Tag Archives: Lyndsey Hicks

LittleBigPlanet — 3Q2015 issue

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Pho­tos cour­tesy of Gamespot.com

A class in mas­ter crafting

There are always games that come with a cer­tain amount of hype. These are the titles that every­one raves about but wind up on your nev­er-end­ing pile of shame. You’ll prob­a­bly buy it but nev­er actu­al­ly get around to play­ing it or play­ing it long enough to see what all the fuss is about. Lit­tleBig­Plan­et is one of those such games.
Quirky is the first adjec­tive I’d use to describe the plat­form­ing game fea­tur­ing Sack­boy, an anthro­po­mor­phic crea­ture that’s fea­tured front and cen­ter at the heart of the game. Sack­boy can be Sack­girl as well, and that’s part of the charm of the game. It can be what­ev­er you want it to be and do just about any­thing you want it to do, in the name of get­ting from point A to point B. The quirk­i­ness comes in the fact that the envi­ron­ment in which it does so is all about Play-Share-Cre­ate. The lev­els of Lit­tleBig­Plan­et are meant to be user-cre­at­ed and shared for online play among the LBP com­mu­ni­ty, so the depth of the game is imme­di­ate­ly obvi­ous and worth the price of admis­sion alone.
Con­trol­ling Sackboy/girl is sim­ple, yet not with­out its prob­lems. It’s much like play­ing any plat­former of the past 20 years and the con­trol scheme is sim­ple and intu­itive in let­ting you fig­ure out what to do and how to apply it lat­er. Where it fal­ters is the jump­ing mechan­ics. While obvi­ous and sim­ple, the jump­ing does feel slight­ly off and floaty, which is a prob­lem in a game that relies on that mechan­ic to car­ry it. It’s annoy­ing to have to re-do sec­tions of a lev­el sole­ly because of a missed jump, and that detracts from the core experience.
While the mechan­ics could use tweak­ing, not much else needs work. The sound­track is fan­tas­tic and fits the game per­fect­ly. It’s a good mix­ture of indie folk and pop, and it imme­di­ate­ly reminds of the bril­liance that is Kata­mari Dama­cy. The graph­ics are also in the realm of per­fect and evoke a cer­tain sort of charm that begs more playthroughs just to see what devel­op­er Media Mol­e­cule could come up with next. It’s breath­tak­ing and sim­plis­tic, like a child’s world come to life, and begs to be admired.
Lit­tleBig­Plan­et is one of the few games of the past few years that demands to be played and war­rants pur­chase of sys­tem just to play it. If you haven’t both­ered to play it by now, you need to stop what you’re doing and get on it. It has its minor prob­lems but they’re noth­ing to keep you from enjoy­ing what’s con­sid­ered a mas­ter­piece. It’s worth every moment of its Play-Share-Cre­ate moniker.

DDR Max Dance Dance Revolution 6th Mix — 2Q2015 issue

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A new era of DDR

Let’s have a quick his­to­ry review, shall we? Kon­a­mi cre­at­ed the Dance Dance Rev­o­lu­tion series in 1998 and by 2002, there were at least six entries in the main series. I’d gath­er that this meant DDR was pret­ty pop­u­lar, but you would nev­er hear Kon­a­mi say that too loud. At some point, how­ev­er, some­one real­ized the mag­ic that was DDR need­ed to come into the mod­ern era. So, every­thing that was relat­ed to the first five entries in the series — with the excep­tion of the song wheel and dif­fi­cul­ty cat­e­gories — was thrown out in favor of a com­plete over­haul. DDR Max was the result and with it comes a mixed bag of mod­ern and old DDR.

Graph­i­cal­ly, Max rep­re­sents the begin­ning of a new era. Sure, it resem­bles cur­rent DDR games because they use the song wheel, but the col­ors became a lit­tle brighter and the lit­tle touch­es used to illus­trate the dif­fer­ent dif­fi­cul­ties and cat­e­gories are empha­sized more. The inter­face is much eas­i­er to read, though the addi­tion of the Groove Radar still has some ways to go here. It’s not exact­ly help­ful in pro­vid­ing digestible infor­ma­tion that helps make quick informed deci­sions. That’s a com­plaint that still stands today, so much so that I tend to ignore the meter alto­geth­er. Also, the foot rat­ing is miss­ing and song dif­fi­cul­ty rat­ing num­bers have yet to come (that’s not until Max 2). But the song wheel has been fresh­ened up so it looks a lot bet­ter and is a lit­tle more palatable.

Musi­cal­ly, the selec­tion is among the best in the series. The one thing about Max that’s notable about the music is the lack of a Para­noia mix. For a series trade­mark song, its absence is imme­di­ate­ly notice­able, and quite frankly, drags the mix down a few notch­es. There’s a few throw away songs like Share My Love and Dive, but over­all it’s quite a few excel­lent choic­es thrown togeth­er to make a good song list. The vari­ety is nice and it feels like a good fresh start for a series that had a lot of repeats in the first five games.

I don’t go back and play 6th Mix often, most­ly because I can’t deal with a lack of Para­noia in my life at this point. As a DDR old head and one who owns the Amer­i­can ver­sion as well as the Japan­ese ver­sion, I applaud the change up that Kon­a­mi pur­sued. It was a bold move that paid off in the long run: DDR still looks like a lot like this form, even with at least eight more games under its belt as a series. Some­times, a change in pace is need­ed to keep the dance groove going.

DanceDance Rev­o­lu­tion trivia

* DDR Max is the first game to fea­ture a 10-foot dif­fi­cul­ty song. Max 300 was offi­cial­ly the first 10-foot­er in the his­to­ry of the series, though it would­n’t receive its offi­cial rat­ing until Max 2 was released.

* Max 300, the boss song of the mix, fea­tures 573 steps in its Heavy dif­fi­cul­ty chart. 573 is known as the Kon­a­mi num­ber, a num­ber that relates to the roman­ized pro­nun­ci­a­tion of the com­pa­ny’s name.

* Max is the first DDR game to fea­ture the Light/Standard/Heavy dif­fi­cul­ty scheme, dance point sys­tem, speed mods, Extra Stage/One More Extra Stage and freeze arrows. The dif­fi­cul­ty scheme would stay in place until the release of DDR Super­NO­VA in 2006.

* Two songs intro­duced in the mix, Flash in the Night and Fol­low Me, are the only two songs in the series that do not have an offi­cial foot rat­ing. These two songs were intro­duced in 6th Mix, which is the only mix that does not use the foot rat­ing sys­tem. They have nev­er appeared in lat­er mix­es, which gave offi­cial Kon­a­mi num­bered rat­ings to all songs.

Samurai Shodown Anthology — 2Q2015 issue

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A com­plete clas­sic collection

The fight­ing game indus­try has always thrived on the very con­cept that makes a title in the genre: com­pe­ti­tion. There have been fabled rivals through­out the entire lifes­pan of the genre, with quite a few pre­tenders to throne. How­ev­er, SNK Play­more was one of the orig­i­na­tors and the pack­age of games with­in Samu­rai Shodown Anthol­o­gy shows they weren’t play­ing around in the ’90s in the slightest.

It’s pret­ty safe to say that Samu­rai Shodown was nev­er a pre­tender. It’s got all the mark­ings of a mar­quee series, some­thing that could car­ry a com­pa­ny far in the worst of times and keep eyes on the prod­uct. At its core, it’s a game about samu­rai and oth­er war­riors fight­ing to the death. What sets it apart from the com­pe­ti­tion — even from with­in its own sta­ble with brethren King of Fight­ers — is its pro­duc­tion val­ues. The games have always been gor­geous and there’s a lev­el of detail that has­n’t been seen in oth­er series except for the likes of Tekken. With­in the col­lec­tion of that is Anthol­o­gy, all of the nat­u­ral­ly gor­geous art­work and lev­el of detail is on dis­play. It’s impor­tant that this be empha­sized because that’s what Samu­rai Shodown is about at the end of the day: Samu­rai fight­ing to the death while look­ing fantastic.

The lev­el of detail extends to the sound­track as well. In all games in the pack­age, the sound­track is an excel­lent con­cer­to of Japan­ese bam­boo flute and shamisen. This may not float your boat, but for a pack­age that focus­es on samu­rai, this is an excel­lent choice to make up the back­ing soundtrack.

Samu­rai Shodown Anthol­o­gy is per­fect col­lec­tion of fight­ing games, most­ly because it’s good to have the entire set of games on one disc with­out hav­ing to own infe­ri­or ver­sions of noto­ri­ous­ly arcade-per­fect games. These are exact­ly what you fell in love with in the arcade and they’re all in one place, lov­ing­ly includ­ed at the orig­i­nal def­i­n­i­tion. If you’ve nev­er expe­ri­enced the hype that was Samu­rai Shodown, now’s an excel­lent chance to do so. Pre­pared to be wowed.

2UP EVALUATION

Final­ly, a clas­sic game that start­ed the weapon-based fight­ing genre is back on the PlaySta­tion 2. For decades, SNK Play­more con­tin­ued this series with not one but six titles, empha­siz­ing Japan’s adap­tion of duels. Uti­liz­ing var­i­ous char­ac­ters and locales, Samu­rai Shodown gives gamers a break from the Tekken/Street Fight­er clones on the mar­ket, and shows a brief slice of life in medieval Japan dur­ing which samu­rai fought under the code of Bushido.

I was allowed for a brief moment to not only act out a samu­rai fan­ta­sy, but also to release any anger in a healthy way. While the mechan­ics take some prac­tice to become famil­iar with, the music, char­ac­ters and graph­ics are top-notch and the sto­ry is sim­ple. My only com­plaint is that there’s one cheap-shot char­ac­ter that loves to pounce. For all of the Soul­Cal­ibur clones flood­ing the mar­ket these days, I proud­ly say Samu­rai Shodown Anthol­o­gy has great replay val­ue, and it DEMANDS a space in any gamer’s library. I’m glad that SNK Play­more had the wis­dom to keep this series alive from the begin­ning, instead of a com­pa­ny that relies on milk­ing their cash cow to the bone. Well done, SNK Play­more. Well done.

Tatsunoko vs. Capcom — 2Q2015 issue

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Tat­sunoko takes on Cap­com in Wii brawl

Every­one who reads GI knows that I’m an otaku. I’m also a big fan of clas­sic ani­me that has set the stan­dard for today’s ani­me. Most of the awe­some-lev­el ani­me old and new has came from Japan’s world-renown Tat­sunoko Pro­duc­tions. So, when I heard that Cap­com was reviv­ing its “Ver­sus” series, I thought that Cap­com was run­ning out of gam­ing ideas. That was until it was announced that Tat­sunoko would play a major role. I thought it was a joke, but I was in shock when the rumors were true and thus the ques­tion came about: What would hap­pen if Cap­com’s heroes met Tat­sunoko’s heroes in a gam­ing for­est? Tat­sunoko vs. Cap­com: Ulti­mate All-Stars for the Wii answered that ques­tion for me.

Devel­oped by Eight­ing and pub­lished by Cap­com, Tat­sunoko vs. Cap­com is a 3D game that places var­i­ous char­ac­ters from both com­pa­nies’ top-sell­ing series into a exclu­sive fight­ing game treat. Inspired by the Mar­vel vs. Cap­com series, TvC allows duos from either Cap­com’s or Tat­sunoko’s ros­ters to fight against oth­er char­ac­ters with the win­ning team going on to face Yami from Cap­com’s adven­ture title Oka­mi. If you like to mix a Cap­com char­ac­ter with a Tat­sunoko char­ac­ter, that’s also pos­si­ble as a way to give the game­play more vari­ety. In addi­tion to the orig­i­nal arcade mode, there are sur­vival and time attack modes that allow you to test your skills via lim­it­ed health regen­er­a­tion and defeat­ing your oppo­nents in the short­est time pos­si­ble. An addi­tion­al fea­ture includes a mini-game shoot­er called “Ulti­mate All-Shooters.”

Con­trol is han­dled with three but­tons, which great­ly sim­pli­fies the learn­ing curve. It’s sim­pli­fied even more thanks to the Wii’s Clas­sic con­troller, Game­Cube con­troller, third-par­ty arcade sticks and the reg­u­lar Wii remote. You will love the char­ac­ter ros­ter con­sist­ing of each com­pa­nies’ top fran­chis­es such as Street Fight­er, Rival Schools, Viewti­ful Joe, Lost Plan­et, Darkstalkers/Vampire and Mega Man for Cap­com while Tat­sunoko is rep­re­sent­ed by Karas, Tekka­man, G‑Force and Yat­ter­man. There are oth­er char­ac­ters that can be unlocked via use of mon­ey (Zen­ny) earned in each game, which also will allow pur­chase of alter­nate end­ings, cos­tume changes and oth­er unlock­able surprises. 

The music is top-notch in each stage, but the intro and end­ings songs are fun to sing and dance to. In par­tic­u­lar, the Gesellschaft (Clear Skies) and the Dai­go Tem­ple (Cher­ry Blos­som) stages are favorites.

Tat­sunoko vs. Cap­com: Ulti­mate All-Stars is an answered prayer for fans of fight­ing games and ani­me. As a first-time con­nois­seur of this type of crossover, TvC is delight­ful game expe­ri­ence. As an otaku gamer, Cap­com can work on my damn nerves at times with their no-thought deci­sions, but in this case, they worked with a renown ani­me com­pa­ny to bring a qual­i­ty prod­uct to a sys­tem that was in SORE need of well-round­ed games. Now only if Cap­com can make amends with Kei­ji Ina­fu­ne. They might be respect­ed once more.

2UP EVALUATION

All of the raz­zle daz­zle hype aside, Tat­sunoko vs. Cap­com is some­thing I want to play. I’m already a fan of most Cap­com fight­ing prop­er­ties, and I love the Ver­sus series, so I’m going to play what­ev­er they come up with next to join forces with and cre­ate mag­ic. In this case, it’s ani­me relat­ed as well, so there’s a win­ning com­bi­na­tion all the way around.

I did­n’t know much about Tat­sunoko before play­ing the game, but after spend­ing a lit­tle time immersed in the super sen­tai world, I learned that it’s some­thing that’s com­pelling to return to time and time again. Nice mechan­ics, an inter­est­ing ros­ter and gor­geous atten­tion to detail with the envi­ron­ments and sound­track make it a nice pack­age. My only gripes are that the sto­ry does­n’t real­ly make a whole lot of sense (real­ly, Yami from Oka­mi, Cap­com? That’s it?), and that not know­ing that much about Tat­sunoko actu­al­ly works against me. Oth­er than that, there’s isn’t a rea­son why I would­n’t play this con­stant­ly, even if it is a Wii exclu­sive. That’s just anoth­er rea­son to go out and buy the now-defunct console.

TvC triv­ia

* The orig­i­nal title for TvC was Tat­sunoko vs. Cap­com: Cross Gen­er­a­tion of Heroes.

* While the game devel­op­ers had the OK to add any char­ac­ter from Tat­sunoko or Cap­com, Tat­sunoko did deny some choic­es because of licens­ing issues; orig­i­nal­ly, Phoenix Wright was sug­gest­ed, but was pulled because of dif­fi­cul­ties with find­ing prop­er attacks for him.

* Most video game review­ers such as G4’s Adam Sessler and IGN’s John Tana­ka were doubt­ful about an out­side-of-Japan release because of Tat­sunoko’s final approved ros­ter of char­ac­ters. They were licensed in oth­er coun­tries, despite being owned by Tat­sunoko, and the lev­el of recog­ni­tion of some char­ac­ters was a concern.

* As of 2012, Cap­com USA senior vice pres­i­dent Chris­t­ian Svens­son has stat­ed that Cap­com could no longer sell the game in phys­i­cal or dig­i­tal form because licens­ing rights with Tat­sunoko expired.

Midway Arcade Treasures 2 — 1Q2015 issue

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A most­ly for­get­table trea­sure trove

We’re going to use the term trea­sure trove loose­ly when I refer to Mid­way Arcade Trea­sures 2. Sure, there are some dia­monds in the mine that was once Mid­way and its arcade hits. But some­times, as demon­strat­ed ably in this pack­age, Mid­way dug just a lit­tle too deep to find things that I would­n’t trade for a seashell and some glass beads.

Mid­way Arcade Trea­sures 2 fol­lows in the vein of the pre­vi­ous title, min­ing for hits out of the ver­i­ta­ble Taj Mahal that is Mid­way’s cat­a­log of arcade favorites. The sec­ond go-round imme­di­ate­ly catch­es the eye — and wal­let — for ver­sions of Mor­tal Kom­bat II and Mor­tal Kom­bat 3, arguably the cen­ter­piece in the entire show. Fol­low­ing up those pieces are less­er hits such as Pri­mal Rage, APB and Ram­page World Tour. The entire com­pi­la­tion is made up of 20 titles, which is a bar­gain for the amount of games you’re get­ting. Whether you want to play all 20 titles or not is the ques­tion and it’s eas­i­ly answered quick­ly: No.

A few of the titles includ­ed imme­di­ate­ly dredge up hor­ri­ble mem­o­ries. These drecks of mod­ern gam­ing soci­ety have been res­ur­rect­ed, and I’m not exact­ly sure for whose ben­e­fit. Hard Dri­vin’, men­tioned and dis­sect­ed in GI’s hor­ri­ble games pod­cast of yes­ter­year, is the worst offend­er of the bunch. I have no earth­ly idea who thought this was an arcade clas­sic and why it need­ed to be thrust upon the mass­es again. It was a hor­ri­ble game to begin with and deserves no fur­ther dis­cus­sion or inclu­sion to rean­i­mate it from the depths of hell where it belongs (Edi­tor’s Note: Fun fac­toid — Hard Dri­vin’ pro­vid­ed the basis for GI’s Tor­ture of the Quar­ter col­umn). N.A.R.C. also war­rants a men­tion as a title to avoid, as well as Pri­mal Rage. Let’s face it, Pri­mal Rage was tout­ed as com­pe­ti­tion for the likes of Mor­tal Kom­bat, Street Fight­er and Killer Instinct back in the day, but no one with any sense ever took it seri­ous­ly. The game does­n’t inspire any new feel­ings of doing so after 20 years.

With the inclu­sion of hideous titles, there will be some con­trol issues. The good news is that most titles play like they did when first released. The bad news is that some “improve­ments” have done just the oppo­site of their inten­tion. Let’s take, for exam­ple, Mor­tal Kom­bat II. Because of “new-and-improved” con­trol map­ping, it is impos­si­ble to fight hid­den char­ac­ter Smoke in all ver­sions except the PC ver­sion, and it takes a patch to fix that. That drags the over­all expe­ri­ence down con­sid­er­ably. Con­tin­u­ing with the Mor­tal Kom­bat exam­ple, Mor­tal Kom­bat 3 runs just like the arcade. Except, the arcade ver­sion of MK 3 was ter­ri­ble, with a lot of bugs and glitch­es that neces­si­tat­ed the much-bet­ter Ulti­mate MK3. It’s a mixed bag: On the one hand you’re get­ting improved con­trols and mod­ern advance­ments, but on the oth­er hand, these changes aren’t exact­ly welcome.
What is wel­come, how­ev­er, is the inclu­sion of the behind-the-scenes mate­r­i­al. Doc­u­men­taries and mak­ing-of mate­ri­als are includ­ed as bonus fea­tures for a few games, most notably Mor­tal Kom­bat II and Mor­tal Kom­bat 3. If you were an MK fanat­ic, these are inter­est­ing looks at the fran­chise at the height of its ini­tial pop­u­lar­i­ty. If you’re won­der­ing what the hype was about, it’s a great look at the ori­gin of the series and where ideas and mythol­o­gy were cre­at­ed. The bonus mate­ri­als for all games includ­ed are worth buy­ing if you’re into the arcade scene and its history.

Whether you deem this col­lec­tion worth your time depends on how ded­i­cat­ed you are to the preser­va­tion of the U.S. arcade scene. If you’re a purist and you care about obscure games such as Wiz­ard of Wor and Xybots, by all means go out and search for the trea­sure. Oth­er­wise, let this boo­by-trapped box stay hidden.

Harvest Moon: Back to Nature — 4Q2014 issue

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A life that’s sec­ond nature

A life of farm­ing is nev­er sim­ple. Ask any farmer and they’ll tell you: It’s a tough, tough job that requires before-dawn ris­ing and at-dusk retir­ing that repeats itself over the course of many a day. There’s also the fear of Moth­er Nature wreck­ing your liveli­hood and out­side forces such as oth­er humans steal­ing from you and run­ning you into ruin. But, thank­ful­ly, you can avoid all of that and expe­ri­ence the joy of liv­ing off the land at its finest, dig­i­tal­ly if you so choose, thanks to Nat­sume’s Har­vest Moon: Back to Nature. And, if you play your cards right and take time to pull your­self away from dig­ging up your ground, you can find your­self a cer­tain Mrs. to share the farm­ing duties with as well.

Back to Nature is the best game in the long-run­ning series. I say this with con­fi­dence because it’s one of the only titles in the series to have been remade mul­ti­ple times with the same set­up, just dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters. Every mod­ern Har­vest Moon title takes its cue from Back to Nature, as well. The main goal, which stays the same through­out the series, is to take a farm that’s fall­en into dis­re­pair and make it into a prof­itable bas­tion of hard work and suc­cess. Your char­ac­ter works to accom­plish this by pulling up his boot­straps and putting in a lit­tle elbow grease with lit­tle to no help from any­one else, aside from the gnomes he meets tucked away in the crease of the town.

Speak­ing of the town, you’re tasked with meet­ing folks and forg­ing some type of rela­tion­ship with them so that you are con­sid­ered neigh­bor­ly. The town’s set sched­ule makes for inter­est­ing inter­ac­tions and a type of sched­ule plan­ning not unlike Ani­mal Cross­ing. While you’re work­ing to save your farm and chat­ting up the towns­folk, you’re giv­en a third task of find­ing a suit­able lass in town to wife up. If you can man­age to put a ring on it by woo­ing your intend­ed (there are five love­ly ladies that you can choose from to pur­sue with vary­ing likes and dis­likes), you’re all but guar­an­teed to earn your place in the town and be allowed to stay.

Back to Nature is deep, extreme­ly deep. So much so that it takes quite a bit of time just get­ting the farm up and run­ning in a prop­er man­ner that you might make mon­ey to sus­tain it. And that’s mis­sion accom­plished for Back to Nature: Get you involved and think­ing hard about what it is you want to accom­plish in your town. That lev­el of inter­ac­tion is sim­ple to begin with, and with decent con­trols it does­n’t get too much hard­er to main­tain. It’s one of the things that I love about Back to Nature. It does­n’t press too hard about mechan­ics and there’s a wealth of infor­ma­tion with­in the game about crops and car­ing for ani­mals that can help you main­tain a com­fort­able way of life with­in the game. But some­times, the lev­el of com­fort you want isn’t always with­in reach.

While I praise the con­trols, the effect isn’t always ben­e­fi­cial for you. The game is hard in the begin­ning, some­times too hard for its own good. Take, for exam­ple, the fact that you arrive in town with basi­cal­ly noth­ing but the clothes on your back. You’re expect­ed to suc­ceed and set­tle down there but you have noth­ing tying you there very much. What’s to say that your play­er char­ac­ter does­n’t decide that it’s too much, packs up shop and goes home? It’s not very real­is­tic with some of the things you’re tasked with doing, and start­ing with absolute­ly no mon­ey and try­ing to rebuild a farm is impos­si­ble with no cash flow. 

My next prob­lem comes with the cash oppor­tu­ni­ties afford­ed in the game. With­out cheat­ing, it is near­ly impos­si­ble to become suc­cess­ful and well off. This leads into a larg­er prob­lem with the way time is struc­tured in the game as well. While the time aspect has to be dif­fer­ent than real time, an entire day should not pass with­in near­ly 30 min­utes. It’s extreme­ly hard to get much accom­plished in the ear­ly going and it demands that you must have a rou­tine in place quick­ly or risk being left behind. Sure, you’re giv­en a year or two to get things togeth­er but it’s hard to make things work on the farm, court a girl and par­tic­i­pate in town activ­i­ties all at once in the short amount of time that pass­es as a day. 

Cou­ple it with the sched­ule giv­en to the town and there’s a time man­age­ment prob­lem just wait­ing to hap­pen. The con­trols some­times leave a lot to be desired, too. More than once I’ve had a buck­et that I’ve filled with good­ies from my plot of land emp­ty just far away enough from a bin that it went wast­ed. And more than once I’ve been angered by loss of income because it’s on the ground and not able to be reclaimed. But that’s a fact of life in Har­vest Moon titles, I suppose.

Oth­er­wise, Back to Nature is a great sim­u­la­tion of farm life. It’s a good way to play a dat­ing sim and life sim all at once with very lit­tle con­se­quence for poor choic­es. Get­ting back to nature is an idea all of us need to think of at least once, even if it is to dig­i­tal­ly pair off and make a fast dollar.

Back to basics

Back to Nature, released in 1999 for the PlaySta­tion One, has been remade sev­er­al times. The first remake was released for Game Boy Advance as Har­vest Moon: Friends of Min­er­al Town in 2003. Friends of Min­er­al Town was expand­ed with a side sto­ry, More Friends of Min­er­al Town — which allows play­ing from a female farmer’s per­spec­tive — in 2005. These were lat­er port­ed as Har­vest Moon: Boy & Girl for PSP in 2005.

ChuChu Rocket! — 4Q2014 issue

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Pho­tos cour­tesy of Gamefaqs.com

An epic cat and mouse game

Cats in rock­ets try­ing to kill mice. As well as being weird, the age-old con­cept of a cat-and-mouse game is sur­pris­ing­ly addic­tive. In the form of the Dream­cast’s ChuChu Rock­et, the con­cept man­ages to jump the bar­ri­er of weird and branch into the realm of entertaining.

The game of cat-and-mouse is sim­ple: Lead mice to safe­ty in your rock­et with well-placed arrows while avoid­ing cats that oth­er play­ers will send to hunt the mice. The more mice you have left alive at the end, the bet­ter. It’s not hard to get start­ed once you have that basic under­stand­ing of the game, and it quick­ly becomes an addict­ing exer­cise of fran­tic fun to keep mice alive.

The fun thing about ChuChu Rock­et is the sheer ran­dom­ness of every­thing hap­pen­ing on the play­ing field. There are so many fac­tors that can affect your mice total at the end of a round that it’s impos­si­ble to win by tal­ent at mov­ing rodents alone. One must con­sid­er the fact that only three arrows can be placed by a char­ac­ter at any giv­en time. With lev­el lay­out also tak­en into con­sid­er­a­tion, the idea that you can be in the lead for five sec­onds and that be enough to win is a real pos­si­bil­i­ty. Throw in the pow­er-up aspect and con­stant­ly chang­ing con­di­tions of the match area and there is a real recipe here for dis­as­ter dis­guised as fun.

It’s a good thing that the game is so fun to play because the graph­ics and the music sure aren’t going to draw you in by them­selves. The game looks like a 1999 game, which isn’t to say it’s hor­ri­ble, but it isn’t pret­ty, either. The graph­ics date them­selves might­i­ly, but that’s not real­ly any­thing to be ashamed of, since ChuChu Rock­et does­n’t exact­ly need to get by on the qual­i­ty of the scenery. The music is noth­ing to write home about, and frankly, I played with it turned off for the major­i­ty of the time that I’ve owned the game. It real­ly adds noth­ing to the over­all expe­ri­ence and after a short time, it becomes rather irri­tat­ing. But, like the graph­ics, it isn’t real­ly what you came here for.

What you’re going to take away from ChuChu Rock­et depends on what you’re look­ing for. In this day and age, 15 years after its orig­i­nal release, you can take a sol­id par­ty game from this that’s a high­ly quirky title wor­thy of many replays or you can see a weird 15-year-old game about cats chas­ing mice with ques­tion­able game con­di­tions attached. Rat infes­ta­tion issues aside, ChuChu Rock­et is a great rat race into nostalgia.

Injustice: Gods Among Us — 4Q2014 issue

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Pho­tos cour­tesy of Polygon.com

Jus­tice takes a new form

There have been a few DC Comics fight­ing games that have tak­en advan­tage of its vari­able super­hero and metahu­man ros­ter. Jus­tice League Task Force and Mor­tal Kom­bat vs. DC Uni­verse are among those that come to mind. And because of MK vs. DC Uni­verse, brought to you pre-Mid­way implo­sion by the com­pa­ny that cre­at­ed that step in the direc­tion of redemp­tion, DC was able to fore­see the fruits of mak­ing a decent game based on their prop­er­ties. Enter Injus­tice: Gods Among Us.

Let’s get straight to the point: Mar­vel has had the mar­ket cor­nered on fight­ing games involv­ing super­heroes for some time now, thanks to the resource­ful­ness and shady under­tones that are Cap­com. So, for Injus­tice to stand a chance in the sud­den­ly re-crowd­ed fight­ing game are­na, it had to be some­thing spe­cial. Thank­ing those gods among us, it is.

Injus­tice plays much like the 2011 reboot of Mor­tal Kom­bat. The com­bat sys­tem is a lot like it in tone and rhythm and the ani­ma­tion style and fram­ing is much like it as well. If you can play that incar­na­tion of MK, more than like­ly you’re going to be able to pick up Injus­tice and run with it in a few short hours. And much like the MK reboot, there’s much more under the pret­ty coat of nos­tal­gia. Injus­tice is deep, with plen­ty to keep the fight­ing game crowd com­ing back for more and just enough to pique the inter­est of casu­als who don’t know much about fight­ing games but want to see who would win in a Bat­man vs. Super­man battle.

That’s some­thing else that’s going to draw in even the unini­ti­at­ed: the name recog­ni­tion. Yes, lots of folks now know who the mer­ry band of mutants are over at Mar­vel, but mil­lions more know the names Bat­man, Jok­er, Super­man, the Flash, Lex Luthor and Won­der Woman. That instant brand recog­ni­tion is what com­pels a cer­tain part of you to come back and learn more about what’s real­ly a good game. While you might not know who Dooms­day is or why the Omega Sanc­tion is instant­ly fatal to most liv­ing beings, you know the names behind the main char­ac­ters for play, or at least most of them, by sight alone.

That brand recog­ni­tion plays a large part in why the game is suc­cess­ful in its mis­sion: The pack­age around it does­n’t have to be slick and beau­ti­ful, but it is. And it’s enough to make the price to play worth it. Tak­ing into account the work that Nether­Realm Stu­dios pre­vi­ous­ly com­plet­ed, Injus­tice is quite the step up graph­i­cal­ly. Every back­ground is gor­geous and lav­ish in the game that’s already beau­ti­ful from the out­set. The graph­ics step up from MK vs. DCU in a way that have to be seen to be believed. And while it does­n’t seem like the game could get any bet­ter look­ing, then there’s the char­ac­ter mod­els. Every char­ac­ter is accu­rate, down to the details from sto­ry­line arcs such as Cri­sis on Infi­nite Earths dif­fer­ences. How­ev­er, while the graph­ics wow, the music isn’t great. It’s not ter­ri­ble, either, but it’s not exact­ly turn-up-the-vol­ume qual­i­ty. It’s just there, which is high­ly unusu­al for the team known for pro­duc­ing out­stand­ing sound­tracks in the MK series.

I may not be able to tell you exact­ly who would win in a fight between Dark­seid and Black Adam, but I can make the point that Injus­tice does the DC uni­verse quite a bit of, well, jus­tice when it comes to a qual­i­ty fight­ing game fea­tur­ing the Dark Knight, Boy Won­der and Man of Steel.

Which ver­sion to buy?

There are two ver­sions to choose from: reg­u­lar edi­tion and ulti­mate edi­tion. Ulti­mate edi­tion, while cost­ing con­sid­er­ably more, is the bet­ter bar­gain because it fea­tures all of the released DLC and char­ac­ter skins. It also comes with Mor­tal Kom­bat com­bat­ant and stal­wart Scor­pi­on as a playable character.

NBA Jam — 3Q2014 issue

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Pho­to cour­tesy of Gamefaqs.com

The old king of the court

NBA Jam was — and still is — an expe­ri­ence. No, that’s not some pre­pos­ter­ous fluff dreamed up by an Nation­al Bas­ket­ball Asso­ci­a­tion maven like yours tru­ly. It was tru­ly an expe­ri­ence because if you were around at the time that Jam hit the streets, you’d remem­ber the sheer amount of hype that sur­round­ed the arcade release. You’d also remem­ber the hype that came home with it. Was it jus­ti­fied hype? Yes and no.

You see, Jam rep­re­sent­ed the start of the exag­ger­at­ed sports game era, the type of game where the play­er ani­ma­tions were over the top and the action just as extreme. Throw in a pletho­ra of secrets — like play­ing as Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton — and the hype went into over­drive. The game isn’t bad and it most­ly lived up to its billing. The sim­ple set­up of two-on-two bas­ket­ball and fast-break bas­ket­ball helped cer­tain­ly, and the ani­ma­tion isn’t bad at all. The play­er inter­ac­tion is where it most­ly suc­ceeds, actu­al­ly. At the time,

Pho­to cour­tesy of NIntendolife.com

there was no oth­er place to get the kind of play that Jam offers: Crazy dunks, the abil­i­ty to be on fire from great shoot­ing and street ball-type rules. It’s that offer­ing that made it a phe­nom­e­nal success.

Jam does­n’t stum­ble in its race to be an in-your-face baller expe­ri­ence. That street ball play­er inter­ac­tion means you don’t have to learn much about the game to suc­ceed and play well. The con­trol is sim­ple yet has a lay­er of depth that means any­one can do well at any skill lev­el. The atmos­phere could be a lit­tle bet­ter with a bet­ter sound­track, but what will make you take notice is the announc­er. If there’s any­thing you will remem­ber about the game, it’s Tim Kitzrow shout­ing to the top of his lungs that a man is “on fire” or “BOOMSHAKALAKA.”

The graph­ics, like the sound­track, are noth­ing to get excit­ed about. There’s a sta­t­ic crowd except for the court­side folk, and then there’s the play­ers. Jam pop­u­lar­ized the over-exag­ger­at­ed look for play­ers, and it cer­tain­ly had its uses. It’s not out of place for Jam, and it brings a cer­tain atmos­phere to the action that Jam ben­e­fits from.

If there’s ever a rea­son to play NBA Jam, find it in the car­toon­ish action, sound and look. That’s where the fun is, and the main rea­sons why the game suc­ceed­ed in liv­ing up to the hype (most­ly) that broke back­boards in the old­en days of 1993.

SSX Tricky — 3Q2014 issue

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Pho­tos cour­tesy of MobyGames.com

Grab your gear and hit the slopes

SSX can get a lit­tle … well … Tricky. OK, yes, I went for the easy joke, but it’s one that can be made with a sol­id title in SSX Tricky. Tricky tends to take the best things about the SSX fran­chise and make them bet­ter. And that’s bet­ter for every­one because snow­board­ing games of the time weren’t exact­ly fresh­ly pow­dered experiences.

Tricky set­tles into its role as a snow­board­ing sim­u­la­tor with slick visu­als and an added bonus of inter­est­ing char­ac­ters. The eas­i­est way to describe play­ing Tricky is that it’s you ver­sus the moun­tain, and well, some­times you ver­sus the oth­er char­ac­ters ver­sus the moun­tain. While the World Cir­cuit mode is tout­ed as a main attrac­tion — and it is cer­tain­ly is for sev­er­al rea­sons — the mode that does the most for me is Free Ride. There’s noth­ing quite like run­ning down the tracks and pulling off tricks with­out oth­er char­ac­ters to annoy you. The char­ac­ters aren’t real­ly that annoy­ing, and the rival­ry sys­tem is fun, but I pre­ferred my soli­tude while learn­ing the game and Prac­tice and Free Ride pro­vid­ed that easily.

Those slick visu­als are also on dis­play through­out the dif­fer­ent modes, and it imme­di­ate­ly sets the game apart from its com­pe­ti­tion of the time. The game flat-out looks great on the Game­Cube, and the oth­er con­sole ver­sions looked great, too. The Game­Cube ver­sion has an inter­est­ing con­trol scheme that lends itself to rolling down the slopes, and it’s intu­itive and becomes sec­ond nature as you become more com­fort­able pulling off var­i­ous tricks. For that increas­ing lev­el of com­fort, you are reward­ed with big­ger and bet­ter items that should help you improve as well as make you look a lit­tle bet­ter on the track. It’s that dri­ve to unlock these good­ies and tracks that keeps you com­ing back to Tricky.

That’s all along­side the sound­track, which is excel­lent, too. There are a few vocal pieces with the instru­men­tal tracks for the dif­fer­ent lev­els, and all are appro­pri­ate for the atmos­phere EA wants to con­vey. In par­tic­u­lar, the remix of Run DMC’s mas­sive hit “Tricky” is the high­light — as it should be. If it’s the main theme of the game, it should stand out, which it man­ages to do so. It nev­er gets old to hear the trio’s 1986 hit sam­pled and remixed (editor’s note: ’80s rap nev­er gets old, in any sit­u­a­tion) while throw­ing down mas­sive tricks on a treach­er­ous moun­tain. And, believe it or not, the voice act­ing adds to the game as well. Usu­al­ly, a ful­ly famous all-star cast of voice actors pro­duces mixed results. How­ev­er, Tricky is an excep­tion to that rule. Folks like Lucy Liu, Oliv­er Platt, Patri­cia Velasquez and Bil­ly Zane deliv­er sol­id results.

With three oth­er sequels and a reboot in 2012, Tricky has had the chal­lenge of stand­ing out in a crowd­ed library of titles fea­tur­ing snow­board­ing. But it’s not that hard to do when it’s got good mechan­ics and great atmos­phere, a rather tricky feat to accomplish.