Finished Super Mario Galaxy

The review for Super Mario Galaxy is simple; this is the best game I've played on the Wii. It's Mario! And he's back to his former glory!

Like all Mario games, there's practically no story. The designers were too busy building fun and imaginative levels to be concerned with meaningless story elements. Make no mistake, it is the level designs that will keep you playing this game. There's a ton of levels to see and explore. They're extremely well thought-out and designed because they're meant to be played over and over again, if not to collect all 120 Stars, then just for the joy of playing them.

The music strikes a nice balance between the old themes that we all know and love, and some cute new themes. And all the music is appropriately repetitive; the themes will be burnt into your brain just like the themes of classic Mario games.

I'm so glad for this installment of Mario, because I had given up on the series. I've been so unimpressed with the latest installments. Mario 64 was awful, and almost unplayable. Mario Sunshine was a step up in controls, but the camera was so terrible that I threw down my controller in disgust after a few hours of play and I've never looked back. I had been worried that Nintendo would continue the trend, but this installment is excellent. (On a side note, we may have the Wii-mote to thank for Super Mario Galaxy. The Wii-mote is so simple and basic compared to the N64 and NGC controllers that the game designers were forced to keep the gameplay simple, which makes the game more playable and more fun!)

Super Mario Galaxy compelled me to play it. I wanted to find all the stars. I wanted to see all the levels. I wanted to experience everything that the game has to offer! I haven't felt so compelled to find everything in a Mario game since Super Mario World on the Super Nintendo...and that's saying a lot because it's one of my favorite games of all time.

I really can't say enough good things about Super Mario Galaxy. I love it. The kids love it too, of course! I could find some criticisms to throw at the game, but I don't want to. I love playing it so much that the criticisms would be shallow and I wouldn't really feel them. In the end I believe Super Mario Galaxy will stick in my mind as one of the best video gaming experiences I've ever had.

Okay, bored with fishing already

Okay, I'm bored fishing already. I have about 20 fish left, but I'm ready to move on. That's one thing I've found about Animal Crossing; I can't obsess about it properly. I don't get a special power-up if I collect all the fish. I don't get a dragon-sword if I pay-off my mortgage. All I get is a full aquarium and a paid-off house. I want to apply my RPG tendencies, but I'm not rewarded enough.

I know I'm playing it wrong; it's supposed to be a vacation-like break. But I want to experience the things that this game has to offer, and they haven't made it easy. I want to kick back and relax with this game, but I want to do it quickly and get it over with!

Maybe it's time for me to move to my next epic quest.

In search of fish...

I've probably played enough of Animal Crossing to give it a review, but the completionist in me wants MORE! I'm trying to find all the fish in the game. I'll probably give up short of them all, but it's fun to listen to podcasts and zone out while fishing.

Epic Quests of Yore

I played these games long ago; long enough to have forgotten exactly why I liked them. Nontheless, I played them.

• 
  
• Final Fantasy X-2
• Final Fantasy X
• Chrono Cross
• Suikoden II
• Metal Gear Solid II
• Final Fantasy VI
• Final Fantasy VII
• Final Fantasy VIII
• Final Fantasy IX
• Ico
• Super Mario Bros.
• Super Mario Bros. 2
• Super Mario World
• Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island

Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)

• Adventures of Lolo
• Adventures of Lolo 2
• Bubble Bobble
• Contra
• Double Dragon
• Double Dragon II: The Revenge
• Dr. Mario
  
• Duck Hunt
• Final Fantasy
• Ghosts 'n Goblins
• Jeopardy!
• Kid Icarus
  
• The Legend of Zelda
• Mega Man
• Mega Man 2
• Mega Man 3
  
• Metal Gear
• Metroid
• R.C. Pro-Am
• Rampage
• Spy Hunter
  
• Super Mario Bros.
• Super Mario Bros. 2
• Super Mario Bros. 3
• Yoshi's Cookie
  
• Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
  

Commodore 64:

• 7 Cities of Gold
• Boulder Dash
• California Games
• Gauntlet
• Ghostbusters
• Gyruss
• Impossible Mission
• Lode Runner
• Marble Madness
• Paperboy
• Racing Destruction Set
• Winter Games
• World Games
  

Atari 2600:

• Barnstorming
• Battlezone
• Bowling
• Breakout
• Combat
• Demon Attack
• Dodge 'Em
• Dragster
• Golf
• Grand Prix
• Haunted House
• Pac-man
• Pitfall
• Pitfall II: Lost Caverns
• Popeye
• Space Invaders
• Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
• Video Chess
  

And that's it. My personal gaming history.

Future Quests

Here's my list of unplayed games. Some games I own, some games I've borrowed, some games I intend to rent, and some games I intend to buy. What's common to all these games is that I have not yet played them, and I want to.

Unplayed games I rented/borrowed/own:
Persona 3 FES (Shin Megami Tensei)
Beyond Good & Evil
God of War
Star Ocean: Till the End of Time
Mario Kart Wii
Okami
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Super Paper Mario
Boom Blox
Wario Land: Shake It
Harvest Moon: Save the Homeland
Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (retro-replay)

Gaming Limbo:
Left 4 Dead - rented, great, play again!
Lego Batman - borrowed, returned, needs review
Animal Crossing: City Folk - I think I'm done, needs review
Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga - I'm done, needs review
COD4 - played and abandoned
Portal - played, needs review




Unplayed games I don't have:

---- PS2 ----
Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia
Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter
Dark Cloud 2
Devil Summoner 2 (Shin Megami Tensei)
Digital Devil Saga 2 (Shin Megami Tensei)
Disgaea: Hour of Darkness
Dragon Quest V
God of War
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
GrimGrimoire
Jak 3
Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence
Persona 4 (Shin Megami Tensei)
Ratchet & Clank
Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal
Rez
Rogue Galaxy
Tales of Symphonia
Tales of the Abyss
Shadow Hearts: Covenant
Suikoden III
Suikoden V
Valkyrie Profile

---- Wii ----
de Blob
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time
Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
House of the Dead: Overkill
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
MySims
MySims Kingdom
Pikmin: New Play Control
Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition

---- WiiWare & VC ----
Ogre Battle
Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
Super Metroid
Tetris Party
World of Goo

---- N64 ----
Goldeneye 007

---- NGC ----
Eternal Darkness
Pikmin
Pikmin 2
Skies of Arcadia Legends
Tales of Symphonia

---- 360 ----
50 Cent: Blood on the Sand
Assassin's Creed
Blue Dragon
Castle Crashers
Fable 2
Fallout 3
Far Cry 2
Gears of War 2
Lost Odyssey
Mass Effect
Mirror's Edge
Oblivion (Elder Scrolls IV)
Saints Row 2
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Too Human

---- PS3 ----
Flower
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
Valkyria Chronicles

---- DS ----
Knights in the Nightmare
Professor Layton
Suikoden Tierkreis
The World Ends with You

Red = Most Wanted

Finished Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

When I first started playing Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time I said, "Wow! This is amazing. It controls like a dream, why doesn't every adventure game control like this?" Literally, I said it out loud. I thought back to all the wasted time I spent falling off ledges in Tomb Raider simply because the controls were awful. But, thanks to the Dagger of Time, even falling off ledges presents no problem for Prince of Persia. The Dagger allows you to reverse time back to the point where you were standing firmly ON the ledge. Then you can take another crack at whatever you attempted that sent you to your death, or decide on another path. What a wonderful gameplay mechanic. But in the end, I was disappointed by the cheap tricks played by the game's designers to lengthen the game. What could have been a favorite game has been reduced to "yeah, I played that; it was okay."

The game's story is framed as if the player is listening to hero tell his tale. And, throughout the game the story teller helps to immerse the player by highlighting the hero's emotions, or pointing out interesting facts about the environment. An example that springs to mind is when the game leads you to a prison/torture chamber. The story teller explains that he knew that his father's castle had such places, but he had never seen them, and how the Sands of Time had reduced both guard and prisoner to equals. Little details like this immersed me in the world and gave depth to the characters and story.

Common gameplay elements are explained away using the story telling motif as well. Saving the game merely becomes a pause in the story, and after you've saved your game the story teller says, "Done, I'll start the story from here next time." Dying gets explained away by the story teller as well. When you die in the game the story teller cuts in and says, "No, no, no. That didn't happen." These mundane elements of gameplay, that otherwise would have drawn you out of the world, now neatly fit into the idea that we're being told the epic tale by the hero of the story.

Another aspect of the game that they really got right is the companion, Farah. It's truly a joy to watch the relationship develop between the hero an Farah. She's supportive of the hero, without losing her own identity or character. The relationship and its development is my favorite aspect of this game (which I consider a love story).

Here's my big complaint with the Sand of Time. As you progress through the story the battles, while fun, seem far too long. It seems as though the game designers added more and more combat simply to add time to the total gameplay. It's a dirty trick that drags down the gameplay and draws you, the player, out of the story. After all, if I'm thinking thoughts like, "Why did the game designers do this," then I'm no longer immersed in the story; suddenly I'm playing a game, not living a story.

Nearly all the game lengthening comes at the end. As an example, there's a part in the game where you have to guess the correct order of doors to enter, and if you get it wrong you go back to the beginning of the sequence.

Then the designers took away the Dagger of Time. I found myself cursing the game and it's designers and I completely lost all love for the story and its characters. I could understand the Dagger being taken away. I could see how that would add variety to the game. I could also see this as a way to shake things up and make you love the dagger even more once you got it back. But, the dagger is taken away for no apparent reason NEAR THE END OF THE GAME! I got pissed when they took away the dagger. I was too far through the story to quit now, and suddenly they made the game un-fun.

In the end I got very little satisfaction from finishing the game. The dirty tricks that the designers played got the better of the game, and I now regard Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time as a mediocre title. I'm disappointed, because the game had potential. And, several gamers I respect, including Yahtzee and Ludwig Kietzmann, regard the game very highly.

I liked the game. I'm just disappointed because I thought I was going to love it. I was enjoying it so much....I feel sad...(sigh).

Dragon Quest VIII

I'm ashamed (as an avid console RPG fan) that Dragon Quest VIII is my first Dragon Quest game. Ever. And, as a DQ newbie I have no frame of reference to compare against past DQ games. The first thing that struck me was the shocking amount of polish in some aspects of the game, such as the character design, world design, music, and voice acting. The next thing that struck me was the shocking LACK of polish on other aspects of the game, like the battle system, saving system, and inventory system. But let me begin with the good...

The RPG goodness is laid on thick in this game. There's plenty of different weapons to choose, armor to equip, skills to level, and spells to learn. You're rarely locked out of any area in the game, which helps improve the sense that you're on an epic quest and exploring a vast world. I found myself thinking things like, "This area is great, but how do I get across this river?" "If only I had a boat I could get to that island over there." "It's nice that I can teleport to areas I've visited, but wouldn't it be nice if I could fly to areas I haven't visited?" Exploration is fun. The story and bosses are fun as well.

An aspect of the game that showed a lot of potential, but failed to live up to it, was alchemy. You can take some items in the game, combine them with other items in the alchemy pot, wait a while, and then you get a new item that's often more powerful than anything you can find otherwise. The has great potential and, indeed, most of the ultimate weapons are only available through alchemy. Throughout the game you find recipes for your alchemy pot. However, the recipes are rarely ever complete, and this is the aspect that I regard as broken. They should have given complete recipes. I'm not willing to sit and try to figure out which item I'm missing through trial and error, especially since the interface is so very, very clunky.

This brings me to the menu interface, the most broken aspect of the game. Let me illustrate the problem by discussing how you save the game. Problem 1, saving can only be done from churches that are scattered throughout the land; why can't I just save anywhere I want? Problem 2, you go through no less than 6 steps each and every time you want to save. You're also faced with 8 screens of useless and repetitive text that CANNOT BE SKIPPED! You are forced to watch the text scroll slowly across the screen until it's fills up the text box, then press the button to continue the process. Every time you save you're given the option to quit, a useless feature that just takes you back to the title menu (and not quickly either). The problems saving are echoed throughout all other aspects of the game. Alchemy is cumbersome. Shopping is annoying. The inventory system is such a pain that it's almost unusable. It feels to me like someone took the interface developers from the SNES era of RPG games, froze them in a cryogenic sleeping chamber, and then revived them to work on DQ8.

What could have saved the game is a deep battle system: a battle system that's unique, customizable and fun. The kind of battle system that forces you to think about strategy and tactics. Unfortunately, a deep and rewarding battle system is something that you WILL NOT find in this game. The first battle I encountered I groaned. Having just come from Final Fantasy XII, I had begun to think that random battles were a thing of the past; we don't need them anymore because our consoles are advanced enough to render the enemies before we encounter them. There's really no excuse for having so many, unskippable, random battles in this game. And, to make matters worse, combat is not fast. Every action is chosen before a turn begins, so if situations change you cannot correct the moves you've chosen mid-turn. I often found myself healing the same character twice, while failing to revive a character who was wiped out near the beginning of the turn. The only way to fix this problem is to use preset, automated battle tactics to guide your party member's actions. While this allows your characters to react intelligently to arising situations during the battle, it does create another problem: boredom. With automated tactics enabled each battle is won merely by pressing a couple buttons just to get the combat started. For the rest of the battle I found myself sitting around for five minutes while my characters slowly won the battle for me. For this reason I say that combat in Dragon Quest VIII is broken and it needs to be completely redone if I'm ever to play another Dragon Quest Game.

Why the low score? The annoyances got in the way. I could have really liked this game. I could have loved it! But the game's flaws got in the way of my enjoyment. I was more compelled to play than enjoying play, thus is the curse of the RPG enthusiast.

So, what kept me playing for 96 hours: The beautiful, colorful world, the interesting characters, new costumes for Jessica (Va-Va-Voom!), and the RPG bug that compels me to get the next best suit of armor, and the next best sword, and the full set of spells. All of these aspects combined into an experience that was enjoyable. In the end I was satisfied with Dragon Quest VIII. There's enough good here to outweigh the bad. Trudging through screen after screen of useless, repetitive text every time I want to save is something I was willing to forgive since I really wanted to continue the quest. However, another game without as much polish, great music, and graphical beauty (DQ9 on the DS, I'm talking to you!) might not hold my attention. The makers of Dragon Quest may not have converted me into a fan, but they have definitely piqued my interest. I'll keep an eye on their future releases and see what develops.