Investigative review: "Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth"
I like this game. Well, I like this whole series. This review will be a shameless pitch of the entire series, including the most recent entry. Take it all in, and don't think about it too much. You'll want to save your brain power for the games themselves.
ACE ATTORNEY INVESTIGATIONS: MILES EDGEWORTH is the fifth game in a series with a decade-long history in Japan, though only half of that decade has featured any North American presence. In 2001, the very first GYAKUTEN SAIBAN game hit the Game Boy Advance in Japan. That game would be ported to the DS in 2005 and localized in America as PHOENIX WRIGHT: ACE ATTORNEY. Two more Phoenix Wright titles would round out the base trilogy. A fourth game, released two years ago, starred a new defense lawyer; APOLLO JUSTICE: ACE ATTORNEY. And now, in game number five, players take control of Wright's rival, prosecutor Miles Edgeworth.
Jurassic Radio #41: da na Na NA!
This week, you'll have to forgive or skip past what is likely the geekiest moment in the history of this program.
See, about 10 days ago, I did my taxes. I got a roughly $1,200 refund, which is awesome. Moments later, I'd spent it on my Newegg shopping cart, which included enough parts to make a quasi-godly computer.
Well, after some nearly catastrophic operator error, said computer has been assembled, and it's systematically destroying every other priority in my life.
So magnificent and so enduring is this feeling that I completely forgot to mention the outstanding THE MISADVENTURES OF P.B. WINTERBOTTOM on Xbox Live Arcade. I also checked out DARWINIA+, but you won't hear about that on this podcast. No, it's just me, my avatar and THE SIMS 3. That's one tremendously embarrassing confession, but heck, it's a tremendous game. I'll get to DAWN OF WAR II and DRAGON AGE just as soon as my pretend chess prodigy boyfriend Parker gets a job.
Fortunately, the Gameodactyl and Gamegnathus pick up my slack. Gameodactyl's been completely consumed by the reportedly fantastic MILES EDGEWORTH: ACE ATTORNEY INVESTIGATIONS, while Rambo is still hip-deep in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: CALL OF PRIPYAT.
(I can play that game, too! Cuz I GOT A COMPUTER, Y'ALL. But I'm going to finish SHADOW OF CHERNOBYL first, because I have that. God, computers are hardXcore.)
But that's not all! We wrestle with ethnocentric anxiety as we dissect Gogol Bordello's "Live from Axis Mundi" DVD, which you can find here or on iTunes for about $10.
With music from Team Teamwork, Four Tet and Five Iron Frenzy.
PODCAST
(right-click to save, use player below, or get the show on iTunes here)
Jurassic Radio #41: da na Na NA!
00:00 - 34:07 -- What we've been playing
ACT BREAK -- Team Teamwork, "Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg - Still D.R.E. (Getting treasure)"
34:32 - 53:07 -- Gogol Bordello, "Live from Axis Mundi"
ACT BREAK -- Four Tet, "Circling"
53:28 - 1:12:58 -- The news, what's coming out
OUTRO -- Five Iron Frenzy, "Third World Think Tank"
Gimme more to review: "Kurulin Fusion"
As stated on our most recent episode of Jurassic Radio, I downloaded this surprisingly cheap PSN title because it was being touted for musical involvement from Nobuo Uematsu. When I first downloaded it, I didn't care what the content of the game was, I just wanted to hear something different from Uematsu.
Turns out, the music was actually synth-arranged J.S. Bach music, and the individual who did the actual arrangement was Kenichiro Iwasaki. So Uematsu is listed as the "sound director" of KURULIN FUSION. What does that mean? Did he pick which Bach songs should be arranged? Did he do synth manipulation? I have absolutely no idea. And I don't really care; this game shouldn't be sold on the laurels of its soundtrack. It's good music, but it turns out my misguided purchasing habits allowed me to stumble into a decent puzzle game.
This is a "pieces drop from the top, make awesome formations" kind of puzzle game, akin to TETRIS or DR. MARIO. I specifically mention Dr. Mario because every piece you're given is a rectangular block with a split down the middle (essentially, two squares). Now, in Dr. Mario, the goal was to throw colored pills at viruses, which already existed in the field of play, and match up virus and pill color to defeat the viruses. Extending the Dr. Mario analogy, the two types of "things" that can be on either side of a piece are orbs and blocks. Orbs are like the viruses, and blocks are like the pills. Except, in Kurulin Fusion, all it takes is one pill to kill as many viruses as are adjacent to it, or to another virus that is adjacent to the pill (i.e. -- possibility for massive chains).
Let's drop the Dr. Mario analogy, because the similarities end here. The orbs and blocks come, sometimes in the same piece, but sometimes orbs are paired, or blocks are paired. Statistically, you are given more orbs than blocks. Different modes of play determine how many colors appear, but the max is four: red, blue, green, yellow. Every possible combination of piece imaginable will be given to you, except for one: putting an orb and a block of the same color in one piece is never done. You can get two orbs of the same color, or two blocks, but never the two types thrown together when they're the same color.
The rules of the game are simple. You're dropping pieces in a contained space, and clearing orbs by sucking them into blocks earns you points. If your pieces spill out over the top of the field, it's game over. Also, after a certain number of pieces drop, a row of randomized orbs and blocks will appear at the bottom and push everything up one row. In arcade mode, every 15 levels goes in a speed cycle: start slow, then speed up, til at level 15 (or 30, or 45), you've reached "pieces drop instantly" speed. After clearing this, at the next level, the pieces drop slowly again. However, the rate at which new rows of random crap appear at the bottom continues to accelerate with each level.
The game looks like this: a 9x12 grid and lots of color.
Keys to becoming an expert player essentially involve playing big risk/reward games. You see, the "block" pieces can be fused. Put two blocks of the same color next to each other, and they become one rectangle. You can have blocks that take up one, two, four, six, and nine squares total. The larger the block, the more points you get. And the massive nine-block will destroy all orbs of the same color, regardless of positioning. Also, setting up chains (block sucks up orb, pieces above drop, more block/orb destruction continues) is a way to earn big points.
My favorite form of the game is the mission mode. There are 30 stages in mission mode, and each one has a different objective. Sometimes it's as simple as "don't lose in a given amount of time." Other times it's "destroy so many orbs," or "build a fusion block of a particular size," or a variety of other objectives. And each of them comes with a time limit. The challenges get harder and harder, and they are tons of fun. Unfortunately, a skilled player (such as myself) can clear all 30 challenges in an afternoon. After that, there really isn't much left to do with the game. Except play multiplayer, which doesn't have random match setups... you need to have friends also playing the game. What a shame!
For its price, it's a great game. I just want more objective-based challenges. And hey, maybe add a fifth color that corresponds with a larger field of play? There's plenty of room to expand, and I'd be fine paying more money for it.
Played: 4 hours, no multiplayer
Platform(s): PSP (PSN)
Price: $4.99
The first hour: "S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat"
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: CALL OF PRIPYAT, the most recent entry in the Stalker franchise was released last Friday, but only on Amazon. The earliest delivery date would have been Wednesday, but the end-times snow storm made that date less likely.
So in my despondency, I put off the purchase. I'm glad I did. Call of Pripyat came out on Steam a week after the official release date, and it's a bargain. The collector's edition is all that's available through Amazon, and it's already priced pretty low at $40. But Steam has it at $30, and they're running a loyalty promotion that drops the price to $20 if you have either of the two previous games, Shadow of Chernobyl or Clear Skies, in your Steam games list. I think that's a promotion that developers or distributors should run more often.
Call of Pripyat is far more stable than either previous game was at launch. It hasn't crashed on me yet. It's not the prettiest game, and it still has some odd bugs, but I'm glad to return to the irradiated Russian back-country. So let me take you on a tour through the first hour of the game.
Warning, there are a lot of images after the jump.
Jurassic Radio #40: R-P-Wha?
New stuff! We talk about S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: CALL OF PRIPYAT, BIOSHOCK 2, KURULIN FUSION and TATSUNOKO VS. CAPCOM.
Old stuff! Pat Gann is grievously offended by CROSS EDGE, and I have the privilege of handing down the final word on MASS EFFECT 2. We also talk briefly about what makes an RPG an RPG, and we finish up our Winning Time of NO MORE HEROES. Thankfully.
Students of the show, will recognize that we've moved onto our fourth piece of unlicensed intro music in less than a year -- one of the few benefits of pulling in about 25 listeners a week. This time, it's Five Iron Frenzy's "Third World Think Tank," and I think it matches the show better than any track since the Chk Chk Chk song we used at the get-go. It sounds appropriately ... Jurassic, I think.
Also, yes, we know precisely how many people download the show now. Hello, lone South Korean listener! Thanks for tuning in. Tell your South Korean friends. In fact, tell all your friends. The two best ways you can help us expand our reach, feel better about ourselves and up our game is to bring in at least one new listener and REVIEW US ON ITUNES. That's not just for our egos -- it's an absurdly valuable metric that would boost our visibility on the iTunes store a lot.
I'm not begging. I'm demanding. Do it!
With music from Of Montreal and the Suicide Machines.
PODCAST
(right-click to save, use player below, or get the show on iTunes here)
00:00 - 44:30 -- What we've been playing
44:31 - 1:01:12 -- Really pondering great RPGs
ACT BREAK -- Of Montreal, "Wicked Wisdom"
1:01:54 - 1:32:48 -- Winning Time: NO MORE HEROES
1:32:49 - 2:00:44 -- The news, what's coming out
OUTRO -- The Suicide Machines, "Stand Up"
King of crossovers review: "Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom"
Capcom has never shied away from crossover titles. Though there are examples before it, the first significant example was the crossover fighter MARVEL VS. CAPCOM and its sequel. Some fighting fans also will remember CAPCOM VS. SNK, released about the same time. After that, there was a strategy RPG called NAMCO X CAPCOM, followed by more crossover strategy RPGs with Capcom characters, including the recent CROSS EDGE for PlayStation 3 (published by NIS America).
Clearly, Capcom has no problem pitting its intellectual property against that of other companies and seeing who comes out the winner in the heat of battle. The latest in the trend is TATSUNOKO VS. CAPCOM: ULTIMATE ALL-STARS. It is best understood as the Japanese equivalent to MARVEL VS. CAPCOM. While the Japanese aren't entirely clueless about the Marvel franchise, they acknowledge that it is an American company and the average Japanese person is probably more familiar with homegrown fantasy heroes, including those from Tatsunoko.
The reverse relationship holds true as well: some of us know Gatchaman and Casshern because we're big-time anime otaku nerds, but we're much more familiar with Marvel characters.
(side note: I kind of want a "Marvel vs. Tatsunoko" game now.)
She's a man, baby, yeah! A Yatterman!
The original version of this game was, of course, an arcade cabinet, released in 2008. The console port, exclusively for Nintendo Wii, came to Japan at the end of 2008, then to North America at the beginning of 2010, despite the difficulty of licensing issues.
The Gameosaurus Rex noted in a previous podcast that this game is a competent fighter. And it is definitely that. But is it anything more than that? I think it is.
First of all, Capcom continues to refine the "give and take" formula of on-the-fly swapping and tag-teaming within a fighting game. It is hardly a new concept for a 2D fighter to allow "team battles" and character swapping. But in TvC, it's a necessity not just to use this game mechanic, but to learn to use it well. Also, I know this may sound trivial, but the whole two-person team thing has a very different feeling than MvC's three-person team. Also, those two "giant" characters that you can learn to play as, forced solo, are truly fascinating. One of them is a giant robot built off of a golden cigarette lighter. Silly Tatsunoko!
Gold Lightan, you have no idea how much I love you.
Second, you get to play as Viewtiful Joe. That's a very serious selling point. Viewtiful Joe is awesome, and he plays extremely well. I love having a short, agile, male character to play as for once. And though we don't get to play as an OKAMI character, the final boss of the campaign mission is a villain from Okami. So that makes for two Clover franchises represented in this game. Instant plus.
But, perhaps most importantly, this is a competent fighter that manages to work on the Wii's ... unique input system. There's a long-standing debate among fighter-fans about whether or not having a classic arcade stick will make you play better than a console control pad. Most experts would argue in favor of the original arcade stick, and many casual gamers will argue it doesn't matter and they're happy to be using the default controller. But the Wii controls? It's like trying to elect a third-party president in the U.S. It just ain't happening!
Yet, it did happen, and it works. I'm not saying it's great. But I can use it, and I don't mind using it. Yes, you can also plug in a classic control, and I'm happy to play using this setup. But if you want to use wand and nunchuck, you can. And it feels fine. Not "natural," per se, but certainly workable.
It also looks decent graphically, which is something I wasn't expecting on a Wii title. Smooth, crisp animation for the win.
Summary: Viewtiful Joe, good graphics, obscure Tatsunoko characters (that might turn you on to classic anime!), surprisingly smooth transition to Wii = four stars. If you liked MARVEL VS. CAPCOM, you are almost sure to like TATSUNOKO VS. CAPCOM. Give it a try.
Played: completed story mode with some characters, 5+ hours, no multiplayer
Platform(s): Wii
Price: $49.99
Jurassic Radio #39: The Cycle
Because we were snowed in last week (as we might well be this week, if the relentlessly snowy forecast is accurate), we did the podcast over Skype for the first time. And with the help of a free app that insists on encoding to MP3 on the fly, we recorded a pretty darn good show.
It's hard to say what sounds better; our usual shows don't sound nearly as telephonic as this week's does, but recording on individual mics almost completely knocked out the ambient crap we usually pick up, and our annunciation sounds much better as well.
In any case, the almost-40th episode brings more talk of MASS EFFECT 2 (and expect more yet next week), the Gameodactyl on IMMORTAL EMPIRE and THEXDER NEO, Gamegnathus on THE VOID and yours truly on CHIME.
In Winning Time, we take a look at Team Teamwork's incredible "Vinyl Fantasy 7," which has been cease-and-desisted but can still be found through simple Googling, or by clicking, say, here. And we gush about ONE BUTTON BOB, a pretty elucidating Flash game you can find here.
With music from Project Majestic Mix and Supersystem and comedy from Aziz Ansari.
PODCAST
(right-click to save, use player below, or get the show on iTunes here)
00:00 - 25:01 -- What we've been playing
ACT BREAK -- Project Majestic Mix, "Anxious Heart"
25:31 - 48:18 -- Winning Time: "Vinyl Fantasy VII," ONE BUTTON BOB
ACT BREAK -- Aziz Ansari, "Are White People Psyched All the Time?"
51:07 - 1:171:32 -- The news, what's coming out
OUTRO -- Supersystem, "Click Click"
Rectangular review: "PIXEL!"
The latest wave of 8-bit nostalgia comes in a few flavors. There are the pixel-perfect reproductions of what we remember from the late '80s (MEGAMAN 9, the stellar VVVVVV), the loving but snarky send-ups of those same memories (NO MORE HEROES 2), and the glut of micro-budget games that rely on Famicom-era visuals for easy cost-savings.
PIXEL!, the third title in the impressively consistent Arkedo Series on Xbox Live's "Indie Games" service, is all of the above. You control Pixel, a digitized feline composed of a fixed number of white squares, as she moves left to right in pursuit of MEOWCITY, the intermittently maddening final stage.
(Could Pixel be a he? I'm partial to she, but you can be the judge. Dude cats are useless creatures, and everybody knows it. I'll fight dissenters.)
She's a she, dammit.
The game is a gloriously precise 2-D platformer that lasts about two hours. Pixel walks pretty cautiously at first, but by holding the right trigger, you send her into a full-on Mario trot that lengthens and heightens her jumps. You have complete control of her in the air, too, which is pretty important, as you'll spend a sizable chunk of the game airborne. Nearly every choice you make involves how and when to jump on something, be it a load-bearing cloud or stack of blocks or angry, KIRBY-looking tree dude.
Then there are the ladder segments, when Pixel must hop from rung to suspended-from-space rung or face certain death. Thankfully, these are tests more of dexterity than of patience. You'll die plenty, but it'll be your fault, and you'll be a better player for it. Only in a few instances are you forced to leap blind into the great abyss, hoping there's a spring or cloud to catch you below.
You'll be asked occasionally to tug on the left trigger to pull up a magnifying glass. This lets you zoom into certain blocks, a handful of enemies and, in one pretty clever puzzle, yourself, at which point you have a couple seconds to navigate a maze loosely based on the pixel-by-pixel makeup of the item in question. You're generally rewarded with some health to fill your three hearts or with one of 18 "useless relics" — collectibles which, by the game's own admission, exist to artificially lengthen the game. There's no discernible in-game benefit to finding them all, aside from the satisfaction of having discovered some pretty well-hidden secrets. I played each of the game's six stages twice, and I've found only half of the relics.
For the most part, the zooming mechanic is a neat idea that's used often enough to be a feature and sparingly enough not to be a headache.
If you've seen the photo above, you have a pretty good idea of what PIXEL! looks like. Each actual pixel is an exaggerated white block, sometimes joining together in ways so abstract that you'll have to ask yourself what you're seeing. The last enemy you'll encounter, and the most difficult, is supposedly a giant mouse (fuckers), but he looks more like a pig in a sports coat or something out of Dimension X. Certainly that level of abstraction is deliberate, and it's part of the fun.
Also contributing to the charm are a few really good chiptunes and the soft blues that color the backgrounds. But by the time you get to MEOWCITY, those blues can feel pretty static. The other games in the Arkedo canon — JUMP! and SWAP! — make skillful and vibrant use of contrast and neons. To my taste, PIXEL! could have used some more of that.
At 240 Microsoft Points (3 earth bucks), the game is a pretty smart investment. It's not as abusive as JUMP!, and it certainly has more personality than SWAP! If you want a reasonably fleshed-out demonstration of what the Xbox 360's indies can do, this feels like a good place to start.
Played: entire game, about two hours
Platform(s): Xbox Live Arcade
Price: 240 Microsoft Points ($3)
GNILLEY @ Game Jam Sydney: Where Screaming Is Everything
Today's Gameodactyl post was supposed to be about TATSUNOKO VS CAPCOM. And even though the game isn't exactly heavy on content, I felt I needed another week to flesh out a good review. Sorry all (especially Rex)!
So I wanted to share with our faithful reader(s) this excellent video from Game Jam Sydney.
(Global Game Jam is an awesome once-a-year event where indie developers present awesome games that they developed in a short amount of time.)
So this "game," if you can call it that, is entitled GNILLEY. The idea started as an experiment involving sound pitches manipulating colors and shades in a game. Eventually, the game (d)evolved into one where angry yelling leads to winning. All enemies go down via yelling. Bosses go down via lots of yelling.
To be fair, there were a few puzzles and tricks worked in where, to get past a barrier, you should only yell at 20% to 30% max yelling capacity.
Also the game uses a bunch of sprites and environments from Zelda. Just to save time as a basic building block I guess.
Anyway, check out the above video, and download the game to play for yourself by clicking here.
Jurassic Radio #38: MAN THE MEAT
Okay, guys! Happy Thursday!
The show is late this week because I finally — finally — found a solution that lets me spy on you wonderful cretins.
Well, not actually. It tracks the number of podcast downloads. That data, coupled with our Google Analytics reports, should help us decide where we need to concentrate our considerable resources.
Right? Pfft. Rofl and stuff.
See, when we had this nebulous, hazy, quasi-idealistic view of how many visitors and listeners we had, we could labor under the fantasy that we were talking to people we didn't know. Hence all of the "Seeya guys next week" and "Tell your friends" talk.
Now I know — know — that we're basically talking to ourselves and our friends. Which is fine! That can help make us better, sharpen our focus and hopefully up our gumption where updating and outreach is concerned.
Oh, this week's show? It's good. MASS EFFECT 2, GLORY OF HERACLES and NO MORE HEROES 2, with another crack at the first NO MORE HEROES in Winning Time.
With music from The Get Up Kids, A.A. Bondy and Hot Rod Circuit.
Thanks again to the Gameodactyl for continuing to post while the other guy and I blow it. We love you!
PODCAST
(right-click to save, use player below, or get the show on iTunes here)
Jurassic Radio #38: MAN THE MEAT
00:00 - 28:54 -- What we've been playing
ACT BREAK -- The Get Up Kids, "Man of Conviction"
29:28 - 48:18 -- Winning Time: NO MORE HEROES
ACT BREAK -- A.A. Bondy, "When the Devil's Loose"
48:57 - 1:11:12 -- The news, what's coming out
OUTRO -- Hot Rod Circuit, "Let's Go Out"