written on Saturday, May 23, 2009
The Red Star (2007, Archangel Studios) is an interesting mix. Most of the game is a brawler. As a bralwer, it's fairly mediocre. There aren't too many moves and most of them aren't particularly satisfying. Well, the big slow guy can impale a guy then beat him against the ground. That's pretty good. And the small fast woman can do an air combo. Yay. But it's still painfully repetitive. It's also punishingly difficult. But that's not in the brawler part.
Every so often you have to fight a boss, and the game turns into a bullet hell shooter. Yeah. I know. Crazy. At first it's not bad. But later bosses will fill the screen with pain, and if you don't get a high rank on every stage (by not getting hit), you don't get enough upgrade points to take on the later stages, and there's nothing you can do but start the entire game over. There are no difficulty levels. There's no stage select. Start over.
No thank you.
2 of 5
The game is competently made and all. Part of me thinks it deserves a three for people who like bullet hell and don't mind having to start over from scratch. But those people aren't me, and this is my blog. :P I preferred Neo Contra. :O
Showing posts with label PS2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PS2. Show all posts
23 May, 2009
03 November, 2008
Game Journal / Review: Yakuza 2
THIS POST CONSISTS ENTIRELY OF GAMEPLAY AND STORY SPOILERS FOR YAKUZA 2
Oh wow. What an ending. I hated it and loved it at the same time. It was almost Metal Gear stupid. So the dead guy turns out to be alive and the mastermind behind a huge revenge which he never intended to go through with. Seriously? There were multiple cut scenes in the final section where I kept wishing SEGA'd just gone all the way and put the cast in full clown costumes. Only Metal Gear could have done it crazier.
The first game was melodrama. This one is just plain stupid. I mean, there's an "it was just a dream" segment and everything. Maybe that's part of Japanese culture I don't understand. But I think I'm done with the series. Much like Metal Gear, I respect it, but it's not for me.
Sure, there's nothing like it. Sure, the fighting is still decent. But I spent over thirty five hours on this game. And that's with significant FAQ usage. It's not like the next one will be shorter. Even the trailer SEGA showed at Tokyo Game Show was longer than I had patience for. Fifteen minutes? Seriously? I'm a guy who is literally sitting here in front of a computer, wasting his life blogging and gaming listening to podcasts, and I find that self indulgent. :P
Time to move on.
3 of 5
Oh wow. What an ending. I hated it and loved it at the same time. It was almost Metal Gear stupid. So the dead guy turns out to be alive and the mastermind behind a huge revenge which he never intended to go through with. Seriously? There were multiple cut scenes in the final section where I kept wishing SEGA'd just gone all the way and put the cast in full clown costumes. Only Metal Gear could have done it crazier.
The first game was melodrama. This one is just plain stupid. I mean, there's an "it was just a dream" segment and everything. Maybe that's part of Japanese culture I don't understand. But I think I'm done with the series. Much like Metal Gear, I respect it, but it's not for me.
Sure, there's nothing like it. Sure, the fighting is still decent. But I spent over thirty five hours on this game. And that's with significant FAQ usage. It's not like the next one will be shorter. Even the trailer SEGA showed at Tokyo Game Show was longer than I had patience for. Fifteen minutes? Seriously? I'm a guy who is literally sitting here in front of a computer, wasting his life blogging and gaming listening to podcasts, and I find that self indulgent. :P
Time to move on.
3 of 5
19 May, 2008
Color Me Topiary: Crimson Sea 2
Koei makes games. I mainly know them for an NES strategy game I never played and an interminable series of ancient Chinese beat 'em ups called Dynasty Warriors. Dynasty Warriors is powerful mediocre. Slash away at dozens of enemy soldiers until they all go poof. Crimson Sea 2 seems to be the sci-fi offshoot, occasionally throwing a roomful of angry bugs or humanoid reptiles at the player.
But Dynasty Warriors bored me silly. I just beat Crimson Sea 2 (just on easy, mind you) having gotten the highest possible rank in every mission. I believe that constitutes 60 missions, some played half a dozen times to secure the best rank. I believe my save file is somewhere in the 25-30 hour range.
Why?
Taming the audience certainly had something to do with it. All the cinemas from the first game are included. Watching them, I started to root for the folks trying to tell this funky story. Yeah, it's hyper clichéd. But like a good B movie, that all falls away when the action kicks in.
Variety helped. A lot of the missions were basically just killing lots of monsters or collecting stuff. But there are enough variations on the theme that I always kept on playing. There's even a stealth mission which didn't totally suck. Who'd have thunk it?
The collecting bug definitely got me. Bad guys will occasionally drop tokens which can be spent to power up guns, swords, or psionics. There's a guy on the space station who will pay for killing random types of enemies. And there's another guy on the station who will pay for hunting down these flying jellyfish things that only appear when you enter the level with no mission. Oh, and there are ways to get critical hits on bad guys that make them drop five tokens instead of one. I got bored with the bounty hunting as there weren't many items I needed. And I got bored hunting down the jellyfish, too. That guy was too stingy with the loot. But I'd still say the collecting element helped the game, overall.
The combat was pretty decent. Like I mentioned in a previous post, the combat is a non-standard system. Lock on or switch to strafe mode to roll instead of jump. R2 to burn 1/3rd of the psionics gauge in exchange for five seconds of slo-mo, during which your move set changes significantly. It's convoluted, but I still enjoyed it. Sure, there wasn't as much technique as Devil May Cry, but who needs technique when you're hacking and blasting away at a couple dozen rampaging monsters in slow motion. Plus extending combos and getting criticals was it's own game, one which I could strive for or ignore, setting my own level of challenge.
The game also has split screen co-op, but the control scheme is so arcane I doubt I'll ever inflict it on anyone. Maybe Matthew. :)
Final Score
4 of 5
But Dynasty Warriors bored me silly. I just beat Crimson Sea 2 (just on easy, mind you) having gotten the highest possible rank in every mission. I believe that constitutes 60 missions, some played half a dozen times to secure the best rank. I believe my save file is somewhere in the 25-30 hour range.
Why?
Taming the audience certainly had something to do with it. All the cinemas from the first game are included. Watching them, I started to root for the folks trying to tell this funky story. Yeah, it's hyper clichéd. But like a good B movie, that all falls away when the action kicks in.
Variety helped. A lot of the missions were basically just killing lots of monsters or collecting stuff. But there are enough variations on the theme that I always kept on playing. There's even a stealth mission which didn't totally suck. Who'd have thunk it?
The collecting bug definitely got me. Bad guys will occasionally drop tokens which can be spent to power up guns, swords, or psionics. There's a guy on the space station who will pay for killing random types of enemies. And there's another guy on the station who will pay for hunting down these flying jellyfish things that only appear when you enter the level with no mission. Oh, and there are ways to get critical hits on bad guys that make them drop five tokens instead of one. I got bored with the bounty hunting as there weren't many items I needed. And I got bored hunting down the jellyfish, too. That guy was too stingy with the loot. But I'd still say the collecting element helped the game, overall.
The combat was pretty decent. Like I mentioned in a previous post, the combat is a non-standard system. Lock on or switch to strafe mode to roll instead of jump. R2 to burn 1/3rd of the psionics gauge in exchange for five seconds of slo-mo, during which your move set changes significantly. It's convoluted, but I still enjoyed it. Sure, there wasn't as much technique as Devil May Cry, but who needs technique when you're hacking and blasting away at a couple dozen rampaging monsters in slow motion. Plus extending combos and getting criticals was it's own game, one which I could strive for or ignore, setting my own level of challenge.
The game also has split screen co-op, but the control scheme is so arcane I doubt I'll ever inflict it on anyone. Maybe Matthew. :)
Final Score
4 of 5
24 December, 2007
Review: Bully
Bully (2006, Rockstar) is the story of enlightenment through pugilation, AKA The American Dream. Seriously, though, it's about a kid who's dumped in a boarding school for troublesome children while his mother and her new husband (Number five? Six? It's hard to keep count.) go on a year long honeymoon.
Gameplay
Rockstar, for those of you who don't know, made the Grand Theft Auto games, Manhunt, and The Warriors. Bully definitely has aspects that are similar. The large environment, the large variety of activities, and the okay but not great combat are all intact. It should be mentioned that the hand to hand is decidedly better than all of those games. Even when I had a full inventory of weapons, I much preferred mixing it up.
The thing that sets Bully apart, is how many other things there are to do. Sure, GTA has a lot of side errands, but Bully has a bit more. There are classes to take, games to play at the boardwalk, money to be made mowing lawns and delivering papers, people who will randomly come to you with problems they need help with or dares you can accept or decline, and there's lots more. They're mostly just diversions, not full games unto themselves, but they're a nice change of pace and learning the one or two tricks to them provides a brief, Wario Ware type rush.
Theatrics
So technically I'm going to keep talking about the gameplay here for a bit because some of the most significant mechanics are about making you feel like a kid.
Many missions in the game are designed to tell the story and show, rather than tell, who these kids are.
***SPOILERS***
(highlight to read by pressing CTRL+A or just dragging the mouse cursor over them)
I'll always remember the mission objective "beat the gate code out of the nerd". I was expecting to beat him down and take a piece of paper off of him, or watch a cut scene after a standard fight. He folds after the first punch saying, "It's 1138" and it's over. That was awesome, and gave me a sense of character more than any dialog would. And the game is full of stuff like that. Jocks like to tackle. The preppies use "fisticuffs" (so sweep the leg, Johnny). And the greasers are often fought on bikes ('cause they're too young for motorcycles).
***SPOILERS***
Almost everything you do in Bully is on the clock. When you wake up, you've got about a minute and a half to get to class before you're considered truant and have to dodge school prefects (or cops if your ditching in town). Then you've got another minute and a half for lunch. Then your last class. Then you can roam free until curfew. Then you can roam unfree until 2AM, at which point you collapse and wake up with a minute and a half to get to class again. It certainly evoked the rigid structure of childhood for me. In fact, when I completed all my classwork and didn't have to go to classes anymore, I was weirded out.
Another gameplay addition was the social system. When locking on to a character, a little menu gives social options, like greet, insult, flirt, push, bribe; apologize. It could have been implemented a little better as you're often talking over who you're supposed to be conversing with, but just the concept of being able to talk your way out of trouble or provoke a fight (generally near an authority figure who would cream the other kid for you) added a lot to the feel of the game.
On the more traditional front, the acting and directing in the game is pretty good. The characters are fairly stereotypical, in the Rockstar tradition. The plot generally a collection of clichés as well. But it mostly works. From the intro cinematic, I felt for Jimmy. And when the time came, I was ready to lay some smack down. Eventually, I got a little sick of the way the game took him, though. While the violence in Bully is very subdued compared to Rockstar's other games, it's still used to solve too many problems. I really would have liked it if the end of the game had involved more brains and less brawns, not that certain people didn't have it coming, mind you, but it would have been more fulfilling if Jimmy had figured out a better way to overcome at least some of the final obstacles. Plus his bragging over defeated foes made him seem like a big jerk and only served to highlight how ridiculous his exploits had become. Maybe I'm thinking wrong to want a hero in a Rockstar game, though. They only give you the lesser evil, as a rule.
Aesthetics
The game has the functional look of a PS2 title using RenderWare (the graphics engine Rockstar licensed for most of its PS2 releases). Special note needs to be given to the fact that the campus and town go through seasons as you play, and seeing the skeletons hanging in the quad or the Xmas lights in the city are worth wandering around just to see.
Final Score
A five.
Out of five.
The only things I wanted from Bully were more content and more refinements. And to that end...
Suggestions
There was some stuff about Bully that bugged me. I'm assuming the upcoming 360 and Wii ports won't improve these things either, but I just wanted to air them semi-publicly and didn't feel like padding my post count by making them a separate article. :)
First off, the combat had some annoyances that didn't need to be there.
Fighting multiple opponents didn't have to be so awkward. Often times I found myself getting attacked by someone who was obviously in my field of view, but because I was locked on to someone else, I would take the hits, instead of, you know, moving my hands a little to block a punch from someone else. I know I'm not playing Dante here, but with as much time as I spent in the boxing ring, it seems like I should have been able to block those blows.
Speaking of which, when I was boxing, I could duck and counter. What happened to that? Shouldn't the uppercut I learned work for that?
Second, I think the immersion provided by the school atmosphere, as great as it was could have been even better.
It seemed bizarre that you could show up to class with five minutes to go and still learn everything. What if it worked like this? If you show up before class or in the first half hour, you get the full time, lives, whatever, to complete your task. Then you reduce that for each half hour late until, if you show up in the last half hour, you basically get nothing. Of course, the classes never gave homework, either, but that's probably too far to go for realism.
For the overachievers who finish all their classes, the aftermath just seemed weird. Bullworth Academy was supposed to be oppressive, not the kind of place where you could skip class just because you'd "done enough work". Why not be able to exchange classes after level five for a job in town (close to one of my save spots so I can get there in the morning)? It could be the same mini-games, but it'd feel a little less strange for the boss of a half ass work study program not to care where I was than the administration at the academy. Plus I'd feel like I had beaten the system, which is always good.
Also, no Santa outfit? Sure, there's a piece of Xmas attire in the game, but I wanted the Santa outfit and the sack of "presents" (doorknobs) to deal with anyone who laughed at it. >:)
Gameplay
Rockstar, for those of you who don't know, made the Grand Theft Auto games, Manhunt, and The Warriors. Bully definitely has aspects that are similar. The large environment, the large variety of activities, and the okay but not great combat are all intact. It should be mentioned that the hand to hand is decidedly better than all of those games. Even when I had a full inventory of weapons, I much preferred mixing it up.
The thing that sets Bully apart, is how many other things there are to do. Sure, GTA has a lot of side errands, but Bully has a bit more. There are classes to take, games to play at the boardwalk, money to be made mowing lawns and delivering papers, people who will randomly come to you with problems they need help with or dares you can accept or decline, and there's lots more. They're mostly just diversions, not full games unto themselves, but they're a nice change of pace and learning the one or two tricks to them provides a brief, Wario Ware type rush.
Theatrics
So technically I'm going to keep talking about the gameplay here for a bit because some of the most significant mechanics are about making you feel like a kid.
Many missions in the game are designed to tell the story and show, rather than tell, who these kids are.
***SPOILERS***
(highlight to read by pressing CTRL+A or just dragging the mouse cursor over them)
I'll always remember the mission objective "beat the gate code out of the nerd". I was expecting to beat him down and take a piece of paper off of him, or watch a cut scene after a standard fight. He folds after the first punch saying, "It's 1138" and it's over. That was awesome, and gave me a sense of character more than any dialog would. And the game is full of stuff like that. Jocks like to tackle. The preppies use "fisticuffs" (so sweep the leg, Johnny). And the greasers are often fought on bikes ('cause they're too young for motorcycles).
***SPOILERS***
Almost everything you do in Bully is on the clock. When you wake up, you've got about a minute and a half to get to class before you're considered truant and have to dodge school prefects (or cops if your ditching in town). Then you've got another minute and a half for lunch. Then your last class. Then you can roam free until curfew. Then you can roam unfree until 2AM, at which point you collapse and wake up with a minute and a half to get to class again. It certainly evoked the rigid structure of childhood for me. In fact, when I completed all my classwork and didn't have to go to classes anymore, I was weirded out.
Another gameplay addition was the social system. When locking on to a character, a little menu gives social options, like greet, insult, flirt, push, bribe; apologize. It could have been implemented a little better as you're often talking over who you're supposed to be conversing with, but just the concept of being able to talk your way out of trouble or provoke a fight (generally near an authority figure who would cream the other kid for you) added a lot to the feel of the game.
On the more traditional front, the acting and directing in the game is pretty good. The characters are fairly stereotypical, in the Rockstar tradition. The plot generally a collection of clichés as well. But it mostly works. From the intro cinematic, I felt for Jimmy. And when the time came, I was ready to lay some smack down. Eventually, I got a little sick of the way the game took him, though. While the violence in Bully is very subdued compared to Rockstar's other games, it's still used to solve too many problems. I really would have liked it if the end of the game had involved more brains and less brawns, not that certain people didn't have it coming, mind you, but it would have been more fulfilling if Jimmy had figured out a better way to overcome at least some of the final obstacles. Plus his bragging over defeated foes made him seem like a big jerk and only served to highlight how ridiculous his exploits had become. Maybe I'm thinking wrong to want a hero in a Rockstar game, though. They only give you the lesser evil, as a rule.
Aesthetics
The game has the functional look of a PS2 title using RenderWare (the graphics engine Rockstar licensed for most of its PS2 releases). Special note needs to be given to the fact that the campus and town go through seasons as you play, and seeing the skeletons hanging in the quad or the Xmas lights in the city are worth wandering around just to see.
Final Score
A five.
Out of five.
The only things I wanted from Bully were more content and more refinements. And to that end...
Suggestions
There was some stuff about Bully that bugged me. I'm assuming the upcoming 360 and Wii ports won't improve these things either, but I just wanted to air them semi-publicly and didn't feel like padding my post count by making them a separate article. :)
First off, the combat had some annoyances that didn't need to be there.
Fighting multiple opponents didn't have to be so awkward. Often times I found myself getting attacked by someone who was obviously in my field of view, but because I was locked on to someone else, I would take the hits, instead of, you know, moving my hands a little to block a punch from someone else. I know I'm not playing Dante here, but with as much time as I spent in the boxing ring, it seems like I should have been able to block those blows.
Speaking of which, when I was boxing, I could duck and counter. What happened to that? Shouldn't the uppercut I learned work for that?
Second, I think the immersion provided by the school atmosphere, as great as it was could have been even better.
It seemed bizarre that you could show up to class with five minutes to go and still learn everything. What if it worked like this? If you show up before class or in the first half hour, you get the full time, lives, whatever, to complete your task. Then you reduce that for each half hour late until, if you show up in the last half hour, you basically get nothing. Of course, the classes never gave homework, either, but that's probably too far to go for realism.
For the overachievers who finish all their classes, the aftermath just seemed weird. Bullworth Academy was supposed to be oppressive, not the kind of place where you could skip class just because you'd "done enough work". Why not be able to exchange classes after level five for a job in town (close to one of my save spots so I can get there in the morning)? It could be the same mini-games, but it'd feel a little less strange for the boss of a half ass work study program not to care where I was than the administration at the academy. Plus I'd feel like I had beaten the system, which is always good.
Also, no Santa outfit? Sure, there's a piece of Xmas attire in the game, but I wanted the Santa outfit and the sack of "presents" (doorknobs) to deal with anyone who laughed at it. >:)
18 December, 2007
State of the Industry
The NPD sales figures for November are out (well discussed on the 1UP Yours podcast and disected on Next Gen). Since all the big games have already been released or pushed to next year because they couldn't make the holiday window, it's a good time to talk about what happened this year.
Nintendo
Nintendo mostly rules, except where they completely fail. The DS outsold the PS3, PS2, and PSP combined in November, moving 1.53 million units. Part of that had to do with them bundling either Zelda (kind of for gamers) or a pet sim (for normal people). In fact, no DS game sold in the top ten. When you consider that the DS installed base in the US alone is probably around 18 million, over double the Xbox 360 installed base, that's an epic fail.
The Wii's kind of the same story except they can't even put the hardware out there. GameSpot is selling IOUs (for the full price of the system, no less) to give desperate parents something to put under the tree. I heard a gal in the cafeteria at work talking about the supplies the big box retailers hoarded for sales last Sunday lasting for two whole hours. Again, these are stories of epic fail. But Nintendo's a conservative Japanese company, and there are Wii's sitting on store shelves in Japan, so they may have a fear that they're on the brink of bursting the bubble and having the Wii market implode. I really don't know. The truth is that gamers only have Wii's because of Zelda, Metroid, and Mario. Now that those games are out, Nintendo has one more game (Smash Brothers) the gamers are looking forward to.
Once there's nothing left but the alpha moms and mini-game lovers buying these things, who's to say whether they'll move on to some talking stuffed animal next year, forgetting all about the Wii? I thought the people calling the Wii a fad were idiots. Well, in fairness to myself, many of them aboslutely were idiots. But maybe a couple of them were ahead of me on this. Maybe they realized that the people Nintendo's marketing to now are fickle. Last year the novelty of the system and the family fun of Wii Sports sold it. This year Mario sold it. Wii Fit (a game which lets you stand on a fancy scale to control exercise games by shifting your weight) is out in Japan this holiday season. Are they going to hold it all year in the states so that they have something to generate holiday buzz next season?
Microsoft
Technically the 360 still has the installed base over the Wii, I think. But the truth is, they're not really in the same markets... at all. The 360 lovers are basically crack whores. They will let you do anything to them as long as they can see their next fix on the horizon. The thing still eats disks. The optical drives still fail. There are still folks waiting many weeks to get their refurbished, fail prone replacement in the mail. And it's kinda sorta working for them. By taking the repair bill as a huge hit in one quarter and releasing Halo 3 the next, they showed their first profitable quarter ever. They say they expect to be profitable in 2008 as a year overall. Doesn't sound like winning, does it?
Then you look at software. Four of the top ten games for November are on 360. Two of them are on PS3, but they're just PS3 versions of the far better selling 360 games. Call of Duty 360 outsold Call of Duty PS3 3.5 to 1. Assassin's Creed 360 outsold Assassin's Creed PS3 2.6 to 1. I'm guessing that's partly because Call of Duty is online, and the 360 is where gamers know their friends are, so they're less likely to want the PS3 version. Beyond that, the numbers seem to reflect the installed base, which is around 3 to 1.
Sony
As has been mentioned before, Sony's losing money like crazy. Any time one of their executives opens their mouth, only the most ignorant doublespeak falls out of their mouths (which I assume are surrounded by clown make-up). If gamers aren't so awestricken by Metal Gear Solid 4 that they're willing to drop $400 on a non-backwards compatible PS3 to play it, what has Sony got? Seriously, the best games on the system aren't selling for crap. Uncharted and Rachet aren't in the top ten at all. Next Gen said Rachet sold less than 150k copies. That's A) criminal and B) freaking bleak.
As the latest example of ignorant doublespeak, a Sony exec said they felt Sony was on a good course for their projected ten year life cycle. Do you think you can lose the better part of a billion dollars a quarter and have a ten year life cycle?
The Rest of the World
Shane Bettenhausen brought up something scary on the last 1UP Yours. These figures we look at are for North America, mostly. In Japan, it's very different. Japan's moving away from consoles to mobile platforms. There are Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy games you'll probably never see because they run only on Japanese phones (which blow ours away). And in Europe, apparently the PS3 is actually doing well enough that it might be the winner there. When a hit driven market becomes that fragmented, what does that mean? Even more first person shooters for the 360? Even more soccer and rally racing games for the PS3? Even more crap I don't care about for Nintendo systems? Blegh.
Nintendo
Nintendo mostly rules, except where they completely fail. The DS outsold the PS3, PS2, and PSP combined in November, moving 1.53 million units. Part of that had to do with them bundling either Zelda (kind of for gamers) or a pet sim (for normal people). In fact, no DS game sold in the top ten. When you consider that the DS installed base in the US alone is probably around 18 million, over double the Xbox 360 installed base, that's an epic fail.
The Wii's kind of the same story except they can't even put the hardware out there. GameSpot is selling IOUs (for the full price of the system, no less) to give desperate parents something to put under the tree. I heard a gal in the cafeteria at work talking about the supplies the big box retailers hoarded for sales last Sunday lasting for two whole hours. Again, these are stories of epic fail. But Nintendo's a conservative Japanese company, and there are Wii's sitting on store shelves in Japan, so they may have a fear that they're on the brink of bursting the bubble and having the Wii market implode. I really don't know. The truth is that gamers only have Wii's because of Zelda, Metroid, and Mario. Now that those games are out, Nintendo has one more game (Smash Brothers) the gamers are looking forward to.
Once there's nothing left but the alpha moms and mini-game lovers buying these things, who's to say whether they'll move on to some talking stuffed animal next year, forgetting all about the Wii? I thought the people calling the Wii a fad were idiots. Well, in fairness to myself, many of them aboslutely were idiots. But maybe a couple of them were ahead of me on this. Maybe they realized that the people Nintendo's marketing to now are fickle. Last year the novelty of the system and the family fun of Wii Sports sold it. This year Mario sold it. Wii Fit (a game which lets you stand on a fancy scale to control exercise games by shifting your weight) is out in Japan this holiday season. Are they going to hold it all year in the states so that they have something to generate holiday buzz next season?
Microsoft
Technically the 360 still has the installed base over the Wii, I think. But the truth is, they're not really in the same markets... at all. The 360 lovers are basically crack whores. They will let you do anything to them as long as they can see their next fix on the horizon. The thing still eats disks. The optical drives still fail. There are still folks waiting many weeks to get their refurbished, fail prone replacement in the mail. And it's kinda sorta working for them. By taking the repair bill as a huge hit in one quarter and releasing Halo 3 the next, they showed their first profitable quarter ever. They say they expect to be profitable in 2008 as a year overall. Doesn't sound like winning, does it?
Then you look at software. Four of the top ten games for November are on 360. Two of them are on PS3, but they're just PS3 versions of the far better selling 360 games. Call of Duty 360 outsold Call of Duty PS3 3.5 to 1. Assassin's Creed 360 outsold Assassin's Creed PS3 2.6 to 1. I'm guessing that's partly because Call of Duty is online, and the 360 is where gamers know their friends are, so they're less likely to want the PS3 version. Beyond that, the numbers seem to reflect the installed base, which is around 3 to 1.
Sony
As has been mentioned before, Sony's losing money like crazy. Any time one of their executives opens their mouth, only the most ignorant doublespeak falls out of their mouths (which I assume are surrounded by clown make-up). If gamers aren't so awestricken by Metal Gear Solid 4 that they're willing to drop $400 on a non-backwards compatible PS3 to play it, what has Sony got? Seriously, the best games on the system aren't selling for crap. Uncharted and Rachet aren't in the top ten at all. Next Gen said Rachet sold less than 150k copies. That's A) criminal and B) freaking bleak.
As the latest example of ignorant doublespeak, a Sony exec said they felt Sony was on a good course for their projected ten year life cycle. Do you think you can lose the better part of a billion dollars a quarter and have a ten year life cycle?
The Rest of the World
Shane Bettenhausen brought up something scary on the last 1UP Yours. These figures we look at are for North America, mostly. In Japan, it's very different. Japan's moving away from consoles to mobile platforms. There are Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy games you'll probably never see because they run only on Japanese phones (which blow ours away). And in Europe, apparently the PS3 is actually doing well enough that it might be the winner there. When a hit driven market becomes that fragmented, what does that mean? Even more first person shooters for the 360? Even more soccer and rally racing games for the PS3? Even more crap I don't care about for Nintendo systems? Blegh.
07 October, 2007
Review: I-Ninja
I-Ninja (2003), is an action platformer for PS2. You play a ninja who, after finding a mystical "rage stone", kills his master. Your master comes back as a ghost and sends you after the rest of the rage stones.
Gameplay
I-Ninja's gameplay is largely forgettable. Your attack is a basic sword slash. You have a couple special moves, but nothing particularly fun or more effective than standard slashing. You can upgrade your sword a few times, but it maxes out fairly quickly. You also gain special powers after every hub world that you charge by hitting enemies and breakables. Outside of being the only way of regaining health, the special powers are... nothing special. They're especially lame because you get no combo bonus when you kill with them, which means they hurt your score. You can probably sum up the combat by saying you will never have a fight as cool as the one that plays behind the opening menu.
Your means of locomotion include the aforementioned running and jumping, but also include double jumping, sword hovering / gliding, wall jumping, wall running, rail grinding, chain swinging, and a combo of those last two where you run down a path really fast, using your chain swing to make tight corners. And finally there are a couple levels that have you steering a giant rolling ball. Sounds like platformer heaven, no? Sadly the execution makes them less fun. You have very little to do while using them. You can jump from rail to rail once in a while, but you generally don't need to. Most wall jumping sections feel like they're just there to pad the length of the level (especially when your trying to complete a time trial). Combat and fun movement almost never interact.
Early on you have some interesting change-ups with vehicle fights. You pilot a giant robot in the first hub and a submarine in the second. The fights aren't bad, but they aren't good either. There's also a gun emplacement mission. By the end you're back to standard boss fights, which are okay, but never that exciting. Also, once you clear a level, you can go back to do various challenges. Doing some of these challenges are mandatory to level up so you can open subsequent doors. I started out trying for 100% completion, but got so bored with the game I gave up. There are only so many "kill every bad guy" or "find every coin" challenges you can do before you want your life back. Additionally, because I had gotten so many grades from earlier challenges, I completely skipped many later levels. Who knows? Maybe they were actually good? I'll take my chances.
Theatrics
Your character is a jerk. You can tell because he says mean things to the ghost of his master who's death he was responsible for. Your master is a moron. You can tell because he mixes up his clichés. That is the extent of the character development in the game. The voice acting for the main characters is performed by seasoned professionals (Billy West and Michael Bell) who have played some of my favorite characters in animation and gaming, so I can confidently say it's the (lack of) writing that make me completely apathetic to the characters and story.
Aesthetics
The art and special effects are competent, but generally unimpressive. They remind me of the Ape Escape sequels.
Final Score
Two out of five.
Gameplay
I-Ninja's gameplay is largely forgettable. Your attack is a basic sword slash. You have a couple special moves, but nothing particularly fun or more effective than standard slashing. You can upgrade your sword a few times, but it maxes out fairly quickly. You also gain special powers after every hub world that you charge by hitting enemies and breakables. Outside of being the only way of regaining health, the special powers are... nothing special. They're especially lame because you get no combo bonus when you kill with them, which means they hurt your score. You can probably sum up the combat by saying you will never have a fight as cool as the one that plays behind the opening menu.
Your means of locomotion include the aforementioned running and jumping, but also include double jumping, sword hovering / gliding, wall jumping, wall running, rail grinding, chain swinging, and a combo of those last two where you run down a path really fast, using your chain swing to make tight corners. And finally there are a couple levels that have you steering a giant rolling ball. Sounds like platformer heaven, no? Sadly the execution makes them less fun. You have very little to do while using them. You can jump from rail to rail once in a while, but you generally don't need to. Most wall jumping sections feel like they're just there to pad the length of the level (especially when your trying to complete a time trial). Combat and fun movement almost never interact.
Early on you have some interesting change-ups with vehicle fights. You pilot a giant robot in the first hub and a submarine in the second. The fights aren't bad, but they aren't good either. There's also a gun emplacement mission. By the end you're back to standard boss fights, which are okay, but never that exciting. Also, once you clear a level, you can go back to do various challenges. Doing some of these challenges are mandatory to level up so you can open subsequent doors. I started out trying for 100% completion, but got so bored with the game I gave up. There are only so many "kill every bad guy" or "find every coin" challenges you can do before you want your life back. Additionally, because I had gotten so many grades from earlier challenges, I completely skipped many later levels. Who knows? Maybe they were actually good? I'll take my chances.
Theatrics
Your character is a jerk. You can tell because he says mean things to the ghost of his master who's death he was responsible for. Your master is a moron. You can tell because he mixes up his clichés. That is the extent of the character development in the game. The voice acting for the main characters is performed by seasoned professionals (Billy West and Michael Bell) who have played some of my favorite characters in animation and gaming, so I can confidently say it's the (lack of) writing that make me completely apathetic to the characters and story.
Aesthetics
The art and special effects are competent, but generally unimpressive. They remind me of the Ape Escape sequels.
Final Score
Two out of five.
18 September, 2007
Review: God Hand
God Hand was the last game by Clover Studios of Viewtiful Joe and Okami fame (obscurity?). It's essentially an over the shoulder brawler, but unusually difficult, complicated, and silly.
Gameplay
There's a lot to talk about with the gameplay, so let's start with the basics. The camera is mostly over your characters shoulder unless a special move takes over. The normal camera position can sometimes cause trouble as an enemy can attack you while standing behind your character.
God Hand has complicated controls, one might go so far as to call them arcane. The left stick drives you around like a survival horror character. L1 does a 180. This is pretty clunky for a beat 'em up, where freedom of movement is often the key to controlling a fight, especially with multiple attackers (who actually attack at the same time instead of just waiting their turn, but we'll discuss that later).
The face buttons perform your normal attacks and are almost completely customizable (the exception being the circle button which is reserved for context sensitive moves). The square button is your combo, while the triangle and x buttons may be assigned one move each. Also each of the custom buttons can have an additional move assigned for when you pull back on the left stick and press the button. Confused yet? You should be. Historically, brawlers are mindless fun. Having to manually purchase and configure your combos practically makes this game an RPG.
Seriously, unless you're a fantastic player, you're going to want to purchase better moves from the store. That means you're going to need to earn some money from the casino. There are also special moves that can only be learned by winning on the high roller slot machine on the top floor of said casino. So if you want to be well armed, you have to play some cards and slots (which unfortunately means doing a fair bit of save / load dancing as the odds are not in your favor). I'd usually do this just before going to bed, as it's boring as hell to watch a slot machine turn over. But I wanted that Mach Speed Punch, dammit!
The right stick is used for dodging. You press forward to duck under attacks. Press back to do a back flip. Press to either side to dash. Flipping or dashing makes you nigh invulnerable (except to a few special attacks) for an instant.
Finally the remaining shoulder buttons are used to bring out the big guns (well except for L2 which just taunts enemies). R1 controls your God Reels. These are special powers which do major damage to opponents. R2 triggers the God Hand. As you beat up bad guys, your God Hand meter fills. When it turns orange, you can trigger it rendering you invincible and very fast for a short period.
All moves have a number of attributes. Speed and power are the most basic. Then you have block breakers, juggles (which throw the enemy up), and launches (which hurl them away). Juggles and launches don't work against heavier opponents unless you're using God Hand and neither work against the games larger bosses (except to inflict their normal damage).
You might be wondering at this point if I'm writing a review or a FAQ. Probably a little of both. The problem is, God Hand is complicated. I've seen no reviews that give a real feel for the game.
So now you've got your moves. You've assigned them to buttons. It's time to go meet the enemies and get your ass whooped. Seriously, there's not much learning curve to the game. It's more of a cliff. Sure, the earlier opponents are easier than the later ones, but you'll still die a lot. It's expected. If you finish a stage (five to nine levels and a boss fight) using only ten continues, you get a reward. That's how tough the game is.
And it gets tougher. If you're doing well, a difficulty meter goes up. Killing enemies at a higher difficulty means more money, but it also means enemies attack more aggressively, even from completely off-screen. There are radar and sound cues, but I was always too intent on the fight in front of me.
So how does all this add up to fun? Well, when you start to master it, you know you accomplished something. God Hand is to brawlers like Skate is to Tony Hawk. It beats the crap out of you until you get it.
Oh. I get it. I need to dodge that one guy's sword attacks because they travel too far for the backflip to escape them.
Oh. I get it. I need to use dodge to cancel out of my attack when the enemy blocks.
Oh. I get it. I need to use quick combos on the weak guys to keep them airborne long enough to do real damage.
Oh. I get it. I can't use quick combos against the gorillas because they start blocking too soon. I need to get in one or two heavy hits and then go for the ground attack.
Oh. I get it. I need to use more area effect launch moves to keep some of these opponents off me.
Oh. I get it.
That's how God Hand is rewarding. In browsing the videos on You Tube, I learned some cool techniques I'd never tried, and I saw some people using exactly the wrong strategy for the enemy they were fighting. The game is deep... and inscrutable enough that you can really feel you built your technique up all by yourself. You bought the moves. You learned where they do and don't work. And unlike the wusses (Chris Roper) who just do two punches then backflip, you've actually learned to mix it up, dodge like crazy, pull off the counters, bounce the bodies into crazy air combos, break enemy combos, and generally own the fight.
God Hand's gameplay is not for the faint of heart. But if you like a challenge, the line starts here.
Theatrics
God Hand is a joke, literally. The enemies spout ridiculous Mike Tyson quotes and run the gamut of generic leather clad toughs, clowns, gorillas in luchador costumes, fat guys with energy cannons on their backs, and many more. Bosses include the gay circus acrobats, a pole dancing vampire bimbo, five midget power rangers, a killer robot with interchangeable limbs, and many more.
The moves are often silly with you spanking female opponents and kicking guys in the crotch. Some of the special moves actually blast the enemy into orbit with only a winking star to mark their passing.
For crap's sake, one of the ways you can earn money is by betting on chihuahua races where the dogs have names like "Boom Headshot" and "Massive Damage".
The voice acting is in keeping with the campy atmosphere always angry about something or changing mood for no reason. You almost wish the characters mouths moved more to make it look like a badly dubbed kung fu movie.
Aesthetics
God Hand's look and visual quality is good for a PS2 game. This is somewhat helped by the close in camera that gives you a good view of the characters. The environments can be pretty plain, but I was usually too busying fighting to notice. The same goes for the music.
Final Score
I give God Hand a three out of five.
I wanted to score it higher. I had enough fun learning and experimenting with techniques near the end to make me seriously consider a second playthrough. But that's me trying to ignore the facts. When I first played the game I hated it because I had to waste all that time in the casino to get moves. At it's best, God Hand is a very rewarding four. But the casino busywork, clumsy interface, and cheap offscreen attacks you have to tolerate to get to that goodness are impossible to overlook.
Gameplay
There's a lot to talk about with the gameplay, so let's start with the basics. The camera is mostly over your characters shoulder unless a special move takes over. The normal camera position can sometimes cause trouble as an enemy can attack you while standing behind your character.
God Hand has complicated controls, one might go so far as to call them arcane. The left stick drives you around like a survival horror character. L1 does a 180. This is pretty clunky for a beat 'em up, where freedom of movement is often the key to controlling a fight, especially with multiple attackers (who actually attack at the same time instead of just waiting their turn, but we'll discuss that later).
The face buttons perform your normal attacks and are almost completely customizable (the exception being the circle button which is reserved for context sensitive moves). The square button is your combo, while the triangle and x buttons may be assigned one move each. Also each of the custom buttons can have an additional move assigned for when you pull back on the left stick and press the button. Confused yet? You should be. Historically, brawlers are mindless fun. Having to manually purchase and configure your combos practically makes this game an RPG.
Seriously, unless you're a fantastic player, you're going to want to purchase better moves from the store. That means you're going to need to earn some money from the casino. There are also special moves that can only be learned by winning on the high roller slot machine on the top floor of said casino. So if you want to be well armed, you have to play some cards and slots (which unfortunately means doing a fair bit of save / load dancing as the odds are not in your favor). I'd usually do this just before going to bed, as it's boring as hell to watch a slot machine turn over. But I wanted that Mach Speed Punch, dammit!
The right stick is used for dodging. You press forward to duck under attacks. Press back to do a back flip. Press to either side to dash. Flipping or dashing makes you nigh invulnerable (except to a few special attacks) for an instant.
Finally the remaining shoulder buttons are used to bring out the big guns (well except for L2 which just taunts enemies). R1 controls your God Reels. These are special powers which do major damage to opponents. R2 triggers the God Hand. As you beat up bad guys, your God Hand meter fills. When it turns orange, you can trigger it rendering you invincible and very fast for a short period.
All moves have a number of attributes. Speed and power are the most basic. Then you have block breakers, juggles (which throw the enemy up), and launches (which hurl them away). Juggles and launches don't work against heavier opponents unless you're using God Hand and neither work against the games larger bosses (except to inflict their normal damage).
You might be wondering at this point if I'm writing a review or a FAQ. Probably a little of both. The problem is, God Hand is complicated. I've seen no reviews that give a real feel for the game.
So now you've got your moves. You've assigned them to buttons. It's time to go meet the enemies and get your ass whooped. Seriously, there's not much learning curve to the game. It's more of a cliff. Sure, the earlier opponents are easier than the later ones, but you'll still die a lot. It's expected. If you finish a stage (five to nine levels and a boss fight) using only ten continues, you get a reward. That's how tough the game is.
And it gets tougher. If you're doing well, a difficulty meter goes up. Killing enemies at a higher difficulty means more money, but it also means enemies attack more aggressively, even from completely off-screen. There are radar and sound cues, but I was always too intent on the fight in front of me.
So how does all this add up to fun? Well, when you start to master it, you know you accomplished something. God Hand is to brawlers like Skate is to Tony Hawk. It beats the crap out of you until you get it.
Oh. I get it. I need to dodge that one guy's sword attacks because they travel too far for the backflip to escape them.
Oh. I get it. I need to use dodge to cancel out of my attack when the enemy blocks.
Oh. I get it. I need to use quick combos on the weak guys to keep them airborne long enough to do real damage.
Oh. I get it. I can't use quick combos against the gorillas because they start blocking too soon. I need to get in one or two heavy hits and then go for the ground attack.
Oh. I get it. I need to use more area effect launch moves to keep some of these opponents off me.
Oh. I get it.
That's how God Hand is rewarding. In browsing the videos on You Tube, I learned some cool techniques I'd never tried, and I saw some people using exactly the wrong strategy for the enemy they were fighting. The game is deep... and inscrutable enough that you can really feel you built your technique up all by yourself. You bought the moves. You learned where they do and don't work. And unlike the wusses (Chris Roper) who just do two punches then backflip, you've actually learned to mix it up, dodge like crazy, pull off the counters, bounce the bodies into crazy air combos, break enemy combos, and generally own the fight.
God Hand's gameplay is not for the faint of heart. But if you like a challenge, the line starts here.
Theatrics
God Hand is a joke, literally. The enemies spout ridiculous Mike Tyson quotes and run the gamut of generic leather clad toughs, clowns, gorillas in luchador costumes, fat guys with energy cannons on their backs, and many more. Bosses include the gay circus acrobats, a pole dancing vampire bimbo, five midget power rangers, a killer robot with interchangeable limbs, and many more.
The moves are often silly with you spanking female opponents and kicking guys in the crotch. Some of the special moves actually blast the enemy into orbit with only a winking star to mark their passing.
For crap's sake, one of the ways you can earn money is by betting on chihuahua races where the dogs have names like "Boom Headshot" and "Massive Damage".
The voice acting is in keeping with the campy atmosphere always angry about something or changing mood for no reason. You almost wish the characters mouths moved more to make it look like a badly dubbed kung fu movie.
Aesthetics
God Hand's look and visual quality is good for a PS2 game. This is somewhat helped by the close in camera that gives you a good view of the characters. The environments can be pretty plain, but I was usually too busying fighting to notice. The same goes for the music.
Final Score
I give God Hand a three out of five.
I wanted to score it higher. I had enough fun learning and experimenting with techniques near the end to make me seriously consider a second playthrough. But that's me trying to ignore the facts. When I first played the game I hated it because I had to waste all that time in the casino to get moves. At it's best, God Hand is a very rewarding four. But the casino busywork, clumsy interface, and cheap offscreen attacks you have to tolerate to get to that goodness are impossible to overlook.
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