This week I’d like to take a minute to talk about some more HDE’s from my past, however moving a generation over to the 16bit era, instead of the 8bit – and this is just a quickie list only three listings today.

#3 – Robotrek :

Now I’m sure many of you have not played this game, it was one of my favorite RPGs on the SNES (Final Fantasy 2, 7th saga and Super Mario RPG not included because well everything pales in comparison to those) by ENIX. It was this whacky game where you played a boy genius (much akin to Dexter’s Lab) who ends up building these little combat-robots to help fight off a band of evil crooks who are attempting to use science to do criminal things.

The real problem here is it gets a Disney style ending. Everything works out PERFECTLY for everyone. Bad guys are defeated, they manage to escape the exploding core just in time and the reporter gets her ’scoop’, your friends are like “man you are awesome.” the ghosts of your damn ancestors are even like “WTG DOOD.” Seriously.

SCIENCE!

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As a brief reprieve from the normal articles I shoot out, I figured I’d take a moment and talk to you all about something that bugs every gamer – Bad Endings.

Now I don’t mean bad endings as in “You didn’t complete a mission objective – bad end” sorta bad endings, but ones that are just highly disappointing and brief or offer little closure.

This may become a weekly thing, I’m not too sure, but today we cover four from the days of my childhood.

#4 – Bad Dudes :

Internet memes aside, really what the hell, a solid beat’em up on the NES where President Ronnie takes the Bad Dudes out for Hamburger after they beat up a legion of ninjas who kidnapped him. I mean really think about that. That’s it? I’d feel kinda pissed off if I was them. Also, what the hell did the ninjas kidnap the president for? Was this part of a larger global plot? What were their demands? Also – why the hell weren’t these guys part of the President’s elite personal security to begin with if they’re such Bad Dudes?

Screw you man, saving your ass is only worth a Burger?

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In the current generation of party games across the platforms – Mario Party, Wii-Sports, Guitar Hero/Rock Band, Rayman Raving Rabbids, Wario Ware, etc – there’s one major thing these games have in common

Co-ordination and or timing – and mini-games.

Now I don’t know about you, but back in my day, we were lazy. Our ‘party’ games so to speak were the likes of Madden, Tecmo Bowl, NBA JAM, Blitz, You Don’t Know Jack, Pong and such. (Shh I’m leaving Track N Field out of this one.)

What I mean by this, is they were relatively sedentary games, learn a few button clicks, maybe a little bit of choice quick finger movements, but that was really it. We had buttons dedicated to juke around an opponent, or to dribble between their legs. Long gone are these games and their lazy ire for the lazy video game playing nerd. Now we have the six-axis to flick our controller in various directions to help angle his shot, a guitar with a gyro in it to detect when we are swishing our instrument into the air to ‘rock out’ harder, or a wii-mote to swish around in a graceful ark to do make a hook at a guy’s jaw. (continue reading…)

Games aren’t that hard anymore, that’s an argument often thrown around these days by many gamers. “Well that’s why they put difficulty settings in!” – is often the retort.

I generally play a game the first time through on Normal, to get a feel of what the developers wanted the average player to see, when I find that it is in fact incredibly easy – I’ll replay it on a harder difficulty (especially when this results in a different ending or extra levels/bonus-dungeons.) Most of my reviews are on a game’s native, default, normal, medium settings of difficulty – because that’s what I expect the developers wanted the average person to play on and it generally seems to be what the average person starts out on (whether or not they finish up on harder ones is another issue all together.) (Such as this preview/review for Fire Emblem) (continue reading…)

No, no I can’t. You can’t either and neither can the Japanese who are notoriously good at these rhythm based games. (I’m kidding) But that should give you an idea of how hard and unforgiving this game is.

‘What is this game,’ I hear you ask (through the mysteries of the Internet) out loud? It’s one of the strangest mix-ups of genres I’ve seen to date – Part WarioWare, part Elite Beat Agents, all frustration on your Nintendo DS. Rhythm Heaven brings to the plate over 30 mini-games that are all rhythm based, everything from helping a little cartoon monkey clap along with the beat to a cutesy j-pop (’Japanese Pop’, for those who are unaware) singer to a platoon of dancing ducks following the orders of their ducky drill sergeant. Not that all the games are dancing based, one game has you filling up robots on a factory line who will fly off to do who-knows-what (attack John Conner I assume) and another has you flipping dumplings into a monk’s mouth.

Yeah, I had the same puzzled look on my face too. (continue reading…)

Okay there are a few things I love dearly in life.

• RPGs
• SRPGs
• Fighting games with ludicrous combos
• Badassery(Badassitude?)

(This is not a full and comprehensive list of all things The Reverend Lei loves dearly in life but can be taken as the context of such for this article.)

That said, tri-Ace has come through with another brilliant installment of Valkyrie Profile (Covenant of the Plume,) it’s brilliant and just like..wait a minute no it’s not – It’s an SRPG? That’s right VP-CotP (here on known as Valk – Plume) is an SRPG, with a twist, combo-combat. What I mean by this is that when you initiate combat, it goes into a semi-action based combat, where your characters are no longer bound by turns but can freely attack at their own discretion, (well, your discretion,) assuming you have enough attacks left for that character, or the monster is still in range of their next attack – similar to the prior games. (continue reading…)

It’s come to my attention lately that there is such a thing as LinuxDS. That’s right – Linux for your Nintendo DS.

Now you’re probably wondering; just now? Yes, just now. I’ve only started to appreciate the home-brew world of the DS and not just the smattering of games one might acquire. Here’s my question; for an OS that’s composed completely of text, maybe you might want to leave it for a system that actually has a keyboard?
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That’s right it’s time for another installment of LocoRoco, one of the most insane games on a hand held since, well I’m not quite sure. I for one, am incredibly excited.

In LocoRoco you take the roll of an incredibly happy go lucky…well blob, for lack of a better term. Via some very innovative controls, (using the L an R keys on your PSP you ’tilt’ the screen to enable yourself to roll around, across and over obstacles.) By chowing down on food scattered through the levels you grow in size and accumulate a form of points.

It’s puzzle platforming done right, though I use the term platforming loosely.

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The latest installment of of the Fire Emblem series does exactly what we’d like of it – give us the same exact thing that we’ve come to love and know and put it on a portable. Swords still beat axes, axes still beat spears and spears of course topple swords. With the various items that reverse the combat-triangle scattered around the game world (I’m still not sure how a ‘Lance Reaver’ works, and how it’s different from a regular sword, but hey let’s just go with it.)

There is some wonderful nitty gritty to this adaptation of the Fire Emblem saga though; your characters can change classes. Yeah that’s right; the useless cavalier that you have 15 of? Pow, turn him into a backup healer. Now you can’t have more of a class than the game would normally have given you, plus one, so obviously you can’t turn all your footmen into cavaliers and have an entire horseback army, but you can come mighty close. Obviously heroes are an exception to this rule as well.

Your story is cliche and typical for a Fire Emblem. There is a bad guy, in this case a giant Dragon, who was stopped by one of your ancestors and of course has resurfaced with the intent to take over the world once again. As the last remaining descendant of said slayer of dragon, you must take up arms and kick some tuckus. Also your family has been murdered and you must rally the nations and old allies to your side.
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