Make no mistake about it - Sonic Chronicles is a slow game. And not just by Sonic the Hedgehog’s standards. It seems almost implausible then that it captures the spirit of the classic Sonic titles, and is competent enough to build an exciting, enthralling and extremely fun game out of what many dismissed as a dead franchise. Rebirth? Not quite, but certainly it is the beginning of change for the iconic SEGA mascot.

Unusually for a handheld game, Chronicles rewards extended play. Featuring gameplay mechanics similar to the Mario RPGs of the past, the game plays out at a very fractured pace. Plot wise, and you have probably already guessed most of it, someone is messing around with the Chaos Emeralds and it is up to Sonic and his roaming gang of fuzzy vigilantes to save the day. But despite BioWare’s almost impeccable narrative credentials, we’re not here for a gripping tale and they don’t really fully deliver one either. The plot simply provides context for a series of chapter based romps across the world map, battling numerous foes in pursuit of the mysterious and ominous Dark Brotherhood.

All your favourite Sonic friends are along for the ride; Miles, Knuckles and Amy are series stalwarts, and the inclusion of Sonic Adventure era companions such as Rouge and Big the Cat can be hit or miss depending on your feelings toward them. Regardless of personal preference, each fills a party role mechanically and contributes to the battle system, enhancing the fighting with special abilities and group powers. There are even some unexpected allies that join you, throwing up all sorts of questions best left to dedicated Sonic fans to answer.

To explore the game, you navigate an isometric overworld in a distinctive illustrative art style. The inclusion of loops and ramps is a bit of a distraction here, because traversing them is hardly fluid and requires context sensitive button presses on the touchscreen to activate them. Yes, you collect rings, and as you guessed, you can spend them on new items and bonuses. Losing that critical fast pace makes this exploration less of a furious race and more of a sedate expedition. Navigation is also sometimes highly confusing, as the maps themselves are drawn in such a way that it is sometimes hard to differentiate scenery from walkable terrain, a problem I encountered often when peeking around every corner and nook. Breaking up the flow of your travels even more are frequent random battles, which play out in a turn based system mashing together aspects of Partners In Time and Elite Beat Agents. So much so, in fact, that as the game progresses you develop a rhythm to the battles, sometimes able to work on autopilot; such is the repetitious nature of the encounters. Boss battles and varying monster types break up the monotony well, allowing you often to fully unleash the skills you have acquired meatgrinding the minions, which is often flashy and loud and requires careful timing and touch screen interaction.

At its core, Sonic Chronicles is an RPG, and BioWare have infused the fast paced frenetic action of Sonic with a plethora of plodding conversations and dialogue options. At times this begins to really grate, especially when the random battles pile up with them to create an extremely disjointed experience. But if you can get past this, you will find a charming and altogether vintage Sonic game that includes all the hallmarks of the series as well as a little of that BioWare innovation on the role playing side. Not suited for commuters or gamers with short attention spans, Sonic Chronicles manages to really capture what was so attractive about the characters and setting of the very first Genesis titles. It is the attention to detail and a huge step in a new direction that really sets Sonic Chronicles above other iterations, and one which I hope continues.

This is an extremely competent game, impressive in every area with few minor problems. Chronicles is always slow paced but constantly feels on the verge of blistering speed and excitement. Capable of wowing you with incredible visuals and your traditional BioWare plot twists, it creates a sense of nostalgia among diehard Sonic fans, while also having the hooks to draw in new people to the mesmerizing world of the Dark Brotherhood. All this in a Sonic RPG? Yes, it really is true.

That’s about where the negatives end, though. Bangai-O Spirits is 2D shooting at or near its best. It’s a pure, smooth combination of simple mechanics that work perfectly together. It feels like they weren’t just conceptualized, but realized first, and then came the level design. Your different offensive abilities (like bullets that bounce off walls, and ones that can shoot through two enemies instead of one), defensive abilities (like a bat that deflects projectiles if you time it correctly and the shield that protects one side of your body of your choice for the entirety of a level), special abilities (like freezing enemies, or reflecting attacks from all directions at once), and all the different types of AI harmonize beautifully.

Then the level design comes in. There are over 160 stages - some straight action, some puzzle (even without a single enemy), and many somewhere in between. They feel like proof-of-concept for the gameplay, and I don’t mean that in a chastising way, I mean it in the same way Super Mario 64 is a proof-of-concept for 3D games and the analogue stick. They’re also inspiration for the level editor, which has got to be one of the most intuitive and flexible ever in a game. “Little Bangai-O Planet,” as it’s been called by fans, is a bit of a stretch, but once you’re good enough to not die within five seconds of starting half the stages, it steals the show. Especially since you can share stages datacassette-style. Watching a video of a stage on YouTube and then downloading it from an mp3 file in its description is a wonderful convenience.

Bangai-O Spirits is undeniable if you don’t have any sort of prejudice against the genre you can’t get over, and if you’re patient with it. It’s a refreshingly hard game - one of few, actually, that doesn’t put me to sleep after an afternoon of NES games kicking my ass. So it’s fun, challenging, great in a group setting, and it fosters creativity. It’s the best handheld release in years.

The only semblance of context you’re given is a blurb on the back of the box that tells you that Earth is in trouble and you need to defend it; it’s all about the gameplay. It’s got more smart design packed into such a small package than it has any right to. You’re rewarded for killing enemies with the same coloring, shape, or placement in the environment, with power-ups and bonus stages, reminiscent of Galaga’s Challenging Stages, that can get you even bigger power ups. It’s also constantly playing with your expectations, as bosses cross two screens, and enemies go kamikaze, and flip sideways (making them razor thin and very difficult to hit). There ends up being a lot to it; more than most will be able to pick up quickly without reading the manual, but it all works together beautifully.

The presentation is also fantastic, for the most part. Its art style is the hippest of the hip, with neon on top of black everywhere and E’s aren’t even 3’s, but are just backwards. Everything also happens in time with the music, meaning that every sound effect is also in time, leading to Rez-style music you inadvertently make as you play. Unfortunately the background music and sounds you make aren’t as good as the ones in other similar games (specifically Rez and Meteos come to mind), but I’ll support any game that does this; it’s really been underutilized since Rez’s release seven years ago. It makes chomping through enemies feel similar to, and nearly as good as, doing the same to music notes in Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

Space Invaders Extreme is a game you want to buy if your DS has been dying for some attention, you love 80’s arcade shooters, or you want to be the coolest hipster fuck wearing headphones on the subway. It’s not everything it could have been, like Pac-Man Championship Edition was, but it’s smart, satisfying, and a lot of fun. Plus it’s budget priced. Hey publishers, this is how we fight piracy.

As with previous titles in the series, Days of Ruin gives the player control of multiple units on a turn-based battlefield, with each having its own strengths and weaknesses. Strategy games in general can be a little overwhelming to new comers, but the game does a good job of getting the player accustomed to all of the different unit classes. This isn’t Sins of a Solar Empire or Company of Heroes, but the number of units it gives you is still pretty decent.

The problem arises when you realize how little impact these units actually have. When playing the game, you’ll recognize the perfect unit to counter your enemy’s unit, and your enemy will recognize the perfect unit to counter yours. This quickly turns into an almost never ending game of rock-paper-scissors, since, on most of the game’s rather large maps, the time it takes for your unit to attack an enemy is more than enough for him to create multiple counters.

At first I thought that maybe I was just playing the game wrong, so I went to some online FAQs and, sure enough, the writers even admit, it is almost impossible to avoid “the eventual stalemate.” There are good strategies to get through most campaign missions quickly, but none of them are alarmingly obvious, and unless you figure out what will probably happen in the battle during the first or second move, prepare to be jostling back and forth with the AI for (literally) hours on end.

This is a real shame, too, because Days of Ruin gets a lot of the superfluous stuff right. It has bonus missions, it has a per-mission ranking system (although, no online leaderboard), it has controls that use the stylus and the buttons of the DS very well—even it’s laughable story would get a pass, were it not for the game’s horrendously boring underbelly.

Days of Ruin is like that super-hot shopaholic girl back in high school. She does a lot of things right, a lot of things that you wish more girls did, but by the time you’ve heard her talk about the same, boring thing for the nth time, you’d much rather spend time with some more interesting company.

The story has a couple predictable plot twists near the end, but it’s told with such confidence through animated cut scenes (that are easily the most beautiful things any DS screen has displayed) that you’ll never second-guess its scenario-writers’ decisions. The more game-y stuff in Professor Layton, like these cut scenes, the large amount of dialogue, and the overworld to explore, are enough to interest people who are more into Level-5’s previous efforts than something like Brain Age, but aren’t so overbearing that people who mostly buy more casual fare on the DS won’t be able to make it through to the end.

The puzzles themselves are the perfect mix of easy and hard, old and new. Some you’ll recognize from the puzzle book in your pediatrician’s waiting room, some from middle school math class, and some you’ll never have heard of before. Some you’ll solve almost immediately, and some you’ll spend ten minutes on and still not get, even with all three hints the game offers (and help from a friend). There’s also a weekly downloadable puzzle through Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, which will extend the game’s stay in your DS, and is a welcome change from most of Nintendo’s online offerings thus far.

It’s exactly the kind of thing the DS is perfect for - the puzzles work beautifully with the touch screen, the audience is there, and portability is perfect for it. Don’t be surprised when you find yourself saying “one more puzzle” for three hours.

The boat riding from Wind Waker (Phantom Hourglass is its direct sequel) is back, but this time you aren’t sailing - you’ve got a steamship. The wonder of riding around and discovering new mysterious islands and hunting for treasure is still there, but you lack the same control over the boat you had in Wind Waker, as you just draw a path on your map for the boat to follow, and then man the cannon. The trips are pretty short, so it’s not a big problem, but that also means the relaxing nature of Wind Waker’s sailing is gone.

The main issue with Phantom Hourglass, though, is the timed central dungeon you go back to over and over throughout the whole game. Every time you enter it, you have to replay rooms you had completed before (some rooms you need to do three or four plus times), and even the first time you play them it’s no fun because scattered amongst the puzzles in them are roaming invincible enemies that do a serious amount of damage and cut seconds off your time limit. These game design choices now feel archaic, and aren’t at all enjoyable.

Phantom Hourglass also has you blowing into your DS’s microphone to blow out fires and clean dust off things, and closing your DS’s lid to make something on the top screen meet something on the bottom screen in a puzzle. This kind of thing has been done to death on DS over the last couple years, and were clever in early games on the system, but now are just gimmicky. Making notes on your map is cool, as the game uses it as a gameplay mechanic — not just an option so you don’t forget things — having you connect certain spots on maps to draw shapes (like arrows) to solve puzzles, but it always holds your hand too much.

The whole game is actually too easy. Zelda games, for the most part, always have been easy in combat, but even the puzzles here are too simple, and too many of the answers to them are basically given to the player. The bosses are also really easy, in addition to being boring and ugly compared to bosses in other games of the series.

Phantom Hourglass still comes recommended from me to Zelda fans, and fans of the action adventure genre, but it does not live up to the standard set by previous games in the series, and is the worst Zelda game Nintendo has ever made. There’s a great engine under there just begging for a better game to be designed around it. Now, though, I’m mostly just excited to see what they come up with for the Wii remote.

The only real differences between this and the original game are the brain training and testing challenges themselves. Some of the new ones are great, like the piano game that has you tapping virtual keys on the touch screen in rhythm, and the rock-paper-scissors game that has you either winning or losing (the game tells you which) against a picture of a hand showing one of the three gestures, by saying the opposite one aloud. Some are pretty average, like the change-making game, and the game that has you filling in missing signs in math problems, and some are inexcusably bad, like the game that plays two or three words being spoken simultaneously, and asks you to write down the word you just heard. It’s too hard, and not at all fun or interesting.

Thankfully you’re never forced to do any of the games, as you pick and chose which training games to do every day, and you can use a code to select which three of the Brain Age Check games to do. Really, though, you’re not forced to play the game in the first place; all of the games should be good, or at least playable.

In the end though, Brain Age 2 is a solid game, worth your money if you missed out on the original, or if you enjoyed it and are itching for more. Even the main problems with the first game, the handwriting and voice recognition, have been completely fixed - you shouldn’t find yourself struggling with them at all. It doesn’t break any ground like Brain Age did, but it’s a worthwhile successor.

Its gameplay, which consists of little more than poking numbered dots and dragging across lines in rhythm in sequential order, steals the show, as it is wholly original and the layout of the targets is expertly designed in every level on every difficulty. Generally the weakest mechanic in the game is the spinner, a disc that pops up on the touch screen that you have to draw circles on repeatedly to pass, but it’s used infrequently and never lasts too long, and doesn’t end up holding the game back too much, if at all.

Maybe the most important part of any rhythm game, the difficulty curve, is handled wonderfully in Ouendan. The easiest setting can be completed even by people who have never played a rhythm game before, normal is a good starting place for veterans of the genre but newbies to the series, and hard and insane mode really are incredibly challenging, even for people who have mastered the previous modes. Completing the final stages in the game on insane mode is a feat few gamers will achieve, but it’s very possible for anyone who works hard enough for it.

The highlight of Ouendan is the endgame, which is truly among the best in all of gaming. Set to the gallant rock epic “READY STEADY GO” by L’Arc~en~Ciel, the ouendan is cheering on not one person striving to complete a comparatively menial task, like the rest of the stages in the game, but everyone in the world as they work together to stop an incoming meteor from ending life on Earth. The game takes a chance here by taking itself completely seriously for a few minutes, and astonishingly succeeds.

Its cut scenes are lightly animated manga strips, and are bright and beautiful. They’re text-heavy, but easy to understand even if you don’t know a lick of Japanese, and are often laugh-out-loud funny. It’s these breaks in the action, along with the J-pop, rock, and hip-hop tunes, that gives Ouendan its charm, and really help set it apart from other rhythm games. It’s Japanese quirkiness at its best - weird, just confusing enough, cute, and never annoying.

Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan is a standout title on DS, not just because the gameplay is fun and engaging and it has huge amounts of personality, but because it’s one of the handful of DS games that really couldn’t be played on any other platform. And, most importantly, is truly an emotional experience, the same of which cannot be said about the majority of other rhythm games.

More annoying changes from the original Tetris formula are present as the game shows you not just the next piece that will drop, but the next six. This allows players to plan out their moves too far in advance, and ruins any spontaneity the game had. Also differing from old school Tetris is the “ghost piece” which shows exactly where your next piece is going to land, and the “hard drop” which allows you to press up at any time and instantly drop the falling tetromino to the bottom of the screen. The hard drop isn’t a bad feature, but working in conjunction with the ghost piece, it makes the game play too fast and not leisurely enough in the early stretches. Thankfully, though, there is the option to turn off both of these features.

In addition to standard Tetris are a variety of modes new to the series. Mission mode is standard Tetris with specific goals, and is not an improvement over the original. The Metroid-themed Catch mode, where you control one central block, and try to catch falling tetrominos to form four by four squares, is too slow and not at all interesting. The Donkey Kong-themed Push mode, where two players are playing in opposite directions on the same playing field, and try to push each other downwards by clearly two or more lines at a time, is really fun and inventive, especially when played multiplayer. The Yoshi-themed Puzzle mode, where you have to use specific pieces to clear a screen full of garbage blocks, is too easy and pretty boring. And the Balloon Fight-themed Touch mode, where players manipulate a stack of tetrominos with the DS’s stylus to clear lines, is the best new mode, and the most interesting take on Tetris maybe ever.

The Nintendo theme that’s plastered all over the game’s menu and gameplay screens and music selection is pretty cool, especially for hardcore fans of the company. The remixes of classic Nintendo tunes, with sound effects from the 8 and 16-bit eras thrown in, are all good, but some players might find them to be too upbeat and annoying. The Bowser battle track from Super Mario Bros. that starts playing when you hit level ten (one hundred lines) in standard mode, though, is undeniably excellent.

Despite the disappointments, Tetris DS is still exactly that - Tetris, and you can only fuck up Tetris so much. The original Gameboy version of the game is still king, and there’s plenty of puzzle games on DS to buy first, but Tetris DS is an all right game.

 

 

 

Players: 1-8
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Game Freak
Genre: RPG
Review By: Michael Fox

“Good things don’t last.”

Stability can be good in certain things, and it can be bad in others. Video games are a little tricky since we don’t want our favourite game to go get a weekend sex change, but at the same time, it’d be nice if they got a new haircut every once in a while and kept their nails trimmed. That specific equilibrium has to be found for each franchise, where certain aspects must remain constant and others a little volatile. With the last four generations of the Pokémon RPG series, we’ve seen a game that has progressed in complexity and is slowly developing into a pointless craze.

Just like when I was twelve-years-old and hated to admit that I played Pokémon, I now hate to admit that Pokémon Diamond/Pearl has become a disappointment. I find this rather ironic since I knew exactly what we were getting into with this latest generation of Pokémon. If you look back at the previous three, not a whole lot has actually changed. The premise of each game has altered ever so slightly, but follows the same basic formula. The visuals and audio have improved with time, and there has been an increase from 150 to 493 Pokémon throughout the games. There have been some large changes to the game series, like the ability to trade Pokémon and battle online with anyone, but this has more to do with changing technology and was only a matter of time. Unfortunately, the changes we’ve seen to the gameplay are lackluster and are more or less there to say that something has changed. But if I want to make poffins, I’ll play Cooking Mama. And digging underground, uncovering gems and building my own secret cave was decent fun for the first thirty minutes, but the charm wore away and I realised that it’s just another gimmick.

Like all other Pokémon games, Pokémon D/P is perceived as a game that your six-year-old sibling plays and yet, it has so much more to it than that. It may seem happy and cheerful (most of the time, anyway) to remain kid friendly, but it does have something that most other games still can’t grasp — the ability to be taken light-heartedly and still satisfy some pretty hardcore gamers. I’ve always been about doing straight-up damage off the bat, which is usually fine against the computer or a dumb friend, but some pokemaniacs out there really plan out in-depth strategies for each of their Pokémon and possible encounters. It’s not always about having an extremely strong or fast Pokémon, but one with a move set that will succeed in most any situation. This is what makes people crazy for Pokémon, for whatever reason. Getting new Pokémon and mastering them, however, I find hard to justify as the sole reason for purchase.

Half the fun of Pokémon now is thinking of what your lineup will consist of. Before Pokémon D/P was even out, thousands of gamers were looking into which Pokémon would form the best team, planning out what moves they’ll give them, and so on. It seems that some people had more fun thinking about playing the game rather than actually playing it. If you’ve played any of the Pokémon RPG series before, all the way through, there will be little satisfaction in beating Pokémon D/P. Unless you’re a newcomer to the series, you’re likely getting it for the new Pokémon and the option of playing online. This does open the gameplay up quite a bit and will leave those who truly love to grind their Pokémon in paradise. Not only can you impress yourself with your team of level 100s, but you can slaughter other trainers all over the world. This is big for Pokémon, and I’m afraid the game would have been a failure otherwise. Even if nothing had changed with Pokémon D/P, millions of people around the world would still have bought the game, which just sends the message across to Game Freaks that they’re still doing it well enough.

The game has that same aroma in the air that was once sweet, but has now turned too fragrant and burns the nostrils. I feel the exact same playing Pokémon D/P now as I did when I first bought Pokémon Red, which seems to be ages ago. This being the first game in the series on the DS, it would have been nice if Game Freaks went that extra length and made it something really fresh and maybe even epic, in its own weird way.

As lovely as it would be, good things don’t last. The Pokémon RPG series used to be something so phenomenal in its beginning. What really bothers me is that this series may continue on using the same method, creating the same experience every time, that slowly dulls, and people will still buy it. Those of us who once loved the series and want to see it evolve into something that could far overshadow the previous games will be left waiting for an unknown amount of time. Buy it if you’ve never played Pokémon before, or just can’t live without Pokémon. Otherwise, you may just want to pass this one up until Game Freaks gets their shit together. It’s the best game in the series. However, it doesn’t exactly feel like it.