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Being a huge fan of Klonoa: Door to Phantomile (PSX) and Klonoa: Lunatea's Veil (PS2), I was eager to jump into Klonoa's first GBA adventure. Klonoa himself is becoming kind of a second rate mascot for Namco, but Empire of Dreams does not totally match up to the standard of the PlayStation outings. Mainly because it's much more puzzley and much less actiony.
There are five worlds of several levels each, full of the regular cast of inflatable baddies (Moos, Boomies, Tetons, etc). Klonoa keeps his familiar magic ring powers here, although this game brings little Huepow back as the ring's power source... he was some kind of lost prince in the first PSX game but was completely forgotten in the second. By manipulating the enemies, blocks and switches, Klonoa must make his way through over 40 "visions." (including several optional boarding and scrolling levels.) The levels themselves are clever labyrinths, as you guide Klonoa in search of keys (to open coded doors) and stars (to open the end-of-level door). Although his moves are platform standard - double-jump, toss enemies, ride moving floors - his purpose is not carried in a straight line. You'll be doing a lot of backtracking and searching, spinning rooms and opening doors to find your star set. The toughest rooms require you to divine a complex strategy of throwing Boomies, timing jumps and positioning boxes. As I've said, the puzzles are the meat here, with the bonus levels and boss fights as a kind of fast-paced reward for slogging through the regular levels. As for the bonus levels, they come in two flavors. The boarding levels are fast and fun, and a decent challenge to collect all the gems. The scrolling levels (where the game automatically scrolls the screen for you) are a major pain, requiring incredible perfection to survive - much less worrying about 100 goddamn gems. Luckily, you can skip right by them, an option I didn't fully grok until I got to the last world. The storyline seems partially lifted from Phantomile: Klonoa is once again rampaging through someone's dream. The ultimate resolution doesn't carry the same melodramatic weight as the other games, but Klonoa and Huepow are their usual dippy selves. I do miss the patented Klonoa audio babblespeak. When Klonoa truly shines is the boss fights. These are not the simple jump-jump-jump fights of the Sonic platformers. These battles are an amazing treat, pulling off lots of cool GBA tricks... like a frequent use of scaling. You'll be tossing ballooned Moos at the boss, when suddenly the camera will pull back, shrinking everything in the process, to reveal some kind of super big baddie attack. Then they keep the camera at this level for a bit, and you must control a Klonoa now half his usual size. It's wildly impressive; one of the first real jaw-dropping graphical moments I've had on a GBA. The end boss is a suitable capper... a multi-tiered baddie with a complicated pattern. (And he drips Moos out of his nose!) Hope for a bit of luck here - he requires you to match random colors to do damage. And bring some very nimble fingers, which you probably have trained up on those obnoxious auto-scrolling levels. What really killed Empire of Dreams for me was the overall sameness of the levels, and the intense difficulty of the last scrolling level. I got deep into that last world, put the game down for months, and then had to convince myself it was worth picking up again. It's a pleasant enough platformer - particularly if you're already versed with the Klonoa franchise - although it's shelf life doesn't seem too great. Especially since it doesn't have any linkup or multiplayer modes to add replay value. Still, Klonoa's boss fights are unequalled by anything I've seen yet. It's a thinking man's Crash Bandicoot. |
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March 2002 Archives
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Although this isn't a game that gathered a great deal of press, the few bits of info leading up to its release were enough to hook me. First, it's PS2 survival horror, which we haven't had so much of yet (and I'm still extremely bitter about the halfway point boss fight of Resident Evil: Code Veronica X.) Second, the battle mechanism involves using an antique camera to "kill" the enemies.
The back of the box goes a long way to make the whole camera thing sound gay. In fact, this was really all that anybody talked about, giving rise to the easy-desc of "Resident Evil meets Pokemon Snap." Well, although that's plenty to get my game on, that label no doubt scares off a lot more gamers, who would probably rather just use a shotgun. In actuality, your ghost-killin' camera is nowhere near as silly as it sounds. I consider that the first test of Fatal Frame. Are you man enough to check out a survival horror game that doesn't fall back on the now-standard formula of mega-weaponry versus advancing zombie horde? The testosterone-soaked among you are probably not, but you're playing Halo and not reading this. In Fatal Frame, you are Miku Hinasaki, a young Japanese girl with mild psychic powers... namely, the ability to see things like ghosts and grainy flashback sequences. Miku has wandered into the long abandoned Himuro Mansion, on the trail of her brother who's been missing for weeks. Her brother, Mafuyu, entered the mansion to look for his mentor, the novelist Junsei Takamine. And for his part, Takamine was in the mansion with a pair of assistants doing some research for a new novel he was working on. Because you see, Himuro Mansion has a bad reputation; the building's ancient history is cloaked in evil deeds and mysterious rituals. Basically, everybody who has entered the mansion has not come out. As Miku discovers, the place is crawling with spirits who capture, curse and/or kill anybody they find. The ghosts of Takamine and his partners are some of the first spirits you'll meet (yeah, they're dead), and they set a general pattern... Miku is led through certain areas of the mansion by one of them, doing typical survival horror things like gathering text files and fighting minor baddies. Eventually, the leading ghost turns on you in an effort to either tell you something important or just kill you. By piecing together the ghosts' laments, Miku's flashbacks, and the text bits, you'll gradually uncover the disgusting secrets of Himuro Mansion's history. And how entire generations of mansion guests have fallen victim to the hell hiding beneath it. Before you jump to any conclusions, let me assure you that Fatal Frame goes to great lengths not to be lame. The game is serious from start to finish. First and foremost, it excels in simple atmosphere like no other game. The camera angles, the shocking cutscenes, the moody audio... the fact that Miku has two speeds: walking and hurried walking. Everything contributes to an experience that oozes a consistance elegance (despite the everpresent subtitle "Based on a True Story.") I scarcely know where to begin. This is a game to play loud and surround. The music changes frequently, often dropping out entirely, and it's always a Psycho-style violin trilling that instantly sets nerves on edge. As you wander the dark halls, every so often you'll hear muffled whispers or a woman crying, the pattering of quick little feet or the clunk of something closing nearby. Extremely scary shit, that. And the ghosts, oh, the ghosts. Although some fall to typical ghostly moaning or cackling, most types (and there are many, many, many) carry their own special sounds. Like the creepy sounds of ropes stretching for the haunt of a woman who was strangled. But of especial note are the talkies... ghosts who chant a litany of tormented speech. They raise an important point about Fatal Frame. These aren't just dopey ghost stereotypes; these are the ethereal spooks of people who died... who died horribly and wrongly and they need to talk to you about it. There is a reason why they're bound to the mansion. Their pain makes you pity them, and casts the ghostbusting angle as more of a mercy-exorcism, instead of just kicking the head off another nameless zombie crawling at your feet. The game also injects life into the expected ol' You Found a Notebook Page, Do You Want to Read It? crap. You'll find a collection of audio tapes, so you can actually listen to the thoughts of the last living people to disappear. It's very Blair Witch and it's a shame the audio tapes run out pretty early in the game. Graphically, there's good and bad. Miku's in-game model is gorgeous. A seamless, flawless 3D figure. Her animations are fluid, although there are some occasions when she jumps (like on ladders.) Her slow pace adds to your tension, but it gives you time to enjoy one of the game's coolest tricks, her head. Many item pickups are obvious, being little shiny bits on the floor. But some are hidden in piles of junk that will attract Miku's eye. Yes, her head will subtly turn towards stuff you should be searching, and it will turn towards doors and other important areas. Firstly, her turning her head looks extremely realistic and natural - for someone exploring a haunted house with a flashlight and a miniskirt. Secondly, it's extremely useful, especially when you're hard up for health items. The rooms she wanders can be the main problem. Some areas look like Miku walked into a PlayStation One game (the outside rooms, mainly.) And I suspect the designers did a good job of hiding low quality textures and models under all that inky darkness anyway. The ghosts are impressive. They phase in and out of view, twist and warp as they float towards you. They have a variety of moves and attacks, from the slow and steady Broken Neck to the zippy Wandering Monk. Yes, they can follow you through rooms if you don't outrun them and yes, they do float right through walls. If you're daring enough to let them get close to you before snapping their picture, you'll get some very cool photos of tortured faces and grasping spectral hands. And about that camera deal. Honestly, I was expecting something much more overt. The Pokemon Snap comparison conjured up images of Professor Oak criticizing my photos based on a centered subject, a nice pose, and a good close up. Fatal Frame may be considering all of this, but you needn't worry about it. When you use the camera (which can be re-assigned on your controller to R1, so it feels just like targeting an enemy in Grand Theft Auto 3 or readying your weapon in Resident Evil), you're thrown into first-person mode, as viewed through the camera's lens. Incidentally, having this first-person option is helpful even in just looking around a room, not just useful in ghost battles. Obviously, you're being chased by ghosts here though, so you can move the camera in all directions and walk Miku around as well. The center of your camera is the hot seat. When a spirit is in the center, your camera will "charge" and if you squeeze the shutter while the baddie is nicely centered, you'll do damage based on the camera's built-up charge and the type of film you're currently using. If you don't catch him in the center of the frame, it's a miss. When the ghost's life meter is exhausted, consider him busted. Each photo is worth points, based on who knows exactly what, and these points can be spent to upgrade your camera, making future ghost fights easier. So really, your camera and film are just a metaphor for a gun and bullets. And you improve your camera RPG style instead of finding new weapons in the course of the game. In that respect, it's not as photo-centric as I had thought... but you do have the option to save your favorite photos in an album for later viewings. ("Oh, look, there's that nice little dead girl playing hide and seek under the back porch. And here's a view of a Headless Priest, attacking me with blue flame orbs!") The camera is also a key part of the mansion's puzzles. For example, taking a picture of a locked door will reveal where you have to go to find the key. There are also tons of hidden unique ghosts, who don't attack you at all and are just there as kind of a point-increasing, item-collecting mini game. I'm not spoiling too much by telling you that this mystical camera also figures into the plot as well. There are four types of film for your camera, each offering an increased level of exorcismal power. You have to manage your film and health carefully, or risk getting raped in the Third Night. Prior to playing Fatal Frame, I had read several reviews saying that the game punishes you for item management and virtually abandons you by the end of the game with no film and the nastiest of nasties. Well, I didn't find this to be the case. Yes, I ran out of Spirit Stones frequently (special items that allows your camera to use powerful functions during ghost battles), but by conserving film and making heavy use of the near-infinite cheap film, I was fine. There were several points (during the end of Second and Third Night) where I was very close to death.. but I was never strapped for film. You just can't flounce about Himuro Mansion taking tourist photos. The mansion itself - although built to your usual survival horror construction code - feels much more natural than, say, Resident Evil's ridiculously structured Raccoon City. There are secret doors, one-way doors and locked doors, but it manages to create an overall feeling of an actual ancient Japanese mansion... albeit one that's been added-on a couple of times. Only once or twice did I ask myself "What the hell did the Himuros use *this* room for?" Compare that to the Raccoon City Police Station whose police chief has reserved the entire upper level for his art collection. Even though each Night (read: level) resets the traps, items and populates different ghosts, I did not mind the backtracking one bit. In a less skillfull game, this would have been boring. In Fatal Frame, you're just as apprehensive on your tenth pass through the Fish Room as on your first. It all goes back to the game's incredible sense of style and mood. We truly are at a turning point in video game history, where games can be appreciated as much (and more) than movies. Fatal Frame belongs aside such games as Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Grand Theft Auto 3, and Ico in terms of storytelling, realism and personal involvement. Remember getting all excited about games with cinematic qualities (Tomb Raider, Resident Evil)? We're finally there. |
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I always get these oddball games on my radar and end up haunting IGN and Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine for details and release dates. I'm not talking about big games, like Star Fox's Belated Adventures... I'm more along the line of Mister Mosquito.
Right now though, it's The Three Stooges for Game Boy Advance. This is actually an old Cinemaware game, part of a unique family of games that sang like sweet sweet music back on the Amiga. I never had an Amiga - been Apple-bred since Day 1. But a great pal of mine did, back in the days when owning an Amiga was something special. If you'll recall, America used to have tons of different computer systems... all specialized into cute niches. Apples were quirky educational machines. IBMs were confusing and old. Commodores were kind of like an advanced Atari 2600. But Amigas were graphics showponies, literally light years beyond what anybody else was doing. Looking back, they were no better than the Super Nintendo... but in 1986 they were drool-worthy.
I remember playing The Three Stooges on that Amiga, and that nostalgic fuzziness is clouding my memory and forcing me to buy the re-release of the exact same game for GBA, fifteen years later. It's frightening to be playing an Amiga game on a handheld... it's some kind of futuristic trump card, bitchslapping the hell out of my past. But I have one clear impression of Amiga Stooges.
It wasn't that great.
As I recall, it was kind of a dopey board game. The Stooges trudge through square by square, completing various random mini-games in hopes of accruing X dollars before reaching the finish line. Although the first blush of digitized Stooge video and cruddy sound samples was amusing, we quickly burned through it and returned to Shadow of the Beast. You see, the very concept of board-game-as-computer-game was laughable to our small minds... a pointless endeavor, a misuse of technological resources.
But that's just an ugly hobgoblin keeping me down. Perhaps now I can look at it differently; not as an adventure game (which is the only way we could understand this genre back then) but as more of a puzzle game. Not just something you play once for completion's sake and then never play again, like Resident Evil or Ico... but as something quick and genial to pass the time, like Chu Chu Rocket or Tetris. Maybe.
You are absolutely fucking nuts if you decide to buy this. Good christ people, you intend to crack open your Game Boy Advance and solder in an internal light all by yourself? Just for what, so you can play Advance Wars under your bedsheet?
Be honest here. Nintendo will eventually release a backlit GBA and you will just have to buy that one. Knock off your sad, lonely bullshit about stickin' it to the Nintendo man. Yes, you need a decent light source to play your GBA. IE, you can't play it in a tent in the middle of the night. You also need light to do just about everything else, including live, so why all the fuss? Where the hell are you people trying to play, during an Alaskan winter? I've played my GBA at desks, in couches, in lunch rooms, in cars, in seedy hotels. I've looked over the shoulder of someone else playing (something you could NEVER do on the previous Game Boys.) Just sit by a goddamn lamp, you morons.
But by all means, wave your freak flag high and thumb yo' nose at the Establishment. And when you snip the wrong wire, break off the wrong bit of plastic, or drip hot melted metal into your GBA's casing... sit back and think about me and the rest of Intelligent Universe patiently awaiting a Nintendo-made lighted version that works perfectly and doesn't require a vo-tech degree. Perhaps you'd like to solder a PS2 into your Xbox hull while you're at it. Jackasses.
I'm about six hours into Fatal Frame and I'm scared. The game does atmosphere exceedingly well, particularly when played loudly in a dark room. Once you're into it, it's very tough to shake off and you'll be convincing yourself that your own house in infested with evil spirits. Ghosts seem much more likely to be lurking at the bottom of my basement steps than, say, zombies. Or zombie dogs, zombie spiders, or ten foot tall zombies in trench coats.
Fatal Frame is survival horror, and everybody wants to hold that against it. It's not like we have a ton of survival horror games out there; there's no glut on this genre. We have the Resident Evil series and the Silent Hill series. That's about 7 games total. That's about how many PSX light gun games there are, and I never heard anybody complaining about "yet another light gun game" being released.
Some time ago I did some reading on how the Japanese value silence. Or, more accurately, the importance of nothingness used in conjunction with somethingness. It's the fundamental explanation of Yin and Yang, and it's why Dragon Ball Z constantly has all those scenes with no one saying anything. (Which the American dubbists naturally fill with character grunts and exposition, because US audiences can't stand watching *nothing* happen.) Fatal Frame - which takes place in Japan and is based on a Japanese legend - is a game of intervals like this. At 6 hours, I have dispelled less than 30 ghosts. That's about 1 ghost every 15 minutes. A far cry from Resident Evil, where you'll kick the heads off 30 zombies before you hit your first light puzzle.
And I think that Fatal Frame has a kind of realistic elegance to it that RE and Silent Hill lack. The RE games have some great moments, but then there's the silly non-sensical elements... from Jill Valentine being the "Master of Unlocking" to that strange Magic Box inventory system. Silent Hill goes too far into over-gruesome, Clive Barker horror. Eventually, both series create their own immunity and you're just as non-plussed by a Silent Hill faceless nurse as one of RE's maggoty dobermans. Just another set of polygons to kill.
Fatal Frame is survival horror, but more grounded than Silent Hill and more eloquent than Resident Evil. I'll do a full review of it later, but until then, don't let the insipid box art scare you. The game will do that on its own.
Like most Americans, I had no idea that somebody had made a Broadway musical out of "The Wind in the Willows," but Rhonda and I received visual and aural proof last weekend, when we saw it at a local high school.
Now I've been a huge fan of the book since 1982 when my aunt gave me a copy (Thanks again, Lisa!) and I've tried to enjoy media interpretations of it. The animated Disney version ("The Adventures of Mr. Toad," 1949) mainly sought to turn a contemplative, pastoral story into a cartoon version of The Love Bug. The 1996 live action version (known as "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride" here in the US) - while notable for reuniting just about the entire Monty Python cast - takes an overblown turn towards the end, and the purposeful non-animalness of the actors is very distracting.
Those are both okaaaaaay, but... Undoubtably the finest adapatation is the Cosgrove-Hall BBC television series, using stop-motion animation that perfectly captured the slow, thoughtful nature of the book. And in addition to the original story, they did 65 other episodes... that didn't suck, unlike most made-for-tv continuances. (Although the general basis for the "further adventures" is that Toad's passion for fads is incurable.)
But what was interesting about the musical was how Toad was presented as a prancing dandy (I'm assuming this is part of the show and not some interpretation by the high school; Nathan Lane was the Broadway Toad, but please forgive my stereotyping.) Throughout, Toad is skipping and caterwauling, acting very much the gay archetype. He even cross dresses. So it got me thinking to re-read the book with the idea that the River Bankers are in actuality trying to curb Toad's obvious homosexuality without ever discussing it... forget the obsessions of horse carts and motorcars. I can already imagine his friends trying to dismiss it as another one of his phases. Consider this quote of Badger's:
"You've disregarded all the warnings we've given you, you're getting us animals a bad name in the district... But we never allow our friends to make fools of themselves beyond a certain limit; and that limit you've reached."
And then Mole and Rat lock him up in his bedroom, but he eventually goes to jail and poses as a woman for the last half of the story.
Now I'm not stupid (or arrogant) enough to suggest that this meaning may actually be part of the 1908 work. That's like trying to turn the pipeweed references of "The Lord of the Rings" into a sub-theme of legalizing pot. It's just a silly interpretation, amusing to an adult, modern-day reader. But of no real legitimacy.
By the way, Disney is going to try it again; they recently bought a new treatment based on the book. This, of course, comes merely years after they tore down the Mr. Toad's Wild Ride attraction at Walt Disney World.
Nintendo decided not to sell the Game Boy Advance/Game Cube link cable in retail stores, making the $10 item only available through their online stores. Now, Nintendo is no stranger to once-and-done peripherals (Game Boy Camera, R.O.B. the Robot, N64 Microphone), so why the hem-haw on the GBA/GC cable? Perhaps because the only GameCube game that currently supports the trinket is the Sega-produced Sonic Adventure 2 Battle (in conjunction with the GBA game Sonic Advance, naturally)?
I ordered my cable already and I don't think that any anti-Sega conspiracy has much to do with it. It's just because the Chao-trading dynamic of the two Sonic games is incredibly boring. You see, you can download a GameCube Chao into the GBA, but it doesn't unlock anything different than what you already can do with a GBA-born Chao. So why? It's interactivity purely for the sake of promoting interactivity.
 | Left Brain conclusion And now, at Nintendo's whim, we eagerly await Animal Forest + and Pokemon, two games that will surely take greater advantage of conjoining the two consoles. | Right Brain conclusion DAMN YOU NINTENDO. YOU BETTER NOT FUCK UP THE POTENTIAL OF CONNECTING THE GBA AND THE CUBE. MORE GAMES NOW! |  |
I'm highly amused by the resounding Thumbs Down for State of Emergency, which is getting worse word of mouth than Spielberg's A.I. If I had to guess - and I have to, since I haven't played it - I'd suggest that State of Emergency's biggest failure is a lack to live up to the Grand Theft Auto 3 standard. When I first read about SoE, I immediately likened it to Dynasty Warriors 2, which is a comparison I have yet to hear anybody else make. I mean, both games have hundreds of onscreen enemies that you have to pummel through to reach various goal points, right? Perhaps the noted redundancy of SoE - that appeared without warning to most reviewers - was the true killing stroke. We all knew Dynasty Warriors 2 would be redundant; that's why there's only 6 levels.
Still, the gulf of demographic separation between consoles grows ever wider. GTA3 and State of Emergency are PS2 games... M rated PS2 games, which does not always indicate a great game, as SoE owners are finding out. Max Payne? Personally, I have no desire to venture into that M rated PC port, since I'm not entertained by the whole Steven Seagal-era storyline. (He's a cop who's crossed over into the world of crime and corruption, to repay a debt and re-claim his sanity. Can you stand the pain... the MAX PAYNE.) And Max himself just looks constipated.
I have a theory that you could release all three of those games on GameCube, even a Special Increased Gore Version of each, and people would still call Nintendo the kiddie console. Perfect Dark, Goldeneye, Turok, and freaking Conker's Bad Fur Day did nothing to alter the N64's reputation as a Marionly machine, so what the hell could? You'd need a Jeff Gordon-autographed Playmate edition with a dildo controller and actual working shotgun to alter most people's perception of Nintendo.
Gamers today are incredibly spoiled. Thanks to today's vast amount of developers and platforms, we've grown to expect amazing Grade A games every week. Our insatiable gaming rage is furthered by an entire industry of gaming magazines, websites, and reviewers... who, despite their ubiquitousness, do very little to increase the pastime's legitimacy.
Already - already! - groups are whining about the utter lack of decent games for both GameCube and Xbox. As if we're owed a giant new game every five days, simply because that's that approximate length of our attention spans. For GameCube, we've got Luigi's Mansion, Super Monkey Ball, Super Smash Bros Melee, Rogue Squadron, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle... and those are just the ones I bought. How about Pikmin? Wave Race? If you dedicated just a month to solidly playing each of your games, you'd have nothing to complain about. As for Xbox... well, you've got Halo. Given the Xbox audience, that ought to be enough.
