Category: Video Games

Lara Croft < Bears

I plugged away at Tomb Raider for a couple hours this weekend because it’s been sitting on my PSP’s memstick for ages now and I’ve barely touched it. I’m not entirely sure, but I have this gut feeling that I hate Tomb Raider.

It’s not really Tomb Raider that I hate though. The concept is fine. Indeed, I actually quite liked Tomb Raider: Legend (though not enough to complete it), but I cannot fathom how people enjoyed the older games. Moving Lara around is just such a hassle. Even back in 1996 I don’t understand how people found the awful, awful control scheme acceptable. I mean, people knowingly played this game instead of… well, anything else? I imagine that playing Tomb Raider is roughly as painful and annoying as jamming a fork into my thigh repeatedly.

Anyhow, after roughly five hours of gameplay I’ve only just completed the Lost Valley, which goes to show how much trouble I’m having here. There was a bear at one point that mauled me to death nearly a dozen times before I was able to get past him. The little dinosaurs didn’t give me too much trouble, and the T-rex didn’t even hit me, but I stopped counting how many times Lara crumpled to the ground dead because of a misstep or when she decided to walk off a cliff despite the fact that I did indeed press the jump button.

I don’t know if I’m going to be able to stick this one out, guys. I can’t imagine that the game is very long, but it’s just so bad. And not Power Glove bad. I feel like I should pack it in and go back to Final Fantasy XIII-2, which is a game that wants me to win. I like those games.

(This post is terrible because I’m overtired and pissed off at Tomb Raider.)

The return of X, again

It hasn’t been a thing lately, but if you’ve combed through much of my site’s backlog, one of the most prominent themes is me being a huge MegaMan fanboy. In recent years, the love has waned a bit, mostly due to Capcom not really doing anything interesting with the franchise. MegaMan 9 and MegaMan 10 were fantastic throwbacks to the golden age of gaming, but that’s really about it. The MegaMan Star Force were just gussied-up versions of the dried-up Battle Network series, and the cancellation of MegaMan Legends 3 was a huge blow to the small but loyal contingent of fans of that particular series. MegaMan Universe just never interested me.

So I guess really the best thing that Capcom could do was port one of the best MegaMan games to iOS. MegaMan X was a landmark game that hewed closely to the tried-and-true MegaMan formula, but pushed it to the limit, making the game faster and more exciting. All these years later, it’s still one of my favourite games ever, and by far my most-played SNES title. Why wouldn’t I want to play it on my phone?

Oh, right, because Capcom released a near-perfect remake of it on PSP some years back. MegaMan: Maverick Hunter X was the reason I bought a PSP, and it’s easily the definitive version of the game. MegaMan X’s iOS port is mostly faithful to the SNES original, but you’ll notice that the graphics have been all smoothed out to help make it look a little more contemporary. They certainly look nice, and the sleeker presentation is in no way a knock against the game, but to me, X looks a little weird when not presented in chunky SNES pixels.

A handful of the other major changes are definitely for the worse. The most blatant one being that you’re playing a SNES game with a touch screen. We all know how much I hated Secret of Mana‘s iOS port for that. And Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2. My opinion is the same as it was when I wrote those posts: touch screen controls are not a good idea for games designed for buttons. MegaMan X makes a little concession to that end by giving you an easy mode, but if you don’t know every pixel of this game like I do, the rough controls will probably cause you more than a few pains.

One of the really cool things about MegaMan X -and it’s something that didn’t even carry into the sequels- is that by defeating certain stages, you’d trigger environmental changes in other stages. The most prominent being that the lava in Flame Mammoth’s stage turns to stone if you’ve beaten Chill Penguin. Most of the other effects are less obvious and less functional. But that doesn’t matter, because they don’t happen here. Flame Mammoth’s stage? Lava’s always burnin’. Spark Mandrill’s stage? The airship never crashes. So on and so forth.

The one upside here is that since the heart tank in Flame Mammoth’s level used to be on the lava and only accessible after freezing the place (by defeating Chill Penguin), it’s now placed on the floor directly above where it used to sit. It takes absolutely no effort to gain it now, but it does cut back on the amount of backtracking you need to do to 100% the game (you need the Fire Wave to get the heart tank in Chill Penguin’s level, meaning you’d have to replay one of the stages).

Another concession to level design was made to the iOS version of the game. Sort of. Before, stages were single, smooth scrolling maps. Not they’ve been chopped into bits, with stark transitions between screens. The transitions don’t really bring down the value of the game, but they’re a little jarring to me since I’ve probably spent more time in these levels than in my own backyard.

Lastly, while this version of MegaMan X sports some slightly updated graphics, the music is ripped directly from the SNES version. This is awesome, because MegaMan X has a terrific soundtrack. The remixes found in the PSP remake are also available. The catch is that you have to buy them. With real money, like. It’s not really a big deal because the original tracks are better, but I couldn’t help dropping the two bucks to have the remixes available. You can buy all the weapons, armor parts and heart/sub tanks too, if you’re retarded and can’t find them for yourself. That’s kind of a waste of money though.

It does get better though! One of the things that really stuck out to me was that most of the dialogue has been rewritten, and it’s not too bad! I didn’t play Maverick Hunter X enough to know if it’s the same dialogue as from that version, but it’s sure different from the SNES original. Some of the best corny lines (see the screenshot above) have been retained though, which is just gravy. The “hadoken” scene is rewritten almost entirely, and it is magnificent (see screenshot below). The odd thing is that the dialogue font is tiny and a full paragraph barely fills up half of the text box. Not really a problem, but it stands out as kind of an odd design decision.

Speaking of odd design decisions, there are no extra lives in this particular port. At first I thought I had just remembered the extra life locations incorrectly, but I know for a fact that there is one not far above where you find the helmet parts in Storm Eagle’s stage. It’s not there. Instead, you just get two lives every time you begin a stage. Not that you should really need more than two lives to beat any single stage in MegaMan X, but it’s just another weird little change.

Also included are Game Center achievements. Being an admitted achievement whore, this makes me very happy. The highway stage even has its own set of achievements (which oddly do not count in Game Canter) that unlock pieces of a puzzle as you earn them. Most of the GC cheevos are stupidly easy to get (Defeat Chill Penguin, Defeat Chill Penguin with his weakness, Defeat Storm Eagle, etc.), but a couple are genuine achievements. Beating all the robot masters without taking a hit would be pretty breezy on the SNES, but with touch controls? Super hard.

Capcom saw fit to make a handful of other additions to the game. The aforementioned easy mode is counterbalanced by an unlockable hard mode, or so I think. It’s still a grey [locked] square, and I assume it will come in an update. Hopefully not in exchange for moneys. There is a new ranking mode that contains time and score attack modes, and a survival mode (which may or may not be a boss rush) which are mostly there as an excuse to have Game Center leaderboards. The score attack and survival games are also [locked], and I’m not sure if they’re going to be in an update or if I just need to clear all the time attack stages to unlock them. I really don’t care enough to actually play time attack. The regular game is fine with me, thanks.

So what’s the final verdict on the iOS port of MegaMan X? It’s your quintessential 16-bit iOS port. It’s got a few improvements, a few odd changes and extra features, and kinda broken touch controls. But it’s nice to have a version of MegaMan X that I will quite literally be able to play whenever I want. The PSP remake might be a more solid effort and more playable, but most of the time I play my PSP at home, whereas my iPhone is always with me. $5 is a pretty steep price for a questionable SNES port, and the fact that it’s a quick and dirty port that pushes microtransactions may sour a few on it, but I’m happy to have MegaMan X in my pocket.

On running, roos, and running some more

I’ve been slowly picking away at 5th Cell’s Run Roo Run whenever I rememeber that I have games that aren’t Tiny Tower on my iPhone. That and Mega Man X, but that’s a story for another day.

In quite a stark contrast to their previous games (re: Scribblenauts), Run Roo Run is a very simple game. The premise is usual video game fare: you are a mother kangaroo who must travel across Australia in order to save your joey, who has been captured and put in a zoo. Just another (minor) twist on the common hero/princess business.

The gameplay isn’t entirely new either. Stages are a single screen long (at least up to chapter 10), and you just have to tap the srceen to make momma kangaroo bounce over obstacles. In each chapter, a new element is introduced, like springs, bouncy tires, and a double-jump kajigger. For the first few chapters, the game is really easy, and only once you reach chapter 8 will you find yourself not getting gold medals on the first try. The game’s main focus is accuracy, so you have to make sure you’re bouncing at just the right time. Once you complete all 15 levels in a chapter, 6 “extreme” stages are unlocked, and in those you need pixel-perfect accuracy to even complete the stage, nevermid score a gold medal.

Run Roo Run isn’t exactly a deep game. Like I said before, for at least half of the game, every stage fits on a single screen. Most of the stages in that first half take less than 3 seconds to complete, too. Only once you get far enough that moving platforms are introduced will your stage times exceed 5 seconds. The rating you get after each stage is handed out based on your time, too. Getting gold stars on normal stages isn’t too diffficult, but nabbing golds on the extreme levels can be even more difficult than 3-starring levels in Angry Birds.

Speaking of those angry avians, Run Roo Run’s menus have a very… familiar look.

The real high point, and I think one of the main reasons I keep coming back, is the music. Scribblenauts had a fantastic soundtrack. Run Roo Run’s music strikes the exact same sweet spot and adds a didgeridoo in a couple spots. The stages proper don’t have much in the way of tunage, but the menu screens provide all the aural pleasure you could want.

As with iOS game developers, 5th Cell is not above trying to wring a couple more bucks out of you once you’ve bought their game. There are a couple purchasable items: a bus that lets you skip a stage, and a “bullet-time” (it may be called something else, I can’t be arsed to check) powerup that slows time for so long. The cool thing is that the bullet-time persists over multiple stages, so you can use one to cheese your way to gold on several extreme stages. I’m not sure if there are more things to buy, as I lost interest in items as soon as I learned it would cost me real money to use them.

Run Roo Run isn’t a particularly robust game, but it’s fun and is over before it wears out its welcome (quite the opposite of Angry Birds). The extreme stages will have you pulling out your hair in frustration from chapter 1, but the regular levels have just the right difficulty curve. Achievements are included, and it’s only a buck. I recommend it and hope that it sells well, because 5th Cell is a great studio, and I’d love to see more work from them.

Skyrim’d

I have one more thing to post about Fallout 3. It should have been done early last week. Alas, Skyrim.

Like millions before me, I have been sucked up entirely into the world of Skyrim and cannot break free of its unusually strong grip. It’s a miracle that my job and relationship aren’t suffering because of it. Just sleep. But that’s okay, I’d much rather play Skyrim than sleep. It’s amazing how the hours just slip away as you’re out slaying dragons and exploring the mountains.

That said, the whole “exploration is its own reward” thing I had going on with Fallout is definitely there in Skyrim, probably even more. There are like twice as many locations to find in Skyrim as there are in the Capital Wasteland, and it seems like a lot more of them are significant. For instance, there was one cabin with a bandit inside. Boring, right? No! In the cellar, I could hear wind coming from somewhere, and as luck would have it, I found a note that mentioned some hidden goods behind a bookcase. After a little searching, I found a button that moved the bookcase, and there was way more down there than a couple bottles of wine. There was a huge, snaking cavern full of bandits. At the end of that was a short ruins area that was full of booby-traps and led to a gigantic treasure trove, full of gold, gems, and rare ores.

Then one other time, I was exploring this cave full of Falmer (cave-people), and then I got to the bottom and a giant robot attacked me! Totally did not expect that!

The one sucky thing I’ve found is that characters who will join you really don’t mind dying permanently. Like this one guy, Faendal, who joined me almost right at the beginning of the game. He was cool, and was a pretty slick shot with a bow. He got the shit kicked out of him a few times, but never gave up. So when I found him laying on the ground after a battle with some particularly tough bandits and discovered that he wasn’t going to get up, I was sad. I also got a stray dog and some random dude killed by giants. Not my fault, really. They just didn’t understand that you don’t fuck with giants.

I suppose I wasn’t too fond of the character creator either. I wanted to play a lady wood elf. Am I so wrong? Well, Bethesda seems to think so, because I had to work very hard to make one that didn’t look manly or scary. I played with the face configurator for at least an hour before I finally managed to work out something I found acceptable. I didn’t need her to be the most beautiful character anyone’s ever seen or anything; I would have settled for cute. (Originally I wanted to make her resemble Stephanie, but there was no way in Hell that that was going to happen.)

In non-Skyrim news (enjoy this, it may be the last for a while), I downloaded the Final Fantasy XIII-2 demo last week. Being one of the three people who liked FFXIII, I’m very excited for it. The fact that it plays more like a regular JRPG (exploring, towns, sidequests, etc) but retains the bulk of XIII’s battle system makes me very happy indeed. I just wish Lightning were the main character again. Serah just seems so… cliche. I cannot relate to her at all. But the new Crystarium seems really cool! It’s kind of sad that I have this pre-ordered, but probably won’t play it for months. Stupid Skyrim, being so awesome and addictive. Skyrim Skyrim Skyrim.

Fallen out

After what seems like an eternity -albeit a very fun eternity- I have completed Fallout 3 to the point where I don’t care anymore. I have all the achievements, so as far as I’m concerned it’s 100%ed. I could have gone back to do all the quests, but I needed to get me into some Skyrim.

But Fallout 3 was huge, and amazing! So I guess I should write up a few final words before I shelve it forever.

It took me just under a month’s time to power through the game, and I think my game clock says something like 80 hours. Which is not too bad! The reason I hesitated from starting the game in the first place is because I kept hearing how you could easily rack up over 100 hours, and that’s before the DLC packs. I suppose you could scribble in an extra couple hours for all the time I lost because of deaths and crashes, but it’s still not 100.

I enjoyed the game in the way I think a lot of people did: wandering aruond the wasteland aimlessly. Yes, I did have drive to complete the quests, but that was just for the little achivement pops. I found it far more satisfying to just prowl about, seeing whatever there was to see. Sometimes I’d end up somewhere I definitely was not supposed to be yet; I fell many times at the hands of super mutants because you shouln’t be tangling with super mutants at level 3. It was still fun though, because either I’d get to enjoy the challenge of sneaking through a dangerous area unseen or I’d just set off in the opposite direction. Exploration really was its own reward.

The low point, I think, was the DLC. I probably would have been satisifed playing the main game to its completion, but they were sitting on my console and the achievements weren’t very demanding. It may have been good that I did them out of order, too. I accidentally got beamed up into Mothership Zeta while wandering around, and while the DLC itself got boring less than halfway through (go down this hall, shoot X number of aliens), the Alien Desintegrator I walked away with made everything after it a breeze. I have no qualm with overpowered weapons.

Point Lookout was easily my favourite, and I’m sad that all the DLC wasn’t structured the same way. As great as it was to have a whole new map to explore with several quest lines to follow, I really just liked when the mansion blew up. That was awesome and totally unexpected. (Sorry if I spoiled it, two and a half years later.) I think this was the only DLC that didn’t provide me with a cool new toy. The double-barreled shotgun is strong, but isn’t as efficient as the combat shotgun.

Operation: Anchorage was kind of bland, but the unbreakable armor I earned from it is swell. Broken Steel was pretty ho-hum too until I got the Tesla Cannon. I don’t know why I’d ever want to use another weapon.

The Pitt was cool, and fudged with my personal morality system. Do I ignore the plea of the slaves or kidnap a baby? Ideally I’d have liked a way to free the slaves without stealing “the cure,” but I was not given such an option. There was no way that I was going to kidnap a baby, even in a video game, and even for the greater good. The way I see it is that the “evil” lord of the Pitt is trying to turn things around, trying to make a city that doesn’t rely on slavery. Things will get better there. I did the right thing.

I think the thing that surprised me about Fallout 3 is how front-loaded the difficulty is. Maybe it’s just because I didn’t start following the story quests until I’d been playing for about 25 hours, but it seems like I spent a lot of time dying and hurting for ammo early on in the game. By the time I made it to Rivet City I was a mostly unstoppable killing machine with thousands and thousands of bullets. Perhaps it was also because I was playing on the easy difficulty. It takes absolutely nothing away from the game, so why not?

So now that I’ve checked the second item off my wishlist, the obvious next step would be to start up Fallout: New Vegas, right? Really, I think I’ve had my fill of wasteland for a while. It’s time for something greener.

Skyrim, though I’ve only spent a few hours with it, has already been just as enjoyable. Again, exploring has been its own reward. Of course, I’m not going to complain when I’m also rewarded with a new bow or a chest full of gold. I can definitely see myself getting deep into this one.

Tiny Trouble

So I downloaded Tiny Tower the other day. Now I’m constantly checking my phone to make sure my stores are stocked up. I’ve learned to eat all meals with one hand, whilst managing my tower with the other. I’m even having trouble resisting the urge to play it during work hours. I’m literally afraid that I’m going to start trying to play while I’m driving. This is becoming a problem.

The thing about Tiny Tower though, is that it isn’t really that good of a game. I mean, it’s as addictive as all the other stupid iOS/Facebook micromanagement games, but it’s pretty shallow and needs way more babysitting than all the other one’s I’ve played.

The objective of Tiny Tower is to build a tower. Imagine that! It’s a neat little pixel tower, and the cute little people that move in are referred to as “bitizens.” It hits all the right old-school gaming notes as far as visuals go. The music isn’t quite as prefectly retro; I find the game is best played with volume off.

Building you tower is as simple as clicking the “build a new floor” button. Only it costs coins to do so. Coins are earned in a few ways, but mostly from businesses that you can open in your tower. Each occupies a floor, and each can be staffed by up to 3 bitizens. Bitizens live on apartment floors, and each apartment can occupy up to five bitizens. So you have to build more businesses to make profit, and apartments to keep them staffed.

Businesses are to Tiny Tower as crops are to FarmVille. Each business can sell up to three items (dependent on how many bitizens work there), and each one has an “ordering” time. So like farming games, you have to wait a while before your products will sell and make you money. Then you have to press the “stock” button before the ordered item can be sold. You get so many of each item, so you don’t have to restock every time a thing is bought, but stocks tend to go quickly. The thing that makes this different from farm games is that (at least early on), your products have an ordering time that’s measured in minutes instead of hours. What this means is that with farm games you can plant your crops before work or bed, then forget about them. Tiny Tower is constantly pushing notifications telling you that your stock is in, meaning that if you’re not constantly babysitting it, your profits are going to slow down to nothing.

There really isn’t much else to the game. Random bitizens will sit in the elevator, waiting for you to drive it to whatever floor they desire. This provides a small payment of coins, but the real reason to bother is that you will rarely get a Tower Buck instead. The “bux” are Tiny Tower’s second, rares currency. The one all stupid little Facebook/iPod games have to confuse idiots into spending real money on game money. The bux can be used to speed construction/ordering, improve your elevator/stores, buy coins, and get new costumes for your bitizens. The nice thing here is that Tiny Tower hands out bux much more liberally than most other games like it.

There’s a silly, useless little feature called “Bitbook,” where your bitizens post their thoughts. It’s more like Twitter than Facebook, but I suppose Bitbook sounds better than Bitter. Rollercoaster Tycoon had a similar feature, where you could read what your park guests were thinking, and use that feedback to improve your park. Bitbook comments are just for fun.

The two features I really like about Tiny Tower are that you can dress up your bitizens and rename all the stores and apartments in your tower. Dressing bitizens is mostly cycling through random, adorable outfits. There’s apparently an editor where you can design your own outfits, but I haven’t used it yet. Renaming shops is undispuatably the most fun I’ve had with the game, as I’ve gotten much more satisfaction from coming up with snappy names than I have from driving bitizens up the elevator. Some of my prouder examples include the bike shop called “Cerulean Cycle” (that’s a Pokémon reference, FYI) and the pharmacy named “Mr. Popper’s Pills.”

 I think the only real reason I keep playing Tiny Tower is to create a bigger tower than my Game Center peers. And really, that’s less a competition of skill than a race to see who gets bored last. I could probably say more about Tiny Tower, but I think my summary has all the pertinent information. Now if you’ll excuse me, my sushi shop has run out of tuna rolls. Again.

What bugs me

Apparently Bethesda games are known for being more than a ilttle buggy? I can’t really blame them, the games are so huge and allow you to do so much. It would be amazing if they caught everything.

Fallout 3 hasn’t been too bad. Most of the glitches I’ve experienced are just little things like textures not loading properly or corpses randomly flying into the sky. However, I’ve suffered from a couple issues with my Pip-boy, like the above. Every time I go into the Nuka-Cola factory, my Pip-boy moves a little closer to the top of the screen each time I look at it. In the picture, it’s about as far up as it gets, but at that point it’s already rendered useless. This issue sometime resolves itself in time, but I’ve had to reload the game to make it go back to normal.

I’ve had another issue where the Pip-boy display is brightened to the point where you can barely read the screen. That one seems more like something that was programmed in there for some reason, but I have no idea why and I can’t figure out how to replicate it. Fortunately, moving my face really close to the TV makes the screen legible and therefore is not quite as inconvenient as the other problem. Still kind of a pain in the butt.