Reviews

Pilotwings Resort

April 15, 2011

Pilotwings Resort is, in many ways, a nostalgia trip. The series saw installments on SNES and N64, but hasn’t been seen in fifteen years. That said, this isn’t Kid Icarus. We think people can generally understand the appeal of a game that lets you strap on a rocket belt and fly around places.

Oh, and glide around on a glider, and fly a plane. Those are the three things you do.

For the uninitiated (and with the 15-year hiatus, we’re sure that’s many of you), the game issues various challenges that you take on in these aircraft, and it grades you on your ability to hit targets, follow paths and land gracefully. Attaining certain levels get you one, two or three stars, and you need at least one star in things to move on to the next set of missions. In this version, you fly around Wuhu Island of Wii Sports fame. That’s really rather arbitrary, but it explains why things seem familiar. (Oh, and all the reused assets.)

While it starts off reminiscent of the original games, it soon develops a feel more similar to Monster Games’ other titles, Excite Truck and Excitebots. Everything is structured similarly, from the menus to the challenge design. While those titles were solid, they didn’t exactly burn up the sales charts, so it’s a bit surprising that they didn’t try to rock the boat.

There are a few additions in Resort that are a bit gimmicky. During your flights you can take 3D photos of the island, and sometimes you’re required to. We understand the fun of taking 3D photos of things around you. We’re not so enamored with the ability to take shots of the eight or so things on this island we see the whole time we play the game. You can save them! You can share with friends! We are trying really hard over here to care about that.

Somewhat surprisingly for a first-party title, Pilotwings has a higher tendency than most games to kick you out of focus. The world’s nice and lush, but this problem (that is sure to be the recurring nightmare of the system) takes you away from it a bit. Otherwise, visually, we can’t complain, though with all these assets being used before for Wii Sports Resort, we’re just not enamored with them.

But we like Pilotwings. The controls work well, the Rocket Belt is still a freakin’ Rocket Belt and the challenges are varied if small in number. That last part is really the problem here. There are only a handful of missions for each craft, and they’re not long. If you’re the type to keep trying to get a perfect score, you’ll find it to be worth your time, but if you’re less persistent about those things, the missions will be over in a few hours. There’s a Free Flight mode, and that sounds relaxing. Right? Relaxing? Well it is in theory, but for some reason there’s a time limit on it, so you can’t just kick back and glide around for as long as you want. We didn’t notice anything in Free Flight mode like a score or a challenge, so it just seems silly to have a limit there.

At launch, Pilotwings is the most traditional first-party option, and it’s not a bad time. It’s just over fast enough that you may start reconsidering the costs of the game and system you just purchased.

And yeah, that photo thing. We’re still not sure what that was supposed to be.

Pros: Smooth flight, return of a classic

Cons: A little short and devoid of extra features

The 3rd Birthday

April 14, 2011

PSP / Reviews / by Justin Last /

The 3rd Birthday is rife with things that don’t make any sense. The story is all over the place, the RPG elements are nearly non-existent, the genre (third person shooter) typically does poorly on the PSP so it has been dumbed down to the point of removing any trace of challenge and, when taken altogether, the entire package does not feel like a part of the generally high-quality Square Enix library.

The 3rd Birthday is not a Parasite Eve game in either name or mechanics. Horror is traded for quick easy fights, and Aya, since she was sent back in time and is able to trade whose mind she inhabits at will, is nearly invincible. If you’re running low on health just jump to another ally a la Mindjack. While the concept is just as interesting here as it was there it realistically only serves to lower the difficulty and make moving through the battlefield ridiculously simple.

Shooters tend to do poorly on the PSP for a very simple reason. The device is not designed for a player to control the camera, the character, and the character’s gun simultaneously. The absence of a second analog input makes everything harder than in should be because when you move camera control to the shoulder buttons you’ve lost the natural location for a trigger, and when you move camera control to the directional pad you insist that the player perform to vital functions with his left thumb. Games like Killzone: Resistance manage to avoid these problems by moving to an isometric perspective which delivers a great and unique gameplay experience. The 3rd Birthday, on the other hand, just has its difficulty ratcheted down to make up for the PSP’s lack of inputs.

This, obviously, takes away from the atmosphere. You move through the bland environments in this fashion for 10 hours. Move forward, lock on to an enemy, unload a clip into it, take cover. Remove lock-on and you have a good formula. Gears of War has been using it successfully for years, but it has some other things going for it. Weapons feel different and are useful in different situations, and moving from cover to cover is vital to keeping your guy alive. The 3rd Birthday‘s difficulty level negates cover, and whatever weapon you have equipped will do the job since you can lock on and be guaranteed that your shots are connecting with their intended target.

Parasite Eve is a series that deserves to be revisited lovingly, and I hope that someday it gets the revival it deserves.

Pros: Battles start and end quickly

Cons: Combat is astoundingly easy, RPG elements are overly light and not taken advantage of, the game’s difficulty is low to compensate for the PSP’s control setup

Tomb Raider Trilogy

April 14, 2011

PS3 / Reviews / by Paul Bishop /

Just in time for the reboot of Tomb Raider later this year, Crystal Dynamics has re-issued its recent back catalog of titles in high definition. With this PS3 exclusive, players have access to the last three games produced: Legend (2006), Anniversary (2007) and Underworld (2008). Including a story thread that links all three titles, these games are natural to appear on one disc and provide some minor extras to make this a value at $39.99.

Lara Croft travels the world hunting artifacts, but none are as personal as the sword Excalibur that is somehow linked with her Mother’s disappearance years ago. Told across all three titles, Lara battles enemies old and new to finally close this chapter in her life. Never before has the Tomb Raider series looked so good. All three games look beautiful with Underworld still looking just as good as any current title.

Included with the games, players will have access to development diaries for all three titles, as well as trailers for the downloadable Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. In addition to the videos, the disc includes PlayStation Home avatar clothing, trophy support and a PS3 theme to tempt fanboys even more. While these are nice to have, they don’t add significantly to the overall value of the title and will only appeal to die-hards.

The platforming and puzzle solving of Tomb Raider set the bar in the late ’90s, and if you haven’t had a chance to play these titles, then you should consider picking it up for your collection to see the final chapters.

Pros: Great game value for one disc, beautiful updating of graphics

Cons: Extras don’t add much value

The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky

April 13, 2011

PSP / Reviews / by Gerry Pagan /

Despite having immense popularity in Japan, the Legend of Heroes series has never enjoyed the same success stateside, in no small part to the lukewarm reception to the PSP Legend of Heroes releases in the US by Namco Bandai. While The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky was released in Japan in 2004, the massive effort that localizing it would require due to the enormous script resulted in no publisher looking to bring the game stateside for years. Taking up that mantle, XSEED struck a deal with Falcom to localize Ys Seven, Ys: Oath in Felghana, Ys I & II Chronicles and the entirety of the Trails in the Sky trilogy. This is great news for RPG fans, as Trails in the Sky is an excellent showing of things to come.

Trails in the Sky takes place in the Kingdom of Liberl, a world where orbments, magically-powered devices power all aspects of daily life: from the common streetlights to airships to more complicated combat orbments that allow people to use magic-like arts. Estelle Bright, the game’s main protagonist, and his adopted brother Joshua Bright are accepted as into the Bracer’s Guild, which is a local mercenary-type group that does jobs on request for all the local citizens, with branches all over Liberl. On their journey to become full-fledged bracers, they become involved in events that affect the history of the entire kingdom.

The gameplay starts off as nothing spectacular. Combat is turn-based and takes place on a movement grid, where you can move about to deliver attacks to any opponents you come by. While early battles don’t deviate much from simply using the attack command, each character slowly opens up their combat orbments as the game progresses, giving each new slots for new abilities and spells. These are completely customizable though, as characters can be tailored to fit your individual play style. You do this with a combination of stat-boosting, support, healing, status effect among other “quartz” that can radically change what a character excels at, outside of his default parameters and unique skills. By the end of the game, it encourages you to experiment with different abilities and arts on party members and plan out fights for the long-run with tactical decisions. In addition, the game has a “retry offset” feature that makes enemy encounters easier every time you choose to retry after a game over. This can be turned off for the hardcore players, but it’s a nice feature to have nonetheless.

Trails in the Sky’s strongest point, though, lies in its narrative. The whole cast is unique and likable, and while not entirely avoiding the RPG stereotypes, it plays them out well and expands on every character instead of making them out to look completely generic. Every NPC has something to say at all times, with text changing after every minor plot point in the game. Even the minor side quests have unique dialogue between characters and are very well-written. Trails in the Sky is extremely text-heavy, almost to the point of being absurd. As a result, it’s understandable that the only voice acting is done in one-liners and grunts during combat, as fully voicing a game with more than 50,000 strings of text is something I wouldn’t expect of any developer. It’s safe to say that you’ll spend more time watching characters say things than actually fighting, so the more action-y type of player might be put off by that.

Another impressive feat accomplished in Trails in the Sky is the sheer amount of optional content. Even during the game’s prologue, you have 15-20 total side quests available during entirety of the chapter, though a lot of the game’s side quests are time-limited. The quests are highly varied as well, with quests ranging from escorting people to locations to using a cat dictionary to catch a smoking culprit. It’s highly unlikely for one to experience everything Trails in the Sky has in one playthrough without the use of a guide. While nothing stops you from going barebones and only playing through the game’s main missions, completing side quests is the only way to get some of the best quartz and accessories in the game, making it harder to not do side quests before progressing in the game’s plot.

This being only the first chapter in a trilogy, Trails in the Sky is nonetheless well-worth the asking price. You’ve got a minimum of 40 hours worth of content, and even more if you’re the compulsive completionist type that just loves to explore every nook and cranny, talk to every single NPC and do every mission available to them. It’s an excellent starting point for newcomers to the Legend of Heroes series, as well as the beginning of events seen in the to-be-released second chapter.

Asphalt 3D

April 13, 2011

3DS / Reviews / by Graham Russell /

Though variety abounds in the racing genre, the main division in the genre comes down to this: some are more about racing, and some are more about the game. In the 3DS’ launch lineup, there’s one of each, and Asphalt 3D is for those who love the little rewards over a smooth ride.

First, though, let’s get through the bad stuff. Asphalt is clearly a port of an iOS game, and it doesn’t fit that comfortably on the new platform. The game uses 3D in the game itself and in car selection, but the rest is largely untouched, and those elements reuse as many assets as possible. Some things, be them menus or road textures or what have you, seem much lower quality than the system is capable of. The engine still has issues with slowdown, and the problem is compounded with every additional car on the screen. (Good thing you don’t start every race with everyone all there at once! Oh, wait. You do.) To add more problems, the game’s placement of the drift and jump information covers up the top center of the screen, which would be exactly the area you need to see in a racing game.

So Asphalt starts on a bad foundation. It takes the game equivalent of a low-rent apartment and covers the walls with tons of posters, going for fun over quality. The game feels like Burnout, with close calls, jumps and dangerous driving the order of the day. There are boost, repair and money icons scattered across the track to pick up. There are bonuses for finding shortcuts, jumping, dodging traffic and avoiding the cops. To top it off, each race has different primary and secondary objectives, and completing each helps you level up, increasing your rank and unlocking cars, parts and attribute-boosting sponsors. If that weren’t enough, there are over a dozen achievements This comes from the game’s origins in iOS development, where casual gaming principles dictate this type of constant gratification.

Asphalt 3D supports local multiplayer for up to 6 players, as well as StreetPass functionality that allows players to exchange best times. It’s not the online play we hope for, but it’s still something. (And for those who read our Ridge Racer review, Asphalt‘s announcer is, if possible, more annoying, but since she speaks less often it’s really a wash.)

The game beneath is not great, and that’s going to turn many away, especially with the solid foundation of its competitor, Ridge Racer 3D. It is, however, not an entirely wasted effort for those who like their games to be as game-like as possible.

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