Game EXP: Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin (PC/SD)

 

Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin

Systems: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One

Release Date: February 5, 2015

Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment & FromSoftware
Developer: FromSoftware

This is going to be a short article (I of course say that now) because we have already talked about Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin multiple times already (here, and here) and while I do not have a lot more to say about a game that is eight and seven years old, there are some aspects about the game I want to address, as well as how I played the game, my experience playing it, if you will.

Let me start off with how I perceived the game prior to playing it for the first time back in 2017 and then again in September 2022.  I had heard back in 2017 that Dark Souls II was the black sheep of the Souls games but I could not have told you exactly why, only that it was apparently different enough that people did not like it as much as Demon Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls III, or Bloodborne.  I think the only thing I can definitely recall hearing was that DSII did not play as fair and that traversing through areas was not as tight as the first DS.  Being a fan (after several unsuccessful attempts) of Dark Souls, I was a little let down by what I had been hearing, especially about how the various areas were connected.  Then I watched Happy Souls, sometime before playing for the first time back in 2017, and apparently because I was weak-willed, I interpreted how traversing between areas in that video as how it happened in-game; if you are not familiar with Happy Souls, the animation showed movement between areas like a parody of an Indiana Jones movie and if you have not seen an Indiana Jones movie, then DM me and we will figure out a way to fix that.  It turns out that it is likely that people were upset about being able to fast-travel from the start whereas, in DS1, it is a mechanic you unlock close to the end of the game.

So I was wrong on the map-moving and general dogging on fast-travel for a couple of reasons.  First is because of Majula and how it ends up becoming a central hub for you, growing from a desolate waste of a village to a semi-bustling hub of commerce, magic, and ladders.  It is also the only place you can level up so I found myself traveling back there very often to level up.  And upgrade my gear.  And buy spells.  And repair broken equipment.  And talk to people.  There were paths back to Majula, but the way I played a lot of the early levels, that would have meant a lot of backtracking through empty areas and doing a lot of running through some beautiful scenery.  So I admit that I fast-traveled fairly frequently because some areas are large and sprawling, while others offer only one-way routes with no ability to backtrack to the beginning of the area (looking specifically at you DLC stages).  I also leveled up a lot.  As in, a lot, a lot.  I finished the base game at level 195 after 127 hours.

When I say I played Dark Souls II on easy mode, this is what I mean.  Especially in the early stages, I would clear out the area to the point where enemies would no longer respawn, partly to make the path to the boss a little easier, but I also found that by the time I finished exploring all the way to what looked like a boss fog door, I would have a host of souls that I could use to level up, and since souls in Dark Souls II are somewhat limited (excluding Bonefire Ascetic to a lesser extent, and the Company Champion's Covenant), I was somewhat averse to charging into a boss fight with 20,000+ souls when I could just head back to the nearest bonfire to head back to Majula to level up.  Or in some cases, I might be a few thousand souls short of being able to level up, so I would backtrack to the bonfire to travel to another area where I had not eliminated every enemy yet.  And then level up again.  I genuinely do not remember leveling in the first Dark Souls being this easy in terms of the number of souls needed to level up, but I could be wrong.  I was also not against summoning computer-operated NPCs to help out in boss fights, especially Lucatiel when available, but I was not against summoning two additional NPCs as I was more focused on progressing through the area than I was on attempting boss fights over and over and over and over again.  Plus I was not as concerned about losing out on earning more souls for not having summoned NPCs helping out.  That being said, I did not initially make the connection between being able to summon NPCs and having your humanity restored until I failed the fight against the Ruin Sentinels and approached the area with my humanity restored to bring my HP back up to max.  I found that I could summon Pilgrim Bellclaire who I admittedly used as fodder and a distraction during my next three attempts.

My character build, because that is really all anyone ever cares about, started out as an Int/Dex build that changed to an Int/Str Sorcerer build which became more of a quality build by the end of the game for a couple of reasons; although I did find multiple definitions of what constitutes a "quality build."  At some point around the time I was starting to visit Heide's Tower of Flame (before taking on The Pursuer on the rampart) I realized that I wanted to wear armor that offered better poise than the lighter and medium grade sorcerer styled armors but the heavier armors required additional points to go into Vitality so that I could wear heavier (and poisier) armor and use heavier weapons.  And with heavier weapons, comes a higher Strenght requirement, so that had to go up as well.  And let us not forget about our friend Adapatibility to increase those infinity frames while rolling because when you are rolling, you do not have time to parry; I don't think I parried once the entire game.  I ended up leaving my Dex in the low 20s because I found that a lot of my gear did not require that attribute and I only leveled up Faith when nothing else leveled up enough stats and when it would still increase my magic damage, although that seemed capped once my Int reached 50.  I also rarely leveled up Vigor because it would often only increase my max HP by 30 whereas I felt that having other stats increase offered a better option for surviving fights and dealing damage.

For gear, I bounced around a bit until I found the Drangleic armor set and that became my default armor for most of the game until I went up against The Old Iron King and needed something beefier in terms of fire defense, and then I wore the Alonne Captain Armor for most of the game.  Only after getting my Vitality up did I switch over to various pieces of Vengarl's Armor set, which I wore through the end of the game.  I did try experimenting with weapons a bit, but once I found and started upgrading the Craftman's Hammer, that was my melee weapon.  For casting spells, I stuck with the standard Sorcerer's Staff because it scaled so well compared to other staves I found.  Once my Int was up to 50 though, I switched over and upgraded the Staff of Wisdom to +5 and then infused it with Magic for that extra oomph.

I went through parts of each DLC area, making it to Sinh in the Sunken City but did not defeat him after a couple of attempts and trying to find good poison-resistant armor.  I also made it just past the second bonfire in Frozen Eleum Loyce before attempting the Sunken City again.  I made it a decent way through Brume Tower, getting past the third bonfire and into some horrible caves filled with lightning-throwing asshats. After these many failed attempts at Brume Tower, I decided to just go and give what I thought the end-game boss in the Throne of Want.  Just outside the fog door, I summoned both Vengarl and Benhart.  We all fought the Throne Watcher and Throne Defender, although Vengarl died during that battle.  So a weakened Benhart and I took on Nashandra although he died in the process, but I was not too concerned as he did help me bring her down to about half health, but oh boy that curse effect.

I did not participate in any voluntary invasions and of the two to five times I was invaded by hostile players, I might have defeated one.  Invading or being invaded was never a mechanic in either Dark Souls or Dark Souls II (and presumably in any of FromSoftware's games), which is probably why I played a good portion of the middle game in offline mode.  I did like that there were scripted invasions though as a lot of them could be cheesed either by using magic or simply by using any shield with a 100 rating in damage reduction and staggering an opponent after hitting the shield; although this did not always work against invaders like the occasional Forlorn or Jester Thomas.  I did feel though that FromSoftware went a little overboard with all of the PvP-focused areas that were essentially dead ends and while some of the areas were very cool looking and added a bit to the lore of the game (although I still need to do a deep dive into the lore of the game), once I discovered that the Undead Purgatory, Doors of Pharros, Grave of Saints, the Belfry Luna and Sol were all PvP oriented areas, I had no further reason to really explore those areas; except to visit Gavlan on occasion.

I do not know if I would claim that I got gud at Dark Souls II.  I mean, I did use the different avenues the game offered me to finish the main game.  I spent 127 hours playing, leveling up to 195, and died 349 times.  But hey, I did beat the main game, and I can say that.  So I did.

I know that there are some things that I am inadvertently leaving out, but that is going to happen when one tries to write a condensed article after playing a game for 127 hours.  There are some story points that were left unresolved that I do not know if they are covered in any of the DLC areas, such as The Pursuer.  Like, I have read the theory that they are the protagonist from the first Dark Souls, but there was no resolution with how frequently they showed up.  There was just the last encounter in the same room as the Smelter Demon, but that specific location did not feel like there was any special significance, but I could be wrong on that as I know that Dark Souls lore is deliberately vague; yes, I know about the two Pursuers being in the thrown room in Drangleic and that is just stupidly nuts.  Then there was the seemingly random-ish noble guy standing in a study after the fight with The Duke's Dear Freja; was that The Duke?  I think I will just watch a lore video.

So yeah, I really enjoyed Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin, even if I did not finish all of the DLC areas.  I think part of that came from going into the game thinking that I was not going to like it based on what I had heard on the Internet prior to the first time playing, and then this time.  I am looking forward to Dark Souls III, but I might take a break to play something a bit shorter where I won't end up sinking another 125 hours into a single game.  But these games are a lot of fun.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental

P.S.  Told you this was going to be a brief article.

MIDI Week Singles: "Winter (The Wind Can Be Still)" - Stardew Valley (NS)

 

"Winter (The Wind Can Be Still) from Stardew Valley on Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation Vita, iOS, & Android (2016 - 2019)

Composer: ConcernedApe / Eric Barone

Album: Stardew Valley OST

Label: Bandcamp

Publisher: ConcernedApe

Developer: ConcernedApe

While I have played Stardew Valley a bit, I never made it through the calendar year to reach the winter months to actually hear this song, but I did watch Conklederp play her character quite a bit and I feel like I can hear the chipping away and rocks, and the collecting of gems while this song plays.

What I think is interesting about this song, is that I get both Vangelis' Blade Runner vibes (albeit less aggressive), along with Tangerine Dream's synth-heavy score from Legend (less Prince of Darkness and more sticking it to the evil corporation with a prize-winning bushel of eggplant), neither of which are particularly wintery movies (although the land does become frozen over after the Goblins capture the Unicorn), but they were both composed in the '80s and something about this song reminds me of that time.  Maybe it is how Conklederp approached Stardew Valley without any spreadsheets or digital farmer's almanacs to calculate which season produces the highest yield of Hops or Poppies, that just makes me want to hang out under a warm quilt with a mug of mulled wine while it's snowing outside watching her tend to her digital farm while digital snow falls.  

Maybe it is all reaching a bit, but that is what this song makes me think about at least.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

And in the Darkness Shining Far Beyond the Starlight

Game EXP: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD (NS)

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD

System: Nintendo Switch

Release Date: July 16, 2021

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Tantalus Media & Nintendo EAD

I had a couple of iterations of my Game EXP article for The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD on the Nintendo Switch, and none of them I was happy with.  Each article inevitably turned into a list of things I did not like in the game that felt like a poorly written walkthrough article with an apparent axe to grind.  Let us see if we can condense all of those previous articles, along with what I said in my First Impressions article waaaay back in March.

First and foremost, I did enjoy the game for the most part.  I liked how the story that seemingly started the entire Legend of Zelda mythology unfolded.  I liked Fi, but apparently, that is because her character and her mechanics were modified from being overly annoying in her interjections in the original Wii version compared to the Switch version.  I initially started out really annoyed by Link's romantic rival Groose, and I think he was manufactured for me to feel that way about him, but his arc over the course of the game was well played out.  I also thought that Link's arc was thoroughly refreshing in that while part of his character was deemed that of the Hero, there was still a lot of proving he had to go through before that title was fully realized.  Even Impa called out Link as a wannabe Hero and not up to the task of rescuing Zelda in a way that was not tough love, but instead very real criticism.  The main villain, Ghirahim I was a little more mixed on but I cannot put my finger on it, although I think it was primarily because of his fight mechanics which I will cover below when I get into my criticisms of the fight and puzzle mechanics.  I did like the almost cliche reaction to Link as being insignificant and toys with him in each of the early fights instead of outright killing him, but again, Impa thought Link as insignificant as well, so it was nice to have some consistency between two characters with polar opposite goals.

Mechanics.  I already covered a lot of the issues I had with the mechanics in this game in my First Impressions article.  Briefly, though, I found that I struggled somewhat with several of the puzzles, which include some of the fight mechanics because they were heavily designed around the Wii mote as the primary way to control Link.  When the game was ported to the Switch and motion controls became optional, this took away the need of the player to constantly think about motion controls as the primary way to interact with the world.  With so much of the game created with the idea that players would be in the headspace of motion controls, this did not always translate when motion controls were made optional and since I played 95% of the game in handheld mode (and for people playing on the Switch Lite), I was not always thinking about how the novelty of motion-controls was the basis for so many puzzle solutions in the game.  Thinking about how you can move the joystick on a controller is vastly different from thinking about how you can move your arm and hand while holding a controller.

Another issue I had was the direction that Nintendo had taken the Zelda franchise from Wind Waker in 2002 through Skyward Sword in 2011 (omitting Twilight Princess in 2006 which was closer to Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask in terms of overworld traversal), also including Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks, and that is traversing the world map in a vehicle with a lot of nothing between locations.  Getting anywhere in the Skyworld while flying on Link's respective Loftwing always felt like it took too much time and I wished that there was a fast travel option (and if you know me and fast travel, that is not a good thing).  I feel like I partially understand the reason behind this decision (maybe?) that it was done to help convey the size of the world, that this portion of the world is massive, but the way that this was executed is where I felt let down.  Sure there were semi-interesting characters to talk and run into on various floating islands scattered about, but since a lot of them were based around mini-games to earn more rupees (and presumably more Heart Containers?), I felt more that I did not have the interest ins traversing large swaths of clouded sky to get to their places.

Let us talk about something positive before we close out: the music.  The music was absolutely gorgeous, and kind of what I had been looking from a Legend of Zelda game since Ocarina of Time.  I loved the full orchestration and this was the primary highlight of flying anywhere was that theme.  Not only was it a gorgeous theme with elements from the original Legend of Zelda overworld theme, but it conveyed the wonder of flying and the hero that Link would eventually become.  And as mentioned previously, the Lanayru Desert theme was another theme that I did not mind listening to as I tried to find my way around the sandy barren lands.  Just all around, Shiho Fuji did an amazing job with the music in this game.

You know, I think I will end it there on that high note.  I enjoyed the story, the character arcs, and the imagining of these characters that I have been playing and interacting with for the past 33 years, and even with all of the mechanics that did not translate well from the Wii to the Switch, I am still very happy that I was finally able to play this game in a franchise that I had begun to lose interest in (prior to Breath of the Wild, although Spirit Tracks did not help with that at all).  Now I will be jumping into The Minish Cap, probably sometime soon or after I finish "Fire Emblem" on the Wii U Virtual Console; or maybe at the same time, because why not?

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Don't Grow Up Too Fast

Game EXP: Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1 (DS) -Atari 2600- Arcade at Home Pt. 1

 

Welcome back to our deep dive into Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1, released on the Nintendo DS in 2010 by Code Mystics.  For the next two weeks, we will be looking at the games categorized as "Arcade at Home, all ports of classic Atari arcade games that not only attempted to recreate the feel of the original arcade cabinet while making use of a joystick and a single button, but also were able to add additional features and modes that would not have been possible in the arcade.  All of the original games we previously covered in their respective categories when we were looking at the arcade games (Asteroids, Battlezone, Centipede) and while there has to be some reference and comparison between the two, I did try to go into each game with an open mind

Asteroids

You know, oddly enough, I actually enjoyed this version of Asteroids.  I liked the ability to decide what kind of ability my little ship had and how difficult I wanted to make it to earn an extra life.  I liked that the asteroids were bright blocks of color compared to the vector-line graphics of the arcade, although I do wish that the asteroids did break up into multiple fragments like in the arcade game because here, each asteroid just broke up into a single smaller and harder to hit piece.  I feel like the game description should have used "normal" instead of "slow" regarding the speed of the asteroids because the difference between slow and fast was noticeable, but I never felt out of my league.

I know a lot of Atari games have different variations or settings of the same game, be it single-player, two-player, and often other slight modifications to the game (like having ships that fire back in Submarine Commander).  Asteroids has 66 different variations.  These all range from the number of players to having access to shields to being able to activate a 180 turn, to activating your hyperspace engines to warp to another part of the screen to escape imminent destruction, to setting the bonus points needed for an extra life.  Two versions of the game implement a Young Children's Version which has slowed down asteroids, and an extra ship at the start.  Playing the game for only 10 minutes will allow me to experience maybe only 10% of the game types, but that is our plan, and that actually turned out to be perfect.

Out of all the ability options, I definitely preferred having the shield (Being similar in execution to Space Duel), which in one instance, to test the shield, I did explode after being hit by an asteroid, but that was likely because I held down the shield too long to see how long I could last while passing through a large asteroid.  It turns out you gain about 1 second of invulnerability before you end up exploding.  In other instances where I activated the shield before an asteroid hit, it ended up just passing through my ship leaving me unharmed.  The hyperspace ability was fun but in a stressful way because, from what I could tell, you could not decide where you spawned out of hyperspace.  Maybe it is decided by the direction your ship is pointing and the game chooses a random point between where you are and the edge of the screen, but even then, coming out of hyperspace still might only give you a split second for your eyes to catch up to figure out which way you needed to fly to avoid another asteroid.  Lastly, the flip ability, which is as simple as its name implies, just flips your ship 180 degrees, but you still maintain the same velocity in the direction you were previously facing.  So the flip really is only useful if there is an asteroid about to hit you from the opposite direction you are facing.

Lastly, this was the first 2600 game I played in this collection that had any semblance of music, albeit simplistic JAWS-inspired music that felt like it was speeding up to the end of the stage and if I did not shoot the last asteroid fragment before the song reached its tempo-increased end then my ship would explode.  Not really being an Asteroids person from the arcade game, I was pleasantly surprised by how much fun I found I was having here in this graphically simplified but heavily variable port of Asteroids.

Verdict: Yes.

• Game 1: (1-player, hyperspace, bonus every 5000, slow) 2210
• Game 2: (1-player, hyperspace, bonus every 5000, fast) 6490
• Game 3: (1-player, shields, bonus every 5000, slow) 8980
• Game 4: (1-player, flip, no bonus, fast) 3750
• Game 5: (1-player, children's version) 2740

Battlezone

Wow.  Just wow.  I was honestly not looking forward to playing this iteration of Battlezone as I was expecting a poorer version of the arcade game that I already did not like.  But once again, like the simplified version of Asteroids, Battlezone's adaptation to the Atari 2600 surprised me in a lot of ways.  First off, I had fun,  I actually did not mind playing the game six times in 10 minutes.  I liked that the game options were simple, that there were just three difficulty settings and nothing else to worry about.  

In-game, you had your radar which accurately showed you where enemies were, and your view screen, which was more like a third-person view rather than an attempt at a view from a targeting periscope similar to the arcade game.  So there you are, just driving your tank around through a grassy field hunting down other tanks, a spastic fighter jet-thing that I could never shoot down, and a purple flying saucer that never fired back and was supposed to be a distraction but I found to be fun and engaging.  The number of colors on the screen was rather surprising too as I was expecting a single-color foreground, a single-color background, a super blocky radar, and slow gameplay.  This was a really fun, faster-than-expected third-person tank shooter with satisfying Atari 2600-level explosions.

Verdict: Yes.

• Game 1: (Novice) 20000
• Game 2: (Intermediate) 28000
• Game 3: (Advanced) 17000
• Game 4: (Intermediate) 25000
• Game 5: (Intermediate) 14000
• Game 6: (Advanced) 9000

Centipede

This version of Centipede took me a moment to get used to.  I was expecting at least a triangle-shaped avatar similar to the sprite in the arcade version but instead, you are a featureless rectangle that at moments looks too similar to the blocks that are supposed to be the mushrooms from the arcade game.  Maybe because I was playing the game on a New 3DS screen and not a TV, but the projectile your little Elf character is firing at the invading centipede was very faint, especially when the color scheme is on the darker red side, so it can be hard to know exactly where your projectiles are hitting.  

Despite the simplified graphics, this still feels like Centipede, but only on the Standard Version, in which the game manual is not specific on the differences between Standard and Children's versions, despite the total point ceiling of 999,999 and 99,999 respectively.  To me, in the Children's version, the enemies moved a little slower allowing me to get a much higher score than any of the other games I played in the Standard Version.  That being said, I did grow pretty bored playing the Children's version as it felt like the challenge of the game had been stripped away, which I guess is kind of the point.

I do wish that there were other modes in the Atari 2600 version of the game besides just the Standard and Children's versions because only having two modes with only one I found enjoyable gives me overall mixed feelings about the game.  Yes, the Standard mode still feels like Centipede, but the Children's version takes away a lot of the tension.

Verdict: Yes.

• Game 1: (Standard Version) 6750
• Game 2: (Standard Version) 8724
• Game 3: (Children's Version) 39935
• Game 4: (Standard Version) 15439

So that closes out the first three of six games in the "Arcade at Home" category for Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1.  I was pretty surprised by all of these games, initially going into them thinking that I was going to get inferior versions of the original arcade games and while there are necessary downgrades to each of the games here, I felt that each still retained the feeling of the original game and in the case of Battlezone, the simplified mechanics and presentation was exactly the way to approach this specific title.  Very happy all around with this selection.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
S nem látja bajai végét

MIDI Week Singles: "Northern Hemispheres" - Donkey Kong Country (SNES)

 

"Northern Hemispheres" from Donkey Kong Country on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (1994)

Composer: Eveline Fischer

Album: DK Jamz: The Original Donkey Kong Country Soundtrack

Label: Nintendo of America

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Rare

Like a lot of the music in Donkey Kong Country, you do not often hear the song unbroken all of the way through by the time you finish the stage, be it because the stages are sometimes not long enough to hear the entire song, while more often than not, the song is broken up by entering bonus stages.  The first instance of "Northern Hemispheres" is in the first stage, Snow Barrel Blast in the Gorilla Glacier stage, and it is only a couple of seconds before you can enter your first bonus stage, and as is the case in Donkey Kong Country when you emerge from said bonus stage, the song itself resets.

There are some telltale music cues in "Northern Hemispheres" although most of the sense of cold I get from this song is primarily from the nostalgia goggles that tell me a multi-layered blizzard is about to descend upon me while slipping around snow-capped peaks.  The higher-toned piano notes make me think of a glass xylophone, there are some jingly-bell-like tones scattered throughout, and the glissando-ing high-pitched synthesizer-like-instrument (around 1:19) at least for me, for whatever reason, invokes a feeling of cold.  So I do recognize that while there are a few elements from this song that would be found in stereotypical music for an ice or snow world, a lot of the reason for its including today is because I have fond (and agonizing) memories of Gorilla Glacier and this song playing over some of the best snow and blizzard effects in an SNES era video game.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Rise Another Day Across the Distant Skies

Game EXP: Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1 (NDS) -Atari 2600- Action Pt. 2

Welcome back to the final three games in the Action category from Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1 released on the Nintendo DS in 2010.  I had slightly higher-than-average hopes for these but a combination of letdown expectations, poor game description and implementation, along with a sense of over-hyping the complexity of a game led to mixed feelings all around.

Outlaw

I mean, I guess I should have taken the description for its word because Outlaw is just a person with a gun either shooting at another player, or what I assume to be tumbleweed with some type of obstacle.  In the 1-player game, your target is, I think, a tumbleweed that just bounces against the top and bottom of the screen, and you have to either shoot around (Normal) or through a cactus/stagecoach (Blowaway) to hit your target 10 times as fast as you can before the timer reaches 99.  After playing the three 1-player games, I decided to see how the 2-player game fared, thinking that I would control one character with the left directional pad and the other character with the ABXY buttons (essentially like the Joy-Con, using the R/L shoulder buttons to shoot, but no.  In the 2-player mode, you control both characters with the one-directional pad and they both fire their respective guns at the same time.  I could not find a way to control the characters separately.

So we are left with a game where you try to shoot a tumbleweed as frequently as possible with either a cactus or stagecoach as an obstacle that you can shoot through or not or another single-player game where you try to shoot yourself through obstacles.

Verdict: No

Game 1: 10-49 (1-Player, Cactus, Normal)

Game 2: 10-28 (1-Player, Cactus, Blowaway)

Game 3: 10-84 (1-Player, Moving Stagecoach, Normal)

Game 4: 10-61 (1-Player, Moving Stagecoach, Blowaway)

Game 5: 10-9 (2-Player, Moving Wall, Blowaway)

Sky Diver

Sky Diver is a little bit of what I was expecting, but I am still confused by about half of the game.  The game mode selection does not specify if this is supposed to be a single-player or two-player game, but in every mode, there are two planes that are both controlled with the same directional pad and the same buttons.  It was not until the second game that I realized that you had to press down on the directional pad to release your parachute, as the entirety of the first game, each skydiver just plunged to their respective deaths.  In the second game, about halfway through, I figured out you had to hold down and then try to direct one or both of the skydivers to their respective colored landing pads.  There is also a flag in the middle that shows the wind direction and speed which affects your skydiver.

How scoring works in this game, I was not entirely sure even after reading the instructions.  I did not know if you are actually supposed to try to land both skydivers at the same time, which seems difficult since both skydivers jump at the same time and are controlled by the same directional pad at the same time.  I kind of had to focus on one and hope that I scored.  In Game 3, I somehow managed to score a 3-point landing, but because I had the same skydiver crash on the subsequent jump, that fall deducted points apparently?  After reading the manual again, it seems like this is designed to be a two-player-only game as there is no option to control just one character at a time.

The presentation here seems poorly implemented.  Without a clear way of controlling separate characters, there is no real way to play this game.  I could see the Chicken mode being potentially fun when played against an opponent, but here, it is just bad because again, you control both characters at the same time with the same controller and the same buttons.

Verdict: No.

Game 1: 0 - 0

Game 2: 0 - 0

Game 3: 0 - 0

Game 4: 3 - 1

Game 5: 1 - 2

Submarine Commander

Submarine Commander was the first game in this action series that I was a little anxious about after looking at the starting screen, so I decided that I should probably read the game manual, and after that, I felt even more nervous.  In the instruction manual, in just Figure 1 alone, the picture highlights your engine temperature gauge, your directional gauge, your torpedo status gauge, and your fuel gauge.  So many gauges and to say nothing about the view from your periscope.  The manual actually does a really good job of pumping up the player for all of the aspects of the submarine that they will have to manage while in pursuit of enemy ships and in defense of their country.  You have a fuel gauge of 3,000 units, and each torpedo you fire uses three units of fuel, getting hit by an enemy depth charge costs between 300-377 units of fuel or even disabling one of your torpedo launchers, as well as just regular fuel usage when your submarine is in motion.  So I was getting anxiously hyped up thinking that this was going to be a resource management game more than anything else.

But then I remembered that this game was categorized in with the Action Games and that the Atari controller is a joystick and a single button, so it was likely not to be as complicated as my brain was making it out to be.  So I started my first game, as "1-player, no depth charges," so I would just be piloting my submarine and shooting enemy ships.  What I learned from this first play was that I found I did not really pay as much attention to my temperature gauge as the manual made me think that I was going to be, and that your torpedos fire out of two different torpedo tubes and that when you are turning your sub, that the torpedos follow the turn of your sub.  After this first game, I was a little worried about playing more games because this was pretty boring as I was just waiting for my fuel to run out and the game to end.

In games 2 and 3, I decided to play "1-player, destroyer depth charges" and "1-player destroyer and pt boat depth charges" respectively because having something to do seemed more interesting than trying to time my shots against non-aggressive enemies.  These modes were a little more interesting as I now had to pay attention to the depth charge gauge, which turned out to be just a thing that flashed, made a lot of noise, and flashed an arrow in, I think, the direction that I was supposed to go away from the depth charge.  These modes were a little more manic because I found myself firing torpedoes more often (and wasting 3 fuel per torpedo), moving the submarine more often, and in Game 3, I did get hit by three depth charges because I was not paying as close attention to the arrow.

Submarine Commander was alright, but I think the build-up to actually playing the game, reading the instruction manual, and getting a sense of what the game was envisioned to be was more fun that the actual execution of the game, which ended up just being another shooter where I never felt I really needed to pay attention to any of the gauges or meters I had been warned about in the beginning.

Verdict: No.

Game 1: (1-Player, No Depth Charges) 620

Game 2: (1-Player, Destroyer Depth Charges) 225

Game 3: (1-Player, Destroyer and PT Boat Depth Charges) 280

Sadly, none of the games from today's selection were fun enough in the end, although had I different expectations going into Submarine Commander as being another Battlezone, then maybe it could have gotten a Yes from me, but what I was hoping the game to be turned out to be something I could just blindly mash the one button and still get a decent score.  And sadly in the coming weeks, we will have more games like Sky Diver that were included in this collection that really only play well as a two-player experience, which I feel should not have been included in this collection on the DS.  I can understand including games that have a two-player component along with single-player modes but having an only-two-player option and not a clear one at that, I feel is not a great game to include.  But that is just me, and that is all I have to answer to.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
What Were We Built For?

MIDI Week Singles: "Severnaya Installation" - GoldenEye 007 (N64)

 

"Severnaya Installation" or "Severnaya Surface"* from GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64 (1997)

Composer: Graeme Norgate

Album: No Official Release

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Rare

Take Monty Norman/John Barry's classic 1962 James Bond theme, but make it 1995, add a couple more years, and winterize it.  Now you have "Severnaya Installation" composed by Graeme Norgate for Rare's 1997 release of GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64.

Like many scenarios in GoldenEye 007, the locations existed in the movie to some extent, but what transpired in the game built on the story from the movie, almost like a movie adaptation of the original novel.  There are scenes in Severnaya, but we only see the immediate area outside the bunker and there was no specific music composed for those scenes aside from the dramatic and sad cue when Natalya climbs out after the first GoldenEye blast.  But Eric Serra's score would not work for James Bond running around in the snow in a not-at-all-conspicuous furry-hooded parka.

So when Graeme Norgate composed the surface music for the Severnaya Installation stage, he did not have much to base the music on besides the overall feel of Eric Serra's score from the film, Monty Norman's, and the Siberian location of the stage.  And the track does fit in well with the tone of the movie and the rest of the game.  It's very James Bondy and also, a very cold feeling, hence why we are including it in our selection of wintery game scores.

The track starts off with a wind gust-like sound that carries through the entire song, which just exudes the feeling of overcast skies and being surrounded by hills of snow in a forest.  The second instrumentation that comes in is a tinkly-xylophone-like instrument along with the characteristic Christmas jingle bells.  The combination of these three elements throughout the entire song helps to maintain the feeling of that cold and snowy forest, to say nothing about the rest of the song bringing back a flood of memories of running over the snow taking out Siberian Special Forces guards and eventually trying to shoot all four of the locks off the vent grate to drop down into the bunker stage within 3:30 on Secret Agent Mode.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

The Tears, The Tears I've Cried

*P.S.  I also included the "Severnaya Surface" title because I have seen this title for this track on YouTube and VGMDb (on , but in my own files, I have the track titled "Severnaya Installation."  Since there is no official soundtrack, I decided to go with the name of the file that I have, but I wanted to include both because the other name is out there as well.

Game EXP: Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1 (NDS) -Atari 2600- Action Pt. 1

 

We now move from games in the Adventure category to the Action category on the Atari 2600 from Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1 on the Nintendo DS; yes I realize that Action should have come before Adventure, but that is apparently just how we roll here.  The first three games are an odd mix of games akin to skeet shooting, Mine Sweeper, and one of the best mini-games from Pilotwings 64.  Maybe that is not the best way of introducing games that were released on a console in the early 1980s, but those are the comparisons that come to mind when I think of the three games featured today.  Like a lot of the games in this entire collection, there were some I had preconceived notions about either based on the title, the cartridge art and description, and from reading the instruction manual before playing.  As was the case with several of the Action games, I was disappointed by some, and wonderfully surprised by others.

Air-Sea Battle

This took me a little bit to figure out on the game setup screen, but only after I selected the 1 Player Anti-Aircraft game option, because it was the first to come up as a single-player game, did I grasp what it was that I was trying to do?  Air-Sea Battle is essentially a stationary version of Missile Command where you play against another player to see who can shoot down the most enemies.  Also to note, regardless of the mode you play, the enemies do not fire back, they only move across the screen at various levels and at fluctuating speeds.  Unlike Missile Command though, I could not aim my shots, and I could only fire one shot at a time and could not fire again until my first shot either hit a target or flies up and off of the top of the screen.  What I noticed about the computer opponent, is that they fire as often as possible, even if there is no target approaching.  What I liked about this approach for the computer player, is that it eliminates any question that the computer is implicitly cheating by timing its shots and I doubt that there is background code running to time the computer's shots with how frequent or how fast the enemies go across the screen.

Of the three games I played, I lost all of them, but they were still kind of fun.  Maybe?  I could see this being fun if you are playing as a two-player game, maybe with a group of people and trading off if you win/lose.  As a single-player experience, yeah, just kind of meh.

Verdict No

Game 1: 12 - 7 (1 Player Anti-Aircraft)

Game 2: 36 - 29 (1 Player Anti-Aircraft, Obstacles)

Game 3: 20-18 (1 Player Torpedos)

Flag Capture

I should probably lower my expectations based off of the cartridge art for games, but Flag Capture got me.  I thought I was going to play some kind of naval form of tag, but what I got instead was something closer to Mine Sweeper.  You play as a person-shaped icon moving around a nine-by-seven grid trying to collect an invisible flag while hoping you do not come across a bomb.  When you start the game, or after you get blown up by a bomb, you start in the upper left corner, you then move to different squares, pressing your one Atari button and you are either given a direction that the flag is in, or a number presumably indicating the number of spaces away the flag is, but it is up to you to determine which direction to search if the space gives you a 3.  If you do capture the flag, a new flag is randomly placed on the board and you respawn back at the start.

As a single-player game, there is little to do but try to get as many flags within 70 seconds.  I tried multiple game modes and the one where the invisible flag moves (although how frequently and how fast was never clear) felt nearly impossible.  This seems like it was intended to play against another player and there could be an element of fun that way, but playing Flag Capture as a single-player game is just dull, and I probably could have gotten a few more games in had I not looked at each of the 10 different game modes (of which only three are single-player), then had to circle back to play a single-player game.

Verdict: No

Game 1: 0 (1-Player, Stationary Flag)

Game 2: 0 (1-Player, Flag Moves (Bouncing off Edges)

Game 3: 7 (1-P, SF)

Game 4: 3 (1-P, SF)

Game 5: 0 (1-P, FM (BoE)

Human Cannonball

What is it about someone getting fired out of a cannon that is fun?  Both for the person watching and the person setting the angle of the cannon and pressing the button that fires the person out of said cannon in hopes that the person lands safely in a basket like some flesh and bone form of basketball?  Human Cannonball is about what I was expecting but turned out to be more fun than I had thought.  Let me clarify.  I figured that Human Cannonball was going to be about firing someone out of a cannon at a target, which is essentially what the entirety of this game is.  But the animation here is surprisingly smooth, the sound of the cannon is satisfying and when you land on the ground (or hit a barrier) the smack just feels right.  In the base mode of the game, from what I can tell, the speed at which the person exits the cannon is randomized, but you have to set the cannon's angle and lob the person into a basket a set distance away.  If you miss, the speed changes and the ground gets a point.  If you manage to land the person in the basket, you get a point.  But there is a fair amount of anticipation as you wait the seconds after firing the cannon to see if you accurately calculate the right angle based on the cannon firing speed.  Sometimes you know immediately that you undershot and other times, you miss the basket by mere pixels.

But I feel like I get this game.  I can easily imagine a sheet of paper with successful angles against speeds written on them in a way that only makes sense to an eight-year-old so that when the cannon speed sets itself to 31 mph, you know that you can make them in with an angle of 60.  But then there are additional modes where the cannon placement changes along with the cannon speed, or even with falling barriers between the cannon and the basket that you have to shoot your person through.

I am not 100% sure on what a winning score is because I never won, but I definitely had a lot of fun, even in the single-player game.

Verdict: Yes

Game 1: 3 - 6 (Random Speed)

Game 2: 5 - 7 (Random Speed)

Game 3: 0 - 7 (Random Speed w/ Windows)

So those were the first three games in the Action category.  Not entirely what I was expecting when I initially thought of action as I thought it might have been something more like a platformer or side-scrolling shoot'em up, although being shot out of a canon at a target is pretty action-y.  And while one for three in this collection is not the best rating to have, there will be three more games next Friday ranging from a patience-oriented quick-draw to a semi-first-person shooter.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
I'm Gonna Rock It. . .