Thursday, July 31, 2008

HEARTS OF IRON: Progress?

Spring, 1936-- Having learned a hard lesson in Rezekne, I spent most of the winter months trying to get my needs for rubber filled, as rubber is one of four main currencies of HoI. The other three are steel, oil and coal. The USSR at this point in history had complete stockpiles of everything but rubber, and it was noted in the manual that I could convert oil to rubber on the fly at a 2 to 1 rate. Good for covering me for the moment, but not sustainable from the way the totals for oil kept dropping. I set up some offers on the 'world market', a system by which you can post a trade offer and leave it there, as in "100 coal for 100 rubber" and other nations of the world can simply trade with you at that rate unrestricted until you take it down. It seemed to me like a great way to distill world demand for goods into a simple system, but I could find no way to take up computer-played nations on their offers some of which had better rates of exchange than my own. I also attempted to set up shipping convoys to get more rubber, but the interface there was so incomprehensible I just decided to stay on the world market as that was already giving me positive results.

At the end of April I checked the weather map and sent my forces into Latvia with confidence. It didn't take long for the battle to be over with the USSR victorious. Happy to just be a winner I cooled my army boots in Rezekne while internal affairs became more insistent.

Winter, 1937-- It was around this time a few things happened. First I had noticed that some idiot had given every command position in my armies to some faceless rube with no points in skill or experience for command. In the manual commanders were supposed to have these two traits as well as other notes on them like "Defensive Doctrine" or "Panzer Leader" that set them apart from one another, none of those either. So I spent a long time fitting the positions to the commanders, of which there were around one hundred in the pool to choose from. I also noticed with some interest that often the most skilled commanders were not the highest ranking, so this meant making sure I had the right rank to command the size of the army I had without sacrificing too much skill. A fun exercise but once it was over I probably wouldn't have to worry about it for a bit.

Secondly I was having problems with my industrial output. In HoI every province you control has an 'industry' value assigned to it. Add all of these together and you get your industrial output. This value needs to be split into four different areas; consumer goods, war supplies for your armies, research and development of new technologies and finally the 'force pool' which determines how many military units you can build at any one time. I was running in the red for two of the four areas, and no matter how I tweaked the sliders I couldn't make them all happy. I clearly needed more industries, lucky for me that every province detail menu I had seen up to that point had a "build more industries" button. That would solve the problem! So I started in Moscow and wheeled around the country, finding provinces with good production and building more industries. What I didn't know at the time was that the local industries in those provinces stopped making things for the mother country and started building up their own industrial capacity. Naturally this was what I wanted, but it only made the budget shortfalls worse in the short term. Not that I noticed at the time.

Summer, 1937-- I smashed the remaining Latvians, annexed Estonia without incident, and took the majority of Lithuania. Losses were minimal and I was feeling like a regular socialist dictator. Nothing to it. Sometime near the end of August I think I got a lengthy message box covering the map screen entitled "The Great Officer Purge". The text explained that starting around that point, Stalin began to notice that Trotskites were starting to gather and plot his downfall from within the military. In response Stalin assassinated them all with impunity, like a thousand of these guys. Great indeed, I thought wryly. It was also mentioned that this draconian killing spree was often thought to have lost Stalin some of the best and brightest in his officer corps, and was at least partially responsible for the terrible losses the USSR would face later on in the war. I was being given the choice to purge or not to purge. If I acted with mercy, I would only gain a 10% measure in my 'dissent' stat. Not a bad offer, save a thousand gifted men and the USSR for some abstract percentage. I deviated from Joe and decided to let them live, those scrappy officers!

Just as I pardoned the League of Stalin Haters, I got a bevvy of messages explaining that a wing of tactical bombers I had on order would be delayed until late next year for lack of industrial output. I decided that this was probably linked to the sudden increase in dissent, as I knew that the higher dissent was in the country, the less the people produced. What was my dissent currently at anyway? 51% That didn't look very good.

A quick look at the Industrial Output panel told me that my entire government was in gridlock. Every sector of the USSR was moving not at all or was just barely getting by. To top it all of the lack of consumer goods was driving dissent ever higher. My industrial output was once near to 300 points and now was flirting with 150. If things got any worse, those officers might get their way with me. I abandoned all research and unit production, also put my armies on 'life-support' with just enough supplies to stay put and not bother anybody, and cranked up the consumer goods slider to about twice what was really needed for people to live. As thanks the Russian people decreased my dissent stat by 0.05 percent per day. The USSR was closed for WWII business unless you brought your war to us, at which point the dissent effect would cause my under-supplied soldiers to fight even more poorly than regular under-supplied soldiers. To be certain, I was lucky to not have any of the other dictators on the block notice. I wondered how long it would take to get the Russian people back on the side of Ol' Joe...

1938-- The USSR launches the "Porn and Candy bar" offensive against it's own people! Truckloads of candy, pornographic magazines, pulp novels, comic books, vodka and furry hats have been dispatched to every corner of the Motherland. One machinist in Moscow commented, "Socialism can't be all that bad. I mean, look at this awesome poster of Lenin I got from the government! So cool. Those nasty army officers were totally wrong."

Monday, July 28, 2008

HEARTS OF IRON: The coldest winter

I decided to start by playing Soviet Russia, the head of the "com intern" (International Communism) alliance in HoI. The others are The Axis and the Allies as one would expect. I figured since Russia was so large and her population therefore also very large that it would be a good place to start for a newbie player. Once the game screen loaded and I saw to my chagrin the way the units moved about that the USSR's massive border along the nations of Romania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Finland would be very hard to defend when the computer Germans decided to follow in the footsteps of their more corporeal brethren. Now I'm not sure of the dates when this did actually happen, but I know that I had a few years anyway. In the meantime I figured I could make the border seem less porous somehow.

I was encouraged by the numerous Soviet 'Strelkovaya' Divisions I saw along the borders with Romania and Poland especially. I read in the manual that each one comprised of about 4000 men, and from the icons associated with them I could tell that they were regular infantry. They were grouped in armies of between 4 and 9 divisions each. Together I had about 60 or so divisions. That looked like a lot to me! I was drastically wrong I was to find out later. At this point I re-deployed my armies in a more even arrangement along the border and turned up the game speed to normal. I was on my way now! *sigh*

January, 1936-- In the opening month of the game I was looking pretty good. I had every intention of putting the heels to my quest for global Communism as soon as humanly possible and it seemed to me that I had the soldiers to do exactly that. Looking along my western border I saw Latvia and Estonia sitting just beyond there and saw that intel was putting them as having 1 or perhaps 2 divisions in each of their small provinces. So I brought up my tactical bomber squadrons and scheduled an attack in the Latvian province of Rezekne, and ordered them to keep up the bombing until my 15 infantry divisions arrived four days later. As the bombers attacked their positions twice a day, their organization rating (a numerical score dedicated to expressing a unit's morale and battle effectiveness) dropped from 38 to a minuscule 11. Before too long my units arrived on the scene and began combat against the enemy.

Something strange began to happen at that point however. As the battle wore on over the course of a few days, my battle strength dropped steadily and the Latvians did not budge one bit. They were out numbered 7 to 1, had no air cover or artillery and yet in three short days had eviscerated my infantry corps and sent them back across the border with half the men they left with. My highly trained military mind knew of course that these Latvians were cheating the death I had arranged for them. Was it possible that I had simply gotten a bad throw of the dice? Did they have a great general to lead them? This amazing victory would live on in the annals of Latvian history for ages, but it was ultimately a fluke. It had to be. 7 to 1! Numbers did not lie.

The numbers in Latvia the next week were slightly less daunting for the Latvians, but only in a purely academic sense being 4 to 1. Now more certain than ever I gave the order to attack, as no amount of luck would save them a second time. To my amazement, we were routed again. Now I began to wonder if my knowledge of the war was even more incomplete than I thought it was. Was there some 'Great Wall of Latvia' that I had failed to learn about from the History Channel? It certainly wasn't depicted on the map so... I was at a loss. Just to be sure I gathered another army this time of a similar size and charged the Lativan troops again, to no avail. This was no mistake, I was really missing something significant.

Like a dog that's had it's nose boxed I ran away for a time and took to reading the manual which was actually made of paper (how novel!), and tried to understand where I was going wrong. This was the first time I was really getting acquainted with the rules of HoI outside of the tutorials provided within the game. I was again amazed at the amount of detail coded into the game. While pursuing a two page treatise on something called the "Land Offensive Resolution Logic", part of a series that had entries for air and sea offensives, as well as defensive resolutions for each, I read a curious passage from a bullet list.

"snow- The attacking force receives a -50% to its offensive statistics in the event of snow fall in the attacked province."

At that point I began to seriously wonder if it could have been snowing in northern Russia in the middle of January. A quick return trip to the computer and a glance at the newly discovered "Weather Map Mode" told me that in the hills of Rezekne blizzard like conditions prevailed from October until around mid-March every year. Imagine that! Snow in Russia in January! And so close to Finland too, I thought it would be a tropical paradise! ... It's fair to say that the last time I was so embarrassed while sitting in front of my computer it involved Yahoo chat, a webcam, and a person named supasexy1980! who was a little less than clear as to their gender beforehand. I guess I shouldn't have to tell you that I then...

-RELOADED FROM SAVED GAME-

January, 1936-- In the opening month of the game I was looking pretty good, especially since I had no plans whatsoever to send the young future of the Soviet proletariat into the Latvian hillside in the dead of a winter blizzard to attack fortified positions manned by invincible fire breathing snow demons. Yay for me. Go Communism!

Saturday, July 26, 2008

The games go on...

A really strange yet wonderful thing happened to me a few weeks ago. I work at a small software company in customer service, and as there are only ten people in my office you get to know people pretty well. I tried to keep things under wraps for as long as possible, but around the one year mark at this new job people began to realize that I was videogame nut. I was sorta worried that people would think I was some sort of man-child if they knew, but I guess it really didn't phase them. I don't really talk about it at all, but some of my culture references tipped my hand. Our marketing man apparently had played some of the same PC games that I had and we had a few good conversations about Doom and Master of Magic. What happened about a year later really blew my mind.

I was talking shop with him one day and right out of the blue he told me that one of his best friends had recently died, a man he'd known since high school. I offered condolences and gave him space to talk but he didn't tell me much more than that about him. What he did tell me was that his widow had met up with him a few days back and gave him a cardboard box full of computer games. Like... fifty computer games. I really didn't know where this was going at this point, so I just nodded at him. The widow knew that he was into PC games like her late husband and she was aggressively donating/selling/moving his things in an attempt to move on, so in that fashion they passed to him. He then said that he wanted me to have them.

Now all of this happened in the space of a little more than a minute so I was sort of stunned. It isn't everyday that someone offers you something a dead person owned once, let alone computer games. When you think of the things people leave behind you imagine clothes or watches, perhaps a baseball glove or tool set. I don't think that any one imagines a copy of Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield on CD-ROM. Now I'm not saying that these games were his prized possessions or anything, but seeing as how irrational I get when it comes to games perhaps I assigned extra meaning to the gesture. I was floored.

I told him that they were his and that was what the widow wanted. He explained that he didn't have time for them now that he has two children. He kept coming back at me and I kept trying to put him off. I felt really uncomfortable about it. In a part of my mind all I could think was, "I really don't deserve this stuff, it's not his fault what happened to him and everything. Why should I profit?" The next week he walked in with the box and talked me down out of my tree. It got a little easier when I saw some of the titles in there, I must admit.

Better than that though, the discs were in near perfect condition and everything had it's codes and documentation. He had taken better care of his PC games than I ever had apparently. He left me alone with the box and I went over them during my lunch. I left a lot on the table but with what was in there I couldn't take them all without feeling really skeezy. Here's what I came home with...

-Hearts of Iron
-Half Life 2
-Black and White
-Age of Empires II
-Sid Meier's Pirates!
-Rainbow Six 3 + Athena Sword Expansion
-Civilization IV
-Return to Castle Wolfenstein
-Axis and Allies
-Warcraft III
-Rise of Nations Gold Edition

Listing them all here just makes me feel like I was cherry picking after the fact. I guess I was, but I was told to! The other part of it all is it reads like a list of the PC games I would have bought over the last six years if I wasn't throwing money at my consoles. It's just amazing. I'm playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein right now and it just feels so strange that this man I never met went down all the same hallways and twisty labyrinths I am in right now, except he didn't really. Neither am I, but he did, and now he's gone and... I'm not sure what to think about it all, but I know what I want to say about it. Thanks a million, man!

Thursday, July 24, 2008

ODIN SPHERE: Healthy cooking for the coming apocalypse

I am knocking on the end of this game, but I have encountered the dreaded endgame grind that I once thought would be confined to the various Fantasies Final. The occasion of needing to power-up the various characters of Odin Sphere leads me to use a system that I only rarely visited during the normal game. There are two parts to it actually; The Pooka Kitchen and The Pooka Cafe.

I should explain what a pooka is first I guess. A pooka is a little rabbit-person who once used to be an actual human but was effected by the "Curse of the Pooka". The entire nation of Valentine was afflicted with this curse through the machinations of it's mad king. Valentine is not a very nice place to be at the moment, but the Pooka still live there underground. They get involved in various plots to heal their land, mainly trough the Pooka Prince and Velvet, the princess of Valentine. This underground village is where the cafe and kitchen are located and all the characters gain access to this place eventually, but some much later than others.

Now once you have access to the village you can start cooking, and cooking is all about hit points. Each character has two levels instead of one, one level rank for your psypher weapon and another level rank for your hit points. You get experience for your psypher by killing foes and collecting the phozons(little purple firefly like things) that appear when they die. You get experience for your hit points by eating food. There is no other way. You often find various food items in the course of battle, and often seeds from which to grow more food as well. These seeds eat the aforementioned phozons to grow into trees or vines that give fruit. When you eat the food whatever it is you get an immediate healing effect, which fills your current total of HP, but you also get an about of xp that goes towards your HP level. The higher this level the higher your maximum hit points will be.

This is why cooking is so important; the food you cook in the pooka village (kitchen or cafe, they both work the same way) gives WAY more xps than the food you find laying around or grow from seeds. They have complicated recipes as well, which you find in the treasure left behind by enemies. One of the oddities here is that you actually need to bring the food you want to cook to the pookas, instead of just buying it when you get there. Times are lean for the little guys I guess. At any rate, one of my favorite recipes is for Yogurt Stew. Doesn't sound so good, eh? Well remember that what we want is levels, and this particular dish has good xp for not too much trouble. The recepie goes like this, one carroteer, one yogurt, one portion of chicken, and an ariel coin(one of the various coins featured in the game). The important part of this particular recipe is that most of the ingredients can be manufactured without too much trouble.

Yogurt is easy to get from milk, and milk is available from many shopkeepers in the game. The carroteers can be found in the ground in certain places, you just need to know where to look. The chicken comes from eggs. This makes sense, right? Well, in Erion the process for getting the chicken is most curious. First take your egg and place it on the ground, after a bit a little yellow chick will hatch from it without any help from a mother hen. This little chick will wander the level, eating whatever plant seeds it finds. Once three seeds are eaten it will quite magically transform into a big grey hen. It then becomes your job to beat on the poor thing until it once again magically transmogrifies into a chicken bone with meat attached. This parody of agriculture could only be more ridiculous if it actually changed into a bucket of KFC original recipe.

I like to get the components for four of these dishes before I trek to the kitchen. It takes a little time but it's worth it, seeing as four stews will double your max hps if you're anywhere near the 300 mark. I haven't found the need to balloon my max hps in this way until this point, but it is an interesting little system. In a way, if you had the necessary components and access to the village you could shoot way past the intended hit point totals needed for where ever you are in the game. I suppose the investment in time is good deterrent, but there isn't anything really stopping you from grinding previously visited levels and getting fat on HPs.

It should be mentioned that the ingredients for the more complex dishes aren't available in most stories until after the midway point. So those are harder to abuse, but it isn't like phozons where the only way to get them is by slaying enemies. Is it the devs allowing the player to ratchet their own level of difficulty a bit, just some fault-tolerant design? With the heavy twitch-factor involved it might have been a stroke genius to include the kitchen and the cafe, but it is obvious that by the point I am at now I was supposed to have been using them much more.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

HEARTS OF IRON: War is really complicated, and hell

In going from the forested glades of Erion to the blasted ruins of Europe circa 1942, I quickly began to wonder if I may be a little out of my league here with Hearts of Iron. I have to admit that the majority of my time playing strategic war games they were made of cardboard and sat on a table in the kitchen, or had more elves and dwarves than Spitfires and Howitzers, or were very realistic sims of ancient wars. Apparently when you turn the wayback machine to not-so-wayback things get very complex. After all, the modern world is a place where the definition of combined arms doesn't just mean "spears and cavalry, together!"

For just a snapshot of what WWII warfare touched on in the very basic sense; in any single action you could have infantry, artillery, engineers, anti-aircraft, anti-armor, mechanized and motorized infantry, tanks, transports, fighter interceptor planes, tactical bombers, strategic bombers... and that's just ground actions. I can see where this sort of sim does not appeal to everyone, or even most simulation fans. The people who make these games are tiny cabals (by today's game development standards) of dedicated technicians who love this sort of game and are making these games for others who could very well be in tiny development cabals themselves. It seems to me that the most common of the modern warfare strategy games have a semi-secret lexicon that is founded on the players supposed understanding of the underlying history, and the fun in these sort of 'what-if' productions is changing or better yet defying that history.

The idea is to make the simulation as accurate as possible so that when a 33 year old customer service rep from Boston leads the German panzer divisions all the way to Siam before 1945 like some reverse Ghengis Kahn, that there can be a question in the corner of his mind whether that could have really happened if he were in charge. Being in charge is a major part of the allure of these games as well. Having the entire Allied war effort on the other end of a mouse click feels pretty cool. After all it isn't easy to keep all the plates spinning and win a war at the same time, right? What I am getting at is the more inaccessible(accurate?) the game engine is the smarter you're going to feel for figuring it out and winning the game. Learning the difference between "Basic Signal Intelligence" and "Basic Signal Logistics" and why one is going to help you and the other isn't is also a cool feeling. And we the gamers are just hoping beyond hope that the conflicts and decisions that we have to navigate in front of the monitor are at least somewhat like the ones that won or lost the Second World War. That is the magic of the simulation as a game.

I'm rambling a little here but I will continue in saying that I spent some serious time early on in my gaming career with SSI's Panzer General and Allied General, but that has left me vastly underpowered for HOI. Panzer General was a set-piece tactical game, where as HOI is an open ended strategic affair. Not only is the scope vastly different, but Panzer General is turn based and HOI is real-time. That makes the timing of everything, and I mean everything critical. This little life lesson will be explained in a later post, but lets just say that the fate of your men can turn drastically on exactly when your units arrive to the battle.

I have just started up the basic scenario that starts in 1936 and fooled around getting my feet wet here and there and I can already see that this game's interconnecting systems and exhaustive detail is going to cause me some problems when it comes to writing it all down here. There is so much that can be discussed that it's a little mind boggling. Also there is the challenge to pare that down into serviceable bites that can be read quickly and for the sake of the readers (I know you are out there!) are interesting to read about. I'm probably going to go the way of The Wargamer's (http://www.wargamer.com/) After Action Reports, but throwing in commentary about design and things as I go. So next time we will discuss my personal role in the shame of Mother Russia's early defeats of the war.

Monday, July 21, 2008

ODIN SPHERE: Velvet

Velvet is the final character and her tale, "Fate" is the final book in the main story. At this point both NPCs and texts of prophecy have hinted at a story after the current one, but the focus of this post is of course on the chain wielding vixen herself. Tooling about with her is about as different as I think would be possible in the game engine.

Now my assumption earlier that she was a 'stick and run' kind of character was correct, but I only barely scratched the surface there. As a matter of course when Velvet uses her dual-psypher chain against enemies, they do not take any knockback. That is that when you are comboing into an enemy Valkyrie, she's comboing right into you at the same time. Your weapon does less damage than the average, and at the same time will not keep anyone from attacking you up close. It is also very easy for enemy attacks to knock you out of your combo, creating a real offensive lack in comparison to the other characters.


Another layer in the failcake that makes Velvet's combat skills inferior is that her combos in general are longer. This means that it takes more time to get to the most damaging attacks which are invariably at the end of the combo. During this time she is standing stock still, getting attacked from behind or above. She does excel in a few areas though. First thing to remember is that she is a range fighter first, and whenever she can you have to use the range advantage because of the lack of knockback from her chains. The upshot of this is that she is a menace against smaller enemies, including flying enemies. Her special trick is a "homing chain" attack that basically just streaks out beyond the screen and wreaks havok with any number goblins, frogs and various spirits so long as they are in range. At higher psypher levels this is usually a one shot kill.


Secondly her spinning dance-like attacks seem to shield her from whirling swords, arrows and fireballs while she is attacking. The value of this is felt especially against wizards, who's many crimes have already been discussed. Lastly she is a good mover and can get around quickly, using her chain in a tarzan swing across the screen during which she is totally invulnerable to attack for some reason. Using this often is sometimes key to nailing down the bosses because it falls perfectly into the 'run' part of the 'stick and run' strategy. These positives though fun to play with, and while not failing to make fighting with her interesting, don't really make up for her overall lack of punch in most cases. Chalk this one up to your usual increase in difficulty over time of gameplay.

Now there are many good things about Velvet, not the least of which is that she is a bastard princess that dresses like a old-timey burlesque dancer. Always appreciated. Her voice work is easily the best in the game outside of Odin himself. The voice actor in this case really conveys the correct emotion in all instances and enhances the game to the effect of my next point. Velvet's story is the most compelling in my opinion. It is ultimately tragic, (I think they all could be eventually...) but it deals with some real issues and carries the player a little bit beyond the screen in the way the FFVII did.


"Fate" is actually about Velvet and her brother, Ingway. Ingway is a fav of mine despite the fact that he is never actually controllable. He figures in major ways in two of the other four tales so you do get to know him pretty well by the time Velvet is the subject of the game. His story is a bad boy makes good kind of tale, which meshes nicely with Velvet's fight against her prophesied destiny. Being at the end of the main game, Velvet's tale plays a little of the 'clean-up' role in Odin Sphere. So she does spend a little time re-treading some ground already traversed by others, but in return she also ends up learning the most about the game world and seems to have complete dominion over the 'shockers' in the story. Events here go most of the way in explaining why things are the way they are, so story wise she is easily the best character.

Now strictly speaking the end of Velvet's tale is not the end at all. At this I have to admit that I was a little disappointed, after all I am ready to move on to something new. What awaits on the other side of her tale is the Armageddon Mode, which at the moment I do not understand in the slightest so I'm not commenting on it now. I am taking a break from this one for a week or so however. So expect something different next time.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

OPINION: FFXIII on Xbox

For details, see this story...

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3168704

I don't like this much. I don't care as much as this guy...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-uTnqYHZ-I (I dare you watch the whole thing without feeling a deep sense of sorrow for the human race...)

but I nonetheless feel somewhat upset at the announcement. Microsoft's policy of buying everything they don't have, including console market share, is disturbing. The simple fact is that due to their PC software pseudo-monopoly they have more money than just about anybody doing anything anywhere. So even though the original Xbox was a complete business failure for years, the entire Xbox part of the company not even turning a profit until close to the end of the consoles viable life (if you want to call it that), we still get an Xbox 2. Other companies can't work this way, because they have to follow the regular Adam Smith rules of business. Microsoft shoveled a crap system with crap games for years and didn't even bat an eye.

This time around they have really learned that it is actually about the games. You can thank Halo and Bungie for that. Also they have learned over years of failure that there is a hardcore of japanophile gamers that wouldn't buy their system if their life depended on it. The solution? Get A class Japanese titles on their system, pronto. How are they doing this? With pure capital. Can you really blame Sqeenix for taking the cash? I don't. What are they losing? Not a thing. Who made them the custodians of the pristine Japanese game development pipeline? The developers are the winners.

We're the losers, as we are with just about anything Microsoft touches. Could they even have done a better job than they have thusfar with their amazingly popular software business? Probably not, but giving them any more capital for any reason is just nuts. They're the British Empire of the next stage of world history, basically. The world badly needed a standard operating system for it's personal computers, Microsoft had the best opportunity to be the one the world chose, and the world chose Microsoft. Now what people like the disturbed boy above are reacting to is a care for the pass time of video gaming itself.

Things have been going swimmingly for decades with the reins of the industry in the hands of a couple Japanese corporations, each jousting for the top spot, each creating great games and hardware in cutthroat competition. Microsoft has bought it's way into the market with brute force economics, but has not and will not contribute in the way that Sega, Nintendo and Sony have. Microsoft will not take the industry forward, unless you count "Achievements" as important as Mario or the Emotion Engine.

Did anyone else really want a PC hooked up to their TV? Besides Microsoft that is? The first Xbox was practically a Packard Bell in black and green. What are they adding to the conversation? You aren't buying a dedicated game console, you're buying a second PC, a PC where Microsoft controls every possible variable. Who wanted that? There is the frustration. The market kicked the first Xbox to the curb, and we are still seeing them on store shelves. The Japanese have yet to be fooled thank goodness, but now it is perhaps a time where Bill and the boys can make some headway there. That is of course only if they can pull their heads out of their asses long enough to realize that releasing FFXIII for 360 in the states but not in it's homeland is an amazingly poor move. They won't be making any friends across the Pacific like that, but they really don't need to do they?

For me personally, I'll be damned if I will ever have my hands in Microsoft products all day at work, and then do the same thing when I'm playing games at home. I just won't do it. Now, Valkyrie Profile on Xbox? Then I might have to buy a video camera.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

FINAL FANTASY TACTICS ADVANCE: What is going on here?

First let me state that I enjoy playing this game. I'm just not sure why I enjoy playing this game. Let me run down some of the oddities about this GBA title. The story is tissue paper thin. There doesn't seem to be much challenge involved. The main game is immense with over 300 'missions' or quests, many with interesting plots such as "Go get me a flower!" or "I lost my homework!" The main map for the game is essentially blank. When you complete certain missions you get an icon to place on the map, wherever you want, that represents a city or a feature of the terrain. This makes VERY little sense, but the next tidbit is even less logical.

The characters learn battle skills from weapons. That is to say, you equip a weapon to a character and if that character has the correct class to use that weapon it will teach you a certain skill. This is the only way to learn anything in this game. The weapons don't talk, they aren't magical and you can get them in every shop in the game. Now I'm not one for literalism or even strict reality in most cases, but this is really nutty. It is true that I enjoy titles that attempt to inject real world consequences into the gameplay, but here you are just giving things attributes that they could never usually have. You can step back and say, "Oh but the characters are in a story-book and it's how they wanted it cause their helping to write it and..." Yeah ok, but that is never referenced. As a matter of fact it looks more like they are in a fully realized world with it's own rules and customs. Rules, or laws, are actually a major part of the gameplay and the characters are punished for breaking these rules. So the 'I'm writing my own story' idea doesn't really work.

Now this is Final Fantasy, so the game is very polished and is pleasing to look at. Strange systems and rules sorta began with this series here in the west, so it's forgivable. There is a lot of cache coming from the stellar Final Fantasy Tactics for the Playstation as well. So it's part of a series (sort of) and you want to get the whole picture. But what is it that makes it all worth it? Gameplay still consists of moving your dudes next to the enemy dudes and attacking them. The difficulty is such that if you are paying any attention it is hard to go wrong. The only thing I can think of is the complexity of it all. Now I don't mean the tactical complexity of the battles, or the complex enemies you'll face. Actually the opposing forces seem flat and thrown together most of the time.

I am talking about the total stat-overload you are going to experience in reference to your own characters. There are around 25 different interdependent classes, 5 races, and about a million different skills with corresponding weapons for them all. It's so bad I had to put together a crib sheet on my palm pilot to let me know what classes I had planned for who, and what skills I wanted them to get. There's 12 characters in my 'clan' as they call it so it's a lot to remember. Now does all that equal 'fun'? I'm not so sure. Anyhow, I pick this up every so often to counter the back-breaking opus that is Rondo of Swords, so I will have plenty of time to ponder it.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

ODIN SPHERE: Frigging Wizards

I love this game, but there is one enemy that just makes me completely lose patience. This is the wizard. These little jerks are raised in a dingy city known at Titania, where I have spent some of the most frustrating moments of the entire game. Part of this is due to the fact that wizardly biology allows for a single wizard mother to whelp a litter of between eight and twelve of the beard-stroking abominations in a single breeding.

The other is their annoying propensity to teleport away the very second you hit them. Of course only the 'pointy hat' breed of wizard will perform this particular injustice upon you, the weaker (and far less numerous) 'hoodie' breed of wizard will just stand there and take their beatings like normal enemies, bless their little hearts.

Now all of this is really not even the issue, because this part of the wizard experience is totally manageable, cute even. It is when you add their varied and totally cheap attacks into the mix that you begin to understand true evil. Both species of odinius wizaratus have the following player-enraging powers;

1. throwing fireballs (natch)
2. summoning little eyeball familiars (not too annoying here)
3. creating whirling swords that shoot out at you in various mesmerizing patterns and do serious damage (not my favorite)
4. summoning ice spirts (this one we don't need)
5. summoning fire spirits (also wik)
6. summoning incorporeal as in untouchable yet still quite damaging spirit beasties from the netherworld (WTF?)
7. damaging+poisoning you from half a level away (We need more wizard regulation in America!)
8. AND turning you into a frigging frog.

As you can see any extended battle with two or more of these wretches quickly leads to ten or so other flying beasties chasing you down as you try to dodge whirling swords and fireballs while poisoned. THEN when you finally get to them and they TELEPORT away! What gives? Why do these game developers hate us so? Is it karma? Is there a god?

You might want to wait to ask yourself the last question because these terrible, hateful robe wearing demons can also be bosses. No no, not mid-bosses, the real deal. There are three wizards in the main story; Urzur, Skuldi, and Beldor and they all suck ass. Why sugar coat it? All three need to be fought at different times, though it seems only once each. Beldor appears as the handler of a dragon named Belial at a few times at the start of the game. Of course you don't fight Beldor at that point because anyone confronted with his cheap ass bull so early on would probably quit the game.

I don't want people to get the wrong idea, these little fucks can be beaten. I've done it a bunch of times already. You just need to strike their whirling swords back at them, which stuns them momentarily and keeps them from teleporting away. The problem becomes doing this twenty times against the wizard bosses while fighting all their pets. I am currently stuck on the Beldor boss battle where you have to fight the wizard and the dragon at the same time. This is probably the hardest boss battle in the game, in my defense. All I have to say is... this charade ends tonight, Beldor.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

NOW PLAYING

For whatever reason, I usually only play one game at a time on a particular system. This is usually a RPG, and that will be where I spend most of my time. Other genre's sneak in from time to time, puzzle games, or fighters, but after that it's mostly one for one. On the PC this system breaks down a bit more, where I allow only one game in a genre instead. Anyhow, here they are.

PS2- Odin Sphere, Arcana Heart
DS- Rondo of Swords
GBA- Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
PC- Hearts of Iron (WWII sim), Starcraft (RTS), Return to Castle Wolfenstein (FPS), Albatross18 (golf MMO)

I've also have a Gamecube and a Dreamcast that are currently not in service, though both have games I am planning on getting to eventually. How exactly I plan on finding time for all of this I do not know. Perhaps I should take the 'Oath' like Carl from "The Stack" has, but unfortunately I'm a console RPG collector too! I suppose I'm just doomed.

Monday, July 14, 2008

ODIN SPHERE: Oswald

I should first say that I've been playing Odin Sphere for a few months so I'll be starting my posts about this one (and more than a few others) in media res. I'll come up with a list of the titles I'm playing at some future point. As for the experience of playing Odin Sphere to this point I have to say it's been a major blast.

It's as if Final Fight got into a steamy love affair with the movie "Legend". The results are really something. The artwork and story are top notch. The game looks so impressive the name "George Kamitani" (the game's director) will be one you remember. The main tale is told from five perspectives. One for each playable character. I am currently playing through the story for Oswald, the Black Knight. He's the fourth of five, so I am more than halfway done with the game. The three others I have already played, Valkyrie, the Pooka Prince and the Fairy Princess are set up in a similar fashion, with the major differences coming in the attacks and abilities of the characters themselves.

At it's heart the game is a side scrolling brawler so the way you play the Black Knight is very different from the way you played the Pooka Prince. Just try to remember how the combos for Guy and Cody of Final Fight forced different play styles and you'll have the basic idea. Some of the characters have to fight at range, others are straight up brawlers that need to be up close and the Valkyrie and I am assuming Velvet (the final character) are stick-and-run types able to do a little of both.

Now on to Oswald, the Black Knight. He's a guy we have already seen many times in the stories of the other characters. To put it bluntly, he spends the majority of his screen time being a tool, and killing dragons and the like for a variety of dumb reasons. His story is one of a lost soul finding his way through love... Sounds sappy, right? Well out of the entire cast so far, Oswald is the most devil may care of them all. He resorts to killing and intimidation with little regard for the opinions of others. After grinding my teeth through the "Fairy Princess" story this was quite a welcome change. Oswald's job is essentially to be as bad ass as humanly possible. Put more simply, he's the Chuck Norris of the Fairy Kingdom. He fills this role with aplomb, even if he gets a little emo at points.

His combos and moveset are easily the strongest in the game. His weapon, the "Belderiever", is often said to the most powerful weapon ever crafted, and the ease with which it slays the heck out of stuff backs this up. It's really novel that in this instance when you are told that you are the most potent warrior ever, you actually are! In many RPGs, especially western RPGs, the strongest weapon or most powerful arcane knowledge imaginable ends up being just a palette swap of some other weapon or spell with slightly better stats. That of course does not mean that his boss battles are easy, on the contrary some of them are annoyingly difficult, but the rabble that comes in between them is nearly inconsequential. Just think of Swartzenegger in Commando. There's a very similar effect here.

So Oswald is all offense and little defense, but what really gives his part of the game some challenge is a restriction on where you are actually allowed to go. Usually after beating an area of the game map you are allowed to return there and get reagents for potions and exps and all of the good things that come from fighting evil. Not so here.

This brings us to a discussion of the ever elusive Carroteer. Now, a carroteer is just like a carrot, except it is part of a class of various in-game vegetables known as mandagoras and it has some kind of magical property that allows you to turn them into healing potions. This of course makes them the ONLY mandagoras a roughneck like Oswald is going to ever care about. Different areas of the game have these tubers in varying amounts. The ground will yield one or sometimes two different kinds. It is usually customary halfway though a story to take a break from the main road to go back and grind a little in the Carroteer's favorite zone to stock up on healing potions. The trouble is that Oswald, so love stricken at the time, could never imagine doubling back to help make life a little easier for the player. That is that these previously played areas are simply not selectable. Very annoying.

I suppose this makes an offset to the Belderiever's amazing offensive power, but at certain points at the end this restriction makes getting hit by enemies at all a serious problem. Oswald's low defensive qualities combined with no healing makes things harder. Add this to the fact that Oswald's quest for love gets him into a number of boss fights where the air is filled with swarms of weaker enemies, making him a finesse fighter all of the sudden. Switching gears between the normal fights and the boss fights with Oswald is part of the challenge here for sure. It's an interesting design choice, making the situation play the character instead of the other way around.

The very end of Oswald's story is actually the start of the last movement of the Valkyrie's story, where he plays a major role. Of course I've already seen that, so I know how his play really ends, but it's so interesting to see how Oswald went from a deadly enemy at the start of Valkyrie's story to something totally different by the end of his own tale. Here we see how the stories intertwine and feed on one another. This is accomplished with the aid of the extensive "Drama" menu that lays out every cut scene in the game in a linear timeline. As you see them in game they become available for review, or for a complete replay from start to end with touch of one button. This is nothing to sneeze at as in one continuous play the Fairy Princess' story took over 25 mins from beginning to end.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

The Inspiration

http://www.wurb.com/stack/

I've been reading Carl's blog for about four months now and it's a really great read. Simply put, this blog was directly inspired by his work. There is a method to what he's doing, and an 'oath' but I will just tease you with those. Hopefully you will click on the link to see what he's up to. What he's been doing for PC games, I hope to do for console games. What I'm going to do is play the games I'm playing as I normally would, and at certain intervals blog about it. I will touch on the design of the game, the story (though lightly I don't want to spoil things), graphics, control and just just about whatever comes to mind.

I figure I like Carl's work for the same reason I want to write in this blog. We both LOVE games. Each one is an intricate experience that we really want to talk about. I've tried to get into the review business but it feels too divorced from the actual experience of playing itself. As a reviewer the responsibilities implied (at least) seemed to create a lot of dissonance for me. Reviewing bad stuff was worse. Here at game-SAGA I plan on just chatting about what I'm doing in a game, the challenges and the victories. I may not get so involved in the mechanics as Carl does (I actually enjoy these bits a lot), but I do plan to keep a tight focus on details. In the end that is the major point here.

Writing about games all or in part for years has been about marketing. The review process has been so tightly machined that it's hard to tell what to think. gameSAGA isn't an alternative to this kind of writing, it's just different. I am obviously going to tell you about what I like and don't like about the games I'm playing, but I don't plan on playing anything seriously bad. I don't do that because it just isn't fun. If it's not fun to play, how much fun will it be to read about it?

I want games to be written about in a way that is respectful to the time it takes to play them. That's the magic of Carl's blog. Like talking about what elves go with what kind of magic, or describing the nuances of the GUI from an adventure title. Games are great, and I think this kind of thoughtful writing is only natural to the medium. After all you don't experience even the shortest of games (perhaps 10 or so hours of playtime) all at once, why should you write about them that way?

Now reading gameSAGA means putting up with my tastes in games. Obviously this can be a boon or bane. So I will now get out the major genres that I spend time with. Perhaps you don't want to read about the games you play, who knows? Better to know in advance, right? In order of preference, roughly...

1. Strategy Role Playing Games
2. Strategy War Games
3. Fighting Games
4. Role-Playing Games
5. Action Role-Playing Games
6. Management and Simulation games
7. Diablo
8. Blizzard RTS games
9. Action games
10. Sports games
11. Anything with hot ladies in it (be they wrestling, or playing volleyball or...)

So as you can see, my tastes run heavily toward the East. Names like Atlus, Sting, NIS, NIS America, and Working Designs are serious business in my house. To that point I am also an fan of anime and an over all Japanophile. Luckily for me both me and my wife fall into this category. Now I just don't play console titles. For genres 2 and 6 I consistently turn to the PC. Blizzard stuff is clearly PC as well, but you you can't avoid wanting to play games that are designed so well.

While I am on the topic of Blizzard I will mention that I don't play WoW or any of the usual mmos out there except for one, and then only rarely. Add to that the fact that it's a golf game, and you can see that I am about as far from WoW at possible at this point. I was a hardcore Dark Age of Camelot and Guild Wars player for years, but in the end decided that it just took too damn long to do anything. In general until I can talk with other players over ubiquitous voice chat with thoughtless ease, for me mmos are kind of a dead language. Other players are the point of these games, but nobody gets to know anyone because typing is a drag. It's a technology thing for me right now.

So as I play games, I will write about them. Hope you like it!