Also avaible in Portuguese (Portugal)
Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony (PC) – Final Form Games
They all look the same.
It’s the rethoric du jour when it comes to shmups; a consensual blindness that in two strokes, fails to recognize the genre’s intricate evolution and gives carte blance to other series which do little other than affixing subtitles or numerals to stale formulas. Jamestown shouldn’t be seen as an eye opener to the history of shmups, at least mechanically; its strength lies more in its creative vision than the scope of its gameplay. This doesn’t mean its systems are outdated or lacking in verve, but these will seem a secondary or tertiary concern when juxtaposed with the concept, and that is:
A shmup set in a 17th century British colonial Mars.
The idea isn’t particularly crazy, but Final Form branches it significantly into other turfs, and this alternate history where Mars is a steampunk British colony fighting off Spanish and alien hordes is given considerable heft. The visuals are but one example, with pixels that don’t succumb to 16-bit nostalgia but instead crystalize the era perfectly, suggesting what most of the output of that era might’ve been were hardware not, as today, a victim of imposed technological obsolescence. The levels are always dazzling – if not in novelty, then in a confident display of rhythm, color and detail. And the soundtrack, like LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias, is remarkable in how it carries the action instead of denouncing it. All these aspects work together to express the theme, ranging from adventurous to terrifying, very well.
And the game, of course.
Ostensibly, it’s a bullet hell: that non grata species of shmup that requires precise movement between, across and around tiny, fatal geometric shapes. But it’s also not meant to be a stubborn recreation of its pitfalls – not initially, at least. Which is to say, players can tailor their experience in the first levels, with difficulty modes that go from a calm pace to a suicidal ballistic dance. Yet, the more advanced levels exclude this and only allow higher difficulty modes. But momentarily lapses of concentration are a much likely reason for failure than impossible odds (those exist but are comfortably optional).
Beyond its traditional approach to shoot-and-avoid-being-shot-at, the main play mechanic is the Vaunt Mode, triggered when enough gold is collected from destroyed enemies. When active, your ship – out of several unlockable ones – gains a temporary shield, absorbs bullets, has its firepower increased and gains a score multiplier. This, of course, is temporary and the real kick out of this mechanism is to balance survival and aggressiveness, conserving lives while placing yourself in harm’s way. Elsewhere, it’s quite generous: a shop where accrued points can be spent on new ships, a difficulty level, a side-story and additional challenges ranging from survival to scoring modes. In place of online play there’s a local co-op mode up to four players – a bizarre choice for the PC, but a choice nonetheless.
In a time when it’s increasingly harder to find studios that genuinely value the past, and most gamers’ idea of history only seems to go so far as last year’s Top Ten lists or Metacritic fixation, Jamestown is a middle finger accompanied by a knowing smile – and Final Form knows what it’s showing to whom.
Driver San Francisco (PC) – Ubisoft Reflections
Quantum Leap in Lamborghinis.
That might not have been the sales pitch, or what Ubisoft Reflections were aiming at. Nonetheless, it’s but one of the themes that emerge after hours behind the wheel in Driver San Francisco, not only a renaissance of a series in dire straits and a great game on its own. That it does not bow down to conventional racing game tropes, and the way it does its own thing instead of reinventing itself as a cheap GTA, are pretty applause worthy decisions – which, of course, translate into the usual hysterics by online communities and their quaint notions of self-entitlement.
The idea of a comatose cop trying to make sense of his trauma isn’t an odd idea. But Reflections just runs with the premise, letting it gleefully contaminate most aspects of the game. But San Fran does something better than piss off tribalists: it takes a standard detective story, applies a 1970′s cop show sheen and then injects it with unexpected influences. And unlike bloated entertainment such as, say, Uncharted, its mechanics never once betray whatever Hollywoodisms might creep into the story.
So, yes: John Tanner, a “strangely animated cop more or less worthless outside of his car” as GTA3 so affectionately called him, is placed in a coma by his eternal rival, Charles Jericho. The game, then, becomes a reverse police investigation – not about how Tanner got into his predicament but how he can get out. The end result sees the detective supervising the city and “shifting” – as in, possessing – any driver in San Francisco. Your van broke down? Jump into the guy driving a police car. Your taxi isn’t sturdy enough? Try that Hummer. Want to stop the criminals and your Camaro is too slow? Jump into a tanker and have it block the road.
As Tanner makes more sense of his condition, the city starts opening up – offering more things to do, more cars to drive – but the mission is always the same: find and stop Jericho. The game’s strongest point is really how it redefines Tanner, or rather, condenses the character into a unified vision of what the series always wanted him to be: the asphalt cop, the daredevil pilot, the expert driver. Naturally, the shifts are paramount to this but so is just about everything else. Car crashes, for one, are no “Game Over”. As Tanner’s focus on the city grows, the game acquires a real-time strategy side, with a map filled with plenty of missions to do and a bird’s eye view of everything. Some missions require protecting a stationary vehicule, for instance, which has you jump from driver to driver in order to stop suicide cars on a colision course – not all that different from directing units against a well organized Zerg rush.
Eventually, content elephantiasis appears, unsurprisingly, like an elephant: some side missions look back at the series’ past or evoke popular car chases throughout the years, but many are just candyland for the Achievement Generation, and do little to further the story. Willpower, gained by performing stunts and helping people, devolves into a virtual currency that, conceptually, could be integrated in interesting ways but serves only to purchase vehicules, from Lamborghinis to garbage trucks (!). On the other hand, there are surprising twists to be had in the main story. One is right at the start, where Tanner is only starting to realize what he can do, and finds himself possessing the body of an ambulance driver – the same ambulance that’s taking Tanner’s body to the hospital. And it gets crazier, but that’s enough spoilers. There are one or two issues, mainly plot threads that seem to go nowhere, and the feeling Reflections could have been less formal in some of their ideas, but valid as these concerns may be they don’t do the game justice.
Regardless, it’s one of the best games of last year, a peculiar fusion of experimental and popular play mechanics that gets just about everything right. To pass it by because it does fit into strict notions of what a driving, or a Driver, game should be, says more about the current state of “gamer culture” than the game itself.
The 3rd Birthday (PSP) – Square-Enix
Deadman in women’s clothes.
By habit and experience, I’m a cynic. Which is probably halfway to being a wrong way to look at this entry in the Parasite Eve series, were it not the fact that, on a basic level, The 3rd Birthday is yet another example of everything that’s wrong with the videogame industry in general, and the japanese side in particular. That’s me being cynic, of course, but T3B’s design owes less to inspired ideas and more about a collective sigh made by people who knew they had to produce this somewhere down the line.
It conspires against itself most of the time. The overwrought and overlong sequences. The character pathos that strains between non-existence and farse. Tutorials that are forcibly repeated, even if I’ve already replayed that particular mission. The idea that numbers by themselves are fun. The systems upon systems that mask an otherwise simple shooter. The idea that tearing the lead character’s clothing as she suffers damage, probably thought up by Tetsuya Nomura, last seen raping Mickey Mouse’s corpse at room temperature, is a worthwhile pursuit. Look: it’s not that I don’t love female anatomy; it’s just that I’d rather look at buttocks in contexts that didn’t involve female characters crying in progressive states of near nudity.
This is all made worse because there are some genuinely interesting moments and a singular play mechanic.
Like Driver San Francisco (see above), lead character Aya Brea can jump from body to body. Hell if I can tell you why, because the game is always obscuring itself in icebergs upon icebergs of explanations. This possession carries different consequences, however. Death and “Game Over” are present, and any body on any given battlefield is a potential life-saver. Further, most characters have a different set of weapons, which might be better suited to the task at hand, or might just present a convenient way to recover ammo. It does with bodies what San Fran does with cars, and it works; even moreso when Aya’s brand of astral projection can also hurt enemies.
These bodies are both a finite and infinite resource. In other words, there are almost always nearby bodies you can use, but enemies can kill every ally in a firefight. Reinforcements arrive after a while but until they do, you’re stuck in your current body. Lose and it’s over. This opens way to a deliberate set of tactics and demands a little more precision, but also leads to hair pulling moments. Some enemies are just obnoxiously resistent, others disable or kill allies (and Brea) in one blow, or keep respawning until you’ve completed a mission objective. Aya isn’t necessarily weak, but guns require extensive use and point allocation to become better, and chipping away enough damage to have her execute Liberation (a heightened mode of attack) or fling her conscience against enemies requires their health to be depleted consistently and considerably.
When it works, you’re floating across a space-time void, surrounded by unconscious people, fighting against a Chtulhuian demigod, with nothing but basic firearms and floating buses and cars as explosive barrel analogues, jumping from body to body and causing enough damage on that thing in order to do a psychic headbutt. Or, later in the game, jumping between tanks and helicopters to bring down massive creatures.
When it doesn’t work, you’re fighting off a giant moth-like thing that fires needles, spawns smaller versions of itself, throws huge balls of mucus, shrinks and shields itself with dozens of clones, dies and comes back to life, requires you to analyze it with a sniper rifle so you can hit its weak spot THAT YOU CANNOT TARGET BECAUSE IT’S ALWAYS MOVING, and also have to dodge fire from invisible snipers while waiting for reinforcements.
The problem with T3B’s pacing isn’t that it’s irregular – the problem is that no one developing T3B seems to know what pacing is.
The game’s poorly conceived themes of time travel don’t help, either. In one level, you’re introduced to a Reaper, which you’re told is invulnerable and your only chance is to run. Another mission, set after that one but still taking place in the past, makes it so Reapers can be vanquished. But regardless of how many times the story claims to be about changing the past, you can’t go back to that level armed with the knowledge of how to fight a Reaper – that one will always remain invulnerable. Worse, whatever Feats you perform during a level (optional objectives such as saving civilians, preventing allies from being killed, etc.) provide new weapons and mods, but are forgotten on subsequent replays, effectively placing you at square one every time you replay a level. You’re not changing the past, just repeating it.
Which pretty much describes the problem with Square-Enix nowadays. Oh. I see what you did there, Square.
I’m being cynic again. Beneath all the mud, and taken as a slightly brain addled third-person shooter (and the PSP could use more of those, brain addled or not), there are good moments. But spending hours just to get to those precious few minutes is hardly worth it.
