video games rock

as with melee, just mastering all of the additional characters will keep you busy for a long while, esp. since the developers made a point of adding characters that have noticeably different fighting styles than anything that has come before. the most extreme examples are snake and olimar who force you to have to use hit-and-run tactics much more than ever before. long-time fans will of course also be kept busy noting which characters and moves have been down or upgraded and be kept even busier arguing over which character is “the best”. at the core of any successful fighting game are balanced characters w/ balanced movesets, and brawl’s roster is certainly up to the high standard of the other games in the series. after the endless speculation the final roster is certainly a worthy one (wikipedia has a nice table showing how the roster has evolved), and although i’m sure everyone was disappointed not to see their favorite obscure character included, the addition of 3rd party characters for the first time (snake and sonic), assist trophies, and a few complete surprise choices definitely help ease the pain. an early favorite was ike (not surprising, considering how good he is in general and how much of a fire emblem freak i’ve become), but other favorites included snake and sonic b/c they both felt new in terms of gameplay and strategy, and zero-suit samus and pit who are both a bit weak but are just frickin’ cool.

the biggest addition to the game was the completely expanded adventure mode. the whole “fighter as platformer” setup still doesn’t completely succeed, but the variety of enemies and boss battles and searching for hidden stickers and statues kept me interested for a fair amount of the way through. also, the adventure mode is full of FMV’s (which are prob. the closest we’ll ever come to a nintendo movie) and really kept me playing. nintendo seems to be embracing FMV’s in general a lot more than they ever did before, which to me can only be a good thing.

i’m still somewhat ambivalent about the final smashes. it’s great that they change the game dynamics and they look great onscreen, but getting one does seem a bit too much based on luck at times. i suppose having a longer match would help balance this out. this is def. one of those cases where casual players will prob. like it and use it more than the more hardcore crowd.

my only big complaint was the online multiplayer. the lag made online play pretty much unusable, and even weeks later it still hasn’t gotten any better. a serious oversight, although there’s still time for this to be improved. we’ll just have to see. but the game is so packed full of extras that it should still tide us over to the next installment pretty well. some of the challenges seem more pointless than others, but in any case the number of characters and the amount of nintendo love crammed into every inch is sure to make nintendo fanboys like me goofily happy for a good long while.

as for my take, i def. enjoyed the game (and the built-in rumble pack!), but all together it’s kind of a strange little package. to explain: first off, the main game isn’t too long or very difficult. and although i started to get a bit weary of the incessant drilling the game element that really kept me engaged was the number of boss and sub-boss battles, a noteworthy amount and for the most part all nicely designed. but, as with luigi’s mansion and his trusty vacuum cleaner, by the end of drill dozer’s main game i felt like the whole drill mechanic had been completely exhausted, and i was ready for the game to be over. (of course i’d be fascinated to see what a sequel of either game would look like, although i don’t suppose either is a very likely possibility.)

but then, post win, the game really started to shine, in a significant way that most reviews (e.g. ign’s) don’t even hint at. i didn’t delve too deeply due to the drilling fatigue i had developed, but each level of the main game has hidden treasures that you can only look for after you beat the game, and you’ll prob. have to visit each one multiple times to find all of them as some are hidden rather deviously. even better are the extra levels you can acquire that take the game to a whole new level, with some sections that are, if you’ll pardon the expression, balls-to-the-wall hard. we’re talking old-school-NES-style hard. in the average platformer a “hard” area may require you to master a complicated series of 5 or 6 button presses, but in some of these extra maps you’ll have to perfectly time some 15 moves with only a bottomless pit below you to break your fall. in what i’ve played through so far the extra maps also require much more thought, and the process of studying your arsenal and exploring your options approaches almost metroid-like levels. if the whole game had been like this second half is turning out to be this would have easily been a game for the ages. as it is, my final verdict will have to wait until i finish playing through all the extra maps and finding all the treasures. but i’m going to have to shelve the game for now b/c, dammit, there’s only so much drilling a man can take!

it’s easy to see the similarities between the two series as both are turn-based strategy games, and no doubt there are many who are fans of both. but there are also significant, inherent differences that make it seem likely that there are many more who are fans of one but not the other. on the fire emblem side there’s an actual story with a huge cast of well-delineated characters, along w/ the fantasy setting and the strong RPG feel. in contrast advance wars is much more about the tactics, as your units never get upgraded and you have to manage their production by capturing cities and factories. all in all i def. prefer the fire emblem series, as story and characters add so much to games for me in general. nevertheless, this is still a top-notch game and there was still a lot i enjoyed in terms of the more undiluted tactics, even despite the somewhat formidable learning curve. w/ advance wars b/c there isn’t much of a story and the gameplay is so focused on the tactics i don’t feel particularly compelled to rush out and play through the sequels. so i’ll prob. replay the main story on the regular mode to unlock the other CO’s and at least A-rank every level before tackling the harder mode. if only the fire emblem DS game would come out sooner!

overall my biggest gripe w/ the game is that i feel there’s too much cheap “try and die” situations, a criterion that i’ve been using for platformers and which seems to me a pretty good rubric; in particular w/ aiming the canons, some of the flying, and with a fair amount of the jumping. i suppose you get better at all the skills including these throughout the game (particularly flying), but even by the end i had a hard time judging exactly how wide a gap was or predicting if i’d have too much momentum if i jumped onto a platform, causing poor mario to slide off. a common complaint and one i agree with is that it’s especially annoying when you fall all the way down from the top of a mountain and you have to keep climbing all the way back to the top just to fall again b/c you haven’t gotten the jumping angle quite right. at least the height issues aren’t quite as bad as mario sunshine, that i can remember anyway.

regarding 3D platformers in general, the game makes me appreciate the modern prince of persia games a bit more, the first of which i played last year. like mario 64 the persia games use height as its main level design element, but with its rewind feature you rarely have to restart from the very bottom. sunshine helped solve the height problem by giving you some leeway in form of a hover ability, but in that game i still remember falling from high up being a big pain. from what i’ve played of galaxy so far, they’ve come up with another way to solve the 3D jumping problem by pretty much doing away with falling at all, thus focusing your attention on other gameplay mechanics instead.

i’ll prob. tackle mario 64 DS eventually, although the controls sound like they’ll be more awkward. but from various reviews i’ve read (including this one from gamespot) it seems like they’ve offset this by making the game easier in general with the addition of characters with powers different from mario’s. mario-wise i’ll prob. hold off on playing too much more of galaxy and return to the 2D games, and you can just imagine i’ll be doing so with a rather big sigh of relief. i guess i’ll just always be a retro gamer at heart. haha.

sword of seals is notable for several reasons. for one, it was the first GBA fire emblem, so the vast majority of its engine (inc. game mechanics, menus, calculations, and graphics) was re-used for the two subsequent GBA releases, the blazing sword and the sacred stones. second, it features roy as the protagonist, who was featured in super smash bros. melee and who along with fire emblem icon marth, also featured in melee, first sparked the interest of most english-speakers in the fire emblem series and eventually led to the first fire emblem game released outside of japan (although the first to get an international release wasn’t this one, roy’s game, but the next one, blazing sword). third, unbeknownst to most english speakers at the time, the aforementioned game blazing sword, which followed sword of seals, was actually a prequel to that game, and features several of the same characters and more than a few cameo appearances.

so, being the first of the GBA fire emblem trio it’s perhaps not surprising that there are several ways that the game pales in comparison. the main one for me is that support conversations feel slightly less developed. according to wikipedia this was actually the first game in the series that had support conversations, and although the types of conversations are similar to the other games, the characters here just seem slightly less alive. this may be in part due to the fan translation as opposed to having an official one. also, the lack of a support reader showing supports that have been unlocked makes me slightly less motivated to play the game again. similarly, the ranking system tracking overall game performance feels slightly less polished here.

in terms of specifics, one complaint i had about the game is that thieves don’t promote, which was a surprise when i realized it, and somewhat of a disappointment as it screwed up my previous strategy. also, there are three extra chapters at the end that contain the “real” ending that you can only get if you fulfill certain conditions, several of which would be fairly easy to miss on your first or even your second playthrough. the other complaint i had is that the enemies’ overuse of berserk staffs seems fairly pointless and cheap. to my recollection the other two GBA games minimized this, what i feel is just a cheap tactic.

newcomers to the series would be unlikely to miss anything, though, and refraining from comparisons to the others the game on its own is quite enjoyable. the story is engaging, and like the other two games this one has a branching storyline for several chapters. there’s a huge cast of characters which adds to the replayability, and the gameplay, while permanently etched into my brain by now, is still fun and addictive. prequels and sequels are generally entertaining and this one’s no exception for those who have already played FE7. all in all this isn’t going to be the first fire emblem game i’d pick up to replay, but it’s definitely a game that i’m looking forward to playing again despite being so similar to the others. and, yes, even after this my 5th fire emblem game my flame for the series still burns. haha. but i think now may be the time for a longer hiatus, believe it or not. we’ll just have to see how that pans out.

the GBA version is limited by having to split the screen and scroll up and down to move from the top to the bottom, and no doubt the adjustment makes the game harder. but all in all it’s not too much of a problem to keep track of where the ghosts generally are at all times. i found it hard to play on the small GBA screen, and the DS directional pad was way too stiff for me, but using the gamecube game boy adapter and the d-pad on the gamecube controller proved to be the best combination for me. at some point i’ll pick up the namco collection that includes it, but w/ the exception of not having the split screen i doubt it’ll offer much of a new experience.

i’m looking forward to delving into the other 3 games in this set to a greater depth, though. i found the split-screen version of the orig. pac-man included hard to play, and the full-screen version is impossible on the tiny GBA screen and awkward using the cube adapter. as you’d expect the full-screen mode is very strangely calibrated and doesn’t feel very natural to play, although i suppose you could get adjusted to it. “pac-attack”, the tetris pac-man game, was quite fun, and i have def. plans to play through the puzzle mode (although you should note that in puzzle mode to make the order of the pieces the same for each board you have to manually change the setting. in the instructions it says to do this: “… highlight Puzzle, hold right on the Control Pad, and press the A Button”). still not sure how the 3-d “pac-mania” is going to fare, but i’ll try to keep an open mind.

and a thought to leave you with today, as namco says at the end of pac-man arr: “the game is never really over. someone … somewhere … is being chased by monsters!”