Miscellanous posts, shop talk.
[+/-]#6- Valkyria Chronicles
Posts categoriezed as Banter
Demo Demo Panic! Banzai Pecan-Chan
Well, we have a special treat for this installment of Demo Demo Panic. Long-time readers may recall a time that I dedicated a month or so to indie games, and within that month, I made contact and became friends with the head of Serious*Impact Works, who made a bunch of Sonic and King of Fighters fan games back in the day and was planning to start doing some original game work soon after.
Well, he’s been doing just that ever since, and the demo for their first original title is live now. Well, it was on Valentine’s Day, but I’ve been trying to fix my stupid PC gamepad since my first run through. There has been an earlier demo build, but we like to pretend it doesn’t exist now. Especially since all the original data was lost to a PC crash and lo, did their little pet project rise from the ashes and was restarted from the ground up with bigger, juicier sprites and a new engine. So, without further ado, I give you Banzai Pecan-Chan: The First Strikes.
Uh, what? You don’t do all the reviewing around here. You’re supposed to be playing through [REDACTED] to prep for your next episode.
I think I have this one covered. I’m not going to go saying this is the greatest game ever made just to make my friend happy. I have a little bit of integrity. Besides, it’s a game about hitting. You’re pro-hitting, right? You can stick around and wat-
O… kay then. Have fun with the [REDACTED] in [HUMOROUSLY CENSORED TO AVOID SPOILERS] then.
Banzai Pecan-chan is a side scrolling beat-em-up that takes a lot of cues in play from 2D fighting, without the super-complex control motions, anyway. A gamepad is strongly recommended, though, since there are going to be a lot of enemies on screen and you need to be pretty quick with your fingers on a keyboard to handle them. Hell, I still had trouble dodging when my virus scanner decided to run its daily run in the middle of a session and slowed everything down to frame by frame. It’s a bit like a simplified version of GodHand- slapstick, unforgiving, but not impossible. The effort behind this build of BPCC really shows, particularly in the “feel” of the hits and the incorporation of aerial combos, wire juggles, and quick recovery moves. The spriting was done at a much higher resolution as well, making it look a bit more in line with a Guilty Gear rather than a 16-bit brawler. There’s even some voice work thrown in here and there.
Plot-wise, we’re looking at a scenario along the lines of Sailor Moon by way of Fist of the North Star. Pecan must save her boyfriend from Koopa with boobs the Sexilicious Seven using her powers of vaguely defined but divinely granted ass-kickery. Along the way, she’s going to trade blows with succubi, evil twins, and hordes of bunny girls. You’ll get gameplay hints from her government-issued Magic Girl Best Friend Flan on the Game Over screen, which you’ll probably see a lot of if you’re anything like me.
Really, the only issues I’ve got with this particular demo are with the difficulty, but I can’t decide if that’s more me or the game. I was having to make do with the keyboard, which didn’t help matters. The stun-gun move the grunts use seems a tad powerful for something bottom-rung enemies should be toting around, but then again on the other hand, yes, a stun-gun hurts. I hit something of a brick wall in level 1-2 involving 4 of the bunny girls at once alongside a miniboss I’ve affectionately dubbed Tallbitch. She shrugs off damage (but does flinch after a few blows) and deals a powerful punch that bounces you off the wall for a wire combo by the mooks. The AI isn’t super aggressive, so I doubt you’re going to fall into an infinity loop or something, but there is a recovery move for when you hit the ground or wall if you have the timing. Overall, Pecan-Chan is a really polished game for what a handful of people put together for kicks, and even though I basically suck, I enjoyed it. I look forward to the final release, whenever it comes.
[+/-] #4- Metroid: Other M
[+/-]#3: Mass Effect 2
Demo Demo Panic! Asura’s Wrath
I haven’t forgotten about this little featurette here, I’ve just been a bit lax on writing about the latest and not-so-latest free samples hot off the PSN. Brothuh Kyo (whose indie game opus is nearing completion, incidentally) tipped me off that there was a demo of a game that was, and I quote:
“It’s like Bayonetta, Panzer Dragoon, Godhand and Shadow of Colossus decided to have an orgy with Liam O’Brien. Asura’s Wrath is cool.”
So, as a fan of wrath in general, I had to give it a shot. So what did I think of it?
1) THAT WAS AWESOME
2) Also, what the hell was that?
On the one hand, the demo definitely has my attention. So that’s a big mark in its favor as a free hit intended to bring someone into a shady alley itching for a score. On the other- Seriously, what the hell did I just play? It appears to have a mix of a beat ’em up with rail shooter-esque bits, and I think the demo at the least was around 75% quick-time events. Which, while certainly awesome, don’t really give you much of a taste of what the rest of the game is going to be like… unless it really is something along the lines of a massive boss rush and skips level-grinding and henchman-killing.
The snippets of plot that we get seem to make the story out to something of a God of War-ish story involving a pantheon of jerk gods who have Asura’s daughter and are using her powers against him. The featured fights seem to have been grabbed to show off how massive fights can get (the first part) and the second I have a feeling is more typical of what the game is going to be like, a free roaming 3-D brawler that mixes together a variety of button mashing combos, counter techniques, and generally dicking around until you get the prompt to go into BURST mode, sprout extra arms, then let the Dragonball Z style QTE stuff begin. It’s very Bayonetta-ish, though a bit more spectacle and a little less skill. The aformentioned “large-scale” fight in the first part of the demo involves auto-running toward the boss while trying to achieve the max number of target locks, then tap triangle and let ’em fly. There’s a bit in the middle where you have to fight off an airship while smacking down a handful of grunts who close in on you on the ground and just kind of impotently poke at you with spears. It’s all pretty epic scaled, and I should mention that I don’t bust out the word “epic” casually. We’re talking about the kind of action where a bad guy becomes bigger than the earth and tries to crush you under his finger or another can make a sword grow long enough to impale the earth and send magma gushing out of the entry room.
I think I’m pretty set on trying this one depending on if I can afford it when it drops. Course with Devil Survivor 2, Mass Effect 3, and Armored Core V (and I’ll probably cram in FFIV or something just to complete the flush) due out this year, who knows. I would like to try and move once I’m able.
What will come in the next Demo Demo Panic? Eh. Who knows. It probably won’t be as much fun as this.
