Wii-Tards.net : We Never Finish Anyth

So, I’ve been lamenting for a while that this site lacks purpose. No one seems to read it, or care what’s put on here. There are so many blogsites already writing about games, and it’s so easy for a small site like this one to get drowned out in the noise.

Then I saw something that brought things into a little better focus.

A little game came along called Battle Fantasia. It’s a ‘2.5D’ fighter from Arc System Works, the folks who brought us the Guilty Gear series. It was ported from arcade machines to…some crap system, and then finally came out for us North Americans last week as a PlayStation Network download.

Initially I was wary of it, since it had no demo, and really the only true test of whether a game is worth buying is in the demo. So, I checked the aggregate review sites, like a good little consumer. Metacritic and Gamerankings both listed a pretty sad-looking 67% for this title. But, the developer and the appealing art style won me over, and I bought it anyway.

To my surprise, it was quite a lot of fun. The art’s definitely unique – the only thing one could compare it to would be the Final Fantasy Tactics series. The characters are all unique, appealing and well animated, and the battles are tough without feeling impossible. The story’s nicely detailed if a bit silly (but then all fighting game storylines are pretty ridiculous). Overall it felt like a very well-polished game, worth the $20 price. So what, I wondered, did these ‘professional reviewers’ know that I didn’t? Where were the flaws I couldn’t see?

I looked into the individual reviews on those sites and saw the same complaints leveled against it. Among various rather silly complaints, such as its small character roster (12 feels like plenty to me for a $20 game), and some even criticizing the presentation as too cute and too anime, as though no one should ever actually enjoy that sort of thing. Of all the complains leveled against it, “It’s too accessible” was the one that stuck out to me most, and that charge was repeated almost universally across the sites. “Too accessible.” “Focused on accessibility.” “Not hardcore.”

Since when was being accessible a negative thing? Accessibility is what software designers are supposed to strive for, isn’t it? It’s why Apple products sell well despite having less raw power than their competition… So someone tell me why a game, as another piece of software, should not be accessible? Do we really need a giant roster of characters each with their own lengthy and arcane movelists? Is the user interface of a game supposed to be some kind of Gordian Knot? A secret handshake to be done with the controller to ensure that only the most elite can enjoy it? I thought this hobby was about having fun…

And looking deeper, all of these reviewers to be saying the same things, parroting each other and crooning over the same favorites. Even the sites that claim to be outside the industry still pay homage to the same industry favorites. These ‘outsiders’ all look like they’re just trying to get in, like Uncle Tom trying to ingratiate himself to his master in the hopes of being allowed into the house. It’s one big disgusting circle-jerk, and of course always played to the 18-24 male demographic.

And, in resistance to that, I think I’ve found our purpose.

So, Battle Fantasia is worth it. It’s a lot of fun, its gameplay is unique in that it’s structured around timing and strategy rather than massive strings of complex combos, and its a definite pleasure to watch as well as to play.

As for the rest…yeah. Always support the little guys.

The new DSiLL is out, and it’s huge. Is it Xbox Hueg? As ostensibly portable consoles go, yea, it is.

Click here to find out all the details.

I love Castlevania.

Consume consume consume! Any Castlevania Konami spits out is ravenously being devoured by me, a crazed fan addicted by the slavernous addiction of leveling and platforming at the same time. Thus, I think I should share my view on this little piece of software.

Since it’s the first time in ages I made a review and my only one here was of Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, I’ll do Order of Ecclesia now before starting with proper Wii games. (Here’s looking at you, Cursed Mountain.)

Did I mention I loooove Castlevania?

So, yeah, I haven’t been posting a lot this year. There’s several reasons for that. The biggest one, though, is that there just hasn’t been a lot to write about. I’ve been watching the new releases for PS3 and Wii and there just isn’t all that much I’m interested in, and the few releases that do interest me are either in the distant future or keep getting their release dates pushed back into 2010. Even the DS, which for some time had more releases I wanted to play than I could keep up with, has now seemed to dry up. Chalk it up to the global recession, I suppose.

But even so, it seems I have less time to play games than ever, much less to play them in enough depth to be able to write about them.

That, plus a feeling of general disappointment. Being disappointed by titles that I waited for with great anticipation, like Cross Edge, or disappointment in the revelation that the Wii needs an extra plugin, the Wii Motion Plus, in order to actually do the kind of motion-tracking gameplay that was first promised in its promotions of three years ago. Not to mention the dizzying amount of shovelware that’s being poured onto that system. With sheer volume alone one would think that there would be *something* worth playing on there. But it seems that Nintendo are just about the only ones putting out anything worthwhile on the Wii. There are exceptions, of course, but those are so few and far between…I’ve started to lose hope.

So…what now? Well, I’ll still keep making figure posts, regardless.

Several people have asked me what the deal is with Aeria and LaTale. Basically it’s a regional thing. Aeria is to be the publisher for LaTale in Europe now since they didn’t officially have one. OGPlanet will remain the US publisher, unfortunately. But Aeria will not be closing their version to the rest of the world, and as far as I know, neither will OGP.

The reason I care at all, personally, is because OGPlanet’s version doesn’t work with Windows7, and the responses I’ve gotten back from their ’support’ on the issue seem to indicate that they know there’s a problem, but they don’t care, and don’t expect anyone to even start working on the problem until several months after Win7’s official release. That, coupled with their dropping of Pangya earlier this year, forcing that game’s developer to take over publishing duties as well, really doesn’t leave me very happy with OGP, and even though I love LaTale, as a customer I’d also love to deal with someone, anyone but OGP.

Sadly, Aeria’s version seems to need a bit of work. It’s in Closed Beta right now, and there are a lot of people complaining of in-game lag, and it doesn’t seem to make any difference where people are connecting from. And with a game like this, a .5 second delay between the time you enter commands and the time you see a response from your character, really makes it unplayable. They’re also missing the new ‘Machinist’ job class.

Here’s hoping that will be fixed soon.