Belart Wright Occult Gaming Plays Ninja Gaiden Black

Check out the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6__wGDtttFzHJ-TI2xtZ0mBbKvPXG6vz

 Ninja n00b Gaiden Black Part 1

Weaksauce Reviews (when time is of the essence): Bayonetta

Amazing visuals, super solid and fun combat, majorly overrated. 

Playstyle
Difficulty: Normal Mode
Gameplay Focus: Beat the Game, Find Secret Lore
and Hidden Items, Get Good at the Combat

Review

I love the fighting in this game.  You can really tell that the minds behind the original Devil May Cry series have conceptualized this game and taken their core ideas to the next level.  With its combat, Bayonetta exudes all sorts of challenge, fun, and creativity.  With everything else, not so much.

To give some insight into my experience with the game, I played through it on Normal difficulty once at the time of this Weaksauce Review.  I am the type of gamer who likes a good challenging game, but needs something else besides the challenge to hook me.  That something could include the game's characters, atmosphere, art style, story, but very rarely will the gameplay alone be enough to hook me.  Bayonetta had plenty of chances to hook me, but it just didn't and it actually consistently did a lot to repulse me to be honest.  My repulsion has nothing to do with anything like oversexualization.  I just think that's a style choice for the character.  My repulsion comes from some frustrating and annoying game design decisions made by Team Little Angels.

Gameplay

The overall gameplay is a mixed bag for me.  On the one hand you have tight, engaging, highly fun, and challenging combat with extremely well designed enemies.  On the other hand, you have mindless mandatory minigames and platforming sections that seem to drag on forever and constantly interrupt the most fun aspect that the game has going for it, the combat.

I'll talk about the combat first.  There are a nice amount of weapons, each with their own types of attacks and combos.  Everything feels unique from the default handgun punches and kicks to the samurai sword to the whip, shotgun, claws, and bazooka.  There's probably even more weapons that I didn't find.  You can also perform a variant of purchased special moves with each weapon.  While the combat does indeed feel near perfect, certain things hold it back as well.  The first is the fact that the game, in some ways, discourages player experimentation during the first playthrough of the game.  Every technique and weapon you can buy costs several completed levels worth of in-game currency.  The game gets around this with its techniques by having a "Try it" function available so that you can practice with the technique in a training space before buying it.  It's a great function that many other similar action games can definitely implement themselves.  But beyond that, the weapons themselves that you unlock are ridiculously expensive and so is everything else including the accessories that you'd have to save up the whole game to buy.

There's also the fact that the game introduces a new enemy to you every few moments so you don't ever really get a chance to master strategies against certain enemies before you're pitted against new ones.  The game loves to mix and match enemy types too.  One particular enemy that really frustrated me was Gracious and Glorious, two golden "super" version of two enemies you fight earlier, Grace and Glory.  Grace and Glory were difficult enough because they could each attack you through your own attacks with "superarmored" strikes and also attacked you together.  Gracious and Glorious can do that and can't be frozen with Witch Time.  This would be a tough fight regardless without that core gameplay mechanic, given how they fight.  The situation was made tougher for me because I had no clue why my Witch Time wasn't working.  There was no previous indication that it wouldn't work against certain enemies and the game gave me no clue why it wasn't working on them even after dying about six times to them.  They even introduce these characters in a cutscene so I have no clue why Bayonetta didn't at least make an effort to say that her Witch Time wouldn't work.  Situations like that made the combat a little bit less than perfect.

Graphics

Top notch visuals, especially when in motion.  But when the action slows down and you're allowed to stop and look at buildings and objects up close there is definitely a lack of details.  Sometimes it just looks like prettied up PS2/Dreamcast objects.  There's a clunkiness to many of the objects like cars.  Some of it is to do with the art style but the models themselves look pretty clunky compared to the concept art.  But when in combat you'll never notice these things.  The effects during combat are really vibrant and Bayonetta and enemy special attacks get some nice looking special effects.  The enemies (especially giant bosses) have an extraordinary level of detail put into them.  Oh and Bayonetta's transformations are great touches for her speed and flying abilities as well.  The game tells more story in its visual effects than its actual narrative at times.

Audio

Pretty good audio.  Nothing much to say.  The soundtrack is kind of catchy, but not my type of music.  The music did manage pump me up during the combat.  The voice acting was okay.  The dialogue itself was pretty hokey and purposefully cliche, but some would say it adds to the charm.  There were one-liners everywhere from just about every character.  The sound design helps give weight to much of the fighting.

Story

A hot mess, but the lore's good. There's a lot of time and attention given to characters and scenarios that don't contribute much to the overall story.  For instance, Luka's story seems superfluous to everything and the time spent on characters like him, Enzo, and Rodin seems like a waste given how disjointed the story feels with their inclusion. 

Most of the interesting backstory that's in the game can be found in the lore through scattered pages of Antonio's Notebook.  You can pick these pages up throughout each level and read them at your leisure.  Or you can wait until chapter 11 where all the lore and backstory are dumped unto you at once.  Before chapter 11 you just randomly chase bosses or Jeanne while Bayonetta's memory slowly returns the they pretty much reveal all the lore you've been reading in Antonio's Notebook beforehand in a chapter 11 cutscene which is nearly at the end. 

The rest of the time you're presented with cutscenes and character dialog that barely reveals anything or moves the story forward in any meaningful way.  It's all corny, cliche riddled dialogue and awkward character interactions.  Though I do like the characters, at the end of the day I feel they weren't utilized very well in the game.  Everything felt shoehorned in.  The Bayonetta, Jeanne, Balder, Cereza story arcs were pretty simple but good overall.  There were some neat though predictable twists and character drama.  More of that and less Luka/boss chasing randomness would've benefited the game a lot.  Of course, I didn't expect much from the story going in since story has never been this team's strong suit.

Presentation

Very clean and familiar presentation.  Reminiscent of Devil May Cry in every way except art direction.  I found everything to be easily accessible, with the exception of the item mixing menus which confused me for a while.

The Quick and Dirty

Positives:

+Great Visuals
+Amazingly Solid Combat
+Very Creative Enemy Design
+Challenging Gameplay
+Much Lore To Find
+Trying Out Techniques Before You Buy Them
+Gallery Mode With Concept Art, Music, Model Viewer, etc.
+Harder Difficulties and Hidden Challenges and Secrets For Gameplay Value

Negatives:

-Too Many Other Types of Gameplay Forced In.
-Anything Besides Combat Feels Wonky (platforming, minigames, etc.)
-Lore Isn't Shown Naturally In The Game.  It's Also a Wordy Mess.
-Story is Incoherent From Start to Finish.  Everything Feels Shoehorned In From The Mobster Guy, To Rodin, To Lucca.  Could've Been Much More Focused.
-Cutscenes Are Mostly Used For Fun Moments But Time Could Be Made To Expand The Story as Well.
-Could Use More Fighting in the Main Playthrough.
-Story Relies on Cliches and Overdoes the Cheeseball Moments, Creating Something That Feels Cheaper Than It Is.
-Boring, Chatty, Weaksauce Main Villain.
-SUCKY MINIGAMES!!!
-Last 4 Levels Bored Me to Death When I Wasn't Fighting and the Ending Dragged On and On.

What is a weaksauce review?
A weaksauce review is a review of a game, based on it's surface impressions.  Weaksauce reviews are born from me not having a lot of time or maybe interest to delve deeply into a game's deeper mechanics or systems which I do in my Deeper Look series.  So I'll do a first impressions type of review about my standard gameplay experience.

I'm Baaaaaaaaack!...and slightly more different than ever before!!!

^^Excuse the title grammar^^

Hey everyone!  Belart here and I’m back from my long hiatus from the blog (and life) and am here today to announce my plans for upcoming blog content.  This hiatus is mostly from pure unadulterated laziness and confusion about dealing with my life’s journey.  The silver lining with all this is that I’ve kept fairly productive as far as the writing goes and have been noting down some really cool ideas for the blog, my life, and my stories.  So now that the soul searching is over (mostly) and I have a rough idea of what I want to do for the month and upcoming year, here’s what I plan to post:

#1 will be a post on this year’s NaNoWriMo and how I did **spoiler, not so good** and what I learned from it.

#2 will be more Average Joe profiles and videogame breakdowns which are long overdue.

#3 will be a blog hop post, which seems like it’ll be pretty fun.

After that I’m not quite sure what I’ll put up but I’ve been gaming a lot lately so probably more VG breakdowns.  I’ve gotten into Dark Souls and Armored Core like crazy lately and of course Borderlands 2 is always in the system.  I just bought a bunch of games digitally over the last few weeks.  So much so that my 250 GB Xbox 360 hard drive only has 6 GB left.  Xbox is really putting out some awesome deals of late.  I was able to get most of the stuff I’ve always wanted to play like the Fallouts, the Elder Scrolls games, Red Dead Redemption, RE6, a slew of Tomb Raider games, Tales of Vesperia, DMC, Eternal Sonata, Soul Calibur V, Tales from the Borderlands, Mirrors Edge, and a ton of stuff that I can’t remember right now.  Each ranged from $2 to $10 so I went a little crazy.

Anyways it’s back to productivity in all things and back to learning new things.  My next endeavor will be learning to draw.  So my life for the next six months will consist of writing, typing, editing, publishing, marketing, dishwashing, reading, drawing, training, family stuff, and maybe a little gaming.  Sounds fun, except for the lack of dating but all good things come in time.  Must focus and improve for now.  Thanks for reading and be sure to make someone you love smile at least once today.  It works wonders.

Guardian Heroes Breakdown: What is Guardian Heroes?

Guardian Heroes XBLA Version
Release Date: 10/12/11
System: Xbox Live Arcade

Guardian Heroes was originally released for the Sega Saturn in 1996.  This Game Breakdown will be focused on the new "Remix" version released for the Xbox 360's Xbox Live Arcade.  This version is a high definition remake of the Saturn version with some massive gameplay, graphical, and user interface tweaks.

This type of article of mine will typically cover: a brief history of the game, what the game's about, a summary of the gameplay and story, who was involved in the making of the game, and what makes the game unique.  Later on I'll Breakdown which features of the game the games industry can learn from and which features could've been expanded on.  I'll also note what I liked and disliked about the gameplay.  If you're not familiar, these videogame breakdowns are not made for the purpose of reviewing.  I make these to take a critical eye to games I like and don't like to understand what makes them enjoyable or not so enjoyable.  This is, of course, all subjective to my opinion so take it with a grain of salt.  Now let's start!

Today we'll talk about the history of the game.  Particularly its release date and a little about the creators.  I should probably also tell you what the heck Guardian Heroes is even about.

History

Wish I had a Saturn :'(

Guardian Heroes was originally released January 26, 1996 in Japan.  I'm not 100% sure on the date that the game was released in the U.S.  Wikipedia lists it as January 25, 1996 while IGN lists it as May 26, 1997.  I've even seen it listed as January 23, 1996 while elsewhere other sites simply and safely list it only by year, the year being 1996.  It was released on the Sega Saturn by Treasure and Sega.  Treasure developed the game while Sega published it.  Because a lot of Saturn games didn't have a ton of media coverage in the U.S. at the time (mostly guessing on my part), this game went on to be considered a cult classic with a niche fanbase despite everything about it having mass appeal and in many ways being ahead of its time.  Maybe it wasn't dark enough for the 90's, oh well who knows.  To this day there isn't a beat 'em up quite like Guardian Heroes, discounting the Nintendo 3DS game Code of Princess whose development team is headed by the same brilliant lead designer and lead programmer as Guardian Heroes.

 

 

What is Guardian Heroes?

Guardian Heroes is a multitude of things but it is mainly a beat 'em up videogame with heavy role playing game (RPG) influence which includes character growth and a deep narrative with lots of world lore.  It is a bright and vibrant game that encapsulates the best of early nineties anime and videogames.  Think Slayers or Dragon Quest meets Streets of Rage or Final Fight.  There is plenty of character interaction, dialogue, and scenarios that seem right out of a novel or T.V. show.  The world of Guardian Heroes is inhabited by all manner of men and creatures: from swordsman and townsfolk to magicians, all manner of fantasy creatures, towering mechs, angels, demons, angelic and demonic monsters, and even more.  The combat is incredibly deep for a beat 'em up, I mean 2D fighter levels of deep.  Think of this as Street Fighter -- or better yet Blazblue -- except you're fighting a horde of enemies instead of a single opponent.  It's a multiplayer game with co-op and versus modes with nearly fifty playable characters.  The XBLA version sports some really good drop in, drop out online support and the game has multiple difficulty settings.

 The Creators

Treasure Co. Ltd early logo

 

This game was created by the now legendary Treasure Co., the developers behind such hits as Gunstar Heroes, Dynamite Heady, Radiant Silvergun, and Ikaruga.  They have a much much larger library of hits and have also worked on stellar licensed titles like Wario World for Nintendo and Astro Boy the Omega Factor for Sega.

The team for this game was headed by Testuhiko Kikuchi (also known as HAN) and Masaki Ukyo who also worked as a programmer for Treasure.  Both had previously worked on several projects.  Between the two, albeit mostly seperately, are such projects as Silhouette Mirage, Bangai-O Spirits, Mad Stalker: Full Metal Force, Silpheed: The Lost Planet, Advance Guardian Heroes, Phantom Breaker, Rakugaki Showtime, Sin and Punishment: Star Successor, Yū Yū Hakusho: Makyō Tōitsusen, Mischief Makers, Gunstar Super Heroes, Half-Minute Hero, and most recently Code of Princess.  As you can see, they have quite a proven track record of quality titles between them.  I respect and revere the design decisions they've made and the ways they've blended several genres, especially in Guardian Heroes.  The pair is currently not with Treasure anymore and now (peddle) their talents independently.  Their design legacy and talents can currently be spotted in the Bones/Atlus title Code of Princess for the 3DS which borrows the core gameplay principles of Guardian Heroes.  Of course, Treasure has also given us the amazing subject of this very Breakdown, Guardian Heroes, remix version.

What Influenced This Game

The two games that the wiki stated to have influenced this game are the arcade games Aliens vs. Predator a frenetic side scrolling beat 'em up/shooter by Capcom and Mad Stalker: Full Metal Force an equally destructive combat experience featuring mechs from studio Fill-In Cafe.  I watched longplays of both of these games on youtube and can definitely see how they may have influenced Guardian Heroes.  With AVP you have powerful combos that have characters leaping across the screen to dispatch foes combined with strong projectiles which is a rarity in most beat 'em ups but also prevailant in Guardian Heroes.  It's even possible that some of Randy's and Han's attacks may have even been inspired by the Predator Warrior's attacks.  Some inpiration for the mech designs of Guardian Heroes as well as the idea to stick most of the combat on one plane or rather lane may have come from Mad Stalker: FMF.  Masaki Ukyo is even stated to have worked on Mad Stalker as a programmer and designer. Both aformentioned games are brilliant games in their own right and worth checking out and possibly playing if you can find the right emulator or if you have the money for an original copy.  You should check out extended playthroughs of the games at the Youtube channel of World of Longplays (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVi6ofFy7QyJJrZ9l0-fwbQ).  You can also go to their site at http://www.longplays.org which is where I found videos of these two rather obscure games.

Aliens vs. Predator, for Arcade

Mad Stalker: Full Metal Force for PC

Next we'll go into more detail about what makes Guardian Heroes so special including a detailed synopsis of its gameplay, story, characters, and the differences between the original version and the XBLA remix version.  Stay tuned for that and as always, thanks for the browse!

I'm currently hard at work on a new videogame breakdown!!!

[Insert Mystery Game]  (don't look at the picture)

For all you Sega-philes and beat-em-up fanatics, coming soon is...MY GUARDIAN HEROES VIDEOGAME BREAKDOWN!!!

90's awesomeness, still cool today.  This is the cast of Guardian Heroes.  Going clockwise and starting from the badass skeleton you have the Undead Hero, Ginjirou, Nicole, Randy (w/Nando), Han, and Serena.  This is what a diverse cast should look like.

Oh yeah!  I know I aint the only one here excited.  Yes indeed, I will not be reviewing the game because really, who can review such perfection?  No I'll be deconstructing the game, piece by glorious piece, to bring you -- my glorious readers -- my painstakingly detailed observations of what exactly makes this game tic.  By the end of this I hope to find and share exactly what's so magical about this 90's flavored gem and maybe find out how we can recapture the timeless nature of this quality product.