Video Games

Review – Dance Dance Revolution (PC)

Dance Dance Revolution
PC (Konami)

2 Players

Here’s a little artifact that is probably fairly obscure. There was an official DDR game released for PC a while back. Except it was an exclusive product for a chain of stores not in my area (Fry’s) and to an online store I never shop at (outpost.com). And at only $10 it’s certainly cheaper than the Playstation alternatives. On the other hand it has to compete with free programs such as Stepmania. So how well does this game step up to the challenge? Not very well I’m afraid.

I guess I’ll get the positive aspects out of the way first this time, there’s really only one. The backgrounds are nice. The chance to play this game with moving animated backgrounds and the 3D dancers is a nice change of pace from the static images of Stepmania. However there isn’t really too much variety in the background movies. There are a ton of characters to chose from though. The game includes I believe 16 characters to start with, plus 8 to unlock, and another 24 that can be downloaded. That’s a lot of dancers. Once again, on the down side, the 3D models used are getting pretty dated and don’t look like they’ve been updated since they were first introduced to the series. Also there was supposed to be a 35th downloadable character but I don’t know where it would fit in the list unless there are only 7 unlockables.

Now the bad. This game is buggy as all hell. It’s a very poor port of who knows what. Other than the bugs the game reeks of laziness in general. For example, the song selection screen just breaks the songs into “Group 1”, “Group 2”, etc; No fancy classifications like in Konamix. Also all of the songs are available from the start, instead you unlock new dancers. It took me no time at all to complete all the songs on Heavy with a B or better. Yeah, only B. This game also uses the old style of scoring, anything less than a Full Combo will get you a B. Now this wouldn’t be too bad if it wasn’t for the numerous game freezes.

I have a pretty good machine, it runs 3D games and software very well, it runs Stepmania beautifully, but this game runs like shit on it. I don’t think I ever have a song where at one point the arrows just stop moving while the song continues. Sometimes I can keep the rhythm pretty well and keep things up but in a game completely dependant on timing and non-freezing gameplay, this is pretty inexcusable. Also I’ve found the first time I load the game each play, the first song will have no music. The whole game is about the music here people, this is a pretty important issue. Also timing in general is pretty flaky. Songs that I easily AA in Stepmania, (My Summer Love, Era) I can’t even A on this game.

Something else of note, the steps for End of the Century on Heavy are off. Like 3 or 4 beats off, it’s REALLY noticible and I’ve tried the song several times on different days so it wasn’t just a fluke or anything. Many of the other bugs seem like they may have been repairable had the game instealled the music to the Hard Drive instead of reading it from the CD (like it seems to do), but these completely wrong steps are just ridiculous. I guess compleyel wrong steps is too strong, they are there, just off their mark. Did anyone play test this at all?

There is also a noticeable lack of features, and songs. This game has 40 songs (see below), most pretty unremarkable bottom of the barrel stuff. Also there isn’t too much in the way of modifiers, only Little, Turn, and Hidden.

Anyway, in conclusion, even if you really want to show your support to Konami by buying this game, don’t. Don’t support this buggy shit software, if you want an official DDR pick up DDR Max on PS2, no PS2? Try Konamix on PS1, the frame rates suck but it’s still decent. If you can’t afford the Playstation versions and still want a home DDR experience just download Stepmania and get all the free songs you want. Just please don’t support this buggy horrible piece of software.

Song List:

Midnite Blaze
Share My Love
Let the beat hit em!
MY SUMMER LOVE
MAKE IT BETTER SO-REAL MIX
MAKE A JAM!,
B4U
BABY BABY
GIMME YOUR LOVE
Don’t Stop! AMD 2nd MIX
Era Nostalmix
Make Your Move,
Orion.78 Ameuro-MIX
WILD RUSH
CELEBRATE NITE
HIGHER
CUTIE CHASER,
Groove,
DEAD END
END OF THE CENTURY
Silent Hill
AFRONOVA
PARANOiA KCET Clean mix
KEEP ON MOVIN’
LOVE THIS FEELIN’
LET THEM MOVE
TRIP MACHINE
AM-3P
BRILLIANT2U Orchestra-Groove
PUT YOUR FAITH IN ME
PUT YOUR FAITH IN ME Jazzy Groove
MAKE IT BETTER
La Senorita
PARANOiA
DYNAMITE RAVE,
BRLLIANT2U
I Was The One
Never let you down
Get me in your sight AMD CANCUN MIX
STILL IN MY HEART
Remember You

Review – Back to the Future (NES)

Feb 27th, 2018

by Ramen Junkie.

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Ok, let’s cut to the chase, this game sucks.

I have long pushed this game as the worst game I have ever played, though I’m not so sure about that anymore. Back to the Future is was a pretty bad ass awesome film, even back when it was new when this game came out. You’d think that some of that would translate to the game on SOME level but it didn’t. It’s essentially a bastardized version of Skate Or Die that has almost zero to do with Back to the Future.

So admittedly, the expectations of what makes a video game was somewhat different back in the days of the NES. There weren’t highly detailed cinematics and for the most part, gameplay was pretty straight forward and unvarying for most games once it got rolling. The whole idea of the stages mixed with mini games presented here is actually pretty dynamic and an interesting idea. If only it didn’t feel so divided from the plot of the movie it’s based on.

Marty traverse across Hill Valley battling foes straight out of the film such as giant killer bees, and guys with panes of glass and armies of bullies. He fends them off with his trusty bowling ball. I’m not sure there were ever any bowling balls in any of the movies even as background items. But then yeah, it’s an 80s video games, so some liberties with the plot are probably needed. There really isn’t a genre of game that would really work for a Back to the Future Game. Most people just want to drive the Delorean, which these days is best accomplished with a GTA Mod.

The real killer on this game, has to be the excruciating difficulty. A lot of old school NES games are pretty difficult. Blaster Master, Ninja Gaiden, these are all pretty tough games which require some skill to beat. Completed Back to the Future takes a miracle. The first issue is the dual timers. Each stage has a timer, this isn’t too bad, it keeps the player from lollygagging through the stage and encourages being reactive. The game also has a second timer in the form of the fading photograph. The photograph lasts between stages but is refilled by these little clocks. The issue is that these two mechanisms often work completely against each other. Picking up enough clocks to keep the photo alive will often result in the stage timer running out.

There is also the whole deal of powering up to the Skateboard. Marty starts out on foot but can pick up a much faster skateboard. Losing the board is pretty much a guaranteed loss vs the timer.

If you can manage to keep your skateboard and beat the timer, you get to face off against some ridiculously tough mini game “boss” stages. Throwing beers at bullies or catching kisses and musical notes.

The icing on the cake in this excruciating run is the music. The exact same 30 second crap repeats endlessly from more or less the moment you turn on the console to the moment the game ends. It’s like Chinese Water torture for video games.

The whole package is just one big terrible mess. Probably the only reason I played it as much as I had was that at the time I owned something like 5 NES titles. It’s a pretty crappy game, but it’s still one I remember very well for this very reason.

Review – Eufloria (PC)

Feb 13th, 2018

by Ramen Junkie.

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Most real time strategy games involve military conflict of some sort. It’s part of the genre really, one military force against another, at war, requiring the player to take strategic command. Eufloria does an interesting job of almost breaking this mold. Technically it’s still centering around a conflict, though instead of tanks and soldiers you fight with plant seeds.

The conflict is certainly more peaceful when it involves plants. The light graphics and airy music and sound effects make this a fairly relaxing and serine experience to play.

The object is to control a region of planetoids before the opponent destroys your forces. In order to control a planet you will have to sacrifice some of your seedlings to plant new trees, the trees will in turn spawn more seedlings over time. Most of the trees will anyway, there are also defensive trees which will instead provide protection from enemy forces. The planets themselves have different energy levels as well and will spawn faster or stronger seedlings depending on the planet’s attributes.

In the early stages it is fairly easy but over time the enemy colonies become more aggressive and will have better defenses. The real key to combat is advantages in numbers, which means owning more planets. Unfortunately, this is where the game play starts to fall apart. Later stages become quickly and easily overwhelming, especially as the enemy starts deploying the large flower pods which can easily wipe out even a large army of seedlings with little to no effort. Much of the play time involved is essentially just sitting and waiting for more seedlings to spawn. When one of the notes in the update is “Updated the gameplay to be faster-paced and more interesting, with more strategic balance” you’ve got issues. Thankfully they put some effort into correcting it. Even so there is a LOT of “sit and wait” gameplay here, especially when you start facing defensive trees which will require large numbers of seed pods to overcome them.

Another minor issues I’ve had, the game doesn’t seem to always record progress made properly. This admittedly may have been an error on my part though it was a bit frustrating when I found I had to replay the first ten or so levels after I’d already completed them.

Generally the game is a fun departure from the traditional strategy game. The design is simple though definitely more complex than it seems on the surface. It is hindered somewhat buy it’s slowish pacing but it’s still a pretty enjoyable experience. My recommendation however would still be to look for it on some sort of sale as the base price of $15 is a little high for what you get

Review – Bionic Commando (NES)

Feb 3rd, 2018

by Ramen Junkie.

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NES – 1 Player – Capcom

If you ever hear someone complain about the “difficulty” of modern games, tell them to go play almost any NES classic. Not only will they find many extremely difficult games, but they will be difficult games by design, not because the computer uses cheap AI to “always win”.

Bionic Commando is one such game. Honestly, this, and any game in the Ninja Gaiden series, are some of the toughest NES games out there. Possibly one of the toughest games ever. The one major pitfall of this game is its lack of password or save features. Yeah, having to write down a 16 digit set of random letters and numbers is a pain but it’s better than starting fresh each time. Of course, a battery back up save file would be even better.

Honestly though, the modern philosophy of save everywhere, save often isn’t something I’ll cry about.

But enough about save files and passwords, let’s get to the game itself. There’s actually quite a bit of variety at work here. On the surface, Bionic Commando is a pretty straight forward side scrolling shooter. It also has this clever gimmick in the Bionic Arm. Your player can’t jump, instead he must use his quick grabbing arm to climb platforms and swing across pits. It’s a lot of fun and ads a lot of interesting twists to the standard philosophy of shooter game play.

The arm isn’t the only thing about this game that helps it shine though. If it was, Bionic Commando would just fall into the category of gimmick game. No, the game play method and philosophy isn’t pretty in depth as well. Between areas or levels, one must traverse an over head map. Levels don’t have to be played in sequential order, in fact, it’s impossible to finish the game if you try to do so. I’m pretty sure there are some levels you have to enter, collect an item, then leave for a different level.

Additionally, some levels are “neutral zones”. You have full regular control, but shooting in these areas will bring down a mass of opponents on both sides of the war. Essentially, you enter these areas to collect information or items.

On top of the standard levels, the map is full of mobile “levels”. These are more like bonus rounds. They play for a top down perspective similar to the older game Commando. Truth is, this game is actually a pseudo sequel to the game Commando, these missions are meant as a throwback to it’s predecessor. If you navigate the map well, you can often avoid these encounters but more often than not, you’ll get stuck in one or two.

Game play isn’t always set out with the standard “finish the level” either. As mentioned, sometimes you simply need to collect an item to proceed. There’s often a communication link you’ll have to hack into in order to gain access to a future area. If you fail to break through, enemy forces will detect you and attack in mass. This ads some level of covert operation to the game play. It’s beneficial to avoid attracting the enemy.

All of this complicates things quite a bit. Add in to this a fairly high base difficulty and a pretty long length and it makes for a game that’s hard to complete. Completing it rewards you with the classic video game scene of, Hitler’s head exploding. Ok, in the US version he’s not technically “Hitler” but the uncensored Japanese version is full of Swastikas and Hitler. In the US version you’re fighting the Badds, in the Japanese version, they are Nazis, of the FUTURE!

Despite its high difficulty, Bionic Commando’s sheer variety of game play makes it a lot of fun to play. Even if you can’t finish it, it’s still worth playing. Heck, the Bionic Arm can be used for all sorts of random fun by itself.

Review – Final Fantasy IX (PS1)

Dec 6th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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It’s amazing how something so good (FF8) can be followed by something so bad. Rumor has it, people complained about FF8 a lot. They complained because it was so different from the “classical aspects of the series” that Square decided to give the fans what they really wanted. In reality Square (hopefully purposely) created a bad remake of all of thier previous FF games all rolled into one. Pretty much every aspect of this game is based on some other game. Surprisingly it seems to draw the most from FF1.

The biggest setback in this game was the return to Munchkin Land. Even FF7’s munchkins looked more normal than these characters do, though I think it was mostly due to FF7 having pretty humanoid characters in battle. I kept expecting the Lolipop kids to pup up and tell me to “Follow the Yellow Brick Road”. They also all seemed ot have really weir mouths. The graphics were pretty nice though for other aspects. Like Black “I am Hell Incarnate” Waltz No 3, who should have been the star of the game.

Instead we get a comical adventure that takes us through a quick history of the FF series. We get to see Garland from FF1 again, The Black Mages return in a new flashier form. The Gurgu Volcano that once housed Kary, Feind of Fire returns complete with a rehash of the original 8-bit music. Too bad they didn’t bring back the good spell names like Ice3 and Lit2 or even “XXXX”. It’s always great eradicating your foes with a hardcore porn spell. The Characters themselves are so so. There’s Garnet, her Tinman, Steiner, the Scarecrow, Vivi, the cowardly “What – the – fuck – is – that – stupid – thing – and – why – does – it – have – its – tongue – sticking – out – like – that?” Quina, the half naked Moogle girl Eiko, the Lord of the Dance herself, Freya, and of course the main character Zid-“I don’t use a big sword like my predecessors”-ain.

Of these charachters the most likable ones are oddly the ones that seem to have less to do with the plot. Steiner’s constant baffonish heroics get old after the 1000th time you see the same joke repeated; The whole thing with Vivi seems like it just sort of vanishes halfway through the game; Freya, what the heck is she there for? Oh right, classic Vengace. Then of course Quina. I have no idea whay this thing is in this game but personally it’s worse then the infamouse Cait Sith of FF7. I mean What the hell is up with this creature. All it does is eat, it looks very androgenous, it says dumb things, it looks stupid, it sucks in combat, and generally it’s useless. I don’t know what they were thinking when the designers decided to make Quina a party character instead of someone 100 time more interesting and useful like say, Beatrix. Oh wait, if they added Beatrix it would be like having two Steiners except one is a girl. You definitely don’t want two similar characters to choose from, I mean it’s not like they haven’t been making everyone identical for the last 4 games give or take.

Not that you could really use two identical characters in this. Another major drawback is unbalanced gameplay. This gets escpecially bad near the end of the game.Not since Chrono Trigger have I played a game up to the very last save point and given up on it for a year and a half or more out of enraged hatred.Basically ech character has thier own specialty, which means in battle at any given time with the most effecient all aound party, you’ll have 2 useless characters.An Optimized party being one that you’ll never end up with 0 useful characters. I mean you COULD put Zidain, Steiner, Freya, and Aramant all in one party, but then you’d have a hell of a time against anything strong tophysical attacks and you’ll never be able to easily heal. Not that you’ll really use Magic much for healing. Even a good ways intot he game chances are you will still be constantly short on Ethers ot retore MP and with the incredible high cost of Summoning by your healers, you’ll need to save everything you’ve got for those boss battles. The Black Mage Vivi was the only character I managed to get halfway self sufficient since he could not only heal but restore MP using Drain and Osmose.

So with it’s unbalanced game play and rehash plot line, FF9 manages to crap itself up pretty badly. I think I may have started out liking this game quite a bit but by the end It was just too much work to bother with. Unfortunately it seems Square hasn’t learned with FFX, which started out fantastically excellent and is slowly turning into a trudging shitfest of long boring pointless random encounters.