Mike Clark

SB Staff Picks ’10: Mike Clark

December 27, 2010

News / by Mike Clark Make a comment! / Tweet it!

One of Snackbar Games’ traditions is to have staffers pick their top ten games of the year. We’re so all over the map in our tastes that our lists are never similar. Today, we have staff writer Mike Clark. His list indicates his favorite game series. Also his insanity.

10. Poker Night at the Inventory: The Texas Hold ‘Em within this game is rather basic and very prone to cheating. If you don’t mind this, or can look past it, Poker Night is a great game. The characters were animated well, interact great and without incessant repetition the lines they spout are gold. I look forward to more characters or sequels in the future.

9. Castlevania: Harmony of Despair: Had this game had more substance I would have ranked it higher. As it stands it is up here more for the fun I had in multiplayer than the game’s worth as a whole. Too little substance for too much cost, but with three to five friends one could overlook this as they ran around the various maps kickin’ some serious tail.

8. Ys: The Oath in Felghana: Also being my top PSP choice for the year, Ys: The Oath in Felghana was another great example of how to do a remake. Fast-paced action combat with an RPG system and a good plot overpowered the frustration I had dealing with the tough bosses. A great challenge and a great game. READ MORE

Knights in the Nightmare

November 24, 2010

PSP / Reviews / by Mike Clark Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Everything about Knights in the Nightmare seems to deviate from the normal conventions of strategy RPGs. For starters, the genre of “strategy RPG” cannot begin to cover it. “Bullet-hell-meets-real-time-strategy-meets-RPG” starts to get there. To fully describe the game’s mechanics could take as long as going through the large amount of tutorials it has, but this necessarily is not a bad thing. Once you get over the learning curve, the game picks up and becomes much faster and streamlined.

You play as the Wisp, an amnesiac lost soul who can raise the scores of dead knights in the game’s kingdom to fight for you. Each map is grid-based, like a classic strategy RPG such as Disgaea. The enemies you fight move around randomly on these maps while you position your own recruited knights. Only two of the seven classes actually move, thus making the bulk of them stationary. Each of these characters you recruit can be leveled up, the weapons they use can be fused and upgraded, and strength is stat-based.

The execution plays more like a real-time strategy game though. Each turn of battle has two steps: set up, then go into action. As you set up and execute attacks in real time, enemies will also attack in real time. The difference is that the player activates their knights to hit enemies, while the enemies spam bullet-based attacks a’la Ikaruga to hit the player and deplete your available time. A turn ends when you run out of time, and if you cannot achieve your objective in a certain number of turns you lose the battle.

All of this barely scratches the surface of the complexity of the game. It does take a bit to get through the tutorials and learn how everything works, but once you get the fundamentals down, the game becomes streamlined and like a second nature. In other words, it’s an acquired taste.

Controls have been updated since the DS original, removing the dual screen and touch support in favor of a more streamlined user interface with several touch screen functions mapped to various buttons for the better. In the prior version, you could accidentally activate knights at times while trying to shift from the Law phase to the Chaos phase, and while in the PSP version a button press does this for you. Another change for the better is the actual movement of the Wisp. Whereas in the DS version you’d move with the touch screen and stylus, precision has been added with the use of the analog stick on the PSP.

On top of all of this, Knights in the Nightmare presents detailed visuals, including great character sprites, an excellent audio presentation, and an incredible amount of replayability with major differences for your second and third playthroughs.  

Overall, Knights in the Nightmare takes a bit to get used to, but ends up shining as an incredible deviation from its core genre’s norm. Learning the game takes a while and might deter a player at first, but if you persevere you’ll be rewarded.

Pros: Wildly original take on the genre, plot leaves you asking for more

Cons: Lengthy tutorials can be a major deterrent, recruitable characters don’t have much depth

 

Ys: The Oath in Felghana

November 16, 2010

PSP / Reviews / by Mike Clark Make a comment! / Tweet it!

In 1989 the world was introduced to the third installment of the Ys series with Ys III: Wanderers from Ys. In 2005, Nihon Falcom Corporation took Ys III and did a complete overhaul on the game, remaking it and updating the features within. Move to 2010 and add even more to the game and you have Ys: The Oath in Felghana.

Series hero Adol Christin and his companion Dogi return to Dogi’s homeland to find trouble afoot, which leads into an upgraded retelling of the Ys III tale. From beginning to end the player is taken for the ride through this adventure with very streamlined action-RPG gameplay contained within. 

Unlike other action-RPGs – such as Kingdom Hearts – Ys: The Oath is more streamlined with a heavier emphasis on the action and platforming aspects. Item management isn’t as strong in contrast with other games and feels more fluid as a result. Traditional RPG consumables aren’t even purchased but rather found and instantly used upon killing enemies. This, together with its simplicity, creates gameplay that is easy to pick up and that has a fast-paced intensity to it that other action RPGs seem to have only sporadically.

Adol only gains two kinds of attacks: Either mashing X to physically attack with his sword, or using magic from one of three elemental armlets he acquires over the course of the game. Not only does the auto-regenerating magic help in combat but they also function in the platforming and dungeon exploration: fire can hit switches, wind helps you cross large gaps, and earth can break through fragile walls a’la bombs in Legend of Zelda games.

The boss fights feel straight out of an action platformer and are relatively difficult. There are infinite retries, and after a certain number of deaths the game will ask you if you want to lower the difficulty but these battles are about learning boss patterns and adapting to them. On Normal or higher, you’re almost expected to die unless you have prior experience or knowledge.

Visually, the game looks great. It moves with fluidity, the backgrounds and dungeons are detailed nicely, and despite crunching a PC-sized game into a PSP screen, it still looks and moves well. In fact, the only visual thing that was slightly problematic to me at first were how tiny the enemy item drops were. But after getting used to the flow of combat and making item acquisition into a subconscious habit, it ceased to be a problem.

In concurrence with the visual, the audio is just as good if not better. The player has access to two different soundtracks from the Ys III releases and a remixed standard soundtrack made for the remake. The standard soundtrack alone was great and it went well with the action the game provided. The voice acting was also very well done with only a few characters being annoying to listen to. Luckily for those who don’t care for english VA, there are options to change or remove the VA.

Ys: The Oath in Felghana is excellent and a shining example of what a proper remake should be like. However, the difficulty can be a little off-putting to the average player and could serve as a deterrent. Beyond that it shines as both a great remake and a tough challenge with loads of replayability. With six total difficulties to choose from, alongside a time attack and new game plus features, there’s always more challenge to players who hunger for it.

Pros: Visually beautiful, great music, fast streamlined action gameplay with RPG features, tons of replay potential.

Cons: Some graphics seem a bit too small at times, the game’s bosses are rather challenging.

 

Costume Quest

October 24, 2010

Reviews / Xbox 360 / by Mike Clark Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Brought to us by the makers of Psychonauts and Brutal Legend, Costume Quest is Double Fine’s first RPG. They’ve managed to take the genre and give us a game based around Halloween: a pair of twins go trick-or-treating and end up getting tangled in a quest of defeating candy-stealing monsters while the player’s character saves their kidnapped twin.

In terms of gameplay, Costume Quest adheres to the Halloween theme rather well. The player chooses the twin they want to play as and the two skip off to trick-or-treat. Upon discovering monsters are stealing the neighborhood’s candy, Reynolds or Wren engage the monsters in battle by becoming the outfit they’re wearing. What may be a cardboard robot at first becomes a giant robot complete with exploding fists and missile barrages.

The costumes function as a class system with each one having its strengths and weaknesses. The Knight has strong defense and defends the party, while the Statue of Liberty can heal. But the battle system isn’t as complex as it might sound. While playing it I saw a lot of parallels to the Paper Mario games. Every costume has two attacks: a normal attack and a time-charged super attack. The normal attacks function like quick-time events where if you do the task on-screen, more damage is done. While simplistic in how it is constructed, the battle system kept me engaged, as once I was done attacking I couldn’t put down the controller and wait for the enemies to attack thanks to the defense-increasing quick-time commands.

Costume Quest also appears to borrow material from Paper Mario with its Battle Stamps. These are equippable accessories the player can put on their costumes for increased passive attributes, or an additional command in battle, and helps to give the gameplay a bit of strategy. Should I make my Fry Monster have a counter-attack or should I allow it to stun enemies by throwing rotten eggs? The choices were numerous.

Outside of battle, the player is free to roam through three main areas completing quests and searching for candy and hidden items. The game is linear, so there’s no aimless wandering or open-ended gameplay to distract your or shy you away from your goal of trick-or-treating and rescue. As a cool bit of added functionality, several of the costumes have functions outside of battle: the Robot has jet skates that allow you to jump ramps and the Space Warrior’s light-up sword functions like a flashlight to get the player through dark areas.

Visually, the game is gorgeous. The cel-shading really brings out the character and kid-like joy associated with Halloween while still managing to shine when the game shifts to the Godzilla-esque battle sequences. I never had a problem with the camera or the visuals at any given time.

The audio, on the other hand, was a bit different. The music seemed a bit repetitive at times and would fluctuate in its dynamics. Outside of battle the music was soft or quiet but when I’d get into battle, there’d be a recognizable audio increase that threw me off occasionally.

Overall, Costume Quest is a great game that manages to bring back the spirit of Halloween with a fresh concept for an RPG. For $15, you get a simple and fun adventure that doesn’t overstay its welcome or water down the experience with things like random drop rates or level grinding.

Pros: Engaging and active gameplay, great humor and writing, visually beautiful, has the right amount of length and content for what it tries to do.

Cons: Audio volume seemed a little unbalanced, not a whole lot of replay value.

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