Tony Hawk's Underground

I bought Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 back in the day. Spent many hours playing that. When I bought a PS2, the first games I bought were THPS3 (and then THPS4 when it came out). Also many fun hours with those games. Recently, I got myself the PC port of Tony Hawk's Underground. My spider sense should have gone off when I read on wikipedia that the port was a "budget release" and only released in Australia. Port sucked.

[IMG]http://i723.photobucket.com/albums/ww240/eztr/TonyHawksUnderground.jpg[/IMG]

First thing I noticed, browsing through the in-game menus, the sound effects would routinely disappear. Not sure if it was the game's problem or my computers - better to blame the game in these situations.

One of the bew features of THUG was the ability to upload a photo and then use it as a custom skater's face. I dug out a high school photo of myself, scanned it and popped it in. Pretty cool feature, though it probably would have looked better if I didn't have that gawky, exaggerated smile on my face. As a result, my custom skater was constantly smiling.

Unlike the Pro Skater series, the main part of the game no longer sees you completing different levels with your skater of choice. Here, you go through a story mode with a custom skater, starting as a local unsigned skater and working your way up. Sounds good. Only problem is that because the other pro skaters are no longer the main object, their graphics have been downgraded. Quite visibly as well.

Some notes from skating around in the first level:
- More sound problems. Various sound effects would drop out, then return later on.
- The new ability to get off your board and walk around doesn't feel comfortable. There's no sense of control. A lot of guesswork is needed to get from point A to point B (particularly when jumping to climb ledges, roofs, etc).
- The rejig of the controls was quite a jarring learning experience (mainly with the shoulder buttons).
- Gameplay motion felt fast. Add the fact that I found it hard to see much, and it felt quite chaotic.

The in-game missions are similar to objectives of previous games. Collect this, get this amount of points, hit this combo, etc. Stats could be raised by achieving certain goals. Getting new trick slots involved visiting a pro skater who would also offer a challenge. As with THPS4, you'd have freedom to select from whichever mission most tickled your fancy.

Easy going really. In no time, I was on the third or fourth level. Which was annoying, because I was wanting a challenge. I was wanting to fall in love with the maps. Instead, I was getting nothing. Rewards weren't rewarding, the story was ultra lacklustre (unaided by dull voice work and dialogue).

I gave up and uninstalled the game. No hesitation.

Shining Force

What a confusing series of video games. There are all these different series (with different styles of gameplay) under the umbrella name of Shining Force, so I'm trying to get my head around what I've missed out on. Well, I know I've missed out on quite a bit. I'd been going by FantasyAnime's Shining Force information, and seeing that there was only four games listed, I thought that those were the only ones with English translations (either official or fan translated). Seeing that one Japan-released-only game had been translated by fans, I'd thought there be more out there.

But no, those four are the on FantasyAnime are the only old games in English available. I've only finished two of those four, and have visited a third briefly.

Mother, brother and I visited family in the US back in the day. An aunt bought us a Sega Game Gear console, Shining Force: The Sword of Hajya, and this tetris like game. Man, that Game Gear sure was thirsty. Six AA batteries gave you a pittance of game time. It really pains me to think of all the batteries that I went through.

The Sword of Hajya was the first RPG I played, and was rather fun to boot. The 'cinematic' action sequences were probably the drawcard of the game. Characters would be depicted as cutesy manga-like characters in portraits and on the map, but when it came to battling, they'd suddenly be depicted realistically. 'tis an interesting idiosyncracy - kinda like the US cover shown above (you wouldn't expect to be dealing with manga characters in the game based on that cover).

Ah, that's more like it! The odd assortment of characters was entertaining. Humans, centaurs, dwarves, bird-men, and other anthromorphs all made for an interesting looking army. Ah, yes, that was another feature - you'd build an army as you beat levels and gathered new allies. Also, just as it was getting visually boring, you'd have the opportunity to promote your characters, so that they'd receive a new title, something like 'Knight' to 'Paladin'. This would coincide with a new look for the character. New and better weapons could also be discovered or bought.

The game had its share of oddities though. The colouring of characters would be counter-intuitive - say on the map, a character would have brown armour, but in their battle sequence, their armour would be green. Next up, our main protagonist is named Deanna. That takes the epicness out of everything.

I've just remembered something that plagued me back in the day. Certain characters would have a spell called 'egress', where you could retreat from a battle. The whole point of the spell was to allow characters to be able to level up, since you kept any experience points earnt. I didn't know back when I was a youngling. Thus, I'd go through a game without levelling up, eventually getting stuck on a certain map, when the difficulty level of the map would overcome my undeveloped characters. Every time I reached that point, I'd restart the entire game. More dead batteries =(

Recently, I discovered Game Gear emulators and ROMs, and so, I wiped my slate clean of that particular unfinished game. Hurrah!

Seeing that there were was another Shining Force game on the Game Gear, I decided to give it a go.

Final Conflict I didn't enjoy as much as The Sword of Hajya. Besides the lack of nostalgia driving me on, the characters seemed dull and the gameplay was very much the same. By dull characters, I mean another silent main protagonist but with blonde hair this time. Blonde! While Deanna had a bad name, at least he had pitch black hair to make a difference. Ian (not a bad name, but not one suitable for a game hero) is just plain stereotypical (tbh, I don't know of many main RPG characters with blonde hair... just my intuition writing here).

The fact that I didn't complete the Shining Force: The Legend of Great Intention ROM on the Sega Genesis probably didn't help. A few characters (or many, I'm not sure) from that game feature here (I've a feeling that there's quite a bit of character sharing in this series*). No nostalgia points for me. Mmyes, despite the Genesis games appearing to have slightly better graphics and more extensive gameplay (town exploration in particular), I just fancied the more simple graphics and gameplay of the Game Gear games.

Returning to Final Conflict now, it was pretty much more of the same. One small difference actually was that there more difficult levels, there'd be stronger enemies and tighter spaces to work through. Required more egress action.

I don't plan to explore the other games in the series. My experience with Final Conflict suggested to me that the fun experienced with The Sword of Hajya was feeding off nostalgia, and my anger regarding the Game Gear consuming so many batteries.

*The Sword of Hajya, called Shining Force Gaiden II in Japan, is actually a sequel. Unfortunately, there's no English translation of Shining Force Gaiden.

Pictures are all sourced from Shining Force Central.

Harvest Moon

Been attracted to this game ever since I first read about it waaaay back in the day. I don't recall ever seeing it for sale in Australia, so the interest was always a craving of sorts. I very much like the simple notion of living depicted here: work, family, happiness, etc... Start from nothing, end up with all you can achieve. No Nazis/zombies/aliens to kill, no mindboggling maps/puzzles to work your way through, no button smashing... just easy, pleasing work.

You play as Jack, a young man who has been handed the land of his late grand father's ranch by his parents. Along the way, you'll need to harvest crops, develop the ranch, raise livestock, and potentially find a partner to raise a family with.

It's all very cute and simple, like so (SPOILER ALERT... well given the size of the picture, it's likely you've already scanned it. Never the less, the following pictures are not in-game screen shots. Rather, they are screens of ending sequences):

It would require extreme determination to lose this game. The level of difficulty is low, and providing you have a firm understanding of how things operate in the land of Harvest Moon, it should be smooth sailing. Some of the work does get a little gruelling at the early to middle stages, but thanks to the cycle of seasons, you'll be forced into rest during autumn and winter.

The dating aspect was interesting. You're given a choice of five girls to choose from, and after working on your relationship points to a certain level, you can propose to one and they move in with you soon after. I chose Ann, mainly because she's a redhead/ginger. Plus, she doesn't like religion, haha. "Q. How do you turn a fox into an elephant? A. Marry it" The same kinda applies here. Ann was all interesting and cool while you were still chasing her, but as soon as she moves in, she becomes very boring, highlighted especially with her plain mama dress. Pity.

There are a host of extra things in the game to keep the interest high. Various secret items, events, and locations to discover throughout the course of the game. An assortment of festivals to break up the monotony of farm life.

I was about to comment on how it was unlikely that I'd be able to play the other games in the series, seeing that they're all on consoles that I don't own, but I've just discovered that N64 roms are available, so Harvest Moon 64 may be on the menu soon. Tiny files as well, less than 10mB.

So yes, the first game in the Harvest Moon series was very enjoyable to play. Particularly to the tunes of mainstream metalcore.