Unsatisfied with just one game under their belts (Sequence, which is awesome), the people at Iridium Studios have decided to make another game. In “There Came an Echo” you use your voice to enter commands as you sneak around with a small squad, using military-like maneuvers to advance (although most of the people have no prior military experience). It’s not quite your average military tactics game. Every step forward is a step towards survival and discovering the truth of the universe.

To elaborate on the plot from the kickstarter page:

Corrin (played by Wil Wheaton) is a 31-year-old cryptographer and inventor of a very particular encryption algorithm…one that currently holds safe a shocking secret. His comfortable existence is interrupted by the enigmatic Val, who informs him that his life is in very imminent danger. His desperate attempts to uncover the truth are aided by a mercenary, Miranda; a vengeful young woman, Grace; and a mysterious British gentleman named Syll. The group is often at odds with one another, but eventually, they’ll need to overcome their enmity to strike back at the forces who kill, indiscriminately and without mercy, for a chance to unravel the deepest mysteries of the cosmos.

Commands can be customized if you don’t want to be formal and other types of controls will be added if you don’t want to solely use your voice.  As for the limits to your voice, “you can try and beatbox your way to victory”. It’s that lax.

The kickstarter page has more info on everything like the gameplay, reward tiers, and a list of FAQs (no, they haven’t given up on Ky and Nia).

This is cool and all, but they don’t have enough funds for the art department. They have already invested in everything else they need like actors, programmers, and a sound team. This is the last area they need to cover. At the moment they need a little over $21,000 to reach their main goal of $90,000. For stretch goals, if they get $115,000 the soundtrack will be expanded upon, $140,000 will get Linux/Mac support, and $175,000 will get Oculus Rift support.

The kickstarter ends in 12 days on Thursday Mar 21, 2:00pm EDT.

If you want to support Iridium Studios, or if you just want to see more of what the game is like, check it out here.

Wrapping up the Carpe Fulgar collection this month is Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone. As with Chantelise: A Tale of Two Sisters, I went in without knowing much beyond some screenshots (which didn’t show much) and the title screen. Looking easier than Chantelise, I thought of giving it about 15 minutes to see what this ridiculously cute game had to offer.

Two hours later, I reluctantly took a break. If it weren’t for the play time counter that appeared when saving, I would have kept right on going well past midnight. Fortune Summoners shot past my lone expectation, proving to be challenging, but not unfair, action-RPG.

The first 10 minutes or so focus on establishing characters and introducing you to the controls outside of combat. Soon after that it sets you against your first slime, a common pushover in every game that has them. Except Fortune Summoners. Any thoughts about how easy it would be to trample the slime are immediately trashed as it hops forward and tries to take a bite out of Arche, the main protagonist. Its attack pattern isn’t set into something you can memorize like “hop, hop, hop, bite” and button mashing won’t help. None of the monsters in Fortune Summoners have a straight forward attack pattern, forcing you to adapt to near unpredictable hostiles.

Honestly, the challenge a simple slime provided was surprising as was the competency of allies. Usually I accept that sooner or later I’ll be carrying the team, throwing out healing items to keep everyone alive. So when a fragile-looking girl suddenly sweeps through slimes and bats that I’m still trying to fend off with a blunted sword, while keeping my health up with no prompting whatsoever, it’s a pleasant feeling. The AI on both sides of battle is programmed well. Enemy encounters don’t become monotonous and partners can take care of themselves.

Party members are pretty smart outside of battle, too. If you’re crossing a dangerous chasm where your allies would likely fall to their doom if they followed, then they will stay back while you continue. If the room is a dead end, you can switch control to another party member and exit safely without having to worry about the character on the other side of the area falling off a cliff. If you need them to stay in one place for a puzzle, say a basket for weight purposes, they will.

The music is ambient, the sprites are well done, and everything is colorful and cute. Definitely not the sort of game you would expect to have excellent AI. Or have little girls accidentally finding lewd material in someone’s home.

As you might expect with such challenging conditions, dying is a given despite the awesome partners. Instead of sending you back to town though, you are given the chance to try again. Doing so places you in the nearest safe location with the same amount of health you had when you were last in that area. If you’re tired of monsters you have a second option. By paying 10% of your cash, you can be sent straight back to the safety of town.

About the only thing so far that has bothered me – besides dying by slimes, of all things – is the fact that it took over two scripted days to get through one cavern. Each time you visit you’re unable to get through for one reason or another, forcing the character(s) to turn around and head all the way back to town from where their progress was halted. This is justified as you are without a means to continue and the kids, having parents, aren’t allowed to stay out after dark. Since it is evening every time you hit an obstacle and step out of the caves, returning is mandatory.

Yay. Backtracking.

On the upside, heading back home means you can save and stock up on items. Saving can’t be done outside of places you can sleep in, so having an excuse to head back to town every once in a while gives the opportunity to do just that as well as advance the story.

Even though the game is very cutesy, Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone seems quite promising. It doesn’t hold your hand, but it does feel like it is holding back on combat early on in the game just so players can get the hang of fighting before being bombarded with the undead and magic-using enemies. Instead of a lengthy tutorial, you learn by talking to NPCs, checking out the abilities screen from the pause menu, and from experience. The system takes getting used to as it takes careful timing to slay enemies and judging by how deadly the AI can be, becoming an expert would mean crushing anything in the way of Arche getting an elemental stone. (And Arche starting to pull her own weight.) If any of this sounds appealing, there is a demo of Fortune Summoners on Steam if you want to try it out. I recommend doing so just for the really good AI.

Following the completion of Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale, I decided to check out its spiritual predecessor: Chantelise: A Tale of Two Sisters. Going by a handful of screenshots, I expected something just as fun if limiting in movement. Without having seen the trailer or any gameplay footage, I made the plunge.

What awaited was a nightmare.

Chantelise began innocently enough. A girl named Elise relates a story, audio in Japanese with the subtitles in English, in which she and her sister Chante disobeyed their mother one night and went out while the moon was blood red. Chante was transformed into a fairy by a witch and for five years the sisters have been tracking down the hag to make her turn Chante back to normal. Busting shins may be in the future.

The player is given a look at how the sisters interact in present-day before switching to a tutorial. Controls are simple; no fancy techniques thrown in. The monsters don’t give experience points, but it is still a training area. Perhaps they haven’t any here like at the beginning of Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, or maybe it’s like Chrono Cross where you level up after every boss fight. Afterwards, the game seems pretty carefree and light-hearted with the sisters meeting an item shopkeeper and having a place to stay while they look for clues leading to the blasted witch.

Then you hit the first dungeon. A number of factors become quite clear as you advance through area after area. For one, none of the enemies drop experience. It would have been normal during training, but not a single darn monster in Chantelise has any. They only drop money and gems, the latter being used for one-time use spells. You can have up to six at a time, being able to use two of the same type at a time to increase the power of a particular element.

The reason the lack of experience is so distressing is that there are no levels in Chantelise. Elise has base stats in all categories, but the monsters keep getting tougher. You have to use a variety of equipment to gain an edge, or at least keep up with her opponents in terms in strength. Only two slots are open at the beginning though. It looks like you gain one additional slot after each boss fight, making equipment management slightly easier. It still requires a bit of strategy concerning which stats to increase or ignore as well as which abilities to make use of, like speed boosts or elemental damage added to melee attacks.

Another disadvantage to having no levels means, of course, that Elise’s HP, a measly thirty, will not increase no matter how many monsters you kill. Instead you must buy or find Ferromin to up her vitality. Buying works for a little while, but the price doubles with each purchase. Soon enough, grinding for money becomes a worthless endeavor. Unfortunately, this weird shop mechanic goes for all items. The only way to lower the price is to sell the same expensive item back to a shopkeeper. Ferromin is used immediately, however, and even if you gather up a ton of treasure, they too will slowly become worthless. For every item sold, the value of that item decreases. It’s an exercise in restraint, handling money carefully so you can upgrade equipment as needed and occasionally increase Elise’s HP.

But that route inevitably takes too long and none of the bosses show any mercy. Your other option is to search the dungeon areas for hidden chests, hoping that one of them has what you need. There’s one hidden chest per area which opens after fulfilling a specific requirement. What that requirement is differs in each area. Sometimes it’s impossible to guess the trigger while other times it’s as easy as picking out an oddity and hitting it. You can get a hint on how to make a chest appear by paying the local priest some health. I find this ridiculously painful and I end up having to reload the game after every visit. Some hints are obvious while others are vague and puzzling, like incomplete thoughts.

The hints don’t show up until Chapter 2 though, so until then you’re left to a pretty easy dungeon followed by a devastating boss. Up until the terror at the end of the first dungeon, everything listed above doesn’t seem too bad. Annoying perhaps, but it all presents a challenge. And then you die. Game over. The abrupt end is as baffling as the sudden surge in difficulty. Nothing prepares you for it nor tips you off that something is wrong until it’s too late.

Oh, this is going to be fun.

Thankfully, you are dumped back in town with all of your loot after dying. The areas opened by clearing out all the enemies are still open, so no having to slay two dozen enemies to lower a shield and advance. These take some of the sting out of defeat, as does the option of practicing the boss from the dungeon area list on the world map. It’s still aggravating to die on the first boss, even more so if you knew what to do. This spike in difficulty is a sign of things to come: mild dungeon, royal pain of a boss. The main reason they become so tough is that there are no restoratives that you can buy. The only way to heal is to rely on random drops which are used instantly. This, more than anything, is why dying is such a common occurrence.

I didn’t think it was possible, but Chantelise: A Tale of Two Sisters is so much harder than Recettear’s dungeon diving portion. Strange shop mechanics, no handy healing items, and a lack of experience points make it next to impossible to survive plunging into a dungeon and conquering it in one trip. The places you explore become unbelievably dangerous with the bosses ready to destroy you the second their battles begin. If you have played Recettear before and planned on using old strategies on enemies, they won’t work as you’ll quickly find out. Chantelise doesn’t seem like a very long game, but it guarantees to grill players for the duration of the adventure. As hard as any old school game, Chantelise proves to be a test of endurance and patience for masochists and challenge-seekers.

Out of all the Sonic games I’ve ever played, I’m glad that I’ve never touched Sonic the Hedgehog, 2006 edition. Also known as Sonic ’06 (among a bunch of other nicknames), the game was plagued with numerous glitches, a messy plot concerning crying and time travel, a bad physics engine, collision detection problems, lots of long loading times, and so much more. It was released as a launch title for the XBox 360 to celebrate Sonic’s 15th anniversary, leading to many unhappy gamers and sinking Sonic’s reputation in one fell swoop. This obvious beta was rushed to be released on time, regardless of how complete it was, and Sega paid for it. Six years later and they are still trying to restore the blue blur’s image.

This catastrophe starts off in Soleanna, a kingdom ruled by Princess Elise. A festival for the kingdom’s deity is underway and as the ceremonial torch is lit, she has a vision of the entire city engulfed in flames. Dr. Eggman coincidentally attacks soon after, wanting to kidnap the princess and unlock the secrets of the “Flames of Disaster” so that he may rule the world throughout time. His actions spur the coincidentally visiting Sonic to spring into action and save the fair damsel. It doesn’t really matter since moments later she becomes captured, tossing Sonic a Chaos Emerald. The rest of Sonic’s story involves trying to get Elise back, losing her again, rescuing her again, time travel via Chaos Control, more kidnapping, and a bleak, fiery Soleanna in the future linked to Princess Elise’s kidnapping.

Shadow and Silver, a telekinetic hedgehog, have their own stories that intertwine with Sonic’s, culminating in a confusing plot that makes absolutely no sense even when the game is over. Some of the more maddening bits involve: a specific Chaos Emerald getting handed around to different people, which should have resulted in a paradox; Shadow having an important role to fulfill at the same time he was supposed to be sealed on Prison Island, also creating a paradox; the main villain’s plan hinging on Elise crying; inconsistencies in cutscenes, such as parts of Soleanna being on fire during Sonic’s story and not during Silver’s after Eggman attacks; the moon still being whole at the end; and Amy, Sonic’s long-time self-proclaimed girlfriend, allowing someone else to kiss her crush without a fuss. It’s a train wreck and not even the sometimes over-the-top-but-mostly-really-bad voice acting can keep you distracted from the fact.

And neither can Sonic’s Finger of Justice (TM).

Sadly, the gameplay is worse than the story. None of the characters move very quickly unless propelled by springs, dashpads, or floating rainbow rings. Usually Sonic’s levels would focus on speed, but his famed ability has been nerfed. He’s not as fast as he was in any previous Sonic games, and any titles released after that, and without his natural speed factor his levels come down to destroying enemies and moving forward at a comparably sluggish pace. He has Mach Speed sections where he runs forward at a surprisingly insane speed automatically, but barely touching anything solid, even the edge of a column or step, will send him tumbling into a break dance if not outright kill him. Combined with ridiculously tight controls these portions quickly become frustrating. Barely moving the control stick sharply moves Sonic, making precision a must.

Shadow’s close combat tactics from Shadow the Hedgehog are back as is his preference for riding in useless vehicles, and he has thankfully ditched the guns. Although this doesn’t really matter much as the vehicles can’t always go where he needs to and they tend to explode. Silver uses his psychokinesis to grab crates and enemy missiles to attack with, solve puzzles, and float over bottomless pits. However, with the problematic physics engine that’s just there his abilities prove to be hard to grasp, especially when dealing with the infamous billiard puzzle where the player has to move a ball around pits and crates while only using Silver’s powers on it nine times. The number also counts down gradually. Thankfully there’s a glitch to bypass the entire segment. All three hedgehogs can purchase upgrades in Soleanna’s hub to help them out, like the Light Speed Dash. This brings up the question of why couldn’t they all be free like in the Sonic Adventure series since old moves are being brought back? They’re mostly useless anyways and there’s no way to go back into completed levels to get easy rings in Soleanna and the stage select from the main menu doesn’t seem to add to your file’s total, so if you really want to get every upgrade you will have to complete the last levels for all three characters repeatedly. Makes you wonder why the developers bothered making a hub in the first place. Perhaps a way to enter previous levels from there was in the works but had to be scrapped.

Coming along for the disastrous ride are six other characters, two per hedgehog. At seemingly random moments throughout the game, the hedgehogs will switch out with one of their companions, something that is more disorienting than entering one of Sonic’s Mach Speed sections for the first time. Tails joins his long-time buddy, flying over obstacles and throwing fake ring containers at enemies. Holding the attack button can allow you to throw them in a first person view, but accuracy doesn’t get much better. It’s weird and out of place for the kit who has used his namesakes and the transformed X Tornado mecha to fight before, not to mention it is easy to lose track of your own lost rings among the fake ones. Granted, it does make a tiny bit of sense if you’ve ever heard of the little known Game Gear title Tails’ Adventure. In it, the fox builds his own weapons, mostly bombs, from objects he finds scattered around his island home. Unsure why he wasn’t just given bombs in Sonic ’06, though. It would have at least made more sense than an exploding ring container. Both attacks still make less sense than whacking enemies with his tails, however. In addition to this is a decrease in the kit’s stamina. His flight time has been shortened since Sonic Adventure and his fall speed is likened to that of a rock.

Then there’s Knuckles and Rouge who have gone back to their treasure hunting ways from Sonic Adventure 2, although Knuckles glides like he has gained fifty pounds since then and Rouge throws bombs for some inexplicable reason. Both of them can easily get caught up in the wall glitch where they are unable to jump and glide away at will. When that happens, you can either crawl around for a couple minutes to try getting back to the game or give up and restart the stage. Reuniting Team Dark from Sonic Heroes is E-123 Omega, a robot who shoots everything in sight and can float for a while using his thrusters. His speed, like everyone else’s, has been reduced and his gatling gun attack seems to be missing. Instead he shoots what looks like arcing lasers at enemies. Amy Rose shows up, turning invisible for no real reason and having next to no use in combat. She has to get so close to enemies to attack successfully that it’s a wonder why she was put in at all. Lastly there’s Blaze the Cat returning from Sonic Rush, only not since apparently this is not the same Blaze from an alternate dimension who protects the Sol Emeralds.

I have no idea; time and space are messed up in this game.

Anyways, she’s as fast as Sonic – the fastest character in the whole game aside from her – and uses the power of fire to launch her own version of the homing attack. She’s not quite his clone as she has an amazing double jump and a fiery twirling attack.

Add in long stages, ridiculously short missions that are necessary yet have nothing to do with the plot, game-breaking bugs, a screwy camera that’s too slow at times and doesn’t lock onto bosses (unless they target you), a physics engine that allows you to break the laws of physics (such as going up at a 90 degree angle, stopping, and not falling), and countless glitches and you have an awful milestone of a game.

Behold: one-tenth of the game!

In-between all of this are the loading screens. There are PS1 and PS2 games with equal or faster loading times. Almost all of them are ten seconds long, slipped in at the beginning, middle, and end of levels as well as when generally anything happens, like doing a mission for a citizen of Soleanna. Those missions have multiple loading screens, beginning after accepting an assignment. A loading screen leads you to a text box telling you what to do. Then one pops up before and after completing the mission. The citizen remarks on how you did, sending you into the results screen before finally making you wait ten seconds to be plopped back into the hub. That is four loading screens for one task, and should you fail you will be kicked back into the hub after the remark with no option to redo the mission before that. It’s nuts! It’s worse if you lose all of your lives since you get kicked back to the main menu. This normally wouldn’t be so bad, but then you have to deal with more loading screens to get back to the level you were on. Guaranteed, this will happen to everyone at one time or another and should it occur during the first stage, you will be thrown back to before the first cutscene. Autosaving early on was apparently a foreign concept.

The horrible controls don’t help either as they make maneuvering a tricky business. It has to be seen or experienced first-hand to understand just how unrefined the controls are. Even gamers who have mastered the controls in other 3D Sonic games will have trouble surviving and not falling to their doom through water, fire, and various other ways of dropping out of a level. Although that’s only half of the reason your life counter will drop. The other half is composed of glitches. The stuck-on-the-wall bug is fairly common but so is Sonic falling off rails while grinding, defying gravity, and missing enemies with the (slow) homing attack. Other glaring flaws include Silver being able to one-shot Sonic in a boss fight by pinning the blue blur to a wall, invisible or otherwise, and throwing him repeatedly without pause; being able to break out of the Silver versus Sonic boss fight as the latter; falling off or through loop de loops; and flying off from the main path during Mach Speed levels after taking a hit. It’s amazing that anyone ever got to the end of this terror.

He can build high-tech gadgets, but he can't avoid getting stuck like this.

Now, it wouldn’t be a Sonic game without something to collect, would it? There are no emblems or cute Chao to take care of and the Chaos Emeralds are collected throughout the story so no Special Zones. Instead there are collectible medals that do nothing. Whatever their original purpose was for is unknown. They exist and can be collected obsessively, although nothing will come from those efforts.

Outside of the jumbled main mess of Sonic ‘06 is a multiplayer mode for two people. There are two modes, one where both players cooperate to finish stages and obtain Chaos Emeralds and a Battle Mode where they race to the end of a level a la Sonic Adventure 2. Downloadable content includes a Very Hard Mode for each character (sold separately), Boss Attack (again, sold separately for each character), and Team Attack Amigo wherein you play as Tails, Blaze, and Omega in an eight part marathon consisting of parts from other stages with a boss battle at the end. Unlockable content that doesn’t need to be paid for is confined to a theatre to look at past cutscenes and an audio room to listen to music.

Absolutely nothing could salvage this game. Not the music, which is all right with a handful of good tracks to be found, and not the graphics, which are what you would expect from a 360 game: high quality and beautiful, particularly in the cutscenes. For the time anyway. Dr. Eggman and every other human are more realistic looking than in previous games, which is quite jarring when looking at Sonic and his big-eyed friends, staring at everything with shiny, jewel-like eyes. Then there’s the bit where Elise kisses Sonic, perhaps one of the most disturbing things to have ever been seen in a Sonic game. No amount of graphical enhancement can make that all right. In fact, it would only make things worse.

Sonic the Hedgehog was hyped up and pushed for release before it was ready and that was its downfall. The developers just couldn’t deliver something of quality with the higher-ups wanting to get their latest game out in time for the Christmas season. Loyal fans had high expectations and they were crushed and buried. The story made no sense, the gameplay was unpolished, a lot of the planned featured were dummied out, and somewhere at Sega HQ was a shredded pile of paper that, when taped together, made a list of bugs and glitches that needed fixing. The game was just about unplayable and although it got placed on the Platinum Hits list, Sonic ’06 effectively destroyed the hedgehog’s good name. Altogether it’s an awful game that’s better off being watched as others are driven to insanity by it.

Shopkeepers are an adventurer’s best friend. They sell the essentials for traveling and surviving, and buy all the junk cluttering your inventory, never asking where any of it came from. This potion from an enemy soldier, that trinket from the home of a rich nobleman, priceless artifacts from a dungeon, old candy that’s been stuffed in your pocket since the journey’s beginning, and those unneeded synthesis materials from wiping out the local bird populace. They take it all without question, give you money, and bid farewell.

While some games give you the chance to sit behind the counter for a while and haggle with customers, like in Digimon World, none do so quite like Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale. It combines a deep store and item management system, RPG elements, dungeon diving, and cute characters for an addictive game that will steal hours of your life away.

The game follows Recette, a naïve young girl who has been living alone for weeks, awaiting the day that her adventuring father comes home. One day, a loan shark fairy by the name of Tear visits and informs Recette that her father took out a rather hefty debt with the Terme Finance Company before he left. Now Recette is saddled with a soul-crushing debt and it must be paid off in its entirety soon or she will be forced to play house in a cardboard box. Since selling off her organs would be inadvisable, Tear suggests that Recette open up the first floor of the house as an item shop. This way she could raise money to pay off the debt, chipping away at it with weekly payments while still having a roof to live under. Jumping at the idea with enthusiasm that only a child could have in the face of hardship, Recette decides upon a name and the portmanteau Recettear item shop is born.

It starts off a tad slow, giving a bulk of tutorials during the first day and several others over the following weeks depending on your merchant level, broadening the options of what you can do and how the local economy can shift. All of the tutorials are skippable and for the most part they show simple concepts (press up to increase the price, press down to decrease, take advantage of price increases, etc.), but it’s worth listening to Tear for a bit to learn how high or low to go or how time is managed. The right prices offered for buying or selling items will make your customers happy, although they start out with only a little cash to spend so you can’t really price gouge anything early on. The more customers in a row you send off without a scowl, the more experience you get and the higher your (unseen) reputation levels with them become. The experience goes towards your merchant level which affects many things from what the local shops will have on display to store expansions to how much your customers can spend. At some point they may even accept paying 300% of what something is worth if your reputation is high enough. It’s crazy.

200% of base price. This is why he's poor.

What kind of customers you get depends on what items are on display and how you have decorated the store. Flooring, rugs, and wallpaper can shift the atmosphere of Recettear attracting little girls with little money or con-artists or certain adventurers. Each day is divided into four segments for morning, noon, evening, and night so you can open for business up to four times a day. Visiting any of the locations in town wastes a segment of time, although you can visit everything from the market to the adventurer’s guild and only a fourth of the day will pass.

After a while the game stops holding back on the various responsibilities of being a shopkeeper. Prices fluctuate, people place in orders, and the weekly payments only get higher.

During all of this, new faces will be showing up around town and more likely than not they will be potential adventurers that can be hired. Each adventurer has one or more requirements to fulfill before they hand over their card. After that you can hire them out to explore dungeons, which are pretty diverse. There are four randomized levels of a common theme (like caves, forest, treetops, or ruins) with monsters and traps aplenty. On every fifth floor is a boss whose weakness must be quickly figured out and exploited while you try to keep from dying. Sometimes the weakness isn’t apparent and you have to wait for your chance. If you are successful, you will have the chance to exit the dungeon. While you can leave with all of the items you’ve collected, you have to decide: wrap things up now or keep pressing further into the dungeon for treasure. The dungeon theme and music change up every five levels so there’s little monotony to be had. However, if the adventurer’s HP drops to zero, you can only choose one item to bring with you in your retreat out of the dungeon. It’s a tough decision. You’re on a constant schedule to gather items and sell them for profit. Do you keep going and risk death for capitalism or stop and safely go home with what you have? On the upside, your adventurer keeps the levels that he has gained should the worst happen, although the entire purpose of going into a dungeon is to gather items to sell so your best choice would be to just quit and reload a previous save.

Make the most of half a day.

Now, let’s say you get an awesome weapon and you want to permanently equip it to your favorite adventurer. You can’t manually equip anything to them outside of dungeons. Instead, for them to upgrade their equipment, they have to buy it off of you in the item shop. Whichever item they want when they come in is a bit randomized as is the order in which people come up and purchase something. If you get lucky, the adventurer will grab the better equipment on display, ask if you have something in that item’s category (sword, scarf, etc.), or put in an order for equipment they can use. If all else fails and you still want them to have better stuff, you will have to bring it into the dungeon with you, meaning less room for treasure.

Unfortunately, due to the increasingly large chunks of debt that you have to pay off each week, you may not be able to pay off the debt in full by the end of the month. When that happens, it is game over. Recette is cast out on the streets and wakes up in her bed like nothing ever happened on Day 2.

Wait, what?

Yes, in the event of failure you will be sent back to right after the initial tutorials with all of your items, your current merchant level, whichever expansions to the store you managed to buy, cleared dungeon floors, and the adventurers get to keep their equipment and levels. It’s sort of like new game plus except when you clear the game you get immediate access to whomever you hired the most before paying off the debt through their “True Card”, and the expansions aren’t carried over.

Other perks to paying back Terme Finance include extra modes of play. In Endless Mode you can dungeon dive to your heart’s content and take your time acquiring adventurers, but the whole point of running an item shop is rendered moot. Collecting money means nothing unless you’re saving up to buy a ton of items before starting a new game plus to get another True Card. You also unlock Survival Mode (normal and “Hell” variations) wherein you have a debt that you can never fully be rid of. Any True Cards that you’ve collected can be used, which is particularly useful if you want a certain character right off the bat.

Throughout Recettear there is an absurd amount of shout outs and references from various sources like Persona 4, Harry Potter, The Godfather, and many, many others. They are mostly found in item descriptions and more than a few are spilled by Tear, but they don’t interfere with the excuse plot or charming characters. If anything the references give a good laugh regardless of whether or not you know where they came from.

While not incredibly fancy, the 2D sprites for the characters as they walk around are cute and the 3D dungeons are on par with graphics from the PS1 so that the quality between characters and environments doesn’t stretch too far.

The music is all right and it’s refreshing to constantly hear new music every so often while going through a dungeon.

There’s not much to note on the game’s cons. Monotony may set in during Endless Mode when money doesn’t mean as much, but several loose ends about some characters are tied up if you manage to keep going. If exploring starts to lose its appeal, then switch to another adventurer. They all have a specialty, like blocking projectiles or running quickly, so they all play a little differently from each other.

On the surface Recettear may seem like a shallow doujin game about buying and selling goods, but underneath the adorable characters and colorful world is a deeper system of management. Granted, it does take time to get to that point while being eased into every aspect of being a shopkeeper. A unique experience, Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale is quite a treat for those who enjoy prospect of running their own store (without as many bills).

Pocky & Rocky is a little known gem that went largely unnoticed in the shadows of popular games and exciting titles like Super Mario World and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. It was released in 1993 by Natsume, which took a chance at introducing a game loaded with Japanese mythology to audiences across the seas. Admirable, but without commercials or ads it didn’t receive a lot of attention. A lot of the original context and graphics were also changed up, erasing many of the Japanese meanings and ties to folklore. It’s too bad because it’s a great cute ’em up that deserves more love.

You play as one of the eponymous duo: Pocky the Shinto shrine maiden or Rocky the tanuki (called a raccoon for some reason; there wasn’t a problem in using the term “Tanuki Suit” in Super Mario Bros. 3). This unlikely team has joined forces to find out why Rocky’s fellow “Nopino Goblins” – they don’t look like goblins though and are actually supernatural monsters called yōkai – were agitated and crazy when he woke up. So agitated, in fact, that monsters show up to attack the shrine. One butt-whooping later and they learn that the Nopino goblins were placed under a spell by someone named Black Mantle. Determined to help out the rest of the monsters, Pocky and Rocky take off across feudal Japan to follow Black Mantle’s trail and cure all of the yōkai by beating the senses back into them.

Violence solves everything.

Combat is frantic and fast-paced with a variety of enemies popping in from off-screen, hiding in plain sight, or waiting underneath the ground. Some have movement patterns while others simply target Pocky and Rocky while remaining stationary or actively pursuing the two. On top of that most of the monsters spawn indefinitely, urging you in conjunction with the timer to keep moving. Later levels throw in obstacles and monsters attacking from just out of sight, meaning you need luck or practice to keep from dying. Thankfully, there are an unlimited number of continues and depending on the difficulty you can start with up to four lives. If you die, you respawn right on the spot with a screen-wide attack that obliterates minor enemies and damages bosses.

Boom.

There are no big differences in gameplay if you decide to choose Rocky over his companion or vice versa. They play exactly the same with only a few differences showing up in boss monologs, the power when respawning with a vengeance, and what happens after charging up and releasing their short-ranged attacks. The shrine maiden throws ofuda tags, er- I mean “magic cards” and swings around her oharai, a purification rod that was translated into “magic wand”. Meanwhile the tanuki tosses leaves at the hostile monsters and swings his tail if they get too close. Cards and leaves can be thrown in eight directions in either rapid succession with the X button or one at a time with the A button. The B button activates the close-range attack. Holding the button for a short time and releasing it makes Pocky spin around, deflecting objects for a short time. Rocky will turn into an invincible statue for a bit, which is great if you can’t dodge a barrage of attacks. Unless your escape routes are barricaded or you are on a narrow path, you should be able to dodge most of the time by sliding with Y. If you slide into your friend while playing together, however, they will take damage and be sent sliding all over the screen, hitting every enemy. A useful, if costly, move. It’s just about the equivalent of respawning or using a bomb. As with the number of lives, the amount of bombs you are given depends on the difficulty. Easy gives you 3, normal gives you 1, and hard has none at all.

Time to clear the screen.

Adding some oomph to your attacks are colored orbs dropped by enemies and found in baskets. Purple orbs upgrade and multiply how many tags or leaves can be thrown while red orbs give the power to shoot fireballs. Additional orbs increase your power, but only if you pick up the same colored orbs. Switching colors resets the power level as does getting hit several times. Other items restore health, create a shield, and allow you to ride an animal around for a little bit to trample enemies.

The music is pretty good with some ear worms stuck in there, like the boss theme. Every enemy is cute and well-designed, although a few palette swaps show up. The levels have a lot of detail, more so than one would expect out of a scrolling shooter. Considering how many times players might wind up doing the same level over and over and over again, it keeps the stages from being dull after the umpteenth attempt through. Combined with the need to memorize various attack patterns, there’s plenty of incentive to keep coming back.

Altogether, Pocky & Rocky feels like it belongs in an arcade, waiting to eat up your quarters for every occurrence of a continue screen. There are six stages so the difficulty ramps up pretty quick, although playing with a friend makes them a bit easier with successful cooperation. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like Pocky & Rocky will hit the Wii Virtual Console anytime soon, so if you want it, start searching your local thrift stores because it is too fricking expense on eBay.

We’re still alive! Here’s our Top 7 games played in 2012 featuring myself, Caleb, and Ryan! Hope you enjoy!

There are not enough words to adequately describe how much I love Dark Cloud 2, also known as Dark Chronicle in PAL regions. It’s a wonderful, innovative dungeon crawler created by Level-5 that’s full of charming characters, customizable outfits and weapons, randomized dungeons, and a plethora of things to do on and off the main quest. You can take photographs, create inventions from said photographs, perfect the ideal robot for murdering monsters, go fishing, raise fish to enter contests, play a little Spheda (golf, basically) to repair distortions in time, and recruit townspeople to come travel the world. Needless to say, there’s enough content to keep you seated for hours on end.

You take control of Max, a young boy from the small, isolated town of Palm Brinks and Monica, a girl from the future. They cross paths in Max’s time when everything seems peaceful inside of the high walls of Palm Brinks. People have accepted that it’s too dangerous to go outside the main gates and remain blissfully unaware of the reality of the situation beyond the town (although no one seems to question how a circus troupe could survive out there). However, after being chased by evil, determined clowns one evening, Max resolves to venture out into the outside world via sewers and find some answers as to why the circus folk wanted his pendant so much.

As it turns out, the pendant is known as an Atlamillia, filled with powerful magic. Oh, and the world needs help. Origin points of important places and people in the future have been destroyed, leaving the world a hundred years in the future defenseless in both strength and knowledge against someone who calls himself Emperor Griffin. Monica has traveled back to the past to restore these origin points and with Max’s Atlamillia combined with her own, they can freely travel to the future and back again to ensure the world is being properly rebuilt.

Rebuilding the world is a mechanic brought over from the original Dark Cloud. How it goes is that you first find a Geostone in a dungeon. It used to be that you had to find a number of balls scattered about, but here it’s been simplified to a single piece of glowing rock. Inside the Geostones is information on structures like houses, benches, trees, torches, mailboxes, chimneys, a river, and so on. All of this is loaded into the Carpenterion, a terraforming machine, allowing you to create new things, so long as you have the necessary materials, or revealing new Georama conditions to restore the origin points. As long as those conditions are fulfilled and everything stays within the Polyn count (can’t have too many polygons on screen), you can build almost whatever you want where you want it. As the game progresses the conditions become stricter, but by no means less fun. Want everyone to have a mailbox, a bench, or a laundry pole? Do it. Want to take up the remaining polygons with gates, trees, or fences? Go for it. Want to paint as many roofs as you can pink? If you can afford that many paint cans, then by all means spruce up the budding village.

The only thing in the way between you and 5 houses painted pink with all the bells and whistles is money. Unneeded things can be broken down into base materials but sooner or later you’ll have to purchase whatever else is required to rebuild the past. As you can imagine some scrap metal here and a hunk of copper there quickly adds up, especially early on. Luckily, most of the materials for Georama are found in the dungeons, saving your wallet from being constantly emptied.

The dungeons are split up into floors where Max and Monica walk around a randomly generated area, kill enemies, find the gate key (which varies from location to location; like a saw in the woods or a slab of meat in the mountains), and use it to continue on to the next area. Combat happens in real time with no transitions to a battlefield, making your immediate options upon finding an enemy flexible. You can lock on and get in close with a wrench or sword, charge up the melee weapon for a powerful blow, stand back and shoot, toss an offensive item, or switch to one of the kids’ supplementary combat modes. Max gets a killer robot in Steve the Ridepod while Monica can transform into monsters as long as she has the appropriate pin. Steve and Monica’s monster forms can earn experience points, the former being able to exchange EXP for upgrades. You can make most them out of photographs but until you know the right combinations of ideas, this is your best bet to making the slow Ridepod go faster and be able to pulverize anything that gets in its way. The parts just get better and better – the ones you can make in particular being superior – until Steve turns into a death machine, capable of taking down every monster and nearly every boss. Nothing like a speeding, katana-wielding, clown-bodied robot of doom to ensure a quick demise for anything that dares to stand in the way of Maximilian.

Steve the Battlebot. Batteries sold separately.

Max’s and Monica’s weapons can also earn experience in the form of absorption points (ABS), every level up boosting damage output and adding on one skill point to the weapon. Skill points are spent on synthesizing items to the weapons, increasing durability and damage to certain types of monsters depending on what was fused in the first place. Just about anything can be synthesized up to, and including, cures for status ailments and other weapons. After certain attributes have been built up enough, you can build up the weapon to change it into something better, sometimes being able to change the weapon completely.

Oddly enough, the kids themselves don’t gain any experience from defeating enemies. Their health and defense only go up by finding and eating specific items for each of them, usually found in chests around towns in the past or restored locales in the future. The more an origin point is restored, the more of these special items you will find scattered about, among other things.

If you thought it seemed too good, that’s because it is. The catch to combat is that weapons have a health bar of sorts and can break after continued use if a repair powder isn’t used in time, although unlike Dark Cloud the broken weapon won’t disappear. Instead, all you need is some repair powder and you can continue pounding enemies into a fine red mist. However, all of the ABS saved up prior to breaking will have disappeared. Steve has the same limitation with its weapons and fuel. They need to be replenished lest Steve break down in the middle of a fight with a giant Mimic or dragon. Other than that, everything about combat is smooth and enjoyable with plenty of strategizing involved. The monsters have a several recolors thrown in, mostly signifying elemental changes, and the dungeons are far from dull to look at. The level of detail is more than one would expect out of a dungeon crawler, displaying not only eye-catching environments but really hard Spheda courses, too.

For those who want some sort of additional goal while dungeoneering in each section, there are medals up for grabs on every floor. It can be as simple as destroying everything with Steve to as difficult as going after every last monster with a specific weapon, like Monica’s fireball magic. The medals are traded to Mayor Need for new outfits if you’re looking for a new look. As you progress, the Spheda option opens up, allowing you to play a little golf in cleared out areas to fix up time distortions. If successful, you’ll nab a few rewards that vary in usefulness.

This is more fun than it should be.

One of the major appealing aspects of Dark Cloud 2 is that it allows you to do almost anything anytime in whatever order you want. That said there are more than enough objectives on the side when you want to take a break from bashing monsters. About half the populace of Palm Brinks can be recruited and placed on Blackstone One, seated somewhere inside the train until you have a home setup for them (or not). Max’s friend Donny has some rewards for you as your photography level goes up, mostly some things to synthesize or sell with the occasional piece of clothing thrown in.

Catch fish, raise them, race them, go on a photo taking spree, or create new inventions. If that’s not enough there’s an absolutely brutal post-game bonus dungeon that can shut you down before the first branching path, even while using Steve. As well, should you make a new file on the same memory card containing your last adventure, any clothing that you’ve managed to collect can be chosen before the new game. Did you grab up some fancy or odd duds? They’ll be available for your new outing.

Grabbing Max’s photo album in Chapter 2 or later allows you save up to 50 photos on the side, which can be accessed from any game file in either memory card slot. This opens up so many possibilities from rare picture storage to carrying over any photos you need for powerful weapons that can rip through early game enemies with ease. Cutscenes and explanations can be skipped if desired, something of which I’m extremely grateful for. There’s only so many times one can take of being enlightened of the same thing over and over again before boredom sets in. Yes, we understand what Atlamillia and Geostones are the second time around. Thank you Level-5 for making it skippable.

Negative points? What negative points? Yes, you have to grind for the bonus dungeon, but that’s after the main quest. Usually one trip through a dungeon is enough if you’ve defeated every last enemy, although half of a second trip isn’t a bad idea for earning some free materials and additional ABS. The story and gameplay are balanced well and despite the plot containing time travel, it’s perfectly coherent with likable characters. Fantastic voice acting is thrown in, although the lips don’t always sync and some of the voices are not so pleasant to listen to. The music isn’t grating, changing up the further you go into a chapter’s dungeon or if an enemy gets within range. The intro song is kind of cheesy but the rest is pure, excellent ambiance. It’s rather pleasing to the ears and possibly one of the few reasons I don’t mind walking everywhere in Palm Brinks. The cel-shaded graphics are delicious eye candy, lovely for a near 10 year-old game, capturing your attention and refusing to let go. It’s the complete package for any fan of roguelikes with so much content to offer in a single disc.

I can’t put into words how much fun and joy Dark Cloud 2 brings. It’s the kind of game that’s more entertaining to play than to watch, although that mainly depends on who’s playing or commentating. It’s truly a great game, having stood the test of time and standing tall even today. It comes highly recommended and if you can find yourself a copy, you won’t be disappointed.

What if you woke up one day in an unknown building, head pounding, and were told that you had to risk your life playing a rhythm game in order to earn your freedom? If you said wanting answers and trying to calm down, then you not only have a good head on your shoulders but a good idea of how Sequence opens. College student Ky has been dropped into some strange tower, probably after being hauled out of his home in the middle of the night, and the only way out is to climb all seven floors, defeating monsters and floor Guardians along the way.

No, Jigsaw isn’t behind this scheme. It’s too bloodless. In truth, not even Naia, Ky’s snarky guide through the intercom, knows who’s doing this and why. She’s just doing her job, monitoring Ky, giving him survival tips, and handing out some synthesis recipes while he does all the work to survive. She may have access to three Saving Graces to stop a battle at anytime and pull Ky’s bacon out of the fryer, but the guy’s basically on his own.

The battles come down to three screens of falling arrows, like in Dance Dance Revolution only for your fingers. One screen is for blocking incoming attacks, one is for casting spells to inflict or heal damage, and the last one is for regaining mana to cast magic. Ky is damaged by any arrows that fall through the first one. They come in different colors for different amounts of damage with white as the lowest and red as the highest. The spells you can cast range from offensive to defensive and everything in-between, and you can queue them up while defending Ky’s health. Thankfully the monsters can’t cast spells otherwise Ky’s health would be taking a chunk of damage out of nowhere. The worst you will get out of them are a series glowing arrows falling at a quick pace. The Guardians on the other hand have abilities that mess around with what you’re able to do, and they like to use these abilities while you are fighting monsters. Early on the arrows start disappearing and it just escalates from there. These abilities are temporary, however, and you can synthesize inhibitors to keep the bosses from interfering in normal battles, but the time spent dealing with their effects can be either annoying or nightmarish. Inverted arrows are nothing to sneeze at.

It can get hectic even before Guardian Effects kick in.

The spoils of battle are what you will really be after. You get some experience depending on how well you did and a chance to earn some equipment or raw synthesis materials. Literally a chance. There’s a visible percentage attached to each item, but you won’t know what each monster drops until they do so. You can face them as many times as you want (or need) to until you have enough to complete whichever synthesis recipes you want. These recipes result in armor, weapons, accessories, spell scrolls, and floor keys. Spell scrolls are simple to make but you have to get a certain percentage or a specific combo on a song to gain access to the spell itself. The keys grant you passage to the Guardians, who are often hilarious upon confrontation. Honestly though, a Victorian boss who tries to throw out modern insults in his own era’s language is pretty ridiculous.

Unfortunately, synthesizing and spell learning have a catch: you have to exchange experience points as payment. Every recipe has a recommended level to reach before shelling out EXP so you don’t drop a whole level when increasing the odds of success. It defaults at 50% and can be increased or decreased. The success rate maxes out at 95% so there are no guaranteed creations. The synthesis can fail and if it does, it is going to hurt badly. The materials stay, but the experience gets wasted. Needless to say if you’re out to synthesize and learn absolute everything you will have to level grind. Not that you need to create everything. Just keep your eye on three or four items, get them, and move on. Unneeded items can be desynthesized for experience so grinding isn’t as bad as it could be. You can also check out the often (bad) pun-filled descriptions of equipment and effects of spells before synthesizing so you know what to expect.

Wrapped around this hybrid of rhythm and role-playing genres is a humorous script, fully voice-acted, focusing on the characters and their interactions. There’s an element of reality to the dialogue – at least as far as Ky and Naia are concerned. As the game progresses more is revealed about the main characters, giving them more depth than expected out of a 12 or so hour game focused around fantastic music and pressing keys to the beat. Or frets. Apparently you can use a guitar controller to play as well.

As for the music, it’s amazing. Right from the get-go it’s easy to sink into the beat, although this is coming from a music nut so your results may vary. There are 28 tracks, not all of them playable but still enjoyable. They can be listened to at any time from the bonus menu with your selection of any detailed background.

Replayability depends on how much you enjoy playing around with the songs or if you want to try a harder difficulty. In combination with the bad puns and script, it’s hard not to put everything on hold and play after every break. Surprisingly addictive, Sequence is recommended to all rhythm fans.

For almost a year now I’ve been reviewing video games for ACGV. It’s been exhausting sometimes, but for the most part it’s been rewarding. There have been some weeks when I couldn’t make up my mind on what to cover, so I would pop into the forum’s chatbox to get some opinions or ideas. One game in particular that has been requested the most is The Mark of Kri, an old title that mixes stealth and action into one brutal package. This game has been sitting in a pile of other PS2 games, waiting to be completed for months now. I got to the third level and stopped after a failed sneak attack ended with the main character, Rau, being trounced in an unwanted melee. Since I recently got the urge to pick up MoK again, I decided to review it at long last.

The Mark of Kri follows the exploits of Rau, a young warrior in search of adventure and excitement. He slowly gains a reputation at a small cantina and eventually saves the world from darkness, which is unleashed via the six symbols of the Mark of Kri. Part of the story is told not in cutscenes, but speed drawings over yellowed paper accompanying the narration. It fits the setting of an ancient era where skilled warriors are valued and huts are still widely used. Even the loading screens have art, though they aren’t drawn before your eyes. It beats a black screen with the words “Now loading”, anyway.

The main gameplay revolves around Rau sneaking into bandit camps, ruins, and general enemy territory to eliminate threats and rack up piles of dead bodies. He’s bulky yet he can somehow creep up on anyone, as long as their back is to him, and take them out. It reminds me a bit of the Sly Cooper series except that the enemies are smarter to a degree and there are no acrobatics involved. Standing clearly within their line of sight will almost always set them off. For instance, I was once above a group of bandits, watching them from a balcony across a gap as unsettling music played, when they started yelling and running into the rope border. It was surprising considering how long it took the bandits to realize that they were being watched, but it was a balcony. Both parties were given an unobstructed view.

Then again there was another group that was in a battle stance, doing nothing as I aimed arrows and picked them off one at a time. No AI is perfect.

Now, there is a certain distance you can stand away from enemies so that they won’t notice an intruder (usually if you can barely see them, they can barely see you), but once they do they will run straight at Rau (if they can) and possibly overpower him. He can’t take on a bunch of people at once in the beginning and while you are trying to mash the attack buttons, the enemies will be whittling down Rau’s health until he falls over dead.

Stealth is always the better option.

This is where Kuzo, Rau’s spirit guide, comes in. This bird can be sent towards revolving bird icons in pillars of light throughout the six levels, allowing you to scout ahead and plan accordingly. It’s really the best way to survive. Being able to sneak through enemy lines flawlessly gives a real feeling of achievement, too.

As you progress through the six levels, Rau gains some more weapons aside from his sword and fists. The others are a bow, a spear-like weapon called a taiaha, and an axe. The bow loses its usefulness once armored foes start showing up more often, so you can’t just pick off every enemy in sight up until the end.

There may be emphasis on sneaking around, but players aren’t totally dissuaded from initiating combat. The level layouts force the player to think of ways around dangers instead of charging right into it and every so often you’ll have to brandish a weapon, guarding and disarming your opponents until there’s nobody moving. Or charging through an enemy swarm to reach the goal. Fighting is easy enough to pick up though mastering it is another matter entirely. X button attacks, right analog stick makes a red beam emit from Rau to choose opponents, up to three enemies can be locked on, circle and square are assigned to chosen enemies, and if only one or two enemies are locked onto then the remaining buttons can be used to go into a deadly combo. Only you won’t always have the convenience of only a couple bandits to handle at once. Bigger groups can, and often will, spell game over, making it a priority to strategize on the run. If you mess up and die – and you know it will be your fault because all five of those guys wouldn’t have come running had you used an arrow instead of creeping up on the one person with the horn – you will begin at the start of the level all over again unless you’ve acquired a save scroll and used it somewhere. There’s more than four in each level that you can use at any time. Loading takes you back to the same spot you left off at, with the same health, arrow count, and body count as you did before dying or quitting. It’s really handy and if you’re not satisfied with how things are going, whether you wasted too many arrows or lost too much health too soon, you can restart the level at any time.

If this all seems too plain, that’s because I haven’t explained how violent MoK is. Depending on where you are when a finishing or stealth move is executed, Rau will do something that cements the fact that small children should not be playing this. Head smashing, grabbing an enemy’s weapon and killing them with it, head splitting, decapitation, and stabbing are the only ones that come to mind at the moment. It’s even encouraged through Baumusu’s Challenge, a list of objectives in a level that can be completed before the end. Unarmed, using boars as a distraction, achieving a combo through quick button input, and about two dozen other things are asked of the player while achieving glory. Not even the cartoonish graphics can keep the brutality down.

Mindless violence. Always a crowd pleaser.

Now you may have caught the bit about the right analog stick not being able to control the camera. Well three of the shoulder buttons don’t manipulate it either. You can only go into first person mode and look around while standing still if you really need to direct the camera somewhere, otherwise it follows Rau around on its own, mainly keeping focused on which direction he’s facing. There’s no convenient way to control the camera to look around corners so you’re stuck with relying on Kuzo. It’s not bad, but it feels odd having no way to move the camera in a 3-dimensional field of freedom.

There’s a reason it doesn’t gets on my nerves. Despite having almost no control over the camera, it does a decent job of aiming where you want it to about 80 percent of the time. What gets annoying are a few things dealing with Rau himself. He can easily get caught on table edges instead of sliding around them, something that’s quite jolting after having played other games where characters just slip by the corners of things. This isn’t limited to the inn, however. If Rau bumps into anything solid, he will stop dead in his tracks. He then has to turn and if you’re making a 180 he will pause in his movements before spinning around. I really don’t have any other complaints since more often than not you have enough room to maneuver around in.

Although there are only a handful of them, the level layouts are really cool. They really push you to figure out the best course of action before continuing, something that I’ve never seen in an action game. This sort of thinking is usually seen in games starring thieves or assassins, not warriors. The voice actors did a great job and I absolutely love the hammy tutorial instructor. He made the long lesson on controls worth it. I wish his voice was heard whenever a help message appeared in the first level. The whole thing was like advanced training; it would have fit.

Replayability depends on how much you enjoy sneaking and making corpses. If you enjoy the latter then you’ll certainly enjoy the arena challenges. One arena opens up every time you complete a Baumusu’s Challenge, giving you two different trials: time attack and body count. Completing time attacks earns you concept art while body count earns you outfits for Rau. All of these, as well as level select and cheats (if you activate them), are available from the Sage at the inn. You can reach him from the file load screen, too. Useful since you can’t enter the cantina unless you’re in-between levels.

Despite the short play time when compared to other PS2 games, The Mark of Kri is pretty decent for what it is. Violent, challenging, and surprisingly entertaining gameplay make for a good time, even with MoK’s age showing now and then. If it sounds like something up your alley, you may want to look into getting yourself a copy.

I somewhat have Faerie Solitaire to blame for trying out Fairy Bloom Freesia. Both games have some spelling of “fairy” in their names and after spending over 22 hours on solitaire, I decided to give a cutesy game I would have normally passed up a chance.

One Steam sale and a controller purchase later and an unhealthy obsession has developed. Much like the Super Smash Bros. series, I can’t get enough of this fighting game lately. You take control of the fairy Freesia who protects the Lita Forest she lives in by beating the snot out of the strange creatures that have recently shown up. They drop mana and give experience points, the former of which allows you to unlock and build up combat skills in between battles. There are three types of skills: Basic, Special, and Optional. Basic and Optional Skills, unlike Special ones, don’t need any magic to be used. Basic Skills don’t have to be allocated, being automatically put to use once the next battle starts and Optional Skills are mostly passive. Up to four Specials and two Optionals can be utilized at any time as long as they are set up during the intermission.

Float like a fairy, sting like a wasp.

Combat is smooth, feeling more like a brawl as Freesia sends foes flying left and right. It’s the absolute purity of crushing enemies; that joy of destruction without any additional tasks shoved in to interrupt the flow of battle. It’s wonderful and may cause players to say “Just one more” before realizing how much time has ticked away.

Aside from the intermission, the only other thing that pauses the action is the storyline. It’s pretty short and the mode can be completed in about four or five hours, but it gives an excuse to change up the battle grounds as well as give an origin for the creatures invading the forest. It is a little disconcerting though to see the character portraits after being introduced to the colorful and well-made 3D world on a 2D plane. The art oftentimes looks unprofessional and, in one case, creepy. Listine’s face when getting Freesia’s attention is a cross between horrifying and laughable.

Beautiful.

The music on the other hand is pleasant if a little generic. Some cutscenes tracks are longer than the scenes they play in though, so unless you read really slowly or wait for a couple minutes you will end up missing out.

Unfortunately there isn’t a whole lot of variety when it comes to enemies. There are a few monster types that get palette swapped, so by late game you should have a good idea on how to approach each one. That is, if they get a chance to even attack before being thrown against the wall. There’s plenty of content to unlock, but so far all I know of is a character gallery, a higher difficulty, an endurance mode of sorts, and the choice to carry over skills and mana to a new game. Technically you could play forever, but I imagine there’s only so much a person could take of the same enemies before succumbing to boredom.

Fairy Bloom Freesia is a fun fighting game while it lasts, although there’s not much to do after Story Mode unless you like taking on harder enemies.

At last, the Rareware Kong Train has rolled into Lake Orangatanga Station for Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble. This final entry in Rare’s DKC trilogy hit the shelves the year after Diddy’s Kong-Quest. It boasted an open overworld, a handful of side quests, and even better graphics than DKC2. Although not as popular as its predecessor, DKC3 was a fine addition to the series as the SNES era came to an end.

This time around Donkey Kong and Diddy have gone missing. Suspecting that the Kremlings are at work here, Dixie makes her way to the Northern Kremisphere where the original duo were last seen going. While there, she visits Funky Kong who suggests that she take along her cousin Kiddy, a huge baby in pajamas. The mechanic then lends her a boat to get started on her search, not seeming to care about the repercussions of leaving an infant in the care of Donkey and Diddy’s only hope. As the Kongs travel through the tropical paradise and industrial sites of the region they learn that the Kremlings are indeed involved in whatever is going on, and they are being led by someone known as KAOS.

A bit of a rehashed plot, but the old Donkey Kong Country series wasn’t known for the story. As with the other two games, the formula of completing several levels in order before facing off against the boss of the area is left intact. However, this time you are given some freedom on where to go between each level. The world of Donkey Kong Country 3 is much more open than in past games, allowing you to visit the local bear brothers or find caverns that contained trapped banana birds. The bears sell and trade items or information to the Kongs, usually resulting in another banana bird for Wrinkly Kong’s Save Cave. She’s an old, retired school teacher and deserves a companion or ten while her husband is out spending his pension on Swanky’s bonus games.

And then she died and haunted DK Island

There are eight worlds – nine in the GBA version – each containing five levels, a boss, a bear brother, and at least one banana bird. They start out pretty natural and scenic before unfolding into factories and sewage lines. Their purpose is unknown, but KAOS is surely behind them. Past that are the mountains, seemingly safe from industrialization but just as dangerous to travel around. While the locations may not be as out-of-the-ordinary or strange as on Crocodile Isle, like with Krazy Kremland and the Zinger nest, some places come pretty close. Then again, DKC3 has its own style, contrasting the dark and serious tones found in Diddy’s Kong-Quest with a bright, colorful overworld and cartoon-ish sprites. More so in the GBA version.

Example A: Big-eyed Klap-Trap thing.

Anyhow, one thing you’ll quickly notice is that the levels here seem to take longer to get through than in previous installments. Instead of being able to clamber up ropes, swing from vines, and scamper through every one, you will have to sometimes stop and do something, or simply wait for dangers to pass, to carry on. Like in the second level, Doorstop Dash, you need to hang off levers from the ceiling to open doors temporarily. Then there are other levels that push you to go as fast as you can like Ripsaw Rage or Riverside Race. Every level offers something new, even if there’s a palette swap of the setting.

Returning from DKC2 are the bonus barrels, DK Coins, animal buddies, transformation barrels, and the fabled Lost World. The bonus barrels lead to small mini-games that earn bonus coins, which have the same function as last time: opening up levels in the Lost World. The DK Coins unlock a little something special once they have all been collected, and the animal buddy crates are seldom seen, being replaced by transformation barrels to become them.

The controls are easy to pick up, as would be expected in a Rare game. Dixie brings back her hair spin to glide through the air and Kiddy Kong plays like Donkey Kong except that he can hop on water after rolling off the edge of a platform. He can also break cracked planks if Dixie throws him. Unfortunately, Kiddy is one the reasons DKC3 gets so much flak from haters. They don’t like the fact that Donkey could easily replace the kid, not to mention that not many people enjoy the prospect of dragging along an infant on any adventure. The rest of the reasons that crop up range from the repetitive plot to the lack of quality found in the soundtrack to the few appearances that the animal buddies make. The arguments in short: Rare changed it, now it sucks. While it is a matter of preference, I have to disagree. Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble is an excellent game and although it may not be on par with Diddy’s Kong-Quest, it’s still a great game in its own right. The graphic style may not be as “real” as in previous entries, but it’s definitely eye-catching. There are two different soundtracks, one for the SNES and one for the GBA port, something that may anger fans who liked the original version more. Both have their good tracks so it’s just a matter of partiality.

The thing about DKC3 is that it experiments a little. Rare tried out some new ideas to keep the game interesting and they succeeded to some extent. Getting everything is challenging, but like with any Rare game it’s worth coming back to at some point. The only problem is that the Nintendo 64 came out some months before and it overshadowed this game. Maybe if Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble had come out before the N64 it could have had more recognition. As it stands, DKC3 was left to accompany the SNES into its final days as technology marched on. Thankfully, it’s available on the Virtual Console now so gamers can grab it up at their convenience.

As for the GBA port, it’s a controversial landmine. More challenges were added as was another world, but a lot was changed. Getting banana birds by going through Sonic 2-like tunnels with slippery controls wasn’t exactly a good idea. Sound effects were changed or added for almost everything, a ten second track played for failing a bonus stage (the SNES one is only a couple seconds), and Wrinkly decided to drop everything and live in a temple. She wasn’t really needed since saving could be done from the pause menu although she still had something to do with the banana birds. On the upside, Cranky got a dojo and the overworld was more detailed. It’s a mixed bag but if you’ve never played Donkey Kong Country 3 before, I highly suggest picking up the SNES version.

So a robot, a knight, and an astronaut visit the mall on Halloween. They bash some candy-stealing goblins until they explode into confectionery treats like piñatas, rescue a piece of candy corn, and go home.

Er, wait. Let me back up a bit.

Costume Quest is a fun little adventure-role playing game where the costumes you wear define your abilities. It was created during a series of Double Fine Production’s “Amnesia Fortnights”, where the staff was split up into teams to work on prototypes for possible upcoming games. When THQ decided to publish it, Costume Quest was developed into a full game with some free DLC added in a couple months later due to some patches that had to be applied.

The game opens on Halloween night. The sun has gone down, the houses have lit up, and there is candy to be liberated. Fade to siblings Reynold and Wren. They’re new to the neighborhood, having yet to make any friends and not wanting to make any on a night about terror and candy. As eager as they are to get to trick-or-treating though, one of them needs to be the designated leader to prevent fighting. They aren’t exactly close, so the decision falls to the mother (in other words, you). Whoever you select gets a robot costume while the other gets stuck being candy corn. They go off door to door and just when they’re getting started, a monster grabs up the other sibling, thinking they are an actual piece of candy. Talking, moving, living candy. Kicking and screaming, the sibling is kidnapped and thrown over an ominous gate that won’t open until every house is candy-free. The child who was left behind transforms into a robot, blows up the monster, and worries about being grounded if their sibling doesn’t come home with them.

Thus begins a series of quests to stop a candy-stealing plot and rescue the other sibling before they get eaten. This being Halloween, trick-or-treating is a must. Visiting each house opens up the gate, but there’s no guarantee if an adult or monster is hiding behind each door.

The monsters won’t last too long.

The core of Costume Quest revolves around the idea that you are what you wear and runs with it. Crudely-made costumes turn their wearers into awesome forces to be reckoned with. From a high-tech machine of destruction with missiles in its chest to a fiery pumpkin that’s reminiscent of Jack Skellington, the forms granted by the outfits in battle never cease to surprise or amaze. Think a unicorn can’t be useful? How about Lady Liberty or french fries? It’s worth entering combat at least once with each costume to see what they look like in action. Every one of them has a special technique, too, which can become the deciding factor between victory and defeat.

As for the battles themselves, they are turn-based with timed hits thrown in to keep your constant attention. Rapid button mashing, timing a button press just right, or moving around the arrow keys enough grant heavier damage and reaction times get shorter to defend the further you get. However, when it comes to anything other than the arrow keys, you never know which button you’re going to have to push. It keeps the constant battles from becoming dull so you don’t find yourself going through the motions of attacking and defending. A smart tactic as Costume Quest doesn’t take long to get through, but there are many battles between the tutorial and the awesome final boss. There are three areas Reynold or Wren travel through and altogether it takes about 6 or 7 hours to fully complete the quest list and get the siblings home.

Adding in some flavor to the skirmishes are Battle Stamps. They give special effects or boost stats, making any higher-level enemy a cake walk. A majority of the Stamps must be bought though with whatever candy you manage to collect while a few are given after boss fights. Unfortunately, most of them are pretty unnecessary. You don’t need a burst of fire after every attack but it does cause a burn effect that damage foes every turn, something that could lessen how many turns it takes to end a fight. It adds on another layer of strategy. Who needs a Stamp that gives more attack power: the one with the most health or the one with the most defense? Should the one with the unicorn costume and revival power have more defense, or should that be reserved for the vampire who can heal everybody instead of one target?

If that’s not enough, certain costumes give a bonus or penalty. Like the vampire has reduced HP and attack power while the unicorn gets a boost in health. The bonuses and penalties rely on the characters’ current level. All teammates share the same experience bar so there’s no need equip the same outfit to everyone to see any differences. Although you will have to often change costumes for varying reasons – like switching to astronaut to light the way through pitch darkness – so you won’t always have one strategy to rely on.

Yar! Playing hooky!

Outside of battle, you are free to take up some side quests like bobbing for apples or finding hidden children while wandering around. It’s quite nice what with the atmospheric music and the great dialogue from talking to the NPCs. Everything’s cel-shaded and the designs are pleasing to the eye. Considering that Costume Quest was made within a year, the quality is impressive. The only real problem I came across was getting stuck around edges that I boosted into. It didn’t happen a lot and some practice in rolling around fixed the nasty habit of running into fences.

What sticks out the most though has to be the script. It’s well-written for such a short game, bringing the world to life and carrying the player between battles with humor and character development.

Happily, the story isn’t quite over with the Halloween adventure. The free DLC “Grubbins On Ice” (already included with the PC version) adds in a brief adventure which takes place in winter of the same year. More door to door battling is involved and more costumes crop up as the kids enter Repugia, the home world of the monsters, in search of their friend Lucy.

Costume Quest is one of those games that you might pick up every other year if only to make things explode or go through the story again. Aside from some repetitious fights, there aren’t any downsides to make note of. The areas you visit are of reasonable size so even if you do have to backtrack somewhere for whatever reason, it won’t take long to get there. There may not be any voice acting, but the game is fine as is and the facial expressions do well enough in conveying emotions.

Despite being short, Costume Quest hosts a wonderful world containing a fun story. It’s pretty casual, giving plenty of battles and dialogue for your money. Really, if you’re wanting a good Halloween-themed game to add to your collection, Costume Quest won’t disappoint.

Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy was one of the first two games I had for the PlayStation 2. Having been a fan of Naughty Dog since their third Crash game, and unable to win a copy of Jak and Daxter when Cartoon Network was giving away copies through an 800 number, it was a must buy upon purchasing the system. At the time it was pretty impressive, with a big, non-linear world to explore to the player’s content. The characters were fun, the voice acting was great, a day and night system was implemented, and since Naughty Dog was coming straight off the Crash Express, there was a somewhat Bandicoot feel to the controls. Some places looked liked someone had transplanted flora from Naughty Dog’s old creation into this new world, all of it perfectly at home in a new setting. Altogether The Precursor Legacy lived up well to the hype.

Years later as I look at the original trilogy, I wonder at how far we’ve come. From simple beginnings in Sandover to epic battles in the Wasteland, Eco flying left and right, Jak and Daxter fans have followed the adventures of the duo as they fought to survive and protect their world. They adapted as the situation – indeed, as everything – changed around them and so did the players. Guns were taken up as melee became a more risky option, new and familiar vehicles were taken advantage of, vicious enemies replaced the once-loathed Lurkers, and Eco, the life energy of all, was given new uses. The series has evolved with more effort being put into flushing out the world of the future and how to live in it, leaving behind the comparatively peaceful world of the past.

And it all comes back to this: The Precursor Legacy. The journey of a teenager and his ottsel friend trying to figure out how to change the latter back into a normal person after he took a dip in Dark Eco, a foul and corrosive substance, and transformed into a small, furry creature. Their only hope is Gol, the only living person with knowledge on Dark Eco who lives in the far off Northern Mountains. To get there, the two need to collect Power Cells, ancient sources of energy that power whatever mechanical devices should need them. Conveniently, these valuable Cells seem to be everywhere, rarely guarded. It’s only a matter of reaching, buying, or earning them. There’s over a 100 of them scattered about, most of them relatively easy to get, although it’s amazing how easily people are willing to let go of their Power Cells as long Jak has enough Precursor Orbs to grease their palms.

That’s right, just hand it over and get yourself some pants.

Precursor Orbs, much like Power Cells, are relics left behind by the creators of this world. Nothing, not even the rocks or trees remember the Precursors although there’s certainly enough technology and ruins to see how skilled they were with Eco. This mysterious energy runs through the planet, able to do great things in the right hands and bring terrible tragedy in the wrong. There are 5 known colors of Eco, each with its own properties. Green gives life and heals, Blue enhances speed and activates ancient machinery that Power Cells can’t, Red increases the user’s strength, Yellow is destructive – in a good way – and Dark Eco corrupts any living thing it touches. As a Channeler, Jak can bring out the best in the safe types of Eco and use them to fight, solve dilemmas, and generally make the trek to Gol’s Citadel easier. Whenever he stands on an eco vent or collects some stray glob of Eco, the Eco Meter kicks in. It’s three-quarters of a circle with a portion of it glowing depending what kind of Eco you picked up and how much. It doesn’t matter how far you run on Blue or how many fireballs you unleash with Yellow, the meter is timed-based. It’s pretty nifty and since Eco can’t be activated on a whim or used to solve every obstacle, you have to mainly rely on Jak’s skills. Standard double jumping, long jumping, punching, and Crash-esque spinning are involved and first person view can be used in combination with Yellow Eco for better accuracy if the homing fireballs aren’t quite hitting high enough. The controls are solid and if you happen to fall down a huge gap to your demise, you can only blame poor timing or a bad takeoff. This particular death becomes frequent in the last area. Better than being eaten by a fish though.

Have to say, the world here was well thought out. Precursor ruins dot the lands and sea, a constant reminder of forces no one can comprehend. A constant threat is found in the Lurkers, dangerous creatures which infest the regions, from the foreboding Misty Island to the chilly heights of Snowy Mountain. Likable characters make the world come alive and the background is flexible, giving some freedom when Naughty Dog went to work on future entries.

Speaking of which, as dark as Jak II and 3 are, The Precursor Legacy is considerably light-hearted. Funny dialogue, some cartoon physics (most noticeable when Daxter widens his eyes in cutscenes), some Bandicoot vibes, and a colorful land welcomes Crash vets and newcomers alike.

Wasting time at the Precursor Basin.

I really don’t have many gripes about The Precursor Legacy. The only one worth mentioning is Daxter’s quips after Jak dies since I tend to do that far too much it seems. If Jak’s body is still intact, Daxter will run up to his face, probably freak out, and a second later Jak will appear back on his feet at the closest area where he bit the big one – a sort of invisible checkpoint. It has the possibility of getting on your nerves after a while. On the up side, there is no life counter and Jak takes 3 hits before he’s down for the count.

After all of these years the game still looks good (although Daxter’s eyes seem kind of surreal after several playthroughs of the sequel), the voice acting is fitting for each character, and the controls are easy to get the hang of, even years after having put the series away. As for the music, it doesn’t really stick out with the sound effects focused on more.

Can’t say that it’s worth a second runthrough after getting everything, but it’s nice to be able to visit familiar locations again. However, even a little visit can last longer than expected. “Just a little more” turns into half an hour. This probably has to do with the lack of game over screens (I don’t think it even exists). It’s a smooth way to keep gamers interested in playing longer.

For an early PS2 release, Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy has aged pretty well. It isn’t sitting on the sidelines with the blocky masses over 10 years later. In fact it is in an HD collection for the PS3. The game is worth picking up if you’re one for somewhat silly platformers or just want to experience the adventure that started it all.

It has been 9 weeks now since NiGHTS into dreams… made it to the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade. With this re-release a new generation of gamers can experience the original dreamscapes for themselves all thanks to the pleasant fanbase (yes, I said that) that has seen only two games and a number of cameos in sixteen years. For the NiGHTS fandom this is a big flipping deal. Before this port, before NiGHTS’ position as flag babe in Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, this jester was in danger of being a shelved IP. And it was all because of the poor sales of NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams.

It’s not hard to find out why. It goes all the way back to when JoD was being developed. The higher ups at Sega changed the console they wanted NiGHTS to be on (apparently it was for the PS3 and XBox 360), the budget was small, and tight deadlines were given. Sacrifices had to be made and so a chunk of story and gameplay were taken out. Besides that, the Wii doesn’t exactly attract the kind of audiences that the PS3 and XBox 360 do. The Wii also doesn’t have the same power as the other consoles so anything cut couldn’t hinder the flow of what was left. Altogether this put a lot of strain on the developers and yet NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams came out pretty well. There are moments when you will be playing and something will stick out that could have obviously been refined with more time, though I haven’t been able to find any bugs or game breaking glitches in JoD.

What we’re left with is something a little similar to NiGHTS into dreams… with diverse missions and more cutscenes added in. Like the first game, JoD follows a couple of kids who happen to live in the same city. Both of them have nightmares about something that worries them in reality and are chased straight into the Night Dimension, a place that few are able to see. This is because of their Ideya you see, spheres that represe

Winter of 1999 was a great time. Presents were hidden, already wrapped up for Christmas and I was shaking all of them when nobody was looking. Although one particular present stood out. A square, thin package amongst the few I found. Carefully tearing it open I found to my delight Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage. Unable to wait until Christmas Day, I switched the new disc out for the old Spyro the Dragon one and pushed the jewel case back into the wrappings.

The perfect crime.

Or so I thought. I eventually got caught, but the point is I was so eager to play Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage (or Gateway to Glimmer depending where you live) that I pulled the old switcheroo in order to play it early. I expected great things from this sequel and Insomniac didn’t disappoint.

So the story begins on a not-so-sunny day in the Dragon Realms. In fact, it’s been raining for days and Spyro is tired of it. Conveniently, the portal to Dragon Shores (a resort mentioned at the end of Spyro 1) is in sight. Spyro and Sparx head off to the beach only to get dumped into a gem mining realm on the other side of the portal. The dragon is greeted with unsettling stares by a faun, a cheetah with a large mouth, and an odd old man in a lab coat, but before proper introductions can begin the group is interrupted by a trio of troubling creatures, one of which blows up the portal Spyro came through. There’s some hammy screaming about the dragon’s presence, but a little fairy mischief and minion stupidity leaves the leader powerless for the time being so the three make a quick retreat. This is puzzling, because why couldn’t the large minions just take care of business now?

The green one ate his scepter. That’s all.

After being given a magical guidebook, Spyro takes a quick jaunt through the realm. When he leaves he finds out that he’s in Avalar, a place that is currently being taken over by Ripto. It seems that this power-hungry short-stack was pulled into this place along with a couple of his underlings during one of the Professor’s experiments. Ever since then they’ve been wreaking havoc seeing as there were no dragons to stop them.

That’s where Spyro comes in. He’s been drafted into a one-dragon army and with no way to get back home until Ripto has been taken care of, Spyro has no choice but to get to work and roast some hides. Dragon Shores will have to wait.

Oh yes. It can wait.

As with Spyro 1, you explore beautiful realms at your leisure across several hubs while flaming and charging through anything that gets in your way. Gems are still around, and the dragon statues and eggs have been replaced with talismans and green magic orbs. There’s one talisman in each world (except for speedways, which are time trials) which will be given to you by a native of the area, and once you collect them all the way to the hub’s boss will open. Each talisman is designed with the level theme in mind so one realm that is at war will have a bomb talisman while another realm with animated totems will, of course, have a totem talisman. It’s a neat touch for things you’ll only see for 5 seconds before they get shoved into Spyro’s guidebook.

The orbs are collected by completing mini-games or mini sidequests or by just exploring and they open up portals throughout the game. Every realm has between 2 and 4 orbs on average, so you probably won’t have much trouble with collecting them until the last hub, Winter Tundra.

Aside from what you need to collect, there are some pretty cool and much needed changes brought into Spyro 2. Gems actually serve a purpose this time around being used as currency whenever Moneybags is around. This annoying bear shows up in the first level demanding gems in exchange for extending a bridge (which is mandatory) and he continues to take gems from you throughout the game. He’s an uncommon sight to see, but when he does appear it’s either for allowing access to another part of a level or for teaching you new abilities. This brings us to perhaps the second most shocking thing about Spyro 2: the little dragon can finally swim! After paying a small fee, of course, but it’s still pretty cool. On top of that, he can no longer drown or lose health from accidentally touching a wet surface.

Witchcraft!

There are a few other abilities that Spyro gains as well so he can climb up ladders (mundane yet useful) and headbash the old-fashioned way by leaping into the air and slamming skull-first into breakable objects. You think that would hurt, but apparently our little dragon has a skull that’s tougher than steel.

Aside from these permanent abilities, Spyro can use some temporary power-ups throughout the game. One is found in each level and they are activated after defeating a set amount of enemies. Little spheres of spirit energy zoom around after felling an enemy which then head straight for the nearest power-up station. These are identified by two pillars with a number between them, and once you trounce that number of foes the digits will be replaced with an image indicating what you can do. The first one you can get is arguably one of the best things you can do in the game: the ability to fly. Even though you’re on a timer, there’s no doubt how thrilling it is to be able to actually fly around a level that isn’t a speedway or bonus area.

There’s a ceiling, but who cares? Flying!

The other five power-ups include: supercharge, which replaces the old ramps and arrows; bigbounce which sends Spyro tumbling high into the air; invincibility for getting through those incredibly deadly areas; superfreeze, which turns enemies and NPCs alike into ice cubes; and powerflame, which lets Spyro spit fireballs. Using that last one while underwater sends spiked balls of ice spiraling towards enemies. It’s enough to destroy mechanical sharks, making it valuable during the water levels that have the powerflame available.

Did I mention the autosave? Because there’s now an autosave. No longer do you have to stop at a platform to manually save. This is a wonderful addition and now you never have to stop and think “Did I save yet?” while heading into unknown territory.

Well, this is going to be pleasant.

When everything is said and done and the credits have rolled, you’ll have a few options open to you. You could go for all of the skill points, earned by completing optional challenges. It could be as simple as destroying certain objects in a world or as difficult as injuring Ripto on his throne during the fight with Gulp. If that’s not your cup of tea then there’s going for 100% completion. There are a couple things you unlock by doing so, but I won’t spoil what they are here.

As for the game’s graphics, they are pretty impressive for a PS1 game. As always Insomniac has made every last location come alive. The world designs encourage exploration, especially after getting a new ability from Moneybags, and it’s a pleasure to wander around and spend time overlooking the environments. You may be confined to the limits of the PS1, but it’s kind of amazing how much was put into Spyro 2. Five minutes around Summer Forest and you’ll get a decent taste of Insomniac’s handiwork.

The music is fantastic, once again including a variety of genres that feel just right for the realms they’re assigned to. If you never play this game then at least give the soundtrack a listen. The voice acting on the other hand varies depending on your tastes, although when it comes to Hunter you’re bound to either love him or be annoyed. It sounds like he’s being sarcastic or faking excitement just about every time he opens his mouth. It’s cute at first since he teaches you how to hover when gliding (it gives you an extra boost so you can reach higher platforms) and it would fit if he slowly started showing signs of respecting you as the game went on, but that’s not the case and it may start to grate on your nerves after the first meeting outside a cutscene. Thankfully this is countered by the other characters. Every NPC that you can talk to has a voice and they’re all done fairly well.

He gets better in the next game, at least.

As for whether or not Spyro 2 is worth playing again, I’d have to say yes. It has so much packed into it and you can tackle the worlds in any order you want. It’s a delight to go through the realms again after a year or two, although there are about a dozen orb challenges that are absolutely frustrating to do no matter how much time has passed. The kick to the shin here is that these challenges pop up as early as Skelos Badlands, one of the first places you can access in the second Home World. If you grab the ladder climbing skill from Moneybags and head back to Summer Forest then you’ll find them in even earlier levels. If you’re a perfectionist with the need to immediately wrap up any loose ends as soon as possible, these mini-games will have you pulling out your hair.

Practice and memorization are key.

If you really get into Spyro 2, then you’ll find the maddening challenges and sometimes cheesy voice acting (ha ha, Ripto) forgivable. It’s an enjoyable entry in the series and if you’re a fan of the original or just looking for a fun platformer/adventure game, give it a go.

For over 26 years now The Legend of Zelda series has given us many fond memories and experiences. From the deepest depths of Hyrule to the skies high above, gamers have explored the different eras of Hyrule, or other regions of the world, to their heart’s desire while trying to banish whatever evil forces at work. It’s a wonderful series but like any long-runner it has some underappreciated titles and black sheep running about. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link fits snugly into both of those categories being quite different from the original Legend of Zelda in almost every way possible.

The Adventure of Link begins some time after the first LoZ with the Link from that adventure being sent on another quest. This time he’s been tasked with acquiring the Triforce of Courage in order to awaken the long-sleeping Princess Zelda. This maiden has been asleep for centuries and only a young man with certain qualities and a crest on their person to mark them as worthy can use the Triforce of Courage, which has been hidden away in the Great Palace somewhere in Hyrule. Link just so happens to have the symbol on him so he’s sent off into the world to fetch the final piece of the Triforce, but to actually do that he has to first defeat the 6 guardians residing in their own palaces and insert a gem into a statue at each location. It’s going to be a tough journey but failure is not an option. Ganon’s minions have been lying in wait and should Link die, his blood will be used to resurrect their dark master (which dwindles down to a silhouette of Ganon on the game over screen).

You begin at the altar where the sleeping Zelda awaits and it’s immediately clear that the formula from the prequel has been changed. Link walks along a single plane that scrolls as he moves and by pressing A he can jump. Common in most other games but using a single button to jump on command is a rare novelty in Zelda games. Once you exit the altar Link appears on the overworld. There’s no close-up of the land Link explores as in LoZ. Instead the view has been pulled back so all you see is a world devoid of monsters with only terrain tiles to let you know where you are. You don’t get a close-up of the mountains and caves. There are no stairs to climb, no ocean to cross by raft, and no forest to get lost in.

Then a blob or a humanoid monster pops out of nowhere to rush our hero. A random group of 3 figures will scuttle around the map after walking for a bit and when one runs into Link he’s transported to an area where he can fight monsters until he leaves the screen. Where you wind up depends on the terrain square you’re standing on when they touch Link.

This is where everything at the top of the screen comes into play. Unlike the previous and future games the health bar is not represented by hearts but a traditional bar that shrinks when damage is taken. This is also the first time a magic meter comes into play. The numbers next to the bars indicate their level which can increase once you get enough experience points to level up.

That’s right, AoL has RPG elements though they’re not very good.

Experience is gained by not only defeating enemies but picking up the uncommon P bags lying around Hyrule. For whatever reason you have to hit them with Link’s sword to pick them up as opposed to simply running over them or pressing down when near them. When you hit the score needed to level up you get a choice in what you want enhanced: attack power, magic, or life. After you’ve chosen something, the score drops back down to zero and the point goal is raised. The down side to all of this is that when you die (not if, when) any experience you have accumulated is lost.

What makes this brutal is the fact that sooner or later, you will have to stop playing. The only way to save your game is to use up all of your lives, including any extra ones you’ve found, and get to the game over screen. There’s a way around dying repeatedly by using two controllers to reach the save screen faster, but it still counts as dying and your EXP is lost anyway. Even worse, the experience bags and extra lives you’ve found don’t come back. Your increased stats and learned skills and (sometimes helpful) spells from NPCs don’t go away but that’s the only upside. The only way to make any headway is to keep practicing, avoiding extra lives, and only going after those bags of experience when you’re set on leveling up.

This isn’t even going into the steep difficulty curve that starts up after the first palace or how easy it is to die or accidentally glitch yourself into a wall using the Fairy spell at the wrong places. It changes Link into a small invincible fairy although the way things are coded, if you go too high up a small screen transition plays and Link is left trapped in places he shouldn’t be.

This is how Ganon should take over Hyrule: make people phase into solid objects.

When you load up a save file you begin back at the altar of the sleeping princess, making an already painful toll agonizing when the palace you need to enter is all the way across the map. Hopefully you won’t need to cross the maze that is Death Mountain a second or third time once you resume. The towns offer a brief reprieve where you can heal, get information, and maybe obtain a new spell or skill (like up thrust, great for flying enemies) but it’s just that: brief. Most of the adventure has you traveling the countryside or trying to survive palaces. The monsters quickly become a problem in areas after the first guardian with perilous falls that spell instant death if flying foes catch you when jumping across lava.

The game has you traveling across a large overworld of Hyrule, fighting monsters, conquering dungeons, using a hammer to destroy trees and boulders, and suffering long periods of time to level grind in order to get to the Great Palace, which is also a maze. You can still find hearts and magic jars in hidden areas to extend their respective bars permanently, but the hints to them are vague and you’ll have to scour every last tile on the overworld to find them.

It’s not all bad. The controls are responsive and some of the spells are pretty cool. After you get the hammer you can break down the boulder near the altar so you can have a shortcut past Death Mountain. It’s also not as bad as Battletoads in sheer difficulty so there’s that.

Honestly, I can’t hate the developers here. They were trying something new (as Nintendo tends to do) but the NES isn’t known for its capabilities to store information. Experience couldn’t be saved much like your progress in Super Mario Bros. 3 couldn’t be kept. If experience was saved it would probably result in some ridiculously long passwords like in River City Ransom, and who wants that in a Zelda game? I’m not sure why gamers couldn’t just press two buttons together on one controller to save their game though. It would certainly make gamers feel a little better knowing they didn’t have to die on purpose.

He laughs at your attempts to rest.

The music tracks are few and repetitive but what would you expect from an 8-bit game?

Unfortunately, even if you look at AoL apart from other Zelda games it doesn’t do much in brightening its image. Gamers who grew up with this game may praise it because there might be pleasant memories attached to it. From the outside the nostalgia screen looking in, it’s easy to see how AoL has aged and it isn’t pretty. The game is frustrating and at some point it stops being fun. That might be around the time someone figures out how to save. It wasn’t a total failure though. Some skills like up thrust and down thrust made it into Super Smash Bros., the sages in Ocarina of Time got their names from the towns in AoL, the idea of spells made it into A Link to the Past and OoT in the form of Din’s Fire and the like, and the magic meter lasted up until around The Wind Waker. For theorists it explains the legend behind the name “Zelda” while at the same time making them wonder how the kingdom got so large when we’ve been restricted to certain areas in most games.

Had AoL came out on the SNES, it could have benefited greatly. The save mechanics could have been tweaked, although there’s no telling if the layouts and monsters would have differed.

In any case, AoL isn’t for everyone. Some are fond of it despite its flaws and zero replay value (unless you’re okay with figuring out how to survive one life at a time), but if you’re looking for treasures from the past, keep walking.

Battletoads is hands down one of the most aggravating games to have ever been conceived. Its difficulty curve (or rather difficulty mountain) has driven many gamers stark raving mad with its brutal trial and error gameplay. These gamers are split between the fandom and the hatedom, with valid arguments on each side supporting their viewpoints. I’m not particularly a fan of Battletoads, but I don’t downright hate it either. It’s from a gaming era when replayability was a must in keeping the attention of gamers because of 8-bit constraints. Harder games took longer to get through and Rare took that formula to its logical conclusion in making Battletoads.

I’m stark raving mad and I’ll be showcasing the good and the bad of this insane rollercoaster ride from Rare.

Starting off we have the plot. It kicks off after Pimple, one of the ‘toads, is kidnapped along with a princess named Angelica by the Dark Queen. DQ didn’t take her recent defeat too well, so this is a revenge plot on her end and a rescue mission on yours. Remaining Battletoads Zitz and Rash rush off immediately to save their pal and the princess, but they have no idea about the dangers that lie between them and the Dark Queen.

This in turn gives the protagonists motivation and an excuse as to why you can only play as two of the three ‘toads. The one you play as is predetermined in both single and multiplayer, but with all the complications involved in co-op mode it might as well not be there. There is a game-breaking bug that prevents player two from moving (fixed in the PAL version though), players can hurt each other quite easily by mistake, and in stages where you have to rush or carefully move forward it’s easy to leave your partner behind as the screen scrolls along. If there are checkpoints, both players are sent back when one dies and when one player runs out of them it’s game over. It’s not completely impossible to play with 2 players in the patched up version, but it makes things a whole lot harder when you have to watch not only where the enemies and obstacles are, but what your ally is doing too.

And player two goes flying. Thankfully level 1 doesn’t send both back to start.

What makes this game so hard in the first place is the absurd amount of trial and error needed to advance after the first two levels. There are 13 stages in all and they alternate between beat ’em up, side-scrolling, and vehicle riding segments. The beat ‘em up parts play smoothly with a couple of simple combos thrown in as well as the ability to pick up items to use as weapons. You can also hitch a ride on a dragon in the first level melee to give enemies the hot foot, but unfortunately the creatures don’t seem to pop up anywhere else.

Side-scrolling parts usually have some platforming involved, mainly revolving around dodging hazards, enemies, traps, and the like as you make your way through the stage. This makes up a majority of the game and the placement of every last thing trying to kill you is not only devious but absolutely wicked. Just when you think you’re safe, something kills you. Eventually you stop feeling safe anywhere unless you’ve been through an area enough times to know which places to stand and get a breather. It doesn’t help that you only start with 3 lives with no passwords to help keep your progress. You can get more lives and sometimes health recovery flies will appear, but that doesn’t make the stages any less daunting.

The few areas that have vehicles either have you dodge a series of obstacles in quick succession or make you race to the finish (wherever that may be). There’s a speeder bike in level 3 and that’s where the difficulty jumps. It doesn’t go back down after that with 10 other levels of practice and precision ahead. At the very least, a couple of the levels with bikes or boards ease you into the course instead of dropping you into an evasion frenzy. The variety of gameplay mixes things up while keeping the controls more or less the same throughout so it doesn’t feel like such a drastic change when you’re suddenly leaping around girders or swimming away from wheels that could crush you.

All of this makes for an incredibly hard game and that’s not even delving into the ice or snakes-in-a-cave levels. This is a game that has either left a bad impression on gamers or a positive one depending on how they took to the challenges. Some people like the trials and controls while others curse the existence of the game itself. There’s a slight mercy in the form of Mega Warps, which will leap you ahead by 2 levels if you use one. However, these are well-hidden and there aren’t any to be found after level 6 so there’s no chance in warping all the way to the end.

If only.

On the bright side, the music is downright catchy to listen to, even the pause music, and the designs of the characters and levels are splendid for the NES. There’s shading everywhere to give the illusion of depth and the colors are used wisely to make the most out of the 8-bit limitations. These are honestly some of the best graphics I’ve seen on the NES. Granted, you’ll get tired of seeing the same room over and over again when trying to get through it but the first time seeing the levels is pretty impressive.

Too bad it’s only a matter of time.

Then you fall into some spikes and the good merits quickly melt away. In their attempt to make a long-lasting game, Rare pushed the envelope and made a monster that has now become the subject of prank calls and outrageous challenges (like beating Battletoads for instance). Later ports of the original toned down the difficulty and removed some stages to make the game easier although it’s the original that keeps getting the most attention due to the high difficulty level. It has to be seen to be believed how insane Battletoads gets. It’s not quite terrible, but it is soul-crushing. One would need an astounding degree of patience, determination, and grit to see the later levels assuming the person could hang onto their sanity that long. The beginning levels are fun but after that you’re better off walking away before getting a headache. This is not a game to shell out money for unless you’re ready to tackle an NES beast (really, no one is ever ready). That being said, it’s really entertaining watching other people trying to get through to the end.

Last week, developer Subsoap announced that they would be giving away copies of their highly addictive Faerie Solitaire in celebration of the game’s Mac release. Seeing as I’ve heard nothing but good things about FS in passing, I decided to give it a whirl while the offer lasted.

The rules of solitaire here are a bit different than what I’m used to, but they’re simple to pick up. Cards are arranged in columns though not always traditional ones. Long, short, and curving lines turn up with a different amount of cards used every time. The cards in these columns cannot be rearranged and must instead be collected one by one depending on the card face-up next to the deck, the foundation. If it’s a 5 then only 4 or 6 can be placed on top. One up or one down, suit doesn’t matter, and you can only go through the deck once. Pretty basic but the additions the folks over at Subsoap put in make it hard to put FS away for too long.

First up is the combo system. The combo meter doesn’t show up until you get 5 cards in a row without having to draw another from the deck, but even smaller chains count. Bigger and more frequent combos mean more money at the end of the hand, with bonus cash if you manage to clear the field of cards. It’s a surprisingly effective way to keep the player’s interest and it’s undoubtedly one of the reasons people play FS so much.

Connected to the combo system is the energy bar at the top of the screen. With every card that’s added to the foundation it fills up a bit. Whatever you manage to get before finishing a hand is added to the longer End of Level energy bar. Filling it is a partial requirement to free a Faerie and advance to the next level. The other requirement is reaching certain goals within the 9 hands it takes to clear a single level, like making at least $4,000 total or getting 2 perfect hands.

A work in progress.

Now, if you fill up the energy bar completely while playing a hand, any additional energy you accumulate will start up a yellow bar on top the first, which will give you more gold at the end of the hand. All of this cash is used to buy upgrades, “restoring the land” with landmarks to indicate what you have bought. They range in usefulness from telling you how many cards are left in the deck to giving you 5% more of your winnings. The main purpose of these upgrades is to make it easier to extend combos. Together with the random spare cards you get from the deck to set up combos at any given time, interested players can be dragged in for hours more than they expected.

Need to build it higher.

Admittedly, part of what kept my attention was the different layout of cards in each hand. It wasn’t just the branching and broken up columns. Sometimes it was impossible to touch one of them until an obstruction had been cleared. The obstacles come in two variations: thorns and ice. Thorns are removed by reaching the end of a column that has a rose at the top and ice is melted by clicking the Fire Blast card in the middle of a bunch of cards.

As an added incentive to get a perfect with each hand, you can sometimes find eggs and resources at the end of a line of cards. The eggs hold creatures which gain experience once hatched and put on active duty. With enough experience (by playing solitaire) they can evolve, but only if you have enough resources on hand to pay for it. The animals themselves do nothing. The images in the Hatchery change upon evolution and gain a short description. They’re nice to look at though that’s all you can do with them. You soon find out that some of these creatures are on the playing cards, giving you a preview as to what you can get.

Altogether there are over 350 games of solitaire from start to finish in adventure mode with more available in challenge mode.

Yes, there’s a storyline involved and it has nothing to do with solitaire.

There are 8 stages with 4 or 5 levels each and every level has 9 hands. After every level you get a bit of story (about a sentence or two unless it’s a rare, wonderfully hand-painted cutscene) about a young man who is able to hear Faeries from a long distance. He’s sent out to find them in what seems to be a clichéd plot until the finale. If you forget anything you can go to the theater or level select at any time to see what you’ve unlocked of the tale. A necessity considering that most of the time your attention will be focused on the game rather than the story.

The entire story is voiced-over. It’s not professional though and the narrator goes a bit overboard on the “this is dramatic” voice. As for the music it’s pretty nice, doing its job to create ambiance as you concentrate on the game.

For a freebie, this wasn’t half bad. Subsoap took a simple game and put a twist on it to make it interesting. It’s not something to tackle in an evening or two though. It’s a game to spread out over a period of weeks or months. That said, Faerie Solitaire is certainly not for everyone. If you’re the type who enjoys a casual card game, however, you may find Faerie Solitaire enjoyable. The game’s still free until this Thursday at 10AM Pacific time so if you want it, grab it before the offer expires.

In celebration of Faerie Solitaire’s release on Mac, the fellows at Subsoap are giving away free copies of their game! Faerie Solitaire, as the name suggests, has gameplay that revolves around the old card game that you’ve probably neglected on your hard drive. FS is quite addictive though with cute critters to take care of and raise, upgrades to buy, resources to obtain, Faeries to save, and a world to restore. There’s over 400 games of solitaire in story mode and 8 wonderful hand-painted cutscenes to see, too. It’s kind of hard to put down. Honestly thought I’d never say that about solitaire.

If you’re interested in Faerie Solitaire, then go over to either the Steam page or the Faerie Solitaire site to get it for yourself. Better hurry! This offer expires on November 8th at 10AM pacific time.

To Secure, Contain, and Protect. These words are the purpose behind The SCP Foundation, an organization that prides itself in keeping the world and (most of) its people safe from the most extraordinary things that could easily destroy life as we know it. Or at the very least make things complicated. Can’t very well pass out a limited amount of cure-all pills without causing an international incident, now can you?

In real life, the Foundation is a wiki maintained by those who have come up with the various abnormalities that the organization keeps under watch. There are many artifacts, reports, and logs that flesh out the not-so-ethical Foundation and with as many creative people as there are coming up with reality bending objects and indestructible creatures, it shouldn’t be surprising that there are a couple games out there based on the things kept locked away from prying eyes.

That being said, Regalis’ SCP: Containment Breach is a fine example of what happens when a few deadly SCPs get loose. The game makes you fill in the shoes of a common D rank personnel, the cannon fodder of The SCP Foundation who take up dangerous jobs nobody else will. They’re full-time guinea pigs and you, D-9341, have been tasked to approach SCP-173 with a couple others. You all approach this abomination of concrete and rebar, ready to do whatever it is you’ve been assigned, when the large metal door behind you malfunctions. Then the lights flicker.

Nothing about it moves, not even the legs.

If you’re lucky you won’t end up like the other Class Ds, dead on the floor, and you’ll be able to move on and play the game. I say “lucky” because it’s very likely you will see the “You Died” screen before even leaving the first room. SCP-173 is a blur when you aren’t looking directly at it and there’s no way you can keep constant eye contact with it in the suddenly darkened facility as it stalks you. You can only see a certain distance in front of you and although you can run for limited periods of time, eventually you must blink. There are two meters at the bottom of the screen, one for how long you can run and the other for how long until you must blink. The latter shortens over time and you do not want to be staring at SCP-173 when it’s empty. A split second of darkness and suddenly the SCP is there in your line of sight. It can also open doors. Nothing can stop it from tracking you. You can manually blink by pressing spacebar to reset the meter, but it’s really only good when preparing to deal with the speedster.

Hey buddy! Mind moving a bit?

SCP-173 isn’t the only escapee at the containment site though. There’s SCP-106 which can phase through walls and floors as well to drag you into a pocket dimension where it can possibly kill you. SCP-372 also appears but it’s harmless, sometimes being seen at the edge of your vision. There are others hanging around although they’re not all out to kill you.

As you make your way through the dim, narrow corridors, abandoned offices, and storage rooms you’ll finds keycards, documents, and other things to help you survive or inform you about SCPs. The inventory is of average size, holding up to 10 items at once and thankfully the game pauses while you’re deciding which item to use. Not so sure about the documents, because once you’ve been surprised by static or a scare chord while reading you tend to not to to that so often. Nowhere is safe and standing in one area for too long could mean the end, so you have to almost always clear out of a room quickly after searching it while treading carefully from location to location. You have to brave the unknown, heading higher and higher, outmaneuvering the constant threat of SCP-173 to stay alive. An ending has been added now so all of your exploring to find a way to the surface finally pays off.

So many new friends.

There’s nothing particularly fancy about this game. There’s no music but the sound effects and voice clips can be really unsettling especially if you learn to identify when certain SCPs are around. The graphics are restricted to the Blitz3D engine yet it’s chilling to know you’re being stalked by deadly abnormalities. You can’t memorize the route every time you start a new game because the room order is randomized. You could find an office and some empty corridors or black gas, catwalks, and bathrooms once you start playing. It certainly gives some replay value and if you have bad luck with one layout, you can start again and see if you get something better. Just be sure to save now and then, preferably not when an SCP is near since their placement will be saved too.

SCP: Containment Breach is a great survival horror game and if you want to experience it, you can find it here for free.

Klonoa: Door to Phantomile is a little known title that didn’t get much attention on the PS1. At the time it was released, a majority of gamers weren’t looking for side-scrollers or 2.5D platformers, instead drifting toward more visually pleasing 3D environments that granted more freedom or had a lot of violence. The marketing campaign didn’t help either since the ads in magazines boiled down to comparing Klonoa to a disease. That people wanted. It was awkward and didn’t help sales for a game with a cute critter.

A remake of DtP was released four years ago on the Wii, but it still flopped. With a long-eared cat on the front cover it’s understandable that it would be passed up for something like Crash Bandicoot or Final Fantasy or a Mario game. DtP may not be long or packed with action, but it’s got some interesting concepts and a story that culminates in one of the most emotional endings ever to be seen on the PlayStation.

Look how cute this is! Nothing could possibly go wrong!

Our story begins in the world of Phantomile, a place where nobody can remember what they dreamed about the night before. There are no remnants, only a blank slate immediately after waking up every time. The people attribute this occurrence to a legend which tells of the mysterious Moon Kingdom where dream energy is collected to shape the world. This is how things have always been.

Or at least, how things should be. Defying this legend, young Klonoa can remember one dream down to the smallest detail. No matter how much time passes, he always remembers how a pleasant dream of running through a meadow with his floating friend Huepow (or Hewpoe) was interrupted by something falling from the sky, slamming into nearby Bell Hill. The ground quaked and the wind picked up, making the hill’s namesake ring loudly. Clouds gathered and darkened as a wave of darkness washed over the village and him. This is where the nightmare ends.

Fittingly, it comes to pass that an airship crashes into Bell Hill one day. Curious, Klonoa and Huepow run off to the crash site to see what’s up. From there the two journey across Phantomile, helping out several kingdoms in an effort to stop the evil forces that are attempting to destroy the world.

There’s also a creepy clown that keeps showing up.

As you make your way across the first level, it quickly becomes clear that the folks at Namco did the most with what little area there was to be had in 2 and a half dimensions. While Klonoa runs along a single plane, that plane turns, curves, and branches out to other parts of the level. You can also interact with switches or egg-shaped capsules that contain things like extra lives in the foreground and background, something that eventually becomes essential to figuring out puzzles later on.

However, it’s sort of disorienting at first to watch as Klonoa turns around corners since sprites are used for most of the characters and enemies. This perception trouble is due to the fact that Klonoa’s sprite doesn’t change when rounding corners (at least from what I’ve seen) so the camera pans to show him running right or left no matter how sharp the turn. He could be running along, going at a near 45 degree angle away from the last bend and his sprite still won’t change. It’s really weird, even if the sprites are admittedly well-animated and kind of blocky.

A unique combination of 2D and 3D. You get used to it.

On the flip side of the graphics coin are the full 3D cinematics that play every once in a while to show off a big event. With no voice actors and only gibberish sound clips to accompany the terrific music, Namco made each one, no matter how short, bursting with quality. The music in particular is responsible for creating the atmosphere and setting the mood throughout the game. This isn’t uncommon in video games but here where there are no English voices, it’s beautiful how it suits the current area or situation whether the characters are happy-go-lucky or in an intense fight. Listening to one track, you could probably pick out what kind of area Klonoa is traveling through without having played the game once. With no voice actors, it’s the only way to invoke emotions in players or get the proper mood across aside from dialogue. Together, though, they’re a powerful combination especially during heavy story moments.

The music doesn’t quite lose its effect in the Wii version even though there’s the option to hear English voice actors, but Klonoa’s actor makes him sound older than he does in the original.

He seems older in the remake, too.

Yet for all the creativity that went into DtP, the creators decided to stick with simple controls. There are 3 different setups, but it all comes down to which buttons you want for jumping and attacking. Pressing jump while in the air makes Klonoa flap his ears for extra airtime and the attack button sends out a wind bullet from the boy’s oversized ring. This is thanks to Huepow, the spirit who resides within the ring and enables Klonoa to use limited wind powers (which mainly comes back to the wind bullets). Whenever a bullet hits an enemy, they puff up like a balloon while Klonoa holds them over his head. After that the enemy becomes a versatile projectile that can be thrown to activate switches, open capsules, or be used as a stepping stone to leap up to higher places. With what few actions you can take, you’ll have to make the most of them through the dozen levels Namco has offered up, solving puzzles and tackling whatever obstacles lie in your path. These levels are split between 6 regions with an extra level solely for the final boss. It’s not a very long adventure, taking somewhere over six hours to finish off, but what it lacks in quantity it makes up for in quality.

Oh yes.

If you want more there are a few things that extend the life of DtP, although the remake got more content. Both versions offer up a level select once the final boss is cleared, which is great because up until then you couldn’t visit any of the previous levels. A music test is hidden away, only opening after meeting some requirements. The first is to search around each level, freeing every Phantomilian found trapped in a bubble. For every set of 6 you find in a level, the jingle on the overworld extends until all 72 are set free. The second part comes after the final boss when a bonus level of heck opens up. This place is ridiculously hard, but once it’s completed the music test opens up for your listening pleasure.

In the Wii version, you open up a character viewer, some costumes, a movie viewer, time attack, and reverse mode after saving the world. Reverse mode flips all of the levels but each one now hides a hidden area to test your skill.

Just about everything has a catch, though. Here it’s a toss-up depending on which version you play and whether or not you know what’s coming. In both, the game is short and easy, only really increasing in difficulty during the last couple levels. It’s even easier in the remake since the health has gone up from 3 hearts (6 hits) to 5 hearts (10).

The original is packed with emotion, but it can be kind of disorienting until you get the hang of how near or far things are. The remake has everything in 3D, fixing the slight perception problem that gamers may have, but the emotional impact is lessened. Despite the graphical upgrade, some things just don’t hit as hard as they used to. The voice actors don’t entirely catch the characters’ personalities and the changes made to the ending sequence reduces the emotional output. The differences may not seem big, but the smallest things can make a scene come to life. In their efforts to remake Klonoa: Door to Phantomile, Namco-Bandai removed some of the subtle (and not so subtle) aspects that touched gamers in the first place.

In the end, Klonoa: Door to Phantomile is a short, fun platformer with cute critters, great music, and a story that ends with a punch to the gut. An under appreciated gem, DtP is worth looking into if you want a fun little game. I recommend the original but barring that there’s the Wii version with the English dub turned off.

This is a great opportunity for those who keep missing the streams since they’re not on a reliable schedule. That will be fixed one day. Hopefully.

Anyway, make some time and come hang out at the stream. You can meet some cool people, try to win stuff, and have fun kicking back with ACGV.

Yatterman has done 24 hour charity events before, raising $1,600 by playing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and $7,800 by playing Dota 2.

Stream link: http://www.twitch.tv/dota2_yatterman

The current list of developers and their games are as follows:

1. Sos – Mc. Pixel
2. ZaxisGames – 99LTH
3. Frozenbyte – Trine 2
4. New Star Games – New Star Soccer 5
5. Spooky Squid Games – They Bleed Pixels
6. Aleksey Abramenko – Intrusion 2
7. Robot Entertainment – Orcs Must Die 2
8. Runic Games – Torchlight 2
9. Coffee Stain Studios – Sanctum
10. NGD Studios – Bunch of Heroes
11. Ronimo Games – Awesomenauts
12. Arrowhead Game Studios – Magicka
13. Hitbox Team – Dustforce
14. Dreampainters – Anna
15. (Unknown worlds) – Natural Selection 2
16. Black Forest Games – Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams
17. Klei Entertainment – Mark of the Ninja
18. Arkedo Studios – Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit
19. The Behemoth – Castle Crashers
20. Ace Team – Rock of Ages, Zeno Clash

Spread the news and mark your calenders because this is shaping up to be a terrific event!

StreamLicious website: http://streamlicious.com
Facebook: http://facebook.com/streamlicious
Reddit: http://tinyurl.com/100Hreddit
Twitch TV: http://twitch.tv/streamlicious

In the early days of the PlayStation console, developers took advantage of the advanced technology to make 3D games in an attempt to lure in consumers. No matter how bad the graphics were (when compared to today’s standards), people were in awe and opened their wallets in the face of a new age of gaming. They began gravitating towards games that had 3D graphics, leaving behind the two-dimensional worlds in favor of more visually impressive ones.

That didn’t mean 2D games weren’t in production anymore. They just weren’t popular and as such they were passed up in favor of anything with bulky three-dimensional characters or a 360 degree view point of the gaming world. The likes of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Klonoa: Door to Phantomile didn’t have much of a chance and neither did Tomba! (Tombi! in Europe) when it came out. Castlevania and Klonoa both have had re-releases but with the steep price tag attached to Tomba! on eBay, which rarely comes down, and the fact that Whoopee Camp shut down after the sequel it seemed that the pink-haired jungle boy would never grace modern consoles.

So imagine my surprise when I found out that Tomba! had arrived on the PSN at long last this year. For fans both old and new this is a dream come true. A great adventure is once again available to them at a reasonable price without charges for shipping and handling. For a gem of a game, you can’t ask for much more but how has it endured over the years?

The short answer is that it depends on whether or not the player is willing to overlook the old graphics and embrace something different. The long answer starts with the plot.

Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.

The story begins in the wilderness somewhere in the midst of a small group of islands. As peaceful as it may seem as the wild jungle boy leaps and hunts, it’s soon clear that the people of these islands are being terrorized by bipedal pigs. A small group of them armed with cattle prods scare away a human from his horse and cart, and just as they’re taking the abandoned valuables, a pink-haired maniac charges at them from out of nowhere. From there it’s a one-sided knock-out fest until Tomba is knocked unconscious himself. When he awakens, he finds that his gold bracelet is missing. It probably wouldn’t mean as much to him if the bracelet hadn’t belonged to his deceased grandfather. But it does and the fact that a pig had the gall to steal it enrages the boy.

Correctly pegging the pigs as the culprits, he runs off to get the heirloom back unknowing of how difficult that’s going to be, especially with seven powerful Evil Pigs on the loose who have cursed the islands with their magic.

As ridiculous as it sounds, it’s the beginning to a wonderful side-scrolling adventure that never gets stale. There are some original concepts to be found and with 130 events (missions) to clear, you’ll be plenty occupied during the course of the game. Rarely is there a dull or boring moment with all the chaos caused by the Pigs. When things do slow down it usually has to do with a fetch quest that has left you stumped, backtracking to an area that has an item you need, or an area that’s hard to get through. Even then, though, you could go do something else via teleporting Charity Wings unless the mission is required to advance the plot (“Seven Friends” is bound to be a harsh one unless you connect some not-so-obvious dots). These events are at the center of this game, and they’re what make it so fun. They range from the simple, such as reaching a new area or talking to somebody, to the headache-inducing in which you will need a guide or blind luck to accomplish. Thankfully, most of the tough ones aren’t connected to the plot so quests like “Flower Seeds” (which can only be completed if certain unmentioned conditions are met) can be ignored. If you’re out to clear every event, however, then good luck. You’ll need it.

Don't start pulling out your hair for this one or you'll go bald.

Finding or completing an event gives Tomba Adventure Points, which open up AP boxes once the number gets high enough. The boxes hold fruit to restore health and items and later on AP is used to open up special places and learn information. AP is also gained by defeating enemies, gathering fruit, and collecting large coins as you explore. While coins and events will give you plenty of AP, hopping on Koma pigs to bite and throw them for the heck of it somehow doesn’t get tiring. Maybe it’s the fact that there are walls and other foes to toss them at after they’ve tried to tackle Tomba, or maybe it’s the fact that they can give you a small boost in the air if flung at the right moment. Either way, if your weapon isn’t strong enough to knock them out (and most of the ones you obtain aren’t), the bite and fling never fails. In fact, it’s recommended that you bite just about every enemy you can find if you’re going after most of the events. Reason being is that it gives you some experience like in RPGs, but the way it’s implemented here is kind of odd.

When Tomba hops on an enemy he gains a little experience towards one of three types of experience bars depending on which type of enemy he bit. A fire enemy will add experience towards the fire bar for instance, and the same goes for wind and water. If you can find the appropriate elemental jewels and get the bars up to the tenth level, then Tomba gets an ability. They’re not crucial, but each jewel is connected to an event.

Also like in RPGs Tomba can be afflicted with status ailments, but this is mainly for showing whether he is laughing or sobbing uncontrollably. This happens after biting a colorful mushroom in the Mushroom Forest and Tomba can’t use any of his weapons. Crying is the worst of the two since instead of standing in place when the circle button is pushed to attack something, Tomba runs forward with his arms swinging. It can be cured, but considering that the forest is a bunch of grassy platforms that go up or down depending on his current state, this can be really dangerous and may cost Tomba a life. Why a life counter is used, I have no idea.

You’ll never laugh alone.

At some point, you will have done enough questing to have tracked down an Evil Pig Bag or three. All that’s left after that is to find the hidden Evil Pig Door where one of the bosses awaits. Jumping into it transports Tomba to their lair and the Pig Bag will float in the middle of the screen. Your goal is to get the pig into the bag, but that’s easier said than done. They throw spells around to mess with you and it takes some luck to hop on top them and throw them into their spinning bag. They can be thrown in any direction, but the teleporting hogs will escape Tomba’s grasp if you take too long to throw them. You just have to hope that when you catch them, the bag will be opened towards you to end the fight quickly.

With every Evil Pig that’s captured, an area is freed of the curse that plagued it. They’re much nicer looking after that and sometimes easier to navigate with more events available. Tomba’s selection of weapons increases and new pathways are opened. The most helpful weapon of them all though would have to be the grapple, which can be thrown at almost any surface and allow Tomba to hang from it. He can climb walls just fine but how many games give you the option of creating your own shortcuts by swinging under platforms or over spikes and enemies? Mind you, any games with super heroes do not count. The grapple is a fantastic thing and it only gets better with the parasol which lets the boy float down instead of quickly plummeting to his doom.

Lava Caves, home to perilous pits and floating objects.

One of the other really neat things you can do in Tomba! is run around in the background. I don’t mean going to the very back of the scenery like in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, I mean the immediate background, like behind a fence. All you have to do is find a surface for Tomba to climb up or down on and he’ll switch planes. The camera adjusts accordingly to focus more on your location and while things in the foreground are still in view, it doesn’t obscure enemies on your current plane. It’s a cool way to expand areas in a 2D game. Few other games that do this – being able to jump into other planes in the same area in a 2D side-scroller – immediately come to mind.

The music is pretty upbeat for the most part with cursed areas having gloomy or tense tracks. Once the curses are lifted though, the tunes become optimistic. It’s worth making a trip to see how each area has changed after capturing an Evil Pig. Then there’s the voice acting in a couple of the anime-style cutscenes. They’re of surprisingly good quality, even if the most you get is an old man telling you about the legend of the Evil Pigs.

The make it or break it factor here, unfortunately, is how the game looks. For those who have grown up with 3D games, Tomba! might prove to be unimpressive. There’s also the fact that the first thing players see when starting a new game is a short animation followed by a very colorful and bright area to start off in. Combined with the cute pigs snorting about it may prove to be too childish at first. Vibrant worlds can’t possibly mean that the game is any good. Of course.

Surprisingly, even though the game is aimed at the younger crowd, gamers who like a challenge can find it enjoyable, too. The sprites and environments are done really well (although the sprites don’t have completely smooth animations), and there are plenty of 3D structures found in each area. A few times you are freed from the 2D plane though and get to roam around freely, but this only happens when you’re in a village or some place that would be better navigated from a top-down perspective.

Tomba! is a fun little gem that doesn’t take itself seriously and is great for killing some time. It may not have aged entirely well, but this oldie is a goodie and if you’re up for a silly adventure and can look past the dated looks, then check it out.

“Dear Hylia, Kisala is an idiot.”

That was roughly my train of thought going around in circles by the end of Rogue Galaxy. What had started as a promising adventure of pirates in space, seeking treasure and hunting monsters, turned into a cascade of clichéd story elements. Granted, clichés can be used positively as demonstrated in Skies of Arcadia and the “Tales of” series. SoA was exciting with a great story, flying ship battles, bounties, treasure, and some really unexpected events, while the “Tales of” series has a habit of demolishing your expectations halfway through and revealing the awful truths that may have only been hinted at up until that point. Rogue Galaxy on the other hand trips up before the last leg of the adventure and starts throwing out so many clichés that the plot becomes terribly predictable.

It’s a shame to see since this game was developed by Level 5, which is also responsible for the wonderful Dark Cloud series. They tried going in a different direction with Rogue Galaxy concerning story and gameplay, but the result leaves much to be desired.

To begin with, the plot is flimsy. Not as flimsy as Digimon World 2 by no means, but after a certain point it goes from standing upright to lying on the floor, unable to give a sliver of an original concept until the final boss where your average player, who didn’t bother with weaker allies, might wind up cursing the developers for how it works out.

Anyway, it starts out following Jaster Rogue, a young man living on the desert planet Rosa. This particular planet just so happens to be rich in resources, so it’s currently being occupied by the Longardian Federation while they are waging war with the Draxian Empire. Jasper cares nothing for the war, wishing to one day leave Rosa and explore the galaxy to his heart’s content. Suddenly, monsters start attacking his hometown. Jasper breaks out his sword, hacking and slashing the invaders, only to wind up outnumbered and surrounded.

Conveniently, a mysterious man leaps out of nowhere and provides backup. Together they travel through the town, destroying monster for a while before the man abruptly runs off, tossing Jasper his sword and disappearing. Almost immediately after that, a robot and his half-mechanical pal show up, mistaking Jasper for the legendary bounty hunter Desert Claw. As it turns out, the sword Jasper has now belongs to (or once belonged to) Desert Claw and these two guys are up for recruiting the legend himself into a space pirate crew. With the offer of space exploration on the table, Jasper decides not to correct the duo and heads off with them into the great unknown.

Then about halfway to two-thirds through the adventure the cascade begins and it doesn’t get much better from there. It probably wouldn’t be so bad though if the game didn’t center around a weak plot. Then there are a few issues that pop up and make things worse. One of them deals with Kisala, Jaster’s love interest. She’s on the luxurious space pirate ship when Jaster joins and during a moment when they’re alone to talk on deck, she starts fading in and out of reality. She brushes this off since it’s happened before and neither of them bother to find a way to stop it. The group eventually gets an eccentric genius to join them, but even then there’s nothing done to check out what could be done for Kisala. It’s not normal and the fact they don’t tell anyone to even try helping the girl’s condition is disturbing. There really aren’t any means to stop it anyway until the end, but the fact remains: no one tried.

Another is the constant tutorials that pop up on the first world you visit, Juraika. It seemed that there was a tutorial for everything and while it was only a screen that appeared and not a full-blown hold-your-hand-as-we-practice deal, it was still annoying. Six hours in and it was still happening. I just wanted to play a game. Couldn’t these explanations be in skippable cutscenes or stashed in a dictionary or guide of some kind for later? Like when I want to know about bounty coins? Why couldn’t an NPC just tell me about this when it actually mattered?

Granted, Fragile Dreams had this going on, too, but it was infrequent and spread out over the course of the game, only appearing when you got a new type of weapon or had to use a specific item in some way right then and there. I believe it also had a tutorial for how to seek out ghosts and whatnot, but again the quick tutorial screens only appeared when necessary.

Lastly, there’s the issue that comes up with every dungeon you explore throughout the game. Much like the dungeons in the Dark Cloud series, the textures you see while traveling are the same from beginning to end with the only difference being how the map differs on each level with a unique area or two as you go, marking how far you’ve gone. Unlike the Dark Cloud series, the dungeons here aren’t randomized. You could be running for over an hour through a place with repetitious design, perhaps getting lost and backtracking when you don’t mean to. All the while random encounters with enemies will trigger and although you can keep going due to the battles going on in real time, your partners will likely die since they can’t dodge incoming attacks very well. There are places to stop, save, or teleport outside throughout these areas, but these dungeons tend to be longer than absolutely necessary. This is horrible during the particular lengthy ones where you just keep going and going and going with no end in sight, hoping that the end will be right around the corner. It could be a trek underground, above ground, inside, or outside and it will still be a breath of fresh air once you reach the group’s destination.

Understandably, having copy and paste environments make it easier for the game to load so you don’t have to wait on any load screens while moving around. It allows for larger areas to be made so the player has more to walk around. The lack of loading was one of the selling points for Rogue Galaxy as was having over 100 hours of gameplay (which only happens if you go after absolutely everything, post-game content included). The worlds are big, vibrant, and beautiful with cel-shaded graphics but there’s only so much a person can take of the same patterns in a dungeon before getting bored. Granted, the outside dungeons are more pleasing to the eye, but there aren’t many of them. Having repetitious designs in a post-game dungeon that has 100 floors is fine since the purpose is to test your skills and endurance. However, it’s not enjoyable to face over an hour and a half of the same sights and sounds while making your way to a boss.

Even the characters don’t like this place. I'm not kidding.

In a game with a weak story, having beautiful environments and/or engaging gameplay is a must. Vexx doesn’t have a big story, but the worlds are wonderful and collecting the Wraithearts is challenging. In the early generations of Pokémon, there was little story and the tiles weren’t really diverse, but gamers liked catching and training monsters for their team. Rogue Galaxy offers visual appeal (when you’re not sick of dungeon crawling), and the music is really good, too, although I found it even better when not looped for a prolonged period of time.

The combat is something to look forward to as well. All eight playable characters have a unique fighting style with both a melee and ranged weapon, both of which need charging after you use up all of your stamina or shots respectively. You can’t just hack and slash to your heart’s delight unless you want to use up a lot of consumables. You’re not totally defenseless since everyone can guard, but being unable to attack is a downer.

Anyway, some allies are quick, some are slow, but their unique attack patterns never change. To make up for that, each one has a good deal of skills to unlock. It’s kind of fun since you don’t level up to get them. Instead you collect specific items, even common ones, and then head to the Revelation Flow Chart for a character. If there’s a skill that character can learn, the outline of one or more items will be shown, however, most of the time you won’t know exactly what the skill does until it becomes available. Slotting in all the items in the field will open the ability and, more often than not, make some other fields show up with more item outlines.

Zegram’s Flow Chart.

These abilities do more than throw some spice into your battles. A select few that can be opened up early on are powerful enough to decimate every enemy on screen, ending a battle in seconds. A bit game breaking but it’s relieving to know you won’t have to spend too much time trying to cut down a cluster of enemies. This gets better when you can combine a couple of Jaster’s earlier techniques to take on mimics. Those monsters are terrors in this game and yet if you play it safe with the tech that lets waves of energy fly from his sword, you can take them out with little difficulty. Another tech doubles his damage output and the combo is enough to make just about any boss a non-issue so long as you have enough Stamina Potions to spare. Being able to down enemies easily sort of takes the fun out of it, but on the other hand you won’t spend a lot of time on each battle and can be on your way very quickly.

What you’ll mainly be fighting for is the weapon experience. Each weapon has an experience bar and once it’s maxed out you may be able to fuse it with another maxed out weapon of the same type. Granted, that other weapon has to match the category that the first one falls under such as being a missile launcher for Simon, a sword for Jaster, a bow for Lilika, etcetera. You have to find a special talking frog before you can do any fusing, but the little guy can’t be missed and the resulting weapons he spits back out are more powerful than either of the base components. Trying to uncover what fusion weapons you can get next is kind of addictive and the items you get from battle can help fill in the Revelation Flow Charts, too, although it becomes a pain to get the desired drops late in the game.

If the random combat gets boring you have some options on what you can do on the side upon reaching the second planet, Zerard. If beating tough monsters is something you enjoy, then get a hunter’s license and start going after quarries. These targets are found throughout the galaxy and they appear once you use a specific item (which is usually an uncommon item) at a specific place. After accepting a quarry, a little question mark will become visible on the game screen when you are near the area where you can summon a monster. Defeating a quarry moves you up the list of top hunters in the galaxy and at certain ranks you earn some prizes.

If you would rather use your brains more, there’s the unlockable Factory where you can make some items whenever you want. After you get a blueprint or two – which you can find by talking to NPCs – you can get to work. It’s tricky business since you’re given a limited space to put down manufacturing parts and outlets to plug them into. Furthermore each part has a set number of seconds that it takes for the ingredients to travel them, and the number of parts you require depends on the type of ingredient being processed. A gemstone needs one while a metal base needs three so you have to set up the piping to make sure everything gets to the final machine at the exact same time to make the product a success. There are some basic arrangements you can choose from to lay out the parts, but the more complex blueprints need you to make convoluted routes for the machinery. Even if everything makes it to the end of the line, you still run the risk of having a wrong ingredient if you mistook the hint for some other item (which is easy to do seeing as some items have the same or identical description). It takes some practice but once you understand the machinery you need for a specific type of ingredient, it gets easier. It’s a great way to get your mind off a long dungeon and if you make something, you can immediately use or equip it.

Lastly, if you want a combination of fighting and brains there’s the Insectron Stadium. It’s a tournament that mixes chess and Pokémon together for an interesting side project (after buying a license, anyhow). You start by trapping and raising some Insectors, tough little bugs found on every planet. You can get an Insector trap and rearing cage at some point, and by placing some food inside the trap and wandering around for a while, you can try your luck at catching a bug for the tournament. The cage holds up to five Insectrors, and once you’re satisfied with your bug collection you can enter Insectron. Each bug has a special ability and a limit to how far they can move on the board. There’s some variety when it comes to the abilities (flipping opponents, poisoning, and so on) as well as how the bugs look, and the strategies you come up with can make up for a lack of a really strong Insector. Insectron is really neat and the fact that you can step back from the tournament at any point, even before the last opponent, is a plus.

A round of Insectron.

If any of that isn’t enough there is an optional 100 floor dungeon waiting for you after defeating the final boss. I have no idea why anybody would put themselves through that or even the extreme version of it, but there you go.

Really, it’s kind of disappointing to see what Level 5 has churned out here when compared to some of their other works. The characters aren’t exactly lovable, there are points where no logic is used by them, a handful of bosses make you play it safe while fighting or risk immediate death, boring dungeons are longer than they should be, and I’ve already said enough about the story. On the positive side of things, the voice acting is pretty good, there are names and items carried over from the Dark Cloud series, a synopsis of the plot is shown when loading up a file to remind you where you were, the music is great, and despite my gripes there are some really good moments in the game before the ton of clichés come crashing down.

Rogue Galaxy is an okay game, but Level 5 put too much emphasis on large environments and few loading times. I can’t in good conscience recommend this game, but if you’re curious about the beginning at least, then go watch a Let’s Play. All the good parts wrapped up with commentary so you don’t have to suffer through the grinding and lengthy dungeons.

The year is 2003. Acclaim Entertainment is on its last legs and the company needs a game to sell now. So of course the answer is to quickly shove one out that’s been in development for a while and hope it floats. This tactic can sometimes work, but only if there’s enough hype generated for whatever is being put up for sale. Unfortunately for Acclaim, when they launched Vexx, an action-platformer, there wasn’t enough advertisement to catch the attention of gamers. As a result the game flopped and it is now an obscure title at bottom of the bargain bin (if game stores even have those anymore for older systems).

The only reason I know about Vexx is because I followed the news about it in gaming magazines (when they were still relevant), looking at the screenshots of beautiful areas and deadly enemies. The day and night cycle was the main attraction with the enemies becoming increasingly hostile once the sun went down. That alone cinched its purchase.

Although I didn’t expect it to be so dark and edgy. This is seen as earlier as the main menu where the eponymous Vexx stands alone on the rooftop of a twisted structure. Night has fallen and malicious shadows zoom around him as haunting, near-unintelligible messages are spoken to him. It sets the mood for loneliness and having no one you can trust in a dangerous place. Then you get to the story.

About 700 years ago, horrible creatures called Shadowraiths descended upon the planet of Astara. They came through a gate opened by the planet’s inhabitants, who only wished to see other worlds, and went on to tear Astara apart and drain the energy from the system that brought them there in the first place. A war raged, causing many casualties on both sides although it was the Astari who ultimately suffered the most. Eventually, the fighting ceased.

Time passed.

In the present, all that is left of Astara are pieces of the planet where wildlife continues to live. The last known survivors of the carnage exist in a village known as Overwood. They know peace, but that is shattered by the arrival of Dark Yabu, the Shadowraith leader. He leads his army into the Overwood and enslaves the villagers, forcing them to work in the nearby mines, possibly looking for Wraithearts. These hearts will power up the Rift system and allow the Wraith leader to go elsewhere, leaving behind pieces of a barren and miserable world.

Conditions in the mines are far from fair. It gets to the point where Vexx, one of the captives, finally snaps one day and tries attacking one of the overseers. Yabu intervenes, turning his dark power on the boy. He would have surely died if not for his grandfather, Vargas, interrupting the creature with a toss of his pickaxe. This earns the old man Yabu’s ire and he is soon sent to the afterlife.

Dark Yabu has no idea how to be a successful overlord, otherwise he would have been smarter about how to handle Vexx and Vargas. Anyhow, that night Vexx vows revenge and sneaks aboard Yabu’s wind ship, intending on destroy the Wraith leader. Fate has other plans, however, and instead of revenge, it grants him fortune in the form of the Astani War Talons. The Talons, having been sunk into a rock for who-knows-how-long, bind themselves to Vexx with Astara’s fate in tow. No, they cannot be taken off. They’re quite clingy.

There’s a massive explosion which kills everyone, leaving Vexx and some elderly man named Darby as the only survivors. Darby lets our protagonist know about their people’s fate, informs him that the Talons are dangerous, and that the boy must now collect the beating Wraithearts if he wants to get any further and stop Yabu. Thanks to a vision while he was unconscious, Vexx knows that Yabu is keeping his grandfather’s spirit captive to feed off of its pain and sorrow. As the only one left with any fighting ability, it’s up to Vexx and Vexx alone to find Dark Yabu somewhere on what’s left of Astara and destroy him to avenge Vargas. The Hearts power the portals leading to other locations on the planet, and there are nine areas to explore with eight to ten Hearts hidden in each. He better get started.

The Talons come with free guiding voices. Awesome.

Now, this sounds like a dark but cool beginning to a story, right? Well since the game was cut off during development there was a lot that had to be left out. More locations and plot had to be sacrificed, but thankfully the game isn’t heavily affected. It’s still a downer that the story just drops off about halfway through the game even with the scattered journal pages to fill you in on Astara’s past, but what we’re left with isn’t half bad.

Collecting the Wraithearts is much like how one would collect stars in Super Mario 64. Find a Heart, touch it, and end up outside the place you were just in. In this case you return to the Rift Hub and have your data automatically saved. This includes when you’ve collected 100 Heart Shards or 6 Soul Jars (this game’s morbid versions of gold and red coins respectively, only they don’t heal Vexx). The difference here is that you’re not given the exact location or instructions on how to obtain these gruesome objects. Instead you are given a small riddle on what to do, and there are some arrows when you enter an area on where to go so you’re not wandering around aimlessly (most of the time anyway). You can also go after the Hearts in whatever order you want with any necessary changes to the level set up when you choose a riddle. This is relief considering how difficult it is to get the Wraithearts half of the time. One of them has you enter a different location altogether and do a series of daring jumps and maneuvers (which is tricky with the often uncooperative camera) just to get to the section where the Heart is actually being kept. It’s positively hair-tearing and one false move can send Vexx plummeting into a bottomless pit. This wouldn’t be so bad if there wasn’t a life counter. The developers knew how hard they made their game so you’re provided with five lives – a decent number of chances – every time you load up a save file to help you avoid facing the game over screen too soon. Focus and control are the keys to success, especially later in the game because Wraitheart hunting gets unbelievably challenging. It would be wise to keep another controller on hand just in case.

Now, the first few levels aren’t too bad if you’re not dead set on getting every last Wraitheart. You only need about three-quarters of the Wraithhearts in the game to reach the end anyway. For the compulsive collectors though this will be incredibly frustrating.

Staying alive during the course of Vexx’s adventure is not an easy task. You will fall to your doom to some point so keeping an eye on pools of water, climbable walls, or poles that Vexx can grab on to is a must. Something else to keep track of is the time of day while exploring someplace. It isn’t completely necessary, but once it turns night it will be tougher to get the health drops from enemies since they take more damage. This is easily taken care of by finding the sundial in the area and turning it until it is early morning. This will last for quite a while, usually giving you enough time to grab a good number of Hearts before you have to turn back time again.

Or you can stand around and admire the sights.

You won’t get far though if you don’t master Vexx’s attacks. Just about everything he does requires using the Talons as they function as both a weapon and a tool. Using the Talons as a weapon, the boy is able to execute a swift combo on a single enemy or juggle several of them. The latter builds up a power gauge that allows him to move faster and shoot a beam of energy when activated. There’s a pretty big moveset considering this is primarily a platformer. The tutorial takes you through the basics of combat, although it’s up to you to make the most out of Vexx’s new abilities. Mashing the attack button can get the job done just fine most of the time, but different combos have different strengths. Some might take care of an enemy faster and it’s up to you to figure out which ones do that. Besides, it’s boring mashing one button the entire time. Granted you’ll still be pressing one button for attacks no matter how often you pause between punches, but the resulting moves will differ.

Spamming reliable attacks instead works, too.

As a tool, the Talons allow Vexx to jump long and far, grab, climb, shimmy across ledges, and even quickly propel the boy while underwater.

You may be wondering why it would be worth investing in such a hair-pulling game. The answer’s simple enough: if you enjoy a challenge, you’ll be treated to awesome views and epic music. The places you visit are big, expansive, and beautiful with music that reflects that. You can see from one end of the level to the other if you find a good spot to stand and there’s no loading time should you choose to go clear to the other side (unless you die, of course). The tracks are several minutes long so the songs don’t really get redundant. On top of that there are tracks for day and night and good grief can the music at night be eerie. The evening tracks sound like they came from a horror game sometimes with sudden, unexplainable noises like metal clashing together or the sound of an unknown creature growling.

Not to say that there's zero silliness to be found.

If you can manage to get all 81 Wraithearts, your reward is nothing. There are no secrets or cheats. Once Dark Yabu is defeated, that’s it. You could go through Vexx again for the cutscenes, but that’s about the extent of it. Combined with the difficulty and ending sequence, Vexx leaves a lot to be desired. In a good way. Too bad there isn’t a sequel or at least a digital download of Vexx on PSN. It could probably kick up interest for this game again. Until then if you’re interested in this great platformer, you will have to resort to Let’s Plays or track down an old copy of it. At the time this article was posted a copy of Vexx on eBay goes for about thirty bucks with the manual, three bucks if not. This is because the answer to one of the riddles is in the back of the booklet, although thanks to the Internet you could just look up what the proper code is by the time you get to that certain riddle (assuming you can figure out when the manual will be needed).

When you get right down to it, Vexx may not be the perfect platformer, but it’s not bad for what it is. There are fantastic worlds, a great combat system, creative ways to obtain Hearts, an epic soundtrack, and what little story there is leaves you to wonder about what else was planned. If you’re seeking a challenging platformer, then Vexx is your answer.

Since 1999, Konami has invited gamers to visit the resort town of Silent Hill. It’s here that weaknesses and fears are given corporal forms, which lurk in the darkness and the heavy fog that envelopes the town. Symbolism is abound as are unexplainable sights and sounds produced by a town that’s probably sentient. It’s crazy and creepy and fans keep coming back for more, because the people in Team Silent Hill know exactly how to play with the gamers’ emotions. In the original Silent Hill for instance, there was Harry Mason who was looking for his little girl after a car accident. Only, instead of his daughter, he discovered monsters waiting for him. Parental fear spurred him, and possibly the player, to find his kid and get the heck out of dodge. A great motivation tactic.

Anyhow, with every installment a new protagonist goes through a series of traumatizing events while we learn about them and a little more about what the “other” side of the town is capable of. As a result, each game has something memorable about it, but the one that stands out the most has to be Silent Hill 2. Despite some outdated graphics and combat mechanics, it gets a lot right and it all begins with a man and a letter.

"Silent Hill."

James Sunderland is a desperate man. He has recently received a letter from his wife, Mary, telling him to meet her in Silent Hill. The problem is that Mary has been dead for three years. This should be impossible, yet he has the letter in his hands. It’s her handwriting, there’s no mistaking it. Determined to get to the bottom of this, James walks into Silent Hill and his own worst nightmare.

After you take control of James, there’s about a twenty minute to a half hour jog until you reach the first monster, but that time isn’t wasted. You’re introduced to one of the other people drawn to Silent Hill and the long route gives you time to appreciate every odd sound along the way. It’s a great buildup for suspense and by the time you pick up the radio that alerts you of nearby enemies, you’ll be itching for a way to release the tension. It’s almost a relief when you get a wooden plank since you finally have something to defend yourself with. Unfortunately the monsters start coming out of the woodworks after that so the streets aren’t so barren anymore.

That radio, though, is one of the most terrifying sources for sounds that can put you on edge. The eerie ambient music wasn’t enough apparently. It’s one thing to see a monster and brace for combat, but it’s another when unearthly sounds start blaring from your TV. You can switch the radio off, but then you won’t know if there are any enemies nearby. So unless you want to risk being attacked, you’ll have to keep the radio on throughout the entire game unless you already know where every monster is. It’s nerve-wracking! No matter what melee weapon or gun you have it’s bound to put you on edge unless you somehow get used to the noise.

Then the series mascot Pyramid Head shows up and you’ll be dreading hearing the scrap of metal on metal. The creature is invincible and it can one-shot James if it gets close enough. You can shoot the monstrosity but if you have the option to run away, then by all means run.

He’s staring at you.

Combat takes practice, but once you get used to the controls and enemy attack patterns it’s not so bad. Pressing R2 readies whichever weapon you’ve equipped, moving the left analog stick or directional buttons aims, and X attacks. You can’t move while pressing R2 so if you’re about to be hit, you probably won’t have enough time to dodge unless you’ve memorized the movements of the monster you’re up against. James isn’t particularly quick with swinging around melee weapons either, so if you miss or take too much time lining up your attack, chances are you’re going to take damage. When you do, a little screenshot in your inventory (that conveniently shows where you currently are in-game) gets fuzzy and slowly turns red. The amount of damage you take depends on the difficulty setting. You could end up with a few scratches or be near death’s door in a matter of seconds. Health drinks, first-aid kits, and ammo are found throughout Silent Hill, but they’re not in infinite supply. It’s tempting to shoot every last enemy from a safe distance and heal up whenever James get injured, but it’s not worth it.

Conserving what you have will mean the difference between bludgeoning boss monsters up close with a metal pipe and unloading shotgun rounds into them. It isn’t much of a problem if you explore a lot to find items, but depending on your skills and luck it might be more trouble than it’s worth. This is definitely the case late in the game where you will be given the option of heading straight for your next destination or looking around for goodies in the monster-infested streets.

The radio crackles. Is it worth searching?

In between all of the abomination bashing, there are puzzles. Lots of puzzles. They are part of the main focus in SH2 and as such the game is stuffed with them. Sometimes they don’t make any sense until you’re sitting there, looking at your inventory, and thinking of what to do with that pack of juice you recently picked up. You can choose the riddle difficulty, too, so half the solutions can either be reasonably quick to reach or require an extra 20 minutes to figure out. Thankfully they never get as complicated as the Hard Mode puzzles in Silent Hill 3, so you don’t need to know anything about Shakespeare’s works to advance.

Really, the story, symbolism (sometimes subtle, sometimes not), and riddles take up a huge chunk of SH2. The atmosphere is unsettling, the radio and music tend to put you on edge, and the way everything in Silent Hill is so dead when there are traces and proof of people having lived there at one time is sometimes chilling. It comes together so beautifully that it’s easy to forgive the outdated graphics. They’re not so bad, and the game has been remastered in high-def in the Silent Hill HD Collection for the PS3 and Xbox 360 if the old looks bother you. There are multiple endings, unlockable weapons, and if you got the extended version of the game then there’s the sub-scenario “Born from a Wish” which follows the side-character Maria before she met James.

That all said, Silent Hill 2 is considered one of the best entries in the Silent Hill series and for good reason. It is on multiple platforms and if you’re a fan of the horror genre, give it a whirl.