7 things to look forward to at E3

Okay, with E3 coming next month, I thought I would put together a list of things I would like to see or learn more about this year.



Note that this is not a list of what is going to be there, only what I am hoping to hear about.

Anyways, here's the list.

7.

The new Silent Hill

I'm a big fan of Silent Hill, so this couldn't not be on the list. We know it's coming, and that it's being made by a new studio, and it may be a First Person Shooter, though that last one is only a rumor.

I'm cautiously optimistic about this new game, since Shattered Memories, another game by a studio I had no faith in, turned out to be a very interesting game, so who knows.

6.

Castlevania Harmony of Despair

Okay, so, rumor has it that there is going to be an HD, 6 player, 2D XBLA Castlevania game featuring characters from the more recent Castlevania games.

I'm hoping to find out a few things about Harmony of Despair at E3. I want to find out if it's coming to PSN, when it will be released, and if it will have local multiplayer.

The idea of exploring Dracula's castle with friends just sounds amazing, so I'm really looking forward to this, if it exists.

5.

Project Red/ Project Redlime

Starbreeze is a Swedish developer who I first found out about as the creators of The Chronicles of Ridick: Escape from Butcher Bay. They also made a video game based off the comic The Darkness. Now, the question is, why would I be looking forward to a game from a company that has recently been working on licensed games? Well, it's because Butcher Bay is one of the best games from last gen, and The Darkness, if not a great game, is at least a very interesting one.

Most signs are pointing to Project Redlime being something to do with one of Peter Molyneux's old game, Syndicate. Whatever Project Redlime turns out to be, it's bound to be interesting.

The reason I say this is likely is that EA has had a game named Project Red rated by the OFLC (the Austrailian ratings board). Right now, it seems that it's most likely that Project Red is Project Redlime.

4.

Mega Man Universe

So, Capcom recently trademarked the name Mega Man Universe. I just want to know what it is, since right now, there is no information about it. Personally, I hope that the game is a crossover between the various Mega Man franchises. But, who knows, maybe it'll be an MMO. I can only hope it's not.

3.

New Legend of Zelda

You knew this was going to be on here.

Anyways, I'm a bit skeptical about the new Legend of Zelda, mostly because pretty much every home console based Legend of Zelda has been very similar to the point of being nearly clones. But the reasons I'm feeling less excited about LoZ is a topic for another blog post.

Anyways, the games are still consistently high quality, so I'm still looking forward to hearing more about the game.

2.

Mikami, Yamaoka, and Suda51's new game

(There are no relevant images for this game, sorry)

How can I not be hyped for this game? One of the best creators of action games teaming up with one of the most unique. My hope for this game is basically that I'll be able to play a game with Suda's unique style and the kind of great polished core gameplay of Mikami's best games. Yamaoka is just icing on the cake.

Really, all I'm hoping for is to here a name, maybe see a teaser, I'm not expecting to hear about a release date, since there isn't any real info on the game right now.

1.

3DS details.

I really like the idea of the 3DS. I like the idea of 3D gaming, but not enough to pay for a $3,000 tv. But I can afford a nintendo handheld, or at least I think I can. That's the first question I'm hoping to see answered, how much is this thing going to cost? I'm probably going to buy it unless it costs upwards of $250.

The other, probably more important question is, what kind of games are we going to see at launch? What is the killer app for this system going to be?

So, that's what I'm looking forward to at E3, how about you?

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Review

Hey, I haven't posted in about a month, sorry about that. Anyways, here's a new review



So, first something that needs to be said, I came into this game knowing nothing about Shin Megami Tensei, so I had no idea what to expect.

Story:

Strange Journey starts with you on a ship traveling towards an anomaly called the Shwarzwelt that is covering the south pole and is expanding outward. Your ship and three others are tasked to investigate the Shwarzwelt. Things predictably go wrong and your left stranded in the Swarzwelt and having to deal with the demons that populate it.

The story starts out pretty slow, and doesn't really pick up until the latter half of the 60 hour experience. When it does pick up, it gets interesting and thought provoking.

Unlike a lot of games, you have a real choice in how the story plays out, though not until the end. The entire endgame changes based on your choices during the game. There are other consequences related to where you fall on the scale of Law-Neutral-Chaos, but those fall under gameplay.

Gameplay:

The basic gameplay of SMT: Strange Journey is a mix of first person dungeoun crawling and random battles that are intensely tactical.

There are two main parts of Strange Journey's gameplay: The Dungeon, Battles

There are a number of dungeons, each with its own theme. while they start out simple, they gradually get more and more complicated, though the most difficult dungeon is not the last, which feels a bit strange. These dungeons are mazes with hidden doors, teleporters, floor traps, and many more obstacles standing between you and the end of each dungeon. The dungeon designs can get very devious, and even unfair, but it's worth sticking through it to explore more.

You can find NPCs in the field who will give you side missions. These side missions, along with your ever expanding toolset, encourage you to go back to dungeons you have already visited in order to do things you couldn't do your first time through.

To help you out, you can return to your ship, which basically functions like a town for each dungeon. You can turn materials called forma that you find in the field into items, and you can heal and save as well as find some side missions.

Something about the way Strange Journey is designed makes it very hard to not explore every last square on the dungeon map. Because the draw distance is rather short, and NPCs only appear when you are on the same square as them, you never know what lies ahead. The dungeons can be quite atmospheric because of this, or at least it would be if there weren't random encounters. Normally this would drive me nuts, as it kinda destroys immersion. However, when the combat is this fun, I don't really mind.

The combat is starts out fairly easy, but it soon reveals itself to be very deep. Buff, debuffs, status effects, and instant kill attacks are not only useful in this game, but they can often times be crucial to success.

While all that is nice, the main crux of the system is that if one of your party members hits an enemy with an attack that they are weak to, all of the demons in your party that share an alignment with first attacker will do a followup attack. What this system means is that you always have to pay attention to weaknesses, as they can make fights that would normally result in you dying into cakewalks.

On the subject of how you can lose, it feels a bit stupid that if the player character dies, you lose the game. While it makes sense in the fiction, the game would have been much more fun if you didn't have to go back to your last save every time you got hit with an instant death attack.

Regardless of the problems of that problem, the battle system is addictive, with special mention going to the great boss battles which really test your planning.

However, taking advantage of the system will only get you so far, you need strong party members as well.

For those who don't know, SMT is a mon game, with the franchise having started the genre way back in 1987 for the Famicom. To recruit your teammates, who are all demons and other mystical beings from various mythologies around the world, you negotiate with them. The type of demon and your alignment on the spectrum of Law-Neutral-Chaos determines how the negotiation plays out, but they all follow the same structure. First you make small talk with the demon, then, if you answer the questions they ask correctly, you can ask them to negotiate, from there you can ask for items, money, or for them to become your demon. If you ask for the first two, they give it to you and leave, but if you ask them to become your demon, they ask for various things such as HP, MP, money, or items. Get through that and they will most likely become your demon.

While the questions asked in Strange Journey basically make the negotiation process a multiple choice test, it's still more satisfying than throwing balls at weakened enemies.

To get even more powerful allies, you are going to need to fuse your demons to make more powerful ones. I won't say much about this system since discovering how it works is fun, but just know that it is vital to your success. Fusion and recruiting, just like the rest of the game, is very addictive.

Graphics:

As you can see from the screenshots I've posted, the game looks pretty good. The two biggest problems with the game graphically is that the draw distance is not very impressive (though that is a bit of a plus as I mentioned earlier) and that the tiles for the dungeon walls are unimpressive, and they repeat way too much. The game looks unimpressive in the dungeons because of this.

The 2d elements of the game are much better with great artwork and a nice amount of detail the boss sprites are especially impressive. The portraits of the demons in your compendium are really good looking. The backgrounds behind the battles are fairly good looking, but the sprites are really the star here.

Sound:

The music in Strange Journey is very good, here have a listen:

While the music is great, in game it can feel a bit fuzzy, like it's a bit too compressed. But worse than bad compression is the fact that the tracks, despite being excellent, are repeated so much that they inevitably become irritating. So, don't feel bad about turning the sound down after a little while.

Overall:

Shin Megami Tensei is a very addictive game. It was able to distract me from games like Just Cause 2, so be warned, it will keep you away from other games. Regardless, this is easily the best RPG on the DS bar Chrono Trigger. Pick it up, don't think, just buy it.

Half-Minute Hero review

So, I'm doing another review, this time of the PSP RPG parody Half-Minute Hero, which attempts to boil down a basic JRPG into digestable 30 second chunks (sort of).

Story:

There are 6 story modes in Half-Minute Hero, so I'm just going to go through the stories for each preceded by a bit of talking about the humor of the game.

Overall: The Overarching story of Half-Minute Hero is of a struggle between two gods and the people they use to accomplish their goals.

The game is funny from time to time, but I'm never laughing as often as I am in, say, Earthbound. There is a feeling of missed potential here, the best example of which is one boss who speaks entirely in Zero Wing quotes. There are so many things they could have done with a parody of bad translations, but they went with Zero Wing quotes. However, the game would probably be much funnier to someone who knew more about classic RPGs, as there are a lot of things that seem to be references to other games. That said, there are some amazing jokes in here which I won't spoil.

Hero 30: A mysterious evildoer is spreading a spell that destroys the world in 30 seconds, you team up with the goddess of time to stop him. This campaign is probably my third favorite in terms of story and it often times captures the spirit of the epic RPG.

Evil Lord 30: You play as one of the bosses from the last game, trying to lift a curse on your lover while fighting against brainwashed humans. This is easily the funniest of the campaigns, since the vain Evil Lord is a great character.

Princess 30: A princess tries to find a cure for her father's illness. Easily the worst for storytelling excluding the pretty much storyless Hero 3

Knight 30: A revived knight tries to protect a sage as they search for a way to heal the world. An okay story, one of the weakest of the bunch

Hero 300: An epic time hopping quest to destroy an ultimate evil. Really captures the spirit of an old school RPG in that this mode is, well, epic in the best sense of the word, kinda feels like a condensed Chrono Trigger in a way.

Hero 3: An essentially storyless bonus mission.

Gameplay:

Hero 3/30/300: These modes are basically RPG lite. You gain experience by killing monsters, equip yourself with gear you find or buy, and eventually kill a boss.

The differences between this game and a normal RPG are where the lite part comes in. You have 30 second chunks of time to complete your quest, and time can be reset for an ever increasing fee in certain towns. Time does not pass in towns or while speaking on normal mode, but it does on hard. Battles are basically you and the enemies running into each other to do damage, you can run to attack more often at the price of hurting yourself. Grinding for both experince and cash is extremely quick. You can find or buy equipment during each quest, which is important to do since equipment is the only thing that carries over between quests.

Hero 300 and Hero 3 basically just change the time limit, though you can't reset time in Hero 300.

These modes are easily the highlight of the game, being the most fun since they quickly and repeatedly hit the part of your brain that responds positively to the gains from level grinding.

Evil Lord 30: This is basically a stripped down, timed RTS. There are three classes of units which basically function as a form of tactical Rock Paper Scissors. Resetting time costs all the money you have on you, but it always resets time to the 30 seconds no matter how much you pay.

You need the money to upgrade your ability to summon monsters, since you start off fairly weak.

This mode is pretty fun, though more could have been done with the idea of a Rock Paper Scissors RTS.

Princess 30: Princess 30 is a basic shooter, you move with the d-pad and fire with the face buttons. You go slower the more damage you take though your speed regenerates., and you have to pay for the losses you suffer when you take damage. Different terrain can slow you down and you regain time by running over red carpets.

This is a pretty fun shooter, though it often feels like you don't have enough space on the screen to see and avoid/shoot the enemies that are coming up.

Knight 30: In Knight 30, you have to protect a sage for 30 seconds. Moving him makes the timer stop, and you have traps and whatever is lying around to stop the monsters who hound you.

Very fun, easily my second favorite mode.

Graphics:

The Graphics in Half-Minute Hero are made to resemble 16-bit sprites. The sprites are charming, especially when you compare them to the concept art in the gallery . The effect is enhanced even more in closeups during cutscenes, where the individual blocks of the sprite look absolutely huge on the PSP screen.

Overall, a well done homage to 16-bit spritework.

Sound:

The sound in Half-Minute Hero is great, and as I did in my Mother 3 review, I invite you to take a listen:



This song demonstrates very well the two main components of the soundtrack. There is a small amount of orchestral music, but the majority is great hard rock themes. This is easily the best part of the game, and it often works with the story to create the kind of 16-bit epicness that makes old school RPGs so fondly remembered. This is the one part of the game that seems to be going less for what old school RPGs are, and more for how you remember them.

Overall:

Half-Minute Hero is a great little game that, while not as consistently funny as the best parodies, is funny enough to be worth it. Throw in some great gameplay, and you have a winner that every PSP owner should pick up, especially since it now goes for about $20.

Mother 3 Final Battle Analysis and Reaction

ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE MOTHER 3 SPOILERS IN THIS POST

You have been warned



Also be warned that there will be no pictures here, simply because it doesn't seem appropriate, and because even if you do decide to spoil the battle for yourself, I want to let you experience at least a little of it without being spoiled.

One final warning, this is going to be a pretty long post, so be prepared for that.

Okay, so this is going to be hard. Let me start by saying I realize that my experience with the final battle of Mother 3 is probably a lot more visceral than it should be to most people, and I'll explain why in a little bit, but first let me set up the format of this blog post.

I'm really writing this article for myself, to try and get through the emotional turmoil that this battle stirred up in me, so here we go.

First, I'm going to talk about the context of the battle, basically, what led up to it. Then, I'm going to talk about the battle itself, first a transcription of the battle, and then an analysis, specifically of the way it uses it's gameness to hit the player square in the gut. Finally, I'm going to talk about my reaction to this battle.

Okay, here we go

Context:

I wrote up pretty much the entire story of Mother 3 in my review, so if you want to get what I'm talking about here, and you don't care about having even more spoilers heaped on your plate, then check it out right underneath this post.

Okay, so, Lucas's twin brother Claus seemed to have gotten himself killed going after the monster that killed his mother Hinawa. After the time skip, you start to run into a Masked Man who keeps pulling the needles that you need to pull. It's pretty heavily foreshadowed that Lucas is related to the Masked Man, which makes it pretty obvious that it's Claus.

You get confirmation that the Masked Man is Claus from Lucas's father Flint right before you go to fight Porky (which is what Pokey is actually called in this game) and then the Masked Man. Clause went through a process of cybernetic augmentation that left him more of a robot than a person, which is something you see the Pigmask army do to animals and one major villian throughout the story.

After you get to the Masked Man at the final needle, he fires a bolt of lightning at your party, knocking out every party member but Lucas, who is wearing a Franklin Badge, at which point, the fight starts.

The Battle(transcription):

Note that this is also a sort of transcription of the battle in text form, the analysis of the battle is in the next section, so if you want to skip this, feel free, I really only did this because I felt it would help me come to grips with it.

The boss battle takes place on a dark, pulsing background with a creepy song that has of bass.

When you try to attack, you will be told that
"For some reason, Lucas couldn't attack." and you will lose your turn.

At some point in the fight, the screen darkens, the music changes to the mournful Mother 3 Love Theme, and some text appears saying "Lucas..." and the response in the battle menu saying, "from somewhere, you heard someone call your name."

The battle continues until the screen fades to black again, this time with the text:
"Claus..." which is followed by "It was Hinawa's voice. It failed to reach the Masked Man"

The fight continues, and the Masked Man continues to attack relentlessly. He even uses PK Love Omega on you, which will almost assuredly deal mortal damage.

Fade to black again and this time the message
"Clause... Stop this. You aren't Porky's robot. You're are son!" appears on screen. Then the battle screen responds again, this time with "The Masked Man looked around."

The battle once again resumes until the Masked Man tries PK Love Omega again but
"Lucas! Look out!" appears in the battle menu and you are informed that "Flint jumped in front of Lucas" and then that "The Masked Man's attack dealt major damage to Flint." Flint then says, "Claus, please remember... I've been looking for you for so long..." The masked man then attacks again and you are informed that "Flint suffered major damage. Flint couldn't stand up."

At this point, you are able to attack the Masked Man, though as far as I can tell, you aren't able to defeat him by dealing damage. But then the text pops up

"Lucas... Stop fighting..." and the battle text response is "Hinawa's voice sadly echoed." To be honest, I never could bring myself to attack the Claus again.

As the battle goes on, the Claus' attacks slowly get weaker, this is most pronounced by the fact that his PK Love attacks start going down in level from Omega, to Gamma, to Beta, to Alpha.

The screen eventually fades to black, and the text this time says
"Claus... You and Lucas are brothers!" There is no response from the battle window.

Clauses attacks get weaker again, and the battle goes on until the screen darkens again and Hinawa says
"Can you hear me? You're Claus. Your name is Claus! You're our son!" The battle then continues.

After another bit of getting beaten on, the screen once again fades to black and Hinawa says "Please... Remember! Lucas... Claus..." at which point the screen fades to white, and a gray scale picture of two cribs comes into focus, and the Love theme plays. There is a lot of dialogue here, so I'm going to transcribe it a bit differently. Also note that the game doesn't say who says what, but I assume this is a conversation between Hinawa and Flint from back when Claus and Lucas were still babies, and I'll put down who I think says what.

Hinawa: "To think we would be blessed with two children at once... I bet they'll accomplish things together that they couldn't alone. I'm sure they'll argue a lot, too. And I can see them helping each other out when they need it. Claus... and Lucas. I bet we'll mix them up a lot until they get bigger..."

Flint: "Claus... and Lucas, huh? How do you want them to grow up to be?"

Hinawa: "To be kind, just like you."

Flint: "Oh, I was just going to say... to be kind, just like YOU.

Hinawa: "Great. Then it's decided. Claus. Lucas. Make us proud."

Fade back to white, then to the battle screen.

Now the previously shaded boxes that represented your fallen teammates are gone, and a sadly empty version of the love theme is playing.

At this point, various messages will appear in the battle text window, such as:
"Lucas isn't sure what to do anymore."
"Lucas shut his eyes tightly"
"The Masked Man shut his eyes."
"The Masked Man covered his ears."
"The Masked Man gazed at Lucas."

At this point, the Masked Man is doing very little damage to you. You can attack him, but I couldn't. Eventually, the screen gets washed out, not in black, but in white, the normal love theme starts playing, and Hinawa says:
"Claus... Claus... Claus... Come to your mother. You must be so exhausted. Come here, Claus.

The battle window response is:
"The Masked Man looked around, as if searching for something."

The Masked Man's sprite fades to black, a sound effect plays, and fades back in, this time with his weapons lowered, and his helmet off,'. The battle text says:
"The Masked Man removed his mask. His face looked just like Lucas's. It was Claus."

Now we get to the heart wrenching part.

"Claus fired an intense bolt of lightning!"
"Lucas's Franklin badge reflected the lightning back!"
"Claus took mortal damage!"

Fade completely to white

"Claus staggered towards Lucas."
"Claus embraced Lucas."
"Lucas, remembered Claus's smell."

Fade to black and open text box for cutscene

Claus: "I'm sorry it turned our like this. I'm really happy you could be with me just before the end... Thanks. Dad. I'm sorry I didn't listen to you. I'm going to where mom is now. Lucas. I hope we meet again someday. Bye. Thank you. I'm sorry. I'm sure we'll meet again."

Fade to scene of Lucas holding Claus's body while the rest of his party and Flint surround him.

The Battle (analysis):

The final battle of Mother 3 is easily the best final boss in the history of video games. I say that not because it is fun to play, on the contrary, it is absolutely gut-wrenching to go through, but it so effectively conveys what the designers hoped to convey that it stands as a the most affecting boss battle of all time, and that is the reason I say it is the best boss battle of all time.

When the battle starts, the first thing most people will try to do is attack. You are then told that "For some reason, Lucas couldn't attack." No matter how many times you try, or what type of spell you try to launch at the Masked Man, Lucas refuses to attack his brother. The point, then, of this boss battle is to survive by leveraging the scrolling health meter to keep yourself from fainting while still receiving massive amounts of damage from the Masked Man's attacks. The way I played it was, guard to slow the health meter to a crawl and wheal when necessary, but it is possible to survive by just healing a lot. This actually brings up the major flaw in the battle.

The best way to play the battle is to guard until your health is about to scroll to zero then heal and wait for your health to stop scrolling up. This, unfortunately, takes you out of the experience and ruins the immersion. It is quite possible to beat the battle without doing this, but it is still a problem that the best way to "win" is to game a clearly broken system that ruins the emotionality of the fight. It's not something you have to do, but it is sad that it is in an otherwise pitch perfect fight.

One of the major things about the battle is that all the text in this battle either appears in the center of the screen, or in the battle menu, which up until now had only been used to relay battle information. This sudden leap from abstract words to the use of battle menu's as narrative driving forces is a great subversion of traditional RPG tropes that really helps the immersion. The other major difference is that the messages are pausing to add dramatic tension, for instance, "For some reason, Lucas couldn't attack" pauses after Lucas's name, then finishes. It is once again a subversion of how the battle menu has worked in the game up to this point, and really helps drive the battle home.

I mentioned immersion just now and I want to talk about why this battle is immersive. There is the already mentioned use of battle text to tell you what is going on, but there is also the fact that what you can do is linked very closely to the way you are supposed to feel. The fact that you can't attack Claus until he attacks Flint shows how Lucas is unwilling to attack Claus shows that we are not supposed to be approaching this from the angle of how do I beat this boss, but with the question of how you can kill your own brother.

Then there is the matter of player control. This is relevant because Lucas clearly can act on his own, since he will refuse to attack or start crying independent of the player. Earlier in the game, it is established that the Player is separate from the character you control, and it is to this game's credit that it is still immersive despite that. For example, when Flint is attacked, the obvious response is anger, and so you can attack Claus at this point, but Hinawa doesn't like that, so even though you can still attack, it feels like something you shouldn't do. This is, like the rest of the battle, both what Lucas feels and what the game is trying to make the player feel.

Another small part of the battle and story interweaving is that Claus takes "mortal damage", the thing is, this term is only used when one of your own party members gets hit with an attack that will eventually roll their health meter to zero. This is a small touch that really bring Claus closer to the player.

The white screen scene, as I call it, is also expertly made to bring out the emotions of both real life siblings and real life parents. The thing is, this scene, and the boss battle as a whole is going to resonate a lot less with only children and non-parents than it will with people with siblings and/or children. I'm not sure whether this is a problem however, since the entire game is very much geared towards a person with a traditional nuclear family. That's not to say it's worthless to them, just that it will be less affecting.

There is one thing about the final battle that needs to be addressed. I have a friend who insists that the entire boss battle is less of a boss battle and more of a cutscene, since you really don't do anything to influence the boss battle other than try to stay alive. In response, I would say that trying to stay alive is what makes this boss battle special, and emotionally resonant, since it creates a sense of hopelessness that really hits the player until they are "saved" by Hinawa and Flint's intervention.

My Reaction:

Okay, here comes the part that is probably going to turn a lot of people off, since this is really just a place for me to, as the title says, share my reaction to this fight.

I broke down at the point where Claus fired the lightning bolt that would kill him, I had to stop for a good 15 minutes because I couldn't see through my tears. I may have just been particularly susceptible to it, because I have a brother very much like Claus, and I kinda see myself as being like Lucas. However, I have to stress that I have never cried more at a work of fiction than I have at the end of Mother 3.

I'm still working through it, and I feel as if I lost a member of my own family, and so I guess I wanted to share that with the community.

Thanks for reading this long ass post, I promise I'll do something fun soon.

Mother 3 Review

Okay, so I teased in my last blog post about a bunch of Mother 3 stuff. I have decided that since this review was starting to take a definite shape while I was typing the RPG list, I might as well start with the Mother 3 stuff.

Okay, first, about Mother 3

Mother 3 was released on the Game Boy Advance, and is the sequel to Earthbound, itself a sequel to the Japanese only Famicom RPG Mother. Mother 3 was not released in America for some reason, but honestly, I don't care why, I'm just angry that they didn't. I played the game using a fan translation patch applied to a ROM I got from an imported copy of the game, no pirating here.

Okay, so since I haven't done a review yet, here's how it's going to go. I will have no scores, instead a write up of various aspects of the game, which are:

Story: The quality of the writing, and the tell the game wants to tell, special mention to the use of interactivity to tell the story.
Gameplay: What kind of game and basically everything that yoru pressing buttons to do
Graphics: I really don't care much about whether a game has good graphics, but I know some people do, and they are an important part of a games atmosphere, so here they are
Sound: Voice acting, music, sound effects, etc.

These are the basics, so I'm only going ot be covering those. Just a quick note about this review, I will be doing story last, since that part will probably be too long for most people.

With that out of the way, here we go!


Gameplay:

Mother 3 is a traditional Dragon Quest style RPG, with a few twists. First, there are very few sidequests. I can remember one which was hidden and took about 30 minutes to complete, but other than that, there is nothing to do other than go to the next place the story dictates.

The other twist is the battle system. At first, the game seems like Earthbound redux in this regard, the scrolling health meuter is back, but now it scrolls slower so it can actually be planned around. Your party members have spells or special abilities, can use items, and do a basic attack, like most turn based RPGs.

The big twist is revealed around the start of the first chapter. Before then, you may have noticed your attacks comboing ofr no apparent reason, you may even realize that pressing the button will cause that second attack, though with maddening inconsistency. What is revealed via a simple message from a helpful ant is that tapping the A button in time with the background music is what causes the combos. Combos can get up to 16 hits long, and the music gets trickier as the game goes on, eventually getting into some insane songs that are incredibly hard to combo.

These two things work together to create a cool risk reward system. Here's an example. One of your party members just got hit, it was a mortal wound, if you don't heal him before his meter rolls down to zero, he faints, so the "game" is to maximize yoru damage output while still keeping your party alive.



The combination of these two systems along with the fairly strategic nature of the battle system makes Mother 3 a joy to play.


Graphics:

The game has a graphical style quite similar to earthbound, which gives it a unique, charming, atmosphere, along with letting you connect to the mostly blank characters by imagining yourself as one of them (at least for me anyways.)

Detail is clearly not the focus here so much as making these characters charming and meaningful. It's not that it looks bad, it's that a less detailed approach was taken as an artistic decision. There may not be a difference to you, but it is an important difference.

Sound:

The music in Mother 3 is simply incredible, here, have a listen




Sound is a key part of Mother 3, from the mournful love theme, to the more guitar centered f-f-fire! each piece does its part to add to the experience, and the soundtrack is uniformly excellent in that regard.

As I mentioned earlier, music also plays a key part in the battle system. To elaborate a bit further on my thoughts up on gameplay, comboing songs is like tapping your foot in time with the beat of you favorite music, you find the part to combo, and let your fingers do the rest.

I'm going to keep my favorite song a secret because it specifically relates to one of the major antagonists in the game, who I hope people haven't been spoiled as to who he is.

There are also a lot of musical references in the game, from classical mashups to Mega Man homages and a bunch of stuff in between. One little tidbit though, keep your ears open for Bat enemy's battle theme

Story:

Okay, be warned, here there be spoilers. If you have any inclination of playing Mother 3, then stop reading right now and play it, this review will still be here when you get done, and it is best to go into Mother 3 completely untouched by what other people think about it, or anything about the story in general.

Last chance:

MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD!!

Mother 3 is, to date, the only video game that has made me cry. and when I say cry, I mean I completely broke down and had to pause the game while I got myself back together, but lets back up.

Mother 3 is best described as a tragic comedy. It has moments of lightheartedness that bring back memories of earthbound (my favorite of them being: Aren't you the guys who carry around a bunch of food and don't eat it until you get hurt, or something to that effect, tragically, I can't remember where that NPC is now.) The first chapter is light hearted up until the halfway point when the main character's mother dies.



I had been playing, as I always do, with stupid names for the characters up until this point. I then decided to go back and rename all the characters with their recommended names.

It gets darker from there, with the final boss battle being the scene that scarred me to the point where I can't stop thinking about it.

Mother 3 is primarily concerned with two families, Lucas' family, and the larger family of the people of Tazmily village. As the game goes on these families grow apart due to the forces of modernity taking their toll on the small town of Tazmily. Lucas' family is pulled apart by the death of his brother and mother.

After a time skip, Lucas finds that his destiny is to pull 7 needles keeping an ancient dragon asleep. When the dragon wakes up, it will either destroy the world or remake it, depending on the heart of the person who pulls the needles. Unfortunately, he has competition in the form of a mysterious masked man who doesn't seem to have a heart and the pigmask army who started off the whole shebang by setting fire to the forest of hope just north of Tazmily.

I know, it sounds corny, but you're gonna have to trust me that the execution makes it incredibly riveting.

As you pull the needles, the town of Tazmily is slowly dying, as more of the townspeople are moving to the big city you will recognize as New Pork City from Brawl.

As you get closer to the final needle, the leader of the Pigmask army that has been hounding is revealed ot be an ancient Pokey, you know, the fat kid from Earthbound. He's been hopping dimensions since the events of that game, and has decided to torment the residents of Tazmily, and the greater islands known as the Nowhere Islands because he is bored. Yes, because he is bored, it's wort

After following porky to the last needle, he blocks your path and sends the masked man to pull the last needle. You fight him in a battle reminiscent of the Gigyas fight from Earthbound, except this is a straightforward battle, no tricks here.

After the battle, Pokey gets into the Absolutely Safe Capsule, which has a small bug, it won't open after someone gets in. This is, once again, a better scene than it sounds, bordering on terrifying once you think of the implications.

Then, you go on to fight the masked man who is revealed to be Lucas' brother Claus, which leads to the heartrending final boss battle that I will be covering in my next full blog post.

End of the spoilers!

I should hate Mother 3's story because I have absolutely no influence on it and in an RPG, I would normally find that a huge fault. I don't hate it because it is so well told, and of such quality that it transcends its limitations to become something more.

Mother 3 is a fable, a poignant story told in broad strokes. It focuses on Lucas' family and the family of Tazmily to the exclusion of all else, including your party members. This makes it paradoxically both less and more personal. You won't have the kind of close connection you felt to your party members in Chrono Trigger, but the moments focusing on the families are some of the most powerful in any video game.

Just a special mention about the fan translation, it is top notch, with the only thing giving away that this isn't a Nintendo published translation is the very adult subject matter.

Overall:

Sorry about making you sit through that long stretch of text without pictures, but let me tell you that you need to play this game. The battle system is top notch, the story is one of the best in any video game, and can, in my opinion, stand toe to toe with most literature.

Just Cause 2 demo impressions

Okay, so the only experience I ever had with Just Cause 1 was when I played the demo over at a friends house, it was okay, nothing all that great.

But this demo, this demo is mindblowing.  If the full game can remain as engaging as the demo has been, then it will easily be my favorite game of this generation.  Hell, I've had more fun with the demo than pretty much any retail game from this hardware cycle.

The whole thing has this great cartoony feel, which, when coupled with the pretty realistic looking graphics, make it all seem deliciously subversive.

My absolute favorite thing about it right now is the fact that your bullets can keep opponents in the air after you grapple them.  I love the rush you get from pulling a guy towards you (while yelling "get over here" of course) then giving him a bullet cushion straight out of Dante's playbook

This demo has very much sold me on this game.  I've been playinga lot of serious games lately, and so this looks to be a good change of pace.

The game is a wide open sandbox game with an emphasis on stunts and just balls out craziness.  The shooting is some sort of hybrid lock on, but you can target heads and legs for specific effects.  The demo gives you a pretty large chunk of land to play with, though most of it is empty.  The fun in the game comes from the sheer amount of freedom you have, and the fact that the whole things seems like an 80's action movie.

Time spent playing Just Cause 2 demo: somewhere around 12 hours

P.S.  I just wanted to say that this is an amazing game to play with friends.  It's always fun to watch, and the demo is timed, so you already have a system in which passing the controller makes sense.

My Top Ten RPGs part 2/2

Okay, so you probably don't want a long introductory paragraph, so here's the last 4 games


4: Paper Mario

This is my favorite of the Mario RPGs. When I was a kid, I bought this for my N64 thinking it was like Yoshi's Story, the only other game that looked like it, a 2D platformer. I was blown away by the humor and the story, which were simply incredible. It's amazing that a character as ho hum as Mario can have his name attached to such a subversive game. This probably should be number ten, but it's my nostalgic favorite, simply because of how I misunderstood it when I bought it.


3: Fire Emblem for Game Boy Advance

I picked this game up after hearing that Marth and Roy were in it, and I wanted to play it since I really liked those characters in Melee. They weren't in it but what I found was one of the most fun games I have ever played. The combat is deep and rewarding, the only blemish being the fact that critical hits can foul up your strategy through no fault of your own. I beat this game close to seven times, and I may go back for another sometime soon. The only thing holding this game back is the fact that, well, the story isn't really all that. It's interesting, but ultimately shallow, very much unlike the combat.


2: Final Fantasy Tactics

I picked this game up off PSN on the recommendation of a friend. The game has an amazing story (overlooking the unfortunate translation) and a great battle system. The story is the real draw here though, with ruminations on class and the political warfare being major highlights. Wow, this one ended up pretty short huh? sorry.




Sorry to interrupt, but I felt I needed to warn you, this one of the very best games ever made, easily my favorite game, and I don't know if I'll be able to stop once I start gushing about it.









1: Mother 3

I went in to this game expecting another pretty much entirely lighthearted adventure as I did with Earthbound. I was not prepared for what this game was going to give me. This game will make you laugh and weep. It has the single greatest end boss of all time, a suprisingly deep rythm combo system, and one of, if not the best story ever comitted to silicon. There is so much I want to talk about that I'm eventaully going to have to write a review of it and a more in depth analysis simply to deal with this game

I have not stopped thinking about this game since I stopped playing it 2 months ago. Not once.

I was going to ramble on, and I did, for more than a couple paragraphs, but that would have made this a review as well, and that is going to have to wait. I'll probably try to get my thoughts on Mother 3 together, probably in a series of posts. Know this though, you are not ready for this game.