Other Games of 2006
No shortage of games to talk about. Some good, some bad.
List items
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I generally stay away from conversations about what constitutes a game. Is Gone Home a game? What about To the Moon? I don’t care. But no, Garry’s Mod isn’t a game, at least not by itself. It can be crafted into a game, but by itself Garry’s Mod is a piece of software that allows the manipulation of content found in other games. And if you enjoy poking at games to see how they run, how characters move, and so on, there’s something about Garry’s Mod to enjoy.
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Vice City Stories brought the neon city of Vice City onto PSP, for better or worse. I remember this game being a technical nightmare. Textures popped-in around you, the draw distance was horrible, and to make matters worse, VCS looks like every other “3D Era” GTA game, meaning it’s ugly as hell. No wonder Rockstar developed Chinatown Wars for DS from scratch; the PSP GTA games were ugly enough.
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What to say about a game I have barely played (I regained control of Sora and basically quick)? I really want to talk about the convoluted fiction that Square Enix has built around this franchise, but I have nothing to add to that conversation. I would like to say that Kingdom Hearts is gaming’s Dragon Ball Z or Bleach – super popular content that seems to stretch forever, becoming increasingly silly as they imagine some new, stupid thing to fight against – but at least those continued in a linear fashion. Kingdom Hearts is going everywhere, introducing people and concepts where there obviously wasn’t before.
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I know that I played through Mega Man X2 and X3, but I can’t remember doing so. I recall completing Mega Man X and going through at least a section of X4. I may have even started X5, but I can’t say that with confidence. Those other two games I have very few memories of; I recall a wire-frame Sigma and a wire-frame sword mini-boss, and there was a tropical forest theme, I believe, for a tiger boss with Wolverine-like claws, but that’s all. Everything else about X2 and X3 is blank, which may speak to how little those two games changed the formula.
Wait, I recall a trio of robots challenging X to fight them to reclaim Zero’s limbs, and then Zero being playable at the beginning of X3. There, that’s everything. Having a collection to play through these games (and the crappy later titles) is awesome, even if not everything within that disk was worth remembering.
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By Portable Ops, I was largely drained on Metal Gear. MGS4 ended the story, and I didn't see a particular need to continue the series. Let series mastermind Hideo Kojima work on something else! Where is the endlessly rumored Zone of the Enders 3? Apparently, Konami wanted more Metal Gear, so we got more Metal Gear, and despite my gripping, a more typical (sorry, Metal Gear Acid) 3D (sorry, Ghost Babel) Metal Gear on a handheld sounded pretty cool.
What also sounded cool was the abduction mechanic, in which Naked Snake could kidnap enemy soldiers and “recruit” them to your side. It was a surprisingly addictive mechanic, which is why I eventually stuck to that and never bothered finishing the game. Oops.
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Metroid Prime Hunters is an example of why the multiplayer in games like Call of Duty and Halo work so well, namely the ease in which it takes to kill another player. Only a few seconds and strategically placed shots are required, something I can’t say for Hunters, at least based on my experience. I jumped into an arena with only one other player and spent the entire match chasing him down, my aim hindered by the game’s annoying controls. My gun required more than several well-placed shots to bring him down, so that combined with his evasive behavior led to a match in which I felt like little happened.
As a single-player game, Hunters is a competent attempt at throwing Metroid Prime onto a handheld, but it never worked for me as a multiplayer game. The fact that some people love this game amazes me.
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I had to mention Sneak King because nobody would fail to mention this crappy piece of “advertainment.” YouTube is clogged with people playing through Sneak King. “The King” popping up from stupidly obvious places has spawned gifs. It’s difficult to determine the point of these “BK Games,” since almost any other type of promotion would've probably cost less than to develop, manufacture, ship, and advertise three separate games.
At least they’re capable of being played on both Xbox and Xbox 360, I guess.
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Remember the film Independence Day? Remember that last dogfight that took place between one of the massive alien ships and Area 51? That was a pretty cool finale. Remember when Star Fox 64 had a level mimicking that part of the movie? That was also great. What an entire game composed of these arena fights, a timer always counting down? That’s exactly what Star Fox Command is.
Now, those levels aren't really bad, but I always found myself losing because I wasn't fast enough to kill every enemy before the timer dropped to zero. If that timer didn't exist, Command would be a perfectly enjoyable game, but that damn timer just increases my frustrations.
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It’s an odd duck, this Valkyrie Profile. So odd that I never quite wrapped my head around it, leading me to lose interest without any significant progress made. Someday I will buy the guide or look up a user-friendly FAQ, but until then, Valkyrie Profile sits in my Pile of Shame, ignored and misunderstood.
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Here’s my big problem with Yoshi’s Island DS: at any time, the game has to account for the player switching from one baby to another, which means that they couldn't always craft levels based around each baby’s unique ability. For instance, stages in which Yoshi is constantly dashing wouldn't work because Yoshi can only dash with Baby Mario, but since the player may instead by using Peach or DK or Wario, there goes that level idea that requires only Baby Mario.
Had players been forced to use a specific baby throughout an entire level, the developer could have crafted puzzles and situations around the abilities of whatever baby is being used. But they didn't do that, and Yoshi’s Island DS suffered because of that.
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