Now what exactly have I been playin' at?
Thoughts on the games I've played in the last few weeks:
Frogger: Helmet Chaos:
The first game I've had to review that I really, truly, couldn't stand. I've since traded it into EBGames for credit towards other, more worthy pursuits. I think my review is pretty fair. I should remember next time to write my own byline. Check it out here and let me know what you think!
Settlers of Catan:
Settlercrack is a near-perfect blend of simple board game strategy and hidden social complexity. I believe I am very good at it, when I don't make boneheaded decisions about initial settlement placement. I've played it four times the past few days and won, by a large margin, three of those times. The time I lost, I made a bone-headed decision about initial placement, just because my conscious wouldn't let me leave my little brother Joel with such an advantageous position. Over the years, I think my win ratio is probably close to 75% as well. I like how the game is secretly competitive. You aren't out to destroy other players, merely out to build the best for yourself. That attitude, however, makes the game fun but also seems to cripple most people who play it, since the game elements: whom to trade with, what information to give out, where to place roads, who to "be nice" to, who to robber, etc, really are very competitive. Secretly competitive, I guess.
Huntting and I aren't as secret about our competitive play when Settlers is brought out. We usually win, too. I've noticed that many people who play the game don't get this edge and they play to have fun and do as little damage as possible to the other players. Those people don't win the game and are often surprised about how poorly they seem to be doing. They allow secretly competitive players like myself to win. I generally don't feel very good about winning a game of Settlers. I feel guilty for playing off the "nice" players and leveraging their mistakes into my personal gain. It almost feels like I'm playing a different game, or that I won because I understood the real rules of play.
I feel extremely good while winning, however. Assessing the situation and making the best decision, the one that leads me closest to the path of victory at the time, is the Settlers high for me. No matter which group I'm playing with, we almost always play at least two games in a row, even if the first was a two-hour long, poor placement affair. Since the island has a different layout each time, every round feels fresh. While a lot of the game is still based on the luck of the dice roll, it somehow seems fairer than Risk, for instance, maybe because no dice roll places you directly against another player, well, at least, not on the surface.
Shadow of the Colossus
I think I'm on the ninth colossus. A beautiful game. Hanging on for dear life to the first flying colossus as it did barrel rolls over an impossibly gorgeous lake is definitely a high point in my video game playing career, but it was over all too quickly. For some reason, I don't feel like I enjoy galloping around the world as much as I'm meant too. I'm obsessive-compulsive with holding up my sword for direction, and I feel frustrated when it points me directly into a mountain, with two long ways to go around, one being the correct path, and the other a desolate 20-minute goose-chase that ends me back up where I started. Agro, the horse, is excellently realistic and very much like a Nintendog in the way I translate his actions through my imagination into a personality. After killing a Colossus, the main hero should be oil-blood-spattered, covered with their dark black ichor, but "clean" upon reawakening in the temple. I like Tim's review of the game. I plan to see this through to the end and not have it wind up on my shelf of "games I'm in the middle of and really need to beat, if I ever decide to want to" that includes its precursor ICO, Shenmue II, and Metroid Prime. This game has a few subtle things to say about the relationship between the player and god. More games should!
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
Phoenix Wright is a DS port of the first in a series of courtroom-drama adventures that were released in Japan for the Game Boy Advance. As far as graphical adventures go, this is one of the ones that hasn't left me feeling stupid or overly unobservant. Quite the opposite, in fact, because the game itself often seems blindly retarded. While the writing and the comic courtroom action has made me smile and laugh a few times, and the characters are growing on me (I just finished the third case), the courtroom proceedings define their own version of logic: rational thought in Phoenix Wright is not related to reality. For instance, to get your client off the hook for a murder case, not only must you prove that he is innocent by proving that 1.) all evidence is clearly circumstantial 2.) all of the chief witnesses have lied like 42 times each 3.) your client's alibi is tight and supportable by evidence and 4.) the main witness has the motive, timing, and mafia connections to pull off a murder, but you have to force a full confession out of the witness or you lose the case! Wha? To do so you have to steal evidence from crime scenes, badger the witnesses, and converse with the spirits of the undead through your half teenybopper half sweet hotness assistant psychic. Also it is incredibly, painfully, linear. I don't think it will even let you into the courtroom without having first uncovered the proper evidence you need to solve the case, which you can do by clicking on everything you can and asking each person the full range of questions. There seems to be only one way to "solve" each case and I can't see myself going back through the cases except to see if it actually lets you come to court unprepared. If you head down the wrong path of a dialogue tree, you can always ask the "right" question by going through it again. So yeah... it's definitely a unique game, and I wouldn't mind more of those making their way to my DS, and I enjoy shouting "OBJECTION!" into the DS, but its comedy and manga artwork don't hold a candle to Ouendan and its suspenseful courtroom drama is generally less interesting than an average episode of Matlock.
TAKE THAT!
Guitar Hero
It's expensive but it comes with a guitar controller and lets you rock out to "I Wanna Be Sedated" by the Ramones and "More Than A Feeling" by Boston... I have to hold back the tears in my eyes after singing along to that last "I see my Mary-Anne walking away-ay-ay" and I've yanked the guitar controller out of the PS2 controller port multiple times by jumping around too much at the end of "Iron Man" and I have a strong urge to put on some sunglasses every time I play that blues song by Stevie Ray Vaughn. The presentation and gameplay is pure Karaoke Revolution meets Frequency meets a smaller-than-normal plastic guitar that you wail on, flipping around the whammy bar like you are Angus from AC/DC. They made this game in 9 months and in places it shows. I could really care less which of the eight "rocker personas" I choose. If a game is about me rocking out, I don't want to look at someone else rocking out, I want to see the crowd and how they are reacting to MY rocking out! But yeah, I'm too busy rocking out to look at the stage, my fake guitarist, or the crowd when I'm playing, but I've decided that my ideal guitar game would be played in first person, and if I did well, it would let me crowd dive and play the guitar on my back while angsty teens in black hold up my buttocks. The game has forty-seven songs and a bunch of them are indie rock or songs I'd never really heard before. As far as rock goes, it's a pretty diverse selection and it has appealed to the metal-heads and classic-thrashers in the room. It is extremely amusing to watch what people do when they have a guitar in their hands and are fixed on nailing the thunderous solo in Ozzy's "Bark at the Moon." I hope Matt or Bill or Mofro or someone gets the game too so we can do two-player jam sessions. Also! Everyone who plays the game agrees that the music selection is great but can instantly come up with dozens of songs they want to play, even by the same artists, so I genuinely hope expansions or sequels are in order, and cheaply!
Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!
I've been playing the Japanese male cheerleading squad music game since it came out this July. Ouendan is definitely THE FEEL-GOOD GAME OF THE SUMMER. Basically, you use your stylus to direct your squad to cheer for various people around the town in stressful situations. The theme is DO YOUR BEST. Never give up, never surrender. It plays on multiple levels. As a cheering squad, you are cheering the townsfolk on to success, but at the same time, as a player you are cheering for yourself and building up a resolve to keep playing. I'm on the last couple of stages on the EXTRA HARD mode, which feature a group of anime-white cheerleading girls instead of fascist-looking large cheering punk rock men, and I'm still having a blast. The game has only fifteen songs, all Japanese, but most of them are excellent. The version of The Blue Heart's "Linda Linda" is a tad disappointing (most of the songs are not performed by the original artists), and despite its inclusion being one of the driving reasons I imported this game, I've discovered a plethora of other song levels that I love even more. One of the most touching moments I've ever experienced in a video game is an Ouendan level where a recently deceased guy is granted by heaven three hours to return to Earth to tell his girlfriend that he is sorry and loves her very much. He quietly asks the Ouendan for the strength to bridge the metaphysical gap. In a steady, quiet series of movements that accentuate the emotionally charged "Over the Distance" by Yaida Hitomi, you cheer for the reconnection of these two spiritually separated lovers, and when they reconnect, and start crying and holding each other, I can't help but feel a shiver up and down my spine.
Yeah, it's a good time to be an open-minded and big-hearted gamer.
Frogger: Helmet Chaos:
The first game I've had to review that I really, truly, couldn't stand. I've since traded it into EBGames for credit towards other, more worthy pursuits. I think my review is pretty fair. I should remember next time to write my own byline. Check it out here and let me know what you think!
Settlers of Catan:
Settlercrack is a near-perfect blend of simple board game strategy and hidden social complexity. I believe I am very good at it, when I don't make boneheaded decisions about initial settlement placement. I've played it four times the past few days and won, by a large margin, three of those times. The time I lost, I made a bone-headed decision about initial placement, just because my conscious wouldn't let me leave my little brother Joel with such an advantageous position. Over the years, I think my win ratio is probably close to 75% as well. I like how the game is secretly competitive. You aren't out to destroy other players, merely out to build the best for yourself. That attitude, however, makes the game fun but also seems to cripple most people who play it, since the game elements: whom to trade with, what information to give out, where to place roads, who to "be nice" to, who to robber, etc, really are very competitive. Secretly competitive, I guess.
Huntting and I aren't as secret about our competitive play when Settlers is brought out. We usually win, too. I've noticed that many people who play the game don't get this edge and they play to have fun and do as little damage as possible to the other players. Those people don't win the game and are often surprised about how poorly they seem to be doing. They allow secretly competitive players like myself to win. I generally don't feel very good about winning a game of Settlers. I feel guilty for playing off the "nice" players and leveraging their mistakes into my personal gain. It almost feels like I'm playing a different game, or that I won because I understood the real rules of play.
I feel extremely good while winning, however. Assessing the situation and making the best decision, the one that leads me closest to the path of victory at the time, is the Settlers high for me. No matter which group I'm playing with, we almost always play at least two games in a row, even if the first was a two-hour long, poor placement affair. Since the island has a different layout each time, every round feels fresh. While a lot of the game is still based on the luck of the dice roll, it somehow seems fairer than Risk, for instance, maybe because no dice roll places you directly against another player, well, at least, not on the surface.
Shadow of the Colossus
I think I'm on the ninth colossus. A beautiful game. Hanging on for dear life to the first flying colossus as it did barrel rolls over an impossibly gorgeous lake is definitely a high point in my video game playing career, but it was over all too quickly. For some reason, I don't feel like I enjoy galloping around the world as much as I'm meant too. I'm obsessive-compulsive with holding up my sword for direction, and I feel frustrated when it points me directly into a mountain, with two long ways to go around, one being the correct path, and the other a desolate 20-minute goose-chase that ends me back up where I started. Agro, the horse, is excellently realistic and very much like a Nintendog in the way I translate his actions through my imagination into a personality. After killing a Colossus, the main hero should be oil-blood-spattered, covered with their dark black ichor, but "clean" upon reawakening in the temple. I like Tim's review of the game. I plan to see this through to the end and not have it wind up on my shelf of "games I'm in the middle of and really need to beat, if I ever decide to want to" that includes its precursor ICO, Shenmue II, and Metroid Prime. This game has a few subtle things to say about the relationship between the player and god. More games should!
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
Phoenix Wright is a DS port of the first in a series of courtroom-drama adventures that were released in Japan for the Game Boy Advance. As far as graphical adventures go, this is one of the ones that hasn't left me feeling stupid or overly unobservant. Quite the opposite, in fact, because the game itself often seems blindly retarded. While the writing and the comic courtroom action has made me smile and laugh a few times, and the characters are growing on me (I just finished the third case), the courtroom proceedings define their own version of logic: rational thought in Phoenix Wright is not related to reality. For instance, to get your client off the hook for a murder case, not only must you prove that he is innocent by proving that 1.) all evidence is clearly circumstantial 2.) all of the chief witnesses have lied like 42 times each 3.) your client's alibi is tight and supportable by evidence and 4.) the main witness has the motive, timing, and mafia connections to pull off a murder, but you have to force a full confession out of the witness or you lose the case! Wha? To do so you have to steal evidence from crime scenes, badger the witnesses, and converse with the spirits of the undead through your half teenybopper half sweet hotness assistant psychic. Also it is incredibly, painfully, linear. I don't think it will even let you into the courtroom without having first uncovered the proper evidence you need to solve the case, which you can do by clicking on everything you can and asking each person the full range of questions. There seems to be only one way to "solve" each case and I can't see myself going back through the cases except to see if it actually lets you come to court unprepared. If you head down the wrong path of a dialogue tree, you can always ask the "right" question by going through it again. So yeah... it's definitely a unique game, and I wouldn't mind more of those making their way to my DS, and I enjoy shouting "OBJECTION!" into the DS, but its comedy and manga artwork don't hold a candle to Ouendan and its suspenseful courtroom drama is generally less interesting than an average episode of Matlock.
TAKE THAT!
Guitar Hero
It's expensive but it comes with a guitar controller and lets you rock out to "I Wanna Be Sedated" by the Ramones and "More Than A Feeling" by Boston... I have to hold back the tears in my eyes after singing along to that last "I see my Mary-Anne walking away-ay-ay" and I've yanked the guitar controller out of the PS2 controller port multiple times by jumping around too much at the end of "Iron Man" and I have a strong urge to put on some sunglasses every time I play that blues song by Stevie Ray Vaughn. The presentation and gameplay is pure Karaoke Revolution meets Frequency meets a smaller-than-normal plastic guitar that you wail on, flipping around the whammy bar like you are Angus from AC/DC. They made this game in 9 months and in places it shows. I could really care less which of the eight "rocker personas" I choose. If a game is about me rocking out, I don't want to look at someone else rocking out, I want to see the crowd and how they are reacting to MY rocking out! But yeah, I'm too busy rocking out to look at the stage, my fake guitarist, or the crowd when I'm playing, but I've decided that my ideal guitar game would be played in first person, and if I did well, it would let me crowd dive and play the guitar on my back while angsty teens in black hold up my buttocks. The game has forty-seven songs and a bunch of them are indie rock or songs I'd never really heard before. As far as rock goes, it's a pretty diverse selection and it has appealed to the metal-heads and classic-thrashers in the room. It is extremely amusing to watch what people do when they have a guitar in their hands and are fixed on nailing the thunderous solo in Ozzy's "Bark at the Moon." I hope Matt or Bill or Mofro or someone gets the game too so we can do two-player jam sessions. Also! Everyone who plays the game agrees that the music selection is great but can instantly come up with dozens of songs they want to play, even by the same artists, so I genuinely hope expansions or sequels are in order, and cheaply!
Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!
I've been playing the Japanese male cheerleading squad music game since it came out this July. Ouendan is definitely THE FEEL-GOOD GAME OF THE SUMMER. Basically, you use your stylus to direct your squad to cheer for various people around the town in stressful situations. The theme is DO YOUR BEST. Never give up, never surrender. It plays on multiple levels. As a cheering squad, you are cheering the townsfolk on to success, but at the same time, as a player you are cheering for yourself and building up a resolve to keep playing. I'm on the last couple of stages on the EXTRA HARD mode, which feature a group of anime-white cheerleading girls instead of fascist-looking large cheering punk rock men, and I'm still having a blast. The game has only fifteen songs, all Japanese, but most of them are excellent. The version of The Blue Heart's "Linda Linda" is a tad disappointing (most of the songs are not performed by the original artists), and despite its inclusion being one of the driving reasons I imported this game, I've discovered a plethora of other song levels that I love even more. One of the most touching moments I've ever experienced in a video game is an Ouendan level where a recently deceased guy is granted by heaven three hours to return to Earth to tell his girlfriend that he is sorry and loves her very much. He quietly asks the Ouendan for the strength to bridge the metaphysical gap. In a steady, quiet series of movements that accentuate the emotionally charged "Over the Distance" by Yaida Hitomi, you cheer for the reconnection of these two spiritually separated lovers, and when they reconnect, and start crying and holding each other, I can't help but feel a shiver up and down my spine.
Yeah, it's a good time to be an open-minded and big-hearted gamer.