Another Capcom game (yeah, I just got through watching Pulse’s coverage of Capcom Gaming Day..does it show?). This one is a cel-shaded 2D platformer that looks freakin’ amazing. And, as an added bonus, it has bullet-time!!
Month: March 2003
P.N.03 (Cube)
New title headed our way for the Gamecube (initially) from Capcom. Here’s the official marketing gak:
P.N.03 is an action game starring a female soldier named Vanessa Z.Schneider, a laser-gun wielding, mech killer with a grudge to settle. A colonial settlement turns into a killing field after a CAMS (Computer Arms Management System) goes haywire on a planet. Vanessa hires herself out as a freelance mercenary who kills robots upon her client�s request � no questions asked. But, she has a dark past: CAMS killed her family and her plan is to get even. Players must dodge and weave through the heavy barrage of firepower on the planet while trying to blast the technologicalterrors into scrap metal.
Blah blah blah. But what’s sorta interesting is the style of our protagonist. She kindof dances her way through the game, doing all kinds of slick moves as she offs robots left and right. Kind of a feminine version of Dante in a way.
Gamespot’s Hands-on preview
IGN’s page (mostly insider links)
Cable Turtle
How cool is this? I love simple ideas that make life more manageable, even in simple areas like that tangle of cables under your desk: The Cable Turtle.
Lord of the Fire Lands
Last night I finished Dave Duncan’s Lord of the Fire Lands. This is one of his “King’s Blades” books, the first being The Guilded Chain which I told you about last July.
Like the first book, Fire Lands is an enjoyable read, though I didn’t like it quite as much. Part of that stemmed from the odd delivery…early parts of the book take place as flashbacks but when we catch up to the present it feels like the pacing changes in an odd way.
Also, though its “A Tale of the King’s Blades” it isn’t really about a King’s Blade. It’s about a Bael, the Baelish being “the enemy” in the first book. Bael’s are modeled on sort of a Viking theme, living on an archipelago complete with active volcano. They aren’t big enough to invade Chivia (where the King’s Blades live) but they harry the coast and strangle trade. Anyway, this book lets you see the war from the other side, so to speak (not that the war is the predominant theme in either book).
Lord, I’m rambling. Anyway, what was really interesting here is that the events of the two books aren’t in sync. Things happen in one that don’t in the other, and vice versa. My first thought was “What shoddy continuity.” but then I flipped back to the front and read a warning that we’ll see discrepancies between the two, and only reading the third will clear them up.
OK, I swallowed that, hook, line and sinker, and you can bet that my next book is going to be Sky of Swords!
On to the next beast
With the leviathan Xenosaga behind me, it was time to press on. I needed something engaging but not too long (after a 60 hour game, it takes me a while to recharge my batteries enough to take on another monster). Eternal Darkness (Gamecube) called to me from the shelf. I’d played it about half-way through some time back and got distracted.
Eternal Darkness is one heck of a creepy game. You need to play this one in the dark. It’s a bit like Resident Evil with better controls, more magic (I think…I’ve never played very far into a RE) and really varied environments. It is not for the kids. We’re talking human skin lampshade stuff.
The idea behind the game is that you’re a girl investigating her familiy’s history, and in doing so, you keep ‘flashing back’ to different places and periods of time. So far I’ve been back to Persia, circa sometime BC and as far forward as 1952. You tend to visit locations several times, hundreds of years apart, which brings a neat “been here, but wasn’t able to do that” feel to the game.
Of course, the big hook was the whole way the game tries to scare you by breaking out of the box, so to speak. Sadly, this has been so publicized that it probably won’t scare anyone now. If you’ve heard about it, you know what I mean (most of the things that happen rely on you being taken unawares). If you haven’t heard about it, I’m not going to spoil it for you. Suffice to say the game plays with your head pretty effectively in the early stages. Once you get deeper into the game, you have ways of controlling your sanity, plus most of the games ‘tricks’ really only work once.
Anyway, so far, this is a really good ride. Sound and graphics are great, level design is really neat. A real sense of claustrophobia in some dank dungeons. Lots of “Indiana Jones” style trap avoidance, and most of the puzzles are easy enough that they’ll make you think for a few moments, but won’t stop you in your tracks. This allows the engrossing story to keep its talons in you. Oh! And you can save almost anywhere so it’s a good game for short sessions. While it might fall all apart in the endgame, I rather doubt it. But I’ll be sure to let you know.
Xenosaga
Well, 58 hours or so since first slipping the disk in, I finished Xenosaga (ok, more like 70 or so hours if you count restarts). It still dumbfounds me that the game is getting so many average reviews. This is easily my third favorite PS2 game so far (1st is Ico, 2nd is FFX). Sure, there are some annoying aspects to it, but any game you play for 60 hours is going to have something that eventually starts to grate on you. But I really enjoyed the ways you could build your characters up, the mini-games, the graphics, and especially, the storyline. I’ve heard the storyline referred to as highly deriviative, but I didn’t get that. Yes, there were some scenes that were very evocative of certain scenes from various movies, but the plot, as far as I could follow it (heh) didn’t seem at all derivative to me. Well, with the caveat that certain common anime themes were included (giant robots and all that).
When I hit the end, I had enough emotionally invested in the characters that I had a few real ‘lump in the throat’ moments, which is always the mark of a good game for me.
All in all, a great game, in my opinion.
Tired of chasing dragons?
Here’s a MMRPG I haven’t played but that has me curious: A Tale in the Desert. While this isn’t the first MMRPG with no combat (I suppose The Sims Online earns that title), it does seem to be the first one with goals and things to do that don’t revolve around combat. To learn a little more, you might want to read this Gamespy Interview with lead designer Andrew Tepper. I plan on giving this one a go sometime in the near future.
Bleary eyed and happy
So it’s after 1 am and I just managed to tear myself away from Galactic Civilizations. Back in the day I was a huge fan of “4X” games but as I grew older I found I didn’t have the patience for them anymore. GalCiv seems to somehow pack in that “grab you by the throat and never let go” gameplay with a sleek enough play mechanic that you don’t get bogged down, at least in the “small” galaxy maps. Part of this is probably because you only have a handful of planets to look after.
Add to that alternatives to the basic “Nuke ’em into the stone age” victory conditions and you’ve got a game well worth playing. Or at least, that’s my “initial reaction” determination. It remains to be seen if the game has legs.
Find out more about Galactic Civilizations at http://www.galciv.com.
Home
The hinges screech in annoyance at being disturbed as the door slowly swings open for the first time in months. Dust sifts down from the lintel, motes catching the sunlight that streams in from outside. A cloaked figure shuffles in, stooped with weariness, oblivious to both dust and sunbeams. Flopping into the nearest easy chair (and thus creating a new whirlwind to dance with the sun) he blinks at the empty room. “Aye, its good to be home. A bit of sprucing up and this’ll do nicely.”