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Tag: 2012

  • Crimson Shroud (Level-5, 2012)

    Crimson Shroud (Level-5, 2012)

    Developed/Published by: Level-5, Nex Entertainment / Level-5
    Released: December 13th, 2012
    Completed: 9th January, 2014
    Completion: Completed New Game and New Game+, getting the good ending.
    Trophies / Achievements: N/A

    Crimson Shroud, eh? Where to begin? Well, I started this blog largely to work out my usually conflicting feelings on the games that I finish (and, honestly, to work out my definitely conflicting feelings on the fact that I feel I simply must finish the games I start) so Crimson Shroud is definitely a “key text.” Because If I’m honest, all I want to—can do—when writing it up is give it a kicking for its many, many deficiencies, but by virtue of it very clearly being an auteur work and something I played largely while half-watching TV, I sorta remember it… fondly?

    So. Crimson Shroud is a game from Yasumi Matsuno (he of Vagrant Story fame) that’s supposed to make you feel like you’re playing through a table-top RPG campaign. This doesn’t really work. Yes, the visuals of the table-top figurines sort of work (though they’re oddly ugly; low-fi in a clumsy fashion) but the fact that your main interaction with the game is through very traditional Final Fantasy-esque battles—just with some dice mechanics plastered on—kind of messes it up. And then there’s the writing, which implies (like Japanese RPGs tends to) that you are the main character. It’s awkward, as the visual novel-esque way the story is represented makes it feel as if you are being told a story about characters rather than living as them—though this might be a factor of the English translation.

    Probably worse for the whole table-top RPG feeling is just how strictly the game sticks to other JRPG conventions. The game may have a limited number of locations and maybe less than twenty individual battles total, but forces you to grind one battle (two, in New Game+) endless times to hopefully get a drop required to progress. The game strongly implies that your characters would rather AVOID these battles (it even gives you a pre-battle opportunity to flee) so it’s no surprise that most people get stuck/give up in chapter two, unless they look up a FAQ (which might be intentional, who knows.)

    I’ll be honest and say that I gave up four times before that, in my lack of comfortable progress through the tutorial. It introduces a few concepts to you before it explains them or their complementary mechanics ; I kept restarting it in the hope that it would click (it eventually does: during the second chapter grind, which gives you some space to feel out the characters and battle system. This is far from ideal.)

    I think, however, that the worst of Crimson Shroud is in its UI. Throwing dice is fine—gimmicky, and it mostly just serves to slow battles down—but the part that matters most in a game without traditional levelling, the crafting and selection of gear, is tragic. I still don’t grasp how the game displays which item is better (there’s a mess of stats) and one of the most important aspects of the gear—the spells that are attached—aren’t fully shown unless you scroll down and select them individually. Any gear reorganisation takes forever and is an unpleasant headache of memorisation.

    Crimson Shroud is, by all accounts, not very good. But something about it is alluring. Matsuno has created a world with far more setting than you would expect for an eight dollar RPG, with a complex backstory that made me want to play through the New Game+ for the good ending (which is a bit of a cheat to double the game length, and one which I regret because the good ending doesn’t really explain anything.) What’s sad, of course, is that it isn’t like this world-building would be remarkable in anything except a game—I certainly wouldn’t read Crimson Shroud if it was a novel. More honestly, the game gets its hooks in by offering a very classic reward mechanic—grind, sort loot, get powerful, grind—wrapped up in a style and setting that’s just interesting enough that if you do most of the grinding with the telly on in the background you’re pretty sure you had a nice time.

    Will I ever play it again? The Japanese version has a New Game++ with parodic dialogue, which was mercifully cut from the English translation. So unless I learn Japanese as well as I’d love to (I won’t) no.

    Final Thought: I was sure I remember someone—Adam Saltsman?—describing Crimson Shroud’s story as a search for a pair of mystical panties, but I really have no idea what he was on about. One of us has misunderstood the story totally.

    This essay is featured in Every Game I’ve Finished 14>24.

  • Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed (Sumo Digital, 2012)

    Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed (Sumo Digital, 2012)

    Developed/Published by: Sumo Digital / Sega
    Released: December 18th, 2012
    Completed: 4th January, 2014 (Completed every level of “World Tour” on at least Medium difficulty, completed Grand Prix as far as unlocking Mirror Grand Prix. Reached “S Class License.”)
    Trophies / Achievements: 42%

    This is probably a good way to start a Tumblr called “every game I’ve finished” considering by all accounts I haven’t really finished it, unless you strictly count getting as far as seeing the credits as a completion (and that happens mid-way through the World Tour mode, anyway.) But the astonishingly clumsily named Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed is definitely one of those games that you eventually run out of steam on and just have to put away—especially because beating pretty much the entire game on Expert to unlock everything requires a level of dedication to a mascot racer that is beyond me.

    S&ASRT, as I’ll call it I guess, is something I’d heard praised, though in retrospect I can’t really tell why. Developed by Sumo Digital (who let’s not forget worked on the superb ports of Outrun 2) this is the kind of game that seems to exist as a very vague way to exploit Sega’s long list of brilliant IP without having to use any of it properly by, you know, making a new game in a series, because, well, it might fail. So better to slightly please people who want to see another Skies of Arcadia by including Vyse as a playable racer, but making sure Sonic, who must still be a big selling point to somebody (children? Do children even like Sonic now?) is front and center as much as possible. Boom, two demographics sorted: people who like Sonic, and people who will put up with Sonic so they can see some old Sega shit.

    This kind of thing can sort of work—Sega All Stars Tennis is actually a fairly decent way to whack on your nostalgia penis for a few hours, with, for example, the Space Harrier levels totally working—but the whole thing does, at best, leave you feeling a bit empty when compared to, you know, going back and actually playing Space Harrier. This is totally exacerbated by S&ASRT’s position as a mascot racer. You might think “oh cool! a Golden Axe level!” only to discover that you’re whipping around the course so fast that you barely pay attention to the decoration, and if you do, it’s not really super clear what about it makes it feel Golden Axey, or Shinobiey, or whateverey. The Shinobi one, for example, is just “generic Asian.” The only one that really works is the Nights level, which is impressively specific without actually being interesting.

    And the racing isn’t really all that either. I mean, obviously there’s the whole “you get to switch between a car and a boat and a plane!” thing but what this largely means is that you can’t easily remember the tracks (because across three laps they can change wildly, switching you between vehicle) and the tracks are too bloody long anyway. The boats are about as fun as the hovercrafts were in Diddy Kong Racing, which you might remember as having been fun, but I can confirm were about as thrilling as pushing a Subbuteo man across treacle. The planes are fine, apart from when you can’t tell where you’re supposed to be flying, which is “usually.”

    It’s obvious that the team at Sumo Digital has a lot of talent—the cars, at least, feel lovely—and that Sega is, more or less, forcing them to phone it in (It’s a bit glitchy, the difficultly level is way out of whack, and so on.) But most importantly, does anyone actually want something like this rather than, I don’t know, seeing any of the IP here given even this level of effort by Sumo Digital on a new game? Honestly, I’d be a bit harsher on Sega here for being so glib in their “no, we do like our old IP, see?” if they didn’t have M2 working their wizard magic on the 3DS Classics line, but taken in isolation S&ASRT is a waste of everyone’s time. The problem being, of course, is that because of the mild nostalgia layer you might not mind having your time wasted for a bit, and so they’re able to get away with it.

    Will I ever play it again? I didn’t totally finish it so if I manage to finish every other game I ever want to play I could conceivably go back to mop up as many stars as I could and finish Mirror Grand Prix. Not doing so would be better for my mental health though.

    Final Thought: They include a bunch of non-Sega racers too, stupidly. From Wreck-It Ralph they include… Wreck-It Ralph. Not Vanellope von Schweetz, who is a kart racer. For fuck’s sake.

    This essay is featured in Every Game I’ve Finished 14>24.