Full Review: Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles (DS)

Well, due to Salty Liver only bringing up Assassin's Creed II a couple of times in the past, this renewed my interest in the Assassin's Creed series.  This lead me to the Wikipedia article which is where I found out / looked up the chronology for the series.  Being the kind of person that I am, I wanted to start the series in the beginning, even though the first Assassin's Creed came out on the PS3 and 360 back in 2007 (2008 for the PC).  The story in Assassin's Creed chronology begins with the DS game that came out in 2008, a year after the initial release.  It should also be noted that AC:AC, the DS game has been ported to Windows Phones, iPhones and Android phones, so a good portion of this review will be relevant for those OS' as well, just not the control schemes.

The nitty-gritty: AC:AC, while a Ubisoft property was developed by Gameloft, a French company who worked a lot with the Prince of Persia reboot series in the early/mid 2000s.  The company now mainly focuses on mobile and portable gaming, so it is not too surprising looking back that they were given the rights to develop this title, especially with their PoP background.

So let's get down to it shall we!

STORY

Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles takes place in 1190, one year before the events in Assassin's Creed.  You mission is to recover "The Chalice," which has been recently acquired by the Templars and it is believed that The Chalice will bring victory to whichever side has it in their possession; so basically it's The Ark in The Raiders of the Lost Ark, and instead of events leading up to World War II, it's the Third Crusade.

Knowing from somewhere that the Assassin's Creed series had a rich backstory (how else could it have so many sequels that have spanned centuries?), I was ultimately a  little disappointed with the storyline in this game.  A lot of the missions were something a long the lines of, "Get info from this guy."  So you would go to City A, which we'll call Damascus, by way of fast map travel, followed by a linear (not an issue for me) level where you would traverse a city by way of leaping from building-to-building all the while avoiding spike traps and swinging axe pendulums. . . Yes,  apparently 12th century cities in the Middle East were very well equipped to deal with infiltrators.  So you would find the guy, get the info and then move onto City B, which we'll call Jerusalem.

For most of the game, it felt as if I could be playing any action adventure game.  It didn't overly feel like I was playing an Assassin's Creed game, although being the "first" game in the series that I have played, I guess my opinion is a bit void.  Regardless, the story is not what kept me playing the game, but my desire to play Assassin's Creed.

I thought it interesting that there was very little set up for the organization that you are a part of.  The game felt as if I were to have already played through the first game so why then bother with setting up the character and/or the setting?

GAMEPLAY

You can't tell, but the apple and scroll are moving.

 You basically move between glowing points in the play area, occasionally come across a much desired checkpoint, then follow the glowing dots through some traps/hazards, often times jumping over gaps/water/sticky oil slicks, et cetera to the next checkpoint: occasionally you will fight a bad guy(s) and kill them.  That is the basic gist of the game.

The game itself is played (in regards to the DS version) on the top screen while a city map is pictured on the lower screen.  You also have the option to switch out weapons when they become available.  One of the first things I read about was how the touch screen was going to play a part in the game in a way that game elements were not be used in the first game.  This included pick-pocketing which really excited me.  The other mini game was interrogating people, which consisted of tapping numbers on the back at the correct time and pulling an arm up behind the shoulder blades.

The controls themselves were pretty straight forward for this type of game on the DS.  I will add that playing on the 3DS, I had the option to use either the directional pad or the joystick to move around.  I instinctively chose the joystick and much preferred this option to the directional pad as the joystick simply felt more natural. 

While researching AC:AC, one aspect of that stuck in my mind: that a number of reviewers wished that they could move the camera.  Initially I felt that going into this game as a DS game, I knew that there were going to be limitations compared to either a PS3/360 or PC game.  After a short while playing, I understood the desire to have a controllable camera.  The camera does frequently move, but it only moves along with you and you have no control over where it goes and what it does.  There were also times when Altaïr was obscured by a building or while travelling from left to right, Altaïr would be on the far right, unable to see exactly what was ahead of me.  If anything, a button to recenter the camera would have been nice.

A lot of AC:AC is jumping from one thing to another thing.  Things include buildings, pillars, levitating platforms, rope nets, floating platforms, rafter/support beams.  And at times, you even get to jump over things, such as pits, pits filled with spikes, city streets and cobras; although the cobras could be easily dispatched with your sword.  So basically, knowing where you were going to jump was very important and just about half of the time I could not tell either how far away my target was or if I was jumping onto onto something at my own level or below me.  I cannot tell you how many times I over/under jumped a target, but it happened a lot.

I guarantee that you will see this screen a lot.

Ultimately, my biggest issue with the game was the gameplay.  While traversing a beam that I had to climb upon in order to jump to the following rooftop, I would sometimes let go of the beam and fall (often to my death; see above picture), I would wobble off the beam, although still grasping it or I would jump to my target and either make it (more often than not I would make it if the target were a rooftop) or I would miss it, if I were aiming for another beam.

Fighting also became somewhat tedious.  You start out the game with basic attacks and as the game progresses, you (somehow) learn different button mashing combos (X-X-X, X-X-Y, Y-Y, et cetera) as well as a couple differing ways to block and parry (of which I rarely used as I found them to be ineffective; or I was just doing it wrong, which is also very possible).  The system isn't bad, it's just that by the point where you frequently ran across the stronger Templar Knights [There are five different types of Templar that you fight: un-helmeted grunts, helmeted grunts, Templar Knights (with and without shields) and crossbowmen], I would almost exclusively use the X-X-Y combo to kill them (after four to five hits) as they seemed to block everything else I tried and counter attacks never seemed to work.

GRAPHICS

Keeping in mind that this is a DS game that came out six years ago, I liked the graphics.  They fit in with the setting.  All the enemies and NPCs intermingled without one being brighter than the other also meaning that both groups blended well.

My only gripe with the graphics partially relates to not being able to move the camera.  At times I could not tell where the platform was in relation to where I was jumping and I would frequently dying from a missed jump because I couldn't tell what I was looking at.

Of the few cutscenes in the game, those that bookended the game itself, each looked about alright.  They do not really stand up to the cutscenes/graphics of the PS3/360/PC versions, but nobody should be expecting them to hold up to comparison.  They look good for what they are: DS in-game cutscenes from 2008.

Overall though, I was quite pleased with how the game looked.

SOUND & MUSIC

I was happy with how the music sounded.  Sadly, after going through the credits twice, I was unable to find out who composed the music for this release.  Even a pseudo-broad search of the internet (including IMDb, VGMPF and VGMDb) turned nothing up.  It might have been Jesper Kyd, the composer of a number of the entries in the  Assassin's Creed series, but that is just speculation.

I really enjoyed the sound editing for the game too and as is the case here too, there was no sound editor of any sorts to credit here.  A lot of the sound effects, the background noise of the various cities were all very fitting.  I don't know if I would say that I was impressed, although I will leave it by saying that I was very pleased.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Overall, Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles was a game.  I played that game and completed that game and that game took me 16 hours and 38 minutes from start to finish, most likely because I died very frequently.  Saying that it was a "good" game might just be a little too much credit.  There were times when I enjoyed what it was that I was playing and other times when I was simply frustrated by the gameplay, level design, camera angle, et cetera and had to put the game down.  If you were to look at my statistics for the game, you will see that I would frequently play the game for about half-an-hour before (having to/needing to) putting it down.

It is only mildly tempting to pick the game up again once I complete the first Assassin's Creed, but I most likely won't.  I guess my recommendation would be that if you haven't played any of the games in this series and you have a DS/3DS, don't spend more than $10 as the end result will most likely just leave you upset.  In the end, Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles is a somewhat solid action/adventure game if you don't care about a storyline and can handle/deal with a computer controlled camera and repetitive killing of enemies.


~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Bewildered On Enchanted Ways

First Impressions: Infinite Space (DS)

Infinite Space is a game that came out back in 2009, developed by Nude Maker and Platinum Games and published by SEGA.  I recall finding out about the game from an article in the December 2009 issue of Nintendo Power.  The glowing praise from the article coupled with seeing Vorlynx play hours on Eve Online and explaining game mechanics (despite my general dislike of MMORPG's), I really wanted to play Infinite Space.  

Being the person that I am, I naturally waited too long before picking the game up and it seemed to fall into relative obscurity.  I was able to find it on eBay, but the frequent "RARE" or "Out of Print!" tag that went along with the game's title always seem to drive up the cost of the game.  While living in Northern California, any Gamestop that carried Infinite Space always seemed to be just far enough away that made the idea of travelling 100 miles round trip, just too damn far.  For a while I'd given up ever trying to locate a reasonably priced copy of Infinite Space until one afternoon I was in a Gamestop up here in Oregon and happened to see a used copy for ~$12.  I snatched that up faster than something that snatches up things really fast.

Presently I have put in 4h38m of play time and 6h21m of game time.  Why the discrepancy?  Because there have been times when I've been forced into combat and didn't come out alive, which was usually 20 minutes after having saved.  I also started the game twice.  The first time was shortly after I brought it home and played for about 30 minutes.  A couple of weeks ago I came back to it and rather than try and figure out what I was doing, I just started over.

Right now in the game, I really feel like I'm playing a video game version of Firefly that was done better than a licensed Firefly game could pull off.  In general terms, you are the pilot of a spaceship that you purchase after hawking a family heirloom.  As the game progresses, you come upon new ships to purchase/acquire and are able to establish/build your crew by assigning them to positions that they are best suited for (each character has individual stats such as Engineering, Command, Medical, et cetera).  I am travelling from planet-to-planet looking for work from bartenders.  Thankfully my ships are refuelled/repaired every time I dock with a station while orbiting a planet free of charge, otherwise it would be too much like Firefly.

One thing about the game that stuck in my mind was that it apparently had a very steep learning curve.  Like the harmonica, it's easy to learn to play, but you'd better learn quickly or you'll find yourself in a battle of the bands against John Popper if you're not careful.  Or if you haven't saved in the last 30 minutes.  This has happened to me a couple of times.  Each time you come across a planet, you have the option to save.  While travelling to other planets, celestial objects, you have a chance/risk of running across hostiles.  Most of the time you have the option of battling x number of ships or escaping.  A few times I've been forced into battle against people I am assuming are pirates and I cannot escape.  Each time was following a battle that I was able to win although suffered plenty of damage to my ship, thus my ship was destroyed along with the money and experience I gained from the previous successful battle.

That's the thing with this game, you have to pay attention.  During the battle sequences, you may be battling three other vessels who are all equipped differently and have differing ranges of fire.  The battle screen is set up as such:

The vertically slashed area at the top shows the position of your ship (green bullet shape) to the enemy ship (yellow /green/red bullet shape) that you are currently focused on (which is selected at the top of the bottom screen), regardless if the ship you've selected is the closer of the x number of ships to you.  The green/yellow/red meter shows which type of attacks you can perform on the ship you've selected, but only if they are within range; if you're not in range, you can't attack.

Within this linear space, you can move your ship forward or backward to put yourself within range or move yourself out of range of the ship that you've selected, all the while keeping in mind that the ships that you're not focusing on fighting can still fire at you if you are within their range, which is not displayed.

At the point I am at in the game, I do not have the special "Spcl1" command or the "Melee" option available to me.  In fact, I just learned "Command 2" which allows me to have more than one ship under my command while in combat.

As I look this over, I can see that I would still have a lot to cover, even in a Full Review and I may have to break that up into two parts, like I did with The World Ends With You posts.

The last thing I will bring up is the music.  The music itself is pretty good, about what you would expect from a science-fiction outer space RPG.  The sound quality though seems a bit lacking.  The music and sound effects often sound like there is a layer of static in the forefront.  I only really notice this staticiness when I'm playing the game around people and I feel like I have to apologize for the strange noises emanating from my non-phone-gaming device.

So yes, I am currently very happy with my purchase of Infinite Space, even if it was published without blast processing.  It's a very fun space RPG that is consistently reminding me of Firefly, and even if Kaylee isn't my chief engineer, at least I haven't come across any Reavers.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

She Screams In Scilence

Full Review: GoldenEye 007 (DS)

This review will refer to the 2010 remake by n-Space of the 1997 classic by Rare.  When the re-make of GoldenEye 007 was first released, I had a hard time, near impossible time actually, trying to locate a review for the DS game as everything I came across was for the Wii release, before the PS3 and 360 versions were released.  Everything I found was all about the Wii release, which made me sad because I wanted to know about how the translation to the DS was.  Even the Wikipedia article mainly covers the Wii version, only briefly mentioning the low GameRankings and Metacritic of 68.8% and 64/100 respectively for the DS version and the involvement of n-Space.

This post probably should have been one of my first reviews posted since, I feel like that I want to post things that I would want to read, and a review for a game that I was interested in, but couldn't find, that's something I'd like to read.

So on with the show.

If you don't think that is Pierce Brosnan's hairline, you'e right.  It's Daniel Craig's.  Maybe that'll sell more copies of the game?

The DS remake of the N64 Rare game GoldenEye 007 doesn't feel so much of a remake as it does as a re-imagining and sadly, not a very great one at that.  Believe it or not, the DS is a pretty good platform for FPS' regardless if you're right or left handed: you look around with the touch pad, move with the directional pad or ABXY buttons and shoot with either the L or R button.  I've played a number of FPS on the DS (Dementium: The Ward, Dementium II and Moon) so my general dislike for the game is not related, as one might think, to playing an FPS on the DS.

I'll be honest when I say that what I was hoping for from this game was a slightly revamped and beautified edition of Rare's amazing game.  Instead what n-Space delivered was a decent looking FPS with, among other things, horrible enemies.  I say "horrible" not because their AI was something ferocious, but because unless you killed them with a head shot, they did not go down very easily.  The enemies, whom all looked identical (just to note, but  not really a criticism) would take a handful of hits, stagger then keep on firing.  If you were lucky they would drop to one knee and then continue firing.  

Your life in the game was again represented by the red/yellow bars along with a set of blue bars when you had body armor equipped.  Now, apparently life regeneration is a current thing in FPS games and it is a thing in this edition of Goldeneye 007.  That's something I don't really like.  It almost makes the game too easy as all you have to do is come out from behind a corner take a couple of badly aimed shots, get shot yourself and move back behind the wall to regenerate while the enemy remains stagnant, patiently waiting for you to come out again.  So either the AI is very smart and holding their ground or really stupid and forgot that someone was shooting at them 3 1/2 seconds ago.  Oh yes, and your Walter PP7 has infinite ammunition.  I know that it's done in the Left 4 Dead series, but there you're fighting hordes of zombies and not stand-still Russian soldiers.  Maybe I'm just an old fuddy-duddy.

Maybe I'm just being too harsh, considering that GoldenEye is one of my favorite James Bond movies and GoldenEye 007 sat unmoved in my N64 for almost nine months so I am kind of attached to what I know and love.  It's true that the 1997 GoldenEye 007 expanded on the story that was in the movie, filling in the nine year gap between the mission in Arkhangelsk and the stealing of the Tiger Helicopter in Monte Carlo.  The storyline too is something that bothered me as the DS re-make didn't do this, but simply took events that happened in the movie and reworked them to be plausible to have happened in a short-ish amount of time, like a Dan Brown novel.  I liked visiting Severnaya while it was still under construction and the missile silo  in Kirghistan before the Goldeneye satellites were launched.  Things that made the original game feel like it took information from a pre-existing book that the movie didn't have the time or money to fit in.  That feeling of an expanded universe/story just didn't exist in this re-make.

Another thing the game was lacking, and maybe I'm just nitpicking here, was the massive amount of playable cheats.  Yes, there were some but you had to purchase them after they became unlocked.  The other "special feature" for this game was collecting document files throughout each level.  With each file you were awarded a puzzle piece to put together an image from. . . something?  Concept art?  I'm not sure.  I only unlocked the tank busting through the wall in St. Petersburg.  I don't know who Activision and/or n-Space's target audience was for this, but it sure wasn't people who played the original GoldenEye 007 or anyone who would play this game.   

The re-make also didn't take the same approach that the original did when it came to stealth.  In the original, ducking behind boxes or walls and taking out security cameras was essential if you didn't want to get into a firefight, while in this game, I don't remember taking out too many, if any, cameras at all.  It felt more of a run-and-gun game.  Maybe that's what they were going for, but then why bother calling it GoldenEye 007?  Oh, probably to try and capitalize on how awesome the first game was.  It's not like it's been done before, right?

I should probably also mention that the game touts a six person local online multiplayer.  That's all I know.  I can't say how well it plays or how fun it is because I simply haven't met anyone else who owns the game to play it with them.

After all that, was there anything that I liked about the game?  Well, the game didn't look half bad and the spoken dialogue was a nice touch, although I couldn't tell you if Daniel Craig or Dame Judi Dench actually did the voice work, but whomever did it, didn't do too bad of a job with their lines.

Oh, and I didn't like that you couldn't duck if you were not behind a crate or box.  Just wanted to throw that in there.


~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Atrocious Humanity

P.S.  To note, I bought this game in the hopes that I would enjoy it as much as I did as the 1997 release AND because it came with a copy of the film GoldenEye on DVD, all totalling something like $24.99.  I decided that even if the game was bad, at least I would finally own a copy of one of my favorite James Bond films.  So I would still like to think that I have come out on top.

Emulator Hour: 8-bit rpg round-up

I've been on an 8-bit RPG kick of late.  It started with Final Fantasy, moved on to a translation of Final Fantasy II, then to Ultima: Quest of the Avatar, and most recently, a cell phone game called Gurk - the 8-bit RPG.   Along the way, I've made brief stops at Dragon Warrior II and Ultima: Exodus.  I guess I'm just feeling some powerful nostalgia, as this genre and these games ate up many days and hours of my young life.

At the present moment, I'm thinking of my unwillingness to play completely through these games.  Granted, I never beat Ultima:Exodus, nor did I beat Dragon Warrior II, Ultima: Avatar - and I never even played Final Fantasy II because it wasn't released in the US.  There exists, in the back of my mind, the desire to actually finish these games; perhaps with the aid of guides, save states or other modern supports of gaming.  But for the time being, I'm more content to wade into the Nostalgia pool and swim around.  However, to experience this nostalgia it is not strictly necessary to sit down and play these games. 

Images and Sound are able to carry me a long way down memory lane.  I recently remembered a fantastic website called digitpress, wherein you can find scans of dozens of NES game instruction booklets.  This is really worth a look, I was strongly struck, when reviewing the manuals for Ultima and Zelda.  There are funny elements, like the consistency of formatting between games - the one page plot summaries on the first page are good for a smile.  The cover art - so influential to me when drawing my own characters, armor designs and such. 

We've written a bit about 8-bit music on this site, and it is another great source of Nostalgia.  If you spent time playing Ultima: Exodus, the song below should be triggering for you.  

A funny thing about my memories of Ultima: Exodus vs Quest of the Avatar:  I remember preferring Exodus greatly, though when I go back to revisit these games I see that the graphical improvement between the two was massive.  Exodus looks almost ridiculous in how blocky the images are and how stiff the movement is.  Still, I remember when Avatar came out, being so excited to play a new Ultima game.  And then I was ultimately disappointed, because I felt like it looked too much like 'all those other games.'  And I think that still holds- one example of which was the choice to outline the characters in black.  This was not the style of Exodus, but became the style in Avatar, and is such a common stylistic choice that it is easily overlooked.

I guess part of my goal in playing around with these 8-bit RPGs is to study different design choices, in things like character equipment, map design and battle design.  It is my ambition to make an 8-bit style RPG of my own some day.  And actually, I've carried this ambition with me for over 20 years.  This is something I visit and revisit- I'm in no hurry, if I'm not enjoying myself, then its not worth it.  I've looked into some RPG makers, and right now I'm playing with RPG Maker VX Ace Lite - which is the free version of the $70 retail RPG maker series.  There is so much that goes into the design of a game, I have to work hard to budget my time before I'm willing to drop the cash for an RPG maker that may collect more dust than design. So far, the map builder is a blast :)

Alright, I'm heading out now.  I want to make a quick note of Gurk - the 8-bit RPG.  This is a free cell-phone RPG available for Android.  It plays like an even more low-fi version of Ultima:Exodus, if you can believe that.  No music as far as I can tell, but its got equipment, item shops, combat and dungeons.  After getting used to the interface, I think I can get into this game;  Gurk will do the job of nourishing my 8-bit RPG nostalgia while I'm away from home, without requiring me to carry my Nintendo DS along with me. 

-D

P.S.  Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the first post on this blog.  Happy Birthday to us.

Full Review: The World Ends With You (DS) / Part II: Music

So once again, I've finally gotten off my ass and now I'm at it.  Finishing up watching The Oscars.  I've told The Kid and I'll stand by it, the 2013 Oscars have been fairly lackluster and ". . .eh. . ."  Seth McFarlane has been not that great of a host of a show that hasn't been all that great, although far be if from me to critique a job that I would never be able to do, nor want to do.  I don't even like talking on the phone, let alone to a group (more than one) of people.

On that note, finally finishing this review.  It's been an odd challenge that I can't fully explain.  But this time, I'm hear to talk about the music from The World Ends With You, primarily composed by Takeharu Ishimoto.

Madd 'shoppin' skills yo!

I'm going to try and not make this sound like the Wikipedia article or like an article on Wikipedia and will probably be more like some of the other Game Scores articles that I've written, except that this has a corresponding article about the content of the game.  So why does TWEWY deserve it's own full article for the music?  For one, there are four separate releases.  There's the The World Ends With You Original Soundtrack, the Subarashiki Konosekai + The World Ends With You EP and full length album and The World Ends With You - Crossover.  The fact that Square Enix had enough faith in both the game and the music to warrant this kind of a musical release for a stand alone original game, that wasn't part of a franchise is pretty awesome.

Granted Takeharu Ishimoto had previously worked with Square Enix before as both a synth programmer and composer since the 1999 release of The Legend of Mana.  That being said, I am only familiar with Ishimoto's compositions for Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII and Dissidia: Final Fantasy, both of which I have very much enjoyed.

In my Initial Review I said that the music was somewhat remeniscent of the music that you might find in Atlus' Shin Megami Tensei Persona series and, now having listened to the TWEWY soundtrack more extensively, I feel that that initial compassion was made because I was not very familiar with contemporary music in an RPG, let alone in a game from Square Enix.  It was very much welcome and I am very glad that the music remained the same from the Japan release to the North American release as it very easily could have been inundated or ever replaced with current popular artists from North America or other English speaking countries.  I do not really care that I can't understand seven eighths of what is beings sung since the majority of the the "sung" music is played during battles which last maybe 30 seconds.  The game even makes it a point to award higher points the faster you can complete a battle, so the music you do hear is only a very brief snip-it.  It wets your pallet for more and I often found myself letting the post battle score screen play for an extra minute to listen to the songs.

So the music.  The music is a very eclectic mix of hip hop, electronica, rock, hip rock hop, and a half dozen other genres that I don't think I'm very familiar with.  J-Pop most likely.  I don't really know, but that's not the point.  The point is, is that the majority of the music is very good and even if I wouldn't normally listen to Japanese hip hop, I like to listen to this soundtrack.  And like almost any soundtrack or compilation album, I don't like every song, but I don't hate any of them.

So now let me highlight a couple of my favorite songs off of the various soundtracks.

Déjà Vu (feat. Joanna Koike) from Subarashiki Konosekai + The World Ends With You full length album & EP:

This is one of the songs that plays while you're not in a battle, although like the battle music, you'll only hear snip-its of it unless you don't progress to another area and thus, another song.  

Hybrid from The World Ends With You Original Soundtrack:

Battle music and if you're lucky (or slow), you'll get to at least the first chorus by the end of the scoring screen after a battle, if it's the song that's playing during your last battle that is.

Transformation [Feat. Andy from Sixpin] from Subarashiki Konosekai + The World Ends With You full length album & EP:

This was probably my favorite battle music and although I have no idea who Andy or Sixpin is (although after an iminint Google search, I kind of now know), it's one of the tracks that falls more in a pseudo-rock genre than some of other songs on the both the album and the in-game soundtrack.

Some other songs that I won't link to, but that I really like are: 
"Calling"
"Someday"
"No Name [Secret Track]"
"Someday (Unplugged) Feat. Sawa"
"Twister Gang-Mix [Bonus Track]"
"Three Minutes Clapping Feat. J.D. Camaro"

I'm sure it will come as no surprise that I highly recommend the original soundtrack as well as the Subarashiki Konosekai + The World Ends With You full length album, the two which I have.  You don't even have to have played the game, the music is great on it's own.  Just peruse youtube for a while if you like what I've posted here.  I would recommend purchasing from the iTunes store as buying physical copies from Amazon will put you back ~$60-70 and there aren't any MP3 albums available.  I don't often endorse iTunes, but in this case, I couldn't justify to my bank account the expense to own the physical copy rather than the MP3 downloads.  I know, to some people I'm a very bad person, but that doesn't make the music any less awesome.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Any Earlier And It'd Be Too Late

Full Review: The World Ends With You (DS) / Part I: Story & Game Mechanics

So I finally got around to it, hunkered down and finished The World Ends With You, which I've been playing for a good number of months now.  I've also been looking forward to composing this "Full Review."  However, during the last couple of days (both in-game and real life), I'd been feeling that a single post for this game would either not do the game itself justice, or it would become unwieldy and long, so I've decided to break the review up into the following parts:

I: The Story & Game Mechanics

II: The Music

I don't know what it has about writing this review, but it has taken me multiple starts over the course of a couple of weeks.  A large part is that the game did so well and that so much has already been written about the game that I didn't just want to be a rehash of the 265 million other articles out there.  At the same time, I knew that I had not discovered something brand new about this six year old game. So once I got beyond my own insecurities, I finally managed to complete the following posts.

I would also like to point out that at the very least, Part I will contain SPOILERS since I feel talking about the story in the game would be incomplete and I feel like I wouldn't be able to write it as effectively without bringing up at least a couple of SPOILERS.  This review will contain SPOILERS.  Now that that's out of the way. . .

The story. . . the story. . . {SPOILER} is a pretty dark one.  It revolves around a group of people who find themselves in a game put on by some supernatural organization calling themselves the Reapers where they take recently dead people and have them play for a second chance at life.  It may be that the people involved in the game had to have died in Shibuya, the area of Japan that the game takes place, I'm not sure.  Throughout the game, you're trying to figure out a number of things, one of those being who killed you, Neku, and how to survive the game.

Along the way, you meet up, and team up with various characters who all have varying degrees of personal issues.  There's the girl who doesn't like how she sees herself (who may have died from comitting suicide), there's the brother who didn't see his life going anywhere and along with his sister, die in a car accident, and a "boy" who turns out is the whole reason why you're there.

The game initially starts out like a typical Japanese RPG in that there's some confusion, then it's fighting monsters to "level up" and trying to "save the world," or in this case, saving your life.  As the game progresses, it becomes apparent that there's more to it than pseudo-cliche's in the form of characters.  For me, it was about the time you find out that your character, Neku is dead, along with everyone else, and that Shiki (the bubbly hyper-attractive girl) only looks the way she does is because she really liked the way she looked despite coveting another girl's appearance while she was alive.  It's a little more complicated than that, but that's the point of playing the game, or even reading a book, to find out for yourself and experience that great Keanu Reeves' "whoa" feeling.

There's a B-Story aspect too that I didn't explore too much.  In the game it's called "Tin Pin Slammer" and it's also the way that two people who own physical copies of TWEWY can "fight" each other.  The basic point is to knock the other players' Pins off a board by sliding them into each other.  Each Pin has a weight and a number of special attacks.  There was only one or two required Tin Pin Slammer battles that were required to progress the storyline, and I think that's all I really did.  Maybe I just need to play against human players.  Or not.

I talked a bit about how the battles are run in my Initial Review so I won't talk too much about how I button mash with the top character.  That tactic held true for the next two partners that join up with Neku, although with Beat, your third partner, his way of attacking was so initially difficult and confusing that I had to hand over his controls to the computer.  Only half way through Act III did I start taking control of Beat when I felt that I could do as good a job or better than the computer.  And that I wouldn't be killing myself by screwing up with Beat (both characters' life meters are connected so Beat could totally fuck things up while Neko remains untouched and you will still die).

While doing background for this article, I also discovered something new about the combat system that I did not know about while playing through the game.  With each of Neku's companions, if they complete/earn a certain number of Combo Stars, it allows them to perform a combo attack with Neku.  If you earn another combo attack before using the first earned combo, you get a level 2 combo which does a lot more damage.  This I thought was the max as I never seemed to earn anything beyond it.  Turns out you can earn a level 3 combo attack.  Huh.  Ah well, I still managed to defeat the final boss.

Let's talk about the Pins now.  The Pins are akin to Pokemon.  They're out there in the world, you want to collect them, level them up and everyone has their favorites.  They're what you use to cause damage or modify other Pins during combat.  Now the game has some pretty ingenious ways to level up your Pins and to gain experience.

1. Earn experience by defeating enemies
2. When you have the game turned off (not just closing the DS), you will earn experience for the amount of time you're away from the game.  I don't know the exact numbers, but it's something like Day 1: 144 ; Day 2: 100 ; Day 3: 70 and so on.
3. While the game is still running, but you're not playing, you can set the game to "Mingle" while enables you to "interact" with other WiFi signals, people playing other DS games, or people playing TWEWY.  You can "interact" with up to 10 signals before you have to accept those signals which are converted into exp and you have to re-select Mingle again.

Now, obviously, earning exp from enemies, in my opinion, is the best way to level up Pins.  The reason is that about half way through the game, you have 6 Pins to use during combat and they all have to have different ways to activate as the game will tell you that you can't equip two Pins that say, have you 'slash vertically on the noise.'  So you have 6 Pins, all with different effects and ways to execute their abilities.  That takes a bit of practice and memorization, especially when one Pin's abilities are recharging and you have five others to choose from.  

Options 2 and 3 for earning Pin experience are really only a good way to go if you have Pins that you have no interest in using and only want to level them up to complete your collection.  I can recall there only being a couple of Pins that I didn't like using, but felt dedicated enough to level them up to full.

At the moment, I think this about covers it.  I know, I know.  I didn't develop my thesis and my citations were a bit lacking.  And, I ended the first sentence of this paragraph with a pronoun.  I also feel that this review could go on a lot longer so I just need to nip it in the bud.  Part II: Music will be up this next Friday and while I can't promise that it will be a shorter length, I can promise that there will be music.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

I Should've Just Given Her A Name

Water, Water Everywhere. . .

It now happens to be that wonderful time of the year again.  Not a time that only comes once a year, but one that happens over and over and over again.  And this, happens to be one of those times.  It's the time between finishing a game and picking up a new one to play.  I just finished The World Ends With You and a "Full Review" is on it's way and now I'm trying to decide, not only which game to play, but which system to play this unchosen game on.  We'll list the top contenders:

PC

Dead Space:  I've played about 30 minutes of this game about a month or so ago and I'd like to keep at it, but not because of the impending Dead Space 3 release on the horizon.

Penumbra: Black Plague:  Having finished the first game in this trilogy, I want to continue the story.

Anna:  A game that I picked up during Steam's Winter Holiday Christmas sale.  The trailer looked interesting and the game looked fun, despite some of the negative reviews.

I Am Alive:  Giving my like towards most things post-apocalyptic and that Steam had this game on sale, I did do the purchasing thing, but have yet to do the playing part.

DS/3DS

Dragon Quest VI:  I finished DQV a while back and I really want to play this and then play Dragon Quest IX.

Scribblenauts Unlimited:  As mentioned in my previous post, I played SU for about 30 minutes just to get a feel for the game, and because I just bought it and it arrived in the mail.  I might be able to get away with playing this on the side and not devoting chunks of time as I normally would with another game.

Infinite Space:  A game released by SEGA that I'd been on the lookout for for a number of years and only recently acquired.  A game, as far as I understand, where you can build, outfit, modify your own spaceship that apparently has a pretty steep learning curve, which is always a fun/frustrating challenge.

Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box:  I've played the first game and thought it was as much fun as I'd heard.  Puzzles are awesome, except sliding box puzzles and how the game explained why you had to do puzzles at every step was pretty smart.  Part 2 is calling.

PSP

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together:  I bought this game around December 2011, played it for an hour or so and then relinquished my PSP to Conklederp so she could play Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions.  I really liked of what little I played and I really want to continue.

Silent Hill: Origins:  I started playing this game for an hour or two and I think I got myself stuck.  This was before I realized that I was supposed to kill every monster on screen and running away is a legitimate strategy.

God of War: Ghost of Sparta:  I really liked the first PSP game in the God of War series (although maybe I should try and defeat the final boss first).

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona:  I started this game about I don't know how many months back and got stuck/lost when I was supposed to go somewhere and I couldn't find out where the building was in which quadrant of the city.  I didn't look online as I thought it was too early to revert to using Gamefaqs, but I'd like to try again before deciding to abandon the game.

So as you can see, I have a problem, very much in the First World category.  I may also have a problem with buying games and not playing them fast enough.  Or, I just happen to like games that take a lot of time to complete in lieu of shorter games like Super Mario Bros. which I can (or at least used to) complete multiple times in about an hour.

Let the voting begin.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

All In All, Chad's A Good Guy

First Impressions: The World Ends With You (DS)

I've been playing this game for a couple of weeks, which was shortly after I earned the Vivi character in Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy.  I'd been trying to unlock Vivi for sometime and after I was able to, I felt like I accomplished something and I played for a bit after that, but I haven't picked the game up since I put The World Ends With You in my DS, which again, was a couple of weeks ago.  Now that the background context is out of the way, on with the initial critique.

The World Ends With You is an odd game from Square Enix.  I mention Square Enix first off because the first thing I think of when I see those two juggernauts of RPG's next to each other are two things, Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior/Quest.  I obviously know there are plenty of other properties associated with that one massive company, but that's what comes to my mind.  Oh, and I guess the Kingdom Hearts franchise too, but I've never gotten into those games as the idea of Disney characters in a Final Fantasyesque type story/setting/whatever it is has never appealed to me.  Anyway!, Square Enix = Overworld Exploring RPG's.  This isn't the case with TWEWY.

Initially, TWEWY feels a lot like an RPG that Atlus would have come up with.  From the character designs to the way the game is played, even the music is somewhat reminiscent of the Shin Megami Tensei: Persona series.  Does this mean that the game doesn't work well, coming from Square Enix?  Of course not!  Just because a game company puts something out that breaks a mold that works very well for them doesn't mean that the game is going to be horrible.  It's a very non-traditional game that works on a lot of levels, even if I know I'm playing part of the game inaccurately.

The battles in the game are what makes this game very different than a standard RPG.  The battles are in real time, similar to how the Tales... games are run: wandering around an over world and entering real time battles.  The actions in the battles are determined by which "pins" the main character, Neku, has equipped.  Different pins do different types of damage and the actions are executed in any number of different ways.  From "slashing" an enemy with the stylus, to "tapping" empty space to shoot a projectile towards and enemy, or "scratching" an open area to cause area damage.  There are a lot more types of damage and actions as I've made it through, maybe 1/3 of the game and I haven't collected all of the pins yet.  And this is only half of the battle system.  The other half takes place on the top screen with your partner.  That half is controlled with either the control pad or the ABXY buttons (depending if you're right or left handed).  For that you're supposed to pick out the "correct" card in the proper order in order to execute a combo.  I don't play it that way.  For the top person, I just button mash, pressing the control pad in whichever direction my opponent is facing.  It's not great, but it's working out somewhat well so far.

Coordination here is the key.  Left hand playing top screen with directional pad and right hand using the stylus on the bottom screen.  It's like tapping your head and rubbing your stomach.  All while being attacked.

As far as the storyline goes, it's a lot deeper and somewhat darker than I had originally anticipated and that's very much welcome.  That's all I want to say about the story as to not give it away for anyone (like me) who plays games four years after they've been released.  Even the fact that the game takes place in the Shibuya district of Tokyo and that I don't really know anything about that specific culture, I don't feel like I'm missing anything that's important to the game.  Sure, I'm sure there are things in the game that I'd be giddy about if I knew about Shibuya culture and the district itself, but it's something that I'm not too worried about.

I think it's safe to say though, that with 15 hours logged in so far, I would easily recommend this game to just about anyone.  Pokemon fans?  There's collecting.  RPG fans?  There's leveling of characters and items/weapons.  Action fans?  Battles in real time.  Rhythm Music game fans?  There's pretty awesome music.  See, a little something for everyone.  Except if you're only a fan of FPS', then you probably won't like this game, and you probably wouldn't own a DS anyway.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

More For The Rest Of Us. 

This Just Happened.

I know this isn't the day that I "officially" put up posts, but seriously, this just happened.

I recently came back from Gamestop (recently as in the last hour, but before I stopped at Fred Meyer to buy a busket of cat food).  I don't go to Gamestop very often as their frequently inflated prices on both used and new games is very much a deterrent.  Sometimes though, they'll have a used game (no this is not a post about the "evils" of used game purchases, which I don't subscribe to) that you can't find new anymore for any particular reason (too old, limited release, game was crapped on by Game Informer and Metacritic).  

The point is, I was finally able to track down a used copy of SEGA's Infinite Space for the DS.  Yes, I could buy a new copy off Amazon.com, but not for fucking $77.  I had a $25 gift card from doing online surveys.  So I went to Gamestop, picked up Infinite Space and Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, because a used copy was only $12.  Turns out with the two games I only owed 18¢ after using the gift card.

So now the point of this special edition post:  I know have more games for the DS than I have for any other console system I've had.  I owned maybe 16-20 games on the  SNES, 18 on the Gamecube, maybe another 15 or so on the N64, but I've just passed 32 on the DS.  I'm going to need to buy another game case, and really, these are the best DS game cases I've ever come across.  

That's all I wanted to say.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

They"ve Learned To Reproduce On Their Own

Starting Over: Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light (DS)

The following is a post that I put up a short while back over on facebook, but I feel that it's perfect for our discussions here as well.  I've made a couple of small alterations/additions/subtractions, so it's not word-for-word, but pretty damn close.

I had been playing Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light for some time and treating it like a traditional RPG.  That is in fact, was one of the main reasons why I bought the game.  

Before the game was released, it was touted as going back to early RPG roots.  That there would be no highlighted text "clueing" you where to go next; no near infinite inventories; you would need to talk to pretty much everybody in town to find out where to go and what to do next.  Your inventory was limited to 15 items, which included your gear (Weapon, Armor, Shield, Accessory), usable magic spells and consumable items.  You know, a lot like Final Fantasy I or Dragon Warrior/Quest I.

Once I started the game, I found out that everything that I'd heard was true.  Enemies weren't always easy.  You could only save with a guy who would record your save data and who could only be found in towns or usually at the end of a dungeon right before a boss and that was it. I didn't always know where I was supposed to go and sometimes was really confused where to go once I was able to "fly" around the world map.

The strangest thing, for me, was that when in a battle, you told one of your characters what action to perform, but not on "whom" to perform that action on.  For example:  You told your Thief to attack, your Black Mage to cast "Firaga," your Fighter to attack and your White Mage to cast "Esuna."  The game then decided who your Thief and Fighter attacked, who your Black Mage cast "Firaga" on and who the White Mage cast "Esuna" on.  Now the computer isn't a complete idiot as it'll cast "Esuna" on anyone who has a status ailment and the attacks would usually land on the same person if they lived after the first assault.  This sounds kind of like a bad idea, until you get past the fact that you'll have to deal with it if you want to continue playing the game.  And I got over it pretty quickly, unless my White Mage was casting "Cure" to give 50 hp to my Black Mage when my Fighter was down 250 hp while fighting a boss that was strong against magical attacks.  Whatever.

Another aspect of the game that I liked, but didn't know about off hand, was that the enemies would level along with you.  So basically, you couldn't overpower enemies.  As it turned out, the bosses leveled along with you too so that you could never be at level 47 fighting a level 25 boss.  They were hovering somewhere right along with you.  I didn't find this out about the bosses leveling until I reached the final form the final boss in the game takes.  Not going too much into the details of the three failed attempts (disasterous attempts mind you), but I looked up how to sucessfully defeat this boss.  Turns out, level 50 is the "just about right" level to be at to defeat the boss.  My characters are at 80 and above.  Which means that even with some of the best equipment in the game, I'm fighting a boss that's 30 levels higher than it should be with gear that's close to 30 levels too low.  Even with upgraded equipment.  (Hypothetically then, I should just try and beat the game at the lowest level possible!)

In short, I'm pretty sure I fucked myself over.  My three options at this point are:

1) Continue trying to fight the boss as is and hope that he doesn't kill my White Mage on it's first of two attacks (which it has done all three times; bastard likes to kill White Mages the first thing in a battle apparently).  Then, if my White Mage doesn't die, hope that whomever the boss attacks isn't either of my tank-type characters.  This all sounds very plausible as I'm typing it out, but when the boss does physical damage between 250 - 600 hp with multiple attacks per turn and my characters (again, at level 80) have between 330 - 550 hp, the outlook is not so good.

2)  Spend hours upon hours gem/gold mining so that I can use a special defense and attack  combination that uses up gold coins rather than hit points.  This doesn't sound too bad either, until you realize that after 30 minutes of gem/gold mining, I only earn about 25,000 gold and I would need close to 2,000,000 in order to take out the final boss.  Roughly, that would be an additional 80 hours, which I would rather not have to do.

3)  Start the game all over again, being careful not to level my characters up as I was previously doing.  And I'm about 98.47% sure that I'm going to take this method.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

It's Like Failure In Reverse.