Okamiden

On the regular gaming related debate centres around art and whether games are art or not. Personally I think they are and will give examples of Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Killer 7, Ocarina of Time and my game of 2007, Okami.

Okami was a work of pure genius. It took the already very successful Zelda formula and created a game completely with its own style. The gorgeous visuals, lovely music, polished Gameplay and long length make it one of the greatest games ever made.

Being on the PS2, Okami’s most unique feature was a compromise between an original idea and a limited control scheme. I’m talking about the celestial brush. By activating the brush you could paint an image on the screen and something would happen in the game, for example painting a circle on a dead tree would bring it to life, or drawing a bomb would make a bomb appear to blow up walls. But you had to draw them using the sticks.

By then the DS had built up a lot of steam and with its touch screen Okami and the DS seemed like a match made in heaven.

Enter Okamiden, a sequel to Okami on the DS. Unfortunately while the celestial brush is perfect (almost, I have difficulty always activating bloom on dead trees), the rest of the game is limited by the format. Such a shame, it seems the series just can’t win.

Okamiden takes place after the second game. Shakuya tries to summon Amaterasu to find out way demons are still appearing over Nippon, despite Yami being defeated at the end of the first game. Instead Chibiterasu, Amaterasu’s son appears. He’s only a puppy but still packs a punch. Teaming up with Susanno’s son Kuni the two set off on their travels around Nippon. Towards the end you save the world from an ancient evil determined to bring the world into eternal darkness.

It’s pretty much what you expect with a big twist towards the end and a strong possibility of a sequel.

It still looks and sounds good, and the story is enjoyable, easy to follow and funny in places. It’s the most basic Gameplay where Okamiden fails and this is due again to the limits of the system.

The celestial brush works a lot better since you can draw symbols using the stylus. The new Guidance power being one of the better new powers. As mentioned earlier you get a partner this time who you can guide to a separate location by drawing a line with your brush.

It’s just the rest of the Gameplay isn’t really up to scratch. You cannot have a 3D game without camera control and this is Okamiden’s biggest failing. Especially considering you need the camera in the right position to use the brush effectively, not being able to manually adjust the camera is a massive flaw I can’t ignore.

The combat has also been simplified with attack being reduced to a single button. The brush stops this from being simply mash X to win but it still feels like a step back from Okami.

Lastly even moving Chibi is a bit of a chore as the D-pad is not suited for full 3D play. Okamiden shows this so well as moving just does not work as well as it should.

So the limits of the DS are all too apparent. It’s a shame they didn’t wait until the 3DS came out. Okamiden would’ve really benefitted from an Analogue stick.

Okamiden certainly isn’t a bad game. Not worth full price but worth a play when you get a chance. The charm is still there and it was nice visiting Nippon again, there are just so many games out there an Okamiden doesn’t really do a lot to say pick me over the others.

7/10

Xenoblade Chronicles

I must admit I didn’t see this one coming. I thought it would take an amazing, unique, brilliant game to take game of the year from Portal 2. With Flawless Gameplay, brilliant gripping story and good humour I could not see how anything could challenge it.

Sure we have Arkham City coming and considering Arkham Asylum was my game of 2009, it may still take Game of 2011. Then we have games like Uncharted 3, Skyrim, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations and Zelda: Skyward Sword all still to come, and all likely to challenge for the crown.

Up until two weeks before its release I had never even heard of Xenoblade Chronicles. I am a fan of JRPG’s and I’m well aware the genre gets a lot of stick, some of it justified, so it’s going to take a lot to convince some gamers this is worth their time.

Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Star Ocean: The Last Hope, Eternal Sonata and Tales of Vesperia have all come and despite being good games have failed to get gamers excited over the genre. Final Fantasy isn’t what it used to be, with Final Fantasy 13 being on of the biggest disappointments of 2010.

So up steps Xenoblade Chronicles, a JRPG, on the Wii, by a relatively unknown developer completely out of the blue and knocks ten shades of shit out of all of those great titles.

If I had to sum up Xenoblade in one word it would be Huge. How they pushed the Wii this far on a single disc is beyond me. Each of the game’s 20 locations goes on for miles and reaches incredible heights. Imagine two or three of Fallout 3’s overworld stacked on top of each other and you’ll get the idea.

Each of these locations has all sorts of hidden paths and offers plenty for the keen explorer. Besides some occasional noticeable low textures each area remains beautifully presented throughout with little loss of detail over large distances. Some even change dramatically between Night and Day; the marsh area for example turns from a foggy dirty plain into a beautiful forest of lights as the in game time passes.

The visuals offer more hits than misses and sometimes you have to remind yourself this is a Wii game. They really have squeezed every little bit of the Wii and still managed to fit in all in a single disc. Even more impressive is that loading times are very good. Considering how big these areas are it’s amazing just how short the loading times are, many developers out there should take note.

The only slowdown I’ve had is during battles where some screen can get a little busy. Combat is fairly simple yet effective. At the bottom of your screen is a selection of special moves called artes. You select them with the D-pad while moving your character with the Analogue stick (note I used a Classic Controller). If you are close enough to your enemy your party leader (the one your control) will automatically do a basic attack. Artes cause damage, heal and/or give buffs and debuffs. After using an Arte you need it to “cooldown” before you can use it again.

By enhancing your artes you can decrease cooldown time and increase damage and/or effect time. You do this by spending AP gained everytime you get experience. Pretty standard stuff. Each arte can be upgraded to level 10.

Artes are colour coded depending on their effect. Attacks are Red, Pink, Green, Yellow. Buffs and Healing are Orange and Blue (Orange being temporary auras, blue moves lasting until the end unless you get rid of them). Red attacks are normal attacks which may inflict a debuff or status effect.

Pink attacks “break” an opponent which does nothing on its own, but if a Green attack is used then they will be “toppled” forcing them to the ground and unable to attack for a short while. You can then inflict Daze with Yellow attacks to extend the period they are unable to attack (so Pink -> Green -> Yellow = Break -> Topple -> Daze). This is the key to beating the harder enemies.

Attack artes only inflict debuff/status effects if you hit them from the side or back. To do this you need to make sure your opponent isn’t aggravated towards you by using artes or by staying out of battle.

Take too many hits and your tension will drop causing you to miss more and take more damage. Everytime you dodge, miss or make a critical hit and simple QTE will appear with a red circle decreasing into a light blue one. Pressing “b” when the red circle is inside the blue one you will raise your tension. If you get it on the edge you will raise your tension even more. At high tension you do more critical hits and more damage. These QTE’s are called affinity bursts.

But what makes the combat of Xenoblade unique are the visions. 8 times out of ten if an attack will incapacitate, inflict a status effect or do a lot of damage you will be warned before hand. You will then have a limited amount of time to prepare, either by raising defence, healing them do the attack won’t drop HP to 0 or by inflicting daze on/taking out the attacker.

Outside of combat Gameplay is centred on exploration, quests and affinity. As mentioned earlier the worlds are huge, towns are filled with a fair amount of NPC’s, many of which will give you side quests. There are hundreds of these ranging from collecting rare items to defeating strong enemies. Completing quests and generally talking to people in towns raise your affinity with that town, leading to more quests and better items from trades.

Affinity also covers your party. Successfully affinity bursts, helping and encouraging party members (to heal them from status effects and low tension), and taking on and completing quests will raise affinity between party members.

Each party member learns a set of skills that can be linked onto other party members depending on their affinity. Each part member learns a maximum of 25 skills, and gains a further 30 from skill links (7 party members, 5 levels of affinity).

To get full affinity you’re taking over 100 hours easy, possible up to 150. The main story is at least 70 hours, my time with a fair few side quests is 90 hours and I’ve only just finished the story. At that time you’d expect the story to drag but it doesn’t. It’s an absolute joy, gripping and with plenty of twists along the way, although the ending is a little clichéd.

The story centres on a war between two titans the Bionis and Mechonis. The Bionis breeds Biological life while the Mechonis breeds Mechanical Life. As the main character Shulk you inherit a very powerful blade called the Monado that gives its user visions of the future. After a “Mechon” kills his special lady friend Shulk chases down this “Mechon” to get revenge. The story leads you to finding the truth behind the Monado and the war between the two titans, as you travel all over both titans.

The characters a generally likeable and instead of very annoying emo/overhappy voices we have only slightly annoying terrible cockney accents. Hey at least it’s something different. Mind you the repetition of certain phrases will start to grate after a while, but let’s not lose our heads though (sorry, I had to. Yeah you’re going to hear that a lot if Reyn’s in your party).

Another thing I really liked about Xenoblade is the way it handles failure. When you lose a battle you are taken to the last Landmark you passed. No game over screens, no reloading save files and no losing affinity/experience gained from the previous battle.

Some might say this makes the game too easy, with the only punishment for failing a battle being all the monsters respawn. I disagree. The first thing I do when I fail is reload a save and try again and this just cuts down on the length of time it takes to get back in there. The game’s challenge comes from finding the right strategy, being prepared and having just that little bit of luck needed to sway the fight your way. Overall what you get a nice flow to the game without it feeling like it’s holding your hand.

Rounding off this near perfect package is a killer soundtrack with a boss theme that will have you wanting to fight the next boss every step of the way. Everything all comes together to give a package that is big, bold and beautiful setting a new standard for each.

For a Wii game, on a single disc, this is one hell of an achievement. Just imagine this on 360. The best JRPG since Skies of Arcadia, sadly it doesn’t take the Monado to see this isn’t going to sell well. Get out there and give this a go because it really doesn’t deserve to be ignored.

On top of all this the Americans aren’t getting it. That’s 1 to us and about a million to them, but who is keeping score. Speaking of which…

10/10

Beware the big bad Sky

The courts have ruled in favour of Karen Murphy, a Landlady from Portsmouth who instead of paying for Sky used an Illegal decoder to show football in her pub. Her argument was that EU law states that goods and services should move freely between EU states.

To give an example anyone from the UK can go abroad and buy a car if they wanted to. They may have to pay one off import tax but it would still end up cheaper. In this case Greek Satellite shows Premier League games cheaper so she should be able to use that instead of SKY.

SKY has the exclusive UK rights to Premier League games. They pay extra so that only they can show Premier League matches in the UK. What she is doing is in breech of these rights by UK law but not by EU law.

What this means is that anyone can now import a decoder and watch more or less the same media for a cheaper price, the price say the Greeks pay for their service. In particular pubs can use this method to show Premier League games much more cheaply at the expense of SKY, despite SKY having exclusive rights.

So cheaper football for everyone and the financial powerhouse SKY gets taken down a peg or two. This can only be a good thing right? WRONG!

The issue here is what SKY does next. Such a potential loss requires attention. David slays Goliath, How will Goliath act? Will he smash the villagers in rage? I see two potential outcomes.

1. SKY decide to pull out of showing live Premier League games. They sue the Premier League for loss of Exclusivity, which they paid a large sum for.

This will hit the Premier League hard. Many have said the Influence SKY has has ruined English Football. It’s become all about the money. Yes it has become all about the money, and while SKY has played its part it is not the only offender. For example SKY has not made Real Madrid and Barcelona such big financial powerhouses.

Take away that money and English Football in general loses out. You cannot say all the money given by SKY goes purely to the big clubs. It goes to the Premier League who are then in charge of distributing it. This includes prize money smaller clubs get for finishing in a certain position and probably covers the costs of Grassroots football.

Even the big clubs will need a billionaire investor to cover the growing cost of Player Salaries. Contrary to popular belief SKY has not invested solely on one team, the money had dramatically improved Services in Football. It has changed the game, and these changes are here to stay.

The point I’m trying to make is how on Earth are English Clubs meant to attract the top players after such a big cut in their earnings? The top players will no doubt go to the foreign leagues where they can earn much more. The EPL won’t be able to compete.

Unless they find a way to cover this cost. Those without a Sugar Daddy will no doubt raise the cost of tickets and Merchandise. The Consumer therefore loses. Ticket attendance will go down in favour of cheap TV, Clubs will start losing Players, and ultimately the EPL will have a drastic collapse in quality. You can forget about an English team winning the Champions League.

Although this is what I think will happen instead of all that…

2. The Premier League will sell SKY the exclusive European rights rather than just the UK.

And we’re back to square one, only now SKY will be even more expensive taking into account additional costs for setting up around Europe. Instead of a UK monopoly they would have a European one. Everyone will pay more and all this has done is draw attention to the dodgy cheaper alternative, and subsequently eliminated it.

SKY is expensive because it pays lots of money for exclusivity, and these costs are reimbursed by Subscribers. Increase the costs for exclusivity, not to mention setting up in the other EU countries, and ultimately consumers will pay the difference.

Similar services in other European countries do not have to pay exclusive rights hence they are cheaper. Change all that and costs in general will only rise and SKY will win anyway.

This technicality that has undermined SKY’s Exclusive rights to the Premier League seems like a Victory now, but it is going to bite us in the arse, just you wait.