999: Got the ending symbolized by a certain fireman's tool. Junpei you foolish fool of a fool. Still, good stuff, as plenty of speculation still live over who did what... though I'm pretty sure my general suspicion is correct even if the details of who did certain bad deeds might be off. Spoilerish thoughts:
Ace >>>> Seven > Lotus >> Dead captain dude > Dead Number 9 dude > Somebody else > Clover-Santa-Junpei-Akane on the suspect list. First off, dramatically, the nice older gentleman is the 'shocking' culprit, so these days he's kind of obvious as the dramatically interesting one. Secondly, the game is actually making a pretense at realism from the speculation the characters make about who could have arranged this and why, and large amounts of the cast are plainly too young to have arranged such a venture, unless their billionaire parents were in on it too. Only Ace / Lotus / Seven seem to be adults. Also, everybody ignored Zero's statement that "some of you are already familiar with the Nonary Game", so um yeah. Anyway, Snake went through door 3, and Clover assumed Seven + Santa (2+7+3). But Santa is a violently unlikely culprit- the loudmouth show off is always all bark, no bite - so um yeah. Clover was also crazy so if anything her bloody rampage disproves them as the real culprits. Clover / Akane is stupid... but... Ace / Number 9's collected bracelet works (2+1+9), or Ace and his own Zero bracelet also gets through 3 (2+1+0, ignoring that Zero can probably cheat wildly). Plus Ace has always been the one to play the good guy, "sacrifice" himself, and say "I trust all of you" etc. He also took Lotus aside shortly before Junpei got slashed... 1+8+0 = 9, or for that matter 1+8+9=9, so yeah.Silly quote of the game: "Do you know Japanese? No? Well, san means three!" Uh, dude. My name is Junpei, this over here is Akane Kurisomething, and several of us have crazy hair colors. I'm pretty sure we're speaking in Japanese right now.
Anyway, good game. Recommended for all that the puzzles could be better designed - your characters speak up too much, so just picking everything up and following orders works most of the time. But plot is still interesting. I do like how the characters don't just blindly accept the crazy situation they're in and wonder about crazed multimillionaires with nothing better to do than set deadly puzzles up - I am entirely willing to accept bizarre situations if the characters wrestle with what this means and try to MacGuyver cheat some, even if it ultimately fails. See game below for a prime example of how not to do this right.
Metroid Prime: Finished. ~5:30 roughly, 51% item collection, for all that items other than Energy Tanks were irrelevant (had one bar of the "top" meter- so 11 tanks I think?). Kind of ambivalent. It was definitely a good game! But it definitely does feel like this is a Metroid designed for people who like Metroid-style combat, and I have to say that I'm not really one of them. The boss fights toward the end of the game ended up frustrating, but I respect that they were balanced aggressively - it's the choice between Super Metroid style "you have the durability to puzzle out how a boss works and defeat their gimmick in your first playthrough" vs. "Yeah, your first few attempts are going to be learning how this boss works then dying followed by a real run." The second approach to game design does give more challenge on replay, I'll grant. Still, screw you, Nightmare. Only managed to beat him once he got into a constant loop pattern in his "ram Samus to death" phase for some reason, but that was after ~13 deaths. A case where "challenging" is not always equal to "fun."
Fusion is also bizarrely linear. Known fact and all, but I guess they want you to uncover all the items before you get the cheaty equipment? Seriously, WTF with constantly locking all the doors. SA-X is a non-trivial boss fight, and since all the sectors that aren't Sector 1 are locked, if you didn't pick up enough energy tanks I guess you're just screwed. More generally the game locks the path behind you really often, which is just bizarre. That's the equivalent of not letting RPG characters level up. It's fine if there's a really good plot reason, or it's a temporary condition that really means "there is a tough puzzle ahead and yes, you must solve it to advance and it is doable now, hence why we are locking you in."
Music was generally terrible - weird, I don't recall Zero Mission having that problem. Fusion didn't have any sequence as cool as Metal Gear Samus from Zero Mission either, so Fusion felt kind of a step back from Zero Mission. Huh.
Also, what happened with the script to Metroid Fusion? I like the *idea* of Metroid Fusion, but this is a game that would seriously have been better if they'd gotten rid of *every single line* of text after the intro. Really. Nuke it all. It's not like plot's the thing anyway; why graft a terrible and nonsensical script on that spends all its time fussing over stupid gameplay details? It'd be like if 70% of the dialogue in Lufia II / Wild Arms dealt with the puzzles in dungeons, and attempted to upgrade it into plot. It's something blatantly nonsensical, so why draw attention to it if you're not going to make it make any more sense? "Selan: Sorry, Maxim, the King of Paracytle ordered me to betray you! You were doing too well in solving the Sinistral's puzzles that they were afraid of your power. They sent me the new tool you need to solve this upcoming puzzle anyway, but I can't tell you where it is. I've hidden it up ahead and you can't ask me anything more as we explore. Once you find it, you can use it to trigger the blue switch and open the way forward to Amon's trap." Buh?!
On the bright side, as noted, I like the *idea.* The infected suit thing is just plain cool, and a bona-fida excuse to mix up Samus's power set more than usual, for all that they didn't really take the opportunity. (One of my friends really really hated the idea of ice missiles. I can't agree at all, and wish they'd done *more* mixing up the default weapons from Super Metroid, really.) That's another annoying thing about the data room plot - aside from being dumb, see above (Samus has an ancient hyped up Chozo spacesuit, as noted in Zero Mission / Super - since when can the Federation help at all with it?!), it'd just be plain cooler if Samus was constantly slurping up X and stealing their mimicking powers for herself to get new abilities. Oh, well.
BlazBlue: This is the first fighting game I have bought, ever. Always played other people's copies of Smash / other stuff, and the only fighter I put really serious time into was Smash, because I can't be bothered to memorize the exact timing of down down semicircle quick reverse B A to unleash super move X. The awesome music was what sold me, really - odd that people nommed some of what I feel to be lesser pieces in the Music Tourney (though still decent!), but yeah,
some of the stuff is really good.
Anyway, I bought Continuum Shift, but the GameStop clerk gave me Calamity Trigger. Uh, free rental, sure! Plot was actually fun. Sure, ridiculous, it's a fighting game, but they did a good job of making characters with lots of reasons to fight each other and ham it up. Since this is an RPG site, they were able to sell power differences a lot better in a fighting game, I felt, too. Overpower a character in an RPG and they just OHKO everyone which is no fun; balance them as normal and they feel like "just another boss." It's especially tricky for duels, since you can't control evasion / blocking at all in an RPG duel, which tends to make them attack / attack / heal fests. (I'd propose Suiko III "you don't have to win" fights where winning results in a plot cutscene of losing is about the best compromise you can have, and even that has issues.) Always using Unlimited Nu-13 for the final boss, and occasionally spicing in Unlimited Rachel for when she's serious, was pretty good at generally selling that Nu-13 / Hakumen / Rachel >>> the rest of the cast.
Have a ton of plot questions on the more serious parts of the plot - I actually wrote them down! - but will wait for Continuum Shift plot before asking 'em. Speaking of which. Went and traded Calamity Trigger for Continuum Shift, and... what the crispy shit is this. No more throw button? Right stick no longer maps to pre-input special moves? Geez, thanks for screwing over people who don't want to have to memorize and learn a ton of, for fighting game noobs at least, rather difficult to perform sequences. I really enjoyed BB:CT's Smash-esque controls for at least some specials to help ease into a character, but this is going to severely nuke my capabilities for characters with more complex moves (i.e. not Jin. I can at least do quarter-rotations!). But more importantly nuke some fun factor, since not consistently getting a move to execute is meh. What were they thinking on getting rid of functionality they already had?! Sigh. (I hope there is some way to map the right stick to moves after all and I eat my words. But I'm not seein' it.)
