March 2011

Monster Tale

March 29, 2011

DS / Reviews / by Graham Russell Make a comment! / Tweet it!

It seems that every system is fated to have late-life gems that get overshadowed by the looming presence of the next generation. We’re sitting here crossing our fingers that Monster Tale, the new game from Henry Hatsworth developers DreamRift, doesn’t meet the same fate. 

And it’s quite problematic to type with crossed fingers, so we’d really have to mean it to be doing this.

In Monster Tale, you play as Ellie, a little girl with a bracelet and a bag. She finds an egg and hatches it, and names the strange creature that pops out Chomp. And Chomp follows Ellie around everywhere. You feed Chomp cookies and give him toys and generally help him grow and be happy. At this point in the description, it may be hard to believe that this game is essentially the best Metroid-style game in years. But off Ellie goes, moving back and forth across the same areas, acquiring new abilities and using them to access previously-blocked pathways. She has melee attacks and ranged ones, and while range has its advantages, there’s a meter that depletes with each shot and fills with each melee hit, so a balanced attack is usually best.

Chomp comes into play too. While he resides on the bottom screen with whatever items you end up giving him, this is much less of a pet simulation game than it originally appears to be. Really, you’re just acquiring stat-boost items. (Think Chaos, but without picking them up and hugging them.) Chomp levels up, has different forms and elemental alignments and gets larger. Why does all this matter? He learns different moves in each form, and you can summon Chomp to the top screen with X and use his attacks with the L and R buttons. He’s very powerful, but he can only stay up and fighting until a meter hits zero and makes him rest. With a bit of micromanagement, you can summon Chomp up, use a move, send him back down and repeat, and generally have him when you need him. It’s in the game’s boss battles where it’s a bit more of an issue. (All of these boss battles are against the few other humans in this land of monsters, who have all seized power and divided the land to rule it.)

It’s not a perfect game by any means. Ellie learns new abilities a bit too quickly near the beginning of the game, so that the limited skill set isn’t explored as much as it could have been. The base monsters could have used a bit more variety, as you quickly learn the patterns and take them all out fairly easily. Also, and we hate to say it, but with only five areas, it’s a little short. Thankfully, the multitude of form options for Chomp, as well as the purchaseable upgrades for Ellie’s stats, make it worth a few playthroughs to fully explore, and the game stands up to a bit of repetition.

Generally, though, Monster Tale is impressive. The music is upbeat and, while the soundtrack’s a bit limited, it fades into the background so it’s not an issue. The visual style is clearly late-generation, going with a bright, simple palette that will age well and appeal to the demographic that may not be able to jump so quickly to the next device. 

Monster Tale is destined to land on Most Overlooked DS Games lists. Thankfully, though, you’re reading this now, so you can totally go pick it up today. It has an irresistible combination of modern multitasking sophistication and classic tried-and-true exploration gameplay. 

Pros: Deep customization, classic Metroidvania gameplay

Cons: A bit short, a few pacing issues

 

Jikandia: The Timeless Land

March 29, 2011

PSP / Reviews / by Gerry Pagan Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Coming from the developer who brought us Half-Minute Hero in 2009, Jikandia: The Timeless Land is a spiritual successor that borrows the 2D style and ideas of the original title while giving us a new experience. Jikandia is a 2D action-RPG, with platforming and dungeon-crawling being main focus. You select either a male or a female character at the beginning of the game, who can equip a wide variety of weapons as well as bring two party members along to any of Jikandia’s dungeons. 

Jikandia begins with a group of students in a subway car, which gets sucked into a portal to Jikandia, a land where time has long since stopped moving forward. A being called the Time Lord has forced time to move again, and it’s up to them to put a stop to his plans. The cast is varied and colorful, like a spunky girl who knows the name of one too many Lovecraftian cosmic entities, a cowardly younger brother with no spine to speak of and a bullied girl who somehow befriended a dragon in all but a few minutes. The interactions between the students are humorous and quirky, with any combination of party members you bring to each locale interacting with each other regardless of where you go.

Exploring Jikandia is done via dungeons, in which explore randomly generated rooms, each with a timer before you’re forced to move to the next room. Jikandia’s gameplay is unique in that the player is able to set how long he wants to spend in each of the game’s dungeons. One can spend 3 to 30 minutes inside a dungeon, with a boss fight always being in the next room once the timer reaches 1:30 mark. The longer you spend, the more you can prepare for the dungeon’s boss fight by collecting stat-boosting items, as well as increasing the odds of getting better treasure. It’s more than possible to clear each dungeon and rush through the game, but the later bosses can become much harder to beat before time runs out without proper equipment and stats gained.

That said, there really is nothing stopping you from beating the game in less than an hour. While there’s plenty of equipment to collect and some humorous events to see by replaying dungeons and playing for longer than 5 minutes, playing through similar looking rooms in a dungeon for 30 minutes can get really tiring and uninteresting  by the third or fourth go, especially when upon reaching a point where no dungeon offers a challenge. Jikandia works best when played in small 3-5 minute sessions, spacing out the repetition over time rather than doing it all at once.

While the style of the game is, like Half-Minute Hero before it, tailored for fans of the traditional 2D look, they could have spared some expense into having the great dialogue actually be readable. The text auto-scrolls without button press, and actually pressing a button moves the line being said to the next one, making it likely that you’ll often skip some lines of text while simply trying to get it all to come up at once. To make matters worse, dialogue often pops up while dungeon crawling, making it hard to read and pay attention to any enemies that’ll attack, as well as the timer for long to stick to a floor. There’s an NPC that’ll let you re-read any dialogue in the game, but the same problem with the text auto-scrolling, slowly at that, makes it frustrating to sit through and read.

All in all, Jikandia is a good RPG for those looking to play something for small sessions over a long time, without rushing through it. There are tons of items to collect and events to see, but playing it for too long can quite easily make you get tired of the quickly noticeable repetition.

 

Bust-a-Move Universe

March 28, 2011

3DS / Reviews / by Graham Russell Make a comment! / Tweet it!

A portable launch can always use a good puzzle game. Whether it’s Tetris or Lumines, the genre’s great for short sessions, easy to learn and hard to leave home without. In the 3DS’ rather-robust launch lineup, Bust-a-Move Universe stands alone in the genre, and that makes things… interesting.

Why? Bust-a-Move, the Taito (now a part of Square Enix) puzzle series, hasn’t really evolved over the years and, at least on its face, there’s no real reason to play it in three dimensions. The gameplay, if you’re unfamiliar, has you shooting colored bubbles at a descending formation of bubbles, trying to create clusters of three or more of the one color to remove them and clear the field. It stars Bub and Bob of Bubble Bobble fame, but really only in the way Dr. Mario was about a plumber, which is to say it’s all secondary aesthetics.

The game, as its predecessors, features two modes: Puzzle Mode, with specific formations to clear, and a random mass of bubbles in Challenge Mode. Clearing bubbles builds a meter with special attacks. The low-level special changes all bubbles around a target to one color. The medium attack is a wild bubble that counts as any color that completes a chain. The top one? It wipes out an entire swath of bubbles, and in puzzle mode, it’s an easy way to wipe out the few bubbles holding the entire formation to the ceiling. (Of course, you don’t get points for that, either.) Clearing a formation that also removes a large segment of connected bubbles gives you “bonus time,” essentially an invincibility mode when you can rapid-fire bubbles and all of them are removed at the end of the time regardless of whether they matched anything.

Puzzle Mode’s worth a playthrough, and you can go back to increase your score in any given area if you’d like. Each area is capped by a boss, but the gameplay in these areas are more like a simple fixed-position shooter than anything else, and they seem a bit incongruous. Challenge Mode is good for sucking a lot more time, as it’s all about survival instead of finding the perfect solution. 

Of course, why would you want to play this in 3D? We’ve played it, and it’s hard to say. For the most part, it’s pleasant, as the bubbles rise from the background when reaching their initial position, and the various planet backdrops make for interesting wallpaper. Developer Arika kept it subtle, and that’s a good thing. Just one gripe, though: the series’ signature screen-shaking to indicate that the bubbles are about to get pushed downward? We found that this regularly kicked our eyes out of focus. It could have been a bit more understated and not caused this.

Still, there’s not that much game here. What’s on the card is polished, though, and Square Enix priced the game at a lower $29.99 price point, so that gives it a few breaks. What’s more, it’s Bust-a-Move, and we can’t think of much they could add to give it more value later, so that makes it a smart choice as a launch title. In a launch field of flawed designs, it’s hard to fault a game that’s just not that ambitious.

Pros: Perfectly-functional version of a game many know and love

Cons: Our Pro was “perfectly functional,” which doesn’t get your heart pumping

 

Lode Runner

March 28, 2011

Reviews / Xbox 360 / by Andrew Passafiume Make a comment! / Tweet it!

There are many gamers who consider Lode Runner to be a classic series, while others have never even heard of it. Developer Southend Interactive is faced with a difficult balancing act: how do you appeal to both gamers familiar with the game while attracting a new audience? Luckily, they pull it off splendidly, with a remake that adds plenty of new things to an already great formula.

For the unfamiliar, Lode Runner is a 2D platformer that involves collecting a certain number of items scattered around a stage while avoiding enemies. However, this is a platformer that forgoes the use of a jump command, instead having you climb and fall down to specific platforms to maneuver your way around each level. It can take a little getting used to, but the controls are simple and handled perfectly. 

You have a weapon which can only destroy certain blocks that are below you at an angle, which is where the game can get tricky. This will allow you to effectively trap enemies for a certain period of time as they enemies can be rather relentless. There is a wealth of great tutorial stages that offer deeper explanations and insight behind these mechanics. They are excellent both new players and older gamers who have to readjust themselves to the rather strange, but addictive nature of Lode Runner.  

There are some small problems that keep the game from shining though. The aiming and shooting of blocks can be a little less than responsive; in a game that requires some precise timing that is a small issue that can cause big problems. You might be just an inch on top of a block you’re trying to shoot, but not realize it, which can be especially troublesome in the later levels. Also, I’ve had some instances of enemies passing over areas they should get trapped in, or even briefly moving through blocks. 

These issues aside, Lode Runner is a very successful update of a classic series. There is a multitude of options, modes, and unlockables to keep you busy for some time. It can test your patience at times, but you’ll find it a rewarding experience in the long run.

Pros: Plenty of modes and unlockables; great controls; the basic mechanics still hold up today

Cons: Some small bugs that can cause major problems

 

Making the case for God Hand 2

March 28, 2011

Features / Opinion / by Snackbar Crew 2 Comments / Tweet it!

Editor’s note: In a recent interview, Okamiden producer Motohide Eshiro hinted that Capcom would consider a sequel to controversial PS2 title God Hand if fans expressed enough interest. Unsurprisingly, that’s mobilized quite a few to express support for the idea. Richard Watts, creator of GodHandFan.com, makes the case for the sequel.

Do you remember God Hand? The game in which you could kick people so hard that they were launched into outer space? In which you could kick a demon in the testicles? Spank a girl to death with your bare hand?  Punch as quick as the Fist of the North Star? The game that was so difficult that you cried and cried, and your parents didn’t understand what had happened to you? If you don’t know this game, it’s time for you to learn about one of the finest games ever to have been made.  

Die-hard fans of God Hand should be very excited. Up until now, they were right to assume that there would never be a sequel to their favorite game. Released by Capcom in 2006, it would be the final game designed by Clover Studios. Clover then went on to become Platinum Games, and the rights to God Hand remained with Capcom. Five years later, we’ve barely heard a thing about the game. Up until now.

The original

God Hand, designed by Shinji Mikami, had a singular vision – to be a game for hardcore players. It took many elements from the old beat-’em-ups like Final Fight and Streets of Rage, taking standard enemy designs from the time (mohawk thugs, dominatrix women, skinny knife-wielders, fat bald men, etc.) and placing them into a modern game with a more complex fighting system. The game is as challenging as the old beat-’em-ups too, with enemies taking a serious beating before going down, and boss health bars seeming to go on forever. Comedy elements and fun references run throughout the game, including the moves that the main character, Gene, uses. From the Dragon Punch to the German Suplex, Gene represents a typical martial artist from anime and video game culture, yet remains unique because of his design and unusual combination of styles.

God Hand really stands out because of the combat system. Unlike Devil May Cry and its contemporaries, God Hand is about getting up-close and personal with the enemy, and using your bare hands to crack skulls. Rather than jumping clear of all danger, waiting for it to be safe then going back in, God Hand forces you to stay with the enemy at all times, and dodge their individual attacks. Unable to block, you have to react to everything the enemy does to avoid getting hit. This requires more skill, but is also more rewarding. By using Gene’s dodge moves, you really feel like you are in a fight, dodging each punch as it comes, rather than treating all moves the same.

When it comes to the beat-down, you have a customizable set of techniques which you can add to as you buy more moves during the game. At any time, you can have five custom moves and a combo loop made up of any moves you have bought. Choosing a different combination of moves greatly affects your strategy in the fight. There are guard breakers which cause a stun on an enemy should they block it, quick moves to intercept enemy attacks, moves that juggle, unblockables, moves with evasion properties and moves which knock enemies flying across the level. It’s up to you what you focus on.

Using your tools, once you smack enemies around enough times you can knock them senseless, so that they are dizzy. Once they are like this, you can activate a stun move – a set animation which causes Gene to pulverize them in a hilariously awesome way, such as knee them in the face a hundred times then DDT them into the ground, or get them in a submission hold and crank their neck over and over until it snaps. These are wonderfully satisfying payoffs to work toward, some of which call for the player to repeatedly press buttons – the quicker you pound, the faster Gene pounds their skull.

On top of these techniques, Gene also has the God Hand itself. This can either be activated to make you invincible and super quick for a few moments at a time, or you can use the Roulette moves, which are unblockable super moves which are powered by orbs that you pick around the levels.

To keep you on your toes, there is also a dynamic difficulty. There are four difficulties that the game can function at – 1, 2, 3 and “Die”.  Enemy AI is different on each difficulty, gradually getting quicker, blocking more intelligently, using more complex moves, attacking in formation rather than one at a time, and of course doing more damage to you. The game determines what difficulty it should be at.  To start with you begin on Level 1. If you get smacked around, it doesn’t rise from there, but if you avoid getting hit and start to defeat enemies with ease, it goes up. And it continues to go up and up until you reach a point where you do get beaten, at which point it will start to go down, and not progress further until you start to do better. This works fantastically, because if you’re having trouble getting used to the game, or come to a particularly challenging section, then you are given a break as the difficulty goes down. And on the other hand, if you’re finding it too easy, it gets harder to cater to your skills. Everybody wins! Not only this, but at the end of each mission, you’re given a set amount of money for each enemy defeated at each difficulty, so it’s an incentive to keep the game as hard as you can make it by successfully dodging attacks.

The need for a sequel

So, why do we need a sequel to God Hand?  First of all, look at the competition. There still are no other games like this. In particular, the unique dodging system, the fully-customizable fighting style and the dynamic difficulty are just some of the things that other designers seem to have overlooked. Also, other modern fighting games worth talking about are high-flying action like Bayonetta. God Hand is a totally different genre, a much more hands-on experience, and there are no modern games of any quality in this genre.

Also, too many games are becoming simple, aimed at casual gamers, with nothing to really learn, nothing to work at. God Hand is a game in which you come away feeling like you have learned a martial art, a system by which you can overcome the odds. You can also play it again and again, trying different combinations, and trying to do better on each stage, learn new ways to deal with situations, push your reflexes to their absolute limit. Other games guide you so much, force you into a particular way to deal with the enemies, instead of giving you more tools than necessary and letting you decide what to do. A sequel to God Hand would address this, if the core elements of the game were preserved or built upon, we’d have something really special, something which hopefully would be noticed this time, and influence games to come.

What could Capcom do with God Hand 2?  First of all, they could expand on all the obvious elements:

  • Put in more moves to buy
  • Add new properties for moves, for instance, eye-poking, more taunt moves like slaps and comedy karate moves, and grab moves which could activate off normal strikes (such as a kick to the belly which turns into a Stone Cold Stunner on counter hit or on a stunned opponent)
  • Put in more options to use on a grounded enemy (as it is you can only stomp or use an axe kick, they could put in elbow drops, leg drops and so on)
  • Add some unique God Hand moves to be used once God Hand is activated
  • Make the stun moves customizable just like the other moves (so that you don’t have to see the same stun moves again and again) as well as allowing Gene to use unique stun moves on downed or juggled opponents allowing for more variety
  • Add in the possibility for double stun moves, (if there are two enemies stunned next to each other) for instance, banging their heads together, or doing a jumping splits kick
  • Add in some kind of counter system, where you would have the option to deflect individual attacks to follow up with your own special counter move, as well as the standard dodge system
  • Put in more species of demon, perhaps they could be related to the type of enemy that they spawned from, so you could have a fat demon, female demon, skinny demon and so on
  • Have more combo options, such as a modifier allowing you to have two combo lists which you could overlap and go between, rather than just having one combo set at a time
  • Add some kind of rating system to keep track of what you’ve achieved in each mission (this would also mean adding a new game type to allow you go back to each section to try to get maximum achievement)
  • Put in even more direct links to other Capcom games, have cameos by other characters, and use more moves and weapons from other games, get the most out of these kinds of references
  • Put in some more things to unlock, costumes, upgrades, and perhaps another character (Azel, or perhaps guests from other games) and other standard things such as unlockables for your PS3 or Xbox 360 (Avatar costumes and so on)

Secondly, they could expand on enemy interaction, have more attack patterns and mix-up combos from them to make it more of a challenge to choose the right dodge. Have enemies react differently depending on what’s going on—perhaps have enemies chicken out if their friends all just got wiped out, or have enemies become fatigued when their energy is low.  Enemies could react more strongly to being taunted, and their tactics could become different as a result. The enemies could have their own stun moves that they use on Gene when he gets stunned (as it is in the original, Gene gets stunned, but then they just punch him some more).  There could be more distinctive attacks from enemies which lead to Gene’s reaction to them.  These showed up from time to time in the original, like when a Demon tries to grab Gene from behind, you can press O to counter to have Gene perform an axe kick over his shoulder.  This could be expanded upon. For instance, some enemies could counter Gene’s attacks, so you’d have to react in time to stop them being successful, and return fire.

There could also be new classes of enemies, for variety in their attack patterns, and also as another way to reference games. There are so many characters in Capcom games that could either be used quite plainly, or referenced heavily due to their attacks and dialogue. 

The very nature of God Hand, its lack of seriousness and obvious nods to gaming, anime and wrestling, allows the designers to put in whoever they want, and also to send Gene wherever they want.  He could venture into worlds which belong to other characters, or have obvious references to other games. Imagine walking past the statue from Sagat’s stage in Street Fighter II. Or walking into the mansion from Resident Evil and beating down some zombie characters.  To expand on that particular idea, they could have some of the STARS members zombified, spouting their legendarily poor voice acting such as “Barry… where’s Barry?” and “I hope it isn’t Chris’s blood!” before getting their face kicked in by Gene. There’s an absolute gold mine waiting to be tapped and used in a game like this.

There were some mistakes made in the first game that also need to be addressed. The biggest error, I feel, was the lack of a tutorial or explanation of the system. Although there were tutorial icons around the first mission, they were not clearly labeled as such, and you didn’t actually have a practice area to begin with. I think that, before the game begins, you should be put through a tutorial to explain how everything works: dodges, guard stuns, full stuns, stun moves, default moves and setting techniques. Since the system is deep and unique, I feel that the developers should take the time to explain what’s on offer, and how to get by without getting your head kicked in.

Capcom has the ability to do something really special. God Hand might not have been a great success, but that wasn’t due to the game. It was a masterpiece which has not been rivaled.  Perhaps it was not marketed so well, and maybe the infamous IGN review hurt the sales too.  But that can be used to their advantage now. Capcom can seize that negative publicity, and launch God Hand 2 as the game which was misunderstood, which was too godly, even for reviewers – a game that was ahead of its time. I think there are many gamers out there who know about God Hand because of the IGN review and because of fans’ reactions to it. Yet they are hardly likely to go back to their PS2 to check out a game from five years ago. If God Hand were available on the current generation of consoles, either as a sequel or as a revamped version of the original, it would allow new players an easy way to access the brilliance of the game, and realize what they missed out on.

Agree with Richard? Join his Facebook group, share this YouTube video, fill out this survey or email [email protected] and let Capcom know. Disagree? Comment and let us know that too.

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