Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

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Axiom Verge

Metroid V

When this one finally hit the E-shop in Europe on the Wii U I got it immediately after watching SomecallmeJohnny's review after it and really have that Metroidvania itch. And I wasn't disappointed. The graphics are dark and mysterious, feeling closer to Metroid in a long way with both an environment that feel alive together with spread out technological areas. The music is techno-awesome with each area has it's unique theme. The gameplay, meanwhile, is working tremendously well. The controls are perfect and I never felt it worked against me. Only once did the game freeze on me and that was right after starting it up, go into an out zooming boss room and turn back right away since I went the wrong way, and maybe that caused it to freeze itself. Of course if you see glitches that might just be the intention of the game. Then again, it was made by just one person so working this well with all that is in the game feels like an impressive feat.

Look, not all the game is inside a cave

The story is that during a laboratory experiment the main character Trace is sent to another world where he greeted by the masked machine at the top of the post here. You are here to save these machines by starting up the necessary equipments so that they can help you explain the situation. And what I gather is that hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago one person entered this dimension, he went away and came back and started a war with this worlds inhabitants. You are there last hope to stop him. Get's a lot more complicated as it turns out that the person you are fighting is really you... or maybe an alternative dimension version of you... or are Trace a clone of the madman? I didn't get any answers, basically I came to the end, the other Trace confessed to being behind the massgenocide of those living machines in order to gain the knowledge of the universe and a few killings wouldn't stop him. I destroy his machines and the one that brought me here kills him and Trace is sent back to after the explosion. Trace still looks for a way back since he needs answers, the end.

It might be the look, but I have a nagging suspicion that they aren't as friendly as they seem

I suspect there is another ending. For example I didn't destroy a boss right before the ending since it was hard as hell and I assume I will get something that will either enable me to climb walls or translate a lot of the papers I collected that I can't currently read. One of the last notes I found that I could read mentioned items hidden in "Breach"-areas (areas corrupted and out of sight of the map) and I only found one with two power-ups. Also it bothers me that I found 4 of those living machines, but one decided to side with the other Trace and was shut down by the other three. I even found her head and I suspect there is a more sinister story behind this. Although it was great fun to play it. Only a few problems I felt, first is that you really got to experiment with the new items you got and try to do everything you can think of to really know the mechanic. Worst was when I got stuck, I didn't know where to go and I run across the map 2-3 times until I figured out that the little mechanical spider you have you can unleash in mid-air and from there steer it into high above places. That was how I uncovered the area I needed to enter. Another problem was the boss you see down below, Gir-Tab. It's a giant scorpion that fires constantly. When I first encountered it I noticed it registered some hits so there got to be a weak point there. It's the eye, but he closes it right away. So while I tried to find the weak point I was killed over and over and since he didn't open his eyes again there had to be another weak spot. And after a couple of tries I caved in and looked it up, you got to shot him in the back with a special gun that explodes remotely and have an area effect to reach it. After that information I didn't take a hit even though it took a long time to defeat him.

I REALLY hate him!

A really fun game, especially if you like the exploration parts of Metroid or just the atmosphere. It is a bit more dialogue heavy, but since I like that, no problem for me. Really need to get my hands on a soundtrack for this... or maybe even try getting the possible real ending... if it exist.

Update: Apparently there is one, but it is 100 % or finish before 4 hours, but more akin to a mind-screw since back on earth the other-Trace appears, older and such and shoots you. So the machines are good to go... my idea was much better... although it feels more like a twist from the Castlevania games.

Fairune 2

Ah, the looking at a tower in the distance opening, how quaint.

A couple of years ago I played Fairune 1 for the 3DS and enjoyed it, as you can read here. So with the announcement of a sequel I couldn't wait to play it. And boy, it feels childlike fun to play this game. Same basic premise, the same princess is searching the lands for adventure, she stumbles upon this book, a codex that points her in searching for the lost fairies, three of them... in the colours red, green and blue... this is Hydlinde isn't it? You save the first fairy in this wooden area, travels up a tower to the next area, the snow area, save this fairy and take the tower once more to the third stage a water stage, save fairy and climb to the top and enter a portal to the Ashen world which is trying to conquer Fairune. Find the gate, destroy the final... and pretty much only boss in a shoot 'em up sequence and you win.

Trash blocks to save fairies!

Each area work pretty much the same. Find the three orbs to open the door to the locked away fairy. Find a hidden ring that grants you access to the whole area, beat enemies to level up and solve puzzles to reach new areas. The puzzles are very fun, mostly solve them by observing the environment to see a picture, or some small hints. The difficulty is more realising which solution goes o which puzzle. Collect stones to open a secret area to add text to a memory stone and so on. One puzzle I really liked was revealing sections of the map so they showcased numbers and put those numbers in as a code to get access to the whole map. Brilliant! Some problems though is that certain puzzles are hingeing on that you can't see a switch because it is hidden behind a pillar or tree. And speaking of trees, some are just illusions which you can walk past, but the only reason you can distinguish them is that they lack the brown foundation everyone else has. The same goes for hidden caves that are only shown as small cracks in the wall. Those can be a bit obnoxious.

The solution to one of the puzzles I missed and brute forced instead after backtracking from the third level to the first since I missed the key behind this solution to get a medallion to open the third level.

The final battle is a four-stage shoot 'em up as expected, but fairly easy I felt since I beat it the first time trying at it. This one is much larger than its predecessor and really fun and really recommended to waste up to 6 hours on a first playthrough. Also, really good music. 

Adventure of the Galaxy Rangers

Best sci-fi show ever!

That little snippet without the song used to play as commercials on VHS tapes my family had as kids and for some reason this stuck with me until I started at the university and was searching through Youtube one day and found... The Adventure of the Galaxy Rangers! One got to hear that awesome intro music in full. And then I watched the whole show. Fantastic show. Of course it wasn't till now I actually got it for myself as a combined Christmas and birthday present. So me and one of my sisters spent most of Christmas and New Years Eve watching all 65 episodes. And it was a great. Although I gotta say the first episode is a bit on the slower side. Instead of introducing each and every character in the episode we are pretty much left with the intro which tell us that it is the year 2086 and two peaceful aliens have given us access to a hyperdrive that opened our gateway to the stars, but as always the final frontier is a dangerous place so mankind assembled a team of unique individuals with the highest ideals of justice, the Galaxy Rangers. And then they hit you with the song No Guts No Glory. And our four main characters is a cyborg, a psychic, a technician and a sharpshooter... or at least I get it from the intro. And then we are taken to the planet Kirwin where the humans and Kiwis are installing a planetary shield to protect the planet from the Crown Empire. Which of course attacks and kidnapps the humans. Meanwhile we see Zachery Foxx and his family (wife Eliza, son Zach jr and daughter Jessica) escorting the Kiwi ambassador Zozo and Andorian ambassador Waldo. They get attacked by the space pirate Captain Kidd who is only able to kidnap Zach's wife while blasting Zach's left side so that after the escape they installed him with cyborg implants and made him the captain of the Ranger 5-series unit they assembled. And that's pretty much it for the first episode. The second episode introduces the rest of the rangers like Doc Walter Hartford, the technician and I believe medical doctor as well? Niko, the psychic archeologist and Shane Gooseman, the super trooper soldier turned ranger with biodefences to adjust to any situation. Zach we already met and his special skill is turning his bionicarm into a cannon named Thunderbolt as well as receiving extra strength.They follow Kidd to Tortuna, a desert planet with the galaxys shadiest criminals to find the captive humans and Zack's wife. After a trip to the Queen of the Crowns psychocrypt they rescue most of the hostage except Zach's wife who is turned into a slaverlord, the queens "zombie"-projections that leads her robot armies against the League of Planets. And this is the set-up for the series. Fighting villains and trying to get Zach's wife back. And the occasional silly episode.

I REALLY like that song

So why do I like it? First the animation at times are really amazing. Especially on episodes where they really put the money where it's at. Easiest is the the only two-parter with the Sundancer. The first part, "the gift of life", isn't much in animation, but they really put effort in to the following episode as the same character that was introduced in the previous episode really got a change of emotions. And the space scenes were really well done, for example the Star Wars-homage in "The Edge of Darkness" or the giant space battle in "Armada". Secondly the music as mentioned is really good. But then again it might be my taste for 80's hard rock synthesiser. Thirdly, the writing is rather good. It isn't as cliched as these types of shows could be, villains and heroes are smart. We have a supposed timeline through the series and they didn't feel the need to always remind us what everything is or who everyone is (for the most time). Also it's one of the darkest kids show I've ever seen. You have several deaths that can't be explained away since they died in space, the episode "Rouge Arm" even takes it time showing two red shirt rangers opening an air lock to investigate destroyed robots on their ship and then proceeds showing the culprit closing the door, then press the button under it, it cuts to an outside view of the space ship with the open air lock and screams. People are forced to touch an alien relic the main character describe as an emotional electric chair. 

Even the song about the villain is good

Is something bad then? Well, there are episodes that are bad, like the "Mothmoose". Not the beginning since a kiwi that goes rambo on Tortuna to find the mothmoose is rather fun, the problem is the ending where Zach jr, Zozo and his brothers kids perform "Don't mess with the mothmoose" together with Buzzwang, the ranger robot that just complains and hardly does anything useful. No one likes Buzzwang. Usually Buzzwang episodes are the worst. Overall the episodes feels somewhat to short. This should have been 1 hour episodes like the live-action show "Stargate SG-1" to flesh out more of the characters and settings, or even the political workings of the different planets and their history. And the final complaint is that as stated the show has a timeline so you can follow the episodes (although I haven't found anyone that gives the correct order sinces the box clearly has some episodes out of order) there is no definite end. The last episode is just Doc restoring an ancient machine on the planet Tarkon so it can activate it's defences against the Crown armada. They don't save Zach's wife, they do hinder the Crown Empire and destroys much of their resources, but the queen is still the biggest threat against the League of Planets and Shane who has a special mission to catch the other super troopers don't catch them by the end of the series. I can except that, but the Eliza situation is a bit harder to swallow. Also, I don't get if it takes place in 2086 or if its a later date since it seems humans have colonised several planets outside our solar system. At least it's still far enough into the future that it might be possible that two aliens just land and hand over a hyperdrive to us. Also, isn't it a bit stereotypical that the first aliens we encounter is one hobbit like race that feeds the galaxy while the other is a elvish type philosopher/inventor race. And you gotta ask why they need humans, but the answer is obviously the sheer numbers and recklessness to be the military force of the League. Which is shown in that the soldiers and officers are all humans. At least I got 65 episodes to watch over and over again, although if I find an english version without forced german subtitles I might be inclined to double dip. Speaking of sci-fi shows.

Good god, what is that?

There were two pilot-episodes for other shows that came from King, the company publishing them. The first being "Defenders of the Earth" from 1985 with Flash Gordon, Mandrake, Lothar and the Phantom which I've seen before, but now I actually saw the rather poor animation job. Didn't help that it only was in german so I couldn't get most of what happened. And then it was Flash Gordon from 1979. Boy, what an experience. Rotoscoping and reused stock images and sequences. Character barely moving while struggling against a plant monster... and of course in german so I didn't get anything. That picture above is Ming doing his awful laugh. You gotta see how he jolts upward and starts laughing the most pathetic evil laugh I've ever heard. I'm not getting that series I can tell you know.

Still out there in space

Moving back to the better show its rather interesting to see that it was a lot of shows centered around wild west in space, Saber Rider and Bravestarr is two other shows I know about, only watched Saber Rider. Although I said earlier it's a bit stereotypical about the different aliens introduced first, farmers, philosophers and inventor and an evil robot empire they still have interesting bits about them. For example even tough the kiwis are farmers they are also great inventors in the field of genmanipulation for plants and foods as well as very aggressive when need be so they don't need to be saved all the time. The Andorians on the other hand is still pretty vulcan like, even though occasionally entering a state of primitive beast-like mentality if certain conditions are triggered, the Andorians for example turns into beast-like creatures as soon they are caged. And the Queens robot armies... are they really robots? They take bribes as any other living being and one of them even escaped the queen in the episode "Lord of the Sands" and stayed with some stranded human children as their mentor and guide and even was about to blow himself up since he knew as soon as his existence would be known he would be hunted down and the children he had protected would be turned into Slaverlords. Although certain question still arise, especially how long humans have travelled across the galaxy. Or are they not humans even though they look like it? It would really have been nice if it at least could have gotten an animated movie to end the whole series and now it's really no point. Cause now you gotta somehow reboot stand nothing good can come out of it even if I would wish. Doesn't help that Jeremy Orbach that played Zach died in the early 2000's. At least fix a dvd/blueray release where I don't have to watch german subtitles with the english voices as the only option to watch the show.

Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past

Finally, a "new" Dragon Quest

Finally, after just below 90 hours I finished it... and they said it would take 100 hours, a master of Dragon Quest I am! And after rushing through Asdivine Hearts it felt really nice playing this game for the first time, it even felt nostalgic, but that is probably more due to the Dragon Quest conservative development which have the same look, gameplay and similar themes in the story. Feels really nice. Story begins with you, a son of the local hero fisherman trying to explore the world with the town mayor daughter and the local prince. The world just consisting of 1 island in an whole ocean, that is until your father drags home some part of a stone tablet they caught in their net. After some running around the ruins of the island and talking to the right people you are able to enter a mysterious shrine (which is what it's called in the zoom list). Inside a... "fairy" explains the deal. Collect stone tablets, bring them to the shrine and put them in the pillars of the shrine. What he doesn't tell you is that once you complete a pillar you are transported to a completely new place shrouded in darkness. The twist... if you can call it twist since it is basically the only explanation that makes sense, is that you have been transported back in time to the moment that the island you are on would disappear from the world. You save the townspeople of the past and the island appears in the present which you then visit to collect more tablets and so on. 

Did we take a left a albuquerque?

So after saving a number of island you begin to unravel the plot. Centuries earlier the Almighty (aka God) fought a battle against the demon king. No one knows the outcome, but the more logical ones was either a draw or a loss for the Almighty. You also collect more people that joins you, Ruff, the wolf turned human and Sir Melvyn, a knight that fought beside the Almighty in the battle the demon king, but was put into a crystal so that he could be awakened when he was needed to fight once more against evil. And Aishe, the descendet of prince Keifer who leaved the party and stayed in the past to be guardian and later husband of a dancer for a tribe who's purpose was to awaken the Almighty. So after saving all islands you unlock a portal to the very moment the battle of the Almighty and Demon King occurred. As the Almighty sends Sir Mervyn into the crystal and sends of the four great spirits HE blows himself up, critically damaging the demon. And you enter and fight the weakended demon lord. Afterwards you enter the present and awakens the Almighty. But plot twist, it's really the Demon King in disguise and he throws you all into the shadows. You are able to transport to the four islands connected with the four spirits and awakens one by one. They shatter the darkness and bring the islands back once again and then exposes the demon lord. And you have to finish him of. Do that and the world is saved and you go on a so called victory tour to meet most of the people you have saved or helped. After returning home you wake up in your normal clothes and for the third time in the game goes out with lunch to your father, but this time you are allowed to stay on the ship... as does Maribel, the mayor's daughter. You get out and credits roll. It all ends with you picking up yet another stone tablet,  but this is from Keifer telling us that he married the dancer and so on. The End.

Interesting how they push this trio when both Maribel and Keifer are missing big parts of the game.

It's easy to describe the overarching plot, but as per usual with Dragon Quest, each island has it's own story that might have taken 30 minutes to complete in the beginning and then a couple of hours to finish at the end. We have the island were all women are kidnapped, the island overrun by machines, a disastrous love story that almost ends in poisonous murder and on and on. This game is huge in stories and it's really good for short sessions, one island at a time. But I can't help that feel that the main characters are a bit slow. For example the murder plot I got directly, but we didn't try to stop it until another person stepped in. The same when two bullies try to play a prank on a little girl and we could stop them, we heard there plan, but no. I would have thrown those brats of the cliffs for their insolence in bullying a little girl. Or the town that erased the proof of their ancestors guilt of almost killing the priest who was turned into a monster to protect them and even though he didn't hurt a fly they were about to burn him. And he had to leave (sadder still is that I met the priest "earlier" when he sacrificed himself yet again to save another town... at least those people tried to save him as well, but I believe he died that time). Anyway, the kids in the town dig up another stone tablet that explain their guilt and you take it and show it to the mayor who proceeds to grab a hammer and smash it... with the heroes right there, why didn't they stop it? That's what a real DnD game have over these games, you actually can stop these kind of stupid things... if not the players themselves causes those things that is.

This is how you deal with bullies and liars (picture doesn't portrait real bullies or liars)

Beside this we have some really heavy stuff. One of the earlier islands is an island were the inhabitants have been turned to stone and the only survivor was a warrior who was outside of town to get provisions and now was an old man. In the village you get three visions from statues right before the rains that caused it. One is between the warrior and his wife that urges him to stay, but he feel he must for the survival of the town, another with a little girl and boy talking about their secret hideout and the last is a father getting drunk in the pub, trying to get home when the rains start and he feels the petrification taking effects as he panic and cries out his sons name as he try to reach his house... and then the statue crumbles to dust. That hit right through the heart. You are only able to save one person, the boy who's father cried out for him since he was at the secret hideout underground and saved from weather and wind. I tell you, Dragon Quest knows how to push the feels. This is a remake from a PSOne game which I first read in the Super Play magazine, but couldn't play since I first didn't have a playstation and secondly since it didn't come out in Europe at the time. I get they gave it a 3d world like Dragon Quest VIII and IX and got rid of the random encounters like IX except in two places, on water and a dungeon where it probably was to problematic to program as you run around on glass cubes and can walk on each side. After finish the game you have enough tablets to get yet another pillar where you dungeon crawl to fight... the Almighty. Being Dragon Quest, of course he is an entertainer and comedian. I haven't beaten HIM as of writing since I probably need to grind a bit, but I probably have enough time before they release VIII.

So when is the release date? Update: January 20th 2017

A bit of a update (which since it isn't out until now anyway make's it a bit redundant, but still), now I finally grinded the cast for 15 hours up to level 50, got all the regular vocations for the Hero and everyone else is up to 3d Tier vocations. I challenged the Almighty and I finally beat him... but no, that's not enough since I did it in 39 turns and apparently its 20 that is the magic number and the Almighty is a f***ing cheater. Putting my characters to sleep, making them laugh uncontrollably and dishing out high amount of damage that almost makes a TPK. And yet, its still much more fun than grinding for the end of any Final Fantasy game I played. But I'm done. I got such a big backlog of games and several of them is RPG's with another 60 hours per game.