posts by chris
chris

Review – Persona 4

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After blue comes yellow. So it would seem with the release of Persona 4, which has the same engine and battle system as its predecessor. Despite all this, it comes off as a much better game – Atlus clearly took the time to figure out what went wrong in Persona 3 and fix it. At the same time, they came up with a plot I found easier to connect with, composed better music, and even came up with better swag to lure people into buying the game. It’s no surprise, then, that Persona 4 is my new favorite RPG on the PS2.

Several improvements make up the core of the reason I enjoyed playing Persona 4 so much. You can pretty much copy the gripes from my Persona 3 and FES reviews and every single one of them has been mitigated if not completely resolved. Allies can now be under your direct command, although battles flow better when the AI does its own thing. →  Hot Shots Post 3

2008 in Review Part 1

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I like to pretend that my favorite games will always be the classics, but this year has been quite a trial for that facade. Every year more and more games come out, and I have no chance to play just the ones that people recommend to me, much less all of them. The games I have played are good enough that I know 2008 was a good year for games, not just in terms of volume but in terms of quality. The DS has gotten a bunch more good games (even if it still has only a few great ones), the PC, XBox360, and PS3 have been receiving a host of games with a few standouts each, and even the Wii has gotten a game or two I’ll at least be keeping on my shelf if not playing again.

Naturally, my three favorites from this past year are outstanding members of the RPG genre:

Fallout 3 – My relationship with Western RPGs has been a bit erratic lately. →  Read Danger!

Review – Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World

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Tales of Symphonia is one of the Gamecube’s greatest RPGs. I only got around to finishing it a couple of months ago at the urging of several friends. I was further encouraged to play through it by the impending release of its sequel, Dawn of the New World. Unfortunately, DotNW does not live up to its predecessor’s legacy and instead spends much of the time in its shadow.

Some of this is inevitable. Tales of Symphonia ends with the merger of two worlds, and much of the sequel deals with what happens afterward. The two lands of Sylvarant and Tethe’alla do not really get along, and bizarre weather events trouble the entire world. A lot of blame is naturally cast at the heroes of the first game. Lloyd, in particular, seems to have gone off the deep end as he instigates a massacre of a town during the game’s beginning.

Much of DotNW is spent traveling the world, usually with one or two of the original ToS heroes. →  Hell is other gamers.

Review – Left 4 Dead

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In an industry where cooperative gameplay is tacked onto nearly every game just for the hell of it, it’s refreshing to see a game where it is the primary focus. All too often, coop is given the short end of the stick – added merely to grab a few more sales from suckers like me. In Left 4 Dead, Valve has created a cooperative FPS with their traditional polish and balance. The versus mode, whether originally intended to be “tacked on” or not, is surprisingly fun, making it a good game for small versus games as well.

Left 4 Dead is what I’d call a running-survival game. In a location filled with zombies, a team of four survivors must make their way from point A to point B. In between the points, there are a few safe houses, which break up the action. The four human players need to stick together and make good use of the environment to survive the trek, as the zombies will quickly trap or surround any individuals who stray too far from the rest. →  All happy games are alike; each unhappy game is unhappy in its own way.

Final Review – Mount&Blade

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It’s been a long time since I first looked at Mount&Blade. This game was my first review subject here at videolamer over two years ago, and it has held my attention for hundreds of hours. It’s progressed a great deal since its original release and my “review update” for .903, and in fact had its final release some weeks ago. As of this writing, Mount&Blade 1.011 has just been released with a demo on Steam, where I hope many prospective gamers will try it out. It’s currently the #5 seller – it’s selling better than Team Fortress 2! – but that spot is very well-deserved.

The improvements over the previous version I reviewed are myriad. Movement, weaponry, and armor are all much more realistic than they were before, and one of the best additions is a completely revamped soundtrack – with 70+ songs that are almost always played in the right situation – trumpet-filled battle themes that play as you clash with your foes, light melodic tracks while making your way through the countryside, and so on. →  Read, I am your father!

Review – World of Goo

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Do you like puzzle games? Do you enjoy gooey things? If so, you should try World of Goo. This blob-based puzzler is one of the latest indie games to be released via Steam (or Wiiware, for the console-inclined). It’s filled with brain-twisting, goo-placing goodness.

Puzzles in World of Goo generally revolve around building structures out of blobs. Each level has a pipe you are trying to reach; once you have reached it, the goo-blobs remaining on your structure shuffle their way into the pipe. There is a simple goal (say, 4 blobs) to complete the level, and a more difficult “OCD” goal (save a lot of goo, complete the level quickly or in very few moves). Any extra blobs you get go into a pool to be used in the tower-building “free” game.

Most gameplay is similar to other physics-based puzzlers, such as Bridge Builder. In some ways it is more akin to Lemmings, since you want to save as many of the adorable little suckers as possible. →  Guitar Hero III: Legends of Read

Review – The Spirit Engine 2

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Five years ago, as a younger lad with a small budget and an unending hankering for good games, I would scour the internet searching for quality freeware. Generally my searches ended in failure; though such games existed, they often had no story and little depth. One of the few games that caught my attention, though, was The Spirit Engine. It looked polished (for the time) and had the feel of a late SNES RPG – the perfect combination. Although my interest waned over the course of several hours, and I did not complete it (though I now intend to), it was a refreshing experience for the same reasons for which I will now laud its successor.

On finding out The Spirit Engine 2 even existed several days ago, nostalgia for the original drove me to look into it. That night, I would buy it. The following week, I played it religiously. It managed to win out over any interest in Dragon Quest IV or Mount&Blade – two games whose release I had been eagerly anticipating – and was the only game I played for the entire week (with the exception of half an hour). →  Eh, I’ve got nothing better to do.

Best Game Ever – Seven Kingdoms II

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Playing the disappointment that was Seven Kingdoms: Conquest got me nostalgic for Seven Kingdoms 2.

I’m not going to talk about the plot, because there is no plot. There are 12 (increased from seven) nationalities, existing alongside a half-dozen or so Fryhtans. No past or future given. The campaign is a set of randomly-generated scenarios, with the ability to carry over your king (and up to five selected “royal units”) to each successive scenario.

The heart of Seven Kingdoms 2 is in its great complexity. Simply put, no other RTS has the depth of SK2. This is somewhat hidden – after all, each nation only has three units, and one of these is the villager type, identical for all human nations. Doesn’t sound complicated, but SK2 is altogether a big numbers-game with highly intuitive systems.

For example, each unit potentially has four stats – Loyalty, Combat, Leadership, and Spying skill. Loyalty is easily explained – on a scale of 0-100, how loyal a subject is. →  Monster Reader 4

Review – Seven Kingdoms: Conquest

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Imagine throwing the major pre-gunpowder empires in history into a grand free-for-all. The Japanese would have samurai and ninja, Vikings would have axethrowers and berserkers, Normans would have crossbowmen and knights, and so on. Now imagine adding in random demon lairs that attack human settlements. This is the setting of Seven Kingdoms, an RTS with several fairly deep mechanics, including unit loyalty, economy balancing, and a great espionage system. Its sequel would go on to refine each of these, adding more civilizations and the ability to play as the demonic races of the Fryhtans. Both have a deep complexity that keeps me playing when other RTS games start to feel too shallow.

Unfortunately, I am reviewing neither of these games here.

Seven Kingdoms: Conquest appears, at first glance, to be a continuation of the first two games. It adds a storyline in its campaign, which adds realism to the world so that instead of being thrown all together, the races are divided into epochs (i.e. →  Zero Escape: Nine Hours, Nine Authors, Nine Articles

Review – Song Summoner

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A game for the iPod? Don’t make me laugh! It’s one of those puzzle games, right? Maybe trivia? Rhythm-based? Well, “rhythm” is getting a bit closer. Of all the genres I thought I’d see on the iPod, a Strategy RPG would be last. Hence why, a mere day after hearing about Song Summoner, I bought it and gave it a try.

When you’re not expecting much, a game can amaze simply by being mediocre. This game cost me about the same as a fast-food meal, and I expected it to keep me entertained about as long. It exceeded my expectations – with decent style and good artwork and music – even though I can’t recommend it against many other strategy RPGs.

If you’re comfortable with the iPod track-circle controls, Song Summoner is pretty easy to get a hang of. Tracing the circle scrolls through selection options or movement squares, the center button confirms, and pressing the top of the circle cancels. →  Read Theft Auto 4