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PUZZLE
QUEST |
 
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D3
PUBLISHER |
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PUZZLE/ACTION |
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NINTENDO
DS |
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Puzzle Quest is a surprisingly
addictive hybrid between a puzzle game and an RPG.
Even someone like me who doesn't particularly favor
puzzle games can get a lot of enjoyment out of this
one.
Put simply, the game is
similar to a strategy RPG in execution, complete with
plot events and quests reachable via an overworld map
where you can select your next destination.
However, whenever you enter battle, you "fight" by
playing the game's puzzle mode. All combat is
one-on-one; you and your opponent take turns moving gems
around on the board, matching colors in order to gather
mana (used for special skills), gain experience or gold,
or damage your foe.
The puzzle game's mechanics
are relatively simplistic, but it holds interest fairly
well, and there are plenty of other things to do outside
of that. You can level up your character, fight
random battles at any time you wish (you aren't
restricted to fighting only quest-related battles like
in some strategy RPG games), build a citadel to give
yourself various benefits, buy or craft items, and so
forth. Even after you hit the level cap, there's
still lots to do.
One curious aspect of the
game is it is expressly designed not to be
frustrating. There is absolutely no way to lose
the game, and there's no penalty for failure. If
you are defeated in battle, you still gain some
experience and gold, and you can jump right back in and
restart the fight without restriction. If you are
attempting to capture a monster and you fail, there's a
"Try Again" button right there for you. You don't
even need to hunt down another monster to capture.
You're allowed to retry the attempt against the same
monster as many times as you wish. Not to mention
the game gives you hints. Yes, hints. Not
very good at the game? Just wait long enough and
it'll do things like point out four-of-a-kinds for you
just in case you miss them.
All of this, combined with
the fact that you can close the lid to put the game into
sleep mode at virtually any time that you wish, makes
this title an excellent "casual" game. Carry it
around in your coat pocket, and whenever you get stuck
in a line or something, pull it out and play a few
rounds. It's definitely a game that you can play
for any span of time. Pick it up for short bursts
here and there, or spend hours at it at a time,
whichever suits the occasion or your mood.
The main downside to the DS
game is it was adapted from a PC game, and so the PC
version has a few features that were not shoehorned into
the DS title. For example, the sound quality in
the DS game is quite diminished; for some reason, the
music clips horribly at times, which gives it a staticy
sound as if it is overloading the DS's speakers.
Also, the graphical effects during battle aren't as
distinct; when you clear a row of skulls, for example,
it's much more obvious in the PC version that you are
damaging your enemy. A few game play elements are
not explained in the DS version's tutorial at all (such
as exploding skulls), which means you might have no idea
what is going on with them unless you've played the PC
game first.
Still, most of the game is
here, and one advantage of the DS version over the PC
one is the portability of it. If you like puzzle
games or you enjoy building characters in RPGs, you
probably won't regret picking this one up.
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50 CENT:
BULLETPROOF |
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VIVENDI
UNIVERSAL |
GENUINE
GAMES |
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THIRD-PERSON
SHOOTER |
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XBOX |
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Sometimes, you can't know how
truly wretched a game is until you experience the trauma
of playing it firsthand. Such is the case with 50
Cent: Bulletproof, the wrongheaded third-person shooter
starring cow-eyed, pudgy-faced rapper Curtis
Jackson. You can read reviews of Bulletproof for
the rest of your life and it still won't prepare you for
the horror of playing it!
The nightmare begins with the
storyline, a paranoid fantasy with 50 Cent and his
partners in thuggery getting swarmed by every
jack-booted thug in the state of New York. If this
is some kind of c-o-n-spiracy as the instructions
suggest, the villains, dressed in SWAT gear and armed
with the loudest and largest guns this side of Ted
Nugent's house, aren't doing a very good job of keeping
it a secret! Anyway, as 50 Cent unravels the
tightly knotted string of broken Christmas tree lights
that passes for a story in this game, he meets a
drug-pushing doctor, Eminem (who really should know
better), and the mastermind behind the sinister plot
against him... Charles Nelson Reilly! He hasn't
seen a paycheck in thirty years, and he's
pissed!
Well, the lead
villain kind of looks like Charles Nelson Reilly,
but with the graphics as dark as they are, who could
tell? We're not talking about the kind of dark
that sets an effective mood, either... no, playing this
game is like experiencing the onset of blindness.
Everything is either pitch black or rendered
in hues outside the visible color spectrum,
bringing back haunting memories of the original,
light-deprived Game Boy Advance. The only
difference is that you can't set Bulletproof directly
under a flourescent lamp to brighten up the
characters and their inner-city environment.
You'll just have to be thankful for the few things you
CAN see, even if they're not as attractive as they
are in other, better, Xbox games.
While on his illin',
chillin', and 40 ounce swillin' adventures, 50 Cent
coughs up a random assortment of canned, profanity-laden
catchphrases, hoping against hope that one of them will
stick. The music is similarly persistent and twice
as obnoxious, with four or five different sound bites
from the rapper's albums played ad nauseum. Did
the designers of Bulletproof loop together fifteen
second clips from a small handful of songs to preserve
space on the disc, or is 50 Cent's work really this
monotonous? Whatever's the case, it won't be long
before you start to feel like the test subject
in a sadistic mind-control experiment conducted by the
RIAA.
Of the many crimes against
humanity that 50 Cent: Bulletproof commits, none are as
atrocious as the gameplay. You'd need a naughty
list the size of Santa's to cover all the mistakes the
developers made when creating this game. On the
rare occasion that they actually do something
right, they manage to screw it up with another
dumb design flaw or unnecessary play mechanic.
Take the melee attacks, for instance. Cowboy
Curtis never runs out of ways to bury his combat knife
into an enemy, making the instantly fatal blows the most
entertaining part of the game. Of course, since
it's so much fun to dispatch soldiers at close range,
the developers included a sluggish stamina meter to make
sure you can't use the knife more than once every thirty
seconds. Brilliant!
Wait, it gets better!
Say you're standing near a door or next to a
corner when you pull off the knife attack.
While you're bissecting that gun-toting agent, another
goon will jump behind you and stick an Uzi in
your back. The moment the counterkill
animation ends, you're pumped full of lead and forced to
start the stage from the beginning. You're not
given a chance to defend yourself, because you've used
your knife attack for the week and the game's clumsy
manual targeting makes it impossible to aim for that
soldier hiding in your blind spot. If you're
thinking your posse's got your back, think again...
they're as dumb as a sack of rizzocks, and are all too
happy to watch as you get gunned
down by foes you couldn't see.
Situations like this are why
you'll be seeing a lot of the game over screen, with 50
Cent holding out his arms like a 21st century
messiah. The only way you'll keep him off the
cross and in the action is to activate all of the game's
many cheats, including invulnerability, unlimited ammo,
unlimited weapons, and most importantly, unlimited
patience. Once you've switched on all these
safeguards, the game becomes almost playable... but
"almost" just isn't good enough when you consider the
many, many third-person shooters on the Xbox that are
better than this one. With an abundance of flaws
so contrary to the point of gaming that
they have to be intentional acts of
sadism, Bulletproof truly is worse than any review could
hope to express.
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GODHAND |
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CAPCOM |
CLOVER
STUDIOS |
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FIGHTING |
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PLAYSTATION
2 |
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Just when the outstanding
Okami left you convinced that anything by Clover Studios
was a lock, along comes God Hand to beat your high
expectations into a bloody pulp. Stepping down
from Capcom's best game of the year to its most
disappointing is like taking a custom-made Ferrari down
a stretch of cop-free California highway for the ride of
your life... only to have the fun come to a sudden halt
when the sportscar veers off the road and into a nearby
tree. Sure, you're still in a Ferrari, but
the experience is quite different once it's been
crumpled like a piece of paper and there's a steering
column buried in your chest.
Metaphors aside, God Hand
promises to bring together the demanding gameplay and
stylish moves of Viewtiful Joe and the thug punchin',
wooden box crunchin', randomly-placed strawberry
munchin' action of early Capcom arcade hits like Final
Fight. In the light of its past successes, it
would seem perfectly reasonable to assume that
Clover Studios would keep its word and make this
hybrid work, but the truth is that God Hand is a whole
lot dumber than advertised.
Let's start from the top of
the list of grievances, shall we? The storyline
barely makes any sense... following the dialogue in
the cut scenes is arguably the greatest challenge the
game has to offer! The
graphics are a drab, dreary throwback to earlier
times... not just the wild west which serves as God
Hand's setting, but the launch of the Playstation 2 when
ALL the games on the system looked like this. The
sound consists of a just barely
copyright-friendly knock-off of the Hawaii Five-O
theme, accentuated by moans, screams, shattered
glass, and explosions (and those are just the noises
YOU'LL make after you reach the first boss!).
Then there's the fighting...
hoo boy. If Ricki Lake ever invited Mike Tyson's
Punch Out!!, Tekken, and Resident Evil onto her show for
a paternity test, God Hand would be the bastard child
they'd all insist they never sired. You'll
see the inspiration from Punch-Out!! in the
over-the-shoulder viewpoint. It's a brilliant
perspective for a boxing game, but
when it's taken out of its element and put
into a beat 'em up where the foes are plentiful
and the player's field of vision isn't
nearly as generous... well, it just doesn't work.
Neither do Tekken's wide
range of attacks and emphasis on targeting weak points
when the thug you're fighting can shut tighter than
a clam by blocking. You can crack open this iron
defense with a guard crush, but they take a while to
perform, and it's tough to sneak in a blow for the brief
amount of time that the guard crush leaves
your enemy stunned. Throw in the
occasional juggernaut who's invulnerable to your
most effective blows even when their defenses are down,
and your blood pressure is sure to rise as quickly as
your interest in the game drops.
The touch of death for God
Hand comes in the form of prehistoric character control
that would have been better left trapped in a
glacier along with Jill Valentine's (Razzie)
award-winning acting and Lara Croft's pyramid-shaped
breasts. We've all learned by
now that there's just no
substitute for absolute control...
and in this age of dual analog controllers and cinematic
camera angles, there's no excuse for games to be without
it. Despite this, God Hand still forces the
player to turn, then walk, then turn again in a
clumsy control scheme that should have went extinct by
the turn of the century, if not sooner.
If this game's abysmal sales don't wean Capcom from this
infuriating habit, nothing will!
God Hand does have a few
things going for it, like chihuahua
races, midget Power Rangers, and oh yeah, plenty of
attacks you can purchase after each stage. Like
Rengoku, customization becomes God Hand's sole remaining
joy after the fighting becomes tedious and
frustrating. Still, with so many other titles
offering superior gameplay and full-featured
create-a-character modes, there's no reason to give this
one a hand... or your hard-earned money.
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TIME CRISIS
3 |
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NAMCO |
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LIGHT GUN
SHOOTER |
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PLAYSTATION
2 |
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Just when you thought it was safe to shut
that closet overstuffed with peripherals
you'll never use again, along comes Time Crisis III
and its pair of bright orange firearms! Better
make some room for those GunCons... if there's any
room left!
The first thing you'll notice about these
mock weapons before you sentence them to exile in
the land of misfit toys is how obscenely difficult
it is to get them ready for the game. It's not
enough to connect the GunCons to your
Playstation 2, oh no! You'll have to do your best
impersonation of the king of convoluted contraptions,
Rube Goldberg, to get things started.
First, you'll plug each gun into a
USB port... then join the two guns together with a
coupler... then plug the PS2's video jack into the
coupler... then finally connect the coupler to the back
of your television set. Wait, wait, that's not
all! If you want to play the game with a more
advanced video connection than the composite cables that
the GunCons natively support, you'll have to shell
out big bucks for an optional adapter!
It's no fun getting the ball rolling, but
once you set it into motion, you'll understand the need
for the elaborate setup. The GunCon controller is
precise down to the pixel... the only thing that stands
between you and the next stage in Time Crisis III is
your own aim. This makes the future of
the Nintendo Wii even more exciting... if
the system's wand controller can match the
accuracy of the GunCon without all those annoying
cords, the Wii may just live up to all that pre-launch
hype!
But er, back to Time Crisis III. If
you're not familiar with the series, here's the deal...
as a pair of ace military specialists, you'll storm
through each stage, picking off hundreds of well-armed
foes. Like House of the Dead and Virtua Cop, the
action is very cinematic, with dynamic camera angles and
plenty of exciting cut scenes.
However, what distinguishes Time Crisis
from those games is that you're not pushed through each
level. If you need a quick breather or some cover
from enemy fire, you can hold a button to hide behind
jeeps, walls, and other protective barriers. That
button can be on just about anything... the light gun
itself, standard Dual Shock controllers, dance mats, and
even the pedals from steering wheels! This
versatility was a smart move on Namco's
part, letting the player get as close as they can
afford to be to the arcade experience.
What WASN'T such a great idea was the
counterintuitive weapon select system. You can
only switch firearms by pressing the trigger of the
GunCon while hiding behind cover. Each of the four
available weapons are best used in different situations,
so you can imagine how frustrating it is when you need
the rapid-fire precision of a machine gun but
inadvertently switch to a shotgun or a grenade launcher
in the middle of an grueling gun battle. The fact
that your partner can be hit in the crossfire makes
this issue even more infuriating.
The graphics and sound are both
appropriately cinematic, making you feel like you've
been dropped in the middle of a slick action film (Danny
Glover not included). Explosions fill the screen
and rock your speakers, while a threatening array of
terrorists crowd the playfield like so many G.I. Joe
action figures crammed into a kid's toy chest.
Like most Namco arcade ports, Time Crisis III is a
very sleek, polished game, with the the only blemish
being the course textures of the rocks you'll hide
behind while reloading your gun.
There's not a large audience for light gun
games these days. What was once the most popular
alternative controller for game consoles has taken a
back seat to everything from keyboards to dance
pads. If you're one of the few gamers
left with a trigger finger that's begging to be
itched, this is the only opportunity you're going to get
to satisfy that craving for at least a couple of
months. Maybe this long-neglected genre of games
will become more prevalent once Nintendo's Wii hits
store shelves, but the latest Crisis game is enjoyable
enough to help you bide the time until November.
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NO ONE CAN STOP MR.
DOMINO! |
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ACCLAIM |
ARTDINK |
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PUZZLE/ACTION |
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PLAYSTATION |
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Oh, Mr. Domino... if only you were as
invincible as the title of your game suggests! The
truth is, this tiny hero will stumble over all
kinds of hazards as he struggles to build
spectacular lines of tiles. These obstacles,
ranging from swinging boxes of chocolate-covered pretzel
sticks to massive station wagons, will join forces
to make Mr. D's life miserable... and very
short.
Regardless of the risks
involved, Mr. Domino refuses to be swayed from
his mission. He's out to set up the ultimate chain
of dominos, spreading them across shady casinos,
convenience stores, and quiet Japanese suburbs.
And once they're dropped in place, he'll return to the
scene of the crime (namely, littering) to tip them all
over. If he's smart, he'll place the tiles in
front of trick squares... once these are
triggered, objects in the background are set
into motion, adding a touch of Rube
Goldberg-inspired flair to the spectacle of dropping
dominoes.
As Mr. D goes about his
business, unaware of the futility of constantly
unraveling his own work, you'll notice that his world
bears a striking resemblence to the colorful cosmic
playgrounds of Katamari Damacy. Every object
on the playfield is rendered with a modest polygon
count and a limited amount of detail, but their bright
colors ensure that they're easy to spot against the more
elaborate backgrounds. The stages are cleverly
designed, illustrating their respective settings
perfectly. Whether Mr. Domino is dodging dice on a
craps table or weaving around discarded sandals in the
breezeway of a Japanese home, there's never any
doubt about his current location.
The soundtrack
acknowledges the game's outlandish premise, but never
surrenders to it, striking a balance between Mr.
Domino's lighthearted Nippo-centric setting and
the merciless challenge hidden beneath it.
Your heart will pound to the beat of
the throbbing techno-influenced tunes as Mr. Domino
makes a mad dash for the health square that will let him
cling to life for just one more minute.
It only takes one
stage before you realize that this isn't going
to be the cakewalk that Katamari Damacy was. In
fact, once you get past the skin-deep visual
resemblence, you'll start to see that No One Can Stop
Mr. Domino! is the polar opposite of Namco's surprise
hit. It's not just because Mr. Domino drops
what the Prince of All Cosmos and his cousins would
likely clean up with their rolling junk
collections. The game offers far less
freedom than Katamari Damacy, pushing the hero
through each linear loop of a stage rather than letting
him admire his surroundings. If Mr.
D misses something important the first time
through, he won't get another shot at it until the next
lap... if he survives long enough!
What brings these two
games together are the qualities they share... charm and
originality. The only game that even comes close
to playing like Mr. Domino is Kid Klown's Crazy Chase on
the Super NES and Game Boy Advance, and without the
strategy that comes from dropping tiles, it's not
an especially accurate comparison.
There's also no stopping
the game from taking pride in its Japanese roots.
There's plenty of head-scratching humor in
store for players who trigger the trick squares in each
stage. Vegetables will sing, microwave ovens will
explode, and famous paintings will scream bloody
murder as their eyes bug out... and it will
all play in reverse if Mr. D walks over a
reset square!
It's moments like these
that will leave just you as determined to succeed
as the game's square-headed star. Victory never
comes easily in No One Can Stop Mr. Domino!, but it's
always
sweet. |
