Bomberman '93
I just picked up my second Virtual Console title from the Wii Shop: Bomberman '93. The first Wii Shop game that I downloaded was the original The Legend of Zelda which I've been playing bits and pieces of. I've cleared seven dungeons so far, leaving only the last two (and the most difficult two) to go. Of course, Zelda doesn't
really start until you've beat the game once and started the Master Quest. Only the Master Quest is the true Zelda experience (hmmm... I wonder if the same goes for Zelda 64? I'll have to look into that.)
But what I really want to rant about here is Bomberman '93. Actually, that's not true--what I really want to rant about is the current lineup of Wii Virtual Console titles in general. :) Bomberman '93 comes out as the title for this post because I consider it to be one of the "must have" virtual console games right now. In fact, it may be the only "must have" virtual console game.
Bomberman '93 is a terrific compromise between old-school and modern Bomberman titles. I'm not much of a Bomberman conniseur myself, but with Bomberman '93, I definitely like what I see. The look and feel is definitively "Bomberman" and also screams of 16 bit graphics. I'm of a mindset such that the mere knowledge that I'm playing a TurboGrafx-16 game makes me a little bit giddy, of course. But the killer feature that makes this game so worthwhile is
multiplayer support for up to five players. You can also use a combination of Wiimotes, Wii Classic Controllers (those plug into Wiimotes, though, so if you have only one Wiimote and a classic controller, you can use one or the other but not both), and GameCube controllers to fill the five slots (which is important, because Wiimotes aren't cheap and some of your friends may have GameCube controllers to spare.) I
love it.
Granted, Bomberman isn't for everyone. It's an action-puzzle game with a relatively steep learning curve that can be frustrating for new players. The single player campaign is a good way to get a leg-up on the game, however, and there's no denying that Bomberman is one of those truly classic game experiences that is endlessly worthwhile. I definitely think that it's worth the 800 Wii points (that's $8 USD) to have on your Wii console.
As for the other Virtual Console titles, there are some good ones, but I find the prices to be sorta steep. I really want to play Bonk's Adventure for TurboGrafx-16 and I will likely pick that up eventually, but I'm in no rush to spend another 800 Wii points. The original Zelda is worth the 500 Wii points if you're a crazy enough Zelda fan to seriously play it (I am, because it reminds me of all of those hours that I put into it back in grade 5), but I have a hard time imagining that newcomers to the Zelda series will be drawn in by it--it's much better to start with A Link to the Past, which isn't available for Virtual Console yet. SimCity was one of my favourite SNES games back in the day, and F-Zero remains one of my favourite games of all time, but the 800 Wii point price tag on each seems a bit steep. I have no doubt that you could get enough entertainment out of these titles to be worth paying that much for, but one shouldn't be in any rush. Similarly, Donkey Kong, Solomon's Key, and Mario Bros. are all tempting NES titles, but 500 Wii points is a lot to spend for one of them. Nintendo needs to jack down the price on these items to encourage impulse spending. :)
The one other Wii Virtual Console title that's the most appealing to me is Mario 64, mostly because I don't have Mario 64 DS already (although I'm pretty sure that my Nintendo 64 is still in good working order, so if I really wanted to play Mario 64 again, I easily could.) I've played this one time and time again, and it's held up really well over the years, but the price on it is 1000 Wii points which is, again, too much to justify such a frivilous buy.
Other than reducing the prices for their offerings, I can think of a few plausable Virtual Console features that would really make the Wii exciting for me:
- Wii Points rewards for purchasing Wii games. For instance, if I earned a bonus of 500 Wii Points for having purchased Zelda: Twilight Princess, that would make the Virtual Console feature much more exciting. Maybe they could even give away some Wii Points rewards for finishing games or playing a certain number of hours.
- High score sharing online. Replaying F-Zero would be a neat blast from the past, but not much more than that--unless, of course, I could compare my time trial records against a world-wide list online. I was pretty good at F-Zero back in the day, and that sort of feature would definitely encourage me to buy it.
- GameBoy Advance games for Virtual Console. There are plenty of classic GBA games that aren't easy to track down anymore, and besides, GBA carts were always pretty expensive at roughly $30 each. If I could buy some old GBA games for 800 Wii Points each that I missed out on before, that would be superb.
- The ability to buy emulation programs for Sega CD, Sega Saturn, or Dreamcast so that I could put in one of the game discs that I still have for those consoles and play it on my Wii. Being able to use the Wiimote to emulate lightgun functionality for Virtua Cop 2 would be awesome. Sega could even republish some of their old games and rake in the profit (with Nintendo taking a healthy cut, I presume.)
I don't expect Nintendo to actually make all of these particular features available, but it's possible that as time goes on they'll upgrade the Virtual Console to include features like these. The idea of giving away Wii Points as promotions seems pretty likely to me; maybe they'll even put 500 point Wii cards in issues of Nintendo Power or something like that. I also don't see why GBA games for Virtual Console would be much of a stretch, since the GBA is a dying breed anyway.
As for the idea of buying old Sega emulators for Wii, one thing that I could imagine being a hang-up for Nintendo would be the fact that the old Sega games are so easy to pirate. There wasn't a single CD-ROM based Sega console that didn't suffer from piracy issues as soon as CD burners became affordable for home users. On the other hand, I could be mistaken but it seems to me that republishing old Sega games would be dirt cheap. Printing CDs definitely isn't expensive, and I doubt that you'd have trouble moving copies of Lunar: Eternal Blue, Nights into Dreams, or Shenmue for $10 each. Just put them in regular CD cases like music CDs and have them on the shelf at Best Buy. A lot of the old CD-ROM games were still over 500 MB in size, so having them available for download might not be practical--not only because the downloads would take a while (not a huge issue, actually), but because the Wii doesn't seem to have a lot of storage capacity for that kind of thing (and even a 2 gig SD memory card fills up fast when you have 500 MB files.)
As you can probably tell, I'm really hyped about the Virtual Console functionality and what it can do for the Wii. For the time being, however, the only Virtual Console game that I'm strongly pushing for is Bomberman '93. With new titles being added every week, I doubt that it will be long before there are many other good bargains available as well.
P.S. Everyone is invited to my place for multiplayer Bomberman.
Trauma Center: Under the Knife
I played a nearly obscene amount of Twilight Princess yesterday--roughly 12 hours worth. Right now I'm at the 15 hour mark and am a little bit stuck having just acquired the hookshot. It's definitely the single best Zelda experience that I've had since A Link to the Past, and there's a good chance that I'll finish it before moving on to any other Wii games (aside from Wii Sports, of course.) The Metacritic score for it has dropped to a more reasonable score of 96, and some other scores have shown up (Trauma Center: Second Opinion - 81, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz - 77, Call of Duty 3 - 75, Red Steel - 68) although they are all in a state of heavy flux. I'm still wishy-washy on what Wii games to get in the near future--especially since I still have PS2 titles including Guitar Hero and Final Fantasy XII to fill time while better Wii games draw nearer to release--but Trauma Center: Second Opinion is emerging as a game that I strongly intend to pick up.
As I've mentioned before, I've been playing Trauma Center: Under the Knife for Nintendo DS and really enjoying it. I still have a ways to go before completing that game, but it has become one of the strongest Nintendo DS titles that I've played. The gameplay itself is certainly the highlight of the game. The action is fast and fluid, and the only real gameplay hiccup that I've encountered is that the zoom tool doesn't work if you draw too much of a circle (that is, if you loop more than 360 degrees around), which is not a big problem once you're aware of it. Generally speaking, Trauma Center takes the fullest advantage of the Nintendo DS's unique user interface capabilities, and after a while you really start to feel like a hardcore surgeon.
Some people seem to be annoyed that the game puts a lot of burden on the player to figure things out as one goes along, since there are many instances where precisely what you're supposed to do next is vague. Since the levels are generally very short and things speed up drastically once you know what to do, I don't find the trial and error type challenge to be a problem--in fact, I think it's fun and refreshing. It's satisfying to struggle through a level the first few times and end up being able to ace it by the time you're finished. There are definitely some levels in which a player could get stuck either due to confusion over what to do next or an inability to keep up with the action, but I haven't seen anything yet that isn't easily solved through persistent experimentation and practice.
The characters and story for Trauma Center aren't bad, but they're not particularly great either. The level of drama that is present between levels can't compete with what happens on the operating table, but the dialogue is kept fairly brief and can be skipped through quickly. Overall, I wouldn't say that the characters and story provide a huge motivation to play the game, but given the aforementioned superior gameplay combined with the drama and suspense of the operations themselves, the characters and story aren't really needed to motivate the player to keep going. They're only there to hold the game together, and they do a pretty good job at that.
I'm definitely going to be picking up Trauma Center: Second Opinion for the Wii, especially now that I've seen how well the wiimote behaves as an on-screen pointing device. There's a great deal of potential there for Second Opinion to expand upon the excellent mechanics introduced by Under the Knife, and I remain hopeful that Second Opinion will become a cult classic among early Wii titles.
Zelda: Twilight Princess
Something that I neglected to mention in my post yesterday: Sunny smashed a glass of water while playing Wii Sports. And I don't mean that she knocked it over and it smashed on the ground; she literally punched it with the wiimote while bowling and it shattered in an upright position. Fortunately, Sunny wasn't badly injured, although she did cut her finger while picking up shards of glass. Let that be a warning to you Wii players out there.
I'm about seven hours into Twilight Princess, having just cleared the first ever horseback sword fighting sequence in a Zelda game. I hope that isn't too much of a spoiler for anyone; it's been well publicized that Twilight Princess has horseback fights. My impression of the game so far is that it's an excellent game all-round and well worth investing in the Wii for if you're a dedicated Zelda fan. I do
not think that the outrageously high Metacritic score of 98 is deserved, but it does belong in the 90 range for sure.
As you've probably heard, the other Zelda game that Twilight Princess has the most in common with is The Ocarina of Time, and the resemblence is quite strong. Seeing as how Ocarina is one of the most beloved Zelda games ever, this is very good news for serious Zelda fans. Wind Waker was a bit of a different cup of tea (although still very good), and Minish Cap has more in common with A Link to the Past than Zelda 64, so fans of Ocarina have been waiting a long time for a follow-up (since Majora's Mask, if you enjoyed that one.)
Personally, I found Ocarina of Time to be frustratingly cryptic in many places--it's a very challenging game in terms of needing to comb over areas and experiment in order to find your way forward. If you don't like to get stuck in video games, Ocarina will frustrate you, and one of the things I said about Wind Waker when it came out is that, thankfully, it is much more friendly than Ocarina in terms of the challenge factor. In terms of difficulty, from what I've seen so far, Twilight Princess leans closer to Wind Waker than Ocarina, but it still throws some decent curve balls.
It's important to acknowledge that Ocarina's deep difficulty factor is by design and, in fact, largely in keeping with the roots of the series. If you go back and play the original The Legend of Zelda, you'll find that the game requires a lot of tedious exploration and experimenting with items to progress through the game. Back in the 80s, home computers were not nearly so common, and a lot of players didn't have access to FAQs and walkthroughs to explain the finer points of the game. As such a player, I found that spending literally hours upon hours toying around with different items in the game and memorizing large portions of the world map through sheer repition was part of the fun of the game, and it made such a lasting impact that even now I can pick up Zelda and clear the first five dungeons or so in short order. What takes me roughly an hour of play time to accomplish now is the cummulation of dozens of hours of exploration that I went through when I first played the game, and to me, Ocarina represents largely the same kind of gameplay. That's why when I'm playing a game like Twilight Princess, I actually enjoy getting stuck for short periods of time where I need to take a deep breath and patiently revisit my options.
Twilight Princess tries to strike a balance between being challenging without being frustrating, and I respect that. It takes a lot of guts in the current state of the gaming industry to truly make games
hard. A couple of decades ago, the standard formula for most video games was that they could be finished in one sitting, but that they demanded many hours of practice to develop the skill to be completed. Over time, that pattern shifted so that games became longer and had much more gentle learning curves. Consider that Ninja Gaiden for NES takes less than an hour to play from start to finish, but it's so difficult that unless you've played it for 20 hours or more and have gotten regular practice, it's unlikely that you'd be able to finish it. Now consider Resident Evil 4, which took me 26 hours to finish, but where I spent very little time repeating any particular area. Ninja Gaiden quickly ramps up in difficulty to the point where you need to start over, whereas Resident Evil 4 also ramps up in difficulty but gives you plenty of time to keep pace with the game so that there's rarely much doubt in you're being able to finish it. Twilight Princess doesn't force you to play the same areas over and over again to the extent that Ninja Gaiden does, but it does make things difficult enough that you're likely to get stuck and spend some time exploring the same area over and over for a while.
The graphics for Twilight Princess are pretty sweet, but I don't know if they truly qualify as "next gen." Although the framerate is smooth and there are plenty of pretty effects, what you see here is really only a moderate improvement over the quality of visuals that Resident Evil 4 brought to the GameCube. Twilight Princess is certainly easy on the eyes, but at no point have the graphics been so impressive as to make my heart skip a beat. The artwork for this game is amazing, however.
The control scheme isn't bad, although there are so many buttons with the wiimote-nunchuck combo that occasionally I've found myself struggling a little. Shaking the wiimote to perform sword slashes is novel, but I find that it makes timing a little bit more difficult and a result the gameplay isn't as fluid as it was in Wind Waker. I'm starting to get to the point now where performing different motions with the nunchuck produces different combat moves, and I see a lot of potential there. Also very cool is being able to simply point the wiimote at the screen to aim items like the slingshot, bow, or boomerang--it's much quicker and more intuitive than using an analog joystick for the same task, which leads me to believe that there may be some serious potential for FPS games on the Wii. Overall, I find the control scheme to be a bit muddled, but it's not a big problem for this game. The novelty factor masks what little needless complexity there is here.
Between the graphics and the controls, I wonder how the GameCube version of this game is going to compare. I could imagine the GameCube version looking almost as good, but the control scheme is going to end up feeling quite different I suspect. I wish they would have included a feature for the Wii version to allow you to use a GameCube controller with it as if you were playing the GameCube version, but I likely would only have used that to see what the GameCube controls are like.
Twilight Princess is a welcome return to the Zelda series with a lot of classic Zelda mechanics present in full force, and what I've played of it so far has been thoroughly enjoyable. If you're an old hand at Zelda 64, I suspect that Twilight Princess will bring back lots of good feelings and likely make you want to fire up your Nintendo 64, if you still have it. And if you don't have your Nintendo 64, well, there's a good chance that Nintendo will release Ocarina of Time as a Wii-playable game at some point--probably by using their online store for downloadable games.
Wii Day
I picked up my Wii at EB Games this morning. I showed up shortly before 9 am expecting the store to open at 10 am, and I quickly discovered that it doesn't actually open until 11 am on Sundays. Fortunately, the store manager is quite cool, and he even knew that a guy was waiting there
overnight to get a Wii, so the shop opened a half hour early.
People with and without preorders were lined up in separate lines and were served alternating between these two lines. Only about six or seven of the preorder people showed up before the store opened, and there were actually more than twenty non-preorder people, so some of them were turned away. Anyone who was there before ten got a Wii, however.
I spent some time in line playing Nintendo DS games multiplayer with another guy who I recognized from the line-up for preorders. He had Metroid Prime: Hunters and Mario Kart on him, and I had Tetris DS, so we played some of each of those. I'd never played Metroid Prime: Hunters before (I know, shame on me) and I was really impressed by the control scheme; it's definitely not bad at all for a handheld FPS. The time went by pretty quickly, except maybe the last 15 minutes or so during which I got so excited that I could literally only stand and stare into the store window dreaming about Wii games.
One thing that threw me for a bit of a loop was the PS3 "trash talk" that went on. There were a handful of fans in line who felt that putting down the PS3 somehow made them bigger Nintendo fans. Most of it was in good fun, however--that stuff was merely kidding around and making crude jokes. Anything that wasn't completely tongue in cheek was obviously no more than sour grapes.
Zelda: Twilight Princess is in short supply, and thankfully I preordered one early enough to get it--nobody who didn't preorder Zelda got a copy. I nearly cracked and bought Call of Duty 3 since the control scheme sounds neat, but honestly, I really don't like console FPS games, and CoD3 doesn't sound all that great. Red Steel is another game that is unavailable so far due to the shipments not making it out in time or some such. I'll probably pick up one or two more Wii games later this week, with likely candidates including Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz and Metal Slug Anthology. The pickings are sorta slim.
But I suspected that Zelda: Twilight Princess and Wii Sports would be enough to keep me glued to the Wii for now, and I was right. I did also get one of those Wii point card things and downloaded the original Legend of Zelda for NES. I do already have a working cartridge of it, and I'm not above playing it on an emulator given that I legally own it, but I really just wanted to try playing it on the Wii. The experience is seamless; my only real hang-up there is that I really wish the games were cheaper. $5 for a NES ROM is pretty steep--particularly for ones like Donkey Kong.
As for Wii Sports, I love it. It's not enough on its own to make the console worth buying, but as a fun game that makes novel use of the wiimote, it's fantastic. I'm particularly enamoured with the boxing game, although the bowling and golf games also seem especially strong at this point.
I'd say more about Twilight Princess but I'm still sorta taking it in. I'm planning to sink some heavy time into that one--likely at the expense of Final Fantasy XII, but I left that one off in a pretty good spot and I'm not going to abandon it for long. I just need to get really far in Twilight Princess first.
Anyway, I've been playing Wii games all afternoon and I'm going to be playing them all evening (although a break for Guitar Hero is remotely possible.) The versatility of the Wii, from what I've seen so far, is absolutely incredible, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what directions developers will take with it. Even with the relatively scant launch-time offerings available for it at present, the potential of the Wii to provide an all-encompasing game platform with enticing offerings for all sorts of gamers is obvious.
I was also very pleased to find that the backward compatibility with GameCube is, so far, faultless. There are two memory card slots and four joystick ports hidden in the top of the Wii (when it's standing upright) for GameCube peripherals, so I can pack away the ol' cube and still have my current game library (including Resident Evil 4, Ikaruga, Pikmen 2, and Pac-Man Vs.) at my fingertips. Not that I have time for those games right now.
The playing schedule for the next week is largely going to consist of Wii, more Wii, Guitar Hero, Final Fantasy XII, and, if there's time, World of WarCraft and F.E.A.R. There may also be the occasional round of Counter-Strike or Company of Heroes if Matt is available. I want to replay F.E.A.R. now that I have a new PC, and soon I'll be replaying Half-Life 2 for the third time as well. That is, assuming that I don't get hopelessly caught up in other games.
And now, back to the Wii.
PS3 Day
This is pretty redundant to say, but crazy stuff is happening today. The highlights:
- There are
numerous reports of PS3 launch day violence, the worst of which consists of people being shot in line.
- PS3 units are reportedly (source: G4 TV) being sold on eBay for $2700+ USD.
- Some nutwigs
smashed a PS3.
- Is it just me, or is ebgames.com actually down?
If you've been following this blog at all, you already know that I'm
not planning to buy a PS3 very soon. There are various features that I'm excited about (backward compatibility, removable hard drive, multi-format card reader), but the bottom line is that right now there are no PS3 games that I am dying to play. Allow me to emphasize that:
there are no great PS3 games yet. As excited as I am about how great the console is, I think it'll be pretty easy to bide my time until there's something out for it that I really want to play.
The situation for the Wii is looking fairly similar, which is to say that there aren't any launch titles that really excite me except for the obvious one--Zelda: Twilight Princess. But Wii Sports looks like a fun diversion, and the Wii is not nearly as massive an investment in terms of price as the PS3. These things make it a lot easier to justify buying one, and I'm also looking forward to playing some old NES, SNES, and Turbo Graphix 16 games on my Wii before long.
Just so we're clear, I do intend to buy a PS3 eventually. It looks like a solid product, and I'm only going to jump ship on it if it flops. The XBox 360, on the other hand, is looking pretty weak. After an entire year of existence, the only games out for it that really catch my eye are Gears of War and Dead Rising. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is pretty cool, but I already have that for PC. The bottom line is that if I had an XBox 360, I'd probably use it, but I'm not about to rush off to buy one. If the current rate of compelling XBox 360 releases keeps up, it'll easily go through a whole five year lifespan without seriously tempting me to get one.
Finally, I'd like to mention something about Sony brany loyalty. I'm not really sure why, but I have a hard time appreciating the logic behind it. What Sony provides is solid hardware with fantastic third-party developer support. The companies that I end up drooling over tend to be publishers or developers like Square-Enix, Konami, Capcom, Nippon Ichi, and Atlus. What does Sony make that's so great? Oh yeah, the console.
I dunno, maybe I'm being completely irrational here, but it just seems to me like people have some kind of hang up distinguishing between the hardware and the software where video games are concerned. When you play Final Fantasy XII or Guitar Hero, it isn't thanks to Sony that these games are possible. These games could easily have happened on the GameCube or the XBox; the main reason that they appear on the PS2 is because of the installed user base--ie. because the hardware is widely used and available. So how is it that people develop this strong attachment to Sony when their role in making the games possible seems to be so minimal?
On the other hand, actually getting your console to be installed in the market as the de facto standard of console gaming hardware in any given generation is an extremely difficult trick, and Sony does deserve a lot of credit for that. The competition has been stiff and they've proven themselves worthy by conquering two back-to-back generations. I just find it hard to swallow that people are in such a panic to acquire the PS3 for what seems to be, in some cases, little more than brand loyalty. The reason for getting a PS3 should be because there's some awesome game for it that you're looking forward to--not because you love Sony. That's my two cents. After all, that's why I pre-ordered a Wii: not primarily out of a love for Nintendo (although my love for Nintendo was a strong factor) but because of the games that are going to be out for the Wii over the next few months.
As a final cautionary note, I'm going to point out that it is
possible, although very unlikely, for the PS3 to still fail. If we see endless delays in major projects start to pop up and if the releases for the first year are too thin, that will provide an easy opening for one of Sony's competitors to grab market share. Of course, this exact problem could also plague the Wii and seems to already be affecting the XBox 360. Really, it's anyone's game at this point, although my money is still on the PlayStation 3 to be the #1 console by 2008. The year 2007 is much more in flux and I'm predicting that it's simply going to be a lean year for the console gaming industry all-round; not unlike those pre-XBox years where it was all about the Dreamcast and the PS2.
This could end up being a good time to have a reasonable PC gaming rig set up. Also, although the PS2 has been stronger than any other console this year, I think 2006 has truly been the year of the Nintendo DS, and that popularity will carry the DS over into 2007 as well. Secretly(?), I have my fingers crossed that the Wii will exceed expectations and bring Nintendo back into the limelight after playing second fiddle for roughly a decade, but it's a silly hope.
Guitar Hero
Ah, where to start... well...
I'm going on vacation, so there won't be any activity here next week. No big deal there; this blog is generally pretty quiet anyway. As for the week after that, well, I'll have my Wii by then, so that'll be interesting (and hopefully fun.)
I'm about 16 hours into FF XII and loving every minute of it. My enthusiasm for the game has calmed a little, which has provided other games a chance to get a word in edge-wise (unfortunately, Disgaea 2 and Valkyrie Profile 2 weren't among them.) My plan from here out is to play FF XII at a steady pace of five to ten hours per week until I'm done with it, and I probably won't be "done" for a long time. I'm really impressed by the fact that FF XII has been able to keep me away from World of WarCraft, although after a couple of months of relatively steady play, I think that a bit of a break is in order. My Undead Priest is still only level 37, though.
I uncorked Trauma Center: Under the Knife for a scant 90 minutes or so and am highly amused with that game. Although it's very much like Pheonix Wright in style (obviously), it's far more of an action/puzzle game that makes novel use of the DS stylus interface. I'm pretty sure that it also has about as much semblence with factual medicine as Pheonix Wright has with factual law--which is to say, very little. Both games are pretty much anime/manga fanfare, although I think it's possible to like them without liking anime/manga. From what I've seen so far, Trauma Center is the stronger of the two, although I like the characters and stories that I've seen from Phoenix Wright better. The difference is that while Pheonix Wright allows you to explore compelling tales and gives you riddles to stew over, Trauma Center really thrusts you into the center of the action. Both games are highly dramatic and suspenseful, but the levels of panic and triumph that I've experienced so far in what little I've played of Trauma Center have been superior to what I got out of my half-finished Pheonix Wright game, even though I'm more attached to the characters and plot of the Pheonix Wright universe.
As the title of this post suggest, my primary distraction from FF XII has been Guitar Hero. To make this perfectly clear, it is
not Guitar Hero II--which I'm planning to acquire in a few weeks. I have been playing the original, and I had not played it before a few days ago. That there is one fucking incredible game. I do have something of a predisposition towards musical rhythm/beat genre games (eg. Parappa the Rapper, Dance Dance Revolution), but this one definitely takes the cake in terms of raw appeal. The relatively (attention:
relatively) badass theme of the game helps a lot, but there's certainly a lot there in terms of polish and good design work too. What really blows me away is the awesome learning curve; I mean, DDR has a great learning curve too, but Guitar Hero was unbelievably easy to get into. It's a highly addictive experience with a lot of emotional appeal, and it's easily one of those games that one makes a routine out of.
In the realm of PC gaming, I've been taking a break from both Company of Heroes and World of WarCraft, and instead focusing on two other great (but less great) games: Dawn of War and Battlefield 2142. For DoW, I just wanted to polish off the single-player campaign, and I managed to accomplish that. The story is nifty, but not nifty enough to force yourself through the campaign for; I really only played it because I like ordering Space Marine squads around. As I've ranted about before, DoW is an excellent RTS, and I personally find the Warhammer 40k theme appealing. I will probably also play through the Winter Assault campaigns and continue to play Dark Crusade as well, but overall Company of Heroes is a much better game, I'd have to say. That's probably not a fair comparison to make given that CoH is so much newer--I'm just pointing it out to be clear that CoH didn't get pushed aside for DoW because there's anything wrong with CoH.
As for Battlefield 2142, I like it, but I don't like it nearly as much as I liked Battlefield 2. Honestly, I don't think that the Battlefield series will ever top two high points in my experience with it: the first being the weeks following the release of Battlefield 1942, which forever changed my outlook on FPS games, and the second being the weekend following the release of Battlefield 2, when I played 20 hours over the course of a Friday evening, full day Saturday, and Sunday afternoon. The getting was good back then; both of those games were not only novel experiences, but very well executed. Battlefield 2142 does not, in my opinion, bring shame to the Battlefield series--it is a solid title with a lot to offer in terms of innovations and novel experiences, but I'm not myself a particularly dedicated Battlefield fan (although I've found myself roped into buying and playing every major release so far), and Battlefield 2142 feels to me like a lot more of what I've already seen out of the series. I play it largely because of a friend of mine who's into the Battlefield series and encourages me to play it during lunch hours at work, but I don't think that BF2142 has the mettle to keep up with games like Company of Heroes, Final Fantasy XII, Guitar Hero, or, of course, World of WarCraft. Even within its genre, I'd rather be playing Day of Defeat or F.E.A.R. than BF2142.
While I'm on vacation, I'll have a limited opportunity to play some DS and GBA games. Slated for the most attention are Trauma Center, Phoenix Wright, Final Fantasy IV Advance, and maybe Children of Mana. I'm also tempted to try and polish off Resident Evil DS; I started a game as Jill and nearly finished it, and it would be nice to do a play-through as Chris too. I've also been craving Tales of Phantasia, but there just hasn't been room for it--I'm saving that one for later. Of course, I've also been "saving" the Phantasy Star Collection for GBA for a long time now. Bah.
It may be hard to believe, but I do have other hobbies like reading, listening to music, and getting some occasional exercise. When the gaming gets this heavy, though, it's hard to think about anything besides work and games. :)
The last time I played Tetris DS, only a few days ago, I was on a bit of a slide. Late last week my rating hit an all-time high of 6790 and I squandered a great opportunity to easily surpass that by at least another 100 pts, but instead I went on a deep losing streak and my rating sunk to 6200. I fought back to 6400 the next day, and then sank lower, to around 5950. Eventually I got some mojo back and was able to get back to 6600. My current rating is 6627 having played 179 battles with 71 first place and 52 second place finishes. Those are all Standard 4-Player games. I'm not planning to play and Tetris DS for at least a week and a half, so we'll see how my skills hold up when I get back into it after the break.
Oh, Sunny has been on a little gaming bout of her own, with The Sims 2. She finally installed it on our new hardware and has been enjoying the drastic improvement in graphical quality. She hasn't started on FF XII yet, but that suits me fairly well since I'm tying up the PS2 quite a bit between FF XII and Guitar Hero.
Well, that covers most of what's been up lately. It would have been a lot smoother if I'd written little bits as I went along rather than building all of this up and spouting it all off at once, but I've been pretty busy lately and simply haven't had a lot of energy for writing. In any case, the next time you hear from me here, I'll likely have played Twilight Princess on the Wii. We'll see how _that_ fits into this crazy scheme of rampant gaming.
Final Fantasy XII
I'm about 12 hours into Final Fantasy XII and it is
spectacular. In my experience, RPGs should be judged foremost on the basis of what they offer in terms of character & story, exploration, and the combat system. FF XII does very well in all of these departments. The marvellous artwork is also nice to have, of course, but it really only serves as the icing on top of what is a solid game all-round.
The most controversial aspect of FF XII by far is the new combat system in which there are no longer separate enemy encounters that the game cuts away to; instead enemies appear right in the environment and your characters engage in combat without a hard transition from the exploration aspect of the game. Everyone who has read anything about FF XII already knows this--in fact, it seems to be all that anybody ever talks about when speaking of FF XII--and I've heard a variety of opinions on the matter. Two of the more extreme opinions seem to be relatively common:
a) If you turn off the "gambits" then the combat system really isn't all that different from previous FF games, so FF XII isn't as big of a departure as everyone seems to think.
b) FF XII completely abandons a huge portion of what makes Final Fantasy games truely
Final Fantasy games with this latest change, effectively ruining FF XII for hardcore fans.
Honestly, I think that both of these positions are wrong, although they're not easy to entirely disprove. To proponents of position (a), I say that first off, almost nobody is going to play FF XII without the gambits--they are one of the game's chief features and an integral part of the battle system. One certainly can play through FF XII without using gambits, but one is not
meant to, which is to say that FF XII was designed around the assumption that players would be using gambits.
But more importantly, with this latest development in the Final Fantasy battle system, a degree of control is necessarily lost. Combat in FF XII frequently gets so disorganized and sudden that, as a player, I struggle to tell exactly what is happening. Which of my party members is hitting for the most damage, and which for the least? Which enemies are the toughest? Even keeping track of something as simple as who is targetting whom becomes a challenge, even with the aid of those red and blue graphical arcs. I get into situations in FF XII where a character in my party gets KOed, and not only did I not see it coming, but I'm not even sure which enemy dealt the final blow. This is the sort of chaos that one expects in World of WarCraft, where things happen rapidly and trying to stay on top of them is part of the challenge of the game. But this is not the sort of thing that one expects from a Final Fantasy game. Every other game from the core Final Fantasy series (except for FF XI, which doesn't count) makes it very easy to tell when a character is attacking or being attacked and exactly how much damage is being done, and the information flows at a deliberately easy to track pace.
So as much as I would like to believe that by some technicality, FF XII is in fact identical to other FF battle systems except for being "in the 3-D plane," or whatever you choose to call it, the plain truth of the matter is that the FF XII battle system does break away from an aspect of the flow and feel of FF combat that no other game in the core FF series (again, FF XI is excluded) has tampered with before. One of the things that makes an FF game a true Final Fantasy title is having set-piece style combat, and FF XII has replaced that with an open melee sort of experience.
But whereas position (a) makes too little of the significance of the changes to the combat system in FF XII, position (b) makes too much of it. I am not denying that some part of what many Final Fantasy fans would say made Final Fantasy games truly "Final Fantasy" games has been lost in this latest release, but that is also the case with pretty much
every Final Fantasy game. One's opinion on the Final Fantasy series as a whole very much rests on where one entered the series, and to complain about change is unbecoming of a real FF fan.
In my mind, there is only one "pure" Final Fantasy game, and that is FF IV. It was the first to employ Active Time Battle, which has been the mainstay of the series. It had archetypical characters and a dramatic, but meandering storyline that is very typical of the series taken as a whole. But far more than that, FF IV just had the perfect feel of a Final Fantasy game world. It was neither too dark, nor too cheery. It had politics without being too political. There was a sense that the world of FF IV was well inhabited yet untamed--that civilizations were thriving, but that much of the world was wild and dangerous. And perhaps most importantly, there was the sense in FF IV that the actions of one enterprising individual could alter the state of the entire world, for better or for worse. These are themes that occur again and again throughout Final Fantasy, and--probably because of where I entered into the Final Fantasy experience--Final Fantasy IV seems to me to be the most overtly "Final Fantasy" flavoured expression of them.
Relative to FF IV, I could accuse every other Final Fantasy game that I've ever played as having strayed too far from the formula of what makes a game truly "Final Fantasy." Even in terms of the combat system, there have been large departures from what an FF IV player would expect to see all along. So while it is true that FF XII is a more radical break in terms of the combat system than we've seen before, it's not true that the precedent for change had not already been set. Final Fantasy is not a traditionalist's sort of gaming experience; it is constantly seeking to reinvent itself. If you're heart-broken because Final Fantasy XII is too different from how FF X was, then get over it. I had to do so, back when FF VII came out.
Bluntly put, Final Fantasy XII still offers what Final Fantasy is all about. Things are, as always, quite different this time around, but while FF XII does leave part of what FF fans have come to expect behind, it doesn't leave out those things that make a Final Fantasy game a true "Final Fantasy" game. I do appreciate that it is something of a shame that Final Fantasy XII doesn't have the separate combat engine--that classic "cut away to the battle" convention that RPG fans adore so much--and I think it's important for Square-Enix to get the message that RPG fans still want to see that, especially from Final Fantasy. But that doesn't change the fact that Final Fantasy XII is an awesome game, and an awesome
Final Fantasy game at that.
One of the great things about being a traditionalist about Final Fantasy is that there's nothing to stop you from going back and replaying the old 16-bit and 32-bit Final Fantasy games; there's a decade's worth of content back there to enjoy, and it's very rare to meet a fan who has played and replayed them all. As for Final Fantasy XII, I would say to the hardcore fans to pull themselves together and get lost in the fantastic game that
is there instead of pouting over what could have been. As I said several paragraphs ago, complaining about change is unbecoming of a true Final Fantasy fan.
