Kingdom Hearts

The video game industry is full of great ideas. Just ask Sean Howard, a man with a few great ideas that can't get a job in the industry to save his life. (seriously, Sean, just go back to making webcomics. You're good at it, and you might even make some money via site donations, if you just stick with it and stop being such an ass)

One great idea that the folks over at Squaresoft had (Yeah, they're SquareEnix now, I know, but they were Squaresoft at the time.) was to mash together the collected worlds of Disney and Final Fantasy, add a few original characters, and do a world-hopping fantasy adventure game called Kingdom Hearts. This was such a good idea that it spawned several sequels, garnered a huge fanbase of people with bad haircuts, and generally made fans of both Disney and Squaresoft's previous efforts wet their collective pants with glee.

I recently decided to replay Kingdom Hearts, and it simply doesn't hold up like I remembered. Sure, it features voice talent like Dan Castellaneta, James Woods, Lance Bass, and Haley Joel Osment, Sure, it's got the trademark Squaresoft Gorgeousness, and sure, it's got Gummi Ships, but it's also got the Final Boss of bad cameras, and a somewhat clunky control scheme.

I recall that playing through the game on normal difficulty was absurdly easy. It was an exercise in mashing X to not die. This time I decided to see what the game was like if I turned it up to 11, and the result is that I die. I die all the time. Half the time, I don't even get to see what killed me, because as I previously mentioned, the camera is in league with my enemies. It often seems to dodge behind walls at critical points in time, and constantly conspires to keep the worst of any group of baddies off the screen while they charge up whatever super-attack is going to result in my immediate and messy death.

It's not all bad, though. The presentation is patently beautiful, the storyline is engaging, and the antics of your constant companions, Donald Duck and Goofy, are just as fun as they always have been. I never get tired of hearing Donald Duck freak out.

One oddity, as far as Squaresoft is concerned, is the background music. It comes in short, short loops, isn't horribly well composed, and becomes grating about three minutes into any new setting. Nobuo Uematsu would have been a good choice for this, as long as they're cutting him paychecks anyways.

It's a best-seller, a classic, and should be played, I suppose, but don't bother turning up the difficulty. Available on Wii and PS2.

Prey

Prey, by 2K Games, is a first-person shooter which offers somewhat more than stand and shoot game play. In Prey, you control Tommy, a Cherokee who wants nothing more than to take his girlfriend and leave the reservation. Then he (and his girl, and his grandfather, and the entire bar the three of them are in) is abducted by a horrific race of aliens. A malfunction in the assembly line he's loaded onto frees him, and he sets out to give his abductors an ass full of pipe wrench. Tommy may be the only hope humanity has against the alien menace, But he's really only interested in saving his girl, and getting the hell home.

Prey has a variety of interesting hooks. Tommy reacts verbally in fairly realistic ways to his environment, level design makes use of gravity manipulation, wormholes, changes in scale, and an interesting grab bag of both biological and mechanical scene elements. Also, the aliens have a number of monitors tuned into Art Bell's late-night radio show Coast to Coast AM, which is covering the events on the ground.

The biggest hook however, is Spirit-Walking. Tapping into ancestral Cherokee medicine, Tommy can leave his body to walk into areas that are otherwise inaccessible, and to hunt his enemies without risking his physical form. Not that his physical form is all that precious. Upon death, Tommy has the opportunity to hunt wraiths for a short time, in order to resurrect himself and continue the fight. While this ability does mean you won't spend any time re-hashing previously completed areas, it also means that the challenge is functionally non-existent, because Tommy is basically immortal.

Sadly, while the first half of the game is clever, many of the design elements that make it so lose their color fairly quickly, and the latter half of the game is little more than a run and gun experience. And it's LONG.

My recommendation is to rent it, play until you stop being confused, horrified, and disoriented, and return it, confident that your five dollars was well-spent.

MapleStory

At first glance, MapleStory is a charming online multiplayer platform hack and slash game. Cute characters traverse landscapes reminiscent of old Super Nintendo levels, swinging swords and shooting spells at cute monsters, accompanied by music that is, if not good, at the very least not unpleasant.

I remember how excited I was when I first loaded it up and saw gameplay that seemed as if player skill might just trump 22 hours a day of grinding. Sadly, this illusion was broken pretty quickly.

The sad truth of it is that MapleStory is not a good game. As a matter of fact, in a genre where the norm is monotony, MapleStory stands out as being not only monotonous, but grind-heavy to the point of serious unbalance. In fact, Unbalanced gameplay seems to be the majority of what MapleStory is built of.

MapleStory features four profession tracks (thief, warrior, wizard, and archer), each with their own skillsets. A brief look at a forum or wiki will advise strongly against certain skill choices for any class, as a large number of the skills are basically useless for a serious player. As for casual players, well, the MMO scene just isn't for you, anyways.

For an MMO, the ability for it to remain entertaining hinges on variety, and Maplestory is sorely lacking in this department. Quests from NPCs either involve travel, collecting a large number of a certain item (dorpped randomly by certain monsters), or killing a large number of a certain kind of monster. What's worse, NPC quests often unlock a good 10 levels lower than you'd have to be to complete them.

All that said, however, MapleStory is free to download and play. If you find that you enjoy it, there's a premium item shop you can spend real money at to enhance your gaming experience.

In any case, have some relevant links, kay?
The MapleStory Homepage where the game can be downloaded, the in-game currency can be bought, and a variety of other information can be found.

A MapleStory Wiki

Rez

When you've played as many games as I have over the years, it becomes harder and harder to distinguish one game from another. Within genres, there seems to be a sad consistency which tends to make most games, sometimes even games of outstanding quality, fade into the background.

This is not a problem Rez has. Part rhythm game, part shoot-em-up, Rez shines in a way that few games ever manage.

In Rez, you take the part of a net-diving hacker set on breaking into a network built to house Eden, the self-aware program tasked with controlling data-flow on an overwhelmed world-wide network. Beset by viruses, Eden has shut down, and you have decided to jack in and risk your mind in an attempt to break the firewalls surrounding her and restore her to functionality.

Rez is a delight for the senses. Some of the best trance music I've ever heard makes up the game's soundtrack, and the player's shots (themed to the background track) add to that soundtrack very nicely. The visuals are gorgeous, and even now stand out as some of the most beautiful graphics I've yet seen.

The game interface is simple; move the targeting cursor around the screen while holding down the fire button to lock onto up to a maximum of eight targets, release the fire button to fire at said targets. Targets include enemies, incoming missile attacks, support items dropped by destroyed enemies (Blue to evolve your avatar through the six available forms, red to power your overdrive attacks, and green to raise your score), and network firewalls.

Rez features a difficulty feedback system, which tailors the boss encounters found at the end of each area to player performance in that area. Mega, Giga, or Tera versions of the end bosses are encountred based on the percentage of enemies shot down during the course of the level.

Upon completion of the game, extra modes are unlocked. Score attack mode allows players to attempt high-scores on remixes of the original levels which feature new and much more numerous enemies. Direct Assault is a classic Sh'mup remix of the original game, setting the player to the task of playing all the levels consecutively. Lost area is a bossless area with high difficulty. High performance in extra modes unlock a number of other options as well, allowing you to pick your avatar's starting form, choose color schemes for levels, and even modify your avatar's lasers.

Rez is available for the Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, and now, in a super-pretty HD version, as a download for XBox Live Arcade.

Planescape: Torment

One of the lamentable truths about the video game industry is that when something is really and truly great, it has a roughly 80% chance of being missed, at least until it's hard to find, and will cost you an arm and a leg on ebay.

From time to time, you're going to see me review a game that is out of print. Often, these are games that could run you upwards of $100 on the speculative market. Now, while there are numerous pathways one could take to acquire pirated versions of these games, and while there is no harm done to the gaming industry if one was to pirate them (especially when the company or branch that made them no longer exists), I'm not about to suggest you run out to your nearest torrent site, grab disc images, download Daemon Tools, and play a stolen game. No sir. I'd vastly prefer that you got the game legitimately. From game scalpers, who are making huge profit margins from us sorry sods who got to the game well into the third inning.

Yep.

But anyways, I digress.

Planescape: Torment is a game from the amazing (and now defunct) Black Isle Studios. Published in 1999, PS:T sold fewer than 400,000 copies, but enjoyed critical praise, and is widely regarded as one of the best games of it's genre ever made.

Imagine you wake up on a slab, and a talking skull reads a tattoo off your back instructing you to find this guy Pharod, read your journal, and be secret about what you are. Except: there're a few promlems with that. You don't remember your own name, let alone this guy Pharod, you don't seem to have a journal, and as previously stated, you don't really remember anything about yourself, so it'll be hard to avoid letting that last bit slip. First things first, though, the skull says that you and he have got to escape this Mortuary...

Thus begins PS:T. It's something of an anomaly in computer video games. I mean, sure, you can hack-and-slash your way through the game, but you'd miss out on most of it. Truth be told, there are only four encounters throughout the game that can't be solved wthout combat. The game mostly shines, however, via it's glorious writing. The plot is thick with philosophy and existential dillemas, touching on such concepts as shared reality, the nature of man, and the very nature of reality itself. Dialogue is incredibly well fleshed out, the characters have interesting and satisfying backstories, and the entire thing just comes across as one of the most subtle, intelligent, and beautiful approaches to adventure design I've personally ever seen.

PS:T is set largely in the city of Sigil, The City of Doors at the center of the Dungeons & Dragons Planescape Universe (Planescape is also defunct, being one of the many settings which was culled when Wizards of the Coast bought TSR, the company which owned D&D and Planescape). The "Doors" in question can be found in any structure closed on two sides and open in the middle; an archway, for instance, or between the legs of a statue. All such doors require a Key, which could be anything from a memory of the smell of pastries, to a whistled tune, to a shard of glass held in your right hand, and can lead anywhere. The city of Sigil is covered with such doors, and much of the fun of the game comes in discovering where they are, and how one goes about opening them.

I can't heap enough praise on this game, but it's not for the weekend gamer. Start this game, and you're looking at 100-plus hours of gameplay, over .8 million words of dialogue, and an in-depth experience that puts most of the rest of the industry to shame.

One downside, however, is that it's buggy as all hell, and Interplay, who owned Black Isle, stopped support of the game before releasing patches that addressed the vast majority of them. Luckily, as so often happens with abandoned and well-loved properties, the fanbase has released a few mods and fixes which address just about any of the problems they could find. A link to these has been included at the end of this article.

Speaking of...

If you want to buy a copy of the game, it can be found at Amazon, with prices ranging upwards from $58.00

Once you've got a copy, you'll most likely want to get the unoffical fixpack.

You can also look at a fan-created archive of the old Official Site.

Dino Run

As you may or may not be aware, the steadily advancing technology of the WWW has added a cross-platform arena to the world of gaming, in the rapidly expanding universe of Flash games. Accessible from the very browser you're using to read this, are thousands of games, mostly made by unpaid hobbyists, and offered by and large for free to whomever wishes to play them.

The purveyors of consoles are well-aware of this. All three of the current-era of gaming consoles can access and play flash games, and the Wii even has entire fansites devoted to the browser-displayable games.

As time goes on, Ill be reviewing Flash games, as well as the more traditional PC, Mac and Console titles.

As for this review, I present to you Dino Run, by PixelJam. Dino Run places you in the role of what appears to be a velociraptor, fleeing the Pyroclastic Wall of Doom, as generated by the meteor what is about to kill off you and all your kin. Unless, of course, you can outrun it. Find somewhere safe, away from the fiery Doom Wave, and save yourself!

Pinning down a single reason why this game is so good is difficult, but most of it's qualities feed into a single benefit: Near-infinite replayability. Just a few of these contributing factors:

* Upgradable Stats: As you run from the Doom, you sometimes pick up eggs, which can be traded for Dino DNA, which, when enough is amassed, allow you to trade for ungraded stats, which in turn allow you to complete higher difficulty levels.

* Challenge Runs: In addition to the main game, there are 21 unlockable Speed Runs. Each of these present new challenges, such as hoards of dinos, lots of falling meteors, lava tunnels, even super-low gravity.

* Downloadable Bonuses: Unlock all the Speed Runs? Now save your bones for wallpapers, mp3s, and icon files for both the PC and Macintosh operating systems.

* Multiplayer Races: Yeah. Says it all, don't it?

* Hats: Donate anything above and beyond what PayPal sucks away in fees, and you're given hats. Lots of hats. Way too many hats. They may not do anything, but I swear that my fez makes Shrinasaur faster. Or at least more indie-hip.

Add all this to a speed game which fights you every step of the way with lava, panicked dinosaurs, and the occasional pterodactyl dropping rocks on you, and you've got a game which I'll be playing for a very, very long time.


Hey, look! Links!

First off, and most importantly: Dino Run at PixelJam games.

Want another perspective? JayisGames did a wonderful review of Dino Run, as well as lots and lots of other wonderful games.

Escape Velocity: Nova

From Ambrosia Software, purveyors of some of the finest shareware known to human kind, comes Escape Velocity: Nova. This title puts you in the role of a starship captain at the helm of your very first shuttlecraft. Where do you go from here? Space piracy? Commercial freight running? Military service? Asteroid miner? The choices are yours to make, and each choice you can make is fleshed out in remarkable texture and detail.

Escape Velocity: Nova comes packed standard with a very open universe, which allows for the maximum freedom within the engine, but has less in the way of story than many players might want. But hey, that's OK. One of the best things about the Escape Velocity series is it's modding community. Mds are available which entirely overhaul the game, placing you both in familiar universes, such as the Star Wars, Star Trek, and Foundation settings, as well as in entirely original settings. On some of these overhauls, the writing is above and beyond what I've seen for player-written mods for any other game. There are even two (of which I am aware) that have professional writing talent behind them.

The game interface is pretty simple. view is top-down (in space... yeah, I know.) and everything is keyboard-controlled. The controls may take a while to get used to, seeing as how there are about thirty different keystrokes which control everything from requesting landing clearance, to selecting secondary weapons, to hailing ships to beg for mercy or fuel.

Ambrosia Software is cool enough to give you almost the entire game for free, and to allow you to continue playing forever, even without paying your shareware fee*. But payment means they'll make more awesome games. And I want that, and you want that. so for chrissakes,pay yer shareware fee!

Want to know more, download EV:N, or take a look at it's thousands of mods?
Check out the Homepage