Title Drop 4: The Prequel

Posted on by
Reply

Originally Posted 29 July 2010

Last night, I finished up Star Ocean: The Last Hope. It is the fourth in a long spanning series of actiony RPGs going back to the SNES era. The series tends to focus on spacefaring humans who end up trying to save the universe/galaxy/world but inexplicably end up on planents with medieval fantasy levels of development.

The Last Hope is actually the chronologically first game in the series, taking place right as humanity is beginning to seriously begin extrasolar exploration. Later games take place once humanity is already an established power in the galaxy. The story here follows Edge Maverick, a bridge officer in the new Space Reconnaissance Force, who quickly ends up the captain of his ship due to field promotion. You’re then tasked with searching out new worlds fit for human colonization due to the Earth being in something of a bad way after all the wars and such. Of course, you quickly become aware of threats to the galaxy and are off to save it as in the other games.

The game uses the rather standard JRPG division of overworld and battle modes. The overworld contains visible enemies who you can encounter to enter battle and all of the other trappings of a JRPG–scattered treasure chests, sidequests, item creation, etc. The battle system is highly similar to the previous games and is nearly identical to Star Ocean 3’s system in terms of control and flow. Luckily, they’ve done away with the idea of being able to either “MP kill” or “HP kill” characters and use the more familiar HP is for damage and MP is for casting. Otherwise, you are simply able to move around the map, carry out special attacks or magic, and otherwise fight. The game up battle slightly by incorporating the “battle gauge”. This guage allows you to gain special benefits by completing certain conditions. The guage contains 14 slots which get filled as these conditions are met: killing an enemy with a critical hit gives an experience bonus slot, killing multiple enemies at once gives a money bonus slot, getting ambushed (being in two consecutive fights) gives a skill point bonus, and killing an enemy using only skill results in an HP/MP regen bonus.

This is where the first noticable bad design decision appears. For the battle gauge bonuses, the level of utility varries massively: for XP and Money, each slot gives a 10% bonus. This means that maxing the guage with one of them would results in getting as much as 240% of base XP or money for a fight. For SP, which is relatively common, but vital to both character advancement and item creation, each slot gives one additional skill point per battle. In the early game, this allows for very fast advancement and access to special abilities. For HP/MP regen, however, you get 1% per battle per slot. This last bonus is completely worthless for the cost of carrying it out. Given the choice of getting to recover 14% of your health and MP after every fight without expending items or getting a 140% bonus to XP, the answer is completely obvious. Furthermore, given how common healing items are in general, this shouldn’t even be an issue. That isn’t the only problem with the battle gauge though. The gauge is not retained when you save and load. This led me (and I suspect others) to simply leaving their system on when they had acquired a relatively large bonus. Since it can take a fair amount of time to aquire certain bonuses (SP especially), this is the only pragmatic solution offered.

Of course, this wouldn’t be such an issue if the game were more stable. At this moment, I’ll say that I played the game on the 360 and that I have not played the PS3 (International) version. I had at least a dozen hard locks of my console while playing this game. Every single one happened during a battle and every single one was frustrating. Worst of all, I had one hard lock occur during my first attempt at the final boss resulting in me having to go back and beat its first form again. Luckily, I was able to skip the pile of cutscenes ahead of it.

Less annoyingly, but still evidence of poor thinking, is the late game transit system. Once you are able to access the final area, you can return to most of the areas previously available. In total, this consists of 5 worlds. Going to the first three worlds requires you have the game using disc 2 and going to the last two requires you to use disc 3. This is completely unacceptable. I shouldn’t have to wander around my apartment playing disc caddy in the late game.

As much as these technical issues grated on me, by far my biggest complaint against the game is from a particular section of the plot. At one point, you end up in a situation with a person who is so obviously evil that from the first word the character spoke, I knew they were out to betray the party. I was then forced to watch as my characters happily hand over the giant world-ending bomb to the obviously evil character who proceeds to blow up the planet. Worse, I then got to listen to the character who did it angst about it for the next fifth or so of the game. I understand that the characters should get tricked sometimes and that the narrative may drive things, but at least write a plot where I can maybe see myself getting tricked in their place. Genre saviness isn’t even required!

Overall, between the grating technical issues and the (mostly) lackluster plot, I can’t recommend the game. I’ve played all of the Star Ocean games at this point and this is the least compelling of them. Also, since it is a prequel, that means that it ultimately has no actually effect on the ongoing progress of the game’s story (aside from providing more backstory for established elements), so it can be skipped without too much trouble.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope: 0

What does “moe” mean?

Posted on by
Reply

Originally Posted 13 July 2010

Over the weekend, I played all the way through No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle. For a very long time, I considered the first No More Heroes game to be the best game available on the Wii console. It was and continues to be certainly the best Mature title for the device that I’d played.

No More Heroes was the story of Travis Touchdown–wrestling and anime otaku, probable NEET, and general loser–who won a lightsaber off of eBay and decided to become an assassin for the chicks. This set up alone was enough to sell the game to me. The first No More Heroes catalogs his ascension by murder to the top of the world-wide assassin’s organization–the United Assassins Association.

This game picks up three years after the first with Travis back to mostly being a poor, unemployed user. The difference now is that he is famous for his exploits of the first game and has been targetted by enemies that he made back during the first game. So, we end up climbing the ranks of the UAA again.

Gameplay wise, not much has changed. The game alternates between the assassination areas and the between mission upgrade/minigame section. In the assassination areas, Travis still wades through hordes of enemies with his beam saber before eventually arriving at his designated target. The assassination fights themselves are still the core of the gameplay and remain quite strong in this second iteration. The between mission areas have been altered somewhat in that Santa Destroy is no longer an open, explorable world.

The loss of the explorable world is not really that big of an issue. In the first game, the primary purpose of the explorable world was to obtain money with which to buy weapon upgrades. In this one, there are no weapon upgrades per se. Instead, each weapon offers a different style of combat. Additionally, only two weapons are available directly for sale and the time to get the money to buy both is rather small (assuming you get good at the minigames). Unfortunately, the game unlocks the second purchasable weapon–the Peony–very early in the game. This particular weapon makes the game far easier due to its huge damage and equally huge hit areas. In fact, it was so imbalancing, it gave me flashbacks of using Hymir’s Finger in Drakengard.

They have mixed things up a few things this time. A couple of the boss fights are different than the usual beam saber flair. Travis gets a motorcycle shoving match and a giant mecha fight, for instance. There are also a couple of levels in which you play as alternate characters with slightly different movesets.

Unfortunately, the things that I liked most about the first game were the interplay between characters, the bizarre and off the wall way the characters behave, and the plot which was full of random and mostly arbitrary plot twists complete with characters ignoring the fourth wall. Although there are still some good moments between the characters, there is still some craziness from the characters, and the characters still occasionally ignore the fourth wall, none of it seems as solid this time around.

Furthermore, it seems like the assassination targets themselves have less “life” than they had previously. Although a few of them are interesting and have colorful backstories, there just aren’t any that can live up to “Bad Girl” or “Holly Summers” from the first game.

So is the game worth it? Well, much like what I said in the Diabolic Box review, this is a game targeted at fans of the first. If you liked the first, you will at least enjoy this one, even if it isn’t quite as good as the previous. If you didn’t like the first one, there’s probably nothing here for you. In all honesty, I was disappointed with it given how amazing the first one was. My hope is that the inevitable No More Heroes 3 makes up for this one.

No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle: 0

Professor Layton and the Meaningless MacGuffin

Posted on by
Reply

Originally Posted 12 July 2010

Last week, I finished playing through Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box. If you missed the first one, the Professor Layton games are puzzle games for the Nintendo DS. Diabolical Box is the second one released in the US with a third one coming to the US later this year.

Once again, the Professor has gotten himself stuck in a closed circle with mysteries all around him. The game begins with one of the Professor’s old friends finally obtaining a box which said friend had been researching and searching for. The box has a reputation for killing anyone who opens it, so said friend thought it would be a good idea to open it. Needless to say, the expected happens and the Professor and Luke go off in search of the secret behind the (now lost again) box and the death of the Professor’s friend.

The gameplay is almost identical to the first iteration of the series. You wander around a world, adventure game sytle, and periodically encountering people with puzzles for you to solve. This one includes about as many sidequests as the former did, but they are at least different this time around. Rather than assembling a robotic dog, you get to train a gerbil so that it loses weight, for instance. The other two sidequests involve a set of spot-the-differences puzzles and a tea brewing/serving quest.

Unfortunately, the game suffers somewhat due to the fact that I had played the former so recently. Although none of the puzzles in the first game were repeated verbatim, many of them were using similar gimicks just repeated with slightly different constraints or with a different framing device. As an example, the first game had a number of variations of the eight queens puzzle on progressively larger boards. The second game replaces this with the knight’s tour at various board sizes. This is actually one of the better examples as it is a relatively distinct (if somewhat related) puzzle. Others are “yet another logic puzzle” or “yet another sliding block puzzle”.

Given that the plot of any Layton game is mostly just a framing device for a large pile of puzzles, this one continues the tradition of crazy plot twists. I might even argue that the plot twists here are even crazier.

Ultimately, Diabolical Box is mostly a carbon copy of Curious Village. If you enjoyed the first, you’ll probably enjoy the second. Similarly, if you didn’t like the first, you won’t find anything here to encourage a second look at the series. If you aren’t sure about the series, I would suggest starting with Curious Villiage as there are numerous references to the first game in the second that are spoilers for the first.

It is difficult for me to come to a numeric value to represent this game. On the one hand, there is nothing bad or wrong with the game itself compared to its predecessor. On the other hand, the game takes no risks and introduces next to nothing in terms of new gameplay. It is the very definition of a “safe play”. I think ultimately, I wouldn’t recommend the Diabolical Box outright. The former is just as good and a fan of it would likely pursue this one regardless.

Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box: 0

They call it Psychonauts because they only go into crazy minds.

Posted on by
Reply

Originally Published 8 July 2010

Last night, I finished Psychonauts. I know this review may not be timely, but I’d never played it until Steam had it for $2 a while back. For those left unaware, Psychonauts is a platformer released in 2005 for the PC, XBox and PS2. It was a critical success, but didn’t have a great deal of commercial success.

The game itself centers around Razputin–usually shortened to just Raz–a young psychic adept who runs away from his life in the circus to go to a summer camp where other young psychics are trained in how to use their powers. Most of the game takes on a similar quirky sort of humor.

Gameplay itself comes in two forms: the real world and the various mental worlds of camp residents. For the most part the two sections play identicaly. The main difference is that the real world has far fewer enemies and a large abundance of collectables (like most modern platfomers) whereas the mental worlds tend to be more enemy infested and have a completely different set of collectables. All of these collectables are used ultimately to raise your character’s level and thereby upgrade your abilities. The abilities themselves come in the sort of standard psychic toolbox: pyrokinesis, telekinesis, mind bullets, levitation, etc.

Surprisingly, the game actually holds up rather well given its age. Since most of the characters in the game are deliberately rendered highly stylistically, there is less of a realization that you’re playing a game that is as old as it is. A sort of “cartoony” vibe is everywhere and helps to gloss over what would otherwise be outdated graphics. The voice acting is also very solid (Raz is voiced by Invader Zim’s voice actor) which helps. Also, the plot manages to hold together despite its silliness to create a believable world–something that games which go toward off-beat routes have the risk of losing.

My main complaints about the game are, unfortunately, the last two areas. At the end of the game, there is a final “real” world and a final “mental” world. Both of these are far less polished than the rest of the game. Rough jumping puzzles abound in these areas. To make matters worse, in the earlier levels, the game always was kind to leave you with something like “recovery points”. If you managed to get high up in one of the jumping puzzles, the game would periodically add things that would let you skip the rest of the puzzle to get back to your starting location if you fell. In the last two areas, the game–for whatever reason–refuses to provide any. Several times, I fell down through minutes worth of puzzle only to have to climb the entire thing again. I’m not sure if they were aiming for an increase in (fake) difficulty or what. Of course, these were also the areas where all of the foibles of the control system became obvious. As an example, I beat all of the final bosses without losing more than 2 lives between them. On the other hand, I went through two complete stacks of lives (10 lives per stack) in the final platforming areas.

Despite the end game being a bit less satisfying, I think this game is still worth the time I spent playing it. It is rare to find a game with such a bizarre sense of humor that still manages to mostly be fun.

Psychonauts: 1

Walk in the Rain

Posted on by
Reply

Originally Posted 24 June 2010

Last night, I defeated Heavy Rain. By defeated, I mean that I earned the platinum trophy and am thus completely done with the game. If you’ve been living under a rock, you might not be aware that Heavy Rain is an “interactive thriller” for the PS3 (currently an exclusive title) made by the people who made Indigo Prophecy. Because Heavy Rain is heavily story driven, you would be wise to expect unmasked possible spoilers below.

Much like its predecessor, Heavy Rain is mostly composed of quick-time events with interspersed exploration scenes and a heavy emphasis on narrative. This time, our four-man band consists of Ethan, the downtrodden father; Madison, the nightmare-addled reporter; Scott, the private dick; and Norman, FBI profiler. The story begins with a very shiny prologue with lots of bloom lighting and a virtual guarantee that something horrible is going to happen to transform the idyllic life of Ethan into the dark and gritty version seen on the game’s box art. Honestly, I was spent most of the prologue trying to figure out how many and which of his family members would die. After the inevitable death in the prologue, we pick up with Ethan two years later.

Within minutes of beginning the game proper, Ethan’s son is kidnapped by the Origami Killer and he is thrust into a series of “trials” in order to save his son. Coincidentally with this, Scott and Norm are seperately attempting to hunt down the Origami Killer. Madison is added on a bit later as a romantic foil and makeshift medic for Ethan.

As I said above, the gameplay comes in two main varieties: exploration and QTE. The exploration areas usually consist of puzzles and tend to be a bit more subdued. Unfortunately, the controls for the exploration areas are a bit klunky. The game uses a sort of “driving” paradigm where you point with the right control stick and move in that direction using R2. Unfortunately, the turns are rather lousy, so the game doesn’t quite respond as expected. This isn’t enough to cause many problems, but it can be annoying. The QTEs make up the bread and butter of the gameplay, however. Despite what might otherwise seem like a relatively restricted set of actions, the game actually manages to mix up the QTE options somewhat. In addition to using all 8 of the available buttons (X, O, Square, Triangle, R1, R2, L1, L2), they also make good use of the sixaxis controller by including rotations (especially in driving scenes) and more complex analog stick manipulations to denote fine actions. Also, unlike its predecessor, the game seems to have relatively few unwinnable QTEs. I believe there is only one QTE that I was never able to complete successfully in the entirety of the game.

I found the story to be relatively compelling if somewhat short. My first pass from beginning to end took less than a day and I was able to get the platinum trophy in under four days. Playing through the last bits of the game so many times in such a short period (one of the trophies is “Get All Endings”), did lead me to discover that the game is severely lacking on replayability. QTEs in general are fixed and don’t change from playthrough to playthrough. Puzzle layouts and hidden items also don’t change, so the second lizard will always have the key no matter how many times you play through the level. At the same time, playing through a second time does allow you to see more subtle things that show off characters’ true motivations. For instance, some animations that originally seemed just like “idle animations” gain new significance when viewed with full knowledge of the game’s plot.

I was a bit disappointed with some of the voice acting/writing. Most of the children that show up in the game have very strange or perhaps stilted dialog and the voice actors chosen have strange delivery. This occasionally happens to the adult characters as well, but is slightly less noticable. I attribute this most likely to the game’s dialog having been originally written in French and then translated into English later. This may explain their constant use of the word “wasteland” to describe certain kinds of deserted areas within an urban area–a usage which I’d not heard before.

There are also some loose ends that I felt the game didn’t properly address in any of the endings. Mostly, there is some background characterization at the beginning of the game which is supposed to muddy the waters in your search for the killer. Some of it ends up getting resolved, but some is simply dropped on the floor once the real killer is revealed. At the same time some characters (Madison and Norman especially) have internal struggles that you seem to be set up to try to help them through, but player actions seem to have little effect on the outcome.

Overall, there is a lot to like here. Indigo Prophecy is a good bellweather for whether or not you’ll like this game (surprise, surprise). Without that bit of data to provide help, I’d recommend it for general fans of mystery and old-style adventure games.

Heavy Rain: 1

Ok, We’ll need a Crucifix and a Knife Sharpener

Posted on by
Reply

Originally Posted 21 June 2010

Over the weekend, I finally beat Cross Edge. For those unaware, Cross Edge is a tactical(-ish) JRPG for the PS3 published in the US by NIS America–the Disgaea people. It’s primary selling point is that it is a big crossover of various other games, notably bringing in characters from Disgaea and Darkstalkers. Less notably, it brings in characters from series that I’d never heard of before (Ar tonelico, Spectral Souls, Atelier Marie, and Mana Khemia). None of that matters though because everyone starts with amnesia, so you don’t need to worry much about the backstory of the characters.

The game itself is segmented into four main “modes”. The first is the overworld “wandering” mode. On the overworld, you are tasked with finding “souls” and releasing them. What this means in practice is that you wander around the overworld map, periodically mashing the square button. If you are lucky, there will be a soul or event within the area of effect of your search. If, as is much more likely the case, there isn’t, nothing happens. Of course, the game includes random encounters, so during this combing effort, you are periodically subjected to fights.

The second mode could best be described as “event” mode. In this mode, you get to watch a short cutscene of various party and non-party characters interacting. Unfortunately, almost all of these are scripted together using perhaps a dozen different still poses of each character in an attempt to convey some action. Rarely, they will use some sprite-based animations to show something more important happening. Events also sometimes have battles in them when you wander across threats and the like

The third mode is the “dungeon” mode. Dungeon mode differes from wandering mode in two ways: your 2d-grid is now oriented like a platformer (complete with jumping puzzles) and your characters don’t auto-heal between battles.

The last, and most important, mode is that “battle” mode. In battle mode, you take your party versus a set of enemies (Hey, its a JPRG, what did you expect?). The “tactical” part of the game comes into play here most. Both your party and the enemies are assigned a 3×4 grid on which characters are placed. The PC party is, generally, made up of 4 characters. Each side gets to take turns wailing on the other with perhaps the most important parts being making good use of the combo system to string together long and deadly attacks.

The game, unfortunately, shows many failings. First and foremost, the plot doesn’t matter. In fact, one of the characters even says as much about two-thirds of the way into the game. Even setting that aside, it isn’t a very strong plot anyway. More egregiously, the game basically ignores the last decade of development in the JRPG genre. Pacing could be best described as horrible with level grinding routinely required even between events which are nominally supposed to occur immediately after one another. The game eventually gives you upwards of 40 possible player characters, but rather than having everyone be at the same level, the “current” party gets full experience with reserve characters getting less. This quickly leads to a huge power disparity between the “main” party and your other characters. This could be ignored, but the game insists on periodically forcing characters into your active party for certain plot-related battles. There is even one event battle (where failure, luckily, has no effect) where your entire party plus your starting formation is chosen for you. Also, the game explains the combo system to you, but fails to stress that mastering it is the entire point of the battle system. In fact, once I had finally grokked it, I was able to beat the final 4 or 5 bosses in two turns each and did the same for the first 5 post-game bonus bosses.

As if these issues weren’t enough, the entire game seems to be build out of guide dang it moments. For instance, there are events which are on the world map and discoverable. Periodically, some events will unlock others. Of course, the game doesn’t make any mention of the newly unlocked events in any way. Since they only show up when searched for, even a map doesn’t necessarily help. To make matters worse, many events disappear after key events if you haven’t found them yet. And woe be to you if you are trying to get the “True Ending”. In order to get it, you basically have to do every optional event in the game (a feat in and of itself). Additionally, you have to do arbitrary, unclued things in various battles. For instance, some characters who are outright hostile to you, you aren’t allowed to attack in battle. Other characters must be completely defeated (getting them to zero hit points) rather than allowing the battle’s turn limit to expire.

Underlying all of this is a layer of creepy Japanese otaku appeal. For instance, one of the things that you can do is change character’s constumes in order to change their stats. Ok, sounds reasonable. The character who describes the system to you informs you that when females characters change, you “get to watch them, so its a bonus to the player” or something similar. Incidentally, said explanatory character is like an 8 year old girl. Oh, and the game also includes hot springs scenes. So yeah.

Ultimately, I can’t say that there is much here to like: bad pacing, weak story, unclued puzzles, and endless random encounters. Honestly, I thought the best part of the game were the handful of post-game events. Since the main story was over, there were many instances of the PCs breaking character and being somewhat hilarious. Unfortunately, those handful of scenes aren’t worth the investment.

Cross Edge: 0

I think “New” is a Misnomer

Posted on by
Reply

Originally Published 19 June 2010

Earlier this week, I beat the final boss of New Super Mario Bros. Wii. I didn’t actually end up beating all of the levels because I had skipped one world entirely due to finding the warp whistle equivalent.

Gameplay wise, NSBW is nearly identical to the NDS version of New Super Mario Bros. that came out a few years ago. The main new bits are a few new suits and the fact of it being on the Wii.

The platforming itself is relatively solid, though I think the wiimote makes a rather terrible controller for this sort of game. You really only have three actions available: jump, run/shoot, and spin. Unfortunately, they decided to bind spin to the “shake the controller” button. This means that precision spinning is mostly impossible.

The game gives a handful of new suits, but the main one of interest seems to be the “propeller helmet” suit. I say “main one of interest” because so many of the levels and challenges become trivial when using it. It seems like the “propeller helmet” is as important in this game as the “mini-mario” suit was in its predecessor given how often level designers chose to include things that are there specifically to appeal to it. Unfortunately, that means that some of the other new suits were heavily overshadowed. For instance, I never once got a penguin suit. I don’t even know what it does and I’ve finished the game.

From the perspective of someone who played it single player and who had actually played the NDS game to completion, I can’t say that there is much here. I would say that it might be worth it to the two or three people who haven’t yet played the NDS iteration. It might also be good for people who want to experience the multiplayer–something that I’ve not done. Mostly though, I just didn’t care at all. The game never engaged me to a level where I was either impressed with it or angered me to the point where I was beating it to beat it. Perhaps the best thing that I can say is that, when I stopped playing, it was because I reached a save point almost every time. I played it just long enough to get to the next checkpoint and then didn’t care enough to keep playing.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii: 0

I don’t really see what we’re prototyping here

Posted on by
Reply

Originally Published 9 June 2010

Late on Monday, I finished up Prototype. The game itself is an open-world platformer similar in style to Infamous. The player takes on the role of Alex Mercer–an amnesiac who wakes up in a morgue–trying to figure out what happened to him and why nearly everyone in Manhattan is trying to kill him.

The game makes use of a relatively standard platformer upgrade system. Completing sidequests, killing enemies, and finding various collectables earn you EP which can be used to buy new powers. Completing main quest missions unlocks new powers for purchase in addition to the standard EP rewards.

Mercer’s powers proper are based entirely on him manipulating his body in strange ways–growing claws, turning his fists into giant mauls, etc. To that end, the standard way of regaining health is to grab a person and “consume” them. Doing so involves Mercer character physically absorbing (and thereby killing) the person absorbed. This consumption mechanic ends up being key to gameplay in several forms. Firstly, Mercer can switch between two disguises: his standard “Mercer” form and the form of the last person that he consumed. Since Mercer is often pitted against military personnel, consuming a military person and using their form provides substantial benefit.

Further, the consume mechanic also has an influence on the plot due to its non-gameplay powers. Most notably, Mercer gains the knowledge and memories of the people he consumes. Due to this, the main plot of the game is often concerned with finding people who know Mercer’s history and essentially eating them. This mechanic also drives the major subquest called the “Web of Intrigue” which is concerned with finding random people on the streets of Manhattan and eating them so as to find out more information about the game’s backstory and the ongoing operations of the military in the city.

The consume mechanic also bends back yet again into the upgrade system. Most powers can simply be purchased using EP, but some can only be obtained by consuming people with certain knowledge. All of the skills of this form are related to using things other than the powers inherent to Mercer–driving military vehicles, being more efficient with guns, etc. In addition, all of the people with the requisite knowledge are military personnel sequestered inside of the various bases constructed around Manhattan. This leads to a sort of minigame wherein you must find the base commander, consume him, sneak into the base under a false identity, and then find and consume the person (or people) inside with the appropriate knowledge. This is honestly one of the most interesting parts of the game because it pulls together many of the game’s more novel elements.

Gameplay wise, Mercer moves about the city mostly by running up buildings and then gliding around. Unfortunately, the building climbing is infuriatingly impercise at low speeds or over narrow objects. There are several collectables situated at the top of antennas atop tall buildings that I collected before I obtained the ability to fly helicopters. Had I known about this, I would have simply waited rather than becoming frustrated. This poor control also becomes troublesome in the various “movement” sidequests. One in particular (Point to Point) took me hours to do successfully.

The combat is also rather weak. Mercer is somewhat fragile and prone to be knocked over. Additionally, he has little in the way on inherent ranged attacks. This led to me using combat vehicles whenever possible due to the fact that they have seperate health bars and have damage output well in excess of what the player can nominally do with weapons. For instance, the tank can take down a helicopter in a single show whereas Mercer on foot only has a shot if there is something large nearby that can be thrown at the heli.

Overall, I found the game fun despite its weaknesses. I also enjoyed the story enough to keep moving through it without feeling compelled to simply get it beaten. I wish that I, as a player, had more impact on the outcome of the game. Given the open world nature of it, such things seem almost the norm, but Prototype gives a fixed plot influenced only by the player’s progress.

Prototype: 1

Maybe I lack the required Nostalgia

Posted on by
Reply

Originally Published 19 May 2011

On Monday, I finished my playthrough of Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. This game is not to my taste, so it quickly became a “rush to the end” rather than an experience that I at least attempted to find some joy in.

I had originally purchased the game because it had been well reviewed and I believed (incorrectly) that it was a 3D platformer. It turns out that the game is actually much more of a racing game. Essentially, the game gives you a system for building custom vehicles from parts (rather similar to the Gummi Ships from Kingdom Hearts) and then has you complete various challenges using them in one of a half-dozen themed areas. Unfortunately, these challenges are uniformly timing-based with a large number of them being races. I generally don’t care for racing games and having a series that had been, until now, a platformer series do a bait and switch was unexpected.

Additionally, the game seems out of place in time. There is no voice acting to be found anywhere in the game. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but they instead have Nintendo 64 era screeching noises play whenever a character has text on the screen. This led to me ceasing to read any text or watch any cutscene about 30% of the way through the game. “Press Y to Skip” became my mantra. Since every “challenge” gives a one sentence description of what you need on the vehicle choice menu, I chose to read that instead of listening to the horrible noises the characters tried to inflict through my speakers.

Of course, since the game doesn’t have standard vehicles, that means it has a sort of generic control system that is supposed to cover all of the vehicle types available. This ends up mostly being frustrating since all of the controls feel off somehow. The frustration is made even greater if you actually try to use any weapons since the game provides no on-screen targeting and the geometries involved are rarely clear especially when the game decides to try to help by auto-aiming. Oh, and if your vehicle ever gets flipped, it is usually just easier to restart the challenge. It may have a button for resolving this, but it has a bad tendency to damage your vehicle in the process or get you stuck on any nearby outcropping available.

The game seems to make a lot of references back to previous games, mostly for humor. Since I perhaps played no more than 2 hours put together of all previous Banjo-Kazooie games, this is mostly lost to me.

Here, I think the comparison should be against the first Ratchet and Clank Future game (Tools of Destruction). It carried most of the same baggage that Banjo-Kazooie did–a long series of games, a humorous style, updates for a new generation system, released at a similar time–but Tools of Destruction revived my interest in the platformer genre and managed to be interesting and engaging without relying so heaviliy on backstory that a new player was unable to connect. This game will probably prevent my from buying another Rare. I think at this point, I’ve played almost all of their XBox 360 offerings (Kameo, Perfect Dark Zero, Viva Pinata, and this with only the second Viva Pinata and their XBLA offering being missing) and haven’t found a single one compelling. Maybe they’ll return to their SNES and N64 glory days, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts: 0

Apparently Hero doesn’t necessarily mean Heroic

Posted on by
Reply

Originally Published 18 May 2010

Earlier this week, I finished up my playthrough of Fable 2. I had been attempting to delay playing it until it came out on the PC, but given that over a year has passed since it was originally released it seemed unlikely. When there was a particularly cheap deal for the Platinum Hits version (~$20 and includes all the DLC), I finally picked it up.

The game plays rather similarly to the first one: you’re still a young hero set out in the world to get revenge on some ultimate evil. You still get to build up your powers in each of three categories: melee combat, ranged combat, and magic. It has a big mess of “sameness” about it. Insofar as it is a rehash, it doesn’t have too many glaring flaws, but action RPGs have evolved since the first Fable, and Fable 2 hasn’t kept pace.

For those who missed the first one, Fable 2 is a third-person action-RPG with an open world. The game is structured as a series of quests with those in the “Main Quest” slowly unlocking more of the world for exploration. This time around, the player character starts off watching his sister being murdered in front of them by a young noble. After surviving the noble’s bullet, the PC is raised approximately a quarter day’s walk away from the villain’s home and trained so as to be able to carry out revenge on him. Apparently, nobody notices this until you start going around being all heroic.

Fable 2 adds a few new twists on the formula. This time around, a major side endeavor is to gain wealth. The game only provides money in a few ways: periodically found in chests or buried underground, a rare reward for quests, signing up for QTE-based jobs, and through buying and renting property. All of the money available from the first three types is dwarfed by that available from the last. The game gives you approximately 0.1% of the total value of all of your rental properties every 5 minutes (or 50 minutes if the game is off or paused). In the early game, this will be close to zero and jobs or quests with gold rewards drive your income. My current character, having beaten the game (and gotten a perfect gamerscore) gets just shy of 20,000 gold every tick. As a comparison, the top three most expensive properties in the game are 1 mil, 100k, and 80k respectively and the largest possible chest reward is a paltry 50k.

The sequel also dramatically ramps up the ability to customize your character and home. Although it is entirely optional, the game provides for substantial renovation of the rental properties by swapping out the various furniture pieces with other kinds. It also has a ridiculously large set of possible clothes and hairstyles and dyes that can be applied to said clothes and hair. Of course, the game once again does the “character appearances is partially determined by leveling choices”. This results quite quickly in having a character who looks more like the incredible hulk than a real person and is much worse on a female PC who ceases to really appear female once they get about half way up the “strength” ability tree (yet still has the voice of an 11 year old).

My biggest beef with the game, though, is the size of it. The main quest is incredibly short. The world consists of maybe three dozen locations, only about 4 of which are worth returning to visit later. Sidequests tend to be sparse and almost uniformly of the form of 1) fetch quests (rarer) or 2) go kill X (the majority). The majority of the time that I spent playing was done earning money so that I could reach a critical threshold wherein my wealth would allow me to buy every property in the game. If I hadn’t needed to grind for money, the game would’ve likely been at least 10 hours shorter.

When I was thinking about what to compare Fable 2 against, my first inclination was to compare it to Oblivion. This comparison, however, quickly shows the shortcomings of Fable 2. Despite being two years older, Oblivion had a substantially larger world–orders of magnitude different in size. Oblivion had a more diverse and larger set of quests. Oblivion may only win out in that it is impossible to build a completely non-optimal character in Fable 2 whereas Oblivion allows for character advancement that results in enemies outpacing the player.

Honestly, I can’t really recommend this game. Yes, I did go through the effort to defeat it, but that was mostly because it was easy to do so. If you want an open-world fantasy-themed action-rpg, just go play Oblivion. If you do decide to play Fable 2 though, I can probably help you along. The game allows players to exchange items and currency when connected to XBox Live. My character currently has about 3 million gold (plus whever I made since I was last online), so I could cut those first 10 hours of money grinding off your game.

Fable II: 0