Lego Batman

Regular readers of The Dust Forms Words know that I've had a tumultuous relationship with the Lego games. The original Lego Star Wars was an upstanding gentleman of a game, but the sequels have done little more than steal beer from my fridge and pass out on my sofa. Lego Batman is the best and least stinky of those surly hoboes but it's still not the champion whom once I lionised.

The principle of the Lego videogame is simple; you walk into a world constructed of flimsy, breakable lego, and you start punching until your fists go numb. Repeat 30 times to complete the story mode, repeat 30 times more to finish the sidequests. It's a solid premise - who doesn't like punching stuff?

All these fisticuffs are, of course, dressed in the livery of a well-known franchise, and this time around it's Batman. This isn't the Batman of the recent movies, or even of the comics. It's instead a mash-up of the Tim Burton films and the animated series. It's a shallow exploration of the brand, and Batman devotees will be disappointed that the amount of fan-service on offer is approximately zero.

The place where Lego games go wrong is that the developers invariably feel that punching is somehow not enough, and throw some jumping into the mix. The jumping is the closest you will come in this life to feeling the tangible presence of Satan intruding into our mortal world. Apparently when a Lego minifig jumps it enters a kind of floaty demiplane where the rules of gravity warp and twist. Distance has no meaning and whether or not you land at your destination is dictated by variables understood only by MC Escher.

What's worse, platforms are possessed of a kind of malignant sentience and scorn the tread of your little Lego feet. Frequently you'll land squarely on a ledge only to watch your avatar drift inexplicably sideways as if compelled by magnets, before plummeting over the edge to its doom. For bonus laughs, occasionally you'll respawn only to immediately be victimised by the same deadly drift again.

The Lego games are built around the idea of co-operative play. At all times you have not one but two heroes on screen, and a friend with a second controller can drop in and out of the festivities at their whim. This worked well in the original Lego Star Wars but has been a cause of histrionics and grief ever since. Both players are bound to a single screen, despite some puzzles which really need you to split up. Attempting to move more than a screen away from your partner will drag them along behind you, usually to their death, or cause them to pop out of existence and respawn closer to you, sometimes in a location which is either fatal or inescapable.

There's no option to play two-player over XBox Live or the PlayStation Network, but that's okay because the co-op here is a friend-losing proposition anyway. Sadly, letting the computer control your buddy isn't much better, as the AI takes a cheerful pleasure in getting in your way, pushing you to your death, and refusing to help you with the co-operative puzzles.

The buggy AI may serve to distract you from the rest of the game, which is also riddled with glitches. Respawns occur in broken positions, secret canisters refuse to appear, characters get stuck in inappropriate animations, and Achievements inexplicably don't unlock. There's only so many times that you can write the woeful playtesting off as all part of the childlike joy of Lego before it becomes time to bring out the murderin' axe.

Just to round it all out, Lego Batman features some of the worst level design to every appear in a videogame. Distances can't be judged, threats can't be evaluated, and goals are seldom if ever clear. You can rarely tell what can be smashed up and what can't, and occasionally there are wierd hierachies at work (you can't destroy a street light until you first blow up its light bulb). Boss fights range from the repetitive to the obtuse, and key locations are obscured by horrible camera angles and unbreakable scenery.

That's the bad. There's some good, but none of it in any way compensates for the bad. I mention the good only to explain why Lego Batman is, while objectively awful, still a better game than Lego Indiana Jones.

First up, Batman is awesome. This has been proven by science. If you built a scale replica statue of Batman out of human crap, it would still be pretty awesome simply because it was Batman.

Secondly, there's a good roster of characters, and they're actually fun to use. You're shortchanged on the hero side, as you only get Batman, Robin, Nightwing and the Barbara Gordon Batgirl (and Nightwing looks like he fell into the mutant-vat). But for the villains you get no less than two costumes for the Joker, along with Poison Ivy, Bane, Mr Freeze, the Mad Hatter, Man-Bat, the Riddler, Catwoman, the Penguin, the Scarecrow, Hush, Ra's al-Ghul, Two-Face, Killer Croc, Clayface, Harley Quinn and, for some reason, Killer Moth. It would have been nice to see even more familiar faces such as Zsasz, Black Mask, Talia, Oracle, Azrael, Huntress, Spoiler, and the Cassandra Cain Batgirl, but it's nevertheless a solid list.

The music uses the Danny Elfman theme from the first Tim Burton Batman movie, which is a fine piece of music. Unfortunately, it uses it exclusively, again and again, until your ears are bleeding and you're begging for it to stop. Some variety might have been nice.

Combat has been tightened up from the previous games. The hard-to-target whip from Lego Indy is gone and some very satisfying fists and guns have replaced it. Getting into battle is no longer a chore. You might even enjoy it. Also, while there are still waves of endlessly-respawning enemies, there's notably less than in the last two Lego games, and they're less inclined to turn up while you're trying to do something fiddly.

That's pretty much all the good points. If you've enjoyed the prior Lego games you're in for a treat, because Lego Batman is very definitely an improvement, but if they frustrated you to tears then you'll find all the same mistakes on display in Lego Batman.

The World Ends With You - Dust Forms Words Game Of The Year 2008

The World Ends With You is the game that everyone should have played last year, and for what it's worth I'm giving it my Game of the Year.

I've already said a lot about TWEWY, so before I talk about why it gets the trophy, I'll say a little about why the other contenders don't.

Braid was a hell of a game. It was this year's undisputed poster-child for "games as art", and despite my unfortunate discovery of its misguided "alternate ending" it remains a very special and enduring experience. It excels musically, visually, narratively, and through its plethora of fascinating time-based mechanics. But it's limited in scope. Last year, when I described why I gave Mass Effect the thumbs up over Portal, I talked about ambition and how an "almost" on the grand scale could be greater than perfection in miniature. Without in any way criticising Braid, I'm passing it over simply because TWEWY does something bigger and more expansive.

Prince of Persia I haven't reviewed yet, but I have finished, and I am a huge fan. I love the punishment-free gameplay, I love the art style, I love the character interaction, and I love the controversial ending. This is how I want my games to be. And it's tempting to slam it for the epically misconceived coloured plate sections, which in the context of an otherwise perfect game are like drawing a penis on the Mona Lisa, but really I'm passing it over because it's not actually innovative. Everything in PoP is something we've seen before, and while there's an artistry in arranging the familiar to new and excellent effect, it's less an evolution of gaming than it is merely a refinement.

I loved Mirror's Edge, although the world seems to be against me on this, and I seriously considered it for Game of the Year. I think it's a deeper and more clever game than people have realised yet (although obviously not in its storytelling, which blows goats) and given time people are going to start coming back to this with new and more appreciative eyes. But, you know, it wasn't that good, and loud complaints about its combat, plotline, and uneven difficulty are not entirely without foundation.

Smash Bros Brawl and Rock Band were only 2008 releases because they took so damned long to get to Australia, and, while I enjoyed them both, neither was a revelation. Brawl was merely iterative upon the excellent Melee, and Rock Band let an uneven song selection and a host of peripheral and user interface issues stop it from being the definitive rhythmn game that it wanted to be.

No More Heroes got a golf clap and an A for effort. Keep doing what you're doing, Goichi Suda, I love that you're out there doing it, and feel free to wake me up when you get it right.

Left 4 Dead was a fantastic experience while it lasted but in the absence of more content it's not really in my Game of the Year contemplation.

You all apparently loved Fable 2; I hated it, as I do all Peter Molyneux's misbegotten works. Enough said on that topic.

Far Cry 2, Grand Theft Auto IV, Saints Row 2, Dead Space, Metal Gear Solid 4, LittleBigPlanet and Fallout 3 are all contenders that I just didn't get around to playing this year. I had a brief experience with Dead Space that satisfies me it was unlikely to take the crown, and while I look forward to enjoying Saints Row 2 I'm pretty sure that a game that so happily wallows in its own juvenilia was probably not going to be my pick for the year. Likewise, my past apathy towards user content suggests that LittleBigPlanet was probably not going to change my world.

Far Cry 2 and GTA 4 are more problematic; both showed promise of being the open-world game "all growed up". Although experiences with the PSP Grand Theft Auto games left me feeling weary about the entire genre, there's every chance that one or both of these titles would have won me back. I can only say that one person simply can't play every top-shelf title released during the year, and if I'm doing these titles a disservice then I can at least be comfortable that they certainly haven't been overlooked or under-recognised by the world at large.

Metal Gear Solid 4 and Fallout 3 are the two missed titles that trouble me most. They are both new and epic iterations of franchises that I love, made by developers that I trust. It is highly likely either game could have found a place on my list of the greatest games of all time. But again, it's simply impossible to play games as fast as they're released, and both games have been adequately covered in other venues.

So that brings me back to The World Ends With You, which is, I feel, a title as underappreciated as it is wholeheartedly excellent. On its face it is a full-length JRPG, a genre famous for its staidness and adherence to formula, and yet it innovates in every single game mechanic. It's hard to find any aspect of the TWEWY experience which has been done before.

The game difficulty is not only fully customisable along multiple axes, but is also seamlessly integrated into the overall gameplay. Equippable items tie into a "fashion" system, which is influenced by player activity and deliberately underlines and supports the key themes of the story. The entire game operates simultaneously on a literal level and several metaphorical levels, from the "noise" enemies through to the player being invisible to the teeming crowds around him. The game accurately and interestingly uses the real-world location of Shibuya as its backdrop, to non-trivial narrative effect, and when you finally finish the main plotline the game offers significant replayability that goes above and beyond the traditional "new game plus" option.

Any one of the points above would have made The World Ends With You a special and noteworthy release; finding them in combination is breathtaking. Add to that an art style which is unquestionably perfect for the subject matter and an urban-groove soundtrack that you can listen to all day long and you end up with a game that feels years ahead of its time.

There is more genius in The World Ends With You than in every other game I have played this year put together. I have no qualms about naming it the Dust Forms Words Game of the Year 2008, and if you haven't yet played it, grab your DS and find a copy immediately.

Currently Playing

Got a bunch of games in my queue right now, none of which I'm particularly near finishing, so I thought I'd do an "in-progress" kind of post.

Left 4 Dead (XBox 360): Awesome. Just... awesome. It makes my jaw drop roughly once a minute and I'm starting to get muscle fatigue around my mouth as a result. Some observations though: as you start to learn the levels the game becomes about speed-running, and I'm not yet sure whether that's an evolutionary step in the gameplay or the point at which ennui sets in. Also it's obviously focused solely on multi-player, and I can't say I've ever gotten more than ten hours out of a multi-player first person shooter before. This may be a first, I guess.

Rock Band (XBox 360): Finally out in Australia. Drumming is excellent and the handling of the vocals is several iterations better than the horrible Singstar franchise. Guitar is a bit lame though, due to an unappealing on-screen interface, a peripheral that pinches my fingers, and punishingly short timing windows. Playing with four friends is great, but the game feels poorly structured as far as progress and incentives are concerned. Luckily it's fun just playing, incentives or no incentives. Also it's clear the developers loved what they were making, which is something it shares with Harmonix's previous efforts Guitar Hero 1 and 2. Neversoft-developed GH3 didn't have that and it's that faceless-corporation direction the Guitar Hero franchise is going in that's really turning me off that brand.

Fable 2 (XBox 360): Not a fan. I can't get attached to the main character, who wanders mutely around the countryside expressing himself solely with corny poses while every NPC has rather excellent voice acting. I can't get attached to the NPCs, who will watch you kill their entire family in horror but then offer you gifts once you dance a saucy jig for a few minutes. The customisation system is shallow, and you end up picking clothes based on their stats rather than what they say about your character. The much-vaunted moral choices are poorly handled, especially compared to something like Mass Effect, and often boil down to "do what you're told, or be a petty jerk". Despite a lot of really well-implemented features, the whole package feels deeply artificial and I have serious doubts I can be bothered playing to the end.

Final Fantasy III (DS): I started this six months ago, I'm about three quarters of the way through and I can't bring myself to pick it up again. The graphical updates are nice, but the "job system" has been poorly grafted onto the original game, giving you little real incentive to play with the different jobs and in fact actively punishing you for changing class. The late game suddenly opens up the map but offers poor direction about where to go next and again can punish you for exploring with the sudden introduction of crushingly difficult encounters. The combat is painfully dull and considering that's most of the gameplay that dullness is a real problem. Despite my gripes it's still a great remake, especially considering the age of its roots, but not a real contender compared to some of the excellent modern RPGs on the market.

Age of Booty (XBox Live Arcade): Yar, me hearties! Age of Booty is real-time strategy dumbed down to its lowest level, where you control one ship and attempt to capture enemy ports with or without allies. It's effectively one-button control, ideal for casual players. It should be awful but it's a heap of fun and pretty much exactly right for the low, low asking price. Local multiplayer for up to four players, or you can take it online to battle the intertubes.

Overlord (XBox 360): Played the first level of this, loved it, borrowed it from a friend, and now it's just waiting until I'm done with Fable 2 or something so I can give it the time it deserves.

Travian (PC / Browser): Actually I've been playing this for a few months. A very hardcore real-time wargame that advertises itself as a casual-friendly city builder. One campaign lasts roughly a year of real-time. An excellent game providing you know what to expect; a very frustrating game for those looking for a casual experience who get eliminated by the cutthroat tactics of the real players. I'm loving it.

DSi Region Locked

Remember how I was excited about the new Nintendo DSi?

Never mind.

The thing's region locked. No importing sweet, sweet gaming candy from Japan. Or America. In fact, I'd be pretty much just stuck with the distinctly lackluster game distribution network of Australia, which seems to largely involve seeing a game come out in America and then waiting for continental drift to bring it within my grasp. (Still a month till we get the original Rock Band!)

By itself that'd be... manageable, but when you combine it with the dropped GBA port it's a big turn-off. About 75% of my current DS library is GBA or imported. Not particularly keen to buy a functionally identical new system that less of my games will work on. Oh, and I'd bet money that it also locks out R4 cards, so that's hombrew off the menu too. Plus the lack of the GBA port means I can't use the Rumble Pak, I can't use the cross-generation functionality from the recent Pokemon games, and in the unlikely event that the DS card reader or trackball games ever make their way out of Japan they won't work either.

Bad Nintendo! Bad!

You can still save the system by telling me that GBA games will be available for download. I know you want to tell me that. Just give in.

Must. Have.

It's official: the Nintendo DSi. My favourite gaming platform just got 100% more awesome.

- larger screens
- two built in 3 megapixel cameras
- SD card slot to store data and transfer between the DSi and the Wii
- built in web browser
- built in image editor
- on board memory
- ability to download games from the Wii Shop and boot from on-board memory
- music playback
- better audio support including the option to adjust pitch
- slimmer profile
- ... but no GBA slot (boo!) although if Nintendo are smart they'll start offering GBA games for download

Available in Japan in less than a month. Westerners unwilling to import get to wait till Spring next year. Announced Japanese pricing translates to around $180 AUD. Sign me up.

EDIT: On the less rosy side, Kotaku suggests the DSi will have a significantly worse battery life. As in, only half as much play before you need to recharge. Not sure what they're basing it on but it's a bit worrying.

Professor Layton 3 Trailer

So this is the Japanese trailer for DS puzzle title Professor Layton 3, also known as Professor Layton and the Last Time Travel. It's theoretically intended to bring the Professor Layton trilogy to a close, and there certainly seems to be plenty of exciting plot in the works. Even if none of that plot will have anything to do with the gameplay. It gets me all excited to go toe-to-toe with another 150 puzzles that I've seen a million times before.

Anyway, that's a great trailer and all, but do you know what would be even better? An English language version of Professor Layton 2. Japan's had it for almost a year.

Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney 3: Trials and Tribulations

There's few things more satisfying than seeing a good trilogy come to a satisfying conclusion, and Phoenix Wright 3 on the Nintendo DS is an excellent example.

If you're new to the Ace Attorney games then you're out of luck. Trials and Tribulations assumes you're already familiar with the rules and characters of Phoenix Wright's world, and spends most of its time resolving the hanging plot threads from the first two games and bringing the continuing storyline to a rousing finale. The original Phoenix Wright is all but impossible to find in stores now so getting into the franchise as a newcomer can be a tad difficult.

Series fans, though, are in for a treat. This is easily the best of the three Phoenix Wright games, and it delivers everything a fan could hope for in style. Not only do you get to play as Phoenix, but you'll also fight a couple of short flashback cases as Mia Fey, and for an all-too-brief segment you'll even get to control former prosecutor Miles Edgeworth. You'll get to see Mia's traumatic first case, foil the plots of scheming matriarch Morgan Fey, and solve the mystery of the missing master of the Kurain Channelling Technique.

There are five cases all up this time around, although two are quite short, and they're tied together with a much tighter overarching plot than in previous installments. You'll want to have played the previous titles, as the game wastes little time reintroducing characters like Franzciska von Karma, Larry Butz and Adrian Grossberg, instead assuming that you know the score and are ready to play. Similarly, the basics of cross-examining witnesses, producing evidence, and breaking psyche-locks are glossed over even within the tutorial case.

The game's legal system is still as silly as ever. To defend your clients from murder charges you'll need to not only establish their innocence but uncover the real culprit. You're opposed by a range of hostile witnesses and flamboyant prosecutors, and only sharp wits and a keen eye for contradictory evidence will get you through.

The logic may occasionally be rubbish, but it's internally consistent, and once you've got a feel for the way the game "thinks" you'll be able to progress fairly smoothly. You'll occasionally run into points where you just have to try every option available before finding the right one, but they're few and far between.

Like Phoenix Wright and Justice for All, this installment was originally released in Japan as a GameBoy title, and has been ported to the DS for Western release. The art and sound assets are, therefore, not spectacular, but they're perfectly suited to the gameplay and do a great job of conveying drama and character.

The real star of the show, as always, is the writing. Silly courtroom antics aside, these are tight, challenging murder mysteries. They're beautifully paced and solidly plotted and despite a wide roster of guest characters you'll be moved to really care about the characters you meet and their often bizarre dilemmas. If it occasionally feels more like you're playing an interactive novel than a video game, you won't care, because it's a really good novel.

In the end everything comes to a head in a fantastic final case. Trials and Tribulations delivers a compelling climax to the first Ace Attorney trilogy and will leave you feeling very generous towards the franchise as a whole. If Phoenix Wright is already amongst your fandoms then you absolutely must play this game, and if you haven't yet experienced the magic then you should start tracking down the first two games just so you can eventually finish this one.

E3 - What Looks Good

This year's Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3) has come and gone, and I understand that I have to make at least a passing reference to it in order to maintain my status as a gaming blog, so here's a round-up of some of the more interesting titles that have caught my attention.

New Pikmin Game: Presumably Pikmin 3, presumably for the Wii although a DS title isn't out of the question. Nintendo didn't have a lot to announce at E3 so Shigeru Miyamoto's vague comment that "We're making Pikmin" was really the most interesting thing coming out of The House That Mario Built.

Animal Crossing: City Folk: Definitely for the Wii. Lots of WiiConnect 24 usage for exploring other cities and receiving special holiday gifts. Those without the internet can download their town onto a DS to take it travelling to Wiis owned by their friends. No retro games to collect this time (which is sad but unsurprising) and for those who care you'll now be able to design shirts which have a front which is different to their sleeves and back. I still don't know why I love these games so much but I'm nevertheless looking forward to once again clashing swords with that no-goodnik raccoon Tom Nook. Oh yes, vengeance will be mine.

Left 4 Dead: I've mentioned this one before. Valve (Half-Life) is involved in the development, it has zombies, and it's got four-player co-op. The playable version at E3 looked reasonably good although I have to admit it's really only Valve's participation that has me trusting the game will make the jump from "average" to "awesome". Coming to PC and 360, I understand.

Portal: Still Alive: While we're on the subject of Valve, there's no Portal sequel until next year at the earliest, but XBox 360 users can tide themselves over with Portal: Still Alive, coming to Live Arcade. It's the original Portal as a standalone game, plus some extra non-plot-related puzzle levels based on the 2D Flash version of the game that did the rounds a few months ago.

Final Fantasy XIII: Did I mention it's coming to the XBox 360? And how I totally called it? I did? Excellent.

New Prince of Persia: I was initially not optimistic about Ubisoft Montreal's new Prince title, but the latest gameplay trailer has sold me on it. It's got storybook-style visuals reminiscent of Okami, it features a new Prince and a new storyline, and it looks like it's got everything you expect from Prince of Persia, with the possible exception of the last trilogy's time-related powers. Coming to XBox 360 and probably some other platforms.

Lego Batman: The fourth of Traveler's Tales' Lego games is based on the Caped Crusader and seems to draw more from the comics and the 90s movies than it does from the recent Christopher Nolan interpretations. I know we all love Lego and we all love Batman but based on the downward trend of this franchise to date I'm going to disappoint you by calling this one in advance as bollocks.

Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway / Call of Duty: World At War: I don't care what you say: as far as I can tell these are the same frikkin' game. Admittedly there's only so many ways you can portray the nightmarish devastation of the Second World War, and also bits of World at War are set in the Pacific theatre and voiced by Kiefer Sutherland, but to all practical purposes they look interchangeable. Interchangeable, but really, really, good. Both coming to practically every next-gen platform under the sun. (Maybe not the Wii.)

Guitar Hero: World Tour: Big track list, includes drums and vocals.... *yawn* I mean, it'll be great and all, but it still looks kind of like Rock Band Lite. Although there's a good chance that Australians will be seeing it on shelves before the original Rock Band finally gets here. Real versions coming to 360 and PS3; crappy ports heading to Wii and PS2, more than likely.

Rock Band 2: Which looks more awesome than words can describe, but will probably suffer the same fate as it's predecessor and get lost somewhere in the Pacific Ocean on its way Down Under. Again, real versions for 360 and PS3 and cheap knockoffs on other platforms.

Dead Rising Wii: You can't say that Capcom doesn't listen to its fans. Dead Rising is coming to the Wii but it's a completely different game. You've still got the same open world but the time-limit nonsense is done away with in favour of structured missions. Also the rubbishy photography minigame is gone and the save system is fixed. This could well end up being the definitive version of the game.

Braid: It's a platformer based on time-control that's heading to XBox Live Arcade. The achievements are apparently already on the network so it should be out any day now. The visuals look nice enough but the brilliance is apparently in the puzzle design. Somehow the thing's won awards before it's even released, so there's got to be something worthwhile under its hood. I reserve judgement, though, as platformers and I have a long and contentious history and this may end up being another supposedly "clever" timed jumping nightmare a la N+.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2: Fusion: I loved Ultimate Alliance; it's one of the most thoroughly worthwhile four-player co-op titles I've experienced. It might not have made you feel quite as heroic as Justice League Heroes but it did a pretty excellent job of having each of its 30+ licensed Marvel characters play differently. If the sequel delivers more of the same I'll be a happy man. I'm a little worried, though, about this "fusion" concept which apparently involves giving powers from one character to another. It feels like a watering down of the pure Marvel-ness of the title. I want to play Spider-Man or The Hulk, not some kind of Spider-Hulk. ... actually, that sounds kind of awesome. I have the distinct feeling that we wouldn't like Spider-Hulk when he's angry.

Rune Factory 2: Given how poorly reviewed the first installment of this franchise was I'm surprised they're making a second. Apparently someone out there has an appetite for dungeon-crawling Harvest Moon clones. *shrug*

Bayonetta: Oh man, this has Bullet Witch written all over it and is likely to be just as appalling, but you can't help but be impressed by its moxy. It's from Devil May Cry creator Hideki Kamiya and he's worked out how to go one-up from his own two-guns-and-a-sword DMC formula. How can Devil May Cry possibly be any cooler? Well, what if the protagonist was a hot chick and instead of having guns in her hands she has guns in her hands AND feet and instead of killing things with a sword she instead uses her magical teleporting hair. That's a recipe for awesome right there. Presumably coming to 360 and PS3.

Halo Wars: Yes, it's a Halo real-time strategy, but did you know it has a three-player co-op campaign? No? Well, it's got a three-player co-op campaign. Alright, Bungie, fine, you win, I'm interested in Halo Wars now. Serve me another helping of your derivative and frustrating franchise like the rabid fanboy that I am.

Afro Samurai: The Afro Samurai anime was a tremendous victory of style over substance, and the game appears to be more of the same. It looks gorgeous, with a fantastic cel-shaded aesthetic that you can't help but be enthused by. Plus it's got Samuel L. Jackson reprising his voice acting. But the actual combat, while not awful, seems a little short of what we expect from the games that it's clearly imitating, such as God of War and Devil May Cry. Still, they've got time to improve it, right? Coming, I think, to all next-gen consoles.

Madworld: I want this game to be good so much. It's this ultraviolent black-and-white thing for the Wii which crosses the look of Sin City with the plot of The Running Man. I'm a sucker for anything that stands out of the crowd a little, and this game looks like nothing else out there, but my hopes were dashed to the ground and stomped on when I saw that the developer was Sega. *sigh* Oh well.
UPDATE: According to commenter Matthew, Sega are the publisher, not the developer, and it's instead being created by former Clover Studios staff, now calling themselves Platinum Games. I loved their work on Okami but I was less thrilled with Viewtiful Joe so although I'm doing a happy little jig right now, I'm doing it cautiously.

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood: Speaking of Sega, it seems like the only way to get a decent Sonic game out of them is to have someone else develop it. The Dark Brotherhood is Mass Effect developer Bioware attempting to do for the World's Fastest Hedgehog what Squaresoft did for Mario with Mario RPG. The Dark Brotherhood is a western-style RPG for the Nintendo DS - featuring blue hedgehogs - and by all accounts it hasn't yet been tempted into a one-way trip down Awful Lane. I'm cautiously optimistic.

That's my off-the-cuff list out of E3. PS3 owners will probably be glad to get another Resistance title too, although I can't quite get excited by it. Plus obviously there's a new Gears of War, but I'd had about enough of that franchise by the time I finished the first one, which was only a month ago, so it'll probably take a while before my enthusiasm for more Gears builds.

What about you? Have you spotted anything coming out of E3 or the surrounding events that got you interested? Leave a comment, let me know.

On The Way: Hell's Kitchen

TV-to-game translations are notoriously bad, mainstream ones even more so, but I still can't help but be a little enthused by the forthcoming Hell's Kitchen game starring everyone's favourite foulmouthed cookmeister Gordon Ramsay.

Cooking Mama and Cooking Guide completely failed to please as far as digital cookery goes; I think having the living crap abused out of me by an ill-tempered Brit is probably the ingredient that both those games were missing.

In all seriousness, though, this is almost certainly going to be a piece of bargain-bin shovelware, so don't raise your hopes. It makes me wonder, though, why we can't get some decent Iron Chef shenanigans happening on XBLA or WiiWare?

On The Way: Elebits DS

There's something of a trend going on right now. It involves developers taking my favourite games of the past few years and gutting them with a rusty knife.

I've previously mentioned the abomination that is Drawn to Life: Spongebob Squarepants Edition. In a similar vein, Konami have announced that the next iteration of Elebits (or Eledees to us Aussies) will be a top-down action RPG for the DS.

Elebits: The Adventures of Kai & Zero appears to pick up where the original Wii version left off, judging from the title. Where the first game was a wonderful sandbox in which you used light-gun style gameplay to lift and throw furniture in the eternal search for "Elebits", the DS version looks a little like Secret of Mana meets Boktai. Which were both great games, but deeply lacking in the "tossing two storey houses as though they were beachballs" department.

Boo. Boo, I say. Poor show, Konami. Make a real Elebits sequel and forget about this DS nonsense.

More on Chrono Trigger DS

To follow up on Wednesday's post, Square-Enix has now officially announced Chrono Trigger DS is in the works. The game will be a remake; apparently the graphics will remain the same but new features include dual screen presentation, touch screen functionality, wireless connectivity and a new dungeon.

That means it's probably going to look more like their re-releases of Final Fantasy IV and V than it is their massive redesign of FF3.

The image on the left was retrieved from DSFanboy, who apparently took it from GameKyo.com.

Chrono Trigger DS

Check it out - Square-Enix has a page up at http://na.square-enix.com/ctds/ showing a mysterious image of a clock, with the words "Nintendo DS" next to it.

Clock? A page entitled "CTDS"? It looks like Squeenix's cult hit Chrono Trigger is coming to a dual-screen portable near you! (It's worth noting that the clock's not a countdown - it's showing your local system time.)

I'm not sure which possibility I'm more excited about - the original game, a remake, or a brand new entry in the franchise. They're all filled with win.

All I ask is that they not commission any more art from Dragonball Z creator Akira Toriyama. His character designs make me cry bitter tears of frustration.

Warning: Don't Buy Guitar Hero DS Just Yet!

Any number of my friends were desperate to buy a copy of Guitar Hero: On Tour for the DS. Their lust for the game has been completely untempered by reason or practicality, even after it was mentioned that neither RedOctane nor Neversoft were in any way involved with the thing.

I haven't had a chance to play On Tour yet, but in the interests of possibly saving people some money and disappointment, you might want to check out the heavily negative reviews:

Gamespot: "Cumbersome controls and several other shortcomings make this guitar permanently out of tune." 6 out of 10.

IGN AU: "A compromised version of Guitar Hero that is really only an adequate first draft." 6.5 out of 10.

Gamesradar: "Tour cancelled due to broken wrists. [...] There's no sense of stardom, no wish fulfillment, just a series of colored notes that you have to hit." 6 out of 10.

Having been busily predicting that this wasn't going to be the portable sex-replacement that everyone seemed to be expecting, this comes as no particular surprise to me, and I don't intend to shell out money for the thing. However, if anyone who has any real experience with the console Guitar Hero games has played the DS version and wants to give a contrary opinion, please feel free.

Awful, Awful Licensed Games

If you've got a really mediocre game and you want to give it an extra push to make sure it really lands face-first in the fail puddle, all you have to do is slap a licensed property on it, right? I mean, in the long evolution of games based on television, movies, or books, pretty much every iteration has been some kind of apalling two-headed mutant. The fact that there's a handful of exceptions whose names include the words "Lego" or "Star Wars" is really only a gaming proof of the monkeys-with-typewriters principle.

So really all I have to do is to mention that the following games are on their way (really - I'm not joking) to give you an idea of how they're almost certainly going to be unmitigated rubbish.

Asterix Brain Trainer (DS): Replace the disembodied head of Professor Kawashima with the poorly animated visage of Getafix and you've got a sure-fire success, right? Right? Apparently it's packed with entertaining mini-games! October 2008.

Bratz Ponyz 2 (DS): I think it's the "2" that cracks me up here. I mean, I have no doubt that these things sell like they're made from a particularly addictive form of methampethamine, but Sweet Jeebers, would anyone who's played the original honestly be masochistic enough to come back for a sequel? This version apparently boasts more ponyz and more minigames, which has certainly never been a recipe for disaster. September 2008.

Rubik's Classic (DS): You might be tempted to think that this is a particularly lame DS version of Erno Rubik's famous Cube, but what you're probably not aware of is that Mr Rubik has been working for some years as a video game developer and is almost certainly personally involved in whatever this game is. I'm still pegging it as lame, though. 3rd Quarter 2008.

TNA Impact! (XBox 360, PS3, Wii): Pro-wrestling franchise TNA understandably wants to get in on the phenomenal success of games such as THQ's Smackdown vs Raw lineup. Unfortunately they've picked Midway as their developer, so we can all prepare ourselves for a game that'll fall somewhere between "comically bad" and "trauma-inducing". August 2008.

The Sims 2: Ikea Home Stuff (PC): Seriously. Ikea. This expansion to The Sims 2 contains Ikea furniture and is more expensive than "free". That seems like a bad trade. Out this week.

It goes without saying that upcoming games based on Wall-E, Kung Fu Panda, and Space Chimps are going to be terrible. And finally, I was going to finish up this article by taking a cheap shot at Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, which for some reason does not feature "Janie's Got A Gun". So I will.

Pink Heart DS

Check it out! Friend Juri's self-modded DS is featured on DS Fanboy! She's traded off the traditional svelte DS profile in favour of a profusion of girly hearts and roses but the overall effect is pretty impressive.

While you're at it, also check out Lehni's home-made game case, which is a use of sewing that I can really get behind.

The World Ends With You

Plenty of good games come along, but it's only every now and then that you find something really special.

The World Ends With You, developed by Square-Enix for the Nintendo DS, is just that kind of special. This is a game that has been thought about, and carefully, and which makes going one-better its quiet religion. It's not as immediately visceral as Devil May Cry or as jaw-droppingly spectacular as Gears of War but it is a game with a masterful and brilliant plan which it executes flawlessly.

You play as Neku, a modern-day teenager with an attitude problem and some intimacy issues. The game begins with Neku waking up in the midst of Tokyo's Shibuya shopping district with no memories and a mysterious black pin. He soon finds that he's invisible to most people, and has been enlisted to fight in something called the Reaper's Game. Played over seven days, the Game offers miraculous rewards to those who win, but the losers are erased from existence.

The game is played in pairs; to complete the missions and fight the vicious "Noise" which stalk Shibuya's streets, competitors must form a "pact" with another player. That's no easy ask for Neku, what with his trust issues, and the dilemma of enforced teamwork is the thematic spine of the game.

The game takes place over the terrain of real-life Shibuya. The world is divided into a couple of dozen areas, each themed around a major Shibuya landmark, and you can walk back and forth across it more or less at will. The narrative of the game is divided into "days"; on any given day only certain portions of the Shibuya are accessible, but luckily after you beat the game you can revisit the days in any order at will.

The black pin that Neku receives at the start of the game gives him the power to "scan" areas, which firstly allows you to read the minds of nearby citizens for hints, backstory, and amusing anecdotes. Scanning also reveals the presence of the aforementioned "Noise", animal-themed monsters intent on erasing players from the Game.

Tapping on Noise initiates combat, which is handled by a separate screen. Noise have to be simultaneously defeated in two different "zones", which equate to the top and the bottom screens. Neku fights on the bottom screen, and attacks using "psyches" granted to him by pins that you collect throughout the game. Each psyche corresponds to a specific stylus gesture, such as drawing a line through an enemy, tapping empty space, or energetically rubbing the entire screen. Successfully activating a psyche can result in anything from meteors raining from the heavens through to a flurry of devastating melee attacks.

At the same time as Neku is scrapping on the bottom screen, your partner will be under attack on the top screen. You control your partner by means of the D-pad. Each directional press deals damage to an enemy, and by navigating through a "combo tree" using a series of these presses you can unleash a powerful finishing move.

Fighting on both screens at once can be initially confusing, but like most games it's a skill you can acquire over time and ends up being quite satisfying once you've mastered it. To help you out, the game by default will take control of your partner if you get distracted, and can in fact completely run the top screen to a fairly adequate standard. Also, on the default difficulty, battles are almost laughably easy, so pretty much any player should be able to make it through to the end.

Actually, the game's difficulty settings are an important part of the core gameplay. The basic settings make most fights a pushover, and give you full use of your abilities, but you can choose to deliberately up the difficulty and/or take a handicap to your health bar in order to make battles yield rarer and more valuable loot. I played through most of the game at the "hard" difficulty with about a 50% level handicap and found that to be pretty much ideal; your individual comfort zone may vary. You can adjust this difficulty at any time during combat, and if you do happen to lose a fight you can instantly retry the fight at either the same difficulty or with your characters made practically invincible.

The dual-screen combat is quite clever from a story perspective. Noise can only be fought in pairs; if you don't have a partner, you're completely helpless. Considering that the narrative thrust of the game is about Neku's relationship with other people, it's a stroke of genius.

A major part of the game is fashion; other than your pins, the only equippable items in the game are clothes, which must be purchased from one of a range of major fashion labels throughout Shibuya. Different clothes have different benefits; by and large one set of threads isn't better than another, only different, so the fashion system is more about customisation than it is about power-levelling. Each area of Shibuya keeps a table showing which brands are hot and which brands are not; simply by wearing a brand onto the streets you'll raise its cool-factor, which is important as psyche-pins from unfashionable brands are significantly gimped in combat.

Theoretically, any character can wear any clothing, and there's benefits to be gained from engaging in a little gender-bending when it comes to your equipment. However, every character has a "Bravery" stat, which is pretty slow to increase, and each piece of clothing has a minimum Bravery required before you can wear it. Female characters tend to start with more Bravery and women's clothing has a higher Bravery requirement.

All that dressing-up might put some people off, but don't be fooled - this isn't just an attempt to cash in on a new demographic. The whole fashion component weaves masterfully into the game's plot and theme. It's hard to say how without giving out spoilers, but the fashion system is one of the most brilliant examples of game mechanics supporting narrative ever to appear in a video game. It's absolutely inspired. The World Ends With You absolutely could not be the game it is without the fashion system, and it turns out to have something really worth saying on the subject.

The soundtrack to the game is phenomenal, consisting mostly of J-Pop, techno and Japanese hip-hop, and the DS speakers don't do it justice. You'll want to spend some time listening to the tunes over the headphones - they're that good.

Also noteworthy is the translation. This is the best translation of a Japanese game I have ever seen - it's a work of minor literary genius in itself. This was obviously going to be an issue for such a Tokyo-centric game, but the dialogue retains the flavour and culture of Shibuya perfectly, including a bunch of sly gaming references and satires of otaku culture. The end product is perfectly understandable and palatable to a Western audience, but still feels savvy and doesn't for a moment allow itself to be dumbed down.

The World Ends With You is great as a game. It's also an amazing piece of fantasy tourism; I defy you to play without wanting to visit the real Shibuya. But beyond all of that, it's an excellent story, with powerfully realised characters, and the whole thing's wrapped within layer after layer of stunningly insightful teen-angst metaphor.

There's a hundred hours of gameplay in this thing easily, and if you're like me the first couple of hours may not make the strongest impression on you. But stick with it, because this is easily the best game of the year so far, and may well be one of the best JRPGs ever developed.

Import Gaming In 60 Seconds

Thanks to Juri, I've recently had the chance to spend a half-hour or so with each of a bunch of imported Nintendo DS titles. As a result I'm able to give a quick run-down on where the fun is at, although my shortened experience with each and the fact I don't read Japanese prevents me from doing full reviews.

Daigasso Band Brothers: This game is absolute gold and I have no idea why it hasn't been Westernised yet. It's essentially a rhythm game where you're pressing the DS face buttons to play the music. The first gimmick is that you can play any instrument in any song; typically songs have six to ten instruments. The second gimmick is that you can play multiplayer with up to eight friends using only the one card, or with unlimited friends if they all have cards. Each player selects an instrument and together you play as a band.

The single player mode is decent but not special. However, playing with a full band is a one-of-a-kind experience. There's a fairly large list of songs drawing from anime, game themes, and Japanese and Western classics. Plus you can buy an expansion pack which plugs into the GBA port on the DS and roughly doubles the song list. If that's not enough, you can input your own songs, and the whole thing is remarkably friendly to those who don't read Japanese.

Doki Doki Majo Shinpan: The infamous "witch-touching" game turns out to be nowhere near as dubious or lurid as internet legend would have you believe. Although it's still pretty dubious. It turns out that one or more 14-year-olds at your local school may in fact be a witch, and it's up to you to stalk them like a creepy pervert and take photos of them doing incriminating things like, uh, saying hello to a cat (?).

Once you've amassed a weird little shrine of evidence, you can engage them in a battle, in which they'll throw fireballs or somesuch at you. Throwing fireballs apparently is not sufficient proof that they're a witch, because you'll then have to inspect their body for a witch mark. This is the "witch-touching" bit, and it's pretty rubbish; you merely have to tap on a still image until the witch changes pose, and repeat until her "witch mark" turns up. There's neither nudity nor ecchi involved. This is rubbish as hentai, rubbish as a traditional dating sim, and generally just a bad game. Plus there's more Japanese text than you can poke a stick at, so those who don't speak the language are going to be floundering.

Taiko no Tatsujin DS Touch de Dokodon: Aka Taiko Master DS, this is the DS port of Namco's successful arcade drum game. The bottom screen displays a traditional Japanese taiko drum, and the top screen has a scrolling list of drum beats. Red drumbeats require players to tap the face of the drum, while on blue drumbeats you need to tap outside the drum, symbolising striking it on the sides.

It's a bit watered down compared to the arcade machine but it's still a heap of fun, especially considering you can play four-player using only a single card. The song selection is a bit weak, with some classical offerings being the highlight, but this is still immensely recommendable to fans of rhythm games. You can play just fine without knowing the slightest bit of Japanese, too.

Meccha! Taiko no Tatsujin DS: 7tsu no Shima no Daibouken: Aka Taiko Master DS 2, it's the sequel to the first Taiko game. The main upgrade is a better song list, including such odd selections as the theme to SoulCalibur, so it's really less of a sequel than it is an expansion pack, I guess.

There's also apparently a story mode this time around although I didn't get to try that. The multiplayer is just as good as the first one, and once again you'll only need one card between four players.

Electroplankton: Strictly speaking you can buy this title in Australia, but it's the import version I played. It's just a collection of miniature game-like scenarios where you make interesting semi-musical sounds by interacting with the environment.

It's not musical enough to make actual songs, and it's not gamelike enough to actually have goals or progression, so while it's an interesting experiment it's unlikely to keep you occupied for more than thirty minutes total.

Oshare Majo: Love and Berry: Aka Fashionable Witches Love and Berry. This is a port of the Japanese arcade game. The original featured collectible bar-coded cards that you bought separately and swiped at the machine; each card depicted an item of clothing and by swiping the cards you unlocked that clothing for your in-game avatar. Core gameplay consisted of a dancing rhythm game where to beat your opponent you not only had to out-dance them but also be wearing a more stylish outfit.

The DS version keeps the card-swiping intact and even uses the same cards as the arcade, allowing for some portability in the unlikely event you live near one of the machines. The game comes with some basic cards but if you want more you're out of luck as they only sell from fairly rare dispensers inside Japan. It's a shame, because it's a reasonably decent game provided that fashionable witches are your thing.

Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales

You know how sometimes when you get a collection of really lame minigames it's almost as good as having a real game?

No, I don't either.

I picture the offices of Square-Enix as a place filled with candy and mogs, where the Chocobo Theme Music plays all day long and the vending machines accept "gil" as a currency. Into this magical land came a dark force, who schemed to bring misery and mayhem unto the innocent peoples, yea until the skies turned black and the children did weep. And from that ancient evil was born Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales.

The premise of Chocobo Tales is this: that you are a chocobo, one of the two-legged bird things from the Final Fantasy games. It is your sacred task to fight evil, or somesuch, which is convenient when a malevolent demon traps all your chocobo pals inside children's storybooks.

Gameplay consists of jumping into the storybooks, playing the lame minigames, and being rewarded with cards for a collectable card game. You use the cards to challenge bosses to card battles, and thereby progress towards more storybooks.

Now, the card battling bit is actually half decent. But seeing as there's only about eight people in the game who you can play cards against, the whole "gathering cards to fight bosses" thing feels a little pointless. You can take your deck online and play friends or strangers, providing said friends or strangers are unfortunate enough to possess a copy of Chocobo Tales.

The minigames themselves range from "offensively easy" through to "frustratingly stupid". Each storybook takes a traditional children's tale and re-skins it with Final Fantasy monsters. You'll see the race between the lazy Cactuar and the slow-but-steady Adamantoise, along with "The Ugly Chocobo" and "The Boy Who Cried Leviathan". Minigame objectives fall into the categories of "race to point X" or "collect item Y". Most games can be played in a trial mode, where you aim for a high score, or a battle mode, where you compete against computer controlled chocobos. Like the card battles, you can play these wirelessly against other people who own the game.

As this is a game for the DS, you'll be mostly playing with the stylus, and the game runs into more problems here. Two of the most common motions you'll be performing are a "flick" and a "double tap". First up, the software seems to only recognise these motions two out of every three tries, and secondly they're damn inconvenient, as you're also using the stylus to move and you can't do both at once.

At least the game looks reasonably nice. The storybooks and minigames are done in a kind of Paper Mario style, with the environment unfolding from the book like a pop-up. The "real world" has a bland but inoffensive polygonal aesthetic. The music is another matter; every last piece of music in the game - and I'm not exaggerating here - is a remix of the Chocobo Theme Tune. I got sick of that thing back in Final Fantasy VII and the years have only deepened my loathing for it.

Also, you can finish the game within six hours and the end boss is a game of air hockey.

So, in short, this is the reason that you should never, ever, ever buy a Final Fantasy spin off. Ever.

Ever.

Drawn To Life Sequel Confirmed To Officially Suck

THQ has announced the sequel to Drawn To Life will be a SpongeBob Square Pants game imaginatively entitled Drawn To Life: SpongeBob Square Pants Edition.

I really enjoyed Drawn To Life, and I hate SpongeBob with a passion born in the fiery pits of hell. I'm thus a little conflicted. Ultimately, though, I think I'm going to have to consign this misbegotten follow-up to the compost heap where I keep my garden clippings, kitchen scraps and games made by Midway.

Drawn to Life was a DS platforming game where the player got to draw most of the major game elements and see the game animate them. As for SpongeBob, those with a little more patience for the pineapple-dwelling monstrosity can find the full story at Gamespot.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village

Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a game about puzzles. It's not even very good at puzzles. And yet, you can't help but like it. Not liking it would be like using a nail gun on a puppy.

This is a game for the Nintendo DS, so you'll need your stylus handy. Once equipped, you'll learn that the eponymous Professor Layton is an archaeologist and part-time detective who's been summoned to the village of St Mystere in order to resolve a mystifying inheritance riddle. The Baron of St Mystere has left his entire fortune to "whomsoever finds the Golden Apple".

Finding the Golden Apple translates to working your way through a metric buttload of puzzles. It seems that every inbred sod in the village is just brimming with half-baked brainteasers, which they're crack-addict-desperate to impart to you in their apalling cockney accents. "I say, Professor!" they'll opine, "your hat reminds me of a smashing puzzle!" Or, "Good day, Professor, would you care to solve a riddle I thought of on the loo this morning?" Sometimes, "What ho, Professor, the way you're pulping my irritating noggin with that metal bar has just made me recall a quite smashing problem that I think you'll really get a kick out of!"

I'm a fan of the puzzle, but it's more accurate to say that I am a fan of the clever puzzle, and that's not what's on offer here. I played PerplexCity - I'm ready for puzzles like this or this. I'm ready for puzzles that are willing to go up against Chuck Norris in a twenty-four-hour roundhouse-kicking marathon, and then defeat Hitler before bedtime. These are not those puzzles.

I've finished all 135 puzzles in the game and less than ten put up a fight. Of those, I brute forced one using a Python algorithm. For most puzzles the answer was obvious as soon as the puzzle came on screen. Sloppy wording and unhelpful pictures were really the biggest barriers to my progress.

(As an example of the difficulty curve, the game considers the fairly famous Eight Queens Puzzle (spoiler) as one of its hardest problems.)

From a different perspective, though, I'm a gamer who's been playing puzzle games since The 7th Guest (ah, the memories) and I know most of the classic puzzles backwards by now. A good slice of the audience for Professor Layton won't have seen these problems before and won't know how thoroughly they've been run into the ground.

And besides, Professor Layton and the Curious Village is just so full of personality that you'll be inclined to forgive most of its lamer puzzles on the strength of how engaging the game is. Professor Layton and his apprentice Luke come across as fully-fledged characters, thanks in part to some rather good voice work. (Warning: you'll constantly be expecting Luke to say "Shine yer shoes, guv'nor?") The remainder of the village are one dimensional, but still rather loveable.

The art throughout is rendered in a charming European style, including some fully animated cutscenes at key points. The music is good without being excellent, and consists of violin-heavy detective melodies which accompany your travel through the village.

The game is by Level 5, better known for titles such as Rogue Galaxy, Jeanne D'Arc, and their collaboration with Square-Enix on the recent Dragon Quest games. They're a developer who knows how to create engaging characters and tell a worthwhile story, and that comes across clearly here. The overarching mystery of St Mystere turns out to be wholly ludicrous, but you're unlikely to care too much, as the process of exploring the village and interacting with its citizens is delivered in a reasonably light-hearted manner and is thoroughly fun.

One major element of the game which could use revision is its scoring system. The game scores you on puzzle solutions by giving you "picarats". Each puzzle is worth a certain amount of picarats. Unsuccessful attempts at solving a problem lower the maximum picarat reward.

This is largely an attempt to stop players from brute-forcing the multiple-choice puzzles. However, as you can turn off the DS after a wrong guess and reload, there's really no reason not to walk away with full points. Facing a similar problem, PerplexCity implemented a mechanic whereby only three guesses could be made within a 24-hour period; a similar system, perhaps with your guesses refreshing every hour, would have worked well here.

In any case, Professor Layton is a fun and engaging game, and there's really nothing else like it available on DS, so if it sounds remotely like something you'll enjoy you should probably pick it up. There's apparently two sequels in the works, and despite my gripes I'm looking forward to them, so if you're hanging out for some puzzle-themed gaming then this is absolutely the game for you.