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A few more hours in, the game's mechanics are much clearer. The game's director has made explicit mention of a Legend of Zelda influence in its design, and it shows; starts in a small town guarded by a divine spirit that sets you on your journey; leads to a mission to fight back a wave of evil overtaking the world; there's even a small fairy-like companion who gives you advice and guides you on your way. Most of the game is focused on adventuring, but there is also action in the form of simplistic combat sequences. Of course, if you want to make a good, engaging game, Zelda is hardly a bad place to draw inspiration.
One striking thing about Ōkami's design is that it more directly orients the player, at least in my experiences so far. There is still a sense of mystery in how you solve puzzles and otherwise drive the story - but Issun, your diminutive assistant, will always tell you where you should head next or if you're going into the wrong area. It's a 'free' enough design that figuring out your own way remains challenging, and yet it's also restrictive enough to prevent you from wasting time on wild goose chases.
The Celestial Brush is a really cool gameplay mechanic - but controlling it is still a pain. Drawing a straight line of considerable length is nearly impossible. I really feel like the location of the analog stick on the PS2 controller is at fault here, but in truth any joystick would be just as troublesome. It would be perfect for Wii pointing of course; shame that Clover isn't around to port it and rake in the dough.
The highly-stylized graphical look of the game is pretty disorienting at first, due to exaggerated shadows making some things hard to see. But in general it's really stunning and extremely cool. I have to mention though, that it is pushing the hardware a little further than it appears comfortable with - some detailed areas have a bit of slowdown, and a realtime cutscene I watched earlier, with blooming flowers and speedy camera pans, was actually so strenuous that the music was audibly cutting in and out. Again, shame it probably won't see a modern retouch.
The first thing about Ōkami, and I mean this literally as in it occupies the first 15 minutes of your New Game, is that it is steeped in Japanese Shinto myth and is particularly mindful of a legendary plot. I haven't delved too deeply into it so far but it's very evident that this is, if perhaps not story-driven, at least very intricately woven into the fabric of ancient tales. This manner of storytelling, combined with the game's infamous and extremely distinctive aesthetics, make for a really unique experience.
Like I said - I haven't gotten very far, but the gameplay is at least passable. As of yet there are three facets: adventuring, e.g. moving around, jumping, and smashing headlong into clay pots; combat, which is currently not dissimilar from the clay pots; and drawing, used both outside of combat to solve puzzles, and in it to weaken enemies. The drawing is a very cool idea, with a multitude of abilities available based on gesture recognition in the control stick paint strokes. But, due to the PS2 controller's left analog stick being in a fairly unintuitive orientation, I'm running into a bit of a learning curve in mastering this controller stick art.
Of course, I knew this going in. Fistful of Boomstick - not just a licensed game, not just based on a series of B-movies, but a game whose express focus is the absolute mindless-est of mindless violence - is just as bad as you'd expect even before you see the pitifully poor title/menu screen. Environments are restrictive and utterly uninteresting. Combat is dull. Hell, you need to collect save tokens to save your game, and if you don't, guess where the checkpoint is? Nowhere! The game is made up of a handful of laborious levels, and a limited number of pickup save tokens are the only thing between you and restarting them from the beginning.
Worth mentioning is the frank impossibility of several combat situations. Compare it to games like God of War or Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, where, when surrounded by enemies, you must strategically continue striking all of them in order to prevent each from felling your character. No, in Fistful of Boomstick, you are virtually locked on to an enemy perpetually, in spite of the occasional swarm of deadites descending upon you from all directions. A slow death and an undoubtedly inconvenient save location are all but assured.
I'm still not sure if I'll bother coming back to this later to try and finish it, because so far, the only redeeming quality is that Bruce Campbell himself has provided and read a treasure trove of classic Ash lines. As should be expected a couple of them quickly became quite repetitive, but there is a certain inner joy in hearing his take on zombie invasion and the Necronomicon.
Progress: Gave Up -- Died while trying to kill some zombie prostitutes
Wow, what a trip. Every time I thought about making a follow-up entry on my experiences in RE4, I got sidetracked by what was going on in the game and just played it instead. Starting up is a little rough - the first chapter is a real trial-by-fire, in some ways, e.g. ammo conservation, just as difficult as the late game. But what it accomplishes is placing the player firmly into its world, and keeping them in it with a compelling plot and engaging gameplay. Though the direction gets a little iffy toward the end (I was sure the game would end in Chapter 4, but a fifth one came out of nowhere), the survival thrill, strategic item management and upgrades, and shooting action are top notch.
What's more, completing the main game unlocks a ton of extras. There's Professional Mode, the obligatory hard mode; new costumes for Leon and Ashley; Separate Ways, a (shorter) five-part sidestory; Assignment Ada, another short sidestory minigame; and Mercenaries, a four-stage, five-character minigame that simply challenges the player to kill as much as possible in a time limit.
Finishing the normal game and each of the sidestories also open up new weapons to purchase in a New Game Plus-esque manner, to spice up the game in subsequent playthroughs. You keep your old weapons and items, with their existing upgrades, so it starts out easy this time - your primary goal being to gather money for an infinite-ammo rocket launcher, or an infinite-ammo machine gun.
Exemplary of the concept of immersion, RE4 is a real masterwork of game development, and the Wii version's aiming controls only serve to enhance that. Especially if you haven't played it before, this one is highly recommended.
Progress: Finished Normal, Separate Ways, Assignment Ada
Back when this game was new (on the Gamecube), I heard it was awesome and borrowed it from a friend of mine. I couldn't even make it through the first ten minutes; those crazy Spaniards kicked my ass up and down the pueblo. I concluded that, though it was easier than previous Resident Evils, it still wasn't easy enough for me. So imagine my excitement when it was revealed that a Wii version was in the works, with point-and-shoot aiming that should be so easy, even a shooter simpleton - myself - should be able to handle it!
Well, I got to the part that kept killing me back in the Cube version, and, guess what, it kept killing me again. But! This time I felt more at ease retrying it, and eventually I cooked up a strategy that worked. In general, I feel like the areas with a lot of not-zombies require several retries to perfect a battle plan, which seems non-ideal to me but at least the checkpoints are closeby. Also, having just finished Metroid, the lack of a sidestep/strafe is a real thorn in my side, but I'm starting to get accustomed to it.
So the game is still kicking my ass. This time, though, I'm having fun with it. Especially the money from killing, exploring, and selling extra goods. I love money.
Prime 3 is shorter than its predecessors, clocking in at about 14-16 hours for a first play through. It's also fairly easy, at least in Normal mode; I only felt like I might be close to dying for two boss battles, neither of which was the final one. But regardless of that, it is a damn fun game, and is really a blast.
One of the biggest differences in this installment is the storytelling, which I've hit upon before, and which Brad has described the effect of very well. In both the first game and Echoes, Samus was almost always "too late;" you could scan nearby objects for informative Lore, but these events had already happened, and so the story was more archaeological than interactive. In Corruption, it's both - there is still Lore, in fact I think more of it than in the previous two games put together, but a considerable amount of significant events actually happen as you encounter and drive them. This more traditional form of storytelling is even more powerful when combined with retrospective Lore entries you'll encounter after the fact.
The controls, of course there will be a learning curve if you're new to Wii shooters (I was), but they are really a dream when you get the hang of them. The graphics may not be what you'll get from a PS3, but they look good, and the environments are detailed with the utmost care. The soundtrack is one of my favorite things about the game: more so than the other Primes, I feel that Prime 3 has very emphatic and powerful battle themes.
I still consider the first Metroid Prime a remarkable work that I don't think Corruption can pass in artistic merit - but number three is definitely more fun to play. One of the most fun and interesting games I've played, in fact.
The next planet - quite literally infested with Space Pirates - shows exactly the architecture one would expect of the pirates: sharp, crude, unfriendly, red. Claustrophobic corridors link rooms that are nothing but utilitarian, in some places riddled with trip-wire laser alarms. Planetwide acid rain (which will kill Samus in short order until getting a protective suit upgrade) completes the ambience of this shithole of a planet.
Lore on the Pirate Homeworld tells a different side of the ongoing story, as well as some parts that were previously untold. It begins with their operation on Aether and frustration at the Galactic Federation for harvesting their precious phazon there. As if that wasn't bad enough, they soon discover that the stores of phazon they are shipping home in their flagship Colossus hide Dark Samus herself, who brainwashes some of the crew and destroys the rest.
The 'Disciples' as they call themselves have converted to complete zealotry in serving Dark Samus. She reveals to them her home planet, deep in the blackness of distant space: Phaaze, the living planet, the origin of all phazon. She displays her ships, the Leviathans. And the Disciples see an opportunity to assist her, by augmenting the wormhole-hopping phazon ships with pirate armor and weapons. They now have common goals: the pirates wish to annihilate their enemies, the Federation, and Dark Samus seeks nothing less than total galactic conquest.
Dark Samus bequeaths upon the pirates a seed, to turn their planet into phazon, just as Phaaze is. Pirates who would not cooperate were shot. Pirates who displayed anything less than unwavering loyalty to Dark Samus were shot. Some of them were shot, just because. They crafted their plan, to drop seeds onto planets in the heart of the Federation: Norion, their main naval platform; Bryya, their source of fuel gel; and Elysia, the listening post that spied on the stars and endangered the pirates' location. Of course, you know the rest of the story up to now.
Two of my cooler upgrades are an X-ray Visor, and a beam weapon that can shoot through certain materials (most often used in pirate armor plating). In particular, one variety of Space Pirate can cloak itself and is heavily armored, but when using the X-ray Visor, a weak point just under its helmet plating is apparent. BOOM, HEADSHOT! And they fall down instantly. It's unspeakably satisfying.
Not long after landing on the Pirate Homeworld, I received a distress communique from a GFed trooper taken hostage from the strike on Norion. He gave me his location and indicated that he knew how to get to the seed, and the whereabouts of vital suit upgrades. So I went and saved him - but it turned out to be Gandrayda in a shapeshifted disguise. This was an interesting boss fight, as she frequently transformed into other creatures that I had already fought, including some basic pirates, the first boss of the game, Rundas and Ghor from before; she even morphed into Varia Suit Samus for a good part of the fight. In her dying moments, she took Samus's current, exact form, at which Samus could only turn away in horror.
But, the mission must go on. The Disciples have protected the entrance to their seed very well, and so the Federation, while launching a full-scale assault on the surface of the planet, lends assistance in the form of munition troopers. The road to the seed is perilous, and at the end, an armored door requires several explosive charges to penetrate. There are 12 bombadiers to start; four of them must make it to the end alive. This section of the game requires that you keep the munitions experts alive, which typically just entails distracting the pirates and killing them as fast as possible, but is a real adrenaline rush.
Guess who's waiting to keep you from the seed's core? Ridley is back, and this time he is all hopped up on Phazon. He goes by Omega Ridley now. Not a particularly tough fight (the other two seed guardians seemed much more difficult), but Ridley is just fun to beat up on. Upon defeat, he pretty much exploded, shooting massive waves of phazon right into Samus. Now she's sitting at 75% phazon corruption, and her face in the visor reflection does not look good at all, a blue tinge everywhere and her left eye gaining an altogether unhealthy glow.
Next thing I know, the Feds are telling me that the surveillance equipment at Skytown has calculated the origin of the Leviathans, e.g. the location of Phaaze, and we're ready to hijack a Leviathan in orbit around the Pirate Homeworld - Phaaze is too far for "conventional space travel," and Leviathans are the only things capable of traversing wormholes. Absolution is just about at hand.
I also looked a little more at the Extras today. I copied my save file onto an SD card, smuggled it onto my housemate's Wii, and used it to embezzle Friend Vouchers - sending them to myself, and piling up Green credits. Then I made a backup of my save, so I could buy some Extras, take a look, then revert and check out some more. The art galleries are fairly unimpressive, with only a handful of neat images; but the Bonus stuff is really awesome. One unlockable is a Screen-Shot tool, that you can use at any time in-game, and it saves a screenshot to the Wii message board (ready to Wii-mail to your friends!). And the dioramas are fully 3d-rendered scenes that may not have actually happened in the game, but look damn cool.
There is just so much cool in this game, it is oozing from every possible orifice. What amazes me most is how it continues to better itself at every opportunity. This is a design tactic that Retro has excelled at in the previousPrimes as well, but Corruption starts with such a high bar, and ramps up so sharply, that it has yet to cease impressing me.
After putting Rundas to rest and taking care of some other legwork, I was able to enter the phazon meteor - or 'Leviathan,' also often referred to as a 'seed' due to its ability to spawn a planetwide corruption of phazon - that landed on Bryya, which looks a little like, and has the same creepy music as, the impact crater from the first Prime. In the center was a highly corrupted mogenar war golem, one of the machines the Bryyans used in their magic-technology war. Epic boss fight ensued!
Once the golem was thoroughly defeated, the massive amount of phazon it had been containing was unleashed, directly into Samus (who prior to this, had a 10% corruption level of phazon, according to the in-ship bioscanner; after this event, the meter shot up to 25%). This overwhelming charge of phazon came in handy when the core of the Leviathan descended, its protective barriers finally weakened, and Samus levitated in a manner somewhat reminiscent of her Dark counterpart, then projected the pure energy directly into the core, utterly destroying it. She proceeded to fall to the ground, and staggered forward, then deactivated her helmet and vomited phazon onto the plagued ground beneath her.
It's worth mentioning at this point that the visor reflection is more evident in Prime 3 than it was in the other two, such that her eyes and the bridge of her nose are fairly apparent just by bringing up the scan visor. After this event, the reflection also began to include what looks like a slight bleed from her forehead, but the blood is a distinct phazon-blue.
The next planet, Elysia, isn't quite a gas giant but is coated in eternal stormclouds; it is basically uninhabitable. Enter the Chozo, who in millenia past, constructed a floating city out of jet-suspended platforms: Skytown. The whole place is Steampunk-inspired, with holograms and jet propulsion intermingled with big brass gears and morph ball cannons and grapple-beam ziplines. It's a very cool city.
According to lore, the Chozo built this city to act as a staging point for probing the farthest reaches of space in their ongoing quest for knowledge. But since the Chozo are like the rich white folks of the galaxy, they got lazy and built a sentient robotic race to run and maintain the city for them. Throughout the city are little rolling and flying robots just welding things together and generally keeping things tidy. There are also a few guard-type robots that are really fun to fight, including some that I got a Friend Voucher for when I bowled into them with my new boost ball upgrade.
Lore reveals that the Chozo were able to learn of the existence of a living planet, but thus far had been unable to locate it, and though their helper robots continued the search after the Chozo moved on from Skytown, they, too were unsuccessful. However, once they learned of the tragedy that befell Tallon IV (the first phazon meteor impact), it was clear to them that the Leviathans were part of this living planet - and that the planet is hostile by its very nature, attempting to overtake the entire galaxy with its phazon plague.
Ghor, the cyborg, was of course the hunter sent to Elysia to try and take out the seed. So he went nuts and screwed up the local Aurora Unit's network connections when I tried to inoculate it against the corruption virus. Then he went and started beating up on my ship! So I kicked his ass, and the Dark Samus avatar appeared again to do its menacing thing. I stole his plasma beam, and went on to, under the guidance of the Skytown AU, construct a thermonuclear explosive to drop on the shield of the Leviathan.
Inside, I beat up a corrupted flying robot sentry, and its powers corrupted Samus (now at 50% phazon corruption, and with more phazon visible in the visor reflection). But this time, she didn't really falter at all. In fact her body language even seemed a big smug as she defeated the seed core and marched off. I think she may be starting to like it.
The plasma beam, in addition to being the already-awesome plasma beam, is used in MP3 for welding puzzles. Sometimes you'll come across an external circuit panel that's been wrecked up by some weaponry or another, and you can use the plasma beam to weld it back together, by pointing the Wii remote at the breaks. There's really no difficulty here at all, but it is pretty cool.
After stopping the spread of corruption on Elysia, the news is that a GFed communication capsule has just been recovered, with a message from Gandrayda: she's found the Space Pirate homeworld. Furthermore, a Leviathan has crashed onto this planet as well, and is by all reports turning the planet into phazon. This + space pirates = not good.
There's a lot more I haven't mentioned; like I said, there is so much cool in this game, I couldn't possibly cover it all. And I've still got a good portion of the game to go yet, somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 based on my pickup and rooms-visited percentages.
Samus's new orders, after waking up from her month-long phazon coma, are to investigate and deal with space pirate shenanigans on other planets. The other three hunters were already on these cases, but they all mysteriously broke contact with the Federation one week ago....
The first planet, Bryyo, is a classical ruined homeworld. As the native lore scans indicate, the Bryyans were once a primitive people, until their scientist caste unlocked the secrets of the rich Fuel Gel deposits in their planet (Fuel Gel is apparently the standard in interplanetary fuel). They reached for the stars, and touched with both the Chozo and the Luminoth, sharing technology with each of them. But this bred discontent, as there were some Bryyans who preferred the ancient traditions to the new wave of science.
Tensions rose until a breaking point, where a prominent scientist insulted the conservative Bryyans, and then there was strife - the scientists constructing battle golems and other machinery of war, and the traditionalists delving deep into their darkest clan secrets, using forbidden magicks. In the end, most of the planet was ruined by their war, save for one city, where most of the survivors relocated. The architecture really evokes this duality, as the high technology, powered by volatile fuel gel, weaves in with Chozo-like magical constructs.
But this safe-haven city is where Samus landed; where are the survivors? As you explore, you find them all encased in ice, an obvious sign of Rundas's presence. But when Rundas appears to save Samus from marauding pirates, he then turns on the bounty hunter he had previously assisted. An image of Dark Samus is projected over him, and it is apparent that he is possessed by it. A boss fight ensues!
After defeating Rundas, he, exhausted, appears about to recompose himself - but large spikes of ice shoot up from under him, fatally impaling the hunter. Yes, the game confirms that he is fucking dead! The image of Dark Samus, with black winglike appendages extending from its back (the angel of death), flies from his lifeless body.
At 17%, MP3 is already almost as exciting as the entirety of the first Prime. Not to mention, I already have Ice Missiles, and the game is basically handing Energy Tanks out like candy. So far I haven't needed most of them, but you never know what's at the next landing site. Things are really looking fantastic.
Samus's ship plays a much larger role in this title than it has before, which is to say, it plays a role. First of all, this is not the same gunship she piloted in Primes 1 and 2; this thing has teeth. Not literally mind you, but it looks like it could take out a capital ship if the GF ever renegged on a bounty. One of Samus's new visors allows her to call the ship to her at specific points, e.g. to land, and as in the other games the ship is a save point that fully restores ammunition. Samus can also enter the ship, which opens a number of other functions.
The ship's primary ability is to transport between landing sites, any number of which exist on a given planet. Think of landing sites as a single, interconnected elevator. It doesn't exactly make getting around a breeze - forging your way through the map is just as much a part of the game as ever - but as a mechanic, it seems much more useful and convenient than hopping from elevator to elevator, or having a world hub area.
Most of the other functions of the ship, I honestly don't know how to explain. One of them measures how 'corrupted' Samus is, which is an indication of phazon infection, but has yet to be useful. Another displays in-game statistics like Enemies Defeated and Shots Fired. Another deploys and un-deploys the ship's blast shields, with yet another enabling weapon systems, but thus far there have been no ship battles or any other instances where these would be used. There is also a lever for engaging the thrusters, which I pulled in the beginning of the game and haven't looked at since.
Another cockpit instrument is used for communication. Activating it brings up a bunch of symbol-buttons to click on (aim at and hit 'A'). This is another thing I used in the beginning - to confirm my security code with the Feds - and haven't been required to use again. But there do appear to be some easter eggs hidden in it.
An upgrade I just got is actually for the ship - air-to-ground missiles! Now with the command visor, in designated areas, I can call the ship to do a bombing run. I've already taken out a shield generator and messed up a space pirate cannon installation. Sweet.
One last thing: if Hypermode (via the PED) is engaged too long, Samus begins to succumb to phazon corruption. While under normal circumstances the Hypermode bar will deplete over time - and with shots fired - until emptying, in this corrupted hypermode the bar actually begins to fill itself. If it fills all the way, ... bad things happen. So the only cure is to go berserk and keep firing until the bar goes down. And! the Space Pirates have a new weapon, some sort of phazon grenade, that will engage a corrupted hypermode if it detonates near Samus! Combat becomes even more intense with all this phazon flying around.