Quintet
It's time to have another good chuckle at my obvious lack of photography skills:
I just can't seem to get a picture of anything without some sort of nick-nack being visible in the background. I guess I should really tidy things up around the ol' apartment.
Today's rant is about a Japanese action-RPG developer known as Quintet. Their games were mostly published by Enix, and their most popular titles in North America were ActRaiser and Illusion of Gaia, which most SNES fans will be familiar with. They developed a lesser known, but still excellent action RPG between those two called Soul Blazer (or I believe "Soul Blader" in the Japanese version; you can learn all sorts of interesting bits on Wikipedia.)
If you're looking to familiarize yourself with some of the old school roots of console RPGs, you could do a lot worse that to play these three games. ActRaiser was one of the earliest SNES titles available, and it drew the attention of critics by combining arcade hack-em-up action with a SimCity inspired town building element. ActRaiser is not a deep game, but it is well-made; I've found it to be thoroughly addictive, and have finished it from scratch at least four or five times in my gaming career to date. I find that the game's theme is a large part of what makes it so endearing. It's hard not to become attached to the little townspeople of the communities that you oversee, and then it's very satisfying to personally kick the crap out of the monsters that terrorize those people.
Similarly, I found that a lot of what Soul Blazer lacks in technical merit is made up for in its thematic execution. There is a kind of old school anime charm to Soul Blazer that makes the game compelling and gets you emotionally invested in it (even if only a little) in spite of the fact that Soul Blazer is not a particularly ground-breaking or classic game. Fans of the greater work, Illusion of Gaia, will definitely recognize its roots in Soul Blazer's gameplay, however. Soul Blazer played a particularly important role in my personal development as a gamer, because it paved the way for me to become an action-RPG fanboy before Secret of Mana arrived, and Secret of Mana knocked me flat on my ass so hard that to this day it remains one of only a handful of games that I can basically play start to finish in my head. If it's possible for you to imagine going back to a time where Zelda: A Link to the Past is the most notable action-RPG-ish title available to date (since Zelda isn't really an RPG), then perhaps you can see what makes Soul Blazer such a worthwhile game.
And, of course, Illusion of Gaia is one of the most critically acclaimed action RPGs for the SNES--perhaps second only to Secret of Mana. It certainly is a memorable gaming experience that takes the Quintet style of that era to its apex. If you consider yourself anything of a 16-bit generation Nintendo fan at all, you should at least have played this game.
Quintet's contribution to the SNES lineup is not a huge portion of video game history by any means, but it is a significant one--especially for console RPG fans. Those of you in particular who feel that console RPGs started with the PlayStation era, or that only Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior were early influences on RPGs outside of the PC gaming realm, would do well to look to these oft underappreciated Quintet works.
I have other rants about games like Lufia, or how I'm still angry that Seiken Densetsu 3 (the incredible sequel to Secret of Mana) never saw a North American release, but I'd rather not steal Quintet's thunder at the moment, so I'll save those for another time.
Learning to Drift
So much for RPG gaming. I've spent most of the day playing Mario Kart DS, and in true Nintendo DS fashion, it has destroyed my hands. I'm developing cramps and callouses in places that no awkwardly shaped controller has ever managed to reach before.
I love the staff ghost data feature; it's a great way to go to school on Mario Kart technique. For instance, something that was made very clear to me in racing against staff ghost data is that one simply cannot make competitive time trial records without making effective use of drifts and drift-boosts: while drifting and holding R, alternate between left and right on the D pad until your tires start burning, then when you exit the drift you'll get a boost. The staff ghost data for Delfino Square has some incredible drifting action that I cannot even touch, yet. It's a good run for me if I can keep up with the ghost for the first half of the first lap.
I needed to start off easy with learning to drift (Delfino Square is quite the technical drifting course), so I fired up the ol' Figure 8 track. Beating the staff ghost data with Mario (ie. using the same kart) is not a trivial exercise, but beating it with Bowser is. I managed to set a Bowser record of 1:34:697, but more importantly, I'm gradually getting the hang of this drift thing.
I'm pretty stoked about FF IV coming out for GBA. I'm not really sure why, though--I mean, I have Final Fantasy Chronicles, so I can play FF IV any time that I want. Yet, being the consumeristic little bitch that I am, I'm certainly going to buy the new GBA version and play that through on GBA. And I'm looking forward to using it as an excuse to reintroduce some Final Fantasy content into my RPG gaming diet. Lunar DS is going to be shelved for a good, long while.
F.E.A.R.
After a seven hour Alterac Valley (double-honour this weekend) battle that just wouldn't end, Sunny finally burnt out and decided to get some sleep. I've been helping her play battlegrounds a bit to earn extra honor, but I generally don't know what I'm doing--my highest level WoW character is only at level 14. At any rate, Sunny's decision to pack it in left the computer open long enough for me to finish off F.E.A.R. I was really impressed with the ending.
I've got pretty mixed feelings about F.E.A.R., and I think that they can accurately be summed up by saying that F.E.A.R. is a solid, worthwhile game that seems somewhat overrated. Now I'm going to have to write several paragraphs to explain myself--or try to, that is.
F.E.A.R. is hands-down the best single player FPS that I've played since Half-Life 2, so in that sense, it's a big deal. On the other hand, Half-Life 2 wasn't released that long ago, and I didn't get half as much out of F.E.A.R. as I did out of Battlefield 2, which doesn't qualify as a single player FPS. Basically, F.E.A.R. doesn't have a lot of serious competition within its own genre at the moment. For whatever reason, Id Software has fallen short with Doom 3 and Quake 4--neither of which I've yet played, but both of which I've heard pretty bad things about. (I'll probably get around to playing them sometime next year, maybe.) I think that everybody has come down from the high that Half-Life 2 provided, and we're all itching for the next truly great single player FPS experience. F.E.A.R. is the best thing that's come along so far.
I don't want to come across as sounding too harsh on F.E.A.R. because it is a great game for FPS enthusiasts who get into the horror genre thing. I just don't think that F.E.A.R. qualifies as a classic, mostly because it's neither deep enough nor cutting edge enough. F.E.A.R. is basically a creative exercise in ripping good ideas off from Half-Life, Max Payne, The Ring, and various other sources; it is not going to throw much at you that you haven't seen before (unless, of course, you're unfamiliar with those sources.) This can be a very good thing, however--the same setup worked very well for The Matrix, by which I mean to say that The Matrix didn't actually contain many new ideas (very few, in fact), but it combined classic ideas in a bold new way that stood out and became very influential. I wholeheartedly support that kind of creative work, and to me, that's what F.E.A.R. is doing as well.
Unlike The Matrix, I just don't think that F.E.A.R. carved out enough of a space for itself. I'm talking about the kind of differences that would have made it an ageless classic rather than the flavour of the month (or perhaps the flavour of the fiscal quarter--something like that.) Certain elements of F.E.A.R. such as the enemy A.I. and squad-tactical combat are very fresh and exciting. The mood and the artwork are both excellent, and the gameplay works very well. Other elements of F.E.A.R. such as the environments, level design, and parts of the story are stale.
I mention environments, and I'd like to distinguish this from setting in a little side rant here. I think that F.E.A.R. has a fine setting in that there is nothing wrong with the ideas behind where the game is taking place. I am not suggesting that the overall premise of each level of the game needs to change. By environments and level design, I'm talking more about the execution of said ideas. The problem with F.E.A.R. is that the corporate offices, the run-down industrial buildings, the concrete corridors lined with pipes, and even the big tech facility reactors were all done in such a typical fashion. Generally when one plays an FPS, one wants to see either fresh new level designs, or level designs that are so good that they revive excitement in classic ideas from other FPS games. F.E.A.R. accomplishes neither of these things at all. This was one of the few aspects of the game that made me feel like I was playing Max Payne 2 or some kind of cheap Half-Life rip-off, and that simply doesn't cut it.
As for the story, I found it to be really hit and miss. There's some good intrigue in there, and I like that they didn't spell things out in too obvious of a way, as that would have spoiled it. With the intra-office phone messages motif, I felt that a lot of them were fairly repetitive and were slapping me over the head with the idea that a big, nasty corporation is involved and bad shit is happening because incompetent managers were ignoring the warnings of scientists, etc. Also, the idea that you're an elite operative fighting an army of psychically controlled soldiers was a bit much to take. Something a little less cheesy would have grabbed me better, although I'll admit that the corporate/government army executing a dirty coverup idea--a reasonable alternative to the psychic stuff--has been done to death already anyway. F.E.A.R.'s plot was a reasonable yarn overall.
One thing I wish had been done better was to setup situations that really showcase that nifty enemy A.I. and radio chatter. It would have been awesome for there to be a large warehouse level where you play cat and mouse amoung crates, or something. It would also have been satisfying to have more situations in which stealth could be employed as a strategy, since I found that a lot of the game got reduced quickly to epic, but generally straight-forward firefights. I figure that F.E.A.R. could have benefitted from some heavy Metal Gear Solid influence.
I definitely prefer the original Max Payne to F.E.A.R. because it had that candy-like John Woo influence. And it goes without saying that Half-Life 2 has a better storyline, much better environments and level design, and a more interesting sci-fi background to it. If you enjoyed those games, though, and you'd like to try something with a creepy bent that is along the same lines, F.E.A.R. is worth your time. I do feel that any game publications giving F.E.A.R. scores of 9 out of 10 or higher are being generous, but the game isn't completely undeserving of the attention. (And, of course, game publications have a tendancy to overrate just about everything these days anyway.)
I also played a couple of hours of Mario Kart DS tonight, and I'm still loving it. I haven't been this immediately addicted to a Mario Kart game since the original. My record on the Delfino course Time Trials so far is 2:01:148, which I feel pretty good about, although I know I can do better.
Tomorrow I'd like to get some RPG gaming done.
Nintendo WiFi
I had my first taste of Nintendo WiFi with Mario Kart DS. I was impressed with how painless it was to use with my wireless router, and Tycho was dead-on when he mentioned how much easier it is to punch in something like a WEP key using the touch-screen interface versus using the standard 4-way directional keypad. I didn't have to mess with my router's config, open up any ports, or so anything of that nature--it was strictly plug and play. And I managed to finish 2nd in my first online Mario Kart DS match ever. :)
I haven't played much Mario Kart DS yet, but so far it strikes me as a first-class title all of the way. It certainly lives up to all of the expectations that I'd built up about it, and I'll chip in that it may very well be the best Mario Kart game yet made. I've played them all, of course. The controls are smooth, the graphics are great (by Nintendo DS standards), and the wide selection of courses is simply fantastic. I'm in Mario Kart heaven. Sunny is probably going to hog the Nintendo DS, though--she's using it to burn time while waiting in the queue for Arathi Basin (World of WarCraft.)
I also popped in Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne after work today figuring that I'd just watch the first 15 minutes or so. I only intended to satisfy my curiosity about it, especially since I'd already seen some of the game months ago when Fritzkrieg kindly showcased it for me. Instead, I ended up playing for a full hour and only stopped reluctantly. The first half-hour of the game, which is all story and no action, was killer; I was completely drawn in.
My initial impression is that SMT: Nocturne is a more interesting game than SMT: Digital Devil Saga, but there's still a lot of Nocturne for me to see and I haven't factored DDS2 into the equation yet. My view is also slanted because having played DDS first has familiarized me with the SMT battle system, so the combat in Nocturne made sense to me immediately. I certainly think that playing both DDS and Nocturne is beneficial in that the two games make each other look and feel better. Still, for reasons that are still fuzzy at this point, I find myself thinking that Nocturne is a stronger game overall.
I also rapped through a couple of songs in Parappa 2. Playing it really makes me wish that I had copies of Parappa the Rapper and even Um-Jammer Lammy, because I don't. Shameful, isn't it? Sony, get off of your ass an republish those games! Sheesh.
Anyway, I'll see some of you suckers online via Nintendo WiFi. >:)
New Used Games
I made off with a pretty good haul of second-hand titles at EB Games today: Parappa the Rapper 2, Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, Star Ocean: 'Till the End of Time, and Gran Turismo 2. I got that last one just because it was so cheap, it isn't "Greatest Hits" packaging (that hideous green crap for PS1), and, well, why the heck not? :) I don't buy junky used titles every week--just once in a while, and usually in moderate quantities. As for Shin Megami Tensei and Star Ocean, those are some righteous scores, and not too heavy on the wallet either.
Do I have time to play these games? Of course not--especially not the RPGs. But one of these days... seriously, one of these days I'm really going to take a whole month off from work just to play video games. I'll get something like 300 hours of gaming done. Just you wait and see.
I was really hoping to finish Digital Devil Saga and F.E.A.R. and maybe even Ico this week, but my work schedule is not cooperating at all. What an annoying thing it is to have to work for a living. :)
High Scores
I thought that it might be interesting to add a touch of an interactive element to this blog by posting a handful of recent high scores. These are some of my better scores of late, but they are far from competitive; most gamers shouldn't have too hard of a time beating them. I'm still actively working on some of them, so there's a good chance that I'll post updates at some point, and probably scores from other games as well. Bring it on!
WarioWare Inc. for GBA:
Paper Plane - 213
Midway Arcade Treasures Vol. 1 for PS2:
Robotron 2084 - 172,900
Root Beer Tapper - 59,825
Marble Madness - 34,880
Taito Legends for PS2:
Jungle Hunt - 37,570
Space Invaders - 3,570
On a different note, I did some serious quest/RPG gaming today. I made it quite a bit further in Ico, which I believe I am more than half-way done now (it's a pretty short game from the sounds of it), I made it to level 8 in Dragon Quest VIII, and I put a couple of hours into Digital Devil Saga. I'm now on the second-to-last area of Digital Devil Saga and it will likely only take me another four or five hours to finish the game, putting the total playtime at roughly 19 hours, give or take an hour. I'll be sure to post about it when I'm done. I'll probably wait a while before starting Digital Devil Saga 2, since I've already started Dragon Quest VIII. There's also an old save game of Growlanser 2 that I'm very seriously thinking about starting up again--I'm not sure why I ever put that game down in the first place. I'm also nearly done playing through F.E.A.R. having just reached Interval 10. I probably won't have time to finish it tonight, but I will soon.
Some quick thoughts about Digital Devil Saga (I intend to write more on it later):
- DDS has a good storyline, although it is spread fairly thin.
- A lot of the character dialogue in DDS is extremely juvenile. It has a heavy manga feel to it, but sometimes it feels like bad manga.
- The combat system in DDS has a lot of intrigue to it. It can be very unforgiving, but also quite interesting.
Some quick thoughts about F.E.A.R. (again, I'll write more later, probably):
- F.E.A.R. strikes me as being very, very heavily inspired by Half-Life and Max Payne. A lot of the game mechanics and story elements are straight out of one source or the other.
- F.E.A.R. has awesome gunfights and enemy A.I. The bots move and react to combat situations in a very satisfying manner, and the radio chatter is cool.
- The storyline has yet to really do anything for me. It's corny and stereotypical. It really doesn't compare with the plot for Half-Life or the original Max Payne.
- The game environments don't do much for me either. I haven't been very impressed by any of the settings yet.
- The weapons in F.E.A.R. are pretty cool. I would almost have preferred for there to have been more realistic (ie. real-world) firearms in the game, but I think that the weapons that they did implement work really well for the game-world that they're trying to establish.
Argh, the weekend is already almost over. :(
Famous Adventurer's Correspondence School
Hey, do you recognize this?
Any idea at all? If you do happen to recognize this, good show. If not, I won't keep you in suspense any longer:
I was rummaging through my closet, and uncovered this old packaging for Quest for Glory. This isn't the true original packaging, if memory serves me correctly, as the game was originally released as Hero Quest and later renamed to Quest for Glory after some kind of legal issue over the name. Still, this should give some of you abandonware noobs some idea as to what you missed out on by not being into video games ten years ago. (I sure do love rubbing that in. Maybe I should seek professional help.)
Check out the awesome illustration of the development team on the cover of the technical manual:
Also have a closer look at the game box:
The system requirements, in particular, are interesting:
512k of what? That would be memory--or "RAM" for those of you who tend to confuse "out of memory" and "out of disk" error messages. You'll notice that a hard drive is under "recommended." There's another part of the experience that one doesn't get through abandonware: swapping disks at certain points in the game, just as you do for multi-disc games like Final Fantasy VII or Metal Gear Solid. Of course, with a hard drive, you just install the whole thing at once and don't need to worry about the disks.
There's some pretty decent writing inside of that Famous Adventurer's Correspondence manual; it has a pretty good sense of humor. Right now I don't have the time or inclination to scan the sucker and post it, which would be a legally questionable thing to do anyway (I doubt that I would get in any trouble--nobody even notices this blog to begin with.) At least you're aware of its existence now, if you weren't before.
That's my little bit of game memorablia for the day. In other news, I played a bit more through Ico, and I got past the Windmill, which is futher than I've ever been before (shamefully, as it took less than 90 minutes for me to get that far.) I think I'm making pretty good time through the game at least. Who knows, I might even finish it, and after that... a replay of Wind Waker? Front Mission 4? Viewtiful Joe? Something new? I honestly can't say.
Being Harsh on FF XII
Wow, I just read
Tycho's post about the Final Fantasy XII demo, and I have to admit, I'm a little surprised by how harsh he is about it. I can certainly agree that between the "active" and "wait" modes, I don't see why anybody would play on "active"--it doesn't have the same effect as it did in the more structured FF battle systems of the past; rather it just removes a further degree of control from combat that is already wild enough. The combat in the FF XII demo is much more frenzied and chaotic than Final Fantasy combat has been before, but as I indicated previously, I was pleasantly surprised by how well the FF XII demo combat system worked. It's really nice to not have to be rudely interrupted by a combat sequence transition while trying to figure out whether you should turn left or right at a T-intersection in the middle of a maze-like forest or dungeon. And besides, the flow of combat is largely the same as in other Final Fantasy games. Sorta.
Okay, I'll grant Tycho a couple of big points: first off, I don't like having to interrupt a character to get them to do something else after issuing a fight command. If I was commanding eight or more characters, than sure, it's a big convenience to be able to say "Fight" and that character will continue attacking until I change my mind--but for only three characters, that system has a lot more cons than pros, since you're more likely to forget who is performing what actions that way, and you're not going to know what the best timing is to issue new orders. I'd rather be interrupted by a menu when a character who made a physical attack last round is ready to act again.
Secondly, because the combat in the FF XII can get pretty hairy, I find that it's sometimes difficult to know who you're targetting with spells and such. What they really need is to introduce a wider camera angle so you can get a better view of combat and more easily tell who you're targetting with what, because those blue and red lines that whoosh through the air really don't cut it (they're also quite distracting.) While playing the demo, I found that too often there was action occuring behind the view of the camera because the party leader character was a bit further ahead of the rest of the party.
Still, there is time for Square-Enix to refine the game system and fix issues such as those. Whether they will address such complaints or simply consider such issues to be differences of opinion that don't need to be answered is, of course, another matter. I wouldn't go so far as to call the combat in the FF XII demo "broken," though. There's room for improvement, but I've had complaints about every FF combat system since FF VI. Personally, I welcome the change.
My Top 10
Via Joystiq, I came across this
cool article comparing lists of the "top 10 greatest games of all time" that have cropped up in gaming publications over the years. I found that the article was more interesting in terms of exposing the various biases of game publications over the years than actually for what it had to say about which games are the greatest, but it did inspire me to one-off my own top 10 list:
10. TetrisOriginally I was going to slot this in much higher, but then I got to thinking about it, and as much as Tetris is such an incredibly elegant and addicitive game (and one of very few that I consider myself to be reasonably competitive at), I just don't think that it's as deeply influential as a lot of people give it credit for. Action puzzle games are popular, and there are none more popular than Tetris, but in a way it's actually sort of damning that nobody has de-throned Tetris after all of these years. Each of the other games that I talk about below has either had brilliant successors or is a brilliant successor in gaming history. Tetris is the only dead-end of the bunch. Of course, you could argue that that's because Tetris is the only pristinely perfect game on this list, and so it should rightfully get the top spot. I wouldn't argue against that--not any more than I already have.
9. Street Fighter IIWhile not the first of its kind (obviously), and far from the final word in fighting games, SF2 does represent a massive turning point in the fighting game industry. It did not spawn the genre, but it certainly defined it, and a much beloved genre at that.
8. CivilizationI don't consider myself a tremendous Civ fan, but I was quite the addict back in the day. There are, perhaps, bigger and better strategy-sim games out there--ones with fewer design flaws, better gameplay, deeper strategy, and that sort of thing. But Civ was there long ago, and not only did it have the guts to tackle a scope as huge as covering the entire history of human civilization, but it also executed well enough to be universally appealing. Civ is addictive to everyone from casual gamers to hardcore strategy nuts, and it remains one of the most revered PC games ever developed.
7. IkarugaThis was a difficult pick, since there are so many other games that I could have put in this spot: Space Invaders, Galaga, 1943, or Gradius, for instance. Overall, I think that Ikaruga is the best fit because it showcases so well the potential for depth that the classic shoot-em-up genre has. Ikaruga blends intense action with puzzle-like strategy elements, and it also has that elegance of only taking a few minutes to learn yet presenting a lasting challenge that takes many hours of dedicated practice to master. It sets a terrific precedent for games to follow.
6. Super Mario Bros. 3In my opinion, this is the best Mario game ever developed, and also the single greatest NES game ever made. SMB3 expands on the exploration element of SMB2 while refining the gameplay as well as the style of the series. Super Mario World--which is perhaps my personal favourite--is primarily a refinement of SMB3, whereas SMB3 is radically innovative. SMB3 is also more challenging than most games in the series, which I feel is a positive trait. Simply put, SMB3 is a brilliant game.
5. Metal Gear SolidI've ranted about all of this before, but MGS is a true work of art, and a superb display of storytelling mixed with fine-tuned gameplay. This is a game that truly exhibits what games are capable of being.
4. Zelda: A Link to the PastNot only is this the best Zelda game ever make, but it also stands as one of the most elegant and clever quest games ever developed. It seamlessly combines elements of action, puzzle, exploration, and story-telling. This is truely a rare masterpiece of a game.
3. Half-LifeIt isn't easy to pick a single FPS title for this list, but in the end, I went with Half-Life over other obvious picks such as Quake. I really think that in the overall scheme of things, Half-Life has had the biggest impact on the genre, although that's a difficult call to make. Also, I think that Half-Life has a broader appeal, but one as deep as Quake. I feel somewhat as though I've robbed id Software of some well-deserved recognition here, but there's only one spot open on this list for an FPS game, and Half-Life is that game.
2. World of WarCraftWoW is far more than a game--it's a cultural phenominon. Slowly I'm beginning to realise that in some ways, WoW is like our generation's version of Woodstock. It has defined us in ways that even the most clued-in of us has yet to realise, and it is having much deeper repercussions than the vast majority of us suspect. Aside from all of that, WoW is perhaps the most addictive and expansive RPG game ever developed.
1. Final Fantasy VIAnd yet, for the top spot, I'm still sticking with the die-hard favourite, Final Fantasy VI. Even though Final Fantasy has gone to bigger and arguably better places in the last ten years, I still feel that FF VI has the best character, plot, setting, and gameplay of any RPG game ever developed. This is certainly a personal bias of mine, and it's likely that most readers would find this list more reasonable if FF VI were dropped outright and everything else was promoted. Still, I insist that FF VI has reached a rare plateau of games-as-art that outshines anything else I've ever experienced in a video game. There is nothing that I want more from the gaming industry than to produce more games like this one.
As a quick aside, I did start playing Dragon Quest VIII the other day, although I didn't get very far. I'm pleasantly surprised by the graphics--especially the character and enemy models--which are even more stylish and impressive than I was expecting. So far the gameplay has also proven to be quite true to the classic Dragon Quest style, although I have to admit that I haven't really played a Dragon Quest game since the very first one: I obtained my copy of Dragon Warrior as a free promotion for subscribing to Nintendo Power, some fourteen years ago or thereabouts, and I played it extensively. In any case, I'm really enjoying DQ VIII so far, but I still have a ways to go before Digital Devil Saga is done with.
Final Fantasy XII - Demo
Today's been a big day so far, and it just keeps getting better. I was pretty burnt out this morning from working just a little bit too hard the last couple of weeks, and since I couldn't pry myself out of bed at a reasonable hour, I decided to call in sick. The local EB Games finally got Dragon Quest VIII in, so I went to pick that up. It's unseasonably warm outside today, so it was a good afternoon for a walkabout. While at EB Games, I had a chance to quickly scout out Call of Duty 2 on the XBox 360, which is the first time that I've actually seen an XBox 360 in person. As soon as I got home, naturally I spent an hour playing around with the Final Fantasy XII demo that comes with Dragon Quest VIII. And to top it all off (easily the biggest event of the day), I'm going to see a Nine Inch Nails concert tonight with Sunny.
About the XBox 360 demo: it certainly looked slick. What definitely caught my eye right off the bat were the hi-res graphics and the silky smooth framerate. It was basically like watching a demo of a game on a pretty good gaming PC. No big surprise there, I guess. I'm not really all that excited about the XBox 360 hardware anyway, or any of the hardware for any of the next gen consoles for that matter. I know that each of them will kick the crap out of my PS2 in that department. What I care about are the game titles that will be available, and so far the only XBox 360 title to have caught my attention is Elder Scrolls IV, which I'd probably rather have the PC version of anyway.
To be completely candid, my plan for the next several months is to save up a nice chunk of change for some solid PC gaming hardware (something with at least a gig of dual-channel RAM and a GeForce 6800 or better; I'm not a big fan paying twice as much to have the absolute leading-edge hardware) and maybe a drop dead gorgeous monitor like the DELL UltraSharp 2405FPW 24-inch Wide Aspect Flat Panel LCD Monitor (yes, I've done a bit of research.) That way I get hot new hardware in the same league as the XBox 360 (or better), and I'll already have a lineup of great games like Half-Life 2, Age of Empires III, and Battlefield 2 that I can replay in their full glory. My current PC gaming setup of an old Athlon 2500 with a gig of RAM and a Radeon 9600 is sufficient for me to keep up on PC gaming (and more than sufficient for World of WarCraft and lesser demanding titles of years past like Unreal Tournament 2004, Neverwinter Nights, and WarCraft III), but it has definitely fallen behind the curve--and besides, with a new computer, I'll be able to play other PC games while Sunny plays World of WarCraft.
Anyway, if the XBox 360 suddenly starts getting all kinds of awesome exclusive titles, it's certainly possible that I could be swayed. For now I'm planning on saving my pennies for the new PC and probably the PlayStation 3 and/or Nintendo Revolution.
The Final Fantasy XII demo is quite entertaining, although certainly limited in scope: there weren't any characters to talk to, nor any story scenes aside from the substantial opening movie sequence. The new battle system that involves fighting enemies right on the area map is better than I expected. It felt a little bit chaotic at first, but it's actually less disorienting than a separate battle system overall since you don't lose your bearings quite as easily just because you got into a fight. The only thing about it that started to annoy me were the red and blue lines that pop up to show you who is attacking whom during combat. They have a tendancy to distract from the beautiful setting, monsters, and character models. Other than that, I feel that the battle system could be very fun, although it's impossible to say for certain just from a playable demo version. Overall, the demo did get me even more stoked about Final Fantasy XII.
Now I face the second half of my dilemma over Dragon Quest VIII. I'd really like to start playing it, but I'm making good progress in Digital Devil Saga so far, and if I start a serious game of DQ VIII, that will certainly interfere. On the other hand, I'm not sure if I can wait until I'm done with either Digital Devil Saga or Xenogears to make time for DQ. A sane course of action might be to concentrate on finishing Disgaea for now and then start DQ, although I have my doubts even that continuing this habit of playing four RPGs all at once (as well as various other action and quest games) is really working for me. I might be willing to drop Lunar: Dragon Song from the menu outright, but the fact that it's a portable game makes it easy to play in bed just before turning out the light, so it fits a niche that the other console RPGs don't. I was thinking about replacing Lunar: Dragon Song with Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow though ("Castlevania: DS", hehehe.)
Anyway, I'm sure I'll work something out, even if by "work something out" what I really mean is "start playing DQ VIII anyway and end up driving myself nuts."
Shadow of the Colossus
I finally finished Shadow of the Colossus last night, at roughly 11 hours of gameplay time. I thoroughly enjoyed the game, and the ending was definitely worthwhile. I felt that this was a real "gamer's game" that harkens back to quest games of yore where the game mechanics and puzzle elements are not spelled out for you. Figuring out how to play the game is part of the appeal, as is playing something fresh and original. These are not elements that one commonly finds in games anymore.
It's tempting to say that Shadow of the Colossus is a bit of a Prince of Persia: Sands of Time rip-off, but that simply is not the case. Long before Prince of Persia's 3-D climbing and jumping madness, Ico (by the makers of Shadow of the Colossus) was doing much of the same thing. Perhaps you might say that SotC was influenced by the popularity of Prince of Persia following Ico, but the term "rip-off" is far, far too strong. Besides, the sword fighting aspect of PoP is a large part of it, and SotC doesn't have that kind of bent at all.
Really, the worst that you can say about Shadow of the Colossus is that it pushes the PS2 hardware too far. The frame-rate suffers greatly in some areas of the game, which I hate to see in a console game, because at least with PC games you have the option of playing that game on much better hardware a year or two down the road. I did quickly get used to the choppy gameplay--but then, I've had a lot of practice with that. Ever since the good ol' days of finishing Mechwarrior 2 on a 33 MHz 486 DX (minimum reqs 66 MHz my ass), choppy gameplay hasn't always bothered me as much as it should. I would criticize SotC for having the screen resolution set too high (I'm thinking that it would run much more smoothly at a reduced res), but a lot of the grassy effects that the game uses rely on that high resolution to look just right. I can understand why the developers made the choices that they did.
What you get for giving up the smooth framerate are some truly picturesque visuals. SotC has a heavy artistic bent to it, and a large portion of the game is set up with the sole idea of putting fantasy storyboard-like images on the screen. The "ooh"s and "aah"s didn't let up at all. In fact, the game is artistically impressive on every level: the plot is thick and deliciously understated, and the musical score has a great deal of character and fits the game well. There is an attention to detail throughout that elevates SotC from the status of a cool novelty to a polished gem of a game.
I was so taken in by the magic of Shadow of the Colossus that upon finishing it I immediately launched into a new game of Ico, which I've casually started once or twice but have never made a concentrated effort to finish. Because SotC made that particular art and gameplay style so addictive, Ico has a very gripping appeal for me now that it didn't before. After finishing Ico, I could see myself going back to SotC and tackling it on the "hard" difficulty that is unlocked when one finishes the game. SotC was long enough to be satisfying, but fascinating enough to have replay value. Overall, I consider this to be a "must have" game for dedicated console gamers.
As an aside, it's starting to look quite likely now that I'll crack on Dragon Quest VIII. It sounds like an excellent RPG. I just hope that it doesn't sell too crazily and that it's possible for me to track down a copy without much hassle.
Dragon Quest Dilemma
So here's the problem: I don't really want Dragon Quest VIII--at least, I was intending on putting off getting it for at least a few months. I have so many RPGs on the go right now (Digital Devil Saga!) and other games besides that I really don't have the time or the need for anything new. But then, of course, I got to reading about the Final Fantasy XII demo. It's been so long since I had a new Final Fantasy game to get worked up about, and it will be quite a while yet before Final Fantasy XII comes out... I have to admit, it's very difficult to resist the urge to get Dragon Quest VIII primarily to be able to play the FF XII demo. I could never justify paying the full price of a game just for a demo, naturally, so I'd be telling myself that really I'm getting it for Dragon Quest VIII, but deep down, the ugly truth would remain.
Magna Carta: Tears of Blood is also almost upon us. I've had my eye on that one for a while, but there's simply no time! I need to clear some of the titles that I currently have off of my plate. Actually, I have to admit that such a line of thinking (clearing titles off of my plate) is futile in itself. I have so many RPG games that need playing that unless I quit my job to take up gaming full-time, I have no hope of ever covering them all. To take such a defeatist attitude might make it possible for me to say "ah, why the heck not" and buy into yet even more RPGs, but then I have the very tangible feeling that I'm just throwing my money away by purchasing relatively expensive games that I might never spend more than a few hours with.
The following is a bit of a map of the current state of my RPG gaming schedule:
Digital Devil Saga is my primary RPG at the moment. I'm about 10 hours into it, and I've been playing it in about 2 hour spurts, which works well. I already have the sequel sitting on my shelf waiting to be played.
I've stalled somewhat on
Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, at around the 40 hour mark. I probably only need another 10 or so hours to finish it, so there's a good chance that I'll finish it soon--but I've been saying that for a while. Here's the brutal part: I already have Phantom Brave and Makai Kingdom waiting. I want to play them in order (I've already conquered La Pucelle Tactics.)
After 10 hours, I'm still throwing away stretches of time on
Lunar: Dragon Song. It's a B-grade RPG at best, but it's easy enough to play little stretches of without putting much thought into. I thought that by now I'd be willing to abandon it, but somehow I keep playing it.
I'm roughly 15 hours into a play-through of
Xenogears, which is an RPG that I've always meant to finish, and this time I'm really going to do it. I may opt to start Xenosaga as soon as this is done, or I might put that off for a while.
Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana is sitting on the shelf waiting to get started. I was thinking of picking this one up as soon as Disgaea is done, although I'll likely start Phantom Brave instead. I'm not sure how long it will take to get around to this game, but I'm definitely not playing it while I already have four RPGs being actively played.
Stella Deus is in much the same position as Atelier Iris. I did start playing this one at one point, but set it aside after only about an hour. I need more time to be able to afford to play through it, although I badly want to.
I got about three hours in to
Paper Mario 2 before putting it down in favour of Digital Devil Saga. I picked this game up rather late (it's been out for a long while now), but I was very entertained by it. I might yet get around to it.
It's difficult to admit, but I never did get very far into
Knights of the Old Republic. As an RPG fan and a Star Wars fan, I'm rather embarrased by my failure to finish this game, and that's something that I would prefer to rectify sooner rather than later.
Now if I really started digging deep, I could think up a whole galaxy of other RPGs that I would like to play or replay, and that I already own. Given this current, rather sad state of affairs, you can see how rushing out to buy Dragon Quest VIII and Magna Carta: Tears of Blood would be a foolish thing to do. By the time I get around to them, it might be 2007.
In other news, I finally made it to the last colossus in Shadow of the Colossus. I thought that there were only 12 for some reason, but it turns out that there are 16. It's taken me a little bit over 10 hours to get this far in the game, and as soon as I can figure out how to beat that last guy, I can file Shadow of the Colossus under "finished." I'll also be posting a rant at some point about how brilliant the game is, although it's likely that I won't have anything to say about it that you haven't already heard.
I'm also still having lots of fun with Soul Calibur III, Burnout: Revenge (still not sick of that one), and We Love Katamari. On the PC gaming front, I have Age of Empires III and F.E.A.R. to keep me busy. Games like that are making it even more impossible to get RPGs finished these days.
Epic Packaging
It occured to me the other day just how dull of an experience my blog must be for the casual reader when I do something as lazy as threaten to post a picture of the Age of Empires III Special Edition box and don't even make good on it. By now it's certainly too late, but this is my blog, dammit, and I'll do whatever I feel like whenever I feel like it.
From left to right: Age of Empires III box (it's heavy, too), Shadow of the Colossus, Game Physics (hardcover book), Advance Wars: Dual Strike, and F.E.A.R. The stacks of CDs in the background are just music discs.
King's Quest IV
I have some friends who aren't into the "mainstream" video game industry. Some of them don't approve of how heavily a typical video game relies on violence to be entertaining, and some of them flat-out just don't consider themselves to have much of an appreciation of games at all. But they are still geeks--they still like Star Wars, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the TV series, of course), and Babylon 5, not to mention geeky comics, fantasy/sci-fi novels, etc. For me, the fact that they aren't also heavily into video games is somewhat baffling--but of course it would baffle me, as it's fair to say that I live for video games, to a large extent at least.
Now if you haven't picked it up already from the subtext of my introductory paragraph, let me make a quick point explicit: there is sometimes some conflict between myself and these good friends of mine who aren't "gamers." They still play video games occasionally and have opinions occasionally which I consider to be misguided. They also sometimes think that my opinions are misguided, and it leads to heated discussions. But we are all still friends--I hope.
Now for something that really cracks me up: once in a while, one of these friends of mine who isn't a gamer will attempt to "show me up" in some extent by discovering some kind of fringe genre or cool game that I don't know about and getting all wrapped up in it. You have to understand that for a proper, full-fledged gamer, this is a perfectly reasonable stunt to pull off. It's not like I play absolutely every great game out there--not by a long shot. But for somebody with only a passing interest in video games who doesn't really listen to me or take my opinions seriously, well, it's much more challenging to identify a great game that would have slipped under my radar. I would say that such individuals are largely relying on chance, and because they might not know what is truly on the fringe and what just seems fringe to a non-gamer, they are easily misled.
Case in point: old Sierra quest games. I've gotten some attitude before from individuals who picked up some abadonware Sierra quest games in the last few years and started up on these sanctimoneous rants to me about how great these games are. Which is absurd because what they don't realise is that back between '89 and '94, I positively adored Sierra quest games. Sierra was my favourite video game company (or perhaps second to Nintendo) for several years--they ruled! When I first played King's Quest IV, it completely blew me away; it was simply the most incredible game that I had ever seen or basically even imagined up until that point. And at a hefty 4 MB install footprint, it was the single largest video game ever developed (in terms of install size) at the time. King's Quest IV was to PC gaming in 1989 what Half-Life 2 is to PC gaming in 2005, roughly speaking.
This brings me to a point that I've argued in other arenas before. Basically, playing old games for the first time today does not give you the same reaction as playing it at the time. A casusal player might pick up King's Quest IV today and think "oh, what a cute, quaint game." Such a person has no concept of the fact that when that game was brand spanking new, you needed a $5000 PC to run the thing properly. An XBox 360, PlayStation 3, or Nintendo Revolution is a cheap,
low performance game system when you take the comparison in the proper context. King's Quest IV was a greater technical marvel in its day than Halo was, by a long shot.
But of course, some smartass who just picked up King's Quest IV this month to play it, enjoyed what a fun, cute little retro game it is, and proceeded to attack me figuring that I would never have played such a fun little fringe game, is going to have no clue that what they were just playing was the biggest blockbuster, most technically impressive, high-profile, mainstream game that the industry had to offer roughly sixteen years ago. So imagine my utter delight--my complete and total smug satisfaction--at spelling out the truth for them. Yes, I am that kind of asshole.
Taito Legends
Work has been busy lately, which has been cutting into all sorts of things. :( That excuse aside, I've managed to pass the 10 hour mark with Digital Devil Saga, and I've logged some quality time with Soul Calibur III.
As for the former, it's still fun and addictive as ever, but the story has really thined out--at the point in the game where I'm at, there is a lot of dungeon crawling and not so much on the story development. The plot remains interesting, however.
As for the latter, Soul Calibur III feels quite different from how I remember Soul Calibur II playing. It's--I dunno... different. I can't quite put my finger on it. The various play modes add a lot of single-player value to the game, and I've definitely found it fun to mess around with even without an opponent to play against.
Just today, however, I picked up Taito Legends and spent a couple of hours with that. Fortunately, it was quite cheap. The highlights for me are definitely Bubble Bobble, Jungle Hunt, Space Invaders, and Elevator Action. There are some other mildly amusing little games on there, but a lot of it is pretty difficult to stomach unless you're a hardcore retro gamer. I definitely wouldn't rate this title as highly as Capcom Classics Collection or Midway Arcade Treasures, but if you really want Bubble Bobble and Jungle Hunt, it's still worth the price of admission.
Right now the only retro game collection for PS2 that I feel I'm really lacking is Namco Museum: 50th Anniversary Collection. Maybe I can get that from Sunny for Christmas. :)
