I really enjoyed Magicka 1, but was so disappointed with its lack of a functioning local multiplayer. It did have local multiplayer, but it was just unplayable on a gamepad with the control set-up they had. This being the case, I was very excited when I not only heard of Magicka 2, but also that it was being developed with gamepads in mind. I am here to confirm, that BOY did they ever deliver.
On a control basis, the game is now as perfect as it's ever going to get. None of the functionality of the old methods of the keyboard-based set up are gone: There's still self-cast, AOE-cast, and weapon-cast bound to the shoulder buttons, with the beam-directional casting now bound to the direction your point the right thumbstick. Additionally, you can now MOVE while casting, meaning the whole dynamic of combat has fundamentally changed. There are still 8 spell elements, and you can pick one of the eight by pressing one of the four right-hand face buttons, and then holding L1 to toggle between the first set of four and the second set. It takes a little getting used to, but I picked it up really quick, and it's far FAR better than the horrible old method of doing different-directioned quarter-circles on the right joystick to pick elements. Other miscellaneous control and gameplay improvements are that the d-pad is now used as hotkeys for your different magicks (the specific, special spells gotten by combining different spell elements (things like haste, or revive)), and the single player mode has been improved dramatically by the addition of a familiar which will revive you upon death, and can be resummoned with the revive key. It certainly beats just having to NEVER die like the first game Xp Other than those control evolutions, the core of the game is still good ol' Magicka. A silly story for one to four wizards led by "definitely not a vampire" Vlad, on a mission to save the world! A very light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek, self referential fantasy story, with tons of pop-culture references sprinkled throughout. My personal favorites being "Sir Antburrow," who gives you weird nature trivia when you talk to him, and "John Frost," who will warn you of an incoming cold-front from the north Verdict: Highly recommended. The co-optional wizard homicide simulator has still got it! An action game that's still great fun to play on your own or with friends. However, I'd still be hesitant to play it with young children not only because of the somewhat complex control nature, but also because things tend to blow up into bloody chunks when killed with death magic
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Far and away one of my favorite couch co-op games ever now, this game looked like such amazing fun the first time I saw it streamed, and it definitely didn't disappoint.
Overcooked is a game about 2 to 4 chefs in a kitchen, chopping, fetching, and preparing ingredients into requested dishes. However, the twist is that the 2 to 4 chefs are you and 1 to 3 friends (in single player mode, you toggle between operating two different chefs). As with most co-op games, this is most optimally enjoyed with a full compliment of people, and as I had that, I had a blast! There are only two necessary commands as well: Picking up/putting down, and operating (be it the fire extinguisher, the flamethrower, etc.), so even gamers of lower skill can still meaningfully contribute to the cause with a little practice. For reference, the group I played through with was with two veteran gamers (one of whom was myself), and two very newbie gamers, and we were still able to 3-star the whole main campaign. There is also a button to launch yourself forwards, but we got by just fine with only the veterans using it, as it usually made things too complicated for the newbies. You can even play 4-players with only two controllers, with each player sharing a controller, and each player just using R/L 1,2 and 3 along with the joysticks to play. We tried it for a fair bit, and it actually works pretty well, although everyone having their own controller is probably most optimal. My only complaint about the game is that it's probably impossible to 3-star the main campaign on your own, as a lot of the later levels really require at least two brains working at once, if not 3 or 4 most optimally. The paid DLC levels pack is INSANELY difficult as well. You'll need to have people who really know what they're doing, and even then it'll probably take a lot of tries to 3-star all of those levels. The free holiday DLC, however, we found to be a very fun romp, especially once you get to the flame-thrower cooked turkey levels XD Verdict: Highly recommended. If you have someone who you can play this with, I can't recommend it enough! If you can only ever really play games by yourself, however, I'd probably give it a pass until you can secure a friend for a day to really give it the shot it deserves. When I originally heard about this game, I heard of it as real-car racing with Mario Kart-esque power-ups. That sounded pretty fun to me, but I had no preperation for HOW fun it would actually be.
Blur mixes the things that I love from my two favorite racing games, Mario Kart and F-Zero. From Mario Kart, you have fairly arcadey racing and a slew of power-ups to pick up while you're doing it to try and knock your opponents down a peg. From F-Zero, you have a great sense of speed, destructable cars (each one has a health bar, but you have to get wrecked like five times before you're actually out of the race), and very packed races. The races with 15-20 racers are very common, and they're great manic fun. The AI' difficulty ain't no slouch, but it's definitely defeatable (even for a racing scrub like me ;p). For being a racing game fairly grounded in reality with its asthetic, the presentation of the game really does lend itself to the title of "blur." From the lights on the cars, to the lights in the cities, to the wonderful neon glow of the powerups, this game really does do a lot to create an impression of speed on the player. There were some races I didn't even mind doing over and over to try and achieve different objectives just because those particular tracks were such fun pits of mayhem and speed! This is the only 360 racer I've played, but it's definitely one of the prettiest last-gen games I've played. The power-ups add SO much strategy to a field where they could otherwise take away. Just about all of them have a primary (forward) and an alternate (backward) fire, from the mines to the boosts. A mine can be dropped behind you, or it can be launched forwards as a very powerful projectile. A boost can be used for a boost of speed, or as a burst of breaking power to make a tight corner juuuust how you want it. A Shunt can be fired forwards as a red-shell-like projectile, or can be launched behind you for a scary thing for your opponents to dodge. I loved the strategy and the variablility the power-ups added. Almost no race ever felt like it was 100% settled until the final flag had been waved. Verdict: Highly Recommended. If you like arcadey racing games, you will love Blur. As a big fan of Mario Kart and F-Zero, this definitely filled the void of a lack of F-Zero last gen for me. This is definitely in the running for my favorite racing game of all time, and was a total treat to come upon so late in the year <3 Not gonna lie, I really only played through this again because I saw that you get an Avatar pet item for beating it on XBLA, and I already owned the game on disc as a part of the triple-pack I have with Trials HD and 'Splosion Man. Granted, it's been a good few years since I last played through it, so it was a good couple-hour romp through vaguely familiar stomping grounds. Figured I'd go for all of the achievement-eggs this time through, but HOLY GOD those secret eggs. Came across a video on how to get those looking up how to get some of the last eggs, and those things are so freaking crazy to find: I have no idea how anyone ever did.
Verdict: It's okay. It's one of the original Indie-darlings post-Braid, so chances are you already have played it or already own it. If you already own it, it's not a bad way to kill a few hours: It's probably one of the better paced puzzle-platformers out there on Steam. If you don't own it, either play the spiritual successor that came out recently, "INSIDE," or just wait until you happen to get it as part of a humble bundle ;P As I said earlier in the RPG Progress thread, this is an old-school sequel through and through. It doesn't rapidly change the formula at all, and could even, to an extent, be mistaken for its predecessor at first glance. However, like from Doom to Doom 2, there are many subtle changes that make this game distinct from its predecessor, and in many ways objetively better. It's similar to the last game, but they took everything good about the last game and made it better.
Music is much better, graphics are a little better and noticeably different (far less reused sprites and resources than I would've imagined for a games so often bundled together on one disc/card), combat is totally revamped (on an engine level) to make bumping more intuitive and allows for combos as well as much of the game being geared towards utilizing your new offensive magic powers to great effect. This in turn leads to MUCH better boss battles. The boss battles in this game were SOOOO great, and some were very legitimately challenging (although the barrier spell is a bit too broken, imo, and kinda makes the final boss pointless, but whatever (you don't GOTTA use it after all (even though I did ))). My only warning about the port though comes from the boss battles. Some of the bosses REALLY make the framerate struggle, and although it isn't gamebreaking by any means (just like it isn't in most old shmups or Metal Slug-type ventures), it still can interfere with the bump system and make things harder than they should be at time, though they were few and far between. Verdict: Very Recommended. A fantastic action RPG! Probably one of the best old-school ones out there, and definitely one of my favorite I've played. I actually own Oath in Felghana and Memories of Celceta for PSP and Vita respectively, so they're very tempting on my "next to play" list :3 A lot of people seem to rave about Ys all the time (mostly just Exhumy and Bone, actually...), so they've gone and hyped me up for it pretty well. I knew there was a DS version, so I was waiting until I got that so I could play the first one first, and as I recently acquired a copy, that was my action game of choice for today. It's not a perfect game, but I certainly enjoyed it enough to finish it in basically a day (in about 5-ish hours).
You all seem to already know what's good about Ys (music, graphics, style, historical influence, etc.), so I'm just gonna keep this brief and talk about what I didn't really like about it. First off, the game isn't always as clear as it probably should be with your quest objectives, but this is probably down to the port, as I doubt the original had them. Like, when I first started the game, the quest goal it gives me is "talk to the villagers." I talk to them, and then nothing! So I wander out of town, and immediately get killed by a log-thing. Granted, I was doing the right thing and trying to go to the next town over (as the only purpose of the starting town appears to be that you start there and proceed to leave there), but the game just made me feel like I was doing something wrong. However, places where your quest objective are usually acceptable down to the fact that the game world just isn't that big. It's fairly easy to check off the list of things you could possibly do to solve where to go from where you are, and there's just about always SOMEONE out of the few important NPC's who will tell you what to do or where you should go. I really liked that more simple, but still open-ended approach to your quest. Aside from that, there are some quests and backtracking which I felt were bullshitty. Things like the puzzle where the solution is literally do nothing, having to go down the entire Dahm Tower to get a quest mcguffin that you literally only need to open the boss door. Mostly just those two things, specifically. Lastly, I'm not the biggest fan of the bump-system, although, again, that may be down to the port I'm playing. Larger, tougher enemies are very big, and their hit-boxes don't occupy the space that their graphic does. As a result, it can be very tricky to judge when exactly you should swing your sword to go for a bump when attacking from the top, especially for boss battles. Although, that might just be how the DS port handles sprites badly. I couldn't say for sure. I'm just glad the game isn't that hard on Normal mode, because otherwise I'd have much bigger problems with it. Verdict: Recommended. It's certainly one of the best older Action-RPG's I've played. It's an YS game through and through, from how you're really expected to grind for money and experience in the start to how Adol runs around so fast and doesn't actually speak (you're only told that he says things). I liked it, and if you can manage to find one of the many ports, I'd say it's at least worth a try For a game I only picked up because it was $13 on Play Asia at one point and time, I enjoyed this game IMMENSELY. It is by FAR the most competent and fun Pokemon-like I have ever played, and I can completely see why it is SO popular here and abroad (but mostly abroad ;p). I'm not sure if I'm ready to say that I enjoy Youkai Watch more than Pokemon, but I enjoyed it a lot. I'm not sure how much of that is just having something so technically competant but so different from Pokemon when Pokemon has been so similar for so long, though, however.
First things first out of the way: For those of you who might've guessed otherwise (as I did), not being a Layton game does not mean that Level-5 can suddenly write well. The story is a total pacing cluster-fuck, with new, VERY plot significant characters being introduced right up until the very last chapter, characters whom you've never even met up to that point except perhaps in passing (literally, like on the street). The story comes to the last chapter really suddenly, and even though the game tries to do things like introduce mystery characters who seem all mysterious, it doesn't use them to any noteworth effect. HOWEVER, being as this is FAR more silly and mechanically-oriented (at least in terms of its presentation) than something like Layton, I felt that the bad pacing didn't really hurt the game too much. The characters themselves are very fun and silly, especially Whisper and your main character, so you never really feel like you just hate everyone, just that you're not that involved in the overarching plot of things. The gameplay itself is certainly not without its problems, but it's the most fun spin on the Pokemon formula I've encountered. First up is the good stuff. The game plays like a real-time Pokemon where your whole team battles at once. You have three active and three inactive Youkai at a time on a wheel-system, and you can literally rotate the wheel to rotate them in and out as they become hurt or incapacitated. Your Youkai fight completely on their own, and other than giving them items to affect their "personality" (i.e. battle move-priorities), there's not a whole lot you can do about it. Granted, different Youkai do have different moves, you don't really have an easy way of viewing all of these moves in a UI of some kind, so it works best just to try different Youkai configurations to see what works. Although, just because your Youkai move by themselves, that doesn't mean that you don't have any way of keeping occupied yourself. In battle, the things you, the player, can do will usually keep you occupied enough that you rarely have down time. First off, each Youkai has a super-move that can be used by playing one of a random series of mini-games. The top-screen action doesn't stop while you're doing these mini-games, so getting fast at them is a real strategy tactic. Additionally, when your guys get status effects (burn, slow, paralyze, etc.) you can rotate (literally) them out to do a different set of mini-games to get them back to tip-top shape. You also get extra EXP for doing those mini-games, so it's well worth it. You do need to have your Youkai's special-meter full before you can do special moves though, which is good, because some are VASTLY better than others (depending on the Youkai). You can also equip one item on each Youkai which will shuffle their stats in some way (almost every item with a stat benefit has some negative effect on some other stat, to keep them from being straight up "why the fuck wouldn't you use it"-buffs). On top of the above, you can literally 'pin' a target for your Youkai to focus on (and you can also use that pin to pop bubbles that float past the top screen for power-ups and items, no joke), as well as use items to feed to your Youkai or the enemy, which brings me to how you even catch these guys. There is no such thing as a Youkai-Pokeball. Instead, this is much more like the awful Ni No Kuni method of catching monsters: You beat them up and then just hope to god that they decide to join you after the battle. You can give them their favorite type of food (of which there is no record or indication of in the game. You've gotta figure it out with trial and error and then just remember who likes which specific category of food) to up your chances, but it's usually never by any significant feeling margin. Especially because there are some Youkai which are legitimately very rare (like Noko) who appear very rarely, sometimes EXTREMELY rarely (there was one that will appear randomly in place of another Youkai, and I saw but two of in my fifty hours of play), this makes it a SUUUUUPER pain in the ass to actually get Youkai you really want reliably or in any meaningfully quick fashion. You can also only feed enemy Youkai (even a food they don't like) once during battle, so there's no food-spam option. This is, in my opinion, what Youkai Watch gets the most wrong about the Pokemon formula, and is my biggest hesitation with recommending the game to another fan of the genre. That said, the above method of forcing you to fight tons of Youkai does have some useful side-effects. First off, this game has no trainers. Even though you have a party of six Youkai which you can rotate, you will never fight another Youkai Watch-kateer, so you'll only ever fight up to three other Youkai at a time. Additionally, becasue there are no trianers, the wild Youkai you fight are just far tougher than wild Pokemon tend to be. Because you have to fight Youkai very repetedly to catch them, this led to me accidentally doing a TON of grinding I hadn't intended to do, just because I wanted to catch all of dem Youkai. Wild Youkai also drop money, so I also never had any remote money problem despite all of the Youkai food I had to keep buying. It's basically the equivalent of if there were unlimited Pokemon trainers to fight, and the only way to catch Pokemon was to hope that the trainer gave you them once you beat them in battle. It's an interesting and somewhat useful side-effect, but I don't think that it outweighs the more significant problem posed in Youkai befriending (You don't capture, you befriend (with violence)!). The last most notable thing about Youkai is that not only do they have specific ranks (six different ranks, E through S), but they also rarely evolve. Out of 220-ish Youkai, only about 15 or so evolve through levels, and another 15 or so evolve through being combined with other Youkai, and then another 15 or so by being combined with special items. This makes it so that you are quite often switching out Youkai completely to make different or sometimes completely new team configurations just because the stats on higher ranked Youkai are just so much objectively better (although it can take a little while to find a move-set that gels well with your team and personal style). If you've ever played Dragon Quest Monsters/Joker, this will seem fairly famliar to you, but I believe that Youkai watch does that system not just better, but correctly. The REALLY (really) annoying thing about DQM series is that you need to combine ALL monsters together to make stronger ones, and you really don't have much concept at all of just how strong or spellfully teched out this new monster will be. That process CONSUMES both parents, and you're only left with a child, so you can seriously fuck yourself over and have to do a ton of grinding for a whole new team if you get some unlucky breeds with your main team members. In Youkai watch, it's just straight up replacements, so if a new team member isn't working out, you can just swap the old guy back in, no problems. Additionally, because higher ranked guys might be a bit better, lower ranked guys can still level just as high as anyone else, and since your main team will likely be higher level than most enemies you encounter, there's an incentive to keep lower ranked veterans in your team whom you like, even though they're lower rank. For example, I had a C-rank in my team all the way up to the end of the game, just because he was such high level and a very reliable damage-dealer. Additionally, there are some REALLY good items near the end of the game that can ONLY be equpped on D-rank or lower Youkai, so the game even give you a means of making somewhat squishier, beloved lower-rank Youkai a part of the team even into the late game Verdict: Highly recommended. If you like Pokemon, I think you will like Youkai Watch. My general rule I've noticed with these reviews is that the bigger and impression a game has left on me, the more I wanna tell you about it, so this giant wall of text should probably give you some indication of that . Granted, Sun and Moon did just come out, and if you're still playing that, I'd agree that there's not much reason to invite Youkai into your life atm. However, perhaps when you get bored with Sun/Moon, Youkai Watch would be an excellent way to fill that Poke-void, methinks |
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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
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