I was warned about this game. That is "wasn't Parodius," despite how it claimed to be the successor to it. I hoped against hope that I'd be pleasantly surprised, but only to be spat in the face.
This is probably one of the most boring, dull as dishwater Shmups I've had the misfortune of playing. For being on a 7th gen console, there is absolutely no reason why it has such lack of creativity in every area: Enemies, bosses, characters, stages. Enemies are all just boring robots and forgettable, bosses are basically ALL just variants of the Core boss from Gradius 1, characters are all non-character school girls (this game wants to be TouHou really badly) and are hella Ecchi, and the stages are all very generic space levels. Coming from Parodius, a series bursting with zaniness and creativity that poked fun at Japanese culture and Konami franchises, a game so creatively bankrupt, is a shame to the series to say the least. My qualms with the presentation aside, this just just a really boring game. The character's hit-boxes are very unclear and big, so I very often found myself dying a ton when I thought I was dodging bullets. The guns aren't that varried (again, Gradius I & II levels of gun variety) and the characters basically just feel like reskins of each other, given that they're all school girls, and basically all tiny variants of Vic Viper (the classic Gradius ship). This is a shockingly poor showing coming from a series that has as extensive and weird a cast as Parodius did. Then, again, enemy and boss variety is really dull, so most the whole game is the same strategy of just "dodge lasers, kill robots, shoot core, repeat." Your hitbox is so big and your guns feels so weak though, it really makes it hard to even just have fun blowing shit up because you feel so helpless and weak. Verdict: Avoid like the plague. This is a tasteless, soulless, shit husk of a game. This is a game that you can buy for under 10 bucks on Amazon in new condition for a good reason. Go and pick up a Cave made Shmup like, Akai Katana or Deathsmiles instead, because those are only a little more expensive, also for 360, and are everything this game was trying to be x 10,000,000. Tl;dr: It's shit and I want the hour it took me to beat it back.
0 Comments
Popo Sensei was prostelyzing about this game a month or so ago, and that got me hella hyped to try it. As luck would have it, it came out on Wii U a few weeks ago, so I picked it up immediately, and then finally got to playing it over the last few days. My hype and excitment was very well warranted! For reference, my ending stats were: Difficulty: Normal, Time: 8:25:40, Items: 78%, Map: 94%, Death Count: 10.
I'm kind of in two minds about the combat. On one hand, there are SO many different guns you can find (like 30+, but good luck finding them all), and I found them at such a rate that it seemed to compliment the difficulty curve quite nicely. There were a good few I never used and didn't really like, but there were like 10+ guns that had quite a bit of use by the end of the game (I found like 17 of 'em). On the other hand though, I really didn't feel the bosses were that great. A good portion of them felt more like environmental puzzles than bosses, per se, and without something like a Castevania-style backdash or melee weapon, a lot of them just felt like a trick of finding the blind-spot in their line of fire (basically every enemy uses guns) where you could still hit them. Though, I suppose, in a game with so many different types of guns, it would be difficult to make bosses that synergize really well with all of them, but a necessary evil is still an evil. Continuing on that, the controls are great. They really utilize all of the buttons on the controller (this is the first Wii U game I've seen to actually use the R3 L3 buttons, which I wasn't even sure it had) to make you feel like you have all of your powers at your disposal all the time. The curve on when you get powers is also very good, and the game is very consistent at that "teaching you without telling you"-style that the Metroid games are so good at. Relating back to the combat, the only gripe I have is with the short-range teleport/dash you get. You have to double tap the direction you're moving in to use it, and because you're using a projectile weapon, this makes it very difficult to use the dash to any calculated effect while you're in combat. I tried quite a bit in the last half of the game to find a method to the madness of that dash, but I feel it was just far more considered a platforming and exploration tool than a combat device. Speaking of exploration, this game is soooo good at it. There are quite a few different sub-areas on the main, large map, with tons of hidden guns and power-ups squirreled away everywhere for you to find. There are even whole sub-dungeons hidden away in some places that guard some killer gun (I think there's one for all 8 main areas, but I only found 2), but those are really well hidden. You can also put two check marks on each main area's map to mark points you want to go back to, and they even stay there between play sessions! *cough* Castlevania *cough*. I'm not sure it's really the kind of "isolating" thing that someone like Exhumy Sensei likes in his Metroidvanias, though, because you have a fairly Metroid Fusion-esque story going on. I won't say too much about the story, other than that it's well written, and surprisingly engaging for a Metroid-type game. You do have a voice that regularly communicates with you though, in a very Metroid Fusion-esque fashion, so this isn't a 0% narrative/dialogue thing like Super Metroid or Zero Mission. I really liked it though. The character dynamics are interesting though, and had a fairly System Shock-ish feel to them, which is the last I'll comment as to avoid spoilings. Verdict: Highly recommended. This is one of the best Metroid-vania games ever. It's up there with Order of Ecclesia and Super Metroid/Zero Mission as top of the top of the crop. If you like Metroidvanias at all, you will thoroughly be delighted by Axiom Verge. Side Note: The Wii U port is great, and I never had any problems with it other than some slight framerate dips when entering 1 or 2 larger rooms. I have very mixed feelings about this game. It's a fairly unique concept of Mario 64 meets Katamari. You need to platform around to paint enough of the level and earn enough points to unlock the stage exit before time runs out. Along the way, there are several missions scattered around the stage which range from bashing enemies, to painting specific buildings specific colors, to foot(?) races. On one hand, the style, level design, and presentation are all top notch. On the other hand, the controls kinda make you wanna die, but only kinda.
First up, my biggest (and really only) complaint: The goddamn controls. In the lovely THQ fashion of running with a gimmick so hard that it is a serious detriment to the game, *cough* Udraw tablet *cough* de Blob really feels like an earlier Wii game. This is exemplified entirely by the fact that jump is NOT a button, no dear reader, it is SWINGING THE WIIMOTE UP. Let me repeat: IN A 3D PLATFORMER, JUMP IS NOT A BUTTON. Why couldn't it be A? Well, that's your compass button. Why not any of the D-pad buttons for the compass and let A be jump? Well, those are already occupied with precision camera controls on Right and Left, and a first person view by holding the Down arrow. The Up arrow, oh, that's right, that does JACK SHIT. I'm giving the developers the benefit of the doubt, since they seem very competant, that THQ higher-ups forced them to incorporate motion controls, so the view-button was changed from Up to Down, compass changed from Down to A, and jump from A to swinging. For the record, B is your breaking maneuver (you zoom towards the ground and lose basically all momentum: useful for stopping in the air), C repositions the camera behind you, and Z targets things in a Zelda style, so you can smash them in a Sonic Adventure Homing-bash style. All of those things work just fine (or as well as they possibly could, in the case of the homing smash). Now, as my rant hopefully gets across, this is an annoying mechanic, but is it game breaking? The answer, thank goodness, is no. Being that the prime objective is painting the level to earn points, hyper precision platforming isn't usually necessary. It can make wall-jumping a pain, but you almost never need to do them unless you're doing the challenge stages (which are really good fun, actually, in a welcome change for challenge stages) or going for very out of the way collectibles in the normal stages. The game just isn't that hard, and that's to its benefit. The clock is SUPER generous, especially if you kill enemy packs and do missions, both of which get you loads of extra time, and just the way damage works on enemies, it's pretty tough to die, and you get plenty of lives and forgiving checkpoints for even if you do. This lets you concentrate far more on having fun by jumping around, painting all the things, collecting all the things, and generally derping around. The presentation is also very good. The story is very wacky and light hearted, and actually quite genuinely gave me good belly laughs once or twice. A colorful, happy world of Raydians is invaded by the evil Inkies, who force them and their world to all become horrible and monochrome like them, and use their world for Ink production (which is truly quite horrifying occasionally, somewhat reminiscent of the Shroobs from Mario & Luigi Partners in Time). A small rebellion exist, but they're no match for the might of the Inky empire, that is, until you, DE BLOB show up! There's not that much story, but what there is is told in cutscenes before each level. My favorite character by far has to be Comrade Black, the leader of the Inkies. He's sort of a wonderfully silly dictator (almost definitely a Hitler parody, despite his title of Comrade), and it's just so funny watching him try and keep his cool when dealing with the incompetance of his subordinates. De Blob himself comes in at a close second, as he has a very snarky, Rayman-ish disposition that makes his pre-level vigniettes very silly, more often than not, just making the Inky soldiers look like fools. The level design is also soooo fun. Each level is gated off into sections that you unlock by getting enough points, and they all make up one large city district in each of the 10 or so stages (each of which take about an hour or less). Every section is just so fun to enter, though! You go through the previous section, exploring and completing missions and painting everything to look pretty, and then you find a new one full of blank, boring buildings and full of nasty ink, all to purify again! The locations are very varied as well, and even though your tasks are usually similar, the mission variety and level layouts are varied enough that it never gets boring. There're also a ton of music tracks, which while not all exactly "put on your iPod"-worthy, are all hopping and jumping and even get faster and happier as you paint more of the level without taking hits. Verdict: Recommended. It's not the best platformer on Wii, but it's probably one of the best 3rd party ones on Wii. It's a colorful, fun time, and while it did occasionally make me rage when I messed up a jump a few times (those challenge levels caused much rage), It was always so satisfying to be done. It's like $3 anyway, so it's definitely at least worth a try if you see it somewhere. |
Categories
All
AuthorI'm an avid gamer who likes to detail their thoughts about what they play in the hopes it might aid someone else's search for a game to play. Archives
April 2024
|