Tap, Zzz, Tap, Zzz -- Digimon World Championship Review

Anyone who is familiar with the digital pets such as Tamagotchi or Gigapet should already have a fairly clear understanding of the gameplay involved in Bandai Namco 's Digimon Wolrd Championship for the Nintendo DS. In fact, the Digimon product began as a rival to the Tamagotchi and has since "digivolved" to the videogame medium.

Because the Digimon franchise focuses raising and training digital monsters, players will find that the Digimon World Championship experience is more about maintenance and management than actual gameplay. Most of one's time with this game will involve moving Digimon from cage to cage in an effort to boost certain stats or give the little buggers a bit of rest, dropping food in their faces to prevent starvation, cleaning up waste with a broom and dustpan tool, applying bandages, administering medicine, etc.

The clock is always ticking in Digimon World Championship, and a schedule of events lets players know on which days special Digimon title matches will be held. It's important to pay attention and have the creatures healthy and well-rested (with full HP) before registering for a match, and to be sure not to miss events altogether.

Building a stable of Digimon allows the player to compete in battles with other, CPU-controlled monsters for ranks, titles, and money. Unfortunately, Digimon combat is apparently a spectator sport, because the player has no control over anything once a match begins. Every battle's outcome is based on the attributes of the Digimon in the arena, and each conflict plays out like a mini bumper car session on the DS screen. The game features a multiplayer battle mode too, but again, it simply pits one player's trained monsters against another's. Money earned through victory in any of these battles can be used to buy new stat-boosting cages, items to take care of Digimon, or tools to hunt for more of them.

Of everything there is to be done in Digimon World Championship, it is the hunting portion of the game that requires the most input from the player. Here, the task is to shoot, lasso, and capture whichever wild Digimon one's little heart desires. The tamer (that's what us players are called) heads to an area on the map where a number of Digimon bounce around through the grass, between trees and rocks, in and out of caves, etc. By using the stylus to poke, draw circles around, and drag these critters, a player can increase his or her army of warrior-pets.

Digimon World Championship, while not much of a hands-on gaming experience, is a great step up from the digital pets of old, and would be a good choice for the youngest of gamer demographics. Other than that, the game lacks any real gameplay value and is more a time-consuming and minimally enjoyable chore.

Little To Discover -- Infinite Undiscovery Review

An impressive resume goes only so far. Such is the case for developer tri-Ace, whose list of prior accomplishments includes games in the critically acclaimed Valkyrie Profile and Star Ocean series. History aside, the Japanese company's newest creation, Infinite Undiscovery, sets off fireworks with neither its plot nor its action-oriented gameplay style.

While the premise of the story itself is intriguing--a league of liberators fighting an oppressive and militaristic order that seeks to chain the moon to the earth--the delivery of that tale is under-stimulating and struggles to immerse the player in the game world. The full cast of characters is diverse and imaginative, but these fictional individuals fail to come to life through the game's underwhelming writing and acting.

Players assume the role of Capell, a fragile flute player who is imprisoned due to his striking resemblance to the leader of the revolutionaries, and must embark on a journey full of new companions (17 of whom become partially playable party members), enemies, and places to be liberated from the massive moon-chains.

The gameplay is not what one would expect from a traditional JRPG, but is an entirely real-time, action-based setup. Melee attacks, spells, "connect" abilities, item usage, inventory management, etc. all take place without pausing the events of the game world. All enemies appear in the surrounding environment, with battles arising seamlessly (and frequently) as players travel, loosely guided, from location to location.

There is much to do during combat in Infinite Undiscovery. Simple and strong melee attacks are performed and strung together with the A and B buttons, flute songs that produce a variety of special effects are played with the X button, and connect abilities are chosen with the right bumper and initiated with the X and Y buttons. Skills can be combined and set to activate by holding either the A or B button, and restorative actions can be requested from party members using the Y button.

Here, again, the concept is more appealing than the final design, because the game's combat mechanics prove to be more clunky and awkward than one might hope. When mounting a hand-to-hand offense, for example, players will find that Capell makes all too many unnecessary pauses, leaving himself open to enemy attacks. Striking the enemy while simultaneously avoiding the incoming assault becomes more clumsy than it should and would be, had the controls been tightened up prior to release. Infinite Undiscovery is in a gameplay no-man's-land that falls somewhere between the responsiveness of a true action game and the methodical pace of a traditional RPG; it is just out of reach of those "safe zones" at either end of the spectrum, and it suffers as a result.

The game's camera doesn't help matters at all. Much of the time, the closely trailing camera makes it impossible to see the action, and can get so caught up between walls, characters, and other obstacles that the player will find him- or herself fighting just as much to see the opposition as with the foes themselves.

Graphically, Infinite Undiscovery is fairly mediocre, with a number of showy effects that are ultimately more about flash (frame rate-dropping flash) than any sort of detail or aesthetic value. Environments and characters are colorful, but again, there is nothing beautiful about these aspects of the game's visuals. As for audio, most of the characters' voice acting is of straight-to-DVD movie quality, and sound effects and musical score are nothing to get excited about.

Infinite Undiscovery will serve RPG junkies well. It has all of the story elements of a fantasy tale, weapons, items, and character improvement to satisfy those needs, but for the less fanatical RPG players out there, or anyone who seeks a more complete and refined gameplay experience, there are most certainly better ways to spend your time and money.

One Word Review | Killer7

This is One Word Review, a concept that I shamelessly lifted from my friend Creighton over at Nerdology (it's okay, he said I could). The idea behind OWR, as we like to call it, is that videogames are so often rated, reviewed, and discussed to exhaustion that it is sometimes a relief to read a succinct, definitive description of a game--a single word that sums up the most prominent characteristics of the gaming experience. That's the idea, so here goes:

Psychowarped

Rumble | N64 Versus Dreamcast

The Game Crush Rumble is stepping away from comics and fighting games today, and into the realm of the ever-waging console wars. The classic rivalry of Nintendo vs. Sega lives on, as Google Trends host a battle between Sega's final console and its Nintendo-made counterpart--two beloved systems with cultish fan following.

Let the battle begin:

As was often the case over the years, Nintendo has kept a few steps ahead of Sega in this matchup. The N64 has clearly laid the Dreamcast to rest today.

Here And There -- Penumbra: Requiem Review

Penumbra: Requiem is Frictional Games' expansion of their stellar first-person adventure game from earlier this year, Penumbra: Black Plague. While Requiem is an immediate continuation thereof, it appears to draw almost equally as much design influence from Valve Software's critical darling, Portal. Unfortunately for gamers, Requiem doesn't quite live up to the standard set by either of those titles.

Requiem picks up where Black Plague left off, in the minutes after the game's final scene. The team has shifted focus this time around from a story-driven adventure to a segmented first-person puzzle game, where players are placed inside a series of loosely tied, fundamentally different environments, with the sole purpose of reaching each successive level exit and moving another step closer to the game's authoritative resolution.

Within each stage, players use the game's physics engine to manipulate objects in the virtual world and solve the many puzzles that lie before them. Rather than a targeting reticle, as in first-person shooters, Requiem features a hand icon that is used to take hold of cranks, levers, doors, drawers, ladders, ropes, boxes, etc., and players must make the appropriate gestures while clutching said items in order to accomplish their goals. This unique approach to environment interaction is still very functional and still very enjoyable, but many of the puzzles seem somewhat contrived.

The puzzles in Requiem have taken a step away from the practical and intuitive setup of Black Plague towards more arbitrary solutions and a small dose of trial-and-error gameplay. Operating random levers and cranks or rolling an electric ball through a series of chutes are a few that come to mind. There is little consequence or motivation for the player's actions other than to gather the "keys" that open the portal to the next relatively disjointed arena, and there is no crescendo in difficulty as the game progresses.

That's not to say that the core gameplay isn't enjoyable. Requiem features strong platforming elements along with the puzzle mechanics, and players will find themselves jump across many sets of static and moving platforms, navigating narrow ledges, and using boxes and other objects to create paths up, over, around, and through all sorts of obstacles. What they won't find are enemies, and consequently, weapons of any sort. The game is a non-combative affair.

Like other puzzle games, Requiem is very light on plot. Voice-overs by a few characters from the Penumbra series sprinkle esoteric philosophy and references to previous games, but without a fleshed-out storyline acting as a point of reference for many of the themes involved (or without having played the game's predecessors), much of the monologue becomes superfluous. Players are likely to simply focus on the game's puzzles and trudge forward for the three to four hours of gameplay Requiem offers.

With Penumbra: Requiem, Frictional Games has taken parts of the Portal design philosophy, coated the product in the Penumbra series skin, and injected their own unique style of gameplay to make a sort of mixed-breed game that's fun, but ultimately less captivating than its predecessor. For $10 by itself or $20 bundled with Black Plague (required to play Requiem), however, this expansion to the Penumbra series is still worth picking up.

One Word Review | Too Human

This is One Word Review, a concept that I shamelessly lifted from my friend Creighton over at Nerdology (it's okay, he said I could). The idea behind OWR, as we like to call it, is that videogames are so often rated, reviewed, and discussed to exhaustion that it is sometimes a relief to read a succinct, definitive description of a game--a single word that sums up the most prominent characteristics of the gaming experience. That's the idea, so here goes:

Transcendesign

Rumble | Mortal Kombat Versus Capcom

Today's rumble is the final round in the comic world/fighting game mini-tournament, pitting Japanese publisher/developer Capcom against Mortal Kombat, a fighting franchise created as direct competition to Capcom's Street Fighter.

Google is bringing out the weapons, so let us begin:

Fatality! Capcom has been decapitated/dismembered/gutted/de-boned/etc. by Midway Games' Mortal Kombat series. (Mortal Kombat beats Street Fighter, too.) Too bad, because I've always been a big Capcom fan...and I think the Mortal Kombat series is somewhat worthless.

Unitl next time, Rumble fans...

Too Human Scribblings

I recently played and reviewed Silicon Knights' long-in-development Too Human, and the review process ended up being one of the more laborious examinations in recent memory. A great deal of consideration went into my assessment of the title, and along with that came a fairly large text file of notes about the game.

A la Kyle Stallock (from whom I shamelessly stole this idea), I give you my pre-review scribblings about Too Human. Enjoy.

like a movie. some of the best direction and cinematography i've seen in a while.

the graphics are not amazing in a technical sense, but the cinematography, artistic direction, and environment design make up for that

miss the whole backstory unless you let the title screen play out. maybe a bad choice

camera shows you what the devs want. crafted experience. wonderful angles make this an epic experience. a static-yet-mobile camera similar to eternal darkness

controls are good. take some orientation. shooting is like smash tv or...uh...commando. also somewhat like eternal darkness

the game doesn't tutor the player much. help available if sought.

spend lots of time in inventory, changing weapons/armor as you get new. auto-salvage can prevent this to a degree

weapon sets give bonus bonuses

dying is a momentary lapse in the action. consequences=weapon degradation

a vast amount of equipment customization. charms, runes, colors, sets,

there is no way to heal oneself, aside from picking up random health drops (or playing as a bioengineer). class distinctions

catching bits of conversation as you explore helps explain the belief structure of the society and the political situation in too human

the game is divided up into missions that baldr embarks on as the story unfolds. each is introduced via a healthy dose of cinematic narrative and backstory. retrospective flash-back segments and explanations reveal...

past missions can be re-played outside of the main storyline of the campaign mode

5 classes, each with different strengths/weaknesses, skills, proficiencies, equipment, etc

some enemies must be dealt with in specific ways. i.e. explosive enemies must be attacked from afar to avoid getting caught in their explosive death throw. alternatively, a player can use a melee juggle to launch them into the air and have them explode far away. gun-resistant, etc

bosses are visually diverse, but some employ similar attack strategies

party is sorta useless, or at least invisible. you hear them more than you see them. always seem to show up at the path to the next area.

pacing is up and down. the game is abnormally death-inducing......for a no-defense berserker.

the excellent dual-world setup should be taken advantage of more. it tapers off

thor
baldr
loki
grendel
aesir
hod
odin
hel
nidhogg
ragnarok

niestzche - human, all too human...hunting monsters

God Is Dead, Reborn -- Too Human Review

There are occasions when it is difficult to immediately recognize a game's greatness without first allowing it to unfold and reveal its entire composition. Such games often deliver the most satisfying experience to players who opt to explore the content thoroughly and completely.

Silicon Knights' Too Human is that sort of game. This is a piece of software that, like works of literature or film, takes time to develop into something truly praiseworthy. The simply enjoyable combat mechanics evolve into a complex system of character specification; inventory management and equipment customization shift from secondary pursuits into a unified, comprehensive craft; the storyline grows ever more captivating as the game progresses.

Too Human treads the uncommon path of incorporating Norse mythology and 19th-century philosophy into a tale about a technologically advanced civilization of mortal humans and a cybernetically enhanced society of "gods" called the Aesir. The collective group finds itself locked in bitter warfare with an encroaching machine race, and the Aesir are tasked with protecting the population from being harvested by these bloodthirsty sentients.

Serving as the first act in a planned trilogy, Too Human's climax is more the delivery of an intriguing plot point concerning the protagonist (Baldur) than an actual peak in the story's action, and resolution is non-existent; the game ends in a sequel-setting cliffhanger. Despite these shortcomings, however, Too Human is a highly captivating beginning to an epic and meaningful tale about the ills of transhumanism. Wonderfully directed cut scenes and carefully interwoven flashback sequences tie together the action of the core gameplay very well.

Too Human's graphical presentation is not jaw-dropping in a technical sense, but the cinematography, artistic direction, and environment design work together to present players with awe-inspiring scenes, conveying a sense of magnitude that ties directly into the game's plot. The camera is carefully positioned nearly every step of the way, showing players a world exactly as the developers wanted it to be seen. This is a crafted experience, and the static-yet-mobile camera (much like that of Eternal Darkness) provides the angles necessary to make it so. The drawback to this approach is that players have almost no control over their field of view, which occasionally makes combat and navigation more cumbersome than one might like.

For the most part, Too Human captures players in a flow of gameplay that keeps them engaged consistently throughout the experience. Combat is simple enough to carry out using the basic attack mechanics of the right analog stick--push the stick in the direction of the enemy you would like to attack--but also features enough complexities (battle cries, spider abilities, ruiner attacks) to keep players interested as their skills with the system improve. Even dying (the frequency of which depends on the player, class, skill tree specs, etc.) amounts to only a momentary lapse in the game's action and a degradation of equipped items (until repaired). This means that consequences of death are kept in the virtual world rather than being artificially applied to the player's interactive experience with the game.

This seamlessness doesn't go unbroken throughout the entire game, however. Players will gather a massive amount of loot during their quest, and may subsequently spend a great deal of time managing equipment in the inventory menu. New weapons, armor, rune augmentations, blueprints, etc. will all demand attention if the player's character is to grow, especially in the early-goings. Unwanted items must be salvaged to gain bounty (the game's currency), and manually checking equipment and selling it off can be a time-consuming affair. Luckily, there is an auto-salvage feature that automatically trades in items based on a tiered "rarity scale," ditching low-quality equipment without concerning the player. This significantly eases the burden of inventory management, even though it is to a certain degree inescapable.

Too Human is an incredibly customizable experience. In addition to the full sets of armor, various weapon types, equipment tweaks, runes, charms, etc., the game's five distinct classes each demand a different approach to gameplay. The Berserker, Defender, Champion, Commando, and Bioengineer each have heavily weighted strengths and weaknesses, unique skills, proficiencies, and equipment. Each one also has a three-path class skill tree and a two-path alignment skill tree, which players must allocate points to as they gain levels. The opposing paths on each tree are mutually exclusive, meaning that committing to one path will forfeit the abilities found in the other(s). This also means that there are essentially 30 different types of characters (builds) to be played in Too Human, with more alleged to arrive later as downloadable content. The game's story remains the same regardless of character choice.

In the online two-player cooperative mode, class and build characteristics play an important role for party synergy as players travel through the campaign levels (no cut scenes or story integration), rack up experience points, and collect loot. Partnering characters that compliment one another allows players to successfully vanquish foes together. For example, the offensive prowess of a Berserker combined with the restorative abilities of a Bioengineer would make for a deadly team. Characters from the game's single player campaign can be used online, and vice-versa, with all equipment and experience carrying over from one mode to the other. Players can revisit all areas in the single-player game, as well.

Too Human is not for everyone; its gameplay style and/or narrative themes may turn some gamers away before they can even jump into Asgard. The game is, however, a triumph in everything it aims to do. It tells [the beginnings of] an intriguing story through breathtaking cinematography and narrative, introduces a unique and effective combat system, and allows players to personalize their gameplay experience with an extensive amount of customization options. This is an excellent videogame.

One Word Review | Viva Pinata

This is One Word Review, a concept that I shamelessly lifted from my friend Creighton over at Nerdology (it's okay, he said I could). The idea behind OWR, as we like to call it, is that videogames are so often rated, reviewed, and discussed to exhaustion that it is sometimes a relief to read a succinct, definitive description of a game--a single word that sums up the most prominent characteristics of the gaming experience. That's the idea, so here goes:

Cultivative