Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII does a fantastic job in bringing this back story to life in vibrant detail. The experience centers on Cloud’s best friend, Zack Fair, whose very limited involvement in Final Fantasy VII proper is shown to belie his importance to Cloud’s existence. Following Zack through his time as part of the Shinra Corporation’s military force, SOLDIER, Crisis Core gives you some insight into the past of Final Fantasy VII veterans such as Tifa, Aerith, Sephiroth, and of course, Cloud, through their interactions with Zack. A new character, Genesis, whom you may have caught a glimpse of if you played Dirge of Cerberus, serves as the primary antagonist of the game–and the main plot thread is actually about pursuing him.

Zack is an actually very likeable guy, his upbeat demeanor reminiscent of Final Fantasy male leads such as Zidane and Tidus. Certainly he’s a polar opposite to what we see in Cloud in Final Fantasy VII. Up front he may seem one-dimensional but you can definitely see how he matures from eager and almost impetuous to nurturing as the game progresses.

Now, I didn’t find the main storyline–pursuing Genesis and uncovering his motivations–all that intriguing. Genesis himself is pretentious to the point of annoying, frequently quoting verses from an epic poem while trotting about. Certainly, the more interesting plot points are those which tie directly into Final Fantasy VII’s back story, capturing some of that game’s most iconic flashback moments re-rendered and produced with much better visuals than we were afforded in 1997. Even cut scenes using the in-game polygonal engine look quite nice, with emotive, convincing motion capture. Luckily, Squaresoft seems to pay as much attention (if not more) to tying these threads with Final Fantasy VII as they do with unveiling the main storyline of the Genesis pursuit. And without spoiling anything, the way in which the writers do so is incredibly effective, creating an almost seamless transition point between the game’s conclusion and Final Fantasy VII’s beginning.

All told, the events that occur, and the aesthetics that accompany them, comprise some truly great fan service, even for me, being someone who doesn’t remember Final Fantasy VII quite as fondly as many others do.

But looking at the big picture, fan service and plot are pretty much the only things Crisis Core is good for. The act of playing the game is, well, almost no fun at all. Whether it’s mindless button mashing, a combat subsystem that you have almost zero control over, or monotonous mission “design”, Crisis Core continually challenged my will power to NOT be a jerk and just look up the main story points on YouTube and Final Fantasy wikis.

Crisis Core bills itself as an action-RPG, with its combat largely eschewing nested menu commands in favor of allowing you direct control over Zack’s movements and sword strikes. I say largely because there’s still a simple row of commands at the bottom of the screen corresponding to the materia that Zack has equipped. Materia, in Final Fantasy lore, are in the simplest terms stones that carry innate powers. Most of your equipped materia translate directly to magic spells and special physical attacks that Zack can carry out in combat, while others give passive benefits such as status boosts. The former are right there for you to select whenever you choose, requiring only a few shoulder-button taps to select the right materia and X to execute the command.

The framework is actually sound. The idea of merging the materia system with its various complexities–materia growth, in particular–with sword-happy combat seems like a great idea. But “character action” this is not, as the mechanics prevent combat from feeling like a smooth experience over which you have total control. The game treats “Attack” just like any other command, requiring you to have selected it with your cursor and hitting X to pull off a slash (complete with Square’s classic “poink” sound effect). Maybe it’s the fact that the game auto-targets and auto-directs you to a target even if you aren’t pointing at anyone, or perhaps it’s the way they animate your attacks, but it really does feel as if you’re selecting a menu command repeatedly as opposed to actually balancing sword swings, dodges and parries in real-time… even though combat takes place in real-time.

And most of the enemies, frankly, are brain-dead. One erstwhile games journalist blogged that Crisis core was, “attack attack attack attack cure attack attack attack”–and I’d be lying if I said that I felt differently. Once in awhile you’ll be challenged to the point where you have to do quick rolls to dodge enemy attacks, and taking the typical precautions by casting Barrier before engaging enemies hearkens back to the RPG battles we know and love, but I was able to emerge victorious quite often by mashing on the X button with one hand. Not a good sign. Or, at least, not what I want out of something with any sort of “action” billing.

Then there’s the Digital Mind Wave (DMW) system, which is nothing more than a slot machine–yes, you read that right–that they stick in the upper left hand corner of the combat screen. As you fight, the slot machine whirrs and stops on various portraits of Crisis Core characters. Meanwhile, numbers accompany the faces, so you’re trying to hit any combination of matching numbers and faces. Match faces in the outer slots, and combat stops, dramatically zooming in on the machine as the middle slot lands on the final character. Will you match three? Will you not? What numbers will you get? Supposedly implemented to introduce luck, drama and “fun” to the combat the DMW system can result in status buffs; restored hit points, magic points or ability points; or limit breaks (super special attacks or other status buffs, for those uneducated in Final Fantasy lore).

But guess what? Apparently, you have almost ZERO control over this, not with any button presses, not with the actions you take in combat, nada. The only influence I could tangibly detect that I had over the DMW was with special materia that, when equipped, would increase the chances of landing a specific limit break. So, the system as a whole just seems kind of silly. Then you get to the part where combat comes to a screeching halt for the sake of keeping you in dramatic suspense as the game zooms in to show you whether or not you match that third slot.

Furthermore, the game randomly shows “images from Zack’s heart” (as the tutorial puts it)–really just artwork that represents key moments in Zack’s life and Crisis Core’s plot–which indicate that you somehow have increased luck for that particular go-round. Who knows how they determine that. And, of course, waiting for those images to appear on the screen takes up even more time. Now, if you thought it was tedious to wait for an unnecessarily long magic spell or creature summon animation to run its course in a full-blown RPG, imagine having combat flow (or Crisis Core’s version of it, at least) interrupted every so often by this obnoxious slot machine and its fly-by images. It really just takes away from the time you could be using to slice up fools. It’s enough that, among the randomness that accompanies any game at least partially rooted in role-playing (damage, chance to suffer status effects, etc), they’re asking us to put up with even more randomness. But now they’re wrestling actual interaction time away from us during combat sequences that are supposed to be all about action. It renders combat monotonous at best, and a real annoyance at worst–and not at all fun.

These mechanics are all tied up in optional mission design that is, to be polite about it, tedious. At any save point, you can initiate a mission, the reward for which can be materia, money, or special weapons and armor. Accompanying each mission is some nice descriptive text, but actually completing the mission is almost always just a matter of killing the required number of enemies. Exciting? Hardly.

Perhaps the only thing that comes close to a saving grace from a systems standpoint is materia fusion, where you combine two materia to generate a new one. Though most combinations yield nothing special, every once in awhile you come across a new attack or a more powerful spell variant, and the experimental aspect of the fusion at least manages to inject some amount of amusement, regardless of how minute. But I missed the materia slots and linking aspects that were present in Final Fantasy VII. These could have added an extra layer of planning and strategy to a combat system that is, as a whole, a boring affair.

That the combat ends up boring is a bigger shame in a game like this than a traditional RPG, simply because Crisis Core emphasizes directly-controlled action. No, it doesn’t have to be Devil May Cry or God Of War. But shouldn’t we expect–and receive–more than a game that could easily devolve into one-handed button mashing? I think so, and perhaps the lesson that videogames at large need to take to heart is that magnificent presentation and interesting story beats don’t make up for kludgy mechanics and lackluster gameplay design.

Now, watching YouTube clips and reading a wiki might get you the information just fine, but you lose that emotional connection with the characters that you might otherwise get by suffering–sorry–spending 20-plus hours with them. And it’s in that regard that Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII entertains in spades, doing enough with Zack and Cloud’s relationship and story line that it’s worth slogging through the tedium for the emotional payoff. That it leverages Final Fantasy VII’s iconic universe only helps it. Given what I just said about story not making up for tedious gameplay, that’s as close to an endorsement as I can give. But I freely admit succumbing to nostalgia, having somewhat of a vested interest in the Final Fantasy VII’s world and flawed but intriguing legacy. What if you don’t give a rat’s ass about any of that, and are just looking for a solid action-RPG to play for the mechanics and design? If that’s the case, then there’s very little reason you should even sniff in this game’s direction.

Verdict:

Based on Epic’s original Unreal engine, Deus Ex doesn’t look or feel entirely adequate at first. The first thing you’ll notice upon watching the opening cinematic, along with the sharp and reflective floor textures of a building lobby, is how strange and ugly the character models and their faces appear. Like something out of Lawnmower Man, the first face you see is full of angles and points. Later environments suffer both from blocky and muddy visuals as well as mundane artistic design. As you start to control your protagonist, “code-named” JC Denton (you can change his “real” name to whatever you wish), you’ll notice his somewhat sluggish movement and encumbered jumping. You’ll find that the physics are a little wonky; try picking up and throwing a small box and it’ll look like gravity–for some reason–decided to be far more potent when it woke up that morning. When you fire your pistol for the first time, you’ll notice that the recoil isn’t exactly there and the “pop” doesn’t resonate quite like you’d expect it to. The presence of role-playing tendencies also means that your accuracy is not only controlled by cross-hairs that expand and contract based on your movement and positioning, but is also reliant on JC’s accuracy statistic. For the player looking to “Doom 2″ his way through the game from the get-go, Deus Ex might seem like a steaming pile.

This would be a mistake, because Deus Ex’s charms become more apparent as you further immerse yourself in what its multi-faceted experience has to offer. No, you can’t quite go in guns blazing at first. You’ll learn, though, how to crouch and wait patiently as your first terrorist victim turns his back towards you, before you snipe him with a headshot from your pistol. Or, you could incapacitate him with your tranquilizer dart (if you choose to go the non-lethal route, that is). Or you could sneak right by him and get to your goal through the back door. As you continue to explore different nooks and crannies off the beaten path, you’ll receive not only health packs and other small knick-knacks, but also experience points for exploring. Here’s where you can start to decide whether or not you want to go through with your Rambo tactics by upgrading your proficiency in heavy weaponry, among other such skills as lock-picking, computer hacking, small arms, swimming, and more.

Along with this basic customization comes a plethora of modifications, both to your weapons (accuracy, increased clip capacity, laser sights) as well as your own body. JC, as it turns out, is one of a new breed of “augmented” soldiers, capable of receiving tiny nano-machines that can bolster his existing abilities as well as granting him new ones. The upgrade path is entirely up to you, and is structured such that you can never reap every benefit in a single playthrough. Installing an arm modification, for instance, lets you choose between increasing JC’s melee combat abilities or increasing his physical strength. (Granting him super strength allows him to move larger objects to reveal hidden entrances or arrange stepping stones.) It seems like a limitation imposed solely to encourage multiple playthroughs, but in reality, the game would probably be too easy if you had access to every single thing and would devolve into a cheat-code-inspired Grand Theft Auto romp. Deus Ex is not that kind of game, and it’s better for it.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that you’re not given the option to toy around with how to accomplish your goals. The skills, weapon mods, and augmentations directly impact how JC develops over the course of the game, dictating how you go about your tasks (do you pick locks and sneak around or do you hack security turrets to do your dirty work for you?), but the way in which you interact with non-player characters also determines the avenues of approach you can seek further along in the game. With the exception of a select few, you can kill characters before it seems appropriate to–and even when it would seem inappropriate at any time–and the game will adjust the story, and people’s reactions to you, accordingly. How you approach your first mission, for instance, can also determine the impression you give off; kill as many terrorists as you can, and you’ll receive reprimand from an old war veteran for not using tact while also receiving great praise from a meathead soldier who previously thought you were a wuss. Even small choices such as how you choose to answer questions in a dialogue tree determine what people think of you and what items (or other things) you might gain. There’s no “good/bad” meter running in the background, as there usually is in Bioware’s games, but most of your decisions need to be made after at least some cursory consideration.

For better or for worse, though, you can’t truly affect how Deus Ex’s story plays out at its core. Certain characters may drop; certain lines of dialogue may change; your development as a character may vary; but you will still follow the same overarching path. This allows for a conspiracy story that is at least consistent and engaging, if somewhat convoluted. Rarely does the story seem like an afterthought or nothing more than a quaint reason for you to be sitting in front of your monitor playing this game, and it’s supported by some pretty convincing, if slightly inconsistent, voice acting (strangely, JC’s own voice acting is probably at the weaker end of the spectrum, and a few other voices have all the emotion of a brick). You will find yourself caught up in a conflict between multiple factions with different motivations, including the token evil corporate executive, underground rebels, Hong Kong Triads, and even the game’s own interpretation of the men in black. Though much of the expository dialogue is delivered through talking-head in-engine cutscenes, there’s a ton of literature spread throughout the game world, including newspaper clippings, diary entries, emails, and books. From these, you can learn as little or as much as you want about what’s going on–from different perspectives, even–at your own pace and without removing you from gameplay. Even if it all gets a little absurd at a point, it should never be said that Deus Ex’s storyline is devoid of entertainment and content.

So, there’s plenty of meat here, regarding both exposition and gameplay. The real issues can be traced back to the game’s engine, which–in addition to hindering Deus Ex’s aesthetic and physics properties–isn’t really expanded to offer more immersive gameplay elements. Lock picking is simply a matter of having enough lock picks to use, and as your lock picking stat increases, all it does is decrease the amount of picks you’ll need to use on a given lock. The same thing applies for electronics bypassing, which is simply the lock picking mechanic in sheep’s clothing (instead of a lock pick and locks, it’s “multi-tools” and security panels). Computer hacking follows a similar route, with a higher stat meaning simply that the amount of time it takes to hack any given computer is decreased. Though overloading the experience with hackneyed minigames wouldn’t necessarily have made things better, it would have been nice for Ion Storm to imagine these actions as more than just, “Click here and don’t move until it’s done!” In addition, the artificial intelligence can be all over the place. Sometimes a soldier will spot you hiding in the shadows, even if there’s no way he could have seen you; in contrast, you can sometimes run around a corner and under a desk or behind a door, and your assailant will give up his chase after spending a minute standing in place, dumbfounded.

Yet, even as the bland graphics and some stilted play mechanics would seem to thwart the overall Deus Ex experience, its variety, hefty game world and ability to let you decide how you want to accomplish things–and to see what kind of impact your decisions can make–will wash away the sour taste of a crappy lock-picking mechanic. Let’s put it this way: Deus Ex is a game begging to be ported to today’s technology and design principles (dumbing things down as its sequel arguably did doesn’t count); but if such a remake never comes, the original is an absolute must-play, warts and all.

From the Trigames.NET Archive

Originally posted August 20th, 2009

Verdict:

Cast in the shoes of the aptly named Crono, you begin your day – as many other similar young RPG protagonists do – unaware of the epic adventure that lies in wait. Encouraged by your mother to get your lazy rump out of bed and have fun at this day’s Millenial Fair, you end up running into a chipper young lass who takes a keen, flirty liking to you. Marle, as she calls herself, follows you to your friend Lucca’s science exhibit – a teleportation machine. Volunteering to be a guinea pig, the strange pendant around her neck reacts to the machine and rips open a hole that teleports not to another place – but to another time.

You’ve likely heard this before, but it’s encouraged that you keep your hands down and your rear ends in your seats. The somewhat cliched beginning only serves to set up a tale whose tapestry is weaved across multiple epochs, leading you to people and places whose very existence hangs almost at your mercy. Participating in wars from the past somehow leads you to the desolation of the future. It’s then where you find out about the cruel fate that will plunge the world into destruction, and make up your mind to disprove the inevitability of this catastrophe. As Marty McFly and Kyle Reese have taught us, there’s no better way to change the future than to abuse time travel.

Because time travel is such an integral part of both the storyline and the gameplay, it would be easy to tip the balance too far to one extreme. Squaresoft triumphantly creates an experience where time travel feels neither like a storyline gimmick that simply follows along a linear path, nor a gameplay gimmick that renders the story overly convoluted or unnecessary. You are mostly in command of when you must travel to which era, and specific actions that you complete triggers changes in the game’s world and story in other eras which reveal more clues and threads. Affecting the past changes the present, obviously, and you end up using what you know from the “new” present to further affect the past – well, you get the idea.

Of course, as a game from the Super NES era, there’s not much room in its game world for a truly dynamic world affected by every action you take. Even with the splendid job done by the developers to script as many time travel puzzles as they did, this is not The Elder Scrolls: Temporal or Grand Theft Stopwatch. This is perhaps a blessing in disguise, for it lends to the game’s accessibility regarding adventure and storytelling. You can’t get yourself into game-breaking trouble by getting stuck as a result of missteps you make. You’re also made to focus on the memorable cast – arguably what keeps many fans reminiscing about this classic. You encounter a valiant young knight-in-training cursed to be in the form of a frog, a rotund robot whose brute strength is an invaluable asset, and a prehistoric woman who straddles the back of a pterodactyl (whose strength might be almost as brute as the robot’s). You might even make a friend out of an enemy after you peel away his sinister outer layer and discover the wounded, traumatized child within.

Though not all of the characters are entirely deep or multi-dimensional, one can’t help but feel attached to them because of the staunch loyalty and respect they have for their friends, family, each other and the entire world. You’ll genuinely want to help them succeed in their quest, and in doing so – of course, in traditional RPG level-building fashion – you’ll uncover some of the more fun aspects of the game in addition to some of the more disappointing ones.

For better or for worse, character management is kept relatively simple. The weapons and armor you find strewn about the gameworld are all tailored to each individual. The character Frog, for example, must use a broadsword – he cannot swap weapons with Crono, who bears a more samurai-influenced blade. Lucca is restricted to guns, Marle to crossbows, and so forth. The same applies for armor and even magical spells. Leveling up your abilities also exudes simplicity – experience points level your character’s stats up, and accumulated tech points unlock new special techniques and spells for your character in a linear fashion. It makes the game instantly more accessible and simple, but also kills much of the tinkering and micromanaging that many role-playing fans look forward to.

With a cloud hopefully comes a silver lining. In this case, the ease of accessibility removes much of the potential complications that might arise when trying to learn “Combo” techniques. At first, without the Combos, the basic battle structure seems familiar and – because of the shoehorned abilities – almost crudely primitive. You have Fight, Tech and Item, with the battle flow being in quasi-realtime similar to the Final Fantasy games on the Super NES. The “Techs” that your characters perform, however, spice things up by adding an area-of-effect aspect. Some Techs will damage all enemies within a certain proximity of the target, where others will target all enemies that happen to be arranged in single file of each other. Since enemies actually move about the battle field, you can wait patiently until the enemies have meandered over into the ideal formation that you can take advantage of.

The Combos take things a step further by allowing any characters in a ready state to combine certain attacks to deal more damage, widen their area of effect, cause additional status defects, among other things. Unleashing Antipode – a Double Tech which is a simultaneous attack of fire and ice – for the first time, though, is nothing compared to the first time you unleash a monstrous Triple Tech, where your entire team of three gang up on the unwitting target. Double and Triple Techs require each character to have learned certain individual techs. The simplicity of the leveling system, then, gives players quick and painless access to these exciting abilities. Again, those that yearn for deep character micromanagement will feel this is watered down – but admittedly, considering how fun the Combos are to use, this can be easily forgiven.

The aesthetics in this game also ease the potential pain of its somewhat simplistic trappings. Famed Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Quest artist Akira Toriyama lends his hand in designing the entire cast and the world in which Chrono Trigger is based. His vibrant coloring and bold line strokes are brought to life with the Super NES’ color palette and is rivaled only by the very best – the 3D illusion of Donkey Kong Country and the elegance of Final Fantasy VI – that the console has to offer. Character sprites are decently large and the environments sport details such as roaring waterfalls, beams of light shining through trees, and far-off mountain mist noticeable only from high peaks. The lesser enemy art design uses smallish sprites and could have used a bit more artistic detail, but perhaps this can be attributed to the fact that combat takes place on the map without a transition to a special “combat mode” screen.

The sound quite possibly trumps the visuals in most cases, at least where the best it has to offer is concerned. Final Fantasy veteran Nobuo Uematsu teamed up with then-newcomer Yasunori Mitsuda, of the Xeno-series fame. The result is an epic score that mixes Uematsu’s noble, heroic and grandiose melodies with Mitsuda’s emotional, elegant and more subtle style to great effect. For instance, the Chrono theme song – which opens with blaring trumpets and brisk, almost staccato strings -contrasts nicely with the soothing, Zen-like and almost Buddhist sitar theme that plays when you reach a city in the clouds deep into the game. There are times when certain pieces start to feel simplistic and almost childish, but for the most part they either evolve into something deeper or are easily overshadowed by the soundtrack’s best.

We have come to expect well-executed story, combat intricacies, and aesthetics from Square’s best. So, too, should we expect the familiar and value-adding game design that opens the world for you to explore after hours of closely following a set path. There are additional characters to meet, items to find and favors to partake in. Even as you build up to the story’s conclusion, there’s that one area you haven’t figured out to unlock. What lies in wait – a secret weapon, or a potent technique perhaps? On a completely different level is the fact that exactly when you choose to rid the world of this evil is what determines which of the ten-plus endings you’ll see. Unfortunately, the value added here falls slightly on its face only because some of the endings are silly or just plain sloppily thrown together.

Thrown-in endings aside, the overall classic feel of the package can’t be denied. For every time you wish there were more weapons, spells and dimensions to your character, there is a moment – be it a battle, character interaction or startling revelation – that tugs at you. Whenever you start to wonder if the adventure could have used more intricate time-traveling butterfly effects, the cleverness of the puzzles that are there will convince you that it matters not. And each time you wish Crono spoke his mind, you find that the rest of the charming cast makes up for it. A flawed diamond is still a diamond, and despite some bumps along the way, Chrono Trigger remains a classic.

From the Trigames.NET Archive

Originally posted April 25, 2006

Verdict:

Canvas Curse dares to strip away any traditional button-based controls while delivering an experience traditionally played with said buttons. The game’s fiction explains this transition: Kirby, under a spell cast by a witch, has lost all of his limbs and is now nothing more than a pink ball. Restricted to rolling around while at the mercy of Mother Nature’s physics, Kirby now relies on you–armed with a magic paintbrush (and conveniently breaking the fourth wall)–to guide him around by drawing lines that do everything from propelling him along a path to changing his trajectory (either by drawing a line in the opposite direction or drawing a quick vertical wall).

There were hints of line-drawing affecting character movement in previous games, most notably Yoshi’s Touch N’ Go and, to a lesser extent, one of the “boss” mini-games in Wario Ware Touched!, but Canvas Curse is neither an auto-scrolling, hands off experience like Yoshi’s DS debut; nor is it a mini-game collection like Wario’s maiden touch-screen voyage. You can accelerate Kirby by directly tapping him, stun his enemies by tapping them (which allows Kirby to then copy their attacks), give him a speed boost by drawing a loop as opposed to a straight line, and shield him from oncoming projectiles by drawing barriers. You’re also forced to work with a limited ink well that regenerates slowly enough for you to have to think your actions through.

Combining all of these elements together proves to be an exciting exercise in stylus gymnastics, and challenges not only your reflexes (as any good platformer should) but also your capacity for physics and planning. To get Kirby across a chasm and onto an elevated ledge, what combination of loops and quick strokes–and at what angles–will propel him upwards in the right direction, without depleting all of the ink? Thanks to some fantastic level design, this type of thinking and activity is everywhere. In some scenarios, you’ll be guiding Kirby up chimneys lined with spikes. In others, you’ll be shielding Kirby from dangerous falling icicles with horizontal lines while coaxing him along a bottomless pit, enemies nipping at his heels—oops, I’m sorry, he doesn’t have heels this time–every step of the way. Still other scenarios are exercises in guiding Kirby towards and around enemies, using the most appropriate strokes possible to avoid dangerous situations and pick up collectibles.

The brilliant level design is mostly responsible for keeping the line-drawing motif from getting stale, but there are other elements–both mandatory and optional–that further serve to make Canvas Curse a varied and replayable experience. For starters, the “boss” battles at the end of each stage aren’t exactly battles, but rather three types of stylus-based challenges. One has you racing to a finish line in a mine cart–for which you must draw the trajectory, natch–grabbing fruit for speed boosts and avoiding mines and spikes. Another has you scribbling through strictly-timed series of Connect-The-Dots, while the final type has you drawing spring boards to guide Kirby through a gauntlet of Breakout-esque obstacles. Not only are these unlockable as bonus games, but time- and ink-trials for each world are unlockable as well (the latter of which rewarding you for making it to the goal using as little ink as possible). While playing each of the game’s worlds, as well as the bonus games and trials, you collect medals that will serve to unlock even more bonus levels and extra niceties (such as an increased life bar), keeping you motivated to search every nook and cranny and beat every time.

Kirby: Canvas Curse is also aesthetically appealing, though those without a sweet tooth might grimace a little. Canvas Curse doesn’t change up Kirby’s whimsical and cartoony style, instead pushing it even further with a mixture various themes including angles, watercolor splotches, and even broadly-stroked mechanical designs. None of this pushes the technical envelope, but it’s perfect for the series and fits into the mythology of this particular game. With the musical score following suit in its upbeat whimsy and simplicity, it’s fair to say that the game’s presentation successfully ties everything together–so long as you can handle its insistence on being cute.

It should be noted that this is being written nearly four years, and plenty of top-notch Nintendo DS releases, after Canvas Curse’s original release. To answer the obvious question given this revelation, then, the game absolutely holds up as an all-time great DS title. It also stands as one of the platform’s most unique titles, which would be surprising were it not for the fact that very few action titles have dared to follow its lead. What HAL Laboratories accomplished with Kirby: Canvas Curse was and is extraordinary; that it hasn’t been aped since is baffling and, ultimately, unfortunate.

Verdict:

The driving concept behind Retro Game Challenge is actually a fantastic one. Its backstory serves as a framework to throw at you a variety of old “Famicom” games and issues of a gaming magazine–both fictional, of course. You’ll split your time between playing the games and flipping through the magazines for gameplay tips and tricks on your way to completing the various challenges that get thrown your way. The challenges vary greatly in difficulty and time spent, from scoring a certain amount of points in a space shoot-em-up to grinding in an RPG to get your characters to level 10.

The challenges are nicely varied because the games themselves span through different genres. The four genres represented are racing, space shooting, role-playing and action platforming. Each of the games are also expertly-crafted to capture the spirit of the mid-to-late 80′s, complete with pixelated sprites and blippy music which evolves with every game, matching the progress games saw from year to year. Let’s not forget to mention the terrible yet lovable localization we all remember from that era. Of special note are the space shooter Star Prince; the role-playing game Guadia Quest; and the Metroid-style action platformer Super Robot Ninja Haggle Man 3. Though not full-length games (as with the rest of the titles within), these titles still take a lot of skill, time and dedication to fully explore, and are just great to play in their own rights.

The problems start to trickle in when you look at how everything progresses within Retro Game Challenge’s main construct. The challenge concept very closely resembles the Achievements and Trophies concepts of today’s modern games. However, challenges and games open up in a completely linear fashion, with the next challenge not becoming available until you beat its predecessor. As a result, you can’t choose to turn on one of the games and play it straight through in an attempt to complete as many challenges as you can in one go. I realize this is called “Retro Game Challenge” and not “21st Century Game Challenge”, but regardless, this makes it more difficult to enjoy the games within the natural flow of gameplay.

As a further disruption, once you complete a challenge, the game halts and you’re greeted with some “All Clear!” fanfare–then you’re booted out of the game. To complete the next challenge, you’re then made to “boot up” the game again and start it from the beginning (unless it was “made” with battery backup saves). Here’s an aggravating example: In Rally King, the top-down R.C. Pro-Am knock-off, the first three challenges are to complete two drifting power slides; complete the first course; and complete the second course with a ranking of 5th or higher. Ideally this set of challenges would be easily attainable in one sitting. But no–with the way Retro Game Challenge handles progression, you end up having to sit through course 1 at least twice (once to beat it, once to race through it en route to beating course 2–and arguably, once to complete the first power-slide challenge depending on how long it takes you).

I suppose that the act of completing a challenge boots you out of the games you’re playing so that Retro Game Challenge can dole out issues of GameFan one by one, but there’s also somewhat needless dialogue stuffed in between each completion. See, the backstory of the game reveals that Game Master Arino has sent you back in time to beat these challenges alongside a younger version of him, which is fine for setup purposes, but the conversations that take place between you and young Arino are inconsequential and can’t be skipped. Indeed, upon first booting up the game, it took me minutes of reading incessant dialogue and backstory before I even got to my first instance of actual gameplay. This is irritating, considering that this game that aims to bring back the feel of the mid-80′s, when you were often thrust right into action-packed gameplay within seconds.

The final insult to injury is that many of the games repeat themselves. Rally King appears a second time, when it’s called “Rally King SP” instead. The most significant changes? Some bumps and puddles are added to the same courses you already raced through, and some of the colors change. That’s it. Robot Ninja Haggle Man’s sequel, Haggle Man 2, contains nearly identical in gameplay, with the key difference being its difficulty. In addition, a few of the games have a second loop–in other words, to truly “beat” it, you have to play through all the stages a second time. It would have been nice to see either different games instead of sequels, or noticeably different gameplay or level designs in said sequels.

It’s really somewhat of a shame that Retro Game Challenge offers such linear progression, repeats itself one time too many, and sits you through pointless chatter. These all blemish what would otherwise be a fantastic homage to the NES era. Nonetheless, there is an attention to detail that makes these games look and play exactly like you’d expect an 80′s game to, and some of the creations are good enough to warrant sitting through this game’s issues. Just be prepared to grit your teeth and roll your eyes as you do so.

Verdict: