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Dengeki Bunko Fighting Climax — 3Q2020 issue

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Ani­me fight­er cre­ates clash of titans

If you’re a fight­ing game enthu­si­ast like myself, you’re hap­py to see the com­mu­ni­ty enjoy­ing main­stream suc­cess now in the esports land­scape. For many years, it was rel­e­gat­ed to a fringe activ­i­ty, some­thing only nerds with noth­ing else bet­ter to do and a lack of hygiene were known for enter­tain­ing. Now, it’s all over the place and there’s mon­ey to be earned. But this is now a pro­fes­sion­al-grade enter­prise and ani­me games are tak­ing cen­ter stage. One of the best? Denge­ki Bunko: Fight­ing Climax.

The game series that I lov­ing­ly refer to as that “all-star ani­me fight­ing game” is a blast to play. You choose from 19 playable and 30 assist char­ac­ters from var­i­ous ani­me series who team up in duos to fight each oth­er. Even if you’re mild­ly into ani­me, there are some well-known stars of the medi­um and some obscure names that will make you do a lit­tle research. For instance, your favorite edi­tor is an ani­me junkie and has seen or heard of most of the series with some stand­out selec­tions that she’s per­son­al­ly watched: Oreimo, Boo­giepop Phan­tom, The Dev­il is a Part-Timer and Torado­ra. There are oth­ers like Sword Art Online that are main­stream enough to draw in even the newest ani­me watcher. 

So, how does it play? Much like you’d expect an ani­me game to play: Super floaty physics and off-the-wall attacks that feel like they do a ton of dam­age but prob­a­bly don’t in terms of fight­ing games. The game feels good once you start play­ing, and like most games of the genre, there are lev­els to the play sys­tem. You can come in on the ground floor of fight­ing game knowl­edge and be able to play and then there’s com­pet­i­tive fight­ing game-lev­el of play that requires inti­mate knowl­edge of the game’s sys­tems. That range serves the game well as a draw for mul­ti­ple groups and it’s a tes­ta­ment to Sega’s devel­op­ment prowess.

The voice act­ing, a major part of a project like this, must be top notch and it is. Because Sega gar­nered most of the ani­ma­tions’ voice actors, there’s a high lev­el of con­sis­ten­cy and gloss over the game’s audio. The back­grounds are also faith­ful to the dif­fer­ent ani­me series, so expect to be wowed with the pro­duc­tion values.

Over­all, if you’re into ani­me enough to go to con­ven­tions reg­u­lar­ly or just hav­ing a pass­ing inter­est, Denge­ki Bunko: Fight­ing Cli­max is a good buy. Yes, it’s got that “super ani­me” feel to it, but there’s a sol­id engine and mechan­ics wrapped up in an extreme­ly gor­geous pack­age that deserves to be played here. This fan­cy fan-ser­vice fight­er is enough to make an otaku like myself sit up and take notice.

J‑Stars Victory Plus — 3Q2020 issue

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Jump into this fan­tas­tic ani­me series brawler

If you’re a man­ga afi­ciona­do like me, you’ve heard of Shon­en Jump mag­a­zine. For 50 years, Japan-based pub­lish­er Shueisha Inc. brought to the world to leg­endary char­ac­ters such as Son Goku, Mon­key D. Luffy and Naru­to Uzi­ma­ki. With these char­ac­ters and their respec­tive series, they became overnight hits in Japan with var­i­ous movies, mer­chan­dise (includ­ing video games) and sep­a­rate graph­ic nov­els. It was only a mat­ter of time that the SJ phe­nom­e­non would branch out to the rest of the world being pub­lished in var­i­ous lan­guages includ­ing Eng­lish. Shon­en Jump, undis­put­ed­ly, has become the stan­dard of intro­duc­ing new ani­me and man­ga series. J‑Stars Vic­to­ry VS+ is an exam­ple of that standard.

Pub­lished by Nam­co Bandai and co-devel­oped with Spike Chun­soft, J‑Stars takes more than 50 char­ac­ters from 32 series with­in the Shon­en Jump uni­verse and pits them against each oth­er in var­i­ous loca­tions with­in each SJ series. The sto­ry mode con­sists of each SJ char­ac­ter prepar­ing for the “Jump Bat­tle Tour­na­ment,” devised by the god of Jump World to deter­mine its strongest cham­pi­ons who will defend it from evil forces pos­ing as strong fighters.

With­in the sto­ry mode there are four arcs: Dynam­ic with Luffy, Hope with Naru­to, Inves­ti­ga­tion with Toriko and Goku and Pur­suit with Ichi­go. Regard­less of the arc you choose, your char­ac­ter and their respec­tive com­rades will face off against oth­ers to obtain essen­tial parts for your pro­vid­ed ship and badges required to enter the tour­na­ment. I like the sto­ry mode, and I also like that the arcade ver­sus mode is an option when you just want to pit char­ac­ters against each oth­er to see who would win. 
Con­trol is sim­ple, which has your char­ac­ters roam free dur­ing bat­tle to pull off their sig­na­ture moves along with a Drag­on Ball-styled map to track the battle’s progress. How­ev­er, the down­side is the game cam­era: It moves wild­ly about and con­stant­ly requires adjust­ment. At the end of each suc­cess­ful bat­tle, your char­ac­ters not only gain expe­ri­ence points, but also gain cur­ren­cy called “jump coins,” which upgrades skills and cloth­ing and unlocks var­i­ous theme music and addi­tion­al char­ac­ters to strength­en your team. 

All of the sound in the game is cour­tesy of Nam­co Bandai’s excel­lent sound depart­ment and the use of Dol­by Dig­i­tal. There isn’t an Eng­lish voice track in J‑Stars, but the Japan­ese voice track for each char­ac­ter is per­formed per­fect­ly, as if you’re watch­ing a Shon­en Jump ani­me. J‑Stars Vic­to­ry VS+ is per­fect for an ani­me con­ven­tion tour­na­ment or if you want to spend a day with friends immers­ing your­selves in Shon­en Jump lore. 

This ani­me-infused brawler is anoth­er tes­ta­ment to Shon­en Jump’s recog­ni­tion of being a leader in glob­al pop cul­ture and how ani­me and man­ga are quick­ly becom­ing visu­al arts that aren’t just for kids.

Fun facts

  • J‑Stars Vic­to­ry+ was billed as the “ulti­mate Jump game,” com­bin­ing past and new­er jump titles.
  • Unlike “Tat­sunoko vs. Cap­com: Cross Gen­er­a­tion of Heroes,” licens­ing for all the Jump char­ac­ters was not a seri­ous issue. Accord­ing to pro­duc­er Koji Naka­ji­ma, the real prob­lem was deter­min­ing actions for char­ac­ters that do not fight. Solv­ing this prob­lem required numer­ous nego­ti­a­tions with Shueisha and the respect­ed licensee for each series to deter­mine what was and was not accept­able for those characters.
  • J‑Stars Vic­to­ry VS + intro­duced the “new class” of SJ series such as The Dis­as­trous Life of Sai­ki K., Gin­ta­ma, To Love Ru and Reborn!. These titles have been licensed for North Amer­i­ca by var­i­ous ani­me and man­ga distributors.

Animal Crossing Pocket Camp — 2Q2019 issue

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Camp­ing with friends

My love affair with Ani­mal Cross­ing began in 2003, a year after the Game­Cube ver­sion was released in the U.S. It wasn’t enough to mere­ly start a life with a char­ac­ter — known as Rubes(kitty) — in my pro­ce­du­ral­ly gen­er­at­ed town known as Tokyo; I had to col­lect every­thing in my cat­a­logue, build my house into a man­sion and catch every insect and fish just for com­ple­tion sake. In the ensu­ing 16 years, I have played every iter­a­tion of Ani­mal Cross­ing avail­able. So, you can imag­ine my pal­pa­ble joy when a mobile ver­sion of Ani­mal Cross­ing was announced in 2016. Cue Ani­mal Cross­ing: Pock­et Camp in 2017, and I’m still going strong in my quest to build the per­fect camp.

Pock­et Camp is a spin­off of the main Ani­mal Cross­ing series but retains ele­ments of the series. Famil­iar tasks such as pay­ing off your debt for your liv­ing quar­ters, com­plet­ing requests for ani­mals that vis­it or improv­ing your finances through item sales are abun­dant in the Pock­et Camp land­scape. New to the series is the timed rota­tion of the ani­mals that are in one of four loca­tions scat­tered around the land­scape. Four ani­mals will be in these loca­tions with options to talk to you and request items; whether you choose to give them the spe­cif­ic items they request or just chat it up for expe­ri­ence points is up to you. Also new are the afore­men­tioned expe­ri­ence points. Each ani­mal has a meter that gauges their friend­ship lev­el with you. The high­er the lev­el, the more rewards they give in exchange for items they request. The rewards are also new, usu­al­ly in the form of Leaf Tick­ets and raw mate­ri­als that are used in craft­ing fur­ni­ture and clothes that can be used to dec­o­rate your camp site and RV.

Pock­et Camp, in its most sim­plis­tic form, is a dumb­ed down portable Ani­mal Cross­ing main game that requires inven­to­ry man­age­ment and micro trans­ac­tions. And it’s a sat­is­fy­ing way to get that quick Ani­mal Cross­ing fix. Much like the main series, it’s relax­ing and fun to pop in and check with the camp site to see what’s hap­pen­ing, pick up some gifts or get involved in fes­ti­vals and events at my own leisure. Time is still mea­sured real­is­ti­cal­ly, and insects and fish are still viable at cer­tain times, though the sea­son require­ment is not in use. Mon­ey is still prac­ti­cal­ly around every cor­ner, and it’s eas­i­er than ever to pay off the debt of upgrad­ing your hum­ble abode when rare bugs and fish are more plen­ti­ful this time around. It’s also quite nice to be able to buy items from oth­er play­ers world­wide in an item mar­ket­place with the Mar­ket Box­es option. The econ­o­my that has devel­oped still has some work to do, but the abil­i­ty to find rare insects, fruit, shells and fish for sale from oth­er friends and strangers is a great start.

For a long­time Ani­mal Cross­ing play­er, the fun in Pock­et Camp is imme­di­ate­ly there but not with­out some caveats. After a cer­tain point, the in-game cur­ren­cy of Bells ceas­es to be a prob­lem. While scarce in the ear­ly going, Bells aren’t an issue once the final upgrade for the RV is obtained and paid off. I now reg­u­lar­ly have about 1.8 mil­lion Bells on hand dai­ly and can’t spend it fast enough on things oth­er than craft­ing and a rare item inven­to­ry econ­o­my that has con­ve­nient­ly sprung up in my friends list. This is like the issue of Bells in the main series so while it’s not sur­pris­ing, it’s still an issue that needs to be reme­died with more things to do. And, the price of Leaf Tick­ets is a bit much. Their addi­tion is help­ful, but their pric­ing should be adjust­ed. Also, in-game cur­ren­cy should be allowed to be used to buy Leaf Tick­ets. That would give anoth­er rea­son to hoard mon­ey lat­er in the game.

While it might not be a main­line game, Ani­mal Cross­ing: Pock­et Camp is still a neat and wel­come addi­tion to the Ani­mal Cross­ing fran­chise. With its con­tin­ued updates and addi­tions, the Ani­mal Cross­ing pop­u­la­tion is still growing.

Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition — 3Q2018 issue

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Father of fight­ing games gets super upgrade

Gone are the days of roam­ing a local arcade to play the throng of would-be chal­lengers and pre­tenders to the throne of the best local fight­ing game cham­pi­on. In its place are home con­soles designed to push the pow­er of the arcade. Fight­ing game fran­chis­es have had to keep up or suf­fer irrel­e­van­cy or, worse yet, extinc­tion. The ear­li­est king of the genre, Street Fight­er, has had a chal­lenge of sorts: con­tin­ue for­ward or go the way of its ride-a-longs of the ‘90s. Super Street Fight­er IV attempts to con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion with most­ly success.

Super SFIV, at its core, is a fight­ing fan’s dream. A robust engine with plen­ty of options for either the novice or the advanced, SSFIV makes play­ing a fight­ing game easy. Even if you haven’t played since the hey­day of SFII, there’s a lot of com­pelling con­tent here to draw you in and get you start­ed in the world of com­pet­i­tive dig­i­tal fight­ing. Var­i­ous modes are here, ready for a deep dive, and there are more than enough new char­ac­ters and old stal­warts to make fight­ing inter­est­ing. The gen­er­al rule of thumb is, if the char­ac­ter was in SFII and its deriv­a­tives, SFIII or SF Alpha, there’s a good chance they are avail­able for play in SSFIV.

Fight locales asso­ci­at­ed with many of the char­ac­ters are avail­able with a great sound­track accom­pa­ny­ing them. SSFIV does an excep­tion­al job of remind­ing more expe­ri­enced fight­ing enthu­si­asts of the Street Fight­er ori­gins and piquing the curios­i­ty of new­er fight fans. The con­trols also hear­ken to the old days, so much so that it’s easy to pick up and play and learn about the dif­fer­ent sys­tems afford­ed to each char­ac­ter. Most new char­ac­ters will play like an old­er char­ac­ter on the ros­ter so it’s easy to learn the nuance of fight­ing with a new­com­er if you’re expe­ri­enced with pre­vi­ous SF games. If you aren’t expe­ri­enced, there’s a great tuto­r­i­al mode that runs through com­bo and movesets of each char­ac­ter to teach the basics. That var­ied lev­el of depth goes a long way toward replay value.

My one gripe out of all the love­li­ness that is the mixed nos­tal­gia fest of SSFIV is that it’s Cap­com being Cap­com as usu­al. For the unini­ti­at­ed, Cap­com gained a rep­u­ta­tion in the ’90s for hav­ing a sol­id fran­chise in Street Fight­er II but not being able to count to three. The con­stant upgrad­ing and reis­su­ing of SFII got old quick­ly. And, quite frankly, Cap­com hasn’t learned its les­son because Street Fight­er IV should not have mul­ti­ple retail ver­sions of its upgrades. Arcade Edi­tion should have been an update that could be bought dig­i­tal­ly and down­loaded to patch the game up to what­ev­er ver­sion Cap­com want­ed con­sumers to have. Even when the orig­i­nal ver­sion was released, the capa­bil­i­ty was there. This just screams of cash grab and Cap­com being igno­rant of tire­some tac­tics wear­ing on the fan base. The fact that Ultra Street Fight­er IV — one more ver­sion beyond this one — exists is proof pos­i­tive of this.

Oth­er than the fias­co of mul­ti­ple ver­sions, Cap­com has a sol­id win­ner on its hands with the fourth entry in the long-run­ning series even as it fades into the back­ground in favor of SFV. If SFV is not your cup of tea, but you want to stay cur­rent with the world of Street Fight­er, SFIV is a good bal­ance and at the right price now to delve into the world of Ryu, Ken and Chun-Li.

Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm — 3Q2018 issue

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The ulti­mate beginning

Naru­to Uzi­ma­ki. From 1999 to 2017, Shon­en Jump Magazine’s hyper­ac­tive nin­ja knuck­le­head had a major impact on the geek cul­ture scene as well as ani­me and man­ga. From graph­ic nov­els, to oth­er nov­el­ty mer­chan­dise and video games, many ani­me fans world­wide fol­lowed his rise from out­cast of his nin­ja vil­lage to its leg­endary sav­ior. Dur­ing Naruto’s rise, there were many video games for var­i­ous sys­tems that fol­lowed every adven­ture of our blonde, blue-eyed hero and his friends. I got the oppor­tu­ni­ty to play one of the Naru­to-based games after a recent game shop­ping expe­di­tion when I found Naru­to: Ulti­mate Nin­ja: Storm.

Ulti­mate Nin­ja: Storm is a hybrid con­sist­ing of fight­ing and role play­ing game ele­ments. Free Bat­tle mode allows you to choose one main fight­er with two back­up char­ac­ters against anoth­er play­er or the console’s choice of char­ac­ters in var­i­ous stages tak­en right out of the Naru­to uni­verse. Free Bat­tle also allows you to earn extra cash if you defeat their oppo­nents using var­i­ous moves known as nin­jut­su. The extra coinage will be need­ed in the role play­ing mode, Ulti­mate Mis­sion Mode, dur­ing which you con­trol Naru­to in var­i­ous mis­sions that involve episodes 1 to 135 of the ani­me series. 

I found every­thing from the cin­e­mat­ic intro to actu­al game­play excel­lent. Nam­co Bandai brought their expe­ri­ence in mak­ing games like Tekken and Soul Cal­ibur and com­bined it with Masashi Kishimoto’s guid­ance in devel­op­ing the per­fect exam­ple of a video game based on a pop­u­lar ani­me fran­chise. Every stage, land­mark and char­ac­ter are por­trayed per­fect­ly in the game mak­ing me as if I was trans­port­ed to the Hid­den Leaf Vil­lage. The con­trols are easy and will help you pull off some up-close cool com­bos when cer­tain but­tons are dis­played. They’re also great dur­ing the explo­ration of Ulti­mate Mis­sion Mode as you’re try­ing to find hid­den items and mis­sion locations. 

Anoth­er cool thing about the game was that the music from the ani­me series was not only kept intact, but also was done in Dol­by Dig­i­tal Sound. The voice act­ing in the game is high cal­iber thanks to Nam­co Bandai work­ing with Viz Media and Stu­diopo­lis Inc. to bring togeth­er the orig­i­nal Eng­lish voice actors to reprise their respec­tive roles. Even with the excel­lent Eng­lish voice act­ing, you can also play the game in Japan­ese with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles for a more authen­tic feel. Any­one who has not played a Naru­to video game will find it per­fect for either a hot or rainy-day after­noon, or a friend­ly fight­ing game tour­na­ment at any ani­me convention.

Nam­co Bandai did an awe­some job of bring­ing Naru­to to the PS3 in addi­tion to pub­lish­ing addi­tion­al games based off this icon­ic fran­chise. For now, Naruto’s jour­ney to be hok­age has end­ed suc­cess­ful­ly, with a son ready to take up his own chal­lenges. Ulti­mate Nin­ja: Storm is a great start show­cas­ing Naruto’s ear­ly adventures.

Devil May Cry 4 — 3Q2018 issue

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Dev­il’s in the details: DMC4 a nice break from Dante

Capcom’s “Dev­il May Cry” series is a game that has basi­cal­ly rede­fined the term “hack-and-slash” in video games. With the first three games using hack-and-slash style as well as action-adven­ture ele­ments, I won­dered what new sur­pris­es would the fourth install­ment of the series bring and to which system? 

DMC 4 fea­tures demon-hunter extra­or­di­naire Dante, but the sto­ry and main char­ac­ter has changed for a more intense expe­ri­ence. Tak­ing place in a remote island town called For­tu­na, you assume the role of Nero — a younger ver­sion of Dante — who is a mem­ber of the Order of the Sword. The Order of the Sword is a mil­i­tant reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion formed to destroy demons based on the actions of the Demon-Knight Spar­da, who rebelled against the demon under­world to pro­tect human­i­ty. At a recent cer­e­mo­ny to hon­or Spar­da, Dante smash­es though a sky­light and kills the priest lead­ing the cer­e­mo­ny, set­ting off a chain of events that would not only put Dante and Nero on a col­li­sion course with each oth­er, but also would lead both demon-hunters through a greater mys­tery to find out the true inten­tions of the Order and to stop a more vicious plot of a demon-invasion.

While Dante’s role in DMC 4 is not as the main char­ac­ter, he does still play a key role in the game as a playable char­ac­ter in cer­tain scenes. Nero is not to be tak­en light­ly either as his arse­nal con­sists of his Dev­il Bringer arm, his mechan­i­cal sword Red Queen and his dou­ble bar­rel revolver, Blue Queen. Nero can gain an extra advan­tage to accom­plish his mis­sion by gath­er­ing “Red Souls,” DMC’s orig­i­nal game cur­ren­cy, and “Proud Souls,” a new cur­ren­cy. After a mis­sion is com­plet­ed, Pride Souls can pow­er up Nero’s tools rang­ing from extend­ing the Dev­il Bringer’s reach to more pow­er­ful shots from the Blue Queen. The con­trols for Dante and Nero are easy to use thanks to the PS3’s Six Axis controller’s built-in ana­log fea­ture, which I found help­ful with cam­era issues from time to time. 

The excel­lent detail that is used in each lev­el comes to life in the back­ground and cin­e­mat­ic scenes. These were done with high def­i­n­i­tion tech­nol­o­gy that will make you feel like you are play­ing with a mas­ter­piece of art instead of a video game. Capcom’s sound team brings their A‑game again. Each sound and vocal effect com­bined with Dol­by Dig­i­tal Sound gives an orches­tral qual­i­ty to the game. Cap­com did a great job in voice and motion cap­ture for DMC 4. John­ny Yong Bosch (Bleach, Street Fight­er IV) brought Nero to life and Reuben Lang­don repris­ing his role as Dante.

Dev­il May Cry 4 shows what Cap­com is capa­ble of doing when they let their devel­op­ment team do its job: make their games enjoy­able. DMC4 is a chal­leng­ing, but enjoy­able way to kill free time when you want to get your demon-hunt­ing on. The replay val­ue is strong espe­cial­ly if you are a vet­er­an DMC play­er; this game is worth your hard-earned cash.

BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend — 3Q2018 issue

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Guilty Gear suc­ces­sor cleans up nice­ly in fight­ing game arena

Fight­ing game con­nois­seurs have a robust buf­fet to choose from these days. There’s Mar­vel, Street Fight­er, Tekken and Mor­tal Kom­bat for tour­na­ment purists, a new Soul Cal­ibur has been announced, and a new Smash is on the hori­zon and the old­er games in the series are still played in some cir­cles. Guilty Gear, which has always been qui­et­ly in the back of the lunch­room, was a mix of tour­na­ment and casu­al, so it stands to rea­son that its spir­i­tu­al suc­ces­sor — BlazBlue — would mim­ic that notion.

BlazBlue arrived in the fight­ing game scene as a new entry in the port­fo­lio of Guilty Gear devel­op­er Arc­Sys­tem. Tak­ing what they learned from that series, Arc­Sys­tem improved upon the for­mu­la they’d cre­at­ed with gor­geous visu­als, a rock­ing sound­track and impres­sive game­play options that ensure you’ll have plen­ty to do.

BlazBlue CSE starts off rather intim­i­dat­ing­ly. From the begin­ning, there are quite a few modes to choose from. If you’re not informed, you might be a lit­tle lost try­ing to under­stand just where you should start. With a var­ied plate to choose from, at the very least the modes are inter­est­ing­ly designed and add val­ue to an already-packed game. 
The stand­out fea­tures, how­ev­er, are the graph­ics and sto­ry. As with Guilty Gear, you’re get­ting a treat visu­al­ly. The lev­el of detail in each char­ac­ter and the back­grounds make the game worth sit­ting down and study­ing. If you’re into ani­me, the aes­thet­ics were designed with you in mind.

The sto­ry is also wor­thy of com­par­i­son to most mod­ern ani­me. It’s con­vo­lut­ed and com­plex and has twists and turns involv­ing a mul­ti-lay­ered cast. There’s a lot about the search­ing for a sav­ior and mag­ic — which isn’t out of place for an Arc­Sys­tem game. It feels famil­iar but it doesn’t detract from the fact that it’s lay­ered and deep.

Learn­ing the mechan­ics for most fight­ing games is a mixed bag. Some games expect you to be able to jump in and mas­ter the basics as if you’ve done noth­ing but play fight­ing games all of your gam­ing life. Oth­ers like to give you a tuto­r­i­al so that you’re not lost and quick­ly putting the game down, nev­er to return. BlazBlue CSE is in the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry: So con­cerned is the game about you learn­ing to play and mas­ter all that it has to offer that it throws a sur­pris­ing­ly deep tuto­r­i­al mode at you. It slow­ly increas­es the lev­el of com­plex­i­ty and the mechan­ics are spot on and easy to grasp. All fight­ing games need the type of learn­ing tool that’s offered here.

If you love Guilty Gear or if you just want a deep­er sto­ry­line than what’s cur­rent­ly offered by the larg­er more well-known titles on the mar­ket in fight­ing games, BlazBlue promis­es to deliv­er a rich expe­ri­ence. It deliv­ers on that promise with a com­mit­ment to extend­ing beyond just the reg­u­lar fight­ing game expectations.

Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival — 1Q2017 issue

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Rolling the dice with Ani­mal Crossing

Judg­ing from the stand­point of an avid Ani­mal Cross­ing play­er and enthu­si­ast, the con­cept of new games com­ing into my beloved fran­chise is not always wel­come. There have been par­tic­u­lar­ly good games (i.e. Wild World, the orig­i­nal game) and mediocre offer­ings (Hap­py Home Design­er and City Folk). Ami­i­bo Fes­ti­val is a lit­tle bit of both: It’s a fun take on the Ani­mal Cross­ing uni­verse, but it needs a lit­tle bit of pol­ish and more things to do to keep the con­cept of a board game based on the fran­chise interesting.

I’ve always referred to Ani­mal Cross­ing as the series about doing noth­ing. Ami­i­bo Fes­ti­val takes that con­cept and turns it on its head. With Fes­ti­val, you’re tasked with mov­ing around a typ­i­cal Ani­mal Cross­ing town in the form of a large board game. The town is trans­formed by spaces that can be events, Stalk Mar­ket sale stops and vis­its from the usu­al assort­ment of guests that vis­it a nor­mal town in the franchise. 

What makes the game fun is the usage of all things Ani­mal Cross­ing. Game time is deter­mined by a cal­en­dar that uti­lizes events com­mon­ly found through­out the series, and vil­lagers that you would encounter in town show up to help out play­er char­ac­ters. The play­er char­ac­ters them­selves are Ami­i­bo fig­urines that you pur­chase and input into the game. For exam­ple, GI has about 25 Ami­i­bo, eight of which are Ani­mal Cross­ing relat­ed (Dig­by, Celeste, Isabelle, Vil­lager, Tom Nook, Mable, Rover and K.K. Slid­er) that can be used to play through a ses­sion. These char­ac­ters can col­lect points to unlock new out­fits and modes in the plaza based on game per­for­mance. The tie-in to the series ben­e­fits the oth­er­wise-tired Mario Par­ty for­mu­la and enhances the charm of what would prob­a­bly be a tire­some exer­cise in board game management.

Using some of that inher­ent charm of Ani­mal Cross­ing, Ami­i­bo Fes­ti­val plays well and looks great. There is a notable pas­tel sheen over every­thing in-game, but it still looks just like you’d expect Ani­mal Cross­ing to look: Bright, col­or­ful and smooth. Because we’re long past the janky block graph­ics of the orig­i­nal game, Ami­i­bo Fes­ti­val is clos­er in style to the lat­est game in the series, New Leaf, and it works in its favor. The sound­track is also in line with the New Leaf era and it’s ser­vi­ca­ble. It’s not the main fea­ture of the game, so I’m not expect­ing it to reach the realm of New Leaf’s great tracks, but it’s not unpleas­ant so it works just fine for what it’s asked to do.

My main com­plaint about Ami­i­bo Fes­ti­val, how­ev­er, has more to do with the pol­ish of the final prod­uct and some of the addi­tions. It feels as though there isn’t enough to do in-game, quite hon­est­ly. While the board game is fun, it’s not enough to keep me inter­est­ed long-term. The addi­tions in the plaza — mini-games that use Ani­mal Cross­ing ideas — are cute but get old quick­ly, and some are out­right frus­trat­ing, even for a long­time play­er like myself. 

The triv­ia sec­tion, for exam­ple, tests your knowl­edge of the series. Set­ting aside the fact that there shouldn’t be a time lim­it to answer ques­tions that test your prowess of a series that has at least sev­en games, the ques­tions are incred­i­bly obscure most of the time and require that you have ency­clo­pe­dic mem­o­ry and under­stand­ing of how the series works. Most peo­ple just look­ing for a fun board game aren’t going to know the answers, let alone know them quick­ly. I have been play­ing Ani­mal Cross­ing since the “Pop­u­la­tion grow­ing!” days of 2003, and I had trou­ble with quite a few of the ques­tions asked. There should be more to do, more inter­ac­tion with the town that you play in and more of an attempt to dig deep into that well of sev­en games.

Ami­i­bo Fes­ti­val is a unique take on a series that has man­aged to endure and improve over the past 15 years with new con­cepts and inno­va­tion. If there is some con­so­la­tion prize for stay­ing on this board, it’s know­ing that while it could use some pol­ish and flesh­ing out, Ami­i­bo Fes­ti­val is a good roll of the dice and gam­ble that paid off for the Ani­mal Cross­ing franchise.

Maximo: Ghosts to Glory — 1Q2017 issue

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Max­i­mo con­tin­ues the quest to res­cue the princess

I have a love and hate rela­tion­ship with Cap­com. For every game they devel­op and pub­lish that will be a smash hit by being more cre­ative and stick­ing to the basics, they churn out five or six copies of the same game with­out break­ing any new ground (i.e. Street Fight­er V). I won’t even men­tion how they stud­ied the Kon­a­mi code of dis­pos­ing of one of their great­est game series and its leader. With this view of Cap­com off my chest, let’s look at a game that is orig­i­nal and has become a suc­ces­sor to the clas­sic games Ghosts ‘N Gob­lins and Adven­ture Island: Max­i­mo: Ghosts to Glory.

You take the role of said char­ac­ter, Max­i­mo, who, after return­ing from a bat­tle to pro­tect his king­dom, finds out that his main lady Queen Sophia is cap­tured by his once-trust­ed advis­er, Achille. To make mat­ters worse, Achille has devel­oped a drill that has pierced the under­world, allow­ing him to cre­ate an army of undead mon­sters to ter­ror­ize the king­dom. All is not lost as is seems that as Max­i­mo was free-falling, the Grim Reaper makes a deal for him to return to the liv­ing world in exchange for return­ing the lost souls to the under­world. Max­i­mo accepts and begins his quest to free Sophia and restore the peace tak­en by Achille. 

Max­i­mo retains the ele­ments from Ghosts ‘N Gob­lins and Adven­ture Island but allows free­dom to explore all of the stages thanks to its 3D design. Max­i­mo has the abil­i­ty to run, jump and crouch to avoid ene­mies and is eas­i­ly con­trolled with use of the ana­log con­trol stick. Max­i­mo is also ready for bat­tle with his trusty sword and shield, which can be thrown at approach­ing ene­mies and capa­ble of wip­ing out all ene­mies on the screen if the right pow­er-ups are applied. In addi­tion to his sword and shield, Max­i­mo has his armor which, if all the parts are gath­ered, he becomes invin­ci­ble for a brief period. 

A heads up: Make sure that Max­i­mo keeps his armor as long as pos­si­ble since like Arthur in Ghosts ‘N Gob­lins, if Max­i­mo takes too many hits, he would be down to his box­ers, which would lead to his death if he takes anoth­er hit. Also, con­trol­ling Max­i­mo is not dif­fi­cult, but some prac­tice is rec­om­mend­ed to get adjust­ed to mov­ing around. 
The stages are excel­lent­ly designed and guar­an­teed to make you feel that you’re in Maximo’s world. The game’s music is an enjoy­able mix of orig­i­nal and remas­tered tracks from the orig­i­nal Ghosts ‘N Gob­lins. The chal­lenge lev­el is ridicu­lous­ly high, guar­an­tee­ing great replay value. 

Max­i­mo: Ghosts to Glo­ry is one of those type of games that will please fans of old-school adven­ture gam­ing who want to play the genre with the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy. In my opin­ion, Max­i­mo is also a exam­ple of what Cap­com can do when they allow cre­ativ­i­ty to flour­ish instead of always milk­ing their gold­en fran­chis­es to death. 
Well done, Cap­com. Well done.

Devil May Cry 3 — 1Q2017 issue

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Dance with the dev­il in Dan­te’s rebound adventure

When I final­ly got my own copy of Dev­il May Cry 3, I read that it brought back the melee action that made the first game awe­some to play, but it raised the bar for future install­ments of Capcom’s demon-slay­ing series. Was the praise heaped upon DMC3 well deserved or was this anoth­er way of Cap­com milk­ing a great game series dry for more cash? I got my answer in Dev­il May Cry 3: Dante’s Awak­en­ing, Spe­cial Edition.
Set as a pre­quel to the orig­i­nal DMC, we find our fear­less demon hunter Dante begin­ning to set up shop when a mys­te­ri­ous man named Arkham arrives with a invi­ta­tion from Dante’s broth­er, Vergil. This “invi­ta­tion” turns into a demon-style, reveal­ing that Vergil has not only helped in res­ur­rect­ing a ancient demon­ic tow­er, but also he wants Dante’s amulet to open a por­tal to con­nect the human and with the demon worlds. Dante, of course, is not pleased and sets off to stop Vergil and his plans of world domination.

DMC3 starts from the begin­ning as an explo­sive non­stop melee with brief but impor­tant tuto­ri­als for play­ers to mas­ter Dante’s moves and his sig­na­ture weapons. In addi­tion to the tuto­ri­als, four dif­fer­ent com­bat­ive arts called “styles” are avail­able to Dante, giv­ing him var­i­ous abil­i­ties to increase the pow­er of var­i­ous guns, strik­ing weapons, dodge attacks, and unleash­ing hand-to-hand com­bat with dev­as­tat­ing results. Once Dante defeats a cer­tain boss, he will be able to use them in the form of unique, var­i­ous weapons. There is a lock-on fea­ture to direct­ly tar­get ene­mies that, with prac­tice, will be a valu­able tool to rip ene­mies apart. Also in the spe­cial edi­tion, there are two modes of play: Nor­mal, which is basic DMC speed; or, Tur­bo, where EVERYTHING is clocked up 20 times the nor­mal speed of the game to test your skills. Also, you can play the game not only as Dante, but also as Vergil, who has some seri­ous weapon­ry and moves that would make Jubei Yagyu be in awe.

The game music fits each lev­el with a Phan­tom of the Opera type of feel while the bat­tle scenes uses an electronic/heavy met­al beat that heats up the bat­tles. My only issue is that it’s repet­i­tive every time I fight ene­mies, but it’s well done nonethe­less. The voice act­ing in DMC is top-notch thanks to Reuben Lang­don as Dante and Daniel South­worth (Pow­er Rangers: Time Force) as Vergil. Both actors did the motion cap­ture and voice work for their respec­tive characters.

With the good comes the bad, how­ev­er. While I appre­ci­ate the use of ana­log con­trol in addi­tion to mov­ing the screen cam­era around, the con­trols are tank-like. That is frus­trat­ing because if I’m sur­round­ed by ene­mies, I’m easy pick­ings. Also, the auto­mat­ic fir­ing abil­i­ty of Ebony and Ivory is still in DMC3 but it requires rapid press­ing instead of the flu­id ease found in the first game. I also had to stock up (and I mean STOCK UP) on red orbs to pur­chase pow­er ups for Dante and his weapons or learn new moves since the game was try­ing to do a stick-up job every time I need to make some upgrades. For­tu­nate­ly, I could replay each mis­sion to get more orbs or lev­el up.

DMC3 lives up to its high praise guar­an­tee­ing plen­ty of chal­lenge and replay val­ue when you just want to get medieval on things but legal­ly. This Spe­cial Edi­tion is a no-holds barred adven­ture in demon-slay­ing with the best in the busi­ness. If Cap­com wants to do a movie for Dev­il May Cry, I’m for it, but do it right; in oth­er words Cap­com, stick to the sto­ry and the pay­day bonan­za will take care of itself.