If I sit on the controller, I can take down an entire army!

Baba O'Reily · Post by **Baba O'Reily** » Sat Oct 14, 2006 7:51 pm

I seem to be in an unfortunate streak of picking up button mashers.

One game made up for its premise with its engaging, over-the-top concept.

The other took itself far too seriously for its own good and presented an almost entirely unlikable cast.

I won't name names, because I don't want to influence opinions one way or another. That would be awful.

Alright, so this first game, it came out four days ago for the Playstation 2. It openly markets itself as a 3D beat-em-up, and thank God for it. The soundtrack is, in my opinion, excellent, as surf music is rarely, if ever, found in... well... anything. But the game itself feels very fast-paced, and while there can be a bit of mashing involved, it's hardly noticeable if you're trying to, you know, win. The graphics flow rather smoothly, which I did not expect, and the game has a sense of humor, which is nice.

The other game, well.... Seven different characters, I empathized with one, enjoyed playing as another one, and I hated everyone else with a fiery passion. It was released a while ago, but I played the demo, and I was fairly unimpressed, but I figured that the game might be worth a shot. Unfortunately, and unlike the last game, the full version is essentially "rake your hand across the controller until the pretty colors stop and/or the enemies are dead, and then move at a snail's pace towards the next overwhelming troupe of enemies, rinse and repeat" for around 25 stages. Each time you unlock another character, it's just the same as the one before, except with a little twist. "This one is fast!" "This one can't jump but has good combos!" "This one can glide and cast magic!" It's all the same after a while, and you begin to hate the game, slowly but surely. The voice acting was fairly bland, the leveling system cruel and unforgiving, and the overall feeling I had was that the game was like a very pretty laser show with amazing cleavage.

Post by **Delphine** » Sat Oct 14, 2006 8:37 pm

You can't review games without telling us what they are. That's stupid.

Locit · Post by **Locit** » Sat Oct 14, 2006 8:44 pm

Second'd.

M.C.Dillinger · Post by **M.C.Dillinger** » Sat Oct 14, 2006 8:59 pm

Game 1: God Hand
Game 2: Ninety nine knights

Am I right?

Ngangbius · Post by **Ngangbius** » Sat Oct 14, 2006 8:59 pm

The first game sounds like God Hand. I don't know what the second one is.

Baba O'Reily · Post by **Baba O'Reily** » Sat Oct 14, 2006 9:03 pm

M.C.Dillinger wrote:Game 1: God Hand
Game 2: Ninety nine knights

Am I right?

You would be correct.

Shadow Hog · Post by **Shadow Hog** » Sat Oct 14, 2006 9:25 pm

Mmm... on the topic of expressing opinions of games recently obtained, I picked up Street Fighter Collection for the Saturn a while back, myself, it being my first Street Fighter game, period (well, games; while the distinction between Super Street Fighter II and Super Street Fighter II Turbo merely boils down to the latter pretty much being the first one, but better, the OTHER title is Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold, which is completely different). After playing for a while, I won't lie - I suck pretty hard. I'm still getting my ass kicked by CPU opponents on one star (particularly Sagat in SSF2 - strangely, Bison right after him isn't so hard), and I seriously have a hard time pulling off the Shoryu-ken on the gamepad.

That said, they're damn fun, I just suck. Kinda like how I'm doing with Guardian Heroes, too - starts out easy enough, but later on in the game I'm often vastly outnumbered by enemies of higher level than I am. Fighting games never really were my forte, even if I have lots of fun with them. *shrug*

As for God Hand and Ninety-Nine Nights, I don't have a PS2, and I'd heard the latter sucked so I pretty much forgot it existed. (Not like I can play the 360 much anyway, seeing as I'm more leeching off of everyone else's than actually having my own.)

Cuckooguy · Post by **Cuckooguy** » Sat Oct 14, 2006 9:57 pm

Hey, while we're talking about games...

I bought Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner recently. I heard it was pretty good, but the truth is I've only beaten the first dungeon so far. So mentioning this game is kinda pointless. I've currently shelved this game for the time being, but I'll pick it up again when I feel like it.

I've also played Suikoden 5. Well, what can I say about it. It's better than Suikoden 4 but not as ambitious as Suikoden 3 and not as good as Suikoden 2. I think it's main fault is that it's trying too much to be like Suikoden 2. Supposedly, S3 wasn't well received in Japan so they dropped that formula, which is a shame, because if the series keeps this stagnant formula of liberating towns and gaining allies all the time, then I'll have to give up on Konami ever bringing out the series' potential.

Actually, there are a lot of good things to say about Suikoden 5; for those who don't know, the scenario writer is the same as Skies of Arcadia's, so you'd expect some lovable characters, right? Well, I'm going to commend him for trying real hard at trying to make lovable characters, because you can tell a lot of effort went into breathing life into their personalities. But... but I don't know why it is I don't give a fuck. Perhaps it's because there's no one main character I'm really attached to. At least in S2, there was the ongoing conflict of Nanami not wanting Hero2 and Jowy to fight. Because of this and because her personality complements Hero2, I became attached to her. Suikoden 5's answer to Gremio and Nanami is the Prince's bodyguard Lyon. Unfortunately, she doesn't complement the Prince well because she herself has a boring personality. All she wants to do is "I must protect the Prince, I must protect the Prince."

Speaking of the main characters, the character designs are lovely, except the gay-ass looking main character and a couple of questionable clothings throughout the game, but none are as horrible as the Prince's. Apparently, Konami never learned anything from Raiden (MGS2) and looked at the trend Square was practicing, as in a gaudy or girly looking main character. Besides this, the character designs are vibrant, unique, and do very well in portraying the kind of culture the Queendom of Falena has. The only other character design complaint, besides the Prince, are the outfits of the Queen's Knights; the giant bows on the back of their uniforms are very unpractical.

The cutscenes are real-time (except for a few, I can only think of two cutscenes that are movie files) and they do a good job of putting a lot of characters into one scene without lagging the game too much (with over 108 characters and 6 characters per battle, they probably had some serious polygon limits for each character). But even so, it seems Konami doesn't really care about the series as much and throws their worst programmers onto this game. It is because of this that perhaps the greatest complaint about Suikoden 5 is in it's presentation. The overhead camera is outdated and I wish they'd bring Suikoden 4's camera back. Normally, Popcorn makes an argument about how cutscenes take away the immersion and reminds the player that they're playing a game; Cutscenes usually don't bother me that much, but in S5 the transition is actually very jarring. Because walking around towns uses a bird-eye's view and cutscenes use a much more intimate view, the camera jump just cuts off the immersion, Not only that, but a bunch of cutscenes are only 10 seconds long where they introduce a character, have them say one line, and then end the cutscene. That coupled with the long load times and the contrast in text and voice acting create, like I said, a jarring experience.

I've probably rambled on too long about S5 so...

I recently bought Sly 2. I like it so far, and I've beaten the boss of the first area (the lizard guy). The game is fun, but somehow I don't think it's quite as fun as the first one. I think my main complaint lies in the "adventure areas", like Sonic Adventure had. In order to reach certain levels, you have to walk around the "adventure field", which is also filled with badguys and obstacles. While they didn't bother me that much at first, they're starting to scratch my nerves. However, for now it's not that big a deal, and I'll probably finish it for now unless the "adventure fields" are a lot worse than the first one.

I've also tried out Fable, but I haven't left that one Hero's Institution or whatever it is yet.

Shadow Hog · Post by **Shadow Hog** » Sat Oct 14, 2006 10:44 pm

Poison Eggroll wrote:Speaking of the main characters, the character designs are lovely, except the gay-ass looking main character and a couple of questionable clothings throughout the game, but none are as horrible as the Prince's. Apparently, Konami never learned anything from Raiden (MGS2) and looked at the trend Square was practicing, as in a gaudy or girly looking main character.

Let me remind you that this is Konami we're talking about. You know, the same one that's been putting androgynous male leads in Castlevania games since Symphony of the Night.

Post by **Green Gibbon!** » Sat Oct 14, 2006 11:07 pm

Apparently the original Suikoden writer/director left Konami after the third one. Suikoden 4 felt like a valiant effort, but an effort is all it was. I figured I'd bail out while I could still recall the series with affection. I guess, then, that I've been right in resisting the urge to try Suikoden 5? Or what about that Rhapsodia nonsense?

I gave up on Sly 2 about halfway through. It didn't have the focus of the first one - those hub areas are large and boring and it's just not much fun playing as Bentley and Murray every other goddamn stage. Sly 3 looked like more of the same schtick so that's another wayward series I've abandoned.

Post by **Segaholic2** » Sun Oct 15, 2006 12:07 am

Suikoden 5 is supposedly decently good. That's the general reaction I've witnessed, at least.

Cuckooguy · Post by **Cuckooguy** » Sun Oct 15, 2006 12:18 am

Green Gibbon! wrote:Apparently the original Suikoden writer/director left Konami after the third one. Suikoden 4 felt like a valiant effort, but an effort is all it was. I figured I'd bail out while I could still recall the series with affection. I guess, then, that I've been right in resisting the urge to try Suikoden 5? Or what about that Rhapsodia nonsense?

Apparently, Suikoden 5 was made the way it was because a lot of the fanbase wanted a game closer to Suikoden 2. While I love Suikoden 2, a repeat of Suikoden 2 is not what the series needs. I don't think Suikoden 5 is a blemish to the Suikoden name, because the story isn't poorly written; it's actually better than 90% of RPG stories out there (I was actually excited when I learned Eternal Arcadia's writer, Kazuyoshi Tsugawa, was on the team). There's a lot of politics and conflicting views, so there's definitely a basis for a war to take place. The first 15 or so hours are mainly for setting up the story, so there's not much fighting; you're just learning about the traditions, the politics, and what drives the country. There are also two very emotionally-driven touching scenes mid-game that played with my heartstrings in the same way the Nanami scene in Suikoden 2 did, something Suikoden 4 failed to accomplish.

Unforunately, the story fails for the most part after getting your base. After you get your base (which is about 20 hours into the game), the story feels very "Suikoden 4"ish. That is, you liberate town A, liberate town B, gain allies with town C, etc etc. until you have the whole continent on your side so you can vanquish the evildoers; this formula is getting tired and trite. Unlike Suikoden 4, you have people on your side who are attached to these towns and want to liberate these towns. Even so, I don't really care about these towns and I'll probably give up on the game series if I learn Suikoden 6 also uses this formula. On the bright side, they at least inject some politics and strategical maneuvers of you vs. them into the story while you're trying to liberate these towns, unlike Suikoden 4.

The battle system got a bit of an overhaul. The game uses formations, so if you want, you can use a formation that allows all the characters to be in the front row, so you can use a team of all short attackers if you wanted to. However, certain formations have advantages and disadvantages. For example, the formation that allows everyone to be in the front row, called True Men formation, increases the attack but decreases the evasion and defense of everybody. You can change formations on the fly, so that's a cool thing.

Also, in addition to 6 characters per battle, you can put four people in your entourage. Support characters and battle characters can go in there, so if you want, if you're sick of using Lyon taking up battle space all the time you can put her into your entourage and switch her with Viki or someone. Support characters are like in S3 and S4, i.e. they can't be used in battle but can heal you after every battle or see the enemy's HP or whatever it is they do. However, one thing I don't like is how when you enter a cutscene, the other characters in your party disappear. At least in Suikoden 3 and below, you could see your characters standing around when you enter a cutscene. While this may not seem like a big deal, I think it is, because whenever I enter a cutscene I go, "Where the hell are all my party members?" The only people who appear in cutscenes are the characters who were mandatory to take along, and when I see those people in cutscenes and not everybody else, it always strikes a nerve. Remember the Luca Blight ambush in Suikoden 2? Well, imagine the three seperate parties of Flik, Viktor, and Hero2 without their party behind them to attack Luca Blight. Yeah, it decreases the excitement and believablity.

However, the loading times suck. Loading in and out of battle can take up to ten seconds each, and so are all the load times. The "Now Loading" screen also makes it feel longer, and they keep reminding me that I'm playing a game. Suikoden 4 had better load times and at least it had a better camera. I think the main reason they used a bird eye's view for the camera is because the townspeople are really low-poly. I guess that's understandable, what with over 108 characters to model, you can't make everyone high-poly without absurd costs. But you know, Suikoden 4 also accomplished this so I don't see why Suikoden 5 can't. I guess the reason behind this is because Suikoden 5 has about twice or thrice as many towns/cities, and the cities are two or three times bigger than S4's. Also, the camera is unrotatable, which is a bummer.

A good thing I have to say about Suikoden 5 is the decisions you can make. When you make a decision, it changes the outcome of the next cutscene. There's also one incident that's much like Suikoden 2's Tinto event, as in you can run away with Nanami or save Tinto. There's a lot of replayability in the game, as the game has four endings (and a couple of premature ones). One thing that amazes me about the game is the sheer amount of stuff you can miss by playing through it only once. By only playing it once, you miss like 25% of what was put into the game, i.e. there was this one guy I was trying to recruit, and normally if you talk to him, you can ask if you want him to join your army or not. There's one time interval where if you visit his town when his town's about to be attacked, if you talk to him he'll join you without you needing to ask him to join your army and he'll run out of town. The game's full of these kind of moments. Also, a lot of characters have affection rating towards you depending on how nice you are to them throughout the game, so you can be a nice guy and have them join earlier, or be a dick and have a harder time recruiting them. I've completed the game three times (New Game+ helps), and there's a sheer amount of branches you can miss. Granted, all but one of them are minor branches, but it's interesting to see that some of these branches are voice acted and choreographed too. Also, how nice you are to one certain character affects what kind of ending you get (there are two good endings). It's not like Suikoden 2 or 3 where you're forced to choose a decision and in the end it doesn't matter which decision you choose. Well, there are still moments like this in Suikoden 5 but it's nice that they added in decisions that make a small difference (and affect the friendliness rating towards certain characters).

In the end, Suikoden 5 tries to be bigger and better than Suikoden 2, but it's not quite as good, nor is it as ambitious as Suikoden 3. Also, you can tell Konami is trying to milk the game series for all it's worth by only introducing one True Rune per game, ever since Suikoden 4. But anyway, if I was overseeing the series, I would tailor it in a way where Suikoden 12 would be a good place to end the series. Right now, the series is in dire need of a push in order for the next game to evolve past it's predecessors. A Suikoden 2.75 for the next Suikoden I do not want.

Cuckooguy · Post by **Cuckooguy** » Sun Oct 15, 2006 12:51 am

Oh yes, speaking of Rhapsodia, it's pretty much a beginner's StrategyRPG. The prologue's great (it sheds light on a bunch of Suikoden 4 events), but after that it's pretty much a generic story of Kyril vs. Rune Cannons and how evil Rune Cannon's are and you learn about the Kooluk Empire (antagonists of Suikoden IV) and you visit the Kooluk Empire and realize they're in pretty bad shape right now because the Scarlet Moon Empire's being mean to them and Jeane is still scantily-clad. Rhapsodia doesn't leave much of an impression on me.

Incidentally, Suikoden 5 has one sidequest that relates to Rhapsodia.

I guess I'll say that perhaps you should buy Suikoden 5 when it's $20, if that ever happens. Like Segaholic said, it's decently good, but it's not great.

Ngangbius · Post by **Ngangbius** » Sun Oct 15, 2006 1:42 am

If you are looking for Rhapsodia a.k.a. Suikoden Tactics, Circuit City have the game for $10.

Tsuyoshi-kun · Post by **Tsuyoshi-kun** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 9:55 am

Green Gibbon! wrote:Sly 3 looked like more of the same schtick so that's another wayward series I've abandoned.

Apparently you play as many as eight or nine characters in Sly 3. Because that's what the PlayStation 2 really needed; its own Donkey Kong 64. That same shit ruined Banjo, Sonic, Spyro, and Crash too (though at least in Spyro 3 the extra characters were put mostly into seperate hubs).

Sometimes less really is more. Are Klonoa and Ratchet and Clank two of the only platformers in the last decade that haven't added a million different characters to play as?

Post by **Esrever** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 6:56 pm

PSYCHONAUTS

Shadow Hog · Post by **Shadow Hog** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 7:30 pm

Which is now available on Steam for $20, by the way, so anyone who HASN'T played it by now has no real excuse.

Tsuyoshi-kun · Post by **Tsuyoshi-kun** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 4:21 am

But...I can't read Japanese..

I would've played Snatcher by now, but apparently it's rarer than gold to find a used North American copy of the game. I'd have played it through emulator by now, but the emulator community refuses to make Sega CD emulators for Macs.

Cuckooguy · Post by **Cuckooguy** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 4:38 am

Because Psychonauts is in Japanese.
Wait, was Psychonauts even released in Japan?

Protodude · Post by **Protodude** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 6:09 am

Tsuyoshi-kun wrote:But...I can't read Japanese..

I would've played Snatcher by now, but apparently it's rarer than gold to find a used North American copy of the game. I'd have played it through emulator by now, but the emulator community refuses to make Sega CD emulators for Macs.

No no no, see, you're thinking of Policenauts. Isn't this the second time this has happened already?

Shadow Hog · Post by **Shadow Hog** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 9:27 am

Psychonauts:
<img src="http://hg101.classicgaming.gamespy.com/ ... auts-9.jpg">

Policenauts:
<img src="http://www.hexdidnt.clara.net/policenau ... _front.jpg">

I was talking about the former. See a difference, yet?

Arcade · Post by **Arcade** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 10:57 am

Shadow Hog wrote:Mmm... on the topic of expressing opinions of games recently obtained, I picked up Street Fighter Collection for the Saturn a while back, myself, it being my first Street Fighter game, period (well, games; while the distinction between Super Street Fighter II and Super Street Fighter II Turbo merely boils down to the latter pretty much being the first one, but better, the OTHER title is Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold, which is completely different). After playing for a while, I won't lie - I suck pretty hard. I'm still getting my ass kicked by CPU opponents on one star (particularly Sagat in SSF2 - strangely, Bison right after him isn't so hard), and I seriously have a hard time pulling off the Shoryu-ken on the gamepad.

That said, they're damn fun, I just suck. Kinda like how I'm doing with Guardian Heroes, too - starts out easy enough, but later on in the game I'm often vastly outnumbered by enemies of higher level than I am. Fighting games never really were my forte, even if I have lots of fun with them. *shrug*

As for God Hand and Ninety-Nine Nights, I don't have a PS2, and I'd heard the latter sucked so I pretty much forgot it existed. (Not like I can play the 360 much anyway, seeing as I'm more leeching off of everyone else's than actually having my own.)

sO, YOU EVER PLAYED street fighter 3?

Tsuyoshi-kun · Post by **Tsuyoshi-kun** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 12:26 pm

This is the second damn time on these forums I've gotten Policenauts and Psychonauts confused with each other!

I wanna play Psychonauts, honestly, but it still hasn't been slashed in price where I live.

Shadow Hog · Post by **Shadow Hog** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 3:25 pm

Arcade wrote:sO, YOU EVER PLAYED street fighter 3?

</capslock>

Yes, I tried it in the arcade down at the Student Union on campus (where they have Second Impact). Tried it twice, even, and plan on trying it again. Both times I made it to the second fighter only to get my ass kicked - first time playing as Ryu, the second as Dudley. I know the person who ended my run as Dudley was Sean, although I'm not positive on the name for the knife-throwing girl who wiped me out as Ryu (Ibuki, was it?).

Tsuyoshi-kun wrote:I wanna play Psychonauts, honestly, but it still hasn't been slashed in price where I live.

Slashed from what, though? Is it $19.99 also? Because that's Steam's asking price.

Post by **Segaholic2** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 4:38 pm

And if $19.99 isn't cheap enough for you...

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Majesco-Psychonau ... ie=UTF8</a>