1. This is Cheers in game form. You spend all your time in a bar. You serve beers. You have crushes on your coworkers and your romantic life is in the public domain. An important gameplay element is getting to know everybody's name.
2. I admire Sukeban Games's utter commitment to VA-11 Hall-A's core mechanic. The only way you interact w/ the world in any way at all is by making people drinks. It is taken to the point to where, even though you spend the whole game talking to people, you don't even get to chose dialog options. People come to to titular VA-11 Hall-A bar. They ask for drinks. You make them drinks. The drinks you make affect how the conversation goes. That's pretty much it.
3. The player character, Jill, is not some super special person. She doesn't even have greater problems than any other person might have, let alone super powers. She has a story but her story is just one of many stories you learn of behind the bar in Glitch City.
4. The art and overall presentation draw you into the world. The retro-tinged but not completely retro pixel art and chip-tune inflected music create a vibration that is feels realistic w/o ever going for anything that resembles actual realism. It plays on your familiarity w/ game art. It's comforting, a place you have been before. Again, this is a video game version of Cheers.
5. Okay, I guess Cheers didn't have sex ro-bots that look like little girls.
6. And the fact that little girl-looking (but fully able to consent) sex ro-bots co-exist w/ everyone is really a big part of the VA-11 Hall-A's charm. They set up Glitch city as the most progressive city in the world--esp. w/ regards to ro-bots--and VA-11 Hall-A is a truly come-as-you-are sort of place. Your character, Jill, is a lesbian. No big deal. Sex ro-bots. No big deal. Regular ro-bots. No big deal. Gay men. No big deal. Bounty hunters. No big deal. Kitten ear women? No big deal. Actual children? Just don't serve them alcohol.
7. There is not much in the way of gameplay challenge in VA-11 Hall-A. You can find your way to a "bad" ending but if you wind up there, you've done so basically by choice.
8. All of the drink ingredients you use are imaginary but after a while you start to feel like you know what they taste like. A few times, I'd look at some drink recipes and just being like, "Oh God, I bet that gives you a hell of a headache in the morning." I also found myself getting concerned for the health of characters who too frequently ordered strong drinks.
9. What really impresses me is just how much of Glitch City and the world
at large you get know from the perspective of one person who spends
ninety percent of her time in exactly two locations. As Jill, you have
conversations w/ bar patrons and spend a few minutes a day on your
smartphone. From this, you learn of all manner of corporate
and government intrigue plus the culture and technology of the day.
10. You get to pick the music you play in the bar. I could never quite get a bead on whether it affects anything else you do. You might get a compliment on the music but maybe it's just a canned response and you'd get a compliment so matter what you picked. Who knows anything these days. It's a mixed up, muddled up world when you tend bar at Va-ll Hall-A. (You see what I did there?)
11.Upon starting a new game, the game reminds you to grab some drinks and
some snacks before starting. Let's just say that I personally chose to
forgo the snacks.
12. VA-11 Hall-A takes a relatively simple conceit and runs with it: you are a cyberpunk bartender. W/ this minimal
setup, Sukeban Games manages to build a full world for you to live
and relax in for a while. They successfully create a feeling w/ pixel art and unvoiced dialog that huge studios struggle to make w/ several million polygons on screen and nine digit budgets. VA-11 Hall-A feels real and VA-11 Hall-A is the sort of game you will replay just to see some familiar faces in a place you've been before.
13. Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name...
Thursday, December 21, 2017
Tuesday, December 19, 2017
13 Points on Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - Konami - 1997 [Sony PlayStation]
1. I don't know what it was like to play this in 1997 but I can tell you playing it right now is great. Some of these so-called classics are really best left to retro-gamers and other insufferable dweebs but I think Castlevania: Symphony of the Night flies by its own two wings. Gameplay is terrific and you don't have to add "once you get used to the outdated control scheme" or any of ten thousand qualifying conditions that these old games are usually allowed.
2. Also, crucify me if you will, ye old game nerds, but the NES-era Castlevania titles are horrible. Symphony of the Night moves the emphasis from getting knocked off platforms because you hit an erratically moving low-level enemy to exploring its foreboding gameworld and is amazingly better for it.
4. This does take one cue from the original games that's quite welcome though: the music is excellent. Go listen to it. It is clearly awesome and anyone who says differently has ears that are really stupid and ugly. It is a varied mix of rock and more symphonic music and each piece sets the mood of its area perfectly. Both in terms of composition and sound quality, Symphony of the Night's soundtrack can stand its ground against any game soundtrack ever made.
5. The graphics don't hold up quite so well, mostly from a technological standpoint. This isn't to say this is a bad looking game--quite the contrary--but modern hi-bit pixel art games that aren't as limited by resolution simply look better. The art style sets the tone nicely but there's times where things get muddled and confusing due to a dark color palate and a limited level of detail.
6. The story here is window dressing. They give you and excuse to go explore a giant castle and you do so. I guess there's something about your mom and Dracula and also some remarkably stiff voice acting so, I dunno, if you need a story, you can pretend this has one.
7. This all actually works because exploring this castle is awesome. Every area has a different theme, different monsters, different music and a whole different feel to it. It is by no means a reasonable structure as anything other than a video game level but, you know, it is a video game level so that's fine. You are given ample reason to explore beyond what you have to through a myriad of hidden powerups and optional bosses but most people would probably want to go around anyway just to see what's tucked away in the various obscure corners.
8. The save system in this gives me flashbacks to when I'd have to leave my old systems running for hours unattended because my mom needed me to do something and "Hold on, I need to find a save point" was an unintelligible to parents in the 90's.
9. On this same subject, I do understand spread out save points from a gameplay perspective--it creates challenge and tension as you traverse between them--but what I don't get is why Symphony of the Night needs to dump you out to the main menu every time you die, requiring you to sit through roughly six hours of loading screens to get playing again.
10. To be honest, I am unsure if I'd have gotten through this w/o consulting an FAQ and map on a few occasions. You pick up a lot of random crap in this and there's a few instances where knowing that something is important is only going to happen if you spend a lot of time digging through menus... or just cheat and look it up. Similarly, you can spend hours exploring every possible path and passage through the castle... or just look at a map. My recommendation: push through as much of this as you can w/o help but a few hints here and there kept me moving and stopped the game from getting frustrating.
11. Speaking of frustrating, this has those same godawful sine-wave flying Medusa heads that knock you off platforms every Castlevania game has--and they are somehow not even the most annoying enemies in the game, not by a long shot.
12. The boss battle is in danger of becoming a lost art in gaming. One advantage of going old school is you are in no danger of ending a level on a glorified clip scene where you have to hit a button as prompted from time. The boss battles here are epic, skill-based challenges and there's tons of them. Huzzah!
13. As touched on in 1, I don't buy into any era in the past being some lost golden age of gaming. Games now are better than they've ever been and that will be true whenever you read this. Games that hold up for twenty years are very much the exception rather than the rule but Symphony of the Night is one of these games and you should play it. It sounds great, looks fine, play great, annoys you only occasionally and is completely engaging throughout. This makes it better than most games regardless of when they came out.
2. Also, crucify me if you will, ye old game nerds, but the NES-era Castlevania titles are horrible. Symphony of the Night moves the emphasis from getting knocked off platforms because you hit an erratically moving low-level enemy to exploring its foreboding gameworld and is amazingly better for it.
4. This does take one cue from the original games that's quite welcome though: the music is excellent. Go listen to it. It is clearly awesome and anyone who says differently has ears that are really stupid and ugly. It is a varied mix of rock and more symphonic music and each piece sets the mood of its area perfectly. Both in terms of composition and sound quality, Symphony of the Night's soundtrack can stand its ground against any game soundtrack ever made.
5. The graphics don't hold up quite so well, mostly from a technological standpoint. This isn't to say this is a bad looking game--quite the contrary--but modern hi-bit pixel art games that aren't as limited by resolution simply look better. The art style sets the tone nicely but there's times where things get muddled and confusing due to a dark color palate and a limited level of detail.
6. The story here is window dressing. They give you and excuse to go explore a giant castle and you do so. I guess there's something about your mom and Dracula and also some remarkably stiff voice acting so, I dunno, if you need a story, you can pretend this has one.
7. This all actually works because exploring this castle is awesome. Every area has a different theme, different monsters, different music and a whole different feel to it. It is by no means a reasonable structure as anything other than a video game level but, you know, it is a video game level so that's fine. You are given ample reason to explore beyond what you have to through a myriad of hidden powerups and optional bosses but most people would probably want to go around anyway just to see what's tucked away in the various obscure corners.
8. The save system in this gives me flashbacks to when I'd have to leave my old systems running for hours unattended because my mom needed me to do something and "Hold on, I need to find a save point" was an unintelligible to parents in the 90's.
9. On this same subject, I do understand spread out save points from a gameplay perspective--it creates challenge and tension as you traverse between them--but what I don't get is why Symphony of the Night needs to dump you out to the main menu every time you die, requiring you to sit through roughly six hours of loading screens to get playing again.
10. To be honest, I am unsure if I'd have gotten through this w/o consulting an FAQ and map on a few occasions. You pick up a lot of random crap in this and there's a few instances where knowing that something is important is only going to happen if you spend a lot of time digging through menus... or just cheat and look it up. Similarly, you can spend hours exploring every possible path and passage through the castle... or just look at a map. My recommendation: push through as much of this as you can w/o help but a few hints here and there kept me moving and stopped the game from getting frustrating.
11. Speaking of frustrating, this has those same godawful sine-wave flying Medusa heads that knock you off platforms every Castlevania game has--and they are somehow not even the most annoying enemies in the game, not by a long shot.
12. The boss battle is in danger of becoming a lost art in gaming. One advantage of going old school is you are in no danger of ending a level on a glorified clip scene where you have to hit a button as prompted from time. The boss battles here are epic, skill-based challenges and there's tons of them. Huzzah!
13. As touched on in 1, I don't buy into any era in the past being some lost golden age of gaming. Games now are better than they've ever been and that will be true whenever you read this. Games that hold up for twenty years are very much the exception rather than the rule but Symphony of the Night is one of these games and you should play it. It sounds great, looks fine, play great, annoys you only occasionally and is completely engaging throughout. This makes it better than most games regardless of when they came out.
Friday, December 15, 2017
13 Points on Rocksmith 2014 - Ubisoft - San Francisco - 2014 (Remastered Edition, 2016) - [PC]
1. I have both this and the original Rocksmith and this one is
better. Though I do miss a few things from the original, that this has
superior note recognition, less lag and a few more techniques give it a
solid edge.
2. I can only review this as someone who has played guitar for years. I think it would work for learning guitar to begin with but what I can say for sure is practicing with this will maintain and improve your guitar skills if you already play. It is much better than just picking up a guitar and noodling around for an hour and it is more fun than practicing with a metronome. The only things I could recommend over this is jamming with other players or taking lessons if you have the kind of time and patience required for interacting w/ human beings in real life.
3. For new players: learning guitar takes a long time. That 400 hours you spent before you got really good at twitch shots in Counter Strike, that is not even close. Sorry you had to hear it from me.
4. For everyone: learn to play and get good at the songs you don't like. You will be exposed to techniques and rhythms you would otherwise miss. It will make you a better player.
5. Getting 100% on a song does not mean you can actually play it well. I have seen way too many YouTube vids of people 100%ing songs with this that just sound all kinds of shaky rhythmically. This gives you the ability to listen back to your performance. Give your fingers a break and do this every now and again.
6. This still has trouble with note tracking on bass sometimes. Sometimes it's pretty severe. Yes, I checked my intonation.
7. If you follow the path specified for you in this game, it makes you spend a lot of time playing w/ these cheesy jam-along tracks and that is just annoying. I dunno about you but playing scale notes to a poor sounding fake classic rock band is just not my idea of a good time.
8. The guitarcade games actually help you so play them. They do help w/ your playing somewhat but they really excel at is keeping your attention on the screen and not on the fretboard since you can't memorize them like you do a song.
9. It is kinda a bummer that they make you pay an extra ten bucks to play the tracks from the original game. Or, not so much that, but that you pay ten dollars and it still doesn't transfer your progress over. Sucks to you for that, Ubisoft!
10. The feature in this called riff repeater that lets you repeat and slow down tough parts of the songs is way better than in the original where I found it nearly unusable.
11. I would not suggest sinking too much money into a guitar for this if you are just beginning. A guitar in the range of like $150 or maybe even cheaper will be perfectly adequate. Buy it at a guitar store and ask if they will check the intonation and set up for you as a condition of your purchase. This is a reasonable thing to do and they won't think you are being a big nerd or anything.
12. Every now and again you will be truly killing it on a rad song and the dumb cable will stop working and you will get really, really mad. Express this anger. You are an artist.
13. There is more to life than video games and more to life than playing guitar but if you put both together, you are pretty damn close. Maybe have a kid or something if you feel unfulfilled. I'm not gonna tell you how to live your life.
2. I can only review this as someone who has played guitar for years. I think it would work for learning guitar to begin with but what I can say for sure is practicing with this will maintain and improve your guitar skills if you already play. It is much better than just picking up a guitar and noodling around for an hour and it is more fun than practicing with a metronome. The only things I could recommend over this is jamming with other players or taking lessons if you have the kind of time and patience required for interacting w/ human beings in real life.
3. For new players: learning guitar takes a long time. That 400 hours you spent before you got really good at twitch shots in Counter Strike, that is not even close. Sorry you had to hear it from me.
4. For everyone: learn to play and get good at the songs you don't like. You will be exposed to techniques and rhythms you would otherwise miss. It will make you a better player.
5. Getting 100% on a song does not mean you can actually play it well. I have seen way too many YouTube vids of people 100%ing songs with this that just sound all kinds of shaky rhythmically. This gives you the ability to listen back to your performance. Give your fingers a break and do this every now and again.
6. This still has trouble with note tracking on bass sometimes. Sometimes it's pretty severe. Yes, I checked my intonation.
7. If you follow the path specified for you in this game, it makes you spend a lot of time playing w/ these cheesy jam-along tracks and that is just annoying. I dunno about you but playing scale notes to a poor sounding fake classic rock band is just not my idea of a good time.
8. The guitarcade games actually help you so play them. They do help w/ your playing somewhat but they really excel at is keeping your attention on the screen and not on the fretboard since you can't memorize them like you do a song.
9. It is kinda a bummer that they make you pay an extra ten bucks to play the tracks from the original game. Or, not so much that, but that you pay ten dollars and it still doesn't transfer your progress over. Sucks to you for that, Ubisoft!
10. The feature in this called riff repeater that lets you repeat and slow down tough parts of the songs is way better than in the original where I found it nearly unusable.
11. I would not suggest sinking too much money into a guitar for this if you are just beginning. A guitar in the range of like $150 or maybe even cheaper will be perfectly adequate. Buy it at a guitar store and ask if they will check the intonation and set up for you as a condition of your purchase. This is a reasonable thing to do and they won't think you are being a big nerd or anything.
12. Every now and again you will be truly killing it on a rad song and the dumb cable will stop working and you will get really, really mad. Express this anger. You are an artist.
13. There is more to life than video games and more to life than playing guitar but if you put both together, you are pretty damn close. Maybe have a kid or something if you feel unfulfilled. I'm not gonna tell you how to live your life.
Friday, December 8, 2017
13 Points on Retro City Rampage DX - Vblank Entertainment - 2014 [Nintendo 3DS]
2. This is basically a really easy version of the top-down GTA games w/ a bunch of little mini-games built in. It also has a lot of references to to 80's and 90's games and culture.
3. Lots and lots and lots of references.
4. I played the 3DS version. I don't think there was anything wrong w/ it at all but I'd recommend the PC or a home console version. This would be a fun game to pass around the controller w/ some friends w/. You could see who could pick out the most 80's and 90's games and culture references.
5. If, like most people, you don't have friends, go ahead and get a handheld version.
6. I would say the main issue w/ Retro City Rampage is it spreads itself too thin. The main gameplay is solid but never great. It never feels like it really hits its stride, esp. in terms of providing a nice progressive challenge. The mini-game sections are also fine for the most part but feel like interruptions rather than anything that adds true depth. Some of these mini-games are required to advance in the main plot-line and often have odd difficulty spikes which are very aggravating at times. It seems like more focus could have been placed on pacing rather than cramming every possible joke into every possible second.
7. Jokes are fine but I've yet to play a game that was worth playing solely for humor.
8. One of my gaming pet peeves is when there is a tough final boss that is fought in a different style than the rest of the game is. Retro City Rampage's final boss is pretty tough and is done as a level of a 2D racing game, which is not really done anywhere else in the game. This is pretty much just an example of what I was talking about in number 6 but I found it particularly annoying.
9. The open world aspect seems to be emphasized heavily but never struck me as especially fun. You basically just go around running down pedestrians or causing whatever mayhem you chose while the cops try to stop you. This is probably identical to what you would do in any GTA game but there is not much challenge and that makes it somehow unsatisfying. In the old GTA games one singular bullet was enough to end your rampage and that made it much more aggrandizing when you were finally able to steal the SWAT van or do whatever it is you set out to do.
10. There are also side missions you can do but you are really not directed toward them or encouraged to do them in anyway. I played a few. It didn't really feel like much of a departure from the rest of the game so I didn't really think about them from then on.
11. This has some cool graphics settings to fiddle w/ if you are into fiddling w/ such things. You can basically translate it it to they style of many different old consoles and PCs. Some of the gameplay is impossible in certain modes due to lack of colors but it's pretty fun regardless.
12. Even though Retro City Rampage didn't play great in the strictest sense, I still had a good amount of fun with it. It seemed to drag on a little too long and there were bits I rather disliked here and there but overall I'd say it's good enough that it is not a waste of time or money.
13. Damned by faint praise maybe but that's how I feel about it.
Wednesday, December 6, 2017
13 Points on South Park™: The Stick of Truth™ - Obsidian Entertainment - 2014 [PC]
1. All things considered, I do not think Obsidian could have done very much more than they what they did w/ South Park™: The Stick of Truth™. It'd be a good game w/o its South Park™ license and, sometimes, it feels like it's a good game in spite of its South Park™ license.
2. I am hesitant to say that the graphics for South Park™: The Stick of Truth™ could not be better because the last time I said that, it was about the original Mortal Kombat. This said, any still from the game could just as easily have come from the South Park™ TV show. It's a perfect likeness. The graphics for South Park™: The Stick of Truth™ could not be better.
3. The same holds true for the sound. It's the same sound design as South Park™. I mean, yeah, they could replace the entire sonic tapestry of the whole game w/ Black Sabbath's Master of Reality and it would be way better but I think the aim here was to recreate the feel of a South Park™ episode not just to be timelessly and face-meltingly awesome... unforturnately.
4. I could write a boring and badly incoherent book on my mixed feeling about the type of humor in South Park™ so I feel like I need to bring it up. Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone come from the Lenny Bruce school of comedy where you don't shy away from hateful language but instead sing it out w/ the idea that you can take away the power of said language by ridiculing it. I like this idea in theory but in practice it has definite downsides. For example, while lots of characters play the roll of distasteful bigots on the show, none do so often as Eric Cartman who has become the franchise's de facto leading man over the years. There is considerable effort put into making Cartman seem awful and unlikable--which ostensibly would make people want to not act like him--but here is the issue: Cartman is funny. People don't want to be Cartman but they do want to be funny like Cartman and the way Cartman is funny is by being a bigot. I don't think the show was made w/ the intent to be bigoted or hateful and certainly don't think people are bigoted for enjoying it or even emulating its humor but if you are telling me South Park™ didn't normalize the kind of language Cartman uses and make it just a little bit easier for some people to use that same language hatefully, I'm telling you you're wrong. Sorry you had to hear it from me.
5. Also, there are way, way too many fart jokes.
6. You play as the new kid in town. You start off playing a rather involved LARP game w/ the usual South Park™ cast of characters and, as you'd expect, this escalates to a Nazi zombie outbreak. Most of what you do is go around and recruit other people to fight on your side.
7. The combat reminds me quite a lot of the Mario & Luigi games for Nintendo handhelds. It's turn based but there is also a rhythmic element w/ careful button presses so you don't feel like you are mashing one button the whole time. You have meters for health, special moves and magic, the former two of which reset after each encounter which really lets you go all in and use all the strategies at your disposal.
8. Inventory management is probably the biggest pain, gameplay-wise. You've got unlimited storage but it's just fussy and annoying to deal w/. All your gear can have little enhancements you can add and it just got on my nerves going through everything after a while. To make matters worse, lots of missions require you to wear a particular set of clothes so you are forever having to change against your will, each time needing to re-equip the enhancements.
9. Other than your player character, you can also bring along a variety of South Park™ characters with you. You only get to bring one at a time and sometimes one or the other is needed in some particular situations so you don't get a choice. The extra characters level up w/ you and you don't manage their equipment, which is a good thing since, as per 7, inventory management is a chore.
10. South Park™: The Stick of Truth™'s version of its titular town is a good size for a game and, by that, I mean it's pretty small. I like sprawling game worlds as much as the next person but there's something to be said w/ keeping scope more limited and letting the player really get to know the whole thing.
11. Makers of humorous games please take note: there is no joke funny enough to be repeated in every single fight sequence for a long stretch of gameplay. The need to constantly be funny seems to hamstring The Stick of Truth™'s pacing from time to time. Rather than trying make every single item in a game funny, focus the humor into sections that are actually funny rather than trying to cram dumb jokes down my throat for the entirety of a fifteen hour game. I don't need every weapon to be a piece of poo or a dildo. I don't need to solve every puzzle by farting on it. It's fine. I can enjoy a game w/o it trying to make me laugh every ten seconds.
12. Going through this all mentally, I have a lot of complaints about South Park™: The Stick of Truth™ but I do actually enjoy South Park™ and I enjoyed actually playing The Stick of Truth™ even more. It doesn't make you run all over a giant map and gets to its point rather quickly, making for a dense and high quality gaming experience. It's a bit pat but I feel like it's sufficient to say: if you think you'll like South Park™: The Stick of Truth™, you will.
13. Points™
2. I am hesitant to say that the graphics for South Park™: The Stick of Truth™ could not be better because the last time I said that, it was about the original Mortal Kombat. This said, any still from the game could just as easily have come from the South Park™ TV show. It's a perfect likeness. The graphics for South Park™: The Stick of Truth™ could not be better.
3. The same holds true for the sound. It's the same sound design as South Park™. I mean, yeah, they could replace the entire sonic tapestry of the whole game w/ Black Sabbath's Master of Reality and it would be way better but I think the aim here was to recreate the feel of a South Park™ episode not just to be timelessly and face-meltingly awesome... unforturnately.
4. I could write a boring and badly incoherent book on my mixed feeling about the type of humor in South Park™ so I feel like I need to bring it up. Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone come from the Lenny Bruce school of comedy where you don't shy away from hateful language but instead sing it out w/ the idea that you can take away the power of said language by ridiculing it. I like this idea in theory but in practice it has definite downsides. For example, while lots of characters play the roll of distasteful bigots on the show, none do so often as Eric Cartman who has become the franchise's de facto leading man over the years. There is considerable effort put into making Cartman seem awful and unlikable--which ostensibly would make people want to not act like him--but here is the issue: Cartman is funny. People don't want to be Cartman but they do want to be funny like Cartman and the way Cartman is funny is by being a bigot. I don't think the show was made w/ the intent to be bigoted or hateful and certainly don't think people are bigoted for enjoying it or even emulating its humor but if you are telling me South Park™ didn't normalize the kind of language Cartman uses and make it just a little bit easier for some people to use that same language hatefully, I'm telling you you're wrong. Sorry you had to hear it from me.
5. Also, there are way, way too many fart jokes.
6. You play as the new kid in town. You start off playing a rather involved LARP game w/ the usual South Park™ cast of characters and, as you'd expect, this escalates to a Nazi zombie outbreak. Most of what you do is go around and recruit other people to fight on your side.
7. The combat reminds me quite a lot of the Mario & Luigi games for Nintendo handhelds. It's turn based but there is also a rhythmic element w/ careful button presses so you don't feel like you are mashing one button the whole time. You have meters for health, special moves and magic, the former two of which reset after each encounter which really lets you go all in and use all the strategies at your disposal.
8. Inventory management is probably the biggest pain, gameplay-wise. You've got unlimited storage but it's just fussy and annoying to deal w/. All your gear can have little enhancements you can add and it just got on my nerves going through everything after a while. To make matters worse, lots of missions require you to wear a particular set of clothes so you are forever having to change against your will, each time needing to re-equip the enhancements.
9. Other than your player character, you can also bring along a variety of South Park™ characters with you. You only get to bring one at a time and sometimes one or the other is needed in some particular situations so you don't get a choice. The extra characters level up w/ you and you don't manage their equipment, which is a good thing since, as per 7, inventory management is a chore.
10. South Park™: The Stick of Truth™'s version of its titular town is a good size for a game and, by that, I mean it's pretty small. I like sprawling game worlds as much as the next person but there's something to be said w/ keeping scope more limited and letting the player really get to know the whole thing.
11. Makers of humorous games please take note: there is no joke funny enough to be repeated in every single fight sequence for a long stretch of gameplay. The need to constantly be funny seems to hamstring The Stick of Truth™'s pacing from time to time. Rather than trying make every single item in a game funny, focus the humor into sections that are actually funny rather than trying to cram dumb jokes down my throat for the entirety of a fifteen hour game. I don't need every weapon to be a piece of poo or a dildo. I don't need to solve every puzzle by farting on it. It's fine. I can enjoy a game w/o it trying to make me laugh every ten seconds.
12. Going through this all mentally, I have a lot of complaints about South Park™: The Stick of Truth™ but I do actually enjoy South Park™ and I enjoyed actually playing The Stick of Truth™ even more. It doesn't make you run all over a giant map and gets to its point rather quickly, making for a dense and high quality gaming experience. It's a bit pat but I feel like it's sufficient to say: if you think you'll like South Park™: The Stick of Truth™, you will.
13. Points™
Friday, December 1, 2017
13 Points on Rhythm Thief - Sega, Xeen - 2012 [Nintendo 3DS]
1. The presentation of this is amazingly charming w/ its hand drawn art style, beautiful music, Parisian setting and hilariously improbably
storyline. All of this is wasted and we'll deal w/ that
shortly.
2. The best thing about Rhythm Thief is its pun-y sense of humor. I cannot get enough of this stuff, folks.
3. Aside from 1 and 2, basically everything else about this game is straight-out bad.
4. As you navigate Paris, you are encouraged to looks for secrets hidden stashed away in various objects on screen. The reality of this though is the secrets don't seem to actually be hidden anything, rather unlocked by basically randomly tapping the stylus somewhere on the screen. This means for each new location, you have to tap, tap, tap every last millimeter of the screen to find everything. This is not fun.
5. While randomly tapping everything, you will inevitably accidentally tap on a character and be forced to re-skip through their dialog, so you can get back to the task of tap, tap, tapping, which as per 4, is not even fun to begin w/.
6. This is not even close to the worst thing about this game. The worst thing about this game is the actual mini-games, which are the core of gameplay. That is bad.
7. I am actually somewhat impressed by the myriad of ways these games are bad since they manage to do just about everything possible wrong at least once though, mercifully, not always at the same time.
8. For starters--and probably worst off all--sometimes the rhythm is just subtly off and it is not even off in the same way every time. Sometimes you have to be a little ahead of the beat, sometimes it's spot on, sometimes it's late. Sometimes the rhythm of the music seems to have nothing to do w/ the game. Sometimes it is easier to go by the visual cues than the music. Sometimes the visual cues are distracting and will make you fail.
9. On top of this, there are forced tilt controls on some games that require you to tilt your 3DS at an unnatural angle. It seems like it's just janky and busted--and it is--but it works if you hold your 3DS just so. At no point is this ever clearly indicated in game.
10. Which brings us to another issue: sometimes the mechanics of various games can be a bit obtuse and they are never well explained. Most of the games are easy enough to figure out but more than once did I find myself failing repeatedly because I was playing a game incorrectly
11. Every time you fail a game, you are forced to re-watch its intro sequence. Over and over and over and over and over....
12. There are many games that simply must be completed at a particular time or you can't advance in the story. Often, you can't even back out of the games and go do something else. You become stuck in a Sisyphean loop of busted, janky tilt controls and rewatching intro sequences until you want to gouge your eyeballs out.
13. Honestly, some of the mini-games are pretty fun. As per 7-11 though, enough of these games are busted enough to be downright infuriating and as per 12, you are forced to complete even the games you hate. There is no real breaking point in this game where I was like, "That's it, that's what stinks about this and I'm done w/ it." But all its minor flaws stack up over time in a really grating way. If you like this art-style, play Professor Layton. If you don't like this art-style, you are not exactly missing out on a stellar gameplay experience by avoiding Rhythm Thief.
2. The best thing about Rhythm Thief is its pun-y sense of humor. I cannot get enough of this stuff, folks.
3. Aside from 1 and 2, basically everything else about this game is straight-out bad.
4. As you navigate Paris, you are encouraged to looks for secrets hidden stashed away in various objects on screen. The reality of this though is the secrets don't seem to actually be hidden anything, rather unlocked by basically randomly tapping the stylus somewhere on the screen. This means for each new location, you have to tap, tap, tap every last millimeter of the screen to find everything. This is not fun.
5. While randomly tapping everything, you will inevitably accidentally tap on a character and be forced to re-skip through their dialog, so you can get back to the task of tap, tap, tapping, which as per 4, is not even fun to begin w/.
6. This is not even close to the worst thing about this game. The worst thing about this game is the actual mini-games, which are the core of gameplay. That is bad.
7. I am actually somewhat impressed by the myriad of ways these games are bad since they manage to do just about everything possible wrong at least once though, mercifully, not always at the same time.
8. For starters--and probably worst off all--sometimes the rhythm is just subtly off and it is not even off in the same way every time. Sometimes you have to be a little ahead of the beat, sometimes it's spot on, sometimes it's late. Sometimes the rhythm of the music seems to have nothing to do w/ the game. Sometimes it is easier to go by the visual cues than the music. Sometimes the visual cues are distracting and will make you fail.
9. On top of this, there are forced tilt controls on some games that require you to tilt your 3DS at an unnatural angle. It seems like it's just janky and busted--and it is--but it works if you hold your 3DS just so. At no point is this ever clearly indicated in game.
10. Which brings us to another issue: sometimes the mechanics of various games can be a bit obtuse and they are never well explained. Most of the games are easy enough to figure out but more than once did I find myself failing repeatedly because I was playing a game incorrectly
11. Every time you fail a game, you are forced to re-watch its intro sequence. Over and over and over and over and over....
12. There are many games that simply must be completed at a particular time or you can't advance in the story. Often, you can't even back out of the games and go do something else. You become stuck in a Sisyphean loop of busted, janky tilt controls and rewatching intro sequences until you want to gouge your eyeballs out.
13. Honestly, some of the mini-games are pretty fun. As per 7-11 though, enough of these games are busted enough to be downright infuriating and as per 12, you are forced to complete even the games you hate. There is no real breaking point in this game where I was like, "That's it, that's what stinks about this and I'm done w/ it." But all its minor flaws stack up over time in a really grating way. If you like this art-style, play Professor Layton. If you don't like this art-style, you are not exactly missing out on a stellar gameplay experience by avoiding Rhythm Thief.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)