DSi XL – Impressions

My curiosity got the best of me and I decided to get myself a Bronze DSi XL the other day. The system didn’t look too big when I first took it out of the box, but when I opened it up the size of the screens was a bit of a shock. It’s like two mini TVs in there. After booting it up, I wasn’t too impressed with the image quality in the menu, despite the immense brightness of the screens, things looked a bit blocky.

However, my fears were put to rest after putting some actual games in it, they all look fantastic. Pokemon, Zelda, GTA, Another Code, all shining brightly and majestically. There were no problems at all reading text or with image stretching, in fact it all somehow looks better. Animal Crossing was one game that blew me away, it suddenly felt a lot more playable and the colours shone through very nicely.

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Fragile Dreams – Impressions

Initial play time:  Less than an hour
Game type:  Anime-ish story-driven flashlight exploration action-RPG

== Package ==

The bonus soundtrack selection is cute. The sleeve art is cute. The vocal tracks don’t have the slight WAV-error crackle I keep hearing in all the MP3 rips I used to find on the interweb. The reversible boxart is sexy-cute, ditching all those back-cover description stuff in favor of a girl in a trash-bag dress. I can almost see her naked.

fragile_ren1

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Pokemon Ranger

It’s hard to tell the difference between this game and a nightmare. It’s got Pokemon, it’s on DS, it involves lots of furious gimmicky scribbling, and after it’s all done you wake up with a wet patch. It’s a kiddie game, the characters in it all talk to you like you’re stupid. Even they know how bad the game is. What’s even worse is the gimmicky non-gameplay. All you do is scribble circles over and over again. If I wanted to do that i’d draw a toilet.

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You Must Excuse Mike

Mike does not have the Wii. But Mike goes to GameStop a lot, and always plays the Wii demo unit for at least half of his visit. The GameStop employees can’t do anything about him, especially when Mike is “reviewing” a new Wii game, because he used to spend his entire visit bothering other customers. Something about recommending “UMD movies” then arguing how the customer’s son won’t get into college if they buy “that DS with those crappy dog games.”  I don’t know.

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Monster Hunter Tri – Event Impressions

Cockatoo Island, Sydney. I was lucky enough to be invited to a special preview of Monster Hunter Tri held by Nintendo Australia. Here’s how it went down. Everyone invited met up at Circular Quay as per directions on the invitation, but nobody really knew what to expect. We knew we were headed to Cockatoo Island via ferry, but nobody expected THIS!

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Yoshi’s Story, Real Lives

Yoshi’s Story gets dismissed as a weak, childish game because of its apparent simplicity and forgiving difficulty. Really though, it is one of the most intelligently designed games ever made. It is one of the only games, if not the only game, to successfully and adequately deal with the concept of losing ‘lives.’

I have an old family friend a few years younger than me. His first console was an N64 and Yoshi’s Story one of his first games alongside Super Mario 64. When I first played Yoshi’s Story at his house I enjoyed it, but invited him to try my copy of Yoshi’s Island on Super Nintendo. He played and enjoyed that but something bothered him and he confronted me about it. He had two extremely interesting questions that to this day I remember because I could not adequately answer them;
“When Baby Mario got taken, how come I had him again at the start of the level?”
“Blue Yoshi died but when I tried the level again I was Blue Yoshi, why?”
Imagine a seven year old asking you that.

Games have always dealt with the concept of death or failure. Yet for some reason, everyone seemed happy to just go along with the idea of ‘lives’ or chances. You might typically start with 3, like baseball “third strike – you’re out.” Unlike baseball, you might actually achieve something before you lose a life and then get to start over. And unlike baseball, you might collect new chances, typically by running over an icon that resembles the avatar’s head. If a video game is an interactive narrative you play out and then you fail, it is as if the events that just played out had never happened and we were starting fresh. Like a blooper, left on the cutting room floor of a movie editing studio. A long time ago it was simply decided that games would adopt this format and no game ever challenged that, until Yoshi’s Story.

As gamers, we have probably forgotten how long ago or how quickly we mentally tore down these logical problems with games. Who knows, maybe it was 30 seconds in that we decided that was just how things were in games. It didn’t matter if you died because you could just start again from where you left off, unless you got ‘game over’. Gamers raised on today’s titles might not even be aware of the ‘game over’ concept, since it was a convention of arcade machines that had to stop you playing all day. But for those people who played Yoshi’s Story, like my buddy Angus, they didn’t encounter this flaw in game mechanics until they branched out. In Yoshi’s Story you start the game not with six lives, but six Yoshi’s, each an individual. If they die, they don’t come back ever. There is no ‘Game Over’ screen in the old sense: if you lose your last yoshi, you have actually failed to protect them, the last of their species, and caused evil to reign forever.

This ties into the game’s name: Yoshi’s Story. It is a story, a pop-up book as the game presents it, and stories do not have mid-sentence revisions. There is no flicking back and reading from the beginning of the page again if you stuffed up in Yoshi’s Story. The events that unfolded always matter and form part of the story. “The red yoshi failed and was taken, crying, to Baby Bowser’s castle” is part of the story and then the green yoshi or whoever has to pick up the pieces. You can even gain new chances in Yoshi’s Story in the form of locating and saving the two stranded yoshis hidden in the game. It is a game that, without removing the convention of extra chances, creates a logical reason for events.

Yoshi’s Story is incredible in that it never ever breaks real life logical boundaries and sustains a narrative. And for that it must be applauded.

As the page turned, the Yoshis all grew happier.

A Night with Dunaway

Last night I had Cammie Dunaway over. I found it unusual that she’d be in Perth this close to E3 so I said “You’re not leaving yourself much time.”
“Hehe, for what sweety?” Cammie replied.
“E3 of course, it took me over 24 hours to fly to L.A.”
“Oh we’ve already done it silly.”
“Done E3? The press conference and everything?”
“Yeah we recorded it last week, everyone who attended is under an NDA. Only the internet hasn’t found out yet, hehehe.”

This was a lot for me to take in so I motioned for her to get back to sucking my cock. Over the next hour, when she came up for a breather, she filled me in on what happened.

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I am SICK of this CASUAL BULLSHIT

All I ever hear these days is “casual this” “casual that” and they’re always talking about the same thing; Nintendo. There is NO SUCH THING as casual and hardcore, there is no distinction, you guys should shut up because no one is listening to your nonsense. What like Mario Kart is casual now? Didn’t anyone inform the guys slaving away for the continental time trial charts? Halo is hardcore? Why do I find people who know nothing about games know about Halo? Your distinctions are fucked. RPGs are hardcore? My Grandmother, who is arthritic and 84 years old LOVES RPGS because they don’t require any dexterity from her and she can just enjoy a fantasy epic. She plays them on her PS2.

‘Casual’ is just the new word losers use to malign Nintendo. They used to use the word ‘kiddy’, remember that? “Oh Nintendo is just kiddy crap, get a PS2 for real mature games where you shoot guys.” Of course they can’t use kiddy anymore now that their aunt owns a DS the television is saturated with advertisements marketing Wii at adults. Not the so called ‘mature,’ 15 year old boys, but directly to gen X and baby boomers. ‘Casual’ is the new ‘kiddy’, just like ‘mature’ was superseded by ‘hardcore.’ But there is an actual word that all these clowns mean when they say hardcore or casual or mature; ‘Cool’ and ‘Uncool’. That’s what you mean. Wii Play is ‘uncool’.

The real question is; why dont the idiot legions of the internet, the soldiers in the trenches of the console wars use the words cool and uncool? Because deep down, they know they’re losers and there is nothing cool whatsoever about video games. The guy talking at a party about Fallout 3 isn’t the life of it. Guitar Hero champions aren’t going to be doing ads for Pepsi. And now they’re threatened because actual cool people are getting into games, casual games.

Sands of Time is Still Arsekicking

Can you believe this game came out in 2003? I played it in January of 04, buying a US copy and Freeloader for GameCube; I was just that excited about it. I remember the announcement way back in 2002 and the details were basically: Jordan Mechner returns to video games, new Prince of Persia, Splinter Cell team. I already had a boner but a little while after, when the first render of the Maharajah’s palace was released, I ejaculated everywhere. So yeah, I was that excited about it and I was still completely blown away by every aspect of the game.

So yesterday as I dwelled on the fact that I didn’t have anything capable of running the new Prince of Persia and with my new A/V cables arriving for my PS2 (I had since sold all my non-PAL GameCube games and re-acquired the game on PS2) I threw it in again, intending only to test out the A/V cables. Anyway, so half an hour ago I beat it. Holy shit. I’m dehydrated or something, everyime the Prince drank from water I wanted to drink, but the kitchen was too far away so I stayed put. Anyway, let me go through my thoughts on this game 5 years after the event.

Visually I remembered the game looking better than this. Now, a lot of this could be due to the fact that I’m replaying it on PS2 which we all know was a DVD-capable Dreamcast. I definitely recall there being a lot more bloom lighting on the GameCube. Now despite what I’ve just said, the game still looks incredible. I totally forget that they included a button mapped to L2 that is there just to show off the graphics. You hit it and the camera zooms out and puts itself at an angle that just lets you appreciate the fantastic art that went into this game. Every single area looks absolutely first class and is polished to perfection. Nothing looks bland; nothing looks out of place; the game is spectacular throughout. I’m just certain it used to be even more of a spectacle.

Level design is amazing. I would enter an area and it would all be familiar because I’ve played it before, but it was still a challenge because I didn’t remember how. I’d be all “oh cool this is the giant aviary bit” or “oh the mess hall” but it was fun going through it all again because the specifics were all hazy. What really makes the level design though is how organic it all feels. Every single area feels like it could be a legitimate part of the palace. It really struck me how you could look at the room and it would look real, yet hidden in it was the video game’s platforming path. The rubble that might help or hinder your path through any given room never seemed out of place although the occasional crate did. Crates are always big problems in games and to their credit, Ubisoft – sorry, I mean Jordan Mechner – only included about, oh, 4 in the entire game.

Game combat was as dull as I remembered, although the order of enemies felt different for whatever reason. I dunno, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t vault over this many enemies last time and had to resort to wall jumps. Also, I swore the final guys you fought all blocked wall jumps but they were blocking vaults for me this time. I was all confused. Perhaps the game adapts to your playstyle! Somewhat related to combat is the whole mess regarding collecting extra sand. Throughout the game you can stab your dagger into these glowing things to increase the size of your sand vial. This gives you more opportunities to rewind time whenever you die, insult Farah and so forth. However, it also makes it much much harder for you to execute the Mega-Freeze, by far the most useful combat ability. Instead of using a set amount of power, the mega freeze uses ALL your power. So early on in the game you can pull it off, collect sand from 8 fallen enemies to refill it and do it again. By the end of the game, you might do it at the start of a fight and then not have enough baddies left to fight to use it, or any ability for that matter, again. I guess that can help with the difficulty but it almost serves as a reason to avoid collecting more sand vials.

Actually, just an aside here. The parallels between Sands of Time and 2002’s ICO are incredibly strong. Both have huge, realistic feeling environments, both have monotonous, simple combat against pretty much the same enemies throughout, both have large scale puzzle solving. Both won Penny Arcade’s prestigious We’re Right awards. The big difference in terms of game design is that Sands of Time had some. Like, if you’ve played ICO, you’ll know that you can explore free range, with very little inaccessible and what not. The problem is while you can explore, there is nothing to find and all these extra areas are boring. Sands of Time cuts all that bullshit out, keeping you focused and in the right direction while piling on it’s carefully scripted, carefully paced awesome. Fuck ICO – I can’t believe I just gave it the compliment of being compared to Sands of Time.

The relationship between the Prince and Farah is still fascinating. It’s the best love story of any video game I’ve ever played, if only because of how subtle it is. Early on in the game, if you glare at her with the first person view, she’ll get all uppity and tell you to stop staring. By the end, she’ll comment on the colour of the Prince’s eyes. And of course the Prince’s thoughts on her that he expressed while they’re apart as just as funny and brilliantly written second time round. He tries to hide (from himself) his feelings for her through – shit, my vocabulary has failed me. I’m not good with feelings. He acts full of himself through chauvinism and because his country just kicked her country’s arse in war. He acts like he’s doing her a massive favour just by existing but deep down you can tell he feels guilty for what he’s done and feels intimidated by her. Classic writing and well acted.

Oh and the game’s ending. I remember the first time, when it pulled it’s twist on me I was blown away. If you haven’t played the game by now you probably never will so I’m going to ruin it for you: At the very start of the game, like you don’t even think about it, it acts as if it’s part of the menu, you walk through some curtains and a cutscene plays as the Prince narrates a tale, talking in the past tense. Throughout the game you’ll hear the narration over the gameplay and humourosly whenever the Prince (or Farah) dies he says something to the effect of “wait… that didn’t happen, I didn’t fall off.” When you pause he’ll ask “shall I continue?” Now it’s natural to assume that you, the player, is the Prince’s audience. Maybe you might also see it as a nod towards 1001 Tales of the Arabian Nights, as if this story was just one of those 1001 tales. In the game’s gripping climax, the Prince plunges the Dagger of Time into the Sands of Time, resulting in the rewinding of time all the way back to the night before the attack on India that serves as the game’s tutorial. The opening cinematic plays again but this time is elaborated on. As the Prince utters the same words he used to begin the game you see that he is in fact telling the story to Farah, in order to warn her of the attack and the traitorous Vizier. It is so, so clever. The Vizier then comes in to ruin everything and you have a terrible final boss battle against him. It’s neither difficult or fun, but that doesn’t matter because there is still time for one last, piss funny, use of the dagger of time to end the game. The credits roll and you get to hear a great song, it’s like Portal, a full fisted, tightly directed game with a song at the end.

Anyway fuck yeah this game is unbelievable. Time to play through Warrior Within and Two Thrones and see if they’re as bad as I heard. I don’t have much faith since neither involved Jordan Mechner but we’ll see.

Disaster: Day of Crisis

Title screen

A convoluted development and Reggie hating it was enough to turn most people away from Disaster: Day of Crisis. Hopefully in Valhalla, Moses will forgive these people and allow them the opportunity to enjoy this game in the afterlife.

You play as some guy. I can’t remember his name because he’s your generic all-American hero. You know the drill: high school football star, ex-Marine, closet homosexual. There’s one word that really describes him properly: dominator. This guy just dominates wherever he goes. Volcano exploding? He’ll just dominate that and run through fire. Special Forces holding hostages and a SWAT team getting shot to pieces? He’ll dominate that by running in in his tank top and hand gun. He gets involved in the story because his dead boyfriend’s sister was captured, she works as the secretary to a real man’s job – a seismologist – and as her only tenuous connection to the past the cops thought to bring him aboard in a giant scheme involving nuclear weapons and man-induced disasters.

Tsunami!

The shit starts to hit the fan pretty quickly and you gotta bust into a building, rescue everyone, and shoot all the baddies. When you’re halfway through this the first of the disasters hit and then it’s every man for himself. Rescuing losers earns you points of some variety, shooting dudes in the face wins you points of another variety. These points can be spent between levels to upgrade your abilities and stats. One of these abilities is strength and lots of strength allows you to just bust arse, stomping on any box or crate in the vicinity. Stomping these weaker objects often reveals more skill points or massive oversized hamburgers which you must then consume with gusto.

It’s probably worth pointing out that all the combat is entirely separate from all the busting garbage bins slash rescuing weaker humans. When a combat situation arises, you know about it because there will be a second long cutscene to hide the loading, the screen will blur and our hero says something positive like “shit.” It’s almost a shame really, because before you work out the pattern of wander-around-busting-arse and then enter combat then wander around some more, the game’s atmosphere provides a real sense of dread and danger. After the first few levels you’ll realise that in fact you’re in no danger at all, even when you can hold C to see a building collapsing in front of you. So now that I’ve cleared this up, let’s break down each section.

Combat is good. The game takes place in first person and feels like a light gun game. It is however a bit odd and unlike any light gun game you’ve ever played. For a start all the enemies can take a bullet to the face like a champion. Shooting them in the head does do more damage, but often not enough to kill them. you can add more power to bullets, enough to be fatal by ‘focusing.’ Focusing zooms the camera in and the sheer will power of the shot allows you to dominate foes. At the start of the game you really only have enough concentration to focus for a second at a time but over the course of the game you can build this up. Also unlike a light gun game, enemies won’t just be complacent enough to shoot endlessly while you hide like a coward to reload. They’ll change position, move up and punch you in the dick. Reinforcements will be called too, some armed with RPGs. Don’t worry though because if you thought enemies that can take a shot to the brain and carry on living were mean, our hero can be run over by armoured vehicles, take an explosion to the balls and still fight on. He’s just that cool. Also sometimes while you move between cover, an automated action, you can bust out random shots at enemies like Virtua Cop. These shots are almost always fatal and at the end of the stage you’ll be awarded titles like “Full fist legend,” “Unstoppable dominator,” or something else along those lines for these heroic shots of justice.

shooting

The other half of the game is spent staggering around the city finding people to rescue and crates and shit to break. The rescues are all pretty straightforward and nearly always utilise the motion controls. The controls are accurate enough to fend off annoyance while the rescues are varied enough to prevent boredom. Occasionally these rescues highlight touching stories like the father who was separated from his son or the emo girl with no friends. The names of all the people you rescue are recorded in the game statistics. You can also beat the shit outta random objects, which I’ve already mentioned and promise not to again. What I will mention though is that the camera is a piece of shit, zoomed way too far in and never doing anything useful.

resuscitation

Every now and then the game chucks you in a random car. The car scenes are all pretty cool with explosions, high speed chases and great crashes. The steering is all controlled via a Nunchuk-free Wiimote and for the most part it feels pretty solid. If you crash that’s because you suck and need to stop playing Mario Kart with it’s pussyfied joystick control option. Put your controller in a wheel cradle to drive like the champions.

The game looks like what we’ve come to expect of decent Wii games, lacking in polish and not dissimilar to GameCube graphics but with a few spectacular moments. The music is all pretty standard, as are sound effects. The game features a fair amount of voice and all the no name actors did their best B grade performances which is really great to see. Thankfully, none of generic dominator’s swearing was censored which helped remove some of the cheesiness.

cutscenes

Disaster: Day of Crisis is a great game. The story, characters, and setting are a write-off but all that shit is bullshit anyway as the gameplay demands to be taken seriously. I barely gave controls a mention in the review because they’re good enough to not be noticeable; the motion controls all enhance the game and work well. With its original ideas, solid gameplay and decent presentation, Disaster: Day of Crisis is great purchase for any self-respecting Wii owners and a game that Nintendo of America ought to be proud of.