This is a bad game. I used to like it when I was a kid; I remember begging my grandmother to buy it for me. I remember thinking the new animal buddies were cool, and it was the first Kirby game I played that had the copy ability so that was neat at the time. Ultimately, I wish I had not revisited this game, as it doesn't hold up at all. Out of curiosity, I looked it up and found out Masahiro Sakurai, the man behind Kirby and Super Smash Bros, had no involvement with this game or Dream Land 3. That doesn't surprise me. I always suspected the Kirby games involving Dark Matter and animal buddies were designed by a different team than the rest, and it's true after all.
Dream Land 2 has a few major problems that really stick out to an aged gamer. The first is enemy spawning: scroll an enemy off the screen, and it respawns immediately after that part of the screen becomes visible again. This is unbelievably frustrating in the various water maze puzzles in this game, and punishes you for backtracking to get things you missed. Another issue I have with the game is that the buddies and copy abilities Kirby uses are so much worse than his generic swallow and spit attacks. The attacks barely do any damage to bosses, making them take forever to beat. Even worse, a lot of the abilities will put you in precarious positions when used on bosses anyway. For instance, if you want to whack one with the parasol, it will take no hit-stun and just walk right in to you, rendering whatever advantage having the skill would give moot.
The animal buddies are a bigger problem. First, there's Rick the hamster. Using him is inferior to just using Kirby, as you lose the ability to fly and have a bigger hitbox. None of the attacks he can use make up for this. Coo the owl is actually pretty awesome (and has an amazing theme song; actually, all the music in this game is great) but the game doesn't want you to use him! No! In almost every stage, you'll be forced to use Kine the fish, who is absolutely terrible out of water but is required in order to collect the rainbow drops you need to finish the game in about half of the game's levels. It's almost like a cruel joke by the developers. They give you all these potentially neat abilities, then make you use only the worst ones to get anywhere.
The final boss is terrible too, and he's the icing on the crap cake. To fight Dark Matter, you have to use the new Rainbow sword ability. Kirby also gets to move freely in all directions... very slowly. This makes it nearly impossible to avoid Dark Matter's screen-splitting attacks, and since the sword doesn't actually hurt the boss, you have to reflect his attacks with it. The physics of this are poorly conceived to say the least, so I would not be surprised if many players didn't bother to beat the boss. I know I save-scummed through it on this playthrough.
I wanted to say some nice things about this game, but apart from the soundtrack (Ando is a genius composer, seriously) there's not much to recommend. This game is worse than Kirby Super Star in every way, and there's nothing that would encourage a replay. The level design is poor, the bosses are done better in other Kirby games, and the physics feel stiff and antiquated. Look elsewhere for your Kirby fix.
4
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
SpaceChem
SpaceChem is a chemistry-based puzzle game released by Zachtronics Industries in 2011. In the game, you essentially guide two input circles called "Waldos" along conveyor belt-like lines, grabbing atoms and fusing them, then outputting the needed compounds on the other side of the screen. It's the most boring-sounding premise ever, but I quickly found myself engaged. At its core, SpaceChem is more like a set of programming puzzles than anything resembling chemistry. It's all about figuring out the most efficient way of making sets of data do exactly what you want them to do. It's fun to look at the leaderboards after every stage and see how well other players did, if they found solutions that took far fewer cycles or used minimal instructions.
What really sets this game apart from other puzzle titles I've played is its difficulty: it's totally brutal, but somehow I didn't mind. I would spend hours, sometimes entire work days (on and off) on a single puzzle, trying to piece together a feasible path through various stages.
Pictured is the level I essentially have stopped playing the game on, though I plan to dabble with it on and off. Here, I am trying to make the blue path alternate given its input, then travel to the proper side of the screen and give the correct compound. (I'm only half-finished here) One of the things that makes SpaceChem so difficult is the size of the grid. Often, you will need to make complex paths in only a small 4x4 grid, then you'll test and find out modifications need to be made that destroy your entire framework. Then, you have to make your path recursive so that it will complete the necessary number of cycles, which is sometimes as hard as making the path in the first place. And THEN some stages require you to make multiple paths work and then connect to one another. I have restarted many missions without making any progress, but somehow never actually got frustrated. See, for all the tedium involved in solving the game's puzzles, I feel so satisfied when a complete circuit works that it makes up for all the agony getting there. You could say SpaceChem is the Demon's Souls of puzzle games.
This game isn't for everyone. If you don't have any knowledge of programming or computer science, I would stay very far away. If you do, try this game out, going in as blindly as possible. The concept is ingenious; simple on the surface but with unfathomable flexibility and surprising replay value for efficiency nuts. There is some nice music too, for what it's worth, though I stopped playing that early on because of the length of time I'd spend on each level. I doubt I will ever finish SpaceChem, but I feel totally satisfied with it after only the taste I've had.
8
What really sets this game apart from other puzzle titles I've played is its difficulty: it's totally brutal, but somehow I didn't mind. I would spend hours, sometimes entire work days (on and off) on a single puzzle, trying to piece together a feasible path through various stages.
Pictured is the level I essentially have stopped playing the game on, though I plan to dabble with it on and off. Here, I am trying to make the blue path alternate given its input, then travel to the proper side of the screen and give the correct compound. (I'm only half-finished here) One of the things that makes SpaceChem so difficult is the size of the grid. Often, you will need to make complex paths in only a small 4x4 grid, then you'll test and find out modifications need to be made that destroy your entire framework. Then, you have to make your path recursive so that it will complete the necessary number of cycles, which is sometimes as hard as making the path in the first place. And THEN some stages require you to make multiple paths work and then connect to one another. I have restarted many missions without making any progress, but somehow never actually got frustrated. See, for all the tedium involved in solving the game's puzzles, I feel so satisfied when a complete circuit works that it makes up for all the agony getting there. You could say SpaceChem is the Demon's Souls of puzzle games.
This game isn't for everyone. If you don't have any knowledge of programming or computer science, I would stay very far away. If you do, try this game out, going in as blindly as possible. The concept is ingenious; simple on the surface but with unfathomable flexibility and surprising replay value for efficiency nuts. There is some nice music too, for what it's worth, though I stopped playing that early on because of the length of time I'd spend on each level. I doubt I will ever finish SpaceChem, but I feel totally satisfied with it after only the taste I've had.
8
Monday, August 19, 2013
Shin Megami Tensei IV
As the fifth Shin Megami Tensei title I've finished, the series is starting to feel very familiar to me. Shin Megami Tensei is one of the bigger RPG series in Japan, and it's pretty easy to see why once you get in to the games. They are designed like classic RPGs, emphasizing challenge and sometimes frustrating random chance. They do monster collection effectively, making the player adapt to the changing difficulty curve instead of getting too attached to his team. They offer the option of changing the game's outcome, even if the choices aren't so hot. Shin Megami Tensei IV ranks somewhere in the middle of the series to me, but it is a good introduction to mainline SMT for newcomers and probably the best RPG on the 3DS so far.
SMT IV starts out differently than its predecessor, Nocturne. Instead of a kid in the big city, you're a hopeful samurai candidate in what appears to be a feudal Japanese kingdom called Mikado. Things seem fishy to the player because the samurai have electronic technology that they regard as mystic relics. After a quick trial, you explore a strange cave called Naraku that lies beneath your kingdom and is filled with demons. The game's story doesn't really unfold until you reach the bottom of Naraku, and I don't want to spoil what happens, but needless to say it evolves in to the usual Law vs Chaos story so prevalent in the series. While I enjoyed the setup of this game, I think the characters don't always show the best motivations or justification for their actions. Like in other SMT titles, only the extremes of each personality type accomplish anything by end-game, and you never feel right about supporting them. The Neutral path makes a decent compromise, but still has a questionable result. I'm not opposed to a game having nothing but bad endings, but I do feel like SMT games often end on an unnecessarily bleak note, only accentuating the negative. Fortunately, the story is secondary to gameplay in SMT, so nitpicking it too much doesn't accomplish a whole lot. One thing the game does really well is creating a sense of dramatic irony: the player is aware that something is wrong with Mikado and the game's world as a whole, but the characters have no clue. This makes the game's many twists and pokes of humor, especially involving your AI assistant, Burroughs, very effective.
SMT IV's visual style is weird. For the most part, it looks good. The demons are well-animated and the 3D environments look beautiful. It's clear that the game was on a limited budget, though. Most of its cutscenes are just characters standing and staring at things without moving, leaving one to wonder why the game wasn't just developed in visual novel style like Persona 3 Portable. Some of the new demons introduced in the game have very odd designs that I didn't think meshed well with the old ones. Often, they are caricatures of humans or grotesque things with anatomy that makes little sense. I feel the developers could have done a little better job of hiding the fact that some parts of the game didn't get as much attention as others. On the other hand, the music is great. It has a nice mix of electronica, hard rock and even bagpipe music. I thought I would miss Shoji Meguro, who really made Nocturne and Strange Journey work well on the sound front, but this game's composers are more than worthy to take his reins.
The gameplay is mostly what you'd expect from the main series: the press turn battle system is back. Hitting weaknesses and not missing is of vital importance, even if you have to burn MP to do it. I was not sure how I liked this system at first back in Nocturne, but I do like how it encourages using skills instead of conservation, which makes for slow and boring gameplay in many games. This time, your main character's build is almost completely up to you. Instead of learning skills from equipment, Flynn gets them from Demon Whispers. When your party members have learned all of their skills, they can "whisper" them to the hero, letting you basically pick whatever skills you want. I think this is great for many reasons, but the primary one is that it lets you experiment with skills before committing to them. Many RPGs force you to go down skill paths without prior knowledge of where you'll end up, but here there's no ambiguity. Overall, this makes the game engine feel improved from its predecessors, and the typical fast battle speed returns as well, so combat is very streamlined. As far as battles go, my one real complaint is about ambushes. If an enemy sneaks up on you, often you are just plain dead. Getting hit by a weakness, a critical, or status effects often spells the end for your entire party. Worse, ambushes can happen on reinforcements or even during boss battles. It just feels cruel and unusual.
On the flip side, the game has a lot of features that make it more newbie-friendly than other entries in the series. It's very forgiving about game overs, for one. For a fee of either money or 3DS Play Coins (which I thought was a nice touch as it got me to exercise a bit while playing this, believe it or not) you can get revived right before the battle you died in. I don't care how hardcore of a gamer you are; this is a good feature that every RPG should have. The game also does everything it can to make the monster fusion system easier to understand, even to the point of recommending fusions. These recommendations are usually good choices, so I think new players will be able to pick it up with little problem.
The game's biggest problem is really its overworld map. Once you reach this area, it's pretty obvious why. You can only travel on small, jagged paths that are maze-like in structure, and you have to do this just to get from town to town. While it's possible to avoid encounters in the dungeons, you cannot on the world map. You also cannot control whether or not you get ambushed. The game assumes you have some knowledge of Tokyo's layout, which would probably help in finding areas you need to travel to, but even then it can be hard to remember a certain road is blocked off or you have to take X tunnel to reach Y location. Add together the dead ends, frequent encounters, and backtracking the game requires and you end up with some ultra tedious exploration. This problem plagues the game from beginning to end, and even the air travel you eventually find only lets you land in useless spots. It's a gross stain on a game that easily could have been one of my favorites.
Shin Megami Tensei has gone on for a long time. Many good games have been released under the brand, and it's gradually becoming one of my favorites. That said, Atlus really needs to get a clue about certain things. It's just silly that Persona gets all of the innovation, character development, and fast travel while the mainline series gets the gameplay depth and build options. These things should not be mutually exclusive. While Shin Megami Tensei IV is a great game, with just a few of the lessons learned from other games in the series, it could really have felt more polished and appealed to more players. RPG enthusiasts should still enjoy the game if they can get past angels and demons being lumped together as the same thing, but even though it's more accessible, I'm not sure I can recommend this to a player unfamiliar with the genre.
8
SMT IV starts out differently than its predecessor, Nocturne. Instead of a kid in the big city, you're a hopeful samurai candidate in what appears to be a feudal Japanese kingdom called Mikado. Things seem fishy to the player because the samurai have electronic technology that they regard as mystic relics. After a quick trial, you explore a strange cave called Naraku that lies beneath your kingdom and is filled with demons. The game's story doesn't really unfold until you reach the bottom of Naraku, and I don't want to spoil what happens, but needless to say it evolves in to the usual Law vs Chaos story so prevalent in the series. While I enjoyed the setup of this game, I think the characters don't always show the best motivations or justification for their actions. Like in other SMT titles, only the extremes of each personality type accomplish anything by end-game, and you never feel right about supporting them. The Neutral path makes a decent compromise, but still has a questionable result. I'm not opposed to a game having nothing but bad endings, but I do feel like SMT games often end on an unnecessarily bleak note, only accentuating the negative. Fortunately, the story is secondary to gameplay in SMT, so nitpicking it too much doesn't accomplish a whole lot. One thing the game does really well is creating a sense of dramatic irony: the player is aware that something is wrong with Mikado and the game's world as a whole, but the characters have no clue. This makes the game's many twists and pokes of humor, especially involving your AI assistant, Burroughs, very effective.
SMT IV's visual style is weird. For the most part, it looks good. The demons are well-animated and the 3D environments look beautiful. It's clear that the game was on a limited budget, though. Most of its cutscenes are just characters standing and staring at things without moving, leaving one to wonder why the game wasn't just developed in visual novel style like Persona 3 Portable. Some of the new demons introduced in the game have very odd designs that I didn't think meshed well with the old ones. Often, they are caricatures of humans or grotesque things with anatomy that makes little sense. I feel the developers could have done a little better job of hiding the fact that some parts of the game didn't get as much attention as others. On the other hand, the music is great. It has a nice mix of electronica, hard rock and even bagpipe music. I thought I would miss Shoji Meguro, who really made Nocturne and Strange Journey work well on the sound front, but this game's composers are more than worthy to take his reins.
The gameplay is mostly what you'd expect from the main series: the press turn battle system is back. Hitting weaknesses and not missing is of vital importance, even if you have to burn MP to do it. I was not sure how I liked this system at first back in Nocturne, but I do like how it encourages using skills instead of conservation, which makes for slow and boring gameplay in many games. This time, your main character's build is almost completely up to you. Instead of learning skills from equipment, Flynn gets them from Demon Whispers. When your party members have learned all of their skills, they can "whisper" them to the hero, letting you basically pick whatever skills you want. I think this is great for many reasons, but the primary one is that it lets you experiment with skills before committing to them. Many RPGs force you to go down skill paths without prior knowledge of where you'll end up, but here there's no ambiguity. Overall, this makes the game engine feel improved from its predecessors, and the typical fast battle speed returns as well, so combat is very streamlined. As far as battles go, my one real complaint is about ambushes. If an enemy sneaks up on you, often you are just plain dead. Getting hit by a weakness, a critical, or status effects often spells the end for your entire party. Worse, ambushes can happen on reinforcements or even during boss battles. It just feels cruel and unusual.
On the flip side, the game has a lot of features that make it more newbie-friendly than other entries in the series. It's very forgiving about game overs, for one. For a fee of either money or 3DS Play Coins (which I thought was a nice touch as it got me to exercise a bit while playing this, believe it or not) you can get revived right before the battle you died in. I don't care how hardcore of a gamer you are; this is a good feature that every RPG should have. The game also does everything it can to make the monster fusion system easier to understand, even to the point of recommending fusions. These recommendations are usually good choices, so I think new players will be able to pick it up with little problem.
The game's biggest problem is really its overworld map. Once you reach this area, it's pretty obvious why. You can only travel on small, jagged paths that are maze-like in structure, and you have to do this just to get from town to town. While it's possible to avoid encounters in the dungeons, you cannot on the world map. You also cannot control whether or not you get ambushed. The game assumes you have some knowledge of Tokyo's layout, which would probably help in finding areas you need to travel to, but even then it can be hard to remember a certain road is blocked off or you have to take X tunnel to reach Y location. Add together the dead ends, frequent encounters, and backtracking the game requires and you end up with some ultra tedious exploration. This problem plagues the game from beginning to end, and even the air travel you eventually find only lets you land in useless spots. It's a gross stain on a game that easily could have been one of my favorites.
Shin Megami Tensei has gone on for a long time. Many good games have been released under the brand, and it's gradually becoming one of my favorites. That said, Atlus really needs to get a clue about certain things. It's just silly that Persona gets all of the innovation, character development, and fast travel while the mainline series gets the gameplay depth and build options. These things should not be mutually exclusive. While Shin Megami Tensei IV is a great game, with just a few of the lessons learned from other games in the series, it could really have felt more polished and appealed to more players. RPG enthusiasts should still enjoy the game if they can get past angels and demons being lumped together as the same thing, but even though it's more accessible, I'm not sure I can recommend this to a player unfamiliar with the genre.
8
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