KairoSoft Sims (iphone): Crack addiciton in 1's and 0's.

During this dry spell when I have nothing coming out I went browsing around my Iphone to look for something new to do to fill the gap. That friend who suggested to me to try Infinity Blade earlier in the life of my Iphone contract introduced me to a Simulation game called Game Dev Story. I hate him to this day for that. I don’t know what it is about simulation games, by all definitions they should be boring as hell, but the second I get started with one I become physically unable to put them down. They become my sole focus in my existence. Maybe it’s the classic sprite animated charm or the simple midi sound track or the goofy parodies on the names in these games, but I don’t know why I keep falling for it.

KairoSoft Simulations: (Iphone/Android)

      

So out of curiosity I downloaded the game. The premise is fairly simple, you start a game development company and your objective is to make as much money as you can. The more you make, the more you can expand, hire new employees, purchase licenses to develop for consoles, and eventually create your own console.  The whole game is very menu driven and if you have happened to be a gamer in the past 20 years, you generally know what consoles will be successful despite the parody names. What made this game hilarious to me is the horribly offensive names I could think of for my game company and names I could come up with, most of which I am unable to provide for the sake of keeping this article PG. I don’t know why I found the game so entertaining, but I've played it through 3 times.

That was several months ago. The problem is when I was looking for something new to play, I found out that they produced three more simulation titles, and like the idiot I am I purchased all of them. Next up is Mega Mall Story, and much like the last game, the premise is pretty cut and dry. You want to try to become a five star mall, run the competition out of town and try to build up the surrounding community to raise your traffic. As people start to come to your mall, they give gifts and introduce ideas for new stores to bring in. You can hold sales to increase the amount of people to come in and placing the right stores next to each other raises their reputations.  You can hire floor associates and if they provide good customer service to people they give you hearts which you can use to upgrade store stock or quality. While some of the stores you earn are a little bizarre (my mall certainly doesn't have a casino or planetarium), this one was surprisingly addicting to play.

The one that I am currently playing is Pocket Academy. I have recently started playing it so forgive me if the review is a little narrower in description.  As you have already guessed, the objective to this game is to create a successful academy. You train your students and the more you do you can increase the level of learning to get more tuition money. That allows you to higher better staff, aside from teaching; the staff wander the halls and get you points to spend on new amenities for the university.  In addition to this your students can help in local events to earn money for your school as well as create relationships amongst the students, romantic or platonic. What makes this game different from the previous two is that you have a much more freedom in your construction of the academy.  Unlike Game Dev Story where you get no building at all and it’s all done for you or Mega Mall Story where basically place buildings in blocks of 1-4 spaces, Pocket Academy opens up the map for you to construct, much in a manner you would expect like in The Sims Series.  It’s still fairly early on in my play through so I’m sure there is more for me experience and unlock, but it’s looking to be just as addictive as the previous two.

Or if going back to school isn’t your thing, you can try your hand at Hot Springs Story.  I only have played the demo for this game, but it plays a lot like if not exactly like Pocket Academy does. You start off with a small spring you have to expand it. As you do you can add different amenities in the same way of the previous mentioned game and you can sway business depending on what clientele you advertise to. Like Mega Mall Story, you can you expand and invest in the surround community to try to bring more people to your spa. What I am noticing about this game and Pocket Academy is that in this one it forces you to plan your building more carefully as money is not as prevalent as the first two titles. That being said, they do open up a new dimension to the game. This is the next one I have on the chopping block.

You can pick any one of these you want. Their all about 2 or 3 bucks on the Iphone App Store or Android Marketplace and every single one of them should keep you distracted for a good number of hours. Plus, if you are like me and looking for more, Android users can download their newest title Grand Prix Story, with an Iphone release in the near future. 

Now they just need to make a Sim Game Rehab Story and I'll be all set.... Damn you KairoSoft... Damn you...

Infinity Blade (iphone): Plays like a mobius strip.

So about a year and half ago in a pissed off rage at T-Mobile for refusing to give me the upgraded that I wanted, I decided for once to splurge and despite my undying hatred of all things Apple, I purchased an Iphone. It hasn't changed my opinion of Apple but taking the device as a whole it really did hit the mark with what its trying to be. But interestingly enough the smartphone market really does seem to be trying to make a push in the gaming area where titles like Angry Birds are dominating in sales with simplistic design yet addicting to play.

Not to long a go a friend (for the sake of his privacy, we'll only call him JD instead of using his full name), had asked me if I had played Infinity Blade. I had not and he said its supposed to be the best looking game on the Iphone. I had noticed that it was half off this week so I took the plunge. 

INFINITY BLADE (Iphone)

The story in this game is pretty slim pick'ns. The game opens up with an unnamed knight entering a chamber and gibberish dialogue goes though that he's a defender of freedom. You briefly learn to fight and then Sir Derply of Nameless gets his ass crushed immediately. It flashes 20 years later and you apparently take control of his son and now the game begins. 

He wasn't kidding when he said the game had some really good graphics. Considering that this is a phone and not a portable game console, I was very impressed by the opening cutscene and some of the animations of the game. The colors and nice and crisp and the environments are incredibly detailed.  The game continues to the change the appearance of your character with every piece of equipment you add and the some of the monsters change as you progress as well.

Sadly, this is about all the praise this game gets out of me. As far as game play goes, it gets hampered by my most frequent complaint of Iphone games in that it has no controller. The game for the most part plays like a point and click adventure game. Most of the animation is just CGI cutscenes as you move from location to location. Your character stands still and you can cam around the scene a bit to find either strewn treasures or glowing little circles that scream "hey stupid, go here". Typically after clicking one of these you either move into another room or a monster attacks you. This was kind of a disappointment because Chaos Rings had really good graphics but I was able to control my exploration.

The fighting in the game is intuitive and frustrating all at the same time. The way that it plays it could almost be described as it plays like Punch-out!!! You get two arrow sets to dodge left and right and one Shield in the middle to block. You only get so many blocks before the shield cracks and you have to see which way the enemy swing is coming and decide which way to dodge.  To attack you simply slash at the screen with your fingertip. Most of the time it plays fairly smoothly. The enemy attack patterns in the beginning of the game an very very simple so its easy to pick up which way to dodge and the slashing works fairly easily. However as you level so do all the monsters, and the patterns become more difficult. This by itself seems like a good idea but the progression never works like it should and I cant think of how many times I'd hit the arrows and my character just would not dodge. Perhaps their too close to the corners and I'm missing them. Maybe its just buggy. But it would almost always happen when I needed to not miss my dodge. Learning the healing spell later helps but its still a frustration. You only can gain experience if you are wearing equipment you haven't mastered so you are constantly upgrading which is kinda nice unless you have all the best gear. Then you have to choose to downgrade or get less exp.

The sound in this game sucks. There is maybe one "song" if you want to call it that. A constant droning of the same 5 bass notes bedding a the constant shrieking of monsters. The combat sound effects are what you would expect. Clashing sounds, grunts, and glittery sounds when you cast magic. All of the voices appear to just be gibberish. Maybe is a Foreign language but I couldn't identify it.

The game is also short as hell, too.  Basically in the course of an evening I had beaten the game twice and gotten two endings. Whether you beat the last boss or lose to him, the game flashes 20 years into the future and you play the next son running off to die like his father before him. The maps never change, the enemies level up but they are always in the same place every run, and there only really seems to be about three different paths to take. Essentially the game just continues to loop indefinitely (hence the title, perhaps). There is a spot where it seems like it might open up more game if you level enough to earn the actual Infinity Blade but at the price their asking I don't think I'll ever do it. Unless the game comes with free updates I don't see this game having a lot of replay value.

The game when it first came out was boasting a 7 or 10 dollar price tag, and I'm glad I didn't pay that much. It's definitely an impressive viewing of what the iPhone can handle graphically. I paid about 3 bucks for the game but you could probably afford to wait for it drop again.

With Apple in the world? I believe it. 

Silent Hill Downpour: Reminiscing about the future (Preview)

In September of 2001 one of the greatest games ever produced was released. Excellent story, interesting characters, brilliant score, multiple endings, and some of the hands down best atmosphere to be put in a video game ever. With the exception of some of the old school tank controls common of that genre, Silent Hill 2 as far as I am concerned set the the standard for what a great survival horror game should be.

On my first play through of this game, it took me around 8 or so hours to get through. At my best, I had every map and puzzle memorized, and could play through the game in just over 2 hours. Played it through enough to get all five endings and still continued to play it afterwards. Hands down one of the best games ever.

So why do I bring up a playstation 2 game that is almost 10 years old? Because for every Silent Hill game to come out since its release, I hear from almost every development team that works on each respective project say: "We are trying to get back to what made Silent hill 2 great." Despite this every adaptation to follow this one has never quite lived up to the expectations of the one before it. 3 had some alright moments in it but it didn't have that same feel of 2. The Room had some interesting concepts but it had some of the worst controls in the franchise. Homecoming improved the combat greatly but that inversely affected the horror level of the game, never causing that sense of fear and panic some of the others had. That's not to say any of them were bad, I thoroughly enjoyed every one of them and played them multiple times. Its just that they don't feel like they've lived up to the standard that's has been set.

The reason I take this little trip down memory lane is because I am staring to hear this same promise again in the form of the upcoming Silent Hill: Downpour set to be released this winter. When I saw the initial release trailer, it looked very rough and unclean. It was clearly nothing more than a concept video to present at a show to and at least get some buzz going for it. Well a year has gone by now and they have got the a more cleaned up trailer that shows a little more of the story and some of the game play elements. 

In this 8th installment of the SH franchise, you play as Murphy Pendelton. A prisoner in transit who escapes as his transport when it crashes and flips off the side of the road. Murphy is stranded in the southern map of Silent Hill, an area that has been yet to be explored in the franchise at this point so while there might be some visits to a familiar location or two, the setting should feel original and different again despite being back in a town we've visited so many times before.

One of the first things I noticed as I was looking at how good the character's looked this time around, is how brightly lit and super saturated all the characters and locations were. To me, this feels like a detriment to the game. That may sound like I am contradicting myself but I'm really not. Here's the thing, while the character models look great, the first three SH games had this fantastic way of increasing the tension from the location alone. The game was either pitch black making you barely able to see past the minimal distance of the flashlight you carried, or in daylight the entire landscape was covered in a thick foreboding mist that reduced your visibility and filled you with this crushing feel of loneliness. While adding some color and life to the setting, it somewhat reduces that empty void feeling, that sense as if you are trapped by the town itself.

Which brings me to my next point of critique. Loneliness is a big factor in raising the tension in these games. Monsters are more scary the less you see of them, and panic sets in deeper when you are fending them off alone. This installment of the game seems to have a pretty big cast of characters in it and I think that by including so many people it gives too many opportunities to break the tension and let the player come down and break from the immersion to sit back and watch a scene. Granted, this is commenting on a trailer that's only about 3 minutes long so this may not be the case, but it is something to think about. The female sidekick in Homecoming did nothing to aid in the playable portions of the game, and when a game like SH gets as cutscene heavy as that one did it really kills any fear it was building.

Looking at how some of the combat played in the trailer, it appears like its going to maintain that over the shoulder 3rd person style of gameplay that it used in Homecoming. It somewhat worked in the last installment but it will need some tweaks to be really effective, (fix the fucking dodge roll this time). Guns again are said to be limited and melee makes a return, but it appears that this time around they are bringing back breakable weapons. This can be good or bad. On one hand, having a weapon break mid fight is a good way to raise the panic and desperation of the situation. On the other hand, this was tried in Silent Hill: Origins and it was clunky, inefficient, and only ended up causing more cheap deaths and reloads that cause frustration instead of raise tension. Melee has never been something that is easily masted in the SH franchise so I don't feel weapons that break were needed. I promise no matter how good you are at SH, when combat goes to melee you are going to take hits.  Having your weapon constantly breaking is just another kick in the junk.

The last thing I want to touch on is the music. Akira Yamaoka has been the composer for the SH franchise for most of the major releases, and he has been brilliant at the job. The SH franchise contains some of the best scoring in video games to date, (the first video in this blog is a fantastic sampling of this). So for what reason is he not being included in the project? In addition to that, if you've kept up with the franchise you probably are familiar with the music of Mary Elizabeth McGlynn. She has been the vocalist to appear on the soundtracks and in the SH franchise since SH3, and while met with mixed reviews, she too has provided a number of memorable tunes to this great franchise. She had originally announced in June of 2010 that she was not going to be a part of this project, but a year later it had been confirmed that she would be doing music for the game. The problem is she is not doing the theme as she usually has. This time around the theme to Downpour will be written and performed by Korn. Yes, I said that. Korn. This would make me excited maybe back in 96 or 97. But now? I do not see how they can add ANYTHING that will fit this franchise and make it better. I'm willing to give them a chance but they have a very narrow margin to impress me. This to me has been the most disappointing news.

Take this preview for what it is, its just me commenting on what I know from the game as of now. I still have it pre-orded, I will still probably play it from start to finish, and i will still probably love the hell out of the game. But if the SH development teams are going to keep making these games, they need to adhere to this little nugget of advice: Stop promising us Silent Hill 2. It might never be that good again.

I still have no idea what he's doing in this scene. 

Yakuza 4 (ps3): Welcome to my Corner of the web.

So this is my first entry here into the world of blogging. So right off the bat i'll let you know exactly what to expect here. I am not a professional writer, reviewer, or critic. I'm just a guy who likes to play games and has some opinions about them, and will probably make spelling and gramatical errors along the way. You can read magazine reviews all you want but you are more likey to take the advice of a friend who played the game, Right? So thats what I'm here to do. I'm not rating things on a massive scale or giving scores in areas of focus. Just going to tell you what I liked, didn't, or if I'll recommend it or shred it a new one, savvy? Good. Then without further adieu.....

YAKUZA 4 (ps3)

So for my first review I would like to cover a game that I personally really liked. When the game first came into the gamestop I worked at, I really thought nothing of it. But they kept airing a commerical for it on the tv we run so for the sake of trying it I took it home. Now, as you can clearly tell this is the 4th installment of the series and if you aren't caught up in your Yakuza backstory, believe me, the game will let you know about it.

It suffers right out the gate by forcing a good 15 to 20 minute install. I understand this is supposed to help you with loading times and such but seriously, can no developer create a way that this install takes place while you play the first level? Nobody wants to buy a brand new game, race home to play to be forced to wait another 20 minutes...

Sorry, I'm getting off topic. Upon starting the game you take control of the first of four characters you play as, Shun Akiyama. From the onset you gather that he is an eccentric money lender of sorts and after a bit of a quick cutscene your secretary forces you out to collect on a debt. It holds your hand on a pretty linear path to start with a tutorial battle along the way, which we'll get to in a moment. After this brief period you follow an aquiantance of your character and then are flung into a rather lengthly cutscene discussing multiple different chracters and clans and who's in charge of who and what clan is at war with this clan and who's has command and yadda yadda blah blah blah. Much like reading Battle Royale unless you are fairly familiar with japanese names this first cutscene will probably make you feel very lost, as I was. In all honesty it was a bit of a put off, but the after that scene and after a bit more walking and miniboss fight you hit the event that starts the ball rolling. From there I focused on the characters I knew and things got a bit easier to follow. There were definitely a number of scenes where I had no idea what was being discussed but the game does do a pretty good job of recapping and remeniscing about it to bring you up to speed. Actually, in the main menu before you start the game, you can view of series of cutscenes from the previous Yakuza games to bring you up to speed. I've yet to watch them all but it is a nice little feature if you are like me and are starting off with the 4th of the series.

The game for the most part plays like a cross of sandbox action game and JRPG. Once the world opens up, you are pretty much free to explore the city of Kamurocho as you please and explore all the mini games it has to offer pretty much right from the start. But unlike most American sandbox games such as like GTA, Saints Row, or Infamous, the game doesn't really provide any vehicles to get around fast in. There are a handful of cabs that you can use to jump to different portions of the map but if you aren't near one then you are walking and that can take time. The other odd aspect of the game comes into the combat. Unlike in say Grand Theft where the moment you hit the streets you can start beating the crap out of anyone you come across that is not the case in this game. Occasionally as you walk some one will charge you and spout some ridiculous reason for why they are angry at you, and you'll get a blurry filter as the game announces who you are fighting a la the random encounter system common in JRPGs. And when I when I say ridiculous, I am not kidding. One of my personal favorites is: "Hey you! Man, you look so familiar.. Don't you just hate it when you can't remember someone? I'll just have to take it out on your face!!!" If that's passers by react in japan then I think my vacation there can wait...

Homeboy seems totally justified to me. 

The meat of the game comes in the combat. The controls aren't particularly innovative but they are simple enough as it uses a fairly standard light attack, heavy attack, dodge, block, throw system. But the combos are plentiful and fairly easy to pick up. It does sometimes spawn a large number of baddies in a small area but its pretty rare to get overrun. But I would say the strongest thing working for the combat is that it is flat our visceral  I've said this to friend and I honest to god mean this that some of the finishers in this game are harder to watch than God of War. When you see limbs getting shredded off in games like God of War and Dead Space it has like no weight to it because it happens so much and so often that the constant sprays of blood can get downright comical. Yakuza can get rough to watch sometimes as you can watch their jaw dislocate and see a few bloody teeth fly from their mouth. As gruesome as it is, it never stops being fun and I crack a smile every time I swing a punk by his shirt collar spine first into a street lamp. Below you can see some of Akiyama's special moves, just to give you an idea of some of the innovative violence they've crammed in here.

In addition to the main story and the hours of ass kicking you'll do, I eluded that there are mini games to play and there are a lot of them. Many of them aren't listed on the map obviously but if there is no shortage of things to do from casino games, golf, bowling, fishing, cage fighting, pool, darts, restaurants, hostess clubs, and pachinko just to name a few. You can easily get yourself distracted for hours playing all the various different side attractions in the game which gives it an impressive depth and nice little getaway from the main story. A good example to show you is my completed game results:

Those bottom two lines tell the story right there. I played the game for almost 60 Hours and all I had to show for it after beating it was just over 20% percent of the content unlocked. 

The only real "complaint" per say comes into one of the characters side missions where you have to do a few jobs for the hostess club that Akiyama runs. Essentially a hostess club is a lot like a brothel for first dates. You come in, meet a cute chick, buy her drinks, listen to her talk about herself, and then if you're lucky get a hug at the door. For a few missions (or the achievement if you wanna put yourself through it) you have to take a girl and dress her up and do her makeup and hair and nails depending on what the clientele of the club wants to see. For a game were I can curb check a guy with a bowling ball, this bizarre pretty pretty princess dress up game seems very out of place. If they forced me to play it more than the three times in order to complete the story, I might not have continued to play it. But if in the event you have to get all the trophies in the game or actually like it, the video below is incredibly helpful for you. Get your achievement and get out, its just creepy to play it. 

So to wrap this up as its gotten a bit longer winded than I wanted to, lets bring it to the bottom line. After a bit of a rocky and confusing start, the game and story become very solid as I played through and learned about the characters and their back stories and meshes together a good number of inter connecting story lines and I felt it was pretty deep and engaging. The game contains a strong cast of likable characters that are genuinely easy to get behind. The combat while not as free to engage as I would have liked provided only a small nuisance and fights made the game very difficult for me to put down as you can tell by the image above. The massive number of mini games give the game an excellent variety so even if you get tired of beating ass, you can find something else to keep you playing the game. Overall I would highly recommend this title so if you happen to see a copy on the shelf, give it a shot because its pretty scarce.