April 21, 2010 @ 3:39 am
· Filed under News, preview
The intertubes are abuzz with the new Marvel vs. Capcom teaser trailer, featuring Ryu vs. Wolverine, Morrigan vs. Iron Man (Can Tony Stark possibly resist a succubus??) and Hulk vs. Chris Redfield.
Speculation is rife as to what other characters will be playable, old standbys like Spiderman are almost assured to make an appearance but there are so many possibilities and so far all we have to go on are some silhouettes in the Marvel Logo. Deadpool possibly? Who knows?
March 27, 2010 @ 4:30 am
· Filed under News, preview
Spy Party is an up and coming new game by Spore’s Chris Hecker with an original and unprecedented game mechanic.
Two players face up in a situation familiar to all from Spy thrillers and movies. The sniper and the spy. A party is in full swing but among the guests is an enemy agent, concealed as a civilian, and carrying out a specific task. The sniper needs to positively identify the enemy spy and take him out. But he only gets one shot, and one chance to get it right.
“SpyParty is an asymmetric multiplayer espionage game, dealing with the subtlety of human behavior, character, personality, and social mores, instead of the usual spy game explosions and car chases.”
The key to the gameplay is a kind of moving realtime turing test. The spy needs to conceal himself among the computer controlled NPCs, while the sniper needs to identify the patterns of movement or actions that reveal which of the partygoers he’s watching through his scope is in fact the rival player.
Graphics are still in rough playtesting mode, since the actual game release is still an estimated 2 years away.
Keep abreast of developments to Spy Party at it’s official page
The tl;dr version is this: Western reviews of the game have been unfair because we're looking at it from a Western perspective. We don't 'get' it. Which is hilarious, really. I mean, practically every other game in the series has received glowing reviews, despite being looked at from the exact same perspective. And if you look at Metacritic, it's still right up there with an average of 86 - 14 points shy of perfection. Which, by anyone's standard (assuming you're not using the 'anything less than 7/10 = absolute garbage' method of grading) is pretty damn good. But because this isn't being hailed as the greatest thing since mouth first met genitalia, we're doing it wrong.
Can't help but think that this is what happens when you get complacent, Mr. Toriyama. Not that this hasn't been a while coming. I mean, while critical acclaim has been generally as high as ever, the fanbase has been grumbling for a while. FFX was probably the start of it, with frequent complaints about the voice acting. Then X-2, which had many of the same bad voice actors (looking right at you, Hedy Burress), but with the bonus of extra cringeworthy scenes and dialogue. Arguably its biggest sin (aside from, y'know, that Sin) was that it wasn't the sequel to FF7 everyone wanted, and that was unforgivable.
Then Advent Children came out and it proved itself to be a pile of wank.
I could go in-depth on what made it so bad (and may well do so at a later date), but the short version was that it was shallow, heartless and didn't tell an engaging story. There was nothing here that couldn't have been told in a spin-off manga or drama CD. And while it certainly looked nice, it was all spectacle and no substance. It went from 'Only through friends can you overcome life's hardships' (FF7) to 'No one could wipe themselves if Cloud wasn't around, also did we mention Vincent, the only character with an extended cameo is starring in a new game? Buy Dirge of Cerberus, kids!' (FF:AC).
Then came FFXII. Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear. The scores in the press were still almost universally above 90%, but the fans were definitely not pleased. In attempting to reinvent the wheel for the 7th or 8th time, Square seemed to forget what made the games fun in the first place. It's all very well and good being revolutionary and making waves, but if you're not using them to, I dunno, make things more fun, who cares? FFXII was an MMO without the MM part (or the 'O') but with all the stupidity. Just you, wandering the landscape looking for rare lewt with robot buddies that you had to pre-program down from 'Huurrrr Duuurrr' to simple 'hurp de durp'. It was like those robots you got in school where you had to program the directions to make it go in a square in advance, only you weren't doing it for 120 hours at a time.
The point that I'm trying to make, in between taking none-too-subtle digs at the series, is this: Square-Enix have developed a sense of entitlement that, of late, hasn't been well-deserved at all. And I say that as someone who has been with the series since Final Fantasy Mystic Quest on the SNES. I can say with no doubt in my heart that FF6 is one of the best games on that machine. Similarly, I can say with as much certainty that FFXII is one of the most boring RPGs I've ever played, and has two of the most worthless characters it's ever been my misfortune to encounter. You two fuckers made me miss Tidus. Tidus, for fuck's sake! The scores are still high, but they're not high enough, and it's not because the game's not good enough, it's because we don't appreciate it right.
Y'know, I think there's a couple of guys from Activision you might get along with. Ask them about Tony Hawk, they'll set you right.
As I said before, this has been a long time coming. The backlash, if you can even call it that, isn't as severe as it probably should be, but it's starting. Whether they take this as an opportunity to marshal themselves and return to the greatness the series was once known for, we'll have to wait and see. Once upon a time, the release of a Final Fantasy title was an Event. You marked it down on your calender, you counted down the days, and you waited for it. Now? It just means it's Wednesday.
Let's be honest, Persona 3 is a hell of a hard act to follow. Great gameplay, a fantastic story, and an ending that could make a sufferer of Bell's Balsy weep like a Japanophile being told their Holy Land ain't all its cracked up to be. To those unfamiliar with the series it belonged to (which was just about everyone at the time) it came out of nowhere, grabbed everyone's attention and became everyone's new favourite series. Critical acclaim, the endless appreciation of fans everywhere... yeah, a hard act to follow by anyone's estimation.
Persona 4 opens in much the same way the last game did: new student transfers to a new town and school, wackiness occurs. Yeah, it's a cliche, but it's a classic, and it works, so we'll let it slide. Our hero (who, for the sake of this review, we'll refer to as Jotaro Tenryu) quickly makes new friends, who tell him about a local urban legend. It's said that if you try watching a TV that's been switched off on a rainy night, you can see something: another reality, your true love, whatever, the reports vary depending on who you ask. So, bored one night, Jotaro tries it out. And finds that he can not only see something, but he can also physically enter the TV itself. The group, disbelieving at first, start to wonder if it has anything to do with the recent spate of murders in the formerly quiet town. And then, one of them goes missing, soon appearing on the Midnight Channel.
Persona 3, while a fantastic game, was not a game without its problems, primarily in the realm of combat. Having your teammates act for themselves, while a nice idea, often proved more trouble than it was worth. While you still have the option of letting them do their own thing, most people will head straight for direct control and never look back. The damage types have been pared down as well, presumably to make things less confusing: now, there's only one type of physical damage, as opposed to three, and the main character can only equip swords, rather than whatever the hell he wants.
Outside of battle, the music has been given a major overhaul. Fans of the original will be pleased to find that themes no longer restart from scratch every time you enter a new area, praise be to Philemon. The world map theme also changes depending on the weather, so you're not stuck listening to the same piece of music for months on end, another welcome change. The main battle theme, Reach Out To The Truth, isn't quite as catchy as Mass Destruction, but it does the job well.
The dungeons have been given a major overhaul as well. Now, every dungeon not only has a distinct look, it has its own music too! Each area ties in to the person lying at the heart of it. So a shut-in game-freak's dungeon is styled after an 8-bit RPG, the girl missing her deceased mother has hers looking like a storybook version of Heaven, the guy struggling with his sexuality has a very suggestive screamingly gay bathhouse, and so on. An infinite upgrade from the atrociously bland dungeon(s) of the last game.
So then, The Big Question: is it a better game than Persona 3? In sheer gameplay terms, yes. Developers, take note: when designing a sequel, this is how things should be done. All the rough edges have been smoothed off, virtually every problem I had has been fixed or improved, and the whole thing has been tuned to perfection. This is everything I had hoped for in the last game, and it's a testament to Atlus that they've delivered in spades. Outside of the gameplay, however...
It's ironic in a way. P3 had a great story, but the gameplay was lacking. And now, here comes its sequel with the exact opposite problems. They've managed to avoid the trap of having identical characters, thankfully. Yosuke is kinda similar to Junpei, in that they're both your buddy and co-pilot for the game, but in terms of personality, they're fairly different. Same goes for Yukiko, who outwardly resembles Mitsuru from the last game, though she's a lot friendlier than Mitsuru ever was. The problem comes with their social links. Every party member has them, and raising them gives them extra abilities in combat, such as being able to knock you out of harm's way when low on health, or being able to stand up again after taking a fatal wound in battle. Fair enough, except this is the only way to unlock their ultimate Persona. Honestly, I preferred it when it was part of the story. Seeing Akihiko's determination to live up to his friend's memory, or Junpei laying the smackdown on Strega with his upgrade gave you a real feeling of pride in your characters. Here, it feels more arbitrary. "Oh, well done, you've maxed me out, have a cookie and a Suzuka Gongen."
Then there's the music. It starts off strong, sunny day theme Your Affection quickly becoming one of my favourite pieces of music in the game. The first couple of dungeon themes are also good, the music for Yukiko's Castle being a standout piece. But as it progresses, the music becomes more and more lackluster. The last couple of dungeons are quiet, sedate pieces when you should be gearing up for a major no-holds barred fight. The final boss theme aims for symphonic fierceness and falls waaay shy of the mark, landing squarely in hum-drum mediocrity. The call back to the battle theme is nice, but not what I was looking for. Honestly, this is probably the first final boss theme I've encountered in a Megaten game that's outright sucked. 'Disappointing' is not the word.
On a related note, the cast has fewer duds in it than P3 did. The voice actresses for Fuuka and Ken were almost universally derided, but here, even the worst voice is tolerable. Kanji is probably the best on offer here, never once dipping below good, and his actor's delivery of lines is, on occasion, perfect, turning mere funny lines into outright hilarious ones. On the other hand, Naoto's is a poor choice. Massive spoilers that really aren't: Naoto's bag is that she's a girl pretending to be a boy. It works perfectly in the Japanese version, since her VA is known for playing gruff teenage boys like Edward Elric in Fullmetal Alchemist with the twist being that, for once, she's playing a girl. In the Western version, the second she opens her mouth, the illusion is shattered and you spend the next 20 hours wondering if your team is functionally retarded for not noticing that she's quite clearly a girl. The battle quotes are hilariously poor as well. They must've been recorded at the start, before most of the cast grew into their roles, because they're badly delivered ("Let us attack with all our strength" and "It's quite tenacious" being primary offenders) or just plain hilarious - Chie, dear, I love you to bits, but your wimpy little battlecry is abysmal. Seriously, stop it. And maybe it's more of a problem of translation, but they leave in all the honorifics like '-san' or 'senpai', and use them liberally, then have your cousin call you 'big bro' instead of 'onii-chan'. It's baffling why they'd do that, and it's jarring to boot.
And finally, we have the story. For the first 8/10ths of the story, it's fairly good. Great in places. Seeing your character actually get involved with events, rather than just standing there as things unfold around him is much more satisfying. You really feel like you have a part to play beyond pressing the X button to make the conversation move on. Some of the shenanigans you get up to are outright hilarious, such as the disastrous school festival and the camping trip, and draw you in more than the events in the last game. However, it's when you get to the end that things start to unravel.
Persona 3 was an epic story in the old sense of the word. You started out fighting monsters with friends and, before you knew it, you were locked in battle with an eldrich force that existed solely to obliterate all of mankind. You were rarely in any doubt as to what was at stake, and when the time came at the end, you knew damn well what would happen if you failed and were ready to give all as a result. Brilliant. Here, things start small with a serial killer offing people in the town when the fog rolls in. But Persona 4 never ups the ante much. When the fog covers the town permanently towards the end, you're expecting something big to come out of it, but it never really does. You're told there will be dire consequences, but, crucially, you're never shown what they are. And when you go to uncover the true mastermind at the end, it feels like an afterthought. One of the party outright states that you're doing this to give your character a good sendoff. Never mind that you've got a literal god taunting you (who's barely mentioned throughout the game, by the way), forget that a whole bunch of people have died as a result of all this, as long as Senpai gets a glorious final battle, everything else is just gravy. Tell me, did someone replace the cast with Klingons while I wasn't looking? What the hell, guys?! And the final bosses themselves are just so boring! Sure the final final boss looks great, but come on, we went through a fight last time where we battled our way through the Major Arcana of the tarot, then fought the god of death and her harbinger to a standstill! "Big spiky disco ball" and "Silent Hill reject" is a major step back by anyone's standards.
It's frustrating, really. For everything Persona 4 fixes or polishes, it creates another gaping flaw. When it should be increasing the pressure, it steps back and eases off on you. And when it should be telling you to gear up for a titanic struggle, it idly tosses a boss with no real difficulty behind it and tells you to busy yourself. I can understand why they'd want to scale things down after the last game - after all, when you've tangled with the embodiment of mankind's despair, how exactly do you top that - but that doesn't mean they can't make the current threat appear every bit as real as the last one. Just because the scope is reduced, that doesn't mean the danger should be too. Ironically, Persona 4 falls into exactly the same category as Devil May Cry 4: both are games that are great in their own right, both have the bad luck of being follow-ups to leaders in their field, both are kept from greatness by major problems. If we could meld Persona 3's storyline with Persona 4's gameplay, (and maybe DDS' or Maken Shao's OSTs, since I'm bored with the J-Pop by now) I have little doubt you'd have one of the single finest RPGs of all time. I still haven't lost faith in the series, not by a long shot, and it'll take more than a lousy final 5th of a game to do that. Still, here's hoping the inevitable Persona 5 will finally bring to fruition everything the games have promised thus far.
Baroque was yet another game I reviewed earlier this year, and it holds the distinction of being one of the darkest non-Shin Megami Tensei-related RPGs I've ever played. Not that the intro doesn't clue you in to that: it starts with a Rorschach test turned cancerous, ends with a bloodstain turning becoming an portentous geometric symbol, and in-between, takes every opportunity to flash ominous text and worrying smiles at the viewer. Meanwhile, the title theme is the charmingly named Sinful Eyes. No, this isn't a cheerful game at all, is it.
It also gives away at least one major plot twist if you know what you're looking for, but, like every character here, in a way, that's neither here nor there.
Something a little different today. Bands covering game music are nothing new anymore, let's be honest. It's getting to be a played out formula: grab some random game from the NES (because it's always the NES, no one ever had a Master System back then), throw in some guitars and let nostalgia take care of the rest. Simple.
Okay, that's perhaps a little too cynical, but there's very few bands who actually bother to do anything more than a straight cover. In Japan, they cheerfully fold, spindle and mutilate the originals til they bear only a passing resemblance to their parents. Over here in the West... not so much. The Adventures of Duane and BrandO, however, were something of an exception. If you know anything about them, it'll probably be their version of the various Mega Man 2 tracks. Rather than the typical cover shenanigans we're used to, they would rap over the music, telling the story of the game they were covering in a roundabout sort of way. I use the past tense, because they split messily earlier this year. They're both continuing to do their own thing but it's pretty much agreed that it just won't be the same.
This here's their version of Duck Hunt. And yes, the dog gets it. You're welcome.
Winner of the 2009 award for Best Use of Chesney Hawkes in a Movie
I've said before that some of the best films, games, whatever, are the ones that come out of nowhere. The ones that have no real hype or build-up about them. Unsurprisingly, I've always had a fondness for them, since, as we all know, I'm one of those freaks who likes to (and occasionally has to) wander off the beaten track for his entertainment. I hadn't actually heard of this film until I read a glowing review of it in Bizarre (still the only major review of the movie I've personally encountered), and while the magazine's gone downhill of late, it's entertainment reviews are still usually on the money, so I decided to check it out for myself.
Sam Rockwell plays Sam Bell, a miner on the far side of the moon. Sam lives and works alone with GERTY, a robot programmed to observe him and keep an eye on his general well-being. Sam starts having weird lapses, seeing things on monitors, having visions of other people. While out investigating a problem with one of the mining harvesters, he suffers a crash. He awakens some time later back on the base, but is under strict instructions not to leave again. Faking a malfunction in the base, he manages to escape anyway and returns back to the site of the crash. His old lunar rover is still there. More to the point, so is he.
At first, you'd be forgiven for expecting a movie in the vein of Fight Club or The Machinist. You begin thinking it's going to be the tale of a space miner dealing with cabin fever or something like that, before pulling a bait and switch with the second Sam. It's a sneaky move that keeps you guessing past your original conceptions of what the movie is going to be about. To talk any more about the plot would be giving the game away completely, but trust me on this, it's a good one.
Similarly, Sam Rockwell is nothing short of amazing here. Yes, the film is basically Sam Rockwell talking to himself for an hour and a half, but if he wasn't any good, the film wouldn't be anywhere near worth watching. The two Sams manage to have differing personalities, despite being fundamentally the same person. By the same token, Kevin Spacey manages to be weirdly sympathetic as GERTY, despite never raising his voice above a monotone.
Moon is a hard film to talk about, hence this spartan (for me, at least) review. That's mainly because discussing the really stand-out parts, or anything beyond the basic premise, for that matter, means spoiling it, and trust me, this is not a film you want spoiled for you. The other problem with movies like this is that they tend to be slow and ponderous, outstaying their welcome by a good 40 minutes in an attempt at making some vague statement about the nature of humanity. At a mere 90 minutes, however, this is a film that comes in, says its peace, then leaves without incident, and that's probably its greatest strength. It's exactly the right length, and no more, and doesn't try and milk all the emotion it can out of things. And probably for that single reason alone, it stands head and shoulders above all others in its class. Definitely keep an eye out for this film if you get the chance
If truth be told, I could probably fill this entire list with the various remixes of Devils Never Cry from the DMC3 soundtrack – there's enough of them after all, and they're all pretty damn excellent. I decided to go for the Motion Capture Demo version, however, simply because there's something worth watching along with it. As you can probably guess, this features footage of the motion capture taken for the game, and it's well worth a look. Watching the acrobatics involved - much of it done by the game's voice cast, no less - is simply fascinating.
That the song's a great take on the main theme is only a bonus.
One of the challenges I set myself for this list was to limit myself to one piece of music from each game series – one piece of music from, say, Final Fantasy, one from Silent Hill and so on – to ensure a good mix of things. Otherwise I would probably wind up clogging the list up with music from the Shin Megami Tensei series and The World Ends With You and just call it a day. So, representing the entire MegaTen series is Hunting – Comrades from Digital Devil Saga. One of the best pieces of music in a game filled with them, DDS 1&2 have probably the best overall soundtracks in a series renown for its outstanding music. Shouji Meguro, you outdid yourself with this one.
