That being said, you know, there was E3 and there was San Diego Comic Con, so all sorts of interesting shit out of there. So I guess I’ll write about those.

I’m kind of looking forward to playing Soul Calibur 4 at some point, for some reason I’m not entirely sure of. Maybe it’s the idea of laying the smackdown with Darth Vader, I don’t know. Still need to get my hands on Civilization: Revolution, and tentatively looking forward to Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. That and I need more money. Maybe I’ll buy up on games in September. I apparently have a Rock Band mic waiting for me in September too, which should be interesting. My Singstar skills are pretty poor as it is…

Kind of weird, but then it’s mostly because I got a massive urge to play Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic again. And while I’m at it, Knights of the Old Republic 2. And Jade Empire, also by Bioware and apparently very similar.

Mostly I just want to beat the shit out of stuff as a Sith lord (actually, probably lady – I’d rather be hitting on Carth than Bastila is all), which I suppose can wait till the release of Force Unleashed, but it’s just not the same.

I like the excessive amount of customisation – the lightsaber crystals, the armour options, the various force skills and all that. The characters aren’t ugly like in Oblivion and the combat is fun as hell. Plus you know, actual characterisation. Good stuff *thumbs up*

But yeah, I also want to know what happens next, hence the desire to play the sequel. I know it all goes to shit in the middle when they needed to complete the game to a deadline and so on, but I like the first game enough to warrant playing the second, I think. And Jade Empire is apparently similar, but outside the Star Wars universe. Which is cool – I’m not a huge Star Wars geek by any means.

And then I was thinking I might play around with XBMC too – I was thinking of just getting a Macbook and playing the PC versions of all those games, and then installing XBMC for Mac on it, but would my hypothetical laptop even be able to handle doing all of that?

But yeah, none of that happening as of yet. Just idle ideas still floating around, waiting to be realised. Meanwhile, I just sit here and feel like killing things with lightsabers, and am sad because I don’t have a proper media center.

So yeah, that’s it from me this month. Not so much quantity, but I did finish one whole complete game and enjoyed the fuck out of it. Yay me!

It also makes sense when you know that I’ve started playing Oblivion, which is a huge time sink. It’s been a lot of fun in the sense that I’ve been missing playing a generally well thought out open ended RPG for a fair while. I’ve been puttering along with my usual talky tank RPG character (Strength, Speech, Stamina and some kind of healing spell, with heavy armour and a large pointy weapon is the way to go for me. None of this magic bullshit) and doing a number of quests and for the most part it’s been fun. Raising some of the skills has been a pain while for others it’s too easy.

Most of the quests have been pretty good difficulty-wise, though I’m currently trapped in a quest which is kind of hard, which sucks.

Most of the NPC interaction is ok except there have been a few weird points – for example I broke into one guy’s house in the middle of the night thinking it was empty. He was home, told me to “Take your time” and to “Take care”, instead of shouting for the guards like most of the NPCs do. I broke into his basement only to find a room dedicated to demon worship complete with bones and skulls and blood, went back upstairs fully expecting to be attacked and instead he was still polite to me. So I left.

Graphics are pretty in parts and horribly ugly in other parts – mostly the landscapes and stuff look nice from a distance (I particularly like the sky). On the other hand, the people are generally pretty weird looking. I made a female character like I usually do, and it walks and sits and stands like a man (mind you, I was attacked by a bear that moved like a man, so comparatively I suppose it’s not too bad). Luckily you don’t see any of this because it’s in first person, but that in itself makes me rather uneasy as I generally don’t play games in first person. Like Bioshock coming out for PS3 soon. On one hand I like the concept and so on, but the idea of actually playing it doesn’t really appeal to me.

I’m strangely excited about the upcoming Civilization Revolution. The brightly coloured screencaps are a bit reminiscent of Ikariam (well, I guess it’s the other way round really), and I’m really digging that style. Plus I’m really beginning to feel the limits of Ikariam as a game, so I’m just in the mood for something a bit meatier. And the idea of going back to the older Civilization games seems like too much effort. So I’m looking forward to it.

Aaand I’ve run out of things to say. That’s it for now.

Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles

5.0 / 10

The game is worth a play for the diehard Naruto fan who wants further adventures of the characters,but proves an unrewarding experience for everyone else.

Ups: The game has an easy to use combat system and the ninja powers are fun to play with. The appearance of many familiar characters from the TV show gives a real sense of immersion in the Naruto series. The stats system gives a unique way of levelling up that rewards experimentation.

Downs: The random battles and the non-essential missions get repetitive and boring, and that isn’t helped by the bad enemy AI. The lack of explorable areas means the game gets quite old quickly, and there is very little replay value in the game.

I pity the unwary gamer who picks up Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles drawn solely by the lure of ninjas. The main character is, after all, not some shadowy black clad assassin, but a preteen boy in an orange hoodie with a somewhat grating voice and an attitude to match. While there are ninjas aplenty, they draw not upon the traditional image of stealthy assassins, but rather from the ninja mythology created in the Japanese anime/manga series Naruto.

N:UC assumes previous knowledge of the original work, to the extent that it’s confusing, if not downright impenetrable to the uninitiated. What is a Hokage? Why is one of my ninja’s powers the ability to turn into a semi-naked woman? Eight trigrams 64 what?

However, if you’re an prior Naruto fan, however, you’ll be pleased to know that a large number of your favourite ninjas and favourite ninja jutsu are included in this game. The use of the voice actors from the TV show help the experience feel immersive and make the game feel like a valid extension of the world created in the anime. The game does suffer at times from some awkward English phrasing, though no translations seem downright wrong or too ridiculous.

A lot of terms are left untranslated though, which, depending on your perspective, either enriches the experience or is a result of lazy localisation. Either way, you should go into this game knowing your Sensei from your Genin. It would be ideal to go into this game having seen at least the first 20 or so episodes of the anime, as the game appears to be set sometime around the Chuunin exam story arc.

The game is split up into missions, with only a few of them being compulsory to complete the game and the rest essentially excuses to put Naruto into battle. No matter how quirky the mission descriptions can be (one mission involves fighting monkeys in order to take back a man’s gambling equipment, for example), the non-essential missions boil down to random battles with grunts, and while they increase the length of the game, they also increase the tedium.

Luckily, the controls for N:UC are assured and intuitive, allowing you to easily unleash various ninja powers at the touch of a button and enabling you to mow through packs of no-name ninjas (or monkeys). The skills, including the Clone jutsu, the Sexy jutsu, the Substitution jutsu and the Power Strike are all well implemented and easy to use during combat. Naruto powers up into his Nine Tailed Fox mode when a combo gauge is filled, which is perhaps overpowered, but the boss fights can be challenging enough to require that. The moves are all introduced at the start via a rather hefty tutorial section, which can also be accessed from the main menu. Having virtually all of the abilities unlocked at the start instead of working to unlock and upgrade them removes some of the incentive to keep playing and level up, however.

While the fights can be fought well, there isn’t much point. As mentioned before, the random battles are all against very generic, boring enemy ninjas. The AI controlling these is poor to the point where the enemy will quite often stand still and stare at you instead of fighting. The fun in the fights is instead with the boss fights against the other characters. Here they show off their signature moves, which look good and are adapted well into video game form. It’s also possible to create a party and take control of the other characters. This occurs in a tag-team format, with the L2 button switching in the alternative character. Given the scarcity of healing items, it’s probably for the best that each character has a time gauge for how long he can remain in combat rather than an HP meter. Being able to fight alongside a teammate would have been better, but there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the existing method. A two-player fight mode would have been a fun inclusion, but is only slated to be included in the sequel.

N:UC goes the Kingdom Hearts route of having the enemies burst into brightly coloured balls upon death. “Virtue” balls are dropped, which are part of a rather unique levelling up system. Virtue is used to buy pieces which enable stats upgrades, and those pieces are fitted, puzzle-like, onto a board in order to be activated. Upon filling the board completely, a bonus is obtained, and different boards can be won through completing different missions. This forces the player to play more strategically, and for RPG players who love tweaking character stats it should add an extra dimension to the game.

Despite being called an action RPG, apart from the fighting style there is little action about it. Everything takes place within tiny combat environments, cut scenes or on the world map, and none of these encourage any sort of exploration. The game was first released in Japan in 2005 and it shows. The combat arenas are mostly drab, grey-green slightly blocky forests and grasslands that look more like they were inspired by an FPS than a vibrantly coloured anime.

Unlike the fellow PS2 Naruto game Naruto: Ultimate Ninja, N:UC is not cel-shaded, and thus visually it appears out of place when compared to the rest of the franchise. For a game that relies so heavily on cut scenes, the cut scenes are awkwardly animated, with stiff movements and sharp edges everywhere. The varying levels of voice acting can also get irritating after playing for too long. As a slight aside, it’s interesting to note that Naruto swings his arms when he runs in battle, but has them stuck out like in the anime in the cut scenes. The world map is nice, but hardly a pinnacle of design.

The soundscape of the game lacks the signature sound of Toshiro Masuda, the composer for the anime. The generic oriental background music is acceptable, but means the game lacks the aural punch of the TV show. The lack of the catchy Japanese pop-rock tunes from the anime may also be a disappointment to fans.

N:UC is a game targetted purely at fans of the existing franchise. While the game has many faults and many aspects which could have been improved, it offers a reasonably entertaining and immersive extension to the world of Naruto. The game’s main strength is in the appearances of characters that fans know and love, and the way the game, for the most part, feels like it’s part of the franchise. The RPG elements are generally well handled, despite the fact that the action aspect is lacking in certain parts. Provided you have completed all the missions though, N:UC has almost zero replay value, due to unskippable cut scenes, little interactivity and repetitive gameplay.

For a while, the Naruto TV show went through a phase of playing endless “monster-of-the-week” type filler episodes where the characters never developed and nothing ever really changed, in order to allow the original author to catch up and write more plot to animate. In a similar way, N:UC is unsatisfying. N:UC is an action RPG that is both a halfhearted action game and to a lesser extent a halfhearted RPG, and the two halves do not make a whole. Overall as a game it is neither truly excellent nor godawful, and thus the deciding factor on the amount enjoyment you’ll take from it is whether you love the franchise and the characters enough to play interactive filler material.

• Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core – bought it while in Japan in January, and have been horribly distracted by the missions, enough so that I haven’t progressed in the main plot for a month or so. Yeah, I’m lazy. Really enjoying what I have been playing though; the cut scenes are pretty and the gameplay is comfortable. It’s that and Lumines II which are really making my PSP worth it, currently.
• Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction for PS3. It’s the first Ratchet and Clank game I’ve played actually, but I was a big fan of the Insomniac Spyro games so I wanted to see how it would go. It’s great fun so far. I’m really enjoying level design that plays nicely between “too big and confusing, where the fuck am I going next” and “stop making me go that way, I want to go the other way”. The graphics and design aesthetic are great too, and I can’t wait to go back to playing it.
• Ikariam – an online browser-based MMO I found via Kotaku. Basically just Civilization with an online element, but it’s fairly easy to pick up and doesn’t take too much of your time, so I’ve been playing around with it in recent days. It helps that I got my RTS playing friend addicted to it so I have friends to make alliances with, and stuff.
• PMOG, also seen on Kotaku. To be honest, I’m not so sure it’s a good idea to voluntarily let anyone track your browsing history, particularly when their Privacy Policy includes this:

GameLayers may disclose player data in limited circumstances if we believe in good faith that doing so would: comply with legal process, prevent fraud or imminent harm, and/or help ensure the integrity of PMOG.

But so far it’s been reasonably fun, in a sort of RPG del.icio.us kind of way. I’ve found some interesting sites through it already, and it certainly adds a bit of spice to visiting places like 4chan, Kotaku or xkcd. Plus I get to do stuff like this:



All in good fun. I understand it’s still in beta, so if you want an invite just hit the “Contact” button up the top and I can sort you out.

I still have a whole bunch of games waiting for me, like Oblivion, Assassin’s Creed, God of War: Chains of Olympus and so on, so I’m going to be a bit busy with all that in upcoming weeks I guess. Busy in the best way possible though. Good thing I don’t care about GTA IV.