My DMC 4 Walkthrough Published

Here it is. I know you don't care, but I do. I'm too busy with Metal Gear Solid 4 to post anything interesting.

Review: Puzzle Quest

I've been stuck at the beach for a week, leaving me unable to play Metal Gear Solid 4, so I decided to play an old game for my PSP while I was here. The game I picked up was Puzzle Quest, which gained a lot of popularity from Penny Arcade's Tycho's recommendation of the PC demo when it came out. Otherwise, the game is so awfully marketed that it's incredible anyone ever played it. Even the title immediately makes it sound just awful, guaranteeing that no one would ever enter a game store and buy it unless they already knew about it. Even inside the game, it just looks like you'd be embarassed playing it. Despite all that, it somehow manages to be just fun enough as a game.

Puzzle Quest (for the DS, PSP, and also at some point it came out for the XBLA, PC, Wii, and PS2) casts you as a fairly generic hero (you pick your picture, name, and class) in a fantasy world that is facing an odd resurgence of evil. The story is advanced through text bubble conversations between your character and others, with no voice acting, and a single expression that tends to look comically inappropriate the majority of the time. Your character must quest against lots of orcs, undead, rats, and whatever else. However, you don't fight through an RPG engine or with real combat, but instead with special Bejewled-style puzzles. Matching sets of three or more skulls cause direct damage, while other objects give you gold, experience, or mana for spells. These spells allow you to actually take advantage of your enemy beyond the mostly luck-based regular puzzle, which means you can actually come up with some fairly interesting strategies for taking it to those ogres. Like the rest of the game, this may all sound like a really bad idea, but it magically just works.

The interesting combination of spell strategies with Bejewled gameplay actually makes for an interesting take on combat that will stay intersting, at least for several hours. I tended to get sick of it after about five separate combats, which is pretty much exactly the amount of time I want to play the PSP anyway. I would still be interested and ready to play again after a few hours, making for a good general gameplay experience. Though enemies have different abilities that will make combats somewhat unique, you still will tend to repeat the same offensive strategies against them, meaning you'll want to turn to the mini-games for some variety. After earning a bit of gold from combat and quests, you can unlock the ability to play mini-games (all still based on the tile-switching puzzle system) to get new spells and mounts. These are fairly welcome, but the fact that you're still only playing a slightly modified form of the same puzzle system means they aren't totally refreshing. Gold from combats also allows you to get new equipment, giving you new abilities in combat, which is also an interesting option to keep you playing.

It wasn't too long before I actually all the mini-games bought and what I thought was the perfect set of equipment for my character, meaning that the gold I earned from then on didn't interest me very much even though I wasn't even halfway through the story. This was somewhat disappointing, but goes to show that the hours of gameplay to actually beat the story are very satisfying if not too much.

In conclusion, Puzzle Quest is a seemingly horrible idea with an awful marketing campaign that is fun to play. It's right for everyone (well, not FPS enthusiasts) on some level, be it the RPG elements, Bejewled casual gameplay, or strategy. I've decided that my reviews shouldn't have scores or even letter grades given the recent controversy over them, so I'll stick with an Ebert & Roeper style recommendation. Thumbs up, I suppose.

Spore Creature Creator Impressions

Over the past two days I've been casually messing around with that new trial for the Spore Creature Creator. I enjoyed creating a few monsters and things, but got fairly tired of it after a while. One very important observation, though: Kids freaking love it. When I let kids play with the creature creator, they couldn't stop. It was infinite entertainment for all of them. Penny Arcade had a similar revelation yesterday as well. It's incredible just how fun and intuitive this is for kids, which has great promise. They even made me buy the full version of the Creature Creator for them. Very exciting.

There has been a huge marketing campaign for Spore come out of nowhere just recently, which is apparent if you check out YouTube or Wal-Mart or their masterful information releases to Joystiq that are spaced just right to keep everyone waiting every second until September 7th or whenever it will finally come out. I think this is guaranteed to be a huge hit that most actual gamers claim to hate because of the extreme hype.

While messing around with the Creature Creator, I did make an honest attempt at a few Mario characters. I had a go with a more impressionistic view of Birdo, but here's the YouTube video for my Koopa Troopa. At least that gives me a video upload that's not just a walkthrough for Echochrome.

My First Published Letter to the Editor (Escapist Magazine)

I wrote a letter to the editor at Escapist Magazine last week on a story about a game store owner of some sort and his problems dealing with parents and controversial games. He stated that "some games are lucky to get an M rating", which I thought showed that the ESRB ratings need a switch-around. There are basically no games in the United States that really would deserve AO, but anyone who doesn't understand the system perfectly (i.e., everyone) would think that games like GTA and the like must be upgraded to it. I proposed that the rating system move M up to where AO is now, and introduce a new name that might better indicate that the old M rating is the same as the movie R rating, and AO is like X or NC17. Even R-rated movies tend to be technically a bit dirtier than M-rated games, so, well, read the letter.

Distractions Upon Distractions As Another Walkthrough is Begun

Last time, when I began writing my Devil May Cry 4 walkthrough, I assumed I'd have less time to write online. Somehow, I wrote even more on those days then stopped writing after I finished it (it's currently awaiting quality-control review at Mahalo.com). Now I've begun a walkthrough for Folklore and started to read Ian Bogost's book Persuasive Games in the hope of finding more material to write about. Theoretically, all that combined with my upcoming week-long beach trip should make me write less here, but that will probably turn out to be exactly what doesn't happen. We'll see.

Video Game Reviewer Bias Sheet

I'd like to propose that all reviewers of video games keep a public record of their biases towards certain types and genres of video games. Video game publishers always complain whenever they get a review from someone who doesn't especially like their genre, so reviewers should just fill out a standard sheet with what genres they think they like the most. Here's the general format I've come up with:

1-10 scale with 10 most favorable towards that genre, 1 least, and 5 meaning that it is entirely dependent on the game and the reviewer doesn't feel any bias towards or against that genre. I've filled out my perceived biases for several genres here for an example.


Action-adventure: 5
Beat-em-up/hack 'n' slash: 4
Fighter: 3
FPS: 9
Third person shooter: 9
Adventure: 5
Simulation: 10
RPG: 7
MMORPG: 5
RTS: 8
TBS: 10
Rhythm: 6
Puzzle: 5
Sports: 6 (favorite sport may also be necessary)
Racing: 6
Pro-independent/anti-major game companies: 7

That would probably be the basis of a review bias sheet if one were to be created. I just think that would help assign the correct reviewers to their sort of games, and hopefully not exclude reviewers from reviewing all that they can anyway. I have a feeling this sort of thing exists where there are lots of reviewers anyway in a less formal way, because the magazines/websites still don't want the wrong reviewer for a game. A clear example of this is whenever Yahtzee Croshaw reviews anything that's not an FPS. Watch his review of any RPG and you'll see what I mean, then probably send him more hate mail.

Expressing My Impressions: Civilization and Battlefield Demos

This week, after a very slow Playstation Store update, I got access to the demos for Civilization: Revolution and Battlefield: Bad Company. These were two very big demos in the middle of nowhere, so I felt like talking about them. I've always been a big fan of the Civilization series, and Sid Meier is actually working on this one unlike the past few computer editions, so this is very exciting. I'm even listening to their podcast right now, so I'm rather giddy, you might say. In general, the deal with this game is that it's more compact and built ground-up for the consoles. The demo itself was just a tutorial, basically, but it did allow you to play the opening turns of a game as either Caesar or Cleopatra. The first sort of shocking moment for PC fans is when the advisor pops up on the screen and starts babbling in a sort of Simlish, which is immediately irritating, (especially when he's blocking the text you have to read) but eventually sort of becomes normal. I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or not. The Civiliopedia looks incredible this time around, with not just text entries but also pictures and videos for all kinds of subjects, showing off the added console power. The only other real difference I found so far was a much more interesting looking combat, with your little warriors sort of jumping around and not fighting so predictably.

Battlefield: Bad Company is, clearly, the next Battlefield game, but this edition appears to be ready to really feature a single player campaign and sort of interesting characters. Even in the online, this version is obviously going for a bit more of a sense of humor, with radio stations playing in vehicles. Similarly to Civilization, some of the quirky elements of this game immediately put me off, but I found them easier to take as time went on. The single player generally doesn't look great, and I found aiming difficult as is so often a problem in console shooters. For some reason, online play seemed just fine and natural enough. I only saw one real bug, when a blown up helicopter fell and balanced on its tip on the ground, but that's not game-breaking at all, and the multiplayer is fun enough to keep playing for a long time on its own. Both of these demos looked very promising for the summer game drought, I just wish the Playstation Network hadn't taken until 4 in the morning to put them up.

Jack Thompson Recommended to be Disbarred

I've been mostly avoiding coverage of Thompson's Florida Bar disciplinary hearing, because GamePolitics has me totally outclassed in their coverage, and there's not more I can add to it. Still, I want to just give them a quick link, as Thompson has been recommended by the Florida Bar to be disbarred (no longer allowed to practice lawyering in Florida, basically) for ten years before he can reapply to be an attorney.

See GamePolitics' coverage here.

It's Finally Over... Democratic Primaries '08

Legal Arcade Jumble of the Week #1

I've decided to start a precedent for gaming-themed jumbles. Why not? Here's my first Legal Arcade Jumble of the Week, presented in some just horrible looking handwriting when it's so zoomed in like this. Click the picture for a closer look if you need. A transcript follows.
Q: "What Gordon Freeman brought back from the party --- forever."
A: "_ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _"

Clues:
O T R S O E H - game genre
I A R T A L - gaming assassin
A D K R O
V C B I E R - GTA traitor

Two word jumbles are independent of one another, so letters above one word stay in that word, they don't all go together in one letter pool. Anyway, you take what you get in the first three jumbles and use the letters that end up in the spaces with circles in them to create a jumble for the answer. Email me (link on the sidebar) with the answer, and I'll... uh... Create a hall of fame or something.

Echochrome Review Diamante

There has been a lot of talk about corruption in video game reviews recently with Konami's reviewer contract for Metal Gear Solid 4. Let me just quickly say that this story falls into exaggeration too easily. Konami basically asked reviewers not to reveal story details, then slightly more controversially asked that they not talk about the mandatory install or cutscene lengths. That doesn't mean they sad no bad reviews at all, and reviewers didn't have to agree or anything, either. I'm not defending what they did, I'm just basically asking everyone to calm down. Anyway, I want in on this reviewing world, so here's a diamond poem review of Echochrome from last week when I was obsessed with it:

Echochrome

Creative Puzzler

Perception Is Reality

Calm Experience, Frustrating Hell

How Much Time?

Haunting Violins

8.5

Pros: Great idea for a puzzler, level-sharing and world leaderboards good use of network. Some will love the music.

Cons: No idea how much time is left, only one look to the game, some will hate the music.

Two thumbs up, because I have two thumbs all to myself.

Small Break to Write Walkthrough for DMC 4

Sorry, complete lack of loyal readers this site attracts, but I have to take a couple of days off to write a walkthrough for Devil May Cry 4 at Mahalo.com. I'll link to it once it has been completed, which should only be a few more days. I'll leave you with this Al Qaeda demonstration- no, sorry, that's a screenshot for Fallout 3.