HitmanN talks games'n stuff

'Budget Price' Review: Project Sylpheed (X360)

2009-04-20T03:20:00.000-07:00

"Project Sylpheed is a space shooter/sim, and it surprised me"

I wasn't honestly expecting much from this game, and at first the controls felt awful and way too arcade-y for my tastes, but after couple of evenings, I really started to enjoy the game. Yes, it does get repetitive, as the only thing you really do is shoot down spacecraft of basically four variety: fighters, attackers (think of bombers), small spaceships and large spaceships, with a few special ones mixed in. However, it's no more repetitive than any average shooter, like quake or unreal tournament against AI opponents. If you're fine with battling against AI, then that's not a problem with this game.

The story is fairly short and simple, cliché but entertaining. You're playing as Katana, a cadet flying a new type of special fighter on a training mission, when some rebel forces attack, and the whole affair turns into a galaxy-wide war. I hated the last mission, but everything else until then is great fun.

The flying physics are semi-realistic. You can float around on inertia alone, but there are some special moves that break this rule, like a 180 degree sharp turn, which is pretty much the only way to avoid collission if you're heading towards a giant ship while on afterburners. You also slow down quickly after using afterburner, rather than retain the gained speed. There's also quick side-rolling to dodge fire or collissions. Fighters can't seem to collide in each other though, but rather go through each other. Such occasions are quite rare though.

The thing about the weaponry in this game is that it favors targeting multiple fighters at once, as well as very heavy weaponry that can take out huge battleships in couple of attack runs. It's more arcade than dogfight. I learned to adapt though, even though I'm more fan of space sims like Conflict: Freespace (on PC). Special maneuvers allow firing with multiple weapons at once, slow motion aiming and quick ramming attack. There's a good variety of weapons, but many of the new ones you gain are just improved versions of the old ones.

Missions consist of basically attacking, defending or escorting, but the difference is simply just where and when you apply your attacks. For most of the game you also have a wingman, and 2nd flight consisting of two fighters, which you can give a few different kinds of commands. Nothing genuinely effective though, as even such a simple command as 'defend that target' doesn't exist. The commands don't make much difference except if you send your buddies in the center of an enemy fleet. Then they can get shot down. Normally they all survive. The only thing that really sucks about missions is that they have a time limit. Even if you've just eradicated 99 out of 100 enemies, and the time runs out, it's game over. Very frustrating artificial difficulty factor until you've learned the controls well enough to not run into the limit so easily.

It took me about 4 or 5 evenings to finish the game, but I enjoyed playing it over for a second time, to collect the remaining weaponry. Achievements in this game are medals granted after missions if certain objectives were met. They're pretty easy to gain on the second playthrough at latest.

Music is decent, sometimes even great. Voice acting varies. Announcers in battles are good, but some plot characters sound shallow.

All in all, doesn't last for very long, but is a surprisingly fun space shooter/sim.

Scoring:

Visuals: 8/10
Audio: 8/10
Gameplay: 8/10
Lasting value: 7/10

Overall: 8/10

Review: LEGO Indiana Jones (Xbox 360)

2009-04-18T05:29:00.000-07:00

"Quite fun platforming and puzzle solving."

Got this bundled with my 360. Thought it'd be too childish for me, but I actually enjoyed it once I bothered trying it. It's the first LEGO game I've tried, so I didn't really know what to expect.

Basically, what you do in this game is control one character at a time (out of 2-4), to jump and climb around, solving fairly straightforward puzzles (I never got stuck for more than a few minutes at worst), consisting of mostly fetching an item to operate another, to build something out of LEGO blocks to be used in a variety of ways, or to destroy something by smashing or throwing something at it. Occasionally you get areas with bad guys, which you punch and kick around, or you can pick one of their weapons (if they were carrying some) and use them. Since it's a LEGO game, you got no blood, just people and things turning into heaps of LEGO blocks.

You can switch between the available characters, to take advantage of their special skills to reach certain places, like women jumping higher or smaller character crawling through tunnels. The problem with this is that oftentimes the characters you are not controlling, are doing either nothing, or something completely stupid. They can hardly even fight back when surrounded by baddies. It's really annoying to be chased by a bad guy, wanting the other characters take care of it, while you concentrate on some more important task... but it never happens. You gotta get rid of the bad guy yourself, and usually by then another bunch of baddies appears. It gets annoying pretty fast. Luckily, you don't have lives in this game. When you 'die', you only lose some money you've collected during the current stage. And there's tons of money, so die as much as you like.

With the money you collect, you can unlock special characters to be used in freeplay mode (once you've completed a stage, you can play it again with any of the characters you've unlocked), to fetch treasures you couldn't find or reach in the story mode. The treasure only counts towards completion percentage of the game, so all that is optional, if you're not planning to complete the game to 100%. It's not a big challenge though, so why not. I played the game for less than a week and got about 85% completion, plus over half of the achievements unlocked for the game. It's easy Gamerscore points at least.

The story part of the game is split to three stories, each loosely based on the original Indiana Jones movies. The cutscenes are fairly funny, though it helps a lot to understand them if you've seen the movies. You just might wonder why that one guy suddenly runs for a cup of water and drinks from it near the end of the Last Crusade, if you haven't seen the movie.

Things get a bit repetitive, but the stages aren't very long, the puzzles are easy-ish and you can't die, or have to start over the entire stage, so it's good fun for a week or two of casual gaming.

Scoring:

Visuals: 9/10
Audio: 9/10
Gameplay: 7/10
Lasting value: 7/10

Overall: 8/10

Review: Midnight Club: Los Angeles (Xbox 360)

2009-03-06T08:55:00.000-08:00

Midnight Club: LA is street racing with great ideas but bad execution.

(I originally wrote this review while being completely fed up with some things in the game. I don't want to give off the impression that the game is totally bad, because it's not. It just takes more patience and tolerance than average to play through it.)

I really really wanted to like this game, but the things that would've made it fun have been totally ruined. Learning the map and the positions where civilian vehicles appear as obstacles has a much greater impact on your performance than learning to drive the vehicles. And even if you do learn the maps, the game cheats. In addition to the classic AI cheating, which makes AI drive faster and more intelligently if you're in the first place, and slower and worse if you're in last place, the game amplifies your penalties depending on your position in race. Crash in the first place, and your vehicle is often gonna flip twenty times around, wasting 10-20 seconds of time at worst, while such effects never happen if you're in the last place (at least not during my 30-40 hours with the game). Difficulty isn't flexible at all. Buy a better car for a tournament you lost last time, the AI drivers will have better cars too. Upgrading the vehicle doesn't improve your results in the end. I really got sick of these fake and artificial difficulty factors.

So, how about going online then? Sure, against other players with nothing but the best tuned up to the max. You gotta finish half the offline game just to get a vehicle good enough to compete. That, plus there was hardly any civilian/npc cars online. It's purely a matter or knowing the map and about how fast your vehicle is.

What I found great in the game were the visuals and city map itself. It's fun to just drive around exploring every now and then. The weather effects look great (loved driving in rain, despite the added difficulty), it's fun to play hide'n seek with the cops, listening to their radio chatter, etc. Music was ok, though required turning off third of the tracks to be enjoyable. (Sorry, ain't a fan of rap and such).

Basically everything about the game is good enough, except the racing itself. Instead of making the game easier for the player if they get stuck, the little progress you make is hindered with even worse penalties than before. Not even halfway to the game and most races require you to not mess up a single time. It's just simply not fun, and definitely not challenging the way a challenge should be presented.

I would've liked the game better if the AI raced with a fixed pace, so that if you learn to drive faster than how they perform, you can go past them just as much as your performance is better, without the AI closing that gap instantly with ridiculously maximized performance. I know I'm not the best with racing games, but I've played my fair share. I'm just wondering how horrible experience this is for someone new to racing games. Definitely NOT recommended for beginners!

To summarize: Basically, driving is fun, racing is not. Not a totally horrible purchase at under 25€, which I bought it for, though, I suppose.

An expansion for this game is due for online release next week, and despite not exactly loving this game, I'll probably give it a try. Maybe I'll enjoy some of the new content. Might post a review later on.

Scoring:

Visuals: 9/10
Audio: 8/10
Gameplay: 6/10
Lasting value: 7/10

Overall: 7/10

'Budget price' review: Blue Dragon (Xbox 360)

2009-03-06T08:52:00.000-08:00

Blue Dragon is a very traditional JRPG.

This is the first RPG I played on my 360. After a few hours of playing, the first impression I got was that the game felt a lot like Final Fantasy V, as to how the character development works. Just like in FF5, where you assign jobs for the characters to learn skills that you can equip for the character, in Blue Dragon you assign classes for the Shadow creature of each character, and can then equip certain number of skills learned from them at a time. The difference is that in Blue Dragon you can ultimately equip more skills, and many of the attack skills have a large area of effect, meaning that in later parts of the game, battles consist of nothing but attacks on all or half of the enemies. Basically, if you don't avoid random encounters, the characters will become so powerful that there's no challenge in the battles at all, down to the last bosses.

Another thing lacking a bit is the story. With the toy-ish and silly character and villain designs, the story doesn't feel serious until the latter half of the game. The monster designs are imaginative, but not very interesting.

Music is a mixed bag. Definitely not one of Uematsu's best compositions. Piano tunes were nice in the few places they happened.

Graphics look ok, though a bit too simple in some places for the current generation of consoles. Framerates dropped quite heavily in many battles too, probably because of the shadow creatures. Too much small detail in such simple designs, I guess.

Not an easy game to score gamer points in either. I finished the game with level 70 characters and had gotten less than 100 points. I sure hope maxing out some levels or shadow ranks will grant a lot more, because I doubt I'll be playing the game much more than that.

With the current low prices though, this is an ok purchase if you're not tired of JRPG's yet. Just be prepared for a very retro, old-school game, which feels like something from early 90's, with modern graphics.

Scoring:

Visuals: 8/10
Audio: 7/10
Gameplay: 7/10
Lasting value: 7/10

Overall: 7/10

'Budget price' review: Eternal Sonata (Xbox 360)

2009-03-06T08:48:00.000-08:00

Eternal Sonata is a JRPG, about a fantasy world the famous composer Chopin dreams of on his deathbed.

I have to admit, I wasn't expecting much out of the game, but it managed to surprise me a little. I can understand that some people can't stomach this stuff, mainly because it has its share of clichés, like repetitive battles and very linear story progression.

The game plays very much like for example Star Ocean games, except in battles the characters move one at a time, for a few seconds, hitting and slashing the enemies, performing special attacks or using items from a limited item bag. It's a shame that the battles are turned into a button mashing event after about 1/3 of the game. Until then, you can spend time planning your moves before executing them. Later on you have to act right away. What could have been a tactical battle system with emphasis on character positioning and approach, is actually just a pure action fighting system. Quite repetitive, but satisfying if you're used to this stuff. For a challenging experience, I recommend skipping some battles, so you fight with lower level characters. In many JRPG's that would be a suicide. In this one, it's actually possible.

What I loved about the game is the music. I'm a big fan of Motoi Sakuraba's works. It's not overly epic, but still gives this grand feeling to everything that is supposed to seem big and meaningful.

I played with Japanese voices, which were quite nice. Can't comment on English voices. I always choose Japanese over English if there's a choice. I've got too many bad experiences with English dubs, so yes, I'm biased.

Graphics are a mixed bag. I really loved the graphics throughout the first half of the game, but later on you get some repetitive corridors and psychedelic stuff. I guess it's supposed to go together with Chopin's feelings as he progresses through the world he's dreaming of on his deathbed, or something like that. It's not horrible, but I liked the first few locations better.

Characters are shown in a somewhat cel-shaded type look, with outlines of the body and items in a pencil-like way, and strong shading for surfaces that are not lit. Works ok, I think. Character and enemy designs are mostly cutesy stuff, so don't expect terrifying monsters or stuff like that. There is no blood, even when people die of wounds.

Each chapter of the game has a moment where the story is quite crudely set aside, and a brief slideshow of photos with Chopin's life story start playing, along with his compositions playing on the background. I actually went through with all these slideshows, but couple of times I thought they broke the story a bit. Like playing right after a dramatic event.

Almost everything in the game seems to be named after instruments or musical terms or styles of music. In a way it seems a bit cheap solution, but hey, it's supposedly a musical genious' dream. I think it fits ok. The whole JRPG world approach actually works nicely when it's a dream world. Under normal circumstances, you wouldn't find treasure chests littered all over the place, but in someone's dream... it's at least a bit more credible.

The game is of average length. Playing through the main story takes about 30 hours. There's at least some extra to explore though. I doubt I'll be playing this again anytime soon, but with the low price it's sold at right now, it's a bargain if you like JRPG's even a little bit.

Scoring:

Visuals: 9/10
Audio: 10/10
Gameplay: 7/10
Lasting value: 7/10

Overall: 8/10

Reviving the blog

2009-03-06T08:43:00.000-08:00

I hardly updated my blog in 2008, but now I have a little more reason to. I acquired an Xbox360 last christmas, and have been playing some games with it. So, in addition to PC and PS2 game reviews, expect some for 360 games as well.

The reviews will also be shorter from now on. I've been writing some reviews on games at Play.com, and will probably copy-paste those here as well. I'm going to start with reviews of Eternal Sonata, Blue Dragon and Midnight Club: LA, all for the 360.

I hope my opinions will be of use to you.

'Budget price' review: Star Wolves (PC)

2008-08-19T11:04:00.000-07:00

I've been doing a lot of bargain bin scavenging lately, and have been purchasing games that look interesting, but have not heard of before. Purchasing games developed by independent small studios has taught me that sometimes you can find awesome games that rival even the latest of popular releases in depth or innovation. Star Wolves is one such title. I had not heard of it before, but picked it up from a bargain bin, and managed to have a good time with it for a good couple of weeks.

If I'm not mistaken, the developer is from Russia, which wouldn't be surprising, since some other good Russian sci-fi titles have been released in recent times as well. Space Rangers 2, to name one. Star Wolves is not a perfect game, but for its price it's excellent. Now to the actual review.

Star Wolves
The game itself can be classified as a real-time strategy game (or RTS), but it has much bigger emphasis on tactics than your average title. However, it's hard to put the game under just one genre, because it also has elements of roleplaying games and adventure in it.

If you haven't guessed from the name of the game, everything takes place in space. The player commands a large mercenary spaceship called Star Wolf, and up to six fighters that can be deployed or docked at the Star Wolf (usually referred to as 'Mothership').

"War in space. Are you ready to pay its real price?"
Star Wolves takes place somewhere couple of centuries in feature (I forgot the actual year, but I think it was 23rd century). Mankind has colonized many star systems, and everything is governed by an Emperor. In turn, everything in space belongs to three corporations, each with their own agenda. For example, one of the corporations (The Triad) is basically mafia. The whole concept of mankind separated in such simple factions is a bit silly, but it provides a good base for conspiracies and alliances. At the beginning of the game, there are two additional hostile factions that are mostly at war with the corporations. Pirates, and Berserks. Berserk's are basically the same as Cylons in Battlestar Galactica. Artificial Intelligence, created by humans, gone rogue. The latter parts of the story introduce additional enemies, but I don't want to spoil anything.

The player's story starts at the newly-established mercenary unit Star Wolves. There's no deep history preceding the beginning. All you really need to know is that the main character (referred to as 'Hero'), and his good friend Ace are the founders of the Star Wolves, and currently looking for jobs to take on. The game progresses mission by mission, so there's no free flying from system to system. It feels restrictive at first, but most missions provide alternate paths and bonus objectives, so you'll always feel like you're playing at a brand new sandbox. There's normally 1-3 missions to choose from. Sometimes you can only choose to accept one, and it has a slight impact on the progress of the story. For example, you may choose to assist the mafia or to defend another corporation from the mafia's attacks. Everyone wants to hire the Star Wolves at some point though.

Along the journey you'll meet several characters that you can choose to recruit in your team. Some join automatically. Up to six characters can join, so opting to not recruit a character can allow another character to join later on, that you otherwise wouldn't be able to recruit. This provides a little replayability, as you can form a slightly different team each time.

Birds
While on a mission, every character can pilot a fighter. Each fighter has a certain amount of armor and shield capacity. Naturally, when taking damage, shields are depleted first, then armor. Once armor hits zero, the fighter is destroyed. If a fighter from the player's team is downed by enemy fire, the character doesn't die. Instead they float in the space in an escape pod, and can be picked up by the Mothership and be deployed with another fighter (provided that you have spare ones). Losing a fighter is not a big deal in the early stages of the game, but later on ships become special, and it's extremely hard to get good ships sometimes, because of their price and availability on the market. The Mothership on the other hand is vital. Its destruction means 'Game Over', and can happen fairly easily too. Even with additional equipment, the shields and armor are limited, so it's a good idea to keep the Mothership away from large battles, and only bring it in to assist in decisive attacks.

Weapons are divided in four types. Small guns (basically rapid-firing), Large Guns (Lasers, Plasma, Heavy cannons, etc), Missiles (guided) and Rockets (dumbfire). Each fighter can house a number of weapons, but only either small guns or large guns. Each character has a weapon speciality, which often dictates the choice of ship and weaponry, but with good tactics it is possible to neglect the speciality in favor of having more of a certain weapon type.

Fighters and Mothership can also have additional modules on them, with various effects, such as shield boosters, anti-missile systems, emergency and active repair systems, etc. Some roles in battle require certain systems to be fitted on a fighter in order to be performed.

Wings
Battles in Star Wolves can be extremely hard at times. How well your characters perform in battle largely depends on their fighter configuration and the correct usage of special skills. Each character has a set of special skills that can be enabled for a set amount of time, for certain number of times during each mission. It is extremely important to not waste skills when not necessary, because they often win battles. Most skills either temporarily boost the fighter's capabilities (ie. higher accuracy, faster fire rate, more damage..) or mess with the systems of either friendly or enemy fighters (shield restoration or depletion, for example). Some skills almost completely nullify damage for a period of time, or completely disable an enemy fighter for a short moment.

In addition to skills, the characters can form teams, also referred to as wings. Being a leader of a wing, or a wingman can increase the wing's performance if the characters have learned proper skills. For instance, it is a good idea to have an anti-missile specialist in a wing. Some tasks, like anti-missile defense and repair on-the-fly prevent a fighter from firing weapons at the same time though, but are necessary to survive under special conditions.

All characters have a traditional skill tree, from which they can learn skills after they've gained enough experience in battles. Some characters have multiple roles available, so specializing can be most effective.

The loot
After a succesful mission, the team receives a reward, and can sell or keep the leftovers from enemy ships. Selling the loot is usually much more profitable than the mission reward itself. You can also purchase new fighters and equipment between missions. It is a good idea to keep the fighters up-to-date, but it's just as important to still rely on the old ones if needed. Sometimes a battle goes horribly wrong, and the only thing you have left is that old fighter you used early in the game, and that fighter can be your ticket to completing the mission.

The space
Graphics in Star Wolves are quite nice for its price range and age. You can zoom in on the action, pause the game at any point and gaze at the battles from different angles. You won't probably find yourself doing this much though, since every second can count in a battle, and activating a skill or changing the battle plan at just the right time can make a huge difference in the outcome. Background look really pretty though. The space feels deep enough, even though the maps are fairly small in size, and moving from a location to another takes often less than a minute in average game speed.

The quality of the music is debatable. It's a combination of rock and light trance/techno. Gets a little repetitive at times, but if you like this type of music, then you'll feel at home. I rather enjoyed some of the tracks.

Sounds are pretty subtle, and you don't hear them much when you're zoomed out on the map, viewing the battle from a manageable distance.

Voice acting is... quite horrible, to tell the truth. There isn't much of it though, so it's not a big issue. And the grammar can be silly sometimes. The translations were not paid much attention to, but it didn't ruin the experience. Just sounds a bit silly sometimes.

The good and the bad
Now that I have explained the game in fair detail, it's time to evaluate it as a whole. Star Wolves is first and foremost a fairly slowpaced game, and can be extremely difficult at times. For a casual gamer this can be a huge problem in the beginning of the game, but as soon as you learn the correct pacing and usage of skills and equipment, the game can become a real treat. Missions are often full of surprises, and it can be tons of fun to react to changes and observe the outcome. Game can be saved at any point, allowing safe step-by-step progression through missions, if you don't like being under constant pressure. It is not necessary to keep all fighters intact through missions though, so I recommend accepting the losses if you manage to complete a mission. It can make things harder for the next mission, but it also adds a level of challenge that can still be overcome, which I haven't seen in any other game in quite a while.

The game is also relatively stable. During the entire two weeks I played, the game crashed only twice, and I came across only one bug (broken saved game file).

Scoring
Visuals: 8/10
For the game's price, the graphics are very nice, especially backgrounds. Ships at close range can look a bit blocky and weird.

Audio: 7/10
Horrible voice acting for the most part, rather subtle sound effects at normal viewing distance, decent music.

Gameplay: 8/10
Challenging game. Maybe even too much at times, as correct usage of tactics, skills and equipment can make a huge difference. If you're up to it though, the game offers lots of interesting scenarios.

Lasting value: 8/10
It is possible to get frustrated with the game at times, and the mission-by-mission progression of the game can feel repetitive at times, but overall the game is worthy of being played to the very end at least once. Alternate story paths and team member selection also provide some replayability.

Overall: 8/10
A solid strategy-RPG title. Provides a unique take on tactical space battles.

'Budget price' review: Arc the Lad 3 (PSX)

2007-11-22T04:09:00.000-08:00

Here's another 'budget price' review, this time of an old release, rather than an indie game. Since it's an old game, the scoring is quite forgiving, and concentrates on the fun factor and playability, rather than visuals or audio, as those are obviously outdated by today's standards. Anyhow, here goes.

Arc the Lad 3
Arc the Lad series has always piqued my interest with the fact that it's a TRPG (Tactical Role-Playing Game), in other words, the battles are done on square/grid -based fields, where position and approach matters, unlike in most other Japan -originating RPG's, where the party and enemies are in rows and exchange attacks. Not that I have anything against the traditional setup, but adding a tactical aspect to it is always a bonus in my books.

Arc the Lad games 1-3 were released on the original Playstation, while the next two were released on Playstation2. At the time of typing this review, I'm already working on the next Arc the Lad title, Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits.

Let's start with the story...
The story in Arc the Lad series continues, and at least in case of the first three games, some characters appear in multiple games. The main adversary most of the time seems to be the Evil One, who is about to be resurrected. The classic way of banishing the Evil One seems to be sealing it inside a magical ark, but other methods have been applied as well. To not spoil everything, I'll let you speculate what the case is this time.

In this part of the Arc the Lad story, the world is recovering from The Great Disaster that happened in the previous title. Much of the world is in ruin, but a handful of towns on various continents have survived, and are trying to rebuild the society again. Some groups are researching the lost technologies, others getting rid of monsters and bandits that are still plentiful in all areas.

Alec, the main protagonist, along with his extremely annoying friend Lutz are living a peaceful life in a village on a relatively small island. However, one day bandits raid the village, and while the villagers are being helf captive while the bandits loot the village, Alec and Lutz manage to sneak out to call for help. In this case, the only help they could rely on is the international Hunter Guild. Hunters are people that take on almost any kind of work, mostly specializing in monster extermination and bandit bashing. Our duo finds their way to a nearby guild, and hires a hunter to take down the bandits, which he does in matter of seconds upon reaching the village. Alec, impressed by the hunter, now wants to be one too. He decides to leave the village and become a hunter. Lutz insists to tag along, and off they go. To become a hunter, one must pass a test at the guild, which is basically the first task ahead.

On a mission
Once Alec receives his hunter's crest and is officially in business, he starts to take on jobs at the guild. Unfortunately for all you battle enthusiasts, half the jobs are basically about running errands to people and attempting to complete mini-games. While not all of these need to be accepted, some of them may have unexpected rewards in form of items or weapons.

In addition to jobs, each guild has six 'wanted monster' posters up, and these monsters can be hunted down in nearby locations for extra cash and experience. These are completely optional, and I personally think that they should be skipped, should you want future battles to be challenging. You'll level up plenty while searching for these monsters.

Once enough missions have been completed on a continent, special guild jobs become available. These jobs, upon completion, or for the job itself, grant transportation to a new continent. Along the way new people tag along Alec's group, up to a total of 7 characters, of which one is optional. Occasionally you get special guest characters, from previous Arc the Lad games to temporarily join. I was delighted to see Tosh and Shu again, who I liked a lot before. Sadly, the main characters in this game are mostly quite boring folk. Arguing teens and clueless youths. Alec is also way too optimistic about everything. Goes too easily with the flow, I'd say.

Eventually the party encounters a special group, that is bent on restoring some old technology by any means necessary. Even with the 'Warning: Evil Energy' sign plastered all over everything, they still just have to do the same mistake as other people before. With no real motivation, other than blind ambition, this group is hard to take seriously. I wasn't really very interested in the story, and that's a shame, as I liked the story in the previous game a lot. It's like everything has been simplified and made compact this time around. It's just too small in every aspect to be really compelling.

Swing and Bang
Battles are, unfortunately, short and easy. What makes them easy is the area in which the characters can inflict damage upon. Quite soon on the first continent already, both Alec and Lutz have a special skill that does damage to an area of 13 squares in size. Take into account that the battle fields are usually less than 20 squares in each dimension, usually closer to 10, and there are only 3-7 enemies per battle, these skills are overkill. And if that's not enough, you have two characters that can equip guns. A machinegun does damage to 4 squares and shotgun to 8 squares, just to name two common weapons. Add to that a spell caster with 13 square spells aplenty, standard attacks, other than guns, become obsolete very quickly. One character has the ability to capture and then summon monsters to do damage or inflict status penalties or bonuses. Quite often capturing a tougher than average monster means that when you unleash it, it takes out all the enemies on the field. They're just that weak and unchallenging. Only boss battles have some challenge to them, though even so, I don't think I ever lost one.

In towns, after you reach a certain point in the game, you can start synthesizing items and weapons, by combining two or more items with each other. You can learn recipes for this in special Society offices scattered in towns, or you can just experiment by yourself. Experimenting is pretty useless in the early parts of the game though. You don't have much materials, and when you fail at an experiment (which you WILL, 99% of the time), you lose the items you used. All useful synthesizable items require expensive or rare ingredient to be made, so you're better off saving that one special ingredient for a recipe that will actually work. Synthesizing does provide access to some weapons, like shotguns and special swords and amulets, but other than that, it's not necessary, and not really worth the time and effort to be casually explored.

Old is gold?
The game looks old. Even for being a PSX title, and even for being a third title on the same console, the graphics aren't really impressive at all. Enviroments have been mostly updated to 3D, but with the camera looking at everything in a fixed angle, the 3d apect is quite pointless, and I liked the environments in previous titles better. Characters are still 2d, but somehow I think they don't look as good as before either. Some CG movies are included, and they're ok. Just not impressive or anything.

Music is... mediocre at best. I've heard tons of better soundtracks on even older games. The music gets repetitive and is simple, and there's very limited selection of it. To me, music can sometimes make a game. In this case, it doesn't. It's way too forgettable.

The conclusion
The game lasts for a solid 50-60 hours if you explore most of the jobs in guilds, and hunt down most of the wanted monsters. Usually I like it when an RPG is long, but the scale in which the story is presented, as well as the simple and overkill battles, could've been better in form of 20-30 hours of playtime. The story simply drags on for too long, and is accompanied by too many jobs that include running and talking to people for very limited rewards. It's not a bad game, just average at most. If you just like RPG's for their stories, and can ignore overly simplified battles and cliché story, this is a very playable game. To someone like me, looking for a purpose or goal in a game, this was a chore to complete.

Scoring
Visuals: 7/10
For a game of its age, the graphics are rather unimpressive. The 2d style of characters can be appealing, but in this case even that lacks fine-tuning. 3d graphics are pointless in a game like this, on PSX.

Audio: 7/10
Repetitive music, poor selection of tracks. Everything's forgettable.

Gameplay: 7/10
Battle skills are overkill, and battles require very little planning. It's fun at times, but there's hardly a challenge at any point in the game.

Lasting Value: 6/10
It does last, but for too long. I'm quite sure that very few would play this game twice, and I'm sure many people never finished it at all.

Overall: 6/10
I like Arc the Lad games, but this one just didn't feel much fun. Even though the previous title had some tedious jobs to do as well, this time it felt like completing them took ages, and they were not as interesting. It's playable, just not very interesting game.

'Budget price' review: Shadowgrounds (PC)

2007-11-17T13:38:00.000-08:00

Budget price games are always a great alternative for gamers who don't care so much about graphics or latest tech, and independent game publishers sometimes release very interesting and unique titles at low prices as well. At times I'll be reviewing such games. The games will be scored to match the expectations of games from the said price range. Here's my first review.

Shadowgrounds
I've been neglecting the games made by studios in my own country (Finland) for the past few years. Lots of popular games have come out, Max Payne and Flatout to name two that come to mind. When I noticed Shadowgrounds, a game by Frozenbyte from late 2005, sold as digital download on Totalgaming.net at an affordable price of $9.95, I couldn't resist purchasing it. One reason why I bought the game was because it was promised to have a co-operative mode, and I wanted to enjoy it with a friend. This review is based mainly on the co-operative experience, which luckily seems to be pretty much identical to the single player game.

Shootin' aplenty
Shadowgrounds is an action-packed arcade-like shooter at heart, though it also has a hint of adventure and RPG in it. You play as technician, situated near a space colony New Atlantis, which is about to be under attack by aliens. There's not much story to tell, which is a good aspect for anyone looking for pure action. Only minutes from the start you're already picking up your first pistol and making bullet holes to hordes of spider-like aliens. Interestingly, the only item you start with, the flashlight, is also useful against at least two types of enemies, which becomes evident as you rush through the first corridors by pointing a flashlight at the spiders that apparently hate light. Throughout the game you'll be picking additional weaponry, up to ten different types. The RPG element I mentioned earlier is mainly evident in the guns, which you can upgrade with upgrade chips that enemies often drop. These upgrades are usually pretty significant too, with benefits like larger clip, doubled damage, faster fire rate, etc. The weapons are mostly much fun to use, and you often find yourself switching to a weapon better suited for the situation. Grenades and rockets against large monsters, minigun against a row of incoming aliens, pistol against the weaklings, and so on.

Hey, I'm up here!
The game is viewed from top-down perspective, so you have a good view of the surroundings most of the time. You move the character with keyboard, and aim with the mouse. This works quite well.

What surprised me most were the graphics though, or more exactly the lights and shadows. Pointing flashlight around in a dark room creates some rather eerie shadows, that constantly twist as you move about. Rails and pipes can sometimes have a startling resemblance in shape to certain types of aliens, though in light you wouldn't mistake them for one, obviously. All in all, the structure of the game is very simple, but the textures look great and detailed. My favorites parts were levels where there was both interiors of buildings to explore, as well as outside roads and alleys that connect them. Enemies could be coming from any direction, including from underground and air ducts.

Intel on the opposition
There are several types of aliens, some with varying types and weapons or abilities, but overall I felt that there could've been a few more. Spiders and dogs (as my friend liked to call the armadillo-like creatures) are everywhere for a good part of the initial game. Some more unique aliens start showing up later on though, so you never get to play for a long period without seeing something new. The creatures behave quite nicely, though they all have only one objective, get to the player and shoot, smash or gnaw him to death.

The game offers various difficulty levels, and I'm looking forward to trying the harder ones again later. The normal difficulty was entertainingly intense in co-operative mode for the latter part of the game. I managed to die couple of times during the entire game. In co-op mode this means both players respawning again at the level entrance. Medikits are luckily plentiful in all levels, so if you survive a wave of monsters, you'll be healed up again behind the next corner. It sounds a bit easy, yes, but also makes the game less frustrating to progress.

Leftovers and co-op inspected
There's something I need to mention about the co-op mode. It's only possible on the same computer, with both characters on the same screen. The second player is controlled with a joystick/gamepad, and it is highly recommended to have a gamepad with two analog controllers, one to move with, and one to aim, though the official site claims that any gamepad should be enough to control a character. I played the co-op with a Playstation 2 gamepad, plugged in an adapter for PC. For a pc gamer, this might sound horrible, but I have to admit, I was surprised by how well I was able to perform with the gamepad, considering that I have hardly ever played any games that require usage of both analog sticks. The gamepad hardly made the experience worse.

Shadowgrounds is unfortunately a very short game. In co-op mode, it was over in less than 6 hours. I wouldn't complain about the length much though, as the price was fitting for this title, and it has replay potential with its easy access and straightforward action.

Scoring
(Please note: the scoring is scaled to budget releases.)

Visuals: 10/10
Some people will most likely disagree with this verdict, but I think it's true that for a $9.95, you're getting some impressive lighting work and very nicely textured areas.

Audio: 9/10
Audio is very good too. Weapons make some nice sounds and the music, while being a bit repetitive at times, has a very fitting arcade feel to it. Only voice acting could've been better. Slightly lacking in emotion (The character portraits are also slightly to blame for this), they're a bit... whatever-like.

Gameplay: 9/10
Surprisingly solid controls, even with gamepad. It's common to get stuck in some corners of tight corridors at times, but it's usually only momentary, and you'll be free again in seconds.

Lasting Value: 8/10
A bit short, but has replayability potential. If nothing else, it's got content for both a single player campaign and a co-op experience. Should provide you a nice 10 hours of entertainment at minimum, even more if you really like arcade shooters.

Overall: 9/10
With more multiplayer options and slightly longer campaign, this would be a perfect game in its price range. Even now, I highly recommend the game to anyone who enjoys blasting some aliens to pieces, preferably with a friend even.

Lastly, I want to inform you that the sequel to Shadowgrounds, titles Shadowground Survivor, has been released this week. According to screenshots and info at the official website, it looks even better now, and should also have option for co-op with multiple keyboard and mice, so you don't need a gamepad. I'll possibly purchase and review this game in future as well. For more info, screenshots and system requirements on the original Shadowgrounds, see the official website.

First Impressions: Unreal Tournament 3 demo

2007-10-29T09:31:00.000-07:00

I've been a fan of the Unreal Tournament games ever since the first game that came out in '99 or something. Before that one, I hardly never played first-person shooters. A friend introduced the game to me and some friends. I hadn't heard of the game before that, so I was delightfully shocked to notice I liked the weapons and music, and later on even the maps of the game. Soon we started playing it at evenings, later on in clans. The interest faded a bit over time and Unreal Tournament 2003 didn't really revive the old classic. I did keep on playing the games though. But my history with the games aside, I've played the demo of the latest installment, Unreal Tournament 3, and have some opinions to share.

Back to the roots
UT2003 and UT2004 started taking the game away from its original style, and everything became a bit more mainstream. However, UT3 seems to be taking a tiny step backwards with some things.

The weapons seem more precise again, and while they feel slower, they also seem to be more deadly. The Enforcer pistol from the original UT also makes a comeback, though the secondary fire now shoots bursts of three shots, rather than being less accurate but faster firing mode. Rocket Launcher seems to pack a bunch again, though still fires only maximum of three rockets or grenades. Lightning gun seems to also be gone, with sniper rifle replacing it, like it was back in '99. Power-ups on maps are pretty much the same as before.

Movement is also slightly more restricted, although noticeably faster than before. You can no longer do a dodge plus jump for instance, though double jump, dodge and dodge from a wall is still possible. All in all though, it's still much closer to '03 and '04, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Game modes
As usual to the series, there's going to be a new game mode in the retail version, called Warfare, which is a combination of the Assault and Onslaught modes. Unfortunately, the demo doesn't show this mode in action, so I can't comment on it yet.

Assault mode will be gone. It never seemed to be a popular mode, even though it's much fun for a casual gamer. Onslaught will be there, along with Deathmatching and Capture the Flag, which by the way now comes with vehicles too. The same ones as in Onslaught mode. The demo features one map for this Vehicle CTF mode. The map is rather small, a suspension bridge crossing a river, so not all units have much use, such as the Hellfire artillery, which rarely can shoot in the places you'd need it to be able to shoot at. New in this mode is also the hoverboard, which seems to replace the translocator device from previous games. It's basically a floating board that you can move around with, with almost twice the normal speed. It's also the fastest way of carrying a flag alone. You can't shoot while being on the board though, and if you get hit while using it, you fall down, unable to perform actions for about 2-3 seconds. You can use it to grab onto friendly vehicles though, for even faster transportation.

Deathmatch seems pretty standard fare, though the maps also seem more open now. One of the maps in the demo also sports a bonus vehicle from the Warfare mode, a walking tripod, definitely inspired by War of the Worlds. If you get to ride this thing, it's got some neat powerful guns. Takes a good beating to destroy too, but definitely not too much to be overly powerful.

The things you see and hear
Graphics have been updated again. I personally like the change, though it could go to the direction of original UT even more. Aside from maybe a wee bit too much rounded items and general details, I'd say it looks really good, and runs very nicely even on a computer that doesn't have quite the latest hardware. Chances are that if you can play UT2004, you can probably enjoy UT3 as well, though probably with slightly reduced detail levels.

Music seems pretty standard fare, though I have to say, the theme music seems like a remixed version of the original, and I had these nostalgic chills running through my spine on a couple of occasions. The original UT just happened to be that special to me. It was the game that made me enjoy first-person shooters.

Final scoring
I like to score the initial impressions I have on games, and then review the final product later on. Although I'm a bit biased here, being a UT fan. The retail review could be total opposite, who knows.

Visuals: 9/10
I'd so love to give this a 10, but a few things could look better, mostly in the style department, but that's really a matter of taste. It's not perfect, though I like it a lot.

Audio: 8/10
Nothing special. Nice sounds, some nice music, sounds like UT alright.

Gameplay: 8/10
Movement seems good, except for vehicle handling, which ranges from overly free to almost inresponsive. It's not bad... but for maximum enjoyment, it could be much better. Game modes in the demo are nothing spectacular either, really.

Lasting Value: 9/10
I still like playing the demo. So if the retail has enough good maps on it, then we can expect a long life for this game.

Overall: 8/10
The game seems very promising, but that's also how I felt about UT2004. The initial fun rate was 10/10, but in mere couple of weeks, it fell down to about 7/10, and soon became more and more forgettable. I would like to give this one a 9/10 just because it's UT3, but wise from the previous title, I need to be prepared for a slight disappointment. the way I see it though, the game won't be a total failure if it runs stable and without major bugs, and if the game keeps evolving and growing, not just by hardcore gamers' needs, but casual gamers' as well.

The release date is set at the end of November at the moment, and it'll probably hold. Even with some bugs, they most likely want the game available by the time christmas sales begin.

First Impressions: Hellgate: London beta

2007-10-23T05:31:00.000-07:00

About Hellgate: London
Those of you who haven't heard of Hellgate: London yet, it's basically a new Diablo-like hack'n slash game, originating from some of the creators of the original Diablo game(s). It's got a single player story, as well as multiplayer mode, both working in a rather standard MMO fashion. The location of the story seems to be in London, England, in a futuristic fantasy-type setting. You have machines and guns, but also spells and swords.

Hellgate: London beta
Having played mostly older games lately, I decided to place a pre-order for Hellgate: London, because the theme and genre interest me. Pre-ordering from certain retailers grants you an access key to the beta multiplayer game. The release date of the game is set at less than two weeks from now, and I can pretty much wager that it'll be postponed by at least a few weeks minimum. The multiplayer is technically up'n running, but buggy as hell. I'm not sure how much the testers are allowed to reveal things to the public (since I'm just like everyone else and don't read the agreement stuff upon installation of a game.), so I'll keep things brief, just to give a general idea of what I've witnessed in the short time I've played.

Hack'n Slash
I wasn't really quite sure what to expect from the game when I finally was able to login at the beta server. It's hack'n slash, and supposed to be Diablo-like, so that's what I was expecting. The game is hack'n slash indeed, but because of the rather World of Warcraft -like controls, it feels more like an MMORPG, than traditional hack'n slash games, which consist more of 'click-click' than movement key tapping.

I've only played worth about 6 levels with two characters, amounting to about 4-5 hours of gametime, probably. So far, the enemies have been easy. Too easy even. I've heard that the combat is more hectic in a party, as the amount of enemies and stuff increases too. I'm yet to try that out, but hopefully soon enough.

I started with an Engineer character, whose abilities include constructing/summoning bots and drones to support in the battle, while the player mostly uses guns to shoot from a distance. This seems to work rather nicely, and an upgraded bot can take a good beating while keeping most of the enemies away from the player(s).

As a second option, I chose a Guardian, similar to Paladin class in most fantasy games. Well armored, wields a sword and has protective and self-healing abilities. Since there's much more close combat battle than with the summoning classes, the character also takes more damage, though even so, I hardly ever had to manually heal the character.

London
The game seems to be set around underground tunnels of the city, basically meaning metro/subway stations, with various tunnels and even some famous locations as questing zones. The stations are kind of sanctuary locations, where players can do shopping, accept quests and gather a party. Once you enter an area with enemies, a random instance is created, and only you (and your other party members) can access it. So, you won't have random high-level people killing all the enemies or looting all the stuff ahead like in some other hack'n slash games, which is kind of a good thing, but also very lonely setting for online gaming. I like playing mostly alone, sometimes with a friend, so the requirement to have a party to experience intense action is a big minus, I think.

Barrels 'n Boxes
The instances are filled with barrels, boxes and chests, just like in Diablo, though this time around barrels are steel, boxes cardboard and chests metal cases, at least in the first parts of the game. You'll find lots of items during the game, many of them are equippable, but only a fraction for your class. The useless items can be sold, or broken into pieces, which you can use to upgrade or construct new items at stations. Cash is rarely a problem, as you find lots of it in the instances if you just bother to crack open everything.

Braaaaiinnnnnsss...
Enemies are mostly demonic stuff. Zombies, skeletons, demons, lizards, stuff like that. Some boss creatures show up every now and then, but so far I haven't found them very challenging myself. Hopefully the default difficulty is upped a bit for the final game. Otherwise lasting value is going to be rather low. I'm trying to stay optimistic though.

First Impressions Scoring:
So, what's the verdict for first impressions?
I'd say something along these lines:

Visuals: 9/10
Looks great for an MMO game. For a single player game, it's all pretty average.

Audio: 8/10
The little music there is works well with the theme. Sounds are pretty ordinary, guns could could make more noise.

Gameplay: 6/10
Buggy as what, but it's a beta, so this is expected. Controls seem pretty standard.

Lasting Value: 5/10
The game has potential, but if there won't be much changes, especially to the difficulty factor, then this is looking to be a game with rather short age.

Overall: 7/10
I'm not canceling my pre-order, but I'm not too ecstatic about the game either. Still looking forward to the final version though.

Last words... for now
In case I'll keep the pre-order, then expect to see a preview of the retail product later. ;) Hardcore MMO and hack'n slash fans should find this an interesting game, though time will tell how good the final build will be...

The birth of a new blog

2007-10-20T15:31:00.001-07:00

Introduction
'ello everyone. I'm HitmanN. I made this blog to be a place where I can let out some of my thoughts and rant about things. I reside in Finland, Europe, and my views will probably occasionally reflect that.

If someone knows me by my nickname from before, then that's most likely because of one of two things. First, I used to run a web page called Unlimited Units, which was a place where I (and couple of other people) uploaded custom content for the PC game Total Annihilation. More probably you might know me from my galleries at both my website http://www.hitmann.net or my DeviantART acount. I mainly draw anime (japanese cartoon/comic style) girls, with the intent of making 'em look cute and sexy. It's not a thing for everyone, but it's what I enjoy doing, and I dare say I've progressed plenty in the 4-5 years I've been doing it. ;)

About this blog
Well, needless to say, since I have a website, and a DA account, I don't need a blog for talking about art. Instead, I want to dedicate this blog mainly to my secondary hobby, which is computer and console gaming. I might occasionally talk about totally unrelated stuff too though.

My current set of gaming platforms include a PC (recently upgraded), Playstation and Playstation 2. If I go and get a new console in the next year or so, it'll most likely be a Playstation 3. Or if there isn't enough good games for it by then, then possibly Xbox360. Time and budget will tell. ;) Nintendo hasn't been on my purchase list since SNES though, that I can say right away, though I'm still considering picking up a used GameCube to get to play a few games on it.

My favorite genres are as follows:
PC: Strategy, RPG, Shooters, Arcade
PSX: RPG, Arcade
PS2: RPG, Arcade, Racing

However, I do like trying games from genres too, though sports games are something I've never really caught on. Real-life simulations in general tend to not interest me much. A little imagination does good for a game, I think. ;)

Currently I'm playing the following:
PSX: Arc the Lad 3
PC: Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Unreal Tournament 3 demo

I also got a key for playing the beta of Hellgate: London, but haven't had a chance to experience it yet, with the servers being down.

Plans for future
So, what kind of stuff do I intend to talk about here then? Most likely my first impressions on games, opinions/reviews after finishing (or having played enough) a game, and possible random news I found interesting and want to share. As next article, I'll most likely type about something related to the games I listed a few lines above.