Fate/Extra is Type-Moon's latest role-playing game based on Fate/Stay Night, a Japanese visual novel. Like the visual novel, the game boasts an intriguing story that revolves around masters whose servants do their bidding, and also includes stellar boss fights that bring the story's central struggles to life. Unfortunately, poor exploration and repetitive combat undermine the adventure. The result is a game with more novelty than substance--and more plot than gameplay. You should approach this dungeon crawler with caution.
Fate/Extra's unique story entices you to keep playing despite some cliches. After 20 years of peace on Earth, an alien supercomputer hidden within the moon has invited you to fight through a tournament for the Holy Grail, a device that grants wishes. The catch is that it's a tournament to the death--and you're a hapless amnesiac. Together with your legendary soul, a magical servant that fights in your stead, you must defeat other masters in weekly elimination battles to survive. Events leading to these fights are particularly interesting, with each opponent challenging you in different ways. Interacting with your servants is also delightful, because you're given three servants to choose from, and each exudes a different personality. The varied dialogue trees also keep things entertaining, prompting key plot decisions that affect the game's ending.
Surviving in this cutthroat world is difficult enough for any participant, but your amnesia severely weakens your servant. If you want to win your elimination match, you have to level the playing field by unveiling your opponent's techniques during the week before the fight. This investigation period is both refreshing and critical: you can unlock enemy secrets in interesting ways, such as by sparring, snooping, or stealing items. Uncovering the enemy servant's identity also reveals part of its attack pattern, which can mean the difference between victory and defeat.
In addition to scouting your enemies, you must do some exploring, but this aspect is severely limited for a dungeon crawler. You're restricted to 14 simple mazes that are a breeze to plow through, and each incorporates dull item fetch quests. Outside the dungeon, the tournament grounds are reduced to a three-story high school, so you may feel disappointed (and claustrophobic) if you're hoping to investigate a big, bold world culled from the visual novel. Fortunately, a few minibosses prevent exploration from becoming completely mindless.
A rock-paper-scissors mechanic generates some strategy in combat. You're given three maneuvers--attack, guard, and break--and each is strong or weak against another. For example, a guard maneuver counters any attack, while a break cuts through a guard. Though simple, this system hides most of your enemy's maneuvers, so you have little idea what a monster is going to do and how to plan around it. You're also limited to six maneuvers per turn and can issue commands--including heal spells--only at the turn's start. These restrictions turn combat into a guessing game that encourages you to memorize enemy attack patterns. Your servant unlocks pieces of these patterns the more often you fight a monster, which prevents the task from growing too overwhelming.
Unfortunately, several elements make combat frustrating, beginning with your need to slay the same monster a few dozen times to learn its attack pattern. These repetitive battles get tedious, and sparse enemy variety and easy mazes add to the boredom. A handful of skills apply status effects like reduced defense, and help freshen up combat, but you rarely need them outside of elimination fights. The game's restrictive save system is another downside. It prevents you from saving while you're inside a dungeon, which won't seem like a problem until you succumb to an enemy's lucky strike and need to reload. These deaths result from the sheer amount of guesswork involved in planning your actions around an enemy's unknown maneuvers, so they're almost inevitable. They're also highly vexing because they force you to replay dungeon floors due to no fault of your own.
Fate/Extra's most impressive element is its tough elimination matches. These boss battles pit you against an overpowered servant with a skilled master. Your investigation directly impacts these fights; learning everything you can about an opposing team reveals some of its maneuvers, which helps you plan your attacks. This information is useful for blocking your enemy's noble phantasm--a devastating special ability that only servants wield. As if that weren't challenging enough, elimination opponents possess much more health, drastically changing combat dynamics. If you play too conservatively, hoping to slowly peck away at your opponent's health, you die when you run out of healing items. Constantly attacking, however, leaves you open to harsh counterattacks when your enemy guards. The best way to win is to strategically guess at an opponent's unknown actions based on the maneuvers that you can see, although this admittedly involves some luck.
Although Fate/Extra's world seems fascinating, you ultimately experience very little of it. You spend most of your time running around a bland campus, with empty hallways serving as key investigation points. The dungeon is equally boring at the start, but the appearance of waterfalls and animals helps make later hours more vibrant. Character models feature colorful anime-style designs that fit the game's roots but are a bit rough around the edges. The soundtrack could also use some work; the game's saxophone-heavy background tunes are ultimately forgettable. Character voicing, which is in Japanese, relays minimal emotion. The game also fails to translate combat dialogue, so you miss out on your servant's witty battle remarks.
You spend roughly 40 hours battling your way through this tournament. You won't find much in the way of side quests or exploration, but additional playthroughs let you interact with new servants, and unraveling their secrets can be fun. A new-game-plus mode tries to boost replayability, but it falls short: only a few key items carry over to the next playthrough, making the feature moot.
Fate/Extra's gameplay faces some serious hurdles. Repetitive combat and an annoying save system test your patience, while lackluster dungeons add to the tedium. Great boss battles aside, there are simply better dungeon crawlers out there. This one may prove satisfying only for series fans.
|
When it comes to scaring people, the Japanese do it right. Be it book, film, or game, some of the most shock-intensive experiences have been brought to us by their creative minds. The latest entry in this category is Corpse Story, a game that's filled with unbelievable moments and keeps your attention until the bitter end.
Where the madness begins!
The story revolves around a group of eight students and one teacher. One of the girls in the group is transferring to another high school, so they all decide to perform a ritual to keep their friendship intact, even if they can't be close to one another. Unfortunately, thirty years prior, the school was the site of a horrific kidnapping and the murder of innocent elementary school children. After the events, the school was torn down, and the new high school was built in its place. But the horrors remain.
As the group performs the thought-to-be-harmless ritual, an earthquake occurs, which transports them all to the old school. They've been split up and are unsure if this is just a nightmare, if it's really happening, or if the true nature of their predicament lies somewhere in between. Now they must try to figure out how to reunite and escape before they succumb to the spirits that haunt them.The plot of Corpse Party is broken up into five chapters, and in each one you control different members of the gang. For the most part, this is a story-driven, puzzle-solving game where you need to scour the school looking for specific objects to progress the story.
What makes the game so interesting is how the environments change from chapter to chapter and character to character. These students are technically all in the same school--it is explained that they have been split up into different dimensions--but the layout for one group may be entirely different from that of another group. In one chapter, you may have easy access to the infirmary, but in another one it is completely out of reach. Not only does the school shift from one chapter to the next, but even within a given section, earthquakes might occur that alter where a character can go. Other tricks include having areas magically appear or disappear; you may visit a section and a door materializes, but when you return, the door is mysteriously absent. Because of theses changes, it can be easy to get lost while walking, especially later in the game when parts of the school change a few times.
While Corpse Party's narrative is fairly linear, there are many ways it can play out, and your decisions can alter the adventure. At the same time, there are numerous ways of making a mistake and ending your game. In each chapter, there are multiple ways to finish. There may be items that can help your character in certain situations, but they are not necessarily required to progress. Decisions such as giving items to certain characters, reading journal entries and visiting certain locations over others can impact the plot. Each chapter has one correct outcome that moves the story, but there are also multiple mistake conclusions that result in the character's death and the appearance of a "wrong end" pop-up.
Even when the character has technically died and you are forced to reload the game, you don't get a basic end sequence or death animation if you don't reach the correct ending. These "wrong end" situations have you watch and/or listen to the characters scream for their lives as they face impending doom. There are more than a dozen different "wrong end" sequences throughout the game and very different ways of getting them. In fact, there are many wrong endings that conclude the story, so getting the correct finale requires you to make the right choices.
There are also plenty of shocking moments in Corpse Party. Not only are the various "wrong end" scenarios quite gruesome, but there are numerous situations as you progress that may be a bit unsettling. These include bloody rooms, lynched students, headless foes, and other horrifying sights. These situations add to the feeling of craziness that these children are immersed in.
Although the story flows at a nice pace and the various endings in each chapter strongly encourage a second, third, or fourth go-round, the placement of save points makes having to go through a particular area multiple times a bit of a hassle. In one area in chapter four, a character has only a limited amount of time and is faced with a situation that could play out three ways. If you make the wrong decision or fail to complete the task within the given time, you have to go through the entire lead-up sequence from the previous save point, which can be annoying. Replaying these moments again is even more noticeable considering that most ending sequences, good or bad, last at least a minute. Add the fact that you must return to the main menu and reload the earlier save, which wastes time that could be better spent elsewhere.
The original Corpse Party was released back in 1996 and has seen two remakes since then. While the game still retains the 16-bit look, new character designs for the dialogue sequences have been incorporated. The game also retains the original Japanese voice actors, and they play their parts well. Considering these are school kids, their screams and the horror in their voices only add to the intensity. Music also plays an important part in the game. Early on, the music repeats itself, but as you progress, new tunes add that extra layer and reinforce the crazy circumstances these children are in. On top of that, there are even moments when no music is used; they rely instead on sound effects, such as creaking floorboards, chimes, and other sounds, to keep your attention.
Corpse Party's main story can take roughly six to eight hours if you manage to stay alive and avoid mistakes. There are student ID cards littered throughout each chapter that can be collected. These don't serve much purpose outside of giving you an idea of the other kids who have also fallen victim to the horror. Completing chapters and experiencing certain endings, both good and bad, unlocks additional chapters that shed some light on those fallen characters. These chapters vary from having you complete a task to having you watch little vignettes. These are nice additions that help explain some of the actions of the characters you meet along the way.
Given the rarity of scary and shocking games, Corpse Party is once again a fresh and welcome experience. It's not a difficult game by any means, instead relying on keeping you interested through its gripping story, unexpected twists, and horrific situations. If you crave something that will keep you up at night, this is it.
|
There's a lot of potential to make good games using the Naruto license. The comics and anime series are filled with elements that can transition well to games: a huge cast of ninja characters with varied motives and personalities, an interesting fantasy setting, and, of course, lots of supernaturally powered ninjutsu battles. Sadly, Ultimate Ninja Impact fails to capitalize on all the great things the Naruto universe has to offer.
Ultimate Ninja Impact adapts the storyline of the most current Naruto anime series, Naruto Shippuden. In the Ultimate Road campaign, Naruto has returned to Hidden Leaf Village after three years of intense training to be reunited with many of his friends and comrades. However, his dear companion Sasuke, who has defected to serve the insidious Orochimaru, is not among them. Naruto learns of some pressing events happening in the village and elsewhere, and he immediately sets off with his teammates to try to set things right, only to get tied up in a much bigger plot that involves several different factions. The way the game adapts the story is admirable, though if you're already familiar with the way events play out (having read the comic or watched the show), there isn't much in the way of surprises.
The main game is divided into several chapters, each of which contains a map screen that allows Naruto and company to advance to various events and stages. By completing certain stages or objectives (some mandatory, some optional), new playable characters, missions, and special ability cards can be unlocked. Successfully completing levels and performing skillfully in battle also earns you ninja points, which allows you to purchase character-enhancing card pieces and upgrades, along with extras like music or wallpaper. Each chapter has a separate completion gauge that lets you know how much further you have to go before you've found and collected everything available. There's a lot of emphasis on collecting bonus goodies in Ultimate Ninja Impact, and this element of the game is well executed. Visuals and sound are also quite nice: The character models are faithful to the original designs and are surprisingly detailed. A heavy amount of voice-over also accompanies the story in both English and Japanese audio tracks.
The actual combat, however, is considerably less exciting. Ultimate Ninja Impact borrows liberally from the design of Tecmo Koei's Warriors games, for all of the good and bad that may entail. Controls are easy to grasp: You can jump, air-dash, or guard, as well as perform basic attack combos and throw weak projectiles with simple button presses. The chakra attacks are slightly more complex; they require you to first charge up your chakra meter sufficiently by holding down the triangle button and then either execute them at the end of a basic combo string or hit a set button sequence. Some of these skills require specific timing, which the game doesn't always teach well, but for the most part, screen-clearing, mega-damaging attacks are merely a few button presses away. Filling both your chakra and awakening gauges while fighting allows your character to enter a special, temporary powered-up mode. While chakra and awakening attacks have varying properties for each playable character, the basic means of execution is the same for each fighter, which allows players to quickly adjust when the game requires you to use a different cast member. However, it also means that the number of different actions each character can perform is strictly limited. Characters can gain levels and equip stat-boosting character cards to enhance their abilities, but their combat capabilities rarely expand beyond a basic skill set.
Limited fighting capabilities would be perfectly fine if the action itself was intense and engaging. Unfortunately, this is the area in which Ultimate Ninja Impact falls flat on its face. Much like the Warriors games that seem to have inspired it, Ultimate Ninja Impact puts you in small maps to fight big packs of enemies. While mowing down a crowd of ninjas is fun at first, it quickly becomes less satisfying when you realize just how utterly stupid and ineffective most of the enemies are and how easy they are to wipe out with a basic combo. Each mission contains several objectives, most of which are simply variations of "go to this place" or "beat these enemies." You quickly find yourself repeating similar objectives for each new mission you reach, putting up with annoying background pop-in as you carelessly wipe out another platoon of generic ninjas. Every now and then, you might encounter a slightly tougher enemy, an enemy with a gimmick, or a boss. These enemies are unique in that they actually pose something of a threat and will aggressively attack you. However, they still fall quickly to basic evasion and rapid-fire damaging chakra combos. Ultimate Ninja Impact on anything but the hardest difficulty is a very easy game, and unfortunately, said hardest difficulty doesn't unlock until well into the campaign. As a result, the combat quickly turns into a boring slog that you only put up with to try to collect NPs and nifty new cards.
The game features a few additional modes as well. Tag Battle lets you team up with either a computer-controlled companion or a friend (with his or her own PSP and copy of the game) to take on specially scripted missions for NP rewards, while Extra Missions offers more challenging single-player objectives to try to complete for additional rewards. (Given the game's typically lax difficulty, these missions are only slightly more taxing than your standard story fights.) You can use your full army of unlocked characters in these fights, which makes them the main place to play and level up favorite cast members that don't get much attention in the central plot.
But when the fighting itself is lacking in excitement, it really doesn't matter how many extra modes you throw in--inherent mediocrity is rarely remedied by putting it in different dressings. Ultimate Ninja Impact doesn't try to do anything beyond offering a bog-standard action game where you fight a lot of enemies at once. As a result, it winds up being a game that is mildly entertaining for short periods of time but quite tedious in extended play sessions. In the end, Ultimate Ninja Impact simply doesn't live up to the intensity of its title.
|
|
