Justin Last

Phantom Brave: The Hermuda Triangle

March 8, 2011

The PSP is a veritable gold mine for RPG lovers. You can even get more specific than that. It’s a gold mine for SRPG lovers. It’s even a gold mine for people who had a large SRPG collection on the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 and would like to own those games again and also be able to play them on the bus. Between Front Mission 3, Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness, Jeanne D’Arc and Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions I didn’t really think I had more room for SRPGs on my PSP. Then I remembered how much I enjoyed Phantom Brave on the PS2 and I have enjoyed it all over again on the PSP.

Marona’s parents were monster-fighting mercenaries who were killed by a demon named Sulfur. Now Marona is an orphan doing the best she can with the help of her parents old apprentice Ash. Ash is no ordinary apprentice though – he’s a phantom. Everything is going okay (not great, the locals don’t trust Marona since she can talk to phantoms) until Sulfur’s minions start showing back up. At that point it is up to Marona and Ash to defeat Sulfur and save the day.

Things get interesting in a couple of key places. First, Marona is not a great fighter. Her primary role in battle is to confine phantoms to ordinary objects to create warriors. Your phantoms each have their own level and stats, their weapons have their own level and stats, and the object to which they are confined affect those stats each time they are confined. If you confine a phantom to rock, for example, he is going to turn into a warrior with a high defense rating and a low speed rating. Confine that same phantom to a plant, however, and he will have a low attack rating and a high intelligence rating. It’s important to keep track of who you’re confining where as the phantom you’ve trained up to be a mage won’t do a lot of good confined to a rock. And you shouldn’t necessarily just confine everything you’ve got in the first turn. Phantoms can only remain confined for a finite number of turns before they leave the battlefield. It’s an interesting system that forces some different strategies than a more traditional game might suggest.

Second, Phantom Brave eschews the traditional grid for a more free-form movement and attack system. Characters can be moved around the battlefield in three dimensions confined by a radius. This means you can jam fighters right up next to each other and need to pay attention to how close you are to your enemy as attacks are less effective the further away you are. Just because you connect doesn’t mean you’ll knock the enemy on his backside.

Like other NIS SRPGs, Phantom Brave has enough depth to either keep you occupied for hours upon hours or drive you stark raving mad. There is a ton to do here. There is the main story, there is leveling up your phantoms and their various weapons in randomly-generated dungeons, there is combining weapons to create better and stronger weapons, there is fusing weapons to phantoms, and there is fusing phantoms together to create better and stronger characters. If you run out of things to do in Phantom Brave then you’re not looking hard enough.

Phantom Brave has a lot going for it. There is a mountain on content here, the main characters are likable, the loss of the typical SRPG grid is refreshing, and the character and item fusion mechanics are sufficiently different from other SRPGs to make Phantom Brave worth your time even if you’ve already got a strong stable of games on your PSP. If you’ve never played Phantom Brave, or are just looking to replace your old PS2 copy with a version that can be played on the go, you won’t be disappointed.

Pros: Endless supply of randomly-generated content, lack of grid is neat, confinement system makes for different strategies than a different SRPG would suggest

Cons: Like other NIS SRPGs, Phantom Brave can be daunting

Lord of Arcana

February 24, 2011

PSP / Reviews / by Justin Last /

The PSP is an RPG gamer’s dream. The genre is well-represented on the system, and the portability of the PSP has convinced most developers that shorter doesn’t mean worse. You can get you turn-based battles, healing potions, and giant dragon enemies in a reasonable-length game designed to be played in small spurts instead of for multiple hours at a time. Lord of Arcana embodies everything that is right about RPGs on the PSP, except it’s not any fun, so it doesn’t matter that I only have to play for 20 minutes at a time.

After a typical “all-powerful” tutorial you find yourself stripped of all useful armor, weapons, and abilities in a temple in the town of Porto Carilo. To prove that you’re worthy to be the next king you have to work your way up from zero to hero again (why the first time wasn’t enough is never explained), only this time it feels like knock-off Monster Hunter. To move the game forward you’ll speak with the woman at the Slayers Guild, pick a quest, and be magically transported to the quest’s starting point (this is actually fairly nice, and I wish more RPGs had a fast travel system). From here you’ll push through the clunky combat until you’ve killed six mandrakes or taken out a boss monster or gathered enough precious herbs.

Combat with regular monsters is dull because they all act the same. Skeletons all block forcing you to move behind them and strike where they’re vulnerable. Goblins dance like idiots to telegraph their attack which makes timing your blocks and attacks simple. This would be forgivable if combat was quick, but you’ll watch the goblin dance, smack it with your sword, sidestep the attack, watch the goblin dance, smack it with your sword, and sidestep the attack more times than you’d care to count. You’ve got the pattern down, and it feels like the game is just trying to wear you down. You’ll cramp your hand as well. To stay locked on to an enemy you have to keep the left trigger held down. A toggle would make more sense here, and at the very minimum there should be an option. Boss monsters aren’t any better – they’re just bigger, which means more health, and their attacks are more annoying. You’ll run into foes that shrink you to miniscule proportions. That sounds neat. Maybe I have to attack some small soft part and being small in inconvenient but the only real way to claim victory. Nope. Being small just makes avoiding attacks harder since you move slower and increases the time of the fight because you’ll spend all of your small time looking for the artifact that makes you big again so that you can inflict some damage on the enemy. Both regular battles and boss battles culminate in a flashy move, but it’s not enough to save the combat system from boring you to tears.

There are an impressive number of weapons and armor available though. You’ll always have something new to pick up, equip to try out, and realize that you’ve broken the game because your firelance has a longer range than most enemies’ awareness ring meaning that you can safely stand back and chip away at their health in absolute safety. (How that made it past the testing phase is a mystery to me.)

Lord of Arcana supports 4-player local multiplayer which could be neat, but enemy patterns don’t change so you’re just sharing the tedium with friends. Combat and monster patterns need to be scaled for multiplayer a la Bionic Commando ReArmed’s co-op boss fights. Instead you’ve just got four swords plinking away at the same regular enemies instead of one. To make matters worse, only the host can save his progress. Everybody else is just along for the ride with nothing to show for it at the end of the session. The concept of Lord of Arcana is a good one, but the execution is off. You’ll be better served with a Monster Hunter game if deep, real-time RPG combat is what you’re after.

Pros: Tons of armor and weapons, fast travel to quest start locations

Cons: No reward for non-hosts in multiplayer, unalterable lock-on mechanic, dull combat

Mindjack

February 23, 2011

PS3 / Reviews / by Justin Last /

Mindjack is a great gimmick stuck inside a mediocre game. In Mindjack’s future disembodied consciousnesses can zip from person to person inhabiting them to further their own agenda. It’s a very interesting and scary concept that, sadly, is never really touched on in the game’s narrative. It made for an interesting, if flawed in its execution, gameplay mechanic, but it really would have shone as a central part of the narrative. It’s a shame that it was only intended to be believed as a part of this world and not an interesting part of the narrative.

And the narrative needs all the help it can get. Despite the interesting premise the story is sub-standard spy fiction complete with unexpected twists that you’ll see from a mile away and enemies cum allies that are easy to spot. While the by-the-numbers spy story is going on you’ll be busy mind-controlling enemy soldiers, inhabiting robots, and forcing civilians to do your will. Taking over enemy soldiers and robots in one thing. They’re out to get you, and you’re just fixing the odds in your favor. Everybody is a willing combatant. Everybody, that is, except for the small army of businessmen you convinced to storm the enemy and be ripped to shreds while you take potshots at them from relative safety. There is a huge missed opportunity here to show the player the negative repercussions of his actions. Instead the only criterion for success is that you must make it through the level and both agents must survive. There is only one outcome, and nobody cares at all that I sent innocent people to their deaths.

Much of this would be forgivable if Mindjack were a competent shooter. I’ve enjoyed my fair share of mindless shooters with terrible stories. Responsive controls and decent enemy AI that make for fun firefights can save just about any FPS for me. Mindjack stumbles on both counts. Movements feel robotic (which is only okay when I’m inhabiting a robot) until you try to dodge – then you have superhuman speed. Enemy AI is sub-par as well. Enemies will try to take cover to shoot at you, but you’ll never see them execute a flank, and occasionally they’ll just run around in circles as the code behind them desperately tries to figure out which box is the best one to hide behind.

Mindjack’s most interesting gameplay feature, though, is the ability to enter other players’ games. We’ve been doing this for years. Co-op is the best way to play Halo: Reach, and the co-op mode in Shank is a blast. The difference in Mindjack is that more often than not when you join an online game you’ll be playing as the bad guy. This is great on paper. We’ve wanted enemies that felt like human opponents for as long as we’ve had enemies. And now we do. The problem is that there is no real reward for the enemies when they win. Since somebody else is playing through the story your win is their loss which makes their do-over the closest thing that you have to a reward. This serves to frustrate those playing the protagonist and bore those playing as enemies. It’s entertaining at first to play an enemy and make the game more challenging for the guy on the other end, but it’s only fun to yank the football away from Charlie Brown for so long.

Mindjack reminds me a lot of the first Assassin’s Creed – amazing premise with loads of potential that just doesn’t come together. Mind hacking is a very interesting concept that needs to be better explored, and adversarial multiplayer bleeding into the main story could be amazing. As it is now, Mindjack is a collection of neat ideas jammed into a mediocre game. The neat ideas just aren’t enough to forgive the below average movement and shooting. Mindjack should be a much better game. Hopefully we’ll see a sequel flesh out those ideas and deliver on all that potential.

Pros: Mindhacking is a great concept, adversarial campaign multiplayer is interesting

Cons: Controls feel stiff and unnatural, sub-par plot that ignores mindhacking altogether, no real reward for those playing as enemies online

You Don’t Know Jack

February 16, 2011

Reviews / Xbox 360 / by Justin Last /

You Don’t Know Jack combines three of my favorite things: sharp wit, trivia, and malicious strategy. This new entry marks the first time since the original PlayStation that console players can screw their opponents and listen to Cookie Masterson berate the leader for not answering the question.

You Don’t Know Jack is fairly minimalist in terms of visuals. Questions and answers are displayed on the screen along with each player’s name and his money total. There are no avatars, you don’t see the host, and questions exist as text and the spoken word. Thankfully, the folks at Jellyvision are hilarious and YDKJ’s writing is more than enough to keep you satisfied and entertained. Have you ever considered what “I Can’t Believe it’s not Butter!” products would be named if they followed the five stages of grief? Or whether something is a part of a pirate ship, an abdominal exercise, or both? With You Don’t Know Jack, you will. The questions are genuine trivia but asked in such a way that you’ll be smiling the entire time even if you don’t take home the win.

A standard show consists of 11 questions which includes one Dis-or-Dat (the pirate ship/abs example above is one of these) and the final special question: the Jack Attack. Dis-or-Dat questions are for one player, usually whoever has the lowest point total, and are a series of things that fit one or both categories. Correctly identify them and make some money. Get it wrong and you’ll lose some instead. Other questions follow the Scene-It formula where nobody buzzes in, everybody answers, and the faster you answer the more money you can win or lose. If you think your opponent doesn’t know the answer you can use the one screw at your disposal to put them on the spot. If they get the question right their winnings come from you, but if they get it wrong you take money from them. It’s high-risk and high-reward, but it makes things interesting and it’s exceedingly satisfying to get screwed and answer the question right. Jack attacks are similar to Dis-or-Dat questions. There is a category, let’s say “Star Wars Actors” for the entire event. Then a phrase is written on the screen. If that phrase was “Han Solo” you’d be waiting for “Harrison Ford” to pop up so you can hit A and make some money. But if you select “Indiana Jones,” “Tom Selleck,” or “Bring me Solo and the Wookie” you’ll lose cash and your opponents still have a chance to make money of their own.

With 73 episodes available on the disc (and one DLC pack already available) you’ll be occupied for quite some time. You Don’t Know Jack also supports the big-button controllers that came packed in with Scene-It: Lights, Camera, Action. They’re supported well, too. The on-screen arrangement of answers shifts from the standard 360 pad diamond configuration to a vertical layout to match the big-button controller layout. This is ideal for parties and people who love trivia but don’t need or want triggers and shoulder buttons to get in the way of their good time.

You Don’t Know Jack is multiplatform, but if you have the capability it really shines on the 360 and PS3. Online multiplayer is available for those times when nobody else is around, additional content is available, and both local and online multiplayer support four players. The Wii supports four-player local but has no online, and the PC, for no reason I can discern, eschews online play and 4-player local play for an anemic two-player mode. I still have my old You Don’t Know Jack CDs, and it amazes me that the current PC offering doesn’t match them. The 360 version is great, but it stings a little to see the platform where YDKJ started treated this way.

Pros: tons of content, great writing, support for big-button controllers

Cons: all versions are not created equal

Qlione Evolve

January 14, 2011

PS3 / Reviews / by Justin Last /

Qlione Evolve is two games for the price of one. The games launch separately despite being bought as a package and are not available separately. I don’t quite understand why you can’t either buy them separately or they aren’t available as separate menu picks from a single integrated menu. This does work out for the trophy chasers out there, however, as Qlione and Qlione 2 have separate trophies and leaderboards. Unfortunately neither game features a decent tutorial, but a little time spent with the game remedies that. Qlione feels like Geometry Wars with multiple bomb types and no gun while Qlione 2 feels like Geometry Wars crossed with Flow. Qlione 2 is far and away the more interesting game, and for $10 for the pack I’d rather have demoed both and then paid only for Qlione 2.

In Qlione 1 you kill enemies by creating waves in the background mesh that run into and disturb the enemies. You have access to two types of bombs, concussive and vacuum. Concussive bombs create waves that move out to damage enemies and vacuum bombs suck enemies toward them. Combine the two to corral enemies close together and drop a couple concussive bombs to take them all out simultaneously. When enemies are defeated they drop orbs, and orbs can be combined using the same bombs that you use to beat enemies. And it’s worth doing, an orb made up of two smaller orbs is worth more toward an extra life than picking up each of those orbs individually. There is no score other than the time it takes to complete any given stage. This makes collecting orbs important because sometimes the best strategy is to round up a ton of enemies, kill them, and then sacrifice yourself.

Qlione 2 trades lives for character revisions. You still have bombs, but instead of being locked into a single character you start out near the bottom of a branching evolution chart. When an enemy is defeated it will drop two orbs – one red and one green. Eat a red one and your bombs get bigger and more powerful – eat the other and your single bombs turn into cluster bombs. Both upgrades are useful, but as soon as one orb is eaten the other disappears so there is a strategy that must be employed and eventually you will come to either memorize what certain upgrades do or know generally what a red orb might do to your current character. And earlier I said that you start out near the bottom. There are some life forms that are only accessible by purposefully taking a hit to start with and evolving from there.

Qlione and Qlione 2 are pleasant diversions that you probably won’t be back to after playing them for a few minutes. On a system with digital releases like Lead and Gold: Gangs of the West, Zen Pinball, Joe Danger and now Angry Birds I just can’t see myself starting one of them up again. I played my few hours, had some fun, and then wished that each title was available individually (so I could only buy the second one) and that they were either Minis titles (so I could play them for quick bursts on PSP) or available on smart phones where I am more concerned with quick fun than a long-lasting experience.

Qlione Evolve is interesting, but I don’t think it warrants the price tag – especially when I can only play it on my TV where I have so many other larger, richer gameplay experiences available to me.

Pros: 2 games for the price of 1, interesting growth mechanic in Qlione 2

Cons: Feel like Minis/Smartphone games, no tutorial in either game

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