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.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Bionic Commando Rearmed
I wasn't even considering buying the Swedish developed Bionic Commando sequel, what with it's anti hero and his dreadlocks landing square in the middle of every comic book character from 1995.
They tricked me however. For $10, I got to download a revamped version of the original. Stage layout essentially the same, music remixed. Now with actual bosses and a much harder last level. I'm loving playing it. The new definition of how a remake should be done.
But they did something tricky: they got me to realize that these Swedes at Grin have the right idea. They get it. They certainly understand the original game. Then they went in and snuck in a few plot points and pickups for the 3d version coming out.
Now I really want to play it, this new Bionic Commando. Especially since by buying Rearmed, I get Rad Spencers original outfit to wear.
Interest piqued, dreadlock issue resolved, I'm now buying the new game unless consensus is it's horrible.
Also worth noting is the new writing in the game is awesome.
EDIT:
yesterday the game glitched out and I lost my save. Upon playing it through again, i'm promoting it. This game is all i've been playing for weeks now, and I can see firing it up from time to time to play again.
4 stars.
They tricked me however. For $10, I got to download a revamped version of the original. Stage layout essentially the same, music remixed. Now with actual bosses and a much harder last level. I'm loving playing it. The new definition of how a remake should be done.
But they did something tricky: they got me to realize that these Swedes at Grin have the right idea. They get it. They certainly understand the original game. Then they went in and snuck in a few plot points and pickups for the 3d version coming out.
Now I really want to play it, this new Bionic Commando. Especially since by buying Rearmed, I get Rad Spencers original outfit to wear.
Interest piqued, dreadlock issue resolved, I'm now buying the new game unless consensus is it's horrible.
Also worth noting is the new writing in the game is awesome.
EDIT:
yesterday the game glitched out and I lost my save. Upon playing it through again, i'm promoting it. This game is all i've been playing for weeks now, and I can see firing it up from time to time to play again.
4 stars.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Metal Gear Solid 4: Demotion
So I played through the game again (on easy) doing a no alert, no kill run to get the always fun infinite headband and stealth camo, two staples of MGS replay value.
I skipped all the cutscenes and it underscored one thing: There's not much gameplay in Metal Gear 4.
One of the most interesting aspects in the promises of MGS 4 was being able to pick sides in a conflict. Snake would be able to ally with one side or the other, or go neutral and sneak on by. Skirmishes between factions only happen in the first two stages in the game, and you are never able to choose a side. You can try and sneak by, or you can make friends with the rebels. That's it. Helping the rebels means they won't flip out when they see you, but there's not a major change to the gameplay.
Skirmishes are boring, shooting the enemies is boring and the game is completely uneventful until level 3 when it merits more criticism.
The failure oflevel 3 is that the only people on the town streets are you, your target and soldiers. You are given a civilian disguise at the start of the level, but there's no need to ever use it. The PMC's already know exactly who you are, even with a mask on (go figure) and there's no one else on the streets. You don't need to even try to blend in: you're better off using your camo and hiding in the shadows, or, do as Gorgeous Hair did and stay in the cardboard box the whole time.
Waste of half a level. But hey, at least it was 'different'.
Level 4 takes us to Shadow Moses island, which can be summed up thusly:
"I didn't realize Metal Gear 1 was so ...small"
It's a short level, full of instances of infinite enemies, except where there aren't. Game balance: how it's done.
The Sniper Wolf battle's pretty cool. Apparently she wasn't initially hard enough, so they added those "frog" ladies to come look for you, which is a bit annoying, but whatever. I liked this battle the most.
The battle I liked next to most was the Metal Gear vs Metal Gear battle. The problem I have with it is it's like GTA. Grand Theft Auto does nothing well. It's a game of other games, all done better in their other games. People love it cos it has all kinds of different games. Metal Gear doesn't do robot on robot battles as well as other games. Still, it's the second best battle in the game, for what it's worth.
After that Liquid controls Snakes nanomachines, hops into a gigantic submarine and (almost) kills Raiden. Mei Ling shows up on the only working battleship in the US Navy.
BREAK.
Here is my biggest problem with the game outside of it's 3 hours of actual gameplay time: The story is stupid. Balistically stupid. Stand in front of this story and it will kill you with it's ineptness. The US has installed nanomachines into all their soldiers and vehicles, as has every other military in the world, all apparently using the same single AI system.
Yeah.
Liquid hacks into it and has complete control over everything that can cause violence. The game says there's no fighting in the world at this point. The only working warship (in the world) is Mei Ling's. Why the un-nanoed rebels from levels 1 and 2 aren't using this time to take over their respective countries I'm not quite sure. All millitaries of the world are broken and you're honestly going to tell me that instead of revolutions happening in half the countries of the world, everyone's having a fucking sunday?
So yeah.
With that kind of lazy writing, you can guess how satisfying the rest of the story will be.
Level 5 is so insultingly short it shouldn't even be called a level except for it's at least 2 hours of cutscenes.
Level 5 is exactly one board. get past some soldiers, shoot a few robots (nobody ever goes "Holyshit, our giant robots got shot!" in Metal Gear) and open a door by hitting the triangle button really fast. That's it. Boss Fight, level over.
The plot at this point centers around a supercomputer at the end of a deadly microwave corridor. No human can get in cos they'll get cooked. Snake says he'll go cos he's dying anyway. One last act of heroism. It's awesome. I'm serious. It's an amazing moment in an otherwise mediocre game. You, playing Snake, get to sacrifice your life for the goal of the game. I wish other games could nail this level of self-sacrifice in their characters.
The great moment is promptly ruined when you get to the supercomputer and Ottacon's little robot comes out and does all the work. ALL the work. You sit there, likely thinking, "sure I was gonna die, but was my final act to escort this stupid plot device?" I don't care if they gave Snake a floppy disk to upload or had him put some plastic explosive on the machine (which would have been both sweet and a nice homage to the old NES game) but to hand off the climax of the game to an RC car is crap.
Snake sits there and watches the little robot break everything. He watches as you the player are watching while the game plays yet another cutscene, all control of the situation taken away from you and Snake at the same time. Part of me wishes this was deliberate; You the player are watching the game hero watch a robot do the job at hand. A robot which is being controlled by someone remotely, as though they were playing a video game. Maybe Kojima knows his game is hardly a game; this scene being his analogy for the whole MGS 4 experience: sit there and watch.
It climaxes with a very pretty and somewhat poignant if completely implausible (they're gonna heal each other up and keep fighting? come on!) fight between Snake and Liquid that plays nothing like the rest of the game and are then insulted for an hour and a half with the resolution of the game in which everyone is still happy and no one dies. When Yang and Cid weren't dead in Final Fantasy, that was kinda weak, but okay, cos Tellah really did die and also it was not a gritty war tale.
BUT
BUT
BUT!~!!!
now I have the Stealth Camo, the Tanegashima (gun that has a 33% chance of making a tornado) and the infinite headband. Time for some fuggin REPLAY VALUE!
Headband is instantly obsolete: you have been able to buy as much ammo as you'd ever need from the menu screen since the first level.
The Tanegashima's tornado is cool, but neither fun nor useful. The reload and randomness of the tornado make it only a novelty. It also manages to work almost nowhere. A weapon to load up and show your friends once and that's it.
The Stealth is crap too: it doesn't' work against machines, which is dumb cos it's a magical cheat device so it might as well. Once enemies are alerted to your presence, they can see you even when the stealth is on. Why? Again, it's a magical chead device, given to you after you have completed the game to add an interesting replay value. The whole fun of getting it is that you can do funny things like appear in front of a guy, have him flip out, then disappear and watch him get confused as hell. Now it's broken and all of the fun I had with it in previous games is no longer have-able.
and my last complaint:
In MGS2 you could collect dog tags from every soldier. in MGS3 you could find and shoot frogs on every map.
There's nothing like that in MGS 4. You can get medals for doing various things, but there's no sub-game that runs through everything. There's nothing that will show you the nuance of the game the way having to stick up every soldier in MGS2 did. There's nothing to force you to explore the areas like the MGS3 frogs did. My cynical side thinks this is deliberate, because frankly, there's way less depth to the game this time around.
2 stars.
I skipped all the cutscenes and it underscored one thing: There's not much gameplay in Metal Gear 4.
One of the most interesting aspects in the promises of MGS 4 was being able to pick sides in a conflict. Snake would be able to ally with one side or the other, or go neutral and sneak on by. Skirmishes between factions only happen in the first two stages in the game, and you are never able to choose a side. You can try and sneak by, or you can make friends with the rebels. That's it. Helping the rebels means they won't flip out when they see you, but there's not a major change to the gameplay.
Skirmishes are boring, shooting the enemies is boring and the game is completely uneventful until level 3 when it merits more criticism.
The failure oflevel 3 is that the only people on the town streets are you, your target and soldiers. You are given a civilian disguise at the start of the level, but there's no need to ever use it. The PMC's already know exactly who you are, even with a mask on (go figure) and there's no one else on the streets. You don't need to even try to blend in: you're better off using your camo and hiding in the shadows, or, do as Gorgeous Hair did and stay in the cardboard box the whole time.
Waste of half a level. But hey, at least it was 'different'.
Level 4 takes us to Shadow Moses island, which can be summed up thusly:
"I didn't realize Metal Gear 1 was so ...small"
It's a short level, full of instances of infinite enemies, except where there aren't. Game balance: how it's done.
The Sniper Wolf battle's pretty cool. Apparently she wasn't initially hard enough, so they added those "frog" ladies to come look for you, which is a bit annoying, but whatever. I liked this battle the most.
The battle I liked next to most was the Metal Gear vs Metal Gear battle. The problem I have with it is it's like GTA. Grand Theft Auto does nothing well. It's a game of other games, all done better in their other games. People love it cos it has all kinds of different games. Metal Gear doesn't do robot on robot battles as well as other games. Still, it's the second best battle in the game, for what it's worth.
After that Liquid controls Snakes nanomachines, hops into a gigantic submarine and (almost) kills Raiden. Mei Ling shows up on the only working battleship in the US Navy.
BREAK.
Here is my biggest problem with the game outside of it's 3 hours of actual gameplay time: The story is stupid. Balistically stupid. Stand in front of this story and it will kill you with it's ineptness. The US has installed nanomachines into all their soldiers and vehicles, as has every other military in the world, all apparently using the same single AI system.
Yeah.
Liquid hacks into it and has complete control over everything that can cause violence. The game says there's no fighting in the world at this point. The only working warship (in the world) is Mei Ling's. Why the un-nanoed rebels from levels 1 and 2 aren't using this time to take over their respective countries I'm not quite sure. All millitaries of the world are broken and you're honestly going to tell me that instead of revolutions happening in half the countries of the world, everyone's having a fucking sunday?
So yeah.
With that kind of lazy writing, you can guess how satisfying the rest of the story will be.
Level 5 is so insultingly short it shouldn't even be called a level except for it's at least 2 hours of cutscenes.
Level 5 is exactly one board. get past some soldiers, shoot a few robots (nobody ever goes "Holyshit, our giant robots got shot!" in Metal Gear) and open a door by hitting the triangle button really fast. That's it. Boss Fight, level over.
The plot at this point centers around a supercomputer at the end of a deadly microwave corridor. No human can get in cos they'll get cooked. Snake says he'll go cos he's dying anyway. One last act of heroism. It's awesome. I'm serious. It's an amazing moment in an otherwise mediocre game. You, playing Snake, get to sacrifice your life for the goal of the game. I wish other games could nail this level of self-sacrifice in their characters.
The great moment is promptly ruined when you get to the supercomputer and Ottacon's little robot comes out and does all the work. ALL the work. You sit there, likely thinking, "sure I was gonna die, but was my final act to escort this stupid plot device?" I don't care if they gave Snake a floppy disk to upload or had him put some plastic explosive on the machine (which would have been both sweet and a nice homage to the old NES game) but to hand off the climax of the game to an RC car is crap.
Snake sits there and watches the little robot break everything. He watches as you the player are watching while the game plays yet another cutscene, all control of the situation taken away from you and Snake at the same time. Part of me wishes this was deliberate; You the player are watching the game hero watch a robot do the job at hand. A robot which is being controlled by someone remotely, as though they were playing a video game. Maybe Kojima knows his game is hardly a game; this scene being his analogy for the whole MGS 4 experience: sit there and watch.
It climaxes with a very pretty and somewhat poignant if completely implausible (they're gonna heal each other up and keep fighting? come on!) fight between Snake and Liquid that plays nothing like the rest of the game and are then insulted for an hour and a half with the resolution of the game in which everyone is still happy and no one dies. When Yang and Cid weren't dead in Final Fantasy, that was kinda weak, but okay, cos Tellah really did die and also it was not a gritty war tale.
BUT
BUT
BUT!~!!!
now I have the Stealth Camo, the Tanegashima (gun that has a 33% chance of making a tornado) and the infinite headband. Time for some fuggin REPLAY VALUE!
Headband is instantly obsolete: you have been able to buy as much ammo as you'd ever need from the menu screen since the first level.
The Tanegashima's tornado is cool, but neither fun nor useful. The reload and randomness of the tornado make it only a novelty. It also manages to work almost nowhere. A weapon to load up and show your friends once and that's it.
The Stealth is crap too: it doesn't' work against machines, which is dumb cos it's a magical cheat device so it might as well. Once enemies are alerted to your presence, they can see you even when the stealth is on. Why? Again, it's a magical chead device, given to you after you have completed the game to add an interesting replay value. The whole fun of getting it is that you can do funny things like appear in front of a guy, have him flip out, then disappear and watch him get confused as hell. Now it's broken and all of the fun I had with it in previous games is no longer have-able.
and my last complaint:
In MGS2 you could collect dog tags from every soldier. in MGS3 you could find and shoot frogs on every map.
There's nothing like that in MGS 4. You can get medals for doing various things, but there's no sub-game that runs through everything. There's nothing that will show you the nuance of the game the way having to stick up every soldier in MGS2 did. There's nothing to force you to explore the areas like the MGS3 frogs did. My cynical side thinks this is deliberate, because frankly, there's way less depth to the game this time around.
2 stars.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft's e3 announcements
Sony:
Movie rentals? On my game system. Awesome.
Microsoft:
Avatars, Really?
Nintendo:
More exact Wii controls. Great, more stuff I can buy and not use.
1 star.
Gorgeous Hair mentioned how they announced things like ZOE3 and the next ICO game last year but haven't shown anything. I posited a theory that after the breakup of last years e-3 thing, this year's return to form isn't being taken as seriously, and in an odd way, Dennis Dyack may have gotten his wish. So game companies are showing whatever's showable, and the Japanese ones are mostly waiting for the Tokyo Game Show to drop info.
We'll see if I'm right whenever that show is.
Movie rentals? On my game system. Awesome.
Microsoft:
Avatars, Really?
Nintendo:
More exact Wii controls. Great, more stuff I can buy and not use.
1 star.
Gorgeous Hair mentioned how they announced things like ZOE3 and the next ICO game last year but haven't shown anything. I posited a theory that after the breakup of last years e-3 thing, this year's return to form isn't being taken as seriously, and in an odd way, Dennis Dyack may have gotten his wish. So game companies are showing whatever's showable, and the Japanese ones are mostly waiting for the Tokyo Game Show to drop info.
We'll see if I'm right whenever that show is.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Metal Gear Solid 4 (bullet point version)
Bad
- nanomachines
- 2 codec channels, neither as interesting as calling up Para-Medic and asking about eating stuff.
- can only befriend rebels, has little outcome on the game
- length of cutscenes. They're good, but too long.
- Drebin calling you up to tell you why each boss was so crazy
- general depth of the non-Liquid villians (which is to say nonexistent)
- installs for every level, on every playthrough.
Good
- wraps up the whole story, and explains many previously stupid aspects of it well
- lots of guns = lots of funs
- gameplay isn't revolutionary, but it's good
- all four B and B boss battles are awesome and the most varied of any MGS game
- great variations on sneaking in levels 2 and 3
- one amazing on-rails sequence
- the graphics are insanely good
- the sound is insanely good
- the animations are insanely good
so definitely buy it, definitely play it, but it's got some issues.
3 stars
- nanomachines
- 2 codec channels, neither as interesting as calling up Para-Medic and asking about eating stuff.
- can only befriend rebels, has little outcome on the game
- length of cutscenes. They're good, but too long.
- Drebin calling you up to tell you why each boss was so crazy
- general depth of the non-Liquid villians (which is to say nonexistent)
- installs for every level, on every playthrough.
Good
- wraps up the whole story, and explains many previously stupid aspects of it well
- lots of guns = lots of funs
- gameplay isn't revolutionary, but it's good
- all four B and B boss battles are awesome and the most varied of any MGS game
- great variations on sneaking in levels 2 and 3
- one amazing on-rails sequence
- the graphics are insanely good
- the sound is insanely good
- the animations are insanely good
so definitely buy it, definitely play it, but it's got some issues.
3 stars
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