Let's start off by noting that if you don't have Steam, then you are falling behind in your gaming and should just denounce any right you have to playing games in the future. Steam is every PC gamers dream come true: easy access to wonderful games, regular sales with hit titles going at 66% off, and a great way to set up multiplayer games with others who own Steam. Plus it all runs on the cloud, so as long as you have access to a computer, you can sign in to Steam and download any game you've previously purchased. Truly a wonderful mechanic.
That being said, we're going to look at a game I've been playing thanks to Steam. Today I'd like to introduce you to a little game called Recettear. Actually everything about this game is little - little characters, little plot, little music. But don't let that sound like a bad thing. In this case little really is going a long way to make something fun and enjoyable.
Recettear follows the story of a young girl suddenly swamped with her missing father's debt. The agent from the finance company suggests that our heroine Recette start up an item shop, and by making weekly payments widdle down the massive debt she has inherited. The size of that debt is the only big thing in this game, really.
With surprising enthusiasm for a girl who can't be more than 12 (if even, it's always hard to tell with Japanese games)and who will likely never see her father again (and doesn't have a mother anywhere in sight), you open up an item shop. Capitalism is the name of the game, as young Recette never fails to mention. Your job is to display a showcase of items you collect, either by purchasing them from the merchant's guild or collecting from dungeons, and then sell them off to the moronic saps who think that a watermelon costs some 3 000 pix. An apple is about a tenth of that price. I don't want to do the conversion rate to figure out how that translates in comparison to the American dollar, but I think we can all agree that inflation is rampant in this town of hers.
As you progress, the amount you have to pay for your debt increases rapidly. You've got about five in game weeks to pay it all off, with the final installment reaching 500 000 pix. If that sounds like a lot, even with the amount of currency you can pull in for fruit, then you're starting to realize that this game is nearly impossible on the first run through. A game that you can't beat, sure does sound fun, huh?
Well that's why you're given the wonderful opportunity to restart from the beginning, with all your items and levels. That way you'll carry over some of the more expensive items and have a better start. And how does the game loop itself like this? Turns out the first run through was all a dream.
Ya, I hate that cliche. Passionately.
To be fair, there's a nice foreshadowing to it. When you start off the game, Recette is asked why she is smiling one morning, and states that she thinks she saw something wonderful in a dream. It's at that point where a failed game restarts. Technically speaking, you can fail any number of times, so the game never really lets you lose. It just makes you grind from the beginning and onward.
Oh, grinding. That is what this game really comes down to. You grind items by sending adventurers you hire to dungeons. You grind money by selling items you get. You grind items by spending money on buying them from the market and the merchant's guild. You grind your teeth when people refuse to buy things for the perfectly reasonable price of 130% of the normal value.
Despite that, Recettear manages to add in so much cutsieness and humour that it's hard to be mad at it. Your starting adventurer is poor and seedy, the thief is a drunk, the lancer has no sense of direction. Everybody is just so goofy and adorable you want to pluck their sprites out of the game and stuff them. Recettear plush dolls - collect the whole set!
I'd hate to spoil all the jokes this game has to offer, and I don't think I could even cover half of them if I tried. Even the plot relevant conversations are more humourous than informative. This isn't terribly surprising, though, considering the main plot consists of nothing more than "collect money, pay off debt, don't end up in a cardboard box in the street".
Actually, plot rears its ugly head only after you've completed the main storyline. There is so much post game material to Recettear that if you enjoyed it, you'll find yourself continuing to play along just to see what else it has to offer. And though the game mechanics never get too innovative, things stay just challenging enough to keep you on your toes.
There are, however, some useless things the game has to offer. You can customize the look of your shop, and in a sort of feng shui balance the interiors feel between Light, Dark, Plain, and Gaudy. If it gets too close to any extreme, you'll get fewer customers, but you'll generally see more of a certain type of customer. In general this just felt like a tedious thing to keep track of, and the wall and floor designs were not terribly appealing anyway.
You can attempt to collect all the items in the game, as it does keep a library for you. But sometimes trying to 100% a game is just a waste of time, and Recettear exemplifies that. Monsters have a relatively low chance of dropping certain types of ingredients that you can use to make your own items. And when you need sometimes 30 or one type of ingredient to make an item? Bring out the grindstone!
Musically, Recettear offers some fairly appealing tracks. Breezy tunes that offer a nice accompaniment to whatever you are doing, be it strolling through town or selling your ill gotten wares to the local children (remember: it's totally safe to sell sharp bladed weapons to little girls!). Only one track really stands out as truly an impressive composition, and since this is a blog, there's no reason not to link you to it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poNlmB1Kt4o From as much as I got through, there was only two locations that this track played, and both times it was in the post game material. It definitely fits the sense of rising tension that comes up in those two spots.
Recettear is a great game if you want something light, different, and funny. You can play it for about 10 hours and complete the main game, but you'll probably find yourself pressing onwards anyway to see what else it has in store. Considering how cheap it is, and how often Steam has the game on sale it seems, the game is worth grabbing. You'd almost think they were trying to offer you a deal at some sort of item shop, but that would be ridiculous.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
I Like All The Pretty Reviews
I'll be blunt – I'm really not an RTS fan. For those of you not in the know, RTS stands for Real Time Strategy, a genre of game in which there is constant action, be it production of fighting units or attacking your opponent's encampment or defending your own supplies. They are a vicious, hectic sort of game which breeds competition like small children breed diseases. Anger ensues upon defeat, though perhaps that particular point is not unique to RTS. Some people will just get angry if they lose at anything. Hell, some people just get angry.
There are two franchises that really stand out as being RTS: Age of Empires and Blizzard's “Craft Dinner” series. And of the two, my personal preference is for anything that Blizzard has made. How, you ask, can I like something that I just previously stated I'm not really a fan of? Simple – Blizzard does such a good job with RTS games that they can make a hater love them. If you don’t understand, imagine somebody who hates chocolate, because he has only had non dairy baking chocolate squares. He doesn’t know any better until you give him actual chocolate. So it is with other RTS's compared to Blizzard.
First, they gave us Warcraft, and few people listened or cared. Then they gave us Warcraft 2, and we rejoiced, because we didn't know any better. Then they gave us Starcraft, and we sang their praises, for Blizzard had created something that few other companies had dared to achieve – a unique game that was engaging, diverse, and above all us, balanced. Despite the three different races, each with their own style of play, their individualized units with special feats and abilities, Starcraft managed to remain fair and playable no matter which race you chose. Then Blizzard gave us Warcraft 3, and we sort of looked at it and said: “Well, it doesn't suck”.Then we went back to playing Starcraft for another 8 years.
12 years later, Starcraft was still one of the most popular real time strategy games, especially in everybody's favourite country, South Korea (Let me just dispel a myth here: South Korea's national sport is not Starcraft. It's Tae Kwon Do). And it's easy to understand why. I remember playing the game when it was a new release, and thinking that it was abominably hard. The story didn't really engage me at the time, and I didn't much care for the diversity. Basically, a ten year old boy looked at the game and said “Oh man, those machine people sure are cool!”, as one might expect a child to say. Those memories brought me back to playing the original Starcraft again recently, only this time I didn't use cheat codes to beat every level. I toiled, strove, and finally clawed my way to the top, only to find that it was covered in robot debris and a bunch of alien carcasses.
Starcraft had its own flaws. The interface wasn't exactly friendly, though it was manageable. Hotkeys worked, but unless you really wanted to spend the time memorizing the different hotkeys for each of the races, you weren't going to be a professional player. And the game didn't provide a tutorial for hotkeys either. They were like a hidden treat, that candy you find left on a desk when you show up to class an hour and half late. Then you realize you've missed the class entirely. But hey, free candy, right?
The hotkeys only are important after you've learned the fundamentals of the game, which - despite what the tutorial levels might say – aren't as simple as gather minerals and gas, build units, win game.
There's a lot of intricate detail that goes into real time strategy. How big should your army be, when should you attack, how many units should you have gather materials? And there's no set answer, no one right solution that will solve all your problems and make you king of the RTS. That's part of the brilliance of the genre: it's so diverse. The best way to progress is to try various things, experiment with what you're given, and find a strategy that works for you. Unfortunately, the important, large scale questions that really make an RTS function are never asked by the game during campaign mode or the tutorials. You get a very basic, simplified understanding of the mechanics, and then you are shoved into the game, expected to play at peak performance, and so help your little units if you fail to live up to these expectations.
Now, it's rather ridiculous of me to be reviewing Starcraft when Starcraft 2 was released... back in the summer. Yikes, what am I doing writing this now, anyway? Well, I guess late is better than never.
Anyway, Starcraft 2 is without doubt an improvement on the original. Aside from the update of graphics – the change from realistic to slightly cartoony may offend some – the game remains largely the same. The majority of your favourite units are still there, tweaked this way and that to better perfect the notion of balance. Some got dropped on the way side, but the new units now available to each race should more than fill that hole. Unless you play as Zerg, the alien bug race who always reminds me of the Borg, even though they really aren't that similar. Either way, if you play as Zerg, you will no doubt be sad to hear that Lurkers do not exist in the multiplayer of Starcraft 2, Wings of Liberty. Don't worry – they'll be back in the next part, Starcraft 2: Whatever the Hell We're Calling It This Time.
Here's a fun point I can harp on. Starcraft 2 is actually being released in three different chunks, one for each of the three races. That means you get one campaign per instalment, as opposed to the original where you had all three races and their respective campaigns on one disc. To be fair, the Terran – hint, they are the humans - campaign on Wings of Liberty is about three times as long as the original campaign, so it does balance out, but I can't shake the feeling that this is Blizzard attempting to make us pay more money for another patch.
In fact, in a lot of ways, Starcraft 2 feels like a patch for the original Starcraft. Nothing extraordinarily new and exciting was introduced into Starcraft 2 that changed the way the game itself s played. Sure, there are new strategies, new units to fiddle with, but the objective is the same, and how you go about it is exactly the same. A lot of people will shout here “But if it isn't broken, don't fix it”. And to them I say... you're right. Blizzard didn’t need to change anything. In fact, I'm glad they didn't change anything too drastically, as it may have ruined the feeling of the game. That doesn't mean it seems any less like a patch for the old game.
Let's go back to discussing the campaign mode, which actually received some fun and interesting upgrades. Aside from the addition of achievements – because every game ever must have achievements now so you can show them off at work and have everybody make fun of you – there is now a “base” portion between campaign missions, where you can purchase upgrades not normally available in the multiplayer portion. Each time you beat a mission, you are awarded some credits, which you can spend on these upgrades. Some of them are ridiculously game breaking, which explains why they aren't in the multiplayer. In campaign, you need every advantage you can get, as the computer cheats.
Campaign also got a difficulty setting, allowing you to play on Easy, Normal, Hard, or Brutal. Hard is about the same difficulty as the original Starcraft, meaning if you're looking for some light fun, Normal is the difficulty for you. If you have never played an RTS before, try Easy for a bit, just to get used to it. If you hate yourself, play Brutal. If you love yourself, for goodness sake stay away from this game, because it is addictive and you will spend too much time playing it.
Of course, Blizzard rewards you for spending your money and enjoying their games. You will get your money's worth on Starcraft 2, and then some. But every time I praise the company of unfavourable weather, I can't help but feel like they are doing their best to sell out. There's one mission in the campaign with a day and night mechanic. At night, you get attacked by, you guessed it, somethings that are supposed to be zombies. Well, infested humans, really, but close enough. And during the day, your objective is to destroy all the infested buildings. Does everything ever now really need to have a zombie motif in it? Are zombies really that popular that inserting a reference to them in your game or story or TV show suddenly makes your medium haute couture? Blizzard has even recently released a multiplayer custom game called Left 2 Die, an obvious and painful reference to the Left 4 Dead series. I fully expect zombie culture to reach a point where there will be No 1 Left who isn't claiming to be a zombie fanatic.
Other than that, my gripes with the game are rather miniscule. The interface is effective, if a bit annoying at times – same as before. There are even more hotkeys now, and some of them have changed from the first game, so forget everything you knew. I mean that, even if you haven't played Starcraft, forget everything you knew. It isn't going to help you for anything, so just give it up and learn something practical.
The music is acceptable, if uninteresting. You barely notice it when you play, which I suppose is good for ambient music. It's not something I'd want to put on my mp3 player. It does exactly what it should, nothing more, nothing less. Some might consider this a point in its favour, though I for one am always disappointed when the music is on the poorer end. There are a few comedy songs hidden in the game, including one called Terran Up the Night, which plays during the credit sequence. If you groaned upon hearing that, you still have a soul. Congratulations.
I'm not going to tell you if you should get Starcraft 2 or not. It's one of those games you should really play a little first, decide if you are interested in it, and then purchase it. If you've played Starcraft the Original and enjoyed it, you'll want to get Starcraft 2. If you like RTS games like Age of Empires, you should consider Starcraft 2. If you think this Blizzard company is evil because of all the people who have died playing World of Warcraft, you need a reality check. Now if you'll excuse me, Olaf and I are going to take turns playing Lost Viking.
There are two franchises that really stand out as being RTS: Age of Empires and Blizzard's “Craft Dinner” series. And of the two, my personal preference is for anything that Blizzard has made. How, you ask, can I like something that I just previously stated I'm not really a fan of? Simple – Blizzard does such a good job with RTS games that they can make a hater love them. If you don’t understand, imagine somebody who hates chocolate, because he has only had non dairy baking chocolate squares. He doesn’t know any better until you give him actual chocolate. So it is with other RTS's compared to Blizzard.
First, they gave us Warcraft, and few people listened or cared. Then they gave us Warcraft 2, and we rejoiced, because we didn't know any better. Then they gave us Starcraft, and we sang their praises, for Blizzard had created something that few other companies had dared to achieve – a unique game that was engaging, diverse, and above all us, balanced. Despite the three different races, each with their own style of play, their individualized units with special feats and abilities, Starcraft managed to remain fair and playable no matter which race you chose. Then Blizzard gave us Warcraft 3, and we sort of looked at it and said: “Well, it doesn't suck”.Then we went back to playing Starcraft for another 8 years.
12 years later, Starcraft was still one of the most popular real time strategy games, especially in everybody's favourite country, South Korea (Let me just dispel a myth here: South Korea's national sport is not Starcraft. It's Tae Kwon Do). And it's easy to understand why. I remember playing the game when it was a new release, and thinking that it was abominably hard. The story didn't really engage me at the time, and I didn't much care for the diversity. Basically, a ten year old boy looked at the game and said “Oh man, those machine people sure are cool!”, as one might expect a child to say. Those memories brought me back to playing the original Starcraft again recently, only this time I didn't use cheat codes to beat every level. I toiled, strove, and finally clawed my way to the top, only to find that it was covered in robot debris and a bunch of alien carcasses.
Starcraft had its own flaws. The interface wasn't exactly friendly, though it was manageable. Hotkeys worked, but unless you really wanted to spend the time memorizing the different hotkeys for each of the races, you weren't going to be a professional player. And the game didn't provide a tutorial for hotkeys either. They were like a hidden treat, that candy you find left on a desk when you show up to class an hour and half late. Then you realize you've missed the class entirely. But hey, free candy, right?
The hotkeys only are important after you've learned the fundamentals of the game, which - despite what the tutorial levels might say – aren't as simple as gather minerals and gas, build units, win game.
There's a lot of intricate detail that goes into real time strategy. How big should your army be, when should you attack, how many units should you have gather materials? And there's no set answer, no one right solution that will solve all your problems and make you king of the RTS. That's part of the brilliance of the genre: it's so diverse. The best way to progress is to try various things, experiment with what you're given, and find a strategy that works for you. Unfortunately, the important, large scale questions that really make an RTS function are never asked by the game during campaign mode or the tutorials. You get a very basic, simplified understanding of the mechanics, and then you are shoved into the game, expected to play at peak performance, and so help your little units if you fail to live up to these expectations.
Now, it's rather ridiculous of me to be reviewing Starcraft when Starcraft 2 was released... back in the summer. Yikes, what am I doing writing this now, anyway? Well, I guess late is better than never.
Anyway, Starcraft 2 is without doubt an improvement on the original. Aside from the update of graphics – the change from realistic to slightly cartoony may offend some – the game remains largely the same. The majority of your favourite units are still there, tweaked this way and that to better perfect the notion of balance. Some got dropped on the way side, but the new units now available to each race should more than fill that hole. Unless you play as Zerg, the alien bug race who always reminds me of the Borg, even though they really aren't that similar. Either way, if you play as Zerg, you will no doubt be sad to hear that Lurkers do not exist in the multiplayer of Starcraft 2, Wings of Liberty. Don't worry – they'll be back in the next part, Starcraft 2: Whatever the Hell We're Calling It This Time.
Here's a fun point I can harp on. Starcraft 2 is actually being released in three different chunks, one for each of the three races. That means you get one campaign per instalment, as opposed to the original where you had all three races and their respective campaigns on one disc. To be fair, the Terran – hint, they are the humans - campaign on Wings of Liberty is about three times as long as the original campaign, so it does balance out, but I can't shake the feeling that this is Blizzard attempting to make us pay more money for another patch.
In fact, in a lot of ways, Starcraft 2 feels like a patch for the original Starcraft. Nothing extraordinarily new and exciting was introduced into Starcraft 2 that changed the way the game itself s played. Sure, there are new strategies, new units to fiddle with, but the objective is the same, and how you go about it is exactly the same. A lot of people will shout here “But if it isn't broken, don't fix it”. And to them I say... you're right. Blizzard didn’t need to change anything. In fact, I'm glad they didn't change anything too drastically, as it may have ruined the feeling of the game. That doesn't mean it seems any less like a patch for the old game.
Let's go back to discussing the campaign mode, which actually received some fun and interesting upgrades. Aside from the addition of achievements – because every game ever must have achievements now so you can show them off at work and have everybody make fun of you – there is now a “base” portion between campaign missions, where you can purchase upgrades not normally available in the multiplayer portion. Each time you beat a mission, you are awarded some credits, which you can spend on these upgrades. Some of them are ridiculously game breaking, which explains why they aren't in the multiplayer. In campaign, you need every advantage you can get, as the computer cheats.
Campaign also got a difficulty setting, allowing you to play on Easy, Normal, Hard, or Brutal. Hard is about the same difficulty as the original Starcraft, meaning if you're looking for some light fun, Normal is the difficulty for you. If you have never played an RTS before, try Easy for a bit, just to get used to it. If you hate yourself, play Brutal. If you love yourself, for goodness sake stay away from this game, because it is addictive and you will spend too much time playing it.
Of course, Blizzard rewards you for spending your money and enjoying their games. You will get your money's worth on Starcraft 2, and then some. But every time I praise the company of unfavourable weather, I can't help but feel like they are doing their best to sell out. There's one mission in the campaign with a day and night mechanic. At night, you get attacked by, you guessed it, somethings that are supposed to be zombies. Well, infested humans, really, but close enough. And during the day, your objective is to destroy all the infested buildings. Does everything ever now really need to have a zombie motif in it? Are zombies really that popular that inserting a reference to them in your game or story or TV show suddenly makes your medium haute couture? Blizzard has even recently released a multiplayer custom game called Left 2 Die, an obvious and painful reference to the Left 4 Dead series. I fully expect zombie culture to reach a point where there will be No 1 Left who isn't claiming to be a zombie fanatic.
Other than that, my gripes with the game are rather miniscule. The interface is effective, if a bit annoying at times – same as before. There are even more hotkeys now, and some of them have changed from the first game, so forget everything you knew. I mean that, even if you haven't played Starcraft, forget everything you knew. It isn't going to help you for anything, so just give it up and learn something practical.
The music is acceptable, if uninteresting. You barely notice it when you play, which I suppose is good for ambient music. It's not something I'd want to put on my mp3 player. It does exactly what it should, nothing more, nothing less. Some might consider this a point in its favour, though I for one am always disappointed when the music is on the poorer end. There are a few comedy songs hidden in the game, including one called Terran Up the Night, which plays during the credit sequence. If you groaned upon hearing that, you still have a soul. Congratulations.
I'm not going to tell you if you should get Starcraft 2 or not. It's one of those games you should really play a little first, decide if you are interested in it, and then purchase it. If you've played Starcraft the Original and enjoyed it, you'll want to get Starcraft 2. If you like RTS games like Age of Empires, you should consider Starcraft 2. If you think this Blizzard company is evil because of all the people who have died playing World of Warcraft, you need a reality check. Now if you'll excuse me, Olaf and I are going to take turns playing Lost Viking.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
If You Do Not Cook Your Review Rare, Your Must Hang Yourself In Shame
When I picked up Master of the Monster Lair in EB Games, I had the impression that it would be a great, original concept that went completely wrong.
And, unfortunately, I was right.
The basic premise of the game isn't too hard to get. You are random male doofus in random town who needs a random job, but every position available to a young upstart such as yourself is taken. So you decide to head out into the forest, where you find a magic talking shovel (I wish I was making that up) which tells you that you are now destined to be a dungeon digger for the rest of your life. Oh, and the shovel will only listen to you, so don't think about trying to give it away. At least they bothered to explain why you and only you could do the job.
Now, charged with the task of digging a dungeon to make your town popular and famous, you spend day after day walking into a cave, digging up dirt, and placing rooms for monsters to live in. The concept is unique, original, and allows for some interesting set ups, even if the options are limited. Monsters are more likely to leave behind loot the more you kill in one battle, meaning if you fight one enemy, you won't get anything, but if you fight three, you're bound to get some sweet loots.
To improve your stats, instead of leveling up by killing things with your sword, you enjoy a hearty supper, which based on what you prepare will increase various stats. I loved this system - even if it was fairly abuseable - since it was just so strange, much like other elements Monster of the Master Lair. You only get three playable characters, and only two of them can eat food(apparently blobs of goo don’t need to eat), so I had it set up that the male doofus was a fighter, and the female doofus was a mage. On a side note, Firefox's spellchecker does not recognize either the words "doofus" or "mage". Expect to see them show up a lot from this point on.
These aspects of the game should come together to make something fun and different. So what's the big problem? Grinding. This game will make you grind so hard Tony Hawk will throw down his skateboard in defeat to your superior skills. Every floor requires you spend tons of money to get the rooms you need so you can fight a boss and move down to the next floor. How do you get money? Kill monsters. Want to level up? You need to kill monsters so they drop the right ingredients so you can cook. And since monsters have so many varied drops, and what you find is random, the chances you'll get what you need are low enough to make throwing the DS at a wall a very satisfying idea.
I'm not sure which doofus came up with this idea to make the player grind and grind until he has enough ground beef to make meatloaf for all of New York City, but he must have been some kind of doofus mage. Sitting at a board meeting with the other doofi, looking at the popular games at the day. Suddenly, our doofus stumbles upon World of Warcraft. He turns to the other doofi and says: "Wouldn't it be great if we could make a game where you can grind endlessly, and not have to play with other people or online?" Everybody nods, awed by the wisdom of this man, and he is crowned Mage Doofus.
It's such a fantastic concept, the ability to create your own dungeon, and then explore it. But it shouldn't require ten in game days just to build a floor. Let the player design one floor completely, then tweak it as necessary to get what he wants. Instead of forcing the player to grind and get food, why not just have somebody in town who can sell all the food the player has found throughout his travels? And make the rooms cheaper, please, or have enemies drop more money. I'm thinking about this, and it occurs to me that if the game didn't take so long to get anywhere, maybe they could have worked on the storyline a bit more.
On the subject of plot, there isn't any. What there is can be summed up in: "Be a doofus. Make a dungeon. Kill monsters so they don't overthrow the town." There is one plot element which could be considered a twist, and if you didn't see it coming, you should probably get your eyes checked, because you suffer from blind stupidity.
To be a bit more fair, the game isn't trying to take itself seriously, what with a main doofus who thinks he has to be a dungeon digger because at least it's something to do, a mage who teaches you how to cook, and a girl in the town square who sings about world conquest. And to top it off, you have a talking shovel. I don't think I can stress this enough, it's a talking shovel. So. Stupid.
I only managed to get through the first ten floors of the game, the "main plot". After that, the credits rolled, and I was told that I could dig another ten floors. To which I said "screw you, game". This is not a selling point, if the game makes me want to not play through the extras. This is bad design. Maybe I'll get back to it at some point, but I doubt it. It is not going to be worth my time. Not even slightly.
However, there are some rays of light in this doofus fest. While not all the music is sensational, there are enough good tracks to make the dungeon crawling enjoyable. After each of the first eight floors, the game gifts you with a new dungeon theme, which you can select to play while you dig up dirt. Or, if you're feeling adventurous, you can set it to random, and get a different track after every battle, or every time you go up and down a flight of stairs. I personally did not make use of this random function, because I found one theme to listen to after the fourth floor which was just that much better than everything else.
I can sum up Lair of the Monster Master in the following sentence: play if you enjoy spending three hours at a time grinding for items and money. If this does not sound like an appealing concept, then congratulations, you are not a doofus.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
My review is... Ignatias Thunderblade!
I've been a big fan of Heroes of Might and Magic since I played the second game for the PC. The one where there were only six different castles, and each of those got six distinct and unique units. Even on normal, the game was fairly challenging if you didn't move quickly. Harder difficulties? Those were for people who enjoyed watching their face hit the pavement. I stuck to normal, and maybe tried hard once or twice just to see if it was doable. It wasn't.
Clash of Heroes seems to take place in a similar world to what I consider the more classic Might and Magic games. There are only five sects now - Inferno, Ranger, Empire, Wizard, and Necromancer - and you are forced to play as each faction throughout the campaign mode. Not bad, considering there's enough variety amongst the higher level units to make things fun and different with whatever group you are stuck using.
So right off the bat I've got to talk about the balancing issues, and compare them to the Heroes games. Unfortunately for Clash of Heroes, this comparison is incredibly unfavorable. Necromancers are by far the best group, with some of the most overpowered units in the game. But I guess to understand exactly what I mean, you'll need to understand the combat system, which means I'll have to explain the combat system, so you can understand what I mean. Get what I mean?
Turn based combat is the name of the game, with a mix of strategy and Tetris. This is how it works: On your turn, you are given 3 moves. On your side of the field, your unites stand in eight columns, with a maximum of six units per column. In order to set up an attack, you must have three of the same units of the same colour stand in row in one column. They will then begin charging their power for anywhere between one and seven turns before they attack, the number of turns required based on the type of unit. You may also delete units on your side of the field to create attacks, and doing so is a combo. Every combo grants you an extra move. If you get a line piece, you clear a whole row and get bonus points.
Now, while a group of units are charging up for their attack, they can be hit by enemy units. Power is depleted from both sides, and if your group has more, they will continue charging but attack with lower power. If they have less, the enemy units will continue you their attack until they hit your main character for whatever power they have left. In other words, you can create blockades by setting up attacks with units that charge slowly but have ridiculously high power, and the opponent can't get through.
Or you could just use Necromancers and forget the whole thing.
Necromancers have two distinct advantages over every other class. For starters, they have the ghost unit. Ghosts take four turns to charge, and aren't all that powerful compared to other units of their level. However, they have the following ability: as long as this unit is charging, it will deplete the power of an attacking enemy unit without losing any of its own. This basically makes the Ghost a four turn wall once it is active, and then attacks for about 30 damage after that.
The kicker for Necromancers is an overpowered artifact they can get. Every class can get artifacts, and there is some overlap, but largely the collection of artifacts per type is unique and game breaking. Necromancers get a cloak, which lowers your hero's total health by 90 percent, but doubles the strength of all units. Now the ghosts have 60 power, are unstoppable, and will run over anything that gets in their way when they attack. Necromancers also have Vampires, who drain hit points from the enemy hero when they attack. So even though you start with less life, it doesn't matter - you can't be hit and you're going to get it back.
Other funderful artifacts include a ring that lets you take five turns and always go first - for Inferno. A wand which starts you off with a fully charged magic meter - for Wizard. A crown which lets you get reinforcements without spending a turn - for Empire. So there's some balance in that every group gets a game breaking artifact, but that's a problem. The game should not be easily broken. I'll give that the wand wasn't as useful as it could be, since the Wizard magic sucked, which is kind of funny and sad when you think about. And what does the Ranger get? Well, the fastest units, the only 1 turn attacker. That in itself is too powerful, when everything else takes at least two, and on average three turns to charge.
Balance isn't one of the games strong points, though the combat remains fun and challenging, with lots of gimmick battles and puzzles. The puzzles I particularly enjoyed. In them, you are given a pre-arranged set of units, and in three moves, you must set it up so you can destroy all of the enemy units. While none of the puzzles were head-hitting hard, they were difficult enough to be fun and interesting. Sadly, there were fewer than ten, so they didn't get all the time they deserve.
Overall though, there's one thing that makes me really want to hurt Ubisoft for Clash of Heroes. And it is the plot. The awful, awful plot that has no surprises and a villain without any sensical motivation. I am aware sensical is not actually a word, but screw it, I'm using it anyway, just to prove a point.
Spoilers from this paragraph onwards, but believe me, I'm not spoiling anything worth hiding. Turns out the head evil demon is the father of your wizard castle. Turns out he decided to help the demons because he was angry that his wife died. Demons killed his wife. Anybody else seeing a problem here?
That's not even the only problematic plot point. After you beat up demon-dad, the Inferno character says that he never wants to see another demon again, having just spent his time in the land of the demons controlling them with some kind of sword. It didn't make much sense in the game either, trust me. Anyway, in the epilogue, we get to see what each of the characters decided to do after peace had returned. And what does our Inferno friend do? He joins the group of knights whose job is to hunt down demons. Really, Ubisoft? A little consistency would be nice, here.
The only character who gets any decent screen time and characterization is the Necromancer girl, who starts off her section of the campaign dead. What follows is a story of her struggle between duty and the desire to regain her life. While it's the most interesting section of the game, it also has nothing to do with the main story. The fact that you beat up somebody in league with the demons is tangential to the Necromancer plot, and it's not even really clear how the person you killed was helping the demons anyway.
Overall, Clash of Heroes suffers from three major problems: Balancing issues, plot points, and music. The music is dull, uninteresting, and forgettable. There isn't nearly enough variety, either, which makes it that much more of a problem.
However, the combat system is original and enjoyable. Battles can range from lightning quick to long drawn out games of chess, depending on the position of your starting units. Is this enough to redeem the game? I don't think so, no. Fix up the plot, maybe balance things a bit better, and you've got a game with a decent story. As it is, Clash of Heroes is only worth playing if you want to do quick battles, a feature Ubisoft was kind enough to provide outside of campaign. You can even unlock extra characters, but that requires you play through the main story. And if you've got the patience to deal with cheesy dialogue and weak plot points, then go right ahead.
I'll be over here, summoning an army of ghosts.
Clash of Heroes seems to take place in a similar world to what I consider the more classic Might and Magic games. There are only five sects now - Inferno, Ranger, Empire, Wizard, and Necromancer - and you are forced to play as each faction throughout the campaign mode. Not bad, considering there's enough variety amongst the higher level units to make things fun and different with whatever group you are stuck using.
So right off the bat I've got to talk about the balancing issues, and compare them to the Heroes games. Unfortunately for Clash of Heroes, this comparison is incredibly unfavorable. Necromancers are by far the best group, with some of the most overpowered units in the game. But I guess to understand exactly what I mean, you'll need to understand the combat system, which means I'll have to explain the combat system, so you can understand what I mean. Get what I mean?
Turn based combat is the name of the game, with a mix of strategy and Tetris. This is how it works: On your turn, you are given 3 moves. On your side of the field, your unites stand in eight columns, with a maximum of six units per column. In order to set up an attack, you must have three of the same units of the same colour stand in row in one column. They will then begin charging their power for anywhere between one and seven turns before they attack, the number of turns required based on the type of unit. You may also delete units on your side of the field to create attacks, and doing so is a combo. Every combo grants you an extra move. If you get a line piece, you clear a whole row and get bonus points.
Now, while a group of units are charging up for their attack, they can be hit by enemy units. Power is depleted from both sides, and if your group has more, they will continue charging but attack with lower power. If they have less, the enemy units will continue you their attack until they hit your main character for whatever power they have left. In other words, you can create blockades by setting up attacks with units that charge slowly but have ridiculously high power, and the opponent can't get through.
Or you could just use Necromancers and forget the whole thing.
Necromancers have two distinct advantages over every other class. For starters, they have the ghost unit. Ghosts take four turns to charge, and aren't all that powerful compared to other units of their level. However, they have the following ability: as long as this unit is charging, it will deplete the power of an attacking enemy unit without losing any of its own. This basically makes the Ghost a four turn wall once it is active, and then attacks for about 30 damage after that.
The kicker for Necromancers is an overpowered artifact they can get. Every class can get artifacts, and there is some overlap, but largely the collection of artifacts per type is unique and game breaking. Necromancers get a cloak, which lowers your hero's total health by 90 percent, but doubles the strength of all units. Now the ghosts have 60 power, are unstoppable, and will run over anything that gets in their way when they attack. Necromancers also have Vampires, who drain hit points from the enemy hero when they attack. So even though you start with less life, it doesn't matter - you can't be hit and you're going to get it back.
Other funderful artifacts include a ring that lets you take five turns and always go first - for Inferno. A wand which starts you off with a fully charged magic meter - for Wizard. A crown which lets you get reinforcements without spending a turn - for Empire. So there's some balance in that every group gets a game breaking artifact, but that's a problem. The game should not be easily broken. I'll give that the wand wasn't as useful as it could be, since the Wizard magic sucked, which is kind of funny and sad when you think about. And what does the Ranger get? Well, the fastest units, the only 1 turn attacker. That in itself is too powerful, when everything else takes at least two, and on average three turns to charge.
Balance isn't one of the games strong points, though the combat remains fun and challenging, with lots of gimmick battles and puzzles. The puzzles I particularly enjoyed. In them, you are given a pre-arranged set of units, and in three moves, you must set it up so you can destroy all of the enemy units. While none of the puzzles were head-hitting hard, they were difficult enough to be fun and interesting. Sadly, there were fewer than ten, so they didn't get all the time they deserve.
Overall though, there's one thing that makes me really want to hurt Ubisoft for Clash of Heroes. And it is the plot. The awful, awful plot that has no surprises and a villain without any sensical motivation. I am aware sensical is not actually a word, but screw it, I'm using it anyway, just to prove a point.
Spoilers from this paragraph onwards, but believe me, I'm not spoiling anything worth hiding. Turns out the head evil demon is the father of your wizard castle. Turns out he decided to help the demons because he was angry that his wife died. Demons killed his wife. Anybody else seeing a problem here?
That's not even the only problematic plot point. After you beat up demon-dad, the Inferno character says that he never wants to see another demon again, having just spent his time in the land of the demons controlling them with some kind of sword. It didn't make much sense in the game either, trust me. Anyway, in the epilogue, we get to see what each of the characters decided to do after peace had returned. And what does our Inferno friend do? He joins the group of knights whose job is to hunt down demons. Really, Ubisoft? A little consistency would be nice, here.
The only character who gets any decent screen time and characterization is the Necromancer girl, who starts off her section of the campaign dead. What follows is a story of her struggle between duty and the desire to regain her life. While it's the most interesting section of the game, it also has nothing to do with the main story. The fact that you beat up somebody in league with the demons is tangential to the Necromancer plot, and it's not even really clear how the person you killed was helping the demons anyway.
Overall, Clash of Heroes suffers from three major problems: Balancing issues, plot points, and music. The music is dull, uninteresting, and forgettable. There isn't nearly enough variety, either, which makes it that much more of a problem.
However, the combat system is original and enjoyable. Battles can range from lightning quick to long drawn out games of chess, depending on the position of your starting units. Is this enough to redeem the game? I don't think so, no. Fix up the plot, maybe balance things a bit better, and you've got a game with a decent story. As it is, Clash of Heroes is only worth playing if you want to do quick battles, a feature Ubisoft was kind enough to provide outside of campaign. You can even unlock extra characters, but that requires you play through the main story. And if you've got the patience to deal with cheesy dialogue and weak plot points, then go right ahead.
I'll be over here, summoning an army of ghosts.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
It's Like This Review Is in the Top Ten Percent of All Reviews!
I love Pokemon.
There, I said it. Yes, I’m 22, and I love a game marketed towards children. I have nothing to be ashamed of. Everybody likes childish things, but how many people really have the guts to admit what they like? Well, I’m saying it right here, right now: I love Pokemon. I think it’s a great series of games, and they’re kind of cute, or just really nifty looking. But I only play the games. Collecting the cards and watching the anime is for kids in grade school.
Of course, 15 years ago, when Pokemon Blue and Red first hit the shelves, that would have been me, rushing to the TV after school to watch the newest episode. Now, the show is still running, over 600 episodes under its belt. I have to wonder how often you can watch the same thing every episode: main character enters a battle, almost loses, but oh wait, he makes a come back and wins. There’s only so much variation you can have. But if it works, it works.
Still, 15 years is a long time, and unlike what a lot of people thought, Pokemon is not a fad. It’s going to stick around, probably well into the future generation of consoles. New games are already lined up for the 3DS - Pokemon Black and White - with a whole new line up of critters to collect and stuff into red and white balls. Now we can all complain some more about how back in our day there were only 150 (151 if you believed in secrets) and how we knew them all by name and in the order listed in the Pokedex. Ya, we were losers then, and we’re losers now.
The fact is, the Pokemon games are so successful because they all follow the same formula, and it’s a formula that works. Let’s review the plot, shall we? You live in your nobody town which just happens to also be the hometown of a famous professor. On the day you are to get your first Pokemon, this professor decides to give you one of his. Suddenly, a rival appears and takes another of the professor’s Pokemon, careful to pick the element yours is weak to. What an ass. You beat him to a pulp, and then go on your grand adventure to defeat the eight gym leaders and become the Pokemon champion. Oh, and along the way, you’ll stop the plans of Team Whatever-they-are-called-this-time.
Like I said, it’s not a very complex plot. But it works because it is simple, and the game plays to what people want. There’s always something more to strive for, like that achievement which you’re never actually going to get, by you try anyway just so you can boast about it when you do get it. So you beat one gym leader, big woop. Now go do the next one. You beat all the gym leaders? Now fight the elite four. There’s even post game content, with harder enemies and rarer Pokemon to get.
Speaking of unachievable goals, just try getting all 493 Pokemon. Yes, there are 493 now, if you didn’t know that, and some of the legendary ones you can only get if the great lords at Nintendo feel like giving them to you. This involves shelling out money to go see the movies, which are only released in Japan. So congratulations, North Americans - you’re screwed. But if you’re hooked, it won’t stop you from getting all the Pokemon you can get. And then you’ll want to level them all to 100, or try and breed them so they can have the best stats and moves possible. It’s addiction, it doesn’t need an explanation.
There’s so much to do, and you can never really be done with it. That’s the brilliance of Pokemon, it got people addicted in its first year. Instead of revolutionizing the game play, Game Freaks have added functionality to the game. Now there’s touch screen capabilities, so you don’t have to scroll through your list of items. Now there’s an auto run function, so you can get places within a reasonable amount of time. With each new game released, the games play better, even if they play the same. You’re buying an upgrade and a new map if you decide to purchase the next generation of Pokemon, but you are paying for the same game.
And really, that’s sort of a problem. You’ve got to get seriously worked up to buy the expansion pack, which isn’t even compatible with your previous Pokemon games. You can’t trade the new guys backwards, and its hell to get your old guys to move forward, meaning you have to start from the beginning again, at level 5 (because starting you at level 1 would just be boring, I guess). You have to catch the same old guys you’ve been seeing for 4 generations of games now (5 when the new ones are released). And you’ll probably be asking yourself: “Have I ever even used a Zubat or a Geodude? Why am I even bothering with them?” It’s instinct. The Pokemon is there, and you’ve got to catch them all.
You’re always going to be running into the same guys, too. Aside from the proliferation of repeats across the map, the random encounter rate is absurdly high. I’ve gone two steps after a battle, only to enter into another one. Considering how long it takes to start a battle, it adds up to a lot of wasted time. The game provides you with Repels, which prevent wild encounters for X amount of steps, depending on how much money you spend. It’s nice to have around, but I shouldn’t need to buy them if I want to play the game.
The item system in general I find wonky. There are so many useless items you’re never going to need, like all the stat bolstering items for battles. I have moves on my guys which do twice the effect of the items I’d be using, and either one wastes my turn, so why would I pay money? The hold items have laughable functions, like the one which slows your guy down, but can be thrown once per battle for some damage. Why would I not just hold something more valuable, like I don’t know, say, the one which auto heals my Pokemon every turn. It’s not all that difficult to get repeats of a lot of items, you just have to be willing to spend the time to get them, like transferring over from old games and… oh wait.
The fact that you can’t easily buy hold items pisses me off. They have some of the most functionality in the game, and you can’t get them without finding them scattered around the world. Who leaves these things lying around, anyway? Probably the same people who think it’s okay to attack you because you walked in front of them. So I guess that’s everybody in this world.
That you only get four moves is limiting, but acceptable. What isn’t acceptable is the uselessness of some moves, and the complete imbalance of others. Maybe if you got the better moves only at higher levels, that would be fine. But no, some guys have scratch at level one, and others have tackle. Tackle misses, unlike scratch, and has the added bonus of doing less damage then scratch. Plus, with the Technical Machines system, I could teach my level 5 Squirtle Surf, and it will never need to use another move. Ever. This is why level requirements for moves are a good idea - it provides a bit of balancing.
Like the music. The music is very balanced, in the sense that the loops are all under a minute long, largely ignorable, and unvaried where it needs to be. Considering the amount of time spent in the battle screen, it would be preferably to have more variety there than having a different, largely forgettable theme for each type of opponent fought throughout the game. I can spend five minutes on one battle, but I’ll go through the laughable dialogue in five seconds. Though to be fair, the fourth generation games - Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum - featured excellent specialty themes for some of the more major fights, especially the climactic battle with the leader of Team Galactic.
When you spend a long time trying to get through a game, you want it to deliver a difficult but rewarding conclusion. Pokemon accomplishes this only if you haven’t spent time trying to vary your team. The steadily increasing levels of your opponents jumps dramatically for the Elite Four, enough that you can easily be ten levels lower, and therefore screwed. It’s kind of a flaw, really. The game gives you so many options, but if you want to beat it without spending hours leveling up, you can only use 6 Pokemon in one play through. 6 out of 493. Assuming you even found half that, it’s still incredibly limiting.
At the same time, with so much variety, the games have tremendous replay value. You can play through the whole game with only one element type on your team, or even with just one Pokemon. You can try using the worst ones you can find, or have no moves with power over 40. There are so many options, so many different ways to play, that it never gets tiring. The walks through the rather plain backgrounds are annoying, but largely inconsequential to how the game runs.
When it comes down to it, if you’re playing Pokemon, you’re playing for one of three reasons.
1) You like seeing small fuzzy animals beat the crap out of each other. You sadistic bastard.
2) You enjoy the challenges that you can create for yourself. Maybe you hate yourself, too.
3) You’re addicted. At least it’s cheaper than crack, overall. Just not by much if you buy every spinoff, too.
There, I said it. Yes, I’m 22, and I love a game marketed towards children. I have nothing to be ashamed of. Everybody likes childish things, but how many people really have the guts to admit what they like? Well, I’m saying it right here, right now: I love Pokemon. I think it’s a great series of games, and they’re kind of cute, or just really nifty looking. But I only play the games. Collecting the cards and watching the anime is for kids in grade school.
Of course, 15 years ago, when Pokemon Blue and Red first hit the shelves, that would have been me, rushing to the TV after school to watch the newest episode. Now, the show is still running, over 600 episodes under its belt. I have to wonder how often you can watch the same thing every episode: main character enters a battle, almost loses, but oh wait, he makes a come back and wins. There’s only so much variation you can have. But if it works, it works.
Still, 15 years is a long time, and unlike what a lot of people thought, Pokemon is not a fad. It’s going to stick around, probably well into the future generation of consoles. New games are already lined up for the 3DS - Pokemon Black and White - with a whole new line up of critters to collect and stuff into red and white balls. Now we can all complain some more about how back in our day there were only 150 (151 if you believed in secrets) and how we knew them all by name and in the order listed in the Pokedex. Ya, we were losers then, and we’re losers now.
The fact is, the Pokemon games are so successful because they all follow the same formula, and it’s a formula that works. Let’s review the plot, shall we? You live in your nobody town which just happens to also be the hometown of a famous professor. On the day you are to get your first Pokemon, this professor decides to give you one of his. Suddenly, a rival appears and takes another of the professor’s Pokemon, careful to pick the element yours is weak to. What an ass. You beat him to a pulp, and then go on your grand adventure to defeat the eight gym leaders and become the Pokemon champion. Oh, and along the way, you’ll stop the plans of Team Whatever-they-are-called-this-time.
Like I said, it’s not a very complex plot. But it works because it is simple, and the game plays to what people want. There’s always something more to strive for, like that achievement which you’re never actually going to get, by you try anyway just so you can boast about it when you do get it. So you beat one gym leader, big woop. Now go do the next one. You beat all the gym leaders? Now fight the elite four. There’s even post game content, with harder enemies and rarer Pokemon to get.
Speaking of unachievable goals, just try getting all 493 Pokemon. Yes, there are 493 now, if you didn’t know that, and some of the legendary ones you can only get if the great lords at Nintendo feel like giving them to you. This involves shelling out money to go see the movies, which are only released in Japan. So congratulations, North Americans - you’re screwed. But if you’re hooked, it won’t stop you from getting all the Pokemon you can get. And then you’ll want to level them all to 100, or try and breed them so they can have the best stats and moves possible. It’s addiction, it doesn’t need an explanation.
There’s so much to do, and you can never really be done with it. That’s the brilliance of Pokemon, it got people addicted in its first year. Instead of revolutionizing the game play, Game Freaks have added functionality to the game. Now there’s touch screen capabilities, so you don’t have to scroll through your list of items. Now there’s an auto run function, so you can get places within a reasonable amount of time. With each new game released, the games play better, even if they play the same. You’re buying an upgrade and a new map if you decide to purchase the next generation of Pokemon, but you are paying for the same game.
And really, that’s sort of a problem. You’ve got to get seriously worked up to buy the expansion pack, which isn’t even compatible with your previous Pokemon games. You can’t trade the new guys backwards, and its hell to get your old guys to move forward, meaning you have to start from the beginning again, at level 5 (because starting you at level 1 would just be boring, I guess). You have to catch the same old guys you’ve been seeing for 4 generations of games now (5 when the new ones are released). And you’ll probably be asking yourself: “Have I ever even used a Zubat or a Geodude? Why am I even bothering with them?” It’s instinct. The Pokemon is there, and you’ve got to catch them all.
You’re always going to be running into the same guys, too. Aside from the proliferation of repeats across the map, the random encounter rate is absurdly high. I’ve gone two steps after a battle, only to enter into another one. Considering how long it takes to start a battle, it adds up to a lot of wasted time. The game provides you with Repels, which prevent wild encounters for X amount of steps, depending on how much money you spend. It’s nice to have around, but I shouldn’t need to buy them if I want to play the game.
The item system in general I find wonky. There are so many useless items you’re never going to need, like all the stat bolstering items for battles. I have moves on my guys which do twice the effect of the items I’d be using, and either one wastes my turn, so why would I pay money? The hold items have laughable functions, like the one which slows your guy down, but can be thrown once per battle for some damage. Why would I not just hold something more valuable, like I don’t know, say, the one which auto heals my Pokemon every turn. It’s not all that difficult to get repeats of a lot of items, you just have to be willing to spend the time to get them, like transferring over from old games and… oh wait.
The fact that you can’t easily buy hold items pisses me off. They have some of the most functionality in the game, and you can’t get them without finding them scattered around the world. Who leaves these things lying around, anyway? Probably the same people who think it’s okay to attack you because you walked in front of them. So I guess that’s everybody in this world.
That you only get four moves is limiting, but acceptable. What isn’t acceptable is the uselessness of some moves, and the complete imbalance of others. Maybe if you got the better moves only at higher levels, that would be fine. But no, some guys have scratch at level one, and others have tackle. Tackle misses, unlike scratch, and has the added bonus of doing less damage then scratch. Plus, with the Technical Machines system, I could teach my level 5 Squirtle Surf, and it will never need to use another move. Ever. This is why level requirements for moves are a good idea - it provides a bit of balancing.
Like the music. The music is very balanced, in the sense that the loops are all under a minute long, largely ignorable, and unvaried where it needs to be. Considering the amount of time spent in the battle screen, it would be preferably to have more variety there than having a different, largely forgettable theme for each type of opponent fought throughout the game. I can spend five minutes on one battle, but I’ll go through the laughable dialogue in five seconds. Though to be fair, the fourth generation games - Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum - featured excellent specialty themes for some of the more major fights, especially the climactic battle with the leader of Team Galactic.
When you spend a long time trying to get through a game, you want it to deliver a difficult but rewarding conclusion. Pokemon accomplishes this only if you haven’t spent time trying to vary your team. The steadily increasing levels of your opponents jumps dramatically for the Elite Four, enough that you can easily be ten levels lower, and therefore screwed. It’s kind of a flaw, really. The game gives you so many options, but if you want to beat it without spending hours leveling up, you can only use 6 Pokemon in one play through. 6 out of 493. Assuming you even found half that, it’s still incredibly limiting.
At the same time, with so much variety, the games have tremendous replay value. You can play through the whole game with only one element type on your team, or even with just one Pokemon. You can try using the worst ones you can find, or have no moves with power over 40. There are so many options, so many different ways to play, that it never gets tiring. The walks through the rather plain backgrounds are annoying, but largely inconsequential to how the game runs.
When it comes down to it, if you’re playing Pokemon, you’re playing for one of three reasons.
1) You like seeing small fuzzy animals beat the crap out of each other. You sadistic bastard.
2) You enjoy the challenges that you can create for yourself. Maybe you hate yourself, too.
3) You’re addicted. At least it’s cheaper than crack, overall. Just not by much if you buy every spinoff, too.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Sorry But Your Good Game is on Another Cartridge
I have a big problem with games these days, that can be summed up in two words: graphics hype. Everything is about the look, the immersion into a realistic setting, or something that at least looks as realistic as possible. First person shooters come to mind most readily, games which hit you in the face with beautiful landscapes and crappy stories.
It’s nice once in a while to see a game that cuts back on the graphics in favour of game play or story line, both rather underrated elements in the video game industry. With that in mind, I put my 3D glasses down as I went off to play Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros., a 2D platformer that gives graphics a vaguely pixilated middle finger.
Now I understand why people complain about bad graphics. Everything is flat, bland and repetitive. There’s no variation in shape or size, and the colour swapped pallets look ridiculous, especially on the few power-ups the game offers. On the one level that even pretended to offer a background other than clouds, the scenery was made up of the same brick blocks I was breaking with my head. And the one time in that background there was a hidden block, it was made obvious by the sprites white line interrupting the otherwise seamless brown.
I want to harp a bit more on the eye-piercing colours. Ye gads those things are painful. Red and blue do not make for a good colour combination, but that white and green on the second player is just too painful to bear. The turtles come in shades of red and green, so I guess Christmas never ends for the local amphibian population. Backdrops were either blue or black, without exception. All blocks were brown and yellow, the underground zones were bluish, and the water level had pink seaweed. I don’t think I’ll be eating sushi for a little while thinking about that.
For one level, the game decided to have a little fun with the colours. Instead of the brown castle I was used to entering and leaving at the start of each stage, I found myself in a gray landscape, with red tinged clouds. This marks the only real variation, and is just so startling that I briefly wondered if I had accidentally entered a Zelda final dungeon. Then a fish popped out of the bottom of the screen and killed me.
Yes, there are flying fish, but only for three levels, and it is always the third level of a world. Super Mario Bro gets broken up into 8 “worlds” that are supposed to have a theme I assume, but are completely interchangeable with one another without affecting said “theme“. Each world has 4 levels in it, and all 4 levels follow the same pattern: 1 - flat level. 2 - Underground or water. 3 - suspended pillars. 4 - Castle with lava. Level 2 might vary a bit, depending on its mood, and forgo the water and underground section for another flat map. It does this pretty often, actually, with only worlds 1,2, 4, and 7 offering a difference. Even then, 2 and 7 have the exact same level.
This irked me more than anything else, probably. After world 4, it was like the designers got tired of making levels, and just decided to reuse old ones with more enemies or slightly shortened moving platforms. The castles at the end of each world were no exception to this rule, with only castle 4 and 8 getting any respect, though both followed a similar “maze” pattern. Woe unto the player if he should take the wrong of two paths, and be forced to start over under a time limit that never runs out. When you drop to under a hundred seconds left, though, the music speeds up, urging you to reach the flag at the end.
I‘m a big fan of video game music, I just can‘t make myself like the limitated tracks offered. The main theme, which plays in every level that isn’t a castle, water, or underground one, gets tiresome quickly. The underground theme lasts about 20 seconds before it starts over, and the castle theme is much the same, but more grating. Only the water levels have a decent track, jaunty in a place where white squids bounce their way toward you, and they do not want to give you a happy tentacle hug.
It’s a bit too surreal for me, without any explanation of why. Mushrooms can give you an extra life or grant you an extra hit, depending on the colour. To enter the underground areas, you walk through a pipe. Mushroom people at the end of castles tell you that your princess isn’t there, and when you shoot down the fire breathing spiked turtle with your own fire power, he turns into a random enemy. For sanity’s sake, I made sure to swim above water whenever possible in the underwater levels. I didn’t want Super Bro to drown.
This might be acceptable if the game offered a semblance of a plot. Instead, I’m left scratching my head: Who is this mysterious princess, and why does she have the nerve to be in another castle? Who built all these castles, anyway? Why are they being guarded by the ninja-turtles’ relatives? Look, I don’t care about your princess, I just want to know why I can’t go backwards. There’s a mushroom I hadn’t picked up before that would be really useful right about now.
Overall, I have to give Mushroom Bro. a rather sad shake of the head. Just because something is two dimensional, doesn’t mean the mechanics within the game have to be one. Worse than that, it’s glitchy - more than once I fell through a floor for no apparent reason - and Mario handles like a broom on a string, going vaguely in the direction I ask him to but unable to turn back around once he starts moving. Running and shooting fireballs use the same button, so you can only do one at a time, which will result in confusion and the inevitable running head long into an open pit.
Nothing was gained by sacrificing graphics in this game. In fact, it looks like everything was sacrificed - including a continue option - for a point system that serves no function. If I wanted to keep track of arbitrary high scores, I’d be wasting my money on arcades, not consoles. Though to be fair, I couldn’t afford the Nintendo Entertainment System on my non-existent salary, so I just downloaded it for free. I wonder if that makes me a felon.
It can be a hard game, not because it’s actually difficult, but because it just doesn’t want to co-operate. I assume that if you master the controls and memorize the levels, you could probably clear the whole game in about 8 minutes. For the average gamer, a successful play through won’t take more than thirty minutes, and if it takes any longer you probably died to the countdown anyway.
It’s nice once in a while to see a game that cuts back on the graphics in favour of game play or story line, both rather underrated elements in the video game industry. With that in mind, I put my 3D glasses down as I went off to play Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros., a 2D platformer that gives graphics a vaguely pixilated middle finger.
Now I understand why people complain about bad graphics. Everything is flat, bland and repetitive. There’s no variation in shape or size, and the colour swapped pallets look ridiculous, especially on the few power-ups the game offers. On the one level that even pretended to offer a background other than clouds, the scenery was made up of the same brick blocks I was breaking with my head. And the one time in that background there was a hidden block, it was made obvious by the sprites white line interrupting the otherwise seamless brown.
I want to harp a bit more on the eye-piercing colours. Ye gads those things are painful. Red and blue do not make for a good colour combination, but that white and green on the second player is just too painful to bear. The turtles come in shades of red and green, so I guess Christmas never ends for the local amphibian population. Backdrops were either blue or black, without exception. All blocks were brown and yellow, the underground zones were bluish, and the water level had pink seaweed. I don’t think I’ll be eating sushi for a little while thinking about that.
For one level, the game decided to have a little fun with the colours. Instead of the brown castle I was used to entering and leaving at the start of each stage, I found myself in a gray landscape, with red tinged clouds. This marks the only real variation, and is just so startling that I briefly wondered if I had accidentally entered a Zelda final dungeon. Then a fish popped out of the bottom of the screen and killed me.
Yes, there are flying fish, but only for three levels, and it is always the third level of a world. Super Mario Bro gets broken up into 8 “worlds” that are supposed to have a theme I assume, but are completely interchangeable with one another without affecting said “theme“. Each world has 4 levels in it, and all 4 levels follow the same pattern: 1 - flat level. 2 - Underground or water. 3 - suspended pillars. 4 - Castle with lava. Level 2 might vary a bit, depending on its mood, and forgo the water and underground section for another flat map. It does this pretty often, actually, with only worlds 1,2, 4, and 7 offering a difference. Even then, 2 and 7 have the exact same level.
This irked me more than anything else, probably. After world 4, it was like the designers got tired of making levels, and just decided to reuse old ones with more enemies or slightly shortened moving platforms. The castles at the end of each world were no exception to this rule, with only castle 4 and 8 getting any respect, though both followed a similar “maze” pattern. Woe unto the player if he should take the wrong of two paths, and be forced to start over under a time limit that never runs out. When you drop to under a hundred seconds left, though, the music speeds up, urging you to reach the flag at the end.
I‘m a big fan of video game music, I just can‘t make myself like the limitated tracks offered. The main theme, which plays in every level that isn’t a castle, water, or underground one, gets tiresome quickly. The underground theme lasts about 20 seconds before it starts over, and the castle theme is much the same, but more grating. Only the water levels have a decent track, jaunty in a place where white squids bounce their way toward you, and they do not want to give you a happy tentacle hug.
It’s a bit too surreal for me, without any explanation of why. Mushrooms can give you an extra life or grant you an extra hit, depending on the colour. To enter the underground areas, you walk through a pipe. Mushroom people at the end of castles tell you that your princess isn’t there, and when you shoot down the fire breathing spiked turtle with your own fire power, he turns into a random enemy. For sanity’s sake, I made sure to swim above water whenever possible in the underwater levels. I didn’t want Super Bro to drown.
This might be acceptable if the game offered a semblance of a plot. Instead, I’m left scratching my head: Who is this mysterious princess, and why does she have the nerve to be in another castle? Who built all these castles, anyway? Why are they being guarded by the ninja-turtles’ relatives? Look, I don’t care about your princess, I just want to know why I can’t go backwards. There’s a mushroom I hadn’t picked up before that would be really useful right about now.
Overall, I have to give Mushroom Bro. a rather sad shake of the head. Just because something is two dimensional, doesn’t mean the mechanics within the game have to be one. Worse than that, it’s glitchy - more than once I fell through a floor for no apparent reason - and Mario handles like a broom on a string, going vaguely in the direction I ask him to but unable to turn back around once he starts moving. Running and shooting fireballs use the same button, so you can only do one at a time, which will result in confusion and the inevitable running head long into an open pit.
Nothing was gained by sacrificing graphics in this game. In fact, it looks like everything was sacrificed - including a continue option - for a point system that serves no function. If I wanted to keep track of arbitrary high scores, I’d be wasting my money on arcades, not consoles. Though to be fair, I couldn’t afford the Nintendo Entertainment System on my non-existent salary, so I just downloaded it for free. I wonder if that makes me a felon.
It can be a hard game, not because it’s actually difficult, but because it just doesn’t want to co-operate. I assume that if you master the controls and memorize the levels, you could probably clear the whole game in about 8 minutes. For the average gamer, a successful play through won’t take more than thirty minutes, and if it takes any longer you probably died to the countdown anyway.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
It's Dangerous to go Alone - Read This!
Welcome to the grand opening of It's A Secret To Everybody. Here, I will be posting a various assortment of video game reviews, video game ideas, and snippets of code I am having frustration with in programming games. Possibly, I will also post concept sketches, once I have gotten far enough in the planning.
In short, this blog will be a collage of bad video game references and even worse video game ideas. Updates will be sporadic, but hopefully will increase as I attempt to learn the meaning of the word "productivity", or perhaps forget the meaning of the words "lazy ass". Either way, it shall be an adventure! One which you can accompany me in.
How, you say? Why it's so simple you should hit yourself for asking.
Send me games you'd like me to review, of course! Send me games you'd like to see me make! Ideas, concepts, heck, even send me pictures of things and I'll do something weird with them. This is all about me broadening my horizons, with your help! So give me a ring, a ding, or ding, and let's make the blog world a little be more... I don't know, something that the blog world doesn't have. Help me out here.
Ciaozilla,
DK
In short, this blog will be a collage of bad video game references and even worse video game ideas. Updates will be sporadic, but hopefully will increase as I attempt to learn the meaning of the word "productivity", or perhaps forget the meaning of the words "lazy ass". Either way, it shall be an adventure! One which you can accompany me in.
How, you say? Why it's so simple you should hit yourself for asking.
Send me games you'd like me to review, of course! Send me games you'd like to see me make! Ideas, concepts, heck, even send me pictures of things and I'll do something weird with them. This is all about me broadening my horizons, with your help! So give me a ring, a ding, or ding, and let's make the blog world a little be more... I don't know, something that the blog world doesn't have. Help me out here.
Ciaozilla,
DK
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