Reviews

Monster Hunter Tri

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If at first you don’t succeed ha ha ha ha. This is now the third attempt at a review of Monster Hunter Tri. Before I start can I just say that it isn’t actually a review. My inner critic has been blinded by adoration. It is more of a love letter? Hmmm. Maybe more of a state of the union of gaming as exemplified through this one game? Who knows what it will be? I don’t. But it begins now in any case.

I wasn’t a fan of Monster Hunter on the best PlayStation. I remember playing the demo that came with Devil May Cry and being a bit underwhelmed by it. Then later I was given a copy of the game and still not really swung. I’ll be honest though. It was at a point when Capcom and my relationship was on the rocks. When us here in Europe were getting palmed off with technically online but-not-really-ports of Japanese games like Resident Evil: Outbreak and to my mind Monster Hunter. →  Apply directly to the forehead.

Review – Half Minute Hero

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Half Minute Hero is a wonderful little game, but it is also one which, in my experience, was  poorly described upon release. It features several modes of play, but one of them, labeled “Hero 30”, compromises at least fifty percent of game time.  As a result, this one mode received the majority of attention from the media, and this skewed perspective is what caused me to lose interest in the title.  I couldn’t believe that its core concept could sustain itself for any length of time, and when it comes to Hero 30, I was correct in that belief.  Yet while the other modes are significantly shorter, they’re also a lot of fun, and their existence makes the whole package worthwhile.

Half Minute Hero is a sendup of old school 8 and 16 bit RPGs.  The story follows three characters – the generic hero, a not-so-evil Evil Lord,  and a ditzy princess. Each protagonist lives in a different time period, and they all find themselves facing off against the Ultimate Evil Lord as it attempts to revive itself over the centuries (there’s a fourth character, but he isn’t playable until you finish with the other three). →  Look upon my works, ye mighty, and read!

Digitally Delivered

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Since I spent the first half of 2010 doing my part to keep Bioware in business, I recently decided I could stand to play some smaller, but nonetheless worthwhile titles.  I have a running list in my head of all the creative and fun downloadable games I would like to play, and finally set aside the time to follow through on a few of them.

NyxQuest: Kindred Spirits

Spanish developer Over The Top Games could teach a master class on developing with the strengths of the Wii in mind (they could not, however, teach any kind of class on the English language).  NyxQuest is primarily a platformer with a few sections that combine light-gun-style-shooting or some other novel mechanic with the core jumping and navigating obstacles formula.  After completing a section where you need to use the pointer to move obstacles out of your way and drag items behind you, shake the remote to rid yourself of hindrances, then shoot at charging enemies, the only reason you won’t wonder why larger developers can’t make a game that understands the Wii controls this well is because you will be too involved in the game.   →  Read more? No, I’ll read it all.

Extra Lives Review

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Tom Bissell’s latest work, Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter, doesn’t include much discussion on the subject of why video games matter. This has very little weight on the text itself, but I think every reader should be aware of that fact before opening a copy. Extra Lives is about Bissell’s fascination with videogames and videogame developers, and about his own experiences playing games. The basic point of the book is, well, I can’t really say. Any central thesis has gone far over my head because as far as my reading comprehension extends I couldn’t find any real point to the book. Each chapter is tied to the others by the fact that it’s about videogames. Videogames: that’s basically the point of the book.

It's like... some sort of life.... it's an... EXTRA Life!?!?!!!

Is it a good or a bad book? What’s it’s Metacritic value? I can’t say because I didn’t learn anything. The problem with me reading a survey of videogame pop culture is that I already passed that class. →  Fine, but this article then no more.

Review – Burger Island

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I recently [not recently – Ed.] spent a good portion of my Memorial Day weekend remembering our fallen soldiers by playing Burger Island with my daughter.

“Do you want a turn making milkshakes, daddy?” she asked in a cute manner.

“I will do it! I will do it for those that died at Normandy!” I cried.

And thus began my nightmarish decent into the maddening world of Burger Island.

Burger Island, I learned the hard way while simultaneously paying tribute to the ultimate sacrifice of others, is a lie.

The island in the title is not a gigantic delicious hamburger. It is not a Burger Island. The point of the game is not to gorge your stranded survivor on the island itself in the name of survival, slowly eating the very piece of juicy, flame-broiled land that also keeps you safe. You do not delicately balance the all-encompassing hunger of the main character against the need to stay afloat upon something, even if that something is food. →  I’d buy that for a dollar.

Review: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers

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Presumably, there is a design doc at Square Enix that defines what defines a Crystal Chronicles game.  A character called Cid, cactuars, marlboros, flans, chocobos, airships, trains and magical jewelery are all borrowed from the main series. What makes a Crystal Chronicles game seems to be an obsession with talking about crystals, carrying things above your head, real time combat and a world populated by four different races. What I didn’t know until I hit the Final Fantasy Wiki is that all of the Crystal Chronicles games are set in the same universe but thousands of years apart. Which is nice and explains the obsession with crystals.

In my little world at least, Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles titles are always released with little in the way of fanfare, especially when compared to the main series of games, and often received a mixed reception. Even the Final Fantasy fans that I know don’t pay them much heed. It’s funny what a subtitle (or two) can do. →  One must imagine video games happy.

Review – SSX Tricky

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In the early days of the GameCube one of the first games I made sure to get was SSX Tricky. It was awesome and I played it endlessly until I had mastered every single trick of every single character on every single course. Eventually I got bored of it because, well, it stopped being fun after doing the same “über trick” for the umptillionth time. It burned out my brain and I couldn’t take it any longer. From whatever was left of those brain cells lingered a memory of an incredible experience. Sometimes SSX Tricky would wander back into my daydreams and I would reminisce about how much fun I had. So you know what I did? I decided that nine years later it was time to play it again.

The game hasn’t changed much in nine years, other than the size of the TV I played it on. I found an old memory card with everything unlocked so I could start right where I left off. →  All your posts are belong to us.

Review – League of Legends: Season One

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Following many months of “live,” but not “ranked” gameplay, League of Legends, published by Riot Games, has gone pro, launching their competitive Season One. Featuring several ranked ladder modes: “solo” (actually solo or duo play) 5v5, full premade 5v5 and full premade 3v3, the ladders will culminate with tournament play and $100,000 of cash and prizes. Although Riot will not release simultaneous usage numbers, they have confirmed through various online sources they have over 3 million registered accounts. With the DOTA community estimated at 7-9 million players built over a decade, Riot should be proud of how quickly their game has caught on and distinguished itself in broad field of incumbents and competitors.

Unsurprisingly, Season One is mostly more of the same. On the cosmetic side, both the website and the game’s launcher UI received new snazzy themes and sound track. For the game itself, beyond the usual patch changes of balance tweaks and a new hero, a draft mode was implemented for competitive play. →  Garou: Mark of the Posts

Review – Fragile Dreams

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I had high hopes for Fragile Dreams. It seemed to have an unusual story, focused on post-apocalyptic loneliness and exploring a more or less empty, shattered world. And, even after moderately bad reviews, I looked forward to trying out what I still hoped would be a good game. After all, Opoona and Baroque both got worse reviews, and in my opinion they are a couple of the best third-party titles on the system.

Then I started the game. And therein lies the problem. Fragile Dreams, despite its nifty artwork, decent plot, and great music, purports first and foremost to be a game. And although it does not completely fail at being a game, it does come pretty damn close. It has a decent atmosphere – chilling, occasionally with that edge of tension that only decent survival horror games can manage – and then you get into combat and everything turns awful.

Among the larger complaints of certain older RPGs is that weapons break. →  You think about everything.

Review – No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle

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No More Heroes was a fine game, but it was one that worked best as a solitary experience. Parodies of gamer, geek, and otaku culture are a tricky business, and the game managed to address this issue well. Going for it a second time around would be pushing it, and having to reconcile the true ending of its predecessor would probably cheapen it in the end.

But really, it was the pessimist inside me that made me most concerned about NMH2. One of the E3 trailers indicated that the protagonist, Travis Touchdown, was going to start fighting as only the 50th ranked assassin. I knew there was a snowball’s chance in hell that Grasshopper Manufacture (or any developer, for that matter) was going to come up with fifty new boss battles to fight. Every bone in my body knew that this was going to be a game that would constantly yank my chain.

And that is exactly what it does. While NMH2 has some more battles than its predecessor, it is a far cry from fifty, and with all the new changes made to streamline the experience, it may not actually be as long for some players. →  Ring of Read