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October, 2018:

Review – Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance (GBA)

Konami – GBA- 1 Player

Itching for more Game Boy Castlevania action after completing Circle of the Moon, I set out to find a copy of the Castlevania Double Pack.  This is a repackaging of Harmony of Dissonance and Aria of Sorrow onto one Game Boy Advance cart.  Both games are complete and there isn’t any extras so I’lm just going to review them as separate games.

Since Harmony comes first in release order, I’ll start with it.  It is however the third game I played through.  I started it second but after about five minutes of play I couldn’t stand it and decided to give Aria of Sorrow a go.  I can’t really place why, but I just don’t care much for this game.  One major gripe is the controls.  Most Symphony style Castlevania games have a “Back dash” button.  This one has a “Dash Left” and “Dash Right” via the L and R buttons.  While this almost seems intuitive since it means always dashing in one direction, when you’re used to always dashing backwards with one button no matter which direction your sprite is facing, it becomes a problem.

That seems a bit confusing.  Ok, traditionally, if you’re facing “left” and press “back dash”, you slide backwards, to the right.  This is regardless of which button is assigned to back dash.  With the new system, if you’re facing left, and press the L button, you dash forward, press the R button and dash backwards, if you’re facing right, L makes you dash backwards, and R makes you dash forwards.  Anyway, it really screws with your head when you’re just trying to dash somewhere and you keep changing direction.

The next issue is the graphics.  They are just plain huge and ugly.  They tried to make them colorful and flashy but it just ends up being kind of a mess.  Also, many of the enemies have different looks than one might expect them to.  First rule of sequels, if you’re recycling enemies, make them resemble the same type of enemy from previous games.  You can update the look somewhat but a previously fat heavily armored “Armor” enemy shouldn’t suddenly be tall and lanky.

Also what’s up with Juste’s constant glow.  He’s also too huge for the screen.  Actually it’s possible he’s not any larger than our other protagonists but I just found he seems slightly too large, especially for the small GBA screen.

Anyway, this game uses a new magic system as well.  You gain magic books based on elemental properties as you progress.  These books combine with your traditional sub weapons (knife, axe etc) to create a more powerful “Item Crush” style attack.  The problem with this system is that you’re limited to one type of sub item at a time.  Finding the better items isn’t always easy and occasionally you can accidentally pick up another item and loose your useful one.  The result is that you’ll pretty much just end up using one or two of these abilities ever (generally the most useful are the rotating shield ones).

Also, your only weapon is the whip.  While this was also true in CotM, it would have been nice to see the return of Symphony’s multi weapon system.  Instead of new weapons, you equip your whip with various stones to give it additional powers.  Essentially it makes the whip a little stronger.

The primary saving grace for this game is the plot, which is actually pretty decent, even if it does come off as a rehash of Castlevania 2.  There is a bit of a twist fairly early in the game involving the castle itself that is pretty well done.  Also the plot points surrounding Maxim are rather intrigue, though really obvious once you realize what’s going on.

As far as new school Castlevania goes, I’m going to have to rank this one at the bottom of the barrel.  It’s fun for many of the reasons Symphony and Circle were fun, but at the same time it all around feels like a huge rip off from lots of previous Castlevania games.  While I wouldn’t go out of my way to find a copy of this game, if you can get the Double Pack with Aria then it’s well worth it.

Transformers – Studio Series – Black Out

As sort of a last hurrah for the Michal Bay Transformers series, which is effectively done, Hasbro has been doing a sort of “greatest hits” line themed around the movies called Studio Series.  It’s not a bunch of re-releases though, it’s new molds of most of the figures, with an emphasis on Robot Mode Scale.  It’s also a way for Hasbro to give us better versions of a lot of characters who aren’t named Bumblebee or Optimus Prime.  Often in the case of movie toys, for the sake of spoilers, toy companies end up working from pre production art and general descriptions or stills.  They need to have the toys out when the movie releases, so they are working on the toys before the final movie vision is in place.  So in the end, things don’t always end up being a perfect representation.  Studio Series goes back to fix some of these issues.

The original Black Out toy from the first movie way back in 2007, isn’t really a bad toy, or a bad iteration of the character.  His main offense is that he’s kind of too small.  Black Out is one of the largest characters across all of the movies, and his Voyager toy isn’t awful, but it doesn’t really give off the proper huge vibes he deserves.  For Studio Series, Blackout gets a Leader sized toy.  The only other Leader Class figure so far is Grimlock from Age of Extinction.

He is definitely a nice size for Studio series at this scale, though he is actually quite a bit smaller than Leader figures from the Generations lines (Currently Power of the Primes) and even previous movie figures.  Leader Class Blackout is noticeably smaller than Leader Class Starscream from the previous movie lines, for example.  If you’re a real stickler for scale, Blackout is still going to be too small to go with a lot of the previous movie Transformers.

Blackout is still a pretty nice looking Transformer though.  He is full of the little greebley bits that really made the live action style what it was during the Bay era.  There are a surprising amount of little tab places on the fold over parts as well, particularly in his arms and shoulders.  The whole robot doesn’t really look solid, but it is.  I have had a little bit of trouble with one leg popping off the mushroom peg joint when turning it, it goes back on, but it’s kind of an issue.  All of the little bits hanging off everywhere also tend to hinder articulation a lot.  He has plenty of joints, but he can’t really use all of them.  He also is pretty back heavy due to his backpack, which doesn’t help when trying to balance any poses.  Probably the last major gripe about his little claw hands, which have no way or rotating them to do anything besides look like little flippers hanging off his arms.  He has thumbs and everything, but the greebles and lack of wrists just makes them useless.

One final note of worry on the robot mode, the flat part of the feet are made up of two panels that later make up the sides of the helicopter tail.  I seriously worry that these panels will end up scraped up and nasty looking after being used as feet, over time.

Transformation leans back into the complexity of the early movie lines as well, which will be a turn off for some people, and probably most kids.  There is a lot of “do this in this order” and “position this just right” going on with panels and whatnot that need to properly mush together.  It’s not a real hard transformation, it just can be tricky in getting everything massaged into place.  Also, I found the joint holding the pelvis and back together on mine to be extremely tight.  I knew it needed to separate and flip up, but it required enough force to free it that it made me uncomfortable pulling on it and I was worried it might break.

The helicopter itself is very nice, it’s appropriately large as well, almost 12 inches long.  Like his 2007 version, Blackout includes a small Scorponok figure and like the 2007 figure, the Scorponok can be inserted into the tail area of Blackout’s vehicle.  There isn’t really much else to the helicopter, there isn’t any spring loaded helicopter gimmick or missile launchers, it’s just a nice looking military chopper.

Ultimately, I feel like Blackout is a pretty cool sort of display piece, maybe not a super great toy.  He looks really good in both modes, but the joint issues and complex transformation make his playability kind of weak.  Also, the price tag of Leader class figures at $50 USD frankly.  This is more of a personal complaint with the latest trends of Transformers pricing though.

Review – Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (GBA)

Konami – GBA – 1 Player

Castlevania is a game series I haven’t always cared much for. The early games were just plain too difficult for my tastes. If I was going to play a tough platform game I’d play something fun and fast like Blaster Master or Ninja Gaiden. After many recommendations I picked up a copy of Symphony of the Night. It languished for years, un-played, on my game shelf. I’d never been a big fan of the whole “horror/gothic” thing, why would I want to play a game full of it?

I then of course played Symphony and loved every minute of it. This sort of side scrolling action game just isn’t made anymore on these next-gen systems. It’s all about 3D! Sadly, Symphony left me wanting more. Armed with my trusty Game Boy Advance, I managed to find more with Castlevania: Circle of the Moon. 2D is all but dead on the home console but it’s still pushing it self out on the Portable system.

Fortunately, Konami realized the popularity of the new format used in Symphony and continued the new exploration and RPG style elements from SotN into its Game Boy series of Castlevania games. This installment takes us back to the whip thrashing heroes of the older games with out hero, Nathan Belmont, err… Nathan Graves. Nathan sets out with his companions Morris and Hugh Baldwin (No relation to the actor) to slay the newly resurrected Dracula. There’s pretty much only one staple for the Castlevania series, and that’s the fact that Dracula is always pulling the strings SOMEHOW and is pretty much always the final boss. If you didn’t finish by killing Dracula, you’re probably not done yet or you got a “bad ending”.

Gameplay is pretty comparable to Symphony. In this game you’re stuck with using the whip for the entire game however. To help out though you collect DSS (Duel Setup System) cards. These cards are themed around mythical animals and gods and are combined for varying themed effects. For example, combining a Flame based Salamander card with the whip enhancing Mercury card will give you a flaming whip. The Earth based Golum card with Mercury gives an longer earth based whip. At the same time combining either of these animal cards with say, the Jupiter based recovery card will cause Fire or Earth damage to heal you. Only two cards, one from each set, can be used at a time though so you’ll find yourself often switching and strategizing. The cards are obtained randomly from enemies and can be a bit of a challenge to collect.

Still, you’ll end up using the same half dozen combinations for most of the game. A lot of them are mostly useless, especially the projectiles and special whips. I found only the Earth whip to be of any true use since it has a longer reach. This lets you hit many enemies before they get too close and start attacking. Hit, not kill, mind you. Most of the enemies take about twice as many hits as should really be necessary to kill them. I find the hits tended to decrease by one for each level gained but near the end of the game the experience necessary to level becomes astronomically too high. I believe while I was “power leveling” I figured up having to pass through the entire Coliseum bonus areas (filled with the toughest monsters) something like 2-3 times before gaining a level. This is not a small task and the Coliseum enemies are tough and give more exp than normal enemies. Still, with a few DSS exploits the final boss was still relatively easy to defeat at my finishing level.

At least there is a fair variety of enemies to keep you entertained in your times of leveling need. Even basic color swaps (like the armors) have completely different attack patterns. The castle is also expansive and varied enough to keep things interesting the whole trip through. You’ll do some backtracking, but it’s backtracking that makes some level of sense.

In comparison to Symphony of the Night, which is a game that all three GBA Castlevania games try to emulate to varying degrees, I’d say it’s a decent follow-up. It’s not quite as polished overall but it has its own merits and methods. A game doesn’t have to be an exact copy of its great predecessor in order to be worthwhile.

Review – Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PS1)

Konami – Playstation – 1 Player

Castlevania games are hard. Or at least they used to be. They tend to be kind of random, long and have clunky controls. At least on the NES. I have never really cared much for Castlevania games. The whole “goth” and “vampires” thing never really appealed to me either. Still, Symphony of the Night I one of those games you hear people talk about a lot. When people start saying a game is one of the best they have ever played, it generally is worth giving a little attention to.

I had first purchased SotN on this notion. This was still several years after it’s release and it would sit in my collection for several years after I acquired it. I still couldn’t quite bring myself to get over the fact that it was still a Castlevania game. Eventually of course, I came up on a need for something to play, so I decided to work my way through this game.

I’ll have to say I was initially disappointed by the main character. I suppose I still am a bit. I have always associated Castlevania as being Simon Belmont. Or at the very least SOMEONE named Belmont. Instead I find that I get to play as some flakey gothy vampire wannabe named Alucard. What’s with Japan’s obsession with anorexic pretty boys sporting flowing white hair anyway? On top of that, you don’t even get to wield the classic whip weapon. Still, there was something intriguing about the gameplay and environment.

Also the music was intriguing. The soundtrack for this game is absolutely wonderful. It matches the visuals extremely well to create the perfect atmosphere for the game. It also helps to keep things entertaining, which is good because there is a lot of backtracking and random exploring involved in this game. The castle is quite large without being overwhelming. The designs and areas are varied more than enough to keep you from getting lost without having to look at the map all the time. Not to mention that once you reach the second half of the game you realize just How brilliant the level designs are. It’s not every game that allows you to traverse every area upside down as if it were designed to be played that way.

The action is quick as well. There are RPG elements of upgrading weapons and levels to help prevent you from easily traversing areas you’re not supposed to be, though generally there are lots of puzzles and required items that do this quite well. In that respect the game does come off as a bit of “Find item A to enter area B, now find Item B to enter area C” aspect to it. Still, many of those old power-ups remain useful for most of the game.

I guess I should interject some sort of opinion here, this being a review and all. This game is a blast to play. It is certainly deserving of all the praise it receives. After I finished the game the first time through, I felt compelled to replay it again, several times. Fortunately there are some reasons to replay. As Alucard you have the option of several different endings, depending on which items you have in your inventory at the time an how you go about defeating some bosses.

There is also the ability to play as Richter Belmont. Hey look, we get to be a Belmont after all! Complete with whip power. Richter’s gameplay is also considerably different than Alucard’s, it’s more reminiscent of the play style of more classic Castlevania games, essentially you simply charge through and kill everything until you get to the end. Not plot or leveling or power ups required. NOTE: in the Saturn version you also get to play as Maria, I’ve not played this version of the game.

Anyway, this classic game is spot on awesome and comes highly recommended.

20 Years of Blogging…

It seems like I should address this pretty big anniversary for this blog.  Lameazoid.com, is twenty years old, more or less, today.  I honestly don’t have the exact date for sure, but I do have an old copy of the original site that suggests it was created on 10/09/1998.  More accurately, it’s predecessor, The Chaos Xone, was created on 10/09/1998.  Back then it was just a random Geocities website.  It didn’t really use a “Blog Engine” but it did use a “Blog format” of sorts, in the form of manually updated HTML webpages and a copy/paste archive of old posts.

Funny enough, it’s pretty much still the same thing… ish.  I really haven’t cared about Anime in ages and the market for “Cool Waves” and “MIDI Files” hasn’t quite been the same in a long while.  The Geocities Pokemon Center was a separate site I ran that was pretty successful at the time.  This original website went through quite a few iterations, all sort of keeping the core idea of writing random “reviews” on “random crap”.  It moved hosts a few times, from Geocities to Lameazoid the Livejournal, then ramenjunkie.wordpress.com, some stints on Blogger, self hosted at my house on a Linux box, to actually using real paid hosting.  Somewhere around the time I left College and lost that free college hosting, and moving to WordPress I think is when I bought a domain and transformed The Chaos Xone, with it’s Edgy Cool 90s X (the X is for XTREEEEEEM), into Lameazoid.com.

Why Lameazoid?

I think at the time it was supposed to sort of be a sort of buzzword sounding name.  Like Freakazoid, the show.  Only Lame.  I have to admit, back then I was way way more cynical about everything, so I sort of had the idea of focusing on Lame things.  It also sounds kind of retro, which was also more of my shtick at the time.  I do still like the name, it was a pretty good choice honestly.

Over the years though my overall ability and interest in actually writing has come and gone.  If I’m being honest, lately it just feels like no one cares.  And they really probably don’t.  There was a time back in the mid 2000s when Blogging was huge and the site pulled in 1000 visits per day.  That felt pretty awesome.  These days, I’m lucky if I am getting 1000 visits a month, less so since I have not even been updating lately.

I’ve also purged things out completely a few times, for better or for worse.  I have everything though, in an archive.  I have a big ass local WordPress instance that has pretty much everything I’ve ever written in my life stuffed into it in one big ball of mind vomit.  Good and bad.  Not just Lameazoid and the Chaos Xone, I’ve scanned or transcribed old paper journals and writings into it.  Digital space is cheap, it can be backed up safely and easily.  Why ever delete anything?

I’ve also tried to actually reboot and spin off a few times.  The most ambitious was Ready Set Geek, which essentially was a separation of Toys and Video Games.  This leads to a bit of a conundrum on my part of where to stick the middle ground things like movies and comics.  The most successful is probably BloggingIntensifies.com, though that’s more of a spin off of my “Personal Blogging”.  I post there entirely because I want to, not to try to be some sort of New Games Journalism writer.  I’ve tried pushing more into the “new hotness” that killed blogging, like Tumblr and Youtube, but I guess I’m just not into that sort of thing.  I’ve considered trying to recruit people I know to also write here, there was a brief time (during that 1000 visits period) when I did have friends also writing reviews.

Running this site has been pretty great for a lot of indirect reasons though.  I’ve gotten pretty good at working Linux, for example, through the need to run a web server.  Its given me excuses to play with Photoshop and to take photos.  I used to use it as an excuse to be an early adopter of a lot of social media sites.  Knowing your way around the Social web is pretty useful.

Anyway, I mostly just wanted to acknowledge this little event.  Here’s to 20 more years I guess.