Video Games – Page 89

Look out!

Needless to say, it’s been kind of a busy month. I am pretty wizziped out right now, and should probably be catching up on sleep rather than blogging. But I haven’t blogged in weeks! One might say I haven’t had a good sleep in at least as long, but that’s besides the point. I’ve kind of let video games drop off my to-do list lately, barely able to find time to cram in games I’ve been working on for a while, much less new ones. So just so you know what I’m trying to play as of late, here are some impressions of said games.

Mario Kart Wii : Is there anything more frustrating than Mario Kart? The rubber-band AI is infuriating, but at the same time, when you win, you feel like you’ve really accomplished something. And of course, multiplayer is a blast too. But I think this one’s even more broken than ever, because I earned gold trophies on every grand prix on every difficulty on Mario Kart DS, but I just barely struggled my way to victory in the 100cc class in this iteration. But like I said, multiplayer really makes up for it. I’ve yet to win a single online match, but I’ve enjoyed each and every race I’ve participated in.

Baroque : A roguelike, but not. The only difference is that it’s not turn-based. I’ve developed a really bad crush on roguelikes as of late (as I may have said before) and Baroque is sating my need nicely. The real-time thing makes it noticably easier than turn-based roguelikes, but that’s okay. After being completely destroyed over and over in Shiren the Wanderer and Izuna, I like having a place to go where I can make some notable progress. Although it’s hard to tell exactly when you’re making progress in Baroque, because it’s structured very differently from any game I’ve ever played, but still, goodness. The somewhat macabre aesthetic really helps keep me into it too.

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time : Before we move off the topic of roguelikes, I might as well mention the pokémon entry. It’s probably the only roguelike that non-niche gamers will ever play, but in that, it’s a great way to draw in new fans to the genre. It’s not a (comparative) cakewalk like Baroque, but it’s cerainly not as brutal as Shiren. It stands to reason though, because the target demographic is between the 5- to 10-year-old age range, and I don’t recall children being overly fond of games that are as merciless as the common roguelike. But do I like the game? Uuuh, yeah. It’s Pokémon, come on. I actually skipped the first set of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games, but I’m glad I broke down and picked one up this time around.

Crosswords DS : Hey fuck you. I love doing crossword puzzles, especially when they don’t reference pop culture and I’m able to solve them. But what’s better? The card is not only loaded with bajillions of crosswords; it’s got a vast expanse of word search puzzles too! Do you have any idea how many giant word search books I burned through in my childhood? Lots.

Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: My Life As A King : I am in love with this game. I’m seriously considering spending less time with my girlfriend so I can play this game more*. I even tried to write a comic about it. And I sort of described how much I like it there too, so just go there if you want to read that.

The World Ends With You : Oh, wait. I haven’t actually started playing this yet. But it looks so good! Well, not literally. I’m actually getting kind of tired of Tetsuya Nomura, but the gameplay aspect seems like it’s really fun. So yeah. Maybe I’ll be able start it by the end of the summer. I’ll let you know.

*I’m not actually considering that. I’m dumb, but not that dumb.

All the times that we suffered

Wow. It’s funny how fast life can turn itself around. For all the shit I’ve been putting up with over the last while, this week has been exceptionally awesome. I guess the most important thing is that I took a trip to the optometrist yesterday, and it seems that I don’t have eye cancer. But that wasn’t really an issue anyway. Also, I won’t be needing glasses for a while still, which was infinitely more likely.

Less importantly to my health, but more important to my happiness, work has been great this week! I’ve actually had time to get some things done, which has been getting increasingly more difficult over the last few weeks. I almost forgot what that sense of accomplishment after a long eight hours was like, since I’ve basically just been running inconsequential errands all day for what seems like forever lately. But this week has been better, and it’s only going to improve, because after plenty of stalling and excuses, I’ve finally been promoted. It’s not much, and not exactly what I was aiming for, but at least now I’m officially in charge of the outdoor world at my store. I suppose that sometimes there’s something to be said for laying all your cards on the table, especially when your employers know that they desperately need you. Or, you know, maybe I just deserve it. I sure think I do. I’ve certainly fought through enough crap to have earned a little retribution and that shiny badge.

And AND I’ve learned today that Namco-Bandai is not only making a Tales of Symphonia sequel for Wii (really old news), but there’s also a new Tales game coming to the 360! If you didn’t know, I am as fanatical about the Tales series as the garden-variety gamer is about anything with Final and/or (but usually and) Fantasy in the title. It’s my RPG series of choice, and the fact that they’re using the Tales of the Abyss battle system helps a lot, because it’s unquestionably the best one yet. Well, except maybe for those FOFs. They’re cool and useful, but really just too hard to make good use of. Anyway, I’m pretty happy right now. Life is good.

One sky, one destiny

Due to life’s many demoralizing little complications, I’ve found it very hard to get excited about anything for some time now (Hell, I wasn’t really even that pumped for Brawl by the time it actually came out), and it only gets worse with time. But that’s why this blog post is so important! I’m actually really thrilled today! Why? Because I got a new CD in the mail yesterday, that’s why! Exclamation marks!

So then, how could a single CD make me go from borderline miserable to jumping with joy? Well, for one I’ve been waiting for it for well over a month now, and it’s not often that I’m anticipating a CD release. It’s even rarer that I pre-order a CD, and I got my copy secured almost as soon as I heard Play-Asia had it available for pre-order. But I guess I’ve still forgotten to mention the important part: what exactly this mystifyingly monumental disc is all about.

This, my friends and colleagues, is a best-of CD of my second-most favouritest game music composer ever, Yoko Shimomura, entitled Drammatica – The Very Best of Yoko Shimomura (the first being Motoi Sakuraba, but that’s another story entirely). And it’s not just a regular “slap sixteen tracks on a disc and call it a day” best-of either. Nope, these are all new arrangements of some of Ms. Shimomura’s finest works, and holy God damn, it does not disappoint in any way. Hell, it could even just be a hackjob with the original pieces and I’d still love it to death.

The album takes a handful of tracks from five games from very distinct generations: Live A Live, Front Mission, Legend of Mana, Heroes of Mana, and Kingdom Hearts. Anybody who’s familiar with her work will immediately jump at the thought of new arrangements of tunes from Legend of Mana and Kingdom Hearts, which had such extraordinary soundtracks to begin with. The SNES titles aren’t represented as strongly as the rest, but the tracks seen from them are there for obvious reasons, and it’s no secret that the music in Heroes of Mana is by and large the best part of the game. And for anyone who’s into that kind of thing, there’s also a bonus track in there from the yet-to-be-released Final Fantasy Versus XIII. Normally I don’t care much for FF soundtracks, but since Ms. Shimomura’s going to be the head on this one, I think that I’ll most definitely have to invest in the soundtrack when it’s released. Hell, knowing me, I’ll likely end up buying a PS3 just for the sake of listening to that single game’s soundtrack.

The one thing about the album is that while it says it’s a “best of”, the fact of the matter is that all the material is picked from her work on Square-Enix games. What you may not have realized is that she has worked on a lot of other game soundtracks. Most notably, she’s a member of Alph Lyla, Capcom’s house band. I really wouldn’t have had anything against hearing one or two Street Fighter-related themes on there somewhere. Hey, even some love for the music from the Mario & Luigi games would have been nice. It’s not nearly as epic as anything from Kingdom Hearts, but I would have appreciated the extra bit of diversity all the same. Not that I’m complaining! I love music and all, but it’s not often that a disc comes around that gets me as excited as this one.

If you’re at all interested, but have no idea what to expect, you can check out a preview right here. I personally would recommend “Destati” and “Legend of Mana ~Title Theme~”, but really anything is a winning choice. You can even play with a slider there to hear the difference between the original and arranged versions. Such good stuff. Should that pique your interest, the album sells for about $30 over at Play-Asia plus shipping charges, which may seem expensive for a single-disc album, but that’s a steal compared to the $50 plus shipping that Amazon’s charging. Dear God, they really gouge you on the prices of those imports.

In any case, as far as I’m concerned, it was totally worth whatever the final price came out to, because I absolutely love it. Would have been nice to get a pre-order bonus like I did with the Silent Hill Zero soundtrack (which was just a shitty coin purse, but free shit is free shit), but again, I’m not complaining. It’s an epic CD, and I think anyone who’s a fan of video game music, or even classical/orchestral music will find something to enjoy here. Sure, maybe she isn’t as big a name as Mr. Fancy-Pants Nobuo Uematsu, but Yoko Shimomura is totally on the top tier of game music composers, and I absolutely cannot wait to hear whatever she’s got cooking up for the next Kingdom Hearts games, among others.

I’ll expect you won’t cry

As I briefly touched on in yesterday’s post, lately I’ve been going back to some older games in anticipation of upcoming/recently released sequels/prequels. I even started playing Final Fantasy VII again a while ago because I was beginning to buy into the Crisis Core hype (I’m still on the fence about it). But if there’s one series I really have a hankering to see a new installment in, it’s gotta be Timesplitters.

I have no idea why, but as I was playing Rock Band with The Tall One last weekend, it suddenly hit me that it seemed like it was about time for a new Timesplitters game. It’s without a doubt my favourite FPS series, and one of my preferred multiplayer games. Hell, I still pop in Future Perfect now and then just to fiddle around with the map creator [I just realized why timesplitters is on my mind] and run a couple rounds with some bots. I’ve never built the same level of camraderie with my AI teammates in TS as I did with the ones in Unreal Tournament (customization helped a lot)(and yes, I know it’s sad to make friends with AIs), but it’s still fun. But seriously, am I wrong? Do you not feel like we need a new Timesplitters game to spend all our weekends for the next couple months on?

Well, I was doing a little digging earlier, and I found out that there is a new one on the way! Huzzah!

I was squealing with joy (on the inside) when I saw that logo image pop up. It’s like a magical promise that one day everything will be right in the world again, if only for a while. Or something epic like that anyway. The issue is that while it was revealed in June of last year, we still haven’t heard anything about it other than that they’re focusing on gameplay over graphics. Which, along with David Doak’s statement that they’d like to put it on Wii, is a pretty good indication that it’ll show up on my little white box of happiness. I mean, of course a multiplatform release would be the best, because for all the bragging rights that exclusivity gets you, the more people that get to enjoy the Timesplitters experience, the better. I really just hope that it’s Wii-bound in general. Of course it’s completely irrelevant to me because I own a 360 as well, but whatever. Brand loyalty, man.

In any case, as long as the game retains its big brothers’ trademark hilarity and monkeys, I think I’ll be satisfied. I complain about companies pushing out the same sports games year after year with nothing but roster updates, but I think that would be just fine for Timesplitters, so to speak. Put a new storyline in there, make up a few new maps and characters (perhaps a character customization mode?), and you’re good. This is one series that I would really prefer just to stay where it is and not be fucked up by trying to be innovative. Of course, if there are any major changes and they work out for the best, I’ll be tickled pink, but I’m pretty much expecting a standard FPS with a few pinches of zazz and a light comedy glaze. You know, exactly like the last two.

I can hardly breathe

Wow, so March was pretty slow then. Actually, over the last couple weeks I’ve been getting a lot accomplished. And by “Getting a lot accomplished” I mean “watching DVDs and playing video games”. I spent almost three hours last night playing Super Paper Mario, grinding enemies for coins and items so that I could conjure up enough good healing items to get me through the Flopside Pit of 100 Trials, which is basically the last thing I feel the need to complete in that game (nuts to finishing the various collections). I gave it a go this morning, and got somewhere into the 70’s where I was disgracefully murdered by a Dark Dayzee. For some reason, I’ve also started playing through the Wind Waker again, and I have to say that I’d really like to see a true sequel.

I should mention that I bought three new games today. All cheap, too! First off, they finally put a Mr. Driller game on Xbox Live Arcade, so I totally jumped on that. I’m completely terrible at Mr. Driller, but I cannot resist the bright colours and the promise of online play. After much deliberation, I also picked up Shiren the Wanderer. I have a lot to say about it, but you might as well go ask Parish, because he just won’t shut up about it. I will say that I really love it, because roguelikes are totally awesome, but I do much prefer Izuna (which I have yet to finish).

Lastly, because I apparently never noticed it before, I sawBomberman Land and decided to pick it up on the account of it was only $30 and it would be a good idea to have a Bomberman game for Wii. Then I realized that I have the VC version of Bomberman ’93. Oops. On the upside, despite the fact that the “adventure” mode is just a glorified mini-game collection, I feel that it’s one of the best mini-game collections in the overcrowded genre. It might have something to do with the RPG-esque way the game works, because having a reason to play mini-games other than for the sake of playing mini-games is a nice change of pace. Having a light plot, character interaction/customization, and a sense of progress make it much more bearable than most other efforts. As far as gameplay goes, I’d even place it above Rayman Raving Rabbids. It doesn’t have nearly as much personality, but it’s far more acceptable as a single-player game. The only real complaint is that the graphics are unabashedly crappy. Seriously. It doesn’t look a whole lot better than the top-tier N64 titles. I don’t mind if you didn’t put your whole heart into the graphics department, but the visuals here are almost inexcusably poor.

Obviously, I bought it for multiplayer though, and while the game does try to push the mini-games on you even then, Hudson was smart enough to keep our dearly beloved battle mode intact. It’s the exact same formula we all know and love, so it’s a perfect choice if you’ve got people to play with. They even had the foresight to allow use of the Classic controller and Gamecube pads, which is excellent because I only own one Wiimote. Overall, I recommend it because not only is classic Bomberman some of the best multiplayer gaming you’re ever going to see, but the single-player adventure is entertaining enough to spend a few hours with. Of course, I’d also recommend Shiren and Mr. Driller Online, but those are far more nichey than Bomberman ever was.

Next time on Torrential Equilibrium: waxing about why we need a new entry to another beloved multiplayer franchise, and then a short run down of what movies and TV DVDs have been sapping up the rest of my free time lately.

You might think I’m delirious

Do I have to say it? Okay fine.

Brawl is awesome.

So there you have it. I should mention that I’m quite surprised at how much I’ve been using the Stage Builder feature. I never thought too much of it before release, but I’ve made at least seven stages of my own, and I play them pretty often too. It really shouldn’t come as as much of a surprise as it does though, because after all, I spent hours and hours designing stages for Timesplitters 2 and Future Perfect. And my favourite part of The Sims has always been building houses for the little sims to live in. So yeah, I guess it kind of stands to reason that I might enjoy a tool made for builiding stages in my favourite fighting series. The only real downside to it is that you can only assign a single song to play on each stage, and I can’t break my insufferable need for symmetry. The first one I made, I just threw down bits and pieces here and there, and it’s easily the best I’ve made, but all that came afterwards have been perfectly symmetrical. I’ve tried to make another more random one, but it physically hurts me to do so.

The Stage Builder will slowly eat away your time and system memory.

The other thing to note is the sheer amount of things to accomplish in the game. I mean, yes, the best thing you can do is get at least one other person and just duke it out for hours, but the choices of game modes is just mind boggling. Thankfully, for people like me, the Challenges make it a little easier to sit back and decide what it is you need to do. Of course, until everything is unlocked, most of them will be marked with question marks, making it impossible to determine exactly what it is you’re supposed to beat on the “insane” difficulty, who you have to win 10 matches with, etc, but they’re still exceedingly handy. In any case, I don’t think I’ll be seeing the “You got all the trophies!” notice for a long, long time to come.

Whatcha gonna do?

You may have heard something recently about the next Guitar Hero game. If you haven’t, I have some news that may disturb or excite you: It’s all Aerosmith. Yeah. Harsh. I mean, it’s just an “expansion” like the 80’s edition, but still. There are a lot of other bands I’d much rather have entire Guitar Hero games based on. Off the top of my head, let’s see…

Tesla
Helix
The Ataris
Rush
Sons of Butcher

And the list goes on, really. I mean, I like Aerosmith, but a whole game worth of them is a lot to take. I really don’t see myself buying into this one. Which is sad, because I’m pretty much ready to drop money on new Guitar Hero games at the drop of the hat. But Aerosmith… Man, I really wish it was Tesla instead. I fuckin’ love Tesla.

This damn girl’s spun my head right around

Last week was without a doubt the most eventful seven days of my life to this point, and nothing really even happened between Monday and Wednesday. I am completely worn out right now, and should be catching up on sleep instead of blogging it up. Alas, old habits die hard.

In between all the things that keep me out of the house, I’ve been enjoying No More Heroes like it’s nobody’s business. It’s the biggest third-party Wii title for a reason. I know there are those out there who may not completely agree, but I think it’s totally living up to the hype I had built up around it, and that’s saying something because I’ve been watching it intently ever since the first trailer was leaked.

The most obvious victory for No More Heroes is the characters. Travis Touchdown is one of the baddest asses I’ve ever seen, and might even be more awesome than Dan Smith from Killer7. He’s an ex-pro-wrestler otaku who’s current job just happens to be killing. He’s blunt, crude, and quite possibly insane. And that’s before you factor in all the other UAA assassins, who are all reasonably interesting in their own rights. It’s just too bad that the main objective of the game is to make them all dead, because I wouldn’t mind seeing a few of those characters fleshed-out in a sequel/spin-off. Ah well, win some lose some I guess. Various other support characters linger about in the few main attractions of Santa Destroy, but none of them have nearly enough screen time. I say this because the few lines/actions/etc they are given are usually either straight-up hilarious or absurd to the point of hilarity.

Shinobu, the samurai schoolgirl, WILL murder you. Many times.

I suppose I should mention somewhere that the game is fun, too. The meat, which would be fighting the other assassins, is incredible. Like their personalities, each battle is completely different and provides many new and exciting ways to be killed. Hacking your way through legions of same-dressed goons on your way to each assassin showdown will provide plenty of fun too. Tons of games have had you battle through masses of enemies, but only No More Heroes makes it worth it by pure style alone. The animations and sound effects bring you right into the action, and within seconds you’ll lose yourself to the fight. Mashing the A button swings the beam katana, but every time you finish an enemy, you’ll swing the Wiimote to finish them off. Grabbing stunned enemies invokes a motion-activated wresting move, and no matter how you choose to dispose of the hordes of peons, each and every kill will be absolutely thrilling.

The biggest complaint point I’ve heard so far is the overworld. I’ll give those complainers a small degree of merit, because truthfully, it is pretty janky. Hitboxes on cars and people are enormous when compared to the actual models (which are blocky and poorly textured), and more often than not, when you’ve flown off your bike because you’ve rammed into a car at full speed, you won’t have been anywhere near that car. On the other hand, buried treasures and Lovikov Balls (essentially GTA “Hidden Packages”) are marked on the map. I cannot even imagine how to explain how much I like this. Yes, it takes the challenge out of finding them all, but I have never enjoyed hunting for unmarked baubles. Besides, you still have to manually search the entire city to find all the dumpsters, many which contain new T-shirts. So if you need that hunt-and-find element, it’s still there. In any case, fooling around in Santa Destroy isn’t nearly as bad as some make it out to be, but the city could certainly have benefited from a little more time in production.

I honestly could not mention everything I love about this game and keep this blog-post length, but at the same time, I don’t really want to spoil all the fantastic surprises, jokes and nuances that make the game so irresistible. So I’ll end on this note: No More Heroes is something to be experienced. If you have a Wii, you should definitely at least rent it as many times as it takes you to finish the game. If you don’t own a Wii, go steal one from a smarter family member or friend (but not me) and then play it. It’s not something to be missed.

Satisfaction guarantees

It’s kind of sad that despite how much I enjoy Guitar Hero 3, I’ve almost completely neglected it ever since Rock Band came into my home. I feel bad for this, but aside from maybe like “F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X.” and “Knights of Cydonia”, the song list is at least 27 times better in Rock Band. It may have something to do with the infinitely superior DLC support; I suppose you just can’t compete with new material every week. I’m still waiting on a Def Leppard pack though.

As much weight as the track list may carry, the other big difference is the drum kit. I mainly play alone (or online, which isn’t much different), so the multiplayer aspect isn’t a huge draw, but those drums are like a little bit of Heaven. They’re extremely hard to learn, but I’ve got it down to the point where I can at least manage to scrape through most songs on hard, so I’m doing okay as far as game progress goes. But just playing for fun, the normal difficulty is more than enough. It provides a challenge, but doens’t have quite enough tricks to really throw you off. Learning to play the drum kit has given me a much bigger satisfaction payoff than playing the plastic guitar ever did. It feels absolutely amazing just to pound away to the beat, and accomplishing hard sections without missing a note is total bliss. I could recommend Rock Band based on the drum section alone.

Did I mention that drumming is the greatest way to relieve tension ever? No? Well it is. Seriously, I can boot up the game and be all stressed or whatever other negative emotions might plague the human soul, and by the time I’m two songs in I feel like I’m on top of the world. It’s like a magic cure for the blues.

As much as I would love to continue jabbering on about drums and Rock Band, or Hell, actually playing the game, I have homework to do. Yeah. Homework. From work. Trying to get ahead is a pain.

Smashing good times

So now that January is over, I can really claim 2008 to be far superior to 2007. January sucked total balls last year, and really set a bad precedent for the months to follow. January ’08, however, has been filled with nothing but awesome. Okay, maybe there have been a few downers here and there, but they’ve been entirely my fault and not the world trying to stick it to me. In conclusion, I think I’m going to be happy this year. Don’t let my sullen disposition and Facebook page fool you; I’m quite content on the inside.

Things are only going to get better though, and I can tell you this with no reservation, because today somebody posted a video on YouTube that features every character’s final smash in Brawl. And I mean every character, so you should know there are spoilers ahead, and if you care, don’t watch this video.

I was kind of excited about final smashes when they were first announced, because I thought it would be neat for every character to have a one-shot, incredibly overpowered, absolutely fantastic finishing move. And while some are more broken than others, for the most part, they deliver. Seeing screens on the Dojo was kinda meh, but watching them in action is pure bliss. PK Starstorm!! Ha. I love it. Did I mention that I love the background music? At this point I’m anticipating the soundtrack almost as much as the game proper.