Crackdown -- Initial Impression.

I'm eternally plugging away at Phantasy Star Universe and I'm currently playing Gurumin so why not jump into Crackdown. Crackdown was developed by Realtime Words for the Xbox 360 and it is published by Microsoft Game Studios. Needless to say, it's an X360 exclusive. When Crackdown was originally announced and shown it was lost in the shuffle. It didn't stand out. It didn't seem like much, compared to say Halo 3. It's this connection to that other Microsoft Game Studios published title that sort of gave Crackdown its dubious notoriety. In a tactically brilliant move, Microsoft has attached Crackdown to the Halo 3 beta by guaranteeing players a spot in the beta by purchasing a first-run copy of Crackdown. Suddenly everyone was aware of Crackdown. It became known as the free game you'll get when you fork over the $59 for the Halo 3 beta key on the disc. Gamers laughed. The message boards were ablaze with people patting themselves on the back for being so witty. Then something happened that caused a surprising shift. The Crackdown demo was released on Xbox Live Marketplace. What's this? Crackdown is good. Who would have guessed? How can that be? How can I be sure it's going to be good just from a demo and a few hours with the final game? The details will follow...

Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure -- The Mechanics.

Gurumin is a surprisingly good fit on the PSP. Nothing about the controls had to be sacrificed. You control the main character of Parin with the analog nub or the D-pad. The X button is used to attack. Parin uses a drill that can be powered up three levels. The drill is more powerful at higher levels of course, but you can also charge up the attack by holding down the attack button. It will cause more powerful attacks and special moves. It will also allow you to drill items like rocks looking for treasure and to break through damaged walls and the like in the dungeons. The circle button is jump. The square button is what is referred to as a guard dash. It's a spinning forward motion movement that allows for you to dodge attacks and not take hits. The shoulder buttons allow you to rotate the camera left and right. The triangle button will center the camera behind Parin. As far as controls go, Gurumin couldn't be more simple. The game plays out using an old style overworld map where you move around the paths with hubs that you can enter. When you first move to a dungeon hub that you've never entered before it will be listed as new. You'll need to complete the dungeon once to have it read clear. When you move over a dungeon you'll get an information bubble that pops up to tell you the total number of creatures in the dungeon. It will tell you how many you've killed. It also lists the number of jars and chests in the dungeon along with how many you've found. It will list your best time for completing the dungeon. The last thing it will list is your rank for completing the dungeon. You're awarded medals based on how you perform. The highest rank awarded is S. Earning an S rank earns you a gold medal. An A rank earns you a silver medal. I've never scored low enough to earn a bronze.  The gold medals can be traded with a character in the game for useful items. The silver medals can be sold for money. Fortunately time doesn't play into earning an S rank. You can take your time to thoroughly search the dungeons for the enemies and the treasures, as they're what counts. To earn an S rank you'll need to defeat all the enemies and find every last treasure chest and clay jar. The dungeon themselves are the standard fare with enemies and traps to overcome, cleverly hidden passages to discover, switches to throw, and puzzles to solve. The dungeon designs have been smart and fun thus far. The actual gameplay of Gurumin is quite fun. But does the game have that old Falcom charm? We'll have to wait and see.

Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure -- Initial Impression.

Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure is an action RPG for the PlayStation Portable that is published by Mastiff and developed by Falcom. The game is from the makers of Ys, Brandish, Popful Mail, and Sorcerian. They're not exactly new to making action RPGs. In fact, it's what they do best. So it's with great expectations that I start Gurumin. Falcom originally developed Gurumin for the Japanese PC market. They released the game in December of 2004. Not pleased with the previous outsourced ports of their work to the PSP, Falcom decided to handle this one themselves. I'm expecting a bright and colorful comic adventure with good action and great music. But more importantly I'm expecting that Falcom charm. That intangible something that just seems to be present in all their games. Hopefully the game will live up to my great expectations...

Hotel Dusk: Room 215 -- Final Opinion.

It took me roughly fifteen hours to work my way through Hotel Dusk. The bulk of that time was spent reading text. Hotel Dusk is ninety percent story and ten percent game. That isn't the worst thing in the world if the story is especially strong. Hotel Dusk's story is its strongest point. It's good, but it's not great. The best part about it is the level of character within the characters. They're all well written. They're fully realized people. The language used to tell the story is appropriately colorful and witty. You'll have characters described with phrases like 'tough strap of leather' for example. The characters are quick-witted and fast with the wordplay. The mystery plays out in a hardboiled style that would feel at home being an Alfred Hitchcock Presents teleplay. Add in an ever so slight dash of The Twilight Zone with the coincidence of how every last person is involved in the mystery of it all and you should have an idea of what you're getting in to. Hotel Dusk will appeal to people who can appreciate slower gameplay and a fuller story. It's more a graphic novel than it is a game. The puzzles are secondary and for the most part well done and intuitive, except for the blasted bookmark puzzle. The controls work fine. It's graphically stylish and pretty. The music fits the mood of the game, but there isn't a lot of it. The story is well thought out and makes perfect sense in the end, no real major plot holes. I enjoyed the game for what it is. I'm giving Hotel Dusk: Room 215 a 7.5.

Hotel Dusk: Room 215 -- Busy Puzzles.

Puzzles play a large role within the graphic adventure genre. They're what sets the genre apart from a glorified Choose Your Own Adventure story. The puzzles in Hotel Dusk are a mixed bag in my opinion. On one hand they're all grounded in reality. They're all plausible. You won't find any giant chess pieces or statues to move around like in the Resident Evil games. In Hotel Dusk you're simply doing real world actions and doing them by touch for the most part. You're using the stylus to pick locks, do some sewing, or solve a jigsaw puzzle. I'm actually glad for the more real world tasks. But on the other hand I get the feeling that some of the puzzles and stylus functions are just there as busywork. To give the player a sense of doing something other than merely advancing the story. Because Hotel Dusk really is all about the story. And that's a subject for next time...

Hotel Dusk: Room 215 -- Stylish Control.

You hold the Nintendo DS sideways like a book when playing Hotel Dusk. When you first start the game you're asked to set the orientation of the system based on if you're left or right-handed. I'm left-handed so I hold the NDS in my right hand with the touch screen on the left for easy access. The game is entirely controlled by the stylus. The game has a couple of perspectives. When exploring you'll see a map of the hotel on the touch screen and the character's view on the other screen. You move the character around by touching where you want the character go. You essentially lead him around like old PC games where you'd click with the mouse and the character followed there. It's the same deal here with touch. Your character is represented by a circle with an arrow sticking out of it so you can easily determine the direction you're facing. On the touch screen there is a head's up display across the bottom whenever you're in the mode where you can move. The icons are a door, a silhouette, a magnifying glass, and a notebook. The door allows you to interact with a door directly in front of you. The silhouette allows you to talk to someone in front of you. The magnifying glass allows you to search the area in front of you. These icons don't have any use until they're highlighted, normally by being near enough and facing the correct direction to whatever you can interact with. When you search an area the game's perspective shifts to the character's view on the touch screen. A new icon appears here, the bag. The bag contains the items you've collected that might have a potential use. Also on the search screen is a slider that allows you to swing the view to the left and right. As an example, this allows you to see a note stuck to the side of a television that you wouldn't have seen with the view being head on. You can use the stylus in the search mode to get a description for just about anything in the view just by double-tapping whatever it might be. As you search you'll locate puzzles. The view will focus in on the puzzle and most of the puzzles in the game will make use of some sort of touch action. The notebook allows you to access the options menu for saving, check the character and item logs, check or write a memo, check the overall map, and access the story summary. The memo feature is especially cool. It's just a notebook where you can write yourselfnotes withthe stylus to be saved within the game. It's crucial for some of the puzzles. When you initiate a conversation the view shifts again to show the player character on the touch screen and whoever he's talking to in the other screen. The game sticks to standard conversation trees. You're able to ask specific questions in specific situations. You can't ask whatever you might want to ask whenever to just anyone. You're offered a choice between a couple of possible questions or comments when talking to people. The game does allow for you to end the game by saying the wrong thing to the wrong person so you do need to exercise some caution. The game's controls work perfectly well enough. They never get in the way. They don't come off as gimmicky. You're going to be spending most of you time just tapping the screen anyway to advance the text. So the control works, but what of the puzzles and the story? Next time...

Hotel Dusk: Room 215 -- Initial Impression.

Sticking with the Nintendo DS the next game I'll be starting is Hotel Dusk: Room 215. The game is a graphic adventure developed by Cing and published by Nintendo. This is Cing's third game. Glass Rose and Trace Memory are the other games they've made. After spending some initial time with the game a few things jump right out at you. The first one is the game has a very cool visual style. It uses sort of an animated pencil sketch style. If you've ever seen the music video Take On Me by the band a-ha then you've got a pretty clear idea of the graphic style the game employs. Another thing that initially jumps out at you is the game is going to attempt the hardboiled style of storytelling. The graphic adventure lives and dies by three aspects. The story, the puzzles, and the interface. We'll have to see how Hotel Dusk tells its story. It's the most important aspect to this genre in my opinion. The puzzles and general gameplay can also make or break the game. Hopefully the puzzles remain logical and cohesive. There is nothing worse than asking why would anyone do that in the puzzles for this genre. The interface needs to be easy to use. There isn't a lot of action going on, if any, so there is no excuse should the interface be clumsy or convoluted. Let's see how it turns out...