Review: Super House Of Dead Ninjas

Super House Of Dead Ninjas is a fast and furious game, kids. No cutscenes, no interrupting tutorials and best of all, no bullshit. It gives you a quick run down of the controls, which you can reconfigure in the main menu anyway (especially helpful if you use a controller, which is recommended for better control... I mean, unless you've only ever played retro games on a keyboard and can't legally buy alcohol in Australia), and then you'll need to use what you learned in five seconds to cut up enemies on your way down the 350 floor tower. There is a story found in the comic book that can be accessed in the main menu... something about a legendary one armed ninja that descended down THE TOWER and found treasure beyond ones' wildest dreams, only to fall victim to the darkness within. That darkness is known as the demon Abarghus, and with whispers around it circulating around the village, the kunoichi Nintai Ryoko goes through the tower in search of answers. The comic itself also details the default control scheme and it looks pretty cool, making it worth a glance over, but the real meat is in the game itself.

Seriously, I haven't had this much fun with a retraux game in quite some time... well, okay, there was Cave Story+ that I played fairly recently, but other than that, these kinds of games tend to come off as lazy, boring and just really fucking lame. It's like “why play these hollow imitations when you can play the originals” - for every Mega Man 9 and Cave Story, there are lots of mediocre wannabe retro games that may bring you back to the past without actually providing any good fun gameplay. Super House Of Dead Ninjas, which came out in February of 2013, is a damn fun game that'll kick your ass until shit comes out of your ears, and like the stubborn mule you are, you'll keep coming back. Well actually, what'll keep you coming back are the various upgrades and different weapons that you'll acquire by doing various things like killing bosses or killing a boss with just the katana you start with, among plenty of other things. You'll either unlock more melee weapons, ranged weapons, explosives, spells, collectibles (x-ray specs to reveal the contents of boxes and enemies, smart bombs to destroy everything on screen, infinite ammo and a bunch of other helpful things) and stats (health, time, projectiles, explosives and spells) depending on what you do during each run through the tower.

The game itself revolves around you going through each floor, making sure to stay alive. You can either slice their heads off (and for good measure, keep slicing at the head) up close or from afar, blow them up using various explosives or use a variety of spells to make things easier on yourself if your other weapons can't do much. One cool thing you can do is, when you hold down while in the air, either perform a downward stab or a spinning slash to kill enemies easier. These attacks do double the damage but are risky because it's possible to undershoot your attack and get raped. In fact, getting raped is what will happen to you when you first play this. The first hundred floors won't seem too bad – enemies just bumbling about or running like they have propellers up their asses are what you have to contend with, maybe with some ranged attackers to keep you on your toes.

That much probably sounds easier than the middle school slut, but then you get to floor 250 and have to contend with your first boss. Now, the boss you fight depends on how much health you have. Having more than half of your health will have you fight a boss while having less will give you a different boss. Either way, getting a hold on these bosses can be a tad tricky as one will run across the floor, climb up a wall and either jump from wall to wall or just lunge onto the ground; or it'll jump around and occasionally fire a bomb at you that'll explode and damage you. This is also where you may want to make sure you have a grip on the controls as while Nintai can move fast, her jumping and even double jumping is fairly low and sometimes, the super jump won't even charge, which is a real bitch when you fight a certain boss that outright fucking requires it (oh, unless dying is what you enjoy doing). Oh, things get more interesting as you descend down the tower as there'll be more relentless enemies, some of which can only be destroyed via spells and explosives. The level design itself throws more spikes at you and bomb headed enemies, as well as enemies that throw small white bombs at you are a bit more common, meaning you'll probably get blown up...

...and then you fight the one armed ninja and find yourself in a handicap match against Vin Diesel and Brock Samson. What makes the fight hard isn't necessarily his attacking patterns, but when you can hit him. Hint – you can only hit him when he flashes orange, which is before he attacks and lasts about 2 seconds. Expect to die a number of times trying to get the timing down. Oh, and he has two phases. This one has a million hit points and a seemingly unavoidable attack until you learn how to make it avoidable and then learn how to hit him. You finally beat the boss and then get told “lol play on the hard difficulty to get the true ending”, because if you play this on normal, that's the end of the ride. Normal mode is essentially training wheels mode. Now, while I'd be quick to say that you're a pussy for playing on the easy mode, hard mode gets rid of continues so if you lose all of your health, that's an automatic game over – at least on normal, you're given 3 continues, but then you can't actually finish the game. The thing is however, you need to get the feel for it before you can be confident enough to get through the hard mode. From there, it dawns onto you that in order to truly beat the game, you need to unlock a combination of weapons that you can fuck about with and see what you get the best feel for. Maybe you'll be fine with the default weapons, maybe you need different weapons; either way, you need to play around with the different combinations that you have at your disposal, sometimes go out of your way to do some things to unlock other weapons (and on the select screen before you play the game, it'll tell you how to unlock extra stuff).

In other words, this game can be tricky dicky. Getting the timing down for the downward slash can be hard and the cost for failure is the loss of a bit of health. Enemies tend to be placed in ways that can dick you over if you rush your way through the tower and given that you generally kill enemies with one or two hits plus the short floors, you'll be quick to rush through. The time limit can also aid in you rushing through as you have at least half a minute before you need to find the nearest clock collectible, lest you lose health by getting hit by the reaper. But if you can take a couple of seconds to look at the next floor, you can plan and execute, or just use the downward slash and pray for the best as it, way more often than not, kills whatever enemy it touches. In other circumstances, the downward slash would be a game breaking kill fuck everything move, but given that only one or maybe two regular attacks are all that's necessary to kill an enemy, the downward slash requires you to cover a bit of distance and the ranged attacks and explosives have their own means of being balanced (ranged attacks are either slow or weak while explosives can take time to explode and require a lot of prediction), the downward slash is far from it. Oh and against bosses, unless it ensures a kill, it's basically suicide because you'll more than likely get hit either after it deals damage or before you even touch it. Another seemingly game breaking mechanic is the rage mode – you have a meter that'll fill up a bit after you kill an enemy, but it empties out unless you kill more enemies. If you kill a bunch of enemies in a small amount of time, you'll enter rage mode, which will make you invincible and stronger until the meter empties. Hey, that's another thing that makes this game fast paced! The reasons it doesn't break the game are that enemies die in so few hits anyway that the invincibility is the only real bonus you get, and you won't be using it against the bosses.

Speaking of bosses, while they have simplistic movements, they're good enough to give you hell if you don't beat them quickly enough or figure out how to beat them. Oh, you think the first boss is easy on paper? Cool – now let's talk about in execution. As I've already mentioned, you have a slash, a downward slash, a ranged weapon, an explosive and a magic attack at your disposal. You've been taught how to execute them in the first couple of floors. Now's definitely the time to put that to good use as-- oh you just got killed by the bomb toting jitterbug demon. Not so easy now, huh? Kind of. As per retro game design rules, experimentation is a necessity in figuring out the best way to kill a boss, but on the whole, most of the bosses aren't all that exciting and after a while, they generally come across as a distraction or a mild annoyance rather than a genuinely threatening guardian of the tower, unless the super jump doesn't fucking work (I make a point of mentioning this as often as I can because this can dick you over when you need it at times). Doubly so if you use the upgraded boomerang as it can travel a great distance and it comes back to you. Generally speaking, this game doesn't bullshit the player and that's what I love about it – I love the fast paced action, I love the different combinations of equipment and spells can either make things harder or easier, and I especially love how deceptively well designed everything is. Hell, despite my bitching, the bosses aren't terrible; it's just that the idea is to play this over and over again to unlock everything and the rest of the tower is semi-randomized, so fighting the bosses again and again gets pretty boring. Except the one armed ninja. He's quite the hardass.

It's funny that when the game loads up, it shows off a Super Nintendo box because if anything, it looks and sounds more like a Sega Genesis game. In terms of audio quality, it's not like it's a bad thing or anything, but with graphics, well, let's just say that somewhat washed out colors aren't everybody's thing. While Nintai and the bosses are brighter than the sun and some bosses coming out looking like a gay pride banner, everything else has a bit of dullness in their schemes. It at least helps Nintai and the bosses stand out, and really, besides the fluid animations, there actually isn't that much to the graphics. The explosions are a basic orange cloud looking thing, the enemies are either ninjas, guys wearing big bronze armor, guy in cloaks wearing crow masks or some sort of monster – the designs are good and like I said, the animations are fluid, but not much really stands out as great or anything. The graphics are good, no doubt about it, but that's about it.

When it comes to sound design, it's technically good, but it's not quite there. The music sounds suited more towards an espionage mission rather than a mission where heads must be rolled or reduced to ash. There are some beats in there, but overall, it's a bit too subdued for what it's trying to be. Besides, it gets drown out by the purposefully low quality sound effects anyway. The main menu theme inspires more heart pumping action than the stage themes anyway as it has a harsh drum beat, is moderately paced and doesn't sit comfortably in the background. The boss theme is fucking good – it, too, is moderately paced, but what sells the song is that it's got the feeling of tension in its composition. It's at a lower register and the rhythm has the same few chords playing again and again to motivate you to kick some ass and take some names.

Games like this don't come to us every day, folks. Super House Of Dead Ninjas might appear to be your typical retraux shitfest, like some hairy libertarians wanting to “pay tribute” to Slayer/Exodus/Kreator by trying way too hard to be them. But underneath the surface lies a game that's more fun than popping bubble wrap. It's not perfect by any means – not with those fucking bosses – but for the most part, it does everything it can to remain fresh with each and every playthrough via unlockables you can experiment with and a semi-randomized tower design. Whether you have a quick run before bed/going out or you go through multiple times because you're too stubborn to accept defeat, this game manages to accommodate towards your lifestyle as long as you have something resembling reflexes. So this is probably not for arthritic grandmas and slow witted people.

9/10 (Fucking Awesome)

Review: Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - Mirror Of Fate

The reboot of the Castlevania series, Lords Of Shadow, was met with mixed reception – people enjoyed it for its refreshing take on the Castlevania series while people whinged about it for being a reboot, being too unoriginal and/or – and this is classic – not being a real Castlevania game. Really, I thought that this was about as close to being a true Castlevania game as it got, and by true, I mean more like the NES/SNES Castlevanias than being Symphony Of The Night. However, Mercury Stream thought that people wanted Symphony Of The Night with Lords Of Shadows' combat engine, because hey, it's on a Nintendo handheld and by law, it better be like Symphony Of The Night! Well, too bad that, more often than not, it just doesn't quite work as well in their favor as they would like it to. It's not so much about striking a middle ground between 2D and 3D – I mean, there are a couple of instances where that sticks out in a bad way – but it's more about the design choices in general. Really, this could've been a great game, but it feels like Mercury Stream didn't quite capitalize on much, if anything that they had at their disposal here.

Before you play Mirror Of Fate, you're basically required to play through Lords Of Shadow on the PS3 or 360 because its story revolves around the plot twist at the end of Lords Of Shadow. Yes, I'm aware that the beginning more than fills you in, but really, everybody should play through Lords Of Shadow. It might not have the best puzzles or beast taming mechanics, but the combat, the bosses and the story are all fantastic, and since they're the focal points of the game, then have at it! Besides, other than filling you in on the story of the previous game, this game barely has any real story. Basically, it boils down to Gabriel Belmont setting up the scene, which then boils down to Trevor/Simon Belmont needing to take down Dracula. Seriously? I get that this is a sidestory that takes place between Lords Of Shadow and its eventual sequel, but a little more oomph wouldn't hurt. There was plenty in Lords Of Shadow and it was a compelling narrative because of that; this is more like Mirror's Edge and Dishonored where there is fuck all to it, except some shit about the Mirror Of Fate and souls and really, I just lost interest in the story. None of the characters are particularly interesting and the story is just boring. Compounding this are unskippable cutscenes. No, fuck you, this is 2013, not 2003; this shit is inexcusable.

Mirror Of Fate is just weird. It wants to play like the 2D Castlevania games, but it has the feel of the 3D Castlevania games. It wants to be like the Metroidvania games in that there's a huge castle to explore, but given that you're playing as three different characters at three different time periods, some downsizing had to be done. As a result, it hardly feels like you're actually exploring the castle; instead, it feels more like you're a gerbil in a linear maze with a few small nooks to give the illusion of open endedness. A lot of the time when you're presented with a seemingly impassable obstacle, you're usually required to get a new item that you'll find at some point in the parts of the castle that you can explore. Even then, you'll only ever really find HP and MP upgrades, sub weapon ammo and experience points you can use to purchase new attacks. You can also acquire experience points from defeating enemies, but more on enemies in a sec – a lot of the time, it feels more like a superfluous detail than a legitimate design choice.

It wants to be like the Metroidvania games but it, more or less, has the linearity of the first Castlevania game on the NES, but yet it has lots of backtracking like a Metroidvania game... it feels like they couldn't quite think of a way to create an ingeniously designed set of castles so they just went “fuck it” and did the first thing that came to mind. “Exploring” this castle feels like a chore, like it would've been better suited as a set of levels rather than one big level that changes when the game decides to arbitrarily change your character every few hours. Before anybody cries “it's on a handheld”, I'll just say that Aria Of Sorrow, which is my second favorite Metroidvania game for what it's worth, was on the fucking Game Boy Advance and it had a much better designed castle than this hunk of shit! In fact, it was a better game on the whole, and that's because it understood basic game design principles, something Mirror Of Fate didn't quite get.

While we're talking about design, it's pretty cool that you can use your whip to swing on chandeliers, although it seems more like a cool afterthought than anything else as it doesn't require anything more than basic timing. In fact, platforming as a whole seems more like an afterthought than an integral design choice. I've played Kirby games with more demanding platforming! But hey, at least it's a cool afterthought, which is more than I can say for the sub weapons and special powers each character can possess – not even going to bother listing them because you'll either only ever use them to get through parts of the castle that you couldn't get through by other means or you'll use them like once before resorting to using the whip. Well, I guess I'd be willing to use Trevor's super speed more to make the one or two backtracking sequences less boring if it lasted for more than like 5 steps. Nope, it's just there to jump gaps, but you'll probably forget because you never really use these abilities. Oh... did I mention that you don't use each character for longer than maybe 3 or 4 hours? Don't get too used to them, you hear? Probably explains why they fight with the combat cross (or the whip as I kept on calling it) eerily similar to one another...

The combat is such a mixed bag, that it almost hurts the game in a way. For one thing, combat happens at pre-determined points. Instead of fighting enemies along the path, you'll get into what would appear to be an arena setting and fight a group or so of enemies. Another thing is that defense oriented gameplay is somewhat encouraged. Much like Revengeance and the original Lords Of Shadow for that matter, Mirror Of Fate isn't above letting the enemies pummel you into dust if you don't either dodge or parry. Thankfully, parrying is as simple as pressing block at the right time and then allowing you to let it rip while dodging has you press left or right while holding the block button. It can be easy to get cornered though, so watch your footing.. or rolling in this case. However, I did say that a defensive style of play is only somewhat encouraged; unless you notice that you're about to get hit, you can pretty much mash the X and Y buttons, only blocking or dodging before you get hit. Unfortunately, it becomes a bit too clear that this doesn't quite work on a 2D scale, mainly because when I look at the 3D graphics and watch the dance of life that is the combat, I can't help but want to dodge anywhere but towards and away from them. Not just that, but between getting cornered at times and just plain being locked on a 2D scale fighting mobs of enemies that magically appear as opposed to fighting enemies as I travel through the castle, fighting enemies is just... boring.

Look at it this way - in Aria Of Sorrow, you fight enemies that roam around the castle – whether they're shuffling about or flying from the sides, there's always something to fight, even if you don't expect it. There was always this whiff of tension to it, like you never know what's behind that door. But there was always a chance to escape or bypass the enemy on your way to the next room... maybe even the save room to heal up and then take that big bad living doll down while Medusa Heads come from the sides. But in Mirror Of Fate, you fight mobs of enemies and you have to kill them. Oh don't worry, there's a checkpoint/autosave system in place, and it's one of the most liberal checkpoint systems I've experienced in a while – for fucks sake, during boss battles, if you die, you simply respawn and they don't regain much if any health! However, none of the enemies or bosses really do anything interesting to warrant giving a shit, and even though you learn new combos via levelling up... there's hardly a need to use them.

Oh, and this game employs quick time events. Not that a single one is used for cinematic purposes or anything; they're just slammed onto the plate because hey, it's the cool thing to put into games. I especially love the ones encouraging the player to mash a button, because the 3DS can take it, right? It's not like these buttons are small and somewhat fragile, right? Oh wait... this drives me insane because the bosses are easily the highlight of this game. They hit hard, which encourages you to dodge and parry if you can while you seek the best time to wail on them. But then two things happen. One, liberal checkpoints that make the fights easier than they should be; and two, it takes like a million hits to beat any given boss, making each fight feel more like a test of your patience than a test of skill. Hey, you want to know how to make these fights challenging while making them fun? Get rid of the mid-fight checkpoints, lower their HP, and get rid of the quick time events! Just thinking out loud here obviously...

But hey, at least this game looks and sounds... alright, at least. In fact, Mirror Of Fate looks amazing on the 3DS, with some high quality textures and highly detailed models seriously showing off the 3DS's graphical capabilities. Needless to say, I was awestruck by the amount of detail put into everything, especially the animations. I didn't say “watch the dance of life that is the combat” for no reason; the animations are very, very smooth and detailed, which goes well with the defensive gameplay that Mirror Of Fate encourages. Not to mention, it's just plain mesmerising  like the Batman Arkham games and Sleeping Dogs, the animations manage to really suck you in. The scenery seems more like a castle featured in the Lord Of The Rings series rather than a piece of gothic architecture like in the older games – I mean, there are parts that are reminiscent of the old gothic atmosphere, but then there are parts that are plain and, despite the staggering amount of detail that surprisingly doesn't result in lag (unlike a certain other game I know of, right Kingdom Hearts DDD), it just isn't as immersing as it could've been. It's a shame – our characters' clothes and a lot of the monster designs are what you'd expect in old vampire slaying movies with maybe a few ripped from Lord Of The Rings (sorry, but Lords Of Shadow did make me think of Lord Of The Rings with its setting at first and that impression carries on here). Ah well.

The soundtrack at least has that gothic vibe, but it's more in the background than anything else. I guess it could've worked as the best haunting soundtracks are ones that lay in the background, ready to pounce – ask Akira Yamaoka! But where Silent Hill had masterful sound design, Mirror Of Fate simply has competent sound design. Well, okay, that's not entirely fair nor even true as the voice acting was good. Most of the vocal deliveries were convincing enough to work with a couple of scenes showcasing great voice acting, and some characters who could've been better. Simon Belmont is a standout amongst the crowd as he has an impassionate voice that suits his fiery demeanour  Most everybody else sounds good, but nothing noteworthy. It's a bit of a shame nothing else stands out because usually, Castlevania soundtracks – from the gothic yet upbeat NES games to the jazzier variants found in Castlevania 4, to even the Lord Of The Rings inspired Lords Of Shadow, there were tracks that stood out as fantastic, especially that one song in Castlevania 2 – you know the one I'm talking about. Here? Umm... it... doesn't blow every dick in a five mile radius...

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow – Mirror Of Fate is Mercury Stream saying “you losers wanted old school Castlevania, well here you go – enjoy your shitty old Nintendo game you fat geeks!” - you know the type of attitude; that grizzled look on their face, with the somewhat gravelly tone in their voice or that loud, hoarse voice depending on how pissed they are with their fanbase, all the while thinking to themselves “those idiots will learn to love my style if I blend it into the style that they love”. It's odd however, because even if I was somebody who can't accept change and think Symphony Of The Night is what Castlevania should be, Mirror Of Fate just doesn't get it right as it's pretty linear despite giving the illusion of open endedness, like most SNES/PS1 JRPGs. As somebody who did enjoy Lords Of Shadow while also quick to consider making love to the Sorrow duo, I found Mirror Of Fate to be a rather... underwhelming mishmash of the styles and an overall mediocre game.

5/10 (Average)

Review: Cave Story+

I'd love to go up to Daisuke "Pixel" Amaya and get him to teach independent video game developers how to make a fucking video game, because Cave Story is a damn fine game that blows the competition out of the water before it even existed. Before Braid's success lead indie developers to believe that pretentiousness was synonymous with quality, Cave Story lead us to believe that beneath the smoke and mirrors that began to form with AAA games lied independently developed games with genuine creativity, ingenuity and a sense of wonder that came with games in the past. A passage through an immersing game world full of things that'll kill you and things that drive the adventure further, Cave Story relishes in old school tropes without essentially being an NES game on your PS3. Instead, it's a retro game with modern touches that actually matter, becoming an experience of its own that still has yet to be topped.

A good video game is one that doesn't waste your time with unnecessary bullshit. If it did, it'd be Assassin's Creed 3, which is a bad game. But Cave Story plops you into a cave with no recollection of how you wound up on what would eventually be revealed to be a floating island. No overly long exposition or anything - BAM, onto the island, you wake up, you explore a bit and you find out from some friendly natives that you have to stop the evil Doctor from taking over the world. It sounds like the setup for the plot of most 90s JRPGs. But like a good 90s JRPG, the story opens up as you progress through the game. There's more to the Doctor's plan than simple global domination which gets revealed towards the end of the game. The characters you meet along the way are all connected in a way that leads to these chain of events. Tragic events will happen, but like any good hero, you'll right the wrongs that have been committed. Even though this game is like five hours long, there's plenty of depth to be found in the story and it becomes a rather enamouring tale of stopping a power obsessed lunatic from achieving his evil desires. For reference, it does in five hours what a typical post-Super Nintendo Final Fantasy game tries to do in 30-40 hours. I sometimes forget that this is an indie game because it's just trying to tell me a story instead of shovelling pseudo-philosophy down my throat and expecting me to believe that it's art. Cave Story has a damn fine story with brilliant pacing to let nailbiting dilemmas and big events happen with enough breathing room between them to let them sink in, all within its five hour length.

It's downright insulting how retro inspired games are either fucking I Wanna Be The Guy trial and error bullshit or Braid “man this is soooo deep” crap, because games like Cave Story gets shit fucking right! It takes Metroid, makes it a bit more linear without it being obvious that it's more linear (sounds like Pixel's been playing some Half Life on the side), and makes backtracking not feel like a chore! Shit, even the best Metroid games can't do that! But I'm getting ahead of myself - Cave Story is a sidescrolling adventure game where you run, jump and shoot your way through a game world that expands as you find items that allow you to access areas that you couldn't before, unless a story event plops you elsewhere. Imagine that, a sidescrolling platformer that's driven by the plot. You'll be revisiting some areas at times, but you'll find that things have changed; enemies have gotten stronger and the terrain is a bit different. You may even fight a boss that wasn't there before! Now, it might not sound like much, but given that it's rooted in Metroid-like gameplay, backtracking is sometimes a necessity and as such, it's nice to see some change so that it doesn't get monotonous. That's not to say that all backtracking is like this – there's one part where you have to go back and forth from getting an item and using it on something a little while away, and then going back to get the item and using it on something on the other side of the map. That part was tedious. But that's the exception to the rule – you'll often have to revisit the central village area but it usually contains the next part of the plot. Towards the end, you'll revisit an earlier area, but it'll be massacred and full of stronger enemies. That about covers how much backtracking you'll do in this game.

The levels aren't massive and a fair amount of the game is pretty linear, but it doesn't stop you from exploring the different nooks and crannies to find health and ammo upgrades. It also doesn't stop the game from doing a splendid job of giving off the illusion of open level designs. It's done to a tasteful degree, so there's no wasted space and doesn't feel like an empty sandbox, and since there are some goodies, it rewards players for being curious. Hell, at some point in the game, depending on what direction you take in a level, you'll either have a shot of getting the good ending, or will have to content yourself with the not so good ending. Deceptively conning the player into believing that this will be a linear game with big worlds, only to drop a bombshell of not only multiple paths but also multiple endings can either be clever game design or bad game design. Thankfully, Pixel is a fucking genius and managed to integrate this in a way that feels natural. Obviously, some areas will be more linear than others; obviously, some areas are going to have branching paths and obviously, some areas will be inaccessible if you don't do certain things right. What that means is that replaying the game is encouraged in order to get the other ending. Getting it is a bit cryptic, but if this game has taught you anything at that point, it's that curiosity is rewarded with neat stuff.

It's not all about exploring as you'll be required to fend for yourself. Whether it's against the wildlife that attacks you first or the forces of evil, you'll have to shoot them down. You're given a decent variety of guns – you start off with a blaster and along the way, you'll find a bubble launcher, rocket launcher, machine gun, throwing swords and the motherfucking BFG. Each of these weapons have their uses, like how the blaster is good for your first weapon but your machine gun is just generally better as it has rapid fire for quick and easy damage. The throwing swords deal a fair bit of damage if it lands on an enemy, although you can only throw them at a medium distance. As a plus, it repeatedly deals damage for a couple of seconds. The rocket launcher deals a good amount of damage, although it doesn't have much ammo. As you kill enemies, you can collect experience points and upgrade your weapons, which will make them even stronger, although getting hit – because we can't have blood or anything – will result in you losing some experience points, so... don't get hit. More often than not, it's not too hard as it's generally easy to read enemies' and bosses' patterns after a while, though some of the bosses are just pricks and will annihilate you unless you have a specific weapon upgraded, but since it has a good chance of hitting you, well, all that needs to be said is good luck. At the very least, the difficulty scales at an incremental rate (except for this one boss about three fifths into the game), they get craftier and more damaging with their attacks. At the same time, the fights can get rather exhilarating as they attack you quickly, methodically and with the intent of deflowering your sphincter, especially on the hard difficulty mode where you can't obtain any health upgrades. Due to this, the boss fights are fantastic and wind up being the most exciting parts of the game, especially the final boss guantlet.

This game gives you the option to either play it with the old school graphics from the original freeware game, or with tweaked up visuals. While the old school graphics look good, the retuned graphics are definitely better looking as the character sprites are given more details and the shading is applied more smoothly. In fact, the newer version looks smoother in general. The old school graphics look good when you consider that Pixel was originally going for that 8 bit but not quite 8 bit look as there's a fair bit of shading on each of the sprites and backgrounds/foregrounds, but given the choice between blocky graphics and not so blocky graphics, choose the latter. Yes, the former may sound the most like it'd give you feelings of nostalgia, but the latter, like I said, is just smoother around the edges and gives everything more detail, which should also cater towards feelings of nostalgia. In general, Cave Story's graphics is an example of fantastic pixel art in motion.

For the most part, it's the same thing with the music – you can either listen to the old school soundtrack, a remixed version and an original soundtrack. The old school soundtrack goes well with the old school graphics, but if you're playing with the touched up graphics, the remixed soundtrack is more suitable because the remixed soundtrack, while it has some chiptune parts, is given a more modern touch by having mostly uncompressed instruments like painos, bass guitar and drums. Either way, the songs are short-ish but they manage to really get you going. During gameplay, it's peppy, it gets you pumped up and makes you want to fuck shit up, and it only amplifies for the boss themes! Then the music that plays during the cutscenes are moodier, with some ominous stuff to foreshadow a terrible event and more sinister stuff for the reveals of evil plans. Oh and yeah there's this new soundtrack but it eats dick. Instead of being catchy and upbeat, it's generic and does about fuck all for the game. Plus it doesn't really suit the look of the game; feels more like it's meant for a game that's not meant to be retro than one that celebrates retro tropes. Did I mention it blows ass? Yeah, head for the remixed old school soundtrack immediately.

In a scene I often feel lethargic about, Cave Story is a damn fine example of getting it right. It's a fun experience full of upbeat tunes to keep you going while you keep on coming back for the intriguing story. That's the kind of game I ask for – one that doesn't fuck about with bullshit that doesn't work. Most games in general can't seem to get the idea that you ought to show and not tell, to eventually reveal the story as the game progresses, to make proceedings either as enjoyable or as riveting as possible, and finally, to make sure everything is delivered in a way that keeps things fresh. This is even more evident with the indie scene – some games get it right like Limbo, Shank and Deathspank, but most other indie games really bugger that up by being made for psuedo-intellectuals and wind up boring the everloving crap out of me. Sure, it might not sound right, but that's because modern day mediocrity and quasi intellectual bullshit has sprayed me with rum over the years... so yeah, support good games by buying a copy of Cave Story and playing it.

9/10 (Fucking Excellent)

Review: The Cave

The Cave is an interesting game. On the surface, it appears to be a platformer with point and click style puzzles and witty dialogue that will keep you amused, entertained and even capture the very essence of your soul. It even offers multiple characters, of which you can use three of in order to offer some co-op puzzles between them and even some unique puzzles here and there for each individual character. But there comes a point where you're going “that's it”, mainly because it never feels like there's enough content in the game to go along with its large aspirations. It feels like a game that's finished, but without the polish and creative measures necessary to call it a full experience. A five course meal where each entree course lessens in taste is the best way to describe it...

It'd be better to explain it in full, beginning with the best part of the game – the story. Deep within the recesses of the cave lies riches beyond ones' wildest dreams. Enter our eight “heroes” (well, seven actually as two of them are twins you control at the same time), who wish to explore this cave in order to fulfil their deepest desires... which basically amounts to money. Now, you might be thinking “but we're playing as a monk, a time traveller and a chivalrous knight, maybe they're just going to use the money for the greater good”. Well, if by greater good, you mean for their selfish desires, you'd be absolutely right. Adding onto this is the disembodied voice of the cave itself. It provides snarky, humorous commentary over specific moments, often having to do with these characters and their not so good intentions. While the narration itself is funny, the situations of which the characters are placed under in order to progress through the cave, like grave robbing or altering with time itself, makes for even funnier situations, then you add the narration and it just makes for some rather humorous moments. So where it lacks in detail, it more than makes up for it with a combination of witty writing, morally reprehensive characters and unfortunate circumstances, all for the amusement of both the player and the cave itself.

The Cave is one part point and click in the form of a sidescrolling platformer, and one part just plain sidescrolling platformer. What I mean by point and click is that a lot of the puzzles will require you to use items to interact with parts of the scenery. Whether you use a single item to interact with a complicated mechanism or you combine items in order to demolish an obstacle, you'll be tasked with first collecting items and then using the three characters – each switchable with a press of a direction on the d-pad - you have control of to solve the puzzles as a lot of them require multiple characters working together. A vague example I can give is that there'll be scenarios where one character will need to activate a mechanism to unlock a door for the other two to get across and then they activate a conjoining mechanism so that the one activating the first one can follow the two. Most of these puzzles aren't complete brain busters and require simple logic in order to solve (insert rod A into slot B), but there are a few that can at least make you think a fair bit. Either way, the solutions for each of these puzzles make enough sense to keep you immersed into the experience. At no point does it feel like you're merely playing a video game; you're only doing what feels natural with what you have. You could make this argument for any game, but like games such as Broken Sword and the Zelda series, The Cave goes the extra mile by implementing these in a way that feel natural. Probably helps that some of these puzzles are downright funny.

But what's a game using multiple characters without abilities? You'll be given options like a character who can temporarily gain invincibility, a character who can hold his breath underwater for as long as he wants to, a character who can hack into computer terminals, a character who can use her whip to swing across gaps, a set of characters (or twins) who can leave shadows of themselves, a character who can use telekinesis and a character who can go through thin walls... the latter, I don't quite understand, but as this is the time traveller, apparently, in the future, people can walk through thin walls. Anyway, given that you have different abilities at your disposal, there are parts where you can utilize their abilities to solve puzzles. Whether there are parts of the cave where only that one character can traverse through (like a fantasy themed section only the knight can traverse through, or a laboratory only the scientist can go through) or you can use their abilities to solve a puzzle differently, there are a few opportunities to use their unique abilities to give the gameplay even more depth, and given that the logistics behind their usage makes sense, it aids in immersion quite well. I keep making a point of immersion, but really, when a game is about exploring what you could assume is unexplored territory, the discovery of new and exciting places is what keeps you playing, and puzzles with sound logic can keep that up.

Seeing as how you're given three characters to control out of seven per playthrough, the idea is that you need to replay this game in order to fully explore the cave. With that in mind, the cave changes its structure to benefit these characters in an attempt not make subsequent adventures feel so redundant. Unfortunately, there are a couple of things that go against this design choice. For one thing, there are a fair amount of areas that aren't character specific, and given that the idea of this game is to explore a previously unknown place, it loses its luster upon repeated playthroughs. The other thing is the third playthrough... in order to experience the last character's specific areas, you have to repeat the other two's specific areas. Unless you're either going through each playthrough with quite some time in between or your memory is bad, this is dull due to the fact that a puzzle simply isn't as exciting nor satisfying to solve the second time as it is the first time you do it. That feeling of “yes I did it” just isn't there the second time. I guess you could consider it the speed run? That's the only way to make that run fun while you explore the parts of the cave exclusive to that one character that you didn't use.

Then again, each playthrough is about five or so hours long, so it could be a lot worse. Still, I feel that there was a good reason why The Lost Vikings and Trine only had three characters – so that they can put more care and attention into the level design. Given how limited in quantity the character exclusive areas are though, it makes you wonder why they even bothered with these different characters. It always felt like more of these sections could've been added, you should have control of all seven characters so that the cave can be designed in a way that requires you to think about how you can use each of their powers to navigate through an increasingly tricky cave, or less characters should've been given to you; and you know, for a game that wants to play like a platformer, it sure feels like crap when you have to do some platforming. The controls are looser than a Vatican daycare and given that backtracking and repeated playthroughs are necessary in order to complete the game and get everything out of it, it can get rather annoying – the only reason it doesn't outright drive me crazy is because when you die, you'll respawn like right before the pit you fell down. I guess that makes up for the sloppy controls... it doesn't, but it's a lesser of the evil of possibly resetting an entire part. Bloody hell! To make things worse, this game is linear – outside of some parts here and there for different characters, there isn't much to it outside of what you go through the second time after your first time through. So while replaying the game is encouraged, it just isn't as good the second or third time around!

The Cave sports a cartoony visual style, giving the cave some smooth and chunky edges, vivid colors and rich lighting that amounts to a sharp look. It's quite a treat to look at, especially as you go through quite an array of different environments despite still being inside a cave. One minute, you're going through some empty caverns; another minute, you go through places that'd host underground societies, and then there's a part where it's like you're inside a volcano. That's not even mentioning each characters' exclusive environments. With them looking as great as they do, it's just amazing. Top it off with some hilarious animations, and it only gets better. The animations are important; the characters may interact with one another, but they're all mute. How else can you communicate but via charades? Like how they can use their hands to perform gestures or even move their bodies. Even better are some of the amusing walking animations, like the hillbilly flailing about while he moves or how the twins may as well be conjoined. Where it hurts is twofold – the framerate can often chug, and you can sometimes find yourself getting stuck in solid platforms which require you to reset the console. Thank god for frequent autosaves...

The music manages to provide the appropriate ambiance. Whether it's the mesmerizing echoes of the cave, to the accordions of the carnival themed places (like when you're introduced to the hillbilly or you're at one of his exclusive portions of the cave), each piece of music manages to fit well with the surroundings and draw you into the experience. Unfortunately, there aren't really any standout pieces, perhaps outside of the James Bond theme sounding song during one of the scientist's exclusive portions involving a laboratory and some sneaky stunts. The voice acting from the cave is fantastic as his voice just drips with sarcasm, complimenting the dialogue with aplomb, and the people you meet along the way also have great voice acting that oozes with personality.

It's amazing how The Cave is a game that revolves around replayability and discovery – while the discovery portion is great, the replayability portion leaves a lot to be desired. The first playthrough is excellent outside of some crap platforming elements, but each subsequent playthrough just isn't as interesting. Most people don't replay the likes of Broken Sword too quickly outside of speed running because discovery, whether it's the solution to the puzzle or possibilities of a solution, is something that only exists during ones' first playthrough. Having a lot of different characters is excellent on paper, but execution is what matters and the execution does leave a fair bit to be desired once you realize that these characters just aren't used as well as they could've been, nor that the cave is as well designed as it could've been, even if it seems like it was well done the first time you go through the cave. At the same time, I would happily recommend that you play through this game, if only for the first playthrough.

7.5/10 (Good)

Review: Skulls Of The Shogun

There isn't a whole lot in the turn based strategy genre in this generation... on consoles, at least. Sure, Vandal Hearts: Flames Of Judgment existed and turned out to be a good game, and XCOM: Enemy Unknown was a good game too, but... I think that's about it, and no, I don't count Disgaea 3 and 4 because quite frankly, 1 is the better game in terms of story and characters. So when Skulls Of The Shoguns unleashed itself to the unwashed masses in the form of a trailer back in 2010, it got reactions and some people were psyched. But then it got delayed until January of 2013. At least it got the Deus Ex: Human Revolution treatment of teasing us for a few years before release and not the Final Fantasy Versus XIII/Duke Nukem Forever treatment of seemingly never getting fucking finished. It's not quite as good as Deus Ex: Human Revolution (and before anybody uses the apples vs oranges argument... well, maybe I prefer a bit of that juicy, succulent apple over eating that average looking orange) and in terms of overall quality, there's no real hook to it other than good game mechanics that don't falter it, but at the end of the day, it's fairly good.

You begin the game as a recently slain Fuedal Japanese army general, raising an army of the dead to wage war against the guy who killed you. Okay, so there's not a whole lot to the concept, coming across as bare boned as a Final Fantasy game, but the effort was clearly put into the dialogue. No, not thought provoking dialogue and not emotional dialogue that'll make get you into the characters, only for them to die partway through and make you cry like a little bitch; I'm talking about pop culture references. Yeah, shit that'll be dated within the next year, if it isn't already. Now, there are some legitimate jokes in there, but it's mainly of the loud, crude, insane, “I really want to be Ren And Stimpy or Rocko's Modern Life” variety that can elicit some chuckles, but never really goes above that level. Maybe I've become so jaded at this point that I need to snort unicorn ashes to get so much as a buzz, but as far out as it attempts to be with its humor, it winds up being restrained to try and be more like a sitcom you see on TV; not going balls out to make you laugh your head off. It's not bad and as I said, it does make you laugh a bit every now and again, but it basically reeks of lazy writing with more pop culture references and internet memes that won't be funny ever again (if at all) than there are actual jokes.

The idea of the game is to move your units from one point of a map to the other, killing enemies along the way to the end goal point. Instead of moving along a grid, you instead move around within a circular area, not unlike Valkyria Chronicles. But where it works in that series, it doesn't quite in this game. Well, it does when you use archers (one of three primary classes you can use at the beginning of each level) and the monks you can acquire when you conquer shrines as they use long ranged attacks, but when you use infantry and cavalry units, it's not quite as easy to line up their physical attacks at it would seem because you often have to be at the right place to do so. But given the more fluid gridless movement system, it's a bitch when it turns out you're like a millimeter away from your desired target. Grids are a tried and true system because it helps you line up each units' attacks with precision, which is absolutely necessary in a turn based strategy game. Moving within a circular area only really works if everybody uses long ranged weapons like arrows and guns. Oh, and memo to future game designers – if you're going to include a mechanic where having two units next to each other reduces the damage they receive and doesn't knock them back when they're hit, make sure that not only do individual units do not require you to be meticulous with the cursor to select them, but that they also look different enough to distinguish without the need for a fucking magnifying glass. Thanks, it'll make selecting the right unit in a tactics game a lot easier.

That's about the extent of the game, but there are some other mechanics to play with along the way. Like I said, you can conquer shrines in order to acquire some spellcasters like a healer, a fire mage and a wind mage, but you can also conquer rice paddies, which are used to pay for new archer, infantry and cavalry units. There are also skulls that units can eat. These skulls are the remains of enemies that have been killed and although eating one takes up an action – of which you get five per turn – it can also heal the unit that eats it. If a unit eats three, then they will essentially level up, allowing them to hit harder. These mechanics insert some technicality into an otherwise simplistic system as there is a fair bit to think about. I mean, a lot of what this game revolves around is moving towards the enemy and then hitting them until they die unless you can push them off of a cliff (there's knockback included in each hit). Resource management allows you to call in for reinforcements and acquire some supersoldiers to protect your general because, powerful as he is, if he dies in battle, you lose automatically.

The mechanics do work out finely for the most part as you can move your soldiers about and execute commands with little to no problems, and the whole multi unit wall mechanic is an interesting one that I've found myself using quite a lot to make things a bit easier on myself when fighting a barrage of enemies. On the whole, fights do feel balanced as they rely more on brains than on powergrinding. Nothing complicated as a lot of this is baseline shit, but what's there works well in that pick up and play kind of way. That's what this game's true aim is – being able to pick up and play it. This is perfectly exemplified in the multiplayer mode, where you can face up to three other players either locally or online to see who's the better tactician, and who can make the best of their five actions per turn with what options you're all given. Things can get especially chaotic with multiple people playing. Nothing beats a good old fasioned alliance with another player, only to backstab him to gain an advantage in the long run.

It's actually funny the more I think about the single player campaign – this game feels like it could've worked better as an RTS than a turn based strategy game. From the gridless movement, to the wall system, to resource management, not to mention the fact that it seems to move at a snail's pace at the worst of times, it's begging to be in real time. A lot of the time, the game will trick you into thinking you've won the battle, only to send in some reinforcements. This was cute the first couple of times, but after a while, it really feels like these battles drag on. With baseline mechanics, you have to make up more inventive reasons to drag on battles than “oh there are hidden reinforcements for the fifth time oh golly”. So cool, we get to fight the same enemies we've already fought like five seconds ago. When is this mission over? Oh, and you want to know the funniest part? This game is about five hours long. No, I'm not kidding, just five hours. When five hours feels too long, you should probably head back to the planning stage. But then I think back to the multiplayer mode and think about how well the system works there, which lead me to the conclusion that there was, indeed, no creativity put into the battle scenarios – just the fucking dialogue. Barely.

I've already made a remark about the fact that a lot of your units look similar to one another with subtle differences, which clashes with the wall mechanic, so unfortunately, we've hit a bit of a snag in the graphical department in terms of a lack of creativity in individual unit type design. It's a shame, because it is a good looking game. Sure, it looks like a Flash cartoon where they bob about like bobble heads at times, but the crisp, colorful models are very well animated and the locations look beautiful. They all look like they're inspired by feudal Japanese art with all the cherry blossom leaves and shit. Considering the subject matter, it's also very fitting. Also consider the soundtrack. While there's some electronic beats in there, you'll also hear some traditional Japanese folk melodies in there. It's mainly put in for ambiance during the battles, but it still sounds good all the same.

Skulls Of The Shogun is the kind of game that likes to believe it's a fun loving game with its colorful visuals and wacky dialogue, but while the visuals nail it, the dialogue alternates between chuckleworthy and unfunny, given that it'd rather make references than tell actual jokes. The gameplay itself simplifies the turn based strategy formula mainly for ease of congestion, but while it works either in heated matches against your mates or for a little while in the single player campaign, it works against itself as each level drags on longer than it has any right to due to a lack of creativity put into each of the battles beyond “oh here are some units go kill them now”. Given that enemies are generally balanced and each of the missions do get incrementally harder, it really is just a lack of variety in the missions and units that drag this game down. Boredom does eventually settle in and all of the charming visuals and dialogue in the world can't save you from it. Consider this a tepid recommendation as the mechanics themselves are finely tuned and the multiplayer mode is fantastically done... just wish the campaign was more tightly paced.

6.5/10 (Above Average)

Review: Final Fantasy X

Throughout the years, I've tried to wrap my head around Final Fantasy X. It's my first Final Fantasy game, one of my first games with the Playstation logo on it, and one of my first JRPGs. It was the game that said to me “yep, the PS2 is miles upon miles ahead of the Nintendo 64 in terms of raw technological prowess”. I mean, that cutscene where Sin blows up Zanarkand? Holy shit, it looked so fucking real to my ten year old brain in the year 2002 that I had to buy it to experience more! However, graphics age, and like human beings, you start to see it for what it really is once its looks start to wither. In this case, it's a game with great ideas, bound together by hit and miss execution. Some parts work finely, but other parts work about as well as Sony's online security. Oh, and unlike human beings, games don't gain wisdom with age; they don't realize that we change when we're given additional responsibilities and expose ourselves to different personalities and whatnot at high school or college or whatever. Sadly for some games, when human beings gain wisdom with age, they just don't look so great. I guess you could say that they outgrow aspects of it, or the games entirely, and Final Fantasy X has its fair share of things that haven't held up to repeated playthroughs or the passage of time in and of itself.

To clarify, this isn't a bad game, but it does make some big mistakes, especially in the storytelling department. The concepts it presents are workable ones that can offer an interesting story, but poor writing, aimless directing and crap pacing ruin it. The story is that Tidus gets transported from his home in Zanarkand, to another part of the world of Spira... about a thousand years into the future. From there, he meets up with a group of people – in particular, the summoner Yuna, who he develops one of the most awkward relationships this side of any given human being's first relationship with. She and the rest of the group are on a journey to pray to the temples all around Spira on the way to the temple to the north of the world in order to acquire the final Aeon (or summon creature) and defeat Sin. To put things into perspective, Sin destroys entire villages and even futuristic cities by simply passing by and maybe shedding its skin. Because it's so fucking huge, it conjures up tidal waves. If it feels threatened, it'll fire a beam out of its mouth that'll destroy everything in its way. So yeah, you'd want to stop this thing as soon as possible... except Yuna's dad and various other summoners throughout the years have already done this. So this would only serve to calm down Sin for... what, a few years before he's back to destroying the world?

It's a story that serves to get worse as time goes on. At first, the worst that the story offers is a lead protagonist who seems more like a cocky yet whiny sidekick than, well, a lead protagonist. Wouldn't it have been more logical to make Yuna the main protagonist? I mean, it's basically her story – she's the one who has to save the world from Sin, and she knows maybe a teeny bit more about Spira than Tidus does. Other than that, you do admire the personalities of each characters, like Tidus's more positive traits (cockiness), Wakka's heart of gold (even if he sometimes says the wrong things because he's a bit of a dickhead), Lulu's intelligence laced with her kind heartedness, short fuse and lack of a smile, and Yuna's naïve kindness, practically humanitarian behavior despite living a sheltered life (eh, Kimahri just kind of exists). Eventually, the bad pacing starts to set in when they spend more time talking complete shit than actually progressing the plot or developing the characters. There's this one sub plot where they initially learn a bit more about their journey, and then the most transparently evil villain of all time wants Yuna's hand in marriage. Cue about 2-3 hours of her thinking about the decision while doing nothing else. There's the whole “it's about the journey and not the destination” argument you could use, but I'll retaliate by saying that none of the characters are all that interesting.

To go with the new direction of every scene being voice acted, characters are given maybe a tiny bit of character development, and then it's basically dropped in favor of plodding scenes that are more interested in boring you to sleep than giving you insight on the characters and whatnot. Long scenes aren't bad as long as they progress the story or provide the player with entertaining exchanges. However, they're bad when it says virtually nothing with characters that are wafer thin for the most part. They're even worse when they spend 10 minutes dramatizing something bad everyone except Tidus knew was going to have to take place anyway. That one scene that'll be unnamed for the sake of keeping this spoiler free, for instance, was painful to watch – it was long, it told me nothing that I didn't already know or couldn't figure out on dialogue prior to it, and it was just dramatic for the sake of being dramatic because at the end of the day, this is a really simple story with mostly simple characters – Auron breaks the mold by being that calm father figure and mentor type character to Tidus while trying to make up for the mistakes he made in his journey with Yuna's father. Simplicity is never a bad thing, but then you've never played this game until the end, haven't you?

See, you eventually get to a point where there's this big revelation that serves to make the plot more convoluted. The actual twist could've worked really well, but given that it comes in the form of a brief coma fantasy, it's just slapped onto the story, feeling like an afterthought. It's like Square went to themselves “you know, Metal Gear Solid is a best seller, let's try and be more like that by adding in some crazy plot twist that makes no sense because that's all Metal Gear Solid is apparently”. Fuck me, this is stupid and only serves to make the rest of the story irrelevant at that point because it did everything in its power to eschew anything remotely cool about the beginning. Oh, but it'll work itself into being a dramatic final act, eh?? Bitchin' – throw yourselves a fucking party Square, because no matter how good or bad that final act is, you've still officially lost me. Before then, you only had me going in and out because it ranged from plodding along to actually having something happen. But then you drop this bombshell that serves to confuse the shit out of me and make me wonder why in blue titties I should even care if you can just drop in more bombshells that come out of nowhere and exist just for dramatics without anything resembling good writing to back it up. The worst part is that it's a concept that could've worked and given the game something really cool to stand on from that point onwards... if it was competently integrated into the fucking story! Oh, and telling me to read the Wikia will result in an automatic “go fuck yourself”, because a game ought to be a standalone experience. Yes, there are interpretations you can make – that's why shit like Braid gets praised – but there's making your own interpretation of the story and then there's just stuff that feels randomly slapped on because hey, we have all these ideas but no idea on how to coherently integrate them into the overall game. Whatever good was found before is either gone or ignored. What a shame, but that's what mostly 1 dimensional characters and badly written storylines do to people I'm afraid.

Really, Final Fantasy X would've lost my interest long ago, had it not been for the gameplay. Funny how it's the gameplay that keeps me interested in a JRPG when it's just there to justify itself as a game in a story driven genre, but actually, it's pretty well executed for the most part. Okay, so a linear world map might not be to your taste, but neither is sex with a live human being so that solves that. Given what I've said about the story, it'd be a pretty empty sandbox if they went with the design of old where it's open for you to explore and whatnot. The more linear world map works because there's more emphasis placed on progressing the story – no distractions like sidequests (well, you can get started on a couple at a point in the latter portion of the game) and all that, but there are still people in this world to interact with to try and help you give a shit about it. It gives you a sense of cause-and-effect as you travel down the paths that make sense to travel down within the context of the story, which is meant to help immerse you into the world even if the story blows ass. It also helps to eliminate grinding as keeps you on track. Now, this might sound like a bad thing, but quite frankly, empty sandboxes are even worse – at least this stops the game from having to spend hours loading and actually forces Square to design bosses with legitimate difficulty instead of just relying on you to grind your way up.

The actual battle system is simple enough to get the hang of. Rather than the ATB system from the last bunch of games, it goes back to the traditional turn based system as seen in Final Fantasies 1-3, and encourages tactical gameplay. You can see who's turn is coming up next and when that character's next turn will come up depending on what attack they use next (cooldown time, to be precise). Besides that, it's all determined by their speed stat. The higher it is, the more likely you'll get the first turn and get more turns. For a while, that's about as far as it goes because a lot of enemies and even bosses just deal damage to you, sometimes inflicting poison onto you and rarely turning you to stone (if all three party members are turned to stone, it's game over – get some healing items out before this happens). But the bosses towards the end of the game will employ more status inflictions and tactics that work to their advantage if just annoying you with damage and like a buzillion status inflictions isn't enough. There are four bosses that especially love to do this, two of which are infamously tricky due to their tactics (both utilize a status infliction that makes it so that healing magic hurts you; one of them forces you to keep it or else you get a game over) and the other two not being much easier in that regard. Hell, the enemies get harder as you progress as they deal more damage and can inflict some status inflictions. Given that the idea is to give you a feeling of true progression, I have no issue with the fact that a lot of enemies are palette swaps – sure, it can seem tiresome fighting the same dogs, bats (WILD GOLBAT APPEARED!!) and lizards (two kinds actually – an armored kind and a more flexible kind), but at least they get stronger the further along the path you go.

Speaking of getting stronger, there's the Sphere Grid. Yep, instead of a straightforward levelling system, there's a more open ended one... at least, I want to think it's open ended, except it isn't exactly. Let me explain – when you begin the game, you're given a choice between the Beginner and Expert Sphere Grids. The Beginner Sphere Grid has a straightforward path for each character to level up the way that best suits their stats, and mostly goes on a line from their starting points. The Expert Sphere Grid bunches the characters together and encourages you to put them down whatever path you wish. Now, this doesn't work because each character is clearly defined. Tidus works best as a speedy attacker, Wakka works best as an accurate hard hitter, Lulu works best as a Black Mage (user of offensive magic), and so on and so forth. But when you go down any path that doesn't suit their base stats, it forces you to... grind. You know, that thing where you have to go back and forth in an area before the boss to fight the same groups of enemies over and over again as opposed to just fighting what's on the way because that's how the linear world map wants it to work? Sure, that's expected if you're trying to learn a useful ability and you're a level or two away from it, or maybe you're a level away from a strength level up and feel like you're not doing enough damage. Okay, fair enough. That much is acceptable (that is, if you're fighting everything on the way or just about everything). When you're spending over 15 minutes grinding though, that's when you need to realize either you're running away too much, or that the Expert Sphere Grid is a load of bullshit because it just doesn't work. It gives the illusion of open ended levelling, but it doesn't even remotely compliment the other fucking design choices! It's a good idea too – no doubt you'd be sick of a linear levelling scheme, plus it has more good ideas in the form of spheres that can fill in blank nodes and let you increase that stat! It's also pretty cool how everyone will eventually go through other peoples' paths (especially Auron's as his is where it starts, plus he has the most Strength nodes which is what will seem the most desirable for everyone not named Lulu and Yuna), especially when you engage in the sidequests involving the superbosses and require you to do a shitload of grinding just to stand a chance. But at the same time, it seems like a fucking waste! It makes more sense to either have more balanced base stats, or just have a linear levelling system! Good idea though; just sloppy execution.

That really sums up a lot of the side content on offer in this game. There's Blitzball, which is basically underwater rugby. It would be fun, but for some bizarre reason, it's got this awkward menu based style where you press square and then a menu comes up. Why? This is a fast paced sport and yet it keeps stopping so that you can choose whether to pass or shoot the ball. Oh and no Z axis? Nice one guys. Thank god you only have to play this once in the story and even then, you don't have to win... you'd have to be lucky to win anyway because the team you face are like a million levels higher than you, with better swimming, passing, shooting, tackling (or ninja kicking), blocking and goalkeeping stats. Blah. Then there are these other minigames where you ride chocobos (giant chickens) to dodge balls and seagulls, dodge lightning bolts, collect butterflies, play hide and seek with Cactuars (little cacti that are living beings) and fight bosses so buttfuckingly strong that you'll be spending the rest of your life grinding just to stand a chance. Aside from the latter, that's how you're getting your strongest weapons, which is paramount to your success in beating the latter sidequest. Eat my tits Square – I got other things I need to get done, like play the next Final Fantasy game! Oh yes, you're playing Blitzball in order to acquire Wakka's strongest weapon, and the items needed to upgrade it. You'll be playing a lot of matches, so I hope you got some time set aside to do this shit! In other words, the sidequests are basically an afterthought.

I've already discussed the graphics in the opening paragraph, but I feel like it bares discussion here too. Seriously, this game was un-fucking-real back in 2002. Those FMV scenes blew me away due to how much detail was put into everything. I mean nowadays, while the buildings blowing up and villages getting hosed by a tidal wave still look impressive due to the amount of detail put into everything, the character models look like they came out of a Pixar film at the time – for reference, this was before The Incredibles came out, so the humans looked a bit glassy eyed and mannequin-esque in appearance. Definitely hasn't aged as well as the models in their first – and only – film, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (Advent Children wasn't made by the same people). That's not even counting the in game graphics, which are still aesthetically presentable in the year 2013 with some decent textures, designs and whatnot, but some jerky animations, horrendous motion blurs during the slow-mo or shaky sections and bad lip syncing can take you out of the experience. Doesn't help that everyone in Spira dresses like they're cosplaying their favorite sci fi characters (although Auron certainly makes the Vincent Valentine trenchcoat costume look positively badass), and I don't even know what's up with Wakka's hairstyle.

Given that this is Final Fantasy, no shit the soundtrack is going to be good. Every song is beautifully composed to fit the exact emotion that the characters are trying to convey – especially drama. Let's be real here, the real drama comes from the dramatic songs because of their composition. The violinists play music that's either meant to be sad or angry, and while the feeling is mutual when you base it just on the music, the actual dialogue and whatnot conveys jack shit, but I'll get to voice acting in a second. Outside of that however, you'll have these gorgeous pieces that can send you into a sublime state, like one that plays in the Kilika/Macalania Woods (especially when played in the Macalania Woods alongside its dreamy blue forest landscapes), or one that plays towards the end of the game just as you're reaching the end of your journey. It gives off this feeling that you're nearly there and all that stands in your way are a lot of monsters. The boss theme isn't fast paced, but given its loud, bombastic composition, it's still able to instil a sense of intensity. Oh, and we can't forget the piano piece that's played at the beginning of the game. Holy fucking shit, it is such a beautiful piece. Those are just my favorite tracks; the others aren't bad, but they don't stick out quite as much.

The voice acting is pretty hit and miss. Tidus is voiced by James Arnold Taylor, known as the guy who voiced Ratchet from the Ratchet And Clank series from Going Commando onwards, and... ehh I'm glad he got the shittiness out of his system here because his voice can quickly grate on your nerves. I guess it goes with the whole cocky yet whiny personality Tidus has, but that's an irritating trait to keep up! Most of the other characters sound bland, like they're just in line for their paycheque, and I cannot fathom why the fuck Wakka has to have a Carribean voice – didn't the first nine games resonate with that audience enough? Eh, whatever, it doesn't even sound that good, like he was half assing his way through it all. Come on John DiMaggio, I know this game's story sucks, but I also know that you can do better! Feel like you've earned that payche-- actually, no, because I'm not sure what you were actually paid, especially versus what you probably gotten paid when you voiced Bender in Futurama back in the day (for reference, this was before everyone really got into Futurama). Really, only three characters have good voices – Seymour, who sounds slimier than those things that live in the sewers; Auron, who sounds cool, calm and collected, but can conjure up the kind of tone that says “don't fuck with me”; and Rikku, but come on, Tara Strong performing badly is like Dane Cook being funny, it just doesn't work.

It's odd; Final Fantasy X actually excels at one thing that its progenitors simply had as a good point, and that's the gameplay. No, not the crappy sidequests or the badly executed levelling system; I'm talking about the battle system. It's well crafted enough to keep you engaged, and the bosses are interesting enough to keep you playing just to see what'll come next. The fact that it's designed to make you utilize your characters' strengths instead of simply grinding for 7 hours is something I've come to find impressive. Mind you, Persona does a much better job of it, but Final Fantasy X does well enough to keep your attention, but that in and of itself is impressive. Add on the crappy story that only gets worse as the pacing deteriorates to nothing and the plot twists get just dumber and less cohesive to the overall narrative, and what you have is a simple yet exciting battle system with some interesting bosses. I can't actually give this game much more kudos because that and the presentation aside, it really could've been a lot better, especially in the storytelling department. JRPGs are best known for their stories, and while gameplay is often important as that's what separates games from movies and theater, a story is what keeps you engaged, keeps you caring about what's going on. I'm just glad battling is good or this would be a complete bust.

5.5/10 (Average)

Review: Heavenly Sword

Damn, 2007 was a gooood year. Before the seventh generation became little more than corporate greed and generic faceless crap, there were a bunch of games that could give a lot of the previous generation a run for its money. Games like Assassin's Creed, Bioshock, Crysis, Halo 3, Super Mario Galaxy and the subject of today's review, Heavenly Sword manage to make PS2, Xbox and Gamecube games look like yesterday's news. Smoother, more detailed graphics leading to tighter game mechanics, with better sound quality to further enhance the experience – sign me up!! Heavenly Sword, unfortunately, had the displeasure of being released on the Playstation 3 and only the Playstation 3 because in this otherwise glorious year for gaming, “PS3 HAS NO GAEMS” wasn't just a simple obvious troll comment, but it was also an actual argument. It's a bit of a shame because Heavenly Sword is fantastic. Of course, it's easily to make claims like “too short” and “too much like God Of War” back then, but now, the former point isn't as relevant as it was back then because now, it's like 20 bucks instead of $60-90, and the latter point is irrelevant because God Of War ripped off Lament Of Innocence and made it into a terrible game, while Heavenly Sword took some elements from God Of War and worked them into a great game.

It all begins with the story. While the game opens up with a big battle between our heroine, Nariko, and thousands of soldiers with her dying at the end, it actually begins five days before the big battle. Nariko is seen as a burden to the clan as she was supposed to be the brave manly warrior who would wield the mythical, cursed blade known as the Heavenly Sword to save them from the evil of the Raven Lord. Instead, she just so happened to be born a woman. Hooray for sexism, right folks? Better get Anita Sarkeesian to do another 20 minute video where she basically reads a Wikipedia article while we pretend to care about what she says! But suddenly, Lord Bohan's army attacks their stronghold and takes most of the clan prisoner, including Nariko's father. While fleeing with the Heavenly Sword, Nariko gets ambushed by Bohan's army and must wield the sword in order to protect herself. Unfortunately, the Heavenly Sword's curse seeps within her body – she only has five days to live before the curse overpowers her body and kills her. From this point, Nariko has to save her clan and kill Lord Bohan before she dies.

While the story itself seems like a stock standard affair, the characters are brimming with personality. Not so much Nariko herself as much as the other bigger characters. Fellow outcast, Kai, is an endearing childlike character that balances out Nariko's more tragic motivations and serious personality, even when you have to play as her and slaughter a few of King Bohan's men. Nariko herself is the perfect tragic protagonist as she is mainly serious and doesn't take any crap from anyone, especially now that she has the Heavenly Sword that'll kill her in five days. But the stars are the villains, especially King Bohan. He's so charmingly over the top that you can't help but love to hate him, especially when you see the way he treats his bastard son, Roach. The other bad guys are also charmingly over the top and manage to play off of Nariko's straight laced personality – alongside Nariko's more snarky sense of humor, which helps make the scenes between them that bit more interesting while highlighting the more crazy aspects of the villains' personalities - while breathing life into the sequence of events on their own, but King Bohan does that like ten times over, making him the perfect main villain!

Heavenly Sword is a hack and slash with an interesting combat system. Instead of equipping one weapon at a time or at best, a main weapon and a sub weapon, the Heavenly Sword is actually three weapons in one, depending on what stance Nariko's in. There's the speed stance, where the sword transforms into two blades that offers a balanced mixture of speed and strength. There's the range stance, where the two blades are chained together like a whip that she flails about – it doesn't do quite as much damage, but it covers a wide area. Then you have power stance, where the sword transforms into a heavy sword and, while it's slow, deals a lot of damage with each hit. Now, this is the sort of model the DmC reboot uses and having played that game's demo before going through this game, I was worried that Heavenly Sword would be an unchallenging mess full of button mashing and cheap hits.

Well, it is and it isn't. It is when the enemies range from generic grunts to grunts with more armor and the occasional kunoichi, all of which aren't exactly tough. It's easy to figure out a way to kill each type of enemy by messing with stances and all but performing riverdance on their reproductive organs. It isn't, however, when you have to figure out a means of countering gangs of them. Strength is most certainly in numbers and while I would actually lambast a game for this, when one is as hypnotically engaging and satisfying as this, it's hard to really criticize this approach to combat. Add on the counter system – basically, you don't press anything except maybe R1 or L1, depending on what color aura is around the enemy when they attack, and you see Nariko really mess them up – and it becomes a combat engine that's very satisfying when you get the hang of it, not to mention engaging to watch and perform. I do find it silly that the only way to perform aerial combos is to launch an enemy up into the air, flick the controller up (oh believe me, I'll be giving the sixaxis its time in the sun in a bit, but let's keep it to one topic at a time) and then perform the combo. See, I've always been under the impression that you can jump in the air without the need for a launch attack, but Heavenly Sword doesn't even have a jump button. You can do some flips to dodge attacks with the right analogue stick, but that's about it, and you can't perform attacks that are built off of the momentum from your dodges. But hey, what we do have works very well.

Not only will you be fighting against groups of enemies, but you'll also fight the occasional boss. There aren't a lot of bosses, but what there are, are pretty good. Generally speaking, you'll be dodging their attacks and then performing combos on them when they're left open. At times, you can counter their attacks as like enemies, bosses' attacks are color coordinated, meaning that being in the right stance can mean the difference between an ass whooping and delivering the pain to them. The fights are refreshingly challenging, managing to offer a balance of them delivering strong attacks while never cheap shotting you into a combo you can't escape from, which is something a lot of games can't seem to nail these days. However – and this is where all of the God Of War comparisons come from – when you whittle down their health to a point where it's nearly empty, you'll have to perform a series of quick time events. Great, just what this game needs, some goddamn quick time events, because we sure love them! Whether you just press the direction on the d-pad or mash the button that's on screen, you'll need to keep your eyes firmly wedged on the center of the screen. Otherwise, you'll either die and have to fight them all over again, or just fight them all over again; it depends on where you fail. These can result in some cheap deaths, especially when you have to press on the d-pad diagonally. Yeah, cheap deaths against otherwise tough but fair bosses. Good job Ninja Theory.

But you don't just play as Nariko – you'll often play as Kai, who has a crossbow at her disposal. The idea is to have her backflip away from enemies and shoot them in the head. When you're in aim mode, it uses the camera setup also seen in Resident Evil 4 and Gears Of War, so you're thinking “ah you just have to aim your arrows at their heads, sweet!” Sadly, it's not quite like that. While yes, you can aim for their heads, the point is to use what Ninja Theory dub the “aftertouch” in order to get precise shots. To do this, you hold down the shoot button, and then everything is in slow motion while you use the sixaxis motion controls to move the arrow around. Besides the fact that this has no basis in logic (how do arrows go up one minute, then down the next, then up and towards the right the following minute), it feels very... gimmicky. You have to hold the controller in a way where the shoulder buttons are facing the screen to keep the arrow centered, and move the controller around to move the arrow around. I have no idea why they would do this when simply shooting would feel more natural. But hey, this is 2007 and we're experimenting with new technology to see what works and what doesn't. Granted, you can simply shoot by just pressing the shoot button – that could make everything I said against the motion control seem like needless bitching, had it not been for any segment where Nariko has to throw objects at switches or fire cannonballs at catapults. That's where you really need to get your aim just right, or you won't be able to solve otherwise easy puzzles that are in the game for the sole purpose of getting players to use the sixaxis controls. In other words, what should be simple things are made more complicated than they have to be due to the gimmicky sixaxis.

Now, when it comes to earlier games in a console's lifespan, the graphics age more like soft drinks than like wine. But Heavenly Sword has the distinction of still looked really good, even in 2013. That's mainly because it doesn't exactly use a realistic graphical style – it looks more like a smooth, high definition painting by hand. It shows it hand with its outdoor environments, with pastel details on the ground and in the sky with a painstaking amount of attention paid to every little detail in the lighting and intricately drawn lines. Speaking of painstaking detail, the facial animations are fantastic beyond belief. The lip syncing is pitch perfect with the voice work, and their emotions displayed on their faces are exquisitely animated, detailing the looks on their faces in a way that works really well with the voice work. I love how Heavenly Sword just casually has this detail going for it while LA Noire used it as a selling point because Team Bondi some high end motion capture techology. The rest of the characters' bodies are also really well animated, especially Nariko's swordplay which results in some hypnotic combo attacking against armies of enemies. It does lag a bit when you're fighting millions of enemies, but a bigger problem comes in the form of screen tearing, where parts of the screen will tear away during some bigger fights and more graphically demanding cutscenes that may take you out of it. Still, it doesn't completely detract from the fact that the game looks excellent.

It's complimented by grandiose symphonic scores – when there actually are some! During key moments, there'll be some big sweeping symphonics that'll make these moments feel bigger in scope. Whether it's the beginning or end of the game, or certain segments towards the end, you can tell that they wanted something more like what you'd hear in Lord Of The Rings or God Of War. But a lot of the time, it's just dead silence, except for the sounds that emit from footsteps and when attacks connect. It's a bit of an odd design choice to have fights that just consist of sound effects - even boss fights are lucky to have music to make them feel bigger. Ah well. The voice acting is top notch. The villains sound so devlishly over the top, especially King Bohan. Then again, kingy's voice by Andy Serkis, and his style is to be as fiendishly silly and yet still threatening at the same time, which goes well with the character's personality. Nariko's voice lends itself to convey her serious yet snarky remarks in a way that really makes them work. In general, every voice actor manages to bring the script to life, managing to make each cutscene well worth the watch as it deeply immerses you into the events that are unfolding.

While games like Resistance and Motorstorm showed off higher end graphical capabilities for those just entering the new generation, Heavenly Sword shows off how it can all be used to make a fantastic game that keeps you wondering how it can be topped. Although it also makes you wonder if there'll be somebody out there that can put the sixaxis to good use instead of it just feeling like a gimmicky afterthought - at least, it would've if you were one of a handful of people who had a PS3 back in 2007. But this isn't 2007; this is 2013, where there are plenty of people with PS3s who have probably missed out on some great earlier games like this. The only real problem comes from the sixaxis because when motion control isn't involved, this is a fantastic game. With a dynamic cast of characters and intense battles, it's hard to deny that Heavenly Sword is definitely one of the finest games in this generation.

9/10 (Fucking Excellent)