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Jul 20th, 2010 at 10:42:56 - Osmos (PC) |
I had read about how ambient and beautiful this game was. I had an image of it in my mind as something much more unique than it turned out to be. Ambient yes, beautiful yes, but original, sort of. It's kind of like Feeding Frenzy with space debris, or the beginning of Spore. Though not entirely original, it is very well done.
You're a...thing...I can't decide if the game takes place in space or in a primordial soup. Your thing inhabits a perilous environment nonetheless. The goal of each level is to grow huge. There are other types of objects in the environement, some inanimate and others like yourself. You propel through space absorbing entities smaller than you. Careful, because the minded entities are trying to do the same thing, and will absorb you if they're bigger and get close enough. You propel yourself through space by ejecting matter. Thus, moving makes you smaller, so careful when propelling toward an entity about your size because it may be bigger than you by the time you expel enough matter to reach it. Some entities are 'attractors' with gravitational fields. These grow quickly. Other entities are 'antimatter' that, instead of absorbing or being absorbed, destroy matter in proportion. Two same-sized entities (one antimatter and one regular) colliding will destroy one another and leave no matter instead of one double-sized entity. Others are true planet-type entities, with smaller entities orbiting them a la orbital physics.
Levels are broken down into type of challenges depending on what types of entities are in space. Sentient levels involve growing large with other minded entities that are trying to do the same thing. In ambient levels, you simply grow large, but have obstacles to doing so, such as antimatter and densely populated space. These dense levels I enjoyed because each movement is vital. One slip and the level is ruined. I had to think about which direction to propel, how much matter to eject, which bit of antimatter I needed to send towards matter and in which direction, etc. The final type is force levels that feature the orbital physics. In these, the player must grow large orbiting one planet-entity before 'jumping' to another planet-entity's gravitational field to absorb its orbiting bodies, and continue this until you're huge. I found these the most difficult, but a lot of the fun in this game lies in the challenge and repetition. You can try to memorize steps to an extent and improve over time.
So, fun and interesting game. It's not as relaxing as I thought I would be. Ambient yes, propelling your little organism through space for its life, not relaxing. It was actually pretty intense for the music and look of it. I recommend playing it for sure though. I'll also leave off with a thought about simulations. The orbital force levels really did a neat job of demonstrating these principles. Planetary accretion is basically built into the gameplay. Something like this game can be used to demonstrate physics and astronomy. Assign names to the planet-entities and call the orbiting entities planets. Build in a tool to edit mass, orbital velocity, orbital shape, and have a go with modeling planetary systems. Imagine a game where a player 'plays' a planet during a solar system formation, watching the formation of a star, trying to accrete debris to become a planet, watching out for bigger objects, maintaining an orbit...sounds neat to me.
Right, and I still have one force level left that I've been stuck on forever. Game is still in play as I intend to beat it one of these days and unlock some achievements!
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Jul 20th, 2010 at 10:44:03.
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Jul 20th, 2010 at 09:42:03 - Suikoden Tactics (PS2) |
I cannot lie. This game was fun. It kept me entertained for about 50 hours. I wanted to hate it, and I did at the beginning, until I got into the game play, because the voice acting is terrible. The story is also pointless. The characters are boring, there’s no humor, except unintentional kinds. And why do they put the emphasis on Rune Cannons (the evil mega-weapons you're out to destroy) on the CAN? Rune CANnons. Humans hit by Rune Cannons get turned into stupid looking fish men. A couple years ago we named a roommate's lazy, obese, and annoying cat Fishman. I couldn't stop thinking about him. So scary. I mean, if the fish men are out of water, they should be dead, right? I shouldn’t even have to play the game unless it was set under water. And there are like 60 or something recruitable characters when you can only have a party of usually 6-12. I ended up leveling and caring about around 15-20 of them. Too many characters, for real. It just makes me irritated that I have so many to choose from and so many are nearly identical that they don’t even matter.
The AI is also god-awful and requires its own section of complaining. Enemy AI was both ruthless and inexplicably stupid. It's a grid-based strategy RPG. If I sent an enemy out front, he'd probably get killed. Probably. Sometimes enemies wouldn't finish off a weakened party member and would choose instead to attack someone at full health. Enemies also had very little concept of hit chance, dodge %, and other stats that affect their attacks. They'd usually try to attack from behind, but sometimes they'd choose to attack a character, say, with a 10% chance to be hit and a 90% chance to counterattack instead of a character with a 100% chance to hit and no counterattack. I mean, just stupid stuff. Some fights have AI allies, and these are even worse. They generally fight when they should run and get themselves killed. One fight where you had to save a computer-controlled character I tried literally like 15 times because she just kept on getting in harm's way and there was nothing I could do to prevent it. Finally I'd leveled up enough that I overpowered the enemies and was able to kill them fast enough, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't intended to spend so much time and leveling on that one battle. My ally was just stupid and made very poor decisions.
The terrain system is cool. Characters can change the element of the terrain with items and spells. You’re strong standing on your element (each character has an inherent element), weak on your weak element (the rock-paper-scissors loser to your strong element). Manipulate the terrain elements to beef yourself up and weaken your enemies. Enemies were selfish in this regard. They routinely would change elements in areas around them beneficial to themselves but harmful to other enemies near them. Then the next enemy on his turn would change half the terrain squares to his strong element. Then the third enemy would change 1/4 of the first squares and 1/4 of the second squares just to put himself on his strong element. But basically if you use the terrain to your advantage, you win. My most memorable moment playing was during a battle I knew I'd lost. I was down to like 3 vs. 6. One of my characters just happened to be standing on his element when he was the last ally left. It happened to be a character with a high dodge chance and a high counterattack skill. You gain experience whenever you attack in any form, including counterattacking. So I watched as each enemy took a swing (half missed) and half were counterattacked. Also, on your strong element, you regain health each round. So one by one, then enemies died while I just sat on my square regenerating health, dodging, counterattacking, and gaining like 5 levels in the 15 or 20 minutes it took to finish up the battle.
Mounts are also a neat addition to the game. Some characters can fly on owls or ride kangacorns (kangaroo + unicorn?). The benefit here is being able to move very far each turn and having access to certain mounted abilities, with the drawback being the inability to use certain character abilities.
I would never recommend this game, not even to the SRPG newbies it was intended for. It's a very basic strategy RPG, fun enough, but lacking in so many areas. Get Disgaea, Phantom Brave, La Pucelle Tactics, Makai Kingdom, etc. or go old school with Final Fantasy Tactics.
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Jul 20th, 2010 at 09:18:13 - Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria (PS2) |
Valkyrie Profile is the sequel (prequel?) to the PS1 classic (which I actually disliked for the combat and timed play)
You play as Alicia, a young princess. She shares her body with the spirit of Silmeria, a valkyrie. Silmeria disobeyed Odin and so was reincarnated in Alicia's body. Being a child with a second person inside her, she was feared, thought insane or possessed, and so was cast out by her father, who told the kingdom she had died. Alicia/Silmeria escapes capture by another valkyrie for return to Odin and embarks on a journey to prevent a war between Midgard (human world) and Asgard (heaven).
Valkyrie Profile 2 is beautiful. The attention to detail in the character models and especially the backgrounds in towns and buildings blew my mind. I was in love with this game’s exterior at first sight. My favorite scenes were home interiors. Wind ruffles the curtains and light plays off the plates on the table. Exploration in towns and the world is 2-D side-scrolling. Push left or right to advance those directions, push up to enter buildings, etc.
The game play matched the visual quality. You basically progress through a series of towns and dungeons with a really cool map feature that tells you what % of the map you’ve explored and what % of treasures you’ve acquired. You’ll usually explore the whole map getting from A to B, and that treasure % was fun to increase because of the challenging puzzles. Alicia/Silmeria has a photon gun she uses to manipulate the environment. Like a typical platformer, she can also jump and swing her sword. Photons temporarily freeze enemies in place. Enemies are visible in the dungeon and one can generally choose to fight (by running into them) or avoid (jump over or freeze them). Shooting a frozen enemy swaps the position of Alicia and the enemy. Photons also bounce off surfaces, allowing for angled shots to shoot enemies (and thus switch places with them by shooting them again) in hard-to-reach spots. Alicia can also push frozen enemies, and if she jumps and shoots a (flying) enemy, that enemy will switch places with her and be frozen where she was mid-jump, allowing the player to essentially 'build' steps with enemies. Puzzles consisted of manipulating enemies in this way, and this was usually optional just for treasure chests.
The game also has a 'sealstone' system in dungeons. Sealstones are objects with special properties that grant buffs or area effects to the party or the enemies, depending on who is holding the stone and where the stone is placed in the dungeon. Whenever you encounter a new type of sealstone, you can 'store' it, making it available for use later. At a 'spring,' you can retrieve stored sealstones and store others. On a 'dais,' you place sealstones to grant area effects. On a 'shell,' you nullify the effect of the sealstone placed there. For example, if I found a +25% damage sealstone, I would put it on a dais to get the benefit. If I found a +25% damage taken sealstone, I might put it on a dais or a shell. I'd put it on a dais because it effects enemies as well, so maybe I'd do this if I was feeling strong. Otherwise, I'd spare myself some deaths and put it in the shell to cancel the effect. I enjoyed being able to play with areas of effect, debilitate enemies, and buff myself, although I mostly used 2 orbs the entire game: 200% experience/0 gold and the 200% healing one. I found that I made the game a bit easy by using the experience orb, as my characters were waaaay higher than those I read about when consulting walkthroughs and arriving at the last boss.
I generally found the battles easy, even the boss fights (except the last one the first couple tries, who slaughtered me), and I admit to button mashing my combos instead of thinking them out. Whatever, it worked fine. Battles are 3D fields in real time containing your party and enemies. The battlefields varied in geography. You have a stock of Attack Points, which are depleted when using abilities or dashing. Oddly, you can't jump in battles, but you can dash, quickly closing in on an enemy. Each character in your party (of 4) is assigned to a button. Pressing their respective buttons makes them attack in sequences you set up in the party menu. Characters have up to three attacks. I honestly, like I alluded to, didn't pay much attention to the finer points of stringing together combos or anything. Some attacks launch enemies in the air, others knock them down, and you're supposed to time and use your characters' attacks in a logical sequence such that all the attacks land and you do lots of damage. I found button-mashing to be a find tactic. I just didn't use attacks that lifted enemies in the air because when that happened, subsequent attacks missed because the enemy was flying still. Special abilities I hardly used either because the menu was clunky and I did fine just attacking. If you string together enough attacks, you build a combo meter and can unleash a powerful attack. Also, in each batch of enemies, there is a leader. The battle is over when you kill the leader, so I'd usually make a break for him if I could to end the battle sooner.
There are a couple other aspects of the game that seemed kind of neat but that I didn't need to succeed. Enemies have distinguishable 'parts' that can be broken off based on which side you attack them from. So, a knight enemy might have a sword and shield. If you position your characters so they attack the shield, the knight may block a lot, but if you break the shield, maybe a 'broken shield' or some item drops after the battle. Same with the sword. These body parts can be used to make special items at shops. I hardly made anything and didn't find it necessary to grind these items. At shops, there is a reward system for spending cash. The more cash you spend, the more items become available. This was a neat idea, and I definitely thought I'd have to spend ridiculous amounts of money to see some rare items. It turns out though that the rare items are crafted with these body parts and the unlockable shop items are usually good, but not totally awesome. It usually didn't take long to unlock most of the shop items just from potion and regular item upgrade purchases.
I found the skill system to be very cool. There are three 'colors' of equippable items. Various skills are unlocked by equipping combinations of color and type of item. So, maybe you learn a skill to do more damage against dragons by equipping a green helmet, green boots, and a blue trinket. You fight a while with that combination of equipment and eventually learn the skill, which you can equip. Skills cost points to equip, and as characters level up, they gain more points, increasing the amount/strength of skills they can equip at once.
It's been a couple months since I beat this, so I don't remember story details too well. I remember enjoying it and thinking it was pretty good. Suffice it to say there are several twists of secret identities, who is who, and one of your party members betrays you to pursue his twisted fantasy of creating an alternate universe that doesn't exist under the rule of the gods, and seeks to rule it with another valkyrie as his (unwilling) mistress. Thinking about approaching the final battle still gives me chills because the last boss/ex party member is so deluded with power and lust for his captive valkyrie. It was kind of disturbing. You enter a path circling his chamber and have to run around the circumference watching him through the pillars and listening to him "Oh, my love" "Finally we are together" while he makes these weird moaning noises. Yeah, kind of disturbing.
Anyway, I totally enjoyed this game. It looks great, is loads of fun, and has a decent challenge level.
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Jul 18th, 2010 at 05:15:35 - Overlord (PC) |
Finished Overlord today. By finished I mean lost interest and don't intend to play anymore. I'm on the next-to-last boss and just don't feel compelled to try and beat it. This boss requires that I grind for minions. Since I hate straight up grinding in games unless it serves a purpose other than leveling up or progressing in the game, and since x hours of grinding for extra minions will net me about two boss fights and an ending, it's just not worth it.
I feel like Overlord was fun in large part for its minions. They are entertaining to watch because they're so silly and adoring of the Overlord. Over time, they become less interesting, and since I feel there's not a strong story line or anything else to keep me interested, I became tired of the game. It doesn't help that I began Rogue Galaxy and am enjoying it far more than Overlord.
So I found the last boss and the various endings on YouTube. I was close enough. I experienced winning vicariously through YouTube videos.
One expectation I had for this game was that I would be able to command a vast army of minions. '100 or so' was what I was thinking. I made it up to 35. On the YouTube videos, the players had up to 45. Speaking of grinding, the way to increase your minion pool is to sacrifice minions to upgrade your helmet. How many minions does it take to upgrade your helmet all the way? About 2000! Want to grind for 2000 minions to sacrifice? Mmmm, no. I have this tension playing games because I'm somewhat of a completionist an perfectionist, but I hate wasting time. I would love to upgrade all my weapons and armor to max everything out, but there's no way I want to spend the time doing it. At the premature end of a game like this, I'm just irritated that if I want more minions, I have to spent way more extra time to get them. Of course it's an extra challenge, and it's a way to get people to spend more time with the game, and it's rewarding. Anyway, I'm glad I checked this one out. Controlling allies in this way was new to me, and it was a creative game. It just got a little boring after a while and I lost interest.
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