Gaming Weekend: The Short List Edition
This week I played fewer games than I sometimes do, fixated more on a handful of titles rather than flipping around from game to game. The result is a deeper look into some current addictions and a perhaps surprising reaction to a demo for a game on my anticipated short list of March purchases that has me running back to the drawing board.
Pata-poop
I played two PSP demos this weekend but before I discuss either of them I need to take a moment to half praise and half rant at how Sony is handling their platforms. On one hand I love the hardware Sony puts out. Aesthetically it’s maybe not on par with Nintendo or even Apple, but I do like the PSP form factor and the Sixaxis/DualShock is a time-tested and supremely capable controller. And I admire Sony for the capabilities they squeeze into their devices. As a gadget enthusiast I appreciate Sony’s kitchen sink mentality when it comes to feature sets.
However, it does drive me batty that the WiFi capabilities in both devices is just wonky enough to prevent me from using it in my house. Now I have a nearly wireless household although the router I use has a switch built in so I can use an ethernet cable in my home entertainment system where built-in WiFi is less standard than in computer equipment. For whatever reason my DS, Laptop, TiVo with USB 802.11x adapter, desktop and Sirius Stiletto can all access my WPA-protected WiFi network without a hitch but both the PSP and the PlayStation 3 cannot. The answer to the problem is probably locked away in my router’s internal settings but with so many other devices set firmly in the “Just Works” camp, I’m stubbornly unwilling to go mucking around for the sake of two devices.
Especially since the PS3 comes with an Ethernet port and it lives in the entertainment system so problem solved. The one minor hiccup is the PSP. Some days I can find a neighbor’s unencrypted network signal and use that to access the net but it’s spotty at best. I can also connect via USB to my desktop computer and the PS3 which allows me to do file transfers and so forth. What doesn’t make sense to me at all is that you can’t set up the PS3 to act as an access point for the PSP. With all the Remote Play PSP-to-PS3 interconnectivity they tout, you’d think this simple option would be the first thing they set up, but as far as I can tell it isn’t even possible.
The upshot of all this is that it took me several hours of fiddling to get the demos for Patapon and God of War: Chains of Olympus onto my PSP and once they were installed I was informed that I needed to do a firmware update to play them which I was ultimately only able to do via USB connection to the desktop PC rather than through the PS3. There may have been (and in all likelihood are) better ways to handle it but not only are the options for this kind of operation scattered around the cryptically titled subheadings in the XMB (for both systems) but the online documentation is a total waste of time.
In short, Sony: Love the products, hate the support.
So, where was I? Ah yes, the demos.
I don’t have too much to say about God of War: It’s exactly what you expect from a God of War game and it looks and plays beautifully on the PSP. I did encounter several moments of intense slowdown (remember I’m running from the Memory Stick here and not a disc so that doesn’t bode too well for the final product) but overall I found it enjoyable if a bit brief. Then again, what I’ve heard about the full game suggests that’s par for the course so perhaps it was simply truth in advertising. I still haven’t decided if I’ll be purchasing the game or not on day one, I’m leaning toward not because while 1Up Yours may think that $40 for a five hour game is totally fair, I don’t agree.
What I really want to talk about though is Patapon. Now this game has gotten a lot of positive pre-release press, praising it’s curious blend of RPG, action and rhythm elements with a distinctive 2D art style that reminds me a little bit of Paper Mario as seen through Tim Burton’s eyes. The way some people talk about this game makes it seem like they fear that it will be a commercial failure (though perhaps a critical success like Psychonauts) and they trumpet the game endlessly. So much so that I was pretty much sold on it before I ever played it and found that it was also on my to-buy short list.
Then I played the demo.
Let me say up front that I appreciate what they’re trying to do with the game. The basic mechanic involves tapping out various rhythms with the face buttons which map to actions that your minions (the Patapons) perform. For example, tapping square, square, square, circle in time with the game’s music sends your Patapons marching forward. So far, so good. But then you have to use this same method to issue attack commands, like circle, circle, square, circle… still in time. The problem is that the graphics are so busy being cute and stylish that they forget they also need to be functional so it becomes very difficult to gauge whether you should be marching or attacking based on enemy location relative to your Patapons. Also the game rewards you for chaining these sequences together (the basic feedback loop is a pulsing border on the window and some tambourine-like metronome action gives you the beat; you enter the sequence in time and the Patapons sing it back to you when you get it right, which you reply to with another sequence and you’ve started a 2x chain). This means that you have to try to keep a consistent string of the sequences going which won’t put your Patapons into harm’s way but the only way to know the outcome of a given command sequence is to issue it. With all the input/feedback going on the visuals need an obvious way to give you information about the status of your characters and quite simply it fails.
It’s hard to find a game that you want to like but that fights you at every turn until eventually you just give up. I felt there were too many things wrong with the Patapon demo to even keep it on my list of games “to check out someday.” The fact that it throws too many elements at you all at once and seems to overwhelm with unfamiliar terminology and mechanics while trying to exist in its own little universe made it feel like it had a steep learning curve and yet the core game interaction (the sequence input) remained static at two options for the first three or four levels. It gave it this uneven feeling of being overwhelming and yet tedious and repetitive at the same time. Also, the little Patapons have incredibly annoying voices and spend too much time talking. There simply isn’t enough story here to justify the amount of text and “flavor” they throw at you.
As much as it pains me to say, I think I’m going to pass on Patapon.
The Rest of the Games
- Resistance: Fall of Man – I spent a good amount of time playing this as my work-week “night cap” game that I play after my wife has gone to bed. I usually have about an hour to myself and often I use the time to play DS or PSP games in bed but occasionally I’ll put in a few rounds on a console game instead. Since this was the last of the four main PS3 exclusives that I wanted to play, I was pretty excited when it showed up from Goozex. The game is decent I suppose, it’s certainly no worse than some of the games I played for achievement points on the 360. The biggest problem is that while the premise is kind of interesting in the way that all alternate history is (to me anyway), they kind of make it moot by adding all these futuristic alien weapons into your arsenal that trump any human-made ballistic weapon you could have had at the time the game is set. Of course they make up for this by having 1950s-era firearms look, act and feel like 2000s-era firearms the likes of which you’d find in CoD4. It’s competent and enjoyable enough but it feels like filler and I’m likely to forget all about it as soon as I’m finished with the campaign mode.
- Jeanne D’Arc – I’m completely infatuated by this game which has found the void left in my heart by Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and filled it with revisionist history, anime and truly challenging tactical combat. I do wish that certain actions (like potion use) affected a more complete nine-square radius rather than the four compass points because tactically it’s usually foolish to have to keep all party members in close proximity to play up everyone’s strength and I don’t understand why one character (Colet) speaks with a cheesy phonetic French accent when all the characters are supposed to be French, but these are minor quibbles with a game that is high on my early list of favorites for 2008.
- Rock Band – Of course we had our weekly Thursday night meeting and Joey Big Hat had a brief performance (we were implored to catch up on Lost as well so we compromised with a short set followed by a couple of TiVo’d Lost episodes). In order to make up for the lack of JBH time we stopped by the other band members’ house on Friday evening to play with their copy and another friend. Having five people there meant that there was more opportunity for me to do something besides sing (though not before nailing 100% on “Interstate Love Song” at the Medium difficulty—a feat I had not achieved previously). I played drums quite a bit and found that I simply cannot hold up on Hard with the drum kit, but I have perhaps more fun playing drums than any other aspect of the game. I can say I’m probably best at guitar and I do the singing by necessity, but I enjoy drums the most. Among my favorite tracks to play on drums are “Don’t Fear the Reaper” and the quasi-difficult to find OXM disc exclusive “Rock Rebellion” by Bang Camaro. The highlight of the evening was a particularly rousing rendition of “Dead or Alive” (a JBH staple) that involved a flamboyant solo by guitarist Doug and a spirited vocal performance by Jay. The song ended with everyone erupting into a five-minute fit of laughter so I’d say it was a huge success.
- Sega Genesis Collection – It’s a little strange that despite my affinity for all things video games I don’t spend more time poring over the classics that I missed in their heyday. A prime example is the Sega Genesis which I never owned as a kid. I certainly had friends who played Genesis rather than Super Nintendo, but where my childhood memories include Final Fantasy III, Chrono Trigger, Super Metroid and Super Mario World, I know plenty of people who were building similar memories only with Phantasy Star, Sonic and Shinobi. I love the Sega Genesis Collection for putting some of these games I missed as a kid into a simple handheld library of nostalgia that I don’t yet share. It’s kind of like experiencing someone else’s childhood and I find that somehow comforting, like I’m connecting with other gamers on a primitive level. So far my favorite by far is Shinobi III which is punishingly difficult like many of the games I recall from my younger days but is also incredibly rich and features superb graphics and a catchy soundtrack. I’ve never been a huge fan of Sonic games (I just don’t get it…. you can go really fast but then you can’t explore or you can go more slowly and find all the secrets but then what’s the point of being “Sonic”?) but since those are quicker games they tended to be the ones that got put in when I visited other kids’ homes so I really appreciate the longer-form Genesis games like Phantasy Star II being included here. It’s a great title for PSP owners and one I’m really glad I made a point to include on my Goozex list.