Spoony devs

Today's a holiday, and this week is completely blank. To celebrate I've pulled out my PSX to play Final Fantasy V. I did this because the game is unplayable on the PS3. "Unsaveable" is more accurate, actually. A 50% chance of a game ending crash when entering the save menu, not groovy. It's unplayable on my PSX. I have a US SCPH-10001 unit, which makes it 15 years old by now. It's been through a mod chip install, a lens replacement, a case replacement, and countless hours of loading. I'm frankly shocked the damn thing still powers up. Some games play fine, some don't. The PSX port of Final Fantasy V doesn't, unfortunately, mostly since it loads after almost every button press.

Next week SNK serves us all by releasing NeoGeo Battle Coliseum via Xbox Live Arcade. I think they announced this since before the Xbox 360 was even released, so maybe since 2005? I tried it for a few rounds on a friends PS2 back in the day, and it wasn't spectacular enough to plunk down the cash for my own copy. It's worth the 800 MSP, though. Gets. Japan finally gets a(nother?) Wii RPG in Xenoblade. That game is butt fugly, but it seems to be the most ambitious Wii and RPG game in general. The world seems to be the most interesting environment in any game, and has the potential to be fantastic, but can be wholly screwed up if the developer got lazy. We'll find out soon enough if Nintendo X Monolith = good.

Game dictatorship

I'm not dead, yet. The reason I haven't been posting anything is because there's been nothing to post. Play-Asia still hasn't shipped my Blaze Union, so I'm twiddling my thumbs over here. Seriously, the biggest news was this fucking guy. Unless you're holding your breath for Miku Hatsune on your PS3, or a Front Mission Evolved release date. (Neither of which I was.) What the fuck, Japan? We finally got Knights Contract today, which is basically a bigger Berserk rip-off than Nier was. Looks cool, mostly because it's a Berserk rip-off. Nothing about the game looks original or inspired in any way. It's also not coming until 2011, so hyping it now seems a little pointless. The most interesting thing I took away from the game is that it's developed by Game Republic for Bandai Namco, just like another high-profile HD project, Majin. Other than Tekken and (some) Tales Of games, Bamco doesn't seem to be developing any games internally any more. A sad state of affairs this is.

Not Monster Hunter

I heard on more than one occasion that the PSP is the system to own if you're a RPG fan, or an avid importer. To this I have to say "huh?" I've been both for over 10 years, and I have maybe five PSP games, and they all suck. Yes, there may be a huge volume of software available, but it's all terrible, console-lite, or a watered down port. The blasted thing finally gets an original entry for its catalog courtesy of Sting and Atlus in Hexyz Force this week. This one's been out in Japan for months, and I haven't heard anything about it, similarly to most hand held RPG's that aren't called Dragon Quest. Not even a collage of upskirt shots of the girl characters on Japanese bullshit blogs. Even Atelier games get those for fucks sake. Hexyz Force looks the most traditional out of the crop so far, save for maybe Brave Story, but it also looks like the most super generic anime fare. Nothing about this game catches my eye in any way.

Maybe the game was equally regarded in Japan, since Atlus has resorted to forcing Sting to get their B-team to crank out a direct sequel to the only Dept.Heaven game that was popular. Blaze Union is Yggdra Union 2. New characters, same game. Works for me. I had heard complaints previously that Yggdra was ploddingly slow. I have no idea what the kid was talking about, but I have a feeling he was commenting on YouTube movies of the PSP version. I played through the Japanese and US versions utilizing the original GBA, Game Boy Player for GameCube, and GBA Micro, and it always felt like it had the perfect balance between strategic unit placement, and auto battle scenes, with the ocasional button press to unleash a special attack. I tried the PSP port for maybe 30 seconds, but I already noticed that it had more button presses during the menus and longer wait times for the character dialog scnenes, due to every line being voiced. Much like most ports, the original feel of the game was lost in translation. I hope they retooled this one to be a better fit for the PSP. Still, the most interesting thing this week.

The last thing we have this week is Deathsmiles II X. The best part of that, frankly, is the "II X" in the title, because it reminds me of Super Street Fighter II X. But where SSFIIX was the definitive version of a classic, Deathsmiles II is the sequel nobody was asking for to the game that nobody wanted in the first place but that turned out not so bad in the end. Will wait for Aksys localization.

Addendum gestalt

I've played Nier for probably close to 40 hours by now, I was never clock watching, and I enjoyed every minute of it, up until the literal last second. The game has four endings, the last two correspond to the choices offered the player upon defeating the last boss the third time around. One of those is not an option given the role playing nature of the game, so I chose the only one I could. It was hard to discern whether it was the "good" or "bad" ending, as per the game's norm, but it was a well thought out ending more for personal character development's sake, than story exposition. Everything was going smoothly, until, in a feat that would make Hideo Kojima turn green with envy, the game thanked me for playing and erased my entire save file. All weapons, items, questlog, and experience. I still had things I wanted to do, even though I was never going to try for the final ending choice. Now that I have to redo the entire quest just to get back to that point, it leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. Partly it was my own fault, as the game warned me several times of what it was about to do, but I went for it anyway, since I didn't actually expect it to follow through. (Damn you Kojima for making me doubt everything I see on screen!) I know I said I wanted games to definitively end, but God damn.

g = 10

I read this article a few months ago in GDMag. It was a cool article, pretty nerdy and technical. One thing immediately struck me when reading between the lines. If animators don't have a clue about how the object they're animating moves, why are they animators? The equations used in the article are literally Newtonian Physics 101. If one is in a AP math program, one could take this in high school instead of waiting until freshman year of college. You don't even need to be a gymnast to know about center-of-mass and rotation. It's pretty distressing to learn that the people who make the games we play have no fucking clue. It's also too bad I don't give a damn about UFC.

Medieval opera symphony

I guess this whole Dept. Heaven thing is pretty popular for Sting and Atlus. They just released the Knights In the Nightmare PSP port, and Blaze Union is coming next week (which is actually a side story). For some cross-media synergy they're also releasing the Blaze Union Original Soundtrack, in addition to re-releasing the Yggdra and KItN OST's in June. Say what you want about the games, but their soundtracks are impeccable. I've played the KItN disc more times than the game, that's for sure.

The legendary hero of legend

I sort of called it, and sort of made a claim that I'd care, but almost two years later, I sort of lost all interest. XSEED is bringing Falcom's PSP stuff over to America. To be perfectly honest, it's about five years too late for that news to be relevant. Ys has always been a painfully archaic series, and my own personal interest in Sora no Kiseki ("Trails In the Sky") has dwindled considerably over the years. My PSP has been collecting the proverbial and literal dust for so long, I don't even think of it as a viable source of gaming anymore, and this announcement does nothing to change that. I once read in GameSpite that "Falcom hasn't gained any new fans in over a decade," and I'd have to agree based on just personal experience. I was always mildly interested in their stuff but never had the chance to play them, but when I finally got to try a few, I lost most of that interest. Their games were mindblowing once upon a time, and they've changed little since, making them the last bastion of the old school today, which serves only their old school fans. Unless their first few releases are accompanied by massive promotional hype, which knowing XSEED they won't be, I can't see myself picking any of these up. The last chance I'll give Falcom to impress me is Ys I & II Chronicles.

Roundabout

I spent all day yesterday going through admin-fu in order to get this place more presentable looking. I was so proud of myself when I got it working, I forgot to post the weekly outlook update. Good thing there are no games and stuff coming or I might have missed something important, he said sarcastically. This week we get Senko no Ronde DUO on 360. I was hyped about the original arcade when it was first announced, I bought it day one when it was ported to 360, I popped it in, and played for about half and hour in total. A game that combines fighting and shooting into one couldn't hold my attention. I'm rather disappointed with myself about that, but there is something about that game that prevents me from physically getting into it. I'm all about the presentation and gameplay, but when it comes time to actually play, I'm less enthused. Maybe I'll check it out if someone localizes it and releases it at a bargain price point. Maybe I'm just weary of blowing another $80 just to see it on amazon.com for $19.99 in six months.

Next week we're back in business. Atlus is dropping Hexyz Force on an indifferent North American populace. Followed by Blaze Union on an indifferent Japanese populace. Deathsmiles II X also hits on Thursday. And again I'm wondering if it's worth my time and money to import. Deathsmiles 1 was at least universally acclaimed, but II is treated with apathy by both shooting snobs (Cave fans) and the general arcade going public.

In addition to games, Square Enix is releasing another of those SQ remix albums. Chill SQ hits on the 26th, featuring electronica remixes of various Square Enix (mostly Square) themes. I'm curious to check this out myself, but I forgot to buy a Mother's Day gift for my mom, so I'll pick one up for her and rip it to my mp3 player after I put it on her iPod. True story.

Let's go crazy!

I loved Street Fighter IV a great deal when it first hit (as you can see). I picked up the domestic PS3 version, because it meant I could use the Sega Saturn styled USB pads (which I purchased especially for the game). I always wanted to pick up the 360 version, just to show my support. I also wanted an import version, since most, if not all, my Street Fighter games are Japanese. In addition, I really liked the remixed character themes from SFIV that played during the rival match and ending sequence. It made good sense, at the time, then to pick up the import Limited Edition of Super Street Fighter IV, which helped support not only SF, but also the 360 in Japan, and it gave me a CD of the remixed themes for my troubles. There was also a downloadable animated featurette, but the less said about that the better.

By the time I popped the disc in it was already pretty late, so I didn't have time to fully explore the disc, but if I'm not mistaken, the biggest addition to Super over vanilla IV are a whole bunch of internet facing modes, which are extremely useless to me, a few new characters, and one new Ultra combo per character. I picked Ryu and was able to blow through the game in one credit. The final boss' AI wasn't even tweaked in this version, which struck me as a little odd. If I think back to all the changes from Street Fighter II to Super Street Fighter II (or any version of Street Fighter to the next, really), it makes me a little curious if the use of that "Super" moniker was appropriate in this case? If one wanted to be cynical, one could take it even a step further and claim that it's not "Super" if all you did was add the stuff that should have been there in the first place. In the end, maybe, I've simply gotten used to having Street Fighter around, and this iteration isn't nearly as special as SFIV was. The CD of remixes is totally worth a purchase, but maybe not at $70.

Hurry up and age

Oh look, a gaem wit old people init. The replay and Ending B were much more informative. Looking forward to Ending C, although I get the feeling I'll have to read supplemental documents to fully grasp the story here. Points off for that.

True form change

I've been neglecting this space for a good while now, and I feel I should make some sort of effort to remedy that. While slacking off, I've been putting in decent time into Nier, which I've never even bothered to note on here, so consider this your warning. I was partially suckered into buying it by the marketing, and manufacturer created hype, since gamer interest in this one was at almost zero since the day it was announced. I did have one eye on it from the start, since it was a Cavia developed game. I never played the spiritual prequel, Drakengard, or to be more accurate I couldn't stomach playing it for more than an hour. That game was the worst parts of Dynasty Warriors, combined with the best parts of Panzer Dragoon, which unfortunately couldn't add up to a playable game. I did like Bulletwitch, though. It had good ideas, that were poorly executed, which segues nicely into Nier.

This game is, thankfully, a little more competent, combining the gameplay style of The Legend Of Zelda, with the theme and mechanics of Berserk. Swing huge sword, kill Moblin...er, Shades, throw bombs into the mouth of a giant floating head boss, collect Tri-Force...I mean, keys to Shadowlord's castle, to rescue your princess... sorry, daughter, while bathing in blood. At least they didn't cop out and called it "spirit energy" or something. Blood is blood, it's very red, and there are gallons of it everywhere. This game does not reinvent the wheel, by any means, nor does it even try to improve, or streamline the design. It's just a plain sum of stolen parts. I have my doubts as to how far this game can go towards becoming Square Enix's next pillar franchise. The biggest innovation this game can claim is the gratuitous (over)use of shooting game bullet patterns during boss fights, and just regular grunt enemy encounters. Everyone loves to shoot red balls of energy in your general direction, which prove to be quite a threat thanks to the imprecise and sluggish movements of the protagonist. Owing to this design choice, if one was so inclined, it could be possible to label Nier as an action-RPG-shooter. The RPG element mainly comes from levelling up through experience gained from defeating enemies, a key step towards making combat in this, and any other game frankly, not seem like a complete waste of time. In addition to shooter and RPG elements, the designers decided to go completely old-school, and throw in some text adventure parts. At one point in the game the player must enter the dream of another, and the entire sequence is conveyed through text, with no graphics or sound whatsoever save for the background music. It is also possible to die during this part if the player makes the wrong choice, and it counts as a boss encounter in the in-game trophy room, making this an essential part of the game instead of an optional sidequest.

Graphically it's serviceable. The environments and models are pretty plain, but look convincing enough, are realistically styled and varied enough to not bore the player. Simple homes are simple, grand castles are grand, ugly people are ugly, pretty people are pretty. Nothing feels over designed, or too barren. It's pretty subtly impressive to experience. My favorite part is the wreckage of a huge bridge that can be seen off-shore from the seaside town. It's just far enough for the depth-of-field algorithm to slightly blur it giving the impression that it's a truly massive structure. Combined with it's wrecked state, it really helps to subtly convey the feel of the distant future world. The water at the beach is a flat polygon, though, but the texture map moves to simulate the rippling. The game also uses a sort of dynamic lighting that varies from time to time to simulate varying weather conditions (sunny/overcast) and times of day (morning/evening). There is no day/night cycle however, something that the game tries to explain away via a "there's no night in the year 3000, lol." While the technical game is barebones competent, the presentation is where it truly shines.

The music. Putting it plainly, is the greatest part of this game. The composers went far above and beyond the call of duty here, and created a soundtrack that pretty easily rivals any of the masters in the genre. Even before getting the ability to swing a sword taller than the main character, I immediately got the Berserk vibe from the theme that plays during the field areas between towns. While not a direct copy of Susumu Hirasawa's work, unlike the gameplay, the music does an impeccable job of creating an original and "alien" atmosphere for a world that's similar to ours, but not quite. The setting of the game is our Earth, a thousand years into the future, so while a few relics remain, they are completely foreign to the local inhabitants. One technique the composers used to great effect to convey this feeling are foreign language vocals. While the ending theme is sung in English or Japanese, depending on your region, the majority of the vocals in the game are sung in much more exotic languages, most of which I myself don't recognize. It is a very refreshing change of pace. Musically, the soundtrack can be compared to Yasunori Mitsuda's Celtic-influenced Creed and Chrono Cross soundtracks, while again, not copying it wholesale. It's so refreshing to see a Japanese artist creating something wholly unique that can't be easily labelled or compared to anything else. The biggest surprise? The music was composed in-house at Cavia, not the huge multimedia conglomerate publishing partner, Square Enix. At this point I'd have to ask, what exactly was Square Enix's contribution to this project? The musical style throughout the game is very sweeping, old-world, choral, symphonic stuff, which fits very well, but does seem monotonous compared to a typical RPG soundtrack from Japan. Hell, even Castlevania likes some electric guitar riffing from time to time. While I certainly wasn't disappointed by this, I did notice the absence. Therefore, I was very pleasantly surprised by what I heard during the downloadable content missions which were made available two days ago. Rocking techno remixes of the amazingly beautiful music from the main game. I'd go out on a limb and claim that the remixes elevate the music even further into greatness. While the standard OST should be purchased without a second thought, a remix AST should be number one on fans wishlists. The OST is a contender for best soundtrack of the year, an AST would be hands down the winner. A note of praise should also be given to the localization and voice work. The writing is entertaining, and each character delivers their lines with the dedication of true actors, not office staff who were shanghaied into the audio booth.

Wish I could be as optimistic about the actual content of the DLC though. As I alluded to before, the game is mechanically very rough, and jumping is by far the most cumbersome action to perform with any sort of precision. Thanks to this, my run through was cut unceremoniously short by a platforming segment that seems quite impossible to traverse by employing only the physical skills of the protagonist. Sadly, the technical flaws again serve to hamper the experience of an otherwise very interesting game. Which Nier certainly is, mainly due to the story being a fairly convoluted mess, as per Japanese norm. The game will require multiple play-throughs to get any idea of what's actually going on, which is an annoyance, since it's a fairly long game, even if one were to skip all the optional side content. (Around 20 hours from title screen to staff roll.) Thankfully, subsequent play-throughs begin at the half-way point of the game, and carry over all the weapons and equipment the player has amassed throughout the course of the game, making fighting the same bosses over again much easier, and quite satisfying when they can be felled by only a few swings of an over-sized sword. After watching 'Ending A,' I still have no idea what is going on, who my enemies are, or what happened to any of my companions. It was at least a happy ending, I think. I learned more about the setting of this game through promotional materials, prior to its release, than from actually playing it. In the end, all this does add up into quite a playable experience, as my 30+ hour game clock can attest to. Overall, in regards to Nier as a game, it's not bad for a first time effort, unfortunately this is neither Square Enix's nor Cavia's first game.

Nine days later: A cautionary note.

Lost adventures

Talk about the bottom the barrel. I'd have a hard time picking anything coming this week even under threat of grave bodily harm. I guess I'd pick Lost Planet 2, since it's Capcom, and may not completely suck, just mildly suck. Shooters make my eyes glaze over and put my brain to sleep, but Capcom managed to shoehorn some little bit of silly crap into it to make it mildly interesting (joke weapons, joke characters, T&A, etc.). Other than that, we have a remake of the last game that ever needed to be remade, by the last people who should be remaking said game. Rocket Knight Adventures was pretty much the perfect 2D 16-bit game. Rocket Knight will probably shit all over that legacy when it hits the downloadable services. I fear the future.

Press #1 for cheesecake

When I said I wanted more Aegina, this is not exactly what I meant. Here come the inappropriate pre-order phonecards for Blaze Union. It's mildly amusing when it's broads that I don't care about, but if it's characters I respect, it feels... creepy.

Back to back

The actual holidays are over, so some people are back at work today. Most PR companies decided to shoot out press releases to various news organizations announcing insignificant things. This is sort of what bugs me about this (self-imposed) gig. I kind of care about this stuff, as a few of them are shooting game related, but at the same time these announcements personally aren't important to me, since I won't be buying any of those things. Should I even bother "wasting" space retyping them? I don't have ads on here, page views and clicks are not a priority for me. But if I wait to post about something that excites me, I'll have one post every four years or so. I'll at least try to make something out of them.

First up, Square Enix is putting Raystorm HD up on the appropriate console manufacturers downloadable services. (What should we call that, XLA + PSN = XLAN? PSXLA?) OK. Time for a tangent to make this interesting. The elevator music in Raystorm was composed by Tamayo Kawamoto. She has a side project called BETTA FLASH (which I love). They're very low key, and haven't been doing much of anything lately. They did manage to put a new song on the CD included with a Fan Book for some generic anime/game/thing(?). Which emoticon best imitates one's head in one's hands? Where the hell did this come from? Why? The last anime theme they did never found its way onto the internets via legitimate means, so the physical disc was the only way to get the tracks. Something I still haven't gotten around to. J-iTunes hoop-jumping/bullshit-tery is the best I can hope for for getting my hands on this track. T_T

It gets better. The next bit of news is about something I'm physically against, Triangle Service. Apparently Shooting Love 200X never got an official soundtrack album, because it's getting one on the 13th, "thanks" to INH. I tried to care about Shooting Love, but they didn't want me, so fuck them. It has unfortunately become sort of a linchpin for the non-Cave shooting game scene. Go Sato and WASi303 both contribute remixes to the album, which also includes the entirety of the Trizeal Dreamcast Limited Edition soundtrack (all two songs). This is why I'm against them. Thanks for nothing Fujino.

The last bit is about Cave. I like them now. It's about the Limited Edition of Deathsmiles II. I don't care about Deathsmiles II, and about the LE even less. Junya Inoue is a cool artist, though, but even the pre-order bonus looks "meh." It's like everyone is phoning this one in, again.

Sigh.

Delay of game

Just a warning. It's Golden Week in Japan, and if you've played Persona 3 and/or 4 (or read the internet for any period of time) you know that means a week-long holiday when the entire country basically shuts down. No news, no new game releases, no nothing. Therefore this space will be even more sparsely updated than it has been recently. I need to find a new gimmick. Being the non-corporate Siliconera isn't doing it for me. Maybe I should switch hobbies, ditch video games and take up fishing. PROTIP: The old man said "beach," he didn't say "this beach."

(It took me HOURS to figure that out.)

A few bucks short

Oops, this post is about 8 hours late. Don't worry, we didn't miss much. The next two weeks are a completely blank slate. The last two weeks of May are pretty busy to make up for that, though. Senko no Ronde DUO is the next game of interest, due on May 20th. Back to Nier for me. Oh, and Play-Asia is marking all "classic" games 20% off. So they're just about market value after P-A's stupid markup, classy.