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February 13, 2013

Demo Report – Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan

Filed under: Editorial Rants — Tags: , , , , , — Mister Raroo @ 8:12 am

Demo Report Etrian Odyssey IV
I love milkshakes.

I know they’re not necessarily the healthiest treat option available to me, so I try not to drink them too often. However, when I get my hands on one, I am relentless and guzzle it up, usually to the point that my wife has to tell me to stop making disgusting sounds as I suck the straw like an addict trying to get just one last tiny hit from his crack pipe.

The Etrian Odyssey IV demo is kind of like that.

I have tasted every last bit of what it has to offer and am starving for more. Atlus was generous to provide such a meaty demo, but in a sense, they were also a little cruel. If anyone takes the time needed to build a party of adventurers, traverse through and map out every square inch of the available labyrinths, level up their characters to the max that is allotted in the demo, and complete all offered quests, they are going to find it very hard to wait a couple more weeks to continue their journey into all that Etrian Odyssey IV has to offer.

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December 24, 2012

The View From Primordia

Filed under: Editorial Rants — Tags: , , , — TJ "Kyatt" Cordes @ 2:02 pm

Review Primordia
The world did not come to an end last Friday, but odds are that one day, our species will be wiped off the face of the planet, and we will be survived by naught but the machines we made. That reminds me – Gamesugar wishes you and yours a merry Christmas and the happiest of new years!

Anyway, Primordia is an old-school point and click adventure game that imagines such a scenario, wherein robots of various levels of technological sophistication exist in a post-human society where man takes the role of divine creator whose existence is disputed.

What truths will be revealed in this land of rust and light about the time before robot?

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December 13, 2012

Demo Report – Rayman Legends

Filed under: Editorial Rants — Tags: , , , , — Jamie Love @ 10:46 pm

Demo Report Rayman Legends
Ubisoft’s demo for the Wii U exclusive Rayman Legends has finally arrived via the eShop – I suspect if you’re a Wii U owner you’re all over that, and if not, you should be.

The short demo offers access to three separate stages, which serves up three distinct flavors of play evolving from last year’s multiplatform rebirth powered by Ubisoft’s sexy little engine that can – so long as can involves making the screen pop with organic flow and crazed character creations.

While Toad Story serves up a more traditional Rayman platforming area, Teensies in Trouble introduces players to the idea of using the gamepad to aid the on-screen character, which in single-player mode is controlled by AI, with the player moving platforms, slicing ropes, and tickling large enemies to pave the way forward.

The entire demo is stolen by Castle Rock in the end though, which takes the speed run formula of Origins and creates a rock themed slide through a stage where the rhythm of the music syncs to the actions on screen. There’s the strangest bit of Muppets vibe to the play of this stage, and aside from telling you that it left me grinning like an idiot, it might be entirely easier to offer up video, which you can catch below.

Of course, you could also boot up ye olde Wii U and sample the offering for yourself – and then, like come back and let me know what you think.

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December 11, 2012

Welcome to the Jungle

Review Tokyo Jungle

-START-

A fresh litter of calico kittens play atop the deserted shops of Shibuya, soon abandoning the safety to follow the lead of their most curious sibling into the rainy streets below. The pack quickly tests their claws and teeth against the helpless chickens and pigs that scatter in panic at the sudden emergence of the newly born predators.

Though the kittens will quickly grow larger from the feast, the never-ending red pangs of hunger and scarcity of prey will drive the pack from the shops of their youth toward the broken streets of Shibuya Station. The young cats push forward while claiming the stray rabbits and chicks seeking shelter in the patches of forest slowly reclaiming the land through cracking cement and decaying automobiles.

Marking their territory along the way, the cats could easily choose to settle into their nest atop the train tracks and relinquish the fight for survival to a new generation. But youthful exuberance and curiosity causes them to follow their pack leader further in the search for new prey and territory to conquer. And as the swarm reaches Dogenzaka, the prey becomes dangerously scarce, changing the balance of this struggle as they encounter a cougar seeking to feed the same need.

Despite their numbers, several of the cats immediately fall to the wild swipes of this predator. Though two escape down a narrow alley, the beat of hunger pounds in rhythm with falling health to see them surrender to the scavengers overhead as they lay down in the street and lose their bid for rule over the Tokyo Jungle.

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December 10, 2012

And Now A Post About Boxart…

Filed under: Editorial Rants — Tags: , , , , — Jamie Love @ 2:07 pm

The Last of Us
With the recent dismay of many to the boxart for next year’s Bioshock Infinite, and Irrational’s Ken Levine making the case that such visual concerns are a marketing tool for garnering the interest of those unfamiliar with a game versus those already invested, I’m going to go sideways and give a nod to the cover for Naughty Dog’s upcoming post-apocalyptic tale, The Last of Us, which recently cemented its exclusive PlayStation 3 release date as May 7th, 2013.

Levine certainly isn’t wrong that the cover for any product is a critical marketing window to consumers, a key opportunity to make a statement about the product.

While The Last of Us doesn’t feature the rare punch to the face marketing pitch I might normally champion as a gamer, the image has grabbed me instead for its subtle message about the comprehension of the subject matter it aims to create a convincing world from for its characters, so much so that I feel the need to spew a few words exploring just how it does so below.

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December 9, 2012

Sweet’N Low – Sound Shapes

Filed under: Editorial Rants — Tags: , , , , , , , — Jamie Love @ 2:06 pm

Sound Shapes
Have you ever really lamented leaving a coin behind?

I mean, when we need some money to pay the shopkeeper, or find ourselves forced to collect every coin in order to complete a level or win a challenge, we begrudgingly do those things. But if I only grab two coins while fumbling through a Mario stage, it’s hardly something that keeps me from leaping toward the flagpole and moving on to the next stage.

Maybe there was a time when I attempted to collect all the rings with Sonic, but forever abandoned the idea after getting hit by an enemy and watching them all shoot across the screen – that’s trickle-down economics for you!

But Queasy Games’ Sound Shapes, released earlier this year, offers up something rather brilliant in the realm of obsessing over every collectible, despite the very real risk of repeated failure on the part of the player. Each stage starts in relative silence, save for the strange rhythmic chants of critters sparsely spread throughout the environment.

Collecting a coin adds a musical note to the proceedings, the everyday visual subtraction of a collectible object earnestly bringing the stage to life for the trouble, and visually replaced by the beating pulse of the note in time with the evolving score. In this way, the idea of suddenly leaving any coin behind robs the landscape of its full potential, denies the player a complete harmony at the finish line, and necessitates that no note be left unplayed – a grand recalibration of want and need on a subject that has lazily floated its existence between the tediously obligatory and the entirely optional.

With most rhythm games, missing a few notes is no big deal; the song continues and the chance to improve remains intact. But here there’s a demand for completion.

Simplicity is at the core of mechanics continually capable of boundless elasticity, offering stages wrapped in albums that all deliver distinctly unique sensations with the same tool set. You can experience the chill Zen tactile pleasure and you can have the retro flavored platforming challenge within the same framework.

And then there’s the entirely fresh thesis of Corporeal, a contribution from Superbrothers that cements the achievement of Toronto’s collaborative development space – tracks that place players within soulless corporate spaces to discover beats and rhythm while traveling to the hellish heart of some lost idea of conformist machinery. The trip is something of a beautiful nightmare, grasping at some idea of what the structure of society looked like to a six-year-old version of myself.

A lot of people will tell you that Sound Shapes turns music games on their ears, but it’s difficult to know what that means without stealing some quiet space and time with the game. Its full intent hasn’t been easy for me to divine since its release, but I’m scratching at some idea of exploring the relationship between sounds and the sources that create them, an earnest attempt to enable players to feel what they hear and vice-versa.

Persona 4’s candy pop aesthetics may well be the Vita’s saving grace this year, but Sound Shapes represents something more enduring for the soul ,with a thesis on sound and play that offers a fresh path toward undiscovered territory in lands generally considered barren.

December 6, 2012

Demo Report – Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

Demo Report Ni No Kuni Wrath of the White Witch
Namco-Bandai’s bite-sized taste of the overdue RPG joint between Level-5 and Studio Ghibli comes up rather short given the size of the PS3 download. The demo offers two small assignments, racing to the top of a volcano to tackle a lava beast, and fighting a forest guardian in order to help a wise old tree and gain access to the Kingdom of the Cat King.

It’s a little depressing that the demo ends before giving us a glimpse of the fat old Cat King, but you can’t win them all I suppose. It’s a shame the demo doesn’t share some more of the animation I spied via the E3 demo earlier this year as well, because it was rather fantastic.

Despite the lack of a hand holding tutorial, combat comes across rather easy, with players able to swap between using Oliver to cast magic or controlling his tiny critter familiars to issue more standard attacks against enemies.

The demo’s emphasis is on teaching players to switch between offense and defense when larger enemies are powering up for more devastating attacks, and moving around said foes to discover critical weak points – for the lava beast this is the tail, while the forest guardian seems to have weak knees.

The rather simple combat could leave this feeling a bit like baby’s first JRPG, but it’s several shades refreshing to my fingers – I’ve been long for an RPG that was this easy to fall into in an age where one of my favorite childhood genres has a habit of putting me to sleep with increasingly complex designs and endless explanations.

Since the PS3 owners in the room can check the demo out for themselves, I’d encourage you to do that rather than listen to me ramble on, assuming you haven’t already.

Two things in particular worth basking in while visiting the other world are the world map itself, which reminds me a bit of the romantic aerial views of the landscape offered in Ghibli’s film Porco Rosso, and the character designs of smaller enemies encountered – these designs are rather simple, and capture something Pokémon-like while still resembling the primary bestiary known to Ghibli fans. My instant favorite is the colorful Ouroboros, which you can find on the road to Ding Dong Dell.

The other point of interest is for your ears. Joe Hisaishi’s fingerprints instantly bring back memories of the feature films, and discovering how the theme for the game expands is as high on my list as unraveling the story of Oliver’s quest to bring his mother back from the dead.

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch hits the PlayStation 3 exclusively on January 22nd, 2013 in North America and Europe on January 25th.

If you need more of a Level-5 fix, Namco-Bandai has also served up a behind the scenes tour of the developer, which you can catch below.

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