Valkyria Chronicles -- Final Opinion.

And to think, I hesitated. I did not start Valkyria Chronicles day-one for fear of the game not being able to meet my high expectations. Not so much for what I thought the game was, but for what it could be based on which SEGA team had made the game. As I stated in my previous post forever ago, Valkyria Chronicles comes from a mix of people who've had their hands in the creation of numerous entries into my all-time top twenty video game list. I completed Valkyria Chronicles with a time of forty-nine and a half hours. That's from me extending the playthrough wherever possible. And that fact alone sort of sums up things already. It was for me the kind of game you truly don't want to end. Valkyria Chronicles is a strategy or tactical RPG. So let's start with what one would naturally think to be the heart of a tactical RPG, the actual battles. It's the standard turned based system. There is a player phase and an enemy phase. You begin by placing your units into their starting positions on a map of the battlefield. You can select units from a pool of twenty that can be rotated in and out between battles. The number of units varies for each battle. You can choose between five classes of units. Most battles require the main character who happens to be a tank commander. Beyond that you have scouts, shocktroopers, lancers, snipers, and engineers. Scouts are your general soldiers, they have long range movement and mid range rifles. Shocktroopers are your close combat units, they have mid range movement and short range weapons like machine guns and flamethrowers. Lancers are your anti-tank and anti-emplacement units. Lancers have low to mid range movement. Snipers are obviously your long range attackers, but they have the shortest movement range of all the classes. Engineers are essentially scouts with special abilities. They have slightly lower movement range and less accuracy than the scouts, but they can disarm mines, and repair tanks and barricades. Once all units are in place you start the movement phase of the battle. You have so many command points and every action in the game requires command points to execute. It costs one command point to move a unit. But within that one point usage you get to move that unit up to the full allotment of their movement and complete one action such as attacking or healing. It's not limited to just moving and an action. You can move, fire, and then move some more permitted you still haven't depleted your movement meter. And you can use the same unit repeatedly, although each time you move a unit within the same phase their movement bar gets shorter. Once you've used up your command points in the player phase, you end your turn and the enemy phase begins. A round consists of one player phase and one enemy phase. Most battles have a twenty round limit among other conditions of defeat. As you progress through the game you're able to train your classes. They train as classes and not individual units. So when you're leveling up the sniper class, all your snipers level. You're also able to upgrade your tanks and weaponry. And it's actually quite deep. The rifles for example spilt into three categories. You're able to increase power, accuracy, and special features. Would you rather have a rifle that hits harder but is less accurate, or a more accurate but less powerful rifle, or would you want a rifle that would put some sort of status effect on the enemy like lowered defense or attack power? What sets Valkyria Chronicles apart in its battles is the use of action. When you go to move your character you'll select them on the sepia toned map. The camera pans down into the battlefield that suddenly springs to life with vibrant color. It's a cool effect. You then control the character's actions. You move out from the sandbags you're crouched behind and run down the field to take up position around the corner with bullets whizzing by. You actually aim your rifle and fire. You run and duck for cover behind more sandbags. You move each unit, you fire each shot, you run that gauntlet under a hail of gunfire. It's great stuff and it looks absolutely beautiful while you're doing it. The battles themselves are also extremely impressive. Each battle has you doing or introduces something new to the point where each and every battle feels unique. The strategy element is very well done. The AI can be dominated, but they'll also walk all over you if you given them any opportunity. The game has considerable depth in the strategy and weapon development aspects. Which is great considering most of your time will be spent in battle. But I wouldn't actually call the great battle system the heart of the game. No, it's actually the characters and story here that are the real winners. Shining Force surprised the hell out of me back in the 16-bit era with its charming characters and story. Something you just weren't expecting out of a strategy RPG at the time, or today for that matter. Valkyria Chronicles is that same reaction, only infinitely more powerful. Valkyria Chronicles is story intensive. And the story here is great, with awesome characters. Real characters, with depth and arcs to travel. There's something about the mix of truly adult themes and the beautiful graphics that helps to further surprise you with where the story is willing to go. I was expecting a good strategy RPG. I wasn't expecting to be introduced to a large cast of impressive characters that I would come to care for and root for. I wasn't expecting to become emotionally invested in the story. A story that will hit a few cliches along its route but that is so impressively well told that it ranks up as easily one of the best ever told in gaming. I found just about every aspect of this game to be perfect. The graphics are amazingly beautiful. The soundtrack by Hitoshi Sakimoto is great. It features all the bombast you'd expect with a game centered on war, but the character specific stuff will catch you by surprise. The voice work is excellent. And the cast is large with no repeat voices. The translation is about as good as they come. The story is one of the best I've seen. It's smart and funny and emotionally moving and just so well done. I'm giving Valkyria Chronicles for the PlayStation 3 a 10. This game has cracked my all-time top ten list. It's up there with games like Shinobi and The Legend of Zelda III: A Link to the Past and Super Metroid and Snatcher and Panzer Dragoon Saga. I could not be more impressed.

Left 4 Dead -- The S & M Factor.

So yeah, Valkyria Chronicles. No, Left 4 Dead. I bought Left 4 Dead for the concept of the online play. You and three other living players shooting your way through the zombie apocalypse. Although they're not really zombies, in the Romero ghoul sense, they're infected in the 28 Days Later sense. The zombie horde can really move in other words. They come flooding out of just about everywhere and come at you in a full run. Also added to the mix are so called special infected. The special infected include five varieties. They are Boomers, Smokers, Hunters, Witches, and Tanks. Boomers are obese zombies who vomit on you from upwards of twenty feet away. They also explode when killed. Getting vomited on or being caught too close to an exploding Boomer results in the same thing and that's being covered with a substance that initiates a zombie feeding frenzy. A hell of a lot of zombies will pour out of everywhere and make a B-line for those unfortunately covered in goop. Smokers have a tongue they can shoot out and grab with. They're able to grab a survivor from what seems to be two-hundred feet. The grabbed have about a second and a half to shoot the smoker to break free. Otherwise they'll find themselves being dragged toward the Smoker or hung up and otherwise incapacitated. The other survivors will have to free the grabbed survivor before it's too late. Hunters can leap about the same distance the Smokers can grab from. They leap on their victim instantly knocking them down and the other survivors will have to knock or shoot the hunter off the victim. The Witches are emotionally unstable and can be found just sitting there on the floor crying. They don't like bright lights or loud noises and essentially just want to be left alone for a good cry. They get seriously pissed off if that good cry is in any way interrupted. They'll charge whoever disturbed them and one-hit incapacitate said survivor with a slash from their extremely long claws. If you can sneak around the Witches without disturbing them, they'll leave you alone. The Tanks are hulking monstrosities. A zombie with steroid rage, if you will. They are extremely fast, can one-hit incapacitate you, and have an immense amount of hit points. They're extremely difficult to bring down. All of that sounds great, doesn't it? Well it is great. But now we add in The Director. You remember what I said about The Director from initial impression, don't you? The Director is a the AI routine that controls the ebb and flow of the zombie horde. It sits there watching all the action and decides that it needs to spawn a horde of zombies out of that room behind you. Again, it all sounds great in theory. There is only one problem. The further you go up the chain of difficulties in the game the more obvious it becomes that The Director is a total sadist. And again there's nothing really wrong there in theory. Some people are masochists. Some people like the pain. And to a point the pain is pleasant enough in Left 4 Dead. The real issue here is that The Director out and out cheats. A couple of times a few of us have literally seen special infected or horde spawn before our eyes. It's actually a rare occurrence and can generally be forgiven. A slap on the ass if you will. But the following scenario is ultimately all too common for forgiveness. You enter a large office room filled with cubicles. It's filled with computers and desks and the like but it's devoid of any infected. There are doors to one side. You go over and open one up and look inside because you're on the lookout for med kits and pills and ammo and the like. You find out it's a storage room. Concrete walls on all sides, the single door is the way you've come in. No other possible exits, no windows, or even vents in the ceiling. You head back out into the room with the cubicles shutting the door behind you. A Hunter or Smoker has wandered into the room at the other end. You take care of it, no big deal. Suddenly a massive horde of zombies spills out of the storage room behind you. Even though there was no possible way for anything to be in there. And a Boomer waddles out and someone shoots in reflexively and three of the four are covered and the feeding frenzy flood starts. And when all is said and done you're limping out of the room much worse for wear. The pain there is a little bit much, a total sucker punch to the face if you will. In the campaigns you move through the levels until you reach the final location where a massive siege battle takes place. You initiate the battle in the guise of hitting a radio and awaiting the rescue vehicle. You have to hold out until help arrives. And it's the same basic pattern. Waves of base infected peppered with special infected assault your location. And then you'll have to face off against a Tank. That's followed by more waves peppered with special infected until you'll face another Tank. Then the vehicle will arrive amidst the final waves. Everybody boards the vehicle and the level ends. On expert, the display of cheapness on The Director's part especially in the final stage of a campaign is bordering on cruelty to the point of being purely unfair. The Director will spawn multiple special infected when the situation is at its worst. It's kicking you while you're down in other words, and mocking you all the way. Having to deal with a Tank while someone gets caught by a Smoker and another one is leapt on by a Hunter not half of a second later is obscenely mean. There is just no possible way to recover, at all. It's funny for a while but then it quickly grows otherwise. Maybe it would be acceptable if it weren't exacerbated by some of the problems in the behavior of the AI. The special infected know where you are entirely. In fact you'll often see them moving around backwards. You'll come across a Hunter with its back to you and it'll make the leap backwards and knock you down. Smokers will grab you with their tongues through open windows and under this and over that and at such extreme angles that no living thing could pull off. Only a computer could see that as a viable angle and it shows. It's made worse by how the tongue will clip through corners and the like and how it homes in on you. You're clearly moving beyond where it aimed by the AI adjusts over a few feet and grabs you anyway. The Tank will tear up slabs of concrete out of the ground and throw them at you. But it doesn't really do that. It throws where you're going to be. Which wouldn't be too bad if it didn't throw fast enough to close the gap of two-hundred feet in about a second. And it's made worse that it also throws through corners and other things in the level that it shouldn't be able to. At the higher difficulty levels Left 4 Dead just blatantly cheats and abuses the hell out of you. The question becomes how much of a masochist is the gamer supposed to be? Next time should be the final opinion on Left 4 Dead.

Banjo-Kazooie -- Final Opinion.

I've completed Banjo-Kazooie, the Xbox Arcade version, at just over seventeen hours. I collected everything there was to collect including the now active stop and swap items to be used in Nuts & Bolts. The gameplay has remaned unchanged. It's just as it was ten years ago on the Nintendo 64. Some things have changed with age and perception though. I remember the game's worlds as these massive sprawling levels. They're not really massive. In fact I was amazed at how compact they actually are. And I didn't remember the hub world as being as complex as it was. It doesn't change how fun the gameplay still is however. The gameplay is still a slightly more complex 3D platformer in the Mario 64 vein. The humor of the game remains funny all these years later. I was actually very surprised by how well the music holds up today technically speaking. It sounds great. And the composition is timeless and classic Rare. I'm amazed by how good the game looks. The higher resolution works wonders. The graphics are extremely sharp and crisp compared to the blury Nintendo 64 original. I was also really impressed with just how colorful the game is. Rare made great use of color. Something not that common these days, well, outside of Rare games. I'm thoroughly impressed with the Xbox 360 version of the game, especially considering it was a free title. But even at the $15 asking price, the game would be well worth it. I'm giving Banjo-Kazooie an 8.5. Now bring on Banjo-Tooie.

Left 4 Dead -- Initial Impression.

Finally, a follow-up entry on Valkyria Chronicles! No, not really. It's the initial impression of Left 4 Dead by Valve. I'll be playing the Xbox 360 version, no Steam for me. These initial impressions are a bit of a cheat really as I've played the demo numerous times over the last ten days or so. And now I've spent a few hours with the retail version. So I'm actually prepared to say quite a bit but I'll bite my tongue and just say that the game is an online multiplayer first person shooter in which you'll assume the role of one of four characters who must survive the zombie apocalypse. The game's big selling point is an artificial intelligence routine that's been named The Director. Its sole purpose is control the spawning of the enemies and ensure the game is different every time you play it. It watches over the events and decides on the spot that player two is camping too much so it spawns a boss type of enemy to deal with him. Of course the big question is how well does it do its job? And of course all the others will need to be answered as well. How are the graphics and sound and story and controls and the online experience? Are there enough modes to keep things fresh? And as always, time will tell...

Banjo-Kazooie -- Initial Impression.

I know I'm overdue on an update for Valkyria Chronicles but this entry is the initial impression of Banjo-Kazooie on the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade. Those people who preordered Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts were treated to a great preorder bonus. A code that enables you to download the original Banjo-Kazooie for free on Xbox Live Arcade a couple weeks before it's made available to the public for fifteen dollars. The title is a port of the Nintendo 64 game. The game has been bumped up to high definition resolutions. They've also reworked the controls for the Xbox controller. They've made some cosmetic changes along the lines of replacing the Nintendo logo on the xylophone in the opening with that of Microsoft Game Studios and the like. However the third save file slot still features a character playing a GameBoy. And they've finally enabled the near mythical Stop 'n' Swap. Back in the day players knocked themselves out trying to figure it out. Originally Banjo-Kazooie was supposed to connect to the sequel Banjo-Tooie by hot-swapping cartridges and sharing data that would unlock items but Nintendo revised the Nintendo 64 hardware and removed any such ability to pull it off. Those with an original model Nintendo 64 would have been able to do it but plans were scrapped because Rare thought it would be best to not fragment the user base. Stop 'n' Swap has been enabled with Banjo-Kazooie and Nuts & Bolts. The upcoming Xbox Live Arcade version of Banjo-Tooie will also unlock items in Nuts & Bolts via Stop 'n' Swap. Beyond those few differences, it's the same classic 3D platformer. My recollection is that at the time I considered Banjo-Kazooie a better game than Mario 64. It'll be interesting to see how it holds up these ten years later.

Valkyria Chronicles -- Initial Impression.

No rest for the weary, or wicked, as they say. Next up for me is a jump over to the PlayStation 3 with Valkyria Chronicles from SEGA. This is one of my most anticipated releases this year. Not only because it's one of a couple titles for my underused PlayStation 3, but more so because of the game's development lineage in a Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon sort of way. It comes from some of the best in the industry. Team members that go all the way back to Phantasy Star, Shinobi, Panzer Dragoon Saga, and more recent efforts like Skies of Arcadia and Sakura Taisen. Valkyria Chronicles is a strategy RPG with an action twist. It's based on SEGA's proprietary Canvas engine. A game engine that essentially looks like a watercolor painting come to life. My initial impression of the game is that it's absolutely gorgeous in motion. I'm also rather surprised to find how involved it is. And to find how story intensive it is. And how it's using these to become instantly charming. I really hope this one only builds on my initial impression. It initially seems as if I'm on to something great...

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia -- Final Opinion.

I have completed Order of Ecclesia with a final time of fourteen hours and fifty-five minutes. That time tells me it's a much smaller game than the standard Metroidvania but it really doesn't feel that way to me. The game is more focused due to what amounts as the game's first castle being broken up into roughly ten smaller areas before you arrive at the nearly full sized final stage of Dracula's Castle itself. The game seemed the easiest to earn one-hundred percent as far as map coverage is concerned. There isn't a lot of focus on the hidden. I also never received the bad ending. It's far more clear as to what you need do to earn the good ending than any other Castlevania before it. We know the structure of the game feels new by incorporating a couple of old ideas from previous entries but how does the combat fare? The game also uses a modified mechanic from earlier entries for its battle system. This time around you're using glyphs. Glyphs can be absorbed from living enemies, or absorbed from drops by defeated enemies and statues. There are two types of glyphs. And it essentially breaks down as glyphs that be assigned to the X and Y buttons and glyphs that can be assigned to the R button. The glyphs that are assigned to X and Y provide magic that replicates swords, axes, daggers, hammers, fire, lightning, ice, shields and the like. They're your means of attack and they come off as traditional Castlevania attacks only with the pretense of being magic. The glyphs assigned to the R button can be toggled on and off and they are more of the status boosting or context use variety. Pressing up and either X or Y will unleash what's called a glyph union attack. The combination of the equipped glyphs is what will determine what actually happens in a glyph union attack. The combat system is essentially remixed enough to feel new. The sense of it being fresh is bolstered by the overall tougher difficulty. Especially in the boss battles. The game features either the greatest bosses in series history or the most torturous depending on your point of view. The bosses are far more complex and old school in design. They're all pattern recognition. There isn't any more going toe-to-toe and just slugging it out with a boss until it's dead. You'll have to learn their patterns to survive. The game actually throws a couple of its toughest bosses at you very early on and that might discourage some players. I'd suggest getting by bosses two and three before making up your mind as the game balances out for the remainder. The game is easily the best looking Castlevania game ever made in my opinion. I loved the new art style. All the way around, in the characters, the enemies and bosses, and the environments. The biggest flaw one could truly pin on the Metroidvania titles in the series is in how much they've blatantly reused assets from Symphony of the Night forward. That's no more with Order of Ecclesia, the game is full of entirely new and redrawn enemies and locations. I also really prefer the new more adult and realistic style over the anime and previous styles. Dracula's Castle has never looked better, the interior backgrounds are just truly impressive. The game has great sound. Really good voice for the Nintendo DS and clear and crisp audio. Nothing is muddled or tinny. Overall I'm rather impressed with Order of Ecclesia. It definitely feels fresh, I'm just not sure it feels better. I'm giving Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia a 9.

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia -- A New World.

When I haven't been otherwise busy or working away at the final couple of achievements for Fable II I've been plugging away at Castlevania. I stated in my initial impression that I was expecting more of the same. But that's not really what I got. I still have a Metroidvania game, make no mistake about that. I just have a Metroidvania game that likes to pretend it's related to the original action style Castlevania titles. Portrait of Ruin used jumping in and out of paintings from within Dracula's castle as a means to try and expand and breathe some new life into the castle design. It's an illusion that worked moderately well. I mean it was greatly appreciated at the time but it failed in that it reused the same assets too much. Order of Ecclesia borrows a little bit from Castlevania: Bloodlines and a little bit more from Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. Bloodlines was a pure action entry on the Genesis that showed you moving around a world map. It gave you a sense of location. Order of Ecclesia does the same thing. Only this time you're allowed to reenter the stages as much as you want. Simon's Quest also offered up a sense of place with its structure of traveling between towns and mansions. Order of Ecclesia offers up a town of its very own. As you play through the stages of Order of Ecclesia you'll happen upon villagers to rescue. Rescuing each villager allows them to return to town. In town you'll be able to undertake quests for the villagers. A certain villager for example wants different types of ore that he'll turn into armor that will then show up in the village shop for you to purchase. Going on further quests down his line will result in better and better armor showing up in the shop. There is a villager that will do the same for accessories and another for healing items and others who offer up less useful but nonetheless cool items like classic Castlevania music tracks to play as the background music whenever you'd like. This new quest structure feels far more important because of the feeling of direct benefit instead of padding or busywork. The world of Ecclesia feels fresh. It feels good to be outside the castle. I'm sure we'll end there, which is fine, but for at least half the game you're somewhere else. And that goes a long way towards feeling fresh. Next time should cover the new combat approach...

Fable II -- Final Opinion.

I have completed Fable II earning forty-eight of fifty achievements. I haven't decided if I'm going to play it that much more to earn those last two achievements. Overall I would have to call Fable II a great success in spite of some rather large failures. The biggest failure being the much ballyhooed co-op game play. To call it outright broken would be an understatement. In theory you're supposed to be able to join someone's game and play through the game. People are bitching about not being able to play as your own hero, but that's actually fine with me. The problem comes in the fact that you're essentially playing couch co-op online. That means you're sharing the same camera view. Think about that, you're tethered to another player to the length of one screen with minimal control of your camera. That means if you go too far you'll suddenly hit an invisible wall and can't go any further. In a combat situation you'll need to back away if you're using guns or spell casting and with both characters doing that you'll be at the boundary almost immediately. And you'll be pinned there by the enemies. Hell, it's even extremely difficult to navigate around the world without even being in combat in co-op. Not all of the co-op functionality is broken. One aspect in particular is decidedly cool. And that's the player orbs. As Xbox Live is actively online while you're playing anything, you're able to see people who are playing Fable II moving around the game world as glowing orbs. You can talk to them via headsets or check their stats or give and trade items with them. It gives the game a slight massively multiplayer online RPG feel. The other major flaw against Fable 2 in my eye is the feeling that the game is barely stable. The entire time I was playing the game it felt as if the game was going to break at any moment. I can only describe it as that PC feeling compared to the extremely solid console feeling you'd associate with Nintendo during the 16-bit era. I would experience sound glitches and proximity issues with failing button prompts and the like. As well as standard random glitches associated with games trying for sandbox or open world. But it's not all bad. Almost everything else Fable II attempts, it does exceedingly well. In no small part due to concepts in art direction and the game's voice. It's a sort of Victorian aesthetic mixed with traditional fantasy and spiced with British humor. The humor is prevalent in everything. Fable II's main story is peppered with it. The world is filled with wit and whimsy. And it comes off as a breath of fresh air. The game's combat is diverse with three styles to choose from and any mix and match combination in between. You'll find a way to play it that's fun for you. The graphics and sound are all top notch. The voice work is especially great. As I stated earlier in this entry, Fable II is well worth playing in spite of its inherent flaws. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Hopefully Fable III will be a tad more stable, and the co-op will be less insulting. I'm giving Fable II for the Xbox 360 a 9.