Saturday, May 22, 2004

ICO


I had heard good things about ICO, so when I saw a number of copies at Best Buy for $15 each I thought it would be a good time to get this game. After 2 hours of playing, I can see this game is special.



The game starts out with a young boy with horns growing out of his head being taken to an old castle by a few cloaked riders. The boy, ICO, is seen as a curse to his town because of his horns, so he is placed in the castle as a sacrifice. Ico soon breaks free of his confinement and explores the castle’s spiral staircase to find a girl trapped in a cell hanging in the middle of the tower. After lowering the cell and releasing the girl, Yorda, a brief dialogue cutscene with Ico talking to the girl about escaping follows. Then the enemies in make their first appearence, as a shadowy form leaves a dark portal and comes after Yorda, slowly dragging her back to the portal.

My first experience with the combat of the game in this scene led to many game overs since I was just learning the game. When you regain control of Ico after the cutscene, the first thing I saw was a stick, so I naturally went to pick it up to whack the shadow enemy with it. But by the time I would do that, the shadow would already have dragged Yorda into the portal where she waited as if she were in quicksand. I couldn’t figure out how to get Yorda back as my attacks with the stick were missing, and after a short while Yorda was gone and the screen filled with a dark wave and it was game over. After another few tries, I decided to use Ico’s basic horn attack instead of getting the stick first, and I struck the enemy before it could return to the portal, making him release Yorda for the moment. I later learned that you can actually pull Yorda back out of a portal before she’s gone by pressing L1, so that explains the silly time I was having.



The object of the game involves guiding Yorda through each area with Ico, and I suppose ultimately escaping the castle. The L1 button allows you to have Ico call to Yorda and have her walk over and follow, or be next to her and take her hand and guide her with you. The characters move in a lifelike way, probably motion captured. Yorda is a girl who appears gentle and not very athletic, so when Ico holds her hand and runs with her, she is kinda dragged along and stumbles. This is emphasized in the vibration of the controller with Yorda’s steps providing the feedback. Guiding Yorda through the castle may involve getting her to jump across a gap, in which you press and hold L1 to have her come over, and Ico will reach out to grab her as she jumps, then use the analog stick to pull her up. Sometimes this can be a nervous experience as you watch Yorda take a leap and just grab Ico in time.

The graphics in this game are very atmospheric with the use of lighting outside and through windows, the brightness of the game, and just the structure and the design of this giant empty castle that feels very empty. Also lending to this is the camera which is set in certain positions depending on where you are in a room. You can zoom in close with R2 and look around with the right analog stick, but its only to a limited degree.



This is an adventure game with puzzles to solve in order to get to the next area, so it seems you spend most of the time exploring and trying to figure out how to open up the passage to proceed, or how to get Yorda to a certain area. Unlike Ico, she can’t climb down a chain rope, or jump up on a ledge and sidle against the wall. In the area I’m currently in, I couldn’t figure out what I was suppose to do to get out. I went through a room with a long bridge, and outside where I found a few bridges pulled up. There was a block in one corner that I moved so I could use it to get to a higher platform. There was a spool holding the rope to one bridge and I thought I needed to release it to get the bridge down, but this wasn’t something I could interact with. After jumping off the side to my doom to try to get to the lower floor a few times, I went back to the previous room and noticed the chandelier hanging on the beams near the celling. After climbing up, I landed on the chandelier, sending it crashing to the bridge below, only to slightly damage the bridge’s support beam. Eventually I wondered if I had missed a door somewhere, seeing another entrance on the floor below, so I went back to the save point and noticed a spiral staircase leading down to the lower entrance along with bombs next to it, obviously to use on the crippled support beam. Using the bomb on the bridge’s support beam brought it down, leaving it slopping down to the exist and across the chasm on the lower floor that had blocked me before. The Zelda secret theme could be inserted at times like these.



After solving this puzzle, the shadow enemies appeared, swarming all around. I still have to get by this part, as I keep getting mauled by the numbers. Some of the shadows take on the form of small creatures like spiders, while some are large beasts. While Ico doesn’t have any life hit points and you only loose to falling from large heights or Yorda’s capture, if Ico gets hit by one of the shadows, he’ll be stunned for a moment while the shadows can take off with Yorda. The most annoying enemy so far are the ones that have wings, who will grab Yorda and whisk her away in the air to a portal, leaving you to chase after and hope you can save her in time.

A few related links, 1up.com has a report on the GDC presentation of the creation of ICOICO Flash appears to be a well done fansite, and the official site for the Japanese version is I-C-O.net.

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

E3 2004


E3 has come and gone, and what a show this year! Normally I would get my E3 info from game sites in the way of text and screens, and Xplay’s coverage, but I’ve been fortunate enough to have broadband this year to see plenty of media, and TechTV’s merging with G4 gave me access to G4′s coverage. Still going to catch Xplay’s coverage starting tomorrow.

Zelda. Awesome. Being a huge fan and anticipating its unveiling, the first thing I checked for was the coverage on Zelda: The Wind Waker 2. What a big surprise it was to find Nintendo had changed direction and instead of delivering another cel-shaded Zelda, as I had expected from riding on Eiji Aonuma’s comments on TWW2 from last year’s E3, they unveiled a “realistic” or “mature” style Zelda in the vein of Ocarina of Time along with the return of “adult” Link. I honestly didn’t think they would be able to put out a different looking Zelda in the same generation, but they did by reusing The Wind Waker’s engine and modifying its graphical style. At first I had wondered if this game I was seeing was real or not for that matter!
Interview with Miyamoto and Aonuma on the new Zelda.
Miyamoto:”

Just very quickly though, as for the reason why Link has changed, there were very, very, very, very many people out there who wanted Link to change [laughs]”

In a way, the new Zelda is kinda like they’ve admitted The Wind Waker’s style was a mistake, not
that I’m opposed to it, but this more realistic style is just more appealing to me for Zelda. Its good that Nintendo is giving what people want with this Zelda, and in doing so they’re pulling out the stops to ensure their success.

Seeing the crowd’s reaction to the trailer and Miyamoto appear afterwards with Master Sword and Hylian Shield in hand was hilarious and awesome. :)

“Even after 18 years, the legend of Zelda never stops changing. We are now taking you to a world where Link has grown up, a world where he will act different and look different. In order to grow, Link must not stand still, and neither can I.”
- Shigeru Miyamoto

Of somethings I noticed in the trailer and screens, while Link’s character design sorta harkens back to the older versions, he looks like an updated Hero of Time Link from OoT with his general clothing appearence and piercings. Unlike OoT’s character design, Link’s hair is now parted on the side instead of in the middle as TWW’s Link was and the Hero of Time was depicted in that game. From the way the game has armies of pigs marching on the horizon, the setting apparently being Hyrule, and seemingly the Hero of Time returning, could this be a prequel to The Wind Waker and expand upon the game’s backstory? Also, there seems to be a serious amount of pig content in the game with the pigs riding on pigs, and the giant fire boss with the chains appearing to have a pig face, could it mean…? From the looks of it, there might be more action than previous Zelda games had with all the fighting and horseback riding, although I kinda didn’t like the pausing present in the video when Link strikes an enemy that The Wind Waker had.

If Ocarina of Time is one of the best games ever as well as one of the best Zelda games, given the hardware of the Gamecube and the looks of the new game in the trailer, and the use of TWW’s engine, could this be everything OoT had and more, making it the best Zelda game of the recent games?!

edit: Wham! Gaming has an interview with Miyamoto.
Miyamoto: “Link as a character will be taller with longer limbs, so we’re going to have a lot more sword fighting and action elements like we saw in a game like Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. And then of course we’ll have to have a lot of cool items that we can have Link using in different poses.”
Sweet! More action like Zelda II!

Nintendo apparently went through a lot of trouble to keep the new Zelda a secret, as the embargo on interviews with Eiji Aonuma at the 2004 GDC have lifted.

Planet Gamecube has a transcript and audio of an interview with Aonuma with several gaming publications.
Eiji Aonuma: …the Four Swords team does include members of the original LttP team, so obviously that may have had some affect of it. Also, the director of Four Swords is a huge fan of LttP and the old 2-D style games.

I had thought I heard about Four Swords + being worked on by the staff of A Link to the Past, which explains some of its nostaligia. Looking forward to FSA and the return of classic Zelda gameplay.
Game Informer got an exclusive interview with Aonuma.
Eiji Aonuma:
To me storyline is important, and as producer, I am going to be going through, and trying to bring all of these stories together, and kind of make them a little bit more clear. Unfortunately, we just haven’t done that yet.

The GBA Four Swords Zelda is what we’re thinking as the oldest tale in the Zelda timeline. With this one on the GameCube being a sequel to that, and taking place sometime after that.
Good to see them wanting to tie all the Zelda games together better, but Four Swords is the oldest story in the game’s history, as in first? I’ve had my suspicions about Hyrule Adventure’s plot, and in general I wonder how that works, how can any Zelda game take place before Ocarina of Time without destroying the importance of its events? Just have to wait an play the game in a few weeks. What’s up with calling the U.S. version “Hyrulean Adventure” anyway? Hyrule Adventure is so much better.

Watched Nintendo’s entire press conference thanks to Gamespot. Overall it appeared they had a much better showing this year to make up for last year’s showing of Pac-Man vs. and connectivity, and what was then 2 spinoff Zelda games, Tetra’s Trackers and a rough looking GC Four Swords. Nintendo’s DS has me interested with its N64 or above level of power and touch screen. I thought The Pac-Man demo where you draw Pac-Man and walls for him to bounce off walls was neat. Its good that Nintendo is taking a creative approach to a new platform to create new types of games. I’ve always been more interested in the home consoles than Nintendo’s portables though, don’t use my GBA enough. But when they make a Mario, Zelda, or Metroid for it, I’ll probably have to have it. DS movies at IGN.

Starfox and Starfox 64 remain among my favorites, and its good to see the series return to its shooting roots after Starfox Adventures, of which I need to play sometime. The ground combat that Nintendo’s trailer mainly shows kinda seems to draw from SF64′s multiplayer mode, at any rate, I hope Namco works on making this new Starfox a very good shooter to live up to SF64. I also hope NOA gets some good voice actors for the characters, something SF64 did well.

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. Having recently finished the original Metroid Prime, hearing the ending theme in the trailer was a great way to present the first footage of the sequel. I’ve heard that Samus is going to be traveling between a light and dark side of a planet, the enviromental visuals of the game in general look dark and grey, so I wonder if we are only seeing one area of the game? From the video it appears that a dark entity is assimilating other enemies.

For those who have fully completed Metroid Prime, it looks like its back with a vengence along with the goo. Is it the cause of the darkness engulfing enemies? I notice there are Space Pirates in the game… but from the intial screens before E3, I thought Samus was fighting a Chozo. The design of this enemy looks very similar to the Chozo ghosts from Metroid Prime with its suit and head. Although they have the mantis claw arms of the space pirates from the 2-D games that was absent from Metroid Prime except for a piece of art in the manual (the Space pirates in the game had hands with guns attached and didn’t look that similar to the ones from Super Metroid). These pirates in fact remind me of the pirates from Fusion, where they had the body of a space pirate, but the head of a bird, perhaps an X merging of pirate and Chozo. The whole Dark Samus entity kinda reuses Fusion’s SA-X idea at first glance. One video shows a really cool intro scene of Dark Samus, who sports a fiercer and more meancing helmet design than Samus to go along with the evil dark Samus thing.

While Samus’ model looked good in Metroid Prime, it looks like they’ve refined her for Metroid Prime 2. The one thing I didn’t like about MP’s character design was that Samus’ visor didn’t look fierce enough, it was more straight and square than it was in the previous Metroid games. It looks like they’ve worked on that this time, but what’s with the change in her visor shape at the top, and change in helmet? It’s almost hinting at the Fusion design.

More Metroid movies, including a long demonstration and information, at Gamespot, and an interview with producer Kensuke Tanabe at PGC and a roundtable discussion with Retro and Tanabe at IGN .
So many games coming out in the future to play, and so many games out now I haven’t played yet, and only so much time to play them :|

Saturday, May 15, 2004

Metroid Zero Mission JPN commercial!


!!#*! Japan – gets – the – best – commercials. XD

Metroid Zero Mission Japan Commercial
This worked ok, but the Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion commercials were better in the way they presented the game… and this latest Japanese commercial for Zero Mission capitalizes on the suitless Samus (would “Justin Bailey” be an appropriate term? :) ) That’s one recent fantasy of mine to cross of my list. More pics and info on the commercial can be found at Metroid.jp’s recently revealed section entitled “Chisato’s Play Diary”, apparently a diary page for the hot actor who plays Samus in the commerical.

Sunday, May 9, 2004

Mobile Suit Gundam: Federation vs. Zeon


 

A half-century has passed since Earth began moving its burgeoning population into gigantic orbiting space colonies…
It is the year 0079 of the Universal Century. The cluster of colonies furthest from the Earth, Side Three, proclaimed itself the Principality of Zeon and launched a war of independence against the Earth Federation…
Intial fighting lasted over one month and half of the human population was lost. People were horrified by the atrocities that had been committed in the name of independence…
After eight months ahd passed and they were at a stalemate, one boy had a fateful encounter with a mobile suit.
Who will survive?


My used copy of Mobile Suit Gundam: Federation vs. Zeon from EBgames.com arrived in the mail recently. Good thing I got the lowcost EBSaver shipping because while their site said to expect 5-10 days, I got my order in 3 days, although I must be close to their facility. Another nice surprise since I was expecting to play it a week from now. As mentioned on EBgames.com, the game came with the original box and instruction manual, both in good condition. Great thing about games coming in DVD cases today is the box and manual don’t get thrown out for used games as easily :) Cartoon Network’s recent weekly run of the new Gundam Seed, a modern reimaging take on the original Mobile Suit Gundam anime series, has brought back my interest in Gundam. One of the reasons I wanted a PS2 was so I could play all these Gundam games that were coming out for the console, and now that I have one, I thought it was about time to pick up a Gundam game. I decided on Federation vs. Zeon because I had remembered EGM giving it a good review and basically saying it was one of the better games of its type, that is, a game based on a anime TV show that was not average, but good. Being a home version of an arcade game developed by Capcom probably helps too. Except when I played it, I thought I was in for a disappointment…

With about an hour to play that night, I went through the Arcade mode. Naturally, when presented with the mobile suit select screen, I picked the Gundam RX-79 :) At first I thought that it was really cool. Playing the controls, I found the Gundam could do most the things it did in the show. Square shoots the gun, while pressing Triangle whips out the beam saber and the shield is used for protection (although it may be decorative) in the other arm. The X button uses the boost, which allows the mobile suit to jump, or if you continually hold it down, to fly for a short distance until the boost meter runs out. Once you land, it refills again. I was miffed at first about the lack of a camera control, but found it isn’t really needed because of the targeting feature. When there are enemies on the map, you press Circle to target one, and from there the camera and your mobile suit’s focus stays on that enemy. So even if you are facing the opposite direction and shoot, the mobile suit will turn around and shoot the current target. When there are enemies around you out of your sight, an arrow will flash to alert you, and you can press Circle to cycle to the next target. The beam sword can be very effective, but it requires closing in on an enemy. I’ll occasionally miss my chance and strike too soon or late and get pummled by the enemy. When you do hit, the camera quickly shifts to a more cinematic side viewpoint so you can see the action of the saber hitting the enemy, then shifts back to your normal view, all without effecting your control and sight. You can even attack large vehicles with your beam saber, even flying ships if your can catch them with the boost.

The simple controls aside, I was having a hard time playing the game. Besides fumbling through the controls on my first time, I found the Gundam to be very slow. I was getting hit a lot and having a real difficult time executing a hit with the beam saber. The slow movement of the mobile suit also made it hard to dodge attacks. Why would they make mobile suits move so slow that you couldn’t properly control and move them to evade and manuever around the enemies? Checking out the game’s manual for the controls, I was missing out on the dashing move. By pressing the d-pad in the same direction twice, the mobile suit will move quickly to evade, while using up a small amount of boost. The left analog stick can be used, but I find it much harder for my thumb to comfortably reach and pull off the tapping. Ah, now I was getting better and the game was getting fun, if only for a moment. Throughout most of the arcade mode I was fumbling about. To make matters worse, most of the last stages took place in space, so I ended up drifiting around a lot because of the floaty physics of that stage type. The last stages seemed to have so many enemies coming at me that I couldn’t get a break at times. Finishing the arcade mode, I felt disappointed about the game. Overall the control of the mobile suits felt too slow and sluggish, it just didn’t feel like there was much to the actual gameplay here to make it a good game. I even thought about turning in the Bandai customer survey form with ‘make the mobile suits move faster’.
The next day I tried the Campaign mode and found out just how awesome this game is and my disappointment faded away. Not awesome in that its a classic/must-have game, but awesome in that its a game based on Mobile Suit Gundam, and it’s good.
The reason the Campaign mode was enjoyable to play was that it starts off easy, while on the Arcade mode, your kinda thrown into the game with too many enemies blowing you to pieces while you learn the game. The first mission in Campaign mode starts off on the Outside of Jaburo map, where you control a GM and destroy all enemies which have low A.I.. And from there the difficulty gradually increases. A chart on the Campaign map shows the different levels of difficulty as marked by color, ranging from Very Easy to Very Hard, the harder missions don’t appear until after you’ve played several missions to get used to the game. Now that I’ve played enough of the game to realize that it was mainly me sucking before, I’m having a good time with Federation vs. Zeon.
The Campaign mode is based upon the events of the one year war of Mobile Suit Gundam, with you in the role of an annoymous support unit helping the Federation instead of playing the role of one of the main characters from the series. Most of the missions will involve clearing the area of a certain amount of enemies, and certain conditions my vary. You might be alone, or you might have a CPU teammate to back you up that you can issue simple movement commands with L1. Some missions might introduce you to a new unit where you test it against enemy forces before acquring it for later use.

There are unique missions sprinkled throughout, based on the events from the TV show where you can support the main characters. One mission in particular involves defending White Base from enemies. At this point, I had thought it was kind of funny that I was doing all of the defending for White Base while Aumro Ray and his Gundam were absent, although I understood that this is a game so its more fun if you are the on taking part in the action. Then all of the sudden Char shows up, and bam, there’s Amuro Ray himself charging from White Base in his Gundam with me backing him up.
As you progress through the Campaign, you’ll be given various new units that you can use, some slightly stronger versions of the same mobile suit, differentiated by the extra stars on the unit select screen. As you progress, you’ll even acquire captured enemy Zeon mobile suits to add to your list, with a new Federation paint job of course. I personally stick to the Gundams and GMs.

Eventually you get Amuro’s Gundam RX-79 when your taken to Side 7 to test the suit out. I especially liked how the mission starts with the Gundam preparing to launch with the apporpriate theme in the background, and instead of starting from a standing position, the Gundam is shown running down the side of the colony, an action I just thought was neat to see. I usually reserve the Gundam for the harder missions. You need to use different suits between missions, as the damge you take during one mission carries over, and they need a few missions to pass to recover their life.

Another mission I thought was cool involved using the G-Fighter and Gundam to destroy a Zanibar cruiser. Like in the TV show, you actually get to jump on the G-Fighter and let it fly you around like your on a surfboard. If you go too high or fall off, you have to look around for the G-Fighter to land and try again.
The game box claims there is over 200 missions in this game, so far I’ve done about 60 missions, and I’d guess the Federation and Zeon sides each get 100 missions. The large number of missions goes along with the fact that the missions themselves aren’t so complicated, as I’ve said, your mainly just destroying enemy forces. It’s not exactly on the level of complexity and scripting as Rogue Leader for example. There’s a good variety of stage types available, and although you basically have a square border showing you the boundaries, the actual playfield level design is unique enough to be fun. You’ll have to make good use of the boost to get to higher elevations of land, or pull yourself out of a canyon. Some stages include water to jump into and fight underwater, while some stages are set entirely in space with more floaty control that can be a pain. Space battles just aren’t as fun as the land battles.


I really like how the stages have different types of terrain like tall buildings, mountains, canyons, and water. Using the boost, you can scale the top of a high building and attempt to take out the enemy below. Might not be that effective, but its neat that you can climb to that kind of height. You can even land on a large vehicle like White Base. A nice touch to the buildings, if they take too much damage, they’ll collapse and leave a leveled space behind.
All the familar (or not so familar if you’ve never seen Gundam) music from the show is present and sets the mood well. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the show, but the music sounds like its high quality midi that sounds very close although I could be wrong. The voice work provided by the Ocean group is excellent, all of the actors from the TV show reprise their roles.
Mobile Suit Gundam: Federation vs. Zeon, while appealing immensely to the Gundam fan in me, is actually a good game, although if you aren’t a Gundam fan, the appeal will probably be lessened. The gameplay isn’t all that deep, but it does a good job at providing lots of action, and many missions to play through to keep you entertained. I haven’t had a chance to try it out, but the game also has a 2 player split screen mode that allows you to either go against or team up with a friend. This game would be awesome if it had online play, and it seems its already being worked on in the form of the sequel, Zeta Gundam: AEUG Vs. Titans. I’d get a netplay adapter for my PS2 for that. I’d get a netplay adapter for my PS2 for that. MSG: Federation Vs. Zeon is long gone out of print and would probably make a good Greatest Hits title, but you can find it used at EB Games and Gamefly for about $20. I might have to check out the other 3 Gundam games for PS2, although I’ve heard 2 of them aren’t that great, and I hope Bandai decides to release this GC Gundam in the U.S.
I recorded 3 movies to show off a few stages of the game, one involving the appearence of Char and Amuro battling it out that I mentioned. WMP 9 is required, and the movies are in zips to save bandwidth.
movies
Arcade stage 1, Side 7
Escort Supply Corps
Defend White Base