Ragequit - Resident Evil 4

Resident Evil 4 (henceforth referred to as 4 Resident Evil because that's what the logo says and typing it that way infers Capcom doesn't know what the hell) is one of those games that, while I hated it, I was sorely alone in that and it became more and more painfully obvious that I was going to remain that way.  4 Resident Evil has transcended that status from "good game" to "great classic" or however you want to phrase it, so with that status, it will never really get panned aside from the outliers like me who just seem bitter about its success or whatever.  And maybe I am just bitter, but I'll tell you one thing I am, and that one thing is "Not Wrong".  I firmly believe that I am not wrong in hating the game and thinking it's a fairly poor game because it has all the -things- that we point at in other games and say "This?  This right here?  THIS IS BAD." and the only reason I think that 4 Resident Evil got away with it is because it was another installment of a beloved franchise that had a very obvious leap in a few areas and had a lot of potential, even if the lot of it was completely undermined and/or unrealized.

So, the premise of 4 Resident Evil (seriously, gonna keep on doin' that) is pretty simple, even though it's really quite far removed from your 'normal' Resident Evil title.  (Re-reading the Let's Play series of 0-4 with Code Veronica in there as well leads me to say that there's no 'normal' Resident Evil game)  Whereas most of the Resident Evil games have you going into a situation caused one way or another by Umbrella with their wacky viruses and the like, 4 Resident Evil sees you doing something quite different in heading what is basically a search and rescue mission directly from the top brass of the United States of America.  The President's daughter (who might actually just be the incumbent President's daughter, since Capcom can't be arsed to really think out dates for this type of thing) has been kidnapped by a crazy cult.  'Are you a bad enough dude to save her?!'  This is basically the entire premise of the game at the start.  Of course, it gets a little, er, 'deeper', but at the start of the game, it's billed as just a simple in-and-out job.

A simple in-and-out job for none other than Leon Scott Kennedy (I don't know why his middle name is important enough to get mentioned, just roll with it) who was last seen in a terrible GameBoy Color game Resident Evil 2 which is still, among certain groups, regarded as the best game in the entire series despite its many many flaws.  Certainly is my favorite of the group, but I'll get into that at another time.  Tonight is negative night.  Now, Leon's been hired by the Secret Service and is then dropped into a location that is definitely not Spain to single-handedly find out where the Incumbent President's daughter is, since I'm sure this is exactly how that type of thing works.  And, of course, since gameplay is -much- more important than story, Leon is handed little more than a handgun and given a pat on the head before sent along his merry way.  Because, you know, a standard-issue assault rifle is too much to ask for or a more convenient drop or anything that somewhat makes sense.

It's worth mentioning that this is a cap of the PS3 remaster.  Thus it's shiny.

So, as soon as Leon gets split up with the guys who are presumably going to drive him to the place he ends up walking to minutes after their death (by the way, if you haven't noticed by now, I'm going to be spoiling the story for the whole game, so if you're not into that, maybe head off now) he encounters villagers who are a little more than hostile towards the American.  In fact, they're downright rude, what with trying to bite him and such and oh, yeah, they're actually just trying to kill him.  Because they are all 'zombies', or at least what 4 Resident Evil calls zombies, which are really just people with parasites in their bodies.  This is sort of important.  I will touch on it more in a couple paragraphs.  Suffice to say, there's at least a reason why getting bitten by these guys doesn't offer an infection chance in theory (since the games prior kind of did and it was never really mentioned outside of something really silly in 3) and it's mostly because to be infected like these guys, you kind of need a giant alien parasite in your body.  Not...you know, a virus or something manageable.

In the village that he walks to (which is, as I assume, the destination goal or at least a stop) he runs into more of these as well as, potentially, one of these 'zombies' who can wield a chainsaw because fuck you.  This whole section is pretty infamous in its own right and it more or less sets the bar for "Will I like 4 Resident Evil?".  It's one of the highest-tension moments in the game, it uses a randomization feature depending on your actions (which isn't used anywhere else in the game) and there is generally just a shit-load of 'zombies' for you to get used to the experimental control scheme that other games have since adopted and made much much better.  Thereafter, the game -really- starts to get weird because it chiefly features Leon just sort of wandering around until he stumbles onto parts of the cult and destroys them and such.  Also a Merchant who is a gigantic asshole because he charges the one guy going around and killing zombies for supplies with which to kill zombies.

Something heavily featured in the gameplay is QTEs which are almost universally reviled by gaming people as a whole unless they're in a game that you like which means they're okay in that game only.  (Notable examples include God of War series, 4 Resident Evil, Shenmue, etc.  Because it's just silly to acknowledge that maybe QTEs aren't the problem, just poor implementation is.)  Said QTEs are, of course, of the "Get it right or die" variety, which is sort of the worst kind, but let's ignore that I suppose.  Adds to the 'horror' and 'survival' elements in the whole 'survival horror' theme that 4 Resident Evil clearly carries.  It also features the QTEs less offensive (Perception-wise) cousin:  Context-sensitive actions, to the tune of "Press button to jump out a window" and the like.  Both are generally not seen as positive additions to any games (with the latter being pretty much overlooked anymore), yet they don't seem to drag 4RE down in opinion like they do in other games.

Also featured is the staple tank controls (admittedly of a different design) and limited inventory space (again, different design) that have been decried in previous titles (while not being enough to outwardly despise them enough to say they're bad games).  Of the former, the most note-worthy thing is the inclusion of the whole "cannot walk and aim" thing that has been series standard since the first game (and is, in fact, only being dropped in favor of good third-person controls in Resident Evil 6, as in they were still present in 5) but generally it's just awkward to get around and, at least personally, I feel the camera is usually a little too tight to accommodate the desired play-style anyways.  With the latter, there's at least a 'neat' idea behind it, in pretending that Leon is carrying around a giant metal suitcase that he is never seen with that has enough space for generally more than the usual inventory, provided you're willing to organize things to eek out those extra spaces.  It is, much to everyone's benefit, also upgradeable through the game, adding more and more space with which to work.

Now, the main thing I take issue with, the main problem I have with 4 Resident Evil, is far and beyond the plot of the game.  What I've already said is relatively tame compared to what the rest of the game has to offer, and I can't even cover the full breadth of -dumb- that the game carries, story-wise.  Not that the other Resident Evil games offer 'smart' plots or anything resembling them, but I daresay that 4 Resident Evil carries one of the dumbest stories of the entire series, just below Resident Evil Zero, which manages to retcon retcons and have the dumbest antagonist ever.  I haven't played, nor experienced Resident Evil 5, so I can't comment on that, but of 0, 1 (remake included), 2, 3, 4, Code Veronica, Survivor and Dead Aim, 4 Resident Evil takes second place handily.  While I'm overstating it quite a bit, also potentially setting it up to be a little less dumb than you might be anticipating, I do have to make it pretty obvious on where I stand on this, because it makes it that much easier for you to get it while I then describe the why.

I would like you to take a look at the above cutscene from 4RE.  I'll offer no real input at this point beyond simply asking you to watch it so that what follows makes a little sense.  And waiting....waiting....Okay, I'm going to assume at this point that you have watched it.  Now I would like to make three points very very clear about what is wrong with that video and, in fact, the entire plot of the game because of it.  First off, Saddler sees fit to just sort of explain the whole plan to both Leon (whom is completely unnecessary to the entire plan, more on that in a minute) and Ashley (whom the entire plot hinges on in -several- ways).  That's probably in the great big list of cliches somewhere, also on the evil overlord lists and such.  It's dumb.  Don't do that.  Because it is dumb.  Under most circumstances, it is only mostly dumb, but in 4 Resident Evil's scenario, it's obscenely dumb, so much so that I had to stress it this much.

Now, the second point hinges on the first because it more or less explains why it is obscenely dumb to do the first point in the first place.  The entire plan is to kidnap Ashley and inject her with a Plagas and then send her back to America so that the Plagas can incubate and hatch so that Saddler can assume control of her to wreck up America from the inside.  Ignoring the glaring ways in which that could go wrong (up to and including the fact that a giant fucking tentacle thing (or an egg of a giant fucking tentacle thing) is likely to show up on an X-Ray which is probably part of the litany of tests she'd be put under upon returning to the States to ensuring her well-being) the problem is that they fucked up halfway through the plan.  The entire game hinges on Leon showing up to rescue Ashely which suggests that she has been held for long enough to warrant Armed Response (barely) which means they got to the part of the plan in which they kidnap and inject her and then stopped.

The half-assed explanation is that they need to ransom Ashley off to the States before returning her so they can wait for her Plagas to hatch and then take control of the States which I'm sure you can read into why that's a half-assed explanation.  That's....whatever.  In that sort of scenario, I can sort of see Leon being just an interloper, even though he's trying to perform the ultimate shared goal of getting Ashley back home, which I would just sort of roll with.  You don't get money immediately, of course (not like you're going to anyway because of the whole "America doesn't negotiate with terrorists" thing, the fact that they clearly know where the cult is operating from, the fact that they actually send an attack chopper to said location and the fact that they kidnapped the daughter of the man who is not President yet) but you get Ashley into the States where, presumably, nothing happens until she hatches the Plagas and shit goes golden for Saddler and his homies.  Since that's part of the original plan.  If you want to really play Devil's Advocate, I guess you could say that they needed to take her back so she could go through channels that would keep her sheltered from American doctors and such until the Plagas was ready, but this is the same cult that is run by a giant, the above Saddler who is loving this shit and is also into the Evil Overlord thing to the degree that it ruins his plans, and a crazy midget.

The third issue, which is kind of the biggest issue is that, directly after explaining his big smart plan to the guy who could safely be shot in the head at any point and disposed of and the girl who needs to not know any of the plan because assuming she gets back to the States, it would be best if she didn't know so that she can't say "THERE'S AN ALIEN IN MY BODY", he tries to kill both of them.  I say 'he' tries to kill both of them because two dudes with Plagas in them (I'm not saying Ganados because those are the villagers, literally 'cattle' and I'm not saying Cultists because that doesn't convey the fact that they have the brain-controlling parasite from somebody's fucking basement inside of them) pop out and he can apparently control people with Plagas, which would suggest that he made them pop out with flaming crossbows and take aim at not only Leon but Ashley, upon whom their entire fucking "Get Rich and Destroy America" plan hinges on not killing.  The worst part is that this is -not- an isolated incident as, in any scenario wherein Ashley is with you (and there are a lot), the Plagas dudes either attempt to re-kidnap her (which as I said is barely acceptable) or just straight-up murder her (like by burying a fucking axe in her head) through these beings that Saddler can apparently control.

The fact is that 4 Resident Evil's entire plot is pretty much made superfluous because the people actively ruining the Antagonist's plans is the Antagonists themselves.  Leon running around and shooting things until they die doesn't help matters, certainly, but the plan is actively circumvented by the ones who came up with it for little reason beyond "Shit, we can't redo the entire story -again-, oh well, ship it".  Being that 4 Resident Evil in its current state was like the fourth or fifth incarnation of the game itself (one of which ended up apparently being Devil May Cry, completely serious) I imagine there was something of a time crunch, especially considering two or three of the builds had been shown off as if they were going to be the game that ended up being released, which they certainly were not.  So suddenly changing it around so that Leon was yet again doing something other than originally broadcast (perhaps something that actually made more sense than single-handedly rescuing the daughter of the incumbent president from a cult that was too stupid to achieve their own goals) would have probably done more harm than good to the thing overall.

Ultimately, what turned me off to the game was simply the controls as they were just too bad for them to actually be usable for me.  I didn't get far enough into the game for it to reveal its stupidity to me (however, I did have a friend over who managed it, so I almost experienced it first-hand) but that's really something that it no more or less egregious depending on the way you're informed (unless, of course, you're simply being misinformed which I do not think I've done) which means I think it's pretty open for ridicule whether or not I beat the game myself.  And while I don't think the game is a good one myself, I certainly don't begrudge anyone who managed to enjoy it because I certainly would have liked to.  When it comes down to it, more people enjoyed the game despite its many many flaws than not, and that's why it gets its spot in success history and whether I like it or not doesn't matter.  Doesn't mean I can't angrily write about it to the internet, though!

Ragequit - Harvest Moon DS

Now, I have been known to vocally enjoy the seemingly-droll games that encompass the Harvest Moon series and its spin-offs, so the fact that I'm playing one should never be a surprise.  The fact that I'm outright refusing to play one of the titles should be one, however, and that's just what I have to do with Harvest Moon DS for being one of the most buggy things I've ever had the misfortune of dumping dozens of hours into to only have it lost.  There's more bugs (or if not more, then at least more devastating) in this damn thing than a Bethesda game and that's -saying- something.  What makes it worse is the fact that the game offers quite a lot and it's not inherently bad, but for the fact that you most likely -will- lose your game in a way that makes it unrecoverable is damning in a way that most games won't ever be party to.

I'll break it down right now and let you know just how you can and will lose your Harvest Moon DS game:  The saving system.  That might be obvious, but it's the bug with the almost innocuous, everyday application of the system that other games have that makes it so dangerous.  At any time, provided you're not in conversation, event or Holiday, you can move to the data screen on the bottom screen and save it in one of the two files available.  It's just that simple, and that's what everyone loves, is a simple saving system.  However, you'll find guides for the game online, or even just advice pieces around online that tell you to save in areas that have no movement on-screen.  Why is that?  It's because if there's something moving on-screen while the game saves, that save will just become corrupt and any attempt to load it will return an unsuccessful message.

That's not the only problem, however, as there is a specific freezing glitch associated with another glitch that is very, very easily activated which makes absolutely no sense.  Apparently in the winter, if you hire the fishing team to fish at the beach and then go down and cast your own fishing rod for a couple seconds, there's a chance that, when the Mayor comes to take your shipments for the day that an exorbitant amount of money that tops out at A Billion Gold will be put into your account.  It seems almost 'perfect storm'-ish as a scenario but I assure you it's very easy to trigger it on accident.  And, in my experience, if you save when you have that Billion Gold in your account, you're not loading that game anymore.  When you try and load it, it just freezes up and the sound that plays stutters and such, and your only recourse is turning off the DS entirely.  So all that work, unless you've been using both slots to save (which you shouldn't be forced to do), is gone.  Unsurprisingly, that's what happened to me and it's the reason that Harvest Moon DS is getting shelved permanently.

It sucks a lot really, because Harvest Moon DS is sort of the last resort I've got when it comes to Harvest Moon games.  I have Rune Factory, and the lot of you know I've gone on and on about those, but they're spin-offs, pure and simple.  I could play Harvest Moon:  Boy & Girl on my PSP, which takes Back to Nature and the Girl version and puts them both together on a single UMD, but Back to Nature takes place in Mineral Town with all of Mineral Town's characters who I am, frankly, a little tired of.  In my playings of Harvest Moon 64, Back to Nature (via Boy & Girl) and Friends of Mineral Town, I've married Karen, Popuri, Ann and Mary more times than I care to remember, and developed more friendships with the same denizens of the Town over and over again than I've formed actual friendships in real life.  I have exhausted Mineral Town of all it has to offer and thus need to move along.

On top of that, Harvest Moon DS actually brings quite a few good, or at least decent, ideas to the table that vary things quite a bit.  With a few extra types of buildings available, not to mention the fact that you can decide their design (sort of) and their placement, that alone opens more doors and windows for variety, and variety is always a welcome thing for HM games as a whole to have.  Joining the usual roster of animals you can raise are ducks, which require you to have a Pond (a new 'building') put into your farm who give off eggs that sell for more than Chicken eggs on the whole, but they only produce them every other day.  Another new source of income (in theory, at least) is a Mushroom Shed that you can buy if you like having something around that won't start to pay for itself for like two or three seasons afterward.  Basically, it's a shed that comes with six slats, you put lumber on those slats, seed them with mushroom seeds and water them everyday for, again, months (In Havest Moon games, generally your 'months' are your seasons.  30 days of Summer, 30 Days of Spring, etc.) and eventually you'll be able to pick off a mushroom.  After the initial one, you'll be able to get one every few days, and if you leave them on and continue watering them, the mushrooms will go up to Medium or even Large size to, obviously, sell for more.

Alongside that, the new ways to up the affection that your animals have for you is welcome, if not executed well.  Using the "Touch Gloves", any action you would take with your animal (petting, brushing, milking or shearing basically) is turned into a scored mini-game and some of the mini-games lead to gaining up to three times the amount of affection you would normally gain.  Granted, that three times means three points over one and a single heart (the measure of affection, they can get up to 10, I believe) is 100 points, but like I said, it's a good idea in theory and not execution.  That the mini-game is entirely optional is the good point, of course, since any action taken without the Touch Gloves equipped is just as normal as it is in any other Harvest Moon game - same efforts, same results.  That the mini-games basically entail "Rub your stylus on the screen really really fast" is also a detracting factor from them, but it honestly would be mitigated easily if the gains weren't abysmal.

Also fairly interesting about HMDS is that there's literally three different casts of women that you can marry, as opposed to just the normal roster of five or so that you generally get.  That is one cast, obviously, and it features Celia, the fair farmhand with a fragile bill of health, Lumina, the rich girl with a curious streak, Muffy, the resident bar girl with a bit too much hot air in her head, Nami, the rough-and-tumble traveling girl, and Flora, the archaeologist's apprentice.  They're your normal group of varied girls who live and work in Forget-Me-Not Valley to cater to varied tastes of the players, and 90% of the time, you're likely going to go for one of them.  However, keen-eyed readers might notice the above picture of the Witch Princess features a little out-of-place black heart as well, and if you know that the Heart System features only with women you can marry, you might just wonder about this a bit.

The second cast of women that you can marry in the game is actually the more 'fantasy' themed ones that features the Above-Pictured Witch Princess, resident 'evil' character, the returning Harvest Goddess who is sent to another dimension at the start of the game and can only be brought back by unlocking 60 Harvest Sprites during the course of the game by performing various tasks, Keira, who is apparently a "Sleeping Beauty" reference that lives at the bottom of a 255-floor mine, and a Mermaid that's being kept in the resident Mad Scientist's basement.  No, I didn't make any of that up, yes it's a little crazy.  The common theme with those few is that if you want to get with them, you're going to have to put in a lot of extra effort.  The Mermaid is almost the exception to that, as you really only have to befriend the Mad Scientist Daryl so he'll let you go into his basement, and he is a fan of the wild colored grasses that grow about the valley regularly, but the Harvest Goddess' hand requires that you ship one of every single item in the game among other things.  It's not a pleasant thought.

And finally, the third cast is the returning cast from Mineral Town, which is apparently just a short walk away from Forget-Me-Not Valley.  Their inclusion is one of those 'neat' little things that you'll likely miss out on anymore, as it requires a copy of Friends of Mineral Town and a DS that has a GBA slot to keep it in.  All five women have their own schedules that take them into Forget-Me-Not Valley a day or two out of every week so that you can talk to them and give them gifts to win their affections.  That's not the only time they come around, of course, but I'm fairly certain you can't woo them without the linked method explained above, and if not then the alternative would be quite tedious.  There are obviously a few ticks against going after them, however, as you might be like me and simply be jaded with them, but even more importantly is the fact that marrying one of them means relocating to Mineral Town which will end the game right there.  I don't know why you necessarily have to move to Mineral Town, but that's how the game handles it and no there's not something that carries over into Friends of Mineral Town if you do so.

After reading this over once, I've realized that the tone is entirely too positive, so I think I need to throw down some of the other annoyances I have besides the few I've mentioned.  First off, saving the Harvest Sprites is a tedious, terrible, game-padding move that detracts from the game more than it adds, despite the obvious.  In previous games, you could hire the Harvest Sprites to do various jobs around your farm that you didn't want to do, or possibly couldn't do (like event days, the birth of a child, etc.) and they retain that role in HMDS....after you bring them back from the other dimension that the Witch Princess inadvertently sent them to directly after the Harvest Goddess. 

This is done by doing various things attached to their particular team, so for example, to bring back a member of the Fishing Team, you have to fish up a certain amount of fish before he comes back somehow, and for another sprite like a sprite from the Collection Team, you have to chop up a certain amount of logs found around the Valley or so.  It sounds simple, but the requirements get way over-the-top for many of them, of which one of the more egregious examples being a member of the TV Team won't unlock until you ship 100,000 of a single item.  Other sprites won't unlock until you acquire Mystic versions of tools which can only be gotten after upgrading every single tool to Mystrile level, unlocking the third mine (which requires getting to the bottom of the 255-floor second mine), finding the cursed version of the tools and then paying a Priest to remove the curse from it.  That's practically a quest in itself and that's only for a handful of Sprites.

Possibly the worst part of it is that half the game of any Harvest Moon game is interacting with the folks about town, so the fact that the denizens of Forget-Me-Not Valley are, in fact, quite forgettable is bothersome.  Characterization is not very strong here despite the fact that the character list includes an android Doctor (or at least a Doctor with a T-1000 eye replacement), the afore-mentioned Mad Scientist, a darling old married couple, and a hulking artist with a fondness for 'modern' interpretations that aren't commonly seen in the Harvest Moon vistas.  Still, even with those, none of them are interesting enough to warrant peeking at, especially when the timing system in the game seems a little sped up from previous iterations.  Less time to do more in a day doesn't bode well, after all, in life or a game simulating life.

Money is either entirely too hard or entirely too easy to get in the Valley, depending on whether or not you know the 'tricks' to making a quick buck.  Normal fare of grabbing up the stuff that grows in the wild and selling that next to crops you grow isn't going to get you very far, and when everything is as expensive as it is (building-wise, at least, which is basically all you need to spend money on), that can lead to not getting a whole lot of satisfaction out of the game.  Even going to the mines and mining a lot of ores doesn't quite pay the bills properly (at least, I don't think it did, or not proportionally to the amount of effort used) so you have to wonder just how in the hell you're supposed to get anywhere.  And while it's not 'the' method, there is 'a' method involving Van, a traveling merchant who wanders into the Valley on every day of the month that ends with a 3 or an 8.  Van sells quite a few things of interest, but the more interesting aspect of his usage is that he buys things -from- you, and apparently has a fondness for accessories.  A Red Cape that can be gotten from the Harvest Sprites for 65k or so medals can be sold to him for a price that fluctuates in the 400k-600k range and the slight pieces of jewelry that can be dug up in the main dig site that leads to the mines can be sold for a few thousand G a piece.  It doesn't feel right and it's fairly cumbersome, but it'll get you what you need.

I guess if I had to describe it in a few strokes or condense what I've already said here, it's that Harvest Moon DS obviously has a few good ideas, but the overall handling of not only them, but some core mechanics of the game (not mentioned so far is the fact that Stamina and Fatigue do not go long -at all-) is fairly poor.  Adding to that the game-crippling bugs and you don't exactly have a 'good' game by any measure.  It's the truth and an unfortunate one at that, but no game can be considered 'good' when your save data can get corrupted for little to no reason at all.  Or when you can get the maximum amount of money possible for no other reason than you went fishing during the winter and didn't keep your line out long enough to reel anything in.  And just the thought of all that progress that I lost just because the game wasn't properly tested...I can't call this anything else -but- a "Ragequit".  Avoid the game by all means unless you're not the type to get attached to your characters.

Ragequit - Sonic Unleashed

I'm sure we've all heard the horror stories of Sonic games past Sonic Adventures 2 (or the original SA, depending on your tastes) on the Dreamcast, excluding Sonic Generations, but most of us have yet to truly step into one of those games if purely because of the stories and rumors about them.  When presented with the ability to jump in head-first to one of these games free-of-charge and running in my cousin's XBox 360, I took the opportunity, if just to see what truth lay in the words whispered in disgust.  As you might be able to tell, I have to unfortunately agree with the bulk of them, or at least the ones that say that Sonic Unleashed is not really a good game.  It is a serviceable game with flashes of brilliance, and by no means is it completely bad, but it just doesn't make it past the threshold into 'good'.

I'm sure you've heard of the premise already, but for the pretense of explaining it, I'll figure that you don't or have forgotten it by now.  While I didn't catch quite all of it, I caught enough of it to know what was going on, at least, and as with all the Ragequit posts, don't take everything I say at face value since I have obviously let my feelings on the game color my opinion of it as a piece of work.  The barebones of it is that at the start of the game, the planet semi-explodes and Sonic is a werehog for reasons that are completely unexplained.  Along with that, Sonic meets a little rodent thing that can't remember anything himself, so the two decide to join together on a quest to figure out their own personal mysteries.  Along this journey, they run across a professor and somehow they all realize that putting the chaos emeralds into altars scattered around the world will pull it back together and thus a quest is born.

Apparently Sonic starts the game with the emeralds already, as at no point in the game was I, or my cousin, forced to gather then, unsurprisingly and it was only after boss fights that they came into play as every boss, of course, marked an area where an altar was.  By all means, however, know that this is mostly all I gleamed from my hours upon hours of playing Unleashed, so know that the story is...unobtrusive to say the least.  'Barely present' is the better term, and even when it's right in your face, 'slipshod' is a good word to describe it as it's poorly executed and it was clear that nobody really wanted a story in the game, yet there it is.  Half an effort is worse than no effort folks, and it's about time we all learned that.  There are other 'hooks' I could touch on, but doing so would...more or less be a spoiler and even for this type of post, I would hate to do that.

The gameplay is, surprisingly, the least offensive part of the game, yet it is also what holds the game back from being good, obviously, as the story is so barely-there it hardly counts.  In here is where the flashes of brilliance occur and they're not quite as few and far in between as some would suggest, but they certainly don't carry the overall experience either.  The gameplay is divided between Regular Sonic (during the day) running from Point A to Point B ala classic style in 3-D and sidescrolling style with several options for branching paths here and there depending on how awesome you do (which, by proxy, makes you feel more awesome playing it) and WereSonic (during the night, obviously) maneuvering about similar areas in what is well-spotted by several other critics as a God of War clone that is fairly clumsy but unoffensive.  The werehog stages are most definitely weaker by comparison but, again, they're not outright bad until you get into the later levels where the game starts hurling bullshit at you in large piles.

Really, that's true for both halves of the game anyway, but it's a little more taxing in the Werehog stages, since the 'bullshit' in the Regular Sonic stages can generally be mastered or skipped altogether if you find a different route.  Not true in Werehog levels since they have a very clear and defined path and even if you have to go completely backwards for twenty minutes to unlock a switch back halfway through the level that you've already been at purely to open a new door, the path is so straight it makes complaints about Final Fantasy XIII look tame.  As far as the types of set pieces there are in GoW and GoW-styled games, I'm sure we've all grown to fear and loathe the balance beam areas, but at least they've never been 'poorly' designed.  Not so in Sonic Unleashed as, not only do they introduce (far too early) spikes on the edges of balance beam sections (meaning if you stray, you fall to your death), but they also introduce spiked beams that crumble when you start to walk on them, thus requiring speed in sections that are not built for them.  It is, again, in a single word 'bullshit'.

Through the whole game, an upgrading system is prevalent, but easily ignorable that has, again, two halves to it for both of the versions of our protagonist.  Upgradeable for Sonic is his speed and the ring energy (boost) gauge only, whereas WereSonic has access to "Combat" which teaches you new moves, Strength which governs how hard they hit, Life which is obvious, Unleash which governs how much energy you can store up for unleash (basically every power-up trigger mode ever), and...something else, I can't quite remember Shield which we didn't upgrade at all since it only affected blocking and blocking was not going to get you far.  They're all arbitrarily necessary to level up several times to be any good at the game, yet you'll find that you mostly get the experience necessary for them in the werehog stages since you only get them from defeating enemies and the werehog stages are where 95% of the enemy encounters will be.  Again, something that was clearly not thought-out well enough beforehand.

For a while, a good while even, I was having fun with the game and was quite surprised that it was as poorly received as it was.  Again, I never claimed the game to be 'good', but I never said it was 'bad' either, but I was quite leaning towards the latter option when we got towards the end of the game.  The above mentioned spike beams were about en masse, hit detection for Werehog's moves was starting to become poorer and poorer (as was his ability to take damage, since it kept scaling up and up in ways that shield would not have prevented) and for Regular Sonic's side, required randomized jump pads (hit the corresponding button to jump) and quicktime events of three to five rapid and random buttons started to pop up mid-level which meant magically training up your reflexes or being stuck for the remainder of your lives until a Game Over meant you had to play the whole stage over again.

Quicktime events become a running theme, of course, and towards the start and then not again until the end, there is a certain type of level that may as well be a rhythm game, since it was certainly nothing else.  Without giving too much away, it was a defense mission that would bring up the buttons of the controller that you had to press in a small window or take damage.  Enough damage, obviously, means you die and have to start over from the last checkpoint.  Or it would, except there are no checkpoints in these levels which means if you get to the end and die to one of the 10-string button combos, you get to look forward to fighting your way back to it and trying again.  Once again, I had to call 'bullshit' which was time number two.

Then we finally got to what I can only assume was the last level.  I won't give it away, but suffice to say it was thematically set to be the last level or at least the penultimate level, which was like a wave of relief to us.  The fun and excitement the game had brought for a day had already faded at this point and we were left with a dull, uninspired and constantly infuriating shell of the game we assumed was present in the final stages.  It was in this level that the game threw its final curveball at us which was all at once great and terrible.  Throughout the game, you've been presented Hourglasses in the hub worlds that you can strike to switch between day and night which would allow access to the other half of the levels that you could play.  It seemed a little odd, since the hub worlds themselves were entirely too small for it to matter, but we figured it was a convenience thing, so as to prevent having to go into the village (past a loading screen) and shift day/night there (causing another loading screen) only to then go back into the hub (for the third and final loading screen).  We were wrong.

The game had been preparing us to know of these hourglasses because they were present within the final level itself.  Don't ask me how it works, since the stage seemed to be in a constant state of darkness of night, but you start it as Sonic and then part-way through find an hourglass that turns it to night (without a loading screen somehow) to play the next section as Weresonic.  It is a good idea on the very surface, to finally blend those two distinct styles into the final level and appropriate as well, but once again, the execution is Sega-Quality, which means they just don't know what the hell to do with it.  Switching once and then back is understandable, and even switching to weresonic again is 'okay'.  However when I switch back to Sonic only to imagine one last section as Weresonic, that's where I draw the line.  There is a such thing as overstaying one's welcome after all.

And that was as far as we made it.  That stage was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, as after one final death that brought around a Game Over during the third time you played as Regular Sonic in the same level, we both realized quite at the same time, awash with dread, that if we were to conquer the game, we'd have to play the entirety of the stage once again.  It was not a trial we were prepared to, so much as it seemed an exercise in futility, so we turned to one of a different color:  Modern Warfare 3.  I won't pretend that I was too 'indignant' to turn down a chance to play the title, nor will I suggest that I would've played anything so long as it wasn't Sonic Unleashed at that point, but I will say that it was quite a bit more enjoyable.  Which is disappointing, since every Sonic game that has been poorly received (likely for good reason) could have been so much better, as could have Unleashed.  But it was, unfortunately, as bad as you might've heard, if my breakdown is any indication.

Ragequit - Generation of Chaos

So, today's ragequit is unique in the fact that not only have I haven't actually played the game for an extended period of time.  And, in fact, I can't.  Therein that fact lies the problem I have with the game.  In all honesty, it's not so much that I can't play it, but I can't play it without losing which obviously just ends the game right there.  Which wouldn't be so bad, if the reason I can't play it without dying was that the game doesn't tell you how to play it.  I don't mean that in some sort of cutesy "The tutorials suck" sort of way because, in fact, there -are- no tutorials.  You start the game, and it -starts-.  There's a little story and then it throws you right into an all-out battle without telling you so much as how to attack an enemy.

From what I can gleam, it's a fairly interesting looking SRPG that's different in having actual troops and units to command over rather than a handful of named, important soldiers.  Sort of like Ogre Battle in having units lead by an important trooper, I should say.  Of course, that's the only comparison that can be made, beyond the whole fantasy thing.

It's honestly really difficult to critique the game considering I didn't play it too much, and it makes me feel a little bad that I'm doing this, but, really, if a game can't properly educate you on how to play it in some form, whether by tutorial, or by playing-as-you-learn and as such, being given 'easier' experiences to learn from, then you can't play it, and by that factor, you probably shouldn't play it.  It's said rather well in this review by Juan Castro.

And no, it's not a simple matter of consulting in-game help, since it lacks the information necessary to make playing the game any easier. It does help a little, but for a game that cries for an in-depth, easy-to-read instruction booklet this just doesn't cut it. Once you get past the steep learning curve, you'll still need to contend with the dizzying array of commands and subtleties packed into this game. You will, eventually, come to grips with the system, but there's a good chance the average player's patience will run out before then.

By no means is a game that (from someone who obviously got further in the game and didn't dislike it as much as I did) "cries" for such a thing as an "in-depth...instruction booklet" a game that has been thought-out properly.  And I suspect that, even if the game was easier to actually play, that the problems with it wouldn't magically disappear.

The style isn't that great, as shown by the super-deformed presentation of the characters, which might just be more of a YMMV thing, admittedly.  But I think what could be agreed on in a general sense is that the typeface is a thing of nightmares and would be on a console, much less the little handheld thing in your hands.  It's not even the size that's the whole problem, but the fact that they decide to abbreviate everything which is also a problem in trying to ease yourself into the game.  If you don't know what something stands for, how are you supposed to know how it's used?

Honestly, what annoys me the most about the game is how I came to get it.  Way back in the beforetimes when GameCrazy was still around, I was hanging around in the one I enjoyed, I forget what I was there to get, but the guy behind the counter saw me eying the pre-orders and talked the game up.  I figured, SRPG (I was on a FFT kick at the time) and it's a NIS thing, so it'll be rare, so I might as well get it while I can find it!  So not only did I buy this game, I pre-ordered it.  I still have the receipt around here somewhere.  And I can't honestly fault the clerk, since he didn't have to push much; I was genuinely interested in what the game could have been.  And rather than something interesting, I was just left with what the game actually was.

If you can find a FAQ that will tell you what you're doing and why so you can ease yourself into the game, more power to you, but I simply cannot recommend it in any fashion.  Especially when there's so many other great SRPGs on the PSP now.  That you can actually play.

Ragequit - Final Fantasy XII

This post will contain spoilers from the game, so if you would rather not see any for whatever reason, you may want to skip this one.

The year is 2006.  Five years after the last Final Fantasy that many will argue was the last "real" Final Fantasy to that point (since "MMOs don't count", apparently, regardless of how much storyline is there) the air is thick with anticipation, both positive and negative as all titles in the series will ultimately face on release, as the next one is upon us.  Carrying a story behind the game almost more interesting than the one featured -in- the game, one of the more divisive games in the franchise is launched October 31st in America.

The backlash became widely known.over time though perhaps not critically and definitely not economically.

I'll stop writing like I know how the climate of the situation was back then.  Because, in all honesty, I didn't buy FFXII when it first came out.  I didn't hear about it, I didn't really care to read about it; I simply wasn't that interested in the Final Fantasy franchise.  But I did buy it eventually.  And it's probably the easiest game for me to write about in this first installment of the "Ragequit" series, for reasons I'm sure you can imagine at least right now.

I was not a fan of FFXII.  At all.  It's hard to not type down some sort of qualifier for that statement like "It's an understatement" or "I'm bordering on outright lying by not writing a string of vitriol here", but I'm not going to.  Because in truth, all I have to say is the truth.  In absolutely no way, shape or form, was I a fan of the game.

What is...what...no.

This right here is probably the very first image of the game I saw.  Way back in one of the various magazines that I got at the time, I remember seeing the words "Final Fantasy XII Details Inside!" emblazoned on the cover, and going "Eh." before opening it to simply leaf through it as I usually do when I first get a magazine, saving the actual reading for later.  And when I hit the section for Final Fantasy XII, you couldn't help but see that picture or the other, possibly more-known pose.  It was unavoidable, and it was atrocious.  I was already unconcerned with the game as it was, and that certainly didn't help.
What also didn't help was that he was an entirely useless character throughout the whole of the game.  Not only was he useless, really, but he was annoying.  Which is, of course, worse than just being a waste of everybody's time and space.  The game starts off in what I will always remember as one of the worst cock-teases in my entire gaming life, in which you actually start out playing as the fairly decent brother of Vaan, Reks.

I say fairly decent, as he wasn't really developed in the miniscule window he existed, but he was far, far better than he-who-would-be-MC, Captain Inverse Abs Vaan.  For that small time when you're playing as him, it simply feels mediocre, but not particularly offensive; you're on some sort of mission with an older knight, Basch, and it's just alright.  Were the game to get better, it would have certainly just been a subdued start to something entertaining.  As it stands, it shines as one of the few times you won't hate a single person in your party.

The section ends unexpectedly with failure, Reks receiving wounds that later wind up fatal in the cutscene that introduces our fantastic little Protagonist.  About a few hours later, Reks is simply gone from the game.  This is after Vaan parties with Penelo (Who is almost irrelevant as soon as she joins), fails at being a thief, runs across two new characters who are totally not analogues for Han Solo and Chewbacca in this whole mess, and generally just attempts being something that he is not:  interesting.

They even have an airship!  Separately, their tropes would make them simply generic, of course.

The rest of the game can be summed up by throwing around terrible clichés from more popular movies and TV shows and the knowledge that yes, the Empire is still the enemy at any given time.  Well, except for the ending, which, I won't even bother spoiling.  I'll just say it's dumb and leave it at that, since it basically just goes crazy for no reason.

The License Board is one of the least offensive parts of the game.

The rest of the game is no better; the battle system plays out like a poor single-player MMO for some reason, and the hated-or-lauded Gambit system could make the game play with itself in certain situations, namely being when you got one of those points with infinitely respawning enemies and set it up so you had near-zero chance of actually dying.  Walk away, come back a few hours later, and hey, your party has super-leveled!  While not as bad as one could make them out to be, the sheer complexity of it, rather than a simple slightly-more-custom-than-normal Tactics system (as in, beyond, "Heal dudes" and "Hit things") makes it unattractive at the very least.

Bear witness to the breaking point.

Everything mentioned isn't even the biggest problem I had with this game.  The biggest problem that eventually drove me to ragequit (see?  This is where the classification comes from) the game were the Hunts.  Well, not even the hunts.  I should say -one- hunt:  The goddamn Trickster.

This goddamn chocobo was insane.  Not only was it -huge-, but it could cast crazy powerful spells, move really really quickly, as chocobos do, but it could turn invisible and render the stupid attack targeting useless.  Upon coming out of invisibility, it would already be casting the new spell so, by the time your attacks have queued up, you're in a severe amount of pain.  The windows to actually hit it is small, it has 61,321, can cast Paling which renders it immune to physical damage, and can, during those times, only be harmed by one element that will change over the course of the battle, leaving the other elements to actually heal it.  In short, this goddamn thing is more monster than it is bird.

At the time I got the quest to go out and actually look for this thing, my interest in the game was beyond waning; The story was going nowhere (and barely does, regardless), the characters were more or less completely uninteresting (Basch and Balthier being the exceptions but only barely so), and it just was more of a boring chore than a gaming romp.  And after getting demolished soundly a few times, I just gave up, as it just wasn't worth it.

Even he's unimpressed with the game.  And he's -in- it!

Anymore, I'm not even angry at FFXII.  I can't even muster up enough to actively hate it anymore.  It's just not worth it.  You know when you hear, "Son, I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed" and you go, "Oh noooo, that's even worse!", well, that's what it is.  I'm just disappointed in FFXII from start to finish with what it ended up as, when it could have been so much better.  Other resources have covered it better, but, in essence, XII was going to be a completely different game than what it ended up as.  Unfortunately, Squeenix managed to drive the Director, Yasumi Matsuno, so crazy that he left the company completely.

It's hard to argue definitively that the game would have been better with him than it was without him, but looking at the product that we're left with, it's not necessarily wrong to hope that it could have been, well, good.