Monday, Feb 16, 2009
Have you heard of the Yellow Light of Death, the PS3 equivalent of the Red Ring of Death? Neither did I until a little over a week ago. Seems the launch models have been experiencing this issue lately, which naturally occurs out of warranty. Oh the things I do for full backwards compatability... Today is my 9th day without a PS3, which is my primary system, and you know what? I don't get how 360 owners suffer from withdrawal symptoms when they lose their 360 for a couple of weeks. Did these people trade in all their other systems for the 360, and trade their new games in to GameStop for $17 the moment they're done with them? I'm finding plenty to play instead. Granted the fact that the only new game I bought so far this year is for the PS2 probably helps. Who would have expected that, though, buying new PS2 games in 2009 when I have all the current systems?
I'll probably be switching from final game impressions in my blog to actual reviews again, since that's practically what they are. The tone will be a bit different from before, though. Part of the reason I burnt out on reviews before is because I was doing them too often, but the other reason was the way I wrote them. Too professional sounding, I guess you could say, and suddenly everything was just following a template that hid what I wanted to say. We'll see how things go in the end.
I'll probably be posting my mega Best of 2008 pretty soon too. I never do it right at the turn of the year like most people do because so many candidates release in October and November that I just don't have the time to play them all, so I usually do it about two months into the year. I have a few games left, none of them a contender for my GOTY, and they're all for the PS3 which I am currently without.
Sunday, Dec 14, 2008
I was really skeptical going into Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. I wanted a platformer, because I love the genre and good modern platformers can be hard to find. All of my disappointment quickly melted away when I actually got to play the game, however. Once I started to play Nuts & Bolts, I just couldn't put it down and hours just rapidly flowed by without me realizing it.
Creating vehicles is pretty easy, as things will work if you add key parts (wings at the front or back, or even on a really heavy vehicle, doesn't seem to impact things much). You are really limited by just your imagination when building vehicles for some challenges. Hovercrafts, cars, planes, helicopters, boats, and so forth are all possible, and with items like folding wings and inflatable floats, vehicles can be multi-use. You can sometimes get stuck on corners or spin out a little too much for my liking, and aiming the basic weapons are annoying since there's no on-screen indicator to give you an idea of where the projectile will hit (this makes the later-game weapons that automatically lock on a major upgrade). But otherwise, you can create some very wacky vehicles of all shapes, sizes, and capabilities. The hub level opens up bit by bit as your trolly (you can't change your vehicle in the hub world) gets upgraded when you beat Gruntilla in certain challenges, and I found myself poking around for its secrets quite a bit. Otherwise, there's pretty much five worlds you spend all your time in (not counting the final level which you won't be in much), and some of them look wonderful. Seriously, this game would win the artistic graphics award any other year, but strong competition this year might limit it to fourth in my mind.
One thing that's important to stress is the missions themselves. While the jinjo challenges, which serve as side quests, can be narrowed down to five basic types (race, search, wrestle, hurl, taxi), the rest of the missions are nice and varied. This is a very nice breath of fresh air when other modern open games, like Assassin's Creed and Far Cry 2, just have you do the same four missions over and over and over again. Not so with Banjo. There's races, but some can be land, others at sea, some in the air, or even a combination of the above. There's moving challenges where you have to get items somewhere else. Others you're protecting someone or something from attack. There's stunt runs. There's stuff like playing darts with your vehicle itself. There's bulldozing everything outside an area as fast as possible. There's soccer-like games where your vehicle is the player. And that's just a bit of the possibilities. Even the stuff that's technically the same mission type, the level and mission design is so different that it's like a whole new experience. You won't tire of the missions like you do with pretty much every other mission-based game these days.
The humor of the game was very good too. Constant pokes by Rare about their past commercial failures, the pointless collecting of their games, and the like. Kazooie keeps whining about her abilities being stripped, wanting them back in case the game bombs and another one isn't made, thus preventing her from ever getting them back. The Lord of Games, the new character who claims he made every game ever, admits there's a Lady of Games but she focuses on the ones where you ride ponies, pet kittens, and blow up ninjas with rocket launchers. Good stuff.
The game retailed for $40 because MS didn't think it would sell well, and it must not have since it's not hard to find it for $26 or so if you look around. That's too bad; everyone should give the game a shot especially at that price. Add this game to the list including Mirror's Edge, Valkyria Chronicles, and Braid as games that try something new and are worth checking out if you can.
Prince of Persia was a day one buy for me since I love the series, and the wonderful trailers and art direction just cemented that feeling further. The game is great to look at, for sure. Well, maybe not so much in the drab corrupted lands, but once you heal them and colors pop out, things look great. This is particularly true at the Vale, an area of wooden machines and pipes, with floating platforms held up by balloons. One particular view is unbelievable, and running around in this particular area is just stunning. They went for an engine that makes the game look like concept art in motion, and they did a pretty good job realizing that.
People have said the game is easy, and maybe it is. It's not entirely because of your new sidekick, Elika, saving you though. Really, that's just a rather streamlined checkpoint system that gets you back into the action faster than the normal way, and nothing more. Nah, it's always pretty clear where to go, due to the scratch marks on the wall where you're supposed to wall run. Elika's compass ability not only points you in the direction where you want to go, but the orb pretty much follows the precise route you travel so you'll know what ledge to grab on and so forth. The controls are pretty forgiving, so if you jump towards a pillar and are off to the side a bit, you'll drift back towards it automatically. The co-op jump, which is the double jump in this game, is also forgiving in that if you hit it too late while you're in a freefall, Elika will toss you right from where the height of your jump arc was, so timing is pretty much a non-issue unless you hit the button over a second too late. Plus, there's no difficulty curve at all. Combat is a small part of the series, as the environment is the real challenge. However, instead of a linear adventure, they decided that open worlds are all the rage with the kiddies these days (and they wisely notice that linear games tend to get a sizable penalty by reviewers these days, even if linear works better for that particular game than an open world). Thus, they couldn't make the later levels harder because what's the later level for you might be the early levels for someone else. As a result, the difficulty curve is level throughout the game, as they're totally prevented from going higher than the relatively elementary difficulty due to their desire to go with the open world.
They cut down on cutscenes a lot, partially because it's hard to do them coherently with an open world (the beginning and the end are two of the few areas they can "control" how you progress through them), partially because of a similar review penalty, plus some of the players just want to play. What they do is let you talk to Elika with the press of a button, there's usually a few short dialogues in each of the game's 25 or so sections, usually when you enter it and after you heal the land. Naturally, I viewed them all since I love such things, and I did like the way the two interacted. However, it was a little disjointed, once again due to the open world. In one instance they seem to be getting along better, then in another one later they seem to not be getting along as well as I would have thought. It probably would have flowed a lot better if I saw the later one first, but that's simply how I tackled the areas. It's weird to see them at odds, get a lot closer, take a step back, another step forward, a big step back, a bit more forward, then back a bit without anything happening in between that would justify this variance. It's not as extreme as I mentioned but I really picked up on it. Either way, I really like Elika's character. The Prince reminded me a lot of Nathan Drake, which isn't surprising given the voice actor.
I hope you like backtracking, because you'll be doing it a lot. There's four boss enemies in the game, and you fight each about six times. Surprisingly it doesn't get repeitive that much, at least not in my eyes. Kill boss, heal land, repeat until you kill them for good in their lair. You average one generic enemy per corrupted area, but if you get to their spawn point fast enough you'll be able to kill them before they spawn. I found this to be pretty easy actually. Even if you miss it, the platforms you fight on are always pretty small, and generic enemies are essentially killed if you knock them to the edge so that's all it takes (naturally this doesn't work on the bosses). You can only survive two hits, but you don't die, you're given a second to hit one of the four buttons to evade their finishing blow, which I found to be rather simple. And even if you do miss, Elika saves you and the boss just regens a little bit, no biggie. Once you heal the land, light spheres appear, there's pretty much 45 in each level. There's four Elika abilities that you need to earn to progress (most of the areas require one of the four to move on), and you collect light spheres to unlock these. So after you go through an area and heal it, you basically run through it again to pick up the spheres. Most are pretty easy to collect, but some are hidden away or require a different ability to collect. About two thirds of the way through, once you unlock the last ability, light spheres are there for trophies/achievements only and things get a lot faster if you're just into finishing the game.
I got the combo trophy on the final boss, where I needed to do all of the 63 distinct combos that can be chained in different ways for a lot of different possibilities overall... and I found out that the fighting system is better than I first thought it was when I really got a grasp of them. Naturally, finishing the game in nine hours on my first playthrough and with only a few instances of combat (and with the generic enemies usually being killed before they spawn), if you don't actively try to experiment with the system you'll beat the game before you really see how deep and good it is, like I did. The relatively small platforms can be a detriment as you'll often break off in the middle of a combo when the enemy hits an edge. There's good stuff here, I just wish they let us use it better.
Overall, despite some issues, I felt it was better than the sum of its parts, but I was kicking back and enjoying the experience and not fretting over the lack of challenge. If you didn't like BioShock, which had atmosphere and some neat combat ideas that were arguably worthless since you had no incentive to use them since the game was so easy and there was little penalty for death, then you probably won't like Prince of Persia. If you liked it, you'll probably like this as well. The ending came out of nowhere for me. I mean, I'm not surprised it practically says "to be continued...", but the way they went about it I just didn't see coming. Some loved it, some hated it. I think I'm on the like side because you can see most cookie-cutter endings coming from a mile away, so its nice to get something different for a change.
Creating vehicles is pretty easy, as things will work if you add key parts (wings at the front or back, or even on a really heavy vehicle, doesn't seem to impact things much). You are really limited by just your imagination when building vehicles for some challenges. Hovercrafts, cars, planes, helicopters, boats, and so forth are all possible, and with items like folding wings and inflatable floats, vehicles can be multi-use. You can sometimes get stuck on corners or spin out a little too much for my liking, and aiming the basic weapons are annoying since there's no on-screen indicator to give you an idea of where the projectile will hit (this makes the later-game weapons that automatically lock on a major upgrade). But otherwise, you can create some very wacky vehicles of all shapes, sizes, and capabilities. The hub level opens up bit by bit as your trolly (you can't change your vehicle in the hub world) gets upgraded when you beat Gruntilla in certain challenges, and I found myself poking around for its secrets quite a bit. Otherwise, there's pretty much five worlds you spend all your time in (not counting the final level which you won't be in much), and some of them look wonderful. Seriously, this game would win the artistic graphics award any other year, but strong competition this year might limit it to fourth in my mind.
One thing that's important to stress is the missions themselves. While the jinjo challenges, which serve as side quests, can be narrowed down to five basic types (race, search, wrestle, hurl, taxi), the rest of the missions are nice and varied. This is a very nice breath of fresh air when other modern open games, like Assassin's Creed and Far Cry 2, just have you do the same four missions over and over and over again. Not so with Banjo. There's races, but some can be land, others at sea, some in the air, or even a combination of the above. There's moving challenges where you have to get items somewhere else. Others you're protecting someone or something from attack. There's stunt runs. There's stuff like playing darts with your vehicle itself. There's bulldozing everything outside an area as fast as possible. There's soccer-like games where your vehicle is the player. And that's just a bit of the possibilities. Even the stuff that's technically the same mission type, the level and mission design is so different that it's like a whole new experience. You won't tire of the missions like you do with pretty much every other mission-based game these days.
The humor of the game was very good too. Constant pokes by Rare about their past commercial failures, the pointless collecting of their games, and the like. Kazooie keeps whining about her abilities being stripped, wanting them back in case the game bombs and another one isn't made, thus preventing her from ever getting them back. The Lord of Games, the new character who claims he made every game ever, admits there's a Lady of Games but she focuses on the ones where you ride ponies, pet kittens, and blow up ninjas with rocket launchers. Good stuff.
The game retailed for $40 because MS didn't think it would sell well, and it must not have since it's not hard to find it for $26 or so if you look around. That's too bad; everyone should give the game a shot especially at that price. Add this game to the list including Mirror's Edge, Valkyria Chronicles, and Braid as games that try something new and are worth checking out if you can.
Prince of Persia was a day one buy for me since I love the series, and the wonderful trailers and art direction just cemented that feeling further. The game is great to look at, for sure. Well, maybe not so much in the drab corrupted lands, but once you heal them and colors pop out, things look great. This is particularly true at the Vale, an area of wooden machines and pipes, with floating platforms held up by balloons. One particular view is unbelievable, and running around in this particular area is just stunning. They went for an engine that makes the game look like concept art in motion, and they did a pretty good job realizing that.
People have said the game is easy, and maybe it is. It's not entirely because of your new sidekick, Elika, saving you though. Really, that's just a rather streamlined checkpoint system that gets you back into the action faster than the normal way, and nothing more. Nah, it's always pretty clear where to go, due to the scratch marks on the wall where you're supposed to wall run. Elika's compass ability not only points you in the direction where you want to go, but the orb pretty much follows the precise route you travel so you'll know what ledge to grab on and so forth. The controls are pretty forgiving, so if you jump towards a pillar and are off to the side a bit, you'll drift back towards it automatically. The co-op jump, which is the double jump in this game, is also forgiving in that if you hit it too late while you're in a freefall, Elika will toss you right from where the height of your jump arc was, so timing is pretty much a non-issue unless you hit the button over a second too late. Plus, there's no difficulty curve at all. Combat is a small part of the series, as the environment is the real challenge. However, instead of a linear adventure, they decided that open worlds are all the rage with the kiddies these days (and they wisely notice that linear games tend to get a sizable penalty by reviewers these days, even if linear works better for that particular game than an open world). Thus, they couldn't make the later levels harder because what's the later level for you might be the early levels for someone else. As a result, the difficulty curve is level throughout the game, as they're totally prevented from going higher than the relatively elementary difficulty due to their desire to go with the open world.
They cut down on cutscenes a lot, partially because it's hard to do them coherently with an open world (the beginning and the end are two of the few areas they can "control" how you progress through them), partially because of a similar review penalty, plus some of the players just want to play. What they do is let you talk to Elika with the press of a button, there's usually a few short dialogues in each of the game's 25 or so sections, usually when you enter it and after you heal the land. Naturally, I viewed them all since I love such things, and I did like the way the two interacted. However, it was a little disjointed, once again due to the open world. In one instance they seem to be getting along better, then in another one later they seem to not be getting along as well as I would have thought. It probably would have flowed a lot better if I saw the later one first, but that's simply how I tackled the areas. It's weird to see them at odds, get a lot closer, take a step back, another step forward, a big step back, a bit more forward, then back a bit without anything happening in between that would justify this variance. It's not as extreme as I mentioned but I really picked up on it. Either way, I really like Elika's character. The Prince reminded me a lot of Nathan Drake, which isn't surprising given the voice actor.
I hope you like backtracking, because you'll be doing it a lot. There's four boss enemies in the game, and you fight each about six times. Surprisingly it doesn't get repeitive that much, at least not in my eyes. Kill boss, heal land, repeat until you kill them for good in their lair. You average one generic enemy per corrupted area, but if you get to their spawn point fast enough you'll be able to kill them before they spawn. I found this to be pretty easy actually. Even if you miss it, the platforms you fight on are always pretty small, and generic enemies are essentially killed if you knock them to the edge so that's all it takes (naturally this doesn't work on the bosses). You can only survive two hits, but you don't die, you're given a second to hit one of the four buttons to evade their finishing blow, which I found to be rather simple. And even if you do miss, Elika saves you and the boss just regens a little bit, no biggie. Once you heal the land, light spheres appear, there's pretty much 45 in each level. There's four Elika abilities that you need to earn to progress (most of the areas require one of the four to move on), and you collect light spheres to unlock these. So after you go through an area and heal it, you basically run through it again to pick up the spheres. Most are pretty easy to collect, but some are hidden away or require a different ability to collect. About two thirds of the way through, once you unlock the last ability, light spheres are there for trophies/achievements only and things get a lot faster if you're just into finishing the game.
I got the combo trophy on the final boss, where I needed to do all of the 63 distinct combos that can be chained in different ways for a lot of different possibilities overall... and I found out that the fighting system is better than I first thought it was when I really got a grasp of them. Naturally, finishing the game in nine hours on my first playthrough and with only a few instances of combat (and with the generic enemies usually being killed before they spawn), if you don't actively try to experiment with the system you'll beat the game before you really see how deep and good it is, like I did. The relatively small platforms can be a detriment as you'll often break off in the middle of a combo when the enemy hits an edge. There's good stuff here, I just wish they let us use it better.
Overall, despite some issues, I felt it was better than the sum of its parts, but I was kicking back and enjoying the experience and not fretting over the lack of challenge. If you didn't like BioShock, which had atmosphere and some neat combat ideas that were arguably worthless since you had no incentive to use them since the game was so easy and there was little penalty for death, then you probably won't like Prince of Persia. If you liked it, you'll probably like this as well. The ending came out of nowhere for me. I mean, I'm not surprised it practically says "to be continued...", but the way they went about it I just didn't see coming. Some loved it, some hated it. I think I'm on the like side because you can see most cookie-cutter endings coming from a mile away, so its nice to get something different for a change.
Monday, Dec 1, 2008
Go and buy Valkyria Chronicles now. I don't care if you don't have a PS3. Get it anyway, as it needs a sequel, and if it doesn't get one I'm holding each of you responsible.
Valkyria Chronicles is like a breath of fresh air for strategy games. You know how turn-based strategy games always use this grid system, you just highlight what enemy you want to attack, and repeat? I mean, stuff like Disgaea is fun, don't get me wrong, but everyone follows the same general formula. Until now. Valkyria Chronicles has no grid, it's a full map with hills, sandbags, trenches, all that good stuff. You have an overhead view, but it turns into a full real-time third person system when you move, with enemies firing at you when you get in their range. You can manually aim, and it'll show you where your bullet spread is, which is determined by the aim rating with your gun. You can actually use the same character as many times as you want (as long as you have the command points), but their movement range drops each time and the more powerful weapons have limited ammo, though they can be refilled with Engineers. The balance of the five c|asses is rather nice, and it eliminates a lot of micromanagement issues present in the genre since all your experience goes into a pool, and you apply it to a whole c|ass of soldiers, not just each individual one. Toss in some really neat situations like sandstorms, ambushes, and the like, and the whole package is just phenomenal.
The graphics are just great, with a canvas system done so the game looks like a watercolor painting in motion. Sakimoto brings his characteristic ochestral music, the voice acting is rather good and so are the characters themselves.
Sadly, the game may get overlooked, due to all the other games coming out, the lack of marketing, the fact that it's a PS3 exclusive, and it's not that easy to even find due to the print run. And that's too bad. In an era of me-too sequels driving the industry, it's nice to have a game that doesn't feel like it's being dumbed down to appeal to a certain demographic, and the feeling that it's being made because the developers just think the idea is great as opposed to it being designed around some random surveys and reports. Really, when a neat new idea comes around, it's worth it to at least give it a try even if it has its flaws. So at the very least, give this, Mirror's Edge, or Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts a try. But in Valkyria's case, the flaws are more limited than you'd expect for a game with such a different gameplay system.
MotorStorm had some great core gameplay, but Sony understandably rushed the game out, resulting in a few flaws. Fortunately, pretty much every flaw has been addressed, and the great core gameplay just shines. MotorStorm: Pacific Rift's island environment gives some great change of scenery, from beaches and calderas to jungles and streams. In other words, there's more than just brown. The new monster truck fits in fine with the other seven vehicles, and their balance was tuned a bit better. The AI is much better this time around, as opponents actually try to win instead of just suiciding to take you out. Load times are better, and the online is smooth and with a much more logical ranking system. There's sixteen courses now, much better than the eight in the original.
The big highlight of Pacific Rift, much like the original game, is the course design. There's usually multiple paths to choose from, be it a shorter path through mud (which slows down lighter vehicles), or a longer one with pretty flat terrain, or a medium one with jumps, whatever. Some are definitely better suited for a different vehicle type, but sometimes the flow of the race (or the momentum of a larger opponent) may force you to change your plans. Really, it's hard to go back to standard racing games with their single routes after you play MotorStorm. Plus the tracks don't feel like regular tracks with a tropical skin on top, but it actually feels like some of the courses were carved into the side of a caldera or along the edge of a rocky shoreline. Definitely the highlight of the package. If you have a PS3 and are even remotely interested in arcade racing games, then you should definitely give Pacific Rift a spin.
Speaking of Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, I'm in the middle of that game now and it's yet another great game from this holiday season that may get overlooked due to bigger names being released. It's certainly one of a kind and will suck away hours without you knowing it, but more on that later.
Valkyria Chronicles is like a breath of fresh air for strategy games. You know how turn-based strategy games always use this grid system, you just highlight what enemy you want to attack, and repeat? I mean, stuff like Disgaea is fun, don't get me wrong, but everyone follows the same general formula. Until now. Valkyria Chronicles has no grid, it's a full map with hills, sandbags, trenches, all that good stuff. You have an overhead view, but it turns into a full real-time third person system when you move, with enemies firing at you when you get in their range. You can manually aim, and it'll show you where your bullet spread is, which is determined by the aim rating with your gun. You can actually use the same character as many times as you want (as long as you have the command points), but their movement range drops each time and the more powerful weapons have limited ammo, though they can be refilled with Engineers. The balance of the five c|asses is rather nice, and it eliminates a lot of micromanagement issues present in the genre since all your experience goes into a pool, and you apply it to a whole c|ass of soldiers, not just each individual one. Toss in some really neat situations like sandstorms, ambushes, and the like, and the whole package is just phenomenal.
The graphics are just great, with a canvas system done so the game looks like a watercolor painting in motion. Sakimoto brings his characteristic ochestral music, the voice acting is rather good and so are the characters themselves.
Sadly, the game may get overlooked, due to all the other games coming out, the lack of marketing, the fact that it's a PS3 exclusive, and it's not that easy to even find due to the print run. And that's too bad. In an era of me-too sequels driving the industry, it's nice to have a game that doesn't feel like it's being dumbed down to appeal to a certain demographic, and the feeling that it's being made because the developers just think the idea is great as opposed to it being designed around some random surveys and reports. Really, when a neat new idea comes around, it's worth it to at least give it a try even if it has its flaws. So at the very least, give this, Mirror's Edge, or Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts a try. But in Valkyria's case, the flaws are more limited than you'd expect for a game with such a different gameplay system.
MotorStorm had some great core gameplay, but Sony understandably rushed the game out, resulting in a few flaws. Fortunately, pretty much every flaw has been addressed, and the great core gameplay just shines. MotorStorm: Pacific Rift's island environment gives some great change of scenery, from beaches and calderas to jungles and streams. In other words, there's more than just brown. The new monster truck fits in fine with the other seven vehicles, and their balance was tuned a bit better. The AI is much better this time around, as opponents actually try to win instead of just suiciding to take you out. Load times are better, and the online is smooth and with a much more logical ranking system. There's sixteen courses now, much better than the eight in the original.
The big highlight of Pacific Rift, much like the original game, is the course design. There's usually multiple paths to choose from, be it a shorter path through mud (which slows down lighter vehicles), or a longer one with pretty flat terrain, or a medium one with jumps, whatever. Some are definitely better suited for a different vehicle type, but sometimes the flow of the race (or the momentum of a larger opponent) may force you to change your plans. Really, it's hard to go back to standard racing games with their single routes after you play MotorStorm. Plus the tracks don't feel like regular tracks with a tropical skin on top, but it actually feels like some of the courses were carved into the side of a caldera or along the edge of a rocky shoreline. Definitely the highlight of the package. If you have a PS3 and are even remotely interested in arcade racing games, then you should definitely give Pacific Rift a spin.
Speaking of Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, I'm in the middle of that game now and it's yet another great game from this holiday season that may get overlooked due to bigger names being released. It's certainly one of a kind and will suck away hours without you knowing it, but more on that later.
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