Gaming exploitation: Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 extra star bits.

The Super Mario Galaxy series is actually a pretty decent bunch of Mario titles, and honestly, I was happy that they increased the difficulty in Super Mario Galaxy 2, although it was still much too easy. Still, while the game was kind of fun most of the time, it is not without its degree of annoyance and demands that you use motions when one could literally place each motion inputs in this game on a button press. Spin jump could be relayed to a button, the flying minigame you just have been done with a joystick, the Luma feeding could have just been done using a scrolling menu. Really, the only things that could not be transposed on a button input were parts of the game that were frustrating an unnecessary. And those that could have been transposed on a button input would have worked better that way. Nevertheless, the control scheme can easily be abused to your advantage.

In ball-rolling minigames, all you need is one hand, and you tilt the controller standing up as if it was a bad joystick with no resistance. The game also features the possibility of having a second player do the lame job of using a second Wiimote as a pointer and getting star bits, shooting them (which you will never do because you want to accumulate star bits) and giving minor, rather pointless help to the player. Combine these two concepts and you can see the possibilities. Now that you don’t have to use the nunchuck and have one free hand, you can technically grab a second Wiimote and get the star bits on the screen. First, you are much more likely to get an extra life, so you can potentially restart the minigame as many as you want if you mess up, and you just get more star bits to unlock future stages. Finally, you look stylish. This can also be done in the bird flying minigame since if does not require the nunchuck, but you don’t have the option to just stop and collect like in the ball-rolling minigame.



Certainly, it is only a small bonus and will maybe only reduce the time it takes to beat the game by about twenty minutes, but that is twenty minutes of less collecting star bits pointlessly and a few extra lives.

Tune in next time.

Obscure gaming: Ys VI: The Ark of Naphitism

Here is the box if you wish to read its information: http://www.covergalaxy.com/ps2/Ys%20The%20Ark%20Of%20Napishtim%20COVER.jpg



Since the Wii came out and motion gaming became the new rage, I have run out of good games to play for the first time in my existence. I don’t like motion games in general and I will avoid them if I can. It’s like how some people just can’t stand 3D movies and no matter how much they earnestly tried to get used to them, it just doesn’t do it for them. I am squarely against the idea of a game forcing people to employ a semi-functional rehash of the old powerglove concept (it’s the same technology). I am against using a controller that has a high chance of failing when doing precise, split-second commands. I am also against the existence of a controller that makes the lives of left-handed people harder and that removes from their sentiment on immersion for the apparent sake of “market expansion”. I’m also against removing complexity from gaming to render games idiot-proof, making the experience mind-numbing for highly-skilled players when game companies could just put difficulty settings.

Yes, that recycled idea from the Nintendo Entertainment System era that was supposed to be a Nintendo Gamecube accessory add-on became the driving force of the highly successful Wii console and has dragged Sony and Microsoft with it too. The first effect was me waking up from my Nintendo fanboyism and trying to find games elsewhere. I’ve ventured on the Sony consoles, which I always had a negative bias against, but found out that some really good games are on them. I often searched through the used games bins and tried games at random. My fun was to ask the store clerks if they had any idea what the game was, and if they said no, I’d try it out. This is when I realized the obscure titles can be very, very good and deserve to be known better. Smaller companies don’t necessarily have the budget to attempt to conquer the more fickle casual market, and thus, many aim for niche markets. And because their market is generally constituted of hardcore gamers, they are not scared of adding complexity to their games. I played lots of titles from companies like Treasure, Atlus and Falcom and some of their series became personal favourites. I also played a few PC games and revisited the libraries of old Nintendo and Sega consoles to play Japanese-only titles, or games that just flew under the radar for most of us. We all that that Final Fantasy VI is good, but that’s not interesting to hear.It’s much more interesting to hear someone talk about Romancing Sa Ga 3 or The Treasure of The Rudras. So today, I’d like to share my impressions of one of these hidden gems from a niche series that I generally enjoy: Ys VI: The Ark of Naphitism.

I’m sure most of you have no idea what Ys is. Ys is a franchise that is owned by the much underrated company Falcom, which is also responsible for other games such as Dragon Slayer and The Legend of heroes. Ys games have been released on many systems including PC, and only a select portion of the games have been translated in English. However, fan translations exist for most of the unreleased ones.

Originally, Ys titles were played using only the directional pad and walking into enemies. Damage was dealt based on statistical variables, but one was much more likely to damage without being damaged by hitting from the front but a little off-center (So that your sword arm would touch the enemies but theirs would not touch you), from the side or from behind. The game was very simple to manoeuvre, but it one was not careful, it was possible for enemies to swarm the player. The difficulty was great at first, but players could get EXP, better equipment, and many helpful items and spells. Nevertheless, the difficulty changed from moderate to very hard once the player engaged a boss. These battles required precision, quick thinking and preparation. Indeed, difficulties ranged from encountering a boss without heeding the advice of villagers and getting the necessary item to end up being stuck in a hopeless battle to having to navigate through a bullet hell to hit the boss. End game bosses were difficult and no amount of grinding could save you. You needed the top level to stand a chance (although if one played normally, one would be very close to maximum level at the end of the game).





The classic feel of the game and the refreshing difficulty was welcomed, and when I first tried Ys I & II on the virtual console, I was surprised to compare the game to Zelda if it had more Japanese action RPG undertones.

The character art was simply gorgeous on the Turbo Graphix 16, the setting could involve the player without being too heavy on dialogue, the puzzles were difficult and sometimes downright sadistic, but the clues were readily available and you had only yourself to blame for not taking your time, the characters were very memorable, and the gameplay was a bit rough, but classic. It was a positive experience overall.

The series stars Adol, the red-haired adventurer who becomes known throughout the world for his adventures, his fame growing ever since his ascent of the Tower of Darm in Ys I. The silent protagonist is brave and reckless, but also a kind gentleman who wishes to aid those in need. Certainly, his character is stereotypical, but the growth of his fame is what makes him somewhat of a fun hero. When you are playing as Adol, you are building his legend, people remember his previous adventures, old friends can be encountered when one least expects it. Adol himself seems to be pretty popular with the ladies, but following his heart as an adventurer, he chooses travel over love. Later episodes introduce a cast of support characters that help drive the storyline, including Dogi the wall crusher and Terra the ex-bandit who seems sweet on Adol and seems like she will accompany him in his future adventures. Ys VII: The Oath in Felghana is a remake of Ys III, so we will have to wait for a bit to see if she becomes a truly recurrent character.





The franchise changed as it grew and became its own genre, now a happy marriage between The Legend of Zelda and Secret of Mana. In The Ark of Naphitism, Origins, The Oath in Felghana and other recent titles, the player now has much more control over Adol, and is able to control when Adol attacks, jump, and use special skills and much more. This game is a typical hack and slash-type RPG, but when boss battles come, it is a ruthless puzzle. You are not expected to charge in the fray. Rather, you are expected to employ a wait and see tactic, find the boss’ moment of weakness and capitalize on it. In Ys, waiting means dodging relentless attacks. If that’s too hardcore for you, you’re free to go home and become a family man. That’s how we played video games in my days.

In Ark of Naphitism, Adol fights using three different elemental swords. The first is the wind blade, that allows Adol to summon tornadoes or to spin into tornado slashes repeatedly, the second is a flame blade that allows Adol to charge fire magic or throw a fireball for example. The third is the lightning rapier that allows Adol to skewer foes with electricity when the button is pressed fast enough, or send a lightning bolt. The blades each have different properties and have limited magic each (one can unleash a powerful move from a fully-charged sword) and must recharge when a special attack is unleashed. The key is to carefully manage the three swords while effectively using the special skills of each blade in real-time combat. This combat system is unique to Ys VI, but shares the puzzle experience of boss combat that defines the series. An easier difficulty level is there for beginners, but easy mode is pretty much what the hard mode for a regular game would be like.





Unlike a Zelda game, however, finding the weakness does not guarantee you a win. All it does is giving you a chance to win. The story is simple, yet interesting, the characters are likeable and interact with you, old faces return, developed from previous games, and new NPCs also seem to have a life of their own considering that their dialogue changes fairly frequently throughout the game. Since events occur at a fairly rapid and steady rate, the NPCs often have new things to tell you, are found in different locations and seem to change their perceptions of you as time flows by. While not a fully interactive experience, it reduces some of the repetition found in some games. The music is simply breathtaking, ranging from epic overworld themes to fast-paced power metal combat music for boss battles. The graphics on the PC version that I played look like top of the line PS2 quality, which makes sense given that the game was released during the PS2 era. The game shares a feature with Baten Kaitos, in that camera angles are static, but water effects, animations, lighting effects and textures are well done and richly detailed.

The story is the usual epic journey through the unknown, and the introduction of the rival character “Geis” and new allies is fairly welcomed. The game avoids stereotypical JRPG character arcs and fanservice and settles for “less is more”. A large portion of the storytelling is dependent on the player being the hero. Adol Christin never says a single word, unless it comes from a choice selection, which is again reminiscent of Zelda. Unlike Zelda, however, allies and villains have much more dialogue and the story tends to be told through their interactions with you.

The gameplay as I’ve said above is simple and a happy mixture between The Legend of Zelda and Secret of Mana. While I have stated that boss battles are very interesting, there are some gameplay flaws in the overworld. In order to get stronger, you need EXP and emel pieces, which you must gather to power up your swords. If you neglect either of these tasks, the bosses will demolish you. Thus, depending on your skills, you may find yourself mowing through weak overworld monsters for hours to gather EXP and collect the emel because you don’t want to be stuck losing repeatedly. You also need gold to buy the best equipment, but you will soon find gold to be next to useless once you acquire everything, so I propose you waste the rest on buying vitality seeds to boost your HP. This is rendered even more troublesome if you end up in a boss room and forgot to prepare. One cannot change their held items during a boss fight. At the same time, you can stack up to nine of any recovery item, which is eight more than you could carry in any early Ys games. If you are rich enough, you can potentially make a fight much easier by stacking on really good items. The game is hard but if you’re not someone with fast reflexes, there are ways to advance, so it’s not that bad. The overworld monsters can murder you at the beginning of the game, but it will not take long until you think of them as no more threatening as minor background fighters in a bad Kung fu movie. Using the tornado slashes from the wind sword should get rid of most of them.



The overworld is mostly entirely opened up for you, and you may try to venture in places that you were not meant to access. You will then promptly get your bottom handed to you. There are sidequests, but there are few. Still, when you do complete them, the rewards are generally worth it. That extra bit of damage from that Seed of Strenght that NPC will give you will come in handy.

I like Ys, it is one of the great obscure titles out there that most North Americans never even heard of. While many once great games series are being ruined by their attempts at expanding their audience (more precisely speaking, dumping one smaller but stable market for another bigger fad-dependent market), Ys kept in line with the things that made games so dang good back then and still managed to innovate and become its own style. I wouldn’t say Ys VI: Ark of Naphitism is original, but it is fun, and it fills a need; the need for old school action that has become scarce and that some of us crave. Sure, the game came out before the Wii and the casual movement took over the industry, but it’s most likely that most of you have never played this game series before, and can enjoy seven high quality games. The trend seems to continue with Ys VII The Oath in Felghana and apparently even lets you control more than just Adol, but I’ve not gotten to it and I don’t want to talk about a game I didn’t finish.

I would recommend this title and series for anyone longing for an old-style action RPG, and it is for PC, PS2 and PSP. A fan translation for the PC version exists and can easily be found on the Internet.

Stagnation of fighting games

I’ve never been a fighting game maniac, and indeed, the only games I ever played competitively is Super Smash Bros. Melee and Project M. However, I do like to play fighting games for fun, and with the horror that is Brawl, I understand why many fighting games fans get so angry when they receive an inferior product in a sequel.

Much like Brawl removed most of the franchises’ technical aspects; most fighting games in general have been getting on people’s nerves lately. It seems that fighting games are either getting more casual or we’re just paying for less.

There are many examples of this: Guilty Gear for example has pretty much retained the same gameplay for as long as it has existed. Buying Guilty Gear X or Accent Core pretty much amounts to buying the same game with a different balance and a little more content, but the roster generally increases by one or two per game, and sometimes, characters are flat-out removed. The re-balancing isn’t that good, with middle tiers being nerfed and high tiers getting buffs. It’s like the developers don’t know what they are doing. Mind you, Guilty Gear is a fun game, but with the gameplay being fundamentally the same, it always felt like a ripoff to always buy a balance patch at full price.

The same problem occurs with Blazblue, where Continuum shift got two more characters. Sure, there were four DLC characters, but they weren’t given to us and were incomplete, none bearing a story arc in story mode for example. It’s like they were just slapped onto the game for a quick cash-in. Two free characters is not enough to warrant a buy. Sure, there was a balance patch and modes like the new legion mode. The interactive tutorial was nice and helped people understand the mechanics a little more. Additional stages are pretty much pointless because they’re all flat surfaces anyways; it’s no more different than changing your wallpaper. There were a few more character songs, and the music plays an integral part in Blazblue (Playing Blazblue or Guilty Gear on mute is a crime in and of itself), however one wonders why there was no Jin vs Tsubaki song or other obvious pairing choices. Daisuke Ishiwatari’s music is very fitting for a fighting game and more music form him is always welcomed. Continuum shift got a continuation to the actually interesting graphic novel-style story of Blazblue: Calamity Trigger, but it was still not enough. I skipped this one and we ended up getting Blazblue Continuum Shift II, which is a rehash of Continuum Shift but with some balance recalibration and now free DLC characters. That is all. Anyone who bought Continuum shift must have felt horribly ripped off, and this taught me that the best thing to do when interested in buying a fighting game is to buy the game at the end of a generation, so that one can get the final version of the game. Continuum Shift II was a big insult to the fans, and arguably, could have been just a patch.



Mortal Kombat on the other hand tried a whole bunch of different things but went too far and denaturalized the series to a point where it was unrecognizable from its origins. Again, you gained new features, but they would most often be gimmicks and they would remove fan favourites just to fit the storyline. I understand the concept of Mortal Kombat... as in, it is about fights to the death, but in a fighting game, characters get fans who are attached to them. If you kill them off, you piss their mains. In other words, Mortal Kombat should have just gone “screw continuity”. An example of this is when they decided to kill off Liu Kang, the main character of the series and resident nut-puncher. Reviving him as a zombie was not consolation enough. Even as a non-fan, I was legitimately angry. I don’t care what people say about MK 9 right now, since there is one thing I must say about it: they screwed with the continuity, and that was a good a good thing and it may be what the franchise needs to get back on track.

Of course, Capcom is one of the biggest offenders with Street Fighter. After the release of a Street Fighter game, I’ve come to expect a super version, a turbo version, an arcade edition, etc... In other words, once a Street Fighter game comes out, you know that if you buy the first version out, a new, better one will come out very soon after. Street Fighter IV for example was soon followed by Super Street Fighter IV, then the Arcade edition. I mean, sure, they added characters, changed the balance, etc... but it is still on the exact same engine and could have been a downloadable patch. Not to mention that the original Street fighter IV had less characters than some of the earlier versions of the game. I don’t really care about a graphic overhaul and bad dance remixes; as a gamer, I want a reason to play this game, and I will not buy a game that does less than an earlier version that I own. Oh, and Street Fighter X Tekken? Yeah, that’s Street Fighter IV with Tekken characters. I’m no lord of Tekken, but that seems again like a lazy cash-in.

And that brings us to Marvel Vs Capcom 3. The game was heavily anticipated and was supposed to be huge and flashy. The game indeed sported very detailed graphics, but for some reason looked less good that the sprites from MvC 2, which seemed to move faster thanks to frame animation skips. It had 36 character, 38 if you count the DLC. That is still much less that the PS2 version that had a whopping 56 characters. MvC 3 was lacking many fan favourites like Gambit, Guile or Megaman. And Characters like Jill Valentine or Shuma Gorah (the later was an unlockable in MvC 3) had to be bought as DLC. So you got much less and had to pay to still have less. Then, when everyone got suckered into buying the already overpriced MvC 3, they announced Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3. The game in itself is a balanced patch with 12 new characters including the highly anticipated Phoenix Wright, bringing the default roster up to 48. That is still nowhere near 56. Where are the other 2, you may ask? Well the two DLC characters... Well they’re not included, so you’ll have to download them if you didn’t own MvC3 before. At least Blazblue had the decency to give them to us in Continuum Shift II (although they are guilty of putting too few new content on the new disc).



It is obvious that these companies are ripping the consumers off, but there’s a reason why they do this. We let them. Consumers fail to realize that they are actually the boss of the market. It pisses me off most of the time, because the market is full of fanboys and casual gamers these days, and they are the reason why Super Smash Bros. Brawl and other idiotic games of the sort exist. However, in this case, this complacent attitude gaming giants have taken to content in fighting games affect all us, hardcores and casuals alike. If anything, we should unite against this practice and just stop buying their scrap. Companies makes games not to please us, but to fill their pockets, and that is because they are corporations. In other words, they will only change their ways if they realize that their cheap practices are hurting their sales.

Take the 3DS for example: Nintendo has a habit of releasing new versions of its portable systems. The GBA was followed by the GBA SP, GBA Micro, etc.. the DS by the DS lite, DSi, DSi XL, etc... They also release new colours later, bundles, price cuts, etc... This has helped Nintendo get a lot of sales in the past because everyone wanted the latest one. But now, that bit Nintendo in the posterior because first: they have too few games, second: people are waiting for a 3DS lite or another colour. And now, look at what Nintendo is doing. Twenty free games through the ambassador program, a price cut very early... They are now paying for teaching people to wait for a better product. And you know what? I don’t feel an ounce of pity. Some companies (e.g. Nintendo, Square enix) can just makes ton of money by plastering some popular franchise name onto a pile of garbage and thus, their products become of lower quality. They know they can get away with it because we still buy them. People will buy Skyward Sword even though it’s a gimmick; people have bought Final Fantasy XIII even if it was a terrible experience. The only way to increase the quality of our games is simple: be more picky. If Super Smash Bros. 4 is like Brawl, opt out, if The Legend of Zelda forces you to swing a Wiimote like you’re on crack, don’t buy it either. As for Ultimate MvC3, Street Fighter IV Arcade edition and all of these rip-offs, just forget about them.