I mentioned back in my Donkey Kong Country: Returns review that two series have come back to the world of gaming after a long hibernation. DKC:R turned out to be a wolf in sheep's clothing, merely a derivative of what the series once was. However, the second game I mentioned is a more faithful in recapturing the series, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.
Dark Dawn is the third game in the series, kinda hard to tell since there's no number in the title, and is the first Golden Sun in seven years. For those who don't know, Golden Sun were two quiet, little RPGs on the Gameboy Advanced of all places. A handheld that was ruled by Nintendo mascots and Pokemon. So finding a unique RPG was like finding a good Adam Sandler movie, had to wade through a lot of crap before finding the good stuff. It's been seldom talked about, but is beloved by many; truly one of the few RPGs that hasn't been overblown by rabid fanboys, yet. But returning to an RPG series is a tricky one. DKC:R had no story obligations to fulfill since it relied entirely on platforming (and managed to fail pretty badly), Golden Sun had a story, and it ended; so what could possibly left to tell?
Apparently a lot since now we're following the adventures of the Warrior of Vale's children. Our previous heroes are all grown up and have kids, and now it's time for them to save the world from destruction. But before I get too deep into the plot, let's talk about why Golden Sun is a good series.
Golden Sun takes a page from the western RPGs by actually combining magic that can be cast in battles to practical use in the game world. Boulder in your way? Just smash it with your rock smashing magic (psy-energy = magic btw). Need that puddle of water frozen? Freeze it with an ice spell. Unlike Final Fantasy where you could summon the devil himself and rain comets down from the sky, but you still can't open a locked door or jump over a fence; letting the player use magic outside of battle makes the world seem more practical. Of course, these action-oriented magical moves are a small percentage of the magic available, but at least it shows the series is trying. This all is apart of Dark Dawn's stronger points: puzzle solving.
Instead of just throwing a cut-scene between enemy encounters, Golden Sun will actually test your mind and psy-energy with dungeons full of puzzles that are solved by using the right magic on the right thing. Thankfully, Dark Dawn keeps the concept going and expands on it a little. The dungeons are challenging and fun. However, the challenge takes a nose-dive when you get a magical spell that actually just tells you the answer to the puzzle. I'm guessing this is to stop people from wasting time by using every spell on an object when they're stumped, but it also works as a cheat sheet; stopping just short of making a psy-spell that just beats the game for you.
But if you're tired of doing the chores of a dungeon, you can run around for a while and get into a random encounter. Battles feel like the younger days of console RPGs by having everyone line up in a row like some very-polite colonial battle, and take turns beating the crap out of each other. You select a series of moves for each character and then let them go. Normal attacks have an extra spice by sometimes perform special moves instead once you use your weapon in enough battles. But I'm ignoring a big part of the game.
The tiny creatures that are seen in that horrible commercial that always comes on while I'm watching Futurama: Djinns. They're everywhere. Over 150 individual Djinns are found throughout the world, and most are just minor variations on the same action: heal the entire party, boost defense, elemental attack. So there's not a lot of micro-managing, just equip them all willy-nilly and go. Which Djinns you have control you character class, psy-energy available and slight stat modifiers. But most combinations are only a fractional difference between the next, so again, don't sweat the small stuff.
Most reviews I've read state the combat is too easy, which I agree with, for about the first 5 hours. The combat isn't overly easy; yes, you'll be spamming the attack button most of the time, but what jRPG doesn't come to that? You still have to heal often (you're PP, basically the game's MP, recharges as you walk), and there are a few challenging boss battles.
With all that out of the way, let's get back to what I started a few paragraphs ago, the plot. It's stretched over about 25-30 hours but should've only been about 10 or 15. It's padded out a lot with tiny little sub-plots and takes a long time to develop. The dialog is also stretched to a breaking point. Several points in the story have the characters in a hurry, but they keep talking anyways. If it was compelling dialog, that's one thing, but this is like Star Ocean bad. Characters announce the obvious constantly, and will reiterate each other's thoughts to no end. It's like textual equivalent to an echo, and each time it's repeated, it just gets more stupid.
The worst part is the game ends on a ga'darn cliff hanger, almost guaranteeing a sequel. Why is it today that no game can just end. There always has to be some small thing that pushes the series long for a least one more game. Golden Sun manages to ignore a plot element that emerged about 3 hours into the game and then proceed to ignore it for the rest of the game. It's like the creators gone done making the game and realized they forgot to develop an entire story line in favor of some stupid side quest involving pirates. Can games just have some freaking closure? I think it should be required by law to have on the box art, 'warning: this game offers no closure at the end and will likely make you buy one more just to see what happens'. At least then it'll save me from putting my DS through a wall.
I won't talk about the graphics or sound much because it's mostly a faithful recreation of the GBA incarnations, but there is a choice system in place. And by choice system, I mean a system where you choose how your silent protagonist reacts to a situation that has no bearing on anything. So the choice is really to give a crap or not. I didn't.
Overall, this game feels like a Golden Sun game, looks like a Golden Sun game and sounds like a Golden Sun game. It may not be the best Golden Sun, but it's still a fun ride and remains faithful to the series without stagnating. There's really nothing more you can ask from a game like this.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Friday, December 3, 2010
Review: Donkey Kong Country Returns
The month of November 2010 saw the return of two beloved series from the past. The first of which is Donkey Kong Country. If you've read any previous blog posts, like my favorite games of all time list, you'll know that the DKC series has a special place in my heart. Many hours were spent frolicking around the jungles, ancient ruins and industrial areas of the tiny island; Cranky Kong's spiels about youngsters and what not, Candy Kong's... ability to save your game, etc. etc. It's good to know that somewhere, someone at Nintendo felt it necessary to dig up this series, dust it off and hand it to one of my favorite developing studios. The apparently adequately named RETRO studios have had such titles as Metroid Prime on their resume, which was a game that brought back the Metroid series from it's coma induced by the amazingness that was Super Metroid. Because when a game is that awesome, no one wants to make the next one. So with memories soaring around in my head while RETRO studios began crafting what could only be a masterpiece game, I think it's fair to say my hopes were abnormally high for a video game. How life makes fools of us all. Because what Donkey Kong Country Returns is, instead of a glorious return of an iconic series, is merely a derivative of its former accomplishments. In other words, it blows.
I was seriously ready to like this game. Reviews were glowing, it was a return to 2D side-scrolling, Retro Studios has made an awesome Wii game already, what could possibly go wrong? Well, apparently the development part. I don't know if Retro played a Donkey Kong Country game before making this, but it sure seems like they didn't. Readers, meet me in paragraph 3.
Let's talk graphics. They're good. I hate them, but it's not because of the technical side of things. They're clean, they're crisp, I get everything that's going on screen; sure there's a moment where I'm confused about what's in the foreground / middleground / background, but those instances are rare and far-between. What I don't like is the styling. If you've played a DKC game, you know each world evokes a different feel. In fact, you could make the comment that each game evokes a different feel. DKC1 had the lush jungles, DKC2 brought us pirate ships and marshes, and DKC3 mostly just combined everything before and made it better. What DKCR brings to the table is ultra-polish, next gen graphics ripped straight from Mario Galaxy. It's all too cartoony. There's no mood, no personality; everything's just ultra colorful and that's it. There are a few levels that simplify the colors and put everything into a silhouette, but these levels just remind me of World of Goo. There's nothing really original about it. And each area seems to just recycle the same vegetation and surroundings.
The soundtrack isn't much better. There are a few songs they brought back from the original series that brought me joy while playing, but all the new tracks are really just lifeless. They're that cliche, upbeat, stock music that doesn't help convey any sort of atmosphere or feeling, just uninspired rubbish. There's a particularly jarring soundtrack played during some of the industrial levels that's an upbeat jazz tune. I don't know why this level is so happy since the industrial area is causing pollution and ruining the environment, but as long as I can tap my toes and swing my hips to it, no harm done. I wanted something dire for the situations that were dire and the game seemed to afraid to show us a little bit of a dark side.
It's hard to differentiate between a lot of the levels because there's so little variation. Besides just straight-up platforming, you can ride in a little rocket barrel that's controlled solely by how much you mash the A button; more to go higher, less to go lower. Navigating this Kong Rocket is probably the hardest obstacle in the game since precision is a must, and you're only means of control a single button. Could this event have been controlled with the d-pad or nunchuck? Yes. Why wasn't it? Because some village out there is missing an idiot because Retro Studios employed them.
But the biggest disappointment, the biggest mistake this game makes and the primary reason I detest this entry is they don't make use of what the series has already established. There's no hint of nostalgia or use of past mechanics at all.
Here's the segment of the review I like to call, 'Hey, remember this?'.
Hey, remember how in the SNES series you eventually ended up with a whole cast of colorful characters in the Kong family? Well guess what, they're gone. You only have Cranky Kong and he's still cranky. No Candy, no Swanky, no Funky, no anyone.
Hey, remember how in the SNES series some levels let you control various amounts of animals and let you go through levels like that? Well guess what, there's 2. 2 whole levels that I came across were you control Rambi. That's it. Just a-two. No swordfish, no ostrich, squawks is non-playable, no snake, nothing. There's not even a single god-damn water level. So if you're like me and wanted to here an updated rendition of Aquatic Ambiance, you're SOL my friend, you're SOL right in the A.
Hey, remember how in the SNES series you could find secret areas that would give you some goal and a time limit? Well guess what, that's... still kinda true. You can collect banana's within a time limit for example; and when I say for example, I mean that's all there is. There's no bash the baddies, no find the coin, nothing. Just get the bananas and that's it.
Hey, remember how in the SNES series rolling around was fun? Well guess what, you have to shake the wii mote to do that now, and it sucks. The problem is shaking the wii mote performs a ground-pound, while shaking it when holding a direction left or right performs a roll. So there are times when you really need to roll, but ground-pound instead. I think they actually did their best so you'd never really need to use the roll move. It's used so little and not very effectively. Overall, its hard to control and can fail you at any moment. There was no reason not to make this title classic controller compatible. Screw you Nintendo.
Hey, remember how in the SNES series there were various types of barrels and blast barrels? Well guess what, they're gone. You have 1 type of barrel and about 3 types of blast barrels and that's it. Oh, but we have flowers we can blow with our monkey breath; thanks.. so... freakin'... much. Seriously, they actually spent time making it so down + wii mote shake makes you... blow on stuff. Hurray?
Hey, remember how in the SNES series you could collect DK coins, KONG, banana coins? Well guess what, this game takes that and takes a donkey dump on it. First off, the DK coins are gone. They're just gone. KONG is more of a collection feature; the game makes a note on which levels you've done it, and banana coins return as currency, but you get so many that really, you're never short of stuff to afford. You can buy extra lives, a key per world, Squawks, potions, etc. But it's just so easy to get them, it makes you wonder why the game has them in the first place. All the items you buy are one-time-use only. The keys are used to open up secret paths to an extra level, but these secret levels don't really offer anything new.
Hey, remember how in the SNES series the enemies were mean and tough? Well guess what Chuck, that's all gone. There's no Kremlin gang this time, just a bunch of stock animals that are more cute and cuddly than threatening. Honestly, I know this game was marketed to a broader audience, but give us some credit. If you're going to take away alligators, at least replace it with something just as menacing. Instead, the evil forces at work are wooden planks that hypnotize the inhabitants of the jungle to steal your bananas. Donkey and Diddy are the only two not effected because you have to have a brain to hypnotize for it to work. And why are they stealing bananas? Apparently to make an army of robot chickens or something. My brain died around this point in the game so it's hard to recall the stupidity.
Hey, remember how in the SNES series Donkey actually sounded like a gorilla? Well guess what, now he sounds like some idiot saying 'yahoo'. By the way, has anyone seen Mario lately?
Hey, remember how in the SNES series Donkey and Diddy could be interchangeable, offering different perspectives on the layout of the level? Well guess what, you're stuck with Donkey. Diddy is acquired by a barrel and has a jet pack, which suspends you in the air for slightly longer. No more taking the little bastard and hurling him across the screen, or throwing him up high to get a treasure.
Alright, enough of that.
I've heard people talk about the difficulty of this game, but really, all I've found is moments I have to fight with the controls. There's not really a steady curve either. Some spots will just spike the difficulty randomly, while later levels pose no threat at all. Most levels do start off easy, then moderately difficult before ending on a part that's hard. The level design is much more straight forward as opposed to the various barrel puzzles and complicated maneuvers from the old games.
Like most Nintendo games, the entire game play revolves around a lives system. For whatever reason, Shigeru Miyamoto can't get passed dumping this system and just letting people continue indefinitely. Gaming over in this game isn't even that bad, you're just sent to the beginning of the level. You still have all your coins and you still have all your unused items, so what's the point?
The game saves the biggest slap in the face for last. After all that platforming and barrel-blasting, the final boss ends up being a disembodied head with two hands... I'm not even kidding, that's the final boss. A disembodied head with two hands and the first targets you have to hit are his hands before moving on to his head. This is the biggest Nintendo cop-out final boss ever. How many Nintendo games end with this exact same boss structure? It just pisses me off to no end that they couldn't even come up with an original final boss fight for this game.
The overall point is: this game offers the least of all the games to gaming, which is inexcusable. When you have 3 games' worth of content and source material to work with, the product should be greater than those parts, not less. DKC1 had more ideas thrown into it than this game; that is why it has earned my strong disapproval. Had this been the first game in the series, I probably would've liked it. But it's not. It's game number 4 (5 if you count the N64 game) and it acts like the other 3 never happened. So if you don't mind, I'm going to act like this game never happened.
I was seriously ready to like this game. Reviews were glowing, it was a return to 2D side-scrolling, Retro Studios has made an awesome Wii game already, what could possibly go wrong? Well, apparently the development part. I don't know if Retro played a Donkey Kong Country game before making this, but it sure seems like they didn't. Readers, meet me in paragraph 3.
Let's talk graphics. They're good. I hate them, but it's not because of the technical side of things. They're clean, they're crisp, I get everything that's going on screen; sure there's a moment where I'm confused about what's in the foreground / middleground / background, but those instances are rare and far-between. What I don't like is the styling. If you've played a DKC game, you know each world evokes a different feel. In fact, you could make the comment that each game evokes a different feel. DKC1 had the lush jungles, DKC2 brought us pirate ships and marshes, and DKC3 mostly just combined everything before and made it better. What DKCR brings to the table is ultra-polish, next gen graphics ripped straight from Mario Galaxy. It's all too cartoony. There's no mood, no personality; everything's just ultra colorful and that's it. There are a few levels that simplify the colors and put everything into a silhouette, but these levels just remind me of World of Goo. There's nothing really original about it. And each area seems to just recycle the same vegetation and surroundings.
The soundtrack isn't much better. There are a few songs they brought back from the original series that brought me joy while playing, but all the new tracks are really just lifeless. They're that cliche, upbeat, stock music that doesn't help convey any sort of atmosphere or feeling, just uninspired rubbish. There's a particularly jarring soundtrack played during some of the industrial levels that's an upbeat jazz tune. I don't know why this level is so happy since the industrial area is causing pollution and ruining the environment, but as long as I can tap my toes and swing my hips to it, no harm done. I wanted something dire for the situations that were dire and the game seemed to afraid to show us a little bit of a dark side.
It's hard to differentiate between a lot of the levels because there's so little variation. Besides just straight-up platforming, you can ride in a little rocket barrel that's controlled solely by how much you mash the A button; more to go higher, less to go lower. Navigating this Kong Rocket is probably the hardest obstacle in the game since precision is a must, and you're only means of control a single button. Could this event have been controlled with the d-pad or nunchuck? Yes. Why wasn't it? Because some village out there is missing an idiot because Retro Studios employed them.
But the biggest disappointment, the biggest mistake this game makes and the primary reason I detest this entry is they don't make use of what the series has already established. There's no hint of nostalgia or use of past mechanics at all.
Here's the segment of the review I like to call, 'Hey, remember this?'.
Hey, remember how in the SNES series you eventually ended up with a whole cast of colorful characters in the Kong family? Well guess what, they're gone. You only have Cranky Kong and he's still cranky. No Candy, no Swanky, no Funky, no anyone.
Hey, remember how in the SNES series some levels let you control various amounts of animals and let you go through levels like that? Well guess what, there's 2. 2 whole levels that I came across were you control Rambi. That's it. Just a-two. No swordfish, no ostrich, squawks is non-playable, no snake, nothing. There's not even a single god-damn water level. So if you're like me and wanted to here an updated rendition of Aquatic Ambiance, you're SOL my friend, you're SOL right in the A.
Hey, remember how in the SNES series you could find secret areas that would give you some goal and a time limit? Well guess what, that's... still kinda true. You can collect banana's within a time limit for example; and when I say for example, I mean that's all there is. There's no bash the baddies, no find the coin, nothing. Just get the bananas and that's it.
Hey, remember how in the SNES series rolling around was fun? Well guess what, you have to shake the wii mote to do that now, and it sucks. The problem is shaking the wii mote performs a ground-pound, while shaking it when holding a direction left or right performs a roll. So there are times when you really need to roll, but ground-pound instead. I think they actually did their best so you'd never really need to use the roll move. It's used so little and not very effectively. Overall, its hard to control and can fail you at any moment. There was no reason not to make this title classic controller compatible. Screw you Nintendo.
Hey, remember how in the SNES series there were various types of barrels and blast barrels? Well guess what, they're gone. You have 1 type of barrel and about 3 types of blast barrels and that's it. Oh, but we have flowers we can blow with our monkey breath; thanks.. so... freakin'... much. Seriously, they actually spent time making it so down + wii mote shake makes you... blow on stuff. Hurray?
Hey, remember how in the SNES series you could collect DK coins, KONG, banana coins? Well guess what, this game takes that and takes a donkey dump on it. First off, the DK coins are gone. They're just gone. KONG is more of a collection feature; the game makes a note on which levels you've done it, and banana coins return as currency, but you get so many that really, you're never short of stuff to afford. You can buy extra lives, a key per world, Squawks, potions, etc. But it's just so easy to get them, it makes you wonder why the game has them in the first place. All the items you buy are one-time-use only. The keys are used to open up secret paths to an extra level, but these secret levels don't really offer anything new.
Hey, remember how in the SNES series the enemies were mean and tough? Well guess what Chuck, that's all gone. There's no Kremlin gang this time, just a bunch of stock animals that are more cute and cuddly than threatening. Honestly, I know this game was marketed to a broader audience, but give us some credit. If you're going to take away alligators, at least replace it with something just as menacing. Instead, the evil forces at work are wooden planks that hypnotize the inhabitants of the jungle to steal your bananas. Donkey and Diddy are the only two not effected because you have to have a brain to hypnotize for it to work. And why are they stealing bananas? Apparently to make an army of robot chickens or something. My brain died around this point in the game so it's hard to recall the stupidity.
Hey, remember how in the SNES series Donkey actually sounded like a gorilla? Well guess what, now he sounds like some idiot saying 'yahoo'. By the way, has anyone seen Mario lately?
Hey, remember how in the SNES series Donkey and Diddy could be interchangeable, offering different perspectives on the layout of the level? Well guess what, you're stuck with Donkey. Diddy is acquired by a barrel and has a jet pack, which suspends you in the air for slightly longer. No more taking the little bastard and hurling him across the screen, or throwing him up high to get a treasure.
Alright, enough of that.
I've heard people talk about the difficulty of this game, but really, all I've found is moments I have to fight with the controls. There's not really a steady curve either. Some spots will just spike the difficulty randomly, while later levels pose no threat at all. Most levels do start off easy, then moderately difficult before ending on a part that's hard. The level design is much more straight forward as opposed to the various barrel puzzles and complicated maneuvers from the old games.
Like most Nintendo games, the entire game play revolves around a lives system. For whatever reason, Shigeru Miyamoto can't get passed dumping this system and just letting people continue indefinitely. Gaming over in this game isn't even that bad, you're just sent to the beginning of the level. You still have all your coins and you still have all your unused items, so what's the point?
The game saves the biggest slap in the face for last. After all that platforming and barrel-blasting, the final boss ends up being a disembodied head with two hands... I'm not even kidding, that's the final boss. A disembodied head with two hands and the first targets you have to hit are his hands before moving on to his head. This is the biggest Nintendo cop-out final boss ever. How many Nintendo games end with this exact same boss structure? It just pisses me off to no end that they couldn't even come up with an original final boss fight for this game.
The overall point is: this game offers the least of all the games to gaming, which is inexcusable. When you have 3 games' worth of content and source material to work with, the product should be greater than those parts, not less. DKC1 had more ideas thrown into it than this game; that is why it has earned my strong disapproval. Had this been the first game in the series, I probably would've liked it. But it's not. It's game number 4 (5 if you count the N64 game) and it acts like the other 3 never happened. So if you don't mind, I'm going to act like this game never happened.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Review: Beyond Good And Evil
Ubisoft hasn't had any problems defining itself on the Playstation 2. With hits like the Prince of Persia games, they've taking gaming to interesting places. Beyond Good and Evil keeps that same mentality going while becoming one of the major cult favorites from that generation of gaming.
While starting the game, I noticed a few things that have bothered me over the years with video games. First off, the Ubisolf logo. They really want you to know who made this game, so Ubisoft decided to make their logo intro an unskippable part of the game. It's like they were so proud of the game they made, they keep throwing their logo at you like, 'Look, look! We made this game! I know, we can't believe it either." The second bothersome moment is selecting a language. This is the only game I've been prompted to select a language of the game every single time that I fire it up. Why not just ask that in the beginning of a new game or put it in the settings? I doubt there's a giant bilingual demographic in the gaming community that would enjoy switching up the language that often. I live in American, as far as I know, American is the only language in the world. DUR! The third strike comes from the game's lack of auto-selecting the Load Game option when it checks your memory card for a save file. It forever stays at New Game, meaning, you'll forget that New Game is default and you'll mash X through it all only to have to restart and try again. But this is really nit-picking right off the bat, let's get into some of the good.
The best thing that can be said is, this game lacks no attention to creativity and originality. You control Jade who is accompanied by Pej, and later HH, through many areas around the string of islands known as the Hillys to help uncover a secret plot between the invading aliens known as Domz and the supposed protectors of Hillys, the Alpha Section. Jade is a reporter equipped a combat pole and her camera, both of which are put to good use. Most of your missions involve taking pictures of certain clues to send to the Iris Network to uncover the truth of what's going on in the small island community. Along the way, you'll meet a colorful cast of characters of various animal derivatives and humans a-like: rostafarian rhinos, pig mechanics, etc, that will take you from your humble lighthouse orphanage to the far reaches of the moon. Despite being a relatively small world to roam around, it's full of life and little details that make you believe this rather cartoon-ish world.
The graphics are perfect for the level of cartoonishness that is presented. The areas are nicely detailed and colorful and the character designs have their own exaggerated features and personality. There not really anything bad to be said about any aspect of the presentation, the cartoon-nature doesn't come off as overly childish or off-putting. The lush graphics mixed with vibrant personalities all fit so well together, along with a soundtrack that has just as much personality and originality than the rest world. Voice acting is also well done, there's not a single blemish on the voice work in this game.
There's tons of variation to be found in this game: from running around on foot, to controlling your hovercraft to piloting a space ship, the game does well with changing up game play to keep everything feeling fresh. The best moments are the scripted chase scenes with combine the perfect mixture of fun and excitement. There's also plenty to collect around the world. You need to find pearls to buy upgrades for your vehicles in order to progress through the story. You can go to the races to find some, you can explore Looters Dens, you can take photos of the local wildlife, or you can simply just buy them. Most likely, you'll participate all of these events at least one time because you'll need a lot of the 88 pearls found throughout the game. When you're not being sidetracked, game play is comprised of sneaking around, platforming and combat. Ubisoft, being especially French, have always had trouble with combat. Since there's not an option to surrender during every fight, we must defend ourselves. Though functional, combat lacks precision. You'll mostly be mashing the attack button while pressing in the direction of the enemy. Sometimes your camera (one you're carrying, not the game camera) will be mixed into the combat when you get the disk-throwing glove, but its not very well-handled. Attacking with your power pole is done in 3rd person, while camera work is done in 1st person. Not sure why you have to be in camera mode to throw disks, but transitioning while enemies are surrounding you is not smooth or intuitive.
Like I said earlier, you're accompanied by a companion throughout most of the game and they get in on all the action. You can initiate a power move which helps you in combat, you can use your partner to access areas of a level you couldn't by yourself. Your partner does tend to be a liability since their health is significantly lower than yours and they're not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier. Their effectiveness is limited but they're not terrible either. HH does, however, get in the way a lot since he's a huge soldier in full armor. He'll stand in your way in a narrow hallways, he'll block your camera when he's following you, he'll stand in the way of photos when you're trying to take a quick snapshot, its just annoying. Too bad there's not a command to tell him to go wait in the corner while you take care of business.
Probably the biggest short-coming of the game is... it's just too short. You can beat it your first time through in about 6 or 7 hours, much less if you know what you're doing. There's only about 6 dungeon in the game, the final one being pretty linear. Kinda like this paragraph.
I would like to say I had the only play through this game once, but twice was the magic number. It was not my intention, but due to a particularly famous glitch, I was forced to restart the entire game. You see, at a random point in the game, there is a small chance of your partner vanishing from the game entirely. No more partner, no more progression, no more game. Your partner is vital to completing the game, losing them is unacceptable. The game decided to pull this crap with me at the last level; getting off my spaceship, my partner was no where to be found. Not knowing what to do, I saved and looked up the problem. The rest is a blur of red-hot anger and swearing. I'm not sure how the game made it out with such a fatal flaw, but if this game weren't so good, it would've been in the trash.
Sans the worst glitch in history, Beyond Good and Evil is a great game. The personality of the game is one-of-a-kind and is well-executed. What brevity it has is filled with a great narrative and great game play.
While starting the game, I noticed a few things that have bothered me over the years with video games. First off, the Ubisolf logo. They really want you to know who made this game, so Ubisoft decided to make their logo intro an unskippable part of the game. It's like they were so proud of the game they made, they keep throwing their logo at you like, 'Look, look! We made this game! I know, we can't believe it either." The second bothersome moment is selecting a language. This is the only game I've been prompted to select a language of the game every single time that I fire it up. Why not just ask that in the beginning of a new game or put it in the settings? I doubt there's a giant bilingual demographic in the gaming community that would enjoy switching up the language that often. I live in American, as far as I know, American is the only language in the world. DUR! The third strike comes from the game's lack of auto-selecting the Load Game option when it checks your memory card for a save file. It forever stays at New Game, meaning, you'll forget that New Game is default and you'll mash X through it all only to have to restart and try again. But this is really nit-picking right off the bat, let's get into some of the good.
The best thing that can be said is, this game lacks no attention to creativity and originality. You control Jade who is accompanied by Pej, and later HH, through many areas around the string of islands known as the Hillys to help uncover a secret plot between the invading aliens known as Domz and the supposed protectors of Hillys, the Alpha Section. Jade is a reporter equipped a combat pole and her camera, both of which are put to good use. Most of your missions involve taking pictures of certain clues to send to the Iris Network to uncover the truth of what's going on in the small island community. Along the way, you'll meet a colorful cast of characters of various animal derivatives and humans a-like: rostafarian rhinos, pig mechanics, etc, that will take you from your humble lighthouse orphanage to the far reaches of the moon. Despite being a relatively small world to roam around, it's full of life and little details that make you believe this rather cartoon-ish world.
The graphics are perfect for the level of cartoonishness that is presented. The areas are nicely detailed and colorful and the character designs have their own exaggerated features and personality. There not really anything bad to be said about any aspect of the presentation, the cartoon-nature doesn't come off as overly childish or off-putting. The lush graphics mixed with vibrant personalities all fit so well together, along with a soundtrack that has just as much personality and originality than the rest world. Voice acting is also well done, there's not a single blemish on the voice work in this game.
There's tons of variation to be found in this game: from running around on foot, to controlling your hovercraft to piloting a space ship, the game does well with changing up game play to keep everything feeling fresh. The best moments are the scripted chase scenes with combine the perfect mixture of fun and excitement. There's also plenty to collect around the world. You need to find pearls to buy upgrades for your vehicles in order to progress through the story. You can go to the races to find some, you can explore Looters Dens, you can take photos of the local wildlife, or you can simply just buy them. Most likely, you'll participate all of these events at least one time because you'll need a lot of the 88 pearls found throughout the game. When you're not being sidetracked, game play is comprised of sneaking around, platforming and combat. Ubisoft, being especially French, have always had trouble with combat. Since there's not an option to surrender during every fight, we must defend ourselves. Though functional, combat lacks precision. You'll mostly be mashing the attack button while pressing in the direction of the enemy. Sometimes your camera (one you're carrying, not the game camera) will be mixed into the combat when you get the disk-throwing glove, but its not very well-handled. Attacking with your power pole is done in 3rd person, while camera work is done in 1st person. Not sure why you have to be in camera mode to throw disks, but transitioning while enemies are surrounding you is not smooth or intuitive.
Like I said earlier, you're accompanied by a companion throughout most of the game and they get in on all the action. You can initiate a power move which helps you in combat, you can use your partner to access areas of a level you couldn't by yourself. Your partner does tend to be a liability since their health is significantly lower than yours and they're not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier. Their effectiveness is limited but they're not terrible either. HH does, however, get in the way a lot since he's a huge soldier in full armor. He'll stand in your way in a narrow hallways, he'll block your camera when he's following you, he'll stand in the way of photos when you're trying to take a quick snapshot, its just annoying. Too bad there's not a command to tell him to go wait in the corner while you take care of business.
Probably the biggest short-coming of the game is... it's just too short. You can beat it your first time through in about 6 or 7 hours, much less if you know what you're doing. There's only about 6 dungeon in the game, the final one being pretty linear. Kinda like this paragraph.
I would like to say I had the only play through this game once, but twice was the magic number. It was not my intention, but due to a particularly famous glitch, I was forced to restart the entire game. You see, at a random point in the game, there is a small chance of your partner vanishing from the game entirely. No more partner, no more progression, no more game. Your partner is vital to completing the game, losing them is unacceptable. The game decided to pull this crap with me at the last level; getting off my spaceship, my partner was no where to be found. Not knowing what to do, I saved and looked up the problem. The rest is a blur of red-hot anger and swearing. I'm not sure how the game made it out with such a fatal flaw, but if this game weren't so good, it would've been in the trash.
Sans the worst glitch in history, Beyond Good and Evil is a great game. The personality of the game is one-of-a-kind and is well-executed. What brevity it has is filled with a great narrative and great game play.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Favorite Video Games 10 - 1
I'm sure people are dying to see what made number one, same way people are dying for another Michael Bolton album. Finishing off this list wasn't easy considering the amount of games I've played and the quality that has existed in the industry for a long time. But I did manage to figure out a clear number 1 and I stand by it, so let's get this party started with...
10. Silent Hill
This game was the object of obsessiveness for me at the time. I constantly read guides and walkthroughs, looking for any secret not yet discovered, for some reference I might've missed, for some clue to what the heck was going on. I found most everything I was looking for. It just shows what happens when people take the time appreciate what they're trying to make.
This is another game that I covered so I'll keep it short. Silent Hill freaks me out. It may be pixelated and poorly controlled, but it does well to throw you into a hostile environment with no way out other that pushing forward through some of your worst fears. This game was designed to put your character through Hell. The series definitely found its stride with later games, but this one kicked it off for me and did something different with the survival horror genre.
Silent Hill isn't a place you leave, it stays with you always.
9. Metal Gear Solid
And the game I rented the most award goes to Metal Gear Solid. I probably could've bought this game a few times over with the amount of times I rented this from Blockbuster. Back when the PS1 was getting strong this game was released. It was in all the magazines, raving about Solid Snake who only appeared in games on the MSX, NES and SNES beforehand, none of which I played on their original console. But how could I ignore the constant barrage of talk and hype plastered all over my Official Playstation Magazine, I finally had to see what the big deal was.
The big deal was a game that took a 2D series and brought it to life with 3D. You could argue 2D Mario or 2D Zelda are better than their 3D counterparts, but Metal Gear Solid is a series that belongs in 3D.
Much like Silent Hill, this game had a lot for the player to take in. Fully voiced characters, live action cutscenes mixed with ingame graphic cutscenes, this game was a benchmark in gaming.
The story was about as complicated as a tangle of spider webs and it's characters were nice and rounded. It was refreshing to see a game that had a message to say, and did so through the art of storytelling. It combined new-age technologies with conspiracy theory craziness; throwing in one of the most bad-ass gaming heroes and the gravely voice of the great David Hayter, and you have gold. Metal Gear Solid was about being a one man infiltration unit, slipping in unnoticed and sneaking around to uncover the secrets of Shadow Moses. How you approached a situation was entirely up to the player. You could take to the shadows and masterfully make your way through to your next objective, or you could just say screw it and run in guns-a-blazing. The important thing to take note of is the game handles both situations quite well. You can be the sneakiest bastard in Alaska or you could just Rambo everything, the game facilitated both to their full potential. You got an arsenal of weapons and gadgets to play with (including a card board box, how you use it is up to you) and the game lets you have all the fun you want, the way you want. Feel like laying a path of mines in front of a soldiers route? Go for it. Feel like holding him hostage while at the same time using him as a body shield? How delightful it must be.
Hideo Kojima's level of detail that he puts into each game makes him the man he is today, and this game is no exception. Hideo Kojima also sought to it that this game had Easter Eggs all over the place. The oddest one of all has to be the ghosts that haunt the entire game. I believe there's about 45 of them and they only show up when you photograph a certain area. It's touches like that which make you want to explore every inch of this game.
It's weird to think about it now, being placed before Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Gear Solid 4 considering the game could've just not had a sequel and it would've worked. But Hideo Kojima couldn't say no to giving Snake more opportunities to strap C4 to a guards back and count the paces before hitting the trigger (which never gets old by the way).
This game was also brilliantly used in a flash back sequence in Metal Gear Solid 4. One of the most powerful moments in my gaming life was returning to Shadow Moses after all that time. It made me realize how much players have gone through with the series, and where most of us probably began the journey. When you get emotional about a game, you know it's good, and that's why its number 9.
8. Final Fantasy XII
Yes, never before was there an offline Final Fantasy that got so much hate from the community (until 13 came out). I can see why people didn't like it, but I don't think people appreciated the great changes Final Fantasy XII made to the series. It's almost a sin to put this game up so high, but I really just find it to be a fun experience.
The big difference between this game and the rest of the series was the combat system. Not only was it in real time, but it also followed the MMO formula of wandering around and fighting enemies, dealing with aggro and linking. This was quite the refreshing system after 20 years of battle screens and random encounters. And for once in the series, it wasn't over when your party on screen was wiped out; you could dig into your other party members to continue the fight. It wasn't until this game made this change that I realized how illogical RPG combat really was. In FFVI if your party died, it was just game over; but what about the rest of the people traveling around with you? What about them? Well FFXII changed that and it was good. Since everything was in real time, you could only control one out of three party members. This brought about the gambit system. It was a way to manage the AIs of the other characters, so they acted only according to what you told them to do. It allowed players to use their command skills instead of relying on the hit or miss nature of pre-programmed AI. The only drawback was having to find all the commands options. And near the end of the game, all gambit setups turned out to be very similar anyways.
The world was also quite something to explore. It felt like exploration had opened up again from the linearity of FFX into fully explorable maps. I enjoy traversing every area, discovering new ones and finding new challenges along the way. In fact, a lot of the world map was completely optional from the beaten path. But not just the areas were quite expansive, there were a host of other optional content one could partake in when they had the time. Quests, bosses, treasure, all lay hidden for those willing to look for it.
One of the major complaint about this game was the leveling system and the means of which players could learn to equip their gear. A character could only equip a piece of gear once they learned how to use it through LP on a board. This was a rather confusing method considering every time the past when you found a piece of gear, you could just throw it on, no problem. But now your characters were apparently so stupid, they had to go through the proper training class, complete a set of courses, be reviewed by the high council and graduate from the academy of hats before they could wear the next upgrade.
While the above was ridiculed, the following was cause for great ire. The story and the characters were not really up to par with fan standards. But then really, what Final Fantasy plot and cast of characters really is brilliant? Final Fantasy 8? Final Fantasy 10? I think players like to think Final Fantasy as some literary masterpiece, when really it's more on the fanfic level of storytelling. Analyze any plot from any one of these games, and you'll realize how ridiculous some of them are. Though, but comparison, Final Fantasy XII's story was a little empty at times, mostly due to staffing issues, and some characters were just flat-out usless (Vaan and Penelo...), I never found it a reason to hate the game.
Again, the reason I loved this game because it was so different from the rest of the series, and it tried new things that I had never seen in a console RPG. After FFX was so linear, I thought the full-range exploration era of RPGs was over, and then this game launched with better graphics and bigger areas.
7. Shadow of the Colossus
Team Ico strikes again with their 2nd game. Shadow of the Colossus sealed their place in gaming history by delivering yet another classic game that didn't feel comfortable being another copy and pasted game thrown in the market. SotC is a unique game that has yet to be replicated.
The story once again is very minimal and open to various interpretations. I get the feeling that this game is a prequel to the Ico game, but really, it stands great on its own. The story is you bring your girlfriend / sister / random stranger? to a temple of a dark god and have to go through the task of ridding the holy lands of their guardians or colossi. So most of the game is comprised of finding the colossi and slaying them.
Once you find the colossi, the really impressive part of the game begins. These bosses are HUGE, and are probably the best in gaming. Each one has their own attitude and way to be felled. From flying colossi, underwater colossi, colossi that walked around on all fours and colossi that were stationary: there is no limit to variation when tackling these behemoths. I kid you not that some of these bosses feel more like skyscrapers than bosses. But the way they move and react to your presence makes them very lifelike.
This is a game that has to be played to truly understand why it's great. For every good thing it does, there's also good in what it doesn't do. The game could've had enemies along the way to bog down the traveling, but the creator's wanted to showcase the environments instead. And they were beautiful. The game could've had some cheesy plot, but it let the player read into what was going on. It could've contrived some overly complicated combat system, but all you needed was a sword and explosive arrows (which were hilarious to fire at your horse) and the rest was up to you. Simple in it's nature and execution, this game is brilliant.
6. Donkey Kong Country
Forget Mario, the Donkey Kong Country series was platforming to me. I picked out the first game because it was the one I probably played the most. The graphics were ultra polished for the SNES, the game play was solid and the soundtrack was SNES gold. There is so little to not like about this game, and the fact that Nintendo deemed it worthy to bring back has been a long time coming. It's funny how the original game of Donkey Kong featured both Mario and Donkey Kong, and now they both have successful platforming games on the SNES.
This game made it so high up because this is really all I played back in the day. It's an easy game to pick up and play and just have fun. And that's the real point of gaming, to just have fun and be entertained. No stat grinding, no overly complicated stories or character developments, just a gorilla named Donkey and his buddy Diddy. Not much else can be said, so let's keep going.
5. Chrono Cross
With as much regard as I hold this game, it's kind of weird putting it at number 5. Chrono Cross is a hard game to say is great because it is technically a sequel to the legendary Chrono Trigger, but not in the traditional way. It's more like a closer look at a minor detail of the world of Chrono Trigger and only focuses on one time setting and cast that almost has nothing to do with Chrono Trigger. On paper, it's almost like a step backwards for the series, no time traveling, no Crono, what was this game supposed to be? Despite casting aside a lot of what made Chrono Trigger a classic, Chrono Cross stepped up with all new ideas and an all new cast to give us one of the biggest RPG hits of all time. I firmly believe that Chrono Cross did the impossible by surpassing its predecessor in just about every way possible. And for those whining that there's no Chrono remember: it's called Chrono Cross, not Chrono Trigger 2.
You follow around another mute protagonist named Serge who has the misfortune of sidestepping to a parallel world that is almost exactly the same as his own. So why is this world worth visiting or caring about? Well, in this new version of the world, Serge is dead. Thus begins a journey to figure out the mysteries of the Frozen Flame, the enigma that is Kid and bringing one of the loose plot threads of Chrono Trigger to an end. The plot gets very complicated and the logistics of some of the time-travelling back story end up as discussions on how, if time travel was possible, it would work and changes the events of history. One of the most interesting points in the story is the visit to the city of Chronopolis. An entire city that was thrust backwards in time by one of the three sages accidentally, thus altering the time space continuum and causing a rift in the dimensions. Wrapping your head around it does take some time and a whole lot of reading, but it's non-the-less fascinating.
The graphics were the best PS1 had to offer and the soundtrack was nothing short of amazing. Yasunori Mitsuda composed his magnum opus with this game. Previously responsible for Xenogears and Chrono Trigger, he really came through with this game and delivered. Every single piece of work helps the player fully realize every single area, moment and mood in the entire game. I still hold firm that this is the greatest soundtrack ever composed for a game.
While Chrono Trigger had a select few cast of characters, Chrono Cross had over 40 playable characters. This may seem like massive overkill. How could each character possibly have a fleshed out background, personality and developing story. Well they do. Somehow the dev team managed to create each character with a unique personality and storyline which made them memorable. The way they did this was creating scenarios that followed only a certain number of the total cast along the way. It took about 3 playthroughs to find everyone in the game, and characters, data and levels carried over into the next game.
New Game+ has always been a preferred feature of RPGs to me and the Chrono series has it in spades. I think it's important to have the option to use all the progress you've made for your next adventure.
The best part of the game had to be near the end in the aftermath of the orphanage scene. If anyone has played the game, they know of a moment that only lasted for about a minute before jerking you back into reality. What ensued in that 1 minute was nothing short of one the most beautiful moments in gaming. A point at which the story drew up startling revelations and helped define Kid as a character. The contrast of emotions of the character and the backdrop of destruction was just a brilliant combination of scenery and story.
4. Resident Evil 4
Resident Evil 4 was another game covered in another post. Without going into reasons, this game revitalized the Resident Evil franchise and defined new standards in gaming. It's one of the few games I've purchased twice for two different platforms just to tackle all the extra content. It was a big game when it was released and it's legacy will never be forgotten.
3. Xenogears
Touching. That's what this game amounts to emotionally. It's weird how stereotypical this game starts out, but then it evolves into something so complex and unique, you can't help but follow each step of the journey with the greatest anticipation of what could possibly happen next. The story alone is worth play for because I've never read anything like it. It borrows from sci-fi culture, religion and anime, and combines it all into one cohesive story line that follows the life and struggle of Fei Fong Wong. Each character leaves such an impact on your that your heart breaks when the game is over. If I had to pick a game to remake or continue as a series, it would be Xenogears Episode V: Deus Ex Machina.
The game didn't have the best graphics around: sure the mechs looked cool, but the character models were horrible. But it did have a stellar soundtrack, even though much of the game relied on ambient noises instead of actual music. Each character carried with them some burden or struggle which they had to overcome. Even the antagonists, you wanted to feel sorry for them since they all acted like human beings. Ramsus gets a special mention for being one of the most tragic figures in gaming simply because he believe his existence is meaningless after feeling like he was the most important creation of God. This game isn't afraid to delve into the human mind, you're frequently taken on Fei's mental journey through his various personalities and incarnations.
Battling was broken up into human combat and mech combat. Humans (or the various other species of intelligent life) could unleash deadly combos and spells on their opponents. Opening up the combo trees corresponded to the combos your mechs could use. While piloted your 'gear', you could perform different levels of attack while consumed a certain amount of fuel, and sometimes, while building up your attack levels, you could entire Infinitely Mode. Basically giving you the chance to punish anything in front of you with extreme prejudice. By the end of the game, mech combat definitely took center-stage, but the game also did well to throw upgrades at you.
There isn't much in the way of optional content, though the game will take about about 50 hours to complete, and the story is at the driving wheel the entire time.
The legacy of Xenogears did live on briefly with 3 Namco games on the PS2 titled Xenosaga. It was meant to lead up to the events of Xenogears but stopped short at Episode III due to budget and copyright issues. So fans have always been left wanting more. What about episode IV? What about episode VI which was outline in the Perfect Works Guide? It's a shame that this series is as fractured as it is today. Most of the original development team left Square Soft and formed Monolith Software, so the chances of a remake or sequel are slim to none at best. It's a real shame to. This is one game that could benefit with a few translation changes and a graphics overhaul. Or maybe it's better we imagine what the game would be like. It's been so long and expectations would be impossible to meet.
2. Final Fantasy VII
Here it is. The big one. The head hancho. The mother of all RPGs. The single game which thrusted RPGs into the spotlight of gaming. The single game which had other development teams struggling to reproduce in order to capture a fraction of the success it had. Final Fantasy VII is less of a game, more of a legacy. If it wasn't for games like Ocarina of Time on the N64, Sony would've just floored Nintendo in the console wars. In fact, I think Ocarina of Time is the only game that can stand toe to toe with Final Fantasy VII in terms of fan base. It's obvious though that no other RPG has a reputation like this one.
It's hard to talk about it since it was my first console RPG and my first official Final Fantasy game. At the time, it was so odd to me. The concept of save points and the battle screen, they were all so foreign. For the first few months, I don't think I ever made it past the Guard Scorpion because I just wasn't that interested. But then I did sit down and play. I played almost everyday until I finally beat it. This is the game that convinved me that RPGs were worth investing my time, my money and my heart into.
Final Fantasy VII really wasn't supposed to be the 7th entry in the series. SquareSoft found themselves in another dire financial situation, much like back in the 80s when they created the series which ended up saving the company. So it's no wonder that the same series did it once again. What came out of it has been one of the most-talked about game, gathering a massive fan base and legend that eclipses the game itself.
With great fan base comes great hatred. Without fail, there's a lot of people that detest this game for what it is. Whether it's being called the greatest thing since the Beatles or the worst thing since E.T. for Atari, I don't think either extreme really has an accurate account of the game. It's almost unfair how this game has been tugged back and forth between people.
Final Fantasy VII is a great game. The graphics haven't aged that well, but the experience is none-the-less enjoyable. The battle system gives you blank-slated character in which you can assign a variety of spells and abilities, building them the way you see fit. The amount of abilities / spells you could allocate was determined by your armor and weapons. The only real problem with the battle system was the magical defense stat was broken, as in, it didn't work. Through some error in programming, the magical defense modifier is never properly calculated. But really, I've played through the game so much, you hardly notice it.
A lot of people like to criticize it's main character: Cloud Strife. The word 'emo' is thrown around a lot with him, and people couldn't be more wrong. Cloud isn't emo, he's a prick. He's a jerk that doesn't really care about anyone other than himself, and it takes a world crisis for him to work with other people. He also happens to be mentally screwed up. I guess this is where people call emo, but he was mentally altered in an experiment during some military plot to reproduce the super-soldier that was Sephiroth. None of the above constitutes emo behavior. People like to throw emo into a character's description whenever they don't fart magical ponies and rainbows with every line. I actually found Vincent to be the more emo character in the game, but no one seems to call him that. It just shows you the ugly side of popularity, when people will overly criticize a game when they've probably never took the time to play it. On the opposite side of that are people who blindly follow this game because it's so popular. The game is great, but it's not the greatest. Objective observations will attest to that.
Unfortunately, this will be a game that will forever haunt Square Enix. I don't think there's been a bigger request to remake a game than there has been with Final Fantasy VII. Expectations and technical limits almost make this task impossible to pull off. It's a shame that this game has been buried under all the hype and slander that it has because really, it's just another Final Fantasy. Every entry before it and every entry after it have tried to add something more to RPGs, and this is no exception.
But we must remember, like it or hate it, Final Fantasy VII is the reason RPGs were popular. It brought in a lot of fans and helped a genre that never really saw mainstream success like Mario or Zelda. It gave a genre a chance to show the world what it can do, and we've enjoyed a plethora of games because of it.
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It seems like Final Fantasy VII should've been number one. It influenced me in many ways other games just couldn't. And yet I still have one more game to go. This next game wasn't culturally important, and it didn't break any new grounds. No, what it has done though is excel in just about every area. It combines a great story with great game play and I have sunk countless hours into this game, doing everything that can be done, and then going back and doing it again. Challenging myself and finding new ways to play it. The number one game is nothing short of a masterpiece of gaming.
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1. Final Fantasy Tactics
I just love this game to death. Not only is probably one of the best turn-based strategy games ever made, but it also carries with it one of the best stories ever told in gaming. Clearly taking inspiration from writers like Shakespeare, Final Fantasy Tactics just has everything going for it. By the end of it, I was emotionally drained from the tale of love, deception, betrayal, power struggles, corruption and the all important quest for power.
You followed the tale of Ramza as he attempts to sway the tides of a three-way power struggle over an empty seat of a deceased king. We're given the impression that Ramza's tale is being told from a narrator's point of view, looking back on the pages of history and finding Ramza's actions to be undocumented and never fully seen as a force acting upon the war. It's Ramza's friend, Delita that has been given all the credit for the story's finale, but we slowly learn how historical records can deceive, as Ramza was always acting in the shadow of a much larger plot. It really is over-simplifying everything, but that's the tone of the entire story.
What really keeps me coming back is the game play. The battle system, though inspired from the Tactics Ogre series, is very deep and challenging. You're given a slew of job classes, each one having their own strengths and weaknesses which you have to exploit and overcome on the battlefield. You can also carry over certain job abilities and traits to other jobs, giving you an almost endless possibility of job combinations and set ups. And there is no optimal setup. You need to fashion your characters in the manner best to overcome the next challenge, what may work for one battle, will get you killed in the next. Late in the game though, certain jobs start to overpower others, like archer and Spellsword classes. Archers start off great but then slowly lose their luster while spellswords are introduced to almost game-breaking standards. Magic also starts to take a back seat when battles come down to speed. The polarization is even furthered with the addition of dark knights in the PSP version, basically being suicidal powerhouses that can dish out the damage in droves while being able to heal instantly.
The game is still a barrel of fun, and has some optional challenges along the way. You can pick up new characters with unique abilities and traits, including Cloud from Final Fantasy VII. The PSP also gives the players the chance to wirelessly team up for missions and combat sessions which is a much appreciated feature that has been missing from console strategy RPGs for the longest time. The new co-op missions are no joke either. Square Enix fully understood that players would be looking for a challenge, and taking your Orlandu into battle wasn't a guarenteed win anymore. Two missions that stand out in my mind is the 10 Algus battle where you have to fend off 10 incarnations of your fallen compatriot while trying to prevent being turned into a vampire every turn. The next is the 10 floor dive into the abyss, each floor being harder than the next. But if you come out victorious, the rewards are great. The PSP version also handed us a whole new set of gear to play around with, including the onion armor set.
The game isn't perfect, it can be hard to get a correct camera angle on some of the isometric view points, and the terrain graphics aren't winning any awards, but these are mere fleas of complaints on the dazzling unicorn of triumph this game is. It's always a must when traveling somewhere, especially if you have someone to play with. The game really just never gets boring, even after completing everything there is to complete.
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Those are my favorite video games. It's easy to see that the PS1 was a major influence on me. There are other games I wanted to put on this list like Final Fantasy IV, Mega Man IV or Pokemon Red. But after weighing all the power some of these games have over me, I feel this list accurately depicts my feelings for them. When looking for a game, I try to find the one's that are unique and don't just rely on the success of other games that came before it, but I can't help being drawn to some of my first-genre games. That's why I made the list of my favorite games and not the best. Everyone looks at a game differently, so the best video game ever is impossible to determine. And besides, everyone knows the best video game ever created is Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
10. Silent Hill
This game was the object of obsessiveness for me at the time. I constantly read guides and walkthroughs, looking for any secret not yet discovered, for some reference I might've missed, for some clue to what the heck was going on. I found most everything I was looking for. It just shows what happens when people take the time appreciate what they're trying to make.
This is another game that I covered so I'll keep it short. Silent Hill freaks me out. It may be pixelated and poorly controlled, but it does well to throw you into a hostile environment with no way out other that pushing forward through some of your worst fears. This game was designed to put your character through Hell. The series definitely found its stride with later games, but this one kicked it off for me and did something different with the survival horror genre.
Silent Hill isn't a place you leave, it stays with you always.
9. Metal Gear Solid
And the game I rented the most award goes to Metal Gear Solid. I probably could've bought this game a few times over with the amount of times I rented this from Blockbuster. Back when the PS1 was getting strong this game was released. It was in all the magazines, raving about Solid Snake who only appeared in games on the MSX, NES and SNES beforehand, none of which I played on their original console. But how could I ignore the constant barrage of talk and hype plastered all over my Official Playstation Magazine, I finally had to see what the big deal was.
The big deal was a game that took a 2D series and brought it to life with 3D. You could argue 2D Mario or 2D Zelda are better than their 3D counterparts, but Metal Gear Solid is a series that belongs in 3D.
Much like Silent Hill, this game had a lot for the player to take in. Fully voiced characters, live action cutscenes mixed with ingame graphic cutscenes, this game was a benchmark in gaming.
The story was about as complicated as a tangle of spider webs and it's characters were nice and rounded. It was refreshing to see a game that had a message to say, and did so through the art of storytelling. It combined new-age technologies with conspiracy theory craziness; throwing in one of the most bad-ass gaming heroes and the gravely voice of the great David Hayter, and you have gold. Metal Gear Solid was about being a one man infiltration unit, slipping in unnoticed and sneaking around to uncover the secrets of Shadow Moses. How you approached a situation was entirely up to the player. You could take to the shadows and masterfully make your way through to your next objective, or you could just say screw it and run in guns-a-blazing. The important thing to take note of is the game handles both situations quite well. You can be the sneakiest bastard in Alaska or you could just Rambo everything, the game facilitated both to their full potential. You got an arsenal of weapons and gadgets to play with (including a card board box, how you use it is up to you) and the game lets you have all the fun you want, the way you want. Feel like laying a path of mines in front of a soldiers route? Go for it. Feel like holding him hostage while at the same time using him as a body shield? How delightful it must be.
Hideo Kojima's level of detail that he puts into each game makes him the man he is today, and this game is no exception. Hideo Kojima also sought to it that this game had Easter Eggs all over the place. The oddest one of all has to be the ghosts that haunt the entire game. I believe there's about 45 of them and they only show up when you photograph a certain area. It's touches like that which make you want to explore every inch of this game.
It's weird to think about it now, being placed before Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Gear Solid 4 considering the game could've just not had a sequel and it would've worked. But Hideo Kojima couldn't say no to giving Snake more opportunities to strap C4 to a guards back and count the paces before hitting the trigger (which never gets old by the way).
This game was also brilliantly used in a flash back sequence in Metal Gear Solid 4. One of the most powerful moments in my gaming life was returning to Shadow Moses after all that time. It made me realize how much players have gone through with the series, and where most of us probably began the journey. When you get emotional about a game, you know it's good, and that's why its number 9.
8. Final Fantasy XII
Yes, never before was there an offline Final Fantasy that got so much hate from the community (until 13 came out). I can see why people didn't like it, but I don't think people appreciated the great changes Final Fantasy XII made to the series. It's almost a sin to put this game up so high, but I really just find it to be a fun experience.
The big difference between this game and the rest of the series was the combat system. Not only was it in real time, but it also followed the MMO formula of wandering around and fighting enemies, dealing with aggro and linking. This was quite the refreshing system after 20 years of battle screens and random encounters. And for once in the series, it wasn't over when your party on screen was wiped out; you could dig into your other party members to continue the fight. It wasn't until this game made this change that I realized how illogical RPG combat really was. In FFVI if your party died, it was just game over; but what about the rest of the people traveling around with you? What about them? Well FFXII changed that and it was good. Since everything was in real time, you could only control one out of three party members. This brought about the gambit system. It was a way to manage the AIs of the other characters, so they acted only according to what you told them to do. It allowed players to use their command skills instead of relying on the hit or miss nature of pre-programmed AI. The only drawback was having to find all the commands options. And near the end of the game, all gambit setups turned out to be very similar anyways.
The world was also quite something to explore. It felt like exploration had opened up again from the linearity of FFX into fully explorable maps. I enjoy traversing every area, discovering new ones and finding new challenges along the way. In fact, a lot of the world map was completely optional from the beaten path. But not just the areas were quite expansive, there were a host of other optional content one could partake in when they had the time. Quests, bosses, treasure, all lay hidden for those willing to look for it.
One of the major complaint about this game was the leveling system and the means of which players could learn to equip their gear. A character could only equip a piece of gear once they learned how to use it through LP on a board. This was a rather confusing method considering every time the past when you found a piece of gear, you could just throw it on, no problem. But now your characters were apparently so stupid, they had to go through the proper training class, complete a set of courses, be reviewed by the high council and graduate from the academy of hats before they could wear the next upgrade.
While the above was ridiculed, the following was cause for great ire. The story and the characters were not really up to par with fan standards. But then really, what Final Fantasy plot and cast of characters really is brilliant? Final Fantasy 8? Final Fantasy 10? I think players like to think Final Fantasy as some literary masterpiece, when really it's more on the fanfic level of storytelling. Analyze any plot from any one of these games, and you'll realize how ridiculous some of them are. Though, but comparison, Final Fantasy XII's story was a little empty at times, mostly due to staffing issues, and some characters were just flat-out usless (Vaan and Penelo...), I never found it a reason to hate the game.
Again, the reason I loved this game because it was so different from the rest of the series, and it tried new things that I had never seen in a console RPG. After FFX was so linear, I thought the full-range exploration era of RPGs was over, and then this game launched with better graphics and bigger areas.
7. Shadow of the Colossus
Team Ico strikes again with their 2nd game. Shadow of the Colossus sealed their place in gaming history by delivering yet another classic game that didn't feel comfortable being another copy and pasted game thrown in the market. SotC is a unique game that has yet to be replicated.
The story once again is very minimal and open to various interpretations. I get the feeling that this game is a prequel to the Ico game, but really, it stands great on its own. The story is you bring your girlfriend / sister / random stranger? to a temple of a dark god and have to go through the task of ridding the holy lands of their guardians or colossi. So most of the game is comprised of finding the colossi and slaying them.
Once you find the colossi, the really impressive part of the game begins. These bosses are HUGE, and are probably the best in gaming. Each one has their own attitude and way to be felled. From flying colossi, underwater colossi, colossi that walked around on all fours and colossi that were stationary: there is no limit to variation when tackling these behemoths. I kid you not that some of these bosses feel more like skyscrapers than bosses. But the way they move and react to your presence makes them very lifelike.
This is a game that has to be played to truly understand why it's great. For every good thing it does, there's also good in what it doesn't do. The game could've had enemies along the way to bog down the traveling, but the creator's wanted to showcase the environments instead. And they were beautiful. The game could've had some cheesy plot, but it let the player read into what was going on. It could've contrived some overly complicated combat system, but all you needed was a sword and explosive arrows (which were hilarious to fire at your horse) and the rest was up to you. Simple in it's nature and execution, this game is brilliant.
6. Donkey Kong Country
Forget Mario, the Donkey Kong Country series was platforming to me. I picked out the first game because it was the one I probably played the most. The graphics were ultra polished for the SNES, the game play was solid and the soundtrack was SNES gold. There is so little to not like about this game, and the fact that Nintendo deemed it worthy to bring back has been a long time coming. It's funny how the original game of Donkey Kong featured both Mario and Donkey Kong, and now they both have successful platforming games on the SNES.
This game made it so high up because this is really all I played back in the day. It's an easy game to pick up and play and just have fun. And that's the real point of gaming, to just have fun and be entertained. No stat grinding, no overly complicated stories or character developments, just a gorilla named Donkey and his buddy Diddy. Not much else can be said, so let's keep going.
5. Chrono Cross
With as much regard as I hold this game, it's kind of weird putting it at number 5. Chrono Cross is a hard game to say is great because it is technically a sequel to the legendary Chrono Trigger, but not in the traditional way. It's more like a closer look at a minor detail of the world of Chrono Trigger and only focuses on one time setting and cast that almost has nothing to do with Chrono Trigger. On paper, it's almost like a step backwards for the series, no time traveling, no Crono, what was this game supposed to be? Despite casting aside a lot of what made Chrono Trigger a classic, Chrono Cross stepped up with all new ideas and an all new cast to give us one of the biggest RPG hits of all time. I firmly believe that Chrono Cross did the impossible by surpassing its predecessor in just about every way possible. And for those whining that there's no Chrono remember: it's called Chrono Cross, not Chrono Trigger 2.
You follow around another mute protagonist named Serge who has the misfortune of sidestepping to a parallel world that is almost exactly the same as his own. So why is this world worth visiting or caring about? Well, in this new version of the world, Serge is dead. Thus begins a journey to figure out the mysteries of the Frozen Flame, the enigma that is Kid and bringing one of the loose plot threads of Chrono Trigger to an end. The plot gets very complicated and the logistics of some of the time-travelling back story end up as discussions on how, if time travel was possible, it would work and changes the events of history. One of the most interesting points in the story is the visit to the city of Chronopolis. An entire city that was thrust backwards in time by one of the three sages accidentally, thus altering the time space continuum and causing a rift in the dimensions. Wrapping your head around it does take some time and a whole lot of reading, but it's non-the-less fascinating.
The graphics were the best PS1 had to offer and the soundtrack was nothing short of amazing. Yasunori Mitsuda composed his magnum opus with this game. Previously responsible for Xenogears and Chrono Trigger, he really came through with this game and delivered. Every single piece of work helps the player fully realize every single area, moment and mood in the entire game. I still hold firm that this is the greatest soundtrack ever composed for a game.
While Chrono Trigger had a select few cast of characters, Chrono Cross had over 40 playable characters. This may seem like massive overkill. How could each character possibly have a fleshed out background, personality and developing story. Well they do. Somehow the dev team managed to create each character with a unique personality and storyline which made them memorable. The way they did this was creating scenarios that followed only a certain number of the total cast along the way. It took about 3 playthroughs to find everyone in the game, and characters, data and levels carried over into the next game.
New Game+ has always been a preferred feature of RPGs to me and the Chrono series has it in spades. I think it's important to have the option to use all the progress you've made for your next adventure.
The best part of the game had to be near the end in the aftermath of the orphanage scene. If anyone has played the game, they know of a moment that only lasted for about a minute before jerking you back into reality. What ensued in that 1 minute was nothing short of one the most beautiful moments in gaming. A point at which the story drew up startling revelations and helped define Kid as a character. The contrast of emotions of the character and the backdrop of destruction was just a brilliant combination of scenery and story.
4. Resident Evil 4
Resident Evil 4 was another game covered in another post. Without going into reasons, this game revitalized the Resident Evil franchise and defined new standards in gaming. It's one of the few games I've purchased twice for two different platforms just to tackle all the extra content. It was a big game when it was released and it's legacy will never be forgotten.
3. Xenogears
Touching. That's what this game amounts to emotionally. It's weird how stereotypical this game starts out, but then it evolves into something so complex and unique, you can't help but follow each step of the journey with the greatest anticipation of what could possibly happen next. The story alone is worth play for because I've never read anything like it. It borrows from sci-fi culture, religion and anime, and combines it all into one cohesive story line that follows the life and struggle of Fei Fong Wong. Each character leaves such an impact on your that your heart breaks when the game is over. If I had to pick a game to remake or continue as a series, it would be Xenogears Episode V: Deus Ex Machina.
The game didn't have the best graphics around: sure the mechs looked cool, but the character models were horrible. But it did have a stellar soundtrack, even though much of the game relied on ambient noises instead of actual music. Each character carried with them some burden or struggle which they had to overcome. Even the antagonists, you wanted to feel sorry for them since they all acted like human beings. Ramsus gets a special mention for being one of the most tragic figures in gaming simply because he believe his existence is meaningless after feeling like he was the most important creation of God. This game isn't afraid to delve into the human mind, you're frequently taken on Fei's mental journey through his various personalities and incarnations.
Battling was broken up into human combat and mech combat. Humans (or the various other species of intelligent life) could unleash deadly combos and spells on their opponents. Opening up the combo trees corresponded to the combos your mechs could use. While piloted your 'gear', you could perform different levels of attack while consumed a certain amount of fuel, and sometimes, while building up your attack levels, you could entire Infinitely Mode. Basically giving you the chance to punish anything in front of you with extreme prejudice. By the end of the game, mech combat definitely took center-stage, but the game also did well to throw upgrades at you.
There isn't much in the way of optional content, though the game will take about about 50 hours to complete, and the story is at the driving wheel the entire time.
The legacy of Xenogears did live on briefly with 3 Namco games on the PS2 titled Xenosaga. It was meant to lead up to the events of Xenogears but stopped short at Episode III due to budget and copyright issues. So fans have always been left wanting more. What about episode IV? What about episode VI which was outline in the Perfect Works Guide? It's a shame that this series is as fractured as it is today. Most of the original development team left Square Soft and formed Monolith Software, so the chances of a remake or sequel are slim to none at best. It's a real shame to. This is one game that could benefit with a few translation changes and a graphics overhaul. Or maybe it's better we imagine what the game would be like. It's been so long and expectations would be impossible to meet.
2. Final Fantasy VII
Here it is. The big one. The head hancho. The mother of all RPGs. The single game which thrusted RPGs into the spotlight of gaming. The single game which had other development teams struggling to reproduce in order to capture a fraction of the success it had. Final Fantasy VII is less of a game, more of a legacy. If it wasn't for games like Ocarina of Time on the N64, Sony would've just floored Nintendo in the console wars. In fact, I think Ocarina of Time is the only game that can stand toe to toe with Final Fantasy VII in terms of fan base. It's obvious though that no other RPG has a reputation like this one.
It's hard to talk about it since it was my first console RPG and my first official Final Fantasy game. At the time, it was so odd to me. The concept of save points and the battle screen, they were all so foreign. For the first few months, I don't think I ever made it past the Guard Scorpion because I just wasn't that interested. But then I did sit down and play. I played almost everyday until I finally beat it. This is the game that convinved me that RPGs were worth investing my time, my money and my heart into.
Final Fantasy VII really wasn't supposed to be the 7th entry in the series. SquareSoft found themselves in another dire financial situation, much like back in the 80s when they created the series which ended up saving the company. So it's no wonder that the same series did it once again. What came out of it has been one of the most-talked about game, gathering a massive fan base and legend that eclipses the game itself.
With great fan base comes great hatred. Without fail, there's a lot of people that detest this game for what it is. Whether it's being called the greatest thing since the Beatles or the worst thing since E.T. for Atari, I don't think either extreme really has an accurate account of the game. It's almost unfair how this game has been tugged back and forth between people.
Final Fantasy VII is a great game. The graphics haven't aged that well, but the experience is none-the-less enjoyable. The battle system gives you blank-slated character in which you can assign a variety of spells and abilities, building them the way you see fit. The amount of abilities / spells you could allocate was determined by your armor and weapons. The only real problem with the battle system was the magical defense stat was broken, as in, it didn't work. Through some error in programming, the magical defense modifier is never properly calculated. But really, I've played through the game so much, you hardly notice it.
A lot of people like to criticize it's main character: Cloud Strife. The word 'emo' is thrown around a lot with him, and people couldn't be more wrong. Cloud isn't emo, he's a prick. He's a jerk that doesn't really care about anyone other than himself, and it takes a world crisis for him to work with other people. He also happens to be mentally screwed up. I guess this is where people call emo, but he was mentally altered in an experiment during some military plot to reproduce the super-soldier that was Sephiroth. None of the above constitutes emo behavior. People like to throw emo into a character's description whenever they don't fart magical ponies and rainbows with every line. I actually found Vincent to be the more emo character in the game, but no one seems to call him that. It just shows you the ugly side of popularity, when people will overly criticize a game when they've probably never took the time to play it. On the opposite side of that are people who blindly follow this game because it's so popular. The game is great, but it's not the greatest. Objective observations will attest to that.
Unfortunately, this will be a game that will forever haunt Square Enix. I don't think there's been a bigger request to remake a game than there has been with Final Fantasy VII. Expectations and technical limits almost make this task impossible to pull off. It's a shame that this game has been buried under all the hype and slander that it has because really, it's just another Final Fantasy. Every entry before it and every entry after it have tried to add something more to RPGs, and this is no exception.
But we must remember, like it or hate it, Final Fantasy VII is the reason RPGs were popular. It brought in a lot of fans and helped a genre that never really saw mainstream success like Mario or Zelda. It gave a genre a chance to show the world what it can do, and we've enjoyed a plethora of games because of it.
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It seems like Final Fantasy VII should've been number one. It influenced me in many ways other games just couldn't. And yet I still have one more game to go. This next game wasn't culturally important, and it didn't break any new grounds. No, what it has done though is excel in just about every area. It combines a great story with great game play and I have sunk countless hours into this game, doing everything that can be done, and then going back and doing it again. Challenging myself and finding new ways to play it. The number one game is nothing short of a masterpiece of gaming.
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1. Final Fantasy Tactics
I just love this game to death. Not only is probably one of the best turn-based strategy games ever made, but it also carries with it one of the best stories ever told in gaming. Clearly taking inspiration from writers like Shakespeare, Final Fantasy Tactics just has everything going for it. By the end of it, I was emotionally drained from the tale of love, deception, betrayal, power struggles, corruption and the all important quest for power.
You followed the tale of Ramza as he attempts to sway the tides of a three-way power struggle over an empty seat of a deceased king. We're given the impression that Ramza's tale is being told from a narrator's point of view, looking back on the pages of history and finding Ramza's actions to be undocumented and never fully seen as a force acting upon the war. It's Ramza's friend, Delita that has been given all the credit for the story's finale, but we slowly learn how historical records can deceive, as Ramza was always acting in the shadow of a much larger plot. It really is over-simplifying everything, but that's the tone of the entire story.
What really keeps me coming back is the game play. The battle system, though inspired from the Tactics Ogre series, is very deep and challenging. You're given a slew of job classes, each one having their own strengths and weaknesses which you have to exploit and overcome on the battlefield. You can also carry over certain job abilities and traits to other jobs, giving you an almost endless possibility of job combinations and set ups. And there is no optimal setup. You need to fashion your characters in the manner best to overcome the next challenge, what may work for one battle, will get you killed in the next. Late in the game though, certain jobs start to overpower others, like archer and Spellsword classes. Archers start off great but then slowly lose their luster while spellswords are introduced to almost game-breaking standards. Magic also starts to take a back seat when battles come down to speed. The polarization is even furthered with the addition of dark knights in the PSP version, basically being suicidal powerhouses that can dish out the damage in droves while being able to heal instantly.
The game is still a barrel of fun, and has some optional challenges along the way. You can pick up new characters with unique abilities and traits, including Cloud from Final Fantasy VII. The PSP also gives the players the chance to wirelessly team up for missions and combat sessions which is a much appreciated feature that has been missing from console strategy RPGs for the longest time. The new co-op missions are no joke either. Square Enix fully understood that players would be looking for a challenge, and taking your Orlandu into battle wasn't a guarenteed win anymore. Two missions that stand out in my mind is the 10 Algus battle where you have to fend off 10 incarnations of your fallen compatriot while trying to prevent being turned into a vampire every turn. The next is the 10 floor dive into the abyss, each floor being harder than the next. But if you come out victorious, the rewards are great. The PSP version also handed us a whole new set of gear to play around with, including the onion armor set.
The game isn't perfect, it can be hard to get a correct camera angle on some of the isometric view points, and the terrain graphics aren't winning any awards, but these are mere fleas of complaints on the dazzling unicorn of triumph this game is. It's always a must when traveling somewhere, especially if you have someone to play with. The game really just never gets boring, even after completing everything there is to complete.
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Those are my favorite video games. It's easy to see that the PS1 was a major influence on me. There are other games I wanted to put on this list like Final Fantasy IV, Mega Man IV or Pokemon Red. But after weighing all the power some of these games have over me, I feel this list accurately depicts my feelings for them. When looking for a game, I try to find the one's that are unique and don't just rely on the success of other games that came before it, but I can't help being drawn to some of my first-genre games. That's why I made the list of my favorite games and not the best. Everyone looks at a game differently, so the best video game ever is impossible to determine. And besides, everyone knows the best video game ever created is Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Favorite Video Games 20 - 11
This month marks the day of my birth, so I'm feeling a little self-centered and wanted to make a post about what I consider to be my favorite video games of all time. It's been a question that pops into anyone's head if you play enough, and I've been playing since 1991 from my earliest memories. Sitting around the Nintendo Entertainment System, spending hours playing Mario Bros, Duck Hunt, Dig Dug and Mega Man 2; gaming has been good to me. Please note, this is not a list of what I think are the best video games. There are a lot of games that I like that are not perfect, but for some reason they managed to capture me in a way other games couldn't. So without further ado, here's the first part of the top 20 most favorite video games of all time.
20. Okami
A sleeper hit, Okami's strength is in its concept. Someone on the development team wanted to make a game about paint brush mechanics, someone else said it should be set in feudal Japan, someone else said the game should be stylized in the art of a classic Japanese painting. This is what makes a great game, a solid, well-thought out concept. And they really did center all their design around the idea of using a brush to interact with the world.
You control the god Ammy (I can’t remember how to spell that name out correctly) as you travel all over Nippon, occasionally running into famous historical figures like Yoichi in order to save the world from a supernatural menace. A lot of people compare this game to a classic Zelda-style adventure, but that’s really selling it short. Zelda had a focus on puzzle solving and dungeons, Okami really is about culture and painting: painting for combat, for solving puzzles, for annoying the town’s people, really whatever.
The only real short-coming I could find was you fought the same boss about 3 times without any variation in tactics. It’s really just the same fight 3 times. Of course being a Capcom-published game, I’m hardly surprised.
This might actually be one game that’s better on the Wii since you have the Wii-mote to help with the brush strokes, but I played and beat it on the PS2, and it was a load of fun. Some times you do run into a drought of excitement, but stick with the game and you’ll find a great experience.
19. Killer 7
Killer 7 is one of those unique games that are hard to compare to anything else because, quite frankly, it's one-of-a-kind. In all my gaming years, there hasn't been a single game that even comes close to what Killer 7 is. Unlike the other ones before, I didn't play Killer 7 when it was first released in 2005. It has only been recently that I can say that I've even beaten the game. I took it upon myself to play it considering I liked No More Heroes and appreciated Suda 51's unique approach to gaming. What I didn't expect was to be completely bewildered by an odd combination of gaming genres and a plot that seemed so incoherent and twisted; it would make Hideo Kojima's head spin.
Start with elements of a first person shooter, throw in some puzzle elements, now some RPG elements, cap it all off with plot about political conspiracies and an invasion of Heavenly Smiles that can only be resolved with a team of 7 assassins, you got one heck of a unique game. Visually the game is also unique, and most people like to applaud its effort, but I honestly thought the graphics could have looked a lot better. Everything is cell-shaded and usually just a simple gradient. I didn't find it that impressive, just a little dated. But clearly the game should be recognized for not wanted to be another game trying to copy the latest trends, it dared to push the boundaries of what defined genres and managed to shatter and conventional means of classification.
Each assassin played out differently, with their own ability and weapon of choice. From magnums to grenade launchers, sniper rifles and machine guns, there's something for everyone to enjoy with this group.
18. Tales of Symphonia
The Nintendo Gamecube had some great RPGs that didn't get the praise or attention that they should've. Although, Symphonia had the benefit of being released on the PS2 with added features afterwards. This was my first Tales of game and it's also probably the best. Prequel to Tales of Phantasia it was an interesting journey.
Graphics were very well rendered and the sound track complimented the scenary. The one draw back was not being able to skip any of the cutscenes. Everything played out in dialog with voice acting.
There were some great moments in the game unless you're turned off by anything tangentally related to anime. It was easy to like the characters despite most of them just filling in some cliche, anime role.
It's a charming game and considering it's platform not really changing the Tales of formula too much, I put this game on the list because it's a great example of when everything just comes together perfectly in a series.
17. Ico
This game was originally my #20, but after writing about it, I decided I need to bump it up a few spots.
If you look up the definition of sleeper-hit, you'll probably find someone holding up this game and pointing to it. Ico came out of the gates with little fanfare and almost no media attention. But that didn't stop people from picking it up and playing. And what those chosen few found was a gem of a game. It was one of the first games on the Playstation 2 to really take advantage of the latest generation of graphics in terms of aesthetic appeal. Everything from the landscape, architecture and character models has this heavenly, surreal quality to them. The design was clearly geared towards more a realistic feel, but there was a hint of cell-shading and fantasy thrown in to make the most mundane of environments glow with personality and beauty. Of course, you can't spend the entire game just looking at it; you had to eventually play it.
If I had to define a genre for this game, which is tough to do, it would be Action / Puzzle. Every new area had a puzzle or series of puzzles to solve in order to move on. That's not to say you had to do math problems or search for some interpretation of a key; these puzzles were more like throwing switches and pressing buttons. You had to work with the environment to move on; and sometimes the solutions were very simple but not obvious, leaving you feeling a little stupid when you had to look up the solution only to realize it was right in front of you. The game challenged you in a good way.
Game play did get a little dicey when combat was thrown in. Often times the camera would stray away from the action and combat boiled down to flailing whatever you were holding at the time at the enemies which would respawn until the game decided enough was enough. But a big part of the game play relied on your partner, Yorda.
Believe it or not, Ico is a giant escort mission game. You have to drag around a helpless female character all over the place, hoping none of the enemies capture her or its game over. While this may seem like a giant hindrance on a game, since the entire design was built around this content of having someone tagging along, the game does well. That's not to say there aren't some times where you want to smack her with a 2x4, but it's something that's easy to accept. In fact, I would stay that you having a companion makes it a much stronger game than if you were playing by yourself.
Ico isn't about getting a high score or mowing down a legion of enemies, it's about building a relationship between you and the game, between you and Yorda and between Ico and Yorda. Ico needs Yorda to get out of the prison through her powers and Yorda needs Ico to help her escape through his strength. And it is this relationship that makes it the game it is. It does so much with that basic of basic concepts. The plot isn't epic or even apparent, it relies on the minimal elements it provides you and let's the player grow attached to the characters and develop feelings for them all on the player's own accord. And I for one was captured entirely.
16. Chrono Trigger
I can say with the utmost certainty that I've beaten Chrono Trigger more times than any other game I've ever played (unless you count solitaire on the PC). This game is just so easy to pick up and play and so hard to put down. The game is constantly throwing new settings at you, it's really hard to get bored. Your band of heroes is on a quest to journey through several time periods to prevent the destruction of the world in the future, and each of those periods has its own personality, mood, and set of characters, plot line and music. It's no wonder the development team behind this game was referred to as the 'Dream Team'. It's a remarkable game.
The intertwining plot lines all come together so nicely, it makes it feel like you're constantly doing something important to further your goal. There's never a dull moment where you might be doing something pointless or a part of the game that serves as padding. The cast of characters is also diverse. You got a frog, a princess, a robot, whatever Magus is, the whole works. The team even included some classic rock cameos with Flea, Ozzy and Slash. Lavos makes for a great antagonist because he is just a primal creature looking for sustenance by destroying the world. It's not human, it cannot be reasoned with. It acts out of pure self-interest which makes the conflict all the more necessary.
The combat is quite good, everything happening in real time or turn-based depending on how you set your preferences. Combining attacks, unleashing devastating combos, pushing your stats to the brink, it's all good fun. The DS version even through in an awesome bonus section, a monster arena and a dumb side quest which I'd like to forget.
It's still easy to play this game, even after 16 years. But is it really any wonder that a game centered on time travel ended up so... timeless?
15. Final Fantasy VI
Probably surprising a few people putting this game outside the top 10, but as most people know, I didn't play Final Fantasy VI until the Final Fantasy VII hysteria age of gaming had passed. In fact, I'm pretty sure I beat it in ROM form until getting it for the PS1 and GBA.
Final Fantasy VI is considered, by me, to be an awkward game in the series. It stands between the transitions from classical RPG to modern RPG. Carrying over elements like princes and castles from the 'classic' Final Fantasy titles, but also throwing us industrial cities which would later show up in the 'modern' Final Fantasy titles. It blended the two concepts interestingly, having mechanized castles and battle armors contrasting the usual traditional castles and chocobo transportation.
It has to be said that Final Fantasy VI has the best opening sequence in the series. The prologue of controlling Terra and marching through the barren snow is classic. A lot of people also credit the game with its famous Opera House sequence. I never saw what the big deal was since there were other scripted moments in this game, and other Final Fantasy games as well. What I did appreciate was the soundtrack. To this day, Final Fantasy VI has one of the best over world theme songs in the entire series.
People also like to point out that Kefka was one of the best villains to antagonize our heroes, and I don't think that's close to being true. Has anyone ever broken down the logic behind Kefka and his situation? First off, he's a clown. How did this guy make it into the military to begin with, let alone become a general? What person in their right mind employs a man who shows up to work dressed as a clown? I have a hard time suspending my disbelief because it's so absurd a concept. And of course, it turns out this clown is very evil. I will give him credit that his level of evil is quite high, but he's still a clown. I think he can also be cited as the first Final Fantasy character to actually have a voice considering he had a laughing sound FX cued up.
Overall though, I can look past the absurd and enjoy the game for what it really is, and that's why I put it on this list. It really is a great game.
14. Zelda: Link to the Past
Probably the first game I really got serious about, and probably the first one I owned for the Super Nintendo. I still remember being over at my grandmother’s house on Christmas morning and opening up my present, to find Link to the Past staring back at me. I won’t lie and say I was a Zelda fan all the way back then. In fact, I could’ve been holding any game back then and I would’ve enjoyed having it. But when I popped that puppy into my console, I was amazed. This was my first Zelda game and it was a blast.
Boasting over 10 dungeons and a host of items, this Zelda was big. Instead of traveling through one world, Nintendo gave us two: Light world and Dark world. This wouldn’t be the last time they tried the whole light versus dark theme.
This one makes the list for not only being a great game, but also hold a lot of nostalgia value for me. Trying to decipher every secret and every method to beating a boss before the advent of the internet. Really created a lot of satisfaction conquering Ganon all on your own.
13. Silent Hill 2
I did a whole shpeal on this game already, there's not really anything left to be said.
Silent Hill 2 was a game I knew I was going to play the moment I saw it. I had fallen in love with the dark tones of Silent Hill 1 and eagerly awaited this game. Each time I play it, I'm reminded of how great a story this game tells. There's no secret why this game is on my list.
12. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
Out of all the Metal Gear Solid games, this one seemed unique. The Cold War setting, the survival, everything just worked well. I especially liked the James Bond-esque opening sequence, very nicely done.
Graphics are beautiful, and it's the first 3D metal gear game that has lush, outdoor environments along with the industrial complexes and hangers.
Basically this is the game we got while watching for the sequel to Metal Gear Solid 2, and I didn't realize how to take it. Did Konami pull a bait and switch on us, or was simply teasing us? Little did I realize the true nature of releasing this game and seeing how important it was that we see all the characters and understand them to fully appreciate Solid Snakes final chapter on the PS3.
The main difference between this game and the rest was you had to constantly fend off hunger by eating the wildlife around you. While this may seem like an annoyance, it really feels natural to the rest of the game. It's not like the game is stingy about throwing animals or plants at you, so it never brings up a dire situation unless you just completely ignore your vitality.
This entry also has the best boss cast of the series. Each encounter is just so memorable. It took a lot of creativity to come up with some of these guys: like the man who is bitter over not being an astronaut so he flies around in his own space suit with a flamethrower. Or the old sniper who will actually die of old age if you take too long to beat him.
Snake Eater also has an amusing side game called Snake vs. Monkey. If that's not reason enough to put it on this list, I don't know what is.
11. Devil May Cry
One of the few games (Xenogears being the other) where I fell in love with it the moment I popped that demo disk in.
This game truly revamped the action genre for 3D. The action, the challenges, everything was just brilliant. Probably the only game I've felt adrenaline rushes after intense combat scenes.
The story was trash, but we didn't play it to know what happens next, we played it to see what monster we had to take down. Of course, being Capcom, you'll see the same bosses a few times, but that didn't take away from the challenge. It wasn't uncommon to die 10 times to a boss before you learned all the patterns and tricks. This game forced you to be great at it, or punished you for failing. Deaths rarely ever felt cheap though. Sure, some enemy could blindside you from off camera, but those moments rarely happened.
One of my favorite enemies from most any game ever is the Shadow Cat from this game (official name escapes me). Not only being tough, this thing could morph into various other forms and attack you that way, making it seem very unpredictable. If you're always left guessing and wondering, it just makes that enemy all the more intense to fight. And if you make it to the higher difficulty levels, you get the chance to fight many of them at the same time.
Devil May Cry was definitely an important game for the genre, and it also gave us classic lines like "flock off feather face." It had that Resident Evil B-movie quality to it which made it easy to enjoy.
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With a lot of great games on the list so far, it's a wonder what could've possibly made it into the top 10. Are there anymore SNES games left, or will Nintendo be conquered by the PS1 era? And what about Final Fantasy 7? How far up the list will it be, or did it even make it at all? Find out next time!
20. Okami
A sleeper hit, Okami's strength is in its concept. Someone on the development team wanted to make a game about paint brush mechanics, someone else said it should be set in feudal Japan, someone else said the game should be stylized in the art of a classic Japanese painting. This is what makes a great game, a solid, well-thought out concept. And they really did center all their design around the idea of using a brush to interact with the world.
You control the god Ammy (I can’t remember how to spell that name out correctly) as you travel all over Nippon, occasionally running into famous historical figures like Yoichi in order to save the world from a supernatural menace. A lot of people compare this game to a classic Zelda-style adventure, but that’s really selling it short. Zelda had a focus on puzzle solving and dungeons, Okami really is about culture and painting: painting for combat, for solving puzzles, for annoying the town’s people, really whatever.
The only real short-coming I could find was you fought the same boss about 3 times without any variation in tactics. It’s really just the same fight 3 times. Of course being a Capcom-published game, I’m hardly surprised.
This might actually be one game that’s better on the Wii since you have the Wii-mote to help with the brush strokes, but I played and beat it on the PS2, and it was a load of fun. Some times you do run into a drought of excitement, but stick with the game and you’ll find a great experience.
19. Killer 7
Killer 7 is one of those unique games that are hard to compare to anything else because, quite frankly, it's one-of-a-kind. In all my gaming years, there hasn't been a single game that even comes close to what Killer 7 is. Unlike the other ones before, I didn't play Killer 7 when it was first released in 2005. It has only been recently that I can say that I've even beaten the game. I took it upon myself to play it considering I liked No More Heroes and appreciated Suda 51's unique approach to gaming. What I didn't expect was to be completely bewildered by an odd combination of gaming genres and a plot that seemed so incoherent and twisted; it would make Hideo Kojima's head spin.
Start with elements of a first person shooter, throw in some puzzle elements, now some RPG elements, cap it all off with plot about political conspiracies and an invasion of Heavenly Smiles that can only be resolved with a team of 7 assassins, you got one heck of a unique game. Visually the game is also unique, and most people like to applaud its effort, but I honestly thought the graphics could have looked a lot better. Everything is cell-shaded and usually just a simple gradient. I didn't find it that impressive, just a little dated. But clearly the game should be recognized for not wanted to be another game trying to copy the latest trends, it dared to push the boundaries of what defined genres and managed to shatter and conventional means of classification.
Each assassin played out differently, with their own ability and weapon of choice. From magnums to grenade launchers, sniper rifles and machine guns, there's something for everyone to enjoy with this group.
18. Tales of Symphonia
The Nintendo Gamecube had some great RPGs that didn't get the praise or attention that they should've. Although, Symphonia had the benefit of being released on the PS2 with added features afterwards. This was my first Tales of game and it's also probably the best. Prequel to Tales of Phantasia it was an interesting journey.
Graphics were very well rendered and the sound track complimented the scenary. The one draw back was not being able to skip any of the cutscenes. Everything played out in dialog with voice acting.
There were some great moments in the game unless you're turned off by anything tangentally related to anime. It was easy to like the characters despite most of them just filling in some cliche, anime role.
It's a charming game and considering it's platform not really changing the Tales of formula too much, I put this game on the list because it's a great example of when everything just comes together perfectly in a series.
17. Ico
This game was originally my #20, but after writing about it, I decided I need to bump it up a few spots.
If you look up the definition of sleeper-hit, you'll probably find someone holding up this game and pointing to it. Ico came out of the gates with little fanfare and almost no media attention. But that didn't stop people from picking it up and playing. And what those chosen few found was a gem of a game. It was one of the first games on the Playstation 2 to really take advantage of the latest generation of graphics in terms of aesthetic appeal. Everything from the landscape, architecture and character models has this heavenly, surreal quality to them. The design was clearly geared towards more a realistic feel, but there was a hint of cell-shading and fantasy thrown in to make the most mundane of environments glow with personality and beauty. Of course, you can't spend the entire game just looking at it; you had to eventually play it.
If I had to define a genre for this game, which is tough to do, it would be Action / Puzzle. Every new area had a puzzle or series of puzzles to solve in order to move on. That's not to say you had to do math problems or search for some interpretation of a key; these puzzles were more like throwing switches and pressing buttons. You had to work with the environment to move on; and sometimes the solutions were very simple but not obvious, leaving you feeling a little stupid when you had to look up the solution only to realize it was right in front of you. The game challenged you in a good way.
Game play did get a little dicey when combat was thrown in. Often times the camera would stray away from the action and combat boiled down to flailing whatever you were holding at the time at the enemies which would respawn until the game decided enough was enough. But a big part of the game play relied on your partner, Yorda.
Believe it or not, Ico is a giant escort mission game. You have to drag around a helpless female character all over the place, hoping none of the enemies capture her or its game over. While this may seem like a giant hindrance on a game, since the entire design was built around this content of having someone tagging along, the game does well. That's not to say there aren't some times where you want to smack her with a 2x4, but it's something that's easy to accept. In fact, I would stay that you having a companion makes it a much stronger game than if you were playing by yourself.
Ico isn't about getting a high score or mowing down a legion of enemies, it's about building a relationship between you and the game, between you and Yorda and between Ico and Yorda. Ico needs Yorda to get out of the prison through her powers and Yorda needs Ico to help her escape through his strength. And it is this relationship that makes it the game it is. It does so much with that basic of basic concepts. The plot isn't epic or even apparent, it relies on the minimal elements it provides you and let's the player grow attached to the characters and develop feelings for them all on the player's own accord. And I for one was captured entirely.
16. Chrono Trigger
I can say with the utmost certainty that I've beaten Chrono Trigger more times than any other game I've ever played (unless you count solitaire on the PC). This game is just so easy to pick up and play and so hard to put down. The game is constantly throwing new settings at you, it's really hard to get bored. Your band of heroes is on a quest to journey through several time periods to prevent the destruction of the world in the future, and each of those periods has its own personality, mood, and set of characters, plot line and music. It's no wonder the development team behind this game was referred to as the 'Dream Team'. It's a remarkable game.
The intertwining plot lines all come together so nicely, it makes it feel like you're constantly doing something important to further your goal. There's never a dull moment where you might be doing something pointless or a part of the game that serves as padding. The cast of characters is also diverse. You got a frog, a princess, a robot, whatever Magus is, the whole works. The team even included some classic rock cameos with Flea, Ozzy and Slash. Lavos makes for a great antagonist because he is just a primal creature looking for sustenance by destroying the world. It's not human, it cannot be reasoned with. It acts out of pure self-interest which makes the conflict all the more necessary.
The combat is quite good, everything happening in real time or turn-based depending on how you set your preferences. Combining attacks, unleashing devastating combos, pushing your stats to the brink, it's all good fun. The DS version even through in an awesome bonus section, a monster arena and a dumb side quest which I'd like to forget.
It's still easy to play this game, even after 16 years. But is it really any wonder that a game centered on time travel ended up so... timeless?
15. Final Fantasy VI
Probably surprising a few people putting this game outside the top 10, but as most people know, I didn't play Final Fantasy VI until the Final Fantasy VII hysteria age of gaming had passed. In fact, I'm pretty sure I beat it in ROM form until getting it for the PS1 and GBA.
Final Fantasy VI is considered, by me, to be an awkward game in the series. It stands between the transitions from classical RPG to modern RPG. Carrying over elements like princes and castles from the 'classic' Final Fantasy titles, but also throwing us industrial cities which would later show up in the 'modern' Final Fantasy titles. It blended the two concepts interestingly, having mechanized castles and battle armors contrasting the usual traditional castles and chocobo transportation.
It has to be said that Final Fantasy VI has the best opening sequence in the series. The prologue of controlling Terra and marching through the barren snow is classic. A lot of people also credit the game with its famous Opera House sequence. I never saw what the big deal was since there were other scripted moments in this game, and other Final Fantasy games as well. What I did appreciate was the soundtrack. To this day, Final Fantasy VI has one of the best over world theme songs in the entire series.
People also like to point out that Kefka was one of the best villains to antagonize our heroes, and I don't think that's close to being true. Has anyone ever broken down the logic behind Kefka and his situation? First off, he's a clown. How did this guy make it into the military to begin with, let alone become a general? What person in their right mind employs a man who shows up to work dressed as a clown? I have a hard time suspending my disbelief because it's so absurd a concept. And of course, it turns out this clown is very evil. I will give him credit that his level of evil is quite high, but he's still a clown. I think he can also be cited as the first Final Fantasy character to actually have a voice considering he had a laughing sound FX cued up.
Overall though, I can look past the absurd and enjoy the game for what it really is, and that's why I put it on this list. It really is a great game.
14. Zelda: Link to the Past
Probably the first game I really got serious about, and probably the first one I owned for the Super Nintendo. I still remember being over at my grandmother’s house on Christmas morning and opening up my present, to find Link to the Past staring back at me. I won’t lie and say I was a Zelda fan all the way back then. In fact, I could’ve been holding any game back then and I would’ve enjoyed having it. But when I popped that puppy into my console, I was amazed. This was my first Zelda game and it was a blast.
Boasting over 10 dungeons and a host of items, this Zelda was big. Instead of traveling through one world, Nintendo gave us two: Light world and Dark world. This wouldn’t be the last time they tried the whole light versus dark theme.
This one makes the list for not only being a great game, but also hold a lot of nostalgia value for me. Trying to decipher every secret and every method to beating a boss before the advent of the internet. Really created a lot of satisfaction conquering Ganon all on your own.
13. Silent Hill 2
I did a whole shpeal on this game already, there's not really anything left to be said.
Silent Hill 2 was a game I knew I was going to play the moment I saw it. I had fallen in love with the dark tones of Silent Hill 1 and eagerly awaited this game. Each time I play it, I'm reminded of how great a story this game tells. There's no secret why this game is on my list.
12. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
Out of all the Metal Gear Solid games, this one seemed unique. The Cold War setting, the survival, everything just worked well. I especially liked the James Bond-esque opening sequence, very nicely done.
Graphics are beautiful, and it's the first 3D metal gear game that has lush, outdoor environments along with the industrial complexes and hangers.
Basically this is the game we got while watching for the sequel to Metal Gear Solid 2, and I didn't realize how to take it. Did Konami pull a bait and switch on us, or was simply teasing us? Little did I realize the true nature of releasing this game and seeing how important it was that we see all the characters and understand them to fully appreciate Solid Snakes final chapter on the PS3.
The main difference between this game and the rest was you had to constantly fend off hunger by eating the wildlife around you. While this may seem like an annoyance, it really feels natural to the rest of the game. It's not like the game is stingy about throwing animals or plants at you, so it never brings up a dire situation unless you just completely ignore your vitality.
This entry also has the best boss cast of the series. Each encounter is just so memorable. It took a lot of creativity to come up with some of these guys: like the man who is bitter over not being an astronaut so he flies around in his own space suit with a flamethrower. Or the old sniper who will actually die of old age if you take too long to beat him.
Snake Eater also has an amusing side game called Snake vs. Monkey. If that's not reason enough to put it on this list, I don't know what is.
11. Devil May Cry
One of the few games (Xenogears being the other) where I fell in love with it the moment I popped that demo disk in.
This game truly revamped the action genre for 3D. The action, the challenges, everything was just brilliant. Probably the only game I've felt adrenaline rushes after intense combat scenes.
The story was trash, but we didn't play it to know what happens next, we played it to see what monster we had to take down. Of course, being Capcom, you'll see the same bosses a few times, but that didn't take away from the challenge. It wasn't uncommon to die 10 times to a boss before you learned all the patterns and tricks. This game forced you to be great at it, or punished you for failing. Deaths rarely ever felt cheap though. Sure, some enemy could blindside you from off camera, but those moments rarely happened.
One of my favorite enemies from most any game ever is the Shadow Cat from this game (official name escapes me). Not only being tough, this thing could morph into various other forms and attack you that way, making it seem very unpredictable. If you're always left guessing and wondering, it just makes that enemy all the more intense to fight. And if you make it to the higher difficulty levels, you get the chance to fight many of them at the same time.
Devil May Cry was definitely an important game for the genre, and it also gave us classic lines like "flock off feather face." It had that Resident Evil B-movie quality to it which made it easy to enjoy.
------------------------------
With a lot of great games on the list so far, it's a wonder what could've possibly made it into the top 10. Are there anymore SNES games left, or will Nintendo be conquered by the PS1 era? And what about Final Fantasy 7? How far up the list will it be, or did it even make it at all? Find out next time!
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep
Listen Square Enix; you have to stop jerking around Kingdom Hearts fans like they’ll wait around forever. If you’re not going to give them Kingdom Hearts III, then just tell them. Sure they’ll hate you for a while, but at least they’ll stop being disappointed every time you make a handheld Kingdom Hearts game. I actually bought Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep because this is the game hinted at in the secret ending of Kingdom Hearts II; the one where three people stood in a barren wasteland littered with abandoned key blades known as the key blade graveyard. This brought about certain excitement from fans because we were lead to believe that having a key blade was something very special indeed. I mean the first game had only one wielder, and that was Sora. But lately, it seems they’ve just been handing them out to every androgynous teenager that just shows up. Even Kairi at one point wields her own pink brand key blade. At that point the story got a little ridiculous (and that’s saying a lot with this series). But seeing all the key blades abandoned in the aftermath of what could have only been some epic battle, the excitement level for another installment was never higher. And then we got Kingdom Hearts: 386/2 Days. A handheld game exclusive to the Nintendo DS that was limited by its hardware because you can’t go from console to handheld and expect the game play to stay the same, a lesson everyone should’ve learned with Chains of Memories. But if we didn’t want to play KH: 386/2 Idiots, we had a PSP option in the form of Birth by Sleep (also known as KH:BS, with extra emphasis on the BS part).
I tried to give the PSP hardware a little credit that it could actually reproduce the game play of the only two numbered games in the series and deliver a satisfying experience. How shameful of me, I almost forgot that this game was being made by Square Enix. Let’s see how they screwed it up.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way. The graphics are good, almost on par with the PS2 incarnations. Every cut scene and character stays true to its source material and never falter. But we have to remember that this is probably where all the money went to when making this game, so I feel stupid for praising it. I’m sure Square Enix reads all these reviews and just scans for what’s said over their precious graphics; gleefully pointing out every time a game review says “despite everything, the graphics are amazing”. Honestly, I couldn’t give a crap about the graphics of this game. It’s now something that I expect from them. And if they ever fail to deliver nothing but graphical perfection, I will turn in a second’s notice, for they are on thin ice with me ever since Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced and that stupid law system.
As far as the soundtrack is, just imagine every area having only one song and having that 2 minute song repeated endlessly. I’m not looking for high art here, but for crying out loud, I want something that actually inspires me to set forth into uncharted worlds and conquer evil. I don’t need some Japanese pop star singing about god-knows-what or its crappy remixed version. Voice acting isn’t terrible, but Terra does have some god-awful deliveries. But even having the voice talents of Orson Welles won’t save your game if the dialog and the story aren’t up to snuff. And what a shame, they aren’t.
Let me give you a summarization of the epic plot. You start off with a Sora-look a like, a childhood friend that will eventually turn evil, and a girl. Sora-wannabe has a strong conviction towards friendship and everything that farts sunshine and puppies, your evil friend has trouble controlling the darkness (this is even shown in the opening sequence, so to be completely oblivious to him being evil at some point requires the mandatory level of retardation needed to work for Activision) and the girl has… boobs. Honestly, the girl, Aqua (named so because her hair is blue?) is the most useless character in the story, and the first character I tried out (because I like magic users even though these games are all about beating up things with giant keys). She really doesn’t contribute a single original thought, motivation or scene in the entire plot. Her entire role is to going around to each world, showing up 10 minutes after everything has happened and go “I can’t believe that would happen”. They even force in moments where you run into Sora, Riku and Kairi when they were still young (well younger) for no apparent reason. Oh look, they’re making reference to the first game. Maybe they’ll do that again by having the camera swing around stupidly in the middle of combat which causes nausea. These nostalgic moments serve nothing to the plot and only are there to make the fans shut up about the lack of KH3 for a few more minutes. But to fully know what’s happening in the game, you have to play through each character’s story, which equates to running through the same nine worlds, watching the same events and doing the same crap about three times. All the while, the game throws out lessons on friendship and hearts and everything else that makes me want to backhand a box of puppies. Events translate to: you get key blade, you go rid worlds of their Unversed problem (this games version of the heartless, although why they need to keep renaming the same type of monsters is beyond me. I guess it’s to make you believe they’re trying to be original) and having your friendship tested. Maybe if there was a bigger crisis affecting the world and not just having a plot that only focuses on the squabble of three pre-teens, I might give a crap.
Speaking from a Square Enix fan (well, really a Square Soft fan) I was disappointed. The primary reason these games became popular was because you could see your favorite Final Fantasy characters out of their element and rendered in better graphics. However, the only Final Fantasy character I found in the entire game was Zack from Crisis Core. Was that the best they could do? Pull a character from another PSP game? Where’s Sephiroth? Where’s Tifa? Sure Zack is a good character, but I crave more. And it’s not like he’s important, he’s merely a combatant in the Olympus World. Because that is the only reason that world is ever added to this series, to serve as a battle arena with all of two areas to explore.
As a Disney fan (not so much as a fan as I liked Phil Collins in Tarzan, I know, I’m a horrible human being) there really isn’t much satisfaction here either. Sure, in the beginning what your character does effects the Disney subplots, but towards the end, what you do in the world doesn’t even really matter. If you subtract the Unversed and your character, everything would’ve just played out normally. It really comes off as a lack of effort to better integrate story with these different levels.
But let’s try desperately to find something to like about this game, like the combat system. Mash X. When you’re done doing that, hit triangle for some variety. But seriously, the combat is quite good at times. You’re given different abilities to work with and you can mix / match / meld them together to create all new abilities with different effects and bonuses. The crafting of said abilities is really well done too. You don’t have to run around for hours, looking for resources and hunting for rare drops. You can buy them all pretty cheaply and the materials used to fuse them drop from enemies frequently. My problem with their integration is you have to use a wheel system which utilizes the d-pad to use them during combat. Hurray, another PSP game that thinks me using the D-pad and analog stick at the same time is a good idea. I’d have a better time using the PSP as dental floss. At least some of the abilities are nice and powerful, making crafting very rewarding. But there is one more problem which is a part of a greater problem with Japanese action games: the dodge button is rubbish. For whatever reason, the Japanese can’t get it that if I press it, it must do something. I don’t care if I’m in the middle of an attack; I need to dodge the second I press it. But not, you’re character has to finish whatever animation they’re in the middle of and return to their original stance before they’ll even think about dodging. This turns combat into more predicting when an enemy attack than it does reward split-second thinking and skill. This is mostly true for every other action you try to perform while you’re swinging around you key blade. Thus, dodging is mostly useless.
The camera is finally handled as a PSP game should handle it, with the L and R buttons. Problem is these buttons also control on the lock on features, switching targets and using some special attack that I rarely ever used. You can switch up the L and R control scheme, but you’re only other options are just varying degrees of stupid. Speaking of stupid controls, I think someone at Square messed up the button assignment. Circle is jump, X is attack, square is dodging / blocking and triangle is abilities. How did circle become the jump button? You know how hard that is to reach on the PSP? Why couldn’t square be attack and X be jump, or even the reverse of that? Why is such a useless feature given the prime spot of the square button? I wouldn’t be as pissed at this if you could reassign the button layout, but you can’t. That’s reserved for the before-mentioned L and R fiasco.
Combat isn’t hampered by controls alone. The camera and lock on system do a poor job of focusing and showing the combat. Enemies will pummel you from off camera constantly. Even if you see them coming, it’s not like you can just use the freaking dodge button! Also, some idiot developer made random objects carry the same targeting priority and enemies. So instead of targeting a particularly threatening enemy, you're more likely the target the seriously menacing foe known as random potted plant. I don’t even want to get into D-links. Just know you can summon the buffoons from other worlds to assist you in battle. Although why you'd want to see anyone in this game more than once is beyond me.
At least the boss battles provided some enjoyment. No two really can be approached the same way to begin with. But even that didn’t last. It’s like this game blew all its good ideas right away in the beginning of the game and phoned it in the rest of the way. Some of the boss battles didn’t even make sense. Take the first one, which is the pumpkin chariot from Cinderella. Wasn’t that a creation of the fairy god mother? How did that become evil? It’s not like it was sitting around, the story clearly has it being destroyed before the prince goes looking for Cinderella (according to the Disney movie), and so why is it back and evil? Did the Unversed resurrect the pumpkin and had it transform back into the chariot? That seems like a long way to go when they could’ve just called upon something from the darkness. Really, anything, just pull a creature out of your butt and throw it at me. Or what about the evil step mother and her two daughters? Couldn’t they think of some creative way to incorporate them into a boss battle?
It seems I've done a good job of beating this game up, but I saved a special complaint area for one more glaring flaw. Load times. Load times, load times, load times. My god are they painful. Even when you fully install the game at 600mbs, the game loads like molasses. Going from cut scene to cut scene, moving to a new area, entering your powered up form or even opening the game's menu: the game loads. These load times are actually so bad, that I get into a hypnotic stare with the loading symbol every time, visualizing it rotating one way, then the other, then back in forth. I don't know why this game has to suffer so much with it. Final Fantasy Tactics had some lag issues, but Crisis Core seemed to play okay. Is it because the areas are a little more vast, or the graphics a little better? Or maybe it's because they padded out the game play over 3 character story lines instead of one. For whatever reason, you will spend a significant amount of time staring at the loading screen. If you've played Dragon Age on a console, you know what I'm talking about.
It really wouldn’t be a Square Enix game if there weren’t some mindless mini-games that serve to distract you from the blandness that ultimately is the game play. You’re given a battle arena (one different from the Mount Olympus), a racing game which uses about 3 different tracks and a board game simulation. None of which are that appealing unless you’re trying to 100% the game, and my experience with the board game is bat-crap dumb. The only time I’ve tried it, I rolled onto some random space that summoned Pete from the Mickey Mouse cartoons in full super hero garbs and he proceeded to drain my currency every single turn, thus making it impossible for me to win. And this was on turn 2. I was basically doomed from the beginning; rolling the dice to somehow fool myself into thinking I had a chance. From what I understand, which isn’t a lot, it’s a more complicated version of monopoly and… that’s about as much as I got. It looked overly complicated and full of extra fluff to pad out an unoriginal concept.
Overall, this seems like another pointless attempt to quell a fan base when Square Enix damn well knows what game we all want. They’d just rather throw up some stupid excuses as to why they haven’t made Kingdom Hearts III yet. Oh, but thanks for announcing Re: Coded and a 3DS game. I’m sure that will make everyone happy. I don’t get it Square Enix. You’re in a position to make games that your fan base is basically screaming for, and yet you make every attempt to ignore them to push out some other piece of crap. I don’t care if PS3 development is hard and take some time, we’ll wait. Other game designers seem to be having no problem making PS3 games on a regular basis. I mean, look at Bethesda: they’ve made Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas in about four years time. Maybe if you didn’t fondle yourselves over your Crystal Tools graphic engine, you’d be able to make more than one console game and one abysmal online game. Let Eidos make the game if you need to, I don’t think the Tomb Raider series is that important that we need another one right away. We just got Guardian of Light.
So is the game worth getting? If you like Kingdom Hearts, maybe. Honestly though, its a prequel to the original game. I don't think anything will be a surprise. Prequels have that tendency to either have them all killed off or some other plot convenient method of explaining why all the characters from this one aren't in the others.
I tried to give the PSP hardware a little credit that it could actually reproduce the game play of the only two numbered games in the series and deliver a satisfying experience. How shameful of me, I almost forgot that this game was being made by Square Enix. Let’s see how they screwed it up.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way. The graphics are good, almost on par with the PS2 incarnations. Every cut scene and character stays true to its source material and never falter. But we have to remember that this is probably where all the money went to when making this game, so I feel stupid for praising it. I’m sure Square Enix reads all these reviews and just scans for what’s said over their precious graphics; gleefully pointing out every time a game review says “despite everything, the graphics are amazing”. Honestly, I couldn’t give a crap about the graphics of this game. It’s now something that I expect from them. And if they ever fail to deliver nothing but graphical perfection, I will turn in a second’s notice, for they are on thin ice with me ever since Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced and that stupid law system.
As far as the soundtrack is, just imagine every area having only one song and having that 2 minute song repeated endlessly. I’m not looking for high art here, but for crying out loud, I want something that actually inspires me to set forth into uncharted worlds and conquer evil. I don’t need some Japanese pop star singing about god-knows-what or its crappy remixed version. Voice acting isn’t terrible, but Terra does have some god-awful deliveries. But even having the voice talents of Orson Welles won’t save your game if the dialog and the story aren’t up to snuff. And what a shame, they aren’t.
Let me give you a summarization of the epic plot. You start off with a Sora-look a like, a childhood friend that will eventually turn evil, and a girl. Sora-wannabe has a strong conviction towards friendship and everything that farts sunshine and puppies, your evil friend has trouble controlling the darkness (this is even shown in the opening sequence, so to be completely oblivious to him being evil at some point requires the mandatory level of retardation needed to work for Activision) and the girl has… boobs. Honestly, the girl, Aqua (named so because her hair is blue?) is the most useless character in the story, and the first character I tried out (because I like magic users even though these games are all about beating up things with giant keys). She really doesn’t contribute a single original thought, motivation or scene in the entire plot. Her entire role is to going around to each world, showing up 10 minutes after everything has happened and go “I can’t believe that would happen”. They even force in moments where you run into Sora, Riku and Kairi when they were still young (well younger) for no apparent reason. Oh look, they’re making reference to the first game. Maybe they’ll do that again by having the camera swing around stupidly in the middle of combat which causes nausea. These nostalgic moments serve nothing to the plot and only are there to make the fans shut up about the lack of KH3 for a few more minutes. But to fully know what’s happening in the game, you have to play through each character’s story, which equates to running through the same nine worlds, watching the same events and doing the same crap about three times. All the while, the game throws out lessons on friendship and hearts and everything else that makes me want to backhand a box of puppies. Events translate to: you get key blade, you go rid worlds of their Unversed problem (this games version of the heartless, although why they need to keep renaming the same type of monsters is beyond me. I guess it’s to make you believe they’re trying to be original) and having your friendship tested. Maybe if there was a bigger crisis affecting the world and not just having a plot that only focuses on the squabble of three pre-teens, I might give a crap.
Speaking from a Square Enix fan (well, really a Square Soft fan) I was disappointed. The primary reason these games became popular was because you could see your favorite Final Fantasy characters out of their element and rendered in better graphics. However, the only Final Fantasy character I found in the entire game was Zack from Crisis Core. Was that the best they could do? Pull a character from another PSP game? Where’s Sephiroth? Where’s Tifa? Sure Zack is a good character, but I crave more. And it’s not like he’s important, he’s merely a combatant in the Olympus World. Because that is the only reason that world is ever added to this series, to serve as a battle arena with all of two areas to explore.
As a Disney fan (not so much as a fan as I liked Phil Collins in Tarzan, I know, I’m a horrible human being) there really isn’t much satisfaction here either. Sure, in the beginning what your character does effects the Disney subplots, but towards the end, what you do in the world doesn’t even really matter. If you subtract the Unversed and your character, everything would’ve just played out normally. It really comes off as a lack of effort to better integrate story with these different levels.
But let’s try desperately to find something to like about this game, like the combat system. Mash X. When you’re done doing that, hit triangle for some variety. But seriously, the combat is quite good at times. You’re given different abilities to work with and you can mix / match / meld them together to create all new abilities with different effects and bonuses. The crafting of said abilities is really well done too. You don’t have to run around for hours, looking for resources and hunting for rare drops. You can buy them all pretty cheaply and the materials used to fuse them drop from enemies frequently. My problem with their integration is you have to use a wheel system which utilizes the d-pad to use them during combat. Hurray, another PSP game that thinks me using the D-pad and analog stick at the same time is a good idea. I’d have a better time using the PSP as dental floss. At least some of the abilities are nice and powerful, making crafting very rewarding. But there is one more problem which is a part of a greater problem with Japanese action games: the dodge button is rubbish. For whatever reason, the Japanese can’t get it that if I press it, it must do something. I don’t care if I’m in the middle of an attack; I need to dodge the second I press it. But not, you’re character has to finish whatever animation they’re in the middle of and return to their original stance before they’ll even think about dodging. This turns combat into more predicting when an enemy attack than it does reward split-second thinking and skill. This is mostly true for every other action you try to perform while you’re swinging around you key blade. Thus, dodging is mostly useless.
The camera is finally handled as a PSP game should handle it, with the L and R buttons. Problem is these buttons also control on the lock on features, switching targets and using some special attack that I rarely ever used. You can switch up the L and R control scheme, but you’re only other options are just varying degrees of stupid. Speaking of stupid controls, I think someone at Square messed up the button assignment. Circle is jump, X is attack, square is dodging / blocking and triangle is abilities. How did circle become the jump button? You know how hard that is to reach on the PSP? Why couldn’t square be attack and X be jump, or even the reverse of that? Why is such a useless feature given the prime spot of the square button? I wouldn’t be as pissed at this if you could reassign the button layout, but you can’t. That’s reserved for the before-mentioned L and R fiasco.
Combat isn’t hampered by controls alone. The camera and lock on system do a poor job of focusing and showing the combat. Enemies will pummel you from off camera constantly. Even if you see them coming, it’s not like you can just use the freaking dodge button! Also, some idiot developer made random objects carry the same targeting priority and enemies. So instead of targeting a particularly threatening enemy, you're more likely the target the seriously menacing foe known as random potted plant. I don’t even want to get into D-links. Just know you can summon the buffoons from other worlds to assist you in battle. Although why you'd want to see anyone in this game more than once is beyond me.
At least the boss battles provided some enjoyment. No two really can be approached the same way to begin with. But even that didn’t last. It’s like this game blew all its good ideas right away in the beginning of the game and phoned it in the rest of the way. Some of the boss battles didn’t even make sense. Take the first one, which is the pumpkin chariot from Cinderella. Wasn’t that a creation of the fairy god mother? How did that become evil? It’s not like it was sitting around, the story clearly has it being destroyed before the prince goes looking for Cinderella (according to the Disney movie), and so why is it back and evil? Did the Unversed resurrect the pumpkin and had it transform back into the chariot? That seems like a long way to go when they could’ve just called upon something from the darkness. Really, anything, just pull a creature out of your butt and throw it at me. Or what about the evil step mother and her two daughters? Couldn’t they think of some creative way to incorporate them into a boss battle?
It seems I've done a good job of beating this game up, but I saved a special complaint area for one more glaring flaw. Load times. Load times, load times, load times. My god are they painful. Even when you fully install the game at 600mbs, the game loads like molasses. Going from cut scene to cut scene, moving to a new area, entering your powered up form or even opening the game's menu: the game loads. These load times are actually so bad, that I get into a hypnotic stare with the loading symbol every time, visualizing it rotating one way, then the other, then back in forth. I don't know why this game has to suffer so much with it. Final Fantasy Tactics had some lag issues, but Crisis Core seemed to play okay. Is it because the areas are a little more vast, or the graphics a little better? Or maybe it's because they padded out the game play over 3 character story lines instead of one. For whatever reason, you will spend a significant amount of time staring at the loading screen. If you've played Dragon Age on a console, you know what I'm talking about.
It really wouldn’t be a Square Enix game if there weren’t some mindless mini-games that serve to distract you from the blandness that ultimately is the game play. You’re given a battle arena (one different from the Mount Olympus), a racing game which uses about 3 different tracks and a board game simulation. None of which are that appealing unless you’re trying to 100% the game, and my experience with the board game is bat-crap dumb. The only time I’ve tried it, I rolled onto some random space that summoned Pete from the Mickey Mouse cartoons in full super hero garbs and he proceeded to drain my currency every single turn, thus making it impossible for me to win. And this was on turn 2. I was basically doomed from the beginning; rolling the dice to somehow fool myself into thinking I had a chance. From what I understand, which isn’t a lot, it’s a more complicated version of monopoly and… that’s about as much as I got. It looked overly complicated and full of extra fluff to pad out an unoriginal concept.
Overall, this seems like another pointless attempt to quell a fan base when Square Enix damn well knows what game we all want. They’d just rather throw up some stupid excuses as to why they haven’t made Kingdom Hearts III yet. Oh, but thanks for announcing Re: Coded and a 3DS game. I’m sure that will make everyone happy. I don’t get it Square Enix. You’re in a position to make games that your fan base is basically screaming for, and yet you make every attempt to ignore them to push out some other piece of crap. I don’t care if PS3 development is hard and take some time, we’ll wait. Other game designers seem to be having no problem making PS3 games on a regular basis. I mean, look at Bethesda: they’ve made Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas in about four years time. Maybe if you didn’t fondle yourselves over your Crystal Tools graphic engine, you’d be able to make more than one console game and one abysmal online game. Let Eidos make the game if you need to, I don’t think the Tomb Raider series is that important that we need another one right away. We just got Guardian of Light.
So is the game worth getting? If you like Kingdom Hearts, maybe. Honestly though, its a prequel to the original game. I don't think anything will be a surprise. Prequels have that tendency to either have them all killed off or some other plot convenient method of explaining why all the characters from this one aren't in the others.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Silent Hill Retrospect
Silent Hill
Dark atmosphere, religious icons and symbolism, subtle references to the horror masters of various ages, Konami first entry into the survival horror genre proved to offer something different from the standards set by Resident Evil. Instead of jump out scares, Silent Hill relied on psychological terrors. Team Silent realized from the start that the more effective weapon to evoke a person’s worst fears is their own imagination. Monsters don’t have to be seen or actually show up as long as the game makes you think they’re there and could show up at any moment. Not to say that you spend the entire game not seeing a single monster, they definitely make their presence realized by assaulting you from the land and air.
I would try to describe these creatures but, there’s nothing really comparative about them. There are enemies that look like pterodactyls (spelled that correctly on the first try!), some that look and move like gorillas, enemies that look and move like dogs and some that resemble little kids (more on these later). All have a skin-like appearance, very red or peach. Some enemies in the later stages are almost completely invisible.
The levels deserve a special mention because they are well-chosen. Middle school, hospital, sewers, abandoned amusement park; these are all examples of settings we are familiar with as human beings, but not when they’re presented deserted and transformed. This is a clear example of taking the familiar and making it strange, which is a common tactic in the horror genre, but is always effective.
The middle school is one of the first levels and has an enemy population that is made up of tiny enemies that resemble middle school students with butcher knives. That’s really unnerving to think about, running around a middle school trying to keep these things from killing you. They lumber around, making little squeaking noise and lunge at you.
Something that has been tradition in the series is a hospital level. The nurses in these levels have probably become the second most famous enemy from this series (pyramid head being the first) mostly from their Silent Hill 2 counterparts being overly sexualized. Not so here. You’ll find a mixture of nurses and doctors in this hospital as they all are hunched over with what looks like a tumor growth on their back. A nice touch which was probably lost in the American demographic is the inclusion of a fourth floor. In Japan, there is a superstition surround the fourth floor in hospitals (so much so that I think they intentionally always stop at 3 floors) since the word ‘fourth’ in Japan is pronounce the same way as ‘death’. And wouldn’t you know it, there’s a fourth floor in the hospital in Silent Hill. It doesn’t show up right away, you have to select the other floors and see that there’s no way to progress through the game before the fourth floor elevator button shows up. It’s a nice, subtle touch.
Speaking of subtly, this game plays host to a lot of horror movie references. Everything from Rosemary’s Baby to the Little Shop of Horrors has at least one instance of being honored by this game: whether it be the street names or little Easter Eggs. The only famous horror movie I didn’t find a reference for was the Exorcist. Or maybe the idea of a possessed little girl was the reference, but even then, I think that’s more akin to Rosemary’s Baby since it was a cult that drove the evil into the girl, not the evil itself.
Harry Mason, your main character, controls like rhino on roller skates. Many times I’ve resorted to yelling profanely at my television screen in some vain attempt to maneuver him away from smacking into a wall and get the heck away from all the enemies. Mixing in all those enemies, controlling Harry, dark areas and some nice lag can make you forget all about being scared and confront being overly annoyed.
The plot will definitely take you a few times through to comprehend, mostly because nothing is spelled out for you, but in a good way. Having elements being explained how removes any sense of uncertainty and mystery. Once you put logic or reason to something, it ceases to be scary or interesting. So I consider it a good choice for Konami to leave players in the dark (pun definitely intended). Depending on your actions during the game, you can achieve one of five different endings, most of which just determine what final boss you meet and the final scene, but there’s not a lot of contrast, except for one of the endings, which was probably intended as a joke, but makes just as much sense as the rest of them. All you need to know is this town is more than your average tourist getaway.
Silent Hill 2
This game is what story-telling is all about. The characters, the story, the atmosphere, all are excellent. James Sunderland receives a letter from his deceased wife from a town they spent a lot of their time in, Silent Hill. But this isn’t the same Silent Hill that Harry Mason ran around in. No, this is a more subtle Silent Hill. The whole town is coated in a thick layer of fog. This creates the atmosphere of uncertainty. Every noise you hear is not immediately accompanied by a source. It leaves you wondering what’s out there and let’s your imagination create the terrors. That’s not to say the game is one big tease, you see monsters. But these monsters aren’t zombies or dinosaurs or some genetically mutated abomination, these monsters are the most well-designed monsters in gaming. Every single one of them is symbolic to your character’s troubled mind.
I’ll start off with the executioner himself (or rather themselves since there’s two), Pyramid Head. Not all of his appearances are out to antagonize you. He’s meant to symbolize oppression and judgment. In the past, the executioners put to death those who were convicted as witches. There are some heavy, sexual overtones in the game which mostly make you feel really uncomfortable. Some encounters he’s chasing you around with the biggest meat clever in the world, it grinding slowly against the ground as he pursues you, some encounters he’s violating one of the other enemies in the game. Even the other enemies don’t feel completely natural. They’re more like mannequins. And of course there are the sexy nurses with the cleavage. I’ll make a note to point out this is the ONLY instance in the Silent Hill series where they’ve been appropriate.
You start to get the feeling that James is creating all these terrors himself during his plight to find his dead wife. Along the way you run into 4 different characters. All of which see either slightly off or are not exactly experiencing the same town you are. You have the little girl, Laura who acts like the town is just simply deserted, Eddie, who is first met throwing up in a bathroom next to a room where someone has been murdered, Angela is always tensed up and submissive, almost childlike and Maria could be your dead wife’s twin as far as looks go. Maria deserves special mention because of how she plays opposite James, even having to be escorted for a short time. James is clearly attracted to her, but still has the strong desire to find his wife. Maria seems to enjoy teasing him around and really wants him to abandon his quest and just stay with her. And thank god, this is one love interest that doesn’t feel shoe-horned into the plot for the sake of padding. There’s a reason Maria is in this story, and it’s a dang-good one.
The graphics are splendid. Sure there might be some long stretches where nothing happens, and the game chugs a bit during the foggier areas, but it’s all about atmosphere. It’s all about the isolation. You feel alone. There’s no security or means to confine within in this town (unless you count Maria’s supple… support). All of which is perfectly accented by Akira Yamaoka mastery of the effects of sound and ambient noise. Everything just fits so well into making you believe this story is really happening, and you’re a part of it.
The combat is clunky, but this is another good example of your character being an average person and not Rambo. Although a normal person should still be able to swing around a nail-board without smacking themselves in the face, which James might have trouble with.
Silent Hill 3
I’m a little confused by Silent Hill 3. Instead of having a person wander into Silent Hill searching for someone, the town actually comes to the character first. Heather is your normal teenage girl who is stereotypically found in a mall. Suddenly the world changes from the casual atmosphere of shoppers to the degraded, rustic look of Silent Hill’s nightmare world. This raises a few questions. How far is the town willing to go to get to someone? Can the town actually stretch its influence beyond its own borders and infect the rest of the world? None of these issues are addressed, which is good, but I wish they could’ve expanded on this a little more.
Silent Hill 3 is a direct sequel to Silent Hill 1, which leaves Silent Hill 2 to take place in its own little dimension. It’s interesting though, because when Heather finally makes it to Silent Hill, it’s the town found in Silent Hill 2. This is probably because the town itself is rather huge, and Silent Hill 1 merely took place in one part, whereas Silent Hill 2 was located in an adjacent location. As far as story goes, this game doesn’t do much to expand upon the legend of the town, but more of some of the characters and events that happened within it. It throws characters related to people from the first game as well as all new psychos like Leonard. All of which helps layer on the fact that this town brings out the evil nature in peoples’ souls.
There are some neat scare-tactics in this game, a haunted house, a room designed specifically to get yourself locked in, some of the same areas from the 2nd game that have transformed. All of which are rendered beautifully. Silent Hill 2’s graphics were something to behold, and Silent Hill 3 somehow improved on them.
Combat was refined a little more. You got more of a weapon selection, like a submachine gun and a light saber which only provides more awkwardness in a game that’s already unsettling enough.
There is one event near the end of the game that’s really disturbing. It happens between Claudia and Heather but I care not to describe it. I’ve never seen it in any form of media, movie or book alike, and it shocked me.
The levels in this game, abandoned amusement parks, your standard hospital level, sewers… basically all the levels you’ve seen in the other games are gone over with a few being completely original areas, mostly found in the last part of the game. Ultimately, the game serves to give some closure to Silent Hill 1, as if to point out which ending event was the true one. It’s almost an unnecessary game, but they improved on the formula enough to justify the release.
Silent Hill 4: The Room
The Room’s biggest accomplishment is making the player suffer one of the worst inventory systems ever conceived. You have a limited number of items you can carry around, but you also need to lug around a lot of items for puzzle solving. Did any designer think that one all the way through? Another layer of stupidity is slathered on when the game introduces limited stacking ammo. Sounds dumb? That’s because it is. Mix that in with the inventory system and you have the most horrifying part of the game. So yeah, some idiot game designer decided that ammo will only stack up to a certain number, let’s say… 12 bullets per stack. So now you’re lugging around all those stacks of ammo, your collection of puzzle trinkets and a whole lot of contempt for this game.
One of the strangest things about this game (and that’s saying a lot) is that you never actually go to Silent Hill. You go through 4 levels with your apartment room acting as a hub for them all. The game sucker punches you in the face by making you go through each level twice, once when its ‘normal’ and again when it’s in ‘nightmare’ mode (as if this game wasn’t already in nightmare mode). And to make sure the nightmare levels are extra nightmare-ish, you have to escort around a female character, and not let her die. Basically it’s this part of the game that determines what ending you get. It wouldn’t be so bad to drag her around if the unbeatable phantoms wouldn’t show up. They cannot be killed, but they can be restrained with some special items, but they are annoying.
Combat received another upgrade with the addition of a charged attack, which is what you get when you hold down the attack button and release. It’s actually worth it to use sometimes, especially when trying to defeat the final boss. And I do have to mention the final boss because, for once, it’s not some spirit or demon that you fight, it’s a human being. I find this to be a more believable and more effective which makes for a more meaningful encounter.
The subtle of this game is The Room because you’re main character, Henry Townshend, cannot leave his apartment due to it being mysteriously chained and bound at the door. He can yell and scream all he wants, but there is no way to get out except by travelling through the hole in your bathroom to get to the game’s levels. Over the course of the game, your room will slowly be possessed by ghosts, which you have to ward off with various items, like candles. It’s a nice touch considering the first half the game lets you believe that this is a haven for you.
The game does a good job with atmosphere and characters once again, but the gameplay is just not there. It’s still worth looking at, considering I managed to buy it for $10 new when it was close to being first released, so I’d imagine it’s even cheaper now. One thing that people might notice is a lack of boss battles. It didn’t strike me until I fought the first one, which is near the end of the game, but I never imagined a game without boss battles. It’s weird to think about considering they’ve been such an integrated part of gaming for the last 25 years. It just shows the creators had enough sense to not force anything into the game that wasn’t necessary; they just made some bad decisions along the way.
Silent Hill Origins
This was the only Climax Studios Silent Hill game I played, since then they’ve release Silent Hill 5: Homecoming and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. Basically Team Silent (the Japanese dev team) decided Silent Hill had gone on long enough, but Konami decided a western developer should get a crack at it, which usually spells trouble for any series. And like Americans tend to do, they messed it up. Gone are the great characters and great story lines and what’s left is merely an imitation of what the series formally was. In Origins you play a truck driver who had no business being in the town in the first place, but soon realizes he too has a troubled past which he needs to work out. The problem is: the game / the town / the enemies / the story weren’t really built around this. There are hints here and there with the levels and some notes you find, but the enemy designed don’t reflect what I would consider a personalized hell for him. It’s actually brought up really late in the game what events took place that were so bad, but it was never a part of the over-arching story. In Silent Hill 2, you were constantly looking for clues where or how your wife wrote you a letter. In this game, you’re just kind of wandering around like an idiot instead of running out of the town and never coming back. Nothing is really solved by him coming to the town.
The combat takes a turn for the worse by including weapon degradation, but you can pick up a new weapon at almost every turn. The idea is, instead of a few weapons that can be used many times, you get a bunch of weapons that can only be used once or twice. I’m not really sure what they were thinking with this. Maybe frantically throwing stuff at enemies is supposed to make combat more of a desperate struggle, but I just kept thinking of how your main character could hold all those items.
As far as levels go, there’s nothing special. I think I liked the theater the best because it seemed creative how you managed to get to the boss area by way of the stage. Other than that, there’s nothing special. You go to a mental hospital which has a connection to you, yadda yadda yadda. Move on already.
My biggest complaint is the developers never took the time to understand what made the series great. They figured they could copy success by copying the game, but there’s more to it than that. Silent Hill from 1 through 4 were all smart games (well maybe not 1 and 3 with the amount of doofus cult-driven characters that run around) that all did one thing very well. Whether it is the story, the atmosphere or always the soundtrack, it was something that kept you playing. Silent Hill Origins does nothing well enough to warrant its existence. Being a prequel game almost means nothing. You see some characters from the first game, but they’re completely useless and only stay around as far as the opening.
Despite the newer games, this is my favorite survival horror series. There’s just so much to chew on with these games (1 through 4). They really put some effort into making them consistent yet different.
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