Now Playing: Castlevania - The Dracula X Chronicles

 Classicvania, yeah!

 My first Castlevania game was Castlevania 64. While everyone hates it, or finds it acceptable at most, I liked it a lot(I was young). I think the second one I played was Symphony of the Night, I was very hyped for that one, as on the months leading up to the PS2 release, I was already thinking of all the awesome PS1 games I'd get to play, and Castlevania: SotN was one my most wanted ones. The game didn't disappoint, I fell in love with the metroidvania/castleroid genre. I did discover classicvania via Castlevania Chronicles, pink-haired Simon rules, and I loved that one as well. Throughout the years I've done my best to play every Castlevania I could, but one had always escaped me: Rondo of Blood. This changes now. Or whenever I unlock it.

 I'm up to Stage 3', and I know I will just have to use some kind of FAQ to keep up with all the secret routes and alternate stages and what not, but for now, I'm just limiting myself to the two unlockables, Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night. But as for the remake itself... It's a blast. It's quite challenging(I might've gotten a game over on Stage 2, really), but the controls are very responsive. The game also looks fantastic, Ayami Kojima's style was translated pretty faithfully into 3D, and after going through Killzone, the brownest game on earth, this is pretty awesome.

 The best thing about this game? Not only is the main game pretty solid(So far), but you can unlock the classic Rondo of Blood version AND Symphony of the Night, how awesome is that?

Review #108: Killzone - Liberation

 The other "We got hacked" freebie.

 Making a FPS for the PSP should be nigh impossible, unless they go with the classic Doom route, but I digress. Guerilla brought Killzone to the PSP, but it is no longer an FPS, rather, an isometric shooter. I had never played a Killzone game before, nor am I interested in the franchise, but it was a freebie so I can't complain!

 The game puts you in the shoes of Templar, a guy fighting for the... good guys against the Helghast, a group of guys with luminous red eyes. And it's your mission to... bring them down? Yes, there is a story to the game, and it is told via text before each mission, and on cut-scenes every now and then. What's the problem? The text summaries take to long to pan out, I was willing to give the story a chance, but these "scenes" took too long to go from page to page, so I just gave up on it. It's not an interesting story, to a newcomer, anyways.

 The game consists of four chapters with four missions each. The first thing you need to learn, is that this is a very slow-paced game, while the isometric look could lead you to believe that this is an arcadey, fast run-and-gun game, you'd be wrong. Templar's running speed is pretty slow, and enemies can be deadly even when few in numbers, so you need to learn to take cover. You take cover by holding the R button, which makes Templar crouch, and you need to make use of your surroundings as cover, enemies will do so as well. And this is when you realize that this is a very slow paced game, as you'll be popping in and out of cover to shoot your enemies. Melee is somewhat of a gamble, as you have to press X when the prompt appears, but enemies sometimes get to hit you before your attack goes off, or sometimes Templar just won't react in time. Melee is unreliable, so you'd better just stick to your guns. Not that it's much fun either, the PSP only has one analog stick, so Aiming is relative to where you are looking at. While you do get a form of "soft-lock" on enemies close to where Templar is looking at, it's kinda unreliable, and guns don't have much accuracy... it's not much fun. You can hold L to "Strafe", but sometimes Templar will just break out of the strafe for no reason, or if you press L twice fast enough you perform a roll, sometimes, when trying to get the strafe right, you might accidentally roll into an enemy! The awkward controls coupled with the poor accuracy of the weapons make for a less than fun experience, as shootouts against one or two enemies can over extend their welcome, and many times deaths feel as if they were caused due to the controls and not your mistakes.

 Every now and then the game will give you a CPU ally, they are pretty self sufficient, and you can order them around with the directional D-Pad. Besides shooting bad guys, placing C4 or disabling mines, you'll also come across cases. These cases are worth "money", which further unlock weapons for you to start each level with or unlock upgraded versions. Speaking of weapons, Templar can only carry one weapon at a time, if you run out of ammo, you are outta luck. Levels have plenty of "stashes" placed throughout, where you can get more ammo, different weapons, health packs or grenades, so it's hard to run out of weapons. Lastly, clearing each chapter unlocks a small collection of Challenge levels, they come in a small variety of placing C4 in certain places, shooting targets or even surviving an endless slew of enemies for as long as you can, the latter being easily the most fun of the lot, while the others are passable. Scoring on these challenges unlocks "perks" for you to equip before each mission, these are small buff like carrying 3 or 5 grenades instead of two, or placing C4 faster, earning Gold on all challenges gives you infinite ammo! Each of the 16 missions lasts 10-30 minutes, but the challenges and finding all collectibles do offer a decent replay value.

 Graphics are... serviceable. They are nothing special, and the game is filled with greys and browns, definitely not a looker. Even worse, slowdown is a bit of a common occurrence, and can ruin your shooting, even if the slowdown, usually, doesn't last too long. Music is almost non-existent, and what little music there is, is very forgettable. Voice acting is alright, not that the dialogue  is anything special.

 Finally, the game does offer local Co-Op and Multiplayer... which I couldn't try since I don't know anyone else that has this game. It does seem like it could be interesting, though. Then there's also a downloadable fifth chapter, but since it's not on PSN and Killzone.com went down, you have to download it elsewhere and get it to you PSP via USB cable, which I don't own yet, so I couldn't try it either.

 Killzone: Liberation is a game I didn't enjoy. According to the Internet, it's a good game, so I might be on the minority here, but I just couldn't get over how slow-paced it is, and how awkward the controls were.
 4.5 out of 10.

Now Playing: Orphen - Scion of Sorcery

 Another one from my younger years!

 And it blooooows! Animation? Laughable. Music? Small in quantity and uninspired in quality. Gameplay? Awful.
 So, there's like two modes: Adventure Mode, that sucks and has a terrible camera, and Combat Mode, that features one of the dumbest battle systems in RPG hist...? This ain't even an RPG, I don't know what this is, but it ain't an RPG.
 The "best" thing about it, is that you have to play the game three times to get the true ending, although to be fair, as far as I remember, all three paths are different. I hope. I chose to start with Zeus this time, then Sephy and I'll leave the kid for last. Oh well....

Review #107: Shadow Madness

 One of your party members is a disembodied head. Let that sink in for a minute.

 Ah, Shadow Madness, Craveyard's first and only game, it bombed so badly that they had to shut their doors. It was a bold move, make a JRPG in America with a team that was fairly inexperienced with the PS1, and it shows, featuring Ted Woolsey, of SNES Final Fantasy games fame. The end result is a game that had a lot of love put in, but a ton of odd choices in gameplay and how it plays out set it back, sinking it to the ground.

 The story tricks you into thinking that Stinger is the protagonist, as the game starts out with Stinger, generic rogue that dresses in red, narrating how his hometown is now a crater, his family dead, and grouping up with Windleaf, generic native-american girl that doesn't like to wear clothes, and Harvester-5, a robot with a barrel for a torso, a Scythe for harvesting enemy heads and a very dark sense of humor, there will be death indeed. Stinger and his friends eventually get involved with the Magi, sorcerers of great power, as they set out to save the world from an otherwordly invasion. Remember how I said that the game tricks you? As soon as you get your fourth party member, the party will start splitting up and taking different routes, with different objectives, Stinger is not the protagonist, this is an ensemble cast, and they get more or less the same development(Which means to say not a whole lot). This also means that, unlike most other RPGs, the rest of the cast is not on stand-by twiddling their thumbs, they are actually fighting alongside the rest of the characters, albeit on a different mission! The rest of the party is made up of a disembodied head that can talk and spit fireballs, he is Xero, the last of the Mage Warriors who lost his body years ago, Clemett, a gadgeteer, robot-like beings who you will soon become familiar with, and Jirina, an Org from the lands below that likes to dress up just like Windleaf, except that her thong is made out of iron instead of cloth.

 While Stinger and Windleaf look very generic and dull, (And Jirina too, to an extent, having blue skin and a metal visor save her from averagedom), the rest of the party members are pretty original. Speaking of original, the whole party loves to rag on each other endlessly, few times they see eye to eye, even when they are on the same quest, and they bicker and argue constantly. This is not your average party of heroes. Having the party split up on pre-set groups also helps, as the game likes to mix characters in every split, so you get to watch them interact with each other. Enemy design isn't so lucky, sadly. In spite of that, the world of the game is very interesting, featuring a fair amount of races that share the world of Arkose, and you'll get to meet them and see how they behave, heck, almost every time you first talk to an NPC, triggers a mini scene where the whole party interacts with him/her!. Furthermore, if you are so inclined, there are loads upon loads of books that give you insight into the world of Arkose, its god, and just funny stories from the world. A lot of care and love was put into the game's lore, and it's easy to tell.

 And now the game falls apart. This is an RPG, so you will be travelling from town to town, but instead of going through an overworld, you go through a map. A map, as in a real map, a flat, hand-drawn map. It's better than a list, as most RPGs now a days use, but at the time it was fairly underwhelming. It does have a very neat twist in the form of landmarks, you may see drawn symbols, like a sun with a face, an upside-down crow or what have you, you can examine each of them for little pieces of lore surrounding the area, which is very cool. Towns are made out of pre-rendered backgrounds, the norm for the time, but they are very low-quality, and while most towns get it easy by showing places you can enter with yellow lights, some dungeons make it hard to see just where you can enter. Movement is also pretty dorky, characters love to bump into things, and walking through narrow places can be a bit of a pain sometimes. There's also a lockpicking minigame, there are like 5 places where you need it, luckily, and most of the time, there are Skeleton Keys that let you bypass it nearby. Why luckily? It's a Simon-says type minigame, the right pick is controlled with the four face buttons, and the left pick is controlled with the keypad, there are four levels to the minigame, and according to the level, is how many moves there are. Level 1 has you memorizing one move at a time, for a total of four, while level 4 has... four moves at a time, for a total of 16. WHAT?! If that wasn't obnoxious enough, some of the moves the pick does look very similar, particularly down and left on the DPad, it's very easy to make mistakes when trying to do a 16-move chain. Don't ever bother with anything above level 2, luckily, there are not many of these, I think there's not a single Level 3 lock for Stinger to pick, god bless.

 Then comes the Random Encounters, which you can avoid by holding R2+L2 when you hear the roar. Combat is needlessly confusing, as it's in real time, but what makes it confusing? There are four menus that you must toggle with the shoulder buttons, a Engage, Attack, Spell and Item menu. Melee characters, like Stinger and Harv-5 have it easy, as you should never need to touch the Item menu(Bar the last boss) and they don't have spells, so only two menus, yay. Engage Menu lets you either Engage the enemy, Evade enemy, Flee from battle or Pass the turn. How does it work? In order to attack the enemy, you must get close to them, hence the Engage the enemy, but why a Get Away from enemy? Once you engage an enemy, or get engaged by one, you are locked into fighting it unless there's another one in attack range, in which case you can attack both of them, but if you wish to attack another enemy, you must "Evade" the enemy, and then Engage it. Needlessly complicated. Attacking needs its own menus since you have Guarded, Normal and Aggressive. Just stick to normal attacks, as Aggressive moves love to miss. Actually, this game has the highest Miss chance I've ever experienced in an RPG, I was missing attacks left and right all the time. Lastly, there's Special, for melee characters, it means that they get projectile attacks that consume ammo, while ranged characters get a melee attack(Since they can't use their normal, ranged attacks when engaged, unless there are enemies far from them). Lastly, the game implements a "Twitch attack" system, pressing X before a melee attack hits deals double damage, and later on you gain elemental twitch attacks that has you pressing two buttons before a melee move connects, not a bad idea, but in a game this easy, it serves no purpose.

 Spells and Items is where it gets annoying. You can't get any spell or item description in-battle. So just hope that "Swarm" is an attack spell and not a Poison spell. Even worse, you have to go through a list in order to pick your spell of item, and you must go one by one, on 20-item plus lists. Clemett gets it worse, as he attacks with a cannon that has 20 different types of shots.... except that there are no description for them anywhere on the game. All his shots look the same, even if they behave differently, He-At was probably a fire attack, but what does the player make of "BNG-50"? With Clemett, just stick to the 25 mana shots. Oh, and remember how combat is in real time? Enemies will get free shots at you while you go through the lists! Except that it doesn't really matter. The level cap in the game is 15, and the game provides the best leveling spot... on the second town of the game. These four guys can be fought at any time, give money after each fight, and give out from 500 to 800 experience points(Depending on how many last hits the character got) per fight. I had maxed Stinger at 5 measly hours into the game. How does this tie into the game? The difficulty is a straight line, enemies take more or less the same amounts of damage, and deal the same amounts of damage, the whole time. New area? Enemies are just as weak as the ones in the area before. Sometimes even weaker. The game doesn't get any harder, but it might as well get easier as you go along. And the bosses are just pathetic, the last boss has two forms(One for each party), one that is fought thrice and the other one twice, but it's really, really easy. I just had to use a mana potion(First time I used an item in the game) on the mages, but that's about it.

 To top it all off, you get a limited inventory, and 80% of the stuff you get are useless items that heal 1-3 Hit points or "Nothing special". You can either have them hog inventory spots until you find that one shopkeeper that will take them for 30 gold instead of 1, or just drop them on the spot, I always chose the latter. The game does keep its sense of humor even with the items, there are items that "Taste great, but does nothing", and you can find "Pandora's Cauldron" that says "Don't use. EVER.". Save before using it, as it destroys the world in the game's longest FMV, and you have to reset the console.  Then there are two FPS minigames, and both of them are.... pretty decent actually, while they suffer slowdown when lot of stuff is going on at the same time, they are way more fun than they should. Oh, and the game is 2 Discs, but each disc contains a different overworld map... when the party splits and one goes to said other world, expect a lot of disc-switching, so you might as well stick with one party until you finish their quest, even though you can swap quests at Inns.

 Most bad games tend to have really good graphics, this is not the case. The game has aged very, very poorly, characters look as pixel vomits, so to speak. Some NPCs look like Final Fantasy VII potions, I kid you not. The animation is very choppy as well, and the FMVs don't fare any better. Hilariously enough, spells have very... picturesque descriptions, say "a spiritual snake appears and bites the enemy", but it's just a small yellow "hit" sfx over the enemy, every spell is like this, more or less. To be fair, the 6 Summon spells do have FMV sequences, but they are the exception. While the music won't be considered a classic any time soon, it's very, very good. There's also a lot of different songs used throughout the game.

 What does one make out of Shadow Madness? It is not a good game, that much is clear, but so much work was put into the setting of the game, I'd say it's worth a look if, and only if, you happen to enjoy JRPGs, especially the old ones.
 4.0 out of 10.

Now Playing: Killzone - Liberation

 Liberate me from this game. Maybe.

 Started it last night before hitting the sack. Again. Long story, anyways I digress, the game: I don't like it. It's very, very slow, movement and shooting. And I know that putting a shooter on this kind of console is a bit hard, but I'm not completely cool with the controls. Even as I hold L, it feels as it sometimes I'd shoot at thin air? I think?  I dunno. Speaking of slow, I was willing to read the whole backstory, but the story panels took so long to go by, I just skipped them after the third one.

Month Overview: March

Games completed in March:
 Little Big Planet(PSP)                                                                                       5.0
 Mimana: Iyar Chronicle                                                                                     3.0
 Shinobi                                                                                                             8.0
 Kirby's Return to Dreamland                                                                             7.0
 Tales of VS                                                                                                      6.5
 Dissidia 012: Final Fantasy                                                                                9.0
 Tales of Destiny II                                                                                             7.5
 Mobile Suit Gundam Extreme VS - Full Boost                                                   9.5

Overview:
 College has started, which means less gaming time, yay? Let's see, I played three PSP games this month, and logged about 60 hours in Dissidia, and still not done with all the post-game! Gundam Extreme VS Full Boost, a game I've been anticipating for about 2 years, I kid you not, I'd visit the GameFaqs boards and the community boards for this game every single day just for any news regarding new units for Full Boost or a Console port. And hey, I'm doing the same for Maxi Boost now!

Game of March:

 Was there any surprise? I've been in love with the series ever since Federation VS Zeon, it's like these games are tailor-made for me! What else can I say? If it only had a more robust single player offering, I could've easily given it a 10, y'see, while it is a better game than vanilla Extreme VS in almost every single way, comparing the previous' Mission Mode against this one and seeing just how lazy the DLC units are when, once again, compared to vanilla's DLC, kinda makes you wonder if they couldn't have done more? They also took their sweet time porting it, and the Online pass is bullsh!t... But as annoying as those things are, the core game is just so darn fantastic!

Runner-up:

 Not gonna lie, I knew Dissidia was gonna be great. Some things did take me by surprise, and I'm not totally OK with having to equip my characters with stuff in order to keep up with the opposition, but after I put my "I WANT A TRADITIONAL FIGHTER, WITH DEFINED MOVESETS AND SKILL DOING ALL THE TALK" behind, I could enjoy the game. The fact that I logged over 60 hours in about 15 days is proof to that.

Review #106: Mobile Suit Gundam Extreme VS - Full Boost

 "Kamille's a man's name, and I'm a man!"

  Finally, after two years of waiting, the sequel to one of my favorite games of the last generation arrived(And the sequel to this sequel got announced at the same time the PS3 port was announced, fun!). The sequel boasts tweaks to the 60+ returning cast, over 30 new mobile suits(20 if you bought the DLC from the previous game) for a total of 97(Not counting DLC), and a revamped system, but does it completely over shadow its prequel?

 Extreme VS is an Arcade Game through and through, there's no real story to it, but it doesn't need one, and it's the kind of game that you can just pick up and play, even though mastering its nuances, like properly managing your boost gauge to make the most out of your movement will take a while. The game boils down to a two on two arena fighting game, though that's selling it a bit short. There's a 6000 point gauge for each team, and you pick from 90+ units with different costs(1000, 2000, 2500 and 3000), where dying deducts from the 6000 point gauge, your objective? Drop your opponent's gauge to 0.

 You get four buttons: Boost(Used to jump or dash), Beam Rifle/Projectile, Beam Saber/Melee and change lock on. The change lock on button changes who your target is. The other three are pretty self explanatory, but certain mobile suits have up to three other sub weapon gauges(Sometimes there are more than one sub weapon for a single gauge) that are used by mixing either of the other three buttons, and sometimes they get different moves that need charging either the Projectile or Melee button. Most weapons have ammo counts that recharge either by swapping the weapons cartridge, through time or only start recharging after the ammo counts goes to 0. Boost also has its own Gauge, so you have to be mindful not to enter "overheat", which means breaking to a stop wherever you are, and having to wait about a second for the gauge to fully recharge. Resource management is the name of the game. There's a secondary Gauge, the Burst gauge, that increases as you take and deal damage, you can either pull a Half Burst, when the gauge is at 50%, or a Full Burst when it's at 100% that lasts longer and gives better bonuses(Plus, can be activated while taking damage), by pressing the three buttons at the same time. The previous game had  a single Burst Mode, but now you get to choose Assault Burst or Blast Burst, the former favoring rush-in units, while the latter helps units that prefer to fight at a distance.

 Arcade Mode got completely revamped, while it plays just like vanilla Extreme VS did, all routes are different now. There are five routes with 8 stages each, plus, alternate, harder unlockable EX stages. Arcade Mode can be played in Single Player or Multiplayer, both on-line and off-line. Off-line means split screen, which tends to have some framerate issues, not as bad as the previous game though! I also experienced a couple of instances of slowdown in Single Player, but these cases were very rare, and only when a lot of stuff was going on at the same time. Mission Mode also makes a return, but it's a shadow of its former self...

 In vanilla Extreme VS, Mission Mode gave you around 300 different missions to be played in Single Player. Out of the box, now you get 45 missions, but they've been unlocking some every now and then, and we are up to 65 at the moment. These missions tend to be much shorter than the ones before, and they tried to overcompensate the lack of missions by forcing you to play them on four different difficulty settings. Forcing? You see, in Mission Mode you can level up your mobile suit of choice, thing is, there is a level cap unless you unlock its figure, and these are unlocked by playing a certain mission at a certain difficulty(Luckily the game tells you what the price is for each difficulty setting). Another thing you have to unlock are the skills themselves, which are the stats that you can level up. So you'll be playing and replaying each missions for a while, not cool. A small, and probably worthless, bonus, is that using specific mobile suits on specific missions(If you are familiar with Gundam, you'll probably notice on your own which unit to use), which toggles special dialogue between your pilot and the enemy pilot!

 So yeah, the lack of missions is a problem, know what else is? On-line Pass. The developers gave some very lame excuses, but the thing is, in order to access any on-line mode, you need an on-line pass. Mission Mode has exclusive missions for On-line play, and know what's hilarious? You can play these with a CPU partner, but you still need to go on-line to do so, with an on-line pass. And you have to do these missions in order to unlock every upgradeable skill in Mission Mode! Very, very cheap. Another change for the worst, in the previous game you could earn upgrade points with any unit, and they went into a pool that could be spent on anyone. Now each unit earns points towards themselves, want to upgrade your partner's suit? Too bad, you have to play as it in order to earn points for it. Arcade mode? As good as before. Mission Mode? Terrible, when compared to the last game's. On-line Mode? Got better, a ton of new bells and whistles, and you can play every mode on-line now, but Off-line mode got the short end of the stick by a long shot.

 Visually, it's the same game as before, it's a very flashy and colorful game, even if some of the special effects could've been better. It's no graphical marvel, that's for sure, but it allows the game to maintain an steady pace, so I'd say it's worth it. Music... is a somewhat different selection from before, but it's overall pretty good, and no, the Premium G sound edition isn't worth it, it doesn't really add songs as much as replace the other ones. Plus, they are accessible from the disc, it's just a piece of paper with a code! As for the voice acting, every voice actor reprises their role from the anime series, pretty cool.

 As lacking as the Single Player offerings are, I'd say the game is still worth it over vanilla EX anyways. I loved playing with the newly rebalanced units, some even got new moves! The game mechanics also got a bit of an overhaul, the game does feel different. And I had fun playing with the new units, I have a new favorite! The game's focus was never Single Player Mode, not that it's an excuse for such a shallow Mission Mode when the last game's was so robust, but Mission Mode was never the go-to mode for this game and never will be.
 9.5 out of 10.