Game Curmudgeons

What are you waiting for?

Alright, fine. I’ll tell you why.

Ikaruga is everything a good vertical shooter should be. The past is fast, the action frantic, and perhaps most of all, you have to think. Ikaruga is a thinking gamer’s shooter, and twitch skills alone will mean nothing. Knowing when to switch polarity, which enemies to fight at a time, and how to get out of some very challenging polarity based puzzles while being fired at from all directions, that’s the kind of thing that really works you over, with a wonderful minimalist idea working in its favor.

The game’s premise isn’t that removed from the normal vert shooter. Blast things into tiny pieces, don’t get shot. Here’s the catch, though. There are two types of enemy fire, black and white (with some blue and red outlining). Your ship has two polarities, black and white. At any time, you’re set to one of those, and you absorb any shots that come your way of that polarity (If this all sounds familiar, this is the same basic idea that was used for the classic, but underplayed, Sillohuette Mirage for Playstation). Those shots are absorbed into a seeker weapon, which you can unleash 16 of for some nasty damage to whatever is in your way. And on top of that, you do massive damage to enemies of the opposite polarity as opposed to the same. Playing it safe is an option, but taking the risk will blast an enemy out of the sky in an instant, netting you more points and with that more extra lives, which ALWAYS matter. And to add more points, killing three enemies of the same polarity in a row adds to a combo meter. As long as you blast sets of three, the combo, and the major bonus it gives, grows, even if the sets aren’t all of the same polarity. Break a set though, and lose the combo.

It’s a very pretty affair, with great models and textures despite the fact the game’s palette is essentially 4 high contrast colors. The special effects are strong, and there’s never a question of what’s coming at you, and how you need to respond. It really is impressive what Treasure (the developer) did with so little, but it goes to show the power of a solid art style and some proper spectacle. It’s easy to get lost in the “Whoa!” of some enemies, and that, of course, means a fiery explosion that used to be your ship. For an extra treat, players who’ve got a TV or monitor they can rotate vertically will get the full experience here, without sidebars preserving the ratio. The game supports rotation to fit native on a vertical monitor, and well, you’re going to yell out “holy shit awesome!” when you try it.

Lots of sections of the game revolve around not dying more than killing things, with streams of energy of opposite polarities forming mazes in ways that players will need to ride through and switch through occasionally. Timing will very much be key, but the reward is great, and it’s easy to load up on homing attacks in such pieces. Minibosses and bosses revolve heavily on the idea of polarity. Some fire certain types and rotate them, some are weak to a specific polarity in specific spots, and some will just require good timing on the swap to not die. One particularly devious miniboss uses both polarities to attack, crossing energy solid beams over the player, ensuring that you WILL get hit. At the same time he’s strafing left and right, meaning you have to swap polarities and engage in a deadly ballet avoiding the beams which will destroy you, and switching as they invert while still maneuvering and dodging the smaller shots still flying.

The difficulty is high, but Ikaruga is not without mercy. As more time is logged into the game and more points, players earn more credits and lives to use to unlock levels. The goals are twofold in this game certainly. One is just the challenge of mastering the basic game, winning it, which is no easy feat. Beyond that, on default settings high scores and replays are uploaded, but the difficulty is quite high at this point. No extra credits, no extra lives beyond those afforded on default settings, everyone is equal except for skill and a bit of memorization of certain devious puzzles.

Like all shooters, Ikaruga can be victim of repetition, especially replaying earlier levels. But those early levels are very fun even after a lot of plays, and provide a basis for the skill needed to finish later levels. Players can also just play a favorite level that they’ve reached by selecting it, instead of always going from the beginning, which is a great feature. Want some motion and polarity puzzles? Hit level three. Non-stop action? Level five. The game is also, like most shooters, rather short, but shooter fans aren’t in a game for length, they’re in it to replay over and over, and to top their best score again and again.

Ikaruga provides that chance. It’s a lot of fun in single-player, and a ton of fun in multiplayer too, with players working in tandem to cover both polarities and protect each other as they unleash absolute devastation on their enemies.

Ikaruga is an easy 5 star game. The polish is top, it’s pure fun, and it’s one of the finest examples of its genre. And on top of that, it’s 10 fucking dollars! 800 points on Xbox Live Arcade gets you the game, which is certainly less than many, many people spent in quarters at the arcade, or the cost of finding a Dreamcast or Gamecube copy of a real collector’s item. Get the trial, fall in love instantly with it, and buy it. Unlike some other XBLA titles, Ikaruga only gets better as you go. Now let’s hope Microsoft decides to give us Treasure’s other opus, Radiant Silvergun.

Digital Extremes seems to try to prove every chance they get that, if it weren’t for Epic Games, they’d never have become a name anyone knows.

Let’s look at their flagship titles, shall we?

Unreal-A thoroughly average FPS with horrid SiN-like anyway, load times.

Unreal Tournament-A great series, heavily guided by Epic’s design and direction, and effectively made by Epic.

Pariah-An extremely shitty FPS with a few ideas taken from other recent games that didn’t work out in any way.

Warpath-Essentially a sequel to Pariah, which also stole some ideas from recent games, and sucked in a stunningly generic way.

Now, Dark Sector. It, like most other pure DE work, is a generic suckfest, showing they just can’t be let to roam too free from Epic.

Dark Sector is 100 blowing 100 guys at the same time in an orderly line, viewed from a distant camera that’s low resolution and grainy. Most guys are going to see it, and say “Oh man, this is awesome!” But then they notice everything is starting to look the same and there’s no real detail or depth. Nothing stands out as special, and it never seems to get anywhere. When it finally does, you only know because nothing is happening anymore, not that you bothered paying much attention by that point.

Dark Sector steals from every recent successful game, and while it does that fine at points, it does it lazily. The aftertouch has little real control. The cover system is awkwardly implemented and hard to use. The sprinting is hard to control and serves no real function beyond exposing yourself to fire. Okay, that they clearly got from Epic’s Gears of War. They also spent the entire first chapter of the game in black and white, which I’ll also snarkily say was taken from Gears of War! It’s too bad they didn’t take the great high-res textures and models to match.

Loose control plagues the game. It defaults to maximum sensitivity, which seems absolutely horrid at first, since a light press of the stick will swing you 180 instantly. Then you aim at an enemy, and the turn speed is somewhere around point oh five are-pee-em, at full tilt. I don’t expect the exact same aimed speed by any means, but jesus christ, these are polar opposites. The fact there’s no reticule at all, unless in aim mode, just adds to the frustration, since you’ll never be close to your target upon the depression of the left trigger. And somehow, you’ll still never get a good shot. The main character, Hayden, gets more accurate throughout the course of the game, but nobody will care about getting that far.

The game’s signature weapon, the glaive, is stunningly underpowered and generally not useful. It’s slow to use, not that strong unless timed perfectly, and while using it, you’re stuck with a pistol, which is relatively weak no matter how often it’s upgraded. Plenty of early sections in the game leave players against a horde of enemies with AI smart enough to have ideas like “run toward the player” and “punch the player.” Not much more, but oh, there’s plenty of that. At points they respawn from nowhere. Sometimes they emerge from six inch deep pools of water, sometimes they simply appear in front of you. The mechanic is incredibly weak and completely unfun. How a big spinning triple edged blade winds up shitty to use is beyond me, but hey, there it is. Even with the aftertouch, lifted poorly out of Heavenly Sword, it’s hard to use well, and awkward. Using the aftertouch is often worse because the game is so intent on you firing the pistol right after tossing the glaive.

It should be noted, at least, that the game’s shotguns are pretty damn nice, and all you’re going to use besides the glaive anyway. They’re the only thing capable of hitting what you aim at, gunwise, and thank god something can.

But the rest, well, it’s a mess. The game’s animation is choppy and unconvincing, and lots of death animations are repeated. When they’re not, the ragdolls are simply awful, springing around like every joint is held by rubber bands. The audio is sloppy at best, though at least the vocals are clear. The damage indicators are undersized and easily unnoticed until it’s too late, and the game’s sense of scale simply feels wrong. Enemies are small looking, generic, and blend in too well, especially for guys in hazmat suits early on.

Simply put, Dark Sector is as unpolished as this article. Feature creep is obvious, and it took away from any real testing or balancing. When the close-range melee attacks from a player simply swing on by the enemy more often than not when you’re close enough to kiss, it’s obvious there’s a problem. There’s just a distinct lack of enjoyment to the game, and some major bad decisions. In the end, you’ve already played this game, but in 10 distinct pieces that were much better on their own.

It never does anything overtly bad, excepting for the animation and some presentation decisions. And the controls. Okay, it does a few things badly, but most of the game is a thoroughly average theft of ideas that were done better in a more specialized focus. And the novelty of the glaive wears out rapidly in the frustration of cheap kills and a lack of any creativity. I’m not one to knock a game for not being terribly innovative if it’s incredibly well done(Unreal Tournament 2004, Half-life, Bioshock even was an incredibly well done FPS without being terribly revolutionary), but this just isn’t. There’s no polish, it’s bland, it’s uninspired, and it will have you frustrated before it even truly starts.

Dark Sector gets 2 out of 5 stars. It’s not all the way to “bad”, but it’s rarely a title that makes it to “average” and never “good” or “holy shit awesome.” It definitely doesn’t live up to the potential, or even the hype, which is a real shame. Digital Extremes needs to step it up next time, otherwise, they may not stay around much longer.

Nothing interrupts an experiment in drunken gaming like something awesome coming along.

Viking, for a moment, got better, when I unlocked a combo of sorts. Then the bad design started rearing its ugly head, and overall awful level design, bad enough to make you question your undying but undeserved love of Sega, and the skills of Creative Assembly.

Well Ikaruga, you came along and reminded me of why I still love my Dreamcast. Ikaruga is a ridiculously great shooter that requires thought and strategy beyond holding the fire button to do well, and at a certain point, to survive at all. The game’s key mechanic of polarity(absorb one type of enemy fire, get decimated by another) means paying attention to your surroundings, knowing when to flip, and being able to pick out fire patterns with two sets mixed in. One color to dodge, one to ignore, but getting complacent will result in that flipping around on you without being prepared.

A full review of Ikaruga will come within a few days after I dive in obsessively and gleefully, but for now, grab the demo off X-box live. Blow things up, and appreciate one of the finest pieces of a generation and of its type. Excercise brain and reflex in one wonderful game!

An MMORPG I like? This can’t be. But it is. It’s actually happened again, thanks to being so different from the rest of the games out there. But it has. Pirates of the Burning Seas takes some cues from quite a few MMOs, and makes something unique and interesting with them, even if it’s not without a few flaws. Rotating, updated flaws, by nature of the genre, but still, it’s pretty solid, and oddly comparable to Sid Meier’s Pirates! smashed together with Eve Online.

Pick a country, pick a class, pick a look, get out and make something of yourself. It’s certainly not a complicated idea, and there’s fun to be had in all professions, and something to match your style certainly. Players into serious PVP will become naval officers, defending contended ports of their own and taking from their enemies. People wanting to make a name for themselves and some big bucks will become privateers, hunting pirates and, given the right circumstances, the ships of other nations. Traders make the bucks without the battle, working the economy(player driven, and so far, pretty damn good), making the goods and ships that keep it all happening. And players who don’t have any particular goals but to sail the sea, find some cool things and enjoy a few dubloons will become pirates, the wild card and catalyst of the game’s economy and contention system.

This is the Caribbean afterall, and you never know what’s going to happen. Someone might come from behind a cove and wreck your shit entirely, you might have everything stolen, or the massive unrest caused by traders dumping dirt cheap goods and pirates raiding a port gets your governor overthrown after a massive sea battle. And that’s the essence of the game, you just never know what’s going to happen. Even the game’s quests, which often seem standard enough, can take some very interesting turns in the middle of an escort or when running a blockade, and thanks to the great ship to ship combat, they stay exciting.

Ship to ship combat is a matter of knowing your ship, and knowing your enemy’s ship. Running alongside someone and firing is an easy way to get a ship sunk or boarded by a superior ship, or superior gun on a weak ship. Each class has its own set of abilities, be they attacks which rend an enemy’s sails, decimate crews or rend armor, defensive measures to repair or prevent damage, or sail away damn fast, or make it easier to board and capture a ship. Knowing how to use those skills properly, along with what points on your ship are strongest, the enemy’s weak points, what type of shot is best for the situation, and how your ship sails best compared to theirs. There really is a lot to it, and while it’s certainly complex, it’s not complicated. Battles can last a long time, but they’re intense and exciting each time because player skill is the primary factor.

Ground combat, unfortunately, isn’t nearly as exciting an affair, and it almost ventures into typical MMO works, save for the lack of an auto-attack button. Attacks are done off a hotkey set(which is a bit slow and limited unfortunately), with attacks made to increase your initiative, decrease enemy balance, and just plain deal damage. They key to avatar combat is to unbalance the opponent(s), and keep your initiative up to deliver the big blows. It’s a really good idea for a system that just feels repetitive and unpolished, but when it works right, it’s great. Sadly, it doesn’t hit that “works right” piece as often as it should. Boarding ships becomes something you’d rather not do at points, despite the profits to be gained from it. Fixing the pace and streamlining the mechanics would do a world of good for it.

For those more interested in diplomatic, relatively peaceful affairs, the economy and trade system await. Taking a solid cue from past MMOs, there’s an auction house in major cities where anyone can list goods. Plenty of things are found just from hunting down foes on the open sea, but the real production starts at the ground level. Really. Opening mining facilities and logging facilities at major ports starts the economy off, among other things. Materials are precious, and the amount harvested at once is finite. Every structure, be it for making items or harvesting resources, has a limited number of labor hours every day that are accumulated and spent on the production. No one person is going to be able to produce everything needed for, well, everything, and advanced ships can take twelve individuals to craft. It’s certainly a complex system, and if you enjoy profit for the sake of profit, the sense of achievement, and say, Ayn Rand, it’s a hell of a system.

It’s certainly a pretty ride on the seas as well. Soothing ocean waves, winds, and the occasional seagull fill in for a few minutes, and once a journey becomes protracted, music kicks in, certainly appropriate(and very nice). The open sea is a nice place to be, danger aside, and a clever system. Rather than traveling slowly across the same maps that you walk on and battle on, the world is compressed for travel, but ships and land masses remain visible and labeled. It’s very much a feeling of sailing across a map, but it works well for the game, and when players engage in battle they enter a private instance(and the battle becomes visible to others on at sea). Docking is just as simple a matter. Click on a harbor, and as long as you’re in range, there you are, back on land.

It’s a shame land itself is so bland, droll, clunky. I never felt like I’ve really gone anywhere else. There’s not a clear separation in terms of feel for the different nations ports, and all ports feel around the same size, with major features re-arranged. Much like the ground combat, it’s repetitive, the framerate is a little weak, and it just doesn’t hold up to the very high standards of the ships and sea. Most of my time on land would have been served better with a menu interface instead of wasting time walking around uninteresting places, and the ground mapping team could have put more effort into some really creative, interesting places to assault on foot, instead of what feels like MMO standard. Move forward 5 feet, pull a mob, avoid aggro by walking it back, etc. The sea battles are so dynamic and fresh that the formulaic ground battles and environments stand out horribly. The quality drop within one game is almost as much as happened to Spider-man with two games.

On top of that, player avatars, while fairly customizable, feel almost pointless. Sure, you get more items and options as you progress, but nobody is spending much time on land, so the only time you really see other players is raiding their ships, and not much then, in all the chaos. It shows severely how there were no plans, originally, for players to ever get off the boat in Pirates of the Burning Seas, though it’s at least a salvagable system.

And honestly, it doesn’t matter too much because the ocean combat is so fun, sailing around is great, and the economy has a great system to play with. It’s good enough I’m actually paying for a second month, which I haven’t done in several years of MMO trial. I didn’t even play World of Warcraft beyond the first month. This time, I want more.

There’s a definite “it” factor going on for PotBS. It’s got a fair amount of bugs currently, as is typical for the genre at launch(and sadly, sometimes, several years after), but if you can look beyond them, there’s a damn good time to be had regardless of your style, be it sailing around wrecking shit, making money, or taking anything you decide you’d like.

Pirates of the Burning Sea gets 4 stars. It suffers from some repetition and bug pitfalls, as is expected of the genre, but when it works it absolutely excels.