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Late to the Nanomachine Tomfoolery -- Metal Gear Solid 4

By Geoffrey Barnes on August 29, 2010 1:07 PM | No Comments

If someone were to ask me what my succinct opinion was after playing Metal Gear Solid 4, I wouldn't be able to give them a straight answer. It's not that I can't put together precisely what I thought of the game, but it's impossible to answer that question as quick as someone would like.

That hesitation arises because MGS4 is a very uneven game. It has plenty of good parts; heck, some of it is actually pretty damned brilliant, with some of the best sequences I've ever seen in a game -- interactive or not. The problem, then, is that it falls flat on its face just as often, with the game itself taking a backseat to the excess narrative and exposition. Basically, it doesn't play to its inherent strengths as often as it should.

The battlefield is something we've never had in an MGS game. It's a welcome and fun edition.

MGS4 features a much older Solid Snake in appearance despite taking place in 2014, a mere five years after Metal Gear Solid 2. Snake has been aging rapidly due to a seemingly unknown genetic defect, and he doesn't have much longer to live. Despite that, he's still undertaking a mission he received from Colonel Campbell: kill Liquid Ocelot. Liquid's taken residence in the Middle East, and Snake will have to wade through the opposition and rebels to make it to him. Good thing you can make it easier by siding with the rebels.

And siding with them is pretty fun too. It not only makes progressing through areas easier, but gives a new dynamic to a Metal Gear game. The controls have been overhauled to make the game feel more like a shooter as well. You can tell that series creator and director Hideo Kojima, along with Kojima Productions, paid attention to specific criticisms from the previous games, and it shows with the controls. The main problem before was that it was impossible to jump out and firefight someone in the older games if you were spotted; this is now possible. It's not as easy as it would be in your average third-person shooter (you have to hold L1 to shoot), but it's fine for a game and franchise that encourages stealth.

It's still possible to play stealthy, though. It's just going to be a little harder.

The camouflage system is back from Metal Gear Solid 3, and its fine tuning is further proof of Kojima paying attention to criticism. The introduction of the camo system added a new sense of veracity then, but it became tiresome going into the menu to keep changing it by the end of the game. Now, it's streamlined with Old Snake outfitted with an Octocamo suit that changes automatically to blend with the environment to keep your camo index up. It sure wouldn't have had a place during the Cold War (when MGS3 takes place), but it does in the near future.

MGS4 also finally deals with the problem of enemies having ID locked weapons that you couldn't take when you either K.O'd or killed them, something you couldn't deal with in the first two MGS games. Now you can! For a price. There's a guy named Drebin (one of many, but this one has a thing for you) who can remove the IDs for you by paying him Drebin Points (DP). He'll also sell you weapons and ammo, though the former can be very expensive. You accrue DP by collecting weapons you already have, though you empty out the ammo first. It's true that it makes the game a little too firefight friendly, but it's a blessing when you're fighting alone. I loved it when I was in need of some tranquilizer ammo.

The instruction booklet also spends pages describing how to survive in the battlefield. A shame that setting is dropped one-third of the way in. The biggest problem with MGS4 is the glaringly obvious cut scene to gameplay ratio. Anyone who's played a Metal Gear Solid title before knows they can be unbelievably talky and preachy, but the cut scenes mostly weren't too unnecessarily long. MGS3 has the best of the aforementioned ratios -- among one of the reasons why that game is hailed as the best game in the series. This is one strength MGS4 does not play to in the least.

I was thrilled to see the briefings come back from MGS1. I wasn't thrilled to see that a couple of them are excessively lengthy.

MGS4 has plenty of cut scenes that are unnecessarily long. In what was Kojima's way of making the game more cinematic and movie-like, the character models have excessive gesticulations during many of its scenes, most of which only serve to lengthen them. It gave me flashbacks to Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, which had the same problem - though it's honestly not as bad as that game's. This is the answer to people who complained about too many Codec scenes before, and if you did I hope you're feeling sorry for yourself. I kind of dinged the comic book-style cut scenes that popped up in some of the PSP titles in lieu of CG ones before, and that's something I need to apologize for. After playing this game, I welcome them wholeheartedly.

The dialogue could also be a problem. No, not because it's full of cheesy moments, which is a series staple at this point. The truth behind some of the plot holes induced by MGS2, especially in the crazy last two hours, are unveiled in this game. Quite a few of them are confounding, with explanations that are either mind-boggling or, worse, retcon events from the last three games. Those explanations make the actions of some characters in the older games completely bizarre.

There are quite a few familiar faces here. But there are a lot of new ones too.

But wait, there's more! Another sticking problem is in how frequent cut scenes are, especially in the last three Acts. It's heartbreaking to see only Acts 1 and 2 follow in the footsteps of what MGS3 (and MGS1 before that) established, because the rest of the game doesn't have as much, well, game. You'll be watching more than playing, witnessing the bulk of the game's nine hours of cut scenes. Yes, NINE hours. To put that in perspective, that's more than Xenosaga: Episode I, which had seven-and-a-half. Most of the scenes and story revelations near the end are enough to make anyone who bashed MGS2's zany finale feel bad.

And man does Kojima know how to play to his fanbase. This game was supposed to be the series grand finale, the all-encompassing Metal Gear Solid title. As such, it's pack to the brim with homages and fan service. Quite a bit of it is lovely, and many of them are very clever for a video game. And all of the boss battles are homages to the first MGS game, down to having similar names. Some of it can become a little overbearing and fall flat a few times.

The robots aren't quite as fun to fight as humans, but they would be if you were playing this guy.

You can't deny how top-notch the presentation is, however. It may be a two-year-old game, and a game may have come to knock it off its throne as the best-looking PS3 exclusive since then, but it still looks fantastic. The voice acting is also as good as you'd expect from an MGS title. Everyone from the older games returns to reprise their role, and this is definitely David Hayter's best performance of Snake in the series. The music is also good, but I was disappointed to see that Norihiko Hibino didn't compose a single track. He only served as the soundtrack's director. I like Harry Gregson-Williams' material just fine, but I usually like Hibino's contributions the most. On the whole, the OST isn't quite as memorable as the last few games in the series. And you can tell there are many points where the Metal Gear theme would have played, but couldn't thanks to copyright issues.

When you think about it, Kojima tends to pump out his best work when he doesn't pay attention to his fan base. MGS4 is a game whose mere existence is living proof of how there is such a thing as too much fanservice, in a non-sexual way (though if you like the sexual kind, there's plenty of that too). There's an utterly brilliant game in here, but it's drowned deeply into the recesses of a river rife with excess pandering. That's precisely what's so upsetting about the end result of this game, and it's a crying shame that it's from a person...well, people capable of putting out much better work.

Puzzle Quest 2 - Yet More Bejeweled Battles

By Joseph Daniels on August 28, 2010 2:54 AM | No Comments

Note: this is a review of the PC version that was released on Steam earlier this month

Lo and behold, as soon as the world was starting to get sick of Konami's Puzzle Chronicles, Namco has released Puzzle Quest 2 onto Xbox 360, DS, and now Steam. It seems the world has fallen in love with games where you match three icons together to tell a story.

This entry in the genre is probably the first that I've seen that qualifies as a sequel, and yet it's more a sequel in the Final Fantasy way than in the God of War way, especially if you consider it's actually the third Puzzle Quest game and not the second.

First of all, Puzzle Quest 2 navigates very differently than the first one. In the first Puzzle Quest, characters wandered around a world map that resembled a Final Fantasy Tactics map: there were set paths around the world that your character had to follow, and they occasionally ran into monsters that they had to kill by swapping gems around and matching them. In Puzzle Quest 2, the original system was thrown out in favour of a Torchlight-style isometric view of the world. There is only one city in Puzzle Quest 2, as opposed to the number of cities in the first game, and instead of selecting options from a menu (which seems to be a staple in games these days), your character can actually navigate around the city manually. Thanks to this system, the world feels more open and explorable than in the first game.

As for the battle system, thy couldn't call it Puzzle Quest and change the battle system, could they? So in Puzzle Quest 2, the battle system returns. Players match three coloured gems to build their mana pool up, and when they have enough power saved up, they can then unleash a spell to attack their opponent or increase their own defense, etc. The board also contains skulls, which inflict damage upon the opponent when matched, and new action gems which build up action points just like coloured gems build up mana points and can be used to inflict physical damage when enough of them are saved up. The big difference between physical damage and magical damage is that it's possible for physical damage to become critical if you're lucky enough for the game's random number generator to roll in your favour. If four gems are matched, the player is granted an extra turn and if five are matched, an extra turn is awarded and a wild gem is added to the board. If the player is lucky and enough of a chain reaction is triggered, it becomes a Heroic Effort, which grants bonus experience and an extra turn, and places a wild gem on the board.

OMGWTFPOLARBEAR!

But speaking of the random number generator, it seems like some of the enemies curry favour with it. It's like supernatural luck is a racial bonus for the Imp, for example. How I hated them with a passion. Sometimes, they seemed to know exactly what they had to do to set a Heroic Effort in motion, and they would do it each time. But: while other reviewers seem to think that the computer is a cheating bastard (they claim it knows what gems are coming next and can plan ahead), I think that the AI programmed into the game is supernaturally lucky and at the same time dumb as a sack of doorknobs. I cannot count how many times the AI was able to pull an awesome move out of its ass and find a way to dominate the board far longer than it should've, only for it to ignore some of the more obvious moves and do something stupid and futile in the very next turn. Certain enemies had healing abilities that required pieces drawn from the board, and I actually saw them try to use it when none of the gems it needed were present to be taken. Quite obviously, they healed themselves for 0 HP.

Also, I found that I couldn't always trust the helpful hint that the game automatically provides. Oh, I could trust it when it was pointing out where I could match four or five gems, but when it was suggesting a regular three gem match, I found that more often than not, it was suggesting a move that would set the enemy up for something nice. It's as if the game only hinted the four and five gem matches because it was obligated to, not because it wanted to, and got revenge by hindering me whenever possible. At one point, I tried setting the hint to wait a while before showing up, just because I felt the game was too easy with it, but short of turning it off completely, it seems to show up whenever it wants to, no matter if you asked it to show up right away or after some time has passed.

I don't know what the appeal is in PC RPGs to completely randomize what equipment shows up in shops and in treasure chests. I didn't even visit the weapon and armour shops in this game, and didn't try shopping at the blacksmith's, either. If I happened to pick up a piece of equipment that was better than what I previously had, then I equipped it and sold the old piece. That's about it. The only money I spent was when I went to improve my equipment at the aforementioned blacksmith's.

The first game made you play mini-games to do everything. And I mean everything. If I wanted to use the blacksmith's, I had to play a match-three mini-game. If I wanted to learn a spell from a captured enemy, I had to play a pre-set match-three mini-game. Etc. This time around, the blacksmith does his thing automatically. I still learn spells in a pre-set match-three mini-game, but the puzzles seem easier this time around. Or maybe I was just more patient when I solved them all. I don't know. New match-three mini-games involve picking locks, bashing down doors, magically unlocking doors, and searching the room for hidden traps, gold, or ambushes. It's like the developers realized that the original mini-games were too much of a hassle to play and came up with some better ones instead. Not only that, but they're more forgiving this time around. Winning or losing a mini-game is now determined by whether or not you run out of turns before your objective is met. In the first game, if you reached a position on the board where you could no longer make a move, you lost the mini-game. The one exception is the treasure mini-game. If you run out of moves, then you've taken all the treasure you can get, and the mini-game is declared over.

Lies!

Most of the 50-60 hours it takes to finish the game will be taken up with gem matching, and that's quite a long time to spend in any one battle system, especially when it takes about five to ten minutes to kill enemies late in the game. If the music gets boring, and it's bound to get boring, it's probably a good idea to turn it off and listen to something else for a while. The boss music is kinda epic, but more like LARPer epic rather than Sephiroth epic, so you're not missing much if you do decide you'd much rather match gems with Guns & Roses playing in the background. I'm just happy that the game isn't ugly, too, even if the story is a basic bad guys doing bad things story. Music, you can turn off. Graphics... not so much.

I won't spend much time on the multiplayer aspects, but will mention that there are some. Unfortunately, and I really should address this one of these days, I can be quite the antisocial gamer. I rarely play so-called "party" games, I've Wii Bowled a grand total of three times, and my last foray into MMORPGland lasted one day. I stopped going to Yahoo! Games years ago, same with Pogo after they got rid of my favourite game there, and I've recently turned down an invitation to download and play Left 4 Dead 2 with some of my very best friends. If you're wondering whether the multiplayer mode in Puzzle Quest 2 is any good, I would advise you to try it yourself.

Would I recommend this game? Maybe. If you're a die-hard fan of the match three genre and love playing through games with stories attached to them, then this game will keep you happy until the next company puts out their own version. But if you've grown sick and tired of the genre and just wish it would roll over and die already, the new Kingdom Hearts prequel drops in about a week and a half, and I can guarantee, you won't be matching gems to power the keyblade.

Dragon Quest IX -- When Angels Lose Their Wings

By Geoffrey Barnes on August 4, 2010 6:40 PM | 2 Comments

One of the more intriguing questions posed by fans upon the announcement of Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies for DS was how Yuji Horii and company -- with Level 5 handling the production -- would evolve the gameplay styles of its predecessors. It's a concern voiced by fans who were quite taken by Dragon Quest VIII's epic sense of exploration and vivacity, a feeling the PS2's graphical prowess assisted with. Not to say games with lower tech can't convey a similar effect -- something people who lamented the franchise going portable claimed, which is ridiculous -- but it would have to provide that from an alternate angle.

While DQIX may be different from the installments that have come before, it actually does manage to provide a wonderful sense of realism. It's living proof that graphics aren't necessary to make a game capable of being perfectly immersive on a lower-end system, and that portability isn't a hindrance. All it needed was a change in the way it delivered the sense of a living, breathing world, something it does amicably. In ways that surpass DQVIII's, even. It's tough to do, especially when you have an entire party full of mutes, but they pulled it off.

The story revolves around themes of death, and the job of your main character is to collect a benevolessence and offer it up to the world tree known as Yggdrasil. Benevolessence is made from the souls of the dead, and forms after you've given dead spirits wandering the earth respite. These lost souls still wander around because they left the world with regret, and you have to be the one to give them ease. Everything is going OK until the Observatory, the place from which the Celestrians observe human activity, is ruptured by a mysterious force. You suddenly find yourself in the town of Angel Falls, where you were a guardian, without your wings and halo. It's now up to you to find out precisely what happened.

Though your plans, and the plans of the Celestrians, have undergone a hindrance, your itinerary remains unchanged. While finding answers to the mysterious crisis, you'll find a plethora of lost souls that need your guidance. Considering about 70% of them left with regrets, you're going to be in for some pretty sad stories. Someone once made the argument that DQ games have a lot of heart, and it's through the smaller stories that you can see that's a completely accurate assessment. They're never a distraction either; all of said small stories have something to do with the larger plot at hand that will eventually unravel.

What really helps bring the story to life is the brilliant localization it's received. Despite being published by Nintendo, all NoA's Treehouse did was oversee how the translation was going. Square Enix, in association with Plus Alpha Translations (who were responsible for all the DQ localizations thus far, save for Joker), was responsible for the localization. It keeps a lot of the accents that made NPCs a joy to talk to a la Dragon Quest IV, but it's toned down heavily enough that it won't be overbearing for anyone. If there's anything here that might annoy some folks, it's the unending stream of puns.

DQIX is a little different from most DQ games in that it allows you to make your own party of characters to venture around with. Having a party of four members of your choosing (including your main character) hasn't been seen since Dragon Quest III, but the difference here is that you can actually see your weapons and equipment visually as you customize their looks. The unfortunate effect of this is the desire to choose the best looking equipment for some characters rather than the most practical. You might be able to get away with that in the main quest, because it's mostly pretty easygoing, but don't expect to cruise through the sidequests and post-game content with your female characters equipped with a Playboy-esque bunny outfit. Of course, that depends on the quest.

The only main downside to having a silent party is that the game won't be heavily character driven. The story is fortunately told in a way that this doesn't feel like too much of a problem, but anyone accustomed to the style of some recent DQ games might miss using party talk to see what your accomplices think about specific events. Also, your fairy accomplice, Stella, does most of the talking for you if need be.

You'll also be giving all four of your characters classes, known as vocations in this game. You don't have too many to start with, but it's enough to get things done. Your main character begins as a Minstrel (this game's equivalent of a Red Mage), but you'll also have the Warrior, Mage, Priest, Fighter, and Thief vocations for the other three characters as you make them. You'll be able to unlock more as the game goes along. When you change vocations, your character goes right back to Level 1, but they'll keep their Skill Points. Besides, it doesn't take long to get your characters back to a reasonable level afterward.

Something else that helps give the game's world liveliness is how much NPC dialogue changes throughout the game. When you've managed to progress the story, NPCs from towns you've previously visited will catch word of it. Many events will also transpire within said towns, with all the NPCs giving their opinions on what's happened; and quite a few of them are comical.

Some of them will also give you quests that you can complete for something special in return. They start off easy enough to ease you into how the quest system works, but they'll ramp up in difficulty by the time you reach the middle of the game. Some of them can get a little frustrating, especially when they entail something that's a pain and the reward is something of minimal importance. You can take on up to eight of them at once, and they're mostly pretty worthwhile.

The graphics also help with its vivacity. Plenty of people dislike 3D on DS solely because it reminds them of the bygone days of the PSOne's pixellated polygons, but DQIX looks exquisite. It's easily the best looking 3D game on the system, and the only upcoming game that will give it some competition is Okamiden. Its in-engine cutscenes look great, even if they don't compare to the anime introduction in terms of animation. The only problem that hampers the presentation is some slowdown when too many things are happening on-screen at once.

DQIX's battle system won't have too many real surprises if you've played quite a few DQ games (or RPGs, even) before, but that doesn't stop it from being enjoyable. Despite being 3D, battles are pretty fast-paced with actions happening quickly. They're certainly quicker than DQVIII's, whose battles were hampered by some awful loading times, but they're slower than the 2D games and remakes.

The alchemy system makes its return from DQVIII, and it's every bit as useful as it was there. You'll want to become accustomed to finding materials and using alchemic recipes to make items, because buying equipment gets a incredibly expensive, especially later in the game. You can often make better equipment via alchemy as well, and finding materials is a hell of a lot more enjoyable than constantly fighting enemies for gold, since many of them don't drop that much -- and if they do, they don't drop much EXP. The downside to using the alchemy pot in this game is having to Zoom to the same location to use it, but you no longer have to wait for it to produce your item.

Koichi Sugiyama's music here is unfortunately not his best work. One of the problems comes from hearing the best track in the game (the Observatory theme) very early in, and very little comes close to matching the quality of that theme. It's not a bad soundtrack, but it's thoroughly underwhelming and below the level of quality we've come to expect from Sugiyama in comparison to previous games.

If you have a DS and like RPGs, Dragon Quest IX is an essential purchase. It's easily one of, if not the, best game in the genre on the system. It's also fairly lengthy; after the 40-60 hour quest, treasure maps can be acquired and quests available for download -- actually "download," since they're just unlocked. What you'll find here is an adventure filled to the brim with heart and soul. The most memorable aspect of the game isn't the story itself, but the way it tells its story.

NieR -- Fathers Be Good To Your Daughters

By Joseph Daniels on July 29, 2010 6:05 AM | No Comments

A snowy landscape, an empty and ruined city, a father protecting his daughter. Amazing ethereal music. The opening of the game made it seem like I would be playing in a near future setting with a bleak atmosphere contributing to the desperation of the characters. In a world brought to the brink of despair and destruction, how far would one man go to save his ailing daughter? The love of a father shines through in NieR.

Right after the tutorial-style scene was over, my character suddenly woke up in a typical fantasy setting, and although he was still taking care of his ailing daughter, I felt ripped off. Where was my snowy, bleak apocalypse? What happened to the cold, the despair, the desperation? How can you ever duplicate that kind of atmosphere in a fantasy setting?

NieR is a game about a man whose daughter has come down with a mysterious illness, and as any father would, he's ready to tear down heaven and hell to make her well again. Along the way, he helps out the villagers whenever they have a problem that they can't handle on their own.

During the course of the story, NieR... well, I'm assuming he's called NieR, since you get to rename him and he has no default name, and the instruction manual only refers to him as The Father. Anyway, during the course of the story, NieR... well, I lost my train of thought now. Don't you hate that, when you're on one track of thought and suddenly you go off on a tangent and you lost what you were originally doing? NieR is like that. There are so many different elements of game play, depending on where you go in the game, that it feels hard to classify it as any one genre. It's generally an RPG, but there are 2-D platforming elements that occur seemingly at random in the game, a text adventure that comes out of nowhere and takes over the game like a virus, a rather deceptive survival horror section, even a section of the game that seemed to play similar to the top-down RPGs from a decade or so ago... it's like each member of the development team had their own idea of what the game should be and when they brought it all to the table, the director just said "Yes" to everything.

Oh, and did I mention the bullet hell portions?

Most of these ideas were implemented well. 2-D platforming helped the character navigate through sections of the game where the standard behind-the-character perspective would've only hindered progress. The text portion of the game seemed to actually fit the story this time around, rather than feel shoehorned in by an inadequate budget. Square might have learned from their mistake after they robbed Xenogears to pay for Final Fantasy VIII, but I suppose it's possible that NieR was also underfunded and the developers just aren't saying so.

The worst part of the game by far was Emil's mansion. That part of the game played like a survival horror. Thing is, when survival horror got its start on the PS1, the best that anyone could do with the technology that was available at the time was to render stills and switch between them when the character moved through a room. The problem with that was that your perspective changed, but the character's did not. Disoriented gamers would move their analog stick and end up veering the character in an entirely different direction than the one the gamer wanted. It was an awful control scheme and it's a wonder that the survival horror genre managed to live beyond its rocky start.

Well, for better or for worse, Emil's mansion adopts this control scheme, and it's awful. I especially hated when the game switched to a different still and I adjusted my walking angle out of reflex and ended up going back to the previous still, then adjusted again and went back to the next, and so on for a few seconds. I'm awfully glad that there weren't any enemies that needed to be killed at the time. (I had that same problem in Heavy Rain, but neglected to mention it.) If there had been, I probably would've burned through all of my herbs and other healing items while trying to sort out the horrible controls.

Boot to the head!

And that's another thing. Inventory limits are severe in this game, and it makes the early portions of the game especially difficult. The game actually gets easier, the longer you play, That in itself is ridiculous. Once you get past a certain level, your HP will suddenly increase in leaps and bounds, and will render the end game pretty easy. Generally, this isn't supposed to happen. Games aren't supposed to get easier as time goes by, they're supposed to get more challenging. It still sucks, no matter how high a level you are, when you can barely carry more than ten of each healing item with you, and you already have as many as you can carry but keep finding more in the field. Not only can you not take the extras with you when you need them, but you'll end up running out in areas of the game where they're scarce. At that point, the only way you'll survive is if you've gained enough levels so that your HP will skyrocket and you won't need to heal for a while. To add insult to injury, any other item you can acquire in the game, you can carry 99 of them. So 99 nuggets of Gold Ore, 99 Tree Branches, 99 Dented Metal Bats, 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, 99 Red Balloons* ...and 10 Medicinal Herbs. What, are you yanking them out of the ground by the roots? Do you have to carry herb trees around? Is that why you can only carry 10 with you? I had no idea a Medicinal Herb was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Bottom line: certain portions of the game handled like drunk monkeys due to a poor decision by the developers. They also accidentally turned the difficulty curve upside down. The game promised one setting, then switched me to a generic-type setting for the remainder of the game. The inventory system was inconsistent. Oh, and I absolutely loved the game.

What's to love about it? The battle system is quick and easy, to the point where you could probably just run around killing things for hours and not feel like you wasted an afternoon. Another point in its favour: you don't have to spend thirty hours learning everything about the battle system (Final Fantasy XIII and Resonance of Fate, I'm looking at you). The music set the mood well, especially the sleepy town-style music in the village of... Village. It really is just called The Village. Anyway, I loved the music in the game, and once the first half of the game ends (rather spectacularly, I might add), the feeling I got from the start of the game came back and stuck with me until the very end.

The story is also well written and rather daring for an RPG. This is the kind of story I never thought I'd see in a video game. It's deep, it's just... deep. I wish I could tell you how it's deep, but I'd be spoiling the game somewhat fierce. Let's just say that you need to play the game twice, then let out a good "My God, what have I done?" Then play again, because there'll still be more to see. I just want to give special mention to the side quests featuring the old lady in the lighthouse. I think that was the closest I've come to crying over a video game since the "You're Not Alone" scene in Final Fantasy IX.

This game contains more blood than God!

In the end, I'm going to go as far as saying that NieR deserves to be known as this console generation's Xenogears. I certainly can't think of any RPG of the current generation that even came close to what NieR has done. Depending on what's left this year, and depending on how good Dragon Quest IX and Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep are, NieR might end up being my RPG of the year.

*At least one of these items is a joke, and doesn't actually appear in the game.

Glory of Heracles -- For Where Does the Soul of Heracles Lie?

By Geoffrey Barnes on July 20, 2010 6:51 PM | No Comments

The most surprising aspect that stood out while playing through Glory of Heracles was that...well, I was actually playing Glory of Heracles. The mere existence of an officially localized version is proof the cynics were right: Nintendo of America has the most schizophrenic localization team in the industry. This was said well over four years ago, and it's even more accurate now.

Here we have a completely localized Japanese RPG from a company that's (1) been known to pass on RPGs before (ASH: Archaic Sealed Heat, Soma Bringer -- the former of which was apparently being localized but halted, given that the ESRB rated it once before) and has questioningly (and, might I say, moronically) passed on publishing some games already in English -- a recent example possibly being Last Window: Midnight Promise, recently announced for Europe but not for America.

And that's not all, either; not only was this game announced 14 months after its April 2008 release date in Japan, but they also fixed a lot of the problems present in its original release. Molasses slow battles? Gone, with there now being three choices for how fast you want the battle system to be. Unintuitive touch screen spell casting? Also eradicated, though it gets a little annoying when you're still tapping away in the same manner after 20 or so hours of play. The camera control is also more adequate, though it's still a little finicky. NoA actually went through the effort of making this game good, yet they won't publish games they'd have to put little effort into localizing. Mind-boggling doesn't even begin to describe this process.

Unless you're a connoisseur for old Japanese RPGs that were never localized, you may not know that this game is actually a revival of an old franchise. This is the first game to be localized, but it's existed in Japan ever since the original hit Famicom back in 1987. This was denoted by the subtitle accompanying the Japanese version, literally translated as "Proof of the Soul," which actually has bearing on the plot itself, and is the sixth game in the franchise (including the Game Boy spinoff). This is the first game since 1994 and that Data East wasn't involved with, though its developer, Paon, mainly consists of former Data East staff.

And we have a story!

Having an amnesiac protagonist is an all-too-common trope for Japanese RPGs, but GoH takes this even further by giving all of your main characters amnesia. It is, however, particularly bad for the main character, who doesn't even remember his name. He happens to stumble upon a ~~girl~~ guy named Leucos, who says she's a guy but obviously isn't -- which is the butt of numerous jokes throughout the game. The forest nymphs identify him as Heracles, but is he really? This is but one of the plot threads that need to be resolved throughout the game.

GoH has a rather unique look to it, something that nearly resembles a 2D cel-shaded style. It's entirely comprised of polygons, but everything is given a thorough amount of shading in an attempt to resemble sprites. It doesn't quite pull it off with finesse -- there are a number of sprite based games on DS (and less powerful consoles) that look better -- but it looks good enough that it shouldn't give anyone who despises the DS's 3D capabilities any problems. Its look is eerily reminiscent of Treasure's Guardian Heroes on Sega Saturn (though it's not quite as colorful), which it coincidentally shares a character designer with: Han.

The battle system could be described as a typical turn-based system with a twist, but you could describe almost any RPG these days that way. GoH's system has two aspects that make it different. While it gives you the usual way to restore MP (items, resting at the inn, getting them from a flower in a town, etc.), you can also restore it via an "Overkill," which refers to killing an already downed enemy. Performing an Overkill will be necessary to get rid of undead enemies, but you'll also be using this often to replenish your MP. Interestingly enough, MP granted by an Overkill becomes more generous as the game goes on, and not just because. You'll only receive a little MP form one early on, but once you pass the halfway mark you can probably (depending on the expenditure) replenish a character's MP completely by using an Overkill on only one enemy, even though every character's MP will be well over one thousand.

It looks cool at first (no pun intended), but don't worry, you'll learn to hate it.

The second unique aspect pertains to casting magic. This game couldn't get by with just casting magic spells regularly; it instead has you use the touch screen for a specific input to help make your magic attacks stronger. It seems fun and intuitive (unlike the Japanese version, apparently) from the outset, but it gets very monotonous when you're doing the same damned motions 25 hours in. Of course you can just use the "Auto" function to cast magic spells for you, but doing that will result in said spell doing less damage.

To further address an earlier point, you probably wouldn't be able to replenish all of your MP via an Overkill if you were using some big spells in random battles. But that's completely unnecessary because of how easy the game is. Though it does have some fierce battles at times --indicated by the screen fading red instead of white when a battle is triggered - the majority of GoH is pretty easy for its 20-40 hour playtime. Most regular enemies can be taken out easily with a few physical attacks.

The music, composed entirely by Yoshitaka Hirota (of Koudelka and the Shadow Hearts games), ranges from adequate to pretty good. It's not the best material Hirota has composed, but it gets the job done, especially when it switches up battle themes to prevent them from becoming stale. The overworld and battle themes are where it's best, but it's mostly nothing that will leave you reaching for the soundtrack. If it had a soundtrack.

Well I'd hope so. Otherwise you wouldn't get too far.

Due credit has to be given to the excellent localization, which wasn't handled by Nintendo themselves, but given to the talented group at 8-4. They also handled Baten Kaitos: Origins and Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon for Nintendo. The text is full of Woolseyisms, including some pretty hilarious in-jokes and references to other properties, many of which are old Nintendo games. It's further proof of how talented they are, especially if Nintendo considers using them.

It's not the best RPG on DS, but you could do far worse. Glory of Heracles worth your time if you're looking for a rather lengthy (for a portable RPG) game to spend some time with, especially for the discounted price (of around $15) it goes for these days. It's well worth that price.

Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen -- Exactly What it Says

By Geoffrey Barnes on July 4, 2010 7:37 PM | No Comments

The overall gameplay flow of Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen may be familiar to RPG fans who have been playing games in the genre for a while.

It introduces an excellent way to familiarize you with its characters, by playing through their specific chapters to walk you through their history and search for the chosen one (of which you're given your choice of name and gender), hence the game's subtitle. This is how the first four chapters are structured, before you begin the fifth, massive chapter with the chosen one. Its earlier moments consist of linear, by-the-numbers RPG structuring (especially these days), but in Chapter V the world opens for you to explore it at your own leisure. Through this structure it actually offers a wonderful sense of exploration, leaving you to uncover the secrets of the world.

You may have figured out by now that its structure is similar to Final Fantasy VI's. Suddenly one of your favorite games isn't so innovative after all!

The dungeons are empty-though-invigorating environments...

But that's perfectly acceptable practice. There's nothing inherently wrong with a game being inspired by another in terms of structure; what matters is how it uses said ideas, and whether it can use them effectively; which FFVI certainly did. And I'm not going to bother delving into the main villain's inspiration, which will pop out as obvious to players once they run into him - even down to his motivations for his descent into malignance.

This may be a recent release, but DQIV on DS maintains a feel that adheres to its NES origins. It's very light on story and exposition, which allows for a more personable experience with its characters. Sure, some of the exposition is gone because of Square Enix bafflingly removing the "Party Talk" feature from the international versions, but the story itself is rather sparse on detail. But that's not to say it isn't sophisticated; everything isn't spelled out, leaving you, the player, to figure things out. In other words, it's the anti-Xenogears.

This game moves at a pretty rapid pace. It's a little slower than the original thanks to the added animations for monsters, but that's negligible. It's typical turn based material, and random encounters can happen often, but they're so brisk that it's not a problem. As the game goes on, you'll realize that there's an excellent balance between your party members and the enemies, which is especially evident during boss battles. Of course, you could always choose to grind and overpower your enemies, but the outcome of every battle won't be as satisfying as merely successfully outwitting then.

...but the towns are pretty lively.

DQIV really isn't that different from the original, aside from the graphics and sound being given an overhaul. Its look is similar to that of Dragon Quest VII, but the result here is a smoother transition and a level of consistency between environments that make it nowhere near as hideous as that game -- DQVII's "finished" product looked a little rough, with portions of the game showing its SNES origins and had sections that were obviously built on PSX. You could say it had a very troubled development period. Not to mention that the PSX didn't do 2D very well.

The Dragon Quest franchise has always had the same sound effects for nostalgia's sake, and they feel right in place here. The music is always very well done, and is a testament to why people like Koichi Sugiyama's compositions so much, despite his dubious personal opinions on a certain other matter (go down to "The Case Against Sugiyama). My cohort may not have expressed similar sentiments in his review -- though he did play through the NES version -- but the music is incredibly in-fitting with the game's style, especially the character themes. It's not without its problems, like hearing the same dungeon themes a little too often; but that issue doesn't lie within the music itself.

Some battles require some thought. Some don't. RPGs.

As a remake, DQIV on DS serves as an excellent way to preserve the style of the original. This was also done for nostalgia's sake. A pet peeve some gamers have with remakes of their favorite games is how they attained a sense of affinity for the original title, something that could be lost with a remake. The DS and PSX versions of DQIV keep that sense perfectly. Not to say there's anything wrong with complete overhauls like Final Fantasy IV on DS, but it's nice to see which interpretations developers like to use. Whatever form an interpretation will take depends on the audience it's being aimed towards.

The main point of contention with DQIV for DS is the localization, which has generated mixed reactions. Dragon Quest VIII contained some beautiful voice work, complete with dialects that matched whatever region NPCs and specific characters were from. Since this game doesn't have voice work, Square Enix, in association with Plus Alpha Translations, sought to convey this through its text. The results are pretty admirable and keep conversations with every NPC lively, but it does have the tendency to go a little overboard at times.

The translation gives everyone a sense of character. You know, if you like that.

Take the speaking style used for the Kingdom of Zamoksva, where characters Tsarevna Alena, Kryll, and Borya are from. Zamoksva and its surrounding townships are definitely based on a fantastical version of Russia, so it follows that everyone from that area should have a Russian accent while speaking English. The localization team has done their best at keeping that tone, but it can be esoteric for people not accustomed to hearing that dialect used in either real life or other forms of media. Talking to NPCs in RPGs is usually a passive experience, especially if you've done it a lot. But the positive effect of hearing unfamiliar dialects in an RPG is that it makes talking to NPCs a joy, and the time you'll spend making sense of everything will assist in helping you pay attention.

What makes Dragon Quest IV one of the most admired games in the franchise is its sense of subtlety in terms of establishing a plot, along with its unique approach to telling its story. It has ideas that many RPGs still haven't explored, despite the original releasing 20 years ago. The excellent, if a tad overdone, localization only adds to the charm the game offers. If you haven't played it yet, definitely go get it. This makes up for not receiving the PSX version.

Or perhaps you prefer the original?

"Agito" Into the Future

By Geoffrey Barnes on July 1, 2010 10:12 PM | 3 Comments

The 3rd Birthday is going to melt half of your face off in sheer awesomeness when it releases, according to Square Enix's Motomu Toriyama, so to speak. Why only half? That's because Final Fantasy Agito XIII is going to melt the other half.

It may not live up to the nigh-unrealistic expectations he's giving it, but it admittedly has potential. The game itself has a very Crisis Core-esque look to it, which should be expected given it has some of the same core team and the same director: Hajime Tabata, who's also directing The 3rd Birthday. It will presumably hit shelves sooner than its belated older brother, Final Fantasy Versus XIII since gameplay footage of this actually exists.

It was originally going to be an MMO-like game back when, like The 3rd Birthday, it was originally intended for cell phones. Again, Square Enix found some sense and realized they wanted more than the inhabitants of Japan - or people with Japanese cell phones - to play this game, and moved it to PSP. In that move, it abandoned most of the aforementioned MMO-like system for one that's similar to a lot of RPGs. Its battle system will be similar to Crisis Core's, which itself was an evolution of the one found in Final Fantasy X-2, and will accommodate both single-player and multiplayer gameplay. Summons will also be fully controllable a la Final Fantasy X.

Plenty of gamers thought this would be Square Enix's answer to Monster Hunter and Phantasy Star Online, but that's not quite what this is. It's an RPG first, and at this time, we now know what their answer to those games is. More on that tomorrow.

The story has a political background this time around. Your playable characters will involve some of the top students at Peristerium School of Magic, located an island separate from the rest of the continent in the world of Orience. There are four countries that signed a peace treaty that stated no other country was to invade the other. But it's broken when Commander Cid of begins his invasion of other nations with his army of l'Cie soldiers. The school setting might invoke memories of Final Fantasy VIII, but the beginning of the conflict is pretty different. Upon seeing the invasion, a bunch of students form an alliance to stop Cid.

The word "Agito" means "to put in motion" in Latin, and it also happens to be the highest rank all the students aspire to make it to. Yeah, there's definitely a SeeD-esque vibe here. Given the plot details we have already, its Latin interpretation has a lot to do with the game too.

There have been twelve characters revealed so far, all of which are school students that wield a variety of weapons. It shouldn't be a surprise to see characters that wield swords or guns, but there's also one that uses cards. Wonder how he uses them. The last time we had a Final Fantasy title that was heavily political, we got Final Fantasy Tactics. I'm not gonna go all Toriyama-style here and hype this to heaven, but it at least sounds promising.

If you're wondering about the release date, you'll just have to keep doing just that, because Square Enix refuses to disclose a release date. It's likely going to make it out sometime next year if everything goes according to plan. And there should be a nice re-reveal at this year's Tokyo Game Show, granted it's not moronically shown behind closed doors again. But I don't think that will happen.

Second Cross-Examination -- Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

By Geoffrey Barnes on June 9, 2010 2:38 PM | 4 Comments

As the title implies, this is the second review. For the first, check out Angela's earlier review.

The unofficial itinerary of Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth's existence is Capcom's, and the Ace Attorney team's, intention to prevent the usual Ace Attorney franchise formula from stagnating. It's a proclamation from a company intent on proving that they've learned from their mistakes of the past with their other franchises. Investigations? It shouldn't surprise you that the game has this in spades. Intense, heart-pounding court cases? Nope, not here. But in its place are nearly-as-intense battles of logic that will happen in any location. It's mostly implausible, sure, but it shouldn't bother you with a franchise rife with spirit mediums and magicians.

Though the previous games took elements from classic PC adventure games of yore, AAI embraces them from an alternate direction. Investigation sequences are no longer first-person, but are now switched to third-person in order to show the player that these characters really do have legs. Ostensibly, it doesn't sound like that would make any significant changes to the investigation sequences, but it actually gives them an alternate (but not necessarily better) sense of vivacity. Enough of one to make it feel like a fresh experience, comparatively.

Wouldn't be an Ace Attorney game without the over-the-top suspense.

At this point, the AA games shouldn't surprise you with their sweeping drama. Time and trouble never stall for prosecutor Miles Edgeworth, a man who happens to run into trouble upon arriving back from a trip overseas. Greeting him in his office in the early morning darkness is a dead body and a gun-toting individual enshrouded in the shadows. There's no time for rest, as Edgeworth has to get to investigating immediately.

The interesting aspect of AAI's story is that all of the chapters are connected. There are no trials or story sequences that serve as a respite period between the actual plot, or just for comedy relief. That is not to say that there isn't any comedy, of which there is plenty. The overall story depicts a smuggling syndicate that's working from behind the scenes, and the earlier happenings are what lead Edgeworth and his companions to fully investigate it.

And here you thought yelling "Objection!" in court was ridiculous enough...

Like the previous games, the localization is exquisite. It's definitely a challenge for the team behind this game to shift the location of the game from Japan to America, and changing the names and jokes while keeping their intent intact. By "intent," I mean the Japanese versions of all the AA games are rife with jokes and puns that only people fully ingrained in Japanese culture, or have dedicated an ample amount of time studying it, would comprehend. The challenge for the localization team is making those jokes relatable for an American audience, and on that front, they've succeeded admirably.

If you're the kind of person that's had a problem with the form of logic that's impeded the games before, then you'll also have a problem with this. Though the game requires less spurious leaps of logic - it's a bit easier than the previous games - they sometimes find their way in. But the best approach to this is to not expect anything fully grounded in reality. And honestly, I sure hope you don't approach games expecting full realism.

Now we got us an investigation.

Common points of contention with the last game, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, were the lack of returning characters and memorable new characters. It's evident that the AA team took this criticism to heart here, because it rectifies both of those problems. There are plenty of returning characters from the Phoenix Wright titles, and the new characters introduced here have a better lasting impression. Every AA game seems to require that the main character have a cute, bubbly sidekick, and Kay Faraday fills this role here. But her very existence isn't purely for eye candy and jokes, she actually has some excellent uses. And while the well-intentioned Interpol agent Shi-Long Lang will try to approach Edgeworth with some haphazard logic, he's still helpful.

The main question posed by series fans is whether court cases would hinder its enjoyment. Unfortunately, it does, but not as much as you'd expect. Battles of logic are nice, but those sessions lack the desk-slamming fun between an attorney and a prosecutor, along with the hapless (or opposite of hapless) client or witness caught within. And then, you'd also have the judge making his eyebrow-raising comments. It's a feeling completely gone from this game, but again, it's not as detrimental as it sounds. You still have your "Objection!" "Hold it!" to deal with. Pressing people and watching them go crazy is almost as fun to watch.

The new characters really are memorable, especially Lang.

The Ace Attorney games, starting with Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice for All, contain a gimmick that involves the main character using extrasensory abilities to put the situation together. Phoenix had a magatama to use in breaking Psyche-locks, Apollo needed to Perceive to find the answer, and Edgeworth must use Logic. Presumably as a demonstration of how smart and level-headed he is compared to the rest of the loonies in the cast. It works pretty well, and it's probably the most realistic of the aforementioned examples. It's also the easiest to use, though that's in-fitting with the rest of the game's comparatively lax difficulty.

The music, provided by Noriyuki Iwadare (with some assistance from Yasuko Yamada), is great, and practically begs for its own Gyakuten Meets Orchestra installment. I'm sure the big Apollo Justice orchestral production will wait until another one or two games are released in that series (if ever?), but the music here is so good that waiting for one is going to be a pain.

If you're a fan of the older games, you know almost exactly what to expect here. Heck, you've probably already played this game! And if you haven't yet, I'm just going to assume there's a good reason you haven't gotten around to it. We just came off a ridiculously crowded first quarter for video games, so if you unfortunately missed it, it's still around.

Final Fantasy XIII (Xbox 360 Version) - Shock, Awe, and Some Disappointment

By Angela Moseley on May 28, 2010 1:05 PM | No Comments

This review is a second opinion focusing on slightly different aspects of Final Fantasy XIII. Geoff's original March review of the game of can be found here.

Final Fantasy XIII is the ultimate example of a blockbuster title that suffers from the trope, "your mileage may vary." The game either resonates with gamers who go on to immensely enjoy it, or gamers quickly find themselves giving up entirely on it. FFXIII was originally slated as a PS2 title but underwent a platform change in 2005 in preparation for a PS3 release. While early game footage was shown at E3 '06 it would be another four and a half years before the game would hit store shelves.

In that time the fans became more anxious for the game's release, especially as the PS3 experienced a serious dearth of JRPGs. The game would go on to reach ungodly levels of anticipation among RPG and PS3 fans. But when it was announced at E3 '08 that Final Fantasy XIII would also be released on the Xbox 360 outside of Japan many fans complained. The console controversy faded somewhat, only to be replaced by new controversy when it was discovered that Square's latest flagship title eschewed the open world approach of Final Fantasy XII. Instead the game featured linear dungeons, scrapped town exploration, and chucked mini-games in order to focus solely on the plot and combat system. In many fans' eyes Square turned its back on hardcore, to others Square trimmed away the bloat which had been plaguing JRPGs for years. The approach is definitely a matter of personal taste, but if you're willing to give Final Fantasy XIII a chance you'll find a current generation JRPG experience like no other.

The idiot hero gets the cute girl early on, and then it all goes horribly wrong. Poor Snow is a victim of Murphy's Law far too often for his own good.

Cocoon is a floating paradise that sits high above the untamed world of Pulse. The floating shell in the sky is powered by magical, mechanical god-like beings known as the fal'Cie who play a day to day role in the lives of the human citizens. The fal'Cie provide sustenance and governmental direction for the people. Although Cocoon itself is a peaceful paradise it is at war with the lower world of Pulse. Citizens fear anything and everything from Pulse. The people's greatest fear are the Pulse fal'Cie and their human servants known as l'Cie. Or worse, being transformed into l'Cie themselves. L'Cie are branded by an indelible mark and gifted with supernatural abilities. Humans transformed into l'Cie are also given a task to complete by their fal'Cie masters. Failure to complete a task results in the l'Cie transforming into a grotesque, mindless zombie-like monster known as a Cie'th.

It is in this setting that a Pulse fal'Cie is discovered in a small town and the entire population is set to be relocated to the world of Pulse. Amid the chaos a newly resigned solider named Lightning and four other characters take up arms against the government purge and are incidentally transformed into Pulse l'Cie. With only a strange vision of a gigantic beast laying waste to the world the group is uncertain if their given focus is to save or destroy Cocoon. Before the outcasts can pause to consider their fate they are relentlessly hunted by the military, and feared by the citizens. In the ultimate lose, lose situation the five have to decide between saving themselves by completing their focus (and possibly destroying the world), or ignoring their focus to save the very people who now fear and hate them.

As Hope sits slumped over in the background he's probably thinking along the lines of: Worst. Fucking. Vacation. Ever. I know I would!

The game's overall plot is satisfying at best and is full of wasted potential at worst. The beginning is strong, the middle is lacking, and if you don't follow the events recorded within the game's datalog the ending will feel incomplete. Even if you take the time to read the datalog the story's pacing still feels rushed. Worse yet, important facts and back story are limited to a light novel only released in Japan and partially fan translated into English. Character interaction and development is the real draw of the story. In the beginning many of the characters are difficult to immediately like. Fortunately, the party comes together and interacts ways more realistic than most JRPGs. For a good chunk of the game the characters can't stand one another, only adding to their angst-filled situation. Often they lash out at one another and the group splits up frequently. Eventually, everyone has an epiphany and grows closer. Given the group's original animosity toward one another the camaraderie that emerges is heartwarming to watch.

The battle system in Final Fantasy XIII is best described as fast and frantic. Only the lead character can be controlled in battle, while the AI controls the actions of the other two party members. The actions of the characters are determined by the roles they assume in battle, called paradigms. Six roles are available and range from physical attackers to damage-absorbing tanks. Varying roles can be pre-set for battle via paradigm decks, and characters can switch roles during battle, i.e. a paradigm shift. The ultimate goal in a fight is to break an enemy by filling up its chain gauge with various attacks. Some enemies can only be seriously damaged when in that broken state, i.e., a stagger. Staggered enemies are easier to deal with and can be quickly eliminated. If micromanagement via gambits were the name of the game in Final Fantasy XII, overall dictation and breaking enemies are key in XIII.

My two favorite women of war. Lightning and her "Army of One" skill, she's such a show off. Also full ATB bar skills are the closest you'll get to limit breaks in this game.

The active time battle system has been retained, although it works slightly differently in FFXIII. Once the ATB gauge fills up actions related to a character's role can be executed. Role specific commands can be manually stockpiled or selected by the AI. Actions are determined by scanning an enemy with the Libra command and the AI will automatically select the most effective attack or ability. The ATB bar begins with two slots and reaches a maximum of five. Various techniques may take up one to five ATB bars. Fortunately, items and special techniques can still be accessed while waiting for the ATB bar to fill up. Overall, the AI in FFXIII is pretty intelligent but not without flaws. The selection of area-wide spells over more effective single enemies spells is common. The characters also have an annoying habit of clustering together on the field making them easy targets for enemies that spam area-wide attacks. Also, if your party leader goes down it's an automatic game over, a la Persona 3 and 4. Thankfully Final Fantasy XIII allows players to immediately restart a battle, effectively doing away with death as a penalty. Had the ability to restart battles immediately after death (or avoid them altogether), not been present the game's difficulty level would be insanely high instead of merely being moderate to hard.

It would have been nice to have more than six slots for paradigm decks. It also sucks that once a party member is switched said decks automatically reset. Arg!

Traditional leveling has been scrapped in favor of overall progress via the Crystarium system. HP, strength, magic, abilities, and accessory slots are all determined by progress made on the crystarium via points known as CP. The points are gathered from defeating enemies and progress on the board is unlocked as the story dictates. The crystarium doesn't fully open until after defeating the game's final boss, giving players very little reason to seriously grind for levels--although CP is another matter. Equipment is limited to weapons and accessories. Both items can upgraded by forging parts salvaged from defeated enemies, using the dismantled parts of other items or simply buying needed parts from shops. In a maddening catch-22 money is extremely difficult to come by, and fully upgrading weapons costs lots of money.

Summons that transform into vehicles (a horse, race car, motorcycle, fortress, gun turret, mechanical dragon) you can ride are either stupidly bizarre or hilariously awesome. I felt they were the latter.

Final Fantasy XIII is easily one of the best looking games on the 360, and no detail is spared. Yet, it is not without its flaws when compared to the PS3 version of the game. Colors are less vibrant, noticeable video compression can be distracting on an HDTV, and slowdowns in graphically intense areas are annoying. Considering that each dual-layer DVD can hold about 6.8GB worth of data it's baffling that Square only used about 5.8GB on two of the dics. Surely, that space could have been used to ease some of the compression. Better yet, a fourth game disc would have been acceptable if it meant less compression. If you own both consoles I would highly recommend buying the PS3 version over the 360 version, especially if you own an HDTV. Other than the video compression issue both versions of the game are identical, and it's not worth buying a PS3 just to experience this game if you already own a 360.

Like the graphics, the music found in Final Fantasy XIII is beautiful. The score was composed by Masashi Hamauzu, and is a mishmash of different styles, including fully orchestrated pieces, j-pop, jazz, techno, and even a touch of rock at times. Unfortunately, many of the songs aren't very memorable and many songs are simply remixes. A few songs do stand out, including many of the game's battle, military, and j-pop themed tracks. The voice acting is also top-notch and Square Enix reanimated cut scenes specifically for the English dub to ensure nearly perfect lipsyncs. In short, while much of FFXIII's music is forgettable the voice acting is outstanding.

A sensible token minority? Check. The chocobo chick and Vanille fully approve of Sazh.

Generally speaking, Final Fantasy XIII's entire presentation is greater than the sum of its individual parts. Unlike the many JRPGs of this generation Square Enix took a straight forward approach with FFXIII and scrapped many of the genre's dated traditions. While the approach may not sit well with many longtime fans the game gives the overall genre a needed breath of fresh air. The game itself isn't without criticism, as Square's failure to straddle the handholding in the first half of the game and the difficulty in the second half was mind boggling. I'll never understand why the first half of the game was essentially a tutorial instead of just the first two or three chapters. Additionally, forcing people to essentially read the in-game manual to fully understand the game's story didn't do anyone any favors, as the approach reeks of laziness. Despite its shortcomings, I didn't regret a single moment with this game. Final Fantasy XIII is a solid game all around and worth a try for anyone looking for a departure from the standard JRPG.

Screen shots from the Xbox 360 version of this game are courtesy of GameSpot.

Heavy Rain -- Losing My Mind Is Easy To Do... Where Are You?

By Joseph Daniels on May 15, 2010 11:53 PM | No Comments

I'm sure gamers are sick and tired of reading Heavy Rain reviews that say that Heavy Rain is a hard game to review. Well, you know, if gamers are into reading as many reviews as they can of a game. Anyway, I'm here to say: it's true. Game reviewers aren't just making excuses for not understanding the game: it really is a hard game to classify. It plays less like a video game and more like a Choose Your Own Adventure book with quicktime events. The way the game is set up, it's like you're watching a movie where you occasionally add your own input as to where you go and what you do.

Quicktime events have gotten a bad rap in gaming, and for good reason. It's a cheap way to fight an enemy: instead of using skills or combos or intelligent use of a menu to defeat bad guys, you're pushing buttons at certain times. For example, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed incorporated them to add cool finishing moves to boss fights, but there were a few fights that I was handling well enough without needing to use a finishing move. Naturally, I messed up the finishing move and was suddenly a lot worse off, tactically. Sometimes you don't need to do something fancy, you just need to pull the chain around your fat and ugly captor's neck and strangle him until he is dead. Fortunately, Heavy Rain is a little more forgiving when it comes to quicktime. Mess up on a few buttons and you might take a hit or two in a fight, but you can still win. It's quicktime for dummies. It's also completely necessary in this context.

Say what? Necessary quicktime? Yeah, the game uses a few design choices that necessitate the use of quicktime. The game is presented like a movie, so the action is rarely from a truly first person perspective. Scenes where a player gains full control of a character are presented in a traditional over-the-shoulder view like most JRPGs have been doing lately, and controls are contextual, depending on what you're doing and which character you're controlling. Meanwhile, action scenes (chases, fights, etc.) are presented in a cinematic style and a player is only given a split second to react to the required input before a less desirable outcome occurs. Enough of those can potentially cause a player to fail the scene, but it would depend on the scene.

I'm blue, da ba de...

The game frequently autosaves, as if each choice you make and each action you perform is an important one. Even making eggs is important! It ties in to the trophy system, where you can earn trophies for accomplishing various objectives in the game. Some scenes award multiple trophies for the exact same activity, but for different results. As such, this game is meant to be replayed multiple times in order to get all the trophies, unlike games like Final Fantasy XIII where you can earn all the trophies in one playthrough, including content available to you after the end credits, if you spend hundreds of hours playing the game.

Unfortunately, the trophies are pretty much the only replay value Heavy Rain has. The overall story remains exactly the same every time; it and the quicktime events are all the game really has. It's like you're reading a book. Once you figure out who the Origami Killer is, there's no surprise the second or third time around. However, there's an important point to bring up: games like Breath of Fire and Super Mario World don't have multiple endings. Games like Final Fantasy X and Starfox Adventures don't have multiple story branches. And yet, when people play these games, they play them because they like the story and they like the game play. That could certainly be the case for fans of the game, since there isn't any other real reason to replay Heavy Rain unless you like seeing 100% in your list of trophies, and also since game play does not require more than the skill required to press what buttons the game tells you to press at certain times in the scene, and even then you can get away with messing up until near the end of the game.

I think screen shots do not do this game justice, so here's some actual game play

Occasionally, you're given a choice between a few different ways to handle a scene, and if you don't make a choice, the character will either do nothing and let something happen, or they'll do what they're more likely to do. In one case, when I was presented with a decision whether to take a narcotic or not, I was not given the option to stop my character from taking it. Oh, it was there, but the game seemed to purposely hide it from view until it was too late to make a decision, and he ended up taking the narcotic. I was not happy, to say the least.

What's funny is that my favourite part of the game is the tiny little detail that the writers included in one of the scenes, where a character is commenting about music she doesn't like. She still gets the sub-genre right! The music wasn't half bad either, so that was a bonus. Thanks to the music, I actually felt like I was in peril for most of the game, even though death wasn't really a consequence until the end. There was one major thing that I had a problem with until the end, but I can't really mention it without spoiling pretty much the entire point of the game, and I've probably risked spoiling it already for the more clever gamers out there who may be able to figure out exactly what I'm talking about if they play through the first few chapters of the game. I'll just say that I was not disappointed in what I thought I was disappointed in.

The characters themselves are played well, and it's obvious that a lot of work was put into the visuals and the control scheme in order to get everything perfect. The character models are very well done, right down to the smallest of details that the game rams down your throat every time it's loading a new chapter: one of the character's faces is presented up close on the television screen and you can see the texture of their skin. Not only that, but whoever designed the game seems to be able to construct a nude female well enough that she looked realistic and not like those unrealistic characters you see in games like Final Fantasy VII (mostly fixed in the sequels), Tomb Raider and Dead or Alive Xtreme 2. I never liked seeing top heavy characters or characters whose breasts each had their own physics equation. I imagine if life were like DOA, those breasts would hurt after a while.

Heavy Rain takes place about a year and a half into the future while including game play mechanics that depend on technology suddenly leaping ahead by at least thirty years, I'll say forty, maybe fifty years. I mean, come on. CSI sunglasses? (No, not Horatio's.) And don't tell me that it's secret FBI science that is highly classified and we're not allowed to see it. Why haven't we noticed agents wandering around crime scenes with sunglasses and a weird glove, pushing at the air with it, looking for clues? Because it doesn't exist. It won't exist in a year and a half. It's a bit of a break in the reality of the story, yet I'll give this to them, even though I think they could've just as easily used current forensic science and adapted it for the game.

Anyway, this review has been hard to write, and has been very long coming. Heavy Rain is one of those games that does things well, but is hard to quantify. I think it would've been easier if the game had been crappy, but it's not. It's an interesting experience and is definitely worth a rent, since you can easily play through the story at least once within the space of a rental, and you'll still get the trophy for supporting interactive drama.

Hey, wait a minute. Aren't all games "interactive"?

*Note: this review is written after playing Heavy Rain on an easier setting. Certain statements may not be true of the game on a harder setting.

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Angela Moseley: Yep. As I was playing I couldn't help but think read more
Hattachi: Yeah nice rip on a game that was purposely made read more
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Superhero Legacy: Anyone know how many more characters there will be? They read more

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