Guitar Hero II
The Christmas season has been good to me in terms of gaming gifts. Ace-High hooked me up with the expansion set for World of WarCraft: The Board Game (called Shadows of War), and Sunny's family set me up with Trauma Center: Second Opinion, Yggdra Union, and Guitar Hero II. So far I haven't gotten around to all of it, particularly since I'm still playing a lot of World of WarCraft and getting back into FF XII.
I did finally have the chance to play Guitar Hero and its sequel as multiplayer games. The original Guitar Hero doesn't benefit a whole lot from multiplayer, in my opinion. The only available play mode is a "dueling guitars" style face-off which forces both players to play on the same difficulty level. That's fine if all you're aiming to do is to settle a grudge with somebody over who's the better Guitar Hero player, but Guitar Hero II takes the multiplayer concept much further with a co-operative multiplayer play mode. In the co-op mode, each song has a lead track and either a bass or a rhythm track depending on the song. One player plays lead, and the other plays back-up; it's very satisfying and does a great job of maintaining that illusion of actually playing the song that makes Guitar Hero such a fun experience in the first place.
One thing that I don't like about Guitar Hero II is the line-up of songs. Taste in music is extremely relative and it's easily possible that you'll disagree with me on this one, but the original Guitar Hero features tracks by bands like Slayer, Motorhead, Bad Religion, Audioslave, and Queens of the Stone Age. There was variety, but there was also a lot for me, personally, to care about. Guitar Hero II has less of that. Yes, there's Nirvana's "Heart-Shaped Box" and a kick-ass Rage Against the Machine track too, but overall the track list feels weaker. One pleasant surprise that helps to make up the difference is the inclusion of the Trogdor joke song as performed by Strongbad--the cartoon character from Homestar Runner.
While I am not as emotionally invested in the songs from Guitar Hero II as the stuff that the first game offered, there is definitely one aspect of GH2 that makes up for it: the heightened difficulty level. Guitar Hero only pushes one so far, and although I've yet to exhaust the range of challenge that it provides, I have gotten to the point where there's really only a handfull of songs that really tax my abilities. Guitar Hero II shifts the challenge spectrum up a couple of notches so that I now have a fair amount of material to "skill up" on. I even expect GH2 to be a big help in improving my ability to the point where I can finally polish off the final tier on Expert difficulty in the original Guitar Hero.
In my opinion, if you're looking to get into Guitar Hero for the first time--especially if you're more of a punk or metal fan and less of a cheesy power-rock fan--then you should get the original game first and move into Guitar Hero II once you've gotten a lot of mileage out of the first one. If you're more focused on multiplayer play, however, you definitely want Guitar Hero II. Although I've talked about the strengths of the tracks here, I should also stress that it's all relative to your own tastes in music, and that you really should investigate the track lists for both games on your own before deciding whether or not Guitar Hero really has better music than Guitar Hero II.
Speaking of track lists and such, one thing I think that the producers of Guitar Hero seriously need to look at is releasing Guitar Hero titles focused on individual artists. For instance, if you took a single major band like, say, Nirvana, U2, or System of a Down (or Green Day, or Nine Inch Nails, or Soundgarden, or...), and produced a dedicated Guitar Hero title for that artist featuring their major singles and music videos, that game would sell like mad. One challenge I can see with that setup is that Guitar Hero and its sequel both feature a lot of tracks--Guitar Hero II has 55 in total--and it's hard to get so many from a single artist. One solution I can see working is to include a fairly exhaustive track listing for a single artist (like a boxed set) and charge more for it; I think Guitar Hero fans would still pay for it. Another simple solution is simply to include fewer tracks and maybe charge a little less for it. Even if such a game only included about 15 tracks, fans would still jump at it, especially for a little cheaper.
Of course, yet another obvious solution is to simply release genre-specific Guitar Hero compilations. "Heroes of Punk" or some such. Yet another solution is simply to get Guitar Hero III in the works already. :) As somebody who listens to music from time to time, however, I really like the idea of Guitar Hero releases centered around specific artists. I'd be mildly surprised if it actually happened, though.
Console Gaming Buddies Redux
Fritzkrieg was over yesterday for one of the most intense gaming marathons that I've ever had. I can't even remember all of the games that we played, but suffice to say that there were more than a few unlikely titles thrown into the mix. The major focus of the day was definitely Capcom, and we spent quite a bit of time playing fighting games, a complete playthrough of the Capcom Quiz (Quiz & Dragons remix), and a quick playthrough of Final Fight. There was Zelda: Twilight Princess progress made, a demo of F.E.A.R. on my new PC, and Burnout: Revenge capped off the evening. I also found out that Fritzkrieg doesn't like Guitar Hero much at all. I don't know what lessons I learned about gaming yesterday (aside from, maybe, some trivia bits about Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, and Onimusha), but I am definitely tired. :)
Phf and Ace-High were also over earlier in the week. I continued to put pressure on Phf to get into fighting games, which is somewhat funny because he still insists that he has little or no interest in fighting games, yet it's easy to pressure him into playing more than a few rounds, and he's certainly not indifferent towards the game once the action has started. I don't think it's even occured to him that most people who really don't like tournament fighters can hardly even be bothered to try to win once the game has started, especially when faced with a more experienced opponent. Like most painfully inexperienced fighting game players, Phf is a bit of a button masher, but he does have a strategic mind and he pays attention to what he's doing to the point where he can duplicate basic moves. I'm impressed by his reflexes and I'm impressed by how much he honestly seems to care about winning. If Phf's interest in the genre is lacking anywhere, it's probably in lacking a desire to improve his skills, and sometimes I get the distinct impression that he doesn't realise how much room there is for him to improve. He seems to under-estimate the true complexity and sophistication of good fighting games, and from what I know of his tastes in gaming, I suspect that if Phf understood the truth behind what these games are like, his interest in them would swell.
The fighting game rivalry between Fritzkrieg and I continues to burn. It's something of a shame that I have had more time than him in recent history to play these games and improve a little at them, but otherwise I would say that we are pretty evenly matched (which is to say that neither of us is particularly good.)
The Fall Gaming... Lull?
A wild realisation has been growing in my mind since the glorious day of the Wii launch: it's been fully a month now and, for the most part, I've been playing the same handfull of great games this whole time. In fact, if you reach as far back as September, I've really only been given over to a select few games since then. Relatively speaking, at least.
Switching games too often is a personal problem for me. For one thing, it leads to not giving the great games as much time and attention as they really deserve; when one gets caught up in a cycle of starting a new game every other week, that generally means that no game gets more than a couple of week's worth of attention at the most. For a good long while, the problem was so extreme for me that even a game requiring only 10 hours to finish typically took me months to complete.
That's not how my gaming habits always were, and I've been trying to return to a habit of having only a few "core" games that I'm playing at any given time and really sticking to them before getting swept up in something new. But it's hard not to start switching up frequently because my willpower is not strong at all. New releases make me go weak in the knees, particularly if they're featured on Penny Arcade and/or get good reviews from the critics. I'm also interested in so many different genres and platforms that it's unreasonable for me to expect myself to keep up, yet somehow I still dread falling behind.
The remarkable thing is that lately there hasn't been as much of a problem in keeping up. Not only have I been able to hang on to the same core games (Zelda: Twilight Princess, Guitar Hero, Final Fantasy XII, and Trauma Center included) for more than a few weeks now, but even among the new releases that I haven't been able to get into, the same handful of titles keeps coming up: Gears of War, Guitar Hero II, Call of Duty 3, Rainbow Six: Vegas, and WoW: The Burning Crusade. These are the headliners on the EB Games web site right now, and it seems to me that there hasn't been a lot of change in the past month.
Okay, so the gaming industry is in a bit of a lull right now. That certainly happens--usually as a result of development teams recovering from the stress of putting together E3 demos, or in the wake of the over-commercialized holiday season. But aren't we smack in the middle of the holiday season? October and November in particular are often the time of year when new "must have" releases fall upon each other so rapidly that I get a little angry at the industry for hoarding all of the good stuff for this one particular season. How is it that right now I'm able to look back on the fall months and think that I was actually able to keep up for a change?
The release of the PS3 and the Wii are most likely to blame. I suppose that there are probably fewer game titles out because everyone is scrambling to get their PS3 and Wii game projects completed. Even given that, I'm surprised because the situation had gotten so out of control the past few years. It barely seemed possible to me that the game industry could get bogged down and overlook the Fall season. And I suppose that for some gamers, this December is no different from Decembers past: whereas I only have the Wii and only Wii Sports and Zelda to worry about, there are undoubtedly those who have a Wii and a PS3, or those who bought six or more Wii games and are frantically trying to get their money's worth out of those (even though there are only two or three good Wii titles available at the moment.)
It's also possible that my perception is simply skewed because I have been better about only focusing on games that matter lately. Of course, it's a little tricky for me to tell whether I've been smarter about my gaming purchases or whether there's simply just been fewer great titles around to tempt me. I tend to think the latter, but it's possible that the former has come into play. Or is that just wishful thinking on my part?
Whatever the cause, I've found myself jonesing for new releases once or twice in the past month and scouting around only to find that there's been nothing new and notable since the PS3 and Wii launched. I'm definitely not complaining, especially since I've been planning to cut back on game consumption and focus more on just playing games that I already have. However, I do wonder how long it will take for the next gen console releases to start to ramp up. Historically, as much as the first year of a console's lifespan has been slow, which means that 2007 could be a slow year for console gaming in general. That sure would be a change.
Xzi Wallpapers
I like to snap screenshots occasionally while I'm playing WoW, particularly if something strikes me as really scenic. The following are a couple of the better shots that I've taken recently; the first one is the night sky over Arathi Highlands, and the second one was taken from within Razorfen Kraul. The character in both shots is, of course, Xzi, my Undead Priest. Xzi is now level 40.
Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 2
Christmas is just over a week away, and while I've been pretty good so far about not buying anything for myself, I did break down a little today and pick up a cheap copy of Capcom Classics Collection Volume 2. As you might recall, I'm a sucker for those PS2 collections of old arcade games, and while my library of them is far from exhaustive, I have managed to cover a lot of bases.
In a nutshell, Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 2 pales in comparison to Vol 1, and while it's not a bad compilation overall, it only needs to be seriously considered for purchase by dedicated Capcom fans. I'm certainly glad that I picked it up, but if you don't already have and adore the original Capcom Classics Collection, you'd be well advised to start there. The original Capcom Classics Collection features many A-grade titles including Street Fighter II (and Turbo), 1943 (and Kai), Ghosts 'n' Goblins, Ghouls 'n' Ghosts, Super Ghouls 'n' Ghosts, Gun.Smoke, and Final Fight. Right there you've got your bases for shooters, fighters, and brawlers covered.
What Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 2 offers, for the most part, are more shooters, fighters, and brawlers of the B-grade variety. The headliners for this collection include Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Strider, Knights of the Round, 1941, and Captain Commando. Of the various other games, there are many duds, and a few games that are more interesting for historical purposes than because of the gaming experience that they offer--such as the original Street Fighter, and Quiz & Dragons.
SSF2T is certainly nothing to scoff at. It was one of the pivotal titles involved in the development of the Street Fighter II series moving into the late 90s and the 32-bit generation of games, and it is still a viable option for tournaments today. As such, SSF2T one of the few "must have" games on this collection, but unless you're a 2D fighting game fanatic, that's probably not a big enough draw to sell you on the collection as a whole.
Strider is another great game, and a personal favourite of mine; I'm really glad to see it in this compilation. It may seem clumsy and awkward at first, but actually the controls, graphics, and nearly everything about this game are top-notch for the era in which it was made. Once you get the hang of it, Strider is an addictive and rewarding game experience that will draw you back time and again.
Knights of the Round is a solid brawler, and Captain Commando is even more-so, but although they are fairly good games, neither has the subtle genius that makes Final Fight such a classic. On the other hand, if you like old school street brawlers and Final Fight alone isn't enough to keep you happy, Knights of the Round and Captain Commando should serve you well. Because street brawlers are one of the most accessible genres of classic arcade games, I imagine that these two titles in particular will draw the attention of most gamers who rent, borrow, or buy this collection without knowing in advance what they're in for.
As for 1941, it's one of the best 1942/1943 series titles that I've ever played, but it remains lacking compared to 1943 and 1943 Kai. Like so many of the other titles in this collection, 1941 is a solid game that provides a few hours of quality diversion but doesn't offer much in the way of lasting appeal. There's a line somewhere between a game that's good and a great game that sticks in your memory, and 1941 lies squarely on the "good game" side.
One great thing about Capcom Classics Collection Vol 2 are the options and extras. The collection maintains separate high scores lists for different game settings (one for "normal" settings, one for "custom" settings, and one for "hardcore" settings), as well as allows the player to save and load the current game state at any time for any game in the collection. These two features alone are things that I've wished for in every other retro games compilation that I've played. One can also unlock tips, art, and music features for each game, which is a nice touch although not overly exciting.
There are two extras in particular that really go the extra mile in this collection. The first is a remixed version of the Trivial Pursuit style game Quiz & Dragons in which all of the questions are about games published by Capcom. So instead of being bothered about US Presidents and what movies from the 1950s through 1980s won Academy Awards, you get questions about Resident Evil, Mega Man, and countless other wacky Capcom subjects. The second is a short series of tutorial videos by
David Sirlin on how to
seriously play Super Street Fighter II Turbo. In a value priced retro games compilation such as this, these bonus features add a lot of value for a gamer such as myself.
Given all of that, it shouldn't surprise you to hear that I'm very glad to have picked up Capcom Classics Collection Vol 2. I recognize that the title has a very limited appeal, of course--it just happens to have exactly the right kind of appeal to be worth my while. Most gamers would probably be bored of this compilation within an hour, unless they're either big Street Fighter fans or especially patient with old games. Still, it's worth renting on a rainy day, or if you loved the original Capcom Classics Collection and are looking for more of the like, you may find this one appealing as well.
Gone Pro in Bowling
I've set a new personal best in Wii Bowling: 221. I'm also flirting with the elusive 1000 "pro" mark, which I'm currently over but am close to enough that a single bad (or even average) game puts me below it again.
I also seem to be picking up steam in Wii Boxing, although I find it utterly chaotic sometimes. It feels good when I'm able to land accurate punches and mount a reasonable defense of blocks and dodges, but when a match starts to go awry, it's hard to regain control of the situation. I suppose that's probably by design rather than a flaw in the game.
After writing this afternoon's epic post, I did go and play an hour of Final Fantasy XII. Some major plot stuff has gone down and left me intrigued as to the role that the Judges play in the world of Ivalice.
More updates to come, pending more gaming. It is the weekend, after all. :)
December Updates
My gaming landscape hasn't changed a whole lot over the past couple of weeks. I'm now over the 30 hour mark in Twilight Princess, and while my general interest in the game is still running strong, I'm no longer keen enough on it to play four hours at a stretch every day. Other games are starting to see attention, although so far no other Wii games. Wii Sports rarely crosses my mind, although I do find the occasional game of tennis amusing, and I did manage to bowl a 210 game once. I have yet to buy another Wii game, but the only one that seems to be a likely candidate at this point is Trauma Center: Second Opinion, which I've watched the GameTrailers.com review of to assure myself of its worthiness. Call of Duty 3 and Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz are still tempting, but I doubt my own resolve to play them; I'll probably end up renting them rather than buying them.
On the PlayStation 2 side, the only game that's been in my console for the last full month is Guitar Hero. I've played through the entire campaign on Hard difficulty (and most of the bonus tracks too), and I've made it all the way down to "Crossroads" by Cream on Expert difficulty. I'm still practicing for roughly an hour a day on average, and I'm steadily improving towards being able to clear the game outright. Although the game remains addictive and alluring, I think I'm starting to burn out on it just a little. Eventually I'm going to get Guitar Hero II, but not while I'm currently somewhat tired of Guitar Hero in general.
Final Fantasy XII has been horribly neglected. I reviewed the Player's Guide about a week ago to refresh my memory of where I'm at in the game and all of the awesome story events that have unfolded so far. At literally any moment now I'm going to jump back into it and continue the adventure, but for complex internal reasons that I haven't been able to wrap my head around, I've been procrastinating. It's probably a simple matter of having spent too much time with Zelda and Guitar Hero to have energy left ofter for FF XII. I think that part of me dreads that once I'm back into FF XII, I'll burn myself out on video games completely.
Matt and I have been playing a fair amount of Counter-Strike: Source the past couple of weeks as well--roughly three or four hours per week, total. I absolutely love how the game looks and feels on my recently assembled gaming PC. Whenever I have a tinge of feeling like I'm missing out on the "next gen" (that is, the
current gen) with the PS3 and XBox 360, I remind myself that I already have a decent PC gaming rig to rival that stuff, and fairly nice monitor to go with it. The visuals that I've been getting out of games like Counter-Strike: Source, Company of Heroes, and World of WarCraft still consistently manage to turn my head. (I really have to get F.E.A.R. installed and replay that sucker. It's on my "To Do" list.)
Speaking of World of WarCraft, there's been major developments there since the 2.0.1 patch (or whatever they're at) was released--which you're no doubt aware of if you've been playing it. I haven't been, but Sunny has been playing tons of WoW; her alt is now level 56 and she's been discovering the new Arena Battlegrounds system. I've been away from the game for a fair stretch now, but I can easily see myself getting back into it. I just need the time and energy. :)
I was reading some stuff via Penny-Arcade recently about the Firefly MMORPG that's being developed, and I remarked to Matt that MMORPGs are really fun, but I still find them to be too expensive for my taste. Guild Wars has a thoroughly acceptable pricing scheme: a one-time fee to buy the game and no subscription charges, just like a regular multiplayer game. The WoW client is a lot cheaper now (about $20) than it was only a few months ago ($60), but the monthly subscription charge of $15 is still a lot to take. If WoW was anything less than the greatest video game ever made so far, I wouldn't be willing to pay so much for it. Contrary to popular belief, WoW is not the greatest game of all time because it's an MMORPG, but rather because it's so well designed; to say otherwise is a lot like saying that the iPod is a huge success because mp3 players in general are great, which is obviously not the case when you compare how other mp3 players measure up against the iPod.
Speaking of iPods and the like, the hand-held world has been a hotbed of new developments as well. In the last month I've acquired Children of Mana, Final Fantasy III, and Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin in addition to continuing to play Trauma Center: Under the Knife and the occasional games of Mario Kart DS and Tetris DS (I've even been tempted to plug-in to Metroid Pinball and Resident Evil DS lately.) There are also two GBA games that I must have but have yet to buy: Final Fantasy V Advance and Yggdra Union. I also own a copy of Riviera that I
haven't played, and I'm rougly half-way through a playthrough of FF IV that I want to finish--both of these being situations that need to be remedied.
I've made it to Chapter 6 in Trauma Center, which is the final and most difficult chapter. So far my skill level is not up to the task, but with regular practice I hope to eventually polish that game off, for now. One of the most impressive things about Trauma Center is what a deep emotional attachment I've developed towards it. Even though I don't find the specific characters or storyline all that compelling, the game design in general manages to create a strong draw, and I find myself getting emotional when I even simply hear musical scores from the game. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Trauma Center is among the finest Nintendo DS titles currently available.
I've only played a little bit of Children of Mana, but that's mainly because I don't like it. It's almost as big of a disappointment as Lunar: Dragon Song, although it doesn't suck nearly as much. My primary complaint against Children of Mana is that it doesn't feel like a proper Seiken Densetsu game. I was hoping for something to remind me of Secret of Mana, and although Children of Mana has a lot of the same sprite designs, it somehow manages to both look and, especially, feel like an entirely different game--and not for the better. I haven't played any multiplayer with it (it requires each player to have a copy of the game), and I can see how that would be worthwhile in much the same capacity that Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles is worthwhile as a multiplayer game. But I worry that this game was designed too much with the multiplayer aspect in mind and it doesn't work as well as a single player experience.
The dungeons that I've faced so far have a tediously linear feel, and the game seems entirely too focused on hack n' slash and building up your characters. I don't think that there's a problem specifically with the characters, setting, or plot, but rather with the presentation and design work as a whole--essentially, the way that the whole game hangs together. Instead of feeling like I'm lost in a full-blown fantasy world (an illusion that Secret of Mana constructed masterfully), I feel like I'm simply warping from a simple base-camp style town to various dungeons that have more in common design-wise with the levels of Double Dragon than the levels of, say, Zelda. Games like this make me angry that there aren't more action RPGs harkening back to the likes of Illusion of Gaia or Alundra.
Action RPGs used to be one of my most favourite game genres, but games like Crystal Chronicles and Children of Mana have really sucked a lot of the joy out of them with their awkward play mechanics and tendancy to treat themselves as arcade-style games rather than full-blown RPGs. Just the summer before last, Fritzkrieg and myself sat down with my old (and still functional) SNES to play Secret of Mana from start to finish, and it was just as entertaining as it's ever been. I also played through part of Alundra only a couple of years ago--a game that I had neglected for years--and I was thoroughly enchanted with it. PC games with real-time elements like World of WarCraft and Neverwinter Nights could be considered Action RPGs, but while they are excellent games, they're not the sort that I'm talking about; I yearn for the console style action RPGs with their simplistic game mechanics and amusing sprites, rather than PC RPGs with sophisticated game systems behind them. The closet thing to the Action RPGs that I want to see these days are games like Zelda and Castlevania.
Speaking of Castlevania, I've started on Portrait of Ruin and it is wonderful. There are a lot of Castlevania games available for the GBA and DS platforms, and while none of them are bad games, some are better than others (Aria of Sorrow, for example, is particularly good.) Dawn of Sorrow was definitely solid, but there was something about it that bothered me a little; it seemed to lack the punch of it's predecessor, in spite of its superior graphics. Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin strikes me as a stronger title, and not simply because of the novelty factor behind its new dual-character mechanics. I'll need more time with it to be certain, but so far Portrait of Ruin feels very "right," and I'm having a great time with it.
I haven't played Final Fantasy III DS yet at all, but I'll get around to it. :) It's good to have options in terms of what you want to play next.
