Sonic Generations review for Thumb Culture

TL;DR
So while this is easily the best and most concise Sonic game that we have had in years, it is still not without its faults, while it does everything that you want it to do there are some annoying things that are just holding it back from greatness. The game starts off amazingly and I was loving every second of it but the further in I got it just became less fun to complete, which is a real shame since by the end I was left a bit disappointed by the whole experience. Despite this though Sega are still on the right track with their Sonic releases, so it’s a worthwhile tribute to the series and a good sign for the future to Sonic!

For my full review and score, check it out HERE at thumb-culture.com.

Oh Hai there again!

I realise I have neglected this place for oooo I dunno months now or something, but I didn't forget about it and plan to resurrect this place a bit.

But yes! I have now started writing for the site http://thumb-culture.com/ which is an awesome games news and reviews site that is hoping to grow into something much more, you should most definitely check them out and regularly! I haven't been around for the last couple of week or so due to me having to sort out and deal with some IRL things, but I should be back on form later this week with a bit of luck.

Which brings me to my plans for this here blog, obviously now I will be doing reviews for the site so I will post links and maybe some brief thoughts on the game here, but I will also like to continue to post other random reviews and stuff on varying aspects of geek culture, in short anything that interests me.

So there we have it, whether or not I will actually follow through with these plans is yet to be decided, but I'll try to keep this place a little more alive from here on out.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn review

Golden sun and its sequel The Lost Age worked together to create one of the best JRPG game experiences available anywhere, let alone the GBA. It wooed people with its amazing graphics, great battle system and the extremely clever Djinn Summon system that was a unique and completely new addition to the genre.  After many years of fans clamouring for more, Camelot eventually delivered with its DS sequel Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, which I can rightfully say was most definitely worth the wait!

At its core Dark Dawn is a classic style turn based JRPG, you will choose what actions each character (in your party of 4) will perform and then combat is executed in order designated by the character and enemy agility rating. This of course is all standard fare for anyone who has had previous experience with JRPGs of any kind, but where the game truly shines is with what it builds on top of these classic mechanics and twists it offers to the mechanics of things such as equipment and summon monsters.

As previously mentioned you play the game with a party of 4 characters, which you can select from a pool of 8 people, offering 2 characters for each element. You are also able to switch these characters in and out of your main party whenever you wish, so you are not locked down too much. You start the game by being introduced to Isaac and Garet, the protagonists of the first game and their respective sons Matthew and Tyrell; you are also introduced to Karis as well (who is the daughter of Ivan, another character from the original). After a tutorial dungeon you set off with the latter three characters to begin your adventure, meeting other party members at various points throughout the game.

One of the things that I really liked about this game that I haven’t seen done much before is the way that Dark Dawn handles weapon critical hits. Rather than the classic style where you get a chance to deal more damage, here they offer what the game calls weapon unleashes. Each weapon will have a set of abilities that will do different things, usually 2-4 per weapon with some being shared across weapons. Every now and then the weapon will “unleash” one of these abilities when using a standard attack which will do things such as attack multiple enemies, increased damage or apply a status effect. With each ability having its own animation, some of which are really quite impressive, it adds more excitement to the standard brawler class and variation to the standard attack.

The Djinns in the game are Golden Suns equivalent to summon monsters from other RPGs, but here they provide a much more important role both in the games story and with battle mechanics. Djinni can be one of four elements (Venus, Mercury, Mars and Jupiter or earth, water, fire and air respectively) each having their own ability, which can be attack powers, buff abilities or healing. There are 72 Djinn in total that you collect throughout the game, with 18 of each element, you equip them to characters of your choice so that they will be available for them to use, also depending what combination of Djinn you have equipped, it will change the characters inherent class and abilities. Here is where things get different as each Djinn has 2 modes, active and standby, while active the Djinn provides a bonus to your characters stats, but when you use its ability it will go into standby and you will lose the stat bonus. Of course there are advantages to this, first being you get to use the ability but there are also more powerful summons that are available to use which require certain Djinn on standby, for example to summon Daedalus you will need 3 Venus and 4 Mars Djinn on standby, meaning that you are constantly balancing what to do with your Djinn in battles.

 Another thing that this game does differently to other JRPGs are its dungeons, there are still random battles as you explore, but by using certain Psynergy powers (this games equivalent of magic) on the field you will be able to affect the environment in a number of ways. The developers have done a great job here as they have created very puzzle like dungeons, not unlike that of the Legend of Zelda series, so there are things such as block moving puzzles and element based puzzles (i.e melting ice with fire) which require some thought to complete. While none of these puzzles are particularly difficult it provides a whole other aspect to this game which helps to make it unique, another nice touch is that in heavy puzzle rooms there appears to be no, or at least a severely reduced amount of random battles.

There are also some other smaller things that I believe are worth a mention, one such thing that I like is the fact that your PP will recover as you walk around, so you will likely never find yourself out of mana,  keeping you from getting stuck in some places. I also approve of being able to save anywhere you want and that the save menu also shows what your next objective is, so if like me you sometimes find yourself not playing a game for while, you can find out exactly what it was you were doing just by looking here, which is extremely useful.

Saying that though there are also some things that I did not like about this game, included in this is a absolutely pointless emote system which you use to respond to characters with, as Matthew is a mute hero, no matter how you respond I don’t think it changes the game at all, and some of the emotes are ambiguous in what they mean. Another thing is that the game ends on a really weird note, you defeat the boss and after that not too much happens, some character wrap ups, but the story is left almost completely open, this is obviously  leaving it for a sequel, but it is annoying none the less.

I’m sure people who have played the original games are reading this and thinking “Hang on a sec, this sounds exactly like the first games” which brings another of the things that I noticed while playing the game. Throughout the whole game, the gameplay is pretty much identical to the originals in every aspect (including the hidden boss monsters), from what I can tell there are no new mechanics or anything. This is not exactly a bad thing, as the originals were excellent games, but if people did not enjoy the other Golden Sun games then they should look elsewhere, as this does nothing to attract a new audience.  

TL;DR

While Golden Sun: Dark Dawn offers nothing new from previous titles and is pretty standard fare in the realm of JRPGs, it’s still a solid game that doesn’t do too much wrong and is likely one of the best games that I have on my DS. With the main story clocking in at around 25 hours there is quite a lot of game to get through, and there are also bonus dungeons and hidden bosses to explore once the game is completed. I would have a hard time recommending this game to people who are not fans of either the previous games or JRPGs in general, but for people that do like such things you are in for a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

4.5/5

Portal 2 review

Back in 2007 Valve released The Orange Box unto the world, a device used to push some of Valve’s previous games as well as some new ones, one such game in this compilation was the hidden gem of the package - Portal. No one knew what to expect from Portal and it ended up being the surprise favourite, with its dark humour, good atmosphere, clever puzzles and the amazing character of GLaDOS, it became a huge talking point amongst gamers and has remained a staple of great games design.

Now a few years on Valve has released Portal 2, this time as a standalone game which some people doubted at first because if it was much like the first game, although amazing, wondered if it would be worth the full price of a retail release. Well I can safely say that these fears are not needed as the sequel outdoes the first and keeps on going, Valve shows us once again that they are one of the leading developers for a reason.

The coloured gels in this game are awesome additions, if only for the above use.

Portal 2 retains all of the mechanics that were a part of the first game; you of course have your trusty portal gun, which fires two different coloured portals that represent either side of a doorway, buttons that you will more often than not have to use the weighted cubes to hold down, as well as all of the physics from the first game such as retained velocity when travelling through portals. Using these mechanics the player will be given a puzzle room to solve, and when complete can move to the next room.

Along with all of this, the game introduces many new mechanics into the game that both help to increase the complexity for the puzzles, as well as adding more variety. This includes three different coloured gels that are orange, blue and white which make you speed up, bounce and create portal surfaces respectively. Other new mechanics are things such as redirection cubes, that will change the direction a laser is going in (often needing to be directed to a laser switch), hard light surfaces which are bridges that can be used to walk on or block projectiles, excursion funnels which act like a tractor beam and aerial faith plates that launch you in a specified direction.

While this does sound like a hell of a lot of new mechanics to get into, Valve have been smart not to have too much going on in one room, often featuring no more than three or four different things to keep track of at once. By having so many varying puzzle types it helps to keep the game feeling fresh, since as soon as you are starting to find one mechanic a bit tiring the game will then switch it up and offer you new ways to do things. This is a hard balance to keep considering the longer length of the game and is very well done.

Lasers are cool, so in turn laser puzzles are cool, right?

Speaking of game length the single player campaign took me around 8 hours to complete. I don’t really want to speak too much about the specifics of the campaign as it really is best left for you to discover for yourself, just know that the game has some amazing new characters introduced, with all of them having great voice acting, not one line in the game sounded weird or wrong. The game also has brilliant pacing in that it will switch up the puzzle type or area style just when it needs to and also has much greater narrative and direction that the game follows compared to the first game. 

Following on directly from the end of the single player is the co-op campaign; the idea of this is completely new to the series and is fairly well executed despite there being a couple of nitpicky issues that I had. In co-op player 1 and 2 play as two different robots named Atlas and P-Body respectively, each player has their own portal gun that shoot separate portals, therefore some working together is required to coordinate them. The robots also have a variety of humorous commands they can execute such as dancing, hugging or playing rock paper scissors to see who gets to risk their life first. The campaign is split up into different testing areas that can be reached via a hub world that you start in, with each area following a different theme (such as hard-light bridges or excursion funnels) and containing around 10 tests each. While this works well to cut the game into sections, I wish that they would’ve varied the areas a bit more, such as having the tutorial tests for each mechanic in one area then mixing up the tests for the remaining areas. The entire co-op campaign took us roughly 5 hours to complete, which is a decent length as it is more room to room challenges, rather than following a narrative like the single player.

What you don't see here is the emote where they tear eachothers heads off.....

TL;DR

In summary the game triumphs over the first in every single area, creating one of the most enjoyable games I have played, and with the co-op mode you have the added bonus of being able to argue over puzzle solutions with a friend while attempting to work together (which is a good thing), making a great addition to the single player campaign available. Although there will still be doubts of paying full price for what at least for myself was a 13 hour game with pretty much no replay value, I think that it makes up for it in character and pure enjoyment.

4/5

Silence....once again

Yeeeeeea, I realise that it's been I while since I posted the review but no worries it isn't entirely my fault! I have been bogged down with various things, such as exam revision, coursework completion and...... painting Warhammer 40K (it's a valid excuse!......promise)

Anyways since the PSN is back up now I plan to finish writing my Portal 2 review right after I complete the co-op campaign for it, hopefully it isn't too tough and I can knock it out pretty quick. So yea, sorry for taking so long, but by Monday I am free from my uni for a fair while, so the wheels should be moving again by then. Thanks a lot dudes.

Dissidia Duodecim Final Fantasy review

 

Dissidia Duodecim Final Fantasy (crazy long title, I know) is a fanboys wet dream, it incorporates many elements from the series’ rich past such as music, characters, themes and style and combines them into one neat and expansive fighting game package, which for many people is all they need to know to warrant a buy.

So, what exactly is Dissidia Duodecim? As I mentioned previously it’s a fighting game on the PSP, albeit not in the traditional sense. Unlike games such as Street Fighter or Tekken, you’re probably better off thinking of this to be a lot closer to Super Smash Brothers.

One reason for this comparison is because it contains a large roster of popular characters from the Final Fantasy series, with 2 or 3 characters (generally the main character and villain) from each numbered entry. For those who played the previous installment, there are six major new characters introduced in Duodecim, they are Lightning, Vann, Laguna, Yuna, Tifa and Kain, plus a couple more hidden characters.

The other reason I compare is that while the game itself incorporates many themes that are conventional to fighters such as one on one fighting where each player has to deplete the others health bar, this game takes a different approach to it completely and in the process creates a unique game experience.

The games mechanics basically work on two major concepts, bravery and HP, that characters have a set amount of, this leads into each character having a set of both bravery and HP attacks. The general idea of the game works as follows, by using bravery attacks you can do damage to your opponent’s bravery which increases your own in equal amounts, whereas when you use a HP attack you do damage to your opponents health that is equal to your own current bravery, once you have used a HP attack your bravery will then be reset to its base amount.

Confused? Well it’s actually much simpler in action than I am making it sound, and creates a very interesting concept for a fighting game, as you are constantly deciding whether to use the current bravery that you have stockpiled to launch an attack, or continue to risk building up your bravery and attempt an even larger attack on your opponent. During a fight you will also build up a meter that when maxed out lets you enter a state known as EX mode, this provides bonuses to your attacks and health regen and when a HP attack connects in this mode it launches into a finishing move that usually requires you to perform a mini game that often results in massive damage to your opponent. Add to this that you can dodge, block, wall run, rail slide, dash (both on the ground and in the air), plus new editions to the series such as assist attacks and EX breaks, all in relatively large 3D environments and you have what becomes a pleasantly deep and complex game.

After each fight your character gains experience and will eventually level up, just like a typical Final Fantasy game, with each new level comes new abilities and attacks that you can customise and select the ones you wish to use (very similar to the ability equip system employed in FFIX). I especially like the rate at which you level, as it’s not slow enough that the game becomes a grind, yet isn’t so fast that you can level each character to 100 in no time, they strike a very good balance and it greatly helps with the pacing of the game. There’s also a large amount of equipment and accessories that you can equip the characters with, as well as summons that perform a myriad of different things, such as reducing enemy bravery or guarding your own.

Content wise, Duodecim is phenomenal. The story mode alone is a lengthy affair as the main scenario took me around 14 hours to finish and once this has been completed more scenarios are unlocked, as well as other modes to play in, and this is just the single player modes, you can then carry your characters along with all the equipment and upgrades into multiplayer to challenge your friends.  So including the main story scenario along with all the extra modes, scenarios and multiplayer, there is a huge amount of content available to players, expect to spend many hours completing modes and collecting extra music, stages, characters and icons, you will not be done with this game in any short amount of time.

Speaking of story modes, the game retains the “chess board” style of progression of the first game in that you move around to encounter enemies and chests, although it has changed. You are now free to move around the board as much as you want, not limited by destiny points as you were previously, which I think is a welcome change. There are also new abilities to use on the board known as chain abilities, that when used will encounter all enemies that it comes in contact with, so you can chain large amount of enemies together which is risky, but leads to a larger payoff in Kupo points these come in a variety of forms such as straight chain which encounters enemies in a plus shape and cross chains which (shockingly!) have a cross shape. Also added is a classic Final Fantasy style world map, you move around this finding gates (that lead to the aforementioned "chess boards"), crystals that give board abilities, random enemies, treasure chests and Moogle shops, where you can spend Kupo points (acquired from the "chess boards") to buy new items.

The story that wraps the games together literally does just that, it’s not especially great and is a typical light vs darkness story that is there only to provide direction for each character, and to tie all of the characters into one storyline. Although despite this the storyline is still leagues ahead of most other fighting games out there and does the job that it’s intended for wonderfully.

One other awesome thing that I would like to mention is that once you complete the game you unlock the whole original story, which has been updated with the new mechanics introduced to Duodecim, this is great since you are essentially getting two games in one package, and anyone who missed out on the first game is getting one hell of an amazing deal.

TL;DR

While the concept of Dissidia Duodecim’s fighting mechanics may seem rather complex at first, the payoff of mastering the battle system and the sheer amount of content that is available makes this one of the most rewarding games that is available on the PSP, or even across all platforms. This rings even more truely if you are a fan of Final Fantasy, as there are many instances of fan service and references to past games, along with what may as well be the Final Fantasy greatest hits soundtrack. For anyone who owns a PSP I highly recommend this as it’s a must-buy for the system.

5/5