"Graphically, apart from the obvious character model textures now representing WW2 soldiers, not a whole lot has changed. Even after nearly a year since CoD: 4 the engine still looks stunning and runs at a consistent frame rate despite whatever chaos is ensuing."
The full preview can be found and read here at TALKXBOX.COM
In this article, I explore some of the games that seem destined to be remembered as “also-rans,” yet at any other time of the year they could have well garnered some considerable excitement and attention amongst the Xbox 360 consumers. I wonder which of the following titles have slipped under your radar in your pre-festive planning?
The full editorial can be found and read here at TALKXBOX.COM
Capcom’s Megaman 9 is the latest game in the long running Megaman/Rockman series which originally made its debut on the NES all the way back in 1987. Considered as the follow-up to Megaman 8 released nearly twelve years ago (excluding its numerous spin-offs), the game’s engine has been built from the ground up to recreate an authentic experience fitting of the 8-bit machines of the past. Background music throughout is appropriately MIDI sounding with its sound range limited to the five channels of Nintendo’s original hardware. Graphical restrictions are also in place with a limited colour palette and even a faithful recreation of sprite flicker, widely prevalent in other titles you would play around this era of video gaming.
If you are a newcomer to the Megaman series, or if you’re too young to remember any of the classic 2D platformers from the genre’s hey-day, then prepare yourself for a shock. This game certainly won’t provide you the comfort zones of similar titles such as Super Mario Brothers or Sonic the Hedgehog. Indeed, calling the game “hard” would be a gigantic understatement.
Megaman 9’s story has you set against a plethora of rampaging robots which have mysteriously been let loose to rampage across the world. It’s down to you as protagonist Megaman to destroy these monstrous machines and at the same time to prove the innocence of your incarcerated friend Dr. Light.
There are a total of 8 Robot Masters in the game of which you need to destroy, each one compromising of a themed stage before the actual boss fight itself. Which order you decide to fight these Robot Masters in is left entirely down to you and is easily selectable from the main screen. Managing to defeat a Robot Master will award you with that particular guardian’s special weapon which one other Robot Master will be especially weak against. This throws up an element of strategy in your game progression or alternatively can provide you an extra level of challenge if you want to try to complete the game with just Megaman’s default blaster.
This may all sound straight forward enough and with each stage clocking in at only a theoretical five minutes to finish, you could indeed be mistaken for thinking this game is nothing than an hour long cakewalk. Unfortunately for you in Megaman 9 you will die.., you will die a great deal.
Making it past a single screen can be a horrific trial and error process sapping hours of your time to just arrive at the Robot Master’s lair. This isn’t to suggest that the level design is bad, just that the game doesn’t afford you to make any lazy mistakes in your timing or mid-air recalculations in your platforming. Landing or even briefly touching a bed of spikes means an instant death, there is also no double jump or post-jump float meaning a misjudged leap will lead to nothing than a grizzly demise and prompt level restart. Throughout the levels you are given the opportunity to pick up bolts (the game’s currency) which post stage completion can be used to buy extra lives and energy packs. This is all fair and well if you can actually finish a stage, until that point you’re stuck with what little you have at the commencement of the adventure.
Outside the core game, Capcom have added thirty or so additional achievements to obtain at your leisure. These achievements range from trifling challenges such as killing 500 enemies to the devishly impossible “complete the game without taking any damage” which only the hardest of the hardcore could ever have any remote possibility of obtaining. If you’re considering purchasing this game purely for gamerscore points then you’d be well advised to focus your attention elsewhere. Another additional feature of Megaman 9 is the speed run option. At the main menu you’re offered the option to perform a timed speed run on any stage of your choosing, all weapons unlocked and readily available. The resulting time (providing you don’t get killed) is then uploaded to the XBL leaderboard, here you can compare just how inferior you are at this game in contrast to everybody else worldwide and to compete against your friend’s times.
Megaman 9 is a game which will be equally loathed and loved by the 360 community. It is far too difficult for most gamers weaned on the Ubisoft philosophy of “everyone should be able to finish” to stick with, even as far as completing just a single level. On the other hand, those who relinquish a gaming challenge will diligently work away at a complex section, ultimately walking away with the satisfaction that they managed to complete one of the toughest games this side of Ninja Gaiden.
The very fact an original game of this kind was able to be released at all stands as a testament to XBL’s ability to distribute online content in an affordable and profitable manner for the development studios. We can only hope that other long-abandoned franchises of the past are soon revisited in a similar fashion. Until that time, providing you can stomach a challenge, Megaman 9 is a fantastic 2D platformer. Exquisite presentation and a multitude of extra features make it a must have arcade purchase alongside Castle Crashers & Braid released this Autumn.
Paw Rating: 4/5
Good: Challenging, worthy addition to existing series, plenty of replay.
Bad: Unwelcoming for beginners, controls don't map well to analogue stick.
Blue Dragon by Mistwalker is what you would class as one the first next generation JRPG's. Created by an ensemble dream team of the genre, surely this title should be a measure of perfection that no others can hope to reach? Well no, not quite.
There has always seemed to be two different class types in the JRPG genre. One in which the game is primarily story driven with a sparse amount of fighting and the other being a pure test of patience level grinding (albeit with subsequent rewards for your time). Everybody interested in JRPG's has a preference of one style over the other, Blue Dragon almost without question falls into the latter category. This isn't to say there is no story in Blue Dragon, just that it's so predictable, ill-written and by the book that in no point during the games sixty hour time span will it put you to the edge of your seat. The vagueness is such a problem in parts that during the story you won't quite understand why certain events take place, or why characters are behaving in a particular manner.
In terms of gameplay, there's no real time MMO style battle system ala FFXII or any of that nonsense here. This game’s gimmick is that rather than equip weapons or armour, the main characters use their own magical shadows to fight for them. While this looks very pretty in a crisp 720p resolution, the level of detail in the characters is almost near non-existent. Rather than scales and scars and other such goodies that you'd wish (and expect) to see on these menacing shadow creatures, instead they look more like shiny balloon animals that some clownshoes at a shopping mall would make. Even worse is the severe framerate slowdown whenever a particle effect comes into the equation, this ends up applying to just about every spell or attack you make by game end. While not utterly game wrecking it certainly underwhelms the whole experience.
The characters all level up in class systems as they fight. All the usual classes you'd expect are here; Sword Master, White Magician, Black Magician etc. Despite the game manual telling you otherwise, essentially to form any kind of effective unit you'll want to roll out the genre norm of physical tanks in front and magic healers at the back. As only a few skills are of any real use in this game, you're going to be levelling up at least three out of five characters in exactly the same manner which proves to be quite a dull and slow paced affair.
As no weapons or armour are involved due to the characters not actually fighting, customisation is offered in terms of accessories. Equipping different accessories changes statistic differentials and some also come added with status effects which help with the larger boss fights. Sadly when the accessories are equipped they make no change to the characters appearance, also the sheer number of them which anybody can freely use with little restraint make the reward of finding or buying them fairly non-existent. In another game while you might get the visceral excitement of seeing your character waving his brand new shiny sword about here you have nothing, not even a new attack animation. So as well as a weak story, the lack of customisation or reward makes it a very hard game to enjoy from a grinding perspective too.
On a positive note the voice acting is actually rather good, with only a few bad apples in the bunch of voice actors. Having played it through in French, the lip-syncing is acceptable and only the character Kluke seemed to under-perform every single line given to her. This doesn't help that the dialogue is awful to start with but it saves the story from being a complete disaster. The musical score is very underwhelming and lacking in variety. Despite the acclaimed Nobuo Uematsu being the game’s composer, it's almost as if he used all his previously rejected Final Fantasy scores for this project.
Despite such a dream team being responsible for the game, it seems a crime of money over passion took place. Money was thrown at the three big names involved making the game purely as an attempt to win over the Japanese market at the 360's launch. However I don't think anyone's heart in production was really fully involved; the story, artwork and music are all very underwhelming and reek of doing the most modicum amount of work possible. If it wasn't for such a shortage of the genre on the 360, it'd be really hard to recommend this game to anybody considering the severely unbalanced ratio of time vs. reward. On par with Enchanted Arms or PSU, compared to Lost Odyssey or Tales of Versperia it’s worth avoiding all together.
Paw Rating: 2/5
Good: Long game length, impressive voice acting, interesting premise.
Bad: Poor story and pacing, lack of character customisation, severe framerate issues.
