#637 Dead or Alive 4

Posted: 27th September 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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1

273th played so far

IMG_4165Genre: Fighting
Platform: Xbox 360
Year of Release: 2005
Developer: Team Ninja
Publisher: Tecmo

Dead or Alive is one of those second tier fighting series. Not as known as the big names, like Street Fighter, but big enough to be known, have a large fan base, and have grown to a series with plenty of entries.

For that reason, it has a single entry on the list, with it intended to be the final and best installment. A fifth game was released about a year ago – too late to be in our list – so this is what we’re getting down to discuss, presumably with the rest of series to go along with it.

Our Thoughts

I’m going to stick my hands up and say that I was one of those hormonal teenage boys that when they got a copy of Dead or Alive 2 on the PS2 they boosted up the age numbers so the girls had ultra bouncy boobs. It was fun to watch the sisters fight with their twins going up and down… and yet it did nothing for me but make me laugh. To be a gay kid making girls have cat fights… lost on me utterly. And yeah, even in this game it’s just funny at times.

So yes, as a bit of a fighter fan I am no stranger to Dead or Alive but I have to openly say that whilst I do have fun with this, as a series, it does fall below Blazblue, Virtua Fighter, Soul Caliber and (my all time favourite) Tekken when it comes to my affection. However, what kept me playing this was not the babes (although Ayane is awesome in an anime way) but the stages; something they happily keep going in this edition.

Although not all of the stages are destroyable (instead opting for electrical fencing) there are still a sizable number where you are able to fling each other around and break stuff. Whilst they still have not gone Mortal Kombat style and have you be able to kick someone into a fight tank (fingers crossed for Dead or Alive 6) you can be thrown off of bridges, tumble down stairs and be slammed headlong into a pile of orange crates. It brings some good strategy into the games since it does cause a lot of damage but mainly it’s a good excuse to break some large vases.

In terms of gameplay Dead or Alive is similar to Street Fighter since the way to win is to fire off a series of quick and/or powerful combos to muller your opponent into submission. This has never really been my play-style on the whole which means I have never been able to master a large number of characters apart from Ninja Gaiden regulars Hayabusa and Ayane. I was also a big player of Helena but Dead or Alive 4 made her unlockable which drove me nuts.

From someone who knows less about fighters, the arena interaction is the most interesting, but also feels a bit unbalancing. You need to get your opponent in the right place and if you’re on the wrong side, there’s no way you can make use of them, while your opponent can throw you down a river within moments.

What makes this more difficult is how difficult it is to get a move in. Again, I tend to have trouble learning the relevant combos and such, but the timing here feels so precise and the AI so accurate that it gets tough. Too often, then, until you’re good enough, this game feels more like luck on whether you can pull it off. It actually gets frustrating when it keeps happening, yet at the same time, in multiplayer, meant that I was able to beat Peter (who is the superior player) several times. It just feels wrong (and you will never play as Leon again).

Final Thoughts

When it holds together, this becomes a rather beautiful fighting game, even with some odd settings and choices. The gameplay options offered through the different fighters and, more important, arenas make for a nice and unique setting.

Even so, if there’s one game where mastery is a requirement, it’s this. The barrier to entry isn’t too high, but just to get to a reasonable point takes some work. Or some luck on getting that right hit and combo in. It’s just what you want, isn’t it?

#707 Ōkami

Posted: 23rd September 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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3

272nd played so far

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Genre: Action/Adventure
Platform: PlayStation 2/Wii
Year of Release: 2006
Developer: Clover Studio
Publisher: Capcom

Part of the reason this set of fifty games is restricted to games new to me, is to put some focus on me playing games that Peter already knows. Ōkami, then, is a perfect game to play here, as I understand it’s one of his favourites. I’ll leave to him to explain.

Our Thoughts

So there’s one thing I’d like to get out of the way before we dive into the actual review, and it’s a bit of a personal one. You see, I’m left-handed. That doesn’t impact much – I use scissors with my right hand, making left-handed ones unnecessary, I use computer mouses with either hand (a great way to avoid RSI) and in most other cases I tend to do well.

When a game seems to rely on holding your controller and using the Wiimote to draw with your right hand, though, it’s tough. I’m not sure whether it entirely explains my issues with the motion control in this game, but drawing with my right hand was impossible, while doing it the other way round seemed to make it difficult to do the normal movements associated with the game. It’s possible some adjustments for accuracy means it feels off if you’re left handed, and that made the control scheme less than desirable. And now it’s time for the right-handed perspective.

It has been over two years since I had last played this and I really enjoyed the chance to play this again (and I will be honest it was painful to watch how much Jeroen struggled with this). Seeing how the controls were a bit of an issue for Jeroen I’ll start there. The original version of this game was for the Playstation 2 which meant that the brush strokes are controlled by the analog sticks. Seeing how the Wiimote added motion controls (and that this was published by Capcom) this was a natural fit right?

In some ways yes. However, in some ways the Wiimotes inaccuracies pre-MotionPlus are a bit of a weakness. There is a section where you aid in the blooming of a cherry tree after watching a rather long dance. The circles you need to make for this are rather fiddly but it really takes the cake when it takes a good ten minutes for it to register 5-6 circles. It’s hard to not throw the Wiimote at the TV when this happens.

The real strength of the game is the use of Japanese mythology in this game (something I won’t go into since a really good friend of mine wrote an incredibly in-depth article here). But this links into an even better part of Okami… the art style. Going along with the ink-powered attacks this game has be styled so that it resembles traditional Japanese (like the one I have hanging above the computer). By doing this Clover Studios have created something truly timeless. Other games from this year have started to look dated but this looks just as good as when I first played it years ago (same thing as when we played The Wind Waker a few years ago). I understand that the original version featured a slightly over the top papyrus effect. It’s probably a good thing it’s not there all time now, but the world turning more papery when you start drawing is a nice effect.

The story of this game doesn’t exactly matter too much. It’s a good story but since it is still very enjoyable 2 years later having forgotten the majority of the game’s goings on (yea I never finished this game because I got stuck on a tricky bit involving scrolls then got annoyed and headed back to university after Easter break). In this you play the Sun Goddess in the form of a wolf, over the course of this game you are fighting the big evil whilst collecting the ‘brush strokes’. These brush strokes allow you to control the passage of day and night, harness the powers of the wind, bring flowers into bloom as well as other pieces of elemental magic. In a way you’re cleaning the world – ridding it of evil and nastiness. Evil is linked to some sort of pollution here. It’s not a heavy message, but instead rather more natural, but it leads to some nice additional side areas. For example, you get to befriend animals, but to do so you need to bring them the right type of food.

Similar to Flower this game is in, some ways, a rather spiritual experience. With some demon ass-kicking action. Never a bad mix when done well.

Final Thoughts

If you want to buy this for the Wii I would really recommend it (even if you are left-handed, just ask my friend Kat). However, if you are not keen to use controls that have a tendency to be patchy then there is always the PS2 version. If you didn’t pawn your PS2 for gaming money that is.

#902 Half-Minute Hero

Posted: 19th September 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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271st played so far

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Genre: Action/Strategy
Platform: PSP
Year of Release: 2009
Developer: Marvelous Entertainment
Publisher: Marvelous Entertainment/XSEED Games/Rising Star Games

Some games just have an odd concept that leave you wondering, before you even boot the game, how it can work, with its basic concept being weird enough that you’re wondering where it goes from there. Although, if done well, these things can evolve into a good game (dragging Fat Princesses around a map or through people around a city in Pain), others work out less, with a recent example being Freak Out‘s stretching-based play.

Half-Minute Hero‘s concept is in its title. Its various missions must be completed in half a minute. There’s some ways around this, but it’s about the time limit. Let’s just say that time based missions are not my thing.

Our Thoughts

Unlike my normal mode of playing, when playing this game I started playing during evenings while I had some time off. Through that, it grew on me. While the missions themselves aren’t the titular 30 seconds long (you can rewind), they’re easy to pick up and play for a bit in between other things.

It does pretty much stick to thirty second limits though. Each mission has a time limit of thirty seconds that can be increased at designated points. There are four storylines, each with their own gameplay style and mission.

The first, titular style is the hero mode. These are very streamlined RPG quests – level-up to high enough and reach the castle while you do so. You can get better equipment to help you, as well as some specialized equipment, but during gameplay this is what it boils down to. There is a lot of streamlining to help you do this. Battles are over in moments, healing is simple, and leveling is just a text on the screen. It’d make for a lousy RPG on its own, but with the time limitations and the pick up and play vibe, it’s actually a lot better.

This is the main mode, later repeated in some special versions, but the other modes are as much fun. My favourite is the second – evil overlord. I’d say it’s more slightly dark overlord, but that’s less relevant. It’s simple – you need to summon monsters to find the opponent. A rock-paper-scissors mechanic means you need to summon the right ones. The longer you give yourself to charge, the stronger your monsters are. It’s not too complex, but it’s fun and plays quickly enough that it’s enough gameplay on its own. I managed to get quite far already and it’s the mode I return to most often.

The third mode is one that suits me less. It’s a fairly standard shoot ’em up, side-scrolling style with monsters. The vague storyline is that of a princess who has a curfew, so needs to be back in her castle on time. You need to keep the soldiers carrying you alive (no relation to Fat Princess that I know of) as they make you move faster. It’s an interesting twist on the standard shooter setup that makes for something quite fun.

The knight mode – defend your sage form attack – is one we didn’t reach (it’s an unlock for finishing all three), but it feels like it fits in nicely with the existing modes.

Added to some pretty decent gameplay are some appropriate aesthetics. Where earlier times might have been bound by hardware limitations, Half Minute Hero shows the pixellated old-time sprites are a valid design choice. They look simple, but fit in with the gameplay, making it the game nicely inspired by forebears.

In that, a lot of the game is a homage as well. Not just gameplay and graphics, but story as well, many of the game’s missions could have come straight out of older games. It has its own funny twists, but in a way that works best as a gentle and loving reference.

Final Thoughts

The real oddity is how this game ended up on the PSP. These days, it would be a phone game – on the whole, it seems like it would work nicely on a tablet or iPhone. The extra care it could have taken in this full release is probably worth it, but in total its sub-two minute gameplay is the sort of diversion you’ll find difficult to put down.

#687 Black

Posted: 15th September 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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270th played so far

IMG_4070

Genre: First Person Shooter
Platform: Playstation 2/Xbox
Year of Release: 2006
Developer: Criterion Games
Publisher: Electronic Arts

Often, ‘by the makers of’ indicates an ongoing quality. A game in the same genre, by people who know the area and can do it well. Bioware, say, has a reputation for good RPGs and by the makers of Mass Effect means you can expect a good RPG.

Sometimes, however, ‘by the makers of’ just makes you wonder how their style will end up mixing with the genre. This is the case with Black. Most interesting we could find in our initial research is that it’s by the makers of Burnout. FPS Rube Goldberg kills anyone?

Our Thoughts

Because of how our available time works (that is to say, because we’ve both got jobs and like money, in part to fund the games for our blogs), we tend to batch our games and play two or three games at a time, usually on a Sunday afternoon (Saturday is reserved for movies). This often works brilliantly, but sometimes, when we’ve got bad luck in picking our games, it sometimes backfires a bit. If you’ve kept up with our blog, you’ll notice that the previous two entries – Freak Out and Super Street Fighter II: Turbo HD something something – are not standouts for us. The former simply because of how it plays, the latter because it felt redundant. Black, then, could do with being an improvement.

For its first level, it is. There are many massive rushes of enemies that keep you worried as you try to kill them before they get you, taking you some time to meet up with your teammates for added protection. While items are dropped fairly freely, surviving long enough to get them feels like a challenge. Not a major one – I survived everything in the end – but it’s tough. You can sort of see the Burnout influences here – frantic, chaotic, lots of people and things going on.

This is added to through the reactive environment. It’s not the huge explosion style we saw in Earth Defense Force 2017, but more subtle and integrated – wooden fences slowly fall apart as you shoot at them, walls get dented, a lot can be destroyed, but in a natural way so you don’t actually realise it. It’s hard to explain the details, but the scenery isn’t indestructible (as you usually see), but doesn’t feature the over the top breaking most games that offer destructible environment have. It’s here, but it’s not in your face.

Aside from surviving and reaching the end, the game adds in a ton of sidequests – mostly of the ‘find the macguffin’ type, but also some destruction style things, all in all rewarding exploration. On lower difficulty levels, you can mostly ignore these, but as you ramp up the difficulty, you are expected to complete more of them and reaching the end of the level won’t necessarily guarantee a success.

So the first level was fun to play. Then came the second (oh god).

We must have tried it four or five times. We made it through the first section, but after that it felt the game became impossible. Basically, you arrive at some big border camp… and they spot you. Cue dozens of soldiers rushing you. They sort of come out in smaller groups, but it’s easy to get overwhelmed and no matter how you play, it seems impossible to get through. Add to that that the soliders that add in cover the places where you shot the previous ones, meaning that topping up your health and, in this case more important, ammo becomes nearly impossible.

Oh, and there’s no checkpoints before this point. Death meant restarting the entire level. Based on some warning texts, it seems like there should be checkpoints during the game… we just hadn’t been far enough in to reach any. That’s criminal when you do complete a primary objective before then (‘cross the border’).

I’m sure we could have made it through eventually, but it got so much, so fast that we couldn’t get much further in the time we had (or our quickly dwindling patience). And with the day not being our top day, we decided to leave it. It might be a game we’ll get back to privately at some point, see how far we get this time (when we force the difficulty down further). A bit more give would have been nice.

Final Thoughts

I suppose we complain about bad difficulty curves with some regularity and to some extent, you could blame impatience for this, as well as inexperience (although I’d argue we’ve developed our FPS skills enough). The second level, however, should not stump us as much as it had, and that’s actually what’s so bad about it. It sucked the fun out of a game that we were really enjoying until that time. It’s just a shame.

#874 Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix

Posted: 11th September 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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1

269th played so far

IMG_4039

Genre: Fighting
Platform: Playstation 3/Xbox 360
Year of Release: 2008
Developer: Backbone Entertainment
Publisher: Capcom

Yeah, you’re right, we’ve played a version of Street Fighter II before – Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting. Apparently the difference here is not directly the game, but the extent of the HD remake.

You see, based on the book, there’s two sides to it. First of all, this is an HD remake done right – rebalanced, redrawn, but the game itself is essentially still there. On the other hand, because of that, it seems to offer less special things – they just don’t go far with it. The question then is, does it work for us?

Our Thoughts

Here’s the thing. When it comes to most of how the game plays, we’ve discussed it before. Read it, it still applies.

To an amateur like me, the gameplay hasn’t changed much. I’m sure the combos are slightly different and some other combinations may apply, but I honestly haven’t really memorized them. Any other rebalancing is even more beyond me – I cannot tell when an attack changed from doing 5% damage to 10% or that you’re stunned for a second longer. I know this is the sort of thing that has a big effect on competitive play, it just doesn’t apply to me.

Yet, despite the story mode, that’s where a lot of the changes are focused. Online multiplayer is a prominent option, with its leaderboards and other tracking systems. It doesn’t offer me much, and I can see that applying to most.

The one thing that is noticeable is the thing you might not think about. The game has clearly had a graphical upgrade – just look at the screenshot on top and compare it to that in the previous review. It’s not a big change – to be honest, when playing it, I thought that’s what the game was meant to look like anyway, perhaps with some nice added flourishes, rather than a full HD upgrade. It’s testament to how well the artists managed to stick to the expected style, though, while still improving it.

This is, I suppose, the definitive version of the game. It looks good and plays well. It should do, it’s a classic, and it’s the version you want to get if you want to get a copy of Street Fighter II. It just leads me back to a question we’ve asked before with Metal Gear Solid Twin Snakes – do both versions of the game really both belong in the book?

Final Thoughts

Everything I read about the game seemed to at least imply the game was made for fans. I suppose that shows here. Too much duplication, with not much added for us. The book introduces the game more as a remake case study than explain the double inclusion, which I suppose suits as an explanation, but it’s simply not enough to woo us.

#470 Stretch Panic/Freak Out

Posted: 7th September 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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268th played so far

IMG_4017

Genre: Platform
Platform: PlayStation 2
Year of Release: 2001
Developer: Treasure Co. Ltd
Publisher: Conspiracy Entertainment

First, let’s settle a few confusing bits. While we list the game as Stretch Panic above, as that’s how it’s known in the US and Japan, in Europe it was released under the name Freak Out. This not only confuses us – the writers of the book got confused as well. While it’s listed as Stretch Panic in the main work, the alphabetic index lists it as Freak Out.  So yeah, even we’re confused.

It’s a situation we’ve seen before – Star Fox 64 is known in the UK as Lylat Wars. It was confusing then, it still is now.

So we have been looking forward to this game for a while because of how bizarre the concept looks. You’re a girl wearing a demon scarf that allows you to stretch the environment and enemies in different directions. You do so to exercise the demons in your sisters. Yeah, freaking out about it indeed.

Our Thoughts

Sometimes, disappointment can be quite harsh. Sometimes, it just feels expected somehow. Stretch Panic was one of those games that could go anywhere, making its initially inaccessible gameplay to be expected. The game dumps you in the hub without any help, leaving it to you to figure out what to do (presumably unless you check out the manual, which wasn’t included in our second hand copy…).

I had built this game up in my head quite a bit from having read the synopsis in the book. The idea of a little girl rescuing her sisters (and a lot of them) with the help of her demonically possessed scarf. It sounded so strange an idea for a platformer that that I didn’t think we could lose. However…

The thing is that even if you get an idea of how it works, the controls are so awkward that you probably won’t get over it when playing the game. Since you have to use one thumbstick to control your character and another to control your demon scarf hand. This means you have no camera control. L2 centers the camera behind you and L1 keeps you focused on the ‘nearest’ enemy, that’s all. That ‘nearest enemy’ detection feels broken though, and is better explained as focused on some random enemy or some other part of the screen it prefers to lock onto.

Then add to that the scarf. It’s supposed to grab things so you can pull and throw them. You need to aim them, but it feels like the way you aim has nothing to do with the place your scarf actually goes to, making it quite frustrating to hit the small areas you need to get to. It’s another frustrating part.

So the controls are awful. The settings, though, is another thing that’s meant to attract, but to be honest, once we got the gist of it, it really didn’t. Your initial in-between areas require you to go to big-breasted women (‘z-cup’) and stretch any part of them that is not their breasts. This is difficult not only because of the vast size of the breasts and crappy controls but also because they are able to use their ‘voluptuous nature’ as helicopter blades should they get into trouble. The reason for this is to earn points in order to face the bosses. Making these mooks just feels juvenile and unnecessary.

The game is mostly boss fights though – you are to free your sisters who have been taken over by these demons. It’s superficially similar to Shadow of the Colossus, in that these are the focus of the game and you spend most of your time in boss fights, the points only used to unlock the doors to get to them. The game gives the bosses far less gravitas, though. They’re cartoony, but all are quite different, at least in their attacks and weak points. These weak points make the bosses more interesting, but at the same time are arbitrarily difficult to get, with some of them easier to defeat by just stretching random parts of their bodies, which damages them too and is a lot faster and easier to get to.

The best way to describe it is possibly that this is a game that tries, but doesn’t quite make it. In controls, in story, in gameplay. Add to that some thematic choices that are too juvenile to contemplate and you get a game that just isn’t worth it, no matter how much it tries to be special.

Final Thoughts

The game has some interesting ideas. The basic concept is fun and is one we’d love to see more done with, possibly with a less puerile designer. As it is though, the game plays clumsily and some of the basic concepts just didn’t sit right with us. Probably the most interesting part are the diverse boss fights, but it tends to take a bit too much time to get the concepts and figure out what to do.

The bosses are really great but it does make you wonder how someone has this many siblings… and how this one sister with the demon scarf got away from being transformed. That’s fridge logic for you.

#4 Boot Hill

Posted: 3rd September 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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267th played so far

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Genre: Shoot ‘Em Up
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1977
Developer: Midway
Publisher: Midway

And now for a trip back in time. One of the oldest game in the books, we now move slightly past Pong and Breakout to the first shoot ’em up on the list. Considering the size of the genre and how often we tend to get behind on it, that’s a big thing. Especially since this is the most represented genre of games before the birth of the NES.

This isn’t entirely the first game to do so – it’s apparently a sequel, although looking at the description, the differences don’t seem to be that major. Still, back to another golden oldie!

Our Thoughts

Yes, the game is simple, that’s for sure. It’s not as simple as the LCD style games with barely any animations that we might be used to, but beyond that the game stays simple. The world is mostly a static backdrop, part of the cabinet, with only the animated/changing elements projected on it. You can walk around and hide behind cacti (as long as they’re not shot down yet, Space Invaders base style) and get a limited number of shots to kill your opponent before he kills you. It’s fairly simple and not overly complex, but fun nonetheless.

One little detail that I enjoyed about the gameplay is what happens after you die. As you can see in the blue sections of the screenshot above there is a sizable graveyard. Upon your death you become a gravestone and drift up to the hill. It’s a very small touch but this small flourish adds a bit to the experience.

The difficulty isn’t too high, but it’s a bearable, fun challenge nevertheless. It was actually surprising how much there still was to it, considering the age and how early in the book it’s listed. The overlay was a neat enough idea that added some amount of context that we’d otherwise have to wait years to see.

With that said, it’s a simple shooter. Arguably as complex as Space Invaders – less overwhelming, but probably more interesting to play due to its focus on a simple round. It just can’t hold my interest as much anymore.

Final Thoughts

This game exceeded expectations. I’m not saying they were miles high when we started, but the game was absolutely better than we anticipated. It’s no longer a game you’d get out, but it feels like a game that would have been impressive at the time. I’d argue it may even beat something like Space Invaders in complexity and interestingness, which is at least somewhat telling, Just a shame it didn’t become as well known.

#813 Afrika

Posted: 30th August 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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266th played so far

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Genre: Simulation
Platform: Playstation 3
Year of Release: 2008
Developer: Rhino Studios
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment/Natsume

Following Bonsai Barber, today another one of the weirder games we have to play. A game I’ve been more interested in, and that I’ve been encouraged to play after some other recent events.

Afrika (known in Japan as Hakuna Matata) is a photography game. You go out on a safari and take pictures of the wild animals wandering around. There are very few games that are part of the genre and its prime exemplar is, oddly enough, Pokémon Snap. Yeah, there’s the Fatal Frame series, but its focus is different. It’s easy to see why – the genre doesn’t sound interesting, but considering how much call there was for Snap to be released on the virtual console, it seems to have hit a chord somehow. Now we see whether it actually is a good game.

Our Thoughts

So yeah, the game is certainly interesting. The idea behind the game is quite interesting. You’re a photographer on a safari in some unspecified (but geographically varied) part of Africa. The area has never really been explored for animals that live there – they are all known species, but you’re spending part of your time cataloging them (well, taking a picture of them to show they’re there). When they’re found, you get further assignments about them, asking you to take pictures of the animals in various poses and places. They are allegedly for use in magazines, books, lessons, research and sometimes just to prove a point to someone.

It works well as an excuse to get you to go out there and get different animal pictures and as a good way to score your work. It also neatly forces you to explore the world and take advantage of all the things you can do – from chasing cheetahs to climbing trees so you can get a good shot of a giraffe eating leaves.

Part of the reason this works is the realistic behaviour of animals (ish, as sometimes they do walk headfirst into a tree and keep doing so). Sometimes you need to get an assignment to do them, but even if an ostrich dance isn’t on the cards, the meandering of animals as they cross the plains is relaxing to watch and getting a good shot requires just the right amount of patience. Just as much, in fact, because the animals react to your movement, so running in place will guarantee the zebra you’re chasing will run off. This also means you’ll need to wait a while after you arrive at a spotting place, since your car is guaranteed to scare most of them.

These spotting places, by the way, pretty much fill the role of levels or locations in earlier games. While the game features a large sandbox world, it’s only these few places where animals congregate (at least initially) and you’ll mostly be driven to and from them. It’s a bit limiting, but helps as a good way of slowly opening the world to you.

The mission structure has one downside – it sometimes forces an order of encounters that feels unnatural. One particular moment is the aforementioned cheetah. Having been conditioned into taking pictures of every new creature you encounter, when you see it and try to take a snap, control is taken away from you and the cheetah gets to run away before you can make a picture. Not because you’re too slow, but because your guide starts talking and triggers a cutscene. This is intentional – it leads into a ‘big hunt’ sequence where you chase the cheetah and try to take the best pictures as it takes down an antelope – but we were frustrated by it at first (I was livid).

One weird omission is voice acting. I’m not necessarily saying you need it for a game like this, but there are several sequences where the game zooms in on your character and another talking and the text is giving through subtitles. With the way the scene is set up though, you’re led to believe there will be voice acting. Somehow, the sequences just feel wrong – as if they forgot to add it, leaving a very static scene. The main reason for a lack of voice acting is quite a simple one; localization. It makes sense until you remember that this game was not released outside of the US and the Asian market. Now, I am not disputing the cost to localize everything between Japanese and English but it seems a little bit half-arsed. More so than games having ‘foreign characters’ without the proper names or even their language.

It’s a minor criticism though, easily forgotten once you get moving again and see a hippo enjoying the sun.

Final Thoughts

The game was slow at times, which wasn’t great for the less patient moments, but in the end it works, it’s what you would expect. The game is enjoyable, and watching the animals interact is almost magical at times.

It’s a shame the game seems to be lacking a bit of polish in some places, where it doesn’t affect gameplay as much, but does get in the way a bit. Luckily that’s when you’re not actually playing the game, so it works out, but it makes you wish they invested a tad more time in these things.

#71 Kung-Fu Master

Posted: 26th August 2013 by Jeroen in Games
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265th played so far

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Genre: Fighting
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1984
Developer: Irem
Publisher: Irem

Some games are games where I really have no proper justification why we played them. They’re on the list, they’re a genre we need, but they’re not a big name and we’re hard-pressed to see why it’s so special. It’s just a spur of the moment thing, something to try that looks okay.

Why, then, is it on the list? It’s quite simple, really. It’s credited with being the first side-scrolling beat em up. Yeah, this spawned Double Dragon 2, which I spend so much time on. It led to Viewtiful Joe, which we loved earlier. Perhaps even the later 3D variants, such as Bayonetta.

Our Thoughts

This is hard! Undoubtably intended to make sure this game ate as many coins as possible, your enemies swarm you and leech life at a dramatic speed, making progress difficult. We persevered to give you some sort of opinion though, and I’m happy to report Peter at least managed to beat the first level. But still, it is that difficult.

 The game’s pretty simple – walk left, right, jump, crouch, punch, kick. You fight your way through enemies, with a boss at the end, to get to the stairs at the end, making it up five floors to get your girlfriend. And those enemies are constant. They stream in from both sides, you have to try to switch on time between the two, only when they’re in range, and it is quite difficult to get it completely right.

The challenge, then, mostly becomes a matter of reflexes. Can you respond on time and make it through? Only a lot of practice seems to be able to get you. It feels a bit unpolished and at times unforgiving or off in its timing, not giving as much slack as you sometimes get otherwise. And if you are a bit too early, the enemies tend to latch on or hurt you before you have a chance to try again.

Sure, it’s part of the game. It’s just a bit frustrating at times and made the game best for us to consume in short bursts.

What is cool about this game is how the later levels play out. In the first level the knife throwers and eventual floor boss are bad enough… but then you have to deal with dragons and crazy-ass moths. Seeing how this was meant as a tie-in game to the Jackie Chan movie Wheels on Meals I am not sure where killer moths comes into it, but I will be watching this film to make sure.

Audio and video have little special to mention. The characters are nicely distinct, but give few hints on what they actually do until you’ve memorised them.

Final Thoughts

If this was a later game, we’d probably deride it for not offering much – the movesets are limited and gameplay is unforgiving without much of a pay-off. As a first, however, it’s a nice landmark and been interesting to give a try.

#943 NHL 10

Posted: 22nd August 2013 by Jeroen in Games
Tags: , , , , , ,
1

264th played so far

IMG_4000

Genre: Sports
Platform: PS3/XBox 360
Year of Release: 2009
Developer: EA Canada
Publisher: EA Sports

So here’s the thing. Unlike our American friends, when I think of hockey I think of grass or grass-like fields, sensible shoes and a brightly colour ball. This is probably a heritage thing, based on Dutch successes in (Olympic) hockey. When those in North America discuss it though, it’s the ice variant they prefer. Always back to national pride with you…

I have no clue how popular the sport is in the US, comparatively speaking. Somewhere near baseball I guess? It’s one of the big EA Sports franchises. And to be fair – it’s not a sports I want to find out much more about. Yeah, let’s just get it over with.

Our Thoughts

Not too long ago (yeah, three months isn’t long ago now), we discussed Top Spin 3. One of the things that came up when we did were controls – if anything, that was the main point of the write-up. And in a way that’s natural. Sports games aren’t going to give you great graphic leaps – sure, they’ll improve, but they’ll never be the big driver. There’s barely any story – NHL 10‘s ‘from rookie to top player’ mode is pretty much all the story it can have. And gameplay? Well, the rules aren’t going to change much, really.

Actually, that last part is partially a lie. While the rules of the game are the same, the games tend to expand to offer more rules, NHL 10 putting in board play (push players and the puck up against the boards so your team can get a hold of them). We can’t really say much about it though as we’re not invested in the series, we don’t know what the differences are. One main thing they did change was how the fighting was done. The shift to a first person perspective actually makes it more immersive but the disruption this brings to the gameplay does make it a bit annoying… especially if you are starting the fight accidentally.

Still (aside from polish) it comes down to controls for us, at least most of the time. And even there your experience with the game series makes a difference. The game starts with an introduction to the controls, but does so fairly quickly and doesn’t take much time to show the general effects. And yeah, it’s fairly difficult to understand if you don’t know the sport’s jargon. True, we’re not the game’s audience, but that’s still an issue we run into.

The enforced breaks (yeah, you have to rest every few minutes while someone else takes over) didn’t always work either. They pull you out of the game for some time without warning, while when you have to go back in you get dropped into the game out of nowhere, messing a bit with you, trying to figure out what was going on. It also may mean you get bad scores purely through luck (you happen to go out at the wrong time), which felt unfair too.

So yeah, the first few matches were painful. But then we managed to slowly get things together. Assist with a few goals, make one or two myself, become known enough that the game mostly praises you. Sure, I was far from an expert, but it’s certainly possible to learn the game and, within an hour or two, become competent enough that the game becomes fun to play. After this time there is so much available in single player (tournaments, online play, creating your own player and seeing them through the perils of professional play) that lovers of ice hockey will be entertained pitting the Penguins against the Russian national side (not exactly balanced) and newbies will enjoy punching people in a sport other than boxing.

Final Thoughts

So despite ice hockey not really being a favourite sport of ours, this game worked quite well. It took some time to figure out what’s going on, but once it did it played quite well. The simulation mode in particular went well and was quite fun to play through, with the game itself playing fast and fun.

If I cared more, I’d probably get into it more and enjoy it further. For now, I’ll just give it some time later.

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