9 in '09, number five: Shin Megami Tensei Strange Journey

31 December 09 | 11:21 | Posted by:

Ah, I've done it again. I've added another game to this list of my favorite games from 2009 that wasn't actually released in the U.S. this year. However, this time I'm not going solely off of import impressions....

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey
Atlus | DS | Old school sci-fi dungeon crawling gone portable

I mean, sure, I played a few hours of the import version of Strange Journey, and by crackie I liked it. But when Atlus sent us a previewable build of the English version a few weeks ago, I grabbed that thing and poured nearly 40 hours into it. I didn't have time to finish the game, though. I think I made it to about the halfway point. It's really a pretty humongous RPG, which probably shouldn't be too surprising since it draws on Etrian Odyssey for technology and inspiration. Eventually, I had to surrender the cart at the climax of section 4, Delphinus. I jotted down passwords for some of the more obscure demons I'd fused, handed the ROM over to another editor (I'm abstaining from writing any more Shin Megami Tensei reviews for 1UP since there's a potential conflict of interest in that a former-coworker-slash-close-friend localizes them) and am eagerly waiting for March, when I will buy a copy of the game and bludgeon my way to the end. Although I guess the Etrian Odyssey III import shows up around the same time. Oh, and Final Fantasy XIII. And Yakuza 3. Decisions, decisions. And here Gamasutra says the Japanese RPG is dying? Pfeh.

Anyway, 2009 was the year I finally got into MegaTen. Not coincidentally, it was also the year that MegaTen started showing up on the current handhelds. The funny thing is that I enjoyed each of the three games, but I liked each one slightly more than the one before. Devil Survivor was really good! But Persona was even better. And yet, Strange Journey trumped them all.

I was sucked in the moment I saw the Famitsu scans and realized, "Oh dang, it's MegaTen meets Etrian Odyssey." But make no mistake; there's more of the former here than the latter. Yeah, it's a first-person dungeon crawler divided into sectors, and it includes plenty of sidequests to keep you involved, but Strange Journey is very much crafted in the tradition of the 16-bit Shin Megami Tensei games that never made it to the U.S. It's MegaTen going back to its roots -- a technologically regressive (but mechanically progressive) sequel to Nocturne. It's vastly more story-intensive than an Etrian game, and you control only a single human party member. The rest of your team is made up of demons (and occasionally angels) that you make pacts with, in the standard MegaTen style.

Strange Journey is a big part of why Order of Ecclesia seems so uninteresting to me. Strange Journey is a tough game -- I made it as far as a boss that wiped out my seemingly invincible team in two rounds before I had to give up the ROM -- but it's a sort of difficulty that comes fairly and can be countered with smart play. Your protagonist works in tandem with three different demons, and the shape of your party determines your strengths, weaknesses, and resistances. If you know you're going into an area where enemies like to use the curse-affinity instant-death spell Mudoon and you choose to take a group of holy-aligned demons with a weakness to curse, well, you deserve to lose. On the other hand, if you stock up on allies with a resistance to curse but who don't have the ability to hit enemies in their own weak spots, your battles will drag on endlessly. It's entirely possible to build yourself a demon with no serious weaknesses, but each demon has a sort of natural soft level cap and their skills eventually become outmoded; at some point, you'll have to surrender your favorite fighters and try to forge suitable replacements.

Choosing your party -- and crafting it with the fusion system -- is the heart of the game. There are a ridiculous number of factors to keep in mind, such as elemental vulnerabilities, attack types, inherited traits... creating the ultimate demon isn't entirely unlike juggling those invisible stats in Pokémon, except less opaque and not invisible. Adding to the challenge is the fact that you can't just carry around a massive party of demons; you can only travel with a limited number, and must dismiss or fuse some in order to acquire new ones. It's the sort of game that should definitely appeal to anyone who loves to refine stats and come up with ultimate builds, although that's not strictly necessary in order to succeed. You just have to play smart and make the best of your resources.

All of this is wrapped in a fairly sober sci-fi wrapper. If the anime school days style of Persona 3 and 4 is a turn-off, you'll definitely appreciate Strange Journey, which involves military expeditions and elite soldiers and a world-threatening crisis that's making the United Nations sweat it out as you battle through a dimensional rift in Antarctica.

In a way, I'm sad Strange Journey is a DS game, because the platform really limits its presentation and I think a lot of people will write it off as a kid's game or something for flaky anime otaku, when in fact its tone is remarkably similar to popular big-budget western RPGs like Fallout 3 and Dragon Age. On the other hand, since it's a DS game, I can more easily make time to revisit it when it launches in the U.S. I'm already thinking about how to build myself a team capable of handing that stupid boss his own arse in just a few short rounds....

category: games | forums | five comments | §

Hey guys, my site's technology sucks.

30 December 09 | 16:06 | Posted by:

I am courting suggestions for replacements for Pivot, my blogging backend. I started using it 4 years ago as a temporary measure and never quite got around to switching to something better. I would like to know what "something better" is. Based on personal experience, I can say with certainty that WordPress, Moveable Type, and Greymatter (is Greymatter even still around?) are not something better. But I am interested in other possibilities! I need to be able to host the blog on this server, not remotely, and I would prefer not to have to pay a monthly fee, because even with reader support I can barely afford the upkeep on this site as it is.

What? Me, picky? Well, yeah, I guess so.

category: blog | forums | 20 comments | §

My aria of sorrow

29 December 09 | 14:04 | Posted by:

I have a confession to make. It's an admission that pains me, but I can't find any other way around it: I really hate Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia.

This feels like a grievous personal failure. I'm the guy what registered metroidvania.com, darn it. I should love Ecclesia, the most recent installment of the games that inspired our stupid little name for the subgenre. But man, I have tried three different times to get into Ecclesia -- before launch, at launch, and this weekend -- and all three times I've made it about an hour into the game before sadly admitting to myself it's not actually any fun to play.

It's maddening, because by all rights it should be fun. Ecclesia is clearly riffing on Simon's Quest, it's designed to be less of a cakewalk than its immediate predecessors, and it features a seemingly deep character customization system. Yet I can't shake the feeling that Konami managed to bungle each and every one of these ostensible successes and turn them into a terrible flaw. The most annoying of these is the increased difficulty level, which was accomplished by simply cranking up the stats of enemies. They hit harder and they take more attacks to put down. They're not smarter, they don't have more complicated attacks, they're not placed more cleverly -- quite the contrary, in fact. Enemies are placed in the most annoying places possible, hidden out of sight so that a simple jump to scroll the screen will leave you reeling from a free hit that you couldn't possibly have known was there. It's like the developers said, "Well, people always complain about our level design being big, boring boxes; let's liven things up by making the navigation of these boxes as infuriating as possible."

It's hard to believe that this is the work of the same people behind Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin, games that -- while hardly perfect -- at least seemed to have been developed with an understanding of what made them fun. To wit: Exploration, both of cool areas and of cool powers. So far, Ecclesia has made me work for every little bit of progress I've made, every ability I've acquired, and seems entirely too happy to halt my progress until I master the latest boss pattern to the pixel and microsecond. Having to hit a puny enemy three or four times when it would go down in a single hit in any other entry of the series isn't fun, it's tedious. I've never played a tedious Castlevania before. Even Legends wasn't this annoying. And the glyph system is basically a reheated version of the Sorrow games' soul system, except clumsier and less interesting. And the villagers are boring. And the graphics are pretty but ultimately look pretty dull and fit together awkwardly.

I really do want to like Ecclesia, but it seems to be resisting my efforts at every step. Castlevania should be challenging, but it shouldn't be a chore. I criticized Portrait of Ruin for its pacing; the characters were so nimble that they breezed through the levels, forcing the designers to copy and paste more ground for them to cover rather than sculpting fewer, more interesting environments. "If only the game moved a bit slower," I lamented. Ecclesia is apparently some sort of horrible monkey's paw designed to remind me I should be careful of what I wish for. Well, lesson learned. I'll never ask for anything of Castlevania again. I'm still wary of Lords of Shadow and its outsourced approach to the franchise, but if Ecclesia is all the old team has to show for a decade of work with the series, maybe it's for the best we get some fresh blood.

I'll keep plugging away at the game in my free time on the off chance there's a point at which I break through the crap barrier and discover the wondrous masterpiece everyone else keeps talking about. And who knows; Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth has shown that it's possible to redeem even the most mundane entries in the series. Maybe 20 years from now, we'll all be downloading Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia ReBirth and loving it, too.

category: games | forums | 75 comments | §

Balamb's talking ass, part 2

27 December 09 | 13:46 | Posted by:

Final Fantasy VIII is a pretty interesting game!

Even if you don't like it, even if you think it's awful and broken, you can't honestly say it's not interesting. Like I said in last week's Retronauts, I really admire the creative team behind the game for using the insane success of Final Fantasy VII as a platform to try out new and untested RPG concepts rather than simply say, "Hey dudes, here's Final Fantasy VII Part 2!" FFVIII was the most different entry in the series since Final Fantasy II (by which I mean the Japanese one on Famicom, not the mislabeled Super NES game, of course). And FFVIII's wacky new ideas worked out a lot better than FFII's. But both had a common origin: Taking a logical approach to explaining RPG mechanics -- or, if not an expressly logical approach (because how much sense does it make that everyone stands in place until their turn comes up, really?), at least an internally consistent approach. FFVIII's mechanics were all explained within the the game world, so even when things didn't work the way your experience with RPGs dictated, they still worked within the context in which they were presented.

That is good game design -- or at least, good game design philosophy. I do think FFVIII was bogged down by bad design trends popular at the time -- overly lengthy animations, overly linear dungeons, some iffy and generally unfriendly interface design. But I'm willing to forgive a good game despite its contemporary limitations, just like I'm willing to forgive a band I like for throwing in soon-to-be-dated sounds or production values to feel "modern" so long as the underlying music is good. Heck, sometimes those dumb decisions work in their favor: Yes's Tormato is a generally mediocre album bogged down by the ennui of the late '70s, but the tremendously dated harmonized bass and offbeat, disco-esque drums make the album's sole stand-out track, "On the Silent Wings of Freedom," a uniquely energetic work within the band's oeuvre.

FFVIII's use of Guardian Forces -- summoned beasts with extremely drawn-out animations and high power -- is a bit like those melodic basslines and tense drums. Used improperly, they're just awful. They drag the game to a halt, turning random encounters into exercises in boredom. But if you don't take the obvious methods and instead minimize your reliance on GFs in combat, they actually serve to open up the game to a wild number of alternate approaches. Sure, you can play FFVIII like you played FFVII, but it's probably not going to be very interesting. On the other hand, you can make use of the abilities that the GFs offer behind the scenes -- the power to transform enemies into cards, the almost alchemical techniques that let you transmute items into magic or other items, the freedom to apply elemental or status characteristics to your offense and defense -- to approach FFVIII in whichever way best suits you. Its Junction System offers a ridiculous amount of freedom.

Unfortunately, JRPG fans are often frozen like deer in headlights when confronted with flexibility and the opportunity to make their own decisions. The genre has long had a habit of railroading you into very specific paths and play patterns, yet FFVIII defies that tendency. As a result, it's not a game that's well-suited to people who have to do everything in a game, because there are items that can only be acquired by sacrificing other items, as well as alternate party-building strategies that are mutually exclusive to one another. Casting magic might cause your stats to drop by a point or two, and then you couldn't have a perfect team! Quel horreur!

My advice: Just relax. FFVIII isn't perfect. The lead character is a mandatory jerk -- the game seems to delight in punishing you for choosing dialogue options that soften his blunt rudeness -- and his love interest is about as appealing as waterlogged spongecake. Some of the dungeons are dumb, and the playtime-extending plot devices are even dumber. But it all takes place in a fascinating world whose history is carefully integrated with the play mechanics and the main party's own stories. Combat can be as energetic or as tedious as you like. And as for completist tendencies, well... just take a roguelike mindset to the game. FFVIII gives you so many different ways to make use of your vast inventory of items and spells, so it's really sort of missing the point to hoard it all. Chill out, take a casual stroll through the game, refine those rare Triple Triad cards, cast those spells junctioned to your HP stat. It's all good. Or at the very least, it's all interesting -- and if you approach it with the intent of seeing just how far you can bend the game to your own will, you might just find it's one of the most appealing and enjoyable games in the Final Fantasy series.

category: blog | forums | 24 comments | §

Balamb's talking ass, part 1

26 December 09 | 11:04 | Posted by:

Final Fantasy XIII is exhausting.

This is due in no small part to it being available only in Japanese for the time being, of course. The breakneck pace of combat (you can just forget about the possibility of the old Wait mode of former iterations of ATB or, god forbid, actual turn-based combat) means my slow-as-Christmas Japanese literacy turns each battle into a fatiguing experience. Things are happening at a rapid real-time clip whether or not my brain is up to the task of parsing them in at real-time speeds. And then I keep getting distracted by dumb things, like the way the game's Enhancer skill set (a combination Green Mage/Time Mage who dishes out buffs) all comes from Final Fantasy Tactics terminology, with spells like Brave, Faith, and Guts. And then I start thinking about how rad it would have been if Matsuno had directed this game. And, well, it all goes downhill from there.

But FFXIII is also exhausting because the whole game is paced exactly the same as its battle system. It just won't let up! Its linearity has been decried far and wide, mostly (I'm guessing) by people who haven't been playing a lot of Japanese RPGs these past, I dunno, 20 years or so and never got the memo that a significant percentage of the nation's role-playing output is basically an amusement park ride in which the director plants his hand firmly on the small of your back and shoves you through a whimsical adventure at high speeds. A lot like America's post-Half-Life first-person shooters, in point of fact. The main difference between FFXIII and, say, Shadow Hearts: Covenant is that you don't have to solve any stupid puzzles along the way. (Final Fantasy got those out of its system with Final Fantasy X, which of course is the game that Covenant was shamelessly aping. God, it's all so incestuous.) Which isn't too say I'm entirely crazy about the tube-and-tunnel approach to RPG design of FFXIII and many, many of its kin -- I prefer taking my time, thanks. "Taking your time" in FFXIII means doubling back along the path you've been traveling for the past x hours to fight the same enemy mobs you just beat at the exact same spawn points they previously appeared at.

This combination of Japanese text and Japanese structure fully account for my weariness with the game. I normally make it 20 hours into each Final Fantasy import before feeling satisfied that I've seen enough to tide me over until the U.S. version arrives, but my mixed feelings about FFXIII -- I love many parts of it, but really wish I could play it my way instead of in the manner predetermined by Yoshinori Kitase and Motomu Toriyama -- are compelling me to throw in my hat at only half that distance into the game. (That the U.S. version hits in two months does make this an easier decision to settle on, I have to admit.) In the meantime, I'm getting a placebo fix by revisiting an old favorite on PSP: Final Fantasy VIII.

I wasn't entirely certain I'd enjoy FFVIII ten years on. I was kind of amazed by it back in 1999, but I admit that much of that amazement probably stemmed from the times and circumstances and novelty of it all. It was the first text-heavy RPG I tackled as an import, which is to say that I thought it was so fantastic-looking that I imported both the demo and the full Japanese release. The hype for the game coincided with the heyday of the GIA, which was run by fellow shameless FFVIII mark Andrew Vestal and thus devoted ridiculous attention to every scrap of FFVIII news to trickle out of both Japan and Square EA. The game was a landmark visual achievement, and it cast aside countless hoary RPG clichés in favor of a wholly reconsidered slate of mechanics that actually made sense within the fictive context of the game's world. Inasmuch as transforming a monster into a trading card and transmuting that card into magic spells could make sense, I suppose. FFVIII was a daring attempt to redefine how the RPG works -- not unlike FFXIII is doing, a decade later.

And much like its successor, it annoyed a lot of people. That annoyance, it should be said, stemmed from reasonable places. FFVIII is burdened with a large number of concepts that just didn't pan out like they were supposed to. It's hampered by technology, with atrocious load times that make the frequent random encounters hair-pullingly slow. The Junction system reduces the cast to even bigger mechanical ciphers than the cast of Final Fantasy VII; with their combat skills being almost completely mutable and instantly interchangeable, they are defined almost entirely through their personalities. Which, sadly, are lacking. I tend to be less forgiving of such things now, so I booted up FFVIII on PSP last week with some trepidation.

Much to my surprise, I'm ten hours into the adventure, and I'm still loving the game. I have a feeling I'm in the minority with this, though. I fully intend to inflict my opinions upon you all... but right now, I'm at the threshold of Galbadia Garden, and if memory serves I have some hockey players to beat the crap out of shortly. Priorities, man, priorities.

category: games | forums | 21 comments | §

GSQ3: Suitably depressing entries for your yuletidings of DOOM

24 December 09 | 11:59 | Posted by:

It's almost Christmas! And that means the bleak, seething sorrow of the darkest days of the year are lurking beneath the surface of family togetherness and love for man, eating away at the edges of our souls and filling our thoughts with darkness to which the soft, warm glow of Christmas lights serves only to contrast in the most painfully ironic manner imaginable! And what better way to celebrate this time of meticulously disguised ennui and depression than with a bunch of articles that ostensibly focus on the whimsical days of carefree and gaudy videogame characters yet which ultimately highlight the soul-crushing realities behind these characters?

Merry Christmas, and remember that if you choose to drink away your sorrows this season, avoid driving until your body does its natural dialysis thing and replaces the alcohol in your veins with something that more closely resembles normal blood. No sense in smashing into someone else's car and making their holiday even worse than it already is.

• Bubblun and Bobblun (Bubble Bobble, by David Goldberg): The happy little angel atop our melancholy Christmas tree, because it's hard to be sad when that infernal theme music plays. Until you realize you have to play through all 100 levels again because you tried soloing it.
  
• Bucky O'Hare (Bucky O'Hare, by Tomm Hulett): I would like to think this is a sign that Tomm will elect to revive this franchise for his next Konami project, but given that it's a licensed property -- based on a '70s comic book by Larry Hama and Michael Golden, who are both awesome despite what this entry would have you believe -- I find that unlikely. Rue ye the conflict between your desires and corporate interests.
  
• Captain Comic (Captain Comic, by myself): The only thing sadder than starring in a lousy videogame no one ever played is trying to build a career out of that spurious claim to fame.

category: blog | forums | seven comments | §

9 in '09, number six: Retro Game Challenge

23 December 09 | 09:31 | Posted by:

I'm aware that there is a perception of me among certain people that I mindlessly sing the praises of any game that passes itself off as "retro" or "classic" style -- that I'm so addled by an unquestioning love of anything predating such-and-such a year that I'll gleefully lap up any work in that style, regardless of origin, quality, vintage, or style. These people are also known as "mouthbreathers," and someday, when I am king, I will punch them all in the face as punishment for being so dumb.

In fact, the precise opposite is true: I don't merely like classic games, I like great games of every vintage and find an 8-bit masterpiece every bit as entertaining as a great recent release. Older games employed different technology and design than modern 3D blockbusters do, and as such they exhibit different strengths. Age and technology don't make one game better than another; they simply mean each game has something different to offer a player. At the same time, my appreciation of retro-style games means I also have very little patience for bad old games. And even less for contemporary games that try to ape the style of bygone console generations and get it wrong. Developers have had 25 years since Super Mario Bros., and 15 years since PlayStation debuted, to figure out what makes great 8- and 16-bit games great. There's no excuse to get it wrong, and simply dressing up a crappy game in dated graphics doesn't excuse its crappiness. It just makes the developers seem cynical opportunists with a P.T. Barnum-like believe that the consumer is an easily-hoodwinked dupe.

On the other hand, when a modern game successfully employs the retro style and does it right, it's a welcome sight, because so few worthwhile games of that kind are being produced these days.

Retro Game Challenge
Namco Bandai / XSeed | Nintendo DS | The NES, compressed

Retro Game Challenge gets it right. And it doesn't just get it right once, it gets it right more than half a dozen times.

But of course, the strength of RGC is that it's entirely predicated on the conceit that it's an omnibus of actual classic games. The games in question never really existed, but each was crafted with love and care and honestly and truly could have sold for $30 back in the 8-bit era. I would have bought Haggleman 3 or Cosmic Gate as an NES owner, and I would have loved them. If Guadia Quest had been released on a cartridge, it would be a cult classic that demands $50 on eBay (or more, if you had the box and fold-out map).

These games couldn't have existed back in the day, though, because while they almost perfectly emulate the tech and style of NES games -- maybe the color palettes are a little too rich, and maybe there's not quite enough slowdown, but they're damn close in look and feel and sound -- they're designed with the canniness of people who well remember the Famicom boom and all the great things about those games, but aren't sheeplike in their adoration and weren't afraid to borrow a few lessons from the 20 years of game design hindsight that creating a game in 2009 affords. The games in RGC are all a little too smart, a little too refined to have been legitimate NES releases. But this isn't a shortcoming; on the contrary, it's ideal. It means the faux classics anthologized here have all the fun and charm of an 8-bit hit but deftly sidestep the frustrations and flaws so common to gaming's 8-bit adolescence. Yes, even Rally King, the somewhat unpopular top-down racing game, isn't bad, and it's a whole lot more fun than any other game in that style which comes to mind.

All of these games are bound together with a curiously metatextual narrative that takes the player through ten years of imaginary NES history. In Japan, RGC was based on the brilliant TV series Game Center CX and perfectly encapsulated the country's collective Famicom experience. We here in the U.S. have neither of those things as touchstones, which was undoubtedly a tricky challenge for XSeed's localization staff. They did their best to compensate, and the results are still satisfying -- especially for those familiar with the personalities of American gaming magazines. It's at once a tribute to and a parody of the NES era, but it doesn't subsist strictly on fond memories. On the contrary, RGC succeeds because that satirical shell is simply the wrapper on nearly a dozen exquisitely designed fake 8-bit games, each crammed with secrets and Achievement-like challenge objectives; at this point, it seems the closest thing we'll ever see to a DS-based Virtual Console. And it's fantastic.

Pity you didn't buy a copy, because it means we'll never see the sequel, which is even better. I'm sorry, but I don't think we can be friends anymore.

category: games | forums | 32 comments | §

GSQ3: The triple triad

22 December 09 | 11:01 | Posted by:

I'm sorry, this entry's title is a complete deception. A fraud. A fabrication. There is nothing to do with popular Final Fantasy VIII card game Triple Triad in this post. I have misled you, all in the name of cheap hits and improved search engine optimization. And I don't even know why I should bother with SEO, since this site doesn't have ads! It's not like we'd be making any money off your traffic. God, my life is a lie.

Anyway, some new content for your perusal:

• Blue Marble (from Marble Madness), an inspirational parable crafted by that modern-day Aesop, Ben Elgin;
  
• Bomberman (from, yes, Bomberman), a totally canonical recounting of Hudson's breadwinner by Adrien Gregory; and
  
• Boy and Blob (from A Boy and His Blob), a handy clip-and-save promotion from America's most beloved snake oil salesman, Philip Armstrong.

category: games | forums | five comments | §

GSQ3: Billy "Bang" Blitz

21 December 09 | 12:51 | Posted by:

I was tragically busy over the weekend writing all those Final Fantasy XIII impressions -- OK, so maybe "tragic" isn't the word -- and didn't really have time to put together content for GameSpite. I'm a terrible person! But I hope to make amends by posting this Quarterly 3 entry about Billy Blitz, manly star of pseudo-metroidvania cult classic Clash at Demonhead. I love Demonhead bunches, even though my most prominent memory of the game comes from about 10 years ago when I picked up a used copy at a pawn shop and started playing it only to have my NES randomly freak out and lose all my progress about two hours into the adventure. And that's when I decided I'd had enough of silly password-based games and that maybe emulation wasn't entirely evil after all.

Man, why is this game not on Virtual Console? Bah.

category: blog | forums | nine comments | §

The unluckiest number

20 December 09 | 14:31 | Posted by:

I've been playing a lot of Final Fantasy XIII this weekend. It's been a while since I've done a play-and-preview game marathon -- I guess maybe since the last Final Fantasy launched in Japan? -- but it's not as easy as it used to be. I think my brain is ossifying as I age, or something. I suppose I'm also a little bit fatigued because of the relentless pacing of the game; I like a little freedom to go at my own speed, but so far it's been seven or eight hours of literally walking down hallways. They're very beautiful hallways! They sometimes look like mountains or oceans of crystal or futuristic highways! But they're narrow corridors, and I'm the sort of person who enjoys a casual pace in an open world where I can go about my own business on my own time.

On the plus side, I guess, people who hated Final Fantasy XII are gonna love FFXIII.

Despite my grousing, though, I'm enjoying the game in the aggregate. The structure isn't my cup of tea, but combat is almost like an interesting puzzle, and danged if the game isn't just completely gorgeous. Wish I had more reason to linger and enjoy the sights, but every time I do Sazh or Vanille jabber at me to hurry up in their curious foreign tongue. Worst tour guides ever.

Anyway, if you're interested in reading more, I've posted my first impressions, a more in-depth look at the combat system, and a bit on a trivial but not unimportant detail. And if you're not interested in reading more, well, I guess I'm just your least favorite person in the world today, huh?

category: games | forums | nine comments | §

9 in '09, number seven: Assassin's Creed II

19 December 09 | 08:48 | Posted by:

Someone called me out on the fact that the first two entries in my favorite-games-of-2009 recap are not available to the general American game-playing public. This is not my fault! If I had my way, Americans would have the right to a chicken in every pot, a car in every garage, a localized version of 7th Dragon in every DS, and a copy of Edge readily available for purchase on every iTunes Store. But I don't call the shots. However, I can perhaps make up for my unfortunate drift into inaccessibility with this entry, which is a tiny paean to a big-budget blockbuster that has been eagerly crammed down our throats for several months now.



Assassin's Creed II
Ubisoft | Xbox 360 / PS3 / PC | Assassinating harder

So, Assassin's Creed was a pretty interesting idea for a game, letting players control an assassin in the times of the Crusades. And by assassin I mean assassin, as in hashashin, as in a politically-motivated Muslim battling against the incursion of European Christian warriors into the Holy Lands. Not only was the setting awfully daring, but so were the game mechanics: Despite it being an action game, you spent a lot of time using "social camouflage" by blending into crowds; and the player's character did a lot of heavy lifting for pathfinding AI for you, to allow you to feel both in control and awesome all at the same time. Maybe unsurprisingly for a game so ambitious, Ubisoft Montreal kind of boned it and didn't really get it right. Assassin's Creed was quite a mess of a game, a big and interesting world with fascinating story and gameplay concepts that forced you to do the same annoying routine over and over again.

Assassin's Creed II, however, gets it right. Oh, it still has its flaws, but there's so much more variety and freedom of play and general polish that it makes the idea of going back to play more of the original seem physically painful. In fact, there's a brief flashback sequence in Creed II in which you briefly see Altaïr, the previous game's protagonist, and it makes you realize just how plain and underdeveloped both the prior hero and his game were.

It's been a while since I've really liked a videogame character, because they're generally not written very well. The hero of Creed II, however, is difficult not to like. The first few hours of the game are a bit slow-paced, but that's simply because they're defining who Ezio is -- or rather, who he was. He begins as a rowdy, callow young man from a wealthy family, thrust by politics and circumstance into a fight-or-flight response. He picks "fight," which makes sense; this is Assassin's Creed, after all, not Milquetoast Coward's Creed. Ezio grows as a character over the course of the story (which spans about 20 years, although the only real indication is that the hero gets stubblier toward the end), and you follow him as he learns to kill and to respect the dead, however villainous they'd been in life. There's a touch of humanity to Ezio lacking in pretty much any other character I've seen in modern, hyperviolent games like this -- you're killing people, a lot of people, but the dialogue specifically calls Ezio out for taking vindictive satisfaction in their deaths.

Of course, that is made a bit hollow by the fact that some of the combat animations -- like disarming an axe-wielding knight by kicking him in the crotch before sinking his own axe into his foot and skewering him through the face -- are grotesquely, viscerally satisfying. But whatever; we can debate the hypocrisy of videogame violence elsewhere. The important thing is that Ubisoft Montreal took pains to make Ezio a warm, empathetic character, someone you like as much when he talks as you do when he jumps across rooftops and quietly sinks a dagger into an enemy sentry's back.

Creed II takes place in Renaissance Italy, and the developers went to extensive pains to research the setting and create a historically accurate rendition of the place (enough so that I was able to find my way to a building I couldn't track down with in-game cues by checking Google Maps); so while it may seem contrived to team up with Leonardo da Vinci and have a fistfight with the Pope and get a pep talk from Niccolò Machiavelli, at least those guys were really alive right then. I didn't think I'd like Italy as much as Crusades-era Jerusalem and environs, but it was by far a more colorful setting. And, admittedly, the developers did a much better job of constructing the cities, and of giving players things to do within those environs than in the first game. While I missed the freedom to travel from town to town, I can't deny that the elements excised for the sequel were fatty bits that needed to be trimmed; instead of looking for flags and Templars in otherwise empty areas, I spent that time enjoying fireworks at a gala festival.

I guess the real proof (for me) of Assassin Creed II's improvements come down to an accusation Penny Arcade's Gabe -- a die-hard apologist for the first game -- made a couple of years ago: He blamed Creed's uneven scores on the fact that it was a game that needed to be savored a morsel at a time, which people rushing to review it for deadline couldn't do. But I played the first Creed on my own time at my own pace, and still found it interminable; yet I played Creed II on a deadline for review (and in one of the most stressful periods of my life, at that)... and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Pity about the fact that they left the game unfinished so they could sell us DLC, though.

category: games | forums | seven comments | §

More stuff what I wrote

17 December 09 | 20:36 | Posted by:

It's been a rough few months, and it seems like the roughness is simply accelerating as we approach the end of the year. It's like the Zeno's Paradox of stress: As we approach the target point (hereafter referred to as "the holidays") my anxiety doubles with each increment. Actually, that's not really like Zeno's Paradox at all. I blame the stress for my poor metaphor-making abilities. But soon the "the holidays" will arrive and we will be asleep. I guess that's good! I can't tell anymore.

Anyway, here is some stuff I've produced for work lately with which I am fairly satisfied. I don't know if that's because it's good work or if I'm just so sleep-deprived I can't tell anymore, but hey.

• Why Do We Play Final Fantasy?: This is the second in what was supposed to be a regular series of features that examine long-running franchises, what their fans think, and what challenges they face in the future. Unfortunately, the first of these features appeared sometime back in, like, April. So that hasn't worked out so well. But, I am happy with the results of this article; you don't often see commentary from developers appear side-by-side with opinions belonging to regular gamers. It's a nice effect.
  
• Rocket Knight preview: This is why I was down in L.A. yesterday, and I have to admit I was a little reluctant to give a day over to covering a game we've already written about so extensively. But then I played it, and it was pretty great. The controls were completely intuitive, and I was bouncing around the screen (in a measured way!) within seconds of picking up the controller. It's fast-paced and responsive. It's pretty much what I want from a 2D game.
  
• Active-Time Babble V: The topic is pretty dumb! "What is an RPG?" But it's good to have gotten it out of the way. We don't come to any real conclusions, of course, but the conversation was good. It was really about the journey rather than the destination anyway.

category: blog, games | forums | eleven comments | §

GSQ3: All Konami, all the time

16 December 09 | 08:13 | Posted by:

Today's entries are all about Konami games. Weirdly, I'm headed down to L.A. for an office call to Konami, as well. It's a zany coincidence that means... well, nothing, I guess. Except that it's neat to see a company that was so vital during the 8-bit era is still kicking as we mosey in 2010.

• The Belmont Clan (Castlevania series) by Kat Bailey;
  
• Bill Rizer and Lance Bean (Contra series) by Nicola Nomali

Is it my imagination or does the blond guy up there look less like Arnold Schwarzenegger than he does one of George H.W. Bush's kids? I guess one Republican was the same as any other to the Japanese airbrush artists of the late '80s.

category: games, gamespite | forums | ten comments | §

9 in '09, number eight: Edge

15 December 09 | 11:05 | Posted by:

Edge
Mobigames | iPhone | Arcade

Sometimes I think about how this game has been almost completely overshadowed by the controversy surrounding some idiotic legal issues that have come about through no fault of the creators, and then I feel sad. Mobigame's Edge is so much more than a crucible in which the alleged spuriousness of former IGDA board member Tim Langdell's claim to the word "edge" as it relates to anything even tangentially related to videogames can be tested. I mean, yes, it's nice that Edge has brought the shadiness of "Mirrors: A Game By EDGE" to light, and the furor has probably helped sell a few copies of Edge out of sympathy or solidarity. But it's also prevented one of the finest iPhone games available from being, well, available.

This sucks, because Edge is genuinely excellent and is the sort of thing that everyone who owns an iPhone or iPod Touch should have on their device at all times. It's also the sort of thing that anyone who doubts the viability of the iPhone as a gaming device should check out, because Edge is a game that perfectly sums up the strengths and qualities of its platform in one neat, stylish package.

The gameplay is the definition of simplicity, which is really exactly what you want from a game that's controlled with one finger. You roll a small cube around a geometric landscape, avoiding edges (hence the name!) and puzzling your way past increasingly devious traps and hazards. It's never especially stressful and consciously avoids being frustrating, so people looking for a hair-pulling hardcore challenge will probably shrug and meh. Really, though, that's not the point. With its abstract, neon-tinged graphics and chiptune-inspired soundtrack, it's meant more as a chill-out game that you play to kill time and relax. That's really what iPhone games are best for -- bIte-sized hunks of escapism -- and almost a year later Edge continues to be one of my favorite go-to time-wasters when I have a few minutes to kill and AT&T's crappy network service makes it impossible for me to check my email.

So really, that means Edge doesn't just exemplify the strengths of its platform; it also help cover up the platform's weaknesses. You can't ask for better than that. Unfortunately, it looks like we're currently in another of those "Edge is not available from the App Store at this time" troughs, so bear with it until the day that it shows up again, then grab it before it's inevitably pulled again. In the meantime, let's hit the law books for some research into how we can fight the good fight against specious trademark squatting.

category: games | forums | four comments | §

GSQ3: Battletoads and Bayou Billy

14 December 09 | 11:07 | Posted by:

Ah, Battletoads, my old nemesis. Whenever I talk about this game I feel compelled to talk in a low purr, like Khan, except that would insinuate Battletoads is the good guy and will ultimately win the day. And we all know that just ain't true.

• The Battletoads (Battletoads series) by Wesley Fenlon: I still can't believe someone thought it would be a good idea to create a set of characters named after skin conditions. At the very least, they could have taken it to its logical extreme by introducing female counterparts: Shingles, Vitiligo, and Alopecia.
  
• Bayou Billy (The Adventures of Bayou Billy) by Nich Maragos: This was a revelatory article. Did you know that "Bayou" Billy West would go on to play the voice of Fry in Futurama? And that I would totally steal the hook of this write-up for the Mega Man 2 entry in my recent Musical Miscreants piece. Well, now you know. Half the battle and all that.

category: blog | forums | five comments | §

9 in '09, number nine: 7th Dragon

13 December 09 | 11:33 | Posted by:

I was going to write that out as "9 in '09, #9," but then the entire title of this post would have degenerated into a very silly load of numeric nonsense. Instead I'm simply going for arbitrary alliteration. Better than asinine assonance, I suppose.

Anyway. I guess it's become kind of a tradition over the past few years that I stop and write about the games I enjoyed playing over the previous twelve months, and some people seem to enjoy it despite its narrow point of view (no man can play every game that hits in a given year these days, at least not while holding down a job) and generally sort of navel-gaziness. ("Navel-gaviness" was not a word until this very instant, by the way.) Last year I took the approach of reconsidering the review scores I had handed out over the previous year as a means by which to mostly say "I am so right! I am awesome." Which was kind of a terrible approach to take, and I apologize. I won't be doing that this year, in part because it was dumb, but mostly because sometime around the latter half of last year my approach to reviewing made a quiet and subtle shift and I started taking a long view of the reviews I've been writing. I think it's because I've become old, but in any case I can't think of a single review or score I've written this year that I would change in the least. So, I'm returning to the format I used in 2007 with my "7 in '07" posts. Except now I have to do nine of them, because "7 in '09" seems weird. And if I call it "7 of '09," well, that's just too damn nerdy for even me.

This isn't some all-encompassing list; I didn't have a chance to play Uncharted 2 or Arkham Asylum or enough of Dragon Age to get a real feel for it (yet). It's simply a rundown of games I've enjoyed, a lot. Some of which are games that will probably show up on people's lists next year, since I've been dabbling in imports all year. Such as this one!

7th Dragon
ImageEpoch | Sega | DS | RPG

Well, it would be nice if this could be on people's "favorite games of 2010" lists, but so far, no luck. Sega doesn't want anything to do with it, and I've talked to PR and business development folks at several likely third-party publisher candidates who have all told me the same thing: "It's too hard." Proof that publishers continue to underestimate the intelligence and resolve of American gamers, I suppose. I hope they all look at sales of Demon's Souls and the fact that it's selling incredibly well because it unapologetically tests the mettle of even the most die-hard player and choke on them.

Because 7th Dragon is an exceptional RPG. It's tough, yeah, but from the portions I've played -- and admittedly I didn't finish the game -- the challenge is nothing insurmountable to any seasoned RPG veteran. Especially if you've played Etrian Odyssey, which comprises a significant portion of this game's DNA. Its key creators are Reiko "Phantasy Star" Kodama and Kazuya "Etrian Odyssey" Niinou, and it really does feel like a hybrid of the two franchises. Rather than taking the first-person approach of the Etrian games, it plays out as more of what people think of as a standard Japanese RPG. You have a party, you wander around the world map in warrior-train formation, you encounter enemies, you dive into dungeons and measure your progress by reaching new towns and beating bosses.

What keeps it from being just a wannabe Dragon Quest/Final Fantasy-alike are the bits it draws from the Etrian games. No, you don't draw a map. But you do build a party from scratch, and you do allocate skill points to customize their abilities at each level-up. And yeah, there are super-powered foes (or should I say, FOEs) that visibly roam the dungeons and pounce upon you to create an extremely hazardous situation. In fact, these special enemies are sort of the whole point of the game: There's a numeric counter that always appears on-screen and it ticks down by one each time you slay one of these wandering minibosses. They're nasty enemies that take a lot of work to overcome, but as with Etrian's FOEs, besting one is incredibly satisfying.

I kind of wonder but what the problem with the game isn't that it's challenging but that it's so relentlessly challenging yet so incredibly cute. 7th Dragon is crammed with colorful graphics and charming sprites and super-deformed character art that appears in combat to add a little extra personality to the first-person combat. It could be one of those instances where publishers balk at offering something so saccharine-looking that nevertheless has a vicious temperament. Demon's Souls probably wouldn't have made it overseas if it had featured little bobblehead munchkins fighting their way through pastel casts, honestly, and this could end up being one of those situations where the differences in tastes between American gamers and their Japanese counterparts creates an irreconcilable cognitive dissonance of sorts.

In the meantime, I'll keep holding out hope. It's a fine RPG that combines the best aspects of several different influences, and if it had been in English it surely would have appeared higher up my list of favorites. Alas: It languishes overseas, and at the bottom of my list.

category: games | forums | 17 comments | §

GSQ3: The Avatar and the Balloon Fighter

12 December 09 | 13:34 | Posted by:

Today marks our second entry about Ultima-related characters, in this case the Avatar. Please note that this Avatar has nothing whatsoever with grotesque blue-skinned CG-rendered escapees from a particular bad Sonic fanfic, and instead represents the finest attributes in humanity rather its most shameful. You're welcome.

• The Avatar (the Ultima series) by Matt Cramp
  
• Balloon Fighter (Balloon Fight) by Bob Mackey

We've also reached the letter B. That scent you smell in the air is the aroma of progress.

category: games, gamespite | forums | eight comments | §

GSQ3: Arthur and Athena

11 December 09 | 11:04 | Posted by:

Confidential to Kishi: I'm so, so sorry. I was looking for artwork from Psycho Solider with which to promote this latest batch of great write-ups from GameSpite Quarterly 3, and this is all I could come up with. It really kind of undermines, well, pretty much everything you wrote about Athena. Mea culpa. Anyway, hopefully our readers will go ahead and click though to the entries below, because they're really quite good.

• Arthur (Ghosts 'N Goblins) by Sean Gandert
  
• Athena Asamiya (Psycho Soldier) by Nicola Nomali

Confidential to everyone else: Please read our feature on music rip-offs in videogames. We sank a lot of time and effort into making the best article we could. I realize lots of other sites have beaten us to covering this topic, but I'm confident that our take on it features better comparisons, has the best formatting, and (I'd like to think, since I wrote it) features the most informed text. And even if not, it's still a fun read. So.

category: games, gamespite | forums | 17 comments | §

Gaming's ovine future

10 December 09 | 12:41 | Posted by:

In the past 48 hours, sequels to two of my favorite series have been announced by way of that clearly-not-yet-dead medium, print. First, Famitsu gave us word of Etrian Odyssey III, which scrambles the character class system in new and interesting ways. And then Nintendo Power went and let slip word of Mega Man 10, which is totally not the same as Mega Man X (sorry, Tycho, the junkslut was right this time). OK, so the part about trying to cure a virus that causes robots to go bonkers is totally Mega Man X. But the rest! Totally different.

Anyway, I was fascinated to realize that there's a common thread connecting these two games. A thread besides being sequels to masterpieces, I mean. That thread: Sheep. So I guess it's more like yarn than thread. You know, wool and all that.



Yeah. The first announced boss for Mega Man 10 is the nefarious (?) Sheep Man, which I think really captures the bottom-of-the-barrel desperation of some of the latter-day 8-bit Robot Masters. Which isn't to say I expect MM10 to be as forgettable as Mega Man 4; quite the contrary! I just like how utterly unthreatening the boss design is.

But what does this have to do with Etrian Odyssey III? Well, Famitsu announced several new classes for the game. There's Phalanx, a heavily-armored spear-wielding class; Monk, who punches things to death, and who will be on my frontlines, because monks are the best class of all; both Pirate and Ninja, who can coexist in the same party despite the Internet's lies; and Prince/Princess, which are apparently pilfered from 7th Dragon, the game designed by EO's original director after he bailed on Atlus. Which is kind of weird and uncomfortable and is probably going to make for awkward conversations when EOIII and 7th Dragon bump into each other at the Christmas party.

Anyway, there are also at least five as-yet announced classes that'll be debuting in EOIII. Famitsu didn't name them, but they did show sample illustrations. And one of them appears to be a farmer. I have no idea what a farmer would be doing in a grindy RPG unless someone decided to take the term "farming" a little too seriously, but it'll be interesting to find out. I say he appears to be a farmer because he carries a pitchfork in one hand, and in the other he holds -- yes -- a sheep.

I can't imagine what the significance of this connection actually is, but mark my words: It's significant. I eagerly await the opportunity to learn how, exactly.

category: games | forums | 29 comments | §

The Mario seduction

09 December 09 | 08:07 | Posted by:

One of the core tenets in my highly positive review of New Super Mario Bros. Wii is that much of the game's success is the result of Nintendo's brilliant balance between challenge and accessibility, using the seamless single- and multiplayer level design convergence to provide a game that's as enjoyable for experienced gamers as it is for novices. Much of my "reference material" for this opinion was a few hours spent working through a cooperative session with my fiancée Cat, whose relationship with games is one of bemused tolerance. I pay our rent writing about them, so she's OK with their existence, but she doesn't have any particular interest in playing them. From time to time she'll try whatever it is I've been playing through out of curiosity, but after an hour or two she'll grow bored and hand back the controller.

NSMB Wii, however, has proven itself to be something of a gateway addiction for her. Once the game launched, we played with Cat's cousin and her cousin's fiance. I left my copy of the game at the cousin's place, because she's been feeling lousy lately and needs whatever distractions she can find (and it did the trick; when when we went back over a few days later, they roped us into helping them through the final stage), and I figured Cat wouldn't care. But I was mistaken, and much to my surprise she wanted to play more. So I gave her my copy of New Super Mario Bros. for DS, which she powered through over the course of a couple of weeks. I'd help from time to time, which usually consisted of her getting stuck at a tricky part for an hour or two, then handing the system to me and feeling frustrated that I could breeze past those sticking points on my first try, when they'd caused her so much trouble.

The weird duality of the original NSMB made me appreciate what the sequel does all the more. Long-time Mario fans almost universally agree that the DS game is ludicrously easy; the only real challenge for us comes in earning all those big coins. Yet for someone new to platformers -- Cat's frame of reference for games consists of things like Q*Bert, Lode Runner, and Pac-Man, games that well predate the standards of platforming established by Super Mario Bros. -- NSMB is almost impossibly tricky in places. It's sold insanely well, sure, but I think most of NSMB's success can be attributed to its brand and the fact that classic-style platformers are in fact a legitimately different form of gaming than their 3D offspring and people still enjoy playing them, despite what publishers seem to have arbitrarily decided a decade ago. NSMB Wii is simply a better-designed game all around, and its accomplishments are all the more impressive the more I contextualize them. It really should be impossible to create a platformer that satisfies the lust for challenge endemic to fans of classic platformers yet which also allows a new player to ease in and feel comfortable, yet NMSB Wii does precisely that.

So far as I'm concerned, that doesn't just make it a great game; it also makes it the embodiment of everything this entire console generation aspires to: Bridging the divide between dedicated gamers and those who take a more (sorry, I can't think of a better word) casual approach. Nintendo's been more overt about it, but even the AAA blockbuster games on other platforms have succeeded largely on their ability to cater to both audiences. Look at Assassin's Creed, which looks gorgeous and has lots of traditional videogame conceits, but also practically plays itself. Look at Halo, which turned the first-person shooter into a sequence of forgiving, bite-sized encounters with streamlined controls, health systems, and weapon mechanics. Look at how eagerly Microsoft and Sony are pursuing motion controls as some sort of silver bullet to fend off the evil werewolf that is Nintendo. NSMB Wii spans this divide, and it make the effort look painless and incidental. It's a masterpiece, and I'm disappointed that so many reviewers focused on the fact that NSMB Wii's control mechanics and visual language are familiar and well-explored, because I think they failed to see just what the game truly accomplishes. So it goes. We gamers tend to develop tunnel vision sometimes, and it's easy to be blindsided by something that achieves greatness in unconventional ways. I'm kind of lucky that my better half doesn't give a fat slap about this entire medium; it keeps me on my toes.

Meanwhile, I really need to get my copy of the game back. Not that Cat cares. After making it to the final level of NSMB on DS (and finally giving up after being unable to beat that stage in hours and hours of play), she decided to try out Super Mario Bros. 3 (she doesn't like the physics) and Mario World (which she likes, but finds dauntingly difficult). I suggested Super Mario Galaxy, which -- after a few hours adjusting to the concept of playing truly 3D space -- she adores. I figured she'd appreciate that the 3D Mario games are like a playground full of things to do as opposed to the regimented obstacle course of the 2D installments, and I was right. She was actually excited when I told her there'd be a sequel to Galaxy out in a few months, which really surprised me.



We'll make a game fan of her yet, and all thanks to NSMB Wii. If that's not a sign that Nintendo got it right, I can't imagine what would be.

category: blog, games | forums | sixteen comments | §

GSQ3: Jason

08 December 09 | 10:23 | Posted by:

I'm skipping about the alphabet today somewhat, not merely for the sake of variety, but also because I'm irrationally excited about the strange but interesting news that Victor Ireland is playing Liaison to the West for Sunsoft and is kicking off this process with an enhanced Virtual Console release of Blaster Master. Exactly how they're going about this enhancement is a mystery for the ages, but he promises it will be worth everyone's while to actually finish the game. Which will take some doing! Back in the days of actual gaming (i.e. before emulation and even before Game Genie), back when I was an idiot savant gamer who could beat anything on NES, Blaster Master thwarted me. I made it to the final boss a few times, but the limited continues ensured I never finished the game. So I never witnessed this scene...


...under my own locomotion. I did watch a friend of mine finish the game, which just made me feel worse about myself. Anyway, I'm looking forward to the rematch. Man versus machine and all that.

And, of course, a GameSpite Quarterly 3 write-up to accompany it all:

• Jason, hero of Blaster Master. Or was it Meta Fight? It is also a mystery for the ages. In any case, I have compiled a dossier recounting his known history.

In the meantime, I'm just gonna hold out hope that the new "enhancements" to the Virtual Console version of the game don't make it even harder. 'Cause that's just not kosher.

category: games, gamespite | forums | fourteen comments | §

Games for learning

07 December 09 | 10:53 | Posted by:

Last week, beloved GameSpite contributor Bob Mackey published a really great 1UP feature that recounted his own efforts to use videogames for learning with an audience of kids who had little experience with the medium. Yes, as in "traditional book-learnin'." It's a great read and I highly recommend it!

But did you know that videogames are educational even for us dyed-in-the-wool gamer types, too? It's true! Why, just the other day I was playing Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey and discovered that astronomers are lame.

Each section of Strange Journey's dungeon is named alphabetically; the first is Antlia, and the second is Bootes. I didn't really think much of the name Antlia, but I recognized Bootes as a constellation. So, out of curiosity, I decided to look up the first sector's name and discovered that it, too, is a constellation. "Weird," I thought. "I've never heard of that one." So I did a little more reading and discovered that it's one of nearly 100 constellations established by some French guy in the 19th century.

"But I don't remember an Antlia in Greek mythology!" you exclaim. Apparently, that's because they decided to ditch classical names for these newfangled constellations and go with amazing new inventions of the Industrial Revolution. Antlia, as it turns out, is named for an air pump.

I grew up a little bit obsessed with astronomy, and I loved reading all the legends surrounding the names of stars and planets and constellations. Now I've discovered that floating around up there with a noble hunter and a mighty bear and seven sisters is a bike tire pump. This is probably the single most disappointing thing I've learned in months. But I guess it's handy if Virgo ever has a flat.

Oh, also, I somehow sank 10 hours into Strange Journey over the past two days. It didn't feel like it was that long, but yeah -- it's every bit as addictive as Etrian Odyssey, if not more so. And that makes me really glad Atlus didn't include a game clock in the Etrian games, because I don't even want to know how many hundreds of hours I've invested in them.

category: games | forums | eight comments | §

GSQ3: Alucard and Armakuni

06 December 09 | 08:28 | Posted by:

You know, I've always hated the box art for The Last Ninja, videogame classic or not. The idea is sound -- a very angry ninja glaring at you, nearly-life-sized, with presumed intent to kill -- but the actual execution is horrible. It's hyper-detailed, yes, but all that detail embellishes an anatomically inaccurate face. Grotesquely inaccurate. It's like the publishers said, "Hey, our character is Japanese, and the Japanese like to draw them big-eyed anime people, so we should make Armakuni's eyes the same size as Astro Boy's!" And so the artist did. And then he applied realistic skin texturing and hairs and big ol' pores and even beads of sweat to his misshapen homunculus. And thus did a million young C64 gamers experience untold years of nightmares.

Anyway, today's posts are about Armakuni and some other less hideously rendered dude. Which is saying a lot, because said dude made his debut on NES and was illustrated by Konami's airbrush wizards, who (for example) decided it would be pretty cool to give delicate mage lady Sypha Belnades revolting man-hands.

• Alucard (Castlevania III) by Nicola Nomali; and
  
• Armakuni (The Last Ninja) by Aaron Littleton.

category: games, gamespite | forums | two comments | §

GSQ3: Alfred Chicken and Alis Landale

05 December 09 | 12:03 | Posted by:

Hello, and welcome to "Further Adventures in Posting GameSpite Quarterly 3 on the Internet." It is a lengthy and protracted process, much like a terminal illness. Hook up a catheter for yourself, ask the candy striper to bring you some stewed pears on a metal stray, and stay a while. Today's patients:

• A look at ultimate 8-bit videogame superstar Alfred Chicken (who appeared in his own eponymous titles, because he was much too important to moonlight in the games of lesser characters) by Tomm Hulett; and
  
• A profile investigating the extreme crimes of Alis Landale (whose record of seditious acts is recorded in Phantasy Star) by new site contributor Jake Alley.

category: blog | forums | thirteen comments | §

GSQ3: All Alex, all the time

04 December 09 | 10:46 | Posted by:

We move on along through the letter A today to touch on some second-tier heroes who were fairly obscure here in the U.S. for various reasons. Mainly reasons that involved not a lot of people discovering Technos' brawler/sports games until the age of emulation, and not a lot of people buying the Sega Master System outside of Brazil. But that doesn't mean they didn't deserve to be commemorated in GameSpite Quarterly 3 just as much as Mario or whoever. We're very communistic, here. (Ask us about our five-year plan!) In fact, the Alex Kidd write-up remains one of my favorite submissions to this issue. And here I never thought anything good could come of that franchise.

Today's online postings:

• Alex and Ryan (River City Ransom, et al.) by Tomm Hulett; and
  
• Alex Kidd (Alex Kidd in Miracle World, among others) by Bob Mackey.

category: games, gamespite | forums | 17 comments | §

2D: Retro without a cause

03 December 09 | 10:22 | Posted by:

I was planning to write a post today that kicked off by saying, "Hey, remember when I wrote about Half-Minute Hero and mentioned that I was initially really skeptical of it because it looked like a meaningless retrogame bandwagon-jumper that affected its visual style just to be trendy? And then I played it and realized it was actually really clever and wholly justified in its choice of graphics after all? Well, I think Nippon Ichi has just announced the game I assumed Half-Minute Hero would be in the form of Classic Dungeon." But then Turnip went and wrote exactly that in the forums, so now I feel really unimaginative.

But not as unimaginative as NIS!


Seriously, though, why is this game "retro"? So far as I can tell, it's a pretty standard action RPG sort of thing with the usual arcane and elaborate NIS-brand systems (for instance, you can use your party members as "equipment"). The visual style looks to have no real bearing on that, which suggests that the company saw something trendy and decided to imitate it without stopping to understand what has made things like Half-Minute Hero, Retro Game Challenge, and 3D Dot Game Heroes so creatively successful. Each of those games has a clear and visible purpose behind its throwback visuals; Classic Dungeon, so far as I can tell, doesn't.

I think it would probably also help if NIS were to create a game that doesn't look inherently dated before getting all cute and faking it.

I gave Half-Minute Hero a fair chance, though, and it turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Maybe NIS can do the same. I just won't get my hopes up.


I do like that they stole the explosion graphics from Blaster Master, though.

category: 2D, games | forums | 21 comments | §

GSQ3: Agent 17 and Albatross

02 December 09 | 08:44 | Posted by:

I've decided to switch from the sort of scattershot approach to posting GameSpite Quarterly 3 content I used yesterday to a more sensible alphabetical approach. That way someone could theoretically read the entire issue online from beginning to end by clicking links at the bottom of each successive entry. As it happens, this makes the next two entries pieces by me, both drawn from two of my all-time favorite classic arcade games, both very much heroes in the classic late-century spy-guy tradition. A curious coincidence, I'd say.

• Agent 17 from Elevator Action is a pragmatic sort of adventurer who knows that architecture is the deadliest weapon of all;
  
• Albatross from Rolling Thunder is more of a dandy who fusses over his appearance, though he wields a mean submachinegun.

Also, after receiving some pushback on the "budget" edition of the magazine (including the fact that it's only sold three copies), I have renamed it the "compact" edition so that you don't think I'm calling you a cheapskate if you opt for that version. Hey, believe me, I know. Money's tight these days. No shame in making ends meet. On that note, please also remember that Blurb offers flat rate shipping on up to (I think) five books, so it might be smart to wait to buy these publications until several are available. This is all print on demand, so the books aren't going to sell out or vanish.

Also, I'm thinking about laying out Quarterly 4 in an actual page design application instead of the horrible Blurb default software, so hopefully that means future issues will look a lot more interesting inside.

Edit: I am informed that the promo code BLURBSHIP is good for free ground shipping until next Tuesday, should that fact interest you.

category: games, gamespite | forums | fifteen comments | §

GSQ3: Adol Christin, Lord British, Rad Spencer

01 December 09 | 11:41 | Posted by:

First of all, a huge thank-you to everyone who's been talking up (and buying up) our new publication. GameSpite Quarterly 3 is far and away the fastest-selling issue of this venture to date. I mean, we're certainly not going to retire on our earnings, but I'm pretty sure that we've already hit my primary sales goal (namely, everyone whose work is included in this volume should be able to buy themselves a copy for posterity with their earnings). No telling if this enthusiasm will hold up for the long term; it could very well be that we simply happened to glom onto the so-called Cyber Monday buying frenzy and that's that. But I'm really hoping that it means GameSpite is slowly and steadily building an enthusiastic reader base who sincerely enjoys what we're producing here and shares our love for old-fashioned media. Print is pretty rad! And I'm glad you (apparently) think so as well.

I haven't entirely settled on a format for posting GSQ3 material online yet, since these are more akin to bite-sized nuggets of content as opposed to full-length articles. So, I've posted three entries all at once -- about a normal article's worth of words, except spread across several pages. (Don't worry, it's not a foul scheme to increase clickthroughs. You see any ads around here? 'Cause I sure don't.) Today's postings include:

• Adol Christin (Ys Book I & II) by Andrew Bentley;
  
• Lord British (Ultima series) by newcomer Aaron Littleton; and
  
• Rad Spencer (Bionic Commando) by... me.

Further updates to come in the months ahead, naturally.

category: games, gamespite | forums | 19 comments | §