Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

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Recently finished up Daemon X Machina (Switch), a mech game in the vein of Armored Core (in fact, it's handled by many of the same key people), but with the financial support of Nintendo, likely had a higher budget than any of it's niche contemporaries.

Let's get ready to roll out.

Gameplay:

• Essentially a really action focused third person shooter (though you can go with a melee focused build), it sees you taking on just over 70 missions (I'd say there's about a 60%-40% split amongst required story missions & optional "free" missions), tearing things up on the ground & in the air in a mech of your own design.
• Most missions take place in large open battle areas surrounded by a yellow warning area (you'll have 20 seconds to return to the battle area if you pass it, and fail the mission instantly if you pass a further out red boundary. This is a change from the original "Prototype Missions" demo, in which you were bounced back into the mission area if you hit the boundary, which caused issues with the boss featured in the demo), though there are also a number of missions that take place in high tech tunnel systems, offering more focused, linear objectives.
• Mission areas are filled with destructible objects, such as skyscrapers (which can damage you if you're hit by the debris), as well as items you can pick up & throw. Some of these are explosive like cars, which can be used to damage enemies, as well as containers that create a temporary health refilling barrier when destroyed (so make sure these don't get destroyed in the fighting when you don't need them).
• In terms of enemies there are tons of riffraff such as drones, helicopters, tanks, jets, and anti-air armaments, and while they can be annoying in escort missions if they overwhelm what you're supposed to be protecting, outside of early missions they're relatively harmless once you get to grips with things, and largely become fodder for ammo (which they constantly drop when defeated) for when you're fighting more fearsome foes such as the bosses or fellow mercenaries.
• While there will be a few generic mechs mixed in with the other regular enemies you face (and they are a few notches tougher in terms of difficulty), your greatest foes will more often than not be other mercenaries. These are main characters that have unique mechs, and it won't be too long before most main story missions pit you against them. They're almost always engaging affairs, so you never want to let your guard down, especially if the mission objective doesn't actually require you to defeat them (they tend to be tougher than normal, though not impossible to beat in such scenarios, which may be worth the gamble if you want their equipment). They have the best equipment to loot though, and you often have a couple AI partners yourself to help even the odds.
• Next I'll mention the stamina & Femto gauges. Stamina is pretty self explanatory and depletes whenever you're boosting, though it refills immediately when your not (if you deplete it you can't boost or fly until it's fully refilled. Otherwise flying doesn't drain it). Femto is an in game energy source. You can use it to create an AI controlled double of yourself which is very useful (though it drains Femto rapidly), to revive fallen ally mechs, to enter different "stances" (I never did this, but you're able to increase your attack at the expense of defense, and other battle configurations like that, in the middle of battle), and all lazer weapons expend it as well (rather than having ammo). It does refill on it's own when not in use, but there are also "Femto zones" scattered about mission areas which refill it rapidly (probably useful in Femto heavy builds, such if you have lots of lazer weapons).
• When most objectives essentially boil down to fly around and shoot everything that moves, it has the kind of gameplay loop that can become repetitive, but it does it's best to mitigate that. It regularly rotates between "eliminate all enemies", "destroy a certain object(s)", & "defend/escort something" type objectives, not to mention the massive boss encounters, and the occasional one off scenario, such as one where you have to infiltrate a base on foot and commandeer an enemy mech, one where you have to protect buildings from a meteorite shower, and even one where you're put in control of a massive boss type mech.
  
  
  Facing down a (defeated) boss up top, and controlling one down below (note the tiny looking mech at the bottom, which is actually an ally in a standard size mech).
• As you may have guessed based on one of those mission objectives, you are able to jump out of your mech & run around as a human. There are a few missions where you have to be out on foot (while intimidating at first, they are built around this & aren't so bad in practice), but otherwise you have no reason to do this. You are automatically ejected if your mech is defeated, giving you a last ditch effort at survival, but 99 times out of 100 you'll get creamed if you're up against even one mech (it's not all useless though, as I managed to finish off the final boss of all things in such a scenario).
• Of course it wouldn't be an Armored Core-like without mech customization, and it has it in spades. Mech parts come in 5 different categories (head, body, right arm, left arm, and legs), which all effect your dozens of different stats in different ways, and have different focuses (heads, for example, largely effect radar & lock on range, as well as lock on speed). Plus, there's all the equipment you can equip as well, such as right & left weapons (this category consists of weapons such as guns, swords, bazookas, shields, flamethrowers, & more, and are equipped to the right & left arms), right & left pilons (same category of weapons, just carried on your back to be swapped out with your right & left arm weapons on the fly in combat), shoulder weapon (missiles, cannons, & support equipment that can cure status ailments or heal health), and auxiliary equipment (grenades, flairs to help you avoid missiles, stamina doubling equipment, etc.). Absolutely everything you equip affects your overall stats (keep in mind things like weight), and while it can seem daunting, it's really not. Just mess around with what seems fun, and stick with something you like (there are memory constraints, so you can't just go willy nilly with your equipment & build).
• You obtain new mech parts & equipment by looting them from fallen enemy mechs or buy buying them from the shop in the out of mission hub area (though outside of a few memory upgrades, I never bought equipment, only ever using what I looted). If you have an open slot whenever you loot something it will be equipped automatically (lets say you loot a bazooka, if your right pilon is empty it will be equipped there), if not it will be sent back to base. Once you loot a part you can't loose it (even if an arm is destroyed during a mission, something that only happened to me once, you're just charged a repair cost that is deducted from your mission reward).
• You can upgrade your human avatar as well, with a Lab in the hub area which allows you to get surgical enhancements that boost your abilities both outside & inside your mech. While picking certain upgrades will set you on a certain path, you're able to reset to default at any point, allowing you to reallocate your upgrades to a different build if you so wish (there's no punishment for this as far as I'm aware). However, the more you upgrade your avatar the more robotic they themselves become, so keep that in mind.
• Also, there is an Ice Cream shop in the hub area which you can eat at which will earn you temporary buffs for the next mission. I never used it, but it goes to show there are a lot of options when it comes to getting ahead.
• There are lots of cosmetic options as well, as you're free to choose your mech's color pallet, and by completing certain objectives/milestones & scanning graffiti found within mission areas, you can earn new design patterns & decals for your mech. You are also able to change your avatar's appearance at any time as well (though keep in mind if you have them upgraded to any degree they'll be so mechanical you may not as well be able to).
• As referenced in other points, there is a little hub area you can run around in (as a human) between missions. The only things to interact with here are two computer terminals & the aforementioned Lab & Ice Cream Shop. The large terminal lets you access single player missions, mech customization, the shop, check in-game messages, and game settings, and the smaller one lets you access multiplayer modes, which I never bothered with, as I don't have NSO. Everything else here is purely cosmetic, with your current mech build on display in the center of the area, and the walls of the area will slowly be decorated with all the new weapon/equipment types you collect.
• Before I finish up on gameplay I should mention that you can fully customize controller layout, including the use of gyro for aiming. I never deviated from the default, but it's nice knowing the option is there.
• Oh, and there's free Witcher III DLC, for those who want to dress up their avatar as Geralt, for whatever reason.

Audio/Visual:

• It has a very vivid & colorful pallet, and while I was at first worried about sensory overload with all the moving objects/effects, the busy HUD, and vivid colors, I actually grew used to it really quickly & never found it to be an issue. Though it took a bit to get used to the odd shading on the human faces (their faces are light, and are ringed by darkening layers), the tech designs were all really slick & the environments all looked really cool, which is what you'll be looking at 85-90% of the time.
  
  
  
  
  The environments, seen here in in-engine cutscenes, look really good.
• Despite everything that goes on in the game, I never experienced a single dropped frame, even during massive boss fights with all sorts of effects flashing around. This is quite the noticeable improvement over the "Prototype Missions" demo, which could be quite choppy. A great performing game all around.
• From what little I played this way, it performs greatly in portable mode too, and it's the mode I ultimately beat the final boss in, too. Looks native res portable as well, as far as I could tell.
• It kind of has a serious rockish soundtrack. Nothing that'll get stuck in your head, but it gets the job done.

Story:

• After some accident, part of the Moon fell to Earth screwing things up, but it also introduced a very powerful yet toxic energy source to the Earth known as Femto. To protect the world at large from it's effects, the Moon's wreckage is surrounded by a protective layer known as the Oval Link. 3 Consortiums have been set up inside the Oval Link to collect & refine Femto for the Earth's energy consumption, and they are regulated by a governing body known as Orbital, which tries to keep all 3 entities at an even playing field to prevent one from getting too much power. Things are complicated by the fact that rouge AI known as Immortals have decided to go all "Terminator" on humanity, and are interrupting the Consortiums' Femto collection efforts. That's where mech piloting mercenaries such as yourself come into play. Piloted by a new breed of human resistant to the toxic effects of Femto, these mech mercenaries take on jobs within the Oval Link in order to protect Femto collection projects from the Immortals. Of course, with the 3 different Consortiums & 7 different Mercenary groups, each with their own unique goals, it's a tale of politics, backstabbing, and technobabble that's all very anime. There's so many characters it's impossible to get particularly attached to any (which renders certain late game moments & revelations moot), though if you sort of roll with it, it works to hold things together.
• Every story mission starts with a briefing session where characters converse via text boxes (these can be quite lengthy), though there are often in-engine cutscenes as well (usually whenever mercenaries or a boss show up or are defeated). Everything is fully voiced, though.
• I'm usually not too bothered by silent protagonists, but it can be a tad annoying here, if only because the other mercenaries take to calling you "the Rookie", even by end game when it's clear you're the most skilled around & humanity's only hope.
• I really don't have any major issues with the story though. Really not anything worse than what you'd get with something like Ace Combat, and it's really not the main reason you'd pick a game like this up.

Conclusion:

• I actually really enjoyed my time with this. There's just a certain cool factor about flying around blowing things up as a giant robot, and this delivers that with a solid gameplay loop with lots of playstyle choice, great performance, and a vivid neon infused art direction. It's likely not the kind of game that'll sit up there with the absolute best games on the system, but even so I think it was hurt massively by a very rough early demo, which made it even easier to ignore when it was sent out to die amongst the hype trains of Astral Chain, Dragon Quest XI S, & Link's Awakening (each of which may just make that shortlist "best games on the system"). Just because it's not quite that good doesn't mean it's not worth a play however, especially considering how much they improved upon the Prototype Missions demo.
  
  I'm the best there is, but at what cost?

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DOOM II: Hell on Earth

Platform: PC

Completion Status: Beat the entire game more than once. As with the first game, I didn't receive 100% completion on EVERY level, but I did find a larger number of the in-game secrets this time around.

DOOM II released less than a year after id Software's legendary shareware classic, DOOM. Unlike the original, which released in a staggered format that lent it an episodic structure, DOOM II was a full commercial product from the beginning, and, reflecting this, contains one continuous campaign from beginning to end, which removes one of the early irritations of the original title.

I've just gotta say, switching to PC for DOOM II was the right move. Aiming with the mouse in classic DOOM games is just a joy, and offers so much more precision than a stick ever could.

Picking up where DOOM left off, Doomguy is now on Earth, and discovers that the planet has been overrun with demons. Humanity understandably freaks out and attempts to leave the planet via spaceship(s), but the demons are using some sort of force field to keep humanity from escaping. After Doomguy disables this field and allows humans to escape into space, he is linked the coordinates to the portal that opened to Hell - in the heart of his own hometown! Doomguy plunges into Hell again, set on ending this supernatural terror plaguing his world once and for all.

Probably the strongest area of improvement in DOOM 2 over the original is in the degree of enemy variety. In OG DOOM, there were only a small handful of enemy types to face off against, and most of these attacked you in a similar manner, leading to combat in the game having a very repetitive and predictable feel to it. DOOM II, on the other hand, infuses the game with a number of new enemy types that can pretty radically change up the flow of combat.

The first new enemy type is actually something that should look familiar to people acquainted with the original DOOM. The Hell Knights are essentially the Barons of Hell minibosses from the first game, but recolored and with half of the HP. This nerfing allows them to be incorporated into the full game as proper enemies, allowing them to be used a lot more than their stronger older brothers were in the original game.

In a similar vein, the Arachnotron enemy is basically a repurposing of one of the last bosses from the original DOOM, the Spider Mastermind. The ridiculous chaingun that made that boss so miserable to fight has been replaced with a much more manageable plasma weapon. Those plasma blasts still hurt, though, and even with a fraction of the Spider Mastermind's HP, these big guys still won't go down easily.

This handsome chap is called an Arch-Vile, and they have one of the most unique attack patterns in the series. Other enemies generally shoot projectiles at the player, but the Arch-Vile uses magic to hit the player with an undodgeable attack that does significant damage. Well, undodgeable by traditional means: you can actually negate damage from his attack if you break line-of-sight with him before he pulls off his spell. With this enemy, it actually pays to exercise some level of caution instead of blindly shooting like a moron due to the degree of damage their attacks do.

The Pain Elementals look a lot like Cacodemons, but they're significantly more irritating. These big boys don't actually attack; instead, they continuously spawn Lost Souls until you kill them. Lost Souls, for those unaware, are these annoying skulls that fly around trying to bite you. The sooner you put these guys down, the better.

The Mancubus is an obese demon with fireball launchers strapped to both arms. You'll want to kill them quickly, and they unfortunately absorb a lot of abuse.

The Revenant is... I mean... it's a skeleton with missile launchers strapped to its shoulders. Heat seeking missiles, in fact, that can follow you around a stage, so you'll want to waste this guy quick. Don't get too close, though, because this cheeky fellow is one of the few enemies with a sub-attack: try to close the distance between him and yourself and he'll punch you right in your gob!

Last but not least, the Heavy Gunner is a new soldier type. The game has been good about not relying on these, and, like most of the other new enemies, he poses an instant threat with his chaingun-thing. Thankfully, a close blast from your shotgun will put this fellow out of his misery.

Thankfully, to balance out all of these extra nasties you'll be fighting, DOOM II introduces the hilariously powerful "super shotgun." This double-barreled wonder does absurd amounts of damage to enemies at close-to-medium range, making it the perfect weapon to mow down these denizens of hell. You can swap between the normal and "super" shotgun with the press of a key, but the only time you'll want to have the normal shotgun equipped is when you're trying to snipe smaller enemies. All of the other weapons are back as well, but the super shotgun is the only real addition to your arsenal in this entry.

If there's one thing I can definitely say is inferior to the original game, it's the level design. Granted, I wasn't a huge fan of the first game's labyrinths or its aggravating late-game stage design, but THIS is just... all over the place. Level construction can range from pretty good to horrendous, with no consistency when it comes to what you should be able to expect. While I like the concept, the game is at its absolute worst in the city levels, which are gigantic, barren maps filled with abstract geometry, enemies at a variety of annoying elevations, and obnoxiously random level progression as you scamper from building to building looking for an area that you can enter.

There are levels here that are just the worst thing ever. The Chasm, for example. This darling of a level features gigantic sections where you have to tight-rope walk your way across thin platforms, little more than a handful of pixels wide, while enemies fire at you. If you fall, the floor below is toxic and will quickly kill you. I doubt I need to elaborate on why I hate this level.

Seriously, screw this level!

With that said, the much more highly experimental nature of the level design in DOOM II allows for some interesting, if not always organic, level design that leads to some unique and almost puzzle-like experience. Two I'd like to immediately highlight are Dead Simple and Barrels o' Fun. The former places you in a ridiculously simplistic (thus the name) Deathmatch-style arena filled with high-level baddies. Despite this, there is an emergent logic to how you can go about killing the enemies here without minimal risk to the player. In the latter level, you will find yourself trapped in various locations filled with high-level enemies and dozens of explosive barrels. It's fun concepts like these that keep DOOM II feeling fresh despite inadequacies in level design elsewhere.

It's also worth mentioning that this game actually has a proper final boss. While it's not amazing as far as boss fights go, it's a massive step up over the irritatingly OP baddies you stumble across in the first game, and the enemy feels like something that would represent the culmination of your time with the game.

Despite being, in some respects, a more inconsistent experience, I definitely think DOOM II holds up better than the original game. The awesomely over-powered shotgun, bigger levels, much wider enemy variety, and single, connected campaign made this entry feel like a much more complete experience. It's a pretty terrific shooter, and I'd recommend anyone who enjoyed the original entry to give it a go. 7.5/10

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Rhythm Paradise (also known as Rhythm Heaven in the US) for the Nintendo DS.

Rhythm Paradise is a collection of over 50 rhythm mini-games. It makes extensive use of the DS touch screen and stylus, requiring players to touch the screen and flick the stylus to the rhythm. Most of the mini-games are fairly simple to understand, but quite challenging to master. The game is also oozing in its charm and personality, and has quite a goofy feel to it.

Of the 50 or so rhythm games, there's around 25 unique concepts for the mini-games. The remaining games are either sequels that build on an existing game, or tricky remixes that combine elements from multiple previous mini-games. The games all feel fairly unique, and use a wide variety of fun and quirky concepts. There's games such as refuelling robots, a monkey fan club cheering on a singer, and a monk eating dumplings.

There's generally a practice section at the start of new mini-games to introduce the player to that particular game and to teach them how it works. Once the player has completed the practice (or skipped it), it's on to the main mini-game. Mini-games are usually fairly short, opting for smaller more intense challenges. At the end of a mini-game, the player then gets a "Superb", "OK" or "Try Again" ranking, along with some goofy flavour text on how well they did.

Despite its fun and goofy appearance, Rhythm Paradise is actually fairly challenging. While there are both audio and visual cues, a lot of the rhythm games will be very tricky unless the player listens carefully to the music and gets a good feel of the rhythm. Rhythm Paradise is fairly strict on its timings, and doesn't offer any leeway if the taps were slightly off the beat. To mitigate any frustrations by the difficulty, there is an option for skipping mini-games entirely if the player is struggling. The skipping option is fairly subtle and is done by a small exclamation mark in the level select screen. This can easily be ignored completely by players not wishing to skip.

Rhythm Paradise mainly uses the touch screen and stylus as the sole control method. It requires the DS to be held sideways, similar to holding a book or playing Dr Kawashima's Brain Training. There's options for both right-handed controls and left-handed controls. The exact controls vary depending on the rhythm game, but generally involve either tapping the screen, holding down on the screen, dragging the stylus across the screen, or flicking the screen with the stylus.

The flicking wasn't easy to get the hang of, and does seems a bit finicky. It did cause some frustration whenever I thought I flicked correctly but the game didn't seem to like it. My 3DS screen was already fairly badly scratched, but I do think the flicking may have contributed to a few new scratches. The developers presumably got some complaints about the flicking, as this was removed in the 3DS game Rhythm Paradise Megamix. Megamix instead lets the player choose between pressing buttons or tapping the touch screen without flicking.

Music is an important aspect of rhythm games, and Rhythm Paradise certainly delivers in this regard. There were no tracks in the game that I particularly disliked, but there are a lot of catchy tunes. There's plenty of variety in the songs, including pop, rock, techno sounding songs, and various others.

Overall, this game was a very enjoyable experience. My main issues were that the flicking controls took a lot of practice to get used to, and seemed finicky. The game also isn't always great at indicating exactly what the player did wrong. In some intense, fast-paced mini-games it can be hard to tell whether a wrong move was due to tapping too early or too late. But the game's charm along with its wonderful sense of fun when playing it more than makes up for its shortcomings.