Ace D. Maxwell, M.D.

Street Fighter 4

Whatever anyone says about Capcom, they must admit that the Street Fighter series achieved monumental success; it’s basically a household name. People might not know Fatal Fury, Type-MOON, Guilty Gear, and many other 2D fighters, but every-damn-body knows Street Fighter and how to throw out a Hadouken. Street Fighter 4 is Capcom’s latest attempt to cash in on this fame. And, in fiscal terms, it works out.

The game sports 3D models fighting on a 2D plane, ala Battle Fantasia by Aksys, and it mixes cool and ridiculous very well. The characters sport their usual level of beloved cliche-ness, and the attacks look artistic, particularly the Focus Attacks, which I’ll talk about later.

In terms of play, it feels like a mix of Street Fighter 2 and 3. There are a limited amount of moves compared to something like the Street Fighter Alpha series, and the combat is more stately and rhythmic, as opposed to Alpha’s more frenetic pace. As a result, combos flow smoothly, not too fast or too slow, and this makes the game more accessible to newcomers and returning World Warriors. Also, hugely to the game’s credit, the play is very well balanced; the weakest characters, such as Dan, are able to overcome powerhouses like Sagat, unlike something like Marvel vs. Capcom, where Cable rules as the Almighty King of the Hill, or King of Fighters XI, where competitive play almost ultimately comes down to Kula, Gato, and Oswald.

Now for the negatives. I come to this series as someone who doesn’t particularly like Street Fighter, and so won’t bore you with the technical elements of the game I dislike, as these are things that are simply integral to the game being Street Fighter (these are things like Weak, Medium, and Fierce attacks as opposed to just Jab and Roundhouse as in King of Fighters). Instead, I will focus on the new elements that are new in Street Fighter 4.

First, the Ultra Moves. These are the truest kinds of “desperation moves” usable only after a certain gauge is filled; this gauge is filled by taking hits. When the move lands, a flashy super attack goes off that does pretty big damage. My issue with Ultra Moves is really that they don’t actually add an extra layer of tactics to combat; if I’m beating you with Sagat, it’s not likely that you’ll land your Ultra Move, since I know you’ll have it, and I’ll know around when you’re going to try to use it (towards the end of the round). It’s a mechanic that seems like it rewards players for being less skillful, I think. I also find the sequence that the Ultra Move starts to be obnoxious after a while; it’s like playing an RPG and sitting through a long spell. In a fighting game, which thrives on competitive play, I don’t want to be sitting there watching a pretty move. I want to be beating in faces. This is somewhat made up for be EX Attacks, which are normal specials powered up and fueled by the super meter, and Focus Attacks, which allow your character to enter a stance in which they ignore one blow and can potentially break the opponent’s guard, and open up the potential for interesting and deadly combos.

I also found the music to be bad. None of it was catchy or memorable, and the song that plays at the main menu was plain old painful. The sound effects are nice and heavy, perfect for a fighting game, however. The English voice-acting is terrible, and when I say terrible, I mean “Damn, I need to mute this,” terrible, not “I can laugh at this it’s so bad” terrible. Just leave the game in Japanese, you’ll be happier for it.

Speaking of voice acting, the game now also includes anime cutscenes and a “rival match” where your character has a conversation with a specific opponent during the match. I found the anime cutscenes to be somewhat boring and unnecessary: again, I’m here to break faces, not become emotionally invested in these characters. It also bothers me that Capcom did this because fighting game stories are notoriously just excuses for the characters to fight. It’s like adding bullet time sequences to a Steven Seagal movie; the sequences are nice, but it’s still going to be a vapid movie.

The rival matches are less tiresome because the player actually gets to fight while the story is explored, but I personally found myself yearning for talking before the fight and possibly after. I find it hard to believe a guy is going to be yelling at me coherently while I set him on fire with my flaming fireball. This is more a matter of preference, however.

The final issue that I have, which I encountered with the character Abel, is that command throws (throwing moves that demand a specific input) hurt like hell. Now this is a specific balance feature to Street Fighter since command throws were normally pretty hard to pull off, but Abel’s throw were easy to pull off and punishingly painful. This is a minor gripe, but it seems to tip the scales towards him and El Fuerte. This would be the most minor of my gripes, however.

Overall: Apparently old dogs can learn a few new tricks, as SF4 picked up an interesting new presentation and a nice feature in Focus Attacks. The game is marred by bad music, horrific English voice acting, and the uninteresting gimmick of Ultra Attacks. Anime cutscenes are uninteresting, both to watch and to deal with, while rival matches are more interesting and in the vein of a fighting game.

Recommendation: Street Fighter fans should definitely include this in their library, as should people familiar with Street Fighter and interested in picking up a 2D fighting game; this would be a great starting point for newcomers to the genre. 3D fighting game fans and gamers who prefer King of Fighters/Guilty Gear to Street Fighter won’t be missing much, but it’s still worth playing just to see.

The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai

I’m the sort of gamer that demands content and depth; if an RPG is less than 40 hours, I think it’s too short (This doesn’t go for handheld RPGs; those need to be 20 hours at least). Fighting games need interesting systems and freedom of movement to develop strategies beyond something like “fireball trap, sweep, okizeme”. In other words, I like thick games that I can sink my teeth into.

The Dishwasher is not this.  Instead, it delivers an unpretentious and unashamed dish of intense, high speed gameplay. The reason I hate something like God of War is because it pretends to be something it’s not; a story-based game. The Dishwasher takes this falsehood and beats it to the ground, yanks it’s hair back, and chops through it’s neck, reveling in the shower of blood. Essentially, I enjoy The Dishwasher because it does not pretend: it knows what it is, and lets you, the player, decide whether you’ll love it or leave it.

And I am finding that I like it a lot. The narrative thrust of the game is fun and tongue-in-cheek; a dishwasher dies and is now roaming his city as an undead samurai, taking down those who rule it. Is he doing it because they gave him no respect when he was alive or out of a sense of justice? The game doesn’t say, and I don’t think it cares, which only adds to the fun for this reviewer.

So we get to the combat, which is rapid, vicious, and enjoyable. The game is a 2D sidescroller based on combos using light and heavy strings; as you progress, you earn spirals and picks which are used to upgrade your weapons, increasing their damage and giving you new and more powerful combos. You carry two of these weapons into combat and can switch on the fly mid-combo to extend your attacks a bit. While it is very simplistic, the speed at which the game flows and the rate that the player gets attacked, it becomes a very engaging experience.

The music is forgettable, but the art direction is attention-grabbing. It looks like a kind of Invader Zim by Jhonen Vasquez. The visuals attempt to suggest a kind of gothic samurai B-movie feeling, which I find that it succeeds in.

There are many mentions of games like Castle Crashers and Braid because this game is an XNA game that won a contest and has been released to XBLA. I find most of these comparisons to be disingenuous at best because this is not attempting to be those games. Braid is a thought-provoking puzzle-platformer; Castle Crashers is a faux-RPG with humor. The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai is a game for people who want an intense action fix, not people looking for puzzles or side-scrollers pretending to be adventure games.

Overall: Intense game to be played in short bursts, unless in co-op. Basic, but very gratifying; hearkens back to the days of Final Fight and Streets of Rage, but with much more blood and gore. Forgettable music; however, interesting visuals, and basic but enjoyable gameplay makes this game a good purchase at 800 points.

Recommendation: If you like action games, you will like this. DMC4, Ninja Gaiden 2, or if you just want to spend some time beating the hell out of things, this is for you. Otherwise, it probably won’t be a wise purchase.

Touch Mechanic

This game is like a slowed down Trauma Center. In a way, it’s more puzzle-like, because you have to put the correct screw in a place or locate the muffler or air compressor (I think that’s what it’s called) and what have you. For car buffs, this won’t really have an element of puzzle to it, since they’ll recognize it, but for others, it’ll be an interesting adventure learning which screw goes into the skirt and so on.

Gameplay is done with a guy telling you what to work on. You then tap the part you want to work on, and follow a procedure. For example, if you have to do body work, first you tap each wheel, remove the screws, remove the wheel, then work on the body. There’s also painting decals and so on, which is a little troublesome, but might become easier as I get the hang of it. In a way, it’s more complicated than Trauma Center, because you have to zoom out from the car and work on different sides; the equivalent would be if, in Trauma Center, you had to go to a guy’s arm, cut it open and fix it, go out, then manually go to his leg to fix that. Not to mention the parts where you take apart the outside of the car to get inside or under the car to fix things. I’m a bit worried by the notion that I’ll have to remember how to take things apart and fix them later on without being reminded, but I’ll just see how that goes when I get to it.

Also, I’ve noticed that if you pick up the wrong item and put it back, you get an error. This pisses me off to no end because sometimes I get confused by which screw I need. Which I suppose is the point, but it feels rather unforgiving for a game that feels so relaxed. In Trauma Center, the patient doesn’t take damage from me picking up forceps instead of sutures, so it seems silly that I get marked down with an error for grabbing the wrong screw without attempting to put it in. Which is something I forgot to mention; different jobs have a different amount of allowed errors; they start out at like 12, and as you go on, you have less errors and more minor things give you strikes. And if you max out the errors, you lose.

The slower pace of the game is counterbalanced by your timer, which is also your score. As you work on the car, the timer ticks down, and as the timer ticks down, you’ll get paid less cash. This, plus the fact that crazy unexpected things don’t happen (at least I haven’t seen it happen yet), means that the player feels more in control of the pace of the game; you can push yourself to get more cash, or take it easy and just get through.

The graphics are nothing special. They’re European in style, as opposed to the bug-eyed anime you may be accustomed to, so I guess it’s a nice change of pace. The music is pretty calm and relaxing, but it hasn’t been very stirring or memorable either. The story has been very abrupt, and the writing is rather awkward at times. Frankly, if you want this game for the story, it seems to me that you’ll be barking up the wrong tree. Not that Trauma Center had a great story either, but the music was stirring, the characters were more interesting looking, and the writing was stronger.

Overall: A strong game. Graphics aren’t interesting outside of the cars themselves, but some may find the art direction refreshing. Music is soothing and contributes to the more relaxed style of gameplay.

Recommendation: For fans of Trauma Center and cars, it is a must buy. For all other DS owners, it’s worth noting. For those who dislike Trauma Center, still worth a look; the game lacks the brutal intensity which seems to drive most people from Trauma Center.

Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume

A lot of games trot out notions of morality these days. From DnD games like Neverwinter Nights to whacky shooters like Darkwatch, gritty and darkly humorous blockbusters like Fallout 3, and weird Sim/sandbox games like Fable 2, every gamer seems to be clamoring for morality to be explored in games, and developers are rushing to make it happen. But do those games really explore morality or just give the player the opportunity to be a prick if the desire arises? The new Valkyrie Profile makes a powerful argument for the latter.

The Valkyrie Profile series has, at it’s core, two strong themes; death and rebellion. In the first Valkyrie Profile, it was redemption just before death and resisting the machinations of the gods; the second one followed suit with notions of reincarnation and stealing mankind’s destiny from the gods. In this side story, we follow Wylfred, a sullen bastard that wants to kill the current Valkyrie, Lenneth. He does, however, have a fantastic reason; the gods have essentially cultivated a culture that worships “glorious” death, which ultimately led to the death of his father and the destruction of his family. This story is set against the backdrop of a brewing war for succession to the throne, and Wyl travels from battlefield to battlefield, killing and fighting to draw out the Valkyrie and kill her. Naturally, being a human, he’d have no hope, except for a pact he makes with the goddess of the underworld, Hel.

And with this, comes the portion of the game maligned by many critics; the Dark Plume. Wylfred has one of the Valkyrie’s feathers imbued with Hel’s evil power, and can use it to imbue his allies with evil power. And when I say power, I mean POWER: their stats are increased by a factor of at least ten, meaning that every enemy that is on the battlefield is now guaranteed to become a smear. Also, Wyl receives a new ability that is generally incredibly powerful. The trade off is that the character who receives this “blessing” is also killed…Permanently. You would think this isn’t so bad, but the cutscenes that showcase the death are heart-wrenching. I mean, these are some genuinely upsetting occurrences; begging for a reprieve, crying, tearing at people’s clothes, and weeping relatives are the norm.

Now I know I’ve spent a lot of time talking about the narrative, but I think this is the most gripping portion of the game. I have found myself in situations that would easily be won by using the Plume and stopping myself from giving in to the temptation because of the gruesome aftermath; not to mention that as the Plume is used, the main character gradually becomes more cruel and callous. This is a situation that truly demands a moral choice: not just in terms of game progression but it also demands something of the player. Not every gamer will feel the same trepidation as me, but those that do I think will find something more moving than the usual moral choices presented in games; there is a true force of temptation working in the game, trying to draw the player down a darker path. It makes for an experience much more moving than the usual “Do you shoot the guy or turn him in to the authorities?” kinds of scenarios commonly present in games.

The gameplay, while working well, is less to my liking. Four units are used, each assigned to a button on the DS. From there, it plays out like a normal tactics RPG until the player decides to attack; surrounding is the name of the game here! If a character is in attacking range of an enemy, then he/she will get to attack, even if it’s not their turn! This is the key to winning in this game, as one character will never bring down a single enemy unless dramatically overpowered, either by the Plume or by carrying over equipment in New Game+. After a while, it begins to feel like Checkers; just like you would set your opponent up to have numerous chips taken in one assault, so do you try to have your characters in such a position that you can annihilate as many enemies as possible by having your characters arranged in positions to attack. There are also formations that can be used by placing the characters in the proper positions relative to the enemy in order to gain bonuses and make it easier to be able to use special attacks, which are available when a meter is built to 100% by comboing the enemy.

There’s also Sin, which are points accumulated by continuously attacking enemies after killing them. Each stage has a certain amount of Sin to accumulate; fail to do that, and you get an extremely powerful boss in the next battle. Sin also gains the player rewards, the most potent of which are gained from gaining double the necessary Sin; these include weapons and techniques that are not easily found and are generally highly powerful when first acquired.

My problems with the game primarily stem from the fact that it’s not very much like any other Valkyrie Profile. While the setting and tone are dark, and the combat works like other VPs when attacking, the fact that it’s a SRPG take the “Profile” portion away from the game, which came from the fact that Valkyrie Profiles areas were traversed in 2D. In fact, except for attacking enemies and the setting, it could be it’s own game and not part of a series. The story of the game follows VP, but the gameplay doesn’t; it feels like a loosely related spin-off as opposed to a true entry into the series. It works well as it is, but lovers of the two previous Valkyrie Profiles may be turned off by this. Also, because of the Sin requirements, I frequently find myself weakening enemies until it only takes one more blow to kill them, and then overkilling them, or being frustrated with myself when an enemy is too dangerous to do this to because the counterattack would be too devastating. It leads to a system that makes me feel like I’m tricking the system as opposed to playing the game. I suppose the design was supposed to make the player think about this, but the game describes Sin as being merciless; why, then, am I supposed to allow my enemies to live with a sliver of their life as opposed to crushing them immediately?

Overall: Strong game with a moving story and decisions that have emotional impact. The combat system works, although there are quirks that can feel awkward.

Recommendation: Tri-Ace fans and Valkyrie Profile fans should try it out. SRPG fans might find it a bit awkward.