posts by chris
chris

Review – Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles My Life as a King of the Jews

by

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King is a simulation game. When I first saw the name, I thought it would be another delightfully (?) simple RPG. Instead, here we have a delightfully simple sim; in fact, MLAK is hands-off nearly to the point of annoyance.

In MLAK, you build your city structure by structure and converse with your citizens (when they are willing to talk to you, that is). That is just about it. The city is composed of empty green glowing spaces that mark where you can place buildings when you have the resources needed for their construction. These buildings range from houses to various shops for your citizens and adventurers. You commission these adventurers to explore the surrounding wilderness to get more resources and advance the plot, and occasionally they will actually do so. →  Tony Hawk’s Pro Reader 3

Short RPGs for fun and profit

by

Almost a month ago, Persona 3: FES was released. It not only contains the definitive version of my favorite RPG, but it has an extra “epilogue” chapter as well.

This is a cause for much rejoicing. I started playing it immediately, and so far I’d say I would pay the $30 just for the improved first game. But herein lies the problem, and the crux of this article: It has been a month and I am still playing it. Not only that, I’m still in the first section; the remake.

I love RPGs. I love playing lots of RPGs. But I also like having time for other, trivial things, like working, sleeping, eating, and the occasional shower. Most games in the genre are long; sometimes the length necessary for fleshing out the story, but more often it is just padding. →  Read more? No, I’ll read it all.

Review – Opoona

by

If a game contains art, is the game itself art? Is it moral for the local populace to manipulate an alien child into doing their bidding? What in the hell does that old engineer want with a sand weasel? These questions and more are asked in Koei’s latest published game, Opoona.

Reviews have not been altogether friendly to Opoona. I am here to tell you that yes, it may well be a horrible game. It has an occasionally annoying camera, a bad translation, and it’s easy to get lost even in the first dome-city. I am also here to tell you that I still really enjoyed Opoona despite these flaws.
But is it art?

I’ll get the bad parts out of the way first. First off: No voice acting. Sorry. I didn’t care; hell, I didn’t even notice until I realized the whole game sounds very uniform and ambient. →  [post launches in virtual reality],[put on your VR headset now],[left click on your mouse to open the remainder of this post in your web browser on your digital computing device]

Random Old Game – Snake Rattle ‘n Roll

by

The NES had so many goofy oddball games, it’s nearly impossible to keep track of them all. Snake Rattle ‘n Roll stands out from the hordes via upbeat jazz music, a bizarre (therefore original) sense of style, and fun cooperative gameplay.

You play as snake(s) appropriately named Rattle (and Roll). To get through the stages, you avoid or defeat strange, snake-hating enemies, from water-dwelling sharks to razor blade traps to giant, snake-crushing disembodied feet. Your objective is to get to the moon for reasons unknown. Placed at specific points in the level are pellet dispensers, which shoot out pellets which you can eat. The pellets try to avoid you in a different way each level; the early ones simply roll or walk, while later ones will bounce or fly away. In an interesting touch, the walking pellets have tiny white feet; after your snake consumes one, it spits out said feet. →  Snap! Crackle! Read!

Review – Phantasy Star 2

by
The layer of pipes obscures your vision in dungeons. At least it looks stupid.

A little over a year ago, I attempted to play through the original Phantasy Star. It was a trying experience, considering there is little in the way of direction or newbie-friendliness in the game. In the end, cuddlier JRPGs prevailed and I lost interest shortly after recruiting Noah.

Last month, I finished a play-through of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and was looking for something else to play. I checked the Wii Shop, expecting once again to find an update with two, maybe three bland-looking clones of games already on VC. “Hmm”, I thought. “Phantasy Star 2…” a quick check around had me somewhat concerned. Most of my friends who enjoyed the Phantasy Star series told me not to even try. →  Hey, hey, hey, it’s time to make some crazy reading!

Review – Gain Ground

by

When Virtual Console was first announced, I have to admit I was really optimistic. I was looking forward to playing several of my favorite classics without having to hook up a half-dozen consoles. For those who hadn’t played them, well, they’d get to enjoy what I did. I am still a big proponent of what Virtual Console can do, but now my original optimism has been lost. I just don’t have the willpower to replay many old games I liked – only the best, if they do get released – but I find that it is a great way to experience the ones I missed.

Four days ago, I had never heard of Gain Ground. On Saturday, a friend recommended it to me when he saw the list of games on VC. →  Videolamer does what IGNotDoes.

Random Old Game – Drakkhen

by

There are few games that can inspire a sense of true exploration – a feeling of awe at how large or detailed they are. Fewer still are the games that can bring out that feeling even after you’ve beaten them. For some reason, despite being only a so-so game in nearly every other respect, Drakkhen (of a few systems, though most notably the SNES) still holds uncounted mysteries in my mind.
Seems fair.

The most likely source of this awe is simply that the game is so abominably random. I never owned the instruction book, and the introduction only gives vagaries as to the plot (blah blah, 4 elements, 2 poles of power). Fact is, you create a party and start in the middle of the Earth area with little direction. →  Did I do that?

The Trouble with Tactics

by

As I’m sure you can tell by my previous articles, I love RPGs and strategy games. It should follow, then, that I love the Strategy RPG genre. Just like peanut butter and pizza. Although I like some SRPGs, I have some issues with the genre, particularly the Tactical subgenre. By “Tactical”, I mean finer-scale games where you manage each individual taking part in battles.

For example, I started up Shining Force a couple months ago via the wonders of Virtual Console. I began noticing occasional oddities; enemies with low agility would move twice when my high-agility archers never got a move in, for example (Hans was useless anyways). Levels would either be quite useful or really suck.
You can’t tell from this picture, but the priest and thief are horribly under-leveled.
 →  The gamers have only interpreted the games, in various ways. The point, however, is to change them.

Review – Growlanser: Heritage of War

by

The third Growlanser game we’ve received stateside, Heritage of War, is actually the fifth in the series. We received Growlansers 2 and 3 as the last games of the late Working Designs (what is Gaijinworks up to, anyways?) in the Generations package. This game is a more than adequate successor.

Similar to the third Growlanser, Heritage of War is a Strategy RPG with leanings toward the RPG side. You move around the world exploring cities and caves, but when a battle starts, you enter a sort of active-time strategy mode in which you can pause anytime to give orders to any of your allies. For those of you who’ve tried Final Fantasy XII, it’s a lot like that with a faster pace and pausing while giving orders. In random battles, your allies’ AI can usually take care of things on its own. →  Ikari Warriors 2: Postery Read

Two years down, too many to go

by

In the past two years I have learned, among other things, how much more there is to learn.

First, from meeting and talking with Jay and co. here at videolamer, I learned about all the great RPG, strategy, action and adventure games on the various Sega systems I missed out on. I even tried out Phantasy Star 1 (a mistake, as I have grown soft and weak with puffball RPGs) at Jay’s suggestion, and bought a Sega Saturn, a mod chip, and a few games as well. In fact, don’t tell him, but with a bit more nudging I might start looking for a Dreamcast soon. Due to similarly sinister influences, I have found the “new old Sega console” – the underdog of the last generation, the Gamecube, and will be working on remedying the last 4 years of missing out on an entire system’s worth of good games. →  Read Theft Auto 4