You must play it.
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I stopped playing Megaman ZX for a few days when I got Okami, which is relaxingly Zeldalike and is actually pretty easy. I don’t hold these qualities against it, for the same reasons that I enjoy Animal Crossing.

I went back to MMZX today, played through a mission that I’d played before (left the DS in standby for a few days, it died, and i’d forgot to save after the mission), and it kicked my butt pretty hard. After I’d died, I got my head on straight again and paced myself. I got through the boss on the first try this time, and realized that 3-D combat will probably never match the intricacy or challenge of 2-D combat.

Okami only requires a lot of button-mashing and occasional dodging. The most involved parts of combat are the enemies that require some sort of interaction with the celestial brush. The combat’s crutch is enemy-seeking weapons.

(aside, speaking of the celestial brush: omfg, Okami better get a Wii port/sequel. it would be too perfect.)

MMZX requires analyzing many different types of enemies at once, anticipating attacks and weak points, planning strikes and using the environment. It gives the player a crutch in the form of respawning enemies that can always drop health pickups.

Perhaps I’m comparing apples to oranges here. 2-D combat is constrained into two dimensions, so it should be easier to deal with. 3-D combat has three axes, and should have more complexity in movement and visual things to analyze.

However, both those attributes are worked against in games. Since 3-D is so complicated, attack controls are simplified and easier to hit enemies with. Think of how easy it is to gun people down in Devil May Cry. Since 2-D is simpler, more enemies and projectiles bring up the difficulty. Think Metal Slug’s projectiles and enemy hordes.

Unless accuracy is a majoy part of the game (FPS-ishes like Counter-Strike or Resident Evil 4), it’s almost too easy to kick ass in 3-D. I don’t want to have to deal with FPS controls to play any and all 3-D action games, so the tradeoff is a necessity. It’s kinda disappointing though.

Maybe our controls are too primitive. Will the Wii rectify this?

I’m going to keep thinking and see if I can think of a non-FPS game with non-simplified combat. I’m sure I’ve played one sometime.

I’m afraid this is going to sound whiny. But hell, this one particular GameStop has annoyed me so much that I don’t think I’ll shop there again. There are like 10 other GSs in my city, but I don’t feel like going to any of them either.

I picked up Okami today! But, I didn’t get the nifty water painting board thing that was supposed to come with a preorder. It’s minor, of course. But c’mon, an offer of free swag is disappointing when it dosen’t come through. The [geekily cute] girl behind the counter offered me some pogs or something. I politely declined.

Almost every time when I go to pick up something I preordered, it’s not there. I work kind of odd hours (4 p.m.-midnight usually), so I go in about 3 p.m. the day it’s supposed to be there. If it’s not there, and I’m really looking forward to it, I go down the street to Fry’s, who have their collective shit together pretty well. It will be there, and it’s generally at least $5 cheaper. Having acquired the [usually portable] game of choice, it brightens up my work day.

I’ve been transferring those $5 preorders to Okami, so part of the bill was taken care of. I only preordered it for the bonus anyway. Bleh.

That combined with the constant sales-pitching and asshattery of the employees (see the ‘Okami looks gay’ incident) means that I’m only ever going there to pick up used sundries, and that’s if I can’t help going elsewhere.

Bah, so I sound whiny. Whatever. GS isn’t making me feel welcome.

Okami has lifted my mood considerably, though. Little touches are everywhere. Like, you can push circle to bark. Now that I’ve learned that, I’m running around a lot and barking at everything. You can even scare the chickens with barking. I have a feeling that I’m going to come across something every time I play that makes me smile.

$250/Nov. 19

I have the money set aside. I’m fervently waiting for someone to start accepting preorders. I check this page a couple times a day, and I’m almost ready to accept this stupid offer. I want a classic controller at launch, but no games. I’ll play GC games, VC games and Wii Sports for a bit. I think it’ll be cool, since the system can be a lot of different things for different people.

I’m also kind of excited to be picking up a system on launch day. I’ve never done that before.

But the deal is starting to look less and less attractive. Never mind that launch games are kinda risky buys*. Never mind that the $250 price tag and costly extras bring down my chances of ‘having it all’ on launch day. Here’s why.

It’s been a long, hot summer. My DS had exhausted its supply of good games after New Super Mario Bros. Nothing was new. And now, miraculously, there are good games surfacing. I’ve been holding back on them so I can save for the Wii. There’s a lot more that I could be playing right now. So there’s problem #1: I’d rather be playing than waiting.

Also, the release date is dangerously close to the Christmas shopping season of death. What if I don’t get one preordered and there aren’t enough? Am I going to dash to and fro during the busy shopping season trying to find one, due to my blind devotion to The Nintendo? Aw, heck no. Problem #2: I don’t want to be unduly inconvenienced to get this thing.

Problem #2 can be resolved by preordering online. It might take a little longer, but I can have it shipped here. There’s no good solution to Problem #1, since I don’t make tons of money.

However, the best solution is this: Wait. Be patient. There will be price drops, better games and new colors in the future. Early adoption doesn’t really benefit the player, unless there’s nothing else to do. And there is a lot more to do, since I could name at least 10 DS games coming out during the season that I’m looking forward to.**

So, in conclusion, I’m in a state of indecision. I think I’m going to let fate guide me: I’ll wait to see if there are any preorder deals and if there will be adequate supplies.

I ask anyone who’s been through a launch-day console purchase: Share your experience. What’s it like? Crazy rabid fanpeople? Crowds? Surly salespeople? Low supplies?

*although: my top-3 must-plays so far are Zelda ~Twilight Princess~, Elebits, and Pangya. I think those are all for launch. Right? Erm. Nintendo isn’t really being clear about what will be out at launch.

**let’s see: Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Rocket Slime, Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2, Cooking Mama, Contact, Touch Detective, Konductra, Magical Starsign, Final Fantasy III DS, Final Fantasy V (yeah it’s GBA), Scurge Hive, Children of Mana, Ouendan (no, not EBA), Yoshi’s Island 2, Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. I think that’s more than 10.

There’s a dividing line in every sidescrolling free-exploration game (you might say Metroidvania*). It separates the truly dedicated from the casual Metroidvaniateers.

There’s always a part, maybe several, where you just can’t figure out where to go. It’s a fun time. You run through the same places over and over trying to spot that one thing you missed or find an extra item or talk to the right person or whatever.

A friend of mine, a casual Metroidvaniateer, has played every GBA and DS Castlevania only to be stymied at some point by this phenomenon. He’ll ask if I can help him, I’ll check out his map and say “Go there” and he’ll still be stuck. I can’t really just up and help someone when I haven’t been playing the game. Sad but true.

Some games will try to help you by including a map that will trace your steps. More often than not though, it’s not really all that useful, except when planning a path from A to B.

Megaman ZX** provides an intentionally vague map, since it’s not really a flat Metroidvania. The map is made up of areas, so you can know, for instance, that area B-2 connects to I-1, but not how. It works pretty well, since each area can have multiple exits. Some doors are in the background, some are in the foreground. The entire game feels pseudo-three-dimensional. It also makes it easier to get around.

After about two missions and some plot, you’re set to go about your business, accepting missions and vising areas, much like the Zero series. The F area (for the ‘rescue’ mission) is one that you might have some trouble finding, but it’s not too hard. You simply look for areas with exits that you haven’t gone through yet, which is pretty easy with the map. After exploring for maybe an hour, I found it.

Of course, I didn’t really go “Okay, I’ve got to get to F now.” I said “Hey, this looks interesting, let’s go there.” So I got sidetracked a lot. It was pretty fun, thanks to the game’s lack of barriers. Sure, there are key cards of different colors and physical boundaries, but the game is remarkably open.

So, it’s not really a Metroidvania. It’s better. I hope it lasts a good while, because there are some new systems that really make the game fun. Being able to switch between functional forms is great. Not only are there the X and Z suits (Megaman and Zero respectively), but there’s also suits that you get from taking out enemy Mega Men (that’s what the game calls them). I love the H suit, it has a sabre, hover capabilities, and a great air dash.

I think this is much more of a classic than Star Fox Command is. Seems like a pretty good trade.

footnote fun time:

*This is a dumb term, but it works. You can probably guess what it means, since the two biggest proponents of the style are Metroid and Castlevania (post-Symphony of the Night). The essential element is a large, interconnected overworld. There’s not a lot else in the subgenre, but Wikipedia makes an argument for a few more additions.

**The kana on the Rockman ZX logo says ゼクス — zekusu, which is pronounced “zex.” So, boldly go into your game store and ask for “Megaman Zex.” They’ll either say “what?” or think that you’re a perv asking for salacious Megaman fanfics. Luckily, I only got the first response.
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I made the SFC -> MMZX trade, at the expense of about ten bucks.

I gotta love any game that has enough heart to include cat sprites!

More actual things about MMZX later!

I think I’m going to trade in Star Fox Command tomorrow and try to get Megaman ZX. Not that SFC wasn’t great, it just dosen’t have a lot of staying power. It’s not hard, it’s repetitive, and I’m about to get the 9th ending, after which the only prize will be SF64’s music on the title screen. I love the game lots, I just don’t think I’ll ever play it again. It’s a kiddie Star Fox. Not a bad thing in itself, but it hurts the replay value.

I considered giving it to a friend, but I really want to play ZX, and I can’t drop the full price.

But, here’s the breaks. I haven’t sold a game back in a long time, thanks to a “don’t sell games back, sucka” policy. I regretted getting rid of a lot of classics I used to own. So I’m trepidacious about this.

SFC’s so not a classic though. It doesn’t have the thrill that 64 or even Assault has. As long as I get a decent figure (more than $10? plz?), I’ll be cool with doing this. MMZX looks like a winner.

oh hey lol @ the people in #4cr waiting on the Wii conference. I’m going to bed, suckers.

I had some prints of my photos made today. Pardon my lack of modesty for a sec, but they’re the most beautiful photos I’ve ever seen. I’ve arranged all the 4x6s in a little photo album for safekeeping and showing off, but this is what I did when I first got them home:

~click for a pretty big version~

The guy who printed them was all like “What lens did you use? How did you get these colors?” and drooling over them. It was quite the ego boost, and it sounded pretty sincere. I am a regular customer, after all.

Regardless, this is the first time I’ve had my digital pictures printed. Immediately, I want to have a coffee-table book printed of all them called Summer 2006: pictures of clouds and trees and other things so my parents and friends can buy it.

Arg. I was writing an intricate, detailed post about how today is the Dreamcast’s 7th anneversary and I played Sonic Adventure for the first time in 7 years and I still didn’t like it. Then a rogue web page crashed my browser and I lost it.

So, in short: I hate the controls, the ease with which I fall off of things, the environment and the music. And the way the Sonic formula was imported into 3-D. I got three stages in and stopped. Back when I was 18, I was full of anti-3-D rage, and I still made it many times further than I did today.

Anyone else do some Dreamcast playing today? The system was everything I wanted the Saturn to be, but by the time it came out, thanks to Sega failing to capitalize on the Saturn’s strengths, I was rather uninterested in gaming. The Dreamcast library is full of charmingly old-school-on-new-school games (like Cannon Spike and Power Stone and Ikaruga and Armada <3), and it’s a stark counterpoint to the PS2’s library. I wouldn’t know this until far after its demise, thanks to this pervasive gaming disinterest.

I need some real games. I inherited the system from a piracy enthusiast, and most of the old burns don’t work anymore.

This blog needs more Dreamcast. Bring it.

Greetings True Believers!* I’ve been far too busy playing Star Fox Command to post anything at all. I need to get back to what I want to be writing about, which is pretentious meta-videogaming.

I like SFC a lot. In fact, I’m going to declare it the best DS game I’ve bought in the past 4 months.

…AAAHHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Damn summer lull.

In all seriousness though, I’m enjoying it. It has a lot of strong points. Have I lost anyone yet? A lot of people are down on SFC. Y’all probably stopped reading two sentences ago.

The weakest part of it is probably that it’s a Star Fox game. Franchises bring expectations along with them, expectations lead to needlessly shoehorning certain features onto game designs, bogging down the freshness of the concept. It’s happened with Zelda, Metroid and Castlevania to name a few. New games in the series, while they innovate, feel lacking, whereas the originals still have all the vitality that they started with.

I’m not going to say that SFC dosen’t have its share of old grafts from Star Fox past, but it does its best to eschew the best part of the original. In doing so, it no longer resembles Star Fox at all, structurewise. This makes a lot of people very not-happy about the game.

(of course, the new elements themselves are subject to be judged; just as people might not like the game because it’s got Star Fox on it, people might also have disliked if it were called Flying Polygon Shooter Command (in 3-D))

So, SFC is a new thing. One with strategy elements, repetitive (but interesting and progressively more difficult) battles, and funky touch screen controls. If there were only a level-up system, this would have been a Star Fox strategy RPG.

Incidentally, SFC is an enhancement of the ideas put forth in Star Fox 2, which is a grand experiment that would have lit SNESs up everywhere if it were released. (i might be looking at the 16-bit days with fuzzy rose-colored glasses though) It was scrapped in favor of Star Fox 64, which returned to the original formula and enhanced it. SFC is like the plot branch that Star Fox hadn’t gone down yet. It took a peek at SF2, but headed back to the main plotline.

I think Nintendo did the right thing with this title, although its cold reception may hurt the chance that we’ll continue down this path. I don’t want another Assault, really, but I don’t want another SF64 either. I liked both of them, but there’s only so much more you can do.

On the other hand, the Wii could introduce some interesting controls.

Perhaps Fox McCloud’s perceived identity crisis will continue, and we’ll have another Star Fox-themed shooter with more wacky and unneeded enhancements in the future. I’ve talked myself into a corner here, so it seems that the series can go nowhere else as a franchise and keep credibility and fun. The best Fox prospect on the horizon for me is playing the original on Virtual Console.

Or maybe a next-gen remake of it…? Oh, I’m just being silly.

*damn you, “Who Wants to be a Superhero?”

(stay tuned for SFC lovefest)
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