Chrono Trigger DS

Chrono Trigger DS : An altered rendition of the celebrated 1995 Super Nintendo RPG.

Story : An ordinary, silent joe who just happens to be a sword expert named Chrono (or whatever you’d like to name him, as most text-based RPGs of the time let you name the characters after any profanity you choose) gets involved in his best friend’s experiment gone awry, and their mishap evolves into a quest that involves traveling through time, having no regards for altering the course of history and aiming to stop an evil force. It’s simple and occasionally illogical, but at the same time is also interesting, charming and moves at a brisk pace without under-developing characters or shoving mountains of dialogue down your throat. The translation is improved here from previous releases, which simply means that the game feels more…right, this time around.

Normally I get upset whenever a game is altered and released at full price on another console instead of just posted on a digital distribution service in all of its original glory and at a price that reflects the fact that you’re playing a ten-plus year old game. But Chrono Trigger gets an easy pass in my books for being, well, Chrono Trigger, and for not only holding up phenomenally well by modern standards, but providing steep competition for contemporary RPGs.

Seriously, most RPGs of today are either vaguely interactive movies, mountains of character dialogue, or exercises in extreme patience in grinding to level up your party. Here’s a game that manages to find just the right balance.

Chrono Trigger is a game that you have to look very hard at in order to find genuine faults. There are no random battles; instead every encounter is scripted in terms of appearance and enemy placement and the player even has a little freedom to pick his fights. Combat is simple, you either attack, cast magic or use items, but there is some depth in how certain spells will affect multiple enemies based on their location, and how allies can learn an assortment of double-team attacks. Unless you run away from every single enemy fight thrown at you, you’ll never need to grind to level up, yet major battles will still find a way to test you. It’s a much more accessible RPG than the more needlessly convoluted releases of recent history.

So my one thought, coming into this DS re-release wasn’t whether or not Chrono Trigger would be worth the money, but whether or the changes Square Enix made to the game would completely screw up the experience.

The answer to that question is “yes, but the game equips you to handle it.”

The game lets you go to menus and determine how you want all of the options to appear. You can choose to use one screen to display the battle as it happens and the other to display all the menus or use the traditional screen setup (which you’ll probably want to, as to avoid constantly shifting your eyes.) You can control movement and menus with either the stylus or the d-pad…and you’ll probably prefer the latter. You can choose to have the game insert the sleek but out of place anime cutscenes that the Playstation re-release of Chrono Trigger included, or not.

Now, some changes aren’t optional, and for people who played the original to death, there’s going to be a slight learning curve. Many items have been renamed as a result of the translation, as have several smaller enemies. The “Roly Poly” now answers to the less intimidating “Roundzilla.” Shop menus have been restructured to display info on both screens. These aren’t game-crippling flaws, just something to adjust to.

Just like how someone who’s never played Chrono Trigger before might have to adjust the 1995 graphics. No, I’m not going to insult the graphics, as the game still looks great, thanks in part to the art style contributed by…whomever was the guy that did art for Dragonball Z (which will also explain why you keep swearing Chrono looks like Goku and the imps look like some green dude.) But certain sequences, like the Mode 7 racing scene, which looked technologically awesome back in its heyday, are going to look awful to the untrained eye. Those players are just going to have to trust me when I say the game is worth adapting to.

As for what else is new in this re-release…well there’s some kind of bonus sub-game where you train some kind of monster and can pit it against other players, but it only supports local multiplayer against other Chrono Trigger DS owners so it can bugger off. There are also a new end-game side-quest that the game tries to justify by explaining that it takes place “in an alternate dimension”. This side quest gives you a chance to collect second copies of already rare items in the game, but all the artwork for the enemies and locales are reused and the story as a whole is uninteresting.

I wouldn’t say that there’s anything in Chrono Trigger DS that’s worth existing fans of the series to go out of their way to buy this version. I would say, however, that if you don’t already own Chrono Trigger, that this is the must-have RPG of 2008. Even if you have little to no previous experience with the genre, this game is friendly at breaking people into the RPG realm and compelling enough to keep you sucked in. Few other games have aged this gracefully.

Pros : After beating the game, you unlock a bonus mode where you can start over with all of your items and stats from your previous save, as well as the option to challenge the final boss at any time to make available hidden endings.

Cons : Sound effects are a bit crude by modern standards. The end-game sidequests are going to need a strategy guide.

4 ½ stars

I think I’ve settled into a theme for December.

WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2009

Here's the incredible sales pitch that pushed me over the edge and made me purchase...




WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2009 : THQ’s annual loved and hated WWE wrestling game release.

Story : For wrestling fans, 2008 will go down as the year Chris Jericho carried an entire show on his shoulders, Mike Adamle stumbled his way to the top and thus proving that talent is nary rewarded, Edge went to hell and nobody raised any questions, the year everyone but jokesters forgot that a wrestler killed his family and himself the previous year, and the year TNA made absolutely no progress in their struggle to be anything but a second-rate WWE knockoff (a mentality that has carried over into their video game!)

My heart fills with trepidation every time a new Smackdown game is announced, hyped, released and left to disappoint the (approximately) one million wrestling fans who pick up a copy. It seems that for the past couple years, developer Yukes and publisher THQ seem to focus their efforts on developing shoddy gimmick matches, game-breaking mechanics and a half-hearted single player story mode, instead of correcting the game’s numerous existing flaws. The 2009 edition seemed poised to follow in those exact footsteps, with the entire PR being focused on an elaborate new Tag Team gameplay system and the addition of the “Inferno Match”, a gimmick match that comes to us about ten years too late from when an inferno match was last considered relevant. (If we’re looking to the past for our new match ideas, how about War Games? I’m just saying…)

Well, to the surprise of no one, the Inferno match is another lame duck gimmick that you’ll probably never touch again after playing it once, except in the instance that your friends come over and want to see it for themselves and thus annoy you.

However, what will be a surprise to everyone is how well the rest of the game turned out. By and large, almost everything that has been promised in this year’s game delivers, which is certainly a shocking revelation in my mind. They even silenced a few issues that I was thinking about complaining about; like how in previous games, there only seemed to be two different difficulty settings, “Gillberg” and “opponents that instantaneously counter every maneuver you throw at them.” By default, that’ll still be the case…but if you explore the options menu, you’ll discover an elaborate new menu screen comprising of slider bars that enable you to dictate how frequently the AI counters any type of move, how easy it’ll be for you to pull off counters, and several other options. I can’t state enough how grateful I am to see these options present in a wrestling game. Thanks THQ!

And thanks THQ for the new and improved Tag Team mechanics. I know it seems absolutely baffling for a WWE game to put so much emphasis on Tag Team gameplay when the WWE itself shows complete negligence to said wrestling style, but consider me surprised as I can’t think of another wrestling game to do Tag matches so well! It didn’t occur to me until recently that Tag matches in wrestling games are always broken messes where one partner does all the work, the AI is dimwitted and it’s almost impossible to score a victory. Because of such, players would only play tornado tag matches or battle royales when more than two people were involved. Here, the man sitting on the apron has plenty to do, but is limited in that cheating will lower the momentum bar that both partners now share. Double team moves are easier to pull off and now the partner can rally the crowd to get his partner in trouble to pull off the ever-popular “hot tag”, where if executed, he’ll come in with full momentum and knock down all of his opponents. On top of that, the AI is now (mostly) reliable and will either try to break pinfalls or protect your attempts at a victory. Suddenly, tag matches have developed a unique ebb and flow, becoming fun to play and have gone from the least occurring match type to see online to the most popular.

Speaking of online…the online service has made a small leap forward. Before I could almost never start a new online session…now I can! The netcode for Smackdown vs. Raw this year has at least improved that much…but at the same time, it seems that there’s at least a full second’s worth of lag to hamper your experience. Well, I guess it’s an improvement, but a franchise as popular as the Smackdown series should be able to afford the best online support money can buy. Somebody’s college dorm room Counter-Strike server shouldn’t be outperforming one of servers of one of the largest game publishers in the country.

Otherwise, the gameplay mechanics are by and large, the same as they’ve been the last few years. I’ve finally grown to accept the right analog stick as the means to pull off grapple attacks, which feel more intuitive here than in past games, where certain directions would result in a lengthy, canned animation of your wrestler locking up before executing a move. Certain wrestling moves are interactive, where your wrestler will pull off different attacks from say, a headlock, based on what you press with the stick. You don’t need to know much about the game to get by, but at the same time, I found myself being surprised by what new abilities I didn’t know about and stumbled across from experimentation, like chop battles in the corner or a good guy’s ability to fire up after sustaining enough abuse. The game has a considerable amount of depth to study, and most characters feel unique and true to their real life personas. Rey Mysterio can bounce off the ropes with ease while Randy Orton can grab the ropes for a pinfall.

Another new and much appreciated addition is the new campaign mode, Road to Wrestlemania. Gone is the General Manager or 24/7 mode of past games that left you to manage all kinds of stats that were anything but realistic and can best be described as Some Horribly Intentioned Tragedy of gameplay. Here, there’s no micromanagement, instead you pick one of six storylines (John Cena, Triple H, Chris Jericho, CM Punk, Undertaker and a two player-optional mode with Batista and Rey Mysterio) and play through a linear series of cutscenes and matches. While many little girls are going to be upset that Jeff Hardy isn’t in the mix, much less whoever you the reader’s favorite wrestler might be, that shouldn’t matter because most of the campaigns wind up being very entertaining. The stories are creative in their own way, in part because you’ll most likely never see them work on actual television, like a wrestler forming his own country or Tommy Dreamer winning a match. There are several nice little touches too, like the announcers talking about the present storyline to not make you feel like you’re just playing regular exhibition matches, and optional side goals such as “put your opponent through a table” or “make your opponent bleed” (you know, the kind of things that would only make sense to a wrestling fan) which allow you to unlock bonus content, they help make this mode feel a bit special.

And for those that absolutely must have a single player mode that lets them play as Festus, why there’s something for you too. Career mode lets you pick a wrestler, created or otherwise, strips him of all his stats so that he has the strength, speed and charisma of a koala, and lets you fight a series of choice opponents in order to win assorted championship titles. Your performance in each match will affect what stats and special abilities your character develops; use a lot of power moves and your character’s strength rating improves and so forth. The idea is nice in theory but I always hate games where the only way to improve a wrestler’s toughness or health rating is to get beat up. Likewise, the game wants you to use your created wrestler in this mode, because the game gives you no alternative for improving his or her stats to anything beyond jobber. Any wrestler you create will, by default, be a weakling and the only way to fix that is to go through this otherwise lengthy process. This presents quite an issue for fans that like to create twenty or thirty wrestlers, be it their creation or otherwise. THQ has promised a fix for this in January.

At the end of the day, it’s still a Smackdown game, albeit the most improved Smackdown game in several years. If you haven’t gotten sick of the Smackdown engine (we’ve all complained about the clipping issues in the past, but you sit down with 3DStudioMax and try to create 300 move animations, and then find a way to make them match 50 different wrestler body-sizes and then you can talk) and you’re not a Fire Pro Wrestling elitist who harps on everything THQ has thrown out since No Mercy, then you’ll be quite pleased with Smackdown vs. Raw 2009. No, it’s not perfect, but if the perfect wrestling game were to ever come out, we’d never have a need to buy the next yearly installment that promises us the world and gives us Snitsky. What is here is strong enough to make the plunge, and for what its worth, it makes the TNA Impact game look stale in comparison.

Pros : The wrestler creation tools are strong as always. You have a ton of possible clothing and attack choices for your wrestler, and plenty of ways to tweak their entrance. New for 2009 is the Create a Finisher option, which while not being exceptionally versatile (you’re choosing from a list of canned animations), can still be a tad interesting if you tinker with it. The roster doesn’t feel too dated, as while there are a number of wrestlers that have long since been fired, almost all of the current big stars are accounted for. THQ promises downloadable content in the future.

Cons : The Miz looks like an alien child. Commentary as a whole is still terrible in all regards. Some of the voicework sounds like it was done in a log cabin in the French Alps. In-game dynamic advertising…I don’t mind it when it relates to wrestling-related ads like merchandise, but I’m already sick of seeing the HMV logo splattered at various locations. No legends, as there’s going to be an All Legends wrestling game in March.

4 stars

More holiday shopping advice.

Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix

Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix : The latest update to Street Fighter 2. That’s right, it’s 2008 and there’s yet ANOTHER re-release of Street Fighter 2.

Story : Well, I guess Street Fighter 2 set the standard back in its’ heyday, of fighting games having incredibly cheesy storylines. The core of the story is that there’s an evil superpowered dictator and to get to him, you’re going to have to beat up an assortment of colourful characters that are going to come across as completely bizarre to anyone but the people that grew up playing these games. Can’t complain, though, as the actual story only rears its ugly head in each character’s ending. If you don’t believe me on this story issue, try and dig up any of the numerous anime movies based on Street Fighter and tell me this stuff is at all compelling.

So I’ve presented myself a challenge in trying to adequately explain what Street Fighter 2 is, in that the game was such an ingrained part of my childhood that I take it for granted about as much as I take breathing for granted. Street Fighter 2 is the genre-defining “fighting game”, where you choose from a selectable roster of characters and battle either a series of computer challengers or whomever decides to put a quarter in the arcade machine and test their mettle against your own. The crux of the gameplay is that each character has their own unique set of punches, kicks and button combination-triggered special attacks, and victory hinges on your mastery of each character, as well as your ability to outthink and out-twitch your challenger. I’d like to be able to say “this was all the rage in arcades back in the early 90s” but that probably doesn’t mean much to most readers that didn’t grow up in the early 90s and thus have no idea how popular arcades used to be. And I say “yet ANOTHER re-release” because Street Fighter 2 has been re-released many times over in the name of adding characters, fixing glitches, tweaking the character balance and wringing every possible penny from the wallets of fans. This brings us to the latest rendition…

One part a labour of love, designed by assorted smaller parties and tournament players that really love their Street Fighter 2, and one part a game tie-in to help promote the upcoming Street Fighter 4 (much like the Bionic Commando remake from earlier in the year) is Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix.

I can tell that this game was made to satisfy the diehards. I know this because I wandered around the options screen and found a menu called “Dip Switch settings”, which is some kind of fighting game fanatic lingo for “really, really, really hardcore settings”. These options allow you to alter such massive settings as, and I quote, “Can do Sagat’s super using a kick button during a 1 frame window” and “When Bison does a headstomp that hits a rising opponent only a few pixels above ground level, he briefly pauses” and “Percentage chance that the first frame of Blanka’s vertical ball is unblockable” and… well, most of these are changes that are so minute that I can’t be bothered to notice, but a hardcore fan will fight to the death over the rights to dictate the fate of the first frame of Blanka’s spinning ball attack. They will gladly appreciate being given such mighty power over such few pixels.

For the rest of us, here’s what’s new in Street Fighter HD in a nutshell: redrawn graphics, remixed music, assorted minor tweaks, and functional online play.

All of the artwork has been redone and scanned in high resolution, to give the game a clean and crisp look. No more pixilation or beady eyes, folks. The characters all look like the jacked up comic book/anime superheroes they were intended to be, or at least much as they can while retaining every single attack animation and pose from the previous games. The game does look great; not Guilty Gear great, but that could just be me relishing in my Guilty Gear fanboy-hood. The music has also been redone and most of the new compositions are appropriately catchy. But in the event that neither are to your liking (you sick old-school purist you), the option to revert to older tunes and fighter sprites presents itself.

Just as the option is present to alternate between playing the previous series update, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, or as the new “Remixed” edition. Now, if you’re hip, you’ll pick Remixed. Most of the tweaks are the same kind of single frame/pixel deals that the above mentioned Dip Switch Psycho Obsessed Menu brings, but even I noticed a few changes from the Remixed edition, and smiled for noticing them. Some of the special moves are a bit easier to pull off now; Guile’s Super Special Attack will no longer shred a layer of skin off your thumb from trying to execute it on a d-pad. As far as Xbox controls go, the game is a bit easier to control here than the previous Street Fighter Xbox Live Arcade game was, but I still fudged up a bit playing with the d-pad. The game does, however, contain full arcade stick support for people that need THE arcade experience.

The game has only two gameplay modes; Arcade mode to wail on a series of surprisingly ruthless computer opponents, and multiplayer. I’ve got nothing but good things to say about the online play though; never lags, the option to play through quick ranking matches or get a bunch of buddies together and take turns fighting the previous round’s winner, tournament support, and no shortage of aggressive opponents.

Now, if this whole fighting game concept is foreign to you and you’re intrigued by the idea of guys in karate outfits (with the sleeves cut off to emphasize their massive biceps) throwing fireballs out of their hands at each other, then this may as well be the game to get. Otherwise, your buying decision (which for Canadians, is about $20 worth in Xbox Live points) will depend on your enthusiasm for Street Fighter in general. If you didn’t care before about Street Fighter, this game doesn’t throw at you anything to make you care. But if you have even a modest interest in the perennial fighting game, especially in the thought of playing online, then hop on in and feel free to go on Xbox Live and try to discipline me.

Pros : The character designs in Street Fighter 2 still hold up very well. They’re not outrageously hokey like in SNK games but not bland and insipid like other fighters. They’re appealing and easy on the eyes, if a tad racist, such as the Indian who’s mastery of yoga gives him phenomenal muscle tone and stretchy limbs, and the All-American army brat with the most impeccable crew-cut in human history.

Cons : You don’t get the original Street Fighter 2 grainy-but-macho announcer declaring that you won the fight. No, it’s the Super Turbo high pitched pansy announcer.

4 stars

I always prefer to use Zangief when I play, just because there are still people that freak out when you pull off the spinning piledriver, treating the move’s execution as the fighting game equivalent of turning water into wine.

Gears of War 2

Well this review feels like a long time coming.



Gears of War 2: The more heterosexual Gear-named franchise.

Story : Surprise Surprise, it’s humans versus aliens! Or mutants, or some kind of grotesque monster that happens to speak English and have mastery over human guns. This new game’s plot elements include one squadmate’s missing wife, a city that is supposedly humanity’s last refuge, another enemy leader whom ranks above the enemy you killed in the first game that you mistook for the leader of the group of monsters you thought you rendered extinct in the first game, and a plot twist that feels a bit too blatantly ripped out of the Halo games. There are a handful of groan-inducing elements too, such as the cowardly teammate whose voicework would’ve fit in perfectly in an episode of Scooby Doo, and the preachy, bizarre computer AI character that’s trying really hard to be mimic the artificial intelligence characters from Portal and Halo, but the story as a whole suffices without being too offensive. For what its worth, despite being the middle chapter of a planned trilogy, the game doesn’t end on a cheap cliffhanger like oh so many other games seem to be nowadays, and protagonist Marcus Felix and his main squadmates from the first game, once reunited, are appealing enough to give the otherwise dull world some personality. I guess to sum it up, as good as a game about four guys single-handedly gunning down an army of enemies can get.

The storyline is the weakest link of Gears of War 2, or at least the link that’s the least-thickest in a twenty-ton chain strong enough to imprison Godzilla. This game is a beast alright. This is your big-budget game equivalent of a summer blockbuster, with all of the cutting edge graphic technologies, physics engines, sweeping orchestral musical scores and end-of-humanity themes that you normally equate with high profile shooting games. It’s the proverbial pissing contest, where all the major game companies (or at least the ones that made PC games back when making big-budget PC games was a profitable business) compete to make the prettiest shooter of them all. However, Gears of War 2 is also a smart beast, one that knows that there’s more to a game than a press release bragging about how many enemies you can fit on-screen or how this game is the first to feature “meat physics.”

In this regard, it bears mention that single player campaign (which can be played co-operatively with a buddy, online or off), is particularly strong. Unlike the Halo games, or any number of other major shooters, you never feel like you’re merely walking from one corridor to another, fighting one respawning wave of enemies after another. Rather, the game does a surprisingly strong job of throwing one unique scenario after another, all the while finding small and subtle ways to mix up the standard gunfights. Considering how the core gameplay mechanics consist of hiding behind something, poking your head out and shooting back, it’s amazing how this never actually gets old. There’s a potent variety of enemies to hack up with your chainsaw-gun Lancer, and a healthy variety of weapons to use in the event that your Lancer runs out of ammo. Just be sure to never drop that Lancer, ever, or even toy with the idea, or else you are going to either run into a wall that needs to be chainsawed-down or enemies that, after the first game, have learned about the tactical advantage of guns with chainsaw bayonets and intend to use them on you.

Throw in plenty of cinematic moments (usually consisting of something blowing up) and you have a story mode that extends well beyond the typical “showcase of things you can do in multiplayer” campaign that most shooters feature, though the game does introduce its share of new features. Gears of War 2 doesn’t reinvent the formula of the first game, but elaborates on it enough to make going back to the first game an awkward experience. Like in multiplayer, an ally can revive you should you approach near-death, and the enemies can do the same, throwing you in some tense situations where you’ll be crawling, begging for help, and developing a new appreciation for Dom. There are vehicle sequences that don’t feel tacked on, Halo 3’s utility weapons like the giant chaingun, chainsaw duels and a litany of other new features that you’ll barely notice but appreciate once you see them. The game doesn’t rewrite the formula of the first Gears, but being as there has been a surprisingly low number of games trying to rip off Gears of War, there’s nothing about this game that feels stale, other than the concept of muscular men in giant, armoured suits shooting down monster invaders.

Speaking of trends, Gears of War 2 does follow what appears to be an emerging new trend in gaming; the multiplayer mode where people mindlessly battle waves of respawning enemies. Horde mode actually works out to be a pretty fun diversion, to tell the truth. Granted, I could just be saying that because of all the multiplayer modes, this is the one that’s the easiest to start up a session with.

The game borrows its matchmaking concept from Halo 2 and 3, where you choose what style of gameplay type you play through and the game looks for allies and opponents of similar skill level. However, the matchmaking in Gears 2 is surprisingly slow, and I often found myself just sitting there, waiting for minutes on end as a game kept looking for an opponent group, only to stop because a member of my group left in frustration and thus needed to be replaced. Now, once you actually start a game, then the game starts to pick up. While the entire multiplayer game is team-based and you don’t necessarily need good allies to thrive, you will feel it if your opponent’s team is a more well-oiled machine.

The game’s matchmaking seems to prefer committed gamers looking to spend all-nighters bulking their ranking and trying to unlock the game’s obscenely demanding achievements than someone who wants to play a game for a few minutes. You can’t leave a game unless you boot out of Gears of War 2 or turn off the system, and likewise, people can’t hop into a game in progress; if you want to play, you’re going to wait for the matchmaker to find ten other players and you guys are going to play together, whether your team is good or not. I know that people who quit games because they’re losing are hated by all, but I’m not one to play a multiplayer session for hours on end, and there’s this thing called real life that’ll sometimes call me and interrupt my gameplay session. Do the developers at Epic know about this life thing?

But that said, Gears of War 2 is visceral, exciting, enjoyable, a shooter that finds a way to stand out from the crowd. If the multiplayer process was a bit more gentle and B. Carmine wasn’t so much of a tool then I’d feel a bit more inclined to rate the game a little higher, but I doubt either of which will keep the 15-28 year old male demographic away from thinking that this is the greatest game ever made, or at least until Gears 3 or the next big shooter comes out. I’ll attest to being a jaded snob that needs a bit more than bleeding-edge graphics to get excited about a shooting game, but at least Gears of War 2 does just enough for me to not label it as another flash in the pan.

Pros : In the absence of having something less rational to say here, I’ll go so far as to claim that this one game’s campaign is better than the combined Halo trilogy.

Cons : As visually impressive as the final sequence is, it’s far too easy for my tastes. Call me old-school, but I like it when a final boss puts up the toughest fight out of all the obstacles the player has faced in the game, not the easiest.

4 stars

Okay, the game does leave a few loose ends, and there’s a bit of a cliffhanger after the credits, but you can practically guess how it’ll all unfold in the next game.

Castlevania: Judgment

Castlevania : Judgement : A fighting game comprising of assorted Castlevania characters. An odd concept, to be sure, considering that most people can only name about 2 or 3 actual Castlevania characters.

Story : Judgment uses an old cliché of Saturday morning cartoons and comics, bringing in some kind of all-powerful being from another dimension to unite characters from different fictions together for a battle. This figure in question is predictably enigmatic, but he also looks like a cross between an outcast from A Clockwork Orange and a pussy.

The game has a story mode, but it may as well not have one, since “story mode” is the same as arcade mode, except with the occasional cutscene of dialogue between fighters, which generally comprises of fighter A saying “Hey, you! Lets fight!” and fighter B saying “Yeah, okay, lets fight!” That the game has this story mode, along with an arcade mode, seems like a petty attempt to give the game more gameplay modes than it really has for the sake of the game’s press release.

Speaking of, one of the game’s most advertised points of notice, it seems, is the addition of famous manga writer Takeshi Obata as the character designer, a man most famous for the series Death Note. I know this because Wikipedia knows this. A lot of Japanese games seem to do this, bringing in a supposedly famous artist or composer to work on something in the game, just as how American games often bring in a famous celebrity to half-heartedly do voicework for a game.

For the last decade or so, Castlevania games have been slowly progressing towards a more anime-influenced direction in terms of art-style…or at least a more sexually questionable art direction. Male and female characters have become harder to tell apart. Clothing comes and goes with the tide. Style coming light years ahead of substance. The concept art for a new character will take prominence in a magazine feature over, say, actual content about the game. However, Judgment takes the cake here in terms of creating the most sexually-confused posers in all of gaming.

Once apon a time, we thought Simon Belmont looked like this.



That was the box art for the very first Castlevania. Here’s Simon on the Castlevania : Judgement boxart, which I’ve neglected to post until now for a reason you’re about to see.



Way to butcher a part of our memories, Konami. I’d like to think that going from ripping off Conan The Barbarian to ripping off Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children is a pretty jarring shift for people who have been with the series for a long time. I know that the characters in the Castlevania franchise didn’t have much integrity to begin with in order for me to proclaim that the series’ integrity has been compromised, but there’s still value in trying to be nostalgic instead of trying to be Guilty Gear. As a somewhat-longtime fan, I’ll admit that the idea of pitting Simon Belmont against Symphony of the Night’s Alucard or the little girl from Castlevania 3 is rather intriguing, but all of these characters have been redesigned to a point where no one can recognize them anymore. Look at Super Smash Bros; part of the appeal is that the series relishes in the idea that these recognizable characters are together and battling each other; that the player can have Pikachu challenge Mario, and have the two beat the shrooms out of each other. Now imagine some famous artist, say, Spawn-creator Todd McFarlane, was hired to redesign all of the Nintendo characters. As cool as it might look like to see Pikachu transformed into a grotesque, human heart-devouring monster, he just wouldn’t be Pikachu anymore.

Instead, the new art direction just leaves the player the impression that the game is ridden with Soul Calibur rejects. Considering how most of these games are set in the 1800s, it’s amazing how these “heroes” don’t get cast out as witches and burned at the stake. To avoid having to play as some kind of androgynous punk who’s more concerned about their victory pose than their fight training, I connected my DS with Castlevania : Order of Ecclesia to the Wii to unlock that game’s protagonist, [Shanoa]. While she comes off as less obnoxious than the rest of the cast, her previous “sexy but tortured” look has been replaced by some kind of stripper-nun hybrid and…

…okay I guess I should talk about the gameplay.

The game is a 3D fighting game, akin to the old Dreamcast game Power Stone. Players move around a trap-filled arena, jumping around, slashing each other and cursing at the camera. Credit should be due for not trying to clone Soul Calibur more than the game’s art direction was already doing, but too many basic elements feel flawed. There’s no punishment to blocking, and the only unblockable attacks in the game have such a long charge time that they can easily be evaded or countered, so most battles will devolve into either two people taking turns hitting each other or just straight button-mashing. It’s a shame too, being that there’s some potentially interesting ideas here, like the ability to pick up and use vintage powerups from the series, like the cross boomerang and the evil holy water of burning blue death.

Oh, and make sure you play the game with either the Gamecube controller or the Classic controller. I actually appreciate that the game gives you the option to play with traditional controllers, unlike most games that force you into using the Wiimote controls for no good reason than to continue Nintendo’s two plus year quest to justify the existence of the Wii controller as functional for anything but Wii Bowling. Apparently, the concept for Castlevania: Judgment was conceived in an attempt to create a Castlevania game with Wii controls; to let the player use their remote like a whip perhaps…and I just can’t fathom the logic in such a statement. As predicted, the Wii controls are inaccurate and tiresome.

One final point of potential wasted, the game has what looks to be a solid online play mode…or at least one by Wii standards. A lot of that friend code nonsense can be abandoned and you can befriend strangers you’ve fought online as rivals. However, I was never able to apply any of this in practice, as nobody seems to be playing this game online.

Which could be attributed to the game’s bad art style scaring away players, or that most any gamer can look at the game from a distance and think “yeah, this game can’t be good.” Castlevania: Judgment is indeed a lackluster title, one that had the potential to be something special. However, fighting games are finicky titles in nature, where milliseconds can make or break the experience, and Judgment is way off the mark. Castlevania fans have it rough sometimes, it seems.

Pros : I guess if you’re the type of gamer that freaks out over an orchestral score in video games, you’ll pop for the one here.

Cons : Even Death falls victim to the artist’s need to redesign all of the characters. Yes, someone felt the Grim Reaper needed to be envisioned as a He-Man villain.

2 ½ stars

Contrary to the Overture review, I’m actually quite the fan of the Guilty Gear series. In fact, that I actually reviewed Overture should be a testament to this.

Wii Music

Wii Music : Apparantly, the next big thing.

Story : No story applicable. Other than “this game was a freaking joke when it was presented at E3 in all it’s hairy glory.”

But despite all that, Nintendo continued to proclaim that this was their big holiday game of 2008. Wii Music was going to follow in the footsteps of the absurdly popular Wii Sports, Wii Play and Wii Fit, whether we liked it or not. Well, the former two only became such unusual hits because of how they were bundled with hardware and became easy to love when played at short bursts at social events, prompting party-goers to yearn for a Wii of their own (and only to get sick of their new purchase minutes after.) I have no personal experience with Wii Fit, but I’ll give it the benefit of a doubt being that it has somewhat honest intentions (but make no mistake, as a certified personal trainer, I very much look forward to reviewing that fitness fad.) But with no bundled hardware, Wii Music has only the E3 video of doucheman to motivate people into running to their store to check in on the latest craze.

Perhaps I shouldn’t review Wii Music as Nintendo’s straight-faced answer to the likes of Gears of War 2, Resistance 2, LittleBig Planet, Fallout 3 and the like. Though doing so would result in me rating the game an “EPIC FAIL” out of five stars. No, maybe I should look at Wii Music’s potential for just straight up fun, for that’s what all games should aim for.

Except it’s still something of a failure there too.

So when you boot up the game, a very annoying instructor who looks like a hybrid of Bach and a Muppet, explains the game’s basic mechanics in a very long-winded tutorial that feels like he’s less trying to explain the gameplay mechanics as much as he is trying to justify the game’s existence. In a nutshell, you bang the Wiimotes to play piano and percussion instruments, bang one remote while you hold out another to play guitar-like instruments, bang the Wiimote horizontally to play violin, and alternate pressing the one and two buttons while supposedly holding the Wiimote near your mouth to play wind instruments. Imagination is the watchword here, as the game is banking on you closing your eyes and imagining yourself jamming in an orchestra to not notice that the remote only picks up the motion of the Wii moving in general. You’re essentially playing Guitar Hero without the five buttons and just the flipper; that’s what playing Wii Music is like.

The only instrument that grants the player control of what note they’re playing is drums. If you actually thought the E3 demo was impressive in its use of the Wiimote technology, well you’re in for a gross disappointment. You actually control what part of the drum you hit on by what buttons on the controllers you hold, not by some kind of sophisticated Wii controller technology. If you have the Wii Fit balance board, you could use that as a kick pedal, but that feels like such a petty use of a $90 adaptor.

Otherwise, all you’re really doing is moving remotes around and making loud noises. Unlike Rock Band, Guitar Hero, Dance Dance Revolution, Singstar, Amplitude, Frequency or any actual music game, you’re not trying to match notes with the song playing in the background. Rather, the game automatically matches whatever notes you’re playing with the song itself, with the sole variation being how many times you opt to play notes and make the song sound like more of a mess. I think “cluster****” is a good way to describe any composition you can conceive. Jam mode is the game’s main mode, where you and 5 other musicians play a song. The game gives you an unusual-yet-useless amount of variety. Unusual in that you can re-dub any instrument with multiple playthroughs, create an album cover, and record a full-blown music video that can be sent to other Wii Music owners. Useless because no one owns Wii Music and no one should announce that they own Wii Music. Also useless because, despite a large variety of instruments that includes everything from cow bells and “guy in a dog suit barking” to “galactic drums”, the audio quality of each instrument is so poor that when so many instruments are mixed together, they all blend together poorly and leave the song sounding like an old ring tone. Though I guess some people dream of creating their own ring tone version of “Wake me up before I go-go.”

I should talk about the setlist itself; a combination of classic music compositions, children’s bedtime songs, 60s-80s pop songs and Nintendo game theme songs, begging one to ask the question “why do I want to play these songs?” Nintendo did the exact same thing with the Donkey Konga games on the Gamecube, focusing primarily on free-to-use tracks. Other music games feature a hybrid of classic and contemporary hits, as well as often-solid tracks from little-known acts. Nintendo’s choice of music here comes off as the equivalent of Marge Simpson trying to fit in at Lollapalooza.

Wii Music isn’t a game, it’s a toy. One that should be marked as targeted towards people aged 3-5. Little kids might have some fun with Wii Music, but like any flashy toy, it’ll be quick to be discarded for the next big toy. Anyone with a semblance of an attention span will otherwise get bored of the game before the tutorial ends.

Pros : Mildly amusing mini-games. In particular “Mii Maestro”, where the motion of the remote dictates the gusto that the orchestra plays their music.

Cons : Only five songs for Mii Maestro.

1 ½ stars

Shiguru Miyamoto has apologized in the past, for claiming that Super Mario World and Super Mario Sunshine weren't up to par. The former I don't understand, the latter I kind of see why. But he should be busting out a U2-calibur "I'm sorry" parade to gamers for Wii Music.

[Castlevania] Order of Ecclesia

I don’t normally do these big “history of the franchise” deals in my reviews because pretty much every video game site does them already and they always wind up sounding like some kind of major sales pitch, like the review was written not by a person but by a company marketing team. But upon seeing me play the Nintendo DS game I’m about to review, my coworker went on to ask me “what is Castlevania?” which caught me off guard, since this is one of the more older and popular licenses of the video game industry, or at least in my biased mind. So here it is, my brief “history of Castlevania” feature. Feel free to skip on to the actual review if you’ve heard this bit a thousand times before.



The original Castlevania was released in America in 1987 (according to Wikipedia) on the NES. It was a basic platformer starring a dude with a mystical whip going through Dracula’s castle, battling skeletons, zombies, flying heads, the grim reaper and every horror movie archetype ever conceived before battling the Count himself. The art direction was distinctly gothic for the time, the mechanics were sound and the game was challenging (often unfairly so, in regards to the threat of frequently respawning medusa heads) and the game became a staple of 2D platforming. Assorted sequels would follow, the protagonist’s integrity would be compromised in a bad 80s cartoon, but the one constant in the franchise was that there was always a member of that guy with a whip’s bloodline beating up monsters, and there was always a Dracula whose arse needed to be handed to him.



The series hit a monumental turning point in 1997 with Castlevania : Symphony of the Night. The linear series of stages was replaced in favour of a giant overworld, Dracula’s castle, where the player’s progression meant obtaining access to more and more sections of the otherwise free-to-explore area. (Perhaps an easier way to say that would be “ripping off Metroid”.) Also, whip boy was replaced by Dracula’s son, who probably had a bone to pick with his dad for his disapproval of his son’s bisexual attitude. As well, the game obtained RPG elements in that the character could be outfitted with different equipment, learn new abilities and level up from grind… beating up enemies as he went. The game still holds up fantastically well by modern standards and is available for purchase online for PS3 and Xbox 360 owners at a reasonably great price.

Told you these things always end up sounding like sales pitches.

Since then, there have been two kinds of Castlevania games being released. The console Castlevania games that attempt to bring the series to 3D and always seem to wind up being terrible, and the Game Boy Advance/Nintendo DS Castlevania games that try really, really, really hard to capture the same lightning in a bottle that Symphony of the Night had, with varying (but usually respectable) results. Which brings us too…




[Castlevania : Order of Ecclesia] : The latest attempt at a modern day Symphony.

Story : [Castlevania : Order of Ecclesia] is based around a young woman named [Shanoa] who was chosen to bear some kind of almighty power capable of bringing down [Dracula], only for fellow cult-mate [Albus] to steal the power for himself, forcing [Shanoa] to go after him. There’s a good twist or two here and there but the overall story in [Castlevania : Order of Ecclesia] is by and large predictable. You know you’re just going to wind up fighting [Dracula] in the end anyways. It’s like the series is sometimes held down from evolving due to its own tradition, yet even I’ll admit that I’d be disappointed if a [Castlevania] game didn’t end in a bout with [Dracula].

[Castlevania : Order of Ecclesia] isn’t so much distinct for its most heavily advertised features so much as it is for more of its’ subtle changes. The only reason I appreciate [Shanoa] as the game’s protagonist is because she distinctly looks female, which is a change of pace from the usual androgynous main character that stars in these [Castlevania : Symphony of the Night] knockoffs, otherwise she’s not a particularly likable individual. The addition of a [village] with [civilians] that need rescuing isn’t too big of a deal, as they merely provide [fetch quests] for the player to…

Oh, and if you’d like to know why I’m talking with [brackets] around words, it’s because the game likes using them too, with the upmost demand it seems. I’ve seen numerous games do a similar thing, using underlines or colours to highlight names or quest related items. Order of Ecclesia is fond of the bracket, to highlight seemingly every noun in for the player. A villager may ask you to collect 3 [iron ore] (no plural form here) or another character will have a major speech proclaiming that [Dracula] is the embodiment of all evil. I can’t help but find that this sucks out a good deal of impact or immersion out of the storyline. I don’t quite understand why; trust me when I say that the target audience of this game is not stupid enough to need important parts of the sentence to be highlights so abruptly.

I say that because this game is not meant to be played by anyone but the most determined of platform gamers. Bosses are all tough, with large chunks of health to chip off and difficult, random attack patterns to figure out. You’re going to die repeatedly in the process of trying to beat one. Even many casual enemies will tear you apart if given the chance. Save points are infrequent, so you’ll find yourself using the magical escape item to retreat to the village often…or die a lot. The game only keeps track of the hours you’ve spent playing and not dying so while my game save says I’ve put in a mere 5 hours into the game, the real number is embarrassingly much, much higher.

In part, that’s due to how infrequent stat-boosting armour appears in the game, as in order to improve your meager defense rating, you’ll find yourself having to do a fetch quest or two from certain villagers in order to make available armour you can’t afford at the store. There’s another issue of difficulty; money is scarce, and you’ll rarely find yourself equipped with necessary potions, meaning that you’re going to really EARN the right to progress.

Another aspect that only the diehards are going to mind is the game’s slap in the face false-ending. Once you do beat Albus, the game sets you up and basically says “you can’t go to the real last level and fight Dracula unless you rescue EVERY villager.” Well this certainly ticked me off, especially considering the number of lives I needed to beat Albus in the first place. It’s even more frustrating how you’re going to need some kind of internet strategy guide to find some of the villagers, since some of them are hidden behind walls that are supposed to be broken down but otherwise untraceable without either some kind of internet assistance or trying to hit every wall in the game until something breaks, like you’re some kind of game tester. This may be fine for the Gamefaqs.com crowd of gamers, but not the average Joe.

In perhaps a sign that the series is going full-circle, there’s no giant overworld in this game, but rather a series of smaller stages, connected by a basic world map. This cuts on the backtracking, and at the same time, each area is interesting enough to make you want to explore, though there’s perhaps one “straight line filled with enemies” type of level too many in the game.

Another small change that I wound up appreciating is the glyph system, where Shanoa takes advantage of her scantily-clad powers and absorbs certain magical artifacts into her bare back. Absorbed glyphs can then be assigned to certain buttons, and end up manifesting themselves into weapons attacks or certain abilities. For the most part, this comes off as a repackaged version of the weapons and spells equipment system, but there are some unique twists. A select few enemy attacks can be sucked out from right under their noses to unlock new abilities. Magic attacks can lead into changing your character’s super attack, and there’s a great variety of spells once you approach the tail end of the game. It’s a small gameplay tweak that you wind up appreciating after you make yourself stick with it long enough.

And that really is the key to enjoying Order of Ecclesia; gutting it out. Truth be told, this is the most fun I’ve had out of a Castlevania game since Symphony of the Night, and likewise, it’s also the most frustration I’ve gotten since the very early NES games. It’s a great purchase for long-time fans and in particular, the ones that like to search far and wide to collect every power-up and compete for the best time in the obligatory “Boss Rush” mode. But if you’ve never played any of these games before, be warned. Go start with Symphony or even one of the other DS Castlevania games. Build up your tolerance for beating giant monsters with sexually-questionable characters.

Pros : Great-as-always art style, without leaving the impression that the game is trying to be more stylish than it really is (i.e. the other Symphony clones). Will greatly amplify your tolerance for Castlevania : Judgement on the Wii (review coming soon) Plenty of post-game extras.

Cons : A few too many enemies were ripped out of Symphony of the Night.

4 stars

Breaking from the tradition of making bad 3D games and uninspired 2D games, the most recent game in the series, Castlevania : Judgement on the Wii, is a fighting game!