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Story: B-

Vesperia takes place in a world where the population has become dependant on magical stones called blastia left by an ancient civilization, and currently engaged in a power struggle between the Empire and the various Guilds.  Yuri, an ex-Knight of the Empire, encounters princess Estelle as she is trying to escape from the castle to find their mutual friend Flynn as they chase a blastia theft across the lands.  As they gain members, the group comes to realize there is a more sinister plot afoot involving the blastia that could lead to the destruction of the world, and only their group can stop it.

The plot is pretty stereotypical as well as the characters, though there are a few nice elements to it, but it does get convoluted.  Story is told by a lot of voiced and some unvoiced cutscenes as well as skits throughout the game, with a handful of anime shorts.  A major nit with the story is that it leads to a false climax; you’re all geared for a final battle but then the story takes a turn that requires another act to complete; not that this is necessarily bad, but the false finale is so strongly implied that to find there’s more after it feels like a cheap add-on to the game.

Gameplay: A

Vesperia’s core gameplay will come as no surprise to anyone already familar with the series or with JRPGs in general.  As the story progresses, you move between towns, passing through the overworld on foot, by boat, or by airship, and then entering various dungeons to find artifacts and other useful information.  There are, of course, monster encounters but they are all visible, and you can also attempt to link two or more monster encounters for a more difficult fight.   The game features a limited day/night and weather system approach, in that the type of monsters may change depending on these factors, at least in the overworld.

Combat continues the Tales series tradition of a real-time combat system, with a handful more features that start to make this act like a beat-em-up game.  You control one character (though the game seems to push you towards Yuri most of the time), and given the monster you’re aiming for, you can move back and forth in a line with it; however, off the bat, you can also hold down a trigger and run anywhere on the field, allowing you to easily evade certain attacks or position yourself better.  Attacks can be standard melee combat or a variety of “artes”, special attacks or magical spells, which deal more damage but also consume your “mana” tracks as TP points.  While TP regenerates during battle by landing regular hits, you’ll find that wasteful use of artes can lead to some close situations.  In addition, once you’ve learned certain skills, you can block, sidestep attacks, recover while flying in mid-air, and a number of other moves that you’d normally expect to see in a game like Street Fighter, and thus may start to appeal to those that play these types of games.  Of course, it does get repetitive, as is the case with JRPGs, so this is likely not going to tip you all the way.  An Overlimit meter fills up with successful hits from your party, and, once full, you can activate it to string a large number of attacks in a row without pausing for a short while, though your TP will still be consumed.  It’s also possible later in the game to coordinate the Overlimit with party members for a limited time.

Artes come in a number of types, eight of which you can assign to quick thumbstick flips to make their access easier.  Certain artes, once learned enough, will lead you to learning new artes; some also are learned as you gain levels, after certain plot points, or after learning certain skills.  These artes can then be worked into attack combos that lead to you being able to unleash more devesting artes, including each character’s unique “Mystic Arte”.  Fortunately, if you are a terrible button masher like myself, gaining mastery of manipulating artes, attacks, and blocking is not needed to win the game, but only makes it easier to complete.  It does help, however, to know how artes can be learned, which is one of those constants that are part of the series but not well-spelled out in the general documentation.  Most artes also have a special direction of damage that they do (up, to the side, or down).  Pulling off enough artes attack on an enemy with the same damage will cause that enemy to become susceptible to Fatal Strikes; hit the enemy again and for a brief second a special indicator will flash.  While this is up, if you hit the right trigger and the direction indicated, you will immediately finish any non-boss character, while doing damage to boss ones.  Using Fatal Strikes can significantly up the rewards you get from battle.  It took me a while to get use to the Fatal Strike timing, more often then not calling up the in-battle menu instead of the right attack.  However, it does prove to be a useful tactic for later battles.

You aren’t alone in battle; up to 3 of your party will join you. A detailed strategy table can be used to highly customize their actions in battle, as well as having a number of different strategies saved for quick recall as the situation changes.  But, by default, the AI for the characters perform well, though you many need to turn off weaker artes for them as they learn their more powerful artes.  While you can’t switch out during battle, those that don’t participate are still going to be able to gain experience and other benefits from battle.  As each has an area that they can be better at than others (two, for example, are better against aerial enemies, while one is strong with attack magic), you’ll be able to get your party right for the areas you explore.  The only caveat is that they need to be active battle members to learn new artes, but this is not a significant problem to overcome if you swap out and around every so often.

The “twist” in this Tales game is a skill system which works very much like Final Fantasy IX’s abilities.  Each weapon and certain armor has a set of skills that can be learned by characters that can equip it.  You gain that skill with the weapon equiped, but if you use it long enough in battle to earn enough skill points, you’ll be able to learn that skill without equipping the item.  Thus, much of the game’s management is to continually make sure you collect weapons (including via synthesis) and keeping track when each character learns a skill so that you can swap in a new weapon as to get them to develop new skills.  Of course, the number of skills you can get is large, and you only have a limited number of skill points to allocate to these skills (these grow with level, but it is still a limit).  These skills come in a variety of areas; some increase your attributes, some give you new commands while in battle, others can help modify artes, and so on.  These can get difficult to manage, though if you fail to take steps to manage them on the other characters, they usually default to fair settings.  While the system items is not new, it is a good way of adding a bit of extra customizations to the characters.

The usual cooking aspect is here in the; you can learn recipes to restore party health and TP one time after a battle (you can do it either from the battle completion screen or the menus), providing you have the right ingredients.  The game also adds a synthesis element.  All enemies drop loot that can be combined at stores to make basic goods, armor, or help improve your weapons to advanced versions with new skills to be learned.  There’s also special items, some which are more decorative, but others that are quite useful in battle, such as increasing your Overlimit level.  Fortunately, you’re told what materials you need to make each and where they can be found, so that if you’re itching for a particular weapon or item and lack the resources, you’ll have a way of getting them.  That said, there are a lot of synthesized weapons that can be made in the game, and while the game helps to track which skills you’ve extracted weapons from, this only helps when you have your full party; as the game separates you from the others several times, you can’t see what skills they have learned while synthesizing and thus you’ll either have to wait till they rejoin or make your best guesses on what they lack.

From the standpoint of the overall game, it’s decently structured; the first third of the game, you’re pretty much fixed on a linear path with a few small side quests; in the second third you gain a ship and then shortly thereafter an airship, and your freedom to explore the world opens up a lot more sidequests.  Mind you, there is a period in the third third where you are stripped of your airship for a brief while, but the fact you get to taste what it feels like and knowing you’ll get back to it helps.   While this is typical of most JRPGs with the same world structure, the game feels like it opens up earlier than others.  That said, one of the more annoying parts of the game is that there are several points where your party of 7 will be missing one or more members due to the story line.  Normally, not a big problem, but one of these extended periods includes your primary healer; by this point you do have two other characters that can heal via artes, but their effects are not as strong as the healer, and this can make the boss fights during this period rather difficult.  Fortunately, you have the ability to alter the game difficulty before battle for less reward.  However, the number of times characters switched in and out did get a bit frustrating.

Value/Replayability: A-

The game clocked in for me at 45 hours - mostly playing the main story.  My only nit here was that when I was approaching the 40 hr mark with the characters preparing for the “final battle”, there was a twist in the plot that added another 5 hrs of play to it, making it feel like a sluggish ending.  As with most Tales games, throughout the game you earn Grade from battles, and thus when you start a new game after completing one, you have the opportunity to spend Grade prior to the game to unlock “cheats”, such as the ability to retain items, money, skills, artes, etc to the next playthrough, or to earn experience or Grade faster, and several other cheat-like type approaches.  Normally, this can make the next playthrough more interesting, but as the game is intergrated with the Xbox Live, there are now achievements to be earned, some which you get through the normal story line, but most requiring a couple playthroughs to earn.  Of course, as you get more Grade, your playthroughs can start to become incredibly shorter since your characters start more powerful and can wipe out monsters without too much problem.  This seems like a nice combination of the Tales approach and Achievements and thus gives some good replay incentive to the game.

Graphics: A

On the 360, Vesperia’s graphics shine nicely.  The game is given an anime cel-shading approach, similar to Crackdown’s comic book style, and they flow well on the console.  There’s still issues with characters mouths not lip-syncing as well with the text, but we’re getting closer to that.  The background environments are beautifully done, and there’s a grand sense of scale in many areas.  The battle screen is nicely compact to allow you to focus on the battle while still having key HUD elements in view.

Audio: B

Music and voice acting-wise, Vesperia is just fine: the music is of the same mood as past games, maybe not as sweeping as Final Fantasy but still a good element, and all the voice actors are pretty good for their roles (despite the poor lines they’re given).  Skits are finally fully voiced, which helps to make them more interesting to play through.  But, and this is where my grade comes from, a number of in-game conversations are not voiced fully.  Certainly interactions with NPCs are reasonable to not provide this, but there were several scenes, only between the main group of characters, where the previous scene was voiced, the scene following was voiced, but the middle scene, just as important to the plot as either its neighbors, was not.  This inconsistency was rather annoying.  I understand the need to avoid something like Oblivion where having every character voiced ends up making the game seem like only three voice actors are behind it, but Vesperia is nowhere close to this point, and could have used with more fully-voiced scenes.

Overall: A-

Fans of the Tales series will well appreciate the fact that Vesperia is a fine continuation of the series onto the next generation of consoles.  The core elements of the series are still there, with appreciable new gameplay elements to make it still a fresh approach, and the graphical boost from the new hardware helps a lot.  There is a bit of triteness with the stereotypical story and characters, but that’s an aspect to come to expect from the Tales games.  If you haven’t had the opportunity to try one of the games from this series and you lack an aversion to JRPGs, you will do yourself good to pick this title up.

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de Blob, developed by Blue Tongue and distributed by THQ, is an interesting title - there’s similarities to Katamari Damacy throughout, but though it is not as quirky as that title, there’s still little touchs that remind me of why I enjoyed that game.  de Blob is a very good effort for a third party Wii game; it’s fun though can be tedious near the end, but does have a lot of collection items that will interest those types of games.  The presentation is very well done, particularly in the sound department.  It’s definitely the type of game that will appeal to those that like ones that go off the beaten path.

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Story: A-

The game is based on a world of color, Raydia, that has been taken over by Comrade Black and his INKT forces, draining all the color and forcing the Raydian residents into a monocolor servitude.  A small resistance force in Chroma City oppose the forces but are unable to combat them enough to take them down until Blob shows up with the ability to absorb the stolen paint from the INKT forces and use it against them to repaint the city, gradually freeing the Raydians and recoloring their world.  The story is primarily told from between-level pantomime cutscenes which are nicely done and are able to craft the story just by gestures alone.  You also gain insight on the city as you get instructions for missions, brief little snippets but shows some depth to what the developers saw.  It is a bit on the childish side, but that’s reasonable given that it’s rated for all players.

Gameplay: A-

de Blob may bear some passing resemblance to Katamari Damacy at first - the concept of rolling around, working your way to new areas may read like Katamari Damacy but as you start to play it, you realize it’s different… but then come around to the realization that more of the general design approaches used in Katamari Damacy are present here.  It’s not the quirk title that Katamari was, but it sure has the right touches to make it a good game.

You control Blob with expected controls schemes on the Wii; nunchuck to move around, waggle the Wiimote to jump, and a few other buttons. Control-wise the game is quick to get into.  Initially on each level, you face a black and white world.  By running into Paintbots, Blob will adsorb their color.  Once infused with paint, any surface that Blob touches becomes that color; this includes buildings, plants, the residents of the city, you name it.  However, the amount of paint you have is limited so you have to keep finding Paintbots to refill your paint to keep up the process.  Everything you paint is scored; you get more points for painting an object the first time, and if you can paint multiple objects without touching the ground, you can get a score multiplier.  When you get enough points, you have the ability to unlock a gate into the next section of the level, with each level having about 3 or 4 of these.

The paintbots come in the three primary colors: red, yellow and blue.  If Blob is already one of these colors and hits a different color, then he’ll become the mix (orange, green, and purple); if each primary color is hit once, then Blob becomes brown.  Hitting a primary color again after becoming one of these colors resets Blob back to the primary color.  If needed, you can run Blob into any water source to return him to paint-less state until he hits another bot.  Additionally, if Blob is hit by the INKT forces, he needs to be run through a water source to wash off the ink before all his paint is drained, otherwise you will have to restart the level.

Throughout this, you’re fighting a countdown meter, but you can gain time by a number of means.  Most commonly is to take up challenges issued by your fellow revolutionaries in art.  There are four types of challenges that are available; converting INKT buildings back into the colorful forms they were before, facing off against INKT forces, painting buildings to specific colors, and racing via checkpoints through the cities.  Each of these has a time limit and a difficulty rating, though most are pretty easy to complete.  By far, the most difficult ones that may require some planning are the building painting ones.  The early ones of these ask you to color buildings a specific color, which is not a problem, but as you get into the later stages, you’ll have to painting buildings multiple colors, often a mix of primary and secondary colors.  This can be made more difficult by having buildings that need to be painted one color only accessible by jumping from a building that has to be painted a different color.  Since you can’t avoiding painting when you touch a surface, these means you’ll need to backtrack to repaint the launch-point building after you’ve dealt with the more difficult one to access.  These challenges get trickier with game progression, but failure does not reset the world, but instead simply leaves what you have already filled in alone, making it easy to finish off multiple times.  You get the same reward for finishing it (another minute on the clock), but the wasted time of failing the first time can loom on that countdown timer.  In addition to challenges, additional time can be found scattered about the level or by both painting a complete city block and painting the citizens as they come out after you freed them.  I found myself never without a time crunch in the game, but this may be a problem for less experienced gamers.  The game is not hard, but neither a cake walk; there are some challenges that are tricky but challenges are mostly optional; the more difficult ones do feel rewarding to complete.

The INKT enemies come in several forms that require different tactics to approach, and can only by smooshed out with a set amount of paint.  You’ll also encounter INKT forces that can only be harmed when Blob is one specific color, thus making it difficult to progress if you haven’t gotten the hang of the color system yet.  The foes aren’t super intelligent, they are merely deterrents and reminders that you need to keep abreast of your paint levels and where you are in the level, and where the nearest source of water is.  The game does provide a nice one-touch interface that shows where the nearest water source is, as well as paint bots, challenge starting points, and objectives as part of a challenge so that you don’t get lost.  There is one final boss to the game, but it incorporates all the concepts learned previously in the levels, and is not very difficult.

Where the game becomes more Katamari-like is that it is set up for those that are completionists and perfectionists.  Each level does have a fixed number of items to paint, and one possible goal is to achieve that completion.  But even if you don’t go for that, you can aim to paint all of the billboards or plants, rescue all the citizens, collect all the paint styles on a level, and many more mini-objectives.  Of course, there’s also scoring aspects to consider, and using paint-combos to build up a good score can help there.  When you complete a level, besides opening the next level, you’ll gain access to bonus content as well as two additional timed challenges for that level.

There’s also a handful of multiplayer modes for 2 to 4 local players, with modes similar to various Tony Hawk multiplayer matches.  A paint match has you all vying to paint the area with your color before time is up; a king-of-the-hill type mode has only one player that can paint, the others trying to take that away from him before he paints up too much.  A third type is a race to paint specific targets first when they show up on the match.

There is, unfortunately, a small bug that can be reproduced that is annoying, in that you can get stuck between two objects while the game thinks you are falling; you’ll become unable to move at all and the only way out is to restart the level, which means up to a good 30 minutes could be wasted.  I’ve had this happen twice, and while it’s not overall detrimental to the experience, it is surprising to see it there.

Value/Replayability: A-

There are about 10 total levels in the game; if you sit down and pound through them, you could be done in 5 hours, but de Blob is not about rushing through but enjoying what they’ve put forth.  It does get a bit repetative, and I felt there was a point in diminishing returns on the number of levels, but it’s just barely past that point - it’s not too long to become too boring.  But like the original Katamari, its length is just off from what one would consider “perfect”. Of course, having all the completeness goals available does give incentive to replay the game.

Graphics: A

This is a very clean looking game for the Wii, the only nit being that the camera just sometimes doesn’t track fast enough in tight busy streets.  The way the game transitions color as you move from an area devoid of it to one bursting with color is nice, and there is a nice sense of wonder as you watch your efforts pay off.  There are some obvious short drawing distance pop-up effects that are clearly shown, but it really doesn’t ruin the game’s experience.  Even with the city in its default white palette, it’s easy to make out all the different features in the game.

Audio: A+

I love the approach this game took to the soundtrack.  When you start a level, you select a general ambiance mood music out of about 10 different choices (most unlock with level completion), nice little jazzy numbers that fit the game’s theme well.  As you start, the music is very subtle and laid back but as you color in the city, the music gains depth and becomes more pronounced.  Furthermore, the color that Blob has influences this, adding record-scratches when brown, orchestra hits when red, and the like.  When you paint objects, these even add to the music score, again based on color.  It is ultimately very pleasant to listen to and completely suits the mood of this game.  Voice work uses made up noises, but it sounds similar to how speech was done on Okami, in that real voice actors provides voices, then these were heavily computerized to mask the speech; they’re not as annoying as the high-pitched ones in Okami, and help with the personality of the characters.

Overall: A

de Blob is likely not going to be the next Katamari Damacy in terms of cult titles, but there are definitely elements that both games share in their appeal.  The game itself is well put together with great graphics and an outstanding soundtrack, and though the gameplay can get a bit long and tedious, it does allow you to take in as much or as little as you want, with lots of appeal to the completionist.  I can see this game gaining further titles in the series with some additional new features without changing the core gameplay completely.  It may be a renter if you’re curious, but if you do like unconventional games, de Blob fits that bill.

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Harmonix’s and MTV Games’ Rock Band was a stunning success last year, beating the Guitar Hero to the punch at incorporating several more instruments besides just guitar into the music game set.  Now, less than a year later, we’ve got Rock Band 2 (at least, those of us on Xbox 360s), and while it’s denoted as a sequel, it’s better to think of it as a version upgrade; there’s no major changes to gameplay (unless you never had the opportunity to play in Band World Tour mode before), and the set list is full of 84 new songs, so it may seem like simply a quick way to chug out a new title.  But Rock Band 2 is very very polished, and a few new features and some tweaks to gameplay really make up for all the small failings that were in Rock Band.  But more importantly, add in the fact that while there may only be 84 songs on disk, you have your DLC library as well as most of the original game’s songs available to play, making this title one that will continue to expand week after week.

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Gameplay: A+

I will note that I am still using my old instruments instead of purchasing the new ones (which I have read are generally better), so I don’t consider issues with these as part of the game experience; the only notable aspect here is that while the new guitar does have auto-calibration, the game still allows for this adjustment but does lack default settings that otherwise can be found in the manual.

The smartest thing about Rock Band 2 is that the core gameplay hasn’t changed.  In some sequels, having the same exact gameplay as the previous title is a quick way to make the series old, but that’s not the case here, as it’s what is wrapped around the core game that makes Rock Band 2 stand out from its prequel.  Maybe the hammer-on and pull-off times are a bit looser (I know I was making more than I thought I would from the first game), and maybe other timings are a bit stricter, and there’s a full pull-off chords now, but outside of these tiny tiny changes, you know exactly what you have to do when you see those notes scrolling at you.

What makes Rock Band 2 superior to it’s predecessor, and likely to continue to improve upon in any follow-up game, is that how that core gameplay is wrapped.  Gone is Career mode, which, to some extent, is a bit of a loss if only to make it easy to run through and unlock all of the 84 songs on disk as well as for tracking your own personal performance against the song list (such as which songs you’ve yet beaten on Expert Guitar).  However, by replacing this with the any-number-of-players World Tour mode (either online or off), the game is just tons more fun.  I unforuntately did not have a regular group of close friends off-line to play Band World Tour though I dabbled at the combo of guitar and vocals to see what the fuss was about for Rock Band.  But to have that off the bat here makes for a phenomenially deep experience.  Sure, I’ve about unlocked all venues and most of the songs, but I feel I’ve yet to really get deep into the experience of the Tour on my own.  As with Band World Tour mode before, you start locally, working various songs or setlists to build up cash and fans.  Soon you’ll be offered the chance for a van to get you to more local areas, and eventually to a bus and a plane to achieve worldwide stardom.  Once in a while you will be offered the opportunity to risk earnings (in money or fans) from the upcoming performance by meeting specific requests.  New to this version (as I understand) is that you can hire a crew member (only one at a time) that may help you access certain cities, unlock certain arenas, earn you more money or fans, or even bring about more of the risk offerings.  There’s also a few times that you’ll be asked to do a video shoot (for specific songs), with additional rewards from that.  Most arenas have both random and constructed setlist challenges in addition to pre-determined setlists as well as single songs.  Earn enough stars and you can unlock the daunting “Endless Challenge 2″ playing all 84 songs in a single set.

Fortunately, the Tour mode expands beyond this with two other new features.  The first are a set of challenges, set for specific instruments or for a band, arranged in a number of tiers. This is probably closer to the more typical Career Mode, in that you can’t play challenges in higher tiers until you unlock certain ones in the lower tiers, and these are generally arranged by difficulty. But there are also more generic challenges, such a “70s Songs”, as well as artist challenges and the like.  These integrate with your DLC and Rock Back 1 tracks so that, despite the lack of Weezer in RB2, there is a Weezer challenge if you have downloaded all three songs.  The other new mode, Battle of the Bands, works in a similar manner, offering the same kind of challenges, but tying it with a global scoreboard.  When you play one of these, you are immediately mapped against a friend’s band (the next highest score on the challenge if you’ve ranked before), and during the set your performance is shown compared to theirs using the Tug-Of-War meter.  When you finish, you’re compared to all bands on your friends list that have completed that challlenge as well as worldwide.  These challenges, about 5 to 6 at a time, come and go, some lasting for a week, some for a few hours, but there’s always something their to play.  So far, they’ve included challenges on the more difficult songs as well as the week’s DLC.  As with Tour mode, these challenges can be played with any number of off- and on-line friends.  For the solo players, the standby options of Score Duel and Tug-Of-War are still present if you want to go directly head to head with another.

Now, the one thing that I do miss and my lamenting on the loss of career mode is an easy way to track, as a solo play, how I am faring on the various songs in terms of difficulty and stars.  I like to know that I’ve 5-starred all but a few of the songs with guitar, or that I’ve got a ways to go to bring my drumming up to expert by looking at a bunch of 4-star hard performances, something that was easily done via the Career mode song selection menu.  But now as the game is based on creating your band, with individual characters simply members of it, the game tracks all performances by the band, so if you 5-star a song with four band members playing on Easy, you can’t easily tell if you’ve previously 5-starred the song before on expert guitar in the past.  I don’t know if this needs to be Career mode again, but maybe just another practice area in the game.  It’s not a loss to be upset over, of course, as the additions outweigh it, but I hope Harmonix considers this in Rock Band 3 or as a patch.

There are still the usual practice modes, but now they’ve added some help for aspiring drummers.  A beat trainer gives you about 70-odd typical drum patterns, allowing you to practice the rhythm over and over again at various speeds until you are comfortable with this and able to pound them out without too much thought (a key to the more difficult songs).  A fill trainer working similarly though helping you to put controlled but energic fills in sections leading up to Overdrive activation.   Finally, you can just bang away on the drums with a free drumming mode.   While song creation was not included in Rock Band 2 but will be in the upcoming Guitar Hero World Tour, I can see this as a starting point for future Harmonix innovations.

Value/Replayability: A+(+)

Here is the sole reason why Rock Band will continue to be the more preferred music game over the Guitar Hero series, and that is the fact that there is a huge-ass load of songs that are out there and will keep on coming out.  All DLC is already both backward and forwards compatible, meaning that all 200-some songs already for the first game can be played in the second.  Plus, Harmonix allows you for all of $5 (to recoup licensing fees) to bring in your Rock Band songs (all but 3) to Rock Band 2.  Off the bat, you’ll likely have a huge collection of songs to start your game with.  It’s only been three weeks since release, but there have already been 3 album releases (granted, one was delayed), with 4 more promised and as I’m writing this, an AC/DC track pack and an album from Motley Crue are due for release as well; this is in addition to singles and packs that are being put out on a weekly basis as promised.  Ok, so some of the Rock Band songs are starting to age on me, but it’s amazing how big my library is growing (and how fast they are getting money from me for it).  Given how Harmonix has insisted this is a gaming platform and not so much individual games, I can this process continuing for several more years.

Graphics: A

There’s not a lot significantly new in the graphics area; a few minor interface tweaks don’t alter gameplay, but now your band has a number of more dynamic and fresh moves on stage.  The customization is still there, but this is basically the same clothing items from before plus about 50% more new items from the “thrift shop”.  It still looks great, but I would have liked to see the customization features improved.

Audio: A-

Ok, here’s where I complain about the soundtrack.  I’m not saying it’s bad: there are a number of great songs in this list.  But I find the indy songs they’ve included plus many of the songs in the “Modern” area from groups like Linkin Park to be not really great songs for a game like this.  It’s not that their tracks aren’t difficult or the like, but they just don’t seem to mesh well with the rest of the game.  However, as these soundtracks are a matter of opinion, I’m figuring that there’s somewhere out there that loves that tracks and hates the ones I love playing. That said, there are some artists that I really hope to see more of, including Journey, Billy Idol, and Kansas, all which make good songs that can be challenged on all instruments.

Overall: A

There’s no doubt that if you liked Rock Band 1, you will love Rock Band 2; true, it doesn’t change much but what is added is basically correcting all the little nits with the first game.  The game is much more accessible to play with online friends beyond simple Quickmode challenges.  While the soundtrack is a matter of taste, there’s pretty much an endless array of songs that Harmonix continues to deliver as DLC that will keep you busy for a long time to come.

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Cell Stage - Less esotertic version of flOw, works well but goes by quickly.

Tribe Stage - A bit repetitive but instant gratification with the evolution of your species via its rewards.

City Stage - Not thrilled with this, I suck as RTSs and had troubles getting through it the first time until I figured that the best time to attack a village is after they sent all their forces to raid yours and you’ve defeated them sounding (as I could still pump out new units as others died right there.)

Civilization Stage - Maybe a bit too easy; I did find that they didn’t mention that your city gets stuck with whatever branch (economic, military, or religious) once you set it, and wondered why I had no military units.  This felt like the stage with the least helpful hints on what to do, despite how close to any Civilization game ever was.

Space Stage - Have to agree with most everyone else, this is where the game really pays off - it feels open and expansive yet not too open (ala the Oblivion problem) as the missions help guide you with what to do.

The user content and sharing aspects are of course awesome.

My primary disappointment with the game is the loss of how the game was to determine what abilities and skills your creatures, buildings, and vehicles would have based on how you designed it.  There’s still a taste of this; most parts you install (up to a limited number, of course) give certain benefits, but there was supposed to be something more organic and less exacting about the way it is currently.  For example, adding any pair of legs gets you a speed boost, regardless of how “functional” the being may end up being; original demos for this showed that the game would have adjusted the speed bonus for strategically placed legs over useless ones, and other aspects of the design.  Similar for all other design elements.  It’s still the same user-created aspects which makes the game extremely fresh, but the lack of significant impact of how well the design aspects are put together is disappointing to see.

The other disappointment is the minimal (to some extent) impact of previous phases on successive ones.  Certainly your route through one phase sets what you are in the next, but this seems to be a choice out of three options.  Physical appearance and other aspects set in the Tribe phase don’t mean anything in the City stage, for example.  Basically, each phase is almost a unique phase with minimal bearing beyond appearance that what you created before carries forward.

This is not to say Spore is bad; it is still impressive.  It is just lacking elements that were shown originally to be in the game that are no longer present that had piqued my interest much more in this game.   Still, the Space stage alone is worth the cost of the game.

Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty

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Story: B+

The “episode” (for lack of better term) starts after the events of Tools of Destruction, with Ratchet seeking clues as to where the Zoni have taken his buddy Clank.  He chases down rumors of a Captain Darkwater who had a telescope that could see to the Zoni world, and with the help of Talwyn and Rusty Pete, makes his way to Darkwater’s last location.  However, as they seek for answers, they find themselves betrayed, and suddenly awash in ghost pirate robots (not zombies or ninjas, unfortunately), and Ratchet must defeat a helpless island village from the undead Darkwater in order to get the necessary part to run the telescope.

The story is a bit trite (the “twists” I saw coming from a long ways away) but its a nice carryover from the end of the last, without deviating too much.  The one thing that I’m still not thrilled on is that there are small but significant conversation trees, ones where you select an answer for Ratchet, but while everything else in the game is nicely voiced, there’s no voice to Ratchet’s replies, and one of the things that I enjoy about the series has been the voice actor’s work in delivery Ratchet’s lines, getting the right amount of sarcasm down; to not use it here just seems weird.

Gameplay: B+

There’s little difference in Quest for Booty as there is for any other later Ratchet & Clank game - a mix of platforming and third-person shooting elements.  However, for one, the weapons are less emphasized here.  All the weapons are repeats from Tools of Destruction, and you only gain them at certain points of the story.  They can be evolved, but not to a great extent.  There’s no Gadgetron vendors, so you’ll have to rely on ammo boxes in the wild to restock; fortunately, for all but a few sections, areas where you are using weapons repeating will have an infinite supply of ammo crates pop in.  Bolts are still collected, but these are primarily used to buy key equipment from the Smuggler to complete the missions given.

The new feature to the game is the ability to use Ratchet’s wrench to manipulate the environment.  Certain objects have wrench-grappling points, and once latched, you can move them around: extending a bring, resetting a spring-loaded jump-pad, or getting platforms into place in order to make jumps safely.  The idea fits naturally into the game, though I found that the choice of control scheme a bit odd.  To do this, you hold down R2, then press the square button to make the latch (both on right hand, note); movement is then done on the right control stick.  While at this point you can disengage the latching controls, this didn’t feel natural for the series, and because my right hand was busy (ahem) it felt more natural to move things with the left analog stick.  Of course, once I discovered that you could release the R2/square combo and then move to the right analog stick, it sorta helped, but again, the overall scheme was just a bit odd.  Not a gamekiller, but just something I would have liked to see handled differently.

The wrench also gains the ability to carry small objects as long as Ratchet is walking or jumping.  These include flaming lava stones to break objects and glowing bugs that are used in dark sections in order to scare away critters that will actually seek to hurt you.  This aspect fits right in - or at least under you get surrounded by things you want to swipe at with your wrench and instead pick up the object you just dropped (a habit you quickly learn to get over).

As such, the game ends up being about 1/4 platformer (grind rails and magnetic paths to walk across), 1/4 puzzlers (using the wrench latching and carrying abilities to get through sections) and 1/2 combat.  The combat is more intense - while there are enemies you encounter just walking about levels, there are three major sections of the game where you are pretty much strictly on weapons-duty, defending points from assault or the like.  Again, you get effectively infinite ammo here (at the rate that ammo boxes regenerate) but annoying you don’t get infinite health.  I played the game on the hard setting (side note: I don’t remember any R&C game having a difficulty setting - there was challenge mode, but that’s not the same here), and the first major assault point took a long time to work through due to limited health and the number of foes.  Not impossible, mind you, just a careful application of figuring out each wave and working from there.  There are checkpoints, so the longer drawn out battles don’t require restarting anew each time you die, and your health experience and weapon growth carry over, so eventually you’ll get strong enough to finish these off.  Hard was sufficiently challenging but nothing to break a sweat over.’

The rest of the game may be rather easy for anyone experienced to the R&C series or to puzzle games in general.  The puzzles are sufficiently simple that you’ve likely seen several variations of them before, and while the magnetic paths or grind rails are fun, they don’t offer any intense moments like they have in past games.  Basically, it feels that the game lacks an oomph with these sections - they’re present but seem to act as areas to tidy you over between combat sections.  I don’t necessarily know how they could have improved these without significant design changes, but that might be something addressed in the next game (whether its full or downloadable).

Unfortunately, there’s no extras with this game.  No challenge mode, no skill points to seek (I’m surprised at the lack of trophies for it).  This is rather unfortunate, as while I can see them trying to keep the length down for a downloaded title, certain things that are built into the gameplay shouldn’t add that much more space.

Value/Replayability: C+

The game took me no more than 5 hr to complete (maybe closer to 4 but I didn’t track this exactly).  It may seem expensive but when you compare it to the full Tools of Destruction, it’s about right in terms of core gameplay to dollar ratio.  However, the decided lack of extras makes the overall value and replayabilitiy disappointingly low.

Graphics: A

Expect nothing less from how good the game looked in Tools of Destruction.  My only nit is that dark areas were incredibly dark and while you were to carry the light bug around to help, there are times where you don’t have access to one and you’re jumping about in nearly-dark areas, which can make it hard to see where you are supposed to land.  This could be a function of LCD monitor, however, and you do have the opportunity at the start of the game to adjust the brightness to account for this.

Audio: A

All the major voice actors return here, and are helped by the witty dialog (though my point about voiceless Ratchet responses still stand).  The music is good and thematic, being based on your average pirate themes, and suits the mood nicely.

Overall: B+

Ratchet & Clank: Quest for Booty fills a nice gap given that Insomniac is working on getting out Resistance 2 this year, thus another full R&C title may not be for a while.  It introduces new elements to the gameplay that I see no problem fitting into the overall series aside from control issues.  However, the game does feel short and not overly difficult, and the lack of some of the typical elements of the series such as completely new weapons, ammo strategy, and other considers, make the game feeling wanting for more.  Ultimately, it is still a high quality title from Insomniac, but it is not exactly how I expected them to approach the concept of episodic gaming, though there is room for correction in the next game.

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PixelJunk Eden

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Gameplay: A-

In Eden,, you play as a grimp, a creature that can jump and grip onto plants.  You also have the ability to swing around for a short period of time on a length of silk, thus allowing you to swingshot jump to higher locations.  You automatically catch onto any plant you encounter, though if you spin while jumping, you can pass through them, thus allowing you to be selective where you end up.  With these basic tools, you’re ready to explore each of the ten gardens in the game.

The goal in each garden is to collect a number of “spectra” that are located high off the ground, well out of reach of the grimp’s abilities.  However, you can cause new plants to grow at higher locations, thus giving you latching points to make the needed jumps to collect the spectra.  To create these plants you need to locate seeds ready to be pollinated.  Pollen comes from colliding with pollen carries that randomly float about the level; once they “explode” you can jump and swing to cause all the released pollen to move to the nearest seed; once the seed is fully pollinated, you can jump into it and create the new plant.  More pollen can be produced by hitting many pollen carriers in a row without landing on a plant or the ground, allowing seeds to fill up quicker.  Thus, the game becomes a patterns of finding a new seed to pollinate and then to work at gathering pollen as to open the seed, and then find the next seed that gets you closer to the spectra goal.  The core mechanism is very simple and generally easy to get used to, and while the first three or four levels are rather bland in that they simply wash, rinse, and repeat this process on more complex landscapes, new tricks start coming into play by the fifth garden.  This includes pollen carriers that can cut your string, unique landscape features (including a garden with variable gravity) and enemies that will try to knock you off your perch.  Should you fall, you’ll need to work yourself back up to your last location.

This is where the game has one of its faults.  As you work your way through the garden, a synchronization meter starts ticking down.  If you don’t collect a spetra before its empty, you have to restart that mission in the garden again.  Collecting a spectra refills the meter, as do special crystals about each garden, but the key point here is that this game effectively gives you a time limit, and this unfortunately stifles the nice, relaxing gameplay.  While the time crunch is not a big problem early on, it does start hitting you by the fourth or fifth garden, where there are fewer plants below you should you fall and enemies are out to knock you down, thus you waste your time both falling and climbing back up.  I agree that the meter needs to be there, but it is too aggressive, and probably should be slowed down by half to make the game more relaxing yet with purpose.

The other gameplay problem is that while there are five spectra in each garden, you can only collect one on the first visit, two on the next, and so forth, the game kicking you out of the garden once you’ve collected the required number.  I would have much more appreciated if the game would have left my try to collect as many spectra as I could in one pass, eventually gaining the skills and garden knowledge to get all five in one go.  Basically, the game requires you to run through all gardens five times, extending the length of the game beyond what it really should have been.

Once you collect a spectra and return to the main “menu”, it itself a garden, a new plant will grow there, and eventually you’ll be able to reach the entrance to a new garden; not all gardens are available at the start and thus this gives a good learning curve to the game.  Unfortunately, getting around the menu garden can also be annoying, moreso than finding spectra in the regular gardens as there’s no signal to tell you the direction to the nearest garden entrance as there is for the spectra.  The menu fits the game’s theme, and I can see requiring the player to reach the garden entrance once via the plants but after that , a quickselect feature was desperately needed.

Your score, both per garden and accumulative are tracked and compared to a global scoreboard.  You also have the ability to record up to ten minutes worth of gameplay and then upload that to YouTube, a nice feature to show off you aerobatic moves.  The game also supposed custom soundtracks (part of a recent upgrade to the PS3) but only after you beat the game.  With two others locally, you can also play co-operatively, each player controlling their own Grimp, and allowing each other to swing farther out or catch another Grimp as they fall. It’s also the first game to support PS3 Trophies out of the box, per se, and thus adds some goals to go back and achieve.

Value/Replayability: B

Ignoring the “forced” revisiting of each garden, the game’s got a pretty good length, more than eight hours to get used to all the mechanics, find the spectra and seeds, and so forth; the force revisiting probably adds another 3 to 4 hours.  The addition of Trophies and high score lists helps to boost the game’s replayability, encouraging you to revisit gardens to find all the seeds or to boost your scores.

Graphics/Audio: A

It’s hard to separate graphics and audio here, as both are outstanding.  The game presents itself with electric trance music, subtle enough to not annoy after hearing it over and over but still catchy.  This works in with trippy backgrounds that change with each spectra you capture, while the foreground of grimp, enemies, and plants remain a glowing, neon color.  The visuals are simple enough, though the monotone plants are appealing to the eye with enough variety and behavior on their own.  The only major problem here is that in some levels the color of the foreground elements is very close to the background colors as to make it difficult to determine where certain enemies lie.  However, this only occurred a few places and by that point, I knew what to look for, thus allowing me to figure in the right amount of caution into each jump.

Overall: A-

PixelJunk Eden is a fun game - there are a few things that hamper it from being perfect, both being design decisions that could be easily rectified.   However, in considering the game with lack of these, the gameplay is enjoyable and relaxing, aided by simple yet appealing visuals and a good soundtrack.  For a downloadable game, it does pretty much what I expect if not more.  If you have a PlayStation 3, it is definitely a good idea to check this out (there’s a demo if you’re afraid to get the whole thing), but I consider it a well-spent purchase for the full game.

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Story: B+

Unlike your typical side-scrolling platform, there is a deeper story behind it.  You play as Tim who is searching for his Princess, but seems to keep missing her.  The story is told through books at the start of each world, and then culminates in the finale and epilogue, and while on first sight it’s rather trivial, people have found very deep meaning in the language, and when you play through it with that in mind, the game is pretty deep.  Mind you, without this information, it’s still an intriguing story but otherwise thin.

Gameplay: A

Braid may look like a platformer from the start, but the game is actually much more than that.  First, throughout the game, you gain the ability to reverse time, allowing you to first correct errors ala Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.  However, this becomes a much deeper mechanic when you start encountering the other ways the game plays with time, and the key focus of trying to solve the various puzzles in the game.

The game is divided into 6 worlds made up of several “rooms”.  Clearing all the rooms is not difficult if not in fact trivial, and that unlocks 5 of the 6 worlds, but the challenge is to collect puzzle pieces that are in hard-to-reach locations to fully complete that world, and only until the first 5 worlds are complete does the 6th world (which is where the story takes its dramatic turn) become available.

Each world (outside of the first, which is more an introduction to the time reversal ability) has a unique time feature that comes into play.  In one world, there are elements (monsters, doors, keys, or the like) that do not rewind as you do, and thus manipulating these to get to the puzzle piece is necessary.  Other time tricks include a shadow character that repeats your movements once you rewind (an idea similar to Blinx: The Time Sweeper), a time ring that slows down time in the nearby area, and one world where time only progresses forward or backwards as you move in those directions respectively.  The variation in time-based elements creates numerous interesting physics elements that make this much more than a simple platformer.

However, there are two aspects that make this a rather difficult game that may not be for everyone, or at least may frustrate you to ruin the enjoyment.  The first is that the game is short - short to the point that you are basically given only one test room to get used to the new time mechanic for the world, and then you’re thrust into trying to figure out how it all works together.  This can make trying to figure out certain puzzles very difficult because you are being introduced to all the elements you need to solve it in one go.  I would have preferred the game to be about 50% longer as to have rooms where the number of new tricks you needed to learn was reduced as to allow a better learning curve to the game.  While the rewind functions helps a lot (eg, you really can never die and you can reset a puzzle, in most cases, via rewinding all the way to the start of the room), the constant repetition of certain steps at the start of solving a puzzle as to get to tricky final steps can be annoying.  The other aspect that can lead to hair-tearing-out experiences is the fact that several of the puzzles require very tight movements - not as tight as you’d find people using for speedruns in other games, but enough that you need to be within the right fractions of a second or at the right two or three pixels to successfully get through the levels.  Again, the rewind function helps to fix these small errors, but the fact there’s such a tight margin of error drove me crazy more than enough times.  Sure, I eventually got through the puzzles, and in regards to the first aspect, it felt good, but the puzzles that relied on perfect timing or jumps definitely tainted the overall enjoyment of the game.

These didn’t ruin the game for me - the game was still sufficiently interesting and fun, but I do question these design choices.  I recently had my 360 RROD on me, during which Braid was released, but in the meantime I had run through Prince of Persia: Sands of Time in anticipation of its upcoming sequel, and one thing that stuck me there is that the game tosses you several elements throughout the game, but at a rate that is more reasonable to get to learn each element first but not so slow as to get bored of the elements as they are brought in.  In other words, you are given one or two opportunities to “try” a new element without significant fear of death (of course, you have the time reverse aspect as well), but then the challenges start to quickly add up requiring you to string the new elements into what you already knew to get through the level.  This is the type of thing that Braid really could have used, just a more gentle introduction to each aspect followed by the full-on puzzles that use it.

Once you’ve finished the game, you gain access to speedruns attempting to collect all the puzzle pieces on the level in the fastest time, and to find eight star secretly hidden about the levels.

Value/Replayability: C-

The game is rather pricey, the reasoning being explaining in several articles prior to its release.  And for that amount, you get what is probably about 3-4 hours of gameplay (this will depend on how well you can get your mind around the time-based puzzles).  While the speedruns help to give secondary replay value, the overall initial game length vs price is a bit of a stumbling block.

Graphics: A+

The game is beautifully presented; the background and foreground elements look like watercolor paints with nice visual touches, while Tim and the other sprites move fluidly and look wonderful.  The graphics adapt well with the time effects; they gray out when time reverses, or during the use of slow time, they wobble nicely.

Audio: A

The game also has a very melody and moving soundtrack that is also affected by the time processes in the game.  It’s subtle enough that when you start having to repeat puzzles over and over again it’s not unnerving and is also a good audio cue for other aspects of the game to know how fast you are going forward in time.

Overall: A-

Braid is an interesting beast - myself, the core aspect of the game - a platform puzzler that includes time elements is great, and the visual and aural experience along with it are top notch.  However, I do question some of the core design issues; the learning curve which basically doesn’t exist is going to throw some people off from this game is probably the core thing that I would change, sacrificing its rather good length in order to have just a few additional levels to help players get used to the various mechanics.  But this should not be something to completely wreck the game; all of it can be taken in chunks (once you’ve walked through the world you can get back to any specific room quickly and thus try that part of the challenge).   I definitely recommend it just to see a unique twist on a standard formula and just remember to take it a few steps at a time.

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Guitar Hero: Aerosmith

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Gameplay: A-

There’s almost no point in repeating the usual spiel about Guitar Hero games -  GH: Aerosmith plays pretty much just the same.  The only easily observable difference on the controller is that hammer-ons/pull-offs were easier to do.  This makes Hard (the level I completed first) about equal footing to mid-range Rock Band Expert; low range Guitar Hero II Hard, and higher-end Guitar Hero III Medium into it’s low-end Hard range - in other words, there is no “wall” that will prevent you from enjoying the songs.  I will also note that in the 360 version, career achievements (finally!) stack, meaning if you finish Hard, you also get credit for Medium and Easy. (Hint hint, this makes it a great rental title for this reason alone).

The primary structure change is that in each of the six sets, the first two songs are the opening acts for Aerosmith proper, and you need to complete those before moving to two more Aerosmith songs, finally finishing at the encore song.  There is only one Boss Battle with Joe Perry in the last set, but its relatively easy to pass (and if you fail a few times, the game allows you to skip it).  With ten additional songs to be unlocked in the Vault, this gives you 41 songs in this game.

There is one significant flaw in the game; not a game wrecker but it should have been caught.  When you play in the opening bands, you select one of the standard characters, but when you switch to Aerosmith songs, you play as Joe Perry.  Perry’s fretboard (as shown here) on screen isn’t necessarily bad, but there are two visual problems with it: the first is that if you are not watching for the yellow (middle) note, it may sometimes be easily missed in the pattern of the fret.  The second is that when you go Star Power, most of the fret becomes blue - just like all the notes, and again, if you aren’t carefully paying attention, you’ll miss notes.  This is only a problem in Career mode (or unless you want to Quickplay as Perry), and maybe only got me on the last two tiers, but still, I figured that would have been something they would have caught.

Value/Replayability: C+

Here’s the largest fault of the game - it’s short and on the easy side - I got it at 11am and was down in Hard, with all but 5 songs 5-starred, by 2:30pm.  It does help that there is the added variety of the opening acts as after a while, I was starting to get bored of listening to Steven Tyler.  What more there is beyond the core game is very small: videos and interviews with Aerosmith about their career, but that’s it.  Now, this isn’t the easy cash-in that Rocks the 80s was; all the venues are new and the menu/interface graphics are similar in style, it is not just a recoloring that Rocks the 80s did, so it is a step up from there.  However, as I like but am not fanatical about Aerosmith, I really wonder if this would have been better served as DLC, because I’m having a hard time otherwise justifying $60 spent on it.  Both it’s length and lasting appeal will probably make this a renter for most.

Graphics: B+

One aspect that is good is that Aerosmith - particularly Steven Tyler - does fit the Neversoft graphics approach to this game.  With the motion capture to get all the band members looking right, they look right at home among the other characters. However, it is interesting to compared the visuals during the opening acts (when your character and the old stand-by band members, including Mr. Muppet-head singer) and Aerosmith’s songs; in the former, your guitarist is mostly center stage of the camera, but when doing the Aerosmith songs, suddenly Steven Tyler is (and in two cases, Run D.M.C. also steps in as singer).  If this was Rock Band, I could understand this, but the game is Guitar Hero, and that’s still the key feature of the game I expect to see.

Beyond that, the new venues are pretty good looking (though I note that the surroundings of the last one, at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, look nothing like Cleveland).

Audio: A-

Again, as a listener but not a fan of Aerosmith, I think the song selection is pretty good, though I note it focuses mostly on the 1970s stuff, with only a handful of more recent works.   The opening acts are pretty consistent with Aerosmith’s style, however, this does lead to a small problem that all the songs are roughly the same playing style and lack the fuller variety of the other Guitar Hero games.  The Vault also contains a bunch of songs from Joe Perry which are ok, and make sense to include, but again, they aren’t really Aerosmith.

Overall: B-

Guitar Hero: Aerosmith is a decent game if it was at a lower price - $40 may be ok, $30 would have made sense (as that’s about as much as I’d expect to pay in DLC).  But while this is everything Guitar Hero is, albeit backed off in difficulty, it’s really hard to set a $60 price for a game containing 2/3rd of the songs of the previous $60 Guitar Hero III.  If Aerosmith is your favorite band, you can likely justify the cost, but this is a renter for most everyone else.

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The World Ends With You

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Story: A-

The game is focused on a introspective teenager named Neku that lives in the Shibuya district of Tokyo, who keeps to himself and otherwise wants to be left alone.  He suddenly blacks out and finds himself at a different part of town, but no one can see or her him except for a girl named Shiki who quickly makes a pact with him so that they can stay alive in the “Game”.  Neku comes to learn that somehow, he has died in the real world and has been forced to play the Reaper’s Game, a week-long event that promises the winner a second chance at life should they win, but total “erasure” should they fail.  As Shiki tries to get Neku to work with her, he learns that they have to work at defeating Noise, strange creatures only they can see that emanate from the negative emotions of the living.  The game starts off as normal as one could expect, but things start getting very strange, and Neku and other friends he makes are quick to learn that the Reaper’s Game is pretty much stacked against their favor, and he must learn to bond with these friends if he hopes to survive and return to the real world.

The story is actually pretty good; the lead characters are all interesting and I definitely had an attachment to them by the end.  The only problem I found (though you can play beyond the end of the game to learn more) is that the full conclusion is a bit weird and piles on a lot of stuff that is hinted enough through the game but really isn’t explained well there.

Gameplay: A+

The World Ends With You is very much not your normal RPG, despite it being a Square Enix title.  As Neku with his partner for the week, you need to explore Shibuya’s various areas for hints and clues to missions that you get each day of the Game.  Most of these are straight forward: go to a location and do something, but more often than not, the way is blocked by Reapers that have erected force field walls between the areas, refusing to let you through unless you complete a task for them.  All these tasks focus on the unique features of the game but more often than not, require you to defeat the Noise in the area, which you see only when you “scan” the area with a special pin; this allows you (most of the time) to select which Noise you want to fight, setting up a chain up to 4 for larger rewards for a tougher battle.

The combat system is highly unusual.  As Neku, you gain the ability to use special pins that can be bought or gained as spoils of battle.  These pins are mostly offensive, though some help with healing, and are activated by some type of action on the touchscreen: slashing across an enemy, tapping the screen to fire bullets, circling an enemy to inflict damage, shouting (or blowing) in the mic to hurt all the Noise on screen, and more.  You only can take a limited number of pins into battle (up to 6), and pins generally have a limited number of actions before they have to “reboot” , a short period where the pin is inactive.  Basically, as you gain pins, you can start to build a set of pins that are timed well and work in multiple situations to get you through the game.  Of course, this is just what Neku is doing.  His current partner is on the top screen and is also fighting the Noise at the same time (as Noise cannot be defeated alone).  For the partner to attack, they must complete a series of arrows on paths in order to select a virtual card that does damage, but at the same time, by selecting specific cards in order, you can create the opportunity to launch a dual special attack on the foes.  For example, Shiki, if you can match her face down cards correctly, the special attack option becomes open.  In addition, pressing the d-pad can help to dodge attacks.

Of course, this means that you have to split your sights between the top and bottom screen to be effective.  Except what makes The World Ends With You an inspired game is that you can utilize the top screen combat mode as much or as little as possible: you can have the computer take over immediately or after a few seconds of your inactivity, or not at all.  Though the computer AI is not perfect at matching cards, at least it is helping you out in battle, allowing you to focus on Neku’s side of the screen better.  However, you do have to watch your health -you and your partner share the same health bar so even if you go damage free, ignoring you partner’s performance may cost you the battle.  There is also a special “light puck” that travels back and forth between you and your partner based on a sync ratio; whoever has the puck has more powerful attacks, so figuring out what equipment and food items help to improve the ratio and speed of the puck can also affect how to arrange your pins.

This points to another aspect of the game that really helps it tailor to exactly what type of game you want to play by allowing you to alter the game’s difficulty level and your current effective hit points any time outside of battle.  Of course, lowering your difficulty or keeping your hit points going into battle near your maximum amount will produce the lowest reward, but there are times, such as for boss battles, that you’ll want to have your levels set right so that you don’t die.  Another nice feature is that if you do fall in battle, you gain the option early in the game to retry at the current level or back on easy as to prevent forcing you from reloading from the last save (which can be easy to forget to do once in a while, though the game does ask for you to save between each “day” of the game).

Pins themselves gain experience from battle, and can gain levels to make them more powerful.  However, pins can also evolve into better pins but this rarely comes just from battle experience, but instead experience gained by two other means.  First, by saving and the actually shutting down the game, you can gain pin experience for the time that it has been shutdown.  Secondly, by playing with friends in the “Tin Pin Slammer” mini game (a concept similar to marbles that is also played as part of the main story), or even connecting to another DS that is in wireless mode but playing another game can earn experience. The varied experience types are the general catalyst for evolution of pins, so it actually pays to play this game slowly over the course of several days.

A key aspect of the game is the focus on the youth culture of Shibuya, and this is represented by the fashion trends that each area of the town has.  Pins that are in districts where that fashion is popular will be more effective in battle, while the weakest brands have reductions in abilities.  However, it is possible to alter the fashion trends in a district by using pins and wearing clothes of a given maker, such that after a few battles, that fashion type will be tops.  Various stores about town (which the Game’s players can enter and interact with) sell garments and other accessories for those brands, and while the basic benefits such as improvements to attack and defense can be gained, each also has a special ability that can only be learned through being a good customer of that store by buying more goods.   There are also special items that can only be bought by trading specific quest items for the new good, typically requiring items dropped as a result of a boss battle.  There are also food and medicine stores that allow your characters to build stats by digesting the food over a series of battles, though the amount of food they can consume in each day of the game is limited.

Basically what this all comes down to is the fact that this is one of the few games where you can select how much of the game you want to take in, and finish knowing that there’s more you can go back to and try again and take in more (unless, of course, you take in everything the first go around).  There are points where you have to do a few points involving fashion trends or some of the other details, but outside of that, it’s an ignorable factor should you not be worried about gaining big rewards; most of the required parts of the game are simply “Beat the Noise as best as you can”.  You don’t even have to worry about anything on the top screen beyond where your health bar sits, but its there if you want to use it  This is a point that many open world games tend to miss that’s captured great here: you can jam pack a game full of interesting gameplay features, but as you get more complex, it is not important to force people to use them, but there should be enough of a draw to make them want to do that.  With the large variety of pins as well, you have a lot of flexibility in what combat style you want, and if you come across a set of pins that just works, there’s no reason to change from that (except for a couple of points), though later boss fights might become prolonged.  Fortunately, nearly every pin typically has one or more “bigger brothers” that has the same action but with more powerful attacks, more uses, or faster reboot time, thus allowing you to keep your style.

There are two annoyances with the game that are just minor detractors and fortunately do not affect the core gameplay elements.  The first is that while you can go to the menu to see a map of Shibuya, you cannot browse this map to identify the section names, nor are the sections as presented on the map directionally consistent with the exits from each screen: going “north” out of screen may actually take you “south” on the map.  Only until the late game is this really a problem since you aren’t attacked just running around, but in the late game as you start getting attacked switching between sections, it would be nice to know what the most direct route is from A to B.  The other annoyance is the pin management.  If you drop your health and raise your difficulty, you can increase the number of pin drops from foes.  Most of these are money pins, and thus accumulate on a “Mastered” pin tab, but other pins will be the ones you can wear into battle, and these do not stack (since each pin grows on its own).  If you don’t take time frequently to clear out duplicate pins for cash, you’ll find that you’ll have to drag and drop for a long time to clear this out.  A way to select multiple pins for this would have been nice.  However, I found neither of these problems enough to mar my experience with the game.

As noted, there is a mini-game called “Tin Pin Slammer” that is based on marbles, using your current pins to knock up to 3 other player’s pins off the table. This is an optional part of the game (save one mission), but this also is playable over local wireless with four players, and as noted, can be used to improve and possibly evolve those pins.  It’s a nice simple stupid addition but that works well in the overall scheme of the game.

Value/Replayability: A+

The game took me, with as much as I drank of it, about 20 hours to complete, with both gameplay and story feeling just about right, ending right at the point where it seemed like more would have been too much.  Finishing the game opens up the ability to go back to any of the previous days (plus one additional day), with all your stats and pins where they ended at, and try to complete special missions assigned for that day in order to unlock “secret reports” that fill in the backstory for the game.  As the game tracks how many pins you’ve found and mastered, what Noise you’ve discovered and defeated, and how many items you’ve bought, there’s a lot to go back and get 100% from the game.  And as noted, once playing through once, there’s the urge to go back and try everything just a bit harder to see what better goodies you can get.

Graphics: A

The game is based on 2D sprites and works find.  The art style is rather interesting, and though I’m not one for the necessary 2″ waistline characters ala Kingdom Hearts, the rest of the character designs were well done, as well as the variations in Noise.  Backgrounds are rather interesting, using a hard-to-describe parallax approach to make it feel like it was walking through parts in 3D, though nevertheless worked nicely.  Cut-scenes, done using relatively simple sprite-manipulation graphics, are also nicely done.  Additional dialog scenes avoid the usual single box of dialog at the bottom by having the characters’ speech appear as word balloons that scroll up the screen, making it feel like a comic book at times.

Audio: A

The game’s music is very eccentric, and reminds me of Persona 3; while that game used a lot of rap-type songs, the music here is very club/dance, not so much the noise factory of Jet Set Radio Future, but fits the spirit of the game well.  In addition, there’s enough variance with the music that it never gets old throughout the game.  When they are voiced, the characters are well done - though most of this voice work occurs at the very end and sort of breaks the illusion of how you believe these characters have sounded.

Overall: A

The World Ends With You is a tremendous piece of work; there are some faults with it, but a game that is put this well together and wisely letting you pick exactly how much of the game you really want to take in can have such faults overlooked easily.  Nearly everything about the game feels unique yet intuitive, making it very easy to pick up and go with it, and the presentation of the game is top notch.  As it breaks the mold of most common JRPG elements, those that normal avoid these types of games may find this to be just enough off the JRPG path to be of interest to them, particularly if you like more action in your RPGs to start with.

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LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures

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Story: A

I don’t think I need to go into the story that much, as it works pretty much like the previous LEGO Star Wars games, capturing the main points of the first three Indiana Jones movies through 6 main set pieces each, while taking liberties with the content as to either make it family friendly (there are  no “Nazis”, just blue-eyed, yellow-haired “army” foes) or to fit within premise of LEGO bricks, such as Herny Jones, instead of getting a bullet wound at the end of Last Crusade, simply is separated from his legs.  For the most part, the game does focus on the most exciting sequences that translate well into the gameplay, though some sequences are rather extended (for example, while the bar fight at the start of Raiders is a good sequence alone, there’s an entire level that takes place in the mountain region, so it wings a bit from the movie).  The typical humor that Traveler’s Tales has used before persists here, in addition to the humor from the movie.

Gameplay: A

LEGO Indiana Jones may be easy and short, but it is a pretty fun game overall.  The gameplay is pretty consistent with the Star Wars games as well, though adds in the right elements to capture the spirit of the movie series.  In the main game mode, you play as Indy, teamed up with one or more other characters to work your way through the various levels in the game.  To go along with the theme of the movies, more of the focus on this game is on solving environmental puzzles, with occasional breaks for combat.

The bulk of these puzzles typically are based on building usable objects from special loose piles of LEGO bricks as to allow further progress in the game, such as a platform or a vehicle.  However, getting to such loose piles may requiring using special skills that each character has, or can be helped with tools that may be found around the levels.  Indy, of course, is unique with his whip action allowing him to swing across gaps.  The female characters have the ability to jump higher, while the children (such as Short Round) can get through small doors to get to special positions.  Shovels can be used to dig up bricks, wrenches used to break malfunctioning machines, and special hieroglyphics can only be understood by those holding books.  Several puzzles require two characters to complete, such as holding down two switches at the same time, or having one character operate a device to raise another to a different level.  When playing alone the game makes sure that when this process is being done right, the other character is in the right position to help.  However, at other times, it is useful to switch between characters, which is also provided as needed.  The game translates Indy’s fear of snakes nicely into a gameplay element where certain characters have phobias and cannot cross an area filled with those creatures (such as snakes for Indy, spiders for Willey, and rats for Elisa) and need to have another character clear it out.  It’s hard to say whether its intentional or not, but also giving Willey the ability to shatter glass with her screams is also pretty funny.

Besides puzzles, you also have combat, which works pretty well.  Indy and his friends are mostly hands-on, so your combat does a lot of melee attacks, but you can use Indy’s whip or any of the tools as weapons.  Additionally, there are guns and swords that can also be picked up and used for a limited number of times.  Combat is typically very easily, unless you are being fired upon from afar but even then is it easy to dodge bullets.  But even though you may die, you will come back a few moments later, so there’s really only a minimal challenge here to complete.  However, there are some nice combat sequences that occur on moving vehicles (from Raiders and Last Crusade) that play out nicely.   The only annoyance is there are sections which are puzzle solving areas, yet enemies continually respawn to distract from this.  There are times where you need something from the spawned enemies (such as a “army” hat to fool guards) but when they are just there to annoy you, it does get boring.

Story mode mimics the movies, so your choice of characters is locked in, but once you complete the levels you can also play in Free Play mode, where you can select two characters and the computer provides several others such that all the special areas on the level are accessible.  This allows you to explore each level fully, and more specifically to complete three special objective that each level has.  Each has a special parcel that can be found and delivered to a mailbox that typically also has to be found, which enables a cheat-like function for the game - such as increasing how fast a character digs.  Each level also has ten special golden chests to be found to complete an artifact that is put on display at the Barlett College, which acts as the hub within the game.  Finally, as you go through each level, you collect LEGO “studs” (the equivalent of money) that can be used to buy additional characters from the game, but within each level, there is a target amount that represents a “True Adventurer” that you need to collect.

A nice aspect of the game, and which the series continues to have, is drop-in co-op play, which works in either mode, allowing the other player to control another character.  This is great for friends as well as for parents and children (though the game is rated E10+).  The only downside is that this is only available for local play.  It would be really nice if they could ever figure out how to do this over Xbox Live or other networks.

The game is surprising fresh despite the previous two LEGO Star Wars - the transition from a sci-fi drama with the focus on combat, to adventure, adds just the right elements to keep the concept interesting.  Some players may miss the space battle sequences (there are vehicle sections but they are certainly not comparable to the battles) but there’s really no comparable aspect to the series that could be added here.

Value/Replayability: B+

It is still a short and easy game: I ran through the story mode in about 8 hours, but as noted, there’s a lot to go back to do to get full completion (I ended just about 50% complete with that, but I suspect that there would be a bit more than just another 8 to get to that point).

Graphics: A-

I found no major problems in the graphics: everything looks great in LEGO form.  The only persistent problem is that some jumping aspects lacked enough light and depth perception that caused me to fail the jump; a temporary annoyance, but an annoyance all together.

Sound: A

It’s hard to argue about using the actual movie soundtracks through most of the game - and where new music is used, it’s the right tone for effects.  Add on the right sounds that LEGO bricks make when you use them, and pretty much there’s no major problems in the sound area.

Overall: A

LEGO Indiana Jones does an excellent job of keeping the same fun and enjoyment as the previous LEGO Star Wars games, and translating the format to match the general concept of the Indiana Jones movies.  It is easy and short, but when a game is generally fun throughout this period, these issues can be overlooked.  With another new format, LEGO Batman, looming around the corner, I have a feeling that Traveler’s Tales can continue to expand the series, though I would be interested to see if they can take the same approach but with a unique story of their own.

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