Retro Game Friday: Star Fox Command

This week for Retro Game Friday I’m covering a game I frequently forget exists. It’s Star Fox Command!

Plot Synopsis: The planet Venom’s forces were all but destroyed, and there is thought to be peace. This is not to be, however, as a race of beings known as the Anglar rise from the acidic oceans of Venom, thought to be unable to support life. The leader of the Anglar plans on destroying the Lylat system, which Fox McCloud and crew set out to save. The Star Fox team has broken up, but re-assembles to fight the threat…

Plot: The plot was not that great, and even more frustrating is that there is no true ending to the plot despite there being nine different endings. Unfortunately for Command the gameplay wasn’t enough to save it.

Gameplay: The gameplay was okay, but what would have been okay with just standard Star Fox gameplay was mired by the fact that you had to plot your flight path using the touchscreen of the DS. This feature was supposed to add strategy, but to me it was all pointless gimmicks made to a perfectly okay game in order to highlight the DS’s touch screen technology.

Characters: What was unusual for this game was the fact that it allowed the player to play as 14 different characters, ranging from Fox to Panther from Star Wolf.

Overall: A less than spectacular game marred by the unnecessary focus on the touch screen.

For those who like: Star Fox, Gimmicks.

Not for those who don’t like: Either of the above.

Retro Game Friday: Battlefield 1942

This week for Retro Game Friday I’m covering the first entry in a series that is incredibly popular now. It’s Battlefield 1942!

Plot Synopsis: Look up World War II.

Gameplay: This was a pretty revolutionary game at the time, as it had a massive amount of players that could play in a single match at one time. 64 players was pretty amazing. As for the rest of the gameplay it follows the now standard Battlefield formula of capturing locations and holding the majority of them to slowly whittle away the enemies spawn tickets which let an enemy respawn upon death. 1942 also allowed players to pilot various vehicles ranging from Jeeps to bombers. This made the matches get really insane when you had all 64 players playing.

Art: The art has aged poorly, but that’s to be expect of a 3D game.

Music: I don’t remember a whit, I was having too much fun gaming with my friend online.

Overall: It’s might be worth a try if you can get a free copy, but I’m pretty sure the servers for online play are down now so it’s not really worth spending any money on this.

For those who like: FPS, Military Games, World War II, Vehicular Mayhem.

Not for those who don’t like: Any of the above.

Video Game Tuesday: No Man’s Sky is Great

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m here to tell you something that other’s have said, vehemently at times, isn’t true. It’s that No Man’s Sky is Great!

Really?: Yes if you weren’t expecting it to be everything you wanted and it to be done perfectly. That’s a fairly large caveat, but given the massive size of the game I wasn’t expecting stuff to be perfect, the programming is exquisite, but even still I knew it would have occasional flaws.

Like what?: Stuff like building’s floating in the air over a cliff’s edge (happened to me on my starter planet on my third visit back to my starter system and when I went exploring on my starter planet again). Despite that I was still able to get into said building just fine, I just had to maneuver to the door a bit more than I normally would.

What about crashes?: Well I’ve crashed about 15 times in the 48 hours I’ve played about. It’s not a great number, but given that I habitually open my options menu and then close it quickly when I mean to check my inventories I’m not too upset. That is a known bug, though I think it was patched last week. I can’t confirm that it’s still an issue or not, we’ve been having a fairly bad heat wave the last two weeks and I haven’t been playing as much as I’d like. I also crashed due to being in the same solar system as someone else, we were both following an Atlas path and no I never got to see him as we were racing to name the systems after stopping to grab the next location’s coordinates. He wasn’t even bothering to name them, and I was trying to be helpful and name my systems with the word Atlas in it, he beat me twice as much as I beat him. So when I reconnected back to the servers, it would disconnect occasionally and I’d think I’d gotten ahead and named my system, I’d crash after submitting the name. Since he had actually named the system before me that is the most likely reason I crashed.

What about supposedly missing “feature”?: Well I can personally confirm that there are butterflies, water areas that are more than lakes (I’ve found at least a few dozen water planets with a few islands here and there), and giant creatures. My very first planet has a giant T-Rex looking like monstrosity with a Lobster head. It scared the living bejeezus out of me as I had just climbed up a very large cliff and it whacked me off as it was an aggressive creature. I fell to my death due to lack of jetpack charge, it was my first time. Needless to say I kill any of those things I see now out of sheer spite whenever I visit my starter planet (which I do frequently). As for Sandworms on Sand Planets I haven’t even tried to get towards the center yet, which supposedly increases the weird creature generation quite a bit, so I’m not sure they exist. They probably do, somewhere out there.

Atlas?: Yes I followed it and yes I went to the end, and I had 10 stones. I didn’t choose the option however, and I left the system after naming every planet. Now I’m trying to find the system again, a fairly annoying venture as I had once again traveled back to my starter system to explore the other planets in the system.

What about destroying space stations?: Well I can confirm that if you continue to shoot the space stations it will send out three fighters to kick your butt, and if you keep firing it will send an additional six out. It’s a very fast way to die, if you wanted to be a cheater and duplicate your items. Hey don’t look at me like that, I was testing that method out for science purposes only, not repeatedly dying to duplicate Atlas Stones to make ridiculous amounts of money. Nope! Not at all.

All in all, I’ve loved No Man’s Sky, it’s been fun to name creatures that will stay there for essentially eternity, or as long as the servers are up, whichever comes first. That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday!

 

 

Anime Sunday: Aokana Final Impressions

This week for Anime Sunday I’m covering one of my bigger disappointments from Winter 2016. It’s my Aokana Final Impressions!

Plot: I had really high hopes for the series, as this was an adaptation of a pretty great Visual Novel, although it did have Adult Content (read: Sex Scenes). I’m not disappointed about the lack of that, because honestly I wasn’t expecting that, though I’d have been fine with implied scenes happening. The story had four different routes for each of the four different heroines and love interests and most Visual Novel Adaptations decide to do one of the routes, some of the worse mix in other routes, but for the most part they take one of the various paths. But instead of doing any of the routes, or even going the harem route which would’ve been disappointing but barely acceptable at least, they chose to do no route changing the entire storyline into that of a sports series instead of the romance it was in the original material.

Characters: Due to this change we don’t really get a good look at any of the characters all that well, sure there are some various character development episodes, but they are superficial at best. In addition the protagonist, the Player Character from the Visual Novel, doesn’t really ever change from the beginning. The reason he stopped using his flight shoes and stopped participating in FC, Flying Circus, aren’t really explored or dealt with satisfactorily. The reason being that in the Visual Novel, the four romantic interests help him overcome the trauma he had. In this he just ends up sticking around helping them out as a coach instead of really solving his issues. As for the actual heroines, Asuka is annoying at best and she’s pretty much the main character. Misaki, Mashiro and Rika are sort of just there, and aren’t really part of the story all that much, except for Misaki at one point. But even then it’s mostly all about Asuka and she’s irritating.

Art: The art is generally the only good thing about this, but the usage of 3DCG was distracting at best and outright an eyesore most of the time.

Music: The music of the Visual Novel is actually pretty awesome, I’ve listened to it, but the Anime doesn’t really live to the standard that it set. It’s not bad, but it’s not amazing.

Overall: Steer clear of this disappointment and play the Visual Novel instead.

Anime Sunday: Aokana Episode 01 Impressions

This week for Anime Sunday I’m taking a look at a series that I was looking forward to prior to the start of the season. It’s my Aokana Episode 01 Impressions!

Plot Synopsis: In an alternate universe, shoes with anti-gravity properties are invented called Grav-Shoes, which allow people to fly freely. This leads to the development of a sport known as Flying Circus, where participants race from one buoy to another, scoring points in the process. Masaya Hinata is a student at Kunahama High School, which is located in a four-island archipelago south of Japan.

Plot: Boy that sounds like a really fun sport to play, and the Anime definitely brings it to life spectacularly well. I’m definitely interested to see where the series goes from here, as the original source material is an Adult Visual Novel with different romance routes for each character. Hopefully it’ll stick to just one route.

Characters: Masaya is an interesting male lead, and it’s obvious that he’s got serious issues which makes him all the more mysterious. Asuka on the other hand is actually rather annoying, I’m far more interested in Misaki as she’s obviously Masaya’s closest friend and isn’t a klutz and airhead like Asuka, which is a character type that I detest.

Art: The art is amazing, with my only complaint being that the use of 3D Graphics is a bit too obvious, but it’s better than most shows.

Music: The musical score however I can’t complain at all about, and even the opening and ending themes are very well done.

Overall: This looks to be interesting, but ultimately it depends on how they choose to go with the romantic subplot that will decide wether this is a hit or miss.