I don't know where to begin with this game. The developers were actually a collaboration of several development houses which includes the creator of Harvest Moon as well as Chulip and probably a lot of others I'm forgetting. My general understanding is that this game is in essence the Chrono Trigger of quirky Japanese games that don't get brought over half the time.

It's not entirely fair to call it a Pikmin clone since it involves basically no micromanagement, it just happens to use Pikmin's combat system and marries it with Zelda. The controls are terrible since the developers were too afraid to use the wii pointer in a place where it makes sense. The beginning of the game is basically hell because of this and other poor control choices, such as being unable to just pick units from a menu until you're 7 hours into the game.

I could go on about the bad controls but I've already dedicated too much time to them. They don't matter that much. The game has a meticulous sense of balance in that the beginning of the game will hook you with stomping over minibosses to expand your kingdom which has echoes of Actraiser (with even less village interaction), to the end game that has you tromping over the wilderness between ridiculous boss battles that range from Pikmin Pinball to geography quizes while delivering boss personalities that are as strong as No More Heroes, in a sense.

The world never has any load times which makes it an absolute delight to explore. The arrangements of classical music are spectacular. Fan art is the best collectible ever in a video game because you never know whether you're going to get an elaborate well drawn piece or a 5 year old's doodle (usually the latter) so you genuinely look forward to finding them. The game is never afraid to kick your ass but despite that it's still pretty relaxing to play.

The general mix of seeing British imperialism led by an 8 year old under an innocent veneer but dark undertones is kind of too awesome to stop playing (That XSeed sticks with alcohol references and 7 wife polygamy to get a T rating in a kiddy looking game is pretty awesome of them). The ending is also spectacular and I'm rather sad that across the entire Internet I only know one other person playing this so it would be cool if the people bitching about no wii games existing would play one. It's basically this the entire time:

HYDRATION 2: OASIS

A GAME BY SDHAWK & GIZMOG1
ORIGINAL GAME BY HACHI-ROKU

COMING SUMMER 2009

http://maekgaems.blogspot.com/2009/03/ikadb-is-done-read-all-about-what-it-is.html

In short, ikaDB generates GUIs for your game's data based on your code. Thoughts on the interface and whether it raises your interest in ika would be welcome.

Picked up Super Paper Mario up on a whim. I was expecting something terrible based on a few people's reactions and what I got was a delicious sandwich that kicks you in the balls every few hours under the guise of a joke that is only funny to the developers.

I just... I just can't grasp what the hell their intentions were with making you hold your d-pad for 5 minutes, a 20-step block hitting pattern preceded by painful console text input, and making you fetch quest items twice that can be avoided with foreknowledge the game doesn't give you. It's really bothering me because I can't tell what their thought process was behind any of this. Beyond "we hate our players", anyway.

What really gets me is that about 80% of the wastes of time can be completley bypassed by reading a guide since the solutions are static and the game makes no attempt to check to see if you did the dumb crap to get the solution. Were they trying to sell guides? I'm actually tempted to buy one to see how the guide handles these areas.

Actually most of the puzzles in the game aren't very well designed, the entire 2d/3d swapping mechanic can be summed up as: Don't know what to do in a room? Press magic puzzle solving button. There's almost never a visual (or otherwise) cue to deduce anything so it just ends up stupid. They also layer on the magic puzzle solving button with the magical puzzle solving pointer. Even at the end of the game I was getting stuck in areas because I consistently forgot the magical puzzle solving button even existed.

I could go on for hours about all the flaws in this game but at the end of the day I enjoyed the hell out of it and it kept me hooked for several days. I don't think I could seriously recommend it to anyone but in some ways that makes it more special in that "this game is awful half the time but I'm enjoying it anyway" sense.

Everything in this screenshot is functional and can be loaded in an ika game.
(The ordering is bugged, though)
((Why didn't you fix that before taking the screenshot? Who knows.))

For XNA / Xbox 360. Dwarven Forge Games: Sew/Krypt/Jazz Man/Hawk

Sunday.

The final Sew/Hawk OHRRPGCE game, featuring Hachi-Roku.

Multiple Projects
After spending a year trying to work on nothing but Contrivia, I've had to switch to another project temporarily. It's remarkable. After a few weeks break and a new project I literally can't stop working on this game. I'm starting to think the one game at a time rule doesn't hold up so well on long-term projects, but is ideal earlier in your game making career when making smaller games.

Blue Dragon
-This is pretty much the perfect version of the traditional console RPG battle system. Specifically,

-The usage of elemental weaknesses: It's not halfassed like most usages of it. Things like an enemy that deals massive damage but if you cast a wind spell, their weapon is blown away vastly reducing their attack power. Another enemy required constant spamming of different elemental attacks to prevent its devestating turn from occuring (it'd wasted a turn repairing itself otherwise). In other cases, flying enemies won't get hit by your attack-all ground attack so you have to choose between what you want to hit or deal less damage- take out the melee tank or deal with the annoying spell casters first? It can be a life or death choice. In a random encounter.

-The usage of timing spells / turn delay: Every spell has a casting delay before it's cast. You can specify this delay by holding a button in a charge-up bar, the longer it's charged the more powerful it will be (Sometimes in raw damage but also in area of effect) and how many turns will pass before it's cast. The result is crucial timing in combat that requires critical thinking or developing a strategy. For instance, one boss requires you to cast a spell on it so its head falls on the ground to let the melee party memebers attack, timing the spell before the melee's turn is required.

-The encounter system: You can effectivley engage in multiple random encounters at once, gaining more exp the more you do in a row. It also applies to having groups of enemies who hate each other merging into one encounter- often a requisite strategy to survive. In one case you have to engage an incredibly hard hitting enemy who distracts himself with other enemies who have high defense- an optimal strategy is to heal the enemy the difficult one is hitting and putting your monk in the back row so he doesn't counter the enemy that's distracting the harder enemy.

-The bosses: Pretty much every single boss battle is a different puzzle that cleverly utilizes the battle engine, accompanied by the best boss music ever.

-The story and characters are utter garbage, at least within the first 10 hours of the game (but honestly when the only thing the main character has said in those 10hrs is some variation of "I WON'T GIVE UP", there's little doubt that it's going nowhere).

-It's pretty much required to download the hard mode patch- the battle system is largely worthless when not having to utilize it to survive. Sort of lame that you have to download something to make a game worthwhile, but it's better than it being broken for eternity without being capable of getting fixed. Also, $5 for a NES game looks a lot more reasonable in a world that charges $4 for a random dungeon generator.

I tried to make a bullet point list to shorten it since no one ever reads it when I use paragraphs, but I have apparently failed at this.

Dead Rising
The concept of surviving for 3 days in a zombie infested mall with zombies that are slowly getting stronger and time progressing regardless of what you do is just about the best idea ever and it pretty much lives up to it.

Mostly, it takes a long time to understand how the game wants you to play it. After about 3 deaths losing an hour of progress you finally realize that you're not supposed to be able to save people all the time, sometimes you're just plain screwed and need to run for your own life. It's a hard system to not get frustrated with given the lack of saves, pressing time limits, and seemingly absurd jumps in difficulty but once you understand that you're supposed to think in terms of survival instead of accomplishing goals in a video game, you begin to appreciate it. How it turns out in the end remains to be seen, I've only played it a bit so far- but I like what I see. It's hard not to when you're looking at the spiritual successor to Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. (One that's far more effective in regards to replay, which is what DQ really failed at.)

Aiming with the analog stick after using the wiimote feels like having your arm ripped off, especially when the game rewards whipping out your camera to capture split second movements while you're still trying to center the camera on the target. Say what you will about how the wiimote has been utilized so far, but I'm not so sure any console with games involving aiming should ever be allowed to be without pointing functionality from this point forward. Too bad the wii port is utterly gimped, removing massive zombies, picture taking, and the time system which was half the point to begin with.

360
-It has a strange sense of just plain feeling like you're running a PC with a gamepad hooked up to it. Maybe it's because of my horrible bias towards it and because it pretty much is exactly that, but I can't shake the feeling. It sort of dampens the appeal of seeing your game run on a console.

The game pretty much ends on an off note that feels like you just beat an intro to an awesome game (and you pretty much did). Game's still awesome overall and I'm not opposed to the episodic nature or even the cost per hour (by the time it hits $50, it'll be a 15hr game which is very much acceptable), but I do wish it wrapped up in a more satisfying fashion than simply going "Great! You beat the intro! Now buy the next one!". But I guess that's just the nature of episodic.

I was going to make the argument that Portal made the same amount of time feel completley satisfying, but that's due to its complete narrative and relative exhaustion of its mechanics. Lost Wind's narrative is forgettable and its mechanics are nowhere near exhausted at the end (heck, you can actually do things the game never needs done yet, like igniting a rock into an explosive ball of flames if you align it with fire and make a void over the two). Still, overall awesome if for no other reason than to use the freaking wiimote for something that doesn't feel tacked on.

It's a little bit sad that two years after launch a small developer making a $10 downloadable game is the first freaking company to make a bloody wii game that both feels like a real game while also using the wiimote to its advantages beyond using it as salad dressing to "feel" better, but that's pretty much what Lost Winds is.

The basic concept is that you move a character around with the analog stick, but the real control comes into play by waving the wiimote around to blow the character and other objects around the level. It sounds somewhat awkward but it works beautifully in action, particularly as they begin to introduce more and more elements. It just feels good to blow around rocks, fire, water, enemies, and other objects. Every extra ability you gain as you progress. People described it as Metroid in level design, but it's much more Zelda since the progression seems to be very linear so far. Maybe it branches out later.

I don't really feel it has exhausted anywhere near its potential in puzzles, but even just introducing the elements is pretty good because it's strikingly fun to just blow around rocks for the heck of it. I'm a little bit worried in that regard since everywhere says the game is 3 hours for total completion but apparently I'm incredibly slow since I'm 2 hours in and roughly only halfway through the main quest and nowhere near the collect quest. This worry is deepened by the fact that they announced a sequel the day the freaking thing came out which is basically like screaming at the top of your lungs that you held back levels back to do episodic content.

Even so, as long as it cashes in on its mechanics before the end it's well worth the $10 to play a freaking wii game that goes beyond mapping shakes to buttons or using the pointer as a mouse. If anything the short length is a relief compared to 50 hour epics I never finish, so long as it ends up satisfying by the end. Segmenting content into sequels is also much preferred to Squenix's extortion of holding back half the content to raise a $15 game to $31 for the rest of the game. I still really want My Life as a King, but not that badly.

The World Ends With You: The Square side of Enix hasn't been much to inspire confidence in playing a good game for years, particularly not when combined with the words "Kingdom Hearts team", but this is actually one of the best RPGs in recent years and would probably fit into a Top X list of all time if I was into making them.

Beyond the incredibly fresh story that fits in perfectly with the game mechanics, the most notable thing is probably just how flexible it is in how you want to play it. Most RPGs you're lucky to pick a difficulty setting that you can only change at the start of the game. That's not the case here. Not only can you change the difficulty between at least 3 different settings at any time, but you can actually set your level all the way down to 1 to make it even harder or easier. The fact that the battle system makes you fight two different interconnected battles at once and the pins you select radically alter how you play it pretty much makes it never wear out. To make the difficulty even more customizable, you can also chain battles together in a row for more difficulty. To wrap it all up, the harder you make it the better the rewards the game gives you.

Besides that, you pretty much never have to fight a battle if you don't want to. There are no random encounters, or even on-touch encounters. Just about the only way to fight is to intentionally look for one by scanning an area or have a plot-related battle. What this all comes down to is you can play the game however you feel like at the time, you can easily spend most of your day doing battles and managing your inventory or you can spend all of it advancing the plot. Whichever you feel like at the time. It's awesome, there's no such thing as getting sick of one part being crammed down your throat constantly and both parts are excellent on their own. In a nutshell, you make your own pacing.

The only downside is the stupid pin evoloution system. Put simply, for some weapons to evolve you have to not play the game and also have it sit on local wifi looking for other DSes (or random chances). The game never tells you how much each pin needs so it's a complete guessing game of how long you need to not play your game to not screw yourself out of better pins. The bonus exp for not playing the game is a fun idea, but making it required to progress things is just stupid and not telling the players how much (if you get too much battle experience, they become impossible to evolve. sometimes they have a specific level of when they evolve so you might even get enough not-playing exp and still screw yourself over) just makes it necessary for a guide if you want to get everything. As amusing as the idea of making powergamers not play a game to get the best everything, it's still annoying even for more casual players to get the most out of their deck.

Steambot Chronicles: I've only played this for a few hours, but for a moment it was incredible. Since basically everywhere billed the game as semi nonlinear, while playing through the intro as a nice guy I figured I was actually directly influencing the game since it was constantly asking for my input and the cutscenes were so poorly animated it was entirely believable that it was that fleixible. Plus, it gave such indescript directions to the next area it was easy to believe you didn't have to actually go there. When someone goes "well, I'm going to my concert" with absolutley no personal invitation it's easy to believe that you could completley ignore seeing them perform and go do something else- or go ahead and check it out since it's there. Or when one of the dialogue options is to give a party member to a bandit. The frequent choices combined with the nonlinear billing makes it entirely believable that, yeah, you can do that if you wanted to.

Turns out it was entirely scripted. But for a moment, I relived that brief period of innocence of having no idea how games worked. Technically, it did exactly as I wanted to do, but the fact that the opposite wasn't actually possible deflates the entire experience in retrospect since I didn't really make those choices. Alas, "but thou must!"

I took a moment to reflect upon some of the more unique experiences I've had with online gaming. By which I mean, something that felt wholely unique to the genre (I use that word loosely), which was wholely outside of the typical online game experience- rather than specifically how good a game was or what have you.

Wulfram2: Vastly differing skill levels between players introduced through the internet's mishmash of matchups isn't anything new. Nintendo (and others technically, but no one uses automated matchmaking if they don't have to) has tried to alleviate it through automated matchmaking based on player ranks, which has in fact ended up completley worthless because skilled players play games a whole lot more than the less skilled, making the probability of two weaker players being on at the same time in a relativley unpopular game extremely unlikely.

Wulfram's former approach to it (though it's really more its approach to a tutorial, really) was to segregate players on different servers based on their skill level. When a player began to thoroughly dominate other players on the server and an admin would notice it, they'd be graduated to the next server until they hit the open server where everyone plays at. There were roughly 4 servers total.

The experience of getting thrown with players of similar skill consistently and then slowly overcoming them, only to move on to the next server to be met with more challenge was quite a treat even though the game itself wasn't extrodinary. Once I made it to the regular server and proceeded to be average to terrible at the game the experience went downhill and I quit after a few hours, but it was a heck of a weekend progressing through the ranks.

Dofus Arena: The original Dofus had a relativley simple concept of taking a normal MMO and then replacing its battle system with that of a tactical RPG. Initially fascinating, its fatal flaw was only giving control of one character to each player in a genre that's largely about managing groups of units. Though it made for some interesting strategy developments amongst friends, the speed and single characters made it collapse upon itself after awhile.

Dofus Arena basically takes the original game's battle system and puts it to proper use. Stripping it completley of the MMO trappings outside of battle, players built teams using limited funds (static funds I might add- there was no way to upgrade anything with experience, it was all about your strategy of building a team and using them properly) and then faced off a random opponent (based on ranked skill levels and who's availible). The end result is vastly more playable and one of the only instances of a multiplayer tactical RPG that actually worked since it wasn't dependent on each player's position in a story mode or somesuch.

But the special part of the game was in the team mode- together with a friend you could build your own individual teams and then combine together against two other random people. To put simply this is pretty much the Best Of internet multiplayer in all history. You got the comradrey of a friend who you already know combined with the rivalry of other opponents who are also human. Even if your opponent is an idiot and talks in internet blather it doesn't matter, you and your buddy can disparge them in private chat while you trounce them. Combined with the pre-game discussion amongst one another about the best possible teams to form and strategies to use made this an incredible experience.

It didn't stop there, though. Since the game was rleativley new it was actually possible to climb the ladders. Ontop of the already amazing stuff listed above, we got to climb up the ranks and made it to position #15-20 or so. Most of the time was spent trouncing players weaker than us, but when we actually met another top ranker the matches were absurdly interesting battle of combined wits. Putting up a good fight against the top ranked team in a game is quite the thrill. The fact it was combined with the rest of the aforementioned aspects made it even better and is easily one of my most memorable gaming experiences, online or not.

Mytharria: In the earlier days of MMOs, one of the biggest selling points was effectivley living a second life through your character in the game. Since the worlds would be popualted with other, real people it became a far more probable proposition to actually see a believable experience as such. As such, the propositon of just living a virtual life as a craftsman and such became just as appealing a proposition as slaying monsters day in, day out. Spending your time in a game chopping trees, going to your home, building furniture, then walking to town to sell it was in many ways the idealized way to try to play these games to many players. Real economies, housing, crafting, and so forth were rather touted (or purported, anyway) features for many MMORPGs at the time. Most of these didn't really work out with economies being difficult to pull off with NPCs providing nearly everything, crafting in of itself being dead boring repetitive clicking with little thought, and playerbases more concerned with phat lewt than buying some guy's furniture.

Moderns MMORPGs are a bit more honest. Crafting has become a sidejob of the major classes which all involve killing things. The driving call towards players is to have fun with your friends by slaying dragons together, rather than living a virtual life. Popular games have their entire item database availible online for easy look up for what's relevant to you at the time, with tips from other palyers and complete guides for how to do anything. So on and so forth.

The general scorn towards roleplaying in mmorpgs is amusing in some ways. Certainly, most commercial mmos have seperate servers for roleplaying but they're in the minority, are mocked by the larger playerbase and people outside of it, and really how much fun can the players themselves have fun with it anyway since all of their actions are completley irrelevant in a completley scripted and static world anyway. It's still rather ironic given the heritage namesake of RPG that the games call from. Besides that, it's hard to deny the jarring clash between "h4y D00DS CAN U TELEPORT ME 2 DNGION o hay did u see last nites episod uv lust?????////" and the static NPCs taking themselves completley seriously. It's essentially like trying to watch a movie with some jerk who keeps commenting on it and taking you out of it, except it's built-in here. Odds are you won't try to anyway since it's all unengaging tripe anyway so the entire immersion aspect is thrown out of the window and it becomes more of a chat program with dragon slaying benefits.

Technically not a game in of itself, Mytharria was a private Ultima Online server. But it had enough to distinguish itself from its parent that it might as well have been its own game. Most of what it did wasn't all that unique (at least I don't think it was. It's possible it was the first of its class but I wasn't really paying attention to tell), and UO servers today still use its same general ideas but continually fail to capture the magic for a variety of reasons including had-to-be-there and nostalgia. The main aspect was that roleplaying was enforced. So much so that players had to write a short biography of their characters before they were even allowed to log in.

But the changes didn't really stop there. They completley removed every NPC outside of the bank. If you needed anything, literally ANYTHING, you had to either get it yourself or make bargains with other players. In addition to that, gold was made extremely scarce to simplify the economy and make it precious. The game used a custom map that segragrated all new players on a single island and town and took some time to get off of, so most of the extremely small player community (maybe 100 players total) was isolate together. To further prod player interaction, it was virtually impossible to see in the dark so it became a necessity to congregate with other players at night.

After describing all that it's hard to say what made the game such an experience. Mostly the constant and necessary player interaction, I suppose. The fact that most of it was relevant to the game at the same time made them feel rather linked rather than seperate. Certainly there was still very little player-effect on the world. GMs rarely held events and the like but they tended towards the underwhelming and baffling to lower level characters. But it really didn't matter since the world consisted entirely of terrain, monsters, and other players so any relevant world bits were your own dealings with other people anyway. Backstory wasn't imposed anywhere, so the only story came from you and other people.

To describe a few events from time playing it: Meeting a tailor, requesting clothing, being sent to go kill the materials and return it to the tailor and then getting your armor, all of which from another, actual person puts the whole thing in so much more interesting context. Plus the fact the tailor might leave the town or game at any moment so you're in a bit of a rush. Sitting around the town's campfire, talking to other players about stuff around the world is far more interesting than any preformatted NPC tip dialogue or hint guide. Noticing bits of two other people's conversation of apparently already relevant story occuring between them, seeing another person you've met earlier stepping into it at random and then pulling him out of it before trouble starts is way more engaging than any random NPC-to-NPC conversation and since they're actual people THEY'LL REACT TO ANY CREATIVE WAY YOU RESPOND TO IT. Sitting outside with some friends when some guy tries to impersonate someone else and then chasing him with the other people. Wandering alone hunting in the forest when some random person encounters you and begins to follow you around, eventually developing into a minor friendship and helping them out with things.

I'm somewhat struggling for specific examples here since this was like 5 years ago, but much sticks out about the whole thing in terms of general feelings. It was quite the experience, one of which has yet to be recreated (to me) in much of any form, even by the original developer's attempts to revive the server. The simple feeling of player and game interactions linked into meaningful scenarios is quite the sight and shows the actual potential of these games. But since it all relies on actual effort on the players to interact with each other, roleplaying being for faggots, and designing the game around it I doubt it will ever be recreated in any mainstream form with any success. But it can be a treat for those who dig.

Incidentally, yes player interactions still happen within normal mmos. But they're largely focused entirely on the game or general conversation about things outside of the game, whether it's the statistical formation a guild should have to take a dungeon, drama about time limitations or someone playing stupidly, requests for things, or the latest TV show, etc. It fails to hit the sweet point of being human storytelling and also game related (in the human sense) simultaniously.

Finally, none of these experiences are probably genuinely unique. I know a couple of the Halos and some other xbox game involves matchmaking that throws your group with other people collectivley (though the only reason I have any idea of this is because of penny arcade constantly talking about it). Roleplaying crap being designed to force players together isn't unique in the slightest, dating back to MUDs and probably BBSes. I haven't heard that much of skill-based servers but I'm sure it exists in some form or another elsewhere (though generally more optional). This is simply a list of unique online game elements that particularly struck me in terms of having fond memories, looking back.

Download

I didn't like the idea of releasing nothing in 2007 so I drug this out of the cellar (I started it ten months ago) and finished it up in a couple days.

How are the Devil May Cry 3 fans (and presumably similar games) and the people complaining about the wiimote making them tired the same people? These are incompatible stances! It's one or the other.

I have a wii now. (Smash Bros online, you see, and not wanting to repeat the hell of getting a console post-Christmas like my PSTwo. I wish Mario Galaxy was out. It feels wrong having a new Nintendo console with no Mario out of the box.)

My code is 4831-0131-8516-7028

Send me terrible things.

So Zelda DS (Or Phantom Hourglass). It's basically the best Zelda in regards to dungeons/items ever. The touch screen really makes the game, almost every item is made several times better by it (there actually isn't a single original to the series item in the game but almost all of them work differently and generally far better). The first item alone of drawing the boomerang's path is amazing and it only gets better from there. About my only complaint in regards in the dungeons in general is that the next to last item isn't used enough for how awesome and multi-purpose it is, but they DO manage to actually keep using every item you get throughout multiple dungeons which is great considering how many recent Zeldas stick to using one or two items occasionally while everything else is only used in the dungeon you get it in. Mind you, it's still guilty of knowing exactly what item you're going to end up using on the boss, but it still nails item variety far better elsewhere.

The game actually had me stumped briefly on a few puzzles, which is tremendously rare in a newer Zelda game. It felt good actually figuring things out now and then, though it never gets so hard to figure out that you sit there for hours. With this and Etrian Odyssey making use of the touch screen for map drawing (Though in different ways- Etrian Odyssey uses it for terrain layout, while Phantom Hourglass uses it for general notes) it's interesting to see the types of puzzles that require writing notes making a comeback now that it's not tremendously annoying to write them down. It really makes the elements not only come back, but also simply be far more enjoyable since they don't require you to work outside of the game anymore. It's also tremendously depressing that PCs have had keyboards and mice for this sort of thing and not a single PC game has used these ideas to date (At least, that I know of). It just sort of underlines how little thought most developers put into working with input devices (though perhaps the entire Wii catalogue does an even better job underlining this).

The new controls do have slight weaknesses when it comes to combat since dodging is now nearly completley irrelevant and it's largely up to swift use of items or timing attacks, but the developers know that and design around it with a larger focus on puzzles while keeping battles as a quick diversion between them that isn't so often to get stale since it's both infrequent and quick.

But the real weakness in the game stems from its complete dropping the ball in regards to exploration, which is doubley unfortunate given that it's a direct sequel to Wind Waker which basically nailed Zelda exploration like no other Zelda since the original. The sailing is constrained to tiny areas, the hidden islands are blatlantly obvious and almost all can be found on your way to plot-specific areas (they even point it out to you and put it on your map whenever you see one), and the on-rails combat on sea is extremely sparse with enemy spawns which makes the whole thing incredibly boring since there's not much to look at. Perhaps what really makes it fail so badly is the fact that every optional island is both tiny and consists of a few extra areas with a minigame. There isn't a single optional island in the game that's at all interesting to explore, they're all minigames or drop-off points. It's basically an insult to Wind Waker, even more so than Twilight Princess's excessive warp points. If they had managed to combine the dungeon/item design with Wind Waker's exploration this would easily be the best Zelda of all time. As is, I now have two favorite Zeldas.

But everything else is bloody awesome. The timed dungeons with invincible guards and safe points are particularly good alongside the excellent stylus usage. There's never not enough time where I ran out, but there was always just barely enough left to make me not screw around with them and keep a feeling of tension in the air. It really works quite well alongside the shorter but more traditional dungeons. And it also makes me wonder just how rushed Wind Waker was with its blatlantly missing dungeons and pathetically stripped down final dungeon, among other things. Did it also, in fact, actually have a plan for GOOD stealth dungeons but they ended up shoving out a prototype of them, or did it just take them awhile to figure out how to properly implement stealth in a Zelda game? Either way, it's pretty great.

Don't let the stylus movement hold you back from getting the game. There's actually an NPC towards the end of the game bemoaning the lack of d-pad control, which is basically the perfect timing for it since you're nearly through the game and it just now hits you: oh wow, I completley forgot that I was complaining about stylus controls when they announced it. The only time the controls really get in the way is for online multiplayer where timing of picking something up is critical and Link doesn't always respond as snappy as he should or your hand is blocking part of the screen when you're trying to look for guards- but in the single player it's completley unnoticable since nothing demands it.

Honestly, I'm amazed they pulled it off. The only really bad thing about the controls outside of multiplayer issues is that third parties are going to try copying it and screw up otherwise good games horribly because of how delicate a thread the system hangs on, right when they were starting to stop abusing the touch screen in stupid ways. Alas.

I'm not entirely sure what the proper name for the things are, I'll just refer to them as interactive cutscenes for the time being. To explain what I'm referring to, they were basicly popularized during the Sega CD era where CD drives were new and amazing and everyone wanted to make a game using video. At some point they realized the games were failing horribly with their minimal interaction which basicly amounted to selecting a scene, so they added timing elements of pressing buttons in sync with the video to have the player affect the outcome of the scene. The concept basicly died before the PlayStation 1 era because movie games died with it, but the whole timing concept began to resurface in the generation after that, probably starting with Shenmue. It sort of laid low for awhile and then suddenly Resident Evil 4 and God of War popularized it en mass for action games to use during sequences that were mostly unrelated to the central game mechanics.

Anyway, recently Tomonobu Itagaki (creator the newer versions of Ninja Gaiden) bashed Heavenly Sword (A PS3 God of War clone) for using them. Specifically, "I look at Heavenly Sword and it seems really half-assed, because it's asking you to do all these button-timing sequences but you are not getting much payoff from it." The more interesting thing is that one of the developers of the game actually responded to the comment with the rather obvious response: "My response to Mr. Itagaki would be that the intent of the Hero sequences is to empower the player to experience events that would be nearly impossible to play in a natural platforming state... for example, making the player run down ropes, leaping from rope to rope as they're being cut from underneath you, all while dodging other objects — that would be a frustrating experience to 99 percent of our users if we were to force them to do that manually."

I'm not real fond of the concept, although it's understandable based on pretty much the excuse used above. But it wasn't until recently that I placed my finger on exactly why I disliked it so much. I was playing Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones and it used the same timing cutscene thing to deal with climbing over this giant boss and stabbing it. And you know what? Prior to Shadow of the Colossus it'dve been believable that pulling off such a thing with just a standard controller would be impossible. Yet we have SotC flat out showing that to be completley false. Yeah, using current game mechanics these things are impossible but when you actually start making new ones (or expanding the old ones) to deal with seemingly impossible situations it turns out they're not as impossible as they sound. Basicly, interactive cutscenes are a crutch for developers to pull out when the mechanics they're copying from ancient games don't happen to account for the situations they want in their games.

2:43 PM 7/19/2007 The log thing does a marvelous job in setting in the full reality of "oh crap I haven't done anything in two days". File writing added, next is setting up the core interface of the database editor, and then making the tree control populate itself from data.

4:34 PM 7/19/2007 Core interface done. Onward to having the tree populate itself.

I've been itching to work on this project for a number of years and have finally started on it but I'm having a hard time making much progress on it, so I'm starting to use this LJ to log progress on it in a vague attempt to promote further progress.

( What is it )

-Log 1-

9:59 PM 7/15/2007 -
Since this is the first log, my primary focus is completing the database program first and then reusing the majority of its code to create the event script program.

At this point the main progress is that the file format has been pretty much decided and is currently capable of being read (but not written) so far. I'm re-organizing the way a few things are handled since I've switched from an RPG Maker-like list of data to a tree-like list of data. Using a tree list allows much better categorization on the user's part (Ie, under the Items tab you can have categories such as: Healing, Attack, Key, etc and furthermore have each category use a different data template. This is both better for working with the data and handling the data in the code.) , combines the definition editor with the data editor, and is generally a better way of going about it.

Next up is adding support for writing the file format and then working on the re-worked category system caused by the shift cause by being tree-based.

The first thing that should be said about this game is that if you were hoping for anything resembling exploration or extensive town interaction from this game, you can just forget that. Odin Sphere is largely nothing but combat intersperesed with cutscenes. But people citing it as just a brawler pretty clearly didn't play more than one or two stages.

If you were to read about anyone talking about this game it's probably them spending 5 paragraphs explaining its systems. I'm trying very hard to avoid describing them in detail in this entry, I've actually scrapped seven attempts at writing this because they devolved into describing the systems. Here I go again. The systems. They're complex to describe but fairly simple in practice. What's important about them is that they all tie together beautifully.

I think what I'm trying to say, in this seventh attempt, is that Odin Sphere makes you feel exceedingly clever and skilled. That is, you feel exceedingly clever when you plant a seed at the beginning of a battle, mix up half the junk items in your inventory to create a painkiller potion which halves your received damage, an unlimited potion which makes your attack bar unlimited, the combinations therein release photons which make the plants grow and you proceed to wail on a boss with your new potions, grabbing the remaining phozons to cast your double damage spell just in time and proceeding to beat the everliving hell out of a boss that's normally hard (because this game is perfectly balanced challenge without irritation) and then grabbing your fruit on the way out to heal and then finish up the boss.

(Edit: In retrospect, that's not nearly as clever as the best moments but I blanked out while writing that. Oh well.)

I somehow managed to not explain any of the systems in this post, finally, so I hope it made sense, but the point is that they're all intricatley connected and mostly involve a crapload of inventory management (your inventory is exceedingly small, you can buy more but money is also exceedingly rare. the end result being that you'll be constantly using consumable items). But the way they're ever so beautifully connected means you'll be constantly improvising new strategies on the fly, and it just works perfectly.

The story is also pretty clever. It takes place across five characters you play as (one at a time, in an order specified by the game) each one having a different timeline of events that connect together. The end result is individual themes per character, while simultaniously piecing together the seemingly random (at first) motivations of the characters within overarching plot. It's probably the best implemation of the multiple-character story telling I've seen in games, with the best part being the cutscene viewer which shows you the exact timeline of each of the characters as you play through. It starts off pretty awful but gets excellent quickly. The English voice acting varies from awful to great, the included Japanese voices are more consistent but for some reason I find myself returning to the English version because the dialogue works better spoken. It also has the wonderful option to choose all three difficulties at the beginning of the game (unlockable difficulties are the worst idea ever), and alter them mid-game (important as you can tell from my next point).

On the bad side, the game absolutley abuses recycled content. I'm only on the second character but it seems that roughly 90% of the stage background, enemies, and bosses after the first character will be recycled on other characters, with only a hand full of actually new content. The order of stages, mix of enemies, and difficulty is changed but so far nothing in the way of patterns is changed and they make no effort to hide the re-use (the final stage/boss of the first character is the same as the second's FIRST stage/boss, except easier!). This is especially awful because you're already used to the patterns of most of the enemies at this point so it gets easier than it should since the difficulty somewhat resets on new characters. On the bright side, the characters play quite differently and I find myself still enjoying it inspite of the heavy recycling, but I wonder as to how long it can keep up the recycling with no variations before I get tired of it.

So! In summary, awesome so far, but with a troubling amount of potential for it to end up stretched beyond what it can handle.