Ush's Videogames review thread!

LOST MAGIC

Some games are absolutely and irredeemably awful from concept to creation to programming to release. There is absolutely nothing to be done for them. Take, for example, the recent ‘Little Britain’ game. Let’s face it, no game based on a sketch show has a hope in hell of surviving, and the format- a bunch of min-games based on sketches from that show- was never going to produce anything better than something mediocre, despite the connection with Tom Baker. As it is, even for games of that style, Little Britain is apparently entirely hopeless as a product. You can have big debates about what the ‘worst game ever’ is, but whenever something like that happens you have a contender.

Horrible piece of crass commercialism as such a product is, you kinda grow to live with it. From lazy film tie-ins to endless clones and rip-offs, gaming is a commercial business ans if there is money you be made on something that has brand name appeal, it will get done. Woe to the poor people that buy such stuff, but a fair few of them won’t be serious gamers anyway; may even enjoy such things, and there’s no point getting too angry about the way things are. The same things happen in all areas of media- films, tv, music…

What annoys me FAR more than such games is when people make an effort to build a proper game and MAKE AN ARSE OF IT. It is almost endlessly frustrating, imagining the various efforts they made, all the little things about building a consistent game experience, bug checking and so forth, that they must have done… only to churn out something so godawfully useless.

And so we come to Lost Magic, an RP for the DS. The DS is a very good platform for computer RPs and although it has not been anaemic on them, the genre has not been exploited on it anywhere near as much as it could be or, perhaps, deserves to be. Lost Magic is a third party attempt to build an entirely original RP for the DS. Good idea! Furthermore, it attempts to make specific and good use of both the duel screen AND the touch screen. Great! Too many games are lazy with this. Ok, if you use the upper screen to show a map or status info, that’s ok, I guess, but it’s not quite getting into the full swing of it. And using the stylus just to select options is lazy too. Once more, it is not as if games HAVE to make use of such things on the DS to be any good (example- Castlevania’s best bits had nothing to do with either factor), but it’s good to see games like Advance Wars, Starfox and Metroid trying their hardest here. And so Lost Magic tried too.

Let’s get the basics out the way. Lost Magic is a fairly typical RP idea- bad guy threatens world, you play guy, guy gets more powerful by killing monsters, uses more power to kill more powerful monsters until he is powerful enough to kill the big boss. There’s a storyline about your father and guardians of the elements and what-not, and some good/evil plot branching at the end… but you’ve heard it all before.

More specifically, you are a wizard. All your power is focussed through the use of spells. All the combats are fought in real time, like an RTS, and you yourself are very vulnerable so you have available an array of creatures that you have captured and trained up over time; you can pick which ones will accompany you on each battle. The battles themselves generally involve using your magic and your creatures to wipe out the opposition.

The spell system is where they have put in the effort, because you cast each spell by drawing out the relevant rune on the touch screen. Runes can be chained for certain combos- combine Fire and Wind to create a cloud of fire, for example. Or Fire and Fire to get… maxi fire! And so on.

Now, I am not saying this should have been the best game ever. It’s a neat concept but not a brilliant one. Drawing runes under pressure in a real time environment is nowhere near as fun as it sounds, and rather frustrating. The game is not even remotely balanced, and some spells are just useless compared to others which are greatly over-powered. The graphics are no great shakes either. Actually I was playing this in my early DS days and forgave that. It’s only since I have played the GBA version of Zelda and concluded it has better graphics than Lost Magic, a generation later, that I have appreciated how lazy they were on the visuals in Lost Magic as well. Meanwhile, the story is pretty much coma-inducing and told through the dullest of flat-panel cutscenes. The music is… well, ok ish.

All of this should have added up to a ‘nice try, guys’ 6/10, and when finished put to the bottom of my game pile for… ever. But no. Indeed it does languish at the bottom, but I never finished the game because it is god-awful. They absolutely sabotaged this game. It’s as if a secret team of game-killing ninjas snuck into the design suite and buggered up the game as part of a personal vendetta against me in order to cause my blood pressure to terminal levels, or perhaps induce me to destroy my DS in a fit of pique.

How did they contrive to piss all over this game’s chances of being above average? It’s all about the battle sequences. They are already underwhelming visually and aggravating to draw under pressure with, but they have combined that with the worst real-time design I have seen… err, actually almost ever. Dune II has better programming and execution for real time than this game has, not to mention every single RTS game that followed it.

First of all, it is almost impossible to select anything at all. You would think the DS stylus would be good for dragging a box around the units you want, acting like a mouse. Indeed, this would be a good idea, and so they decided to do something entirely inane instead. You drag a circle, which widens out from all directions from the central point where you first put the stylus down. This means that if you want to choose HALF a group of bunched up units, you have to place your stylus… err… nowhere near them, and then drag the circle in… a random direction, until enough of it covers, with any luck, the exact units you wanted… also covering a load of useless area, which if it contains any other units you want will select them as well… and in fact the collision detection on the circle is so rubbish it just tends to select nearly everything on the screen anyway. As it is absolutely essential to continuously move your creatures and NOT you- because else you move to the front and you are so very vulnerable that normally means instant death and having to re-start- this basically means every time you move you accidentally pick up a ton of units you don’t need, and have to spend the next minute trying to separate everything out again, hoping you don’t die in the meantime whilst trying to draw more of those dumbass spell runes…

… and then, because they decided this was not quite irritating enough, they decided to hammer another nail into my psyche with their particularly innovative approach to pathfinding- vis a vis the approach the AI takes to moving around objects in their way. Many games have had some issues with this. The origins Dune II could not find a way around a base if you told a unit to go from one side to another. The original Warcraft had problems with terrain, whilst Command and Conquer went a bit funny when moving between different levels of elevation. Trying to get Goliaths and Dragoons up stairs in Starcraft was a particularly trying experience. It’s a difficult area to programme correctly, evidently, and so perhaps a new approach is indeed needed. The creators of this gamer took the approach of… why bother?

Because indeed yes, this game has NO pathfinding, Absolutely none at all. If your units comes across an obstacle in their way… they just stop moving. They make no attempt to go around it. This is actually an approach behind, technologically speaking, games created fifteen years ago. If a small rock is in the way of your guys, you actually have to manually guide them around it. Whilst under fire. And trying to co-ordinate all your other units as well. And trying to draw in bloody spells. And not being able to select the correct units in the first place because of the moronic group-select system.

Frankly, they have actually managed to make large sections of the game actively unplayable. There are maps that are almost impossibly difficult not because of the bad guys, or because of sophisticated tactics required. No, it is because they are so littered with obstacles it is actively impossible to move anyone anywhere- and oh yes! They tend to combine all this with a freaking TIME LIMIT on the more awkward levels! Holy crap. They could not have been more hostile if they tried.

This game is in the toilet. It’s an absolute travesty; one of the few games I have purchased and not finished; purchased and entirely regretted the purchase. It was a cancer in my brain whilst I was playing it and I am proud and happy to never go near the damn thing again. What a waste.

Cardinal Sins: Unskippable cutscenes (in places). Broken selection mechanic. Missing pathfinding AI.

Rating: 3/10

Comments: How to turn a reasonable stylus-using RP in a pile of utter shiteness by horrendous approach to gameplay. Please make it go away. Else I will kill someone.

Game-killing ninjas is great.

A loud and resounding amen. I nearly broke the cartridge in half after only a half dozen levels. Lost Magic is the one and only DS game I've ever bought that I have come to despise with every fiber of my being.

I don't think I've ever even heard of this game until now.

That's a good thing, apparently...

Yeah, never heard of it either.

I don`t know anything about this game, but I would like to say that in light of review, the title "Lost Magic" seems quite suitable....

Ush, isn`t it similar to Magic and Mayhem?

Oooh, long overdue to carry on with this one… well. Anyway. Very late in the day, here finally is my verdict on

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: TWILIGHT PRINCESS

I think that Ocarina of Time is the best Zelda game. Now I am aware that this is hardly a controversial opinion, but certainly in fandom there is always a lot of competition between Link to the Past and Ocarina, so I just wanted it firmly down for the record that I am an OOT man.

There are several reasons for this. First of all, the upgrade in games around that time was one that really suited me. For example, I never really had much truck with the 2d Mario games but I loved Mario 64, which I know is enough to get me lynched in some areas. I haven’t even finished New Super Mario on the DS, whereas the Mario 64 remake on it I played through to maximum completion. It’s a matter of your preferred style. In the same way, the 3d approach to Zelda appealed to me much more than the old 2d one.

Secondly- much as I acknowledge it as a classic game in many many ways- I do simply feel that they were still in an elongated process of finding their feet with ALTTP and they peaked the formula with OoT.

The third reason is probably the biggest- I was not playing consoles at all in the time of ALTTP. I seem to remember briefly playing it at a friend’s but that is about it. I didn’t own an N64 either but a friend of mine who did used to let me borrow it a lot, from the moment I got really stuck into Mario 64 onwards. He’s bought Zelda because of the hype but didn’t quite have the time or attention to play through it… err… so I did. I actually took a long time to really get into it, finding the starting bits irritating at first, but this gave may to the multi-layered genius that was that game. Now, I am not reviewing that game here, just giving the context of how I became a Zelda fan and how it started with OoT. As a footnote, I should point out that I very much liked Majora’s Mask as well- I thought the basic setup- was extremely good. Clumsily handled in some places with inconvenience to the user, and the temples weren’t as good, but still something I enjoyed very much.

Anyway. I finally bought into console gaming last year after I picked up my DS. The quality of that persuaded me to get a Wii, and by a small miracle (after my pre-order failed) I managed to find one on launch day. By the time I got home, my mail order copy of Twilight Princess had been delivered to my house. This all seemed like a perfect set-up to try the big geek event of the year… so of course I didn’t actually play it that day at all, trying out Wii Sports and Wii Play instead. Ah well.

In the end, I only tinkered around with Twilight Princess in December. I didn’t properly play it until the start of 2007 and even then I played it at a very slow and measured pace. I don’t just mean taking time to find all the stuff, I also mean not playing huge 12 hour marathons to find stuff ASAP. Nope, I was determined to enjoy this game so I sure as heck made it last. I actually cannot remember when I finished it now but I think it was in March. So I rather feel I got my time out of it.

So, let’s get the basics out the way. It’s a Zelda game. We know what they are now. You start off as some incarnation of Link, you get drawn into great events, you wonder around exterior sequences normally batting bad guys out the way as you go around, or avoiding them, you find important quest Mcguffins in Temples, and over time you gain more health and learn more tricks to become more powerful and take on the later Temples and similar things that are more difficult, until you end up confronting the big boss- normally Ganondorf or some variant. Normally there is some new piece of technology in each Temple, or near each, that is required to complete it. You meet a variety of weird friends and bad guys along the way, chances are an incarnation of Zelda

All of this is so painfully formulaic that it is hard to explain to those who have not played Zelda before what is so good about it. The trick that the Zelda programmers always pull off is by making every single moment feel important because there is something new to do, or learn or bypass. They manage to keep the tantalising promise on the return of your playing time, that everything you do will be rewarded by something worthwhile. That’s how they hook you, and that’s how they keep you in it, and then all the bonus things they put in- mostly minigmes, including the much heralded fishing segment- gives you many hours of stuff to do if you don’t feel like trying a major plot point at any time. Then you have the exploration of an open world, the search for secrets and extra stuff… all very well integrated, very well done… and possibly very predictable too, which I shall come back to later.

Nearly all Zelda games have the same plot and basic activities; unlike Wind Waker (this game’s non-handheld predecessor, which I actually ended up playing after this game) which flooded the world and bought a naval spin to things, this game has the basic ‘wonder around Hyrule sorting stuff out’ vibe that everyone associates with Zelda. It does, of course, have its schtick, being the Twilight World and Link’s wolf form he assumes within it, but aside from that every Zelda fan knows what to expect. Indeed, I understand some very much welcomed this after the departure of Wind Waker.

Ok, well, I could go on forever listing all the aspects of this game, and most of you know the score anyway. I am going to address several pertinent issues:

1. Seeing as I brought this on the Wii, how does the control scheme work out?
2. How well does the game do in areas of presentation?
3. How well does it do plotwise?
4. Does the gameplay match up to modern expectations?

1. CONTROLS
These are absolutely fine. Of course, the Wii has fairly much made its point now, but no-one knew at the time if it would be any good for more traditional games. I found the controls extremely good indeed, did not get at all tired or feel at all foolish swishing my remote around to draw or slash my sword, found the bow aiming much improved on any other Zelda title out there and using my left hand to manoeuvre the joystick controller felt absolutely natural. TP is basically a Gamecube port, of course, but at least it was duel-developed rather than simply hefted over with a different control scheme so the game has been designed with Wii-ness in mind, and it worked out just great.

2. PRESENTATION
Now, here is where the game was very much up against things- designed for the Gamecube (admittedly a console with great graphics, as anyone who has played Rogue Leader will know), but released in a time of HD loveliness coming out all over the place on 360 and PS3, not to mention how good PC games look these days. As for it being on the Wii, it gets a 480p mode and 16:9 widescreen but these are very modest improvements.

So, no doubt, the technical quality of the graphics is lower than any comparable game. The resolution is low, the anti-aliasing close to non-existent, the detail not great. Just looking at the title sequence you can immediately see that this is not cutting edge. In fact, forget about Oblivion having better graphics; I’d say the character models of Final Fantasy X were better. Mind you, I thought they were better than Oblivion’s horrible animations too.

And herein comes the trick; my Oblivion review above talks about how I thought TP had done stuff better. And this is very much true- although the technical quality is lower, their use of what they have is MUCH better,. The animation is fantastic- on the horse riding, the combat, and definitely the bosses- the use of light (an important facet of the game what with the Twilight schtick) and other visual effects is gorgeous, things like the washed-put wobbliness of the Temple of Time seen from the outside… they’ve got everything they could out of it and the final effect bowled me over. Impressed me more than Oblivion. Still… no getting away from the fact that if they had Oblivion’s technology combined with this attention to detail and with the same talent it would have been rather stunning. So, short of what games today can achieve, but an amazing use of what was there.

The Twilight Realm looks suitably good, with its subdued colours used well and allowing a variety of creatures that make surprisingly good use of the colour black. Meanwhile their idea of using digital squares of blackness to represent the corruption of the Twilight Realm into the main world was a very apt piece of visual imagination. The early temples looked good; this lessens as time goes by and the sky temple, for example, didn’t thrill me visually as much as I may have liked.

As for the sound… it’s ok. The sword-drawing sound for the Wii Remote is horrendous on the ears- the remote speakers have not really lived up to the premise with any game except the tennis, I think- whilst the game music is… well, it is perfectly good, it just didn’t wow me as much as OOT did (right from OoT’s beautifully understated title sequence onwards). Wii sound hardware isn’t all that either, of course, but this time I feel that the soundtrack does not quite have the mark of genius that their use of the graphics did. Best use of sound was the crazy schizo music that played when a twilight creature was near you inside that realm- not only did it work well, but it was a presentational touch you wouldn’t expect from Zelda, and quite welcome for that.

As for no speech…. Must be said I didn’t notice it. Maybe if they ever do flesh out a Zelda game with voices I may find this odd to look back on. But right now I really don’t feel deprived.

3. PLOT
Hmm. Again, it’s ok. Didn’t bowl me over, didn’t repel me. Link, in this case, is a older teenage boy (older than he normally is) from a small village who gets dragged into big things when the power of the Twilight Realm starts to take over the world, in the form of a ‘Twilight Curtain’ that slowly covers the land. Those within the Realm fade away to mere ghosts, incapable of worthwhile action. Link himself, owing to his heritage that he does not fully understand, proves resistant to becoming a ghost, and transforms into a noble-looking wolf instead. He starts to get some answers when he is joined in his quest by the renegade Twilight denizen Midna, an extremely strange and mischievous flying cat0like creature with weird powers who helps out Link for her own purposes. Midna’s slightly dark touch to things works very well for the game also, and she also doubles as the game’s advice/hint system. Midna rides Link around when he is a wolf (which I am sure some people read something into) and lives in his shadow when he is in the normal world, another stylish addition.

For the first half of the game, Link is repelling the Twilight world by finding the essences of light inside each area as a wolf, and then restoring the Light spirit of each area inside a temple. This done, the bad guy of the game- the Twilight King- reveals himself. Link can’t beat this guy and ends up cursed afterwards, so he then needs to go find the Master Sword (of course) and then go around collecting shards of the mirror that will allow him to open the portal that will allow access to the home of the Twilight King and take him on. The majority of this plot is taken in complete isolation from the main Zelda plotline, such as it is, with the main intrusion being the Master Sword. Many of the (very well constructed) cut scenes deal with the issue of the Twilight World, and its denizens, descended from people who took up arms against the Goddesses that created the world of Zelda mythology long ago. Only one (admittedly very significant) cut scene harkens back to Ocarina of Time, complete with Sages and temple symbols, and talks of Ganondorf being imprisoned in this realm. He then turns out to be the bug bad guy behind the Twilight King. This incarnation of Zelda, meanwhile, spends much of the game out of view in the Twilight Realm before coming out in the end sequence to help Link.

It’s not bad. The first half- the build up, the arrival of Twilight and the spooky wondering around a Hyrule removed of all Human life accompanied by a none-too-moral Midna- is better than the second half where it becomes a simple hero struggle against a King who is just too nuts to be very interesting and then Gandondorf again. Odd as it might be to say for a Zelda fan, the arrival of Ganondorf in the plot didn’t add much. The game worked perfectly well without him in every way to the point where it felt he was in there simply because it was a major Zelda game. He doesn’t ruin it or anything… he just fails to add to it, in a way which makes you wonder that some other creative idea might have added more. It’s a mature plot, for a Zelda game, and I enjoyed it- certainly more than Oblivion’s. But once you are past the halfway point it ceases to engage you as much as it could. Of course, I am trying to hold up this game to a very high standard here. I never get bored with this game, I never felt like the plot made me want to stop playing, and it is much better than the majority of things out there. It is just that people wonder if Zelda is going to be a perfect game, so I have to try and hold it up to a perfect standard.

For a long-term series fan, the better part of having Ganondorf in is that it is part of the puzzle of trying to fit this game into Zelda continuity. Now, that is a subject so complex that it deserves its own thread, which indeed it has, but TP almost certainly cements the idea that Zelda is running in two different continuities now. Both Wind Waker and Twilight Princess clearly connect to Ocarina of Time. Wind Waker portrays itself as a direct sequel, Twilight Princess as a kind of offshoot. It’s very difficult for Wind Waker and Twilight Princess to share the same timeline due to, basically, the behaviour of Ganondorf and certain aspects of the references to Link and the triforce and so on. Not to mention that it just doesn’t fit in with the mass flooding. There’s no definitive answer here, of course, but I rather like the way that they put in just enough clues and references to please the fans without making any of the game inaccessible to new players (unlike Wind Waker, which I think is very hard to appreciate without playing Ocarina).

4. GAMEPLAY
It’s fabulous, really. Playing Zelda is SO much fun. Everything feels good- walking, riding, climbing, swimming, being a wolf, fighting small bad guys, fighting big bad guys… it’s all got that amazing Zelda polish. I seem to remember I found the underwater boss fight a bit irritating but that was about it. The game is not very difficult but I rather approve of that, and there is enough content to make it all worthwhile.

Meanwhile, the game is slick and smooth; almost entirely absent of irritations that so many other games have, and with no cardinal sins that stuck in my mind. Everyone fits together well; the menus are fast and efficient, the system for teleporting around the place (once you get that capacity) is quick and easy… everything is just so accessible. There are so many games I can think of where I know for a fact I would rate them so much more highly if they were designed to this level of professionalism. Virtually bug free, too. Games should be like this in general, but as it is I have to single games like this out.

I have two reservations, both related, really, to how many Zelda games there have been. First of all, you can start to see the bones of some of the tricks they use to keep the game interesting. As I mention above, they need to keep you ‘bombarded’ with material to stop you getting bored with wondering around killing and collecting. But how many new things can they really come up with? One device in particular that you find- I cannot remember its name- is a spinning platform that attaches to tracks on walls and whirls you around the wall at high speed. Used to fairly good effect inside the temple you find it- especially for a boss fight- it becomes very clear that this was added in just to find one more thing to do in that particular temple. It has almost no use anywhere else save for a few bonuses and cannot be used creatively at all- either there is a track you can use it against or there is not. It is effectively a flashily animated key for certain doors. Things have worked like that in Zelda before but they hid themselves well, or had other uses- a flame arrow might effectively be a key for ice doors in Ocaraina, but it had other uses too, not least as a weapon. Here… you really do worry that they are running out of ideas. And definitely I found, much as the plot started to give out a little halfway, so also the game failed to add anything drastically new either. It didn’t become bad… it just stopped escalating, and the later temples felt not quite so great as the earlier ones.

The second reservation is inevitable. A 3d Zelda game like this simply cannot impress as much as they did before. We all know this. With the first three major Zelda games, each was a massive improvement of the formula of the previous one. Link to the Past took the bare bones structure of the original and turned it into a genuine immersive experience. Ocarina took that and turned it into a fantastically realised 3d world. But whilst Wind Waker and Twilight Princess have added different amounts of content and their own personal visual styles, their fundamental nature is no different to that of Ocarina. How can we really expect it to have such an impact when it’s already been done now? It cannot, it simply cannot.

I understand Nintendo are saying that this is the last of the Zelda games to be like this, meaning Ocarina, Waker and Twilight will form a trilogy of their own. The next Zelda game will be different. This is a good idea because now I think this type of Zelda has had its day. Hard to see what they can do, of course, but we’ll see. What I think will be a good barometer of possibilities is how Super Mario Galaxies turns out. They say that SMG is the true successor to the brilliance of Mario 64. If they can show that there is a way on there, then I am confident they will find a new outlet for Zelda too.

(Though I don’t mean put Zelda in space)

Overall then? A fantastic gaming experience, a great start to my Wii playing (though I doubt it has much on the GC version, despite me liking the controls), and a brilliantly realised game. But I don’t think it was possible for it to quite have the impact Ocarina of Time did, certainly for me, anyway.

Cardinal Sins- None that I remember, though I would like to have been able to review cut scenes afterwards

Rating: 9/10

Comments: A slice of gaming excellence, but just not quite able to bring the ultimate punch that the franchise did a decade ago.

Very good review. I especially agree when it comes to the plot, about how the second half just seemed to stop climbing, and Zelda and dear old Ganondorf served no real purpose in the game other than to arbitrarily be there because it's a Zelda game.

My one complaint of that game is it was somewhat to easy. It's minor but I never once died during a boss battle. For an Zelda game, that's highly unlikely.

What I did enjoy was the Twilight World, and how they added scripted events.

I loved it. Never once stopped playing it.

I guess the big question now is whether they can do another big Zelda game inside the Wii lifecycle.

Of course they will.

Anata wa wakarimasu ka.....

They likely will, yes, just that Mr. Big himself seemed a bit reserved on the issue when questioned recently.

Good review, Ush.

Yeah I'd love to see a Zelda game made from the ground up for the Wii. I really do hope they do another one, I think they will. They've hinted at it, I believe.

Originally posted by BackFire
Good review, Ush.

Yeah I'd love to see a Zelda game made from the ground up for the Wii. I really do hope they do another one, I think they will. They've hinted at it, I believe.

They said they started the next Wii Zelda, with no hints on which 'Link' it will be, or another one all together though.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
I guess the big question now is whether they can do another big Zelda game inside the Wii lifecycle.

I think they can considering Twilight Princess was an lanch title. Four years to make another one, I think they can do.

But I guess it also depends on how long the cycle is.

I wonder how good an Zelda game could be in HD. That would be interesting to see.

A SERIES OF SHORT GAMECUBE REVIEWS

Due to the anaemic release schedule on the Wii this year- which will be worse in Europe where there is a lead time for release normally significantly after other releases- I was left without much to actually DO on the Wii, especially after Twilight Princess was done. Which is not to say there’s been nothing at all but having gone to all the fuss of getting it I wanted to make much better use out of it than I was.
But having never been a Gamecube owner (and Gamecube having never been emulated) I was left with the option of picking up old Gamecube games and taking advantage of the Wii’s ability to play those. I actually made a considerable investment here- some of the games were pricey to track down, though others were cheap, and I also had to furnish myself with two Gamecube controllers and a memory card. So I was pretty keen to get some proper enjoyment out of it! I tried to find some of the more acclaimed Gamecube titles to play, and so here are some short reviews reflecting my findings.

-----

LEGEND OF ZELDA: THE WIND WAKER

The major Zelda release between Ocarina and Twilight Princess. Centuries on from Ocarina, Hyrule has long been flooded and forgotten when the seals that kept Ganondorf out the world began to weaken. But now Ganondorf has returned anyway, and a new version of Link has to travel the flooded surface world in a sentient boat known as the ‘King of Red Lions’, in fact some strange representation of the old King of Hyrule (and therefore the father of Zelda from Ocarina). Link is also sometimes accompanied by the pirate Tetra and her fairly useless crew; Tetra is a descendant of that same Zelda and so is in fact a Zelda herself. Link must make sure Ganondorf does not stay returned, and at the end the King makes sure that Hyrule will be lost under the waters forever, and Link and Zelda go out to look for a site for a new Hyrule. Standard Zelda stuff except mostly on water, and with much more direct references to Ocarina than Twilight Princess subsequently had.

Wind Waker made several controversial decisions- its cartoony art style that brought the series into a much more kiddy direction, and the long travelling of the ocean surface via the manipulation of wind that many found annoying. Other than that it has all the general gameplay- and hence well-polished brilliance- that you can expect from a major Zelda game. Less intriguing plot-wise than Twilight Princess, but probably with more relevance to an Ocarina veteran who can definitely see all the places where it fits in.

My opinion? Actually I really loved it. The art style did not bother me at all- and I really do recommend anyone put off playing this by that style to give it a go. It’s much better experienced than seen in stills, and they do some great stuff with it. It’s really very pretty and it allows the game world to be exceptionally seamless. See my Twilight Princess review for what I generally like about Zelda.

But I am giving it one mark down from Twilight simply on a measure of the amount of entertainment it will give you. It’s not that large (correction- not that LONG; it’s actually very large in many respects), with not many temples, and whilst I personally found the sailing sequences relaxing and was not too annoyed by the wind control, there is no denying that a. all that ocean sailing is REALLY filler, trying to extend game length for its own sake, and b. the Wind mechanic actually adds nothing to gameplay other than to make getting from a to b more fiddly. I thought they were going to go further with it but they really didn’t. So the actual ‘meat’ of this game is a bit thinner than Ocarina or Twilight either side of it. Nonetheless, still extremely good.

Looking forward to the DS sequel, of course.

CARDINAL SINS- Again, none. Zelda is a series that sometimes has sins but not cardinal ones.

SCORE: 8/10

COMMENT: More Zelda brilliance, just not quite offering enough pure Zelda-y content, especially for the hardcore fans.

-----

METROID PRIME AND PRIME 2: ECHOES

Somewhat famed sci-fi heroine Samus Aran (who reminds me a lot of Turrican… not sure which came first) went stratospheric with this re-launch of her career on the Gamecube. Metroid was one of the founders of the persistently explorable gameplay mechanic that I often enjoy (and that was very well copied by Castlevania in a move that showed that blatant copying of a good idea is often no bad thing). I played a little with Super Metroid and I had played Hunters on the DS but this was basically my introduction to the franchise proper.

It’s a first person game but- sensibly realising that the Gamecube controller is not ideal for that- it’s played at a relatively slow pace with auto-aiming and many of the controls are set up for other activities rather than fighting. It tells the story of Samus- continuing her vendetta against the ‘space pirates (actually a highly advanced and aggressive alien race) tracks them to an outlying world where the Pirates are investigating the use of the very weird material ‘phazon’, which corrupts all around it, The world used to be an outpost of the ancient race that built Samus’a battle suit, and there she finds the story of the terrible effect the phazon asteroid that hit the world had on it. Prime is much more about Phazon than it is about the brain-sucking Metroids, which the Pirates are rather incidentally using for power but that don’t really play much of a part in the plot, save that the final boss is a big metroid/phazon mutant monstrosity. Samus must explore the world, opening up new areas and slowing growing more abilities for herself that allow her to go back and reach previous inaccessible spaces, so the game is a mixture of exploration, jumpiness and blowing stuff up.

Metroid Prime came extremely highly recommended to me. Ahh, I am running into trouble here… it’s not that I didn’t like it, far from it, and it is extremely well polished with lots of nice touches… it just didn’t bowl me over THAT much. I enjoyed it but I didn’t go nuts over it. I feel Zelda is a smoother experience in many ways and despite the wealth of background detail, Metroid feels… sterile in comparison. I think also having played games like System Shock 2, Metroid’s means of delivering log info and what-not seemed very bland, presentationally speaking, and so that being the case Bioshock is going to smash it to bits. The atmosphere just did not cut it for me.

People make a lot of Metroid being more than a shooter… but frankly, the ‘more’ bits aren’t all that. The much vaunted exploration really just feels a drag of going back to where you were before and it quickly loses its charm, and the puzzley bits underwhelm as well. Advancement of yourself is fixed- you just get more stuff- and again this feels primitive in comparison to System Shock 2 (or even Morrowind/Oblivion for that matter, though it does have previous areas becoming more dangerous as you do in disturbing shades of Oblivion thinking). None of it is BAD… it just didn’t thrill me.

I also feel compelled to add that this game drove me MAD. Really brain-bustingly angry. I cannot remember getting so emotionally angry with a game in recent times (and I am a guy who gets pretty mad at games in general whenever a perceived flaw does me over). Gosh…it really did make my blood boil for hours on end. It was just so darn frustrating in many parts (and whoever made you have to climb all the way up to meet the final boss again if you died to him needs to have their brains Metroided out. This was sensibly changed for the sequel). Man! Oddly enough I was playing this at the same time as Final Fantasy III on the DS which was getting a reputation for pissing people off with no save points in dungeons… but its frustration factor had NOTHING on these games, as far as I was concerned. So maybe… in some combination, this game just isn’t quite my sort of game as I might have hoped it was. Ah well.

The sequel is more of the same but this time on a planet which, as well as sending the wildlife nuts, the phazon has also split into Light and Dark versions which Samus must bounce between. A mark off for being more of the same with blander weapons… but for me, a mark back on for good use of a dual world mechanic, which I am always a sucker for (Link to the past to thank for that, of course). In fact I found myself getting more into Echoes than the original, which I know makes me a double heretic.

Incidentally despite not being bowled over I will follow the series and eagerly await number 3 on the Wii. Aside from the control advantages, looking at the previews some of the presentational differences they are making I think are ones that will make a very positive difference to the game, perhaps putting it a lot more up my alley.

CARDINAL SINS- There must have been one or two to drive me that mad, but actually I got so mad that I now cannot remember them; it’s all a red mist

SCORE: 7/10

COMMENTS: Competent and smooth pair of sci-fi shooters/explorers etc… just didn’t tick as many boxes for me as other efforts in this area I have played have done

FIRE EMBLEM- PATH OF RADIANCE

I love strategy games, have done ever since Arnham and Jonny Reb on the Spectrum (hah, beat THAT…). The DS has been proving a good platform for strategy, with Advance Wars leading the way. Advance Wars originated on the Gameboy Advance (obviously) and in my lookings into this I discovered that in the GBA days it had been accompanied by a set of fantasy strategy games called Fire Emblem (whose origins were older still). More recently, Fire Emblem transferred to the big league going for the Gamecube rather than staying handheld. And this was the result.

You play (or at least the most important person you play) Ike, son of the commander of a group of mercenaries in a fantasy setting who get pulled into a vast war between nations etc. The plot is INCREDIBLY bland, with nothing on, say, Final Fantasy Tactics (to which it is very comparable), and it is told in absurdly verbose text conversations between flat pieces of artwork, with a frankly too big cast of characters very few of which you care for. There are occasional competently done anime-style cutscenes, but too short and too few.

Forget the presentation then- skip through it… what’s the game itself like? At its base, not at all bad. Some basic gaming principles like Swords beat Axes which beats lances which beat swords, fair enough. A random factor in attacks, unlike Advance Wars… fair enough, though in the end Advance Wars’ flat rate of things may have been predictable but it makes for a steadier strategic experience.

So anyway, you move your fantasy units (representing just one person each rather than an army or some such thing) around a grid map in turns, trying to destroy foes with melee weapons, ranged weapons, magic and special abilities. Your characters gain experience and power up between battles and can get better equipment as time goes by… all nice but again, nothing that FFT did not already do and also there is a needlessly complex double-class system via which you can upgrade from one set class into… err… a better version of that set class. Pointless really- may as well just have more levels in the first class. You also cannot choose class, characters are all personalities and come with fixed classes. FFT’s job system was better.

All of this would have been reasonable and pretty enjoyable, a good candidate for an 8/10. [i]But they messed it up, big time[/b]. There is a gameplay mechanic that strikes at the heart of the fun of the game, and worse, they trumpet it as a decent feature. I want to spread the anti-word here and convince as many people as possible that this is an AWFUL mechanic.

If you lose a unit you lose it for the entire rest of the game, in all future missions

Now, they think it is great, encouraging you to take care of units and added in as something of extra zest (and, I suspect they thought, realism). But UGH it is so AWFUL. It was awful when it was first used, years ago. It was famously used in the XCOM games and even back then people immediately caught onto the problem- skilled people were SO vital that ifg tou lost one forever then you basically had lost the entire game from that point on. Solution? Reload and play again so you don’t lose him. In fact, reload and play again so you didn’t lose ANYONE.
It’s exactly the same now. Several of your units are vital and irreplaceable. Lose them and you probably won’t ever complete the game. Basically you cannot really afford to lose ANYONE. So you just play through each mission again and again until you win it 100% with no losses. Fine, you think? An extra challenge? No. NOT fine. Because the implications are more than the boringness of forcing you to win perfectly each time. The problem is that it encourages incredibly dull strategic play. You have to play so carefully or boringly or, even, ‘leaving units out of fights entirely lest they get killed’ style (an issue with heroes that Blizzard worked out was useless long ago, hence making them ressurectable). It is SO boring! You get none of the zest or brilliance or full breadth of strategic options because you cannot lose anyone. Time and time again you have to play slowly… carefully… methodically… coma-inducingly…

And they make it worse and worse. Magic units follow the old cliché of being killed almost instantly in melee (WHY? WHY are people still so hooked into this D&D view of Wizards? Why can wizards cast great balls of fire afar but cannot do jack to protect themselves up close? This kind of thinking is outdated and discredited) and have a remarkably short range as well. So if ANY bad guy gets to your priests or wizards… they die. And you need them because you won’t get them back. Reload. And again. And again. And again. Because, you see, the bad guys aren’t worried about dying at all. And in the defiance of all logic and sense, their faster units will make completely suicidal charges around your lines to go for your vulnerable units. There are no sensible additions to the game like zones of control around your units (like Advance Wars have) so that they stop bad guys from just walking past them- nope, your guys just cheerfully watch the bad guy walk right by and hack your priest to death. That unit will DEFINITELY die next turn as your people hack him to pieces. As a general strategic move it is useless. But just by suicide bombing your one unit… it forces you to reload the game. You see, they aren’t playing the same game as you. YOU are forced to play ‘carefully and boringly completely win the map with no losses’. THEY are playing ‘suicide charge the vulnerable unit no matter how dumb that would be if it wasn’t for the fact that he can’t actually afford to lose anyone at all.” It’s so horrible because some of the later missions are easily an hour long or more. You can have smashed the enemy and be sure of victory, but then the second-to-last unit suicide charges your priest and… you have to start over from the mission beginning (no permanent saves allowrd during battle). Idiocy!

It is godawful, it really is. Two things at a stroke would improve this game hugely- first, add in a control radius around units so that you cannot just walk past them, and secondly… make it so units lost are out the map but NOT out of the game forever. That one design decision cripples the game. Advance Wars does it so much better- in it you cannot just stroll by enemy units, and support units (like the equivalent of healers) cannot fight back but don’t just blow up as soon as one suicidal bad guy touches them. And you can just rebuild the darn thing if you do lose it. Smart.

Sequel coming on the Wii soon. Not convinced, really not. We’ll see.

CARDINAL SINS: Two hugely outdated and discredited central mechanics to the gameplay. Fools.

SCORE: 6/10

COMMENTS: Possible extreme fun and an addictive formula ruined by fundamentally stupid decisions about unit survival

-----

BATALLION WARS
Whilst Fire Emblem made a complete conversion from handheld back to console, Advance Wars carried on handheld but the team made a console version as well, called Battalion Wars. Oddly enough it’s not set in the same continuity, instead set in a made-up world full of clichéd versions of modern nations. It’s mostly just silly but I will admit that undead Germans are some of the best bad guys ever conceived. The plot is just… err… basically everyone at war with each other and you are trying to win for the US-equivalent.

It’s actually a very different game to Advance Wars- real time and with you in the action controlling a unit yourself, although you do order others around in real time as well. PC Gamers would recognise it as being a more arcade version of Operation Flashpoint or Armed Assault.

As I say, you order guys around. Some of you may be thinking- how can the Gamecube Controller rather than the mouse be used, reasonably, to order units around? And the answer? It can’t. The system is completely UNreasonable. It tries its best but it’s really clumsy.

Bit of a shame because running around blasting stuff to pieces is quite fun and it all runs very smoothly with a not at all bad selection of units on ground or air (naval units in future, please?). The game is presentationally competent with lots of speech in comparison to Fire Emblem (a shame so much of the speech is just entirely annoying).

And so despite the clumsy controls, this game was maybe heading to an 8 again… but again there is a big flaw in it. A more old fashioned one this time- HORRIBLE AI! You basically have four things you can tell your units to go- go there, attack this, stay here, follow me. Due to how difficult it is to control people under fire, most of the time you will use one of the last two- either stay put, or get the hell over where I am. Staying put works fine, though that’s hardly advanced. But following you is broken. Not just because they often aren’t very good at it, but because they don’t defend themselves! They are MEANT to, apparently, and sporadically they do, but nine times out of ten I notice them striving so hard to follow me they are ignoring the bad guy units firing at them all around, and shortly after you die. You can force them to attack, but they will only attack that one unit and you are doing this under pressure of fighting yourself so there is no time to do anything other than order EVERYONE to attack one unit, whether it is sensible for that unit to engage or not. So instead you have to get into a habit of telling everyone to just stop- whereupon they WILL defend themselves, but they might not all be in the right place, and that messes up any other specific orders you’ve given…

Darn it! All this game needs is a clearly and working distinction between “Follow me at all costs” and “Follow me but attack bad guys along the way, retards!” RTS games made sure that the attack-move option worked a long time ago. This franchise should too!
Other AI awfulness abounds; things like troops being sent to attack a target and brainlessly firing into a huge obstacle between them and it instead of moving five feet to the left where there was a clear shot. I mean, you just can’t tolerate that sort of poor quality implementation in a modern day game.

Still. A great deal of fun and at least most missions don’t last more than ten minutes so= if your moronic troops bugger it up you can get back to it very quick, unlike the horrific heartbreak of game flaws ruining a Fire Emblem mission.

Again, Wii sequel coming soon. Hopeful for that- Wii controls may well make directing troops much better, and with any luck they’ve improved the AI. I also hear it will be multiplayer- this game will be great for that, especially co-op. One to watch for.

It’s not REALLY strategy though. Although heavily disguised, it’s really an action blaster; the amount of strategic thought involved is minimal. Ah well!

CARDINAL SINS- Crappy AI!

SCORE: 7/10

COMMENTS: Great action fun somewhat compromised by clunky controls and poor AI. But only somewhat.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
Cardinal Sins- None that I remember, though I would like to have been able to review cut scenes afterwards

I got one for you. Bosses are far too easy.