b-ruce

MGS4 Impressions

I won't call this a review because I don't feel like going that in-depth on the subject but allow me to share my thoughts on the game.

Pros:
Fantastic visual presentation
Wonderfully interesting narrative
Fun gameplay mechanics at times

Cons:
Sometimes feels non-interactive
Boss battles seem not up to series standard
Ends weakly

Overall I don’t think I’m disappointed in the game but I won’t say that I’m overly impressed either. Much like GTA4 I think if you look past the glitter and shine you find a game that either refuses to or can not match the luster and be as special as their predecessors.

MGS4 article in New York Times

Got to love the press... I find it most amusing that the author references the editors of PS Magazine or 1up.com as he would a professor of woman's studies or a think-tank pundit.

They've finally done it, they've killed my car, man!

... or Xbox 360. So I got the red ring of death today. After a couple years of dreading this more than likely occurance it came upon me as I unsuspectingly turned on the console after a day of non-use. So obviously it's not an overheating issue.

It's disappointing, especially because I've been getting back into Rock Band and NBA2k* again, but actually Microsoft seems to be handling this whole thing not too badly.

I had always hoped that I'd be one of the lucky few not to get this but really I'm a little happy with the timing. Nothing huge and pressing right now for Xbox.

Everything old is new again and shinier!

So the Patriots weren't able to stop me from getting my hands on a copy of MGS4 and god damn if I'm not overjoyed about it. 4-6 hours in and it's just sheer joy, nostalgia mixed with an incredible graphical presentation mixed with Kojima's trademark crazy ass narrative.

You know a game's good when you are considering replaying it even before you're finished.

Age of Conan is here but MGS4 is right around the corner

So Age of Conan, it's incomplete. There's largely no real endgame material yet, which wouldn't be that big of a deal if it wasn't so darn easy to reach it. Within 10 days of release legitimate players using legit means were reaching the max level of 80. And then they started building their guild cities. And then I think we all realized in horror that there's nothing to do with them after that. At some point guilds with big fancy safe guild cities will be able to plant their flag in contested land and defend their square footage of dirt and cinder blocks. But for now all we can do is whine.

But don't get me wrong the gameplay is highly amusing. I'm using a controller to play for the most part and am having a blast in the thick of the fight. I think when more content gets added the game could be a real special experience. But for now it feels very limited, small and unfinished.

The point of a series

I finished the main narrative in GTA 4 over the weekend. And I know it's good and all but I can't help but still have this strange feeling of let down from it all. The driving mechanics and physics have changed to make the whole process much less enjoyable which in turn makes the radio much less enjoyable. And those two things are the heart of the series for me. But let's not also forget that they moved away from having any celebrity casting, limited your clothing options without improving that clunky store interface at all, removed all silencers, removed the "skip the car ride" option to streamline missions, stopped the tradition of having a carry-over character in mission critical cutscenes, took all the fun out of driving the motorcycle as the merest hitch will cause you to fly 80 feet due to their crazy rag doll physics engine, took out the bike and airplane vehicles, turned the standing gun gameplay into paramilitary duck and cover rather than just fun old run and gun, no driveby camera angle, etc

It just feels a bit too different from its predicessors.

IGN gives GTA 4 a perfect 10

Hilary "Bulldozer" Goldstein's GTA4 review is up and hell if it doesn't make me envy pAjAmO's ablitiy to get advance copies all the more. I on the other hand have to wait until Monday nite nite. Still I'm very excited, especially since Hilary sez that the main character has a lot of heart and the story is more layered and subtle. Now I thought that is what made its predicessor one of the best games I had ever played but no one spoke on that much at the time. So I'm well interested to see this for myself.

On other fronts the IGN networks are tent calling for Age of Conan like mad, and it done got me an open beta key. 12 gigs are downloading as we speak. Which is a little bogus because I just had 12 gigs of the Gamespot beta but it wouldn't transfer over. Oh well, when servers open on May 1st I'll be there man. Ooo! I wonder if I'll be able to play the single player intro as soon as it's installed!

Harmonix lays an egg on the eve of GTA launch

So it finally happened. Much like all things, the good folks are Harmonix, makers of the fine "Rock Band" have failed me miserably. Today the first full album became available for download and play. It is "Screaming for Vengeance" from Judas Priest. An interesting first choice to be sure, especially with nuggets like "Who's Next" and "Nevermind" rumored. Still, I was very excited to finally see it, as the ability to play a full album was something I really wanted to experience in Rock Band. I thought it would be the perfect culmination of learning how to play the game and figuring out where I stood in the difficulty hierarchy. "I have an hour to play something, I'll pop in 'Pinkerton'" I imagined myself saying in the months to come.

But what we have so far is a failure to combine interface with intention. So as it stands the play-experience for an album is to first write down the order of songs, then go to the quickplay, choose song #1, choose difficulty, play it, choose "new song", look up what song 2 is, find it amongst the 100+ tracks, choose difficulty, play song, and repeat until album.length = trackNumber. Talk about buzz kill. Shouldn't it be enough to pick what album you want to play? To let the players change difficulty after a failed attempt but keep their place in the setlist? It seems like such a minor adjustment would be needed from the gameplay they already have implemented in the Band World Tour. This is going to stick in my craw for a while. I feel gypped by laziness and greed. And no one outlazies and outaverices me! With only a week until GTAIV comes out, I'm afraid the best gaming movement of the last year has completely lost steam.

They are so good at this

GTA 4 radio station widget. I can't wait to hear more!

Again and again

Gamespot reports Age of Conan is delayed, yet again. This time til May 20th. Pretty damn bogus.

Rock Band does indeed rock

I'm in love with a drummer and that drummer is me! I still wish it had a creative aspect as we hoped it would have when we first heard about the game but still it's hella fun.

wait what was I talking about now?

Everything else is lost to me, Mass Effect now owns my soul. It's really so good, my only complaint is the shooting gameplay and the skills/powers don't sparkle like the KoTOR lightsaber stuff, but really what would?

Once around the block

From what little I’ve seen of Super Mario Galaxy I can say that it is truly a marvel. Once again M challenges us to think of platforming games in a completely different way, with Mario 64 it was with 360 degree movement and explorations in what felt like 3 dimensional space. Now with Galaxy we’re treated to a vision of spheroid space. I was a bit discombobulated by it at first but I adapted to sheer enjoyment minutes later. My only worry is the difficulty. I was never great at Mario 64 and I died twice at Galaxy’s first boss before getting that good good star collect. Still I doubt my future failures will stop me from enjoying this one of a kind experience for hours to come, after I’m through with Mass Effect.
And why am I focusing on Mass Effect? Firstly, it has most of the elements that titillate me most in gaming. Secondly the first couple hours of Assassin’s Creed didn’t wow me. I don’t particularly enjoy the Prince of Persia jumping thing and the combat seems needlessly joyless. The environments look next gen but everything else resembles more of the same. Still I’ll be glad to give it a go after Mass Effect and Galaxy.

Edit: hours later after a work shift but before I could post this I found myself wondering about Assassin’s Creed. It’s highly likely that I’ve already guessed the plot but in execution it could still be fulfilling. So that’s a good thing for AC.

Edit #2: a great quote from Gabe at Penny Arcade: "Imagine what an open ended sandbox title must look like to a reviewer especially right now. How many games do they have piling up on their desks? A game like Assassins creed isn't meant to be played under a deadline. You shouldn't be trying to beat it as fast as you can so you can move on to Mass Effect or Mario Galaxy. As soon as I gave myself a deadline all of a sudden I understood all their complaints. It was like a fucking Escher painting. I had put myself in their shoes and suddenly the landscape flipped and I could see games from their perspective. In the end I wasn't angry at them for their bad reviews. I actually just felt bad for them."

It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

Over the course of the next 2 days I shall have in my possession all which I desire from the gaming world for the foreseeable future. Super Mario Galaxy will be in my sweaty grip today, possibly Assassin’s Creed as well. And on Thursday I will have an advance copy of Mass Effect courtesy of the magnanimous pAjAmO. This nicely coincides with my school term coming to an end in a week, or less if I can finish the final paper sooner, leaving me ample time to reacquaint myself with childhood memories of an Italian plumber who’s a star at jumping on mushrooms. And then to discover how next level these next gen games truly are. Say all you want about the commercialism of Christmas. If you’re a lover of toys it’s still the most wonderful time of the year.

IGN gives Lion War 9.0

Looks like Square Enix's remake of Final Fantasy Tactics hits the mark. I can't wait to check it out!

grr and now AoC's delayed too

Down go my two most wanted games of 2007. Age of Conan is at least not canceled though, unlike Shenmue online apparently. I need to get my ass in gear and make my own MMORPG.

Hrmmmm, maybe we could all pool our resources and buy Rockstar

I know I could make a damn good GTA game... anywho, by now you must have heard, GTA IV is delayed. Delayed up good and proper. I must say I was worried from the info I had heard about the game, the harder carjacking and smarter police just seemed to mean an extra 10 minutes of jerking around before being able to start a mission, not sure if I really want that even if it is more realistic. It's too bad they couldn't have set a separate team to making another GTA San Andreas type game, would have been a far worthier and more profitable effort than making Manhunt 2, no one even bothered to play Manhunt 1 for more than a few hours.

Problems with Vanguard

So as an impulse I decided to buy and digitally download Vanguard: Saga of Heroes last weekend. And that was my whole weekend. Had to download over 10 gigs twice due to corrupt files or downloading issues only to find after the patching process I'd have to defragment my HD before I could have a prayer of it working. Which of course after it did, but only barely. It's so incredibly laggy it's unplayable. I'm very disappointed because although my system is certainly on the low performance side it's still well within the minimum requirements, save for the sound card perhaps, but at this point upgrading it just to play Vanguard seems like sending good money after bad. =(

Final Fantasy Tactics PSP sells 240k units!

This in the month of May in Japan. Story at IGN here.

I must say I'm surprised. Not that 240 thousand units is a ton when it comes to game sales but I've always viewed FFT as a niche game. Hopefully we'll see similar numbers in the US, 500k total would be great. And maybe then we'll get a real follow up, instead of that crappy kiddy tactics advance.

Wow RTK4 on the Wii

So the Wii's got Romance of the Three Kingdoms 4 up for download. One more reason I can't wait to be allowed to buy one of these things (seriously, has production ramped up again yet?) Now I didn't play 4 in my youth but I gave years of it away to numbers 2 and 3 and I can tell you that if you like retro gaming and turned based strategy you should love any Romance of the Three Kingdoms game.

Blue Dragon ships 150k units in Japan

According to this IGN article. I wonder if Sakaguci's games will be enough for the 360 to break through into general acceptance in Japan. It doesn't seem that unreasonable, the main purpose of my old game consoles was to play Final Fantasy games.

Metal Gear 4 to have psychological effects on player!

What I love about reading Kojima is his totally sincere tone.

hmmm, you have not saved often, you are somewhat reckless!

Game reviews an their aims

There's an intersting article up at destructiod about revamping the review system. I've felt that the review system is problematic for a little while now but I've yet to figure out a course of action. Different people consume these reviews for different reasons so it seems best for the reviewers to differentiate themselves by catering to different tastes. Short of that, I think by and large the system in place now (mostly the 10 point scale) is fine so long as critics are being truthful, which by and large they seem to be.

Miyamoto at GDC transcribed

Gamespot has that here. The whole thing is a good read, fascinating to get some insight on his way of thinking. Most notible to me was his goal to get his wife into games and how the Wii seemed to succeed in that. It reminded me of talks I've had with Pajamo, about how gaming needs to pull in the fair sex and how Pajamo's own wife had started to play games (though that was pre-Wii).

Final Fantasy XII Review

Final Fantasy XII
(PS2)
4 out of 5

What’s good?
• The level grinding is actually fun
• Ends very strongly
• Decent cast and one stellar character, the next Square-Enix shooter should be titled “Balither May Cry”

What’s bad?
• Slow pacing and/or lack of the normal huge narrative we’re used to from the series
• License board is an interesting way to level up a character but needlessly tedious in spots
• Featured pop song feels tacked on, not like the pop theme in Final Fantasy 8.

So after a long long wait we finally got to play Final Fantasy 12 and by and large it was everything we could have hoped for. The new battle system was perfectly fine and fun, unlike the detractors told us it would be. The cast was decently interesting and competently voiced for the most part. The visuals and production values were top notch as usual. So what’s the problem? As with most things worth writing about the devil’s in the details, as a sum of all its parts Final Fantasy 12 is, sadly, not a masterpiece. It’s more on par with numbers 9 and 10. This is to say that it is still a very good game. But it just doesn’t have that sparkling extra something to it.

FF 12 has a massive pedigree to live up to. Not only is it the twelfth installment in a long-running, best-selling, game-of-the-year-winning series, but also it is the follow up work from the man who brought us Final Fantasy Tactics (which many people think is the best thing ever made with the Final Fantasy name attached, myself included, maybe, depending on my mood that day) and Vagrant Story (which has a cult following and received a rare, perfect score from the Japanese magazine authority Famitsu.) Unfortunately as stated above, despite this pedigree, FF 12 is not a masterpiece.

Since the game itself isn’t a masterpiece what history will probably remember of FF 12 is the behind-the-scenes intrigue. Development of FF 12 took a much longer time than usual. And halfway through Yasumi Matsuno, the aforementioned auteur behind Tactics and Vagrant Story, had to bow out of the Producer/Director role due to “health reasons”. Then the reports started coming out that the whole development had to be over-hauled. And so after many months of extended development we’re left to wonder what the game would have been had Matsuno had his druthers, much as we’re left to wonder what The Magnificent Ambersons would look like had Wells had final cut authority. Given Matsuno’s track record I would have to think that perhaps his initial vision would have been better than what was finally released. All we can do is wait and see what Matsuno comes out with next (reportedly with other Square-Enix expatriates at Mistwalker.)

Saint's Row Impressions

When it's bad, it's really bad (bugs that will stop the game for minutes or completely crash the game, horrid level design that doesn't allow for restarting somewhere in the middle of the mission, and a level of difficulty that seems downright sisyphean.)

But SR does have some good things, a decent soundtrack, good characters and voice acting and it's generally fun to play.

Blue Dragon about to hit shelves in Japan

Xbox 360's first multi-disk game has THREE DISKS!!!1 Story here from IGN.

Damn, maybe I should have pre-ordered

a.k.a if these bids are true I hate the world.

I hope the early models all break down like they did last generation.

1.5 million FFXII units sold in opening week

IGN reports, which is a record for the merged Square Enix, even though Square has seen bigger sales previously.

Meanwhile some IGN editor vents his disapointment at the game.

My jury's still out. I just hope when they come back they'll have some slippery shrimp leftover, mmmmm slippery shrimp.

Also Gamespot has reviewed Xbox 360's big title of the year Gears of War quite favorably. Doesn't look like my cup of tea at all but pAjAmO was interested in it.

The numbers are in

So Final Fantasy XII nabbed a 9.5 from IGN and a 9.0 from Gamespot. Which is par for the course for the series. So really the only thing this tells us is that all those hating on the new battle system were wrong to think it would destroy the game.

6 days until final fantasy 12!

Woohoo! I've also recently picked up an Xbox 360, the menu system seems needlessly complicated but the controller is fantastic. Wireless connectivity + remote on button = best controller ever.

Worrying news and exciting previews

Old Final Fantasy mind-head, Hironobu Sakaguchi, or “The Gooch” as his friends and Diff’rent Strokes fans like to call him, has elaborated a bit more on his first Xbox 360 RPG Blue Dragon. It seems they’re really coming down to the wire to meet their launch date. While reading this I wonder if The Gooch isn’t just trying to get some more cash out of Microsoft. MS Japan really needs Blue Dragon to come out, somewhat on time. At first the game was promised before November 4th, now it’s slated for December 7th. So if Blue Dragon doesn’t make it out before 2007 sees the light of day MS Japan may loose what little credibility they have with the public. With The Gooch saying that they’re only at 90% complete now makes you wonder if that’s just his way of trying to get MS to shell out a little extra cash to help with development. My prediction: The Gooch wants the MS money but regardless of whether he gets it or not Blue Dragon will be released Christmas week and it’ll take a whole year for Blue Dragon to reach our North American shores.

Also Gamespot has a Final Fantasy 12 preview up, with lots of gameplay movies. I was disappointed to see that you’ll only be able to have 3 to 4 characters on screen at any given time. The MMORPG style of battle looks fine, if somewhat joyless. And was happy to note that they were pleased with the voice acting.

Gee, I wonder if he'll sign them too

Nintendo of America President and leader of the Reggie-lution, Reggie Fils-Aime will be personally selling Wii consoles on launch day.

In other news it's only 1 month until we finally get our hands on Final Fantasy 12!!!

Sakaguchi's still got it!

Well I dunno if that's 100% true but this new 8minute clip of Lost Odyssey has got me believing.

It's too bad that they were unable to deliever on their promise of releasing Blue Dragon within a year of the launch. Still if they deliever that game in December in Japan they won't lose too much face. I just want Lost Odyssey on or before Christmas 2007, please.

Now Wii know

Nintendo's new gaming console, the Wii, will be available in stores on November 19th for the sevlt price of $249.99. Also for the virtual console, the platform which older Nintendo games can be downloaded and played, the games will cost $5, $8, and $10 for NES, SNES and N64 games respectively.

When PaJaMo called me about this late last night, he said "Why two days later than PS3?" And I've got to say I'm with him on this one. It would seem like they'd want to launch at least a week earlier. Also I think the pricing on the virtual console games is a bit dissappointing. $8 for an SNES game that has been available on computer ROMs for forever? Hopefully Nintendo will lessen this blow by offering a shit-ton of games (right now 10 new games a month is the word). Also it'll be interesting to see if only Nintendo made games will be released or if we'll see some of our old 3rd party favorites too.

Review: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Chaos Bleeds

Speaking of beat'em ups (well at least I was until the buzz was mellowed on Yakuza) here's my take on the second Buffy game.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Chaos Bleeds Xbox, PS2, Gamecube

September 10, 2003
You tread a dangerous path basing a game on a television show/movie. If it’s no good you’ll have earned the ire of rabid fans, if it’s a success you’ll have the same fans numbering themselves as your fans. That being said I should also preface this review by saying that I was a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As such I looked with trepidation upon the first Buffy game and ultimately gave up on it as it failed to balance the concepts of difficulty and the “continue” option. Still, I felt the game did use the license well and was not revolted by what they had done to my beloved TV series. So when I saw “BtVS Chaos Bleeds” at E3 this year I met it with enthusiasm. I hoped that the developers had learned their lessons on the first game and expected a better game this time around. Then I learned that “Chaos” was being produced by a different development studio altogether. These new Turks did manage to avoid some of the pitfalls of their predecessors. However, they also dug some of their own, leaving us with a freshman attempt that doesn’t completely satisfy, but does entertain from time to time.

Story
As with the first game what we’re playing is billed as a “lost episode”. And does play out like an episode of the series, perhaps a little light on the dialog & humor and a little heavy on the action. Still the plot was developed and sanctioned by all the right people and it shows.

Gameplay
As with the first Buffy game the player is expected to fight vampires and demons (most of the time 2 or 3 on one) and solve fetch puzzles (e.g. looks like I need to place that candlestick I found in the study here on the dinning room table next to Colonel Mustard) which are far too difficult as the items are almost always hidden away in the most inexplicable of places. Still one can appreciate the attention to detail in some of the levels (you can’t get past the metal detector until you empty your pockets of metallic items) and some of the puzzles are quite ornate in their complexity.

Fighting the bad guys feels very similar to the first game. Sometimes there are camera issues and it doesn’t feel as fluid or responsive as a Soul Caliber but what it lacks in that department it almost makes up in the brutal way she brings the hurt to the vamps. The impact, especially when using weapons feels very satisfying and you can also beat the hell out of the baddies once they fall down, which can lead to very easy dustings. The focus here is still on multiple-hostile management. You will have to face 2 vamps far more often than just one and sometimes they will pile as many as 4 on you at a time. Being as such I wish they had worked on the perimeter-targeting so that Buffy could string combinations that would hit everyone surrounding you a-la “Enter the Matrix”. Say what you will about that game, at least Niobe could throw 3 kicks to hit 3 different people in a row, and she made it look good, or at least as good as a mediocre game can make it look.

Buffy 2 sports a plot convention that lets players assume the control of some of the other series’ characters, such as Willow and Faith. While this does make for a good change of pace, it also is a bit redundant as Buffy, Faith, Spike and Xander all have essentially the same moves. So really you get to play as 3 different character models when playing as the 6 different characters.

Presentation
I think it looks pretty good, but when my little sister (who’s also a fan of the series, but no gamer) saw it the first thing she said is “That doesn’t look like her (Buffy).” And it’s true, the characters bear a slight resemblance to the actors that portrayed them on our TV sets (and in most cases lend their voices to the game) but everything still looks a little blocky and dated and Willow looks really really scary.

The interface is serviceable with one setback from the first game. In the original game when cycling through your weapons and items you used to be able to see them all in a long row so that you knew, for instance, that the health pack was only 4 clicks over to the right. This feels like a great idea compared to how it works in “Chaos” where you have to blindly fumble through your inventory, sometimes more than once, while trying to evade that killing blow the vamps are trying to connect.

The sound is top notch; the voice acting is done well but feels a bit strange at first, however after the first chapter you get used to it and learn to enjoy most of it – the glaring exception is Anya, who is not voiced by Emma Caulfield as in the series. Thankfully she doesn’t get to say much. The sound effects and background music are right out of the show and help give the game an authentic feel.

Since there is no carry-over from level to level (since oftentimes you’re playing as a different character) it makes sense that the game would allow you to replay any of the levels that you’ve passed previously. However since these all take about an hour each and they all hinge on figuring out the trick to the puzzle or end boss I don’t foresee myself going back for too many seconds. On an interesting side note you do unlock new features every time you finish a level. These features range from DVD-esque interviews and outtakes to other playable characters in the games multiplayer mode, which allows for 4 player action.

So what we have here is a competent entry and a decent if oft frustrating way to waste 10-20 hours. I would recommend this game to Buffy fans (of course) as well as anyone who enjoys a decent platform/action game. Nothing spectacular, nothing revolutionary, but a respectable first effort in a series two in number.

black hawk down, snake style

new Metal Gear Solid 4 trailer up at gamespot. I don't exaggerate when I say it's a-maz-ing.

hrmmm maybe i should finally play MGS3 instead of Final Fantasy 8 (in preparation for the new Final Fantasy.)

Disgeaea Review

Seemed like a good idea to post this here, now that Pajamo's no longer functioning and now that Disgaea 2 has hit shelves.

Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (PS2)

October 14, 2003
To be blunt the strategy RPG genre is the most intimidating and unapproachable of all game types. It’s like a special club where the doorman won’t let you in because when you tell him you know Tony, he says he doesn’t know any Tony. You almost have to have a friend help you get into these games if you’ve never played one before. Two reasons why this is so:

1. Strategy RPG games play very differently and normally offer no real explanation on how to play them.
2. You need a friend to assure you that these games can be enjoyable and worthwhile and to recommend them to you in the first place.

This is how I got into strategy RPGs with Final Fantasy Tactics, one of the greatest games ever made and I would have never played it because of the word “Tactics” in the title, and this is how you should get into them now with Disgaea. I’m here to tell you, friends, that these strategy RPGs can be very fulfilling to play. Yes the gameplay will need some getting used to but it’s nothing you can’t handle. Just think of it as chess with special pieces and different attacks and you’ll be fine.

Story

A great set up, you wake up after a two year slumber, your father’s dead and everyone has forgotten about you. So as prince Laharl, your mission is to secure your rights as the heir to the throne. And since the kingdom we’re talking about here is the Netherworld (like Halloweentown in Tim Burton’s “Nightmare Before Christmas” with demons instead of people) this is quite a daunting task, demons don’t really have an ethics code and so most of your tribulations will come from underhanded schemes that you or your enemy devise. Laharl is a bit one dimensional but I got a great kick out of leveling the hell out of him and making him almost omnipotent.

The story progresses nicely, most of the speech is done while you watch a puppet show. Each of the main characters have about 4 different poses for angry, sad, confused, embarrassed, etc. These pictures will flash over the dialog box when the characters are talking or listening to one another. At other times you will watch the in-game engine animate the characters actions. While it’s definitely the road less traveled when it comes to games it does bring to mind the great Final Fantasy Tactics which also used the in-game engine, the puppet show, however, is a really great way to watch the game unfold, truly original. In a word Disgaea is quirky. There’s a great humor to this game that can’t really be conveyed in print. Humor is what makes Disgaea really stand out. Now granted it is the wacky Japanese Anime style of humor that some of you might not get or like but for those that do it’s really well done. And that’s something we’ve never seen in games before, at least I haven’t. It says here that humor is what made Grand Theft Auto 3 the great game it was - the best of the series. It was more of a social satire in GTA3, but the point is that it was damn funny, an added emotion to the experience that made the game so great. The same can be said of Disgaea.

The one thing that Disgaea really lacks is a vile antagonist. It’s really more the story of Laharl’s journey to become the overlord, protecting his land and the people he meets along the way. This is fine, but without a strong villain that we can all look forward to beating at the end Disgaea has to fall back on its humor to keep us coming back for more.

One other problem: there are quite a few different endings you can receive in Disgaea, but the “normal” one, which is probably the one most frequently seen by players, is very weak. The first ending I saw while playing this game was uncharacteristically somber and it also had no type of resolution for the intrigue involving certain characters who were observing your movements throughout the game. These people obviously had something going on here but it’s never addressed in the “normal” ending. It wasn’t open ended it just felt incomplete.

Gameplay

Fun, fun, fun! It’s amazing how much fun Disgaea makes turn-based, strategy play. These are the games that give you a (normally) square faux-3D board and allow you to move your characters about the map and using different attacks or tactics. As stated earlier it’s like chess but your pieces move differently and to capture a piece you must deplete all of its health points. But there’s more! Characters that can’t get to a square adjacent from an enemy can instead go adjacent to an attacking ally and join in a combo attack. You can do this with up to three characters giving you a four character combo attack that can really look cool. You can also lift and throw your own characters as well as your enemies around the board. This adds another tactical layer to the game. If you need to cover the length of the board in a single turn you can create a ladder of characters. The first character gets picked up by other and then that character gets picked up by the next one and so on until you have a human ladder reaching up to the sky. Then you throw the ladder a few squares per each character until all of your characters’ feet are back on the ground. Add in special moves that allow for incredible damage to multiple enemies and enjoy beating the hell out of your opposition.

Presentation

Disgaea is visually pleasing, like a mix of the afore mentioned “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and the “Tenchi” animes. The characters are incredibly cute, but devilish, which is perfect since they are demon children. I submit to you this is the reason that you will immediately be drawn to the game.

Like any other RPG you will have access to many menus that will allow you to check your characters’ status and equipment, rearrange their order and many other things. The menus are pretty straightforward and easy to navigate but there’s no help determining what all those different statistics are good for, so you can be left in the dark at times.

The voice acting is the best of this year; yes, I liked it better than even KoTOR’s which was very professional but lacked a certain spark - save the homicidal droid - that made any of those characters memorable. Disgaea has a great cast, doing voices for several memorable characters and they’re not even credited!!! I really do think it’s quite horrible how little recognition the people get for the English versions of these games. The only bad thing about the dialog is that you have to hit “X” after every line of dialog. Why? It gets damn annoying and can break up the flow of the scene.

This game is huge. Your first run through should take you anywhere from 38 to 55 hours. And that’s really just going through the linear story arc. There are other features such as the Dark Assembly (the Demon congress, you can pass different resolutions such as to have the store carry more expensive and therefore better items, or to open optional levels for a few more hours of fun), the Item World (there’s a whole world inside of every item with special characters that boost certain stats, by traveling into the item world you can make that particular item stronger and subjugate the special characters so you can relocate them to boost a different item if you wish), and dozens of unlockable character classes you can get into if you so choose. With at least 8 different endings one could spend over 100 hours on Disgaea. The game is so well made that there’s a good likelihood that you will.

This is a great game with a whole lot to offer. Its humor and visual style will grab and take hold of you as you take this wild ride across the Netherworld. It may be a bit too repetitive at times – the bad guy is sending more minions at you to cover his escape. And this happens in almost every chapter. Also the “normal” ending is very unfulfilling. But in the end the good far out weighs the bad. Disgaea is a wonderfully quirky game with more content then just about any other game I can think of.

there's always next month

well so the IGN review, while a little more positive than the gamespot review leads me to believe that Yakuza is really nothing like Shenmue, except in cutscenes. So, I'm going to be steering clear of it for now.

In other news, 400,000 PS3s will be available at launch in the US. This will make the ebay sales go through the roof but other than that it's no big deal. Sony should wake me up when they have killer app to play it on.

Kasavin gives Yakuza a disappointing score

Well the hype bubble starts to burst as gamespot gives a mediocre 7.4 to Yakuza. I'm not super surprised as he listed some of my fears I had begun to have for it after seeing the gameplay footage, it's a small environment and the beat-em up gameplay get's old.

Even though the comparasons to Shenmue have been downplayed, I still think that Yakuza is a spiritual successor so I wish he would have weighed in on how the two games stack up, besides on the scorecards.

Official movies of Yakuza voice talent

Gamespot has several videos of the Yakuza voice talent at work, including one of "Lex" Rosenbaum, with hair!

That part of the production looks fine but I'm still reticent about the gameplay footage I've seen. I guess we'll find out if the game was worth the hype, the release is less than a week away =)

In other game news, Final Fantasy 12 is drawing some attention both at Gamespot who has a preview and at IGN who has a write-up of the soundtracks. For the record, the best soundtracks are FFT, FF6, FF7 and FF8. I can't believe they added the X-2 soundtrack, even they hated it in their review.

Shenmue Review

I think it's finally time to post my old game reviews here, as Pajamo.com seems unlikely to ever be free from the clutches of domain claim-jumpers. This is, I think the best review I have ever written. It happens to be for one of the best games I've ever played, funny how that works, eh?

August 27, 2006

August 9, 2006

June 29, 2006

March 24, 2006

March 9, 2006

December 6, 2005

November 27, 2005

'Once again we've shown what Balkan savageness is!'

The Bruce Lee statue, predictably vandalized, only moments after it was unveiled in Bosnia.

Wait, Bruce Lee... Bosnia... WHAT???

In other news, related mostly through savageness and less with the Balkans or Bruce Lee. I am in love with the small, silly, yet intricate and addictive game, Yohoho Puzzle Pirates. It’s an MMORPG with out all the stuff you don’t need, like level grinding or graphics. Seriously tho, the way the crafting system is set up with various player run shops and the supply brought in by players and AI merchants alike is pretty cool. Not to mention that you can form larger groups and politic and jive to colonize islands. Stew in a bit of Animal Crossing-like aspects what with different clothes to wear and furniture to place in your house and you’ve got something that, while not visually impressive, can be very very pleasing.

Posted by b-ruce at 5:44 PM | Comments (2)

November 22, 2005

July 30, 2005

June 3, 2005

March 3, 2005

December 30, 2004

In flight

So I've been neglecting most of my other interests as of late to focus on this so called World of Warcraft. It's pretty damn fun. I especially like the crafting system. I'm proud to say that I've become quite the blacksmith and miner.

Posted by b-ruce at 11:03 AM

December 17, 2004

July 31, 2004

July 6, 2004

June 26, 2004

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February 4, 2004

oooooo... pretty

Check out my new desktop image.

If you read my Crimson Sea review, then guessed that I'd be down for a sequel, you'd have guessed right, I am, down for a sequel to Crimson Sea, I mean. And this screenshot is part of the reason why. Koei has developed some graphical muscle in their "Dynasty Warriors" golden age.

Tycho over at penny-arcade has some funny things to say about IGN's low review of FFCC. As usual he seems to be telling it like it is, only a few more days until we get to see for ourselves.

Posted by b-ruce at 10:11 PM

January 31, 2004

January 28, 2004

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January 14, 2004

January 12, 2004