Anyway, Sonic games. Yeah yeah, I know. sonic has been REALLY bad lately. And it hurts me deep… but there are good ones. Lemme show yah what ones.

Starting with a newer game:

Sonic and the Black Knight

No, really. I’m not kidding. The concept for this game was HORRIBLE, but the execution is pretty damn good. Sonic is summoned to the land of King Arthur by a cute loli version of Merlin named (surprise!) Merlina and after some delicious chili dog eating, Sonic gets a magic talking sword named “Caliburn”. The action is fast, and the sword allows you to obliterate most enemies without a care in the world. Now, like Secret Rings, there are a few slowdowns. There are points where you have to give villagers rings and there are large enemies that don’t go down in one hit, but everything else in the game is a pretty damn good time. I don’t really recommend it for someone who doesn’t like Sonic, but it’s worth a try even if  you don’t.

Sonic Rush

This is the game where Blaze the Cat was introduced. The story for this game is something like Blaze comes from the negaverse and there are funky Chaos Emerald style gems there as well and Blaze is looking for them… It doesn’t matter much, it’s really not important. This game also introduced something I think all Sonic games need: A boost meter. You can use it to get to speed with a small burst or use it to destroy everything in your path for a short time. It’s filled by rings, doing mid-air tricks or defeating enemies. It’s awesome and EVERY SINGLE SONIC GAME SHOULD HAVE IT FOREVER.

YOU DON'T MESS WITH THE BEST

Sonic CD

Oh god, this is one of the best Sonic games in my opinion. It brings together some of the best parts of the first three Sonic games, but it adds in cool shit like time travel and some of the most fucking amazing music ever. The level design is amazing, the bosses are challenging and the time travel mechanic gives each level a wonderfully fresh feel. The game has good replayability and looks totally amazing. It’s for the Sega CD, PC and is an unlockable in the Sonic Mega Collection.

And, finally…

Sonic 3 & Knuckles

What happens if you take one of the most critically acclaimed Sonic games, then add the functionality to play as FUCKING KNUCKLES? You get one of the coolest things ever. Ever. This is seriously one of the best things that 16 bits has to offer. Climb shit, swim in the water, get around… You can do it all. You can do it with Sonic 2 as well.

That wraps up this stuff. Sorry about being gone so long, personal shit…

Anyway, I hope that soon I will be able to contribute regularly again!

Till next time!

Jumpluff~

My first video review. More to come.

EDIT: Redid the audio, so it’s 10x better now.

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.

Interactivity makes the game better I’m told. I thought it was pretty interactive when I pushed left and Little mac dodged to the left to enable me to dodge Mike Tyson’s (or Mr. Dream for those more politically correct or for our younger crowd) deathly uppercut and come back in with a few quick jabs of my own.

So then there are the Wii’s waggle games. Little co-ordination of timing, but lots of flipping your nun-chucks around in a pattern to achieve the goal of various mini events. Great concept, problem is the motions rarely seem to actually give a shit about what you’re doing, more that you’re just moving. I’ve played Mario Party 8 and when it told me to swish the wii-mote around in a circle to paddle a boat, simply just swinging it around in whatever direction I wanted worked just as well. I found that all kind of disappointing, as a system and series of games that tried to be the front man for the whole life-like motion concept – it felt rather half-assed.

I hear there’s an attachment coming out eventually that will actually make the wii-mote’s motion more life-like and less sporadic. I’m on the edge of my seat. (/sarcasm)

But then came Dokapon – It’s Mario Party without the mini-games with the addition of an adorably charming RPG in the mix. Yes! Finally! A game I can play with friends and don’t have to worry about scratching up my touch-screen when we’re spazzing out to flick soccer balls in a goal, or something equally as obnoxious.

What I mean is – You have a Kingdom (coincidentally Dokapon Kingdom on the Wii,) ruled by a silly little king who has a daughter. He wants to marry his daughter off to the bravest adventurer in the land – so here come you and some friends (or AI, up to 4 players/AI max.) There are 8 classes to chose from that all have their own stat-gains and abilities and carrying loads or spells available. At it’s core it actually has a pretty acceptable RPG. There are shops to upgrade your gear, monsters to kill to gain experience and get gold. Minimalistic PVP, quests and boss monsters.

Charmingly cartoony graphics give this game a unique feel compared to the seriousness of most current RPG’s

All the players move around on a giant game board map similar to Mario Party’s, with a ‘rolling’ system to move your spaces each turn. Items that enable you to move a specific amount of spaces, or get additional rolls. Spells can be cast against one another to screw with each other’s progress or hamper your health before a big fight.

Generally whoever is richest at the end of the allotted amount of time (Or all the quests have been finished) is the winner.  There are a few quests along the way to help you earn more money (One quest has you retrieving an elixir to cure a town’s poisoned well, another has you rescuing the King’s daughter who wandered off on her own to go on a shopping spree) and rescuing towns from evil monsters adds to your net worth and earns you tax-revenue.

All in all it plays like a Mario Party, but it’s adorable and doesn’t have aggravating mini-games that newcomers would have no idea how to play – thus making it easy for anyone to jump in and play.

Oh, right I knew I forgot something – 4player Wireless one-card support. One of my favorite features about this game is that nobody else needs to have it to play. You can stream it out to 3 of your friends and then can join you for a dumbed-down version of the game (8 weeks long, starting zone and about 12 towns only.) But its nice to see multi-player games that still support this feature on the DS (and just solid multi player games in general) – one of the main reasons I got one in the first place.

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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)

Along comes Dark Spire, the new DS dungeon-crawler roguelike. Now you may wonder, ‘Leighton – what the hell does that mean?’ Let me inform you — You are gonna get punched in the face and humiliated, potentially your mom will be insulted, as will your gaming honor. Lets take a quick trip down memory lane from the last time we had games like this (Yes I am a huge fan of Etrian Odyssey, yes it is similar, but it’s leagues away from the traditional feel that Dark Spire brings.) Might and Magic 5, Wizardry 3, Bard’s Tale (not that bastard child that was on the PS2,) Eye of the Beholder, Shining in the Darkness and if any of you guys remembered, or played them – pretty much half the games that SSI (Strategic Simulations Inc) did on the Amiga/Commodore/NES/PC.  I’ve probably put 300+ hours into Dungeons and Dragons : Pool of Radiance on the NES, and I’m still nowhere close to being done all the quests.

What does all that have in common? That’s all the 16bit era and prior.

Well along comes Dark Spire and it is here to tell you it is no cartoony joke that’s going to bring modern-day mechanics into an old genre. No, it is going to be that genre. It infarct has an option to PLAY it in 8-bit mode with vector line art – ‘Screw your graphics,’ it says.

I digress, I haven’t even explained what this roguelike dungeon-crawler is. Dark Spire is an RPG, except there is no giant vast scaling world, no cities to explore, no oceans to sail, no convoluted plot lines of love-interests between party members. You are a very forgettable group of adventurers, one of many bands of adventurers, in a bland city that offers the most basic commodities.

Then there’s the dungeon. The dungeon is this massive living thing. That’s what these old dungeon-crawlers are about, a kajillion floors, up, down, around, trap doors, treasure chests, pits, elevators, bands of briggands living on various floors, evil artifacts and ghosts and sorcerers. You are going to get lost more than once.

That’s half the fun and challenge with these games, wandering around, getting lost running low on potions and available spells and praying to the everliving gods that you can find your way out back to town to restock and sleep and get to the training hall to level up.

The other half of that is frustration, stepping on a trap-door, or pitfall or a revolving door or a one-wall secret wall and getting lost while trying to escape the floor you were on. Lost, with a bare minimum map (that does not show your location) hoping you remember which set of twists and turns you took, attempting to flee from battles…and..was that the door we came in through? Battle after battle as you attempt to reach freedom.

That is a dungeon crawler. They are all about number crunching and feeling brave to adventure further than you had before, without knowing what’s up ahead. Dark Spire brings you all this but does it very prettily.

The soundtrack is fantastic – well orchestrated, fitting the mood very well, in fact my copy came with a bonus CD full of the game’s music. I’m listening to it at my desk as we speak, that’s how good it is. Not only that but the graphics are fantastic too – in a style of game that we’ve come to expect to not have graphics at all (See above about the vector-line-art option.)

Which brings me to my original point (and finishes up my point about the art.)

This is your training master. The tutorial level if you will. First thing you do in the game is navigate a mini-dungeon and fight this guy. He hits really really really hard. My first time through he nuked my main tank in one hit on the first round. Training is learning how to die? Yes, it’s preparing you for the realization you will get demolished from time to time (I’m not joking.)

Nostalgia aside, there are two quick things to point out – the downside.

The menu is pretty clunky and a bit of a chore to navigate around at first – the quest screen is for some reason in the same menu as save/load/options. That seems a little ridiculous to me, in my mind it would fit better in with the equipment/spells/stats menu.

Second note – the learning curve. If you are not familiar with having your ass handed to you and figuring out a VERY simple class system (There are only 4 classes and equipment disables abilities of classes it does not agree with – ie: plate mail on a priest or multi-classed priest prevents casting,) as well as general unfamiliarity of not having blatant stat points on weapons (there are no +20 to attack on a sword vs +23 attack on an axe or anything like that,) you might have a bit of a rough start to this game.

Oh right – and saving often. I cannot stress this enough. I played for about 40 minutes my first time, hadn’t thought about saving, got murdered by a wandering group of bandits and had to start all over again, tutorial and all.

If you’re an older gamer like myself, you’ll probably feel right at home with Dark Spire, for people new to the genre – you might glance at it’s odd style of game play and think it’s not for you – give it a shot, you will fall in love with it’s quirky charm and the tension you get from delving too deep into the dungeon…unprepared.

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‘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.

However, strange as they may be, they are also incredibly endearing and fun.

To help you through, each level comes with a tutorial teaching you the basic mechanics and whats expected of you for each stage, which have 3 grade levels. Failing a song will get you a little snappy comment about how you did and you’ll be told to try-over. Doing alright will award you a silver-mark for passing (’Just OK’ as they put it) which enables you to move on to the next game and lastly a ‘Superb’ rating on a track gets you a gold-mark and a medal. The number of medals you have unlock additional mini-games inside the in-game ‘cafe’, where you can hang out between levels. Inside you can chat with the waitress (who will compliment you on your perfects) or listen to music you’ve unlocked from the main stages.

The mini-games are lumped into groups of four, where at the end of the four levels you are presented with the ‘Rhythm League’, a mini-game that is a bit of each of the past four you have completed. These levels are a bit harder and really get you on your toes – switching back and forth between the mini-games you’ve just played through in about a 2 minute span gets kind of confusing unless you’re very alert.

A whimsical game for any age as long as you aren’t the type to jam your stylus through your DS, Rhythm Heaven will definitely give you hours of entertainment (at least if you’re the perfectionist type who wants a medal on each song.) If you could care less about the medals (and extra mini-game unlockables,) you’ll blow through this in six hours, maybe seven tops.

A word of warning though, you will want to jam your stylus through the screen on the frog-level.

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• 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.

Now what makes this different over the previous games, your characters do not share one unilateral action bar, each character can make a move on their turn, but assist as many times as possible as long as they are still in range when someone else attacks (whats that? 16 attacks in a turn? Why yes! Thank you), the down side is that the monsters will in fact get a counter attack on each attack your party initiates (keep those tanks alive) and will also be able to do the same to you.

Minor spoiler alert, honestly this is all found in the first fifteen minutes.

In Valk – Plume, you play the..well no not really heroic… role of Wylfred who’s father tragically died on the battlefield and who’s soul was whisked away by the Valkyrie, the Battlemaiden, leaving Wyl’s family to fend for itself – leading to your mother’s madness and your sister’s death. Pretty heavy for the first five minutes I thought. This all leads Wyl down a path of vengeance to seek justice against the Battlemaiden for destroying his home and family. With the aid of the underworld you seek out on your quest for blood and must fuel your blood rage by committing grievous sin, (which you must gain a certain amount of each battle,) that is acquired by two means – Overkill (Remember that?) which is basically doing more damage than your opponent has health, or, sacrificing your teammates.

Now you may think, why in gods green earth would I want to give up my allies? Reason – When you sacrifice them to your Plume (ah, the title makes sense now) they become rampaging murderous monsters with 1000% to all stats for the rest of the battle, then die a soul-sucking death. This can pull you through in a pinch and really save your ass in a boss battle.

Depending on how many of your teammates you decide to sacrifice to your rampage, effects the plot line you recieve, the characters you encounter and the general events of the world around you. With 3 major story endings and 6 mid-game endings, there is plenty of reason to play through over and over. With the combat staying fresh with a variety of character and class types, there’s little reason NOT to do so anyways (I felt bad ignoring some of my characters.)

Will you stop the madness and grief around you? Or will you reap vengeance and slay the Valkyrie. Your choice, at about 12-14 hours for my first play through and about 9-11 for each sequential one, this game will definitely give you your money’s worth.

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Presenting…

…The Top Five Signs That a DLC Should Have Just Been Free

Brought to you by Fedora Man

Well it finally April and you have to love how easy it is to open an article with the lines “so it’s finally whatever month we’re in right now”. It’s time for the next step in my great journey to earn money through a video game blog. Now I know you might be wondering “I thought you had billions! Were you lying to me?” The answer is of course, no. Stupid. Why would I make something like that up? But the difference between that money and the money I’ll earn on this site is I actually had to do work to earn it, unlike my corporation where I really don’t do any work at all. I can show all my friend “yeah this is the ten dollars I earned THROUGH WORK!” and if they say that they also have a job and have made more money, I’ll pull out my emergency one million dollars that I always keep stashed in my pants and laugh at them, probably while rubbing the money all over myself.

Now I’m sure that everyone reading this right now loves to hear all the stories that end with me rubbing money all over myself (and there are a lot of them) but now is neither the time, nor the place for me to describe my achievements to the world. Mainly because I think that might blow my secret identity and also I don’t think anyone would let me post an article called “The Top Five Ways to Rub Money All Over Yourself Like a Pro”. Instead I’m going to write about some game related phenomena, but only because I have to.

That brings me to my greatest problem: what the hell am I going to write about? There aren’t any games coming out these days (according to me) and writing about one specific past game has been done by everyone and their grandma. At first I was thinking “Heroes of Might and Magic 2, everyone will love to hear about that!” before moving to and idea about specific overrated games. Then one night I was staying up late to try to perfect the insertion of a giant blade into my fedora. Some might call that an oddjob rip off, but those same people might find it hard to speak when, say, a razor-bladed hat cuts their entire mouth off. Anyway it was around 6 am that I decided “screw it I’m too tired to think up a new idea” and settled for this one.

Now if you’re like me (and you’re not at all like me) then you too have expressed frustration at some of the worst excuses for DLC (downloadable content if you somehow made it to this point in the article without knowing what that is) ever made. That’s not to say that all DLC is bad and that it should all be free because there are small amounts of DLC that actually seem to have been worked hard on and deserve some sort of monetary reimbursement (the shivering isles for Oblivion is the first thing that comes to mind). Of course for every shivering isles there are hundreds of “screw you, give me all your money” DLCs or as I like to affectionately call them “dog shit”. I’m sure that this isn’t just at 360 problem, it’s probably also a problem with the PS3 but I wouldn’t know now would I? So here are the signs to identify if the dog shit you just bought should have been free.

Number 5: When the DLC is Free Anyway

Example: Call of Duty 4: Variety Map Pack

This is probably the one that isn’t about dog shit (I’m very much hoping the editor doesn’t take offense to that word being used over and over again). This is one of the cases where the DLC might actually be good but in any case it isn’t free even when say, THEY OFFER IT FOR FREE ANYWAY!

Take the above example for instance. The Call of Duty 4 map pack was offered for free via a code in the Game of the Year Edition. The cost of the Game of the Year Edition is exactly the same as the original game so you’d think they’d start offering the map pack for free, right? Wrong (as always)! I’m not exactly sure why they’d do this (other than the obvious “I want more money” approach) yet it seems like around the time they started offering free map packs they’d just go ahead and put it out for free on the marketplace anyway. There’s only one possible explanation: to piss off hat-based crime fighters.

Hell, that reminds me; before I go on I’d like to tell a little story about my experience with these “free” maps. It started like any other day, random death hurricanes mixed with volcanoes and a zombie apocalypse, you know, nothing special. So I decided that I’d go and get Call of Duty 4 because I was in a crime fighting slump (only because I imprisoned all my enemies) and so I decided to blow off some steam by mercilessly killing people on the internet. I picked out my game and brought it to the Gamestop counter where the cashier was like “I’ll give you the game of the year edition, it doesn’t cost anymore and it gives you free maps.” So I was like “sweet free maps, thanks you pimply faced bastard, I’ll be sure not to violently attack you in the future over game prices.” So as I got back home I opened the box… nothing. There was a game and an instruction booklet but that pimply faced sonofabitch lied to me! There wasn’t any map code at all! Now my first reaction was to don my fedora and jacket/trench coat (have to protect my secret identity) and go back to that store to kick all kinds of ass. But I’m a detective too and my detective-like instincts told me that it probably wasn’t that pimply faced bastard’s fault. Using my fedora-shaped super computer I quickly got confirmation that this had happened to many other people as well. In the end, after a brief bout with tech support that should have just began and ended with the word “bastard” I never got my maps. I’m just waiting for the time that they become free, WHICH THEY NEVER WILL!

Number 4: When the Game in Question has a Sequel

Example: Call of Duty 4: Variety Map Pack

Call of Duty again? Really? Well that’s just an example; there are many games like this. Again this isn’t necessarily dog shit but I promise that the next one will be about dog shit, you dog shit enthusiast you. Anyway the reason I claim that the DLC (which may or may not be dog shit to appease all you crazy people) should be free once a sequel comes out because sales probably drop rapidly over time once the sequel hits stores. I’m pretty sure that’s how it works, but don’t take my word on it, it’s not like I know a lot about business (although I do run a multi-billion dollar business in my free time). I don’t think anyone is rushing out to go buy Halo 2, or Mario Party 3 (despite how awesome Mario Party 3 was) so I’ve taken this rule and applied it to damn near any other game. Maybe I can understand not immediately making it free but in the above example Call of Duty 5 (or Call of Duty: whatever the hell they’re calling it these days) has been out for nearly half a year and I doubt that the Call of Duty 4 will have those free maps in another four or five months time. Granted the two were made by different developers but that’s beside the point. Give me the free maps! I demand it!

Number 3: When the DLC Doesn’t Add Anything Special to the Game

Example: Bomberman Live: Bomb-Up Packs

So NOW we’re talking about dog shit. Again I’m hoping the editor doesn’t come to my house and challenge me to a fist fight for using that so often. In any case I could talk about this in depth but the name says it all. The dog shit doesn’t add a whole lot to the game so it should be free on the grounds that I don’t want to pay you to add pretty much nothing to the overall gameplay.

Take my above example… for example (does that even work?) Bomberman’s bomb-up packs should definitely have been free or just included it in the original game. With the pack comes a bunch of gametypes and maps no one online plays anyway (we’re all too busy playing on the good starting maps with the non-stupid game variants to care). It’s like opening a gift on Christmas to get a playstation 2, a gamecube, or an xbox when you already have the better console. But gosh there’s really not more to say about it, maybe I’m complaining too much or maybe… just maybe… you’re not complaining enough.

Number 2: When the DLC is Just a Little Polish to an Otherwise Bland Turd Sandwich

Example: Crackdown (whatever that weapon pack is called)

I wanted to research what the dog shit was called here to retain my journalistic and genius vigilante integrity but I honestly didn’t care. Now let me set one thing straight, whereas Number 3 on the list (the one you just read if you read like a normal human being or super being) was about something that should be free based on the fact that it added little to a good game, this one is about DLC which could be good or bad that adds little to a horrible game. That’s right; I beat the system by having ALMOST identical but still slightly different types of DLC on display. Wooh!

Anyway I’m sure you (yes you, the guy in the red baseball cap) can think of a ton of DLC and games like this, but let’s go with my example because I already took the time to write it down. Now Crackdown wasn’t THAT bad of a game… okay yeah it was. The whole game was GTA or Saints Row with a ton of collection and not a lot of anything else. Shooting civilians was a power-up losing crime too, so there goes all the random slaughtering fun. The goal of the game is to collect orbs and kill a bunch of bad guys. You’re basically like Super Man except with a gun (or a slightly more athletic Fedora Man, with super powers, a gun, and no awesome hat). So after the fun of jumping around rooftops and shooting people wears off about six hours into the game what’s left to do? Well Realtime Worlds (the developers) has the answer in the form of a content pack sure to add a couple more hours of fun to the game. You get a weapon like the harpoon gun which is cool in that you can fire harpoons at people and stick them to cars and buildings and trees and other people. Where was the downside again? Oh right the fact that there’s a fuggin’ price tag associated with it. What the hell?! I paid sixty dollars for your game! There is no way in hell I’m going to spend six to ten dollars more to make your game NOT suck as much. You may think I’m being a little frustrated this time, because if there’s anything Fedora Man is known for its definitely not violent outbursts of vigilante justice. But that’s what happens when you stay up too late and you keep slicing off your fingers with your stupid razor-blade lined hat that STILL DOESN’T WORK!

But hey let’s look on the bright side. I’d like to take this time to get away from all the anger and pessimism and quickly point out Left 4 Dead. It’s a decent game, not too bad, not too good. But it appears that they’re coming out with DLC soon to make the game better. You know what I like the most about it without even having to look up gameplay videos on youtube? The fact that valve decided to not be a bunch of assholes and release the DLC free. So there, at least I tried to make this article slightly happier with a contrast between dog shit and decent DLC, as well as decent business practices in general.

Number 1: When the DLC in Question Sucks

Example: Too many to count

Damn even the example is a little depressing. There’s like a sea of dog shit out there (not literally you creep) and you know a DLC should be free when the DLC itself sucks. Really, this one ties into every other group category. By now you must be wondering “is there some kind of evil video game-themed villain out there causing all the DLC in the world to suck?” Well no, there was once, but he died in 1983 when the video game crash happened. It was weird and sad because the one thing he was trying to destroy was the only thing keeping him alive. Once the games became bad enough the crash happened and he died. It’s tragic, which is why I’m writing a play about it. I’m thinking of starring the lead role to Adam West and maybe get Jackie Chan in there somehow; we’ll have to see how it turns out.

Anyway there’s really not much more to say but hell I have time to kill in between creating my razor-bladed fedora and fighting demons from beyond time and space. So I’ll start with a little known game called Halo 2 (does anyone remember this game?). Halo 2 had four or five map packs, with the last one having two levels “Desolation” and “turd sandwich” or… something like that, I can’t remember (and I refuse to look it up). Anyway both were remakes and both were TERRIBLE. Although I’m not ashamed to own the Halo series, I am deeply ashamed to have put any money down toward this map pack. Turd sandwich was a terrible level and desolation was… also terrible (cut me some slack I’m tired AND I saved the world yesterday, shut up). Look I’ll give you another example: Halo 3. Halo 3 (and I use the halo series because of its general accessibility so people know what I’m talking about) had the “Heroic map pack” which was so bloody awful that I had to think twice before ever purchasing any kind of map pack EVER AGAIN! It was like they had a staff meeting but only three people showed up and they left after five minutes after someone said “but think about the customers” and someone else responded with “screw the customers!”

I’ll give you one more you might not have thought about: gamer pictures. Yeah those things, you actually have to pay for them. I think I’ll leave it at that instead of pointing out the crippling stupidity in paying for tiny pictures rather than picking up a fedora to hide your identity and going out to vigilante the shit out of the gaming industry.

Grandia is a game I played over and over when I was younger, and now, nearly eight years down the line, I decided to give it another go for nostalgia’s sake.  Many of the flaws escaped my notice when I was just a wide-eyed kid, new to the RPG genre and still fascinated by the idea of a storyline in a video game, but what I loved about the game- the fun battles, the colorful characters, the sheer sense of fun and adventure- have all aged like a fine wine.

Grandia is a traditional RPG developed by Game Arts, the creators of the Lunar series, initially for the Sega Saturn in 1997.  The first North American release came to the Playstation in 1999, right in the middle of what many consider a golden age for Japanese RPGs, or at best a highly competitive market for the genre on the PS1.  It released mere months after the likes of Suikoden II, Final Fantasy VIII and Game Arts’ own remake, Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete. That it managed to stand out enough to spawn a successful series is remarkable, but it was easy to understand why once I sat down with the game again.

For starters, the presentation is still solid after all these years.  The graphics consist of 2D sprites on fully rotatable 3D backgrounds, similar to games like Xenogears and Breath of Fire IV.  The sprites are colorful and represent the characters quite well.  The animations can be a tad on the choppy side, but they’re expressive, fun, and there are a lot of them.  As with many PS1 games, the 3D hasn’t held up well, but it’s still far from laughable.  The graphics overall are nicely done, with no major holes or any need for the player to pretend something is happening- everything unfolds as you see it.

The voice acting ranges from average to bad (usually bad), and although the translation is well done and the voices fit the characters well, it’s always awkwardly timed and sounds like it was recorded by a high school theater club.  The dialogue scenes actually play much better without the voice acting, due to each character having a plethora of character portraits conveying every possible emotion to go along with the scenes.  They switch in and out constantly as the character speaks, and sometimes even specific situations (such as Leen being soaking wet or Justin waking up with bedhead) have their own portraits that are unique to that one scene.  That attention to detail goes a long way toward establishing the character’s personalities and giving life to the dialogue.

The narrative itself bears many similarities to Studio Ghibli’s Castle in the Sky, and like the film there’s a sharp contrast between the two halves of the story.  In the beginning we’re introduced to the main character, Justin.  He’s a troublemaker living in the port town of Parm who dreams of following in his father’s footsteps, discovering the lost civilization of Angelou and becoming the world’s greatest adventurer.  He fits the “determined to be the best [blank] ever” archetype perfectly, being so determined that nothing can shake his determination, and often inspiring others with his determined determination.  Despite the cliche, he’s a likable character and his enthusiasm really permeates the entire game.  After the spirit stone his father left him leads him to an encounter with a mysterious priestess who tells him to travel east to the lost capitol of Angelou, it’s time for Justin to cross the ocean to the New World and begin his adventure.  But because he has the spirit stone, he’s often forced to tangle with the sometimes intimidating, often hilariously incompetent Garlyle Forces- the military force that’s excavating ruins for some mysterious goal, and who provide the game’s chief antagonists at this point.

After a surprisingly poignant parting scene between Justin and his mother, Justin crosses the ocean and meets the other principle character, Feena.  She’s a confident and competent ally- never a nag, a designated healer, nor a damsel in distress- and the romance that springs up between the two is refreshing in its lack of needless, tacked-on drama.  They don’t hate each other at first, but then suddenly fall in love.  Rather, Feena progresses naturally from companion, to friends and finally love interest as they adventure together.  In fact, nearly the entire first disc is similarly lighthearted and innocent, even humorous at times, as Justin continues to surprise people with his resourcefulness and refusal to back down from impossible tasks.  The game often pauses admire the scenery or bask in a new discovery, most memorably when Justin and company become the first people to climb the huge wall known as the End of the World and see what lies on the other side.  The bombastic soundtrack really sells these scenes, which give a sense of accomplishment simply for progressing through the game and establish Grandia’s world as truly vast and unexplored.

Then, at the start of the second disc, the plot finally decides to show up and cause a complete 180.  The sense of adventure gradually dissipates to make room for the “epic” story.  Justin goes from likable kid to chosen one, and immediately begins spewing idealist philosophies at anyone who’ll listen.  He is, of course, always wrong, and only manages to survive and make fools of the more intelligent and reasonable characters through the magnitude of his plot armor.  Feena becomes whiny and feeble, crushed under the weight of her sudden “mysterious power”, causing her to bicker with Justin and then need to be rescued by him.  The Garlyle forces, as it turns out, were enacting a plan by General Baal to resurrect the ancient evil that destroyed Angelou (presumably just because) using the power of the spirit stone.  There are big CG cutscenes of towns being destroyed and a predictable ending, but by this point I was invested enough in the characters and the game in general to see the 40-hour quest to its conclusion.

The game’s battle system is one of, if not the best in the genre.  The flow is similar to the active-time battles of the Final Fantasy series or Chrono Trigger, but with several additions and modifications that add strategy and depth to every encounter.  If you’ll look in the lower-right corner of the blurry screenshot above, you’ll see the IP bar shared by all characters and enemies.  The first 80% is where characters wait for their turn, and the player inputs the commands once they reach the last segment.  The final 20% is the wait to execute the command, which could be anywhere from five seconds to instantaneous.  Simple commands like Combo (the standard attack, hits twice), Critical (a more powerful single strike, not as strong as both hits of a combo but containing some special properties I’ll explain later), or Guard will come out instantly, whereas special moves and spells can take time to charge depending on the character’s proficiency with the move.  The combatants are not locked in place, either.  They move around the battlefield and stay wherever they end up, not unlike the Lunar series, which lends to some extra strategy with area-affecting spells.

What really sets the battle system apart, however, is that aside from command input and execution of special moves or spells, it all plays out in real-time- meaning every character and every enemy is moving and acting simultaneously.  This allows for some unique strategies that are both intuitive and easy to pick up.  Combatants are momentarily stunned when attacked, which can be used to stall an enemy until a specific character’s turn comes up.  Hitting an enemy with a Critical will set them back about 50% of the IP bar, or if they’re waiting to execute a move, potentially cancel it altogether, sending them to nearly the beginning of the bar.  Hitting an enemy who’s currently attacking counts as a counter and does extra damage.  These same rules apply to the characters, of course, which forces the player to strategize on the fly with attack and defense timing, as well as target priority.  Everything adds up to create an deep, intuitive, lightning fast and unpredictable battle system that I never got tired of, and often had me actually wandering around looking for battles.

Part of the reason why is the skill system the game utilizes for learning abilities and spells.  Each character has a skill level for each type of weapon they can use and for each of the four types of magic you can teach them.  Points are gained through use, and a level up brings minor stat boosts and better proficiency.  Once certain requirements are met across one or multiple skills, the character will learn a new ability.  The game keeps the names and properties of the abilities a secret, but not the requirements to gain them.  So the good news is, you’ll always be working toward a new ability.  The bad news is, you will always be working toward a new ability. Because the only way to level up a skill is to use it, the strategy is almost always taken off of how to best win a battle and placed, instead, on how to spam the same moves as many times as possible.  You may find yourself limiting one character to a single useless ability (say, a spell that grants a minor defense boost or an area attack that does an irrelevant amount of damage) for two straight dungeons just to grind the skill level.  While this does provide another incentive to keep engaging in combat, it also makes the entire game feel like one big grind.  On the other hand, this may not be a bad thing, because it’s also so addictive that it may end up being the very thing that keeps the player going until the ending.

Exploration in the game is somewhat limited, which seems ironic for a game with such a heavy storyline focus on adventure and discovery.  The towns are big and well-designed, but due to the near absence of side quests and the game’s linearity never leaving the player with any question as to what to do next, there’s generally very little incentive to explore them once you’ve located the shop and the inn.  The world map is a literal map with towns and dungeons listed on it, and destinations are chosen like on a menu.  Instead of having a whole countryside to explore, locations are generally divided up by fields or mountain ranges the player must traverse like a dungeon before the next location on the map becomes available (although they very thankfully did not go the Suikoden III route with this idea- you only have to clear each one once).

This brings us to the dungeon design: one or two early dungeons got my hopes up that they’d all be full of  traps, puzzles, difficult to reach treasure chests and the like.  This concept is woefully underdeveloped, as the dungeons mostly alternate between wide-open areas and long series’ of identical corridors, very occasionally interspersed with something falling on you for minor damage (and even that’s mostly phased out by the second disc).  Enemies appear on the map along with a liberal amount of treasure chest, loose items and sacks of money.  The battle system and the skill system, along with the surprising quality of the items you can find, make it rewarding enough to explore every nook and cranny of the areas, but as the majority of the game is spent doing this, it can get tiring after a while.  Unless you’re a big fan of dungeon crawling, this isn’t likely to be a game you’ll play in particularly long sittings.

If I have one chief complaint, however, it’s that the game is just too easy.  Enemies pose no threat against even normal attacks, and there’s no reason to conserve your special moves or spells since the save points will fully heal you.  Even most bosses will only be able to attack once or twice before you completely lay them out.  This means the fantastic battle system partially goes to waste as some of the deeper strategies are largely unnecessary.  There’s a limited inventory system where each character can only carry twelve items (not counting what they have equipped), which under normal circumstances would lend to the “adventure” theme of the game by forcing the player to prepare before leaving for a dungeon and ration items once they’re there.  However, besides the very beginning of the game when there was no magic available (and maybe not even then), I never used a single item.  This was not a conscious decision, there was simply no need.  This, coupled with the linear story progression, makes for a game you’ll breeze through without trying.

However, in the end the flaws don’t manage to detract nearly enough from the overall experience to not give Grandia a strong recommendation.  Ten (or rather, twelve) years later, Grandia remains a memorable and enjoyable experience, and one of the better games on its platform or in its genre.  There’s a lot to love here- whether you’re an RPG vet or a genre newcomer (like I was when I first played it), it’s an adventure worth embarking on.

This is another game in the series of the Yu-Gi-Oh: World Championship series. I own both 2006 and 2008, having gotten all cards on 2008 and having played a lot of 2006. And again, this game is fun, because I love the Yugioh card game. There’s so much variety, and because every release includes a whole bunch of new cards, it’s worth playing them every year.

This time, it’s not about the Yugioh GX like 08 was, but about Yugioh 5D’s, the new series. The game has a whole lot of new cards, including synchros (which were recently added to the game, it’s an entirely new game mechanic) and they even included something else.

Dueling on a motorbike. That’s right. In Yugioh 5D’s, they duel on motorbikes. It takes a while before you can finally do them (almost the end of the game), but they’re great. They solve one of the big problems in the Yugioh game: Powerful spells that can turn around the entire game. In Turbo duels, both players gain Speed counters every turn, and all spells either require a cost speed counters or simply have a requirement of having a number of them. This means that you can have very powerful spells that are not even overpowered. Remember Raigeki? In Turbo duels, it costs 12 speed counters to use them. That means you have to wait for at least 6 turns without using any other spells.

But actually, this is not what I wanted to make this blog about. Sure, the game is great, but they made some really, really terrible design decisions.

One of the problems is that your starter deck sucks, as usual. The problem this time is that it actually contains some really good cards, but it’s just a mess. There’s no strategy to be found anywhere. So while it’s possible to win with it, it will be hard.

Especially considering your opponents. Random opponents you can find on the streets in the story mode have really, really good decks compared to your starter deck. I don’t mind the challenge as a veteran, but any newcomer will hate it.

Another problem is that they introduced racing. That’s right, racing in a card game. There are times when you have to complete a lap in a certain amount of time, or escape from the cops. The racing is easy, but it’s so easy  to screw up. And if you want to improve your bike? You’ll have to pass up on getting new cards and pay for new parts.

But the worst of all? They included a stealth segment. A stealth segment where the guards have a huge line of sight and a huge radius around them that you can’t enter or you’re caught. And the worst part? It’s timed.

This part alone is so extremely frustrating that it’s unbelievable. You have to avoid guards that you cannot even see. Because their line of sight is as big as your entire screen.

Yu-Gi-Oh 5D's match commentator

The game has some really bad design decisions, but also some good ones. Ever wanted to have a yugioh match where this guy was providing comments? Hell yeah! It’s great!

…the top five games not worth full price

Brought to you by Fedora Man

Well it’s finally March; or rather it has been March for half a month now, whatever. It’s hard keeping track of time when you’re on another planet fighting the living embodiment of anger with nothing but hat based weaponry and your wit; not to mention making love to all the alien women who all suspiciously speak English (call me). In fact it’s nearly impossible to keep track of the time when you’re fighting robots and defending humanity twenty-four hours a day seven days a week (or sometimes eight days a week depending on where I am) so cut me some slack on the issue. But in between throwing my Fedora-rangs (not a rip-off of Batman) and solving super crime in my Fedora Cave I did manage to get down to Gamestop to browse the selection. I was thinking “Damn, I need some new games to play in between sleeping and fighting five dimensional creatures that my mind can’t fully comprehend.” Because honestly, what the hell else am I going to do in my spare time but play games on my super computer?

A horrible thing happened as I browsed the new games list: most of them weren’t worth the displayed price and I’ll be damned if I spend a cent of my billions of dollars if it’s on something overpriced and uninteresting. At first I believed some crime was afoot. Perhaps my non-arch-nemesis (but a nemesis nonetheless) The Emo-inator replaced all the great new games with some games that were released last year and already had at least thirty dollars shaved off the price tag in reality. But I quickly found out he was still in jail after his last big scheme (replacing all the pen ink in my mansion with black eyeliner). So I returned to Gamestop and demanded answers! “Why are these games priced at sixty dollars!” I demanded to know. “There is no way in hell they’re worth that much money!” I grabbed that pimply faced bastard by his collar and pulled him close to my face to show him I was serious. The rest after that was a blur, but I’m pretty sure the police came and I think I was trying to explain my innocence to them while being beaten with their night sticks. I couldn’t do anything since I wasn’t in costume (my fedora) so I just had to take the ass kicking. There is some good news though: I did manage to write down a list of games to bring to the public’s attention before I got sent to jail. Now the list was hastily scrawled on a dollar bill and there’s also a lot of blood on it but I’m pretty sure I can read it so I hope you can appreciate what I’ve done for you in the following list.

Number 5: Halo Wars

If ever there was an argument for Starcraft 2 to come out in the year 2009 this game would be it. With what looks like completely unbalanced gameplay and some craptastic AI; Halo Wars makes me yearn for the glory days of the RTS when Starcraft was out and kicking some ass. Or at the very least it makes me yearn for a computer RTS instead of this watered-down console game. Sure the controls worked but everything else was terrible compared to almost every other RTS on the market. Want to build a defense line at a chokepoint? Well you can’t build outside the designated bases. Do you like managing resources and armies to win strategically? Well I hope you do since it’s a Real Time STRATEGY. The only trouble with that is they only put one resource in the game and you can’t really hotkey or select units you aren’t looking at directly so micromanaging is nearly impossible. So do you want to kill the Prophet of Regret’s vastly inferior forces with your army of super death? Well have fun getting killed by his stupid laser. What about the AI? You might as well take out the “I” in that because there’s nothing intelligent about the computer. Even on the hardest difficulty and with the handicap of being a human (the entire human race tends to suck horribly in this game) I still managed to destroy the computer with minimal effort.

Admittedly the above was all part of the demo but a demo is designed to make you want a game and this demo did nothing but make me look at Blizzard’s website to see how far along Starcraft 2 was in production (and now I’m going to stop talking about SC2, I promise). “But there was a harder difficulty in the real game”, or so I’ve been told. But the thing about that is I don’t want to buy a game only to find out it’s not the least bit challenging. If someone else wanted to buy the game for me then sure I’d play it, the point is I just don’t want to pay $60 for it.

Number 4: House of the Dead: Overkill

Call me crazy (and I’ll punch you) but I’ve never been much for rail shooters. There was something about the lack of freedom to choose where I wanted to go (or move) that always got me. I guess they were alright in an arcade where I never had anything better to do and I had a friend handy. Other than that it never appealed to me to want to play a rail shooter at home because I could always do something different. “Let’s see do I want to play a game where zombies attack me and I’m not smart enough to take a few steps back? Or do I want to play Mario Kart?” Mario Kart won every single time. So although I haven’t played House of the Dead: Overkill, I have played rail shooters and previous HotD installments and can say that with one hundred percent certainty that this wouldn’t be worth fifty dollars.

Number 3: Tom Clancey’s HAWX

I don’t think demos are really making me want games anymore. First Legends of Wrestlemania (yeah your favorite superhero Fedora Man likes wrestling, sue me) with its “I don’t want to download because I’m an asshole” attitude. Then Halo Wars was like “I don’t feel like trying”. Then there’s this game, and I honestly can’t decide what this game’s message is. On one hand it could be “I’m not fun!” On the other hand it could be “what the hell is going on?” Both of those would actually work for this title. Maybe I was just stressed out from lack of sleep and from all the clowns I was punching in the face and the game simply appeared to not be enjoyable. Or maybe everyone telling me how great the game would be made me build up false expectations that it would be the next Starfox (minus that stupid Starfox Assault failure). Whatever the case may be it was not really all that great as a game. This could have been because I had no idea how to fly my plane in a way that didn’t cause me to experience vertigo. It could also be attributed to the fact that it felt like I wasn’t really accomplishing anything during the course of the battle. On one hand I could cut it some slack because it’s just a demo. But on the other hand I’m sworn to uphold the law in whatever way I see fit and if that doesn’t give me jurisdiction to be a douche for no reason then I don’t know what will.

Number 2: Halo Wars: Limited/Collectors Edition

Now I know what you’re thinking, and no I don’t have the ability to read minds I’m just that good. You’re thinking “but you already did Halo Wars! You’re so lame!” You’re probably considering destroying your Fedora Man action figures and burning all the T-Shirts with my face on it. You might even go pick up monopoly, dig the hat out, and eat it just to prove a point. Although firstly I’d like to point out that’s not a fedora, it’s a top hat. Secondly don’t lose faith! There is a very good reason I’m putting the special edition on this list.

For a while I debated just putting this down as an honorable mention and putting MLB 2K9 on this list instead. But then I realized that not only was it a sports game but it was one about baseball and no one would even read what I had to say about it because no one cares. I probably just pissed off some baseball fans that are no doubt injecting steroids and getting angry at me at this moment (zing). However I really can’t care because none of them parade around in my merchandise and play Dungeons and Fedora Man in their free time. In truth I shouldn’t make fun of baseball fans just because of our differences in what we like to watch. After all professional wrestling also has steroid use so I can let that slide (note: Fedora Man does not use steroids he is naturally a buff ass kicking machine). I do apologize for those last remarks, but only if you wear a fedora tomorrow to recognize my heroism.

Hey it looks like I’m getting off topic. Let’s get down to Halo Wars: Special Edition. Now I’m not sure when every major release had to have a special edition but I think it was around the time Halo 3 came out. In any case the special edition is priced at a nice eighty dollars. With it you get a disc on how they made the game, you know, in case you ever want to make a Halo Wars game yourself, in your basement. Actually it’s probably because they love Halo SO MUCH they just HAD to get it! Since figuring out how the game was made makes the experience so much better. Aside from that you also get a Spirit of Fire patch so that you can become the coolest kid on the block! (Note to self: get Spirit of Fire patch for costume). You also get some useless crap like trading cards and a book that details the history of the characters in the game. Now I’m no rocket scientist (okay yes I am) but I’m thinking that should have been included as an encyclopedia in the game or in the instruction book. Look I don’t mean to talk about Starcraft again but this just came up and it’s very important. See when you bought Starcraft it came with a huge manual that, aside from telling you how to play, detailed the history of each individual race as well as several heroes. Maybe it’s just me but I’m pretty sure that part could have easily been included in the game.

However the biggest reason this is on the list is attributed to the Halo 3 map code. I’m just wondering if somewhere along the line openly treating the customer like an idiot became the norm. The maps are going to be ten dollars on the xbl marketplace but now you can buy them for the low, low price of twenty dollars! Seriously? Maybe people really want all that other crap (anyone want to give me an ultra hip Spirit of Fire patch?) but I’m quite certain the majority of people bought the special/collectors/limited edition for those maps. So if you want to pay ten dollars more for the maps then go for it, just be sure to give me the Spirit of Fire patch.

Number 1: Resident Evil 5

So I get to play Resident Evil 4 again? Well that’s cool, it was a fun game and I’m sure they’ll change it so it doesn’t get boring while still delivering the great gameplay I expect from the fourth game. Oh but what’s this? You took out the merchant (the best character in the game) and the attaché case? So I can only carry around nine measly items? Well I guess they’re going back to their roots with survival horror in a way right? They’re limiting the items, it’ll totally work! Except they’re giving you mounted mini-guns with unlimited ammo so they can’t be trying to make it survival horror-esque again. But hey now they’re giving you cooperative mode, that’s awesome right? Except it ruins the gameplay for single player entirely which you might think is odd because it’s supposedly a single player game. One could argue Resident Evil 4 had an annoying partner you had to take care of. The difference here being Ashley could hide inside of dumpsters and not die like a jackass. She also decided that trying to run up and hug a man wielding a chainsaw was a bad idea, unlike Sheva whose battle strategy involves running right up to the chainsaw man and trying to shoot him. Oh and that’s another thing, Ashley never wasted my ammo. Hell when I think about it all the complaints I have about the game boil down to “my teammate is a moron”, that and they pretty much downgraded everything from the fourth game. I’m not going to spend a cent of my billion dollar fortune on Resident Evil 5 when I could invest that money in something much cooler… like a space ship shaped like a Fedora.