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I got about 3 hours into the original Okami. I quit because the game didn't just hold my hand-it told me exactly what to do- then congratulate me on doing it. I had just got an ability to revitalize the world. Before I got the chance to try it on a random tree in the overworld (after using it on a special tree in a dungeon) the game said, "hey maybe you should try our new ability on these trees!"
Nope! Time to GO HOME.
So while I was in airports and on airplanes I tried Okamiden. The handholding was lessened just enough that I could enjoy the actual game. The problem was the actual game. It looked quite stunning for a DS game, incredibly close to it's PS2 counterpart. The dog was a cute (it was a dog.) The puzzles were complete nonpuzzles. Stand on the switch. Have your partner stand on the switch. Uh... draw a path for your partner to stand on the switch.
The boss battles were okay, but there's no friction to the combat. There's no technique either. You jam the attack button. Occasionally you draw with the stylus. Even an hour into the game the random enemies were just tedious. This partly had to do with them being separate from the overworld/dungeon. After a dungeon that went on for way way too long I quit.
Then I spent 4 days farming in Demon's Souls for a Pure Bladestone. I spent hours and hours. I looked at forums online and yelled horrible obscenities at the people that got it an hour. Or a day. Or 2 days. I got my friends also doing runs. It's no doubt the rarest item in the game. After the first day it became a vicious white whale that consumed me. I had to do it. My brain couldn't let go.
The weird part is I did this exact same thing about 2 years ago.
It only drops from one (two) enemy in one level. I got it down to where I could make a run in a little over a minute. I sat there for hours doing runs. Talking with friends on Skype. Or my friends were talking, I'd occasionally gasp at my own utter insanity. I debated putting it on my resume. "Able to do a repetitive task for hours for fictional reward."
I got one and proceeded to do what I had planed. Demon's Souls servers are shutting down at the end of this month. That means the online component is gone, which is more than 60% of why the game is so good. So my group and I cheated, duped the most precious item in the game and then proceed to invade other people's games at starting character levels.
There are a lot of new players that are really really awful. Often they're in full armor, which means they die in 3 hits instead of 2 against bosses, and they can't roll. Rolling is how you survive in DS. Most of these players don't even know we are there to kill them. They want our help. We give it, because some of them are completely helpless. Other times we'll be stupendous jackasses to them.
So far my best story is attacking a player with a weapon I can't wield. It deals 1 damage to them. They are casting magic at close range (bad idea.) After being silly and getting to the point where I will die in one hit from them, I switched to a real weapon. 2 hits brought them down to a sliver of life. They started running. or uh..put their back to me. Never put your back to a black phantom. That's the main rule in Demon's Souls. Never put your back to a black phantom. They will stab you in the back. I stabbed him in the back.
Showing posts with label DS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DS. Show all posts
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Monday, February 6, 2012
Solatorobo (DS) Otomedius Excellent (360)
Man Solatorobo. It has to win for best DS graphics. It's just absolutely stunning at times. The plot is lighthearted until it gets 26 episode anime like a 26 episode anime would. It has a battle system based around throwing things. You "fish" by shooting harpoons at hermit crabs with battleships on its back.
It's just too easy too breezy. You do things and then you did them. There's no challenge and so no sense of accomplishment. The battles become more about how to do that as absolutely fast as possible so you can advance the plot. Wait you can't advance the plot until you raise your HUNTER LEVEL. That means you have to do sidequests with the end of the world looming. It's the largest momentum killer in a game with a severe lack of momentum. I wish I could like it more. It has so much detail to the world and the cutscenes and the controls are pretty good. It's just there isn't the spark that is "entertaining to play." It might have been surgically removed so you feel this emptiness where joy at playing it should be.
I'm not entirely convinced making it harder would have helped. It took 10 years to make supposedly and it almost feels like the opposite of games that take a long time to make. Instead of becoming harder and harder and harder and more precise (Super Meat Boy yo!) you have it being challenging to no one.
Otomedius Excellent is uninspired. I mean yeah we got anime girls as spaceships and that's pretty creepy but that's also it. The first and second stages are alright I guess? then it's just a parade of boring bland space areas and pretty much the same boss all the way through. You have that speeding part that is kind of neat but then it's over and you have a boss rush of what might be the same bosses you fought in the previous stages or new bosses I COULDN'T TELL.
It's just too easy too breezy. You do things and then you did them. There's no challenge and so no sense of accomplishment. The battles become more about how to do that as absolutely fast as possible so you can advance the plot. Wait you can't advance the plot until you raise your HUNTER LEVEL. That means you have to do sidequests with the end of the world looming. It's the largest momentum killer in a game with a severe lack of momentum. I wish I could like it more. It has so much detail to the world and the cutscenes and the controls are pretty good. It's just there isn't the spark that is "entertaining to play." It might have been surgically removed so you feel this emptiness where joy at playing it should be.
I'm not entirely convinced making it harder would have helped. It took 10 years to make supposedly and it almost feels like the opposite of games that take a long time to make. Instead of becoming harder and harder and harder and more precise (Super Meat Boy yo!) you have it being challenging to no one.
Otomedius Excellent is uninspired. I mean yeah we got anime girls as spaceships and that's pretty creepy but that's also it. The first and second stages are alright I guess? then it's just a parade of boring bland space areas and pretty much the same boss all the way through. You have that speeding part that is kind of neat but then it's over and you have a boss rush of what might be the same bosses you fought in the previous stages or new bosses I COULDN'T TELL.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
The World Ends With You (NDS)
REASONS THE WORLD ENDS WITH YOU (WEWY) IS BETTER THAN EVERY OTHER RPG
1. It's got like 20 god damn battle themes. Probably one of the most flawed lines of thinking in RPGs is making a 30-100 hours game with about an hour and a half total of music. That's absolutely moronic. "The battle theme is sooo good." Sure maybe in hour 2, but never in hour 36. or in hour 13. This game has like 40 excellent pieces of music showcasing the merge and clash and variety in tastes available in Shibuya (this will be important later.)
2. It's like 15 hours long. Look I fucking love Persona 4. It was also the only thing I played for about 3 months. People just don't have that time. 15 hours? That's great!
3. The game is broken up into 20-30 minute chunks. So you can spread that game playing across your commute or before bed or just whenever you have some time. Again great for people with actual lives!
4. The game is like brain training. See your fighting the battles on both screens. On the bottom screen you're using your stylus to scratch or press or flick. You might also need to blow or scream (one of the only possible negatives I can leverage at the game (it also requires you blow and scream for about 2 minutes once.) On the top screen you are using either the face buttons or the dpad to pull off combo attacks with your partner. BUT!
5. The game is only as hard as you want it to be. See you can set it to easy mode and your AI partner to auto attack. You won't do as well or get as many trinkets/bonuses for controlling both characters. If you do want it ultra hard...
6. The game constantly rewards you. Setting it on hard and bouncing the light puck between your two characters gives you the immediate benefit of "I'm kicking ass and dodging shit and totally wrecking these freak monsters." It also gives you more money and more pins.
7. There's so much shit to collect in this game. There's over 300 pins that give passive and active abilities. You can also just stick with the pins that work and just moving to the upgraded model of that pin. There's also clothes to put on your characters that give benefits inside and outside of battle.
8. WEWY is constantly asking you to experiment. Sometimes it's forcing you, but that's okay. You gotta expand your horizons (holy shit does that mean the...
9. There is an absolute connection between the way the game plays and the narrative. The way the battle system works, how your equipment boosts your stats, why there are no random battles. It's like the whole game is as cohesive as the ending of Final Fantasy Crisis Core. Every part of the game feeds back into other parts.
10. FOR EXAMPLE use specific brands in one area and those brands get bonuses in future battles in that area. The game gracefully explains this to you.
11. It probably has the best tutorial system on EARTH. See this might be going over your head and I might not be explaining what I'm talking about but the game very slowly and smoothly introduces every concept. It never feels dumbed down and it just keeps getting more complex. You keep thinking "there can't possibly be more to this battl-OH SHIT I WAS WRONG."
12. You eventually gain the ability to restart any battle you've lost. Okay here's one fault. The first two hours of the game if you lose a battle you are stuck back at the title screen. I'm not sure why they decided this should be an eventual feature.
13. BUT YOU CAN SAVE AT ANY TIME. If you aren't in a cutscene or a battle you can save. This may sound like "duh" but there are plenty of games this generation with save points and that's BULLSHIT and we all deserve better.
14. Your pins gain experience when you aren't playing. and.
15. You gain pins merely by connecting to wireless hotspots and other DSes. Remember THE WORLD ENDS WITH YOU. You gotta expand your horizons. You have to break out of your bubble and enjoy the world. Play it in cafes.
16. There's this whole other pog like minigame you can play with other players.
17. Our protagonist is kind of a jackass. But he really does grow as a human being/character.
18. The post game content is plentiful. As I started getting towards the end of the game I was afraid to end it purely by how much fun I was having. Good thing there is an absolute ton of post game content in the form of challenges for each Day that unlock details of the meta-narrative.
19. There's even a gaiden side story. Alternate goofy universe adventure to play featuring all the characters from the main story!
20. There's more going on in the plot than bullshit just not going to tell you. YEESSSSSSS.
21. Scaling Sprites.
22. Shibukyu. Okay backstory. While I was walking around Tokyo one day I had a white dude approach me and go, "Do you know how to get to Shibuku?" That's not a real place. I instead told you. "Uh...ShibuYA is that way, and ShiNJUKU is that way. Good Luck." There's a play on a department store's name in this game call Shibukyu.
23. It's just like Shenmue! Taking any nerd that had a Dreamcast around Tokyo and they will at some point tell you this is just like Shenmue at some point. Granted I'm retarded and Shenmue is one of my favorite games precisely because it so well represents anywhere Japan. WEWY accurately represents Shibuya. You could probably use it as a semi-map of the area. I could identify just about every area and store presented within it.
24. It's localized just enough. Everyone still has Japanese names and the story doesn't take place in NYC or some shit. But you also don't get "san" and "kun." I think they even call "nikuman" "nikuman" and not something like "meat buns."
25. It's really fun. The battles are fast! The music is great! The atmosphere is fun! The story is on a small scale for 95% of the game. Not buying this game when it was released was a huge mistake. It didn't sell well. S-E has said they aren't going to let something like this happen again. That's a tragedy. I want Jupiter making whatever the fuck they want forever. They have some of the smartest game designers working for them. This game is a marvel on a design level. I love it and it was probably the best thing I played in 2011.
1. It's got like 20 god damn battle themes. Probably one of the most flawed lines of thinking in RPGs is making a 30-100 hours game with about an hour and a half total of music. That's absolutely moronic. "The battle theme is sooo good." Sure maybe in hour 2, but never in hour 36. or in hour 13. This game has like 40 excellent pieces of music showcasing the merge and clash and variety in tastes available in Shibuya (this will be important later.)
2. It's like 15 hours long. Look I fucking love Persona 4. It was also the only thing I played for about 3 months. People just don't have that time. 15 hours? That's great!
3. The game is broken up into 20-30 minute chunks. So you can spread that game playing across your commute or before bed or just whenever you have some time. Again great for people with actual lives!
4. The game is like brain training. See your fighting the battles on both screens. On the bottom screen you're using your stylus to scratch or press or flick. You might also need to blow or scream (one of the only possible negatives I can leverage at the game (it also requires you blow and scream for about 2 minutes once.) On the top screen you are using either the face buttons or the dpad to pull off combo attacks with your partner. BUT!
5. The game is only as hard as you want it to be. See you can set it to easy mode and your AI partner to auto attack. You won't do as well or get as many trinkets/bonuses for controlling both characters. If you do want it ultra hard...
6. The game constantly rewards you. Setting it on hard and bouncing the light puck between your two characters gives you the immediate benefit of "I'm kicking ass and dodging shit and totally wrecking these freak monsters." It also gives you more money and more pins.
7. There's so much shit to collect in this game. There's over 300 pins that give passive and active abilities. You can also just stick with the pins that work and just moving to the upgraded model of that pin. There's also clothes to put on your characters that give benefits inside and outside of battle.
8. WEWY is constantly asking you to experiment. Sometimes it's forcing you, but that's okay. You gotta expand your horizons (holy shit does that mean the...
9. There is an absolute connection between the way the game plays and the narrative. The way the battle system works, how your equipment boosts your stats, why there are no random battles. It's like the whole game is as cohesive as the ending of Final Fantasy Crisis Core. Every part of the game feeds back into other parts.
10. FOR EXAMPLE use specific brands in one area and those brands get bonuses in future battles in that area. The game gracefully explains this to you.
11. It probably has the best tutorial system on EARTH. See this might be going over your head and I might not be explaining what I'm talking about but the game very slowly and smoothly introduces every concept. It never feels dumbed down and it just keeps getting more complex. You keep thinking "there can't possibly be more to this battl-OH SHIT I WAS WRONG."
12. You eventually gain the ability to restart any battle you've lost. Okay here's one fault. The first two hours of the game if you lose a battle you are stuck back at the title screen. I'm not sure why they decided this should be an eventual feature.
13. BUT YOU CAN SAVE AT ANY TIME. If you aren't in a cutscene or a battle you can save. This may sound like "duh" but there are plenty of games this generation with save points and that's BULLSHIT and we all deserve better.
14. Your pins gain experience when you aren't playing. and.
15. You gain pins merely by connecting to wireless hotspots and other DSes. Remember THE WORLD ENDS WITH YOU. You gotta expand your horizons. You have to break out of your bubble and enjoy the world. Play it in cafes.
16. There's this whole other pog like minigame you can play with other players.
17. Our protagonist is kind of a jackass. But he really does grow as a human being/character.
18. The post game content is plentiful. As I started getting towards the end of the game I was afraid to end it purely by how much fun I was having. Good thing there is an absolute ton of post game content in the form of challenges for each Day that unlock details of the meta-narrative.
19. There's even a gaiden side story. Alternate goofy universe adventure to play featuring all the characters from the main story!
20. There's more going on in the plot than bullshit just not going to tell you. YEESSSSSSS.
21. Scaling Sprites.
22. Shibukyu. Okay backstory. While I was walking around Tokyo one day I had a white dude approach me and go, "Do you know how to get to Shibuku?" That's not a real place. I instead told you. "Uh...ShibuYA is that way, and ShiNJUKU is that way. Good Luck." There's a play on a department store's name in this game call Shibukyu.
23. It's just like Shenmue! Taking any nerd that had a Dreamcast around Tokyo and they will at some point tell you this is just like Shenmue at some point. Granted I'm retarded and Shenmue is one of my favorite games precisely because it so well represents anywhere Japan. WEWY accurately represents Shibuya. You could probably use it as a semi-map of the area. I could identify just about every area and store presented within it.
24. It's localized just enough. Everyone still has Japanese names and the story doesn't take place in NYC or some shit. But you also don't get "san" and "kun." I think they even call "nikuman" "nikuman" and not something like "meat buns."
25. It's really fun. The battles are fast! The music is great! The atmosphere is fun! The story is on a small scale for 95% of the game. Not buying this game when it was released was a huge mistake. It didn't sell well. S-E has said they aren't going to let something like this happen again. That's a tragedy. I want Jupiter making whatever the fuck they want forever. They have some of the smartest game designers working for them. This game is a marvel on a design level. I love it and it was probably the best thing I played in 2011.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Radiant Historia (DS) Dragon Quest VI (DS)
I sunk a good 26 hours into Dragon Quest VI: The Subtitle hoping it would get interesting it didn't. It almost defined how lazy Dragon Quest games can be. You have a dream world and a real world with the same sprites, tiles, backgrounds, music, and colors. The only thing to definerate the two is the story tells you one world is FAKE the other is REAL. Around hour 15 the main plot drops away and the game goes, "I don't know...go do something, whatever." Then you're left playing Dragon Quest except the little stories aren't as good as VII, it doesn't have the graphics of VIII, and your "motivation" for traveling the world isn't nearly as strong as in V. It's the worst Dragon Quest until the day I play II. Which is actually apparently even worse.
So I managed to stop myself from grinding and try out Radiant Historia instead. Which also has the dual worlds element, but the story keeps you guided along and you have easy access to knowing what you are supposed to be doing at all times. Something about it just made me run out of steam 6 hours in. I think it was because the positives were "alright" and lack of negatives were getting by.
I was staring at the story and 4 times in a row the solution was "learn something in the other world that had just been mentioned in that world." At least let me feel a little bit clever.
So I managed to stop myself from grinding and try out Radiant Historia instead. Which also has the dual worlds element, but the story keeps you guided along and you have easy access to knowing what you are supposed to be doing at all times. Something about it just made me run out of steam 6 hours in. I think it was because the positives were "alright" and lack of negatives were getting by.
I was staring at the story and 4 times in a row the solution was "learn something in the other world that had just been mentioned in that world." At least let me feel a little bit clever.
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