welcome to the compound
Posts about games. There’s bunches.
Front Mission 3(PS1)
2000 Squaresoft
The Short Version- Fragile robots and oddly hardy humans duke it out over a massively destructive MacGuffin.
The Long Version- Continue reading Front Mission 3: Front Harder
…2010 is about ready for the trashcan. And its about damned time. This has been a long-ass year, and if I had to sum it up in one word, it’d be ‘tiring.’ But we’re not here to talk about that crap, let’s take some time to look back on the past year in gaming and entertainment. Fondly, less fondly, awfully- whatever. Let’s break out the gold wrapped chocolate awards and queue up a list of celebrity musical guests that I booked specifically to murder in public. (It’s not entrapment if it’s written in the ‘bilingual’ part of the contract they signed.)
So without further ado…
THE 2010 ‘UNNECESSARIES’ AWARD SHOW
~sponsored by NIS America: the least necessary company in gaming!~
So, last week, Golden Sun DS- oh, wait, that game doesn’t actually have a ‘lol the subtitle spells DS’ subtitle- came out, and I have been enjoying it. Unfortunately, the right trigger on my DSi stopped working. This sucks, because I have a DSi. I’m not really sure what happened with it since it ‘feels’ normal, it just doesn’t do anything anymore, and being right handed, it’s my default shutter button for the camera. But, the real suck of it, and why I am inspired after a couple weeks of collecting cobwebs and neatly sorting them rather than writing, is that Nintendo downloads are tied to the console they’re on, rather than a player account a la the PSN. So basically, to not lose my downloaded games, I have to turn it in for repairs to the tune of what a new one would cost used anyway.
When my PSP’s analog nub kacked a few months ago, on the other hand, all I had to do was walk in, get a fresh one, and slip my Memory Stick in. Good as new. Actually, better, since I kind of wanted a video-out cable to play it on the big screen anyway, and the -3000 feels less like a brick in my pants.
I always thought it sounded aggravating. I can’t imagine the people whose Wii crapped out and needing to send it in for similar service being thrilled either, much less the handful of people who just had to get the other-color versions when they came out needing to ship both systems in for the data transfer.
That said, I haven’t actually had to call a game company’s service line before. I only held for like a minute, got a native English speaker, and they were nice as could be. I’m just irked that I have to drive to the Fed Ex center by the fucking airport since the Post Office drop box only takes Air, and they sent me a Ground label.
Fffffffffffff.
So! Anyway. I got some feedback recently and it… really seems like people want me to do a video. Seriously, people who have never heard my voice are perfectly willing to suggest I try adding commentary to a Let’s Play or something like that. So… you know what? I’m gonna give it a shot.
A hot new series about complaining about free things
Every now and then, if my PS3 is turned on and for some reason not occupied by Fallout or BlazBlue, I like to log into the PSN Shop and see what I can get free demos of. It’s a good way to test out the latest big name ti-who am I kidding, I own a current gen console and still devote most of my interest to remakes of old stuff or indie games of varying quality. For crying out loud, you want to know what my current PC desktop is? It’s a GameBoy Micro. Well, I’m kind of pleased to say that Thexder NEO seems to carry on many design choices of the NES era. Sadly, they’re choices that probably should have died already.
So yeah. You are Thexder, I guess. In this remake of the classic that nobody I know personally has actually played, you control a transforming robot that flies around and murders aliens and other kinds of robots with his death lasers. Sounds pretty sweet, doesn’t it? You don’t even have to aim. The death lasers hate life so much they automatically lock on to the closest possible killable thing. Robots are pretty cool on their own, naturally, and transforming robots only kick it up a notch. So why did I hate the demo so much?
For starters, the game measures your life out with a simple ‘Energy’ gauge. This gauge depletes when you take hits. Duh, right? Well, they also have your weapons tapping the same source, so if you go around recklessly using your death rays, you can run your battery down to nil and kill yourself. So even though the levels are pretty wide open and you can fly about (kind of) freely, your steadily depleting life battery forces you to figure out not just the way out of the stage, but the most efficient way out. I’ve played a few dungeon crawlers and roguelikes, so I can kind of get the appeal of managing your resources for survival’s sake and pushing just a bit further on, but in those games, you have time to consider your moves, whereas in this one, you’re in control of a large hunk of metal hurtling chaotically through the air with a leaky battery. Now, you do have a shield that lessens the damage you take from enemies. It does add a bit more in your favor since you can power on your shields before taking on a cluster of enemies, and you can pick up more juice by killing them. I still kept reaching a point where I would need to blast a block to move on, then keel over dead from energy loss.
Enemies are of the classic “Ok, so what’s that thing?” stable that plagued old games, especially anything involving aliens. I guess having alien species around lowers the bar for recognizable, believable enemy designs. I recall the point where I gave up was about the time I ran into a small dark hallway patrolled by a pair of spinning, colorful dildo things that seemed pretty much invincible and ran directly at you, and lingering too long to let them pass usually lead to small, endlessly respawning ‘thingies’ coming for you.
You know what Thexder needs? A fucking extension cord. It worked in Evangelion. You could even make puzzles around ‘how the hell do I get past this section when my cord hangs up on the sofa?’
At one point I thought I had found a princess or something to rescue. She morphed into a hideous death beast and killed me for my trouble. Women.
Looking to put together a review this week at some point since I’m on a chapter break from RK as of today. I do have a design midterm this Wednesday, but it’s cake.
Not a lot else to say otherwise at the moment, seeing as how I’m in between classes anyway, I just wanted everyone to know I hadn’t been hair-whipped to death or anything of the sort. I didn’t care too much for how the Strange Journey journal style thing turned out, so I may yet do a straight-up thing on it, but lesson the first for this kind of game: it really doesn’t work when I play a huge chunk, get about 3 zones in, then try to remember what order all the sub quests came in before. Considering it is basically just a grimmer, easier version of Etrian Odyssey, maybe I should give that one another try some time?
I have a weird ritual with Etrian. I know people who are pretty ga-ga over it all over the place, but for some reason it never clicked into place as something I’m compelled to put in my DS every time I get the chance. As such, I didn’t buy EOII, or EOIII, but I always end up making an attempt to get back into the first one and see if maybe this time, I’ll be in just the right mood to enjoy it.
Or not.