Monday, September 23, 2002

Review of Kingdom Hearts for PS2     Publisher: Squaresoft/Disney Interactive     Developer: Squaresoft/Disney Interactive     Genre: Action/RPG     # Of Players: 1 When most people think of the biggest names in animation and videogames allying, the word “unholy alliance” comes to mind.  But these two mighty forces and unusual partners come together to create one of the more original adventures in a long, long time.  You are Sora, a young boy with a need to explore and see what’s out there, along with your friends Riku and Kairi.  But when you are about to leave your tropical paradise, strange dark beings attack the island and you are pulled out of your world.  At the same time, in the Disney universe, King Mickey has gone missing, and his top aides, General Goofy and Court Magician Donald, intend to find him because evil beings only known as “The Heartless” are not only stealing people’s hearts, they are destroying entire worlds.  Disney & Square have made an extremely unique and original as well as grand adventure.  Unfortunately, as much as there is to like, there are a lot of little things (and a couple of big things) to dislike, which keep it from being an all time classic. Graphics: Each world is wonderfully represented, and faithfully recreated, as well as the characters within it.  I hate Winnie the Pooh, but I loved being in the 100-acre wood and all the great places of past great Disney movies like Alice in Wonderland and Aladdin.  The animation is top-notch all the way, and there is never the slightest hint of pop-up, or glitching, or slow-down.  My only thing is (and I’m not going to knock the game for it because I don’t know if it’s even possible), that all the characters are polygonal, and it would’ve been really cool if the Disney characters were cel-shaded or hand-drawn while the FF characters in the game were polygonal like they normally are. Sound: The voice acting in this game is completely dead-on.  You get top notch-talent like Haley Joel Osment & David Boreanaz, as well as most of the people who did the voice work for the actual movies to do it hear again.  Sound effects are not completely perfect, but work really well for the whimsical atmosphere of the game.  And every single area has really appropriate theme music.  It’s great hear the “under the sea” instrumental in Atlantica, and even hearing the theme from the Mickey Mouse club in Mickey’s castle. Gameplay: Ok, let’s get what I don’t like out of the way first, because there is a fair amount.  The menus are manageable, but a little clunky.  I don’t like the outdated idea of only being able to equip a few restorative items for battle when I’ve got a ton in stock.  The hotkeys are a great idea, but I can’t hotkey using items or summons, just normal magic.  I don’t like that you can’t keep party members, as it would’ve been really cool (just imagine having Tarzan in Agrabah).  The worlds are kind of small in my opinion, limited to a small number of areas. The plot for each world follows more or less what the movie is based on and it would be cooler if it were a new adventure in that world.  And I’m not to keen on how the lock-on feature works, since it’s essential for being good at casting spells.  But these are all very minor quibbles, more preferences than actual problems.  There are two very big problems, however-the shooter levels and the camera.  To get to each world, you fly on a gummi ship while avoiding obstacles and shooting down heartless ships.  You can customize and build your own ship, which is nice, but it doesn’t matter cause the shooter levels are some of the worst things ever conceived.  Space invaders is more complex and more fun, this I consider boring crap that I have to bother with in order to get to the next world.  Thank god you can get a warp engine so you can skip the levels to places you’ve already visited.  And then there is the camera.  This is possibly one of (if not the worst) cameras I have ever seen in a video game.  Your view gets obscured 85% of the time, maybe 90% in battle.  Surprisingly, this doesn’t interfere with gameplay all that badly (you can never die from missing a jump, for instance), but it’s @$%^##%&$%^#&$$^%#&^$^%$^ ANNOYING!!!!!!!     Now, onto the good stuff.  Actual fighting in the game is so fun that often I do it a lot more than is necessary, the battles are extremely creative, intense and just a blast.  Your companions are computer-controlled, but they can more than handle themselves most of the time (although in my experience, Donald isn’t particularly useful in boss battles).  The game adds a great twist to the summon feature, and there are lots of interesting and fun mini-quests and mini-games throughout.  Bosses are extremely creative, and the game is just genuinely challenging without being cheap, which many games fail to do these days. Features: Well, you can choose between normal and expert difficulty, but nothing much other than that features-wise. Funfactor: Despite overlooking a couple of major league (and a lot of minor league) problems that really, really, REALLY should’ve been fixed, Square and Disney have undeniably created something absolutely magical in this game.  The best games in the world are ones that are just a grand adventure, and that’s exactly what Kingdom Hearts is.  This is the first rpg since FF 9 that I can really see myself just going through over and over again, and in the end I wish there was a lot more of it (no Robin Hood, no Black Cauldron, no Pixar-based land, no Emperor’s New Groove or Atlantis, hopefully there will be a sequel with a lot of the new worlds because I can barely drag myself away from this fantastically fun game just to write the review (and fix the camera and drop the stupid gummi ship!). --Final Scores— Graphics: 10-Perferctly capture the Disney worlds and characters, but still has that Square edge to it. Sound: 10-Great music and top-notch voice casting (possible the best yet in a game). Gameplay: 7.0-Great combat, but shooter levels suck, camera needs lots of work, and lots of really minor quibbles. Funfactor: 8.5-A truly original adventure, a great experience, and arguably the best rpg released this year (although granted, the only serious competition out right now on any console is Morrowind). 8:53:13 AM    comment []

Review of Animal Crossing for Gamecube Publisher: Nintendo Developer: Nintendo Genre: Simulation # Of Players: 1     Animal Crossing is what I’d describe as sort of a cross between The Sims and some really kiddie cartoon show they would show on PBS.  There is no real goal in this game.  You live a life.  You get a house (which you have to work off a mortgage on initially), which you can improve.  You do odd jobs, plant things, and your general goal is to make your house (and possibly the town) the best it can be.  With its extremely kiddie cute looks & sounds, it takes a man at least somewhere secure in his masculinity to really pick it up and give it a real shot.  It takes a man fully secure in his masculinity to admit he likes this game.  And I, for one, can say I truly enjoyed this wonderful experience of a game. Graphics: This is a wonderfully colored game, with distinct looks for days, nights, and seasons, and holidays (I love the how the town looks on Xmas).  The town is very creative and everything is always smooth.  But nothing can alter the fact that this game looks like it was drawn by a 6-year old as far as pure graphics quality goes. Sound: Music is appropriately cheerful (maybe a little too cheerful for some) for the game.  Voice acting is annoying squabbling of the characters; luckily you can turn it off completely.  Effects are way lacking, but they aren’t really an issue in this game.  Gameplay: Again, this is basically a kid-friendly version of The Sims.  You don’t date, you don’t need to eat or sleep, and technically, you don’t really need a job.  But you do need money if you actually want to buy stuff.  But there is just so much to do.  You can dig for treasure, catch fish or bugs, run errands, decorate your house, change the town around to what you like.  You keep up relationships with the critters in the town, and they all have extremely distinct and amusing personalities (my personal fav being Biscuit, who is an obvious stoner, all he does is sleep and eat, and he never works).  And time really matters, I moved my internal clock three months forward, and there were roaches in my house, and people barely remembered me since I hadn’t been there that long.  Other people with their own game can visit your town, or live in your town (and steal your stuff!), and you can find (or earn through various jobs) old NES classics like Super Mario Bros., Balloon Fighter, and so on, and I haven’t listed half the stuff you can do (especially since jobs change over time). Features: GBA connectivity to add new items, nes games, and tons of other stuff.  You can use your character to visit other towns. And anybody playing on the same memory card as you can live in your town (which can make for some real interesting towns if 4 different people are playing).  I’m not going to knock the game for it, but online play would’ve been extremely cool. Funfactor: This is the closest thing on consoles you can get to The Sims, but calling it a mere Sims clone is wrong.  What it does is take the real basic idea behind the Sims of living your everyday life and gives a very unique spin and flavor to it.  It’s a fun game to play by yourself, but it’s a complete blast if you’ve got friends who also play it either at your house or at their own place.  The sheer amount of fun stuff you can do makes sure that it never gets particularly dull, and this is one of a handful of games in history where I can safely say the replay value is nearly infinite as the true purpose is to just keep playing, playing, and playing some more.  This is truly the best game on Gamecube this year. --Final Scores— Graphics: 4.0-Hey, I like the colors and style, but it doesn’t change the fact that I drew stuff like this when I was in kindergarten. Sound: 5.0-Music is appropriate, but still a little too cutesy, and “voices” are annoying, with a pretty big lack in sound effects. Gameplay: 10-Just so much never-ending fun stuff to do that just keeps changing as you go along, and all those cool NES classics! Features: 10-With being able to visit other people’s towns, and having players live in the same town, GBA connectivity that is used incredibly well, and all the cool stuff you can find is awesome. Funfactor: 9.0-Simply one of the best games this year on Gamecube or any other platform. 8:46:05 AM    comment []

Review of The Scorpion King: Rise of the Akkadian for Gamecube     Publisher: Universal Interactive     Developer: Universal Interactive     Genre: Action     # Of Players: 1     In this prequel to the big hit movie, you play as a young Mathayus, who as the game starts, is still training to be an assassin.  But of course you end up on a quest to save your people from evil forces, and ultimately, the world (as usual).  Universal goes a long way in getting the look, sound, and feel of the world of the Scorpion King right.  It’s too bad that obviously left them no time to work on gameplay. Graphics: Well, Mathayus looks pretty much like Mathayus, and the levels have a pretty good Egyptian look to them.  It looks nice, but hardly taxes the Gamecube’s power, as none of the levels are extremely lively, and some of the animation is a little stiff when it comes to fighting. Sound: Rock is doing his own voice, which is great. The rest of the cast does a great job as well, possibly giving one of the better voice-acted games on Gamecube.  Music is nicely done and appropriate, but not quite up to the scale of an epic adventure.   Sound effects are actually fairly good as well, you’ll hear guys scream, fall, pots breaking, etc. Gameplay: There are some really good ideas here.  You have a really wide variety of moves that all fit the character, and I like that you can build up your strength and stamina.  But levels are really limited in interactivity overall (yeah, I can pick up some pots, oh joy!), and enemy A.I. is extremely cheap and stupid.  You can’t target enemies, so occasionally, you’ll hit someone you didn’t intend to.  And since you fight multiple enemies, they get plenty of cheap hits in.  Overall, the combat just feels incredibly clunky. Features: Well, the best thing is the bonus materials that you can earn.  Artwork, videos, and some other really cool stuff. Funfactor: It’s really too bad that Universal didn’t spend any time tweaking the gameplay, because this could’ve been a great action game.  Instead, we are left with a merely mediocre title which might be good for a weekend rental (or for those scary Rock fans who are truly hardcore and need to have everything he’s ever worked on).  Still, that makes it better than 90% of the licensed crap out there. --Final Scores— Graphics: 7.5-Rock looks great, and the game has a nice style to it, but animation is a bit stiff and it doesn’t tax the hardware. Sound: 8.0-Nice music, really solid voice acting, and fairly good special effects. Gameplay: 4.5-Some nice ideas marred by a poorly done combat system. Features: 7.5-Plenty of cool bonus material to unlock. Funfactor: 6.5-Not a horrible game, but could’ve been a really good one if a little more effort was put in. 8:40:43 AM    comment []

Review of Blade II for Xbox     Publisher: Activision     Developer: Mucky Foot     Genre: Action     # Of Players: 1 Based on the hit sequel now out on DVD; wait a minute this isn’t based on the sequel!  It takes place after the second movie; and the guy trying to pass for Blade has only one resemblance to ultra cool Wesley snipes: the fact that he is also black.  Oh well, anyways, this game has you as the badass vamp hunter once again hunting down a gang of vamps who are up to something rotten once again.  Unfortunately, this poorly conceived action wannabe can go right in the bargain bin with most of the other licensed crap out there. Graphics: Oh, where to begin.  Low color, poorly textured areas with little to no detail, and faux interactive environments (meaning you can’t use or break everything in sight).  Blade doesn’t look anything like any previous versions, of course, it’s hard to tell since he’s so poorly animated, and missing so many frames.  The enemies all look extremely stiff and poor as well. Sound: Crap music, god-awful voice acting, only a couple of canned lines for in-game play.  Effects are lacking as well, because not every hit registers a sound, and effect sounds like explosions are incredibly lacking in noise level, and even the guns have fairly generic sounds. Gameplay: This is where Blade makes it worst sin.  It tries to do something original by having the right analog perform your martial arts moves. It doesn’t work.  You can’t lock on to anything, and even though you use the left analog for running, it works like Resident Evil controls, which massive hinders combat.  Your moves are extremely weak, and collision detection is pretty bad itself, as often I won’t hit the guy even though it looks like I did.  I can’t use my kick ass sword except when the game tells me to.  Gunning enemies down is fun, but your bullets aren’t unlimited, which really limits the fun. Features: Well, you can watch a preview of the movie this game isn’t based on, but other than that, there doesn’t seem to be much. Funfactor: Activision should feel ashamed of themselves, especially after doing such a good job on the Spider-Man game.  Every bit of this feels like no real effort was put into this.  Maybe I’m being a bit harsher than I should, but I don’t care because I am sick and tired of perfectly good licenses going to such a bad waste.  I never thought I’d be saying this, but everybody should look at Buffy from EA (mainly cause I genuinely dislike EA) for how to truly do a license justice, especially in presentation. --Final Scores— Graphics: 3.5-Is this Blade? I can’t really tell with all these horrible textures and animations, Sound: 2.0-Bad techno-punk, horrid voice acting, poor effects, nuff said.  Gameplay: 2.5-Just a horribly conceived battle-system with god-awful collision detection. Features: 5.5-You can watch a preview of a much better movie that has the bad luck of sharing its name with this game. Funfactor: 3.0-I always wondered, now I know that Buffy can kick Blade’s ass (hell, this Blade’s ass I could kick). 8:36:40 AM    comment []

Review of Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever An elite escort carrying the head of the DIA’s (it’s something like the Canadian FBI) son is brutally attacked and the son is taken hostage by former agent Sever (Lucy Liu).  The FBI calls in a retired agent who used to be one of their best, Ecks (Antonio Banderas) in order to track her down, because she may have vital info on a new type of assassination tool, and she knows about Ecks’ wife, whom he thought had died in a car explosion.     This is what I’d call an attempt at a super-action drama, as there is no real levity in this movie, and that’s one of many problems with it.  The action sequences are all paint by numbers, with no style or flair to them.  There is some attempt at style, with slowdown and varying angles, but it makes no sense why that’s being done.  Ray Park, who is known for his great stunt work as Darth Maul & Toad, is almost completely wasted, but still provides the only interesting fight in the movie (which isn’t until the last 15 minutes).  The main villain is a very poor James Caan imitator (Caan did a much better job as a similar character in Eraser).  Now, normally this seems like the type of role Liu is used to, as she’s supposed to be cold, but for some reason, this time she doesn’t know the difference between cold and no emotion whatsoever.  Banderas does a decent job portraying his emotions, but you don’t really see why he’s the “best”, especially since Liu kicks his ass with ease.  And again, there is no sense of fun in this film; it’s just one unhappy action moment after another.  For films of this style to work, the characters need to actually enjoy kicking ass, and the only one in this entire movie who actually seems to enjoy it is Ray Park (and again, he only gets one fight in the entire film). Final Grade: D- 8:28:56 AM    comment []