Some You Win, Some You Lose

XII Stag

Amongst my various video game purchases recently, I had a package arrive with two STGs (Japan-derived acronym for 2d shooters: ShooTing Game) in it. Despite being in the same genre, they are incredibly different in most ways… including quality. Good examples of how much variety there can be even in what is perceived (by the mainstream) as a very limited, niche gaming style.

As a baseline for comparison, both games are arcade ports, vertical scrolling, and both are running on a Playstation 2 with a Hori EX Pro joystick used to control.

First the bad:
XII Stag for the PS2. I’m kind of a sucker for buying 2d shooting games (not arena shooters like Smash TV or Geometry Wars), though I’m not so blinkered about being a completist that I will overlook anything. Since you have to do quite a bit of research to track down niche video games, finding opinions just goes with the territory. For me STGs are not one of those game genres where the shitty ones are collectible BECAUSE they are shitty or weird. A shitty shooter is usually unplayable. So you aren’t going to get to enjoy whatever weirdness might be on tap without putting in way too much effort.

XII Stag is an exercise in mediocrity. I read reviews and mostly they said something along the lines of ‘doesn’t do anything new, but does it fine’. This is not what I found to be the case at all. XII Stag has ONE new thing to it, but pulls it off tepidly. Everything about the game is tepid.

I watched snatches of online videos and thought it looked pretty cool. The graphics weren’t groundbreaking, but they seemed detailed, speedy, and interesting enough. Now in real life? Bleagh. Wrong. The objects in the game are all pre-rendered sprites, and they have a kind of shiny aspect that looks pretty good on some of the bosses, but mostly they have this really blocky outline around all of them that just looks budget. Like the blue matte lines in old movies. The backgrounds and scrolling look cool at first, but as you play you realize each level’s background have very little variation and is not going to change. Whatever moonscape, swamp, or mountain range you are flying over… that’s what you are going to see for the rest of the level. Cave games do this to a degree too, but at least Cave usually knocks it out of the park with the enemy designs… along with so many bullets you almost can’t see the backgrounds. Background variation or transitioning started to become a staple of STGs back in the early days of the Genesis, but no one told the staff behind XII Stag apparently.

You get only one type of ship. That’s fine. Really, REALLY old school, but fine. There is only one type of power up. It makes your basic forward shot a little bigger with each powerup gained, up to four levels. The difference between your level one shot and your level four shot is, again, tepid. FAIL! Nothing else. No options, no additional or different firepower. Nada. The bombs it gives you operate in a somewhat interesting fashion… a huge shield from which you can shoot out, but the enemy cannot shoot in. But that’s all there is. Not fantastically spectacular or destructive.

The unique mechanic of XII Stag, ‘the gimmick’ since a lot of developers seem to think a shooting gimmick of some sort is needed, is the side and back shots from your ship. They are very short range but powerful, and raise up the multiplier for whatever enemies you kill. So the risk/reward system of the game is that you need to get close alongside a lot of the enemies in order to use your best weapon. The designers decided that wiggling the joystick back and forth was the way to trigger the side shots, but of course the shots are so limited in range that when you get that close to the enemy or its guns, jerking your ship left and right is the last thing you want to do. You CAN assign the side shots to a button, but your ship still goes all spastic when it fires these off. If you try to just NOT use the side shots you will find your front shots too weak, even fully powered up, to destroy a lot of the enemies in a reasonable amount of time… and your score will really suffer too.

I was so bored I credit fed through the game just to see what the ending was like. I need to research online to see if credit-feeding netted me the shittiest ending because just like the rest of the game it was a big fat nothing much. I finally beat Last Resort for the Neo Geo recently, a game notorious for giving you a crappy ending after such a difficult game… but at least Last Resort is pretty fucking spectacular on the way to the end. And Last Resort is OLD. It isn’t from this century. There is no excuse for XII Stag not giving you ‘something’. The whole game feels like they did the absolute minimum that they could and still have a game. Especially graphically.

XII Stag came out in the arcades in 2002, ported to PS2 in 2003. The developer of the game, Triangle Service, may not have had the budget of the established shooter companies, but it should’ve at least tried to match or beat the competition on some level. I also know Triangle Service HAS done better games. Cave’s first shooter Donpachi, was graphically kind of bleah next to some of the other stuff of the day (like Batsugun), but they made up for it with the unique play ideas that would become their bread and butter in modern times. In similar circumstances another small developer, G Rev, came out with their debut shooter Border Down for the Dreamcast a year after XII Stag, and it was wwaaaaayyyyy better than this game.

The ship controls just fine (when you aren’t side-shooting), and is pretty small with no crazy hitbox problems. The level of enemy fire is sort of manic-lite. A bit heavier and slower than a typical Psikyo game. I have Shooting Love 200X on the way too, a compilation of later Triangle Service releases, but Shooting Love has actually garnered a lot of enthusiasm, particularly for the ‘shooting task’ game included. XII Stag hasn’t dampened my anticipation for it because every company has its blech moments, frequently their first game. My kid is just getting into STGs and he wants to hang on to XII Stag for awhile to see if it gels for him.

Strikers 1945

Now the good:
Strikers 1945 I & II for the Playstation 2. The games in this two-pack are arcade ports as well. My play time, and therefore these comments, are geared toward the first of the two games, though all evidence indicates the second is very similar. A good thing if you enjoyed the first, which I did.

Strikers 1945 came out in 1995 originally, some seven years before XII Stag. As stated in a previous entry the mid-90s was the tail-end of the shooter golden years. So there was plenty of history and competition to look at in designing an STG. Released by Psikyo, a developer known for cultivating a certain ‘style’ in shooting games the same way Raizing, Toaplan, and Cave all have. Psikyo was known for their very clean and colorful art style (frequently risqué) and bullet patterns that have come to be characterized as ‘few but fast’ in opposition to Cave’s manic style of ‘many but slow’. Psikyo game mechanics and techniques are the older style that hearken back to ‘twitchier’ games where memorization was important but not necessarily critical, and fast reflexes helped the player more than being able to thread your hitbox through labyrinthine bullet patterns.

Firing the game up, I was instantly reminded how lo-res the old arcade games were, but how much joy there was in the presentation. The game is set in an alternate 1945 where a new technologically superior threat masses against the former Axis and Ally nations. Psikyo’s art in the game is very precise and shiny, but also very detailed (considering the resolution) with really sharp animation. Particularly for the bosses who all transform from a ‘typical’ vehicle, like a ship or a train, into a mechs that have a sort of post-WWII style to them.

You get a number of planes to choose from, each with their own firepower spreads, options configuration, movement speed and bomb types. The powerups come frequently during the game and you can get your weapons up to pretty massive proportions. Your plane controls really well. The hit box matches the outline of your plane which will vary depending on how big the plane you selected is. There are a few primitive screen options, including ‘tate’ if you are able to flip your monitor or TV on its side.

The early levels are deceptively short and easy. When I was first playing, I knew Strikers did not have a rep as a particularly easy game, but I was blown away by how quickly I was ploughing through it. But there are more than the usual five levels that today’s shooters all seem to sport… and they get a lot more difficult, particularly the ‘boss rush’ that makes up the last quarter of the game. The final section that contains the end boss is worth the price of admission, ranking high on the ‘just when you thought it was over’ scale.

There is nothing super-fancy about this game, just like XII Stag. But this is an example of a game doing everything right. Everything about it is just polished to perfection. A new generation gamer might fire this up and be put off by the pixel-obvious visuals, but once you start playing it all becomes so right. This game is greater than the sum of its parts. I am something of a latecomer to the Psikyo party, as I was with Cave. So as much as I love shooters and have collected scads of them, I’m still getting to discover these extensive pockets of goodness. Psikyo is one of those companies who developed a reputation. Some players may not like the ‘style’ of shooter (few but fast bullets), but there is little doubt that they were good at what they did. There’s a reason why software houses develop followings, and this game is a really good example. It doesn’t even really have a ‘gimmick’ in its mechanics, like XII Stag, it is just a straight-forward blasting good time. When you play the much-more-recent Raiden Fighters games (collected on Xbox 360), which have been described by many as ‘good old-school games that gets back to basics’ this is the game the newer game is referencing. Raiden Fighters has an elaborate medal-chaining system, for modern players who need a deeper scoring mechanic, but at root it can be enjoyed in much the same way as Strikers 1945. They even look really, really similar.

So there you go. I’ve discovered it really is possible to find an absolutely dismissable example of my favorite game genre. One that doesn’t even have the benefit of being ancient. So mediocre it doesn’t even have any camp or ‘so bad its good’ factor. And then in the same mailing, the first of what I hope will be a lot of old Psikyo shooters flowing into my collection. Not EVERY Psikyo game is a winner (I’m still not over the mental scars of Sol Divide, probably why I haven’t bought Psikyo since then), but there’s a lot to look forward to.

GOTY 2009

I think ‘best of’ lists are a mixed bag.

I find the sort of those lists that are voted on by consumers or readers interesting to look over. They don’t shape my own interests really, but it is usually interesting or informative to have examine a barometer of public opinion. Like when I look at reader’s choice awards in a music magazine. It is interesting to see how close or how far off my own choices are from the mainstream, though I’m too old and weary now to get much satisfaction from being as far from the common view as possible. Lists compiled by magazine editors or other supposed professionals are frequently a waste of time though. I feel like they can only be useful if genre is taken into account. Mixed genre ‘best of’ lists are without context even if the writer tries to preface it with some bullshit.

A list from a reviewer that had his best example from each (or several genres), labled as such and no specific priority for them could be useful, and just as importantly, credible. When you just make up a list of say ‘my top 10 albums of the year’ or ‘my 25 favorite games’ with no regard for genre or style… well, what’s the point? If you’re tastes are not at all like those of your reader, then you’ve wasted their time. You also confuse the issue of whether a game was left off your list because it sucks or just because you suck at it (or it belongs to a genre you don’t care for). Lists like that are more an indicator of the writer’s taste NOT the quality of the items listed. Yeah, its all opinion anyway, but if you don’t distinguish genre (or style or some sort of context) you’re adding another layer of bias, conscious or not.

A ‘thing’ of the year is a little different. I think it possible to single out a favorite and still remain credible, because that is a distillation that makes sense and can be quantified simply. Irrespective of genre, fads, flaws, prevailing opinion and all that, what’s the one entry that was just flat-out the most enjoyable?

I said it is possible, but myself I’d probably have a really hard time with choosing a favorite film of the year. Or book. Or a favorite album. Those likes depend too much on my mood of the moment. I mean I will always list Rammstein’s Liebe Ist Fur Alle Da as a favorite album of 2009. At some point during that year, when it was new and I was really getting into it, I’m sure it was THE favorite. But with all the interest and exposure I have to music I don’t think I could call it or any album of that year ‘the best’, objectively.

Most years I’d probably say the same thing about video games. So many, so different… and in 2009 there were some really good games. Releases last year included Mushihimesama Futari, Deathsmiles, Brutal Legend, and lots of others just in the genres near and dear to me personally. Most of the games I played over the last year weren’t actually released in 2009, but were older. Games I hadn’t gotten to yet. Do I include those? I’m not working for a magazine with its stringent regard for release dates. No matter what I played, what I missed… regardless of genre… and regardless of my usual inability to settle on an absolute favorite, in 2009 one game rose right up to the top. Noting this is my pathetic attempt to add one more voice to the chorus chanting its greatness, though that chorus is probably restricted to the critics and the so-called hardcore… and get more people to buy a copy of this game:

Muramasa: The Demon Blade for the Nintendo wii.

Earlier in the year, I played through Odin Sphere. That game that had an awful lot going for it, but was marred by some glaring problems. I still enjoyed playing, but wanted a game from the same creative wellspring that somehow avoided all of Odin Sphere’s issues. Muramasa does exactly that. With the same unbelievable production values as Odin Sphere, a similarly complicated (though less Wagnerian) plot, Muramasa eliminates the repetition, load times, drawn out storylines, grinding for items and weird combat timing that were part of the earlier game.

In Muramasa you will play through two story lines (instead of Odin Sphere’s five). Like that earlier release the game will dovetail the two stories into a sort of crossover finale, but it isn’t particularly grueling to get there. You can play the two characters, Princess Momohime or Ninja Kisuke in any order, even jumping back and forth whenever you feel the need for a change. After selecting your character, you choose your ‘mode’, either Muso, which has an enhanced RPG aspect that allows you to keep gaining levels to help overcome more difficult parts of the game, or Shura which diminishes the leveling aspect (and your hit points) to make the game more skill and reflex-based… though both modes are far more quick action oriented than any Vanillaware game prior. You then proceed through the game areas fighting, gathering items, and talking with various in-game personalities but delivered to the player in a way unlike just about any other game out there.

Movement through the game reminds me of the old NES and arcade game Legend of Kage. In that game the hero ran along the ground or jumped through the trees, and a lot of the combat took place in the air. Muramasa is like a very polished, very elaborate version of THAT. The protagonists jump through the trees, or over rooftops slashing the enemies with their swords or deflecting back their foes’ projectiles. The wii controller, which is not my favorite means of input, took some getting used to, but after a while becomes really easy and I can’t really imagine using anything else for the game now. None of the motion control aspects come into play. Since there is really only one main attack button (the other two buttons are for versions of super attacks that you don’t get to use all the time) it would appear you can just mash your way through all the combat. It’s true there aren’t a lot of input commands like a fighting game, but the seeming-simplicity is deceptive. The combat here is all about timing and discernment. You need to keep track of how your swords are holding up (they can be broken). You need to pick out the strongest foes, and modify your attacks based on what works against who. Certain swords and their powers will work better in certain situations. The game doesn’t really want all fights to be brutally challenging to the player… you can button mash your way through a lot of them. But if anything doing that in the minor fights just brings satisfaction because they are over so quick. You start working on fighting and ending the fights in style. With panache. Everything in the game is quick. The running. Accessing menus. Even the game saves happen so fast it is almost ridiculous. Everything about the game is optimized to go as quickly as possible, from the game engine, to the convenience of getting from one place to another. Even the dialogue, which is wonderfully voiced and subtitled, can be fast-forwarded through. After I’d gained the ability to warp from one town to the next, I frequently didn’t bother because a) I wanted the experience points from the battles during travel and b) you move so quickly anyway it really isn’t boring. The number of scenery changes helps too. Not every area or screen is unique, but there is a lot of variety.

The game’s narrative is linear, but the world itself is pretty open once you’ve gotten a ways into the game. This allows for grinding if you wish, but its never forced on you. It is almost impossible to get lost or lose track of your next goal. Once you’ve beaten several bosses and removed some of the games barriers (designed to keep you on track) you basically have a world map where you can run around wherever you want, but can always figure out where to go to ‘progress’ the plot. The mapping mechanism is genius. You can select between a transparent full-screen area map, a top-of-the-screen immediate area map, or no map… all on the fly. Super-quick. Getting to the overall world map, or any of your inventory and item options is also super-quick and convenient. You can set your favorite items, healing or sword protective, to be quickly accessed at any time right during movement or fights. In previous Vanillaware games (and most other action games, really) you have to open a menu pausing the action to switch weapons or access healing and magic items. That’s bullshit to Muramasa. You CAN pause the game to pop an item, but mostly its done without pausing, that second, with no drop in pace.

All this work towards speed and action, and the game still has decent play time on its bones. I clocked just under 25 hours to get through both storylines and epilogues and most of the optional ‘lair’ areas, though I wasn’t trying to go through it hell bent for leather as fast as possible. I was trying to enjoy what there was to see.

And there is so much to see. Heaping shitloads of praise have been written about this game. I though Dave Halverson at play was going to jizz in his pants. But he’s not wrong. The game is a throwback in one sense to the artistic sensibilities in the heyday of 2d gaming. But the old games rarely had production values like this. As I raved about in my entry on Odin Sphere, this game makes most other titles 2d, 3d, whatever all look drab and pathetic by comparison. Of recent games I’ve played, only Bayonetta (a future blog entry to be sure) shows as much love of the characters and game world as Muramasa. Of particular note are the boss fights. Games love to have huge or elaborate bosses. Its one of the draws of video gaming. You’re David and that thing is Goliath. Muramasa has awesome (frequently huge) bosses. Only the aforementioned Bayonetta and perhaps Shadow of the Colossus made me flip out the way Muramasa did during boss fights. The art style hearkens back to traditional forms of Japanese painting, but with a modern use of color. Even eating food is an elaborately detailed, lovingly-animated experience. The whole thing’s a little like going to see Disney’s Fantasia when what you’re used to is a steady diet of Phineas & Ferb.

There’s pretty much no aspect of Muramasa: The Demon Blade that isn’t a total class act. That this thing runs so much faster and more conveniently than Odin Sphere is amazing and a testament to Vanillaware’s ability to learn and adapt. The only gripe I’d probably put on the game is that compared to Odin Sphere the whole game runs through a slightly foggy filter. All the graphics in the former game were really sharp and brilliant. Muramasa is ever-so-slightly faded and softened, but you’d almost have to have played the two side-by-side to notice… which is what I did actually. It might be partly an issue with the wii’s video output and whatever mode Muramasa runs in. I don’t know enough about the technical specs, but I have other 2d games on the console and only Samurai Shodown Anthology seems to have the same problem. It could even be a conscious decision on Vanillaware’s part to give the game a dreamlike veneer.

Anyway. The game is practically worth buying a wii to play. Nintendo’s console gets a lot of flak for catering so much to casual gamers, but this title does much to fight that stigma, along with Super Smash Bros. Melee and the upcoming Sin and Punishment 2. I spend more time on other consoles than I do the wii, sure. But I’ve rarely had such a concentrated must-keep-playing experience as this game gave me, and it is a Nintendo wii exclusive. Do what you must to play this game.

Past Blast Froth Fest pt1

Some oldie-games cracked open for the first time in years. For a lot of these modern, spoon-fed, shovel-ware gamers need not bother. They can be harder than an angry black cock.

In The Hunt

In The Hunt- Sega Saturn. Graphically incredible 2D (sprite graphics) submarine shooter from Irem. Development team formed Nazca and made Metal Slug for the Neo Geo. So if you are familiar with that game you should have some idea what this looks like. In fact, Metal Slug in a submarine is probably an apt description. Mostly a shooter, it has the player controlling the scrolling like the run 'n' gun that Metal Slug is. The pacing may be off-putting for gamers expecting the forced scrolling of a typical horizontal STG, but I think the game's other details more than make up for it. Unbelievable animation and detail. Gobs of destructible scenery which is atypical for any 2D game, let alone a shooter. A game that shows all the Saturn's strengths. Only five levels long with the last two-thirds of the fifth level (the fucking volcanoes and beyond) really putting the stones to you. There's probably some trick to getting past all the lava chunks without losing a bunch of subs, but I haven't figured it out yet.


Assault Suit Leynos 2- Sega Saturn. Sprite-based sequel to Target Earth on the Genesis and Assault Suits Valken (Cybernator) on the SNES. A run'n'gun with platforming elements like those games. Unlike the other two games, the production values surrounding the game look shite. The FMV intro and the manual art look totally second rate. Check out the man-breasts on the protagonist! The game even feels truncated with only seven pretty short levels, which for a shooter would be typical, but for a run'n'gun is pretty weak. If you're going to have so few, they need to be longer to make it your money's worth, ie the aforementioned Metal Slug, which has levels that might be too long. Leynos 2, the game itself mostly makes up for all these shortcomings. You pilot a mech-suit with abilities lifted straight from the anime series Mobile Suit Gundam (plots and scenarios largely lifted too, in all the games in the series). The graphics are pretty decent (sprites) with occasional huge bosses (like Gundam mobile armors), and a really neat weapon and suit customisation menu. It is an import only game, so plot details and conversations will be lost on the non-Japanese speaker, but the controls, though complex, are not difficult to figure out since the menus are in English. I could recommend this to Gundam fans or people who enjoyed the other Assault Suits games. It is easier than the earlier games because I think the idea is to play through it multiple times, getting better grades each time because you've earned better weapons and suits. There may be some additional level or ending when you earn everything, but I'm not that good at it yet. Internet info on this thing is bloody scarce, especially since it is a robot action game and not an effing dating sim.


Ultraman Fighting Evolution Rebirth- PS2. 2D fighting game with polygonal graphics. Bought this one mostly for my son, based mostly on Youtube videos since, again, internet info (in English at least) is really lacking on gameplay details. Fortunately this turned out to not only be better than a license like this has any right to be, I found it to be fun enough myself to see it all the way through to the end. Which was good because my son is totally intimidated by fighting games, primarily because he doesn't feel up to the task of managing command inputs like the so-called dragon punch from Street Fighter, and with my going through the game first, I was able to coach him through finishing the game himself. There are no command inputs for this game, but it was still a hurdle to overcome his reluctance, despite the subject matter which he loves. The game does a really good job fitting in the particulars of the various Ultraseries which is no small accomplishment. With episodes and characters spanning forty years of television, plots that change the characters powers and weaknesses at the writers' whims, and all kinds of abilities like firing beams, transformations, wrestling, and super-strength, it was herculean to make a game that was even playable and somewhat balanced. I won't say it IS super-balanced, it isn't a 'formal' tournament-ready fighting game, but it works surprising well. The controls are slower to respond than the Street Fighter-type games (I'd say its more 'tactical' like early Samurai Shodown) but it conveys the giant size and massive impacts of the characters... much like the recent Godzilla console games Atari distributed. The TV episodes almost always end with a huge finishing move, and they've worked those into the game, even giving finishers to all the monsters, because unlike the shows, HERE the monsters can win. To help ease things for younger players, and because the game IS rather tactical (with a detailed plot for a fighting game) the game saves after every fight in story mode. The battle mode is more like the conventional fighting game, shedding the plot pauses and the saves. The overall sheen of the game lets the older Ultraman characters fit right in with the new ones and its really fun (if you're a fan) to explore these sorts of 'crossovers' between the series. Many of the characters and backgrounds need to be unlocked, so there's a lot of replay incentive. I'm letting a huge bias cloud my opinion, I realize. People who have no interest in Ultraman will likely not see any draw to this game. But Ultrafans will find this much cooler than they would probably expect, and shows what the license could be like taken seriously... well, as seriously as it could be. The game is somewhat easy, and experienced gamers should have no trouble getting to final boss... but that's when black cock strikes, and you fight what might be the award winner for most frequently regenerated lifebars/most transformations in a game. The final chapter goes on for scadloads longer than any of the other chapters and unless you figure out a certain secret for one of the the boss's forms, it WILL go on forever until your character just wears down and dies.

Flink

Flink- Sega CD. 2D platformer, sprites. Another amazing graphic masterpiece. Games like this and In The Hunt were the real catalysts for my 'No Love...' post from several days back. This is a thoroughly European game, contrasted against the overwhelming majority of Japanese games and a smattering of American ones. The style of this game brings to mind the detailed, characterful artwork of Brian Froud, Arthur Suydam, or Patrick Woodruff. Every leaf, every blade of grass delineated in loving detail. An amazing soundtrack to go along with it, partly owing to the CD format of the game. The gameplay is pretty basic, jumping, bouncing on enemies, or throwing objects at them-- standard Mario-style-- but additionally, there is mildly RPG-like magic system involving finding and mixing ingredients. Some of the more involved precision jumping sections can get frustrating because Flink's jumps cannot be controlled quite as well as say Mario or Sonic. But the immersion factor is just huge because of all the care lavished on this game. The opening intro alone will tell you the designers poured everything they had into the details, and the intro doesn't use any FMV or anything... it is the same sort of graphic design used in the game itself! Awesome game if you are one of the few (or the insane) who actually own a Sega CD.


Soul Star- Sega CD. 3D shooter, sprite-based graphics. The Sega CD was supposed to be a huge leap in graphics and sound from the Sega Genesis, but apart from more elaborate FMV intros and CD soundtracks they didn't really live up to the hype. Especially when so many of the early games were 'cinema adventure' games that set new standards for suckage. Eventually some great games did come out, and they had the expected super music quality, but only a select few like Flink above, or this one, Soul Star actually LOOKED like a big step up from the Genesis. Again Soul Star's gameplay, like Flink's isn't revolutionary, but it does it what it does pretty well. You pilot three vehicles, a spaceship, a hovercraft, and towards the end, a walker. Each vehicle has a different type of playfield with the spacecraft a rail shooter (see Space Harrier or Panzer Dragoon), and the other two working in more free-roaming areas. The graphics are pretty amazing. Smooth scaling, relatively high speeds, and cool enemy designs, particulary the mechs and bosses later in the game. Planets and ships in the distance gradually scroll forward as you play to become the site of the next level. The control scheme for the hovercraft takes a helluva lot of getting used to, but I enjoyed the game so much I stuck with it. The music is almost haunting in places. This is another game where the designers were obviously enamored with their idea and really went to town creating an immersive experience. I'm not a huge fan of films that are hung up on just their special effects, but occasionally a strong setting or artful cinematography can elevate a mundane story. The interactive nature of a video game means this sort of successful world-building can be even more successful.

Vampire Savior

Vampire Savior- Sega Saturn. 2D fighting game, sprite-based graphics. Third in the DarkStalkers series. It is not hard to find heaping piles of praise for this game on the internet, but its been a long time since I played it, so I'm adding my own droppings to the pile. Saturn version, arcade-perfect, playing to the Saturns strengths. Absolutely jaw-dropping art and animation especially when seen on today's flat-panel TVs. The gameplay is deep with an elaborate and satisfying system for the specials and supers. One of Capcom's best. Not as perfectionist-technical as Street Fighter or King of Fighters tend to be... its more for fun. But not as retardedly over-the-top as Marvel vs Capcom either. A good balance. With some of the greatest, but decidedly underappreciated characters in all of gaming. My son's lack of patience for games like this makes me want to sell him to the gypsies.


GigaWing 2- Sega Dreamcast. 2D shooter with polygonal graphics. Flashy, somewhat cute-seeming blast fest... until about thirty seconds in. Then it initiates you into the world of manic shooters (aka danmaku, 'curtain fire') with all the subtlety of a rigorous fisting. The manic shooter is a relatively modern variant on the old 2D STG, usually vertically-oriented. It is characterised by a small hitbox (collision area) for the ship (often just the cockpit), massive streams of firepower available to the player, and screen-filling amounts of neon-colored projectiles. I'll probably devote more 'blog space to specifics of manic shooters (or bullet hell shooters as they are often called) in the future. But suffice to say this one is right alongside the notorious difficulty level many manic shooters lay claim to. It has a shield/reflection system similar to Mars Matrix (another game by the same house, Takumi), but using it well enough to survive is an exercise in practice, practice, practice. Short, intense, difficult. It took me a long while to warm up to this game, so unlike the shooters I've been used to. Now I'm a manic shooter devotee. I'd say the biggest strike against the game is the unlimited continues. It doesn't matter how hard a game is, or how worthy of practice, if you can just 'credit feed' your way through it. I wish this had an option to limit the continues. There's no incentive to really work when the temptation to just hit continue (again) exists. I really like the method used by Ikaruga, Radiant Silvergun, and Border Down of 'earning continues' through play time. By the time you've earned enough continues to finish the game your need for them should have dropped. Gigawing 2 is not even close to being one of my favorite shooters, but its decent.

Cool Cool Toon

Cool Cool Toon- Sega Dreamcast. Rhythm game with polygonal graphics. I am definitely NOT a fan of rhythm games. The only one I even have near me is some chapter of DDR that I got for my kids (complete with dance pad). So I cannot claim to be any sort of fan or expert. This game, however, struck me as interesting when I first saw previews for it on import sites. It has a very quirky art and music style. The graphics are polygonal but in a very cartoony solid-color style, that sort of looks like a precursor to cel-shaded graphics. The music is equally offbeat, cover a lot of different musical styles. That could be plus or a minus for the game depending on how closed-minded you are about your music... all of it is sort of 'dancey' as you'd expect. No beat, no game y'know? Its a pretty cool as the title say. There's nothing else really like it. But the game incorporates analog stick movements in addition to button presses (no dance pad, its more akin to playing an instrument than placing dance steps), and therein lies the game's main problem. Control. Odd thing to say if you place it in context of most other rhythm (or music games like Guitar Hero) since control is the last thing you worry about with simple button presses. Cool Cool Toon requires precise exact movements of the Dreamcast's analog stick though, and this proves incredibly difficult and frustrating. There are no detents or 'clicks' as you guide the stick in the clockface directions during the game. So no aids to your the exact placement. You just slide around rather loosely. At first this is no problem, the pauses between beats allow some correction, but as speed and complexity ramp up, you'll wish abominable tortures down upon the designers' children. I guess like a lot of other activities it takes practice. But this control scheme seems needlessly difficult, literally problematic to the goals of the game. There are already grueling memorisation tasks in other parts. So this one gets a lot of points on style, but only people absolutely in love with that style, and so willing to tackle the incredible learning/practice curve should seek out this game. Note: the clearest screenshots of this game seemed to come from the Planet-SNK site, so that's where I filched this pic. The huge 'nexgam' logo is NOT in the actual game.


Street Fighter III: Third Strike- Sega Dreamcast. 2D fighting game with sprite graphics. As most people know this game is basically a clinic on how to do shit-hot 2D animation. The sprites are huge, move fluidly and are cool updates on the classic Street Fighter characters. Fans are split on whether this game or the concurrently available Street Fighter Alpha 3 game was better. I tend to fall in the Alpha camp. That game is just more fun. This one is much more restrained and technical, and I do think it is a great game, I just prefer the characters in Alpha and the greater number of options for your super bar and special moves. If you want a Street Fighter game that 'feels' realistic, this is your boy.

Okay, that's enough for now. More later.

No Love for 2D

'Older' hardcore gamers know this old chestnut: '2D gets no love'.

Recently I got ahold of some of my old video game systems and planned to bring to light some good (often overlooked) games on this 'blog. But, as is often the case, I feel a burning need to define the context of my reviews and essays. One of these days I'll have all this 'background for the uninitiated' shit out of the way and can just put links into new posts. The posts will get shorter as we go along and everyone will probably be happier.

For the purposes of this post, '2D' will most often refer to games with play oriented along a 'flat' XY field, and lacking the Z 'depth' axis. So horizontal or vertical shooters, most platformers, most older fighting games, older RPG and strategy games, and many puzzle games would all fit this model. Some games that PLAY in 3D will still count as '2D' for this monologue, if most of the creative elements (graphics, controls, etc) are crafted in the same manner as a typical 2D game. See Space Harrier for an easy example of this convention. Likewise, some games with polygonal objects play in a 2D field. While I'm going to decry the 'lost art' of crafting 2D sprites, many polygonal games (or games combining sprites and polygons) are actually still really good examples of 2D gameplay, like Radiant Silvergun or even the very recent Super Smash Brother Brawl.

Space Harrier

Radiant Silvergun

It's pretty much a matter of record for American video game history that two-dimensional gameplay (and the various creative aspects associated) died with the popularising of the first Sony Playstation. That death wasn't quick, and in fact isn't complete even now... so maybe 'death' isn't the right word... 'terminal decline' might be better, but I'm going to use 'death' because its quicker to type, simpler, and suits my sense of hyperbole for this post. For all intents and purposes, the only place 2D games flourish now, in this country, is on the portables, ie the Sony PSP (itself headed for the chopping block) and the various Nintendo DS flavors of the month. In Japan this hasn't been so much the case, as their gamers tend to tolerate more genres, and embrace a wider variety of play experiences. This has the added effect of keeping consoles (or handhelds) alive as viable products much longer than the same machines are sold in the USA. One conclusion to be drawn from this trend is that if you are willing to make certain efforts and import Japanese games you can get a lot more out of your machine. If you are anything like a serious video gamer most of this is stuff you already know. But if you are a YOUNG gamer than the decline/demise of 2D might be something you aren't concerned with or even aware of, but you should be, dammit.

The death of 2D corresponds to the end of the video arcade. Again I'm largely referring to the situation as it exists in the US. In another country your mileage may vary. With the arrival of the Playstation (or PSX or PS1 whichever you prefer) 'pushing polygons' became the order of the day. Previous consoles had run the occasional polygonal game, but these were pretty simple affairs by today's standards, with simple shapes often no more than a graphical gimmick, and usually married to 2D gameplay (like Vectorman for the Genesis or Silpheed for the Sega CD). Every polygonal game devised, whether 2D or 3D was another step by designers towards more realistic (or at least more cinematic) physics and game worlds. As the years and games rolled by, the polygons became less of a gimmick and more integral to the play itself, leading up to the watershed moment (by my recollection at any rate) Virtua Fighter.

Virtua Fighter

Virtua Fighter was an arcade game first. As was often the case prior to the PS1, home video games were often ports of arcade games. There had been a number of outstanding 3D games before Virtua Fighter, especially if you counted all the vector-technology games like Tempest or Tac Scan. But Virtua Fighter had a big rollout, was in a ton of arcades and really made an impact on gamers. 2D fighting games like Street Fighter and Samurai Shodown were in their heyday and developers were struggling to tap gamers' huge appetite for fighters while still having a game that stood out from the crowd... well, stood out enough for gamers to take a break from Ken and Ryu. Virtua Fighter was at once familiar (two opponents slugging it out, archetype characters, life bars, timed rounds, etc), but at the same time wildly different with its weird looking art style, but 'realistic' physics. Here was a game where, yeah the people didn't look all that great, but they sure moved cool... and the camera swooped all around them, giving views of the action that looked much more like a martial arts film then a staid anime-still look of the 2D fighters.

Here's something I find pretty ironic: The Sega Saturn, direct competitor to the PS1, was a 2D powerhouse. It was designed to bring the arcade experience home in a way truer than had ever been possible before. With that machine, you actually had hardware that could match many of the circuit boards housed in arcade cabinets. And at that time MOST arcade games were still two-dimensional in both art and gameplay. Sega ported Virtua Fighter to the Saturn, a no-brainer considering VF's success in the arcades, and the designers and the console did a passable job with it. However, polygonal games were NOT easy to manage on the Saturn. For the Playstation which released VERY soon after, programming polygonal games was a cinch.

See where this is going? Sega created perhaps the best argument for 3D gaming, and yet launched a console less up to the task than their competitor. I've seen many articles about the whole Saturn versus Playstation thing, how one was 2D and the other 3D... but I don't think I've ever seen notice of this irony. Most people talk about Sega's awful marketing of its consoles, particularly in the US. The Master System, Saturn, and Dreamcast all 'failures' by comparison with their competitors in each generation. But in the case of the Saturn I'd put as much blame on the success of Sega's 3D arcade games, particularly VF... GOOD marketing in a sense, as I would to the fact that Sega mishandled how the console itself was marketed or how the machine was underpowered for the new style of games.

At any rate, upon the release of the Playstation, Sony took an unusal step; they actively discouraged the development of 2D games. This was really kind of a weird move. In an effort to keep costs down the PS1 hardware was designed to push polygons and sprite-based designs were not a priority. The PS1 could do it, but it had limitations the way the Saturn did with polygons. But to actually say 'no' to 2D games seems strange. I mean if a developer had a good 2D game design or wanted to do an arcade port and they could make it work well enough on the PS1 why would you not encourage that? Be all things to all people? Cast as wide a net as possible? The PS1's success was largely apparent from the day it launched. So while it is possible that this move was designed separate the Playstation from the Saturn, define their strengths and discourage people from designing for both platforms, the Saturn never really presented a serious threat to Sony. Even when the Saturn was on its way out, Sony never encouraged 'old-skool' gaming on what was to become one of the bestselling pieces of home technology ever made. And so that begs a question. Did Sony see the writing on the wall and just cross over to polygonal games before everyone else? Or are they actually culpable for the decline, like a reporter who gets involved and becomes the news? They acted like 2D games were on the way out and had no significant place in the future of home consoles, but was this precognitive or part of a plan?

Now a downward spiral was set. The bestselling console was not encouraging the style of gaming prevalent in the arcades, and was providing a great play experience at home. Why go out and feed quarters into arcade cabinets? Actually, there is a competitive reason to go out to arcades, even to this day, but the majority of the video gaming public didn't/doesn't find that compelling enough. Arcades specialised in pick-up-and-play gaming. You didn't have to read big instruction books or map out levels or anything like that. Arcade games could be deep or complex, but you didn't have to be an acolyte to get something out of them. Home consoles offered some of that, but also had huge story experiences in their so-called RPGs, and deeper/different gameplay in their strategy games and simulations. Basically the stuff you need a saved game for.

So in America, the aftermath of the PS1 era is newer generations of consoles (at the time of this writing, the Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360) with their most popular games being first-person shooters and polygonal action games. Man, I've lost count of the number of 'gritty, destructible scenery, you versus the totalitarian regime/aliens/robots' type of FPS. Arcades are pretty much gone.

Why should any of this matter? It is just the logical progression or evolution of the video gaming scene, right? Who cares about those old-timey games? Well, old-timers do. The kind with lots of disposable income now that they are working, responsible adults. They come from a time when the play was the thing. In some sense a purer time. Yeah, graphics and music were important. It is hard to deny the coolness factor of many of the oldskool games, even today, when faced with the incredible graphics of a Metal Slug or the bitchin' soundtrack of a Thunderforce game. But the simplicity of the pick-up-and-play mechanics meant that your 'skillz' were put to the test in a direct, primal way. And you might be able to exploit safe spots or poor enemy AI, but you weren't going to just 'think' your way through the tough spots. These types of games required practice, repetition, and patience. Nowadays, games are designed to either be played through once or have to have tons of unlockables to encourage replay. I'm not knocking unlockables. I think they are great in a home video game of any sort. But old-timey (mostly arcade or arcade-style) games were not something you were going to just move through, seeing each part once. See other entries (rants) in this 'blog for my opinions on entitlement and whiney gamers. They're related. I don't really have a problem with epic, one-shot through adventure games either. Shadow of the Colossus was a gaming orgasm as far as I'm concerned. But this stuff (especially the aforementioned FPS genre) has just come to DOMINATE. And almost all of it is polygonal, three-dimensional, and in its way cold and sterile. In the early days of polygon-pushing games 'cold and sterile' could easily be seen in the graphics. The impressive part was the motion and the camerawork, not the 'art' of it. But as the details have gotten finer, the skins on the polygons have gotten more sophisticated, and the number of polygons pushed every second has climbed, the graphics have gotten better... but still have a lack of... something.

There is the analagous decline happening in theatrical animation. How many cel animation films have you seen released in the last year. How many CG animated movies? There's your story right there. No cel animation (one coming up soon, Frog Princess), a bazillion CG cartoons. And y'know? There isn't LESS art to making a CG movie, or a polygon-based game (nowadays anyway). You still have to have artists designing the characters, sculptors creating models for rendering, painters (working in a digital medium), writers, musicians... all of it. But there is just an 'artistry' missing from most CG work. CG animation IS artistic, but most of the time it still FEELS manufactured, though we are past the point where 'realism' is much the issue. For the same reason that cel animation going away is a shame, so too the 2D video game.

2D video games required artists to draw the objects in the game. Either by hand in an draw/paint program or as an actual pen and paint work that was then converted to a digital image. Some 2D games look like polygonal games at first glance because their sprites were pre-rendered from models and appear to turn and move to smoothly show sides and backs the same way polygonal models do (see Mars Matrix or Soukyugurentai).

Soukyugurentai

This could just be the cry of an old fart, lamenting better days gone by, but there is whole cult of these old fart connecting and lamenting together, mostly facilitated by online communications. And they are adding brisk fresh farts to their ranks all the time. With access to PC-based emulators and 'classic collections' on home consoles, newer players are discovering there really is something compelling and timeless under the primitive skins of many of these older games. Have a look at some of the classic gaming sites like Shmups.com or Hardcore Gaming 101. These are vigourous communities that not only spend a lot of time being nostalgic about the old days, but are clamoring for new experiences in the same vein... and trumpeting the hell out of any new software that delivers it.

Now I have to go back a little on my earlier drama. There are actually a few 2D games, even high profile ones, being made and marketed. Sprite art seems to truly be dead or dying, but gameplay like the old days can still be found, sometimes right under our noses. Typically these are recent interations of venerable franchises like Street Fighter. The recent Street Fighter IV for the PS3 and Xbox 360 has the very latest in detailed polygonal character models (and are a great argument for polygons as art) but is STILL a 2D fighter. There is no moving 'into' the screen playfield. The camera can move in 3D for dramatic effect, but that's it. There's also the aforementioned Super Smash Brothers Brawl, again a flashy polygon fest object-wise, but never playing along the Z axis. The one-player game included 'Subspace Emissary' is even a 2D platformer very much in the style of Hal Laboratory's Kirby games.

Street Fighter IV

Then there is Cave.

Back in the halcyon days of arcade gaming there were the big boys like Capcom or Namco that developed (and still do develop) all sorts of games in all sorts of genres. And then there were the littler guys that tended to specialize, like SNK with fighting games and Toaplan with STGs (shmups). At heart STGs are basically just move your ship (or person) and blast all enemies, picking up powerups and maybe avoiding some obstacles. There isn't and hasn't been all that much development from that core premise. And really, the genre doesn't need it. It is designed to be pure twitch gaming and that's it. Mostly what distinguishes STGs from each other, and indeed a good one from a bad one, is in the details. Graphics play a huge part, the appeal of the see-what-comes-next factor. But scoring mechanics, the control of your ship, the 'fairness' all play a part too. Even difficulty.

Toaplan mostly developed STGs, and were known for their weird, dark art style, and the occasional innovative play or scoring mechanic. When they disbanded, the staff went on to work at the companies Takumi and Raizing/Eighting, both companies also known for the cool shooters they made. Eventually the Raizing part went away and so did their shooting games (Eighting still exists). Ex-Raizing developers and some others eventually formed Cave.

Love their games or hate them (and shooter fans are typically really polarized on this topic), Cave are instrumental in keeping STGs (a cornerstone of 2D gaming) alive AND continuing to champion intricate 2D (sprite-based) artwork. They are also masters of putting a lot of innovation into the scoring and play mechanics of this very limiting genre. Unfortunately Cave products are almost exclusive to Japan. Thanks to the internet Westerners know about them and are able to play them, but in terms of their (arguable) brilliance having any discernible impact on the gaming market HERE, that's unlikely. Ya gotta import. Look for Mushihimesama, Espgaluda, or Dodonpachi Daioujou on the PS2, DeathSmiles on the Xbox 360 (a version of Dodonpachi Daioujou is on the Xbox 360 as well but is not well thought of).

Espgaluda

Mostly I've held off on including handhelds in this discussion mostly from my own personal distaste for them, but I'll admit to getting some 2D love from the Nintendo DS. There are actually tons of 2D games on there, but oldskool play that I've particularly enjoyed are Bangaioh Spirits, Gunstar Super Heroes, and Nanostray 2. There's even a Cave game, Ketsui, if you are willing to import, but I'm almost afraid to try a game as manic as that on the DS's small screen. Nintendo is actually a major league anchor for old timey gaming. There dowload service for both Wiiware and the Virtual Console are bastions of 2d art and gaming though much of it is rereleases of older games. This service makes available a lot of games even old timers may never have seen or were unable to afford.

Things move ever forward. But I think we are losing something here. With all the concern about realistic graphics, licensed music tracks, and the number of weapons available, we are filling our heads up with a lot of stuff that, though fun and interesting, has little to do with the core idea of PLAYING. There was a time when you could see the fun the developers and artists had coming up with the game (I recently really saw this in the old SNK run 'n' gun Shock Troopers). When gamers didn't mind playing through the same levels over and over again, because there was enough to the levels and the play, that you WANTED to get better.

Even if there's never a literal resurgence of 2D games on home consoles it is well worth the time of any serious gamer to scrounge up some play time on some of the great old games. I'm not suggesting going back as far as DigDug and Burgertime. Many games, particularly the REALLY old ones haven't aged that well. As much as I'm a 2d STG fan I'm not avid to play Zanac. As this post was inspired by my rediscovering stuff on my old consoles, in upcoming posts I'm going to give opinions and impressions on games that you won't find in your local Gamestop today, but that you could probably still scrounge up on ebay.

(images filched largely from Hardcore Gaming 101)