ZPE's Random Encounters

RPG Maker Review: To the Moon

zpte — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 03:20:03 +0000

Fly Me to the Moon

To the Moon is the first commercial RPG Maker game I’ve played as well as being my first review of 2012. A game made by a small indie team called Freebird Games, it’s available for download on their site at the price of nearly £10 (a generous one-hour trial is available too). This price is pretty hefty for a game offering only fours of game play but I’ll give my opinion on what it’s worth down below.

The game follows Dr. Watts and his travelling colleague, Dr. Rosalene as they seek to fulfil a request from a dying man named Johnny (it has something to do with going “to the moon”). Unlike most doctors in our world, they possess technology that can manipulate and change the memories of humans. I couldn’t help but draw parallels with the film Inception however the writer (well the guy that did most of the work on this game) mentioned in an interview that it was influenced more by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and a few other films I never watched (but plan to do so as soon as possible).

This game allows mouse input so you can point and click instead of using the arrow keys to move around but I mainly used it to scan the screen for items of interest rather than navigating as it was a little buggy.

The game is described as “tragicomedy” but I felt at times it was mood-breaking and didn’t really work as well as it was intended. It had the odd laugh-at-moments but the general banter between the characters in the story wasn’t very pleasant. I can understand why it was it was included but the small pokes (such as at gaming clichés) fall flat. If you can see past this it’s not a problem but I wanted to mention it as it was the reason why I stopped playing the first time around.

Having said that, the “serious” dialogue is aided by some very clever use of character animation as well as other cool techniques. The graphics are pretty much the sort one would expect in a RPG Maker XP game but it has a few scenes where original artwork is used and this greatly complements the story as it unfolds.

Lotsa rabbits; what’s the story behind this? The many mysteries of To the Moon

There are no crystals to collect or dragons to slay but the story is very human and this is the reason to play the game. It might be better told in a different way altogether but to see the story unravel with it’s various sub-plots reflects the talent of the writer here. Spoilers are a big no-no in my reviews so I’ll refrain from giving details about the backdrop to the story but most of the synopsis is on the official site if you want to read it.

There are no battles in the game as it mainly relies on collecting clues in a level that allows you to travel a bit back in time (in Johnny’s memories). At the end of each memory you have to solve a puzzle by swapping tiles around until they all disappear. Further on into the game, there are various other things to do but nothing special. The majority of the game play serves to keep the player doing stuff for the sake of story progression more than a challenge, it neither adds or detracts from my experiences.

On the other hand, the soundtrack accompanying the game really does add a lot of atmosphere and feeling into the story. It’s used very effectively and I don’t remember an instance where I felt something was out of place.

I played this game in just over three hours contrary to the four-and-a-half hour adventure quoted on the official site but I’m not sure if the in-game clock registered it incorrectly as it felt like more than that.

I can’t help but think To the Moon would’ve been better in a non-RPG Maker platform but at the same time, the program scripting behind it is very sound and does the game justice. As someone who’s used to playing RPG Maker games for free, the cost of the game is a little dear in my opinion but at the same time, the work behind everything in this game is something I really do appreciate. For £10 I’m not sure there are many games that can rival this game on a personal level. If you’re still unsure, you can get a refund if you’re not happy after playing the game. How’s that for product confidence?

Overall verdict: good

Review of 2011

zpte — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 23:06:02 +0000

The year 2011 proved to be “a game of two halves” for me in terms of my personal life but gaming-wise it was one of the better years of gaming for me. The motivation to play video games was still burning bright through the entire year right until the end which was pretty rare for me as I’m easily susceptible to ‘gaming burnout’.

I’ll be going in the order I got around to playing the following games last year, this is the first part and a final part will follow as soon as I’ve written up that section. On a side note, I won’t be delving into any RPG maker games as I covered all the ones I played in my game reviews.

During much of January I was playing through the much-anticipated third Golden Sun game, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn (DS). Just a year or so ago, I got around to beating both it’s preceding games and my expectations for it to deliver were high. The various gameplay elements that carried the prequels forward weren’t as compelling a third time in and I felt the game got a little too easy at some point in the game. Furthermore, Golden Sun always had eight playable characters split into two parties that you could swap around in battles but some of the latecomers to the party arrived a little too late and this didn’t help with the story side of things. The soundtrack was forgettable as well. I was better off not playing the original games as Golden Sun: Dark Dawn is one of the better RPGs on the Nintendo DS but comparing the three games is unavoidable.

Dark Dawn’s story runs many parallels with previous Golden Sun games

After I was done with Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, I picked up Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (DS). I had already seen some footage of the Japanese version prior to it’s European release. The game had me instantly hooked from the off as I loved the the mystery surrounding Ghost Trick’s story. The shortfalls in the game were the trail-and-error way of solving puzzles that were transferred over from the Phoenix Wright series and the dialogue can get a little heavy but Dark Dawn prep me well here and I’d say the ending was definitely worth seeing. The character you control, Sissel, had all the qualities of being a good IP for Capcom but poor sales will probably mean there will be no planned sequels or similar risks taken in the future which is a shame as I enjoyed this way more than the next game I’ll be discussing.

Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds (PS3) was Capcom’s cash cow and for good reason too. Riding on the success of Marvel vs. Capcom 2, this game was hotly anticipated and I brought it on pre-order without a second thought. It was only later that I realised it came with on-disc DLC as well as some seriously annoying elements within the game that made me regret ever hearing about the game in the first place. I found the character roster very lacking and the absence of some of my favourite characters like Megaman and Cyclops made me somewhat frustrated but I overlooked this and chose to enjoy the game with it’s relatively newer mascots.

“I can’t control it!”

Playtime did not last long however as I found the game a little bit ridiculous when it came to character balancing. Sentinels were everywhere online and offline, I was constantly beaten by a Phoenix player using the X factor to it’s full potential. Maybe I was just a bad player but the advice that was thrown at similar players discussing these issues was to spend hours in the training mode, I tried but couldn’t face the music. I learnt to play fighting games from regular battling but that was impossible unless you mimicked the play-styles off your opponents. Also, clearing the mission mode was pretty much hopeless without an arcade stick and to rub some salt into the wound, Capcom indrectly admitted MvC3 was incomplete by announcing and later releasing Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Essentially, the same game but with more characters, refined gameplay as well as improved online features. I didn’t buy that standalone DLC as I quit this game indefinitely after getting tired of trying to like MvC3.

Sometime during the spring, I decided it was time to get Plants vs Zombies: Game of the Year Edition (PC). It gave me a much-needed change from the previous games I had played for those last few months. The “hat factor” might have had some influence on me too as the game gave two free hats to Team Fortress 2 owners but that fad wore off fast. The game itself was easy at the start and got very frantic near the end levels. I liked the way special units were handed out and the mini-games themselves were a blast. It’s a game that I’ll be playing on-and-off for sure. I had the chance to play on the DS too and the game is just as good on there.

Zombie-zapping, plant-shooting fun

Professor Layton and the Lost Future (DS) completed the trilogy of Layton games on the DS. At the time of its release back in 2010, many critics called it the best Layton game out of the three which is quite something considering how good the first two games were. I played it with some expectation that it will be some more of the same as the others but Level-5 managed to freshen things up a little. I liked the mini-games, the toy car one being my favourite. The story book was great fun and collecting and arranging those stickers was strangely satisfying. The puzzles themselves, like before, were weaved into the engrossing story which I loved and considered better in most ways to the other Layton games. I didn’t particularly like the abundance of lock puzzles though and that’s the only negative thing I remember about it back then. As this was the final Layton game to grace the DS, I can definitely say that I’ve enjoyed all three. It’s definitely one of my favourite series at the moment.

“CORRECT”

Super Scribblenauts (DS) set out to improve on the original Scribblenauts game (which was hyped to the stars above). Another 2010 release, I expected that it’ll be up for grabs for cheap by the following year and it was. Having played the original for a short time, I didn’t hold out much hope of enjoying this game but the game surprised me with great use of the newly-added adjectives feature. Completing levels weren’t too hard although some of the objectives were a little vague at first (thankfully, the hints helped). The messy controls were fixed although I didn’t really find it hinder me that much in the first game. A game much like Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, this game is definitely better than its predecessor although the idea behind it all wore off big time by the time it was released.

Having played the awe-inspiring Ōkami, I didn’t have any second thoughts about playing Ōkamiden (DS) except for the sad fact that Clover Studios was not working on this game. However, the people behind it’s sequel did more than enough to satisfy many fans (although probably not all as I did notice a lot of backtracking and some other minor niggles; can’t remember them though). The fights were difficult, the world was smaller than on the PS2 but the compelling story and chiby art style presentation made it a worthy sequel.

I spent much of early summer was spent catching up with Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies (DS), a highly customisable RPG trying to appeal to the wider audience. Initially, I didn’t like the fact that there was hardly a story behind the characters that you control other than the main protogonist and evne then the story was just treading on old ground. Eventually, I grew to like the game for what it was. I spent many hours grinding down grotto maps and completing my file to 100%. The hardest time I had was with the wardrobe thing as it was a weekly WiFi download thing where you got some items randomly but using a few “secret” techniques I managed to get all of them. The optional quests took a while to complete too due to them not being released when I had finished the main quests. The game was dubbed to be the most difficult game in the series and a lot of the monsters were definitely no pushover. Grinding up levels with metal slimes made short work of that though.

This is obviously not my own party (or my screenshot)

While waiting for the WiFi stuff in the DQIX, I decided to get Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Reverie (DS). I remember playing the first Dragon Quest and enjoying the game for hours on end and wanted to try out the game on a SNES emulator due to the fact that it was never released in the western shores but I didn’t stick to it for long back then. This time was different and I managed to beat the game. It was a difficult game to get into as the two-world system was confusing and travelling back-and-forth with random encounters (something I didn’t miss in DQIX) didn’t help alleviate that. However, the game did a lot of things right like the class system, exceptional character dialogue, crazy transportations and many other things that have escaped my memory. The purists will prefer this over DQIX but I liked DQIX more as it felt more accustomed to the DS and more importantly in 2011.

In June Steam released their first free-to-play games and one of them was Spiral Knights (PC). An online action-adventure game borrowing elements from the handheld Zelda games. I hardly play it these days but for a quarter of the year, it was my number one game to play but one can only do the same task over and over again just for the sake of feeling like you’re working towards something (the bane of MMOs). When I stopped playing regularly, the energy prices (that are required for many things in the game) was sky high thanks to Three Rings decision to introduce an elevator pass but recently this has dropped again to decent enough levels. My review can be found here.

In mid-November I got the critically acclaimed action RPG, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (PS3). It was being hailed as the “game-of-the-year” across the internet so I couldn’t pass up on this game. Initially, I thought Bethesda had skipped the PS3 but I had forgotten my reasoning behind that (someone on Twitter reminded me it was on PS3 too). Anyway, when I loaded this game up, it was pretty much gaming haven. The vast scale of the game meant I had seemingly limitless ways in which to play the game. I spend many hours side-tracking from the main quest and doing various things for about 50 hours including forging my own set of armour and doing various explorations without some random NPC telling me where to go. It wasn’t until I decided to go into far-away cities that I came across the reason why I never heard about the PS3 version of the game in the first place. Bethesda didn’t provide any copies to media outlets. In fact some IGN guy had to buy his own copy to test out a major issue with game (which he later confirmed although this isn’t exactly the same intensity of lag I’m experiencing at the moment).

One of the many things to do in Skyrim is to simply stare at the amazing scenery around you

I was pretty distraught as it ruined what was at first a great game. Patches came in to remedy the situation but they didn’t work in the long run and I had to use some frustrating workarounds (which didn’t fix anything at all to be honest) to play the game like turning off auto-saving, rebuilding my PS3′s file database, re-installing the Skyrim data etc. I also came across bugs that prevented me from continuing on with the game like the civil war bugs I mentioned earlier last month and a bucket-load of others which are all listed on the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages (a great source for Skyrim information by the way). However I persevered and got my platinum trophy, after this I gradually lost my motivation to put up with the bug-ridden game but completed as many quests as I could using USEP to guide me. I can say that I’ve done almost everything in the game except the Bard quests which are too buggy for me to attempt at this stage.

The game “breaks” after a certain point where enemies get very easy and you don’t need to bother worrying about having optimised gear and the dungeon crawls get very repetitive too. The game was advertised as an “epic” and I got about 230 hours out of it (not counting the hours I lost in backtracking through previous saves because of freezes, lag and quest bugs and not to mention the delightful loading screens) before putting it down, it definitely has a limit to it’s appeal but I had hoped it lasted longer. Here’s hoping the next patch Bethesda release addresses the issues they insist they are going to fix.

I also got to play a much more quality-tested game called Super Mario 3D Land (3DS), finally a reason to actually own a 3DS. Having not played the previous most-recent Mario games on the Wii, I was coming into this off the back from New Super Mario Bros. The levels were very creative and finding the stars proved to be quite a challenge but the most challenging aspect was to visualise this game in 3D because for some reason, it never worked for me. I tried the two different modes, held the 3DS high in the air, under my foot but nothing helped. All I saw was a blur so I guess I was in the minority that had to play it in 2D but I still enjoyed the feel I got of various past Mario games implemented in here. The game was only difficult because I couldn’t get used to the analogue controls and kept misdirecting my jumps (I wish Nintendo had given the option to use the d-pad for this reason).

I used this screenshot before and I’m not afraid to use it again…

Thus ends my recap of 2011. I can look back on this post and learn from the mistakes I made with some titles and avoid becoming a paying beta tester as well as pay for half a game while the companies in question release the superior version several months later. I’m pretty weary of critical reviews as well now since most of them lack the guts to write honestly rather than write sonnets to the hands that feed them. I’m not sure how 2012 will go but I have a feeling I won’t be playing as many games as I have done in 2011 but time will tell.

Skyrim: The Buggy Civil War Quest Line

zpte — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 00:05:59 +0000

A week ago, I had the pleasure of playing through a horrendously buggy and dull quest line when I joined the Imperial Legion. I’m sure it’s just as bad on the other side (Stormcloaks) but there is the potential to wreck your progress if you fail to take heed ahead of starting each and every quest you do (like most other quests in Skyrim). I’m playing the PS3 version so I don’t know if this is just a bug for this platform.

I’ll save myself the trouble of mentioning cross-linked bugs with this quest line and the one that made me post this as a reference to others as well as myself is the “The Battle for Fort Dunstad” or replace Dunstad with whatever the fort’s name is because there are three occasions where the player is hand-guided into these repetitive tasks. All of them have the following steps:

1) Report to the field commander or Legate Rikke if you chose to side with the Imperials

2) Go and meet fellow soldiers at a specific point indicated by Rikke

3) Raid the fort mentioned in the quest title and kill all waves of enemy soldiers which respawn until you kill enough of them

The problems I faced:

1) I can’t report to Legate Rikke. There is no option despite trying many things until I decided to check the unofficial Skyrim wiki (UESP). I found out that using the ice form shout to turn Rikke to an ice statue worked (I talked to her after she’s defrosted).

2) After getting the quest update, there is no marker on the map to meet the soldiers. If there is, chances are the soldiers won’t be there.

3) If the soldiers are there, follow them to the fort but the chances of finding an empty fort is probably 50/50 thus making you start over. If your game is stuttering really bad here but you manage to get the enemy soldiers to load up, you might freeze due to the high number of character models on-screen. I froze once and had slide-show fights the rest of the time, not fun.

So as you can see, in order to complete one quest, you’re hoping many things go your way. I noticed that saving in-between the steps was a no-no and the best place to save is somewhere other than the area your camp is (before you report to duty). It took me at most on one occasion, roughly forty tries to get it working for the first fort and less on the other forts but I couldn’t really figure out the issue here except that I was lagging really bad in the area around the fort and had temporary freezes while the game was loading up the scenery.

The only fix I know of is go and do the main quest line and skip these petty fort raids but you miss out on the War Hero trophy if you’re after that. I still managed to get the War Hero trophy and that’s all I did it for really as the climax to the end of the war is disappointing and probably not worth the hassle unless you’re trophy hunting or a completionist (not really possible in this game anyway). I can’t wait for the Bards quests, I already know they’re bugged thanks to all the players posting about it on Bethesda’s own forums as well as other sites.

Skyrim: Thoughts on Radiant Quests

zpte — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 01:48:25 +0000

When Skyrim director Todd Howard was busy hyping up Skyrim and what it offers to gamers, he mentioned something that caught my attention, radiant quests. Quests which are randomly generated by some ingenious coding by Bethesda. This system has a serious flaw in that the NPCs you are asked to go kill, be it the Jarl or the Innkeeper, resulting in your target to be either missing in action or already dead. You, yourself, might have killed them already or they were killed somewhere in the background while you were travelling to a different location or the game just decides to bug your quest for no reason.

I already have some quests to ‘kill this giant and that bandit leader’ but I hope they’re still alive when I eventually bother to get there. All these radiant quests get very tedious and lethargic after getting a taste of a few of them and this doesn’t help. Radiant quests are ever present in any guilds you join and the worst radiant quests you’ll find is definitely in the Thieves Guild. I mean, to get the One with the Shadows trophy, you must do several radiant quests for two lazy bums across various cities. You can only take two at a time and most of them are pretty much the same thing. Coupled with the Thief trophy, these are a pain to get even if you choose to do fishing jobs just to ease the burden. I also believe that the former trophy doesn’t actually activate with quests until I complete the entire Thieves Guild questline but not sure if that’s true. I’ve done more than what I’ve seen other players quote (five or six) but not got the main quests to restore glory in any cities. That skeleton key is too useful at this stage…

It’s nice that Bethesda implemented this system but I would rather just have an option to turn it off as I already have several misc quests which are bugged as a result of a flawed system that probably didn’t get enough testing (much like the rest of the game I suppose). For now, I’ll just have to avoid any Jarls and Innkeepers looking for some random adventurer to help slay the local terror.

Now Playing: Skyrim; First Impressions, PS3 Lag

zpte — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 21:55:25 +0000

So I finally got Skyrim (on the PS3) and what a wonderful game it is. I got it as a gift but probably would’ve had second thoughts if I was buying it for myself. I hate to start my first impressions on a bad note but I might as well get it out of the way.

This is mainly due to a few major issues with the game on the PS3 players across the internet are reporting. From my experience of playing the game for roughly over 15 hours, I’ll comment on the following:

Standard TV compatibility. As Bethesda designed Skyrim for a HD TV, the screen on a SD TV is not big enough to fit the entire game screen so the left and right side of the main frame is cut off by a few centimetres. Also the use of narrow text (inevitable as this game uses the variable width format) makes reading the text on the screen very difficult to read in some cases.

The first issue is not much of a problem, you get some dialogue cut-off but in battles, exploring Skyrim, this isn’t a problem. The second one can be a huge deterant for gamers if they prefer to sit far away from the TV. Not only that but if you plan on getting this game to play on a SD TV, make sure you are using RGB (or scart?) cable and not the composite cable Sony bundled in with the PS3. This makes a huge difference with the text and I only had problems reading tightly-squeezed text rather than the normal-width text (not that matters much as I always keep check on my quest log and inventory). One thing I noticed on reddit was someone complaining about not seeing the notification text at the top-right of the screen, I guess they have the rounded-screens because on my 21″ flat-screen TV, it was perfectly visible.

So many bugs. Yes, this is probably expected and it’s no excuse for a well-established developer like Bethesda. There was a day-one patch to get rid of the major game-breaking bugs so I didn’t find any of those and to be honest the worse bug I got was probably falling to my death from one feet (this set me back a few hours so I was pretty annoyed but whatever). In the grand scale of things, I can live with them as the game offers too much to just some bugs that occur occasionally deter you from playing the game however the next issue will probably lead to many to stop playing unless Bethesda release a patch.

This is like the bug from Team Fortress 2 where players appear to be swimming on land

Game save bug. This is the one that has me looking over my shoulder every time I decide to play Skyrim. The PS3 version has so many players reporting that after a good amount of playing the game, you get major drops in the frame-rate as shown by this video (this also shows excessive loading times which doesn’t look like fun at all).

Some people have said this has the same save bug as Fallout: New Vegas which is slightly worrying as Bethesda never fixed that as far as I know. Apart from all that, this game is highly enjoyable and warrants the praise it’s being getting from reviewers although I can’t help think why there are so few PS3 reviews for it.

The graphics are really quite jaw-dropping in many places and encountering my first snowfall was pretty. The character models look a bit dated though as do the animations that look like they are walking on air but it’s not anything that stopped me from playing, just gave me and others watching me play, a good laugh.

The battle system isn’t all that compelling, you use L1 and R1 to attack. I went with a Nord mainly focusing on one-handed swords with a shield on my left. Too bad I couldn’t equip the sword on my left as I’m left-handed. I also use minor spells in case of emergencies and found the fire spell to be highly effective in the early parts of the game (I think I still am in the early parts).

My personal highlights so far include:

Clearing the first dungeon and fighting a hoard of undead soldiers while running through a trap-filled ruin
Got my first Dragon shout, it’s pretty useful
Falling one feet to my death near a mountain, this was just hilarious but annoying at the same time
Entering Riverwood‘s woodcutter’s house and upsetting his child. He chased me out of town (didn’t want to kill him for job opportunities) and I jumped into the river for safety. That got my blocking skills up at least but he always sounds angry now whenever I speak to him.
Figuring out that holding the activate button allows you to hold an item
Beating up my first-ever elf companion because my guild ordered me to (this was a difficult quest but the victim was cool about it)
Making much-needed money through alchemy and smithing new gear to buy my first house
As a first-timer to the Elder Scrolls series, the enormous amount of books in the game allowed me to catch a glimpse into the lore and history of the previous games. The various NPCs added to this immersion through their I spent an hour at one bookcase just reading books in this game…

I’ll post more on Skyrim I’m sure but for now, it’s back to the game itself!

Spiral Knights: Royal Jelly

zpte — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 01:07:18 +0000

Spiral Knights offers its players many ways of earning in-game currency (crowns) and other loot. You could analyse the volatile auction house and play it that way although it’s very monotonous or go and do some clockwork levels that give out a lot of crowns and rare materials. If you’re looking for the easiest route, it’s probably the gate with most tier 1 arenas. The highest reward comes from Firestorm Citadel (tier 3 boss stratum) but it’s much more time-consuming and not to mention the risk of death is far greater. Arguably, the most efficient method is running through the royal jelly (RJ) levels found in the fourth stratum of a tier 2.

This gate appears only in one gate and stays there until it’s shifted off the gate cycle to the left every six days or so. It’s always there though so it’s best to clear the first and second stratum of that gate (tier 1) to avoid the 200 crown penalty if you intend to do a lot of RJ runs. If you plan on doing this, this is the best option. This post will aim to guide you through what is the best way to proceed through the levels.

Preparation

Before you head down to the first RJ castle level (which is at depth 15), you’ll need to clear the previous levels or get lucky and join Basil randomly in an open party group. I always take the risk of the latter but that choice is up to you. A more easier way is to join guild or friends that are also doing it, if you see open slots, you might as well ask.

In terms of what gear to take down there, there are various options at your disposal. You don’t really need to take in optimal gear (some is good enough) but I suggest:

piercing resistant armour and/or helmet against the ton of jellies you’ll face. The most common one is the wolver line but one piercing resistant gear should suffice. I’ve managed to do this with other types of gear while always wearing my Skolver Coat.
Dread Venom Striker (or Vile Striker) . This sword without a doubt is very handy for the boss level but also a blast to use anyway. It poisons occasionally which is it’s main draw as you’re less dependant on vials (more on that later).
shadow damaging weapons. This is a no-brainer, jellies are weak to shadow so take in anything that will make your battles easier. I prefer the Silent Nightblade over the Faust but both are very effective.
Guns are very useful for kiting (attacking enemies with no or very little chance of getting hurt) as are bombs (the Shivermist Buster is generally the best support bomb in my opinion even though I don’t have one, everyone that is at least fairly decent with it, makes any mobs a cakewalk). In a party, make sure to take note of other players as recklessly unloading your attacks can get them hit or dead even.
The best shield for RJ runs is the Barbarous Thorn Shield or one of it’s lesser forms simply because if you’re using a sword (most likely you are), it gives added sword damage and it also offers piercing protection. That’s not to say other shields aren’t to be considered.

Another thing you’ll need to consider if you are going to take on the Royal Jelly (King; I’ll just add the king bit in for easier notations) is to stock up on certain vials. These will make the battle much easier. The most useful is poison as it’ll prevent the RJK from healing and curse which greatly shortens the battle time. Health capsules are an obvious recommendation and apart from that, the remaining slot should be left for the vial you think is most useful. I think mecha knights are ideal but rare from my experiences, fire isn’t too bad, shock is decent but doesn’t stop the berserking RJK. Stun is the most useful if you can time the throws as the RJK leaves it’s berserk state. The mini-spins will be temporarily stopped allow you to inflict maximum damage. The remaining vials, sleep and freeze should be used on the RJK mob rather than the king itself because it doesn’t last that long otherwise. Only take these in if you’re joining the run late and can’t gather the other vials in time, no vials are entirely useless.

Depth 15

This is the first RJ level and unsurprisingly, it’s the easiest. In a party, it’s best to share the two sides of the map to make things quicker. The room to the left is probably the harder of the two because of the spikes so get out of there as soon as possible to fight the enemies out in the open, it’s much safer. The right room should have the centre area cleared for easier manoeuvring (leave the grey blocks to shield against gun puppies if necessary). Once these rooms are done, the final room is just a wave of more jellies and a few lumbers and silkwings which you should have no problems with.

A love puppy, the most relieving sight in the clockworks

Depth 16

This level can be difficult if you make it so. The first part is simple enough, just go around in a circle and grab the stone and place it north. The enemies in-between are jellies and a lumber on each triggered mob group. There’s a silkwing on the final part which should be taken out as soon as possible but this part is relatively easy.

After this is done, the floor opens up to four rooms. You cannot split here if you’re in a party so it’s best to work as a team and deal with the enemies in a co-ordinated fashion. The hardest room is the north-east one simply because of the tight spacing, spikes and not to mention the explosive blocks (which regenerate). A general tactic is always to take out healers first and this greatly applies here. The longer the silkwing is alive, the more work you need to do to clear the room. If you’re in a party of four, one or two players should stay back and attack the gun puppy directly to the right of the party button and one or two players should go and hit the blue block. These players should defeat the silkwing straight away to make life easier. A general observation I’ve seen is that players spreading across the room survive better rather than staying together. In pairs, this is okay but sometime ago my entire party got wiped out by a lumber when four of us were trying to kill the silkwing.

In order of difficulty, I’d say the north-east room is the hardiest to clear followed by the south-east room (this room is ideal for shivermist buster users who can just keep dropping bombs in the centre and deal with the four corners of the rooms with ease. The north-west room can get quite messy if you go in with all guns blazing, controlling the space where the party button is, makes this much easier. The easiest room is the south-west room, do this first if you’re low on health, just make sure not to get hit by exploding blocks and/or blast jellies and you should be okay.

Once all four rooms are cleared, that leaves one final room before the RJK. As well as the standard monsters you’ll face here, there’s the likelihood of facing a giant lichen colony if you let the lichem merge into one. This will occur at the very end of the wave unless you can shield-bump the gaint lichen away from the other lichens fast enough. To be honest, this isn’t a great problem and the reward is greater but if you’re running low on health, it’s best to increase your chances of survival by not having to face a crazy oversized lichen in the first place.

*gulp* (Artwork courtesy of Zoph)

At this point, choose whether to carry on or not, if you leave now, you’d be missing out on jelly tokens and a small amount of crowns from the next level.

Royal Jelly King

This is the final level in the royal jelly run. As of writing, RJK has been “downgraded” to a much easier battle. When I started playing, it was insanely difficult and I had to make sure I was on top of everything and not waste any vials. Now, it’s a case of applying as much damage per second (dps) as you can, poison helps but it’s not vital if you’re fast enough. I have actually found it much easier to go in a party of faust or nightblade players and finish the RJK off in about half a minute not even letting it go past the first berserk.

There are effectively two ways to defeat the RJK. I always go all-in and try to end the battle there and then but you could also kill off it’s health supply. This is longer and more tedious but it is an alternative approach but not one I’ll discuss now.

Before activating the party button, it’s best to charge up your sword to attack the RJK (making sure not to take damage before you reach it). The battles start off with you facing some royal minis and jellies in front of the RJK itself, try to ignore the mob as your priority is on the big one. Throw a poison vial and keep attacking it. You can throw other vials on it if you want but make sure not to waste any (just in case). Once you’ve done enough damage, the RJK loses it’s crown and enters the second (and last) phase.

In this phase, run away from the RJK because when it has a pink energy shield around it (it goes beserk), you cannot damage it and each swing it does, greatly damages you (remember it does normal damage not piercing). The normal-sized jellies will disappear but Royal Polyps will pop up (turrets) so just dodge their bullets, it’s a waste to mow them down. As the RJK is spinning around, take this time to use some health capsules or if your health is high enough, start charging your sword ready to go back in when the RJK stops spinning. If you have a stun vial here, use it straight away and throw everything at the RJK, if you do enough damage you’ll defeat it. If not, it’ll go pink again and go berserk once more but just do what you did before and it should be okay.

My Royal Jelly Gear

Weapon Slot 1: Silent Nightblade (will be upgraded to Acheron when I can do so). Weapon Slot 2: Dread Venom Striker

Helm: Royal Jelly Crown. Armour: Skolver Coat. Shield: Barbarous Thorn Shield

That’s all there is to it, really. Some bad luck can ruin your run such as the usual lag, getting cornered by monsters and/or misplacing some vials but with the last update, the RJK has become much easier and quite rightly so (it’s a tier 2 boss after all). You should make enough crowns to invest in some CE which you can use to re-run or call it a day. After doing so many runs, you’ll probably want to do something else but it’s a good way to gain some crowns, running on CE alone, I can’t recommend anything else.

Have fun!

Looking Forward to Super Mario 3D Land

zpte — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 22:00:48 +0000

In this month of some highly rated game releases, there’s only one game I really want to get my hands on, Super Mario 3D Land.

Call it whatever you want but there’s rarely anything to comes close to the enjoyment of playing a proper Mario platformer. I loved all the Super Mario Bros. games and Super Mario World was just awesomely good fun. The Game Boy Mario platforming games were very enjoyable as well but I never played them with the same addiction and excitement I got from playing the console renditions.

From what I’ve read so far, it seems Super Mario 3D Land is closer to Super Mario Bros 3 than any of the Super Mario Land games which I welcome greatly. Some reviewers have listed it as being the reason to finally own a 3DS so I may just do that (I have access to another person’s 3DS, hehe). ut If it can match or over perform all it’s predecessor, I’ll be one a happy goomba-mashing gamer. Content with the fact that at least I managed to play one of the finest games this month has to offer.

I’ll share my thoughts on the game as soon as it’s released here but I expect it to be so great that I probably won’t bother!

PES 2012 – Full Team List Video

zpte — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 22:40:59 +0000

I haven’t been blogging much but that’s because I’ve been distracted by other things. I’m still keeping tabs on PES 2012 as I’m not sure if it’s buying for another year when I hardly played PES 2011. I also got the season update for 2011/2012 thanks to some dedicated awesome people over at PESGaming but I’ll have to see for myself this month with the demo.

Here’s a video showcasing all the teams available in PES 2012 courtesy of prorevo blog via onlyproevolutions. Check them out for the latest PES news.

RPG Maker Review: Beyond the Gate

zpte — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 19:16:51 +0000

Beyond the Gates Lies a Story to be Told

Beyond the Gate is a RPG Maker 2003 game made by Sam for the 2011 RMN Summer Games contest.

It follows the life of Claire, a young woman who struggles with living with terminal cancer. As you play through the game, you play as Claire facing her fears which physically manifest themselves as ghostly entities. The game doesn’t really focus on the illness at hand and chooses to follow a much more general theme much to it’s benefit.

In order to overcome Claire’s fears, you have to defeat them in turn-based battles which are carried out using the default RPG Maker 2003 engine. Enemies are encountered on-screen and they re-appear after defeating them if you leave the current map. You can choose not to fight the monsters although it makes compulsory fights much more difficult – probably impossible. However, thanks to save points fully healing you, you shouldn’t have a problem with normal battles.

There is a fair bit of grinding that needs to be done as the boss fights can very difficult without doing so and the numerous enemies scattered across rooms suggests this. Most of the skills (or techniques) in this game aren’t very effective or have a reason to be used at all. For example, there’s a skill called “Assertion” which is meant to lower enemy defence but it always fails. The only skill that had any use was ‘Self Esteem’ which increased my defence and made fights much easier.

Rest ‘assured’ victory will be yours

After gaining a couple of levels, I did not learn any new skills which I found disappointing. All battles consisted of either attacking flat-out or using Self Esteem then constantly hitting the attack button. Having only one or two different common enemies to fight didn’t make this any better.

Although this game is a short game, there is still room for customisation. You can buy stat-specific items which permanently raise your stats. I spent all my money on attack and defence-enhancing items which made the remainder of the game trouble-free. There is only one weapon you can buy which is the best weapon in the game although the icon used to show if a weapon improves the character’s stats is vague.

As I walked around as Claire, I couldn’t help but notice the jerky action in her movement as though there’s a missing frame in there somewhere. However, in battles, the animations were smooth and much easier on the eyes than RTP battlers. I didn’t feel like you were walking through larger areas of empty space and there were plenty of objects spread across to enhance each setting. There were a few issues with movement passability along with the game commenting on a bed when facing the wall. These weren’t major shortcomings which hindered the game in anyway.

The ceiling fan animation in the hospital was a nice touch

The slow-paced, relaxing music in this game fits in really nicely with the theme the game is trying to convey.

Beyond the Gate sets a compelling story and it paces itself nicely until the end. Battles can do with a bit of spicing up as well as making more skills useful but overall it was a good forty minutes of game-play.

Overall verdict: good

You can download Beyond the Gate at RPGMaker.net

RPG Maker Review: Sister’s Storybook

zpte — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 07:18:52 +0000

A Short and Sweet Story

Sister’s Storybook is a RPG Maker XP game made by rabitZ and Epischdrew for the 2011 RMN Summer Games contest.

The story follows a young boy who is magically transported into his sister’s storybook (hence the game title). As you play through the game, you’ll realise this is more of a doodle book rather than a storybook as there are no short stories to be found. Instead you are required to get out of specific scenarios which involve either puzzles or turn-based battles – usually both.

The puzzles themselves are not that overly difficult. They involve tasks like rock pushing, walking in a certain matter amongst other things. The hardest of the lot was probably the part where the game designers decided to include some good old Betrayal at Krondor riddles but a quick search online will get you through that!

The enemy battles themselves are fairly easily to get through as well. I thought they were a bit on the easy side but the difficulty in this game wasn’t the main focus anyway. My character died only once but that was down to my own negligence (I ignored a vital piece of advice…).

Battles are straight forward but enjoyable

As for the graphics in this game, they are a mixture of borrowed, custom and default graphics but they work rather well. Mapping is generally good with lots of variation in the themes of the “pages”of the storybook. One thing I didn’t like was the rock sprite overlapping on the character sprite but that would be just nitpicking.

The sound and music were very much at heart of the game’s theme. Default victory fanfare and other common things are used but nothing that detracts from the game’s theme.

After the end of the game you’re given an option to save but this doesn’t do anything, I’m not sure what was the purpose of this.

So in conclusion, Sister’s Storybook should last for around ten to fifteen enjoyable minutes.

Overall verdict: good

You can download Sister’s Storybook at RPGMaker.net