The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

So here’s some game design thoughts based on my discussion of DnD with Brer where I didn’t get my points across at all. (through not fault of his, I just… I don’t know. I’m so speaking from the heart more than from the brain sometimes with this stuff. It feels right this way, and I can’t tell you why sort of situation.)
One of the things I’ve been thinking about with DnD is the whole… complexity issue. As I was sitting there playing Neverwinter Nights 2, which I’m sure it already dumbed down some, I was feeling so clueless as to the system. Things would happen and I would just die and I would be staring at the screen wondering what the hell just happened. The problem is that to play DnD at all, you need to know the intricacies of higher-level play.
Now, consider many other games I play. For one, KoL. There is, most definitely, a high-level game in KoL, one of people trying to pull the best times and ascend with the least number of turns. Because I pay attention, like the game, and read stuff about the game, I know a lot, although probably not all, of these tricks. I never use them, though. I never worry about the quality of booze I’m drinking or if this skill I’m perming is actually going to cut down my number of turns. I just drink something to play more and pick a skill I think is fun. Seriously, if I was going for speed, the skills I have permed right now are completely wrong. From that perspective, me not having Pastamastery, Advanced Saucecrafting, and Advanced Cocktailcrafting is criminal. Double-fisted Skull Smashing does not help from that perspective. But dual-wielding is fun, so I picked that one up. I can play the game at a level less than high and still get enjoyment out of it.
I’ll also make an example of Magic. There is obviously a high-level game of Magic, and I feel like I know a thing or two about how I would try to put together a high-level deck if I really want to. But I never want to. Those decks are boring to me, because they’re all about efficiency. I don’t get to do cool, retarded tricks and shit with them. So I build my silly little Johnny decks, and if they work well, awesome, and if not, I still have fun trying to pull off my little weird things. Hell, someone can play the game really simply as a game of people smashing monsters into each other, and it works just fine that way.
The point is, I don’t have to have a knowledge of high-level mechanics to enjoy these games. In DnD, I feel like I can’t. In Mask of the Betrayer, there is so much shit going on in a combat that I have no idea what half of it is, and that half is important. That half is all these buffs and debuffs that are keeping me from stabbing people in the face with my spear. I don’t know what they are or how to deal with them. Things just happen so quick. I suppose part of that is me needing to pause the game more, but… it just bothers me that it’s designed like that. It’s set up to create a sort of elitist structure.

There are other things, too, that bother me, but these I feel are more just decisions and I feel are more on the “personal preference” side of things, so I’m letting you know I’m not presenting them as fact.
One is all these calculations. I really don’t get the appeal. There is such a wide variety of roles and outcomes and factors in the game, and it just seems ridiculous to me. If I attack a monster in Arkham Horror, I look at my will and pick up that many dice, then look at the modifier and subtract that many die, then roll for a horror check. If I get a 5 or a 6, I don’t take sanity loss. Then I pick up dice equal to my Fight + my weapons – the modifier on the monster, and roll. If I get enough 5 or 6s to equal his life, I win. If not, I take damage and have to attack again. Now, there is a bit of calculation involved, sure, but it’s all with the number of dice, something you can physically sort of sort out. You can pick up five dice that equals your will and then put two back on the table for the modifier. It’s simple stuff. And to me, there is nothing there that is less thrilling than rolling something with complex calculations of damage resistance and this and that in DnD. The thrill comes from throwing the dice and not knowing what will come up? Will you have an overwhelming success? Barely edge by? A crushing defeat? You don’t need complex calculations to get that thrill. It’s basically built-in to the mechanics of dice-rolling. So why do all the crazy stuff with many different sided die? I really don’t know.
Another thing is the fact that the more I learn about this game, the less about actually role-playing this game is. The appeal of tabletop RPGs is, for me, to sit down with a lot of friends and improv and act out a character. I guess I was pretty strongly affected by Kill Puppies for Satan and all of his thoughts on RPGs in general. That’s the experience I want if I’m going to sit down and play, and DnD is completely not going to give that to me. Or if it is, I’m probably going to be ignoring a lot of what makes DnD what it is. DnD is all those calculations and complex damage models. That just seems so boring. I want a computer to do that (to which you say “But you have Neverwinter Nights 2 to do all that for you!” to which I say “Well, yeah… that’s why I bought it. Other factors kept me from liking it, though.”)

Anyway, these are just some thoughts I wanted to get out of my head… please let me know what you think of them, if you’d like. It’s time to clean up and go to lunch now, though.

So I bought this game on a whim, and it has me entranced. It’s a download-only PC game, and you can buy it on Steam… they’ve got a website here.
Basically, what this game is is a weird combination of both music rhythm games and falling-block puzzle games. You load the game up, and you insert a favorite MP3 or whatever. It reads like every file format ever, and even just CDs. Then you pick a mode. They call them characters, but each one plays different enough that it’s basically a different mode. There are hardcore point modes where it’s all about being the best and having like these crazy fucking reflexes to score these huge combos… or you can just play the fun silly ones like I do. I play “Vegas,” which has a random shuffle instead of any sort of skill-based way to take care of your blocks. I also play a lot of “Mono-pro,” which takes the game away from puzzler aspects and makes it more of a… reflex dodging game where you have to grab colored blocks and dodge grey blocks, trying to build up a multiplier.
Every level is made by the computer based on the music itself. So like… if you play that song a second time, it’s going to be the same thing? And if anyone else plays that song, it will be the same thing. The levels it creates actually do a really great job of syncing to the music. The blocks themselves make sense based on what’s going on, but what normally gets me is how much sense the hills and turns on the little race track that is the level work with the song. Like… if it’s got a fast thumping beat, there’ll be all these little hills, and the little ship will bounce up and down constantly… well, here’s a silly example of someone playing a level on Mono. You’ll get the idea, I think.
Finally, you have scoreboards created for any song you play. If it’s popular, you can compete against the world! If it’s not, you can just compete against a few random fans of that song and yourself or your friends. The fact that it tracks all this leaderboard data in their own servers for any song you might plug in is pretty damn awesome, in my opinion. It doesn’t work perfectly, since it’s based on the Song ID stuff in the tracks. If you changed yours to make it a little different for some reason, you’ll be on a scoreboard by yourself. But for the most part, it works great. And if you don’t want to sit around, wishing that someone would play your favorite song so you can show off your high score, they have a selection of Indie tracks on an “Audiosurf Radio” tab where everyone has access, and thus competition will be, which is a smart idea. Hopefully those tracks will change on a weekly or biweekly basis, but it’s too early to tell now. I won’t use it anyway, but I appreciate it being there. Really, though, there are obviously a decent number of people playing there. I found mostly full leaderboards for things like Albuquerque by Weird Al, which is 11 minutes and 24 seconds worth of dedication to play through. It was fun, though. There were also pretty decently-sized leaderboards for pieces of the Persona 3 soundtrack.
The point is, this game is definitely fun. It would seem like a great way to listen to a new CD, or just waste a few minutes with your favorite songs when you get that “music game” itch, knowing it’ll always HAVE your favorite songs available. Not to mention the price is right at 10 bucks. If you like music games, you should probably give this one a go. It’s a good time!

Do you like Poker?
Your answer to that question is irrelevant to this game.

Do you like Puzzle League/Tetris Attack/Panel De Pon?
If the answer is yes, and you have a 360, you must play Poker Smash.

Take the blocks from Puzzle League. Associate each color with a playing card from 10-A. Put an additional suit on each block. That’s Poker Smash. All your normal puzzle league moves work just like normal, but in addition to your normal clears, you can also make various Poker hands, like Full Houses, Flushes, and Straights, in order to clear blocks for even bigger points than usual.
The controls work really well. Normally, controls would be kind of… pointless to talk about in a puzzle game like this, but the two-stick scheme they use is intuitive and lets them do some neat things. Basically, you move the cursor with the left stick, and slide the tiles with the right. This lets them do things you can’t do in puzzle league because of you having to tap to flip things, like dragging tiles past groups of tiles that would normally trigger a clear to use them somewhere else.
Other welcome changes include a Bullet Time meter which you can activate at any time by pulling the right trigger. I find it easy to forget, but if you spot a way to get an extra chain out of what you’re doing, holding down that trigger can help you make it happen. It recharges over time. You can also place bombs with the A button. You start with five, and a meter charges up to replace bombs you’ve used as you clear titles. The bombs will basically destroy the tile you put them on, letting you easily set up 2x’s Chains and get you out of sticky situations. It also freezes the scroll while the bomb’s fuse is going off, so you can use that to set up some additional clears. Both of these make the game a little easier earlier on, but once you get up to the fast, insane speeds, you’ll welcome these additional tools that give you more to think about. They connect with the game flawlessly.
The game comes with all the standard features for this stuff: A full Puzzle Mode, both Timed and Endless score attack modes, and full multiplayer for up to 4 people on Xbox Live, or two people split screen. There is also a little store you can buy skins to use in the game, and set up “custom playlists” of skins for the game to cycle through, so it only uses your favorites. It all works great. And it’s only 800 Microsoft Bucks. That’s $10. Considering the number of times I have bought copies of Puzzle League for $30 dollars over the years, that’s a steal.
One other thing I wanted to mention was the cleverness of one achievement I worked for and got today. There’s an achievement called “Self-restraint” that calls for you to go from speed 1 to speed 7 without making anything but 3 Combos. (They call them 3 of a Kinds, because of the poker theme, of course) This was really quite difficult, and really made me look at the game in a completely different way than I normally do. This is an example of a “Good Achievement” in my book.

I was about to skip this game, because I have little love of Poker. All the talk on 1up Yours made me decide to download the demo and try it. I bought it immediately after playing for like 5 minutes. If you like Puzzle League, this purchase is seriously a no-brainer. If you like puzzlers, why don’t you play Puzzle League? Also, you should try Poker Smash. It gets my crazy awesome seal of crazy awesome blogging approval.

This almost hurts me to say.

Culdcept Saga sucks.

Now, maybe it’s great with a few people online you’d like to just chat with, and you can flip around some settings to adjust game length. But as a single player experience it is GOD AWFUL. I’m stuck on the fifth map, and I can’t beat it. And it’s not the difficulty that’s bothering me, especially because you get new cards even for losing. No, it is the game length. It is way the fuck too long. Most games again the computer can easily take 2 hours, especially with multiple computer opponents like the map I’m on. During these two hours, at any moment, you can be subjected to the Risk problem. (I guess I’m trying to coin that as a thing, because I do find myself referring to it all the time.) What I mean by this is, you can be struck a blow from which it is clear you will never recover, no matter how well you play from that point on. In most games, knowing you’re going to lose wouldn’t be too much of a problem. You’d just restart the scenario and try again, yes? But this is a card game. You need to finish matches so you can get access to new cards to improve yourself. Skill will only get you so far. You need to improve your deck, too. So you need to actually let someone finish the match, but you can easily be dealt this blow an hour into the match, with at least another hour to go before the end. And I know I’m not over-exaggerating the whole “Now I have lost” point in the games, either, because every time something happens to me that makes me think that, I can no longer do anything. They take the one property I was banking on keeping for the whole match and built it up big, and then it’s gone, and I no longer have the cash to make one to replace it and the dice are unlikely to be lucky enough to me to let me retake it. I’m dead. And then I play on and on in a game I don’t care about because I already lost it just to get 3 cards and then try again. Add this to the fact that you have to watch slow and long battle animations over and over again, as well as every animation of every action your opponents take, and you can see how it would become annoying.
Now I could take one of these things, just because of my love of card games. I can take arduous, overly long Mario-party-esque animations for a deep card game. I could finish up games that I lose in the middle of them if I had some way to zip through all the bullshit at that point. But I don’t. And so I find myself not wanting to play it.
This game desperately needs a limiting factor. There needs to be some sort of escalation to make the games end quicker. Every X turns, all the toll values need to go up by 10%, maybe. I don’t know, just something, Or if they don’t want to go with an elegant solution, a simple turn limit would help things quite a bit. Also, having smaller boards. The first level has a tiny board that is just perfect for me and another player. I can play that. But I think I get weaker cards just for beating that level over and over. However, the map quickly gets too big, and the score goal keeps going up. I don’t want that. At the same time, without that, the game has a lot less variety, so I don’t know what to do. But someone should have made a decision that “Games of Culdcept are an hour” or maybe even half an hour, and then tweaked the mechanics to make that happen.
I hope to gods the online play has a turn limit option to make it playable. I haven’t checked yet. I also hope that I get cards after finishing an online match. Because I’ll be honest, I’m pretty well done with the single player. I hope to play the game with my Talking Time friends sometime, because it would be fun with friends and a limit set up. But gods, I’ve pretty well had enough of it at this point. And that saddens me. Because I love card games, and I’ve heard so much about this series. But I just really can’t play it.

So I can’t play Advance Wars: Days of Ruin.
I thought it was just that I couldn’t play MUCH of Advance Wars: Days of Ruin? I’d play it in little spurts. That’s fine, I thought. It’d last me awhile. But I’m to the first level where I’ve hit a stalemate, and it’s going to take me gods know how many turns to break it. And I just don’t want to. And I don’t. I mean, I want to push through the campaign so I can unlock all the COs for multiplayer, but I just can’t do it. It’s just like in Risk. There comes a point where you know a player is going to win. They’ve won the game. But to actually beat everyone in the game, it’s going to take another hour of pointless dice rolling. Hard Advance Wars levels can easily get like this. I know I will beat the computer. I’m not in danger of losing. But the number of turns it would take is just not worth my time. And so I put the game down.
Now, I’m not saying Advance Wars: Days of Ruin isn’t a good game. Because it totally is. It’s a great game, a vast improvement from a mechanics standpoint from Dual Strike, very friendly to those new to the series, and offering the robust online play that the hardcore want. But I know how to play the game. It hasn’t taken me too long to get most of what there is to know about using the new units. (I think Carriers might be more powerful than I’m giving them credit for, but that’s about it.) And once I figure that out, all that’s left is this great game, but a great game I have played to death, and when it confronts me with these “waste 20 turns to push past this stupid bridge” moments… it’s hard to care.
This all got started because Parish put out a call for “what should we ask the people behind Advance Wars” for this interview they were doing, and I eventually wrote up some things I wanted to hear, a lot about their process in making units and balancing them, as well as justifying the attempt at a serious story in a game with silly gameplay mechanics, but it made me realize that I hadn’t played the game in like 2, 3 days. So I put on a podcast and start and I put it down in like 10 minutes. I dunno. It’s just… it’s kind of depressing, I guess. Advance Wars is one of my favorite series… oh well, I suppose I have Culdcept Saga to enjoy next week.

Also, there seems to be a lot of talk recently about how I seem incapable of getting tired of Kingdom of Loathing. Here’s why, in a numbered list. 1) It doesn’t take much time in the day to do. I rarely play marathon sessions and when I do, it’s after not playing for like 4 days, so it’s not old. Also, I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t care about being optimal, so I don’t mind if I don’t play for a week and then come back. 2) It’s perfect to play while podcasting. 3) It’s neat to see my set of skills build over time as I perm them and make me more flexible and more powerful. 4) I play as one class for like… 2 months. And then I ascend and switch. The classes do play differently. Not a whole lot, but enough that it keeps the combat from being completely old. I’ve been every class, but for the past few months I’ve only been Pastamancer… so now that I’m a Sauceror, the various splash buffs make the experience different. 5) I listen to the Jick and Skully show and thusly I am constantly hearing about all the new stuff they’re working on, and it’s all really neat. 6) I’ve still got goals to shoot for. I want the Tome of Transcendent Olfaction and the Pompadour’d puppy. That takes a lot of time. And when I get done with all that, I do want to see all the cool content in Bad Moon. Hell, just going Hardcore Oxygenarian to get the Plexiglass Pocketwatch made the game feel a lot different, because as a “normal run” player, I do get dependent on Hagnk’s and the mall for various items. It also made the game slower, which meant I could play less often and not lose any turns, which is good for getting over boredom with the game. If I feel boredom setting in, I’ll be doing another Hardcore Oxy run, you can be sure. Probably as a Seal Clubber. 7) Finally, even being on my tenth ascension, there are still jokes that I missed that I will randomly get and make me laugh my ass off.
Anyway, there’s some reasons. Does that clarify? I don’t know.

This has been a look at two games I love, one that I’m sick of and one that I’m not. Feel free to use this to figure out how I get sick of things. Or something. Hell, I dunno.

So many better games I could be playing or reviewing, and yet this game captured my interest basically all day.

So… It’s time to slam jam.

Imagine, if you will, someone who likes Charles Barkley and the sprites from Barkely Shut Up and Jam, and has watched Space Jam enough to write elaborate fanfiction on it. This person is who made Barkley Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden. You too can download this game here or just watch the trailer for it here, if you prefer.
Basically, this game is an RPG Maker creation, though it does seem to be hacking pretty thoroughly. There’s actually bits of interesting battle system in there. You’ve got action-based attacks like in Paper Mario, for example. You’ve also got some interesting monsters to fight, like this Robotic Gatorade I was fighting earlier.
But mostly what you have is a game that is seriously making fun of things by taking them overly seriously. This game has an almost scarily thought out back story for what is such a completely stupid concept. There is an explanation for everything, even if its done using concepts such as “Negative B-Ball Energy.” There is a tale behind how Barkley accidentally brought about the Great Baller Purge, and how the earth was plunged into this Post-Cyberpocalypse. It’s all so ridiculous, but as I said, so complete that it’s hard to look away from it. I don’t even know most of the basketball players being parodied in the game, and it’s still intriguing.
The game also uses this overly serious style to attack other things. All of the save points, for instance, spout at least 4 screens of rant about how things from Japan are better than things from the west. I’m almost certain these are copypasta that I don’t know the source of, but they’re funny because they’re so amazingly serious and sincere. Of course, they also apply the same lens to furries at length, which, you know, I’m fine with. It was sort of weird how much I agreed with some of the dialog, though.
There’s also plenty of odd, humorous parodies. There was a long parody of the whole hunts thing in FFXII that I enjoyed, for instance.
Anyway, I guess the point is, it’s pretty decently written and not completely abysmal in the gameplay department, and it couldn’t hurt to give it a shot. You might end up pointlessly entranced like me. It’s not going to revolutionize anything, or probably impress many people, but I enjoyed it. I guess that’s the point. If you watch that Youtube video and think more of that would be funny, give it a go.

Before I get started with the review, just a few things. One, why the fuck was I completely entranced by this comic for like… two days? I have no fucking clue. Two, yes, I have THREE Listening Time CDs to liveblog now. Bleh, I am failing at that… I hope to get on the bandwagon soon… one is all Christmas music, for fucks sake! I can’t wait much longer!

Anyway, Earth Defense Force 2017. I got it for my brother for Christmas, you can probably pick it up at budget prices like I did, and you should, especially if you have someone else to play with.
There are tons of things wrong with the game. The graphics are just a little over budget PS2, the gameplay is really repetitive, and your AI-controlled teammates talk CONSTANTLY about NOTHING, which would probably annoy the shit out of most people, but Jonathan and I find it pretty hilarious because it’s so bad. In any case, Bioshock this is not.
What you get is a game that is a TON of fun with two players and completely mindless. There is a joy in blowing shit up, you know? That is what Earth Defense Force gives you. Take a friend and play split screen mulitplayer. You both can pick two weapons, that you switch between whenever you’d like. There’s completely useless weapons and completely crazy ones. I think there’s something like 171 weapons in all? Most are slight modifications of other weapons. Like, for example, you’ve got a wide variety of assault rifles with different rates of fire and damage amounts, etc. But you also get crazy shit like the Acid Spray Launcher and, our favorite, the Air Tortoise, a homing missile launcher that fires missiles that move so slowly you can nearly outrun them, but who explode gigantically. Anyway, you pick your weapons and you run into short missions, 53 in all. You don’t have ammo, (Except on a few guns that completely suck) you only have reload times. Some are long, some are short. You blast rockets at gigantic ants, jumping spiders, flying space ships, and giant robots over and over and over. The combat is completely ridiculous, with huge swarms constantly coming at you and the realism level being so that you can fire a single rocket at a skyscraper and it will collapse into a pile of rubble. There are also some vehicles, too, but you don’t use them because they control like crap and are so damn slow.
So you fire and you fire and you fire, and you pick up Armor, which increases your max health permanently, and new weapons, and you shoot some more until you beat the mission, and then you move to the next one and do it all over again. There’s little strategy involved besides “Don’t fire the rocket launcher at an enemy close enough to get you caught in the blast.” Yet, trying out all the ridiculous weapons is a good time, and bringing a friend along, like most games, makes the fun increase quite a bit. Jonathan and I are yelling at our AI teammates in the same stupid mannerisms they talk in, blowing shit up, and loving every minute of it.
There’s a versus mode, but it’s not really worth mentioning. Well, besides the AIR TORTOISE BATTLES Jonathan and I have done. We both equipped two Air Tortoises, and entered the battle. We were at separate ends of this huge map, and we just started firing the things at each other. The rolling and running from these slow-moving missiles is hilarious fun, and it’s actually kind of tense, since it takes so damn long to reload one of them. Give that sort of match a try, perhaps, but you’ll never touch it otherwise.
But seriously, just blowing shit up. It sounds so simple, but it is so fun, and completely worth 20 bucks, if you have a friend to bring along. To say anything else is just to repeat myself over and over again, I think.

So one game that has been on my mind since someone showed me a Youtube video of some of the cut scenes (from the DS version, of all things) was The Simpsons game. I’ve never really been a Simpsons fan, and with all the bad talk about how The Simpsons has gone downhill combined with how horrid most licensed games are, I never would have given this another thought. But those cut scenes did make me chuckle, so I was thinking about trying it. Well, I’m sitting on a fat stack of Hastings Credit, so I decided to try the demo, and if I liked it, go and rent the game. Well, I liked it, and was impressed by how the sound clips never repeated and were all entertaining. So I rented it, and I’ve been playing it all night. I’m not done, but I will be tomorrow… but I can say with confidence that the game is quite enjoyable, and that this is how licensed games should be made.
The basic plot of the game is that the Simpsons stumble upon an instruction booklet, which tells them they are in a video game and thus have video game superpowers. This sets up all kinds of things that pull in all sorts of Simpsons characters, a lot of which I only vaguely recognize and would probably like more if I ever watched the Simpsons, as well as setting up tons of Video Game parodies. It does this really well, actually, and it’s refreshing as well to see EA (who made the game) poke tons of fun at itself as the evil video game overlord who does nothing but stamp out sequels. In any case, why you play this game is for the dialog. All the characters have lots of lines that are very true to the show and very entertaining, and, thankfully, the designers decided NOT to have any of these lines repeat (unless you restart the level, which is okay) which is a godsend and keeps them all entertaining, as opposed to moving into annoying. (For an example of how not do to this with dialog, see almost all the dialog in Clive Barker’s Jericho) It’s all fan service and funny jokes, and even as someone to whom a lot of the fan service goes over my head, it’s still entertaining.
The gameplay itself is nothing to write home about, though. It’s serviceable, and rarely frustrating, and honestly, that’s all I can ask for from a licenced game. It would be neat if it were better. For example, Marge plays kind of like Captain Olimar, and rallies mobs to do things. If this was even MORE like Pikmin, it would have been completely awesome. Instead, it’s just a little like Pikmin, and doesn’t really come off as anything memorable. It’s just a little variety from the beat-em-up action of the other characters. The worst part is the camera, which can do some really odd things and not always control like you’d like. In those times, you just have to kinda give up, and let the game do what it wants. It can be a little frustrating, but, at least for me, the humor inherent in the game more than makes up for it.
Anyway, the game is short. I’m going to beat it tomorrow, no doubt in my mind. I’m over halfway through it. It was completely worth the 6 dollar rental, but I can’t see how it could be worth much more than that, even if you were the sort of person who is willing to go through and find all the collectibles (I’m not, though I think I will go back and collect all of the “Video Game Cliches” that I missed, because those are funny and completely true) and try to ace all the time trials to maximize replayability. I dunno who would have thought it was worth the 60 dollar asking price. But it’s pretty great, and it’s on like every console under the sun. Go rent it for something and enjoy it, eh? Especially if you’re a Simpsons fan, you won’t be disappointed.

Hey, now I don’t look so much like a liar! Neat! Also, at some point this next week, in case I don’t make another post, I’m going to be moving servers to, well, a server I’m in control of instead of Droid. Wish me luck with that. If there’s some sort of interference in service, that’s probably why. Hopefully everything should just drop into Cpanel flawlessly as Droid told me.

ANYWAY, Mass Effect is an RPG-ish experience from Bioware. This indicates several things: There are a lot of dialog choices and a lot of dialog with your party, who tend to be fairly well-rounded characters (though, personally, Obsidian’s takes on Bioware’s games have created more interesting characters, at least to me. But they’re both good.) and have a lot to say about themselves and the world. All of this is pretty separate from the whole “game” aspect, which has dungeon crawling and shooting many a robot and person though a variety of locales.
There’s like TONS of dialog in this game, and it’s all voice-acted, even your own stuff. Instead of picking a phrase and having the character respond to that phrase, you pick a general idea and your character says something along those lines. It actually works really well. Your choices get to be short and to the point, like “Kill him,” “We should save him,” “That’s illegal,” and so on, but what Shepard says is much more satisfying than that… something like, if you picked “Kill him,” Shepard would say something like “You switch sides too often. I can’t allow you to survive.” and then pull a gun on them and shoot them. It’s neat. Anyway, all of the dialog is great, but that’s to be expected. There are no annoying voice actors in the game, and both Male and Female Shepard sound right. It’s awesome.
Technically, however, the game has flaws… since the 360 does not necessarily have a hard drive, the game has to work REALLY HARD to run without using any HD space as a swap file or whatever. The disc is spinning CONSTANTLY while you play, and it sometimes takes a few seconds for textures to pop in… so you’ll be talking to a character, and all of the sudden, BAM, the texture on the wall behind them or on their clothing will just appear. It’s not annoying outside of dialog, though… I never really noticed it anywhere else, though I’m sure it happened. The menu system is god-awful as well. The game forces an inventory limit on you, and then makes it near impossible to navigate your items in order to manage them. It’s really quite frustrating.
These issues, though, don’t break the game. The story is cliche, but well written, and the dialog great, like I said. The combat is pretty good as well. The combat controls an awful lot like a Gears of War with magic. You can dash up to cover, pop out from behind it to shoot a few shots, and then hide again. You have four different weapons, but depending on your class, you’ll suck with some of them because you can’t train in them. This isn’t much of a problem. I used the pistol for most of the game, and it was still powerful and satisfying. I didn’t feel I was missing anything by not being able to use the Assault Rifle or Shotgun well. Holding down the right bumper lets you use your various abilities from a pause ring menu, and it works well. I was an Infiltrator, so I mostly had Tech attacks, but they were really satisfying. They all dealt damage as well as shut down one thing… Overload shut down their shields, Sabotage overheated their weapons so they couldn’t fire for awhile, and Dampening kept them from doing their “spells” for awhile. The weapon combat abilities like Marksman and Shield Boost were very handy as well, Shield Boost especially because I had such high shields because of my class. The combat starts out hard, but gets pretty damn easy by the end of the game if you go out of your way to do some side quests to improve your skills and equipment. In the end game, unless I happened to run out in front of a missile Turmulent or something, I was pretty well completely safe. The last boss was still satisfyingly hard, though not frustrating, which I appreciated.
The vehicle combat, though, is not nearly as refined. It’s fun the first few times you get to blow shit up in the Mako, but some stupid decisions quickly come to your attention. Shields in on-foot combat start to regenerate after a couple seconds of you not being shot… if you’re patient and take cover for awhile, you can recharge them completely, and it doesn’t take so long as to annoy you, but still long enough that you have to be careful. The Mako’s shields are completely annoying. They recharge glacially slow if you lose them. Like 5-10 minutes for a full charge. I sat an enjoyed a Frosty the other day, and it STILL wasn’t completely charged by the time I finished. You can repair the hull and armor portion of the Mako, but it is something like 25 percent of it’s max health, the rest being shields, so you still can’t get into too much combat without being screwed unless you let the shields recharge. Additionally, the aiming sight for the gun is a weird transparent grey. This disappears on almost all backgrounds in the game, so you can’t aim worth anything for absolutely no reason. It’s really annoying.
All in all, though, Mass Effect is flawed. Yet, it has so much charm and so much… good… going for it that I really didn’t care too often as I played through it. I hope all the stupidity is worked out in the sequel, but as is, it’s a great Sci-Fi RPG experience on the 360, and almost certainly worth your attention if you like Bioware’s games, or feel the need for an RPG that isn’t sillystupid like Blue Dragon.

Another one down… still need to write something about Mario Galaxy, though. Oh well, I’ll get there. Maybe next sunday…

Okay, so, it’s a day late, but it’s not like anyone but me cares anyway! We’ll start with Rune Factory. I’ll try to write more today, but damn, I’ve written a shit ton on Rune Factory already, so now these are getting their own posts.

Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon was, supposedly, described by the Harvest Moon creator as “Harvest Moon with Swords.” Harvest Moon. This explanation is completely accurate, basically. You can sit there and farm up a storm if you’d like, and some of the series’ improvements since the first game that have carried over, like the backpack, make this just as good of an experience as it can be. You can even grow crops out of season without having to purchase a greenhouse like in other games, since each dungeon has a “season” climate inside with which to grow various crops. (though who knows how they grow without sunlight) The biggest change from previous games that I’ve played is that you can walk over your crops. I guess that sounds kinda stupid, but in previous games, when your crops got close to the point where they were fully grown, they’d block your path. Therefore, even though your seeds would cover a 3×3 square, you couldn’t actually plant them in the full square, because you wouldn’t be able to water the middle square… at least not with the starting watering can. This isn’t an issue in this game, which is nice, I suppose. It does tie into the fact that growing 9 crops to completion gets you a “rune” which refills some of your RP. You can not harvest the crop and it’ll produce a new rune everyday, if that’s your thing, but that’s mostly useful in dungeons.
Which brings us to the new part, which is the dungeon crawling. Your farmer/adventurer has two meters, HP and RP. Each time you do a chore or attack or whatever, it takes some RP. If your RP meter is empty, it takes some HP. Run out of HP and you collapse… run out of HP in a dungeon and you’re dead. You run through, fighting enemies and destroying these machines which sort of work like the monster generators in Gauntlet. It’s really hack and slash and not especially deep, in all honesty. You get some spells, and as I mentioned, you can plant crops in the caves to create “recharge zones” to get your RP back, if you so desire. You can also charm monsters. These monsters work as both the gnomes and the livestock of previous games. You can tell them to do chores around your farm, like watering for you, and some also produce eggs, milk, etc, for you to sell. You can also take them with you adventuring, which is nice, though they don’t have the best AI in the world.
And that’s it, I suppose. The dungeon crawling is not the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen, but it’s a welcome distraction from the normal Harvest Moon gameplay which, if you’re like me, you’ve already exhausted in previous outings. There’s a plot of sorts, but it’s not going to wow anyone. It’s just something else to put on your daily chore list like any other farm chore… just to see how far you can get and maybe level up, so that you have more RP to get more done in a day. My problems with the game are the hot springs. It’s a bathhouse this time, and it doesn’t open till 3 PM game time. This is insanely annoying, especially in the beginning of the game when you don’t have much stamina, because you literally have to set the game down to let the clock run to 3 with nothing at all to do if you want to make the most out of your day. That’s retarded and frustrating. Also, for once you have a wide variety of people to marry. Not everyone is just a country girl in this game. You have adventurers, spies from other countries… women who do shit other than get married. And yet, if you woo them, they immediately become “stay home and take care of the kids” moms. It’s kinda silly. That’s missed awesomeness potential. Why not have them adventure with you, or research new spells while you’re gone, or otherwise help out the dungeon crawling portion of the game? You could do neat shit with that, but they didn’t. Oh well, maybe in the sequel.
Wow, I really rambled on that one. Anyway, if you like Harvest Moon, but would like a little change and haven’t picked one up in awhile, this is a good buy, I’d think. Just don’t expect a COMPLETELY new experience and you’ll be fine. It’s really just further refined to keep your interest longer… you also might want to wait for the sequel I hear is coming out soon at this point. It might have more in-depth combat and whatnot.