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I've been pouring myself into Phantom Hourglass at every available opportunity. I really, really like this game. It's damn fun to play - the dungeons are pure genius. Sprinkle in island puzzles - in the form of cartography challenges and treasure hunts - and it's just awesome. The story isn't as compelling as Wind Waker's or Twilight Princess's, but moreso than Minish Cap's; for a handheld-sized presentation, it's really remarkable. But I still, still don't like the controls.
Navigating the ship is something I thought would turn out very poorly, but it's actually one of the cooler features of the game. When you're at sea, you bring up your sea chart and plot out your course using the stylus. More often than not, you'll simply draw a line (avoiding obstacles in the way) between yourself and your destination. Sometimes you'll need to bring up the chart again and readjust, such as to evade or chase another vessel, but fortunately this juggling act doesn't come up very often.
The first upgrade your ship gets is a cannon, which operates similarly to Wind Waker's, except that it doesn't use your bombs; the cannon's ammo is infinite. Once you get it you'll start running into enemies at sea that need to be blasted to kingdom come, and firing on them is a simple matter of tapping them on the screen.
The second ship upgrade is the grabber arm, which you use like Wind Waker's maritime clawshot to retrieve sunken treasure. The difference here is that the grabber has HP, and bringing up chests invokes a minigame that requires you to avoid mines. Repairing the grabber arm costs rupees, and you can only repair it at the main port, so there's a strong motivation to take it slow and avoid mines rather than try to barrel through the minigame.
Lastly, you can get a fishing rod. Yes, fishing! Chase a fish shadow on the sea chart, and use the rod to engage the fishing minigame. It's a simple gesture-oriented affair, and in the end, you get... well, a fish.
On top of all the deep-sea activities, there is a ton of stuff to do in the world of Phantom Hourglass. It strongly embraces the Zelda philosophy of a litany of background quests, while at the same time making it surprisingly easy to skip it all and move right on to the next part of the main quest.
Something that's been bugging me throughout is that there are no heart pieces. Bosses give up full heart containers, and I actually just bought another full container off a ship merchant (the only one I've seen so far), but in general my HP is being capped at a relatively low level. This has the net effect of making the game more challenging than most Zeldas, as the amount of enemies you encounter and the damage they deal actually scale proportionally with the amount of health you have.
I may as well just say it - I don't like the controls. I knew I wouldn't, going in; controlling a character with a stylus just isn't something I take to. For its part, I will say that they're not as bad as I anticipated, but after spending an hour and a half with the game I'm still liable to accidentally swing the sword, roll around, or leap to my death. And of course, there's the little matter of the hand getting in the way of the action screen. The other touchscreen uses, thus far including puzzles and the super-cool boomerang, are excellent; but I'm just not a fan of using it to walk and run.
Nevertheless, Phantom Hourglass has engaged my full attention in short order. The introduction is little more than a cute little throwback to Wind Waker, but the real adventure wastes no time in presenting itself. It all begins very mysteriously, ala landing on Koholint in Link's Awakening, and I am compelled to drive through the game and figure things out.
In the prologue of the game, after recapping the defeat of the Evil King by Link and the "handsome pirates," Tetra boards a ghost ship to keel-haul its treasure. A scream lets out, and Link attempts to come to her rescue, but plunges into the sea and eventually washes up on Mercay Island, where a fairy (of the "HEY HEY HEY LISTEN" variety) named Ciela offers to help Link in his quest. Curiously, she says she doesn't remember anything about her life from before she came to the island.
The first real dungeon of the game, on the Isle of Ember, is marked at first on the map with the emblem of Din's Pearl from Wind Waker. This emblem recurs at the end of the dungeon, and defeating the boss frees a red fairy who calls himself the Spirit of Power. Here it is revealed that two more such spirits - of Wisdom, demarcated by Nayru's Pearl, and of Courage, by Farore's Pearl - must be rescued in order to catch up with the dreaded Ghost Ship.
The dungeon design, just as I've come to expect from a 2D Zelda, is magnificent. The puzzles are already becoming really interesting, as the stylus-guided boomerang is the first item (other than sword and shield) Link comes across, and even the first dungeon requires some crafty boomerang-ing.
The multiplayer mode has been public knowledge since some of the earliest previews of the game: Link must find Force Gems and bring them to safe spots, all the while evading Phantom guards, using Metal Gear Solid-style map radar. What hasn't been talked about as much, is that the game's recurring quasi-hub dungeon, the Temple of the Ocean King, has this same mechanic, and not instead of typical dungeon puzzles, but in addition to them. Also, there is a limit on how much time Link can spend in non-safe spots within the Temple! As the game goes on, he must venture deeper into the sublevels of the dungeon to recover more treasure, but even the first few are delightfully challenging.
I'll talk more about charting and driving the ship next time, but I must mention that you can customize the ship with special parts, which appear to be able to affect its performance and resilience. Awesome.
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.