astroboy777's GameSpot Friend's Reviews astroboy777's GameSpot Friend's Reviews astroboy777's GameSpot Friend's Reviews en-us Copyright (c)1995-2013 CBS Interactive. All rights reserved. http://www.gamespot.com 20 Mon, 20 May 2013 04:49:26 -0700 GameSpot astroboy777's GameSpot Friend's Reviews http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/shared/promos/misc/gs_logo.gif http://www.gamespot.com 135 40 Sat, 16 Dec 2006 12:56:31 -0800 Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed Meteos for the DS... http://www.gamespot.com/meteos/user-reviews/399824/platform/ds/ ...and gave it a 8.3.

Combining three like objects somehow never loses its appeal, as long as there is a twist, and for Q? Entertainment, that twist was probably found by wanting to reach the stars. With rockets in hand, Meteos lights a fuse under a puzzle concept that has been worked to death and blasts it off into space. Instead of evaporating into the pixilated void after forming lines and assorted shapes, Meteos blocks turn into incendiary squares with fire jets flaring underneath, propelling any blocks above them into the sky. At least that is what the remaining planets have discovered.

The evil planet Meteo has become an extraterrestrial cancer, threatening the universe with streams of phantasmagoric matter suffusing from Meteo's surface. One by one, planets have fallen to the life-crushing blocks of Meteos, but then by chance of a here's-the-point event, three Meteos of the same type aligned and ignited.

Blast off!

Though the rather hard-boiled storyline continues with the impression that the player is piloting the Metamo Ark, a warship tasked with defending a chain of planets until facing Meteo at the finish line, it serves as a passive, quirky thread through what could have been cliché gameplay. How blocks are fired off the screen, stylus in hand, hits multiple sweet-spots that hone in on just the right difficulty and complexity. With the restriction that blocks can only be moved up and down a column, turning Meteos into rockets is fairly simple, particularly when compared to chaining complex launches. Removing blocks, as they drop more and more feverishly, requires small launches to be made across the width of the board, so that rockets connect by stacking above and below each other. This element of strategy, combined with a dynamic system in which something is always moving in real-time, just adds to the already frantic hands-on action.

Surprisingly, while this puzzler is of the general pick-up-and-play mold, its appeal lasts longer than a quick burst. Lending more significance than just common blocks, any Meteos that are sent into space are stored in a fusion room and can be transformed into weapons, rare Meteos, planets, and even music. The main storyline mode Star Trip is grueling on the highest difficulty setting, so forging weapons that can destroy chunks of Meteos will probably take first priority. The other game modes Simple, Time War, and Deluge don't benefit from weapons as much, but they allow for spurts of play that, courtesy of the variety of planets, still remain addictive.

Each planet offers an experience that is fresh and compact, minimizing the game's flaws by keeping the action in motion. Akin to competing against a CPU player, defeating planets requires launching piles of Meteos over to their game board in the hope that they will overflow and be annihilated. Given the three-minute time limit, holding down the accelerator button to speed up the drop rate occurs often, essentially compelling the player to quicken the pace despite the risk. Since each planet has its own sound effects, music, block skin, sound effects, Meteos distribution, and gravitational pull, the brisk tempo of play relieves some of the unavoidable loss of impact that happens after playing the game multiple times.

Once five different endings are reached and enough planets to recreate Earth's solar system are fused, there's not much reason to continue. Mastery of the game in particular is not clearly defined, emphasizing column management and luck more than skill. Groups of launched Meteos act independently when they are suspended in air, so especially for planets will low gravitational pulls, there will be large spans of time when only one or two columns will be left standing to take all the Meteos drops. Sometimes this comes at no fault of the player since three Meteos occasionally align without any assistance at all. Put in this situation, this luck backfires, and no amount of stylus-swiveling will prevent annihilation. Fortunately, this only becomes a problem during the highest drop rates, and control still largely remains in the hands of the player.

Meteos has a fair share of irony. Many puzzle games have the lasting interest of a rocket - few hours of play are enough to enjoy all the sights. But actually insert rockets and a fusion room into the formula, and the game will last longer than most any flight. It takes a certain level of audacity to combine something as atypical as rockets into a rule-heavy genre that is rather formal and turn-based. For breaking the cliché barrier, Meteos aims for the stars, and though it lands somewhat short, the moon is nice enough.

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"Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed Meteos for the DS..." was posted by Draqq_Zyxorian on Sat, 16 Dec 2006 12:56:31 -0800
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/meteos/user-reviews/399824/platform/ds/ Sat, 16 Sep 2006 17:07:46 -0700 Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed Pump It Up: Exceed for the PlayStation 2... http://www.gamespot.com/pump-it-up-exceed/user-reviews/363841/platform/ps2/ ...and gave it a 8.1.

Step onto the Dance Dance Revolution platform. Look at your feet and chances are that you are standing in the middle, on a metal plate that covers not only the center, but also the corners of the pad. You are only a tap away from the arrows. Up, down, left, right. Safe and secure. Then suddenly, the arrows and the metal plates begin to warp. You stagger as the arrows slide into the corners and a center arrow forms beneath your feet. The metal plates now cover the arrows you once knew.

No, you are not having a nightmare. You are ready to Pump It Up.

No matter how Pump It Up is explained, the diagonally-skewed pad is enough to intimidate everyone - even DDR veterans. Unbeknownst to most, we have been given ample time to adjust. Andamiro has served up this DDR alternative for several years now, and Pump It Up machines have begun to take hold in arcades all across the continent, blasting Korean pop songs over their Japanese counterpart. Following in Konami's footsteps, this relatively unknown company is porting the competition to the console with Pump It Up: Exceed. Unfortunately, Andamiro - known for creating games exclusively for arcades - isn't familiar with the world outside of their pinball-lit universe, and that inexperience shows. Still, Exceed betters DDR in nearly every aspect of dance and makes more than just a slanted, hackneyed variation of aerobics.

Exceed doesn't stray far from the basic design of a typical rhythm game, which doesn't bode well for first impressions. Flip through the music. Pick a song. Pick a difficulty. Listen to the beat. (Sigh.) Watch the colored arrows scroll up through the stationary gray arrows at the top of the screen. Stomp on the corresponding arrows on the pad. (Yawn.) Get a grade from 'Perfect' to 'Miss' for how well you timed each step. Get a grade from 'S' to 'E' for the performance. Flip through the music again. Pick another song. (…zzz…)

Just on premise alone, Exceed seems like a dreary, unpolished DDR rip-off. Indeed, for a game that will be inevitably compared to a series that already has more than fifteen console iterations, it doesn't pay much attention to the competition. To the chagrin of rhythm veterans, thorough features found in DDR have been ignored. First and foremost, grades are not saved anywhere. Sure, you get a list of high scores and an internet code that gives you a worldwide ranking, but who cares? You should be able to track your progress song by song, and for most arrow-minded dancers, that means seeing whether you can achieve grades of either 'A' or 'S'. Exacerbating the problem further, Practice Mode doesn't allow you to train specific ankle-twisting step sequences in a song. Furthermore, songs from various Pump It Up mixes have been plastered over without fully-fleshed step charts. Far too many songs can't be played on the difficulty setting you want. And worse yet, you have to pick a song before you can actually see the difficulty rating; that is, if you can unlock it first.

Okay, take a deep breath…

…to unlock most songs in Arcade Mode, you have to complete songs in Home Mode and Sudden Death Mode, but that's only if you can unlock songs in Sudden Death Mode - by passing songs without making a single mistake - but even then, you have to unlock songs in Home Mode by completing songs in Arcade Mode, and…

…Scream.

But while you will feel short-changed many times, Exceed makes dancing so vivacious and fluid that nitpicking doesn't do justice to the game. Stepping on diagonal arrows, let alone a "center arrow", certainly feels unconventional. But the wider arsenal of steps gives, at least more than DDR, the impression that you are not trudging through an exercise routine. On the traditional four-arrow pad, your movements hardly utilize the full range of the platform and specific step patterns pop up frequently. Since the arrows in Pump It Up are in the corners, your feet can spread from the center, shifting forward and backward, one side to the other. With five arrows and double - even triple - combinations, your feet won't be bored. The center arrow also acts as a pivot, providing a firm axis to ground your feet and turn; thus, jumps and spins are far less awkward to perform. You have the ability to use your feet - and even your hands and knees - without feeling restricted to the tabular arrows of a step chart.

You can actually dance.

And not just to generic music with generic backgrounds, either. You will, of course, still get the occasional epileptic backdrop and one (extremely) unfortunate remix of SixPence None The Richer's "Kiss Me". But you will notice that the background for each song carries its own artistic theme - either through hand-drawn or computer-generated animation - or even the song's actual music video, and that the vast majority of songs have rhythms that you want to dance to. Spinning through the color-wheel of music, you can choose your favorite from a 101-song selection of Pop, Korean Pop, and BanYa - Andamiro's acclaimed in-house composer. Headlining the Pop soundtrack are "A Little Less Conversation (Jungle XL Remix)" by Elvis Presley; "Let's Groove" by Earth, Wind, and Fire; "Rapper's Delight" by Sugarhill Gang; and a fiesta of Latin-flavored songs like "Essa Maniera" and "La Cubanita". But even if you don't understand Korean or aren…t fond of techno renditions of classical music, every song has it where it counts: a heavy dance beat. Even if it's heavy metal or Koreans singing in Spanish, you will find music that suits your taste.

The only serious criticism that can be lodged against the game is the quality of the dance pad it comes bundled with. The pad is a slippery mess, and sadly, hardcore step-stompers will be frustrated that there are no compatible pads, foam or metal, that can replace it. But for the most part, the pad is responsive and durable enough for casual gamers. Besides, you will be too lost in the music to care. Just make sure to tape the pad to the floor, because you don't want to end up on your face.

Unfortunately, it seems that Konami just won't get up. When will DDR get it right? After countless - meaningless - iterations, it's time to find the answer someplace else and that place is Pump It Up: Exceed. With a simple shift of 45 degrees and a blood-pumping soundtrack, Exceed is one of those few games that makes you forget that you are playing a rhythm game. Any slipups the game has is quickly made up with solid dance mechanics and a hip, no-nonsense groove - two things that DDR doesn't have.

So while you Pump It Up, have fun proving to your parents that video games are actually making you do something productive. Just drink lots of water and hold on to that sweat.

You're going to need it.

Get the full article at GameSpot

"Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed Pump It Up: Exceed for the PlayStation 2..." was posted by Draqq_Zyxorian on Sat, 16 Sep 2006 17:07:46 -0700
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/pump-it-up-exceed/user-reviews/363841/platform/ps2/ Sun, 27 Aug 2006 12:24:31 -0700 Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64... http://www.gamespot.com/the-legend-of-zelda-ocarina-of-time/user-reviews/356997/platform/n64/ ...and gave it a 10.0!!!

No matter how many I save, how many I defeat, the question is never far behind. Is this a burden that all heroes carry, bound before the path? Every step I take, grasping for the earth, brings me closer to death. But even as I lay beneath the silence of night, when all that trembles is doubt, music comes to soothe my soul. As my weary hand finds the ocarina, I hear the melody on my fingertips. The sound of the sky, of the rivers and fields, echoes each sweeping note. Restless in its wake, the sword on my back hums to the weighted rhythm. The instrument beckons to be heard. So I begin to play.

The first few notes begin like a simple tune of youth. I was a Koriki child once. The forest was my playground. I would roll around the bushes, hop along the waterside, pick up a stone with all my strength and lob it just for fun. The world beyond the village was unknown to me but I did not care. All I wanted was a fairy like all the other children, and one morning before I woke, she finally came. Navi tinkered around my head, flapping about how I was lazy and how the Giant Deku Tree was waiting for me. I thought she was lying. A boy with straggly legs and a flapping green hood was nothing special at all.

I moved to allegretto, dashing about the village. After scouring for the secret treasure sword and gathering forty rupees to buy a Deku shield, I sprinted towards the guardian of the forest. Poison had spread from root to branch. I stood bewildered as The Giant Deku Tree implored me to purge the evil planted inside him. My feet began to falter, but then, for the first time, I seized my sword. The temper of justice coursed through my hand. I did not need a voice. All I needed were my narrowing eyes to bring my courage into focus.

Only haunting noises, along ivy-skinned walls and rotting cobwebs, crawled within the dungeon. Dim and moist, this spire of toxin and sagging moss held a silent crescendo that quivered down my skin. Then as I passed, a saliva-dripping head sprung from a weed. The Deku Baba sunk its venom into my shoulder. Falling to the ground, I hollered in pain. But before its mouth lashed out once more, Navi flashed me its weak spot and I swung at its neck. My yell pierced the air, stirring the spiders back into the crevices. My first kill was a writhing head, spewing a bundle of Deku Nuts.

In that moment of battle, as blood crept down my arm, the crescendo once fearful now settled to a rhythm, to the beat of my pulse. Climbing up vines, leaping across chasms, stunning monsters with Deku Nuts, and then slaying them with swift slashes, I passed a thicket of spider webs sprawling with Skullwalltulas. Opening a far door, I crept into a room with a golden chest. As I would discover, every dungeon mysteriously kept a map, a compass, and a golden chest. Inside this one was a slingshot without any pellets. Thinking for a second, I hiked back to the thicket of webs. I grabbed a few Deku Nuts, pulled back on the rubber sling, and flung them against the sprawling monsters. They plummeted to my feet like writhing heads, spewing more bundles of nuts.

I quickly understood, with glorious intonation, that nothing served only one purpose. My slingshot could kill or it could turn on a switch. Fire could light torches or turn cobwebs into ash. Deku Sticks could swat enemies, bring fire from torch to torch, or turn butterflies into fairies. If Deku Scrubs threatened me with spitting seeds, my shield could deflect them back at their fiendish faces. By the time I stood before the last looming door, this little piece of wisdom had unraveled many of the dungeon's twists.

The Parasitic Armored Arachnid Gohma was no different. Navi knew the monster and let me follow the spider's eye in the darkness with the glow of her wings. Stunning its eye with a few well-slung Deku Nuts, I leapt into the air with a diving slash. I soon held the Kokiri Emerald, from amongst its entrails, like the final chord of a symphony.

But I never thought that this was just the beginning. Once the curse was lifted, I learned that my life and my quest would not be of the forest. The truth is said to set you free, but in that instant, I didn't want to be. I scaled the ladder to my hut, gathered my few belongings, and left the village in the cover of night. As I shuffled across the bridge that would lead me to the unfamiliar world, I paused. Calmly surrounded by fireflies, Saria bade her farewell. She handed me her fairy ocarina. Not ready to leave my friend behind, I stared at the ocarina as it rested in my hand.

I turned quickly enough to be cloaked in blinking lights.

As if caught in a strange interlude, I soon found myself in a spacious, undulating field with the sun moving hastily above. Time, it appeared, wasn't on my side. The dirt path ran beneath my feet as the free air flapped by my clothes. As I passed a high-walled ranch on top of a hill, a giant river and a drawbridge came into view. But then I heard a wolf howling in the distance, and the drawbridge began to rise. Suddenly, skeletons emerged from the ground, drawn to the gleaming moon. I tried to fend them off but I was soon overwhelmed, so I dove into the river. The Stalchilds, thwarted by the water, burrowed back into the earth. I floated on the stream until dawn, never to take time for granted again.

Trotting atop the cobblestone road, I heard the verve of the town in a medley of hustle and bustle. Throngs of townsfolk bombarded the street venders, item stores, and game booths, but I could still feel their stares and the corners of their eyes. I guess I was special after all. Fortunately, I found solitude at The Temple of Time, a place forgotten by its people. Only one other place matched its stone-walled tranquility.

Sneaking past the castle guards patrolling the entrance, the gate, the moat, and the gardens, I fell upon a secluded, circular patch. A princess was staring beyond the window. Hearing my footsteps, Zelda turned to find me bemused, the boy she saw in her dreams. She smiled and clasped her hands together, inviting me to take a look. There, beyond the glass, was Ganondorf kneeling before the king with a grin. The legendary Triforce, which is said to grant its owner any one wish, was all that gleamed in his eye. Only one who could gather the three sacred jewels from the corners of the land and retrieve the Triforce before it fell into his hands could stop him from blanketing the world in darkness. Grasping the Kokiri Emerald in the palm of my hand, I accepted the mission as if it was destiny. I entered the world with a new purpose, and with that, the interlude was over.

Yet even now, I still am not free.

Even after seven years. A staccato affair with freedom. Three jewels. Six sages. The Master Sword upon my back. Preludes that trickle like the waterfalls of fairy fountains. Nocturnes that bare my scars and the souls of the innocent dead. Of the dwarfish, earth-skinned Gorons. Of the aquatic, blue-finned Zoras. From the boleros of dragon mountaintops to the serenades of crystal lakes. The hooves of my horse galloping through the field. The pitch of arrows and hookshots sailing through the wind. The echoing cadence of magical spells. Roaring werewolves. Grunting knights. Moaning zombies and laughing phantoms. From the requiems of the dead to the minuets of the lost. And even songs that rule nature and time.

My journey, though wondrous, ageless, and revered, is yet to be finished.

The blanket of darkness still covers the world. Zelda is still shrouded behind Ganondorf, behind his stallion and his sneer. Behind thunder and lightning. Behind the fear of the town. Behind Saria and the fireflies. Behind The Giant Deku Tree. Behind my courage before the path.

The answer is close. The Master Sword speaks.

I understand now. I feared that this would end. I cannot fool freedom. I must save her to save myself. And if I must, if I befall to repeat every sword slash, block push, switch pull, and rupee hunt, I would do it all over again. I am The Hero of Time. My name will not leave my sword. The notes will not leave my fingers. My voice will become the player that beckons to be heard. My freedom will be the world composing when the last breath leaves your hand.

Get the full article at GameSpot

]]> http://www.gamespot.com/the-legend-of-zelda-ocarina-of-time/user-reviews/356997/platform/n64/ Fri, 11 Aug 2006 17:58:17 -0700 Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! for the DS... http://www.gamespot.com/brain-age-train-your-brain-in-minutes-a-day/user-reviews/350659/platform/ds/ ...and gave it a 6.0.

The words "education" and "entertainment" usually don't belong together. So when we call Oregon Trail, Reading Rabbit, and Math Blaster "edutainment" software, heads start to turn; even more so for Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!, since (besides its long name) it targets more than children. Brain Age dreams of DS lovers walking down the street playing mental exercises that supposedly improve your practical intelligence. Supervisor and prominent Japanese neuroscientist, Dr. Ryuta Kawashima, wants his game to make mental training simple and fun, two adjectives not associated with exercises steeped in academia and psychoanalysis. For a game that only requires basic math, reading, and writing, Brain Age takes a lot of complicated risk, to rather odd results.

Dr. Kawashima's extremely polygonal head guides you through the game, but like an overeager professor, the game begins by force-feeding facts that try to "show that brain training works" but also prevent you from having fun. Flipping screen after screen will lead you to believe that your brain age determines your intelligence. The game takes every opportunity to remind you that your results in training programs are determined by monitoring the activity of your prefrontal cortex. The six-page introduction in the game manual is littered with colored diagrams of the brain's anatomy, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and near-infrared spectroscopy. This pretentiousness sucks some of the joy out of the game, especially when the scientific evidence is not entirely convincing.

Brain Age uses mini-games, like addition and counting, that generally provoke quick reactions to simple operations, but the provided comparisons to other games aren't fair. The introduction shows you four labeled brain diagrams displaying how much Brain C performing simple math problems quickly or Brain D processing words when a book is read aloud has more red-glowing activity than Brain B solving a difficult math problem or Brain A sitting in idle thought. Is that it? What about high-impact fighting games or resource managements in a real-time strategy game? Don't they require quick reactions as well? Furthermore, if your performance is based on the activity of your prefrontal cortex, which is in the front of the brain, why show diagrams of the entire brain? Finally, basing an entity as broad as "brain age" on just academic smarts fails to recognize different kinds of intelligence. Physical and emotional intelligence may not be as readily testable, but it should have been noted that brain age doesn't encompass the breadth of all intelligence.

If you overlook this overgeneralization, however, Brain Age has a nostalgic charm that is quite disarming. Beyond the scientific mumbo-jumbo and analytical wordplay, you will find mini-games that rekindle what made learning so fun:

* Before mathematics became an onslaught of theoretical algebraic functions and variable conic sections, we scribbled big numbers and squiggled plus signs and symbols we thought were x's (Calculations x 20, Calculations x 100, Triangle Math).
* Before we deciphered lines of Shakespeare, we sputtered and stumbled over long words (Reading Aloud and Syllable Count).
* We glanced at the clock to see how much time was left until recess (Time Lapse).
* We pointed at people and counted with our fingers (Head Count, Number Cruncher).
* We shouted out numbers and the names of colors (Voice Calculation, Speed Counting, Stroop Test).
* We flipped cards with letters and numerals. (Word Memory, Low to High).
* And we connected dots (Connect Maze).

After a mini-game, you are rewarded in a happy yet quirky way. Did you finish the game as fast as a man, a bicycle, a train, a jet, or a rocket? Juvenile, yes. But it's this juvenile spirit that makes this game more than just some derivation of an IQ test.

As Brain Age takes seemingly childish games and, in Nintendo fashion, gives them an unexpected spotlight, it also highlights the power of DS, using the stylus and microphone exclusively. Just on first impression, playing Brain Age with a directional pad and the standard buttons would be silly. Imagine having to spin digit wheels to answer your multiplication tables; every calculation would be an exercise of tedium. Instead, you either speak the answer or write it on the touch screen, and with speed being the name of the game, both writing and voice recognition are properly swift.

Unfortunately, as you fight your way to earn rocket speeds, the game's shortcomings don't get any harder to see. There's no clear system for recognition, no manual that tells you what the game is looking for in penmanship. Frequently, your 1's are confused for 7's, your 4's are looped into 9's, and the word "blue" doesn't like to register. Worse yet, the game actually recommends you to have your friends and family take a quick brain age check - with the Stroop Test. So expect to hear them blare "blue" at the screen ad nauseum. Making these problems even more irritating, the penalties for a wrong answer are severe: a 5-second penalty for an incorrect calculation and a 20-second penalty in Syllable Count. And if you choose to be notified of an incorrect answer in a basic-level Sudoku puzzle, one unlucky error between a "4" and a "9" will you get a 20-minute penalty, the same amount of time it takes to finish the darn thing.

More frustrating is that the game forces its worth. The whole point of Brain Age is to, well, check your brain age, by having the game monitor your performance in three games. You might struggle near the beginning, but you will probably reach the highest brain age of 20 within a few tries, except that you are only allowed to record your brain age once a day. Since the game is based on elementary skills, you probably won't have any trouble earning at least train speed on every game, so why force us to wait? Even starker than how standardized tests are in some measure about test-taking skills, your initial struggle comes more from learning the game rather than any lack of intelligence on your part. Sure, there's always a learning curve, but for a game that (supposedly) assesses your brain age, you would expect the game to test your natural ability sooner.

Moreover, you can't unlock all of the mini-games when you want to. The game requires you to collect time stamps, which you painfully earn one day at a time. That Brain Age wants you to train your brain every day is understandable - it's in the title - but it should have depended on the strength of its training games to make you come back for more, instead of forcing a daily regimen down your throat.

Truly, the scant multiplayer says it all. The "Calculations x 30 Battle" is quite fun, but that's all there is. Brain Age has so many training programs at its disposal that having just one multiplayer game is ridiculous. It just makes it more obvious that the game spreads itself across several days, because there's just not much there. Brain Age should be praised for showing us that educational software can be entertaining for everyone and for getting you to learn on purpose. Learning can be fun. But after a week of solving problem after problem, you will soon forget about your brain age and activate your prefrontal cortex for bigger and better games.

Get the full article at GameSpot

]]> http://www.gamespot.com/brain-age-train-your-brain-in-minutes-a-day/user-reviews/350659/platform/ds/ Thu, 27 Jul 2006 17:59:18 -0700 Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed Capcom Fighting Evolution for the PlayStation 2... http://www.gamespot.com/capcom-fighting-evolution/user-reviews/344020/platform/ps2/ ...and gave it a 3.1.

Instead of trying to update or reinvent any of its fighting franchises, Capcom continues to inflame the cross-over fighting madness with Capcom Fighting Evolution. The question of whether Ryu is stronger than some other non-generic 2D fighter has probably crossed your mind, but this game will make your brain bleed from its skull-bludgeoning lack of execution. Though Capcom Fighting Evolution combines five (well, four) well-known franchises together - Street Fighter II, Street Fighter Alpha, Street Fighter III, Darkstalkers, and Red Earth - the novelty ends quickly. Whatever enjoyment you might experience during the first few run-throughs gets swiftly and repeatedly crushed by the number of places the game feels like a pitiful copy-and-paste job. If you have ever wondered why Capcom never puts credits in its game manuals, it is to protect its staff from the embarrassment of having made such an unpolished wreck like this.

Immediately after the usual title screen and epileptic intro movie, you are faced with a selection screen with four options that are oddly italicized. Unfortunately, two of them are Training Mode and Option Mode, so you're left with the barebones offering of Arcade Mode and Versus Mode. Capcom seems satisfied disguising a would-be arcade game as a slap-dash console title without any added value, except for the wearisome task of unlocking two characters and a batch of character theme songs. The inadequate couple of options will leave you wishing there was, of all things, a survival mode, which feels as fantastic as a punch in the stomach.

You will try to remain steady, even amidst a riff-heavy soundtrack that belongs in Sonic: The Hedgehog, but the character roster will offend you with its choice of Capcom titles and then beat you senseless with its choice of characters. As you can surmise from the selection of franchises, Capcom Fighting Evolution should really be called Street Fighter vs. Other Stuff. Now, Darkstalkers is actually a welcome addition, with its strong cast of demonic characters and its bloodlust art style, but why does Street Fighter need to be represented three times and what from the Capcom abyss is Red Earth? Does anyone care? Out of speculation, you may try to discover the concept behind the characters of Red Earth - a swashbuckling lion humanoid; a fire-breathing lizard that takes up half the screen; a mechanical ninja that uses sickles, knives, and cannons; and a creature that can only be described as an aqua squid-octopus - but your chances are slim.

The title selection notwithstanding, your odds of approving the four-characters-per-franchise limit are even worse. Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Capcom vs. SNK 2, and other (better) Capcom cross-overs have no trouble featuring more than forty playable characters. So faced with a twenty-character roster, you will feel slighted. Furthermore, many of your favorite characters won't make the cut. How can you represent Darkstalkers without the two succubae main characters, Morrigan and Lilith? And how can you speak about Street Fighter without Ken?

Oh, wait. Ken is standing in the middle of a street in New York, as if the game is pleased with putting him in the background. In fact, a whole slew of characters, including E.Honda, Dhalsim, B.B. Hood, and Sagat, will stand on the sidelines and watch. Because why would you want to play as them?

Furthermore, there is no game that will make it more apparent that your characters are fighting in front of a green screen than this one. Except for a few background animations made mostly with a measly two to five frames, backgrounds are static. Nothing moves. So either time has frozen or you're fighting in what is the most uneventful night in Hong Kong. Sure, this makes your fighters stand out more, but the game can't even get the character art right. Characters retain the art style of their franchises, which is a fitting tribute to their origins, but the differences in artwork - and even resolution - is stark to the point that the game feels like five disjointed titles instead of one cohesive statement.

You will get the impression that the game is a sloppy copy-and-paste affair, despite the coined "Switch Tag System". Coupling a one-on-one battle and a tag-team system together, you can switch freely between two characters before a round begins. This double-blind procedure gives the usually idle transitional time between rounds some importance and tries to smooth out the differences between characters by giving you a team of two characters, but the team element is weak. No real teamwork happens. Like an episode out of some reality TV show, your team is just a pair of characters from separate games that have nothing but individual strengths and weaknesses.

Gluing two characters together might mend other fighting games; however, the character balance is repulsive. The back cover declares that "Characters retain their unique moves so they'll play exactly as you remember!" and the manual boasts that Street Fighter II characters have "Just simple, powerful attacks!" Bad ideas.

Each fighter has a power gauge, special moves, and super arts, but Street Fighter II characters have been given the shaft. Street Fighter III fighters are the only ones that can parry and break through guards with leap attacks, both making them much too powerful. Along with Darkstalker characters, they can also power-up their special moves with a section of their power meter. Moreover, Darkstalker and Street Fighter Alpha brawlers can use original chain combos, and even Red Earth fighters can block all attacks with an Ultimate Guard. Nostalgic Street Fighter II characters deserve at least a fighting chance. You can vouch that any character can win if you're good enough, but the one-sidedness of powerful abilities is just unfair. Ultimately, you would rather play any one of the five franchises in the game by itself - even Red Earth - instead of Capcom Fighting Evolution.

Truly, the title says it all. We can clearly see "Capcom" printed in the bottom right-hand corner of the box, so the first word is unnecessary. It's also quite obvious within the first fifteen seconds, if you didn't already tell from Guile's roaring face on the cover, that this is a fighting game. So the second word is useless. And "Evolution"? Well, that's just a lie. Even monkeys can tell that this game is worthless in every sense of the word.

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]]> http://www.gamespot.com/capcom-fighting-evolution/user-reviews/344020/platform/ps2/ Fri, 30 Jun 2006 07:59:15 -0700 Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed The Legend of Dragoon for the PlayStation... http://www.gamespot.com/the-legend-of-dragoon/user-reviews/332033/platform/ps/ ...and gave it a 4.2.

"This room is tidy. This shows a lot about this person's personality."

Dart, a strapping spiky-haired teenage male of main character clich…s, was standing in a small, dainty room when this box of text vomited out of his mouth. I knew it was my fault for pressing X at every dresser in a room - it is the job of an RPG-completionist - but I was already drenched in the verbal diarrhea spewing from this self-proclaimed legend. Clumps of invisible slime, composed of watered-down music, constipated battle systems, and stomach-churning dialogue, had already slithered down my skin and onto the curved, porcelain, oversized toilet bowl. I wanted to get out, but either more diarrhea came slopping down on my head or I was forced to backtrack through the slush. No matter how much I hoped that my journey would end, The Legend of Dragoon kept crapping. So I decided to sit down and wait until it was done.

As I anticipated the next crap attack, I wondered how I got into this mess. Was it the level design? As I sat, I remembered how each scene and backdrop gave attention to lighting, perspective, and mis…-en-scene. Everything from nature's tender snowfields and dry pine forests to man's crystal citadels and cavernous prisons sheltered winding paths and earthen structures. Organic textures, spread across the scene, made even the tiniest branch a vision to behold. Even dim volcanic tunnels shared the same understanding of space as the leveled and layered teleportation pads in The Magic City of Mayfil. But then again, saying that I was hooked by the level design would be an oversight. I don't find anything gorgeous about crap aligning itself in harmony with feng shui.

Was it the music? Absolutely not. Not a single track was noteworthy in melody, rhythm, or construction. The music was either serviceable and strictly environmental or blatantly disruptive. Every time I wanted to change my character's status, the theme for the item screen would cut the music off without any aural transition. Moreover, every track was comprised of three layers at best. As soon as one boring looping melody would die off, another one began. It was a tortuous cycle I should have foreseen.

Design philosophies and musical foresight notwithstanding, it dawned on me that I had been entranced by the pristine lake that this disgusting swamp once was. I was fooled by the opening cinematic, sparkling with flowing animations and colors deep enough to dive into. I should have paid heed to how strained the voice-overs were. I should have seen the monster of horrible dialogue. But before I knew that my journey would be a whirlpool of backtracking, I was caught by the Mighty Morphin' Power Dragoons.

Dart and his mishmash of followers, through a bizarre series of events the game tries to call "destiny", can transform into winged humans with magical powers and dragon armor, which are both imbued with a taste-the-rainbow complex. I took a glance at Dart's red armor, Meru's blue ribbon, and Rose's violet chest plate, and I knew what colored Dragoons they were. As the monster of horrible dialogue came from behind, infecting the surrounding water with its foul excretions, the cherry-flavored Dragoon saved me. Dart lifted me into the air as I watched the Dragoons dodge the monster's attacks with their swift wings and destroy its limbs with enchanted weaponry and elemental magic. But after Dart cast his fire spell, his wings suddenly disappeared. I should have known their transformations only lasted several turns.

Plummeting back to shallow waters, I resigned to my fate, but Dart came from under me and broke my fall. Once I stopped tumbling through the rancid water, I scrambled over to him and was surprised. He was already standing. He said that he simply chose to Guard for a few turns, giving him one-tenth of his health back every time. I said, "Doesn't that make life too easy? I mean, doesn't that make you practically immortal?" He replied, "No. I cannot Guard outside of battle." With a puzzled look on my face, he dashed back to his friends, whom had also Guarded back to full health. After fifteen minutes, I sat bored - watching them Attack and Guard over and over again - now knowing that practically every battle was trivial.

To be sure, I was engaged for the first few minutes, amazed at all the attack combinations. If the Dragoons pressed X - or O for counterattack threats - at exactly the right time, they could extend their attack and inflict more damage. Having watched them perform their techniques on the monster about five times, I asked Dart whether I could see other Additions. He replied, "No. I can only switch Additions outside of battle."

Where have I heard that one before?

"Well, then can I see your best Addition after the battle?" He replied, "No. I do not know it yet. I must use each of my Additions eighty times before I know it." Shrugging my shoulders, I was left with disappointment.

To keep the long story short, here were a few more replies within the next three hours:

"No. I cannot use magic outside of battle."
"No. I cannot carry more than 32 items."
"No. I can carry 255 pieces of heavy equipment but cannot carry more than 32 items."
"No. I cannot take you back through the water because I have forgotten the way, even though I have been through it many times before. I must revisit and backtrack at the same time."
"No. I cannot go around or fly over the water. I can only follow dotted paths on the world map."
"No. I cannot let you leave before you hear our epic story."

It was then that I realized that the Dragoons had been a part of the monster of horrible dialogue all along. The monster had possessed them to make me stay and listen. So I quickly remarked, "I wish I could hear it but… No. I cannot handle any more of this." But it was too late. The Dragoons turned into the monster and caught me by the ears.

For four discs, I was in a screenwriter's nightmare. Whatever the potential for the storyline, however interesting the concept, was squandered by the complete ignorance of the fundamental rule that governs fiction writing: "Show, Don't Tell". Trapped in a story that stood only on plot twists, I was sent to a one way trip to a land of clich…s: war-torn countries, a mysterious hooded man, and political espionage, all wrapped in a scant love story. Hardly a single line of dialogue, despite the occasional interesting twist, had depth. From the opening scene, verbal diarrhea was flung in my face, with lines such as "I gotta do something or I'll be killed!!", "What a monster!", and "It's coming!" when it's obvious that a dragon is attacking him. In fact, a simple "Crap!" would do.

A few moments later, Dart's hometown village of Seles came under attack (another clich…) and Shana, his childhood friend and girl of mysterious abilities (another clich…), is taken to Hellena Prison. I am told three times that Dart should have come back earlier, and talking to the survivors, one of them blurts, "…what are you going to do about my feelings for Shana." When I was not bombarded by overplayed conversation, I was agitated by underplayed character progressions. Personal conflicts are quickly presented and then quickly disposed. Haschel's quest to find his daughter, Miranda's issues with her parents, and Kongol's quest for friends are all resolved in one fell swoop at the end of disc four.

So with as much subtlety as the plot, I concluded that **** happens. Why did the game not warn me that I couldn't leave the final area? What's the point of having both an Inn and a Medical Center when they heal me just the same? Why does Lavitz say "Blossom Storm" when the skill is "Flower Storm"? Out of curiosity, I tried visiting the early towns of my adventure, and I actually had to remove disc four and reinsert disc one. I then went back to Seles, back to the first screen that I could ever control Dart, and the music reloaded. As if Dart's hometown was burning again, the same nerve-wracking track I heard at the beginning of the game vomited into my ears. Just when I thought The Legend of Dragoon was done, another pile of crap comes full circle.

I guess this shows a lot about this game's personality.

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]]> http://www.gamespot.com/the-legend-of-dragoon/user-reviews/332033/platform/ps/ Thu, 22 Jun 2006 07:36:33 -0700 Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed Final Fantasy IX for the PlayStation... http://www.gamespot.com/final-fantasy-ix/user-reviews/328726/platform/ps/ ...and gave it a 8.1.

Right at Birth

If we consider the life of Final Fantasy from its origins, when characters moved like pixilated beasts, to Final Fantasy VIII, when characters moved like full-bodied humans, then Final Fantasy IX resembles Zidane Tribal: half-man, half-beast. Zidane, a short yet nimble human with the tail of a monkey, is an odd choice for a main character but quite fittingly embodies the message that "old doesn't mean broken". Gameplay elements, new and old, combine together to compose an easy, breezy romp through the pages of Final Fantasy. Take one look at the cover - big heads, small bodies, and a black mage, all in happy-go-lucky colors - and you will remember the days before the growth stunt into the third dimension. Nostalgia speaks loudly in Final Fantasy IX, if not too loudly. At times, this four-disc adventure feels like a disjointed kindergarten song: "...chocobos here, moggles over there, here a card game, there a summon, everywhere a plot thread..." The game sings along our memories without knowing what it wants to say. Through all of its play, however, Final Fantasy IX has the innocence of a child - the power to undo old age. It does not run through the historical halls of Final Fantasy because it's stupid and immature. It does it because it's fun.

Child's Play

The world of Gaia is a bucket of watercolor that spreads its fine paint into imagination. It will open a landscape filled with flying ships, grand castles, and Renaissance flair. Smooth, round palettes brush the scene from the first moment you aboard the M.S. Prima Vista and step into the streets of Alexandria. Every floorboard, every flower, every lamplight and shade, shows life in its most vibrant color. So refined is the detail that you will play, entranced in the fairy tale, merrily and undisturbed; that is, until you stop, step back, and admire the shadows and lines in every crevice and corner. Even as you sprint across verdant fields, thrust your sword into gnarled monsters, and summon eidolons of awe and majesty, the still backdrops will move you. The warmth of the world sways like a field of un-plucked cotton, seamless and gently magical.

Whether you are skipping along the forest trail, splashing the puddles of Burmecia, sailing through the clouds with a mechanical ship, or swishing your legs upon a fluffy chocobo, you will hear melodies that will remind you of childhood. Nobuo Uematsu orchestrates cheer, in its bubbly tones, with such incredible range that melancholy songs gain poignancy simply by contrast. Princess Garnet's lullaby is an empathetic solo reflecting her lonesome yet kind heart, and the theme for Burmecia - The Land of Eternal Rain - cascades through minor progressions, medio-fortissimo, and arpeggios without rest. The spectrum of compositions, instruments, and rhythms will have you appreciate music in its many colors. Unfortunately, the musical paint is spread thin among ninety-one tracks. Though the light and charming themes are comforting, you will detect an air of immaturity. Don't expect to hear anything dramatically rich like One-Winged Angel from FFVII or Liberi Fatali, the opening theme for Final Fantasy VIII. Battle music, in particular, lacks dynamic urgency, neither rising nor falling enough to make you care about fighting. To a kid, though, such analytical nuance doesn't matter. The music will run to you, smile, and show you a finger-painting splatted with a mishmash of bright tone colors, and you just won't have the heart to say anything but that it's wonderful.

Teenage Traps

As you hop-scotch through your adventure, you soon learn an inevitable fact: life isn't all just fun and games. The world has rules, and as you try to fit those rules into your once fun-filled life, you will scoff at how unfair everything is. Balancing old mechanics with new ones is problematic, especially for a game that wants to both please its fans and reach a new audience. Though Final Fantasy IX is amusing and approachable - FFIII and FFVII easter eggs will surprise fans often, and mechanics are simple and traditional - characters have rigid roles, either as physical attackers or magic users. This over-simplicity constricts your decisions in combat and limits the flexibility that a materia system from FFVII or a transferable magic system from FFVIII would allow. Furthermore, it stereotypes the abilities of your characters to their personality. Vivi is a black mage that casts elemental spells and Steiner is a knight with sword abilities, and that's all they'll ever be. This caste system would be fine in the early days of Final Fantasy, but the lack of customability is too much of an unnecessary step backward.

New equipment-based skills try to make up for that customability, but they don't give you the same sense of freedom that the sound and graphics do. Granted, learning and setting skills is at least simple. Weapons, gear, and accessories all give specific skills to specific characters - some ribbons truly are magical - and by killing enemies, characters can learn those skills permanently. Using shiny aquamarine stones for reusable skill points, you can turn skills on and off, but more than a few flaws crack this simple system. For one, you can only learn what your skills actually do by switching out of the equipment screen and forcing your way to, from, and through the exhaustive skill list. Wasting your time even further, skills are the only way you can prevent negative statuses like poison and confusion, but there are status effects - and severe ones at that - which skills don't account for. Having no defense against Berserk, Mini, Death Sentence, Virus, Trouble, Zombie, and Instant Death is not just unfair, it's neglect. Until the end of the third disc, enemies don't inflict statuses often, but later bosses - particularly the last one - abuse your lack of immunity viciously. Sure, you can use items, but they are only temporary, case-by-case cures. In fact, since death removes nearly all status effects, you will resort to killing off your characters and reviving them later. Such a strategy has you realize that no matter how powerful your characters are, they will die.

Older and Older

As you slowly reach the end, the game will begin to lose its creativity - its inner child. Final Fantasy tradition bars FFIX's battle system, magic system, and practically every other system under a common guise: Why change? You certainly cannot fault the game for immersing you in a fantasy that works and still works here. The blend of ATB battles, "-ara" and "-aga" suffix upgrades for elemental spells, cinematic summons, feathered chocobos, waddling moggles, and an outrageous cast of characters on an outrageous adventure is a signature formula that has worked wonders for years.

The magic, nonetheless, is starting to experience a mid-life crisis. Limit Breaks are now erratically called Trance, except that it occurs automatically at random moments like an uncontrollable bladder. Standing in for save points are moggles - little animals that, of all things, now want you to deliver mail for them. If you ever wanted to know how a letter sorter feels, try remembering where Moguo, Mogryo, Mogki, and Mogmi are. If that bores you, why not try a card game, ala Triple Triad from FFVIII, called Tetra Master, a game that requires skill, fortitude, a need to ask random strangers to play with you, and a willingness to receive almost nothing but a Collector's Rank for your efforts. Or how about going on a distant journey on a chocobo, digging for chocographs in mysterious lands, and realizing that this is just an elaborate rip-off from FFVII that tries to justify itself with worldly treasures and color-changing birds? What these side quests have to do with the game other than filler is beyond explanation.

Reminiscence

Looking back, the story of Final Fantasy IX is one that lives from moment to moment but doesn't hold its attention on any particular point. From the beginning, we see a conflict between officers and outlaws as Steiner and his Knights of Pluto try to save Princess Garnet from Zidane and the shipmates of the M.S. Prima Vista. Characters, revolving around the romantic story between Garnet and Zidane, also have their own conflicts: Freya wants to regain her honor as a Dragon Knight, Eiko doesn't want to be alone, and Vivi struggles with his self-identity. Dialogue reveals these conflicts with strong content and smooth transitions, using occasional one-liners that have a depth you wouldn't expect from such a cheery game: "The only thing about the future is uncertainty." Unfortunately, the plot employs more than a few fixed battles that force you to lose, taking the game out of your control. Moreover, although most character arcs reach resolution, they are usually forgotten as quickly as they came. By the end of the game, you will ask whether anyone, except for Zidane, has relevance to the plot. What is truth? Why am I alone? What am I here? Instead of focusing on the love story or any of the character's motives, the story concludes with pseudo-intellectual existentialism. Philosophical endings that suffocate in the overused device of an evil entity bent on total destruction are a trend in Final Fantasy that needs to stop. Powerful stories are built from layered character progressions and plot threads, not on a road full of one-stops, leading nowhere.

Memoriam

Someday, you will begin to regret life and the adventures you had. On a journey that lasted you a lifetime - within a mere hundred hours or more - there were hardships, mishaps, and conflicts. Then you remember what you had kept secret, what you had kept safe. Final Fantasy IX is like a family treasure, a charm that is passed down from parent to child, one generation to the next. The crystal embedded in its logo symbolizes two worlds of different meanings merging together: romance with philosophy, innocence with nostalgia, the old with the new, and man with beast. It will remind you of a time when all these troubles meant no more than a passing memory. All the things that the game breaks by running through the halls can be forgiven and forgotten. Returning you to your childhood is the power of the charm, whether it is cracked, chipped, or a round piece of plastic in a jewel case.

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"Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed Final Fantasy IX for the PlayStation..." was posted by Draqq_Zyxorian on Thu, 22 Jun 2006 07:36:33 -0700
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/final-fantasy-ix/user-reviews/328726/platform/ps/ Fri, 19 May 2006 06:41:30 -0700 Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed Bombastic for the PlayStation 2... http://www.gamespot.com/bombastic/user-reviews/313708/platform/ps2/ ...and gave it a 4.3.

At best, Bombastic is the sequel to the action-puzzler Devil Dice for the Playstation. At worst, who cares? Sure, there will be that dustcloud of time when you will be sucked into that steady vacuum of clearing assortments of geometrical objects - that unforgiving whirlwind of a once-steady pace blurring faster and faster and faster… until that ill-fated mistake. Game Over. You suck. But unlike those free afternoons willingly lost to the burning masses of Meteos, the resonating tetragons of Lumines, and, yes, even the brooding mines of Minesweeper, there is nothing in Bombastic to reel you back in. Like a hawker at a flea market, it will try luring you with a generic Story Mode, off-brand versions of Devil Dice, an annoyingly cute baby named Aqui, and more exploding dice than Pamela Anderson's "pair of ones". But you stop looking. You quit.

That is, if you can already withstand the learning curve. Puzzlers, by presumption of the genre, know that if they don't relieve the difficulty of learning the rules through extra lives, a slower speed, or something that flickers "E-A-S-Y", many players will give up. But Bombastic doesn't understand how to make a good first impression. Press Start at the title screen and BOOOMB!!! A complex tutorial. And worse, an over-enthusiastic English dubbing:

You play on a diagonally-planed grid with DICE!!! Move Aqui around on a die and match the faces of the dice by rolling two 2's together, three 3's together, AND SO ON!!! and they will IGNITE!!! After they EXPLODE!!!, they will ignite other dice with face equal to or one less than the number on the exploded die within a crossfire spread equal to that number causing a CHAIN REACTION!!! But don't get caught in the EXPLOSION!!! or let the dice that come out of lightning BOLTS!!! fill the plane, or you will DIE!!! And once you learn these RULES!!!, you should learn the B-B-B-B-B-B-BASIC TECHNIQUES!!!

So after being force-fed how opposite sides of a die sum up to SEVEN!!!, watching enough practice dice land on the face you WANT!!!, (finally) unplugging your ears, and then scouring through all the modes, you will realize that instead of a bang, you got a dud. Trial Mode is your basic heap of modes rolled into one: "reach the highest level" mode (Standard), "you only have three minutes" mode (Limited), and "beat your opponent" mode (Attack). Fortunately, the multiplayer modes save the game from boredom. Barely. On the one hand, the relentless see-sawing with your opponent is surprisingly engaging, especially in Wars Mode, which has you drain your opponent's health frantically by igniting dice. Attack Mode takes a different spin, forcing you to tag a certain number die by igniting, say, 4's and protecting your tags from your opponents, as you ask: Do I go for the quick but easily stolen 2's and 3's? Or should I invest my time on the arduous 5's and 6's? On the other hand, finding worthy opponents and worthy friends for co-op is more of a challenge due to the lack of online functionality and the steep learning curve. Moreover, though you can battle against AI-bots, any modicum of difference in skill level gets blown out of proportion. If you suck compared to the computer, you will lose. And continue to lose. Though you have the ability to adjust the speed of the AI-bots as a handicap, your fate is practically sealed before you set the challenge and light the fuse.

Bombastic tries to blast through its flaws by following an unfortunate trend in gaming. Apparently, the solution to lacking innovation and lagging sales is a Quest Mode. Need we recount the failures of recent classic adaptations in justifying a half-baked narrative? Frogger, Q*Bert, Pac-Man, Dr. Mario… sigh… So, with no need to reinvent Devil Dice, which isn't even a classic, by ways of a storyline, we have… five Aqui brothers (the pink one must be metrosexual) sneak out of bed on a Candyland journey to find their grandfather who lives in the clouds. Though they could have asked Mama and Papa to help them, they merrily roll their dice on a death-defying adventure of drawn-out puzzles across dangerous lands like The Land of Sweets lurking with perilous enemies like Miss Cling.

Perhaps the only saving grace for this saccharine atrocity is that the graphics finally stop fixating on dice and Aquis, and take the time to sugarcoat the level design with cel-shaded lollipops, primary colors, and all things kindergarten-cute. But after seeing the Aquis frolicking in harmonic meter with the sickly sweet J-Pop, you will begin to wish that you had never listened to your curiosity. The first world is a tutorial. Wait. Another one?! Yep, only this time you get English subtitles and Mr. Macho, a gym teacher that rips off Captain America (stars and all), who screams motivational Japanese-turned-English puns. Like an unfortunate translation of Leviticus, adding up the opposite sides of a die to seven apparently sends you to the heavens. Soon after, you are dragged through four worlds with four sections, ala Super Mario Bros. You trudge through puzzle after puzzle, blasting balloon-looking enemy after balloon-looking enemy, and even with five lives and infinite restarts, there will come a point when you never want to see another exploding die ever again. You quit.

Bombastic is a paragon for what not to do in puzzle games and real life. Besides the scant few unlockables modes that are just previous versions of Devil Dice, there is no reward system. Your only incentive is the rusting "achieve the highest score" mechanic, so after pressing Start at the title screen, you unwittingly strike a match against the pointless learning curve. A bombardment of cubic crap ignites. Tutorial. Useless multiplayer modes. "Quest Mode". J-Pop. Tutorial. "Sevens to the heavens." Pamela Anderson's pair of ones. And then Aqui EXPLODES OFF THE SCREEN!!! But you smirk. You bask in the glorious immolation of Aquis. You learn that burning babies end the suffering. And that's just wrong.

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"Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed Bombastic for the PlayStation 2..." was posted by Draqq_Zyxorian on Fri, 19 May 2006 06:41:30 -0700
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/bombastic/user-reviews/313708/platform/ps2/ Sun, 09 Apr 2006 20:35:07 -0700 Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed Facade for the PC... http://www.gamespot.com/facade/user-reviews/295409/platform/pc/ ...and gave it a 6.3.

Questioning whether Fa…ade is a game would be to overlook its importance in game design. In fact, to rant on this independent-party, low-budget, one-gigabyte download would be a failure to admit its inherent production value. Fa…ade does not intend to be a masterpiece. It intends to be an experiment in artificial intelligence and natural language processing, allowing you to type a short sentence of dialogue at any time during a conversation. And what better place to interrupt a conversation than between two friends whose marriage is falling apart. Hear Trip and Grace argue over wine glasses before you even walk through the door and you know you're about to get caught in the middle. Unfortunately, you soon realize you have little to no control over the outcome of this storyline, regardless of how interactive it is. And you are forced to question the game behind this one-trick pony. Nonetheless, that trick holds a special quality that pulls you in a direction you cannot describe and forces you to rethink the purpose behind interactivity.

If you define games to need a winning condition or set goal, then Fa…ade will disappoint. Like an experiment out of The Sims, Facade is more of an experience. There is no clear purpose other than solving the mystery of "what can I do here?" You will fiddle with the arrow keys, scrounge for words to type on the keyboard, and move about the apartment in search of something - anything - that you can interact with. Exploring for functionality, if you will. Sure, the game challenges you to solve your friends' marital issues, but nothing is ordained. You create your own goals and reach to fulfill them.

Unfortunately, Fa…ade takes this virtue to the extreme: you are never certain whether your actions will reflect your intention. You may want to save their marriage but that probably won't happen. This is certainly surprising, because the game is a strong example of agency, our ability to alter the game world around us or our situation in it. Indeed, the game affords you much flexibility in what you can say. Type anything onto the screen, press Enter, and chances are that the game will recognize it. In effect, you will feel like you can make a difference at every possible turn.

Until you notice that you have no control.

Fa…ade resembles an elaborate Goosebumps choose-your-own-adventure book, except that you don't know what options you have - artificial intelligence imposing as gameplay that just happens to have a setting and characters that speak. Have any programming experience and you can hear the if-then statements clicking and the temporary variables swapping. The game suggests that you replay the scenario - requiring you to quit and reload Fa…ade all over again - so you can experience each diverging path, but it only makes the clicking and swapping louder. Surely, we have to expect this. If computer code could translate human dialogue with one gigabyte of memory, Fa…ade wouldn't exist. Still, though the game recognizes most words, it frequently fails to respond naturally. It's one thing if you are ignored (which happens often); it's quite another to write, "You're not ugly", only for Grace to retort, "You know, insulting me isn't going to help things."

Furthermore, you will cover your eyes and your ears in disgust. The cel-shaded graphics clip more than a 3D program done in Flash. Walls have no thickness, and looking beyond the terrace window, buildings have yellow, glowing squares that try to pass for windows. Moreover, the music and sound effects are so uninteresting that silence would create more of a cadence. Voiceovers are much too over-dramatic, even for simple sentences, shifting from anger to joy and back to anger without any emotional transitions at all.

Such lack of polish insufferably dampens what Fa…ade offers aesthetically, but it doesn't prevent you from experiencing one of the finer subtleties of interactivity: empathy. Usually, we find it difficult to empathize with in-game characters because they only have the ability to regurgitate pre-recorded speech and perform predictable actions. Fa…ade should be commended for not only being able to stimulating your thoughts, but also your behavior and emotions. Trip and Grace are believable enough that you want to repair their relationship, and you will continue to replay the game until you have done so.

Even if you have a strict definition of a …game… or have a low tolerance for glitches, Fa…ade is worth your while. Heck, it…s free. If you hate it, just delete it. All you will suffer is thirty minutes downloading from interactivestory.org and about an hour and a half until you never think of it again. Whatever your opinion, Fa…ade will afford you a glance into the future of gaming … a time, perhaps, when robots and user interfaces can converse with humans beyond just …yes…, …no…, and …I do not understand your request.… Yes, the game…s interactive storytelling is one-note and isn…t reasonably portable to other games today, but it makes the point that there is a world beyond the narrative, a world that only games can tell. Behind Fa…ade is a deep, provocative exploration into the interactive craft and an answer to the art hidden beneath the cold, programmed machinery that is the video game.

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"Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed Facade for the PC..." was posted by Draqq_Zyxorian on Sun, 09 Apr 2006 20:35:07 -0700
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/facade/user-reviews/295409/platform/pc/ Mon, 09 Jan 2006 23:49:08 -0800 Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed Guitar Hero for the PlayStation 2... http://www.gamespot.com/guitar-hero/user-reviews/238104/platform/ps2/ ...and gave it a 9.3!

Simulations are seen as fake. While most genres are judged on creativity as works of "fiction", many sports and rhythm-based games are "non-fiction" and are judged on how close they come to the real thing. Accordingly, Dance Dance Revolution and DrumMania use interactive peripherals (i.e. a dancing platform or a drum set). But watch people play DDR by stomping their feet on directional arrows and it looks like they're doing step aerobics. Or, watch DrumMania experts feverishly bash thin rubber pads and you will wonder why they don't just get a real drum set or play the one they already own. In fact, the same could be said about Guitar Hero - even a loading screen in the game encourages, "At some point, you should seriously consider getting a guitar." But Guitar Hero does something that those games do not. It fully understands its origins and honors the electric guitar with vigor and absolute integrity.

Everyone wants to be a rock star. The screaming fans. The seven-digit contracts. Your rock-hard abs. Fame and fortune is always just a dream away. But how can a game capture something as intangible as a "rock star"? How can a mere slab of zeros and ones bring out the Jimi Hendrix in all of us?

Well, Guitar Hero won't make you feel completely like Jimi Hendrix (if you do, please stay away), but it comes pretty darn close. The dream of being a rock star is extremely close to the Harmonix staff - many of the programmers, project managers, and producers have been in a band before and know how it feels to be driven on rock adrenaline.

From the tutorial voiceovers, the unlockables, the venues, down to even the loading screens, nearly every opportunity has been taken to infuse Guitar Hero with rock energy. Song titles on the selection screen are written like lyrics on a scrap of loose-leaf. Saving screens post an old, suit-and-tie congressman in the background covering his ears, and loading screens feed flavorful comments - "If a band member insists on wearing a white belt, kick them out immediately." How true. How true. The game also allows you to choose from one of six default characters with names like Pandora or Axel Steel, but Harmonix knows that just because you happen to select a rock star won't make you feel like one.

You need a guitar. But you will be skeptical. The guitar peripheral looks like one of those xylophones you played in kindergarten but even less persuasive. It's plastic. It has a flimsy strap. It comes packaged with stickers. There are no strings. And the fret buttons on the guitar's neck are colored red, orange, yellow, green, and blue - one Care Bear short of a rainbow. How cute.

But after a few hours, you will forget just how ridiculous you look. Don't worry if you have never touched or seen a musical instrument in your life. If you played Harmonix's Amplitude or Freq, the gameplay is immediately familiar - small capsules representing the five fret buttons zoom toward you. Once they reach the bottom of the screen, you simply hold down the right fret button and strum the guitar to blast the capsules to smithereens. Blasting them at the right time makes the audience go wild and your rock meter climbs. And at the very end, an imaginary critic gives you a rating from one to five stars. If you still don't understand it all, going through the hands-on tutorial is worth its weight in gold - it's easy to grasp and the voiceover is actually interested in what's its saying.

In short, Guitar Hero cares. The music selection is essentially an ode to rock. While it's not going to win any awards on genre variety, the game has songs that you actually want to play. In fact, you will probably recognize a few melodies, despite not knowing their names. Most of the songs are not performed by the original artists, but the new vocals don't take anything away from "Take Me On" by Franz Ferdinand, "Crossroads" by Cream, or "No One Knows" by Queens of the Stone Age. If you're not familiar with "rock culture", think of the game as an introduction, a sampler to different rock palettes. Guitar Hero attentively diversifies classics with "Fat Lip" and "I Wanna Be Sedated", and their appreciation will probably rub off on you.

As you progress from difficulty to difficulty, you will experience a natural progression that is only marred by the lack of a practice mode. Since you have to use your thumb to grip the neck, your four remaining fingers will have to work to span the five fret buttons. And that causes a lot of awkward fingering (I mean, phrases… oh, never mind), especially with your pinky, which probably doesn't get much action (…). The learning curve, however, is quite generous, and you can use your star power to get out of tight places. Blasting a sequence of star-shaped capsules builds your star meter so that you can amplify your guitar riffs and restore your rock meter. In a stroke of genius, activating star power has you tilt the guitar upright, away from your body. Rock my world, baby!

Unfortunately, the game doesn't allow you to practice specific sections of a song. While you probably won't experience any difficulties early on, there are a few riffs that will probably rip your hands off. However, the only way to practice a song is to play the damn thing all over again. When Ozzy Osbourne has problems hitting a riff (amongst other things), he doesn't go back to the beginning. And while this may be a small gripe, it's enough to get on your nerves.

A few other blemishes also prevent you from feeling like a guitar player. For one, the rock meter goes from red to yellow to green - whenever you go up to another color, the crowd goes wild, and whenever you fall, you get a torrent of boos. So if you are hovering between two colors, you will get a schizophrenic audience. Boooo! Yay! Booo! Yay! And if you look closely at the crowd, you will notice that it's comprised of only four different characters. Imagine jamming on your guitar and then seeing sixteen identical people head-banging in perfect unison.

Thankfully, Guitar Hero more than makes up for its flaws by being one of the best party games around. Don't get confused. The multiplayer experience is actually bland - it's just one overly simplistic versus mode - and you will have to dish out another forty bucks for the second guitar. Despite this, Guitar Hero has the immediate presence and casual approachability suitable for a social gathering. Friends will want to watch you play or try it out for themselves. It would have been nice if there was a Soundtrack mode so you can listen to the songs without having to play the game, but regardless, Guitar Hero creates the perfect party atmosphere.

And while you're having so much fun, you will forget one thing: Guitar Hero respects the guitar. The soundtrack embodies rock history so well that you won't have to buy one of those TimeLife compilations. Each seemingly insignificant artistic touch will make you feel the effort missing from other simulations. And like any musical instrument, Guitar Hero has an air of seduction. Find yourself bored and you will magically wander over to the guitar, glance at it, and accept with little hesitation. Guitar Hero is the guitar. And that's real.

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"Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed Guitar Hero for the PlayStation 2..." was posted by Draqq_Zyxorian on Mon, 09 Jan 2006 23:49:08 -0800
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/guitar-hero/user-reviews/238104/platform/ps2/ Mon, 05 Dec 2005 19:45:45 -0800 Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed Indigo Prophecy for the PlayStation 2... http://www.gamespot.com/indigo-prophecy/user-reviews/212679/platform/ps2/ ...and gave it a 8.4.

As snow falls innocently outside the bathroom window, a man sits quietly, his forearms freshly cut with the symbol of two snakes. Rivers of blood run from his fingertips. A silent crow watches from behind the frozen glass. He steps from the stall, his eyes in a trance, his body possessed, his hand firmly grasping a knife. He creeps beneath the sound of running water. The victim stares at the stained mirror. And turns.

Once. No sound comes out. The knife sings without mercy. Twice. The body writhes on the floor. The knife steals without repent. Thrice. But his life has already left. And with your head staring at the sky, your arms spread like wings of death. But then you awaken. Consciousness returns. And as the crow flies away, you begin to understand. You are the killer. You are Lucas Kane.

Indigo Prophecy goes beyond the cinematic experience. It reaches a pinnacle in storytelling that can only be told through the interactive medium. It won't impress you with its unresponsive controls, lackluster graphics, and repetitive gameplay, but you will be so engaged in the storyline that you just won't care. Though somewhat clich…, the storyline immerses you so well that it makes even the game's most glaring flaws forgivable. Examining the game by standard criteria won't lead to any answers to why you will be so hooked. You will simply feel an indescribable force pushing you forward, a relentless gravity moving you down an emotional roller coaster. And even far after the ride ends, you will remember the rush.

Your mind falters. Panic brushes down your face. You have to hide the body. One misstep and you might get caught. One more depressing thought and you might commit suicide.

Mental health plays as the character's psychological life bar. Watch someone die, lose mental health. Save an innocent life, gain some back. However, doing even simple and mundane things like drinking water or checking yourself in the mirror will affect your mental health. While you won't have to worry much about ever falling to zero, this see-saw life bar will make you connect with the characters while keeping you on edge. Virtually everything you do will have an impact and knowing that there are direct consequences for your actions is a disillusioning and most unsettling experience.

More than any game before it, Indigo Prophecy allows you to determine your fate. Dialogue sequences will have you ask and answer from a number of possibilities. But choose wisely. Lying might actually be better than telling the truth. Two NYPD police officers, Carla Valenti and Tyler Miles, are hot on your trail and leaving behind the tiniest bloodstain might lead to your end. However, in a welcome twist, you play both sides of the story, adding the much needed depth missing from other adventure games. Like the mental health bar, it is a simple yet effective technique in creating emotional conflict and keeping you interested in the plot.

While emotionally engaging, the script is not particularly original and loses steam near the end. The game opens with such a bloody murder that the rushed, open-ended conclusion lacks polish. In particular, there is a romance that occurs late in the plot that is not only completely predictable, but told so unconvincingly that you feel cheated from what could have been an amazing storyline. There is also a belated "save the world" spiel that does not sell particularly well, since the majority of the game is told as a mystery-thriller. And all the while, Tyler Miles just feels limped into the story without much thought. Though the intermission sequences with Tyler do break up the monotony and bring some variety to the gameplay, his character is little more than the black stereotype of a tall guy acting like a playa' and that just happens to play basketball. Moreover, his numerous efforts to appease his girlfriend Sam have little relevance to the storyline, and honestly, he is just a heavy-handed disruption that is not worth the weight.

The controls and the camera also get in the way with lumbering animations and disorienting angles. The facial animations really bring out emotions well, but the characters move in a stiff and clunky manner, making it difficult to turn. There aren't many places in the game that require you to turn on a dime, but the sudden changes in camera angles happen so frequently that just walking around becomes an aggravating affair. One minute, you'll be walking through the middle of the room from the left, and the next, you will be coming from the top, the right, or diagonally from a narrow hallway. The game does offer some camera control, but the camera moves so slowly that you will give up all together and just leave the camera to its own devices. It is true that the different shots are intended to highlight the scene, and the effort absolutely shows in each cinematic cut-scene. However, outside of these cinematic sequences, the camera distracts and frustrates the player more than anything else.

The visions begin to blind you. You can not stay here. You see them coming. The bullets, the cops, the crows, and even the angels are after you. And whether you have to run, bend twist, or climb, you will fight for your life. You will prove your innocence no matter what it takes.

The game offers new gameplay mechanics for high-action sequences that might seem silly but are surprisingly effective. The first mechanic places two circular Simon-Says panels in the middle of the screen and has you follow a sequence of glowing colors with the analog sticks. If you fail a sequence, you lose a life. The second and more effective mechanic has you press the L1 and R1 shoulder buttons alternately as fast as you can. This type of action sequence is associated with strength-type activities like opening a tight window; accordingly, pressing the two buttons will wear your hands to the point that you understand what the character is going through. Many might find these two features to be bizarre and annoying, but they immerse you into the gameplay.

On the other hand, the unlockables and collectibles are just time-consuming ploys. Throughout the game, you can find crucifixes and tarot cards scattered in random nooks and crannies - just as exciting as going on a scavenger hunt for bling-bling crosses and spinning picture cards. Crucifixes net you extra lives during action sequences, but even if you die, you can simply restart the scene with three brand new lives. Just as pointless are tarot cards that give you bonus points which you can use to unlock movies and music, but simply completing the game gives more than enough bonus points to unlock everything. And for as difficult as it is to find this stuff, they both should have just been removed from the game entirely.

Both the graphics and the sound are also not particularly exciting, but they set the depressing environment in a subtle and most delicate manner. While the amount of graphical detail is only adequately passable, the washed-out tones, the cold whites and blue, and the earthy browns bring out the melancholy mood of Indigo Prophecy. The soundtrack only has fourteen songs, but they are worth each and every note. Whether it's rock by Theory of a Dead Man, soul, funk, or jazz by Nina Simone, the licensed soundtrack captures the essence of each genre and each scene without sounding generic or intellectual. The violin interludes by Angelo Badalementi express sorrow beautifully with the same power and conviction as a John Williams score. After unlocking the soundtrack, don't be surprised to find yourself listening to the same song over and over again.

Indigo Prophecy is like a dot drawing. The dots themselves are not compelling or impressive, but seen as a whole picture, they merge together to become a brilliant work of art. Furthermore, it is a declaration of video gaming as an artform. Indigo Prophecy effectively explores agency, the ability of players to change the world around them, by providing the player sufficient control over the storyline. Without the engaging gameplay mechanics, the game would be a second-rate, "The Matrix" rip-off. Indeed, if Indigo Prophecy was a movie, it would be bashed for being unoriginal and a complete waste of time. Instead, as a game, you will be drawn into the story and engrossed in the environment and the sound effects. The emotive scriptwriting is powerful yet it operates so much on the edge of your consciousness that you will keep on playing the game without knowing the full reason why.

The thought continues to consume you. Your search for the truth burns in your eyes. You run and hide for your quest to understand. You return home and sleep, but you soon find yourself staring beyond the window. Your life does not seem to matter. Fate stands still.

Silence.

Indigo Prophecy goes underappreciated.

Just like the falling snow.

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"Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed Indigo Prophecy for the PlayStation 2..." was posted by Draqq_Zyxorian on Mon, 05 Dec 2005 19:45:45 -0800
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/indigo-prophecy/user-reviews/212679/platform/ps2/ Tue, 08 Nov 2005 19:22:50 -0800 Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed We Love Katamari for the PlayStation 2... http://www.gamespot.com/we-love-katamari/user-reviews/194324/platform/ps2/ ...and gave it a 8.9.

We Love Katamari is as guilty as a pleasure gets. Never has rolling up a ball of mass destruction been so undeniably fun. Who would have thought picking up chickens, PE teachers, and ice cream sandwiches with a sticky sphere would be so addictive? Even The King of All Cosmos doesn't get it. But with fans of Katamari Damacy screaming for more, how can he not bask in his newfound stardom? Thus he commands his tiny, neon-green prince back to Earth to amass katamaris to please his adoring fans. And boy, does it ever!

- Royal Rainbow!

We Love Katamari is a pure sequel to Katamari Damacy and, in many ways, pays homage to its roots. Whereas the first installment followed the rather inconsequential storyline of an arbitrary family, this time around, we see how the King of All Cosmos in all his magnificence came to be. This historical account could have easily been irritating and monotonous, but it is told in such a quirky and picturesque manner that it is actually enjoyable and relevant. Also, in dedication to the age-old snowman, there is a refreshing level that lets you re-experience the childlike innocence of rolling up that fresh ball of snow. Memories of winter will come rushing back to you and just put a smile on your face.

- What do you think they love about Us?
- Our looks? Our tights? Our moustache?

Fans will also be happy to know that the core gameplay has been left mainly untouched. Some missions that have you rolling sumo wrestlers and fireballs do add some much needed variety, but you are still basically trying to please your "never good enough" father by making katamaris as large or as fast as possible. And while katamaris are now turned into planets as well as stars, filling the Cosmos with stardust and comically-named celestial bodies remains your lofty goal.

- Oh…Eureka! We've got it!
- It's Our chin! Yes?? That must be, yes, must be.
- Our chin is so magnificent.
- Earth is full of dedicated followers of Our chin.

Raising the replay value, Royal Presents and Royal Cousins provoke you on a scavenger hunt as before while cooperative and versus play finally give some oomph to the multiplayer experience. Finding Royal Presents will allow you to wear some bizarre accessories like a giraffe head or Mt. Fuji. Similarly, finding Royal Cousins will allow you to swap with some bizarre relatives like Dipp, a cousin with color-changing poka-dots. Still, the multiplayer experience is still not up to par. Co-op mode requires a lot of frustrating communication (and a lot fights) between you and your partner, and you would be hard-pressed trying to find another person a skilled player to compete with you in versus mode. We Love Katamari remains a solo experience, just like its predecessor. However, the game invites you into its world so thoroughly that the lackluster multiplayer modes don't even matter.

- The meaning of life…of course, you forgot.

Nothing about this sequel feels out of place. An interactive and well-paced tutorial ensures that all players are comfortably reacquainted with the controls. A few more camera angles have been added, but honestly, the camera has never really been an issue. There are times when objects block you from seeing where you are, but most of the time, you are so busy rolling around that you usually get out of tight spots quickly and painlessly. In addition, a Select Meadow has replaced the planet interface that previously made it difficult to find the missions you wanted. Each person and animal is instantly recongizable, be it Hensel & Gretel or a dog, so as you skip and dash from screen to screen, you can fulfill their requests without having to run in circles. Despite having to hear people shout out their requests for katamaris like an art teacher with diarrhea - "Origaaami!!! Origaaami!!", the meadow makes mission selection much easier.

- We were on a roll, yes We were
- Fierce and fabulous We certainly were

More importantly, the bizarre yet effervescent atmosphere is alive and well. Between the King of All Cosmos speaking in Esperanto and spanking your ass with laser beams, the graphics all give off this "na…ve spunk". Whether they're "cowbears", innocent pedestrians, or the countries of South America, rolling up everything in your path is a callous yet pleasant experience. The fluid soundtrack helps you move along without a care in the world. Although the music is not as spirited as the first installment and the J-pop is sometimes too bizarre, tracks like "Houston", "Meadowtrance", and "Angel Rain" provide a relaxing tone that wasn't there before.

- A big hit with Earth, the star so full of stuff.

Yes, We Love Katamari is more of the same, but it is also more of what we want. It's quirky. It's colorful. And most of all, it doesn't take itself too seriously.

- We have no idea what you're talking about. - The King of All Cosmos

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"Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed We Love Katamari for the PlayStation 2..." was posted by Draqq_Zyxorian on Tue, 08 Nov 2005 19:22:50 -0800
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/we-love-katamari/user-reviews/194324/platform/ps2/ Thu, 27 Oct 2005 20:53:05 -0700 Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed Dance Dance Revolution Extreme 2 for the PlayStation 2... http://www.gamespot.com/dance-dance-revolution-extreme-2/user-reviews/187987/platform/ps2/ ...and gave it a 7.0.

7:30. The crowd shuffles out beneath the dimming lights. The booths at the DigitalLife convention begin to empty as Sunday closes upon DDR NYC 2005. Long, long faces stare blankly where the competition once stood, where a mere video game enraptured in flashing lights and metal led its followers on a stepwise dance that held an audience mesmerized. Yet beneath this memory of flowing color, of wonder and rebirth, a worry creeps from behind. It whispers from the shadows cast by the towering arcade upon a lowly setup, innocent and mute. And in the corner, in the growing silence, its voice awakens onto our ears. Its name is DDR Extreme 2.

Konami has not released a new arcade mix since 2002, a now even heavier fact as we compete on the same DDR Extreme machine for the forth year. The once treasured developer now delivers only to the console, sending DDR Extreme 2 like a belated parting gift. What once was grand has been left to diminish. And as much as we resist, casting $2000 grand prizes, building lofty platforms, and gathering praise and awe, futility breathes upon the back of our necks. It becomes clear that our efforts are faint. The waning interest in The Land of the Rising Sun has sailed across the ocean to wash us away.

Rain. Rain on Friday. A light, cold shower hardens my stroll from the A-train to the convention. Take out an umbrella. Pitter, patter. Pitter, patter. A storm of monotony falls into the gutter. How fitting, how fitting. Every DDR game on the console has been like redundant litter on the pavement. Drain the same old gameplay with new songs, filter in some unnecessary game modes, and throw them all into the $49.99 recycle bin for the next installment. This, we have endured so long that we cannot forget the lack of effort nor even care to remember.

The game modes are all still there, still rotting away: Training, Lesson, Workout, Endless, Oni… like the Javitz Center coming into view, a building dyed in ash. The walls, the ceilings, are all blackened glass dripping nervously from the rain. Amidst the dreary, overcast air, the tension surges from my stomach to dampen my skin. Open the double doors and surprise rushes forward. The light of change shines brightly into my eyes.

Dance Master, Shop, AND Online?! What a feast! I dive into the first. I remember an arcade in Canada. Boom Boom Dollar, my very first song. Quarters, quarters, quarters. And now this day has come, but then I return with fire crashing into the earth.

Dance Master Mode has failed me. My journey was not a nodal labyrinth of snail-crawling missions, lines and numbers flinging across the screen, or a pathway locked in five areas lettered from A to E. Those new to DDR will not find their way through this winding mode for ten months and those already familiar will only need ten hours. That is, if you don't fall to monotony. Pass this, pass that. Turn left, turn right. Connect the dots with molasses. And if you get stuck, for you most certainly will, you will have to purchase a hint. Yes, purchase.

New songs, modes, courses, and even new costumes and arrows are now all bought in Shop Mode with points garnered through simply passing songs. Unfortunately, everything must be unlocked through the unruly spiderweb of rectangles that is Dance Master Mode. Not only do you eventually have to purchase every hint to unlock every song, but you have to go back to the main menu every time you want to view them. Hints should not be difficult to use, let alone purchased in the first place. Moreover, Online mode is slow and woefully unnecessary. Why would you want to waste your time dancing-off against someone you can't see? Just go to the arcade or invite some friends over.

Anger. Frustration. Heard there was a sudden rule change. Did not place top 5. Left with a smile on my face as fake as the joy on a photograph. Ranted off on websites. Slept staring at the wall. Some thought my style was weird, silly and unrefined. It was, of course, ballet with breakdancing in between. But some thought it was original, not bland and not flashy, as that was my intent. I appreciate quality with the absolute fullness of the word and that which is unique. I finally realized there was something more to the experience, something that only calmness could see.

The backgrounds that haunted DDR in the past are now gone. No more flash and no more epilepsy. Smooth artwork finally flows through the scenery and actually matches the music with some relevancy. And what extraordinary songs the game has: Sean Paul and Beyonce, "Butterfly" and "Boom Boom Dollar". The song selection in DDR Extreme 2 is leaps and bounds over the previous installment and surpasses nearly every mix that has come before it with flying colors.

There is effort, a word that has eluded DDR for years. It does not matter that Dance Master Mode was weary. It does not matter that I lost. I showed my spirit and Konami has too. There is life yet in the series, and as long as we both still draw breath, I will continue to follow DDR wherever it leads. In the growing silence, I turn away and awaken. I am glad to hear its name.

Get the full article at GameSpot

]]> http://www.gamespot.com/dance-dance-revolution-extreme-2/user-reviews/187987/platform/ps2/ Tue, 11 Oct 2005 07:54:54 -0700 Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed Dance Dance Revolution Extreme for the PlayStation 2... http://www.gamespot.com/dance-dance-revolution-extreme/user-reviews/179343/platform/ps2/ ...and gave it a 5.8.

Remember the time you were so desperate that you threw whatever leftovers you had into the frying pan and hoped something edible came out? Well, Konami has cooked up DDR Extreme in much the same way, and while starved fanatics will most certainly devour anything DDR, it goes down with a distinctly bitter aftertaste. More than any of its predecessors, DDR Extreme is a half-hashed recipe teeming with more unharmonious flavors than a milk and orange juice burrito with a vinaigrette truffle sauce. This eighth installment tries to bombard you like a cheap buffet with as many entr…es and appetizing a la "modes" as possible with the intent of making you believe its illusionary grandeur. So many ideas from previous installments have been flung around that you will probably accept DDR Extreme out of sheer bewilderment. However, as the saying goes in the world of cuisine, "a dish is only as good as its ingredients". In short, though DDR Extreme is awful every way you cut it, it is unfortunately bearable. Just be prepared for the upset stomach.

Ruining the glory days that were DDR 3rd Mix, Konami has been reheating the same old gameplay and idly serving it over and over again with new songs as seasoning. Stepping on the correct arrow at the correct time has been the name of the game for more than nine years now. Still, nothing has prepared me for just how complete DDR Extreme pretends to be. Every attempt at innovation down to every feature and game mode is too little, too late. Moreover, design issues and gameplay problems that were solved by the past two DDR MAX installments return from the ashes to burn whatever is left to a crisp.

In fact, many would like to put an end to the graphics in DDR Extreme, let alone the entire series. Konami always seems to try its best to not only cause distractions, but also to cause epilepsy. As much as we enjoy neon-flashing orbs, spinning teddy bears, twirling stars, and inwardly-spiraling photographs, they do not belong in the background. Ever. Nor should they move left then right, up then down, or in any geometrical direction in 3-space.

Randomly waltzing across the screen, the dancing characters in the background have also continually served to mystify me. Granted that they are now selected at a separate screen without having to navigate through the option menus, they are useless and serve only to divert attention to itself when the attention should be focused on the actual performer. Many of their movements are also neither coordinated with the steps on the screen, well-synchronized in time with the music, nor even all that interesting to look at. Both the character and background animations have been copied over from as far back as DDR 2nd, which is just lazy and unacceptable. Sure, the game provides you with the option to turn them off, but the fact that they are turned on by default shows that Konami does not realize just how annoying they are. Unfortunately, these two features are already so integrated into DDR that for them to face the chopping block is doubtful at best.

This is not to say, however, that Extreme's flaws come from a lack of trying. Konami has actually listened to some feedback and has addressed a few nagging problems. DDR MAX had a score meter as well as what can be best described as a squiggly life meter that limited the number of arrows you could see on the screen at one time. DDR Extreme corrects this problem by making the life bar and scoring meter translucent, thereby making game feel less like a cocoon.

In-game movies have returned in high style. Licensed videos, such as Junior Senior's "Move Your Feet" and Kim Wilde's "Kids in America", all provide the relevance and appeal missing from the frequent acid trips that spill over our eyes. Konami has finally noticed that videos are more intriguing than whatever breakdancing shenanigans the characters will ever have. In-game movies cut out the dancing avatars, giving the players and the audience something that is actually enjoyable to watch. Silent Hill fans in particular will love the computer-generated movies from the game serving as the background for Heather's (Melissa Williamson) "You're Not Here". This tempts me to dream of a day when every DDR song comes with a full-length video. Alas, DDR should clean up its mess before even thinking about anything this mouth-wateringly delicious.

When DDR MAX came on the scene, many believed that the dreadful interfaces of ages past would rot with it. We were wrong. Extremely wrong. Why Konami has us suffer through the interface from DDR 4th again goes beyond the limits of my sanity. To be sure, DDR MAX had us press left to move the songs up and right to move the songs down. But how would you like pressing left to move the songs right. Right, left, I mean… left. Or how about tapping the sensitive up and down arrow just once, instead of twice, and accidentally changing the difficulty level from three to eight. Family fun for the unconscious.

Indeed, there is a laundry list of minor issues that just waters the gameplay down the drain. Steps are usually graded on a scale of how well it was timed to the music: Perfect, Great, Good, Almost, and Boo. While attaining Perfects are not particularly difficult, DDR Extreme adds an exclusive Marvelous grade for Challenge Mode. However, players really have little or no control on whether they receive a Marvelous or not. Unless you have superhuman ears and god-like precision, there is no way you can step on the exact beat of the music consistently. In effect, getting Marvelous grades is completely random and puts the game out of the hands of the player, which is a downright sin in game design.

Achieving "A", "AA", and even "AAA" final grades have always been one of the key ingredients for motivating DDR players to continually improve. Normally, getting a max combo on a song virtually guaranteed a "AA". Look, anyone who completes a song with a flawless string of Perfects and Greats deserves it. But no, let's go back to the harsh grading system in DDR 4th and make it worse. Here, it is far too possible for a max combo to be downgraded to an "A*". You heard me. A*. It's like getting an 89.9 and getting a B+. How dare they not give the additional A. It should not matter whether a person does not satisfy the 3:1 Perfect to Great ratio or whatever nauseating requirements they pull. A max combo is a "AA". End of discussion.

I am also sickened by just how horribly Lesson Mode and the Beginner difficulty setting attempts to help new players. Lesson Mode offers three tutorials, each with eight separate lessons, which seems to be well put together. True to fact, these tutorials constructively guide fellow newbies through the game in an easy-to-follow manner. Nonetheless, after players complete every lesson and finish every song that Beginner offers, the game carelessly leaves them out to dry. I have encountered far too many instances where Lesson-Mode-graduates simply quit because the game fails to offer any transition from Beginner to Light.

Worse, the beginner difficulty setting actually hinders a beginner's progress. DDR Extreme provides on-screen characters that step on imaginary pads to supposedly help new players follow along, but they are only helpful the first three times. How the characters lunge their feet onto the arrows is just plain unnatural, and how they have to place their feet in the middle of the pad is an absolute crime in the DDR world. In addition, there are gaping rest areas and a lack of step variety that make Beginners steps far too easy in comparison to Light steps. Beginners also cannot disable the help character in the background and, thus, cannot view any in-game videos. Not very appetizing if you ask me.

DDR Extreme presents quite possibly every game mode in DDR history and serves one extra mode on the side: Mission from DDR 4th, Endless from DDR 2nd, Workout from DDR MAX, Lesson, Edit, Training, and a special Party Mode. Even with a few minor tweaks, virtually every mode is redundant filler that has been simply copied and pasted over. On the contrary, Party Mode is a nice complement - short and sweet. That is, if you own an Eye Toy. While DDR Extreme puts forth a course of seven party games, only two are available without the additional peripheral. Not many own this USB camera and, honestly, the five exclusive games are not enough to dish out another 40 dollars. This is quite disheartening because the mini-games serve as light, enjoyable diversions that succeed in breaking up the monotony of playing song after song without end.

Equally as disappointing, the Challenge difficulty songs return to baffle me even further. Why waste a two-megabyte remix solely for Challenge difficulty steps and not create two-kilobyte Beginner, Light, Standard, and Heavy difficulty steps as well? Asking this question to myself after DDR MAX 2, Konami seems to agree and then disagree at the same time. DDR Extreme features two songs that have every difficulty setting available and seven that remain Challenge-exclusive. Should I be confused or pissed off?

Just as ambiguous, the song selection in DDR Extreme will set off mixed reactions. I have never understood why Konami insists on doling out song lists for home editions that differ from those from the "genuine" arcade. There is a nagging difference between releases in Japan and those in the US that begs to be answered. For some inane reason, DDR Extreme has hashed out remakes of American songs in the hopes of grabbing a wider American demographic. I can safely assume that no one can stand to hear second-rate artists ruin popular songs on the radio, and no one will stand them in a game, either. We do not need a Cher-less "Believe", a Madonna-less "Like A Virgin", or a J-Lo-less "Waiting For Tonight". Perhaps offsetting these blunders, dj TAKA's "V" and "Frozen Ray", the resident 10-foot-difficult "The Legend of Max", and dj Amuro's "A" from beatMania has finally arrived stateside. Combined with a few classic songs like "YMCA" by the actual Village People and a bevy of classic songs, the music selection is acceptable, though it won't knock your socks off.

The DDR franchise has reached a boiling point. As a freestyle specialist and vice president of my university's DDR Club, I am angry that I despise Extreme as much as I do, especially the ostentatious title. The only thing revolutionary about it is how extremely incomplete and predictable it is. With such a long-standing trend of half-boiled reiterations, there is very little hope that DDR will ever change. Like a chicken without a head, Konami continues to flap around the DDR vault, run into new songs, and plop out nearly rotten eggs like DDR Extreme. Yes, it's edible. But the stench is already all too familiar and makes the chicken that much closer to being eaten.

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]]> http://www.gamespot.com/dance-dance-revolution-extreme/user-reviews/179343/platform/ps2/ Wed, 14 Sep 2005 06:15:00 -0700 Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed Amplitude for the PlayStation 2... http://www.gamespot.com/amplitude/user-reviews/159870/platform/ps2/ ...and gave it a 8.7.

Saying that the rhythm genre has been barren is an understatement. It is already fall 2005 and nothing has grown from that musical tree. Just like leaves, the industry has left the genre to wither, gently plummet to the ground, dry in the heat of the sun, and deteriorate into indistinguishable grains of mulch. I pine for the days of genuine button-mashing dexterity and wind-in-my-eye concentration as I remember a game still golden after two long, agonizing years… Amplitude. While not flawless by any means, this follow-up to Freq is a welcome addition to both the world of innovation and music. It serves as a nice diversion to the steady stream of ammo-driven, sword-slinging, and point-scoring titles overflowing both shelves and bargain bins. There is a refreshing intensity in its techno-colorful aesthetic that must be experienced. Boasting artists such as David Bowie, Pink, P.O.D., Run D.M.C., and Weezer, Amplitude makes what is akin to playing DDR with the controller an actually pleasant and worthwhile experience. Amplitude effectively transforms an aged musical concept into a living, breathing exploration. Virtually every song created in modern times consists of multiple tracks that play simultaneously - the bass, the guitars, the vocals, the drums, and so on. In the world of Amplitude, blue capsules spread along these tracks have locked their sound away. Navigating a laser-shooting spacecraft, it is your job to unlock each of these tracks and return the song back to its original form. Despite this rather peculiar premise, Amplitude is, at its core, a rhythm-based game where timing remains the ever-essential key. Pressing the square, triangle, and circle buttons respectively blasts capsules on the left-hand side, in the middle, and on the right-hand side of a track. If within the span of a green-highlighted musical phrase, you can destroy the capsules without missing, the track is turned on for a set period of time. Any mistakes and your life bar dwindles away until it's game over. Thankfully, completing a musical phrase and passing through one of three checkpoints boosts your life meter, aiding your quest to reach the very last measure. Consequently, to the approval of beginners, passing a song is not particularly difficult, but to the appreciation of veterans, the game provides enough challenge for them, especially Brutal and Insane difficulty modes, to complete songs with flying colors. Finishing a song prompts a screen that grades your performance from one to four bars based on your total number of points, which are earned primarily through successive phrase completions. The higher the quantity of capsules and the more difficult the capsules are distributed within a phrase, the more the phrase is worth. As an incentive, if you're able to swiftly and consecutively glide from one track to another, a combo bonus will incrementally multiply the base value of the phrase from two to eight. In effect, maintaining an x8 multiplier throughout the entire song becomes the mission for bona-fide rhythm experts. Unfortunately, the gameplay has a few issues that frustratingly prevent us from doing so. On more than enough occasions, you will find tracks that are sometimes absent (e.g. no vocal track when the song itself has an unvoiced section) or find yourself in a position where the next available track is up to five rows away. These inevitable three-to-five row gaps make it nearly impossible to seamlessly flow from track to track, thereby resetting the combo multiplier to zero. With enough practice and familiarity, you can achieve the continuous x8 multiplier, but the game could have made this more feasible and in the hands of the player. Also helping your cause are preset power-ups that are acquired through sequentially hitting all of their labeled capsules: Autoblaster, Slo Mo, Score Doubler, and Freestyler. Autoblaster is like a get-out-of-jail free card - if you screw up, you can use it to safeguard your combo multiplier. Score Doubler does none other than double the base value of all musical phrases for a limited time. The least useful item is Slo Mo, which lowers the pace of the song to supposedly help you blast each capsule. The abrupt reduction in speed causes more turmoil than assistance, and there is nothing that indicates when the Slo Mo will wear off. The most interesting and arguably the most powerful of the four, Freestyler takes you off the track and into a mode where you gain points by pressing and holding buttons as well as the left analog stick. Despite the freedom and gameplay variety the item provides, points are too easily gained through freestyle. All it takes to gain the maximum number of points is holding down a random button and the left analog stick for the full duration of the effect. In fact, changing this technique just hurts you more than anything else. Moreover, the game does not allow the power-up function to be assigned to the less troublesome shoulder buttons in lieu of the overcrowding X button. Still, in spite of these blemishes, the power-ups infuse enough strategic and focus-inducing energy to justify their inclusion. Character customization has gradually weaved its way into everything from Tony Hawk to Tekken, and Amplitude does not avoid jumping onto the bandwagon. Attaining triple and quadruple bar scores and simply passing songs grants you more parts to customize your FreQ. Before starting, you can choose your DJ from a number of various Prefabs, or preset characters, but players will want to create their own FreQ from the supplied heads, torsos, arms, legs, and accessories. There are a bevy of options to choose from, including the ability to change the color, saturation, and brightness for nearly each piece of clothing. Unfortunately, your FreQ's physical appearance, let alone its utter existence, has no effect. There are no stat points, no special effects, nothing that connects character customization to the gameplay. If only for not having a purpose, this self-contained yet comprehensive system makes us wish for more. The additional modes capriciously extend the game's worth. Save for having an interest in being a DJ, Remix mode will neither excite you nor change your mind. How it has you create and edit the notes is contrived and strangely does not let you stop the song from playing or looping. Most will also be turned off by how much memory card space is required to store a remix as well as the confusing and over-sensitive controls. Concerning multiplayer action, Amplitude features three modes … Game, Duel, and Remix … and two new power-ups … Crippler and Bumper. However, you would be farfetched to find a person online or even a friend that would want to join in. Any difference in skill becomes immediately evident, and unless you both have equally explored the solo experience, the multiplayer venture will be discouraging. As a personal adventure, Amplitude offers a kaleidoscope of musical breaths. As long as you keep an open mind toward the diversity of musical genres, you will respect a compilation that presents everything from the experimental Herbie Hancock to death-metal Slipknot. To be sure, classical, choir, country, and "world" music lacks representation here, and personal tastes will directly affect how much you care for the game. There are only a few things that a blink-182-hater hates more than blink-182. Nonetheless, Amplitude is a vibrant yet silent creed of multicultural acceptance. Unlike the epileptic DDR backgrounds, the graphics are exuberant, colorful, and surprisingly do not distract us. In essence, Harmonix does not feel as though it has to flash us with anything. There is a somehow calm yet enthusiastic spirit that sets the game apart from the pack. Like a dormant volcano, Amplitude watches the gaming world from afar, settling under waning human interest. Buried beneath a blizzard of the recent and left to wither in a two-year drought, Amplitude stands as a forgotten peak in a forgotten land and quietly hopes for the newfound revival of the rhythm genre.

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"Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed Amplitude for the PlayStation 2..." was posted by Draqq_Zyxorian on Wed, 14 Sep 2005 06:15:00 -0700
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/amplitude/user-reviews/159870/platform/ps2/ Thu, 14 Jul 2005 04:04:29 -0700 Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed Tekken Tag Tournament for the PlayStation 2... http://www.gamespot.com/tekken-tag-tournament/user-reviews/159871/platform/ps2/ ...and gave it a 8.5.

Before committing themselves to a Tekken 4, Namco has released a tag-team variation of its prominent fighting series befittingly entitled Tekken Tag Tournament (triple T, if you will). The concept is quite simple: roundup every Tekken character, render them in 3D-pixelated heaven, and then pit them against each other in teams of two. For all intentional purposes, this semi-sequel compilation is a …Tekken All-Stars… that follows the crossover trend of Capcom…s prolific and seemingly never-ending …Vs.… titles. As such, Tekken Tag delivers on its intentions, serving as an addictive multiplayer that packs enough nonstop action to satisfy any group of fun-hungry gamers. Unfortunately, it does not fully capitalize on the tag-team concept and ultimately comes off as a pleasurable yet shrug-your-shoulders addition to the Tekken line. Sure to respectfully appease its fans, Tekken Tag Tournament does not stray too far from the gameplay foundations that gave Tekken 3 such vast success. Except for the standard graphical facelift, the integration of the tag-team concept, and a power-balancing update that teaches old characters new tricks, nothing much has changed. Controls are as tight, responsive, and conveniently placed as ever before. Lightning reflexes and accurate timing will still give beginners a migraine just as Tekken veterans will cringe when they fail to pull off the 10-hit combo they practiced a million times before. Any changes to the movelists or mechanics of characters from Tekken 3 are barely noticeable. Pre-Tekken 3 characters have been granted a wider arsenal of moves, but their basic style and strategies have thankfully been left intact. Also as before, the party-friendly Versus mode as well as the unlocking of characters through successive Arcade mode completions keep the replay value extremely high. Unfortunately, the Survival and Time Attack modes return despite, again, having no real purpose other than filler. In fact, as well-grounded as Tekken Tag Tournament is to its revolutionary predecessor, it does not push the Tekken series forward as much as it should have. To be sure, Tekken Tag does have a palpable vision with its initial exploration into the already heavily-saturated tag-team territory. Still, its attempts at innovation are neither noteworthy nor all that well-executed. Reminiscent from as far back as the X-Men vs. Street Fighter days, characters now have restorable (red) health, which gradually recovers when they are inactive, in addition to their main (blue) health. Tagging in and out is as simple as tapping the analog stick or pressing whatever designated button you assign. The difference from other crossover fighting games is that a team immediately loses if either member is knocked out. While this gives more emphasis on juggles, high-damage attacks, and 10-hit combinations, it also makes them more threatening and more powerful than they already are or ever need to be. In lieu of a Capcom-esque energy bar for specials, Tekken Tag offers partner-assist throws as the one and only actual tag-team attack. Not only does this show a lack of effort, but the added damage is so minimal and the buttons to perform them are so frustratingly concealed (they are not given in the movelist) that these throws are barely worth finding, let alone actually using them. Moreover, Jin…s updated movelist is the only one that incorporates team-specific moves; in this case, with Heihachi. Why they are the only pair to have these exclusive attacks makes the game feel incomplete or at the very least, unfair. On the good side, team introduction sequences sometimes show interaction between two characters. For instance, a Heihachi and Kazuya team stand-off against each other before fighting while Devil and Kazuya virtually fuse into one being. Almost as a twitch of inconsistency, however, there are a few team match-ups that are just pining to have some special introduction, but yet are inexplicably absent. For some reason, Jin is not surprised to have Jun, his dead angelic mother, as his partner. (Well, it is Jin, so maybe it…s not too surprising.) Indeed, all of these mishaps only add to the feeling that the game plays more like two separate versus battles rather than one cohesive tag-team battle. As Tekken Tag Tournament features effectively all of the characters from Tekken 1 through 3, storyline had to be sacrificed in order to maintain the plot thread of the Tekken series. As a result, the only reason for fighting the final boss, Unknown, is under the most uninspiring and assumed notion of an …evil force that will destroy mankind…. Just as unfortunate, the endings for every character, besides Unknown, serve nothing more than an unnecessary and uneventful waste of space. There is hardly any character development nor even true character involvement within any of the 10-15 second epilogues. Adding insult to injury, the same musical track is repeated throughout each ending, rendering the Theatre Mode an aurally monotonous affair. Alternatively, replaying the historic endings from Tekken 2 and 3 would have been a better idea. To its credit, Tekken Tag Tournament…s graphical prowess overshadows much of its flaws. Higher resolution and polygon counts have yielded smooth and incredibly detailed character models. Every character, costume, and environment is refined … a testament to Namco…s long-standing excellence in visual effects. Tekken Tag features many new fighting arenas and some old environments, such as the school, have returned much improved in clarity and substance. On the other hand, the game…s sound and music do not match the brilliance of its graphics. Though the mostly techno, semi-electronic soundtrack remains above average fighting fare, the sound effects have been left unchanged. Exactly when a character will cringe in pain or attack with vocalized effort is completely random. Not only are the sound effects subdued and rather muffled, but characters do not voice their actions nearly as much as they should, and there is also no voice work or voiceovers. On the contrary, Tekken Bowl is a fairly well-executed and pleasant diversion that presents the softer side of Tekken, if there ever was one. Unlike the haphazardly-produced volleyball counterpart from Tekken 3, Tekken Bowl faithfully recreates the casual sport of bowling with a Tekken spin. A selected team of two characters play one full round in a gutterless lane featuring gold Heihachi statues as pin fodder. If the first member, designated the initial ball thrower, fails to knock down a strike, the other character then tries to deliver the spare. As a nice touch, the speed and precision of the ball mirrors the character…s fighting style, be it strength-based or technique-based. While there are minor issues with aligning the bowler with the pins and ultimately abusing the scanning devices internally equipped on Jack, Bryan, and Yoshimitsu, they are not enough to harm the whimsical nature and ephemeral amusement of an otherwise solidly produced mini-game. Though not by any means revolutionary, there should be no reason for Tekken fans not to purchase Tekken Tag Tournament. Though the ill-conceived tag-team concept, less-than-stellar sound effects, and lackluster endings will cause some criticism, they are not enough to stop casual gamers from enjoying the exquisite graphics and the superb gameplay. While 2-D fighting fanatics as well as Dead or Alive and Virtua Fighter veterans will not change their minds with this title, Tekken Tag Tournament is sure to fill that Tekken-void before the true sequel is released.

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]]> http://www.gamespot.com/tekken-tag-tournament/user-reviews/159871/platform/ps2/ Fri, 01 Jul 2005 22:37:50 -0700 Swordslinger0 reviewed Kirby: Canvas Curse for the DS... http://www.gamespot.com/kirby-canvas-curse/user-reviews/173338/platform/ds/ ...and gave it a 8.0.

Pros: - One of the first Nintendo DS games that actually can't be done on any other system. - Makes the stylus feel natural. - Enough unlockables to keep you coming back. Cons: -The game could have had a great multiplayer mode worked into it, its a shame that there isn't one. - The main story is a bit on the short side. ______________ Gameplay: Kirby: Canvas Curse is the first Kirby game I have ever played, and for the most part, the experience was enjoyable. Sure the design of the game may be childish, but it's a great game, so it was easy for me to get past that. In Canvas Curse, you use the stylus not to control Kirby directly, but to draw paths that guide Kirby through the obstacle course like levels. The stylus is also used to tap on enemies in order to briefly stun them, once stunned and enemy can instantly be killed if Kirby just simply touches them. The stylus also can be used to tap Kirby and cause him to do a boost attack, or, if Kirby has absorbed the power of an enemy (which is simply done by killing an enemy that has a certain power), you can tap on him to use the power. In addition, the levels may contain certain puzzle elements that are solved with the stylus, such as tapping parts of a wall to reveal a passage, or using the stylus to light a lamp. Boss fights in Kirby are also a bit different. At the end of a world, you have the option to chose which of the three bosses (which I won't reveal) you would like to challenge. The bosses aren't what we are used to however, instead they are mini-game challenges, once you beat them twice, you can no longer chose to challenge them as a boss, instead they are unlocked in the subgames menu. Graphics: Canvas Curse features some very detailed 2D worlds. Although the backgrounds are static and stay the same for every level of that theme, they look extremely nice and don't get tiring. The character sprites also look great, the more complicated ones are nicely detailed, and all are very colorful. The 3D capabilities of the DS can sometimes be seen going to work in the game, which is a small, but nice touch. The graphics may not take full advantage of the Nintendo DS, but they still look awesome. Sound: The music in Canvas Curse is mostly upbeat techno, but it suits the game very well and doesn't sound all too bad. Playing the game with the PSP headphones made everything sound really great, if you can, you should really try that out. Kirby: Canvas Curse is a great game, one that most DS owners will enjoy. The unlockable characters and the ability to play Time Trials and Ink Trials greatly increase the replay value. Going through levels to find hidden medals that are used to purchase new ink designs, courses, etc help with replay value also. My biggest complaint is that Hal should have worked a multiplayer mode into the game, racing friends across levels could have been great and would have given people even more of an incentive to come back, I just hope theres a multiplayer mode in the sequel (which will no doubt be coming in the future).

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"Swordslinger0 reviewed Kirby: Canvas Curse for the DS..." was posted by Swordslinger0 on Fri, 01 Jul 2005 22:37:50 -0700
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/kirby-canvas-curse/user-reviews/173338/platform/ds/ Sat, 25 Jun 2005 03:33:23 -0700 Kenshin100 reviewed Gran Turismo 4 for the PlayStation 2... http://www.gamespot.com/gran-turismo-4/user-reviews/164770/platform/ps2/ ...and gave it a 9.0!

Now everyone, after 3 to 4 years, we finally have Gran Turismo 4. GT4 is the latest installment in the GT series. It brings back original aspects from its predecessors and also brings new elements to the game. When I played this game, it felt so much more realistic and fine tuned from GT3. GT4 has an arcade mode and a career mode (Gran Turismo Mode). If you just feel like picking up a car and racing, hit the arcade mode. On the other hand Gran Turismo Mode is also now known as GT World. In here you have the dreaded license test and a nice garage. When you race you have an option of racing in A-spec mode and B-spec mode. A-spec is when your driving and B-spec mode is when the computer is driving for you. I am better off with the a-spec because on B-spec you can see that the computer is holding back TOO MUCH. So much that it can cause you the race. Otherwise it is very fun to look at and to be the director to control everything. But the good side is that in B-spec you can adore the beautiful graphics. The graphics in GT4 is a big step up in the game. The idea of putting over 600 cars in the game give you more fantastic cars to look at including the near perfect environments and tracks. The sound of the cars are incredible. The engine sounds were taken for each car in the game so you can tell the difference when you drive another car. Each car also handles in a unique way. Even better is the customization of cars in the game. Its pretty deep and pretty cool. The soundtrack as well really gets you amped and is well suited for a racing game. All together it really puts you in the game. It is an experience that you should not miss.

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"Kenshin100 reviewed Gran Turismo 4 for the PlayStation 2..." was posted by Kenshin100 on Sat, 25 Jun 2005 03:33:23 -0700
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/gran-turismo-4/user-reviews/164770/platform/ps2/ Sat, 11 Jun 2005 17:40:46 -0700 Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Bose for the PlayStation 2... http://www.gamespot.com/xenosaga-episode-ii-jenseits-von-gut-und-bose/user-reviews/172935/platform/ps2/ ...and gave it a 7.4.

Xenosaga II is not for everyone, including even those who have completed Xenosaga I. While graphically superior, especially in level design, most players will be turned off by the onslaught of in-game cinematics. Horrendous dubbing, sluggish loading and transportation times, a slightly over-complicated combat system, and an insecure design connection between Xenosaga I and II serve to spoil a game that, otherwise, has an in-depth storyline and plenty of minor improvements over its predecessor. While by no means horrible, Xenosaga II is an above-average RPG that should appeal to fans that enjoy storyline over action and have a lot of spare time on their hands.

As the second (and somehow, final) episode, Xenosaga II continues the storyline of the original Xenosaga without disruption. Having just disposed of the apocalyptic flying device, Proto Merkabah, Shion and her motley gang venture to her hometown of Second Miltia. However, as faithfully as the storyline has been kept intact, the game has not. The designers made a bold decision to rebuild the gameplay from the ground up. So while many elements from the previous installment have made it through with a few minor touches, Xenosaga II still lends itself to be a similar yet unique experience. Unfortunately, Namco has not addressed the major problems that severely plagued the first Xenosaga and adds a few of its own.

If I were a cut-scene, where would I be? Most likely Xenosaga II. Following its predecessor, the linear storyline is told mainly through in-game cinematics. As before, each cinematic is actually insightful, dramatic, and intriguing, and remains faithful to the Japanese animation from which the game is derived. However, is Xenosaga II (let alone, the series) a game or is it a movie? As much as I admire the storyline, I would have liked to have seen a bit less talk and more action, especially with the rather horrible dubbing. Practically all of the actors, notably Chaos, Jin, and Canaan, speak with overwhelming disinterest. If toning down the voice acting was a conscious choice made by the director, it was an extremely detrimental one. The direct translations are not compelling and do not match with the characters' mouths. Moreover, the dialogue between characters is more often than not, contrived and uneven. Somehow, Xenosaga I had better voice acting and dialogue, and quite frankly, this second installment, while keeping the integrity of the Xenosaga concept, has done a disservice to the storyline of Xenosaga.

Already not so keen on how Namco handled the character progression from Xenosaga I to II (it relies upon a formula that downgrades all the characters), I found the combat system more complicated than anything else. There are break zones, air attacks, down attacks, stock, ethers, boost, counter boost, elemental combinations, and double tech skills (I…m probably forgetting something). On the other hand, these features truly give the combat system the much needed depth where sacrificing a bit of simplicity is nothing serious. In fact, for a game of such length, complexity is welcome. True mastery of the battle system occurs somewhere near the middle of the game, as it should. However, casual players may probably find the combat system too convoluted for their taste.

Ether skills have been given a complete overhaul. The system for learning new ethers have been reorganized into a more comprehensive and understandable format. Characters spend class points and skill points gained either through defeating enemies, using item upgrades, or completing a full set of skills (say, all four skills in Class A, Level 2) in order to unlock and obtain ethers. Thankfully (insert angelic chorus here), ether weight, which frustratingly restricted the number of ethers a character could allocate for battle, has been removed. Now, except for Shion's Erde summons, there are no more character-specific ether skills. Consequently, tediously evolving and transferring skills is no longer necessary, and the ability to customize a player's ethers has been improved.

Still, with these improvements aside, the new ether system is far from perfect. While the ethers that comprise a class usually have a specific theme (i.e., all "ether attacks" or all "equippable skills"), class names are given extremely arbitrary letters: Class A, Class B, etc. These terribly non-descriptive titles force you to cycle through every ether menu before almost randomly finding what you want. Also, though it's a minor gripe, the idea of a planetary system graphic filling in with pretty blue and red planets as each ether is acquired is useless and downright unnecessary. The programmers and designers could have used their time doing something else, such as actually utilizing the whole half of the screen the graphic takes up.

Players will also find that a whole slew of ethers are locked with "????" emblazoned over it. This causes a rather awkward gameplay issue that undermines whatever strategy in ether selection a player can adopt. Since class points are rather difficult to come by and a significant amount of class points are awarded when a class is completed, you will almost be forced to unlock classes where all of the ethers are also already unlocked. That way, you can actually complete that class and gain more class points without having to worry about when, if ever, a "????" will be revealed. This, in turn, forces you to ignore the skills within other classes for the sake for gaining class points.

With all the "????"s to uncover, it is difficult for the so-called Global Samaritan Campaign not to be a chore. Essentially, the GSC tracks the progress of sidequests in order to improve the livelihood of the common people, one person at a time. However, I found the GSC such an awfully poor excuse for sidequesting, because it bluntly states the purpose of sidequesting in the first place - "Global Samaritan Campaign". That is obvious - the whole concept of a sidequest is usually to help people in order to get something back (and if they don't give something back, they deserve eternal damnation in pixilated hell). But it's more of the GSC being so contrived and poorly executed. Practically every reward is a secret key that unlocks ethers or a double-tech skill. Hardly ever is a sidequest required in some way or a reward something other than uncovering a "????". Somehow, unlike other games, it just makes the player feel used by the designers - the "????"s are so obviously placed that it's like they are purposely dangling a carrot in front of you.

Sidequests would not have been such an issue if Xenosaga II was not so damn sluggish. If there is one word to describe Xenosaga II, it is "SLUGGISH". The text moving across the screen is sluggish. The cutscenes, dialogue, and voice-overs are sluggish. Even transportation and movement are sluggish. Just like in Xenosaga I, no matter whom you select as the leader, the on-screen character moves mind-numbingly slow; it doesn't even look like you're running. Moreover, loading times define the essence of the word, "long". Xenosaga II is one of the only games where there is substantial loading time before enemies and characters appear on the battle screen. Traveling normally through the game, the loading times in between areas are just barely tolerable. However, with so many GS paths that require backtracking, going back and forth between the Kukai Foundation and Second Miltia for the 257th time is unbearable. Do not be surprised to find yourself spending half of your gameplay time visiting a sector you've already seen a thousand times. One particular GS campaign that required recharging a battery in Second Miltia and using it on the lower floor of the Elsa took an inexcusable thirty minutes of going back and forth twelve times!

Perhaps the only saving graces for Xenosaga II are the bevy of minor improvements and the attention to level design and graphics. The removal of the annoying email system; quicker on-screen item retrieval; not needing to venture back to a UMN point to exit the Encephalon; and each character being able to perform three animated attacks against breakable objects are just the tip of the "improvement" iceberg. The sounds and music, although not memorable, fit the environments well, be they technological cities or natural scenery. The removal of item shops and currency, while probably unrealistic in the futuristic world of Xenosaga, is a refreshingly new direction toward a more simplified gaming experience, which I applaud. Level designs are also superb - no two areas are identical in texture, environment, or construct. Each area and fighting environment is beautifully conceptualized, and really makes you feel that you are part of an intergalactic galaxy. Also, Xenosaga II is more puzzle-intensive that its predecessor. While they do not integrate with the gameplay or storyline very well, the innovation in the design and the sheer visual clarity of the puzzles are quite refreshing and help keep the monotony down. This, coupled with the smooth, lush, and well-detailed graphics that just expands across the screen down to every nook and cranny, complete the package.

In the end, Xenosaga II gets its job done, but doesn…t reach its full potential. Besides the graphics, there really isn…t anything that shines above the standard fare of RPGs. Perhaps if the game…s speed was twice as fast, the sidequests more involving, and the storyline better executed and acted, we would truly care for the characters beyond ten cut-scene minutes at a time.

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]]> http://www.gamespot.com/xenosaga-episode-ii-jenseits-von-gut-und-bose/user-reviews/172935/platform/ps2/ Fri, 10 Jun 2005 08:43:57 -0700 Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed Mario Kart 64 for the Nintendo 64... http://www.gamespot.com/mario-kart-64/user-reviews/172870/platform/n64/ ...and gave it a 8.2.

If there is any video game that Gamespot should seriously consider giving a regrade, Mario Kart 64 is undeniably one of them. I understand each and every criticism our fellow Gamespot reviewer, Trent, gave to this game, and as a critic, I actually agree with a few of them, but I cannot support a rating of a 6.4 from any video game publication for this game. Even with the reasons he gives, Mario Kart 64 should have received a score in at least the 7 range, as guidelined by Gamespot. Even if it might be a videogames.com to Gamespot issue, this fact should just make the regrade that much more necessary. While the game is by no means flawless, it is at least a game whose "strengths outweigh its weaknesses [, but] tends to have noticeable faults" (definition of a game in the 7.0-7.9 range). As a premiere title for the N64, Mario Kart 64 does its job as a multiplayer game that gets friends and family hooked on purchasing the console. While it's true that the gameplay doesn't offer that much depth, that's the same reason why anyone from a 10 year-old kid to a full-fledged adult can pick it up. Similar to NFL Blitz, Mario Kart 64 has the quick rush of simplicity and rewarding fun that allows it to be so justifiably popular. Just like it's predecessor, Super Mario Kart for the SNES, the game essentially features a grand prix mode and the all-important battle mode. While the battle mode supports up to four players, the grand prix mode can only support one or two. There is an exhibition-esque VS mode where up to four players can compete on one track at a time, but, if possible, it would have been better if grand prix mode could have supported four players (but that's a minor gripe). The main flaw of Mario Kart 64 is, indeed, the single-player grand prix mode, and more specifically, the rubber-band computer AI. Even in the 50cc division (100cc and 150cc are more difficult), the computer players are given an extra boost of speed if you're in the lead. This is just a cheap way to make the game engaging and the developers know it. The previous incarnation for the SNES allowed players to forge into the lead and stay in the lead without any real fight from the computer players, albeit on the easiest difficulty setting. Indeed, it is rewarding and engaging to see how skillful you have become as you wave at the 50cc computer suckers. Here, instead, the computer player in 2nd place becomes an undeniable pest that is able to catch up to you no matter how many bananas, shells, or lightning bolts from heaven descend upon it. Furthermore, completing the game by obtaining each gold cup is simply not rewarding - all you get is a mirror mode (one great hoo-ha-dilly) and, perhaps, a comment by your friends near something on par with "oh, wow, you got a Gold Cup on Special Track on 150cc... ... ...(sigh)". However, the sixteen tracks are very much appreciated. It would have been easy to just slap-dash whatever amount of tracks together where each track looks and feels the same. On the contrary, Mario Kart 64 delivers sixteen tracks that graphically gives a distinct mood and environment as well as track designs that are dissimilar enough from each other to make each of them unique and interesting. While the graphics themselves are not all that spectacular and pop-up and fog show up now and then, there is a palpable vision and concept to each track. Bowser's Castle is like a labyrinth of blocks, lava, and right-angle turns; Rainbow Road is a colorfully straightforward and wide track; and everything from penguins and moles to trains and coconuts get in your way. In addition, the music, while not particularly memorable, does fit each track rather well, and the sound effects are adequately done. As a side note, the comment made about the tracks being too wide has some merit, but it's more of a matter that the tracks were not narrow, which I find more appropriate in a jovial game such as Mario Kart 64. Besides, the frequency of overtly wide tracks diminishes as you progress to the more difficult Star and Special Cups. On the issues of control and weapon selection, they are both executed quite nicely. The consistent framerate complements the responsive and intuitive controls. While there is a lack of depth in the actual racing part of the game, there is some depth in weapon usage. Beginner players will fire willy-nilly, use their weapons only when necessary, or fail to discard fairly useless items. However, expert players will learn to fire green shells backward, hold the Z button to drag the shells, bananas, or upside-down question mark behind them, and will also learn how to slide effectively. As before, the lightning bolt fits its role as the holy "oh-crap..." weapon, though I never understood what lightning has to do with miniaturization. Nonetheless, the weapons provide the bulk and intensity in Mario Kart 64 in lieu of in-depth racing mechanics. The true value of Mario Kart 64 lies solely in its multiplayer grand prix and battle mode. Frankly, the VS mode and the time trial mode are dismissable. While playing grand prix by yourself is more likely to be a tiring and drawn-out experience, playing it with a friend is not. Players can start to protect each other with weapons and preventing the rubber-band AI from occurring by always keeping the computer players in sight. That alone keeps the game fair and, thus, more light-hearted in nature. The battle mode is also quite engaging - players have three lives represented as balloons and each hit or slip-up removes a balloon. As a result, tactical warfare, weapon hogging, and dodging the green shells on the lower floors, all come into play. The fact that players will find themselves going around for one or two minutes without engaging each other is all a part of the multiplayer experience. On the other hand, the diversity of battle tracks is appalling. Namely, there are four, but, excuse me, Big Donut doesn't count. However, for what it's worth, the other three tracks definitely keep the replay value high - you may indeed find yourself playing this game just for the multiplayer years from now. While not exactly addicting, Mario Kart 64 is one of those games that N64 owners will play at least once a week (or once a need-for-vintage-gaming trip), and thus, is worthy enough for anyone's gaming library.

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"Draqq_Zyxorian reviewed Mario Kart 64 for the Nintendo 64..." was posted by Draqq_Zyxorian on Fri, 10 Jun 2005 08:43:57 -0700
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