The Lord of Blades
Game Masters
Ero Sennin
Please allow me to introduce myself: I'm a man of wealth and taste
Posts: 1,314
|
Post by The Lord of Blades on Mar 1, 2008 17:42:10 GMT -5
Okay, I decided that since we all play alot of games, that it might be fun for us to post reviews of the games we enjoy or are playing to let others know what may or may not be a good buy. Personally, I don't intend to pull any punches on mine, and I don't see any problems with multiple people reviewing the same game as it's a good perspective issue. Can't really think of anything else to say, we all really know what reviews are I'm sure as most of us have laughed alongside Yahtzee's reviews at Zero Punctuation. So anyways, without further ado, I'm going to kick this off. ------------------------------------------------- Hellgate LondonHellgate London, for those unfamiliar with the premise, is the post-apocalyptic story of the survivors of a hellish invasion that began in London and subsequently claimed the rest of the world. Mankind was forced underground, devoting themselves to waging a war they had no hope of winning against the endless demon hordes emerging from the Hellgate. Many years have passed, and in that time, man has learned how to forge weapons to strike down the demons, to travel across the surface, and to hopefully, retake the earth. Now onto the actual game mechanics and the nitty gritty. The game lets you select from two jobs out of each of the three factions (Templar: Heavy armored melee experts, Cabalists: demon-power using wizards, Hunters: military soldier types) as well as choosing your camera angle from first to third person. Whichever you decide to choose (class-wise) has no effect on the story whatsoever, and indeed, the shops will only sell you loot for your respective job so no worries about having to scour the markets for a specific piece of gear for your job. Even in Multiplayer there is no loot thieving as individual players recieve their own loot drops completely seperate from eachother. Although this tends to cause a few problems when your ally kills a monster without you around and you consequently totally miss out on several drops having not known there were monsters present in that area. It also ties you down even longer in town as you're trying to figure out if you found any 'good' gear for your ally or not. Speaking of drops, Hellgate also pulls a page right from Diablo in that you'll probably never find a unique of the class you selected until it's long since become obsolete. You'll find that as a Hunter you find an abundance of swords and heavy plate as well as Cabalist items while your own gear is remarkably lacking. Perhaps I just have bad luck, but when I've found three unique Cabalist items, two unique Templar items, and am still waiting on my first Hunter unique, that says something to me. Next up in the mechanics of shops and items (while I'm on the subject), is the mods and upgrades you can plug into your items. Each weapon comes with a certain number of available mod slots of certain types. Throughout the game you find bits of specific 'techs / relics / fuel / batteries / rockets' that are woefully not interchangeable. What this means is if your gun has a slot for two techs and one battery, it doesn't matter how awesome that relic you found is, it won't go in your gun. Now, this wouldn't be so bad in and of itself, except that for the most part you tend to have to stockpile dozens of each kind simply to be prepared should you find a good new weapon. Worse still, all mods, weapons, and armor have an item level. For armor this isn't so bad, namely, setting a minimum level you have to be to equip the armor piece (ex: Item Level 19 requires level 15+ or something similar). However, for weapons and their mods, this can be a crippling blow to the games own ingenuity. A mod that is only available for level 9 - 19 can unfortunately NOT be placed in a weapon outside those parameters, regardless of how good or bad the weapon or mod is. So what that means is there's no reason to stockpile that amazingly good mod you found, odds are good unless you put it in a weapon right away, you'll never end up using it. Now, this would still again not be so bad were it not for the other 'aspect' of the item system. Upgrading. Throughout the game you can disassemble the gear you don't have room to carry (which I assure you, unless you're town-portal happy [called "Personal Relocation Devices" or "PRDs" in Hellgate], you'll need to do) into one of four types of 'material'. These materials (runic fragments, scrap metal, tech bits, holy relic) come in two flavors: Regular and Enchanted. This doesn't matter much as the Enchanted kind are merely more rare and used less frequently in the games crafting (which one NPC in each 'station' usually offers) as well as item upgrading. For example, to create a new shoulder pauldron, it might take 50 runic fragments, 10 enchanted runic fragments, 30 scrap metals, and 3 enchanted scrap metals. Not too bad at all given it provides another way to acquire new items other than shops, a good way to make money too with an abundance of materials available (although you'll always make more money just selling as opposed to disassembling and selling the scrap or re-crafted items). Still, that's not a problem, that's a refreshing new mechanic. The problem lies in what it does to modded weapons. A weapon that is level 18 with 3 mods in it, let's call them Mod A (Levels 1-18), Mod B (Levels 8-24), and Mod C (Levels 15-30) that gets modified to be level 19 will lose the effects of Mod A... without ever informing you. It was by sheer chance that I even noticed the effect myself, since mods provide a new aesthetic appearance to your weapon when installed (some more visible than others, such as an ammo clip or scope in comparison to a battery). When I upgraded my weapon, the mod vanished (even though it was still attached to the weapon) and so did its effect without ever even informing me. Nor does it make any mention of this in the instruction manual at any point. Now admittedly, it would, in a sense be cheating to put great level 1-10 mods in a weapon and then be upgrading it, but not even telling me my mods aren't still doing their thing other than removing their visual aesthetic (of which I assure you, some are totally unnoticeable) is downright shitty. Fortunately you can detach mods to place new ones into your weapon that will function, but it costs you money each time you do it. So upgrading your weapon and losing mods will cost you materials and money. Also, it's important to note, upgrading your weapons is highly necessary as it increases their damage, so don't think you can keep those great mods and just not upgrade. Mod bullshit aside, you can also add magical properties to an item for a fee from poor to medium or great quality of enchantment (Good, Rare, Legendary, by ingame terms from the "Augmentrex3000"). Unfortunately, you don't get to pick them. That's right, you could spend upwards of 30,000 Palladium (the currency of the game) for a bonus that does complete crap for your job such as getting "Minion Damage +20%" on a job that can't summon minions. What's better? Can't take 'em off either or get the money back. Congratulations, you just played roullette with your equipment and lost. Now it sucks and is gonna sell for about 500 as opposed to the 30,000 you just shelled out. By the way, the most Palladium I had at any time on my completed playthrough on Normal was 120,000 (still think 30,000 isn't that much?). The game tends to punish you inventory-wise, forcing you to often choose between scrapping and selling to either get parts or palladium. You'll often find yourself in a deficit of one or the other if you frequently mod, upgrade, or add magical properties. The graphics in the game are quite beautiful and even simple environments really shine in DirectX10 (although they still look quite good in DX9). The wartorn lands and burnt out cities look fantastic and there is no shortage of nooks and crannies to explore... if only there was a reason to do so. Most of the levels are extremely linear and are not varied enough to keep you excited about leaping through the portal to the next area. You go from burnt out city with red sky to burnt out city with dark sky to ruined park with brown sky to ruined park with red sky. This is of course, when you're topside, when you're below, you're left with a choice of sewers, train tunnels, ruined churches, and the occasional warehouse-looking place. This isn't to say they are by any means bad-looking, quite the opposite really, it's just that there's nothing really new or exciting. The environments tend to look rather bland after a while and without anything to search for besides monsters, clearly-flagged objectives placed along your path, and the portal to the next zone, you're left with little desire to explore the nooks and crannies. You might find a bolthole with a few crates you can blow up for some palladium or items, but don't expect much more. The enemies on the other hand look fantastic. They take traditional horned/winged demon stereotypes and throw them out the window. Instead you're fighting gangly magic-flinging vortex rogues, and then brutish, armored elephant-like creatures called Carnagors. They all have exquisite models that die in remarkable fashions (sliding down hills or over railings) and attack in unique ways, actually utilizing their reach or strategies that make sense (such as swarming for smaller enemies). The problem is that you run out of enemy types by about Act 2 (out of approximately 6 Acts). You go into the next zone eager to see what new monstrosities they've cooked up for you... and instead you're treated to the same monsters as before... but higher level. Maybe a few have a new paint job, but nothing fancy at all. It's like the designers took their inspiration from a crappy old school RPG where there is a sum total of 8 different monster appearances but 500 color schemes/size variants to make the whole collection of monsters. Even boss monsters are few and far between and tend to resemble little more than color/size-altered previous seen foes. There are maybe 7 unique monsters in the game and they all look great and awe you... and you never see them again. One of them is the damn boss of the game! All in all, the game looks great, but they don't put any of it to great use, you're left wanting to see some kind of 'theme' but instead they just take random-level-template A and put random-monster-set Q on it. It's a huge letdown after the first couple of acts. We get it, there are zombies, can't you impress us by putting in a little bit more creative a theme? For that matter, as mentioned above, sometimes the enemies are downright brilliant, being completely incapable of missing while aiming their weapons despite strafe-moves that dodge Godlike AI in UT, while other times they turn and aim at walls and shoot them or run away from you for no reason other than to inspire chases ala Descent 2's thief bots (YOINK! GOT YOUR QUAD LASER!). We'll come back to enemies in a minute in a bit more of a discussion regarding some other glitches. The game's main story doesn't make a damn lick of sense at first. No question about it, when you begin, you have no clue what you're doing, but it is oddly compelling. Never once in the main story did I not feel like I was involved and intrigued. The mysterious dialogues and characters, the goals and the assaults, and the efforts of Mankind to cling to survival... it is all very gripping and despite being unsure of what you just did, it feels important. Which, by default, makes you feel important. The problem would be the endgame. You finally think you have a grip of what's going on, and then you get God Emperor of Dune'd (meaning alot of weird inexplicable shit happens in a disjointed, weird, broken, you're involved but not involved kind of way) and are left with a "WIN THE GAME" objective for lack of better words. It's a good story with an enthralling plot, but it definately feels like someone originally had a much 'deeper' thought in mind that got scrapped when no one had depth greater than a spoon on the dev team to understand it and so the ending had to be dumbed-down. At least, that's what it feels like to me. Experience-wise, the game doesn't fail to deliver an even growth pace for attribute points and skills. Hellgate London has perhaps the most balanced attribute system I've yet seen in such a game, with each of its four attributes: Accuracy, Strength, Stamina, and Willpower, all being almost equally important. I was both shocked and pleased to see that I'd need to raise my Stamina and Willpower, not just my Accuracy, on a Marksman, and the game delivers an excellent system for helping you monitor it. Your equipment's "Drain" on those stats is present as a blue bar that you always want to be able to keep low (if it's full it means you're using 100% of that attribute across your equipment) so as to be able to equip newer, better, and higher drain equipment. The system is fantastic and you frequently find yourself with additional attribute points awarded from the sidequests as little treats you didn't know you had. The skill system, however, falls surprisingly short. Whereas Diablo II left you scrounging for skill points with it's max level of 20 per skill and numerous quests to gain skill points or items that boosted skills, Hellgate takes that to an extreme. With a maximum level of 50, at one skill point per level, and a maximum skill level of 10 per skill, Hellgate makes you decide right from the start where your skills are going. Hell, you even start with one skill point already assigned. So there, you have a maximum of 49 skill points to choose where they go across approximately 30 skills per class. That leaves you with very little room to max out skills if you want more than 4 or 5 skills. This is particularly rough with no way to reassign skills, hell you can't even take it back in the level-up screen. Once you click the little "+" that skill is locked in until the end o' that character. Finally we're on to the game's real lows. The sidequests, the monsters, the allies, the minigames, and the sound. Starting with the sound, the game does have music, although it fades in and out randomly in an attempt to be dramatic (I can only guess as mimicking Half Life 2), but it fails and instead it leaves you feeling like they didn't record enough of a soundtrack to give you a legitimate full-time audio experience. Second, some of the attacks sound downright pitiful. Firing something called an XM57 20mm Rifle loaded with demon-piercer rounds should not go: "patpatpatpatpatpat". Following the sound, in the next simple to cover segment, we have sidequests. They start out novel and intriguing... but they come in one of but a few flavors: Explore an area, kill a monster, kill multiple monsters, activate a few prominently labeled objects, retrieve X amount of an object, or my personal favorite... use an item on a monster/object while it's still alive but before it kills you and then kill it. Now, rinse and repeat for the rest of the game starting in town one. Oh, and did I mention, often times the quest giver you just completed the first one for will assign you another quest in the very next zone, so make sure to PRD back the moment you finish a quest. Sometimes people will be sure to make you go back and revisit old areas multiple times in a row just to piss you off too. Now, the allies in this game are a supreme lowpoint. They deal next to no damage, attack anything that registers as remotely hostile, and either die a few minutes into combat, or manage to steal your kill (which can and will cause quests to be uncompleteable until you leave the zone and return to replenish the monsters, but be careful because they can just easily killsteal it again!). If the ally is storyline important, they will deal even LESS damage, and lose the ability to tank for a few minutes, rendering them entirely useless for any purpose other than distracting you momentarily by making you think they're an enemy when they suddenly appear next to you after lagging behind minutes ago. Or, my personal favorite, near the end of the game, one ally literally does not attack, and instead floats around sparkling and generally floating in front of you. I'm not sure how much of a problem this is to melee fighters, but when you're trying to aim a gun in first person and all you can see is a stupid whore floating in front of you and glowing it brings "HEY LISTEN!" to mind. Finally there are the enemies. They range from supremely gigantic (which, when they die, their corpses stay and thusly obscure absolutely everything from sight in a wonderful way of going: "We know you liked the good death animations... so FUCK YOU!") to utterly miniscule. Ideal for fucking up their goal of first person and third person action as it makes aiming incredibly difficult in either instance. Also, either the enemies will die in one shot, leaving no point to attempting to outmaneuver them... or they are hands down faster than you. In several instances of the game I found there was simply no point to back up firing as the enemies simply refuse to move at a rate that is in any way manageable. Either they stop moving sporadically, or they just decide to run at you (ignoring stun effects in some cases, rendering such effects utterly pointless in the long run), or they are so huge they need only take one step to be on top of you and swinging with a range exceeding that of the area. Then there are the enemies that remain invisible until it strikes their fancy to appear and attack you (usually noiselessly until they hit you) so good luck seeing them until you've been demon-raped because if you're playing in first person the game is out to get you. The game also lacks enemy detection on the minimap... which wouldn't be so bad if the game didn't frequently abuse enemies spawning/appearing behind you or being as visible as albino fleas in snow. The game is dark, we get it, the environments are gritty, sure, so give me a damn minimap with enemy blips on it so I don't have to go: "WHOOPSY-DOO! I just got a demon-dick up the ass because they appeared noiselessly behind me in a bright pillar of fire that cast 0 illumination onto the surroundings!" The worst is when you have an objective to kill "10 monster that only appears when it decides it wants to, and until then remains not only invisible, but invincible." because then you just have to wander around like a jackass even after purging the zone of all life waiting for these dipshits to appear and attack you so you can finish the quest. Sometimes there aren't even all of them present in the zone either. So you'll wander around for a half hour before giving up and leaving, only for 12 of them to gangrape you the next time you enter the zone. This leads to a remarkable amount of fuckery in the first person shooter approach and the more I've played a Templar, the more I've found the game blatantly favors the third person approach. All well and good, but next time you should fucking warn people in the manual: "Playing in first person is akin to playing on Hard Mode." The last, and indeed greatest, glitch in the game is pathing. This is where Hellgate London makes me cringe like Nick contemplating not a thief character or Max contemplating the workings of my mind. Pathing in Hellgate London is an absolute nightmare. Sometimes you'll find your foot catches on absolutely nothing and so you're completely stuck, other times, monsters will hit you and cause you to stop moving or shooting or anything at all. Sometimes you have the joy of watching a monster throw an attack at a wall... and it hits you! Or a monster leaps into the air... stays there... you move... and it lands on you anyway! Or nothing beats moving away from an enemy only to have it slide forward attacking, then stop as it gets caught on an wall... then moves into the wall... and stays in it, and keeps attacking you while completely invincible. Another favorite is enemies of large enough size attacking through walls because they have enough reach. Enemies drift through objects and walls all the time, shooting through them with precision accuracy while not one bit of them shows. Or, another good one, when an enemy less than 15m (in game measurements that's not much) vanishes from sight just because the game decided he should. All in all these don't totally kill the fun of Hellgate London to be honest. Despite all of the absolute hatred of first-person mode, the game is still rather fun and enjoyable. In many ways I consider it the futuristic successor to Diablo II. So while the game is riddled with design flaws that do little more than ruin what would otherwise have been a great game it still actually comes across well. Overall the game looks great, also when it decides to cooperate and when you have figured out all the nasty tricks it pulls... it plays great too! I'm not gonna rate it as perfect, and I'm aware the review is less than glowing. The game is a 7/10 for me because it manages to be fun despite all that bullshit and it's a definate throwback to Diablo, managing to evoke that same 'feel' in a whole new way which is rather refreshing... even if the game itself manages to become droll, boring, and excruciatingly frustrating at times. So there you have it, Hellgate London in a nutshell. 7/10 because despite its flaws it manages to be fun. Which is really saying something given how many flaws it has with actual gameplay.
|
|
|
Post by Yamazaki on Mar 2, 2008 20:55:32 GMT -5
Following James' idea, I think I'll take a stab at this.
Neverwinter Nights 2 Expansion: Mask of the Betrayer
While the main game bored me greatly, the expansion has managed to keep my interest for many hours at a go. And that is a very difficult task to pull off on someone like me, who's gaming whims can change in an instant.
First, the graphics - nothing too great, but not ugly. The new races that were included in this game were the Gensai, and I'll admit, I felt the need to roll one of them up for this run. I ended up going with a Fire Gensai simply because of the fiery hair lol. Your party members look pretty original, 'specially One of Many (I'll let you discover what the fuck that thing is).
Music and sounds leave a bit to be desired, but I wasn't asking for much to begin with. However, the voice acting, when it comes up, is pretty damn good. I haven't cringed from the voices yet, so that's a good sign.
Game play: It's NWN, so you shouldn't expect anything grand here. Not much has been added to the whole thing, although they made crafting a little easier on you by adding a new 'essence' based system, which in a nutshell, you just put a few items in a bag, cast a spell on the bag, and then you get something better from it if you did it right. The other thing new is that they give you a curse known as the Spirit Eater. I'll leave it at that, since it's spoilers from there. Also, you will want to play a fighter type - anything else and you'll likely die pretty damn quick.
And now for the meat of the game - the story. While the main game's story never gripped me enough to get through the damn thing, Mask of the Betrayer has kept me in. Plane jumping, Spirit Eaters, a whole slew of crap left behind a rogue Mrykil priest (which also adds complications since that god is dead), dream haunting, and a whole party of interesting characters, I haven't complained at all about the story. There's a good depth of mystery involved as you try to figure out the source and cure for your curse, and the explanation for everything that's going on around you. And since I do not want to spoil the greatness of the story, I shall leave it at that.
Since I'm still working my way through the game, I can't give a full review just yet, but if it keeps up what it's been doing, I'll stick with the grade I'm giving: a 8.5 out of 10. If only the gameplay was more fun...
|
|
The Lord of Blades
Game Masters
Ero Sennin
Please allow me to introduce myself: I'm a man of wealth and taste
Posts: 1,314
|
Post by The Lord of Blades on Jun 9, 2008 16:38:43 GMT -5
Final Fantasy 7: Crisis Core
Ah the Final Fantasy series, ever true to its continued development and attempts at new things while keeping the core successful elements of the series intact. It's rare that we see direct relations between games that aren't cameos or subtle nods towards eachother. Usually when a direct sequel happens it doesn't bode well, as evidenced by the lovely (see: shitty) game FFX-2. Were it not for the fanservice, the game would've been completely pointless in its existence.
So what we were to think when Square-Enix decided to revisit their beloved classic: Final Fantasy 7? I was skeptical to be honest. Alot of the mechanics and 'revisit the world before the time of Cloud' issues seemed a bit strange and dubious, but I have to say SE pulled it off splendidly.
Let's start at the most easy area to cover, the graphics. Without a doubt these are some of the best graphics I've seen on a handheld and in many ways the quality of these cinematics exceeds some of what the PS2 did. It's no lie to say that summoning Odin in Crisis Core made me laugh at FFX in retrospect. They're -that- good. I mean, Advent Children levels of quality in the handheld. That's freaky! Outside of the CG moments the game still manages to present a very crisp game that doesn't suffer from slowdown at all. That alone is a huge accomplishment in my book because it means you seamlessly flick from menu to menu or area to area. There is no noticeable lag in the game at all except when it spins up a glorious CG which, believe me, is worth the few seconds wait.
Next is the sound, another easy area and Crisis Core delivers quite solidly here too. Remixes of classics in addition to new tunes and great game sound effects allow for rather indepth immersion and a presentation that is just overall splendidly polished. Crisis Core lives up to SE's reputation for releasing the most beautiful damn games with each iteration of their classic series.
Onwards to story, I've gotta give them credit, the main character (Zack Fair) actually feels different from Cloud so there's no: "Great, I'm playing Cloud again." feel there. The two are personality-different, whereas Cloud was mostly a mopey fellow, Zack is full of energy and life. It's refreshing to not have to watch someone go super-emo before they realize they know Omnislash and can save the day. The story revolves around the SOLDIER division of Shinra Inc., mainly their 1st Class SOLDIERs, ya know, the badasses like Sephiroth. From the beginning we meet Angeal, Zack's Mentor (as Zack wants to become 1st Class), and Sephiroth shows up not long after as well. A little ways in you meet Genesis and already the game's plot has you rather enthralled. I'm not going to give any spoilers, but suffice to say there's some great stuff going on.
I'm personally a big fan of the different perspective too. Working for Shinra actually feels uniquely desirable since you spent so much time hating them in FF7 it's quite a change of pace to happily be completing missions for Shinra within their SOLDIER division and working alongside the turks. Alot of times the extra missions can get tedious and they could've varied 'em a bit more than just: "Find one enemy and defeat it, this enemy will be the only enemy visible outside random encounters." but they each do convey little ministories that are rather entertaining at times in their simplicity.
On to gameplay and mechanics we have the biggest stray from classic FF, it's realtime action. That's right, you run around and swing your sword, block, dodge, and cast spells all in real time. While it doesn't hold a candle to things like Devil May Cry, I give SE full marks for their first successful foray into this area. Ergheiz, The Bouncer, these never happened. Let us forget them... MOVING ON! The monsters are all visually impressive and no matter how big or how many of them there are, you can't help but notice how detailed they are and how there's no slowdown at all! The combat is smooth and seamless, whether your timing is good and you can dodge and take no damage from certain attacks or whether you guard and take less damage but needn't time it so well. It plays well for any kind of learning curve whether good or bad at action games you'll still be able to progress through the game once you get your style down. Now the modulating phase thing at first seems like: "Wait, what, my levels are random? I can't just grind myself to being super?" but in time you come to realize that's the better way of doing it. I personally like that you play the slot machine to get level ups for your materia or yourself and that if you line up 3 of a certain person on the slot machine you get a special attack! Example, line up 3 Sephiroth's and you perform Octaslash; line up 3 Tseng's and you get an air strike; line up 3 Odin's and you get Zantetsekuken. That's AWESOME, you find yourself hoping for crazy shit whenever it comes up and you can't argue that the random factor of it lets it sometimes save your ass from a boss by suddenly busting out Beatrush on someone like Bahamut (who you fight surprisingly early...).
There are only two real problems with the games combat and progression. First of which is the materia. I guarantee you'll find yourself wishing things like Blizzard and Fire were awesome, but they aren't. You'll cast Cure and lots of it, but that's gonna be about it. You might try and get a few longrange hits with spells but then you'll see that they don't have infinite range and so you're left wondering why bother? You end up equipping attack skills (which use AP instead of MP) and passive materias and then just relying on sword swipes to end the battles. Far too often you'll find yourself using the Materia Fusion abilities only to remember that the Firaga Materia you just made doesn't help one damn bit. The game also suffers from not just showing the monster HP and the Libra materia isn't actually -that- helpful since the HP only shows up when NOT attacking.
The other problem would be in the game's pace. You're loaded down with bonus missions from the start with varying difficulties and there's so many that you're kind of baffled at how they can all effectively be the same mission (see above). Also, at times you'll decide to move on with the story and instead be treated to "walk here, get cutscene" about a hundred times before any actual fighting happens. Now, not that I complain about the story being developed, but please let me have a BIT more of an active hand in it. There's no feeling of dungeon crawl or even free-roaming in the game when faced with the sheer volume of cutscenes and character interaction and the like. This is by no means a bad thing, but it does hurt the game's ability to keep up the action balanced with story flow. That and sometimes your soldier colleagues make you want to slit their throat for uselessly introducing game mechanics. "Yes, I know I have a mail thing, yes I know I can leave the Shinra building and explore town, STOP DRAGGING ME BY THE TEETH THROUGH IT ALL!"
All in all Crisis Core is a truly fun game. I've found myself idly picking it up and then realizing I just spent 3 hours playing when my battery on my PSP is dying. The sudden realization that doesn't happen with some RPGs that require you grind and grind. Crisis Core doesn't feel like a grind at all as dozens of battles are easily avoidable (hug the wall) and since leveling is random and determined by SP (gained from killing monsters, trust me, you'll never run out, at 2 hours in I had 10,000 SP already) which is used to spin the roulette wheel, you end up feeling like whenever you choose to fight you're still not underleveled. A decent grasp of gameplay mechanics and you can even beat "Very Hard" missions well before you should be able to simply by knowing how to dodge. I personally defeated a Behemoth with 50k HP dealing only a thousand damage or so each hit even with him returning 780 damage attacks to my 1500 HP. With good timing and dodging it was an extraordinary fight using the cure spell from time to time (it even impressed Hojo!).
Crisis Core gets a 9/10 just because it feels like they left out a few extra features and ideal improvements to get it out quickly. This is the kind of game I would've preferred they'd delayed for 3 months to get the Magic just right and to improve the mission variety a bit. If they'd pulled that off it'd be a 10/10 easy and as it is the game is a blast to play. If you own a PSP and haven't picked this game up, you're hurting your own gaming. If you don't own a PSP but like the FF7 and FF7:AC world, now might be the time to scoop one up and get Crisis Core, it's a worthy investment since there are a number of great PSP games out now as well (I recommend Jeanne D'Arc, Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions, and Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness, why? Because SRPGs make handhelds amazing because you don't need to pause in between actually doing things, allowing you to truly play the handheld wherever you want). Crisis Core is a hell of a game and comes with a great recommendation from myself to go out and get it. I've even been playing without an FAQ or guide of any kind and have found the game greatly enjoyable and the secrets still obtainable just by actively searching.
Definately pick it up, you won't be let down by this prequel to FF7 (even if you haven't played FF7 you'll enjoy it, you'll just miss the significance of seeing some of the characters 'younger').
The review was not spell/grammar checked, I am feeling lazy.
|
|
The Lord of Blades
Game Masters
Ero Sennin
Please allow me to introduce myself: I'm a man of wealth and taste
Posts: 1,314
|
Post by The Lord of Blades on Jul 27, 2008 23:16:59 GMT -5
Final Fantasy XII: Revenant WingsFinal Fantasy, arguably one of the most famous of all RPG series to ever be made, always trying to reinvent itself and expand into broad new territories. What's the territory we have here? Ahhh, real time strategy, or RTS, and let's just say that Square Enix should stick to Turn-based or RPG elements. I'll state this right now and get it out in the open, Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings is fully playable without ever having beaten or played FFXII, and in fact, you might enjoy it better like that. We're gonna start with the basic premise of the story: Vaan and his friend Penelo are young aspiring Sky Pirates (who come across more as middle school kids with dreams of being heroes) under the tutelage of Balthier and Fran, two legendary sky pirates themselves and longtime friends of theirs following the events of FFXII (which are remarkably unimportant in relation as it is all easily summed up in the manual in a user-friendly way). The game picks up when Vaan and Penelo acquire a new airship of their own as well as a piece of 'Auracite' to both power it and summon monsters that do their bidding and (along with their two 'looks-like-they-are-10-years-old' friends Kytes and Filo, you won't remember them from FFXII, they were generic townspeople with a few additional roles than normal NPCs) are taken to the sky continent of Lemures where the people summon "Yahri" monsters to do battle alongside them (We've not established our RTS, but don't worry, your characters fight in the game too). They quickly encounter their newest rival, the so-called "Judge of Wings" who is bent on destroying the way of life of the Aegyl, a winged group of people living on Lemures. One thing leads to another, and suddenly Vaan, Penelo, Kytes, Filo, and Tomaj (who tags along solely to be a pain in the ass and your shopkeeper NPC), are on a quest to save the world and rescue the Aegyl with their new Aegyl friend Llyud. Okay, now that we're all on the same page, let's tear this game apart! Now let's start in one of the areas that actually works for this game and that is aesthetics. The DS software is not exactly as gorgeously beautiful as the PSP, but there is still a pleasant pixel sprite charm mixed in with some rather detailed 3D worlds, however at times it can get a bit grainier that one would expect from a game like this that just shows a level of polish sorely lacking. Also, the majority of the game will be seen on the Touch Screen of the DS, further resulting in a smudgier appearance even when the game itself is not at fault, or a combined effort to make it look far lower quality than it should be. If you can stomach the lack of 'polish' that is present in games like Advance Wars, Children of Mana, or Phantom Hourglass, then it's not so bad, but you do find yourself wondering why they couldn't just spend a few minutes using the "Sharpen" and "Blur" tools from photoshop on their sprites and textures. After you get past the graphics, you'll notice that the music is quite nice, a lot of songs are taken directly from FFXII itself and they blend many of them together into the game nicely. There is a notable exception, that being "Rabanastre's Upper Ward" lacks the epic crescendo of the music present in the original FFXII, this is just a personal gripe though, as that is my favorite part of that song and it is NOT present in Revenant Wings, just some minor version lacking that key part. ANYWAYS! The music is good... if you're not comparing it to FFXII's glorious soundtrack and accept it as a DS game's set of songs. Sound and graphics together provide a sort of old school appeal from sprite-based appearances and "FF" tunes, but this is horribly overshadowed by a cruel game failure. When too many monsters are on screen, the game suffers slowdown. Yep, that's right, a DS game can have slowdown from having too many sprites on the screen. Yes, you read that right, too many sprites slow down the game, not even fully rendered 3D Models causing slowdown... sprites!!Moving right along, let's dig into plot since I'm loath to tackle the rant and a half that game mechanics are going to be. Plot-wise, it starts off well enough, but then you quickly realize that Balthier and Fran are not sticking around. Suddenly you have Vaan and Penelo, that's not so bad though! I personally was quite keen on seeing a developing romance between the young man and woman that could come about from having them be the two main characters... only for Filo and Kytes to come along and join up. Now, I'm not going to complain about having allies, until I see what 'jobs' they fill in for. Kytes is obviously a blackmage and is lacking only the pointed hat and clown pants to wind up as Vivi in terms of both "no clue what's going on" and "I couldn't be MORE obviously innocent and blackmageish". Already I was disappointed, then Filo reveals that her weapon of choice is a floating surfboard that makes me think of Back to the Future II... and not in a good way. So now, we have two whiny, dopey, idiotic 10 year olds joining the party. Two children who were barely even bit characters in the original FFXII, once again driving home the point that if you have not played FFXII you will likely enjoy this game more. Still, not being one to judge prematurely, I decided to give Kytes and Filo a chance to grow on me as characters. With my party of four, I set off in a new airship (after some story driven events to obtain it) to the sky continent of Lemures. Now, this isn't a spoiler in so much of a sense, but let me tell you right now, every 'familiar' face you see from FFXII doesn't act a damn thing like you remember them except for Fran, in that all she does is spout of 'mystical' (gotta love that pun, Fran is always harping on about "The mist") talk that serves little purpose other than to confuse you and make you try and figure out whether she said something plot-related. Everyone else though acts NOTHING like their original roles. Penelo is a bossy 'motherly' character; Balthier says nothing and openly hands over the title of 'leading man' to Vaan; and Ba'Gamnan is comic relief. Yes, you read that right too, the murderous cutthroat killer from FFXII is comic relief (and yes, he's back in this game too despite that being seemingly impossible for unmentionable reasons). Oh, and let's not forget you're joined by an emotionless Aegyl named Llyud from the start who fills in all the information you lack on the Aegyl so your team can quickly leap to their aid and defend them from the Judge of Wings, whose motives are very thinly explained even around 70% of the way done the game. In short, you wind up hating your own party for being the crew of the Mystery Van with magic and swords (and flying surfboards... jesus-christ-I-hate-when-games-try-to-be-'funnycute') and defend the Aegyl from being pillaged by other Sky Pirates with less morals and more "Let's take the Auracite". You eventually reunite with the rest of the cast of FFXII, but it's so late in the game and so sudden and forced that you're basically broadsided by Basch and Ashe cock-slapping you in the face and joining your party. I'm sorry, but I like my characters to join my party based on some semblance of reason or if they're going to be a sudden addition, at LEAST make sense (i.e., FuSoYa in FF4) but don't just throw characters at me so suddenly that I wish I was on the villain team!! Oh, and not to be spoileriffic, but the Judge of Wings is revealed to pretty much not be a villain at all, and you realize you spent the entire first 55% of the game just faffing about without even a masterminded scheme custom tailored to keep you in the dark. More or less a: "Whoops, we're fucking retarded." kind of turn of events. Not good storytelling AT ALL. Moooooving right along from bad storytelling and character growth as well as an overall simpleton plot, we have the game mechanics, which, if you'll believe it, are going to make that story shit look magnificent in comparison. This game is an RTS played with the stylus at a 'slanted-overhead' viewing angle... permission to cringe granted. You have a rock-paper-scissors mechanic of flying beats melee, melee beats ranged, ranged beats flying unit types, with 5 elements thrown in for extra vulnerabilities and exploits (example, a fire ranged unit will ruin a water flier like a guitar hero controller at a frat party kegger), the units also come in 3 tiers, of which you can only select so many before a battle. You are limited to five unit type choices and five 'leader' units. Now, this sounds cool so far right? Limited warfare! Wrong. This mechanic is undoubtedly the one that cripples the fun of this game the most, because before each battle you'll see you have "X enemy leaders" with their unit types, and so you pick ones to counter them... unfortunately for you, you start with 2 units per leader unit and ONLY tiers 1 and 2 can accompany you at the start of battle (tier 3's need to be summoned using "Summoning Gates" which are also used to gate in more monsters). So what this results in, is that if you have 2 ranged leader units, you'll get 4 of the ranged unit selected, or the LOWEST tier unit of the next available type if you did not select a ranged unit, and did I mention that you ALWAYS have to take at least one Tier1 unit into battle with you? That's right, even at full power, your selections are limited to I I II II III, meaning you can only ever have one type of tier 3, a max of 3 tier 2's (if you sacrifice the tier 3 slot or haven't opened it to "Tier 3" yet), and up to 5 tier 1's, not that you'd ever want them as they are complete SHIT. So right from the start you can practically rest assured one of your leaders will be accompanied by 2 utterly craptastic units that you did not want. Since the game has a 'unit-cap' preventing you from building infinite units (not the computer though, they'll often build hundreds without stopping in a truly infuriating double standard), you'll often suicide these 'extras' at the start and replace them with what you actually wanted in the first place. Unfortunately, most enemy squads are completely docile until attacked, at which point half the map of enemies will come to stomp your head in for your audacity, so generally you cannot sacrifice these hated starting units without getting yourself in a heap of trouble. Now, as if this weren't bad enough, units have a pathsize and separate movespeeds. What this means? Try to move your groups together, and you will assuredly end up with your weak ranged units at the front, your powerful melee units at the back, and any large tier III's way back at the beginning, stuck behind a clusterfuck of your own troops. Not fun because suddenly they chew through your guys, and yes, Odin is strong, but not strong enough to fight 500 enemies by himself because your army is retarded. Did I mention there's no "Attack-move"? Yep, you have to select to attack a single enemy, and only if it dies will your people auto acquire new targets, although sometimes they are prone to selecting new targets mid-attack, resulting in several enemies being left alive at 1 HP to either keep attacking or regroup and heal. Ah, the joys of terrible AI and bad pathing. Fortunately, for you them though, the computer suffers none of these flaws, able to coordinate and attack separate units with unrivaled ease, using their abilities all at once and laying waste to you while you try to single out that one unit with your stylus (because the sprites overlap, good fucking luck picking out a unit in that big mob of guys), also, the computer never trips over their own army, advancing seamlessly across multiple fronts (and generally flanking you with ease) with their melees in the front, fast fliers to the sides, and ranged behind it all lobbing explosive death. Is it fun? No. Does it try to be? I don't quite think so. See, there's just so many problems with the RTS elements, it's like they didn't research any RTS material at all and just winged it. For example, you HAVE to bind your Yahri monsters to a leader when you summon it, and the only way to select an individual monster is to click directly on it on the world map. You can click 'leader' tabs up top to select the whole group, but clicking it again only allows you to select the leader and use his abilities (all by tapping and hitting the right area, and if you miss the menus will often cancel or deselect, resulting in you having to repeat the process just because a monster died or is so hidden behind a mess of sprites you misclicked and highlighted your own unit and now have it waiting for commands). The system is plagued with things like this that make it infinitely harder to play it in real-time and you end up wanting a pause button to play it like Baldurs Gate or Neverwinter Nights. There's no way to change the camera angle, you can set a maximum of ONE gambit (which in this game just results in them spamming that ability whenever the cooldown is gone, regardless of whether it'd be useful at that time or not), monsters have no attack-moving or target acquisition precedence (meaning ranged monsters will sometimes just ignore flying units and attack melee ones like idiots and etc.), and to cap it all off: the only way to deselect a monster without ordering it to move somewhere is to either press one of the buttons (hard to do while holding the stylus) or tap a small "X" in the upper right corner of the touchscreen, and if you realize too late you had a monster selected when you try to click somewhere, you'll accidentally order him to start marching off to his death. Another huge problem is the way the game sometimes will lie to you about what is in store for you or offer up truly ludicrous mission objectives that only pretend to be easy or fun. Rescuing or escorting NPCs is nigh impossible because they will march off in any which way they please, often times the ones you're escorting will not stop for any circumstances and instead will simply proceed to their 'goal' with you making a mad dash both to clean up their mess and run ahead to protect them. Other times, the mission will tell you there are summoning gates (which means you can actually use those Tier3's you are never allowed to start with) only for you to start the map and see the only Summoning Gate is sitting BEHIND the objective monster. Fat lot of good that does. Sometimes they'll tell you that the enemy monsters are "____" and then when you start the map, there will be one or two of those before the chief villain summons up 50 of some completely different monster, resulting in you simply soft-resetting... oh wait! No soft reset in this game, you've got to power it down and back up all the way! Regardless, you end up resetting right then and there, because if they have something you're weak against, you aren't going to win because the computer has none of the mechanic problems you face! The redeeming features? The characters possess different unique abilities and equipment, money and loot are not hard to acquire, there's no bullshit gimmicks for 100% completion (although the extra sidequests are boring and uninteresting, even Zodiark was a dull battle given the mechanics flaws made it a hundred times harder than it should have been), and unlocking new Yahri to use and summon is fun to see their new renditions (Ifrit and Shiva look pretty cool) and use them in battle. There's simply too much wrong with the game to recommend anything other than avoiding it though. It's an RTS without attack-move for gods sake! That's been standard since Starcraft at least, how could you not include it? Also, slowdown from sprites on the DS!? Are you serious?! The game just trips over its own feet and the overall final product is shoddy at best. Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, gets a 2/10 because there are just so many lacking areas and so few redeeming qualities that I found myself playing through it not out of fun or enjoyment, but merely to cross it off my list, which at a maximum of 30 hours or so game-length, was easily done during long drives, loading times, and time spent looking for groups online... and waiting for you bastards to post and move your games and mine
|
|
|
Post by Yamazaki on Mar 27, 2009 10:14:36 GMT -5
It's been a while since we've had a new game review, and I have one to bring in: Madworld for the Wii. Made by the company formerly known as Clover (known for games such as Okami and Godhand).
Premise: Blood. Carnage. Mass Murder. Chainsaws. Lots of chainsaws. You play Jack, a bounty hunter who joins the Deathwatch games to find his target. Of course, he has to win or die trying. And to win, it means a massive bloodbath.
Gameplay: The meat of the game involves playing as Jack and killing everything in your way. You can't just beat everything up though. You have to get creative, as the more creative the murder, the more points you get, which gets you more things to kill with and to the boss.
You can punch and kick with the A button, and if you swing the Wiimote, you can either do a wide arm swing or do an uppercut. While holding down the B button, you pull out the chainsaw in Jack's robot arm. Once again, you swing the wiimote to swing the chainsaw. You can also grab enemies and throw them, and grab objects throughout the stages to use against your foes.
The fun kill-score system works like this: you can throw a tire on a foe, restraining him. Points. Then you can grab a sign and shove it through their neck. Points again. Then you can pick up the guy and carry him to a spiky wall and proceed to slam him repeatedly against it. Points, points, points, and even more points. And all of this adds up. Throw in the humorous Bloodbath Challenges for even more points.
The downside is that it does have quicktime events, but they're very forgiving, and rather fun instead of Simon-Says-to-Victory. And the motions fit the actions.
Thoughout the game, there's a surplus of humor. From the choices of weapons (spiked bats, golf clubs, tractor beams...), to the Blood Bath Challenges to the announcers to some of the deaths of the bosses (very Godhand like). Not exactly a game for the weak of heart though.
Graphics: This is the bit where you'll either love it or hate it. The game is entirely Cel-Shaded in black and white, which splotchs of red for blood. Very stylistic, but sometimes a tad confusing. However, if you can get past that, the graphics are pretty good for the Wii. It's what you would expect from the creators of Okami and Godhand.
Story: There isn't much here. It's more about the game than the story, so it's nothing special. It gets the job done explaining what's going on and how things have happened.
Music and Sound: Personally, I don't care for the rap music in the game, even if it fits the game perfectly. Thankfully, I can tune that out easily. The sound effects fit the bill. Meanwhile, the voice acting is awesome. They had the guy who voiced Spike from Cowboy Bebop voice Jack, and it's awesome. Also, the announcers are funny (they sound like sports announcers, but sure as hell aren't working for a sports event). Constant jokes are thrown around by those two. "Hey, it's Big Long Driller!" (a mini-boss with a massive drill appears) "They used to call me that before my accident." "What do they call you now?" "They don't."
Overall: As expected from the Godhand team, it's a fun game. While it's a whole lot darker than anything this company has down while as Clover (I blame Capcom), it's still just as fun as any of their other games. Just be expecting some difficulty. It's not too easy like most Wii games tend to be. I give it a 9.5/10
-Max, easily distracted
|
|
The Lord of Blades
Game Masters
Ero Sennin
Please allow me to introduce myself: I'm a man of wealth and taste
Posts: 1,314
|
Post by The Lord of Blades on Jun 27, 2009 1:50:52 GMT -5
Odin Sphere
I promised this one a while ago and I've decided I'm finally going to make good on my review for it.
Odin Sphere is a gem. One of those games that comes along ever-so-rarely and challenges what we use to define good games. The game is an action RPG but it takes a lot of established traditional RPG mechanics and turns them upside down and inside out... and it works brilliantly. This is, of course, an exception and not the rule; I'm sure if some other companies tried to copy Odin Sphere's formula of "burning the current formula" then they would fail abysmally. The level of success and win in this game is so great when you hit "Begin" on your menu screen, or load, or whatever, it tells you "Directed by: George Kamitani" and shows the "Vanillaware,Ltd." logo; there is no pretentiousness here, they know they made something magnificent and want you to know who did it.
Let me start by telling you that this game happily consents to the players in many respects. Firstly, the dialogues are all completely voiced and have text, the voice actors are top notch, and yet if you're one of those people who has to hear everything in Japanese, it has that too. That's right, you can completely change the spoken dialogue to Japanese and it changes for EVERY character. Not major or minor only, EVERY character. There are two complete and distinct dialogue tracks and you're welcome to pick whichever you like.
The second major catering point is in the difficulty. The game asks you at the start which mode you'd like to play on, but you can change it midgame if you find you're getting your ass kicked and just aren't enjoying things. There's a minuscule tutorial at the start that just flows with the game's story (as the very first character is somewhat inexperienced) and as you change characters you're given brief little recaps and explanations on their new abilities but it never lasts more than a few minutes. Aside from that, all the things the game has to tell you are in the manual or available within in-game scrolls that tell you so you never feel bogged down being taught how to play the game when it is all rather intuitive anyway (anyone who has played more than one Zelda game is familiar with how tiring it gets watching Link relearn how to swing a sword or shoot a bow).
The third nod to the players, you can rewatch cut scenes easily. I don't just mean the menu is easy or the load times are short, I mean you can click a button that says "View All" that will literally let you watch the story you've completed so far from start to finish with no battles or game play in between that you can stop at any time. A great feature because if you want to recap the story in its entirety, or just enjoy it from one smooth transition to another, it's perfectly available for you to do so; or if you want to re-watch just one cool scene, you can.
Finally, you can save anywhere. Not that saving right before a boss means you'll start back at the boss, no, you'll need to redo the entire dungeon you were in... but that's okay! I don't mind redoing a dungeon so long as I kept my progress from before. I still got my items, my experience, my money; and now if I want more it's again available to me! You don't even need to abuse this feature, because you can revisit dungeons and the items return. The game has no qualms with letting those want to grind do so until their eyes bleed (not that it'd take that long, once you've finished a dungeon once you can leave from any room instantly Megaman style, making it possible to farm the one room with the item prize you like much easier). Still, being able to save anywhere is a wonderful thing because you don't have to worry about trying to finish a gigantic dungeon in one go and then worry about redoing the entire thing from exploration to opening treasures again. If you have done all but the boss chamber, save and reload, you'll have a complete map of all but the boss chamber and can simply make a dash over towards it fighting as few enemies as possible. It's a nice courtesy because it means you can just enjoy playing whenever you want. You're not going to have to just leave the game on for hours on end to avoid shutting it down and losing progress.
On to the actual game, however, we're going to start with the easiest of its brilliant high-points to describe: the story. Odin Sphere tells a story about at least five main characters and yet it never once gets confusing. I say five because there are five playable characters whose stories you play in a row. Despite playing them one after the next, the important thing about these stories is they overlap each other. First you play as Gwendolyn the Valkyrie, then Cornelius the Prince, then Mercedes the Fairy Princess, then Oswald the Shadow Knight, and finally Velvet the Forest Witch. Now, this might sound drawn out or confusing but trust me when I tell you it is presented beautifully. The stories overlap in such a way that when one character rejects the advances of another romantic-wise believing them to be a crude evil person, you then get that person's heart wrenching sorrow later when you play through as them through the same scene. The events don't all overlap, but together they fill in the gaps of the story you might miss or wonder about the first time through. "Who was it that did that?" you might ask yourself while playing through as Gwendolyn only to discover who it was or that it was you while playing Oswald or Cornelius.
Still, one of the greatest parts about Odin Sphere's story that flaunts tradition is that it isn't "Good Guys Vs. Bad Guys" or anything even remotely that clear-cut. In fact, half the time you feel legitimate remorse about waging war because you know the faction you're against is just trying to survive and defend themselves. Other times, though, you feel totally righteous perceiving the people you're against to be total assholes who have it coming. I'll say this, as I played through the game, I even began to feel both sorry and upset by the fate that awaited people who had gone from being friend, to enemy, to person I pitied and wished I could help but knew I had to defeat. It's that deep. The game doesn't hold anything back and doesn't 'fluff' out any cruel realities. Characters you care about die. This isn't like a one-time scene for emotional strength like FF7, this is more along the lines of showing you the bitter reality of certain things that makes them so awful.
In fact, the story of Odin Sphere begins with you as "Alice" a little girl reading story books in her attic. The stories you play out ARE these books. A subtle nod from the developers about the size, scope, and depth of the stories you play through as there a sum total of seven books that you play through. I don't understate it at all when I agree that in real life seven books would adequately sum up the amount of vivid and stunningly well-done plot found in the game. I won't say anything about the story itself. I won't even give you a vague premise because it wouldn't do the actual story any justice whatsoever. I'd feel guilty of turning you away from it if I made it sound even slightly less compelling and enthralling than it is. Also, the story is just so grand in scale that a vague summary can't hope to capture it. I even looked at the Wikipedia: "Setting" entry to see how they possibly summed it up and all it does is hand out a shitload of confusing proper-nouns, so please, just go play it if you want to know the story, you won't be disappointed.
The next easiest thing to talk about is the sound. Odin Sphere has a magnificent soundtrack, albeit a slightly unmemorable one for an odd reason. Simply put, the music does what it should do. It provides mood, atmosphere, and excitement when it needs to. The tracks all sound great, but you find yourself so distracted by everything else going on that remembering a specific track is difficult, it evokes enough emotion that you tend to remember the scene instead. You don't hang out in the lava dungeon to hear its soundtrack, you just remember the feeling you had being there. While this doesn't exactly sound like praise, I find myself oddly pleased by it. Too many games often have areas that suck or fail to immerse you (such as Rabanastre in FFXII) but the music is great. An epic orchestral piece is great to listen to, but it just doesn't fit when you're walking around a town buying items. My two prime examples of sound done in the exact same fashion as Odin Sphere are as follows. Tourian's Theme (Super Metroid) is one of the creepier songs you'll ever hear in that it isn't even really song. It's more like you've stumbled into a hellish genetics lab. You feel unwelcome in the extreme and when I first played that part of the game, the music put me extremely on edge. The other is the music from Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. This soundtrack did a unique thing in which when in times of high excitement the music ramped up and became more grandiose, while in times of relaxation, became tame and mild.
The easiest way to describe Odin Sphere's music is atmospheric, if I had to put a name to it. Now, mind you, I said slightly unmemorable. There are songs that you can't remember hearing or distinguish from their locations. That doesn't mean there aren't memorable ones. There are several songs in Odin Sphere that are downright stirring and you'll go back to listen to again. Notable amongst those is the intro and the ending. I encourage you sit back and let the "Press Start Button" flash and enjoy the song. It's hauntingly beautiful.
Probably the greatest kick given to traditional RPG standards is the graphics. Odin Sphere takes the path of sprites over detailed and realistic 3D CG animation. What it does differently though... is it decides to make the sprites absolutely fucking beautiful. I can't properly capture how pretty they are to truly look at. The best I can come up with is to take a painting and make it come to life and move. That's Odin Sphere. Each little sprite is more detailed than half a dozen put together seen in other games. Occasionally, there's some slowdown in the game's presentation when there are a lot of sprites on the screen at once, but in this game I can forgive it. When each sprite looks like a hand-drawn painting, it's okay if the game lags down some when there's twenty plus on screen all moving beautifully with full animations. That's really the only flaw to the graphics is the slowdown, and its such a minor concern (especially because with so much on screen at once, it slowing down actually helps you out a tiny bit with dodging and moving around, and if not that, it gives you a moment to at least appreciate the detail).
On the subject of flaunted RPG traditions, the last really flaunted 'traditional' aspect of RPGs is the level up system, which I'll cover before diving into the game play. In Odin Sphere your HP Level or your Psypher Level goes up and it's based on what you use Phozon particles (released in many various circumstances, most commonly when enemies are defeated) for. When you grow food and have that cooked into meals, you'll get a lot more HP Experience than if you buy an item like a hot cross-bun or eat a fresh fruit (though it will cost more money and phozons and time to make and isn't as applicable in battle because eating them takes a moment). The healing elixirs, in fact, don't even give HP growth at all in return for their large amounts healed and easier combat use. When your HP levels up, you get a higher max, and your HP is instantly refilled to the new max. This is a great feature because it can be extremely useful in the middle of a really tough battle to suddenly regain all of your HP by eating a normally less-healing fruit than drinking a powerful potion. The Psypher Level is your damage and your combat abilities that you increase by outright absorbing Phozons into your weapon. The more you absorb you also increase the amount of 'magic' you have available to you to use on those special abilities. What's great about this is that there are no 'stats' or anything else. Everything feeds off of Phozons and believe it or not, the plot ACTUALLY EXPLAINS THAT AND USES IT! It's not like in some games where you eventually have more money and "EXP" than a god for no more reason than you killed brachiosaurii endlessly. I just love this system because it adds such a new feel to the way you level up. You don't go to some screen after every battle that gives you an arbitrary amount of money and experience. It all just fits and makes the world seem even more vibrant, it also lets you choose how you want to become stronger and when.
Finally, there's the game play. A lot of people criticize Odin Sphere for being redundant or abusing a POW meter (which I'll explain). Don't listen to them. They're expecting something from Odin Sphere that would either make the game too easy or would just defeat its own purpose. Odin Sphere is an action RPG with five separate controllable characters. They each fight differently, have different special abilities, and learn spell abilities at different times. Their number of moves is a limited, but functional. They aren't bogged down with an obscene number of convoluted moves that would be perfectly fine in something like Devil May Cry; instead you've got various stylized attacks (for each character) for enemies in most directions and you choose which to use when. In Odin Sphere, you've got to remember you're watching sprites, not some manipulated wireframe. Each of these attacks was drawn, so show some respect and understanding that there aren't dozens of them for every character.
The POW meter, the other complaint, I just don't get. It is a bar that quickly fills over time when sitting still, slowly when running away in the same direction, and in chunks when hit. It empties as you attack repeatedly. The game limits the number of attacks you can execute in a row so that you don't simply chain a boss or enemy to death endlessly. It's not even that large a handicap, it's just there for you to retreat occasionally as your character catches their breath. Various characters make additional use of the POW bar in varied ways such as Oswald using it to maintain his Shadow Form and for Mercedes it represents her crossbow's ammunition before reloading. Simply put, it is there to add some pacing to combat which I can't honestly fault. Between that and absorbing Phozons (which do also restore the POW bar but leave you vulnerable while you absorb them), you're forced to sometimes withdraw from combat and recuperate or risk sitting still near a boss to recover although it does go back up when hit, sort of like an adrenaline rush. All in all I can't fault the POW meter, it adds some strategy to things as opposed to simply mash the attack button until everything but you is dead which I'm sure the same people who complain about the POW meter would complain about as monotony with the absence of the POW meter.
The actual combat takes place on a ringed map. That means no walls to pin an enemy (or be pinned yourself) to and then repeatedly pummel and juggle until dead. It's nice because the battlefield from room to room is relatively endless and the larger slower enemies you can even loop around behind by running fast enough. You have a little minimap that shows enemies, projectiles, and everything else without being either overly cluttered or the sole focus of your attention. The loading times can be a bit long, but they honestly never bothered me, I'm happy to wait a few extra seconds for Odin Sphere to deliver a well done scene after defeating a boss, if I want otherwise I'll go play Final Fantasy for that well known victory-over-boss theme. The only real problem with the maps is that they all tend to be the same excluding a new paint job. If you're looking for crazy terrain that goes up or down with cliffs and pits, you're not going to find it here as it is relatively flat through and through, but that's okay: it lets you avoid dealing with those flea-sized enemies that are always downhill while you're playing a character with no good low-attack.
The game-play aside from those frequently heard gripes is quite fluid and enjoyable. The combat is challenging when it should be and the town segments are short but interesting with the shops and inventory a bit tricky at first (due to limited space which does grow as you buy more bags to expand it, but come on, you know what items you need and don't; the game gives you a lot so you can choose, not to insult you like some seem to think) but really easily organized and useful when you get the hang of them and with NPCs that mention the current events. The game does slow down some as mentioned before, but there's usually so much going on that you can't fault it. Each of the dungeons usually features some kind of little problem that you can solve by using the game's "Alchemy" system (combine ingredients to make neat potions) to solve such as the fire dungeon requiring you to occasionally make "Cool Potions" to combat the extreme heat or you take damage over time. Fortunately these ingredients are always quite handy and you'll at most have to do one or two rooms unprepared for the detrimental effect. You'll find yourself redoing dungeons a lot and re-fighting the same bosses with different characters because, like I said, the stories overlap. It may seem like a cop-out, but I find it refreshing. You get to tackle some challenges with other characters and in some cases a boss that was the last boss of one story, might be the first of another. It's also interesting because their difficulty ramps up or down accordingly. Though some might wonder how its possible to fight the same boss multiple times I assure you the plot covers it completely.
The ending is one area that I think Odin Sphere really shines, the "unlockable" ending is obtained by beating the 'final book' in the right order. It consists of little more than cutscenes between defeating five bosses consecutively. That may sound boring, but it is honestly one of the more enjoyable ending 'areas' I've played in a while. No frustratingly long and obnoxious dungeon to deal with for a frequently disappointing last-boss. Especially because in this case, EVERY fight is a new one. Even if it looks like the same boss as before (won't say why for plot reasons), they've got a ton of new moves and are much more powerful. It's who you choose to fight them with that determines your ending. Now, the story helps you figure out the 'right order', throughout the game you'll get hints and the last story before the 'final book' focuses a lot on it. So if you're paying attention, have put some thought into it, and do things right, you'll get the best ending on your first try. More-so, even though those five bosses are challenging, each of the individual "Character" books is re-doable with a newgame+ available to strengthen an individual character further.
I can't really think of anything bad to say about this game... honestly. It's absolutely fantastic start-to-finish in its depth and beauty. This is just one of those classic games that goes unnoticed because people aren't sure what to make of it or because they heard about a silly gripe from someone else. This game, like Psychonauts or Portal and etc., just should not be missed. The few shortcomings of this game can be easily dismissed because of the way it excels in sound, story, graphics, inventiveness, and characters. Some slowdown, a little redundancy, inventory management, and a POW bar aren't enough to knock this game even a .5 from the score it has rightfully earned.
Final score for Odin Sphere: 10/10
Here's an example of some of the memorable music.
|
|
|
Post by UltimaterializerX on Jul 9, 2009 3:46:28 GMT -5
I've heard you rant about Odin Sphere in person a lot; just posting here to say I'm in love with that music. What is it, the main theme? A travel theme? An "I-can't-sleep-so-relax-with-this theme?".
And good review, naturally.
|
|
|
Post by Yamazaki on Jul 21, 2009 10:37:39 GMT -5
Blaz Blue
So it's been a while since I took a serious look at any major games. I know James does a good job reviewing, but there are some games he doesn't get to. Anyways...
I'm not sure if anyone really remembers my Guilty Gear obsession. It might have appeared after my departure from Purdue. Regardless, I had fell in love with the silly anime-styled 2-D fighter. So of course I would pick up the spiritual successor to the Guilty Gear series as soon as I realized it had made it's way to the States.
For those of you who don't know what the hell I'm babbling endlessly about, Blaz Blue (and the Guilty Gear series) is a anime-styled 2-D fighting game. Think Street Fighter. Now add weapons, unique and often times silly characters, and speed it up a crap ton. Now you have these two series.
Blaz Blue doesn't disappoint. It continues the high quality, fast paced action we know and love from Guilty Gear. Let's get to the nitty gritty now.
Graphics: With Street Fighter 4, one would expect Aksys to upgrade to 3D graphics, but instead they stuck with 2D sprites. Some people might be turned off by this (damn graphic whores), but most don't mind. They used hi-def spites with fluid animation and nice special effects. There's no slow down of gameplay at all. Also, they do a nice job with the 3D graphics for the backgrounds, but that's all of their 3D work.
Sound and Music: Not much to say here. While compared to Guilty Gear, it's about par for the course. The sound effects are exactly as you would expect from the game, and the music is good-quality rock, but not quite as memorable as Guilty Gear's. The voice acting totally sucks in English, no doubt about it. It just sucks. However, they give you the option to switch to the Japanese voices, which is sweet ear-candy for the Weeabo in me. It also helps that I recognize some of the Japanese voice actors (Jin happens to be voiced by the same guy who voiced Gurren-Lagaan's Simon).
Gameplay and Controls: Unlike Guilty Gear, Blaz Blue has been simplified some. We're now down to 4 attack buttons. Weak, medium, strong, and the new Drive. We'll get to Drives a little later.
Blaz Blue is made newbie friendly, unlike most fighting games. Anyone can pick up the controller and actually stand a chance right off the bat, even when mashing buttons. This is from 2 different aspects: the quick commands and the drive commands. The quick commands are simply hot-keys for some of the special attacks that are linked to the right control stick (up and right will do a particular special, left is one super, and down is the astral heat).
Now then, the Drives. This is a special attack unique to each character that is vital to their individual styles. Most of the time, it's an attack, but sometimes it's more defensive or strategic. For example, Ragna the Bloodedge (our Sol Badguy clone) has 'Soul Eater'. His drive attacks will drain health and restore some of his own. Jin's Drive freezes foes (which is brutal since he's a generally fast character). Haku-men will counter. Rachael Alucard will summon wind to push her and foes around the stage.
Guilty Gear's Instant Kills have been all but replaced. They are now Astral Heats. Like Instant Kills, AH's will destroy your opponent, but only under certain situations. To even perform the attack, you must 1) be in the final round, 2) have full special gauge, and 3) your foe must be at 20% HP or lower. It's basically a way to add insult to injury if you pull it off, because there's no way you'll get those conditions unless you intend to. Furthermore, you must unlock these via arcarde mode for each character save for v-13, Ragna, and Rachael.
Regardless, the controls are solid and responsive. It's about as tight of a control scheme as it's ever going to get for a fighting game.
Characters and Story: So, there's 12 playable characters, all of which are ready to use the second you start the game. Each character is unique, but you'll see some similarities for a few from Guilty Gear. Ragna resembles and plays like Sol and Order Sol. Jin is almost like Ky, but with ice. Iron Tager is the new Potemkin with a vest. v-13 (pronouced 'nu', since it's the funny greek letter), is almost like Dizzy.
Regardless of the similarities, each one is unique. No clones here, people. Thank god. The small cast is actually a blessing, because they could take the time to focus on each character, making sure they're mostly balanced and not buggy.
The story is a bit confusing at first. While most people will be bored and confused, I liked it. It does help to know that the world is in an infinite time-loop, and few characters realize this. But since it's a fighting game, story isn't that big of a deal.
It should also be noted that Haku-men is a total bad ass.
Overall: A solid fighting game that's worth picking up if you have either 360 or PS3. However, if you hate fighting games, or hated guilty gear with a passion, avoid it.
-Max, lurking teh webs a lot more with a improved interwebs connections
|
|
|
Post by UltimaterializerX on Jul 21, 2009 15:05:21 GMT -5
Why not.
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
You got an above average score (5)!
5/10
When a new Zelda was announced at E3 all the way back in 2004, grown men literally wept at the reappearance of Adult Link. But the game was delayed for years -- some think on purpose -- allowing for it to become a Wii launch title and assist in the Wii's overnight success despite being a simple port from the Gamecube version. But the original version of Twilight Princess, the Gamecube version that should have housed the title from day one without a ton of delays, was still of course released. This was excellent news, since The Wind Waker was the only main series Zelda title released since Ocarina of Time and fans were itching for a Zelda game without bad cel shading in it. The delays were of course forgivable in the eyes of fans, seeing as Ocarina of Time was delayed for years and ended up one of the greatest games ever made. Could Twilight Princess use a similar pattern for itself and see equal acclaim?
In a word: no. Twilight Princess is the very definition of wasted potential, especially paired with how long the game took to finally hit shelves. There is wasted potential all through the game, and a ton of silly little oversights that should flat out not be in a game that gets delayed for so long. It does however retain all the tried and true Zelda methods -- even risking having some feel forced at times -- and ends up a good enough game by the end thanks mostly to a well-developed story and Ocarina of Time gameplay elements. But "good enough" doesn't help Twilight Princess rank with gaming's elite.
At the very beginning, Link is in the farm village of Ordon doing what farmers typically do; herd up goats, grabbing chickens by the leg, looking for loose money under rocks, playing with owls, fishing and flirting with girls. All without ever speaking, since it's a guarantee Nintendo will treat their best characters like avatars and never give them an actual personality. Every year Nintendo tells us how great they, and every year we get the same exact thing and most new additions don't work out correctly.
Anyway, Link goes through a very extensive exposition process in his little home town, but he eventually gets ganked by some pigs and imprisoned in another world entirely. When he wakes up, he's in prison and gets the double whammy of not being human anymore. He's stuck as a wolf, with an imp named Midna floating around and taunting his every move. Midna is the supporting actor that steals the show, though in the beginning she acts like a selfish little tool that only cares about helping herself. She does eventually help Link get out of prison, and explains that he's stuck in the world of Twilight. Link can either sit around and do nothing, ensuring that he remains a lone wolf forever, or he can help her and maybe return home with no real guarantees either way.
Cue another gigantic exposition, this time with Wolf Link learning the ropes. Literally. Eventually Link learns that the Twilight Realm is the antithesis of the Light World and that the place he was imprisoned is actually Hyrule Castle, and an evil sorcerer named Zant one day decided to spread the influence of darkness into the Light World. This caused parts of the Light World to get thrown into chaos, and Link somehow gets cursed to wolf form whenever he enters here. Eventually, after what can be hours of gameplay, Link makes it back to being a human form and enters the game's first dungeon. If one considers the time from beginning of the game until first entering the Forest Temple the game's tutorial, then a couple of comparisons can be made here. In just the tutorial for Twilight Princess, you could probably beat the original Legend of Zelda or Adventure of Link, get to the Dark World in Link to the Past and possibly even clear two dungeons in Ocarina of Time. Twilight Princess has a bad habit of being far too big and drawn-out, and it plagues the game all the way to the very end.
The first half of the game especially is a chore to play. Your main task will be traversing a world that's entirely too big, freeing the world from the Twilight's influence and tracking down three vaguely defined armor pieces for Midna. She barely mentions anything about what the artifacts do, only that they're really powerful and it falling into the wrong hands is out of the question. Never mind that Midna herself isn't defined as good or evil by this point, but Link goes along with the plan anyway. These three artifacts obviously come from three different dungeons, all needing their own annoying line of fetch quest nonsense before entering.
To free parts of the world from the Twilight's influence, Link has to enter the Twilight, find some ancient light god and fill a necklace with bugs only visible to Wolf Link. All the while, with the sole exception of being in the three dungeons themselves, you'll feel like you've been stuck in a never-ending tech demo. The first half of the game is littered with the game forcing lame stuff on you, such as scripted mid-bosses, badly done horseback combat, Wolf Link's "Sense" command, everything involving Wolf Link in general, and on and on and on. The game, gameplay and story range from "Bad" to "What the hell were they thinking?" until you enter the Lakebed Temple. By no coincidence, it's right about this time where the game drastically reduces lame gimmicks and leaves you to your own vices. Granted there's still the old Zelda issue of using an item in the dungeon you find it in, then barely touching it again. Twilight Princess takes this to a whole new extreme. Other than the Hookshots -- The game calls them "Clawshots", but spare us the semantics; they're Hookshots -- and the Bow, you can count on one hand the number of times you'll use an item outside the dungeon you find it in. Two new items, the Spinner and Dominion Rod, are the big offenders of this and only add to the game's overall problem of wasted potential.
Right around the end of Lakebed Temple, the game picks up by a lot. Characters, especially Midna, are given a ton of development, the story as a whole gets pretty good (for a Nintendo title, at least) and the gameplay gets very fun albeit in a game that remains too damn big. You're again hunting for items found in dungeons, but this time it's to put together an item called the Mirror of Twilight so that Link can enter the Twilight Realm and kick some ass. And if any character can invade the most evil place in any Nintendo game, it's Link. Even though the guy never speaks, he's a badass made out of concrete and chiseled by titanium. All the gods of the universe could band together, beat the crap out of Link for two weeks and then throw him into Hell itself, and all Link would suffer is the loss of half a heart.
The game's second half is also made better by a lot of gameplay improvements not seen in the stupidly long exposition sequences. Link can transform free from human to wolf forms, which is an option that should have been there from the very beginning. Warp points will exist all over the world thanks to Link's efforts in the first half, which helps to shrink an oversized world down to manageable levels, and the game is just overall great in the latter parts. The story will eventually climax and various villains will get their asses whipped, which is what we've come to expect from Zelda games. Twilight Princess does this very well, though Zelda and the final boss feel extremely forced, almost as if they're in the game because they had to be. Things eventually culminate in one of the worst endings of any game ever made, yet again leaving a bad "What the hell are they THINKING?!" in the player's mouth. But this is the true story of Twilight Princess: Wasted potential.
From a pure gameplay perspective, this is where all of the most egregious such violations take place. The short version of this is that Twilight Princess has the best set of dungeons in the entire series, great bosses, a pretty good set of items, some fun mini games and side quests, and a completely lousy everything else getting in the way of anything that could make Twilight Princess fun. It is no coincidence that the most fun part of the game is when the dungeon-hopping finally kicks in, because you're doing what makes Zelda games fun and not dealing with all the extraneous BS of getting to them. The first half of the game especially is just horrible about this.
Most of the fun things in Twilight Princess are canceled out by what could have been, bad gimmicks or just plain old stupid oversights. For example, Epona is always fun to ride around on and have fun with, but you can't call her at will until near the end of the game and horseback combat is horribly done. You're better off ditching the horse and fighting on foot. The items are mostly good, but are rarely used outside the dungeon you find them in. The Spinner especially just reeks of wasted potential; you only need the item one or two more times following the Arbiter's Grounds. If you're a completionist gamer, you'll need it.... four or five more times following the Arbiter's Grounds. Wolf Link was a good idea in theory, but virtually all the parts where you have to use this form are forced, gimmicky and terrible. Scent following is especially lame, and is forced upon you until the very end of the game. It also isn't until the second half of the game where you can freely switch between human and wolf form, and even then you're stuck going into a menu first rather than the switch taking one button. The biggest issue everyone always complains about in Ocarina of Time is Iron Boots not being a C item; you have to go into the Start menu a million times to get through the Water Temple. A decade later, Nintendo is still making games with the same stupid oversights.
Speaking of menus, you have to use the horrendous octagonal analog stick to navigate them in Twilight Princess. For whatever reason, the D-Pad cannot be used to navigate menus, which is one of the stupidest oversights possible. This is what happens when games are intentionally delayed to sell unreleased systems; you get stupid oversights like lack of D-Pad use in menus. And the the list just goes on and on and on.
Twilight Princess has no ocarina in it. Which is fine for exploring new ideas, but Nintendo also removed everything that made the ocarina good in Ocarina of Time. In Twilight Princess, you can't make it rain whenever you want. You can't have random fun with enemies by using a Sun Song to freeze the undead. There is no quick way of switching from day to night or night to day either, which makes Poe hunting one of the game's biggest chores. If you go hunting for Poes, fly around like a bat out of hell at night. Because once the sun comes up, you have to wait eons for night time again. And the list just keeps going.
Rupees. Oh dear God, the rupees. The rupee system in this game encompasses everything bad about Twilight Princess in one fell swoop. The game throws money at you like you're a Saturday night stripper, yet there is next to nothing to spend your "hard earned" money on. But this is no problem, because who cares about walking around with a full wallet in a Zelda game, right?
Wrong. If you find a treasure with bombs in it and you have full bombs, you'll take the treasure anyway. Full arrows, but you found arrows? No problem. But if you find a rupee treasure chest (and no joke, over half the treasure chests in this game have money in them) and your wallet is full, Link just puts it back. Even if your wallet isn't full and taking the rupee puts Link over max, he puts it back. Even worse, you'd better free up 60 straight hours or so and play this entire game in one shot. Because if you turn the game off and come back later, be prepared to relearn what every non-green rupee's value is.
On the off chance you forget:
You got a blue rupee (5)! You got a yellow rupee (10)! You got a red rupee (20)! You got a purple rupee (50)! You got an orange rupee (100)! You got a silver rupee (200)!
And yes, there are treasure chests even near the end of the game that have green rupees in them. The little value 1 guys. The whole rupee issue in this game is galactically stupid, even by Nintendo standards. It stops being as big an issue once you get the Magic Armor, but the Magic Armor itself is also subpar. It drains rupees constantly while worn, and drains rupees if Link gets hit. Most people will only use this armor to snuff out treasures on a full wallet, otherwise it's barely worth the trouble.
And even with all this, there are still tons more dumb mechanics and silly oversights. The Zora Armor is decent in theory, but you swim so slowly compared to Majora's Mask it makes no real difference outside the whole not drowning thing. The Cave of Ordeals could have been a cool little side challenge, but it makes too much of an effort to swarm Link with enemies. This causes horrendous targeting errors, bad camera angles and a ton of enemies getting a stupid advantage solely because of camera angles and a targeting system. If Nintendo wants to recreate Devil May Cry fine, but give Link some added speed and let him keep up with the hordes of enemies. As presently constituted, the advertised enemy hordes are little more than Nintendo's proof of how far they've fallen when it comes to first party game development. Even the hidden sword skills, some of which are designed to help Link deal with hordes of enemies easier, feel like a bad gimmick.
A lot of companies or individuals that experience prolonged periods of success get really stupid, because they don't know what failure is. They're told for years how great they are, how everything they do is golden. When they finally jump the shark and start making one bad choice after another, they cannot be told their ideas are bad. Samuel L. Jackson, The Rock, Mariah Carey, Eddie Murphy and a host of 2008's failed banks and investment firms are all perfect examples of this. Nintendo has long since passed this line in their game development. Twilight Princess is the rarest type of game, because it ends up being good despite its own development. A ton of the game feels rushed, gimmicky, forced, childish.... but yet miraculously, the end product isn't all that bad. This is likely because Nintendo, on muscle memory alone, remembered what made them iconic in the first place. Because despite all the useless nonsense this game throws at you, it still has amazing dungeons, epic boss fights and ends up with a fairly good storyline. It's a miracle Midna ends up such a great character, because Nintendo's new ideas haven't worked in years.
Musically, Twilight Princess bumbles its way into having a great soundtrack thanks to using themes from past Zelda games and tweaking them a bit. But it's no surprise that known songs are mostly good, and the new songs are pretty much pond scum playing instruments and hoping for the best. Graphics are passable enough given how this is a Gamecube title, though the coloring of the Twilight Realm leaves a lot to be desired. Even Nintendo has fallen into the recent development trend of everything being different shades of brown.
In the end, Twilight Princess is an interesting case. If you're a Zelda fan, you'll probably be able to like this game even with the long line of wasted potential and bad oversights. If not, you can safely skip this. It offers little new paradigms and likely feeds into your opinion of why the Zelda series isn't good in the first place. The game does some things really well, like dungeons, bosses, items and mini games. It does other things not so well, like lack of D Pad functionality in menus and pretty much everything outside of dungeons, bosses, items and mini games being terrible.
Since you'll only be spending half the game having any fun (See also: "In dungeons"), the game gets half the score. Twilight Princess had amazing potential, but virtually all of it gets wasted by how bad most non-dungeon aspects of the game are. If this is Nintendo's so-called best effort, they're in trouble.
|
|
|
Post by UltimaterializerX on Jul 21, 2009 15:09:44 GMT -5
Super Smash Brothers Brawl
Quite possibly the most disappointing game ever made.
2/10
Ever since Electronic Gaming Monthly pulled the greatest April Fool's joke ever in 2002 --- a false code claiming to unlock Sonic and Tails in Super Smash Brothers Melee was printed --- Smash Brothers fans have waited in anticipation of SSBM's sequel. And why not? Melee was one of the best games ever made, and a simple remake into Melee Version 1.1 would be a slam-dunk follow-up. Fans got their wish at E3 2006, and before long anticipation for the game reached record levels. The game's creator, Masahiro Sakurai, even created a web site with daily updates for the upcoming Brawl, which he was able to keep going for almost a year before the game's ultimate release. But after almost six years of waiting, two of which being pure hype fed to Smash fans, and then a two month delay for the American release, Brawl finally hit our stores. Once we were finally able to bring the game home, it was realized even the best makeup cannot cover all sins.
The core ideal of Brawl remains the same as the last two games, insofar as you get a bunch of Nintendo characters kicking the crap out of each other on various Nintendo-themed worlds. A great appeal in any Smash game are the characters and levels, and to this end Brawl doesn't disappoint. There are 35 characters total (39 if you count Sheik, Zero Suit Samus and Pokemon Trainer's three Pokemon) and 41 stages. New characters range from Wario to Lucario to King Dedede, while all of the old staples from Melee return sans useless clones that no one liked anyway.
Fights play out in a part 2D fighter, part platformer style, with the main idea being to knock your opponent off of the stage you're fighting on. Attacks deal numerical damage, and characters are sent flying at an exponential distance proportional to increased damage. The higher the damage, the farther a hit sends someone, and the easier it is to knock someone off of the stage. Brawl also remains true to form in that there is a ton of unlockable content, be it characters, stages or trophies, or new unlockable content like the stickers or music. Unfortunately, this is about where the good aspects of Brawl stop.
Virtually all of Brawl's single-player modes range from barely average to completely and utterly god-awful. Classic mode, in which you fight through a series of enemies en route to the final boss, takes a giant step backward. In Melee, Classic was almost always random with enemy choice. Brawl, despite ten more characters, has a surprising amount of predictability. You'll always fight Zelda characters first. You'll usually fight a giant Yoshi second. And so on and so forth. This, paired with both bonus settings being target tests turns Classic mode into a chore very quickly. In Smash 64 and Melee, it was fun beating Classic with all the characters. In Brawl, it's tedious and boring, and just seems to drag. On top of Classic's step backwards, Brawl's version of All-Star mode is equally disappointing for similar reasons.
In All-Star mode, you pick a character and fight every other character in the cast in a series of 1v1, 1v2 or 1v3 battles, with limited healing items in between fights. Melee's order of characters fought was always random, began with 1v1 and progressed to 1v3 matches, and ended with a really fun battle against 25 Game and Watches. All-Star in Brawl is now set in order chronologically per the Nintendo franchise --- decent novelty act, but ends up making Brawl's version of All-Star inferior and repetitive. You'll always fight the other characters in the same order, and never will more than two enemies be on the screen at once. For the few battles against more than two enemies, such as in the fight against the four Zelda characters, you fight two characters at a time. When one dies, another switches in. Worst of all, All-Star concludes with a lone 1v1 fight rather than a massive multi-man battle, which makes All-Star's end very abrupt. All-Star was unbelievably fun in Melee, but is another game mode that somehow made a terrible transition between Melee and Brawl. Once you beat All-Star with a couple of characters, it becomes boring and pointless to keep going. In Melee, it never stopped being fun.
Ditto for Event Mode in Brawl. Melee's event modes were unbelievably creative, whereas Brawl's events come off as very uninspired. On top of the number of events reduced from 51 to 41, most are either bad upgrades from their Melee counterparts, or just bad outright. In Melee, the final event was an always-fun fight against Giga Bowser, Mewtwo and Ganondorf. In Brawl, it's a fight against Giant Mario, and regular-sized Solid Snake and Sonic. It's Nintendo's "we think we're twice as big as everyone else" message more than a final fight, and the rest of the events aren't much better. Furthermore, the addition of 21 co-op events seemed like a good idea leading into the game, but was also an uninspired effort through and through. The only co-op event that's any good is the final one, but even that is just a glorified multi-man Brawl.
Despite the flaws with the aforementioned single player modes, however, nothing --- NOTHING! --- comes close to how freaking terrible the Subspace Emissary (SSE) is. SSE, the supposed upgrade from Melee's supposedly bad Adventure mode, is by far the worst part of Brawl. SSE is a story mode in which the characters of the Smash universe set out to save the world from the invading Subspace army, which mysteriously seeks to suck all of the Smash character's worlds into a black hole known as Subspace.
It starts out as a typical save-the-world sequence, but soon turns into eight hours of completely horrendous fanservice for all the game's characters at seemingly the same time. The story (more appropriately, the lack thereof) tries to do too many things at once with too many characters at once from too many angles at once. There is no branching, no dialogue, and most of it makes absolutely no sense by the end. Sakurai ended up posting an explanation of the SSE's story on his Smash Dojo site, and admitted that the SSE's story was incomplete drivel. An exact quote from Sakurai: "...there may have been some story-related items that didn't fully make sense. So let me tell you some of the story background you couldn't have gleaned from the movies". On top of this, scenes were cut that could have shed serious light on the background of SSE and certain character motivations. In SSE, gamers are fed an unfinished product and the parent company offers a follow-up explanation a month after the game's stateside release. Gamers don't mind delays in release dates if the end result is a better game --- Zelda: Ocarina of Time being the single best example of this --- but a delay yielding such glaring oversights is unacceptable. The one bright side to the SSE story is that the cutscenes portray the Smash characters in an incredibly funny and/or badass light, but this only serves to blind the viewer from an overall very lacking storyline that requires outside information to fully understand. The PC industry was crippled by the mentality of releasing fixes and patches after the fact, and console gaming could be wise not to follow the same path.
The SSE story might be bad, but actually playing through the SSE manages to be worse. SSE is essentially a bad beat 'em up sidescroller, made worse by characters whose fighting style doesn't fit in well with said genre. Most characters play very awkwardly during the platforming aspects of the SSE, and fighting enemies can feel even weirder. The platforming in general is some of the worst in gaming; it's a bunch of pointless, repetitive, tedious and linear door-hunting. All "puzzles" consist of carrying a door key a few inches, hitting a very obvious switch, or opening a door by hitting three nearby switches. That's it. There's little to no variety, repeated ad nauseum for about eight hours. The whole while, you'll have far too many enemies unique to the SSE thrown at you, including very annoying sections where you have to stop and kill a set number of enemies on a screen before advancing. The SSE enemies are eerily similar to the Heartless in Kingdom Hearts, only they aren't the least bit fun to fight against and there are a lot of sections in the SSE where entirely too many enemies pop up on-screen at once. There are occasional breaks in the monotony for actual Smash-style fights or for boss fights, but for the most part the SSE is repetitive, pointless nonsense. There are too many enemies, it's too big, it takes too long to finish and there are too many gimped platforms throughout for the gameplay to be at all fun. Worse yet, a good deal of the unlockable characters are unlocked via having them join your team in the SSE, which completely ruins the stigma of the old "New Challenger Approaching" screens of the older Smash titles. Even if you grind through VS matches to bypass SSE unlocking, three of the characters are only unlockable upon clearing the SSE, then reentering, finding their hidden doors and defeating them in fights. It's not too big a deal unless you're very nostalgic about unlocking characters, but independent of this the SSE and its gameplay are the worst thing in Brawl by quite a lot.
Multiplayer could have saved the game, but it too is a total failure. In Brawl, Nintendo makes a giant effort to perfectly balance the game, yet managed to ruin the gameplay beyond repair. The game plays slower than even the original Smash, and there is now a ridiculous overemphasis on defense. To remove the wavedashing glitch, air dodging is now predicated on aerial character momentum. This would have been fine, only your character isn't disabled after an air dodge anymore, granting what is essentially perfect aerial defense. On top of this, edge-guarding was made far too difficult. Most of the stages in Brawl have little air space on either side of the stage, most characters can recover with one basic jump, and the new air dodging makes it too easy to avoid being edge-guarded to death. Edge games are now virtually irrelevant save on a few select characters.
Furthermore, the lack of hitstun is the big offender for why Brawl's multiplayer is bad. Combos are next to impossible against someone that can DI properly, and there are very few guaranteed combos in the game that are worth their effort in damage. The lack of hitstun also creates limitless defensive potential, including the ability to throw a shield up in the middle of some characters' basic A combos, and shielding or air dodging directly after almost all attacks. It adds too much defense to an already too-defensive game, and when factored in with how slow the game plays it ends up dragging out most matches. The lack of hitstun alone turns Brawl into Campfest 2008, but it gets worse.
The balancing of the game ends up removing all of the old advanced tactics from Melee, which is good in that matches don't all come down to who can pull off Infinite Drillshine first with Fox on Final Destination. Unfortunately, the balancing effort takes out too many useful techs from Melee. There's no more crouch canceling, no more L-canceling, and throws now have too much knockback to prevent chain-grabbing and easy combos. And even that wasn't done right, because King Dedede and Falco can both chain-grab heavy characters. With Dedede in particular, 0 to death chain-grabs are impossible to DI out of on stages with no pitfalls, or any stage with a wall in it. There's also a very useless tripping feature in the game, in which your character has a 1% chance to trip and fall upon dashing. It usually doesn't make a big difference, but a forced random element is pretty ridiculous.
The removal of L-canceling is equally annoying, mostly because it was removed in favor of lazy auto-canceling aerials. Not all aerials auto-cancel, of course, so if you use the wrong aerial you'll be defenseless for quite a long time upon hitting the ground. At least in Melee, canceling required skill. Now, aerials are all about finding the ones that auto-cancel and almost never using the other ones. In turn, fighting in general comes down to auto-canceling aerials and grab attacks, with a ground attack mixed in whenever possible.
The items and random whacky stuff on the battle stages, aspects of Smash that always existed to make things chaotic and fun, are at their absolute worst in Brawl. Items are insidiously broken this time around, and a good deal of them will kill people from 0% if used correctly (or if the game pulls the old bomb-in-the-middle-of-an-attack trick on you, which you can expect to see a ton of in single player modes). Worse yet, there's a group of items --- Deku Nut, Franklin Badge, Screw Attack and Motion Sensor Bomb --- that look almost exactly alike. And the highly touted final smashes, hyped for months prior to the game's release, are totally out of balance. Some, like the Landmaster, are amazing and can score two kills on one character before the duration ends, while others, like Zero Suit Samus and Jigglypuff, are lazy novelty acts that barely do anything. The new Pokeballs are the worst of the entire series, rendering the once-fun Pokeball-only match fairly pointless. The new Assist Trophy item, which is basically a glorified Pokeball that has non-Smash characters pop out and attack, was a good idea on paper. But similar to Pokeballs, most of the Assist Trophies are either weak, easily avoidable or completely pointless.
There have always been a lot of bad stages to fight on in Smash titles, but Brawl crosses the line from bad to broken beyond repair. A lot of the levels, like Spear Pillar, Rumble Falls and New Pork City, make no sense being in existence at all. Others, like Castle Siege and WarioWare, are glitched to hell and back and can kill you for no reason. And the worst are levels with lips for edges, like both Pokemon Stadiums and the new Final Destination. It all adds up to the worst collection of levels in the entire Smash series, which one would assume isn't possible given that the game has 41 levels to choose from.
The last aspect of multiplayer, the much-anticipated online play, is perhaps the most disappointing aspect of them all. Even though companies have been doing online well for years, Nintendo refuses to get with modern times. The friend code system is beyond pointless, as is using WiFi as a matchmaking online service. Brawl online is laggy, chaotic nonsense in which the best strategy is to pick a character, spam his or her two most broken moves, and to never play more than one person if you can help it. The lag is bad enough in 1v1 matches, but the game slows to a near stop if three or four people are in a match at once. The slightest bit of lag will cripple any attempt at playing a fighting game, and Brawl is no exception to this. Online play, be it against friends, random people or the sandbag in the online Home Run Contest, is wholly pointless. The only mode that's at all fun online is spectator mode, in which you watch matches from other people, bet coins on who will win and can earn some coins or stickers.
Speaking of stickers, the unlockable content in Brawl goes well past the breaking point into the completely obnoxious. There is entirely too much, and the vast majority of which is tedious and not at all fun. There are 544 trophies to collect, and to get all of them you'll have to go through classic, all-star, boss rush and 100-man brawl with every character on various difficulties, turn every Subspace Emissary enemy (including bosses) into a trophy via the trophy stand item, and do all 175 possible target tests, among a ton of other things. Trophying enemies in the SSE is particularly obnoxious, even if you use Big Boss stickers to increase the drop rate of the trophy stand item. Enemies will only get turned into a trophy if the item causes enough damage to kill them, effectively forcing you to play Pokemon with them. It also forces you to reenter the god-awful SSE in the first place, which is absolutely never a good thing. And if you turn a enemy into a trophy but fail to pick it up, which is to guaranteed to happen if you go after Meta Ridley, it's too bad, so sad, no trophy for you. As for randomly found trophies, the old coin lottery was done away with in favor of a Galaga-wannabe coin launcher. In Melee, you could throw as many coins as possible into a slot machine for a higher chance at getting the rare trophies you're missing. It wasn't the best feature, but the coin launcher makes Melee's coin lottery look brilliant. Coin launcher is fun for a little while, until you realize that there's no way to make the percentage on your rarer trophies increase.
258 total songs are in Brawl, the majority of which are unlocked via picking up CDs during multiplayer matches. This actually isn't so bad a task, because CDs on the battlefield almost always net you a new song. CDs will drop less as you get closer to getting all of them, but it's not so bad a task as it looks, especially if you build yourself a factory in stage builder. The real killer however lies in the 700 stickers that can be picked up. All of them are found randomly during various forms of gameplay, and the grind to get all of them is completely ridiculous due to there being no real way to increase drop rates on the stickers you're missing. Worse yet, the stickers are completely useless outside of the Subspace Emissary. In SSE, you can slap stickers on your chosen character's trophy stand to increase various character effects. The overwhelming majority of stickers are completely useless, and once a sticker is placed, it cannot be removed without disappearing entirely. It's a lame, pointless and forced RPG effect that would have been better not existing at all, and is a big testament to the overkill that Brawl offers with collectables.
Aside from the major issues with Brawl, there are also a lot of little things wrong with the game that add up. Masterpiece mode, which is where you get to play old games that some Smash characters came from, was a decent enough idea gone wrong. The demos are much too short, effectively turning Masterpiece mode into a bad advertisement for the Virtual Console. The trophy case is ordered and presented very badly in this game, and there's no option to view everything alphabetically. Stage Builder mode is a very good idea, but the buffer zones for stage pieces is entirely too large and there's no way to sort your levels if you build a bunch of them. Saving replays is a nice idea as well, but the three minute limit is too small and again, the lack of any sorting options cripples those with large numbers of replays. Co-op play was introduced for most of the game modes, but adding co-op to bad game modes doesn't make them good; you just end up playing something bad, like the Subspace Emissary, with two people instead of one. The 4 ways to play gimmick was introduced for the four possible controllers used for Brawl, but the Gamecube controller is the only one that feels intuitive. Wiimote, Classic and Wiimote on its side are all pointless to try and play with, and the aforementioned points are only a few of the little things wrong with Brawl. The camera angles and anything involving ladders are horrendous. Overall, the game simply is not fun to play.
But in fairness, it's not all completely bad. Brawl has a large and beautiful soundtrack, and the My Music section allows you to turn off any songs you don't like. The challenge wall details virtually all of the game's unlockable content and how to get it, and for the truly ridiculous achievements like getting all 700 stickers or beating 100-man brawl with all characters, you're given a total of 5 golden hammers to use on any non-boss-related box on the wall. This allows you to get the 700 sticker trophy, for instance, without really earning it. The graphics are absolutely top-notch, and to date are by far the best seen the Wii. Stadium mode remains fun outside of the target tests, including a more challenging set of enemies in multi-man brawls, the new Boss Battle mode and a blast shield in the Home Run Contest that can prevent the sandbag from being knocked off of the platform on purpose. The game also has complete customization, right down to the long-overdue addition of changing controller layouts.
Unfortunately, it's all not enough to save the game. Brawl ranks with Chrono Cross, Fable and Warcraft 3 among gaming's all-time biggest disappointments, and the best part of the game is when you realize it's bad, stop playing it and go back to vastly superior Super Smash Brothers Melee.
|
|
|
Post by UltimaterializerX on Jul 21, 2009 15:13:55 GMT -5
Guitar Hero: Smash Hits
Leave it to Neversoft to ruin a great setlist.
3/10
Neversoft has been slowly ruining the Guitar Hero series with garbage cash grabs for years, what with the overpriced track pack known as Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, a legion of useless DS titles and the complete and utter failure that was World Tour. So it should come as no surprise that Smash Hits, a great idea in theory, ends up a bottomfeeder game.
The only reason this game is not a 1/10 is because it has arguably the best setlist of the entire series. Smash Hits takes some of the best songs from older games and combines them into one neat little product placement package, and for the most part they got song choices (the most important part of any Guitar Hero title) correct. Free Bird, The Trooper, Barracuda, Bark at the Moon, Cowboys from Hell, Laid to Rest and more highlight an overall excellent choice of songs, and all songs have been reworked to coincide with all of World Tour's instruments, and are all master tracks this time around. No bad covers this time. There are some pretty bad omissions -- Where the hell did Megadeth disappear to? -- but overall the setlist is fine. There's nothing from World Tour, but that's okay since World Tour was an abomination that never happened.
But sadly, this leads us into the biggest issue with Smash Hits, as well as the direction of Guitar Hero in general: No Guitar Hero fan wants to play Band Hero. Leave Rock Band to the people that know what they're doing. Guitar Hero has flat-out stopped being Guitar Hero, which is rapidly killing the once-fledgling series. It would be lovely if all the bitterness between Harmonix and Red Octane would just end and they got back to making old fashioned Guitar Hero, but sadly this will never happen. And then we get stuck with bad gimmicks, like Smash Hits.
The songs all being reworked to mesh with a new paradigm no one wanted renders Smash Hits a complete waste of time and money. Trying something new once is fine, but continuing it after fans have made their feelings on the matter clear is not. Slider notes and open bass notes remain a bad gimmick, the drums are still rarely fun (not to mention a ton of drum sets from the initial release of World Tour quite literally never worked to begin with), and vocal fills are clear "We're going to pretend this never happened" territory. It's fun for about five minutes, but the only real benefit for Smash Hits in particular is a newfound shortcut through the intro of Through the Fire and Flames.
If you're like most people and still treat Guitar Hero as Guitar Hero, you'll only get to see the issues plaguing lead guitar and bass. Lucky you. What is advertised as "The best music from Guitar Hero" -- It's right there on the back of the case, check it out! -- is more accurately deemed "We're going to ruin your favorite songs as best we can". Free Bird is the best example of this, what with out-of-place slider notes taking up the first half of the song and unnecessarily hard solos that make no real sense plaguing the second.
And Free Bird is not alone. If you're a fan of GH2 Psychobilly Freakout, pretend Smash Hits never happened. It's for your own good. If you hated Mosh 1 from Raining Blood in 3, pretend Smash Hits never happened. It's for your own good. Ditto for.... pretty much the whole setlist, really. Most songs are redone in stupidly difficult ways, at the expense of having fun. No matter the advances in video game technology and development costs, the endgame goal is games are supposed to be about having fun. Smash Hits is not fun. Sounds simple enough. And if you're one of those people that never plays on Expert and will never notice any of this stuff, it's to the benefit of Guitar Hero fans everywhere to pretend you never happened either.
All this comes on the back of issues that began right around when Neversoft stepped in to make Guitar Hero 3. No one cares if we can outfit our rocker of choice to have 5 piercings in the left eyelid or show off a tattoo of Christina Scabbia's ass on his or her middle finger. There is such a thing as being too big and having too much customization, and Guitar Hero crossed this line ages ago. The only thing it's ever accomplished are stupidly long loading times on any system the games appear on, which only makes it more annoying to get to the only part of these games anyone cares about: Playing the damn songs.
The overall art direction accomplishes more or less the same thing: Terrible loading times, regardless of system. Recreating Atlantis to be a series of islands held up by giant eagle's wings is quirky once or twice, but it gets old and annoying rather quickly when it just makes for longer loading times and less time away from actually playing songs. This says nothing of character design, which has been wholly ridiculous from day one. The only thing people are going to do with any of this is give Pandora and Casey Lynch the least amount of clothes possible and be done with it. If we're going to play games that embarrass the people playing them, we might as well give spectators some eye candy.
In the end, Smash Hits is another in the long recent line of bad, cash grab Guitar Hero games. Given the ridiculous price of games these days, avoid any and all such bad games like the plague.
|
|
|
Post by UltimaterializerX on Jul 21, 2009 15:15:01 GMT -5
And no, I don't dislike all games. Here's a positive review:
Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete
"By the power of Althena!"
10/10
Silver Star Story Complete is quite the charming RPG, especially if you're playing the superior albeit overpriced Playstation version. When compared to the Saturn version of the game, there are more important characters, more dialogue and significantly faster loading times. So if you're somehow struggling with system choice on this game ten years after its release, Playstation is the way to go. Saturns are probably impossible to find these days, anyway.
Lunar's story takes place on the planet of Lunar, with a giant blue star serving as the planet's moon -- like if Earth were some barren wasteland and humanity actually lived happily on the Moon somewhere. You begin as Alex in the tiny village of Burg, and Alex's dream in life is to experience adventure and follow in the footsteps of his hero, Dragonmaster Dyne. Dyne had died 15 years before the story of Lunar begins, and no one really knows how or why. Presumably, Dyne's death helped save Lunar from certain destruction at the hands of some otherworldly evils.
Things aren't so bleak when SSSC first begins. The story is more or less Alex seeking adventure with his best friends, and his ultimate goal is to find the four dragons of the world and become the next Dragonmaster. There's no giant pressing need for the world to be saved in the beginning of the game, but of course this all changes. The game's main evil shows up after some very well-done plot twists, and Alex's destiny is to become dragonmaster and save the world. There's obviously much more to it than this, but Lunar is filled with so many twists and turns that you're better off experiencing them for yourself. Lunar's story overall is amazing despite how cliché and cheesy it gets at times. A lot of what happens is surprisingly deep and breaks the fourth wall, including the question of religious morality: Are humans better served by having free will of their own future, or do they need rigid control and predetermination from a higher power?
On top of this, the characters in Lunar are very, very well-done and have a lot of inner relationships adding to the story's experience. Alex and Luna's dialogue is a little lacking compared to everyone else, but they're still top-notch. Between all the character relationships in your party, the funny things said by townpeople and deep villains, you'll experience a wide range of emotions while going through the game's storyline. It has a tendency to be a bit fetch questy at times, but it's all worth it in the end given the spectacular ending of the game.
Even better is Lunar not being a story-driven RPG, because it's an absolute blast to play. You have your generic RPG stuff with world maps and talking to townpeople and entering dungeons and stuff, but the battle system is this game's bread and butter. From the very beginning, the enemies are quite unforgiving with you. There's no adjustment period on scrubs to get you used to everything; if you try to go through the first dungeon unprepared, you'll probably die. Hell even if you are prepared, you may still have to bail out and heal a few times. Regular enemies can be a real pain unless you overlevel past them, but Lunar knows this. As such, boss strength grows along with your main character's strength. This isn't to discourage leveling up per se, but Lunar is a rare RPG insofar as you'll never hit a point where your party is invincible. There are no random encounters, so you'll screw yourself out of much-needed experience if you try and skip everything. But if you get too strong, some of the bosses, especially the last few, can maim the unprepared or unlucky.
In the actual fights, Lunar has an amazing system of character position and spell radius affecting many attacks. In most RPGs, you just select an attack and watch it hit stuff. In Lunar, especially early on, you have to consider the consequences of some attacks before doing them. For example, Alex's weapon of choice is a sword. When you choose to use a basic physical attack, he'll run up to an enemy, hit it once and that's it. No running back to the party's front line; he's now exposed to potential attacks from all the enemies that are close, and he could die if the enemies gang up on him. So do you defend for a round or two as your ranged attackers soften up the enemies with pot shots, or do you charge in right away with guns blazing and kill the enemy before they kill you? Fights get considerably easier as your party grows stronger, but the early parts of the game offer a lot of strategy typically not seen in the JRPG genre. It's a battle system very similar to Chrono Trigger, only with enemies that can actually hurt you and no dual or triple party member attacks.
That said, the battle system doesn't get any less fun as you grow stronger and learn new things. Your physical attackers will eventually attack 2 or 3 (or even 4 and 5) times per round, you'll learn some very fun catch-all magic attacks, and you'll even have some random status effects to throw at the enemies now and again for good measure. Nothing beats Alex and Kyle getting a combined 8 attacks off against a bunch of hypnotized enemies, and it stays fun from start to finish. Bosses generally require much more refined strategies because of how hard most are, which amounts to "cast all your buffs, spam single target attacks, heal when necessary and win".
The story is amazing and the battle system is near-flawless, which is the tried and true formula for making a good RPG. But there's even more. The reason Lunar is so charming is because it does so many things well, both little and small. All the townspeople have something funny to say if you talk to them twice, even at the game's darkest hour. Your party's characters do the same thing, even if they're fresh off of getting their asses whipped. Sure the world might end soon, but that doesn't stop Nall from craving fish or Jessica and Kyle from bickering like an old married couple.
There are no inns to stay in. Just touch an Althena statue in town and you're healed. There are no status effects, even death, that last after a battle. Nall revives anyone, and status effects just go away. Everyone has a funny spell quote or two, including the last few bosses. When Jessica uses a basic physical attack in battle, her hood pops off for a second. Enemies strike a pose if they're about to let loose a special attack. There are a ton of bawdy jokes and random scantily clad pictures of women, and all sorts of silly things hidden in the game for no real reason. That's just the type of game Lunar is; fun for the hell of it. And above all else, it took a look at what Final Fantasy 7 was doing at the time and said "Screw you, sprites are better". Sprites always win.
Speaking of which, this game's graphics are unbelievably top-notch for how simple it looks. The detail on all the sprites is amazing, the world map and dungeons and towns very bright and colorful, and even the various anime scenes of the game are well-done. Or as well-done as small anime scenes can be, I suppose.
To find any flaws in Lunar, you have to be extremely nitpicky outside of a couple obvious issues. First and foremost, the voice acting in this game is just over-the-top atrocious. Voice acting is almost never a deal-breaker in any one game, but be prepared to have your opinion of a few characters change when you hear them speak. The catch here is that once you beat the game, you'll unlock an outtakes scene in which the voice actors were clearly told to sound as ridiculous as possible while doing the characters. Because again, Lunar is randomly fun and silly just for the hell of it. The soundtrack, while not overly bad or good, isn't very memorable. The battle theme and main boss theme in particular don't seem to fit the game's atmosphere very well, but admittedly music is a purely subjective taste.
Which leaves the one actual design flaw in Lunar: "AI" is the default option in battle. This means when you save the game and turn it off, you're guaranteed to select "AI" in your next fight and watch as your characters expend magic points filleting some random giant ant.
And that's it. That's the one problem Lunar has. I'm sure you'll get over it.
|
|
|
Post by UltimaterializerX on Jul 29, 2009 12:59:28 GMT -5
Resident Evil 5
"Capcom, just stop making games,"
2/10
We get it. You're bad at it. Stop reminding us. Street Fighter 4 was an abomination, your oversaturation of Mega Man means he hasn't had a relevant game in over a decade, you tried your damndest to ruin the Devil May Cry series by firing the original director over nothing (literally, nothing), and now you're repeating the entire pattern with Resident Evil 5. 4 was a masterpiece, so Capcom not getting out of its own way and rendering the sequel a gimmicky pile was the lock of the forever. Gamers should be used to this given most of them are good at pattern recognition, yet somehow Capcom themselves haven't learned anything. One last verse is still the same old song.
RE5 takes place in Africa. Chris Redfield of the BSAA is sent in to investigate the latest area bio-organic weapons -- a euphemistic way of saying "Viruses that turn people into zombies and kill whatever moves" -- have surfaced, a staple of any Resident Evil storyline. Upon arrival, you're introduced to the biggest reason RE5 is bad: Sheva Alomar. She's your partner for the entire game whether you want her to be or not, but more on this later. Chris and Sheva's mission in a nutshell is helping infiltrate the location and rid it of the viruses plaguing the populace. And by standard issue, most of their help gets killed, a few plot twists pop up, and an old RE villain makes his most important appearance yet. It's an acceptable enough story, existing only to get you to where and how to play the game next, and to tell you who needs some shotgun blasts in the face. It's not the deepest story out there, but action games are never made for storylines anyway.
The issue RE5's story faces, and this is a theme that repeats itself all over the game, is that it's lost its fun compared to games of the past. We're used to heroes and characters and quotes in action games so over-the-top ridiculous that we can't help but laugh along with them. RE5 has lost this. Oh it has its moments, like Chris Redfield being built like a refrigerator with biceps that would make Hulk Hogan jealous, but overall it just feels like the game takes itself too seriously. There aren't enough "Your right hand comes off?" and "Jill sandwich" moments, outside of a few characters yelling a name at the top of their lungs. Gone is the merchant, and instead we get an in-game store that exists just to exist. No rhyme or reason to it.
But this is all chump change compared to how bad RE5's gameplay is. The game throws a partner at you and she's there for the entire game, no matter what. This of course leads to the entire game being based around co-op gameplay, which is guaranteed to make any game bad. Co-op gameplay is the most forced, terrible style of gameplay that can exist in any game, so it's no coincidence RE5 suffers from this design. The idea is that you don't have to face fear alone -- quite the contradictory message given RE is a survival horror series selling itself on the fear of being alone and not knowing what's next, mind -- and you can play with either a friend in person, a friend online or even a computer-controlled ally. The obvious problem here is that two people playing means each player can only have half the potential fun a game can offer. Co-op in any game boils down to three things: You watch someone else do most of the work, you do most of the work and drag along some slug until they themselves can lead a team, or you get two people of even skill level playing the game somewhat evenly. The latter works in theory, but in practice it's nearly impossible. Even if you get the hypothetical perfect duo that plays the exact same way with the exact same skill level, you run into the problem of each player having different pacing, divvying up weapons and work load depending on what enemies show up and so on. Even the best possible co-op will never be better than basic single player, and multiplayer is best left to versus modes. Sizing up an enemy only to watch someone else kill it is not fun and never will be. Having to communicate who does what so both players have equal fun will never be as easy as just doing everything yourself. This has been a near-indisputable fact in gaming for years and years, but companies continue banging their head on a brick wall hoping it'll one day break. The recent focus on co-op gameplay in games is a huge reason for most recent games being ass. It's not a coincidence.
And this is just if you play with another human being. Resident Evil 5 has the unique distinction of playing horribly no matter how you go through. If you do decide to try it solo with an AI Sheva, good luck. She's scarier than any enemy in the entire game, which should be legitimately impossible given how freaky some of the enemies are. But regardless, Sheva perfectly captures the lack of common sense in most any female. Maybe this was Capcom's goal all along: replicating a woman's total lack of any common sense. If this was their endgame, they did an ingenius job of it. You can bet your ass Sheva will waste ammo, waste healing items, grab most any item on the field she can, hand you items you don't need or want, never use the correct weapon, make as many dumb choices as possible regarding which enemies to avoid or not, and more.
She will also manage to trap you against walls at the most inopportune times, leading to much damage at the hands of powerful enemies. She will follow you around like a puppy when you least want her to, and you can bet this will lead her to stand right in the way when you try to use the scope on a sniper rifle or rocket launcher. You can't actually shoot her with these items, but you'll wish you could. And worst of all, because of her being in the game with you the whole way through you can bet Capcom could not resist putting in one dumb co-op gimmick after another. Co-op puzzles and doors and broken ladders are one thing, but nearly the entire game is superfluous co-op nonsense. You can count on one finger the number of bosses that don't have a stupid co-op gimmick in it, which is to say there is one boss that's a basic "kill me before I kill you" affair. One.
Oh and for the bosses and tough enemies that require you and your "partner" (she's actually the MVP of the enemy through this entire game, but we'll assume she's a partner for the sake of argument) to flank the enemy and attack from two sides, you can bet your bottom dollar she'll pull the lost puppy act and follow you around with her nose up your ass. Good luck having a partner distract the enemy from behind when she's busy distracting you from behind.
Anyone with common sense would of course ask, "Well if your partner sucks so much, why let her do anything at all? Hog all the weapons for yourself, do everything yourself and just ask for help on puzzles and doors". A good inquiry to be sure, and that would be nice. This is where the god-awful new inventory system comes into play. You aren't given the space to do anything yourself, which is one more way to throw bad co-op (which is to say, all co-op) down our throats. Unlike the perfect attache case system in Resident Evil 4, in RE5 you get 9 squares and all items take up equal space; that is, one square. So somehow, a rocket launcher takes up equal space to a pistol. Makes sense. Worse yet is this space dwindles down really fast. It's 8 squares if you bother with the Melee Vest or the Bulletproof Vest, 7 if you equip both at once. Yes, these are separate items even though the in-game description says you can equip both at once.
Between you and your partner, that's 18 total squares to manage all weapons, ammo, explosives, healing items and so on. It's a complete insult that makes the game as least fun as possible, and there are even oversights thrown in for good measure. Let's assume you have a full inventory, with a gun equipped that's out of ammo. You then find ammo for it. Guess what? You're not picking that ammo up, even though your character could easily load the gun and drop on the ground any leftover bullets to comply with this moronic new inventory system. Have fun finding something to discard, and if said discard item is on your partner, have fun exchanging items first. And make sure not to temporarily trade any ammo for a weapon you currently have equipped, because she will of course hand it back before you can pick up the item off the ground.
With how annoying the new inventory system is, one last kick in the nuts comes your way from Capcom's bright idea to have the inventory screen done in real-time. Enemies can and will hit you while you fiddle around in the inventory, so most players will wait until the enemies are gone to bother gathering items. And because of the limited space, you'll have to decide what to leave behind. Make sure you do it quickly, of course, since items not disappearing off the ground while you dabble in the inventory would make sense -- something Capcom has proven they do not have.
The inventory system and Sheva render the entire game very clunky and gimmicky, and in the end it causes RE5 to fail in the most important category of all: Fun. The game is not fun to play, even with a few RE4 elements still thrown in. Hell even if you suffer through it all and unlock Mercenaries and random trophies, it' still not fun, even with the ability to go at Mercs solo. The limited inventory prevents most any fun this game could offer. So in the end, you're left with yet another next-gen game that's all style and no substance. It almost feels like the people designing games these days aren't gamers.
For example, take a wild guess where RE5 actually manages to succeed. Yep, the graphics and music. RE5 actually deserves a lot of credit for its graphics, because for the most part it avoids the recent trend of having all colors be a different shade of brown. But graphics are the least important factor in what makes any game good. How many bad games have to be made, in which the only positives are graphics and music, before people realize that most such games are awful? Most modern games are built around graphics, and most of them are awful. Most older games were built around gameplay, and for the most part those games were fun to play. This is common sense stuff that modern game developers have yet to figure out for whatever reason, and RE5 gets to be another high-end, low-fun game in the fast-growing pile.
|
|
|
Post by UltimaterializerX on Jul 30, 2009 21:19:53 GMT -5
Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link
"Criminally underrated."
9/10
Zelda 2 had the unfortunate distinction of being a victim to its own series' success, sandwiched between two timeless classics that stuck to one formula. Zelda 1 and Link to the Past are gems that will be good games no matter what standard they're graded on. This guaranteed Zelda 2 would get flak for trying new things and deviating from the norm. Sometimes doing different things doesn't work out too well, but this is not true in Zelda 2's case by any stretch. Nintendo took some new, often odd risks with this game because they such a gigantic foundation to build on. Every success is allowed its "I'm Keith Hernandez" moment; the Zelda series got this out of the way early, yet struck gold anyway. It's difficult to imagine <I>any</i> game with the word "Zelda" in it being underrated, but Zelda 2 fits this. It is the very definition of underrated, in video game form.
The story is the same as most any other Zelda. You're Link, Zelda's been kidnapped, you possess the Triforce of Courage and must rescue her from the evil clutches of a nameless evil that threatens Hyrule. Tried, true, simple, and it's always worked even to this day. Even during the NES days when this wasn't a rehashed story, a lot of people complained about the game pulling what was essentially a repeat performance.
Be that as it may, Link sets off in 2D platformer glory this time around, leaves the home temple, and.... huh? A world map with some dinky model of Link on it? How will you see him attacking anything? Then once you stray from the main road, enemies show up, you'll press A and B and nothing will happen. WHAT GIVES?
Once that first enemy runs into you, it all becomes clear as you get warped to an alternate little 2D zone to either fight the enemy or run away. This is Zelda 2's version of random encounters. For all the debate about whether Zelda is an RPG series or not, Zelda 2 is the only game that's ever bothered having traditional RPG elements. There is a form of world map, random encounters, towns, experience points, a true quest feel and things overall get a lot harder as you move forward. Not just in enemies, but in the areas you must traverse. There are tough environments, instant death traps, decent enough 2D platformer puzzles and nasty surprises as you move along. Zelda 2 is pretty much the hardest game in the entire series --- and it's no coincidence people don't like it too much, since gamers are pansies and hate a good challenge --- and a pretty tough game in its own right when compared to all others. The enemies in this game start off fairly weak as in most RPGs, but Zelda 2 is different in that enemies do <I>not</i> mess around. The enemies and the environments you fight them in get really tough really fast, and you... pretty much won't get to that level as quick as the enemies do. This keeps you on your toes, but you are given tools to succeed.
You get experience points and level ups, and at each level up you can increase one of three stats: life level, magic level or attack proficiency. One could conceivably grind until getting high stats, but it would take an obscenely long time as enemies don't give a ton of experience until very late. And even then, each stat only reaches level 8 -- not an overpowering number by any means, and things will eventually boil down to your own skill level. The world map, big as it is, only exists to get from one place to the next. The 2D realms and temples are where its at, be it the occasional 2D zone where enemies show up or the always-2D temples where the game makes its living. The game's temples are obscenely fun, are filled with some good challenges and often have really tough mini bosses and main bosses. You get some defense from your shield and can block either high or low, but the shield doesn't block the most powerful of projectiles. You get some spells along the way, but nothing game-breaking. You can attack either high or low and do some jump attacks, but it takes some skill with spacing to avoid getting crushed by the more powerful enemies.
The one part of the game that's truly broken however, and the reason this gets a 9 instead of a perfect 10, is that the Downward Thrust and a basic jump attack pretty much break the game. Once you get the Downward Thrust, you'll never use anything else. For the occasional enemy that can defend against it, jump attacks always work. Even the enemies with shields almost never block a perfectly spaced jump attack, including the final boss. This said, you kind of need a broken skill or two because the second half of the game would destroy you otherwise.
Musically and graphically, this is what you'd expect from any NES game. Some pixels that move around well enough to see what's going on, some looping midi techno-sounding tracks, but you never see Zelda 2 get in its own way by worrying about aesthetics. It's actually a very well-done game from a presentation standpoint, considering how bad some other games from this era were about graphics and music and such. Link looks like the Link we know and love, the music is quite entertaining, the atmosphere gets deep as you go forward (the final temple especially is unbelievably well-done) and very rarely will you encounter the old "too many things on screen at once will make things disappear" problem that plagued, say, Metal Gear or R-Type.
Everything in Zelda 2 is downright fun. Older games that base themselves around gameplay and fun tended to be quite awesome. Games today mostly base themselves around graphics and music, and fun is becoming increasingly rare. What a not-so-odd coincidence. Also an easily foreseen coincidence is how Zelda 2 is a perfectly good package that people unfairly talk down, just because it doesn't look or act like other games in the series. This is pretty unfair, because these same people will piss and moan whenever a series doesn't try anything new. This is why fans of any series, <I>especially</i> Nintendo series, are known far and wide as ungrateful, whiny and never satisfied. This is why fans are best left ignored, much like communists.
The most fun thing about Zelda 2's reputation is that it <I>is</i> similar enough to other Zelda games to live up to its brethren. You're Link, Zelda gets kidnapped, and you gradually gain skills, power and items until you're powerful enough to save her. It's the same formula, even with the odd, albeit welcome risks Nintendo took in getting there. Zelda 2 is a nice throwback to cheap and easy risk taking, and it's so easily accessible these days that Zelda fans and non-fans alike should all give it a try. Zelda elements, platforming elements, RPG elements and adventure elements. What's not to love?
The answer is "nothing". Everything in this gem of a game is quite loveable.
|
|
|
Post by UltimaterializerX on Aug 2, 2009 14:44:12 GMT -5
Resident Evil 4
"The greatest adrenaline rush ever, packaged and released in video game form."
10/10
Resident Evil 4 is one of those rare games whose insane amounts of hype were fair. There was a minor controversy about Capcom promising only to release this on the Gamecube and then announcing it as multi-platform once they saw the critical acclaim and success, but who even cares? This just means more people get to play one of the greatest games ever. And make no mistake, Resident Evil 4 is in the discussion when discussing the five or ten best games ever made. It's that good. Timeless. Legendary. There is no limit to how many over-the-top positive adjectives you can slap onto this game, and all would be well-deserved.
In the very beginning, Leon Kennedy of Resident Evil 2 fame is assigned to rescue the president's daughter Ashley Graham, who has been kidnapped and taken to some remote part of Spain. He arrives at some remote village with two local police officers, who conveniently stay behind and have Leon investigate the village by himself. No harm done, right? It's just some dinky little remote village.
Leon goes down the beaten autumn path, and in the very first house some crazy guy attacks with an axe. No problem, we can chalk that up to some crazy old man having five functioning brain cells. On he goes to the actual village, where he encounters a few nice locals who will assuredly give him a tour of the place as well as give some clues as to Ashley's whereabouts.
But nope. The most heart-pounding music ever kicks in and Leon has to fight off an entire village of crazy-ass people coming at him from all sides with axes, torches, and even bare hands and teeth. The car with the police has long since fled Leon to fend for himself, and he's stuck with a tiny little handgun and limited ammo. After killing a seemingly endless number of villagers, a church bell rings, everyone goes on their merry way and Leon barely escapes with his life.
The best thing of all? All this is only the game's intro. It gets worse, with far harder enemies. You think these basic little villagers at the beginning were a problem, even though they probably killed you five times? Easy street. Wait until instant death enemies or super-powerful psychotic freaks with a small army's worth of killing power show up, and you have like 2 shotgun blasts, a handgun and a knife. That's what makes this game great, especially the first time through. Until you get the best guns in the game, rack up a lot of ammo or just plain get good at the game through dying and retrying areas a lot, this will be a scene that repeats itself quite often. Crazy zombie-people coming at you from all sides, barely fending them all off, barely escaping with your life and somehow moving on. And the whole time, Leon will be talking inordinate amounts of trash. RE4 does atmosphere perfectly, even if it doesn't fit the mold of a true survival horror game. You won't get jump-out-of-your-seat scared very often, but there is an unreal sense of tension all through the game. Not only do you have no idea what's around the next corner, you don't want to find out.
And even with a lack of nightmare scare tactics, the game pulls it off in other, more subtle psychological thriller methods. For example, you'll learn pretty damn quick to fear anything holding a chainsaw. There are giant invisible bugs that you'll hear long before you see them, a ton of people inflicted with a legitimately scary virus (it's Resident Evil, of course all the people are affected by a supervirus), and Regenerators. You'll know and hate Regenerators and the Iron Maiden the second you hear them, and the end results will not be pretty.
All this makes RE4 one of the best, most atmospheric games ever before you even pick up a controller. It doesn't have the deepest story ever --- the president's daughter is kidnapped, go save her, kill everyone before they kill you, the end --- but it's not in a genre that needs a perfect storyline anyway. Survival horror action games need only the main character to be awesome, and he is. Leon Kennedy is a prototypical over-the-top action hero badass that talks a ton of trash no matter what happens to him. It's all you need in an action game storyline.
But the gameplay, the other big selling point of RE4 along with atmosphere, is absolutely sick. Resident Evil 4 tries something new, in which you move your character in a 3D world but your own perspective the entire time is looking over the character's right shoulder. It'll seem weird at first, but it's intuitive within minutes. Movement can be a little funky especially with the inability to strafe, but Capcom lucked out big time as this lack of a feature only adds to the game's tension. You need to take care with where you're moving, because fumbling around with a ladder or carelessly letting an enemy attack you from the side can get you killed. If you screw up and someone with a chainsaw comes at you the wrong way, you'll get your head cut off and die instantly.
You are however given means to defend yourself, in the form of some great weapons. You start out with a basic handgun, but you'll eventually get shotguns, sniper rifles, explosives, magnums, machineguns and all the other good things one could need to kill off an army of zombies. The game uses a new system of shooting called a hit zone aiming system, which in layman's terms means you don't have to hit an enemy perfectly for it to count as a hit. You still have to come pretty damn close, but shooting doesn't require laser precision like in other games. And speaking of laser precision, every gun comes equipped with a mounted laser so you can easier see where and what you're shooting at. It's a tad weird at first, but like movement, shooting stuff will become intuitive and easy within minutes. It's not a difficult game to learn by any means, which is something game developers can easily overlook. If a game is too hard to just pick up and play from the beginning, it can turn people off. Thankfully RE4 doesn't do this.
Once you learn the basics, you'll start to notice all the cool things you can do with them. Instead of gunning every enemy to death, you can shoot one in the legs, then run up and do some badass melee attack that'll likely result in an exploding head. If it should live, you just knife it to death. There are random explosive barrels you can shoot if a bunch of enemies are stupid and get too close to them. A few of the enemy's traps can actually be used against them. And so on and so on. The random things scattered about are really fun to figure out and do, and it only gets better the more you figure it all out.
The game isn't just about gunning everything down and killing whatever moves, either. Other things are done well, including interactive cutscenes, a few puzzles now and again, and even some mini games. Not only is the Merchant one of the most defining characters in the entire game, he has a fun little diversion shooting range mini game for you to waste some time on. Other random fun stuff includes a dog near the beginning that's stuck in a bear trap. If you help it out, it'll return later to assist you in a boss fight. The game is filled with stuff like this, to the point where you can play it through five or six times and not discover everything.
The interactive cutscene bit is especially important, because you do more during scenes than just putting the controller on your lap and watch what's going on. Often something will attack Leon and you have some buttons to press, and he'll die if you miss. There's an entire boss fight, a knife fight no less, dedicated to this. If you're worried it all sounds like a hassle, don't be. RE4 is about creating tension, and what's more tense than having a split second to press L+R before death? There are some enemies you'll come across with interactive bits outside cutscenes, including a good number of the bosses. If you're fighting Del Lago on the lake and you fall off the boat, you'd better be ready to mash that swim button. You'll die otherwise. When you're fighting (more specifically, running the hell away like a little girl) Salazar's right hand, your choices are avoid most every attack he unleashes at you via the popup button combo or die. A ton of this stuff pops up all through the game --- you know, just in case the near-perfect gameplay starts to bore you --- and it never stops being fun. It's a game filled with tension from start to finish, and it never stops being fun. Isn't that what games are all about? Having fun and well-done immersion?
Adding to the tension in RE4 are some wonderful graphics and music, arguably the absolute limit of what the Gamecube is capable of. If this were an N64 game, there'd be something like 45 expansion pack add-ons and 20 cartridges to capture everything. Even for the Gamecube, the graphics stack up to anything and they add to the atmosphere like nothing else. You'll come across bloody dead bodies, wells filled with dirty maggot water, prisons that feel like actual prisons, sewers that feel like actual sewers, bug nests that feel like actual bug nests, and so on. The game spares nothing to make you feel like you're going through Hell itself, and in a way you are. Blowing an enemy's head off might feel satisfying, but not when a giant virus comes out and eats your head. There are a ton of fun ways to die in this game, including getting eaten alive, getting your head cut off, getting your face melted off by acid, getting blown up, getting your neck snapped during a certain cutscene, getting stabbed to death during a certain other cutscene and so on. Even in dying, the game never stops being fun because it's loaded with continue points and you're never set back all that far. And as mentioned before, few games have music adding to a game's endgame purpose than Resident Evil 4 does. Nearly every track you hear in the game just screams out "You're going to die soon, you suck, go kill something", and it starts right at the beginning when you see your first enemy.
It all adds up to a near-perfect package, and by itself renders it one of the best games ever. But once you beat the game, you'll come across the best postgame content ever made: Mercenaries. There is other postgame content like a little stint with another character, a New Game+ mode and the like, but Mercenaries is where it's at. Mercs didn't make its debut in RE4, but RE4 perfected it.
Mercs is this awesome mini game in which you pick a character, go to an area from the game and kill as many enemies as you can within a certain time limit. If you kill enemies quickly all in a row, you gain a combo bonus and score a lot more points than you normally would. Each map also has time bonus items, a combo bonus or two, and various assorted weapons that give the weaker Merc characters a chance against the reappearing mid bosses. If you really get into Mercs, there are four maps in total, and five characters in total all with their own varying traits and starting weapons. It's a very simple concept, but it's fun and addicting, and grows on you more and more as you get better at it. And if you master Mercs, you'll even unlock a gun buyable in the main game on a New Game+. Mercs by itself is astounding, and when tacked on to such a great game it helps RE4 go from great game to timeless classic.
If you've never played RE4, you have no clue what you've missed out on. It's available on four systems for cheap these days, so you're pretty much a communist if you haven't looked into getting this yet. RE4 truly does belong in the conversation when discussing the best games ever made, which you'll see for yourself once you play it. And you better play it, because the Iron Maiden is watching you.
|
|