WIMP Diary #1
So it begins.
As promised, what follows is a running diary of the games that I’ve ingested over the past week.
Final Fantasy X (PS2)
Past experience has proven one thing: Regardless of my adoration for the Final Fantasy series, I never seem to bother getting around to play them as they come out. This in spite of the general sense of excitement I feel about the impending release of any new game in the primary Final Fantasy series (as opposed to the many spin off series, one of which shall be discussed below). Final Fantasy X is possibly the only exception to the highly anticipated release theory in that I really couldn’t have cared less when it was released. This is not a reflection of my sentiments towards Final Fantasy in general, but rather a side effect of the particular moment in my personal history when the game descended upon an anticipatory public. Which is to say that in 2001 I was just not as into video games as I (a) had been and (b) would become again.
Having invested just over 40 hours into the game in the span of about two weeks, my little band of merry and mysterious people have been through a lot. The basic story is typically epic, but incredibly familiar: A diverse and motley crew of warriors, magicians and athletes are brought together by extreme circumstances and must travel a great distance to save the world. With the exception of the part about athletes, you’ve seen this story a dozen times, which is not to say it is not very well told here. I could probably fill pages discussing the game in greater detail, but I’ll pass. I will say this: Whereas Final Fantasy VIII introduced a phenomenal mini-game in the form of card battling (in the vein of something like Magic: The Gathering) and Final Fantasy IX refined (and somewhat ruined, imho) the same game, FFX introduces Blitzball, which is what you might get if you took a half-staffed rugby team, gave them a beach ball and drowned them underwater. Lest you did not take in the negativity in that sentence, I’ll spell it out for you: I do not like Blitzball. At all. Sadly, there are rewards to achievement in this craptacular mini-game that carry over to the main game in significant ways, so I suspect I have not trudged my way through my last game of BB.
MLB ‘08 (PS3)
Jumping right into Franchise mode with my Mets, I played through a couple of spring training games to get a feel for the game before launching into my own personal 2008 season. It’s been quite awhile since I’ve played a baseball game, but the demo impressed me enough a few months ago to give this one a shot. I tend to buy sports games and play them only a couple of times before they take up permanent residence on my shelf. So far, MLB ‘08 has me coming back thanks to the fact that it is simply fun to play. Pitching tends to be my least favorite part of any baseball game, but the golf swing meter style used here is really finely tweaked and totally functional. It serves as a remarkable representation of each pitcher’s actual style of delivery. For example, someone with a short wind up leaves you with less time to react on the downward swing of the pitching arc, a situation further exasperated by the presence of a runner on first you’ve got to keep honest with an even shorter delivery.
I’m not nearly as in love with the hitting game. This probably boils down to personal ability, but whatever touch I once had in video game batting is completely gone. Maybe this is indicative of the developers doing their best to emulate the experience of actually batting in the major leagues, but it does get frustrating when you’re basically just guessing if a pitch is gonna nick the corner for a called third strike or not. I recognize that’s part of the game, and I’m not sure I have a tremendous solution, but sometimes it just feels frustrating. Perhaps this will improve as I play more.
After getting shut out on opening day by the Marlins, I held a 3 to 2 lead over them in the second game right up to the 8th inning, when they tied the score only to come back in the bottom of the 9th to crush a one out home run over the left field fence. Here’s hoping things improve. One thing to note: The way in which my Mets positively crumpled in the later innings was pretty much a pitch perfect simulation of how the real Mets seem to always find a way to do the same thing. Fuckers.
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Rings of Fate (DS)
Numerous sources compared FFCC to a Diablo-style (or more accurately, “roguelike“) loot snatching fiesta, which piqued my interest considerably. Those comparison are accurate and the acquisition of loot is plentiful, though it is hampered by the fact that despite the fact you’re constantly picking up items, you can’t actually use them right away. Basically, as you kill enemies and slash open treasure chests (does nobody simply lift the lid anymore?) you grab up “materials” and “scrolls,” along with other various items. The way the materials and scrolls work is this: Once you’ve collected a particular scroll, which has a generic descriptor of some kind (”Rugged Clothes”; “Steel Weapon”), you go to a workshop and submit the scroll along with the materials required by the scroll, pay a fee, and receive in return a weapon or armor that generically fits the description of the original scroll. The results seem to have an element of randomness to them, which is nice, but it doesn’t really replace the satisfaction of striking down some monster in the middle of a dungeon and being rewarded with an epic and powerful sword in return and for immediate use.
Jeanne D’Arc (PSP)
I’ve been playing this one on and off for the past couple of months. Tactical RPGs are far from my favorite type of game, but this one is pretty good. I remain impressed with the decision to retell the story of the Maid of Orléans in a fantasy setting. I can’t vouch for the historical accuracy of the story thus far, but at the very least, they seem to have the correct locations important to the story of Jeanne.
Nonetheless, a great story can’t save a poor game, which is a completely moot point in this case. My favorite contribution here is the “burning aura”: When you attack an enemy unit, the grid square on the other side of your opponent becomes engulfed in flames. If you can get there quick enough, one of your other units will gain a significant boost in attacking power if they do so from within the burning aura. This lends a really deep element to the strategy, as you’re forced to consider your progress within each stage more carefully to take advantage of this strategic element as much as possible. Along the same lines, when attacked, if your friendly units sit on adjacent squares, they respond with a “unified defense,” greatly hampering the enemy’s ability to harm you. This focus on teamwork is a brilliant game play realization of the story, which bands Jeanne with a wide variety of characters she meets along her journey who have the same goal, which is, of course, to drive the English out of France.
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (PSP)
I’ve had this one on the shelf for a month or so now. Sequentially, PO fits into the Metal Gear Solid canon as a sequel to Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (which I have not played) and as a predecessor to the original PS1 Metal Gear Solid title (which I have played, though it was years ago).
Just starting out, I’ve barely nicked the in game tutorials that make up the first levels. I’ve only just reached the point where I’m starting to grasp the general concept of Portable Ops, which is to recruit local militia and whatnot to create a virtual army of individuals who carry out a variety of tasks. Reading elsewhere, I come to understand that these soldiers are recruited via random WiFi access points, which will ideally lend some excitement and mystery to the proceedings. The concept of using real world randomness (or at least the appearance of such) as a tool for each player to tweak their experience is one that fascinates me. It’s not something that is often explored in console games. One example of such a thing that sticks out is Monster Rancher, back on the Playstation 1, which let you “breed” new monsters by inserting any readable CD.
My early experience actually playing Portable Ops is somewhat similar to how I felt about Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror, which is that the lack of a second analog controller really forces a bit of a learning curve in terms of how you control the game. There are a variety of controller mappings you can choose from, but nothing feels quite right yet, and the camera doesn’t do a terribly great job of making up for the player’s inefficiency at moving the view point. The game does seem to take this into account by being a little more forgiving in terms of how observant the enemies you’re trying to sneak around are, which is to say they aren’t.
Tetris DS
The search for this game in stores led Patrick Klepek over at MTV’s Multiplayer blog to conduct a great series of interviews with game publishers about how they choose to manufacture particular games and why they choose to stop. Since I already own a copy, I figured I’d give it another play. It’s Tetris, so there’s not much to be said that you’re not already familiar with. That said, I continue to feel slightly disappointed with the Nintendo themed Tetris offering here, where each game type takes place in a Nintendo world. For example, the standard style of Tetris play (drop your pieces, make your lines, until you can’t do it anymore) exists in a Super Mario Brothers themed world, the bouncy theme music playing while a Mario you don’t control hops around on the upper DS screen. Maybe I’m alone on this, but I miss the classic Tetris theme music.
Next week I anticipate discussing the conclusion of Final Fantasy X just as The World Ends With You. Possibly more Jeanne D’Arc, possibly more Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops. A newly released add on pack to Super Stardust HD (PS3) looks promising and the beta begins for Metal Gear Solid Online. The overall theme for next week, however, is to avoid starting anything I can’t put down in anticipation of arguably one of the premiere media releases of 2008: Grand Theft Auto IV.
Tagged: blitzball, Crystal Chronicles, DS, final fantasy x, Jeanne D'Arc, Metal Gear Solid, MLB, multiplayer, PS2, PS3, PSP, running diary, video games
For MLB08 commentary
As for batting, I always preferred a simulation style model. Where you had limited batting zone options (low and away, middle of the plate, up and away, up and in, etc, etc), where the hitting stats or the player prefs determined the results.
Otherwise, you have the difficult or potentially silly model where you just “shrink” the sweet spot zone of the players based on stats, and human player gets to completely control the quality of the hit. While it sounds good in theory it always leads to bad statistical hitters hitting .500 when run by a good human player. Developers tweaks to avoid that seemed to have revolved around making the hitting motion far more difficult, but that just shrinks the number of people hitting .500 with the .240 hitter..the model still breaks down at some point.
The games I liked the best in regards to batting would let people with basic skill in batting “do the job” to simulate a real game, and let luck and just making good contact drive the results (much like real baseball). As of the last time I played baseball video games I found the latter model taking over and I didn’t care for it much..it stops resembling baseball at all.