Game #1212: Touken Ranbu Warriors

  A lot of pretty boys were harmed when playing this game. A lot.

 Touken Ranbu Warriors is yet another Warriors crossover with a pre-existing game license, much like Persona 5 Strikers or Hyrule Warriors. Touken Ranbu can be considered an Otome game, I guess, as it's a gacha game in which famous swords take the form of beautiful boys that go back in time to prevent a race of bug-things from altering history, or that's what I could gather from this game.

 Well, first things first... I didn't really care about most of the characters. There are no female characters, which I felt robbed the game of variety, albeit that's the source material's fault, and, to be honest, I didn't really like most of the character designs in this game. There's this blonde guy, who wears a hood because he is a sword based on another sword so he hides his beautiful face, and he was pretty alright since he fought with both his Katana and its sheathe, which looked cool. Oh, an the main guy, Minazuki?, the guy in blue, he was pretty cool too. The rest of the characters followed typical Japanese Shojo standards of male beauty, which I thought weren't very appealing. There are like 3-4 kid characters too, and I hated them.

 As for the narrative, as much as I like the Sengoku period, I couldn't quite get very invested in it because I didn't care about the heroes. As you play the game you can unlock small 'bond' conversations between pairs of characters, and I felt they were very silly and vapid too, so I skipped them. All of them. If you are a history buff about the Warring States period you will probably get more out of the plot, because while I know a bit about it, there are a ton of details that this game covers that eluded me.

 Gameplay is standard Warriors fare, albeit with a few new bells and whistles. As per usual, you have a basic string of attacks you can chain together by mashing the attack button, and there's a Special move button that you can press at any time during the weak attack combo to finish the combo with a special attack. There's also a super move, of course, that costs an energy bar from the Musou gauge. You battle as a team of characters on every mission, although you can't play as your chosen partner, and this game's Hyper mode, which uses a third gauge, has both your character and the one being controlled by the AI fighting together with every press of your buttons. It looks kinda neat, but it's nothing ground breaking.

 There is, however, a new mechanic, similar to what Pirate Warriors has been doing, in which holding down the R button lets you use moves assigned to the four face buttons. These attacks are the Special move enders! This way you can use them at ANY time. Don't like the Y-Y-X finisher? Press Y-Y then hold down R and use your favorite special move ender! This idea was brilliant. Another new feature, added for the ladies, is that when your character takes a strong hit... their clothes will break a bit. Pretty much everyone ends up showing their abs.

 On the other hand, the game has been streamlined a lot. Maps and skirmishes are pretty small for Warriors standards, reaching 300 kills is pretty uncommon as it is, and I think there were only one or two stages in which you could reach a 1000 kills. The thing I like about Musou games is mowing down hundreds of enemies, so I can't say I liked this. The game also has a few stupidly easy, and yet massively boring, stealth missions. Why? Who plays a Musou game to AVOID enemies? And some missions require mind-numbingly simple exploring, because if you don't and you defeat the enemy before reaching "100% analysis" you'll lose the mission. This usually means just walking towards what looks like a dead end on the mini-map to discover a hidden route. It's almost an insult to the player's intelligence. Completely unnecessary too, as this doesn't add depth to the game, only a dumb chore.

 The game's set-up is also rather weird, as the game's 18 characters are divided into 5 teams, and every "Chapter" only allows you to pick characters from that Team. To be fair, maybe if I liked the characters a bit more I would've liked how the game encouraged me to use other characters.... But I just wanted to play as my blonde pretty boy, and didn't want to play as the other derps. That said, the game is rather short, clocking in at 15 hours, which sounds like a lot, but Warriors games tend to be much, much lengthier.

 Touken Ranbu Warriors isn't bad persay, but it doesn't measure up to the other Warriors games and spin-offs. I feel as if most changes weren't very enjoyable, and the fact that I didn't like most of the playable characters did get in the way of how much I liked it.

 6.0

Game #1211: Test Drive Unlimited

 The longest test drive.

  A few years ago I played Road Trip Adventure, a game I loved, and afterwards I was on the lookout for other Adventure/Driving game hybrids. I never found such games. But, during that search, I came across Test Drive Unlimited, a game I purchased... but only got around playing now. It's not the type game I was looking for, but, having loved Burnout Paradise earlier this year, it's one I was pleasantly surprised by, as this is another Open World racing game, much like Burnout Paradise!

 This game is HUGE, as I'm pretty sure the game covers the entire Hawaii island. This is both good and bad, the good is that if you enjoy driving just for driving's sake, let's just say that there's a ridiculous amount of asphalt to drive on. On the other hand, there's no quick travel or anything like that, so going from one point to another can take over half an hour, assuming you pick the best route. Speaking of routes, I loved trying my hand at driving through hills and what not, trying to save time! If you ever get stuck or too lost, you can just press L3 and R3 and the game will teleport you back to where you were before you went off-road.

 The objective of the game is to drive around to find challenges, which can be races against other drivers, against time or trying to make it to certain checkpoints(Cameras) while driving at a certain speed. Completing challenges gives you money, which you can then spend on cars. But don't go to wild on them, as you need parking slots, and you get parking slots by buying expensive houses. I'm horrible at driving games, so at my skill level it felt as if I was making very little money, and I was getting gold on quite a few challenges. Thankfully the game gives you free cars for certain milestones, so you can focus on getting larger houses to park your freebies.

 The game is a curious mixture of Arcade-style racing as well as more Sim-like elements, although it favors the former by a mile. Driving is done exclusively with Automatic Transmission, which was an interesting design choice considering you are encouraged to take curves slowly, heck, some missions will be failed if you drive off-road too much, and, well... it seems the Xbox 360 version of the game does feature Manual Transmission, if you so choose. I hate MT, so I didn't care too much. The physics were interesting too, as colliding against 'pedestrian' vehicles will send them flying, but the physics are more subdued when hitting other drivers, during races.

 The game does feel a bit iffy at first, but as you get used to the game it slowly starts coming together. At first I thought the map was terrible, as the game is just too large and it was hard to plan your way through the streets, plus, it didn't highlight challenges. Well, it turns out you can press R2 to make the map highlight challenges you have found. Besides that you have a GPS, which you can turn off, that directs you to the closest Challenge you can try that you haven't attempted yet.

 That said... This game is pretty similar to Burnout Paradise, but I think Burnout's smaller map is better if you enjoy objective-based gameplay. This game's world is so huge that finding challenges on your own can be like finding a needle in a haystack, and it's not due to the game lacking content, it's just that the game is so HUGE that finding it without the GPS can be almost impossible. I think that both games are brilliant, but both favor a different type of approach. If you'd rather drive at your leisure, this one is a better choice, as there's simply so many places you can drive through. But if you get your dopamine fix from completing goals, Burnout Paradise is your game.

 Another difference from BP is that races are more structured and don't encourage finding your own routes, heck, most races are based around hitting checkpoints, so the routes are pretty much set in stone. A few other missions, like the ones in which you must drive through cameras at a certain speed, may allow for more freedom, but not usually.

 One last thing... the Police in this game are just too annoying. Driving quickly around them will trigger them into chasing you, and if they catch you they fine you money, money which his already hard enough to come by already. And it kinda kills you inside to drop your pace just because a cop is around, which kinda gets in the way of enjoying driving for the fun of it. And it takes FOREVER for them to stop chasing you.

 Test Drive Unlimited was a load of fun, and there's so much stuff to do. Sadly, I think I was spoiled by Burnout Paradise, as I feel that that game does what this one does much better. Regardless, TDU is available on PS2 and BP isn't, so point for TDU, and comparisons aside, this game is REALLY good, and I bet it was pretty ahead of its time back when it first released.

 8.5

Game #1210: Rumble Roses

 And I thought Dead or Alive was raunchy....

 First of all... Do not judge me! Secondly... I don't quite remember how I first got interested in playing Rumble Roses, but it doesn't really matter, as we are here now and there's no going back. Well, this is a Wrestling game, but a horny wrestling game. It's so horny that even the Instruction Booklet is full of double entendres and innuendo.

 Getting the elephant out of the room... yeah, it's one of those games. There are jiggling breasts and even jiggling butts. Girls wear the most revealing outfits, you can 'Humiliate' them and what not, and there's mud bikini wrestling. The "Gallery" lets you move the camera around their bodies as they stretch, it's very voyeuristic. Oh, and the intro movie goes on and on and on, as the girls dance and wrestle while camera pans all around them. Dead or Alive's got nothing on this one.

 The game does fall short when it comes to modes. You get Exhibition and Story, and Exhibition has basic fights or mud wrestling, which is pretty much identical to normal fights but girls wear bikinis and fight over mud, mud that looks like brown water. They do get dirty, and considering the time of its release, the effect is pretty neat. Story Mode is rather neat, because every girl of the base roster gets their own story, so that's 10 storylines, and... each of their personas(Face/Heel) get their OWN plot, so that's a total of 20 different stories to follow. And the story is fantastic because its super dumb and cheesy. The voice acting is TERRIBLE, and it has such genius plot contrivances as Reiko's mother dying during a wrestling match. Or how the Judo girl's Heel persona was born because she was tired of people expecting her not to cheat! AND THERE'S A ROBOT WOMAN FINAL BOSS! Her moveset is incredible, as she uses her robotic body to perform impossible moves.

 On the other hand... that's it, that's all there is to the game. No Tag Matches, no Elimination, no Cage Matches, no Ladder matches, no nothing. But, on the other hand, the character models are fantastic, this might be some of the best looking 3D models on the system.

 First of all, I want to praise the really good ideas. I love the concept behind Face/Heel personas, because that's very true to Wrestling. Each girl has a different look and moveset depending on their persona. That said... you can't have both personas unlocked at the same time, which is a waste. In exhibition matches you can select "vows", which are certain objectives, some grant you Face points and other Heel points, and once you veer to much into either, they get changed into that Persona. I liked the idea, and it could've worked for Story Mode, but not for Free battles, the entire roster should be playable, otherwise it's a complete waste. At least you can pick either persona for Story mode.

 The gameplay is similar to SmackDown, or how I remember it anyways. X is your basic attack that can be comboed up to five times. Square is a grab, depending on the direction you get different grabs. Circle is context sensitive, it's the Pin button. You can win matches either by Submission, by 'breaking' a body part through submission hold or by pinning down your opponent for over three seconds. You can also turn ON the option to win by Humiliating the opponent. You also have Counters, by timing R1+Strike to counter strikes or R1+Grab to counter a grab.

 There are three kinds of Super moves, all of them unique to every wrestler, which you can use by using a Super Bar, which you gain by landing strikes or grabs or by taunting. Killer Moves are performed with L1. Lethal Moves are also performed with L1, but they can be used only under certain conditions, such as a Dazed enemy, being on a corner, being behind the enemy, etc. Then there are the Humiliation moves I mentioned before. In order to use them, you must first fill a heart shaped Humiliation gauge. This is done through certain Grabs, and even some Killer or Lethal Moves, and these are the moves that, well, pretty much spread your opponents legs or stretches their torso. You know, by being a perverted. If the move also spreads your legs open, you'll also fill your own humiliation gauge. Once full, you'll get a special cutscene in which your opponent will look vulnerable as the camera pans through them. Japan. From then on, you can press L2 to use a Humiliation Move any time you want, or have available super stocks.

 Leaving aside how utterly lewd this game is, I admit that I actually liked it a lot. The core gameplay is pretty solid, so I had fun playing the game. Would I rather the game was less horny? Yeah, of course, but the game itself is fun and it plays as well as any other Wrestling game I ever played, which granted aren't many, but still. Not to say that the game doesn't have anything else going against it, as there aren't many modes, and the Face/Heel system, as appropriate and interesting as it is... having access to only 10 characters, instead of the full 20(22 counting the secret characters) is rather lame.

 7.5

Game #1209: Rogue Ops

 Solid Snake's got nothing on her.

 Well, considering I don't really enjoy Stealth games... I don't know why I bought Rogue Ops. To be fair, I used to see this game's cover back in the day when I was younger and I went out to a pretty specific pirated video game store, so I probably found the game for cheap and said why not?

 The game is very cheesy, in a good way, the dialogue was funny for all the wrong reasons. You play as Nicole, a female spy who had her husband and son murdered, so she is working for the Agency since that would give her a chance to avenge them. Spicy! Of course, throughout the whole adventure you do get to avenge them.

 The game is clunky, very clunky. To start off, X is sort of a context-sensitive button, that let's you use your grappling hook or jump onto ledges and what not. Thing is, and the game doesn't explain it properly, you have to point at it, in other words, you have to center the grappling point or the ledge on the screen. Once you get used to it it becomes almost second nature, but it until it does, it will feel off. You can't just stealth kill enemies, oh no, you have to go through a simple QTE.

 While you have a decent amount of guns, you don't get much ammo, so you have to be careful lest you get to a boss with few bullets. This means that most action-packed scenes, including bosses, are best played slowly and methodically, going for headshots to maximize your ammo. There's no melee attack whatsoever, besides the stealth kill, so there really isn't any other option.

 As for the stealth itself, it uses a 3-tier Alert system, much like Metal Gear Solid. If you are caught you enter Emergency mode, in which enemies will actively search for you, and will open lockers and search through possible hiding spots. Remain hidden for long enough, and you'll enter Alert Mode, in which enemies will be on the look out, but not aggressively, for you. You'll also enter Alert mode if enemies find a body you didn't hide or come across blood.

 There were some cool moments in the game, such as using bodies to cover deadly lasers, or having to scan eye retinas with a tool, but overall... I really aren't much of a fan of the genre, I don't like waiting. That said, it's not a bad game, a bit wonky, but I liked some of its ideas.

 6.0

Game #1208: M&M's Adventure

 I bet Smarties had this game made to make you hate M&M's 

 You thought M&M's Kart was bad? M&M's Adventure is here to see if it could get any worse. Honestly, I came at the game thinking it was a Crash Bandicoot rip off, turns out that was the PS1 game, but instead I got one of the worst platforming games I've played in recent memory.

 So you start off playing as Red and the first thing you'll notice is how awfully slow your movement speed is. Then you'll notice a missing door, with a floating handle, in the game's main hub, as well as a hallway that leads to nowhere. You can tell from the start that the game is unfinished at best, but broken at worst.

 Your main goal is to collect green M&M's, and progress is locked behind them. You need at least 80 out of 120 in order to open up the fifth, and final, world. By that part of the game it would mean collecting most, but not all, of the green M&M's available to you.

 The next thing you'll notice is that loading times are rather lengthy. And then how bad the collision detection can be. And it only gets worse. You cannot defend yourself from enemy attacks, if you are lucky you may be able, if the hitbox doesn't screw you over, to stun, very briefly, your enemy. That said, you are so slow, enemies are so fast and the hitboxes are so janky that avoiding damage feels impossible most of the time. There's no mercy invincibility, by the by. The flying enemies are the worst because you can't stun them and they follow you mercilessly. The fourth world, Halloween, is particularly nasty about it, in one section a moving platform must carry you from one place to another, and there's nothing you can do about the flying enemy, just take it and hope you make it to the end. It's absurd. I almost dropped the game on that world. 

 Unlike most other Platforming games, once you enter a world you must play every stage in order. Missed a green candy in the second to last stage? Too bad. Must replay the entire world. And if you die you lose anything and everything that you collected, oh no, you must make it to the end. And hopefully you remember how many green m&m's there are in that stage, as after you enter a stage there's no way to check.

 And the bosses? The bosses make no sense. For the Cherub you have to... wait, why the **** is a cherub a boss??? What does that have to do with M&M's or candy? So what if it's a Saint Valentine world, it still makes no sense. Anyways, you have to move towards a battery, so that if follows you, so that platforms will appear and you can jump on a switch and... electrocute him? What? Another boss you have to make him touch the green spray.... why? The Easter bunny has to be led to switches so that sometimes it gets a .... a nut? What? The only boss that made ANY sense was the Halloween boss.

 Well, guess what? There are two other playable characters, Yellow and Green. Each character has doors only they can go through and abilities unique to themselves. Kinda. Yellow is, actually, the only one with an ability, a double jump. Red's 'ability' is having flying stages, and Green's ability is that sometimes she gets a racket that must be used to repel some projectiles. It can't be used to harm enemies. This racket is used by swinging the Wiimote or... with the + button. Why not the unused B button? That'd make too much sense. Oh, and Green is under a time limit.

 Things of note: Sometimes Yellow and Green can skip some stages, but other times you'll have to go through stages that hold no Green M&M's they can collect. And while Red must play every stage in the first two worlds, from world 3 onwards sometimes he skips stages. Which is weird. For whatever reason, you cannot play stages as the other two UNTIL Red has found every single green M&M in a stage. Sometimes there are power ups, but they are very rare. I found an invulnerability power up on the final world, Christmas, and I think it got bugged 'cause I was invincible throughout the entire stage.

 M&M's Adventure is a masterclass in how not to make a platformer game. It's broken, it's unfinished, it's poorly made, but what's even worse than all of that... it's downright boring. The movement speed is just pathetic, it feels like going anywhere takes forever. There's nothing good I can say about it, and the cherry on top is that it actually made me dislike M&M's a bit.

1.5

Game #1207: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

 The king never left.

  I spent a huge part of my childhood playing The Lord of The Rings: The Return of the King, albeit on PC, over and over and over again. Leveling up every single character, playing and replaying every stage with everyone. I loved it. The Two Towers was a fantastic game, with the Return of the King they dialed it up a notch.

 Well, at its core, it's the same game. Same gameplay. Weak and strong attacks, a parry, a projectiles attack, a score multiplier that, when maxed, makes you stronger, and an incredibly satisfying downward stab to finish off enemies. It feels a bit faster now, more arcadey, which I love. It also has Multiplayer, which makes it even better. 

 But they took it up a notch by making everything bigger. While it has more or less the same amount of stages, they are longer, and now there are three routes: The Wizard route, in which you play as Gandalf, the King's Route, in which you play as Aragorn, Legolas or Gimli and the Hobbit Route, in which you play as Sam. But don't worry, after you finish the game you can replay any stage as any other character. You can also unlock Frodo, Merry, Pippin and friggin' Faramir.

 Honestly, there's not much else left to say. It's just like the Two Towers but better. If anything, some of the final stages can veer a bit into frustration, but it's not too bad considering how great all the other stages are.

 Yeah, The Return of the King has aged pretty well, it's still one of the best licensed games I have ever played. If you removed the license, the game would be JUST as good, but as someone who adores the book AND the movies, the license only makes it better, and they used it very well.

 9.0

Game #1206: Ganryu 2 - Hakuma Kyojiro

 Donkey Kong Ninja.

 I came across Ganryu 2: Hakuma Kyojiro while browsing through Play-Asia, and I came across this 2-D retro-styled new game. I didn't even know what a Ganryu was, but the screenshots looked neat, and at that point, nothing else mattered. Well, this is a 2-D action/platforming game that is very reminiscent of the latter Shinobi games on the Genesis, such as Blade Dancer. It's also, quite probably, even harder.

 The game has 5 stages, as far as I could see, divided into two acts each. There might be a sixth stage, but I wouldn't know since I couldn't get past 4-1. This is probably one of the hardest games I've played in recent memory. Every stage has two bosses, one per act, and if you run out of lives it's back to act 1. At least you don't go back to level 1! What I'll grant the game is that it has a ton of variety. Act 1-2 has a section with mine-carts, similar to Donkey Kong Country. Act 2-2 ends on a shoot'em up stage. Stage 3's bosses are fought while constantly running forward, and act 4-1 has you platforming upward through falling platforms. All these variety makes it reminiscent of oldschool games, which is pretty cool. Stage 5 probably has some sort of neat gimmick at some point, but I wouldn't know... yet. Maybe?

 Musashi is armed with a sword, Kunai and some magic. You have about 5 spells or so, but let's be honest, the only spell that really matters is the healing spell. You must fill your magic gauge, by finding pick ups, either from objects or slain enemies, and only when full can you use your magic. Kunai are limited, but it's usually the most common pick up. You can also dash, which can kill enemies on your way forward, as well as break tougher enemies' guards so that you can wail on them with your sword. Hidden throughout every level you can come across hidden walls that are filled with goodies and power ups.

 Enemy placement is kinda nasty, as they just pop all over the place out of thin air, catching you offguard. Musashi can run pretty fast, and the offensive dash might encourage you to keep on the move, but that would be a mistake. I was stuck on Stage 2 for the longest time, most of the time I couldn't make it out of 2-1, because I kept running forward. That was the wrong approach. If you play it slow you'll have a much better time and a much better chance at making any progress.

 But unfair enemy placement is the least of the game's problems. Level design is kinda garbage at times. Sometimes it's hard, not to say impossible, to see what's beneath you, feeling like you must make a gamble and hope not to fall on a bottomless pit. There are also a ton of performance issues, which is baffling on a 2-D game, but what was even MORE shocking was that stage 2 became almost unplayable when I tried it out with the Switch docked. Stage 4 has this weird bug that causes Musashi to grow an extra pair of legs. It's unsightly. Something about the game itself feels a bit wonky, one time, all my controls stopped working except dashing.

 I heard people praise the animations, but I disagree. Some animations feel kinda stiff, and the art-direction is a bit amateurish at times. Heck, the spinning slash has some sort of weird transition that makes it look as if your character flickers. Maybe it does flicker. I'm not sure, but it made me think I got hit a couple of times.

 The controls are a another issue, the Katana slash is mapped to the X button, which is above the B button, the one you use to jump, which is very awkward. There's a Controls option on the main menu... but it does nothing but show you the controls. Lame!

 And then, despite all these issues, despite the unfair enemy placement, the sometimes questionable level design, the poor control layout... the game is very punishing. Checkpoints are nice, but your Kunai drop down to 10 and your magic gauge goes back to 0. Magic is useful for bosses, so respawning before a boss with no magic is incredibly punishing. Losing your stock of Kunai also sucks, and what's worse, you can find items that increase your maximum hit points by one.... but it's lost as soon as you lose a single life. This game hates you.

 While I'm not big on the overall art direction, I love having new sprite-based games. I also love the amount of variety in the action.... that said, the game feels very unfair, and it has many questionable design choices, including a rather poor control layout. I think the game has its heart in the right place, but it simply didn't deliver.

 5.5