Thursday, September 28, 2006


I intended to wait until sunday to sit down and write something thoughtful about Rocket Slime (Slime Mori Mori 2, here in japan), but having plowed through the game in under 2 days, I was worried the impression the game left with me would be lost by then.

On monday night, after a short drinking session, I was berated by several GAF members (namely Dragona) to pick up Rocket Slime. I felt rather silly that, despite Slime Mori Mori 2 being available in Japan for the last 5 months, I never really got around to picking up the little gem, for a variety of thinly veiled and silly reasons.

I finally broke, and used some points to pick up the game (I also sold back my copy of God Hand...shush, don't tell anyone), and arrived at home. I left the game sitting on my couch for a good 20 minutes, checking news and eating dinner, before I finally broke down, cracked open the case, and popped the pint sized card into my DS Lite.

Friends had raved about the game's tank battles, so despite some initial ambivalence towards the initial level of the game, I plodded on. As I finished the first stage, and the early events of the game unfolded, I was met with a horrible realization: this is a collectathon!

This isn't to say that collecting something in a game is bad. In fact, it's quite the contrary. Unfortunately, I have a terrible habit. I often miss 1 or 2 pieces of something I must collect...out of 100. There is nothing more annoying than missing 1 or 2 pieces, and having no idea where you missed them, and no idea where you have and haven't been.

In Slime Mori Mori 2, you save citizens of the slime kingdom from evil, and 100 of the slimes are scattered about the levels. As usual, in every level, I would miss 1 or 2. Why 1 or 2? Often times, the ones I was missing were grouped together in a room that I had completely disregarded for god knows what reason. For those who are truly worried about my wellbeing, I did indeed find all 100. Crisis averted.

The real meat of the game is the tank battling, though. While the game proper, most of the time, is a zelda style adventure game, everything you do in the game flows into the tank battles. Items, health, rescued slimes; everything is geared towards improving your tank for upcoming battles.

Tank battles themselves are genius. For once, I actually couldn't figure out how it could have been done on a system without two screens. On the top screen, the two opposing tanks sit, firing volleys (or straight shots) of random items at each other to cause damage. On the lower screen, you control your slime hero, and run around either loading cannons with ammo, or infilitrating enemy tanks in an effort to throw their operation into disarray.

The most classic technique is the ability to launch yourself from your own cannon into the enemy base, and then proceed to demolish machinery in the enemy tank, not only causing an ammo shortage, but also preoccupying the enemy crew long enough to disrupt the firing flow.

The concept of a Zelda style game with tank battles seems disjointed in concept, but the flow of the game is so ingeniously devised, that it makes one wonder how Slime Mori Mori as a game survived with that vital puzzle piece tying the entire game together into a unique and addictive package.

I hate to give letter or number grades in reviews, and instead favor the binary "buy" or "don't buy" scheme that should have been adopted by gaming publications eons ago.

Regardless of that useless prattling, I would have to say that Slime Mori Mori 2 is a "buy," though I'll admit, there was no trying point counting or feature weighing to come to that conclusion. The game is downright fantastic.
X06 has brought a wealth of announcements: Halo Wars, Wingnut Interactive, and even an exclusive Splinter Cell game for the 360. I enjoy my 360 (despite being in Japan, which automatically makes me the laughing stock of my local community), and i enjoy the odd game that releases for the system, but X06 has been, largely, a rather mundane occasion for me, apart from one single announcement:



DOOM. On XBLA. With Thy Flesh Consumed. 4 Player online co-op over Live. TODAY.

Those that grew up without Doom have my sympathies. The pixelated visceral gut punch of Doom was a masterpiece of ultraviolence and midi music when it was first released in the early infancy of the first person shooting genre. Those only privy to Halo and its ilk would probably find Doom wasted on them. The XBLA incarnation intentionally (or perhaps unintentionally) plays upon the nostalgia of old school FPS gamers like myself.

Doom for Xbox Live Arcade is PC perfect, from start to finish. For a game originally tooled for the PC, the 360 controller works without a hitch. Despite never playing Doom with a controller in the past (and staying with the PC version almost exclusively), I found myself racing around E1M1's hangar like a pro in under a second flat.

The achievements are rather inventive. Apart from the regular mundane achievements that one would expect (finishing episodes on Hurt Me Plenty, for instance), the game also offers a plethora of side achievements that I already found myself trying to achieve when I was a young tyke.

As I mentioned to a friend over Live chat, finding secrets in Doom, for me (and I suspect many of those who downloaded it yesterday and today), is not a game of chance. It's a perpetual struggle with my own memory, hoping to recall the smooth path through each level I had mastered and perfected after countless hours playing Doom on the PC.

Now I just need to find someone to fucking play the game with me on Live! Play with me, you dorks!

Monday, September 25, 2006



I forgot to take a photo of the rabbite fan I got at TGS. The other side is a Chocobo from Chocobo's Magic Picture Book for DS.

This fan is fucking awesome.
 

Sunday, September 24, 2006

I've been getting a lot of comments on the Wii post, saying that region free was proven false by Nintendo of Europe. While they have indeed denied Kaplan's remarks, NOA still insists that the system is region free. A thread on the subject has been plaguing GAF for some time, and no one really knows the answer. Journalists and developers I've talked to don't seem to know one way or another either.

It's really bizarre. A representative from NCL should dispel the rumors one way or another. Knowing it's not region free would be just as helpful as knowing it is, at this point.

 
 Hey all. I just got back from Tokyo Game Show, and I am absolutely bushed. Met a lot of new people there (including 1up, IGN and Game Informer folk), as well as saw a few guys I already knew (two guys from Capcom, and a host of others).

I made a really long post on GAF with some TGS impressions and photos, so I'm going to save some energy, and paste all of it in here. Enjoy the regurgitation!

Photos after the Microsoft Party:

I'll start with just a couple photos after the Microsoft party on the night before our visit to TGS. The whole shindig was rather boring, and there wasn't even any alcohol there.

We did get a grab bag of not-so-goodies, and I took a few photos.


Gears of War JP sticker. Boring. Next.


Ah! Here's something interesting! An XBLA point card. We later found out it only had 100 points on it. We couldn't even buy a picture pack with that. :\


Here's sp0rsk trying to use the Xbox Live radio with retractable headphones. Not only do the headphones not effectively retract, but the radio itself didn't work.

TGS photos:


That's sp0rsk's head in the shot. He was taking a photo and had no idea I was as well. That's the entrance to TGS.


The It's A Wonderful World booth at Square Enix. I had to wait for 20 min to play the game, but it was worth it. It really hooked me, and I love the battle system.


This is the SNK stage where they announced KOFXII would use new sprites. As you can see, they're talking about KO2MI2 here.


EDF3 in action. Was lots of fun, and had some good texture work on the main character, but in general, didn't feel like it added anything.


The Xbox booth. Looks far more grand on the outside than the inside.


A Trusty Bell station. I really liked what I played of the game. The on map enemies had zero AI, but the actual battles were fun and felt fairly original.


360 with the HD DVD add on next to it...and a very very cute japanese girl behind it.


A project sylpheed station. I really enjoyed this. Can't wait to pick it up on the 28th.


A crappy angle of the Sony booth. When I saw it, I was really taken aback. It took huge real estate, and basically screamed "Okay, you can start. We've arrived."


One of my favorite booths. I didn't get a chance to take photos of the inside of the Gyakuten Saiban 4 booth (only this sign), but inside it was a big mock courtroom with DSes set up in a square running GS4.


DMC4. Own.


DQM booth. I really enjoyed what I played. It looks really promising.


There was absolutely no line to play Bleach DS 2nd. Which worked for me, because I was pumped to try it out. The demo had only two new characters playable out of the 6 that were choosable: Urahara and Ikkaku. Urahara was awesome. Didn't get to try out Ikkaku.


The Capcom booth, running a video of Lost Planet on the big screen.


Kojima and Murata doing to the Hidechan's Cafe stage show. They showed some very cool footage of the Kojima Prod. team doing more field training for MGS4.



The same terrible mass that sp0rsk took photos of. This was a veritable bermuda triangle. Konami, Sony and Capcom were the three corners, which is what made it so goddamn terrible. Namco Bandai had a tales of destiny stage show going on at this point, which made it worse.


The playable demo booth for Heavenly Sword. After playing it, I felt completely underwhelmed. The camera was way too zoomed in, the combos felt phoned in, and there was no tactile, visual or auditory key to show that I was actually pulling off counters. In general, I was underwhelmed.


Cute japanese girls playing Bleach Wii. Wii was at the show to take photos of (holy crap that thing is TINY in person), but it wasn't playable for the regular greasy masses. Understandablem considering no Nintendo reps were present at TGS.

Impressions:


It's a Wonderful World for DS:


I only played IAWW's battle mode in its entirety, so I'll share my impressions on how it works. The bottom screen is the male character, who is who you control most of the time. All attacks are different movements with the stylus. To move your character, you touch your character and drag the pointer around to move him. Attacking enemies is slashing them. Casting fire is dragging the stylus around the screen in lines or circles. Casting lightning is poking enemies.

The top screen is the female character, and she is mostly auto controlled. She has attacks that are controlled by using the dpad. She does this herself, but if you control it, you can cast the attack faster (right right, up, right right right, which you can do as fast as you can, but the computer will take its time).

It seemed like every time you do a certain attack with the girl, you get a card on the bottom screen. 3 cards allows you to pull off a super attack. I couldn't figure out why there were different cards, or how the different cards affected anything, though.

Heavenly Sword for PS3:

After playing it, I felt completely underwhelmed. The camera was way too zoomed in, the combos felt phoned in, and there was no tactile, visual or auditory key to show that I was actually pulling off counters. In general, I was underwhelmed.

Motorstorm for PS3:

Motorstorm is an absolutely beautiful game. When opponents crash, it's really spectacular. They twirl out of control and parts start to fly in different directions. The framerate chugs a bit at points, but in general, it's really solid.

The maps seem really exciting and don't give you a defined track, maintaining that offroad feel. The biggest problem is that the races feel like everyone is driving at 10km/h. If they sped it up a bunch, we might have something!

Genji 2 for PS3:

I bought and played Genji, and was totally unimpressed. As Bebpo from GAF once said, it's a great 2 hour game that goes on for 10 hours. That was one reason I was apprehensive about actually waiting in line to play Genji 2 at Sony's booth. I was totally floored when it finally came time.

I was presently surprised to find that the open war scenes were actually quite chaotic, and motion blur was used sparingly and effectively to subtly show quick movement. There seemed to be a slight overuse of bloom, but the effect served its purpose in most cases.

The quick slash system from the first game has returned, with some new twists. Major enemies (like the famous giant crabs) had multiple different ways to take them down, facilitated by the different character's strengths. One thing I liked was that the characters could be changed on the fly, unlike the first game, where you had to return to your base and speak with the character to take control.

The biggest problems I found with the game were in fact not the control. There seemed to be frame tearing and framerate issues in certain parts of the demo, especially the demo's waterfall area. Hopefully things like that will be fixed soon.

Bleach DS 2nd for DS:

I was a huge fan of the original Bleach for DS, and a huge fan of the manga of its namesake. Bleach DS 2nd doesn't seem to mess too much with the formula, and that's definitely a good thing. They added a timed bar for specials, so if you get knocked down, you can't retaliate with a special immediately.

The demo only had 4 player free for all to play, and 6 selectable characters, but two new characters, Ikkaku and Urahara, were playable in the demo. I only had time to try out Urahara, but he played very differently from other characters. Many of his moves actually used Ururu and the other store employees, which was an interesting twist on the super move list.

It's really a shame that the Guardian Heroes style mode wasn't sampled in the demo, as I'm sure that would be a must buy feature for both fans of the series as well as those who have never read the manga, but just love Treasure games.

That's all for now! I'll try to update with more impressions later.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Nintendo had its Japanese Wii conference yesterday, so there's a worldwind of information to deal with. Most of you who read this blog probably already know the gist of the news, but I'll recap real quick, regardless:

- 25000 yen for the console
- The console comes with Wii Sports and one Wii remote
- It will release in the US first on November 19th, and then in Japan in December.
- Zelda Wii will be available at launch
- Mario Galaxy will be a 2007 release.
- A host of games was announced, including Sengoku Basara (which I will annoyingly call Sengoku Basara Thwii), and Biohazard Umbrella Chronicles.
- Virtual Console games will range from 500 yen to 1000 yen, depending on the legacy content's original home console.
- MSX joins the leagues of Virtual Console games.
- 30 VC games are announced for release by the end of 2006, with 10 new VC games hitting each month.

That's the major news. One piece of news that seemed to slip through the cracks for most people is confirmation by NOA executive Perrin Kaplan that the Wii (at least in the area of first party releases), will be region free. That's right. It looks like next gen is a land of region free. I hope Sony and Nintendo's region free content proves to be more wide spread than Xbox's spotty at best unlocked content.

I need some time to let all of this sink in, so I will wait until sunday to post my thoughts on the announcement. Catch you then!

 

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

I've had about 5000 yen worth of points sitting on the membership card for my local game and book store. Up until two days ago, I had little direction as to how I would wisely spend this new found bounty. I was tempted to buy something that was expensive that I wouldn't normally spend money on, as these points could be categorized in the "free money" section, right under jacket change and botched lottery winnings.

Sp0rsk over at GAF had been trying to sell me on Sengoku Basara 2 for months prior to obtaining these points, but with a mountain of games to play, I had quietly ignored him. I had played a little bit of the original Sengoku Basara, and really enjoyed it, but the US localization of that terrible hose beast Devil Kings had soured me on the thought that Capcom knew what it was doing with a Sengoku Musou clone.

When I arrived at the store on sunday afternoon, though, I was surprised to find a copy of Basara 2 (normally at 6400 yen) down to 5700 yen for just a single day. With my digital bounty, the price of the game would become a measly 700 yen. I was willing to risk 700 yen on a game that potentially could suck. After all, the points I had gained were from purchases I would have made regardless of a point system that, refreshingly, isn't designed to fleece me of my earnings.

I decided to make an outing of the whole thing, and traipsed over to my local ramen shop, and ordered the biggest meal they had on the menu, in honor of this momentous buying occasion. As an aside, the biggest meal they have on the menu is a ramen and tuna chauhan combo, that costs a whopping 1050 yen.

After getting my fill, I made my way back home, and popped the game into my slender JP Ps2 (which humorously sits atop my gargantuan hard drive housing US PS2). The first 20 minutes of gameplay left me rather underwhelmed. "Well, it was only 700 yen," I thought, as I played through the first mission as Date Masamune. I finished the level after a little trouble, and turned off the PS2 to read some manga.

I returned 20 min later in hopes of redeeming the game in the eyes of my wallet. I turned the PS2 on once again, and tried another mission. I was pleased to see variation in the move set between characters, and found that I had been playing the game all wrong with Date (I won't go into the details, as it's rather embarassing now that I think about it). After getting a handle of how the game is supposed to be played, I charged right in and began conquering battle after battle with multiple "Extreme" versions of famous sengoku generals. The game had me hooked.

At the present, I'm still only going through story mode. I've finished the story mode for 5 of the original characters, and am working to finish the story mode for the rest of the originals, as well as the newly joined set of unlockables. The game has me by the balls, and i don't find it likely that it will let go until I've beat the shit out of its various modes.

 

Sunday, September 03, 2006

Ever wonder why 360 is failing so badly in Japan? It could be the marketing.

 


I snapped that at Yodobashi today, when I was picking up Tingle DS. The TV commercials are actually worse, if you can believe that.

I finished FF3 on Thursday night, with a final time of 38 hours and 42 minutes. The final dungeon was some hardcore RPG action. While I took out the 5 bosses in the lower part of the dungeon and then saved, I had to proceed to the upper floors and deal with 6 bosses in a row (along with numerous random battles) without the ability to save.

Post Mortem: The game is fantastic. While the lack of top screen is downright criminal, and inexcusable, it rectifies the dismal situation with excellent graphics, gameplay, and balance. The game is as difficult as you want it to be, rather than so easy that you find yourself not wearing armor just to have some fun. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys class based RPGs in the least. It's hard not to enjoy FF3.

I journeyed to Yodobashi Camera today, to pick up Tingle's Rose Colored Rupee Land. It's a fantastic game so far, and it's heavy on the gambling. Your life is how many rupees you have, but everything in the game requires payment. Of course, the problem with that is that you don't know how much they want, so you have to guess.

If you give too much money, you've wasted valuable rupees. If you under pay, you lose what you tried to pay with, AND have to try again. That can be a fairly trying when you're a little low on rupees, and you waste them all in a failed attempt to bribe someone for information.

I need to play more of the game, but so far it seems excellent. It makes good use of both screens (unlike FF3), and while movement is on the Dpad (or the face buttons if you're left handed), you touch objects on the touch screen to interact with them. An interesting premise that seems to work out fairly well.

More information later.