Back In MY Day... -- The Dark Spire Review

When a reviewer's best (and only) analogies for a game come from 1980s classics, one can be certain that the title is decidedly niche. Such is the case with The Dark Spire, a dungeon-crawling first-person role-playing game from Atlus and Success, which frustrates, delights, and disappoints all at the same time.

The Dark Spire is most similar to early Wizardry titles, and makes no effort to try to be anything more, adhering more closely to genre conventions than anything gamers have seen in years. Still, the game manages to fall short of the classics in some ways, while surpassing them in others.

Players begin by custom-tailoring a party of four adventurers, rolling base stats with a slot-machine style number generator, and choosing spells (if applicable) from a short list. After receiving beginners' equipment and playing through a brief training session as an introduction to the menu-driven gameplay and unforgiving turn-based combat, the party is thrust into the titular Dark Spire, and for the most part, to their doom.

Many gamers will loathe this game; in order to play and enjoy The Dark Spire, one must possess incredible patience, unwavering resolve, and an understanding that the greater journey is comprised of many smaller steps. Anyone expecting to blow through each floor of the tower at attention-deficit speeds will find the game's pace to be laboriously slow, while those who appreciate the methodical exploration of dark, disorienting rooms and corridors will revel in the challenge. It is an exercise in trial and error much of the time; many dead ends make for a fair amount of backtracking, and the frequently encountered and very dangerous enemies will kill off party members left and right.

Better than many horror games, the Dark Spire instills real fear in the gamer -- fear that the party's next step may be their last. This fear is partially allayed by the game's save-anywhere system, a necessity for any handheld rpg. However, players relying too heavily on this feature and not enough on careful preparation may end up sapping the life out of the experience.

Beyond it's very daunting barrier to entry, The Dark Spire is indeed an engrossing and rewarding videogame. Amid the high-contrast ink style of the tower's stark halls, the mobs of graphic-novel-rendered enemies, and the synthesized, polyphonic acoustic atmosphere, players will find well-written, detailed descriptions of certain aspects of their surroundings, secondary characters, puzzles, and other objects scattered sparingly throughout. The game, though encased in a claustrophobic shell, reveals itself as an open environment to explore and discover. Without excessive guidance, the player's own adventurousness becomes the way forward.

For all it achieves, however, The Dark Spire leaves much to be desired. Party options are severely limited, offering the initial choice of only four races and four classes -- numbers that were eclipsed in this genre more than two decades ago. There are many skills available to each character, each of which finds some obscure and clever use later on, but including only four starting classes is underwhelming. The weapon system is difficult to wrap one's head around, as the game is never clear what distinguishes one from another in terms of damage, though this could also be considered part of the game's "work-for-it" appeal. More frustrating, however, are the delayed text response when activating or examining objects, and the menu setup, where players are asked to dance a ballet of d-pad and shoulder buttons in order to equip their party, cast spells, use items, etc.

The Dark Spire is an undoubtedly niche, uncompromising title that will earn the ire of the many players who aren't interested in the classic gameplay found within, but put smiles on the faces of those who are. With a fitting audio/visual presentation, intense challenge, and do-it-yourself design, this is a throwback to a bygone era, and a good one, at that.

Where's The Rest? -- Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor

GamerNode - The Company of Heroes franchise is not the typical real-time strategy experience that many gamers are familiar with. Relic's latest standalone expansion, Tales of Valor, takes the gameplay standard set forth in the first two entries in the series and runs with it, though not exactly in the same direction as the originals, but still a unique one.

Tales of Valor adds three new single-player campaigns and three new multiplayer modes, along with new unit types and maps to do battle on. As expected, the content is all of standard CoH caliber, but compared to the two additional armies (each with full campaigns of their own) that the Opposing Fronts expansion introduced, ToV feels quite small, especially as a standalone product.

For those unfamiliar with the Company of Heroes style of RTS gameplay, a primer: Company of Heroes differs from the by-the-numbers RTS formula primarily in the way players acquire the resources necessary to fuel their war machine. Rather than setting up and relying on continuous, semi-passive background harvesting and generation, players must actively capture supply points scattered throughout the map to boost the three resources -- manpower, munitions, and fuel -- that are required for building new structures and producing additional units. This system makes players have to work to improve their army alongside their combat efforts, and feels like a more realistic match for the game's setting than in many other RTS games.

As a result of the less exploitable resource system, unit production is also toned down a bit; players won't be leading thousands of units across the battlefield in a tsunami of camouflage, but will have to be a bit more selective and strategic in their efforts to put together an effective force. HQs, barracks, motor pools, and other analogs to what one would expect to find in an RTS exist in CoH, but the speed at which the gears of war turn is less rapid than some may be used to.

Unlike earlier CoH games and multiplayer, however, the new single-player missions in Tales of Valor do not ask much of the player in terms of base-building and unit management at all, save for the final campaign, which only lightly dabbles in the more traditional type of RTS gameplay. The expansion instead chooses to focus on the exploits of small groups of units through the heavily -- and impressively -- narrated campaigns, mostly without the luxury of any sort of home base to fall back on. Players are given more direct and fine-tuned control over a wealth of specific squad actions, including the new, aptly-named direct fire ability, which is available for some unit types.

ToV's stories of a German Tiger tank's efforts to stop the British advance on a French village, the U.S. paratroopers' D-day attempt to take a German-controlled causeway, and the German defense of the Falaise Pocket are all woven seamlessly into the action via voice-overed radio communications, scripted battle sequences, and finely hand-painted cutscenes, which makes for a very intense experience that drives home the unpredictable and mostly uncontrollable nature of the war from the soldiers' perspectives. The game can, however, be a jarring departure from what fans of the series have grown accustomed to, as it takes on more of an action flavor than previous titles. And though they are quite engaging, players will find that the nine new missions are over very quickly, leaving multiplayer matches as the only remaining option for novel engagements.

Multiplayer, too, takes a detour from the norm in Tales of Valor. Like the first of the new single-player campaigns, Operation Panzerkrieg puts players in control of a single tank, but this time in a victory point match (capture and hold strategic points across the map) against other players. This may seem very bland, but with the variety of tanks and commander skills available, things still remain interesting.

Operation Assault, while the least involved, is arguably the most enjoyable of the new modes. It casts up to six players as individual hero units on either side of a large-scale battle over open ground, the goal being to have enough influence over the deeply entrenched AI forces to sway the outcome of the war. As a sniper, commando, medic, engineer, etc., players can affect the proceedings of the engagement in a variety of ways, leveling up abilities as they successfully defeat enemies and complete objectives. After falling at the hands of the enemy, players respawn as a new hero of any desired type. It's like a fast-paced RTS version of the Battlefield series, except that the majority of the soldiers involved are relatively weak and expendable, and the player characters are undeniably badass.

Lastly, Operation Stonewall is basically a co-op skirmish match against the CPU, in which players must work together to build their forces and manage resources as they defend a small town from the attacking German soldiers. Although these new operations offer a good change of pace from CoH's existing multiplayer, they suffer from the fact that each is limited to only one map, so get used to them.

Tales of Valor may not be what longtime Company of Heroes fans were expecting from Relic's expansion, but the game still delivers a great experience from start to finish. The problem with that, though, is that "start to finish" is not a very long time, because ToV is comparatively light on content, overall. It's a great game, but at $30, gamers should expect more.

The Ship Is Thy Shepard -- Flock! Review

GamerNode - Flock! is an interesting and novel puzzle game from Capcom and Proper Games, in which players must use a small flying saucer to herd a variety of farm animals across vibrant, elaborate, and hazard-ridden landscapes toward the Mother Flocker mothership to be abducted for who knows what otherworldly reasons... and points.

These hapless creatures flee from the Flocker's ever-shining cone of light, no matter what pits, predators, or other obstacles may be waiting in the opposite direction. The key to meeting the abductee quota in each of Flock!'s 50+ levels is to carefully avoid these things. This won't be easy, however, as the animals aren't exactly organized, and often end up either scattering wildly or getting stuck on whatever it is that the player is trying to avoid. At times, the critters' degree of responsiveness feels almost equivalent to the marbles in those old, tilt-controlled wooden labyrinths.

In addition to simply chasing the animals around, the Flocker can make use of tractor and depressor beams to alter terrain and manipulate environmental objects. For example, a player may need to pick up a gate and use it to bridge a small gap, send a boulder rolling down a hill to break through a fence, or stuff a bale of hay into a pit to create a path for the animals. Each of the four species behaves in different ways and have different abilities. Cows stampede through fences, chickens fly across gaps, pigs absorb mud, and sheep shrink when wet (wool, get it?). These traits are all useful in their own ways, and must eventually be used together to successfully complete certain levels.

Sometimes the power of love needs to be called upon, as well, making male animal follow females single-file, or bringing a couple together in order to... increase the population. Unfortunately, after extended Flock! sessions, the game begins to feel just a bit empty and slow; despite the differences between the animals and the suite of environmental hazards, a sizable portion of the game feels repetitive and borderline chore-like, and the introduction of new gameplay elements occurs at intervals that are too wide. Perhaps as an XBLA/PSN title, this issue is a lesser concern than in a full retail game (although the caliber of many downloadble titles is fast approaching and even exceeding that of their retail counterparts), but the sort of bite-sized gameplay that players will inevitably partake in with Flock! seems to lend itself far better to a handheld gaming system than to a home console at all.

The monotonous nature of Flock!'s levels is theoretically curtailed by the inclusion of a level editor and the ability to share creations with other players via XBL. Thus far, the pool is fairly shallow there, so the creativity of the Flocking masses has yet to shine through, but the editor itself is very user-friendly and makes it easy to put together nice creations. Players only have access to the items that they've unlocked in the single-player campaign, though, so any budding designers will have to play through that first.

An alternative to the single-player mode is a cooperative multiplayer romp that makes the game more interesting and fun, thanks to that extra human touch. Players can split duties, get in each others' way, or simply go mess around with helpless [animated, PETA-don't-sue-me] creatures and boulder physics.

Much of the fun of Flock! comes from the obviously humorous and playful nature of the game's overall concept and its animal stars... not to mention the animations that accompany their untimely demise at the hands of killer moles, fish, shadow-lurking monsters, and the player's own Flocker beams. The audio/visual presentation as a whole is very appealing; the patchwork landscape, plush toy modeling, and hand-drawn GUI art are all just as quirky as the sci-fi/bluegrass soundtrack, and silly animal sound effects. The only complaint in this department is that players will be listening to the same tunes over and over again, as there are very few songs to accompany the action.

This Lemmings-inspired puzzler is unique and charming, and can be very fun for a short while. As an XBLA title, it is solid, but its lack of depth and gameplay variety prevents it from becoming a heavy hitter. The game needs more, just not more of the same old stuff.

Failing Grade -- Mana Khemia: Student Alliance Review

GamerNode - Mana Khemia: Student Alliance is a game that should have never been. The original Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis, developed by Gust, was mediocre to begin with, and the PSP version only serves to degrade what was already a less-than-enrapturing gameplay experience in a nearly direct port that suffers from a myriad of technical issues.

Mana Khemia is an RPG set during the course of an academic year at the Al-Revis Alchemy Academy and both alchemy and school play major roles throughout the game, incorporated into just about every aspect of the player's adventure. The main character, Vayne, finds himself in a very Harry Potter-esque situation, orphaned and sent to this school full of colorful anime characters to find the answers to the many questions surrounding his past.

Student Alliance plays out almost identically to the original PS2 game, aside from a few new characters and craftable items. Players watch story segments to introduce each week of class, attend classes, and complete outside assignments with the help of the group of friends who make up the party. There are also periods of free time that allow players to complete side jobs, synthesize items, and venture off campus to find ingredients and unleash their frustrations on enemies.

And yes, there will be much frustration while playing Student Alliance. Due to a horribly inconsistent frame rate that manages to drop into slide show territory on many occasions, along with more loading than a professional moving company, it is difficult to derive any pleasure from the portions of the game that were actually enjoyable to begin with. Pauses for disc or memory card access accompany almost every action, from cutscene transitions, to enemy encounters, to NPC interaction, to menu selection. It is by no means the definition of fun.

The already adventure-limiting school setting and complex, tedious crafting system become less bearable due to the game's technical issues, and even the once-commendable battle system, which employs pre-encounter on-screen enemy representation, an interesting tag-team "support" system, and a novel "burst" system, is rendered sluggish and inadequate. The hand-drawn art and battle sprites are still nice, but background visuals are a blurry mess. The game's voice acting ranges somewhere between poor and mediocre, and the music is generic and repetitive.

Mana Khemia was a niche title to begin with, dividing players into love-it and hate-it audiences. Mana Khemia: Student Alliance is that same niche title... in a wheelchair... in the mud... with no arms. I would recommend that gamers avoid this one; if school-focused role-playing and item synthesis are exciting to you, please opt for the PlayStation 2 version.