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New Grounds

Judging from what’s in the game now and from what Keiko Iju said in her intervew, it looks like Noise intends the roster in Maximum Impact 2 to look something like this:

  • Kyo, Beni, Iori
  • Terry, Joe, Rock
  • Mai, King, Lien
  • Ryo, Robert, Yuri
  • Alba, NEW, Soiree
  • Athena, Kensou, Mignon
  • Leona, Ralf, Clark
  • Chae, Chang, Jhun
  • K’, Maxima, Whip
  • Seth, Vanessa, Ramon

I’m not saying that’ll be the exact arrangement; it’s just an example. I can see a third Magical Girl taking Kensou’s place. Or a new woman, in King’s.

I’ve broken this into teams, because it seems from the current arrangement like Noise wanted a team-based structure; they just didn’t have enough characters to support it. If you notice, I’m mostly just adding one color character, as Noise puts it — meaning a supporting character or sidekick, such as Benimaru or Kensou — into each of the existing rough “teams” (going horizontally).

Color characters are the likes of Joe, King, Robert, Chang, Ramon, Whip, Vanessa. They serve no important role in the game balance. They don’t represent anything that isn’t already covered by someone more obvious. They exist mostly to provide different kinds of energy. To make the game feel more alive and varied. In my interpretation, it’s the kind of subtle variation just for the sake of humanity which makes The King of Fighters what it is.

Which might go a distance toward why MI doesn’t feel like a KOF game to me. You might notice that there are basically no supporting characters here. It’s all heroes; protagonists. Main characters. Icons. The only ones who you might count as supporting characters are Maxima and Seth — yet K’ and Maxima are close to a matched set, and Seth actually serves a bigger role in the plot than anyone outside the new characters.

I discuss this.

(October 31st, 2004 @ 4:52am)



8 responses

IT’S O.K.!

Shepard sent me a copy of KOF: Maximum Impact. It came with Terry’s hat and a “making of” DVD with interviews with Falcoon and with Noise Factory president Keiko Iju. (Yes, one of SNK’s two development studios is run by a woman. Amazing what we learn when they leave the door open a crack.)

Although I had read that both dubs were available, I can’t find a switch for the Japanese one. That’s a shame, as the English voices are kind of… fruity. And you know how good the normal actors are.

The game system needs some work, though that’s been well established. Otherwise, it is darned impressive for what it is.

The last boss, Duke, is an SNK Boss. I was playing on Normal. I had to continue, I think, at least three dozen times. I spent many times longer on he than on the whole game up to him. If he didn’t plain-out cheat, that would be one thing. (Though, what kind of a boss would that make him?) His meter is always maxed-out, meaning he can use at whim moves that drain half the player’s life and which are difficult to block or avoid.

The second time, I set the difficulty to “Coward” and I beat him without getting hit more than a few times. Then again, I DID use Yuri…

Getting hit can be a problem in this game, given A) the chain combos, B) the walls, C) how damned long you stay on the ground when you fall. Against the wrong opponent, just getting nailed once can be fatal. That shouldn’t take much to adjust, though, for the next game.

Speaking of Yuri, the game overtly suggests in a few places that she indeed is destined to be the heir to Kyokugen. One, it… says that she just might be. Two, you can unlock a Tengu mask for her.

Of course, this game doesn’t seem to take place in any established continuity. So who knows how this applies elsewhere.

I notice that the second instruction booklet (the one that comes with the behind-the-scenes DVD) has full character profiles and stories. This is almost impressive. Rather than being forced to search the Internet for the storyline, SNK now provides it in the actual manual. Of course, it is the manual to a bonus disc. We’re getting closer, though. Maybe Maximum Impact 2 or future home ports of the main series will contain the stories right there on the game disc. Then maybe they’ll work them into the game’s story mode.

Someone asked me why, given their ambitions, SNK doesn’t just make a long, branching, story-based fighting game that you can save and return to between battles. I don’t know. I’ve wondered this for a long time. They did make Samurai Spirits RPG — though that’s not quite the same.

So, yes.

This game is daffy (all the more so due to its dub). It needs some work. It also has a bunch of heart. For a first effort, this is grand. On its own merits, it’s charming. It’s fun. Though flawed, all of the problems can be fixed easily. It makes me want to play the sequel.

Ms. Iju talked about some of the things they’re working on for the sequel. They want to focus on improving the facial animation, the special moves, and the character interaction, to help show the personalities of the characters. They want to add a lot of the livelier supporting characters they had to omit this time (like, I’m guessing, Joe and Benimaru). This all fits. They know what they’re doing.

…

Perhaps I should finish editing Tim’s review.

(October 28th, 2004 @ 2:23am)



27 responses

Keeping Your Options Open: Reinterpreting a Legacy

by Eric-Jon Rössel Waugh

This is an early draft of a feature or review (depending on your perspective) that soon after went up on Insert Credit. The version there is probably better. Still, interesting to compare.

I must be forward: although the series has charmed me for two decades, Gradius is as cold, arbitrary, and unforgiving as videogames get. It almost feels like it doesn’t want me to play it. For my part, I abide where I can; I turn the game off when I lose my first life. The only chapter that has stuck to me through the years is the NES version of Life Force — yet I adore the game. Life Force is one of my favorite games for the NES. It’s one of the best shooters I’ve played. It’s probably one of the games I have the greatest affection for, overall.

Clearly something is odd here.

( Continue reading )

(October 23rd, 2004 @ 9:17pm)



3 responses

On Metroid: Zero Mission

> So I was wondering, why did you never review Metroid Zero Mission?

Because I moved to the other side of the continent, and some plans have gotten kind of lost along the way.

It’s a good game. I really like a few things it does, in particular the way it frames itself and what that means; how it justifies existing alongside the original version of that game. There are some little bits of narrative which I find uncommonly clever and illustrative of just how videogames work, as a medium. The game also tries hard to fix some of the problems in Fusion. Much of that is a success. Some of it, not so much.

I just had a dream in which it was common knowledge (and indeed true) that oranges, left unpicked, grew up to huge gourd-like fruits; their rinds hardened into a shell, while their pulp decayed into a juice then dried away. Oranges also grew along the ground, on vines. There was one orange in particular, on the front porch of my mother’s house in Maine, that had a fungal infection on one corner. Sort of a tumor. I knocked it off, only to realize that if it had the one infection, the whole orange was bad. Especially if I left the hole in the shell which I (unintentionally) did. So I tipped the orange over, adding a flood of rancid matured orange juice to the front lawn.

There are a few things about the game which I don’t like as well as I might, of course. Most of those would take a while to explain, though.

(October 22nd, 2004 @ 9:14am)



7 responses

On the Outside: An Informal Look into Silent Hill 4

by Eric-Jon Rössel Waugh

Today’s post is brought to you by Andrew Toups and the letter Æ.

People complain about Henry’s personality. I don’t get it. I mean, I do. There seems to be this idea that The Room is substantially more character-based than the earlier games, and that the tendency toward supreme understatement in all parties somehow undermines what emotional potential there might be. I don’t know how true that is, though. Taking the game for what it is, I get the idea that the characters are distant because they’re distant. Because that’s the nature of our interaction, as the player and as Henry Townsend.

See, Henry is a strangely normal guy; in a way, more typical than either Harry or James. He doesn’t have a dead wife and a lost daughter. He doesn’t have a dead wife and a crushing sense of guilt. He just has a bottle of white wine and a carton of chocolate milk in his fridge. He has no particular problems, outside his current predicament. Although compassionate for his part, he maintains his distance. As far as others are concerned, Henry’s role is of the bemused observer.

Although he’s not just a foil, Henry is a parallel for the player. You might call him a bit of a Raiden. Think of his circumstances in terms of Myst — with the Malkovich-holes in place of linking books. Notice how much of the game involves peeping — Henry, taking in his world indirectly, which we in turn take in indirectly through Henry. That is, except for the portions in room 302. Those, the most overtly Myst-like, we experience in the first-person. It is only when we leap through the holes, back into the game world, that Henry returns as a buffer.

In his relationship with others, Henry continues this role. He’s nice enough a person; it’s just, this isn’t his world. He’s busy living the life of the mind. Even when he’s standing next to Eileen, he’s still peeping. He’s not really there. He’s just watching.

It is this distance, and the safety it provides, which the game later tries to dissolve — for Henry and the player alike. When the game notices Henry is when it notices the player. When the darkness intrudes into room 302, it is intruding into the player’s own perceived safe space, where there is no Henry to fall back on.

For my part, I would find Henry’s conversations jarring if they were any less zoned-out. I would be distracted if the human relationships were any more satisfying. That would be too perfect. Perfection ruins any illusion. Henry would cease to be so very normal. He would become someone special. And he’s not. He’s no hero. He’s barely a protagonist. He’s just a twentysomething guy with white wine in his fridge. And at the end, Henry has resolved no personal problems. He remains the guy he always was. He just needs a new apartment.

(October 21st, 2004 @ 10:34pm)



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