, in fact, a polygon-rendered floating head, it was only natural to make him the star of his own videogame.
The name of said game is Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain? (Released in the US as Brain Age: Train Your Brain In Minutes A Day) It's not to be confused with the similarly titled (but inferior) Big Brain Academy, released in Australia about the same time, presumably to capitalise on Brain Training's expected success.
For those who haven't had the pleasure, or confusion, of seeing this little game yet, it's not really too hard to describe. The game features Kawashima's floating head, exhorting you to perform simple mathematical, spatial, and reading challenges, and promising that following his instructions will bring back your brain's lost youth.
That's really as simple as it is. You turn the DS sideways (holding it like a book), and use the stylus to write down the answers to speed arithmetic, counting games, and so forth. The game mixes it up by sometimes allowing you to answer verbally through the DS microphone. And if you play with several people using the same card, you can compare your results against each other with occasionally amusing results.
Well, I've been playing it for 20 days now, and the game tells me I've experienced all the content there is to experience - "but you can still keep training!" Did I return my brain's lost youth? I don't know. On day one, the game estimated my Brain Age as 20, which is as low as it can measure to (low is good), and it hasn't budged since. What's more, on most of the puzzles I'm routinely getting the highest score or highest bracket possible, even on the "hard" setting. Is it possible I'm too intelligent? Or is it that this software just wasn't designed for people with gaming legacy skills?
It was kind of fun and all, but I have to say, on the basis of the software's main function, it wasn't remotely worth whatever I paid for it. (I forget what I paid, but there's a strong chance it was in the $50AUD "budget" range rather than the $80-$90 premium category.) I was stretching a bit to keep playing it for the 20 days, and those aren't 20 days of heavy gaming. Much like Animal Crossing, Brain Training effectively limits your play to under a half-hour per day (actually, more like fifteen minutes a day, at most). You can replay the day's "training exercises", but... why would you? They're not inherently fun, and the game only takes account of your first score per exercise per day.
However, there is a silver lining. The game also comes packed with some 120-ish stylus-driven Sudoku puzzles, and a really fairly good interface for solving them with. You can even play them with a "cheat mode" that warns you if you start to go wrong (just in case you're determined to not extract any longevity from this title). The sudokus have kept me going a lot longer than the training, and I suspect I'll be at them a little while longer still.
Is this game worth your time? If you're a regular gamer, no. Spend your money on Mario Kart, Meteos, or the upcoming Phantom Hourglass. If you're a casual gamer, though, just beginning to discover the magic of the DS, it might be worth your time. If you're really into solving sudokus. But I'd still suggest your money might be better spent on Animal Crossing: Wild World.
This review has been edited from one previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 20/07/2006.
Score: 6 out of 20 (A deeply flawed game that still holds some interest.)
For fans of the puzzle genre genre: 6 out of 20
For fans of the Brain Age franchise: 12 out of 20
Release date: April 2006
Developed by: Nintendo
Published by: Nintendo
So when the geniuses at Nintendo met the esteemed Doctor Ryuta Kawashima, and discovered that he was, in fact, a polygon-rendered floating head, it was only natural to make him the star of his own videogame.
The name of said game is Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain? (Released in the US as Brain Age: Train Your Brain In Minutes A Day) It's not to be confused with the similarly titled (but inferior) Big Brain Academy, released in Australia about the same time, presumably to capitalise on Brain Training's expected success.
For those who haven't had the pleasure, or confusion, of seeing this little game yet, it's not really too hard to describe. The game features Kawashima's floating head, exhorting you to perform simple mathematical, spatial, and reading challenges, and promising that following his instructions will bring back your brain's lost youth.
That's really as simple as it is. You turn the DS sideways (holding it like a book), and use the stylus to write down the answers to speed arithmetic, counting games, and so forth. The game mixes it up by sometimes allowing you to answer verbally through the DS microphone. And if you play with several people using the same card, you can compare your results against each other with occasionally amusing results.
Well, I've been playing it for 20 days now, and the game tells me I've experienced all the content there is to experience - "but you can still keep training!" Did I return my brain's lost youth? I don't know. On day one, the game estimated my Brain Age as 20, which is as low as it can measure to (low is good), and it hasn't budged since. What's more, on most of the puzzles I'm routinely getting the highest score or highest bracket possible, even on the "hard" setting. Is it possible I'm too intelligent? Or is it that this software just wasn't designed for people with gaming legacy skills?
It was kind of fun and all, but I have to say, on the basis of the software's main function, it wasn't remotely worth whatever I paid for it. (I forget what I paid, but there's a strong chance it was in the $50AUD "budget" range rather than the $80-$90 premium category.) I was stretching a bit to keep playing it for the 20 days, and those aren't 20 days of heavy gaming. Much like Animal Crossing, Brain Training effectively limits your play to under a half-hour per day (actually, more like fifteen minutes a day, at most). You can replay the day's "training exercises", but... why would you? They're not inherently fun, and the game only takes account of your first score per exercise per day.
However, there is a silver lining. The game also comes packed with some 120-ish stylus-driven Sudoku puzzles, and a really fairly good interface for solving them with. You can even play them with a "cheat mode" that warns you if you start to go wrong (just in case you're determined to not extract any longevity from this title). The sudokus have kept me going a lot longer than the training, and I suspect I'll be at them a little while longer still.
Is this game worth your time? If you're a regular gamer, no. Spend your money on Mario Kart, Meteos, or the upcoming Phantom Hourglass. If you're a casual gamer, though, just beginning to discover the magic of the DS, it might be worth your time. If you're really into solving sudokus. But I'd still suggest your money might be better spent on Animal Crossing: Wild World.
This review has been edited from one previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 20/07/2006.
Score: 6 out of 20 (A deeply flawed game that still holds some interest.)
For fans of the puzzle genre genre: 6 out of 20
For fans of the Brain Age franchise: 12 out of 20
Release date: April 2006
Developed by: Nintendo
Published by: Nintendo
Mega Man: Powered Up (PSP)
I never liked Mega Man. It was a platformer. It featured one-mistake deaths and bottomless pits. It was not my cup of tea.
But then, that's what I thought about Metroid, until I played Metroid Zero Mission, and discovered it was really a lot of fun. It's what I thought about Castlevania, but Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance turned out to be one of my best gaming finds of the year. So I thought maybe it was time to bury the axe with the old shiny blue robot and try out something from his more recent oeuvre.
It's worth noting that really good games for the PSP have not been as thick on the ground as I ideally would have liked, so I made a plan to remedy this by picking up Mega Man: Powered Up for my Sony handheld. It's a remake of the original, with cute super-deformed characters, and some modern gameplay concessions. It looked ideal - I could return to the roots of the series, without having to put up with 20-year-old NES game design.
Bah. Capcom obviously didn't remake Powered Up quite as much as I would have hoped. It still features one-fall deaths. And you know what? It doesn't really matter what else they've thrown in there, because none of it is going to get me past the sheer frustration of playing a difficult level almost to the end and then being booted all the way back to the start from losing my last life on a stupid jumping puzzle.
Total play time spent with Powered Up = about 15 minutes, just long enough to remember why I hate eighties platformer design. I'm done now. It can go back on the shelf, and never be played again.
No, I don't claim that this is a representative review of the game. It's just the reason that this game was a complete and dismal failure in interesting me in playing it, and you know, there's not that many games that manage that.
This review has been edited from one previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 28/06/2006.
Score: 3 out of 20 (A terrible game with no redeeming features)
For fans of the platforming genre: 13 out of 20
Release date: March 2006
Developed by: Capcom
Published by: Capcom
But then, that's what I thought about Metroid, until I played Metroid Zero Mission, and discovered it was really a lot of fun. It's what I thought about Castlevania, but Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance turned out to be one of my best gaming finds of the year. So I thought maybe it was time to bury the axe with the old shiny blue robot and try out something from his more recent oeuvre.
It's worth noting that really good games for the PSP have not been as thick on the ground as I ideally would have liked, so I made a plan to remedy this by picking up Mega Man: Powered Up for my Sony handheld. It's a remake of the original, with cute super-deformed characters, and some modern gameplay concessions. It looked ideal - I could return to the roots of the series, without having to put up with 20-year-old NES game design.
Bah. Capcom obviously didn't remake Powered Up quite as much as I would have hoped. It still features one-fall deaths. And you know what? It doesn't really matter what else they've thrown in there, because none of it is going to get me past the sheer frustration of playing a difficult level almost to the end and then being booted all the way back to the start from losing my last life on a stupid jumping puzzle.
Total play time spent with Powered Up = about 15 minutes, just long enough to remember why I hate eighties platformer design. I'm done now. It can go back on the shelf, and never be played again.
No, I don't claim that this is a representative review of the game. It's just the reason that this game was a complete and dismal failure in interesting me in playing it, and you know, there's not that many games that manage that.
This review has been edited from one previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 28/06/2006.
Score: 3 out of 20 (A terrible game with no redeeming features)
For fans of the platforming genre: 13 out of 20
Release date: March 2006
Developed by: Capcom
Published by: Capcom
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance (GBA)
I have memories. Horrible, horrible traumatic memories. They date from a
time in the late 80s, when a friend who shall remain nameless dragged
out his NES, fired up the original Castlevania, and handed me the
controller.
As those who have played it will know, the original Castlevania is a hardcore game. It is not for those faint of heart, or slow of wit, or really for anyone who doesn't have thumbs of Mercurian speed and a nearly bottomless tolerance for frustration. In the course of my time with that game, I honed my pre-existing loathing for platformers to a new and nigh-on superhuman level. Oh, how I hated that game.
So you can understand that I was a little skeptical when I started hearing talk that these "new-wave" Castlevania games of the last half-decade or so were really quite good, actually.
Our story jumps to about three months ago, when I was cruising the bargain bin at the local Games Wizards and happened to come across a little late-release GBA title called the Castlevania Double Pack. This modestly priced package promised to deliver not only Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, which by all accounts was rather good, but also its purportedly superior follow-up, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrows. The prospect of two complete games in a single game-pak, priced to please and portable to boot was too much. I decided to give Castlevania another chance.
And I'm glad I did. Harmony of Dissonance is definitely one of the better games in my non-small collection of GBA titles. Gone is the punishing difficulty of its ancestor. Instead, Harmony of Dissonance offers free-roaming exploration of not one but two giant castles, with gameplay more than a little reminiscent of the 2D Metroid titles. You wander around, finding keys to doors, increasing your abilities to be able to jump higher and slide through tight gaps (and so forth), and then exploring the new areas that these discoveries unlock. The hero this time around is Juste Belmont (descendant of the original game's Simon Belmont) and he's supposedly on a quest to save the beautiful Lydie. (Actually he seems a lot more emotionally preoccupied with his buddy and rival Maxim than with anyone in particular of the female gender, but whatever.)
If anything, Harmony of Dissonance is too easy. You acquire several sets of magical power as you progress through the game, which combine with the game's "subweapons" (of which there are six, although you can only carry one at a time) to produce powerful magical attacks. Some of these attacks are so powerful that they will connect with a nearby enemy five or six times a second for significant damage, and continue doing so for some five or six seconds (after which you can immediately recast the spell). This turns the majority of bosses into less of an exercise in skill, and more of an application of brute force. In the unlikely event that something goes wrong, you are able to carry around a disproportionately large stock of healing potions which can be consumed at the drop of a hat to set you back on your feet.
Still, the fun in Harmony of Dissonance comes less from the combat and more from the exploration, and the game definitely shines here. It's always clear whether you can or cannot reach a new area with the skills you possess. Your travels are marked out on a set of very clear maps of the castle,which make it easy to see where you haven't been to yet, and there's very rarely a point where you don't have several new things to try out. The castle itself is quickly revealed to actually be two castles, one hovering in a somewhat generic "dimenson of darkness", each castle possessing a parallell layout to the other. Predictably, solving problems in one castle occasionally yields a result in the other, and switching between the two castles is often key to progressing.
One place where the exploration could have been better crafted becomes more and more apparent as you play through the game, and that is the matter of backtracking. You are regularly required to travel from one remote location in the castle to another, often passing through long stretches of terrain you've already conquered. Luckily, the design of the game and its lack of difficulty means you're never faced with having to re-face a frustrating section you didn't enjoy the first time, but nevertheless this could have been better crafted. There are a range of teleporter-style rooms to facilitate your travel, but these are ever so slightly less frequent than would be ideal, and there are a particular couple of locations that always take several minutes of travel to return to whenever you want to try something new.
Graphically, the game is well suited to what it claims to be, but excels neither technically nor artistically. The castle contains a somewhat predictable array of gothic hallways, spiralling clocktowers, and skull-lined catacombs, but you never really need to take a moment to admire how good it looks. Interestingly, it was clearly decided at a late point in the game that certain of the game sprites (including the protagonist, Juste) didn't sufficiently stand out from the background, and so these characters bear a strange blue outline to enhance their visibility on screen. I suspect this would have been more an issue if I were playing it on the original GBA that didn't feature the backlit screen, as opposed to my significantly more friendly DS. Still, congratulations to the developers for being willing to so quickly sacrifice the visual aesthetic to create a more playable game. It's a shame about the sound, though, which is really quite bland and forgettable.
The structure of the game is perfectly suited to a handheld. Rarely does any single task or point of exploration take more than a couple of minutes (including boss fights), and although there are discrete save rooms that must be discovered to record your progress, you are also given the option at any point to save your game to your last save room, including all achievements since you last visited it. This allows you to travel to distant locations to check if you can move past them without worrying about the long trek back if it turns out you can't.
In addition to the obvious goal of finshing the game's plot, there are also side goals which include achieving 200% map exploration (that's 100% in each of the two castles), discovering each of the game's three alternative endings, discovering and defeating one of every monster in the game, and (for some reason) collecting a full set of furniture to decorate an empty room in the basement. Not all of these tasks give any sort of reward, but they're clearly marked and still kind of fun to shoot for.
I can thoroughly recommend Harmony of Dissonance to anyone who hasn't already played it, particularly if you like the free-roaming exploration-based gameplay made famous by such classics as Metroid and The Legend of Zelda, and although I'm a bit Castlevania-ed out for now, I'll certainly be coming back to play Aria of Sorrows in the near future.
This review has been edited from one previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 25/06/2006.
Score: 14 out of 20 (A great game, but not exceptional.)
For fans of the Metroidvania genre: 14 out of 20
For fans of the Castlevania franshise: 16 out of 20
Release date: September 2002
Developed by: Konami
Published by: Konami
As those who have played it will know, the original Castlevania is a hardcore game. It is not for those faint of heart, or slow of wit, or really for anyone who doesn't have thumbs of Mercurian speed and a nearly bottomless tolerance for frustration. In the course of my time with that game, I honed my pre-existing loathing for platformers to a new and nigh-on superhuman level. Oh, how I hated that game.
So you can understand that I was a little skeptical when I started hearing talk that these "new-wave" Castlevania games of the last half-decade or so were really quite good, actually.
Our story jumps to about three months ago, when I was cruising the bargain bin at the local Games Wizards and happened to come across a little late-release GBA title called the Castlevania Double Pack. This modestly priced package promised to deliver not only Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, which by all accounts was rather good, but also its purportedly superior follow-up, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrows. The prospect of two complete games in a single game-pak, priced to please and portable to boot was too much. I decided to give Castlevania another chance.
And I'm glad I did. Harmony of Dissonance is definitely one of the better games in my non-small collection of GBA titles. Gone is the punishing difficulty of its ancestor. Instead, Harmony of Dissonance offers free-roaming exploration of not one but two giant castles, with gameplay more than a little reminiscent of the 2D Metroid titles. You wander around, finding keys to doors, increasing your abilities to be able to jump higher and slide through tight gaps (and so forth), and then exploring the new areas that these discoveries unlock. The hero this time around is Juste Belmont (descendant of the original game's Simon Belmont) and he's supposedly on a quest to save the beautiful Lydie. (Actually he seems a lot more emotionally preoccupied with his buddy and rival Maxim than with anyone in particular of the female gender, but whatever.)
If anything, Harmony of Dissonance is too easy. You acquire several sets of magical power as you progress through the game, which combine with the game's "subweapons" (of which there are six, although you can only carry one at a time) to produce powerful magical attacks. Some of these attacks are so powerful that they will connect with a nearby enemy five or six times a second for significant damage, and continue doing so for some five or six seconds (after which you can immediately recast the spell). This turns the majority of bosses into less of an exercise in skill, and more of an application of brute force. In the unlikely event that something goes wrong, you are able to carry around a disproportionately large stock of healing potions which can be consumed at the drop of a hat to set you back on your feet.
Still, the fun in Harmony of Dissonance comes less from the combat and more from the exploration, and the game definitely shines here. It's always clear whether you can or cannot reach a new area with the skills you possess. Your travels are marked out on a set of very clear maps of the castle,which make it easy to see where you haven't been to yet, and there's very rarely a point where you don't have several new things to try out. The castle itself is quickly revealed to actually be two castles, one hovering in a somewhat generic "dimenson of darkness", each castle possessing a parallell layout to the other. Predictably, solving problems in one castle occasionally yields a result in the other, and switching between the two castles is often key to progressing.
One place where the exploration could have been better crafted becomes more and more apparent as you play through the game, and that is the matter of backtracking. You are regularly required to travel from one remote location in the castle to another, often passing through long stretches of terrain you've already conquered. Luckily, the design of the game and its lack of difficulty means you're never faced with having to re-face a frustrating section you didn't enjoy the first time, but nevertheless this could have been better crafted. There are a range of teleporter-style rooms to facilitate your travel, but these are ever so slightly less frequent than would be ideal, and there are a particular couple of locations that always take several minutes of travel to return to whenever you want to try something new.
Graphically, the game is well suited to what it claims to be, but excels neither technically nor artistically. The castle contains a somewhat predictable array of gothic hallways, spiralling clocktowers, and skull-lined catacombs, but you never really need to take a moment to admire how good it looks. Interestingly, it was clearly decided at a late point in the game that certain of the game sprites (including the protagonist, Juste) didn't sufficiently stand out from the background, and so these characters bear a strange blue outline to enhance their visibility on screen. I suspect this would have been more an issue if I were playing it on the original GBA that didn't feature the backlit screen, as opposed to my significantly more friendly DS. Still, congratulations to the developers for being willing to so quickly sacrifice the visual aesthetic to create a more playable game. It's a shame about the sound, though, which is really quite bland and forgettable.
The structure of the game is perfectly suited to a handheld. Rarely does any single task or point of exploration take more than a couple of minutes (including boss fights), and although there are discrete save rooms that must be discovered to record your progress, you are also given the option at any point to save your game to your last save room, including all achievements since you last visited it. This allows you to travel to distant locations to check if you can move past them without worrying about the long trek back if it turns out you can't.
In addition to the obvious goal of finshing the game's plot, there are also side goals which include achieving 200% map exploration (that's 100% in each of the two castles), discovering each of the game's three alternative endings, discovering and defeating one of every monster in the game, and (for some reason) collecting a full set of furniture to decorate an empty room in the basement. Not all of these tasks give any sort of reward, but they're clearly marked and still kind of fun to shoot for.
I can thoroughly recommend Harmony of Dissonance to anyone who hasn't already played it, particularly if you like the free-roaming exploration-based gameplay made famous by such classics as Metroid and The Legend of Zelda, and although I'm a bit Castlevania-ed out for now, I'll certainly be coming back to play Aria of Sorrows in the near future.
This review has been edited from one previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 25/06/2006.
Score: 14 out of 20 (A great game, but not exceptional.)
For fans of the Metroidvania genre: 14 out of 20
For fans of the Castlevania franshise: 16 out of 20
Release date: September 2002
Developed by: Konami
Published by: Konami
Loom (PC)
About three hours ago I booted up an emulated version of LucasArts' seminal adventure game, Loom, and began the quest of Bobbin Threadbare. About three minutes ago, I watched the credits roll over the end sequence.
They don't make 'em like they used to.
No, really, they don't. This game is so far from anything you'd expect to find on store shelves today that it's really a breath of fresh air to go back and play it. It's one of only two of the LucasArts SCUMM games that I never played (the other being Zak McKraken), and I'm very glad I just did.
The game is a traditional point and click adventure (although it's worth mentioning that it appeared quite early in the history of the genre). However, instead of being presented with a wide range of verbs such as "USE", "TAKE", et cetera, with which to manipulate your environment, you are instead given a magical distaff (because you're a Weaver, see) which you can use to cast spells. Spells are cast by playing sequences of four notes on the distaff, and you get those sequences from observing your environment. For instance, watching a knocked-over flask dripping onto the ground will play the tune for the "empty" spell, which you can then repeat on your distaff. (Playing the same tune backwards creates the "fill" spell.)
The story is simple, and yet rich, creating an intriguing world, and then deliberately not explaining more than it has to so as to retain an illusion of vastness that isn't borne out by the actual scope of the game. A lot of very elegant foreshadowing occurs. The very first spells that you learn play an important role in the climax of the game, giving you a nice sense of your victory coming from the nature of your origins.
The art is fantastic; the soundtrack (Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake) is well suited and well executed (in part by prolific 90s game composer George Alistair "The Fat Man" Sanger); the plot is coherent and well dialogued by Orson Scott Card. There's very nearly nothing that this game leaves you wanting.
Except for three things.
First, as you may have guessed from the start of this post, it's a short game. Three hours to complete, and I wasn't stumped by a single puzzle. It's a story driven game, and these days I'm playing it for free, but back in the day I probably would have felt a little cheated to have payed full price for this when comparable point-and-clicks being made by Sierra were significantly longer. Although it's worth saying that I'm playing Loom today, whereas I have no intention of going back and replaying the early Police Quest games.
Secondly, there's no in-game way of remembering your spells. You have to write down every musical sequence you hear on paper, because if you get up to the game's final moments and can't remember that spell for "healing" that you only heard once and haven't had a chance to try out yet... well, there's no going back to hear it again. I didn't have any trouble using pen and paper to do this, but still, these days you'd have at least an in-game notepad or something.
Thirdly, why has there never been a sequel for this game? The ending is a cliffhanger! The last words before the credits are pretty much the big bad evil thing threatening that you haven't heard the last of it, and you vowing to return to your homeland and undo the mischief that has been wrought upon it. And... that's the last we heard of Bobbin Threadbare for a couple of decades. Dagnabbit. Even Sam & Max is getting new games these days - where's my "Return to Loom"?
Anyway, it's been a nice afternoon running through this old classic, and if you haven't ever played it, it's well worth getting hold of a copy and working through it yourself.
This review has been edited from one previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 20/06/2006.
Score: 13 out of 20 (A good game with some significant drawbacks.)
For fans of the point-and-click adventure genre: 14 out of 20
For fans of LucasArts classic point-and-clicks: 11 out of 20
Release date: January 1990
Developed by: Lucasfilm Games
Published by: Lucasfilm Games
They don't make 'em like they used to.
No, really, they don't. This game is so far from anything you'd expect to find on store shelves today that it's really a breath of fresh air to go back and play it. It's one of only two of the LucasArts SCUMM games that I never played (the other being Zak McKraken), and I'm very glad I just did.
The game is a traditional point and click adventure (although it's worth mentioning that it appeared quite early in the history of the genre). However, instead of being presented with a wide range of verbs such as "USE", "TAKE", et cetera, with which to manipulate your environment, you are instead given a magical distaff (because you're a Weaver, see) which you can use to cast spells. Spells are cast by playing sequences of four notes on the distaff, and you get those sequences from observing your environment. For instance, watching a knocked-over flask dripping onto the ground will play the tune for the "empty" spell, which you can then repeat on your distaff. (Playing the same tune backwards creates the "fill" spell.)
The story is simple, and yet rich, creating an intriguing world, and then deliberately not explaining more than it has to so as to retain an illusion of vastness that isn't borne out by the actual scope of the game. A lot of very elegant foreshadowing occurs. The very first spells that you learn play an important role in the climax of the game, giving you a nice sense of your victory coming from the nature of your origins.
The art is fantastic; the soundtrack (Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake) is well suited and well executed (in part by prolific 90s game composer George Alistair "The Fat Man" Sanger); the plot is coherent and well dialogued by Orson Scott Card. There's very nearly nothing that this game leaves you wanting.
Except for three things.
First, as you may have guessed from the start of this post, it's a short game. Three hours to complete, and I wasn't stumped by a single puzzle. It's a story driven game, and these days I'm playing it for free, but back in the day I probably would have felt a little cheated to have payed full price for this when comparable point-and-clicks being made by Sierra were significantly longer. Although it's worth saying that I'm playing Loom today, whereas I have no intention of going back and replaying the early Police Quest games.
Secondly, there's no in-game way of remembering your spells. You have to write down every musical sequence you hear on paper, because if you get up to the game's final moments and can't remember that spell for "healing" that you only heard once and haven't had a chance to try out yet... well, there's no going back to hear it again. I didn't have any trouble using pen and paper to do this, but still, these days you'd have at least an in-game notepad or something.
Thirdly, why has there never been a sequel for this game? The ending is a cliffhanger! The last words before the credits are pretty much the big bad evil thing threatening that you haven't heard the last of it, and you vowing to return to your homeland and undo the mischief that has been wrought upon it. And... that's the last we heard of Bobbin Threadbare for a couple of decades. Dagnabbit. Even Sam & Max is getting new games these days - where's my "Return to Loom"?
Anyway, it's been a nice afternoon running through this old classic, and if you haven't ever played it, it's well worth getting hold of a copy and working through it yourself.
This review has been edited from one previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 20/06/2006.
Score: 13 out of 20 (A good game with some significant drawbacks.)
For fans of the point-and-click adventure genre: 14 out of 20
For fans of LucasArts classic point-and-clicks: 11 out of 20
Release date: January 1990
Developed by: Lucasfilm Games
Published by: Lucasfilm Games
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