i-do-mo’ yu-gi-oh

about a year ago i played through a decent amount of yu-gi-oh! world championship 2007 (as recounted here). at that time i set the game aside because i got fed up with how long it took to build up a decent deck. to quickly recap, the game requires you to duel to earn duel points (DP) which you then use to buy packs of cards, but since you’re limited to only 1 rare, super rare, or “ultra” rare card per pack, many of which aren’t even that useful, it takes ages to develop a deck that contains a decent amount of the better cards.

this time around i passed a threshold and finally my deck had enough of these better cards, so much so that duels were significantly easier to win than before, even against the computer-controlled opponents at the higher level i had reached. but perhaps unsurprisingly, as my percentage of good cards increased and the difficulty of the duels decreased, the game’s interest started to wane for me. it became apparent to me that the game was significantly less deep than i had originally thought: duels seem to be less about strategy and building up decks that have a lot of cards supporting each other (e.g. “elemental hero” cards) and more about just having good individual cards. maybe at higher levels still or against human players the strategy becomes more important, but as it is once i got to this point i didn’t have much motivation to continue.

this time around i did end up exploring a bit more of the other modes. i had enough breadth of cards that i felt up to tackling the limited duels (e.g. limiting your deck to only dark monsters, or no trap cards in your deck), and those provided entertaining-enough diversions. still didn’t bother with the “theme” duels, though, (e.g. win after fusion summoning at least five times) as most of the themes just seemed pointless.

i also tried out the online matches, an area i hadn’t spent much time on before. i quickly ran into the problem that is so pervasive in online games in general, namely people who drop out as soon as it becomes clear they’re going to lose. this was extremely frustrating, especially since the game doesn’t include any sort of punishment for people who drop out. your ranking only increases based on winning online matches, and my partners were ill-matched anyway since i kept getting matched with newbies who dropped out and there wasn’t any way to increase my rank by playing more dedicated players (although the game does have an option to be matched with someone with a random rank, i still ended up being paired with newbies the few times i tried it).

one of the interesting features of the online mode is that you can get a list of the top-ranked players in the country and the world and download a copy of their decks, and then play against that deck on your own. this provided some interesting games, although i inadvertently discovered that you win duel points based on the rank of your opponent, even when playing him/her as a ghost. this turned out to be a big surprise because i played the ghost of the highest-ranking player in the world, and perhaps because of poor AI i beat him easily and suddenly found myself with thousands of DPs. this made buying packs of cards in the game trivially easy, but once i realized i could get pretty much whatever rare cards i wanted and thus fill my deck with the best cards the game completely lost any sense of balance it had (which was already in short supply as it was). that ended up being the last straw for me, and for now i’ve put the game aside indefinitely. it’s too bad that the game didn’t have better pacing and more strategy, but i enjoyed the time i spent enough that i’d be willing to try out another game in the series. i don’t expect there to be any differences in the gameplay, but i’m somewhat interested in seeing if the pacing is any better. i doubt it will be, but i have a copy of the next game in the series, yu-gi-oh! world championship 2008, so i’ll try it out eventually. i’m leery of the fact that there are 2000+ unique cards in that game, compared to ~1640 in this game, since even in this game the majority of the cards felt fairly useless, but we’ll see.

you need yu-gi links!
i actually don’t have any links to add to my original list in my original post on the game here. but the two essential FAQs are still these two from gamefaqs: guide to all the cards with their text and the list of cards available in each series of packs.

operation C complete

it’s been ages since i’d played a contra game, but since the original NES classic was one of my favorite games of the era i was eager to get back into the series. i happened to start off with operation C, the first game boy contra release, which came out after the NES contra sequel, super C.

the game is a contra game through and through, so there’s not a whole lot to say. it’s made easier than most of the other games in the series thanks to a level select code, and the introduction of the homing gun makes the game a breeze for as long as you can manage to keep it. i didn’t mind the lack of 2 player co-op, but i wasn’t too into the substitution of the pseudo-3D levels of the original with two top-down view levels (a change that was apparently introduced in super C). but other than that this was typical run ‘n gun contra bliss. graphics and music, all heavily indebted to the original NES game, are all great. i’m definitely going to have to tackle super C next, although i played through the demo of the fairly recent release of contra 4 on the DS (thanks to the wii’s nintendo channel) and it looks fantastic. but i got spoiled with op C’s level select, so whatever contra game i play next will be more of a challenge.

two links are all you need to accompish your mission!
- entry at wikipedia
- a nice history of the contra series up to 2002

oh, yu-gi-oh!

another DS game, although quite a bit different than the previous two. i’d never played a card-based game before and frankly hadn’t had much interest in them despite their apparent popularity among the more “hardcore” otaku crowd, but after playing baten kaitos and quite enjoying the card-based battle mechanics i thought i’d try out one i had lying around: yu-gi-oh! world championship 2007.

my previous exposure to the yu-gi-oh! franchise had been limited to catching bits of the cartoon on TV, so it turns out this was a good one to start with b/c apparently this was the first yu-gi-oh! game that included a tutorial. and if you’ve never played the game you’re definitely going to need it. there’s no question that the card game has a steep learning curve (easily seen just by perusing the arcane details discussed in the beginner and advanced gameplay FAQ’s on the official site), but the dense tutorial does a pretty decent job of going over the basics. once that was out of the way i was ready to jump into the game itself. i was surprised that there wasn’t any sort of story, just battling, but the card mechanics are easily deep enough that a story is pretty unnecessary (esp. since it would’ve prob. been pretty flimsy anyway).

so how did i fare? well, perhaps unsurprisingly, the game sucked away huge amounts of time. i spent way too much time obsessing over my deck as i battled my way through the computer opponents, and before too long i was making my way through the game fairly respectably. i was enjoying the card mechanics for the most part, and overall the presentation feels very polished with good use of the DS touch screen and good artwork, including all of the card artwork and 3D models for all of the monsters (although the menus feel very GBA era).

but as i played more and more, the game’s shortcomings became increasingly apparent. the main problem i had was that the game’s built-in progression of difficulty is designed so that you’re always at a significant disadvantage. to explain: your deck of cards in the game is derived from a pool of cards that you get to start with, plus cards you “buy” in the game. the game is designed so that you only have access to more powerful cards after you beat all six opponents in a particular tier five times each. the enemies are ranked as levels 1-6, and the higher tiers are only unlocked one at a time. this would all be fine, and at the first level the difficulty is challenging but manageable, but then at the second level i just got fed up with the fact that the computer opponents always have more powerful cards than you b/c they have cards that aren’t available to you. even the good cards that are available to you to buy are hard to get, b/c the “rare”, “super rare”, and “ultra rare” cards require you to buy tons of useless cards (which come in packs of 6) in the hopes that you’ll get one really good one. of course this baseball cards-like setup is how the game works in the real world and it’s how the company makes so much money (although of course in the real world the “advanced” cards aren’t grouped separately and aren’t off-limits to beginners), but as a video game mechanic the elements of surprise and chance in buying cards just don’t outweigh the frustration of how slow it is to build up a decent deck that will get you through the game.

well, that was quite a rant. after spending so much time playing the game, though, i was disappointed in how it came up short since there was so much in its favor. ah well. i’ll definitely be picking this up again at some point to play through it some more, but all in all my yu-gi-oh! obsession ended up being fairly short-lived. which is just as well, b/c i can just imagine how much dough some people spend buying those cards!

if ya need some yu-gi links:
- gamefaqs has a load of essential FAQ’s, in particular a guide to all the cards with their text and the list of cards available in each series of packs. there’s also this FAQ which covers limited and theme duels, two modes which were mildly entertaining but which i didn’t find myself getting into much.
- game entry at yugioh.wikia.com
- entry at wikipedia and a list of all yu-gi-oh! video games
- list of unlockables at gamespot
- this game piqued my interest in magic: the gathering, although there don’t seem to be that many video games of it. this video on youtube of the finals of the san diego pro tour is kind of entertaining.

dracula’s moody melodies

i’ve still been listening to video game soundtracks, but i haven’t really been posting reviews since there’s not a whole lot say other than “i liked it” or “i didn’t like it”. but since i’m in the middle of a lot of games w/ none quite finished i thought i might as well post some comments on one of the more memorable ones. castlevania 64, with a soundtrack by masahiko kimura, motoaki furukawa, and mariko egawa, is a generally underrated game which i played through last year. in the game’s opening, which immediately sets the tone of the rest of the game’s soundtrack, we see the young boy malus play a haunting solo violin line which is then accompanied by an habanera (i.e. tango-esque) rhythm in the lower strings. the designers made the odd decision to keep the first stage devoid of music, but after that the soundtrack in general is a great mix of very classically-influenced music, dramatic and heavy on the strings, oftentimes driven by prominent percussion parts which, although anachronistic, work extremely well. there’s a fair number of “mood” pieces with much sparser arrangements, but they’re so effectively done with interesting instrumentation that they’re never boring. there’s also a refreshing lack of gothic organ music for the most part. given the limitations of the n64 audio, the CV64 team did a fantastic job of creating an ideal accompaniment to the company’s first foray into three dimensions, and it’s one of the best on the system or of the series i’ve heard thus far. so if you need another reason to check out the game, there you go.

dracula whipped

i finished castlevania 64 a couple of weeks ago but am just now getting around to collecting my thoughts (and links!). i’m quite familiar with the original NES castlevania, so i was interested in playing the 3D version despite reading people’s complaints about it. the game does have its faults, but i actually ended up rather liking it, definitely enough to play through as carrie and pick up the “sequel”, legacy of darkness (eventually).

most people will probably mostly agree with the reviews posted at vgmuseum.com and ign.com. i appreciated the storyline, such as it was, but my biggest complaint is that the gameplay gets a bit too repetitive. it may just be me, but endlessly jumping over pits and whipping medusa heads and candles gets old. in the center of the game are a villa and a castle that you get to explore which make the game much more interesting.

one thing that people consistenly complain about is the game’s camera. i’d recently read this feature at 1up.com about the differences between japanese and western approaches to game design, and so i was much more accepting about it. if you keep the mindset that the fixed camera is part of the challenge of the game, then you shouldn’t be too disappointed. it’s not too problematic anyway, and at times it even makes the game more effective. for example, at one point you’re being chased around by a baddie with a chainsaw, and if you had complete camera control you could always just turn around and see exactly where he was, which would be a much different experience than never quite knowing how far behind you he is.

not much more to say. i’d previously said that it was interesting how franchises reuse the same elements over and over (enemies, weapons, etc.), but in this case i found the reuse to be a bit stale; not quite sure why that was. anyway, i’ll have to see how the next castlevania game i play fares.

lotsa links:
- vgmuseum.com: best cv64 site, with scans of the instruction book, all the dialogue transcribed, screenshots of all four endings, and more.
- nice guide from ign.com
- castlevania.classicgaming.gamespy.com also has some good info, including concept artwork and a comprehensive timeline
- about.com has some good bios on carrie and reinhardt.