08.01.10 / videogames / Author: admin / Comments: (1)
Tags: final fantasy, games, nintendo, nostalgia, real estate, rpg, transportation, web-info, xenosaga
I hadn’t really thought too much about transportation in games until I played Xenosaga. You know how in most RPGs, especially the Final Fantasy ones, there’s always a point where you get an airship and can go all over the place? Or you get to ride chocobos across the map? Well all three Xenosagas had nothing like that at all! Seriously.
So inspired by that, I started reading an article about Transportation in games, over on web-info. It’s a brief but interesting article about all the things game designers have to think about when adding means of transport to video games.
The author makes a good point off the bat that players in most games care a lot about how they get about, and the speed with which they do it. I know I’ve heard a lot of complaints about various games (Xeno II comes to mind) when the walking speed is too slow and it takes forever to get around the map. And he’s right that a game with various means of travel needs to take into account the different speeds different vehicles have.
Another good point he makes, and one I hadn’t really thought about, is that the designer has to take into account the amount of time travelling takes in the real world. His example is about taking a suit from the closet, but another one that comes to mind is airship travel in the Nintendo RPG nostalgia: I got from London to New York in my airship in no time at all, compared to 6 or 7 hours in the real world. This is one area where designers definitely don’t worry about being realistic!
The writer then goes on to state that it’s “important to design large-area games so that it does not really matter how long a trip takes.” Interesting way of looking at it, but if you make the sandbox too open, players might get lost – as he himself notes in the same paragraph. He ends the article with a look at player behavior when it comes to cars in video games. According to him, “take more risks than they would in their ordinary lives”. Haha, well that’s obvious, isn’t it? You think I fight dinosaurs with only an axe in real life? Or go on a shooting spree around Los Angeles in only my shirt? But he does quote a few (unsourced) studies on the subject, so look it up if you get the chance. He ends by saying that “driving a car while playing a game is a bad combination”…gee, you think? LOL!
Web-info has articles on other subjects as well, not just video games. Here’s one about real estate, for example: Anyone Can Invest in Real Estate But How do You Make Money? Good question!
13.07.09 / Japanese, RPGs, nintendo ds, shining force feather, videogames / Author: admin / Comments: (0)
Tags: bale, cocotte, grizeria, jin, miriam, sega genesis, shining force feather
I loved Shining Force I and II on the Genesis all those years ago, so now I sit up and bark whenever I hear the word “Shining” in front of any game. But Shining Wind, Shining Tears, all those games weren’t really “it”. At last another Shining Force is out, is what I thought when this game was announced, so I bought it as soon as I could and now I just finished it.
Overall thoughts: It was really short, not more than 15 hours or so, but it was a good 15 hours. The action never stopped and the story moved at a brisk pace so there was never a dull moment. It was a worthy purchase, and I just might play it again in the near future.
Story: You play Jin, a treasure hunter who comes across a mysterious girl when he’s looting some ruins. The girl’s name is Alfin, and she leads Jin to an ancient airship, which he promptly decides to sell for cash. The earlier parts of the game are taken up by Jin’s attempts to fix the crash-prone ship up so he can flog it for mega-bucks, and then the later parts involve the usual “save the world” stuff. It’s nothing original, and since the game is so short nothing is fully developed, but it’s interesting enough while it lasts.
Characters: A total of 9 playable characters and a few interesting NPCs. Alfin is never able to join you in battle, despite what the cover might lead you to expect. There’s Jin, his best friend Bale (a centaur and the best battle character, period), Miriam the elf, Julius the snooty noble, Tida the half-beast (another excellent fighter), Rush the hotblooded treasure-hunter, Grizeria the magician, …some minotaur whose name I can’t recall and Cocotte, the angel with next-to-no relevance at all.
Their interactions throughout the game tend to be very funny indeed, especially Miriam’s dumb innocent ways. Jin’s airship has a lounge where he can talk to the characters and find out what’s on their mind. Make sure you don’t miss the one where Miriam asks Jin where babies come from 
. Unfortunately the endings aren’t character-dependent: there’s only one ending and you get it regardless of how you get along people. I really wish there had been 9 endings and more of a focus on relationships, because the characters were great!
Ooof, I’m tired from typing all this. >_< I’ll continue with the battle system, music and graphics tomorrow.
14.06.09 / RPGs, persona 4, ps2, videogames / Author: admin / Comments: (0)
Tags: atlus, chie, persona 4, ps2, soundtrack, yosuke
Meh. Whatever. I liked Persona 3 better.
There, I said it. No one will deny the gameplay elements in P4 are better. In particular it feels really good to be able to hit Square to move around the map. When exploring you can count on an easy supply of Goho-Ms to get out of the dungeon at any time. You can control your party directly. You can control your party directly. You can control your party DIRECTLY. Etc, etc, it’s improved over P3 is every way you can imagine.
When it comes to other elements though, I find it sadly lagging behind P3. Firstly the story feels really trivial. In theory a serial killer in a small town should make for a really tense and gripping game, but nobody really cares in the game. When someone close to them dies, they don’t even attend the funeral, and only one or two people seem to care. The townspeople go about their business just as usual and let their children run around town like nothing’s going on. For your party, which has appointed itself unofficial detectives, solving the mystery involves entering the TV once in a while, saving someone, then getting on with the rest of their lives. There’s never a sense of fear or urgency about the whole thing.
The characters are boring too. In fact I’m bored just writing this because it was such a dry game. I didn’t find the lame attempts at humor amusing at all. The crossgender beauty pageant was a flop, Teddie was just annoying, Chie was a faint shadow with no real presence, Yosuke was meh in battle and meh outside, it just goes on and on. Not to mention if you don’t do their S. Links then their character development stops right after you face their shadows and is never referred to again. Haa.
The soundtrack was another let down. P3 was one of the few games where I rushed out and got the soundtrack right after finishing it. To be honest P3′s soundtrack got on my nerves in the beginning, but in some sort of perverse Stockholm Syndrome way, by the end of the game I loved it. P4…I remember the battle tune, god knows I heard it often enough. That’s it. Yah.
The graphics and colors in P4 somehow managed to be grayer and blander than P3′s, maybe to showcase the fact that it’s set in the boring countryside. The whole thing looks washed out, the blurry dungeon effects gave me a headache and writing this review is giving me another headache so I’m quitting.
I didn’t dislike P4, but I didn’t quite like it either. Plop down, do some S. Links (only good one was Death, IMO), do some more S. Links, fight and clear a dungeon in one day, do some more S. Links. Dating sim with fighting, I can live with that. And now that it’s over I can live without it.
02.06.09 / RPGs, videogames / Author: admin / Comments: (0)
Tags: GameFAQs, impressions, Japanese, previews, reviews, RPGs, videogames
I’m crazy about video games!
So crazy that when I’m not playing them, I’m busy chatting about them on 4chan, GameFAQs, anywhere someone will listen.
I’m crazy enough about them that one of my motivating factors to learn Japanese was so I could play video games ASAP. Yes, I am weeaboo, and it feels so good.
Seeing as I’m that crazy, the next logical step would be to create my own blog so I can talk about video games some more. Posting on other people’s sites isn’t the same. Threads get old, threads get archived, threads get deleted, people stop talking about certain games… Nope, gotta have your own site. And now I have mine.
95% of this blog is going to be about role-playing games, because those are my favorites. Especially Japanese RPGs. It’s going to be reviews, previews, impressions, general gaming news, that sort of stuff. If you’re interested, stick around!
I hadn’t really thought too much about transportation in games until I played Xenosaga. You know how in most RPGs, especially the Final Fantasy ones, there’s always a point where you get an airship and can go all over the place? Or you get to ride chocobos across the map? Well all three Xenosagas had nothing like that at all! Seriously.
