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
Metal Gear Acid (PSP)
Rewind a year, to PSP launch day in Australia. I tracked down to my
local Electronics Boutique, and picked up my wonderful new preordered
Sony handheld. I bought two games to go with it from the launch line-up.
One was Wipeout Pure, which I haven't regretted for a second. The other
was Metal Gear Acid.
Fastforward back to today, when I finally finished Metal Gear Acid after playing it on and off all year.
That play length doesn't represent a fantastic depth of content, or endless replayability, or fantastic multiplayer. It's accounted for entirely by a frustrating design, lots of redundant gameplay, and a rather dull plot. Were I not a complete Metal Gear fanboy, I can promise you that I would never have finished it at all.
It's my own fault, really. I had such a good experience with Metal Gear's last handheld outing on the Gameboy Colour (also known as Metal Gear: Ghost Babel) that I just kept hoping that the PSP incarnation would measure up to the rest of the series. But I was disappointed.
Good Points
* Metal Gear Acid tries something new, and takes a risk, which is always to be commended. It replaces the tried and true Metal Gear tactical espionage action with a turn-based strategy where your actions are taken through playing action cards drawn from a customisable deck.
* The graphics are highly comparable with Metal Gear Solid for the Playstation and are an excellent early demonstration of what the PSP is capable of.
* Firing weapons feels appropriately visceral.
* The soundtrack and sound effects are reasonably good and certainly don't feel out of place in a Metal Gear game.
* The collectable cards are full of Konami/Kojima fanservice, with references to all the other Metal Gear games (including Ghost Babel), Zone of the Enders, and Policenauts.
* Many of the cards trigger short skippable movies when played showcasing relevant footage from the games they're drawn from.
* Coordinating two characters at once is occasionally fun and makes for an interesting spin on some classic Metal Gear gameplay; for example, one character can tap a wall to attract guards while the other sneaks past in a different direction.
* There are a couple of good set piece boss battles, notably the two battles against Clown and the final battle against Metal Gear.
Bad Points
* Like most Metal Gear games, being stealthy (supposedly the aim of the game) is disproportionately difficult and poorly rewarded. Combined with the overall frustrating nature of the game, there's a strong temptation to just run and gun.
* The difficult overall is balanced poorly. Later decks effectively let you "stop time" and just run circles around enemies, dispatching entire stages of soldiers before they can get a shot off. Conversely, early stages before the cost reducers and stealth camo become available can be punishingly annoying.
* Despite a wide range of cards available, you end up using very few of them. Certain classes of weapon (such as the shotgun) are neutered by poor range, high cost to fire, and a relative dearth of ammo. A wide range of pistol weapons are made irrelevant by being simply unable to do relevant damage to an enemy. Most of the weapon power-ups such as "Head Shot" and so forth are not worth the time due to (again) a high cost, and the fact that they vanish over time or after a single use. Most of the novelty effect cards are.. well, a novelty.
* Many situations in the game see you using just one of the two characters available to you. (A favourite tactic of mine was to have a firepower character and a stealth character.) This means that you have to keep flicking back to the unused character and telling them to wait, which can be frustrating.
* There are many long sequences of sitting in an area where you've already killed all the enemies and either slowly crossing the area using movement cards or waiting for a specific card to cycle into your hand.
* Some of the boss fights are underwhelming.
* The plot is rubbish. No, really, even for a Metal Gear game. It tries to be filled with twists and surprises, but the execution just feels childish and contrived, rather than the mixture of confusing and deep that the rest of the series regularly achieves.
* [Spoiler] The game ends with you defeating Metal Gear, and then watching every other surviving villain character being defeated by NPCs or escaping. Not delivering a showdown with the mastermind behind events leaves me feeling cheated.
* The nature of the deck building system requires you to repeatedly replay stages to earn more points to buy cards with. Very frustrating.
* The game doesn't include any of the head-games that the Metal Gear series is famous for. Nothing on the scale of Psycho Mantis, Arsenal Gear, The End or The Sorrow is present in the game.
Summary
The Metal Gear series COULD have worked as a card-driven turn-based strategy, but this particular game took a couple of wrong turns unrelated to its new format. I think where Metal Gear Acid went wrong can be summarised by two main points.
1) Metal Gear Acid fails to capture what made the Metal Gear Solid series so exciting: innovative and exciting boss battles, quirky humour, engaging characters, imaginative and surprising sequences of "thinking outside the box", and a rewarding climax.
2) Metal Gear Acid tries to use "all the rules all the time". It would have benefited endlessly from some context-sensitive mechanics. For example, allowing free and unlimited movement when all enemies on a stage have been cleared, or allowing you to set a character to "sleep" when you don't intend to use them for a while.
By all means, try this out if you're a Metal Gear fan. It's not a total disaster. But were it not for its position near the PSP's launch and its relationship to a successful franchise, I doubt anyone would remember it this long after its release.
Now, I DO have the sequel sitting on my shelf, which promises that it's learnt from its mistakes. I'll try it out once I've had time to forget the original, and see whether it delivers.
This review has been edited from one previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 20/06/2006.
Score: 8 out of 20 (A sub-par game that still delivers a fun experience.)
For fans of the Metal Gear franchise: 9 out of 20
Release date: March 2005
Developed by: Konami
Published by: Konami
Fastforward back to today, when I finally finished Metal Gear Acid after playing it on and off all year.
That play length doesn't represent a fantastic depth of content, or endless replayability, or fantastic multiplayer. It's accounted for entirely by a frustrating design, lots of redundant gameplay, and a rather dull plot. Were I not a complete Metal Gear fanboy, I can promise you that I would never have finished it at all.
It's my own fault, really. I had such a good experience with Metal Gear's last handheld outing on the Gameboy Colour (also known as Metal Gear: Ghost Babel) that I just kept hoping that the PSP incarnation would measure up to the rest of the series. But I was disappointed.
Good Points
* Metal Gear Acid tries something new, and takes a risk, which is always to be commended. It replaces the tried and true Metal Gear tactical espionage action with a turn-based strategy where your actions are taken through playing action cards drawn from a customisable deck.
* The graphics are highly comparable with Metal Gear Solid for the Playstation and are an excellent early demonstration of what the PSP is capable of.
* Firing weapons feels appropriately visceral.
* The soundtrack and sound effects are reasonably good and certainly don't feel out of place in a Metal Gear game.
* The collectable cards are full of Konami/Kojima fanservice, with references to all the other Metal Gear games (including Ghost Babel), Zone of the Enders, and Policenauts.
* Many of the cards trigger short skippable movies when played showcasing relevant footage from the games they're drawn from.
* Coordinating two characters at once is occasionally fun and makes for an interesting spin on some classic Metal Gear gameplay; for example, one character can tap a wall to attract guards while the other sneaks past in a different direction.
* There are a couple of good set piece boss battles, notably the two battles against Clown and the final battle against Metal Gear.
Bad Points
* Like most Metal Gear games, being stealthy (supposedly the aim of the game) is disproportionately difficult and poorly rewarded. Combined with the overall frustrating nature of the game, there's a strong temptation to just run and gun.
* The difficult overall is balanced poorly. Later decks effectively let you "stop time" and just run circles around enemies, dispatching entire stages of soldiers before they can get a shot off. Conversely, early stages before the cost reducers and stealth camo become available can be punishingly annoying.
* Despite a wide range of cards available, you end up using very few of them. Certain classes of weapon (such as the shotgun) are neutered by poor range, high cost to fire, and a relative dearth of ammo. A wide range of pistol weapons are made irrelevant by being simply unable to do relevant damage to an enemy. Most of the weapon power-ups such as "Head Shot" and so forth are not worth the time due to (again) a high cost, and the fact that they vanish over time or after a single use. Most of the novelty effect cards are.. well, a novelty.
* Many situations in the game see you using just one of the two characters available to you. (A favourite tactic of mine was to have a firepower character and a stealth character.) This means that you have to keep flicking back to the unused character and telling them to wait, which can be frustrating.
* There are many long sequences of sitting in an area where you've already killed all the enemies and either slowly crossing the area using movement cards or waiting for a specific card to cycle into your hand.
* Some of the boss fights are underwhelming.
* The plot is rubbish. No, really, even for a Metal Gear game. It tries to be filled with twists and surprises, but the execution just feels childish and contrived, rather than the mixture of confusing and deep that the rest of the series regularly achieves.
* [Spoiler] The game ends with you defeating Metal Gear, and then watching every other surviving villain character being defeated by NPCs or escaping. Not delivering a showdown with the mastermind behind events leaves me feeling cheated.
* The nature of the deck building system requires you to repeatedly replay stages to earn more points to buy cards with. Very frustrating.
* The game doesn't include any of the head-games that the Metal Gear series is famous for. Nothing on the scale of Psycho Mantis, Arsenal Gear, The End or The Sorrow is present in the game.
Summary
The Metal Gear series COULD have worked as a card-driven turn-based strategy, but this particular game took a couple of wrong turns unrelated to its new format. I think where Metal Gear Acid went wrong can be summarised by two main points.
1) Metal Gear Acid fails to capture what made the Metal Gear Solid series so exciting: innovative and exciting boss battles, quirky humour, engaging characters, imaginative and surprising sequences of "thinking outside the box", and a rewarding climax.
2) Metal Gear Acid tries to use "all the rules all the time". It would have benefited endlessly from some context-sensitive mechanics. For example, allowing free and unlimited movement when all enemies on a stage have been cleared, or allowing you to set a character to "sleep" when you don't intend to use them for a while.
By all means, try this out if you're a Metal Gear fan. It's not a total disaster. But were it not for its position near the PSP's launch and its relationship to a successful franchise, I doubt anyone would remember it this long after its release.
Now, I DO have the sequel sitting on my shelf, which promises that it's learnt from its mistakes. I'll try it out once I've had time to forget the original, and see whether it delivers.
This review has been edited from one previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 20/06/2006.
Score: 8 out of 20 (A sub-par game that still delivers a fun experience.)
For fans of the Metal Gear franchise: 9 out of 20
Release date: March 2005
Developed by: Konami
Published by: Konami
Guitar Hero (PS2)
"Well, the E-flat, it's doable, but the diminished ninth, you know... it's a man's chord. You could lose a finger."- Oz, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, What's My Line Part 2I'd just like to say thank you to everyone who recommended playing Guitar Hero. The game has just come out Down Under. I've picked up my copy and I'm pleased to report it may well be The Greatest Game Ever Made (TM). Rarely has a game so instantly and enthusiastically made me smile.
I got my copy from JB Hi-Fi. They were showing footage of the game down there, which actually looked kind of dodgy, but I thought to myself, "Well, I understand it's about the gameplay, not the graphics." Forget that - with Guitar Hero, it's all about the oversized novelty guitar controller, definitely one of the greatest innovations in game control ever created. The switch-like strum bar and the wah-wah control were pretty awesome, but what really secured its place in controller history was when I discovered that to begin really rocking out (and start the audience clapping along) you had to do no more than tilt the contoller vertically in classic air guitar style.
The song list is great - I think I've conquered I Love Rock And Roll on every difficulty now, and I'm working my way through Smoke on the Water, Take Me Out and No One Knows. There's 30 "A-list" songs, and then about (I think) 10 or so bonus tracks from mostly B-grade and garage bands. As always with rhythmn games, no matter what IS included in the game, you can't help but think about some noteworthy omissions. Personally I'm a little disappointed that I don't get an opportunity to go nuts on AC/DC's Thunderstruck.
I still haven't mastered the intricacies of "hammering on" and so forth, but even so I can't even contemplate how anyone can pull off some of the face-melting solos in the later tracks on medium difficulty or above. No One Knows, for example, is a reasonably blistering piece even on the easiest difficulty. I barely survived it on medium, and hard has me weeping in a corner. On expert it looks as though it requires a number of fret-changes per second significantly higher than my typing speed! What kind of God would allow that?
Um, so, yeah, it's at my place and people in the area are welcome to come try it out. If it sustains my interest more than a couple of weeks I might give thought to picking up a second controller for some head-to-head axe grinding.
This review has been edited from one previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 16/06/2006.
Score: 18 out of 20 (An exceptional, iconic or innovative game that everyone should play.)
For fans of the rhythm game genre: 19 out of 20
For fans of the Guitar Hero franchise: 13 out of 20
Release date: November 2005
Developed by: Harmonix
Published by: RedOctane
Tales of Phantasia (GBA)
First Impressions
I mentioned before I'm working my way through the port of Tales of Phantasia for the Game Boy Advance (by way of my DS). I thought I might post some thoughts.
Phantasia is the first installment in Namco's Tales franchise. It was first released for the SNES way back in the day, but only in Japan. I'd never heard of it until the series started getting a lot of western attention with the release of Symphonia on the GameCube and the more recent releases of Eternia and Legendia for the PSP and PS2 respectively. Apparently there are a whopping 13 games in the series, putting it up on a par with Final Fantasy, lengthwise.
That's not all it shares with Final Fantasy, though, by a long way. The game follows the classic Japanese RPG format, featuring a group of four adventurers on a quest through time in a medieval-esque setting to face a great evil... thing. The plot progresses from city to city, and dungeon to dungeon, punctuated by random encounters and levelling up. The graphics are unremittingly remniscent of Final Fantasy, as are the combat abilities (going so far as to include a summoning mechanic straight out of FF). As a whole the game feels remarkably like a bastard cross between FF IV and V.
If you're willing to overlook the fact that it may as well have been named Tales of Phinal Phantasia then it's a pretty good game, though. It has a few nice touches like being able to directly control the main character in combat, in a wierd mix of action gameplay and turn-based combat. There's a cooking system (apparently not present in the original game) that ties into the systems in later Tales games and enables you to heal your party of a range of ailments, but it's a bit redundant in the face of plentiful potion-style recovery items (here called "gels").
I breezed through the first half of the game and really enjoyed it; however, I've now reached a point, beginning roughly when I entered the Tower of the Zodiac, that the difficulty seems to have ramped up sharply. Where before I was levelling up at almost exactly the right pace to continue through the plot without stopping to grind, now I'm being beaten to within an inch of my life in every battle I encounter. I'm worried that I have a long grind-filled slog ahead of me; if so, then it will severely impact my interest in finishing the game.
The other thing that's a bit sad is that early on in the game I was receiving a bunch of skills for the main character which "levelled up" with practice; when you "mastered" them you could use them in more powerful combos. But it seems as though I've arbitrarily stopped getting any more of those skills, or at least entered a dry spell, and all my old ones have been mastered already. The combat's getting a bit tedious without any mini-rewards, and there's a LOT of combat in Phantasia.
I'm hoping the game evens out for the final third; it's been a great ride and I'm looking forward to eventually following it up with Eternia once I've had some non-RPG time.
These first impressions have been edited from ones previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 21/05/2006.
Post Mortem
Last night I finally finished Tales of Phantasia (the GBA version, as played on my DS).
I'm pleased to say that the horrible difficulty I reported on was a temporary aberration, and after finishing that section of the game I was able to progress through to the end with a minimum of grind. The game's unique battle system, which crosses a Final Fantasy style party screen with Street Fighter-esque real time 2D combat, means that certain classes of attack are significantly more powerful than others. Specifically, monsters who are direct-damage spellcasters, or who fly, or who can cause paralysis or petrification are exponentially more dangerous than their more standard peers. And, of course, flying spellcasters, or spellcasting paralysers, are another order of danger again.
Probably the most annoying parts of the game were the two places where progress depended on having an item equipped, without clearly signalling to you which item you need. In one case, the item was obtained as a random drop from a fairly rare enemy, and you needed six of them. In the other case, the items were more appropriately placed in chests and on NPCs but had I not access to a walkthrough to tell me what I was looking for I may have given up in frustration.
I didn't end up doing the Colosseum and Morlia Mineshaft quests (the ubiquitous Final Fantasy style optional boss battles), but did complete pretty much all the other content. The ultimate battle against Dhaos was almost the exact level of difficulty to be appropriately significant without being frustrating, but it did go for way too long. To beat him, you pretty much have to stop him from getting off an attack by constantly interrupting. Without Dhaos really attacking once, it still took about twenty minutes to finish the evil bugger off.
Finishing the game resulted in the obligatory New Game Plus option, along with a minigame that I really can't be bothered trying. I'm done with Phantasia - I reached the end at exactly the time I was losing all tolerance for it, so that worked out pretty well.
Overall, I'd say this game was better and deeper than Final Fantasy IV but not as good as V. It may seem a little Square-centric to rate it in that way, but really, I keep finding it hard to believe that this game wasn't a product of Squeenix - I've never played a non FF game that came so close to the key aspects of Final Fantasy design. It's a total knockoff - but it's a pretty decent one, that captures most of what makes FF good.
This post-mortem has been edited from one previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 06/06/2006.
Score: 13 out of 20 (Good with some drawbacks.)
For fans of the JRPG genre: 14 out of 20
For fans of the Tales franchise: 11 out of 20
Release date: March 2006
Developed by: Namco Tales Studio
Published by: Namco / Nintendo
I mentioned before I'm working my way through the port of Tales of Phantasia for the Game Boy Advance (by way of my DS). I thought I might post some thoughts.
Phantasia is the first installment in Namco's Tales franchise. It was first released for the SNES way back in the day, but only in Japan. I'd never heard of it until the series started getting a lot of western attention with the release of Symphonia on the GameCube and the more recent releases of Eternia and Legendia for the PSP and PS2 respectively. Apparently there are a whopping 13 games in the series, putting it up on a par with Final Fantasy, lengthwise.
That's not all it shares with Final Fantasy, though, by a long way. The game follows the classic Japanese RPG format, featuring a group of four adventurers on a quest through time in a medieval-esque setting to face a great evil... thing. The plot progresses from city to city, and dungeon to dungeon, punctuated by random encounters and levelling up. The graphics are unremittingly remniscent of Final Fantasy, as are the combat abilities (going so far as to include a summoning mechanic straight out of FF). As a whole the game feels remarkably like a bastard cross between FF IV and V.
If you're willing to overlook the fact that it may as well have been named Tales of Phinal Phantasia then it's a pretty good game, though. It has a few nice touches like being able to directly control the main character in combat, in a wierd mix of action gameplay and turn-based combat. There's a cooking system (apparently not present in the original game) that ties into the systems in later Tales games and enables you to heal your party of a range of ailments, but it's a bit redundant in the face of plentiful potion-style recovery items (here called "gels").
I breezed through the first half of the game and really enjoyed it; however, I've now reached a point, beginning roughly when I entered the Tower of the Zodiac, that the difficulty seems to have ramped up sharply. Where before I was levelling up at almost exactly the right pace to continue through the plot without stopping to grind, now I'm being beaten to within an inch of my life in every battle I encounter. I'm worried that I have a long grind-filled slog ahead of me; if so, then it will severely impact my interest in finishing the game.
The other thing that's a bit sad is that early on in the game I was receiving a bunch of skills for the main character which "levelled up" with practice; when you "mastered" them you could use them in more powerful combos. But it seems as though I've arbitrarily stopped getting any more of those skills, or at least entered a dry spell, and all my old ones have been mastered already. The combat's getting a bit tedious without any mini-rewards, and there's a LOT of combat in Phantasia.
I'm hoping the game evens out for the final third; it's been a great ride and I'm looking forward to eventually following it up with Eternia once I've had some non-RPG time.
These first impressions have been edited from ones previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 21/05/2006.
Post Mortem
Last night I finally finished Tales of Phantasia (the GBA version, as played on my DS).
I'm pleased to say that the horrible difficulty I reported on was a temporary aberration, and after finishing that section of the game I was able to progress through to the end with a minimum of grind. The game's unique battle system, which crosses a Final Fantasy style party screen with Street Fighter-esque real time 2D combat, means that certain classes of attack are significantly more powerful than others. Specifically, monsters who are direct-damage spellcasters, or who fly, or who can cause paralysis or petrification are exponentially more dangerous than their more standard peers. And, of course, flying spellcasters, or spellcasting paralysers, are another order of danger again.
Probably the most annoying parts of the game were the two places where progress depended on having an item equipped, without clearly signalling to you which item you need. In one case, the item was obtained as a random drop from a fairly rare enemy, and you needed six of them. In the other case, the items were more appropriately placed in chests and on NPCs but had I not access to a walkthrough to tell me what I was looking for I may have given up in frustration.
I didn't end up doing the Colosseum and Morlia Mineshaft quests (the ubiquitous Final Fantasy style optional boss battles), but did complete pretty much all the other content. The ultimate battle against Dhaos was almost the exact level of difficulty to be appropriately significant without being frustrating, but it did go for way too long. To beat him, you pretty much have to stop him from getting off an attack by constantly interrupting. Without Dhaos really attacking once, it still took about twenty minutes to finish the evil bugger off.
Finishing the game resulted in the obligatory New Game Plus option, along with a minigame that I really can't be bothered trying. I'm done with Phantasia - I reached the end at exactly the time I was losing all tolerance for it, so that worked out pretty well.
Overall, I'd say this game was better and deeper than Final Fantasy IV but not as good as V. It may seem a little Square-centric to rate it in that way, but really, I keep finding it hard to believe that this game wasn't a product of Squeenix - I've never played a non FF game that came so close to the key aspects of Final Fantasy design. It's a total knockoff - but it's a pretty decent one, that captures most of what makes FF good.
This post-mortem has been edited from one previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 06/06/2006.
Score: 13 out of 20 (Good with some drawbacks.)
For fans of the JRPG genre: 14 out of 20
For fans of the Tales franchise: 11 out of 20
Release date: March 2006
Developed by: Namco Tales Studio
Published by: Namco / Nintendo
Mario Kart DS (DS)
Well, I've had Mario Kart DS for a while now, and I'm reaching
the end of my tether on the single player game experience, so I thought
I'd post my final impressions of the game.
I'll start with the title. The game's called Mario Kart DS. That's all. The DS does not stand for anything above and beyond the title of the gaming machine. They didn't try to call it Mario Kart: Dust Strikers or Dual Strike or Dawn of Sorrows or Deadly Silence or any other clever or not so clever extension of the letters "D" and "S". So big points for that. Yay Nintendo.
Right, so now that we've established that the name's relatively pretension-free, we can move onto the gameplay. There's essentially three single player modes: a grand prix, a mission mode, and a battle mode.
The "main" single player game is the tried and tested Mario Kart race formula: a series of grand prix style "cups", each featuring four races. You can choose from 12 familiar Mario-style characters (four of whom are unlockable), and then pick one of that character's karts (a choice of two to start with, expanding to some ridiculous amount through unlocking). Each character and each kart has different strengths and weaknesses, including their weight, their speed, their handling, and the average quality of items they find on the track. Bowser, for example, is a high-speed powerhouse, but a little slow to start and awkward on the corners, whereas Toad is annoyingly nippy with a tendency to lose ground on the straights.
There are eight cups of four tracks each (that's 32 tracks in all). Half the tracks, collected in "retro" cups, are re-issues of tracks from the last four iterations of Mario Kart, including favourites like the Mario Circuit from the original SNES game and the Baby Park from the Gamecube. The other half are new tracks, which are a little more hit and miss; some tracks like DK Pass and Delfino Square are a load of fun, whereas some others like the notorious Rainbow Road are just a pain. (Though it's worth mentioning for veterans of the older games that this time round the Road is a walk in the park compared to its last outings - it's not hard now, just dull.)
As always with Mario Kart, the gameplay involves driving the track using very simple controls, and attempting to improve your position by the use of items scatterered around the track, and by controlled drifting and boosting around corners. The items include such things as red koopa shells which function like homing missiles, banana peels which can be dropped to foul races behind you, or mushrooms which give a brief speed boost. The more you're losing by, the better the items you get are, so there's a constant rubberbanding which feels good when you're learning or playing someone a lot better, but can be a bit frustrating when someone you've outperformed all race nips the victory which a cheap Bullet Bill at the last second.
Boosting bears mentioning, though, largely because it very nearly wrecks the game. This isn't the first time this game element's been included in Mario Kart, but it's the first time I've really appreciated how annoying it is. Basically, it works as follows - when you turn through a corner, the best way to do it is to do what's effectively a handbrake turn, allowing you to "drift" through the corner. While drifting, you have the opportunity to waggle the D-Pad left and right very quickly. If done sucecssfully, your wheels spark orange, and when you come out of the drift you gain a quick burst of speed which makes up the speed you lost on the corner and then some. It's so effective, that it's essential for mastering the game - on the top difficulty, you absolutely have to boost at least once on every corner, and sometimes twice.
But it gets worse - the speed boost is so significant that on straights, instead of just accelerating like mad, it's actually more effective to drift back and forth across the track, boosting like crazy. The speed gain makes up for the snaking motion, and will outperform a racer just driving normally. To play at the top level, you spend almost the entire race holding the drift button and waggling your thumb on the D-pad. I've almost ruined my wrists doing this online - I wish there was an option to have a race with boost disabled. Item use and course positioning largely become irrelevant in the face of the mad thumb wiggling; which is a shame, because those are the best bits of Mario Kart.
Boost-snaking aside, the grand prixs are pretty fun. There's more, though. The second gameplay mode is a mission mode, which challenges you to complete certain tasks, such as "collect 5 coins" (which are laid in certain pattern on the track), or "drive through six numbered gates in order". You're ranked on performance factors (usually speed) to get a rating for each mission. Every ten missions culminate in a boss fight with a classic Mario boss rendered in Mario Kart style - for example, you're challenged to race the giant Goomboss from Mario 64 DS around the Baby Park - but the Goomboss cheats by stepping over the median strip! There's no real point to Mission mode as far as I can tell - it doesn't unlock anything or have any plot - but it's kind of fun and the boss battles are truly excellent. There's about 80 missions in all, by the looks of things.
Lastly is the classic Battle mode, featuring the Balloon Battle and Shine Runner modes from the Gamecube. Here you're placed against other karts in an arena-style level and challenged to use items to take out or otherwise frustrate the other karts. This has always been my favourite Mario Kart mode, and so I'm a little disappointed to see only two battle modes and only a handful of courses. Where's Bob-omb Battle? Where's King of the Hill? Where's Capture the Flag? Still, what there is remains solid.
No discussion of Mario Kart DS would be complete without mentioning multiplayer. I have to say I haven't had the chance to try out Multi-Card play against other people who are physically close to me, but I have thoroughly explored the online options, thanks to me DS Wi-Fi USB connector.
Online play is excellent; it's well implemented and almost lag free. But it's not without its disappointments. Firstly, online play is limited to grand prix. That's right - no battle mode. I can't fathom this omission - it strikes me as just plain bizarre, and a little sad. I assume you can play battle mode multi-card, but I would have loved to go global with it. And secondly, of course, everyone else in the world is better than me. I can go nuts breaking my fingers with drift boosting and I still lose an awful lot. At least it's not on the PSP or I would have gone into terminal hand cramps long ago.
There are several online match finding options. "Friends" allows you to match against people whose friend codes you have. There is no way to trade friend codes in game (this is deliberate to protect minors from online predators, apparently) and as far as I can tell no way to tell when your friends are online short of trying to start a game with them, so I haven't had any joy from that mode yet. "Regional" matches you against players from your region (which I assume for me is Australia). I've yet to find anyone else actually using that mode, so I've never had a regionial match. And "Worldwide" effectively dumps you into a match against the first three players it finds, out of everyone looking for a game in the world. It might just be that I'm playing at Australian hours, but considering I'm searching "everyone", it takes me a damn long time to find players. Often I'm forced to go with only one or two opponents as we can't find a fourth.
That's worth noting, by the way - although you can race eight players in single player or multi-card play, it's limited to four online. I don't know whether that's a technical limitation or just a wierd design decision, but it's another small frustration. I suppose given my luck to date in even finding four players, I'd never find eight in any case, but still. Also, in passing, it's worth saying that Mario Kart doesn't have the voice chat support that Metroid Prime Hunters has implemented. In fact, Mario Kart doesn't support chat of any kind - not even a "good game" button for when someone hands your butt to you. Sometimes it feels a little like I'm not playing other people, just a spotty AI. The only sort of communication you can engage in comes in the form of your "icon", which is a little picture that you can draw yourself in an included pixel-paint application. Your icon appears over your head in multiplayer games.
I know I'm picking a lot of holes in the game, so it's worth saying that despite all its niggles, Mario Kart DS is far and away the best multiplayer handheld title I have ever played, Liberty City Stories notwithstanding. Its online implementation is a great first step into the obvious future of handhelds, and it's a ton of fun no matter what mode you're in. It picks up everything that's always made Mario Kart great and is probably the best ever released in the series.
Now, it's almost certain there's a Wii version of Mario Kart in development right now, so can I just shout out a message to any designers out there that stumble across this - forget about drift boosting. Just take it out, and get back to the item-focused, skill-light gameplay that we know and love. And for Jeebers' sake, give us more support for battle mode!
This review has been edited from one previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 18/052006.
Score: 15 out of 20 (A great game, but not exceptional.)
For fans of the racing genre: 14 out of 20
For fans of the Mario Kart franchise: 16 out of 20
Release date: November 2005
Developed by: Nintendo
Published by: Nintendo
I'll start with the title. The game's called Mario Kart DS. That's all. The DS does not stand for anything above and beyond the title of the gaming machine. They didn't try to call it Mario Kart: Dust Strikers or Dual Strike or Dawn of Sorrows or Deadly Silence or any other clever or not so clever extension of the letters "D" and "S". So big points for that. Yay Nintendo.
Right, so now that we've established that the name's relatively pretension-free, we can move onto the gameplay. There's essentially three single player modes: a grand prix, a mission mode, and a battle mode.
The "main" single player game is the tried and tested Mario Kart race formula: a series of grand prix style "cups", each featuring four races. You can choose from 12 familiar Mario-style characters (four of whom are unlockable), and then pick one of that character's karts (a choice of two to start with, expanding to some ridiculous amount through unlocking). Each character and each kart has different strengths and weaknesses, including their weight, their speed, their handling, and the average quality of items they find on the track. Bowser, for example, is a high-speed powerhouse, but a little slow to start and awkward on the corners, whereas Toad is annoyingly nippy with a tendency to lose ground on the straights.
There are eight cups of four tracks each (that's 32 tracks in all). Half the tracks, collected in "retro" cups, are re-issues of tracks from the last four iterations of Mario Kart, including favourites like the Mario Circuit from the original SNES game and the Baby Park from the Gamecube. The other half are new tracks, which are a little more hit and miss; some tracks like DK Pass and Delfino Square are a load of fun, whereas some others like the notorious Rainbow Road are just a pain. (Though it's worth mentioning for veterans of the older games that this time round the Road is a walk in the park compared to its last outings - it's not hard now, just dull.)
As always with Mario Kart, the gameplay involves driving the track using very simple controls, and attempting to improve your position by the use of items scatterered around the track, and by controlled drifting and boosting around corners. The items include such things as red koopa shells which function like homing missiles, banana peels which can be dropped to foul races behind you, or mushrooms which give a brief speed boost. The more you're losing by, the better the items you get are, so there's a constant rubberbanding which feels good when you're learning or playing someone a lot better, but can be a bit frustrating when someone you've outperformed all race nips the victory which a cheap Bullet Bill at the last second.
Boosting bears mentioning, though, largely because it very nearly wrecks the game. This isn't the first time this game element's been included in Mario Kart, but it's the first time I've really appreciated how annoying it is. Basically, it works as follows - when you turn through a corner, the best way to do it is to do what's effectively a handbrake turn, allowing you to "drift" through the corner. While drifting, you have the opportunity to waggle the D-Pad left and right very quickly. If done sucecssfully, your wheels spark orange, and when you come out of the drift you gain a quick burst of speed which makes up the speed you lost on the corner and then some. It's so effective, that it's essential for mastering the game - on the top difficulty, you absolutely have to boost at least once on every corner, and sometimes twice.
But it gets worse - the speed boost is so significant that on straights, instead of just accelerating like mad, it's actually more effective to drift back and forth across the track, boosting like crazy. The speed gain makes up for the snaking motion, and will outperform a racer just driving normally. To play at the top level, you spend almost the entire race holding the drift button and waggling your thumb on the D-pad. I've almost ruined my wrists doing this online - I wish there was an option to have a race with boost disabled. Item use and course positioning largely become irrelevant in the face of the mad thumb wiggling; which is a shame, because those are the best bits of Mario Kart.
Boost-snaking aside, the grand prixs are pretty fun. There's more, though. The second gameplay mode is a mission mode, which challenges you to complete certain tasks, such as "collect 5 coins" (which are laid in certain pattern on the track), or "drive through six numbered gates in order". You're ranked on performance factors (usually speed) to get a rating for each mission. Every ten missions culminate in a boss fight with a classic Mario boss rendered in Mario Kart style - for example, you're challenged to race the giant Goomboss from Mario 64 DS around the Baby Park - but the Goomboss cheats by stepping over the median strip! There's no real point to Mission mode as far as I can tell - it doesn't unlock anything or have any plot - but it's kind of fun and the boss battles are truly excellent. There's about 80 missions in all, by the looks of things.
Lastly is the classic Battle mode, featuring the Balloon Battle and Shine Runner modes from the Gamecube. Here you're placed against other karts in an arena-style level and challenged to use items to take out or otherwise frustrate the other karts. This has always been my favourite Mario Kart mode, and so I'm a little disappointed to see only two battle modes and only a handful of courses. Where's Bob-omb Battle? Where's King of the Hill? Where's Capture the Flag? Still, what there is remains solid.
No discussion of Mario Kart DS would be complete without mentioning multiplayer. I have to say I haven't had the chance to try out Multi-Card play against other people who are physically close to me, but I have thoroughly explored the online options, thanks to me DS Wi-Fi USB connector.
Online play is excellent; it's well implemented and almost lag free. But it's not without its disappointments. Firstly, online play is limited to grand prix. That's right - no battle mode. I can't fathom this omission - it strikes me as just plain bizarre, and a little sad. I assume you can play battle mode multi-card, but I would have loved to go global with it. And secondly, of course, everyone else in the world is better than me. I can go nuts breaking my fingers with drift boosting and I still lose an awful lot. At least it's not on the PSP or I would have gone into terminal hand cramps long ago.
There are several online match finding options. "Friends" allows you to match against people whose friend codes you have. There is no way to trade friend codes in game (this is deliberate to protect minors from online predators, apparently) and as far as I can tell no way to tell when your friends are online short of trying to start a game with them, so I haven't had any joy from that mode yet. "Regional" matches you against players from your region (which I assume for me is Australia). I've yet to find anyone else actually using that mode, so I've never had a regionial match. And "Worldwide" effectively dumps you into a match against the first three players it finds, out of everyone looking for a game in the world. It might just be that I'm playing at Australian hours, but considering I'm searching "everyone", it takes me a damn long time to find players. Often I'm forced to go with only one or two opponents as we can't find a fourth.
That's worth noting, by the way - although you can race eight players in single player or multi-card play, it's limited to four online. I don't know whether that's a technical limitation or just a wierd design decision, but it's another small frustration. I suppose given my luck to date in even finding four players, I'd never find eight in any case, but still. Also, in passing, it's worth saying that Mario Kart doesn't have the voice chat support that Metroid Prime Hunters has implemented. In fact, Mario Kart doesn't support chat of any kind - not even a "good game" button for when someone hands your butt to you. Sometimes it feels a little like I'm not playing other people, just a spotty AI. The only sort of communication you can engage in comes in the form of your "icon", which is a little picture that you can draw yourself in an included pixel-paint application. Your icon appears over your head in multiplayer games.
I know I'm picking a lot of holes in the game, so it's worth saying that despite all its niggles, Mario Kart DS is far and away the best multiplayer handheld title I have ever played, Liberty City Stories notwithstanding. Its online implementation is a great first step into the obvious future of handhelds, and it's a ton of fun no matter what mode you're in. It picks up everything that's always made Mario Kart great and is probably the best ever released in the series.
Now, it's almost certain there's a Wii version of Mario Kart in development right now, so can I just shout out a message to any designers out there that stumble across this - forget about drift boosting. Just take it out, and get back to the item-focused, skill-light gameplay that we know and love. And for Jeebers' sake, give us more support for battle mode!
This review has been edited from one previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 18/052006.
Score: 15 out of 20 (A great game, but not exceptional.)
For fans of the racing genre: 14 out of 20
For fans of the Mario Kart franchise: 16 out of 20
Release date: November 2005
Developed by: Nintendo
Published by: Nintendo
The Movies (PC)
It being two weeks since I last booted the sucker up, I'm now willing to admit that I'm probably not returning to playing The Movies any
time soon. I paid full price, got a total game experience of probably
10 hours, and I really can't even advance the argument that at least
those ten hours were a top-shelf experience.
Don't get me wrong - it was a great idea for a game, and the "make your own movie" bit was better realised than my highest practical expectations. But ultimately, just like every other game ever created by Peter Molyneaux or Lionhead, it was a product with an awe-inspiringly unique and ambitious concept jammed into a sub-par implementation suffering from a variety of technical and gameplay faults.
Take my game experience. I mean, in eighty years of film studio operation, I get maybe a total of 20 people wanting jobs. Despite the fact that I'm rolling in cash I can't keep my sets together because I can't get a repair guy for love or money - never mind that I'd be willing to pay them wages that would make my stars green with envy. The game stutters badly and regularly no matter what I do to my graphical settings, and the online "screen your movies and view those of others" component is set out with no real thought given to the practicalities of finding genuine quality in amongst the dross.
The act of actually making a movie in-game feels shallow as creating your masterpiece has no real effect on your progress through the standard game, and yet the sandbox mode where you get to go nuts with what's arguably the game's centerpiece requires you to have completed said standard game to have all the features available. And I don't know, but having to regularly instruct my entire cast to "drink yourselves happy" between each and every scene of a movie in order to get top results just doesn't feel right.
Props to Molyneaux et al on once again daring to go where no designer has gone before; but would it kill you to take a few lessons from Blizzard or Konami on how to deliver a polished well-considered final product that actually achieves the gameplay and atmosphere that it's aiming for?
This review has been edited from one previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 24/042006.
Score: 6 out of 20 (Deeply flawed but with some interesting aspects.)
For fans of the simulation genre: 6 out of 20
Release date: September 2005
Developed by: Lionhead Studios
Published by: Activision
Don't get me wrong - it was a great idea for a game, and the "make your own movie" bit was better realised than my highest practical expectations. But ultimately, just like every other game ever created by Peter Molyneaux or Lionhead, it was a product with an awe-inspiringly unique and ambitious concept jammed into a sub-par implementation suffering from a variety of technical and gameplay faults.
Take my game experience. I mean, in eighty years of film studio operation, I get maybe a total of 20 people wanting jobs. Despite the fact that I'm rolling in cash I can't keep my sets together because I can't get a repair guy for love or money - never mind that I'd be willing to pay them wages that would make my stars green with envy. The game stutters badly and regularly no matter what I do to my graphical settings, and the online "screen your movies and view those of others" component is set out with no real thought given to the practicalities of finding genuine quality in amongst the dross.
The act of actually making a movie in-game feels shallow as creating your masterpiece has no real effect on your progress through the standard game, and yet the sandbox mode where you get to go nuts with what's arguably the game's centerpiece requires you to have completed said standard game to have all the features available. And I don't know, but having to regularly instruct my entire cast to "drink yourselves happy" between each and every scene of a movie in order to get top results just doesn't feel right.
Props to Molyneaux et al on once again daring to go where no designer has gone before; but would it kill you to take a few lessons from Blizzard or Konami on how to deliver a polished well-considered final product that actually achieves the gameplay and atmosphere that it's aiming for?
This review has been edited from one previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 24/042006.
Score: 6 out of 20 (Deeply flawed but with some interesting aspects.)
For fans of the simulation genre: 6 out of 20
Release date: September 2005
Developed by: Lionhead Studios
Published by: Activision
Monday, May 5, 2014
We Love Katamari (PS2)
I've just sunk my gaming thumbs into Namco's We Love Katamari for the Playstation 2, the sequel to the surprisingly successfull Katamari Damacy (unreleased in Europe and Australia). And it's absolutely brilliant.
I cannot recommend this game highly enough. Don't be fooled by the kiddie packaging and the G rating. There's something in this for everyone. The game places you in the role of the Prince of Cosmos, the son of the flamboyant King Of All Cosmos (a giant with handlebar moustaches, a love for frills, and a head shaped like a horizontal rolling pin). During the last game, the King destroyed all the stars in Cosmos, and challenged the Prince to use a magical ball called a katamari to roll up conglomerations of matter on earth into giant spheres which the King could use to replace the stars.
Don't worry. I don't understand either.
But the plot's really not important. In fact, even the game itself pokes fun at its completely off the wall characters and stylings. The important thing is, you get to push a ball around and roll stuff up. And by "stuff", I mean paperclips, cookies, milk bottles, ducks, flowers, books, dogs, people, the Eiffel Tower, and, eventually, the Sun. Your ball grows in size with every item you roll up, but you can only roll things up once your ball is big enough to accept them. Luckily, there's no shortage of items lying around... you're averaging multiple items per second most of the time. Everything you touch sticks to the outside of your katamari, and you can see each item actually on the ball, at least until it gets covered up. It's a blast rolling up a little dancing gnome and then seeing him get repeatedly crushed as you roll the katamari at the next target.
It would be a really simple, amusing game, were it not for the control scheme, which challenges you to push the katamari with "both hands". In practice, this works out to having to use both of the PS2 controller's analogue sticks simultaneously. Up on both moves the ball forward, while up on one and down on the other lets you move the Prince around the outside of the ball to push it in a different direction. A quick push-in of both sticks does a 180 degree turn, and so forth. It's highly non-intuitive, but it could be argued that this constant battle with the controls is part of both the charm and the challenge of the game.
It's multiplayer, too, but I haven't had a chance to try that yet, and I suspect I may have a little trouble. The control scheme makes it probably not casual enough to tempt my girlfriend into a session, but the essential wierdness and lack of the ability to shoot things in the head may make it difficult to talk my gaming friends into giving it a serious try.
It's a horribly addictive game, and I might have to go have another session of it right now. In fact, I think I will.
This review has been edited from one previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 26/03/2006.
Score: 18 out of 20 (An innovative, iconic, or exceptional game that should be played by everyone.)
For fans of the Katamari franchise: 19 out of 20
Release date: September 2005
Developed by: Namco
Published by: Namco
I cannot recommend this game highly enough. Don't be fooled by the kiddie packaging and the G rating. There's something in this for everyone. The game places you in the role of the Prince of Cosmos, the son of the flamboyant King Of All Cosmos (a giant with handlebar moustaches, a love for frills, and a head shaped like a horizontal rolling pin). During the last game, the King destroyed all the stars in Cosmos, and challenged the Prince to use a magical ball called a katamari to roll up conglomerations of matter on earth into giant spheres which the King could use to replace the stars.
Don't worry. I don't understand either.
But the plot's really not important. In fact, even the game itself pokes fun at its completely off the wall characters and stylings. The important thing is, you get to push a ball around and roll stuff up. And by "stuff", I mean paperclips, cookies, milk bottles, ducks, flowers, books, dogs, people, the Eiffel Tower, and, eventually, the Sun. Your ball grows in size with every item you roll up, but you can only roll things up once your ball is big enough to accept them. Luckily, there's no shortage of items lying around... you're averaging multiple items per second most of the time. Everything you touch sticks to the outside of your katamari, and you can see each item actually on the ball, at least until it gets covered up. It's a blast rolling up a little dancing gnome and then seeing him get repeatedly crushed as you roll the katamari at the next target.
It would be a really simple, amusing game, were it not for the control scheme, which challenges you to push the katamari with "both hands". In practice, this works out to having to use both of the PS2 controller's analogue sticks simultaneously. Up on both moves the ball forward, while up on one and down on the other lets you move the Prince around the outside of the ball to push it in a different direction. A quick push-in of both sticks does a 180 degree turn, and so forth. It's highly non-intuitive, but it could be argued that this constant battle with the controls is part of both the charm and the challenge of the game.
It's multiplayer, too, but I haven't had a chance to try that yet, and I suspect I may have a little trouble. The control scheme makes it probably not casual enough to tempt my girlfriend into a session, but the essential wierdness and lack of the ability to shoot things in the head may make it difficult to talk my gaming friends into giving it a serious try.
It's a horribly addictive game, and I might have to go have another session of it right now. In fact, I think I will.
This review has been edited from one previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 26/03/2006.
Score: 18 out of 20 (An innovative, iconic, or exceptional game that should be played by everyone.)
For fans of the Katamari franchise: 19 out of 20
Release date: September 2005
Developed by: Namco
Published by: Namco
Facade (PC)
Not a commercial release; don't feel bad if you haven't heard of it.
This odd little game is part experiment, part proof of concept, and part
challenge to game designers.
You play a guest at the house of two married friends on the verge of a messy breakup. Their breakup forms the story; you're challenged to interact so as to affect the outcome.
My first attempt, though interesting, was largely unsuccessful. The game seems to be a fairly excellent demonstration of AI driven characterisation and combining plot elements or "beats" to produce a unique story while still retaining narrative cohesion.
Unfortunately, the underlying situation is inherently stressful and non-fun, making it less something you want to experiment with and more something to toy with once or twice and then escape from.
It's a free and legal download via Bittorrent, though, so if you have the bandwidth I strongly recommend you to check it out.
This review was previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 24/03/2006.
Score: 7 out of 20 (A deeply flawed game that remains interesting or provocative.)
For fans of the indie: 10 out of 20
Release date: July 2005
Developed by: Michael Mateas & Andrew Stern
Published by: N/A
You play a guest at the house of two married friends on the verge of a messy breakup. Their breakup forms the story; you're challenged to interact so as to affect the outcome.
My first attempt, though interesting, was largely unsuccessful. The game seems to be a fairly excellent demonstration of AI driven characterisation and combining plot elements or "beats" to produce a unique story while still retaining narrative cohesion.
Unfortunately, the underlying situation is inherently stressful and non-fun, making it less something you want to experiment with and more something to toy with once or twice and then escape from.
It's a free and legal download via Bittorrent, though, so if you have the bandwidth I strongly recommend you to check it out.
This review was previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 24/03/2006.
Score: 7 out of 20 (A deeply flawed game that remains interesting or provocative.)
For fans of the indie: 10 out of 20
Release date: July 2005
Developed by: Michael Mateas & Andrew Stern
Published by: N/A
Burnout Legends (PSP)
A frankly amazing port of the Burnout franchise to a handheld format. Were it not for the PSP's hideous hand-deforming ergonomics, you'd almost forget you weren't playing a console. It's a like a remix of the four console titles, including old gameplay favourites like Pursuit Mode, while missing out on the more recent Burnout Revenge's ability to check same-way traffic.
Probably the only less-than-perfect note of the game is Crash Mode, where the limitations of the hardware conspire to cause a relatively low number of on-screen vehicles, and a bevy of camera issues which make it really hard to make effective use of the series' trademark Crashbreaker mechanic.
But the short-burst playing style inherent in a handheld release makes Crash Mode still an ideal playing choice, so all round you don't worry too much. Did I mention this game supports pretty much every multiplayer under the sun, including a gamesharing mode that's only limited by how much time you're prepared to spend uploading levels and cars to friends?
Warning: Do not confuse this game with the identically titled DS version! The DS version is rubbish and should be avoided by all sensible people!
This review was previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 24/03/2006.
Score: 15 out of 20 (A game that is genuinely great without being innovative, iconic, or exceptional.)
For fans of the racing genre: 18 out of 20
For fans of the Burnout franchise: 18 out of 20
Release date: September 2005
Developed by: Criterion Games
Published by: Electronic Arts
Probably the only less-than-perfect note of the game is Crash Mode, where the limitations of the hardware conspire to cause a relatively low number of on-screen vehicles, and a bevy of camera issues which make it really hard to make effective use of the series' trademark Crashbreaker mechanic.
But the short-burst playing style inherent in a handheld release makes Crash Mode still an ideal playing choice, so all round you don't worry too much. Did I mention this game supports pretty much every multiplayer under the sun, including a gamesharing mode that's only limited by how much time you're prepared to spend uploading levels and cars to friends?
Warning: Do not confuse this game with the identically titled DS version! The DS version is rubbish and should be avoided by all sensible people!
This review was previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 24/03/2006.
Score: 15 out of 20 (A game that is genuinely great without being innovative, iconic, or exceptional.)
For fans of the racing genre: 18 out of 20
For fans of the Burnout franchise: 18 out of 20
Release date: September 2005
Developed by: Criterion Games
Published by: Electronic Arts
First Post
Hi.
Welcome to Every Last Game.
It's an aspirational title. I have not played every last game, or even most of them. There are, if nothing else, an awful lot of terrible shovelware titles for Nintendo systems.
But I have played a lot, and I've written about what I've played. The intention is to collect what I've written here, and write more of it, in a searchable format.
Enjoy.
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