Project Sylpheed

I wanted to love Project Sylpheed. After all, it’s everything Armored Core for the 360 should have been, and it’s in space! Despite all it has going for it though, the title has some glaring problems that can’t be ignored.

Overall this game is built well. The training missions are good, and for the most part, the controls are easy. Some buttons are utilized multiple times through double-tapping, but this is used sparingly. The reason I compared this title to Armored Core is that you can customize the loadout of your fighter before every mission. In addition, to obtain new equipment, you need to “research” it by spending points earned by completing each mission. The specs of new equipment, such as machine guns, railguns, and warship-killing torpedoes, are provided before research, so you know what you’re getting before devoting points toward it.

The gameplay is dependent on your loadout. Selections of special equipment, like extra ammo bays and radar systems to let you lock onto missiles, change your approach. With multi-lock missiles, sweeping your fighter’s nose (or camera, depending on the missile and if you’re actually using the right joystick) over targets generates a lock, and many missiles are released to track down their targets. With lasers and ballistics, timing and aiming are critical. In addition to weapon choice, you can use special abilities such as high-speed ramming moves and slowing down time. These come at the expense of shield energy but can be valuable tools in defeating enemies.

A major drawback in the design, however, is the camera controls, which are so bad that I didn’t use them for the majority of the game. Manual control is too sensitive to be useful, and the lock-on camera makes navigation of the battlefield an impossibility. The HUD notifies you the direction to turn to find an enemy, so it’s possible (and appealing) to play without touching the camera. The other potentially confusing control feature is the use of the left joystick to both yaw and pitch. However, after a short learning curve, getting around the battlefield becomes second nature.

Now, for the really bad news. The plot is the standard, “Earth colonizes space, colonies want independence; war ensues.” The characters are one dimensional and cliche (the just hero, the dependent girl, the double-crossing best friend, the psychopathic dictator). This game lasts only a few hours, especially with the arbitrary, imposed time limits. Worse, there’s little replay value for anyone but the most diehard achievement collectors. To top it all, there’s no multiplayer!

Despite these problems, however, the game is still worth playing… once. The missions are action-packed, frantic, and, when you get some of the more powerful weapons, full of explosive goodness. This is a rental game if I’ve ever seen one, since you’ll be done with it in a few sittings and there’s really no point in playing it through more than once. I only wish Square Enix would have fully realized the potential of the gameplay and built a better framework around it.

Fury

Finally, an MMO where you get to stab people through the neck! Auran, the company that brought you the riveting Trainz series, has created a new online game that mixes the best elements of Guild Wars and Quake into a fast paced, action-packed free-for-all between up to 32 players…or so they claim.

Combat in Fury works like in most other MMOs. Select another player to start whacking them with your weapon, then use hotkeys or buttons to use special moves. Before combat, the player selects the set of skills that they want to use during combat, as well as their equipment. This allows for different skill/equipment sets, or incarnations, to be created for the player to switch between for easy, quick pre-battle configuration.

The special moves also offer a twist. Each skill has one of five elements: air, water, fire, nature, and general. Other than general, skills can either add or subtract charges of the element. Likewise, there are opposing elements (fire and water, air and nature), that cancel each other out when earned. This allows extra flexibility at a price, and motivates the player to keep separate incarnations of element-focused skill sets.

Post-battle, the player is presented with the score screen, which contains a breakdown of performance and how much essence (the equivalent of experience) that each player received. Also, players are given bonus essence for being the most similar to a given archetype (even if that isn’t the archetype of the character), or for achieving certain goals (most kills, etc.). Essence is broken into the four archetypal types (Life, Death, Growth, and Decay), along with a more general Fury essence, and allows for the purchase of new skills and advancement of rank.

Fury’s plot is thin, but decent. The combat itself is rich and rewarding, although players at a much higher level than others are often thrown into the mix and offset the skill level, which is more than just a little annoying, and gets very old very fast. There are hundreds of skills available, and 25 “killing moves”, including one where your character stabs another through the neck, breaks their leg, and backflips them into a wall (!!!).

If Auran can get the balancing issues worked out, I have no doubt that this will be a popular MMO when it comes out of beta, especially now that they’ve announced that you can play for free. In the meantime, I’ll just do my best to stay alive for as long as I can.

Factor 5 Won’t Admit That Lair’s Less Than Perfect; Tells Reviewers How To Play Game, Blames Ghosts

Some people just can’t admit that they’ve screwed up. In an attempt to get better reviews for their new, PS3-selling game Lair, Factor 5 is blaming poor ratings on reviewers not playing the game right. As such, they’ve sent out dozens of 21-page “Reviewer’s Guides” to magazines and gaming sites. Instead of the usual marketing-speak, these manuals are just that - manuals. Instead of letting reviewers pick up the feel of the game on their own, which is half the fun and challenge of reviewing, Factor 5 feels that the only right way to review Lair is to do it with their guidance. Of course, all the hand-holding in the world won’t make the game any better.

So, if the reviewers are doing it right (read: according to Factor 5’s manual) and the game is still getting bad reviews, what must the logical conclusion be? Ghosts, of course! “I am not a believer in ghosts, but this one was haunted,” said Julian Eggebrecht, lead director of Factor 5. A string of bad luck, including deaths in the family, illness of critical staff, and technical problems at various important points in the development cycle plagued Lair, and Eggebrecht’s blaming the supernatural.

Or maybe Factor 5 just couldn’t make a decent game. Just maybe.

Conflict 2142

The year is 2142. A new ice age is ravaging the Earth, and there’s not enough land to support the population. Two factions, the European Union and Pan Asian Coalition, fight for land in an epic struggle for survival. Read more

Rockstar Games presents Table Tennis Coming to the Wii; Mii’s Seek New Employment

In a move that makes perfect sense, Rockstar Games presents Table Tennis, originally for the Xbox 360, is finally being ported to the Wii. Considering the popularity of Tennis in Wii Sports, this makes perfect sense. However, for all the gamers out there who have what my old music teacher Mrs. Mellenger called “stupid fingers”* (the author included), the 360 version may be preferred. Another downside of the move to the Wii is the loss of graphical quality, but, considering the nature of the game (it’s Pong with an incredible physics engine), it’s doubtful that that will be a major downside. Read more

Moore goes to EA, Mattrick goes to Microsoft

The man who’s been running Microsoft’s Xbox and Games for Windows divisions, Peter Moore, is heading to the west coast to take over EA’s EA Sports brand. Taking his place is former EA president Don Mattrick, who’s worked on such famous EA titles as The Sims and Need for Speed.

Although this seems sudden, it may have been in the works for some time. Mattrick’s been working for the past few months as an “external advisor” to Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division. Considering Moore has a new post at EA so soon, it’s unlikely that this all happened on the spur of the moment.

Mattrick chose a fine time to take over for Moore. Between the not-quite-recall and the impending lawsuit from scratched disks, he’s got a lot of work on his hands.

Surviving Outside the Party

Playing together is what the Nintendo Wii is all about. The name was chosen because it’s pronounced the same in virtually every language, and exemplifies Nintendo’s message of people playing together. The Wii’s advertisements all feature dozens of people, of all ages, genders, and races, either playing together or taking turns playing the single-player titles, rooting each other on. Where does this leave the stereotypical, friendless gamer in an age of party games and social focus? Read more