Masem’s Gaming Blog

Zack and Wiki: Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure, developed by Capcom, is hopefully what is the first of many more adventure/puzzle games for the Wii console. The game combines situational puzzles with the use of the Wii Remote nicely, albeit that it is possible to run into a situation where you have to restart a puzzle completely from the start and can be a major source of annoyance in the game. Regardless, the rest of the gameplay is pretty well done and provides a nice framework for followup games to work from.

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Timeshift, developed by Saber Interactive and distributed by Sierra, is one of those titles that has a premise with promise: what would happen if you drop a player with some limited control over time into an FPS game? Concept-wise, Timeshift manages to get the time powers down nicely and can make solving puzzles and combat much more interesting – for a bit. Unfortunately, in the long run, most of the rest of the game is pretty bland, with little variation from other FPS or during the course of the campaign, and results in a game that feels like yet another FPS clone without any sort of soul to the game.

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Oh man, this is already so much better than Super Mario Sunshine.  As probably most have seen the previews, much of the game takes place on small planetoids, and an excellent camera system is used as to avoid many of the problems from Sunshine while not being disorienting.  There’s parts that feel like a standard 2D Mario platformer, and the new additions for the Wii side (that I’ve gotten to), primarily the spin attack which through the first couple “galaxies” has been used rather nicely for defeating foes.  The controls feel nice and slick (using both Nunchuck and Remote) and really intuitive once you learn everything.  Plus this looks really really good – again, the Wii may not be pushing the envelope for graphics, but this is very pleasent to  look at.

Consider this as Squenix’s first venture in the Pokemon-type RPG.  Basically, you go around, collecting monsters to fight together monsters in order to get them into your party.  While there’s less about competing against other “scouts” (aka trainers), and much more in terms of visible random encounters that you see.   Where it is better than Pokemon is that it is much easier to work on convincing a monster to join you: you “scout” it and then let your monster party do one round of attacks to accumulate a percent of a chance to turn the monster to your side.  A weak part will only gain a few percent while a powerful one can get close to 100%.  No more carefully waiting until you’ve poked the monster enough to weaken it to capture.  The other aspect I’ve yet to get to is that one can then synthesize monsters together to make stronger ones — my monsters are too low level to do this, but it seems to have standard aspect of the DQ games that make them interesting to experiment with.

Unfortunately, the game is done in 3D mimicking DQ8 in art style and approach.  While it may look ok, the 3d movement is just too klunky to really work well – I’d much rather have seen them go all 2D sprites like in Rocket Slime, or a fixed top-down 3D angle like Pokemon Diamond/Pearl.

I’m pretty impressed with this game – while we’ve had at least one FPS on the DS before (Metroid Prime: Hunters), this is a little different as, so far, the shooting aspect isn’t much (though I know I get more guns later in the game), but for that, it works nicely.  Exploring the abandoned mental hospital that is crawling with monsters, you move with the dpad, look around with the stylus on the screen, and then use your currently selected object with the left shoulder button – this requires you to hold the DS in the right way but definitely feels more comfortable on the Lite than the old DS.  The game uses darkness effectively – you pretty much have to walk around using a flashlight all the time, and need to use sound to listen for certain monsters that lurk the halls – including little ankle-biters that easily can sap health.  There’s a few puzzles so far (eg a numeric code written in blood on the wall that you need to enter into a number pad to open a door) but otherwise outside of that is not much more different, gameplay, from a usual FPS – it’s all about the atmosphere which is done pretty well on the limited DS hardware.

For purposes of last season, I will hold off on a full review until the entire season is released; particularly since most of the general presentation elements are the same and will carry over.

So far, the second “season” of Sam and Max is looking pretty good. “Ice Station Santa” continues where the first season left off (and while its not required to have played through Season 1, you will miss a lot of the characters and setup if you don’t), this time having the duo facing against an evil-turned Santa. The game still has the same usual gameplay structure: in this case, an intro, two “acts” (a singular puzzle that requires solving several other puzzles before continuing), and an ending puzzle, but it works for the material. The puzzles themselves are not too hard, but nothing too sinister either, though some of the puzzles require multiple traversing of the the game’s sets to collect all the items as needed. The gaming introduces a hint system option that you can adjust, from having absolutely no hints to being close to hand-held through the game, which can be a nice option if you’re more interested in the clever writing and situations than the puzzles themselves. Characters include all the favorites from the last series and a few new ones that are bound to make reappearances in future episodes.

Probably the only other most notable change to date is the addition of widescreen support which is really nice.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare continues Infinity Ward’s strong combat first-person shooting game, though as the title suggests, the game has now been set in the near future, breaking the limitations that the World War II setting required of previous titles. While the game plays pretty much as you’d expect from the past titles in the series, the switch of venue to the modern theater has given the series a huge breath of fresh air – the single player campaign is very strong with a story that can hit close to home, and the multiplayer, while still feeling like standard FPS games, has many new features that make each game rewarding regardless of how well you do.

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On the single player side, I am so glad they’ve moved to modern times.  Sure, the basic elements are still regular Call of Duty elements (checkpoints, limited weapons, etc.) but the move to the present gives them much more flexibility with combat arenas and appearances.  The intro level, a raid on a listing ocean tanker, is pretty damned awesome in how it asserts the rest of the game.

Multiplayer looks interesting but from what I’ve tried, I noticed that of the 11-12 or so game modes that the game has, you are locked from all but 2 of these in ranked play until you get enough ranks; other features of multiplayer mode are also similarly locked.  I’m not sure if this is a great idea even if it is relatively easy to gain the necessary ranks.  It pretty much means that to unlock all the available features, you have to play now while there’s plenty of players to earn the appropriate ranks and before the online game community becomes stale.

As with Disgaea, this is another great game to have available everywhere due to how deep and complex the gameplay can get.  The transition from the PS1 title pretty much leaves intact all the graphical elements, maybe enhanced for readability on the PSP screen, plus adds a few pre-rendered cutscenes at critical moments.  The most annoying graphical feature is a slowdown that occurs when you use a special attack (magic spell, rushes, etc.) which seems to be related to disk loading but may also be a element of the emulation process they have.   Annoying, but well overlooked considering the gameplay that’s possible.

Plus there’s ad hoc wireless co-op and competitive battles you can take against another player’s party which is a nice addition to the game.

Having played some of the original game for the PS1, I am glad and also somewhat disappointed they didn’t change anything with the game appearance beyond widescreen (which does help to see what the battlefield’s like from afar).  Unfortunately, this means some of the text still displays a bit slowly but that’s a minor inconvenience compared to the ability to have this game available where ever you go.  It’s still Disgaea with its somewhat insane but still logical rule following that once you get past the first chapter, things start to make sense of how to get in the game (plus if you die, you start the game over but with all your characters as you built them up).