The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
- Wii
- Release Date: 11/19/06 (4 years behind!)
- 1 Playthrough @ 50 hours
- Waggle Factor: Medium/High
Caveat: I lost all my notes on this game, so this may be shorter than it should be.
I beam with a bit of gamer self-satisfaction when I say that I've not only played every major Legend of Zelda game, but I remember when each of them came out. I even ate the LoZ breakfast cereal (and threw it up one morning on my way to school!) Of course, it's not long before I realize that this doesn't make me awesome, it just makes me old.
The games themselves, however, are indeed awesome, and Twilight Princess continues this and many of the franchise's other traditions. Twilight Princess has all the ingredients that we know and love from the series. All the characters are there, there's the Master Sword, bow and arrrow, bombs, a massive overworld, and huge sprawling dungeons. After 25 years, how do they keep the formula fresh? By altering and tweaking the role that each element plays. Twilight Princess is perhaps the most mature entry in the series. (At least the ESRB thought so, it got a T rating) Link is an adult, or close to one, and the story is arguable darker than the rest of the series. However, it's executed nearly perfectly. The world is beautiful (or was in 2006) and huge, and it's very easy to lose yourself in.
That is, once you've passed one of the series' more onerous staples, the far-too-long village intro sequence. It drove me nuts in Ocarina, it drove me nuts in Wind Waker, and it drove me nuts here. No, I don't want to find your cat or round up your stupid goats!
Another serious frustration has to do with the platform I played it on. At launch, Twilight Princess was released for both the GameCube and the brand new Wii. I imagine the controls for the GameCube version were alright having played Wind Waker, but the overly gimmicky and far too imprecise Wii controls cheapen a lot of the experience at best, and hinder the gameplay at their west. Emnara quit playing the game after dying three times in a row due to this issue.
I didn't however, and for the most part I'm glad I stuck with it. The game is fantastic, and certainly worthy of all the praise it's received over the years. Hopefully, the forthcoming Skyward Sword (due in November) will show improvement due to having been developed of the Wii instead of ported from a last gen system, and maybe Emnara will finish it, and I won't be yelling "******* Wii ****!" every half hour while playing it.
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
- PS3
- Release Date: 10/5/2010 (4 months behind!)
- Playthroughs: 3@15 hours each
- Trophies: 100% (before DLC)
One of the big trends in gaming right now is franchise reinvention. Just one of the plethora of factors contributing to this: franchises in the gaming world tend to stick around a lot longer than a lot of their film counterparts, so reinvention becomes absolutely necessary every other generation or so. Many recent examples of this went back to the franchises roots to rediscover what was fun about the game in its early days. Others make a radical departure, leaving nothing intact but it's surface elements. This latter approach is a big risk, and can wind up costing a series its fans forever.
Fortunately this is not the case with Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. Developer Mercury Steam, with the collaboration of Konami and the legendary Hideo Kojima, have changed Castlevania's fundamental formula from the accumulated legacy traits over the last 25 years to a God of War meets Lord of the Rings style epic. To be honest, I never expected to care about the series again. After the fantastic Symphony of the Night, still considered by many to be the pinnacle of the series, we were dealt a number of experiments in 3D on the Nintendo 64 and PS2, which ranged from the mediocre to downright horrific. Lords of Shadow is arguably the first 3D entry in the series to get it right, and it has done this by calling in all the favors the God of War series owes to it. This formula is very well traveled, but this skill of its implementation makes it noteworthy. Aesthetically, Lords of Shadow owes a debt to Lord of the Rings. The first third of the game finds protagonist Gabriel Belmont traveling a lush countryside through murky swamps dotted with crumbling, unbelievably ancient ruins. The level of detail is absolutely amazing and certainly worthy of comparison to the epic films. The soundtrack brings the epic feel even more in the art direction however. It feels more like a film score, and it does not like to sit unobtrusively in the background. While it is a bit heavy handed in the beginning, and even managed to epic me out at first, it grew on me, so much so I would go so far as to say it's my favorite game soundtrack of 2010, and that's not just my opinion. It won a BAFTA last year.
Several more elements one would not expect to find in castlevania games of yesteryear that Lords of Shadow has in spades are story and character. While the story seems like your basic video game plot at first, some truly inspired twists and turns begin to take their toll on Gabriel. Some excellent voice acting (including none other than the legendary Patrick Stewart!) fleshes out a story that truly redefines the Castlevania universe, and makes this a landmark for not just the series (which would not be that impressive), but gaming as well.
Lords of shadow could be called a God of War clone gameplay wise, but it doesn't clone it perfectly. Blocking and parrying is nowhere near as precise is it should be, especially given how many bonuses are tied to the action. With combat as unforgiving as Lords of Shadows', my recommendation for the first playthrough is dodge, dodge, dodge. However, as you buy more upgrades on subsequent playthroughs, you'll become so powerful as to negate the need to block. Mostly.
Lords of Shadow is easily the best Castlevania since Symphony of the Night. That title made the series relevant again by adopting many of the concepts that made Super Metroid a success. Lords of Shadow does the same thing. Story wise, if you're a fan of Castlevania, or non-sparkly vampires in general, (you can tell the devs are gamer geeks: I found references not only to Portal, but my old Vampire: The Dark Ages pen and paper RPG!) you owe it to yourself to give Lords of Shadow a shot.
Final Fantasy XIII
- PS3
- Release Date: 3/9/2010 (1 year behind!)
- Playthroughs: 1 @ 45 hours
- Trophies: 52%
When I was a little kid, I loved hot dogs. Like, eating them cold out of the fridge loved them. One year, I discovered pizza. I still like hot dogs, just not nearly as much as I used to. The same can be said of Final Fantasy, of course, I'm sure hot dogs haven't changed as much as Final Fantasy has in the last 20 years.
The latest entry in the most oxymoronically named series ever bears practically no resemblance to the Final Fantasy I grew up with, and just passing resemblances to the last several entries. While Final Fantasy games have always had that one character you couldn't stand, it seems like they comprise most of the cast in FF XIII. Some truly atrocious dialogue such as "Heroes don't need plans," and "heroes don't run from fight," greet you in the very first scene, which aside from the inane dialogue is just confusing and disorienting as hell, and really gives you no clue what's going on until hours into the game. This approach isn't always bad, unless the game assumes you already know what's going on.
It's not like the story gets better as it goes though. There is practically no complexity or depth to the characters, and a lot of the game's story plays out like some weird fan fic translated into Japanese then re-translated back into English, with heavy liberties taken on both sides.
One of the game's most glaring flaws is its tyrannical linearity. One of the best things about the series has always been its side quests and freedom to explore, and FFXIII gives NO chance for either until the penultimate chapter, and by then, you're so close to the end of the game you'll just want to power through and finish the final level.
On the plus side, combat isn't too bad. I'm still not a fan of real time battles and not being able to directly your party members, but the Paradigm system (a predefined set of AI behaviors/rules that you level with experience) is far more fluid and user friendly than XII's. (while that game had a lot more customization options, I felt like a programmer more than once) This makes combat very fast paced, sometimes too much so.
I've been asking myself, if I had played Final Fantasy VII for the first time at 30, would I be as critical of it as I am of XIII? Conversely, if I played XIII at 17, the age I was when I first played VII, would I feel the same way about it as I did about that game? No and no, for these reasons. 1. VII, I think , is not remembered as much for the game it is than the promise it showed of what games were becoming. 2. XIII lacks most of the things I loved about VII, which were exploration, complex characters (some of them, anyway) and a clear conflict and goal in the story. VII isn't the best Final Fantasy, but it's whole is far more than the sum of its parts. XIII is a clear victory of style over substance, and sadly, an indication of the direction the franchise is going. I won't be going with it, if that's the case, and with Final Fantasy XIII-2 just announced, yeah really, there's no reason for me to go there either.
By the way, Mass Effect is the pizza to the Final Fantasy hot dog. I'll bet no one else has ever put those words together before.
