Category: Reviews

Niche Game: Super Smash Bros.

Niche games: Âwe’ve all played them. ÂThey’re the games that you remember for a long time because they’re so unique. ÂSometimes they’re the only ones ever made like them. ÂOther times they were trailblazers for their kind of gameplay. ÂBut what they have in common is the bravery to try something new, allowing them to rise above the imitators. ÂEven though there might be newer games with shinier graphics, these games are still worth playing mecause they’re something different, something special.

If you’re like me, you got sick of playing those old tournament fighter games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat whose main difficulty was based around the user memorizing long strings of button combinations to trigger special moves. Like in Mortal Kombat, I still remember that Scorpion’s spear move was Back, Back, B. So anyone who has taken the time memorize dozens of these moves has a major advantage over someone who is a good player but hasn’t memorized.

Enter Super Smash Bros. (SSB), released for the Nintendo 64 by HAL Laboratory in 1999. The most unique feature of the game is immediately obvious: the fighters are all Nintendo-licensed characters from other games. Mario throws punches and fireballs. Samus Aran fires charged-up plasma shots, missiles, and drops bombs from her morph-ball form. And others, including several that characters that you can unlock. If you’re a Nintendo lover like me, it’s a lot of fun sending Donkey Kong in for a wind-up punch against Fox McCloud.

The damage system in SSB is one of a kind. Instead of having a health meter that signals how close to death you are, you have a damage percentage on the bottom of the screen. I’m not really sure why it’s expressed as a percentage, because it doesn’t stop at 100%, it just keeps going. The higher the damage level, the farther you fly when you’re hit, and the longer it takes you to recover. An enemy attack doesn’t kill you directly; to die, you have to leave the edge of the screen on any side. But the higher your damage meter goes, the more likely you will fly off the screen. This means that anybody can still have a chance to win even if their damage percentage is very high. A character with 0% damage can die by slipping off the edge, and a character with 400% damage can keep fighting (though he’ll have to be very careful not to get hit too hard).

Besides the obvious appeal of the Nintendo characters, the big appeal of this game for me is the simple play control. Regular moves, like punches and kicks, all involve the A button and some direction on the direction pad. Down+A might be a sweep kick, for instance, and forward+A might be a punch. Smash attacks are also easy to perform, and are more powerful (though often slower). These are done by “tapping” the direction pad in a direction at the same moment that you press the A button. These really pack a wallop, and are often the best way to send an enemy flying off the screen once you’ve brought up their damage level.

The special moves are no harder to perform than the regular moves, they are just combinations of the direction pad and the B button. so each character has 4 special moves. As an example, Pikachu:
B: Shoots a bolt of static that hops along the ground in front of you. It also climbs walls until it runs out.
Up+B:Â Pikachu jumps super-fast, no damage, but good for recovery
Forward+B:Â Pikachu charges up then fires himself forward like a cannonball
Down+B: Pikachu’s best move, and the easiest move in the game to spam. Calls a powerful lightning bolt down from the sky, striking Pikachu directly. Anyone in the path of the bolt or touching Pikachu himself takes heavy damage and gets thrown a long way.

Each character is lots of fun to play, each with their own special traits. Zelda is one of the most unique because she is two characters in one. Zelda has powerful magic bursts for her regular moves and has some nice long range and short range special attacks, but she’s pretty slow to move around. With her Down+B move, she transforms into Sheik, her ninja-like alter-ego. Sheik’s attack are weak but super-quick. In the hands of the right player, Sheik can run circles around her enemies.

Up to four players fight at a time in arenas themed around Nintendo games, and random items drop down. Food items allow fighters to heal their damage. The home run bat has medium reach and a decent damage when swung, but when swung in a smash attack it has devestating knockback ability. Also, there are pokeballs which summon a random pokemon to damage your enemies.

The original game was followed up by Super Smash Bros. Melee in 2001 for Gamecube and Super Smash Bros. Brawl in 2008 for Wii. Each has some new mini-games and lots of new characters. Most of the appeal is the improved graphics, new characters, more and more each time. In Melee, Bowser and Peach (Princess Toadstool), as well as Ganondorf are major additions. In Brawl, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Solid Snake become some of the first non-Nintendo created characters to be added. Brawl also has the addition of a single-player quest style game, involving all of the characters. It’s a fun diversion in it’s own right. Most of the enemies in that section are unique to that, and the only way you can collect trophies for them is to use the “trophy stand” item against them. The stand appears randomly, and if you throw it and connect with a sufficiently weakened enemy they will turn into a trophy. The stand will appear more frequently the higher the difficulty, but you also have to survive the rest of the level without losing your lives or you will lose your trophy as well.

A lot of fan groups on the internet cry out for Mega Man as an addition in future games. I think he would be a good character. Between all the special moves he’s gained in all of his franchise games, he would have plenty of special ability opportunities. But there’s one character that I’d like to see even more than Mega Man: Earthworm Jim. He could use the worm whip for one special move, his blaster gun for another, maybe Snott for a recovery move. It would be so much fun to pit Earthworm Jim against Asmus Aran! Well, I can always hope, for SSB 4.

Finding a copy of this game shouldn’t be too difficult. A quick eBay search comes up with quite a few hits for around 20 dollars. But, really, you might be better off just getting one of the newer versions. All of the characters in the original game are present in both of the other two games anyway, plus the newer games have better graphics and are playable on the Wii. Check the series out. Enjoy!

Niche Game: Grand Theft Auto

Niche games: Âwe’ve all played them. ÂThey’re the games that you remember for a long time because they’re so unique. ÂSometimes they’re the only ones ever made like them. ÂOther times they were trailblazers for their kind of gameplay. ÂBut what they have in common is the bravery to try something new, allowing them to rise above the imitators. ÂEven though there might be newer games with shinier graphics, these games are still worth playing mecause they’re something different, something special.

The original Grand Theft Auto, the game that started the memorable series, was released by DMA Design, now known as Rockstar North. This is just one in the long list of ingenius games this company is capable of, with such varied gameplay that you never get bored. This game is similar in some ways to its descendents, but has many unique traits of its own.

The game is mostly 2-D. Technically it’s 3-D, because the height of buildings is clear as you drive by them, but the game rarely involves interacting with anything that’s not strictly on the ground. The view is top-down only. This view works pretty well for the most part, but isn’t very helpful when you are beneath something opaque like an overpass.

The plot moves through three cities, which will sound familiar to fans of the later games. You start in Liberty City (New York), move on to Vice City (Miami), and the last level is in San Andreas (California). The game starts out with your character in Liberty City, near a bunch of ringing telephones on the edge of Central Park. Each telephone kicks off a different mission, which you then try to complete. When you pass or fail, you return to the phones if you want more missions. Or, like the sequels, you can just choose to rampage.

Completing missions is important, but in this version is not required to advance through the game. Advancement in this game depends on the points, though missions are an integral way of rapidly increasing your points, and succeeding in missions tends to open up more missions. Besides getting a huge point bonus for completing a mission, doing so also increases your points multiplier by one. The multiplier is applied to every point you receive. The points are labeled as dollars on-screen, but it’s not really clear who is paying you $10 for every pedestrian you run over, so I tend to think of them as points. You can use the points to purchase things, such as a paint job to lose cops or planting a bomb in a car.

Missions vary widely. Sometimes you’re the driver for a bank job, evading pursuit with a high police level, or other times you’re sent on an assassination mission. One mission re-enacts the premise of speed. Once you get in this bus, you must maintain a minimum speed or the bus will explode. So you have to drive on sidewalks and swerve in and out of traffic to pull this off, keeping it up until someone can disable the bomb while you’re driving.

You do get points for pretty much anything, including running over people with your car, shooting people. You get lots of extra points for mass carnage. For instance, if you steal many cars and parks them side by side, then blow them all up with a shot from the rocket launcher. This works with people too, which is especially noticeable when you see a line of Hare Krishna walking in single file. If you can run over the whole line without missing a single one of them, then you get a huge bonus, along with the word “GOURANGA” filling the screen. Another way to cause carnage is to scare people onto the third rail of the city trains. Fire a gun or a flamethrower at no one in particular at a train station and people will flee in every direction, even if they zap themselves to do it.

Of course, the more visible crimes you commit, the more your police wanted level goes up. With one star, you’re usually only pursued by one or two cops who don’t try to kill you, only to arrest you. As your wanted level increases, so does the level of pursuit. A little higher and cops set up road blocks with their cars blocking the road. It escalates up to the point where the military gets involved, sending tanks barreling down the street. If you get “BUSTED” or “WASTED” (both of which come with their own awesome sound clip), you will come to at the nearest police station or hospital without weapons and with your multiplier reduced. This is very disappointing when it happens, because those multiplier values are everything.


Besides the phone missions, there are also missions you begin by jumping into abandoned cars parked in various places in the city. And sometimes you get important mission information via your beeper which scrolls messages up on the top of the screen. It’s all open-ended, so you can do any of these missions, or not. it’s really up to you.

There is a wide array of cars in this game, most modeled after real cars, though using different false names than the 3-D GTA games. For instance, the Dodge Viper is a “Beast” in this game as opposed to the “Banshee” used in later games. Each car has its own attributes, and of course stealing cop cars is one of the most fun things to do. Turning on the sirens increases the cop car’s top speed.

Just like GTA3, this game has radio stations with made up songs on them. This was one of my favorite parts of the game, just driving around and listening to the fake music. There are several radio stations, and not every one is available in every car. For a laugh, grab a pickup truck, which has just one possible station. It’s a country station and it plays just the one song–which is a hilarious country parody. After the song, the DJ comes on for a few moments and says “In fact, I liked the song so much, I reckon I’ll play it again.”

Once you reach the minimum point level to pass the level, then you are given a special mission. If you pass that mission, then you pass the level and are allowed to move on. Personally I’ve passed the first two levels, but did not make it through San Andreas. I just wasn’t very good at gun play in this top down game and tended to get smeared across the landscape. Some time I should pick up the game and try again, to see if I have any better luck now.

The 3-D sequels are well known, so I won’t list those, but there some a couple of lesser known sequels to the game. Grand Theft Auto: London takes place in 1969 in London, with different music, different kinds of cars, and of course in London itself. It’s not as big a game as the original, but can be sort of fun if you’re craving more. Grand Theft Auto 2 is done in the same top-down style, but with a gang war system added. In each level there are 2 or 3 major gangs fighting for contention over the city, and you have a reputation with each of them (measured by meters on the heads-up display). Completing missions for one gang will increase that gang’s like for you, but will decrease other gangs’ like for you. The higher your reputation with a gang, the more of their missions are offered to you, and the lower, the more hostile they become. This game was hard for me because I have a tendency to want to complete every mission for everybody, which isn’t really possible for this game as you’d just end up with a neutral reputation with everybody instead of really gaining something. Grand Theft Auto 2 added a new feature, an evangelist hut that says “Jesus Saves!”. And he does save. Your game that is.

If you want to find a copy of the game, you’re in luck! Rockstar offers a free download of Grand Theft Auto and Grand Theft Auto 2 on their website. So you have no excuse not to play it. See where the carnage began. Enjoy!

Wheel of Time Re-read Review: Crossroads of Twilight

[Fair warning: The beginning of this article is a lengthy explanation of why I’m re-reading this book at this moment. If you don’t care, then skip down to the part below that says BEGIN REVIEW]

I’ve long proclaimed that Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time fantasy series is my favorite fantasy series of all time. The characters are great, the magic system is detailed and interesting, and the worldbuilding is just extraordinary. Jordan strikes just the right balance between style and substance, hitting a medium that flows easily but still reads in an appealing way.

But, since 2007, I have been dreading picking the series again. The reason for my dread is not anything that Robert Jordan did, but rather a change in my tastes, leaning towards the critical. I started writing fiction back then, and it has changed my reading preferences forever. Above all, I’ve learned that my most valued trait of any writing is conciseness. Is it the best length for the story it has to tell. This has made it VERY hard to read Stephen King novels! Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time novels are very long, and there are a lot of them (11 written by his hand before he died), so I’ve been worried that I will no longer be able to enjoy the books now that I’m so much more picky.

In September 2007, Robert Jordan died of a blood disease. I regret that I was never able to meet the man who created my favorite books. He’d known how the series would wrap up for a long time before the end, and since he saw the end coming he kept copious notes so that the Wheel of Time would not have to pass away prematurely with him. His publishers at Tor chose Brandon Sanderson to use the notes to complete the series. I’m not sure what to expect from Sanderson. I haven’t read anything else that he’s written so he’s a completely unknown entity to me. I got the newest WoT book, The Gathering Storm, for Christmas, so I will soon find out what I think of his writing. I will probably either love or hate him, depending on if I feel he is continuing Jordan’s legacy satisfactorily.

To be fair to Sanderson, I decided that it would be best if I re-read some of the Wheel of Time before reading the new one. After all, it is possible that I no longer care for Jordan’s writing style, and so it would be rather unfair to judge Sanderson against a nostalgic memory that isn’t all that accurate anymore. Sanderson is the guest of honor at MiniCon here in the Twin Cities, which I will be attending, so I want to have gotten started on The Gathering Storm before that time so I can decide whether I hate him. So I don’t have time to re-read many of the Wheel of Time books. I decided to re-read books 10 (Crossroads of Twilight) and 11 (Knife of Dreams), leaving me at least a little time to get started on The Gathering Storm before Easter weekend.

So, long story short, I’ve just finished Crossroads of Twilight, and here is my review!

BEGIN REVIEW

Spoilers ahead, and I don’t really feel like marking them out after this. So, if you don’t want to know, then don’t read it!

The good news is that I still enjoy Jordan’s writing style, his accessible characters, and the world they’re contained in. The bad news is that I found this book incredibly boring. I suspect (but am not entirely sure) that it’s just this book that I dislike and that I could still enjoy the other ones. There are several reasons why I simply had trouble getting into this one:

1. Too many POVs. By this point in the series there are so many separate groups of people, widely distributed from one another, most of them in a position of some power over a huge group of other people. The trouble is, there are just simply too many groups to be able to give any single one of them justice within a single book, even a book that’s nearly 700 pages. For the first 600 pages or so, the narrative takes turns going to each of these characters for two or three chapters in a row, then on to the next and the next. The trouble is that each time there’s a transition there’s a break in whatever tension had been built to that point and I start the next section in a null state. And when it became clear that most of these people would not even be returned to in this book, it was hard to care much what happened in their everyday lives. I understand that Jordan, by this time, had set up a wide cast of characters that we all care about, but he would be better served picking just 3 or 4 major characters and focusing on them for this book, and focusing more on other characters for other books. The way it was, it seemed that fairness and equal representation was more important than reader interest or conflict, and that really killed any tension that could’ve been created.

2. Aftermath syndrome. In the last book, Winter’s Heart, a hugely important event occurs. Rand and Nynaeve, along with a bunch of other helpers, manage to use incredibly powerful sa’angreal to do what has been thought impossible–cleanse saidin, the male half of the source. Since the Breaking of the World, the world has lived in fear of men who can channel because the taint on saidin eventually causes them to go mad. The modern version of Aes Sedai are only female out of necessity and an entire division of the White Tower (the Red Ajah) is dedicated entirely to neutralizing any man who can channel for the safety of all. This is a huge blessing for Rand and others who can channel, and though it will be hard to prove the claims of the cleansing of saidin on any large social scale, it will allow channeling men to live longer and be free from madness.

Anyway, the actually cleansing created a beacon of power of both saidar and saidin detectable from anywhere within the book’s world by anyone who can channel. This is understandably disconcerting for those who can channel because they would’ve thought that magnitude of Power usage would’ve been impossible. I understand why they’d be disconcerted. But one of the major annoyances of the book is that every one of these multitude of sections involved a rehashing of this concept. All of the sections took place more or less simultaneously, beginning just before this beacon appeared and lasting for a day or two after. So the mystery and the worry is rehashed so many times. Maybe this would interesting if we weren’t already aware of what the beacon was, but we already saw it in the last book! So it just gets tiresome.

3. No thread of standout importance. In most of the Wheel of Time books, there is a thread that is clearly meant to be the most important thread of that book. In book 1, the quest to find the Eye of the World. In book 3, the quest to catch up to Rand and Rand’s drive to go to the Stone of Tear. Many of the books end with a major fight with one of the Forsaken, or a major revelation such as Rand’s learnings in Rhuidean. In Crossroads of Twilight, none of the threads seemed significantly more important than the others. Each was just like a quick update on what that character’s up to, but in most cases it’s entirely clear that they’re in the same place they have been and will continue to be aftereward. Only in the very last chapter does any sense of change really take place and it’s so unforeshadowed and comes so completely out of nowhere that I never had any particular tension about it in the first place (More about that in #4).

4. No climax. Okay, yes, the book does end on a cliffhanger. Egwene sets off in a rowboat to use her mad cuendillar-making skills to block the harbors. She succeeds in blocking one of the harbors, but is captured and brought into the tower. Which is a great twist, and the quest that sparked it was both worthy and interesting. The trouble is that quest was not foreshadowed in any particular way. In her sections she thought from time to time about some unspecified plan she had, but never went into details. This bugs me to no end, because I like to really sink into a point of view when I read a story. I want to feel what the character’s feeling, but that’s impossible if she’s making huge overarching plans and keeping it as a secret from me. Finally in the last five pages, I figure out what she’s doing, and then she gets captured two pages later. Because I’ve read the book before, I knew her plan and knew the cliffhanger, and there was a hint or two but not enough to create significant tension for a first read. If I’d known her plan back when she started making it, then I could worry about how it would turn out, but revealing the plan and then having it fail at the same time doesn’t work well for me–I’m already disinterested! And because of my #1 complaint, Egwene had a very minor portion of the book, page-wise, so it didn’t make a great deal of sense to have her ending be the big ending.

I like when the beginning ties to the end in some significant way, but in this case there was no Chekhov’s gun to tie everything together. It ended up seeming more like a collection of uninteresting status updates on every character. Next I’m reading Knife of Dreams. I hope this one measures up more to my memory of the series! That’s Jordan’s last chance to get me warmed up to read the new Sanderson volume. Wish me luck!

-David Steffen

Game Review: “Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier” for the PS2

Written by Melissa Shaw
Reprinted from Fantasy Magazine

“Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier (TLF)” has no business being as entertaining as it is. It’s a Sony PSP port for the PlayStation 2, for God’s sake. To an eye accustomed to the PlayStation 3’s rich visuals, TLF’s graphics seem boxy and crude.

And yet, TLF is great fun, with solid gameplay, an interesting storyline, and a surprisingly compelling soundtrack. It features platforming, environmental puzzles, combat, lots of side quests and mini-games, and high-flying aerial missions that have you zooming around in the dogfighting plane of your choice.

TLF is the first game in the franchise to be developed by High Impact Games instead of Naughty Dog, and it has a slightly different flavor and focus than its predecessors. Gone are most of the familiar characters and locales from earlier entries in the series, as our intrepid heroes venture farther afield than ever before.

TLF opens with Jak, Daxter, and Keira (the only other character who has appeared in previous games) searching uncharted territories for eco, an energy source whose current inexplicable absence is creating storms that threaten the world itself. Find more eco, save the world.

As in previous installments, through the course of the game, Jak acquires weapons and abilities that bring a lot of variety to the gameplay. Instead of just retreading old territory with eco-based powers from previous games, however, this game brings a whole slew of new toys, including a weaponized ball of energy you can throw at enemies, temporary eco-crystals you can grow to change your environment at strategic locations, an ersatz jet-pack, and the ability to slow time (okay, that one was from previous games). The weapons are largely familiar, though High Impact Games has added a powerful grenade launcher that ends up being the game’s most useful weapon.

TLF also offers a number of mods, hidden as treasure throughout the levels or available in mini-quests, that allow you to upgrade your armor, weapons, and planes.

While most of the gameplay mechanics are familiar to fans of the series, in TLF, Jak has lost his ability to turn into the eco-powered Dark Jak or Light Jak. To make up for that, you now get some Dark Daxter segments in which Daxter, the fuzzy little sidekick, falls down a tunnel, gets doused with dark eco, hulks out, and has to navigate his own mini-levels. Unfortunately, these sections are the weakest part of the game, with no camera control, dull environments, and no integration into the rest of the story.

Speaking of camera control, the forced camera perspective in several spots in the game is an annoyance, particularly when navigating an especially tricky platforming section, or when you want to look around for extra goodies. Fortunately, some camera control is available most of the time.

TLF has a surprising amount of replay value in Hero Mode, which becomes available once you have finished the game. As you play through the levels again, you may notice environmental cues that you missed the first time through, and that lead you to secret rooms and hidden areas filled with loot. And if you don’t notice them, the game gently clues you in by sending a small, ethereal blue light to guide you to the goodies when you get close enough.

While it shows its PSP origins in its crude visuals and frequent lack of camera control, “Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier” for the PS2 is still more satisfying than many snazzier-looking action-adventure games for the PS3.

Melissa Shaw’s short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, Realms of Fantasy, Analog, and several anthologies. Melissa is a Clarion West graduate and a “Writers of the Future” contest winner. She is currently writing for an as-yet-unreleased video game.

Review: Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3)

written by Melissa Shaw
Originally printed in Fantasy Magazine

arkhamasylumFrom top to bottom, Batman: Arkham Asylum for the Sony PS3 is a vivid, detailed, and sometimes chilling foray into the gothic world of Batman.

The premise is simple: Batman delivers a newly-captured Joker to Arkham Asylum, the notorious Gotham prison housing all his vanquished supervillain enemies, only to find himself at the center of a sinister plot. The Joker plans to make Batman witness his creation of an army of huge, bestial soldiers by using the Titan venom, a chemical compound developed at Arkham. The Joker’s more personal ultimate goal, which he reveals just before the big final boss fight at the end, is both unexpected and satisfying.

Every step of the way, the Joker is in control, leading and taunting Batman through the game’s earlier levels. But Batman is not without his own resources: an array of gadgets that allow him to master his environment by gliding with his cape, grappling up to ledges and gargoyles, using the Detective Mode view to locate enemies, and more. The fight controls are simple but responsive and effective. The game wants you to feel not only physically powerful but clever, focusing on both fighting and detective skills, and it gives you plenty of tools to do both. Despite the perils of the nighttime environment and its denizens, it’s clear that you, as Batman, are the most dangerous creature at Arkham.

The narrative in this game, written by Paul Dini (a veteran writer and producer who has written for Batman: The Animated Series), holds the game together and gives it added depth, demonstrating the increasing importance of strong scriptwriting as video games become more complex.

The game takes place over a single night, and takes Batman not just through Arkham Asylum but all over Arkham Island, in and out of various large, impressive buildings. From the moldering cemetery to the abandoned mansion, the lavish, realistic settings are filled with nooks and crannies to explore, many of which contain the 240 extras , riddles, trophies, interview tapes, and secrets maps , left for you by the Riddler.

Throughout this long, dark night, Batman encounters and must deal with any number of lunatics, henchmen, and sub-bosses, but it is his battles with Scarecrow and the hallucinations Scarecrow induces that are the most developed and affecting. The Scarecrow sequences are genuinely chilling, and delve deeply into the Batman mythos, producing some disturbing images.

The graphics are gorgeous, taking full advantage of the PS3’s processing power to deliver sharp, detailed settings and characters. (The game is also available on the Xbox 360 and the PC.) Where possible, the game integrates gameplay with narrative and dialog. For example, during the opening gameplay sequence, Batman , under your control , escorts the Joker through the entrance to Arkham, while the Joker taunts Batman, his head and body swiveling in surprisingly naturalistic movement to follow Batman wherever you move him.

The voice-over performances are strong, particularly that of Mark Hamill, who reprises his Batman: TAS role as the Joker with intelligent, psychotic glee. The soundtrack supports the narrative without intruding, creating a sense of menace and urgency where appropriate.

The game is a little on the short side, but the richness of the world and the large number of extras make up for a briefer linear gameplay. The game’s foremost flaw is that while it provides maps of the island and its various buildings, it’s not always clear how to get from one place to another; a door that was unlocked before may be locked now, and because the buildings are so large and labyrinthine, it can be difficult to figure out how to get out.

A more minor flaw , which some will see as a strength , is that despite the budget that Arkham Asylum’s massive scale clearly requires, the warden somehow couldn’t afford to clothe Poison Ivy, who saunters through the game in panties and a half-undone shirt. (While Harley Quinn’s outfit is also brief and geared toward seductiveness, she has the excuse of wanting to please and amuse her paramour, the Joker.) Of course, this game, as with most games, is geared toward teenaged boys, but as the number of adult women who play video games continues to grow, the industry would be wise to be responsive to more of its consumer base.

One note of caution: this game is a dark ride, its nightmarish imagery of corpses and skulls inappropriate for young children.

Overall, Batman: Arkham Asylum is a strong, satisfying game that lets you taste what it’s like to be Batman, up against nearly insuperable odds, but finally winning the day. Or, in this case, the night.

10527_1187758026540_1606014926_30480607_3193812_nMelissa Shaw’s short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, Realms of Fantasy, Analog, and several anthologies. Melissa is a Clarion West graduate and a “Writers of the Future” contest winner. She is currently writing for an as-yet-unreleased video game.

Niche Game: Kingdom Hearts

Niche games: Âwe’ve all played them. ÂThey’re the games that you remember for a long time because they’re so unique. ÂSometimes they’re the only ones ever made like them. ÂOther times they were trailblazers for their kind of gameplay. ÂBut what they have in common is the bravery to try something new, allowing them to rise above the imitators. ÂEven though there might be newer games with shinier graphics, these games are still worth playing mecause they’re something different, something special.

Kingdom Hearts is a parallel world story, with a twist. The game is a joint venture between Squaresoft and Disney, released in 2002 for the PS2. The main character, Sora, travels from world to world, and each of them will be very familiar, because each is the setting of a Disney movie, from the pride lands of The Lion King, Wonderland, and Neverland. Besides the worlds, there are also many cameos from Disney characters, and characters from Squaresoft’s Final Fantasy series.

The protagonist of the game is Sora, a fourteen year old boy. His friends Riku and Kairi also play important roles. At the beginning of the game they are all living on Destiny Islands, and they want to leave the islands to explore the world outside. One night, shadowy creatures appear, the Heartless. He discovers the magical Keyblade, which is his weapon throughout the game, a giant key that he wields like a sword. He’s separated from his friends as the Heartless destroy Destiny Islands.

Meanwhile, in another world, King Mickey (yes, the mouse), heads off to deal with the Heartless and sends his knight Goofy and his mage Donald to go find the key to stopping the Heartless. They seek out Sora, and join forces with him. You always control Sora directly, never his companions, but you can equip them, and set their behavior during battle. Donald’s attributes are based around magic, as he learns various spells as he levels up. Goofy’s primary weapon is a shield–yeah I know it’s weird. Though Sora technically carries the same Keyblade throughout the game, he can add different charms to it that will change it’s attributes drastically, changing the length, the appearance, the power, and even adding extra attributes like extra mana for abilities.

In each world, the Heartless take on new and varied forms which match their surroundings. So, in the pride lands they take the forms based loosely on African animals, in Neverland they often appear as pirates. I like this variation, all tied together by the “Heartless” logo they wear as a badge. Besides the minor Heartless enemies, each world generally has a big boss, also going along with the theme of that world. The objective of travelling through each world is to use the Keyblade to seal the keyhole, the heart of each world that the Heartless seek to destroy.

Different from most Squaresoft games, the fights in the game are real-time, though there is a menu item for performing actions like casting spells and using items. There are also hot-buttons to help speed up these side actions. You never control your two companions, all you can do is set their equipment and attributes. When visiting other worlds, sometimes a hero from that world will travel with you, and can temporarily replace either Goofy or Donald as your fighting companion. In addition, some characters are available as summon magic, where you call them up (Goofy and Donald temporarily disappear while this happens) to bestow some powerful effect and then disappearing. I liked the real-time aspect of the fighting system. It kept the game much more exciting from moment to moment, and much of the challenge is figuring out ways to defeat each unique type of enemy and dodging their attacks.

The one element of the game I wasn’t really impressed by was the Gummi ship. It’s your method of transportation between worlds. The transit ways are filled with enemies that attack you as you fly through Gummi space. You build your Gummi ship from scratch out of spare parts you find or buy along the way, including armor, weapons, radar, etc… It wasn’t that it was a bad element, but it just didn’t really seem to relate to the rest of the game that much and was just a diversion from the important parts–all the different worlds.

There’s quite a cast of voice actors for this game, including Haley Joel Osment, Hayden Panattiere, Billy Zane, and Lance Bass. They all did a really good job at their parts, making the characters seem real and helping to bring the game alive. Many of the Disney characters are voiced by the “official” Disney voice actors for each part.

The theme song, Simple and Clean, was composed and performed specifically for this game release by Hikaru Utada. I love the original version of the song, and the graphics of the sequence (though unfortunately with a remix instead of the original) at the beginning of the game just make it even more awesome to watch. When I first played the game I sometimes just watched them over and over to hear the song and see the sequence.

The plot is a reasonably good, though the main character is a bit corny at times. I loved to see the Disney villains working together across movies, Captain Hook and Maleficent, among others. Maleficent (from Sleeping Beauty) is one of my favorite villains of all time; I love her voice, her look, her power, everything about her. These villains were worked into the plot and blended seamlessly with the Squaresoft characters and the Heartless, despite their different animation styles.

Kingdom Hearts II was released in 2006 in the US, and used many of the same concepts, revisiting some of the same worlds as the first game, while expanding the ground covered. Despite their efforts to add fresh worlds and plot elements, it just came off as more of the same, so I give it a “meh,” despite the addition of Christopher Lee’s excellent voice acting abilities. It’s not a terrible game, and it was fun to see some of the new worlds they covered–such as Tron–but overall it just came off as more of the same to me.

Finding a copy of Kingdom Hearts shouldn’t be difficult at all, probably 10 bucks or less on eBay. It’s totally worth it. Enjoy!

Niche Game: Final Fantasy Tactics

Niche games: Âwe’ve all played them. ÂThey’re the games that you remember for a long time because they’re so unique. ÂSometimes they’re the only ones ever made like them. ÂOther times they were trailblazers for their kind of gameplay. ÂBut what they have in common is the bravery to try something new, allowing them to rise above the imitators. ÂEven though there might be newer games with shinier graphics, these games are still worth playing mecause they’re something different, something special.

I trust in Squaresoft to provide RPG games with intricate plots, interesting characters, varied special abilities, lots of room to explore, and heavy but surmountable challenges. The Final Fantasy series is a particularly shining example of this, especially Final Fantasy III (titled VI in Japan), VII, and X. Each of those games deserves an article in their own right, so I’m not going to dig into them here. Final Fantasy Tactics is an offshoot, not included in the main numbering of the series titles, but the numbering doesn’t matter much anyway. Despite their numbering, none of the games really have anything to do with each other plot-wise. They do tend to share much in the way of game mechanics, NPC races, monster types, some character naming, and other aspects, but otherwise the games have nothing to do with each other in terms of continuity.

Most of the games in the Final Fantasy series have a very artificial battle system. I’m not saying they aren’t great games in their own right, but the battles generally consist of the enemies lining up along one side of the screen and the players lining up along the other. When each character’s or monster’s battle timer fills up they have the opportunity to perform some action. If they choose to attack, they run over to the other side, slash the enemy with sword (or whatever weapon) and then run back to their own lines, as though they could charge unimpeded into the midst of an enemy group like that.

Final Fantasy Tactics uses a completely different battle system entirely. It is still turn-based, but the real interesting part is the use of terrain. The layout of the level has as much effect on the outcome of the battle as the strengths of the enemies or the skill of the player. In particular, holding the high ground is very important if either side has ranged fighters. Archers and mages are incredibly effective if they gain a little height, as their attacks gain a great deal of range when shooting at a lower location. Also, they’re harder to hit–if they’re high enough off the ground, an archer’s arrow won’t even be able to reach them.

Using the terrain takes some getting used to. In one of the first levels, your enemy is standing on top of a house throwing rocks down at you. To really face off against him, you have to go around the back and climb some crates on the back of the house to get up there. Until then he’s a constant annoyance, pelting you as you try to fight other enemies.

As each player’s turn comes around, they can move once (the range dependent on their class and the terrain, among other things), and perform an action (such as attacking, casting a spell, or using an item). Use these moves wisely, as that character will be a sitting duck, stuck in one place, until the next turn.

Another strange thing about the game is your ability to hire fighters to join your ranks. Your main character is always involved in every battle, and is the center of the plot, but you can bring along 4 other units to any fight. Any human unit can change character classes between fights, allowing you to customize your little army to a large degree. And as you play the game you can unlock new and unique character classes, each with their own special abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. You unlock these by creating obscure combinations of levelling up other character classes–to get the more interesting classes I needed to look up hints online. I would recommend doing so, because some of the classes are fun enough to make the game totally worth it on their own.

The game is based around a really good skill system. You build up ability points as you fight, which can be applied to different skills for each class. You can get them all in the gradual cheapest first order, or save up for a whopper of a skill. Either way, I like purchased skill based systems like this, they make the experience building into an interesting resource management challenge in themselves.

By far the best class in the game is the Mediator class. He doesn’t have much in the way of offense or defense, but what he does have is the unique ability to talk enemy characters over to your side. This works on both humans and monsters (but not bosses). It’s a great double threat, because not only do you reduce your enemies’ number by one, you also add one to your own group. This is the only way your group can ever number more than 5, so that’s another huge perk. Also, this is the only way you can get monsters on your side. And once you have a couple monsters, they randomly breed and lay eggs, creating new monsters. And for the human initiates, once the fight is over, you can strip them of their valuable equipment and get rid of them. The mediator’s talk skill has a fairly low rate of success, so you’ll want to have a well-rounded party to be able to fight and heal and all that good stuff even if he accomplishes nothing.

Besides the hired hands you get along the way, there are also plot-important characters that join your party. These guys tend to have their own special skills, not held by anyone else, though you never know if the plot is going to kill one of them off or make them leave your party. These guys are the real powerhouses of your group, and you should make good use of them.

When I first started playing this game, I had an idea for experience building that turned out to be a terrible idea. I hired several extra people for my party, and tried to rotate them all in and out of the current party to make them level at equal rates. In other games this would’ve worked fine, but the trouble is that the game-makers decided to increase the challenge level with the overall experience gathered by your party. The monsters are set to keep it challenging if your small party are the only fighters, so I soon learned that the more I tried to increase experience in a well-rounded way, the enemies got tougher at a much higher rate than I was. So my advice is to keep your active party small, and just keep those people around as long as you can.

One thing that really annoyed me in this game is the low success rate for white magic. Imagine you’re in the middle of a tough fight. Your archer is dead. Your knight is severely wounded. It’s your white mage’s turn, and he can either try to cast a cure spell on the knight or cast a life spell on the archer. He starts casting the spell, which takes a while–he stands in place and mumbles for a while. After this interminable wait, he finally casts it, and “Miss”. Well, your archer’s still dead and you’re knight’s soon to follow and your white mage has just wasted a turn. Arg! So I ended up relying mostly on items. Most of the character classes are only able to use items from one square away, which really limits their usefulness, but the alchemist class can throw items for several squares. Items always succeed, as long as they’re successfully administered (that is you don’t try to throw them through a wall or something). And the action occurs instantaneously. But an alchemist isn’t useful for much else, so I like to make one of my special plot-characters into an alchemist. He still keeps his inherent skills, but also has the ability to throw items, so he can be both a killer and a healer, as the situation demands.

Finding this game shouldn’t be difficult. A quick eBay search comes up with many hits, though if you want this particular game you will want to be careful not to get the PSP or Game Boy Advance or DS sequels. By using the following search string I was able to get a list mostly of just this version of the game:
“final fantasy tactics” -advance -rift -“war of lions” -“war of the lions”
I saw it on there for a Buy It Now price as low as $15 with plenty of open bidding going on for other identical items. And there’s always the possibility of getting a ROM for it, though I’ve never dabbled in Playstation emulators so I can’t give any advice on that route.

This game is definitely worth playing if you want an RPG that incorporates more battleground strategies instead of artificial “I stand over here and you stand over there and we’ll take turns” fighting style. Try it out. You won’t regret it. Enjoy!

Review: Tweedlioop by Stanley Schmidt

Tweedlioop,Review written by Frank Dutkiewicz,

The state of our economy has forced many to make hard choices when it comes to spending money on entertainment. If you are one that likes to plow through a new book in a day or two (I generally prefer to take my time), 7.95 for a paperback novel can start to get pricey after awhile. Let me introduce you to the world of the used book.

You can find a good book if you search. Although many can be dated, you might get lucky and find a jewel within the dusty piles of worn covers. The latest, I found on rack inside a truck stop in Indiana, caught my eye because of the name of the author. If you are one that writes you should be familiar with the editor of Analog, Stanley Schmidt. While I know of him, and read plenty stories that he found worthy of the iconic magazine (none of which were mine, Dave’s, or Anthony’s, BTW), I have never had a chance to sample one of his writings. So I put down my two dollars and a bit and dove in.

Tweedlioop begins with a vacationing Bill Nordstrom, camping alone in Alaska while he is trying to get over the loss of his wife and son in a tragic house fire when he is approached by a strange looking squirrel. It refuses his offerings of nuts and chocolates and instead chooses to eat the plastic bag. The odd looking squirrel returns the next day, says the word ‘Tweedlioop’ and prods Bill to follow him further into the forest and leads him to a crashed spaceship. Inside are three small bodies but all larger than Tweedlioop. Bill pieces together that the small critter is just a kid and is asking for his help. After thinking that would mean for him and Tweedlioop, Bill concludes the young alien would be better off left in the wild.

The next morning Bill packs his tent and finds Tweedlioop lying listlessly inside his camp. He doesn’t bat an eye as he leaves him there on the forest floor. His guilty conscience gets the best of him and he returns to see three wolves surrounding Tweedlioop. Bill manages to scoop Tweedlioop away from the indecisive wolves. The wolves follow them and finally attack Bill at a road when a tour bus stops for him.

It is the first instance in many where Bill wonders if he has made the right choice. Along the way he enlists the help of a lawyer named Danni and her nine-year old daughter Laurie. A long trip on the bus and a journey in a pet carrier aboard a plane back to Florida is rough on Tweedlioop and by the time Bill finally gets home the young alien has taken a turn for the worst, forcing Bill to take actions he hasn’t completely thought out and consequences he and Tweedlioop aren’t prepared for.

Tweedlioop is a story written in a time when the Cold War appeared to have no end and the ET craze was at its zenith. I found it curious that in that time space flight was still considered to be a top priority for our country (in reflection it could have been wishful thinking on Mr. Schmidt’s part). Reading this story set in our pasts present brought back a few nostalgic memories for me. Cell phones was a Star Trek fictional pipe dream, the personal computer was in its infancy, and playing a video game meant scooping up your quarters and hanging out at the local arcade. What I also remember was an underlying fear of the government but a bright hope in the future. Today the hope ain’t that bright and the fear of the government isn’t underlying anymore.

The storyline to Tweedlioop is pretty straight forward; lost alien wants to go home and seeks the help of an Earthling (does sound familiar now that you mention it). Despite the similarities with that Steven Spielberg project, Tweedlioop does take a more precarious path than what ET was subjected to. One glaring difference is the characters (with the exception of young Laurie) who are nothing like the ones in the early 80’s screenplay.

The story is seen through Bill Nordstrom’s eyes, an engineer working in the space industry (just a coincidence). Bill has issues with the death of his wife and daughter. Whispers (real and imagined) that he didn’t try to save them the night of the fire haunt him. When he first decides to leave the abandon alien to the hostile wilderness you cannot help but to feel disdain for him. That scene is the first in many that centers on mankind’s selfish desires and a reluctance of sticking our neck out for another. As callous as it seems to us today “not getting involved” was an accepted course of action in that period of our history.

Danni, the widowed lawyer, and her nine-year old daughter, Laurie, are the bright bulbs in this box of low-wattage characters. Danni comes off as the only competent lawyer in America. She easily spots the legal loopholes that spare Tweedlioop from the probing hands of scientists. Young Laurie develops a connection with the juvenile alien. Their friendship becomes a special bond any girl that age would dream of, a pet that can talk in a language only she can understand.

The last major character, President Wilbur Giannelli (would an Italian father really name his son Wilbur?), is a politician that was elected largely on his vision of a future in space. He sees Tweedlioop as a bargaining chip to help further America, and his political futures, best interest.

Tweedlioop, the small marooned alien, is the true draw of the novel. The squirrel like creature is a lot cuter and more convincing as a scared abandoned child on a strange world than the wrinkly, giraffe-neck ET. I never bought into the circumstances on how ET was left behind (come on, would they have really just taken off without him?), but with Tweedlioop I found the eventual revealed reason believable.

While most of the characters in this novel come off as dry, Tweedlioop (the character) is convincing as a scared child left alone on a hostile planet. The main character, Bill, however is difficult to like. He is at times selfish and wimpish. Mostly I would classify him as dense. Fortunately he had Danni’s brilliance to lean on for most of the novel. Laurie’s character is really an extension of the young alien. The two become a pair halfway in and are portrayed as inseparable chums. Giannelli comes off as a lout. He is a poor diplomat, a narrow-minded thinker, and a very bad president. I believe his character was miscast as the Commander-In-Chief. A chief aide to the Pres would have served the role just fine.

It is easy to punch holes into Tweedlioop‘s premise. I can buy that wolves would be curious about the strange smelling creature, and could see them either wanting to keep their distance or attack it out of fear but not both. How the local law enforcement went about seizing Tweedlioop is less convincing to me. It was as if all the lawyers in Naples forgot how to practice law. If a local man had a strange creature of unknown origin in his home wouldn’t an ‘importation of an exotic species’ be the proper charge?

The biggest problem I had with the novel was President Giannelli’s behavior. I would find it hard to believe that the leader of the Free World would be so demanding, unyielding, and adversarial to a people in whom he is unsure of their capabilities and clueless of the consequences in which his rash action may wrought. I would have at least if it wasn’t for the last eight years of the Bush administration. Now I would think it prudent that our government would deserve an answer from the aliens on why they were here. I could also see them asking for an exchange in technological know-how (doesn’t hurt to ask). But once those question were exhausted what’s wrong with asking for diplomatic recognition and perhaps a trade agreement (plastic industry would like that, give a whole new meaning to the snack-size baggy) between the two species? Instead of taking these logical steps, Giannelli turns all Somalian pirate, promising to back down if things get too hot. The UN diplomats act even less juvenile when they learn of events. The entire political world treats Tweedlioop as if he were a diamond ring found on the street and then discovered it belongs to the Queen of England. No ordinary reward will satisfy them at this point for his return.

Ironically, Tweedlioop is not the type of story you would find in Analog. It is hardly the ‘hard sci-fi’ that I am used to reading in their pages. It was clearly written to capitalize on the ET craze (as the review byline from Publisher’s Weekly suggested on the cover). There are two questions on whether this would make a good book to find today. Does it stand up after 23 years? And, is it an enjoyable read?

To the answer the second question, it must have been for me. I plowed right through its pages. I was genuinely curious to know what was going to happen to the little squirrel. The beginning grabbed me and I read entire story in a third of the time I would usually take for a book its size. As far as if it would be relevant in today’s market? Hmmm, I would suggest a few changes if Mr. Schmidt wanted to pitch a reprint. Mostly changing Giannelli’s character as an opportunistic aide with the president’s ear. Another suggestion would be to change that disco-ball cover (yuck). I could point Mr. Schmidt to a few artists that would do something grand for it.

Tweedlioop was a Tor book publication. Its original listed price was 3.95. I paid 2.25. I found it worth the price.

Niche Game: Bart vs. the Space Mutants

Niche games: Âwe’ve all played them. ÂThey’re the games that you remember for a long time because they’re so unique. ÂSometimes they’re the only ones ever made like them. ÂOther times they were trailblazers for their kind of gameplay. ÂBut what they have in common is the bravery to try something new, allowing them to rise above the imitators. ÂEven though there might be newer games with shinier graphics, these games are still worth playing mecause they’re something different, something special.

Bart vs. the Space Mutants is one of the first video games to be made based on The Simpsons. The game was released back in 1991 on various consoles–the version I’m familiar with was on the NES. It’s a side-scroller game probably best described as platform-jumper and puzzle combined.

In the game, Bart is the only one who knows that space mutants have begun an invasion of Springfield. He knows this because his X-ray specs let him see through the aliens human disguises, to see the tentacle-headed monsters beneath. No one believes him so he’s on his own to stop the alien invasion.

The aliens’ secret plans involve collecting certain classes of items, and your objective is to collect, hide, or destroy these items so that the aliens can’t use them. The first level takes place on the streets of Springfield, and the items in question are things that are purple. Bart, of course, comes equipped with his trusty can of spraypaint, thus giving vandals an ironclad excuse for their actions. “I was saving the world from aliens, man!” The spraypaint works on some things, like the purple trash cans, but not everything. Other purple things will require different strategies, like walking on the clothesline to drop the hanging clothes onto purple items in the lawn below. In addition to all this, you can get and spend coins in various ways in this level, including some bottle rockets. I’ll leave it up to you to discover the use of the bottle rockets. This first level also has a skateboarding section which will test your reflexes, and in the end you’ll face off against a water balloon wielding Nelson.

This game is really quite difficult, or at least I thought it was at the time. Bart can only withstand two hits before he dies, and he only has three lives. There are little jumping aliens all over the place as well as the boss characters and other potentially damaging things like dogs. I should replay this game, as I’m curious how far I would get with my much-matured gaming skills.

Later levels progress to different areas of Springfield, such as the mall (where you collect hats), and Krustyland (where you collect balloons). The style of the levels and the different sort of collectibles helps to keep the game fresh. I like the variety this game offers, as well as the familiar humor that will be appreciated by any fan of classic Simpsons.

Finding a copy of this game shouldn’t be too hard. If you want a hard copy, you can find one for less than $5 on eBay. Otherwise it shouldn’t be difficult to find a copy of a ROM to play on your computer. It’s worth the time to play for its platform jumping, interesting puzzles, and Simpsons-based elements. I hope you check it out. Enjoy!

Niche Game: Black & White

Niche games: Âwe’ve all played them. ÂThey’re the games that you remember for a long time because they’re so unique. ÂSometimes they’re the only ones ever made like them. ÂOther times they were trailblazers for their kind of gameplay. ÂBut what they have in common is the bravery to try something new, allowing them to rise above the imitators. ÂEven though there might be newer games with shinier graphics, these games are still worth playing mecause they’re something different, something special.

Black and White, released is in 2001 by Lionhead studios. You play a deity and your objective is to convert more and more people to your belief system. You can do influence the world through two mediums: your own godly self, which is represented by a giant floating hand, and through your creature, your physical avatar in the world. The creature’s AI learning system is one of the most unique I’ve ever come across, and that alone makes this game worth playing. More on that later.

The title refers to your ability to choose your own path. You can be good or evil and you can complete the game either way. If you choose to follow the path of good, then you might help people grow their crops, save people’s lives as often as possible, and make people feel good. If you want to follow the path of evil, then intimidation is the way, human sacrifice, flying fireballs, that sort of thing. And you don’t have to strictly choose one or the other, you can make every choice however you want. But I suspect your worshippers will give you more belief if they know what to expect. As you lean more toward one side or the other, both your appearance and your creature’s appearance reflect this. Your hand will become red and claw-tipped and veiny if you are evil, and will be glowing and golden if you’re good. Likewise your creature’s appearance will be affected.

T

o help you consider the good and evil choices, you have a good and evil conscience which bicker with each other throughout. They also serve to provide missions to you, and which side you listen to determines your alignment. These guys did get annoying after a while, but occasionally they’re actually funny. If you leave the game unattended for a long time they will start talking to each other.

Your way of directly influencing the world is through your hand. You can manipulate objects directly, which includes carrying food, wood, people, rocks, which you can then set down gently or throw. You can uproot trees and plant them elsewhere or drop them at the village to be turned into lumber. And perhaps most importantly, you can perform miracles. Miracles are available in one of two ways, through miracle seeds or by casting them directly. Miracle seeds are free, but are not in wide abundance. Later on in the game, the villagers add extensions to the temple where they worship, filling up your mana which you can drain with spell-casting. If you want a quick boost of mana, you can drop a sacrifice on the altar, either an animal or a human. Benevolent miracles include healing (which works on both villagers and your creature), rain, wood, and food. Malevolent miracles are often attack spells such as fireballs or lightning spells.

The hand is quite powerful, but of course there’s a catch. As a god, you only have power within your own area of influence, an area defined by the number of believers you have and the locations of your towns. You can observe anywhere on the map, nothing is hidden from you, but to manipulate objects you must be within your own area. Your area is clearly marked by a thick red line drawn on the world, and if your hand leaves that area you can see the belief draining from it, drawn back to the worshippers.

This presents a problem, because your area of influence may not stretch all the way to the next unconverted town. You can try to grow your population of believers to stretch your area of influence over there. Or you can use your creature. Your creature is a supernatural animal under your influence. He starts out as a clean slate, only about two stories tall. Near the beginning of the game you can choose one of three animals: the ape, the tiger, or the cow. Each has its own advantage. The ape learns quickly, the tiger is a good fighter, and the cow is average in most stats and just plain lovable. I tend to choose the cow because, well, cows are awesome.

Your creature can do everything you can do, and in many ways can do it better. He can operate outside your area of influence, and once you teach him to cast miracles he can do them as often as he chooses without costing any mana. The trouble is, you don’t have direct control over him. You have to train him to do what you want, and training isn’t easy. You can direct him where to go by putting him on a leash, and you can tell him to interact with objects by clicking on them while holding the leash, but with any object there are more than one action he can perform on them. You can teach him the correct behaviors in two ways, teaching by example or by using positive and negative reinforcement. To teach him by example, put on the leash of learning (there is also a leash of compassion and a leash of aggression), and do yourself what you want him to do, such as casting rain miracles, watering crops, or throwing fireballs. If he sees you do something enough, then he’ll pick up the behavior and start doing it himself. And then there’s the reinforcement. If you tell him to interact with a villager, he might do a few things with it: eat it, throw it, set it down gently, or carry it around for a while. After each of these behaviors you can choose to punish it (by slapping it around) or rewarding it (by rubbing its belly). This will reinforce or deter its behaviors. You can also just ignore it and see how it turns out on its own, but don’t expect it to listen to your commands if it’s been living independently its whole life.

Being a physical creature, it has needs. It must eat and it must sleep to maintain its health. What you want it to eat is up to you, it could eat grain from fields, cattle, or it could eat people. And its behavior affects its appearance and strengths. If you have your creature carry boulders around it will build muscle and get lean. As time passes, it will get steadily bigger and its appearance will be affected by whether you teach it to do good things or evil things.

And when there’s another god around, your creatures can fight! The fighting system I found to be rather awkward, you click a spot on the enemy creature to mark where you want your creature to attack, and then he does so whenever he gets around to it. The fighting is real-time action, but the lag between command and action is much too long. If he loses he disincorporates and reappears at your temple with low health. He never permanently dies, but it’s a big setback, as he is no longer around to impede the other creature. As a god you can still attack the enemy creature directly with miracles or by throwing things at it, but again, only if it’s within your area of influence.

Throughout the game the people make demands of you, more food, more children, more houses, more mercy. You can meet these needs by doing it yourself (like scooping up grain and dumping it into the village store), or you can create disciples to help you along. By setting a person in a field they will become a farmer dedicated only to producing food. If you set a man next to a woman he will become a breeder, etc… And there’s a lot more to these people than is immediately apparent. You can zoom in on any one of them, find out their name, their age, their current activity, their destination. Everyone grows from a baby into old people and die (if something else doesn’t kill them first). There’s a lot of processing going on that isn’t immediately obvious. And you can help construct various buildings to help things along, such as a playground to keep kids occupied (so their parents can work more), and a graveyard so people won’t need to grieve as much about the bodies lying around in the street.

I found this game to be extremely difficult because there is just too much to manage, between the creature and the people. In the first world, there is not much conflict. That world is mostly a tutorial, with no opposing gods, just some side quests and stuff. I think the way to go is to spend this first world tending to your creature, because you don’t need to worry too much about the people–nobody’s trying to steal them away from you. If you could get your creature trained to a sufficiently consistent behavior in the first level, then for the later levels you could spend most of your time tending to the people. For me, I tend to get impatient and move on to the next level, and maintaining the happiness of my people, trying to usurp the other god’s people, and tending to my creature all at once proved too much for me, especially when the towns are so widely separated geographically. And these needy little humans just annoyed me. I got sick of literally telling them where to place every building. If you need a house–build it! I’m not seeing the problem here. But I may just not have had the best strategies for playing the game.

In 2005 there was a sequel released, cleverly titled Black & White 2. I didn’t really like this one. It took a complicated scenario and further complicated it, adding different cultures that could be played as, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, and adding human warfare. In the first game, humans are pacifist, or at least you never see them cause any damage on purpose. In this one you have to build and maintain armies, and it was all just too much for me, too much to juggle all at once.

If you want to play Black & White, it shouldn’t be too hard to find. I did a quick eBay search and found a few copies. Most of them didn’t have a Buy It Now price, so I’m not sure how much it would end up costing. There were many more copies of Black and White, with Buy It Now prices as low as $10 or so, so if you wanted to try that game out it would be easy to do.

If you want to feel the power of a god, and create good or evil giant animals which can shower love or destruction on your friends and enemies, then check this one out. Enjoy!