Here Ya Go, Mates! Long time no see.^_-
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow Gameboy Review
Where do I begin except the beginning? I will explain myself. I am a fan of pokemon. Hardcore. However if I am going to review the ones that I hate and explain the reasons accurately, I am going to have to review these games in the order they came. That means that despite all of my fandom, I have to take these apart as well. On the upside, I get to whine about these games.^_^
Alright, for those of you that have no clue about what pokemon is about or anything at all, Why are you reading this? In any case, I will explain it the way I have since I finished Gold version the first time. It is effectively pit fighting for kids. I know that is harsh and over dramatic but I don't know a more sussinct way of putting it. You play a ten year old given an animal with elemental abilities and you train it to fight other animals effectively to the death. You raise these animals up so you can earn respect, money, and fame.
Alright, now that most parents are either not bothered by the premise or have been scared off, we begin the true review. Your character starts in a town called Pallet Town. It is a small town that just happens to have the expert on all pokemon, those elemental animals from before, living there.
Let's stop here for a second. The most famous professor in the matters of pokemon, with world wide fame has a lab in a small town consistent of FOUR BUILDINGS including his own lab. Why isn't the town bigger? He is the absolute expert in everyone's mind on something that is so popular that the entire society is wrapped up in it. I highly doubt more people wouldn't track him down, build near him and hail interviews on him with no chance at breathing.
*sigh* Moving on, so Prof. Oak, the expert, lives in your town. When the intro is given where he explains the world more innocently than me, you can name yourself. He will confirm your name and tell you that his grandson is your rival. The best part of this is that he says he can't remember his grandson's name. He lets you name him.
That's right, I haven't even really gotten into the game and we already have something to mock. Oak, master of all pokemon, cannot remember the name of his grandson so you get to change the fabric of reality and make it whatever the hell you want. Many kids had fun with this.
Anyway, when you are done naming his grandkid, it turns out he was distorting space and time because he then shrinks you and it leaves you in your room. It gives you no direction on where to go, just that he will be seeing you later. When you head downstairs, if you talk to your mom, and no one does, She tells you Oak wants to talk to you. No matter where you look in the town, he is no where to be found.
Eventually, having no where else to check you might decide to leave the town. Maybe he is just out of town. It is only when you try and leave that he appears from behind out of no where and says tall grass is dangerous and to come with him.
Your first introduction to your rival consists of him whining. You think that I am kidding but I am not. Oak says he is going to lend you some of his old pokemon to go complete the pokedex. I'll get onto that in a sec. Your rival whines that he wants first choice but just like a good grandpa, he lets you go first because his grandson is a disgrace.
You soon find out that this is not the best choice. You can pick a fire lizard, blue turtle, or a green dinosaur with a closed flower bud on his back. Fire is the hardest one to raise but gives the most payback with high speed and power. The turtle is the middle road and gives you a artillery tank. I am not kidding. Oh, and the dino, no one gives a real damn about. Let's face it, he is the easy route so some try him out but as time goes on, he becomes pretty useless. I usually ended up replacing him.
Now onto the pokedex before I tear into the story in a few paragraphs I ranted too long. Only one question about it and let it float through your brain as I continue. If he is the expert on all pokemon and the go to guy for these kinds of things, couldn't he contact a few friends via e-mail(and yes he has one. You can read it in his lab.) and request that they bring in as many different pokemon as they can?
Alright, the story in a nut shell is you are going to all of these gyms and wandering the countryside trying to complete the pokedex by having owned at least once each pokemon. there is a group of villians you run into somewhat early called Team Rocket. They are the only minor plotpoints in this game other than the quest for the pokemon and the gym badges. You will occasionally fight your rival in plot important locations and if you are doing things right, he should go down somewhat easily.
Your first major run in with team rocket is in the fourth gym town called Celadon. You have to go in there and bust up their criminal activities under the casino, I mean Game Center. Yeah, pokemon has gambling in it too. Are there any parents still here? Anyway, you jump through some hoops until you come to their boss.
Giovanni is the boss of team rocket but this won't be the last time you see him. Anyway, he is somewhat decent if not a bit weak on the first encounter. When you beat him, he gives you an object called the silph scope. You take this with you over to the town on the other side of another town to be able to climb and fight back against the ghost types that inhabit it. It allows you to see them for what they are.
Anyway, when you get to the top of the tower, Mr. Fuji will give you a poke flute after you save him from team rocket. This flute will let you move on to the other gyms. This is where I stop fleshing out the story for you guys because it just keeps going on like that. You need to get one plot device item to get a plot device pokemon into your party/out of the way.
I have never beaten these games because it will come to a point where you have beaten every trainer so the only thing left to do is mind numbing grinding before you can beat the elite four. You could also hunt down and capture the three legendary birds but that is even more of a pain to catch than it is to grind. Not to mention, they don't really help too much. They raise your odds of success but without strong pokemon to compliment them, you are screwed.
After you beat the elite four, you have to face your rival once more. It will be the hardest battle in the entire game and unlike all the elite four members, he has a balanced belt. You can't just spam one type of move and ruin them. It is a real pain and I have never beaten them for that reason.
Summary: They are good games and the only differences is in feel and what pokemon you run into. If you still have a gameboy advance or a gameboy, I would suggest playing this at least once. I tore through the rest fast because I could tear this much more apart but I felt this was getting a bit too long.
Alright, for those of you that have no clue about what pokemon is about or anything at all, Why are you reading this? In any case, I will explain it the way I have since I finished Gold version the first time. It is effectively pit fighting for kids. I know that is harsh and over dramatic but I don't know a more sussinct way of putting it. You play a ten year old given an animal with elemental abilities and you train it to fight other animals effectively to the death. You raise these animals up so you can earn respect, money, and fame.
Alright, now that most parents are either not bothered by the premise or have been scared off, we begin the true review. Your character starts in a town called Pallet Town. It is a small town that just happens to have the expert on all pokemon, those elemental animals from before, living there.
Let's stop here for a second. The most famous professor in the matters of pokemon, with world wide fame has a lab in a small town consistent of FOUR BUILDINGS including his own lab. Why isn't the town bigger? He is the absolute expert in everyone's mind on something that is so popular that the entire society is wrapped up in it. I highly doubt more people wouldn't track him down, build near him and hail interviews on him with no chance at breathing.
*sigh* Moving on, so Prof. Oak, the expert, lives in your town. When the intro is given where he explains the world more innocently than me, you can name yourself. He will confirm your name and tell you that his grandson is your rival. The best part of this is that he says he can't remember his grandson's name. He lets you name him.
That's right, I haven't even really gotten into the game and we already have something to mock. Oak, master of all pokemon, cannot remember the name of his grandson so you get to change the fabric of reality and make it whatever the hell you want. Many kids had fun with this.
Anyway, when you are done naming his grandkid, it turns out he was distorting space and time because he then shrinks you and it leaves you in your room. It gives you no direction on where to go, just that he will be seeing you later. When you head downstairs, if you talk to your mom, and no one does, She tells you Oak wants to talk to you. No matter where you look in the town, he is no where to be found.
Eventually, having no where else to check you might decide to leave the town. Maybe he is just out of town. It is only when you try and leave that he appears from behind out of no where and says tall grass is dangerous and to come with him.
Your first introduction to your rival consists of him whining. You think that I am kidding but I am not. Oak says he is going to lend you some of his old pokemon to go complete the pokedex. I'll get onto that in a sec. Your rival whines that he wants first choice but just like a good grandpa, he lets you go first because his grandson is a disgrace.
You soon find out that this is not the best choice. You can pick a fire lizard, blue turtle, or a green dinosaur with a closed flower bud on his back. Fire is the hardest one to raise but gives the most payback with high speed and power. The turtle is the middle road and gives you a artillery tank. I am not kidding. Oh, and the dino, no one gives a real damn about. Let's face it, he is the easy route so some try him out but as time goes on, he becomes pretty useless. I usually ended up replacing him.
Now onto the pokedex before I tear into the story in a few paragraphs I ranted too long. Only one question about it and let it float through your brain as I continue. If he is the expert on all pokemon and the go to guy for these kinds of things, couldn't he contact a few friends via e-mail(and yes he has one. You can read it in his lab.) and request that they bring in as many different pokemon as they can?
Alright, the story in a nut shell is you are going to all of these gyms and wandering the countryside trying to complete the pokedex by having owned at least once each pokemon. there is a group of villians you run into somewhat early called Team Rocket. They are the only minor plotpoints in this game other than the quest for the pokemon and the gym badges. You will occasionally fight your rival in plot important locations and if you are doing things right, he should go down somewhat easily.
Your first major run in with team rocket is in the fourth gym town called Celadon. You have to go in there and bust up their criminal activities under the casino, I mean Game Center. Yeah, pokemon has gambling in it too. Are there any parents still here? Anyway, you jump through some hoops until you come to their boss.
Giovanni is the boss of team rocket but this won't be the last time you see him. Anyway, he is somewhat decent if not a bit weak on the first encounter. When you beat him, he gives you an object called the silph scope. You take this with you over to the town on the other side of another town to be able to climb and fight back against the ghost types that inhabit it. It allows you to see them for what they are.
Anyway, when you get to the top of the tower, Mr. Fuji will give you a poke flute after you save him from team rocket. This flute will let you move on to the other gyms. This is where I stop fleshing out the story for you guys because it just keeps going on like that. You need to get one plot device item to get a plot device pokemon into your party/out of the way.
I have never beaten these games because it will come to a point where you have beaten every trainer so the only thing left to do is mind numbing grinding before you can beat the elite four. You could also hunt down and capture the three legendary birds but that is even more of a pain to catch than it is to grind. Not to mention, they don't really help too much. They raise your odds of success but without strong pokemon to compliment them, you are screwed.
After you beat the elite four, you have to face your rival once more. It will be the hardest battle in the entire game and unlike all the elite four members, he has a balanced belt. You can't just spam one type of move and ruin them. It is a real pain and I have never beaten them for that reason.
Summary: They are good games and the only differences is in feel and what pokemon you run into. If you still have a gameboy advance or a gameboy, I would suggest playing this at least once. I tore through the rest fast because I could tear this much more apart but I felt this was getting a bit too long.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Generation Of Chaos Review
Generation of Chaos for the PSP. A game most people have never even heard of let alone played. I am torn on this game and as the review moves on you will find out why. I found this one day a few years ago when Gamecrazy still existed. I went to them instead of the Gamestop accross the street because the atomosphere was just more friendly and non-sterile. I know what you are thinking, why are these details important? The answer is that it is only at a place like that that you will find a game like this. Gamestop would probably toss this thing out the window because no one knows it exists.
This game tries to take the strategy genre and the rpg genre and mix it with large scale battles not to mention immense attacks. Does it succeed? Well, yes and no. Let's start with the gameplay.
The setup is simple. The map is a series of squares lined up sort of like candyland. there are paths that lead to each of the bases. That being said, each of your commanders has a set amount of spaces they can move. Typical stuff really. You can have on the board over 20 commanders. That being said and adding that it almost operates like Risk, you would think that it would be fantastic but short. You would be able to sweep the entire world map in a single go, wiping out all that came in contact with you. Is this true? No! They thought it would be a great idea to limit the amount of moves you can make to five a round. The hell is up with that? Not to mention that actions within the base factor into that so you can't have someone move into a base and get straight to exploring or anything like that.
Factoring into that, some actions on the overworld have a cooling time. That's right! Sometimes when you do something it will take more than one round to recover. You may think that that would force you to think things through and use tactics but no. It's just stupid for the sake of stupid because most of the time you only have about 5 commanders that are any good anyway and thus have at least one of them on every base you have that can be attacked.
Then there are Open Lots. On these spaces, if you own them, you can build one of a few structures on that spot. However sometimes what you can build there makes no sense! You can build a 'base', and I put quotes on that because the reality is it's supposed to be a graveyard. It's a place that if units pass over them, there is a chance that they will be stopped to face a RANDOM ENCOUNTER!!! I say that not as an iCarly reference but from the fact at how dickish some of these encounters are not to mention how jarring random encounters are to begin with. Most of the time, these encounters will destroy your commanders but the computer seems to do just fine against them.*growl* That being said, you can build other things like hospitals and recruiters but the most hilarious one is the forts. Forts are fun because they are like a free generic armies you don't have to pay and are fully healed at the end of the encounter. If you know what you are doing, you can fight off most people. Not kidding. Best fun ever.^_^
One last thing about the overworld, You make or lose money depending on your bases and how many commanders you have. That is right, you have to manage an empire, your commanders, and your pocket book. Thus why I said earlier that you will only have about 5 commanders that are any good. You really will want that money for later to build up your bases. Trust me, I won't get into it now, but that is mildly important if you want most of your commanders to be properly equipped.
All of that being said, I move onto the actual battles. The concept was simple. Take the idea of RPG stats for the main character, equipment and abilities intact and give them an army of 29 units of a variety of types to factor in tactics and make it unique. The first important question about this brilliant concept is did it work? Sort of yes sort of no. The battles are mainly set on autopilot. You only have a few things you can control. At the beginning of a battle you can decide what formation to use. The only important things this decides is placement of your commander and what percentage of your stats are increased or decreased. This is both important and stupid. IF YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE STATS MAKE THEM MEAN SOMETHING!!! I know it was supposed to be brilliant because you could adapt your stats to a given opponent but at the same time, the more you play through this game the more you realize the only stat you will ever raise during a level up is your strength or intelligence based on what kind of attack your commander uses.
Even more problems exist with the armies themselves. At first, it seems brilliant. Hey, I don't get to tell each one what to do but how bad could it possibly be? If we are are talking about execution, its crap. None of them are intelligent at all. They run straight at the enemy and attack whatever is closest instead of, ya know, THE ENEMY COMMANDER! Your army will destroy every last member of the enemy army before they register they have to destroy the leader. That is the only person you have to kill. That's right, You only have to kill the leader. It doesn't matter and the same is true in reverse. It's not like your men have personality or the will to fight and save their leader. Nope, you run out of HP, battle over.
I think my favorite tactic that seems to be able to handle everything but the boss monsters is spamming super moves until your opponent has no chance to win. You see in this game, based on how much damage you do or recieve your super meter at the bottom of the screen fills up. It only goes up to 3 before stopping. This means you can stock pile 3 super moves. When you realize that a single super move cripples your opponent's entire army and that the bar fills up rather quickly, you will adopt the same tactic. Especially when you find out that if you time the activation of ANYTHING so that your opponent has started their attack but hasn't hit yet, their attack won't count. Oh, they will attack and the game will treat it like they attacked but they will do no damage.
The veteran gamers will say, but Chibi, to take advantage of such a bug would be unfair. This brings me to one very important point. This game is ball-bustingly hard. My rule is if a game wants to play hardball, take advantage of every single advantage you can get your hands on. I am going to give you a simple and true illustration of what the hell I am talking about. In this game, no matter what story you choose, you have to fight a dragon. I don't mean dragon as in Baby Dragos or Wyvern. No, I mean building sized, elemental, people eating, overpowered monsters of people killing death! These things have so much health that even the max number isn't even close to half of their health sometimes.
Most of the time, You will have to send in a sacrificial commander that doesn't mean as much to you, just in case you lose them, just to soften them up so you can actually beat the damn thing. These things are overpowered, unfair and genuinely a problem. When one appears it is usually out of no where in a spot that you didn't expect it and it sends out it's henchmen(not wanting to get into the problems with that part of it alone) to take over a huge chunk of your empire before you can do anything at all. Then when you finally trim them back and corner them, you have to pull out all the stops and hope they don't rip your face off.
This brings me around to my biggest problem with this game. IT'S FREAKING HARD!!!! Everytime you complete whatever the hell goal they put in front of you, they applaud you by throwing another hard as all hell battle at you as if to taunt you. It's sort of like finishing hiking all the way up a mountain and as soon as you get to the top, someone with a beanbag cannon aimed at your balls fires full force and as you are writhing in pain and anger tells you to do it again.
You think I am kidding? In the beginner's story, the EASY story, You know the one with the tutorials, You go along through mildly tough odds until you come to a choice. It's either love or duty. When I first went through I ended up going for duty and when I eventually got my hands on the game again I remembered why. If you choose love, you have to start from scratch with a brand new army and not only do you have to defeat your old army but even some new members to that old army. After that uphill battle they shoot you in the groin by saying, "Good job. Oh, and do you remember that dragon you had to fight earlier that was a pain but not impossible? We are going to throw 5 dragons that are twice or even three times as strong and you have to beat all of them. Good luck, and remember, the strongest of them has no elemental weakness you can take advantage of."
Idea Factory, the makers of this game, are sadistic and brilliant. The animations for the unique super moves and the story is awesome. I love the characters and when you get to know how to play it, it is probably one of the most fun RPGs on the PSP. It hands you nothing. You have to fight it out every step of the way and even though when you realize this is just a game, you feel like you have done nothing, in the moment, you feel acomplished. You feel like even though you were cheap shotted in the tiddlywinks, you man'd up and showed this sadistic game who is boss.
I would suggest any Strategy RPG fans at least try this game, though make sure your PSP is in a shock proof case.
This game tries to take the strategy genre and the rpg genre and mix it with large scale battles not to mention immense attacks. Does it succeed? Well, yes and no. Let's start with the gameplay.
The setup is simple. The map is a series of squares lined up sort of like candyland. there are paths that lead to each of the bases. That being said, each of your commanders has a set amount of spaces they can move. Typical stuff really. You can have on the board over 20 commanders. That being said and adding that it almost operates like Risk, you would think that it would be fantastic but short. You would be able to sweep the entire world map in a single go, wiping out all that came in contact with you. Is this true? No! They thought it would be a great idea to limit the amount of moves you can make to five a round. The hell is up with that? Not to mention that actions within the base factor into that so you can't have someone move into a base and get straight to exploring or anything like that.
Factoring into that, some actions on the overworld have a cooling time. That's right! Sometimes when you do something it will take more than one round to recover. You may think that that would force you to think things through and use tactics but no. It's just stupid for the sake of stupid because most of the time you only have about 5 commanders that are any good anyway and thus have at least one of them on every base you have that can be attacked.
Then there are Open Lots. On these spaces, if you own them, you can build one of a few structures on that spot. However sometimes what you can build there makes no sense! You can build a 'base', and I put quotes on that because the reality is it's supposed to be a graveyard. It's a place that if units pass over them, there is a chance that they will be stopped to face a RANDOM ENCOUNTER!!! I say that not as an iCarly reference but from the fact at how dickish some of these encounters are not to mention how jarring random encounters are to begin with. Most of the time, these encounters will destroy your commanders but the computer seems to do just fine against them.*growl* That being said, you can build other things like hospitals and recruiters but the most hilarious one is the forts. Forts are fun because they are like a free generic armies you don't have to pay and are fully healed at the end of the encounter. If you know what you are doing, you can fight off most people. Not kidding. Best fun ever.^_^
One last thing about the overworld, You make or lose money depending on your bases and how many commanders you have. That is right, you have to manage an empire, your commanders, and your pocket book. Thus why I said earlier that you will only have about 5 commanders that are any good. You really will want that money for later to build up your bases. Trust me, I won't get into it now, but that is mildly important if you want most of your commanders to be properly equipped.
All of that being said, I move onto the actual battles. The concept was simple. Take the idea of RPG stats for the main character, equipment and abilities intact and give them an army of 29 units of a variety of types to factor in tactics and make it unique. The first important question about this brilliant concept is did it work? Sort of yes sort of no. The battles are mainly set on autopilot. You only have a few things you can control. At the beginning of a battle you can decide what formation to use. The only important things this decides is placement of your commander and what percentage of your stats are increased or decreased. This is both important and stupid. IF YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE STATS MAKE THEM MEAN SOMETHING!!! I know it was supposed to be brilliant because you could adapt your stats to a given opponent but at the same time, the more you play through this game the more you realize the only stat you will ever raise during a level up is your strength or intelligence based on what kind of attack your commander uses.
Even more problems exist with the armies themselves. At first, it seems brilliant. Hey, I don't get to tell each one what to do but how bad could it possibly be? If we are are talking about execution, its crap. None of them are intelligent at all. They run straight at the enemy and attack whatever is closest instead of, ya know, THE ENEMY COMMANDER! Your army will destroy every last member of the enemy army before they register they have to destroy the leader. That is the only person you have to kill. That's right, You only have to kill the leader. It doesn't matter and the same is true in reverse. It's not like your men have personality or the will to fight and save their leader. Nope, you run out of HP, battle over.
I think my favorite tactic that seems to be able to handle everything but the boss monsters is spamming super moves until your opponent has no chance to win. You see in this game, based on how much damage you do or recieve your super meter at the bottom of the screen fills up. It only goes up to 3 before stopping. This means you can stock pile 3 super moves. When you realize that a single super move cripples your opponent's entire army and that the bar fills up rather quickly, you will adopt the same tactic. Especially when you find out that if you time the activation of ANYTHING so that your opponent has started their attack but hasn't hit yet, their attack won't count. Oh, they will attack and the game will treat it like they attacked but they will do no damage.
The veteran gamers will say, but Chibi, to take advantage of such a bug would be unfair. This brings me to one very important point. This game is ball-bustingly hard. My rule is if a game wants to play hardball, take advantage of every single advantage you can get your hands on. I am going to give you a simple and true illustration of what the hell I am talking about. In this game, no matter what story you choose, you have to fight a dragon. I don't mean dragon as in Baby Dragos or Wyvern. No, I mean building sized, elemental, people eating, overpowered monsters of people killing death! These things have so much health that even the max number isn't even close to half of their health sometimes.
Most of the time, You will have to send in a sacrificial commander that doesn't mean as much to you, just in case you lose them, just to soften them up so you can actually beat the damn thing. These things are overpowered, unfair and genuinely a problem. When one appears it is usually out of no where in a spot that you didn't expect it and it sends out it's henchmen(not wanting to get into the problems with that part of it alone) to take over a huge chunk of your empire before you can do anything at all. Then when you finally trim them back and corner them, you have to pull out all the stops and hope they don't rip your face off.
This brings me around to my biggest problem with this game. IT'S FREAKING HARD!!!! Everytime you complete whatever the hell goal they put in front of you, they applaud you by throwing another hard as all hell battle at you as if to taunt you. It's sort of like finishing hiking all the way up a mountain and as soon as you get to the top, someone with a beanbag cannon aimed at your balls fires full force and as you are writhing in pain and anger tells you to do it again.
You think I am kidding? In the beginner's story, the EASY story, You know the one with the tutorials, You go along through mildly tough odds until you come to a choice. It's either love or duty. When I first went through I ended up going for duty and when I eventually got my hands on the game again I remembered why. If you choose love, you have to start from scratch with a brand new army and not only do you have to defeat your old army but even some new members to that old army. After that uphill battle they shoot you in the groin by saying, "Good job. Oh, and do you remember that dragon you had to fight earlier that was a pain but not impossible? We are going to throw 5 dragons that are twice or even three times as strong and you have to beat all of them. Good luck, and remember, the strongest of them has no elemental weakness you can take advantage of."
Idea Factory, the makers of this game, are sadistic and brilliant. The animations for the unique super moves and the story is awesome. I love the characters and when you get to know how to play it, it is probably one of the most fun RPGs on the PSP. It hands you nothing. You have to fight it out every step of the way and even though when you realize this is just a game, you feel like you have done nothing, in the moment, you feel acomplished. You feel like even though you were cheap shotted in the tiddlywinks, you man'd up and showed this sadistic game who is boss.
I would suggest any Strategy RPG fans at least try this game, though make sure your PSP is in a shock proof case.
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