Life kind of got in the way of my play-time this week. But, despite that, I still managed to hit a couple milestones. As always, let’s start with some numbers. My total time spent playing is now 28 and a half hours, I’ve completed chapter 6 of the story, and my main character is currently level 25. There will be some spoilers ahead, but they’re pretty minor this week. Continue reading
It’s been a bit of a roller coaster week for my Xenoblade Chronicles X play-through. Although I’m still really enjoying the game, a lot of it’s problems are becoming much more apparent. But as I was preparing to write a largely negative blog post this week, I got to a story section that really surprised me and made me excited all over again. I know I gave this warning last week, but just to be clear, there will be spoilers in these posts, so read at your own risk.
Like I did with last week, let’s start with some numbers. I have 22 hours of play time, I’m level 23, and I just finished chapter 5. This means I played for about ten hours this week, but I’ve only completed one story mission. So, what was I doing the rest of the time? Continue reading
Earlier today, investigative journalist/blogger Emily Rogers posted some rumors about the upcoming Legend of Zelda Wii U game. None of it is confirmed, but she’s been right in the past, most recently when she stated that a Paper Mario game was in development for Wii U before Color Splash’s announcement. So while we can’t treat these as fact, there’s good reason to at least think about them seriously. Continue reading
Welcome to the first entry in my new weekly series, Xenoblade Chronices X Check In. If you missed the announcement post I made, the basic gist of it is that I’m playing through Xenoblade Chronicles X and every week I’ll write about how I feel about it. Honestly, it’s rare for me to get through games of this scale do to lack of time (I do work full time) and wanting to play many games. But, by doing this series, I’m incentivizing myself to keep going with it, as it’ll help me put up regular content on the blog. Plus, a friend of mine has been bugging me to play it, so this’ll finally get him off my back. It’s wins all around!
I’m going to start each week with some numbers, just to give you an idea of how much I’ve played. I’m currently sitting at twelve hours and forty minutes of play time. My main character is level 17. Finally, I’ve currently played through chapter 4 of the story.
I should probably warn you that there will be spoilers ahead. Although the game does not seem to be particularly plot-heavy, I’m not going to hold back when talking about anything story-specific.
Still with me? The game opens with the Earth caught in the middle of an unrelated war between two advanced alien races. Earth is caught in the crossfire and destroyed. I actually really like this setup. So often in sci-fi, humanity is put on a pedestal. I love the idea that we were simply caught in the middle of something much bigger than us. Anyway, humans attempt to escape the planet in ships, but most are destroyed. One ship ends up crashing onto a planet called Mira.
Your first action as the player is to create your character. This is a huge departure from the previous Xenoblade Chronicles game. The editor is fairly robust and let’s you make a wide variety of different characters. I made a grizzled old dude, because that’s just what I always do. Don’t ask me why! Because the main character is a create-a-character, he or she doesn’t have a whole lot of personality. That’s ok though, as it’s easier to imprint yourself on a charter that’s a bit of a blank slate.
Your character is found in a lifepod and woken up by a woman named Elma. You tell Elma that you don’t remember anything, which is kind of frustrating. Amnesia is a pretty common trope in RPGs, and it’s a fairly lazy way to explain to a character the rules of the world they’re inhabiting when they should already know them. But it is what is. Elma explains how the Earth was destroyed and how you’ve come to live on planet Mira. Part of the ship you arrived on, the White Whale, has been converted into the first human city on Mira, New Las Angeles.
Elma hands you a weapon and tells you that you need to get back to New LA. And thus begins the prologue of the game. It’s very straight forward, but is mostly there to teach you the basics of combat. If you played the first Xenoblade Chronicles, you have a pretty good idea of how the combat will work. You move around in real time, doing auto-attacks every few seconds. You also have moves called “arts” which run on cool down timers. Some arts are more effective if you meet certain conditions, such as attacking the enemy from the side or while they’re suffering a status effect. It’s a fast paced and very active combat system, which makes it stand out from other Japanese RPGs.
When you arrive in New Las Angeles, you begin chapter 1 of the story. It’s basically just a bunch of tutorials and can get pretty long-winded, but the information is very useful. You learn that Elma is what’s called a Blade, which are basically the people who explore and map out Mira as well as defend what’s left of humanity. By the end of the chapter, you’re being asked to become a Blade. I kind of wish I had selected “no” just to see what would happen, but I said “yes” and progressed the game.
Now that you’re a full-fledged Blade, you can start running missions. This seems to be the bulk of what you’re doing in Xenoblade Chronicles X. All story missions have prerequisites, such as being a certain level, having done certain side quests, and having a certain amount of Mira probed. Most of these tasks you’ll complete from just running missions that you get from the mission counter.
I mentioned probing Mira just a bit ago. This is very important task that you need to do. It’s only been two months since the White Whale crashed on Mira, and that means most of the planet is still largely unknown. But, you can find points out in the world where you can plant a probe. This serves multiple functions. In the story, it’s helping to get data on the planet. As a gameplay function, it serves as a means of collecting money since you get paid from the probes periodically, and also as your fast travel system.
The side quests you pick up all seem to be variations on just a couple different themes. You’re either gathering items or slaying monsters. Sometimes the monsters will be a group of small monsters or they’ll be one large monster with special properties, referred to as a “tyrant”. The gathering quests are kind of annoying, as they don’t tend to do a very good job of explaining where you can find the items you’re looking for. A lot of times though, you’ll luck out and already have the items from your previous quests.
Eventually, you’ll reach a story mission where you meet another alien race called the Ganglion. It turns out the Ganglion are one of the races that was responsible for destroying the Earth. They view humanity as a cancer on the universe and are trying to wipe it out. This frustrates me, because it’s suddenly putting humanity on a pedestal again. It’s a real bummer, but what are you going to do?
And that’s about where I am in the game so far. The game is definitely not perfect, however I’m really enjoying my time with it. It’s been a long time since a large scale, open world RPG was really able to hold my attention like this. Fallout 4 was close, but that game, while still good, was too buggy and too similar to it’s predecessors to keep me going. But Xenoblade Chronicles X is taking up all of my spare time, and when I’m not playing it, I’m thinking about it.
Yesterday, Nintendo released its first mobile app, Miitomo. The game itself is pretty rudimentary, but the fact that it released on non-Nintendo platforms makes it pretty significant.
When you start the game, you have to make your Mii. You’re presented with a Mii maker that’s very similar to the ones found on the Wii, 3DS, and Wii U. You can also use a QR code to transfer the your Mii from a previous system over to it or use the Mii associated with your My Nintendo account.
Miitomo is a game about answering questions. That’s kind of it. Basically, the game asks you some questions, and then you answer them. Then, you’ll start getting questions from other players Miis, but to be clear, not ones that those players came up with. Soon, you’ll be answering questions about your friends and yourself as well as hearing their answers.
As you answer questions and add friends to your friends list, you earn coins. You can use those coins to buy new clothing items for your Mii. When you change your clothes, your fashion level increases, although honestly, I haven’t really figured out what that does for you.
If you haven’t already figured this out, Miitomo is an exceptionally casual game. Honestly, calling it a “game” is a bit of a stretch. It’s more like a weird social experiment. But for whatever reason, I’ve been playing it quite a bit in the last two days. It’s strangely addicting, and getting into weird conversations is a lot of fun.
I think Nintendo made the right decision in making Miitomo and putting it out on mobile platforms. Nintendo had huge success with the casual audience on the Wii, but really struggled to keep that momentum going with the Wii U. I think Nintendo recognized that the audience they once catered to on the Wii simply doesn’t care about game consoles anymore and has largely moved onto phones and tablets. While I’d be excited to see them put something closer to a real game out on a phone, I think it makes a lot of sense to put more casual experiences on phones and more hardcore games on consoles.
All in all, I’m definitely enjoying Miitomo, but I’m not sure how long I’m going to stick with it. Maybe I’ll check back in with updated impressions later, but for now, I think everyone should check it out, but keep their expectations in check.
There’s a new Star Fox game due out next month and I’m worried about it. I have no doubt that the game will be great, but that’s not what’s getting to me. The thing about Star Fox is that standards have changed in the last twenty-three years, and I just don’t know if Star Fox makes sense in 2016.
When the original Star Fox released back in 1993 on the Super Nintendo, it was kind of revolutionary. The majority of Super Nintendo games were, for lack of a better term, very video gamey. They were primarily 2D games with little story. Just move from right to left and rescue the princess. Obviously there’s some exceptions to this, like SquareSoft’s RPGs, but generally, if you popped in a random SNES cartridge, this is what you could expect. And then along comes Star Fox.
Star Fox was fully polygonal. It’s not particularly impressive by today’s standards, it mostly just looks like flying triangles, but at the time it was a revelation. Suddenly, cinematic camera angles in cutscenes were possible. Characters would chatter with each other during gameplay. Console games could now feel more like an interactive movie.
Another one of the traits of games from this era is that they are often very short. If you know what you’re doing, the original Star Fox can be beaten in less than an hour. This is the kind of the thing that would be viewed as a problem today, but back then, it was par for the course. Many games, Star Fox included, were meant to be finished in a single sitting. The longevity came from the challenge the game presented and alternate paths and secrets. Repeating the same game over and over just to get better at it and find all the secrets is something players used to do all the time, but it simply isn’t the way people play games in 2016.
However, I think Nintendo is aware of this. They know that the core gameplay of Star Fox is great, but also simple by today’s standards. Star Fox 64, the first sequel to Star Fox, was built on largely the same ideas, but added multiplayer to help give the game more legs. Star Fox Assault on the GameCube added missions where you were on foot, turning the game into more of a third-person shooter. Star Fox Command on the DS was more of turn based strategy game that would turn into mini Star Fox levels when units interacted. Every Star Fox game since the original added something to try and make the game a little more complicated.
Now, Star Fox Zero isn’t out yet, so I might be jumping to conclusions, but everything we’ve seen points to it just being Star Fox. I love Star Fox, but the idea of putting out a game that is just more of that at full price just seems insane. Nowadays, games come out for less than twenty dollars that have more complicated gameplay and last longer. A good example would be Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley is $15, offers tons of content to do, and takes players over seventy hours to see and do everything. I know that the actual style of game is quite a bit different, but it’s hard to see the value in something that’s most likely to be so much shorter, so much simpler, and so much more expensive.
All of this really bums me out. A new Star Fox coming out should be reason to celebrate, and I’m still willing to bet that it’s going to be a lot of fun. But putting Star Fox out in it’s most basic form at full price on a console that has a very small user base sounds like a recipe for disaster. But this is all speculative, and I hope to be proven wrong next month.
Oh, and you probably noticed that I didn’t mention Star Fox Adventures when I was going over the previous games. Adventures is such a different game and didn’t even start as a Star Fox game, so it didn’t really make sense to bring it up. However, I do really like that game and hope to talk about in much more detail later on. So, hey, look forward to that.
A friend of mine has been bothering me to play through a certain video game for a long time. It’s a big game, and one that’ll take a decent commitment for me to get through. But, it is one that I want to play and one that I now own. So, I’m going to start playing through Xenoblade Chronicles X.
Starting next week, you can expect check-in posts from me talking about my progress in the game and how I’m currently feeling about it. Think of it as a really long review that you get a section of every week. I imagine the first week will be a pretty long post, but depending on how much happens and how much opinions change over time, future posts might be much shorter.
Anyway, I hope to have fun playing this game and I hope you have fun seeing how I feel about it. Check back next week for the first installment.
The NES is often remembered as one of the greatest consoles in history. When it’s brought up, people will bring up a couple dozen games that defined the entire generation. You’ve got your Marios, your Zeldas, your Castlevanias, and so much more. But did you know that there are over 800 officially released games on the NES?
If you grew up with an NES, there’s a good chance you ened up with at least a few games that aren’t part of that coveted dozen or so of classics. These are the games that your non-gaming relatives got you for your birthday. Or perhaps ones that you picked up because the boxart looked cool. After all, in those days, video game coverage wasn’t nearly as prolific as it is today. It wasn’t uncommon to discover a game while you were in a store.
Because you were a kid and didn’t have limitless money, when you got a game, you played that game. A lot. As a result, everyone seems to have that one game that no one else remembers, but you spent a significant amount of your childhood playing. One of those games for me was Dynowarz.
My copy of Dynowarz was a loose cartridge. Having never owned the instruction manual, and the game itself offering nothing in terms of story, I had no idea what this game was about. You were a blue guy with a gun. You’d go through pretty simple platforming levels until you run into a strange brain thing. After destroying the brain, you backtrack through the same level, then jump into your giant robot dinosaur and wreak havoc on other robot dinosaurs., As a child, I never questioned why any of this was happening. Here’s the thing about Dynowarz; it’s awesome. Robot dinosaurs, weapons, colorful visuals, great soundtrack… it’s all great. It doesn’t matter at all why any of this was happening, it’s just awesome.
Unfortunately, there’s something else about Dynowarz. It’s kind of a big thing, probably one of the main reasons that the game isn’t looked back upon as one of the classics. That reason is that this game is hot garbage. Almost everything about the actual act of playing this game is objectively bad.
As I’ve mentioned earlier, the game is broken into two distinct gameplay styles. The first is a fairly simple platformer. These are the parts where you control the blue guy. You start at the left and you go right, shooting enemies and hopping on platforms along the way. Unfortunately, the control has this real lag to it. Nothing you do feels fluid. Getting your character to do anything the way you want him to is a massive undertaking. If you want to jump on a small moving platform, you have to take into account the fact that he won’t respond immediately to what you’re telling him to do, and you have to line up that jump pixel perfect or you’ll fall to your death. There were several times while I replayed the game for this article where I swear I successfully landed a jump only to find myself dead.
After getting a few screens to the right, you encounter that brain boss I mentioned earlier. Hopefully you really enjoy fighting this thing, because it’s at the end of every single one of these segments. All you have to do to destroy it is keep shooting. The most variety that comes from these fights is in the layout of the room they’re in. Sometimes there’s some platforms you have to deal with with to get an ideal shot in. Other times there’s smaller enemies trying to get in your way. But none of that really matters. Every fight is extremely easy and they all feel like the same thing.
Upon beating the boss, you have to go back through the entire level. Thankfully, it does remember what enemies you have defeated, so it’s a lot easier this time around. This is a pretty rare thing in NES games and is very appreciated. The jumps can still be quite difficult though, and if you mess up you’ll have to do the entire section over again. When you get back to the beginning, you’ll find your giant dinosaur robot waiting for you.
Next you’ll pilot the robot dinosaur through a more action heavy stage. There’s still jumps over bottomless pits you’ll have to make, but these sections are much less platform-heavy. Now your primary goal is to beat up other robot dinosaurs. Some enemies use unfair tactics that make the game much less fun. While most are of the stand around and shoot variety, some will bum rush you the second you hit them. This results in almost completely unavoidable damage. Challenge is not a bad thing, but when a game stops feeling fair, when it feels like there’s nothing you could have done to avoid what happened, that’s when the game really starts to suffer.
As you progress through these levels, you’ll come across weapons power-ups. The weapon system in Dynowarz is actually pretty cool. Basically, when you pick up a weapon, you’ll receive the level 1 version of that weapon. If you find the same weapon and pick it up, you’ll receive the level 2 version of that weapon. Each weapon has three levels, which increase their effectiveness. If you happen to grab a different weapon, your weapon will be replaced by the level 1 version of the one you just picked up. As a result, you’ll likely find one weapon that you like a lot and stick to it, trying your hardest to avoid accidentally picking up a different one.
When you get to the end of these sections, you’ll fight a boss. Thankfully, these bosses actually look different each time. However, the strategy for beating them never changes. Just keep hitting them and try not to get hit yourself. When you defeat the boss, you enter a doorway and go to the next blue guy level. You repeat this cycle about seven times and then the game is over.
I’ve done a lot of complaining about this game so far, so why exactly do I love it? Well, as I stated earlier, there’s a lot of really positive features. The visuals and art style are very striking. The music is catchy and has been stuck in my head since replaying. The weapon upgrade system is fairly unique for this style of game. There’s just a lot to really appreciate here, but it’s the fundamentals that it messes up.
People talk about movies that are so bad that they actually enjoy watching them. But does this concept exist in video games? I think it can, but it’s a little different. Because you have more direct control over what’s happening in a game, gameplay problems can make it so you don’t see the rest of the game. You end up giving up because it just isn’t fun. Movies will keep progressing whether they’re good or not.
Sometimes, what you find fun is kind of inexplainable. But that doesn’t mean that you aren’t having it. I guess if there’s any point to this other than just wanting to talk about a game that no one talks about, is that no one can tell you what you do or don’t like. However, you need to be able to think critically about what the game doesn’t get right. I love Dynowarz, and that’s okay, but imagine if that game was actually good.If that was the case, I wouldn’t be the only one talking about it over twenty years after it’s release.
Oh, and one last thing. While looking up information on Dynowarz before writing this article, I learned that the blue guy is named Dr. Proteus, the bad guy is Dr. Brainius, and your robot dinosaur is called the Cyborasaurus. This game is great.
Quarter Circle Forward 