The Biggest Game Project on this Planet

Metroid: Other M

2010-09-05T09:21:00.006+02:00

Hot Damn, my Wii is doing overtime!

And I don't mean in the Ashley vs. Leon kind of way either.

I'm STILL playing Xenoblade, which has just given up counting my play time and stopped at 99 hours and 59 minutes (kinda stupid for a game that big) but I'm guessing I'm around 130 hours or something.
I hope I'll get some kind of report at the end of the game but it's doubtful.

Anyway, Metroid: Other M.

I haven' finished it yet, but I'm kinda torn on it, I guess.
On one hand, I really like what they've done to the combat, it's very fast-paced and action-packed, and you really have to stay on your toes.
You can tell it's by Team Ninja since it kinda feels like they want you to fight in close quarters, instead of staying at a distance shooting.
You can also tell it's by Team Ninja because it's kicking my ass into next week. I don't even want to think about how many times I've died.

On the other hand, I don't like how it's paced.
Far too many times you'll hit a dead end, and you'll have to track back only for some event to happen in a room you already visited.
It keeps confusing me by locking me into rooms to fight enemies and then NOT giving me something but just expecting me to walk back the way I came. It seems counter-intuitive and, frankly, kinda boring.
I also HATE the bits where you are forced into First Person to look for something really damn tiny in the environment. They totally take the speed and fun out of the game.
And that's pretty much all there seems to be to the puzzles as well.

I can recall the Prime series doing some really great and clever stuff with the morph ball, but in this game the morph ball is just a way to move through narrow corridors and nothing more. It feels like there's something missing...

So in other words, yeah, great combat, some awesome boss fights, but lousy pacing and puzzles.

Kage no Tou / Lost in Shadow is...

2010-08-06T03:39:00.004+02:00

A gimmick that never reaches its true potential, probably because Hudson isn't that good at making videogames.

I'm sorry, but I'm having trouble liking it.

The aesthetic is definitely heavily borrowed from Ico, which in itself isn't bad, but it doesn't win you any originality points either.

Now the gameplay, it's definitely a really original concept and it has some really clever ideas but it doesn't really take them anywhere.
You learn the basics right at the start, and the rest of the game is built around 2 or 3 gimmicks that quite honestly aren't interesting enough to carry a 10-hour game.
The puzzles are staggeringly easy, I think I haven't actually needed to use my noggin for a single second, because, like I said, they fail to realize the true potential of what they have here and they get stuck rather soon in the game just repeating the same kind of puzzle over and over.

One of the most blatant examples of this are the Shadow Realms, those areas you enter through a big gate in the normal levels and that you have to escape from by finding the exit. The majority of these areas are based around a gimmick where you have to shift the level itself left or right pivoting around the main character, which is a really cool and clever idea in itself UNTIL you realise that the puzzles are never more than a simple trial and error case of "you have to push either Left or Right" which noone above the age of 2 could possibly find fun or challenging.

Moreover, the control themselves are rather clunky and akward. There's too many times when the character's momentum is halted (I hate the fact that he has momentum in the first place) or where he has to SLOWLY crawl up edges (pretty much every vertical jump).

I was going in expecting something really clever, but the more I played the less I enjoyed myself and the more it started feeling like a chore.
It's a clever gimmick, but it's not interesting enough to built an entire game around.
This should've been a 3-hour Wiiware game or something.

Red Seeds Profile is...

2010-06-20T09:34:00.003+02:00

otherwise known as Deadly Premonition in the West!

I just started playing this game, because it actually came recommended to me by people whom I trust more than IGN (there's people living in cardboard boxes whose opinion I'd value more, mind you), I'm about 2 hours in and I have to say...

It's f*cking awesome.

Don't listen to the retards at IGN who don't know quality when it comes up to them and pisses in their skulls. Instead, read the Destructoid review!
Deadly Premonition Review
They're right.

Well, maybe that's exaggerating a little, but it's DEFINITELY a lot better than most people will have you believe.
Yes, it has a low budget so you get crappy graphics and lousy car controls and whatnot, but right from the get-go it is obvious that this game was made by people with passion, heart, and a great sense of humor.

Fans of Twin Peaks will LOVE it.
Fans of campy 80s movies will LOVE it.
People who understand that videogames do not have to be about state-of-the-art graphics, Hollywood-style production and lots of explosions will LOVE it.
People who love "different" will LOVE it.

The game's been a pretty straight roll of (intentional!) LOLs, and it's pretty fun to play as well (aside from some control issues, mostly relating to vehicles).
It was made BY and FOR people of "my generation" (ie early thirties), and there's shitloads of (optional) conversation/trivia on 70's/80's movies which is a total blast to listen to.

It's a shame the game only goes for full retail price in Japan. I love it, but I still wouldn't feel comfortable recommending it for 6000 yen...
It is, for all intents and purposes, a Budget Title: simple graphics, iffy voice-acting, completely warped directional audio and there's only 12 (!) achievements, so asking full price is a bit of a rip-off.

I'm guessing this one's going to win in the "Best Game Noone Played" category this year.

Xenoblade

2010-06-18T13:03:00.003+02:00

I'm probably talking to myself here, but let's assume that there are some people here who are still using their Wii (is NOONE playing Mario Galaxy 2!?) and, God forbid, even into JRPGs.

You (and that's probably a singular 'you') will be happy to know that Xenoblade is, in fact, a very good game. It's been likened to Final Fantasy XII, which is understandable since the character design was done by the same guy and the battle system is rather similar.
Although you could just as well say the battle system is like most MMORPGs, indeed, it's quite close to World of Warcraft, with auto-attacks and a set of rechargeable skills that can be activated at will.

The game features large and lushly detailed environments, full of enemies and items and whatnot. It's not going to win any originality awards for its setting, but there are lots of tiny gimmicks in the system to make it stand out as an interesting and entertaining RPG.

What I like most of all so far is how low-stress the game is.
There's a quick-travel feature, and you can change the in-game time at any moment you please (to hunt for those elusive monsters/items that only appear at night), regardless of whether there are any enemies around, although obviously not during actual combat (still a great improvement over Oblivion/Fallout 3).
If your party gets wiped out, you will be automatically sent back to the nearest Landmark, keeping any progress you've made, so you don't have to worry about when you last saved, or anything else for that matter.
Saving, by the way, can be done anywhere and at any time, which is quite unusual for a JRPG I'd say.

Other than that, there's a trading system, a Bond system that keeps track of how close you are to your party members and to other people in cities (and how close they are to each other), loads of quests (the first city alone has dozens upon dozens, so I haven't even left the first area yet after 4 hours of gameplay) most of which, thankfully, are short and easy, although they are likely to increase in difficulty later on in the game, skill trees, item manufacturing, an in-game 'achievement' system that rewards you for fulfilling tasks by granting you EXP and the like, and loads more.

It's a very fleshed out, grand-schale RPG, and they managed to squeeze a lot out of the humble Wii. Also, no gimmicky motion control, so you can just relax your hands in your lap, WHERE THEY BELONG.

I've been having a blast with it, and it's already shaping up to be one of my favorite RPGs of this year.

Platform Peril: Prince of Persia the Forgotten Sands and Super Mario Galaxy 2

2010-06-10T14:23:00.007+02:00

That's a long ass post title, right there.
Maybe it would help if I split them into 2 posts?

Yes, but that ain't happenin'!

So, let's start with Prince of Persia - The Forgotten Sands, the latest addition to the long-running wall-climbing pole-vaulting parcours games starring the Prince of Persia.
Man, it must be sweet to be the Prince of Persia. You never actually seem to do a lot of governing from what I can tell.

It's another decent romp through the kingdom of Persia, which seems to be perpetually plagued by some kind of disaster that involves sand at some point (not much else there, is there? Hur hur!), but there are some new gimmicks for the Plucky Prince to work with.

For one, there is the ability to freeze water in order to change waterfalls into walls and fountains into poles to run off and jump from. Secondly, there's the ability to create platforms that were there before but not anymore, but only 1 at a time!
Both new abilities require lots of switching back and forth in mid-jump/run/fall/whatever and it can get pretty hectic and challenging later on in the game.

The problem is though, the game's creators don't give you any of these new abilities until you're already several hours into the game. They must've figured the 5 people who've never played an Ubisoft Prince of Persia game before needed some time to get a hang of the controls, so in the beginning you spend your time pulling off some very basic moves which will be all too familiar to most people for what feels a bit too long.
Christ, if you've never played one of Ubi's PoP games before, there's better games to start out with, so you shouldn't be bothering with this one in the first place.

The new abilities add some new twists though, so it's definitely a fun adventure, but I'm starting to think that the formula is perhaps groing slightly stale.
The scene leading up to the final battle is pretty awesome though.

Second up, is Super Mario Galaxy 2.

And Super Mario Galaxy 2, like Super Mario Galaxy 1 before it, is all kinds of Awesome.
I never thought I'd say it, but they've come to the point where Mario just works BETTER in 3D than in 2D, which is insane enough in and of itself.

It's going to be hard to top this in the category "Wii Game of the Year", but unfortunately that's not saying all that much.

The only question I have is, whereto next!?
We've had Mario Land, Mario World and Mario Galaxy, WHAT NEXT!?
Where could they possibly take the plumber next, that is going to be better than Super Mario Galaxy!?

FOOD FOR THOUGHT.

NieR, Splinter Cell Conviction and Alan Wake

2010-05-13T15:11:00.012+02:00

I've been meaning to write several entries for all of the above 3 games, but never seem to get myself to actually do it, so I might as well just throw 'em all together.

First off: NieR Gestalt.

NieR is an action RPG, published by Square Enix, but developed by a company called Cavia which is the most awesome name anyone could ever possibly hope to create when naming their company after a rodent, and in Japan it comes in 2 flavors: Gestalt (on 360) and Replicant (on PS3).

Replicant has the generic effeminate 15-year-old boy with spiky hair for a protagonist, and Gestalt has a more unusual middle-aged ugly man trying to look after his daughter.
Understandably, the West will only get Gestalt (on both 360 AND PS3), and that's probably a wise choice.
It's nice to play with a middle-aged guy once in a wh...

Holy crap, I don't like where that sentence is going.

It's refreshing to see a middle-aged man as the protagonist of a JRPG, and it works really well. I've been playing the game in English (because I can't be bothered to switch my system language to Japanese) and the voice acting and localization in general are pretty damn good.

It is for all intents and purposes a generic Action RPG.
You fight monsters, collect items, defeat bosses, do quests, the works!
To make up for what is perhaps rather uninspired gameplay, the game regularly throws some really weird and funny things at you. You WILL be surprised by some of the things in here, including references to Resident Evil and the Legend of Zelda among others, as well as some really clever and cute deviations off the beaten action RPG path.
Also, the game seems to think it's a Bullet Hell shooter at times. Make of that what you want.

This game has also once again reaffirmed the suspicion that I am getting sick and tired of SAVE THE UNIVARSE stories with budding wannabe heroes going on and on and on and on and on about how much they want to protect everyone and his goddamn DOG from everything and its goddamn evil hound.

So yeah, Final Fantasy XIII was pretty crappy, and it made me wary of the age-old Band of Heroes theme.

NieR, however, is much more like End of Eternity in that you follow a small group of people (3) that are all kind of social misfits, just trying to deal with their own problems.
Admittedly, there is an overarching story about some evil presence that doesn't like humans too much, but it's never blown out of proportion and most certainly not shoved down your throat.
Even the presentation itself is down-to-earth. The game world isn't very big and consists largely of rural environments and small towns. The game's visuals seem to take a cue from the Ico/Shadow of the Colossus palette, with grassy, mountainous environments and plenty of bloom effects. The soundtrack is composed largely of ethnic music with lots of chanting and minstrel songs in a made-up language, that only serves to enforce the calm, quiet, laid-back agraric atmosphere the game is going for.

I like that.

Secondly, Splinter Cell Conviction.
Now, I love the Splinter Cell series. They've always been the true stealth-based Yin to Metal Gear Solid's ridiculous action-based Yang. I liked how getting caught too many times, or just taking out enemies with your gun would result in instant mission failure. It forces you to use your head instead of just running through every situation guns blazing, and it worked great.

And now Conviction is upon us! The, what, fifth instalment in the series!?
And what does it offer us!?
Uh...action, lots of guns and a Quick Take Out system.

Blegh.

Christ, Ubisoft, try NOT fucking up one of your IPs for a change!
You actually have several good ones, but you keep raping them!

Now to be fair, SC Conviction is still one hell of a ride.
The graphics are great, the presentation is top notch (love how the game reminds you of your objective by projecting words on the environment), the interrogation sequences are really awesome, and there's a very well-executed chase scene that has to be, well, the BEST chase scene I've ever witnessed in a video game, like, EVER (not counting QTEs, cos they're just glorified cutscenes anyway).

There is still some good stealth to be had, but there is far too much of an emphasis on action. One level, based in the Middle East, is nothing BUT shooting and really feels out of place (perhaps a left-over idea from the Rainbow Six series, Ubisoft!?).
Most missions are frightfully short as well, and very easy because violence will get you pretty much anywhere.

I would still recommend you try out the single player mode, it does offer a great experience, but it feels like, once again, the 1P mode got the shaft in favor of a fleshed out Multiplayer mode.

If I've said it once, I've said it a billion times: the Internet is going to ruin videogames forever.

Last but maybe possibly not quite totally unleast: Alan Wake.

Apparently this game has been in development for quite some time, although I didn't hear about it until fairly recently.
Alan Waka is a survival horror game with very obvious Silent Hill influences mixed with a liberal dose of Stephen King (which the game is only too happy to remind you of hamfistedly, time and time again), starring a writer called Alan Wake (that may NOT have been a spoiler) who visits a small suburban American town, where soon strange things start happening and an eerie fog, sorry, darkness hides hideous monstrosities and generally gives Alan a bad time.

Oh, and did I mention he's looking for his wife?
Cos he is.

Homage, or ripoff?
YOU DECIDE!

Anyway, this is a 360 game, not some last generation CRAP, so if anything, it looks a lot better than Silent Hill ever did (including, er, the current generation ones), and in fact, it looks drop-dead gorgeous.
The night scenes (which are the majority obviously) aren't anything special, although the fog and darkness effects are very well done, but during the daytime scenes, the game can be VERY pretty indeed. Even more so during cutscenes which, for some reason, look a billion times better than the gameplay scenes, even though they also seem to be real-time.

Alan Wake is constantly being hounded by the darkness for whatever reason (haven't finished the game yet!), and whenever you get to a dangerous area, the fog and darkness will start swirling and eddying all around you, which makes for one of the creepiest effects in the game.
Overall though, the game fails to actually become very scary.
Checkpoints are extremely liberally doled out, the action is really rather easy, you tend to have plenty of ammo and flashlight batteries and enemies never take that much damage.

There are some edge-of-your-seat moments, but the game has these clearly defined areas where you are in danger, so there's very little in terms of surprises.
Enemies do tend to pop up out of nowhere though, and this is my biggest gripe with the game. When a group of enemies appears (and it's ALWAYS a group), the camera pans out to show one guy approaching you.
What it does NOT show you is that that is the guy FURTHEST away from you, and that, in the meantime, at least 2 others will have popped up behind you to bash your skull in with an axe.

Enemies will CONSTANTLY be popping up from somewhere off camera, almost always managing to get a couple of hits in if you're not fast enough, which is a really cheap way of adding tension or difficulty to a game, especially considering that you can't take all that much damage. Most of the deaths I've suffered were completely unnecessary and cheap, because of a mean design decision.
But, like I said, plenty of checkpoints to go around, so it's not so bad.

The story is told largely through pieces of a manuscript scattered about the place.
These are pages that Alan Wake himself has apparently yet to write, and as such, they contain information on what's going to happen, as well as viewing past events through the eyes of other characters, which is pretty cool, even if the actual writing itself isn't all that clever.
That might be on purpose though, since I have the impression they're trying to make Alan Wake look like a bit of a B-grade writer.

It's pretty fun so far though, and it does have some nice "WTF" and "woah" moments.
Oh and it does look really really nice, did I mention that?
Well, it does.

Darksiders is...

2010-04-21T13:47:00.003+02:00

...a total rip-off of God of War mixed with a total rip-off of Zelda, that somehow manages to end up less than the sum of its parts.

Which is not to say it's a bad game, mind you!
Because it's not!
It's very enjoyable, just don't expect anything new or surprising.

Also, Ulthane is awesome.

Man, I've been so busy working this month that Darksiders is the only game I've had time to play so far (>_<)
Need...more...slacking...time!

It's all for a good cause though!
I'm making sure the English version of King of Fighters XIII is going to be TOTALLY AWESOME ;)

God of War III is...

2010-03-27T15:58:00.002+01:00

Bad for your health.

In that, occassionally, I forget to breathe.

Still, I do have a nagging impression that something is missing, that something is not quite right, it doesn't sit 100% well with me for some reason...

Non-2010: Dead Space is....

2010-03-15T14:55:00.002+01:00

Without a doubt the best game EA's ever made.
Now that's not saying much, but Dead Space is fucking awesome.

It's what RE5 SHOULD have been. In SPACE.

BioShock 2 is...

2010-03-09T08:48:00.002+01:00

...by all means an unnecessary sequel.

Every single new addition serves only to annoy me.

One of the new features has you "adopting" Little Sisters, whom you can then use to gain Adam from one of the (many) corpses strewn about the place. As soon as you set down your little tike to start gathering Adam, you will be set upon by a literally endless stream of Splicers until the little Bitch is done with her task.
Die in the process, and you'll have to do the whole thing over again.
Thankfully though, Gatherings are optional, and most of them are a matter of choosing your position and setting up decent defense, so it involves some strategic thinking.

The Gatherings therefore, I can still muster up to some point, although having to redo them from start when you die is really annoying. The problem is that once you decide to take care of your adopted Sister, be it by rescuing her or harvesting her, you run a chance of being attacked by a Big Sister.
A Big Sister is like a Big Daddy, in that a cheetah is like my aunt's obese cat.
THEY ARE NOT NICE TO DEAL WITH.
The addition of Big Sisters is a HUGE pain in the ass, and just makes me reluctant to deal with Little Sisters in the first place.

Even though I had little to no trouble getting through the hardest difficulty in the first game, even Normal has me dying time and time again, and one of the main reasons for this is that the respawn rate HAS to be higher than the original, I'm sure of it.
I don't even remember enemies respawning in the original, but here they are all over the place every single time you step out of a Vita Chamber, it just pisses me off.

I see that the original game I loved so much is still in here somewhere; graphics, presentation and atmosphere are still second to none, the gameplay mechanics are still a lot more fun than 95% of all other FPSs, but I'm finding it just too much of a chore to play.

End of Eternity is...

2010-02-16T14:24:00.002+01:00

initially as confusing as a hail of machinegun bullets, but once you get the hang of it it's addictive as HELL.

Bullet Hell, perhaps. AHAHAHA.

Sega is back on track, releasing another incredibly imaginative and original RPG to the HD consoles, again involving extensive gunplay.
First there was Valkyria Chronicles, now there's End of Eternity (or Resonance of Fate as it will be known in the West).

The first couple of hours confused me to no end, but now it's got a full and relentless grip on me (something FFXIII never managed to do) and it's pushing even the mighty BioShock 2 aside for valuable game time.

Man, 2010 has been a fucking kick-ass year for games so far and it's only mid-february.

一万マン

2010-02-10T10:14:00.002+01:00

With the purchase of a second hand copy of Devil May Cry 4 for the XBox 360, the estimated value of my collection (according to IGN) has now officially broken the 10.000 dollar barrier!
Woohoo!

Time to break open the Bubblies!

It should be of note that the estimated value of DMC4 was apparently 60 dollars (!) so I don't think this should be taken at face value, considering the game cost me 1300 yen.
Still, it's nice to hear!

Buying the game was, appropriately, quite the event.
The guy brought back a copy of the game from the deep dark recesses of Behind the Counter, and was so eager to show it to me, the disc left his hands and was flung halfway through the store.

OOPS.

Naturally, he couldn't sell me that (not in Japan at least), so he brought me another copy of the game, which he showed to me, this time a bit more restrainedly.
I normally don't really pay much attention to this, but just for form I checked the proferred disc, only to notice there was this HUGE GASH across it.
So I said "what the heck is this?", received profuse apologies, and had the third copy of the game offered to me (how many of copies do they have!? This is not a good sign), which was to my satisfaction.

Excitement!

Non-2010: Valkyria Chronicles & Klonoa 2

2010-01-31T15:29:00.003+01:00

Dammit, there's so much stuff I WANT to write about, but I just don't have the time at the moment. Stupid University! Stupid Games!

No, wait, it's never the fault of the games. NEVER!

I just finished Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep with 1 of the characters.
There's 2 others, and the game encourages you to play with them too, because they get lots of different items/skills/scenarios etc.
This game is going to stay in my PSP for quite some time I think...

Mass Effect 2 is getting increasingly awesome by the second.
The Universe they created for this series is just so friggin awesome, and they have the writing skills to back it up. If you've ever wanted to play a GOOD Star Wars or Star Trek game, this would be it.
Sans the light sabers and up-beaming.

I'm starting to get worried about the rest of 2010, because it looks like we've already found the best contenders for Game of the Year here (for PSP and 360 at least).

I managed to sit through the entirety of FFXIII and I can confidently say I won't be going back. All I'll say is: FFX-2 was better, and that should probably mean enough to most people.
I continued my RPG adventures on the PS3 with Valkyria Chronicles, which is the kind of game that is quite good, but will instantly turn me off the second it gets too much of a bother.

I also recently picked up Klonoa 2 for the PS2 because everyone keeps whining about how good it is. And so far, it is!
Problem is, I already played the remake of the first game on Wii which is incredibly similar.
Sometimes playing a later game before the previous game will make you judge the previous one by the latter's standards, which is of course unfair, but well, there you go. As such Klonoa 2 is just...well, Klonoa. Level design is slightly more interesting than the Wiimake of the original, but the gameplay is exactly the same.
Still good though.

I also picked up some junk from the Bargain Bin at the local Sofmap today.
These are so-called "naked soft" (it sounds even scarier in English. Wow.), meaning you don't get the full package, but only the disc and sometimes the booklet as well.
Still, as long as they're not scratched (God bless the Japanese for being careful with their games, unlike most Westerners) and buy 'em if they're as cheap as fuck.
To wit:

1. Tales of Rebirth (disc only): 100 yen
2. Mega Man Legends 2 (booklet missing): 240 yen
3. Dragon Quest VIII (case missing): 490 yen
4. Final Fantasy XII International: Zodiac Job System (disc only): 490 yen (that's damn cheap!)

There were more good games for REAL low prices, but most of them were severely scratched, and that's where I draw the line.
1320 Yen for 4 games (GOOD ones at that) is a total steal though.

Mass Effect 2 is fucking Awesome.

2010-01-29T13:44:00.001+01:00

That is all.

Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep - Command Board

2010-01-14T06:09:00.014+01:00

And so, this years kicks off with the first 2010 title I've played: Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep.

This is a prequel to the series that started on the PS2, moved to the Gameboy Advance, went back to the PS2, then visited the DS and eventually ended up at the PSP game I am babbling about today.
The GBA game, Chain of Memories, was remade in 3D and ported to the PS2, where it was made much more enjoyable because you actually had decent controls, but with the exception of that title, all of the games so far have been exclusive to their platform.

Now, there is nothing wrong with trying to reach as wide an audience as possible with this wonderful series, but the problem is that if you're a fan, you're pretty much forced to buy every single console there is, if you want to keep up with the story.
And that's the thing, the story is insanely complex. At first glance it may look like a simple gushy Disney-esque story with cute characters and an annoying emphasis on being friends with everyone and his Pluto, but hidden underneath is a complexely woven story about Heartless, Nobodies and Organization XIII (a storyline that starts in the GBA version, making Chain of Memories crucial to understanding what is going on) that is mostly told through hard-to-understand cutscenes and secret documents that you have to shift mountains for to obtain.

The DS version fortunately, can pretty much be skipped. It takes place around the time of the GBA game and the beginning of Kingdom Hearts 2, but it doesn't really give any kind of important information, and instead opts to introduce a new character completely out of nowhere, only to kill her off at the end.
And no, that is NOT a spoiler, because anyone who's familiar with the story should know there was no place for a fourteenth member.
Besides, I just saved you the trouble of having to play through what isn't that interesting a game to begin with.

However, the PSP version, as Kingdom Hearts Mastermind Tetsuya Nomura would have it, is a "proper" entry in the series, on par with the PS2 games.
He'd say that wouldn't he.
I would too if I looked like THIS:

I would love to debunk that statement, but the fact of the matter is that, after clocking in several hours, I'm still at the very first planet (not counting the tutorial one).
Why?

Because of the Command Board, ladies and gentlemen.

You see, in Birth by Sleep, not only do you gain abilities and skills by finding them in treasure chests or just leveling up, you can obtain them through what is called the Command Board as well. Leveling up your skills happens through battle, as is usual in RPGs, but, again, can also be done (much more swiftly) through the Command Board.

"What, then, IS this Command Board?", I hear you say.
"And how does it help you earn/level up skills?", you'll also say.
Come closer, and I'll tell you...

Obscure videogame references for teh win!

The Command Board basically plays like a game of Culdcept.
If you know what Culdcept is, you will probably already start frothing at the mouth.
If you don't know what Culdcept is, you probably never had a lot of trouble fitting in at high school.

Let me rephrase, the Command Board basically plays like a game of Monopoly.
You know Monopoly, right? Everyone does. Except for Russia.
There they call it "Government".

But enough clever social commentary!

It's like Culdcept, without card battles. It's like Monopoly with a less linear board, no hotels, no stations, no get-out-of-jail-free cards, and, like, 5 different "Go" points.
Another way of saying it would be: "this game is not very much like Monopoly at all".

You play the game with 3 characters, one of which is YOU, or at the very least someone who doesn't look like YOU.
The other 2 are controlled by the CPU, or by human players, if you have any of those hanging around at the moment.
First you choose a board, then you choose the target BP. This is important!
BP (or "Board points") is basically your currency. They could've called it any other fictional currency like munnies, gil, fol or zloty, but they went with BP, because abreviations are the Hot New Thing, IIRC.

Right now, I've only unlocked the first board, so there's not much choice there, and games are played for 5000, 10000 or 15000 BP.
Look at the picture below.
DO IT!

The panels on the right show the current BP for all 3 characters, but you'll see there are 2 numbers. The one on top indicates how many BP you are carrying, the bottom one is your "capital" so to speak, which is raised by buying and upgrading squares and whatnot.
Each board has one Start Point (shaped like a keyhole), and 4 Check Points (yellow, green, red and blue). The point is to pass all check points and return to the start point to earn money. If you've reached the target amount, get back to the Start Point ASAP to claim victory.

BP can be spent on the squares. You start with 5 cards in your inventory, each representing one of your character's skills/abilities. On their own, cards can be used to gain advantages like extra dice, stunning opponents, preventing BP from being taken etc, but using them like that prevents the abilities from gaining any experience.
Each empty square on the board can be bought using BP, at which point you will place one of your cards (ie abilities) on that spot or BUY a new ability if the square comes equipped with one.
Land on a square owned by someone else, and you have to pay them BP. Land on one of your own, and you can fortify the ability by spending BP, which adds to the experience that ability will earn at the end of the game AND makes it more expensive when an opponent lands on it.

And then, there's a shitload of special squares with special effects, but I'm not gonna introduce all of them here. Suffice it to say, it's EXTREMELY addictive, and a very clever and fun way of learning new abilities and upgrading old ones.
I've been making it a point to play at least one 10000 BP round each time I start the game, before moving on with what is actually the main game.
Like I said, I haven't progressed an inch in the story so far, and I'm loving it!

You'll amass a lot of abilities quite quickly, and you'll often get abilities you already have, in which case you can use the Command Charge option in the main game, to combine abilities and make something stronger/better.
It's AWESOME, and I'm abusing the hell out of it :D

So yeah, more on the main game as it develops, but so far, I'm immensely enjoying the Command Board feature.
Last year, I played what would be my PSP game of the year right at the start of the year (Dissidia Final Fantasy), it looks as if Square-Enix is going to pull that off again this year...

Possible Revival?

2010-01-11T14:30:00.002+01:00

Not likely, but still!

What with the end of 2009 being only so sort behind us, the Gaming Internet has been awash, as it is wont to, with Best of 2009 and Game of the Year lists.

Nothing wrong with that per se, but I notice that, whenever I endeavour to participate in these lofty discussions, I tend to not remember anything that happened to me more than 3 months ago.
That is to say, by the end of the year, I really don't remember what I was playing at the beginning, even if it was GOOD.

So I have decided to revive this blog, in Frankenstein fashion, to at least be able to remind myself at the end of 2010 what on EARTH I have been playing this year.

I'm not sure what the content is going to be like. Maybe some simple reviews, maybe some spoiler-heavy "what happened to me today"s, whatever suits me at the moment will probably suffice.

I will try not to mention games I started playing last year, but I will mention everything I start playing this year, even if it's an old game.

First up on the list: Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep for PSP.

Keep watching this space!
Or paint dry, which will probably be faster AND more interesting!

Sony RetardedStation 3

2008-12-30T12:50:00.002+01:00

Remember kids! You can't spell "Playstation" without "Palsy"!

Now let me get one thing straight first, I am NOT a fanboy, never have been never will.
Well, okay, I USED to be a Nintendo Fanboy, way back when, but that was before I actually got to try out Sonic on the Megadrive, and as soon as I did, I discarded my ridiculous prejudices and learned to love the world of Video Games in its entirety.

Geez, just look at my Collection and you'll immediately see that I am not particularly partial to any Console in particular, I have just sold my soul to Capcom, and they can do with it whatever they want.
I most certainly do not have anything against Sony, in fact, I would say that if you enjoyed the NES and the SNES after it, like any sane person with taste, then the most logical next two steps would be the PSX and the PS2, rather than Nintendo's two successing consoles, the N64 and the Gamecube.
Similarly though, I feel that the Xbox 360 is by far and away the best choice to continue your life as a gamer with access to actually good games.

But I digress! Sony in itself has done perfectly fine in the past, and the PSP is also holding up very well against the Unslain King of Handhelds, it's just that the PS3 is completely stupid, retardedly expensive, and just not very well equipped.

We all know that Microsoft's success has led to Sony stealing some ideas, and that's FINE, as the Dutch saying goes, "better well-stolen than ill-conceived", and it's perfectly acceptable to steal someone's idea and implement it in your own console, it simply means that owners of other consoles can enjoy the same features as other consoles, people should be HAPPY with that, and I know I am.
In fact, I am still waiting for Nintendo to include some kind of Achievement system on the Wii, but that will probably never happen.

And that's what I wanted to talk to you about today, boys and girls, the PS3 equivalent of Achievements, Trophies.
I actually really like the system, it works exactly the same as the XBox Achievements, the sole difference being that the points you earn are not just points, but are actually used to "level up" your gamertag. Each game has Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum awards, each type of metal ranking in a specific amount of points, which goes towards your "experience" so to speak. Which still means you're dealing with meaningless numbers, it's just that it's slightly more interesting than a score. Experience points are better than simple score points, right? RIGHT!?

Exactly.

The only problem is that very few PS3 games actually support trophies. Unlike the XBox, where achievement support is MANDATORY (smart move Microsoft!), Trophy support is still only optional (rumors are that Sony is working on that though), meaning that not many games actually have them.
On the other hand, some games are patched to include trophies, so that's good!

An example of one of those games would be Fallout 3.
I did not know that Fallout 3 would be getting a patch to include trophies, and I did not find out, oh the irony, 2 days after I completed the game. HAHA.
Nope, they're not retro-active either, so you have to do everything all over again.
Still, Fallout 3 is a really good game, so doing it over again is not any kind of punishment. I'd been the goody-two-shoes I always am on my first playthrough of an RPG, but this game looks like it might reward you for being a total fucking arsehole as well, so playing through a second time might prove fun.
And even if it didn't, I just wanted to get ONE trophy, just to see what it's like.

So I pop in the game, and start a New Adventure. The first trophy you can earn is VERY near the beginning, awarding you pretty much just for creating a character and sitting through the basic Control Tutorial.
You get it for recieving the Pip-boy 3000, which is this game's goddamn Menu-screen, so it's not even POSSIBLE to miss.
So I sit through the opening...no wait, I SKIP the opening sequence, watch myself being born, choose my sex (loads of it please, hur hur), create my avatar (using a preset face), skip all the feature customizing features, watch mom going into cardiac arrest (am I THAT ugly!?), fade to white.

One year later, control tutorial, crawl out of your baby-pen, read the picture book to determine your skill levels, follow daddy into the hallway, fade to white.

Nine years later, your 10th birthday. What do you get for turning 10 in vault 101?
Your very own Pip-boy! Yay! Here comes my first Trophy!
So I get my Pip-boy, slightly salivating in anticipation, and silently a message pops up in the upper right corner of the screen. That's a shame, no fulfilling ploppy sound as with the Achievements, a sound that I keep hearing every waking moment of the day, but whatever, as long as I get the trophy.
So the message! It reads:

"You did not earn a Trophy"

...

...

...

Wait, what?

...

I did NOT earn a trophy?

You are telling me I did not earn a trophy?

Anger, frustration, confusion, and a slight feeling of amusement fueled by the ever-persistent comedian in me who actually sees the irony of the situation, surge through my body.
See, I'm not pissed I didn't get the Trophy, like I said, it's stupidly easy to get, you just TURN ON the game; it's not like I just finished Megaman 9 without taking any damage or anything.
No, it's that the console goes out of its way to tell me I DID NOT GET IT.
Could you imagine the XBox telling you at key points "achievement still locked!"!?

That's like going on a date with a really hot chick, only at the end of the evening to be left outside in the cold in front of her door, and then her quickly popping her head out to tell you "you did not score!"

FUCK!

So, as always the Interwebs shows that more people have had this problem, and it seems it has something to do with having changed your PSN account password, which I might have done recently, I can't really remember, but I had to go through quite some trouble before I was able to get Super Street Fighter II HD, and now it seems I need to delete my user account, and then recreate it, in order to fix the problem.
Haven't tried that yet, but I hope it works.

I any case, this is another fine example of Sony COCKING up immensely.
Fix it. FIX IT NOW!

And while you're at it, get some decent exclusives, make sure they STAY exclusive, and make sure they're GOOD, cos right now, I don't really know WHY I have a PS3 in the first place.

Fuck Other People

2008-12-24T08:10:00.003+01:00

I believe the phrase is "ZOMG".

Yes! It's another update! I, unlike this blog, am NOT dead!
Actually, I've been meaning to write something for a while, and actually finding out I had some responses to the last review I wrote encouraged me to at least vent my frustration one more time, whether it be read or not.
Thanks Bert and Anonymous!

So, to the topic at hand, Fuck Other People.
A bit broader in scope than last time's FFIV review because it obviously involves a lot more fucking, about 7 billion times more, but it needs to be done, and who am I to deny the world its well-deserved fucking?

Now, don't worry, this post is not going to be quite as misanthropic as the title may imply, but I found it to be an accurate way of conveying my current stance towards the video game market, and the troublesome direction its heading in.

So what I would like to rant about, is Multiplayer, and how it is destroying the world of video games as we know it. Now I'm not even going to whine about all the sad sad people on XBox Live and PSN, spouting profanity and racism and leaving moral destruction in their wake, with names like "NiggaBlasta", "GayBlower69" or "Bob", we KNOW about those, there's plenty of people warning you for this kind of behavior, and it's definitely a worrisome trend, but it's just people being complete assholes, which is not the game's fault, as such. Also, the mute button.

No, what pisses me off nowadays is the fact that every single fucking game and its DOG, HAS to have multiplayer it seems, be it online or off. Now there's nothing wrong with hanging around with yer mates, drinking way too much, eating greasy snacks and generally treating your body the way it's SUPPOSED to, but it should not be obligatory, and it should most definitely not be included as an afterthought, or, adversely, be the sole purpose of playing a game.
If you're going to include multiplayer in your game, make sure it makes sense, and compliments the single player mode, instead of fucking up the entire game just for multiplayer's sake.

Now, a good example of a game doing this right this year, would be Gears of War 2. In fact, I daresay that Gears of War 2 is a good example of doing pretty much EVERYTHING right this year, putting a huge amount of what's on the market to shame, in terms of scope, setting, grandeur and bloody ass-kickingness.
But that's not the point, the point is that Gears 2 delivers a superb single player campaign, that works awesome in co-op as well, plus it has some really good multiplayer mode, with the much-lauded Horde mode standing out as a shining example of how absolutely fantastic online multiplayer can be.
Never does it feel as if concessions are being made for the sake of allowing other people to play at the same time. Sure, you have to switch weapons on the fly, there's no pause button or menu screen during gameplay, but switching weapons is a matter of pressing one of the four directions on the D-pad, with the up-button always linked to Grenades, down to some handgun or other, and left and right to two kinds of Big Guns of your choice, so it's really easy to manage, and you don't need anything more (well, actually, it would be nice if you could carry another Big Gun instead of a Handgun, but that's nit-picking).

But you see, the problem with Gears is that it became too popular, and now EVERYONE wants in on that "hot multiplayer action", even those who have no real business being there.

I'm looking at YOU, fucking Resident Evil 5!

FUCK YOU, Capcom, for (once again) fucking up this brilliant series.
You know what? I read this game is NOT made by Shinji Mikami, original creator of the series, the Big Brain behind masterpiece Resident Evil 4, and just all-round Badass, and not only that, but he explicitly stated he would NOT be playing RE5, because it would only "piss him off" (that's how you should read "cause him stress" anyway): And how right he is

Now in case you haven't played the Demo yet or followed the uproar around the "mowing down loads of black people" trailers, RE5 takes place in Africa (and there's nothing wrong with that, but I ain't opening that can of worms) and pits you against a horde of African Genados this time (I'm going to miss that "Un Forastero!" line) alongside some Hispanic Chick named, uh, Shiva or something? Is that her name? Is she made of Ice too? I don't even care.
By the way Capcom, smart move, you get thousands of people complaining about that whole "Caucasian shooting Africans" thing, and what do you do? You give him a Hispanic side-kick! Hellllllooooooooooo? Way to miss the boat there hunh?
A Hispanic side-kick? In Africa? To help you kill lots of Black People?
COULD YOU NOT THINK OF A MORE APPROPRIATE COLOR TO PERHAPS EASE THE COMPLAINTS?

So yeah, she could have been Asian as well I guess (D'oh!)

Anywhore, playing the Demo, you get to chose from 2 different areas. One of them does that whole "onslaught of countless enemies" thing we already saw in the first fucking village in RE4, way to be original there, guys, and the second one is a more linear affair, and to be honest, good fun actually.
Problem is though, your little lady-friend, whom I shall refer to as "Poorly Chosen" from here on cos I can't be arsed to confirm if it was really Shiva or not, so miss Chosen, she's with you ALL THE FUCKING TIME. Sure, you get to split up now and again (again, Gears of War stylee) but you're playing alongside the whole time, and from what I've heard, that's what the WHOLE GAME is gonna be like.
Now like I said, it actually WORKED in Gears, because Dom, stupid asshole he may be, at least is not too much trouble to look after. He does his job, and only occasionally will he be downed, and reviving him is simple. And the fact alone that you CAN revive him instead of going Game Over immediately is also a VERY smart move from the creator's side.

Now I don't know what happens in RE5 when Poorly bites the dust, but she looses health pretty quickly (Dom could take a very tough beating, even on Insane mode) and she requires you to actively look after her, which is a total PAIN if you have to do that all game long. To quote The Nerd, "Fuck that Shit!"
What's even more of a pain is that to allow for simultaneous co-op, the menu-system is now ACTIVE, so no pausing or opening screens, you just get a small window popping up, on the fly, to select weapons and healing items.
THAT SUCKS!
In Gears, you don't have to heal, because that happens automatically over time, but in RE, you're still fucking around with those dubious Herb things, so to account for all the weapons and healing items you're going to have to carry, you have like 8 or 9 slots. 8 or 9! (note to self: just look it up you lazy asshole!)
So, on the fly, with loads of Genados coming at you, you have to start plowing through your inventory actually SELECTING the item you want to use or equip. No quick selection, no nothing, open the menu, find what you're looking for, move the cursor there, and then CHOOSE whether you want to Equip, Use, Drop, Mix, Hand over, Marinate, Polish or Stick Your Dick Up the item in question. ON THE FLY WITH DOZENS OF ANGRY GENADOS COMING AT YOU WITH SCYTHES AND PITCHFORKS, not to mention the inevitable Huge Bosses you're going to have to face off against.

One more thing, RE4 was scary as Fuck! Why? Because it was just you, on your own, in a strange isolated foreign area, where people don't speak your language, and everyone's out to get you. Now most of that remains in tact, apart from the very important fact that you're not ALONE anymore. You constantly have Poorly hovering around you, being a nuisance, it was bad enough with Shelly or whatever the Hell her name was (I is good at remembring stoff), but at least she wasn't around you ALL the time. Imagine if you play a game like this with a friend! Where's the creepiness? Where's the tension? Ah well, the atmosphere is probably already ruined by the fact that it takes place in bright sunny daylight anyway.

That's one, how about another?

White Knight Chronicles.

It's being released here tomorrow, but reviews have been pretty average. Famitsu, always ready and more than eager to dish out 9s and 10s to a game, just for throwing enough money around, gave WKC 7, 8, 7, 7, which is very poor for such a hotly anticipated game, especially considering it was made by Level 5 who fucking KNOW what they're doing.
Not this time it seems...

The first shock came when I saw the commercial on TV a while back.
Here was me, really looking forward to this great JRPG, which the PS3 really desperately needs, because Disgaea and Valkyria Chronicles are slightly too niche, only to find out that what I had thought to be an old-school single player RPG experience, had now somehow turned out to be an ONLINE RPG.
Rumours abound that Sony ordered Level 5 to throw in Online capabilities to satisfy, well, someone or other, I'm not sure who on earth was waiting for this, but there you go, Sony being clueless as usual, and although it's just a rumour, the reviews pointing out the poor implementation and borkedness of the online components seem to substantiate the word on the street.

As the official Homepage states, the game will have Story (offline) segments and Live (online) segments which supposedly "blend seemlessly", but apparently do not if the rating are anything to go by. Besides how the Hell do you pull something like that off "seemlessly" anyway?
Does that mean that only the cutscenes are offline!? That seems rather pointless to me. But WHY did this game, that was looking to become such a beautiful much-needed single player JRPG, suddenly get dumbed down to poorly-executed Online RPG!?
WHY!? WHY OH WHY!?

Well, at least it still looks pretty...

It seems everything that looks even halfway decent nowadays needs to get butt-raped to provide for some unnecessary online/co-op mode, it's really pissing me off!
Co-op should be COMPLIMENTORY, not obligatory. Remember, there are still a lot of people out there who enjoy playing games on their own you know?

I Fucking Hate Final Fucking Fantasy IV

2008-02-04T14:28:00.000+01:00

FUCK!

So, now that we have the introduction out of the way, let's get straight to business: Final Fantasy IV DS.
In case you were wondering, the DS stands for Dual Screen (as in Nintendo DS), not Damned Shitty, which is what I found myself thinking most of the time whilst playing this game.
This is the remake of the SNES original, which was also rereleased on PSX and GBA, but this time, rather than a more or less direct port, you get a FULL remake, 3D graphics, remastered sound, bells, whistles, the WORKS.
It follows in the footsteps of yesteryears FFIII remake featuring the same kind of improvements and also being amazingly similar in terms of frustration and unforgiving difficulty. In fact, I was amazed at how much FFIII and IV resemble each other in many many ways, which only goes to deepen my suspicion that in fact, every Final Fantasy before VI was total and utter CRAP. YES, that includes V. Cos V comes before VI donchaknow. Ask any Roman!

Now I already vented my frustration on the PSX remake, and I thought, why go through the trouble of writing all that AGAIN, when I can just copy and paste the whole lot (I'm good at that) and perhaps write in a bit more sparkly letters, thusly providing a rather clever allegory to the game itself. Man, I rock.

So here goes, my entry of May 1st, 2005: Setting things straight. The original text is in italics (that'll be the Romans again), my new comments are in standard text. Standard seems to sum me up pretty well, I think, ahaha. SHUT UP!

Okay, I have to be honest here, I may have been overreacting in my angered response to FF4 just a little. See, thing is, what was annoying me most were the battles, which just seemed unfairly hard, but I found out there is a mitigating factor. The game, like most FF's I think, offers a configurable Battle Speed Option, and I, being the impatient freak that I am, set it to the fastest speed.
Now this shouldn't be a problem, cos it never has been, it merely means the pace of the battles is upped, and they won't take as long as is the standard.
That's how it works in all the OTHER FF's at least. Not here though.
No, here it means the enemies are 5 times as fast, and you are NOT.

The DS remake offers the same adjustable speed, but does not seem to suffer from the same inane mistake Square made before. Mind you, I never really took the risk long enough and just kept playing at the default speed to avoid unnecessary frustration. I was having plenty of that as it was already. It looked to be okay though.

And now, I shall switch to Boldface, just to screw with your mind.

There were basically 3 kinds of situations:
- Back Attack: You are attacked from behind and will get hit by every enemy before you can do anything.
- Surprise Attack: You are attacked from the front and will get hit by every enemy before you can do anything.
- Preemptive Attack: You surprise the enemy and your fastest character can hit once, and the rest have to wait until they are hit by every enemy before they can do anything.
Technically speaking there are also plain battles, but I hardly got those for some reason. They just mean that 3 out of 4 enemies can attack before your fastest character can move. Nice.

This still holds true. The game's rate of non-normal battle-starts (How the HELL am I supposed to describe it in any other way?) is friggin' ASTOUNDING. I guess I should be happy that it's not just Back Attacks and Surprise Attacks but Preemptive Attacks are plentiful too, but still, it gets real annoying real fast.

Fact remains, you are at all times insanely overpowered by the enemy, new equipment has no noticeable effect and levelling up hardly helps. In fact, I've read that once you hit a certain level, around 70 or something, your status actually starts GOING DOWN. I swear, this is so insane, I can't make this stuff up!

True again, although Levelling up actually seemed to make some difference this time round. Also, I can confirm that Cecil at least will keep groing UPWARDS even after hitting level 70, so either they fixed that or my sources on the original were not reliable. Or it happens AFTER level 74 or something.
Beware that you WILL have to level your characters up to these lofty regions if you want to stand any chance against the final boss, or indeed, practically ANY enemy in the Final Dungeon.

It amazed me to find out that the original game is so incredibly popular in America.
I mean, I can understand Japanese loving this, they're friggin INSANE. They're masochist freaks who spend hours and hours cheerfully levelling up to Level 99 at the START OF THE GAME so this will be right up their ally.
Also, they tend to have Lolita-complexes and get turned on by criminally young girls, which I guess further proves my point that they like things that are hard to get into (Man, I'm classy)
Later, I found out that back in the SNES days, America actually got a DUMBED down version, known in Japan as Final Fantasy IV Easy Type, and that explained a LOT.
I've personally never played that one, but it might actually be enjoyable.

The game just feels like it should have been better, gameplay-wise. One one hand, you see, you have an RPG of a decent size, with a great soundtrack, and above all a great storyboard.
There's so many things happening at every turn, it's really overwhelming, in a good sense of course. The story is rich and rewarding and there really never is a dull moment.

My opinion on this also, remains unchanged. The story REALLY is great, there is such a fantastic shitload of stuff happening after practically every dungeon and in any new town you get to, it is quite understandable that this game scores lots of points with story-loving RPG-freaks, which makes it all the more painful that you have to go through the insufferable game that accompanies it.

Dungeons are a slightly different affair. They're all pretty much the same, walk from A to B kind of affair, loaded with treasure though, that's nice. No puzzles, no gimmicks, nothing, just pathways. Not too maze-like, just dull and pointless.

That point also still stands, but the DS version does you the IMMENSE BALLWARMING favor of supplying you with a map on the bottom screen. The map fills in as you move along (get 100% for a handful of items), but it helps a LOT, oh man does it ever help a lot, plus you can see all the treasure strewn about the place, which is extremely convenient. Kudos to Square for that.

Not only battles but also the shop and equipment system totally suck. Shops only show who can equip what, nothing more. You can't see how many pieces of a certain item you are carrying or already have equipped which is annoying enough, since you might be buying something you already have on. So first you have to look at all your equipment and memorize it. This would also be easier if you could go into the equipment screen and scroll from one character to the next using the L and R button as is customary in, well, EVERY game on earth, except this one. So you have to go into and out of the equipment screen for EVERY character. Nice.
THEN, even if you're not carrying said item already, you have NO clue whatsoever if it will improve your status or not, until you actually equip it. So if you don't want to waste any money, you'd have to save your game, buy what you want, try it on, then load your game to buy what you actually need. Super.

This, I am glad to say, has been completely fixed. You can see who can equip what, and how much it will improve their offense, hit rate, defense and evasion rate. There are however, much more status elements which might go DOWN with a new weapon that you will not be able to see until AFTER you bought the item, but that is a minor gripe. Still kinda annoying though.

Speaking of hit rates, the DS version also maintains the INSANE amount of misses that plagued the original. GOD, how frigging annoying. Lots of RPGs have hit rates and you will occasionally miss in even the best games out there, but FFIV is retarded. Seriously, at some point I wanted to go inside the screen (EITHER OF THEM) and STRANGLE Cecil, the Paladin PUSSY, because he seemed to be the biggest offender. Not that Kain does much, mind you. Fuckheads.

Furthermore there are no helpful descriptions for magic and skills, you don't know what ANYTHING does until you use it, and even then the effect might not be immediately clear. It's like the creators assumed you are familiar enough with the series that you don't need any explanation. Stupid.

Man, I don't know who wrote this, but give the guy a Cigar! Brilliant! Spot-on!
You do get item descriptions, which is a BIG help, and you get magic descriptions in your normal inventory screen, but NOT in battle, when you need them most.
Also, some descriptions are completely inane.
"Ifrit: Summons Ifrit", WELL FUCK, SHERLOCK, THANKS A SHITLOAD.

Which brings me to another thing, Using Magic and Items in the Inventory Screen (man, I love how I can bridge all this stuff together).
You see, this game has full detailed (for lack of a better term. Oh wait: Crappy) Polygon Models for the once 2D rendered characters, and apparently Square is so proud of this feat, that they want you to enjoy, even savour, this new-fangled technology at every turn in the Inventory screen.
But you know what, clocking in at a hefty 128MB, this is a rather sizeable cart, and apparently the DS has some trouble conjuring up these models on the fly, so it takes a couple of seconds (and any gamer knows that seconds of waiting can seem like HOURS when they become frequent enough) for the model to load. So while you are just trying to QUICKLY heal/cure your character, which is something you have to do a LOTLOTLOTLOTLOTLOTLOTLOT, you are sitting there, pointlessly pressing buttons to no effect, because the game is busy LOADING THE FRIGGIN CHARACTER MODEL!
And do we actually NEED to see the model at that point!? FUCK NO! There is no point to it WHATSOEVER! IT ONLY SLOWS THINGS DOWN! THANKS SQUARE, I LOVE IT! MAYBE NEXT TIME YOU CAN KICK ME IN THE BALLS EVERY TIME I TRY TO REVIVE SOMEONE, WOULD THAT HELP THINGS!?

Christ.

And you know what, the game also suffers from all these polygons during battle scenes. There is no real slow-down as such, but that's largely because battles run at a frighteningly low framerate in the first place, which in turn can lead to unresponsive controls, such as your cursor not moving quite as speedily as you want it to. This is really only a minor gripe though, it's not that much of a problem, but it's a minor gripe on a pile of steaming dung, so it doesn't exactly help thins.

Speaking of which (bridge!) who on God's Motherfucking Green Earth ever decided it would be fun to have Dungeons with TOXIC/LAVA puddles strewn about the place!? Is it anyone's idea of fun to HAVE TO run around on flooring that will HURT you with every step!? Seriously, can someone explain to me what's fun about this!? And they did this in every FF BEFORE this one too! GREAT IDEAS ARE HARD TO LET GO HUNH!?

Thirtyfifthly, WHAT'S the DEAL with all these invisible walls and pathways!? Every dungeon has like, several THOUSAND. And it's fine if they just lead to hidden treasure or something, but as the game progresses, you NEED to find these hidden passages just to progress, and you can't see where you're going, if you didn't have the map (which you DON'T in the original) you can't even see if you're actually moving because of all the darkness around you. You just have to randomly press directions to see if you end up somewhere. LET'S PUT THE 'FU' IN 'FUCKING FUN' RIGHT!?
And you know WHAT!? You get these invisible passageways in dungeons WITH TOXIC/LAVA FLOORS TOO! HUZZAH! God I can't tell you how much I love all of this.

Did I mention the insanely overpowered bosses yet? I think I did, but they deserve second mentioning. This is the kind of game where you HAVE to put a lot of effort into EVERYTHING to just be able to get by.

Only Masochists need apply.

Anything positive?
Well, the opening movie is gorgeous, as always, the 3D revamped graphics are pretty decent, the vocal version of Theme of Love is quite beautiful (you'll have to finish the game to hear it though), the newly added Voice Acting is really quite good and you can throw the game at passers-by and watch them sneer at it. Most fun I've had with it at least.

For Die Hard fans only.

5.0

Ingen's Game of the Year Awards 2007

2007-12-30T17:51:00.000+01:00

Yes! Finally!
It's here! The biggest event known in the world of Video Games, The (almost) Annual Ingen Game of the Year Awards, 2007 edition (limited!)
Which makes it, what?, the second time already? Man, this is some exclusive shit!
Actually I was thinking of doing one last year too, but you know how these things go, no time/interest/money, and besides, 2006 pretty much sucked BUTT, so you're not missing anything anyway.

But not this year! Oh man, this year was SWEET. For some strange reason pretty much all the good games were released in the last 3 months (how do these things happen?) whereas the first 9 months of the year were pretty uneventful (with a couple of exceptions), causing lots of empty wallets and poor people around Christmas time, quite unusually, thus neatly explaining the increased crime rates around this period as well. I'd show you statistical evidence, but I can't be arsed.

Anyhow: Games!
This year's categories are: Best PS2 game, Best Wii game, Best 360 game, Best DS game, and Best Game Overall, and maybe Most Disappointing Game, depending on whether I feel like it, I don't actually know that right now, and it's far too much trouble to go back and edit this later.
Notice the absence of a PSP and PS3 category in these awards because they are Ass...uh....AS...of this moment not worth the money. Yeah, yeah that's it. Phew. Nice save there.
Also, expect random opinininininions (FUCK!) on random games in here somewhere, I'm drinking shochu right now and the glass is still far from empty.

So without further Ado, let us proceed to PS2 game of the year!

PS2 Game of the Year! (I think I already said that):

What!? GOD OF WAR!? II even!?
Yeah, so it was a slow PS2 year. REALLY slow. I mean, the thing is breathing its last breath for Pete's sake! (yet still outselling the PS3)
Well, to be perfectly honest, this game would have been a strong contender either way, cos, and let's be honest here for a change, it KICKS ASS. Serious Ass. Not the kind of ass you find at a second rate petting zoo, you know, the kind of ass that has seen better days but is now a mere shadow of its former self, with patches of balding skin all over its body, but REAL burly, testosteron Ass. The kind of Ass that follows you into a dark alley at night, and just when you turn around to see absolutely nothing, it pops up behind you and gives you a Somersault JUSTICE in the face. That's the kind of Ass I'm talking about. Seri-Ass

This is not a game about subtlety, beauty, art or poetics. It's about brutal, viscious, viscerous single-minded KILLING. Kratos is definitely not someone to mess with, and he doesn't mind letting you know, and leaving no fractions of doubt.
What this means is that you are playing an enormously bombastic game, with HUGE Boss Fights, lots of violent Finishing Moves, Big Shiny Graphics, large worlds and especially, LOADS OF NUDITY, all of which makes this an instant classic.
They fixed the lack of boss battles from the first game and threw in a lot more variety, so in the end, everyone's happy!

Everyone, it seems, except for Kratos himself, who is SERIOUSLY pissed throughout the entire game. And this is pretty much my only gripe with this game. Kratos is an immensely unlikable character. He's too much kick-ass and too little good guy. His purposes are entirely self-serving and don't make that much sense at all, and he is extremely serious (and violent) in evertyhing he does. Would it have hurt to give him some semi-comical quips, or SOMETHING to show that he is not taking himself too seriously? I rather dislike the guy, which prevents me from forming any kind of emotional interest with him or the story.
He does know how to smash people's heads between a door though, DAYAMN!

Rather short, but great fun all the way. And lots of boobies!

Disclaimer No.1: Of course I have been watching other Game of the Year Awards on other sites, I can't be expected to play EVERYTHING that's released (I'm damn well trying though), and it seems I am missing out by not having played Odin Sphere or Persona 3 yet. Both of them are on my To Buy list, but I still have so much other stuff to do!

Best Wii Game:

No contest here.

Super Mario Galaxy.

Well, yes, it HAS been a rather slow year for the Wii, but even if it hadn't, this game would have stood head and shoulders above its competitors.
I may have mentioned in the past that I wasn't that much of a Mario 64 fan, and Mario Sunshine abhorred me so much that it became the only Mario game in existence that I didn't bother to finish for the full 100 percent (I finished the game, but I didn't get all the Shines, because it was WAY too much trouble, mainly due to the blue coins)
I am a HUGE fan of the old 2D games, especially Super Mario Bros 3 and Super Mario World (I have trouble acknowleding Yoshi's Island as a Mario game), and I for one have never been convinced by Mario's foray into the Third Dimension (I seriously do not get how some people can claim that Mario 64 does a good job of translating the original 2D Mario gameplay into 3D. Did I somehow play a different game than all those people!?), but shit, Mario Galaxy is about as good as it gets.

See, whereas Mario 64 and Sunshine threw you into the same stage over and over again, with minor changes, to find all the stars/shines/coins/coke addicts, which was a rather repetitive and BORING ordeal, Mario Galaxy starts you out at the same point in every galaxy, but very soon whisks you off to new asteroids that you couldn't reach with previous tasks.
This way, the game perfectly maintains the short 'episodic' structure of the old 2D games, with short but fun and varied stages, each with their own theme and gimmick, offering a LOT more fun than any of the previous 3D games were ever able to offer.
Also, the Fire Flower is back! YES!

It's truly amazing the amount of variety, love and imagination that has been poured into this little gem, and it doesn't get boring for a second!
What it DOES get, though, is FRUSTRATING. Believe you me, once you finish the game for the first time, you'll unlock the Purple Coin challenges, and those can be SERIOUSLY annoying.
I'm willing to accept this though, as it provides a very decent challenge for the more experienced player, appeasing pretty much every single person in the audience.

Add to that a marvellous Orchestral Soundtrack (WHY did it take them so long!?), wide screen and progressive scan support, and you've got yourself one immensely impressive Wii game.
I'll admit, I had kind of given up on the little fat plumber, but Nintendo totally proved me wrong by kicking me in my jaded gaming nuts.
And being kicked in the nuts has NEVER felt this good.

Best DS Game:

Man, this was a tough one.

Hoohoo, bet you didn't see THAT one coming!
Like I...um...haven't said yet, I adhere to the release date of the version I've played, regardless of whether something has or has not been released in the West/Japan (yet/still/not/ever/if/through)
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2 (damn, that's a straight road to RSI, right there), not so aptly named because it was NOT made for the Gameboy Advance, was released in Japan this year and, to be honest, spent most time in my DS.

I have to acknowledge the brilliance that was Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, it was definitely a superb game, MUCH better than its spiritual predecessor, the Wind Waker, and I loved every second of it (well maybe not the Temple of the Ocean King), but in the end, I found that FFTA2 kept me coming back time and time again to finish every little subquest I could find, and I had non-stop fun for the entire ride, so yeah, I guess it comes out on top.

Basically, it takes Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (DAMN you Square!), improves the graphics, music (well, "rearranges FFTA1 and FFXII" is more like it. Hitoshi Sakimoto is not known for his variety, that's for sure), ditches the unforgiving "Disobey and DIE" Law System in favor of an "Earn Bonus Stuff if you Bother to Obey" system, adds another 100 quests on top of FFTA's already impressive 300, gives you a whole buttload of jobs to choose from, adds auctions and whatnot, and in the end creates an incredibly compelling deep tactical RPG, that, although rather easy and family-friendly, manages to keep you glued to your dual screens for HOURS upon HOURS just to get that next subquest done. It's very easy to just pick up and play for 15 minutes, and it pretty much dominated my free time for about a month after I got it.
And that, after all, is what games should be about, no?

Best 360 Game

Cliffhanger! Seriously, I don't know what the Hell is going on here, but ever since Blogger changed their service, it's become completely incomprehensible and impossible to work with. It seems I CAN save a entry without posting it, but the stupid system refuses to recall it when I want it to, so I'll just have to resort to posting a provisory version. Sorry about this, you can complain at Blogger Headquarters if you want. More coming soon!

Overachiever

2007-12-24T02:53:00.000+01:00

ZOMG! Update! And within 15 months!
I spoil you.

I have been having...Writer's Block! Yes! That' s it!
Quite a severe case of it in fact, so much so that I had to go see a doctor, and he ordered me to take lots and lots of rest, preferably playing LOADS of videogames, and who am I to argue with medical science? So rest assured, plenty of gaming has been done, and who knows, some day, I might even write about it, but not today! Today I am here for you to bring you my latest rant, and because I know noone is reading this anymore, it is a most excellent opportunity for getting things off my chest.

Actually, this is just a separate special post in preparation for an upcoming even larger one. I was initially going to include this topic as a tangent, but then I decided it is worthy of its own special space to separate my brilliant insights from my...uh...other brilliant insights.

Right.

So without further ado, let me introduce today's topic: Achievements.
And I don't mean the kind where you score a Drunk Bulgarian girl at a Student Party, that's hardly an achievement and the only thing it will earn you is your friends' ridicule, massive trauma, and some worrisome greenish pustules on your penis that you should probably get someone to take a look at.

No! I speak of the Achievements you can earn by playing XBox 360 games.
You know, the ones that are indicated on your profile with a bright shiny G behind them, implying that they are some kind of Final Fantasy currency, but good looking trying to get hold of a Potion with these, cos they don't do squat!
Initially, the point of these points (ahaha) escaped me completely. All they do is amount to a particular score, and that score won't do you ANY good. Apparently you can take your score online and see how many people have a smaller penis than you, but that's about it really.

Wouldn't it be SO much cooler if these points could actually be used as some kind of currency? I don't mean that you should pay your rent with them or anything, but wouldn't it be nice if XBox live offered some kind of, I dunno, skins, backgrounds, demo's, trailers etc. in exchange for points? The way it is, it seems totally useless to me.

It seemed all the more pointless to me, because the way games hand out points is completely random. Every game has to have 1000 points apparently, but it is obvious that some developers don't feel like bothering with them at all. Some games will give you all 1000 points gradually whilst making your way through the game so that you can't actually miss any (Enchanted Arms), but most others give you some nice side objectives to complete.
Thing is though, some games have really HARD challenges that only earn you like 20, 30 points or something, whereas some games like Lost Odyssey have the nerve to give you 125 points (that's pretty hefty) just for clearing a CD! Considering this game is 4 CD's long (Mister Sakaguchi obviously still has his head stuck in the PSX era), that's 500 points earned without any real effort!
And then there's Avatar, where you can get all 1000 points in two minutes apparently.

So what's the point in going online and showing off your enormous WAD, when points can be gained this easily in some games and are so hard to come by in others?
The answer is, there is none. In fact, I daresay that XBox live is one very good reason to never go online anymore EVER (Halo is a fine example of Darwin's Missing Link).

But then along came The Orange Box.
And the Orange Box opened my eyes!
The Orange Box has 99 (!!! Count 'em!) Achievements, which is such an insane number that most of them are only like 5 or 10 points (well there ARE 5 games in here), and Valve were apparently so proud of their ideas that they even included these achievements in the PC version, where you don't get any points at all apparently.
And that's what opened my eyes, Achievements are exactly that, Achievements!
It's not about points at all, it's about getting something done, it's about challenging yourself (or being obsessed if you look at it from another angle) and The Orange Box provides plenty of fun challenges indeed. In fact, I even replayed Half-Life 2 Episode 2 several times just to get some of the more elusive ones, and it was a goddamn blast.
So if anything, Achievements are about bragging rights, about being able to say you put that goddamn motherfucking asshole Gnome on board the Rocket, that you played through Episode 1 with only 1 bullet, that you defeated Generaal RAAM on Hardcore difficulty and what have you. Points don't mean Jack, so going online and showing them off to the world is completely pointless.
The Orange Box has rekindled my interest in Achievements though, and I even went back to some games I already finished long ago, just to get some of the Achievements, not for the points, but for the feeling of accomplishment, for the satisfying *plop* sound when your XBox tells you you unlocked something!

The point system can be dismissed for all I care, unless they actually DO something with it at some point, but as it is, it serves no purpose and worse, has no meaning, because the points don't tell you WHAT someone actually achieved.
Getting 40 points for killing every Antlion Grub in Episode 2 is considerably more impressive than getting 1000 points on Avatar.
And that's why I think there should be something to reward you for getting particular achievements. Not points, but something useful.
I think this was one of the early rumors on Sony's Home format: that accomplishing certain tasks in a game would earn you objects to adorn your humble virtual abode with. Posters, action figures, furniture, the possibilities are endless.
I don't know if this idea is actually going to be executed, but Sony have a potentially very exciting format in their hands if they do.
Knowing them, they'll probably mess it up though.

So if anyone from Sony or Microsoft is reading this, AND I THINK THEY ARE, then, please, get some kind of system that earns gamers achievement-specific virtual objects to brag with, not meaningless points. It'd be SO much cooler.

The Results are In

2006-10-06T07:17:00.000+02:00

For what it's worth, the winners of the BAFTA Video Game Awards have been announced, and although Shadow of the Colossus did not get the Music Award, at least it was acknowledged as the best Action/Adventure game, and it got Artistic Achievement, which is indeed the LEAST it deserved.

The world is not yet completely hopeless after all.

BAFTA

Crushing the Competition

2006-09-27T11:29:00.000+02:00

Finally finished Dirge of Cerberus yesterday, and MAN, it certainly wasn't a walk in the park.
That is to say, the game's pretty easy most of the time, but as you progress you'll get into some EXTREMELY annoying boss fights, and you'll face plenty of them before you get to the actual final boss, which, adversely, was pretty easy.

Overall, Dirge of Cerberus is kinda enteraining although the fun definitely does not last as long as the game itself, and with the game being a measly 11 hours long or so, that IS saying something. It could also have used some variety.
It sports some absolutely stunning FMV, this is still Square (-Enix) we're talking about, on par even with the mighty Advent Children (same character models probably), which makes it all the more sad that the actual in-game graphics are totally pathetic. Seriously. This looks like a first generation PS2 game, it's exceedingly lacklustre and dull. In fact, it reminded me of one of Square's first PS2 games The Bouncer, which might even have looked a bit better.

So, um, unless you want to see some nice FMV, stay away from this game.
In fact, even if you want to see nice FMV stay away, and get FFXII instead, which has even nicer FMV, much better graphics and is just a much better game.

What!? Was I just praising FFXII!?
Well.....uh.....only in comparison to Dirge of Cerberus of course. Ehem.
Actually, quite scarily, I'm enjoying FFXII considerably more right now than I did the first time. It's still not as good as, well, any of the PSX games (including 8!) but it is more fun than I have previously led you to believe.
I might even make a review some time in the future.
Maybe even before FFXIII comes out.

On a side note, the British Academy of Film and Television Awards (BAFTA!) apparently also has a Video Game category (nice one!) and october 5th will see the winners for 2005 (only 10 months after the actual year!), and I was pleasantly surprised to see that Shadow of the Colossus has been nominated in just about EVERY possible category.
Here's hoping Justice will finally get served.

Still, it's enough of a victory to see that God of War isn't even ANYWHERE in there:

BAFTA Nominations

Update!

2006-09-19T08:33:00.000+02:00

Although I'm not quite sure why, since noone's reading this anymore anyway, including myself.

Let's just say it's therapy, which, of course, works best when noone is listening to it.

First of all: I'M GETTING BLOODY SICK OF ALL THESE "WII" PUNS.
Seriously, STOP IT RIGHT NOW, all of you.

Secondly, although I've clearly expressed my dislike for FFXII in the past, I have recently picked it up again (something I hadn't expected myself to do), after purchasing one (of the two! Thanks again, Square!) FFXII Ultimania, the Scenario version to be exact, which is the (only) one I wanted.
It was 700 Yen at the local Book-off, and I still had 700 Yen worth of discount tickets, so there you go :)
Even more unexpectedly, I'm kind of enjoying it right now (I'll put that down to those Ultimania's just being so goddamn good they make EVERYTHING fun), and I've even started......*gasp*.....levelling up! I never do that.

Also, I recently bought Dirge of Cerberus for a measly 980 Yen, despite all the rather negative reviews (it averages 59% on gamerankings!). And so far, I gotta say, it's actually rather entertaining.
Kind of easy though, but definitely not bad at all.
And Vincent just rules.

Still haven't acquired FFIII for DS, much to my shame, I'll probably wait until it becomes somewhat cheaper.

I've bought plenty of games recently, most of them from the bargain basket, and I just finished Ratchett & Clank (380 Yen!) which was amusing until the last couple of levels or so. Also picked up Maximo (380 Yen) which is supposed to be entertaining.
Haven't tried it yet though.
I ALSO tried getting the secret ending in Kingdom Hearts II by clearing the Jimminy Memo notes, which is goddamn IMPOSSIBLE. Or at least an insane amount of work.
So I decided to just play through on Hard mode and get it just for finishing the game :)
Great stuff though, as usual. In fact, if you're going to play the game, just start on Hard Mode, cos it's the only way you'll get a decent challenge. The first game was MUCH harder.

Well, that's it for therapy right now. Must fly!

Gamendum Est!

2006-07-03T11:03:00.000+02:00

Ugh.

So......much......to.......write.
So.....little.......time.

It HAS been awhile, hasn't it, and I'm not really in the mood for writing a long story, I NEVER am, but some people want to make sure I'm still alive, so there you go.
I'll keep it short and to the point and random:

- I am the proud owner of an Enamel Navy DS Lite! woohoo! Finally!
After checking, like, a THOUSAND stores where they were ALL sold out, I found an out-of-the-way Game store that, as irony would have it, had a whole BUTTLOAD of the things lying around, so I bought the color that was least gay, and also easiest to get dirty by touching it. Fatty fingerprints anyone?
I gotta stop eating french fries while gaming ;)

So I bought New Super Mario Bros as well of course, the main reason to get the bloody thing in the first place, and, yes, it is as good as everyone says.
Pure classic Mario goodness. It shows that Nintendo can still make games like they used to, it's just that they can't be bothered most of the time.
It IS really easy though, and there's a lot of "been there, done that" moments, but still good.

Also bought Mario & Luigi RPG 2x2, which is as much fun as the original, which is good.

- Finished Final Fantasy XII, like, one month ago or something, and I can safely say it is NOT worth all the clamoring it's getting. It is seriously one of the most boring installments since....well....Final Fantasy 1 probably.
Graphics are nice, FMV is INSANELY beautiful, as we've come to expect, but the story is boring, characters are dull and without personality, there's no build-up whatsoever, dungeons are straightforward and eventless, and Vahn is an annoying little shithead.
I did like the Mob-system, and the game is REALLY long if you bother with all the sidequest, but the question is if you want to bother with the main quest in the first place. To be honest, I don't see myself picking this game up again anytime soon making this the first FF EVER that I wouldn't want to replay. That's NOT good.
Shit, I even played FF8, like, 5 times or something.
I have no clue why this game is getting rave reviews, but then the same thing happened with Dragon Quest VIII, so maybe I'm just becoming a boring old biddy (10 points if you know where that quote's from)

Seriously though, don't bother.

- I finally bought the sequel to one of my favorite games of ALL time: Valkyrie Profile. God how I loved the original. I want to have Lenneth's babies!
Um.
Right.
Anyhoo, Sylmeria (the sequel) stays true to its roots by playing entirely in 2D, although this time round it sports eye-poppingly beautiful (GOD I HATE TYPING THAT WORD, CHANGE THE GODDAMN SPELLING! Personally, I blame the French) 3D backgrounds.
Technically very impressive, but so far, rather easy and lacking the open-endedness and variety of the original. I wasn't expecting this to top its predecessor, and it definitely looks like that won't happen. Even Sakuraba's soundtrack, which I was really looking forward to, lacks his normal OOMPH. The original VP had some kick-ass Dungeon Themes (almost all of them), but the OST is kinda lacklustre so far.
Still nice game though, cos it's goddamn Valkyrie Profile, and I had to wait 6 years for a friggin' sequel.

- Saving the most positive for last: I finished Shadow Hearts II last week, and I absolutely LOVED every second of it. I'll play the Third game in the series once I finish VP Sylmeria, but Shadow Hearts is rapidly growing into one of my favorite RPG Series EVER at this rate.
The first game had a great dark and moody atmosphere with unique presentation and a really unorthodox setting for a Japanese RPG, and the sequel maintains the great atmosphere, although it's a lot less dark now. There are still a couple of shocking moments though, but it's often very lighthearted as well.
In fact, this game's got one of the most delightful senses of humor I've found in a game in a LONG time. It's EXTREMELY Japanese at times, but done very well, it likes to poke fun at itself, which is always good in my book, and Yuri is simply one of the funniest and most likeable Main Heroes I've seen, well, EVER.

In fact, I liked almost every cast member, Rasputin is one of the coolest Badguys this side of Sephiroth (shame he wasn't actually the final boss), and the person who DOES turn out to be the final boss is great as well. I won't spoil it for you, but I didn't really see it coming, and it's great to have a Bad Guy who's not single-mindedly evil (*cough*Kefka*hack*) but actually has a personal past and most amazingly, it felt really nice to have a final boss whom you're not so much angry with as you feel kinda sorry for.
Everything about this game just felt totally great. It was rather too easy, but that has never been a major point of criticism for any game for me. The encount rate was amazingly LOW for a Japanese RPG, or any RPG for that matter, making it very relaxed and non-stressful. Great humor, likeable, funny characters, great story with a beautiful touching ending, a shitload of Side-quests, a lengthy main quest with a LOT of variety, greath graphics, nice soundtrack, so in short, THE ENTIRE PACKAGE.

Also, it's tied in very closely with the original, which is rather rare in RPG's, so you'll have to play the original if you want to follow the story, but believe me, it's worth every frigging second.

This is what I play games for!

And now I am going to eat. Otherwise I'll die.

The End of an Era

2006-05-25T11:06:00.000+02:00

The PS2 is dead! Long Live the PS2!

Last weekend the Noble Drs. Summerhouse graced my humble abode with his enlightening presence, and as soon as he set foot in my room, it was clear that there was only one thing we HAD to do (apart from depraved sodomical acts of the flesh), which was: Bring an End to the Tyrannical Rule of the Evil King PS2.

For years it has been bothering me with it's crappy disc-reading problems, forcing me to keep opening and closing that STUPID disc tray thingy (What a BLOODY stupid idea that was. Why does it always take Sony several YEARS to figure out what is the best design for their machines? Especially ironic since the New version is top-loading LIKE THE VERY FIRST PSX. Idiots), until it would, sometimes, succeed at reading the disc.
Can I get a "Hurray, first Model PS2!"?
I thought not.

Fortunately for the benign Drs. Summerhouse, I am enough of an asshole to actually lend people my extremely defective hardware, so he was able to witness FIRST-HAND (expect many more Hand references in this post) the Evil Powers of this Dark, Dark Device.

So without further ado, we took our victim to the top of Mount Dorm, and we contemplated on how to most effectively and violently destroy this piece of Rather Inferior Hardware.
Plenty of good ideas were offered, but since I don't actually own a toolshop, we were going to have to do this with what God has given us, ie. Our Hands and an extreme amount of blind violence and a knack for wanton destruction.

Now, extremely unfortunately, there are no pictures of the actual demolishing.
This has been recorded on Video as a warning to posterity and indefinite proof of the malificent aura surrounding this infernal machine.
As of this moment, these Video's are in careful possession of the Wise Drs. Summerhouse, who is keeping them securely locked in a titanium vault in the middle of the Andes to make sure noone attempts to copy the last remaining fragments of the PS2's demonic reign.
This means in normal language, that I will not be able to put them up on this site, let alone actually recieve them in some way or other. But rest assured, like The Ring, this video will find its way to the outside world some day.

After some serious throwing around, and scaring people away with the noise, we decided to return to my room, to take the subject apart for further investigation.
This too has been recorded on Camera, and it provides possibly the most shocking proof of the PS2's Dark Essence, because whilst I was using the utmost of my destructive powers, the PS2, believe it or not, actually FOUGHT BACK and frigging BIT ME. I swear to God, we have proof.

It.
Fucking.
Bit.
Me.

"It can't bite you! It's a Machine!" I hear you cry in desparate voices, hoping that perhaps you can convince yourself, but NO! Nothing is further from the truth!
The PS2 is a freakish mixture of Dark Matter and pure solidified EVIL.

It gave me a sharp quick snap in the left hand which would have made a Mother Crocodile proud, completely severing (or at least slightly wounding) my Pinky. And I can tell you now, that you people out there should be goddamn happy you still have a fully functioning Pinky.
You never know how important your Pinky is, until you have to live without it, and mine has been out of service for a couple of days now.

The wound is deeper than the deepest thought, thought at the bottom of the deepest ocean, sometimes I can hear screams coming from the inside.

Blood gushed forth immediately after the first attack, and I wisely withdrew my badly damaged hand to prevent further trauma to my extremities. It tried to take a couple more fingers, but I kicked it away with my harnessed foot and left it crying softly, but panting violently, in the corner of my room, where it slowly started to loose all signs of life, EXCEPT FOR MY PINKY.
I carefully inspected my wound, and noticed that I could see the bone, since, basically, there was no flesh left to hide it. What is it with PS2's and damaged hands? You tell me.

After making absolutely perfectly sure it was safe, I picked up the battered King of Darkness and inspected its fatal wounds. I then proceeded to write my name on it in Katakana, as one would a hunting trophy (at least, that's what Zorro used to do. Partly)

And here's a picture of the Perished Ruler. Be warned, it is not for the faint-hearted.

But barbarians we are not, so we decided to pay Sauron's Elder Brother his last respects by giving him a proper burial, ie we lobbed it on the garbage heap.
It seemed to feel very much at home there.
I LIKE this picture.

And that is how Kings die and New Ages are born.
The King's younger, smaller, shinier, better functioning brother has taken his sibling's place and is now working hard to repay the debts his predecessor has made.
It will probably reign steadily until its Prodigial Child sees the light of day in November, but at a severe cost.
Noone knows the future of this trouble-ridden Realm. Where will the New Powers take us? Perhaps the expected Prince will have to bow to Young Lord 360, although his reign does not seem to extend very far across the boundaries of the West.
Or perhaps the brightly burning light in the East indicates that the son of the Duke of Cube will wield the Nunchu....I mean Scepter.

We shall have to wait and see.

E What?

2006-05-09T12:08:00.000+02:00

Yes, it's that time of the year again, and even though E3 hasn't officially started yet (I think), some stuff has already leaked onto the Internet like it tends to happen.

I'm not going to regurge all the information you can find anywhere else, so I'll just direct you to www.gametrailers.com for the necessary Footage.

So first impressions:

1. GODDAMN Metal Gear Solid 4 looks amazing. This can't be all realtime can it?
If it is then the XBox 360 can really pack its bags, which it should anyway.

2. Hey, FFXII hasn't even been released outside of Japan yet, but here's FFXIII arriving in a mess of other related games apparently. Looks nice and impressive, but a little bit too much like Final Fantasy X-2 for my taste. Don't know what to make of this yet. Looks great though.

3. I don't really give a damn about Sony ripping off Nintendo's ideas of 3D control, but I'm more bothered by their Microsoft-esque stunt of selling two separate versions of the PS3, problem is the cheapest one is going to be 499 BUCKS. Add another 100 for the Full version and you've got yourself one Expensive Mutha.
But shit, if it looks anything like what has been shown so far I'll be all over this.
I'm a bit worried about getting a first model though, Sony doesn't really have a clean reputation when it comes to functionability. ie. Their bloody machines keep crashing. Bastards.

Well, that's it.
Oh and on some unrelated notes I'd like to say:

4. FFXII is starting to PISS ME OFF. Seriously, I came THIS *makes tiny handmotion* close to putting it down FOR GOOD yesterday. I'd been doing fine until I suddenly ran into one extremely motherfucking hard boss, who kept kicking my ass over and over, and after, like 4 tries I was seriously fed up, but I managed to scrape in a victory with one character standing with 1 HP or something.
And you know what the bloody Irony of it all is? THE BOSS WAS DOCTOR CID!
Fucking Asshole.
Oh, that was kind of a spoiler by the way, just so you know.
I swear if they pull this kind of stunt again, I'm NOT going to finish this game, making it the first since.......well actually making it the first FF EVER I didn't finish after starting it.
I'll admit I had trouble with 4 and 5 as well though.
Bleh, I wanna start playing my Shadow Hearts games already.

5. Don't think I mentioned this yet, but I bought Baten Kaitos 2 for around 4400 Yen or something. Absolutely LOVED the original, so I'm sure I'll enjoy this since very little seems to have changed. I'm going to finish Paper Mario 2 first though.

6. Dammit, the more I think about it the more I love Shadow of the Colossus.
I've been listening to the soundtrack a LOT lately and it's just so damn beautiful, especially if you've played the game and enjoyed the fantastic visuals that accompany it. I'm going to have to get this game, even though I already completed a borrowed copy, cos I just NEED to have this for myself.
It's getting dangerously close to becoming one of the best games I've ever played.
Oh, and: FUCK GOD OF WAR.

Shit

2006-04-26T08:02:00.000+02:00

Woohoo!
Went to the local Cheap-ass Book/DVD/CD/Game store and picked up some nice games yesterday. Shadow Hearts 2 for only 1980 Yen, including a short guidebook, and Shadow Hearts 3 for 2980 Yen which is also fairly cheap.

There has to be a reason why this post is titled 'shit', though, hasn't there?
Yes, and it is: My PS2 finally seems to have given the ghost.
After trying to watch several rented (ie. Severely Damaged) DVD's and messing up most of the movies my PS2 decided that it was getting too old for this, and now it won't read my games at all anymore either.
Yeah, that's great quality there, Sony.

Why are my fucking 14 year old SNES and GB still working, when my 6 year old PS2 isn't, and my PSX has been freezing up a lot as well lately (Before I left to Japan).
Dammit, I have a bloody NES that still works....uh....reasonably well.
At least it plays games.

So I guess I'm going to have to buy another one, cos wouldn't you know it, FFXII was JUST getting interesting (there's irony for ya) with me getting my first Summon and the story finally starting to go somewhere (after only 15 hours!) so I can't really wait until the PS3 hits stores, can I. No, I can't.
I'll try and pick one up cheap somewhere in the course of this week (I hope), or else I'll just steal one. There are these things that the Japanese just expect foreigners to do, don't ya know.

As a pastime though, I decided to fire up Paper Mario RPG yesterday, and it's great fun, as I had expected. It doesn't need 15 hours to become good, it's immediate fun from the beginning, UNLIKE SOME OTHER GAMES. Which shall remain nameless.

As a further Poke in the eye from God, the Silent Hill Movie has been released anywhere but here in Japan it seems, and it turns out to be real good actually (for the fans at least). Apparently the director has stayed VERY close to the games in terms of looks and sound, which is ALL I want from this movie anyway, so I know I'm going to love it already.
Which makes waiting until summer even harder, bunch of assholes.

Bah!

*Update since I wrote this, which was 2 days ago, but the bloody computer wouldn't update my blog*

Bought myself a new PS2, cos the other one was crap.
I am now the proud owner of one of those spiffy New Model PS2's, Satin Silver no less, and it actually plays my games, AND severely scratched and damaged rental DVD's without any trouble.
Damn my old Black Box which is, like, 15 TIMES BIGGER (you can use it to launch rockets) and yet doesn't do what it's supposed to.
Really, I had no idea the new Model was SO small and compact.
I put it on the old one, and it was a good thing the colors were different otherwise I might not have found it back anymore. Damn yo, is it ever seXAY!

SO, this means that the time has finally come to...do away...with my old PS2. I'm not sure if I'm going to sell this new model once the PS3 hits stores, since it's so damn HOT, and I read the PS3's backwards compatibility might be a bit restricted, like the XBox 360, so I'll probably hold onto it, but my old one is DEFINITELY going to bite the dust, in several very violent ways.
I'm still pondering over what I'm going to do to it, but I'm seriously considering breaking my fist on it. And I'm fairly certain there will be crowbars involved somewhere....

OMGMMOFFRPG

2006-04-21T10:31:00.000+02:00

You know what, I'm starting to like Final Fantasy XII less and less.

If you recall my post from some weeks ago I was not very hyped about it in the first place, but then I read a lot of positive reviews, and I was getting kinda anxious to buy it, and now that I own it, I'm slowly starting to shift back to where I was in the first place.

It's really too MMORPG-ish for my liking. Or at least, it's too much like FFXI for my liking. It seems all you're doing is walking across huge plains defeating endless enemies with a semi-active combat system, and occasionally you'll get a request to kill some monster that's WAY too powerful for you.
Dungeons and Open Areas offer NOTHING interesting whatsoever so far, just walking from point A to B, no puzzles, no gimmicks, NOTHING, just very pretty graphics.

Environments are HUGE, bigger than anything in the FF Universe so far, which makes it even more painful that there's nothing substantial to see or do.
Well, there's pretty graphics, but the design is so boring that it doesn't matter anyway.
Say what you want about Tetsuya Nomura, but at least he made stuff interesting.

And that's another thing, Final Fantasy has recently become famous for its abundant use of very pretty FMV, and this title definitely manages to top even the mighty FFX in terms of pretty FMV, but it just seems like they put in a lot of clips because they thought people expect it from FF nowadays.
FMV is extremely abundant once again, but more often than not, it's just people talking or walking around, which makes you wonder, why didn't they just do this in real-time?

Perhaps the reason is that the story is not exactly interesting or exciting in any way either. Like I said, if you like dark and serious stories a la FF Tactics or Vagrant Story, this'll be your cup of tea, but if, like me, you've grown to love the kind of New Age-y stories dealing with life and energy and stuff like that, and especially if you've grown fond of the series charming humor, this game is extremely disappointing.

In fact, they should've called this game Vagrant Story 2, because EVERYTHING points towards it. Same character design, Same composer (Hitoshi 'boring' Sakimoto), similar Battle System, samish story, only the latter two are even less interesting than in Vagrant Story.

There is no comic relief WHATSOEVER, no funny or likeable characters, just people being all moody and serious all the time. It used to be that at least the story would keep me going, but I'm not interested by this one at all.
In fact, I wouldn't even know what it's about, it's just some run-of-the-mill War Story of two huge feuding countries with some tiny-ass country stuck in the middle, lots of politics and backstabbery of course and non-stop yawning as far as I'm concerned.

I keep waiting desperately for this game to pick up and overwhelm me with its true greatness, but even after 11 hours or so, this still hasn't happened. I'm going to persist though, cos I'll be damned if I let an FF game get the best of me, but so far I don't feel like replaying it at all.
And that's another thing, I don't know about you, but when I play a really great game, I tend to want to start over again, before I've even finished it.
Along the way you're bound to find out lots of cool and new stuff, and you'll go "Hey, I shoulda known that from the beginning, then I could've done this or that", and sometimes I do. This, for me, is a sign of a great game, and I still have that feeling with good games, but FFXII so far has done nothing for me in that respect.

I'll keep you posted on any happenings, but so far, this is looking like one of the least interesting FF's since....well....ever.

Tell me why it is so goddamn expensive again?

New Investments

2006-04-17T04:22:00.000+02:00

Update? What? Here?

HERE!?

YES! Finally, your prayers have been answered.
Or in other words, I finally got to spend some money yesterday, which had just been burning in my pockets, itching to be spent on GAMES and related articles.

Well, first of all, I was going to need a TV of course, which I have now, but immediately afterwards I went out to celebrate my new aqcuirement by buying even more stuff! Woohoo!

So, what did I get?:

- Rockman X8 Guide (500 Yen)
- Rockman EXE 5 Guide (550 Yen)
- Paper Mario RPG Story (I forget, it's become too complicated) 2 (3200 Yen)
- Final Fantasy *gasp* XII for 7200 *fucking* Yen.

GODDAMN FFXII is expensive. Holy Hell. And this one was cheaper because I got a used one from Book Off, the original price is, like, 8500 Yen or something. INSANE!

Of course FFXII is the only game I've spent time with so far, and it's a lot more enjoyable than I would've expected so far. It's really quite different from previous FF's though, which might not suite everyone's taste, but it might also serve to attract other people.
The promotional blurb for the game said something like "for those who think the last couple of FF games were so-so", which is a hell of a way to promote a game in such a long-running series.

But the fact is right there that this game is wildly different from other FF's, and that's definitely going to put some people off, but like I said before, Square is talented and experienced enough to make a great game out of it anyway, even if it doesn't feel like Final Fantasy.

It's really very much like playing an MMORPG, without the MMO part.
So.
Uh.
I guess it's like playing an RPG :S

But seriously, in terms of mechanics and gameplay it's very much like what you'd expect from an MMORPG, it's just not online, which means you only get to talk to Artificial Intelligence controlled characters who keep saying the same thing, which is actually considerably less annoying than Real Stupidity controlled humans.

The graphics look much better than pictures can show (which seems to be the case with every game nowadays. Maybe we just need better camera's) and the movies, as usual, are astounding. And plentiful.

By far the most enjoyable part, as with most FF games, is the ability system, this time presented in the shape of the License Board.
In the beginning of the game you only have a handful of licenses, but by defeating enemies you will gain License Points (LP), allowing you to open up more space on the board, which in turn grants access to new skills and new equipment.
Most skills and equipment have to be bought separately before you can use them though, so new abilities don't come easy.

So far though, levelling up and earning money seems to be easier than most reviews make it out to be. Enemies never drop money, but they will often drop items which can be sold for a decent price. Kill several enemies of the same kind, and you will form chains, and the higher the chain gets, the more likely an enemy is to drop something, and the more rare the item will be.
It's a good system, and since combat is easy and straightforward and most of all NOT RANDOM, I haven't experienced any trouble or irritation yet.

The only problem is that, like in MMORPG's, there will also be enemies walking around that are WAY out of your league, from the very start of the game, which is kinda stupid if you ask me.

As for the story, we're getting one of those stories where 56 different countries seem to be at war with each other and I'm sure there's going to be lots of back-stabbery and hard-to-remember names. There's a reason this world was based on the Final Fantasy Tactics series.
The story starts out great though, full of drama and action, and people are dropping like flies in the first hour or so, but then you get control of Vaan, the Hero, and the pace starts slowing down considerably, which I guess is good for a breather.

I've spent most of my time so far doing small quests. The game uses a Clan Quest system like found in, again, most MMORPG's, and it's very enjoyable.

I can definitely see this going somewhere, but I'm not expecting it to top Final Fantasy X, by a long shot.

Ingen in Japan!

2006-03-30T12:22:00.000+02:00

Just to let you know, I created a brand-spanking New Blog, which I will be using for my misadventures in Japan. Aptly titled Ingen in Japan! it can be found at http://timinjapan.blogspot.com

Damn the dude who stole my ingen.blogspot.com 4 years ago!

The site will be entirely in Dutch, since most of my family will be reading it, probably, and heck, most of the people reading this one are Dutch too, so there.
I'll keep this blog for my gaming life, since I don't think my family wants to know about my games, and I don't think YOU want to know about my personal life, so that takes care of everything nicely.

April 4th is when I will be leaving, and then things are going to change drastically around here. Cos I will have Japanese Internet.

Woohoo!

Awaiting the End

2006-03-14T22:30:00.000+01:00

I don't know if ANYONE's noticed, but apparently, the day after tomorrow is going to see the release of Final Fantasy XII (in Japan of course).

Now is it just me, or does it seem like this game is not getting the hype that is normal around the release of a new Final Fantasy? I remember everyone was in a total state of "WHEN THE F*CK IS IT GOING TO BE OUT?" when Final Fantasy X was about to hit stores, but perhaps that was understandable, since it was the first FF for a new console and it was going to be the first one to be in full 3D.

Then along came Final Fantasy XI, and everyone was like:
"When's it going to be out?"
"It IS out, and it HAS BEEN out for some months now!"
"Oh okay. So, what's for dinner?"

And that's good, cos it sucked anyway. That didn't stop Square from rereleasing it on PC and now even on XBox 360 though. Got.....to.....make.....more MONEY!
Or ANY money, for that matter.

But deep down inside, Square KNOWS that FFXI bombed like the piece of....uh.....bomb that it was, despite all the effort they put into it, and dammit, those bloody punters WILL play our great Online Experience whether they goddamn want it or not!

So in comes Final Fantasy XII, apparently. From what they've shown so far, the game borrows heavily from Online RPG-esque style gameplay, and THAT, my friends, is where they're going wrong right there.
Cos let's face it, the SOLE selling point of Online RPG's, is the fact that they're online. The fun in MMORPG's (God, I hate that acronym) consists largely of the fact that you can hang around with people from all over the world, form clans/guilds whatever, and team up to tackle dungeons and do some serious killing.
And that's great in its own right, very enjoyable, and scarily addictive, but let's be honest here, the gameplay itself is hardly every anything to write home about.

I like the whole Quest-based system and being free to do what you want, but combat, which I consider to be the axis of ANY RPG, is dangerously boring in most cases.
Let's be fair here, even the Almighty World of Warcraft, great as though it is, would not nearly be as much fun when played in a static, offline environment, the kind of environment that is common in Console RPG's.
And that's fine, cos World of Warcraft is in fact NOT a static offline RPG, but a dynamic Online experience with millions of players worldwide.

From this point of view it makes sense to say that Console RPG's are, generally speaking, more fun to play on your own, and tend to have better fighting systems, simply because the better and more strategic and rewarding kind of combat (I'm thinking of Valkyrie Profile, Megaman Battle Network, Grandia, to name but a few) would simply not work in an Online Environment.

And again, that's all well and good, but the problem here is that Square is going to bring the stale kind of monster-mashing found in most Online RPG's, and turn it into a fully fledged OFFLINE RPG, including the Quests and whatnot, but EXCLUDING the most essential element, ie Other People.

The game has already been receiving a lot of bad rap from critics AND fans alike, not simply because it's such a significant departure from the original formula, but because it is in all actuality just not a very good idea. I've seen enough in-game footage to have a rather negative impression of the battle system and from what first-hand reports have told me, I'm probably right.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm a total consumer whore, and I WILL be getting this game.
But it's not because the ideas or prospects of the game excite me, but merely because this is a Square game we're talking about, and they've enough Experience under their Mythril Belt to make something enjoyable even out of the dumbest RPG ideas. (That's a rule that goes ONLY for Square's RPG's though, I'm not touching their other games with a 10 ft. Masamune) even the moronic Final Fantasy VIII was still a joy to play, simply because Square knows how to put in enough interesting things to make a game fun anyway.

Famitsu scores it 40 out of 40, which is....odd to say the least, but I'm sure I'll get it eventually. It's just kind of weird that what was once a Giant Happening in Videogame Land now seems to be going past without too many people noticing. But perhaps I merely have the wrong impression, I'm not in Japan right now anyway.
The Japanese Amazon states that the game is already sold out, even though it hasn't been released yet, so I'm sure Square'll be okay, and I don't really know how much buzz there is on the streets (Bert?), but it seems that Western Press at least is less than excited.

We'll see how this goes. Keep watching these pages ;)

Misc.

2006-03-08T12:28:00.000+01:00

Alright, ALRIGHT!

I can take a not-so subtle hint.

Let me assure you that this is only the proverbial calm before the storm, so to speak. That is to say: not really.
What with my departure to Japan drawing ever closer, my daily life is becoming increasingly hectic and busy, so I'm not exactly taking the time to write "extensive" reviews anymore.

I still prefer actually playing games over reviewing them, and if I have to cut time-corners somewhere, this blog is most likely to be the first thing to be compromised. I guess I just don't love you as much as you do me.
But rest assured, plenty of gaming is STILL being done, every day, relentlessly.
It's just that, now that the Project has officially gone to the Gods more or less, there's no real use in writing about it anymore.

In due time, I will leave this Godforsaken country and take up residence in a country that has been forsaken by even more gods, and I cannot tell right now if I will have ready access to a computer. I'm sure they have plenty of computers at University, but I don't know where I will be stationed, so to speak, and when I hear the stories about this University apparently lying in the middle of the mountains

(photo courtesy of www.niallmurtagh.info)

I kinda hope I won't be getting a room on Campus, but that inevitably means I won't have easy access to computers, unless I resort to Internet Cafés, which I usually don't.
I will write the occasional review, but probably only for new/obscure games, so that at least there is SOME journalistic value to this blog (yeah, right).
Like I've stated before, it is extremely likely that this is going to be more of a Diary than anything else. I'm considering getting a decent Digital Camera so I can post pictures of my Misadventures in the Kansai Area, and regail you with my many tales of undoubtedly Chinese nature. Bastards.

I'm also considering starting an entirely New Blog altogether, since it seems like Sacrilege to befoul these Sacred Project Pages with everyday mundane banter, and since my Family will also probably be reading my Daily Blurb (and I say 'daily' only in the purely figurative sense) I might want to keep Game stuff and Boring stuff apart.

Did you know about this?:
Song of the Week

It's a kind of contest for obscure Video Game Music, where VGM enthusiasts nominate music from the more obscure games for an officious reward of sorts, like Eternal Fame or something. It's like elections, only interesting and fun. It's a weekly contest and anyone can join, provided you like Game Music.
Apparently it's been going on for 50 weeks now, but I only learned of it recently, so I started participating from week 48 or something.

I made my first own nomination, Deadbolt from the Johnny Bazookatone Soundtrack, and it's nice to see people affirming that I have good taste.

This is what one of the Moderators at the Gamingfore Forums said about it:

Johnny Bazookatone - Deadbolt - I haven't heard of this game in years. Such an awesome name for a character. The track though, it definitely blew me away with its ambience and cool funk slickness. It's smooth as rich, chocolate mousse and practically flows from the speakers in mellow, syncopated waves of bliss. I LOVE the synthesized trance beat and resonant guitar. The sax wails with grace and charm. I can't get over how eclectic and really, really stylish "Deadbolt" is.
Also, this track was submitted by a newcomer, making it an even more pleasant surprise. Thanks!

So, basically, I rule. Not that I have anything to do with the music itself, but seeing one of your personal favorite songs getting critical acclaim because of your nomination just feels like a nice pat on the back.

Oh, and if there's actually anyone out there who cares, please gimme some feedback on what you want me to do with the site, and if you would be interested in my Japan adventures AT ALL.

- Ingen out -

Prêt à Porter

2006-02-24T22:49:00.000+01:00

Occasionally, I actually have some money to spend, in between the Telephone Bills, Medical Bills, Insurance Bills, Taxes and Transportation costs (I love being an adult), and after finally receiving some payment from my Boss, and with an imminent bonus from my Health Insurance (it's about bloody time they started paying ME for something), I decided I was allowed to spend a little bit of money on luxury items.

Now normally, I tend to say that I'm not much of a Portable gamer, because I don't spend nearly as much time on my Gameboy Advance as I do on my Home Consoles, but lately I've been kinda hooked on portable gaming again, when I found out it's actually a lot more fun than reading on the bus, and time literally FLIES by when you immerse yourself in a good Adventure.

I have to travel to my job by bus for about 40 minutes (one way) every day, and after playing Rockman EXE 1&2 as part of the project, I decided I wanted more.
Now there were 2 options available to me.
Well, actually, there were 3, but buying a PSP, is not REALLY an option, is it?
I mean, come on.

So the first option was to get a DS. I still DEFINITELY want one, and I know I'll be getting one, it's just that I've been postponing it, like, forever. There's definitely a bunch of games I'm dying to play, so I was on the verge of getting one, until the thought of the second option hit me.
Also, the fact that Nintendo recently announced they'll be releasing the DS Lite in Japan soon, and that, on the very same day actually, the new Seiken Densetsu, entitled Children of Mana, will also be released, made me hope for a nice bundle package, which I will be sure to pick up there, as soon as I get there, if any of that will ever happen.
I decided that getting a DS right now would be stupid, what with the new and improved version on the near horizon, so I chose otherwise. I still need to have something to do on the bus, and more importantly, on that goddamn 11 hour flight to Japan, on the inevitable transfer times at the airport and on the first couple of nights there when I will probably not have a TV yet.

So I bought this:

That's right, the Extreme Flash Advance Linker II.
The Wha?

Exactly.

The Extreme Flash Advance Linker II is one of the many available Flash Cards for the GBA, but one of the few ones to hold as much as 1Gb (that's GigaBIT, not BYTE, before you start freaking, so it's "only" 128 Megabyte or so).
And what it does is, it holds a very nice amount of GBA ROMs (the average game is between 8 and 16 MB, so it holds between 8 and 16 games, depending on size), making this a very nice cartridge to carry with you.
No more carring around dozens of games with you, just one small cartridge with all your favorite stuff. Now, of course you're legally obligated to use this cartridge only for back-up purposes of games you actually own, but just IMAGINE how much fun you could have if you just put a shitload of great games on that you simply don't want to buy, because you're a cheapskate. I mean, for argument's sake, just IMAGINE.
That would be cool, if it were legal.

Ahem.

But these trinkets are really cool, and easy as heck to operate.
This particular one came in a small handsome box, complete with two USB cables (a long one, and a short one), and...well...nothing else.
You plug one end of the USB cable into the cartridge (there's a very tiny slot in there), the other end into your PC, and Bob is your Mother's Brother. There's no Software included in the box, for the very simple reason that you don't actually NEED any. I downloaded the necessary Software from the site where I bought the thing itself (very good Dutch site actually), but it's needlessly complicated and filled with Chinglish anyway.
As soon as you link up the cartridge to your computer, your PC recognizes it as an External Drive, and you can simply Drag & Drop (or Cut & Paste, if that's your preference, God knows it's made MY life a whole lot easier) the ROMs to the cartridge directly. Quick, Safe & Simple.

Fortunately, I was aware in advance, that the 1Gb it says on the front, is 1 GigaBIT, not byte, otherwise that would've been a nasty shock (it's only 8 TIMES as much), but there was still one slight disappointment.
Although you can store 128 MB of ROMs on your cartridge, you can actually only USE 32 MB at one time.
See, it's like the cartridge has Active and Passive Memory. The passive Memory holds 128 MB of games, but only 32 of those can be put into the Active memory at one time, and those are the only ones you can play.
Still, Active and Passive Memory can be very easily exchanged, and Save files are stored separately, so you can play anything you want at anytime, from anywhere you last saved. Nice.

Also, if I am to believe the promotional blurb, this cartridge can be used on DS as well (not for DS games of course, but for playing GBA games on your DS), so I'll be able to use it until it EXPLODES, which I'm sure will happen some day.
It should also be able to handly Gameboy and GB Color games, although I haven't been able to get that to work yet.

If there's one thing that this positive experience has taught me, and it hasn't, it's that, and I reiterate my previous statement, the Megaman Battle Network/Rockman EXE series is totally goddamn cool. They're PERFECT for bus & train travelling.
Easy to pick up, and with a save system that allows you to save at practically ANY given time, easy to put down as well, for when you've reached your destination.
Pure fun, great longevity and just kick-ass gameplay all-round. These games motherf*cking RULE.

That's right.
I actually SAW one of them doing it to their mother.

So, in short, a fairly costly purchase, almost as expensive as a new DS would've been, but you get a great item in return, instead of a soon-to-be-improved portable with no game included.

I'm happy.

Rockman EXE 2

2006-02-19T13:19:00.000+01:00

Otherwise known as Megaman Battle Network 2.

Now, if you keep in mind that I've said I'm only going to be reviewing games that stand out somehow (in a positive or a negative sense), AND you know that I'm a huge Megaman Fan, you probably know where this is going.

But honestly, even if I weren't a huge Megaman Fan (what a Universe that would be) it is completely obvious that this is a truely fantastic game. Truth be told, my Megaman Fandom doesn't reach much further than the 2D Platform games, and I've shunned most everything else sporting the Blue Bomber's name.
I have no interest in the Legends/Dash series, since 3D Megaman doesn't seem right (unless it PLAYS like 2D), nor do I feel the desire to play RockBoard:

Or Megaman Soccer or Battle & Chase, or anything else they care to crap out and put our little Blue Hero in.

So it was with heavy doubt that I decided to pick up Rockman EXE 1 one day (actually, I downloaded a ROM, but that doesn't sound as dramatic does it?) thinking that anything outside of the regular 2D Megaman's was NEVER going to turn out very good.

How wrong I was.
The Megaman Battle Network series is easily one of the best Action RPG series in existence and they are as brilliant as they are simple and easy to pick up.
Although I'll be the first one to admit the series has gone up and down in quality a lot the past couple of years (3 was still good but had some unnecessary changes, 5 was half decent, and the less said about 4 the better (I'm not even counting 4.5 as a game). 6 is as good as the old ones though), the first two were really good.

The very first Rockman EXE introduced the characters and the concept.
You play as Hikari Netto, a young boy living in Akihara Town, a quiet little town.
In Netto's world, everyone has a so-called P.E.T., or Personal something Terminal, I forget. Inside this PET is a Navi, a small intelligent program, with the ability to think and act on its own, but with infallible loyalty towards its owner.
Not only that, but the World Wide Web, and basically anything electronic now has visible landscapes, meaning you can actually navigate your Navi's around them and talk to other Navi's and Programs.

But a game like that wouldn't be very interesting if there weren't some enemies to destroy, and they come in the shape of Viruses, or Viri if you insist.
Viruses are also visible entities, which have to be deleted on the spot by using your Navi's weapon and a LARGE variety of Battle Chips.

As soon as you run into a Virus, the battle screen will pop up and your Battle folder will open. Your battle folder holds 30 Battle Chips which can be used for a variety of effects. Most are for attacking, but others are for healing, defense, summons, placing objects and many other things.
At the start of the battle 5 chips are randomly selected and you have to choose which you want to use. In principle you can only select one chip at a time, but you can also select more of the same chip if they appear, or you can select chips with the same code.
Every chip has a letter code (from A to Z), and chips with the same code can be chosen at the same time for one battle turn. Once you've chosen your chips, the battle commences, and you will note that the battle arena is made up of 18 panels.
9 on the left for you, and 9 on the right for the enemy. You get to walk around in your own area as much as you want, and you can use your standard Mega Buster as much as you want to, but it's not very strong.
The key to fighting effectively is combining your chips and chosing the right ones for the right circumstances to finish the battle as quickly as possible.
Sometimes, the same kind of chips have different codes in alphabetical order. When you choose these in the right order (for instance: Cannon A, B & C) you will get a so-called Program Advance, a special combo attack which has a variety of effects.
In this case you get Zeta Canno, which allows you to shoot unlimited cannons for 5 seconds, whilst being invincible. But there are also combinations of different chips with the same code that form very powerful group attacks or singular ones.

In fact, if you've played Baten Kaitos, you should have a decent idea of how this works, only, this system is EVEN better than Baten Kaitos, because:
A) You get to move around freely
B) There are no Battle Turns, it's all active combat
C) The Combo's actually make sense and are easy to find out.

Thus, battles are a tremendous amount of fun, they're active, fast-paced and intuitive, and they actually require some thinking as well.
The amount of different kinds of Battle Chips differs per game, but there's usually somewhere between 200 and 300. You get a Data Library that shows which chips you've found already, making collecting very enjoyable.

But how do you get chips?
Well, of course you can buy them in shops, you can trade with NPC's, there are Chip Trading Machines that give you a random chip in exchange for a bunch of your own, and you can even exchange with human players through the Link-Up cable.

But the first and foremost way of gathering chips is: fighting.
And this is where the true brilliance of the series comes in.
EVERY single virus you meet, from the smallest insignificant little Mettaur to the Largest Kick-Ass Navi (most of them are restyled versions of bosses from the old Megaman Games) has AT LEAST 1 unique Battle Chip, that can only be acquired from that Virus and that Virus alone.
The key to getting these chips is to fight as skilfully as possible.
At the end of each battle, you get a Grade, from 1 to 10, and finally S if you're really good. The higher your score, the bigger the chance of getting that elusive chip.
The decisive factors in getting a grade are as follows:
A) Your movement. The more you move, the lower your score. 1 point is deducted for the first step, 2 if you make 2 or more.
B) Your dodging skills. The more you get hit, the lower your score.
C) Your Speed. The faster you finish the battle, the higher your score.
D) Your SKILLZ. The more virusises you delete with one blow, the higher your score.

In effect, this makes battles EXTREMELY exciting. This is one of the very few games I know that VERY effectively reward skill and accomplishment, instead of the many many games out there that merely punish your mistakes. Rewards is what this game is all about. The better you get, the more you will get out of the game.
If you only bother with the main story, there will not be much trouble.
It's not too hard, save some boss battles and event battles every now and then, but it's perfectly playable until the last boss. Finding secret items and stuff is a lot harder, but it will in effect make the game easier, the further you get.
The more your try, the better the game gets.

There's a wealth of extra bosses and extra events and areas AFTER you finish the game, making this one of the most replayable games EVER. If you are into collecting and getting the most out of a game, this series is almost ENDLESS fun.
Finishing the game is easy and fun enough, getting all chips and defeating extra bosses is a challenge unlike anything else. It's as hard as you want it to be, and you are completely free in your decisions.
There's SO much stuff to do here it'll make your head spin, and there are no words to describe the nice warm and fuzzy feeling you'll experience when obtaining a particularly hard to get chip. You'll know you got it because you did GOOD.

The first game is still rather basic, but the second, and the one up for review here, perfects the formula. The Internet is easier to navigate, you get a Regular Memory to set 1 chip as a regular, meaning it will turn up EVERY time a battle starts, there are subitems to heal, avoid battles, and search for particular enemies, and EVEN MORE chips.
Also there is even more of a strategic factor to battles with the introduction of different panels and different elements. Ice panels are slippery but double Lightning damage, Grass Panels heal Wood-based creatures but double fire damage, Lava Panels are safe for Fire creatures, but damage everything else, Magnetic Panels draw in enemies, Holy Panels halve damage, etc. etc.
There is a HUGE variety of battle environments, which all encourage different fighting styles and different strategies, the possibilities are almost endless.

It's incredible how much fun this game gets and how rewarding it is.
Even regardless of what you think of Megaman, this game is truely fantastic.
It deserves a nice 9.6.

There's no continuity in the series, so you don't have to play them in order.
Try this one, and if you like it, try 1, 3 and 6 as well.
If you don't, well, then you can just die. Seriously.

Secret of Mana

2006-02-08T10:42:00.000+01:00

Ted Woolsey for President!

Actually, no, but you gotta love the guy anyway.
And his English can't possibly be any worse than George W. can it?
Uhhh.

Well, anyway, I decided to dust off Secret of Mana again, as part of the project (I'm skipping the sequel because it's too much work and moving on to Legend of Mana), and, if anything, it has shown me that Pink is not a fashionable color for glasses.

This game is known as Seiken Densetsu 2 in Japan, or Legend of the Holy Sword 2.
It's a sequel to Seiken Densetsu 1 (bet you didn't see that one coming), which was released as Mystic Quest on Gameboy, here in the West.
Noone ever played that game apparently so they decided to give it an entirely different name for the sequel, which became one of the most popular SNES games EVER.

Is this justified?
Well, Yes AND No.

Well, okay, YES, but I just wanted to make the point that it has its problems.

Let me start at the beginning.
You play a Nameless Hero who one day finds a mysterious sword stuck in a rock at the bottom of a waterfall. An eery ghost tells him to remove it, and ghosts are never wrong, right? So the Hero pulls out the sword, and basically, that's the beginning of the end.
Monsters start roaming around, evil people start appearing and generally, people are not very happy anymore. The Obligatory Evil Empire is trying to resurrect the Ancient Mana Fortress and then have the Legendary Mana Beast crash into it to cause the destruction of the entire planet or something. It doesn't really make sense anyway.
In the course of the adventure, two other characters will join the Hero, a small Sprite with a very big Mouth, and a young aristocrat girl, whom I can only describe as "Sassy".

What ensues is an Action RPG full of monster bashing, equipment....uh....equipping, magic spells, weapon forging, Rabites, Moogles, Dwarves, Sprites and a little bit of Romance. Oh, AND Santa Claus and Rudolph. WTF!? I mean, WHY!?
And to put it mildly, this game is very very GOOD. Seriously.
It's one of the best Action RPG's the SNES has on offer, which unfortunately isn't saying very much. It also reminded me of the fact that they don't make games like this anymore. I don't mean games of this quality, because there's been better, but I literally mean games like this. I want a new Seiken Densetsu game in this vein, and hopefully the DS is going to bring it.
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles has been likened to this game, but it's nowhere near as good.

It's fun, action-packed, humorous, exciting, epic and it has one of the best SNES soundtracks EVAHR.
The great thing is that you can play with two friends to control each character separately, which is not only more fun, but it also saves a LOT of frustration.

Because as fantastic as this game may be, it's buggy as HELL.
Really. I haven't played a game this SERIOUSLY messy since, oh, any Sonic game.
And that includes the Sonic Adventure series. Holy Hell.

I already mentioned Ted Woolsey in the beginning, the Father of All Game Localizing, and also the kind of Father whom you're kinda ashamed of when you think of him. I mean, he means well and everything, but he tends to drool a little bit, he scares your girlfriends, makes stupid jokes and wears sweaty T-shirts. And there are some chips stuck in his beard.

I found an interview with the Good Man at some Geocities site:
TED WOOLSEY!
which incidentally happens to deal with the localization of Secret of Mana.
One interesting point he makes is that apparently he had to translate this game within ONE MONTH, and they didn't even give him the entire thing layed out in an easy to read way. And frankly, it shows.
The localization is very messy. Weird dialogues, faulty message-box layouts, and NON SEQUITURS abound, hahaha.

Still, that is not something we should blame on the game, cause logically, the Japanese version does not have this problem, and it's ridiculous to rate the English version lower than the Japanese one. I'm reviewing a GAME here, not a book.

It's a shame therefore that, if this game WERE a book, several pages would be missing, others would be stuck together in a suspicious way and the letters don't stay in their place.
The fact is that a lot of material was apparently left on the cutting room floor (uh. figuratively of course), and even in Japanese the story is a bit convoluted, not to mention the fact that dialogues are too confusing at time, simply because too many people are talking in ONE and the SAME message box WITHOUT any names (this only happens with smaller characters though, but it's still annoying)

But I can still forgive faulty story-telling since gameplay is the most important thing, but the problem is that the entire GAME is messy.
Please, do yourself a favor and play with your friends, because having the computer control the other two characters is an ORDEAL. They are IMMENSELY stupid.
They have no sense of intelligent movement. I know its hard to program Artificial Intelligence to have characters avoid attacks and everything, but it seems this game is worse than usual.

But the absolute Number 1 most frustrating thing is that they GET STUCK BEHIND ANYTHING. You see that small pebble lying on the ground there? THEY'LL GET STUCK BEHIND IT.
If you've ever played any RPG where you control a party of 3 (plenty of those around), you'll see that the 2nd and 3rd character tend to follow the leader in his EXACT footsteps, even if you decide to make a silly little dance (I'm easily entertained), but this is GOOD, cos it means they will follow you EXACTLY whereever you go.

Not so Secret of Mana. Presumably because each character has to be able to move on his own during battles, they are pretty much programmed to go where they please at ANY TIME. Many, MANY was the time where I would just move, well, anywhere and the second character ALWAYS follows like a good Sprite, but the one in the rear (and it's ALWAYS the BLOODY Girl, which just goes to show the reality of the engine I guess) tends to get stuck behind Trees, Walls, Stones, Tables, Chairs, Desks, Bushes, FLOWERS, ANY BLOODY THING. So you have to walk back to slap her in the face and then move on a little bit more slowly.
God, that's annoying.
Also, when you're being surrounded by enemies, FORGET about running, cos the computer is too stupid to follow you at that time. They figure: "Hey, the leader is running off, that must mean he wants US to deal with this horde of baddies! Let's do it!"

Oh, the Cups of Wishes I've spent.

But that's not all, I actually managed to get stuck MYSELF as well. Sometimes you're just wandering around, minding your own business, only to suddenly get stuck in a part of the scenery. It HAPPENS.
First time it was the computer actually (YES, THE GIRL) getting stuck, not behind, but IN a wall. I mean. IN A FRIGGIN WALL. Fortunately, there was one of those posts around that you can use your Whip on, which automatically gathers your entire party to one spot when you get close to it, no matter WHAT they're stuck in or behind.
Second time, it was ME getting stuck in between some rocks, I still don't know how I did that, and I had to use the Magic Rope to escape back to the beginning of the Dungeon. VERY nice.

Really, every game is allowed to have some bugs, I've been told it's IMPOSSIBLE to get them all out, but some games are considerably sloppier than others.
Now a SuperNES has cartridges, which are generally less accident-prone than CD's, but I'm not lying or exaggerating when I say this game has crashed or bugged on me considerably more often than most CD games I own.
Yes. It actually CRASHED on me once. It just froze. In the middle of the final dungeon. Great Job Square.

It's all the more frustrating if you consider the fact that, when the game IS functioning properly, it's absolutely awesome. It's SO damn good, that I'm prepared to turn a blind eye to most of the problems at hand here, but there are some minor things about the game itself that should've been improved.
For one thing, buying new equipment is a bit unclear. I mean, generally speaking, the most expensive item is the strongest, but you can't see any status improvements in the shopping window (the Ring Menu System rules all, though), and you have no idea whether it's an actual improvement over what you're already wearing.

Secondly, and this annoys me to no end, there are SO many empty and completely USELESS rooms in this game. Empty houses, okay, people need to go shopping sometimes, right? But empty rooms in dungeons and castles, I mean, WHY!?
Use that excess memory for something USEFUL dammit. Like BUGFIXING for instance.

Shit.

Seriously, without all these stupid things, this game would've scored a 10 probably, but as it is, I'm letting it off with a 9+, for being just really good.
They should still make more games like this though, they should just try testing it first.

Game Reviewing

2006-02-02T11:07:00.000+01:00

First of all: Sorry for the lack of updates recently, but it has entirely to do with my not caring. Haha. Seriously though, now that I know the Project cannot be finished I'm a bit less inclined to keep posting new reviews every other day, since the idea is kind of ruined now. Furthermore, it takes up a lot of time writing these posts, which is time that can also be spent on ACTUALLY playing games, so I'm getting kinda lazy here.
Of course, the Project is still on, for as long as I'm here, but I think the amount of posts may decline a little bit. Besides, seeing as how I'll be leaving in 2 months and I'm NOT going to take everything with me, I'm considering skipping the games I don't feel like playing again, to get to those I haven't even played at all. Also, I'm considering not reviewing every single game, but just doing the ones that stand out, in a good way or a bad way. In short, the integrity of the Project has been slightly tainted.
I will strive to keep this as game-related as possible, but I will probably occasionally use this as a diary of sorts, only less wussy. Cuz I iz a MAN!

Anyway, on the topic of Game Reviewing, today I would like to bother you with a slight rant about the state of Video Game Journalism, and more specifically DUTCH Video Game Journalism.

It sucks.

Thank you for reading.
Goodbye!

NO! I'm not letting them get away THAT easily.
You see, yesterday I recieved, as per usual, our trusty Veronica Magazine, not just a TV Guide, but an Entertainment Magazine with an opinion. Too bad their opinion tends to SUCK though. Yes. THEIR OPINION SUCKS. There, I've said it.
With all due respect though, because this Magazine IS one of the best TV Guides our country has to offer, it just needs to make sure it doesn't meddle in affairs it has no knowledge of.
I understand that it's hip and popular to jump on the Video Game Bandwagon nowadays, and that they've decided to incorporate a small 2 page Video Game Corner in their magazine, which in itself is a good thing.

The problem is though, that these people are complete amateures and they have no idea what they are talking about. These are people who apparently, judging by their reviews, got into gaming BECAUSE it was hip and popular, and not because they actually know how to enjoy a good game. They are Mainstream Gamers. *shudder*
It's a real shame, since their Video Game Corner was written in cooperation with Gammo, one of Holland's only Video Game TV programmes, and in all honesty, also one of the best (not because there's so few of them, but because it's actually pretty good).
Gammo actually, according to their own website, make a point of not judging the Games they play. They show the video's, they show the gameplay, they talk about what's what, and that's it. They don't say "YOU NEED TO GET THIS", which is a breath of fresh air, but they don't say "THIS GAME IS THE SUXXORZ!" either. Which is good.
They do offer some slight criticism sometimes, where necessary, but they don't tell you whether to get something or not.

But I still haven't spoken about the problem.
Well it is thus: This month is going to see the release of Shadow of the Colossus in our wonderful country, and already it seems the scale of the game is too big for Dutchmen to handle.
Veronica Magazine, in their internal wisdom, called this game "okay". They have several categories (they don't give grades), ranging from "sucks" to "okay" to "must-have" and finally "classic". I'm not really sure what the quality difference is between the last two categories, but there you go.
So let me stress once again that THE Best and most original PS2 game of 2005 (Hell, even if you think God of War was the best game last year, this is still stupid), a wonderful piece of art, a truely unique experience unlike anything you've ever played before, indescribably HUGE, beautiful and epic, showered with officious awards by many Gamesites, was called "okay" by these people.

Why?
Because there's not enough explosions.

I fuck you not

Okay, that's not what they said in words, but that's definitely what it boils down to. They acknowledged how extremely cool it was to climb and fell a Colossus, and yet they thought it was not good enough to reap a good score, simply because there are NO FRIGGING EXPLOSIONS.
See, thing is, they main problem for them was that:
A) After every Colossus you are sent back to the same shrine.

That's true, but it is in no possible way a bad feature of the game. It makes sense storywise, since the Shrine is the pivotal location in the game, and also, it is SLAM in the middle of the world map, meaning that every possible spot is easy to reach without spending too much time.

B) The world is too empty.

Granted, the world IS empty, apart from those 16 MOTHERF*CKING ENORMOUS creatures walking around (did I mention there are no loading times in this game? Not even FADE-OUTS!?), but so what? It's astoundingly gorgeous, and a pure pleasure to navigate, and you NEVER have to look very long for a Colossus.

But that's not what pissed me off, oh NO.
It's that little caption they put at the end. You see, only the week before, they gave a preview of Black, some First Person Shooter by EA (for CHRIST'S sake, EA!) which apparently had lots of pretty explosions and brute action.
So they put a caption at the end, saying something like "if you like Black, then this game is not for you". I mean, WHAT THE FUCK, YO!?

"hey you there!"
"Hunh?"
"What's that you're playing?"
"Uh. Shadow of the Colossus, sir. It's pretty good"
"Yeah, sure, but what if I told you that instead of playing that magnificently original game, with its beautifully aesthetic design, presentation and storyline you can also take this thirteen in a dozen FPS, and Blow Shit Up, WITH.....pretty explosions"
"Hot Dang, where do I sign up!?"

Right.

And to add insult to injury, they said "the older you are, the more likely you are to enjoy this game", and added a small age symbol saying '30'.
The sad thing is that this is probably even true, but you should read this as "The higher your IQ is/The more open-minded a gamer you are/The more sensitive you are to pure quality and originality, the more likely you are to enjoy this game."

I mean, everyone's entitled to their opinion of course, and there's no reason whatsoever to get so upset about a review in a small-time Magazine that has nothing to say in the VG Scene, but it just irked me because it was so examplary of the current attitude towards games in this country, or indeed, the West.
Even though most professional sites have recognized SotC as the magnificent piece of work that it is, it just seems to be wasted on all those Pig-headed Mainstream Gamers out there who won't buy a game that doesn't have A) A licensed soundtrack, B) Some American Sports Celebrity (FUCK YOU, EA), C) Some American Rapper D) Explosions or E) All of the Above.
They are the disgusting grease-stain on the clean tablesheet of gaming, they are what give all good gamers a bad name (thank you, Rockstar!) and worse, they are what's keeping the XBox alive [/low blow]

Damn man, go and play 50 Cent: Bulletproof, and leave REAL gaming to professionals.

And let's face it, American games generally SUCK. There are exceptions, but extremely few, and they're never THAT good. I'm not saying that Japan is the be-all end-all of Video Gaming, although it is, God knows I've played some fantastic games from European (Rare) and even Canadian companies (Ubisoft never ceases to amaze me, nowadays), but American games just SUCK.
I'm looking at my Gamelist right now, and there are hardly any American companies in there, and those that ARE, are CRAP. The only exception to the rule seems to be Core, who made some very good Tomb Raider games (2), probably by accident.
I rest my case.

In Between VII

2006-01-26T11:27:00.000+01:00

It Has Been Decided!

The Great Mighty Ingen has been gracefully bestowed by the Japanese Government with a 2 year scholarship for research in Osaka, Japan! Justice (not related to Summerhouse), at long last!
I will be leaving in April, although I have yet to recieve the details, God knows how long that's going to take.

In any case, I will be gone from this infernal country for at least 2 years, making me one happy Ingen, although I'll probably miss all the street crime, threats of terrorism, lousy service EVERYWHERE you go, rude and uneducated people, and worst of all, FOREIGNERS that make up such a large part of Everyday Dutch life.
Now I can be the mal-adjusted boarish Foreigner myself! Yippee!

"But Great Mighty Ingen, Purveyor of All that is Good, Scourge of at least one small Sea, Bringer of Joy and Happiness and Incredibly Gay Person, what does this mean for the Project!?" I hear you shout in desperation.

Well, obviously I'm NOT going to take all of my games with me to Japan, so that probably means the Project will have to come to an abrupt end, or at least prolonged vacation. I'll try to get as far as I can before April (oh, I'll TRY, believe you me), but it does not seem likely that I will be able to finish.

It is highly likely that this Blog will turn into a more run-off-the-mill "What happened to me on the way to the busstop" kind of thing, but I'll try to keep it as game-centered as possible. Of course this does in no way mean I'll stop playing games (HELLO!? I'm going to JAPAN!), it's just that instead of reviewing old games noone's ever played, I'll be able to review the hottest newest games, fresh off the shelves, that you'll probably NEVER get to see over here, so even my lovely readers will benefit.
I also plan to buy a Playstation 3 as soon as it is released and then make a video of me throwing it off a skyscraper, just for laughs. Damn Sony.

I'll try to maintain the same low quality you're used to, and you can be sure I will be insulting you all at a regular basis, only from a safer distance. Good.

Here's to the future!

Rockman X5

2006-01-24T19:47:00.000+01:00

Man, there sure are a lot of Megaman games out there.
Fortunately for YOU, though, they aren't exactly getting any better, so you can actually skip playing a lot of them.

After 4 fantastic Megaman X games, varying from "just really good" to "really great" Capcom decided that the series needed a change, mainly because EVERYTIME they released a new game, everyone was going "Oh look, it's Capcom and their if-it-aint-broke-dont-fix-it routine!", "Oh, another Megaman game, great.", "Isn't this the same as the last one" and "Why are these new Sonic games so crappy?"

To respond to almost all of these regularly returning allegations, Capcom DID decide to change some things for their new Megaman X game, and you know what?
It's not nearly as good as the old ones anymore.
See!?
THAT IS WHAT YOU GET FOR BEING A WHINY ASSHOLE.
(this last remark directed at every "official" game reviewer out there)

The way it was, we just got great games, that maybe didn't change very much, but at least that meant they were consistent in high quality. But because the industry wants Capcom to change, we get crappy new games like X5.
Thanks, IGN!

Well, to be honest, it's not really that bad at all, actually.
It's a fact that it's not nearly as good as any of the first four, but it still has some shards of that good old Megaman Action flying around here and there.
The story is that there is this Big Space Colony called Eurasia which is on a crash course with planet Earth and X and Zero need to retrieve parts to create a big Cannon to blast it out of the sky. Of course, these parts are kept by 8 bosses, who are all infected with the Sigma Virus, so they're not about to let go of them without a fight. It's not a very interesting story, but the coolness of the Megaman X storyline lies not in each separate game's story, but in the revelations regarding the characters themselves. Megaman X4 already revealed a shocking secret about Zero, which is further expanded upon in this game, and the game even ends on a rather sad note, which the series had actually been building up to from the beginning.
So the story is cool and makes sense, which makes it all the more painful that 3 more sequels have been made afterwards. But that's Capcom for you.

Anyway, they tried to change the formula a bit this time, and I'm not even talking about the addition of a crouching feature or whatever, nothing wrong with that. But there are just some really stupid decisions:

A) The game has a time limit. You have to finish it in 16 "hours", which boils down to trying stages 16 times. Admittedly, this limit goes away once the 8 bosses have been dealt with, but it shouldn't have been there anyway.
B) You start with full armor. Normally you start with Regular X and you have to find enough parts to form your new armor, but in X5 you get a full armor from the start, which makes regular X totally useless. There are two new armors to find, meaning 8 separate parts, but you have to find 4 parts before the armor can be completed.
Part of the fun of the original games was that you could immediately equip whatever new part you found, and the new system is just too cumbersome.
C) Bosses have levels! This is REALLY idiotic! Did someone come forward and say "Platform games need to be more like RPGs!"!? I mean, What the Fuck, Barbeque!?
On the one hand this means that, as you grow stronger, they do too, and they learn new skills, which is fine and all, but they will also get more health, resulting in Level 96 Bosses at the end of the game with HUGE energy gauges going twice across the screen and coming out of your TV set, making battles longer, harder and more boring. Nice one.
D) Ayla! Ayla is your friendly helpful guide who gives you information about oncoming dangers and enemies WHETHER YOU GODDAMN WANT IT OR NOT! SUXXOR!
Shit, that's annoying. It's extremely nice to be speeding along a level when all of a sudden you come to an abrupt stop because Ayla feels the need to tell you that she's having a bad hair day. You're a friggin' ROBOT, woman! In fact, you're not REALLY a woman AT ALL, although you certainly have that whining aspect down like a charm. I guess even Robots have genes then.
E) You get full control of X AND Zero at any time you want. This may sound nice, but it's not so convenient if you realize that there is only a limited amount of health upgrades, and you need every one you can get, meaning you can only give them to ONE guy at the same time. There's no use switching back to Zero when Z is all powered up, cos he doesn't stand a chance. X4's system of each guy having his own separate route through the game was much, MUCH better.
F) SLOWDOWN! OHMYGOD! Well, to be fair, it doesn't actually happen in 90 percent of the stages, but when it happens (in Dark Necrobat's Stage) it HAPPENS. Try to make a dashing jump and you can make a cup of coffee in the meanwhile. FOR AN ENTIRE COUNTRY. Come on, Capcom, this shouldn't have been necessary.

On the other hand, it has some good stuff as well, which are more innate to the series than to this game, but at least they're there:
A) Good, Solid Action.
B) AWESOME Soundtrack. Really. X5 is one of the best in the series, and that is saying a WHOLE lot. One of the best Playstation soundtracks PERIOD.
C) Some nice secrets and lots of hidden stuff.

This is the main reason I'm not scoring it that low. Although by Megaman X standards it's not very good, it's still a solid action game. It just fell in with the wrong crowd. Poor little guy. I'm grudgingly bestowing a nice 8- on this game, but that's me being nice. Now don't let me catch you doing that again! (*Sigh*, everyone knows what's coming up next....)

Rockman X2: Soul Eraser

2006-01-23T10:44:00.000+01:00

Do you remember what I wrote about Capcom in my previous post?
If not, it's only a couple of centimeters below, so go and check it.
I'll wait here.

There, got it?
Now forget it, because Capcom SUCKS. And blows.
That is to say, when it comes to making new innovative games, and even breathing life into their old series, they pretty much rule. But when it comes to squeezing every little bit of life/money out of a popular franchise, well, they pretty much rule the roost too, but that basically means that they SUCK.

The Megaman X games are great in general, until X5 which sucked tremendously, as did X6 and I don't even want to talk about X7 because it gives me convulsions. I still have to play X8, but I've heard it's a lot better and actually, in fact, good.
Capcom realises this so they try to rerelease and remake the CRAP out of the old games, because they know they can't make a decent new one anymore. This has recently led to Maverick Hunter X on PSP, which is supposedly nice, but they fucked up the soundtrack pretty bad, and to the Megaman X Collection on GC and PS2, which everyone was excited about until it turned out to SUCK just as much as the abysmal Megaman Anniversary Collection, only with better emulation.
The problem was though that there were NO extra's, despite the fact that fans were promised a whole bunch. No remixed soundtracks, no redubbed voice tracks, NOTHING.
Just some artwork and some crappy original songs. Bleh.

With that in mind, let me take you back to the year 2001, when Capcom decided to release 2 Megaman X games on Gameboy Color. They were called Megaman Xtreme 1&2 in the West (that name alone should get someone fired), in Japan they were called Rockman X Cyber Mission & Soul Eraser. I never played the first one, but when I saw Soul Eraser for a very reasonably price in a second-hand shop, I thought, why not?
Well, the answer is: because it will give you a migraine, that's why. And it will make you impotent. And it will steal your job and your house.

Still, I guess I should've known better than to expect that a series that became popular on the SuperNES with detailed colorful sprites, great animation, kick-ass music and big bosses could ever turn out decent on a Gameboy Color.
And you know what? IT DOESN'T!
Although I'll admit the graphics were better than I expected, and not even that bad, everything else just sucks. They took 8 bosses from Megaman X1 - X3, but they:

A) Messed up the music. I mean, of course it would lose in quality, going back from 16-bit SuperNES to 8-bit sub-NES quality, but they actually managed to mess it up in other ways. It uses the same themes from the respective games, but some portions of each theme have just been cut out, presumably to save some storage space or something. Also, they mixed up Launch Octopus's theme with Flame Mammoth, which is just idiotic.
B) Messed up the stages. The GBC has a very small screen, meaning you won't see very much on one screen at one time. In honesty, the game manages to maintain a very decent speed throughout, not notably losing out to the SNES counterparts, but to do this, they make sure you can never see much of what is happening around you. Scrolling happens too late, meaning you'll often run into enemies or harmful objects that you simply couldn't see, or that you'll have to rely on blind jumps, which is just moronic.
Also, some stages have exactly the same layout as the SNES versions, which is cheap, and others are completely new, but totally boring. Stupid.
C) Messed up the fun. It's just no fun at all to play anymore. NO FUN AT ALL.
Really. Let's face it, they're making these games to make some extra money out of the franchise, meaning they are either aiming at people who don't have a SuperNES and want to play these games anyway, or they're aiming at die-hard fans, who'll play anything Megaman related. *raises hand*

If you're in category 1, you'll get a severely downsized and compromised sucky version which is crap. Instead of paying 30 bucks for this GBC cartridge, pay 800 bucks to get a decent computer with an Internet connection, and download a SuperNES emulator with all 3 Megaman X ROMs. Or, perhaps a slightly less costly alternative, sell your stupid GBC and get a SuperNES with the 3 original games, although they're rather hard to get nowadays. So best option: get a GC or PS2 and get the Megaman X Collection for 29.95. Easy as pie.

If you're in category 2, you'll get a severely downsized and compromised sucky version of those fantastic games you loved so much, which is crap. Instead of paying 30 bucks for this GBC cartridge, pay 50 bucks to get yourself laid. The fun'll last longer, and there's a considerable SMALLER chance of getting a venereal disease.

Avoid like the plague. A lousy scrawny 4 for this game.
Bad Capcom!

Killer 7

2006-01-22T12:51:00.000+01:00

I think I've uttered this statement before, but in any case it should be obvious from all of my previous post, as well as the list I've put up on IGN, I friggin' LOVE Capcom.

Whenever they're not making incredible quality titles like Megaman, or Resident Evil, they're trying something new and unexplored, if not gameplaywise, then at least style-wise.
First there was Viewtiful Joe, which introduced American Comic Book style graphics to a great side-scrolling beat-em-up with Slow-motion, Fast Forward and Lord knows what else. This year will hopefully bring Okami, an awesome looking RPG based on Japanese mythology, starring the Goddess Amaterasu in the shape of a Wolf.

To fill in the Cell-shaded gap between these two titles Capcom gave us Killer 7 to ponder over. And it's.....well.....different.

The story is that there's this gang of Assassins called the Killer 7, who are hired by the American Government to dispose of liabilities, ie terrorists. The story behind the Killer 7 is that there's this one dude, Harman Smith, an old guy in a wheelchair carrying a HUGE FRIGGIN' Sniper Rifle, who has 6 split personalities, which have all been made flesh somehow.
It is up to you to take out several terrorists and other dangerous people, making use of each persona's skills and abilities. The terrorists come mainly in the shape of the Heaven Smile, a big bunch of VERY strange creatures who cackly maniacally when you get near them and then try to get close enough to you to commit a suicide bombing.

Sounds weird? This is only the tip of the proverbial Iceberg, my friend.
At your disposal are 7 other Smiths. First there's Garcian Smith, he acts as the middle man between Harman and the other personae. He's also the one people contact for assignments.
You'll get to spend most time with the other 6 persona's though:

Dan Smith, aka the Hellion, good all-round shooter with Energy Shot ability to dispose of stronger enemies.

KAEDE Smith (the capitals are intentional, apparently. An Onimusha reference, perhaps?), aka The Barefoot, who's good at sniping and...er....uncovering hidden areas by spraying them with the blood from her wrists (just to be sure, I'm not making ANYTHING up for this post).

Kevin Smith, who uses knives instead of a gun, meaning he doesn't have to reload, and he can make himself invisible, which is considerably less impressive.

Coyote Smith, aka The Thief, who is a Master Of Unlocking (Damn you, Barry!), and can jump on top of high walls.

Con Smith, who's blind and therefore possesses great hearing ability, which is used exactly 2 times in the entire game, and he can fit through small openings, which is used a bit more. Also, he can run very fast.

And last but not least, Mask De Smith, a Mexican Pro Wrestler, complete with gaudy uniform, and two shotguns, meaning he can pierce through armor, and break walls. He can also smash or move heavy objects.

You can change between these characters on the fly in the menu screen, and you'll have to use most of them very often.
Now, as if the above wasn't already indicative enough, I will restate here that this game is WEIRD. In a good way.
This is seriously one of the most bizarre, disturbing, unique and violently original games I've ever played in every single concept.

Presentation is absolutely awesome. The comic book style graphics and basic color pallette more than once reminded me of Sin City, which is a big complement. Basically, this game is Sin City in Cell-shaded 3D, although it has more color.
The pictures I've shown here are mostly dark which might give you the wrong impression, because there's a surprising amount of outdoor colorful environments, which are actually pretty relaxing, and not scary or disturbing at all.
Which is good, because the environments are pretty unique, not like what you'd come to expect from video games at all (except for the odd school or office building or so), but there's a couple of unusual surroundings in here, which all look really really good.

Make no mistake though, this is not survival horror, and scaring you is not what this game is trying to accomplish, it's just seriously bizarre. It wants to surprise you and perhaps disturb you, It wants you to experience a game unlike anything else, and it manages to do this almost perfectly. Almost

You see, for all its amazing presentation and disturbing events and dialogues, the gameplay is rather tame and quite commonplace. Basically, there's shooting, and there's puzzle solving, making this not much different from your average Resident Evil, only more linear, and with slightly better puzzles.
The R button readies your weapon, and switches the screen to First Person mode, from where you have to shoot the baddies. Make sure you make them visible first, by scanning the area with the L button. Heaven Smile are usually invisible, but they will alert you of their presence by cackling eerily, which is your sign to grab out your guns and start shooting. Killing a monster will earn you a certain amount of blood, which in turn can be used to level up the personae, use special weapons or heal your wounds. Hit monsters in key places to earn more blood (or to be able to kill them in the first place) and you've got yourself a decent fighting system.

The most unusual thing about the gameplay is that you are walking on rails the entire time. Of course you can't actually see them, but you do not have free movement nevertheless. Pressing A will have your character move forward, B will turn him/her around. As soon as you get to a fork in the road, the screen will divide into the possible directions, and you have to use the 3D stick to choose where you want to go. This all goes really quickly though, so it never gets annoying.
In fact, I really enjoyed this system, since it is not very taxing on the reflexes, and you don't need to be a Joystick Wizard to maneuver your character around.
The extreme linearity of this system is what this game has been criticized for most, but I wasn't bothered by it at all, on the contrary.

No, my main problem lies in the map system. You get an instant map anywhere you go, you don't need to find it or pick it up, you're equipped with it from the start, which is fine, but it's rather unbalanced.
It shows you which room you are in, but, and this was my main gripe, it doesn't show WHERE you are. No red dot or arrow to indicate your position, just a (big) room glowing yellow. This means that, when you get to a junction, and you want to make an informed decision on where you want to go, you need to infer from the architecture of the room where you are, which can be a PAIN. You will probably take a lot of wrong turns before you get to the end, but, like I said, the walking system is very speedy, so it never becomes really annoying, but it's something I would've liked to see differently.

The other major problem with the map is that, although it doesn't tell you where you are, it tells you exactly where you have to use which Smith, and where you have to use which item. The location of all key items is shown on the map, and often a little symbol indicates what or whom you need to use to get it, in effect rendering about 80% of all the puzzles in this game COMPLETELY obsolete.
It's like Capcom said: "Well, we WANT to put puzzles in this game, cos there's very little else to do, but we don't actually want the punters to THINK, cos that'll scare them off, so we'd better give them all the solutions in advance."

Furthermore, information that can be acquired from NPC's is usually painfully obvious, the only hard puzzles are those whose answers can be obtained from Yoon Hyun (another freaky character), since you have to pay blood to get the answers from him, meaning you might consider solving them yourself first.

It seems therefore that the sole reason of existence of this game is to freak you out and impress you with its magnificent style and presentation, and admittedly it scores very well on these fronts. If gameplay had been a bit more balanced and, frankly, less simple and straightforward, this game could've scored very close to a 10, but it seems Killer 7 favores style and visuals over content.
The story is complicated, but eventually leads to a couple of plottwists that most serious game-players or movie-goers will be familiar with by now, since it's been done to death. I can't say I was surprised in the least, which was a shame, cos the entire game you feel like you're working up to something really cool, only to get a rather predictable twist at the end.

So that's it then, as a game it offers simple fun with little to no replay value, but as a piece of modern media it offers style, adult content and brilliant originality that'll just blow your socks off. Anyone with a taste for out-of-the-ordinary visuals, and anyone who can enjoy something completely different should DEFINITELY try this out, cos it doesn't get much better than this (well, I still vastly prefer Silent Hill myself actually, but this is too different to even compare).
Anyone who's looking for a great game might want to try and rent this first.
I give it a 9-.

Rockman Mega World

2006-01-18T11:02:00.000+01:00

Wow!
Capcom sure has rereleased the heck out of their old Megaman games, and if it's up to them, they'll never stop! And you know what? I'm stupid enough to keep buying the same games over and over again! Yay for commercial whorism!

First there was Rockman Mega World, known as Mega Man The Wily Wars outside of Japan, then there were the rereleases on PSX, the Megaman Anniversary Collection, probably some versions I don't know of, and the near future holds Mega Man Powered Up, aptly titled Rockman Rockman (who the HELL came up with that, and why isn't he dead yet?) in Japan, a complete makeover for the PSP, looking a little something like this:

I'm not into the PSP AT ALL, and these updated graphics are definitely not a direction I want to see the Mega Man series going in, but when I read this game is going to have 2 extra bosses AND a level design mode, where you can apparently even exchange your own levels with friends through WiFi, I am once again becoming the sad consumer whore that I am, and I'm almost seriously contemplating getting one of Sony's sickening handhelds. Especially if they're going to do this for later Mega Mans as well.

Anyhoo, back to Rockman Mega World, which is more a Remake than a Rerelease as well.
Originally designed to introduce Mega Man on Genesis/Megadrive to the Sega Audience, this game contains "updated" versions of Mega Man 1, 2 and 3. The fact that it now plays on a 16-bit console (of sorts) means improved graphics, improved sound (well, the synth is slightly better, but none of the arrangements are as good as the originals), and you now get to play with the patented Atrocious Genesis Controller!You know, the one with the crappy ROUND directional pad (at least that's not as bad as the SQUARE directional pad from the Master System, where pressing right meant you were pressing up and down as well), and a whopping 3 ACTION BUTTONS! Wow! Please hold me, because I think I'm going to faint!

On the other hand, this being NES games, you only need 2 buttons anyway, and the third is used as an alternative menu button. Button layout on the Genesis controller is not quite as comfortable as on the NES control pad, though, although I didn't have any real trouble with it.

What I DID have trouble with are the tremendous changes in the "integrity" of the games. A good remake shouldn't change anything but Graphics and Music, and perhaps add some extra's. And this game DOES deliver in that respect. Graphics and Music are improved (although the music is really debatable, and why is it not in Stereo!?), and you get 7 extra stages, exclusive to this game.
The major mistake here is that they changed how the games work. First of all, Mega Man controls EXACTLY the same in all 3 games (with the exception of the slide added in Megaman 3), whereas the original NES games had some clear differences in control.
Although this shouldn't necessarily be a bad thing (the original Mega Man controlled like CRAP), the default they chose isn't very good.
You usually need to press the controller a little longer to start walking properly, which makes forward jumping in tight spots very awkward, and I also had the impression that Mega Man's weapon is slower than it should be.

To compensate for this, enemies are much MUCH faster, and for some reason the levels seem like they were slightly compressed. That is to say, it looks like they took the old screens and compressed them a little so that slightly more would appear on screen at one time, meaning in effect, that there are moments where you are assaulted by many enemies at once, whereas in the originals, they would neatly wait until you'd moved on far enough to trigger their appearance.
And you know what that means? SLOWDOWN! YAY!
The weird thing is that this game even suffers slowdown in the one-screen areas, where the NES NEVER did. EXPLAIN THAT TO ME, SEGA!
Also, either Mega Man jumps higher, or the levels have been compressed from the top and bottom as well. You can now make some jumps that you never could in the original, or where you needed Rush's help.

In other words, in some parts, these games are easier than the originals, and in others, they're much harder.
Still, only a fan would notice that. If you consider what this game was supposed to be, ie. the introduction of Mega Man to a Sega audience, noone is going to know, right? After all, you ARE getting 2 of the best NES games EVER, and....er.....Mega Man 1, plus extra bosses and levels, where enemies and design from these 3 Mega Man games are combined, which is actually pretty cool, especially since you can take 8 weapons of your choice from ALL 3 Mega Mans with you to tackle the new Bosses, which just rules.

Only true fans are going to know Capcom kind of raped the games, but if you're a real fan, you should just shut up and enjoy all the extra cool bits, which is what I did. As a value pack, it's superb, 2 great games and one not so great but made slightly better because of improved controls (they messed up the Cut Boomerang though!) on one Genesis Cartridge and extra levels make one happy Ingen, so I give this a 9. It could have been a 10 if they hadn't fucked up the controls and the speed. Still a great buy for any Mega Man fan or Genesis owner, if you can find it, cause it's rather LIMITED apparently. Now give me a PS2 remake already!

Rockman & Forte

2006-01-16T16:02:00.000+01:00

You know what? Before starting this long line of Rockman games in my Project, I used to think, like many other Rockman fans: "Capcom should pick up the regular Rockman series again and make a real Rockman 9 or sumthin", but now that I've replayed Rockman & Forte, I'm not so sure anymore.

Let's face it, what with the rather dreary Rockman 8, and now this game, the series has really gone to the dogs, and I fully understand if Capcom doesn't want to bother anymore. They're probably afraid of what they'll do next.

In fact, I dare say that even this game was a bit of a gamble, since there's one thing about it that doesn't really make sense. Rockman 8 was released on PSX and Saturn with the cutscenes and the theme songs and the colorful graphics, but THEN Capcom decided to perhaps give one last nod to their Old Fans and release the sequel Rockman & Forte, on SNES again! WTF YO!? That doesn't make any kind of marketing sense whatsoever, unless they wanted to keep it cheap and see how much money they could still make with it.

I was impressed to see that the sprites have lost nothing in quality with this big step backwards. ALL enemies in this game, apart from 6 of the 8 bosses, were taken directly from Megaman 8 and they look exactly the same on SNES.
Backgrounds are a bit less detailed and colorful though, there have to be concessions somewhere. Music isn't that much worse either, but that's because Rockman 8, even on CD, sucked quite large balls.

The point of this game is that this time Megaman's not-so-eternal rival Forte/Bass is also playable. Forte controls distinctly differently from Megaman, and he has his own weak points and Fortes (I'm going to run this pun into the ground. INTO THE GROUND I TELL YOU!). He has a double jump and a buster that can shoot in 8 directions, whereas Megaman has his charge shot and a Slide to get through narrow Hallways. There is good balance between the two, and it is kinda cool to be able to play with Forte, but the problem is that the game itself is just not good.

It's a terrible cash-in, obviously, with all these re-used sprites and bosses, and it's bloody annoying and frustrating as HELL. For added replay value, the game has 100 Data CD's hidden across the stages. Each CD contains information on previous Megaman Bosses and characters, which can be viewed in the Data Screen or whatever it's called. It's a nice idea, but for fans only, and some CD's are extremely hard to get, not to mention those that are invisible and buried at places where noone would EVER think to look.

The story, as if it matters, is that there's this robot called King, who's started to go on a rampage against the Human Race because he thinks there's no need to live in peace with Humans, so he's rebelled against basically EVERYONE, and now Dr. Tomas Light and Dr. Wily have joined forces (through Megaman and Forte of course, don't expect these old geezers to ever do anything) although only an idiot would think that Dr. Wily was NOT behind it after all this time.

It's a completely unnecessary addition to the series, one made ONLY for fans, since it has many many references to older Megaman games, but even fans will have a hard time liking this one, because it's just NO fun.
It's a very nasty tone to end the Megaman Series on, but at least it doesn't leave me wanting more. Great job, Capcom. A 6 for you.

In more interesting news, I have expanded my collection once again!
Never mind the fact that I have a back-log as big as my Ego (big), as a True Gamer, you just keep buying and buying games. AND BUYING.
I'm no idiot though (never mind what the doctor's say), so I only buy games that are cheap, usualy below the 30 dollar/Euro or 3000 Yen barrier, which has today left me with: Killer 7.
After reading rather a lot of negative reviews from Gamesite, but basically having people who DO know what they're talking about telling me it's actually really good has caused me to buy it anyway.

The store clerk told me I was more than likely going to loose sleep over this game (in a positive way) so that's promising. And I already LOVE the visual style, so who knows what will come of this. More on this soon!

Rockman 8

2006-01-15T11:03:00.000+01:00

And the downward Spiral begins!

Actually, it's not so much a Spiral as it is a straight line plummeting to unknown depths. As if the Number 8 wasn't already an indication that this series was running a bit too long, then let it be the fact that the game kinda sucks.

For Megaman 8, the series took its first steps into the realm of 32 bits (wow!), as it was released on PSX AND Saturn (wow!), and to show off its newly acquired Powers, the Megaman series for the first time sported Anime Cutscenes (wow!)
And to be honest, they're not bad at all. Although they look rather dated by today's standards, they're really very decent, and they almost succeed at covering up the fact that Rockman games usually have crappy stories.

Of course Dr. Wily is involved again. I don't really know what happened at the end of Megaman 7, all we got to see was a burning building, but apparently, Dr. Wily has managed to escape unscathed and even more eager to conquer Earth than usual.
This time, there's an Evil Alien Energy which has made its way to Planet Earth, and Dr. Wily plans to use it for his own evil causes, and Megaman has to stop him.
Of course, Forte will be there to stand in his way, but he will get help from his "brother" Blues, and newcomer Duo, a mysterious robot who seems to know a lot about this strange Alien Energy stuff. So all the characters are here, there's 8 new bosses, Rush is back, Beat is back, it's like they were never gone before and as if you're playing the same game you were playing years ago, only not quite as good.

You see, for some reason, it just fails to get interesting. It's a bit boring.
Levels are bigger, there's plenty of hidden Bolts (enemies don't drop bolts anymore; there is now a finite number of very well hidden bolts, which is actually a slight improvement), but the level design is just not interesting. Music has reached an all-time low for the series, which is a disgrace, and its more childish than ever.
And let me say this: If you're going to play it, get the Japanese version. The voice acting is MUCH better (why does Dr. Light sound like Elmer Fudd in the English version!?), and there's actually more voice samples in the game as well.

In fact, if money is not an issue, try and find the Japanese Saturn version, since the Saturn version is MUCH improved, with extra boss battles and some Artwork.
Good luck finding it, though.
For the PSX version, which I played, a 7- seems enough. Only Die Hard fans need apply.

Rockman 7

2006-01-14T18:22:00.000+01:00

I'd thought this would be more fun, but it isn't.
And this is actually one of the better ones, it's just that I think there's a good reason they stopped making games in the regular Megaman Series, and started concentrating on Megaman X and the other series.

Having finished the entire regular series at this moment, I can say this is the last game that was actually good, and you don't really need to bother any further.

Rockman 7 starts exactly where Rockman 6 left off. Dr. Wily is imprisoned by Megaman and the world seems to have returned to peace and quiet. Little does everyone realise that hidden in some secret laboratory somewhere, 4 of Wily's Robots lie dormant, waiting for their Master's distress signal in order to activate and start rampaging around the city.
And this is of course exactly what happens. Within hours the City is in total ruin, and Wily manages to escape from prison and start wreaking havoc once again, as if NOTHING ever happened in the previous 6 games.
You'd think a Scientist would learn a little bit faster, wouldn't you?

This was the first step to a new Console. After 6 games on NES, this was the first in the regular series to go to 16 bits, and it shows. A little bit.
Graphics are cute and colorful, which is a shrill contrast to the darker pallette of the old Nintendo Entertainment System. Although presumably the NES games were aimed at young gamers as well, the colors of the NES were too dark to give anything a real "kiddy" feel, but suffice to say, there IS a generous amount of pink in this game. WHICH IS NOT GOOD.
Also, the music, although great in composition and definitely one of the better melodic Megaman Soundtracks, uses synth that's VERY sugary and actually gave me multiple cavities IN MY EARS. Deliberate or not, the old dark atmosphere of the NES games was much MUCH better.

Bigger storage space, though, not only means better graphics and "better" synth; it also means Bigger Stages and more to do. Although there aren't MORE stages, in pure terms of absolute numbers, than in, say, Megaman 3 - 6, they ARE definitely longer.

Gameplay-wise, Rush Jet is back, this time accompanied by Rush Searh, which will allow you to find hidden objects, buried in the ground. Rush Power also makes it's return to form Super Rockman, which is basically a combination of the two forms present in Rockman 6, only a bit more balanced this time.
This game also introduces the Bolt System, where enemies will drop bolts which can later be used at a shop to buy upgrades and items.
All upgrades can be found hidden in the stages as well though, if you know where to look, so you don't actually need this system, but it's nice anyway, if you need some extra lives or Energy Tanks or whatnot.

Also making his first appearance is Forte, known as Bass in the West, and his trusty sidekick Gospel, aka Treble (gotta love all those Music references). Although initially someone who seems to be on your side, he becomes increasingly self-centered throughout the series until he even became one of the most evil characters in the Rockman universe (in the Battle Network series), so I don't quite know what happened there.
He's nothing but a persistent mid-boss in this game though, not much more than a simple gimmick.

Megaman 7 is also the first in the series to start with 4 Bosses, rather than the usual 8, right at the beginning. I don't know why they chose to change the regular series into something more like the Gameboy series, which were always rather simple in that respect, but logic has never been Capcom's Forte (dur hur hur).
This means only 4 bosses are available at the start, which also means it's much easier to figure out their weakspots, and also that you just don't get a lot of choice at the beginning.
I have to admit though, that for Megaman (and maybe even Capcom in general) fans, this is one of the better games, because there are numerous references to other Megaman games. There are cameo's of old bosses, some familiar music and even some bits of old stages were included in full color for nostalgia.

There's also some nice secrets, including a short battle mode, a hidden piece of "armor", a great homage to the Ghouls and Ghosts series and there's a fucking annoying final boss. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT!?
Diazepam, perhaps, but you're not getting any in this game.
What you ARE getting is an 8+, which isn't bad at all actually.
Get this as a final goodbye for the series, and just ignore the 2 sequels, which unfortunately, I can't. D'oh!

Rockman 6

2006-01-13T11:22:00.000+01:00

SHORTEST POSSIBLE ULTRA MINI REVIEW EVER!

I'm kinda running behind on my update schedule, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna write two reviews on one day. I don't love you that much.

So, Rockman 6 then. "What's the story!?" is of course the most burning question on everyone's minds right now. Well, this time the Mysterious Mr. X (very original, Capcom!) has organised some kind of Robot Tournament or something, and I'm sure there's some kind of World Domination involved here somewhere.
Strangely, Mr. X looks VERY similar to a certain Evil Doctor we've seen a couple of times before, and I don't think I'm spoiling anything by telling you this IS in fact, the infamous Dr. Wily, in a fantastic plot-twist that shook the earth back in, oh, 1745. Very Original x2, Capcom.

The most notable changes this time are that Rush is now not longer a separate device to help you reach difficult places, but this time he actualles merges with Megaman to create 2 special kinds of Armor: Rush Jet and Rush Power.
Rush Jet allows Megaman to float after jumping, and Rush Power allows for more powerful attacks, and breaking some blocks and shit.
Unfortunately, although Rush Power has very limited range, he's FAR too strong, making the majority of the game FAR too easy.

On the upside, the new Armors are used to gain access to extra/alternative areas. 4 of the Boss stages have alternate exits, and finding the hidden one will result in getting some extra items (ie. BEAT. Yay.). This IS a nice addition though making the game more interesting and giving it slightly more replay value than Megaman 5, and of course, it's still great shooting fun, like any Megaman title.
Also, if you're playing the PSX rerelease, the arranged music is some of the best in the series, and it doesn't even look bad for an NES game. Not bad at all.
A nice round 8, because I always tend to hugely overscore Megaman Games.

YOU GOTTA PROBLEM WITH THAT!?

Rockman 5

2006-01-11T11:18:00.000+01:00

EVEN SHORTER ULTRA MINI REVIEW!

What is it with the Megaman series and the fifth installment generally sucking?
The regular series started the trend, the X-series continued it, as did the Battle Network series, but let's hope the Zero series will be the sole exception.

Perhaps it's because, after 4 prequels, there isn't a whole lot of new stuff you can do anymore, and even fans will be tired of the same gameplay they've witnessed four times already.
What you'd need is a real tour-de-force, Resident Evil 4 stylee, taking the series into a completely different direction. This never happened to the Megaman series, although you might call Megaman X the refreshment the regular series so desperately required.

I mean, think of it, how many game series do you know that have SIX (6!) separate installments on ONE (1!) console!? The NES got 6 bloody Megaman Games back in the day, which is insane. Not even Final Fantasy or Mario reaches that kind of numbers.
The worst thing is that hardly anything has changed for Megaman 5.
Whereas the previous 4 games all introduced something new into the series, Megaman 5 seems fresh out of ideas. The only notable difference is that Megaman's charged Rockbuster is now a bit beefier, and has taken its final shape, looking like it was going to look for the rest of the entire series.
And that's ALL.

Well, there is BEAT. BEAT is a small blue robot bird that you can call for aid in dire times. It will automatically start attacking enemies, no matter where they are, so that's useful. It surely makes the final boss a COMPLETE push-over, so that's stupid too.
BEAT is not nearly enough to make this game interesting enough to stand on its own though. Also, they've given Rush Coil an overhaul, and it's basically a lot more annoying to use now.

Add to that the fact that there's some trial-and-error bits in here, which is NEVER good in a video game, and it features THE most annoying enemy in the entire series, that Tiger thingy, and you've got yourself a pretty unnecessary game on your hands.
Also, the bosses are dull. The Wily Numbers seem duller than they once were, but most notably the castle bosses are stupid.
One of the great things about Megaman 4 was the HUGE bosses you would get in Dr. Cossack and Dr. Wily's Castles. This time round, the game lets you think that Megaman's Brother of Sorts, Protoman aka Blues, has gone haywire and wants to destroy the world or some such thing, but of course Wily will turn out to be behind it, shock and horror, I never saw that coming, What's This World Coming To, etc. etc.

Anyhow, the bosses in Protoman's Castle totally SUCK. They're small simple robots with nothing cool or special about them, and they're totally boring. Yuck.
Also, the music is rather uninspired and very lacklustre, especially when compared to 2, 3 and 4 which all had amazing soundtracks.
And ruining a Megaman soundtrack is simply something that can not be tolerated.

That said, it still is a quality action title, of sorts. Megaman's base value is still way above 90% of the competition, as it always has been. It's just that this particular game is not very good when compaired to the rest of the series.
I give it a 7 for trying, but please don't do this again Capcom.
At least, not until Rockman 6... :(

On a side note, I finally finished Kingdom Hearts 2 yesterday (yay!). The final boss fight was spectacular, as expected, and it's another fantastic game overall, so expect a very nice (exclusive!) review soon.
Now I've started work on Grandia III, which I recently acquired (thanks again, Drs. Summahhouse!) and which should last me a couple of weeks as well probably.
Nice!

Rockman 4

2006-01-10T11:33:00.000+01:00

Super Ultra Mini Review!

The great thing about Megaman games is that they NEVER change, so if you've reviewed one, you've reviewed them all! Very little words are necessary here, you just need to EXPERIENCE this truely MAJESTIC piece of Video Gaming because IT RULES, almost as much as I do.

This time, not Dr. Wily but the Evil Russian Dr. Cossack is threatening World Piece, and it is up to Megaman to save everything and everyone. Why Megaman and not someone else? BECAUSE THIS IS MEGAMAN 4!
Otherwise, they would've called it Someone Else 4, or Tanin 4 in Japan, but fortunately the majority of the threatened world is a little bit less dense than good old Rock, so anyone with even half a brain already knows that Wily is actually behind it AGAIN.
To flog a dead horse, there are 9 games in the regular Megaman series, and they ALL have Wily as the final boss, so don't get fooled by any other kind of story. The same goes for the X series and Sigma by the way. Only the Battle Network series has different Badguys occasionally.

The only new thing this time is the fact that there are two Castles at the end (Dr. Cossack's and Dr. Wily's), which would prove to be a short-lived fad, but most importantly the addition of a chargeable Rockbuster. It would change shape in later installments, but Megaman finally takes his complete form in this game. Later games add very little new, and this is by all means the game that set the mood for the rest of the series.
Rush is back too, and there are even an additional 2 secret Power Adaptors, and that's about all. This game is one of the absolute highlights of the series when it comes to the music though. It represented some of the finest audio the NES was ever able to pull off.
I'm playing the PSX rereleases for these games, which were only released in Japan if I'm not mistaken. These versions were used for the abysmal Megaman Anniversary Collection, in a HEAVILY compressed, compromised and downsized form, even on PS2.
These PSX "originals" have clearer picture, STEREO sound (for the arranged music, which is great), unlockable artwork, time attacks, sound tests and some more cool stuff.
Owning these games may cost you more money than buying the Collection, but you do get INFINITELY better quality, so true Megaman fans will vastly prefer this over Atomic Planet's disgraceful attempt at making money out of this famous franchise.
I just hope Capcom is going to do a better job at that Megaman X collection.

I'm going to give this a 9.5 as well, since this is one of my absolute favorites, but I promise this is the last one ;)

Rockman 3

2006-01-08T19:25:00.000+01:00

As if the recent amount of visitors to my site hasn't been stagnating enough, today marks the first day of a long LONG range of Rockman games, so it's FANBOY TIME, for good old (and handsome) INGEN!

First in line is the wonderful Rockman 3, released AEONS ago on a little known system called the NES, or Famicon, by an even lesser known company called Capcom, who are to this day presenting us The Universe.
Rockman, in case you didn't know, and you couldn't tell by the obvious picture below, is the Japanese name for what we in the West have come to know as Megaman aka the Blue Bomber, or The Blue God of Games That Are Cool.
This is only the third installment in a LONG series that has spanned 9 chapters so far, and that does not include all other Megaman series, because counting those would mean I had to be here ALL NIGHT.

Back in the days of Megaman 3 however, these games were still really REALLY good, and actually represented some of the most advanced high-quality video games of that era. As such, Rockman 3 is one of those games you simply HAD to play, as most people have, because it rules. For Megaman fans, this is a given, but even a great number of casual gamers of that age have played this, since this actually REALLY was one of the best games of its time. Most people agree that Megaman 2 and 3 were the highlights of the series, it's just that they can't actually agree on which of the two is the better one.
Well, if you ask me, and by reading this, you ARE, Rockman 3 is better than Rockman 2. More levels, bigger levels, better difficulty (although still way too easy), arguably even better music (although both are fantastic) and better graphics, as far as that means anything on an NES.

New for this game are the Slide, allowing Megaman to get out of or through tight spots, and the introduction of Rush, the Robodog, who functions as a Trampoline, Jet platform or Submarine thingy, to reach those hard-to-get-to places.
There are 8 new Boss Robots, and clearing them out will reveal 8 OLD ones, and of course Wily's Castle with 6 stages, cos this wouldn't be Megaman if Wily wasn't in there.

Like any good NES action game, the story is non-existent, and it takes about an hour to complete, but what is there is fantastic! The action is great, the music is classic, and it just rules. Seriously.
Back in the day, this game was DA BOMB, although nowadays there are CELLPHONE games that look better. Still, no cellphone game to this day has even been this good, and you have to keep in mind that these games should be reviewed according to their respective timezones, and this game was the best in its day.
A 9.5!

Resident Evil 4

2006-01-05T15:59:00.000+01:00

More Zombies! Oh, no, wait, Ganados.
Yeah, right.

After popularizing the Survival Horror Genre with Resident Evil 1 (because noone ever gave a F*ck about Alone in the Dark, because it SUCKS), Capcom realised it was on to something and a new production line of "Squeeze every penny out of the series" items had begun.
Resident Evil 1 was followed by Resident Evil 1: Director's Cut, which offered an arranged mode with different object and enemy placement but was basically the same, since the promised Uncensoring never actually took place. To get people to buy it anyway Capcom included a demo of Resident Evil 2, which would later turn out to be COMPLETELY different from the actual game, and has now become somewhat of a collector's item, because it's LIMITED.
Eventually Resident Evil 2 was released with a totally different look, and it would turn out to be the best game in the series BY FAR. Mainly because Leon was cool.

Some years later they made Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, or Last Escape, or whatever, which was pretty much use- and pointless, and its sole reason of existence seemed to be to blow up Raccoon City, which is an event that most of the sequels keep referring to. Mainly, the game was ruined because of that Big Asshole that kept following you around everywhere, which was more annoying than scary.
THEN came RE: Code Veronica on Dreamcast, which turned the entire series into FULL 3D for the first time EVAHR, but they forgot to actually make it fun or, indeed, change anything about the old formula, so it was arguably the least exciting game in the series.

Then, many moons later, when it looked like the series was all but dead, Capcom came out of nowhere and announced that they had made a contract with Nintendo to make a bunch of exclusive RE games for the Gamecube, one of which was going to be the much talked about Resident Evil 0, which had previously been in the works for N64.

It was canned for N64, very much like Onimusha, which was ALSO supposed to appear on Nintendo's ill-fated machine.
Capcom then went on to remake the original Resident Evil, for Gamecube, and made it look insanely good, using the most advanced technology in animated prerendered backgrounds and adding a whole slew of new stuff to the game, making it effectively one of the best remakes in the history of Video Games (which is unfortunately not saying much).
The remake was then followed by the REAL Resident Evil 0, which looked a little like this:

Which, despite its great graphics, was not very interesting, because it still featured that same old tired gameplay that had been plagueing the entire genre for years now.
Konami took it upon themselves to create Silent Hill and showed that Survival Horror can be truely Goddamn Scary, as long as you employ enough people from the local mental asylum, who are either suicidal, certifiably insane or homicidal maniacs, but preferably all of the above. Yet, they still did not manage to change anything about the tried and tested kind of gameplay, and therefore never gathered more than a hardcore fanbase, with just slightly better taste than others.

Years later, when it seemed noone was going to bother anymore, Capcom suddenly came out of nothing and introduced Resident Evil 4, starring good ole' Leon Kennedy, certified Bad-Ass. Even in its early stages, which would turn out to be COMPLETELY different from the final game again, Resident Evil 4 looked absolutely stunning, as it was another venture into the realm of full 3D again, and it looked VERY nice.
I recently saw a movie of it showing a very advanced version, which, if anything, looked A LOT more like Silent Hill than Resident Evil, and it looked totally COOL, but it was abandoned anyway.

And later on, the final version would finally be revealed on Gamecube, and the results are, to say the least........phenomenally good.
Discard EVERYTHING you know about Resident Evil, in fact, FORGET everything I wrote above, because it doesn't apply anymore! The only thing connecting this to the old series is Leon S. Kennedy, now part of some secret organisation, and some other characters who shall remain nameless because they're Ada and Wesker.

That's it.

NO Zombies, NO prerendered nonsense, NO fixed camera angles, NO boredom or annoyance!
You DO still get limited inventory, but it's much more roomy than before.
Leon has an Attache case, which he uses to store items in (bigger ones can be bought), and every case has a set number of squares/grids. Every item takes up a specific amount of space, and you can pretty much decide wherever you want to put it, which is actually so much fun that it almost constitutes an entire mini-game in itself.
Many was the time I obtained some large item, that I didn't actually even really want or need anyway, that would not fit into my case, until I pushed and pulled some items around after which it fit in just snugly! It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, even though it was a huge fish!

Also new is the fact that you can earn money this time. There is a merchant whom you'll regularly run into, who'll sell you weapons and items and upgrade some of your equipment as well. To earn money, you can shoot badguys, or look for hidden treasure lying around. Gems, necklaces, ornaments, there's a veritable multitude of stuff to find, and many of them can even be combined to form an even more precious and valuable artifact.

Most importantly though, the combat is radically different.
First of all, the Zombies are gone, and are replaced by so-called Ganados. Ganados are people who are.....influenced by a certain something or someone, but they are still real live human beings, meaning they are FAST and they can THINK.
No standing around waiting for a Zombie to shuffle closer this time, but MAD FRANTIC battles for your life as one Ganado leaps at your throat, after another.
The fact that they're smart means that they are also able to wield weapons, ranging from simple knives and pitchforks, to crossbows, chainsaws and even frickin' ROCKET LAUNCHERS. It ALSO means that they'll come at you from EVERY side.
NOWHERE IS SAFE.
Try and hide on top of a roof? They'll find a ladder and climb up. Or they'll just throw Molotov Cocktails or Dynamite at you of course. Nice.

To help you deal with these freaks, you get a vastly improved shooting system.
The Camera is behind Leon at ALL times, and pressing the R button will ready his weapon and show you a small red laser, indicating what you're shooting at.
This allows for very precise shooting, which is good, because every body part is a hit-zone. Shoot the head and it will explode (don't think that'll make the game easier though. Capcom has a very nasty way of punishing you for that later on), shoot the knees or below to bring them to their feet, shoot their arms to let them drop their weapons etc. Stun them and you can kick them in da face for some free damage! Yay!
This system works fantastically and is huges amounts of fun. The only minor gripe I can think of is that the camera is slightly too close behind you for comfort sometimes, which makes detecting enemies behind you rather difficult, although they're usually not afraid to announce their presence first.

The game looks absolutely gobsmackingly amazing, putting about 98% of current video games ON ALL CONSOLES look like complete and utter crap. Believe it or not, but in many instances it looks better even than the prerendered stuff you got in the remake of RE1. And it's all in full glorious, interactive 3D!
Which brings me to another thing. Interactivity.
Your weapons not only function as killing devices, but also to interact with the environment. Switches can be shot to be operated. Shoot oil drums to cause huge explosions, shoot oil lamps hanging from the ceiling to rain FIRY HELL on your foe, BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
No matter WHAT you do, everything feels exciting and an almost immeasurable amount of fun can be had. There's a big supply of weapons, which all handle differently and have their specific situations where they are most useful. Like I said before, looking down from above at a group of Ganados, unaware of your presence, and dropping a Grenade in their very midst is totally PRICELESS.

And then there's a whole bunch of freaky monsters, like trolls and what have you. Most boss battles are executed brilliantly, there's the obligatory context sensitivity stuff that's so hip nowadays, and most imporantly, the game is quite big. Especially for a Resident Evil.
You'll be moving to different areas until the very end. There's hardly any backtracking, and there's a great variety in the environments you will get to see.
New enemies, events and gameplay mechanics await you at every turn, there's mini-games, unlockables, sidequests, EVERYTHING.
There's really NOTHING I can criticise about this game, it's about as perfect as games can get, AND it's original, innovative, fun, exciting and every other superlative you can think of.

There's a whole bunch of adrenaline-pumping, nail-biting action (although putting down your controller to bite your nails is not a wise decision), some scenes that I'm pretty sure are movie references, only now interactive, ie you can act them out yourself, and then there's the fact that this is simply one of the best games ever created. Play it, or be a sad loser. Yes, playing this will make you COOL.
Women will want you, rich people will like you and shower you with expensive gifts, animals will feel safe with you, and the president will call you to tell you you rule.

It's simply the best game of this age, and it's from CAPCOM.
GET IT NOW!

A perfect 10!

The Ingen Game Awards 2005

2006-01-01T13:19:00.000+01:00

Gotta have one of these, haven't we?

In true Game Reviewer Fashion, I present to you the much acclaimed Ingen Game Awards 2005, THE be-all end-all of Gaming Awards, the most prestigious Award in the Gaming Business, Companies exert themselves to be able to claim this victory every year, as not only does this Award earn you eternal fame, but you also get a nice potted plant, shaped like a willy. And a cash prize of $100.000 to be transferred to my bank account by TOMORROW, or else. Bastards.

So without further ado, let me present to you the definitive Game Awards of 2005, don't believe any other sites, cos they suck, and they wouldn't know a good game if it came up to them and violently stabbed them in the Magic Symbol.
Just listen to me, and you'll be alright. Get these games, and you will experience the best of the past year, and you will thank me for it. ASSHOLES!

Ehem.
Bear in mind that I'm only including games released in 2005 in the country of origin of the version I played. There are some titles which were released in America or Europe in 2005, but which were already available in Japan in 2004, and are therefore not included (ie. Zelda: Minish Cap, Metal Gear Solid 3, among others).
Here we go:

- Best Gamecube Game:

There can be only one:

Resident Evil 4.
No motherfucking contest. I haven't written a review for it yet, but expect one soon, since I've almost finished it for the project. It's ironic how this was the first game I bought in 2005, and also the last game I played before the turn of the year. But that's how Goddamn INSANELY good this game is, you can play it for a whole year, and you'll discover new things every time. Not only because there's a slew of hidden treasure and items, but also because there's literally DOZENS of different ways of tackling each area.
Each area is wide open and VERY big, and there's all kinds of objects and things you can interact with. Want to take out the baddies by just blasting through them?
You can do that, but you can also climb on top of a roof and drop some grenades in their midst (I frickin' LOVE doing that! Weehee!), shoot some explosive oildrums, use Karts full of explosives, shoot them down cliffs, do whatever the Heck you want, it's ALL good.
Not only that, but it sports fantastic visuals as well. Unbelievably beautiful and realistic, I'm sure the Gamecube wasn't even supposed to be able to handle anything like this; it puts 99% of the current video gaming world to shame, and that includes your stupid XBox 360. PHA!
One of the best things to ever happen to video games. Let's all burn a candle for Capcom and worship their leaders.

- Best Playstation 2 Game:

Again, no real contest:

Shadow of the Colossus.
I acknowledge the fact that Resident Evil 4 has been released on PS2 as well, and that all the added extra's make it an even better game than the original (the PS2 version is apparently coming back to the GC as a budget title, which is good!), but it was originally a Gamecube title, and it wouldn't be fun to give the Best PS2 Game award to the same game, now would it?
Also, as much as I'm loving Kingdom Hearts 2 right now, it simply cannot match the incredibly indelible expression Shadow of the Damn This Title Is Long left on me.
It easily matches Resident Evil 4 in terms of completely overwhelming visuals and fantastic gameplay, and even manages to up the ante for sheer originality, beautiful art direction, a great moving story and a majestic soundtrack.
You have never played a game so visually impressive as Shadow of the Colossus. It may not be as polished and realistic as Resident Evil 4, but it more than makes up for that by gorgeous lighting effects, dreamlike graphics, and totally humongous enemies. You though the Troll in RE4 was big? Don't make me laugh! He's an extremely small ant, when compared to even the smallest colossus in SotC.
For one of the most unique gaming experiences you are ever likely to have, this game is the bee's knees. Wonderful, exciting, adventurous, and completely overwhelming, one of the finest experiences in my entire life.

- Best Gameboy Advance Game:

Hmmmm.

Rockman EXE 6: Dennoujuu Faltzer/Greiga.
Let's be fair, it hasn't exactly been a very exciting year for GBA this year, what with its new younger brother, the Nintendo DS, stealing all of its limelight. The same companies that made games for GBA have quickly made the small step to DS, and its older brother has therefore had to deal with a rather severe lack of anything good.
Amidst the rather dull titles released on GBA this year, Megaman Battle Network 6 is the only game that I really enjoyed, perhaps because I'm a longtime Rockman fanboy, but most probably because this game was finally as good as its early predecessors.
Capcom had done a good job at totally fucking up the last couple of games in the series, so I was pleasantly surprised to see them returning to their roots, and making a game that was worthy of the name again.
These games, when done right, are tremendous fun. They offer a decently lengthy quest, with many many subquests, and a superb battle system that rewards skill and dexterity. Collection freaks will also love this, cos there's a whole shitload of items to collect and stuff to unlock.
I don't care for Fire Emblem, and I definitely don't like Final Fantasy IV, so this was pretty much the only game worth playing on GBA for me this year. And great stuff it is too.

Sadly, this is pretty much the only 3 categories I've been into this year.
I don't own an XBox, regular OR 360, nor do I own a PSP or DS, so I've been kinda running behind things this year. Maybe I'll get one of the above in the future, although I'm sure I'll never buy an XBox, and the 360 is going to have to REALLY strut its stuff if it wants to attract my attention, cos from what I've seen so far, not only does it not look like true Next Gen (just a nicer Xbox), it has rather dull and uninspired games as well.
The PSP is a complete joke, despite its processing power, and the DS is the only thing I AM interested in, but it has the added disadvantage of my not enjoying Portable gaming very much anymore. Those Online features are definitely looking cool though.
Which leaves the final category:

- Most Overrated/Overhyped/Disappointing Game:

Again, a very clear winner here:

God of War (PS2)
Check out ANY End-of-the-Year Awards at ANY gamesite on the Internet, and you will see God of War showered with almost EVERY possible award. Well, let me be the voice of reason here, and say that it is NOT all that good. Perhaps people are just surprised to see such a high quality title (it is definitely not bad in any way) from an AMERICAN company, but by any means, it's not all that great.
I still think that the 9.0 I gave it was giving it too much credit, cos the more I think about it, the less I like it. There's games that look good in retrospect, and there's those that don't, and God of War belongs to the latter.
First of all, the graphics are overrated. This game reminded me in many ways of Jak and Daxter. It has great open environments, which blend into each other without any fade-outs but are usually connected through some short and uneventful hallways, which occasionally stutter because of the loading. Like Jak and Daxter, the Graphics are bright and colorful, but as the above picture should show, have no real textures to be proud of.Take a gander at Resident Evil 4, and it is painfully obvious which game has the REALLY good graphics.
The cutscenes are stupid as well. It's like they took cutscenes in real time graphics, and then TURNED THEM INTO FMV, which looks like crap. Only occasionally you'll get REAL CG movies, which mainly make use of 2D sprites, strangely, but admittedly DO look very nice, at least from an artistic point of view.

The music is also laughable. Why everyone likes it so much is beyond me. It's bombastic, loud and boisterous, and it lacks any kind of melody. The main theme is boring and blaring horns don't make it sound any better. It claims to be orchestral, but it sounds like synth, which stands in stark contrast with the beautiful Shadow of the Colossus, a majestic, sweeping score that actually had some talent behind it.

Controls are decent, the context sensitive functions are nice, pulling off finishing moves by pressing random button combinations was also a cool idea, but Kratos jumps like a Bag of Sand. AGAIN, like Jak and Daxter, it seems American companies can't make a hero with decent Jumping abilities, which is kind of a painful omission if you're going to make a bloody PLATFORM game. Why equip your hero with a standard Double Jump, if you could also just give him a GOOD single jump? You know, one that works? Also, balancing is completely atrocious. The camera TOTALLY gets in the way, and many was the time I plummeted to my untimely death, through no fault of my own.
Prince of Persia did a MUCH better job at this, since the Prince has more grip, and at least HOLDS ON TO THE EDGE, if he threatens to fall off. Kratos only occasionally manages to grab the ledge when he falls, which makes him an idiot. But that's fine, cos he's not a likeable character to begin with.

And then there's the fact that almost the entire premise of the game was ripped off from Rygar. Same kind of battle system, same kind of background setting. And the story is stupid. IGN actually dares to give it a Best Story award, which is insane.
Of course Greek Mythology rules, but the creators of the game had nothing to do with that, did they? And what they added was tripe. Tripe, even, that has been done thousands of times before. Bah.
The only REALLY cool thing about God of War were the boss fights, and there were FAR too few of them.

No sir, don't like it!

Well, enough bitching, let's start 2006 on a more positive note, shall we?
This year is likely going to bring A LOT of cool stuff! With the PS3 and Revolution in the works and apparently scheduled for this year, the New Console Wars will probably start this year, and I for one, am very curious as to how it will turn out.
Final Fantasy XII should make it to stores this year, although I'm getting increasingly worried about the quality of gameplay.
Zelda: Twilight Princess should not be too far away anymore (apparently Europe is going to see the release FIRST), which should be enough to last ANYONE the entire year, and Baten Kaitos II, so Gamecube owners are looking at a good start.
Next week will see the release of Megaman X Collection on Gamecube and PS2, which is a nice way to start the year (thank you, Capcom, as usual), and the same company should bring us the fantastically and beautifully artistic Okami this year.
I'm sure there's a lot of great stuff in the works noone knows anything about yet.

So here's to 2006, let's hope the Earth doesn't explode!

Happy New Year everyone!

Side-Log: Namco x Capcom

2005-12-30T18:42:00.000+01:00

For the record, that little 'x' is pronounced as "cross".

Once in a while, I am actually able to do a review on a game that HASN'T been reviewed everywhere else yet, so you can consider this somewhat of an exclusive, even though the game's been released for 7 months now.

So, Namco x Capcom then. Don't you just LOVE Cross-overs?
No? Well, you're right.
Although the idea of having SNK characters fighting it out against Capcom characters was still good, and made sense in some way, it has spawned a veritable SLEW of crossover games, mostly Capcom related, and this is only one in a long long line.
First there was X-men vs. Streetfighter, then there was Marvel vs. Capcom, SNK vs. Capcom, The United States vs. Capcom, Oprah vs. Capcom, Capcom vs. Capcom and finally Capcom vs. Sexual Harassment, which is still pending results.

First there were rumors Capcom was going to team up with/against Sammy to create a Street Fighter vs. Guilty Gear crossover, but (sadly) this never happened.
So Capcom moved on into territory that did not actually made sense, and Namco x Capcom was born.
At least, up to this point, they had restricted themselves to fighting games, but now they decided to make a huge Mascot-a-thon that had little to do with anything anymore, and what's even worse, they decided to leave the actual production of the game to Namco, meaning you don't even have to expect good gameplay either.
Rather than spawning a Tekken vs. Street Fighter game, which would've been......weird....this game is Namco's attempt at Tactical RPGs, which makes me go "Why don't you try to get more orthodox games to be fun FIRST!?".

I won't hide the fact that I don't like Namco games that much. That's not to say that they're bad, because they usually aren't, but they're never really good either.
The game's design has been left to Monolith Soft, always closely involved with Namco, and previously responsible for the "Love it or Hate it" Xenosaga series and the "Love it or Be An Idiot" Baten Kaitos series. And honestly, Baten Kaitos is the only REALLY good thing they ever did, and Namco x Capcom didn't change anything about that.

Anyway, like I said, the game is a kind of Tactical RPG, meaning you have to move units around grid-based stages, and you have to get your characters as close as possible to the enemies to be able to attack them. As a tactical RPG it's really not very interesting. There's very little variety in tasks, you're facing "Destroy all Enemies" scenarios almost every time, only occasionally interrupted by "Beat the Boss Character". Sometimes there are some enemy characters that you are not supposed to kill, adding a very minor challenge, and most times there are specific characters in your own party that are not allowed to die, adding yet another minuscule difficulty element.
As it is though, the game is exceedingly easy, and I don't even know what the Game Over screen looks like. I think I was halfway through the game when a single character died for the first time, and I laughed at him.
A real tactical or strategical element is nowhere to be found, and fans of the genre are likely to be disappointed by this title. Especially if you're used to Final Fantasy Tactics, this game is absolutely laughable.

The real distinguishing feature though, are the battles themselves. Once one of your troops attacks an enemy character, the game cuts to the battle mode, which is interesting. Each character has 5 moves and 1 Super Combo at his disposal, which can be freely used. Every attack is performed by pushing the O button alone, or in combination with a directional button. Perform all 5 possible attacks in a row, and you'll get a small HP or MP recovery bonus.
At the bottom of the screen, there's a SPECIAL gauge, which fills up as you pummel your enemy. When the gauge reaches 100%, you can pull off a special combo, and do some serious damage. All moves are of course trademark skills of the character in question, which is nice because of the recognition and everything.
Each character has a Branch level, which decides how many times he/she gets to attack. By succesfully chaining moves together, extra damage and extra Branch points can be earned and blahblahblah.

If you've been a close reader of this wonderful blog you'll know that I recently finished this game after a whopping 81:30 hours, and sadly, the above is ALL there is to this game.
The biggest problem is the incredible monotonousness. There are 45 chapters, and a couple of Prologues, and they are ALL pretty much the same. Battle Arenas are not very interesting, you keep fighting the same enemies and bosses over and over and over again, until you finally dispose of them in an incredibly anti-climactic battle in one of the last chapters, and there are basically NO surprises along the road.
The reason for clocking in at 81 hours is that, before long, battles start taking HOURS to complete. New enemies will keep appearing and appearing, and 2 hour battles soon become nothing out of the ordinary. You'd expect some variety and change of pace, but there is none.

Add to that the fact that there is a LOT of dialogue, most of which is totally useless and only meant as "comic relief" and you really don't know why you're bothering in the first place.
Strangely, the dialogue is only really narrated at extremely erratic intervals. You can be in the middle of a conversation, and then suddenly a couple of lines will feature real voice acting, only to completely disappear a couple of lines later, EVEN if the character in question is still talking. Either don't bother, or do it properly, you assholes!

The fact that this style of game and especially the sense of humor are VERY Japanese means that there is VERY little chance of this game ever getting translated and released in the West, but don't worry, cos you're not missing out on anything.

Now I hear you asking: "Why the HELL did you bother to finish this game then, playing for more than 80 HOURS!? And it's not even really part of the Project! LOSER!"

And you'd be right, because I don't know either.
The fact of the matter is, and I've heard this from everyone who's played it, despite its many many shortcomings, this game is strangely addictive.
Really.
I found it EXTREMELY hard to put down, even after a 2 hour battle, I wanted to see what was going to happen next, even though nothing actually ever happened.

I guess the battles are kinda fun, with all those trademark moves, and their complete over-the-topness, but most importantly, it's Namco x Capcom.
This game is completely Mascot Driven, to an almost disgusting degree.
It's filled to the brim with familiar Namco and Capcom characters, and THAT is exactly the strength of this game, because it caters for a VERY wide target audience.
Everyone is going to find some characters they recognize or like, unless they've never played any games before, in which case you really shouldn't bother, cos this game is not going to get you interested in Gaming either.

But all the famous Mascots have been handled REALLY well.
They all have their most recognisable and coolest moves, most characters even have their original voice actors (most Street Figher characters actually sound like in the old game, and then there are characters from recent Namco games, like KOS-MOS, Momo, Shion etc. who are obviously voiced by their respective actors), and more importantly, they behave like they are supposed to.
They have the same quotes, the same way of speaking, the same personality and are therefore ultimately recognisable. In other words, all characters have been treated very respectfully, so all fans should be pleased.

In that respect, the game is more and more enjoyable, depending on how much of a veteran gamer you are. Street Fighter, Tekken, SoulCalibur, Megaman etc. are likely to ring bells, but also expect characters from lesser known titles like Genpei Toumaden, Druaga's Tower, Ghouls and Ghosts and some obscure stuff even I had never heard of.
There are some weird choices as well though. I don't see why they chose to include characters from Dino Crisis or Gun Survivor, where Resident Evil would've made more sense, seeing as how the RE games ARE popular. Also, why did they choose for the Megaman from the Legends series, whereas the Megamans from ALL other Megaman series are WAY cooler.

But I complain like an old geezer. The fact is that there is a LOT of recognition in here, which is just cool for gamers who've been around for awhile.
All characters are part of their own story, and there are a lot of events referring to other games, which are pretty cool if you know what they're about.
Problem is, many of these sub-stories have no conclusion, presumably because you're supposed to know the games they come from, or whatever. It can be very unsatisfying if you're not familiar with any of them, cos there are a lot of loose ends that are not tied up.

So to make a long story short, if you're a video game Buff, you're likely to enjoy this, if just for all those mascottes in one game together, but if you're not, there's little here to enjoy, especially if you're a Tactical RPG fan, because this game is ridiculously simple.
An 8-.

Resident Evil

2005-12-27T11:22:00.000+01:00

Zombie Time!

Believe it or not, but Resident Evil was the first and foremost reason I bought myself a Playstation way back when. I'd rented a Playstation before, to see what all the fuss was about, and I picked up a game called BioHazard (at that time, videostores and game shops still imported things from Japan) that I'd never heard of, and even the genre "Survival Horror", which was proudly displayed on the front of the box, didn't ring any kind of bell. But it said Capcom on the box, and pictures looked pretty, so I decided to pick it up anyway.

Needless to say, I loved every second of it, and so did the rest of the world, and so the genre became popular and everyone wanted some of the action.
And, yes, I KNOW Alone in the Dark was first, but Alone in the Dark also completely SUCKED and noone's ever played it, so Capcom rules.

Many games would follow, not only in the same franchise, but from other companies as well. Capcom showed Survival Horror was a great and entertaining genre, Silent Hill showed that it could be beautiful, haunting and intelligent, the Alone in the Dark series showed that it could do nothing but copy Capcom's versions of their own idea, and Tecmo even showed that Camera's can be goddamn scary, if I am to believe the reviews, although I have yet to play any of the Fatal Frame games.
And Nintendo showed that Fat Italian Plumbers can be cute, which is probably even more scary.

But, like any other Capcom game, it has aged considerably, and has been improved upon so many times, that the first game that started off the whole craze, is now bland and kinda dull. It's hard to believe that these graphics were EVER impressive, and these are RENDERS we are talking about, and later installments have added so many improvements that this one has become hard to play indeed.

It's hard to believe the Resident Evil series ever had to work WITHOUT Auto Aim (excluding RE4 of course, which didn't need it, because it was too goddamn good), Quick Turn and Leon Kennedy.
The lack of an Auto Aim is probably the most painful problem with this game, since the fixed camera often does not give you a good angle. In fact, more often than not, you can't even SEE the enemy, because he's not in reach of the fixed camera.
He could be right in front of your nose, but you wouldn't be able to shoot him, because you can't bloody see him!
But even if you CAN see him, it can still be hard to target. The fight with Plant 42 is one of the most atrocious examples, where you can clearly see yourself AND the huge Poisonous Piece of Lettuce, but you cannot judge your angle AT ALL, at least, not without wasting some ammo, to see where your bullets end up. And this is a battle where you have to keep moving, so you have to adjust your position EVERY time.

But you know what's worse? Bloody Goddamn Fucking HUNTERS.
These assholes have been the thorn in the eye of every RE player around the globe, since day ONE. They're really damn fast, really damn strong, can take a shitload of bullets, and in this game THERE'S NO AUTO AIM. Thanks, Capcom.

And when you're suddenly confronted with a Huge Green Clawed Monster, with a gold medal in 100 yard dashing, it doesn't really help that you don't have a Quick Turn either. Bastards. God, I'm getting angry just WRITING about them.

Also, the series' famous Magical Boxes, which allow you to store items and pick them up somewhere else, are a LOT fewer and further between in this game, than in the sequels. There's a particularly nasty part of the game, where you have to go without any kind of item management for a LONG time, constantly picking up new stuff that you NEED, NO discarding function, and a goddamn Boss Fight coming out of NOWHERE, and THEN afterwards you need your combat knife, which NO sane person EVER carries around, unless you want to waste a shitload of ammo taking cobwebs off a door.
Damn, that bit sucked.

Furthermore, there has been a Director's Cut on PSX, which is already better, because it has more stuff in it, and an arranged mode, and THEN there's the absolutely fantastic Gamecube Remake, which basically deletes any kind of need for the original, unless you can't stand those Crimson Heads, which is understandable.

And of course, this wouldn't be any kind of review of Resident Evil, if I didn't take some time to point out the absolutely brilliant Voice Acting.
Brilliant, in the "so bad it's hilariously funny" way. Really.
This game has become legendary because of its totally awful voice acting, which is really some of the worst EVER.

The actors sound like they've only ever watched crappy B-movies in their life, ITALIAN B-movies at that, but it's not like they have anything to work with either.
I mean, how do you say "You were almost a Jill Sandwich!" or "It might be handy if YOU, the MASTER of Unlocking, take it with you", without sounding like a moron?
As shown by the above quotes, Barry is by far the worst, but then, like I said, he gets the worst lines to work with.
But Jill Valentine is horrendous as well, I mean, you just have to hear it, it's really incredibly funny actually. Many of the lines in this game have become infamous quotes Nerds like me use all the time.
From lines like "NO! DON'T GO!" to "I can't figure this out AT ALL", it's a riot a minute.

Also, there are some other things that make this game stand out from the rest of the series. First of all, to my knowledge, this is the ONLY Resident Evil that got censored. The opening movie was gory and full-color in the Japanese original, whereas the gore was edited out, and it was turned into black and white, for the West. Also, during the Character introduction, Chris is seen smoking in the original, but that was replaced by a cut of him from the movie itself.
And the first CG movie, showing the first Zombie eating at someone's corpse, does not show the head being severed and rolling to the floor.

Secondly, and most interestingly, this is the ONLY Resident Evil to use ACTUAL real(ly bad) actors. The opening and ending movies are all done by real human beings (altough they might be robots, I'm not sure), which is kinda cool, cos that makes it slightly more legitimate to have the hots for Jill Valentine. She IS pretty though.

I will acknowledge this game for setting a standard, and being totally cool for its time. It "immortalized" the Undead in Video Games, and it became a staple of the genre, despite it's sluggish controls.
Every rerelease and sequel are better, but I have to give credit to the grandfather of all Survival Horror, despite the fact that it's not that much fun anymore.
A nice round 8 seems sufficient.

It Is Here!

2005-12-24T18:54:00.000+01:00

Great service Lik-Sang, swift delivery DHL, Merry Christmas Ingen!
Now I have to wait until I can open my presents, cos my mom confiscated it for under the Christmas Tree. D'oh!

Also, I FINALLY finished Namco x Capcom, clocking in at 81:30 HOURS! DAMN YO.
This has to be the longest non-open-ended game EVER. Not a single second of this game has been spent on levelling up or side-quests, because there aren't any.
Expect the full review soon.
I am going to use my 3rd Joker in this project for Reiselied, because it is one of the most atrociously bad games ever. I'm close to finishing Resident Evil, and I'm really looking forward to picking up Resident Evil 4 again, so the next couple of days are looking REALLY good, gamewise.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Woohoo!

2005-12-22T13:02:00.000+01:00

I have just recieved word from the lovely people over at Lik-Sang that my copy of Kingdom Hearts 2 has been shipped (yay!), and that I should recieve it in 1 to 2 days, since I laid down a crapload of money to have it delivered before Christmas.

Also, I have been told Famitsu scored it a whopping 39/40 (meaning three 10s and one 9), making it a VERY good game indeed, almost akin to the perfect scoring Ocarina of Time.

I am excited, to say the least.

Back-log: D2

2005-12-18T21:21:00.000+01:00

Or "D no shokutaku 2" in Japanese, which means "D's Dinner Table".
And as much as that may sound like a Kitchen Furniture Simulation Game, it is in fact none of the above. It has NOTHING to do with any kind of tables, let alone other types of furniture, unless you include beds, which I think I saw somewhere once.

Also, the 'D' part of the game is completely gone.
The original D game was a 7th Guest/Myst style first person puzzle game, which actually DID feature a huge Dinner Table, which was actually an important element of the story. I don't want to spoil too much about that game, but D stands for Dracula, referring to the fact that Laura, the main heroine, and her father are descendants of the aforementioned Count who is famous for decorating his castles upside down.
Together they ate Laura's mom, and depending on your choices in the game, you could even end up getting eaten by your father yourself, which was rather sick.
By the way, I just spoiled everything, so you can skip playing that game altogether.

The original game on PSX was actually rather clever. It was one LONG CG movie, but it was actually interactive. You were inside a big mansion (aren't you always?), and by pressing left, right or forward you could move Laura about, as she walked over a fixed path, which was basically a movie showing.
It looked nice, for its time, but due to its nature, it was immensely slow, and short. Despite the fact that it was spread across 3 CD's, it only took about 1 hour to finish, and it had hardly any voices or music.

And then there was D2, on Dreamcast, which is COMPLETELY different.
The only thing that points back to its roots, is that, when you're inside buildings, you can only walk along set paths in a first person perspective. It's all in Real-time though, so it's more of an homage to its ancestor than anything else.
All the rest of the game is in full glorious 3D, although Full Snowy 3D would be more accurate.

Why? Because there's a lot of snow. And I mean a LOT.
Laura is back, although NOTHING indicates the events of the first game ever took place. This time, Laura finds herself in an airplane, which gets hijacked by, say it with me now, Terrorists (amazingly relevant this game is) and eventually the plane crashes in the middle of some Alaskan Mountain Range, if I'm not mistaken. A very Snowy environment anyway.
As it will turn out, Laura is not the only survivor. She is found by Kimberley, a young black woman, who talks WAY too much and is a real whiny bitch. Those who did survive are behaving very strangely and before long, Laura finds herself surrounded by freaky monsters, and Kimberley gives her a machine gun to get rid of them.
"Oh you regained consciousness eh? Here's a gun, now get to WORK!"

What ensues is a kind of exploration based puzzle/action game. You have to walk a LOT in this game, although you'll get a Snowmobile later. Battles occur at random, but are fought on the spot, and in first person perspective. The directional pad moves the cross-hairs, and X and Y make Laura turn left or right (only during battles).
Occassionally you'll move inside buildings, usually to solve some puzzles or talk to people, but the majority of your time is spent walking and walking and walking.
Did I mention there's a lot of snow everywhere?
Well, there is. A LOT.

On the one hand, I have to admit, the graphics are very nice, and they do a great job of creating a cold and alienated atmosphere, as does the sound and the presentation. In fact, it would be pretty accurate to liken this game to the movie The Thing, even down to the Alien Life form that can take over people's bodies.
It's like they turned The Thing into a game, only they gave you an open outside environment and a young woman wearing a suit that cannot possibly be comfortable in that kind of circumstance.
Still, what WOULD you wear to Alien Combat, right?
Right.

Puzzles are few and far between, and usually pretty easy. Combat is fun to some extent, and there are some cool and gory boss-battles, but the game does kind of suffer from the tremendous amount of walking you have to do.
The story is good, although the ending is kind of non-sensical, and seems to exist only to preach about how we should treat Mother Earth (where the Hell did THAT one come from!?). Still cut-scenes are good, there's lots of twists and turns, freaky and gory scenes, good voice acting and believable characters (except for Laura, who's a Mute for some reason, until a key scene late in the game).
All in all, this game could've been really good. The atmosphere is really spot-on and presentation-wise it's all good, it's just that there is simply TOO much walking (straight ahead AND back and forth) to be fun.
Since everything you'll get to see are Snowy Mountains, you can only take so much of running endlessly before you start getting bored, since there's literally NOTHING to do, except for random battles, and the occasional collectible that''s lying around.

Still, it's very original, and atmosphere and good storytelling go a long way in my book, so I give this an 8.2. If you want to see a...different look on survival horror, this game will likely entertain you.

In other news:
Holy Shizznat! My game clock has reached about 53 hours (!!!) in Namco x Capcom and I'm at Chapter 36 now. Thing is, I recently discovered there are 45 GODDAMN CHAPTERS, so I'm looking at at least another 15 hours or so, I think.
Damn, this has to be the longest game EVER, considering not a second of those 53 hours was spent on side-quests or levelling-up, since NEITHER OF THOSE ARE POSSIBLE.
Damn.

Back-log: Croc, Legend of the Gobbos.

2005-12-15T12:03:00.000+01:00

Yeah, Legend of the Gobbos.
If that doesn't spell Gore, Mayhem and Carnage, I don't know WHAT does.

Gobbos are small cute, fluffy creatures, and by nature this kind of creature is prone to getting kidnapped, because in some way they are important to someone, you know, like Mice.
By the way, is it me, or is that the most disturbing Nintendo commercial EVER!?

Anyway, like I said, the Gobbos of Legend have been kidnapped by the Evil Baron Dante, and not the Demon-slaying Wise-ass with the Red Cloak we all know and love, but the rather hideous Frog-like Green Dude with a taste for small fluffy creatures.

So it's up to you, as the loveable Croc (he's a Crocodile! Get it!? It's insanely original!) to rescue these creatures and give Baron Dante the ass-kicking he deserves.
At your disposal is your tail, which packs quite a punch, and.....well, that's it really. No huge arsenal of moves in this game, just jumping and whacking.

There are 4 worlds each with 6 regular stages, 2 boss stages and two hidden stages, which can be unlocked by finding all six Gobbo Cages in every stage up to that point.
Find ALL Gobbos, and a new world will be opened, to give you access to the REAL final battle, and a totally crappy ending which is not worth your bother.

And a bother it IS, make no mistake. This game goes into the exact same category as Rayman, being the Platform game that looks deceptively cute, but sports an extreme difficulty and immense frustration. The fact that the controls are very rigid doesn't help in the least. Croc is not very versatile, but quick turning is often required, making for some very annoying bits in the game.
Throughout the levels you will find Crystals, which are Croc's Trademark collectibles, and very much like Sonic's Rings, they also act as a kind of Health Insurance, meaning that as long as you have at least one Crystal, you can be hit without dying.

I mean, it's fun and all, every stage is divided into several areas, which aren't so big, so exploring is easy meaning you won't easily miss anything. There's bonus levels and extra lives to be found, as well as those elusive 6 Cages you need to find in every level, and it would be fun if it hadn't been so TERRIBLY frustrating.
Of course in the beginning it's all nice and good, but later levels are VERY hard, and you'll die A LOT, mostly because of some unfair jumps and not so tight controls.

One particular problem is that Croc has a hipdrop. I think you'll find that MOST platform game mascottes have a hipdrop of some kind, but they are usually activated by jumping and then pressing an attack button or some other button, which is good, but in Croc, the hipdrop is activated by pressing jump AGAIN in mid-air.
Now, considering that there are some truely nerve-shatteringly annoying jumps in this game, you might imagine that sometimes you're pressing the jump button SO frantically that you accidentally hipdrop yourself into oblivion, which is just stupid. Awkward and unnecessary.

Like I said, it goes straight into the Rayman category, also because the main reason I bought it was because I had rented it before, and really liked the music. High quality synth and some live instruments make this game a joy to listen too at least, even when you're swearing at that Goddamn Crocodile for being a Total Asshole.

I'm going to give this a 7, which is my standard score for games that are good but too frustrating.

PS: blame the recent lack of updates on the fact that Namco x Capcom simply REFUSES to end. Damn, this game takes a SHITLOAD of time.
In other news, I pre-ordered Kingdom Hearts 2 yesterday, and I hope to get it in time for Christmas, because I payed the full smack of dough to get it here ASAP.
I haven't been this psyched by a new game since Resident Evil 4, which was almost a whole year ago (yes, it HAS been that long), and RE4 definitely didn't dissapoint, so I'm hoping the same for KH2.

Side-log: Capcom Fighting Jam

2005-12-11T13:13:00.000+01:00

Or Capcom Fighting Evolution, whatever.

Ahhhhh. Capcom. Once upon a time, they were the absolute Gods of beat-em-ups, and anything that had the letters "Fight" on it in some form or other, was a guaranteed success!
And for a long time, it was all good, but THEN, Capcom became lazy. They decided that sprites from a game from 1998 were good enough to still be used, many many years later for EVERY new game they make.

And to compensate for lack of evolution, they decided to just throw in tons of characters from different series. The Age of Cross-overs began, and many companies like Marvel and SNK tried their best at a bout of fisticuffs against age-old sprites.
The Marvel vs. Capcom series were great fun, because at least they offered an entirely new way of fighting, which was very frantic and over the top, and even the SNK vs. Capcom series wasn't that bad. Well, the second one wasn't, at least, but it mostly lived off the novelty value of pitching two rival companies against each other.

Now, it has become time for Capcom to take a big step back (how the HELL did they find the guts to put that "Evolution" staple on this game!?), and offer LESS characters, NO selectable fighting styles, and really crappy 2D visuals.
Capcom Fighting Jam features characters from a variety of Capcom games, 4 characters per series, and includes well known characters such as Chun Li (SFIII version), Rose (SF Alpha), Demitri (Darkstalkers), Ryu (SFII Version, and where the hell is Ken?) as well as some that you've probably never heard of, and one entirely new character called Ingrid.

Each character plays like in the game he or she was taken from, and it is not possible to choose alternate versions, which is a huge step back from SNK vs. Capcom 2, where you could even have Ryu play like a Samurai Shodown character if you wanted to.

The character sprites all look absolutely HORRENDOUS. Bald and extremely pixellated characters, lacking color fight against boring STATIC backdrops that look worse than some fighting games from the year 2000 even. Come ON, Capcom! Time to fucking move ON already! At least SNK vs. Capcom 2 had decent 3D backgrounds, but this is ridiculous.
It's like they wanted to make a new game with as little effort as possible, using old sprites, crappy music and a rather unresponsive control system.

With the Guilty Gear series showing that 2D can still look incredibly good, if you just use High defition sprites and put some effort into it, Capcom still seems to think they can get away with the same sprites they used in Street Fighter Alpha 3 and Street Fighter III, which, like I said, ARE FROM THE LAST MILENNIUM. Seriously, check the release dates.

I'm not saying that games are all about graphics, but I AM saying it's stupid and REALLY cheap to be using the same damn sprites forever.

The only positive thing I can think of to say, is that this is, after all, still Street Fighter (mostly), which means you DO get good gameplay, but it's so much lesser quality than we are used to.
Also, the only really nice surprise is that, finally, we get Character Specific endings again. After dozens of fighting games with a crapload of characters, all getting the same ending, you can finally see some nice personalized artwork again, if you play through the incredibly cheap 1p mode again.
There's no real text, just a one-page comic of sorts, but it does look nice, I've always loved Capcom Artwork, and it makes you think what they could do if they tried implementing this kind of graphics FOR IN-GAME, maybe? Assholes.

So what we have here, is a game that is in no way interesting, good-looking or fun, and only lives off its legacies.
Paris Hilton? Yes, that sounds scarily similar.
Yeah, I like that. This game is the Paris Hilton of the Capcom fighting games, a cheap skanky parasite, too lazy to do anything new.
Now, I am going to wait patiently for that sex tape starring Rose.

A 6.5

In between VI

2005-12-08T11:37:00.000+01:00

Status Report!

Yesterday was the day of my graduation!
In itself, this is enough of a feat, but it becomes even more bizarre when you consider I started studying in bloody 1997. I am now officially a Master of Arts, as the boring English title would have it, but I vastly prefer the Dutch terminology of Doctorandus, which even means I can put a nice Drs. in front of my name. THAT'S why I was doing it, after all.
My guidance teacher held a very nice speech, even though he admitted not knowing me so well. So what he did was, he actually went onto the Internet to perform a search on my name, AND HE FOUND THIS SITE. D'oh! *waves*
I'm sure he suddenly understood why it took me so long to write the damn thesis in the first place :S
Still, he made some very nice comments about it, so it was all good, and I was able to dodge out of the room, skillfully avoiding any nasty questions from the family.

So I'm a certified Japanologist now, which also automatically means that I'm unemployed, unwanted and a bit of a laughing-stock. At least I have my games, which don't laugh at me or call me names or put tacks on my seat just before I'm sitting down.

But I know that my regular readers are ALL wondering when the Hell I'm going to know if and when I can go to Japan with that nice scholarship. Well, I had a nice talk with my teacher the other day, who kindly made use of his contacts at the Japanese Embassy, and his insane Japanese Ambiguity Skills, and he found out for me that I will recieve the final results come MID-JANUARY at the frigging earliest.
Great.

Game-wise, I'm working on Namco X Capcom at the moment, which is consuming EXTREME amounts of time. Battles get longer and longer every time, and the other day, it took me about 2 HOURS to get through one particularly nasty fight. Over-the-top fun aplenty, but very time-consuming nonetheless.
Also, I'm playing the recently released Rockman EXE 6 on GBA (emulator), which is great fun, since they decided that the older games were better so they made one in the same vein again. Good stuff.

Well, that's my two cents for today, in the near future look forward to perhaps a Backlog, or maybe a review of Capcom Fighting Jam.

Drs. Ingen out!

Side-log: Shadow of the Colossus

2005-12-05T15:51:00.000+01:00

Once every decade, amidst a plethora of boring tripe and things you've seen a thousand times before, a game will come along to prove that video games aren't dead yet.

To totally overwhelm you; To show that fantastic things can be done, even with consoles that are running on their last legs. To provide proof that there still ARE brilliant game designers out there with a HUGE imagination and great originality.
To deliver an experience that is unlike anything you've ever seen before, one that can ONLY be felt through playing games, because books or movies simply can not get away with this kind of thing.

And this year, we've had TWO of those.

One is of course Resident Evil 4, which I will be getting to soon.

The other is Shadow of the Colossus.

THIS, my friends is interactive motherfucking ART. It's a wonderful experience that you have to FEEL rather than play. A dream-like adventure with monsters of incomprehensible magnitude awaits those who dare to cross the Treshold.

In Shadow of the Colossus, you play as a nameless Hero. This game was made by the same creators as Ico, and thus has a very similar look and direction. The characters speak in a made up language, although thankfully there are real subtitles this time round. You get very little information about the story which helps establish the surreal kind of atmosphere that was also present in the prequel.
All you know is that your girlfriend or some kind of princess at least, has died and there is only one way to bring her back, which is to slay the 16 Colossi roaming the Cursed Lands.

You start out in some kind of Castle with the Princess lying on an altar, waiting to be revived, like women tend to do. From the immediate get-go the graphics are ASTOUNDING. If you've played Ico, you'll know that the team in question has a real knack for displaying bright lights as if you're playing in someone's dream.
It offers a beautiful and surreal atmosphere that fits the mysterious mood of the story and the strange huge world perfectly.

At your disposal, you have a sword, a bow and a horse.
By raising your sword to sky, the reflecting light will point you to where the next Colossus is. Once you have found it, you can use the reflecting light to find its weak spot, and use the sword itself to violently stab it to death.
The bow is used for very minor damage, and is most appropriate for long distance attacks (mainly to hit certain key points on some Colossi) or just for drawing a Colossus's attention.
The horse serves mainly to make travelling across the vast plains a bit faster, but it can also be used to gain some extra height for jumps, and for swearing at.

If you've read my Ocarina of Time review, you might remember that Epona's presence in that game annoyed me to no end, but fortunately, this game is slightly better.
First of all, it looks and moves MUCH more realistically, so much so that I'm wondering if they didn't in fact Motion Capture a real horse (now that would be something to see) and it also feels like you're actually riding a horse, despite the fact that I've never done that so I can't possibly know, but it's still true.

You can jump on or off its back at any time, although jumping on can be slightly unresponsive sometimes. The good thing is that the Horse, which seems to be called Arro or something is very clever and can usually find you in no time.
The triangle button calls him, and if you keep it pressed, the camera will focus on the direction where he's at.
Even when facing a wall he won't jump off, you can just jump off yourself (you can take an amazing amount of damage when it comes to jumping from heights) and then let the horse figure out for itself how to get to you, but it will always be quick and clever about it.

The same applies for the Hero. Motion Capture is magnificent, and what's even more special is that they've gone for a believable kind of motion system. You don't get some kind of cool Kick-ass Warrior with impossible moves, no, instead you get a normal guy with a sword, who stumbles when he drops from a great height, who is knocked over when an Enormous foot is stomped down nearby and, in short, who moves as clumsily as any REAL human being would. I'm sure this is not bad programming, because they've taken great care to make his stumbling looks as realistic as possible, and it just makes the character all that more human.

When battling a Colossus, the L1 button focuses on the beast so you can quickly check where it is, should you lose sight of it, despite it's gigantic proportions.
And HUGE they are. With the exception of two or three rather small ones, every single Colossus is, well, COLOSSAL for lack of a better term. The major challenge in the game therefore, is figuring out how to get to their weakspot. Usually you have to find a way of climbing the beast, but sometimes it's just a matter of exposing its Vitals (that's what the game calls it) and stab away. The Final Boss is INSANELY big, and might very well be THE biggest living thing you've ever seen in a Video Game. The beauty is also that the game has NO loading times whatsoever. The entire world is one big whole and everything blends into everything else.
This means that if you climb up something really big, and you fall, that you will end up at the bottom, instead of getting a cheap fade-out or game over screen.
This makes the world much more believable and really gets the impressive size of the game across.

And every battle is completely different from the next too. Great care and inventivity have been put into making these battles as varied and fun as possible, and you really truely won't believe some of the things you have to do. I've battled on land, in water, and even in the air (those fights are REALLY a sight to behold).
It takes guts to make a game that is essentially nothing but Boss Fights, but Sony Computer Entertainment has done a truely fantastic job at it.
This does unfortunately mean that the game isn't very long.
In 7 to 8 hours, you should be able to finish it, and there are Time Challenges and a Hard Mode, leading to some unlockables, to increase replayability, but even if the adventure is really short, it is absolutely worth playing. There's literally NOTHING like it.

On the real downside the Camera can be a REAL pain in the ass sometimes, but as I've said numerous times before, 3D games with a good camera can be counted on the finger of one hand, so I've given up criticizing games for it.
Also, there's a rather large amount of pop-up, even when up-close, you can see that some textures or objects are pretty much realised at the last moment, which can be a bit disturbing. As a small disclaimer, this is a ridiculously big world we're talking about, with lots of eye-candy and hidden rooms so I guess we can cut the game some slack.

It's like having a beautiful girlfriend with MASSIVE boobs: Great to look at, and a lot of fun to play with, but still a girl, so that means she's gonna bitch about things.

Technical short-comings are MORE than made up for with content, gameplay and originality. The story doesn't move along very quickly, but when it does, it's great. The ending is particularly chilling and orchestrated in a truely masterful way.
NOT playing this game because of some slight technical issues WILL be the biggest mistake you make this year, even if you decided to go on a condom-less sex-tour in South Africa.

With marvellous dream-like graphics, phenomenal and epic battles, a majestic orchestral soundtrack and a HUGE gaming environment, this is one of the most unique and impressive games you're EVER likely to play.
It has rekindled my faith in video games as the best form of entertainment on earth, and it has even reminded me of why I love games so much in the first place.
THIS is why I keep playing, THIS is why I wade through cash-ins and commercial crap; to find that one true diamond amongst your grandmother's cheap pearls.

I cannot see this getting anything lower than a 9.8

Rayman

2005-12-02T14:35:00.000+01:00

And yet another Ubisoft game for today.
This game was released in 1995, WAY before the Splinter Cells, Beyond Good and Evils and Princes of Persia of today, when Ubisoft was still a relatively small company with a rather uninteresting logo.

Still I wouldn't be the die hard gamer that I am, if I hadn't discovered this talented company WAY before anyone else, because I'm cool and the rest of the world is not. Did I mention I invented sliced bread?

Back in the SNES and PSX days, I was the kind of person who just played every game he could get his hands on, and if he had to, he would rent them. I stopped doing that when I first went to Japan, where I found out you can actually BUY games at rental prices, and besides, I now have Japanese consoles mostly, and modding is not always an option, so I'm stuck with Japanese junk anyway.
In any case, this is one of those games I just decided to rent for a couple of days, because it looked nice, and I like platformers, so what the hey.

And it IS lovely. Ubisoft's talent is unmistakeable, with even an old title like this still looking very good, great colorful cartoony graphics, with lots of detail, a great and varied soundtrack, although the tracks are WAY too short, and a likeable mascotte, in the shape of the Limb Flinging Rayman.

The ever-so-important story is that The Evil Mr. Dark has stolen the Great Protoon, which keeps balance in the world, and kidnapped all the Electoons which orbit around it, presumably because they're annoyingly cute. So, now it's up to Rayman to retrieve the Protoon and rescue all those little pink buggers from their cages, to once again restore harmony to the world, and maybe get laid, if he's lucky.
At your disposal are your fists, and.......well, that's about it. You can jump, and you can send off a flying punch, and that's the gist of your attacks, so there's no wondering why the game's manual is thinner than Kate Moss.
It's also equally likely to kill you if you try to eat it.

In the course of the game, you will learn some new skills like hanging off ledges, running and using your hair as a helicopter (that's not a joke).
There are around 20 levels in the game, and each level is built up of several stages, most of which are pretty long. Every level has 6 cages with Electoons you have to find, and some of them are hidden very well.
You HAVE to find ALL cages in EVERY stage if you want to get to the final stage, which makes the game rather cumbersome, since a lot of cages are INVISIBLE.
That is to say, you have to trigger their appearance by touching some invisible triggering point by walking or jumping over it. Usually, some clever and logical thinking will lead you to finding these triggering points, but it's very easy to miss one, meaning you'll have to replay an entire stage over and over again, just to find that one elusive cage, IF you want to see the ending.
On the other hand, the ending is really not worth the bother anyway, so you might just stop without playing the final stage.

In fact, you might even stop long before that because, nauseatingly cute graphics and cuddly charaters notwithstanding, this game is frigging HARD. In a very definitely FRUSTRATING way.
Seriously, for a game that is obviously aimed at kids, this is INSANELY difficult.
If you want your kids to go even more mental than they already are, and start breaking things around the house and beating you up, give them this game.
It's the effect it had on me, and I'M 26.

Controls can be frustrating, and some jumps require absolute pixel precise timing and a lot of stuff will kill you in one hit.
A Platform game wouldn't be a platform game without some kind of collectable (except for the brilliant Prince of Persia of course, but Ubisoft didn't realise that until MUCH later), and Rayman has "Tings" to collect. 100 Tings constitutes an extra life, in a total surprise of Gaming logic, but if you die you'll lose ALL the Tings you collected so far. So basically, Ubisoft gives you the finger by saying "You died hunh? Well, just to punish you, we're going to make getting an extra life EVEN harder for you". Bastards.
Still, the main difficulty lies in frustrating controls, and very cheap situations that require lightning reflexes, perfect timing and precision, and often even blind leaps. Good Job, Ubisoft. And this is aimed at young kids you say? Brilliant!

Seasoned gamers will find a good challenge here, if they can stand the bright colors and suffocating happiness (and blinding frustration), and if you persist, you'll find a very decent platform game here, with some nice tricks up its sleeve.
This is one of those games I decided to buy because I liked the music more than anything else though, but it's still entertaining for as long as it lasts.
Children need definitely not apply though, which is kinda stupid, considering the subject matter.
A 7.5 seems about right.

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

2005-11-30T12:40:00.000+01:00

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.

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time

2005-11-28T11:02:00.000+01:00

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!

Pocket Fighter

2005-11-25T16:58:00.000+01:00

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:

PLOK!

2005-11-24T15:16:00.000+01:00

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.

Pilotwings 64

2005-11-23T14:55:00.000+01:00

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!

Pikmin

2005-11-22T13:09:00.000+01:00

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.

Parasite Eve 2

2005-11-21T15:36:00.000+01:00

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.

Backlog: Chrono Cross

2005-11-19T11:23:00.000+01:00

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.

Parasite Eve

2005-11-15T20:45:00.000+01:00

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.

P.N.03

2005-11-14T11:35:00.000+01:00

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!

Onimusha 3

2005-11-12T15:22:00.000+01:00

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

Onimusha 2

2005-11-09T10:59:00.000+01:00

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!

Blood and Boobies!

2005-11-07T21:53:00.000+01:00

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.

Bortlog: Conker's Bad Fur Day

2005-11-06T20:07:00.000+01:00

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!"

Onimusha

2005-11-05T13:14:00.000+01:00

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.