Cartridges In Play

I as well am playing multiple games now, as I also tend to do with books.  Not because I'm all like "Look at me, I can read 5 books at the same time and not get lost, see how awesome I am!?"  I'm playing multiple games because I just have a number of games that I have yet to play.

So let's get down to them shall we:

Nintendo DS

Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride (2009)

I finally acquired this game last December and have been looking forward to playing since whenever Nintendo announced that it would be released for the DS.  Aside from the updated graphics, it plays very much like a mid 1990s RPG (JRPG I guess, although I'd like to do another post on that whole bundle of chips later), you end up with a party of varied characters, level building traveling around a world map, purchasing weapons/armor/items, dungeon crawling, fighting end of cave bosses et cetera.  Basically very typical Dragon Quest gameplay, nothing too original.

I've since read on Wikipedia, that Dragon Quest V is considered to be the  favorite in the whole series (out of 9 at the moment, not including spin offs) by the creator Yuji Hori.  However, I'm not finding as exciting as I thought that I was going to.  Don't get me wrong, I'm very much enjoying the game and I like the story line and the fact that you start out the game as a young child and eventually progress to having your own offspring.  I guess I just don't feel as connected to the characters as I thought I might.

I think what's disappointing me is that there're things that happen to the main character that I would've like to have seen differently in the way things were handled.  Without giving anything away, let's say something happens to the main character, then one of your friends says something like "Wow, we wondered what happened to you.  We're glad you're back now!"  Oh, and the world's gone completely to shit and we're facing a potential apocalypse.  I just have to keep telling myself that this game originally came out in 1992 and has a somewhat more "cartoonish" feel to it than say, Final Fantasy IV, of around the same time; Final Fantasy IV (or Final Fantasy II on the SNES) came out in 1991).

I'm nearing the end of the game right now so I might make an addendum after I finish.

Sony PSP

LittleBigPlanet (2009)

I've been playing this game off and on since I got it for my birthday (just over a month ago).  I never played the first in the series that came out for PS3 so all I knew about the game before playing it was that you played a burlap sack character and that it was pretty much a puzzle type platformer.  Which, pretty much is what it is in it's most simplest form.

One of the other main selling points of the game/series is that the game also encourages you to create your own levels and then share them online via the Playstation Network.  Honestly right now, I don't know if I'll take advantage of this side of the game, or at least as much as the game intends and I think this is more of a personal thing rather than some flaw with the design of the game.  But as for game design, I love the fact that everything in the game looks like it was snipped from a coloring book.  Early on in the game, I was wondering how enemies would be introduced and what few enemies there are, are brilliantly done.  They're simply cutouts that are either swung along chains or move along carts.

Something that I don't fully understand (and maybe appreciate as well) is the whole "thing" about stickers.  Moving stickers, which are akin to decals on the background scenery, is somewhat amusing, but I'm personally more interested in completing the levels than making them look asthetically different.  I'm assuming I'm missing something here, but until I'm told what it is, I can't tell and therefore I happy to be ignorant.

One thing that I am currently sad about with the game is the lack of the narrator being around.  Early on in the game, the narrator (who sounds a lot like the guy who did the narration for Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) tells you how to do certain things and what options the game delivers.  It only makes sense to cut out the helping narrator as the game progresses since, one would hope, you don't need directions how to do things half way through the game.  I'm just sad because I like the guy's voice and the dialogue that was written for him was pretty funny/adorable/witty.

And yet, another game that I have yet to complete, but slowly working on it.

And now, because I feel that I should mention what games are up in my queue after the previous two games mention are finished, I will.

DS: The World is Not Enough and Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings.

PSP: Tactic's Ogre: Let Us Cling Together I and Shin Megami Tensei: Persona.

PC:  Crayon Physics Deluxe and NightSky.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

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