The Bodies of the Gods: Thoughts on Xenoblade: Chronicles

As the sun sets on the aging Wii, the system is set to experience one final blast of gaming goodness; the JRPG renaissance of Xenoblade, The Last Story, and Pandora’s Tower. The first game of this trilogy of games to finally reach North American shores, after an overly lengthy wait, is Monolith Soft’s excellent Xenoblade: Chronicles. After getting to what I am assuming to be the halfway point in the narrative, I thought it was high time I put some of my thoughts to words about this very unique game.

Xenoblade tells the story of a young man named Shulk, and his journey to exact revenge on the machine that killed his friend. Wielding the powerful sword known as the Monado, Shulk and his party set out on their quest across the dead titan, Bionis. While the game does not forge new JRPG story territory, the characters you experience this tale with are likeable and well written and while they may not break any stereotypical RPG tropes (the wise healer, the thick-headed tank, etc), they are decent enough. The characters and story are well development along predictable lines, but it is the setting and art style that really steal the show; the world where the people live in Xenoblade: Chronicles are actually the long dormant bodies of two massive titans (the Bionis and the Mechonis) standing in an endless ocean, locked into eternal combat. This unique setting gives the game a surrealist vibe, and I for one love how different it is.

The combat, unlike its turn based forefathers, is fast paced and all about managing your cool downs and positioning. One thing that may turn people off is that your AI controlled companions fight on their own (very well I might add) while you control your own character. Sure it would have been nice to have more control over your party, I don`t know how Monolith Soft could have done it within the confines of the current battle system; it feels more like a western MMO (think WoW) than a traditional JRPG. If you where a fan of Final Fantasy XII`s battle system, then you will feel right at home here.

The British voice acting is something that I find really neat about this game. I know some of the references may be lost on me, and I admit that I don’t know the inherent implications of the various regional accents and dialects of the UK, but the British voice talent adds another very unique layer onto an already unique gaming experience. It also helps that the voice work and localization is very well done, and helps to get me even more excited for The Last Story.

Xenoblade Chronicles is a game that is big in scope, content, and heart and is easily one of the better JRPGs I have ever played. It boggles my mind that it has taken this long for a modern JRPG to see the light of day, and for this game to finally be released over here in North America, but I am glad it is here. Xenoblade, with its excellent localization and voice work, has me excited for the North American release of The Last Story (June 19^th) and has me crossing my fingers for an eventual North American release of Pandora`s Tower.

Thoughts on RAGE.

Was Rage, the new IP from id, worth the wait? On one hand, id has delivered what looks to be a fairly solid engine to the game industry. Yet on the other, Rage already feels very dated; but never mind that now, instead of talking about the quality of Rage as a whole I want to talk about an idea that occurred to me over and over again as I blasted my way through the wastelands: just because a game may look amazing does not automatically mean it is a good game.

I do not want to imply that the people at id wanted to, or even thought about making a game that can be seen as a critique of current state of the gaming industry, but it does seem pretty in your face about it. Everything from the gun play, to the racing, to even the way you do quests feels very dated. The enemies you face take round after round and shell after shell, and shrug off head shots as if they’re nothing at all; the racing is more akin to Mario Kart than anything else; quests are buried away behind peoples none changing (yet well written) dialog; and everything is so nicely separated from each other by long loading corridors and loading screens that you never have to worry about getting lost. It is such a striking juxtaposition between the gorgeous visuals and dated game play that I cannot help but wonder if it is all intentional. If it is not intentional, then Rage is an example of an old school developer failing to move into the modern world. Also, all the damage control Carmack is doing is not helping their cause. Talking about how much better PC technology vs. Console tech still does not explain why the very mechanics of your game feel old as shit.

Rage exists as more of a show piece for the engine rather than a game in its own right. While I am glad to have played it, it feels more like a living relic (much like the ancient coelacanth) than anything else; if nothing else, I am excited to see what other developers can do with an engine like IdTech5. Maybe this is the future for some companies: instead of making an engine for their game, they make engines for the industry. And you know what? I am okay with that.

Thoughts on Monster Hunter

My recent obsession with Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, easily one of the best games on the PSP, has got me to thinking about why this series –a series that is wildly successful in Japan, and is often credited with saving the PSP from oblivion– has not been as fondly received this side of the great pacific. One would think that a game centre around the idea of slaying massive monsters, collecting countless pieces of armour, and amassing a personal arsenal of handcrafted weapons would be universally accepted as something amazing! But that is really not the case when it comes to Monster Hunter in North America, and why is that? Maybe it has to do with the series initial showing on the PS2, in all of its clunky glory, or perhaps it has to do with the steep learning curve the game forces on the player from the word go? How can a game where loot is the main motivation be so widely ignored by the North American gamer, when we all loved Diablo and all of its loot-whore spin-offs? I am not going to claim that I have the answer to this question, but I do have a few ideas as to why this series has stagnated for so long with the Canadian and American gamer.

Monster Hunter is not a series that caters to the “power fantasy” so many gamers are looking for. You are not the unstoppable force of nature you are in most other games; instead of being the penultimate hunter (who eventually hunts the God of the monsters or some other such nonsense), you are simply a person whose vocation it is to hunter down and slay the various monsters at the request of your village elders. The world of Monster Hunter does not exist for the purpose of housing the player, and if it did, Capcom would have had no reason to devise the complex social and hunting habits of the creatures that roam the wilds. This is a very different approach to games –the player simply existing as a part of a world– than what we see here in North America. Over here we need to be the space marine, soldier, knight, or whoever has the fate of the world in their digital hands. We enjoy, and I am just as guilty as the rest, that sense of power and of importance that the game bestows upon us. The point of Monster Hunter however, is not about feeding your gamer ego but about your own continual self-improvement in the quest to hunt harder and more ferocious beasts.

Monster Hunter is also not an easy game, in fact it can be quite hard. Now let me be clear, I mean Demon’s Souls/Dark Souls hard (the deference being that where as Demon’s Souls is unforgiving and severely punishes you for dying, Monster Hunter assumes that you will be defeated over and over, and thus does not punish your death nearly as harshly). In a day and age where companies are giving us achievement points and trophies for doing nothing more than playing the tutorial levels, challenge has almost become a negative qualifier when we talk about games. The challenge of the series harkens back to an age where memorizing boss patterns was the recipe for survival, and when games were not made to be easily beaten.

We should also look at the demographics of who bought a PSP in Japan and here in North America, and what the systems primary function was for the consumers of both markets (was it a game system, or a device used primarily to surf the net and listen to music on?) when we consider the idea of difficulty. While I cannot talk about the Japanese demographics, all one has to do is look at the recent add-campaign with the little kid (Marcus or whatever his name is) to see how a game designed around difficulty and old school 90s game traditions would fail to have an impact over here. With Sony targeting the early teen and pre-teen market, it stands to reason that a game based around classic mechanics would not have the same impact on them as it does on someone, like me, who has been playing games since the days of the NES.

One thing I would like to know for sure is how well Monster Hunter Tri for the Wii sold over here, and if there are any firm plans on bringing the 3DS sequel, Monster Hunter Tri G, to North American markets (I also hope we get the PS3 HD remake of Monster Hunter Portable 3rd). I want to know why Capcom is bringing Monster Hunter 4 to the 3DS after having such a long history with Sony’s handheld, and will the series have a large impact on the future of the 3DS much as it did on the PSP? I also want to know why Capcom has kept the Xbox 360/PC MMO Monster Hunter Frontier in Japan when the 360 has such a large (quite a bit larger than in Japan) market share over here; and why is it only on handhelds that this series has thrived? If nothing else, Monster Hunter seems like a natural fit for the big screen of TV (and it is when you play it on the Wii or even the PS2).

I don’t pretend to have the answers as to why this series has stagnated in North America, and I know that the reasons are much more complex than just high difficulty and different demographics. Monster Hunter is a series that has fascinated me ever since its debut on the PS2, and I hope Capcom brings the upcoming 3DS games here so I can satisfy this loot hunger. Then again, it’s not like I am going to be done Monster Hunter Freedom Unite anytime soon.