Reviews

Review – Growlanser: Heritage of War

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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. →  Romance of the Three Articles IV: Post of Fire

Review — Eternal Sonata

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I dislike bullet point reviews almost as much as I dislike people who smile too much and eat pasta salad. And yet, there are so many different aspects of Eternal Sonata that bear commenting on that I find myself gravitating towards the wretched format. So, instead of cleverly disguising a bullet point review with the absence of bullets, let me simply reassure myself that “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and dog-gone it, people like me” and dive into the shallow depths of sound bite commentary.

Quick review: Eternal Sonata is a truly beautiful but ultimately flawed game that delivers barely enough substance to warrant my recommendation.

If only all mothers of 8 year old girls were 16.

ES got largely positive reviews both on major US review sites and in the international community. →  READ3R

Review – King Of Fighters XI

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I am still in a state of shock – SNK actually managed to bring the PS2 port King of Fighters XI to America. For a long time we heard nothing even regarding a possibility of release, and, in typical SNK fashion, it was announced and released so quietly that people only knew it was shipping via automated Amazon emails. I think the Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting compilations from earlier in the year got more press coverage than King Of Fighters XI.

Rest assured dear readers, the game is here; mostly intact from the Japanese release (we lost online play) and sporting its own beautiful cover art. Part of me is, of course, glad to simply have a chance to play it, but a smaller part wishes it would get the attention it deserves. →  Who is that standing behind you?

Review – Assassins Creed

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From everything I have read online, it seems that gamers everywhere are split into two camps when it comes to Assassin’s Creed: those who love the game and those who find it painfully repetitious. After beating the game over the course of four days, I found myself graduating from one group to the other. For the first third of the game I was frustrated, annoyed, angry, and bored. (Incidentally, three is an important number in the structure of Assassin’s Creed. There are three cities in the game, each with three sections and three assassination targets – one per section. In order to complete an assassination the player needs to collect three out of six available pieces of information about the target. →  Read or Alive 2: Hardcore

Review – Transformers the Game

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Before you get all doe-y eyed for the great video games that have come out in the past two months, and start swallowing the industry’s mandate that we can only have decent games around the pinnacle event of a religion that totally hates video games, lets take a minute and remember how fucking terrible the rest of 2007 was for video games. Starting with Transformers the Game.

Transformers the Movie was the cinematic equivalent of going to a space zoo and jumping into a pit of laser equipped alligators and beating them down with your cock. While on fire. While the Teen Girl Squad cheers you on. Transformers the Game is the video game equivalent of falling into the same crocodilian awesomeness, only to find your cock quickly chomped off. →  Romance of the Three Articles IV: Post of Fire

Review – Rock Band

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I spent the week of Thanksgiving on vacation, so I missed the debut of Rock Band. Thanks to .33 cents a minute shipboard internet, I was able to read Tony’s gleeful post about the scarcity of units available. Although I had reserved the game at Gamestop, bane of all video game stores, panic set in. Contacting my roommate, I asked him to see if he could procure my reserved copy from Gamestop, either through the kindness of the Gamestop employees (yeah right), or more likely, impersonating me.

Surprisingly, not only did my local Gamestop have enough copies, they also allowed my roommate to buy on my behalf (shout out to Sasha, the store manager of the White Flint Gamestop, for being 100x cooler than every other Gamestop manager. →  Now is the winter of read this content.

Review update – Mount&Blade

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It’s been over a year since my first article here on videolamer, in which I reviewed the PC Action/Strategy/RPG hybrid Mount & Blade. I didn’t mention it in the original review, but good old M&B is still under development. The version I reviewed was somewhere about 0.75; the current version, released just a few days ago, is 0.901.

And what changes have come! In .890, there was a major combat overhaul, the addition of three new factions in “vanilla” (the regular, un-modded game), as well as a troop tree for each faction. The game plays better than it ever has before; combat is quick without feeling unnatural, trading remains profitable, and veteran mercenaries are available early on.

For those who didn’t read my original review, a quick overview: Mount & Blade is a medieval FPS RPG. →  Devil Summoner: Readou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Article

Review – Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations

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I recently went through some effort to prove that most games are entirely about play mechanics and that story and characters are mere dressing. This concept is echoed by some great designers. In On Game Design, Chris Crawford describes interaction as the key to all games — more, deeper interactions make for a better game. Judging by his designs, Miyamoto agrees.
Don’t look at this picture. Too many spoilers.

With this in mind I face a problem. The Phoenix Wright trilogy stands among my favorite games despite their being little more than books on DS carts. And not even Choose Your Own Adventure books that create the illusion of control; there is only one correct thing to do at all points in Ace Attorney, and often you will be forced to run through all items in your inventory in hopes of showing the right someone the right something. →  Reading more, assemble!

Review – Crysis

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Taking First Person Shooters to a New Level of Suck

After a long day of working, it’s nice to come home, jump on my computer, and blow the living daylights out of people, monsters, hookers, you name it. For me, playing an FPS after a day of work is akin to getting an Oreo Cookie Blizzard on a hot day; it just feels right. I don’t have to think, I don’t have to care about hurting people, I just shoot and all of my stress melts away. As blood sprays across the digital walls and bodies drop, mangled and lifeless to the floor, I grin and become new again. When I heard the news that Crysis was in development, I was happy. →  Welcome to read.

Review – Etrian Odyssey

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There is nothing more depressing than wasted potential, and, somewhat ironically, nothing more pleasurable than wasting potential. As I lay on my couch playing Etrian Odyssey instead of washing the dishes, helping the homeless or learning to read, my mind struggled to cope with conflicting emotions. I was enjoying that I was wasting my time, but not enjoying the time wasted. Is it hypocritical to be upset that Atlus squandered this game’s potential?
F.O.E.s are rendered in stunningly accurate orange blobs.

Etrian Odyssey starts off nice and difficult. I died on the first level and there’s a good chance you will, too. This high difficulty forces the player to engage in some old school level grinding, but I’ve always welcomed work in my time wasting, as long as society doesn’t benefit in any way. →  It’s time to read and chew bubblegum… and I’m all outta gum.