Reviews DS

DS Adventure-action hybrid Insecticide attracted some attention (on this site, if not from the videogame community as a whole) when the developer, Mike Levine, criticized negative reviews of the game for overlooking what he considered some of the game’s strengths. What are these supposed strengths? The game is in 3D and features voice acting. To me, the measure of a game isn’t the number of dimensions in which it resides, but how much fun it is to play, and whether I believe the developer tried to do something interesting or innovative.

The early criticisms, as well as Levine’s retort, turned on two key disagreements. Reviewers thought the controls were poor and the game had technical problems. Levine thought the reviewers did not completely explore the controls (ie complained about using the d-pad and buttons while stylus controls were available) and argued the game is technically very impressive (in 3D and featuring voice) even if there are a few hiccups. →  Read awhile, and listen.

My quest for time killing DS games that aren’t infantile and minimize the use of the stylus came to an abrupt end when I purchased Lock’s Quest. Lock’s Quest does use the stylus, but in a manner which doesn’t offend my manly lifestyle of sex with supermodels and drinking rye whiskey (when drawing rainbows in Kirby, I pick up a hankering for an appletini) but feels familiar, in a very mouse-like style.

This is helpful, because Lock’s Quest is a tower defense game – you construct defenses in an RTS-style world against unintelligent, persistent, and most importantly plentiful, clockwork monsters – a genre that would be unplayable without a touch screen (or a mouse).

I was unaware that tower defense was a game genre that extended beyond Warcraft 3 custom maps, but seeing as I enjoy those, I decided to see if THQ could turn them into a meaningful DS experience. →  PaReader the Reader

Etrian Odyssey (the first one) was an interesting RPG by independent developer Atlus. Rather than focus on traditional RPG elements such as story save X kingdom from Y evil wizard, Etrian was explicitly a dungeon crawler. A giant dungeon has appeared near a city, adventurers flock by the dozen to be plumb the depths looking for treasure while mostly being savagely killed.

And that’s about all the plot you get. Instead of a standard plot driven party, you had an entire guild you could fill with various classed adventurers, and off they went into the meat grinder. It wasn’t a perfect game, but it was an interesting concept, particularly on a portable device where entertaining time killing is the primary motivator for many people. And one could plausibly assume, if one were naïve and trusting, that the franchise would be built upon and gameplay refined in future installments. →  Michigan: Article from Hell

Let’s be honest kids, it’s not a real Final Fantasy game until I review it here on your favoritest ever videogame site videolamer (tell your friends). Of course, as it turns out, Final Fantasy IV actually already was a real videogame, like, a billion years ago back on the SNES when we Americans called it Final Fantasy II because we didn’t know any better.

Now, full disclosure, back on the SNES, Final Fantasy IV/II was the first RPG I ever beat; I was in Kindergarten, my older brother beat it first, and to this day I lord over him the fact that I found the crystal sword (best sword in the game, now retranslated as Ragnarok) before he did.

I also beat it on its PS1 rerelease, and again as the GBA game, Final Fantasy IV Advance. →  Words are the towns and cities of letters.

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). →  Frankly my dear, I don’t read a damn.

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. →  Read or Alive 2: Hardcore

Hey guys, there’s a island survival game with the word “lost” in it. It has flashbacks, a secret lab, mysterious blah blahs, and blah blah blah. Sound familiar? Surprisingly, Lost in Blue 3 is the first of the series that grossly appropriates themes from the um… “popular” TV series Lost, and it makes the game a whole lot more fun!!! Just kidding.

Dolphin sing along!

I remember the first time I played The Sims. There I was, in an apartment full of moldy food, girlfriendless, and soaking in a pool of my own urine, gleefully being much more tidy and put-together in the virtual world than I ever could be in the real one. I didn’t get it. Why was picking up virtual trash actual fun when I hated doing it in the supposedly more interesting 3 dimensional world? →  Shining Post: Legacy of Great intention