Category: Video Games

We carry on

Imagine, if you will, a play composed and performed by retarded monkeys. That would basically be your localization of Final Fantasy Tactics. The PSP port, The War of the Lions, on the other hand, is more akin to reading Shakespeare. No, really. I expected the story to be comprehensible this time around, but the thickness of the dialect they applied is astounding (in a good way). Let’s just say the improved loacalization alone is more than enough reason to play through the game. There. If you’re not sold on the fact that now you’ll be able to tell what in God’s name is going on, then read on.

 

I guess the only other real addition to the game I’ve seen yet (I’m on mission five, which is about as far as I’ve ever managed to get in FFT) is the revolutionary new “cutscene” feature. It’s this thing where instead of always having the fat little sprites quibble about with their text boxes, once in a while there’s animation and voice. But seriously, the cutscenes are beautiful. The style is so very inspired, and makes me happy to be watching my game instead of playing it. Or at least makes me forget the irritation of having just sat through twenty minutes of tubby sprites gabbing at each other.

Ummm… I dunno. If I have to gripe, it’s that they didn’t add an easy mode for people like me. I can shred through killer solos in Guitar Hero, but for the life of me I cannot manage to successfully get five heavily-armed men to take out three unarmed goblins. It’s a wonderful game though, regardless of how much I suck at it. But hey, on the upside, at least the outcome of the war between Heaven and Hell won’t be resting on my shoulders.

You’re starting to bore me

Hey! Nintendo’s giving away free Wii Remote jackets! Okay, so it’s not a lot, but free is free, right? So, you know, any Wii owners might wanna mosey on over and get some sweet free goodies. Really, I just like getting things in the mail.

In other news, it seems while September was a wonderful month in which no games I really wanted were released, October was invented solely to bleed my wallet dry. The new Zelda and Chibi-Robo games drop today. Then later on come the first PSP games I actually want in a long time, The War of the Lions and Dracula X Chronicles. Guitar Hero 3 is on the 28th, and then on Halloween comes Dementium: The Ward. I’m sure there are more, but quite frankly, I’d rather not know about them. At least things are going to cool off to near-stagnation again when the month is over though.

Don’t mess with me

I was poking around on the articles page for no reason, and after a quick look-over of some of the mini-reviews, I discovered that I was rather harsh on Shadow of the Colossus when I reviewed it. I don’t remember being that down on it, and in retrospect, I think maybe I could have been a little nicer.

I guess the main reason that I was so cold toward the game back then is because my review was based on a rushed initial playthrough and a go at the easy time trials. Between now and then, I’ve bought the game (at $20, I definitely recommend picking it up) and played through it at least six more times.

I think the key to enjoying the game to its full potential is not to focus on getting to the end, but rather to take as long as you can to accomplish anything. While the environment doesn’t offer a lot of options when it comes to goofing off, there are a couple things to do. For one, speeding toward a cliff on Agro and then leaping from him over the side is always fun. What, you think dying isn’t fun? Oh, but I beg to differ. Half the fun of Shadow of the Colossus is finding new and/or higher places from where you can fling yourself to your death. Watching Wander flail hopelessly through the air only to crumple on the ground with a satisfying thud is perhaps a little sadistic, but holy cow is it ever entertaining to watch. It’s like the episode of Family Guy where they move to the south. You can hear Peter lament “It’s in my raccoon wounds” a million times, and it will always, always be funny.

Where climbing and deadly falls are concerned, let’s not forget the crowning achievement for any Shadow of the Colossus player: climbing the Shrine. It took me many hours of effort and painful deaths, but I did it. I had to resort to a YouTube video to figure out the last step, but even though I had to enlist some help, I still felt an overwhelming sense of satisfaction as I stood atop of the Shrine. And while it may seem tedious to spend like seventy hours crossing a single bridge, it’s still exciting, because of all the effort it took to get to that bridge. And when you get across? Well, let’s say that it’s not easy to find such a good place to leap from. Setting targets helps. Once I almost landed right on Agro. Probably best that I didn’t though, as the universe probably would have imploded from the occurrence of a feat so near-impossible.

Of course, playing the game properly is perfectly good fun too. The thrill of single-handedly taking on a monster that’s eleventy-billion times your size never dulls. Not ever. And while the music provided by the game suits the moment well enough, putting your own soundtrack to the madness can enhance the experience tenfold. I play while listening to different music every time, and the pace of the music kind of changes how I go about the battles. It’s hard to explain, but it makes the experience seem a little different each time.

I guess the only thing I still hold against Shadow of the Colossus is the story. It’s still totally dumb, regardless of the fact that after spending a lot of time researching it on the internet I understand it a little better. However, that tiny gripe aside, I totally have to revise my opinion on the game. It’s not a renter anymore. Now that it’s a Playstation Greatest Hits title, and therefore only costs $20, it’s totally a buyer. I pick this one up every now and then and play through the entire game in one or two sittings. Aside from Guitar Hero, I think that Shadow of the Colossus is more than likely my most played PS2 game, and that’s saying a lot considering that the first time I played it I didn’t walk away with an overly positive opinion.

Gimme an R!

It’s been flying on the edge of the radar since it was announced, so you may or may not have heard about Drawn to Life. If you have heard about it, you know exactly why I bought it.

Drawn to Life is, in essence, a platformer. However, the platforming part of the game is like 34% of why I enjoy it. Quite frankly, the controls are a little sluggish, and it’s been painfully easy so far. But that aside, it’s also a game about drawing! Yes!

As you can tell from the boxart, you get to draw in your own character, and while that’s kinda neat, it also sucks a little. No matter how nice your drawing is, it will always look like shit in play, and it’s animated quite poorly too. I suppose that’s the price you pay for getting to draw your character though. But hey, the rest is pretty awesome! You get to draw a ton of other things, like platforms and weapons and stuff, and it’s wonderful! Unlike your main character, all the other sprites come out looking great, and I could simply sit there for hours filling in the landscape with custom props, and then bouncing around and reveling in their beauty. In fact, that’s basically what I’ve done with the game so far.

While you get to design a lot of objects from scratch, with the ability to do whatever you want inside a set frame, there are a handful of things you’re provided with an outline for and can only really colour in. Of course, this is still pretty fun. It’s not quite as great as drawing in an imitation Air Tikki where you’re supposed to draw a cloud, it still allows for a good amount of creativity.

The music in Drawn to Life is pretty upbeat and spunky, but nothing really special. I mean, it’s decent, but you could just as well turn off the volume and put on your own tunes in the background. The graphics, the ones that don’t depend on the player’s drawing talent, are pretty nice. Think Rocket Slime with a little more detail. The animation is very crisp, too. Not quite as smooth as you’d see in the more recent Kirby games, but the artist’s effort really shows through.

As I touched on briefly, the gameplay is weaker than I’d like, but it’s not unforgivably bad. The best way to describe it is to say that it plays like a good (but not great) Flash platformer. So kinda janky and amateurish, but still playable. The ability to doodle in most of the environmental objects and a ton of other stuff really makes the game worth playing for me. Did I mention there is plenty of secret crap to collect? Oh yeah, there’s boatfuls. In conclusion, I think it was totally worth my $30. It’s no Mario Bros game, but if I wanted a game where everything was already drawn in, I’d just play something else.

As for a score? I’d say six and a half out of ten interchangable rating doodads.

Even to the end of his life

Hello. My name is Ryan. and I’m a Facebookaholic. I haven’t been on Facebook for almost six days now. I think I’m making some real progress.

Seriously, I was having trouble there for a while. I’d poke around Facebook for hours on end, never really accomplishing anything. At least when I spend my Friday nights surfing Wikipedia I’m learning something. My infatuation with just being on the site was becoming a problem, because days would melt away as I poked through random groups and people’s profiles. It made me late for work on one occasion. But times are going to change. I don’t even know why I was on there in the first place. I’m a loner. I don’t want to make friends. Fuck that noise.

In a completely unrealted story, Sam & Max kicks ass. It’s nice to see that people can still make quality adventure games. The fact that I laughed more during the first half of the first episode than I have at anything on TV lately means something too. But I won’t say what, because I think you should be able to draw your own conclusions. In any case, if your PC is up to it, it’s $30 very well spent. If you don’t enjoy it on some level, you’re pretty much a waste of your parents’ reproductive cells.

Right!

I don’t have any idea what it was, but something was mucking up my page, making it hard to see. In any case, it’s fixed now. Maybe. Onto greater things, then!

I’d like to open with this statement: I really like Metroid Prime 3. It’s awesome the controls are effin’ sweet, and it’s very fun. Now more to the point, I think it may be a bit overrated. Everyone’s just shitting themselves slathering the damn thing with far more praise than I think it really deserves. I mean, yeah, it’s a well-crafted game, but it’s no better than the first two once you take away the motion controls. I dunno. I’m always the first one to kiss Nintendo’s ass, but really, I just don’t see it as being quite as deserving of so much praise as some other games. The thing is, we knew the motion controls would rock ass for FPS games, it’s just that Retro is the first developer to get them right. So, um, I don’t really know where I was going with this, but I think the point is that if you take away the Wiimote and nunchuk, people wouldn’t be anywhere near as excited about this game as they are. And I guess if nothing else, that proves how much that little pointer can do for games.

I guess that’s actually all I had to say for today. I’m sure there was something else, but nothing’s coming to me, so I’m off. Laterz.

What about the thieves?

I guess everybody knows that BioShock is awesome by now. If not… Get on the fuckin’ train man. I’m not really into shooters, but there’s so much to love about BioShock that there’s no way I could skip it. The funny thing is that for the longest time I just kept ignoring the hype around it, and a week before the thing launched I decided to give the demo a shot. It kind of goes without saying that the demo really sold me on it.

Most people just keep going on and on about how great the story is, but for me, it’s all about the atmoshpere. Honestly, I love playing scary games, even if they’re kinda bad in the gameplay department (except for Clock Tower 3, that was just awful), but BioShock is fun to play as well, especially given the fact that you can search like everything for items, and there are roughly seventy billion character upgrades of various sorts to collect. Incase you weren’t aware, I love to collect things in video games. One of the other less-mentioned things I like is that the harder achievements are challenging but not frustratingly difficult to earn, as they would be in oh, let’s say Crackdown. I really don’t even know what else to say. It’s a game you totally have to play. If I can’t convince you, read this review. It should do the trick. Made me want to buy the game a second time.

Oh! And also make sure to grab the soundtrack as well. It’s free!

It’s not over yet

Last Friday, it was revealed (sort of) that Princess Peach would be returning for the next Super Smash Bros game. That was kind of obvious, but there is a more interesting topic here!

Just look at the detail on that dress! Sure, it’s nothing compared to some of the visuals you might get on the 360, but it’s still a step up from Peach’s Melee model. A HUGE step up. But I know that the real question on everyone’s minds lies beneath the fancy dress:

Will her panties be remodeled as nicely too?

Just another substance abuser

I was playing Crackdown into the wee hours of the morning last night, and it was probably the best thing I’ve done all week. Near the end, I decided to go to the marketplace to snag some additional game content, and then when I was done playing, I revisited because it was Wednesday and new things come in on Wednesday. Now I don’t usually keep up with Marketplace updates, but this was a great day to check it out for two very important reasons.

The first thing I saw was new junk for Guitar Hero 2. Another new song pack from the first game? NO! Better! Three completely new songs! Now THIS is why I shelled out the $90+ dollars for the 360 version of the game. And they’re great songs too! …Well, I like them. They’re all songs from My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade. “Teenagers” and “Famous Last Words” are two of my favourite songs from the album, but they’re second-set songs at best (read: eeeeasy). “This Is How I Disappear” on the other hand, is respectably difficult, and while I personally would have rather had “House of Wolves” it’s still a fantastic track for Guitar Hero. In summation, if you hate MCR and love Guitar Hero, you’re boned. Har har har. Good times for me.

Less in keeping with the good times, but still significant to me, we finally get a Beautiful Katamari demo. I’ve watched the trailer like… well, just the one time I guess, but I’ve still been itichin’ to get my hand on summa dat Beautiful Katamoori. On the downside, it’s a pretty short, bare-bones demo. Oh well, at least it’s something to quell the itch to roll until November or whenever the game is supposed to come out. Or, you know, I could go back and actually finish the other three games, but the PS2 games are both just collection headaches now, and the PSP Katamari is annoying, so I don’t think so.

Oh, and something about Metroid Prime 3… Uh… that Aurora video is cool, but I guess the entire rest of the internet came to the same conclusion like two days ago. Prime 3 is going to kick some serious ass though. And it’s coming soon! Hooray!