Archive for the ‘Video Games’ Category
Tales of Phantasia
Posted by Rhys Aronson in Video Games on February 17th, 2010
This is a review I wrote many years ago so please let the horrible english have a pass.
SNES: Tales of Phantasia (IMPORT)
-A friend of mine told me to try out Tales of Phantasia one day when I was bitching about being boredm this was to be the start of a beautiful journey through one of the greatest RPG’s of the SNES era, one which unfortunately has only recently become available in an official English language version (which I now own.)
The main protagonist of this adventure is Cless a young swordsman who is thrust into time traveling adventure when his parents are slaughtered while out hunting. Admittedly a rather cliché start to what is otherwise a fantastic piece of writing (originally starting as a novel by the programmer Yoshiharu Gotanda) The characters and story is very classic RPG but taken in a completely different and original direction, the characters become very fleshed out and the player will either become attached to them or grow to dislike them. I really enjoyed it and you most likely will too.
The Linear Motion Battle system was the forerunner to the system present in Tales of Symphonia. This 2D combat is fantastically simple system to pick up but oddly difficult to master. It blends strategy with action to make for a unique experience on the Super Nintendo. This game like so many of the classic RPG’S of the time and you may really struggle at certain points of the game as even the normal monsters who appear randomly can be incredibly difficult and a supply of apple and orangee gummies (Health and TP respectively) will defiantly not go astray.. Button mashing just wont work do the job for you. Fortunately you can set your party members to specific strategies (styles of combat) either before or mid battle whereby you can inform them how to use their TP (Technical Power) and this can be the essential to getting through the length of a dungeon. The Game is split into 3 specific areas of play dungeons/cities the overworld map and combat. The game is filled with NPC’s each with an interesting thing to say (although I must admit many of the NPC’s are much more interesting in the DeJap translation, this applies to various cut scenes as well but does not detract much from the official version)
Released in 1995 at a for the time whopping 48 MB’s this was an exemplary example of what sound in RPG’s should be like. With 32MB’s associated with the game and 16MB’s just for sound this game had what is considered by many to be the greatest sound-track of the era, fantastical orchestrated music accompanying some incredibly cheesy voice acting, it was one of the fore-runners to today’s voice acting, throughout the battles you will hear the names of moves called out and a victory cry of Yatta! (All Right!) By the exuberant half-elf mage Arche
Although compared to today’s multi-million dollar productions (such as the new version of FF III) it does begin to appear extremely dated for the SNES the graphics were up in the higher echelons of the industry, with great art direction the world manages to come quite readily to life and the watercolour theme comes through well.
Closing Comments This game may be difficult, it may be becoming dated but it will always hold a place in my heart as one of the most fantastic gaming experiences I have ever had. Its kept me busy for hours on end even once I had finished the game as it is chock full of side quests and Easter eggs for me to ferret out and enjoy. I would defiantly suggest this game to any lover of the classic SNES style RPG’s or anyone ready to spend some time with a classic game to see what I am talking about, I assure you, you wont be dissatisfied with the experience. But I warn you may become as infatuated and whittle away hundreds of hours playing through this game. This game tends to evoke either love or hate not many end up in between. Presentation 9/10 A highly polished game that was a absolute pleasure to look at and listen too. Graphics 8/10 Slightly dated but endearing all the same. Game Play 9/10 Fast and hard, not for the faint of heart but worth the effort, this will engross many a gamer. Sound 10/10 The Top of the SNES ranks for sound, this game has one of the best orchestrated sound tracks in a game ever made, cheesy voice acting aside. Lasting Appeal 8.5 Many hours in the main game with plenty to search for and do, and although like most RPG’s for many one play through is usually enough. The game is chock full of enough extras to make it worth spending plenty of extra time with. Overall 9/10
Demon’s Souls
Posted by Rhys Aronson in Video Games on January 8th, 2010
Demon’s Souls is an Action RPG set in the medieval kingdom of Boletaria which has been taken over by a Demonic Fog. While the story of the game isn’t fantastic it is interesting enough for the player to keep playing without groaning every time a (skipable) cut scene appears.
The game world is dark and oppressive, it does an amazing job of giving the impression that you are all alone in a hostile and beautiful landscape. From Software have obviously put a lot of work into all the designs from the realistic armor sets and weapons to the vast vistas you sometimes stumble upon while exploring the dungeons. Some of the lesser enemies are a tad generic but the boss Demons are a sight to behold, both massive and fearsome. For such a good looking game it runs pretty well with only a few choppy areas when a lot of effects are going off.
The player starts out by choosing one of the origin classes which vary in their starting stats and equipment but can be developed into whatever area the player wishes without too much trouble. After a short tutorial your character is killed and drawn into the nexus in soul form (where they have less health and a blue glow surrounding them) a state which you will be spending a large portion of the game in after a short bit of story it is straight into the action.
The real meat of the game is the combat which is punishing, responsive and an amazing amount of fun. While the controls are relatively simple they provide the player with a dearth of options to tackle any particular situation. A shield can be used to both block and parry attacks (opening the foe up for a critical strike) and is generally required for most characters, or a weapon can be wielded two handed for increased speed and strength. Combat is all about timing and positioning and while it is brutal it does not cheat like so many game do to be difficult, every foe is a threat and should not be taken lightly or they will do a reasonable job of ripping your face off.
The games multi player is spectacularly implemented with players able to help each other not just in co-op play but by leaving short messages with warnings or suggestions about the area ahead and the blood stains left by a players most recent death showing their mistakes.
PvP is interesting in that you invade other players worlds which can lead to a bit of frustration as you fight a group of enemies and a black phantom comes up behind and cuts you into fifty different pieces.
Demon’s Souls is an often difficult sometimes frustrating but almost always fun game with a lot of atmosphere and style and while doing so dosen’t fall into the trap of trying to be ‘edgy’ for the sake of being edgy like so many games do. I suggest it to anyone who doesn’t mind a challenge. My only real gripe is that sometimes the camera can make the platforming sections or fights more difficult then they should be.
Rating: Buy it!
Since this is my first review I will describe my rating system below:
NGRGHBLGRG NGGGH! This game is so perfect it has sent the reviewer into a spasm of joy.
Buy It! these are games which are a lot of fun and will be worth the money for almost every one.
Try It! is my rating for games which are fun but should probably be borrowed/rented or purchased with a 7 day return policy because they aren’t for everyone
Don’t Buy It! This game is awful and should only be purchased if you are incredibly bored and it costs less than $10
KILL IT WITH FIRE! This game is an affront to the gaming gods and should be burned on sight, It goes beyond shovelware.
Gaming Journalisim and Modern Warfare 2
Posted by Rhys Aronson in Video Games on October 21st, 2009
Gaming Journalism is often pretty damn awful, Admittedly the guys over at Destructoid and Rock Paper Shotgun generally do a good job.
In any event, what I am talking about in this particular case is this article over at gameinformer, As many of you have no doubt heard Infinity Ward have decided to eschew dedicated servers in favor of a p2p system similar to many Xbox live games (we will get to my opinion on that little tidbit later in the article), Adam Biessener managed to score an interview with the guys over at Infinity Ward about the whole incident but appears to have put together a article more reminiscent of the tabloid trash than Times Magazine, I’m not sure why a respectable website would pay this man to write for them..
Now I don’t pretend to be a journalist but I thought the idea was to investigate a situation and present a fair and balanced depiction of the situation, otherwise its just an opinion column, even the articles title radiates contempt for the people disappointed by IW’s decision, nor does he seem to have asked any of the questions on the communities mind or even fact checked the statistics he was given. The article appears like its missing half its content and is pandering to the developer (I expect that was the only way he managed to get the interview) while doing its best to piss on and insult the community.
There are certainly some benefits to the IWNet approach but they have been brought into play by ripping out parts of normal PC gameplay for no apparent reason, I would gratefully accept an automatic match making system so I can jump into a game quickly when I want to if it did not come at the cost of the dedicated servers which provide the player base with flexibility, stability and a degree of control. Not to mention the limitations P2P hosting puts on game size and performance.
The decision for P2P based hosting causes some unique issues for those of us here in Australia, while I could probably host a server with similar capabilities (power and bandwidth wise) to those currently run for gamers I am in the minority and with a completely impenetrable match making system I am just as likely to end up playing on an incredibly laggy game hosted by an American. I have trouble finding games with a solid connection in the 2 player turn based Blood Bowl, I am not looking forward to trying to play with 16 other people on some kids core 2 duo with a 256k upload speed.
Not only that it kills the communities that build up around servers, as most of my current readers know I am a member of the Australian gaming community over at www.co-opp.net with players ranging from the casual to the incredibly Hardcore. We sprang from the GameArena Counter-Strike Source community and now are a conglomeration of four separate clans playing games from Team Fortress 2 to Aion. I have met some great friends in this community and we now run a LAN every six months among a myriad of other social events, without the dedicated servers to base that community around I would not have gotten to know any of these people and would be a poorer person for it (no matter how soppy and lame that sounds)
What I am saying is: Infinity Ward, please don’t try to take away the factors that make the gaming community what it is today because you have a want to lock down the experience and force DLC down our throats, Don’t take away the very reason we still play games on the PC rather than the consoles.
Disclaimer: I have nothing against Console gaming or gamers, I own every home and handheld console on the market and play a number of offline games on them, they just don’t provide what I want in an online experience.
Game companies need to stop gouging us
Posted by Rhys Aronson in Video Games on October 17th, 2009
Cheap on Steam
So I went out and bought the Dragon Age: Origins Digital Deluxe Edition off steam for US$55 yesterday and I just went and had a look at the retail price at JB Hi-Fi is nearly double that. Even taking into account the reduced sales base and the distance for shipping (assuming they can’t stamp the DVD’s out here in Australia) that kind of difference is criminal.
The gaming community needs to get it through to the industry that this kind of thing is completely unacceptable, If I can import a game from the other side of the world and make a significant saving on retail something is horribly wrong.
So gaming Industry if you can give me one reasonable reason for gouging your Australian customer base like a stuck pig I will start to be sympathetic when you and the retailers complain about how difficult it is to turn a buck in an industry which is booming during a recession. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if more and more of the brick and mortar business is lost to places like CDWOW and steam as they become more well known. When they start hemorrhaging customers because they dont give a shit I won’t shed a tear.
Games with Soul
Posted by Rhys Aronson in Video Games on September 28th, 2009
The folks over at NetGameRadio had a bit of a discussion about what games we are playing today will be considered classics ten years from now. I think if we were to fast forward to then we may be surprised by what shows up. I think the classics of the future will be the games with a soul, the ones that shine in spite of their imperfections and draw the player into the game world.
We get told that many games are fantastic because they have gritty and photo-realistic graphics or some while often they are fun for a while (Gears Of War, Any Halo after the original.) they are not the kind of games that I will ever come back to or most likely even remember years from now.
Then we have games like Valkyria Chronicles, Bioshock, Baldur’s Gate 2 and Okami which draw a player in and take hold of them so that ten years from now you will be able to talk to another gamer and reminisce about them and even go back and enjoy playing them out of something other than pure nostalgia. Zelda Ocraina of Time is a perfect example of this from the past.
This “Soul” that games can have is the true reason some great games between a true classic and some are just considered good games. The makings of a true classic come from a few areas, The Graphics, The Gameplay and The Writing. While having all three is spades is not a requirement for a truly great game it certainly helps.
The Graphics
It’s all about style and implementation in this arena, Okami and Valkyria Chronicles are two of the best examples of this recently. These aren’t the most technically impressive products but the way the artists have used the engines to produce an endearing and enjoyable art style which help make the game world something you can just spend time looking at it and enjoy yourself. Not that games have to be as stylistic as those two to have what I would consider great graphics. Photo-realism or a mix of the two implemented correctly can be used in the same way, Bioshock and CoD4 proved this with a game worlds that drag you into the story and almost make you believe you are there.
Crysis is a prime example of failure to do this because while it had the engine to do an amazing job it did not provide a game would that you truly felt part of. Some parts were truly amazing (The frozen ocean) but others failed to evict an emotional response from the player.
The Gameplay
I suppose this section is pretty self evident to players; poor controls, unnecessary obstacles (Damn you Quick time Events) and lazy level design are the big detractors in this area and its pretty obvious when games fail at them.
The Writing
Unfortunately this is the area when so many games fall flat on their face and lose a lot of their luster. Even some truly amazing games are kind of disappointing in this area (I’m looking at you Final Fantasy 7).
There’s a reason for this because it is a truly difficult task to write for a game. There is the temptation to overly verbose without actually saying anything (MGS4) and I expect a general lack of resources being devoted to it. Intelligent characterisation and depth of storytelling is sparse in the gaming world. Baldur’s Gate 2 did this very well by spending a lot of time on the characters other than the PC, I think you will hard pressed to find a player who wasn’t charmed by the antics of the valiant Minsc and his hamster Boo.
I expect many developers think of story as a means to an end saying give me an excuse for the player to be doing this rather than “why would this character do this? and how would he go about it? What motivates him to act this way?” As technology advances I am of the opinion that this kind of sloppy thinking becomes less and less excusable and it makes me cringe to see a character who is calm and collected throughout the rest of the game something completely irrational with no justification just because it is easier.
Not to say a games story has to be deep and thought provoking as much simpler stories can be a lot of fun (de Blob, Mario, Banjo Kazooie etc) as long as the writers realise it and write them that way. I cringed all through the story of Gears of War 2 as they tried to take the story much more serious than it was capable of supporting.
In addition and intermixed with these three areas is the sound, careful selection of music so it is suited to the gameplay and storyline currently going on in game but without breaking from the style of the game is something I could write a whole other article on.
So that’s my opinion on what helps put together a true classic, let me know what you think in comments if you disagree.