The Biggest Game Project on this Planet

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

Sequel Time!

Warrior Within, the second game in the Reborn Prince of Persia series, takes place not so long after the events in Sands of Time. This time though, it is the Prince's Task to go to the Island of Time, and stop the Empress of Time of actually creating the Sands of Time, and thus make sure a whole heap of trouble is NOT going to happen.

Trouble is, in a rare moment of wisdom, Ubisoft decided that this was perhaps a very meager concept to build an entire sequel around, so, in a not-so-rare moment of laziness and inoriginality, they decided to change the entire look and feel of the game and make it into something that can only be called unsuitable.

Now, judging by the story and some of the flashbacks, this is very much the same prince we're talking about, which makes it extra weird that he looks and sounds TOTALLY different. In fact, he's an entirely different person altogether, even though the creators insist he's the same guy.
Gone is the lovely charming Prince of old, with the slightly posh English accent, and in comes the generic American husky voice, which is neither here nor there.
Don't get me wrong, the voice acting is not that bad, it's just a totally boring voice, lacking any kind of character or personality.
It's not like he's getting anything to work with either, normal dialogue is straightforward, no frills attached, and during battle the Prince occassionally utters a completely stupid warcry, either a pathetic "HRAAAAAR!" (which happens far too often. Imagine a big, tough guy going "HRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!" whilst smashing a bloody crate, and you can imagine how sad that looks)

Farah is also gone, and replaced by Kaileena, who, in a totally unsurprising plottwist turns out to be the Empress of Time of course. Spoiler? Only if you're stupid.
Kaileena is sexy, undoubtedly so, and Ubisoft tries to make a point of it by having her voice provided by Monica Belucci,



who is also not entirely unsexy, and even her voice is a joy to listen to, it just doesn't really make a lot of sense for an Arabic Empress to have an Italian accent, does it?

To accompany the change from professional charm to amateur "I want to be cool"-ness, the Exotic soundtrack of the original has been replaced with very very loud Rock music. Now, I don't actually MIND very very loud Rock music at all, but it is so totally inappropriate for a game like this, especially since it is not solely restricted to the battle scenes, but often also extends to the platform bits, which totally makes no sense at all.
The environments are as beautiful as ever. A lot darker this time, but still the occasional very pretty light areas with almost surreal looking lens flare, which made the original so great to look at, and which reminded me of ICO so much. Imagine being in a luscious garden, trying to balance yourself on a small ledge of some marble garden ornament, whilst in the background a couple of idiots are hammering away at electric guitars. It ruins the mood, to say the least.

The major problem with the original was the lacklustre combat. Ubisoft tried to fix this by giving the Prince a large amount of moves, and even the ability to hold two weapons at once, making combat slightly more interesting although still not actually fun. Also, it's spread out instead of concentrated on one area. The original had occasional rooms where you had to fight off dozens of enemies in a row, which I found terribly annoying, but this game offers more frequent battles with smaller groups, which I found to be less of a fuss. There are also some genuine boss battles some of which are nice, most of which are dull.

To add some much needed replay value, there are some treasure chests scattered all over the game, containing artwork and the like, which can be viewed in the special features mode.

Other than that, the game still offers the same brilliant kind of platforming that made the original so great, with a couple of small added features, like absailing down curtains and using ropes to run along walls etc.
It's still great fun even though you might wonder why you're doing it.
The game's story wants you to travel back and forth between the Palace in the Past and the Palace in the Present, which unfortunately means you'll have to backtrack occasionally and redo some things, which can be tedious. It's not THAT bad, but it's a cheap way of lengthening the game in any case.

And THEN there's the capital mistake EVERY company seems to make now and then, when they think gamers enjoy being chased by an invincible monster. Resident Evil 3 anyone?
In this case, the Prince is chased by the Dahaka, some ancient Demon who's trying to get to him because it is the Prince's fate to die or whatever, the story is rather stupid and predictable anyway, so don't bother to follow it. What it amounts to are these regularly occurring chase scenes, where, if you're not fast enough, you die instantly. Nice.
Speaking of which, the original had a great system, where, even if you didn't save recently, you're automatically put at the beginning of a room, or at the beginning of the last cutscene you witnessed, when you die. This made the game fun without being annoying, but the sequel throws you back to where you last saved, which again often means you have to retrace your steps for quite a while, which is annoying, especially since the Game Over screen is not as quick and easy to continue as in the original.

So, if you've reached certain levels of reading at your Primary Schools, you will have drawn the conclusion that this game is not nearly as good as Sands of Time.
The platforming is still cool, the graphics are better, if less atmospheric, but the rest is a shambles. I'll give it an 8, for still offering unparalleled platforming fun, but casual gamers probably don't want to bother.
Besides, the ending is totally unsatisfying too, basically giving you a "thanks for trying, now go and buy the sequel" message, with no kind of resolution whatsoever.
One for the fans.

posted by Ingen! @ 12:40 PM 0 comments

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time

Wow!

You know, occasionally, people decide to make a sequel to an ancient game, that was popular back when your grandparents were still popular, just to see if they can cash in on an ancient success, because they're too lazy to think of something themselves.
Prince of Persia was a very enjoyable 2D game released in frigging 1989 (yes, it HAS been that long), which did get a couple of other really crappy sequels, INCLUDING in fact, a Prince of Persia 3D, which sucked Horse-balls.
Once in what is almost a lifetime though, people manage to create a 3D sequel to an old 2D game, that TOTALLY manages to capture the wonderful feeling and gameplay of the original, and even expand and improve on it.

So several years later, the Ubiquitous Ubisoft decided to pay an hommage to this classic of old and release an officious sequel, called Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. Gone were the simple dungeon environments with a rather shabby looking prince



And in came the luscious 3D environments, both inside and outside, of an Arabian Palace filled with traps and conveniently placed ladders and poles. Yeah, that makes sense: "Hey Ahmed, as soon as you're finished installing those spikes and rolling blades, make sure there's a ladder and a couple of nice ledges around, to avoid them!"
Logic notwithstanding, the environments were created brilliantly. Not only do they look spectacular, but every room is like a puzzle, in that you have to look closely and think about how you're going to get through, making use of every pillar, every platform, basically anything you see.
To help you out, or perhaps just to impress you with its visuals, the designers offer you a landscape camera, that can be activated by pressing right on the control pad (in the GC version at least). The camera will pan out and show you a VERY WIDE view of your surroundings, so that you can find those elusive ledges and poles, you need so desperately.
It's a good thing the Prince is so agile cos you won't believe the acrobatics you have to pull off in some parts. If he's ever fired from being a Prince, he can always get a job as a pole dancer at some sleezy bar. He'd have to put away his knife though. Probably.

The story is that the Prince (I don't think he has a name) of Persia is tricked by the Evil Vizier (is it EVER anyone else in this kind of story!?) to use this nice little dagger he found in a treasury somewhere on that odd-looking Huge Hourglass and see what happens. Yeah, very clever.
The hourglass contains the Sands of Time, and as soon as the Prince unleashes them, everyone around him is turned into a monster, so it becomes your task to set everything straight again.
The developers were aware of the fact that the story wasn't very interesting in itself, so they decided to make it more appealing by having the Prince tell it in retrospect, which leads to some very amusing dialogue and voice-overs during the game. Especially when you are joined by Farah, a snobby (but Hot) slave girl who knows what's going on and helps the Prince in his quest.
The conversations between the two are delightful, and its especially funny to hear what the Prince really thinks through his voice-over comments. They gave the Prince a nice cocky attitude, slightly self-centered and spoilt, but a nice guy nevertheless. Voice acting is generally very good, and the course of the story has some nice surprises in store as well. Ubisoft have done a great job at making an otherwise meager story into something really fun and interesting, just by presenting it in an unorthodox way.

But what is most fun is the actual game itself. If you're a platform game fan, you won't easily find a game that does platforming better than this one. Let's face it, most platform games aren't really platform games nowadays. They're collect-a-thons for all kinds of stupid items, and they have very little to do with platforming anymore.
PoP: SoT however, goes back to its roots and introduces gameplay that is completely centered around REAL platform jumping, wall running (I LOVE wall running), pole swinging, wall jumping (is Metroid really the only series on earth that sucks at wall jumps?) and what have you.
Most rooms are built very intricately, and sometimes it can be hard to see where you need to grab on to, which is where the Sands of Time come into play.

When the Prince is in possession of the Daggers of Time, he can rewind time to suit his needs. So that means that, should you plummet to your untimely (literally!) death, one press of the L button will whisk you back in time for a couple of seconds, to retrace your steps and try something else, like not dying.
This is a great and very original addition, which makes the game an extreme amount of fun to play, because without it, you would have been dying CONSTANTLY.
You get sand tanks that determine how often you can use these powers (can't have you using them all the time, right?), but generally speaking, there's enough to go around.

But a Video Game wouldn't be a Video Game, it seems, without something to ruin the fun. In this case, the Uberpeople at Ubisoft decided that only platforming would be too boring (would've been fine by me!), so they throw in some really annoying battles. Every once in a while, you have to ward off these Sandy Monsters, but it's just no fun at ALL. Usually they come in HUGE groups, not so much with lots of them at one time, but just an endless string of enemies that'll bore you long before it's over.
Fighting is simply not interesting, despite some nice moves the Prince has, and some "stylish" slow-motion here and there, and it breaks the otherwise brilliant pace of the rest of the game. Also, when you defeat an enemy, the small time indicator at the top left of the screen will reset, so you can't rewind, presumably to avoid enemies regenerating. The problem here, is that you have to deliver a deathblow to every enemy to finish him off, and delivering such a blow will ALWAYS leave you open to attack. When an enemy hits you, he'll usually be able to get several hits in and do major damage, meaning you'll be dead without rewinding options, a little too often.
A damn shame, because even when the fights don't pose a problem, they're still boring and uninteresting, and they really spoil this game from being absolutely fantastic.

As it is, it's "only" really insanely good. Really. Ubisoft have firmly imprinted themselves as a great quality company, despite the fact that they're Canadian, meaning they speak bloody FRENCH, but they have started delivering quality on almost Japanese levels, which is about as big a compliment as you can get from me.
It made sense to me that they're Canadian though, cos a USA company could never have made anything this good.
A 9+ for this one, with a definite "Try this Out" staple.




Incidentally, yesterday was a VERY nice day for me.
I acquired a new student, eager to learn the Japanese language, and, not unimportantly, a great gamer! I'm not ashamed to admit my superior when I say that he TOTALLY kicked my ass at Street Fighter III, but he compensated by lending me a whole SHITLOAD of his games, so I foresee some slight delays in the project.
He lent me a bunch of games I was dying to play, most prominent of which was Shadow of the Colossus.

I think I'll post a nice review of it once I finish, but let me already give you a slight indication of what I think with these four words:

Oh.

My.

Fucking.

God.

I was playing with my jaw on the floor for almost the entire time, this game is INSANE. In a GOOD way. I have never ever EVER been this awestruck by a game, or at least, not in a long long time. It looks absolutely FANTASTIC, and the size of it is impossible to comprehend. You won't believe it until you see it. Pictures do not BEGIN to do it justice, this is a game you have to FEEL. Awesome.
More as it happens!

posted by Ingen! @ 11:02 AM 0 comments

Pocket Fighter

Blegh. I don't feel like writing a very long review, so I'm going to keep it short.

Fighting Game.

Capcom.

Good.

8.

There, that should do it.
It's nice to play a fighting game every once in a while that has some personality, and is not so much an attempt to cram as many characters into one game as possible.
Marvel vs. Capcom 2, and SNK vs. The Same Company 2 were both good games, but some personality was sorely missed. Where are the good old days where every fighter had his/her own story and own ending? I miss those days.

Pocket Fighter provides what you need, with a big fat layer of super-deformed cute versions of your favorite Capcom Fighters, LOADS of humor and over the top moves, plenty of references to other Capcom franchises, and simple, easy to pick up gameplay.
It's a bit more button bashing, with every character having the same kind of combo's involving punch-punch-kick-kick, or p-k-k-k or whatever, making this game also more enjoyable for stupid people who like buttonmashers like Dead or Alive, SoulCalibur or Tekken.

Very enjoyable, very funny, very 8.

Eat now?




Oh, and:

posted by Ingen! @ 4:58 PM 2 comments

PLOK!

PLOK!

This is probably my favorite title for a game EVER!

PLOK!

A SNES Golden Oldie, in PLOK! you get to play as PLOK!
He's a cute, cuddly character, with an endearing attitude, made entirely of VELCRO.
This basically means that his limbs are not securely fastened to his body, which only goes to show that flesh is a lot more sensible for living creatures.
The advantage this offers though, is that he can use all of his limbs as weapons, and long before Rayman started using his fists as projectile weaponry, PLOK roamed the plains of Akryllic, his kingdom, firing arms and feet at anyone who dares stand in his way, after which his limbs come flying back magically, not entirely unlike pigeons.

PLOK!, being the materialist that he is, has provided all his domains with Flags sporting his own likeness, but one dark day, the flags are stolen and replaced with Flea Flags, which naturally means the Evil Flea Queen is behind everything, so it's up to you, as PLOK!, to finish her off.

As you can tell, platform games have fantastic stories, and this game is no exception. What you might NOT be able to tell from this blurb however, is how surprisingly much fun it actually is.
The sense of humor is really cute, and it's actually pretty original for a platform game. It's got its own style and attitude, colorful graphics, and even has an entire world done in Black & White, accompanied with appropriate Silent Movie-esque music, where you play as Grandpappy PLOK!
Oh, the miracles of technology!

Also at your disposal are several vehicles to blast the color out of those nasty Fleas, like a Unicycle, a Tank, a UFO and several more. There are also several bonus stages revolving around a time challenge with any of these vehicles, which, when completede succesfully, will warp you a couple of stages ahead.
It's all great fun, and it gets DAMN hard too near the end. Don't be fooled by it's kiddy appearance, it gets REALLY challenging later.

One point of note I feel I should make, is the incredibly high quality of the soundtrack. Hot Damn, this is some of the finest music the SNES has ever produced.
It's mostly a disco/pop/rock kind of affair, but considering this runs off a 16 bit Cartridge system, the quality is absolutely mind-blowing! It has in fact been hailed by many as one of the very few SNES games sporting actual CD quality sound, and it's LONG too. That's a good thing, as there are some HUGE levels in here, and most of the music takes 3 or 4 minutes before it loops, which was insane back at the time.
Even by today's standards it's still above average I think.
I'll be more than happy to host some music files if anyone's interested in hearing SNES music. REALLY GOOD SNES music.

Anyway, musicwise it would have been a definite 10, but seeing as how it's a simple but very enjoyable platformer I'll give it an 8.




On a side note, you may have noticed that my Comment system now requires the confirmation of a random code before you can post. Sorry for the bother, but all the Spam was driving me goddamn crazy.

posted by Ingen! @ 3:16 PM 2 comments

Pilotwings 64

Aaaaaaaahh, yes. Pilotwings.
I remember this game as THE first game to be released for N64, alongside Mario 64 of course. Naturally, when I bought my N64 for a ridiculous price I got Mario 64 because it was the obvious choice, and not until much later did I get to play this game. I was VERY enthusiastic about the N64 in its early stages, because everything looked so nice, and I was basically prepared to play ANYTHING I could lay my hands on, and it was thus that I came to play this game.

Normally I stay well clear of any flight-related game, since I find them about as interesting as watching paint dry during a speech by Al Gore on the mating rituals of the mayfly, on Sunday.
And this, my friends, is where Nintendo stepped in and once again proved their uncanny nack to make ANYTHING a lot of fun. In fact, Nintendo's rare sleeper hit "Al Gore's Paint Watchers" is one of the most fun things I've ever played.
Nintendo has systematically taken every genre I tend to dislike, and made at least one truely fantastic game in it, which is why I still admire this company more than anyone else.
Racing games? Super Mario Kart!
First Person Shooters? Metroid Prime!
Strategy Games? Fire Emblem!
Flight Sims? Pilotwings 64!

Well, perhaps Flight SIMS is giving it a bit too much credit, since Pilotwings 64 is about as realistic as, well, Mario Kart, but that only means it's a helluvalot more fun.

Basically, you get 3 categories: Hang-glider, Rocket Belt and Gyrocopter.
Spread over 3 difficulty levels (not including the practice stages) A level, B level and Pilot Level, every level has 2 or 3 missions per category that you need to fulfill to get those elusive medals. Each mission will earn you a maximum of 100 points, depending on your speed, landing accuracy and landing impact, as well as numerous other mission-specific conditions.
Score enough points and you will get a bronze, silver or gold medal, and if you score enough of those, new subgames will open up, like Cannonball, Skydiving and Jumblehopping. Uh. Yes.
Do well enough in those categories, and you will unlike the Birdman stages, which will allow you to fly around the stages without any particular goal other than to take in the nice graphics.

And great graphics they are (or rather: were, this game IS already 9 years old!).
The stages vary from BIG to HUGE, which helps explain why there's only 4 of them.
They are incredibly detailed however, full of easter eggs and little things that'll put a smile on your face. It might possibly be even more relaxing and nicer to watch than an episode of The Joy of Painting, starring the immortal, yet dead, Bob Ross. God, I love that guy.

God, I love this game, for that matter. The only possible negative comment I can think of, is that it's WAY too short. You'll blaze through it in no time, especially since it's not particularly hard or anything, although it can be tricky. Oh, and I was kinda bothered by the fact that there's no direct Retry Option, you can only quit and go back to the mission screen if you want to try again.

Main replay value lies in improving on your score, although getting gold is good enough for all the unlockables. Perfect scores are not required.
The Birdman stages are a very nice addition, since there really is a lot to see here, and the relaxing jazzy music just provides a wonderful atmosphere to let yourself go. I bet if you get high first, there's NOTHING like playing this game.

Hell, even when sober, this is a truely unique experience, short-lived as though it maybe. There isn't a single kind of person I would NOT recommend this game to, since it's such pure unadulterated fun. If you're looking for explosions, gore and action, look somewhere else. If you have taste and brain cells on the other hand, you'll love this. I'm going to give it a whopping 9.5 since I'm feeling generous today.
Now give us a goddamn sequel already!

posted by Ingen! @ 2:55 PM 0 comments

Pikmin

Woohoo! Lots of short games coming up! I'm gonna blaze through my collection like this, so expect plenty updates this week.

Today is Pikmin! TOTALLY unrelated to the Namco character with an affection for pills and blue ghosts, Pikmin are small plantlike creatures which are totally stupid and helpless on their own, but can destroy entire ecosystems when in groups and with proper guidance.
The guidance comes in the form of Captain Olimar (orima- in Japanese, which is a "clever" anagram of Mario), who crash-lands on this strange new planet with his spaceship. 30 Parts of his ship are scattered all over the planet, and so it is up to you to retrieve all of them (or at least all the vital ones) with the help of those lovely Pikmin.
Olimar finds one red Pikmin on his exploration of the crash-site, which immediately acknowledges him as its parent, and all the others will follow. New Pikmin can be created by having your Pikmin carry pellets with numbers on them or killed monsters to their mothership (which is called an Onion, because it looks like one) and soon you can have your own tiny army of vicious little shits, armed to the teeth with cuteness.

You start out with only Red Pikmin, which are strong and resilient against fire, but soon you will find Yellow Pikmin, which can carry Bomb Rocks and can be tossed further and higher, and finally Blue Pikmin, which are weaker, but can survive in water.
All of this leads to strategic gameplay, involving lots of puzzles requiring clever use of each Pikmin's abilities to retrieve all of Olimar's lost space ship parts.
It's kind of a mixture between a Real Time Strategy game, without building bases and waging war, and a kind of 3D Lemmings, only not quite as crappy as the game of the same name.
Best of both worlds really.

To add some much-needed difficulty to this game, you get a rather strict time limit.
Pikmin can only work during day time, because at night, monsters will run amock and eat everything on sight, so you have to make sure you get everything done when the sun is still out. I'm not sure how much time that is exactly, but I had the feeling it was about 15 minutes or so, which is pretty strict, but should be enough to gather about 2 pieces of aircraft every time.
Which is why you get ANOTHER restriction: you have to do it in 30 days. This strange new planet contains a kind of poisonous oxigen and Olimar only has enough energy left in his Air cleaning device to survive for 30 days, so you have to finish the game in 30 times 15 minutes, approximately.
And this is really the only difficulty factor in the entire game. The puzzles are rather easy, enemies don't put up much of a fight, except for the final boss, so the ONLY trouble lies in the fact that the entire game is under time pressure, and I HATE that.
Remember Breath of Fire V? No? That's because you've never played it because it SUCKED for exactly the same reason.
To be honest though, like I said, this game is much much easier than Capcom's instrument of torture, so even the strict time limit won't form much of a problem, but it's still a cheap way of adding difficulty to a game.

And you know what's fun? When you're dragging the FINAL piece of your starship to its rightful place, only to have the timer reach Zero literally one FUCKING MILLIMETER before the finish line. That happened to me, and I was less than amused.
On the other hand, this is Nintendo, and they're nice enough to make sure that, even if you come back the next day, everything is exactly where you left it, so you never have to redo something, and it was only a matter of dragging that piece the last bit anyway, but it still annoyed me that I had to use an extra day for it.

Other than that, there's very little to say about this game. It's very straightforward, and it's pure Nintendo, which means extremely cute characters, great and intuitive controls and just a very enjoyable game experience overall.
Nintendo STILL needs to learn how to reward gamers who go 'all the way' though.
They usually give you a lot of things to do, in this case you don't have to find all 30 parts, but if you do, you do not get much of a reward, which I'm afraid is examplary of most Nintendo games. Great fun, with plenty of added challenge, but no reward other than the fact that you can boast you pulled it off.
Anyway, it's not so difficult in any case, which means that it's more than likely that you'll find everything on your first playthrough, which immediately forms the biggest problem of this game: no replay value.
Once you finish there's nothing to come back to. There's a challenge mode where the goal is to create as many Pikmin as possible in the span of one day, but it's a rather useless playmode, since it doesn't add anything except for some simple score-breaking incentive, which hasn't been fun since the middle ages.

But I bitch and I bitch, yet the fact of the matter is that it's really enjoyable to play through one time. It's a very original concept and it's very well executed, be it with a cheaply implemented difficulty and no replay value.
It's cute as hell though, you can make of that what you will.

I give it a nice 8.4, and now I'm off to crush some snails in the backyard.

posted by Ingen! @ 1:09 PM 0 comments

Parasite Eve 2

Can I get a "Yay sequels!"?

Anyone?

Hm.
Well, it's not like Square are known for making direct sequels anyway. Most of the time they make completely independent sequels taking place in separate universes, but with a familiar name slapped on the box anyway. Because it SELLS.
Not so, Parasite Eve 2. It's a direct sequel to the first game, starring, again, Aya Brea, who I'm pretty sure got a boob-job in the meanwhile.
It takes place several years after the Manhattan incident from the prequel, which is often referred to, but the setting is different. Aya is now part of MIST, an FBI-like organisation specialised in disposing of NMC's (Neo Mitochondria Creatures), based in Los Angeles.
A recent slaughtering at some building somewhere has her dispatched to the scene of the crime, where monsters naturally run amock and it is up to you to do something about it or die trying, or possible of boredom about the story.

Gameplaywise in the prequel, we had an RPG that was slightly reminescent of Resident Evil at time. This time, we get a Resident Evil clone, that is slightly remeniscent of an RPG at times. Really.
The game seems to have shifted from RPG-driven gameplay to Survival Horror style gameplay, only lacking the necessary horror (it's gory, but it's not scary at ALL), and, well, survival element. With experience points, so there you have your RPG elements. There's no levelling up though, you only get to use your experience for reviving and powering up your magic skills. Furthermore, there's BP, which can be used to purchase new armor, new weapons and ammo and the like.
In fact, Resident Evil was SUCH an obvious influence on this game that even the prequel's 3D controls have been discarded in favor of Resident Evil style 2D controls, with 'up' being forward, etc. you know the drill.

Why this was done is completely beyond me. Although I'll readily admit that the RE inspired gameplay works A LOT better than the half-baked RPG that the original was, there's no excuse for turning a proper control scheme into something that's as versatile as a huge boulder chained to a telephone pole. And Aya still moves about as fast as a dead drunk. STUPID SQUARE. No cookies for you today.
Other than that really stupid decision, I feel this game is a huge improvement over the original in every possible way. More variety, more atmosphere, more interesting environments and better puzzles (in that there actually are some). I have to say that some puzzles are pretty damn obscure though.

Once again, we get prerendered backgrounds (very pretty, much better than the original) and loads of CG movies (even prettier), but the melodic soundtrack provided by Yoko Shimomura in the prequel, is now replaced by a more ambient/industrial sound by Naoshi Mizuta, sounding like it perhaps belongs more in a Silent Hill game (not QUITE that good of course) than anything else.
The RE-esque setting predetermines that the game ends in a research facility of some sort, of course, but along the way, you'll go to a small hamlet in the midst of the Mojave Desert, and you'll get to see an artificial jungle, making for at least a couple of unusual settings for this kind of game, and they all look great.

Throw in some alternative routes leading to different endings (not that much different though), unlockable extra modes of play, loads of weapons and secrets, and you have yourself a very solid game on your hands.

One word of warning: It's sponsored by Coca Cola. I can't find any official confirmation of this, but playing the game, I have concluded that it HAS to be so.
Because Coca Cola is bloody EVERYWHERE. Not only will you find Cola dispensers everywhere you go, a can of coke is even a usable item (replenishes 20 HP and 80 MP! That's why my urine always sparks more when I drink it!), and you get a Refridgerator Magnet as a key item, that is shaped like a Coca Cola bottle cap.
Oh, and every 15 minutes the game goes into commercials with Santa Claus.
Cheap rip-off old geezer.

I always tend to research the general opinion and consensus of a game before I review it, just to check what other people think of it, and give you my side of the story. As it turns out, this game has not been recieving very good critiques, but I fail to understand why. Unless you are bothered by the stupidly slow, clunky and bothersome control system (uh....okay, that IS a pretty big hurdle) it's all good as far as I'm concerned. But then, Resident Evil's controls never really bothered me in the first place, so it probably has to do with tolerance levels.
It's generally not quite as good as the Resident Evils either, although I enjoyed it more than RE3 and Code Veronica, but if you can get over the unnecessary change in controls there's a very entertaining, atmospheric action-RPG-esque thingy waiting here for you, including frustrating enemies and some really hard boss battles.

I loved it so much that I was prepared to start again when I found out I had a guide laying around, having already finished more than half of the game at that point.
It's not that long anyway, although for a game of this kind, 12 hours is pretty hefty. Ironically, the second CD seems to be a LOT longer than the first one, but that's probably because there's a fair amount of backtracking involved.
Still, I loved it, and it's definitely one of my favorite Square games on PSX.
I'll give it an 8.8, and I'll add that I'd love to see another sequel some day.

posted by Ingen! @ 3:36 PM 0 comments

Backlog: Chrono Cross

Parasite Eve 2 is taking slightly longer than expected.
That is to say, I want to get the most out of it, and I know there are multiple endings, and RIGHT AFTER the decisive point of no return I remembered that I bought a guide for this game, like, 5 years ago, at which point it was of course already too late.
So you know what I did? I decided to Reboot from Start, as the saying goes, and just redo everything with my trusty guide next to me, meaning I'm not missing out on ANYTHING. Needless to say that one would only do this if one REALLY likes a certain game, and dammit I do. Some investigation into online reviews indicates that Parasite Eve 2 hasn't been received that well in general, but I honestly can't see why. But that is of later concern. To compensate for the absence of a PE2 review, let me regale you a nice backlog, namely Chrono Cross.

Chrono Cross is the aptly titled sequel to Chrono Trigger, which is officially one of the best games ever made, and only complete idiots don't like it.
For the sequel, it doesn't go down quite that well, but there's still a great game in here, if you have the patience.

You play as Serge, which has to be one of the dullest and stupidest names for a main hero EVER, actually I have a cousin named Serge, believe it or not, and we have officially disowned him. For having a stupid name of course.
Serge lives in the wonderfully peaceful Arni Village, which makes me feel dirty because it ALWAYS reminds me of an obnoxious character from a ridiculous TV Drama we have on TV here. "Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrniiiiiiii". God I hate him.

Anyway, Serge goes out on one beautiful day, to collect lizard skin or something but while he is on the beach, a big black warphole type thingy sucks him up and spits him out in a world that initially looks just like his old home world, with one major difference, the Serge in this world died a long time ago.
Of course, soon it will turn out that that's not all that's different here, and this is really only the tip of the iceberg, but Serge doesn't let that stop him from finding out what the heck happened to his other self.

Where Chrono Trigger dealt with Time Travel, this game is all about parallel universes, which is always nice. The game starts out very interesting, like described above, but soon explodes into an insanely complicated, but very deep and original story, that probably requires multiple playthroughs just to be able to fully understand it. It should come as no surprise that the people behind these game were also responsible for Xenogears, which to this day still stands recorded as the most impossible to understand story EVER.
The main gripe here probably, is that the story builds up kinda slowly. At least, that's what most opponents of this game complain about. It takes too long before anything starts happening and most people don't want to bother. I respectfully disagree actually. I thought the build up was done very well, you get little bits of information every step you take, sometimes it will make you go "aha!" and sometimes it will make you go "now I get it even LESS" but in the end, most of it will make sense. Or perhaps not.

Being a HUGE fan of the original Chrono Trigger, I was not expecting this game to top it's forefather, and it doesn't, but I was surprised at how much justice it still manages to do to the original. At first glance it has nothing, NOTHING, to do with Chrono Trigger, but if you advance far enough, you will see that you couldn't be more wrong, since the two stories are VERY closely intertwined, and this game will even provide you with additional information about the original's story. Very well done.

Actually the main reason this game is not quite as good as it's predecessor lies in the gameplay and some rather disappointing decisions Square made. This game was released in november 1999 in Japan, I fondly recall, and you may have noticed that a lot of Square games released in 1998 and 1999 (and partially 2000) are a bit....different. That is, it really seems they were trying to come up with alternative methods of levelling up or use of experience. Just look at FF8, Parasite Eve 2, Legend of Mana etc. and you'll see what I mean.
Perhaps there was a rising demand of gamers for new systems, from the point of view that the old tried and tested formula of "defeat enemy and gain experience. repeat until level up" wasn't interesting enough, so Square did their best to come up with different approaches, and quite fairly, NONE of them work as well as the traditional way.

I mean, geez, there's a bloody REASON that such a system has established itself over the years, and it's that it just works PERFECTLY for this kind of game. Fortunately, we can see that every game developer nowadays has gone back to that original system, and it seems everyone is now reluctant to experiment, which is fine with me.

Uh. To get back to Chrono Cross, the system here does not involve any kind of point collection. Basically, your character gets a level, with stats, but fighting doesn't earn him experience. No. After battle you will get to see the results, and status increase may randomly occur. This only happens for 2 or 3 battles usually, and then it stops, because the character will have reached its predetermined base values and he will not grow any further. Only when beating a boss, will you recieve a special "level up star", which greatly boosts your stats, and after that you'll get some slight increases again after battling 2 or 3 times, and then you have to wait until the next boss battle again.

This basically renders combat almost entirely obsolete. You could blaze through the game without every fighting any standard enemy (if you can avoid them that is) and you would not be in any kind of trouble for the final battle.
Very fortunately, Chrono Cross doesn't have random battles, but instead uses enemy characters running around on screen. Touch them and the battle will commence.
This saves a lot of frustration that would otherwise have been born from the meaningless levelling system.
The only real merit to combat, is getting items from enemies. They will often drop accessories, materials that can be used to create armor and weapons, or more frequently they will drop magic. Magic?
Yes, Magic.

You see, magic is not acquired per person. Every character has a couple of personal special attacks, that are unlocked once he or she reaches a certain level, but magic has to be equipped. For that, every character gets a grid, that allows installing magic spells. Usually, your grid goes from level 1 to level 8, rising in power.
Each magic attack has a set level, equipping magic with level 4 on a level 2 grid will decrease its attack value, but alternatively, equipping it on level 6 will make it stronger.
Furthermore, there are summon monsters that can only be equipped on one specific level and require a full elemental charge. A what? Well, in the top left corner of the battle screen, there's an elemental indicator, showing the three elements that have last been used in attack. There are 7 elements in total, which even come to play a vital role in the story, and their correct use will eventually determine whether you get the good ending or the bad one.
If the last three elements were all the same, then the elemental gauge will reach one color and summons of that particular element can be used. This way, using summons can be very hard, so the damage is usually proportionate, ie they HURT.

It's a very original system, and it throws a big tactical element into the gameplay, which kinda saves the battles from being totally unnecessary at all. This game would have been perfect if it had just had a normal experience system though, cos otherwise it's ALL good. The way it is now, fights with standard enemies can be just boring and serve no purpose.

Also, there are a whopping 45 characters (!) in the game, and ALL of them can be used in battle. You can't get all of them in one playthrough though, cos you'll have to make important choices along the way which will lead to certain characters joining you, and others leaving you. And that's what I love about this game, you get to make a LOT of choices, and most of them directly influence the course of the story. Rather than the majority of RPG's where you are pushed into a certain decision:

"Should we sneak inside that mansion or just burst through the front gate?"
"I say burst through the gates, dammit, that'll show them who's boss!"
"I disagree. Should we sneak inside that mansion or just burst through the front gate?"
"What the!? I just told you! I wanna go in guns BLAZING!"
"I really think that's unwise. Should we sneak inside that mansion or just burst through the front gate?"
"THEN WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU ASKING ME!?"
"Syntax Error"

If you've played Suikoden, you'll know what I mean.
Not so Chrono Cross however, cos you get a LOT of freedom, and multiple courses through the game. Initially, there will only be a bad and a good ending, but finishing the game will open up a "new game+" mode (gotta love those) and a host of new endings can be achieved. Also, on your consecutive playthroughs, you'll get a nifty Remote Control which allows you to fastforward through cutscenes by pressing R1 and even make you run faster.

To make a long story (and it IS) short, I totally love this game. The story is fantastic, it looks great with loads of pretty CG movies, the soundtrack is very mellow (great job by Yasunori Mitsuda, as usual), there are loads of brilliantly directed scenes, some touching, some exciting, and there's plenty of subquests, minigames, alternative routes and things to discover to make this an extremely replayable game, clocking in at about 45 hours or so.

The biggest gripe is really the lack of experience, meaning battles are kinda useless, also the totally overwhelming amount of characters means that character development is a bit scarce, and I would have expected, this being a Chrono Trigger sequel, there to be more Double and Triple techniques with such a huge cast, but in total, there's probably even less than in Chrono Trigger.

That aside, this is a huge and epic RPG that'll keep you going to see what's going to happen next. One of the PSX's finest. I give it a 9.3.

posted by Ingen! @ 11:23 AM 2 comments

Parasite Eve

A "Cinematic RPG" no less! So this means that whenever you play it, someone with a huge hat will be sitting in front of you, talking loudly into a mobile phone, or giving away the ending. Thanks man!

Parasite Eve was based on the novel with the same name, written by Hideaki Sena which even recieved some kind of prestigious Horror Award that noone's ever heard of.



Consequently it got turned into a movie.



I don't remember much from the movie cos it was 5 or 6 years ago that I saw it, but it wasn't anything special I think. Later on, inspired by the games, I decided to read the novel which is infinitely better than anything that was based off of it.
The book has a beautifully chilling atmosphere, very medical and biological, with a rather sad and disturbed, but understandable main character. Towards the end it even delivers the gore and sickness you'd expect from a horror story so it's a great read all round, you just have to learn Japanese.

The game never comes anywhere near the chillingly sterile setting of the book, and instead goes for obvious quasi-gore and a more mundane setting.
It was made by Squaresoft, long before it merged with Enix, to become....uh....Squeezy or whatever it's called, and by the looks of it, it was an attempt to rival Capcom's Resident Evil, or in other words, get a piece of the "Survival Horror" action, only with Square's trademark RPG elements thrown in, cos they suck at anything else.
They have it take place in New York, starring Aya Brea, a beautiful young blonde policewoman, who on her day off decides to go to the opera with a friend. Soon though, the story kicks into action with the Opera Singer appearing to be the prodigial Eve some ancient parasitic being which has a thing for Mitochondria.
If you don't know what mitochondria are, then I challenge you to try a day without using them and see how you like that. Next time, be nice to them okay?



Before long the entire audience bursts into flame, except for Aya, and it is up to you to find out why exactly, and en passant fix this whole Evil Parasite thingy up good.
I say it's an RPG derivative of Resident Evil, but perhaps it would be more accurate to say it is NOT. I think Square may have been slightly influenced by it, but it plays totally differently. Now the sequel is another story entirely, but I'll get to that in a couple of days probably.

Basically you get pre-rendered backgrounds which you can move around in freely, but very very SLOWLY, and combat occurs more or less in real time. Actually, it's a lot like Chrono Trigger in that battles do not occur randomly, but at set points, and you fight on the spot, without any real transition to a battle arena.
The screen stays fixed though, so you have limited space to move about in, and the biggest difference with Chrono Trigger is that you can actually run around at all times, even when it's not your turn to attack.
Your turn is of course decided by a gauge slowly filling up, and once it's full, you can use your gun or your special Powers to kill the many monsters. The real problem though, as I said, is that Aya is really goddamn slow. In fact at one point, I was overtaken by a 90 year old woman with only one leg. And she was DEAD. And enemies of course can bounce, jump and run about happily, without a care in the world, for the only being above them in the food chain moves at 3 inches per YEAR.

"But Ingen! What about this Cinematic RPG stuff? What does it even mean!? Tell us!"

Yeah yeah, I'm getting to that, geez. Honestly, some people...
Basically the cinematic aspect lies in the movies.
Now I want you to let that one sink in, because it might contain a little bit too much information to comprehend all at once.

Thing is, movies are PLENTIFUL, there's one at almost every corner and it seems even the slightest aspect of the story has to be told through a CG sequence, otherwise we might miss something. Parasite Eve was made somewhere between Final Fantasy VII and VIII, and in terms of movie quality it indeed lies somewhere in between. They are without a doubt rather dated, but they still look nice and they're pretty well directed too.
But as we all know CG Movies consume large quantities of memory, which leads to the game being incredibly short, despite it being spread over 2 Discs. You'll blaze through it in no time at all, so you're not exactly getting your money's worth.
Still, it should be insanely cheap nowadays so don't let that stop you.

If anything should stop you let it be one of these factors:
- The game's difficulty is rather cheap. It's not too hard most of the time, but when it is, it is simply because enemies will throw any kind of Status Ailment at you or very simply because they're a lot faster than you are.
- One major gripe I have is with the Auto Potion function which you can find on some armor. It automatically uses up one potion when you're down on health, but it is programmed tou use your BEST potions! It will always start with the strongest healing items, and then work it's way down, whereas the opposite would make more sense to me.
- There's very little to do. Combat is fun, generally, but the environments you have to plow through are boring and eventless. Occasionally there's a very pathetic attempt at a puzzle, which always boils down to "find item A to insert in slot B" and you're done. Other puzzles are of the 'push button to open door' variety, which is insulting to ANYONE's intelligence.
- Your inventory is extremely limited. I hate games with limited item-carrying in the first place, but this one is really bad. Your pockets fill up in NO time, and you get new items all the time, which can be frustrating. Also, why can't I USE any items on the spot if I get something new after a battle? Why do I have to discard?
But most annoyingly, you'll get some items that are PURELY in the game to clog up your inventory and serve NO purpose whatsoever. Nice one.
- Whoever is responsible for this needs to be shot: After a whole string of long and arduous final battles, you finally beat the "Ultimate Being", or so you think, because it falls to the ground and just sloshes around. What ensues is a nerve-wrecking and extremely annoying race towards the exit. If you get too near the creature, it will devour you with one attack and it's INSTANT GAME OVER, meaning you have to do ALL of the battles over again. The first time I thought I just had to approach it to give it its last moments, but I was killed immediately, which left me swearing like a drunken sailor. NOT a nice note to finish the game on.

In the end what you're left with, is a rather unique game. The battle system is fun, the movies are pretty and full of action and there's lots of treasure to find.
The fact that it's really short only saves it from becoming too tedious, but what's there will most likely entertain you if you're into the genre.
Nice, but not great: an 8+ seems about right.

posted by Ingen! @ 8:45 PM 1 comments

P.N.03

That's "Product Number 03" actually, pronounced Pee En Three.

This game was released on Gamecube by Capcom, roughly a year after the Resident Evil remake, and especially when looking at that title, and considering that P.N.03 was made by the same dude, Shinji Mikami, you can't help but wonder, WHY!?
I mean, geez, did Capcom have a spare 10 bucks lying around and decided to make a game out of it?
Everything about this game screams "we want cheap cash!".

Let me introduce first: in P.N.03 you play as Vanessa Z. Schneider, a young mercenary woman who receives an assignment from a mysterious client, who of course wishes to remain anonymous, otherwise it wouldn't be mysterious now would it?, and sends her off to some remote facility to get rid of some big machines that are menacing the neighbourhood by playing loud music at night and putting out the trash one day early.

I won't spoil the rest of the story because it's rather stupid and I don't want to befoul my beautiful blog with it. It's like all those years of making crappy Resident Evil stories have taught Mr. Mikami absolutely NOTHING, because we're back to painfully stupid dialogues, with non-existent humor. They tried to give Vanessa an attitude, but only succeeded in making her annoying. It's obvious from the get-go that this is Mr. Mikami's attempt at making a new Devil May Cry, only with a hot streamlined woman instead of a Jackass with a Red Coat.
As it is, they only managed to get the hot streamlined woman right. Dante still had an amusing whit, BECAUSE it was slightly cheesy and I think he's aware of it himself.
And there's no mistaking he got the better game.

But I'll admit this much, sad Polygon worshipper that I am, Vanessa IS totally HOT.
I mean, WOW. I don't generally like short hairdoes on my women, but if you've got a body like this, DAMN YO. They went all out on Vanessa's polygon model and made sure she not only looked sleek, but also moves realistically, with Capcom's trademark high-quality motion capturing and everything. Even when standing still, Vanessa will be tapping her feet or snapping her fingers along with the rhythm of the adrenaline pumping music (Great soundtrack by the way, wish I could find some Mp3's) and when she runs her ass wiggles about in what can only be called pure poetry.
I mean, everyone knows I'm a Titman, but this is the finest Ass I've seen in awhile, which is sad since it's not even real. Still, you come over here and take a gander at Dutch women and you'll see why only Polygonised Asses can make me excited.

Also, a big point has been made of Vanessa's Battle Armor. There are about 10 suits in total, and they all look great! Great use of colors, very nice designs, and appropriately shiny and smooth.
The same kind of design has been applied to the environments. Everything is sleek, futuristic and above all, WHITE. Only on the rare occasions that you go outside do you get darker and dustier visuals, but they're not very interesting.
Well, actually, the indoor settings aren't very interesting either, but they look nice from a stylistic point of view.

The major problem here is that they are re-used Ad Nauseum. This is where the cheapness of this game really shows, cos you'll be running through the same kind of rooms over and over again.
You get 11 Normal Missions, and in between every mission you can do 5 trial missions, as many times as you like. You won't like to do them a lot of times though, cos they're IMMENSELY boring. The Trial Missions are basically missions where you have to clear 15 randomly selected rooms (all taken from the Normal Missions and repeated and repeated and repeated) to score points, which can be used to buy items and new suits, which can again be upgraded with added strength and extra skills.
You HAVE to do this if you want to get the newest suits, which are essential to your survival. This is extremely annoying, since the Trial missions are so goddamn repetitive and boring. Most of the time you'll be walking in a straight line, cos the game's very linear. Occasionally though, you'll get to a room with two exits (other than the one you came through of course) and the road splits up. This becomes annoying quickly, because you have to clear all the rooms, and by definition both doors lead to dead ends, you just don't know which the shorter route is. But you might end up having to backtrack 10 rooms just to get one room you left uncleared.
VERY annoying, since you need to clear them ALL to advance to the next trial mission, which earns you more points, which you need so desparately.
Actually, I found that if you play skilfully you only need to bother with the first 3 Trial missions every time, which are still easy, but should still earn you some decent pointage, but it's very boring anyway. Oh, and towards the end almost EVERY room is a fork in the road which makes exploring extremely tiresome.

The Normal Missions are enjoyable though, since they stick to linearism. They also tend to be extremely SHORT. It is more than likely that you'll spend more time with the boring trial missions than with the main adventure, which is just wrong.
Not until the 9th mission does the main adventure become longer and HARDER, but it's too little, too late and too annoying by that time.
Admittedly though, shooting and blasting all those robots can be a lot of fun. Extremely fast trigger fingers are sometimes required, as well as lightning reflexes to dodge out of the way of enemy attack. The L and R back buttons make Vanessa dodge in the corresponding directions and they are a LIFE SAVER, let me tell you that.
Most of the time Vanessa moves like a Drunk Tank and she's about as mobile as a Skyscraper full of Senior citizens, but the dodging ability helps a LOT.
Because of this, facing a lot of enemies can be confusing since the camera isn't always in the best position either, but, man, does it ever get frantic and insane action at times. And it's at these times that P.N.03 proves its worth by being a fun action-packed shoot-em-up.
It's just that these moments are too few and far between, and the fact that there's only 4 different kinds of enemy (more if you count different colors of course. What is this, a Square RPG!?) doesn't help either.

So what you get is a very repetitive, but fortunately short, experience, which does have some great action at times, flashy moves, and a main character who's very nice to look at. The shortness in this case helps, since it makes the game less bothersome to play through. If this had been only the Normal mission, it would have been CRIMINALLY short, but also less annoying, cos the main storyline is actually still fun to play through. It's all the stupidly boring Trial Missions that are so needed for points, that make the game into the chore that it is.

I give it a 7, rather begrudgingly, but it can be fun at times.
On the positive side, this game bombed hugely, so I don't think we'll have to fear a sequel, not even from Capcom. Yay!

posted by Ingen! @ 11:35 AM 0 comments

Onimusha 3

More Sequels! Yay!
This time, we have an actual real sequel. Rather than Onimusha 2, which had no real relation to Onimusha 1, Onimusha 3 closely follows the story as it ended in the first game. Once again, the lead character is Samanosuke Akechi, voiced by and shaped after Takeshi Kaneshiro, but this time he is joined by Jacques Blanc, voiced by and shaped after Jean Reno, who is inexplicably popular in Japan, hence the movie Wasabi, which was pretty stupid, except that it had Ryoko Hirosue in it.



The story is that Guildenstern, the Genma's evil mad scientist has invented a machine that causes ruptures in the space-time continuum to send hordes of Genma into the present day, as well as their leader Oda Nobunaga, who is of course voiced by the omni-present Akio "what HAVEN'T I done?" Otsuka.

In the beginning Samanosuke gets caught up in a randomly generated wormhole, as a cause of the instability of the machine, and he is whisked to Paris of the year 2004.
In his stead, Jacques Blanc is sent back to feudal Japan in the 16th century where he has to make due without his cellphone.

Of course, this wouldn't be a sad soppy story line if Jacques didn't have an 8-year old son, whose mother died in an accident several years ago, and who now has trouble adjusting to Daddy's new and MUCH YOUNGER blonde gilfriend with incredibly big boobs.
"Sorry son, you'll understand when you're older" indeed.
You just know that your beautiful Japanese jidaigeki has gone to complete waste when it involves Grenade Launcher wielding busty blondes, methinks.

So the story is really stupid and doesn't make ANY sense whatsoever. Even though Samanosuke is sent to the future, there is STILL an alternative self of him in the past, even though there's only one Jacques. Well, logic doesn't apply, and turning your brain off probably helps best. This IS Keiji Inafune after all, who brought us the many marvels of story-telling that was the Megaman Series, so I guess you should be happy Samanosuke isn't a Kobun.

The whole timeline thingy is introduced into the gameplay by a special Interdimensional Mirror (I had one of those, but I threw it away because it didn't match the carpet), which allows Jacques and Samanosuke to exchange items over a span of 500 years without worrying about inflation or exchange rates. Naturally, lots of puzzles depend on this. Jacques is in the past, so sometimes he needs to open doors and solve puzzles so that Samanosuke can access the appropriate areas in the present.
It's a nice and enjoyable system even if it is rather obvious.

The biggest change this time however, is the fact that the Prerendered backgrounds are now completely gone. The game has finally been fully done in 3D, and admittedly, even though you'd expect the graphics to loose some polish and detail in the process, the environments look absolutely stunning, offtimes looking nearly as good as some renders of the original.
The game now also offers full 3D control, with additional 2D control. The left 3D stick lets you run around wherever you want, whilst the directional pad AT THE SAME TIME, no setting of options is necessary, allows for the traditional control method, which can still be useful if you have to move ahead in a straight line.
It's strange however that, even though we now have 3D environments that allow for dynamic camerawork and such, they STILL have not done away with one of the major problems of the original, ie that sometimes the fixed camera angles obscure your view of nearby enemies.
Even in 3D the camera is often fixed in a certain dramatic position, not allowing you to see any nearby enemies, so you still get the frustration that accompanies prerendered backgrounds, it's just that it doesn't look as good this time.

Speaking of which, Onimusha wouldn't be Onimusha if it didn't have some fantastic CG movies. And surely enough, the opening cinema is an awesome sight to behold. The team has not lost its magic with motion capture, and it's still the most fluid animation in the history of the WORLD, but the quality of the CG movies is now not as consistent anymore. Basically, the opening movie, and a small epilogue movie, are of the high quality we have come to expect, but all other movies in the game look like they have been done with slightly spruced up real-time graphics, which doesn't make any sense. Why not just use real-time then? Why make a CG MOVIE with Real Time graphics!? Perhaps it is to ensure nicer special effects and more polygons or something, but it looks really rather sad next to the awesomely beautiful CG scenes of Onimusha 2, or even 1.
God of War had the exact same problem by the way, but God of War was a rip-off anyway.

So what you're left with is a game that, even though they decided to do it differently this time, STILL does not fix the problems of its prequels, although it is considerably longer this time. Almost as long as the first two put together!
There are plenty of unlockables again though, amongst which is an entire side story involving one of the secondary characters, so enough to do even after you finish the game, but it lacks the clever scenario system of Onimusha 2, that added REAL replay-value to the entire story.

Also, the preachyness of Onimusha 1 is back, and it is paired with Family Drama this time. Yech. It has lost its great medievil Japanese atmosphere, which was pretty much its raison d'être if you ask me.
That said, it's not actually a bad game by any means, it's just that it feels too dull after the first two. We know how it goes now, and Jean Reno is not interesting enough to breathe new life into the series. I do like the authenticity of him actually speaking French, even though this is a Japanese game. He is replaced rather shortly after the start by a lousy Japanese voice actor though, so even that was messed up.

So like I said, still a fun game, but definitely the least interesting of the three: 8.5

posted by Ingen! @ 3:22 PM 0 comments

Onimusha 2

It's a sequel! A Capcom sequel!
Know what that means? Yes, you get EXACTLY the same thing. Similar weapons, and even several of the same environments and backgrounds.
Crappy?
No, because it's WAY better than the original. I mean, WOW!
It's like they took a good long hard look at Onimusha 1, and then said "Okay, the idea is good, but we need to do it more like this and then they made Onimusha 2, which just makes a helluvalot more sense.
It's like with Resident Evil 2, you know? Basically, not much has changed gameplay-wise, but they get everything right this time, so it's basically the most perfect game in the series.

This time you play as Jubei Yagyu, who finds his native village destroyed by the Genma, and vows to take his revenge on Lord Nobunaga, because he's so damn good-looking.
All of this happens, by the way, in what has to be THE absolute most beautiful opening movie I have seen in my entire life. Make no mistake, this game is the bee's knees when it comes to CG cutscenes. Insanely beautiful is what comes closest as a description. Especially the bit where all the side characters are introduced is.....WOW! I love that kind of stuff.
Also, as in the prequel, motion capture is of the absolute highest quality possible. These are fucking REAL people walking about, you have NEVER seen animation as good as this, I can tell you. And, what do you know? Even the voice acting is really really good.
I should point out here that I own the Japanese version, because it seems the English version is rather atrocious, but the Japanese voice acting is very good. With the exception of Oyu, the obligatory whiney woman. Every game or anime has a character like this, and you know you hate them.
Other than that, voice acting is great, and what with the superb motion capturing, it makes the entire story very believable and the characters very likeable. It's like looking at a Japanese Jidaigeki, only one with more action and gore, obviously.

And this, I think is why this game hasn't received that great reviews on the Internet. Not bad in any way, mind you, just not really great either. The game makes absolute and total sense in a Japanese setting, with Japanese voices. Most elements are based on or derived of actual (in the real sense, or in the "existing as a myth" sense) places, people and events.
In every way of presentation, Onimusha 2 kicks its prequel's butt.

The only downside is that they didn't fix any of the small problems that the original had. You still get prerendered backgrounds, which look a LOT better this time though. I daresay these are the prettiest renders in any PS2 game to date, although they are no match for Capcom's Gamecube Resident Evils. Beautifully animated water and detailed colorful environments make this one pretty game to look at. The problem with renders though, is that you have to deal with the fact that the camera stays fixed at all times, so sometimes you can't see who are what you're dealing with, even when you're being attacked, which can be annoying.

Also, you still get 2D-type controls, like the ones that plagued the Resident Evil series. Meaning 'up' is forward etc. On the positive side, Jubei moves rather quickly, especially for this kind of control system, and you're pretty versatile when locked onto enemies as well, which comes in handy for those elusive Issen moves.
And, DAMN, pulling off an Issen feels so good! It makes a lot more sense now too, timing seems to be a bit more logical, and less random, which is a good thing, since they've included an entire unlockable Issen mode this time round, where the ONLY way to kill your enemies is to pull off that one-hit kills counter, otherwise they just keep getting back on their feet. Very hard and very challengeing, in a good way.

Don't get me started on the unlockables by the way, there's an entire SHITLOAD of them. DAMN, this has to be one of the most replayable games I've played in a long long time. And it's fun every single time. How can that be?
Because Capcom has provided some variation.
Through the course of the story, you will meet up with 4 different characters. Ekei, the Buddhist Priest/Boozing Womanizer, Magoichi the Gun-wielding Scholar (?), Kotarou the Ninja, and Oyu, the whiny Bitch. Capcom introduces a new trading mini-game, where you can find items in treasure chests, or buy them in shops, and then give them to any of these 4 characters in exchange for something else.
Sometimes you'll get another tradable item back, but if you give them something good, they will reward you with health items, ammo, extra skills, or those elusive extensions for your health and magic meters.
But that's not all! Give them something good, and they will start liking you. And if someone likes you enough he will start turning up more often in the course of the game, thusly altering the course of the story, and adding some events. The ending stays the same, but how you get there is different. When you finish the game, you'll get a Scenario Flow Chart, showing the timing of events for specific characters, so that you can try to get those other sides of the story as well. This is really great fun, and adds even more replayability to an already extremely enjoyable title.

So in short, what we have here, is a game that truely EXCELLS in presentation. I don't think these CG movies are EVER going to look outdated, they put most of present day movies to shame, even after 3 and a half years.
Not only that, but it offers great and rewarding gameplay, a shitload of unlockables, likeable characters with decent background stories, multiple routes through the game and well, lots of stuff to do basically.

This game is what Resident Evil 2 was for that series, ie the most perfect game in the series (until RE4 came along and changed EVERYTHING), the only gripes are the unnecessary 2D controls and fixed camera, which may irk some players.
I'll give it a 9.4, making it a must-play for just about everyone who is not an Oyu.
Do yourself a favor and go and get this NOW!

posted by Ingen! @ 10:59 AM 0 comments

Blood and Boobies!

Yeah, that sums up God of War pretty darn accurately, I'd say.

Foregoing the usual Something Something Log title for today. Thing is, I'm not quite sure what kind of log this is anyway. The King Ruler promised me he'd borrow me his copied copy, but I haven't seen him for awhile and I was getting kinda anxious, so I just rented it. But then, I had to play it on Bort's PS2, although it's not his game, so this is a Not Really Related Log, but I decided to do it anyway, to give you the DEFINITIVE lowdown on what is one of the most hyped games of this year.

So much so in fact, that it is one of the contenders for Game of the Year at many game sites. And, well, if I'm going to be honest here, the one other major contender, Resident Evil 4, has NOTHING to worry about as far as I'm concerned.
Really.
Nothing.

But let's talk business. God of War was released this year by Sony themselves I think, featuring a new hero at the firmament: Kratos, the Spartan Buff Dude, who one day decides to sell his soul to Ares, the ancient Greek God of War, in exchange for powers strong enough to defeat all his enemies. Kratos gets what he wants but looses most of his sanity and freedom by being forced to go on a rampage, killing everyone that stands in his way. Kratos has now had enough of this life and vows to kill Ares and reclaim his innocence.
The cool thing is, right at the start of the game you get to see Kratos commiting suicide (this is NOT a spoiler) and the whole game you're working up to that moment, which gives it a nice edge.

Anyhow, massive blood-shedding ensues, with EXTREMELY violent battles and finishing moves, and some naked hooters thrown in for good measure. Hey, it's all in the name of credibility, right? Right!
When Kratos has pummeled his enemies enough a Circle will appear over their head, cleverly referring to the circle button on your PS2 controller (it's not a Halo!). Pressing said button in the vicinity of that enemy will start a finishing move animation, that requires active participation on your part. For instance, Medusa's have to be finished off by twisting the left 3D control stick in directed movements to finally jerk off the Medusa's head, and Cyclopses have to be killed by pressing a certain random order of action buttons, to take out their eyes and rip open their guts. Yes, it's one friendly game.
Mess up the instructed moves, though, and the monsters will throw you off again and deal some damage before you can try again. Fortunately you don't have to finish them off like this. Just keeping to thrash them will also get them in the end, but succesfully pulling off a finishing move will earn you more rewards, like health and magic restoration etc. And Soul Points.

Soul points are gathered by killing enemies, and finding treasure etc., and they are used to upgrade your weaponry and improve your skills. Sounds familiar?
Yes, you've probably already done this in Rygar, Onimusha and/or Devil May Cry, amongst perhaps even others.
And that is my main gripe with this game, right there. If you take away the immensely violent finishing moves, which admittedly ARE nice and satisfying, this game is nothing but an obvious clone of the above mentioned games. Well, the only similarity with Onimusha is the soul gathering, but the set up of the game is reminiscent of Devil May Cry, and really, really really really REALLY EXTREMELY remeniscent of Rygar on PS2, also known as Argus no Senshi.
Really.
Very.

I mean, Tecmo would have a VERY good lawsuit on their hands if they ever found out, cos God of War is basically a complete rip-off of practically everything they did in their ancient Greek Monster Basher, even down to some of the EXACT same moves Rygar has. Of course the similar setting demands similar environments and architecture, which can be largely destroyed in both games of course.
Also, Kratos's Weapon wielding is criminally similar to Rygar's Diskarmor, with the same kind of flashy combo's and sweepy effects. It's odd that from the reviews I've read about God of War, NOONE has mentioned this blatantly obvious fact. Most people make the Devil May Cry connection, but none I've read have seen the Rygar plagiary.
Perhaps Rygar was not so much of a hit which is why it has gone by unnoticed?
I dunno, but it was a complete disgrace.

Admittedly though, God of War does everything Rygar does a lot better. There is no mistake that this is a VERY enjoyable game, with a very high "I just wanna see what happens next" element, and it is very hard to put down, but it definitely does not deserve the many claims to originality and boundary-shifting...ness...it has been
getting.
Rygar did almost all of this before, only 3 years ago, so that means it didn't look quite as good as God of War.

The biggest complaint I had with this game though, aside of the obvious ripping off, is the boss battles. There aren't enough of them!
In the beginning of the game you have to work through several boss battles in short succession, and you'll have to do a couple at the end, but there's, like, only 1 in the middle. In a game that takes 10 hours or so? That's weird! And a real shame, cos the boss battles are really good, and a lot of fun! The context sensitivity (there's that word again!) element of the battles is put to very good use here, making these battles very spectacular, and I definitely would have liked to see more.

Difficulty-wise the game is very playable. You only get a Health Gauge that looks rather short (it can be extended by finding the right items), but Kratos has good defense and he can actually take quite a lot of damage. You won't die by battling enemies that easily. No.
Frequent deaths are reserved for the platform elements. Oh yes
Miss a jump and you're DEAD. Or, ahaha, you're MYTHOLOGY, so to speak. Ahaha. Ha.
There's no being put back on the platform with some energy lost, no, there's INSTANT death. On the upside, there's numerous automatic Checkpoints throughout the game, even regardless of the many savepoints, so you'll never have to do a lot of things over again, but I wish they would have dealt with the platforming a bit more friendly-like.
Also, the camera can not be controlled! The camera is fixed throughout the ENTIRE game, swinging only when the creators meant it to. Most of the time it works. Often it does not. Especially the bits where you have to balance on VERY thin ledges and bits of wood, where even the slightest misstep will send you plummeting to your untimely death (cos you still have to do that later yourself), with a Camera moving freely around the place without warning. Yeah, that's REAL nice.
This was the only real frustrating element though, although enemies can be annoying at times.

In short, the game is spectacular enough to warrant a playthrough for most gamers, but it's not as unique as people make it out to be, and if you strip away the fleshy layer of the flashy combo's and finishing moves, you're left with an extremely standard Action game, most of which you are likely to have seen before.
Still, as I said, it deserves a full playthrough at least once, because there IS some awesome stuff in here.
I give it a 9, which is me being VERY nice.

posted by Ingen! @ 9:53 PM 0 comments

Bortlog: Conker's Bad Fur Day

Time for another Bortlog! Yay!

Once upon a time, there was a little-known company called Rare.
One day they started making a lot of money by taking the original Donkey Kong character and putting him in a totally new kind of environment.
These became very popular and it set off a whole string of Rare games featuring cutesy animal characters, and household appliances with eyes and mouths.
There was a slight undercurrent of toilet humor in these games, with some flatulence and belching thrown in, in a great example of the Britain's Finest Humor.
And one day at Rare's office, there was a conversation going a little like this:

Corporate Snob: "So, any new ideas?"
Worker Ant: "Well, sir, we were thinking we could make another new game starring perhaps a cute red squirrel, with yellow flowers, green grass, and possibly some pink bunnies..."

And it would have looked something like this:



But Mr. Fine Taste didn't like this one bit and said:
"I like the squirrel, but it needs more toilet humor."
"Well, Sir, I rather think we've depleted that source of marvellous high-brow humor, and I thought that maybe this time..."
"Then we'll go ones step further! Not just farts and burps anymore! I wanna see piss, barf and shit! And LOADS of it. SHITLOADS, so to speak! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Laugh damn you, I'm your boss!"
"Ha. Ha. Sir. But I don't think the people at Nintendo will...."
"Fuck those yellow bastards! We're gonna do it MY way or the.....uh...that other way! I want swearing, violence and loads of CRAP. And I mean that literally! AND I WANT MY GODDAMN RED FUCKING SQUIRREL, NOW!"

And this is what happened:


And, damn it, it's a fucking blast.
This is one of the funniest, most original platform games I've played....well, EVER!
It's hilarious!
You get all the Trademark Rare cute character designs, with EVERYTHING having a face and a voice, yet everyone is totally rude, profane, foulmouthed and abusive, to everyone's merriment!

And what's more, they've got the gameplay to back it all up. Gone is the tedious open-ended level dwelling, searching for Stars, Coins, Puzzle Pieces, Banana's and God only knows what else, but instead you get....well...it's hard to describe, but basically, every stage has a couple of tasks you need to perform, just to advance the story, and occasionally earn some money. I love the Wads of Cash, by the way. They WANT to be collected, but when you do, they just give you abuse.
"Come on! Hurry Up! Pick me up, SHITHEAD!"
Well, it made ME laugh.

Money is generally your reward after completing enough tasks, and occasionally you'll need a certain amount of money to pass a specific line in the game, but only extremely occasionally, to make sure you don't get ahead of the story. And with a system like this, you get a platform game that is surprisingly story-driven.
Of course, it's all a load of Bollocks, as they say, it's totally inane, has no point or logic whatsoever, but man, is it fun! I can't even tell you what it's about because I'm not too sure myself, it just serves for humor anyway. Only thing I know is that the Evil Panther King is after Conker because he needs a new leg for his table to put his milk on.
There, that should give you an idea of the complete nonsense in this game.

Also, the fact that you have to perform tasks, and not find some stupid magic items or something, means that there's a great variety in styles of gameplay. It's not all platform skipping, oh no, there's shotgun blasting, wing-flapping and ass-biting as well!
There are so-called Context Sensitive Pads throughout the game, with a huge 'B' mark on them. Stand on top of them and a lightbulb will appear over Conker's head. Press B at that point and something that is sensitive to that context will happen. It's all the rage in games these days, since it's a very easy way to incorporate lots of different moves and skills into one game, without using insane button combinations.

Presentation-wise, everything is in order as well. I mean, come on! This is Rare, we're talking about, they KNOW how to squeeze the most out of any console, and they know how to make great graphics, huge levels, and very high quality music.
Conker is no exception. The soundtrack is another mixed bunch of a variety of styles, and most of it is really good. Be it country music, techno, or brooding orchestral music, this game's got it all, and uses it very well.
Voice acting's great too, very funny and with unique voices.
The battle against the Great Mighty Poo is one of the single most hilarious things I've ever witnessed in my entire history as a gamer, extremely funny, and great bombastic Opera music, you just have to witness it. It's a shame they censored it for the XBox version. I mean, come on! A NINTENDO game getting censored on XBOX!?
The N64 box says it's not suitable for anyone under 17, and that's no joke.
It's very rude and violent at some points, but always funny.

But I have to say something bad, don't I? Yes, I do.
First of all, this game's been praised for its many movie parodies, but in all honesty, they're not really parodies. A parody means you have to make fun of something you copy, but unless your idea of fun is seeing a cute Red Squirrel in place of the original actor, there's not very much parody here. Some scenes in this game follow famous movie scenes to the frame, which is nice to see, but kinda pointless, since it's not funny.
I liked the Clockwork Orange reference though.

Secondly and most importantly, aside from the lousy camera, which I have given up criticizing games for cause NOONE can get it right, is that this is, after all, when all is said and done, a Rare game, which means it CAN and WILL get EXTREMELY frustrating at some points, especially towards the end.
Really, so much so in fact, that I didn't enjoy the last, oh, 2, 3 hours or so at all. FUCK, Rare can be annoying as HELL. Basically, everything up to the Dracula level is fantastic fun, delightfully refreshing and original, but after that, it becomes really annoying. I'm thinking mostly of the "It's War" world, which is just too frustrating too believe. After that, there's another short level which is nice, and a completely non-sequitur (hahaha!) final boss battle, and a very strange and rather depressing ending. Perhaps that is also part of the parody; it's definitely the first time I've seen a platform game like this end on such a dark note.

I would very much advise anyone with an interest in platform games, a broad sense of humor, and generally into good games to play this game, because I had a total blast with it! Heck, you don't even have to bother finishing it, just experience the first 6 to 7 hours or so, and you've had the most enjoyable meat of the game.
Fantastic stuff, but not consistently so, unfortunately. The last couple of hours spoil what would otherwise have been an almost perfect 10.
Now, it's "just" a 9.3

And some samples! Yay!
The first is the main theme, the XBox version, very catchy.
The second is the battle against the Great Mighty Poo, sencored XBox version alas, couldn't find the original.
The last is Rock Solid, the original N64 version, and some really great pumping Techno at that. Enjoy!

Windy

Sloprano (Censored)

Rock Solid (original N64 synth! Incredible!"

posted by Ingen! @ 8:07 PM 3 comments

Onimusha

Whazzat? Don't gimme none o'this Japanese lingo! I prefer AMERICAN names for my games, like Demon Warrior: The God of 1000 DEATHS! With lots of boobies of course.
But no, this is NOT my review of God of War yet, although it's surprisingly accurate.

This is the game that was obviously one of the major influences on God of War, Onimusha. Not as big an influence as Rygar though. Can you say Rip-Off in Japanese?
But I digress yet again.
This is about Capcom's Demon-slashing Samurai game Onimusha, or Onimusha Warlords as it is called in the West, because of that whole language thing. Onimusha is another classic example of a Capcom series that makes sense until they decide the series is too profitable to stop so they fuck up any kind of logic and story continuity.
Onimusha was originally supposed to be a Trilogy, and it IS. At the moment at least, cos Onimusha 4 is already in the works, ready to pulverize Capcom's integrity, and make a direct attack on the gullible gamer's wallet. Megaman X anyone?

You play as Samanosuke, a young Samurai person, who is thrust into a dangerous adventure when Princess Yuki is kidnapped by a bunch of monsters called Genma(a kidnapped princess! What'll they think of next, these crazy Japanese!?) who need her for some kind of Dark Ceremony to create the ultimate Genma with the body of Lord Nobunaga, who happens to be one of the most popular Generals in Japanese history.
I don't know if the Japanese Historical Society approves of this alternative theory that Mr. Oda was killed in a battlefield, but revived again by demons, but who's to know? I know for a fact that the Universe is presented by Capcom, so they probably know best.
Incidentally, Samanosuke is played by Takeshi Kaneshiro, a very well known drama actor in Japan, who not only gave his voice but also his face to the Early Modern Samurai, as well as being actively involved in producing the game. If you don't know who he is, he also played Jin in House of the Flying Daggers, where he speaks Chinese amazingly well. If that still doesn't mean anything to you then this whole series is probably wasted on you.

Anyway, I'm always rather partial to stories that have their foundations in actual facts. It's what makes the Metal Gear series very enjoyable, and there are loads of references to actual Japanese historic events in this game, to make it a bit more credible. Yeah, right.
It's a crying shame therefore, that what initially looks like a Japanese Historical Drama gone Hack'n'Slash, turns out to be a very sad attempt at Hollywood style action...uh....gone Hack'n'slash. What this means is that the story is stupid, there are lots of explosions, and a stupid whiny moralistic background story which is far too preachy to be enjoyable. A shame really, cos as a decent Japanese jidaigeki it could have been great, and it sequel does a far better job at it, but more on that later.

But it's all about the gameplay of course, and that's solid enough to be very enjoyable, as you would come to expect. Keiji Inafune is the man behind all this, and if you consider the fact that he's the creative Mastermind behind the entire Megaman Series, it not only explains why a potentially good story is messed up, but also prooves that the gameplay is well worked-out.
The game basically controls like most Survival Horror games, meaning pressing 'up' will make your character go forward, regardless of where the camera is. This is a kind of control scheme that always raises a lot of criticism amongst gamers and critics alike, since it doesn't really allow for versatile movement. The problem is that this kind of control system doesn't even really make sense in this kind of game.
Why not just use 3D controls?
On the other hand, when you press R1 to lock onto enemies, you can quickly dash backwards, forwards and sideways, and you're generally mobile enough to dance around your foes. You also get a block button, which is VERY helpful, but dodging is essential if you want to perform those elusive 'issen' moves, to eradicate your opponent with one mighty blow. These require very precise timing, but are very satisfying when pulled off nicely. Also, when you knock an enemy to the ground, you can use your weapon to deliver a final stab in the guts to finish them off, which also feels nicely warm and squishy inside.

As an added service, the Japanese version comes with both the original Japanese voices as well as the entire English voice track, which is really quite GODAWFUL.
Seriously, this makes the original Resident Evil sound like Shakespeare. Very painful, especially considering the fact that the Japanese voice acting is actually really really good (with some exceptions). Also the soundtrack is performed by a full orchestra, complete with classic Japanese instruments to enhance the feel of early modern Japan. It was scored by Mamoru Samuragoch, who is often called the Japanese Beethoven, either because he's deaf, or because he's been dead for a couple of centuries now, I'm not sure.

When all's said and done, this is a very simple but extremely enjoyable action game. It's mostly about slashing enemies to pieces, collecting their souls and enhancing your weaponry with them, with some puzzles thrown in for good measure. It's nothing out of the ordinary if you've played any Resident Evil before, although there's no element of Survival OR Horror, since you don't have to worry about ammo and the like.
There's more action too which makes it more enjoyable for more people probably.
There's very little else though. There are 20 Shiny stones hidden in the entire game, and getting all of them will open up a new subgame. There's also a nice extra strong sword hidden somewhere, and clearing the game will give you a new (stupid) costume for Samanosuke and that's about the extent of the extra's.
The game's also insanely short, clocking in at about 4 and a half hours which is a disgrace even for a game like this. It's very enjoyable while it lasts, but it's far from perfect. Too whiny, too preachy, too short-lived and too short in general.
Still fun as long as it lasts though. I'll give it an 8.8, which puts it in about the same league as the original Devil May Cry. Seems about right.

posted by Ingen! @ 1:14 PM 0 comments

Ogre Battle 64

I would like you to cast your minds back to my review of Nightmare Creatures, if you will. Perhaps you will recall that I am generally confident in the games I buy, and I make sure I'm well-informed and therefore generally end up buying games that are very good.
Occasionally though, I purchase games haphazardly, not knowing what to expect, simply because I like the look of the pictures on the box, some of the music I've heard, or just because I have nothing better to do.
This usually ends in ruin.

In the case of Ogre Battle 64 I was impressed by graphics, and I was also still in that phase where I was desparately trying to find a decent old-school RPG for the N64. Suffice it to say, I never did find it.

Judging by the back of the box, the graphics are good (and they are nice during the 2D bits, the 3D maps suck though) and they offer nice old-school turn-based battles.
I was wrong though.
Perhaps my non-existent knowledge of the Ogre Battle series is to blame, but this is an entirely different ballgame. I think this game was made by the people behind the Tactics Ogre series, which IS a very enjoyable series. It should be obvious to anyone who's played these games that Tactics Ogre was a major influence on Final Fantasy Tactics, if they weren't in fact actually made by the same people.
Even in Ogre Battle 64, presentation and music are VERY remeniscent of FFT, which was ripped off the Ogre series most likely.

But whereas Tactics Ogre and FFT offered great Tactical gameplay, where you actually get to decide how your characters move and fight, Ogre Battle is ENTIRELY different.
If anything, it's closer to a Real Time Strategy game, than it is to a Tactical RPG.
The goal of each battle is to guide your teams towards the enemy base to defeat the leader, taking over enemy settlements along the way and defeating anyone who stands in your way.
Thing is, you only get to form your party members, and equip them, but you do not get to decide WHAT they actually do. Battles are fought automatically, and you only have the option of deciding if they spread their attacks or attack one specific character at a time.
On the field map you just have to select a party and point'n'click it to its destination. If you encounter an enemy party along the way, you automatically go into battle and every side gets to attack two times usually. After this, the computer decides who wins or loses (usually depending on total amount of damage, I think, but it seemed really random at times) and the loser is thrust backwards on the field map, whilst the winner can advance gloriously, until either of the sides is wiped out.

Basically, in perhaps more understandable terms, it is VERY similar to Final Fantasy VII's Fort Condor subgame. You deploy fighters, and you point them to where you want them to go, only in Ogre Battle 64 the emphasis is on offense, not defense like in FFVII.

The problem is, I don't like this kind of game AT ALL. It's just too damn boring!
It would have been SO much better if it just had non-automatic battles, if you could actually decide per character what they do and whom they attack. But alas.
This is the major reason why I've always stayed very far away from any kind of RTS, I just do not enjoy pointing armies around and then having them sort everything out for themselves. I want to be PERSONALLY involved like in a Tactics game, which is infinitely more enjoyable.

I do have to admit though, that this is largely a personal preference. Looking at this Ogre Battle 64 subjectively, I can't help but conclude that it's not actually a bad game by any means. I've checked around the internet for some reviews, and most of them are very positive, but to me it is painfully obvious that you HAVE to be into this kind of game to enjoy it. If you're not a fan, you do not need apply.
This is contrary to many other great titles that are enjoyable even if you don't like the genre or aren't into playing games at all.
I have yet to hear ANYONE speak negatively about, for instance, Resident Evil 4, which is praised by hardcore gamers and laymen alike, for just being insanely good basically.

Ogre Battle is the kind of game that is really for die hard fans, because it is simply too dry and static for most other people. I'll give it a 7, for acknowledging that it is a very solid game in its genre, and probably addictive if you're into it. The die hard Role Player in me found some elements to enjoy, but it won't get any higher because it's too much of a 'niche' game.

My mistake for getting a game I knew nothing about.

posted by Ingen! @ 3:17 PM 0 comments