Review #288: Nightshade

 Ashes to ashes.

 I can't believe it's been two years since I last played Shinobi on the PS2, a game that earned a place on my PS2 favorites list. Nightshade's got some pretty big shoes to fill, and it succeeds, mostly.

 Taking place an unspecified amount of time after the events of Shinobi, you now play as Hibana, a Ninja under control by the government, as she is tasked with stopping Nakatomi's Ninja and collect all the shards of the broken Akujiki, before more hellspawn are brought into the world. Hibana is one cool Ninja, I swear to god, she and Hotsuma are the coolest Ninjas around. Unlike Hotsuma, however, Hibana is much sassier, spouting one-liners and taunts all the time. And as cool as he look, the game is Japanese... which means that the camera loves to focus on her butt, which is a bit off-putting. Heck, even her standard slash looks really weird, since she has to shake her hips in order to pull it off. That aside, they managed to make Hibana look really cool, and act the part. As for the story, it's pretty shallow, and there's a bit of backstory that is best off learned by reading the instruction booklet... but then again, I don't think that this is a game you want to play for the story.

 The game plays a lot like the previous game. Hibana can slash, double jump, stealth dash, cling to walls, throw Kunai and unleash three different spells by collecting scrolls. But there's been some new additions, firstly, some enemies can block attacks, while other come equipped with armor, both which are dealt with by kicking them with Triangle. Hibana's air-game is a lot stronger than Hotsuma's as well, she can also use an aerial homing kick to close-in on her foes, and there's a new gauge, filled by collecting certain items or killing enemies, that allows for strong charge attacks. And guess what, unlike Hotsuma, Hibana uses a sword forged in the style of the Akujiki, but it's not the Akujiki, which means her life isn't being constantly sapped away!

 I played the entire game on Normal mode, and it's almost as hard as the first one. Almost. Not having to care about the life gauge makes quite a difference, but in its place come new platforming challenges that will require Hibana to use the homing kicks on flying, armored enemies, in order to get across certain chasms. And it has to be the homing kick, since slash attacks will just bounce off armored enemies. The thing is, landing an aerial hit on an enemy resets your jump, stealth dash and homing kick, so you must make it across by exploiting this mechanic. This makes the latter levels, where this becomes a necessity, very challenging, as tapping the wrong button, or aiming at the wrong enemy(And the targeting reticule can sometimes pick the worst targets, and you can only switch targets by tapping R2), or even getting hit mid-jump, can result in you dying. At least the checkpoints are slightly more generous than the first game.

 The game has three unlockable characters(Hotsuma among them, if you have a Shinobi cleared save file, and he can't kick, but his normal slashes break armors and guards!) that play noticeably different from one another, plus, extra costumes for Hibana and another one of the playable characters. There're also Oboro coins hidden on every level, and collecting them nets you access to Survival, Time Attack and Mission Mode levels. There's quite a bit to do and unlock on this game.

 The game falters a bit when it comes to bosses. I felt that some of them were a bit too random on their patterns, making it a gamble when it came to scoring hits and not getting hurt. Maybe I'm just bad at the game though, and that said, I could clear the game on normal, so it's definitely doable. I also felt that sometimes the game had way too many waves of enemies on certain areas, which got a bit tiresome when I just wanted to explore the damn area. I mean, you could always ignore them, but that's not the way I roll.

 While Shinobi is a slightly better game, Nightshade is no slouch. It has some amazing levels to play through, some that will put your platforming to the test. It's a fun game, and a worthy companion to Shinobi.
 8.5 out of 10

Now Playing: Nightshade

 Hibana is one cool Ninja.

 Hibana and Hotsuma are the two coolest Ninja out there. I also like how they are fairly different when it comes to personalities as well, which kinda reflects on their costumes. While Hotsuma was taciturn and a loner, Hibana has a sassy personality, and she wears white and red, because she's cool like that. She also wields two swords, since one sword isn't cool enough.

 As for the game, I'm up to stage 3 and it feels just like Shinobi. It's the same game, albeit, I feel, a bit easier. And Hibana now has to break the defenses of certain enemies with kicks. Also, inverted camera controls that can't be changed, whose idea was it!? Regardless, I'm liking the game, a whole lot, just as I did with Shinobi before it. 

Review #287: Clock Tower 3

 Unintentionally hilarious.

 When one thinks of Clock Tower, one thinks of scary games, some of the earliest horror games created. And then there's Clock Tower 3, which isn't very scary, but it's so wonderfully weird. You can't come to this game expecting a horror game, unless you want to be disappointed, or in my case, weirdly amused.

 The game pits you as Alyssa, a 14 year-old girl who is one day away from her birthday, and receives a letter from her mother telling her to hide. Alyssa, being as smart as she is, decides to come back home, and all kinds of weird stuff starts happening. This is what happened to me, early in the game you come across a man in black, who acts all weird and creepy, it creeped me out, and it made me second guess my steps and what not. I was creeped out! And then... you are sent back in time. I kid you not. And you have to... aid ghosts? But then you are introduced to this big guy and his hammer, as he squashes his first victim, and you are next! YEAH! This is what I wanted, the game finally got scary again. Yeah, this is awesome! Wait... Alyssa, why is your flask glowing? Why is a bow forming out of..... Alyssa, why are you shooting energy arrows? Oh yeah, Magical girls? This game's got'em. And the game only gets more ridiculous from there on. Then comes the next 'Subordinate', and he is introduced as he brutally kills a mother and his son, yeah, this scene is phenomenal and scary, now we are back on trac....why does he attack you by tackling you with his butt!? THE HELL IS THIS!? And the next three Subordinates are Onimusha-Godangantess wannabes. Yeah, this game is ridiculous alright, but it's oddly amusing. Except for Dennis, this guys ruins any scene he is in... although I guess he is part of the game's ridiculous charm. And it's not like the voice acting is bad, but the character models are very facially inexpressive, but everyone moves in very over-the-top fashion, which produces a very bizarre clash. Look, if I haven't made it clear by now, this is not a horror game, as hard as it tries to be, but if you are up for a weird game, with Time-travelling, Magical Girls, Ghosts and a protagonists that is sent flying at high speeds while riding debris and decides to laugh and dance, instead of, y'know, being worried for dear life, this is your game.

 80% of the game is spent exploring the numerous locations for different items in order to solve puzzles. Occasionally you'll be surprised by the level's Subordinate, an Alyssa being an unarmed 14 year old schoolgirls needs to run and hide. There's different ways to deal with these bastards, you can use Holy Water, which can only be refilled at special fountains, to temporarily stun them, or find Hide Spots or one-time use Escape Spots. Escape Spots incapacitate the Subordinate, letting you go along on your merry way, while hide spots may stop working if you use them too frequently, plus, they can't be used while under a Subordinates sight. Eventually you'll learn to complete puzzles while avoiding subordinates though, however, you have to be careful, as the Panic Gauge increases every time they attack you, even if they miss, if it gets too high, Alyssa will enter 'Panic Mode' and any hit will kill her, plus, she becomes harder to control.

 Puzzles are very 'Resident Evil'-ish. Find items to use on other places, find and read files to learn more about what's going on or even obtain clues for a few puzzles. There are also ghosts that can hurt you(Or rather, increase the panic gauge, and kill you if you are hit while panicking), but can be dealt with by specific items and using them on their corpses, it's entirely optional, but they reward you with usables, items that decrease the panic gauge or even make you invisible temporarily, so it's a good idea to 'help' them, plus, they disappear and stop bothering you when you are trying to escape from a Subordinate!

 And then there's the boss battles... After finding out about the Subordinates' previous lives, by reading conveniently placed files about them on the areas the inhabit, you will get to fight them. Alyssa will produce a magic bow, complete with a reused 'transformation' animation before every single fight, like any proper magical girl, and the fight starts. You must outmaneuver them, and hold triangle to charge an arrow and shoot it. Hitting them with fully charged arrows will bind them, making further shots easier(And making it harder, sometimes impossible, for them to reach you, until the chain expires if you fail to keep binding them), and binding them with about 5 arrows will let you unleash an special attack that will most probably kill them. Boss fights are pretty dumb, and Alyssa always auto-aims... although you can't change where she is gonna shoot and you are rooted in place. It's very stiff, and wonky, and in a particular Subordinate fight, the auto-aim is a bit broken and most often than not, Alyssa will aim in-front of her, which makes this particular fight a bit of a pain. Not to say anything about the last boss, who can bind you, and if you are bound by three shots, he can unleash a 10-15 second long instakill attack that you can't skip. Fun. The last boss is incredibly fun, until you figure him out, and then he becomes incredibly tedious, since it may take a while before he goes down, even though you aren't taking any damage at all!

 The game is four hour longs, probably less if you know what you are doing, taking into account that I went into the game completely blind and figured everything out by myself, that's a bit short. Finishing the game unlocks fetish costumes for Alyssa(Since, y'know, the Japanese love to sexualize young girls!) as well as a harder mode.

 Clock Tower 3 is a game that (jump)scared me, that made me laugh, made me think, engaged me and overall entertained me. It's not the game I expected, but I was pleasantly surprised with how weird, and at times 'so-bad-it's-good' moments. I figure that Haunting Ground is probably the game that they really wanted to make, y'know scary and stuff, but Clock Tower 3 is pretty good, provided you aren't expecting spooks.
 7.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Clock Tower 3

 I've mixed feelings about it so far.

 At first, the intro was so good, the creepy man, the creepy mansion. I was creeped out and second guessing my every move during the initial manor segment! I thought that it got the ambiance right... and then it teleported me back in time, and I felt it was a bit... ridiculous? And then I was helping ghosts, and the scare factor disappeared entirely. I was actually a bit disappointed....

 ...Until I entered the creepy Tailor Shop and the first stalker appeared. The setting was spectacular, with broken glass and blood everywhere. And then came that phenomenal cutscene that introduced the Hammer stalker? The game just got scary again!

 Basically, I'm a bit torn. On the one hand, I feel some things are a bit... ridiculous. But when the game gets scary, it gets it right oh so well. I was expecting something a bit more like Haunting Ground, but oh well, I'm only 30 minutes into the game and got into the Concert Hall, so there's still time.

Review #286: Megaman Powered Up

 And now we've come full circle, the first game I started the marathon with, is also... the last one.

 And now it's Megaman Powered Up's turn, a remake of Megaman 1 with a ton of new bells and whistles to make it worth the price of entry. As with Megaman Maverick Hunter X, this game is much more than 'just' a remake, with multiple modes and character to make it enticing both for new players and people that know Megaman 1 by heart.

 At the start of the game, you can choose either 'Old Style' or 'New Style'. 'Old Style' is probably not what you'd expect. It's Megaman 1 redone with the new game's engine, which means 3-D graphics, new physics(Megaman doesn't slide anymore, but his movements comes with a bit of a... quirk) and what not, which translates into a much easier and much more manageable game. You don't get any of the new features, like the cutscenes, the two new robot masters or the alternate playable characters, plus, the screen has borders on the edges, in order to maintain the original game's ratio. This mode doesn't unlock anything, so I think it's best of left as a curiosity.

 But if you pick 'New Style', you get to pick a difficulty setting(Easy, Normal and Hard), features two new robot masters, for a total of eight, and entirely redesigned stages. It doesn't stop there, defeating a robot master using only your Mega Buster lets you unlock as playable characters. You can also unlock Protoman, Roll and variations of Megaman(A version that can slide, one that can charge his Buster and another one that can... kick?), Oh, and it has fully voiced cutscenes, which are fantastic. The entire game has been redone in a 'super deformed' style, with huge heads and tiny bodies, with the entire world being very colorful and animated. The entire audiovisual presentation makes it look like a children's cartoon, and it's amazing.

 But you are not done with the game yet! You can create your own levels and even share them online(The servers are still up!), or download stages from other players. Still want more stuff? How about 100 challenges, which unlock Protoman on completion!

 As fantastic as it all sounds, there're a couple of issues with the game... Firstly, there's a ton of construction pieces, as well as Roll and all her costumes, that need to be downloaded.... except that you download 'unlock keys' since everything is already on the UMD. This is downright idiotic, as one day Capcom's online servers will close and you won't be able to get them anymore, even though they are on the UMD. And y'know, as with almost every PSP game, it suffers from slowdown every now and then. Lastly, Megaman's movement is a bit quirky, after coming to a full stop, when you start to move again, Megaman will stop for a second or so before taking another step. This was probably done to help you with some pixel perfect jumps, as it makes moving towards an edge much easier and precise, but, unless you're planning a jump, it just makes movement feel weird, although, eventually, you get used to it.

 And just like Megaman Maverick Hunter X before it, Megaman Powered Up is a phenomenal little game, that packs a lot of content into a tiny UMD. Capcom really knocked it out of the park with this one.
8.5 out of 10

Review #285: Megaman Maverick Hunter X

 And thus I conclude with my Megaman Xathon.

 So, Megaman X was amazing, arguably the best game in the series. Let's go back in time, Megaman X's story had gotten incredibly convoluted, after Keiji Inafune kinda left the series to work on Megaman Zero, so with Maverick Hunter they planned on reboting the entire series. Sadly, sales weren't very high, and the whole plan was scrapped.

 While there is a story to each installment in the series, it's a mess, both in part due to poor translations(on all entries, even X4 had a few errors(Like Magma Dragoon being referred as an Irregular, what the Japenese call the Mavericks)), but Maverick Hunter features, for the first time in the series, a good translation and fantastic voice-acting. If you've played the first game, you know the deal, Sigma goes Maverick and it's up to X and Zero to stop him, although Zero works on the background, while you, as X, do the legwork. The 8 Mavericks have been given a bit more developement, thanks to dialogue before each battle, and they get three different, fully voiced introductions: One for X, another one for X after watching the OVA and a third one in Vile Mode. Speaking of the OVA, finishing the game unlocks an animated 30-minute OVA as well as Vile Mode.

 As for the game itself, it's basically the same 2-D Action-Platform game from before, but now with 3D graphics. There's been slight changes to some levels, and while the Heart and Energy tanks are hidden on the same places that they were before, the four capsules have been switched around, and if you opt for the secret Z-Buster, it's actually different from the upgraded X-Buster. I noticed that some things are slightly harder this time around, and others are easier. For example, Armored Armadillo's stage, destroying the excavators is much easier this time around, but remember those annoying birds near the end of the stage? They can knock you out of the mine-cart very easily this time around(I think it has to do with the minecarts being a bit smaller than before). Boomer Kuwanger's invincibility period lasts longer, so you can no longer just spam missiles until he dies... but Spark Mandril can now be frozen immediately after he defrosts, making him a much easier boss. After you are done with the 8 Mavericks you'll unlock the 4 Sigma Stages... and they've been completely redone. While they are not terrible, they are not quite as good, or fair, as the originals. But hey, at least now you can replay Sigma Stages, save mid-way through them and keep the Hadoken! These changed stages would've made me lower the score a bit, but while Megaman X(SNES) had the better stages, Maverick Hunter X makes up for it with....

 VILE MODE! Clearing the game unlocks Vile, and he plays entirely different from X. Mind you, at the start, it's incredibly challenging, expect to die on the tutorial stage. Multiple times. Not only is Vile slower, but the new enemy placement is much cheaper and annoying. When you start off as Vile, you are supposed to move slowly and take out enemies methodically... until you defeat your first Maverick(Preferably Chill Penguin, since he drops an upgrades that halves the damage you receive) and get new weapons. Unlike X, who carries 8 different weapons from the 8 Mavericks, Vile can only take 3 weapons with him.... from a weapon pool of 45! There's a ton of variety and combinations to make Vile a lean, mean killing machine. Vile Mode is a fantastic little extra with a ton of replay value by itself.

 If there was one thing to complain about, besides me preferring the old Sigma stages, is that every now and then, the game suffers from slowdown. It's not a huge deal, and it's not very prevalent, but it's there and it's a tad annoying. One time, the game froze for a second or two as it decided if X had died or not(To be fair, a lot was going on at the time of my death!).

 I wouldn't say that Maverick Hunter X is superior than the SNES game, but I wouldn't say it's worse either. It has different strengths and weaknesses. I may not like the 4 redesigned stages, but Vile Mode is a blast and the 30-minute anime OVA is a nice treat. It's clear that a lot of work went into this game, and the result is phenomenal, it's a shame it didn't sell much, but what was Capcom expecting making it a PSP exclusive?
 9.0 out of 10

Review #284: Megaman X 8

 Almost but not quite.

 Megaman X hasn't been quite the same since X4. X5 was alright, X6 was a disaster and X7 was a mess. Instead of building upon X7, they decided to begin anew with X8, axing the 3D/2D segments(as well as crouching!) and opting instead for classic Megaman X 2D action, albeit with 3D graphics(2.5D if you will). It goes a little further, characters have been redesigned and streamlined, so no more silly stubby legs, and look better than ever.

 It's the eight time around, so you know the gist of it: Defeat the 8 Mavericks then tackle Sigma, yadda yadda. The three heroes have been further differentiated this time around, X is a long-distance power house, however, charging his Mega Buster takes a while, Axl can't charge his shots, but he fires rapidly in any direction(Although it roots him to the ground) and is the only character that can hover, while Zero is the only character with a double jump and specializes in close combat. And just as it was on X7, you can take two characters with you, and a new 'Team-up' attack has been introduced, which is fairly unimpressive but deals decent damage.

 X5 introduced the Reploid saving mechanic, which I never cared for, but after X6 they got tied to upgrades. Not this time, now you have to find their chips and then buy them. Yes, Megaman X8 introduces a shop system and I love it. You can purchase a few basic upgrades, like more health or one-time use health items, and once you find a life tank, extra charges, at the outset, but the really juicy stuff must be found. I absolutely love this new system, much, much more than having to rescue Reploids. And on New Game plus, you can unlock new armors for the three main characters(Or, y'know, use a cheat code and get them on your first playthrough) as well as three female characters, which behave as nerfed versions of their male counterparts, but hey, new characters! Kinda. And you can cheat codes to unlock them early as well.

 The game's difficulty is a bit higher than what we've gotten used to, more reminiscent of X3 than anything. And it's mostly fair. Mostly. All fairness goes out the window once you hit the last levels, filled to the brim with cheap deaths and stuff you can't see coming the first time through. And the last boss, if you take too long to figure out how to off him, he automatically kills you, no matter how much health you've got left, because that's fun, isn't it? At least Megaman X4 through X7 offered unlimited continues and generous checkpoints, this time around, continues must be bought and they are a one-time use only, so unless you've got the cash, you are stuck with the default two continues. There's also an Easy mode, but they don't let you fight the true boss and get the true ending, not cool. There's also two horrible, horrible vehicle stages. The least said about them the better.

 When all is said and done, while not as good as the SNES games, this is the best Megaman X game since X4. Level design is, mostly, fair, the weapons are fun to use, all three characters are completely different from each other, there's a bunch of fun unlockables as well. It's a fine game all around, that lacks some refinement, but the X series had finally gotten on the right track again. Not that it matters, since Capcom basically did away with the series.
 7.0 out of 10