Not Now, I'm Busy

I feel slightly hypocritcal at this present time, so much so that the horns on my helmet are slightly drooped to give an impression of shame.

I feel this shame because I can remember (vaguely) going into a blood-rage frenzy at a certain shopping outlet and killing all the store assistants due to a problem with Nintendo’s inability to publish games that didn’t have the same four or five characters in every title, or produce an even passable JRPG.

Even though they are definitely guilty of my first accusation they are certainly no longer guilty of my second accusation.

Golden Sun is a passable JRPG.

Note: I didn’t say the words good or great, I said passable. And there are some damn good reasons for it.

In a book I once used to get something out of my teeth, someone who could read told me that the book said that a sentence is a story in itself, it should be logical, whole and tell a tale. Darkest Dawn is the part of the sentence that comes after a semicolon. I’m not exactly sure how important the pre-semicolon sentence would have been, but I can only assume it would have helped me understand what the fuck was going on.

In the game you take primary control of Matthew, a silent protagonist (for a given value, will explain further when I get the last of this book out of my teeth) who is teamed up with Tyrell, Karis and later on, Reif. These are the children of the previous heroes in the series, and are all very, very annoying.

Matthew et al (that’s latin for ‘and the rest of the annoying characters in the group) are Adepts, people who can use psynergy (which makes them sound like the marketing and HR department rather than a group of people who can control the elements).

So our group has to do something, and I’m not exactly sure what that is at the moment as it seems to change drastically as each fifteen minute period goes past. I originally had to fix what is more or less a hang-glider, and now I’m caught looking for a mask in the midst of a war between two nations. Somehow the ‘Golden Sun Towers’ are coming into play as well because it keeps slipping into dialogue like a golden oiled banana that’s been released onto a muddy football pitch in the rain and everyone is wearing gloves made out of ice.

As far as the story is concerned, I’m not interested. All the good characters love you and all the bad ones either hate you or are using you to achieve their own ends. One of the enemy characters is called ‘Blados’ and carries a huge sword. I hope someone got fired for that creative genius.

Some of you are probably scratching your heads and wishing you were as smart as me, pondering whether to ask the question ‘But Viking Gamer, isn’t the point that there are goodies and baddies and they act accordingly!?’

My answer would be yes, if I was 5 years old and still wrestling Kodiak bears for fun. Now that I’m much older, I need something that makes me think for more than half a second. What everyone fails to remember is there’s no such thing as ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’. There are only bad people, but they’re on different sides.

Moving on from what is a quagmire in moralistic debate, the games graphics are probably what I should pick on next. They are decent enough so that I can tell what’s going on, but also seem to have performed a mistake that is continually perpetuated in games that try to be different: they’ve mixed up an attempt to create style with keeping the graphics shit.

If they can do the movies they’ve made for FFIV, then I’ll be damned if they can’t do style with a little less giant heads and box like bodies.

The last thing I want to illuminate like a torchlight at the last screaming and cowering peasant left alive after a long raid is the how we use our silent protagonist to communicate. Matthew is the leader of the group, yet doesn’t talk or take command of any situation. When a decision is made, he is asked how he feels about it and you can choose happy, ecstacy tablet induced happy, sad/discomforted/morose/about 1000 other emotions or maniacally depressed.

What the fuck? Hasn’t anyone watched Donnie Darko? He understood you couldn’t see the entire emotional spectrum from ‘fear’ and ‘love’, and I’ll be fucked if I try and achieve the same thing through four vague emotional responses. After selecting happy for ‘I’m confident we can save your drowning child’ my group rebuked me for laughing at the fact the child was drowning. Seriously, fuck the child, if I can’t communicate that I don’t want him to drown then the little fucker has to go.

So far you probably think the game is a giant Polar Bear turd, and for the most part, it is. But I said it was passable, and here’s why:

The gameplay. It’s your usual JRPG turn based combat except that it’s much, much faster. You choose what you would like to do and the orders are carried out after you’ve completed them, so it means you have to know what you’d like to do and figure out what the enemy might like to do before you commit. The downside to this is your group will always be much, much stronger than your enemy and with almost zero chance of running out of PP (like MP only with no M and another P) because after a few hours in the game your party is completely self-sufficient. Unless you’re brain-dead, you can always get back health and PP.

It has also eliminated enemy encounters when you’re trying to figure out puzzles, which has always been the cause of blood-rage murders in my area. The puzzles themselves are fun and are not too difficult, though at times you may find yourself wondering what the fuck you are supposed to be doing, travelling to your previous destination and realising you left without hearing the last and vital piece of conversation. This actually happened, and instead of my usual rampage I had to sit and reflect on why any game would let you leave the place that you NEEDED TO HEAR THE DIALOGUE IN, before I then calmly picked up my axe and went on a rampage.

Puzzles involve your characters using their elemental abilities, like growing vines to reach new places or dousing out fires with water etc. It’s quick enough so that experimentation with different solutions doesn’t feel like a lobotomy, and while retardedly cutesy in its visual execution, solving puzzles is actually quite rewarding.

The biggest hook in this game for me has to be in the djinn. Djinn are creatures kinda like current generation Pokemon. They are round and have barely distinguishable characteristics and work like GFs from FFVIII in that they give you added stats  like health or PP. They are either in ready mode; where you can use them in combat to perform special techniques, or in standby mode; where you can use them as summons and combine them to summon more powerful creatures.

As I stated before, no enemy is ever strong enough to get the better of you, so the whole ready and standby mode really seems to me as an optional thing; how would you like to win this time?

The real hook for me is figuring out the puzzles to find the Djinn. It’s kinda like Pokemon but with an added sense of achievement. You can look at  your collection of Djinn and think, ‘I used my brain to get that’.

This is the kinda game I will play on a particularly lengthy Longship trip, but wouldn’t ever bring back into my hut just to play it. However if you want a break from banal JRPG’s or want to deviate from Pokemon, I’d wave my axe at you and cut off your hands. Not because of anything to do with the afore-mentioned reasons, but because I’m a Viking and it’s kinda just what I do.

I’m giving Dark Dawn 3/5 I dream of Djinnies.

Til next time, the gamer with horns on his hat.

First things first: James Bond is the worst secret agent of all time.

Why? He tells his name to everyone. I’m surprised there hasn’t been a scene yet where a guy asks him to pass him a coaster and all hell breaks loose.

‘Sorry mate, could you pass me that coaster?’

‘Bond.’

‘…What?’

‘James Bond. My name is James Bond.’

*In the background, shifty looking Russian/Arab/Not White characters start pointing at him and drawing out guns, motioning and laughing how they are going to shoot the shit out of him.

‘Yeeeeaaaah, sorry I just wanted you to pass me a coaster’

‘Oh…did you know my name was Bond by the way? James Bond?’

‘Sure thing James, about that coaster…’

‘Most people call me Bond. Or Mister Bond. But when they call me Mister Bond they’re either leering or have accents because they are Not White and it sounds like Meester Bond. I’m a secret agent you know. For the British government. And my name is JAMES BOND!’

‘Jesus Christ man do you want everyone to hear!? Just pass me a fucking coaster will you?’

*Both Not White characters come forward and step to either side of Bond

‘Excuse me, are you Meester Bond?’

*Drinking a martini like a big girl and an impotent flair of cliche charm

‘Yes. I am’

*Massive gunfight later, everyone dead, especially Bond who was shot at by the Not Whites and other members of the British secret agent society who were ACTUALLY not blowing their cover like that showy retard.

‘Dont fucking bother I’ll get the coaster myself’

*Reaches over bloody, bullet ridden, chunks missing corpse and grabs coaster.

What a moron.

Now onto my problem with the PSP. I noticed in my console reviewing article that I did’t mention the PSP, or I did and it wasn’t very interesting.

Realising on my latest raid into France (I ran out croissants, and a good Viking breakfast needs a baked roll of pastry and lard to get him through the day) there wasn’t much to do on a longship except row or laugh at the people who have to row (the French that we abducted on the previous raid), so I decided to revisit to my PSP.

Having owned every game worth having on it (Final Fantasy 1, Final Fantasy 2, Final Fantasy Dissidia, Final Fantasy Crisis Core) I came to the conclusion that the PsP is pretty much fucked.

Why? Well it’s not the graphics, because they are actually pretty damn amazing for a handheld device. The controls work well, the battery lasts ages and it’s memory capabilities are entirely dependant upon how much you’re willing to fork out for a memory stick duo, in my case 4 gigs worth which seems to do the trick for me.

So the PSP, on the whole, is a pretty damn amazing machine. Except it has NO FUCKING GAMES. If you liked Monster Hunter (which I don’t) then you’re pretty much set for the next 20 years because it seems there’s about 3 or 4 of them on the market and they seem to be released weekly.

Other than that you can play the games that you loved on the PS one but have since moved on (about 20 years moved on) and no longer wish to see again.

So what can a gamer who loves his PsP but has no idea what the hell he can do with it besides use it as a very small plate to eat croissants off after/during a raid on France, do?

Well, I can tell you what I did NOT do.

I, unequivocally, DID NOT get my PSP ‘hacked’ which allowed it to be used as a portable usb gaming device in which I would not have to pay for the chance to maybe play an hour of a shitty game.

I also DID NOT use this new found freedom to download Final Fantasy Tactics which is turning out to be as NOT addictive as sniffing the cardboard pine tree that gives off the scent ‘new axe’.

HAD I done such a thing I may have felt guilty that my loyalty to Sony was about as strong as a fresh Frenchman after his first day behind the wheel of an oar while being given a Viking Burn (like an Indian burn but the Viking performing it will set his own hands on fire first).

But, HAD I done this, I would have researched where I could buy FF Tactics so that I could buy a copy, perhaps just to own or to pay what was due to a great game.

BUT LO AND BEHOLD (hypothetically), it was nowhere to be found unless I wanted to buy it on some obscure site online (what the fuck is Ebay anyway?).

Looking through the list of games I’m finding Little Big Planet *yawn*, basketball *YAAAAAAWN*, FPS’s that they couldn’t make first person and are barely shooters *SUPER CONTAGIOUS YAAAAAAWN* and some kid who has a green wristwatch called Ben and he’s ten or something.

So they discontinue the games that may have sold some copies here and there over time, yet keep publishing these bland games over and over for some reason. WHOSE BUYING THEM!? YOU’RE ONLY ADDING TO THE PROBLEM!

You could always risk the money and buy some random JRPG or a spin-off of a popular title on the consoles, but why bother (unless you have money to burn {in which case I may very well earn you a Viking burn [I'm subtely threatening you for your money]}).

What I don’t understand is why they don’t use what the PsP actually is to its advantage. It goes online and its completely portable, so why not have a Diablo like game that people will want to congregate over (yes, I’m already aware of this capability used in Monster Hunter, but I mean a game that isn’t slow, tedious, and requires me, A FUCKING VIKING, to delay in the pursuit of killing huge, angry monsters to PICK THINGS OUT OF SAID MONSTERS FECAL MATTER).

The machine is powerful enough to do this. So do it.

Why is it not working on its ability to have a potentially amazing social aspect? Why aren’t its FPS ripoffs also FPS? WHY AM I NOT PAID TO COME UP WITH THESE GREAT IDEAS!?

The only I advice I can give is that if you own a PsP, YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY NOT GET IT ‘HACKED’. It’s unethical that you shouldn’t pay for any game that’s on the PsP and surprisingly some that haven’t actually been released on the PsP, as well as have it downloading and ready from the comfort of your own home.

I’m giving the PsP 4.5/5 for being an awesome gaming device, and a sweaty, Viking burned Frenchman for having fuck-all games.

Til next time, the gamer with horns on his hat.