Last Rant on Videogames: Gundam Hammer! [Gundam Battle Assault 2]

As I seem to be doing lately, this one's a bit about a specific game and a wide strafe around the concept it embodies.

Today's rant?  Gundam Battle Assault 2!

I'm a big fan of 2D fighters.  I love competition, and, as anyone who's played with me a game containing any such element can attest, I am a glutton for it.  It's not the winning, so much as pitting myself against an opponent, regardless of the opponent.  It's especially bad with 2D fighters.  I can play CvS2, a game I consider a pinnacle of the genre, endlessly.

However, though today's game is a 2D fighter, that's not really the genre I'm talking about.  As a bit of background, I'm a huge nerd.  If the fact that this is on the blog for a retro gaming podcast didn't indicate that to you, you might want to practice some logic puzzles or something.  Being a huge nerd, I'm a fairly big fan of giant robots.  My biggest exposure to shows with these glorious machines is the Gundam series.  I've never actually watched one to completion, but the idea has always captivated me.

Enter what might, for me, one of the greatest franchise exploitation games ever.  GBA2, not to be confused with the Nintendo DS, is a 2D fighter featuring giant robots from the Gundam universe duking it out in cheesy glory.  This is a game of total abnegation for me; I can zone out to this game for hours.  The AI, even on the hardest setting, is never really a good match for the prowess of a skilled player, and the survival mode is rather forgiving with regards to taking damage.

Let's break it down a bit.  First off, the life gauge is a bit different than I've seen in any other fighter.  Rather than a single discrete health gauge, you have three gauges.  As one runs out, your suit overheats, causing you to go prone for a moment.  That, in itself, isn't a huge deal, but it's important for two reasons.  The first is that the survival mode just refills your current gauge when progressing, rather than restoring some arbitrary amount of health.

The second reason this is important is that you can attack prone enemies.  I've known several people over the years who have griped about the inability to sucker punch Ryu after you've jumped his Hadouken and tripped him.  Well, lament no more, random people!  Part of mastering this game, to me, is knowing when to follow up your attack with a series of kicks in the side while your opponent is down.  The comboing system in this is about what you'd expect.  As a fighter takes damage, they recoil slightly.  More hits cause them to recoil more, until you take too long to hit them.  At this point, they may attack or guard as normal.

Sadly, there aren't very many ridiculous combos available.  Most involve a series of light hits followed by a strong hit and maybe a super.  Supers are limited in this game, which is a bit of a departure from the Capcom driven arena.  You have three supers which are all activated in the same manner (QCF+2 attack buttons).  The results, however, vary wildly.  Each suit definitely has a unique flavor to them, and the power of a super attack can very easily dictate your choice in mechanized monstrosity.

Almost every suit has some sort of ranged attack, mostly accomplished with a Hadouken movement and punch.  Additionally, some suits have what are known in the universe as funnels.  These little guys just pop out of your mech and float around for a bit.  The opponent can destroy them if they manage to land a hit, but they're otherwise unobtrusive.  Usually.  At literally any time, you may input the command to fire them.  This can lead to some interesting mind games, especially if you vary your funnel use against a seasoned opponent.

The two big departures from what are, for me, the standards in this genre, are the ability to jump jet and unblockable attacks.  Unblockables have been seeing more use lately, with the pretty nifty addition thereof to SF4.  In this game, they range from fairly well balanced to absurdly powerful.  The telltale indicator of this attack is a bright pink glow, which is always amusing.  The notable thing is that, at least from my potentially non-linear perspective with respect to time, this was a new concept.

The jump jets quite similarly duplicate the effects of high jumping or super jumping from SF.  However, the action is mapped to a single button.  When you press the button, you'll just fly off in the direction you're holding at the time.  This allows pretty great mobility from what are otherwise slow moving pieces of metal.  Since each jump uses up a boost gauge, which will slowly recharge, you're limited in how you use this.

If you don't feel like just jumping around, you can also fly.  It's pretty amusing, but I don't think that anyone does it on purpose.  You take slightly less damage when flying (and when overheating), so if you can't dodge that unblockable, you could fly into it.  If you have the boost gauge to be flying, though, you could probably just jet jump out of the way.

The last use of the boost gauge is dependent on your suit.  The vast majority will perform a just in time dodge.  This is a great alternative to jumping out of range, especially if you've got your opponent's timing down.  It allows you to maintain your position, whether that's a good thing or not, and try to lay on the pressure.  I find a fair number of unblockable attacks actually run longer than the dodge animation, though, so you're probably screwed if you try this.  A much smaller number of suits have a limited shield instead.  This shield will soak all projectiles and unblockable attacks for a short time.  This is a huge advantage, but most machines that have it make up for it by being about as agile as an inebriated turtle after a "Greatest Circle Spinner" contest.

At the end of it, the suits are quite varied, the combat is both tactical and frenetic, and it's a whole lot of fun.  The game certainly has its flaws, however.  Some bad voice acting aside, the game has pretty striated character tiers.  Rather amusingly, each row of the selection screen almost directly translates to these tiers.  There are a lot of suits that fall into the low-medium to high-medium areas, however.  If you're good enough with a slightly lower power suit, you can reasonably defeat one of greater innate strength.  My personal favorite, though it's not a very practical choice, is the Zaku IIS.  For those of you who don't know, it's got 1.3 times the output of a regular Zaku!  Basically, this thing has no major damaging attacks, but can cross from one side of the screen to the other in under half a second.  Contrast that with a mech that can shoot lasers from its chest as a standard kick attack (I'm not sure how that's kicking) and takes about 5 seconds to walk across the screen.

To be fair, I'm not sure character balance was what the designers were aiming for.  Really, this is a Gundam cheese fest, and that's what it does best.  Each suit is relatively true to its depiction on the shows, and it feels really good to just go and crush some of the weaker suits.  That said, if you're trying to play this competitively, that's a good way to ostracize about half of your character selection.

Since I'm rambling about games of fan service, and not the pervy kind, the genre of games I wanted to wander the borders of is genre cash in games.  After Geremy and I had played this game for about 2 hours one day, he asked me the next whether most of our enjoyment from it was from the fact that it's just filled with characters from a familiar series.  My immediate response was in defense of the general awesomeness of the game, but I know that, at some level, I don't think I would get quite the same enjoyment from a generic robot fighting game.

I play Star Wars: Battlefront II reasons.  It's not super difficult, but requires enough engagement of the mind to stay interesting.  I don't know that I would enjoy it as much were it not a Star Wars property, however.  I'm not the biggest fan of the franchise, but generic guys shooting lasers wouldn't be quite the same.  As I think on it, however, my biggest source of amusement from the game with regards to the idea content mainly stems from the colors.  Seeing a variety of colored light beams fly frantically across your field of vision is, for the non-epilepsically inclined, pretty enjoyable.

However, I've always loved games from either the Star Wars or Gundam franchises.  I've played a variety of Star Trek games and never gotten into, however.  Most of the Gundam games are pretty decent, Journey to Jaburo being one of my favorites.  I've played just as many bad games from that, however.  I'm of the opinion that a game shouldn't be solely judged on the properties its depicting.  Being, despite my efforts to the contrary, a subjective observer, I can't quite tell whether I am judging such things by their own merit, however.

I don't believe property exploitation games necessarily be bad.  I'm under the impression that they tend to be less than average, though.  I'm going to make a radical conclusion about this one.  I postulate that, even if it were just some generic giant robot game, I would enjoy it as thoroughly.  Really, it's giant robots.  It's pretty hard to argue with that.                  

I Love Videogames: How Videogames Found Me.

For my fourth and final column every month, (well most months) I actually found I didn’t have a real great idea. I thought I might do something like Tyler’s rants on the videogames he’s playing. I play a lot fewer videogames than he does, but there’s still more then one a month I want to talk about, as our “what have you been playing?” section proves every week. But we’ve never gone as in depth in these sections as I’d like and really talked about the things we play. That’s my fault as much as anyone else involved in the show, especially since some weeks all I play is League of Legends.  For my last column, I’ve decided to just talk about the games I love, modern and old, and why. And since I just shared how I got into Table Top RPGs, I figured I’d also share how I got into videogames and what they’ve meant to me.

The story of how I first got into videogames is pretty short. I had an aunt when I was much younger who was born a generation too early, in that it was kind of hard to pirate stuff in the 80s and 90s. That didn’t stop her though, and I owned hundreds of movies when I was a kid, because she’d record everything they owned or rented and send it to us, usually three movies per tape. Batman, Batman Returns, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, hundreds of movies I watched on tapes that were technically pirated. Something seemed off to me about it, but I was too young to get that it was illegal and simply enjoyed my bounty. Then, when I turned 4, movies lost that place in my heart. She sent me something far better an NES and a huge collection of games. I honestly don’t remember how many there were now, fewer than 20 probably, but it seemed gigantic. I was instantly aware of Super Mario, probably from the terrible cartoon, as I remember thinking the only thing that was missing from my collection was Sonic. 

That said, Super Mario Bros. Excitebike and Super Mario Bros. 3 were the only Nintendo classics in the bunch. I’d heard of Mega Man, but just the cartoon, I didn’t know he was a Nintendo game. A friend of mine had Metroid as I mentioned in that podcast, but Kirby and The Legend of Zelda were completely unknown to me. That said, a lot of the games I had were licensed games and back then, licensed games could some times be good, even great. On the podcast I’ve talked about Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers the first game I ever beat, a surprisingly good platformer made by Capcom. Another game deep in my memory is GI Joe The Atlantis Factor  another Capcom game that I loved. My favorite game at the time though was probably one made by Knoammi; Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II, a port of the arcade game that would eventually be succeeded by the beloved SNES classic, Turtles in Time. 

I could just list the games I had as a kid and the fond memories as an entire series of articles, but those are the ones that stand out the most for whatever reason. There were plenty of games I didn’t like, or that were more mid range in my mind, and especially so when I found out about a place called Game Force. Game Force was a second hand videogame chain, very similar to GameStop now, although it was a far more local chain. They currently have four stores in the Colorado area, they used to have a lot more, but I don’t know if they ever got out of the state. Anyway, I found a place where I could trade in all the games I didn’t like for one that I wanted! My mom told me that it was a rip off, but I didn’t listen, and the first game I ever got for myself was Super Mario Bros. 2.

More importantly though, the guy at Game Force had a weird shaped cartridge with writing that was in Japanese. He told me it was a game for the Nintendo 64, a new console that was out in Japan and was coming to America soon. I had to have one. I begged my mom. They cost $400. She told me it was too much. I begged more. She told me if, by my birthday, I could save up $200, half the cost, she’d cover the rest. I saved like mad, and managed to meet the mark, and ended up getting Super Mario 64, Wave Race, and Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire as a birthday bonus. 

As an important aside here, I suck at videogames. This was even more true as a kid. The only game I could beat on my NES was Chip and Dale, a game that’s major flaw, in the eyes of most critics, was that it was too easy. The N64 was not much kinder to me, Wave Race wasn’t hard, but it was kind of boring. Relaxing might be a better word, I enjoyed the game, but never felt compelled to win races or unlock new content. I could beat the first few levels of Shadows of the Empire, but level 5 was huge by the standards of the time, and I couldn’t commit to beating it in a single sitting. To be fair, the game is only ten levels long. And Mario 64… well it took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to find my first star. I can beat it in under two hours now though, so showed it! 

Then, one day when my mom dragged me to King Supers and I was extra bored, and as we went through the magazine isle, something stood out to me. An issue of Nintendo Power. It had a list of what games were the best, with Super Mario 64 on top of course, and cheats, and previews of new games coming out, and guides about how to beat the games that were out already. I absolutely had to have it. My mom wasn’t the sort who would buy me something to shut me up in the store, but for whatever reason, she agreed to get me that, and it changed my life. 

I was constantly saving my money for new issues of Nintendo Power after that, and each time we went to the store I eagerly looked to see if there was a new one. At some point, I convinced my mom to let me pay her for a check so I could get a subscription to Nintendo Power, and they’d bring it right to my mail box, weeks before it made it to the store. It was amazing, and it introduced me to games I’d never even think of playing, games like Goldeneye, which my mom wouldn’t let me buy, and Mystical Ninja’s Starring Gomen. But in the back of an issue one month, was something that may have introduced me to the most important game of my life. A smaller magazine, named Pokemon Power. It looked like the stupidest thing I’d ever seen, and I left it attached. 

A few weeks later though, something unexpected came in the mail. A VHS tape. One I’ve tried to find on youtube many times since, and have succeeded only in finding videos talking about it, or copy write notices that say it’s been taken down. And what was on this mythical tape? I’ll tell you in a month.

Episode 11: Really, You Should Be Listening to Episode 64 [Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen]

We've been attacked by another guest host!  This week, we talk Ogre Battle, among other things.  This week is pretty heavy on other things, actually, but it's 92% by volume videogame related.  Can you battle ogres with the best of them?



Direct your Downloading units here!

(00:30) Zach!  We've mentioned him basically every episode and now he's here, like a specter from the ether.  I'm neither confirming nor denying this, but he might be a regular from now on.

(02:50) We hit the wall flying.  Or throwing.

(03:45) What we've been playing.  It's actually different this week!

(05:15) Griefing.  Also, XCOM.

(06:35) More Naruto madness.  This stuff is crazy awesome, regardless of whether you like the show.  Big on style.

(09:30) Pokemon!

(10:50) Pixelmon, the super awesome mod for Minecraft where you play with Pokemon on the map.

(12:40) Myths and legends in games and how they're dead with the Internet.

(15:30) Commensurate rewards for secrets in games and the 3D platformer collection craze.

(20:00) We finally get to the game of the week.

(23:40) A special point here: you are punished for using your best teams.

(25:40) Zach has causality issues.   Also, the Tarot system.

(30:00) We talk a bit about unit promotion that may make you think that this game sounds cool.

 (32:00) Plot!  We were told there was one.

(36:00) TL;DNL: There's some potential here, but it's wasted.  Go play Ogre Battle 64 instead.

Next week, we look at another series progenitor, The Legend of Zelda.  Zach will be joining us again, so expect outbursts of some sort.

Wander through caves and get a sword at

Geremy@lasttimeonvideogames.com,
 Tyler@lasttimeonvideogames.com,
 Zach@lasttimeonvideogames.com,
 or LTOVG@lasttimeonvideogames.com.
 You can also go to the show page at plus.google.com/+LastTimeOnVideogames or comment on the site at www.lasttimeonvideogames.com.
 Also, you can follow our tweets @LTOVG.

Pardon the mess

If you've been hitting the site today, you may have notice intermittent functionality.  That's because I've been mucking around with the template to make the site more accessible to you, the reader!  This is something we've been wanting to do for a bit, but I've not had the gumption until recently.  All posts, barring informational posts and episode posts, will only be excerpts on the main page, including the listing of all posts in that category.  Episode posts and posts such as this that are informational material about the site or episodes, will appear in full on the main page.  Click either the post title or the Read More link at the bottom of the post will take you to a full version of that post, in all its textual glory.  If you, dear readers, would prefer a similar thing be applied to the episode posts as well, comment on this post or shoot us an email!

Last Rant on Videogames: Action... Something

I haven't played a game recently that's not going to be fodder for the show at some point, so I'm going to be taking a brief look at a genre.  Despite the title of this post, it's not going to be specifically action games, for reasons I'll delve into in a bit.

I have this problem where, when trying to describe a game, especially many 2D games, that I tack the word "action" onto the beginning of the describing phrase.  Most games in the Zelda series, for example, become "action RPGs" or "action adventure."  I'm not sure why the industry started calling them RPGs at all, actually.  The role being played is minimal at best.  Similarly, JRPGs generally don't involve the player filling any role, other than serving as the guiding hand behind the protagonists' movements.  In this capacity, almost every game would be an RPG.

As anyone who knows me is probably aware, my biggest love in gaming is the adventure game.  For those of you who don't really know what this genre generally entails, it usually means a game where exploration is a key element of the game.  The other mechanics notwithstanding, these types of games usually have a fairly large environment to explore that requires the player to make notes (usually mentally in my case) about the locations of things they cannot interact with yet, and reward the player upon return to these places with the appropriate "key."

Geremy had Zach and I read an article about how the original Zelda was the best in the series on the premise that the games should be entirely about exploration.  The rant then went on to state that the later games were flawed due to having such silly contrivances as plot and a more linear world design.  What grave sins.  Imagine, having to acquire an item that allows you to interact with the environment you're familiar with in a new way.  Such folly.

Jesting aside, the adventure games I most enjoy, and consider to be most well implemented, are those that reward the player for exploration with changes in depth and for advancing the game with changes in scope.

What now?  When I say change in scope, I mean giving the player something new with which to affect the game world.  This could be a ranged weapon in a predominately melee focused game, the ability to burn away foliage, or a faster travel mechanism.  I love me some faster travel.

Changes in depth, then, enhance an area that the player already has access to.  Whereas a change in scope gives you a nifty bow, a change in depth might give you more arrows for that bow, or a slightly different arrow.  While some might be tempted to say that a bomb tied to an arrow is a change in scope over regular arrows, I would argue that the mechanic fundamentally the same.  A change in scope, to me, is a completely new mechanic.  A change in depth is simply more of the same or a slightly better version of what you have.

Now that the explanation is out of the way, why should I prefer a change of scope for advancing the game over a change in depth?  I think this has much to do with the standard structure of videogames, and, in fact, storytelling.  Generally, as you progress through a game, various challenges are presented to you in an increasingly difficult order.  Specific challenges are much more difficult, momentous, or, at least, consuming of time than others.  Such challenges usually take the form of bosses, but it can be any particularly unique challenge.  A commensurate reward for such challenges is usually a change in scope.  For some games, it's just rewarded with plot or some such thing, but in adventure games the change in scope is rewarded for overcoming the challenge or is necessary to affect that change.

The problem, as I see it, with rewarding such events with a change in depth is that it does not feel sufficiently momentous.  You beat the super awful dragon so have more magic.  Woo?  Yes, it's likely going to be useful to be able to toss around more fireballs, but wouldn't it be more fun to summon the wind of the dragon's wings AND throw fireballs?  Using this, you could go find a way to do both more often.  I feel like the exploration of a game is partly driven by the player's own desire to delve into the depths of the world.  Really, the items they find there are just tangible rewards for doing something they would already do.  A change in depth, then, feels like a better suited reward to this kind of activity, since it only enhances their ability to go and explore more.  This, of course, has the fringe benefit of making the continuance of the "real" part of the game easier, but is not necessary to complete the game.

I'm not saying, of course, that it's impossible to make a good game without following this pattern.  I could very easily imagine a game where the changes in scope are the rewards for exploration, and are necessary to continue the plot and receive changes in depth.  I am saying, however, that the reward structure I like to see is new mechanics accompanied by movement of the plot.

So, why did I say "Action... Something?"  I feel like adding action to the beginning of an attempted genre description is, at best, redundant.  Modern games are almost never devoid of action.  Really, I think that word is both a hangover from when not all adventure games were action games (some still aren't, and are still good!), and is an attempt to point at something else that we care about.  We're trying to say something about the mechanics around which the game is framed.  Some games are all about the mechanics.  Some are all about the story.  Some, though much rarer, are all about that nebulous layer between the two that makes up what we call the "feel" of a game.  That alchemic combination between the raw mechanics and code and the plot presented either explicitly through text or implicitly through environment can be its own way of categorizing a game.

That, at the core of the matter, is where I think the wonder of an adventure game lies.  I think that most good adventure games must involve the isolation of the player from a human element.  Since there's no one around but the player's character to convey the story, it's usually up to the environment to fill in the details.  I think Metroid Prime is an excellent example of how an adventure game can be done without having clunky exposition.  In fact, many of the rewards for exploration in that game are changes in depth, but specifically the depth of the story.  While there are certainly a large number of upgrades to be had, much of what you find is lore about the aliens who crafted the world you're on or tidbits about the other aliens that are trying to harness the world's unfortunate energy source.  I think this game would be better classified as an adventure game from a first-person perspective, shooting, and (blech) 3D platforming.  Saying that it's an adventure game should imply that there is a world to explore, things to collect from that exploration, and some sort of main plot to advance by ditching straight exploration.  The other things are there, but do not make the game.  Calling it a first person shooter, as anyone who has played it will tell you, is grossly inaccurate.

I feel that there is a growing desire from the gaming masses to buck the trend of genrefication of games, and adopt a system of classification that more accurately describes what the game is.  I don't know that it's going to happen any time soon, or at all, though, since many of the big publishers rely on those labels to make their sales.  The next time you describe a game, try to do so in terms of experience, feel, and mechanics, rather than using a predefined genre label.  Unless it's CoD.  We know what that is.  ^_^

Commenting!

The Blogger team recently released an update to the site that links comments on posts directly to Google+ comments.  This seems like a nice consolidated approach, so we're taking it.  Took it, actually.  At the time of this posting, that's been in effect for a couple of days.  Hatcha!

The Table Top: My Intro to Table Top Gaming

Warning This Post contains links to TVtropes.  You have been warned. 

Tyler and I have both mentioned before that we’re avid “Table Top Gamers” multiple times on the show, and some of you may be wondering, what does that really mean?  Board Games are played on a Table Top, but so are poker, games like Magic the Gathering, Warhammer 40,000 and one could even think we were referring to Pool in certain contexts.  While I believe we both have at least some interest in all of the above, what we’re really referring to is Table Top RPGs.

Some of you may still be asking; what’s a Table Top RPG?

Well, the prime example, and the short hand for most people in the hobby is Dungeons and Dragons but it goes far beyond that, and to many people, Dungeons and Dragons is an old game with a stigma they don’t want to be associated with.  For others, it’s the entirety of the hobby, and while they’re aware of other games and may have played one once or twice, they really just want to play D&D for the rest of their lives.

But I still haven’t gotten to what a Table Top RPG is or why anyone would want to play one or how they relate to videogames.  One thing me and my partner in crime share is a predilection towards rambling.  Perhaps I should start with how I got into the hobby.  I believe it started with a certain episode of Dexter’s Lab.  That said, I feel like I knew that the episode was a parody D&D even when I saw it, so it may just be one of those things I always knew about and assumed everyone did, like how if you blow into NES carts they work again, or that there are three different Robins  (Well 5 now.  6 if you count Carrie Kelly 4 if you don’t count Stephanie Brown.  Technically three again now because…. Comics are weird, let's leave it at that.)

But I didn’t seek the game out right away… for one, I didn’t have a lot of friends, and while the ones I did have were nerdy, they weren’t that nerdy, and while D&D isn’t that complex, we were probably too young to play it right at the time.  Instead, like every kid in the 90s, I got into Pokemon.  And the Pokemon Card Game.  Which lead me to the Dragon Ball Z Card Game.  Our Friendly Local Gaming Store had Dragon Ball Z card game tournaments every week.  And after each tournament, one of the older kids would run a quick session of the Dragon Ball Z RPG.  If it sounds terrible, it’s because it was.  We’d all chose a DBZ character, I was usually stuck with Chiaotzu because even Krillin was taken, but despite his special attack being to blow himself up, he was still better than Yamcha.  Every week we’d run the same battle, the “Z Fighters” Vs. Nappa, Vageta and some Saibamen.  Unlike a traditional RPG, with a game master controlling the opponents and an ongoing story, this was just that same fight, and when we had a lot of people, players would play the bad guys as well (though I still rarely got to play a character like Gohan or Piccolo and was stuck with Chiaotzu.)

This might sound like it sucks if you’re familiar with Table Top RPGs already.  And to be honest, it kind of did, the rule system for the old game is absolutely terrible.  But I loved Dragon Ball Z, so playing out the game’s classic adventures.  What fascinated me far more though, was when the person running the games told me about how there were rules to make your own characters and adventures, and I begged my mom to get me the rule book for Christmas.  When she finally did, I studied the thing, and luckily all of my friends were huge Dragon Ball Z fans, so it wasn’t hard to convince them to make characters, and I told my own stories.  Now they all followed the typical Dragon Ball Z plot, an Alien with a terrible Pun for a name and his followers attacked Earth and defeated the heroes, the heroes trained and became stronger, fought the alien again and won, then went and found the Dragon Balls so they could bring back anyone who died.  Rinse and repeat until we got bored and made new characters, and eventually until we’d broken the subpar system to the point where the game was boring enough that we just quit completely.

And the DBZ card game didn’t hold up much longer, the old tournament players went to other games, mostly Lord of the Rings which was the flavor of the month at the time, but I ended up playing a game called Yu-gi-oh.  It had Dragons, warriors, wizards and monsters, and Trap Cards, everything a kid my age could want.  And I met new friends, one of which was always carrying around a notebook.  When I asked him what was in it, he said he was statting out Yu-gi-oh cards to be used as monsters and enemies in his Dungeons and Dragons game.  My mind was blown.  My birthday was coming up, and as soon as I got my birthday money I bought a Players Hand Book.  I didn’t even want to use Yu-gi-oh monsters in my own games, just the fact that you could, that the game had so much available, had me hooked.

I didn’t even wait to own a Dungeon Masters Guide or Monster Manual, the other two “core” rule books of D&D to get started.  I knew the basics of how DMing worked and how to make monsters, and I had a few friends willing to play.  While Video Games and anime were huge influences on my early DMing, the memories from the Dragon Ball Z game filtered in as well, and my games always had a story… even if they were 10% story and 90% dungeon as things went on.  Eventually, I found a Star Wars RPG book, and we tried that and found it just as fun.

What does this have to do with Videogames though?  Well not a lot, but it’s very important to the creation of this podcast.  When I left for college, I could never get a group together willing to try D&D or the like.  My room mate was interested, but my other friends, even the super nerdy ones, one who even read Forgotten Realms novels all thought that D&D was too nerdy. 

But Dungeon Mastering was a major creative outlet for me for years, and I still had the urge to play, but I couldn’t fill that.  Until I found Fear the Boot a podcast about Table Top RPGs.  It was the first Podcast I listened to, and easily the biggest, though not only influence on Last Time on Videogames.  If you’ve any interest in Table Top RPGs go listen to it.  On second thought don’t, it’s a way better Podcast than ours with a huge back log and you might not come back.

So in honor of one of my favorite hobbies, the third Friday of every month, I’m going to write a column on Table Top RPGs and how they’ve influenced videogames.  What Videogames can learn from them, and conversely, what Table Top games should take from them.  Also, lately I’ve been tooling around with porting a very popular videogame series, one mentioned in the article, to the Table Top.  No promises, but if I decide to continue with the project, this may become a design diary of sorts for the project. Stay tuned.

Episode 10: You Take the High Road, and I'll Shoot the Lasers [Gunstar Heroes]

It's full of lights and sounds and craziness!  Gunstar Heroes is a crazy anime styled action shooter that probably belongs in an arcade box.  This game has gotten a lot of praise for being a forgotten gem for the Genesis.  Is it really worth its weight in cartridges?  (That's one cartridge)



Download for Justice!

(00:30) Alex is here.  Yay!

(1:50) What we've been playing.  Alex watched what Tyler played.  Geremy played the same stuff.  Notice a pattern?  Later we find that he's actually been playing everything ever.

(3:10) Ducktales!  Woo-oo!

(4:50) Naruto: The Subtitles Continue

(6:30) We finally get to the game and break down what's going on here.  We start with the powerup system!

(8:10) Alex explains the excuse plot

(10:20) Life leeching

(12:20) My eyes!  This game has crazy amounts on the screen at a time.

(14:00) Level rundown time

(17:20) Have we mentioned that the optimal strategy is homing laser?  I CONTROL GRAVITY!

(18:45) Curry and Rice

(21:20) Transformers, more annoying than meets the eye

(22:55) Gradius!  Again.  Wait...

(27:00) Style against Depth

(31:15) Nostalgia lens, watching games, and difficulty cliffs for non-gamers.

(38:30) Wrapping up on our thoughts about Gunstar

(41:10) After the credits.  You guys know there's an after the credits?  This one's awesome.

Next week, we tackle Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen.  We have a different guest host, and talk about strategies!

Learn all about our obscure menus at

Geremy@lasttimeonvideogames.com,
 Tyler@lasttimeonvideogames.com,
 Zach@lasttimeonvideogames.com,
 or LTOVG@lasttimeonvideogames.com.
 You can also go to the show page at plus.google.com/+LastTimeOnVideogames or comment on the site at www.lasttimeonvideogames.com.
 Also, you can follow our tweets @LTOVG.

Last Rant on Videogames: Mark of the Ninja

It is time, once again, for my ruminations about a videogame.  As I sat and pondered what to say about this game, I found that, while I intend to gush about it, there wasn't a whole lot.  The good news for you is that this will likely be shorter than my previous ramblings.

Mark of the Ninja is an action stealth platformer implemented in a manner I find truly wonderful.  I have had several encounters with games of this variety, where the mechanics do all the talking, engaging you by making you wait.  Such a seeming contradiction and the truly enjoyable rewards to be reaped by waiting perfectly have left me with something of an infatuation with this type of game.  I've played some Metal Gear and some Splinter Cell, but something about them have always seemed lacking.

This game, however, is most certainly not lacking, except for leaving me wanting more of it.  The developers of this game have, to me, perfected this type of game.  Every action you take is accompanied by a visible radius of the sound you'll make, so you know exactly how to manipulate your environment.  Enemies have convenient, but not obtrusive, timers to let you know how they're behaving and for how long they will continue to do so.  You can lay intricate traps and lure one guard at a time or go ninja through their ranks, taking down an entire room before the last guy notices.  You can use your environment and fallen foes to manipulate the ones still standing in your way, run up walls, fly across landscapes... It's really a thing of beauty.

This is all packaged rather nicely with what, at first, appears to be an excuse plot that turns out to be a fairly enjoyable, though not terribly complex, series of events.  The ending may seem surprising at first, though I suspect most could see it come with the fairly heavy foreshadowing.  With the elegance of a ninja, each level is tied neatly to a mostly coherent plot and gradually increasing powers that let you be even more ninja.

To top all of the wonderment off, you can play through the game, after unlocking certain medals that are outlined as bonus objectives on each level, with different outfits and gear.  The outfits, specifically, affect gameplay in several ways.  My favorite allows you to more effectively terrorize your foes by using the bodies of their comrades as set pieces.  Additionally, you can choose one that bars use of your sword, but allows you to run without causing noise.  That one's a lot of fun.  Another grants additional bonuses when enemies are slain.

I don't know what else to say about this game other than that it is a pure joy for me to play.  I would highly encourage anyone who likes the idea of a fairly action heavy stealth platformer to play this game.  It's only $15 dollars on Steam right now, so... you know... get out there.  ^_^

The Series: Navalgazing about what a Series is

Unlike my cohort’s ramblings, I intend to write monthly columns, and post each one on Friday afternoon.  While the first column of every month will be The Ratings, a deeper look back on the games we played the month before.  The second Friday of every week will be a column called The Series.  What will I be posting on other Fridays?  Well you’ll have to read and find out!

The Series will be about a particular series of videogames, chosen by me, which may relate to something we’ve played on the podcast, like Super Mario Bros., or it may be something much newer I feel like talking about like Naruto Ultimate Ninja.  I’ll take a look at the various games within the series I’ve played, admit to the ones I’ve missed, and try to make excuses for that, and talk about the changes made to each game, which ones worked, which ones didn’t which were genius, and which killed the franchise.  For series I’ve followed along with such as The Legend of Zelda, I’ll also talk about the changes going on in gaming around the time, and why certain ones were likely made.  For series I’m just now coming to and observing from the outside, like Mega Man, I’ll speculate wildly about why decisions were made, and merely focus on whether they worked or not.

Since this is the first week, I’m going to instead talk about what makes a series, and why sequels are so prevalent in Video Games, even compared to industries like movies.  First and foremost, for the purposes of this article, I’m defining a series as any sequence of games with similar titles and intents with at least three games in it.  That’s perhaps a little vague, so I’ll go a bit more in depth.  Obviously, I want there to be at least three games within the series.  A series is different then a game that has a sequel.  Arkham Asylum and Arkham City are both great games, but there are only two of them, so I don’t count them.  You could argue that there are many older Batman games to connect them to, but they clearly differ in intent, being old side scrollers and fighting games. 

That said I don’t want a change in developers to “Break” the streak of a series.  The Legend of Zelda: Oracles of Ages and The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons were both produced by Capcom instead of Nintendo, but the intent of the games is clearly the same.  On the other hand, while Mario Kart and Mario Party share Mario in the title, the intent of those games is clearly different, and separate from the Mario franchise as a whole.  I also don’t want storyline to be a factor, as Final Fantasy II is clearly in the same series as Final Fantasy X, despite the stories having almost nothing to do with each other.  Title is also insufficient, since Naruto: Clash of Ninja and Naruto: Ultimate Ninja, while both fighting games based on the popular Naruto anime series, have very different mechanics and were made to be competing games.

So now that we’ve equivocated on a term for two whole paragraphs, why are series so frequent in videogames?  Before the Nintendo Entertainment System, they were actually pretty rare.  Ms. Pacman is sort of a sequel to Pacman, obviously they were made to appeal to the same people, but it’s almost just an update to the original Pacman rule set.  This began to change with the NES.  Super Mario was not only a video game character; he became a marketing platform, with a cartoon and everything.  The same happened to Mega Man.  Suddenly you had lunch boxes, action figures, and in Mario’s case even a (terrible) live action movie.  But the thing that started it was a videogame, making more seemed obvious.

While Nintendo of Japan was quick to bring out Super Mario Bros. 2, less then one year after the first, Nintendo of America hesitated.  The common legend is that they felt the game was “too hard” for a American audiences, and if you’ve ever played Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels you can’t help but imagine that was a factor.  But more then that, as videogames were becoming more and more complex; Nintendo of America felt that people wanted more from the next Mario game then just more levels.  In addition, they had a game called Doki Doki Panic that they simply did not know how to market.  The solution?  Paint over the sprites in that game with Mario sprites and sell it as Super Mario Bros. 2.  While in the modern era, they’d be billed as charlatans trying to cash in on a successful brand, in a world without the internet, Super Mario Bros. 2 looked more vibrant and colorful then the original, with more playable characters and new enemies, and while it’s sometimes seen as the black sheep of the family, it’s still one of the most popular games in the franchise today, and elements such as the Shy Guys and Birdo have migrated over to the series proper. 

After that, the Mario series proper became an innovator with its games.  Super Mario Bros. 3 brought us the map screen, as well as adding some inventory options to Mario, though it was hardly the first game with these, as well as the Raccoon suit, which allowed you to fly over the entire level.  Super Mario World can in some ways be seen as just a more colorful remake of Super Mario Bros. 3, but added in Yoshi and some of the series best enemies.  Super Mario 64 is the first truly great game to use 3d, and many of the subtle things it did are still found in games today.  The marketing side of Mario was spun off into great games like Mario Kart and Mario Tennis, and while they’re sometimes decried as a cash in, they’re clearly made with love. 

That doesn’t explain why sequels are so popular now though.  Clearly Call of Duty doesn’t have a cartoon, and I’ll shoot myself if I find they’re making a live action movie.  Well, in the old days, a video game could be made by a single guy given enough time.  As technology improved, it became reasonable to hire a guy to do all the art, and another to do music, while you had two or three programmers and a “director” to make sure everything was coming together nicely.  As graphics got better, you needed more artists and more coders.  As levels got bigger and expectations grew you needed more.  As story started to become more important, you needed a few writers.  As dialog grew in importance, you needed more, and with voice acting, you of course needed actors.  The price of the average videogame has simply spiraled out of control.  You need to sell a ton of units to make back what you put into a game.  Trying something new is risky.  Trying to sell a sequel is quite safe.

This is starting to run long, and thus I’ll end things here.  Next month, I’ll continue to talk about why sequels are safe, why we see so many of them, and ultimately if that’s a good thing or a bad thing for the industry.

Episode 9: Ninja Legends Suck [The Legend of the Mystical Ninja]

Once a decade, when the moon is full and the spirits are restless, the lone ninja rises from the shadows to quell the growing unease in the world. Then his fat companion trips on the way up the hill and ruins the scene. This week, it's The Legend of the Mystical Ninja, who, as it turns out, isn't really all that mystical.  He does fight an octopus horde, though, so that ought to be good for something.



Download it before it ninjas away

(1:00) What we've been playing.  *SPOILERS* Geremy's been playing the stuff he was last episode.

(3:40) Mystical Ninja, with no articles, is a much better game than this.  It has bazookas.

(6:15) We start getting into the meat of this.  How generic is this game?  Very.

(10:35) Ewww... I got some Japan on my game.

(13:33) Difficulty and enjoyable challenge, and why they're not necessarily the same thing.

(17:05) Co-op is good, surprising everyone.  One person even had a heart attack upon hearing that.

(19:25) Biting off more than even Goemon's comically large mouth can chew in game design.

(20:35) Theme vs. The Translators vs. Disjointed Plot.  This game is filled with things that have no purpose.

(23:40) Grinding in my action game?  Soooo repetitive.

(26:35) Finishing thoughts and the ambition of ActRaiser.  At least this game looks good.

(31:15) Our apologies to the audience for this game.


Next time, it's Gunstar Heroes for the Sega Genesis.  You can rest assured that, if nothing else, this game is not as large a waste of money as our ninja adventure.  Additionally, we're encountering a wandering guest host!

Punch some living curry with us at

Geremy@lasttimeonvideogames.com,
 Tyler@lasttimeonvideogames.com,
 Zach@lasttimeonvideogames.com,
 or LTOVG@lasttimeonvideogames.com.
 You can also go to the show page at plus.google.com/+LastTimeOnVideogames or comment on the site at www.lasttimeonvideogames.com.
 Also, you can follow our tweets @LTOVG.

Last Rant on Videogames: An Ocean of Stars [Star Ocean: Till the End of Time]

Somehow, I have failed to mention my abiding love for the Tales series on the show.  I'm not really sure how that is, as it's a mix of two of my favorite genres.

For those of you who don't know, the Tales series consists of games like Tales of Phantasia, Tales of Symphonia, and the rather more popular (and recent) Tales of Vesperia.  If you've never played any of these games, it's a pretty standard JRPG-esque game.  You have mostly random encounters, anime styled characters, generally cheesy but enjoyable plots, and a pretty standard leveling system.  You also have a tech point system that allows you to master individual combat skills through repeated use.  The thing that really sets these games apart is that when you enter combat, you are placed directly in control of one of the characters.  Fights then take on a style similar to a 2D fighter where you mash silly combos into the random bug or dog carrying money.  The rest of your party, while you may take active control of them, is generally dictated by a strategy that you assign them off of a list.  Tales of Phantasia, my introduction to this series, continues to be one of my favorite games.  It's fast paced, has some pretty fun plot twists, and a large and fairly malleable world to explore.

However, I'm not talking about this series today.  Instead, I'm talking about Star Ocean: Till the End of Time.  Yes, it's "Till" and not "'Til" or "Until."  I like to imagine it's referring to making a large farm out of the end of the universe.

The reason I mention Tales is because the two series share a common history.  If you've ever played games from both, this probably won't surprise you much.  The team that went on to develop Star Ocean made the first Tales game.  After selling off the property (which I believe has been handled fairly well since), they went on to develop Star Ocean, the first entry in that series.

Star Ocean takes a slightly more open stance on battle.  Rather than run back and forth in relation to your current target, as you do in Tales games, you are free to run about the battle field.  When you attack, however, you generally make a straight line for your target.  This allows you a bit more opportunity to try to avoid attacks, and lends  a slightly more realistic feel to combat.  Realistic, however, is a relative term, as you're free to fling giant fireballs and create electromagnetic disasters in both games.

I tried to play the original Star Ocean once.  I didn't get too far, and I honestly don't remember why.  I do remember that each character had an inordinate number of skills, ranging from cooking to swordplay.  In the tenderness of my youth, I may have been daunted by the perceived complexity of the system.  At any rate, I dropped the game, but remained intrigued by the idea.  It probably didn't help that I went on to play Tales of Phantasia roughly twenty times.

Therefore, my first real experience with the series, and, to date, my only experience, was Star Ocean: Till the End of Time.  For those of you who don't know, each entry in the series is only loosely connected to the others, mostly sharing a setting consisting of a fairly advanced science fiction universe.  The game centers around a young man named Fayt on vacation with his parents and childhood friend Sophia.  Fayt, as Alex and I jest, is a space hippie, who just wants everyone in the universe to hug each other.  Space pirates attack, there's some evacuation, more space pirates... Things proceed like this until Fayt is stranded alone on a pre-industrial world with a beat up escape pod. 

Speaking of which, one of the major criticisms with this game, which I do not share, is that you spend the majority of the game on a world where the pinnacle of technology is gunpowder when the setting around you contains ships capable of traversing the galaxy in a fairly reasonable amount of time.  As far as I'm aware, these games always tend to be that way.  I'm a fairly avid proponent of mixing my traditional fantasy with my science fiction, and such a setting happens to be a happy marriage of the two.

I can't talk too much about the plot quite yet without getting into fairly massive spoilers, so I'm going to talk a few moments about gameplay.  First, this game shares the hallmark of its ancestors: fast paced open combat.  A variety of tactics are available, and can vary strongly within individual characters, much less all the different ones you eventually have access to.  You can focus on just punching opponents in the face (hunting Australian style, as I like to say), slinging spells to the same effect, mashing weak attacks that do extra damage to the opponents' MP reserves (since running out of MP or HP kills), or being a support caster.  Really, there's opportunity here for you to engage in combat however you feel, which is a refreshing change of pace.  However, given the nature of the system, finding combos and chaining between special attacks is highly encouraged, and you'll find yourself just beating upon the walls of your enemies' bodies more often than not.

You also have the ability to, with large sums of money, craft items of varying sorts.  There are invention centers across the world that you can cough up some cash to add facilities to.  Each character has some skill in every crafting area, and various NPCs around the world may be recruited to further your item making goals.  The crafting itself is a little odd, however.  Rather than finding materials and attempting to combine them, which has generally become the standard, you pick a team of up to three people to work on something.  Whenever you add a member or choose a type of crafting, a cost per attempt is displayed.  Higher costs require higher group skill, but yield better items.

When you're ready, you tell everyone to start, and a timer runs down while you're treated to a montage of your team attempting to make things.  The actions of each character during the montage are dictated by their skill in the subject, which can be rather amusing at times.   Depending on various factors, time will run down and consume your money as each attempt at producing the item is engaged.  It's generally a fairly boring process, but also pretty quick.  There's a whole system around this, but you don't ever have to participate; it is, in fact, quite possible to beat the game without ever touching it.

The plot is generally well-paced, though it does tend to drag in spots.  I went to this game directly after giving up on Suikoden IV, however, so it seemed at the time to be a blazing guided rocket by comparison.  I'm going to start getting into some spoilers for what is now a nearly ten year old game.  I'd be surprised if you haven't played it but are still considering it, but I'm going to warn you just in case.

The plot plays out basically as follows.

Fayt is stranded on a backwards planet after an attack of what I earlier called space pirates, which are actually an alien race called the Vendeeni, and decides to help the locals after he learns of some information that implies that another offworlder has been terrorizing them.  He finds out that the guy is not only insane, but also a wanted criminal.  A member of the organization Quark, Cliff, comes to the rescue.  Due to some science fictiony nonsense, his species developed super powers, so he just ends the guy.

Fayt is placed under quasi-arrest as Cliff and his partner, Mirage, head back to headquarters.  On the way, however, the group is again attacked the Vendeeni, causing them to crash land on Elicoor II, where most of the game takes place.  This place is slightly more advanced than the last planet, but still pretty far off from space flight.  Cliff and Fayt are taking prisoner while Mirage ninjas away to go do some covert things.  I guess she's good at that.  It's actually implied several times over the course of the game that Mirage is something of a mentor figure to Cliff even though she's mostly subservient to him.

At any rate, our two haphazard heroes are sitting in prison when a member of the opposing nation in a two-sided war on the continent comes to save them.  Nel, the ninja style woman who saves them, is convinced they are engineers from a neutral country and escorts them back to her homeland under the pretense of having them make some sort of super weapon to end the war.  Some war stuff happens, and Fayt seriously starts to question why both the Vendeeni and the organization Quark are so interested in him.  After hanging around with Nel for a while and finally getting back to the capital, the Vendeeni attack.

The reason everyone's interested in Fayt is revealed to the audience, although not to him.  The poor kid blacks out afterwards.  As it turns out, he's the result of his parents' experiments in genetic engineering.  Magic in this universe is cast by drawing specific patterns on things and saying specific words, which basically causes quantum particles to realign the local space into whatever effect the user desired.  To accomplish this, many who use magic, or symbology, have the symbols they need carved into themselves.  Some, like Fayt, actually have a specific sequence in their DNA that acts as the required symbol.  Fayt, under great duress, shoots a giant laser at one of the Vendeeni battleships and takes it out of orbit.  He blacks out, and his counterpart and leader of Quark, Maria, arrives to save the day.

Before continuing with the plot, I must say that Maria's a pretty epic badass.  However, I play the game for Cliff.  He's a tongue in cheek womanizer, fairly arrogant, and generally amazing.  Fayt's still a hippie.

At any rate, everyone finds out that an ancient relic of the planet is what the more advanced civilizations call an out of place artifact.  The heroes race against the Vendeeni to secure it, and, of course, succeed.  There's some stuff with Fayt's dad, but he dies, so we don't get much substantial out of it.

Shortly after this, some sort of super beings that are being called Executioners start destroying space outposts indiscriminately across the galaxy under the orders of a being called the Creator.  Based on a small tidbit from Fayt's father, the crew travels to Luna to find out more about his research.  As it turns out, Fayt, Maria, and Sophia, Fayt's girlfriend, were all children resulting from genetic experiments.  As it turns out, all of their parents were part of the project.  Fayt's father decided after talking to an AI on a planet called Styx that the galaxy would need to rebel against, or at least defend itself from, the Creator at some point.

Acting upon this information, the crew eventually arrives on Styx while the Executioners set up them up the bomb.  They manage to, with the help of the newly recovered Sophia, go through a "time" portal governed by the resident AI.  They step through to a new universe, though one that does not appear too much more advanced than their own.  At this point, everyone finds out that the universe in which we, the players, live, is part of a fairly popular online game.  The universe that created is a bit odd.  It is considered a high privilege to work, and society is basically controlled by a few organizations.

This is the point where many of the long term fans of this series started disliking the game.  For some reason, the universe being a game is seen as cheapening the actions of the previous heroes in the series.  I, however, think that a virtual reality is no less important than "actual" reality, but we're venturing dangerously near Plato's cave, so I'll wander away.

At any rate, the corporation that creating the game decided that the inhabitants coming into full sentience and developing free will is a bad thing.  I have no idea why.  As a programmer, I'd be ecstatic.  At any rate, the Executioners are revealed to be a clean up program.  The crew decides to try to put an end to this, and eventually meets with the group of developers who actually worked on the game.  Not wanting to see their creation ruined, they help our heroes by giving them an anti-anti-virus to rid the game universe of the executioners.  A side note here, but the gods worshiped by Nel's culture are actually the developers you meet here.

Some action to try to stop the deletion of reality takes place, culminating in a fight against the "real" universe's greatest programmer and owner of the game corporation.  You win, stop the deletion of the universe (but somehow the owner is deleted), and the characters go about their lives.  Yay!

The game ends differently depending on how much other characters cared about you, which can be affected by talking to them in towns in between major plot events.  Additionally, there are several characters that are optional in your party.  There are, in fact, four such characters, though you can only recruit two.  The game also continues after the ending.  If you're a big enough fan of the combat system, it's a fun diversion and yields many of the game's best items.

All this now out of the way, my final thoughts on the game are generally positive.  The plot is fairly fun, and not one I've run across in a videogame before.  The combat's fast and addicting, though the bosses can act as pretty steep difficulty cliffs.  If you've not yet played this, or any other game in the Star Ocean series, I highly recommend you do so.  This game was in fairly wide print for the PS2, so I don't imagine it would be terribly difficult to pick up a copy.  Also, if you're into setting fluff like I am, there's an in-game dictionary that defines the history and technology behind almost everything, which is a mildly interesting read.

Until the end of (next) time!

The Ratings: End of February, March, and into April

So I haven’t posted here in a while, and not to let Tyler dominate our sweet blog, I’ve decided to start writing as well!  Since I’ve sort of continued to give games number ratings at the spur of the moment near the end of each episode, I’ve decided to publish a revised list each month, with each game sliding around.  Ideally, this will work like Monopoly, I can only give a game a number rating if there are an equal number of games with each rating.  The exceptions will be 10/10 and 1/10, which are reserved for the best and worst game we’ve played during the Podcasts run.  Without further ado, here’s the list.

Castlevania 10/10

Castlevania maintains it’s spot at the top, for now anyway, just the right mix of challenge and theme.

Mega Man 9/10

Mega Man moves up, due mostly to having played a whole lot more games, and it’s still the perfect combination of action and jumping puzzles that makes for a near perfect NES game.

Gradius 8/10

The most recent game we’ve played, Gradius is considered a classic by man, and it’s easy to see why.  It has a very arcady look and feel, with all sorts of flashing lights, and it’s crazy hard, but once you start to build some skill in it, it’s a lot of fun.  Even though I still haven’t beaten level 3, each time I give it a try it’s an incredible amount of fun.  I certainly wouldn’t want every game to be like Gradius, but I absolutely love it, and I’m very eager to try Gradius III, Super R Type, and other games in the genre.

Metroid 7/10

Metroid is one of the great landmarks of the NES and really shows what a videogame could be, eschewing the traditional level sequence for a single large world to explore.  It’s not a sandbox in the same way we think of such games now, offering little to do but kill bosses and find items, but it has the same set up, if on a much smaller scale.  The lack of a map screen really hurts this game, making it worse then more traditional games that are executed with precision like Castlevania and Mega Man, but it’s still worth an in depth look by anyone interested in game history.

Super Mario Bros. 6/10

A classic, I’m really not sure what I should say about Super Mario Bros…. easily the most influential game on the NES, probably the most influential of the 1980s, maybe the most influential game ever.  I really like the idea of this being my 5/10 midpoint, of rating games purely on whether or not they’re more fun then Super Mario Bros.  Unfortunately, we’ve played way more games that aren’t as good as this than are better, and thus it sits at 6/10.

Final Fantasy 5/10

While I gave it a very favorable review in the episode we recorded on the game, my opinion of Final Fantasy has sort of fallen off since.  I tried to go back and finish it multiple times, and every time I failed.  I actively tried to avoid playing it when it was the assignment as well, and while the game’s systems are interesting and I really want to explore them more, the combat is just too slow.  It kills the game and makes it boring, and no matter how innovative a game is trying to be, the first thing it should be is fun.

Kirby’s Adventure 4/10

Speaking of games that just weren’t fun, for me at least, Kirby’s adventure takes a bit of a hit due to us playing better games, though it’s still a technical marvel as far as NES games are concerened.

Harvest Moon 4/10

While I kind of savaged it in our episode, Harvest Moon was a ton of fun for the first year or so of the game.  The real problem comes from the fact that I was trying to beat it, and the fun died off long before that point, I should have quit while I was ahead.  It was fun for that first chunk, and while 8 dollars will buy you a whole lot more entertainment elsewhere in this day and age, I’ve boosted its rating here to reflect that.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3/10

Flashy graphics and a “cool” in the 90s sense mascot don’t make up for the fact that this game simply isn’t any fun.  My opinion of it gets a little better every day I don’t play it, and there are so many good ideas in it, but it’s just so counter-intuitive.  I remember Sonic the Hedgehog 2 being much better, so perhaps the franchise will be redeemed in my eyes when we get around to that.

Double Dragon II The Revenge 2/10

The game is better than Double Dragon, but really all they added onto it was Co-Op.  That adds a whole lot to a game, but there are better games (Scott Pilgrim) that do the same (Scott Pilgrim) for about the same price (Scott Pilgrim) only better (Scott Pilgrim).  I recommend you pick up the Scott Pilgrim game on XBLA and the PSN Store instead.

ActRaiser 2/10

Act Raiser, while not a very fun game, tried a whole lot of new things, and that’s resulted in it getting put above at least one game this go around.

Double Dragon 1/10

And here’s the bottom of the barrel.  Poor graphics, reuses enemies constantly, shaky controls, terrible music, I really don’t get why this game is considered a classic, like at all.  And I hope I never have to play anything like this again.

Well, that’s the ratings for this month, with luck April will bring not just May flowers, but some sweet old videogames as well.  Got a suggestion for a game you’d like to see us play?  Leave a comment, or email us at LTOVG@Lasttimeonvideogames.com

Episode 8: What Exactly is a Gradius? [Gradius]

Disclamer
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First off, we apologize for the poor audio quality on this episode, especially on Tyler’s end.  We have a new audio setup, and he was turned down a bit further than he should have been, while Geremy was up a bit higher.  This should be fixed for the next episode.
 ***

Our zany adventures continue as we fight our way through hordes of wacky moai misfits and belligerent bionic battle suits in the arcade classic, Gradius!  This game has a record for being incredibly difficult, a testament to the adopted slogan "Nintendo Hard."  For the sake of this, we'll ignore that Gradius is on every system ever.  Listen in as we test out some new audio equipment and find out whether this game withstood the test of time.



Download all power to the forward lasers!


(2:00) What we’ve been playing and watching.

(5:30) We talk about Slender and discuss this video a bit.  NSFW (Language) www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvYrA9rCjy4

(7:00) The Assignment: Gradius

(10:00) Power-Up!

(18:00) Just how hard is Gradius?

(21:00) Gradius compared to Mario, and the transition from Arcade to Home Console.


Next week, we jump back forward to the Super Nintendo and take on some Japanese Culture with The Legend of the Mystical Ninja.  Probability of Naruto jokes 95%!  Don’t miss it!

There's no 'I' in 'Shinobwe'.  Find out why at

Geremy@lasttimeonvideogames.com,
 Tyler@lasttimeonvideogames.com,
 Zach@lasttimeonvideogames.com,
 or LTOVG@lasttimeonvideogames.com.
 You can also go to the show page at plus.google.com/+LastTimeOnVideogames or comment on the site at www.lasttimeonvideogames.com.
 Also, you can follow our tweets @LTOVG.

Last Rant on Videogames: Slightly More Modern than Orthodox Steampunk [Steambot Chronicles]

I swear, people, I will, one hallowed day, write an entry less than five pages.  It might even be this one.

Also, I've retroactively come up with a title for these little essays.  They're officially part of a series I'm now calling my Last Rant on Videogames.  It's a play on the show's title.  It's a little obtuse, I know, but I'm told I have a knack for coming up with obtuse sayings.

One convenient segue later, you might recall in my last Last Rant that I espoused, not too briefly, the virtues of a game publisher that goes by the monicker of Atlus.  If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go read about the first five paragraphs, or hit up the Wikipedia page.  I also briefly alluded to a game they published that fell short of the image I have of them.  I guess they can't all be winners.

The game to which I refer, which might be more obvious if you followed that last link, is Steambot Chronicles.  I'm going to spend a little bit here talking this game up; I only do so that I might tear it down when I've finished, so don't go getting your hopes up.  If you want to cut to the chase, you can skip to the summary of all this.   Steambot Chronicles is an action adventure style RPG, in a similar style, at least in navigation, to the Zelda games for the N64, except it's on the PS2.  In fact, it looks pretty nice.  If you're interested now, there's more.  The setting for this game is in a post steampunky universe similar to 1920s U.S.A. except the immediate improvement upon cars was to put them on modular locomotion systems, ranging from traditional wheels, to treads, and bipedal leg systems.  Additionally, the main chassis for each model was eventually designed to have slots for various appendages.  Essentially, you have a modifiable vehicular monstrosity, similar to a Mr. Transformer Head.  I wish that was a thing.

So far, this game sounds pretty cool, right?  It gets better.  Not only do you get to assemble your machine, you get to fight other similarly constructed machines in actual combat wherein you have complete control over the movements of your mechanized death dealer.  There is, in fact, an arena should you wish to pit your skills against opponents more threatening than highway bandits.  Had I mentioned the bandits?  Apparently, because the vehicles are so prevalent and parts are everywhere, lots of organized gangs have sprung up and use the Trotmobiles, as these modified motorized carriages are called, to enforce their will wherever the police do not have the forces to combat them.  Needless to say, part of the plot involves fighting them.

Or joining them.  As if customizable Trotmobile shenanigans weren't enough, this is also an open RPG where your decisions influence the course of events and you can choose to impose your will upon the weak.  In addition to all of this, this is also a dating sim of sorts.  A dating sim whose potential prospects are members of your band.  Did I mention that you're in a band?  You can choose to play basically any instrument you can lay your grubby Trotter mitts on, which is actually a wide variety of instruments.  If you're feeling short on cash, you can even set up a stage arm on your ride and give an impromptu concert from the side of the streets.  Also, there are a number of fairly large and mildly diverse cities to explore, countryside to see between them, which may be skipped by means of a train if you're bored of traversing the pastures, and a substantial number of side quests to engage in, such as trying to build a flying Trotmobile.  Also, you can buy and sell real estate (which you may also live in and acquire all sorts of goods for), and there's ostensibly a cooking minigame or something that I never found.  Additionally, for those of you who enjoy this kind of silliness, every main character in the game is named after some sort of spice or seasoning.  For the record, you play as a kid named Vanilla.   All of this, also framed by young Vanilla suffering from mysterious past syndrome for some potentially juicy plot hooks.

To quickly summarize this before moving on, Steambot Chronicles is an open world action RPG about being in a band, finding love, and fighting giant car robots.  Simply amazing.

Unfortunately, burdened by such a wonderful premise, this game was doomed to disappoint from inception.  Let's start tearing the gilded facade down, shall we?

First, this game suffers from a lot of lazy writing.  Things just happen to the character by chance, which while believable, gets old after the tenth time device is presented.  You, through Vanilla, never actively cause events, and simply drift like some sort of new age vagabond upon your metallic steed, sometimes aimlessly because the game refuses to tell you where to go to drive the plot forward.  The entirety of Vanilla's mystery background, which is resolved in a somewhat satisfactory manner, is caused by amnesia, rather than having some important character traits prevent Vanilla from disclosing his past in large doses.  I assume this is primarily to keep Vanilla as a blank slate so that the player might more easily assume the protagonist's role, but it's a pretty tired plot device.  Additionally, you're allowed to make a number of choices throughout the game, but it seems very few of them actually influence the world in any manner, despite the game's assertions to the contrary.  Admittedly, the game tells you some decisions do not matter, but this appears to apply to the vast majority of them.  The plot itself is pretty formulaic, and the big bad behind everything is either a huge plot twist, or so obvious you called it when you met him depending on your exposure to this sort of thing.  It seems that there are a few plot events which must always happen and that the only real thing your decisions influence is which side of the conflict you're on.  I don't mind this as much, as branched story telling is certainly no easy task, but it's played up as a big part of the game and never really bears fruit, at least not any so shriveled and sour that I don't even want to make a pie of them.

Well, if the story isn't so great, how about the interpersonal relationships?  Well, I'm sorry to say that there's not a whole lot going on there.  There are two, possibly three, girls you may court.  One is substantially older than you, and the other is your age, obviously infatuated, has an ailing mother and could use some help caring for her, and saved your life when you washed up in a shipwreck while she was picking flowers.  The plot seems to be nudging you in a certain direction, but I can't quite tell which.  Honestly, the advances of the older girl are a little creepy, considering how much older she acts than the rest of the band.  At any rate, wooing your chosen partner is more tedious than fulfilling, as it does not serve to further develop their characters.  Most of their respective personality traits and past events that inform the people they are come to you by following the main plot and a bit of city exploration rather than actually interacting with them.  As for the other members of the band, they're pretty useless, and don't develop much past the first couple hours of the game.  Alongside the promise of an open and malleable world, this flaunted aspect of the game falls quite short.

Being in the band doesn't offer much in the way of gratification either, though it is a pretty interesting mechanic.  There are only a small handful of songs.  My rather shadowy memory informs me that it's five, but they're all pretty similar and share a huge flaw; they're directly translated from Japanese.  While I don't normally have a problem with this, the composition was changed to help the flow, the backup vocals are pretty awful (played by the older love interest, Sage, methinks), and the lyrics range from nonsensical to mediocre.

How playing a song works, provided you're actually performing a concert, is fairly interesting.  First, you choose a song from the list your band has worked on.  This means you'll be hearing the first few of them A LOT.  Everyone in the band performs a couple of instruments, and will be automatically assigned one for the song.  If you wish to play one and their backup instrument is being played by another member, you may do so.  There are quite a few instruments to play, and they all handle at least somewhat differently.  What we're left with is basically a series of timing minigames while you listen to the voice actors wail away.  My personal favorite for comedic value is the accordion, which involves moving the two analog sticks left and right as if you were squeezing the box.  While not particularly poorly implemented, the monotonous musical menageries your must master may make you mildly miffed as you struggle to play to the best of your ability and find that some instruments do not reward your effort at all.  Also, I believe I mentioned you have to listen to the same poorly executed songs again and AGAIN and...  You may be seeing my point about this.

At least there's still robot battles.  Everyone loves a good robot battle.  Sadly, these are either impossible, or incredibly boring.  There's not much middle ground.  Controlling the robot, while a little tricky, is actually a neat concept.  The left analog stick controls the movements of the left half of your chosen locomotion system, while the right stick performs its appropriate complementary action.  This can be confusing for a while, but I found that I accustomed quickly.  The left and right triggers activate your left and right weapons.  You can perform a quick rush by pushing in the analog sticks, block with one back shoulder button, and lift things with the other.  There's a variety of tactics available, which seems like it would be a good thing.

Sadly, there is an optimal strategy for most situations.  It usually boils down to "strafe and then hit with something" or, for arena matches and duels, "pick up, lob, and hit with something."  The machines don't move quite quickly enough to perform more dextrous maneuvers, and most enemies either run away from you to bombard you from a range or immediately attempt to close with you.  The variation on the weapons is limited as well; you're stuck with melee weapons that all act extremely similarly, or ranged weapons that are nearly identical that differ only by their damage to monetary cost ratio.  Combat quickly degrades to the same boring fight repeated with slight differences in enemy appearances.  The exception to this is bosses.  I was considering a new paragraph for this, but it can be condensed to jumping upon the behemoth, which the boss always is, and hitting it until you're knocked off.  Repeat ad nauseam.  Possibly literally if you're easily sickened by motion.

I mentioned a variety of side quests, but the game didn't really hold my interest enough for me to want to finish most of them.  They largely involve carrying things between two points, usually using a specially designed body attachment for your trusty Trotter.  Sometimes it's carrying a fossil to the museum, sometimes it's delivering carpet, occasionally you can sell water to people.  I neglected to mention that the game also claimed you could become a merchant king by buying and selling goods between towns.  Apparently what they meant by that is giving water to people in the desert.  Fun times.  Travel through towns is mostly automated while you're on your vehicle, as you swim through traffic with light systems.  That's right, you wait at traffic lights.  Enthralling.  Sadly, if your destination is pretty far away, this is the fastest way to travel.  No GTA style irreverence for traffic laws.  You are obligated to follow the guy in front of you until he turns; you actually have no control of your movement while doing this.  You just pick a spot and wait.  Go make a sandwich.  Read a couple pages from a book.  Maybe listen to a podcast.  You can get a bicycle, mitigating this problem somewhat, but the town's are pretty large and you'll find yourself wandering across them quite a bit.  I feel this game would have benefited substantially from a quick travel system of the point and teleport nature, but that might have detracted from the feel of the world a bit.

One thing this game does well is setting.  While many of the buildings are useless and generally visually indistinct, the entirety of the game really does feel like a setting I want to be in.  I can't help but wonder whether a videogame with tighter focus or possibly a tabletop game could take this setting and make something more engaging out of it.

Speaking of tighter focus, that brings me to my overall criticism with this game.  Like ActRaiser, and quite a few other games, this particular attempt at entertainment tries too much and succeeds at none of it.  That said, despite what, for me, was a rather scathing review of this thing, it does not fail spectacularly.  This whole thing lands squarely in the realm of mediocre.  I feel that another year or two in development or a few more months in preproduction narrowing scope could have made this game truly great, but all we received was lost potential.  I really would like to see a sequel to this game that improved upon the lessons taught by it, but I don't think it will ever come from the software studio that made it.

That studio, by the way, is Irem, the company behind R-Type and a few other things.  Apparently they were making a sequel before the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that hit Japan a while back.  Wikipedia tells me that they're no longer in the videogame business and are currently focusing on their first love: gambling machines.  Looking at their list of endeavors, I'm sad that a company so multifaceted as this is no longer producing, but I suppose future mediocrity in overly ambitious endeavors is a pitfall they will have avoided.

My conclusion is that if you think this game sounded awesome before I laid waste to the glittering appearances it presented, you might want to pick it up.  I found it at a used games store for $15, so I don't think it would be too hard to track down a copy if you're really interested.  For me, it was roughly a week's worth of evenings spent trying to find something more in a game that had already offered me everything it had to give.

Now, where's my Gundam action adventure RPG?