@LtSarge Nice review and appropriate since the EA Play is on sale, and I was considering subscribing to 3 months with the thought of trying to get through the Mass Effect trilogy again and maybe even finally try Andromeda.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@LtSarge Outstanding write-up and screenshots! This is definitely one I've heard a few people say wasn't as bad as its reputation suggested for years now, so it's definitely going on my to-play list after I play through the remastered trilogy.
I guess the flipside of that is that ME Andromeda has been perpetually cheap for years, so finding a copy to add to my PS4 backlog shouldn't be difficult at all.
I'm glad to hear they spruced up the planet exploration with some variety. While the planet exploration was a cool idea in ME1, you're right that it always landed you on the same patch of samey wasteland with an enemy encampment to explore. They should have improved on this system in ME2, but instead they opted for the lame minigame where you scanned planets to collect resources.
Will absolutely be adding this to my eventual to-play list for when I clear through the remastered trilogy.
Apologies for the late replies everyone. I haven't been in the mood to talk about the game the last few days due to fatigue after having spent so many hours playing it as well as writing the review.
@Th3solution Thank you! I think you could probably play through the entire trilogy in three months for sure, so go for it! If you have the time to play Andromeda as well, then that's just icing on the cake!
@Ralizah Thanks! Yeah, in the back of my mind, I've always thought this was going to be a good game despite what others have said. Because the main complaints have always been about launch issues, but it's been five years since the game launched so surely they've polished it since then. And while I did encounter several bugs, the majority of my 60+ hours with the game was experienced without any issues. Some may not remember this, but even Mass Effect 2 had numerous bugs. I vividly remember getting stuck on one planet and not being able to progress, so I had to revert to a previous save file.
Keep in mind though that you're still scanning planets for XP, minerals and so on in Andromeda. But I rarely felt the need to do that. While I do want them to remove this aspect of the series in future entries, I think it's needed for the increased immersion, i.e. you're exploring many systems with planets in them.
But yeah, definitely give this game a go after you've finished the trilogy. Would love to hear other people's thoughts on it after giving it a proper try.
@Bentleyma Thank you! And yeah, I couldn't believe they actually had a scene like that in this game. It just made me love it even more!
Yeah, it doesn't really make sense to want to kill everyone inside just to destroy the facility. After all, the whole goal is to defeat the kett, so what's the point in destroying the facility if they won't be around to use it? Saving the angara lives is more important. One choice though that made me feel bad was during the mission to save the salarian ark and you had to choose between Drack's scouts or the salarian Pathfinder. My reasoning was that this whole mission was about saving the salarians, so of course I was going to save every last one of them. I didn't even know Drack had scouts on board until the last minute. When I made my choice, he pretty much hated me for a while and even brought up how I chose the salarians when I did his loyalty mission (which was a nice attention to detail). But either way, I would've had either Drack or Kallo be mad at me depending on my choice, so it didn't really matter. Pick your poison and all that. But at least I got all the Pathfinders together (even if the salarians would've just appointed a new Pathfinder).
I actually really enjoyed romancing Peebee and seeing her character grow throughout my playthrough. Even though I don't know what it's like romancing the others, I get the feeling that she has one of the best character developments among your teammates. At first she was simply with us so that she could continue her research since we were looking into the Remnants anyway. Towards the end, she saw us as her family and she finally managed to open up to a close relationship with somebody else, even though she was afraid of letting somebody into her life again. It was just so nice seeing all of this develop during my playthrough.
Haha, that's a really good video and fitting music to that scene! I agree, the game desperately needed more music but I feel like that's true of the entire series anyway. Hopefully they'll focus more on this aspect in the next game!
Up until ME3, I've only used the Soldier class throughout the series because I preferred keeping the gameplay simple. However, by that point, I desperately needed some changes to combat and so I decided to give biotics a try. It was seriously so much fun, it's basically like having superpowers and I highly enjoyed using them in both ME3 and Andromeda. I can't imagine playing through Andromeda without biotics, it would've been so boring for me.
Something that I just now realised is, maybe I've been playing a lot of these games wrong by not choosing the "superpower class". Another series that comes to mind is Borderlands, which also has classes. I've also always used the soldier class there but after having played through the Mass Effect series, maybe the push I need to finally finish Borderlands 2 (as it's one of my New Years resolutions) is restarting it one last time and choosing the class with superpowers instead. You've definitely given me some things to contemplate on now after this discussion!
@RogerRoger Great piece! A lot of people don't seem to understand the sentiment, but some games are just far more impressive experiences on handhelds vs home consoles, even when they're technically lesser experiences in terms of raw specs. There's just something exhilarating about playing a game away from the TV that didn't feel like it should have been possible. Particularly years back when the Vita was still alive and handheld gaming platforms still had dedicated libraries.
I've never played Burnout Paradise, so maybe this game would feel less samey to me. It's great to hear it performs well on Vita, though, and mostly holds up as a technical showcase on the system. I imagine that the game probably looks great shrunk down on a small OLED screen.
You've really been on a kick with these Vita games lately! There's an unfortunate lack of Vita reviews, so I'm actually a fan. Have any other games on the system lined up?
Yeah, as much as I didn't necessarily need Most Wanted in my collection, given that I'd played Burnout Paradise twice before, its handheld status and impressive Vita performance really did make all the difference, in a way I might've dismissed before. Normally I'd opt for the home console version if given the choice, but my recent rediscovery of my Vita and my desire to broaden the types of games I have for it helped; that, and I kinda wanted something to prove my downbeat analysis of The Amazing Spider-Man wrong, as I felt bad for dunking on the Vita when it probably wasn't its fault. They're two very different games, and I'm sure Fairhaven City would look kinda rubbish if viewed from an elevated perspective all at once, but at least Criterion managed to prove that the hardware was at least capable of a like-for-like experience.
Handheld consoles can really be made to sing, but they usually require a decent amount of effort and optimization when it comes to home console ports. A big reason you stopped seeing that as much with a lot of Vita ports, IMO, is because the culture of multi-platform game development that became standard during the seventh gen made developers less eager to create bespoke ports of their games.
If you've never played Burnout Paradise before and like the sound of Most Wanted, then know that it's still available via the Vita's PS Store (for much cheaper than a physical copy fetches on eBay, since most physical Vita games have become overpriced collector's items nowadays) and that servers for its deep online integration are still running, provided you're prepared to open an EA Origin account.
I gotta say, I really wish I'd gone physical with the Vita! It was just so tempting to d/l games on it, though.
I guess the good thing is that, now that I've hacked my Vita, I can use a MicroSD card to expand my storage and have my entire library on the console all the time.
Oh, and if I were American, I get the sense my view of law enforcement would be very different. I don't mean any offence by that, and shouldn't judge from a distance, but... well, yeah.
Fair enough. Like virtually every other social and political institution in this country, the way law enforcement is handled is in need of drastic reform that it won't get for generations, if ever.
I'm gonna be taking a short break from my Vita, as I've neglected The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles for far too long, and I have another old Spidey game to play as well, but I should be back before long because I'm planning to replay Gravity Rush, Tearaway and Uncharted: Golden Abyss at some point this year, in order to fulfil one of my 2022 resolutions. Knowing me, unless something goes terribly wrong, I'll probably end up writing reviews for each of 'em, so watch this space!
I recall you started TGAA1, and got at least two cases in, I believe?
You know, I don't think I ever realized just how many Spider-Man games there were out there.
I loved Gravity Rush, liked Golden Abyss, and wanted to like (but really, really didn't) Tearaway, so it'll be interesting to get your perspective on those games.
@RogerRoger I do think we've arrived at the point where most companies simply wouldn't develop much for something like the NDS if it was around today. You saw that shift with the 3DS, frankly. While it had a pretty massive library of amazing exclusives, the sheer scope of its software lineup was still pretty vastly reduced from the NDS before it, and the biggest reason for that is that NDS launched before the seventh gen took off, and 3DS arrived at the tail end of that generation.
And, you're right, the Vita being a pretty beefy handheld at the time would've tempted companies to do as little as possible to adapt their games to the hardware. This is probably the biggest way in which the "portable PS3" reputation it had worked against it.
My regret is most born out of the loss of the resell value for those games. In terms of user-friendliness, digital is a million times easier on Vita. I went with one of those insanely expensive 32GB cards when I first got the system, and then, a year or two ago, hacked the system, installed custom firmware, and replaced it with a 400GB MicroSD card. Lemme tell you: you'll never, ever run out of space with one of those. The sheer amount of stuff you can do on a hacked unit is pretty astonishing, honestly, even if you don't delve into the obviously illegal piracy side of the equation. The biggest appeal to me, for example, was that I was able to complement all of the PS Classics I bought on PSN with rips of my own PS1 collection, turning the Vita into a true portable PS1.
I actually do own 5 or so physical Vita games, tbf. It's obviously not as nice as your collection, though, which you clearly love deeply.
The third case in Adventures is probably a top five case for me in the entire series. It actually went to places that I was a little disappointed Farewell, My Turnabout in the second game shied away from, and was incredibly memorable as a result.
Yeah, it'd be fitting for you to own Spider-Man's entire video game career, I think.
I expected to enjoy Tearaway a lot, honestly, so I was a little floored by how boring I ended up finding it. Pity, too, since it's a great showpiece for the system's capabilities.
@RogerRoger I think the design of the Switch was primarily motivated by problems mostly unique to Nintendo. Given:
a) Nintendo will never abandon handheld gaming tech, given that's where their bread has ALWAYS been buttered. Just compare the frankly gargantuan sales of most of their handheld consoles over time to their shrinking home console sales prior to Switch, aside from the Wii.
b) Nintendo proved with Wii U/3DS that they can no longer simultaneously juggle two concurrent devices with their own respective libraries.
Developing a hybrid was, frankly, their only good option at that point.
It's a happy accident, IMO, that the appeal of this design resonated so much with their base that it actually ended up leading to dramatically improved third-party support. Because it took years for major publishers to stop distancing themselves from Nintendo after the Wii U disaster.
Yeah, in terms of Sony and the Vita, I think it took them awhile to really fully realize they weren't interested in pursuing portable gaming tech any more. The way they advertised the Vita was kind of a side-effect of that. Reporting has suggested there was deep skepticism about the device before it even launched, so it's no surprise that Sony pretty much abandoned first-party software development on it after that first year or two and left it to indies and Japanese companies to float the device along for the rest of its lifespan.
I dunno, man. That 32GB memory card investment was painful. The smart move, realistically, was probably what you ended up doing: buying big games physically, and then downloading smaller stuff on a cheaper card. But I knew there'd be a lot of stuff I wanted to download, and I'd personally regret it if I cheaped out with the memory. I guess it all worked out in the end, even if I ended up having to do something I'm not fully comfortable with to achieve it (thankfully, Sony is totally apathetic about people modifying their Vitas, so I'm not too worried about the CFW triggering an account ban like it undoubtedly would on something like the PS3).
Indeed, I have my full PS1 library on my Vita AND PC now. It's quite cool. PC is technically the better place to play, since you get the benefit of upscaling games, it's easier to take screenshots, etc., but yeah, I can't resist finally having playable portable versions of PS1 games that were never uploaded to PSN.
The games I own are:
Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars
Corpse Party: Blood Drive
Demon Gaze
Persona 4 Golden (the first game I bought alongside the system, in fact!)
Valkyrie Drive Bhikkhuni
I also bought a Senran Kagura game physically on the system, but I sold that years back.
For a period of time, it really was the go-to hardware for the sort of bizarre Japanese games that used to proliferate on Sony's home consoles.
I think the bigger issue for me is that Tearaway is utterly shallow once you rip away the gimmicks that drive the game and look past the (phenomenal) presentation. MM's game live or die on how deeply you can immerse yourself in the "creative" aspects of them, and that sort of approach really just didn't resonate with me. It'll be interesting to see if you end up falling in love with it like a lot of people did, though.
Mega Man Powered Up is one game I've wanted to play in this series for years, but never really had the opportunity to do so until now, as it's one of a handful of PSP games that never enjoyed a digital release on PSN, leaving it stranded as an out of print UMD release on a long-dead handheld. MMPU is a full remake of the original NES Mega Man game (the one that nobody likes and was pretty much forgotten about after the release of the amazing Mega Man 2) that manages to impress in a number of ways. It's one of the only Mega Man games to enjoy fully voice-acted dialogue, for example. Not hard when the original Mega Man didn't even have any dialogue in it, you might say, but that's where I'll stop you, because Capcom went the extra mile of including a surprisingly large amount of dialogue in this release. You actually get a proper story set-up this go around, brief exchanges before boss fights that develop the personalities of each Robot Master, and so on.
Pretty much every aspect of the original game was re-evaluated or touched-up in some way. The game's default mode offers more player-friendly level layouts, story events, and so on, but you can also play in a mode that preserves the game design of the NES original. As in later games, collectibles are incorporated into the game's various stages, incentivizing the player to return to previous stages with newly acquired weapons. And these collectibles aren't just ticking off items on a checklist, either: the game actually features a surprisingly robust lever editor that is unlocked as the player finds new modules to use in it through the game's various levels. This ancient PSP title from 2006 even featured the ability to share and download levels you've created with other players.
To be honest, the amount of optional content in this game is almost overwhelming. I haven't touched on the large challenge mode, either, or the fact that it includes two new Robot Masters, or the fact that, amazingly, you can play this game through with at least eleven unique characters, including the eight Robot Masters, Proto Man, and Roll, and they all have unique dialogue/plot events for their playthroughs! You can even unlock optional costumes for Roll. A completion rate counter in your save file will helpfully remind you of how far you are from seeing everything the game has to offer, which might end up being a bit maddening for completionists.
So, this all sounds fine and dandy, but are there any downsides?
Well, yes.
The biggest marmite element of this game will be its overtly cutesy aesthetic. It feels like the original Mega Man if it was viewed through the lens of a cartoon aimed at small children. All of the characters have been reimagined in adorable chibi form, even in the game's 2D portraits. The majority of the in-game dialogue is deliberately campy. Even the OST has lost a lot of its 8-bit edge, with the remixed tracks smoothing out the rough corners and making everything sound much friendlier and approachable in the process.
Listen briefly to the theme for Cut Man's stage in the NES original for example:
Now compare to the version in Powered Up:
All of the tracks are like this. They don't sound... bad, but they sound inappropriate for a 2D Mega Man game. The combination of the new visual style and remixed music often gives the game a somewhat bland feel that robbed some of the enjoyment from it for me.
Even putting aside the aesthetic, though, there's no getting around the fact that Mega Man 1 is almost unquestionably the worst game in the series. The changes made to this remake help, but oftentimes it just feels like they're smearing an excess of lipstick on a pig. This would have been a great opportunity to ditch some of the unfriendlier aspects of the original. Does Guts Man's stage REALLY need to center around infuriating insta-death sections where you have to precisely jump on and off moving platforms before they dump you into a pit? Did the profoundly frustrating Yellow Devil boss, which is even more frustrating in this version than in the original since I couldn't replicate the Thunder Beam pause glitch that made him bearable in the NES game, really need to be here? It's great that the game has so much stuff to do, but if the core experience is unsatisfying, piling on a metric ton of padding (very well done padding, mind you, but still padding nonetheless) isn't going to fix it.
Powered Up remakes of Mega Man 2 and on could have been amazing fun, but, unfortunately, MMPU ended up selling pretty poorly on PSP, so plans for more remakes in the same vein were quickly canceled, which is a shame. Mega Man Powered Up is the best version of a fundamentally mediocre game, and is filled with cool ideas and a surprisingly robust level of polish for such an old handheld game. If you like Mega Man 1, it's a must-own. If you don't, it's still an interesting remake in its own right, and one of the more interesting PSP-exclusive games. Let's hope this gets remastered or something so that it's not trapped on a dead console forever.
@RogerRoger Great review of Need for Speed! It's nice to know that the game holds up well on Vita despite the AI's rubber banding and the game's focus on the social aspect. I actually have a digital copy of Most Wanted because EA gave it away (along with a few other titles) years ago but I still haven't played through it because it takes up so much space. However, your review has made me more interested in giving this game a go, especially since I haven't played the console version of Most Wanted. Would be really cool to experience a game like this on the go, for sure!
@Ralizah Excellent write-up! I really enjoy reading reviews of titles that I haven't heard of since it lets me learn something new and this time, I learned that Mega Man 1 got a remake, which I had no idea about! It sounds like the best way to experience the first game even though the music doesn't feel appropriate compared to the original OST and the art style is more chibi. It's too bad that it's not available digitally as I would've loved giving it a try on Vita.
Speaking of Mega Man though, I've been browsing the Wii U eShop the past few days and noticed that there are tons of Mega Man games on there. It sounds to me that you really like this series, so do you have any titles that you would recommend getting on there? I have the Mega Man 1-6 and Mega Man X 1-4 collections already, and most of the games have been ported to modern consoles anyway. But there's apparently a subseries called "Mega Man Network" on GBA and those games are available on Wii U eShop. Are they worth getting would you say?
@LtSarge Thanks! Yeah, Mega Man Powered Up has been pretty thoroughly buried, so it's unfortunately very easy for even people who love Mega Man games to be entirely ignorant of it if they never owned a PSP.
The Battle Network games are actually JRPGs, and not really what I'm looking for from this series, so I bounced off the first one pretty quickly. They do have their fans, though. If you end up grabbing it, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
In terms of the Wii U eshop, I know the four Mega Man Zero games are available on there, and that's a very decent spinoff series. The first one is especially distinct, and almost has a Metroidvania-esque structure to it.
Otherwise, the best game from a modern standpoint is probably Mega Man 11. But if you want something a little simpler and more akin to golden age games, Mega Man 9 and 10 are both excellent as well. Those should be available on modern platforms via the second Anniversary Collection.
And, while it's really dated from a modern standpoint, I'd be remiss not to shill for Mega Man Legends, which featured a ton of voice acting, really strong cutscene direction, and surprisingly complex character models for a PS1 game way back in 1997. That's available as a PS1 Classic on PSN.
@Ralizah I might give the first Battle Network and Zero games a go just to see if I'd like them more than the main series. Because in all honesty, I've played the first couple of NES games and the first Mega Man X and these games are just too difficult for me. I actually already own Mega Man 9, 10 and 11, but I do want to try out more of the older games before I get to the ones that really appeal to me, you know?
Legends sounds really interesting but apparently it's only available on NA PlayStation Store, which is too bad.
Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time (Wii U) - Impressions
Just finished Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time on Wii U after 20 hours of playtime. I never thought I would ever reach the end of this game, lol. I started playing it back in June last year and ever since then I've been playing it on and off every other month. The reason for that is because the game just isn't that captivating compared to the first one. The gameplay gets incredibly repetitive halfway through as you never learn any new attack moves and the "Bros moves" that you learn aren't really that good. Not to mention that I never felt like using the new Bros moves because you only have a finite amount of them. It's not like in the newer games where you have Bros points (the JRPG equivalent of SP/MP) so you could use them as much as you like as long as you have points. Instead, in Partners in Time, the Bros moves are based on items so you could eventually run out of them if you keep using them. So just like with many other games where you have a finite amount of items, I just saved them for the end of the game and I don't like that they did it this way because it discourages you to use them.
What I did like was the story. The game takes place in present and past Mushroom Kingdom, so Mario and Luigi will be teaming up with their baby versions in battles. I think it was really cool seeing their interactions and also how other characters from the past and present reacted to each other. On top of this, we got to learn actual Mario lore. For example, the original Yoshi's Island on the SNES is actually a prequel to Partners in Time since it was in that game that the babies were introduced and they tried to implement a continuation from that game in Partners in Time. How cool isn't that? To actually have lore in a Mario game. It's crazy to see how much Nintendo actually cared about their franchises back then compared to now.
Sadly though, with the introductions of the babies, the gameplay became even worse. Having to control four characters now instead of only Mario and Luigi and constantly switching between their special moves in order to solve puzzles was so freaking confusing. I'm just so glad that we won't see anything like that in the other M&L titles (except for Paper Jam where you have to control Paper Mario but I'll have to see how that works).
All in all, while the gameplay wasn't as appealing as the first game, I really enjoyed the story and the inclusion of actual lore in a Mario game. So overall, I (think) I liked the game. But I can definitely see how people regard Partners in Time as one of the weaker entries in the series.
@RogerRoger Yeah, I wouldn't expect most normal people to have heard of games like those. In terms of progressive degrees of weirdness:
one is a dungeon crawler full of odd humor and vocaloid music where you hunt down and seal away demons, which you can later summon in battle.
one of them is a life-sim/JRPG hybrid where you solve a murder mystery with a group of friends while saving people who are being tossed into an otherworld accessible via climbing into TVs.
one is ostensibly a horror game involving a haunted school, but it trades the raw supernatural thrills of previous entries for bizarre fanservice and out of place fantasy tropes; the scariest thing about it ends up being the horrid optimization, which led to many, many crashes on my system.
one is... um... it's a dating sim/dungeon-crawler hybrid where you make weird supernatural babies with your chosen waifu and turn them into child soldiers who can fight alongside you in the dungeons.
one... how do I even describe this... is an action game involving lesbian warriors infected with a virus that causes them to turn into weapons (like swords, axes, guns, etc.) when they become aroused. So their partners take their weapon-girlfriends and use them to beat up other lesbian warriors, who also have weapon-girlfriends.
I'll let you puzzle out which descriptions match which titles! I got these games physically mostly because they were accompanied by really nice goodies included with the physical editions.
Yeah, it's fun learning about different types of games from someone who is knowledgeable about them. The number of licensed games I've possessed any desire to play can probably be counted on one hand, but I've learned enough about various Naruto, James Bond, Spider-Man, etc. titles over time that I'm much less likely to immediately dismiss them out of hand like I would have in the past.
And yeah, I always appreciate the rare occasions when I run into someone else who wasn't utterly wowed by Mass Effect 2! Looking back, while it's not a terrible game, it definitely felt like a downgrade in a number of respects from the original, to such an extent that, as you know, I never played the third game. I'm hoping I'll enjoy it a little more with more grounded expectations this time, since I technically own the remastered trilogy now ($10 deal for the Steam version was too good to sleep on).
Thanks. Yeah, I was super surprised by how strangely ahead of its time Mega Man Powered Up was in certain respects, since I actually didn't know a lot about it going in. The most impressive thing is that, at least circa 2019, the servers still appear to be active, as, when I checked online, there is still a small community of people uploading stages they made. For this obscure 2006 PSP exclusive.
@LtSarge The Mario and Luigi series is one I wish I liked. I also tried out Superstar Saga and found it really couldn't hold my interest at all. Also wasn't fond of the puzzle-platformer nature of the gameplay, and the way you have to switch the character lineup to perform certain manuevers. It sounds like this entry just doubles-down on those aspects and tosses in the annoying babies from Yoshi's Island for good measure, so I'll probably steer clear of it. I do still want to try Dream Team if I can ever find it for a decent price, though.
@Ralizah Thanks! I actually like the formula of the Mario & Luigi games in general because they make turn-based JRPGs way more interesting by having more player input during the battles. For example, you have to press the action button just as you land on the enemy in order to deal more damage, you need to actually jump when an enemy is about to attack you in order to evade it and so on. It's not just about choosing an attack from the menu and watch as it happens, you need to actually be an active participant. That's something that I like about the M&L games compared to your standard JRPGs like Final Fantasy.
But yeah, Partners in Time just didn't feel as good to play as the first game. I do have to add though that I played the 3DS remake of Superstar Saga, so I don't know if the GBA version was even worse than Partners in Time. But I did enjoy the 3DS game very much and it's disappointing that AlphaDream didn't get the chance to remake Partners in Time on 3DS. Not only would you have been able to own all M&L games on one system, but maybe PiT would've been actually more enjoyable in a remake form.
Either way, I'm looking forward to playing the next game in the series, which is Bowser's Inside Story. I've read that people consider it to be the best game in the series and considering I'll be playing the 3DS remake, I have high hopes for it. At least you only control Mario and Luigi this time, and I'm curious to see what the Bowser segments will be like.
@RogerRoger Haha. No skeevy extras, thankfully. Conception came with an outer box and sampler CD or something. I forget if Valkyrie Drive had any bonuses. Corpse Party games have all come with amazing bonuses the few times they got physical releases: Blood Drive came with a really pretty outer box, a surprisingly high-quality artbook, and a multi-disc soundtrack. Even if the game itself was rubbish, the extras still kinda made the purchase worthwhile. Meanwhile, the retail port of the original Corpse Party on 3DS actually came with little figures of two of the characters from the game in addition to a snazzy outer box.
Yeah, I couldn't ignore that price. It's a little annoying insofar as, regardless of being redeemed on Steam, I believe it'll actually require a separate log-in to EA's launcher, but it should be fine otherwise, and the games will all run better on my PC than they would on my PS4 (maybe not as well as on a PS5, but $500 takes a fair bit of convincing for me to part with). I'm actually pretty enthusiastic about finally getting to experience the third game.
Question, actually: I recall something about ME3 having an ending that upset people originally, motivating EA to change it after a backlash. Do they have the option of experiencing the original ending in this version of the game?
Yeah. I thought about making a level myself to test out that whole feature, but since I was a bit lukewarm on the game overall, I decided to move on. Kind of annoys me a bit that Capcom will support the online component of a failed obscure PSP game for 15 years or so (at least), but Sony barely waited a year to remove the online features from Gravity Rush 2. -_-
I'm actually revisiting a somewhat obscure PS1 classic atm. I'll give you a hint: it's a puzzle game, and it has a strangely cinematic, almost John Williams-esque soundtrack.
@RogerRoger Depends on the game. I sold the Fire Emblem Fates special edition for about twice what I paid for it, since I was kinda disappointed with it anyway. On the other hand, despite physical prices exploding in recent years, I've never been tempted to part with my MegaTen collection.
Certain retro games have also exploded in price in recent years. I managed to sell one of my old PS2 horror games for $250 back in 2020.
Well, I mean, you're 90% a Playstation guy, right? If I spent most of my time on Playstation, I'd probably be looking into upgrading my console as well, so the rush to upgrade makes more sense in your case, I imagine.
With that said, while I'm still getting a few new games here and there (primarily to play with my nephew, who is a big Nintendo fan), my consumerist zeal from the last few years has kinda cooled off. I've got a massive backlog, several very capable platforms to play games on... I don't need to spend a bunch of money on new gaming stuff any time soon.
And that works anyway, because with all of these studio acquisitions, Game Passes, Project Spartacuses, etc. it makes sense for me to lay low and see how things shake out over the next few years.
That's disappointing to hear. I guess I'll youtube the original ending at some point, then. Even if the revamped ending ends up being objectively better than what people initially got, something rubs me the wrong way about developers altering their art based on backlash like this.
Your reviews should be helpful when I get to these games, since I recall you talking to some extent about what order to play the DLC in. If there's still any confusion, if it's all the same to you, then I'll pick your brains on the matter in the future.
Yeah, I got GR2 at launch, but I do kinda regret not supporting most of their releases when they came out. Now Japan Studio is a thing of the past, and even if their games didn't sell like GoW or Horizon, I still feel like something important was lost from Sony's first-party lineup.
I'm def. looking forward to talking about it, then, and its impressive soundtrack. It's pretty much perfect as a portable game (even if it was never intended to be one), since its short, segmented into multiple stages, and has a compulsive 'pick up and play' quality to it despite the brutal level of difficulty.
It's kinda fun revisiting my PS1 library portably.
I.Q.: Intelligent Qube Platform: PS1 Year of Release: 1997 Genre: Puzzle Completion: Only takes an hour or two to beat, depending on how little you struggle with it. I've finished the game a few times, since my goal before posting this review was to be able to play through it without dying once, which took some time. I also wanted to check out the unlockables.
Let's start with a North American TV spot for the game.
Yeah, that'll show you for knowing how to spell words, you uppity little girl!
I.Q.: Intelligent Qube (AKA "Intelligent Qube" in the United States and "Kurushi" in Europe and Australia) is a PS1 puzzle game originally released in 1997 by developer and original publisher G-Artists Inc. (SCE actually published the game in the U.S.). In IQ, you play as a character trapped on a row of blocks suspended in a dark void, fending off the encroaching danger posed by a series of gigantic cubes that advance from the top of the screen toward you. Your goal in each stage is to use your power to mark and detonate normal cubes and advantage cubes (which glow with a green color) while allowing forbidden cubes (which are jet black in color) to roll off the end of the stage. There's a lot of depth in the gameplay, but this is the basic goal of every stage in the game.
There are life and death consequences to screwing up, because if you accidentally destroy a forbidden cube, or if enough normal cubes are mistakenly allowed to fall off the end of the stage, the stage itself will begin to crumble in segments, and if you're unlucky enough to run out of ground (or to stupidly be standing on a row that's falling, for whatever reason) your character will fall screaming into the void, presumably forever. That's obviously no good, so your goal is to master the nuances of this ostensibly simple series of death puzzles.
IQ is divided into nine stages, and each stage is divided into four sections, with each section marked by a new arrangement of cubes that advance in waves. I've already mentioned that destroying advantage cubes or allowing enough normal cubes to roll off will start destroying the stage (normal cubes will fill up a cube queue that, when filled, will punish the player and reset), but what happens if you clear a wave without making any mistakes? Brilliantly, the game's announcer will triumphantly yell out the word "PERFECT!" and a section will be added to your stage instead.
How many ground segments you have doesn't just matter to your immediate survival, either, as each chunk of ground is tallied up at the end of the stage, and you'll get a cool 1000 points added to your score for each one you have. Your goal, then, is to maximize this number by playing as well as possible.
So, I've been mentioning advantage cubes, but what's so special about them? Well, these cubes are either your best friend or worst enemy, depending on how efficiently you play. When you detonate an advantage cube, a green mark will be left on the ground, and a special explosion can be triggered by hitting the triangle button that blows up not only whatever is on that space, but also on all of the spaces touching that space. So that's eight spots detonated in addition to the spot the green mark was originally left on. Efficient use of these delayed explosions are necessary for destroying the massive swaths of cubes that threateningly advance toward you, but if you catch forbidden cubes in your explosions, you'll also start to quickly destroy the stage. This gets especially tricky considering that, unlike your normal detonation mark, which you can only have one of at a time, any number of green marks can stay on the ground during a section of a stage, and all of the green marks are detonated simultaneously when you trigger their ability. And the game is NOT kind in terms of how it mixes up the three cube types, making it easy to destroy forbidden cubes in the process.
I mentioned scoring at the end of the stage before, but there's also a separate system of scoring that happens with each wave of blocks you encounter. The game doesn't want you to just survive, it also wants you to play WELL, and the mechanism it uses to incentivize this is by challenging the player to clear each wave in a certain of actions. Well, kind of. The number might be "0/3" for the wave, which means that after you detonate your first mark, you get three successive rolls of the cubes to destroy them all. This part is crucial, because, when I first started the game, I assume the number began counting up as soon as the cubes started advancing, but the number actually tick up until you denote your first mark. The game doesn't require the player to be speedy so much as use planning and tactical thinking to achieve their goal. For example, it often doesn't make sense to try and blow up sets of cubes from the front going back. It might make more sense to, say, blow up an advantage cube, and then detonate other cubes on the side of a formation while the cube formation rolls over the green mark until you're able to say blow up a large swath of cubes blocking your way, blow up another set of advantage cubes to create marks on those spaces, etc. Each formation of cubes in this game requires a separate approach and quick, tactical thinking in order to efficiently conquer it in the specified number of turns.
At least, this was my experience up until Stage 7. The game steadily increases in difficulty as the stages go on (primarily by increasing the width and length of successive cube formations, but also sometimes by making the cube formation patterns more complex as well), but by the time the seventh stage rolled around initially, I... hit a wall. Hard. I really struggled to get through it for probably hours on end. Eventually conquering this stage, along with the final two stages, taught me a few things. Like, sometimes it's better to just allow a formation you've messed up on to squash you, roll off the stage, and collapse a few sections of ground rather than struggle until you're pushed back to the edge of the stage and fall off. While this game mercifully allows for endless continues, getting a Game Over also resets your score to zero. In a score-based puzzler, it's the worst possible outcome, so sometimes it pays to swallow your pride and accept defeat rather than allow the game to nuke your entire score.
Being a score-based game, your ultimate goal is to rack up as many points as possible through the game's nine stages. This score will somehow be translated into an "IQ" score, which can range between 0 - 999. With that said, I expected it to take longer to access the game's few unlockables, which include two new character skins (Cynthia, a female player, as well as a dog named Spike) and "Original" mode, which I'm told allows the player to create their own puzzles (I played around with the original mode, but couldn't make heads nor tails of what I was supposedly doing, unfortunately).
That probably is the game's biggest weakness, ultimately. The game itself has almost no diversity to the experiences it offers, the experience itself is short as hell (two hours or so on the default difficulty if you play well, and a little over an hour on the highest difficulty if you can somehow manage to withstand the ordeal, as the higher that setting goes, the faster the cubes advance), and the unlockables are few in number and simple to access. You'd have to really fall in love with it and play it to death for it to be a good value for the money it probably cost back in the day (and especially now, with the inflated prices of retro games almost across the board).
The game is also not terribly... photogenic. This was a point that came up back when it first released, as reviewers were disappointed by the incredibly rudimentary 3D models and lack of visual pop compared to bigger titles on the system.
I wasn't sure where to fit this, but it's probably also worth mentioning that the game doesn't have a formal tutorial sequence. Instead, there are a series of tutorial videos explaining the rules, which are narrated in a hilariously manner-of-fact manner: the closest comparison I can make is to one of those work training videos, like the one I was made to watch when I started my first job.
Perhaps the most notable aspect of Intelligent Qube is its weirdly excellent soundtrack. Composer Takayuki Hattori's memorable orchestral score, which is by turns eerie and sweeping, adds immensely to the game's atmosphere. The compositions are totally out of tune with what you'd expect to hear in a puzzle game even today, but it really compliments the abstract and strange nature of the setting and tone. It's perhaps not surprising to learn that Hattori's work was primarily featured in Japanese TV shows, anime, and theatrical movies, although he did also contribute the (also excellent) soundtrack for I.Q. Final, the 1999 sequel that never made it to the States, as well as an Arc the Lad game on the PS2.
Whatever the reason the soundtrack ended up like this, it definitely helps to show off the potential for a new console that had the ability to recreate CD quality music using real instruments, and these pieces dramatically showcase what's possible when you evolve beyond the bleeps and bloops of 16-bit era chiptunes.
(I'll be linking from the official soundtrack for the second game, which actually combines the music from both games)
So, this is the first piece you hear after the game boots up:
Quite an introduction, right? Well, this is the MAIN MENU music, of all things:
The music you hear when you go into the first stage:
Second stage:
And so on. You get the idea. The soundtrack is tiny, but literally every track is great.
So, at the end of the day, we're left with a true curiosity of a game. Despite some shortcomings, which I've mentioned, it still manages to be an utterly unique and addicting experience that puzzle fans will find themselves itching to return to. The soundtrack is also fantastic and enthralling. I own a lot of PS1 games, but IQ, despite a lack of fanfare in the West, has still remained one of the first games that come to mind when I think of the system, and I definitely enjoyed revisiting it and experiencing it more fully than I did in the past.
@mookysam Oh yeah, you could probably spend the rest of your life playing all of the weird, off-beat games that released on NDS and PSP. I also really dug the unique style of gameplay and presentation in these releases that distinguished them so thoroughly from home console/PC releases. That style of game is probably never coming back, unfortunately.
Yeah, I suppose it's an open question if MM2 would have even benefitted from a remake like this. While the level sharing building/sharing stuff is super cool, it doesn't really benefit from being attached to a remake of Mega Man 2. And yeah, a lot of the original's personality would be lost with the redone music.
I think Capcom probably did what they could to make MM1 enjoyable, but, really that entire game needs to be rebuilt from the ground up around new levels themes and bosses, at which point it wouldn't really be a remake anymore.
90s/early 00s video game commercials were the best, IMO. They got away with so much edgy, absurd marketing that just wouldn't fly today.
I feel like a lot of people probably played IQ/saw it being played back in the day and forgot about it or didn't remember the name. The imagery is fairly distinctive, though. Despite its niche status, it did well enough to actually inspire at least three sequels, although I believe this remains the only game in the series to actually be localized in NA. I guess it performed better in the Japanese and European markets.
IQ occasionally has opportunities to regain the spotlight briefly. It was notable, for example, for being one of the games included with that ill-fated PS1 mini-console Sony released a few years back. Occasionally you'll also see a small boost in visibility when some prominent youtuber references it.
Thanks for reading!
@RogerRoger Thank you! I was curious if this would end up being familiar to you. I hope the review wasn't too technical, since, with a game like this, any write-up will end up getting bogged down in the mechanics. They're really solid and unique as far as the game design goes, though, and I wanted to try and convey that.
Yeah, I feel like the PS1 was so strong partially because it had so many blockbusters as well as a metric ton of these weirder, smaller experiences. Sony's cheap CD-Rom based system really stormed the barn, so to speak; amazing to think about the sheer degree of third-party support Nintendo lost that generation by opting for cartridges and censorious content standards in comparison to the free-wheeling culture Sony was building on their platform.
I'm mixed on the presentation. I like the kinda spare, creepy aesthetic of the game overall. It's evocative. There is also some cool reflective surfaces in this game that look nice for such an old platform. But those 3D models for the humans are... not great. Thankfully, the camera is zoomed out, and you're typically focused on the cube formations stomping toward your character.
I could see this being stressful for someone. While playing it, I actually got a friend to try it on the lowest difficulty for a few minutes to see his reaction. I explained the controls and showed him what to do, but it only took a few moments for him to get irritated and shove the Vita back in my hands, defeated. Maybe for a laugh, the next time I give it to someone who's new to it, I'll set it on the highest difficulty option and wait to see how long it takes before panic sets in!
It's brutal and requires on-the-fly thinking, but I love the sort of very on-hands nature of the puzzle-solving, the way its outward simplicity belies its true mechanical depth, etc. I'd love to see a more polished modern spin on it with challenge modes, maybe some level of narrative to the campaign, etc.
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