Splinter Cell 3: Chaos Theory -- Initial Impression.

Splinter Cell has become one of my favorite series. I have high expectations for the third game in the series, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. I bought the collector's edition of the game, and while it's predominantly irrelevant to the gaming experience, I have to say they did an exceptional job on the casing. It's the same metallic casing used for the Halo 2 CE. They provided a swivel tray for the second disc whereas Halo 2 stacked the discs in the one tray. As for the game itself, three things come to mind from the initial playing. They've added an ambient sound meter under the light meter. This lets you know how much noise the ambient sounds are making, and how much noise you're making. So for example, you start off on a beach in the first level and you can hear the waves crashing. You see how high it registers, so if the noise you're making stays under that of the ambient noises of the level, your sound is masked. If the noise you're making goes over the ambient sound levels, the enemies can hear the noise you're making. The next thing that comes to mind is you can no longer read the notes or hack a computer or read emails as if paused. All of this is now in realtime. The game doesn't stop for you to do this. The enemies are still active and on patrol. If they find you, they'll act accordingly. The last thing that comes to mind off the initial playing is they've increased the AI. The enemies are more diligent in their searching for you. They react to the loss of lighting. You can't just take out the lights and be assured success anymore. They have flares they'll use to help themselves search. All three of these additions are much for the better in my opinion. They're making the early going of the game very interesting.

Next time should cover the gameplay and combat.

Ancient Ys Vanished Omens ~ Famicom -- Final Opinion.

I've gone ahead and powered through the Famicom version of Ys. The mines, the second of the game's three dungeons was relatively unchanged beyond the different art and the slightly different layout. The items were all relatively where they were supposed to be and the final boss was something close to the correct boss. The game's third dungeon, the Tower of Darm on the other hand was highly altered. It's a pale version of its former self. The TD and SMS version is a thirty-six story monstrosity filled with evil puzzles and traps. This version couldn't have been half that. It's graphically stale as well. It's bare bones. The puzzles are all in place, with a couple of unneeded additions. The bosses are shoddy versions of their counterparts. The mantis boss is unimaginably cheap now. They added an elevator puzzle, and for some reason another boss beyond Dark Fact. I don't understand what they were trying to do. They've messed with things that didn't need to be messed with and hasn't been messed with since. They never should have messed with it in the first place. As a game, I'd give this version of Ancient Ys Vanished Omens a 7 compared with the 9 of the TD version and the 9.5 of the SMS version.

I will eventually get to the Famicom version of Ys 2, but before that there will be some Chaos Theory Sam Fisher style.

Ancient Ys Vanished Omens ~ Famicom - Initial Impression.

I am just into the mines in the Famicom version of Ys. I have played through Ys 1 on the SMS and the Turbo Duo version. The differences between the SMS and TD versions are minimal. The in-game graphics are slightly improved in the TD version. It also contains FMV and voice and better quality music because of the CD format. There are minor translation differences between the TD and SMS versions. The games have different difficulty balances. The TD version stays true to the Japanese versions and is considerably easier. The creatures are easier to kill and they offer more EXP resulting in you becoming stronger sooner. The SMS version was made much tougher by SEGA of America. The creatures are much tougher to kill. Especially the bosses. You gain far less EXP and the EXP needed to gain the next level has been extended. It takes well into Darm Tower to max out your level, and you will need to be at max level without question. The actual events between the games are pretty much identical as is the story being told. Just the most minimal of differences. That brings us to the Famicom version and its list of differences. As far as graphics and sound go, the Famicom is the weakest. Graphically it has the weakest sprites and the sparsest background detail. There is also lesser animation in this version. The music is tiny sounding compared to the SMS version. One major change is the music for Zepik Village is entirely new. I have no idea why they replaced The Syonin used in all other versions of the game. The game starts out the same and I'm building up and I'm gaining levels exceedingly fast. I'm like three levels away from max just into the mines, which is the second of the game's three dungeons. As far as EXP and combat goes, this is like the TD version and rather easy. The layout of the map and dungeons has been altered from the standard used in all the other versions. You have two entrances to the mines. The path to the palace is entirely different. The palace itself has a different layout. Chests in different locations containing different items found elsewhere in the other versions. The boss of the palace doesn't come off the wall at the start of the battle. He's just there in the room to begin with. Characters normally found in the palace aren't there at all. The Roda Tree is now on an island unto itself. You access it by warp statues now in Minea Fields. To get in the mines you now have to find a fairy at a lake who tells you of her missing staff. Once you find the staff and return it you're rewarded with an item. Said item gets you past a tree that actually gets out of your way and the path takes you to another tree that powers up the item. The now powered up item causes a lake to dry up so you can cross to the mines. Inside the mines you'll now find a carving on the wall that gives clues to an incredibly obscure puzzle. Once that's solved back in Minea, you end up on the parapet seen in the Ys anime where a disembodied voice speaks to you and then opens the mines proper. It's a huge WTF to someone used to the other versions without any additions. I can't say I like them. There doesn't seem to be any point to them beyond being different for the sake of being different. I will be playing on and will comment on any further changes...

In all likelihood Ys will run into the next must play day-one title and I'll be commenting on them congruently.

God of War -- Final Opinion.

There's been a change of plans. I was supposed to cover puzzles this time around, but I've gone ahead and completed God of War. Clocking in at one minute over nine hours at the final save. There is an awful lot to like here, and a little not to like. Let's start with what's to like. The graphics are gorgeous for a PS2 game. GoW pushes the PS2 to its limits. The game features arguably the best FMV ever seen. In both visuals and concept. They blend 2D art with CGI and they mix and morph characters between the two styles seamlessly. The voices are as high quality as you'll likely to ever find. The sound effects are crisp and clear. The score is huge and bombastic orchestral music that pounds away fittingly to the nature of the fantastical visuals. Heavy on the percussion in battle. It may not be something you can hum, but you certainly feel it while playing. The puzzles used in the game are great. They are greatly varied and heavily seeded throughout the entire game. Most of the major puzzles are very clever and never reach being frustrating. They're entirely enjoyable. The story is very well done. They've come up with a story fitting Greek mythology as if it were from the gods themselves. The main character's character deserves special mention. He's the first main character I've ever seen in gaming that truly is beyond liking. He has absolutely no redeeming values whatsoever. It's a very different vibe than any other character in gaming. I felt no sympathy for him at all. Another thing that should be noted is the level of nudity within the game. The game prominently features breasts complete with nipples in both the realtime game and the FMV. It's not really gratuitous given it fits right in the era and setting of the story. It is walking a fine line though. Something not everyone is going to be able to do. It's going to be interesting to see how other companies deal with it as it is most assuredly the future. Another positive for the game is the amount of extras. You get the standard harder difficultly level, but you also get a making of feature, a bunch of concept art covering a bunch of facets to the creation of the game, deleted concepts and levels, and a bonus game consisting of specific challenges. The challenges and the hardest difficulty mode unlock new outfits and you'll get scenes that further explain the ending and the fate of a certain character will be revealed. The last thing to note that's really well done are a couple of the boss battles. The game features two of the best bosses in recent memory. Sadly the final boss isn't one of them. Which leads us into what's not so good about the game. Some combat issues arise that keep the game from taking its place among the truly great games and keep it stuck at really good. The final boss battle is the most glaring example. The game becomes cheap for the sake of difficulty.  It's something that ramps up throughout the course of the game. The hit priority is broken. The weakest of enemies break your combos while you can't break theirs no matter what once the animation has started. It's never overly frustrating until the final boss. For most of the game it's just a slight annoyance. It's only slight because the rest of the game is just so well done. In a more mediocre title the annoyances might be a little more annoying than slight. I'm giving it a 9.0

I have a few days before the next must own title arrives again, so I'm going to take this time to play Ancient Ys Vanished Omens. The Famicom version with an English patch. We'll see how it shapes up to Ys on the SEGA Master System and the version on the Turbo Duo.

Battle Worn, Wearing Thin?

I'm in Poseidon's Chamber, in the middle of Poseidon's Trial, within Pandora's Temple, which is atop the titan Kronos who is wandering through the Desert of Lost Souls as punishment from Zeus. There is obviously no lack of story in God of War, but this isn't about the story, it's about the combat. The combat system arguably contains the most depth the genre has ever seen. Maybe a little too much. The sheer number of moves is overwhelming at first. Kratos, the game's main character, uses a weapon called the Blades of Chaos. The Blades of Chaos can be powered up. As you level up the weapon, more moves are made available. There are twenty-one moves available for the Blades of Chaos overall. Adding to the complexity and or depth are varying magic abilities. The different magic can be leveled up so new moves are learned within the magic itself. At one point in the game, you'll find a new weapon called the Blade of Artemis. The Blade of Artemis adds seven more moves to the combat. It's a lot to take in. It results in finding a couple moves you like and sticking to them. The combat engine allows for an almost freeform combo building experience. Among the lowest level creatures you can string a combo together as varied as your imagination allows. Weak attack into strong attack launching the enemies into the air, jumping into the air and latching on to the enemy, continuing with weak attacks and directional control to fling the original enemy around into the others as if it were a yo-yo, landing on the ground to then grab the enemy and finally beat it to death with your bare hands. It's quite fun. Soon after you'll discover that's not entirely possibly all the time. The stronger enemies don't allow for it. Their size and weight make it impossible. As does their considerable skill at blocking your attacks. One thing that some people might find frustrating is the inability to stop certain enemy attack animations. They're going to hit you no matter what once they've started. You on the other hand don't have it so easy. Your attack animations are interrupted with amazing ease. Which is especially bad considering you'll find yourself often surrounded by numerous enemies at once. They will bounce you around considerably if you make a single mistake. The camera is entirely removed from the player's control, which is a good thing. If you had to deal with the camera it would just be too much. There are only a couple instances where the camera can be apain in the ass. Often due to the great size of some enemies and the sometimes dramatic angles employed, you'll find yourself behind some creature that blocks your view of yourself. They use QTE's rather extensively. The larger creatures once weakened enough will allow you to grab and throw them when prompted by a circle button on screen. One cool thing is they use the QTE's to allow you to decide on how to kill them depending on what you need based on your current life or magic levels. Normally if you just kill something by dealing enough damage the dying creature spews red orbs which are used as currency to power up your weapons and magic. But if you're hurting for life, and there is a minotaur, and you get it to the point where it will display the circle button prompt, when initiated you go into a QTE where you knock it down and put your sword to its face as it grabs your arms to stop you. Repeatedly hitting circle fast enough will allow Kratos to win the power struggle and drive his sword through the minotaur's face, causing green orbs to spew from the dying creature. Green orbs heal you. Successfully do the same on a gorgon should you be in need of magic via the blue orbs it'll spew upon death, or just kill it normally to gain those red orbs. It's a great use of situational control with QTEs while adding to the very cinematic nature of the game. Overall it's a fun but imperfect combat engine that in my opinion will only need a few tweaks to be perfect. Let's see what they do with it for the sequel.

Next time will cover puzzles...

God of War -- Initial Impression.

I'm through the midboss battle in the level The Gates of Athens in the PlayStation 2 game God of War. A couple of things are readily apparent. First off, the game looks gorgeous. It's about as good looking as a PS2 game is going to get in-game. Secondly, the game is going to be a blast. The controls are good, if not exactly intuitive. It's not that they're off or a pain in the ass to deal with, it's that there are a large number of commands. It results in a steep learning curve. Another thing is that the game is following the current trend of highly cinematic gameplay. Just like Resident Evil 4, GoW uses Shenmue's QTE's to be as stylish and cinematic as possible. The only real question at this point, is can they maintain the greatness of the first level all the way throughout the whole game? Let's find out...

Next time will cover the combat of God of War.

Doukutsu Monogatari -- Final Opinion.

Home-brewed or not, I really enjoyed this game immensely. It's all about the quirky nature of the story and great gameplay, especially in the boss battles. The gameplay will please you. The sophistication of the bosses will impress you. The slightly weird story will entertain you. The controls will go by unnoticed as they are that intuitive, even with just a keyboard. I thoroughly enjoyed this game. I'm giving it an 8.5. I hope Pixel, the guy who created the game gets noticed and ends up at a job with a game developer. It's that good. But don't take my word for it. The two of you reading this, whoever you may be, owe it to yourselves to at least try out Cave Story.  Both the game and the English patch can be found here: http://agtp.romhack.net/doukutsu

Next up will take some consideration...

Once Upon a Time, A Floating Island.

Cave Story is a story about a race of rabbit like creatures called Mimigas who live underground on an island that happens to float in the sky. You play as a robot who was created by the humans who live on the surface. You're a robot who happens to have amnesia. Yeah...that's only the first of a bunch of 'say what?' type moments. That's actually part of the charm of the story. It's strange and quirky and funny. You'll stop questioning it early on. You can only wonder why there is a mad doctor who has a servant dogging you throughout the game who happens to look like a toaster for so long before going insane. Along the way you'll discover what the mad doctor's plans are and what you'll need to do about them and maybe find out who or what you are. You'll come across colorful characters who both help and hinder you along the way. It's full of cliches, but it's just off enough, and written well enough as to be fun. I was actually surprised by how much events moved me. It's a surprising game all around.

Next time should be the final impressions of Cave Story.

Like Whoa, Totally Boss!

So like wow, I'm impressed. I've just returned to Mimiga Village after the Waterway. I have no idea how many hours in. The combat in this game is just great. The game gloriously embraces a time in 16-bit gaming where gameplay was king, and graphics secondary by default. The game is from the same vein as classics like Wonderboy in Monsterland, Wonderboy III: The Dragon's Trap, Ys III: Wanderer's From Ys, Super Metroid, and Castlevania II. It's a little of all of those in fact, with some boss battles that would impress Treasure. You have the basic attack and jump with automatic story event item usage. You'll find items to increase your maximum health and missiles. The hero can collect various weapons along the way. Most of the weapons are a projectile of some sort. The laser pistol, the bubble weapon, fire, rockets and so forth. The game features far more advanced play mechanics than I was expecting from something home-brewed. The machine gun for instance allows you to access higher platforms previously unavailable by pointing the weapon at the ground and firing mid jump. Another thing I wasn't expecting was the sophistication of the boss battles, which are wonderfully frequent given their impressiveness. Maybe it's the home-brewed thing, but with each boss, I'm being further wowed. Don't get me wrong, none of them will make the top fifty greatest boss battles in the history of video games or anything, but they are amazingly fun and varied. The bulk of the game is running to and fro collecting this or doing that for some quirky story reasoning while the action stays fast and furious. The overall small size of the areas makes this fun instead of anything remotely close to a chore or even an inconvenience. The level design is also rather impressive and varied in that it often employs a trick here or there to keep you on your toes. Again, I just wasn't expecting it from something fan made. The game controls wonderfully, even with a keyboard. I would imagine it to control perfectly with a PC controller. I am thoroughly enjoying this game...

Next time I'll cover a story of robots and rabbits.

Doukutsu Monogatari -- Initial Impressions.

Doukutsu Monogatari is the Japanese title for a home-brewed Windows game. The English name would be Cave Story. Cave Story is fan made. A couple of Japanese guys who loved sidescrolling action RPGs decided to make their own since they don't make them very much anymore, even in Japan. Luckily a couple of English speaking people played through the original Japanese version when it was released to the Net and liked it enough to translate and create a language patch for the game. The game looks, plays, and has a story told in an 8-bit fashion. I'll be playing through it with keyboard only. The game is really fun so far, a couple hours in through the town of Grassland. I'll get into full details on everything as I go...

Next time will cover gameplay.

Fatal Frame -- Final Opinion.

Fatal Frame is the highbrow horror film in video game form. It's the classy, albeit safe horror the non horror film masses can feel secure in seeing and come away going "ooh scary" while the horror film crowd never flinches and moves on to whatever is next. That's exactly what we have here. A safe ghost story told with class. It does everything right as far as telling the safe ghost story is concerned. The story itself is great and the game's biggest draw. The combat is flawed, however not fatally so, just enough for you to notice. Just enough to make it so the ride isn't smooth. The speed of the ghosts paired with the very slow speed of your character will be more than enough to cause a few moments of frustration. Same can be said for the game spawning random ghosts on you constantly. The pacing of the spawning is so constant as to lessen any tension. It's not if one is going to appear, or even when, it's where is it going to come from and where can I move. Another bit is the character has a tendency to stick to walls and corners and items. This can happen in combat. You'll be running to avoid a ghost's attack only to stick to the side of the trail for no apparent reason. You'll just run in place while the ghost attacks you. A tad irksome. By the end of the game you'll be aware of it enough to better gauge the distances, but it's something you shouldn't have to do. I didn't find the game to be scary at all. I never jumped. Nothing ever creeped me out. The story itself got a reaction of surprise in how brutal the events were for Kirie. Ghost stories don't really stray too far from what's come before. That's another probable reason I didn't find this one scary. I knew where it was going twenty minutes in, and it went just where I thought it would. The visuals in the game are rather good for a PS2 game bumped up to Xbox standards. The music is traditional classic horror film scoring, which fits the old-fashioned ghost story perfectly. If you want a great old-fashioned ghost story that's satisfying without necessarily being chilling, then look no further than Fatal Frame. Just be prepared to adjust to some mildly bothersome combat issues, and you should find it to be worthwhile. I'm giving it a 7.5.

Next up is something nobody would have seen coming...

 

An Old-fashioned Japanese Ghost Story.

The Himuro mansion has had a long and troubled past. It's this past that brought the famous novelist Junsei Takamine, his editor Koji Ogata, and his assistant Tomoe Hirasaka to the mansion for research. They never left. Reports of their disappearance brought Mafuyu Hinasaki to the mansion looking for his missing mentor. He wouldn't leave either. Mafuyu's disappearance is what brings his sister Miku Hinasaki to the mansion looking for her missing brother. You play as Miku. A convoluted premise to be sure, but one that pays off. Miku's search eventually leads her to discovering what happened to Junsei and the group. They're still there, after all. It's this path that leads you to the heart of the story. The story is a very traditional Japanese ghost story. You'll get a surprisingly mean story of ancient cults and sacrifice of innocence. A story pieced together in the survival horror genre standard of notes, files, recordings, journal entries, newspaper clippings, and other conveniently left behind means, should you find them. I'm quite intrigued by the story so far. I want to know more, even though I'm really rather sure where it's going. It might be that because it's playing out just like I'm expecting it to, to the letter even, I don't find it to be particularly scary at all. Ghosts can be scary. They just aren't here. It might not be the story at fault. The game works against itself. For any event ghost, you're walking down the hall for example, you'll cross a point or pick up an item and you'll be removed from control for an in-game cutscene. There you are now being formally introduced to whatever ghost is showing up. You'll watch it reveal itself in a nice but detached fashion. You'll be put back into control for the battle. It's hard for them to pop out at you with such a system. With any random ghost, you'll be walking along, and your filament meter will glow blue or orange. If it glows blue, you'll know a stationary ghost is nearby. No physical threat at all. If it glows orange, you'll know a random combat encounter has begun. So you'll pause, look around and find it, then begin to capture it in the camera. Again the system makes it rather tough to make you jump. The story is interesting and cool, but it's not Silent Hill. It's not enough to mess with your mind. It's not creepy. It's just mean and messed up for the characters. It leaves you with an interested to hear it all vibe. You're not scared at all. At least for me. It hasn't come close to being scary in the slightest.

Unless something else strikes me, next up should be my final opinion on Fatal Frame.

Dance of the Dead.

I'm saved just into Night 2 - Demon Tag after Night 1 - The Strangling Ritual in Fatal Frame. Fatal Frame has you capturing ghosts via a special camera. It's the only way to deal with them. You can't attack them or effect them in any other way. The game has you controlling your character in the third person with stylized camera angles like those of the original Resident Evil titles. When you look through your camera's viewfinder, the game switches to a first person view. The game is composed entirely from realtime 3D graphics. There isn't a single instance of prerendering anywhere to be found. Even the game's cutscenes use the game engine. When controlling your character, your movement is slow at best. Even when using the run feature, she chugs along at a snail's pace. You can't run in the viewfinder mode. You can only creep along. Herein lies the problem. The ghosts can move, unencumbered by physical forms such as they are, they don't have to worry about going around whatever, they can just float right through it.  See, your camera can't defeat a ghost in one shot. You have to aim your viewfinder reticule and target a ghost. You need to keep them targeted. Targeting builds up spirit power. The more spirit power you have, the stronger the power of the picture will be, doing more damage to the ghost. The ghosts move all over the place, they dart around, they even warp. Lose the target and the spirit power fades. Come in contact with the ghost and all stored spirit power is lost as well as you taking damage. So you need to avoid the ghosts, while keeping them targeted long enough to build up spirit power to do the most damage possible, and then take their picture. Damage them enough, and the picture will capture them. It's a great idea. The problem is your character's speed compared to that of the ghosts. She's just so slow, and they're not. It creates situations that can be rather cheap. Especially with some of the ghosts that respawn just to keep you on your toes. They can spawn just about on top of you, and if you're in a confined space with nowhere to go, you can be screwed. This dancing with the dead would be so more enjoyable if they had given her a decent speed.  I'm not asking for an easy game. I'm asking for one that lets you have a fair chance in some instances. The other solution would have been removing the random nature of some of the ghosts. I think the speed fix would be the better solution. The game needs the randomness of some of the ghosts. The game allows for you to upgrade your camera, which should help alleviate some of this issue. Unless the ghosts become tougher at a rate which negates the upgrades. The basic function of the camera can be upgraded in three ways. Capture circle range increases the range in which the camera can capture the ghosts so you can capture them from further away. Increase maximum value will increase the maximum level of spirit power you can charge up for a single photo, creating a stronger attack. Increase spirit charge speed lessens the time needed to charge spirit power to maximum, speeding up your attack. The camera has bonus functions which can also be unlocked. The bonus functions use spirit stones which are found throughout the game in a limited supply so you have to hold off on using them willy-nilly. A couple of examples of bonus functions would be pressure and slow. Pressure pushes a ghost back. Slow lowers their movement speed. There are also different types of film, each with a different level of ghost stopping power. I'm the kind of guy who hordes ammo in survival horror games. I just never want to use it. So I make it tougher on myself than I probably need to. By the time I'm facing the final boss I'm too prepared. I'm spending my accumulated spirit points which are earned from capturing ghosts on unlocking the basic functions of the camera before moving on to the bonus functions. I am however saving the more powerful film. Old habits are hard to break. Hopefully upgrading the camera functions will help things along. I'm well past where I stopped originally and I'm not even that annoyed with the combat this time around. I believe my real world situation took its toll on playing a few of these titles the first time around. I just didn't have any tolerance or patience. I am enjoying the game this time around. The combat flaw, as I see it, isn't anywhere near the breaking point I felt it to be last time...

Next time I'll talk about the story of Fatal Frame.

Fatal Frame -- Initial Impressions.

Fatal Frame is Tecmo's take on the survival horror genre. The game doesn't feature zombies, demons, shibito, or even monsters. It's a ghost story, pure and simple. I'm about an hour or so in at this point, and not all that far from where I stopped originally. The problem originally was the combat and the fairness of the picture collecting. The combat was a struggle. Your character's movement was sluggish to the point of being cheap. The ghosts spawning right on top of you in some instances isn't exactly fair either. In the game you collect pictures of ghosts. In some cases you don't get any advanced warning and have mere seconds to react and capture the ghost's image. If you miss them, they're gone. Originally that rather irritated me. At the time I first attempted Fatal Frame, I just didn't have the patience to tolerate and adjust to the game. Things should be better this time around. Especially post Siren. If I can get through Siren, which might be the most frustrating game in the last decade, I should surely be able to get through Fatal Frame.

Next time should be covering combat, such as it is.

Star Wars: Republic Commando -- Final Opinion.

Star Wars: Republic Commando is a fun first try. You can see the potential for a great game. The main aspect of the game, the squad tactics is half way there. The squad itself, and the available tactics you can employ, as well as their AI and ability to perform are all dead on. They work great. The problem is, you're using tactics on enemies who don't react or adapt. The game's enemy AI is its biggest fault. They are of the stand there and get shot, or charge at you and get shot varieties. The only exception to the rule are General Grievous' personal bodyguards, the Magna Droids. They just perform an AI routine on par with a dance. Flipping around and attacking and retreating. There is no rhyme or reason to it. If they could fix the relative lack of any enemy AI in future titles, they could have something great. The rest of the game itself fairs pretty well. Brightly lit, good enough graphics. Sounds straight from the Star Wars universe. They didn't overuse the music from the films. There is no use of the Star Wars main theme. They use more subtle pieces to underscore the emotion and the turning tide of battle. They also use a pretty substantial amount of new music. The minimalist storytelling style works well with this aspect of the Star Wars universe being shown. The character banter also fits in well. Another aspect they might wish to consider is overall length. It's a rather short game. Only three main areas to explore spread out over sixteen or so missions. Overall it's a solid enough game which shows potential. I'm giving it an 8.0. Solid start...

It seems I have a window of a couple weeks before the next must play day-one title arrives, so I'll be trying to knock a couple more titles off the restart list. First up, I'll take another swing at Fatal Frame.

FPS Online Play In A Post Halo 2 World.

Is it fair to compare SW:RC's online play to that of Halo 2? I'm not entirely sure. After all, SW:RC sort of shared the same development cycle as Halo 2. It didn't really have all that much time to adjust. Three months. That's all.  That's not enough to realize how much Halo would forever change the console standard in both quality of online play, and the front end interface. SW:RC fails to deliver in both areas. The front end interface is bare bones and workhorse compared to Halo 2's value packed thoroughbred. You have the basic options and nothing more. The gameplay is the standard Unreal / Quake / Doom online experience. No finesse. No subtlety. Run fast and gun faster. The multiplayer maps are variants on the offline maps that cover all the standards. Maze like corridor levels, open arena levels, rinse and repeat. The multiplayer options are also the standard deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, and assault. Assault being a capture the flag variant where one team is forced into defense while one is forced into offense. On a side note, I was surprised to find an amazingly worldwide audience attracted to SW:RC compared to most other games I've played online. In the one session alone, I was playing with some very talkative people from Scotland, Great Britain, Germany, and Australia. I was called a "fucking cunt!" by the guy from Scotland in a heavy accent. It was great. SW:RC online is a decent distraction and nothing more. It's not something I'd suggest you buy the game for.  Bungie has set the bar. Companies are going to have to meet it. The standard is higher these days. Bare bones doesn't cut it anymore...  

Next time will be the final opinion on Star Wars: Republic Commando.

A Long Time Ago In A Galaxy Far, Far Away...

Star Wars: Republic Commando tells the story of the an elite squad of commando Clone Troopers. The game begins at the battle of Geonosis portrayed at the end of the film Star Wars: Attack of the Clones.  It provides sort a behind the scenes view of the battle as the squad makes it way deep into the droid foundries. Along the way the squad banters in a way fitting a World War II era squad with a modern dark sensibility. It's a very different way of telling a Star Wars story. It feels far more as a war movie than it does the fantasy adventure of Star Wars. There aren't any Jedi in this game. There isn't any mysticism of the Force. These things are irrelevant to a clone bred to be an elite soldier for the Republic. There isn't even an opening crawl. You're not viewing the game from the greater encompassing universe. You have no need for the whole story. In fact, once you're into the game itself at the beginning, you never leave AD-1138's first person view. The entire game is seen through the eyes of your character. There aren't any FMV scenes. No establishing shots of the levels. You see it as he sees it. There also isn't any why. You don't question your orders. You can't. Once you meet your objective on Geonosis, the game lets you know that it's now a year and two days later, and then informs you of why you're being deployed at the moment. Once you're done recovering a stolen capital ship taken from the Republic, you're once again moved ahead in time to roughly six months before the events of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith on Kashyyyk. You'll get a new mission objective and off you go. You're left with what amounts to a game without a story at all. The result will surely annoy a lot of people who play this game. This is actually the correct design choice in my opinion. It fits. It works. To paraphrase the classic line 'Ours is not to reason why, ours is to do or die'. The game therefore has to live on the strength of the combat itself. Does it? I'll answer that in my final opinion on the game...

Next time should cover online play.

Delta Squad, Hold Them Here.

Star Wars: Republic Commando wants to be tactical Halo. It's almost there, but not quite. The tactics aspect is very well done. Controlling your squad is a breeze. You hold the A button and use the directional pad to issue commands. A+Left is 'search and destroy,' your squad will advance through the level aggressively attacking along the way. A+ Right is 'form up,' your squad will regroup at your position and then follow your lead giving you supporting fire. A+Up is 'secure area,' your squad will advance to the position you were aiming at and clear it of any hostile. A+Down is 'cancel maneuvers', your squad will stop doing any previously assigned maneuvers and regroup on your position. When targeting an enemy, pressing A will cause the squad to concentrate all fire on said target, allowing you to more quickly take out the greatest threats first. There are also situational maneuvers available. Throughout the level there are areas and items that will have a white glow when you target them. Pressing A while targeting them issues a situational command to a unit of the squad. Highlighting a computer and pressing A will result in you ordering a unit to slice a computer system. Or you can tell them to get behind that wreckage and take up a sniper position. This results in you slowly moving down the corridors and entering larger rooms where these set-pieces are. You'll quickly scan the room for hotspots you can issue commands for. You'll place a commando at a sniper point looking down the corridor. You'll order another unit to man a turret pointed at the large blast doors across the room. You'll place a third unit on a catwalk where he'll launch grenades. You'll then proceed to the door and hack the computer to open the way for the enemies to come in. All hell breaks loose. Not only are you having to watch your own back, but now you have to watch the back of your entire team. It's not like Halo where the NPCs tagging along will be refreshed by the story. You get the one squad. You have to get them through. It can get quite intense adapting to the situation at hand. Your strategy might not be working, and you have to pull certain member off their maneuvers and assign them elsewhere. Or it may be going well, and you have to pull them off and order them to pursue the fleeing enemy. The situation is always changing. The game does a great job in always mixing things up. The set-pieces aren't one way solutions. You often have many choices in the how of the matter. Thankfully, for the most part, the squad AI is brilliant in performing their duties, and adapting to the situation. Strangely though, the enemy AI doesn't fair so well. So far they are of the stand there and get shot variety, or the charge at you until dead variety. They don't take cover and or run instinctively as the AI in Halo does so well. You'll see them doing such things, but it's not on the fly. It's story or situation based. The weapons available in the game don't break any new ground and cover all the basics. You'll have a pistol, machine gun, grenade launcher, sniper rifle, and shotgun. Your main weapon is the DC-17m Modifiable Blaster Rifle. You modify it on the fly to switch your weapon type. The D-pad without the A button pressed is the means by which you'll switch weapons. D-pad Up is the standard blaster rifle. D-pad Right is for the sniper modification. D-pad Left is for the anti-armor modification, otherwise known as grenade launcher. D-pad Down is the pistol, unless you've picked up an enemy weapon. They provide some variation on the standard genre weapons. You'll also have a collection of hand grenades at your disposal. Thermal detonators are your standard frag grenade. You'll have a flashbang variant to blind biological enemies. An EMP variant to disable machine based enemies. You'll also get a grenade that works as a timed proximity mine. All of these, the squad, the weapons, and the grenades all help to give you some depth of play and strategy in a genre not necessarily known for it. If only the enemy AI were more up to the challenge...

Next time should cover storytelling within Mr. Lucas' wonderful universe.

Star Wars: Republic Commando -- Initial Impressions.

Star Wars: Republic Commando is a first person shooter for the Xbox with the emphasis on squad based gameplay. The action plays out much like Halo 2's NPCs, but this time you have basic control over them. You have set commands to control their general group behavior, as well as situational control over the other three individual members of the four man squad. You can order them to take a position, secure a room, or group up. You also can situationally control a specific unit to slice open a door, hack a computer, or plant explosives. The controls follow that of Halo 2, in other words, they're perfectly suited to the Xbox version of the game. The HUD holds a lot of information and initially seems rather busy. I'm still only early on in Geonosis and am still within the initial tutorials. The HUD busyness should vanish as I cut through the learning curve. The game shows initial signs of great character in the chatter from the squad and the enemies. The early AI shows signs of being of the just stand there and be shot at variety. We'll see if that changes. Hopefully it does. I've only had the use of a pistol, standard machine gun type, and sniper rifle. It's too early to form an opinion on weapon variety and use. I've only tried the offline mode so far, online play is available. We'll see how it shapes up.

Next time should cover combat.

Ys: The Ark of Napishtim -- Final Opinion.

Ys: The Ark of Napishtim does everything it sets out to do flawlessly. Visually the game is very pretty. The art is very appealing. On a technical level, today's gamer raised on the PlayStation, might scoff at the 2D art. The game isn't pushing massive numbers of polygons around. There aren't any 128-bit bells or whistles being employed here. You won't find bump mapping or even outdated trilinear mipmap interpolation, or any other graphic buzzwords in use. Just clean, crisp, artistic 2D graphics of another era. You're not going to find an angst ridden story filled with metaphysical psychobabble. You're again just going to get a clean, crisp, well told story in the spirit of adventure, much like the serial adventures of the 1930s. You're not going to get whining teenagers bitching about their feelings. You're going to get surprisingly deep fully realized characters you'll actually root for and wish to save. You're not going to find a battle and magic system filled with combos and two-minute long spell casting animations. You're just going to get one combo from a single button per sword, and magic animations under a few seconds in length. You're not going to be bored. It's never going to seem tedious. It's going to be just simple fun. A pleasure to play. And in a strangely sad way, it will seem like a breath of fresh air. It's nearly perfect. The only thing wrong with it is it's short, like all games in the genre tend to be. About twenty hours. Which is a rather glaring flaw, in a game I didn't want to end. I'm giving it a 9.5. If you have even the slightest affinity with the action role playing genre, then you owe it to yourself to experience Ys: The Ark of Napishtim.  

Next up should be the initial impressions on Star Wars: Republic Commando.

You Can Go Home Again.

Playing Ancient Ys Vanished Omens as a sixteen year old in 1988 turned out to be a watershed moment in my gaming. It was a virtual blowing of my mind. Expanding my perception for the potential of the medium. Yes, it was that impressive, even coming six months after The Legend of Zelda. At the time, the game was absolutely gorgeous. On top of that you had the deep personable story. Another factor would have to be the music. Still the epitome of video game scoring done right. Those three factors, the visuals, the story, and the score added up to the first true full world in gaming for me. An actualized world is something developers are still struggling to achieve to this day. Ys is my benchmark. It's the game from which I gauge anything adventure. Everything that has come after has had to measure up to Ys.  Everything always will. Just seeing the Falcom logo, which I haven't seen in over a decade brought a pang of joy I couldn't have expected. The subtle nods in the music to previous scores have the much the same effect. Playing through Limewater Cavern which is a nod to the original game's mine in both visuals and music brought about serious nostalgia. Heh, this game is tied to other memories as well. I was playing Ys 1 on the SMS at my friend's house. We had been working on Ys for a month. This was the days before being online. There weren't any FAQs. If you were stuck, you had to figure it out.  Calling a company hint line was too costly and forbidden. I'm working my way to the final boss and my friend is goofing around. He accidentally knocked into a shelf which contained his mother's glass figurines, sending them crashing to the ground. His mother hears them shattering and comes flying in the room. His mother goes insane and starts screaming at him as I'm starting the battle with Dark Fact. He's trying to defend himself, she's yelling at him to get the fuck out of the house as she's kicking him out, and I'm trying to not fall in the pits Dark Fact is opening on the platform our battle is taking place. She leaves the room, he follows her, and I finally succeed in defeating Dark Fact.  He comes back in to tell me she's entirely serious and he's really been kicked out and notices the credits rolling. He's instantly amazed and happy that we'd finally reached the end. His priorities clearly where they should be. Ys is tied to great memories for me, in and out of gaming. Playing it again seventeen years later has been nothing but a blast.

Next time should be the final opinion on Ys 6.