A few weeks ago, we trekked around town trying to find a copy of Oboro Muramasa and completely failed. “Japanese games (that are not Mario or Link) don’t do well” was a reason one employee at a games store gave us. We ended up getting it online where there were still some in stock left.
So, the game’s good. Tutorials take you through the basic moves, but even without it seasoned gamers shouldn’t have a problem. Characters talk in Japanese and subtitles are available… except more information is being given in Japanese than in the English subtitle. The game’s still playable but you’ll be missing out on some aspects of the story. It’s not as if the subtitle was scrolling so damn fast they couldn’t fit more info in.
Talking of Japonesque games, here are the screenshots from Zombie in Wonderland available from 16th March on WiiWare (800points). Made by a small Spanish company, it features fairy tale characters like Dorothy (Wizard of Oz), Snow White and Momotaro (Japanese story) toting guns and blasting zombies left right and centre.
The game’s part of a series called World Game Parade, and they hope to introduce Japanese gamers to games made overseas that even they couldn’t fail to like. (Oh yeah, Japs are incredibly insular in some ways.)
Street Fighter IV is moving house, so to speak, to iPhone too. The link takes you to screenshots of eight available characters.
Kind of glad PlayStation didn’t do a Toyota this week. Not that they apologized in their press release properly. Just mentions the glitch was due to their clock thinking we had a 29th Feb this year.
Oh and Glico’s doing a series of wooden toys again. Only available with Glico Caramel packs.
I realise the launcher says they’re working on increasing server capacity. But I can well empathise with people complaining loudly on Twitter the last day or so, saying they can’t log in at all.
Never have I been more satisfied I’m in a different time zone to the majority of players. It means I get to play some of the game and have no problem logging in.
Considering my last night’s review was based on a ‘first impression’ of sorts, I decided I’ll try the game again. Only got to try for less than a half hour actually, since it decided to boot me off the ‘busy server’ in mid-loading screen and I haven’t been able to get back in since.
I’ve also looked in on the forums and what other players are saying. Aside from a lot of angst about the servers or fanboys being optimistic, there are a few good points raised by non-fanatic players.
1) Auto-grouping for group instances. Great feature or no? Great that you can go straight into it without waiting around for an age. But wait… the server’s booted half the team off mid-battle and we’re doing the ‘dead, respawn, pummelled’ routine again. And no more players coming into battle because apparently we’ve got a full group.
2) The game is unfinished! Well of course it is. It’s a beta. But this guy’s got a point: ["to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before."
To be fair, there’s an ‘exploration area’ called Delta Voranis. Shame some of those quests are bugged beyond the telling of it. And the map… jeez, the map! It does not function as a map at all.
3) The quests are strangely boring. Go near a quest giver, press F, click, click, accept. Go to flashing console/door/item, press F (to interact), click, and you’re done. WoW-haters/rejects will always tell people that the quests are “collect this, kill this, how many of each, etc.” True. But at least they make them interesting with variety. Variety is what is sadly lacking to Star Trek Online quests.
Even Torchlight, with its strangely addictive “click, click, click, loot” pattern was more interesting. Because of the different types of things you could loot!
Oh, and apparently, variety does come into play when you’re above Lieutenant to Lt. Commander rank. If you’re lucky enough to stay logged in to level that much, that is…
4) Copy and pasted off a thread about busy servers:
“Seriously, you’ve offered the keys, now, have the servers. Period.
Otherwise, limit the number of purchases on the client side. But, don’t have a bunch of people buying software and no way to play the game.
That’s just dumb.” [according to a guy called Traim]
That’s it in a nutshell.
Sorry, my second impression of the game may have got slightly worse than my first impression. I think the game has potential, because it’s part of a huge franchise with a huge fanbase. But it needs to work on its debilitating flaws straight away or the same thing that happened to Vanguard (incidentally, a game that did have diplomacy – ST is supposed to have it, but don’t) is going to happen to this one too.
Downloaded the beta, and played it this afternoon. It’s had a lot of hype, plus it’s Star Trek. Sorry to be negative, but my gamer instinct tells me this won’t be around for long. Why? Here’s the list:
Bug1: I’m a tiny spaceship at Starfleet docking station (you’re supposed to see your character, not your ship), then I’m my own tiny character out in airless space (supposed to be ship, not character). Oh, and I can’t move.
Actually, this one was amusing. According to general chat, quite a few people found it funny.
Bug2: I want to move forward dammit, not jog on the spot! Oops, just moved several yards apparently and now I’m dead.
Sadly very inconvenient. Getting stuck in scenery was the reason we stopped playing Star Wars Galaxies and City of Heroes in its early days (and a host of other MMOs that have come and gone in the last 5 years). When getting stuck means you get killed, it’s not fair the first time. Second time and thereafter, you start thinking this game’s got a lot to sort out before beta finishes.
Major Problem: Scaling of diffculty is practically non-existent. No way to tell (like in so many other MMOs) whether the quest is too hard for you to solo at your level. So you blithely go in and get pummelled, death, respawn, pummelled… etc. It’s just not fun! To add insult to injury, you have a team of other players in your instance who also get pwned by these all-invincible npc mobs.
Another Problem: Respawn point. Respawning away from combat area is good. But does it have to be so damn far from where you were? After running through the same ol’ passages time and again to get back into combat (see Bug2 and above paragraph) I got bored and abandoned the quest.
The manoeuvrability of your ship… now that sucks. Maybe I’m not used to it, sure. But half the time, response is so damn slow you may as well not have pressed anything. It’s the frantic button-mashing that’s getting quests done. And why oh why is it so boring to do quests? It’s not as if there’s an interesting backstory here and I’ve completed less than 10 quest chains, but I can safely let you all know if you’ve done 5, you’ve done all the variety there seems to be!
Yeah, it’s in beta stage. I get that. But they’ve got a long way to go. It needs to be a bit more bug-free to be enjoyable.
Oh and Cryptic, you guys need to check out those ’supply aid’ quests. They’re seriously bugged – undoable. In fact, all of the chat in the area was about how bugged it was, never mind quest help. (I was on there for about 4.5hours straight, and most of chat was of rumours about how Cryptic’s not going to iron out the problems before releasing it proper.)
I first came across Amanita Design back when I checked out the Polyphonic Spree site in 2005. I remembered their design and played Samorost when it came out too. They’ve now come out with another brilliant game called Machinarium.
It’s the familiar point and click with an intriguing plot. The main character you get to play with, is cautious, yet admirably daring at times… which kind of makes you fall in love with him. Most of the puzzles are great. There were only two with which I had major problems with: 1)infinite possibilities moving boxes = too many minutes spent trying to figure it…to no avail; 2)pressed the green button way too early and somehow can’t seem to reset the puzzle… so start right from beginning, again.
Actually, only two problems out of a good few hours worth of gameplay is excellent. I got into it last night and now that I’m at the tail end of my adventure with my robot, I feel kind of sad.
Oh yes, it does say Super Skills. So of course we weren’t even thinking we could emulate such glorious tactics. My husband and I are hard-core gamers. We’re fairly good at games, and we play together a lot. And we do know that for Mario games, you know you need the skills to time everything just right, or watch Mario and Luigi fall down into an abyss.
I thought we were prepared. The reviews said it was a good fun game for all the family (presumably because it’s a Mario title) so my husband felt it’d be a fun evening thing to do for us. How very wrong we were…
1) No classic controllers allowed – I prefer having those controllers as opposed to just the Wiimote. It’s prohibited.
2) Jumping off each other’s part of the game – fine, but don’t respawn us one on top of the other so there’s suddenly an unintended jump into the jaws of death.
3) Continues are infinite – so why bother giving us lives at all?
4) Why are the levels so damn hard?
Granted, we’re not used to timing our jumps to perfection, but this is ridiculous! Even Super Mario Sunshine was better than this (and that’s saying something)!
Now is this just us or has anyone else feel incredibly frustrated with this game? Just to work off this annoyance before bedtime (after all, I don’t want dreams that involve jumping onto blocks and avoiding spikes), I’m prepared to go kick some unfortunate people’s bums in PvP.
Nine Dragons is a MMO from Japan, played and downloadable for free. Something I’ve had my eye on since it was first announced (it was hyped, and it apparently is playable in both China and Korea too). So here I am downloading for the past half hour (only 10%) to see if I’d get to have a go on it. I’ve had troubles from Japan-based MMOs before, so I’ll have to see how things go. Here’s one of the PV trailers available on YouTube:
The first impression that Age of Conan gives is pretty positive. For the last week, any other games I’ve been playing has been put on hold, and I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time in the world where Conan’s king.
Like any MMO, choose and customize your character, but the starting place up until you’re about level 20 is in the Barachan isles, more specifically around the town of Tortage. You were shipwrecked, and have no idea of who you were… so the story goes that by playing, you find out more about yourself. During the time spent around Tortage, you can set yourself to play Night (single player only) or Day (multi-player). Level 20 is when you can get yourself a gathering skill, level 40 when you can learn to make things. Just bear in mind though that you will have to travel quite a ways in some areas to get to where the professional trainers are.
The interface is pretty easy to get used to, especially if you’ve been playing other MMOs like LOTROnline or WoW. Mobs will give up on you if you zone out or you run far enough away, WASD are the directional keys… But there are a few differences that make this game refreshing:
1) Climbing – surprising that none of the MMOs I’ve come across so far has had this feature. But here it is. You can climb vines, walls, ladders… as long as your skill in climbing matches the skill in whatever you’re trying to climb.
2) Succubus – we’ve said this all along, and I’m so glad someone’s noticed. Warlocks in WoW can summon a succubus, but it always got to us that whether your character was male or female, the resulting minion was always female. In AOC, if you have a female character, your minion is male! And vice versa.
3) Traders – they are both a bank and auction house. Yes, you can store items in there, but should you wish to sell things, right click and set your price. The price can be changed at any time without additional cost. (Lowest currency is Tin, then Copper, Silver, Gold.)
4) Cooldowns – Path of Asura (HearthStone function) has half an hour, potions have 60secs. Either way, half the time of WoW items, which helps a lot!
5) PVP – Guilds can build their own town, their own buildings etc., and these can give rise to PVP action. Pretty cool idea.
6) Quest – whichever quests you choose, you will always know where to go. Follow the arrows and you can’t go wrong.
7) Instances – you can choose Normal or Epic mode. Either way, you do not need to party up before entering, and most missions can be done on your own.
No doubt I’ll be playing this MMO for a while to come.
Eledees. (Meh. Why not keep the name of Elebits?) A game I happily got stuck into between translation work and other games. Hours of fun to be had with this one, not to mention how cute these Elebits are! I managed to run down the batteries in the Wii remote. That’s how good it is. None of the missions are what I’d term ‘extremely hard’ – although it might help to have a good memory if you’re trying for a better score – so it’s accessible to anyone who can navigate with the controls.
In the story mode, you will have four different types of missions to choose from once you’ve cleared the stage: normal (the one that needs clearing), score attack (5mins time limit), eternal (no time limit, just root out all the creatures, ‘give up’ when finished), and challenge (harder restrictions). Admittedly, I haven’t played much with the other modes, but you can edit your own levels (again, un-lockable depending on your performance in story mode) and exchange them with your friends, etc. You want to keep your kids busy and out of the way? Or simply improve your hand-eye coordination? Buy this game now :) My reason? They looked cute, and I wanted to lift things effortlessly for a change.
At the Square Enix conference, who should appear but…
Yep, another game with Chocobo as the main character is in the pipeline, this time for Wii. Also announced was news on FF Ring of Fates(DS) – that it will have a multi-player mode (up to 4 players), and that it’ll be out in Japan on 23rd August for approx. £25.
Excuse my lapse for the last week or so. Ordered myself some games last week, they arrived, and I’ve been spending most of my time with one – The Lord of the Rings Online. It’s like a mixture of WoW, Vanguard and a bit of Oblivion mixed in for good measure. The basic manoeuvers are the same as WoW, although quest-related NPCs are marked with a yellow ring overhead (and on mini-map) to make it user-friendly for players finding them. The graphics resemble Oblivion in that it’s detailed but not so overly, and the characters look realistic enough. You can play as one of four races: Man, Dwarf, Elf or Hobbit (though Dwarf is only playable as male), with seven differing classes to choose from (5 characters are permitted per server). Each have their own stories along which your quest choices differ, as does some part of your location. The ‘Vanguard‘ bit is the crafting side – the professions. Fortunately, it’s not as complicated as that half-finished game, which made crafting so very laborious. Just a bit detailed: you have to be at a specific workbench/forge/oven/field to start the process, and have the right tools equipped.
While I’ve been trying this rather new fancy game obviously, my WoW time has suffered… so I apologise to friends and guilds alike. And if you’re a fan of any other games mentioned above, give this one a try. For your info, most of the quests at the beginner stages (only played one of mine ’til level 12 so far however) are solo-able, even those marked as a ‘fellowship’ q. So even if you don’t know anyone else there, not a hard job at levelling :)
A new Zelda game for the DS is coming out 23rd June for approx. £24. The days when you moved Link via ‘trial and error’ method is almost over, as now the map can be drawn on with places of interest and ways to go around certain areas. So, Link doesn’t have to die too often :)
DK Barrel Jet Race is out 28th June for £29 on Wii. The classic moves of DK is available in the forms of throwing various barrels at your opponents. According to the article, the Wii remote makes it all so much fun.
For £20, and coming out in August is a collaboration between Sega and two other firms: 音声感情測定器ココロスキャン – which roughly translates to ‘Mind Scan’. How? By talking into the DS mic using Sensibility Technology. Know your mood, what you may be feeling etc. What use would it be? Apparently by taking your DS into the conference room, you’ll know if your colleagues are interested in such and such a project or not. More than likely, if people suspect the use of such things, they might become one extreme of another of those ‘moods’ that the software can detect.
Lastly, a DS game currently out for £18 or so, might be nostalgic for some, but aggravating for others. Rubik’s Cube. In all sizes. Puzzle game obviously. For up to 4 players, battle other players in how fast or how much you can solve the puzzles. Fortunately the mini-game option does allow other less stressful puzzles.
We finally got a Wii a few days back, and no, didn’t have to pay an extortionate amount for that. The first day of playing brought forth muscle ache the next day – must be the unusual ways in which you have to move that controller sometimes. Still, when Elebits comes out, I’ll be waiting with controller in hand, ache or no ache.
Along with the Wii, my betrothed got me Puzzle Quest for the DS. Here’s some screenshots for people who don’t know what it is. It’s fairly simple: you solve puzzles to defeat bosses, forge items, research your mount, research spells, and capture creatures. Pretty addictive, to the point that my character is now a level 26 after about 2 solid days of playing. It’s not often that I find games that are good enough to keep me playing so continuously.
But… and there is a ‘but’, as with any game that has been rushed out onto any platform, and worldwide at that, there are some bugs you may encounter during gameplay. No other reviews online seem to mention any of these, so maybe people haven’t played enough of it to discover them, but they have managed to annoy me a wee bit too much.
1) Screen scrolls interminably downwards… to stop in the middle of a sea on map section. It happens most often when I’ve been playing it for a couple of hours, and if I try to scroll back up, it just rolls back down again. So reset time. After reset, you may notice that the last few matches may not have been saved, and you do end up doing it all again (frustrating if it was one hell of a battle).
2) Someone reviewed that dialogues have glitches, as in it doesn’t show properly occasionally. I haven’t had a problem with that, but during the battles, I’ve had what was supposed to be ‘4 of a kind’ or ‘5 of a kind’ come up in some weird blurred out incomprehensible yellow glyphs. Again, reset does help, but save point might be a bit boggled.
As they seem to happen every few hours, it hasn’t improved my temperament of late. So, if you’re the type of gamer who gets irritated at the mere mention of a ‘bug’, this game’s not for you. On the other hand, you’re used to ‘bugs’ and like playing puzzles of the Zookeeper or Bejeweled type, this game is a must for you – you won’t have a life for a while after this though :p
After complications in downloading the patch the last two days (many people seem to have the exact same problem – download the latest version of Direct X or else!), I’ve finally been able to play Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. Another MMORPG as may be, it does seem to have some promise. It’s out 30th Jan. (in the UK at least) for £17.99 according to Play.com (Amazon doesn’t even stock it. somehow when you type the product name, it comes up with The Burning Crusade…).
The opening screen… is uncannily similar to WoW as is most of the game – in that sense, it’s very playable for me (I spend probably more than 15hours on WoW a week). But the characters are more in-depth – probably a lot more realistic looking than the comic-based looks from WoW, and the scenery – it’s really good. The details are more in line with Guild Wars though you don’t get the gay ‘every bit outside town is an instance’ thing here (that really put us off playing for good). The music’s soothing in an ambient kind of way too (or down right classical), but I kept having a deja vu of sorts – the elf starting place in WoW (Teldrassil) and some of the starting areas in VG kind of look similar to me. Of course, what with this being a Beta and the fact I’ve only been playing it the last couple of hours (and not having seen much of the continent), the comparisons to WoW may be uncalled for. But it’s there to illustrate my point – how playable this seems to be. Of course, as soon as you get used to the way your character moves, etc.
There are little problems, as any games would. There was even a shouted argument in the chat pannel – it turned out slightly one-sided as one person seemed to be the target of everyone else. But that one unnamed person was right. There does seem to be an awful amount of bugs (patching took well over 9hours, not to mention that Direct X problem which wasn’t highlighted until today), and a respawn rate of mobs from bloody awful (several players gathered in one spot trying to find a mob needed for quest) to a fastness that resembled popcorn (several players were killed due to ultra fast respawn rate in one area). I realise that there would be problems, especially in Beta stage, but yes, there certainly seems to be a lot going wrong. The Quest log does tell you where to go – or which direction to go to – but it doesn’t give you a detailed map of an area… so you could be wandering in the general vicinity for a while.
I can quite complaining though – every quest I finish, I get to leave feedback on, so maybe, in a couple of weeks’ time, the problems will be sorted :)
PS I never really thought I’d miss my left thumb, but there we are… I do use it for typing after all. Was dicing some onions last night for curry, and managed to slice a bit of the thumb along with them. Didn’t hurt at the time, but without hourly rests, it does now. Utter stupidity!
