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boltaku · 5 years

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The Great Ace Attorney Review

Snap out of it, Ryuunosuke!

The Disappointing Turnabout

Story:

The Great Ace Attorney is the fan translation of the first Dai Gyakuten Saiban game. Taking place at the end of the 19th century, it tells the story of Ryuunosuke Naruhodou's journey to Britain as part of an exchange program between the Japanese and Great British Empires. On his journey, he meets THE Sherlock Holmes, and a fearsome deductive duo is born. The game is a prequel of sorts to the Ace Attorney series and really leans on the good will built up across the history of the series. Unfortunately, the long history of the series means the game has a lot to live up to. The game really starts off on the wrong foot with the beginning of Ryuunosuke's journey. Ryuunosuke gets thrust into his role as a defense attorney with zero experience. As a common university student with no interest in law, Ryuunosuke gets accused of murder and somehow falls into the role of defending himself in court while assisted by his law-student best friend who happens to be a prodigy. The entire game takes place over eight months, which is also the entirety of Ryuunosuke's exposure to law at this point in the series. His newness is treated as a bit of a joke, but it falls flat. The game jumps through some pretty big hoops after this to set Ryuunosuke on his path as a lawyer, and I did not appreciate them. Furthermore, a lot to test how much you can suspend your disbelief in many other ways. I'll describe more about the jury system later, but the thing that irked me the most was that the jury was often filled with witnesses from the previous trial or else people who have intimate knowledge of a certain part of the case that can then serve as a deus ex machina to get Ryuunosuke out of being cornered. They even reuse jurors from previous cases occasionally (though I'm sure that's in part a way to cut down on the number of models they had to make).

Another sticking point for me is lack of character growth. The characters are pretty flat and boring. Ryuunosuke’s arc as a whole didn’t work for me. The main prosecutor antagonist, Barok von Zieks has lots of personality when you first meet him, but you’re given nothing in the way of character until the very end of the epilogue of the final case, and even that’s barely anything. This leaves a lot to be desired, especially compared with Miles Edgeworth in the first Ace Attorney game. Edgeworth’s journey as a prosecutor is an essential part of the first game where he starts as the shady and unbeatable prosecutor and becomes a defeated man accused of murder and prosecuted by his adoptive father. Barok von Zieks is known as the Grim Reaper for his reputation of sending every man he prosecutes to their death. When he’s finally (obviously) beaten by Ryuunosuke for the first time, von Zieks is already over any feelings he may by the beginning of the next case, which also takes place 2 days later. Sherlock remains the intelligent buffoon. Iris Watson, Sherlock’s assistant and John Watson’s daughter, remains a cute, genius child. Often times, too, the game tries to use tragedy to shade characters, but with nothing to grab onto characters in the first place, the emotion falls flat and feels unearned. On the other hand, the two characters best served by character developed are Ryuunoske’s assistant Sato Mikotoba and a plucky pickpocket named Gina Lestrade. Gina is perhaps best served by the story in the game and was my favorite character by far.

As for the cases themselves? Well, they’re fine, I guess. I’ll cover them more extensively at the end, but, briefly, they’re really stymied by the time period the game takes place in. There’s no Little Thief or fingerprinting analysis to help out, so the game has to rely a lot more on witness testimony and blood spatter. Iris does whip out some pseudo-science in the final case (she’s and Sherlock are genius inventors, you know!), but it doesn’t do a whole lot to spice things up. The first case is too long by an entire trial segment. While I appreciate what Case 2 was trying to do, it ended up being my least favorite case for the unearned moment. Case 3, on the other hand, was by far my favorite. It really takes advantage of Ryuunosuke’s inexperience and takes you someplace unexpected before you even realize what happened. Case 4 is boring filler. And, finally, Case 5 was okay but the least exciting of any of the final cases other than Dual Destinies in the series due to a thoroughly unimpressive culprit. When compared to the interesting scenarios and masterminds of previous games, like the hostage situation in Justice for All, the multi-year-spanning cases of Spirit of Justice or even Apollo Justice, and the incredible reach of Quercus Alba in Ace Attorney Investigations, the final trial felt pretty lacking.

Gameplay:

There are two new gimmicks and one new-ish gimmick in the Great Ace Attorney: Great Deductions, the jury system, and the return of multi-witness cross-examinations. The multi-witness cross-examinations were a fine inclusion.

The Great Deductions have Ryuunosuke partner up with Sherlock Holmes to deduce new information from people involved in investigations. Sherlock will come up with a really crazy theory to explain something and it’s up to Ryuunosuke to review the logic, survey the scene, and correct Sherlock’s mistakes. The camera direction for these scenes is great with Ryuunosuke and Sherlock dancing and twirling in and out of frame while a spotlight from nowhere shines on the person being interrogated, causing them to be startled. I truly can’t explain how much fun these scenes are, though the mechanics did get a bit boring by the final case. They’re still worth it for the fun and the killer music.

I really did not like the jury system for a number of reasons, including the odd choice of jury members described previously. The way the jury system works is that each trial has 6 jurors who are responsible with determining the ultimate sentence for the defendant by voting guilty or not guilty at any time as the trial progresses. Once all 6 jurors inevitably vote guilty, the defense is then granted time for a Closing Argument, wherein you pit the jurors’ reasons for voting guilty against each other to show contradictions in logic until 4 people change their votes to not guilty, at which point the trial will resume. At first the jurors interrupt at different times by changing their votes. However, it felt like the writers realized how much this slowed the pace of the trials down because, by the end, the jurors just all vote in unison. Overall, this gimmick was pretty unenjoyable and ended up making the trials feel slower and more predictable. I especially did not like the deus ex machina jurors.

Graphics and Sound:

Okay, now this is where the game really stood out. The soundtrack was exquisite (especially all 5 Deduction themes). The character animations were very well done, and the game through in quite a few new tricks. Lots of dramatic, changing camera angles really made the court segments stand out, especially the camera rotating all around Ryuunosuke as he winds up for his iconic finger point. The Great Deductions, too, are filled with tons of fun little character moments for the people being interrogated. However while all of the character models were really great, I do wish they had paid more attention to improving the actual story...

Translation Quality:

The translation team did a great job of portraying the attitudes and mannerisms of British people towards the Japanese at the end of the 19th century, warts and all. It was a little galling to see the language and insults being thrown about, but that was how the Japanese were treated at the time. The team made the interesting choice of not localizing the character names to be puns but it wasn’t terribly missed. I think this must have been quite a daunting task with all of the accents and references to Sherlock Holmes. With only a few typos, it was pretty well done overall.

So should you play this game?

Eh. If you’re a die-hard Phoenix Wright fan, sure. It’s definitely not the best, but the Great Deduction scenes were charming enough. Don’t expect anything revolutionary, though. I pointed out a lot of the flaws in this game as a fan who knows the series is capable of so much more. I will say that this game was the hardest I’ve had to work at staying interested in the story, though. If you’re new to the series, I recommend playing other games instead.

LONGER CASE SPOILERS AND THOUGHTS TO FOLLOW SOON

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boltaku · 6 years

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428: Shibuya Scramble Review

“As you can see...I’m a cat”

A great entry point for people curious about visual novels and a great read for longtime visual novel fans.

Story:

428 tells the story of a particularly eventful day in Shibuya and the events surrounding the kidnapping of a girl named Maria Osawa. The game starts off from the viewpoint of Detective Shinya Kano, one of the detectives charged with keeping watch over the ransom exchange between the kidnapper and Maria’s twin sister Hitomi. As Hitomi waits anxiously in front of the Hachiko Statue in Shibuya for the person to whom she will be handing off the ransom money things quickly spiral out of Kano’s control, leading to the first of many Bad Ends of the game and, eventually, to the viewpoint of a second character. The game proceeds to take the reader hour-by-hour through the twists and turns of that fateful day while adding and switching between the viewpoints (or routes) of some of the major players involved in the story.

In the early hours of the story, many of the twists can easily be predicted by seasoned VN veterans or readers with a keen eye for foreshadowing. However, I was pleasantly surprised that towards the end there were still some surprising conclusions and revelations that required a bit more thought. The story moves along at a pretty quick place, and readers are never forced to experience a character’s POV for so long that it gets stale.

Speaking of POV characters, they are all very well written. Each POV has its own tone. For example, Kenji Osawa’s route drips with dread and unease as he tries to unravel the mysteries behind the motives of his daughter’s kidnapping, and Tama’s route provides levity detailing the exploits of a girl trapped in a cat mascot outfit while trying to deal with the harebrained business ideas of her goofy, money-chasing boss. There’s quite a number of diverse characters major and minor as well, and all of the characters feel fully fleshed out. One of the ways that 428 achieves this is through the theme of passion. Each of the characters are clearly driven to act by something they care deeply about, whether it be a desire to impress a girlfriend’s father through their career track or a drive to put out a high quality magazine for a long-suffering editor friend. In turn, each characters’ passions drive their actions and force them to adapt and grow as a result. The attention to building up minor characters is also greatly appreciated when compared to entries in some of the more famous franchises like Danganronpa 1 or Zero Time Dilemma. 428 really does a great job with character work so that minor characters don’t feel like unimportant additions to the story. They all have lives outside of their interaction with the protagonists of 428 but their involvement with the story is still very important. And, as cliche as it sounds, Shibuya itself was successfully written to play a vital role as a character in the game. After all, the game, and Achi’s route especially, can be considered a love-letter to Shibuya.

Ace reporter or spiky-haired lawyer wannabe?

Gameplay:

As the story plays out, the reader is tasked with making decisions for the POV characters that end up affecting not only their own route but others’ as well. Over the course of making these decisions, the reader will constantly be running into Bad Ends--alternate endings with good or bad outcomes that are not the true ending for the story of the day’s events in Shibuya. The game is peppered with many Bad Ends and does a really good job of introducing them immediately. Running into Bad Ends can be a turn-off for a reader new to VNs because oftentimes it is difficult to tell where in a story the wrong decision was made and how to fix it. This game solves that problem by providing hints at each bad end for what time things might have gone wrong and in whose route. As the game progresses, the hints provided become less and less obvious, culminating in them completely disappearing in the game’s final hour. This is a great way to get new VN readers to acclimate to the idea of Bad Ends as well as train their brains in how to reason out where things need to be changes. My only major complaint involving decisions resulting in bad ends is that while there is a way to skip directly to each major decision in the game, the text moves excruciatingly slowly, which is especially annoying when you’re revisiting a scene for the fourth time in order to choose the last choice provided. The game could really have used a button that would display all text from any given page on screen at once.

Another of the gimmicks in the game is the JUMP mechanic. As readers progress through the story, certain characters’ POVs get blocked off by a KEEP OUT screen. This results in the reader having to progress through a different route until they find a JUMP point--a bit of red text that refers to another character that allows the reader to JUMP between viewpoints. While this is an interesting mechanic for controlling the way the story reads, it did get a bit frustrating when JUMP points would occur in the middle of an important part of one character’s story, providing you with the option of leaving mid-action or continuing with the story and returning later. Again, it’s great that the game gives you the option to return directly to the page with the JUMP point, but the slow text to get you to the correct word is still annoying. I also did not enjoy that some JUMP points were buried in TIPS screens because they felt less natural and a bit harder to get to as the blue font color for TIPS was a little too light to differentiate between the normal white text on certain backgrounds.

One other gimmick unique to this game, though not technically a gameplay element, is that all of the background scenes are stills of live action. Typically, visual novels tend to use drawn pictures for characters and setting, but the live photography really worked well. Every “page” used unique photos, and they didn’t even reuse establishing shots for locations that popped up over and over again. The backgrounds are well-shot and really help in establishing the tone for the scene.

A completely relaxed moment

Sound:

Not a whole lot to say here, other than the music also does a great job of setting the tone for a scene and there are some really great, fun tracks. My is titled “Eggplant” and most often plays whenever Tama’s crazy boss shows up.

Translation Quality:

The translation is really well done despite there being a few typos. The dialogue flows well and, again, the characters are really well developed. My only nitpick is that I wish that they had used honorifics for dialogue between the characters only because it is a Japanese story that takes place in Shibuya. I feel like they would have added yet another layer of immersion in the story.

So should you play this game?

Absolutely! There’s a lot to love about the game. I highly recommend it, especially for people who want to read a visual novel but are turned off by the puzzle aspects of series like Zero Escape or the waifu bait of the Fate series. If you like mysteries with well-written characters, twists, bogus get-rich-quick schemes, bananas, environmentalism, or men with canes, you should definitely read 428: Shibuya Scramble.

Ominous banana

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boltaku · 6 years

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Metal Gear (MSX) Review

Play Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake

Any discussion of Metal Gear for the MSX (abbreviated MGX) should start with "Play Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake" (abbreviated MGX2).

As good as the Metal Gear series is, it is important to not retroactively attribute its success to all of its games.

MGX is a bad game. It's abysmal on the NES, and it's average at best on the MSX.

Heather Alexandra's deconstruction of MGX in a series retrospective piece fails to evaluate the game itself. It is only inspected within the context of the themes and mechanics of the entire series. This improperly mixes the success of the entire series with the actual quality of MGX.

But I'll pause here and openly admit my own difficulty evaluating MGX on its own because I'm always comparing it to MGX2 and I am blatantly about to do just that. I feel like this comparison is really important though to help distinguish what is a bad game, what is a good game, and how developers respond to their past mistakes.

Let's attempt to evaluate MGX on its own. At the end, I'll compare it to MGX2 and demonstrate the improvements that were made to make an good game.

The start of Heather's article places a strong emphasis on MGX's story. Solid Snake being a clone of Big Boss, the Patriots running the show in later games, Big Boss' more humanistic portrayal in later games, and the conflict of "creator vs nature" are all bought up. None of these story elements exist in MGX. Throwing them out, we have a very simple tale of a rookie soldier invading a base and being betrayed by his commanding officer. It's not deep. It's not meaningful. It has a fine twist, but that twist isn't delivered well as the final fight against Big Boss is very lackluster.

The codec calls are very shallow and don't serve to drive plot. The codec is simply a tool, another item, to help solve puzzles and is not used for exposition.

Next we move on to gameplay. Gameplay is marred by technical limitations. The inabiltiy to equip a necessary key card and a critical item like the gask mask at the same time is not genius game design. It's a flaw. It's not good. It's annoying. This is especially obvious in the gas basement of building two which has 2 doors to open and one unintuitively requires keycard 1.

Enemy vision being only 1 pixel wide is also a flaw. This breaks immersion as sometimes it looks like an enemy or camera is staring right at you but an alert is not triggered.

Instant death pits themselves aren't inherently bad. They're a ok trap in older games. But in most cases you cannot continue walking across to avoid falling and it's a death sentence.

To specifically call out Heather's example of a room with three cameras that "has no mercy"... (1) There are plenty of stationary, background boxes to hide behind. (2) The cardboard box is literally two screen previous, so if any exploration was done it is likely to have been found. (3) All enemy and camera movements reset when screens transition, so observing and resetting the room is a perfectly viable strategy (albeit in my option yet another flaw of the game).

One time use items like the enemy uniform and bomb blast suit are also bad. Games with items should work like chemistry. I think this analogy was explicitly mentioned in a Breath of the Wild developer video. Games that allow items to have multiple, non-specific uses are better than single purpose items. In MGX, only the cardboard box let's you use it in an impromptu, unscripted way which is why it's a fan favorite across the series. Every other item has 1 specific use and cannot be used creatively.

There is a paragraph describing an unwinnable state for the game in which you are unable to carry enough explosives to defeat Metal Gear. It is not clearly stated in this article whether that is good or bad. For clarity, it's obviously a BAD game mechanic to have an unwinnable state. Instead this possibility is twisted into some sort of victory for Kojima having thwarted the player. The whole analogy this article perpetuates of BB/Kojima vs. Solid/player is preposterous and unnecessary. The game designer should want its players to succeed. The game should be presented as a challenge to beat it, not something created for a designer to relish in the failure of others. An unwinnable game is unfair, not fun, and makes it bad.

That's plenty of background and venting. What I really want to get to is how Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake is such an improvement. I think what really cemented Kojima as a designer was his ability to innovate and improve on his past works.

Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake fixes so many of the flaws with MGX.

Story is actively explained and pushed forward through codes and the introduction of cutscenes.

The codec now serves a dual purpose of function to progress in puzzles and flavor to explain the world.

Enemy vision is still 1 pixel, but instead of being on one screen, enemies constantly patrol the surrounding 8 screens created an always active, living environment that can be seen on the radar. It also prevents the ability to "reset" rooms in most circumstances. This now has created a more unscripted gameplay experience. Enemies could be in different places in their pattrol each time you encounter them yielding new experiences with each re-traversal of a room.

Instant death pits now have a fighting chance to be dodged by never stopping movement.

Items now have multiple uses. Keycards can be consolidated (huge quality of life improvement). Rations not only heal but also solve puzzles. The brooch can be manipulated by heat and cold. The mine detector makes it easier to crawl and pickup mines (a stretch in this bullet point, but an important improvement nonetheless).

Lack of unwinnable game state. All your weapons, items, and rations are removed for the final two bosses. You are naked for the final stretch of the game and must use your exploration, puzzle solving, and combat skills learned to beat the game.

MGX needs to be called out as a Bad Game. No analysis can change that. What makes the Metal Gear series great is its improvements from one game to the next. The first 4 games, MGX, MGX2, MGS, MGS2, are all basically the same game when seen from 10,000 feet. One reason each game is better than the last is because Kojima sees the game's flaws for what they are and fixes them.

I have been struggling to write a similar article for the Zachtronics series of automation puzzle games (SpaceChem, Infinifactory, TIS-100, Shenzhen I/O, Opus Magnum). It has bad games, but I think each one gets better because the designers are identifying and fixing their past mistakes. I love both of these series (Zachtronics and Metal Gear) because I see their designers efforts to improve gameplay and innovate on a similar base formula to make new games.

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boltaku · 6 years

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Super Mario Sunshine

Sunshine is overshadowed by the Mario games that sandwich it, Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Galaxy.

There are only seven levels and they all feel the same. Limiting the game to Isle Delfino's setting is a huge flaw. The island geography doesn't allow for traditionally themed environments like a fire world, ice world, etc. Seven levels pale compared to Mario 64's 15 and Galaxy's over 30.

The episodes are very inconsistent in quality and diversity. There are boss fights in the same world only 3 or 4 shine apart. Every stage has a "chase Shadow Mario", which gets old considering you also do this in the hub world a number of times. Most shines take 1-3 minutes, and some bizzarely take (me) 10 minutes or more blind (looking at you Sirena Beach manta ray and hotel mystery).

I do like the movement options available with FLUDD; I'm not against its inclusion. Tt's ironic though that FLUDD-less shines are the best part of this game in design, challenge, and even their one music track.

And those blue coins... eye roll emoji... just lazy shine padding to get to 120. I'll defend Super Mario Odyssey's moons over blue coins any day. At least any moon could act as ship fuel whereas blue coins offer nothing aside from completion since the final boss isn't unlocked by a total number of shines.

What I see here as the series developed from 64 is that Sunshine tried to give Mario some new movement options with FLUDD, spin jump, and Yoshi while regrettably taking away long jump and backflip. However, the levels were poorly designed and didn't seem built around this new movement. Galaxy and Odyssey corrected from these missteps and put bigger, better focus on level design that utilizes each game's unique mechanics.

I don't see how this could be anyone's favorite Mario game. It's not a bad game at all, but it's quite a mediocre Mario.

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boltaku · 6 years

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Monster Hunter World (and the Franchise)

...or Fantastic Beasts and how to Hunt Them

Monster Hunter World (MHW) is a game I've been waiting on for quite a while. It came out in late January on PS4 and only came out very recently for PC.

As a brief aside before going into the game, I love that all these previously "console exclusive" games are now coming out for PC, but could definitely live without the delays on the PC version. Part of me wonders if there's not some money throw around for console first releases, but I have no evidence one way or the other. Certainly it's extra effort to account for the widely varied specs of different PCs, but MHW is using an existing game engine behind the scenes...

Anyways, I digress. It's out now and I've been playing it! And as it turns out, I have a few things to say about it and the series in general!

Studying your Quarry

Monster Hunter is one of those series that practically everyone who plays games often has definitely heard of, but probably never played. I myself only got into it a few games ago, with the Wii U port of Monster Hunter 3.

I feel like the series has a bit of an unfair reputation. It's like the reputation that Souls has for being "fiendishly difficult" when really it just expects a little out of you. Similarly, Monster Hunter has a reputation for being both boring and grindy and really challenging.

However, it really doesn't deserve it. The problem that earlier Monster Hunter games had was an explanation problem. They seemed boring and grindy because at the very beginning it just gives you a bunch of small monster and gathering quests, both of which you practically NEVER do past the very early games. And they seemed overly difficult because, well, they expected you to play around with the tools you're given and figure out the games rhythm instead of playing like a hack and slash.

So, just to get us all on the same page, let me explain what Monster Hunter is REALLY about. If you're a Mon Hun pro, no need to read this bit.

The Hunt is On

The core loop of Monster Hunter is this:

Deciding what to hunt to tackle

Preparing for that hunt

Tracking the monster

FIGHTING!

The first 3 steps make up about maybe 10% of your actual playtime, unless you count hunting other large monsters part of the prep work, which I don't really.

What to Hunt

Very early on, in every Monster Hunter game, you're limited in what monsters you have access to hunt. Once you make it past the initial large monster hunts though, the game balloons out, giving you a lot of choice as to what to tackle next.

The only mandatory hunts are the Assigned missions, which unlock a new tier of Optional and Assigned hunts, further expanding your options.

You might hunt a monster a bunch to get a set of armor or a new weapon. You might hunt a monster to progress your Assigned Quests and get access to more monsters. You might hunt a monster just because you haven't fought it yet.

But everything you're doing in the game is an effort to be able to successfully hunt down the next monster on your list.

The fact that you're always just hunting the next monster could be considered a "grind", but its no more of a grind than the core loop of any game, it's just the content.

In Mario games you collect stars or moons or whatever to unlock a new place to collect stars or moons in. In Dark Souls you get gear and souls and fight bosses to unlock more places to fight and collect in. In Monster Hunter you hunt and gather to unlock new monsters and areas to hunt and gather in.

Simple!

Prepwork

Most of the time, this will be as simple as going to your item box, changing which weapon you have equipped to match an elemental or status weakness, refreshing your item set, and eating a nice meal for some nice buffs.

Takes almost no time or tedium at all!

And every Monster Hunter game gives you tools over time to keep yourself well stocked with all the Potions / Traps / Bombs and stuff you need.

In fact, MHW makes this even easier than ever, but I'll mention that later.

Occasionally, you'll want to upgrade your gear or make new sets. Almost always, this will involve hunting a bunch of big monsters. This could be considered a "grind", but as I just mentioned, it's just a way to get you to explore the content in the game.

Tracking

You start the quest, grab some supplies, and set out to find the monster. Previously this involved wandering around in the zone til you found the monster and throwing a paintball at him to keep him marked.

MHW makes this even easier. No need to paintballs or marking.

FIGHTING!

This is what you'll spend 90% of your time doing.

Combat in Monster Hunter can be as fast or slow paced as you want it to be. There's a ton of weapons to choose from, and they all feel very different from each other.

Some of them, like the Greatsword, play pretty slow and are built around charged hits which do massive damage. Some of them, like the Lance, play defensively, using techniques to shield damage and counter attack. Some of them, like the Insect Glaive or Dual Blades, play very quick and floaty are about attacking as much as you can without getting wrecked.

But in general, regardless of weapon, combat is all based around flow, and that flow is different with almost each monster. The monsters all have very different AIs and phases and attack patterns. Some are very, very aggressive, others are more reactive. And in general, getting hit by a strong attack will deal massive damage to you, my dear hunter. And every monster has different strategies and gimmicks to figure out!

So combat is about figuring out how to exploit the openings the monsters leave, as well as how to use your items and environment to your advantage. This is where the game is SO MUCH FUN for me.

The game really makes it feel like you're fighting against these forces of nature, and whenever you pull of some sick dodge or break the monster's horn or tail or whatever, it feels like you've really accomplished something.

There's nothing better than getting completely demolished by a monster, trying it a few more times, and then completely turning the tables. You figure them out and conquer them. And then you get to make wepaons out of their pieces.

Ok so what about Monster Hunter World? Remember when this was a review?

Attracting Casuals without Catering to Casuals

Right! So back to Monster Hunter World.

So, remember how I said earlier than Monster Hunter had a problem with explanations?

Monster Hunter World fixes those problems without turning the game into some generic, safe, AAA game where you mash X to pay respect to monsters.

You don't need to memorize the spots of items on the map, you have scoutflies which will make those spots glow and mark them on your map. Those same scoutflies will automatically mark monsters that you have enough investigations points for. You get those points by examining their tracks or marks they've left behind, and once you get enough to track the monster once, you basically know its location in every future hunt. And, after you've collected enough tracking info about the monster, it'll even tell you its elemental and status weaknesses as well as what it drops and how rare it is!

It also gives you more in game information about armor, weapons, and skills. Previously, you basically had to look up what skills actually did on some external site, but now almost all the information you could want is in the game itself.

However, even with all these awesome quality of life changes, it's still Monster Hunter. If you go in unprepared, you'll still get wrecked. Monsters are still agressive and do tons of damage. Attacks still have weight, you still can't dodge while stuck in animations.

All the good of more information without all the bad of dumbing the game down.

Gameplay Changes

That's not to say there were no changes to the gameplay.

Controls

It still controls the same as the other Monster Hunter games, but because its on a HOME CONSOLE AND PC instead of a handheld, you're guaranteed TWO WHOLE JOYSTICKS.

I never played ranged weapons on earlier portable incarnations because of it.

In MHW I've been playing the bow and love it.

The Slinger

In Monster Hunter World you get a slinger on your wrist. You can load it up with classic monster hunter items, like flash bombs to blind monsters.

However, there's lots of new things you can do with it. You can load up rocks to trigger environmental traps, like unstable rocks to drop on monsters head.

You can also use it to grapple on certain spots in zones, allowing you to get around quicker, but also allowing you to try to mount monsters or dodge attacks. There's nothing more satisfying that doing both at once.

The slinger is an excellent edition to the franchise, and complements the bigger, taller, more expansive zones in the game, which is something worth talking about on its own...

The Areas

In previous Monster Hunter games, you'd have a area that looked like this:

Each of those areas had a little loading screen between them, so fights were confined to one small area unless you or the monster left it. This meant that you could very quickly leave the zone and then be in NO DANGER until the monster came back.

Since we're console and PC instead of handhelds now, maps look like this:

The whole area is loaded at all times! Monsters will follow you if you walk away. Plus, the extra power allows them to do a lot more with the environment.

Not only does this lend another level of immersion to the world, it also means that...

Monster on Monster Action

Monsters will run into other Monsters like all the time!

Very few hunts only have 1 big monster in them. And very few monsters actually GET ALONG. MHW does a great job of making the ecosystem of the areas feel really alive.

Some monsters that you struggle to beat at first are just prey for bigger, badder monsters. And if a bigger monster finds some small fry on its turf, it'll throw down.

Some of these interactions are scripted, and some of it is just the AI going at it. It's pretty much always entertaining though, because the monster you were fighting still knows you're there. And be careful, because sometimes both monsters will decide that the biggest threat is the hunter!

These never fail to get a laugh, sigh of relief, or cause a tense moment. I love all the interaction between monsters.

Graphix Upgrade

Yeah I'm just gonna leave this here.

Monster Hunter 4

Monster Hunter World

Amount of Content

This feels like it's worth saying, but I don't want to give the impression that MHW is lacking in content.

It does have way less Monsters than Monster Hunter Generations, but that's almost cheating.

Since the engine was the same until MHW, Generations could just dust the cobwebs off the old monsters and port them in. It just had to update a few to handle the verticality added in 4.

For MHW they have to basically recreate everything from scratch, so they've created mostly new monsters and started porting over some old favs.

Hopefully, they'll keep doing this for some time to further increase the variety present in MHW.

All in all, though, I only saw the credits of MHW around hour 70, and there's still some end-game stuff to do!

Overall

I've really enjoyed my time with MHW. If you've never tried a Monster Hunter game, there's no better time to dive in.

It's easier to understand, easier to invite friends or even allow strangers to help, and still as good of a series as it's ever been, if not better.

And, even if you have played a Monster Hunter game, if you only got a few hours in before dropping it for any other reason than the core combat, maybe still give MHW a try. The increased accessibility might be just what the earlier games were missing for you!

In conclusion, I'll leave you with this clip, where we learn not to play around with live ammunition.

Watch What's this? from TalonExodus on www.twitch.tv

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boltaku · 8 years

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Overwatch or: How I Learned to Start Worrying and Hate the Hype

Overwatch is a team-based first-person shooter in which a team works together to complete a given mission. The mission you have to complete depends on the map type you're on, and there's a few different map for each mission objective.

It has a diverse cast of quirky characters that gives some necessary color and flavor to the game.

Sorry, I was describing Team Fortress 2 by accident, let me start again.

Overwatch is Team Fortress 2 but with simplified FPS elements and a larger, more diverse cast of characters.

Oh, but more importantly it's made by Blizzard's Marketing Department Entertainment.

Blizzard Entertainment is a subsidiary of ActiVision, but more importantly they have a hojillion dollars available to market their games.

Unrelated graph of the Blizzard marketing budget

It should be pretty obvious by this point that I'm not the biggest fan of Blizzard or of Overwatch. But, I'm going to attempt to explain why without sounding like an irrational hater.

Let's start with Blizzard's new modus operandi.

The New Blizzard Strategy

Blizzard has never been some perfect bastion of originality. There's no arguing that Warcraft, Starcraft, or Diablo were completely novel concepts. However, until recently, their games have always refined and synthesized existing concepts into a satisfying, complete game with plenty of depth.

Well, no longer. It's hard to exactly pinpoint what caused the change, but I think it'd be hard to argue that the ridiculous success of World of Warcraft didn't have a role in this. Their most casual friendly game to date was also profitable beyond their wildest dreams.

It seems only a natural conclusion that casual market = more money.

Since then, Blizzard's strategy is heavily monetized, simplified versions of games that already exist

But whatever right? It's not like it impacts me, they're just casual, simple games that I can ignore.

Why it Impacts Me, Why it Impacts the Industry

The game industry has always been full of copycats looking to make a dollar by following trends.

Meanwhile in mobile gaming pic.twitter.com/BtUwDqVEJz

— 27 Inch Garlic Hero (@Palle_Hoffstein)

May 18, 2016

Just think back to all the WW2 shooters back in the days of the PS2 or MOBAs being released these days.

What's successful steers the industry. If safe, casual retreads of ideas are what's profitable, that's what publishers are going to fund.

Much more importantly though, they're good gauges of what gamers are willing to accept.

The success of Diablo 3 was one of the first examples that gamers would accept a completely broken launch and always-online games.

The success of Hearthstone is another example that gamers as a whole are completely fine with paying to not grind.

Bringing it Back to Overwatch

Overwatch came out yesterday, after a completely modest marketing push.

Went to IGN to get an Overwatch ad and instead a monkey literally smashed the homepage.

Marketing has become an insanely powerful tool for generating hype. I mean, it's always been successful, but it's never been easier to generate buzz.

Now you can just pay known community artists to generate your buzz for you.

And of course the journalists are just salivating for those clicks

This kind of hype so inherently disgusts me, I can barely describe it. The fancomics and completely pointless (not to mention entirely derivative) animations seem to point to just how little the game itself has to show for itself.

It's a simple team FPS, with 12 maps total, yet from the general sentiment on the internet, it's the second coming.

Honestly, it's ingenious from Blizzard, though. Their marketing hits several different audiences at the same time:

1. The Blizzard Fanboys have things to link to their friends

2. Casuals get to remember your game exists. All the time.

But, the one that really irks me, is the emergent market that I've heard of, due to the prevalence (1) and (2)...

3. "All my friends are playing it, so..."

Because the hype is so intense, people who don't even care for the genre feel pressure to buy the game because their friends have been influenced by the hype. This isn't a made up category, I've already heard this reasoning from several people.

And on top of that, the fact that this game costs 40 dollars (or 130 dollars if you're an idiot), with day-one microtransactions. This is possibly one of the most gamer-unfriendly monetization models I've seen.

What We've Learned Here Today

1. Marketing dollars are a great investment, it can sucker in people who didn't even think they wanted it, due to peer influence

2. Gamers don't care about progressively more anti-consumer game pricing models, as long as there is sufficient hype

3. Out-of-game attention can make up for in-game deficiencies

Final Thoughts

These points are not exclusive to Overwatch or Blizzard. These are industry-wide problems that just happen to be demostrated by Overwatch as the most recent example.

I suspect in a month or two, I can reskin this article using whatever the next Game Du Jour gets rammed down my throat.

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boltaku · 9 years

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Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is a very different kind of Metal Gear game. Peace Walker essentially steals Monster Hunter's mission-based structure for a more multiplayer oriented experience. Well, steal is a pretty unfair word to use, as there's even Monster Hunter crossover missions baked into the game. If you've ever wanted to take down a Rathalos with the great Big Boss, here's your chance.

A lot of people consider this game the black sheep of the Metal Gear Solid installments, and they're not incorrect. Here's some core differences between MGS1-3 and Peace Walker:

MGS1-3 all feature a single, relatively seemless world to sneak around (technically, MGS2 had 2 of these, the Tanker and the Plant, but the idea is the same)

MGS1-3 are very heavily driven by in-engine cutscenes and codec calls

MGS1-3 gameplay is designed around deliberately designed one-time use set pieces to sneak around in

MGS1-3 feature boss fights against a quirky set of special agents

MGS1-3 feature very harsh penalties (especially on higher difficulties) for being detected, so sneaking is absolutely crucial)

MGS1-3 have you find weapons and items yourself throughout the game, usually as the plot dictates

And, the biggest different, MGS1-3 are all single-player for the main campaign

Peace Walker keeps the core controls, but ditches a lot of the staples of the series in favor of a completely different direction. If you're on board with a different experience, there's a lot to enjoy. If you're expecting the true "Metal Gear" experience, you probably won't enjoy Peace Walker as much.

Gameplay:

Peace Walker is entirely mission based. There's a main story that progresses in missions called "Main Ops", but there's far more to the game buried in the over-100 "Extra Ops" that the game offers. There's also a base-building section, where you build your Mother Base up as you complete missions and recruit enemy soliders.

Stealth / Controls

The controls pretty much match what you might expect from a Metal Gear game. You have lots of movement options to use in your sneaking, the only subtraction is that you can no longer crawl. The weapon and action controls are the same as the other Metal Gear games as well, as are the weapon / item submenu controls. The one departure is the CQC controls, which are far more streamlined than they've been before.

Where we start to run into a major difference, is that stealth doesn't matter nearly as much. You're highly encouraged to sneak still, and there are bigger benefits than ever to going non-lethal (more soldiers for your Mother Base). However, the simplified CQC controls make it trivial to take down a hoard of guards without much difficulty. You have much more health and health recovery options, too. The sight radius and AI of guards are also vastly diminished from the other MGS games. Normally this would be pretty damning for a stealth game, right?

However, this is Peace Walker. It's really half-stealth, half-action game. It's clearly designed from the ground up for coop play, meaning teaming up with a buddy or three to slap the crap out of some goofy soldiers. You're meant to team up with a friend and attempt to be sneaky, but the game wants you to have a fun time in each mission, even if you get caught.

Boss Fights

This leads into the boss fights. All of the boss fights in this game are against mecha, tanks, or choppers. Once again, in a normal Metal Gear game this would be awful, but Peace Walker pulls it off. The enemies are large enough, with enough health, to satisfy a party of 4, Monster Hunter style. All the bosses are very clearly designed to mimic the Monster Hunter pattern of a big 'creature' that you take down through teamwork and persistence.

Outer Heaven

I suppose I should also talk about the Mother Base portion of the game. It's ok. It's the mechanism by which you can acquire new items and weapons, and also train up your soldiers to play as. It's pretty mindless, though. Mostly just shuffling staff between teams and selecting what you want to build next.

The major benefit of having the system in the game at all is to encourage you to repeat missions with your buddies to recruit better soldiers to get cooler stuff to do MORE missions with your buddies.

Graphics:

It was a PSP game. It shows. Nothing looks particularly awful, though, and I quite like the hand-drawn cutscene approach.

Ultimately, they're servicable, which is the important part.

Sound:

The soundtrack feels worse than the other MGS games to me, many of the tracks feel very generic. Though, it's not bad, really, just kind of disappointing that it doesn't feature the composers for the other MGS games.

Story:

The story feels like a Metal Gear story. It's a bit simpler overall than the mainline titles, but it has a very similar feel to it. There's nukes involved, betrayals, conspiracy, all that sort of stuff.

It also feels like the story is less important to the game than the other mainline titles. I think this, again, has to do with the mission-based design of the game. You're not 'forced' to continue the narrative, and pretty much all of the radio conversations are optional.

There's plenty of character building optional dialogue in the hours and hours of tapes you'll collect though. So if that's what you're after, that's present, complete with many goofy and silly conversations that the series is known for.

Final Verdict / tl;dr:

Don't go into this game expecting a very tradition MGS title. If you do, you won't enjoy it very much, if at all.

I'd recommend playing this game you enjoy the MGS gameplay, but also enjoy more action-based titles. I'd also highly recommend having a friend or two to play through it with you. Most of my favorite moments from my playthrough stem from the situations created by having 2 players trying to sneak through a bunch of missions together. Unplanned alerts, some clutch saves, and amusing deaths all create a lot of fun situations and interesting scenarios.

And, hey, for a more traditional Metal Gear Solid game, I hear another one is on the way very soon...

#mgs coop good

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boltaku · 10 years

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Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Path

A fantastic fan translation for a fantastic sequel.

Story:

It's been a few months since everyone finally stopped yelling EXTRATERRATORIAL RIGHTS at Miles Edgeworth, so, obviously, Edgey needs to be called in once again to deal with those crazy people from Zheng Fa. It seems there has been an assassination attempt on the crazy country's leonine leader, and it's up to Edgeworth to find the culprit because that's how being a Prosecutor works. Anyway, after some finger-waggling and a little bit of Logic Chess, Edgey-boy bags the bad guy who murdered a member of the President's security detail, and that's the end of that. Or so you're led to believe. As per usual, this first case serves as the tipping point for the rest of the cases in the game.

At first glance, this seems to be pretty boiler-plate for the Ace Attorney games at this point. Toss in a few people from an older game, talk about your mommy or daddy issues, add a stupid circus or two, and there you have it. That's pretty much how they made Apollo Justice and Dual Destinies, right? Well, the great thing about AAI2 is that they do a remarkable job of interconnecting multiple cases across 18 years and making you actually become invested in all of the players on the chessboard. I mean, who really cared about Clay Terran (I'M FINE!!!)? For that matter, who even really cared about Apollo in his own game?

The main theme of AAI2 is really a prototype for Dual Destinies (dark age of the law/the ends justify the means), but handled way better. AAI2 explores what being a Prosecutor really means to Edgeworth, but it also shows how those who have chosen to uphold the law can use it as a weapon for both good and evil. In addition to that, the game also explores at great lengths the bonds between fathers and sons and how this relationship can affect the latter. Edgeworth's choice to become a Prosecutor after the death of his father is still a choice that haunts him to this day, and it's nice to see one of Gregory Edgeworth's associates show up and challenge Miles's beliefs.

And, finally, what's a good Ace Attorney game without a slew of great characters, new and old? There are definitely some great new characters (and breakdown animations) to go along with some familiar faces from especially the first game. The new Judge-and-Prosecutor combo is especially interesting despite initial appearances.

Gameplay:

So of course there's a new gimmick in AAI2, and that gimmick comes in the form of Logic Chess. Again, this concept seems like sort of a prototype of the Mood Matrix found in Dual Destinies, and, again, it's executed way better. Occaisionally when you really need to pull some important information from the person who is being interrogated, Edgey will engage his opponent in a battle of wits and thrown chess pieces known as Logic Chess. Essentially, you pursue different chains of inquiry as you interrogate a suspect and use their emotional cues to dictate the means by which you ask your questions. Keeping silent while a suspect grows increasingly agitated often leads them to spilling the beans about things they never wanted you to know. At other times, being too timid with someone mouthing off at you will just cause them to clam up even further. The context clues and sprites used as you are matching wits with your opponent are much better indicators of mood swings and emotional discrepancies than the odd flashing icons and strange beeping from Athena's Mood Matrix. The time limit for pursuing trains of thought during Logic Chess also add to the tension, especially when your opponent's crazy verbal outbursts take away large chunks of your remaining time.

I would also like to mention that the great Little Thief segments from the previous AAI game make a triumphant turn, letting you solve a case from the past while in the middle of a seemingly unrelated case in the present. The Little Thief reconstructions were my favorite part about AAI and I was happy to see them make another appearance.

Sound:

Wow, this was one of the best soundtracks out of the entire series. My personal favorite is "Investigation ~ Core 2011." The OST is definitely worth checking out.

Translation Quality:

It is quite easy to tell that the people who translated this game are very passionate about the Ace Attorney series. They effectively capture the tone that's so crucial to the other games and nail some great jokes and references. The dialogue is hilarious and touching as usual, and it's pretty tightly edited (with the latter cases being a little less polished than the first few). All of the diagrams and illustrations look fantastic, especially considering that many of them required replacement with English text).

So should you play this game?

Absolutely. If you are a fan of the Ace Attorney series at all, you need to play this game. It is a much better sequel and spiritual successor to the Ace Attorney lineage than Dual Destinies was. Interestingly enough, it pretty much succeeds in every way that Dual Destiny failed despite being made prior to it. The scope of the story is better handled, and it doesn't feel like you're getting bashed over the head with the theme (DARK AGE OF THE LAW). But, most importantly, you really care about all of the characters involved--even those minor throwaway ones that get murdered. It is a fantastic game, right on par with Trials and Tribulations as one of my favorite games ever. Go play this game immediately. And, while you're at it, why don't you give ol' Uncle Ray a hug?

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boltaku · 10 years

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Pokémon Battle Trozei!

An incredibly shallow puzzle game. The touch mechanic to drag a piece wherever you want it destroys any challenge. The game is basically just a giant type chart quiz, except there are no dual types so you have no idea if Snover is grass or ice. The visuals are really great though, and all the pokemon sprites are gorgeous. The one music track that plays is ok, but the problem is... it's the only track in the game. It's 5 tedious hours to get to the credits, and you capture maybe 30% of the dex. I won't be playing 5 to 10 more hours to catch 'em all.

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boltaku · 10 years

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Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

Naia (left) and Naiee (right), two brothers who lost their mother in an accident. Fast forward to the future, their father has fallen ill and they must make a journey to find the cure.

This game is more focused on the story rather than gameplay. It gives you very simple puzzles which are completed cooperatively with the two brothers. Each controlled with both joysticks on a gamepad (heavily recommended), or 2 separate sets of key bindings on your keyboard.

The game is split into an intro, 7 chapters followed by the epilogue. Each chapter presents some new type of gameplay mechanic which is nice so you don't get bored trying to get to the end of the story. It also sets you in a new unique environment with a side story to keep it very interesting. For a story based game, all of the "reading" is actually just based on visuals, as it has no voice acting or text to actually consume.

#pringpoints

Completed in 2:42.

Story : 9/10

Gameplay : 2/10

Sound : Lacking

Graphics : BEAUTIFUL

BENCHES : YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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boltaku · 10 years

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Fire Emblem: Fuuin no Tsurugi

TFW RNG

WOULD PLAY AGAIN 10/10

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boltaku · 10 years

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Ys V: Lost Kefin, Kingdom of Sand

It's not very good.

Gameplay:

Ys, this time around, is more like a Zelda game.

Well, really, it's more like they saw Zelda's sword mechanics and copied them poorly. Your sword swings are pathetic and hitbox detection is poorly implemented for both you and enemies.

The weird thing is, despite how awful your range is and how big some of the enemies hitboxes are, the game is still ridiculously easy.

There's also a magic system. You combine 3 elements of differing types to produce different spells, which I thought was really cool, until I realized that you can't use magic on almost all of the bosses. So, the whole system is pretty much pointless. Dang.

Graphics:

The sprites look fine for the SNES. Some of the effects look pretty neat.

Sound:

Unlike other Ys games, Ys 5 goes for a more orchestral soundtrack. It does its job, I suppose, but I still missed the more dynamic tracks from the other Ys games.

Story:

This is probably the most Ys thing about the game. Story isn't very important in any of them and that's the case for this one as well. It's there, it's mostly unobtrusive, cool.

Length:

Normally I don't really complain about length in games because there can be good and bad games regardless of length.

But for Ys 5, it's so short it feels like you never really do anything. You crawl through a handful of short dungeons, you unlock no new abilities -- there's almost nothing to it.

The game is devoid of content and it shows.

Final Verdict:

It's probably the worst of all Ys games besides maybe the original version of Ys 3.

There's very little to do in the game and what's there isn't very good.

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boltaku · 10 years

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Valkyria Chronicles 2

Valkyria Chronicles 2 is an ok sequel to a fantastic predecessor.

Gameplay:

The gameplay is pretty much the same as the first game, save for the addition of new classes and a shuffling around of some of the old classes. For example, Snipers are now a sub-class of Scout, and the Armored Tech is a bulky, melee-only new class. These changes mostly work out for the better, delegating some of the engineer's roles to Armored Techs, making Scouts a little less broken, that sort of thing.

However, the promotion system added is quite cumbersome. You unlock different types of credits to advance your units down the class tree, but the credits are determined arbitrarily depending on the unit's contribution to the current mission, so it can be hard to unlock the classes you want on the units you want. In addition, the classes aren't unlocked forever, so switching back and forth costs you credits each time. While an interesting concept, I think this system ultimately hurts the game, as you really just end up using a few already classed up units.

The maps, this time around, are much smaller. Since VC2 is on the PSP, obviously they couldn't render very large maps all at once. So, maps are broken down into areas, with bases connecting two areas. This creates some really silly situations where you're naturally stretched too thin (since there's a 6 unit max on the field), and it makes it fairly tedious to keep bases defended.

The filler is what killed me here. Whereas VC1's main focus was new and exciting story and side missions, VC2 has you put the lion's share of your time into pointless filler missions on repeated maps.

Between each story mission, of which there are 13, you're required to do between 3 and 4 filler missions. These missions have no story to them and they all take place on maps that you've already seen in previous story missions. They're really just there to pad the game out, and in that regard, they succeed. Expect to spend 3 hours on this mandatory grind for every 1 hour of actual new content.

Graphics:

For the PSP, the graphics are good enough. It's not really a concern here. Nothing looks too fantastic besides the pre-rendered cutscenes, but that's okay.

Sound:

Same awesome composer as the first Valkyria Chronicles. No complaints here.

Story:

The first Valkyria Chronicles had a pretty decent story. It wasn't too outlandish and there were some pretty good twists along the way. It served the gameplay well and the setting was coherent and made sense.

This game, on the other hand, is far more enjoyable if you just forget that it has a plot. It takes place in a Japanese High School slash European Military Institute. The characters all basically act like caricatures of high school students, and the story is laughable even when it tries to be serious. It turns up the friendship speeches to 11 and the villains are 1 dimensional at best.

Final Verdict:

Play this game if you liked the gameplay of the first and also really like to grind out missions. Don't play it for the setting, story, or if you're expecting a game as good as the first.

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