I Think I'm A Flaming Emblem

Oh thats right. It is time at last for more discussion  of my favorite portable franchise ever.

No not Pokemon. I mean Pokemon is fun and all, (The legit games at least) but rather of Fire Emblem.
It is certainly an interesting scenario, Fire Emblem is a great SRPG. But this is not the next generation of Fire Emblem. It is a remake of the first, and boy does it show. Keep reading and I shall enlighten you as to this.

The graphics represent the problem that is inherent in this remake. One the one hand alot of the graphics are beautiful, the map screens, and menus, the unit model also look very nice. 

Once the animations start running though. In a word, ugly. But to be honest it is really more lazy than anything else. Criticals usually have no extra flair at all added, and most animations are stiff. Some of the upgraded units have animations that look nice, but that is the exception rather than the norm. Spell effects do look much nicer with the new engine. Of particular dissappointment is the lack of weapon models available to units. It is not a huge deal, but even the Royal Weapons lack special models, Which greatly lessens the thrill of using them in combat. The white flash across the screen is nice, but thats all you get.

Sounds are fine, the music is moving enough to grant some emotion to the drama that exists.

The story is garbage, the plot itself is servicable, but it shows that it was a NES game with the razor thin dialogue, and complete lack of support conversations there is no emotion as to why you give a fuck that Marth deserves his Kingdom back. Characters have next to no emotion, and there are more characters than you can count. You easily collect dozens upon dozens within the first few moments. This is the first Fire Emblem game where losing a few units didnt affect me at all.  

The actual combat though is the real meat of the game, and it is also a mixed bag. On the one hand it is classic Fire Emblem, but on the other hand, it is the easiest I've played. The game simply throws huge numbers of units at you. You sit back let your knights tank them, while the others move in to finish them. Class switching is interesting but only makes me think that the units in the game are even more disposable and that the developers were too lazy to tailor each unit as a specific class as such. 

I suppose the thing with Fire Emblem is that it really shows it age. Things that were neat in the first game, are no more. I suppose I should add that I did enjoy the game, and I have not tried the online stuff yet, which could greatly enhance the replayability. I recommend the game to fans of Fire Emblem who are bored of the other English ports and are looking for something new. If you havent played the other ones yet though, try to cut your teeth on those first, they are far more enjoyable in almost every way. Hopefully this was just a quick job for the developer as they work on the next legitimate sequel Fire Emblem/Advance Wars. 

Time Apart Really Makes Me Miss You

Why?  Most likely because you leave all these unresolved feelings that demand to get out but you have no way of releasing them.

Of course I refer to my PC which died a few weeks back. Which sucks, but I have classes to worry about (something about a Term paper for a seminar course) and also I have plenty of other games to get into. 

But then I remembered that my Space Marines had not yet saved the day, and that Empire: Total War came out last week, and the tears, well they did not flow, but inside they did. And the TF2 Scout update (which isnt that big a deal because my old PC can play TF2 just fine). And there was my Farcry 2 game which remained unresolved. 
Man, I really want my PC back.
It really reminds me that the good games call you back after time spent playing something else. Sure I'll always dive into the new games, but the truly great ones bring you back. I'm not sure that any of the ones mentioned above will do that in the future but maybe they will.
So my point?

That great games are defined by how long you can keep coming back to the well over and over again. And right now I think I'll list some games that have already accomplished this feat for me.

Warcraft 3: Oh the mods, the gameplay, it is to die for.

Zelda OoT: I mean come on.  Its the Zelda game you have to play.

Diablo 2: Because they mastered the flow of killing demons and evil things perfectly, hopefully the sequel finally wrests it away.
Chrono Trigger:  Man, this game is probably the best RPG you can play. It is purely exquisite, even after playing through it half a dozen times I still love playing through it.
Duke Nukem 3D: He's the king of innovative level design. Along with hilarious enemies I usually get pulled back in every coupla years.

Well that'll have to do for now. And I'll end this post with a quote that has shown up far, far, far too often in the past few days for me.

You Are Likely To Be Eaten By A Grue.

NOW ONLY NINETY NINE NINETY NINE NINETY NINE NINETY NINE!

So's I got myself a new PC. It works wonderfully. Although getting everything installed was a bit of a 4 hour excursion. And installing all the old games will likely take a solid week, given that most of them need to be downloaded, and that's gonna take some time. 
But the machine cuts through games like a vibroblade through a wookie. Just in time for Dawn of War II on Thursday. It will be glorious. In a mass blood, and robots throwing corpses across a battlefield kind of glory way. 
Well that will have to do. I've got more stuff to do. And more Vista smashing to work on. Getting rid of UAC, seems to only have been half the battle.

Too Human Thoughts

Well, I picked this up for cheap at boxing day, and... wow. What to say about this game.

It does some things right, and can feel quite good at times. And then there is the time when you just dont have a fucking clue what the devs were thinking. 

Death has no penalty other than a durability hit. Oh also the death animation is like 1 minute long and bores the shit out of you. So the biggest penalty is that death wastes your time. Pretty much. I mean and the sad thing is alot of the times I died I wasnt sure what I did wrong. I simply went up against enemies that were vastly stronger than me, but the thing is enemies autoscale in level to match your level, so you cant exactly level up to ease through the game. So Grinding is useless except to get more loot.

And dear god is there alot of loot. If there is one thing they got TOO right in the game it is the loot system, you get a lot of loot and you can customize it quite effectively. Tragically the game is only about 10 hours long which means that most of it is utterly pointless. 

The combat itself is all over the place, its typically mindlessly easy with little challenge thrown at you. Unless you suddenly face the tough enemies which means you'll just have to slowly chip away at the hp of some uber guy who is beyond you

The story, well its basically Norse mythology given a super high tech bend. Which worked for me, but kinda meant I knew what was coming. Further it seems like they went to alot of effort for a lot of the things in game but maybe they should have spent that time getting the combat to actually flow. 

The RPG stuff is basically non-existent, you apparently have stats, but you dont control them, but are told they increase with each level. Also you can apparently boost your dexterity and strength with items but are never given a clue as how that actually benefits you. You do get skill points to put into various passives and a few actives skills, but basically they dont matter. My ability to root enemies to the ground was never apparent to me, nor was richochetting bullets. So basically I had skills that did stuff that I was unclear if they actually worked.

Overall I did enjoy the game. The combat is fairly fun, if simple and annoying at the same time, and the presentation of the story worked for me. But then I did not pay $60 for it. So that certainly helps my opinion of it. If I had paid $60 I would not be happy. 
The real shame is the game ends basically setting up the sequel, which I'm quite certain is not happening. Certainly not anytime soon. 

So there you have it. Too Human is a game that is all over the place and may or may not be worth your time. Yea, thats all I got.
Wait, wait. Do you like Diablo? Yes. Did you like Dungeon Siege? No. Titan Quest? No.
Basically if you adore hack 'n slash rpgs then there is a good chance that you'll enjoy Too Human, if you like Diablo because of its polish and didnt enjoy Dungeon Siege or Titan Quest because they werent quite Diablo-calibre, then i'd stay away from Too Human.

Yay. Ciao.

Canadia strikes me as unpatriotic

Okay so here we go, its a little late I know, but here are some of the games in '09 that I'm looking forward to playing.

Dawn of War II. 

You say that the base building is gone so that I might worry entirely about tactics of the battlefield ala Total War? I will make love with your orcish hordes. Also shit bleeds and dies horrifically to sweeten the deal. 

Empire: Total War

Uh, I'm a history major who loves war. So this is kind of a no brainer. The ability to conquer the globe, and finally have control over naval battles in a Total War game is awe inspiring.

Starcraft II

Starcraft got me into PC gaming, I'm not about to leave it now. Plus, all the custom maps will be awesome. tower defense has come along way since starcraft.

Resident Evil 5

RE4 remains on my top 5 games of all time (which I feel could be one of my future posts), and since this is basically that game with a new story and an actual Co-Op gameplay how can it not (Answer? It better not!)

Madworld

Brutally Violent Wii Controls. Meh, hopefully it'll be good. The all black and white and red asthetic might get annoying but it certainly is catching.

Fire Emblem DS

I want this game right now. I'd import if it wouldn't cost me over $100. But all the places with decent prices are sold out. Bummer. Oh well hopefully North America gets it in a month or two.

And that's pretty much it. There are some more titles that I am curious about, like Star Ocean 4, Killzone 2, Street Fighter 4, and that game with jack black by the guy who made Full Throttle, yeah that one too. 

Oh and I would have put Diablo 3 on the list if I felt it was going to come out in '09. But come on people, this is Blizzard we are talking about here. We'll be lucky to see it in 2010. And if I'm wrong then I'll be the first to eat those words.

Stay Frosty

So, we all know that games are supposedly one of those great forms of art that allow people to bring their own experiences along for the ride and as such enable each person to have their own favorites. 
But gaming is not like movies or a book or a painting, because games need an exhaustive amount of effort invested simply to ensure that the game is able let you play it. Then the game designers have to apply what is possible with some form of story and experience to make gameplay exist. Simply if a game fails on a mechanical level it would be the equivalent of what would happen if Leonardo had decided that the public wanted to see Mona Lisa so bad that he would simply have it put on display with only half of her face drawn in. 
As such games that fail to do this are usually derided by gamers and critics alike because they are not fun, even if the story is great or at the very least intriguing. 
But when certain local print publications begin posting their best of 2008 and put games with such glaring flaws in them, I begin to question that publications quality. To be fair a local newspaper is not the best source for hardcore gamers to go. Newspapers are literally the source of gaming info for the casual creature. 
There was a few grievous titles that were left on this list that make me question the quality of the list in general. 
First up, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Good game. Not best of the year by a long shot however. Especially in light of the fact that one mission is utterly broken (Dtar Sestroyer). This moment completely ruins the game. Also the fact that the game is basically God of War in Star Wars without blood or dismemberment, or the superb calibre of God of War's combat fluidity. Or considering that Ninja Gaiden II came out in July maybe you would think they'd at least try to compete with that.

Sure the maybe if you were a hardcore Star Wars fan you might call it one of the best of year, but then you have to explain that you are a hardcore Star Wars fan. This was not present. The story was good, but not superb.

Next up, Fable 2. Does advertising that you can jump fences, even though you really wont be able really qualify a game for best of the year? Or does shipping the exact same game with a slightly better combat engine? Maybe if you did this in 1 year. But if you did it over 5 years and said that the game will make you feel love and blah blah blah. I cannot reiterate Peter Molyneux's words here for fear that I may summon him, and listen to him hype me into oblivion.

Now maybe it isnt fair for me to bash the game because, well I never played it *wink*, but I will give this game credit for at least not being completely broken, well minus that thing that can break the game that needs a patch that still needs to come out, oh and there is the issue of the DLC that was planned to ship before Christmas that smacks of coulda made it into the gold code but Microsoft decided it would look better as 800 Microsoft points. 

really I'm just sore because games like Valkyria Chronicles, No More Heroes, The World Ends With You, Boom Blox, Burnout Paradise, Ninja Gaiden II, Rock Band 2. Hell they did not even include Metal Gear Solid 4 for fucks sake. I mean I'm sorry but the role of the gaming press should not be to hype the fuck out of what is already gotten 2 months worth of press coverage. At a year end best of the year you should remember the games that you played and you know other people did not play. I mean could drone on and on about GTA IV or Gears 2 or Mario Kart Wii, but i know they all sold in excess of 7 million copies and everyone who played them knows what I would say about them. But if I talk about games that less people played maybe they'll go out and grab those games, maybe they wont because I'm bashing the fuck out of the game but at least I'm giving the game something. But if people buy good games, more good games get made. If we praise adulations upon games that are technically broken, that exhibit signs that they dont know how to playtest (looking at you Star Destroyer pull down sequence) then they treat their paying customers like idiots.

I mean Force Unleashed and Fable 2 weren't bad games, they pretty fun. But they are mediocre games being included in list that is leaving out vastly superior games, that may only be lower profile. And that doesnt slide with me. Oh well at least the enthusiast press is a little better. I mean IGN gave Sins of a Solar Empire GotY, that gives some hope.

Oh and I've decided to simply put quotes from my favorite shows in the Title. Its fun that way.

Just In Case You Are Curious

My gaming-esque presents were:

Chrono Trigger on the DS. Awesome.

Thats it. I'll prolly get Resistance 2 for PS3 if I see it cheap ever. 

Oh, but I did get Seasons 4-6 of Scrubs; Futurama: Bender's Game; Sphere (Novel); Doctor Who: Series 4 (Since I have the first three already).

Also got socks, and pajama pants.

Oh, and $500. It was nice.

Played Rock Band with relatives, and got to feel good about being the second best player there, as well as the only one with the confidence to actually sing when no one else would. I believe I even boasted that if necessary I would simulataneously play the Drums, Guitar, and vocals. But quickly realized I lacked the number of limbs required to do that.

My next post I plan to talk about games I'm looking forward to in 2009. I doubt I will talk much about the Blizzard franchises though. They dont exactly need the coverage.