Assorted Stuff

Yes, it's time for assorted stuff. Everyone likes stuff, right?

* In case you've missed it in the last two weeks, for all you Dynasty Warriors fans who aren't already over the moon about Dynasty Warriors Gundam, there's also word of Warriors Orochi, which is basically just a new Dynasty Warriors game featuring the entire cast of the Dynasty Warriors franchise plus the crew from Samurai Warriors, united at last. Plus if you read this article in the right way you can interpret it as meaning there'll be three-player co-op. Awesome.

* My favourite developer that nobody loves, Quantic Dream, are not only following up their fantastic PS2 title Fahrenheit (aka Indigo Prophecy) with a PS3 release called Heavy Rain (old news), but they're also for some reason doing a PS3-exclusive sequel to their unanimously reviled Dreamcast relic Omikron: The Nomad Soul. That's great; while they're at it maybe they can get the rights to Phantasmagoria off Sierra and release a few more redundant iterations of that franchise too.

* I'm working my way through F.E.A.R (again at least a good year behind the hype), and I absolutely can't believe how you can pour as much raw talent and technical genius into a game as has obviously made its way into F.E.A.R. and still produce such a charmless and unmemorable end product. I'd be writing it off completely, if only it weren't so darned fun unloading my shotgun into those Replicas. The completely-tacked-on attempts at scariness just make me wish I had a new Silent Hill game to play.

* And in case you weren't excited about Rock Band yet, here's another big helping of huzzah.

On The Way: Dynasty Warriors Gundam

Is it just me, or does Dynasty Warriors: Gundam sound like the greatest idea in the history of gaming, ever? It's like some kind of horrible curse that game developers keep creating reasons for me to buy an XBox 360. Damn you, game developers! Damn your eyes!

Gaming In 60 Seconds

Since the last time I've been blogging, I've finished an awful lot of games. For those who care, here are some quick summaries.

Final Fantasy XII (PS2): A fantastically addictive experience that will consume 100+ hours of your life - but if you like depth of gameplay, compelling plot, or interesting characterisation you're better off playing an earlier installment of the series. The later dungeon designs are downright idiotic, becoming repetetive, tedious slogs wherein you'll be forced to search for invisible paths and illusionary walls on a scale not seen since the original Might and Magic. Sadly better than most traditional computer RPGs but still not up to scratch for Square-Enix's mascot franchise.

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS): Fun open-ended 2D platforming in the tradition of the Castlevania titles for the Gameboy Advance. This one acts as a direct sequel to the GBA Aria of Sorrow, and sees you once again leading white-haired pretty boy Soma Cruz in a quest against vague and unspecified evil. If anything, Dawn of Sorrow is even easier than its already undemanding predecessor, and you'll breeze through in a couple of days of gameplay. It's a decent ride though, and this time around Soma's ability to capture the souls of defeated enemies and gain their powers is put to better use in crafting puzzles to block your progress. Worth your purchase for the DS if game longevity isn't a major concern to you.

Gitaroo Man (PS2): Everyone who told me this game was good was full of filthy, filthy lies. A pox on their houses. Gitaroo Man comes from Koei, the makers of Dynasty Warriors, and features a similar hardcore guitar metal soundtrack, but that's where the similarities end. You're tasked with fighting the challenge, or challenging the fight, by using the analog stick to follow a rapidly moving line across the screen while simultaneously jamming out using the face buttons, in time to each level's music. In practice, this is eye-wateringly hard, deeply unsatisfying, and will likely just leave you wanting to go back to playing Guitar Hero. Avoid as though it had rabies.

Elite Beat Agents (DS): Every bit as good as Ossu! Tatake! Ouendan!, this extravagant tale of male cheerleading captures most of what made the Japanese original good, while at the same time turning down the difficulty to more realistic levels. Not all the new Western soundtrack will win gold medals, but the excellence of busting your moves to the likes of YMCA and Jumping Jack Flash more than compensates. Must-have for all DS owners.

Cooking Mama (DS): Real cooking, taught through the use of minigames. What's there is definitely strong, but it only took me about ten minutes to start asking, "But then what?" Certainly original; possibly a good buy for non-gamers and the very young. Hard to justify at full price for connoisseurs, though.

Another Code (DS): Aka Trace Memory in the US. Developer CING's first attempt at a DS point-and-click puzzler falls flat due to an uninspiring story and a largely sterile game world. While some obstacles make inspired use of the DS's unique features, on the whole this is likely to leave most consumers cold. Stay away unless you're a die-hard adventure fan and you see it on sale.

Hotel Dusk (DS): Where Another Code bit down hard on the suck pill, CING's second effort in the adventure genre is significantly more impressive. Hotel Dusk combines strong plotting, dialogue, and a unique art style to create a memorable and enjoyable romp through a 70s noir-esque mystery novel. The game sometimes moves on rails and makes you feel more audience than player, but this won't diminish your enjoyment of an all-round class act. Should be seen.

Excite Truck (Wii): Sweet Goat of Moses, this game is fun! Everything you liked best about the Burnout franchise, combined with motion sensitive controls and the sensibilities of the old-school PC classic Stunts. Never have monster trucks spent so much time flying through the air. For people I've shown this to, it seems to sell the Wii in both concept and execution better than anything except perhaps Wii Sports - and Excite Truck has a hell of a lot more staying power. Must-buy for Wii owners.

Well, that's all the things I'm done with since last we spoke. While I'm here, I'll mention that Wii owners who haven't yet obtained and played ActRaiser for their virtual console are uneducated philistines who deserve to be shot in the street. Right in the street, shot.

Samurai Warriors 2 Post-Mortem

Samurai Warriors 2 for the PS2 continues Koei's franchise of Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors games, and despite only marginal changes from the last edition, is probably the best game they've made yet.

The Dynasty Warriors series put the player in the role of a legendary warrior in the era of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and charged them with cutting a swathe across sprawling 3D battlefields packed with literally thousands of enemy soldiers. The Samurai Warriors series transposes this premise to feudal Japan. Samurai Warriors 2 loosely follows Japanese history from the rise of Nobunaga Oda through to the assumption of power by Ieyasu Tokugawa.

The game has some 26 playable characters, ranging from Nobunaga and Ieyasu through to master swordsman Musashi Miyamoto and ninja Hanzo Hattori. Each of these characters is significantly more... extreme... than history might indicate. Nobunaga, for example, apparently commands all manner of demonic magics. Kotaro Fuma can throw fireballs. Ieyasu Tokugawa carries an honest-to-god cannon around the battlefield, which seems to ignore all rules of recoil and reload times.

When you take these characters to the battlefield, you'll basically be turned loose on a vast army and left more or less free to decimate them as you see fit. Generally, you'll have an army of your own backing you up, with a general at the head who you have to protect or risk losing the battle. As you wander around slaughtering your foe, you'll hear the chatter of generals on both sides of the battle discussing their changing fortunes, ordering ambushes, taunting their rivals, and announcing charges and counter-charges. Generally, you'll want to pay attention to this chatter, as not only do you have the opportunity to become involved in their schemes by co-ordinating or thwarting their stragems, but it is in some cases fairly vital. You'll need to capture fortresses, defend cannon emplacements, prevent assassinations, escort spies, and achieve a whole bunch of other objectives.

These in-battle objectives have been tightened up a lot from previous games in the series. Firstly, they're greater in both number and variety than previously. There's usually at least two things you can be doing at any given time, which is great for two-player games as the second player will always have something meaningful to do. Secondly, they're more important. Where previously you could largely ignore the general chatter and just kill stuff, now you'll generally have to finish at least a couple of sub-goals in order to win a battle. This is a change for the better, as it lends each battle a distinctive character, breaks up the repetition, and gives the feeling that you're actually making strategic decisions which influence the course of the battle. And you're still largely free to do your own thing most of the time.

As you win battles, your character will level up in a variety of ways. This, too, is handled better than previous installments in the series. Firstly, levelling up is well matched to the progress of the plot, so you'll rarely need to repeat a level to gain XP - you can just play straight through. Your stats rise as you gain levels, which is a much better system than Dynasty Warriors, which saw you farming levels for rare stat-up items.

You'll also gain gold as you play, from defeating officers, accomplishing sub-goals, and just winning battles. Gold can be spent to buy new mounts, new bodyguards, upgrade your weapons, and most importantly to buy skills. Skills provide passive bonuses on the battlefield, including raising your basic stats, giving you increased effect from healing items, and strengthening your apocalyptic "True Musou" attack. Skills can also be randomly "stolen" from defeated enemy officers.

The game's Story Mode features a unique story for each character, detailing their place in Japanese history over five or six stages of battle. These are reasonably historically accurate, and you'll likely learn a fact or two as you play, although there's a decent amount of "what if" speculation for some of the minor characters or characters who died before achieving their dreams. Notably, there's been significant licence taken with the assassination of Nobunaga Oda.

There's also a Free Mode, letting you play any stage with any character, and a Survival Mode. Survival Mode challenges you to fight your way through 100 floors of a giant castle. Every five floors you have the opportunity to pick a mission, which will then play out over the next five floors. If you complete missions successfully, you earn bonus gold, and occasionally unlock new mounts, skills, or characters. It's a lot more fun than the Survival Modes of previous games in the franchise.

You can play Story Mode or Free mode co-operatively with a second player. Actually, the missions are so hectic you'll often feel like you need a second player just to stay in control of the fairly large battlefields. Two-player mode works in splitscreen, which involves some graphical compromises but is perfectly workable and a lot of fun. There's also a Monopoly-esque boardgame called Sugoroku which can be played with up to four players using a multi-tap. Sugoroku is fun, and worth a couple of tries, but is unlikely to hold your attention in the long term.

The main criticism levelled at the Dynasty and Samurai Warriors games is that they're repetitive, and that's an accusation fairly made. But, it could be said, Tetris is repetitive. It doesn't really matter that gameplay is repetitive when that gameplay is inherently entertaining. And, at least for me, going through battalions of soldiers like a hot knife through butter never gets old. No other game delivers an experience quite like Samurai Warriors, and it's an experience you'll either tire of in minutes, or be happy repeating for uncounted hours.

It's also true that Samurai Warriors 2 is effectively the same game as the original Samurai Warriors, and is very similar to pretty much all the Dynasty Warriors games. Like a sports franchise, Koei releases a new Warriors game every year with little more than a roster update and some new arenas. It may be the case that if you already have Samurai Warriors it's not worth your money to purchase the sequel. But on the other hand, Samurai Warriors 2 is a remarkably fun game, and for whatever reason the original Samurai Warriors was never released in Australia.

Graphically, Samurai Warriors looks good, but not great. The models are reasonably detailed, but some compromises have been made in order to depict the throngs of enemies that the game demands. The fog-of-war is still present and unfortunately close, but never really impinges on your awareness. The game overall looks about as good as Samurai Warriors or Dynasty Warriors 5. I'd love to see it on the XBox 360, as I can only assume the graphics are significantly better. Artistically, it's nothing special - less ugly than some of its ancestors, and sporting some great character design, but still plagued by some pretty bland battlefields and enemy troops.

The sound is similarly middle-of-the-road. Character voices are considerably better acted than the earlier games, but are still by no means particularly good. The best that can be said is that they're rarely irritating. The music combines traditional Japanese motifs with hard electric-guitar rock, and again is neither irritating nor memorable. The sound effects are probably the best part of the bag, with a great mix of screams, yells, horse hoofbeats, weapon swings, musket fires, and suchlike. They're still probably not going to win awards, though.

For my money, Samurai Warriors 2 is the best Warriors game yet. The level design is exemplary, with missions that are tight and focused without straight-jacketing the player. Levelling up is natural and free from the grind that plagued earlier versions. The character stories are strong, and the Japanese setting seems to suit the flavour of the game better than the Chinese one ever did. All in all, this is not only a must-have for existing fans of the series, but an ideal point to jump on board if you've never played a Warriors game before.

More Of The Same

How is it that I can be thoroughly enjoying Samurai Warriors 2, the seventh functionally identical installment in that franchise that I've played, and yet the release of Vice City Stories for the PSP just has me sighing and saying, "I guess I'll play it, some day"?

I just feel tired of the Grand Theft Auto formula. The often tortured plotlines, the implausible characters, the occasional frustratingly difficult missions that just make me want to throw my PS2 or PSP out a window. It's not doing it for me any more. Vice City Stories will probably end up being the fifth time I've completed an ambulance R3 mission, and I can sense already that it'll have some idiotic and nigh-on impossible motorcycle checkpoint stunt challenge.

There's only so many times I can build a bloated criminal empire, Rockstar. Can't you give me something new?

I have Bully aka Canis Canem Edit aka Grand Theft Schoolyard sitting by my TV waiting for me to play it, and it's good and all, I suppose. The main character looks and acts like an asshat, which is a turn off. I'm fundamentally left feeling that I've already done four years in a private school, and I'm not really sure I want to go back under the guise of gaming. Plus, that whole "jocks vs nerds vs greasers vs rich kids" thing has been done to death. Watching The Breakfast Club only takes a couple of hours, and it has Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson in it.

Lego Star Wars II is next on my gaming list after Samurai Warriors. Maybe it'll set me straight.

Dynasty Warriors BB (No Luck)

By the way, last week I tried that Dynasty Warriors BB demo that I got given at Tokyo Game Show. It installed fine, and I got treated to some very nice cinematics of assorted Chinese-esque warriors going toe to toe with series mascot Lu Bu. And then I got to the point where I'd have to log in, and realised that unfortunately the game only works for subscribers to one of Japan's BB networks (hence the name), such as Yahoo! BB.

As I understand it, what differentiates the BB networks from other broadband service providers is that they go at a speed of about 12 megabits per second, which is an order of magnitude faster than most of the rest of the world gets. I'm unsure if Dynasty Warriors BB actually needs all that crazy speed, or whether it's just some sort of exclusivity deal, but in any case it's off-limits to us gaijin for the time being. Sigh.

For those who don't know, Dynasty Warriors BB is a PC-based massively multiplayer installment of Koei's successful console franchise, which sees players controlling single exemplary warriors on large semi-historical battlefields. The player is the proverbial "one warrior worth a thousand", and has the ability to go through literally thousands of enemies like a hot knife through butter.