Archive for 'Impressions' Category
Soma Bringer: The Revised and Final Impressions
1 April 2008I picked a class that wasn’t for me.
I’m getting way too self analytical these days? Anyway, after futzing around a bit in chapter 3 while on a train the other night I said “Fuck this. I’m not having fun.” and started again picking another class. My first attempt was at the Corps class which is basically a paladin. Boring for me in most other games and unsurprisingly boring in Soma Bringer. So I picked a Gunner and gave the game another go.
I flew through the first three chapters easily since I knew what I had to do and was having more fun. Chapters four through six weren’t as painful as my original run through the other chapters but my core issues with the game remain.
There really is too much text in this game. I want to read it all for Japanese practice and just because I hate skipping cutscenes. It was hard. I even enjoyed Xenosaga in all of its bloaty goodness. This was just painful. Perhaps it’s just the mindset aligned with the game-type? Diablo clones are not good places for excessive text. I want to be killing things.
And that brings up the other issue. In agreement with my previous fears the maps of Soma Bringer just got bigger and bigger and the enemy count didn’t increase enough. There were definitely some fun and challenging boss fights. But proceeding from the start of the chapter to the end was definitely a struggle at times. If I ever saw that I was approaching a slightly larger group of enemies I knew most of them would be easily taken out with a few shots.
The AI is unfathomably stupid. I set my healer to be in the back and, well, healing. She spent most of her time being hit in the air as she dared to go too damn close to the enemies. As my class was a ranged attacker I knew someone had to get in the thick of it but that’s why I picked a fighter as my third character. Why my healer couldn’t stop dying I couldn’t discern.
The game does happen to shine and thankfully where it needed to the most. Multiplay. There are some ridiculously difficult hidden bosses within the chapters. Taking them on by your lonesome with the AI is tiring and nearly impossible. Doing this with friends makes it a blast. It’s truly a shame that this game doesn’t have wifi play as getting friends together to play is the biggest challenge I’ve had with the game.
That said, it was a good run if not too wordy. I don’t think I’ll touch the game again unless my friends want to take on some of the bonus dungeons. Soma Bringer does a lot of things right but needs more combat and better design for its maps. I look forward to a sequel.
Soma Bringer: The First Impressions
9 March 2008Soma Bringer is a lot like me. Beautiful on the inside, average on the outside, a bit too wordy and made a few mistakes during the developmental stage that will prevent being the best it could be.
First is the opportunity to pick one of the characters to play as and then a class to go with them. Characters determine starting statistics, classes add to those statistics and determine what weapons and skill that will be usable during the game. After that the talking begins.
There’s really a lot of text in this game. It probably wouldn’t surprise you that this came from many of the same people that brought us Xenosaga. I’d comment on the story but my Japanese isn’t catching enough of it and I really only bought this game to whack shit. And whack it good.
I’ve only just gotten through the second act and it seems this is where said whacking begins to pick up. I’m still disappointed. There isn’t enough to kill. The enemies are sparse and so far rather easy. If it picks up that’d be great, but so far I’m not happy. The maps keep getting bigger and the enemy supply isn’t filling up that much. Another oddity is that enemies don’t respawn until you power off the game and load it back up. This helps a bit for boss fights as their HP remains what it was if you die and make your way back, but on the occasion which you have to do a little backtracking, which isn’t much at least, there’s not a goddamned thing to do.
Much like Diablo is the presence of awesome and mostly awful loot. There is an inventory limit, but don’t worry as sending items to your storehouse is as simple as pressing X. Too simple really, as I’ve accidentally sent some items without meaning too. Luckily, stackable items don’t go away instantly as you need to specify how many will go so there’s little chance of accidentally sending away your entire potion stock. And since loot doesn’t disappear until you power down the game, there is little fear of leaving something behind.
Right now I’m liking the potential but not liking the game. I’ll stick with it though since everyone else I know who has the game is having a blast.
Nothing quite like a chainsword to the face
30 October 2007
I became addicted to Warhammer 40k right before I left for Japan. I’d try to play here, but my folks haven’t gotten around to shipping me my army yet. While little has whet my appitite, the recent PSP demo for Warhammer 40k Squad Command is doing a good job thus far.
The game is actually turn based as opposed to real time which excites my Netherlands. Unlike most turn based strategy games, it lacks the “testing” phase of the order issuing. That is to say, when you tell a troop to do something, it does it and there’s no taking it back. While I’ve been prone to making mistakes, this also tends to make the playing a bit more fast paced and ‘raw’. Also leaves a lot of dead Space Marines at the end of some turns. That leads into my biggest complaint thus-far. Out of all the many races available in the 40k universe, only Space Marines and Chaos will be playable. Other than that, while in no way exactly like the table-top game, it retains enough to give a great experience.
In the given brief army construction menu it can already be seen that customization of your army will take place. In exchange for the “points” that are commonly used for playing 40k, beefing up your individual units causes a reduction in its available action points (AP) each turn. These are the points that are required for your moving and shooting. So, it is possible to double the ammo carried for a powerful gun, but setting the unit up for that perfect shot may take more time. Speaking of perfect shots, it seems that when you do take aim at your enemy, you can expend more AP to increase your chance of hitting. Spending these points doesn’t increase your damage, though, so it’s not worth it to unload a whole turn’s worth of AP into one shot.
I’ve played through the demo mission five times already, and I still feel like I can get fun out of it. I did manage to make it crash once when I ended my turn with no visible enemies on the screen, but since that it’s been cool. I’ve now placed a pre-order on Play Asia. Thirty five American bones with free shipping on top. It comes out sometime in November, so that’ll be a nice treat. Hopefully I get it before the Dragon Quest IV remake hits, though, as I’m sure that will suck a lot of my Winter gaming.
Did I forget to mention anything? Hrm, oh yeah, the environments are destructible. It’s pretty badass to blow a hole in the wall the enemy are standing behind, resulting in a couple of gas tanks taking enough damage to blow them bitches to kingdom come. The camera system is pretty assy though. Would have much preferred a rotation system instead of only the tilting they let you do right now.
LocoRoco Cocoreccho! is Lemmings with even stupider creatures
22 October 2007Jesus. H. Christ.
I wanted to say that the game is like Lemmings with retards, but I don’t want to speak ill of the mentally handicapped on a level of asininity such as LocoRoco Cocoreccho. The original LocoRoco was a mildly entertaining puzzle game of sorts. Reminiscent of Katamari Damacy, you started off with one little LocoRoco and rotated the world around in order to avoid obstacles and assimilate more LocoRocos, since apparently sometimes when they touch each other they become a bigger one. LocoRoco Cocoreccho on the other hand is a middling mess of a game that shows why the PS3’s “Sixaxis” is a hackneyed piece of shit.
“Playing” involves moving a butterfly around and pressing a button to have it expel some sort of sound/odor/shiney trinket so that the LocoRocos will hop their stupid asses in the direction. The rest of the gameplay as I can manage involves shaking the PS3 controller in various directions to have little creatures move platforms around. Maybe this sounds enthralling, but it wangs chung.
I give this one a big ol’ pass. I want my $6 back
This Just In: Crisis Core doesn’t suck!
19 September 2007All hail the glorious band of Kitase, Nojima, Nomura and their associated band of rascals who prevented the exact reason I bought a fucking PSP 3 long and arduous years ago from not completely wanging chung. While I enjoy defending Dirge of Cerebus, that’s mostly for silly reasons. Since the game is, unfortunately, not so good. That all said, Crisis Core is pleasing me deeply.
I got the game last Thursday and have slammed around 11 hours or so into it, not counting the times I died. Most of that time has been spent working on the available missions. These missions range from retardedly easy to “Fuck, I have to wait until I level up a bit more.” I thought I’d be all cool and do all the missions available to me before continuing on with the story, but the game made short work of that plan when the boss of one mission took me out in a single hit.
The missions are so far incredibly straight forward. Go to a savepoint, select “Mission” from the menu, choose your mission and then go kill some shit. The rewards range from “yay, a potion!” to summon materia, which really just add a chance of them being randomly summoned by the slot machine part of the game. If you’re tilting your head at a funny angle, don’t worry. Your neck will be fine.
But yeah, I looked at some screenshots of the game and saw the thing up in the left hand corner, but as I didn’t really feel like finding out too much about the game before I played it, I had no idea what the hell those pictures were. Turns out that this slot machine type thinger is actually what governs your summoning, limit breaks and even leveling. Yep. Get a 777 with the same 3 character faces and you level up. Get 2 same numbers on 3 faces and that number slot materia levels up. Otherwise, when faces don’t match up for triples there is a variety of bonuses you can get. And even bonuses for just a 7 in the right spot. It’s interesting and adds a nice luck variety to the game. You can’t really count on it, though, which can be annoying. But when coupled with a sound strategy on the player’s part, it allows for a damn good battle system.
The story, which I’m only kinda following (damn bad Japanese skills!) is fucking entertaining from the little I get. Definitely gonna replay this one day. I have no idea when it hits the states, but you folk there with PSPs better grab that shit fast!
I died a little bit on the inside today.
9 July 2007
If there is one group of people who drive me batty, it’s the health nuts. Sure, I’m not entirely fit and I know that’s my fault. I can live with this. But without the occasional indulgence, food becomes boring. And with something that I do three times a day, I want a little variety or spice. I want a monster to shove down my throat and later regret. But really, I just love to try new and crazy foods. I’d love to try almost everything once. In attempt to appease my appetite for the trying of new things, Wendy’s delivered me the Baconantor.
It’s indeed a daunting monster in Wendy’s ads, but the reality just isn’t the same.
It tastes like one would imagine. Beef, bacon, cheese, mayo. Extra ketchup for me because I deem it so. Outside of its seeming ridiculousness, the burger really doesn’t have anything going for it. No special tasty sauce, no outrageous spiciness. Just excessiveness. I’d like to say that’s a selling point, but it really isn’t. Sorry Wendy.
Final Verdict
Truthfully, I’d just take a Jr. Bacon or two instead. If there’s some sort of bacon threshold, this sandwich comes close. The Law of Diminishing Returns and bacon just unfortunately go together.
Surprisingly Supple
9 July 2007I picked up Resident Evil 4 Wii Version
Asides from pointing and shooting via Wiimote, the Shenmue-esque Quick Time Events are the biggest change. It may not be drastically different, but swinging the Wiimote back and forth to outrun a boulder is just more exciting than yamming on a button. Consider me hooked
Little seems to have changed outside of the controls, but that’s hardly a complaint. The game looks good, controls smoothly and is still fucking fun. Capcom, I salute thee.
Nothing quite like hearing Utada via Gameboy speakers
8 July 2007Simple and Clean sounds more like a commercial song for a sanitary napkin, but what do I know? Really now.
Starting up Kingdom Hearts 2 a while back gave the impression that Chain of Memories is vital to understanding what the shit is going on in the game. What I found in Chain of Memories was surprisingly a good time.
At completion, I have about forty hours nested into this little GBA game. Overall, quite the pleasing experience, even if I did have to study the battle system mechanics a bit to get a hang of how to play. I’ve long since lost the instruction manual (Damn you cardboard packaging!) so I’m not sure if it’s my fault or the games, but I don’t think you can just “dive into” Chain of Memories.
But since I’m one of the few nuts who actually enjoys card-based games I stuck with it. In the end, I’m glad that I did, because Chain of Memories offers a fairly unique experience in the Kingdom Hearts world.
Stop All The Fighting!
22 May 2007Warning: Heroes finale spoilers below.
Last night delivered unto me the Heroes season finale. Of course, I missed it due to what is probably best called a brain fart. Oh well. I have the season pass on iTunes so I just waited for it to come up there.
Anyway, I really, really liked it. It wrapped up everything I wanted to see wrapped up, had some damn fine tense moments, and ended on a note that left me wanting to watch more. I’d say that comes off as a good finale.
Now, I venture to the interwebs to do a little discussion and find that the vast majority of my peers are not happy with this episode! Puzzled, I delved into the madness and discovered many expected a big brawl of sorts between Peter and Sylar, something that has been apparently “owed” to the fans for a long time.
I’m not sure I get this sentiment. Heroes the show is at its core a drama. Sure, it’s about people with superpowers and that leads itself to “comic-book-isms” which would then again bring you into big epic fights. But I don’t feel as if that is what brought me to watch this show. I’m relatively glad that the “showdown” as it were was brief and to the point. Overanalyzing the scene could bring up some flaws, I’m sure, but nothing seemed blatantly out of place. So I’m happy with the resolution.
Rumors are flying about what next season will bring, some say that there will be an entire new cast, putting the old characters behind us. But I’m quite curious as to the fates of four specific characters, as they definitely left it with those lives on the line. So, it would be pure cruelty to the fan base to ignore these questions. But, I have good faith in this show’s ability to keep me entertained.
It’s quite tantalizing, really.
The Pokémans Are Coming! THE POKÉMANS ARE COMING!
29 April 2007Sweet happenin’ hogwash, it has happened again.
With the advent of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl releasing in the US last Sunday, and since some friends are playing I once again picked up my Japanese version and got to work. I’m at over seventy hours of playtime. The game is still far from perfect, but damn does it still reel me in. I’ll write more later when I’m not bushwhacked but damn. If you enjoyed Pokémon once before and have a DS, do yourself a favor and pick up one of the new ones.
Damn.