Tales of Monkey Island and #28:Actraiser

So, I just finished Tales of Monkey Island and noticed something kind of interesting and wanted to briefly talk about it. Basically, in the 4th and 5th episode, the game has some slight parallels with the gospel. The obvious one is the "Judas" role that Morgan LeFlay has. She betrays the hero and is paid with exactly 30,000 pieces of silver. However there are some other slight parallels as well. Guybrush Threepwood is a savior figure, who frees the world of the pox before dying to LeChuck. He then has to conquer death to set things right and is finally resurrected at the end of the whole ordeal. I would love to read more into this but I shouldn't since I think most of this is sort of incidental. The 30,000 pieces of silver is the only direct reference and I'm pretty sure the makers weren't thinking "Hey, lets take the story of Christ and retell it with voodoo and pirates. Yeah that will be awesome." So, I won't go about it, though I'm sure others will. As for the game (or games since it was episodic), it started out slow but by the third episode, it picked up and became a solid series. Not as good as the other Telltale Games I've played but definitely worth my money. And now, for more games I like:

28. Actraiser

Once upon a time, I heard about a game called Actraiser several times. When it appeared on the Virtual Console on the Wii I decided to buy it and try it out. What I came across was one of the more original and better games I've ever played.

The game puts you in the shoes of God (or the Master in this case) on his quest to reconquer his creation from the clutches of Satan (or...actually I forget what they called Satan in this game...). The game takes place in two modes. The first mode is a Castlevania-esque sidescroller that has you play as a statue the Master posses. The first time you enter this mode, its to free an area of land from the clutches of evil. After you've defeated the boss, a temple will be built and a priest and priestess will appear. From there you enter the next mode which plays sort of like civilization. You take the control of your Cherub, with whom you can guide how the village builds itself up, defeat monsters who are trying to terrorize the area, and cast some spells that cause natural disasters and stuff. Your villagers will occasionally seal up evil layers if you guide them to them. Eventually, you'll descend again and posses a statue again to free the land from evil once more. Once you finish with that area you move onto the next one until you finally reach your confrontation with Satan himself.

The game plays pretty well and both modes within the game feel as if they belong there. I'm actually surprised more games haven't tried to do something similar to this game since it really stands out because of it. The music is also amazing and gives you a feel for the sheer epic nature of this game. The game, though, does have its flaws. It was made early in the SNES lifespan, so its not particularly impressive graphics wise. Its controls also leave something to be desired though mostly its because of the lack of a double jump function. The game is rather forgiving in the sense that you have infinite continues...

All in all this is a good game that no one should pass up if they have a Wii.

#29: Timesplitters 2

It's been awhile, but I figure now, in the midst of homework and NaNoWrimo, I should go ahead and post something. Since I obviously haven't completed Eternal Darkness yet, I might as well continue onto the next game on my list of favorites.

29: Timesplitters 2

This was my introduction to the incredibly difficult series of FPS known as the Timesplitters series. I bought this game because it was advertised as an heir apparent to Goldeneye and, knowing that Goldeneye had a reputation as the first, good console FPS, I figured I would pick it up and give it a chance. Needless to say, it managed to impress me quite a bit.

There really isn't much of a story to Timesplitters 2. Basically a race of aliens known as the Timesplitters have captured a bunch of these crystals that allow them to go back in time. Our heroes, Corpral Hart and Sergant Cortez, have been sent to stop them. When they arrive on the ship, the Timesplitters quickly take the crystals and jump into a time portal that looks like something out of Stargate. You take the helm of Sergant Cortez, as he travels back in time to retrieve the Timecrystals and have his sex changed...many...many...times. If you're wondering about that let me explain. Each stage has you playing as a character from that time period who Cortez has sort of...taken the identity of. So, for instance, in the first stage of the game, you end up taking the identity of a female, Soviet character and, in the first cut scene, watch as Cortez literally becomes this person. The time periods themselves have their own unique story established with the opening cutscene, however there is barely any attempt to connect them, making the story of this game a major weakness. The game does have a co-op mode for the story, which was nice to see since only a few FPS seemed to be doing that back when it was released.

What Timesplitters 2 lacks in story, it makes up for in the wide variety of multiplayer and single player modes that you can tackle. Single player wise, you have the Challenges and then a single player version of Arcade Mode with various objectives ranging from find these bananas in x amount of time to win this type of game against this type of enemy. All of these single player challenges can be rather difficult and that brings me to something about TS2 that must be mentioned. This game is hard. Not just mahogany desk hard, no I'm talking about diamond plated steel hard. I have never beaten the story mode on any difficulty beyond Normal (there's Hard and Very Hard after that) and many of the single player challenges I haven't even come close to beating. If you manage to unlock everything in this game, you are truly a god of console FPSs.

TS2 contains a ton of multiplayer modes as well. You have your deathmatches and Team Deathmatches but you also have a mode called Assault. This was a game mode where one team would be given a set number of objectives to complete while the other team tries to stop them. In TS2, these objectives are always the same no matter what map you choose, but they are still a lot of fun to accomplish.Another interesting modes are Flame Tag, where you have one person on fire and they try and run into another person, causing them to catch on fire and be it instead of them. Not only did this game have a ton of multilayer modes, but it also fields map maker built into the game, allowing gamers to make their own multiplayer and story maps.

There are some other things which need to be noted in passing before I can move onto the flaws of this game. First, the game allows you to choose from a huge cast of colorful characters that, if you leave this on, have different strengths and weaknesses. The differences in play between the characters makes Multiplayer a little more interesting and actually makes you choose strategically which character you are going to use. Second, the game also boasts fully customizable controls that allow you to fine tune which buttons do which on your controller. Finally, if you don't have any friends around but want to play through the multiplayer modes, the game allows you to use bots to fill up all the other, open roster spots. The bots AI ranges from horrendous to spectacular, so it can provide some challenge in any of the modes.

Despite its strengths, TS2 does have a number of weaknesses. First of all, there is no jump button. This wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't for Halo's successful incorporation of such an ability into their controls. Speaking of controls, aiming in this game is just downright difficult. Unlike in Halo or other FPS where you move the cursor and it will stay where you've left it, TS2 has it set up so that the cursor will snap back to the center of the screen whenever you let up on the control stick that handles aiming and turning. This is incredibly frustrating and makes Sniping a much more difficult task then it actually should be. The multiplayer lacks any online play, though the PS2 and XBox versions of the game support system link, allowing for 16 player matches.

TS2 is still a fun FPS and was a great introduction to the Timesplitters franchise for me. While its story was lacking, I found myself enjoying the multiplayer with my friends or by myself with a bunch of bots. TS2 did its job, and made me a fan of the Timesplitters franchise.

An Update and some brief reviews

If you haven't figured it out based off of my inactivity, I've given up on Stalin vs. Martians for now. I will return to it in the future however I need a very long break from it. So, I've been working through my last run of Eternal Darkness. Hopefully I will complete that this week and will be able to post a review of it before Halloween. For now, though, I've decided to do some brief reviews on what I consider to be my favorite games of all time. I wrote a list like this a while back, but it's changed slightly sine I compiled it and I want to expand it from 11 to 30 (I kept adding games to the list as I went through my Backloggery...). I should note that in some cases on this list, I have placed a series, not a game, in one of the slots. In all of those cases, this is because I've loved every game within those series and have decided to just lump them together so I can fit more games on the list. Anyway, here is number 30 on that list-

30. Heroes V (including Tribes of the East)

Let me cut right to the chase and say that the Heroes of Might and Magic series has a special place in my heart since I grew up playing it. So, when I saw that Ubisoft had picked up the license for that series after 3DO folded, I knew I would be buying Heroes V at some point in the future.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this strategy game series let me quickly break it down for you. The game is completely turn based and revolves around you controlling a Hero and a Castle. The Castle allows you to spawn monsters for the Hero to take along with him as his army. The Hero can also get spells, artifacts, and siege machines from either the Castle or the map. The battles play out sort of like chess, with you moving around stacks of Monsters ranging from 1 to well over 9000 (meme reference intended...). Heroes V carries on this lineage except unlike the previous games is in 3D. Tribes of the East and Hammer of Fate (the two expansion packs) add to this further by giving you alternate upgrades of your various monsters to summon, something that's never been done before. It should also be noted that you don't need to own a copy of Heroes V to run Tribes of the East (which is awesome). The only games I have from this set are Heroes V and Tribes of the East and this is likely how I'm going to keep it.

The game carries on the lineage of Heroes quite well. The atmosphere, strategic elements, and overall design have been kept in tact and because of that, I have to say that I love this game. It's fun to see all the different units I knew from my youth blown up into full 3D models and changed to give this game and even better art direction. The game still has the Hot Seat mode which allows you to play a multilayer game at one computer which is probably the best reason to buy this game. However, there are flaws that hamper the Heroes V games. The campaign mode is ridiculously hard and unlike previous games, there are no cheats to help you. So, not surprisingly, I got stuck on a mission and haven't touched the campaign since. The move to 3D has made it a little harder to click on things that you want to go to or pick up however this doesn't effect the game play much since you can correct it with no problem. Most of the monster abilities are never explained forcing you to experiment until you figure out what each one does. The graphics and art style look like a rip off of Warcraft III and finally, those extra advanced forms of every monster in the game don't seem to add as nearly as much strategy as it should.

All in all, though, I still like this game a lot. It's not my favorite game in the Heroes series by a long shot, however I'm glad that Ubisoft made it and look forward to whenever the create Heroes VI.