1. I am way too busy coming up w/ pithy comments on video games to do proper research but from what I can gather, the After Burner franchise is a small handful of arcade games, their related ports and this, After Burner: Black Falcon. The PSP is an interesting place to have the one non-arcade game in a series but, hey, oddball stuff like this is what makes handheld gaming so fun.
2. It basically plays like any other game in the series but there is a bunch of stuff layered on top of it, some of which you would never see in a game meant to be played in an actual arcade cabinet.
3. You can pick between three different characters to play as. Two of them are insufferable so you will most likely pick the improbably cleavaged woman. Each has their own set of cut scenes but the overarching story is basically the same no matter what and your choice has no real effect on gameplay as far as I can tell.
4. What does change gameplay is you have a variety of planes to pick from, ranging from more agile fighter jets to sturdier but less nimble bombers. I found that you could just go ahead and use After Burner's classic F-14 for everything and that worked just fine. Experimenting w/ different planes is fun but not necessary and I didn't feel like anything handled so vastly different from everything else that it felt like a different game or anything.
5. It tries to encourage you to try different planes by recommending one for each mission but doing this actually works to your disadvantage. You collect money in game to buy upgrades and the new planes cost money as well. As far as I could tell, any well kitted out plane was better than the base model plane suggested for each mission. I guess they tried though.
6. You
will have to go into the options and change the Y-axis controls to be
reversed because it's programmed to be stupid by default but once that's
done, you're cooking w/ gas and the game controls excellently.
7. You have a cannon, missiles and rockets. You use the cannon to shoot planes that are close, the missiles to shoot planes that are far and the rockets to shoot things on the ground. You do this all while dodging enemy fire w/ air-brakes, the titular after burner and a handy barrel roll. The arcade style gameplay comes from balancing chaining combos for points and in-game currency while avoiding enough enemy fire. This is a classic formula and it works.
8. Enemies you kill drop packages that slow down time, give you money, restore your health or your afterburner fuel and ammo. Collecting these is essential to the rhythm of the game, pushing high scores and just staying alive. It is a very welcome addition to the standard After Burner mechanics, an extra wrinkle that adds depth w/o getting in the way of the core mechanics.
9. In addition to the combat, there are some environmental obstacles you
have to avoid and these are never anything but annoying. For the vast
majority of the game, you can always take some damage w/o dying. A bunch
of insta-kills thrown in there just seems out of place and cheap.
10. For some reason, ground targets give you way more money than air targets. There's a level about a third of the way through which has about twice as many ground targets as any other level and if you want to quickly build up funds to upgrade and try new planes, you are going to find yourself replaying this one level an awful, awful lot.
11. Black Falcon is not exactly a tour de force in graphical fidelity on PSP but it looks good enough. Excellent
HUD elements make up for the fact that sometimes distant enemies can be
hard to see. A variety of different landscapes present some variety and
it all looks pretty good if not exactly stunning. The music is pretty standard rock music and has a resounding twang of
genericness to it. Still I noticed some track have a cool post-punk
flavor to them that I rather enjoyed.
12. How much replayability you will find in this will depend on how much you like going for high scores. Here is where the different planes start making a real difference, trying to squeeze a few more points by having a plane w/ more firepower but is harder to control. There's extra difficulty settings for those looking for a challenge as well as a multi-player mode that I will try after you get this game and bring it over to my house to play w/ me.
13. Given that the Sega Genesis collection on PSP does not contain any of the ports of the original arcade games, this is the only After Burner you are going to get on this portable. It is also a rather unique take on the series and is thus a good choice for both fans of the franchise and people who somehow have no other way to check out After Burner other than their PSP. How many people like this exist is anybody's guess, I suppose, but if you are one, hey, have I got a game for you.
Showing posts with label 2007. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2007. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 27, 2018
Wednesday, June 13, 2018
13 Points on Jeanne d'Arc - Level-5 - 2007 [Sony PSP]
1. I just kinda glanced over descriptions before picking up Jeanne d'Arc so I was expecting something of historically accurate tactics game revolving around the French in the Hundred Years' War. I got a game in which the opening cut scene is an evil wizard corrupting the juvenile King of England w/ strange magicks. You are whisked off shortly thereafter to meet w/ the titular character who then uses her mysterious powers to battle evil along side a rag-tag group of unlikely allies. Yes, it would seem as if this is some sort of Japanese role playing game.
2. Actually, seeing a Japanese take on European history is one of the most interesting things about this Jeanne d'Arc. Specifically, it does not really touch on Christianity or Catholicism in any specific way. There are mentions of the Christian God but that's as close as it gets. Priests and such do not have crosses on them and there's no meaningful mention of liturgy or theology. I suppose this might have been done to avoid offending people but, you know, it is pretty interesting to tell the story of Joan of Arc w/o a heavy does of the Christian religion. Still, I enjoyed this version w/ less visions from Catholic saints and more talking cat people.
3. I didn't really expect to get wrapped up in the story when playing a tactics game but nevertheless I did. Well, I didn't get wrapped up in the story, which is frankly a bit melodramatic for my taste, but in the game's version of fifteenth century France. The one element that was spot on w/r/t historical accuracy is just how much the Hundred Years' War was a bunch of fear mongering and intrigue on the behalf of powerful men. The soldiers in Jeanne d'Arc--including yourselves and many of those you fight against--are manipulated into killing and risking their lives out of some abstract notion of loyalty to country when really all they are doing is redistributing power among those who already have it. My mind kept returning to that old saw from All Quiet on the Western Front: the wrong people do the fighting.
4. There's also cat people doing the fighting. I think I mentioned that.
5. You get a pretty standard assortment of classes in combat. There's melee fighters, ranged fighters and magic users. There's over a dozen characters and each is unique but you've seen stuff like this if you've ever played a grid-based tactics game before. You equip your players w/ the best gear you can give them, place them on the map and have at it.
6. A layer of depth is added by allowing each character to have one of three elemental abilities, which interact in a paper-rock-scissors manner. This has a lot of cool possibilities but, in practice, it seemed to always be best to use the one that's got the least penalties against it for your whole squad on any given map. There were times when it made sense to equip a couple of your characters to take out one or two key foes but, esp. since you can use magic of any type regardless of what elemental ability you have equipped, it mostly made sense to just try to make sure a small mistake wouldn't get a couple of your characters killed in short order because of a disadvantageous match up.
7. There is also a mutual defense mechanic where each character gets a defense bonus for standing near other characters as well as a mechanic that provides an attack boost you can get from standing behind enemies that have been successfully attacked. I find it's a common problem in tactics games that it is always the best option to keep your party in one big group rather than breaking them off into squads and these two mechanics just make it all the worse. This is actually accurate in terms of real world military tactics as you typically want to concentrate your forces and throw them up against a weak point in the enemy's defenses but I don't think that makes for the most interesting gameplay. Also, it is another point of historical inaccuracy as this is a Napoleonic tactic and wouldn't have existed in the fifteenth century. Just saying.
8. The last unique wrinkle in Jeanne d'Arc is some of your characters wear an armband that lets them change into a super hero version of themselves for a couple turns. It makes you more powerful but its greatest advantage is giving your character an extra turn if they use their attack to finish off an enemy. Using your transformations at the correct time is absolutely crucial when the game throws thick waves of enemies at you. It's very satisfying to soften up the enemy army and then have someone go Super Saiyan and clean them up in one fell swoop. The downside is it does increase your tendency to rely on just a few characters rather than the full breadth of your roster because those w/ arm bands are so much more useful than the rest.
9. Outfitting your team properly is important but there's ample opportunity and side content to grind and level up your characters. You do gain less and less experience from the same enemy types as you level up, which tends to guide you to being at a certain level at certain points in the game. It keeps the difficulty curve pretty smooth while allowing you to cop out and just spend a while grinding if you momentarily don't feel like spending the brain energy on figuring out a clever strategy.
10. The story sections present themselves in a variety of ways. The most important events get gorgeous anime cut scenes. Lesser events get in-engine cut scenes and there's some tossed out dialog before battles. There gets to be enough of these that it occasionally bogged the game down a bit but the animated ones, esp., look great and serve as a nice reward for finishing each chapter.
11. Once you've entered an area w/ a battle, you cannot back out even if you haven't started the battle yet. If you save over your game at this point and find you cannot win the battle, you are stuck. Start the whole game over or hope for really good RNG. The hell of it is the developers seem to know this system stinks and give you a great big warning before you save. It seems to me like if your save system has a flaw deep enough you need a warning, you should just go ahead and fix it. What do I know though.
12. The end section is an absolute beast. Several battles in a row w/ no chance to stock up on healing items or grind your characters if you are feeling overwhelmed. It frustrated me a bit but was also one of the few times I was forced to strategically re-outfit my team from the ground up so it made for as a satisfying conclusion. You also get to return to the world and tromp about all you want in post-game which is fun too.
13. Jeanne d'Arc it is a really well executed example of an RPG tactics game and fans of the genre should absolutely dig into this one if they get a chance. The story is interesting, the music and graphics are great and the combat is very competently designed. I might make a small complaint that, other than the animated cut scenes, nothing really stands out as exceptional but the experience start to finish is enjoyable and tactics games are a great fit for handheld gaming so definitely check this out if you get a chance.
2. Actually, seeing a Japanese take on European history is one of the most interesting things about this Jeanne d'Arc. Specifically, it does not really touch on Christianity or Catholicism in any specific way. There are mentions of the Christian God but that's as close as it gets. Priests and such do not have crosses on them and there's no meaningful mention of liturgy or theology. I suppose this might have been done to avoid offending people but, you know, it is pretty interesting to tell the story of Joan of Arc w/o a heavy does of the Christian religion. Still, I enjoyed this version w/ less visions from Catholic saints and more talking cat people.
3. I didn't really expect to get wrapped up in the story when playing a tactics game but nevertheless I did. Well, I didn't get wrapped up in the story, which is frankly a bit melodramatic for my taste, but in the game's version of fifteenth century France. The one element that was spot on w/r/t historical accuracy is just how much the Hundred Years' War was a bunch of fear mongering and intrigue on the behalf of powerful men. The soldiers in Jeanne d'Arc--including yourselves and many of those you fight against--are manipulated into killing and risking their lives out of some abstract notion of loyalty to country when really all they are doing is redistributing power among those who already have it. My mind kept returning to that old saw from All Quiet on the Western Front: the wrong people do the fighting.
4. There's also cat people doing the fighting. I think I mentioned that.
5. You get a pretty standard assortment of classes in combat. There's melee fighters, ranged fighters and magic users. There's over a dozen characters and each is unique but you've seen stuff like this if you've ever played a grid-based tactics game before. You equip your players w/ the best gear you can give them, place them on the map and have at it.
6. A layer of depth is added by allowing each character to have one of three elemental abilities, which interact in a paper-rock-scissors manner. This has a lot of cool possibilities but, in practice, it seemed to always be best to use the one that's got the least penalties against it for your whole squad on any given map. There were times when it made sense to equip a couple of your characters to take out one or two key foes but, esp. since you can use magic of any type regardless of what elemental ability you have equipped, it mostly made sense to just try to make sure a small mistake wouldn't get a couple of your characters killed in short order because of a disadvantageous match up.
7. There is also a mutual defense mechanic where each character gets a defense bonus for standing near other characters as well as a mechanic that provides an attack boost you can get from standing behind enemies that have been successfully attacked. I find it's a common problem in tactics games that it is always the best option to keep your party in one big group rather than breaking them off into squads and these two mechanics just make it all the worse. This is actually accurate in terms of real world military tactics as you typically want to concentrate your forces and throw them up against a weak point in the enemy's defenses but I don't think that makes for the most interesting gameplay. Also, it is another point of historical inaccuracy as this is a Napoleonic tactic and wouldn't have existed in the fifteenth century. Just saying.
8. The last unique wrinkle in Jeanne d'Arc is some of your characters wear an armband that lets them change into a super hero version of themselves for a couple turns. It makes you more powerful but its greatest advantage is giving your character an extra turn if they use their attack to finish off an enemy. Using your transformations at the correct time is absolutely crucial when the game throws thick waves of enemies at you. It's very satisfying to soften up the enemy army and then have someone go Super Saiyan and clean them up in one fell swoop. The downside is it does increase your tendency to rely on just a few characters rather than the full breadth of your roster because those w/ arm bands are so much more useful than the rest.
9. Outfitting your team properly is important but there's ample opportunity and side content to grind and level up your characters. You do gain less and less experience from the same enemy types as you level up, which tends to guide you to being at a certain level at certain points in the game. It keeps the difficulty curve pretty smooth while allowing you to cop out and just spend a while grinding if you momentarily don't feel like spending the brain energy on figuring out a clever strategy.
10. The story sections present themselves in a variety of ways. The most important events get gorgeous anime cut scenes. Lesser events get in-engine cut scenes and there's some tossed out dialog before battles. There gets to be enough of these that it occasionally bogged the game down a bit but the animated ones, esp., look great and serve as a nice reward for finishing each chapter.
11. Once you've entered an area w/ a battle, you cannot back out even if you haven't started the battle yet. If you save over your game at this point and find you cannot win the battle, you are stuck. Start the whole game over or hope for really good RNG. The hell of it is the developers seem to know this system stinks and give you a great big warning before you save. It seems to me like if your save system has a flaw deep enough you need a warning, you should just go ahead and fix it. What do I know though.
12. The end section is an absolute beast. Several battles in a row w/ no chance to stock up on healing items or grind your characters if you are feeling overwhelmed. It frustrated me a bit but was also one of the few times I was forced to strategically re-outfit my team from the ground up so it made for as a satisfying conclusion. You also get to return to the world and tromp about all you want in post-game which is fun too.
13. Jeanne d'Arc it is a really well executed example of an RPG tactics game and fans of the genre should absolutely dig into this one if they get a chance. The story is interesting, the music and graphics are great and the combat is very competently designed. I might make a small complaint that, other than the animated cut scenes, nothing really stands out as exceptional but the experience start to finish is enjoyable and tactics games are a great fit for handheld gaming so definitely check this out if you get a chance.
Wednesday, March 28, 2018
13 Points on Hot Pixel - zSlide - 2007 [Sony PSP]
1. If I was a betting man, I'd bet whoever decided Hot Pixel should be made handed the development team a copy of a WarioWare game and said, "Here, do exactly this."
2. Okay, it is not exactly the same as WarioWare but the influence is clear and present. Hot Pixel consists episodes, each a collection of micro-games, followed by a micro-game boss battle. I think this will strike Nintendo fans as not unfamiliar.
3. This is going for some kind of a sanitized 90s urban vibe. Or, it might have been a very out of touch attempt at a contemporary urban vibe in 2007. Suffice to say: break beats, skateboards and "attitude" are all front and center.
4. Oddly, many of the micro-games are throwbacks to early 80s arcade titles so who the hell knows how that fits in.
5. Before and after each episode, there are brief and strange live videos of a thirty year old acting like a teenager. This is absolutely baffling to me but it does kind of fit in w/ the sort of scattershot presentation Hot Pixel has going on all the time.
6. Lack of attention to detail that holds the game back generally. Micro-games are an established premise but you've got to keep it polished to make everything flow.
7. The games themselves are pretty good. Well, mostly pretty good. There is supposedly two hundred of them but it depends how you count. It feels more like there's a couple dozen games, each of which have a couple variations.
8. Some of the variations just have the screen shaking a bit or scrolling around. It's kind of annoying.
9. Some of these game variations seem randomized and I think some of the random variations might be actually impossible. It is hard to tell since you can't really get back to that exact version of the game to retry it. Even if there aren't impossible scenarios, every now and then there will be a giant difficulty spike and that's never fun.
10. This gets into a problem a lot of these micro-games type deals. Your goal is typically to get through a set number of micro-games in a row w/ only a few failures allowed. Successfully completing these can often feel more like luck of the draw in getting mostly easy challenges rather than like you are actually getting better.
11. This is one of very few PSP games where I notice the load times from the UMD being distracting. The micro-games are meant to come at you fast and furious and those split seconds are much more egregious in something like this than in most games.
12. In addition to episode mode, there's a couple other ways to play. You can do a marathon of random games or pick your own list of games to play among other things, This stuff is all unlocked by playing through the episodes. It's a pretty decent bonus but it's all the same games just in a different order so not really all that much more content.
13. I have a soft spot for micro-games. This isn't the best of the genre but is certainly worth having as a weird low-budget Atari curio if nothing else. The whole thing seems a little half-baked in the end but Hot Pixel will distract you pretty well for a few hours.
2. Okay, it is not exactly the same as WarioWare but the influence is clear and present. Hot Pixel consists episodes, each a collection of micro-games, followed by a micro-game boss battle. I think this will strike Nintendo fans as not unfamiliar.
3. This is going for some kind of a sanitized 90s urban vibe. Or, it might have been a very out of touch attempt at a contemporary urban vibe in 2007. Suffice to say: break beats, skateboards and "attitude" are all front and center.
4. Oddly, many of the micro-games are throwbacks to early 80s arcade titles so who the hell knows how that fits in.
5. Before and after each episode, there are brief and strange live videos of a thirty year old acting like a teenager. This is absolutely baffling to me but it does kind of fit in w/ the sort of scattershot presentation Hot Pixel has going on all the time.
6. Lack of attention to detail that holds the game back generally. Micro-games are an established premise but you've got to keep it polished to make everything flow.
7. The games themselves are pretty good. Well, mostly pretty good. There is supposedly two hundred of them but it depends how you count. It feels more like there's a couple dozen games, each of which have a couple variations.
8. Some of the variations just have the screen shaking a bit or scrolling around. It's kind of annoying.
9. Some of these game variations seem randomized and I think some of the random variations might be actually impossible. It is hard to tell since you can't really get back to that exact version of the game to retry it. Even if there aren't impossible scenarios, every now and then there will be a giant difficulty spike and that's never fun.
10. This gets into a problem a lot of these micro-games type deals. Your goal is typically to get through a set number of micro-games in a row w/ only a few failures allowed. Successfully completing these can often feel more like luck of the draw in getting mostly easy challenges rather than like you are actually getting better.
11. This is one of very few PSP games where I notice the load times from the UMD being distracting. The micro-games are meant to come at you fast and furious and those split seconds are much more egregious in something like this than in most games.
12. In addition to episode mode, there's a couple other ways to play. You can do a marathon of random games or pick your own list of games to play among other things, This stuff is all unlocked by playing through the episodes. It's a pretty decent bonus but it's all the same games just in a different order so not really all that much more content.
13. I have a soft spot for micro-games. This isn't the best of the genre but is certainly worth having as a weird low-budget Atari curio if nothing else. The whole thing seems a little half-baked in the end but Hot Pixel will distract you pretty well for a few hours.
Friday, March 23, 2018
13 Points on Bioshock - Irrational Games - 2007 [PC]
1. This game is in conflict w/ itself.
2. On one hand it is a moody, slow simmering sci-fi thriller.
3. On the other hand, it is an FPS in which evil mutants fly at you in rapid succession.
4. Both of these elements hold their own but they don't really fit together. Each element works despite the other element not because of it. There is no synergy.
5. The first person combat is great. A combination of melee, gun and magic attacks and a well thought-out progression of upgrades makes for a rather deep experience and allows a fairly wide variety of play styles.
6. The focus on combat doesn't really allow for your gameplay to have much of a plot. You basically get dropped into this underwater city and do what some guy tells you two for a dozen or so hours and then there's the ending.
7. This is different than me saying there isn't a plot. The majority of the plot just happens before the player is ever involved and is told by having the player discover tape recorders throughout the course of the game. It all gets kinda laid out to you no matter what you happen to be doing at the time.
8. Who cares? The atmosphere is cool and it's fun.
9. There is some minor illusion of moral choice in this game. You chose between "harvesting" and "saving" what appear to be little girls. They try to add some ambiguity as far is what is the right choice but, honestly, if you are scratching your head over what to do in this situation, I don't want you around my children.
10. There are multiple endings but they are not worth replaying the game for.
11. It is worth replaying to try out new combat mechanics or just for fun. Higher difficulty levels are worth checking out because in addition to making enemies more powerful, it adjusts random loot drop frequencies and makes certain powers take more energy to use so you do really need to adjust how you go about things rather than just aim and dodge better.
12. There are vending machines that yell at you in this and it's the most annoying thing ever.
13. And for my last point: The inevitable comparison to Infinite: I like this one better. The storytelling in the later game is better but since the combat in Infinite is even faster paced and more frenetic, the disconnect between the thriller atmosphere and the combat is even worse. The original Bioshock just feels better and more consistent to me. If you like one, you'll like both though, each being great games in their own right.
2. On one hand it is a moody, slow simmering sci-fi thriller.
3. On the other hand, it is an FPS in which evil mutants fly at you in rapid succession.
4. Both of these elements hold their own but they don't really fit together. Each element works despite the other element not because of it. There is no synergy.
5. The first person combat is great. A combination of melee, gun and magic attacks and a well thought-out progression of upgrades makes for a rather deep experience and allows a fairly wide variety of play styles.
6. The focus on combat doesn't really allow for your gameplay to have much of a plot. You basically get dropped into this underwater city and do what some guy tells you two for a dozen or so hours and then there's the ending.
7. This is different than me saying there isn't a plot. The majority of the plot just happens before the player is ever involved and is told by having the player discover tape recorders throughout the course of the game. It all gets kinda laid out to you no matter what you happen to be doing at the time.
8. Who cares? The atmosphere is cool and it's fun.
9. There is some minor illusion of moral choice in this game. You chose between "harvesting" and "saving" what appear to be little girls. They try to add some ambiguity as far is what is the right choice but, honestly, if you are scratching your head over what to do in this situation, I don't want you around my children.
10. There are multiple endings but they are not worth replaying the game for.
11. It is worth replaying to try out new combat mechanics or just for fun. Higher difficulty levels are worth checking out because in addition to making enemies more powerful, it adjusts random loot drop frequencies and makes certain powers take more energy to use so you do really need to adjust how you go about things rather than just aim and dodge better.
12. There are vending machines that yell at you in this and it's the most annoying thing ever.
13. And for my last point: The inevitable comparison to Infinite: I like this one better. The storytelling in the later game is better but since the combat in Infinite is even faster paced and more frenetic, the disconnect between the thriller atmosphere and the combat is even worse. The original Bioshock just feels better and more consistent to me. If you like one, you'll like both though, each being great games in their own right.
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