I needed to take a break from wading through the story in yet another JRPG, so I downloaded a couple demos – including the demo for ‘Splosion Man. After a mere few minutes going through a couple of the first levels, I was hooked and had to get the full game.

‘Splosion Man is a puzzle/platformer where the aim is to clear levels by using your character – a lab-created experiment, apparently – to explode, thus performing many tasks depending on the tools and the environment around you. At first its nothing but exploding off the ground or walls to get to higher places, but later on you’re faced with roving enemies out to get you, laser guns that will zap you, pits of acid that will melt you and many, many other obstacles to overcome. There are various devices placed in the environment to help you accomplish the task of making it through the level, such as exploding barrels that propel you higher, switches to unlock various gates and even scientists controlling the aforementioned obstacles, which you have to take out to progress.

You only have three explosions available before you have to “recharge” yourself by touching the ground, a wall or an exploding barrel, which adds to the strategy of clearing the stages. If you fail to hit one of those rechargers in certain cases, you’ll fall back to the ground or, sometimes, to your death. However, death is very forgiving – there are frequently-placed checkpoints and an unlimited number of lives. One feature I like, mostly because I’m not really all that great at these types of games, is the “Way of the Coward” option. After you’ve died so many times on a particular level, you can skip the rest of the level altogether. However, you get an insanely high completion time (for no hope of placing anything higher than dead last on the leaderboards) and are forced to wear a tutu through the next level. (Once you complete another level the way its supposed to be completed, the tutu disappears.) Some might call that feature stupid, I call it good game design for catering to many different skill levels. I can clear most obstacles in most levels, but there’s one or two that weren’t worth the trouble of continuing to bang my head against.

The character – Mr. ‘Splosion Man himself – is a joy to control. He’s full of life, has many different animations and his dialog (if you can call it that) can be quite hilarious at times. Control, for the most part, is accurate and not very wishy-washy, which I find refreshing in a platformer. Also, some of the acrobatics that you are forced to perform to clear some obstacles are amazingly fun when accomplished correctly.

Unfortunately, the single player game is where all the fun is. The multi-player is just plain annoying. The goal of most multi-player levels is to somehow manipulate both characters in a manner that will precisely move them in a way so as to clear obstacles. There’s basic tutorials to help you do these things, but it doesn’t explain much how your characters are supposed to move when these “moves” are performed. Many times you have to move at the same time and explode off of each other to move in opposite directions, yet it seems haphazard in the direction your character moves. One time they’ll “bounce” off each other and move in opposite direction, other times while performing the same “move” they’ll both move in the same direction. Its hard to control and more of a headache than any fun. Its a shame the multi-player isn’t more multi-player-friendly, to make this truly an awesome title. There is a countdown you can activate to help time your jumps, but for the most part, it doesn’t help in practice.

Overall, this is a great diversion and an awesome addition to the Xbox Live Arcade, if only for the single-player experience. A definite “must buy”, especially for the whacky dialog and the fun of blowing stuff up.

Score: 7.5 (out of 10)

I beg your indulgence for a few moments.

I’m not a big fan of saying, “I’ll finish a game before I review it” or “I’ll play X number of hours before I review it”, because to be perfectly honest with you, if a game doesn’t hook you in the first couple hours, at the very latest, then there’s a problem somewhere along the line. I don’t think anyone – reviewer or casual gamer alike – should be forced to play a game when the developers have failed somewhere in grabbing the attention of the player early on.

That being said, with non-RPG titles, I usually put three to five hours into the game play before a review. If I get really into it and finish the game, more power to me. Games that I dislike early on, like X-Blades, are on the lower end of that scale. I think I saw all I needed to see after about three hours of game play, if that. How would the major issues I have with that game change after the three hour mark? After five hours? After I finish the game? Trust me, the camera and control issues aren’t going to change at any point in the game.

RPG titles I will likely play longer. Some of these games are dozens and dozens of hours to completion and sometimes the story takes a bit longer to get rolling. In a 10-hour action title, the story has to be approached at a different pace than a 40-hour RPG, and the same could be said of my reviewing. In my review of Sacred 2, I stated that I played about 12 story quests into the game (about eight hours of game play because I get sidetracked a lot) and I still couldn’t figure out the story – that’s a problem which I recognized after the fourth or fifth story quest. I gave it extra time because, well, its an RPG. (Apparently, in this case it didn’t matter ’cause the story is so all over the place that after nearly 10 hours of play I still hadn’t figured it out.)

If I play a game less than the average time for a title, I’ll say it in my review in the spirit of full disclosure. I’ll also tell you why, because usually those are games that really, really suck (like Too Human or X-Blades). Potential players should know what the issues are that early in the game, and why they caused me to stop playing.

So, as you can see, there are a lot of variables involved, so I won’t give solid specifications on how much of a game I’ll play before I review it.

If you’ve read my previous reviews, you’ll notice I use a scale of one to ten as the final score. I hope readers focus more on what I say about the game than the final score. (I’m not convinced I’m going to keep the “final score” idea, I might just get rid of it altogether and just discuss the game and leave it at that – but I haven’t decided for sure yet.)

I tend to view reviews and thoughts from individuals who run smaller gaming blogs as a more accurate depiction of these titles, so I build my reviews with that in mind.  Sometimes I think the large gaming sites put too much stock in what the general gaming public wants instead of taking each game and reviewing it on its own merits.  For example, I dislike blanket statements that knock games for not innovating, considering a feature to be a holdover from years past.  Instead of complaining that a game isn’t an innovative title, why not take the game on its own merits and consider how that “non-innovative” feature works in the game.  A great example of this is Persona 4, which uses a mechanic that many game reviewers despise these days – turn-based battles.  It works well in Persona 4 because its executed well.  Whether its a tried-and-true mechanic or a new, innovative one, if it works well in the title, why is the game dumped on?  Along those same lines, innovation does not automatically mean a game is great.

Taking that into consideration is really what I focus on when I write my reviews – I don’t care about the “mainstream”, FPS-or-nothing crowd or appealing to what they want to see.  I’ll take each game on its own merits and consider how the features I want to discuss work in that specific title, not on some larger “non-innovative” scale that some reviewers seem to be in the habit of using.

Well, those are some of my thoughts on my own, personal review philosophy.  Its not something written in stone – mostly its just stream-of-consciousness rambling.

I had always assumed that the next Persona game would be a PS3 game, it was the natural progression of things. Rumor has it, an announcement might be close. (Follow-up article here.)  Instead of talking about that in detail, let’s talk about the last two Persona games on a personal level for a moment. While I feel Persona 4 was the better of the two, Persona 3 FESwas what reignited my passion for playing and enjoying JRPGs. This generation of gaming was a bit of a disappointment, especially the PS3. I think part of the reason for that was because it came with such high expectations for niche RPG greatness, thanks to its predecessor. Since it didn’t deliver (and it really still hasn’t, but its getting better), I felt disappointed – disillusioned, even.

When Persona 3came out, I wasn’t really feeling in the mood for playing anything, but later on the FES version came out and I decided to give it a shot. That game single-handedly brought my attention back to the realm of RPGs and its only gotten stronger from there. Persona 3 FES was such a great game at the time – it did almost everything I would ever want a JRPG to do, even though it retained many traditional elements of the genre. The follow-up, Persona 4, did even more to refine that near-perfect formula. (As an aside, I get a kick out of all these critics and reviewers who usually complain that a JRPG has turn-based battles, but gave Persona 3/4rave reviews. Laff.)

Now, we have this formula that has worked very well in those two games, let’s hope Atlus can come into this generation of gaming by retaining that magic and, perhaps, making it even better, assuming these rumors are true, of course. If they are, Persona 5 will be my most anticipated game, with the exception of maybe Final Fantasy XIII. Here’s looking at you, Atlus.

Judging by some images released for the localized version, character control is likely through this trackball-like interface on the lower DS screen.  That sounds like a horrible, gut-wrenching way to control Dorothy, if you ask me.  But, I shall reserve judgement until I’m able to try out this quirky DS title.

All this originally stemmed from the great fun I had years ago playing Secret of Mana on the SNES.  That was an awesome game and you could play it with friends, because it supported three-person local co-op play.  Every so often you’ll find an RPG that attempts to do something similar, and its great.  I only wish more RPG developers would take advantage of some sort of co-op play, preferably support for both local and online varieties.

What would be the advantages?  You would be able to engage in co-op displays of bad-assery with your pimped out heroes, that’s what.  Tales of Vesperia, which I’ve been playing recently, has local co-op play during battles.  I haven’t yet tried it out, but if it works like I think it should work, it’ll be pretty cool.  I’m interested to find out how the camera operates and if its actually more or less chaotic than the battles are now.

On the other hand, the thing about Secret of Mana that I haven’t seen any JRPG do since is allow the extra players to control their character on-screen outside of battles.  Its a mostly passive experience for those other players when they can only participate during battle sequences.  A typical RPG focuses a lot on story-telling through non-interactive cut scenes and include many other things besides battles.  Granted, the camera is an issue if you let four players go wandering around on their own, but you can set limitations to that.  Let each player talk to different NPCs on their own, as long as they’re within a certain distance from the main player’s character.  Let the camera zoom out a bit so things don’t feel too confined.  Let them buy stuff at a shop to upgrade their own equipment while the main character is talking to an NPC a few yards away.  Let the player characters talk to each other in a way that would expound the story, give clues as to where to go next and see how the characters interact with each other.  We do have that now, but its all controlled by one player.  There needs to be engaging interaction with possibly four humans playing local or online co-op.  Don’t limit the co-op to battles only.

There’s also the possibility of introducing co-op split-screen play in RPGs, with limitations, of course. Imagine playing with three other friends in a JRPG – you’re in a town trying to gather information on where to go next. One player can, as I mentioned earlier, be buying supplies at a shop, while another player is in the pub gathering info. None of the players can actually leave town by themselves (there’s the limitation). I don’t think you’d want a situation where a solo player can leave the group and go waltzing across the world without the other players.

The introduction of co-op challenges might be a direction to go, as well. If playing with more than one person, there could be parts of the story where they would have to split up for a short time to advance the story. You have to be careful here, though. You don’t want the game to require co-op play, so it would have to recognize when there was more than one human playing it and adjust difficulty and/or these challenges to accommodate that.

I would definitely like to see more RPGs take up the multi-player bandwagon.  We do have some limited multi-player here and there, such is the case with Tales of Vesperia, but to really be a breakthrough in design, I think you have to keep the extra players engaged more than just the time you’re facing down baddies in a battle setting.  Therein lies the challenge for developers.

We definitely see strides in the direction we want to go – it seems like developers are testing the waters to see if they want to commit to going all out with co-op play.  Now they must proceed carefully.  I wouldn’t want the single-player experience that we’re used to in RPGs to be compromised because they feel the need to tack on multi-player – this has happened in quite a few games recently.  The single-player experience in these RPGs should always be foremost in mind, otherwise they will likely alienate a large portion of their player base.

Needless to say, I haven’t played the Japanese version, or seen anyone play it in videos, so I’m unsure how everything works, but it looks like we’ll get to find out next week (July 23) when the demo is expected to hit the North American PSN.  It could get delayed, of course, but who wants to be pessimistic like that?  You can bet I’ll give my impressions of the demo here very soon after the download is available.

[Via Joystiq.]

I’m glad they’re releasing a sequel on the PSP – the art style, game play and setting of the story holds so much potential it would be a shame not to attempt to expose more people to its grandeur. Looks like its aiming for a winter release in Japan, so we’ll likely see it on this side of the Pacific next year sometime.

If I had never purchased my 360, I’d be glad for the day that the game hit the PS3, which it will be doing before too long. In fact, a demo of the PS3 version just went up on the Japanese PSN not long ago, new playable character and all. Wait, what? New playable character? That’s right, with the re-release on the PS3 comes many new additions and improvements. I’m not sure how I feel about this, honestly. Why does the PS3 get content that owners of the original Xbox 360 version not get? Will 360 owners ever get that content?

Here’s what should happen – any changes to the story, game play or mechanics (like bug fixes or whatever) – should be patched into the 360 version free of charge. I will compromise on the next part and say that any new characters and outfits given for “free” when you buy the game on the PS3 should be put up as cheaply-priced DLC for the 360 version. Truth be told, that DLC should be free since 360 owners usually paid just as much as the PS3 owners for the game, but I’ll concede that there can be a slight charge to the DLC. Anyone who is madly in love with the game would buy the DLC without much thought anyway.

I’m not a fan of the practice of giving one system different or exclusive content compared to another system – especially between the PS3 and the 360. I hated what they did with Soul Calibur IV, and I dislike re-releases of “exclusive” titles a year later with “bonus” content like Bioshock and, now, Tales of Vesperia. Its great that they’re adding more value for your buck to the game – that’s not the problem. The problem is giving one system content that the other one doesn’t get, for no particular reason. Perhaps they think that since the Xbox 360 players got the game a year earlier, the PS3 players should get something for the time they waited. Sure, if Square-Enix adds loads of exclusive content to the 360 version of Final Fantasy XIII to make up for the past fifteen years of Sony exclusivity, then I might let it slide. But, that’s not exactly going to happen.

I’m not a “fanboy” of one system over another – if anything I’ve become more accepting of the various systems in the last few years. I just think it’s a crappy move on the part of whoever is behind this to offer content on one system and not another, especially a year after the original release. Who knows, it may very well be announced that all this stuff will be provided as DLC for the 360 version. That would be cool, but I won’t hold my breath.

I honestly find it hard to start this review, frankly because I don’t know where to start.  Do I start with the over-sexualized, scantily-clad, smack-talking heroine?  Or do I start things off by talking about the awkward, too-sensitive, mind-of-its-own camera?  How about the boring, repetitive combat?

I have this thing that I do with all my reviews – I try to find at least one thing that this game does well.  I did find that – the artwork and environments are eye candy, on a visual level.  I enjoy the fact that you can tear apart parts of the environment and there aren’t many invisible walls in the games different “combat zones”.  Ayumi, our heroine in this tale, is nicely designed, but a bit over-the-top.  It is nice to see an anime-inspired action game, which is the whole reason I rented this game to play in the first place.  See, I’m trying to be positive!

The issue is, there’s so much that is negative about this game that it snuffs out the few glimmers of light.  The story is overly cliché and not explained very well, although I was impressed with the few stylized cut scenes that were scattered throughout the game.  I was disappointed there weren’t more of them – after every couple “combat zones” I expected to see one, shining new light on some little nuance of the story, yet I was disappointed nearly every time.  The battling felt so monotonous and long-winded that it would have done well for the game to flesh out the story by adding more cut scenes.  But, I digress.  Its likely the audience the developers were searching for would disagree with my RPG-minded brain chemistry.

The controls themselves were fine, and fairly standard for a title like this.  My problem was with the camera.  I seriously felt like pelting my 360 controller through my TV every time the camera would either whip around Ayumi on its own when I was trying to look somewhere else or when it wouldn’t move at all when I wanted it to.  Sometimes it was way too responsive, other times it wasn’t responsive enough – if at all.  This complicated battle sections that were already too long.  Maybe I was doing something wrong, maybe not.  It seems a bit long-winded to have to sit there hacking and slashing for 20 minutes before you clear one battle area.  That’s called artificially inflating the length of the game.

As far as the game mechanics themselves, things were sound, although it didn’t seem like the basic tutorials were enough to really let the player understand how things work.  The new spells and abilities – both “light”- and “dark”-based – were fun to use, when they worked.  Again we have the same problem that we had with the camera, it seemed that spells like the “fireball” often would not even cast when I tried, even when the cool-down was up.

Unfortunately, the armor-less eye candy that is Ayumi couldn’t keep me focused.  The camera needs to be tighter, the story more engrossing and the game mechanics easier to grasp.  I applaud the efforts of the developers to attempt to introduce an anime-inspired hack-and-slash action title to the North American minds infatuated with God of War, but in the end it was likely more of a detriment than a benefit to the genre.

Score: 3.0 (out of 10)

NIS recently announced that Princess Antiphona’s Hymn: Angel’s Score Op.A will hit the hand-held in Japan in October.  Unfortunately, I have not played similar music-RPG fusion titles, like the PS1 and DS game Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure (published by Atlus, unsurprisingly), but the more I read about it, the more interesting it sounds.  A lot of people might find a game that has musical numbers in its cut scenes a bit…off.  And it is, for American gamers.  But, not in Japan, where previous musical RPGs have garnered a huge following.

I’m reminded of the musical numbers in various episodes of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.  I thought they were odd at first, but it didn’t take long and I realized how well they fit into the idiosyncratic nature of the series overall.  Then, I think of something like that in an anime-style RPG and a smile spread across my face.

Here’s hoping Nippon Ichi intends to localize Princess Antiphona (for short) for a North American release sometime in the future.