First Impressions - Metroid: Other M

As I dusted off my trusty Magic 8-Ball to peek into the future of what Metroid: Other M had in store for me, I was not prepared for the rather unorthodox answer that awaited me.

“Man, you better hang on, ‘cause this is going to be one rocky ride.”

I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen that come up as an answer before.

The all-knowing plastic sphere was right, though. Other M has been tossing me around like a roller coaster, with thrilling highs that kept me begging for more and terrifying lows that left me wondering whether I wanted to keep going at all. 

To put it simply however, it can pretty much be boiled down to one simple statement. When the game shuts the hell up and lets Samus do her Samus thing, it’s a mighty good time. When it attempts to derail the proceedings with needless cutscenes, horrible voice acting, and bad writing (none of which you can skip, by the way) things go sour really damn fast. And I do mean fast. 

After 15 minutes with Other M I wanted to put it down and never so much as see it ever again. If the disc happened to end up on fire and at the bottom of the ocean being eaten by whales or something too I wouldn’t have complained. What I’m saying is that Other M makes a horrifyingly off-putting first impression.

Click to read more ...

First Impressions: Arc Rise Fantasia

First impressions are important. They let you know what you’re in for. They’re even more vital when you’ve just blown $60 on a game and you need to know whether or not to mourn the loss of your poor cash. In the First Impressions series of articles, I’ll spend an hour with a new game and document my experience. One hour is hardly enough to fully judge a game, but to partially judge it? It’ll do just fine.

-------------------------

Not all beginnings are easily deciphered. Some experiences exude a mysterious aura that leaves one’s thoughts clouded. Not all things show their true selves immediately upon first viewing. Not every facet of an experience is always displayed at first glance, leaving more to be discovered with the passage of time.

Final Fantasy XIII, for instance, hides the fact that it apparently becomes a competently constructed game if only you sink 30 hours into it first. Limbo, without uttering so much as a word, captivates you while leaving you totally on your own to figure out what kind of experience you’re actually in for. 

Other beginnings are more obvious. The first time a character uttered a single sentence in Arc Rise Fantasia I knew exactly what I was in for. Every cutscene, battle, town, and dialog afterward simply reinforced my initial impression. This isn’t a game that will perplex your poor brain as you desperately struggle with the quandary of whether to spend more time with it or not. I can guarantee that within five minutes of picking up a controller you’ll know whether this game is for you.

By the second sentence of dialog, I, for instance, had discovered that I was not one of the small percentage of gamers who could tolerate Arc Rise Fantasia. 

This game seems to be made for a mysterious type of gamer who may or may not actually exist. It is carefully constructed to be of maximum appeal to those whose enjoyment of a game is directly proportional to the number of terrible cliches it contains. A game consisting of nothing but a series of these cliches must, by way of logical conclusion, be aiming to sell itself to those who love a nice trite line of dialog and favor predictability above all else.

At the least, one has to credit Arc Rise Fantasia for not limiting its mastery of cliches simply to overdone plot constructions or familiar gameplay elements. It extends its reach to a far more, shall we say, “meta” level; all the way to the quality of the experience itself.

Click to read more ...

Best of 2009 - Honorable Mentions, Part One

And now for those unfortunate games that just didn't quite cut the mustard. In some alternate universe these could be just as deserving of a slot in the top ten, but for some reason they got left behind. They are grouped here so they can at least get some shot at the recognition they so clearly deserve.

Fallout 3 DLC

The elusive definition of a “good value” in gaming is getting trickier and trickier to define in these times of inevitable downloadable content, dirt cheap iPhone games, and digital distribution that sometimes costs inexplicably as much as a physical product.

I have not lost sight of the fact that the downloadable expansions for Fallout 3 have cost me nearly as much as buying the game new in the first place. This on top of the fact that I paid extra for the Limited/Collector’s/Special/Suckers edition, which is an entirely different maddening variable in the value equation.

Click to read more ...

Best of 2009 - Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

Putting this list together has truly made me realize what a good year this has been for gaming, which is surprising considering that my reaction otherwise might have been to suggest that 2009 was a mediocre year.

Nowhere was this proliferation of terrific games more obvious, and more troublesome, than when attempting to choose the candidate for this very entry. I reserved it for those games I played only at the tail end of the year. 

The problem was, I was hit with more last-minute awesomeness than I expected. Some truly deserving games were left behind, relegated, perhaps unfairly, to the Honorable Mentions category. 

The other two candidates, New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Borderlands, are both safer choices. I picked both up expecting them to be fun and they were. There were no surprises with either, but they were both quite fun.

But Silent Hill: Shattered Memories ultimately stuck with me the most because, frankly, it surprised me. In a year of sure things, Shattered Memories was an unexpected pleasure; a nice, refreshing dose of unique. 

Click to read more ...