Gaming Addiction: Fall 2007 Edition

By: Bob Mackey

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December 1, 2007

Some months ago, I promised to review the games I’ve been playing throughout 2007 over the course of several blog installments.  And while I got off to a fresh start, it didn’t take me long to realize that this wasn’t a very good idea.  After all, aren’t readers more concerned with the here-and-now instead of some smelly old RPG I played back in the bitter month of February?  Of course they are; and it should be clear by this point that Valley24.com is about you, the reader, and possibly your desire to have parts of your face burned off with acid or lasers (see the above banner ad).

This is why I’ve now decided to take time out every few months to go over the handful of titles I play whenever I’m not reading big, expensive, and irrelevant books for graduate school.  Don’t be scared; I’m a semi-professional gaming journalist—whatever that means.

Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations (Nintendo DS)

If you have had any interest in the anime lawyer sim genre and haven’t picked up either of the past two Phoenix Wright games, it’s really best to start with the first.  While the connection between the games is not essential to your enjoyment, having played the first two makes part three much more rewarding.  Justice for All (the second installment in the series), while still a great game, suffered from not really having its cases (the “levels”, if you will) interwoven within themselves and the game’s larger universe; thankfully, Trials and Tribulations does just the opposite.  The third game touches on various parts of the universe’s history, and, as in the other Phoenix Wrights, the cases build in length and craziness exponentially as you advance.

Capcom, surprisingly, is still able to shock and surprise with the logical absurdity of the game’s various trials, even though the physical assets used for storytelling are stretched very thin by this point.  I don’t think I’d be able to handle another Phoenix Wright game of the exact same style, so I’m thankful that Apollo Justice, a new lawyer series engineered especially for the DS, is being handed the baton in this unique genre.  I just worry that I won’t grow as attached to the characters as I did in the Phoenix Wright series—I’m not ashamed to admit that I was a little sad to see the stories of these characters (mostly) wrapped up in Trials and Tribulations.

4/5

 


Wild Arms V (PS2)

I am an idiot.  There, I said it.  The proof of this is that I played this terrible game for around 40 hours when I could have been doing much more useful things with my time, like volunteering at a food bank or getting very, very drunk.  And the latter would have killed less brain cells.

Buying Wild Arms V seemed like a no-brainer, since its predecessor, Wild Arms 4, was such a streamlined and fun experimental RPG (and I even liked it so much that I wrote about it) that shrugged off some of the more annoying tropes of the genre.  Wild Arms V, on the other hand, is a bloated mess that fails on just about every level (and subscribes to every lame RPG tradition) except for the very nice soundtrack that doesn’t deserve to be attached to this abortion of a game.  The simple, entertaining battle system in 4 is bloated with hot air just like every other element of this sequel; and sadly, Wild Arms V just doesn’t have the budget to pull off “epic” like its contemporaries do.  I guess I could forgive some of this if the characters and story were halfway decent—even though I’m not stupid enough to play RPGs for such qualities.  Let me just say that I’ve never encountered a more hateful, aimless, and stupid cast of characters in a game before.  I hated them, and because of this, I really didn’t want them to succeed.  Though I guess that’s irrelevant in a game where the story happens elsewhere while your characters deliver trinkets from point A to point B.

Look at this scene and tell me you don’t want to murder everyone involved, then yourself:



I’d write more about the game, but I purged most of it from my memory.

1/5


 

The Orange Box (PC)

The Orange Box is so crazy that it could have come from a video game company where the CEO died and left all the important company decisions to his cat.  And then his cat decided to release five games for the price of one.  Someone needs to fire that cat!

Economically, The Orange Box is literally the deal of the century.  X-for-1 media deals usually net you a crappy DVD with three public domain movies copied off of a two-head VCR, but The Orange Box happens to deliver quality in the form of some stellar titles.  You get one of the best FPSes of all time (Half Life 2), its two episodic sequels (Episodes 1 and 2), a radically new FPS puzzle game (Portal), and a multiplayer game completely different from anything else out there (Team Fortress 2).  And as a PC gamer, I got the whole deal for 45 bucks, which actually filled me with so much guilt that I still find it hard to sleep at night!

Obviously, if FPSes are not your thing, then perhaps The Orange Box is not for you.  But I’d argue that the Half-Life games are such unique experiences that they’re worth playing for those who haven’t touched an FPS since Doom (like me).  And Portal is literally like nothing you’ve ever played—in a good way.  It may be a little crazy to say that the package is worth the price for Portal alone, but I’m just going to throw this idea out there, anyway.

5/5

 


The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo DS)

The recent of Legend of Zeldas have had a sort of mesmerizing effect on me, meaning that I never really see the flaws until I’m completely done with the games.  I’m sad to say things were the exact same way with Phantom Hourglass.  It features the best use of the stylus seen in a DS game, but still plays things entirely too safe for the Zelda franchise.

What makes Phantom Hourglass great is that the game puts its foot down and proclaims, “Here’s how action games should be played on the DS!”  Literally every action in the game from walking to attacking is controlled with the stylus—though you can use one of the shoulder buttons now and then to make things a little easier on yourself.  I originally had anxieties about this control method, but after about 30 minutes with Hourglass, it’s hard to imagine any other action game on the DS playing differently.  The game also uses the interface of the DS for many of its puzzles, most of which involve drawing on maps to note puzzle solutions, the location of treasure, and what may or may not kill you.  It’s very intuitive, and is something that needs to be implemented in more games.  Hotel Dusk had a similar feature that also aided the game and really brought me into its detective atmosphere. (Psst - you should really buy Hotel Dusk!)

If you’ve played any of the Zelda games since The Wind Waker, you should fully know what to expect—which is both good and bad.  Zelda games are always fun, addictive, and rewarding, but the reuse of familiar tools, enemies, and environments means that a lot of this game is an exercise in déjà vu.  I commend the development team for using the expressive, appealing Wind Waker universe for this game, but in the end, it’s just window dressing, making it apparent that Nintendo is afraid to expand on this franchise.  And there’s really no excuse for the complete lack of new items in Phantom Hourglass.

But still, it’s a Zelda game—though that distinction may not carry the same implications if Nintendo doesn’t shake things up in this franchise very soon.

4/5


 


The New York Times Crosswords (Nintendo DS)

There isn’t much to say about this one.  It’s crossword puzzles, it’s on the DS, and it does what it’s supposed to do.  While I’m not a fan of the interface and the dreadful font they chose for this game, it does feature some of the best and hardest crosswords from what is essentially the authority on crosswords in the US.  And when I say these crosswords are hard, I’m not kidding.  If I can get through a Tuesday puzzle (the difficulty goes up as the week progresses), I’m either very lucky or just cheating—and the game does give you letters if you ask nicely, but it does affect your score.  The scoring system is kind of broken, though (it’s time-based), so you shouldn’t be playing the 1000-or-so puzzles in this game for any goal other than to finish them.

I’d like to see a sequel with some improvements, but I don’t think I’ll be doing more than 1000 crossword puzzles in my entire life.

3/5