Demo Driver 8: BeatBlasters III
I am relatively sure that this is the place where Kirby bosses are born.
Sometimes games wind up with poor scores simply because no one can really categorize them, even if they want to. BeatBlasters III is kind of terrible at basically everything it appears to be, and it’s only when you start to get a feel for what it actually is that the game goes from being “bad” to “fun.” Although I freely admit that not everyone is going to feel even remotely the same way as I do about the title.
See, BeatBlasters III is not a platform game, although at a glance it sure looks like one. There are platforms and you move between them, but that is hardly the point. Nor is it a rhythm game, although there is a rhythm element to the game. It’s some very odd combination of both, and yet it manages to be neither, or at least not with any skill. It’s a game with poor play control that’s part of the experience while at the same time being a game with perfect control for creating exactly the right sort of tension.
Perhaps I should start from the beginning.
Lest a monster you become
It’s not the supernatural that makes any hint of opposition something to be destroyed.
What really locked in my opinion of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines was Heather.
Heather is almost the definition of an optional character, albeit an important one. You first find her when she’s in a hospital bed barely clinging to life, obviously going to die unless you do something. Feeding her a drop of your vitae will ensure that she lives, and if you’re trying to be a halfway decent person you’ll do it without a second thought. It’s an altruistic act, a kind one, something wholly divorced from your own needs.
It’s only when she shows up again that you realize what you’ve done, but even then you can’t really object. Heather immediately sets about making herself useful to you, and it’s easy to keep being nice to her right off. After all, she makes it clear that she can help you when you’re otherwise asleep, and she doesn’t want anything in return except to be near you. You could run her off, but this happy fashion student just wants to be near you. Why would you be so cruel?
Then some time passes, and she tells you she’s dropping out of school after you’ve further bound her to your blood. And you realize that you’ve ruined her life.
The Final Fantasy Project: Final Fantasy IV -Interlude-, part 2
Artwork from a sketch by Yoshitaka Amano
I had really wanted to get through the whole of -Interlude- in one part, but alas, it’s just a little bit too long. You’d think there’s be a more solid sense of progression as a result, but instead it’s kind of scattershot and all over the place, starting you in the middle of leveling with an odd assortment of gear and no super-clear picture about how long you’ll be here. It’s an odd duck, is my point.
Last time, we left off with Rydia acting as if she is far too drunk to be near crystals and loaded onto the Falcon, which is weird enough in and of itself but still leaves the question of why monsters in the Sealed Cave were acting up in the first place. Also, apparently Edge is doing something, although it really hasn’t tied into the game in a significant fashion yet either. I really hope these plot threads start coming together soon, there’s not a whole lot of interlude left.
Sorry, not a whole lot of -Interlude-. That title formatting looks really ugly. Did anyone point that out?
Demo Driver 8: Vector
Maybe they’d stop chasing you if you stopped pirouetting all over the place and making them feel like total dickwads.
You are being hunted. Go.
We don’t need more elaboration than that. We’ve seen countless films wherein the big action sequence is as simple as trying to outrun pursuit. There’s no fighting back against your pursuers, no hope of reasoning, only escape or collapse. They are at your heels, they are coming for you. No time to pause, no time to think, no time to do anything but hurtle forward and try to be as quick and clever about your escape as possible.
Vector is meant to tap directly into that urge, the “flight” portion of fight-or-flight, the need to escape however you possibly can and as fast as you possibly can. No frills, no waffling, no nonsense, nothing except the straight pitch of your character from left to right, traversing obstacles, vaulting railings, smashing windows, slowing not a whit until you have outrun your pursuit. And it does pretty well at that, if not perfectly.
Go.
The dark heart of Final Fantasy XI
You know it doesn’t want you there, but you can’t help but feel a stirring of nostalgia.
When Final Fantasy XI launched in America, it received a pretty shining reception, which should say a lot about MMOs at the time. This release was a port of a game programmed for a very specific Playstation 2 peripheral, released long enough after its initial launch that a significant portion of the existing Japanese playerbase viewed the incoming American players in much the same way that you would view an army of roaches assembling just outside of your front door. The resultant culture clash and sheer ambiguity of the way the game functioned led to problems that Square-Enix is still pretending to clean up, not to mention that it included PlayOnline, a service so magnificently useless that it makes Games for Windows LIVE seem almost fashionable.
It was problematic, is my point. And that isn’t even getting to the actual game, which I’ve previously said is sort of like some bizarre outgrowth of Stockholm Syndrome, constantly assaulting you for the crime of trying to play it even while you find yourself aware of its deep-seated loathing and contempt for players. And yet the game did well. It was a success. It’s still relatively successful now, more than a decade out from its launch, warts and all.
Like any game, there are lessons to be learned here.
Recent Work
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Chocobo Dash
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Eliot Lefebvre 