Los extremos del mundo con usted

El lanzamiento norteamericano esperado desde hace mucho tiempo del anunciado (con todo unappreciated en gran parte por gamers japoneses) Subarashiki Kono Sekai ha traído una nueva revolución a RPGs handheld, probando que es Enix cuadrado, a pesar de su ordeño continuado de Final Fantasy y Corazones del reino licencias, aún capaces de contenido original.

Los jugadores toman el papel de Neku, cínico joven que se encuentre en la travesía famosa del despegue en tiempo mínimo de Shibuya sin el recuerdo de cómo él terminó para arriba allí o de porqué. Neku descubre que él ahora es parte del juego de la muerte, y el excedente el curso de siete días debe luchar el “ruido” (las varias criaturas que toman la forma de animales) para sobrevivir y para terminar misiones diarias. Mientras que progresa la historia Neku aprende más sobre se, sus aliados, y los puntos más finos de la interacción humana, entre hacer compras para la ropa, las ranas y los canguros venenosos de la matanza, y lectura los pensamientos de traseúntes.

En combate, la “cubierta” de Neku consiste en 300 pernos cobrables con habilidades únicas del ataque tales como flame-throwing, balas, y huelgas del melee. Los ataques son ejecutados usando la aguja en una variedad de maneras tales como rayas verticales y golpecitos, algún uniforme integrando el micrófono. As the game progresses, pins level up and grow more powerful as they’re utilized. While Neku’s action takes place on the bottom screen, the top screen features one of several allies who also fight the Noise. Allies are controlled via the D-Pad (or the face buttons for you southpaws) in a unique pattern combo system, with combos performed by either character giving bonuses to his or her partner on the opposite screen. For those who would find it hard to manage both screens at once, an auto-assist option is available to help players get adjusted and can easily be overridden by the player.

Designer Tetsuya Nomura (known for his work in the recent Final Fantasy games and the Kingdom Hearts series) has given the game a hip, urban feel, to match the setting of Tokyo’s current hotspot for teens, urban culture aficionados, and bleeding-edge fashionistas. The character designs are both comforting to S-E fans and at the same time a refreshing departure from the fantasy-based settings of its other series; featuring the sort of outfits that, while certainly outlandish by American standards, are a common sight in districts such as Shibuya and Harajuku. The game’s music also matches the mood - essential in a modern setting when the wrong tunes can quickly remove the player from the experience.

World takes steps to revolutionize how players gain XP with a “Mingle” mode in which XP is awarded when the player’s DS comes into WiFi contact with another DS, no matter what cart is in that system, ensuring that World will be slotted at anime conventions, LAN parties, and events like PAX for months to come. This and other in-game innovations are proof that if you’re looking for a change of pace in both the RPG genre and how you use your DS to play games, The World Ends With You is a must-buy.

Professor Layton

I recently tried to explain to a friend about the fox, chicken and the worm.

“It’s a classic puzzle.  You’ve got a fox, a chicken, and a worm on one side of a river.  You can only carry two of them on a boat. If you leave the fox alone with the chicken, it will eat it, and if you leave the chicken alone with the worm, it will eat it.  How can you get all three of them across the river safely?”

My friend, having never played Zork Zero, looked at me as though I were mad.  But now I have my revenge, for I have introduced him to Professor Layton and the Curious Village, which has a variant of this puzzle, and he is completely addicted.

Puzzle games have been a bit outré in the past few years since the PC community recovered from the excesses of the early CD-ROM years.  Perhaps it was a lingering sense of guilt over wasted hours spent playing The 7th Guest.  The typical puzzle in today’s games tends to be a sideshow to the main event and boring to boot.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village is all about good puzzles, what are sometimes called “brainteasers”.  Some of them are straightforward, some of them are trick puzzles.  Some are easy, some are hard.  But nearly all of them are interesting, and they don’t talk down to the player.

The eponymous Professor Layton and his apprentice, Luke, visit the village of St. Mystere to assist in a mysterious bequest.  The villagers of St. Mystere spend their days, and nights, trying to solve puzzles.  As Layton unravels the thread of the game’s plot he will also be presented with well over 100 puzzles, of varied difficulties, by the villagers.

The artwork is beautiful: simple lines, and somehow evocative of the animated film The Triplets of Belleville.  The music, likewise, evokes the French countryside, and if it can get a bit repetitive at times, it still enhances the experience.  That being said, I’m a sucker for accordion music.   Your mileage may vary. The inhabitants of the village are by turns awkward, fat, ugly, grotesque-looking, and supercilious, so it looks to me as though the authors actually did carefully survey the inhabitants of small French villages before creating the game.  

Throughout the game you’ll find “hint coins” which can be used to purchase hints on any puzzles.  You’ll also receive different puzzles from the same villagers.  At the end of a given “chapter” of the game, any unsolved puzzles will appear in “Granny Riddleton’s Puzzle Shack”, so there is no way to  permanently miss a puzzle.  It did seem to me that solving a puzzle in Granny’s shack was less satisfying than solving it “on the street,” but that’s entirely a question of mood.

There are also various meta-puzzles along the way that unlock bonus content, and there is extra downloadable content that can be played without impacting the main storyline of the game.

A sequel has already been released in Japan, and work is proceeding on the third game, which I will buy without a second thought.  It’s that good.

Jam Sessions

From the “I never thought they’d localize this” file comes this surprisingly full-featured guitar simulator from Japanese developer Plato and North American publisher Ubisoft, based on the Japanese title Hiite Utaeru DS M-06.

Jam Sessions isn’t a ‘game’ so much as a ’sound toy’ - think Electroplankton but far less experimental. Players first assemble a ‘chord palette’ out of over a hundred authentic guitar chords each of which corresponds to the D-Pad (or action buttons for southpaws). Using the left or right trigger buttons to shift palettes, players can have access to up to 16 chords at a time.

The actual ‘play’ mode shows the chord palette on the top screen of the DS, and a single ’string’ on the bottom. Using the stylus (or a guitar pick, or a thumb), players ’strum’ the string (while pressing a corresponding chord button with their other hand) to produce - yes - music. Once players adjust to the system, they can play any number of chord-based songs to their heart’s content. This means, however, that the realm of lead guitarists (solos, melodies, and the like) are not an option. Most guitar players will point to this as the game’s greatest shortcoming. Players are also “limited” to the chords available. There isn’t a method to create custom chords or power cords, but most will find the available selection more than adequate.

Song Mode includes several built-in tracks with a wide ranges of genres; from Bob Marley to Johnny Cash and even some Death Cab and Avril Lavigne thrown in for good measure. These pre-built chord palettes (and accompanying chord guides with lyrics) allow you to play the songs on your own. Half of the songs include demos so that players can hear the proper tempo. However, these demos are hampered by the lack of anything representing a vocal track (one of the few features in Hiite that wasn’t included in Jam Sessions as opposed to vice versa), and Song Mode doesn’t have any method of making players play the correct stroke rhythm. So, while this mode will pose challenges to players who haven’t picked up a guitar (or a Guitar Hero controller, for that matter) in their lives, seasoned guitarists will enjoy being able to rock out to Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” and other classics.

Significant improvements to the original include 7 unique effects pedals such as distortion, delay, flanger, and tremolo, each with their own settings. Players can also record their pieces for playback (with the ability to store up to five at a time). Audio options have been updated to include a specific output setting for guitar amps. Superficial improvements include several dozen backgrounds and string animations, which are a welcome change from the unappetizing gradients available in the Japanese version.

Jam Sessions is available in three flavors - the standard edition, a special Best Buy-only edition that includes three more tunes in Song Mode, and a Performance Bundle (MSRP $69.99) dated for December that includes a mini-amp. While the casual gamer will likely want to give this a pass, musicians of all stripes will be interested in finally being able to put their DS to productive use, whether on-stage or in the recording studio.