Gaming off the Beaten Path

 Last week I discussed Grandia II and its solid-but-uneven story, well written-but-tropetastic cast and well presented-but-uninspired style.  That's a lot of hyphens and not a lot about actual gameplay. Let's get started with something positive.  Grandia II absolutely nails one of an RPG's most important elements: the combat system.  It's a bit difficult to explain so bear with me here.  You enter (random) encounters with a party of four.  Each party member and enemy combatant are denoted on a scrolling bar, called the IP gauge, at the bottom of the screen.  When it gets to the command section, its time to input your command.  Each party member can use a combo or critical attack, special move, magic attack, evade, defend, use items or change their equipment.  Enter your command and the IP gauge will scroll through its last section, the command section.  If it reaches the end, your character will perform their attack.  The same is tr...

Here's the thing about the past, you can't escape it. You can learn from it, move on from it, grow from it, dwell on it or even downplay it.  But running from it is impossible, it will chase you until you can't run anymore.  For its first two thirds, Grandia II's narrative explores this better than any game has before.   Sure, other games deal with the past of their heroes and villains, but not quite like this one.  Initially released for the Dreamcast in 2000 before being ported (poorly) to the PlayStation 2, Grandia II tackles a theme that is difficult to discuss, something most people hate talking about.  It's entire story is framed around the past of not just its main protagonist, but everyone involved.  Your party members, your enemies and society as a whole.  It's a great, compelling 20 hours of storytelling...until it goes off the rails. In its final 10 hours, Grandia II goes from a pinpoint narrative about the inevitability of the past cat...

It seems like just about every game gets at least one sequel, no matter how lousy it is or how poorly it sells. It doesn’t even necessarily have to be a direct sequel, hell sometimes it can even be a prequel, just a second game in the series. I am wracking my brain for a single one.  Well, other than this week’s entry, of course. Nano Breaker is an action game released for the PS2 in the early aughts.  It’s a Konami game, so its not like it came out of a small studio that closed down or anything like that.  It didn’t get the best reviews or anything but again, gaming is such a sequel happy medium that it is a tad surprising the IP was just abandoned.  There were certainly a lot of interesting elements presented here, so why not give it another shot?   Before we get into that, let’s discuss the gameplay a bit.  One of the first games I reviewed on GOTBP was “Castlevania: Lament of Innocnence,” another Konami title.  It took...

Nowadays, it seems like any game that becomes remotely popular gets some sort of spinoff.  Hell, they took a mini game from The Witcher and turned it into its own standalone title. But that wasn’t always a given.  Even with a game as popular as Final Fantasy VII, the thought of having a cannon spinoff wasn’t something that crossed most people’s minds.  I talked last week about how deep the characters in FFVII were, so it would make sense to give them their own time in the spotlight.  Dirge of Cerberus puts said spotlight on Vincent, one of the more popular characters from the original game.  Though he’s and optional character, Vincent has a very deep, intricate backstory that is very closely related to many of the critical characters of the universe.  Aside from Cloud, he’s probably they only member of your party that has close ties to both the Shinra and Sephiroth.  So a spinoff about him definitely makes sense from a storyline pe...

I figured I would start the 10s list with the game that will be least interesting to talk about.  A little clarification here, whenever I talk about sports games, I always group them together by generation rather than year.  I think all of the Madden games from this era are great, these particular three just did the littlest of little things better than the others.  These games need to be looked at almost more like expansions than sequels. Unlike a lot of games I have talked about so far, there is absolutely no doubt the Madden Football franchise is a household name.  It’s one of those series’ that most non-gamers have heard of and a favorite of casuals everywhere.  Of course, it also has a massive competitive circuit that was one of the first true E-Sports leagues to garner attention.  It can trace its roots all the way back to the 90s on the 4th gen consoles and its still a massive cash cow for EA today.  Thanks to some shenanigan...

Well, I’m sure surprised it took us this long to get here. During my Mega Man reviews, I talked at length about how that was the series that got me into gaming.  I have so many memories of seeing and playing it for the first time as a child and being blown away.  But over time, I started to gravitate away from the blue bomber as I got older and my tastes changed.  Enter Final Fantasy .  If Mega Man was the reason I started playing video games, FF is the reason I kept playing them and continue to play them. Like Mega Man, Final Fantasy certainly has its offshoot games.  Of all of them in my collection, Crystal Chronicles is probably the biggest deviation from the rest of the series.  Released on the GameCube in the early 00’s, FFCC was the first game in the series on a Nintendo console in more than 10 years.   The story goes that SquareSoft, the publisher behind Final Fantasy , felt their games had essentially outgrown Nin...

“You can’t judge a book by its cover.”   How many times have you heard that in your life?  What I’m sure was once sage advice has become a hackneyed platitude repeated ad naueseum by those looking to appear more open minded than they turn out to be.  That being said, throughout my life I have found that statement to be demonstrably true for the most part. Sometimes though, what you see is what you get.  Take one look at a PS2/XBox game from 2003 based on MTV’s Celebrity Deathmatch and the first thing that will most likely pop into your mind is “wow, that game is going to suck.”  I wish I could say I found a hidden gem, or that this was shockingly good or something of that nature.  Hell, I would have been okay with “passable.”  But that most certainly wasn’t the case here. For those of you unfamiliar with Celebrity Deathmatch, it was an MTV show from the late 90’s/early 00’s where claymation versions of famous people ba...

Last week, I took a high level look at Mega Man X: Command Mission, an RPG featuring side scrolling stalwart Mega Man.  Now its time to take a closer look. I guess we can get started with the first thing anyone would notice: the graphics.  They are pretty good, everything is bright and bold and all the characters look great.  The attacks look cool, the enemies are well done and the backgrounds are serviceable.  I found a lot of the areas to kind of look dull and sterile.  There isn’t much to look at, but it kind of fits the setting of the MMX universe.  My eye was usually drawn to the enemies, many of whom appear in 3D for the first time.  That might not matter to non fans, but as a Mega Man aficionado I thought it was cool. The music and sound effects are also great, but the cutscenes....whooooo boy.  It brings us to one of the biggest flaws in the game.  Anyone that has played any of the PS1/Saturn MMX games (X4, X...