Some games
Apr. 29th, 2011 02:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amethyst73So, I'm something like 11 or 12 hours into Okamiden. What do I think of it?
To a very great extent, it's more Okami 1.5 than 2.0. So far the geography is almost identical to the previous game, though small details of individual locations have changed and there's a new town off Shinsu Field. The dungeons so far have been largely reimagined - Hana Valley had the same painting puzzles as last time, but the layout and the boss were new. Using the stylus to do the brush techniques feels great, even better than the Wiimote did. For the most part, it's a great deal of fun and I'm really enjoying it. More of the same is generally no bad thing with Okamiden.
There are some minor changes. The partner mechanic is pretty cool, thought it's been used exclusively in dungeons so far. Presumably to save on memory, you cannot draw a sun in any sky you see, only when prompted, and the waterspout technique seems to be similarly limited to areas that specifically require it and in battle. Ink pots do not automatically refill with time, but are instead replenished via scattered pots and the small spawned monsters in dungeons. Money is gained only in battle, never from pots.
Save points, though, the game could really have done without. What is this, 1990? Furthermore, the second dungeon had one save point at the beginning and one save point at the end... and a whole hour of gameplay in the middle. What if I hadn't been sitting at home with an hour to devote to gameplay??? (Even then, I would have appreciated being able to save, oh, 45 minutes in. I was really peeved that I was forced to continue playing - it's the same major problem that I have with Metroid Prime.) The next dungeon, thankfully, was set up as a series of loops which all branched off pretty close to the savepoint. Also, what's with only allowing one save file??!? If Phantom Hourglass can let two people play the game on a single cartridge, so should any other adventure game on the DS.
Oh.. and I've been told that there's a lot of digging going on over at the ancient ruins. Perhaps they've improved things so that they're more manageable?
The game can't quite seem to make up its mind what audience it's looking for. It's visually adorable, all its main characters are children (of gods or humans), and many of the puzzles and boss fights are merely long rather than being hard. The first boss was surprisingly difficult in terms of figuring out exactly what you had to do when to beat it, however; I died the first time I tried! Perhaps an 8-year-old would have figured it out faster than me, who knows?
I also completed Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective earlier this week. I really enjoyed it! Both the story and the gameplay are interesting. The story, in fact, is its great strength: while I had a pretty good idea what the identity of the main character was some chapters before the end when All Was Revealed, there were still surprises in store through the lengthy - but very sweet - final chapter and closing credits. The gameplay involves zapping your ghost self into the cores of manipulable objects, and generally setting things up such that a live character doesn't end up dead. Once I'd played the first couple of chapters, I found the remaining puzzles pretty straightforward.
One small problem that the game has is that it doesn't really ramp up in difficulty over the course of the game, but instead has these occasional steep hillocks before going back to the previous level. One chapter had me scratching my head for a week!
The other problem with the game is that it felt rather short, but then I use the Phoenix Wright games as a benchmark, and those are 15 hours and more. This was probably about ten hours long, but it was a quite enjoyable ten hours... and it looks like a sequel might just be possible, so yay. Recommended for story and puzzle lovers.
For my next story-with-puzzles game, I got my hands on a copy of Professor Layton and the Curious Village via EBay the other week. I'm barely into it, but it looks promising. Good thing: The voice acting during the movies is really excellent! Bad thing: Touch screen controls only. Can't I have buttons for the multiple-guess questions? Why is the letter and number recognition so poor? For your entertainment, Penny Arcade's take on Professor Layton (NSFW).
Happy Friday, and have a good weekend!
To a very great extent, it's more Okami 1.5 than 2.0. So far the geography is almost identical to the previous game, though small details of individual locations have changed and there's a new town off Shinsu Field. The dungeons so far have been largely reimagined - Hana Valley had the same painting puzzles as last time, but the layout and the boss were new. Using the stylus to do the brush techniques feels great, even better than the Wiimote did. For the most part, it's a great deal of fun and I'm really enjoying it. More of the same is generally no bad thing with Okamiden.
There are some minor changes. The partner mechanic is pretty cool, thought it's been used exclusively in dungeons so far. Presumably to save on memory, you cannot draw a sun in any sky you see, only when prompted, and the waterspout technique seems to be similarly limited to areas that specifically require it and in battle. Ink pots do not automatically refill with time, but are instead replenished via scattered pots and the small spawned monsters in dungeons. Money is gained only in battle, never from pots.
Save points, though, the game could really have done without. What is this, 1990? Furthermore, the second dungeon had one save point at the beginning and one save point at the end... and a whole hour of gameplay in the middle. What if I hadn't been sitting at home with an hour to devote to gameplay??? (Even then, I would have appreciated being able to save, oh, 45 minutes in. I was really peeved that I was forced to continue playing - it's the same major problem that I have with Metroid Prime.) The next dungeon, thankfully, was set up as a series of loops which all branched off pretty close to the savepoint. Also, what's with only allowing one save file??!? If Phantom Hourglass can let two people play the game on a single cartridge, so should any other adventure game on the DS.
Oh.. and I've been told that there's a lot of digging going on over at the ancient ruins. Perhaps they've improved things so that they're more manageable?
The game can't quite seem to make up its mind what audience it's looking for. It's visually adorable, all its main characters are children (of gods or humans), and many of the puzzles and boss fights are merely long rather than being hard. The first boss was surprisingly difficult in terms of figuring out exactly what you had to do when to beat it, however; I died the first time I tried! Perhaps an 8-year-old would have figured it out faster than me, who knows?
I also completed Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective earlier this week. I really enjoyed it! Both the story and the gameplay are interesting. The story, in fact, is its great strength: while I had a pretty good idea what the identity of the main character was some chapters before the end when All Was Revealed, there were still surprises in store through the lengthy - but very sweet - final chapter and closing credits. The gameplay involves zapping your ghost self into the cores of manipulable objects, and generally setting things up such that a live character doesn't end up dead. Once I'd played the first couple of chapters, I found the remaining puzzles pretty straightforward.
One small problem that the game has is that it doesn't really ramp up in difficulty over the course of the game, but instead has these occasional steep hillocks before going back to the previous level. One chapter had me scratching my head for a week!
The other problem with the game is that it felt rather short, but then I use the Phoenix Wright games as a benchmark, and those are 15 hours and more. This was probably about ten hours long, but it was a quite enjoyable ten hours... and it looks like a sequel might just be possible, so yay. Recommended for story and puzzle lovers.
For my next story-with-puzzles game, I got my hands on a copy of Professor Layton and the Curious Village via EBay the other week. I'm barely into it, but it looks promising. Good thing: The voice acting during the movies is really excellent! Bad thing: Touch screen controls only. Can't I have buttons for the multiple-guess questions? Why is the letter and number recognition so poor? For your entertainment, Penny Arcade's take on Professor Layton (NSFW).
Happy Friday, and have a good weekend!
