Kingdom Hearts
Kingdom Hearts is a fun action-RPG made by Square and Disney. It has, at its, core, the rather bizarre pairing of a typical Square hero with various Disney characters in a meta-plot that is typical Square that abounds with subplots that are straight out of Disney movies.
To clarify, you (Sora, the main character) and your two partners (Donald Duck and Goofy) go from one disney world to another (for example, Wonderland, Halloween Town, and Neverland), meeting up with characters from those movies, and defeating the enemies in those worlds. Meanwhile, you've got the meta-plot of trying to find your friends and save the universe. It sounds silly, and odd, but works amazingly well.
As for the gameplay, it's a third-person action game, along the lines of the Destroy All Humans! franchise, or, say, God of War. You directly control Sora, and Donald and Goofy (or whoever happens to be your allies at the time) tag along with you, acting on their own - though you can give them basic instructions as to when to use items, how often to use special attacks, etc. It's pretty good, though fairly one-dimensional - mashing x to hit people with your keyblade is often all you need to do to beat enemies, even bosses. There is magic, and it is useful, but the limited nature of it usually means that the spell you're going to be casting far more than any other is Cure, since the other magic, while useful, can simply be replaced by hitting people with your Keyblade.
You also have abilities that you can assign to your party members - special keyblade attacks, for example, or simple status or spell boosts, or new abilities like high-jumping or gliding. The customization aspect here is nice, but didn't really feel like it was all that it could be. Your choices never felt like they made that much of a difference. Still, it's something.
The enviroments also are worth noting - they are very pretty, and quite true to the movies that they are based on. However, they are huge, and often labyrinthine - you spend lots and lots of time wandering around the worlds, looking for that next place to go. Some people applaud the world design of Kingdom Hearts (at least compared to Kingdom Hearts 2), saying that the exploration of the Disney worlds was fun and cool - however, I like having a more set path to follow in my games. Exploration is all well and good, but getting lost and wandering around until you find what you need to do should be a gaming trope that no longer exists.
There's also the Gummi ship levels - levels that happen between worlds that are reminiscent of Star Fox. They're all right, but not really all that fun, at least to me. All the gummi levels felt the same, and I never really felt any incentive to play them over again. There's also gummi ship customization, which is nice, but I never really saw the draw of it, as there were no real objectives to gummi-shipping other than to get from point A to point B. The levels themselves all were very similar graphics-wise (a technicolor background with occasional rocks, rings, or other obstacles) and didn't really vary gameplay-wise either.
There's not that much more to talk about - the story is good, and very true to its sources, and the gameplay is fun, if frustrating or one-dimensional at times. Overall, a solid, fun game with a few moderately-sized flaws.
Things to learn:
Mixing atmospheres (Square and Disney) can work surprisingly well! As with Paper Mario, the idea to take away from this is that anything can work if it's done well, no matter how crazy it might sound.
Making your gameplay fast-paced is often a good thing. Fast combat is fun, more often than not, in my opinion.
Providing multiple viable options in combat makes combat more fun. Kingdom Hearts doesn't offer enough options - compare this to, say, The Force Unleashed, where you have many different viable options to kill mooks. The latter really gets quite a bit of milage out of its gameplay, whereas Kingdom Hearts really does start to wear thin towards the end in its "press x until the bad guy dies" style of gameplay.
If you're going to make transitionary levels (such as gummi ship levels), make them interesting. Don't just slap something in there to make your gameplay more diverse. You want them to be fun, good breaks that don't necessesarily need to be as deep as the main gameplay. What I'm trying to say is that these sorts of levels (and mini-games in general) should be both fun and different, not just different. It sounds obvious, but too many mini-game type things try to make things just different and forget to make them fun.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
Review: Paper Mario and the Thousand-Year Door
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
A great RPG, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has you playing as Mario, as well as guest-starring Peach and Bowser. Mario faces, by and large, the X-Nauts, a group of pretty generic evil people, and their leader Grodus, who has kidnapped Peach for reasons initially unknown. Your quest is to find the seven "crystal stars," as well as rescue Princess Peach - and solve other people's problems in the meantime, too.
The story is pretty generic, but the characters really make it spring to life. Mario himself is a silent protaganist, but the other characters are fantastic - from the sexy mouse ninja Ms. Mowz to the depressed Koopa Koops, they are quite entertaining. The subplots are also quite entertaining, and often fairly original, such as when Mario looses his identity (quite literally, his name and appearance are stolen) - it's certainly enjoyable.
I feel the need to mention pacing here - most of the time, it's quite good. Dungeons and cities are laid out well (in terms of how long you spend in each), and the subplots usually last just long enough. Also, the train level towards the end was one of my favorites, and it was just a mystery with only minimal fighting for the most part. Very well done. Occasionally, however, it does falter - for example, there's one part where you have to go back and forth between the a few different areas several times - quite annoying.
Badges are how you customize Mario - you have a set number of points (that goes up as you level) to spend on badges that can give you different attacks, more health/magic, upgrade Mario's abilities... whatever you feel like. The badge system is quite well done, and an entertaining exercise in customization.
As for the combat itself, it's very entertaining. You have Mario, and his partners, one of which can be assisting you at any given time. You can switch between them on the fly (assuming you use the right badge, which I think pretty much everyone does), giving you quite a few choices for attacks. Additionally, Mario has a decent variety of attacks to choose from, depending on which badges you give him. You also have a timing element with every attack - press A when Mario lands on someone, hold left to charge the hammer - whatever. They keep combat interesting. And combat is interesting - the wide variety of things you can do with your partners and Mario, as well as the timed effects for each ability keep combat fresh and fun.
Of course, I should mention the art style - everything looks like it's made of paper. And so it is - many of the puzzles of the game involve abusing the fact that Mario is, in fact made of paper - such as folding him into a paper airplane or turning sideways to fit through a crack. Honestly, once you get used to it, the paper art style is just another part of the world. Sure, it gets used in puzzles, but really, it's just a fanciful art style that compliments the mood of the game. It never feels like it gets in the way of the game. So really, I suppose that it's done very well - it compliments the gameplay and the tone of the game, and never feels like it should have been done some other way. And this doesn't just apply to the paper-ness of everything - twilight town (or whatever it's called) and the black and white forest are both fantastic, as well as all the other locations in the game.
All in all, this is just a solid game. There are a few things I'd change, but they are only very minor points. This game deserves the high praise it gets, as it's one of the best RPG's I've played in quite some time.
Things to learn:
Adding some sort of timing to otherwise turn-based combat is a good way to keep combat interesting.
Interesting and fun characters are key. A good story is great as well, but always looking forward to what the characters will do next makes a game interesting.
Sometimes, just doing something very well without being especially innovative is excellent.
Feel free to use a seemingly bizarre art style! If you do it well, and it compliments the game, it'll work, no matter how initially crazy it may sound.
Also, some housekeeping - I've basically run out of pre-made reviews and design from my archives, so I'm shifting to a once-per-week update schedule (at least - I may update more than that), and ditching having any select day to update on - though Tuesday and/or Thursday will still be likely. Also, this is really last weeks post, so expect another later in the week.
A great RPG, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has you playing as Mario, as well as guest-starring Peach and Bowser. Mario faces, by and large, the X-Nauts, a group of pretty generic evil people, and their leader Grodus, who has kidnapped Peach for reasons initially unknown. Your quest is to find the seven "crystal stars," as well as rescue Princess Peach - and solve other people's problems in the meantime, too.
The story is pretty generic, but the characters really make it spring to life. Mario himself is a silent protaganist, but the other characters are fantastic - from the sexy mouse ninja Ms. Mowz to the depressed Koopa Koops, they are quite entertaining. The subplots are also quite entertaining, and often fairly original, such as when Mario looses his identity (quite literally, his name and appearance are stolen) - it's certainly enjoyable.
I feel the need to mention pacing here - most of the time, it's quite good. Dungeons and cities are laid out well (in terms of how long you spend in each), and the subplots usually last just long enough. Also, the train level towards the end was one of my favorites, and it was just a mystery with only minimal fighting for the most part. Very well done. Occasionally, however, it does falter - for example, there's one part where you have to go back and forth between the a few different areas several times - quite annoying.
Badges are how you customize Mario - you have a set number of points (that goes up as you level) to spend on badges that can give you different attacks, more health/magic, upgrade Mario's abilities... whatever you feel like. The badge system is quite well done, and an entertaining exercise in customization.
As for the combat itself, it's very entertaining. You have Mario, and his partners, one of which can be assisting you at any given time. You can switch between them on the fly (assuming you use the right badge, which I think pretty much everyone does), giving you quite a few choices for attacks. Additionally, Mario has a decent variety of attacks to choose from, depending on which badges you give him. You also have a timing element with every attack - press A when Mario lands on someone, hold left to charge the hammer - whatever. They keep combat interesting. And combat is interesting - the wide variety of things you can do with your partners and Mario, as well as the timed effects for each ability keep combat fresh and fun.
Of course, I should mention the art style - everything looks like it's made of paper. And so it is - many of the puzzles of the game involve abusing the fact that Mario is, in fact made of paper - such as folding him into a paper airplane or turning sideways to fit through a crack. Honestly, once you get used to it, the paper art style is just another part of the world. Sure, it gets used in puzzles, but really, it's just a fanciful art style that compliments the mood of the game. It never feels like it gets in the way of the game. So really, I suppose that it's done very well - it compliments the gameplay and the tone of the game, and never feels like it should have been done some other way. And this doesn't just apply to the paper-ness of everything - twilight town (or whatever it's called) and the black and white forest are both fantastic, as well as all the other locations in the game.
All in all, this is just a solid game. There are a few things I'd change, but they are only very minor points. This game deserves the high praise it gets, as it's one of the best RPG's I've played in quite some time.
Things to learn:
Adding some sort of timing to otherwise turn-based combat is a good way to keep combat interesting.
Interesting and fun characters are key. A good story is great as well, but always looking forward to what the characters will do next makes a game interesting.
Sometimes, just doing something very well without being especially innovative is excellent.
Feel free to use a seemingly bizarre art style! If you do it well, and it compliments the game, it'll work, no matter how initially crazy it may sound.
Also, some housekeeping - I've basically run out of pre-made reviews and design from my archives, so I'm shifting to a once-per-week update schedule (at least - I may update more than that), and ditching having any select day to update on - though Tuesday and/or Thursday will still be likely. Also, this is really last weeks post, so expect another later in the week.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Review: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
In this third-person action game (think something like Kingdom Hearts for gameplay, or even Mario 64) You play as the secret apprentice of Darth Vader, set between episodes 3 and 4, a force-slinging badass whose job it is, at least initially, to track down and kill the survivors of the empire's massacre of the Jedi which took place in episode 3. As is only natural for a video game, your character is actually fairly likable, and the character himself develops over time to be more of a hero, though you do have an eventual choice at the very end of the game to be good or evil. (Sort of. It's moderately complicated.) The "good" ending is actually Star Wars canon, apparently, and it's a fairly interesting tale in general.
(As a note, my review of this game comes only from the Wii version. I've never played the other versions, so anything I say here may not apply in the other versions of the game.)
The story is all well and good, and paced fairly well. The characters, as well, are fairly interesting - and of course, it helps that you already know the personalities of The Emperor and Darth Vader. It's not exactly the pinnacle of originality - especially for a Star Wars story - but it certainly gets the job done, and is certainly entertaining. Apparently, some rather important details were left out of the Wii version of this game (the rebel alliance symbol is the main characters family crest? news to me), but it still works. That said, I have no idea why this would be the case - I highly doubt it was a disk space issue, though I suppose that's not impossible. Either way, such important details shouldn't simply be cut.
But why I really love this game isn't for the story, it's for the gameplay. And let me tell you, the gameplay is fantastic. Your various force powers are, by and large, easy enough to use, as well as fairly intuitive - for example, to use "Force Push," you push the nunchuck forward. You also use the main part of the remote as a lightsaber - swinging it back and forth actually makes the main character swing his saber back and forth, in a very similar way to the way you swung the wiimote. It's really cool.
The sheer power of the main character, and the many ways you have to devastate the enemy forces, are what makes the game great. You've got your saber, you've got a few varieties of force lightning, you've got a few varieties of force push, you can throw your lightsaber (among other lightsaber-themed force powers), and you've got telekinesis, to name a few. All of them rapidly dispatch the enemy mooks, and boy is it grand. Wave after wave of enemies are sent against you, and you can dispatch them without too much difficulty in any number of entertaining ways. It's really hard to describe just how the game goes and adequetly convey the sense of fun that playing the game gives. The sheer power of the main character, the way he devastates all in his path - it's just really, really fun.
And yet, you aren't invulnerable - while you do have an innate capacity to reflect blaster shots, plenty will get through if you're not careful, and the bosses can be a pain. The balance of the main character's phenomenal cosmic powers and the game's difficulty manages to work, which is just fantastic. Enough minions (especially spread-out ones) can still do you in, and the bosses can be a pain. Which brings me to my first qualm with this game - the bosses. They all feel (at least, the humanoid ones) fairly identical, and your tactics don't really need to vary from one to another. Swing your saber, shoot some lightning, maybe try some telekinesis, and they'll eventually go down. Maybe you'll need to block from time to time, and maybe you'll have to kill some minions here or there, but the humanoid bosses (which is the majority, by the way - non-humanoid bosses are typically actually minibosses, and fairly easy in their own right) all feel basically the same.
There is also no "hard mode" in this game. Given that if you decide to start the game using your old file's data, you'll probably start with one or two maxed-out force powers, it makes the game incredibly easy until late. Additionally, there's no level select mode, which is particularly annoying given what I just said about difficulty, as well as the fact that there are many collectibles to grab throughout the levels. Trying to get all of the collectibles is quite an annoying task without any sort of level select feature. The camera could use some work as well, but it's not as bad as some I've seen.
I haven't played the multiplayer mode for this game, but I hear it's alright - though there is no online, nor are there bots you can play against. Frustrating.
The penalty for death in this game is minimal - you just lose a small amount of force points (experience used to power up your force powers), and if you're facing a boss, the boss regains a bit of health. You respawn at basically the exact same point you died at. Frankly, I think this isn't severe enough - you should get kicked back to the last checkpoint, pure and simple, and you should have a limited amount of lives before you have to restart the level. Of course, there's something to be said for being able to truck through levels, but I think with checkpoints and a fairly decent amount of lives per level, it would be a better game, since there would actually be some sense that the main character was in serious danger. Like I said earlier, the balance is good - staying alive is fairly challenging, but if you actually die, it's not that bad at all. So I suppose game balance "feels" good, but in reality, with the lack of penalty for death, it makes it a really easy game. Whenever I died in this game, I honestly felt a bit of disappointment - my thoughts were basically "Huh. Well, uh, I guess I'll go kill the dudes that killed me and move on now. And now I've got full health." Not exactly the sentiments I feel should accompany death, in pretty much any game. At the very least, the game should keep track of how many times you died, in order to make you feel bad if you die too much, and give you a "0 death run" goal to shoot for.
But all in all, this is a really great game. The gameplay is some of the funnest I've ever played, and the story is pretty good as well. I wish it was longer (it was quite easy to rent it once and beat it), but with this sort of action game, a long game isn't the standard.
Things to be learned:
Giving the main character a really high level power and tossing wave after wave of mooks at him is really, really fun if done right. Indeed, making the main character have a TON of power in general, and yet still making the game balanced, can be great fun. It's always fun to have power, and it's even better if you have incredible power and the game is still balanced. I've never encountered a game that does it as well as this one. (PS: Dear Psi-Ops, please take a look at this game. It proves that you don't have to make everything immune to your psychic powers late game in order to still have a challenge. Please take this to heart if you ever get a sequel. Love, Adam.)
Differentiate bosses. Fighting one shouldn't be the exact same thing as fight every other one.
Difficulty levels - have them. I believe this is on my "list of things games should always have." Blasting through a game with no challenge is much less fun than blasting through a game while you are being challenged.
Level select - have it. For a game like this - a game that consists of very little but one level following another following another, it's a really good feature to have.
If you can, make your multiplayer have online and computer bot capabilities. It may be some extra work, but it makes multiplayer a heck of a lot more fun.
Death should have some sort of penalty, I think. Obviously, given current games like Bioshock (or so I hear) and Destroy All Humans! that don't have a severe penalty for death, some good game designers disagree with me, and I certainly can see the reasons they choose to have a minimal penalty for death. But my (current, anyway) opinion is that there should be a decent, though certainly not unreasonable, penalty for death. I feel that this game falls into the "too small penalty for death" category.
In this third-person action game (think something like Kingdom Hearts for gameplay, or even Mario 64) You play as the secret apprentice of Darth Vader, set between episodes 3 and 4, a force-slinging badass whose job it is, at least initially, to track down and kill the survivors of the empire's massacre of the Jedi which took place in episode 3. As is only natural for a video game, your character is actually fairly likable, and the character himself develops over time to be more of a hero, though you do have an eventual choice at the very end of the game to be good or evil. (Sort of. It's moderately complicated.) The "good" ending is actually Star Wars canon, apparently, and it's a fairly interesting tale in general.
(As a note, my review of this game comes only from the Wii version. I've never played the other versions, so anything I say here may not apply in the other versions of the game.)
The story is all well and good, and paced fairly well. The characters, as well, are fairly interesting - and of course, it helps that you already know the personalities of The Emperor and Darth Vader. It's not exactly the pinnacle of originality - especially for a Star Wars story - but it certainly gets the job done, and is certainly entertaining. Apparently, some rather important details were left out of the Wii version of this game (the rebel alliance symbol is the main characters family crest? news to me), but it still works. That said, I have no idea why this would be the case - I highly doubt it was a disk space issue, though I suppose that's not impossible. Either way, such important details shouldn't simply be cut.
But why I really love this game isn't for the story, it's for the gameplay. And let me tell you, the gameplay is fantastic. Your various force powers are, by and large, easy enough to use, as well as fairly intuitive - for example, to use "Force Push," you push the nunchuck forward. You also use the main part of the remote as a lightsaber - swinging it back and forth actually makes the main character swing his saber back and forth, in a very similar way to the way you swung the wiimote. It's really cool.
The sheer power of the main character, and the many ways you have to devastate the enemy forces, are what makes the game great. You've got your saber, you've got a few varieties of force lightning, you've got a few varieties of force push, you can throw your lightsaber (among other lightsaber-themed force powers), and you've got telekinesis, to name a few. All of them rapidly dispatch the enemy mooks, and boy is it grand. Wave after wave of enemies are sent against you, and you can dispatch them without too much difficulty in any number of entertaining ways. It's really hard to describe just how the game goes and adequetly convey the sense of fun that playing the game gives. The sheer power of the main character, the way he devastates all in his path - it's just really, really fun.
And yet, you aren't invulnerable - while you do have an innate capacity to reflect blaster shots, plenty will get through if you're not careful, and the bosses can be a pain. The balance of the main character's phenomenal cosmic powers and the game's difficulty manages to work, which is just fantastic. Enough minions (especially spread-out ones) can still do you in, and the bosses can be a pain. Which brings me to my first qualm with this game - the bosses. They all feel (at least, the humanoid ones) fairly identical, and your tactics don't really need to vary from one to another. Swing your saber, shoot some lightning, maybe try some telekinesis, and they'll eventually go down. Maybe you'll need to block from time to time, and maybe you'll have to kill some minions here or there, but the humanoid bosses (which is the majority, by the way - non-humanoid bosses are typically actually minibosses, and fairly easy in their own right) all feel basically the same.
There is also no "hard mode" in this game. Given that if you decide to start the game using your old file's data, you'll probably start with one or two maxed-out force powers, it makes the game incredibly easy until late. Additionally, there's no level select mode, which is particularly annoying given what I just said about difficulty, as well as the fact that there are many collectibles to grab throughout the levels. Trying to get all of the collectibles is quite an annoying task without any sort of level select feature. The camera could use some work as well, but it's not as bad as some I've seen.
I haven't played the multiplayer mode for this game, but I hear it's alright - though there is no online, nor are there bots you can play against. Frustrating.
The penalty for death in this game is minimal - you just lose a small amount of force points (experience used to power up your force powers), and if you're facing a boss, the boss regains a bit of health. You respawn at basically the exact same point you died at. Frankly, I think this isn't severe enough - you should get kicked back to the last checkpoint, pure and simple, and you should have a limited amount of lives before you have to restart the level. Of course, there's something to be said for being able to truck through levels, but I think with checkpoints and a fairly decent amount of lives per level, it would be a better game, since there would actually be some sense that the main character was in serious danger. Like I said earlier, the balance is good - staying alive is fairly challenging, but if you actually die, it's not that bad at all. So I suppose game balance "feels" good, but in reality, with the lack of penalty for death, it makes it a really easy game. Whenever I died in this game, I honestly felt a bit of disappointment - my thoughts were basically "Huh. Well, uh, I guess I'll go kill the dudes that killed me and move on now. And now I've got full health." Not exactly the sentiments I feel should accompany death, in pretty much any game. At the very least, the game should keep track of how many times you died, in order to make you feel bad if you die too much, and give you a "0 death run" goal to shoot for.
But all in all, this is a really great game. The gameplay is some of the funnest I've ever played, and the story is pretty good as well. I wish it was longer (it was quite easy to rent it once and beat it), but with this sort of action game, a long game isn't the standard.
Things to be learned:
Giving the main character a really high level power and tossing wave after wave of mooks at him is really, really fun if done right. Indeed, making the main character have a TON of power in general, and yet still making the game balanced, can be great fun. It's always fun to have power, and it's even better if you have incredible power and the game is still balanced. I've never encountered a game that does it as well as this one. (PS: Dear Psi-Ops, please take a look at this game. It proves that you don't have to make everything immune to your psychic powers late game in order to still have a challenge. Please take this to heart if you ever get a sequel. Love, Adam.)
Differentiate bosses. Fighting one shouldn't be the exact same thing as fight every other one.
Difficulty levels - have them. I believe this is on my "list of things games should always have." Blasting through a game with no challenge is much less fun than blasting through a game while you are being challenged.
Level select - have it. For a game like this - a game that consists of very little but one level following another following another, it's a really good feature to have.
If you can, make your multiplayer have online and computer bot capabilities. It may be some extra work, but it makes multiplayer a heck of a lot more fun.
Death should have some sort of penalty, I think. Obviously, given current games like Bioshock (or so I hear) and Destroy All Humans! that don't have a severe penalty for death, some good game designers disagree with me, and I certainly can see the reasons they choose to have a minimal penalty for death. But my (current, anyway) opinion is that there should be a decent, though certainly not unreasonable, penalty for death. I feel that this game falls into the "too small penalty for death" category.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)