Since I mentioned it down below, I might as well cover it.
You're a space ship, you fly to the right and shoot things.
Squaresoft was magical back in these days. They were good at everything they tried to be good at. Who can say why someone there decided to make a shooter, and lord knows why it got greenlit in the Lucasarts of the East, but it did, and it's amazing.
Einhander takes everything that was previously right about shooters (dying a lot, memorization of enemy patterns, insanity) and does it even better. Bosses, mini bosses, it's all so good. While some will say some other horizontal shooter's better, I will say they are wrong. While i love Gradius 5, it's not nearly as epic or as brilliantly laid out as this.
4 stars, and in the "Desert Island" competition
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Disgaea 2
First off, Disgaea 1: 3 stars. Not for everybody, but a great story and a just stupid amount of post-story gameplay.
Disgaea 2's story's not as good, or at least not as whimsical which is really the charm of Disgaea games, outside of the mathgasm anyway.
But about that mathgasm, some things about the Disgaea series:
- Max character level: 9999
- number of 'stored levels' you can accrue (this involves reincarnating back to level 1 but with more powerful base stats based on the number of levels you have 'stored') 19,998. (what this basically means is that to make your character as powerful as possible, you will have to level it to 9,999 three times)
- Every item, from a lowly piece of candy (for healing) to the great sword Yoshitsuna has levels inside of it. You can go inside the item, beat randomly generated maps populated by random enemies and level up the item. Every item. Items have between 30 and 100 levels (Per Item!) depending on rarity.
- To get the best weapons and armor (class 40) you have to:
I currently have 15 of the 16 map pieces.
I understand the formation of religions a little better. Everyone says it's random, but there has to be something. Maybe it looks on the clock? Maybe the Jolly Pirates are much more likely to show up on Thursdays? Maybe only when the sun's up? There has to be something to give me an edge other than trying to roll a seven over and over and over again.
2 stars, at least until I get that last map piece.
Got the map piece. Now I have two "Yoshitsuna" swords. The thing I'm finding now is that while Disgaea has always been far less about "strategy" than say, Fire Emblem, it's also becoming embarassingly apparent how rote everything about the game is.
You could not convince a man from twenty years ago that anyone would have fun doing this, and while I do and may even take all 10-plus hours it takes to "perfect" a Yoshitsuna, it's still a horrid waste of time.
I used to be mad that in Einhander (4 stars if I haven't covered it yet) to get the ultimate ship, the Selene (9999 of any given ammo, dual gunpods) you had to beat the game, on hard, without continuing (which I never did). Now I don't know. Disgaea is the opposite. The game keeps going and while there are super hard enemies to fight, there's basically no reward (other than possibly bragging to the one other dude who's even heard of the game that you know, and truth be told he's not impressed, he's freaked out). The Selene may have been nigh-impossible to get, but I did get super good at Hard Mode because of it.
2 stars. 3 if you're into strat rpg-esque games.
Disgaea 2's story's not as good, or at least not as whimsical which is really the charm of Disgaea games, outside of the mathgasm anyway.
But about that mathgasm, some things about the Disgaea series:
- Max character level: 9999
- number of 'stored levels' you can accrue (this involves reincarnating back to level 1 but with more powerful base stats based on the number of levels you have 'stored') 19,998. (what this basically means is that to make your character as powerful as possible, you will have to level it to 9,999 three times)
- Every item, from a lowly piece of candy (for healing) to the great sword Yoshitsuna has levels inside of it. You can go inside the item, beat randomly generated maps populated by random enemies and level up the item. Every item. Items have between 30 and 100 levels (Per Item!) depending on rarity.
- To get the best weapons and armor (class 40) you have to:
- Buy or find a class 38 weapon or item and go into it. In this "Item World" you'll need to find steal a very rare version of a class 39 weapon, which may or may not show up randomly, pretty much anyhere if the enemy level is high enough in whatever item you are inside.
- Go into said class 39 weapon and level it all the way down to level 99 of 100.
- Collect the 16 pieces of treasure map from the 16 types of pirate that randomly show up after a few turns on any given level in the item world.
- Go to the new "Land of Chaos" opened up by finding all the map parts, going back into your class 39 weapon on it's 99th level, going to level 100 and stealing the class 40 weapon from the "Item God" that resides on the 100th level.
I currently have 15 of the 16 map pieces.
I understand the formation of religions a little better. Everyone says it's random, but there has to be something. Maybe it looks on the clock? Maybe the Jolly Pirates are much more likely to show up on Thursdays? Maybe only when the sun's up? There has to be something to give me an edge other than trying to roll a seven over and over and over again.
2 stars, at least until I get that last map piece.
Got the map piece. Now I have two "Yoshitsuna" swords. The thing I'm finding now is that while Disgaea has always been far less about "strategy" than say, Fire Emblem, it's also becoming embarassingly apparent how rote everything about the game is.
You could not convince a man from twenty years ago that anyone would have fun doing this, and while I do and may even take all 10-plus hours it takes to "perfect" a Yoshitsuna, it's still a horrid waste of time.
I used to be mad that in Einhander (4 stars if I haven't covered it yet) to get the ultimate ship, the Selene (9999 of any given ammo, dual gunpods) you had to beat the game, on hard, without continuing (which I never did). Now I don't know. Disgaea is the opposite. The game keeps going and while there are super hard enemies to fight, there's basically no reward (other than possibly bragging to the one other dude who's even heard of the game that you know, and truth be told he's not impressed, he's freaked out). The Selene may have been nigh-impossible to get, but I did get super good at Hard Mode because of it.
2 stars. 3 if you're into strat rpg-esque games.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Linger in the Shadows
They say up front it's not a game but rather an interactive art piece. I don't entirely buy that. It's a very slow and even more poorly explained "Dragon's Lair".
I like the idea of people doing things like this, but I have no love for this specifically. Being able to spin the sprite particles does not interactive art make. If it did more stuff I'd be more onboard, but the game seems to be hit all the buttons, which all do nothing until the right moment when one will do something.
This gets into an idea of technology art. A game, by its very nature, should feel like you are in control of it. Art gets to pick and choose, but because this art is on my PS3 I want to feel like I have more input than I do so I'm upset about it.
Who knows.
I like the idea of people doing things like this, but I have no love for this specifically. Being able to spin the sprite particles does not interactive art make. If it did more stuff I'd be more onboard, but the game seems to be hit all the buttons, which all do nothing until the right moment when one will do something.
This gets into an idea of technology art. A game, by its very nature, should feel like you are in control of it. Art gets to pick and choose, but because this art is on my PS3 I want to feel like I have more input than I do so I'm upset about it.
Who knows.
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