I’ve been struggling with Fable 2 – struggling with a dying Xbox and some frustrating bugs – but enjoying it greatly. I was originally going to compare it to Fallout 3, but it seems somewhat unfair. Suffice it to say that even as someone who vastly preferred Oblivion to Fable 1, I feel Fallout 3 – as the belle of the 4th quarter Western RPG ball, earning review 9s and positions on “Best of the Year” lists – is tremendously overrated, and poor Fable 2 is fabulously under-.

More...

I’m struggling to understand why I’ve replunged into Etrian Odyssey 2, the roguelike-ish DS game from Atlus that I dismissed as “too grindy and random-monstery for me” the last time around.

More...

I’ve never played Fallout or Fallout 2 but this brought me up to speed, sorta.

Hard and good like Clint Eastwood.

More...

The world is great, but ends badly.

Sometimes I think developers have a running joke where they can put anything they damn well please into a game as long as it occurs past the 20-hour mark, knowing no reviewer will ever get there. I wonder how many of the 10/10 reviewers of GTA IV ever got to Alderney, for example, and experienced the stale characters and repetitive mission fatigue.

I also wonder what to say about a game that is generally a thrill, with a number of innovative gameplay elements, a refreshingly non-cliched story and setting, and yet with an ending boss battle so frustrating that I’ll never get through it and find out how the story ends. Should I say this is a good game, since you’ll get many hours of enjoyment out of it, or condemn it for wasting your time by hooking you on a story that you’ll never get to finish without at least an hour of mindless repetition?

First, what it does right. As I’ve mentioned before, the setting is the modern day Shibuya district of Tokyo, albeit a strange alternate-reality version in which people who have died must play a brutal game to try and win their lives back. The characters aren’t far out of the JRPG norm, and neither is the dialogue. But the gradual unfolding of revelations about how the game works keep you involved in what is essentially a mystery narrative.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the game is that not only is the story about games, the gameplay incorporates the central thrusts of the story. Since Shibuya is fashion-obsessed, power-imbued ‘pins’ replace the weapons and abilities you’d normally have in an RPG. These pins have brands, and some brands are trendy in some areas, meaning they have enhanced power, or weakened in others. And if your characters wear a certain brand a lot, they will make it more popular in that area.

The combat itself is so different as to be nearly bat shit insane. You control two characters at once, in real time: one with the touchscreen at the bottom, and the other character on the top screen, controlled by simple sequences of d-pad presses. (You can let the upper character get auto-controlled, or you can just spam the forward button, but it’s eventually in your best interests to frantically glance up top and try to control what’s going on.) It’s crazy, but it speaks to a central theme – the need for protagonist Neku to overcome his isolation and learn to work with others.

What else? You buy food, and feed it to your characters; when they ‘digest’ it, they improve some stat or another (depending on the food, of course). You can adjust the difficulty at almost any time in a couple different ways: one is a slider that lowers your character’s level, but leads to more item drops; The other is a simple toggle between normal, easy and hard. If you fail a fight, you get an option to ‘replay on easy.’ The music and art are excellent samplings of J-pop and anime vs. graffiti, respectively. There’s an excellent minigame that uses your pins in a boardgame context, revealing new powers. And yeah – your pins will level up not only based on combat experience, but also how long you spend away from the game.

Thinking back, though, the problems with the final battle are foreshadowed early in the game. The ‘replay’ and ‘replay on easy’ options after a failed battle are only introduced partway through the game; before this happens, if you die in battle, it’s game over, go reload a save. Unfortunately, you can’t save during battle, nor can you skip over the cut-out ‘dialogue’ segments, and at more than one occasion this meant I had to replay not only the battle but an increasingly tedious dialogue exchange that landed on the wrong side of a save point.

The final battle – and I’ll describe this without story spoilers – warns you ahead of time that you better well save. That’s fine, okay. But then you slog through a few screens of real estate, run up against many a dialogue segment, and fight one or two bosses before you get to the real uber-boss, who is exponentially harder than any other boss you have faced.

Okay, you might think, that’s cause you suck at the game, D. Maybe so. Through most of the game I had my slider set to make me a lower level so I’d get more items – I love me some items! However, I’d frequently get killed during boss fights, and as I’m not playing to impress anyone here, I’d replay on easy. And I never had to retry more than once. It was that easy, on easy.

During this final fight, I did so, and proceeded to retry the battle on easy over and over again for an hour, then again for half an hour the next morning, and again later in the day, until my DS’ battery finally gave out, as did the battery that provides power to my patience. Now, if I wanted to go back and retry it with a more complementary selection of pins, say, I’d have to replay all of the boss fights and unskippable dialogue since the last possible save to do so.

There are (what I might propose as) two cardinal rules of gaming that have been broken here: watch the difficulty curve, and don’t create false difficulty through the withholding of save points.

So, where does that leave us? I’ll leave it up to you. If you can deal with either an awesome, incomplete game or a flawed, complete one, then this game is for you. I’m happy to have entered such a world, but ticked off that it ended so badly.

I’ve got GTA IV in my filthy little hands and I know my next gaming month will be spent near-exclusively in off-brand NYC, but I wanted to just squeeze out a drop of appreciation for my recent crush, The World Ends With You on the DS. It’s a Japanese RPG, but it’s so positively bursting with new ideas that it feels like an entirely new genre.

It’s set in the modern day, in a real location; combat is real-time and requires use of BOTH stylus and d-pad to control 2 characters at once; you can toggle difficulty settings at any time; brand awareness has gameplay implications; a major theme of the game is gameplay itself, that and urban isolation. Leveling and unlocking new abilities is largely handled through fashion-conscious ‘pins’.

But the thing that’s really blown my mind: your pins level up while you aren’t playing. This is a game that rewards you for not playing it. Yeah, go ahead and marinate on that shit for a while. (And when you come back, your pins will have leveled up.)

A few months ago I was talking about how playing Lost Odyssey would explode my brain in super nova like proportions. What was is that Treebeard said? Oh yeah, don’t be hasty. Don’t be hasty indeed! The opposite of what I assumed would happen occurred. I have been changed. Deeply and into the very core of the gamer that I am. Where once I bore disdain for menus and equipping and unequipping skills and items, now I can’t get enough of them! For you see, Lost Odyssey brought me back into the world of RPGs. And it can do the same thing for you, if you only let it.

Back when I popped disc one into the ol’sex machine 360 I clawed my eyes out in frustration at the epic opening that took fifty-two minutes to finally get through the credits. It was horrendous. For someone like me, any opening that takes more than ten minutes is absolute torture. The Gears of War opening is like my perfect start to a game. Now, I am no stranger to the world of turn-based RPGs or their anime storytelling roots. No no, I just hadn’t the taste for them since oh…1993. The last Final Fantasy I played was Mystic Quest and that was on the SNES and very low-impact considering how far RPGs have come. So after that I said goodbye to Final Fantasy of any kind and welcomed action-adventure styled role playing into my life with A Link to the Past and subsequent Hyrule Adventures. I dabbled in Golden Sun on the GBA and was aggravated by things like roaming battles and constant village detective work. I wanted to be fighting and figuring out puzzles, not speaking to every single bloody villager to find all the secret treasures and powers. Boring, said I. Annoying, said I.

The loss of turn-based fighting in my life was a happy one, and eventually my displeasure at that genre turned into a malicious disdain. I scoffed at the enjoyment others would derive from such long winded stories. Sure, they had by far the most extensive and satisfying cinematics, but there were also cliched characters I couldn’t stand and merry bands of annoying characters I wanted to hit in the face. I told you I was malicious.

So when D explained the game a bit I was horrified. I couldn’t play this game! I couldn’t stand skill setting and reading moral stories via power point (you recover memories in text form during much of the game). So D bet me twenty bucks I couldn’t finish the game. And so it began. Out of spite and full of bile I intended to finish what I had started. I went into it looking in every barrel or pot, I spoke with everyone I met. I was going to do this by the books.

The typical plot (as Toku had told me) of “magic energy coming into the world and bad things start happening” was present. The metaphor for Technology vs. Natural Order was in full effect and I do admire it, but “moral heavy” could describe Lost Odyssey with ease. The basic story of Lost Odyssey is that you are part of a group of immortals that have lost their memories of their immortal lives. They are all pawns in a game of power that spans an entire world and they must reclaim their memories in order to find their true purpose and stop the evil threat. I’m not going into specifics because I don’t want to spoil anything, and there is a lot to spoil, the game is huge. Again though, I admire the ideas and philosophies the main story and sub-stories express. If Japanese RPGs do one thing well it’s nailing the human condition and characteristics of a variety of personality types.

My spite drove me, I judged the characters (particularly the comic relief Jansen) harshly. I would finish the game, but I would never let in into my heart! Then all of a sudden, after I spent half an hour picking flowers and collecting torches for a burial ceremony, I found myself hooked. I was picking flowers and all I wanted to do was get through it so I could get back into the battles and get my immortals powered up. When I told D and Toku about what I was doing in the game I spoke in the first person, I had accepted the characters into my mind as parts of myself. I was on an adventure, a mission. I had to find out what was going on and why it was happening. I even began to rely on Jansen to relieve me with his funny lines after tense situations. I also valued his skill in battle. I was changing. The spite vanished and all that remained was a sincere desire to continue the journey, to finish the fight.

I knew going in that the biggest challenge for me was the turn-based combat thing. As a FPS lover I had a clicky trigger finger that ached for rapid firing action. There is no rapid fire in turn-based combat. There is first round analysis, second round strategy based on first round results, and then just sticking with the chosen plan until the battle is over, with healing in each round for defense. I took to it quickly, I could relax in a huge battle while at the same time I felt a tension, an angsty prolonged worry that dissipated as soon as that victory screen popped up and I saw all that my team had achieved in the battle. Each time I felt confidence in my team grow, I was proud of them and how they worked together.

I wasn’t focused on the navigation of menus, which I had been worried about – they became second nature to me. After each battle I would heal those who needed healing and mana up my magic users effortlessly. You need to set skill links between your immortals and mortals, as well, so that your immortals can gain valuable attributes and resistances. I methodically assigned the defensive skills first, then offensive, then miscellaneous ones like stealing. I managed the skills throughout the team for balance and effectiveness. I never thought I could think like that, never thought I could get through all that information. For so long I was only concerned with how much ammo I had. In this game, worrying about how many items I had was a pittance, negligible. I had bigger fish to fry. Big, damned awesome fish.

The battles were unlike anything I had ever experienced. I knew that as I got further into the game the battles would get tougher and the bosses would be epic. My magic would increase and my attacks would get awesome. I wasn’t disappointed. It was when I was in the middle of a half an hour long boss battle that I knew I was addicted. Toku and our other roommate wanted to go to a movie and I totally bailed on them. “I have to finish this battle!” They called me lame. I didn’t care. I reveled in my victory and wanted more. Lots more.

The story progressed, more memories were recovered, my emotional investment grew. It was comforting to start up the game, fit into my menus and manage my different groups of characters. The music was invigorating as well as soothing, it moved me and motivated me. The cutscenes were striking, and sometimes lasted twenty minutes minus the few moments where I would move characters barely a few steps and another scene would start. There was fire, there was water, there was ice. All terrible in intensity. All begging me to stop the destruction of this world before it was too late. I pushed on, sometimes hours at a time before a save point would surface.

All my judgements, all my assumptions faded away. I was playing. I was experiencing an adventure. For all my talk of immersive storytelling I had never spent twenty minutes picking flowers, or spending ten minutes slowly walking through an ice storm simply to get to a save point with no battles whatsoever. That is immersive, that is experiencing an adventure.

Lost Odyssey has humbled me as a gamer. I had seen a light, through the mist as it were, and it brought me happiness. I didn’t see four discs anymore and groan at the long haul I was in for. Now, I saw a world I would enter and a story that I didn’t want to really end. I even slowed my playing to savour it just a little bit longer. Lost Odyssey is a game I can’t see myself replaying for a long, long time. Yet, the feelings I’ve had from playing it will stay with me forever.

Of that, I am certain.

Here’s a veeeery interesting post from Matthew Baldwin that draws a parallel between the mounting mysteries in Lost and leveling in role playing games.

During each show you gain a little experience in the form of new information: about the island, the characters, or both; every four episodes or so you level up, as some (allegedly) major piece of the overall puzzle falls into place. After leveling up in a CRPG, you typically head to Ye Olde Flail ‘N’ Scented Candle Emporium, sell all your current equipment, and buy the improved weapons that your enhanced abilities now allow you to wield; likewise, after a revelatory LOST episode, fans chuck all their old theories into the dustbin and cook up new ones consistent with the revised facts. Then, having done so, each—the player of a CRPG, or the viewer of LOST—is handed a brand new quest, or puzzle, or plot plot. The ephemeral thrill of leveling vanishes, replaced by a longing to hit the next milestone. You never disembark from the treadmill, it just goes faster.

I think he’s right on with the precedents he sites: Twin Peaks and The X-Files. I guess it’s no surprise that these are two of my favourite shows, and that I seem to like the video games a little bit. Also, check out the post about the surprising amount of swears in Lost scripts. Holy. Fucking. Shit.

We’ve been talking about JRPGs a lot lately, so this seems topical: a review of Barkley: Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden. Story summary:

Protagonist (and former NBA star) Charles Barkley is a haunted, troubled man with a dark past, but a noble heart. He lives in the future dystopia of Neo New York – a fearsome place where basketball has been abolished and most of his friends slain – trying, as best he can, to make a life for himself and his son Hoopz… but first he must dodge the authoritarian intentions of Michael Jordan, who believes Barkley to be responsible for the civilisation-wrecking Chaos Dunk.

Here’s a trailer.

More...

Well, I’ve been out of Toronto for many a day and also without any of my worldy gaming possessions. So I’ve not touched the sexy, shiny four-disc adventure as of yet. It’s also a strict hardcore rpg. I fear those kinds of games.

Yet I want to play this one!

So, I borrowed it from my friend who works night shift and I just got back from waiting on a somewhat well-lit street corner of Toronto in the early am to pick it up. In freezing cold weather. See how much I’m giving to this game already? It not only owes me a back rub, but I better get some sweet addictive gameplay for my troubles.

I’m worried that I’m not smart enough to play the game. Or that I don’t have the gaming chops to pull it off. But I am going to try, hot damn, I am going to try.

So, after I sleep for a bit I’m going to start my day with a heaping bowl of rpg goodness.

I’m really going to try and hammer my way through this one. Blue Dragon was asking way too much of me…but I think I can handle this one.

Updates to come…

… is pretty good and gives a sense of what it was like to be there.

Also in the GDC news pile: the sequel to one of the weirder games of last year , the RPG-puzzle game Puzzle Quest, is set in space. How awesome is that?

I’m now about 7 hours into Lost Odyssey and my feelings are mixed. On the one hand this is a quality traditional Japanese role playing game with many powerful, emotional moments. On the other hand, it’s got a massive learning curve issue that goes by the name “Bogimoray”. But I’ll help you beat that bastard in another article (over here).

More...

Bogimoray. Bogmeister. Bog-sucking bog-fucker from the planet bogg. Man did this dumb worm piss me off. (This is the boss in Lost Odyssey that’s waay too hard waaay too early.) So I wrote this up to spare some poor souls the grief. If you’re not a google searcher for ‘bogimoray’, you probably don’t want to read this, but if you are, read on for the Angry Robot patented anti-bogimoray success™ recipe!

More...

Okay so like what a year ago this trailer was released and I went crazy insane over the song. The trailer had me, I didn’t need to know anything other than I wanted to play it so badly. The music was epic and struck right to my core.

The recent ads have given me pause, however.

More...

It’s a delicious cocktail of button-mashing coke and character-leveling smack, and that’s why I’m still playing Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom, a game with so many flaws you fear it might shatter into a million pieces in your 360’s drive tray. But I’m not going the way of Belushi, Phoenix and Farley, I’m gonna kick this habit. Or at least find a dealer with a better supply.

You face wave after wave of submoronic AI, the quote-story-endquote is so incomprehensible the developers don’t even try to tell it – why am I selling swords to the Buddha? Fuck knows! – and if the repetitive level designs don’t get you, the shamelessly linear paths through them will. Hope you like invisible walls! Yet, it has the odd charm – monsters like the four-headed spinning top turtle boss and the ‘flesh spears’, aka Freud’s nightmare aka subterannean rape sticks, are pretty neat-o.

Some people love action games; I can take ‘em or leave ‘em. But throw in some RPG elements like leveling up, modifying weapons and unlocking spells and suddenly gameplay takes a giant leap from the 80s into – well, at least the mid-90s. This game has just enough different characters and nice weapons and spells to keep you hacking and slashing just a little more to see what new kind of ‘bommyknocker’ or ‘headbanger’ or ‘gunsword of piercing’ fat, slow Duane might rend from the bones of his vanquished foes’ magically vanishing corpses.

But I’m trying to quit. I could probably find a better action RPG on the DS, say, or just find a Mac port of Diablo and be done with it. Yet in the back of my mind there’s Duane, flailing the shit out of some poor mentally-challenged Lightning Knight. Damn!

I was thinking about which games I have played the most of this year, and number one has to be a tie between Oblivion and my hockey pool.

More...

So I’m finally finished this badboy. Might as well check in with updated thoughts.

More...

After a long wait, through months of delays, Bioware’s RPG epic Mass Effect is finally here. I’ve gotten about 12 hours in, although I’ve been playing for 14 hours. More on that in a moment.

Mass Effect is many things, and your enjoyment of it will likely reflect what you expect it to be. If you’re looking for a rich scifi storyline set in a detailed world, you will love it. If you like RPG shooters – an odd category to be sure, but one shared with Bioshock at the very least – you’ll enjoy this, after a steep learning curve. If you’re looking for a step forward in interactive entertainment, or (even less modestly) the pinnacle of modern gaming experiences, you’ll be somewhat disappointed.

More...

Okay I have to get this off my chest…

If the worst happens, at the very least I can say I told you so.

On October 30, IGN UK broke the story that Lucasarts and Bioware were teaming up to create an undisclosed “Interactive entertainment product”. The news brought a giddy smile to my face. How could it not? In 2003 Bioware and Lucasarts teamed together to make one of the most enjoyable RPGs I have ever played. But the sequel left a bad taste in my mouth.

More...