Thursday, May 27, 2010

Shadowrun (SNES)


Platform:  Super Nintendo
Developer:  Beam Software
Released:  1993
Genre:  Action RPG

The Game
Jake Armitage is having a bad day.  But most days in which you die and wake up in the morgue aren't going to be your best, and that's just the situation in which Jake has found himself.  Unable to remember exactly what happened to him, he has to follow a thin trail of clues in order to figure it all out.  As he makes his way around the Seattle Metroplex in the year 2050 he has to dodge all of the people trying to kill him a second time, find help wherever he can get it, learn the path of a shamanic magician, and take down a couple of megacorporations to bring a conclusion to his adventure.  Just another day in the life of a shadowrunner.

Shadowrun is based on the popular pencil and paper RPG system of the same name.  Set in the only somewhat distant future, corporations more or less rule the parts of the world that the remnants of the sovereign nations no longer hold (and some of those chunks as well) and magic has returned to the world.  Shadowrunners are mercenaries willing to do virtually any job for the right price, finding profit by slipping through the cracks of civilization and doing the jobs the corporations aren't willing or able to dirty their own hands with directly.

The Characters
You can hire on other shadowrunners throughout the course of the game, but the only main protagonist is Jake himself, and he only speaks a few times, making any determinations concerning his character fairly difficult.  At the very least he seems prepared to finish the job he's been given and do the right thing when it comes down to it.

The bad guys - primarily taking the form of Drake, a dragon in charge of his own little corporate empire - are usually distant and cranky, but they're undeniably evil because . . . well, I guess they just are, dammit.  It's really a black and grey morality at work here.  The best baddie is undeniably the Jester Spirit, however, with his sadistically amusing dialogue and interesting character arc.

While characterization in this game isn't exactly deep, it's still there.  Virtually every NPC and PC you meet has their own distinct voice, all speaking with different accents, turns of phrase, and attitude.  Some of them - like Norbert, my favorite little maniac dwarf shadowrunner - are actually pretty damn entertaining at times.

The Writing
The story is a mildly complex plot that holds up pretty well, even if specific motivations are rarely called into question.  There are a few good revelations and a couple of decent twists . . . nothing great, but enough to keep a player interested and entertained.  In the end and despite a few oddities here and there, it definitely gives the feel of a typical Shadowrun adventure.

The dialogue is where the writing really shines, however.  As mentioned before, each character has their own particular way of talking, meaning you won't get bored chatting up four or five people with identical speech patterns.  The writing also has a good bit of clever wit about it . . . one of the runners you can hire on is a shaman named Dances With Clams, and he makes ocean references from time to time.

One thumb up.

The Gameplay
The game works on a point and click interface that would have been more at home on a PC than on the SNES.  Examining, manipulating, and picking up things isn't really so bad, but having to hit a button, move the cursor over, and then start spamming the button some more whenever one wants to initiate combat is a little bothersome, especially since no one else - including any runners you may have hired - aren't bound by any such restriction.  You also can't move Jake around while any of the cursors (manipulate, attack, magic) are active, meaning that while your enemies are free to go wherever they want while they're filling Jake with lead, Jake has to stand rooted to one spot while he returns fire.

Also unfortunate is the dialogue window.  While talking to people, you receive certain words and phrases that you can repeat to them for more information or tell to other people to get more info or advance the story in some way.  The unfortunate part is that after a while you collect an exorbitant number of keywords, and unless you already know exactly which ones will and won't get a response, you have to go down through the entire list, one word at a time, until you find just the right one or two that will make things proceed.  And if you forget or miss that one little word somehow, you might go nuts trying to figure out what you did wrong and end up starting the whole process all over again.  I remember that the first time I played this game, I was stuck in the first section for what seemed like hours all because I somehow missed saying "Lone Star" to this one guy tucked off the back office of a building.

Still, it's not too horrible.  The system is, overall, workable.  The karma system is okay.  Basic, not too deep, but it does its job.

The Challenge
I've played and beaten this game several times before, but even knowing exactly where I needed to go and exactly what I needed to do when I got there, it was still fairly challenging for me.  I'd like to take this as a hallmark of a well-balanced game, that it can be challenging (if not as challenging) for veteran players and newbie players alike.  It helps keep one from getting bored with it too easily.

The Graphics
For the most part, the graphics are beautiful, showing off worn-down slums and shiny, glittering office buildings alike with wonderful style.  The overall map of the game is pretty small compared to most SNES games, but it makes up for it by making each section of that map unique, a collection of greatly varied environments from a car-lined junkyard to a Gothic cemetery to high-rise offices to underground computer labs, with almost no cloning of rooms whatsoever.

Where the graphics fail is regarding small clickable objects, a common problem with a lot of early point and click adventure games.  One of the first items you're supposed to pick up is a scalpel from the morgue Jake wakes up in.  Unfortunately, the scalpel is only about three pixels long, so it takes a little trial and error to even discover that it's something you're supposed to take unless you already know what you're looking for.

The Music
I love the music in this game.  It's got a kind of "rock noir" sound to it a lot of the time, and I found myself quite often singing along with the catchy background tunes.

The Bottom Line
I'm an avid fan of the Shadowrun setting, having been playing and GMing it off and on since high school.  I can't say I'm horribly impressed with this particular outing . . . I'm not particularly fluent in the first edition version that this game is apparently based on, but I'm still fairly certain that a lot was cut out or changed in the transition.  Prickly little things like a very shallow stats system and having a character use magic and cyberware without any sort of detriment.

Still, I don't hate it, either.  It plays pretty well and is a decent diversion for a slow afternoon.  Let's just call it middle of the road and leave it at that.

Friday, May 7, 2010

Goof Troop


Platform:  Super NES
Developer:  Capcom
Released:  1993
Genre:  Puzzle-based Action Adventure

The Game
While out on a relaxing fishing trip, Pete and PJ get kidnapped by dastardly pirates and carted off to the nearby island of Spoonerville.  Goofy and Max give chase, determined to save their neighbors.  To do so, they have to work their way across the island, solving puzzles and whacking pirates across the noggins with barrels, potted plants, or anything else they can get their grubby mitts on.

Goof Troop the game, for the uninitiated, is based on Goof Troop the cartoon series, which was part of the 90's Disney heyday, back when both their TV shows and animated movies didn't suck major balls.  It was part of the same great lineup of Disney TV toons as Darkwing Duck, The Little Mermaid, and Aladdin, the last two of which (in my own personal opinion) managed to equal or even outshine the movies they spun off from.  How the big D's TV branch went from creating top notch entertainment like this to making crap like Cinderella II: Dreams Come True (originally the pilot for a TV series which got nixed, bumping it to direct-to-DVD) is beyond me.

The Characters
Goofy is . . . well, Goofy.  I think we all know Goofy.

Max, Goofy's son, is thankfully here the younger, fun-loving TV version and not the whiny emo teenager brat from A Goofy Movie.

Pete is Goofy's greedy, sour neighbor and (often backstabbing) sometimes friend.  When it turns out that the pirates kidnapped him because they mistook him for their long lost captain, he milks it for all its worth, ordering the pirates about and generally living it up.

PJ is Pete's kid and Max's best friend . . . and about the only thing he does in this game besides get kidnapped and then later saved is worry briefly what's going to happen to him and his dad if the pirates figure things out.

And finally there's Keelhaul Pete, the real captain and the final boss of the game, who's mighty unhappy with the impostor who's shown up in his absence.

Oh, there's also a bunch of pirates, who are trying to stop Goofy and Max, as well as the peaceful villagers of Spoonerville island, who . . . man, I dunno.  I figured they were there to give hints and clues and advice or whatever, but mostly they just spout needless exposition.

The Writing
Very simple, very basic, but surprisingly true and authentic to the show.  The only dialogue and narration is in short cutscenes at the beginning and end of the game as well as between each stage, but I can see what little there is being used if they'd actually had an episode of Goof Troop about pirates kidnapping Pete and PJ.  The characters are in character the whole way, and that's pretty cool.

The Gameplay
Pretty damn good, I must say!  And not just for a licensed product, but just as a general game!  I'm as shocked as anyone might be!  That's why I keep using these exclamation points!  Wow!

The game is primarily puzzle based, trying to figure out what combination of tools (wooden planks to close up small gaps, bells to make the pirates follow you, grappling hooks to grab things, stun pirates, close up large gaps, etc.) you need to get past an area, or what order you need to kick blocks around into the holes so that doors will open.  There's some minor inventory management puzzles, as you can only carry two items at a time, which are surprisingly not annoying and are relegated mostly toward the end of the game, where they add a little more challenge.

There is action involved, what with the pirates that are coming after you, but oftentimes said action is part of the puzzle as well.  Some doors won't open until you've defeated all the enemies in the room, and the game will force you into coming up with inventive ways of dealing with the pirates instead of just straightforward bashing their skulls in.

All in all, big thumbs up!

The Challenge
There were a few puzzles that had me scratching my head for a few moments, but for the most part everything - both action and puzzles - was easy and quite simple.  This is unsurprising and perfectly understandable, however, as the game was almost certainly created primarily for younger children, for whom it would provide a good deal more challenge.  And even though I zipped through the game with little to no problems, I was having more than enough fun that the low difficulty was entirely forgivable.

The only point where I actually did find myself sitting up and taking notice was the final battle against Keelhaul Pete.  It still wasn't all that hard, but he's a mean old bastard, that's for sure.

The Graphics
The design of the characters and rooms was great, marred only by spotty textures.  Being a game based on a cartoon, I think that it would have benefited much more from having mostly flat colors, similar to the visuals in The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past.  The pseudo-realistic feel that they seemed to be trying for didn't really work out so well.

Still, it wasn't an eyesore or anything.  I probably only noticed because, y'know, I was trying to pay attention to that kind of stuff for the review.

The Music
Catchy, pleasant, and inoffensive.

Y'know . . . Disney music.

The Bottom Line
Wow.

I really didn't expect to like this game, but I do.  I really really do.  Looking it up on Wikipedia after beating Keelhaul Pete revealed that it has a cult following, and I can see why.  It's simple, fun, and potentially addictive.  It doesn't fall into the same trap as most other licensed games, as well, that being to just make a crappy little half-made game and slap an already existing property onto it.  Capcom could definitely have made this game with original characters and no one would have known the difference, but the fact is that both the Goof Troop setting and the mechanics of this game work rather well with each other, making it where two things that are perfectly good separately have been combined to make something great together.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow


Platform:  Game Boy Advance
Developer:  Konami
Released:  2003
Genre:  Metroidvania (Action Adventure)

The Game
During an eclipse in the year 2035, Soma Cruz and Mina Hark- er, Hakuba get sucked into Dracula's castle.  Finding themselves trapped, Mina stays by the entrance while Soma explores the building, trying to find a way out.  He meets several people tied to the mystery of the castle along the way, begins to display powers he never knew he had, and gets inexorably drawn into a dark destiny that's been waiting for him his whole life.

Aria of Sorrow is the second GBA Castlevania made by the folks who created Symphony of the Night, and it is the third and last Castlevania game made for the GBA overall.  It has a sequel, Dawn of Sorrow, which was made for the DS.

The Characters
Soma Cruz is our protagonist, ladies and gentlemen.  He's your typical white-haired Japanese pretty boy type, but he still manages to be a pretty interesting character for all that.  He's got the powers, the destiny, and the dark secret that even he doesn't know, which all gives him some pretty decent inner and outer conflicts.

Mina Harkne- dangit, did it again, I mean Mina Hakuba is his childhood friend (there seem to be a lot of those in Castlevania) and one of the keepers of the shrine from which the two of them get transported to the castle.  She spends most of her time giving hints (provided by one of the other characters) and healing Soma when he stops by to see her at the castle's entrance.  Basic two-dimensional support character.

Graham Jones is the primary antagonist for most of the game.  He tries to buddy up with Soma at first, but once he realizes that the younger man is absorbing the powers of the castle's monsters, he gets ticked.  Why?  Because he was born on the day that Dracula was last defeated (supposedly forever) back in 1999, and he intends to be the one to absorb all those powers, as well as the very essence of Dracula in the hopes of becoming Dracula himself.  He's kind of a jerk for the rest of the game, but even then he's pretty affable, since he believes his ascension is inevitable and that Soma is a minor speed bump at most on the path to his destiny.

Then there are a few minor characters wandering around . . .

Yoko Belnades is a member of the church who meets up with Soma a few times to encourage him and help keep him focused.  Genya Arikado is a dapper man in a suit who provides Soma with information about the castle, mostly by passing along hints through Mina.  He's also Alucard, Dracula's son.  I'm not really spoiling anything there . . . very early in the game, Yoko (I think it was Yoko, anyway) nearly calls him Alucard before correcting herself.  The shortly named J is an amnesiac wandering around the castle.  The only thing he's certain of is that he has some connection with what's going on, and he's right.

And then . . . there's Hammer.

Hammer is quite possibly one of the worst human beings in existence.  He's an American Army guy that was ordered to go to Mina's shrine, but once he gets trapped in Dracula's castle, he almost immediately abandons his ill-defined mission and decides to start selling crap that he's found to Soma for a profit.  So to start off with, he's a greedy wuss.  And he's also something of a stingy greedy wuss, since everything he sells is swords and spears and the like.  You're an army guy, dude!  Where's your machine gun?!  Your grenades?!  I'll buy 'em all!  Sure, I might need some sort of magic sword when I'm fighting Dracula Jones or whatever, but when I use the single Handgun in the game, it seems to perforate the regular monsters just fine!  Hell, the Zombie Soldiers throw grenades!  What, you couldn't find any extra grenades to sell me?!

And to cap off his being a useless greedy wuss, he's also got rape face.  I'm gonna show you a picture to prove it, but don't look too long or he might steal your soul . . .


There is absolutely nothing about that expression that doesn't say "YOU GOAN GET RAPED".  And yes, I know that might be profiling or whatever, but after Yoko gets injured and has to sit out the rest of the game unconscious at the main gate where Hammer's set up his shop, he asks Soma about her and says that she's his "type".  Yes, Hammer.  I'm quite sure that the unconscious woman who has a nasty knife wound is definitely your type, you sick fuck.

Sweet Jebus.

The Writing
Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and say the story is good.  Betrayal, dark destinies, good vs. evil, some enemies become friends and some friends become enemies, blah blah blah.  But it all seems to move so fast.  It might be a translation thing, I dunno and I'm quite willing to believe that's all there is to it, but a lot of the characters just seem to jump to certain (correct) conclusions pretty damn quick.  At one point, one of the characters asks Soma if he knows anything about "the predictions".  Exactly that.  Absolutely no clue as to exactly which predictions out of the millions or billions that have been made in the past, or even which of the lesser but still substantial numbers of very famous predictions made.  But Soma automatically divines that they mean the future insights of Nostradamus and is told "Exactly!".

And this sort of thing happens several times throughout the game, to the point where I started to believe that everyone in the castle had somehow gained either telepathic or precognitive powers.  A minor thing, but annoying nonetheless.

The Gameplay
Soma is sloooooooow, ohmigaw he is slow.  Not so slow that it's frustrating or annoying, really, but still slow enough that I noticed it almost constantly.  He doesn't get a proper dash maneuver until almost the very end of the game, so most of the time I was walking every damn where.  Fortunately, there are portals spaced somewhat evenly throughout the castle, allowing quick and easy transport from one area to another.  Also fortunately, his lack of speed doesn't adversely affect the combat for the most part.

I like the weapons system of Aria.  The Vampire Killer whip is cool, don't get me wrong.  But after playing around with nothing but that whip in Harmony of Dissonance, it felt good to get a nice variety of weapons to choose from.  Soma gets to choose from hammers (powerful but slow), spears (swung from underneath), and two kinds of swords (stabbing straight out and swinging down from above), as well as a nice selection of specialty weapons that work in various ways, such as the Whip Sword (acts like a whip, natch) and the Handgun (which shoots things from a distance, also natch).  The spears and hammers annoyed the hell out of me, so I stuck mostly to the swords which, thankfully, were the most plentiful weapon type in the game.

While I liked the weapons and most other aspects of the game's combat, I'm kind of on the fence about the soul system.  Much of Soma's abilities come from absorbing the randomly dropped souls of the monsters he kills.  There are three types, those being Red (one-shot attack abilities, activated like subweapons in other Castlevanias), Blue (sustained abilities, with a mixed bag of results covering attacks, defense, and movement), and Yellow (support abilities).  While I certainly like the depth of the system, allowing you to have a wide variety of power combination, I don't like that circumstances in the game often force you to change these abilities on the fly.  I don't know about anyone else, but I feel that if you end up spending as much or even more time in your menu screen switching out abilities as you do fighting monsters and, y'know, actually playing the game, there might be a small problem with the way the system is set up.

The Challenge
Aria of Sorrow sits right on the good side of frustratingly difficult for me.  There were a few times when I started to get truly annoyed at the cheap shit that kept getting thrown at me (the Disc Armors, green Medusa Heads, and most of the flying enemies were especially nasty about this), but overall I found the game to be decently challenging, especially after the slaughterously easy Harmony of Dissonance.  I found myself having to actually come up with different sets of tactics for each new monster I faced . . . hell, the fact that I had to come up with tactics to take any of the monsters out is in itself pretty cool, and points to good AI programming.  They weren't just buffing up monsters later in the game with more HP and MP, they were actually giving them unique abilities and behaviors that I had to take into account in order to get ahead.

So kudos on that!

The Graphics
It may be just me, but it looks like this game took a step back from Harmony in the graphics department, especially in the lighting effects of the lamps, candelabras, and the like.  There's also a few odd bits here and there that I noticed, such as the wavy fog cutting off oddly at walls.  As a trade-off, the character models - which was one of the few things I faulted Harmony on in the graphics department - have been much improved.  Soma isn't surrounded by a neon blue aura, his walk cycles make it look like he's moving with a goldurn purpose, and everyone actually appears like they belong in a Game Boy Advance game.  I really think-


GAH!  Jeez, okay, that's one graphic I definitely could have done without.

The Music
I decided to actually try and pay attention to the music for this game, and I found it very easy to do here, 'cause I like it!  If I was the type to buy soundtracks to things, I might possibly someday perhaps consider maybe buying the AoS soundtrack.

The Bottom Line
Yah, I complained about a few things, but they were mostly minor.  Overall I feel that this is a good and definitely very solid game.  Played once, would play again.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Metroid Fusion


Platform:  Game Boy Advance
Developer:  Nintendo R&D1
Released:  2002
Genre:  Action Adventure

The Game
Some time after the events in Super Metroid, Samus Aran goes back to SR388 (the home planet of the metroids, which she scoured clean of the little buggers back in Metroid II: Return of Samus) with a group of scientists from the Biologic Space Laboratories (aka BSL).  She encounters and is infected by an organism that becomes known as an X Parasite.  The X attacks not only her but the organic parts of her suit, several sections of which the scientists have to surgically remove and later send off to one of their labs for study.  Just as Samus is about to shuffle off this mortal coil, someone hits on the idea of using some Metroid cells to whip up an antidote, and it works!  Samus can never be infected by X again, but it has irreversibly changed her cellular structure.  After she has mostly recovered, she gets a call from the Galactic Federation, sending her to the BSL space station on which her infected suit parts were being studied.  Seems there's been some sort of mishap, and they need Samus to go check it out . . .

Metroid Fusion is the fourth game in the primary Metroid series (despite the "Prime" in their name, the Metroid Prime series is a side story that happens in between Metroid and Metroid II), and the second to be on a hand-held system.

The Characters
Samus does a lot more gabbing in this game than she does in most Metroid installments, though we still don't get too much info on just what she's like.  We know that she's basically pragmatic, resourceful, determined, and has a problem with authority . . . but that could be said of virtually any action hero.

Fusion introduces a new character into the Metroid universe, an artificial intelligence that Samus eventually nicknames "Adam", after a commanding officer of hers of which she was somewhat fond.  He's an interesting character, and I actually look forward to seeing more of both him and his namesake, the latter of which is slated to appear in the upcoming Other M.

The best character in the game, however, has to be the X Parasites themselves.  They've turned out to be a very interesting new foe for Samus, a worthy successor to the space pirates and metroids of the previous games.  I found the way they work to be very well thought out and executed.  After infecting and absorbing the cells of a host creature, killing it off in the process, the X has the ability to duplicate the form and abilities of that creature.  In their natural form, they appear to be a giant floating mass of plasm.  If this had been another series - say, System/Bio Shock instead of Metroid - I could see how they could have turned into something extremely dark and creepy, which gave them a nice edge.  Not that they aren't kinda creepy anyway.

Speaking of creepy, and representing the best of the best, is SA-X.  SA-X is the X Parasite which infested the organic parts of Samus' original suit, and it has used that and the bits of Samus' DNA that it absorbed to turn itself into the ultra ass kicking machine that Samus was at the end of Super Metroid.  This scary bitch truly is creepy, and dangerous, and every time she comes on the screen, the game lets you know it.  She is also, of course, the final boss (or at least the last one to really count), and extremely good at it.

The Writing
Fusion's story is great.  The struggle against the X is well done, and the sequence of events through the course of the game is well plotted.  Though Metroid isn't really a series that particularly needs a lot of plot, this one makes the absolute best of what it's got.

But while the story is great, the writing is not.  Props on a good idea, but several million points off for terrible execution.  Firstly, I feel that the game would have been better serviced if the intro had been playable.  It would've helped give the player a better connection to Samus' predicament if her infection by the parasite had been part of a playable battle sequence instead of about three seconds in a cut scene.  As it is, the whole intro just kinda feels like "Okay, sooooo, a bunch of stuff happened . . . and now it's game time!"  Why couldn't it have been game time while that bunch of stuff happened?  I mean, we got to play the part where the infant metroid was taken by Ridley at the beginning of Super Metroid, after all.

And second, much of the backstory stuff in Fusion feels extremely tacked on.  I don't mind backstory exposition and I don't mind flashbacks or references to it, but I do mind it when it feels like it's just coming out of nowhere and sounds like it was just made up on the spot and doesn't fit in with anything else.  As much as I would like to know more about Adam and the Adam AI, both elements have just that sort of feel to me.

The Gameplay
The controls are spot on.  Steering Samus around in this game feels smooth and comfortable, very close to the way it was in Super Metroid.  The rooms are nice and spacious, allowing for even better movement and fine control.  It shocks and dismays me that they took this wonderfully constructed engine and turned it into the lurching horror that is the Zero Mission engine.

There are changes both big and small in the way Samus' abilities work from previous installments in the Metroid series.  The changes - such as the Ice Missiles instead of the Ice Beam - took a little getting used to, but it's not so bad or so different overall.  I look forward to seeing how the new suit's powers develop in future games.

The Challenge
Fusion manages to hit that sweet spot that so few games seem to do.  It doesn't take the super-easy route where walking from one end of the map to the other is a cakewalk and I barely even notice that I'm trodding on the gashed and bleeding backs of my enemies.  It doesn't take the super-hard route where I die time after time after time and feel that there is no Earthly way of getting past a certain point.  Instead, I died every once in a while, but in ways that I could see were my own fault, and that if I tried just a few more times, I could eventually get past it.  Winning involved neither luck of the draw nor simple button mashing; it involved learning the skill necessary to advance.  And I like that.

The place where this was most evident to me was the final battle with the SA-X.  I believe I tried beating her at least twenty times, but none of those deaths left me feeling discouraged in the least.  I gradually got further and further with each fight, learning the moves needed to keep one step ahead of the SA-X as I went along.  There wasn't any hoping that she didn't randomly use this particular ability and wipe me out with one shot, there wasn't any relying on a particular glitch or weakness that the game designer hadn't anticipated . . . it was all me, baby.  And that's the way it should be.  No cheap outs for the game's AI or for the player.  No attempts that end within three seconds of the fight because Samus got hit once and THERE ARE NO ROOM FOR MISTAKES, DAMMIT!

I wish more game designers would learn to set the challenge rating of their games like this.

The Graphics
Mostly based on those of Super Metroid, so verrah nice.

I didn't think I would, but I'm digging the design of Samus' new suit.  In the end, it doesn't really look that much different from the original, anyway, except for having a more organic than technological look.

I love the level design of Fusion.  Running around underground in caves and planet-based pirate bases is great and all, but the shift to a space station is a nice change of pace.  I really enjoyed the more logical, structured form of the station compared to the sprawling, organic feel of the previous game maps.  When the computer first opened up the elevators for the six main sections, all lined up in a tidy little row, I though, "Oh, hey . . . this is gonna be neat."

The Music
No complaints here.  Sounded a lot like Super Metroid music to me.

The Bottom Line
I have to admit, when I first started reading about Fusion way back when it originally came out, I was a bit leery.  Samus is in a weird new suit?  She's fighting some kind of Parasite organism that isn't a metroid?  Eeeeeeh, I dunnoooooo . . .

I'm thankful to say that as I progressed through the game, these feelings were quickly abandoned by the wayside.  The whole "new suit" thing wasn't nearly as much of a departure from the original as I had built up in my head, and I won't mind seeing it again in Metroid 5 or whatever.  The X Parasites were also pretty dang snazzy, and I find myself hoping they might pop up again later on.

In the end, I'm gonna place Metroid Fusion as my second favorite in the series, right after Super Metroid.  It's a damn good game in my opinion, and one that I'll most likely end up playing through again at least a few more times.

Metroid: Zero Mission


Platform:  Game Boy Advance
Developer:  Nintendo R&D1
Released:  2004
Genre:  Action Adventure

The Game
Once again players take on the role of galactic badass Samus Aran as she takes on Mother Brain and the space pirates in an attempt to take back the Metroids that the pirates done stoled.

This is a . . . well, I hesitate to use the word remake, since so much has changed from the original Metroid.  It's sort of an update crossed with a reimagining that still uses the same basic framework as the original while changing almost everything else around and adding on a whole bunch of new stuff.  Despite their similarities, in most ways Metroid and Zero Mission are two completely different games.

The Characters
Samus Aran is pretty much the same as she ever was, with the only addition to her character from the original being a couple of pages of monologue setting up the story.  Her design, while updated for the newer technology, is still more or less the same.

Ridley, Kraid, and Mother Brain, while still as lacking in characterization as ever, have meanwhile gotten massive design upgrades to bring them in line with their appearances in Super Metroid.  Mother Brain is now sportin' a wicked looking cycloptic eye, Kraid's gone on a bulk-up program, and Ridley is larger and more monstrous-pterodactyl-like than ever.

The Writing
For the most part, it's basic boilerplate, same as the original.  The Samus monologues don't really add anything other than allowing the player to pass on reading the story section of the instruction booklet.

But for the rest part, there's been a new mission added to the story!  And I hate it.

I understand that with this "remake" they wanted to add in a bunch of new and exciting stuff.  I applaud them for putting an extra section into the game, as it gives the folks who already played the original Metroid that much more reason to bother playing this game.  What I have a problem with is how they did it.  First off, it was placed after the end of the game, making it feel so extremely tacked on that I swear I could see the thumtacks sitting right at the edge of the screen.  What they should have done, in my opinion, is expand their other main addition to the map, the Chozo Ruins, even further.  Put in a few more mini-bosses, maybe even a whole new Ridley/Kraid-like sub-boss or something.  Y'know, integrate the extra mission into the overall game like Super Metroid did with its new sections instead of making the player go "Yay, I won!  I . . . aw, what?!" at the very end.

The Gameplay
On the good side . . . there's a map!  Oh, sweet merciful heavens, there's a map!  And it tells me where my next major goal can be located!

On the bad side . . . jeez, Samus, did you eat bricks for dinner or what?  This isn't the high-flying daredevil gymnast Samus Aran of Super Metroid to be sure.  And that could be understandable as this is earlier in her career, but the thing is, she was nice and agile and loose in the original Metroid.  So I'm gonna have to peg this one on badly designed character movement.  Driving Samus in Zero Mission is like driving a rock in water, and there's really no excuse for that.  Especially since - and this is truly baffling - it used a modified version of the Metroid Fusion engine, and Metroid Fusion's controls were absolutely wonderful.  I guess "modified" in this case is another word for "ruined".

Adding to the frustration is the claustrophobic feel of the corridors.  The original had its tiny spaces, to be sure, but compared to Zero Mission's hallways you might as well have been leaping around a twelve acre bit of flat land without any trees or other obstructions.

The Challenge
On the good side . . . the main game isn't Nintendo Hard anymore!  Save for the problems caused by Samus' wonky movement, playing through the game is challenging without being hair-pullingly annoying.  Fighting Mother Brain was about the only point where I was ready to start throwing things, but that's understandable really since she's the last boss of the game.

Oh, wait, right, the extra mission thing.  That brings us to the bad side . . . it's straight back to Nintendo Hard again!  Samus starts this mission off bereft of her suit and thus virtually all of the abilities that she's painstakingly garnered over the course of the game.  And to make matters worse, this mission turns Metroid into a sneaking game!  I hate sneaking games!  I just don't have the patience for them.  I wanna kill, and I wanna kill now, and simultaneously forcing me to sneak around while also turning my badass character into a wuss with a tiny little stun gun isn't going to do anything but piss me off.

Sure, eventually Samus regains her suit and you get to tear through the pirate ship like a flamethrower through rice paper, but I don't feel it really makes up for the betrayal that this extra mission pulled on me.  Screw you, pirate ship!

The Graphics
Based almost directly on the Super Metroid graphics, so all good there.

The Music
No major complaints.

The Bottom Line
Many of the problems of the original were ameliorated for this version (ooh, "version" . . . I like that better than "remake"), and for that I'm glad.  Unfortunately, it also brought with it a whole new batch of frustrations.  Overall, I'd say Zero Mission is better than the original Metroid, but it's still pretty bad.  Worth a play if you're a heavy Metroid fan, but otherwise I'd say give it a pass and play Metroid Fusion or Super Metroid instead.

Metroid


Platform:  Nintendo Entertainment System
Developer:  Nintendo R&D1
Released:  1986
Genre:  Action Adventure

The Game
Samus Aran, an agent for the Galactic Federation (and who just happens to be a fine lady underneath her futuristic space armor), has been given the task of retrieving life forms known as Metroids, which have been stolen by a bunch of no good, low down, just plain rotten space pirates who plan to use the creatures as biological weapons.

It is, of course, well known at this point that Samus is a woman, but back when this game was first released, it was a well guarded secret.  The original Japanese instruction manual used gender-neutral pronouns, which was sneaky, and the English translations used male pronouns, which is kinda cheating but understandably necessary.  Either way, it rocked a lot of gamers' worlds when they found out that the whoop-ass space pirate-killin' fightin' machine that they had been controlling the whole time wasn't a man, baby.  Whether because or in spite of this, Samus has become not only one of the top ranking heroines in video games, but one of the most popular video game heroes regardless of gender of all time.

The Characters
Not much can be said about this crew, since both protagonist and antagonists are pretty silent.  We've got our resident ass-kicker Samus Aran, who has started receiving a little more personality and backstory as of late.  We've got Ridley and Kraid, the sub-bosses of the game, who basically just sit in their little rooms and wait for their fights with Samus to start.  And we've got Mother Brain who . . . well, signs point to her being a corrupted organic computer or something like that.

The Writing
Um, well, what I wrote up above is pretty much it.  Not big on the writing, most of these early NES games.

The Gameplay
To these old hands and this old brain, the controls for Metroid feel hopelessly outdated.  You can't shoot down, you can't switch from shooting up to sideways while you're jumping or vice versa, you can't shoot any lower than your waistline, and so on and so on.  But compared to games at the time of Metroid's original release, the controls were basically all good.  And even without that modern flexibility, Samus still controls like a dream.  She's very gymnastic, fast, and smooth in her movements, especially once she gets the High Jump power-up.

And speaking of power-ups, Metroid has a great system for upgrading Samus' various abilities.  There's a nice amount of depth to her powers, with the only unfortunate part being you can't have the Ice Beam and the Wave Beam at the same time, which sucks because it would help so damn much.

The Challenge
And now it's time for me to break down into serious rant mode.

I used to think that the original Metroid was kind of neat and a halfway decent game.  I no longer think this.  It is an unforgiving bastard of a game that almost seems to dare you to play it.  I hate it forever, and the reason is quite simple . . . it's too damn hard.

Now, I should make a couple of things clear before I continue.  The thing is, I'm not afraid of a challenge.  I'm one of those gamer types who likes to beat a game without any outside help.  No cheat codes, no strategy guides, no walkthroughs, no maps, no other person standing over my shoulder and telling me how to beat this section, so on and so forth.  Once I've actually beaten the final boss and am going back to find all the secret stuff, or if I'm play through for a second time or more, then fine.  I'll grab every single one of those things I can get my hands on and soak up every bit of cheating knowledge I can.  I also hate it when games are too easy, and I'll complain heartily about that as well.  I like that nice little spot right in the middle where things are just challenging enough to keep things interesting while not so difficult that I start throwing things in a fit of rage and start truly believing that there is absolutely no way any human being could possibly be expected to win under the circumstances.

That said, I eventually had to break down and seek out a Metroid map.  It's bad enough that the place is huge and completely wide open compared to most NES games, but it also has to have tons of corridors that are exact copies of each other, a million and one secret areas - many of which are actually vital to proceeding through the game - which take hours to find through trial and error, and not even a vague indication of a general direction in which you might should maybe be heading.  While the map I found was helpful in that it also showed where missile tanks, energy tanks, and the various power-ups are, I wouldn't have particularly cared if it hadn't because all I really needed it for was so that I wouldn't get lost for days on end!  Seriously, before I looked it up, I often found myself going in circles over and over again without even realizing it for about half an hour or more.  This does not seem like good level design to me.

Further, Metroid was obviously one of the earliest games that helped create the term Nintendo Hard.  This normally wouldn't be a problem for me because I grew up playing nothing but Nintendo Hard games for many years.  But Metroid is just unforgivingly difficult to the point of ridiculousness.  It's great that they don't give you a certain number of lives or continues so you can just keep going with all the stuff you've already collected and without having to start all over from the very beginning of the game, but transporting you all the way back to the entrance of the section you died in with only 30 Energy, meaning that your only real choices are to either hope you find an energy tank before you face something particularly dangerous or spend the next half-hour to full hour grinding for health bit by tiny bit?  Who's bright idea was that?!  The game's difficulty level is bad enough without having to resort to such cheap tricks to make it even harder!  It only becomes tolerably challenging once you get the Screw Attack, which finally keeps you from getting killed while trying to walk across a room.  A tiny, crawlspace-sized room with a monster flying around in it that only moves to where you can reliably shoot it for a split-second before it's suddenly all up in your grill and your suit explodes and AW DAMMIT BACK AT THE LIFT AGAIN.

And to hell with Mother Brain.  That's all I'm gonna say about that.

Also far too frustrating . . . the password system.  Thank goodness future installments of the Metroid series finally added the save feature, because part of the horrendous difficulty of the game is simply putting in these 200 character monstrosities that the world's leading cryptographers are still trying to figure out decades later.

The Graphics
As stated above, many of the corridors are clones of each other.  They're different from corridors in different sections of the map, but within each individual section, you might end up running back and forth down the same monster-studded hall for ages before you even notice you're not actually getting anywhere.  The visuals look great, don't get me wrong, it's just that they're the same visuals over and over again.

The baddies of the game are all visually interesting, even after seeing their updated designs in other Metroid games, and Samus' suit is, of course, a classic.

The Music
Nice and equal parts science-fictiony, actiony, and 8-bitty.

The Bottom Line
Like I said, I used to like Metroid, but now that I've actually played it all the way through, it has earned my neverending hatred.  I'm glad that it spawned so many other wonderful games, especially since if I ever get a hankerin' for some Metroid action, I can just go play them instead of this infuriating blood pressure cooker.  All of the good points it has got buried underneath the cavalcade of deaths and setbacks I had to endure.

Fuck you, Metroid.

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance


Platform:  Nintendo Game Boy Advance
Developer:  Konami
Released:  2002
Genre:  Metroidvania (Action Adventure)

The Game
Juste Belmont, grandson of Simon Belmont, is drawn into the fight against Dracula when his friend Maxim returns from a long journey having lost both a huge chunk of his memory and Lydie, his and Juste's childhood friend.  Together, the two men retrace Maxim's steps until they come across a strange castle filled with monstrous beasties.  Over the course of the game, Juste comes to find out that it is Dracula's castle (duh) and that the spirits within now threaten not only Juste and Lydie's life, but Maxim's very soul.

This is the second game created by the people who made the widely acclaimed Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, making it one of the earliest installments of the Castlevania series to help bring about the fan term "Metroidvania".  It also pulls some thematic inspiration from Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, as you go around the castle collecting the same body parts of Dracula that Simon grabs up in that earlier game and they are intimately tied into the mystery behind the bond between Maxim and the castle.

The Characters
Though there is an interesting story to be had, like most Castlevanias, characterization is fairly sparse, the worst instance being Lydie, who doesn't really progress beyond being your typical damsel in distress.  Juste is more or less your standard hero type, his emotional range staying pretty well within the "angry-concerned-jovial" trilogy of action hero acting.  Maxim is the one who comes closest to approaching interesting, since he's the only one to have any real motivations and internal conflict, but he's only seen on a handful of occasions throughout the game.

Still, the lack of real characterization doesn't really detract from the game, as it's more or less just a basic framework upon which to hang the other elements of the game.

The Writing
As with the characterization, the story is a fairly basic tale of rivalry, betrayal, action, heroism, self-sacrifice, and good vs. evil.  Nothing to get too excited about, but it does its job adequately.

The Gameplay
The gameplay is where Harmony of Dissonance truly shines.  Juste moves extremely well, and gains several power ups that improve his maneuverability even more.  Considering the scale of the castle and that you'll be spending a massive amount of your time just moving from one section on one side of the map to another section all the way on the other side, this is a good thing.  Without the dash and slide abilities, I would most likely have given up after the third or fourth time having to walk through any given section.

Though Juste's primary attack (the whip, natch) stays more or less the same throughout the entire game, I like the depth they gave to the subweapon system.  You've got all your standard Castlevania mainstays such as the Dagger, Axe, and Holy Water, but you can also mix and match them with the five spellbooks you can find throughout the castle for varying effects.  The one I ended up using for the most part was the Wind Book + Cross combo, which caused a shield of flying crosses to whirl around Juste in a wide circle, damaging any creature hit by it.

The equipment system is pretty basic, but solid.  Most items are rare, but you rarely ever even use them, so it's not a big deal.

The Challenge
If there's one spot I can point to and definitely say "I'm not happy with this" without any qualifiers, it would have to be that Harmony of Dissonance is too damn easy.  I explored 200% of the castle (there's two castles, by the way, just like in Symphony of the Night), got all three endings, found almost every single findable item in the game, beat every mini-boss . . . and I died a total of two times.  And it wasn't even because the guys I was fighting were particularly difficult.  It was because I'd gotten so used to just flying through every obstacle that I stopped paying attention to my health meter most of the time.  Things jumped to being a little bit tougher in the second castle and I hadn't been prepared for just how much life each hit would take from me.  After these two deaths and after just a few minutes of collecting better gear, I was able to go right back to coasting through the entire rest of the game.  Even the end bosses ended up going down like little bitches.

Yawn.

The Graphics
Stellar.  The castle is beautifully atmospheric, looking just like Dracula's castle should in a Castlevania game.  The monsters, both the classic and the new, have wonderful designs and well-made sprites.

Unfortunately, this cannot be said of the human character sprites.  Juste, Maxim, and Lydie are all very muddy and ill-defined, looking more like they belong in the NES era than the SNES look that the GBA usually achieves.  Further, Juste is inexplicably surrounded by a blue aura that trails behind him as blue afterimages of himself.  Now, I know that Alucard had a similar shadowy effect on him in Symphony of the Night, but in SotN, it looked cool and wasn't very obtrusive.  In HoD, it's this terrible flat neon blue that looks horribly out of place and is, frankly, an eyesore.  An eyesore that follows you around the entire damn game because it's attached to the player character like some sort of super-resilient bioluminescent fungus.

The Music
I typically don't pay attention to game music unless it's particularly bad.  Since I didn't really pay that much attention to it here, I've just gotta assume that it wasn't bad enough to attract my notice.  The only points at which the music did catch my ear was during the file naming screen (a funky beat that I rather enjoyed) and in the save rooms (there didn't seem to be any music, and the sudden lack of audio output caught me off guard and annoyed me every single time).

The Bottom Line
The creators of Harmony of Dissonance, it seems, wanted to try and make lightning strike twice by crafting what would basically be a portable version of Symphony of the Night.  For the most part, I would say that they succeeded.  It's of a smaller scope and naturally limited by the platform that it was created for, but still a very entertaining play and, in my opinion, worth wasting a few hours on.  I just wish that it had been a little more difficult and that the hero wasn't lined with dayglo shoelaces.

Hello, And Welcome To YOTGR

Please allow me to introduce myself.  I'm a man of poverty and taste.

At least I hope I have taste.  I mean, I like old video games for one thing.  Scratch that . . . I love old video games.  I was just a kid during the days when Nintendo revitalized the video game industry after the Crash of '83, but after I got my teeth sunk into the games of that time, I also started to realize my love for games that were old even back then.  Classics like Pac Man and Galaga and Pong, who's popularity is still felt to this day, and who's arcade machines can still be found in pizza places across America.  And as I grew up, I still found myself drawn to the games of yesteryear, even when a particular yesteryear used to be a future and finally presentyear for me at some point.  To this day, I still consider the Super Nintendo era to have been the true Golden Age of Video Games, and have ever since I first played Super Mario World nearly two decades ago.

As I mentioned above, I am a man of poverty.  I'm not living on the streets or anything, but for most of my life money has been hard to come by.  As a result, I haven't been up to date with the latest gaming tech in several, several years.  Old games are basically all I get to play nowadays since they're all I can afford . . . and that doesn't really bother me in the least.  I may salivate just like everybody else over the newest, shiniest toy in the video game toybox, but I have learned great patience, secure in the knowledge that someday everything will become cheap enough that I can afford to play it.  Maybe not today, maybe not this year or even the next, but someday it will be mine.  In the meantime, I happily stick with the old stuff that still entertains me just as much - if not more in some cases - as the new junk.

And now I intend to help share that love of old games with my fellow internet denizens by playing and then reviewing them.  The games, that is.  Not the internet denizens.

"But what," you may ask, "constitutes an 'old' game, Jim?"  And rightly so.  Well, I'll tell you.

For the purposes of my reviews an old game is any that isn't on a current generation console.  That means that at the time of this writing, I will not be reviewing anything on the XBox 360, Playstation 3, Wii, DS, or the like.  Everything before all that is fair game.  Of course, computer games - which I also intend to review from time to time - may be a little more difficult to peg for some folks, but I'm just gonna say that if my currently-about-five-years-obsolete computer can't run it, I won't be reviewing it.

I hope everyone who passes this way enjoys reading my reviews, and that maybe - just maybe - I'll be able to help a few folks find some entertaining old gems that they'd never played before.

Cheers!