Reviews

Review – Soul Calibur IV

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Ever since Soul Calibur 2, it has been clear that Namco decided that their once experimental, more serious fighting game series could be another cash cow, if only they made a few tweaks. Thus we have been getting sequels that continuously emphasize style over substance, chock full of nerd bait for people on both shores.

True, the classic combat engine has always been there, but without any real dedication to the arcade scene it has become increasingly useless to the veteran fighting game fan. By the time Soul Calibur 4 was coming ’round the bend, the series was facing bugs, confused single player modes, and balance issues. When the early screenshots indicated an increasing focus on titillation, I was ready to write off the series.

But old habits die hard, and the allure of online play was strong. →  Castle Readigami 2

Review – Braid

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We can spend a lot of time talking about Braid, trying to interpret it and stamp out a definitive idea on what it is and what it says. There isn’t much of a point in it though. Braid, for all its flaws, is literature, something that has meaning. Anything I say about its message or its power may be quite different from what you would see on a playthrough. What we can do is look at it as a game.

Braid is a puzzle platformer. Some have called it “just a puzzle game with platforming elements.” We saw it with Portal, where people called it a puzzle game and forgot is was also in the first person. I’m not sure why that happened; Portal’s puzzles often thrive on how the player moves and positions himself, so the perspective (and the controls inherited from it) cannot be ignored. →  Readalations: Persona

Review – Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2

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On Gameplay: the battle system, the law system, and quests

Golden Jew
Before you pick up a copy of Tactics A2, there’s a simple question you need to ask yourself. “Do I love SRPG battles?” It’s really quite simple because this game is basically a lot of tactics battles. For the most part, random encounters have been eliminated and are instead replaced with 300 quests for you to complete.

Augmenting pixilated slaughter, there are run and fetch quests, and a few “dispatch the right person” quests, where the fun lies in trying to figure out what the proper class/race is. For example, an intuitive one asks for a sexy barmaid – so of course you send a viera. But others are slightly more obscure and can be irritating (and therefore FAQ-worthy). →  You lost me.

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. →  Shining Post: Legacy of Great intention

Review – Alone in the Dark

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Apparently, it is becoming the rule rather than the exception for games to be rushed to release, rather than given the time to properly simmer. There are a slew of factors causing this, such as soaring costs, tricky console hardware, and the fickle, tiny window of attention that the hype machine grants.

Of course, a rushed game can come in different flavors. In my last review, we saw how Army of Two lost most of its grand cooperative aspirations, but still managed to ship as a stable and competent action game. From a business perspective, this is acceptable as gamers will buy something derivative if it is polished well enough.

Another result is something like Alone in the Dark, where the grandiose ideas remain, but are held together by duct tape and the hope that bugs and glitches are not severe enough to cause the game to crash out from under the player’s feet. →  Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the article?

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. →  Show me the reading!

Review – Jake Hunter

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You likely play video games for one of the following reasons:

To enjoy fun gameplay
To be amazed by pretty graphics
To fall in love with characters
To listen to an enthralling score
To read a well written story
To kill time because your life is entirely devoid of meaning, even fake, self-created, existentialist meaning

Bad news for those who play primarily for any of the first five reasons – Jake Hunter fulfills none of them.
The Hazakura temple or Neo Olde Tokyo would be nice.

Adventure games, specifically Japanese text adventure games, tend to lack dynamic gameplay and, as such, have a niche audience. If you enjoyed Phoenix Wright or Hotel Dusk you likely don’t mind game mechanics that are under-developed and only there to bridge text box A with text box B. →  Drakenread 2

Review – Army of Two

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Army of Two is an attempt at many things, one of which is to capitalize on the recent enthusiasm for cooperative games. Co-op is arguably the number one most important bullet point a game can have in its press release. Even if it is hardly suitable for the game at hand, excluding it will cause many people not to buy your product.

In order to distinguish itself from the deluge of co-op titles, Army of Two attempts to integrate cooperative measures into every aspect of the game. It also tries to deliver some social commentary like so many hotshot developers and players crave in their desire to legitimize their hobby. Ultimately, the game shares the same major fault of so many of its competitors: it was rushed. The interesting ideas and promise shown in early previews are all missing, and the end product is the usual kind of worthless. →  Post of Tsushima

Review – Rondo of Swords

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What we have already played shapes our opinions of new games. To an SRPG fan, a game like Luminous Arc is old hat. Yet people new to the genre may be taken in by the musical score, voice acting, interesting story and quality breast-focused character art. Without knowing what has come before, the game seems competent enough and can provide some good strategic fun.

The experienced SRPG fan likely sees Luminous Arc in a very different light. Its serviceable gameplay is often boring and it does very little to distinguish itself from older SRPGs beyond the innovative addition of painful load times between character turns. If you have played an SRPG or two in the past few years you will miss little by ignoring Luminous Arc. Of course if you are partial to the genre you may have already played the game and then realized the wallpaper images are the best thing to come from the design team. →  Guitar Hero III: Legends of Read