Lunar: Dragon Song -- System Experimentation.

The Japanese sure love their combat systems. It can't be the same thing twice. They have to tweak it, already perfect or not. Lunar: Dragon Song didn't escape the tweaking.  Gone is the strategic element to the battles. You don't get to select which monster to attack. You only select attack and it's up to the CPU to decide which creatures to attack. I'm clearly going to miss that, as it would prevent having the wrong characters attacking the wrong creatures. Being able to select the creatures minimizes the risk of death, and speeds the battles themselves along. We all know the standard Japanese RPG drill. Go out into the world, find creatures to fight, collect your items, experience, and silver. Build up, buy better weapons and armor and stock up on healing items and the like. Advance the story. Kill the badguy, and watch the credits. Hopefully enjoying the story and characters along the way. As far as the experience, items, and money work in L: DS, they tweaked all of it. In L: DS you fight creatures in one of two modes. In Combat Mode, you'll enter a dungeon and see the creatures walking around. You'll run into them to start a fight. Within the actual fight the combat plays out the same for either mode. You have your options for manual or automatic battle. Manual allows you to select attack, items, or magic. Automatic has the CPU allowing your characters and the creatures to just slug it out uninterrupted. You can regain manual control at any time with the push of a button. So after the fight in Combat Mode, you'll be rewarded with the spoils of battle. The spoils are in the form of items. Creature parts, food, natural items like spores, metals like lead, and a ton of other various items. That's it.  You don't get any experience points, and you don't get any money. Just the items. The items go into your satchel, where you can hold up to 99 of each kind of item. You'll be needing them. If you want experience, you need to be fighting in Virtue Mode. You can shift between the two modes at anytime while walking around the dungeons and locations of the game with the R button. Switching to Virtue Mode and fighting a battle will reward your victory with experience points and nothing else. No items, no money. It's the only way you can level. There are other effects the two modes have on the game. In Combat Mode, your killing the creature removes it from your screen in the dungeon, and spawns it elsewhere in the dungeon. Allowing you to kill them again and get more items. Fighting battles in Virtue Mode removes the creature from the dungeon and doesn't respawn them elsewhere in the dungeon. Instead, you'll start a timer on the menu screen. The game takes place on the upper screen, and the menu screen stays in place while wandering around towns and dungeons. The battles use both screens. Also in the menu screen while wandering around the dungeon are a given number of boxes. One box per creature in that section of the dungeon. When you kill the creature sprite that represents the actual numerous creatures you fight in combat, you'll put a check in one of the boxes. You have roughly about a minute as the timer is now ticking away to find the next creature in that section of the dungeon. If you find the next one in time, you'll enter battle. Winning the battle earns you more experience, checks off that creature's box, and earns you another minute to find the next creature. Finding all the creatures in time will reward you with a free healing of thirty percent of your hit and magic points. It also opens the blue chests in that section of the dungeon. In the Lunar games there have always been colored chests you can't open without a trick. Usually it's a single key that allows you to go back through every dungeon in the entire game to open the locked chests you've been finding all along.  L: DS sort of turns them into a combat minigame and allows for you to get their contents as you find them. If you aren't able to find the creature within the minute or so allowed, a box is unchecked and a creature is respawned back into the dungeon. That covers experience and items. That leaves money. Selling the items you get from the creatures isn't going to make you wealthy anytime soon. You need to work as a courier in the game to earn money.  You'll go into a Gad's Express office in the game. There is one in every town. It will have a list of jobs delivering packages to people throughout the land. You can only accept one job at a time. This is where the items you're collecting off creatures come in handy. The jobs will have requests like bring me the items needed to make such and such a thing. The job will list off the items and how many you need to make whatever it is the person needs or wants. It will also list who you're supposed to deliver it to, and what town they're in. Every last NPC in the game is named for this purpose. You can look at your current job information at any time outside battle via the menus. You'll accept jobs based on already having the items needed or being sure you can go hunt them down. You'll take them to whoever it may be, and they'll give you a receipt which you'll take back to any Gad's Express office to claim your fee.  If you accept a job and find yourself unable to complete it you'll be able to cancel the job for a cancellation fee. It's not small either. It's based on how much the reward offered is, so be sure you can complete it before accepting any jobs. The jobs are rated from one to five stars in difficulty.  Some jobs only require from one to three of a single type of item. Others require dozens each of numerous different types of items. The rewards reflect the difficulty accordingly. That's how you'll make money to be able to upgrade your weapons and armor and afford those healing items, which coupled with time spent in Virtue mode gaining experience, will allow you to advance the story and see the game through. Seven and a half hours in, I'm pleasantly surprised to find myself liking this system. Hearing about it beforehand, I had my doubts. The question becomes will it last. Will I still be enjoying this system by the time the credits are rolling? There's only one way to find out...

Next time should cover a shrunken world for a handheld device.

Lunar: Dragon Song -- Initial Impression.

Next up for me is the game Lunar: Dragon Song for the Nintendo DS. The game is published by Ubisoft and developed by JAM under the supervision of Game Arts. It's the first original Lunar game in the US in a decade.  This is technically the third game in the series, even though it's seventh one released. The original game was Lunar: The Silver Star for the SEGA CD. It was followed up in the US by the sequel Lunar: Eternal Blue also on the SEGA CD. Japan saw the SEGA Game Gear gaiden Lunar Magic School. Then came the remakes. Lunar: Silver Star Story, and Lunar: Eternal Blue Complete, both of which came to the US on the PlayStation. The first game got another remake that hit the US in the form of Lunar Legends on the Game Boy Advance. So that brings us back to Lunar: Dragon Song, the first role playing game for the Nintendo DS. Where does L: DS fit in one might ask? Well, I'll tell you.  L: DS is a prequel to the remake of the original game Lunar: Silver Star Story. The game is taking place one-thousand years before Lunar: Silver Star Story. Why is it a prequel to the remake of the original and not the original itself? Because the people who made the remake have made L: DS, and not Game Arts themselves. Although as I stated before, they were closely supervised by Game Arts. The first things that come to mind from the near two hours I've initially spent with the game are as follows. The game looks like Lunar, and it should, as Toshiyuki Kubooka is still the character artist. The game sounds like it's trying to be Lunar. Which makes sense as Noriyuki Iwadare isn't doing the score. Whoever is doing the music is clearly trying to emulate Iwadare's sound. Graphically the game doesn't even seem like a little step up from the GBA. I've only seen one town, one dungeon, with the one battle background, and the few creature sprites of said dungeon. But the initial impression remains, this could have been a GBA game. Which brings up another issue, the mixed touch control. You have to control the game with a combination of touch screen and conventional command input. For me anyway, it causes the slightest bit of confusion. This should be able to be chalked up to being apart of the learning curve. We'll see. And the biggest impression I've come away with is how experimental this game is going to be as far as the game mechanics are concerned. I will however save the details for the entry on combat. The story and characters haven't really presented themselves as I've just really fiddled around within the first dungeon. This game marks the start of the 2005 holiday gaming season for me, and I'm full of zeal to play these upcoming games. Let's get to it...

Ninja Gaiden Black -- Final Opinion.

I've completed the game on normal difficulty level. It took me seventeen hours and change with an overall rank of Master Ninja. There are some things right and some things wrong with the game. What's right with the game? It's simply gorgeous for one. The in game graphics are about as well done as anything on the Xbox. Team Ninja also has a real knack for visually impressive CGI cutscenes. You will not find prettier CGI this generation. The music is really well done and is used sparingly and dramatically both to a good result. The combat gets some mention in the good category. When it's working, it's very fast, frenetic, stylish, and fun. On the other half of the coin we have the bad. And here, the combat will get some mention. When it's not working, it's as cheap as anything I've ever seen. It's not exactly fair. Which is the key distinction in what makes a hard game fun instead of merely hard. With most of the later bosses there seems to be a chance factor being used. It's not about skill here. You can dodge the attack, and land your counter attack perfectly, and it's seemingly up to a chance modifier if the hit lands. It might take skill to make the dodge, and then to counter, but then having to rely on chance is crossing that line of hard and fun and fair to hard and not fun and unfair to me. Also in the bad is the camera. Easily some of the worst camera movement I've ever seen. This is the very first game where I've managed to be killed off screen, by a boss also off screen. The camera didn't feel the need to track me or the only other creature around and instead chose to show me the corner and the really nice textures employed by the graphics designers. The combat being so frenetic is the cause for this. The camera just can't come close to keeping up with the action. The content offered on the disc is to be considered a plus if you like the combat system. That's a big if. There's nothing there for you if you don't, and an awful lot there for you if you do. Once you finish the game on any level, the mission mode is unlocked. It's a series of fifty challenges. Ten are available at the start, and completing five of the ten unlocks the next ten. You'll be set against a group of creatures and with specific items and weapons and must make it through. These become insanely hard. It's fan service to those who like the engine. It's torture to anyone who doesn't like the engine. Now for me, I liked the game enough to see it through, but the engine is not my preferred brand of poison. The frustration with the cheapness I see in the engine is what does it for me. The camera angles can be suffered through a little easier. If I were to start with the game being a perfect ten, and took full points away for the cheapness I see and the what I don't see because of the camera, I'd end up at eight. So that's it, I'm giving Ninja Gaiden Black an 8. Glad I was around for the main course, but not sticking around for dessert.

Ninja Gaiden Black -- Initial Impression.

The next game for me is Ninja Gaiden Black for the Xbox. Keldroc has been on me to play Ninja Gaiden for over a year. I didn't play it because I'm a Shinobi fan first and foremost, but secondly it just came out in the middle of the holiday rush and it wasn't high on my list. It fell by the wayside. I meant to grab it from the bargain bin at $19, but it had vanished. Lucky enough Tecmo saw fit to release Ninja Gaiden Black. Ninja Gaiden Black contains the whole of Ninja Gaiden, and adds in the Xbox Live download content of the Hurricane Packs one and two. Tecmo also added some new content on top of that in the form of a mission mode and the original arcade game as an unlockable bonus. The initial things that jump out are the game is gorgeous. It's pure eye candy. The story is seemingly headed for the Japanese very silly and completely over the top category. The controls are intuitive with little learning curve in their use. The camera isn't going to be the greatest, as there is seemingly a lot of running into the screen. A camera angle I almost always despise. Ninja Gaiden has a reputation as being one of the hardest games ever made, let alone for this generation. My initial impressions tell me it might be up there, but it doesn't seem like it's going to be any harder than say Shinobi, Nightshade, or Gunvalkyrie. We'll get into all the details as I play on, of course.

Feel the Magic -- Final Opinion.

Feel the Magic offers three modes of play. You have story, memories, and maniac modes. The main game is in the story mode. You access scenes, which may contain one to three minigames each. You'll choose one of the minigames and you'll be treated to a scene telling you the story. The story is totally bizarre in that way only the Japanese can create. You play as a guy who falls in love with a girl at first sight. Being an everyday average type of guy you are, you have no chance at landing the girl. So you join a "Super Performance Group, the Rub Rabbits" to perform stunts and get attention and prove your love. The scenes play out a story of you getting her attention, then dating and wooing her. The memories mode allows you to play any minigame that you've unlocked directly. It also offers tougher and longer rounds of the said minigame. The maniac mode is where you can alter the look of the woman you're after by using the hidden items you can unlock in the game. You unlock them by finding hidden rabbits in the story panels before each minigame. There is always at least one, and could be multiple hidden rabbits per panel. You can only find one at a time though, so you'll have to play the minigame over and over to search for multiple rabbits. The minigames themselves all make use of the Nintendo DS capabilities. The touchscreen mostly, but a few use the NDS mic. There are some creative minigames here, but a lot of it feels like the developers were throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck. The game does reveal potential issues with the NDS. The touchscreen isn't perfect. It in turns seems both non-responsive and oversensitive. Nothing that reaches frustration levels, but mainly that's because of the nature of the game. Depending on the type of game, that might go the other way. Graphically the game is impressive in its art style, if not the actual graphics. The title isn't pushing the NDS by any means with its simplistic, almost minimalist graphic style. But the art direction is very cool stylistically. Musically the game features an upbeat and fruity score with humming vocals that actually impress as far as previewing the potential in sound for the NDS. The game comes off as a fun distraction. It's set up perfectly for those who actually use their portable systems away from home. It's perfect for killing twenty minutes here or there. As far as the main question of whether touch control is a gimmick or not, this title doesn't provide the answer. I'm going to give Feel the Magic: XY-XX a 7.5.

Feel the Magic XY-XX -- Initial Impression.

Next up is my first game for the Nintendo DS. It's called Feel the Magic XY-XX. It's published by SEGA and developed by Sonic Team. I finally got around to buying the Nintendo DS because this upcoming season finally sees some games worth playing. Feel the Magic was the only NDS launch title that I had any interest in at all. Feel the Magic is about the touchscreen entirely, in fact it only uses the stylus for control. My initial impression of the game is that it's a collection of minigames thrown together to fully explore the new abilities offered by the system. Another thing that instantly springs to mind is the artistic style of the game. As does the wacky only from Japan story mode. The question will be is the game fun or is it a gimmick? We'll find out...

Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath -- Final Opinion.

Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath does something interesting midway through the game. Based around a major plot point, the game changes things up and alters the gameplay. It actually keeps things fresh. It's not entirely drastic, as it remains a first person shooter, but the weight of the game changes. It becomes slightly more serious, and far more intense. The story is excellently told, and ends in such a way as to leave you wanting more. The comedy lasts throughout the whole game. The graphics are top notch. Very pretty. Easily in the top five best looking Xbox titles in my opinion. The music can be subtle, and it can also be Hollywood bold and dramatic. The voice acting, like all of the Oddworld games, is exceptional. The controls are perfect. No complaints. It's a shame we'll likely never see a sequel as Oddworld Inhabitants has apparently gone the way of the dodo. Oh well, the Oddworld series will go down in my book as a gamer's series that didn't grab enough of the mainstream to survive. I truly enjoyed the game and I recommend it to the two of you who actually read this. I'm going to give it a score of 9.

Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath: Mostly First Person.

Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath mostly plays out as a first person shooter. There are third person elements if you want them. You can run around in towns and while not in combat in third person. It helps with some of the platform jumping. Sometimes the third person element is automatic, as when you climb a rope in first person, it instantly pulls out to third person to give you the best camera angle for the dismount jump. In third person you can also run at a lope and move much faster through the countryside. The bulk of the game, the combat, is all played out as traditional first person shooter. Left stick controlling movement, right stick controlling look. Your weapon is a double barreled crossbow. It holds two types of ammo at once. So the left trigger fires the ammo loaded on the left, and the right trigger fires the ammo loaded on the right. The A button will cause you to jump. The Y button will heal. You heal by "shaking it off". You can heal as long as you have stamina. Stamina slowly refills over time. You change ammo with the D-pad. Hitting up or down will cycle through the ammo types, and hitting left or right will assign the ammo to either barrel. The game has simple and responsive controls. The game has you playing as the Stranger. A bounty hunter who arrives in town short of the cash needed for an operation that will save his life. He sets about taking bounties to earn the money. You'll walk into the bounty store and accept bounties. You talk to the townspeople, who all happen to be poultry, for clues to the whereabouts of the outlaw you're currently hunting. You'll set off out of town to track down your prey. There are a couple ways to go about it. You can bring them in dead, or you can bring them in alive.  Bringing them in dead is rather obvious. You just shoot them until dead, and then press the X button to capture them. Bringing them in alive is another story. They have stamina bars as well, and you need to lower their stamina enough without killing them to be able to hold the X button long enough to capture them. Bringing them in alive nets you about three times the cash, so there is clear benefit to bringing them in breathing. There are also shops in town where you can buy upgrades to make your work easier. Brass knuckles to improve your physical attack power, upgrades to make your stamina regain faster, to give you more stamina, to allow you to carry more ammo overall, to allow you to loadmore ammo into the crossbow, to allow you to load faster, and potions to attract the various kinds of ammo. Yes, I said attract your ammo. The Stranger's crossbow doesn't use bullets, it uses creatues. He fires live ammunition. That's the big twist that makes this first person shooter its own thing. The ammo types have differing uses beyond just bigger sets of boom like most games of the genre. There are Stunkz, Bolomites, Chippunks, Zappflies, Fuzzles, Thudslugs, Boombats, Stingbees, and Wasps. The Stunks are skunk like creatures that let out a cloud of gas in the area they're fired in. They cause the enemies caught in the area to become sick, which incapacitates them long enough for you to capture them. The Bolomites is a large spider like creature that will wrap up the target in webbing, which holds them long enough for you to capture them. Chippunks are jive-talking chipmunk like creatures that will start trash talking the enemies in the area, which irks the enemy to the point of being lured to the Chippunk, allowing you to thin groups, or isolate enemies where you want them. Zappflies are the basic ammo of the game. You'll never run out of them. They charge up and shock single enemies. Fuzzles are balls of fur and razor sharp teeth. You can fire them into an area and they will attack the enemy. Distracting them enough for you to move position, or to make your move in capturing them, or they can even kill outright. They can also be laid as traps. Fire one where you think an enemy is headed and if they get close enough to it, the Fuzzle will attack. The Thudslug is a pillbug like creature that causes heavy damage to a single enemy. It will knock down almost whatever it hits. Boombats act as grenades. They will cause large damage to a group of enemies. Stingbees are the machine gun of the game. They fire in rapid succession. Wasps are the sniper bullets in the game. You have to hunt your ammo. You'll see them going about their lives, and you zap them with a Zappfly shot. Pick up their stunned bodies to add them to your ammo pouch. It's the ammo, and how you use it to bring in your bounties alive that makes up the fun of the game. Most of the time an outlaw will be protected by his gang, and you'll need to take them out to get them to come out and face you. Then there are some slight puzzle elements in figuring out the boss and which ammo to use and how to take down his stamina enough for you to capture him. Added to that is the obviously comic nature of the game. The game is well written and funny. As all the Oddworld games have been. It doesn't take itself seriously at all. It would be hard to with Fuzzles and Chippunks and enemies named Blisterz Booty and Jo' Mamma. The characters in town like nothing better than to insult you, the player. It's all lighthearted and fun. Let's see if it stays that way through to the end...

Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath -- Initial Impressions.

I'll be playing Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath for the Xbox. It's the fourth game in the Oddworld series, but it's not apart of the Oddworld quintuplet. See, there are five main games telling the central story. Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee is the first game, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee is to be taken as the second game of the quintuplet. Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus, and Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath are to be taken as side-story off the main path of the quintuplet. Isn't it just so very odd? Anyway, Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath is a third person and first person shooter within Oddworld. It's a combination of Oddworld, first person shooting, and Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns like A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Right off, it's clear that the Oddworld sense of humor is intact. The game appears to be laugh out loud funny.  We'll see how long the funny lasts, and see if Oddworld Inhabitants can handle a first person shooter.

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes -- Final Opinion.

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes took me 27:37 to finish, with it being 96% complete. It's clearly a well made game. I mean, it's gorgeous. The sound design is exceptional in both sound use and music. The puzzle aspect is rather cool. They range from simple to deviously clever to insanely hard. The boss battles are monumental struggles. A lot of thought went into them all. The story is great. It's well thought out and well executed. So the game gets a ten right? Not quite. There are real problems and not so tangible ones. First off, having to scan every last thing in the game to advance, and get the story is quite a pain in the ass. I didn't like it in Metroid Prime, and I don't like it here. Secondly, the level layout leaves a lot to be desired. There is just a serious problem in having to backtrack back and forth across the areas. It's compounded by most of the major rooms locking with no way out until you defeat all the creatures therein. Creatures you've killed twenty or even thirty times over. It really detracts from what's great in the game. You want the most bang for your buck, but in this case, it's just too much. It's essentially overdose. I also have issues with the locking on to enemies. It's the same problem I had with Metroid Prime. It is just so spotty. It seemingly works whenever it wants. It makes the boss battles much harder than they needed to be. The boost ball control in morph ball mode is another area that it's spotty. You have to jump from spider track to spider track using boost ball. It should be relatively automated. But for inexplicable reasons the ball would shoot out at varying angles. It's not like it's obvious from the angle or anything. The ball is seemingly in the same place, as is the control stick. You let go of the button, and you'll shoot off at a different angle each time. It's just frustrating. I described in the last entry how this game isn't even remotely Nintendo user friendly as most of their offerings. It's for the determined and those who are looking for a challenge only. I wouldn't casually suggest this game to anyone who didn't know what they were getting into. Weighing all that's good and all that's bad, I'm going to give it an 8.

Metroid Prime 2 -- Sometimes Bigger Isn't Better.

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes doesn't stray far from Metroid Prime's gameplay, in fact it's more of the same with one major twist. The control stick moves Samus around.  The A button fires, the B button jumps, the X button activates the morph ball mode, the Y button fires missiles. The R button allows Samus to look around. The L button locks on to enemies. The Z button brings up the map. The D-pad selects the current visor. The C stick selects the current beam weapon. From there it's straight up classic Metroid gameplay in 3D. You move through a gargantuan maze of a world on locked room pathways. There is three-dimensional movement within the rooms, but it's not a go anywhere do anything type of 3D game. Metroid works in a very controlled manner. You advance through the game finding locked paths. You further advance in the game looking for the power-ups that will get you into the locked paths. Very early on, you'll find more locked paths than open ones and eventually you'll find the item that lets you open a new path, usually guarded by a mini or major boss. So now you can go back and explore all these newly open paths in hopes of further power-ups that further open new paths. In the most general sense, The Metroid series plays out like one giant action puzzle. In whole, and in part. Most of the rooms have some sort of puzzle to figure out, and they all add to the whole. Metroid Prime added the concept of visors, which makes sense as the game is mostly played from Samus' perspective. There is the combat visor, which is the standard view. You can only fight in this view. There is the scan visor, which allows you to gain information and story details. You switch to this view, and start looking around. You'll see items that show up in blue and red. You hold down the L button in this view to scan the objects. You have to hold it down until the scan is complete.  Red objects are critical to the game, you can't advance without them. Blue objects offer up story and information, they're not required to finish the game. Objects will show up as green once they've been scanned. They added the dark visor, which allows Samus to see interdimensional objects and creatures. They also added the echo visor, which allows Samus to see sound. Samus' main weapon is the power beam, but they've added the dark, light, and annihilator beams. Each beam having a better effect against certain items and creatures. She will have use of missiles, super missiles, and seeker missiles. Her powerball also sees its share of upgrades, the boost ball, the spider ball, and the power bombs. You can also power-up the suit itself, with space jump boots, gravity boost, grapple beam, and the screw attack. There are standard power-ups to be had, like energy tanks and missile expansions. All of these things have to be found, and they all play a role in allowing Samus to move into new areas and advance the game. You can see how the complexity of this game is shaping up. They added to the complexity further with the story and its light and dark worlds. Samus is ordered to the planet Aether where a Federation ship tracked a fleeing Space Pirate. The Federation ship crashed from the violent weather upon entering the atmosphere. Samus arrives to investigate and finds a world torn in two by war. Quite literally torn in two. On a dimensional level. There is a light and dark Aether, with both sides fighting over the planets' shared energy resources. Samus enters the fray near the end of the centuries long struggle with the good-guys, the Luminoth, nearly being defeated by the bad-guys, the Ing. Samus' ship was damaged upon arrival on Aether, so she has little choice but to help the Luminoth. What that story does to the gameplay is double it up. There are light and dark versions of the world, much like in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. You'll spend a great amount of time jumping between them as the puzzles are stretched across both realms. What you do in one can have an effect in the other.  So not only are you having to think of every action and item combination in the puzzles themselves, but you have to think across the dark and light dimensions. The game is hard-core. It's not your typical Nintendo offering. It's not, shall we say, Nintendo friendly as most of their offerings are. The combat is very hard for a Nintendo game as well. But that's not all as far as the dark and light thing goes. See, the dark world is a very unfriendly place. It's poisoning Aether. It's just one toxic waste dump. So much so that just being there poisons Samus. Just being in the world hurts her, causing her to lose health constantly. That's right, essentially a timer. You can't mess around in the dark world. In their war with the Ing, the Luminoth figured out a way to move through dark Aether. They've left behind these beacons of light. They create little pockets of light where you're safe from the darkness and are slowly healed. Some are very strong and always on. Others are out and need to be shot with your power beam where they'll come on and give you protecting light for very short periods of time. You'll need to keep hitting them with the power beam to keep them on.  Now imagine this applied to combat. Yes, you have to run around the dark world, shooting at difficult enemies, while trying to keep pockets of light alit. As I said before, not as Nintendo friendly as most of their games. The sheer size of it is another factor. As of this entry, I'm at 36% of the world complete and at 13:36 for time put in. It might be a while before the next entry...

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes -- Initial Impressions.

The next game I'll be playing is obviously Retro Studios' follow up to Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. The initial impression that comes along the strongest is that this is very much the same game as far as control and game play are concerned. It's easy to see why it should be, it's the very same engine reworked. Which means everything that was good and bad about Metroid Prime should be coming along for the second trip. One thing they seemingly ditched is the constant chiming in of the game telling you that you need to get to a certain point every few minutes like clockwork. They allow you to explore in peace. This seems like an improvement at this stage of the journey. But if the world is as large as its rumored to be, how will I feel after an hour or so of being lost should it arise? We'll have to see.

Next time will cover the game play of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes.

Namco Museum 50th Anniversary -- Day Four & Final Opinion.

Dragon Spirit was developed and published by Namco in 1987. Dragon Spirit is a horizontally scrolling shooter. The game has you playing as a guy who transforms into a flying dragon. It's the standard scrolling shooter game play of the time. You shoot enemies to collect their dropped items that power up your firepower. You advance through each of the nine stages to a boss creature. Since you're a dragon, you actually have a lifebar. You can take a few hits before dying. Also, because you're a dragon, the stronger your firepower becomes, the more heads you'll sprout.  You can go from a single-headed dragon to having three heads. The game also features the Xevious game play of having to shoot both air targets and those on the ground. You don't exactly bomb the ground targets, as the dragon just tilts its head down and fires. The game is really tough. The graphics are great. 1987 is just into the second golden age of arcade gaming, where the graphics, sound, and depth of play took a huge leap over the Asteroids and Pac-Man era.

Rolling Thunder was developed Namco but published by Atari in 1987. Rolling Thunder is a predominantly sidescrolling action game. In it, you play an agent who is out to save his kidnapped fellow female agent from an insidious organization out to rule the world. You're armed with a gun, and you can jump. The game plays out one two levels of play. You can jump up onto walkways above and the like by holding up and jump. So as you're going through the levels, killing enemies and avoiding shots by others, you're constantly jumping from the upper and lower levels. The enemies also can move between the upper and lower levels. Throughout the levels are crates to duck behind and doors in the background. You can enter these doors, and enemies appear from them. They can be used to avoid an enemy or their firing at you. Some of the doors are marked with signs about weapons or ammo. Entering these will allow you to pick up the machine gun, or refill your ammo. The game is hard, but fun. It's really about cat and mouse with using the two sections of the play area. There are no real bosses, except for the last boss. This is the most advanced game in the collection as far as graphics and game play.

Pac-Mania was developed and published by Namco in 1987. Pac-Mania is the first of two hidden games on the disc. The game is a "3D" version of Pac-Man.  There are four mazes, the original Pac-Man's Pac-Man Park, Block Town, Sand Box Land, and Jungly Steps. It's Pac-Man in three-quarter topdown isometric view. They've added the ability for Pac-Man to jump over the ghosts. Certain ghosts can also jump. This adds some depth to how the game is played. In the latter levels, there is a silver ghost that cannot be jumped. The levels all have obvious themes being named, but they each get their own musical theme. The game is fun, and the graphics are great for what they are. The only real problem is the speed. The game is slow. Pac-Man moves slow, and the ghosts all move slow. It's almost a plodding pace.

Galaga '88 was surprisingly developed and published in 1988 by Namco. Who would have guessed? Galaga '88 is the second of two hidden games. Galaga '88 is very much the same game as Galaga, but with new backgrounds for the stages, comic game sprites, and the ability to have three ships joined at the hip. You start by selecting if you want to begin the game as a single or double ship. Which means you'll start with one less extra man if you select the double ship. You play the same way. The enemies come out in waves and form up and begin swooping down and firing away. You have to avoid them and their shots and destroy all of them to move to the next stage. Every few stages you'll get the bonus round where the enemies come out in waves without firing and the object is to destroy them all before they leave the screen. Since they've added backgrounds, every once in a while you'll actually play over a scrolling background. Outside of these minor additions, it truly is just the Galaga game play. It's a great bonus title, and easily the best version of Galaga ever made. Take that for whatever you will.

Overall Namco Museum 50th Anniversary is a decent bare-bones collection of classic arcade games. You'll come for the classics like Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Dig Dug, and Galaga. You're likely to be pleasantly surprised by Sky Kid, Rolling Thunder, Galaga '88, and Bosconian. You're likely to enjoy the time spent browsing through Pole Position, Pole Position II, Xevious, and Mappy. Time killers is the best way to describe most of the games on this disc. I don't think anyone raised on today'sgames is truly going to appreciate any of these titles beyond their novelty value. This disc is for collectors of history more than anything else. As far as the emulation goes, I'm very pleased with the quality of the job Digital Eclipse did in compiling this for Namco. Everything looks and sounds perfect. As far as production value goes, I really think Namco dropped the ball. No histories, movies, commentary, art, photos, developer interviews, nothing. They could have handled this so much better. Especially in light of everyone else's collections. I'm going to give Namco Museum 50th Anniversary a 7.0.

Namco Museum 50th Anniversary -- Day Three.

Dig Dug was developed by Namco in 1982 and published by Atari in the United States in both stand up and cocktail versions. In Dig Dug you play as the title character who is a robot that can dig a path in the earth in four directions. He's armed with an air pump which he uses to inflate the enemies until they burst. The air pump has a limited range, as a hose shoots out into an enemy. You have to be close enough to them. The object is to clear the stages of enemies. You can do that by bursting all of them with the air pump, or you can smash them with rocks. You can dig a tunnel under a boulder and a few seconds later it will come loose and fall. If you time it correctly, it will crush the enemy. The enemies can also make a break for the surface and escape to end a round. That's all there is to it.  Each section of dirt you clear is worth ten points. Killing enemies by bursting or crushing them will net you greater points. Letting them escape gets you nothing. As with almost everything in the era, it's about points, to get extra men, to get you further into the game, to get you the highest score. Dig Dug is famous for one little bit of programming. By this time there were people who could play Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man by pattern recognition to the end on one man. The Dig Dug programmers put in a nasty little surprise for those insane enough to reach level 256, where the game ran out of alternating patterns. Instead of looping the patterns, one of the enemies starts the level right next to you. No matter what you do, it will get you. This repeats for however many lives you might have. Ending the game.

Pole Position II was programmed by Namco and released in the United states by Atari in 1983. This really is the same game as Pole Position as far as game play and the differences in the stand up and sit down cabinets. Nothing at all has changed about the controls, graphics, sounds, or graphics. What they did do is add three more tracks. The included the returning Fuji Speedway and added the Test, Suzuki, and Seaside courses. The process of the game is the same as the original Pole Position. You start out by preparing to qualify by racing one lap. Again the other seven cars are already in play. Depending on your finishing time, you'll earn a position or game over. If you earned a position you'll get to start the race from a dead stop with theother drivers. Continually completing the course in time would earn extended play, allowing you to play forever if you were good enough. All of the same control issues that are present in Pole Position coming home are present in Pole Position II.

Mappy was published by Midway and released in 1983. Mappy is just weird. Get this. You're a mouse. A mouse who is a cop. You're in a house trying to recover stolen items.  There are five feline cat-burglars chasing you around. The house is made up of several floors where stolen items are laying about for you to collect. Items like computers, paintings, safes, and radios. The house doesn't apparently have stairs. You have to use trampolines to bounce up to higher floors. There are doors to open and close to help you deal with the cats. Opening a door into an approaching cat will stun it, allowing you to bypass them. You have one other form of attack, microwave ovens. You can open a microwave and presumably cook the cats that are close enough. The whole point is to get points, for extra men, for the high score. Yes, that same cycle. The game can be fun and chaotic. It's a good little distraction. You won't spend a lot of time with it in my opinion. It's just too weird.

Sky Kid was published by Namco in the United States in 1985. Some issues with Midway brought them to the opinion of doing it themselves. Sky Kid is a side scrolling shooter. It's definitely Japanese in that regard as it scrolls right to left. In it you control a biplane on missions to bomb targets. You take off, fly through the zone, at the midway point you must collect the bomb, avoid the enemies to the target, and successfully bomb the primary target. You can move left and right within the forced scrolling to the left. You can also lower or gain elevation. You hold down-left to go lower and up-left to go higher. The plane tilts in said directions, allowing you to fire your machine guns at air and ground targets. You have a button to fire the machine gun. You have another button to loop the plane, as not only are you contending with enemies in front of you, but other planes coming behind you. Looping allows you to get behind the planes and shoot them down. Getting behind a plane doesn't stop it from looping and getting back behind you. So as you're dealing with planes in front of you and behind you and ground targets shooting at you, at one point you have to swoop down and pick up the bomb that will be on the ground. You then get to continue on to the target. You have another button to release the bomb. Same points for extra men cycle applies here. Sky Kid is a great variant on the Choplifter style gameplay of the same year.

Namco Museum 50th Anniversary -- Day Two.

Galaga is the sequel to Galaxian and it was developed by Namco and published in the United States by Midway in 1981. Once again it saw the light of day in stand up and cocktail varieties. It's pretty much the very same basic game as Galaxian. They did add some things though. It looks a little better, but not much. They added new enemy flight patterns. One of the Galagas can swoop down and it will shoot out a tractor beam. If your ship gets caught in the beam, the ship is taken away from you and the Galaga takes it back up into the formation. If you manage to destroy the Galaga that has your ship coupled to it without destroying your ship, you get the ship back. It comes back to you and connects to the side of your actively controlled ship. Having two ships joined at the hip gives you twice the fire power. They also added challenge stages every couple of waves where the Galagas come out in patterns and they don't fire at you. The object is to destroy all forty of them before they can leave the screen. Outside of those, it really is more of the same. This version proved more popular than the original, and I prefer this version over the original. It's more challenging. And being more complex takes it a step away from just being a Space Invaders variant.

Ms. Pac-Man was also published by Midway in 1981, in yet again cocktail and stand up versions. It was developed by General Computer Corporation as a modification to Pac-Man. Midway bought it and altered it to become what is Ms. Pac-Man. Namco wasn't exactly happy about this. Midway surrendered all rights to Ms. Pac-Man over to Namco to essentially keep them from taking away publishing rights of their future titles. Ms. Pac-Man offers a new character, four mazes instead of one, wandering bonus fruit, and between level cinemas. Outside of that, it really is the same classic game play as Pac-Man. It's still perfect. Ms. Pac-Man would go on to become the most successful arcade machine of all time. A special note should be said about the emulation. This is actually the real Ms. Pac-Man emulated perfectly. It's available for the very first time on this disc. All other previous Namco Museum versions of Ms. Pac-Man have been recreations.

Pole Position was manufactured by Namco and published in the United States by Atari in late 1982. The game was released in stand up and sit down versions. The stand up cabinets had the accelerator pedal, gear shift (Lo-Hi), and the steering wheel. The sit down cabinet had all of that plus the addition of a brake pedal. Pole Position featured one track, Fuji Speedway. Players would put in their quarter and would be instructed vocally to prepare to qualify. You would then complete one lap to assign your pole position, your starting position. If you qualified, you'd be placed in position one through eight depending on your time.  If you failed to qualify, game over. If you qualified, you got to race again. The difference in the qualifying lap was that the cars were already in play when you begin. And in the race lap, you all start the race together. There were also puddles to avoid in the race lap that aren't in the qualifying lap. The arcade Pole Position used a free spinning wheel. That means you can spin it left or right and it would continue to rotate endlessly.  For the sharpest turns you'd actually fully spin the wheel and let it spin. There is no way to replicate this with the current generation of console controllers. An aspect of the arcade game is lost here. Home control of Pole Position is tough at best. It's just extremely twitchy and sensitive making things overly difficult.

Xevious was published in 1982 by Atari in both cocktail and stand up varieties. Xevious is a horizontal scrolling shooter where the player has to interact on two areas of play. The player could shoot forward in the air at enemy ships coming toward him. He also could bomb targets on the ground.  You have to watch both areas of play for enemy fire to avoid. It the heat of the moment, it's tough to tell what's coming from where. It's pure twitch game play. You're able to power up your ship from items that come out of defeated enemies. There isn't much more to it, than kill for power ups and points for extra men to get as far as you could and set the highest score. It's fun if you like the genre. Otherwise you'll probably never return to Xevious.

Namco Museum 50th Anniversary -- Day One.

Galaxian was released in 1979 and as such is the oldest game in this collection. It's clearly inspired by Taito's Space Invaders released the previous year. You control a spaceship left and right along the bottom of the screen shooting at aliens in formation who also move to the left and right across the top of the screen. It's identical to Space Invaders, except for being in color. Namco couldn't have that, as they didn't want a copyright infringement lawsuit. So the bug like enemies can break from formation and swoop down moving left as right and firing as they fall. It's essentially never-ending wave after wave of enemies. It's all for the high score. The game spawned five sequels from Namco. It was originally published in stand up and cocktail varieties by Midway in the United States. Personally, I always preferred Space Invaders to Galaxian. I still do all these years later.

Rally-X was released in 1980. It was also published in the United States by Midway. This is essentially Pac-Man re-envisioned. You control a rally car around a maze while trying to collect all the flags in the level and avoiding the other racer cars and rock obstacles. The course is a maze. You aren't as walled in as Pac-Man. There are some open areas. The controls work identically to Pac-Man, just the joystick. Up, Down, Left, and Right. You pick your direction. You can't crash into the maze walls unless you hold the direction into them. There are four other cars to avoid. You just avoid the enemies, collect the flags, before the fuel runs out and move on to the next level. It's quite fun as a Pac-Man alternative.

Pac-Man was released by Namco in 1980 and was published by Midway in the United States. They published it in both stand up and cocktail varieties. Everyone knows Pac-Man. Taito's Space Invaders and Atari's Asteroids were hits, Pac-Man was the first video game smash hit. You control Pac-Man in a maze with four ghosts. You're collecting pellets for ten points each. The ghosts are fatal and must be avoided at all costs. In each maze are four power pellets, when eaten the ghosts become vulnerable for a while, and flee. If you can chain the ghosts together while they're vulnerable, you'll gain far more points, and more points mean extra men, which means the further you can potentially go. Pac-Man is a perfect game. The gameplay is as fun today as it ever was. It's one of those titles you can pick up anytime to kill twenty minutes with while waiting to leave or something along those lines.

Bosconian was published by Midway in the United States in 1981. In it, you control a ship in an eight way scrolling shooter. The unique thing about this one, is you fire both forward and backwards at the same time. The object of the game is to fly around the play field and destroy all the mother ships that have six destructible sections all the while avoiding asteroids and swarming enemies defending the mother ships. It can get chaotic, even by the era's standards. Firing both forwards and backwards while being able to fly in eight directions with swarming groups of enemies coming at you from all directions results in truly twitch game play. It's actually great fun. The game features synthesized voice yelling "Alert! Alert!" and "Spy ship sighted!" and "Condition red!" and various other things. It's clearly an inspiration for Williams' Sinistar which would be released the following year.

Namco Museum 50th Anniversary -- Initial Impression.

I've thrown the dog a bone and picked up Namco Museum 50th Anniversary for the Gamecube. I went in looking for the Xbox version and the store only had two copies of the Gamecube version left and I didn't feel like driving all over the place looking. The Xbox version allows for Xbox Live use in uploading your high scores for global bragging rights. Not like I was expecting to place in the top ten for anything, but a nice little feature missing from the other versions. The game is a collection of sixteen arcade games from Namco's history. The games only go back to 1979, if you were at all wondering about the fifty years part. Namco is celebrating fifty years as a company. Founded in 1955, they started out making the rides for kids in Japanese department stores. You know the kind of thing you see outside a grocery store in the US. Put in a quarter, and have junior bounce up and down in a little plastic police car or on a little plastic horse or something. They didn't get into video games until the late 1970s. What's included for your $19 you might be asking? Well, I'll tell you. You get: Galaxian, Pac-Man, Rally-X, Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga, Bosconian, Pole Position, Xevious, Dig Dug, Pole Position II, Mappy, Sky Kid, Dragon Spirit, Rolling Thunder, Pac-Mania, and Galaga '88. Pac-Mania and Galaga '88 are hidden games. Pac-Mania is unlocked by earning 15,000 points in Pac-Man and 20,000 points in Ms. Pac-Man. Galaga '88 is unlocked by earning 40,000 points in Galaga. Both are exceedingly simple to accomplish. As I was able to unlock them in my initial playing. A couple things come to mind for my initial impressions. This is a bare bones presentation. It's just the games. That's it. No history. No art. No photos. No movies. No developer commentary. No discussion of global cultural impact. None of the stuff they could have done. Just the games and a front end interface. That's rather disappointing for a supposed celebration of fifty years in business. It's very half-assed feeling.  The interface is the sixteen arcade cabinets with their backs to each other in a circle. Galaga '88 and Pac-Mania have out of order signs on them until they are unlocked. During this interface they have 1980s music playing. Five tracks. Come on Eileen by Dexy's Midnight Runners, Working for the Weekend by Loverboy, She Drives Me Crazy by Fine Young Cannibals, Talking in Your Sleep by The Romantics, and Joystick by Dazz Band. It's almost a nice touch, if it weren't such a limited selection, and you could actually play them over the arcade games.  Every single 1980s arcade I ever went into had the era's pop music blaring over the arcade machines. It was part of the charm of the era. The sights, the sounds, the smells, they all went into it as much as the gameplay. The arcade games and the gameplay are what really matters in this of course, and I'll be covering four games a day for the next few entries.

Legacy of Kain: Defiance -- FATAL FUCKING ERROR.

There has been a change of plans and I won't be talking much about the puzzles and story of Legacy of Kain: Defiance as I've encountered a fatal error. A fatal error is when something in the code causes a glitch in the game that you can't get beyond. In the game, I'm supposed to deliver the Heart of Darkness to the corpse of Janos Audron. I obtained the heart via a cinema sequence at the end of which you must hit the A button on the message confirming you've picked up said item. I play on. Save the game. Come to play it the next day. Play on. Get through all the puzzles in Vorador's mansion to finally get to the crypt where the body of Janos is at rest. I walk in, and a great nothing. There is obviously supposed to be a cinema scene. I check the menu, and the directive listed is to resurrect Janos. One would do that by returning his heart. So I go back to the game, and walk all around him looking for the trigger. Nothing. I try hitting the buttons. Nothing. I look at the screen again, maybe I actually have to use the heart even though nothing has had to have been used this way previously, it's all been automatic. It's then I notice the heart isn't located in the artifacts section. It's just not there. The key to the trigger of the scene isn't there. Well, I better make sure. I check a FAQ. Yep, it's what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to just return here and a scene will play on its own. So it looks like I'm fucked. I load the only save I have, no backup. Work my way back and nothing. I power off, reload the game and save, check the inventory and nothing. Well, I better be sure, so I make my way back, and fucking nothing. Holy shit am I pissed off about this. The games have been notoriously glitchy since the second in the series, I manage to make it through all five of the games up unto the very goddamned end of the final one. According to the FAQ, I was very near the end. The scene results in me being whisked to the final location of the game where a battle and a scene happen. I would switch over to Kain, make my way there, and the final boss battle would take place. The end, but no. I'm fucked twelve hours in with just twenty minutes left to the whole thing. I was able to unlock what's called the Dark Chronicle with a code. It has all the cinema scenes in the game, and I was able to watch the one I couldn't trigger, the two after, and the ending. I was able to gather the actual events in-between from the FAQs, I just didn't get to play them out myself. I am too angry to start over, and I will be for a great while. Bah!