Aftermath of Alphonse no Daibouken

Well, I kind of went on my big "day of being outside" adventure YESTERDAY, but I was kind of too tired to post anything about it last night because I am sort of terrible. Anyhow.

I resolved to yesterday, on January 29th, 2009 to dick around the Lower Mainland area as long as I could. And so I did. Long story short I picked up 3 games that day: Greetest Hits (not a typo) Beyond Good & Evil, War of the Monsters, and Twinbee Deluxe Collection for Japanese Sega Saturn (not ENTIRELY sure why I picked this up, probably because it was only $10).

While wandering around Lonsdale Quay after taking the seabus (a feat I had not done in almost ten years), I found a non-molested copy of a great PS2 game I played back in high school, War of the Monsters. Needless to say, War of the Monsters is a very entertaining monster fighting game which I could easily equate to the King of Monsters games done in 3D, and infinitely more balanced and entertaining. The one thing I imagine that holds it back is that it is only a 2 Player game. Had there been a sequel with a 4-player mode, the series would have definitely become an instant classic.

Beyond Good & Evil is one of those games that I wish I had purchased when it was new (happens a lot actually). Without being able to play it, from what I remember it was a very well-recieved adventure/action game. The weird plastic covering on it somehow melted onto the spine and, in my eyes, ruined the case. That ain't cool, bro. However this also further drives my resolve to purchase a whole whack of Playstation 2 game cases to replace the molested-by-stickers used games I already have.

Lastly, Twinbee Deluxe Collection is a weird little Sega Saturn Jap game I found at GameDeals yesterday when I popped in there to look around and probably not buy anything. At $9.95 the game called out to me, "TAKE ME HOME!" and so I obliged. I can't play it, I don't even have a working Saturn, but it does sort of feel cool to have a Sega Saturn game in my collection, specifically one of a series I always imagine I enjoyed but never played that much.

2 New (Fodder) Foes!

Not gonna lie to you, I haven't drawn much of anything this week. I spent a majority of this week playing Fallout 3 and enjoying the sight of punching things so hard they explode. But that's neither here nor there. Today's sort-of update includes a picture of the two enemies I "created" when I drew the picture for the Momentumeter idea.

Shoop Lizard: These odd little reptiles have the curious ability to concentrate the air within their lungs to a (relatively) devastating energy attack. Naturally since they are fodder foes they are easily dealt with by Azure with a couple of hits. Just be mindful to avoid their "shoop a da woop" as best as you can, it knocks the player back far more than any normal attack.

Sicklepeede: Unethical giant hybrid of mantises and centipedes, the sicklepeede is a mildly irritating person-sized carnivorous insect. Despite the menacing pinser on their rears, due to their unweildly large size and blind spot directly behind them it is all but useless. The sicklepeede's main strength is in its dual sickle-like claws, which it uses to tear into prey. Taking a sicklepeede head-on is not recommended unless you are able to strike first, and most of the time that will not be the case. It is best to leap over them and hit their unprotected rears.

Good times.

Let's Talk About: Noitu Love 2

Instead of the (for some reason) popular Let's Play, I decided to go with the title, "Let's Talk About" pretty clever, eh?

...Yeah okay.

ANYWAY. Noitu Love 2. Noitu Love 2: Devolution is the high-speed action game sequel to the very short-range and methodical Megaman-style game, Noitu Love and The Army of Grinning Darns, both created by Joakim Sandberg. While I can say that I never did finish the first Notiu Love, I tore through its sequel like a chippy tearing into a lobster and had a blast doing it. "But hold on a second!", you might think, "Noitu Love 2 was released in the spring of last year! Isn't this review a tad tardy?" Yes, that is true, the game's been out for a long time. However, the new price attached to it has NOT been out all that long.

Noitu Love 2 is $10 US now! (And here I paid $20, it was money well spent though.) That's as much as an XBLA arcade game!

But enough about the new price, let's talk about the actual game some more. From the get-go, the frenzied movement and attacking of the game's protagonist Xoda Rap reveal just how much Mr. Sandberg has improved in his game development and design abilities since the first game. An ingenious combo of the mouse and keyboard make for a control style that really feels at home on the PC. Left click to attack and home in on enemies, use the WASD to move and perform special movement techniques (slide, duck, "double jump") and use the right click to summon a sheild that is actually quite imparative to success in more than one occasion. It works incredibly well and it is almost mind-boggling that the control style is not nearly as widely used in PC side-scrollers.

Trying not to dwell too long on the graphics and music of the game, both parts (especially the pixel art graphics) are composed with such a charm that the game really does feel like a lost 16-bit era classic of Treasure Ltd. caliber that happens to have a control scheme none of the systems of the day could have.

Each of the levels in Noitu Love 2 has its own distinct feel and, in several cases, foes to fight. Because of the pseudo time-travel plotline within the game, you will find yourself using Xoda to battle darns across many varied landscapes, from Victorian England to the wild west to a post-apocolyptic future. Each landscape stands out as seperate from the others, yet obviously feeling of the same world, despite the obvious time difference. Some stages, like the aformentioned wild west stage, have completely different control schemes!

Combat is by far the crux of the game. Every single grinning darn or other mechanical monstrosity that Xoda swipes into oblivion is entertaining to fight, from the weakest orange darn to the towering Omega Darn (depicted in the first picture of this post), the game is full of action and enough boss fights to really drive home the "Treasure-like" feel of the game.

And after all is said and done with Xoda Rap, the game still is not quite over. There are also unlockable characters to be played as, and their playstyles vary radically from Ms. Rap's homing beat-em-up action. Of the two unlockable characters, Almond is the most interesting to play as. Playing as him causes the game to become a lightgun/mouse-controlled platformer, as you click the screen to shoot at foes, move the mouse to the bottom of the screen to reload ammo, and right click to maneuver Almond places he simply cannot jump through. Rilo Doppelori plays more like the usual mouse-based side-scrolling shooter, which in this game is also supplimented by her WASD-based double-tap attacks and charge laser. Her storyline runs sort-of parallel to Xoda's, with her actually fighting Xoda in the third stage, and also her having a completely different final boss.

In short, Noitu Love 2 is a game that was well worth the price of admission when it was $20, and now that the game is $10, it is even more worthwhile to play. It is a maddeningly fast-paced action romp that oozes with charm and the feel of a bygone era while still being as tight and polished as any game of this era is expected to be. In the hunger for 2D side-scrolling action games is abound, Noitu Love 2 will definately curb your appetite.

Notes: Noitu Love 2 can be purchased from Joakim Sandberg's website at http://www.konjak.org/ for $10.

Pictures of game from Mr. Joakim Sandberg's website and used without permission.

GAME DESIGN IDEA!

Oh hey, I may not have updated for a while now, but that does not mean I haven't been hard at not-work! Ha-ha. By which I mean, here's a delightful new image based off a concept I thought up while eating fish.
PRETTY SWEET, HUH? ...Yeah okay. I know, it could use a little work. Not exactly clear and all that jazz. I figure the way this would work ingame would be that while your character has a hitbox, there would also be a larger hitbox surrounding that hitbox I call the "near miss" zone. Every time you narrowly dodge attacks and be aggressive, the momentum meter fills up. This meter also acts as the special meter, which would allow the player to do awesome heavily-damaging special attacks.

Now, if you decide to be tactful and decide to take things slow (like my usual playing style) then you will be punished by your momentum meter deplete rapidly! This whole idea stemmed from figuring out a way to "ease" myself out of the comfort zone of my playing style into that of other people's. As a whole I figure it would work quite well.

SORT-OF PIXEL ART TIEM

I actually finished this up on Sunday morning, but my whole Sunday as a whole was a weird, insomniac mess.

WHATEVER.

Here's some okay pixel art sort-of depicting the boss battle of Azure VS Klink. As you'll notice, there are totally blocks of Tetris-style shapes making up the floor. I also kinda half-assed the background.

...I'm not really sure exactly how to draw backgrounds well.

YUP.

More on Azworld

Well, technically it is Saturday now so it's cool for me to update (by my own standards). And boy have I drawn up some poor caricatures of people I know in the last 24 hours!

First off is a little kernel of truth concerning a design sensibility I have towards every character that is not little Azure Cruz. EVERY person in my life that I decide to draw up a character of, if taller than me, will ALWAYS be three heads tall or higher (as shown with Bread). This first picture also depicts a good friend of mine as a character in Azworld, although I am a little unhappy with how it turned out now that I have had enough time to reflect, it really does not scream volumes to me as a character that really stands out compared to others. (Mostly because his clothes are pretty much the catch-all jeans and T-shirt combo)

This second picture is, in my opinion, a bit more towards the spectrum of (sort-of) what I am attempting to accomplish with these (poorly made) drawings.

In this second picture are depicted two more friends, Cody Klink and Swhalen Van Whalen. As you can see, Swhalen Van Whalen is a giant viking king (mostly) based off of Marvel's depiction of Thor. Naturally, he is Bread's superior.

Cody Klink is based off of my good friend from one of Azure Arcade's associate blogs, Brain Billows. In the initial conception of his Azworld character, he appeared as the boss of the third level, utilizing his artistic skills to battle Azure and/or Pang.

Oh, what's that? I drew a picture sort-of depicting what the fight would feel like? Well, okay, if you insist, me.

Well alright. Yeah. This is the drawing I cooked up before "properly" sketching up Cody and Swhalen. In theory the boss fight would have operated almost exactly like the Painting Boss in the Kirby series. Cody would draw up monsters for Azure and Pang to fight, and the battle would continue until the duo destroyed every last being created, including bizzaro versions of the heroes (which, in theory, I'd ask Cody to draw for accuracy's sake).

Oh what an ambitious loon I was.

Size Comparison!

Oh what fun. This is probably gonna be the only thing I post today, but it's SORT of entertaining, at least for me anyway.

Before/during December, I had the CRAZY idea of utilizing the deliriously ambitious fictional world I sort-of crafted in my last few months of High School as a basis for a pen & paper RPG world. I dubbed it Azworld, taking place in a fictional Earth in present day, but everything is just more video-gamey.

That's the best description I got and I'm sticking to it.

ANYWAY. This particular picture contains height comparisons between the two eldest characters of this world, Azure Cruz and Pang Watanabe (best bros), and the newly drawn newcomer based off of one of my local friends, Vikelord Bread.

As you can see, Bread is actually sitting down. And Azure is half the size (roughly) of Pang.

I should do this more often.