Secret Agent Clank

I hoped this would be a straightforward review. Picking up my PSP to play the latest incarnation of the Ratchet series, I knew that, rather then the normal Ratchet-focused game play, I would finally be put in control of Clank (dressed in an adorable little suit with the creative bits of weaponry for which Ratchet is famous) in a Bondian adventure. Read more

Guitar Hero: On Tour

When DDR first hit the local arcade, there were two crowds that loved to play it - the weekenders and the during-the-weekers. On the weekends, all kinds of people would show up, taking turns, laughing as they failed song after song, cheering for the rare victory. During the week, though, it was a whole other event. Read more

Final Fantasy IV

Short on the heels of my completion of Final Fantasy 3 for the Nintendo DS, Square Enix releases yet another remade classic game. Moving slowly down the line to Final Fantasy 4 (soon, no doubt, heading to 5 and 6, but never 7) in order to destroy the time I have only recently freed up. Read more

Tabula Rasa

From the mind of Richard Garriot, TR puts you into a futuristic MMO that supposedly adds ingenuity where other games offer repetition. It supposedly began with ‘wiping the slate clean’ of gaming ideas, and throwing in new ideas. That is what Tabula Rasa means, after all. Instead, it is a game based around every overdone idea with a few tidbits of innovation thrown in.

The first of these tidbits is the character creation system. Each player creates one character, and one character only. As that character grows and chooses it’s path, you create ‘clones’ at the turning points, which allow you to come back and start from the turning point, rather then completely from the beginning. It works very well, and I found it incredibly useful.

A very un-useful tidbit, however, is the user interface. Since the designers were working from a ‘blank slate’ they apparently didn’t realize that the MMO user interface has been refined over time. Instead, they created a radial menu accessible entirely by the mouse. Good, in theory, but when the menu is open, the menu is the only thing you can interact with. Don’t try attacking, don’t try turning around or changing direction - it won’t let you. This means in the middle of battle you shouldn’t access the menu to use an item or to level up. Again, the blank slate has forgotten that people do these things all the time.

Graphically, the game is quite pretty. And while every character looks quite identical, you’ll find the world itself to be quite well detailed and the ’spells’ to be impressive. But graphics only go so far, and the one place the game did not start from a ‘blank slate’ is the gameplay. Filled with fetch quests and kill quests, you’ll find yourself having flashbacks of World of Warcraft, DAOC, and any other game that has a brutal level grind. And here is where innovation would have made the largest difference - rather then simply putting a new coat of paint on the overused MMO formula, they could have started from ‘Tabula Rasa’ and given us something worthy of the title.

Persona 3

Any JRPG fan knows the Shin Megami Tensei series as an innovative alternative to the Final Fantasies continually re-re-released.  Always a bit off-standard, any RPG fan can expect well written stories, a driving style of gameplay, and something that makes the game stand out from the rest.  Persona 3 is no different.  Thrown into the body of a self-named seventeen year old, you’re a new student at Japan’s best secondary school.  As the story opens, you are thrust into alternating between a normal day any student experiences and the ‘Dark Hour’, an extra hour where normal people are transmogrified into coffins, and your enemy - the ‘Shadows’ - kill anyone who doesn’t change.  Naturally you are one of the latter.

The gameplay itself consists of two separate but connected sub-games.  During the day you play a standard Japanese dating-sim.  You make friends, build relationships, and try to do well in school.  When the Dark Hour approaches, you enter a very well done dungeon-crawler.  You take your group up through multiple floors of a tower, trying to get to the top and figure out what the hell is going on.

The connection of these two games is what sets it apart from anything I’ve ever played.  As you venture upward, your characters become tired, which affects your performance at school.  Your performance at school and with daytime relationships then directly affects your powers in the tower.  This symbiotic relationship feels so natural that once you are playing, it doesn’t feel like two sub-games, but instead like a solid, innovative RPG.

At first, you’ll be scared of the pacing.  With midterms coming up and the need to get to through the first section of the tower, you’ll be torn, or so you’ll think.  In fact, the game is set up to make you have to debate about whether to study and sleep or to trudge up another few levels of the tower, and that balancing act is what sets this game apart from anything else.  From the brilliant voice acting to the well written side-stories, any JRPG fan will be hooked into the world of Persona 3.  Now excuse me, I have to get back to studying for my finals.

Habitats for H’nemthe

In the world of Star Wars Galaxies, players have watched as their fellow denizens join and quit, leaving the world abandoned. While, in most MMO’s, this would mean little more then a few extra characters sitting on the server being unused, Galaxies had a much larger problem - real-estate. Much like Hashima Island, The planets in SWG were being filled with empty dwellings. So much so that the abandoned buildings were overwhelming the servers, and the only method of removal was demolition by Tie Bomber.

Someone at SOE Austin realized the strange bit of poetry that this was. In a virtual world they were overbuilt with homes, yet in the real world too many families go homeless. It’s actually rather depressing when you sit back and think about it - so rather then simply sit back and think, they called up Austin’s Habitat for Humanity. For every house that a Tie-Bomber destroyed, a donation to AHFH would be made. SOE Austin plans to present the check to AHFH today at the Austin Game Developers Conference.

From all of us at PTD, Kudos, SEO Austin.

Warhawk is the worst thing to happen to Lair

This last week has seen the release of two much-anticipated games for the Playstation 3. Last weekend the Playstation Network graced downloaders with an early copy of Warhawk for our multiplayer fix, and this weekend sees the release of Lair. But as the reviews show, Lair is lacking - and for this reviewer, it’s all thanks to Warhawk.

A year ago, Six-Axis and the Wii-Mote were both just gadgets - fun things to tack on to games to give a bit more immersion. They were akin to vibrating controllers, pressure sensitive buttons, and the like. A few games used them, but no games used them well. Motion-sensitive controllers brought us features like shaking the controller, or pointing at the screen, but never really went past that; they never gave us a sense of awe, only a sense of fun. Somehow, that all changed this week. On the Wii, gamers finally got a chance to open doors with a tactile response unlike anything in any game. With spot on controls, and perfect movement, Metroid Prime showed Wii owners what had paid for.

The PS3’s story this week, however, brought two contenders out. Lair and Warhawk both used the Six-Axis to control flying, and both were in contention for the first flying game to truly take advantage of the motion-sensitive feature. After sitting down with Warhawk for an hour, I was transfixed. The plane I was flying was instantly responsive, and with a bit of practice I was easily swooping in and out of tunnels, doing tricks in the air, and evading other flyers. It felt great, and more importantly, it felt natural. And just like Metroid has finally set the standard for FPS controls on the Wii, Warhawk stood, for me, at the pinnacle of flight controls for consoles.

And that is why Lair was such a direct kick to the sack.

Let’s say Warhawk has not been released, lets pretend it doesn’t exist. Lair would, for me, be lauded as a valiant attempt at new technology. It would be looked at just like FarCry on the Wii - the best yet, not the best it can do. It is difficult, no doubt, to program motion controls perfectly, and we should applaud them at trying. We would be making excuses, just like we did with the Wii, about why the games aren’t fun yet, about why the controls aren’t perfect yet. Lair would not be a perfect game, but it would get a pass on the controls. But thanks to the perfect responsive nature of the Warhawk’s flying controls, Lair gets more and more frustrating.

So, as I ready my review of Lair, I play Warhawk. Just as Metroid Prime sates my desire for responsive FPS controls on the Wii, Warhawk shows the flying controls are not only easy to implement, but more immersive then any analog sticks could be. It removes all doubt of motion controls being a gimmick or gadget. It actually makes me smile to play.

And then I go back to playing Lair.