Dyad Review

       I always heard that Dyad was awesome, but I wasn't totally sold when I played the demo. Many months later, I tried the demo again and really got addicted to it. It may be that it is such a different game that you need some time to get used to it. Kind of like when you listen to new music. You may not like it at first, but when you recognize its pattern again months later, that's when it really syncs up with your brain.

       Dyad is a bit hard to describe. It's like tempest, sort of. You are in a tube moving forward. By “you” I mean this weird ball with lots of flowing tentacles. You propel yourself forward by hooking enemies. You do this by pressing X when they are in front of you in this long wavy channel that extends out in front of you. That is the basic building block of Dyad's gameplay, but it wastes no time introducing new elements and goals. Soon, hooking pairs of like-colored enemies will give you a speed boost. Then, later, it creates zip-lines in the tube between the enemies you hook that greatly boost your speed. You are also introduced to grazing. When you hook an enemy, a shape extends out on either side of it. If you move through, or graze, this shape, you fill up a meter, and when the meter is full, you can press square to lance. While you are lancing, you move very fast and can smash right through enemies. There a quite a few more enemies and mechanics introduced, including enemies that create zip-lines when hooked but also attack you, invincibility shields that last as long as you can keep colliding with enemies, and bullets that fly down the tube at you, as well as several others.

       Just like the enemies and power-ups populating the tube frequently change, so do the goals of the levels. Some are time-trial style races to the finish. Others require you to hook certain amounts or types of enemies within a certain time limit. A few levels have more exotic goals, like reaching a high maximum speed, staying invincible for as long as possible, and lancing large numbers of enemies in only a few lances, just to name a few. The varied enemies, objects, and goals keep the levels feeling fresh and interesting and keep you guessing as to what is coming up next.

       Things get even more outlandish in the game's trophy levels. Each level has an alternate version you can unlock by getting a 3-star ranking on the normal level. These are called trophy levels as you get PSN trophies for beating them. These levels usually have a different layout than the original level and feature a different goal. The goals in these levels are usually not as straightforward; some involve doing a certain action a lot within a time frame and some have totally unique goals, such as one that starts you at high speed and wants you to slow down. These trophy levels are the only way to earn trophies in the game, which is pretty cool. Unfortunately, the dedication needed to beat these levels exceeds my desire to work too hard at them. It's certainly fun and worthwhile to play around and grab a few of these trophies, but the gameplay is not compelling enough to inspire a few dozen hours of practice needed to get these levels perfect. That said, I am very proud of the trophies I did earn: Tune in, Dyadic, Danger, Line 'Em Up!, The Light Spectrum, Winds of the Dawn that is My Crown, Becoming Purple, Giraffes? Giraffes! In Outer Space, I Really Missed Jack, and Perpetuation. The other trophy levels were just too much for me. A lot of the levels I didn't get a trophy for I couldn't even earn the three stars needed to unlock the trophy level. But I felt a great sense of accomplishment earning the ones I did get. There is a nice guide on PlaystationTrophies.org that gives some general useful tips and advice on each level that helped me out quite a bit. Also, did you notice how awesome the level names are in this game? If I remember correctly, from the interview I heard with the game's creator, some of those names come from a philosophy his friend invented or something.

       The game's audio-visual design is pretty special. Each level has a different color and pattern scheme. Many of them are pretty trippy, and when things get chaotic, they can get to the point of blurring so crazily that you can't see what's going on. This is done quite well though, because at that point you aren't supposed to be able to control things properly or see what's going on, such as when you reach a blisteringly fast speed or the screen becomes over-crowded with enemies. The music is great electronic stuff that leans more towards ambient sounds than club music. The sound is drastically affected by what you do. Every hook, every lance, and every interaction cues different sounds and tracks in a way that most games that have reactive music can't match. The sights and sounds are beautiful, and you are shaping both as you go.

       The menu design rivals the Wipeout series. It's visual and audio design is simple and beautiful. Navigating the menu is a joy. In fact, one of the best experiences you can have with the game is scrolling through the level select screen and seeing how the music builds on and subverts itself instantly as you highlight each level and look at all the changing solid colors. There are also some great graphs and charts that show you your progress during levels and on a results screen. These are easy and fun to read and give you a good sense of how much you need to improve to get better scores.

       I've heard that Dyad is kind of defined by its final level, and I would have to agree. The game itself shows you the name of the final level, Eye of the Duck, right on the main menu, which gives you this great sense of building up to some grand finale. If you think you've seen it all in the arena of beautiful trippy graphics, you need to play Dyad through and check out this final area. I won't go into detail since you have to experience it for yourself. I'll just say that, despite that fact that Dyad is a totally abstract game, Eye of the Duck is a beautiful, emotional, profound, and moving experience that left me with eyes a little moister than when I started. It's a great way to do an ending that's different and interesting and really a legitimate piece of artwork.

       Dyad is a unique game that has a great flow to it due to it's constantly shifting set of goals and interactions with it's otherwise identical tube levels. The beautiful visuals and unique reactive music keep pace, making every level a totally new experience. The final level is stunning and really leaves you with a great impression. It would be better if the basic gameplay was compelling enough to warrant the dozen or two hours it would take to get all the trophies. But Dyad's audio-visual design and wonderful ending really edify it into a must-play experience. It's a great game, tier 2.

Lone Survivor: The Director's Cut Review

      I've had a note on my calendar for most of the year reminding me to play Lone Survivor during October for Halloween. Fortunately I've had the opportunity to play a lot of scary-ish games during the Halloween season, as you may have noticed if you look at what I've reviewed in October. Lone Survivor is certainly the most horror-ish of them all.

       You play as a young man who appears to be the only person left who hasn't turned into a monster in his apartment building and possibly the whole city. Information about how we got into this situation is sketchy, as there is no one to ask and the main character's mind is starting to slip, both in memory and his perception of reality. The game constantly has you questioning if you are hallucinating certain experiences. The disease that turned people into monsters almost sounds like the more sci-fi elements of many zombie movies, but you have to call either that theory or your mind into question when you start seeing more and more bizarre things happening.

       In the game, you walk around rooms and hallways in 2d using the direction buttons or the left stick. If you go through doors (by pressing X), you are now in another hallway or room you can walk around. The view may not stay consistent, but your character's left and right do, so you have to orient yourself by your character's new position on the screen. This allows you to follow the maps that you pick up and can view by pressing circle. For example, if you know you want to go left once you enter a door, you need to go to the character's left, not your actual real-life left, as the two may or may not sync up depending on the new 2d vantage point. This sounds counter-intuitive but works fine once you understand it.

       You typically are given a location you need to get to on a map, and you explore your way through rooms and hallways in an effort to get there. You can search through rooms by pressing X in front of things of interest. There are many items you can pick up, such as food and tools that help you out, plus lots of other stuff. Many areas are dark, so you'll need your flashlight, which you can turn on and off with square. Triangle pulls up your inventory, where you can select tools to use, eat food, and look at stuff you've collected. The main character will often comment on what he is feeling or needs. For example, he might say he's hungry, so you might want to eat some food. Or he might say he's growing tired, and you might want to make your way back your apartment to sleep. There are no meters or stats governing hunger or fatigue, but when the character's running comments start to become more desperate and the screen starts to distort, you are going to feel some motivation to take care of him for fear he might be approaching a bad fate. These elements of the game almost become a bit of a life simulator, as you spend a lot of time making sure you get a good night's sleep, a nice cup of coffee made up in the morning, and making sure to scrounge up some half-way decent food so that you don't have to resort to... unpleasant... alternatives.

       The monster's roaming the halls can sometimes be avoided. You can lure them to a section of the screen by placing rotten meat down and then hiding in the shadows by pressing X near certain background areas that allow you to hide in them. Rotten meat can be placed by holding L1 and pressing triangle. A few other items are hot-keyed into this L1 menu as well for your use. Holding R1 pulls out your pistol. When it is out, X fires it and O reloads it. If a monster sees you, it will attack you, and you will die if you take too many hits. A lot of these fights are intense as multiple monsters might spot you if you turn on your flashlight at the wrong time. You'll struggle to fire at them and reload as they charge you and attack.

       Lone Survivor is a 2d pixel-art game. The characters and backgrounds are made out of big, chunky pixels. It's drop-dead gorgeous and pretty unique looking, like a living cross-stitch pattern. There are a lot of environments, items, and characters, and they all look great in this art style. Particularly great are the grotesque monsters roaming the halls of your apartment building. They are really horrific, and fit perfectly into the pixel art style. You can't see details in the pixel art, and that is kind of the point with these monsters. There is something terrible going on with them that you can't quite figure out. Something you can't quite perceive.

       The sound design is also amazing for these creatures. The sound of them walking around, and especially the sound of them eating, is terrible to hear and really establishes the mood. The music contributes to the atmosphere too, switching from hopelessly low-key sounds to disturbingly optimistic sounding depending on the situation.

       The writing is also very solid. The main character almost constantly narrates his mood and needs and comments on everything. This gives you a great feel for his state of mind and body, and what he thinks about all the stuff he witnesses. Between the art, the sound design, and the writing, the game is a near perfect depicter of its intended mood – desperation, fear, and mental breakdown.

       That's not to say the story is that great. The one big flaw with the game is that the endings are pretty weak in my opinion. I didn't get too much out of them despite the big potential to do interesting things with the settings and characters that are so well presented along the way. That said, there is one element of the endings that is really special. It's shocking the first time you see it, actually. Obviously, I can't say what it is. I was thinking about alluding to what it is, but I won't even do that, please check it out for yourself.

       The journey is very important in stories like this, so it's not the end of the world that the endings didn't live up to the potential that was there. This is a game where I had some true empathy with the character, where he would sometimes say things that I was thinking in my head as we both witness some new horror or experience. Very few games have done that too me. There is a lot to discover and see, and you are right there along for the ride with this poor guy. The general loop of exploring, discovering, trying to take care of your mind and body, and desperately avoiding and fighting monsters is also very fun. That's why Lone Survivor is a great game, tier 3. It would have been tier 2 or higher if it could have pulled together something special in the endings too. Still great stuff though.

Left Behind Spoiler Post!

SPOILERS!!! SPOILERS!!!SPOILERS!!! SPOILERS!!!SPOILERS!!! SPOILERS!!!SPOILERS!!! SPOILERS!!!SPOILERS!!! SPOILERS!!!SPOILERS!!! SPOILERS@@@ SPOILERS!!! SPOILERS!!!SPOILERS!!! SPOILERS!!!

       Quick little spoiler post here. So... I guess Ellie is a lesbian. I'm really conservative about most issues and I believe that homosexuality is morally wrong per the teachings of the Bible. Of coures, I also adhere to Christ's strong commands to love everyone and not judge. So of course I still love Ellie as a character, but I'm also a little upset that what I view as a negative thing is portrayed as one of the only positive things in Ellie's life. I also feel like it kind of takes away from the great hours I spent with Riley in the mall. That felt like such an innocent playtime between two young girls, but the scene in the department store at the end soured that for me a bit (still very enjoyable though. Got a vibe of realism from their conversations and behaviors that I recognize from seeing teenage girls talk and run around malls).

       Ellie still comes off as quite the innocent character, and she's still great. And I still loved this DLC. I just wish Ellie and Riley were friends only. Hopefully I don't draw too much ire for this opinion. It's also a bit weird that this is revealed as a sneak attack in DLC months after the game came out. Very similar to what we learned about a certain character in a certain series of books after they were all published... It seems like nowadays we have to always think about sexuality as a possibilty when two people of the same gender are good friends, which to me is weird. Obviously some people of the same gender become attracted to each other, but there are also really strong, intimate friendships between people of the same gender that don't have any sexual undertone. I hope that kind of friendship can still be portrayed in fiction without people getting the wrong idea or making assumptions. I'm sure it can, I'm just throwing this idea out there. Thank you for listening, please don't send me hate mail :) Of course non-hate mail disagreeing with me is fine :)

      The combat situation I was talking about in the review is the handful of times there are infected and hunters running around in the same area. Throwing bottles at the hunters to make infected attack them is great, as is getting snuck up on by infected while hiding from hunters. Having both after you at once is quite frightening and also opens up room for some interesting tactics, and as far as I remember, there wasn't a scenario like this in the main game.

       I wonder what Naughty Dog is working on now... Hopefully something good.

The Last of Us: Left Behind DLC review

Note: This review contains the mildest of spoilers for the main of The Last of Us.
       I played Left Behind on grounded mode, which you can do if you have purchased grounded mode. It was a lot of fun that way. The final encounter is really epic and took me 15 + tries to complete. When I finally beat it, I felt like such a baller. That's the great thing about super hard modes. Many of the times I failed this scenario were also lots of fun as I tried to adapt when I made a mistake. Sometimes I would make it really far doing really risky stuff. But then, of course, somebody would take me down... It's funny, I found a lot of materials on my playthrough, but never enough to make anything. Then when I played some sections on easy to get trophies, there was stuff everywhere. That's grounded mode for ya.... Anyway....

       Left Behind is a short DLC chapter for The Last of Us. It took me about 3-5 hours on grounded mode. It takes place in and around the events of TLOU. I'll try not to spoil exactly what's going on... You play as Ellie, so you'll be knifing people rather than choking them out or punching them. The action parts are great and tense, and put you in some very interesting combat situations that you don't see in the main game. Now that I've seen these scenarios, it's actually pretty weird that they aren't in the main game. They were a bit of a surprise to me, and I had a great feeling of the gears clicking in my mind when I saw what was going on, so I won't mention exactly what happens so you can hopefully get that feeling too.

       A big part of this DLC involves doing non-combat stuff. And those parts are really fun and really well written. Switching from playing as Clementine in The Walking Dead Season 2 straight back to Ellie is quite jarring and really emphasizes the drastic differences between these two characters that sound almost identical on paper. The story fills in a few interesting blanks, and doesn't feel tacked on at all, especially if you play it some time after playing TLOU proper (although a few of the artifacts you find are kind of dumb, or at least placed in weird places. Some are cool though). I imagine it probably does seem tacked on if you were to play it immediately after beating TLOU. Then again, maybe not, since the ending of TLOU pretty directly leads into some of what you'll experience in Left Behind.

       Left Behind is a great game, tier 2, just like TLOU.

The Walking Dead Episode 5: No Going Back SPOILER POST

YOU KNOW THE DEAL ABOUT SPOILERS!!!! YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO READ THEM!!!!

YOU KNOW THE DEAL ABOUT SPOILERS!!!! YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO READ THEM!!!!

YOU KNOW THE DEAL ABOUT SPOILERS!!!! YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO READ THEM!!!!

Here're my stats:

I protected the baby.

I shot the zombies instead of going to help Luke in the ice.

I did not ask to leave with Mike.

I shot Kenny.

I was with Jane and the family in the end.

       Man, I think Jane is like the new Kenny now. She kinda made me kill Kenny, and I'm really mad about that. But I had to go with her as that's the best chance for the baby to live. And she did kinda prove her point about Kenny being crazy. Clementine's reaction of saying everything's ok with Jane is not how I feel. I'm mad, and I don't trust Jane now. But I need her help to protect the baby. Maybe I should have said I didn't want to go anywhere with her. But she is great at surviving, and AJ and I need all the help we can get. That's a pretty haunting ending, and another step toward becoming a messed-up adult for Clementine. Clem really took a physical beating this season too. She's going to have a bunch of scars. We'll see where things go from here in season 3. I think a bit of a time jump would be appropriate. Things went so bad for so many people this time around. I wonder if Mike and Bonnie and Arvo are still alive... One of them might be. We'll see if they turn up. 
       That Lee flashback was great.
       I talked to a friend who finished the season, and in the end, his Kenny killed Jane and then he and Clem went to this town they were hoping was safe, but they only let Clem and the baby in. Totally different than my ending! I wonder how season 3 is going to work since the two endings are so different. It seems like it would be hard to bring them back together to follow only one path for a bit in season 3. Maybe there will be two paths from now on? Sounds like a lot of work...
       Great stuff. Not as good as the first season, but still great stuff, and pretty unique among video games. 

The Walking Dead Season 2 Episode 5: No Going Back Review

       Due to the month-long break from playing video games I took to work on my Dropzone Commander miniatures, I missed out on playing episode 4 and 5 of The Walking Dead Season 2 when they first came out. So I actually just played them in a row, one a night for two nights. It's a little weird since I played the other episodes a month or 2 apart. I loved playing episodically, but finishing off with two in a row worked out pretty well. I just finished writing my episode 4 review last night, so this one might reference that a bit.

      Like for starters, Episode 5 ran much, much, much better than the mess that was Episode 4's technical side. In fact, this might be the best running episode of the season, although it still wasn't perfect. There were a few instances of animation stutter and freezing at the beginning of a scene, but that was it. I felt like the graphics really shined in this episode too. The lighting work on people's faces was especially great looking, and a few of the special effects used this time were a bit more impressive than past episodes.

       As for the story, well, another Season is wrapped up, and I am certainly feeling some feels. I don't know if I made the right decisions. How many games leave you with that feeling? This season is not as good as the first, but it is certainly head and shoulders above most video game storytelling. It continues the first season quite well. Wow, it's great stuff.

       Despite my constant griping about the technical problems plaguing this Season (which will continue until they are fixed), I greatly, greatly enjoyed the second season of The Walking Dead, and the last episode is fittingly enjoyable. It raised the story back up to the level of the first two episodes of the season. I hear that season 3 is in the works, and I will definitely play it. Hopefully it can keep this good thing going without losing the magic, and hopefully attain a perfect score by fixing the technical problems. Episode 5 is a great game tier 2, and the season as a whole is as well.

The Walking Dead season 2 Episode 4 Amid the Ruins SPOILER POST!!!

DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU HAVE NOT YET PLAYED THIS EPISODE!!! MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!

Real quick, here are my choices:

I saved Sarah at the trailer park (Although I thought very seriously about leaving her both there and when she fell off the deck. Especially off the deck)

I robbed Arvo, thinking he was lying about his sister since he appeared to be making some kind of shady drop and had a TON of medical stuff.

I crawled through the ticket booth.

I held the baby.

I shot Rebecca.

       The emotion I felt a lot in this episode was anger toward Kenny. I know he's going through enough to literally make someone crazy, but he was treating Clementine terribly. I know it's good writing because I was genuinely mad at him. But now he seems to be doing pretty good. Arguing with Luke is almost a good sign. Man, a lot of people died horribly this episode. Can't wait for the finale!  

The Walking Dead Season 2 Episode 4 Amid the Ruins Review

       So this review is much the same as all the others, but a little worse. This episode ran worse than any other with the exception of some sections back in season 1. The amount of frame-rate drop and animation chugging and skipping that goes on is downright embarrassing. I've played a lot of games with much more complex animation than this that were made by only a handful of people that ran smooth as butter. As I watched the credits roll and saw the several dozen names of the people who made this game scroll by, all I could think was how can this many people let something with this many technical problems out the door. Didn't any of them think to themselves, “Wow, this game runs TERRIBLY.”

     It's to the point now that it is really starting to break the immersion, and immersion is this game's main thing. The story is still great (although this chapter is not quite on par with the first two of the season, but it's slightly better than episode 3. Not that episode 3 is terrible, it was merely great when I am expecting perfection), but didn't quite totally suck me in as many episodes have. The technical problems played a big role in that. It's very distracting. I can only hope that someone at Tell Tale reads this and is shamed into making future episodes better. Seriously, I don't care if you delay an episode by months, don't ship it like this.

     My missing stats from episode 3 appeared when I downloaded episode 3, so that's good. But then there was no "next time" preview at the end of episode 4. Another glitch? Or maybe they just didn't make one? Either way I missed it as I love the previews.

     All that whining aside, this episode continues one of gaming's great stories and succeeds pretty well at continuing it. There are a few rough patches in the story, but in general it's pretty great. I felt some emotions I don't usually feel while playing a game (and not the normal tug at the heartstrings either, see my spoiler post for details). I am of course, really pleased with it in general and glad I played. It just doesn't even come close to flirting with perfection like the best Walking Dead episodes do. It's a great game, Tier 3. Onto the finale!!

Soldner-X: Himmelssturmer Review

      Crazy German name, check. Story that can justify you fighting any kind of mechanical or biological enemy, check. One vs. thousands theming, check. Pre-flight checklist complete, must be a shoot-em-up!

      Starting up Soldner-X, I could immediately tell it was made by Eastasiasoft and Sidequest studios, the same people that made Rainbow Moon. It shares some assets with that game, including a few fonts. The style is also similar, with many of the enemies having a very sprite-like appearance despite not actually being sprites (or maybe they are HD sprites, I dunno). I think it is because they have some small bits of animation to them that loops, much like a classic sprite. Soldner also features multiple pop-up tutorials to teach you it's many systems, just like Rainbow Moon. And by that I mean that they are the exact same boxes.

     Soldner is one of the hardest 2d space-ship shooters I've ever played, and I feel like I am pretty good at them. I can hold my own in Ikaruga, Philosoma, R-Type, and quite a few others. Soldner has been carefully designed to put it on par with games like that as far as difficulty goes. I started playing on normal mode. After about 5 attempts, I pushed the difficulty down to easy. Then I went down to very easy. Even with earning a few extra continues along the way, I think it took me a few tries to beat the game on very easy, which is where I recommend everyone should start. Then I went back to easy and was able to beat that in a few tries. I never beat normal mode. This all took 27 tries and over 20 hours (estimated).

     Soldner sets itself apart from your typical shooter mechanics with a few neat systems and ideas. One of the most noticeable is the chain system. Killing enemies with the same weapon builds up a chain meter. Once full, you gain a chain level if you switch to another weapon. Completeing multiple chains in a row releases power-ups. You need power-ups bad, so following this chain system is really important to keeping a good flow of power-ups coming your way. This system is easy to follow even for a beginner because there is a helpful chime that tells you when to switch weapons. This system really gives Soldner a different feel than other shooters, and since there are so many shooters in the world, you need something different to hold your attention. There are a few odd quirks to this system though. If you want to keep using the same weapon and still build your chain meter, you can simply switch to a different weapon when the meter is filled and then switch right back to the first weapon. This is tempered by the fact that your weapons overheat if used too much. It's also weird that when you gain a chain level that will release a power-up, you don't automatically start a new chain, you have to switch weapons to manually release the power-up and get the new chain started. This can mess up the flow a bit if you forget to do it.

      Soldner is also different than other shooters in that it has a lot of different power-ups, including some very clever ones, such as weapon protection, which keeps your weapons powered-up in your next life if you die. This is really important as getting downgraded from throwing out hundreds of bullets to a pea-shooter is frustrating and can lead to a chain of deaths. It's reminiscent of the way you could keep weapons powered up in Philosoma by manipulating what weapon you had equipped when you died. There is also an armor piercing shot power-up that makes you do normal damage to heavily armored enemies that take very little damage from your normal shots, a cool-down power-up that stops your weapons from over-heating, and bad power-ups that give you de-buffs, including a particularly evil one that kills you outright if you pick it up!

Soldner has another great mechanic giving it a unique feel: beserking. When your health gets low, you enter beserk mode. You take half damage and deal out double damage. This makes most deaths very dramatic as you become extremely powerful right before you die. This often allows you to finish off a mini-boss or blast through a difficult section and is a tremendously great idea. It would fit right into almost any video game. I'd love to see the same thing in more games as it is really fun. One more thing, Soldner also shows you how much damage you are doing in the form of RPG style hit point numbers bouncing off enemies as your shots hit them. Genius, I love seeing that in a shooter setting for the first time.

      The Soldner X fighter has 6 weapon systems it can use. You always have the standard rapid-fire shot and the lightning shot, which can hit multiple enemies at once but does less damage. You can also pick up a few more powerful weapons in some levels. Rather than overheating, these weapons have limited ammo. You can get a very-short range flamethrower that does massive damage and a powerful laser shot that arcs in an interesteing firing pattern. You can also hold one traditional bomb, which blows up in a wide radius (but which does not destroy bullets like many bomb weapons do), and up to five rockets. If you equip your rockets, holding down fire causes them to lock onto the enemy on-screen with the most hp. Releasing fire launches the rocket, which then heat-seeks it's way around the screen to the target. If it hits, it does massive bomb-like damage. Some enemies are equipped with these rockets too though....

      The game constantly encourages you to find hidden keys in its levels, promising some kind of cool unlock if you find a majority of them. These are carried by enemies or hiding in destructible objects and out of the way spots. I won't spoil what you unlock, but I'll say that it is very, very worth getting.

      So those are a few of the things that make Soldner X different. Beyond that, it is a very standard horizontally-scrolling shooter. The d-pad is move, X is fire, square is use bomb, and L1 and R1 cycle through your weapons. The enemy design and backgrounds also include a lot of things you have seen in other shooters. Some enemies, especially the more civillian and military looking enemies, look almost exactly like some designs from R-Type and Philosoma to me. There are a few really cool and unique designs among the more standard stuff. A few bosses stand out in particular as being either unique or a nice homage to some famous bosses from other games. The Soldner X fighter that you control is a great design too. The story, which is told by some terribly written mid-level text over nice art pieces, is almost exactly the same are R-Type (an evil force in space is corrupting everything). Surprisingly, the ending to the story is quite good.

Soldner's music is also quite good. It too seems to be homaging some famous shooter music. One amazing track sounds very similar to a track from the game Phalanx (which is hidden on the disc with the PS1 game Zero Divide). And if I remember right, the Phalanx level with that track has you shooting down asteroids just like the Soldner level does.
      My only real complaint is the presence of some cheap deaths when you re-spawn into solid objects. You have a few seconds of intangibility when you re-spawn, but it's still easy to get stuck inside an object and instantly die during some crowded sections. This is really frustrating as you need every life you can get. It's also hard to succeed when you re-spawn without a lot of firepower in a really hard section. This can cause multiple deaths in a row. The game will often drop you some free power-ups if this happens, but not enough to get you back to full strength if you were really powered-up before.

      Soldner looks very much like a standard shooter, but actually playing it gives you a different feel than most games because of all the unique features built into the game. Standard features, such as enemy patterns and boss fights, are also superbly designed. Enemies move in quite dastardly ways to try to get hits on you, and boss fights are slug-fests against dynamic foes with some interesting attacks and patterns. Soldner stays fun whether you are fighting hundreds of tiny ships, dodging mines, taking on a trio of mini-bosses and their entourage, or navigating deadly cave walls or asteroid fields. A lot of tiny tweaks to the standard formula make for a great game, tier 3. Just don't expect to be able to beat it on normal mode without putting in a few dozen hours. It's disturbing to think that there are 3 difficulty levels above normal....

Urban Trial Freestyle Review

      I don't usually think about playing dirt-bike Darrell type games. But I watched a video of Urban Trial Freestyle and thought it looked really great based just off of what is happening in the background. That first impression turned out to be very accurate and spoke to one of the game's greatest strengths; its theme. I'll explain after going over the basics.
     In Urban Trial Freestyle, you control a dude on a motocross bike. The environments are 3d, but you only operate on a 2d plane. Your bike is oriented going left to right, and it can't change direction. Your only controls are acceleration (X), brakes (Square), and shifting the rider's weight around (left analog stick). You can also go very slowly in reverse by pressing the brake twice and holding it down. That's it. Very simple. But there is a lot of nuance to this control scheme.
      In each level, you must go from left to right and go over obstacles with the goal of either completing the stage as fast as possible or scoring points by completing stunts at certain spots in the level, depending on which type of level you are playing. In race levels, you must beat certain times to earn stars. In stunt levels, you need to get high ratings on specific stunts you do at specific points in the level to earn points to earn stars. Stunts include things like jumping high or long off specific ramps, getting your speed up as you cross certain lines, and landing on certain bulls eye areas. Stars are then used to unlock new levels.
        If you've ever seen a trials rider in real life, you'll know the basic mechanic of the game. If you're unfamiliar with the idea, trials riders are really good at riding up obstacles. In real life, they can climb sheer walls and make fantastic cat-like leaps between obstacles. It's pretty amazing. So in the game, you are mainly climbing obstacles using the same kind of techniques you might see in real life, such as rapidly accelerating to jump high or long, leaning hard into the bike to make it climb a steep incline, and using ramps to launch a bike up and then balancing it on one tire until you can roll the whole bike where it needs to go. I've only seen this type of riding a few times on tv, but from what I remember, the animation in this game is pretty spot on. The bike moves realistically. That's not to say this is a realistic game, because it isn't at all, which leads us back to the theme I was talking about at the beginning...
        You are trial riding in urban environments that are populated with people and activity. It reminds me of the way I used to imagine a skier just outside my car window when riding in the back seat as a kid, riding through the snow over every obstacle we passed. You ride through construction sites, office buildings, mines, junkyards, highways, you name it. And all of these places are bustling with activity, some of which is window dressing, and some of which comes into play. And it isn't just any activity. It's all negative. Cars and trains are always crashing. People are fighting or arguing. All kinds of over-the-top accidents are occurring, and you are riding right through the center of the chaos. Something bad is about to happen to everyone and everything you see. More than that, everything seems destroyed and half-held together with people camped out inside half-destroyed buildings, like the city is just starting to rebuild after a bad war or something. Or maybe your character is the harbinger of destruction, bringing chaos wherever he rides. News headlines that play on the radio during the title screen seem to back-up the idea that something bad is going on. The headlines are often about natural disasters and other problems that you might hear about on the real-life news. It's almost like the game is trying to make a statement about the way people fight with each other, the way natural disasters and tragedies are part of our everyday lives, and the way accidents with machines, like cars and trains and infrastructure, are a part of our lives as well (just this past weekend I saw a car on the highway totally engulfed in flames). I think the developers really were trying to make a statement of some kind. It works really well since it never tells you this statement, just shows it to you in the world and lets you really feel it.
        It also lets you revel in the chaos. Cops are always on your trail, and you end up riding over their cars as they pull up. You'll gleefully ride through horrific traffic pile-ups on the highway. You witness over-the-top destruction of vehicles, machinery, structures and more, some in the background, and some falling apart as you ride over it (or because you rode over it). Some of the crashes and scenes in the game are really horrific and crazy, but the game manages to walk the line of having those parts be fun action scenes yet still giving you a little bit of food for thought about the fact that we all drive around in cars at 65 miles an hour and that this will cause the deaths of thousands of people.
         The levels can generally be stumbled through in just a few minutes, but earning enough stars to keep the new levels flowing requires good performance. You generally need to get the feel of each new level before you can earn the 3rd-5^th stars in it. A lot happens in the levels, and knowing what is going to come is key to racing through quickly or setting yourself up just right to complete stunts. It's also fun to just slowly work your way through the levels for the first time as well, experimenting until you figure each obstacle out. This is made easy by the fact that you can reset to the last checkpoint instantly by pressing triangle (which you also have to do if you crash. You crash constantly).
         The game has a pretty strict star quota for opening levels. About three-quarters through, I started really having to work to get the new levels open. You can earn five stars on each level, and the game basically requires you to have 4 star ratings on most levels and 5 on some to keep the new levels coming. This is a bit too strict, especially since even a not-so-great player will have a blast stumbling through the later levels. The requirements are so strict, I almost quit before opening the last few levels, even though I really wanted to see them. I stuck with it though, and it was totally worth it; the last two stages are incredible. If only I had known that upgrading my equipment would make a big difference in performance. You see, you can find money hidden away on the tracks in out of the way spots. Picking it up lets you buy parts for the bike. This didn't seem too important to me at first as the low to mid-level parts don't seem to make a huge difference in performance. But if you buy and equip all the best parts, your bike performs drastically better than even the mid-level equipment. So much so that I ran through the game again once I maxed out my equipment and was able to earn quite a few extra stars.
        The game also has 5 challenge stages, which are less-realistic levels that you unlock by beating groups of normal stages. One has you blowing yourself up to see how far you can fling your body. Another has you picking up icons for points along with multipliers. The final one is a really great and fun use of sixaxis control, which I won't spoil here.
         The graphics in the game are really good realistic-style graphics. Very impressive and varied. I think the main design of the biker is not that great, but you can change his clothes into some better looking stuff. The music is pretty good, but maybe not as hard as it could have been. Some of the lighter tracks don't seem to fit to me. I've been listening to a lot of metal lately, and I feel like that would have been a better fit. I could be wrong though.
          Did I mention the game is super-fun? The controls are instantly understandable yet impossible to master. Every little movement and button tap counts, and the tracks can be worked in so many different ways. Every stage is intuitive to get through yet challenging if you are trying to excel. And all the stuff going on in the background and throughout the play area gives the game a big shot of excitement and creates and interesting and thought provoking theming. That's why Urban Trial Freestyle is a great game, tier 2. Next time you drive by that construction site on the way to work, just imagine...