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Siman_Shinsafe

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Natural Doctrine (PS3). A Self Reflection

Natural Doctrine is a Japanese SRPG that I played the PS3 version of but this will not be a review, the reason for that is the hour I played failed to do anything but bore or aggravate me.

Normally a game I can’t be bothered to really get into would go without mention or just be one of the entries in a Playlist post,

so why give this game a post all to itself?

The reason is due to me wanting to have a quick look into why I gave up on the game.

The first JRPG that I got into (like a lot of people) was Final Fantasy 7 and while I did go back to play a lot of the classics I had missed out on FF7 did spoil me, the massive production values mixed with great visual design and story that always seem to have way more going on then you will be told about, how could any older RPG even compare to that.

Even so I found many RPGS to love but the one thing the PS1 FF games did so well that all developers need to give more thought to is the introduction. I’ll go into more depth on each of them in a post later this week, the main thing for now is that they have prologues that start the game at what could very well serve as the grand final for most other games. 7 has a new recruit into a eco-terrorist group that is going to sabotage a facility that is protected by a group who that new recruit used to be one of.

In about an hour the player knows the basics of combat, as well as the new things like the limit break, the fights in the intro are never that challenging but that is more than justified by how this both gives greater control of pacing to the story tellers as well as letting new comers like me get through it while ‘learning on the job’ as it were. By the time the safety wheels are removed and each encounter could be a full party wipe the player has invested enough time to want to get better and see what happens in the story and to the characters.

Natural Doctrine (ND from now on) starts you in a little area with goblins to kill, lots of chitter chatter from characters who seemingly only exist to kill goblins and steal their shit.

One out of nowhere line from the main charter hints that maybe going and commenting genocide for junk isn’t very moral.

That one line is the one thing that sets up what the story might become in the future.

The games is 3D with voice acting and the option to choose to have static art on screen to show who is talking during the story sections, the whole thing is very obviously low budget and that’s why I question my lack of engagement. Did I not give the game a fare shake due to its tiny budget?

I don’t think so. The intro taken as is inspires to interest but that is exacerbated by the graphics, the models are just detailed and animated enough to show that they are a complete waste of resources. I can’t help but feel like it being simple sprites and the man power being put into presentation of the story.

So I look at RPG for place, story and character but this game has a stronger focus on mechanics, so I should at least try and look at it on its own terms, as with the story complaints all this has to be taken in the context of only playing an hour, give or take.

To move in combat you use the left stick to take direct control of the character, the D-Pad is used to to select the action be it ‘attack’, ‘potion’, ‘end’ and many others. The stand out feature is that the areas are segmented into mid sized sections, by any grid based standard the sections are about 5×5, you are free to move around a section as much as you want but you’ll only be able to move a few sections at a time, this plays into attacking via a bonus when multiple team members are in the same section but not too close to one another, on paper this is a smart concept but using the system is not enjoyable at all. Getting a bunch of moves up and then having no idea what will actual happen when I trigger them removes me from the battles, being filled with so many misses, counters and blocks that it may as well be random.

On top of this is the camera that is far too close, almost no sense of the environment layout, meaning you have to just keep rushing in head first setting off fights blind, then struggle with the camera to even find the baddies. What’s worse then then fighting is the not fighting, there is no difference between being in combat and not, so something as simple as going from one room to another is a plodding and dull few minutes of moving one character after another then picking ‘guard’, over and over for every character for every round. Horrible.

In the end ND’s biggest failing might be that it shows what it is too soon, no game is it’s highlights all the time but they at the very least try and hint at what good stuff you can work your way towards, rather than ND that throws you head first into filler with no light at the end of the tunnel.

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Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes An Always Late Review

Cowboy Skeletor is waling round in the rain battered prison camp, surrounded by legions of his troops we. He leads XOF witch is which is FOX backwards, he takes off in a bunch of helicopters and then we see that Big Boss is infiltrating Cowboy Skeletor's base to free some prisoners. Big Boss leads Fox witch is which is XOF backwards.

This constitutes about 44% of the entire story.

After picking up the two VIP's who are the only ones 'Very important' enough to be left to be tortured to death Snake returns home to his little shell, a munch of oil rig looking things in the middle of the ocean.

The little shell is under attack, from that Cowboy Skeletor from before and then a big bang takes out Snake and the helicopter he is in.

Start game, 2 hours later finished and have completed all the side missions I could be bothered with. I've had wanks that lasted longer and they didn't pad that time with absurdly long credit scenes.

After recently giving up on Destiny for being terrible GZ is put in an odd context, Destiny was a hell of a lot of padding out of weak content where as GZ's main mode is super short but is constantly interesting. The difference between finishing a meal and still being hungry and having Bungie shit in your mouth.

So all is well, like the Tanker Mission form MGS2 this is a nice taster of the up coming game, the problem comes from the fact that the Tanker Mission was an intensive to go buy Zone Of the Enders, GZ is a product unto itself.

The Tanker Mission was way more complex, with many more environments, a boss battle, the 'take photos of Metal Gear' that is still one of the best things in the series, not to mention being crammed with lots of great Easter eggs including though optional codex conversations.

GZ falls very short in comparison, the side missions are nice but don't make up for the much less involved story mission. The big problem is with those very same Codexs. Finding all the overly long rambling and funny convos was the main reason I liked MGS 2 but even then I wanted them to play in the background as I continued my sneaking mission. They have finally implemented the latter at the complete dismissal of the former.

Pressing the one of the shoulder buttons will beep who ever is on the line, then they will give you their words of wisdom. Short and informative they show how the Codex now functions as the 'to do list', rather then the wonderfully self involved chatter of the past now we get stuff like: “Go to the heliport”, “You can use that spot light”, “Don't waste your money on Destiny”. All good advice but its not why the codex are iconic.

Also ruined is the voice acting, Hideo has always had a stiffy for Hollywood and rather then cast actors who are good value, give a lot of personalty and energy he would rather higher a Hollywood actor who is way too expensive, gives a terrible performance leaves no positive impression and has such a tight schedule that you are forced to ration how much your main character can talk. Fucking stupid idea, the only way to salvage it is if there is a metatextual reason for it, mainly Big Boss and Solid Snake having a meeting, other wise its a pure trash move.

Gameplay wise it has some improvements over 4 while removing some little things, I found no way of flipping while prone or laying even more flat to pretend to be dead, while not necessary both of these took advantage of the third person nature of the game, giving you more control. I would have wanted even more little things like wrestling moves from chokes and the like.

Not to say everything is less then before, the in world signs to aid stealth are very cleaver, guards will pull out touches to make sure they have seen you, spot lights return but have more natural swaying patters and can be used by you, cameras have a green flare. These make night-time missions much more fun and adventurous for the player. Making me hopeful the full game delivers on its day night cycle, since picking when to attack could really have some impact.

As a demo/prologue Ground Zeros works amazingly well, as a 20quid product its a disgrace.

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Destiny Beta Impressions P2

Destiny Beta Preview MultiPlayer

When previewing Destiny I decided against making even a cursory statement on the MP / PVP side of things. The main reason was that if a games MP works then it is something to come back to for years and so judging that off of a few days was silly, but since the Beta servers are back up for PS3 owners things have changed a bit.

Starting a new Hunter character and trudging though the same opening hour or two showed just how right I was in thinking the SP is a boring slog, getting this charter to PVP was the goal and that's when my views on the Beta's MP really solidified.

Going in as a very low level character lead to having to play with only a sniper as a secondary, no a power weapon, no grenades, no jump ability, no special Abilities and having to use a low grade main rifle.

And even with all those 'basics' gone I was constantly top of the winning team. All those perks and stats, trade offs and upgrades all of it is meaningless fluff, when a low level grunt with noting but a figurative stick can still come out victorious.

This naked champ thing is something I did often in Cod4, prestiging' just to see if I was good or had just unlocked enough to make things unfair for everyone else, it turns out I was just really good at it. The difference was when I was 'naked' in Cod4 I felt it, no claymores to narrow directions of attack, weapons that were harder to use with precision lots of small things that meant I had to push myself to win.

With Destiny I wasn't even thinking of winning, just learning the systems again from a slightly different POV, accidentally coming beating both enemy team and all my level 8 team mates, this goes into how pointless the RPG systems are in this game but what really holds the game back is that everything in the game is built around these meaningless systems.

Players die far to quickly, this is supposed to be augmented with building resilient, health based characters, but that will only change dying after one tenth-of-a-seconds of gun fire to dying after two tenth-of-a-seconds of gun fire.

The whole thing is like the scene from Starship Troopers where a cadet asks why learn hand to hand combat when the fighting is done with machines, then the guy in charge throws a knife though his hand. Punctured paw or not its a good point.

If a few bullets at an enemies head will kill them then all that fancy purple magic will go to waste.

For how to do these types of amities right Bungie should have looked at its one time associate and victim on Microsoft FASA, and their masterpiece ShadowRun on the 360.

That game had SMGs,long rifles, sniper rifles, rockets and they were all pretty useless, that is to say by themselves. They were one third of taking out an enemy at best.

If you cased someone down and just sprayed them with an SMG you would really hit them and it would take a stupid amount of time, instead you would make damaging crystals grow around them, throw a 'nade at them and just to seal the deal pepper them with bullets. 'Nades are the only thing on that death list that could kill by itself unless you were against a troll who would 'harden' the more damage they took meaning it was best to do as much damage to one in a short amount of time them back off. Their damage resilience would fade but the health taken would still be lost.

So when dealing with a human, elf, dwarf or troll you would want to tailor your approach to taking them out, Destiny instead goes for 'just shoot em' in the head'.

See a level 1 Warlock, just shoot em' in the head.

See a level 8 Hunter with maxed out everything, just shoot em' in the head.

The sheer usefulness and distinctiveness of ShadowRun's abilities puts what's on show in the Beta to shame.

Since I could talk about ShadowRun all day lets move to a topic where that game has no place, vehicles.

That is the one way Destiny beats ShadowRun and only due to that game having none, but that leads to the far more talked about point of comparison Halo, and would you believe that Destiny is worse in that regard then any Halo save for maybe 2.

This is the one complaint that will probably be fixed by nature of the full game being... well, a full game but as it stands now the vehicles aren’t great. The reason to be hopeful is that there should be a few others in the complete game and these two could be tweaked into balance far easier then the infantry combat could.

Sparrow

A hover bike with no weapons.

Press select then box until it magics up under you.

Very Unreal 2004 like, though it can run people over which the hover board in UT might not have been able to.

Pike

Much like the Sparrow but faster, with 2 crazy fast plasma riffles on the front, very manoeuvrable and is fun to just swirl around on. Eats up anyone on foot but is very underpowered against an Interceptor.

Interceptor

Hover tank with tiny boost, and twin rockets that do good damage but aren’t as fun to use as they should be.

While not the most important of issues all three of these have the same problem, they are hover based.

This means as they are being used they don't interact with the environment very much. Making them like the horrible Ghost from Halo.

The best Halo vehicle without question was the Brute Chopper.

It was much like the Pike but had a giant wheel on the front of it, and it behaved accordingly.

If you were barrelling towards an enemy warthog (Hummer) missed then then spun around for another go the front wheel would grind into the ground then mangle its way in the new direction until it hit and rended that fucker in two.

I would play the game for hours just riding around in those things, they were balanced with the damage they did and took and their use in the sandbox but above all they were glorious to use.

Part of that was how they connected with the ground in such a direct and violent manner. Just bobbing on invisible forces will never be as satisfying.

So that’s enough mud thrown for one post, I am very disappointed with the Beta and can say that with the protection that I am also really good at it. These aren’t sour grapes.

Though there are many bright sides to this whole thing:

It isn't Halo so that series can do a better path then GOSS.

All my issues could be just based on what the early Destiny will be higher level vehicles, abilities and armour might bring a better sense of balance.

Even if the full game is as poorly though out as the Beta hints at the game is set to sell crazy numbers and they will have a lot of chances to fix it in follow ups.

Bungie has the right to have some internal staff work on a new Marathon so I hope in a year or two to hear news of them working with another dev on making a brand spanking new game in that universe.

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Destiny Beta Impressions P1

Just to give my biases going into this preview:

I have liked Bungie since the PC demo of Marathon 2 and Myth.

Loved Halo even with its ups (Halo3) and downs (Halo2, everything with the Flood).

Followed news on Bungie for ages and before Halo2 saw some leaked information of a fantasy game that they had to put on hold to get H2 finished, that game I think was called Phoenix which might be ironic since it may have been the seed that would become Destiny.

Hearing about Bungie wanting out of being owned by MS and having to push out H3, ODST and Reach made playing them like going to see a band from the 70's as the play the hits while desperately wanting to play 'something from the new album'.

I was happy for them as well as for my Halo fandom to see them go and make something with passion involved.

MS had ages to set up a replacement (the vision less 343 Industries) so I would still get my Halo fix and Bungie could make a more out there, experimental type of game.

As its shaken out I'm also happy that since Bungie went the 'MMO like' route it probably means 343 will keep away from it.

Playing MMO games strike me as like being forced to construct one thousand envelopes at which point you'll be given some thumb pads that with give you better grip and allow for faster envelope construction, but now you need to make a further two thousand envelopes but for that feat you'll be rewarded with pads for all your finger tips that will aid in the construction of envelops, now though you need to have made four thousand in order to get something else and this repeats until either they shut down the servers or you are dead.

MMO is a term that half the people talking about Destiny love to use and the other half hate them for it.

So a better term would be Grouped Online Shooting Saga or GOSS.

Sadly while not a full MMO Destiny does appear to lessened by the few connections it has with them.

It has a safe hub where players are free to run around with each other, taking quests and buying things like MMOs all this really means is there is a bunch of people dashing from point to point making the whole thing look like some Easter egg scavenge hunt.

The people are there to show you that there are people there, nothing more.

Story

Running around a medium sized area is not by itself a problem but the enemy AI is of such a low standard that picking them of from distance is a 'tactic' they have no answer for, even 'put self behind thing' is beyond them. Memories of the map Halo and attacking the Grunts from the first drop ship and how they would flee for cover comes to mind. Destiny's AI has an even bigger problem with the idea of multiple players, if they become aware of one person another can stroll though from a different side and casually blow them into... well not chunks since there is no fun damage modelling. H3 had brutes with armour plates that would lost in satisfying explosions giving fighting them great feedback. Destiny just has the bipedal baddies fall over in ragdolls.

Last thing about the Story mode for this preview would be how average the 'missions' are. They all play like the 'in-between' bits of Halo games. Those things that happen between the good bits.

Those long winding corridors and elevators, those cramped involvements filled with fodder. The open areas while nicer have poor enemy placement and no proper flow to them, feeling more like ODST's horde style mode then a well constructed single player level. This is made even worse when you remember that since H3 those games let 4 people play though the Single Player game together. In trying to add pointless MMO elements they are doing the same thing as before far worse.

I'll talk on the MP / PVP stuff in another post after giving it some more time and hoping it shows something redeemable.

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Grab Bag Of Game Ideas

In World Physical Point And Click… Thing

A normal Point And Click with an inventory bar long the left of the screen but when you want to use an item you have to grab and drag it. Why this is worthy of note is due to the item being a real physical thing reacting with the world and characters.

So imagine you need to paint a window its easy if you try, in-between the window and the inventory bar is a police man you have a roller with paint on it already but if you mindlessly drag you might splat the coppa’ leading to a fail state.

I think this is a genuinely good idea since I’ve never seen anything like it before and since it would mean only single press and move input it will work with in this era where being on PC, Tablet and Consoles is the most desired outcome.

Other ideas would involve things like:

Having to pretend to be someone at a wedding so you combine something sharp with some paper work in you inventory making paper scarps, you then need to drag and release the paper like confetti.

Pulling a length of cloth across the whole screen to stop something that is moving towards or away from the view point.

Rolling a Bowling ball around a on the floor china shop making sure not to knock anything.

Another Bowling ball idea would involve being able to order items in the inventory bar manually, when the Bowling ball is above the lowest spot it rolls out and falls to the floor.

This could lead to a puzzle where a thug is looking out for you so to take him out you must sneak just close enough that the inventory bar is directly behind him, put the Bowling ball at the highest slot then roll it out, it will fall and knock the thug unconscious. This very obviously breaks the forth wall but to really push the idea you would have to embrace that aspect.

Base Assault F2P

The only game to ever have this mode was Call Of Duty: United Offensive and the fact that years later when CoD became ‘the game series’ they never returned to this mode is a crime and since they don’t want to that leaves a gap for someone to fill.

I don’t like F2P but having as many people as possible to play with would be important to make sure the game stays around.

Rip Off Pokemon But Make It An SRPG

Much like the above example this idea is one best done by the company that makes the game its a subversion on but with over a decade of Pokemon games selling buckets they haven’t seen fit to make one with good combat.

I understand keeping the core Pokemon games the ‘my first RPG’ simple turn based combat but since they don’t rush those games to market there is more then enough room for a sub-franchise that goes for deeper strategy based combat. While I’m not a fan of Pokemon its evident what makes people love it and I am more then ready to jump in if given a little nudge.

Nintendo should really reach out to Nippon Ichi about this Pokemon SRPG as that would allow them to not have to use much of their internal manpower.

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Short Peace Rankos Tsukigimes Longest Day REVIEW Part 1 and 2

Going in only knowing it had an odd name and a great box art I found Short Peace to be a constant befuddling joy, the long and well produced opening gave no hint as to the gameplay style, so much that part of me though there might no be any at all.

A clean yet visually dense art style, a focus on its animated segments it at first presents itself as very character and story based, setting up a simple if shocking primes for its narrative.

Our main character is a school girl who inherited a lot of wealth from her fathers car storage company, she lives alone in a series of shipping containers that are moved into place by one of these automated car holds, each container is its own room and she jumps from one to the other. Even though she seems embedded in her fathers world towards the end of the intro she admits to the audience that she blames her father for her mothers death and so will seek out and kill him.

His and her only two friends should be enough for the story to be getting on with. Well, that’s what I though at this point anyway.

Then the CG anime video ended and there was a traditional ‘static characters standing either side of the screen’ moment, this was a relief as many games transition from A cutscenes with big budgets and full animation to the much cheaper D level cutscenes, this was the first time since the start menu that it had conformed to any recognizable game ideas, but even this was twisted when a banner started to run across the bottom of the screen next to a sad looking icon of the main character. The message is an apology for the cutscene and erasures that gameplay will follow shortly.

Long before the message turned up I was exited to find out what type of game it would be and… I won’t say in this review, just encase anyone does ever read this I won’t spoil something that is worth finding out for oneself.

So some gameplay happens and we get more story, this one follows on with some logic of what the first one set up, this is the end of that, the narrative after this points goes in lots of directions and by the end even though they still are playing with the same characters its obvious telling a cohesive story is not a goal of the piece.

The scale and pace of the story is so much more important then the story that by the end and seemingly to set up a sequel they show the main character’s (Rankos) sister transformed into a space demon lead an army against earth as Rankos herself narrative about how the war isn’t over yet and how the fight will continue,

the problem with this is that wasn’t anywhere in the game I watched all this faux importance was placed on a twist to a story they didn’t tell. This comes about an hour afters starting the game and the ‘end twist’ is preceded by Rankos father who died when you removed an 8-bit version of his wrestling mask 8 times in a dream about the future turns up in a Karaoke bar screen and tells her its not over. Since as stated above this happens an hour in its easy to be tricked into thinking the game will continue, but this is a real ‘twist’ as for once the twist early ending is actually the ending and all you have left is a quite good credits scene and the mock sequel bait.

This is part one because the game that is more of a movie can also be a whole movie as the PS3 lets it be played like a normal Blu-Ray, so next post will be about what ever crazy thing that is.

While I won’t reveal the type of game play I will do so for the duration, below are the clear times for the games stages as such time spend on failed tries won’t be shown, but I would bet that would add up to less then 5 minutes all told.

Time given in minutes,seconds,tens of seconds

Stage 1. 2.41.67

Stage 2. 2.22.22

Stage 3. 2.18.55

Stage 4. 1.49.85

Stage 5. 1.58.60

Stage 6. 1.00.09

Stage 7. 1.57.54

Stage 8. 2.35.10

Stage 9. 2.30.07

Stage10. 2.17.09

PART 2

After seeing a little bit of the gameplay I exited the game and went to watch a video that was saved on my PS3, then I noticed that Short Peace was also recognized as a Blu-Ray, while not the first I’ve come across it being Short Peace it was bound to be something interesting.

It could have been just some extras like making ofs and interviews, it could just be lots of adverts for both Short Peace and other projects or it might have just been a bug where you can watch the raw video files without going though the gameplay segments.

While it was loading the big hope was that it was a feature length animation that works along side the game. Seeing a run time of 1hour and 8minutes I felt exited and decided to save it for post game.

Then far sooner then I thought the game ended with lots of gags about how little the games story meant then going into the hour plus of side B I was looking for it to plug the gaps and grow the style and story outwards.

Instead it turns out to be 4 very impressive short films that try and recreate anime with 3D animations and be based around the words ‘Short Peace’.

The first is about a guy stumbling into a hunted shack and using his love of crafts to appease the demons.

Visually this contained both the highs and the lows, with the very solid character model often lacking the finer details like animations on fingers and toes.

The story is very simple but does enough to endear it.

The second is about a love story stifled by the culture and rules of feudal Japan.

This is either the only one that uses exclusively 2D animations for characters or is the best 3D pretending to be 2D that I have ever seen.

The narrative could have used more time to show the central relationship and build up some of the background of the time, as is its ending got little more then a shrug even though I was along for the ride until that. Its most distinguishing feature ends up being the very cleaver framing it uses to transition from its intro.

Gambo follows and is the story of a white bear who fights a demon to protect a little girl.

This one used its time to much greater effect then the last and does as much as you could with the time and elements set up in the story.

The demon is a of the traditional Japanese style with some bits I’ve never seen before, like just how gruesome the fate of the girls taken from village ends up being, this is not Dragon Ball.

The fight between the White Bear and the Demon had be captivated and truly caring about the outcome it would have been the best short if it wasn’t for what would follow.

A Farewell To Weapons

Is the most well realized in every way possible, characters, art style, animation style, world, story structure.

The only problem is that it should be a full feature by itself, watching it tough it would be hard not to want more.

By the end I was both laughing at the wonderful satire, lamenting the course of the narrative and being in awe of the world set up.

Rather then what side A was I would rather just have had a longer version of A Farewell To Weapons.

In a series of posts I talked about wanting the creative output akin to the PS1 and by the end of the PS3 it might have dragged itself to a respectable level, maybe that is worth looking into, in a post …tomorrow.

Vodka Tales Blog

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Star Fox: Wrongful Innovation

Star Fox on the SNES was a revelation, before polygonal games were anything more then an occasional arcade novelty Argonaut Games and Nintendo found a cost effective way of building chips into SNES carts that would allow for true 3D games on a system that was never intended to have them.

More then that it had charm, visual design and a gameplay style that no other active Nintendo franchise did, flying though stages avoiding obstacles and shooting drones and bosses until they stop coming.

It was great... at the time, people forgave the simple look and horribly stutter frame rate due to how amazing it was at a fundamental level. With the new generation of Saturn and Playstation full 3D could be done with more detail and without the massive technical faults.

With a whole generation built around 3D bringing back one of the originators was a must. This did however lead to the cancellation of a SNES sequel but that's for later.

Star Fox 64 was in a lot of ways a remake, lots of new elements, enemies and bosses but most of what made the first so popular returns.

Stages filled with meteor, to avoid or blast apart, secret courses and bosses, allies needing your help. The power of the N64 was put to use to fill similar area as the first had with way more then was possible back then.

The big innovation of 64 was the pack in Rumble pack, allowing for more feedback via violent shacking of the controller reacting to what the player was doing.

It was a nicety that the player y did not need to use to play the game. The more pervasive innovation were stages that change the movement type, a submarine and tank. These were two of the worst stages and they have aged far worse then the rest of the game. Slower, more restrictive and with a lot of challenge coming from having to relearn basic movement.

64 is an amazing game but set the standard for Star Fox and innovation not getting on so well.

So while being born of innovation it getting close to it after growing up weakens it, much like Superman (64).

Star Fox Adventures does not count as it was an adventure game that had Star Fox IP juice wiped over it, form what I heard it had a couple of shooting stages just to trick people into thinking what they were playing was a real Star Fox game.

Star Fox: Assault developed by Namco for Nintendo a relationship that went though two Mario Kart arcade games all the way to the new Smash Bros.

Assault was a real Star Fox, almost like it was an apology for the bait and switch that was Adventures, the innovation that ruins this game?

On foot sections, they were so bad that I gave up on the first one that should up never touching the game again, were the traditional stages any good?

No idea.

Star Fox Command.

Star Fox 2 on the SNES, the game killed to make room for Star Fox 64 to shine rises from the grave and shows just how close we came to a terrible 16-bit Star Fox game.

The most important element with both 2 and Command was the map.

The enemy forces move around from stage to stage and the player must use strategy and forward thinking to plan counter measures and offensive strikes to win the war. Sounds good but in effect it means stages having to work no matter what the situation going into it is.

So stages could have just one or two drones in it that can be taken out in a few seconds, the crafted paths though amazing areas of 64 is gone replaced with big empty fields with no fun environmental aspects. Add the 'innovation' of touch screen controls and you know you got a stinker.

So of the 2 good Star Fox games the first was born of innovation and good and the second (64) was amazing apart from the innovations.

Star Fox should be Nintendo’s Gran Turismo, every gen we gen one maybe two games with the big difference being better production and new courses.

Now with fan demand hire then it has been for years Nintendo has announce a new Star Fox for the Wii U and they have already talked about how innovative it will be, will they never learn.

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The Engines For A New Age Of Experimentation Part 2 Ubiart Framework

Ubiart Framework is the engine that got its release début with Rayman Origins, starting its run off with one of the best 2D plat formers of all time.

Followed by the just as good Rayman Legends, these where both 2D platformers in an era where most people are only interested if they have a Nintendo logo on the box, but the next two games using Ubiart Framework really shows that its more then an engine.

Child Of Light is a sidescrolling RPG where you play a dead girl flying though a fantasy world over taken by fog and forest, all dialogue was written in poetic verse.

This could seem like a crazy move making something that the mass of gamers would baulk at, but just to make sure everyone knew it was a commitment and not an breakdown they made Valiant Hearts: The Great War.

Even with the Rayman games being risks and Child Of Light a crazy move Valiant Hearts stands as a statement of intent.

A game set at the deep end of the battlefields of World War one with a medic dog and a few silent humans as the cast, narration being the only words.

The Ubiart engine really does seem like the foundation of putting creativity above maximizing profitability, a way to make small, focused and Auteur driven.

Ubisoft as a whole will still be fuelled by hundred million yearly productions that being in billions but they seem to understand the need to divert even a little bit of that profit into projects that are allowed to fail, in a sense to small to fail.

After the Rayman games the releases have been digital only, meaning an even greater focus on the content over the form.

From the engine functionary that has been shown publicly it looks a lot like the more simple fan based one, like GameMaker or to a lesser extent Unity: a clean and easy interface that for quick iterations, a focus on 2D though it can handle 3D models and animation. This along with an easier path to many different systems means the inherent risk of these projects is spread across multiple SKUS, PS3, PS4, PSVITA, X360, XBONE, PC, IOS, ANDROID. Giving a greater chase of these more niche ideas finding their audience.

The post release buzz on Valiant Hearts is that its good, and there seem to be enough talk that it might catch on, and if it doesn’t any financial loss with be filled by a couple of hours worth of Assasin’s Creed DLC sales.

If the rate of Ubiart titles keeps up that Sony comment about bring back a PS1 era of creativity might come true, even if they aren’t the leaders of the charge.

Vodka Tales Blog

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The Engines For A New Age Of Experimentation

Around the unveiling of the PS4 people high up inside of Sony talked about how their new system would bring back the exuberant expropriate spirit of the original PlayStation’s catalog.

While this was putting the last two generations into a not so positive light that part rang true, the big thing that was missing was how.

Looking back over the first half year of the PS4 generation it appeared to have been a way of owning closer relationships with indy developers, while a smart move it bring to mind just what could be from Sony. With PlayStation Plus now needed to play online it becomes a core revenue stream and honestly a great deal with the many free games, to make this a appealing deal to as many people as possible the triple A titles are the ones that get the most focus and publicity, but this could sever as a keystone to truly bringing back that style of adventurous, unsafe game projects getting proper backing inside of a first party.

The new Amplitude had to be Kickstarted even though it was never going to be on a non-Sony system. While not a PS1 game the original PS2 Amplitude and Frequency were some of those games that carried that momentum forward, there just ended up being less and less of them until we were stuck in an infinite loop of the only Sony published games with proper marketing and care happened to be God of Wars and whatever Naughty Dog made last.

A little bit of frustration of seeing this Kickstarter limp over its target made me wonder why Sony couldn’t leverage PS Plus as a way of getting value out of these risky productions.

An example would be if they put a new Parappa The Rapper into motion with a budget of four million, they release it digitally for £15, with a purchase you get everything.

Then success or failure 6 month later they have it as the big give away title that month for PS Plus, maybe a slightly trimmer version with the stuff locked out as a one off DLC buy.

While gamers are rightfully cautious of DLC it would be a niggle worth getting over for a greater variety of games.

While Sony is now painfully silent about these remade niche classics like Parappa The Rapper and Vib-Ribbon and new games made in that spirit the one big company who looks to have taken up the mantle is Ubisoft.

Part 2 will delve into them and their little engine that might.

Originally posted on June 26th On the Vodka Tales Bloghttp://vodkatales.wordpress.com

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