DWGames

2016-06-04

Game Ramblings #13 – MegaTagmension Blanc + Neptune vs. Zombies

Platform: Vita (PlayStation TV Compatible)
Genre: Action RPG

Blanc + Neptune as the long name implies, is an extension of the Hyperdimension Neptunia series, this time acting as a side story focused on Blanc. The gameplay is similar to Vita and Steam release Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed. I’d also played that one, so went in knowing roughly what to expect, but generally left entertained but disappointed as it felt like it hadn’t picked up on the promise of that title.

Let’s get this out of the way first. Like the rest of the Neptunia series, the girls are all powerful female forms of various game consoles and properties, and the setting absolutely makes fun of some known videogame tropes. In this case, the girls are part of a high school movie club, and spend most of the game filming movies that poke fun at the Resident Evil series. Like the rest of the series, the story is generally pretty non-serious, but absolutely entertaining. Also like Neptunia U, the minute to minute gameplay is relatively fast paced, and generally entertaining combo-based action RPG gameplay. So then, where do things go wrong?

Neptunia U at its core was a game out along the lines of the various Warriors titles, where individual levels would often result in killing hundreds or thousands of enemies as I went around completing the story and various side quests. Far as I can recall, the most enemies I was tasked at killing in Blanc + Neptune was 80. That right there exemplifies a lot of the problem I had with this game. It took what worked in Neptunia U, and made it all shorter. There was less story, less action, less side questing, less progression. The core game was there, but felt like a step back in the series. In the end it definitely felt that this was a side game focused on a side character, where the game just didn’t receive the attention that a core Neptunia title would receive.

So, was it worth playing? Probably, though I’d probably recommend waiting on the price dropping some. End of the day, these games have always been pretty mindless fun, and this was no different. I was generally just left feeling like they could have done so much more, even if they just went in with the goal to match Neptunia U.

2016-05-22

Game Ramblings #12 – Phantasy Star 3: Generations of Doom

More info from Wikipedia

Platform: Sega Genesis
Genre: JRPG

Going back to old JRPGs is something that I do from time to time, and usually end up regretting. I can’t go back to the PS1 Final Fantasy titles without getting annoyed at the amount of time waste because of loading that happens during battles. Games like Dark Cloud, which were so revolutionary at release have lost a lot of their luster. Even more recent titles like Lost Odyssey have simply been surpassed by the latest and greatest. So, going back to play a game that I’d never played is usually an even bigger risk. The question then becomes, was it worth playing? In this case, it’s reserved, but a yes.

The story generally plays out over multiple generations of a single family, including the option of who you are marrying at the end of a generation. While this does mean you lose party members you invest in, they are replaced by generally stronger characters. There are also a pair of cyborgs written into the story that maintain their level and gear across generations, so the party’s power curve never suffers from the transfer between generations.

The game also greatly benefits from largely being quick and focused. Battles are fast, leveling is fast, gear is generally easy to find and purchase, and the story is there and is well written, but does not get in the way. I got to the end of the game within about 20 hours, so unlike a lot of modern JRPGs, I didn’t ever reach the point where I was bored. There’s a lot to say about the over reliance of fluff in modern JRPGs, and PS3 offers a good show of focusing the experience for the player to get the most out of more limited hours.

That’s not to say everything has aged well though. While it is interesting that you can customize the relative strength of character’s magic spells, I never really dove into the system beyond heavily leaning towards the strength of single target heals. The shop and inventory system is also simply bad at this point. Items give no description, gear shows no stats, and also doesn’t show what characters it can be equipped to. This is nothing that an item list from Gamefaqs couldn’t solve, but is definitely a little strange to have no information in the shops. Purchasing and selling is also one item at a time, inventory is capped per character at only 15 items, and items can’t be stacked. It’s just kind of frustrating, and not even something that even games of similar age tended to do.

So, I wouldn’t say this game has aged that gracefully, but end of the day it had enough going for it, and a length short enough that it didn’t grow old.

2016-05-182016-05-18

Game Ramblings #11 – Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune Revisited

More info from Wikipedia

Platform: PS4 (Part of The Nathan Drake Collection)
Genre: Action-Adventure, Third-person shooter

Uncharted 4 came out, so I’m doing what everyone else is doing; not playing it! Admittedly I’ve always had a bit of a habit of picking up games, having more games come out, and never finishing games that I got sidetracked from. For as quick as they are, the Uncharted titles definitely fell into that category. Because of that, I decided to start at the top and work my way through, beginning with Drake’s Fortune. So then the question is, how has this one aged?

So I’ll start this off by immediately admitting I have a love/hate relationship with the gun play of this series. I absolutely adore that I can run through the entire game with a 9mm pistol, using it as an effective sniper rifle and getting the vast majority of my kills as headshots. That said, it absolutely bugs the game developer side of me that I can do this. Throughout this play through, I only really ended up using other weapons on a need-to-use basis. The shotgun and MP40 came into play in the zombie-ish end game segments when they had effectively infinite ammo. The AK47 and MP4 became relatively effective pray and spray weapons into walls of enemies. However, they never really felt more powerful on a per-hit basis than either of the main 9mm pistols, and the lack of ammunition available for other larger pistols meant that I really had no reason to use others.

On the other hand, I have a much less positive relationship with the actual environmental design when it comes to this. Going through the levels, it’s extremely obvious when you’re about to get into gunfights. In general, you’ll turn a corner, see a bunch of crates, concrete wall segments, etc in a flat area, and know that once you hit a trigger point, a bunch of dudes are going to come into the field to start attacking you. Sure by end game you get snipers in vertical nests, but by and large the combat areas are extremely obvious and scripted.

That said, mechanically I would tend to lean towards the gun play still being very fun, but not more than above average. At this point I feel like the Tomb Raider series has taken some of the strong points of this series, and with the addition of that game’s more defined stealth mechanics, there are definitely options out now that have vastly improved on the third-person tomb crawling.

So then the question I guess becomes, is this one still worth a play through if you’re new to the Sony world? Aging aside, I’d say yes. The story is a pretty solid Indiana Jones-style story, the characters are entertaining, there’s enough visual improvements for the game to still look pretty decent, and the craftsmanship of the experience is without question. Much like the Jak series, the first in the series showed the promise of Naughty Dog’s path, and new people to the series shouldn’t skip it for its age.

And yes, sniper 9mm is a lot of fun.