Review: Fire Emblem: Awakening

Developer: Intelligent Systems
Publisher: Nintendo

Fire Emblem: Awakening is reason enough to own a 3DS.

I don't throw that phrase out lightly, especially because it's hard to convince someone to plunk down $150+ just to play one game. However, when the game in question is as deep and engaging as Fire Emblem: Awakening, it's absolutely true.

Awakening is the latest in Nintendo's long-running series of turn-based tactical RPGs. In Fire Emblem games, you move your characters around a grid-based map, select which enemies they're going to attack, and then watch the battle play out. There are three types of weapons: Swords, axes and lances. Swords are better than axes, axes are better than lances, and lances are better than swords. There are also magic powers, some which are more useful against certain types of enemies than others. Characters that fight alongside each other will also build up friendships. The stronger the friendship, the higher the combat bonus that they generate.
Fire Emblem is also known for having permadeath: If one of your characters dies in combat, they're dead and they're not coming back. That means you have to carefully plan your strategy and protect your spellcasters and archers so that you don't lose them forever.

The most recent entry was Shadow Dragon, released for the DS. It was OK, but certainly not a system-seller. You'd be excused for thinking that Awakening was something similar. I certainly did. However, Awakening has so much more going for it.

The gameplay in Awakening is just as tight as other games in the series, but with an extra graphical sheen that will make it difficult to go back to previous games in the series. I know of what I speak, because I tried going back to Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones and couldn't do it. Awakening is just too pretty. The cutscenes are tremendous, the maps are gorgeous and brightly colored, and the 3D is used to excellent effect.

You can also get characters to marry and have children in Awakening. I won't spoil how it works because a large chunk of the plot hinges on it. However, exploring the romance options for your various characters isn't a superficial waste of time like some other games with romance options. In Awakening, it actually has real gameplay benefits for your characters.

Speaking of those characters, they're all exceptional. They have excellent personalities, which makes it easy and fun to match them up. You can ask yourself questions like, "Should I match up the stoic and gynophobic Lon'qu with the tough and terrifying warrior woman Sully or the scientific and Aspie-esque Miriel? What about Donnel, the country bumpkin? Should I torment him by matching him up with the uptight Maribelle?" You can make these decisions in the best interests of the characters themselves, or just match up completely incompatible characters and see what happens, which is frequently hilarious.

The story is also pretty great, too, full of surprises and twists. In contrast to many video game stories, the characters actually have good motivations and make good choices, and the story fits together really well.

There's also a lot to do in Fire Emblem: Awakening. I've been playing for over 30 hours and I'm still not finished with the main quest yet. I've been dabbling in romance options, doing sidequests, optimizing items, and all sorts of other things besides actually finishing the game just because it's so much fun.

If there are flaws in Fire Emblem: Awakening, they're flaws that are endemic to the series as a whole. For example, just like other games in the series, weapons and magic tomes have a limited amount of uses before they're spent. All Fire Emblem games have this feature, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

It would also be fantastic if Awakening would allow you to restart a battle from the beginning. Some previous games had the "Restart Chapter" option, so I don't know why it's missing here. Maybe they didn't want it because they were afraid that people would abuse it, but let's face it: Most people who play Fire Emblem are going to restart the game when they lose a character anyway. Since they're going to do it anyway, you might as well give the player the ability without making them jump through hoops.

All in all, though, Fire Emblem: Awakening is in the conversation as the best game on the 3DS. That's heady territory, considering some of the great stuff that's out there for it.

If you own a 3DS, get Fire Emblem: Awakening. If you don't own a 3DS but have been on the fence about it, get off the fence and get one for Fire Emblem: Awakening. If you don't want a 3DS at all for whatever weird reason, suit yourself. Just be advised that you're missing one of the best tactical RPGs ever.

Final Rating: A-

Review: Super Hexagon

Developer: Terry Cavanaugh

Terry Cavanaugh is a mad genius. I'm convinced of this, and you can't talk me out of it.

First came VVVVVV, his love letter to the Commodore 64, with an awesome gravity-shifting mechanic, amped-up difficulty level and tremendous music. Now, we have Super Hexagon, his vertigo-inducing, mezmerizing, insanely difficult and insanely simple action game.
In Super Hexagon, you control a little triangle that moves around the perimeter of a hexagon. You can only move left or right, and have to do so quickly in order to avoid getting hit by obstacles that come at you. Meanwhile, a slamming soundtrack plays in the background, the hexagon pulses and spins to the music, and you either fall into a trance or get disoriented and seasick.

Super Hexagon starts out incredibly difficult and doesn't let up. After a brief five-second training session, you're thrown into the fire and have to survive. On your first attempt, you'll probably make it about five seconds or less before dying. I've been playing for a week now, and I can survive on the easiest difficulty for about 30-40 seconds on average. On the hardest difficulty, I can last about 10 seconds if I'm lucky.

This game is not for everyone. There are some that will be put off by the intense difficulty level, and others who will be put off by the dizzying and constantly-shifting patterns. However, if Super Hexagon sounds interesting to you, I have a suggestion: Use headphones to get the full effect. Also, don't play it right before you try and go to sleep. You'll be too wired.

Final Rating: B+

Review: DLC Quest

Developer: Going Loud Studios

DLC Quest is commentary disguised as a game. The basic concept of the game is that DLC (downloadable content) is wrecking games. It's getting to the point that you practically need to pay the game company extra money in order to use a pause screen, or even to jump. That's the direction the industry is going, amirite? You may or may not agree with that assessment, but it's a pretty good hook for a game.

In DLC Quest, the only way to progress is by picking up coins in the game that you can use to "buy" the sections in the game that are missing from a shopkeeper who's all too eager to nickel-and-dime you to death. You can increase your health, get "game-breaking" weapons, and unlock "uncompleted" areas of the game.
For a while, DLC Quest is very, very funny and has some pretty pointed commentary. For example, you can get a sword, but the sword needs to be sharpened before it can be used. You can sit and sharpen it on a grinding wheel, but you'll have to press the "sharpen" button 10,000 times. Why not pay money to get it sharpened much quicker? You get the coins to pay for it, and now you only have to press the "sharpen" button 10 times. That's some pretty pointed commentary on the whole "freemium" way of playing games: "Sure, you can play our MMO for free, but unless you want the game to be a tedious grind, you should pay money."

But, when DLC Quest moves away from commentary and starts trying to be more of a "game," like in the bonus "Live Freemium Or Die" pack, it starts getting tedious. They start picking on some of the other dumb things that games do, like lock certain areas away for Day One DLC, or making you do silly fetch quests, but it doesn't really come together like it should. That's the problem with satire in games: Making a player run all around the world and do ridiculous fetch quests is funny in theory,  but take note: Making the player do something tedious isn't funny, just tedious.

Kurt Vonnegut had a quote that I think is applicable here: "Use the reader's time in a way in which they won't feel that it was wasted." Replace "reader" with "player," and that should give future gaming satirists something to chew on. Sure, you can make fun of fetch quests and annoying backtracking, but somehow you have to make it interesting. Lampshade it somehow, do something that will make the player laugh at it. Just don't waste their time.

However, for $2.99, DLC Quest is a fun little diversion. It could have been better, but then again, so could the majority of the video game industry.

Final Rating: C+

NES Replay: American Gladiators

Developer: Incredible Technologies
Publisher: GameTek
Released: 1991
Spandex Budget: Off the charts

I was a pretty sheltered kid, so I didn't watch much TV when I was little. I got to watch Family Ties, Growing Pains and the TGIF lineup, which I thought was amazing. Aside from those few shows, my knowledge of TV was extremely limited.

However, even a weird, sheltered kid like me was aware of the syndicated TV show American Gladiators. For a brief, shining moment in the late 80's and early 90's, American Gladiators was pretty popular, especially in my grade school. Kids would talk about who their favorite gladiator was (they almost always picked "Nitro" just because he had a cool name) and play miniature versions of the games on the playground, which usually resulted in someone going to the nurse's and/or principal's office.

It was inevitable that a show that featured people that looked like superheroes in real life and inspired such devotion would get their own licensed videogame for the NES, but the developers could have chosen one of two options with the Gladiators. One, they could have made a game with the Gladiators as superhumans, and make the player just a normal person trying to beat them. Two, they could have made you play as the Gladiators themselves, given them superpowers and just amped everything up.

"You will die you will die you will die."

Instead, the developers of American Gladiators decided to aim for the comedy third option: Just include a few of the games from the show, make some of them incredibly easy while making others impossible, and then fall face-first into a pile of cocaine while singing "I Feel Pretty."

American Gladiators includes five of the games from the show and they're all mostly terrible. Let's look at them!

In The Human Cannonball, a rope swings above your character. You stand on one pedestal and the opposing gladiator stands on another. You jump onto the rope, and then time your jump so that you can hopefully fly feet-first into the gladiator, knocking him off his pedestal. It's so incredibly easy. Once I understood the rules, I could play Human Cannonball in my sleep.

In Joust, you have a padded weapon that you're trying to use to knock your opponent off of a pedestal. Sounds fun, right? Shame on you for thinking that. The computer player is completely aware of where they are in relation to you down to the pixel. Move into their range even slightly, and they'll hit you. You can block their attacks, but their attacks happen so suddenly that you don't have time to block. All you can hope to do is frantically press forward and flail at your opponent in hopes that you'll hit them. There's no strategy whatsoever.

In The Wall, you're trying to climb an enormous wall by alternating the A and B buttons to simulate using either your right or left hands while pressing the direction keys. The wall is practically endless. If you get brushed by one of the pursuing Gladiators, you will fall all the way down and have to start over. If you reach for a handhold and are off by a pixel, you will fall all the way down and have to start over. By the way, I am not exaggerating. You have to play pixel-perfect in order to climb all the way up, and even then you'll get mobbed by pursuing Gladiators and will probably lose.

"Death has a padded fist."

In Assault, you're running from one end of an obstacle course to another while a Gladiator inside of a tank shoots at you. You can grab the equivalent of a rocket launcher along the way, but it's more of a defensive weapon than an offensive one. When you fire the rockets, the Gladiator moves away from you to avoid the rocket, so you just have to fire when you see him coming for you. It's really easy.

In Powerball, you have to grab a ball, avoid one of three Gladiators that are constantly mobbing you and somehow deposit the ball into one of five receptacles. You have to put the ball into all five in order to win. If one of the Gladiators so much as touches you, you lose the ball and have to run the whole length of the field in order to get another one.

If any of these sound like fun, that was purely by accident. Every "game" in this compilation is either incredibly easy or incredibly difficult. The hard ones aren't even the good kind of difficult. It's the bad kind, where every time you fail it's because the computer cheated or provided you with an impossible task, not because you deserved it or made a real, honest mistake.

So, yeah. If you want to feel what it's like to slap on some star-spangled spandex and compete for prizes and glory, there are better places to do it than in this game. Like, say, the DMV. Or the police station. Or maybe the hood of a '73 Ford. Don't waste your time playing American Gladiators, I beg of you.

Final Rating:

Next Week: Anticipation

NES Replay: Amagon

Developer: Aicom
Publisher: American Sammy
Released: 1989
Does that letter 'o' have fangs?: Yes.
Yes it does.

I think we can all agree that Japanese culture has its quirks.

Japan isn't as weird as we think it is, of course. A lot of it gets overblown because it's just more fun thinking of Japan as some wacky land of insanity where used panty vending machines are EVERYWHERE and totally legal (they're not) than what it is: Just another place where people are people, albeit with a different culture.

Now that we've made that disclaimer, though, I think we can all think of at least "Japan is weird" story. It's an odd place, but being on an island all by yourself for a thousand years or so will do that to you.

For most of us, our first exposure to the Japanese culture was through the medium of video games. During the 80's and 90's, most of us didn't have access to videos of Japanese game shows or anime where characters grunt at each other for 20 episodes, use their special attack, find out it didn't work, then grunt at each other for another 20 episodes. (That one's for you, DragonBallZ fans.) However, since the vast majority of console video games came from the Land of the Rising Sun, we at least got a taste of how completely different Japanese culture was from our own.
Take the game Amagon, for example. Look at that main character on the title screen. Would you ever guess that the pink-clad doofus with the monkey face is supposed to be a tough soldier (named Amagon) who's crash-landed on an island of murder-death and has to fight his way through to the other side?

This guy.

No! He looks like he just came to this island fresh from Double Cocktail Night at the Copacabana.

Along the way, Amagon can power up and turn into an enormous shirtless musclebound freak named Megagon, because of course he can, and punch his way through the island.

Looking good.

The Japanese title of this game is "Suddenly! Machoman," and I wish that would have been the English title, too. It really would have improved the whole enterprise quite a bit, since Amagon doesn't have much else going for it. The levels are really boring, with long stretches where nothing happens except for the constant attack of the island's flora and fauna.

This is about as exciting as it gets, folks.

As Amagon, you have a gun with which to kill enemies. It has limited ammo, and once it runs out, you're reduced to wildly flailing a stick above your head in order to try and kill enemies. It never works. When you die, your ammo doesn't get refilled for your next life, so if you run out of ammo you're pretty much screwed.

When playing as Amagon, one hit will kill you and drop you back at the beginning of the level. As Megagon, you have more hit points and a stronger attack, but limited range. Some enemies can only be beaten as Megagon, so you have to choose when to bring him out. Since there's very poor level flow, it's hard to tell when you're near the end of a given level, making it easy to summon Megagon well before he's needed.

However, just like most things the Japanese do, there is at least one awesome thing buried in Amagon: The musical track that plays when Megagon is summoned. Listen to it:

That is the 8-bit equivalent of a tyrannosaurus in a helicopter. That is a Rocky training montage in a burning oil tanker while electric guitars wail in the background. That track is two robots flying across the Pacific, firing missiles and laser beams at each other in a battle for the future of humanity.

So now that you've heard the best part of Amagon, you really don't have any excuse to play it. Amagon can almost get by on quirk alone, but the typical Japanese quirkiness isn't enough to get it over the top. However, if you want to play a game where a tough soldier dresses in pink and murders and entire island, here you are.

Final Rating:

Next Week: American Gladiators

NES Replay: Alpha Mission

Developer: SNK
Publisher: SNK
Released: 1987
Difficult?: Yes, but fair.

In NES Replay, we go through each NES game from A-Z to see if they're any good. Today: Alpha Mission.

I've had some mean things to say about games with excessive difficulty levels, but I want to make it clear: A hard game isn't necessarily a bad game.

See, there are two ways to make a game more difficult. The cheap way is by making the player character underpowered, weak and slow and surrounding them with things that can kill them at a moment's notice, then making the player run through the gauntlet again and again. The other, more thoughtful way is by giving the player character a very difficult job to do, but providing them with the tools to do it.

Leave it to SNK to show how it's done with Alpha Mission.

Alpha Mission is a top-down shooter that can be incredibly difficult. Your little ship can only take one hit before you die and you're back at the beginning of the level. However, we're going to compare Alpha Mission with another really hard game that we've covered: The Adventures of Dino Riki. This should be a good direct comparison, since in both games it doesn't take long until you're swarmed with enemies and desperately trying to fight your way out.

A hard game done right.

However, there's a key difference between the two. In Riki, your player starts out really weak. The tomahawks he throws only land a few feet in front of him, and Riki moves incredibly slowly in comparison to his opponents. There appears to almost be a pre-defined path you must travel in order to complete the game, because if you haven't picked up certain powerups at the beginning of the level, you're going to get killed. It's inevitable.

However, in Alpha Mission, your ship's bullets travel the length of the screen and your ship moves quickly enough to evade your enemies. You have two weapons: Bombs and bullets. The bombs you drop below you and hit ground targets. Most ground targets contain powerups, and a lot of the ground targets have a big red E that stands for Energy. Others have different letters that unlock other special powered-up ships.

When you have enough Energy, you can hit Select and bring up your currently available ship choices. For example, one of the ships spews a steady stream of fire out of the front that can obliterate enemies. Another ship has a shield that can absorb enemy bullets. When you run out of Energy, you revert back to your old ship.

Even with the powerups, Alpha Mission's difficulty is still crazy. I was only able to get to the second level, and I've been playing a lot more than my normal twenty minutes. Yet, giving the player choices as to how to beat the levels opens up experimentation, lets players use their own play styles, and at least gives you the feeling of fairness.

By comparing the two games, we can tell the difference. Anyone can make an impossible game. That's easy to do. A game that gimps your player character, puts an excessive amount of enemies in your path, gives them a lot more health that you and then expects you to fight your way out through impossible odds is just being a bully. Some people like getting bullied, and we call those people masochists.

A really well-made game like Alpha Mission, though, presents you with an impossible task, but at the same provides you with the tools to complete it. Those are the kind of games that truly deserve to be celebrated, not the ones curbstomp that gamers into submission and then have the temerity to act like it's the gamer's fault.

Final Rating:

Next Week: Amagon

NES Replay: All-Pro Basketball

Developer: Aicom
Publisher: Vic Tokai
Released: 1989
There's a "watch" setting: That sounds
somewhat creepy.

In NES Replay, we go through each NES game from A-Z to see if they're any good. Today: All-Pro Basketball.

Sports games were really hard to make in the NES years due to the NES' myriad limitations. Developers resorted to all sorts of behind-the-scenes trickery in order to make them work, and when they could pull them off, like they did with Tecmo Bowl, they were great. When they failed, like with most other sports games, the results were painful.

A lot of times, the choice came down to fun or realism. When a developer aimed for realism, the results weren't pretty. For example, 10-Yard Fight could have been great if they would have gone with a more up-tempo feel and given up any pretenses toward representing real football. For example, maybe the could have cut out two linemen per side and added one more wide receiver to give the player more options to throw to. That would have made the game play faster, since there would have been fewer players for the computer to manage, and opened the game a little more, making big plays happen more frequently. Alas, they assumed that people would rather play a gimped version of football, and it stunk.

All-Pro Basketball aimed for realism. The developers tried to make a basketball game with five players per side, fouls for traveling, charging and back passes, and a season mode of sorts. Could they pull all of that off on the NES?

Notice how badly the computer is spanking me.

No. Not at all. Let's look at a few of the problems in All-Pro Basketball and see why they happened.

So, you're going to do an inbound pass from the sideline. In order to do an inbound pass, you hold down the right or left side of the D-pad and throw the pass to one of your players. However, instead of throwing the ball to one of your teammates, you manage to throw the ball the entire length of the court and it ends up out of bounds.

Why did you do that? Well, instead of being able to choose a specific player to throw a pass to, you're throwing the passes in a specific direction. If a player happens to be standing in that general area, the ball will be thrown to them. If a player was standing there and wandered off to a different place on the court right before you pressed the pass button, you'll end up whipping the ball into a vasty nothingness. This happens more often that you'd think.

Now, why would you program a basketball game like that? I don't know much about basketball, I'll admit. I think a shooting guard is the same thing as a New York City police officer, and a power forward is when a bunch of people are standing in line and all move together at the same time. Even with my limited knowledge, I can't believe that there is ever a situation where it makes tactical sense to throw the ball across the court and out of bounds.

This looks SO COOL! If only this was ME
dunking and not the computer player wiping
the floor with me.

And your teammates. Oh, Lord, your teammates. They wander around like confused and frightened lemurs. They don't play defense at all. They don't attempt to block passes or steal. I've seen them run away from the ballcarrier. They bunch up in a clot along the three-point line and let you go one-on-three constantly.

A few other problems: When there's a steal, there's no real sound indicator or anything. The only way you know that the ball has been stolen from you is because the computer player starts running the other way with the ball while you're still running toward your hoop like an idiot. Of course, the computer player doesn't have this problem. They know where the ball is at all times and will steal it right back from you.

The score and time isn't displayed on the screen either at all times in All-Pro Basketball, which is essential for a game where you need to, you know, know how much time you have at all times. It's only displayed on the wall behind the hoop, and if you happen to be at midcourt you have no idea how much time is left on the clock. With most sports games, when time starts running out they'll start playing a sound indicator, maybe a series of beeps or dings just to let you know that time's a-wasting. Barring that, they'll at least have the current time on the screen at all times so you at least know how much time is left. All-Pro Basketball doesn't do either, so you end up dilly-dallying around midcourt only to realize that you should have shot the ball a second ago. Of course, the computer player always knows what time it is and will attempt that half-court shot.

"Well, sports games are supposed to be played two-player!" you might say. If that's was the intent with All-Pro Basketball, why did they include a single-player season mode at the heart of it? It's obvious that the developers intended you to play single-player at some point. Yet, because your opponent barely commits any fouls, always knows what time it is, and doesn't make the same mistakes that you're forced to make because of your idiotic teammates, single-player is a hideous misadventure.

The one consolation is that there's one person in the game who seems to understand what you're going through: The reporter in the news segments.

"The world is burning."

"I smell the seared flesh and hear the snapping of necks. We are all among the damned."

"RUN."

She understands. She's the only one who understands.

Final Rating:

Next Week: Alpha Mission

NES Replay: 1942

Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Released: 1986
Kind of Weird Feelings: Yes

I say that there were only three companies that really understood what the NES was capable of and how to push it to its limits: Nintendo, Konami and Capcom.

Capcom started in 1983 and quickly became a force in game development. They formed from two companies merging together, and the name "Capcom" is a portmanteau of "capsule computers," which was their name for arcade machines. However, while they started out in arcades, it didn't take long for them to take control of the NES. In short order, they were making some the greatest NES games, and the first one we're going to cover is 1942.

However, there are some weird things about 1942 that gave me pause. Tell me if this seems weird to you:

1. In 1986, Capcom was a completely Japanese company.
2. 1942 is set in the year 1942. It's not an alternate-history 1942, where there are aliens and laser beams or anything. This game appears to really be set in 1942.
3. Your enemies are Japanese planes. I'm not making that up, either. Look carefully at the screenshot below.
4. Therefore, we can conclude that 1942 is about World War II, and in the game you're killing the ancestors of the developers en masse.

Correct me if I'm wrong on any of these points, because I would love to not have a twinge of guilt every time I blow up an enemy plane in this game.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this game, but imagine the furor that would erupt if a developer today made a game where you did nothing but mow down wave after wave of American soldiers en route to destroy Washington DC. I mean, this is weird, right?

Either way, that's way too much thinking about a game that's clearly supposed to be nothing more than a mindless yet challenging shooter. Even at this early juncture, Capcom already had a good handle on the NES, being able to show an astounding number of on-screen enemies and bullets. The animation is fantastic, and some of the bigger planes look really imposing.

That's to be expected, since the producer of 1942 was Yoshiki Okamoto, who eventually ended up co-designing Street Fighter II. He's had an interesting career. He went from Capcom, where he worked on games through Resident Evil, and ended up with his own company where he made Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom (which is highly underrated).

There are a few problems with this game, though. The music in the arcade game is supposed to sound like a drum track with military-style whistles, but on the NES it just sounds chirpy and tinny. Plus, the levels are incredibly repetitive. You'll see the same few planes, the same few islands, and the same ocean below for the first several levels, and it doesn't get much better the further you go.

That being said, 1942 is still a pretty fun game. It's just the right amount of challenging, and it's neat to see that Capcom was able to work wonders on the NES right from the beginning.

Final Rating: