Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors -- Initial Impression.

So we're jumping back over to the Wii for the next game and that's going to be Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors. Dragon Quest Swords seems to be the marriage of Pokémon Snap and Dragon Quest. Instead of going along railed paths taking photos of Pikachu and Snorlax you're using the Wii Remote to waggle sword swipes at Slimes and Magidrakes. Hopefully there is a story worthy of the Dragon Quest name backing it up.

Folklore -- Final Opinion.

The credits have rolled on Folklore with a time of a few minutes shy of twenty-eight hours. Folklore is an action RPG so the combat is rather important and you might be wondering how they did. The combat of Folklore is great fun. It's essentially hack and slash into combos with great variety. The story has you absorbing the ids of folks, creatures from various netherworlds, and using them to fight for you. You can easily assign an absorbed id to one of the four face buttons of the DualShock 3. The system to switch them out is fast and easy. And you'll be needing to switch them out as certain folk work better than others against specific folk. You'll be able to absorb a great many folks providing you with a lot of depth in combat. Each folk that you use has karma that can be released therefore making the folk stronger. You're leveling them up. And that's done by meeting a variety of listed conditions for each folk. For example we'll use Gargantua. If you absorb three Gargantua ids you'll decrease magic consumption. And if you defeat twenty folks with Gargantua you'll increase hit points and magic points attack powers. If you use a golden ore which can be found from crystal chests or dropped from other folk you'll further increase the Gargantua's attack power. And that's one of some fifty plus folks that you can absorb and use and level up. And with some folks requiring you to defeat numerous other folks to level you can maybe start to see the depth of the combat and leveling system. The game also features some fun boss battles requiring key use of various folks. As for the story, the setting is great as I said in my initial impression. A Japanese RPG that's outside of Japanese myth  or culture or anime, and that's just refreshing. It doesn't fully escape Japanese sensibilities though. The game plays out like a murder mystery and that aspect has some definite Japanese flavor. Anyone who has played Shadow of Memories will have an idea. The game actually has an interesting take on the power of the concept of death as applied to pagan mythology. The game has you running around a small Atlantic coastal Irish village named Doolin. You alternate playing as two characters drawn to the village for various reasons. Ellen is looking for her mother and secrets of her past. Keats is a writer from an occult magazine looking for a lead on a story. They both stumble onto a seventeen year old murder mystery. The majority of the story is told from sort of moving comic panels based off the in game engine. The game is broken up into seven chapters and each one follows the same basic formula. Run around talking to everyone and figure out how to gain access the next action segment. Fight through collecting and leveling the folks, and then fight a boss and on to the next chapter. The story is slow moving but interesting. And the result is decent. The game is absolutely gorgeous in its art style. Wonderfully vibrant worlds filled with color await you. The animations in the characters and folks in battle are equally lush. The voice acting is well done throughout and the music is truly great. Folklore is a relatively long action RPG with a great battle system and a fresh take on pagan belief tied up in a decent murder mystery. I'm giving Folklore a rock solid 8.

Folklore -- Initial Impression.

I've been playing Battlefield online with a little Phantasy Star Online thrown in. I sort of needed a bit of a break after nearly seventy-five hours of Pokémon so I haven't started anything for a few days. Now it's time to jump back in and I'm going to be doing that on the PlayStation 3 with the Gamer Republic developed and Sony published Folklore. The game is an action adventure with a dark setting based on Western fairy tales and mythology, especially those of pagan Gaelic origin concerning Samhain. You know, the basis for Halloween and All Saint's Day and the general celebration of the end of the harvest. Where the pagans believed that the boundaries between the living and the dead were weakened and the dead became dangerous to the living. I find the setting and concept for the game to be extremely enticing. It's good to see more western folklore and mythology appear in Japanese made games. And not bastardized versions of it along the lines of Xenogears. Considering that the game is an action adventure title I'm hoping for a good combat system backed up by a great story. We'll see how it goes.

Battlefield: Bad Company -- Final Opinion.

So if the offline game of Bad Company is a decent first attempt, how is the online? As far as bringing Battlefield to consoles it's a great success. All the mayhem and insanity of the Battlefield series is perfectly conveyed. Bad Company ditched the Battlefield series mainstay of conquest mode although, based on reaction to the beta and demo from fans, Dice CE has decided to implement the mode via download content for free at a later date. Instead they've created gold rush mode. Which has two teams of twelve players going after gold crates. One team is an attacker and the other defenders. One wants the gold, the other wants to keep it. The attackers need to reach the crates and destroy them to claim the gold in that section of the map. If they succeed they move on to the next set of crates for the map. Each map has roughly four to five sets of crates. The defenders need to keep the crates from being destroyed. They achieve this by reducing the number of attackers. It works on Battlefield's ticket system. The attackers only get so many spawns. Each one represented by a ticket. Once they've all been used up the attackers are defeated. Into this you add Battlefields class structure. Bad Company features five classes and they are assault, demolition, recon, support, and specialist. Each class is outfitted with exclusive weapons and gear. You're able to select your class with each spawn within the round. It's all about playing your role. Demolition allows for you to take out armored vehicles and tanks with shotguns as the primary weapon. Recon allows for sniping. Assault allows for automatic rifles. Support is the medic. Specialist allows for you to excel situationally as in tagging a helicopter with a tracer bullet so that the demolition class can lock on with their rockets for an easy kill in an otherwise dreaded and difficult encounter. On top of this they've included Battlefield's point system where everything you do is rewarded. Kill an enemy for points. Kill an enemy within range of a gold crate for an attacker or defense point bonus. Kill an enemy after they've killed a squad member for an avenger point bonus. Kill an enemy who is attacking a team member for a savior point bonus. You name it, it's pretty much covered within the system. And it all works toward the great rank and award system they've implemented. There are essentially one-hundred and twenty in-game achievements to earn. There are three categories. Trophies are based on points. Kill six enemies in a round with a specific weapon to earn an assault rifle trophy for example. Patches are earned from earning enough specific trophies. So if you were to get a bunch of defense based trophies you'll eventually earn a bronze defender patch and up to silver and gold and so on. Wildcards are just that, the one-off freakish things that happen in the game. Get enough air in a Humvee for example. It's actually a great system that encourages you to fully explore the classes and everything they have to offer. Now as for the actual gameplay. I really like it. But I have to stress that Bad Company online really does depend on your team. If they've got their act together you're going to have some fun. And a lot of it. Teamwork really comes into play. There is a true sense of accomplishment and working together. On the other hand, if you're on a team with a couple of other squads who don't have their act together, it can be near miserable, especially if the opposition is on the ball. Because no matter what you do as an individual you're not going to be able to truly turn the tide without help. One squad alone can do something against another decent squad, but one good squad versus two or even three others means misery awaits.  And that can be frustrating. That should be alleviated considerably once conquest mode is patched in as it will open up the maps from the start and you're not funneled through the areas in concentrated numbers as you are in gold rush mode. When it works, Bad Company is awesome online, and when you're behind the eight ball you'll just have ride it out and take the loss and look for another game. But for me the highs make it well worth the lows. I'm giving Battlefield: Bad Company for the Xbox 360 a 9.

Pokémon Pearl -- Final Opinion.

Five minutes short of seventy-four hours and the credits have rolled on Pokémon Pearl for the Nintendo DS. Better late than never, but I've finally completed a Pokémon game. Such as it is with the game really being never ending. I've completed the main story. I've stopped Team Galactic's evil scheme. I've collected all eight gym badges and fought my way through the Elite Four and I've defeated the Pokémon League Champion. Pokémon is a traditional role playing game with a lot of massively multi-player online trappings heaped on top. The bulk of the game revolves around catching and battling Pokémon. Everything else is just busywork. The combat is traditional turn based. You'll select what to do via a menu. Attack, flee, or use an item. The complexity, such as it is, comes in to play via a basic rock, paper, scissors system. Fire beats earth and water beats fire and so on and so forth. Your Pokémon can learn new attacks and moves from being leveled up or by learning them via items. Just like the massively multi-player design scheme, there is a lot for a person to do  and obsess over. It's no surprise that the games have proven so addictive to a whole generation of fans. I can see how the basic premise of having to catch them all allowed for addiction and by the fourth generation of the games Nintendo has built upon the obsessive nature of the series. Unfortunately it's all a bit shallow. The game's combat actually allows for some deep strategy to be employed but the game never makes use of it until the very end withthe Pokémon League battles. I understand that it's the player versus player battles that will make use of such potential. It's just a shame the game leaves it out of the main quest. Most of the other trappings in the game are just as useless and truly come off as busywork. There are benefits to doing almost everything in the game, but again, they're mostly irrelevant outside of versus play because the main quest doesn't come close to challenging you in any way. You can get by with the same couple of moves from a few select Pokémon. And of course you're not playing a Pokémon game for the story, unless you're an eight year old girl or something. The story is just there to move you around. It's inconsequential. If you actually stopped to think about the world within the game you'd probably be a tad disturbed by the people and their obsession over Pokémon. The graphics are decent. They're bright and colorful and cleanly drawn. There isn't a lot of animation in the game. That's one area where they can surely stand to improve the series. Especially in the battles. Phantasy Star 2 had far more impressive battle animations twenty years ago. The music is decent with a good sound quality. It won't annoy you. I don't think it'll wow you either. I enjoyed the considerable time I spent with Pokémon Pearl. I don't feel the need to run out and track down the three previous generations of games. And I'll be skipping Pokémon Platinum, the update semi-sequel for this generation. I will probably jump back in for generation five though. I'm giving Pokémon Pearl for the Nintendo DS a 7.5.

Battlefield: Bad Company -- Truckasaurus Rex Would Win.

It's been a while since my last update. There are a couple of reasons for that. One Battlefield related, and the other being Pokémon. It just happens that Pokémon is a black hole of a time sink that I wasn't quite prepared for. But this entry is about Battlefield. I've completed the offline game of Battlefield twice over. I originally went through it on the hard difficulty level and earned the achievements for it. Once I realized that the normal achievements don't unlock alongside the hard achievements I sort of only halfheartedly searched for the collectible weapons and the bars of gold hidden in each level. I saved my more thorough searching for when I went through the game the second time on the normal difficulty level. So how was Dice CE's first real attempt at an offline mode? It wasn't bad. It wasn't great either. Some things they got right, and others they need more ironing out. What's right about it? First and foremost, the character of the characters. They have it in spades. Stereotypes though they may be, they're all wonderfully entertaining with smartly written banter and great voice work. The story is shallow to begin with. You're just out to steal some gold. It's the banter that will keep you entertained throughout the game. The game is also really pretty with some massive levels that show off Dice CE's great level design skills. Something they've always exceeded at. The game also features what might be the best surround sound design I've ever heard in a video game. Everything sounds great from the pinging of bullets to the clanging of shell casings hitting the ground to the booming explosions and they all rock and roll through the speakers. The controls are pretty functional and never get in the way of things. So what did they need to spend some more time on? The artificial intelligence is the chief complaint on both sides. Your squad mates aren't the brightest bunch when it comes to actually shooting as they are when talking trash to each other. You have to do all of the work yourself. The enemies in turn are freaking brilliant. Not only are their tactics quite sound, but they're gifted marksmen who don't ever miss and they're seemingly smart enough to ignore your squad mates and concentrate all their considerable firepower solely at you. Which makes things tough. Did I mention the greatly designed levels are massive? Maybe a bit too massive as each of the game's eight levels take a serious amount of time to complete.  What Battlefield: Bad Company really shows is great potential for future offline efforts from Dice CE. But as anyone who has ever played a Battlefield game knows, it's all about the online baby. And that will have to wait until next time...