Mongo Nation

My first rodeo in the world of Chrono Trigger

By Jeremy Azevedo

I may have my nerd card revoked for this, but I have never actually played Square’s essential classic, Chrono Trigger, before this week.

As a young dork, I had a Nintendo Power subscription long enough to have read all about it, but somehow never got my hands on Chrono Trigger. I even tried the original Playstation game that came after it, “Chrono Cross”, but it didn’t really seem to have the same character that the original supposedly held. Thirteen or so years and hundreds of best-games-of-all-time chart listings later, it was finally time for me to see what all the goddamn hollering was about.

It’s hard to weigh the expectations against the comparatively primitive graphical and sound technology utilized in the game, but it isn’t difficult to see what it is about the game that was always so appealing to cosplay geeks and RPG enthusiasts the world over. Chrono Trigger is as excellent as they say it is.

The graphical sprites are clean and colorful, with energetic animation and supremely memorable character design. If you don’t think that the robot and the frog dude and the cave chick are totally sweet, than you are probably some kind of retard or whatever, and should probably be playing ball-in-a-cup instead. And the sound, while from a simpler time in video game music production, embodies everything that was great about that time by invoking vast orchestral scores that not only fit the mood, but do it with only like twelve sound effects. The gameplay is fast and intuitive as well, but what’s really great about Chrono Trigger is the surprisingly engaging story.

Chrono Trigger features multiple ways to play, as every action can have serious ramifications later in the game that affect how things ultimately turn out. I think there are like, 20 different possible endings in this game. It’s like in “Back to the Future” when Doc is telling Marty not to dick around with anything too much when time traveling, for fear of causing ripples in time that may disrupt the current timestream. Everything in this game works according to these principles, which is pretty impressive even now, let alone in 1995.

New DS enhancements basically come down to having your map, inventory and action commands on the bottom screen, as well as a couple of fun but inconsequential new dungeons… Really though, all that was required of this game was that it be a faithful port of the original, which I’m assuming it is, though I wouldn’t really be the one to ask about that. What I do know is that Chrono Trigger is fun, whether you’ve played (or even heard of) the original or not.

Score: 9 out of 10
+1 if you are enough of an RPG gamer to understand the significance of being able to see your enemies on the map rather than just have them appear out of nowhere, and how much more awesome it is when that is the case
-1 if you are used to saving anywhere, because in this game, you can’t

Hopefully, more like the first of many

By Jeremy Azevedo

There really isn’t any shortage of RPGs to choose from this season, with new titles flooding the 360, Wii, DS and the PS3. But if you can only make room for one more after Fallout 3 and Fable 2, The Last Remnant should be the one.

The Last Remnant is just about the best-looking RPG I have ever played. Square-Enix employed the Unreal Engine 3 to construct visuals on par with the best that the 360 has to offer. This comes at a cost, when the machine struggles to keep up the frame rate or takes a full minute to load the next area anytime you go anywhere, but it’s a minor hindrance, really. The characters look great, whole armies are present at any given time, and the controls work perfectly.

The Last Remnant cans the usual “plucky, orphaned teen hero experiencing an existential crises” bullshit and instead focuses on a wider reaching plot centered on ancient and unknowable technology, politics, cold war and military operations. There are no labored love interests or children, and though your main character is a teenager technically, he is also quite different than what you would expect, as he is a total dick.

Throughout much of the games opening, you fight alongside Marquis David Nassau (whom your character refers to as “Dave”, enraging the members of his cabinet) and the four generals of Athlum. The four generals, who are representatives of the four prevailing races (giant fish-men, four armed cat people, Yoda-like frog dudes and humans), are all great characters that you will enjoy fighting alongside. Even better, you don’t even have to micromanage all their stats and equipment. Since they come and o so frequently, Square-Enix wisely decided to have them take care of themselves, merely requesting items from defeated enemies from time to time which they then use to upgrade their equipment. Awesome.
Read the rest of this entry →

Already has my vote for game of the year.

By Jeremy Azevedo

It’s been a great month for gaming… We’ve been bombarded with so many class A titles, from Fable 2 and Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia to Guitar Hero: World Tour, Little Big Planet and maybe even Wii Music, if you’re into that I guess…

Well, I hope you saved a few crispie$ for Fallout 3, because it’s the shit. I’m sorry to have to ask you to shell out again, what with the economy being as crippled as it is, but consider how much money you’ll save by not going out, because once you start playing Fallout 3, you are unlikely to leave your house for weeks.

Like Fable, Mass Effect and KOTOR, Bethesda Game Studio’s new crown jewel offers infinite ways in which to play. Your actions truly do shape the world around you, and what seems like the “right” or “wrong” course of action may have totally unforeseen consequences. At one point some asshole that tried to encourage me (via a tasty bribe) to detonate the nuke sitting dormant in the center of the town of Megaton. I won’t spoil the surprise by telling you exactly what happened, but my attempt to do the right thing ended up in a particularly shocking and tragic turn of events that I was entirely caught off guard by. And had I decided to actually take the dude up on his offer rather than play the hero, there’s no doubt in my mind that I could have simply destroyed the entire town and everyone in it. This is the weight that is applied to all of your actions and decisions in the world of Fallout 3.

Character development allows you to make any kind of hero or villain that you like: Cannibal freaks, science dorks, gunsmiths, highwaymen, politicians… You are the sum of the skills that you choose to develop. Furthermore, you can upgrade your character with a wide range of abilities that range from obvious stuff like higher critical percentages to weird shit, like a guardian angel that sometimes appears to blow your enemy’s head off before mysteriously disappearing back into the wasteland. I would imagine that different playthroughs might offer entirely different experiences, which puts the replayability of Fallout 3 pretty much through the roof.

Read the rest of this entry →

Is it the masterpiece that was promised?

By Jeremy Azevedo

The original Fable was one of the greatest games that I have ever played. Along with Knights of the Old Republic, it was the reason why I bought the original Xbox in the first place. (I am a huge action/RPG nerd.)

Fable represented a quantum leap in role playing, introducing a deep system of player interactions, personal choice, rewards and consequences. Fable 2 takes all these concepts and develops them further, evolving into what may be the greatest sandbox game of all time, even next to Grand Theft Auto 4. There is more to do in this game than you could possibly imagine, and none of it involves lame stealth, following or escort missions, either.

Everything in Fable 2 delivers on the promises made by Peter Molyneux and Lionhead Studios. The writing is top notch, the combat is fast and fun and the many, many different systems of interaction and moral consequence may extend the life of the game indefinitely. I have spent far more time dicking around, robbing houses, resisting arrest, scoring babes, practicing safe sex, treasure hunting, blacksmithing, highway robbing, cliff diving, dog grooming, hunting and dabbling in real estate than I have actually following the main story. Thankfully, an unobtrusive “trail of bread crumbs” is always present to lead you to the next objective, as you will probably wander off the beaten track at times for so long that you forget just what the hell you were in the process of doing in the first place.

Even the graphics, which look kind of weird in pictures, take on a life of their own in motion. The style and fluidity of animation is top notch, avoiding the hallow appearance of most realistic looking art styles by not really trying to look realistic at all. Everything in the game is bursting with character, from your incredibly useful canine companion to the goblin-like Hobbes… You almost feel a real sense of guilt every time you lead a villager to sacrifice or sell your wife and children into slavery. And I don’t think there is any character evil enough to abuse the aforementioned dog that accompanies you throughout the game.

The number of ways in which you can approach a moral dilemma are what makes the game so enjoyable. Nothing is just black and white, good and evil. Your character can be pious but feared, cruel but fair, a thieving, clowning jerk (like my character) or really anything that you feel like being. Your appearance and the way people react to you is affected by these choices, as well as the appearance of the world around you. For instance, decisions that you make in the childhood stage of your quest can determine whether the town of Bowerstone is a booming suburb or a crime-ridden hovel. Read the rest of this entry →

Sorry, I still have no idea what “Undiscovery” actually means…

By Jeremy Azevedo

Infinite Undiscovery by Square Enix is one of very few proper RPGs available on the Xbox 360, despite the fact that the system has been around for nearly three years now.

Up until now, I’ve been getting most of my RPG gaming fixes on my DS or my old-ass PS2. Infinite Undiscovery is a huge leap in graphical quality and play mechanics, but the presentation is not quite enough to make me throw out my PS2 just yet.

At it’s best, Infinite Undiscovery is a beautifully animated action RPG with a relatively compelling story that unfolds very slowly and entices you to keep playing. Most of the characters are way cool, except for the two creepy twin children (Rico and Rucha) who are absolutely intolerable in every way. Like, inexcusably annoying, creepy and awful. If someone sees you playing as them, they will laugh at you. Really though, nearly every other character is unique and useful to the point that you will have difficulty choosing who to party up with. And in some instances, you won’t have to: Some battles allow you to roll with your entire posse, which really makes you feel like part of an army instead of a solo adventurer going through an existential crises (like nearly every Final Fantasy protagonist).

Your rad female sidekick/pseudo love interest, Aya.

The voice acting is pretty good, although, as a result of the graphics being so detailed, you can now really see where the English dub doesn’t match up to the Japanese-speaking mouths. I sort of wish I could just hear it in the original Japanese with English subtitles so it didn’t feel like a bad martial arts film or something. If you can get past that, you’ll find the characters have a decent amount of depth to them, even to the point that you actually sort of care about their personalities and motivations more than you would expect, which is very important for an RPG, of course.

Read the rest of this entry →