Review: "Henry Hatsworth"
I expect a lot of privileged children will wake up Easter morning, find HENRY HATSWORTH IN THE PUZZLING ADVENTURE in their baskets and, after a long day of wall-surfing and block-juggling, cry themselves to sleep.
The game isn't bad. In fact, in almost every department, including a steampunkish Studio Ghibli look, it's extremely proficient. But its difficulty is unsparing and surprisngly incongruous with those aggressively colorful visuals.
Part of me loved it for that. The other part — the one that makes decisions — was ready to chuck my DS through my bedroom window.
THE SETUP
In Henry Hatsworth, you control a mannered, David Livingstone-esque fellow who dons desert fatigues and becomes 20 years younger when his super meter is full enough.
Filling said meter requires a tap of the Y button, which freezes the platforming / beat-'em-up action on the top screen and focuses your attention on the puzzle below. Blocks rise steadily from the bottom of the screen, a la TETRIS ATTACK. Matching three or more like-colored blocks erases them from the puzzle screen and gives a boost to your super meter.
Good show!
Because matching regular blocks will get you only so much super-juice, you'll have to be constantly dispatching top-screen enemies for ammunition. Once banished from the platforming world, they move down to the puzzle screen, where they fuck up your Christmas in different ways. Most enemies simply turn into frowny-face blocks; others lock blocks in place, freeze a column or increase the rate at which the blocks rise.
Matching up these trouble blocks gives you substantial super-meter gains. Fill the gauge halfway, and Henry goes 19th century super-saiyan, with a bushy red moustache and full-on safari gear. If you fill the meter all the way, you'll temporarily summon a clockwork robot suit that can take out anything in the game in a few hits.
The platforming action is terrific and easily could stand on its own. Controls are extremely responsive, and there are only a few moments when Henry will be doing something other than exactly what you've asked him to do. By the end of the game, he'll have all the moves you could expect from a side-scrolling man of letters.
The puzzle component isn't as strong. It really is BEJEWELED with a little extra flair and no illegal moves. But the way it feeds the platforming is inspired, and you'll be fairly impressed with your multi-tasking dexterity by the time you hit Tealand, the game's fifth and final world. The way you use items — collect them on the top-screen, at which point they travel to the puzzle screen, where they must be matched before they're activated — is a particularly nice touch.
For the first few hours of Henry Hatsworth, everything comes up roses. Unfortunately, frustration and burnout begin to settle in shortly hitting the game's third world. Some levels take more than 20 minutes just to navigate, and because there are about 40 of these suckers — most of which you're encouraged to troll through a second or third time for secrets — repetition becomes a real threat.
When you've got trouble blocks peeking out of the bottom screen, it's time to get puzzlin'.
Difficulty shoots up profoundly at about the same time. The game's many bosses are fun to fight, but they become extraordinarily tough. Most levels will kill forward momentum deliberately, at least once or twice, to wall you in with dozens of enemies at the same time.
All of these hurdles are extraordinarily satisfying once you've cleared them. Think Dario in CHRONO CROSS. But when you watch the 50 lives you've amassed in the game's earlier, easier levels dwindle into the single digits, just because you can't puzzle quickly enough or combo with enough discipline, well, it'll drive you up a wall.
I like tough beat-'em-ups. GODHAND and VIEWTIFUL JOE are two of my all time-favorite games. But those two were challenging from minute one, whereas Hatsworth holds your hand for a few hours before ramping up the difficulty dramatically with no warning at all.
When you beat the game, you unlock the much more difficult "Gentleman Mode." I'll not be playing Gentleman Mode.
There are a few other annoyances. At times, you''ll be keyed into what's happening on the puzzle screen with Zen-like clarity, but because the game has to finish its poof and slide animations before you can make your next move, sometimes you'll be left hammering on the A-button fruitlessly as your combo counter disappears.
And the game could offer you a more tangible sense of progress. Finishing each world grants your mech suit a few new abilities, and you can upgrade your combat and puzzle-solving efficiency with currency you collect from treasure chests and enemies. But you'll still get to a point in Tealand where you're bashing or blasting rank-and-file foot soldiers 15 times or more before they go down.
THE PRESENTATION
Score one for sprites and MIDIs, because Henry Hatsworth looks and sounds stunning.
All of the enemies and characters in the game, including Henry himself, are thoughtfully designed and animate nicely. The worlds have their own pleasing, disparate palettes, and they manage to take you through a variety of locales without resorting to standard platforming tropes. You won't see desert, fire or ice worlds here; instead, you get floating pirate ships, giant Tetrominoes and cerulean jungles. The game works the whole crayon box and is much better for it.
There's even some variation within the worlds themselves, which sets Henry Hatsworth apart from too many beat-'em-ups.
The soundtrack, which you can download legally here, is just as great, especially if you're as excited by jazzy circus music as I am. There's a vaguely creepy, carnivalian air about some of it, like those ridiculous (and perfect) CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM riffs but with a little extra zip.
The story and characters (forgot to carve aside a spot for these in our review template; will remedy this soon) are as slight as you'd expect from a game like this, but it's all certainly charming enough. In the Hatsworth universe, clothes make the man, and Henry is after a golden suit that would make him the world's No. 1 gentleman. Along the way, he'll have to fend off unscrupulous competitor Leopold Charles Anthony Weaselby the Third — the Dr. Robotnik to Henry's Sonic — and a rogues gallery of womanizers, invalids and fat ladies.
THE JUDGMENT
If you can stomach the game's wildly uneven difficulty and occasional bouts of burnout, HENRY HATSWORTH IN THE PUZZLING ADVENTURE will give you about a dozen hours of great platforming supplemented by middling puzzle play. Taken altogether, the game is more than the sum of its parts, and it makes a fine addition to the DS' ever-growing library of niche action titles.
Review: "My Facebook Friends"
This is meant mostly to be a template for Gameosaurus reviews going forward, but it's also a response to an especially instructive social experiment I staged last week.
For future reference, these first few paragraphs are where we clear the introductory bull for any given game. By "few," I'm thinking maybe three graphs, 150 words max.
THE SETUP
This is where we'll describe central gameplay conceits and how they play out. What makes the game worth playing? What's different? If it's not different, what does it do well or better than other games of its ilk, if anything?
To celebrate the public debut of our infant Web site, I invited about 100 of my Facebook friends last week to visit Gameosaurus. There are easy, low-profile ways to do put the word out, but because this was about getting the site in front of as many eyes as possible, I used Facebook's built-in "events" applet.
This involves filling out a few self-explanatory fields. Who's hosting the event, when it begins, when it ends, where it's happening, et cetera. When I finished, it looked like this.
Looks like busy-work, yeah? Looks like an enormous commitment, right?
A Web site announcement obviously is not a traditional "event," so I adapted a few of the fields with some vaguely Jurassic-sounding stuff. The phone number is 65000000, as in 65,000,000 years ago. The location (I had to choose from actual places) sounds like Pangaea, which last existed about 750 million years ago, but whatever.
I understand that the entire point of "events" is to solicit RSVPs and that I shouldn't take it personally if people choose not to attend.
But come on. This is a Web site. You click on a link, or you don't. In any case, you at least tell your "friend" that you attended, right? I'm not sure what one achieves by announcing, "No, I'll not be visiting the Web site into which you're dumping untold amounts of off-the-clock time and energy. I don't have time, what with all the wall-writing and photo-tagging I've yet to do today."
For the folks who said they're "maybe attending" or didn't announce at all, you guys are great. Even I, the host, "maybe" attended. And I don't hold anything against people who just passed over the invite altogether. That's the reaction I largely expected.
But I really was a little shocked by the 23 "not attending" folks. Almost all of these people were high school acquaintances who friend-requested me because they saw me pulling a book out of my locker after first period some Thursday seven years ago, or something. Twenty out of the 23 haven't spoken to or messaged me since they asked to be my friend. I'm either a device to boost their own friend counts or another name they can stalk in their mini-feeds, even as they complain about how "creepy" Facebook has become.
In other words, these people offer me no social utility whatsoever. Even three journalism professors, whom I confess I did ask to be my friends, declined to attend. These are the people who begged us hysterically to understand the rising tide of new media and how we should get involved as soon as possible.
One journalism professor did attend. She was my feature-writing teacher; coincidentally or un-, her class played a substantial role in reining in my less writerly instincts.
So by the end of the week, I'll have pruned 23 Facebook friends.
Propers to my 13 friends who attended, regardless of whether they actually checked out the site. You're attractive, sensitive creatures of value, and the world needs more of you.
THE PRESENTATION
Herein we'll catalogue what we like about the way a game looks and sounds. I'm a sucker for meticulously designed front-ends, so I'll likely devote more words than necessary to especially slick menus and whatnot. Dactyl and Nathus need not do the same.
THE JUDGMENT
Here's where we'll score the game. I've decided on a 5-point, whole-number system, which means no halfsies. One, two, three, four or five stars, fangs, talons or whatever we settle on. We need a graphic for it, too.
As for my Facebook "friends?" One star out of five. That's * of a possible *****. Epic, epic fail, people.
Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak"
There must be some kind of way out of here.
My plan was to word-vomit some impressions immediately after watching BATTLESTAR GALACTICA's series finale Friday night, but the climactic two-hour wrap-up left me numb.
And not in a bad way. My synapses just needed some time to reboot, reconfigure and learn to process a universe where my favorite show isn't airing new episodes.
Nearly all of the Battlestar's dozens of open questions — including several I hadn't even thought to ask — are answered with a wave of the proverbial wand. All along, it's been God, the Divine, the Eternal, the Something Greater to which the show has been referring explicitly since its debut in 2003.
The Internet is outraged. It wails. How could the creators of one of the headiest, best-acted and most tightly scripted television shows in the history of the medium end it all this way? We're talking about spaceships and faster-than-light travel, right? What's God got to do with it?
I'm as hard-boiled an atheist as anybody who's watched the show, though I wear the label differently than some do. I don't believe in God, but I don't presume to understand enough about the universe to say we got here by any other means, either.
And that's why I have absolutely no problem with the Powers That Be in Galactica's universe. In its final moments, the show goes out of its way to say that the Divine is unknowable, that it takes no one's side, that you can be damned one moment and blessed the next without ever understanding what you did to curry karma's favor. The only thing you can do is to persist, without being too much of a prick about it.
To have qualified it beyond that would have been disastrous.
I loved that the survivors of the terrific final stand — the finest, prettiest, most geographically sensible space battle ever assembled, in film or television or literature — found some peace. I'm thrilled and encouraged that these tortured people ultimately opted to simplify.
And while I'm tremendously saddened that Battlestar Galactica is over, I'm satisfied with what we've got. It's been a force for good for more than five years. I've mounted recruitment drives for the show's sake. I've begged and pleaded with everybody I know, but 19 out of 20 of you never made it past the miniseries, if you went that far.
Thankfully, the show has ended with dignity and of its own accord. And now we don't have to worry about cancellation, or endure any more glib dissections from the army of professional reductionists who feel they're owed something. If you didn't watch the show, or if you refused to enjoy it, it's your loss.
And you can borrow my DVD sets anytime.
The game that made me vomit
Stand tall, shake the heavens, and make plenty of allusions to philosophical/religious concepts.
Note: this article contains some minor spoilers for the game XENOGEARS. If you've never played XENOGEARS before, but still plan to play it someday, and really don't want to be spoiled, don't read this article. Otherwise, please do read it.
Like a good book or movie, games can evoke emotional responses from the person playing. Usually, when people are asked about games and emotions, most people think about anger that stems from the frustration of the gameplay: "why can't I beat this boss?" or "why did it start me that far back after I died?" But I tend to think about the content of the plot. The games I've played have made me happy, sad, tense, anxious, and even nauseated.
And when you have an extreme surge of feeling or emotion, it may result in a physical display. The game may include a comedic scene/event that makes you literally "laugh out loud." Or your favorite character dies and you shed a few tears (come on, I know some of you softies cried, more than once, over the whole Aeris fiasco; even the scenes in ADVENT CHILDREN or CRISIS CORE brought back all those emotions, did they not?). But rarely does a game make you feel so awful that you actually get sick. And I'm not talking about flashing lights messing with an epileptic. I'm talking about the content of the plot, assisted with the graphics and sound, leading you to the nearest toilet or waste basket so you can toss your cookies.
I hope I'm not the only person in the world to whom this has happened. I know it has happened to other people with movies (my little brother literally couldn't stomach The Matrix), but I've never heard any stories of other people vomiting from games! But then, if my experience is unique, that should make the following account all the more spectacular. The game that made me vomit wasn't a gross-out gore-filled horror game like RESIDENT EVIL or PHANTASMAGORIA (three cheers for wife-killing?). No, the game that most thoroughly influenced my digestive organs was an epic sci-fi fantasy RPG filled with cultural, historical, and philosophical references of the early- and mid-20th century. Yes, I am talking about Squaresoft's XENOGEARS.
The Maw: A game about eating
Maw is slightly scared of flowers
Meet Frank. Frank is a captive on a bounty hunter ship, destined to be be a slave or an exhibit in a zoo or some other trophy in a more-or-less horrible setting. Good for Frank, it becomes clear the ship is not going to make it to its destination. The ship crashes, giving Frank a chance at freedom.
Frank, our adorable hero
Finding out how to use Maw's growing and mimicry abilities is the key to solving the puzzles at the heart of THE MAW, a game by indie developer Twisted Pixel Games. Growing is pretty straightforward; Maw has to gain enough weight to set off a sensor at the end of each level. But Frank needs to experiment by feeding Maw new creatures and use the abilities they confer to find more food.
Virtual Console Round-Up: March '09 (and a brief look at the best and worst of all months prior)
Call it the TurboGrafx to my face and I'll punch you. Hardcore importers know that NEC's PC Engine is the greatest thing that didn't take off in North America.
One of our planned monthly features on Gameosaurus is a "Virtual Console Round-Up." It's a fairly relevant piece; after all, who doesn't want to pay for games you could have had freely (though illegally) on your computer anytime over the last decade?
Seriously though, there is something satisfying, not to mention ethical, about paying Nintendo a nominal fee to enjoy some of the greatest games from the 8, 16, and 64-bit eras. It's certainly cheaper than trying to hunt down all those old consoles on eBay and rebuilding a solid game collection. All that matters from here is that Nintendo puts all our favorite games on the service so we can freely spend our hard-earned dough on true classics!
This month, two games were released on VC on TurboGrafx-16 (aka the "PC Engine" in Japan). Both games were developed by Hudson, though Konami is the publisher on the latter title, which has never before reached North American gamers.
The first of the two games is BOMBERMAN '94. It had never before been released on TG16 in North America, but a port for the Genesis did reach Americans in 1994. If you remember playing MEGA BOMBERMAN for your Sega Genesis, then you've played this game. It's just the original TurboGrafx version of it, which (prior to now) had not existed in North America. Now personally, I am more prone to enjoying the Super Nintendo game SUPER BOMBERMAN; but until Hudson gets off their butt and puts that on Virtual Console, I suppose I'd be happy to play BOMBERMAN '94. It's all the same lovable, bomb-dropping dudes getting through maze-like environments to save the day.
It doesn't even matter what kind of game it is: you see this poster, you want to play it. And yes, we found this image on Wikipedia.
The other game coming to North America is DETANA!! TWINBEE. Now this particular game is a cutesy, shoujo-anime-style vertical scrolling shoot 'em up (or as I like to call it, "shmup") (REX: You and everybody else) that has seen unprecedented success in Japan, with a variety of ports and remakes in tow. At one point, Europe got this game in a limited release for the TG-16 under the name BELLS & WHISTLES ... so for the one European who stumbled upon our site, maybe you played that game (but chances are you didn't). Anyway, it's an admirable game, particularly because it blends two seemingly-disparate concepts (cute girls and massive destruction) and makes it work like a charm. But in terms of replay value and difficulty, it doesn't hold a candle to GRADIUS, or any of the new import shmups. And, that said, know that we will eventually devote some time to the TOUHOU phenomenon on Gameosaurus.
Other March releases include ALEX KIDD: THE LOST STARS (Sega Master System), OGRE BATTLE: THE MARCH OF THE BLACK QUEEN (SNES), and the extremely underwhelming SUMMER GAMES II for Commodore 64. Among these games, I'd say that the only one worth playing is OGRE BATTLE, and that's only if you like RPGs.
Now, since Gameosaurus hadn't existed from November of 2006 to the very recent past, we don't have a monthly Round-Up of releases for the 28 months we missed. So here's a quick summary of worthwhile Virtual Console content.
Obviously, all oldschool Nintendo fans have plenty to love. Nearly every MARIO and ZELDA game for Nintendo 64 and all prior consoles exist on the VC. Other classics, such as MEGA MAN 2 (NES), the DONKEY KONG COUNTRY series (SNES), SUPER CASTLEVANIA IV (SNES), and SUPER METROID (SNES) can all be found.
RPG fans will be pleased to find such classics as SUPER MARIO RPG: LEGEND OF THE SEVEN STARS (SNES), SECRET OF MANA (SNES), SHINING FORCE I and II (Sega Genesis), and PHANTASY STAR II, III, and IV (Sega Genesis). If you're into fighting games, there are a ton of SNK-developed games on the Neo Geo: FATAL FURY, SAMURAI SHODOWN, ART OF FIGHTING, etc. But beware of the disgustingly bad VIRTUA FIGHTER 2 (Sega Genesis). The 32X-based port of the Sega Saturn title isn't worth a single penny. I have a friend who made the mistake of paying for this one.
In my opinion, the vast majority of notable games are originally SNES titles. And for 800 Wii Points apiece, they're definitely worth the price paid. If you've never played ACTRAISER before, you owe it to yourself to give it a try. And there are plenty of other gems you can find using the VC service. I'm serious.
Play this game. Play it right now.
I'm also serious about this point, however: Nintendo needs to drastically increase the catalog of games available, and reduce prices as much as possible, if they want to effectively fight the "problem" of illegal emulation. Japan has nearly double the amount of Virtual Console titles that we have, and their list is far more interesting, with far more worthwhile games, than what's available in North America. The rate at which games are released on the service, and the reputability of those games, needs to increase in a hurry of the Virtual Console service wants to remain competitive against...um...piracy.
Rapid climax, I choose you!
Chansey!
We're going to give podcasting our best shot sometime in the next few weeks, but all three of us are brand new to this thing, so it might be dicey at first. A little dead air here, a few too many minutes spent dwelling on the weather or sinus infections there.
So there's nothing wrong with looking to the competition for a few pointers, and it was while studying Rebel FM, composed mostly of 1UP staffers who were laid off during the massive January exodus, that I stumbled on this gem.
The challenge put to Rebel FM listeners before last week's show was simple: describe your sex life using only the names of POKÉMON abilities. The response over at eat-sleep-game.com, home of the podcast, was pretty terrific. You can browse the answers at your leisure, but my personal favorite has to be from "Jake," who apparently gave the Rebel FM guys the idea.
They took my pokemon moves suggestion, awesome.
Anyways:
Harden
Hyper Beam
Flee
Spoken like a tro Snorlax, Jake. You are a gentleman and a scholar.
I haven't played a Pokémon game since, uh, Blue, so I'm not up to speed on my TMs. But here in a nutshell is what goes on behind my bedroom door.
HARDEN
VICEGRIP
EXTREME SPEED
CONFUSE RAY
FAKE TEARS
RECOVER
AMNESIA
Anyone can play! Try it!
An emotional history unrelated to Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II
Beating up defenseless citizens, popular long before GTA
I suppose I should devote my first few words to the origins of my gaming fetish. I have a thing for PCs. They're my constant. I spend all of work on a keyboard and, aside from time with the band and the girl, I'm on a different colored keyboard at home. It started with my dad, who conducted occasional marathon Kingmaker sessions with college friends until CIVNET made them obsolete.
When he brought home our first computer, a blazing fast 386 with 10s of megabytes of space, he played more games on it than me or my brother. He was the first of the family to beat MINES OF TITAN, and he spent more time trying to get games to run in DOS than whatever it was he told my mom he was getting the computer for. Browsing the store that sold shareware at Delco Plaza and going to computer shows are pretty much the only fond memories I have of my dad before he quit the soul-sucking insurance business to be a librarian and a poorer, less angry person.
Cave Story or Doukutsu Monogatari
I have an emotional attachment to the beige boxes. Sure, things 'just work' on PCs with an alarming irregularity, but that's what you pay for an open platform. My descent into DIY/Punk culture was tied to subversive gems like FALLOUT and one-man operations like CAVE STORY as much as it was to Operation Ivy and Against All Authority. Those games influenced me in ways that Sonic and Duck Hunt never did. The raw element of the indie game scene continues to keep me wasting most of my gaming hours on the PC today. The PlayStation Network, WiiWare and XBox Live Arcade distribution models are a good start, but still present painfully high barriers for developers to jump, which is a risk developers aren't always willing to take.
So that's my introduction. Now on to WARHAMMER 40,000: DAWN OF WAR 2.
DoW2 is incomplete. Two-thirds of what is there is exceptional. The single-player and cooperative modes recreate the small, squad-based conflicts that made the table-top game so fun to play. Without resources to manage, battles become a tactical affair. Cover is both essential and, with the right equipment, destructible, and each squad serves a specific function. But even the most thoughtful approach quickly breaks down into a chaotic grudge match, which is a joy to watch thanks to detailed and smoothly animated character models.
Space Marines, your only hope, and choice, in Dawn of War II
Sadly, though your squad leaders will grow in power and offensive variety, the missions remain the same. You attack Orks, Tyrannids or Eldar, or you defend a structure. Again and again and again. The illusion of control granted by non-linear missions helps, and group of squad leaders with real personality is a welcome touch, but the varietal deficit leaves the game feeling unfinished. What's there is a joy to play, that relieves the genre of its most tedious aspect.
The last third of what is there is a completely different game. It does away with the tactical approach in favor the resource management and large armies common to the RTS genre. There aren't any buildings, but it still feels more like the first Dawn of War than the single player game I've been playing. If I wanted to play DAWN OF WAR, I would. But I don't. I want to play what I've been playing with my roommate, only now I want to destroy him. And I can't for reasons that are beyond me.
Final thoughts? What is there of the game is great. What is missing? Too much to recommend a purchase at this point. If Relic releases campaigns for the Orks, Eldars and Tyrannids, and they add other races -- Tau and Chaos Marines would be a good start -- the game could be worth $50. But for now, it's really just for people who love the table-top version of Warhammer 40,000.
Also, I hate Games for Windows Live. It's intrusive in the game, and its logo is an ugly stain on the box art that screams this "game has been tainted by Windows, install at your own risk."
On tap this weekend: MadWorld, RE5, Halo Wars
What's up, nobody at all?
I'll be in court all day Friday, and Friday night is set aside for Russell Brand's Comedy Central special and the first third of the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA finale.
But I've carved out a good chunk of Saturday for a pretty substantial gaming blitz, which means playing and posting impressions of MADWORLD, RESIDENT EVIL 5 and HALO WARS.
I'm still in a quandary over which version of RE5 to pick up. They're probably identical functionally, so I've put down money on the 360 version because I know more potential RE5 players on Xbox Live. But Dactyl, who's told me he's getting the game as well, is PS3-bound.
If I can get assurances from Dactyl (hint, hint) that he will buy the game and be the Sheva to my Chris Redfield, I'll definitely go with the PS3 version.
Also, I've opened my MAPLE STORY account on the free MMO's Windia Server. Dactyl and Rambo should do the same.
Dragon Quest V, and a rant about the state of the handheld RPG market
So I just finished playing through DRAGON QUEST V: HAND OF THE HEAVENLY BRIDE on the DS. As far as insight goes, I have little to say. It's DRAGON QUEST. It's the quintessence of Traditional JRPG.
Okay, okay, it does have some different features to it. DQV's big novelty is the "generation" setup. You start as a young child, adventuring alongside your father. Then you get older, and you get married, and you have some kids, and then your whole family takes on a world-threatening evil power. And since the art's done by Akira Toriyama, you may as well name yourself Goku and your son Gohan. There's even a golden orb you have to find at one point to bring the dragon back to his proper place. Come on!
But that's not really what I want to talk about. What I do want to talk about is the dilemma of RPGs, particularly on handheld devices, at this current juncture.