Violent fighting to come again

I wasn't going to do this thing again, instead I wanted to just throw up a quick GOTY post. Since I've stopped cataloging my purchases on this site, I've had to pad the master list from memory, therefore it's probably incomplete, but there was still enough content to have a decent contest. In the process of deciding, I made a list any way, so numbering them was only a small extra step to make. In the end, I ended up with a Top 10 Games Of 2010 anyway. As usual, the list is in reverse order, without any fanfare. I'll follow it up some arbitrary mentions just for kicks.

1. Nier - Cavia/Square Enix
Single handedly the best game I've played all year. An engaging story, fantastic music, fun gameplay, nice graphics. A complete package.

2. Deadly Premonition - Access Games/Ignition Entertainment
A very close second, it only lost out in the end due to region locking. Due to this, I had to play through this entire game at a friend's house. The game experience was still enough to rank at the top of this list despite the extra effort.

3. Tatsunoko VS Capcom Ultimate All-Stars - 8ing/Capcom
The original Tatsucap missed last years list by a month. Despite the (cosmetic) short comings of this title, the core game is still good enough to rank on any decent Top 10 list.

4. Resonance Of Fate - Tri-Ace/SEGA
The best RPG of the year. Very original in design, it stumbles over its own ambition in execution. Its importance is further underscored by its existence as an HD console role-playing game. One of an endangered species.

5. Fragile Dreams - Tri-Crecendo/Xseed Games
The most emo game of 2010. The audiovisuals are exceptional, and the core game is solid enough to make the list. The perfect game to play if you want to feel depressed.

6. Arc Rise Fantasia - Image Epoch/Ignition Entertainment
A vary by-the-numbers Tales' clone. In a year without a Tales' of release, that warrants a mention. A very traditional entry in the genre, also something of a rarity these days.

7. Gran Turismo 5 - Polyphony Digital/Sony Computer Entertainment
I was never a Gran Turismo fan. I am one now. The first game to make me wish I was back home so I could play some more instead of stuck at work, in a long, long time.

8. Ys The Oath In Felghana - Falcom/Xseed Games
A portable port of a Windows PC remake of a 16-bit action RPG. I remember jumping on those enemies' heads in those mines at the beginning on the SNES back in the day. The remake remains faithful, while modernising the parts that needed modernising. This is how you re-imagine things, Neverland.

9. Sands Of Destruction - Image Epoch/SEGA
It wants to be Xenogears 2, and pokes fun of itself for exactly that. Though content-lite, a pretty technically interesting game, despite being saddled with anaemic hardware. Given its pedigree, it makes one wonder what could have been.

10. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers - Square Enix
More of a tech demo with a plot than a game. Still, something about the world and characters made me want to go back to it. Another fine Akitoshi Kawazu production.

Developer Of the Year: Image Epoch
Does not compute...ffffffffkkkkkkkkkkkzzzzzzz......!@#$%

Publisher Of the Year: Ignition Entertainment
It was a three-way tie between them, SEGA, and Xseed, but having both of their entries be console games, put Ignition on top for the second year in a row, despite some ironic setbacks. (Square Enix was disqualified. See below.)

The Wii made out like a bandit, with four titles on the list. I'm probably more surprised about that than any one else. It feels like every time I buy a new Wii game I have to buy new batteries for the Wii-mote, since it's been sitting idle for so long the standby state completely drained them. The second most represented "console" were multi-platform titles across both the PS3 and 360 (the PS360 if you will). With one exclusive going to each distinct platform. Deadly Premonition cheated a little by being 360 exclusive in the West, while multi in Japan.

I'd also like to give an Honorable Mention to 2K Czech's Mafia II. It was the only Western developed game on my list of contenders for the year.

Saddest Fucking Failure Of the Year: Final Fantasy XIII
Also not much of a contest. Although No More Heroes 2 was a contender, it still remained a playable game despite being a let down. FFXIII is an embarrassment bigger than FFXIV in my mind. You can patch the missing content into an online game at a later date, FFXIII will stay a hollow shell of a game forever.

20% of the games I bought this year were RPG's, down 9% from last year. That's not counting action games with levels and hit-points like Nier and Ys. I'm not happy about the trend of blending genre conventions we've been experiencing for the past decade. I hope for a champion to rise up and preserve tradition, while innovating in a the narrow space allowed by the genre, similar to what Cave has done for shooting games. I hope it wont be Image Epoch, though. Style over substance is how Square Enix got into the mess they're in now.

Addendum: I'll probably wind up realizing I've omitted a bunch of games from contention for no good reason over the coming days. I'll list them here, even though they probably won't be anything that can affect the outcome and force a recount. I did forget these games, after all, because they are forgettable.

• Wizardry PSN - Acquire - Painfully old school
• Guwange - Cave - Good old game
• Metroid Other M - Team Ninja - Oh yeah, that game
• Sengoku Basara Samurai Heroes - Capcom - Was fun for a few minutes
• Gunblade NY/LA Machine Guns - SEGA - Pretty damn short
• Time Crisis Rising Storm - Bandai Namco - Lightgun game without the lightgun :(
• Final Fight Double Impact - Proper Games - Comes with Magic Sword, and something else
• Afterburner Climax - SEGA - This one could be in the Top 10
• NeoGeo Battle Coliseum - SNK Playmore - Kind of decent, it's no SVC Chaos
• KOF Sky Stage - SNK Playmore - Kind of bad, but Geese Howard falling off of his skyscraper makes up for it
• Malicious - Alvion - Bought it to support the developer, played it for like five minutes, while drunk

That's probably it. A lot of downloadables on this list. This is a big problem with digital distribution for collectors. If I can't see the box on my shelf, I won't remember I own it.

Don't think, just destroy!

I decided to stop doing stuff like this, since it's more trouble than it's worth really. Between finding photogenic locations (say hello to my couch), taking the actual pictures in a manner that wouldn't look like complete crap, uploading them, making thumbnails, and writing up the blog entry, the whole process sometimes took longer than the time I actually would spend with the game. I decided to make an exception in this case. After all, it isn't every day that Cave drops a DoDonPachi on us. Now that Raiden* is gone, I don't have much else to look forward to in the shooting space. I decided to pick up the Limited Edition, for the reasons mentioned above, but also because the cover artwork is super nice. The Cave nerds weren't happy to see the boss ships transform into moe girls for this instalment, but they can go fuck themselves. This one piece of art has more character and weight than the entire shooting genre combined (save maybe Gradius V).

The cover girl is the first level boss, AI, looking up at the sky where the contrail of the player's fighter can be seen. The scene depicts the moments immediately before the first boss battle takes place. While the player is busy blasting his way through relentless hordes of enemies, the boss is sitting back, in a rather peaceful and serene setting, contemplating the upcoming battle. Try sticking that in your chainsaw gun.

The extra included with this package was an arranged soundtrack CD. After a few pack-in soundtracks, I was pleasantly surprised to find this an actual album, in a jewel case, with art work and everything. The mixes were not what I was expecting, but it is definitely a cool extra to have. The mixes border on the ambient genre, but have enough melody and instrumentation to not induce a coma. The piano rendition of the boss theme is eyebrow raising in particular (and matches the cover art nicely). On some of the other tracks I'd swear these guys stole Nobuo Uematsu's synthesizer. Good stuff all around.

The real kick to the head with this package is the horrible disc art on the game disc itself. Ever wonder what a $100+ game disc looks like? This is your answer, and it ain't pretty. Every time I see a single color disc I immediately have flashbacks to the PSX port of Samurai Shodown III. I can understand the vanilla version getting the red-headed step child treatment, but the LE? C'mon.

The game itself was a wake up call as well. After playing through the iPhone version several times, I was worried about some of the design decision Cave took in this instalment of the storied series. Thankfully, they turned out to be iPhone exclusive. One of the biggest differences between the iPhone version, and the series as a whole was the movement of the ship when the laser was activated. In previous games, the speed of the ship was halved, while in the iPhone port, the speed remained constant. This eliminated the biggest reason to alternate between weapon systems, and indeed the easiest way to get through the iPhone version was to switch the laser on, and keep it on for the duration of the game. (To my great surprise I was able to one-credit-clear the iPhone Arcade mode, where in any other shooting game I can make it up to level three or thereabouts during the first week.) None of that crap here. Not only is the laser weaker than the main shot, it also slows the ship down considerably, making it troublesome to use while dodging bullets. This is called game design. Take notes kids.

In addition to the sexed up high-res arcade mode, the disc also features two Arrange modes, as well as a ver.1.51 mode, made exclusive to the first print run and Cave Festival attendees, which throws past DDP bosses into the DaiFukkatsu main game. In addition to crafting excellent arcade games, Cave has lately been highly experimental with their arrange modes. DaiFukkatsu certainly lives up that tradition. The first mode, ver.B is an abstract melding of DDP with Tron. If that sounds out there, it definitely is. Most of the background graphics are replaced with grid patterns, while the enemies have neon highlights and numbers attached to them. I don't even know what the hell was going on, but the point is to exploit whatever system is in place for maximum score. This is a pure score chase mode.

The second arrange mode, ver.L is more mysterious. The "L" stands for Lei-yan, the Chinese dress robot girl from DaiFukkatsu and Dai-Ou-Jou, and the theme is definitely "pink." Original Dai-Ou-Jou artwork is even used during the score screen and the wallpaper behind the game screen. The player isn't given a choice of aircraft, instead they're given a ship not found in the main game*. The weapon and scoring systems seem to resemble Dai-Ou-Jou much more than DaiFukkatsu as well. The ship moves much quicker than the standard ship, and fires the "shot" laser from the original DDP. If that DOJ patch never materializes, at least we'll have this mode to tie us over, I suppose.

A slick package, for a slick game. Cave not only can create intricate games that challenge all players, they've also learned to make those same games inclusive to newcomers, and wrap the whole thing in a style of their own. A Novice mode makes this game very similar to the iPhone port, as well as the myriad of game options and modes means that the player can customize the game to their style. Easily worth the price of admission.

*The ver.L ship looks an awful lot like the Raiden fighter. And more then one location in this game make me think of the Raiden series. I wonder if Cave absorbed some ex-Seibu Kaihatsu and/or Moss staff. Can the return of Raiden Fighters be not far off?