Review Scoring Chart - 10: Masterpiece; 9: Outstanding; 8: Very Good; 7: Good; 6: Above Average; 5: Average; 4: Below Average; 3: Bad; 2: Awful; 1: Reprehensible; 0: Non- Functional.

XENOBLADE CHRONICLES
Format: Wii
Developer: Monolith Soft
Publisher: Nintendo
Players: 1

DISCLAIMER: This article will be posted on my non-Dtoid blog in about four hours.

I intended to write this eight months ago, when the game launched in the UK. I'm not averse to writing a review when still a little way short of completing the game in order to get the article out in a reasonably timely fashion: as long as the bulk of the game has been completed and its important details revealed, there's nothing wrong in my eyes with passing judgment on it, even if an hour or two remain unfinished. It's unlikely the end-game material will impact greatly on the review, not least for fear of spoilers.

In Xenoblade's case, I was about fifteen hours in by the time it was do-or-die for the article. As a JRPG novice, it's fair to say I wasn't quite prepared for the odyssey that had been undertaken and progress had been, let's generously say, leisurely. Lots of questing, exploration, general larking about, not quite so much movement in story terms. Checking a GameFAQs guide to see how near I was to the end revealed there was still, if continued apace, roughly one hundred and twenty hours of play to go.

Turns out Xenoblade Chronicles is all kinds of colossal.

Had the game been reviewed at that point, the first plot twist would have barely elapsed and virtually none of the party with whom the majority of the game would be spent were in my company. The gameplay mechanics were still extensive and baffling, the camera still causing frustration and well over half the game's features remained untouched. My verdict might have been something along the lines of impressive in size, but unwieldy to handle.

That's not far away from how I feel now, but the difference is that where the game was then defined by my annoyance at the many niggles that are part and parcel of the experience, now it is looked back upon as my favourite gaming experience of 2011 and easily one of the best on the Wii, a console I have greatly enjoyed despite its undeservedly negative reputation. Fifteen hours into a game like this, little irritations take on significantly greater importance than they do after fifty, even less after ninety. It's as much that you get used to them as the awe-inspiring scope of the game renders them more forgivable with every passing minute.



The camera, for example, is horribly wonky when left to its own devices and requires constant adjustment to stay in an acceptable position, especially when navigating indoor areas. After thirty hours, though, keeping it under manual control is not only second nature, but preferable to leaving it alone: the gorgeous landscapes demand to be examined from every possible angle and, even if by accident, the game trains you to do exactly that without breaking the flow of play. There's something majestic about swooping the viewpoint around Shulk as he runs through a vast field, overshadowed by hanging cliffs, creatures many times his size, glistening lakes and soaring birds. Had the camera been programmed to function adequately on its own, pulling off that thrilling little flourish would have engendered the same pernickety annoyance as when having to get to grips with it the first time. Instead, it's the most effortless thing in the world.

Other issues, admittedly, do not yield such long-term rewards, but the game's length gives you time to work everything out long before the going gets seriously tough, and there's no question each is a price worth paying for taking part in such a huge adventure. Mechanics like gem crafting, the affinity system and how to use characters such as Melia, a mage, in combat go woefully underexplained, while the volume of moves and counter-moves to remember in combat can be overbearing at first. (Early on, it feels as though something new is added every hour). It's never less than enjoyable, but the lack of adequate explanation for the numerous mechanics can feel as though you're being held back from plunging into the game's tantalising depths. Time and experience tidies these up, but they can make the game alienating in its first twenty hours, when it needs to be easing you in. Paper Mario, this ain't.

The only issue which lasts from start to finish is the lack of information on NPC locations for the extensive array of sidequests. If a quest isn't completed within a short time of receiving it, it's easy to forget where the person you're supposed to be talking to is and the time at which they'll appear on the map. Rudimentary information is given on the affinity map - where you build relationships between townspeople by helping them, another system rendered more annoying than fun by a dearth of information - but nothing anywhere near sufficient to remember what to do after the console has been turned off for the night. Quests requiring specific items to be collected can also be annoying, since their location is randomised and the trading system is so low-key, many players may not even be aware it exists until long into the game.

If the sidequests often require more detail than the game is able to convey, other areas are expertly streamlined. The usual frustrations of navigating a gameworld of this scale are alleviated by allowing players to warp instantaneously to any of the map's many markers, effectively eliminating backtracking. The combat system loosens up the stiff RPG turn-based structure into something more dynamic, with free movement around the area, context-sensitive hits (one of Shulk's more effective moves requires him to be positioned behind the enemy to deal, yes, massive damage) and a single controllable lead character - who can be swapped when out of battle - assisted by two AI partners adept at unleashing the right move to combine moves in helpful ways. Chain attacks, wherein a more traditional turn-based format is adopted for extra damage, allow you greater control into the minutiae, even if not being able to select the order of the attackers makes it difficult to execute pre-planned tactical sequences.



The storyline, too, moves in all sorts of bonkers directions (for starters, the entire gameworld exists over the bodies of two petrified titans) but almost never feels padded in the way that so blighted Skyward Sword, a game roughly a third as long. Plot twists arrive with mischievous frequency, and while this makes proceedings far too circuitous to properly keep track of by the end, all the pomp (and silly jokes, especially between the party) is infectiously compelling.

There's a constant sense of forward motion, with new locations opened up every few hours - ignoring the side-quests, ill-advised in practice - many of them foreshadowed early on and each with a distinct colour palette and visual identity. While the game is technically a little clunky, with intermittent framerate drops in vast areas and crowded combat, and considerable fade-in, few titles demonstrate and embrace the importance of art direction in such a vibrant, evocative way. The starry night sky above the Bionis leg doesn't tax the hardware much, but by golly is it breathtaking.

That sensation is Xenoblade all over. There are plenty of little problems to pick at and wrinkles in need of ironing out, but in the end, the grandeur and ambition will hold your heart even while your fingers are struggling to keep up. Considering the game's size, Monolith deserve unreserved credit for the absence of any major bugs, putting to shame companies like Obsidian and Bethesda who ship games bursting with problems, content in the knowledge of being able to patch them later (for players with online connections, anyway) and demanding forgiveness because of the scope of their creations.

Xenoblade invalidates that excuse. It is an exquisite achievement in game design, fiercely loyal to RPG tradition whilst refining it in clever, helpful ways. If its ambition sometimes exceeds the execution, you can't help but admire it for getting as much right as it does, a perfect example of an experience all the more engaging for its flaws. The game may have taken its time reaching American shores, and this review delayed by over half a year to accommodate its insane scale, but everyone lucky enough to be preparing for their first steps onto the Bionis are about to have that wait paid back in spades. [ 8 ]

If you enjoyed this, you can subject yourself to more such ramblings on my Facebook and Twitter accounts! Don't forget Flixist either: we have pterodactyls there and were recently taken over by, ahh, Jeff Goldblum. Such shenanigans! Also, these '10 Things About Me' posts are brilliant, I'll try and find time to do one of my own sometime soon.

DISCLAIMER: This review is up on the CBlogs at (roughly) the same time as my blog. As much as I love writing for the Dtoid Community, it's pretty hard to find the time these days to cover all my bases, including Flixist. If you'd rather I no longer posted these reviews/articles, just say so in the comments. Thanks, and enjoy!

Most gamers out there will already be aware of Michael Thomsen's withering assessment of the hundred-hour fantasy game, Dark Souls, wherein he questioned whether a game of such length could ever be a worthwhile endeavour when the time (he surmised) could be spent much more effectively elsewhere. As happens far too often when members of the older generations write about video games, Thomsen quickly descends into judgmentalism, his thesis proving little more sophisticated than a suggestion games are not as worthy of a person's time as other activities or media.

It's tempting to write a full rebuttal, but Edge Magazine's Jason Killingsworth (if ever there were a more appropriate name...) got there first and did a better, more extensive job than I ever could. It's worth a read if you have a considerable amount of time on your hands, which you probably do if you're a Dark Souls fan. I kid, I kid! For all Thomsen's righteous indignation, one criticism he levelled did ring true and is something which has been bothering me for a while: gaming's continuing disregard for building consistent internal logic into its worlds and gameplay systems.

Apologies if that's the most pretentious sentence you've read so far this year. It's a difficult point to phrase more elegantly, though, so I'll use Thomsen's quote to illuminate my point:

"In more than twice the time it would take to read Tolstoy's historical fiction, Dark Souls leaves one's head overflowing with useless junk like the difference in attack stats between a Great Axe with a fire bonus versus a Great Axe with a divine bonus. These bits of occult nonsense don't have an internal logic. In one early section, you'll fight a pair of gargoyles who live perched high up on a bell tower in a castle. These gargoyles, you discover, are especially vulnerable to lightning damage. Why a creature that lives on the medieval equivalent of a lightning rod should be vulnerable to lightning damage is not explained. Every victory in the game is built on a similarly dumbfounding bit of nonlogic."

Disregarding the needless invocation of Tolstoy, Thomsen actually makes a very solid point about how little care many games seem to put into the internal consistencies of a game world and the demands it makes of the player. There's nothing wrong with fantasy, but few games seem to recognise the genre as more than a set of Tolkien-esque aesthetics. Fantasy writers for books, movies and television are notorious for going to ridiculous lengths to define every variable in the worlds they create, from class systems and royal hierarchies to the co-existence of different species and the sometimes anarchic effect magic can have on all those rules. Fantasy works best when the authors fill in every nook and cranny so intricately that the worlds seem as real and lived-in as our own. Only, you know, with dragons and that.



The lack of internal consistency in Dark Souls, as Thomsen describes, is a serious problem throughout gaming. In his rebuttal, Jason Killingsworth suggests this is excusable because it is akin to a game inviting the player to learn a kind of language unique to the experience, aka determining an enemy's weak point and using the appropriate bonus effect against it. This argument falls down on the fact that language relies on internal consistency more than any other human endeavour: if grammar, syntax and conjugation were defined by the illogical rules making up the foundations of many games, composing a single sentence would be an act of brain-destroying difficulty. Sometimes this incoherence can involve an enemy inhabiting a location completely nonsensical relative to their physical weaknesses, as detailed above, or it can be that their weakness simply appears entirely an entirely random choice.

You can see this in many different games, spanning all genres. It isn't just a matter of some games not thinking through their mechanics well enough, either: in everything from gameplay to world design, there's a noticeable lack of coherence in the way many games send messages to the player. I recently reviewed The Last Story on my CBlog, a game which features many of the cited issues in all aspects of its design. One of the most startling is the design of a castle which plays an important part in the game. I'll avoid important spoilers, but at one point the lead character manages to attend a royal event in the castle's ballroom. It's all very lavish and impressive, until you realise that the ballroom doesn't actually have a front entrance.

It's the room in the castle hosting the game's most vital ceremonial event, yet the only entrance is a tiny, narrow staircase behind the royal throne. Not only that, but to reach that point from the entrance, you have to climb a flight of stairs, make your way around the balcony, cross an exterior bridge to the opposite side of the castle, then locate the most innocuous of little staircases, more suited for allowing servants quick access between floors than ferrying dignitaries for a royal reception. Myriad other questions are raised about the design of the castle if you think about its layout for more than a minute. Many would argue that I'm nitpicking, but what does it say about the gaming medium's ability to tell worthwhile stories and build cohesive worlds if the developers are not even willing to consider such a fundamental absence of logic in a game's layout?

That's a problem with game spaces in general, which are designed to be exactly that - locations designed around the needs of a game, rather than worldly logic. The Resident Evil 2 police station is a classic example, yet while that game wears the ridiculousness of its environment on its sleeve - becoming endearingly hokey in the process - many other game environments are no more effectively designed as logical spaces, even if they try to disguise it through less conspicuously bonkers aesthetics. Half-Life 2 gets a great deal of praise for its world, yet still blocks players' paths with ridiculous obstructions and is laid out in a manner antithetic to any kind of convenient existence, with ridiculous 'puzzles' to clear and irritatingly circuitous routes designed to artificially prolong the player's time in a certain environment. All that is gained as a purpose built game space is immediately lost in creative credibility. Who cares about saving a world so obviously built around a single person, the player, rather than a logical outcome of its inhabitants' existence within their environment?



The same problem exists on a micro level too: why, in Xenoblade Chronicles (a game I love, incidentally), do the requests for rebuilding materials for one important side-quest bear no relation to what is being constructed? Okay, so it would be ludicrous to ask the player to ferry about hundreds of bricks and gallons of cement at a time, but if (for example) the project in question was the building of a house, could the architect at least ask for - say - a certain kind of rock and some kind of adhesive substance, rather than six feathers, three blades of grass and the hide of a mountain wolf?

Here's another: how many games highlight important locations with floating arrows, or circles of light, rather than attempting to communicate with the player through less conspicuous, illusion-breaking means? Again, such a criticism might appear pedantic in the extreme, but it's emblematic of the kind of shortcuts taken by game designers spanning the entire medium. David Lean didn't put a glowing arrow over Omar Sharif's head to mark his character's entrance in Lawrence Of Arabia, he subtly constructed the image to draw the viewer's eye to a certain point on the horizon. Assassin's Creed, on the other hand, lays down glowing cones of light to guide/force the player along a certain path, rather than finding a more appropriate method of direction. Considering how few game spaces are designed to be logical in their own right, the deployment of such techniques is nothing short of shambolic, illustrative of a medium lacking the communication language of the illustrious peers with which it so often demands equal billing.

Fiction works when it is based around a set of recognisable, relatable rules in logic and presentation. In taking such shortcuts, gaming is underselling its own capacity for telling stories and building worlds, with the medium being more suited to excelling in the latter category than any other. In gameplay terms, tighter design consistency allows more effortless communication with the player, in turn leading to more satisfactory experiences. If an enemy's weak spot has been arbitrarily decided, the player is merely following an order to quickly overcome an obstacle. The success is not theirs. If the enemy's weak spot is a logic extension of their design - shoot a bird in the wings to ground it, for example - then the player is able to gain greater satisfaction from being able to work out and implement the solution for themselves.

The same is true for all areas of design: an environment created solely for the purpose of hosting developer-set tasks will never be as inviting or fulfilling as one where the player feels part of a fully realised world. One of fiction's many pleasures comes from the redeployment of the familiar in exciting new ways: fantasy with its roots in medieval history, for example. If the seams are so obvious as to appear unreal, be it through illusion-breaking methods of signposting or nonsensical architecture, the user's relationship with that world can only operate on the most superficial of levels, as little more than an external participant in a game, rather than explorer of a new world. This matters less in abstract spaces (hence the mad construction of the Aperture labs being so much easier to accept, for me, in the barebones Portal than its narrative-driven sequel), but even the most far-fetched imaginative space must be defined by a set of rules clear to both designer and player. While Mr. Thomsen's snippiness in his critique of Dark Souls is uncalled for, if games are ever to be taken seriously as a worthwhile cultural endeavour, it is about time they started to take themselves more seriously as well.

What ho, Dtoiders! If you're so inclined to read more of my strange ramblings, you can follow me on Twitter (I'll follow you back, just mention in the comments if you go tweet under a different username), get updates from my blog on Facebook and, of course, be sure to pay a visit to Flixist as soon and often as possible! Thanks for reading!

Review Scoring Chart - 10: Masterpiece; 9: Outstanding; 8: Very Good; 7: Good; 6: Above Average; 5: Average; 4: Below Average; 3: Bad; 2: Awful; 1: Reprehensible; 0: Non- Functional.

THE LAST STORY
Format: Wii
Developer: Mistwalker
Publisher: Nintendo
Players: 1, plus online multiplayer

DISCLAIMER: This review is up on the CBlogs at (roughly) the same time as my blog. As much as I love writing for the Dtoid Community, it's pretty hard to find the time these days to cover all my bases, including Flixist. If you'd rather I no longer posted these reviews/articles, just say so in the comments. Thanks, and enjoy!

If ever there were proof that Nintendo no longer has any idea what to do with the Wii in its final year, it is that virtually all its important 2012 titles are JRPGs. The publisher has a less than stellar record when it comes to promoting the genre outside its Japanese shores and took some convincing before allowing Xenoblade Chronicles and The Last Story to head States-ward. The Last Story was released in Europe last Friday, with Xenoblade having already been warmly received in September 2011.

While my Xenoblade review will be arriving in time for the game's US release, I'm confident enough in saying that it raises one hell of a standard for The Last Story to meet. Fortunately, on hand is Hinorobu Sakaguchi, creator of the original Final Fantasy and a man in search of a new hit for some time. In title, The Last Story makes a none-too-subtle nod to its creator's most successful creation. In execution, it has to prove the ailing genre still has the capacity to adapt for a modern generation of gamers seemingly where Western studios and design aesthetics dominate the cultural landscape.

Cards on the table, my knowledge of JRPGs is extremely limited. So limited, in fact, that unless the Mario RPG / Paper Mario series somehow counts, Xenoblade Chronicles represented my first proper foray into the genre. Even with my limited familiarity, Last Story's experimental streak is clear from the beginning. There is certainly no shortage of the familiar elements most commonly associated, by vets and noobs alike, with the genre: for one thing, the plot involves a floppy-haired boy, innocent to the ways of the world, discovering his hidden power, falling in love with an ethereal princess and heading out to save the world. So far, so many boxes ticked.



It's in the gameplay, though, where the game starts to take liberties with the established formula. As usual, the protagonist is part of a team which gathers experience points in combat, although where this would typically involve fighting as many enemies as possible in a relatively non-linear environment, Last Story takes a more Western approach to proceedings. The path through the game is tightly controlled, with only the city hub of Lazulis Island offering much in the way of freedom to explore. Whilst there are plenty of enemies to dispatch in each environment, harvesting extra experience has to be performed at certain pre-set points on the map (represented by a red symbol on the ground), where enemies can be summoned as many times as the player desires in order to ascend through the levels.

It's a streamlined approach, removing the annoyance of having to continuously traverse a wide environment to find enemies worth fighting, but its convenience comes at the cost of satisfaction. The traditional method of JRPG grinding may be in need of some work, but the labours required make its rewards all the sweeter when each new landmark is hit. Heading out into a new world to practice your skills is an important part of players immersing themselves in a world where their skills grow in tandem with those of the character they are controlling. It's a chore, but brings with it the pleasure of achieving an aim through hard work. Abandoning the need to hunt for prey does not make the fighting any less of a graft - it merely removes the legwork - but makes the game's world feel smaller, too centred around the needs of the player to fully immerse in the fantasy. It's a hollow convenience, tidying up one of the genre's minor annoyances but accidentally taking down a key pleasure with it.

Fortunately, changes to the traditional combat system are more successful, albeit implemented somewhat clumsily. Fighting takes on a form more similar to a third-person fighting game à la Prince Of Persia, with moves enabled through context rather than menu selection. Attack from cover to activate a more powerful strike, with a further damage increase if the enemy is confused as to the player's location. If near a wall, it's possible to activate a jumping stab. The concession to the genre's menu-based roots comes through Zael's ability to command his teammates (otherwise controlled by the AI) once his skill bar is full, selecting a sequence of moves to gain a tactical advantage. It's a slick system, undermined by how rarely it is needed: only later boss fights pose any serious challenge to all but the most haphazard players, who, with five lives at their disposal, can quite easily survive the game using only the most basic commands.

The crossbow is another neat tactical device - albeit disgracefully forcing Wii remote users to use analogue aiming rather than the infinitely superior pointer - allowing players to take out mages from afar and identify vulnerable spots in the environment to be destroyed, increasing the chances of a successful fight. A brief overview of the battlefield is offered beforehand, allowing players to form a rudimentary strategy and sometimes spot hidden pathways to gain a positional advantage.



It's an idea never used to its fullest, partly since the environment rarely makes a difference to how a battle plays out, but also because team-mates shout out the solution almost every time it does. Its main purpose ends up being to identify the different enemy types and select which to attack first (healers and mages, basically), reducing a potentially vital addition to a merely handy one. The online modes, based around players fighting each other or bosses from the single player, demonstrate the system's versatility, even though the multiplayer modes themselves soon lose any tactical edge to the human tendency to run around aimlessly and hope for the best.

Party members are chosen automatically ahead of each new scenario, in theory a good idea to force players to adapt to different styles of play, but in practice involves a rotation of characters with essentially the same skills. This approach also has the side-effect of unbalancing the team in the first half of the game, with some team members achieving levels way above the others, unless taken to the Lazulis Island combat arena to bolster their stats: Syrenne, the game's most charming character (armed with a filthy sense of humour and mildly arousing Lancastrian accent) is barely used at all until halfway through the story.

The game's frustrating inability to spot the potential in its own mechanics is further established by its habit of increasing difficulty - in all but the boss fights - merely by increasing the size of enemy hordes, or gradually strengthening foes without requiring any new strategies to overcome them. Large groups of enemies become doubly frustrating due to the game's technical shortcomings: the framerate slows to a chug whenever the action grows to anything involving more than a handful of characters at once, while the use of the analogue stick to control both movement and aim automatic attacks (this can be resolved by switching to manual) makes it quite possible to become unable to move when surrounded. The camera requires manual control at all times and is prone to jerking into inconvenient positions when left to function independently.



Framerate problems might have been slightly more forgivable were the game to give off the impression of taxing the console to any degree, but while sometimes graced by agreeable images (Zael and Lisa watching a display of shooting stars on a purple night sky), environments are small and texturing on enemies and scenery frequently blurry. Brown and grey colour schemes dominate, combining with the low-quality character models to make Lazulis Island a particularly dreary hub to navigate (the lack of signposting and worthwhile reward for sidequests, meanwhile, only encourages them to be ignored).

A further quirk is how, despite the game's muddy visual quality, it seems to have been designed for large televisions: on smaller screens, the icons indicating which character is equipped with what weapon or armour is almost indistinguishable, with no text offered for assistance. Certain bosses, meanwhile, require players to note small details, such as glowing red eyes, as a guide to success. The shambolic graphics make this a task requiring superhuman observational skills, leaving the player relying on pot luck or the purchase of a larger television to progress. Even for the Wii, that's an expensive peripheral too far.

The game steadily improves as the player adapts to its issues: battles become a tad more challenging and require greater tactical consideration, while the twenty hour length keeps the storytelling focused and accessible for those not able or willing to commit to a Xenoblade-esque eighty hour extravaganza. The lead characters are an engaging bunch, with their regional British accents an easy fit for the rural trappings of the fantasy genre (not a trace of sci-fi on show here) and the excellent localisation never shy of deploying an amusing colloquialism or two. Legendary composer Nobuo Uematsu's score only produces a handful of memorable tracks, but is of consistently solid quality. A pity the same cannot be said for the game as a whole, its most exciting ideas let down by uneven execution. The Last Story is far from a write-off, offering enough potential to hope for an improved and title-defying second instalment, but as a first chapter it is a bit of a bungle. [ 5 ]

Review Scoring Chart - 10: Masterpiece; 9: Outstanding; 8: Very Good; 7: Good; 6: Above Average; 5: Average; 4: Below Average; 3: Bad; 2: Awful; 1: Reprehensible; 0: Non- Functional.

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: SKYWARD SWORD
Format: Wii
Developer/Publisher: Nintendo
Players: 1

Skyward Sword is a game obsessed with motion. That's true of the controls, which utilises the gyroscopic sensitivity of the Wii Motion Plus to manage everything from basic attacks to swimming and various forms of flight, but even moreso of the core of its design. It is a game driven by keeping the player moving forward at all times, towards a new checkpoint or location.

The dowsing mechanic exemplifies this: courtesy of new fairy companion, Fi, your sword is now able to track people, locations and objects of importance, compelling you towards them with an excitable bleep. The game doesn't like the idea if it going unused, either: leave the C button alone for too long and the bleeping will start regardless, shrilling at you to get moving towards your next destination. No time to lose - there's a thing and it's all the way over there! What are you standing around for?



Goal-oriented progression is hardly new for either the series or videogames in general, but previous Zelda games have applied it fairly casually. You COULD head for your next dungeon in the desert, but there's also a lake waiting to be explored, plus all those opportunities passed a while back to use an item recently picked up. Skyward Sword includes side-quests and secrets, but does not exactly seem enthralled by the idea of players taking the time to indulge them (or, heaven forfend, go for a wander) when there's a story waiting to be told.

The game is significantly more linear than any previous entries, with environments designed more like obstacle courses than expansive worlds. Once you have made your inaugural pass through an area, a number of shortcuts are put in place to facilitate later navigation, allowing a touch more freedom but mostly in the aim of allowing quick access to a new path later on.

While a little dismaying for those of us who enjoyed taking Zelda games at our own pace, Nintendo have to be complimented on their outstanding use of space: from the surface lands to the dungeons, Skyward Sword is a masterclass is level design ergonomics, with nary a square inch wasted. Dungeons, in particular, are smaller in size than those from previous games, but navigating each feels like a puzzle in its own right - literally, for one example very late in the game - making for some of the series' finest efforts to date. The game may be a stricter taskmaster than veterans will be used to - as far as could be from the freeform NES original - but its efficiency is undeniable.



While the exploration may be missed, Skyward Sword is at its best when doing its own thing. The game's linearity allows the designers to throw new tests at the player with startling rapidity. One moment you will be duelling with a Bokoblin on a tightrope, the next guiding a minecart around a track at high-speed, or ascending a set of steep buttes to collect a map from the inconveniently located house of a robot pirate. The high volume of fetch quests (and one boss battle repeated three times and no less boring on each recurrence) can be frustrating and needlessly pads the game's length - a less forgiveable error in light of Xenoblade Chronicles staying consistently fresh despite being at least four times as long - but the game manages to be just surprising and wonderful enough that persevering through the annoyances feels worthwhile.

The motion controls play a big part in this. The sword fighting is the first and most obvious implementation, but each item in Link's arsenal is refreshed by the added physical twist. Bombs can be rolled along the floor or tossed through the air with the relevant gesture; levers manipulated with a crack of a whip and the wrist; a mechanical beetle flown through the air to scout ahead and find hidden switches: it is just a shame that the upgrade system is so negligible, neither in-depth or impactful enough to satisfy veterans, nor sufficiently simply for newcomers to easily to get to grips with.

Enemies, too, are vast in number and each requiring a different strategy to defeat, be it lacerating gooey blobs, dissecting Deku Babas, or slicing laser-firing totems along their illuminated body markings. Crowd control can be problematic when Link is surrounded, as wide attacks aimed at one enemy tend to get deflected by others at your sides (which can lead to damage being taken when the enemy in question is designed to punish misplaces swipes with electric swords and the like), but the physical nature of combat makes each encounter a thrill, especially the boss fights revolving around one-on-one duels, making an engaging step-up from what was offered in Ubisoft's excellent Red Steel 2 last year.

It isn't all perfect: the sword swiping may be vastly improved over Twilight Princess, but the decision to forego the sensor bar altogether for aiming, relying solely on the gyroscope, is a frustrating mess. With the remote's sensitivity set so low (and unalterable), the on-screen cursor often lags behind the player's movement rather than relaying it directly, meaning recalibration is required almost every time it is used. Trying to take aim in the midst of combat and finding Link pointing somewhere entirely different to the direction of your Wii remote is unacceptable. The skyward charge is also somewhat unreliable for the same reason, often taking several attempts to initiate and adding a unnatural layer of difficulty to the two boss battles in which it plays an integral part.



As the 25th anniversary game, there are a number of echoes to previous entries in the longstanding series, few of which are a comfortable fit: the sky echoes Wind Waker's vast ocean, but with fewer areas of interest and requiring too much physical activity - controlling the flight of Link's bird, the loftwing, is done with the Motion Plus gyroscope - to achieve the Zen-like relaxation which made traversing those expanses bearable.

A musical instrument and time travelling mechanic are carried over from Ocarina, although the former is strictly controlled in terms of when and how it can be used, and the latter is restricted to two areas, both identical in past and present barring a slight darkening in colour palettes. Twilight Princess' teardrop-collecting trials are imported wholesale and only slightly less irritating. Majora gets a small nod prior to the climactic battle, but otherwise continues to be treated like the black sheep of the Zelda family.

In lieu of a vast Hyrule field, the game's central hub is Skyloft, Link's floating island home from which he can access three areas of the land below (divided between forest, desert, volcano). Though its soft colours are easy on the eye, it is by far the blandest of the Zelda overworlds to date: apart from the chests secreted away in various nooks and crannies, accessible only after being 'activated' by cubes on the surface, there is precious little waiting to be uncovered. The flying mechanic, meanwhile, remains unchanged from beginning to end, with the sole attempt to use it in a combat situation being mundanely simplistic and barely lasting more than a few minutes. Those hoping for aerial (bird)fights will have to think again - it exists solely as a means of navigation and is consequently one of the game's most blaring missed opportunities. Fortunately, diving from the sky's highest point to its lowest island never gets old.

The town's populace is imminently forgettable, mostly defined by appearance rather than personality, making the tasks they set feel just that little bit more laborious than usual. Although there's one moment which is genuinely hilarious (a rare treat in gaming, but one which Skyward Sword pulls off unexpectedly frequently), involving a dilemma as to what to do with a poorly-worded love letter, nothing ever comes close to matching the joy, tragedy and grace that made each of Majora's Mask side-quests so rewarding. As befitting a game so determined to keep its players on the straight and narrow, most can be done and dusted with a minimum of time and effort.



One improvement on previous entries is the relationship between Link and Zelda, which finally manages to flesh out both characters beyond the usual hollow archetypes of hero and damsel in distress. Stripping Zelda of her royal status (although she is still the daughter of the prestigious Knight Academy's headmaster), she instead becomes Link's dearest childhood friend and unspoken crush, the one who wakes him up when he sleeps in - leading to the game's most heartbreaking line - and shouts down the gang of jealous bullies who confront him. If the other characters are mostly reduced to space-fillers (exceptions being Groose's excellent comedy stylings and Lord Ghirahim's gleefully sadistic androgyny), putting Link and Zelda as the game's emotional core works to moving effect.

The central love story - because that's what it is, even if Zelda is quite the tease - is enhanced no end by Koji Kondo's versatile and playful score. While only the end credits track reaches the heights of his greatest works, notably on Ocarina and Mario Galaxy, the orchestration is an enormous step up from the MIDI-produced soundtracks from previous Zelda titles and hits all the right emotional cues - sad, funny, stirring, sedate - at all the right moments. The way the music for the Skyloft Bazaar alters slightly to suit each vendor is a particularly endearing touch.

So too does Skyward Sword change character, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. The painterly visuals are a perfect fit for the series' unique blend of epic scope and intimate charm, but the feeling pervades that they are unlikely to survive the leap to the next generation of consoles. The streamlined design leads to some of the series' most engaging dungeons, but also makes this the first 3D Zelda to have no time for a sunset. The story of Zelda and Link finally finds a heart to match its legendary scale, but reduces the supporting cast to non-entities. For every fresh innovation to drive the series forward, there seems to be a frustration or a loss to match. Nods to the past feel perfunctory and half-hearted. A relief, then, that the moments when it all comes together are so much greater in power than those when it stumbles: Skyward Sword's greatest achievement is in getting a twenty-five year old series moving again. [ 7 ]

This review will also be published on my blog at 12pm GMT tomorrow.

Hey, Cbloggers. Long time no see. Reading what the Dtoid staff consider their most terrifying gaming moments, and seeing them somehow miss the most nerve-wrecking one of all, inspired me to write about a game I consider one of the scariest ever made. (There's a link at the bottom of the article to the precise moment I'm talking about). For the record, this article will be put up on my blog shortly after I publish it here. I know you guys aren't keen on having cblogs also being online elsewhere at the same time - quite rightly - but it's Halloween and there's a time limit on this sort of stuff. It'll probably go up on the blog at midnight, UK time, which gives Dtoid a nice hour of TOTAL EXCLUSIVITY. w00t.

Back on topic: Eternal Darkness begins with a monologue about how little we are aware of the consequences of our decisions. The narrator, Edward Roivas (recently deceased), might as well be passing a more specific judgment on game design rather than humanity in general. Games rarely force players to deal with consequences in any meaningful way, no matter how elaborate the action. In fairness, it should be pointed out that no narrative medium explores consequences in any great depth – action heroes don't have to do gaol sentences for all the death and destruction they were responsible for – unless it can be tied into the central plotline somehow. But because gaming stories are by necessity padded out more than those of books and film, where the users' experience of time is controlled by the author rather than themselves, they are prone to including a greater number of throwaway events - boss battles, isolated action sequences - that are forgotten the instant they're over.

Originating on the N64, the game is unique in many ways, but arguably none moreso than the importance it places on making players feel the consequences of their actions. This is a factor of the game that goes largely overlooked, even by those lauding its many qualities.



The sanity effects are brought up most often, referring to instances when the player's character has tussled with too many monsters without respite and apparently starts to lose their mind, resulting in such meta-horror as the player being shown a message on-screen that their controller has been unplugged, or their save file is being deleted when it's supposed to be saving. Yet these broad strokes are more amusing than terrifying, even irritating after recurring once too often. They're inventive for sure, but rely too much on players being scared as players outside the game than as the character in the midst of the narrative. There are a handful which work well – the hammering on doors as you approach never fails to be a little unnerving – but the likely truth is that they're remembered more as being one of the game's most distinctive features, even if its more subtle tricks are far more effective.

Having put some playtime into the game in anticipation of this article, the emphasis on making players live out the consequences of their actions seems to me the real reason behind its success as a horror game. It's easy to roll your eyes at statements that building strong characters is key to drawing the most powerful emotional reactions out of players or viewers, but finding that discernable streak of individuality in the person through whom you'll be experiencing the story does make you feel like you know them and have a stake in their future. No-one has ever been scared in a Legend of Zelda game because Link is designed to be anonymous. This approach has its benefits in blurring the line between the gamer and their avatar's actions on-screen, but makes it far more difficult for the developer to draw tension or fear without that empathetic connection.

Eternal Darkness has a (relatively) large list of playable characters occurring throughout various points in history. The slightly hokey framing for this is that Alex Roivas, the game's official protagonist, discovers a secret office in her murdered grandfather's mansion where he was studying the Tome of Eternal Darkness, a collection of knowledge accumulated by damned individuals throughout human history. As Alex reads their stories, we flashback with her.

In visual design alone, these characters are so far removed from the traditional gaming heroes - a Roman centurion, an 18th century nobleman, a monk - that they immediately feel more real by differentiation from what we're used to. Developers Silicon Knights don't make these differences purely aesthetic: each character has a health and sanity bar unique to them (among other invisible attributes, like running speed and posture), which reflects the physical strength of their appearance and the mental strength of someone in their situation. The centurion and the fireman, for example, are more resilient to losing sanity than a monk or Cambodian dancer. Despite the clunky animation no doubt leftover from the game's early days on the N64, even the characters' finishing moves seem strangely appropriate to each of them. Even though we interact with them no differently than we do any number of identikit game protagonists elsewhere, it's in these fine details that the player is first drawn into a world rich enough for the fantasy, no matter how outlandish, to attain that all important grip of credibility on our minds.



With distinctive characters anchoring the drama and its world, Silicon Knights proceed to relentlessly punish players for their sympathies. After giving you people to care about, the game starts destroying them in front of your eyes, all while you're in control of them and still powerless to change their fate no matter how many spells you cast or monsters you defeat. Since we believe in these characters and want to see them survive, this gives the world a real sense of danger and foreboding. In almost any other game, forcing the player into these cycles of predestined defeat would be blasphemous to the accepted rules of design – players get their kicks from feeling like champions, after all.

Yet by spanning the narrative across history, Silicon Knights makes every small victory along the path feel that much more important and rewarding. Discovering a new spell adds it to the Tome, which may not be enough to save the character presently in your control, but will make the journey easier for whomever is next in line to pick it up. Among a cast of vulnerable, human individuals facing a supernatural threat of divine magnitude, these tiny successes escalate until, when the time comes for Alex Roivas to make her stand, she's empowered enough to do so.

It's this sense of collaborative effort, enduring terrible suffering so that humanity will one day be able to stand its ground when the threat rises to the surface, that gives the game its emotional weight. Finding the corpse of a character who had been at your control in a past period in history becomes an unsettling reminder both of your previous failure as a player but also the reasons you choose to persist in the long struggle. This is a game with a real sense of passing time, where the consequences of tiny struggles can be felt echoing thousands of years into future where, as Alex continues to turn the pages of the Tome in her dead grandfather's office, the monsters beneath the surface are closing in on the present day.

This is a story where the efforts of the weakest person can have an impact felt far deeper and longer than any number of heavily-armed space marines. When the game talks about destiny, it's not just empty self-aggrandising. Edward Roivas is damning of humanity for choosing to remain ignorant of the consequences of its decisions. Enlightening us might well be Eternal Darkness' most terrifying trick.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

- - - - -

PS: First off, apologies for not posting here so often these days. Believe me, I miss my dear old cblog, but between writing for my blog and Flixist, time can be tight and I don't want to disrespect this awesome community by just copy and pasting everything. I still do pop in every now and again, though, and love how you guys still do some of the most interesting and original games writing on the 'net.

PPS: Speaking of my blog, I'm currently serialising an action thriller, DEAD DROP, and it would be very cool to get some feedback from you guys. Also, I'm now on Twitter and have a Facebook page. I mostly use them for promotion, but will follow anyone who follows me and do my best to reply to any tweets, comments, or whatnot.

James Bond sat alone in the small St Petersburg bar and downed a third whiskey and soda to soften the screams of dead men for another hour. Under the red light, he checked his watch, a 1953 Rolex submariner which told a different time to the clock above the back bar.
"Another," he told the bartender. "Is your clock correct?"
"Russian clocks are always correct," the bartender replied as he poured the drink.
Bond disapproved of the American whiskey, but said nothing and again drained the glass in a single gulp. Having forgotten to do so upon his arrival at Pulkovo Airport three hours earlier, he changed his watch to St Petersburg time. He looked up and an ageing man with grey hair stared back at him from the bar mirror.
A man in an army raincoat entered the bar, accompanied by a blast of frosty air. He kicked the door closed with the back of his heel, then withdrew the hood from over his head to reveal a mohawk haircut and stern looking face.
Bond assessed the man in his peripheral vision. Even beneath the loose coat, the broad shoulders gave away his muscular build. He was over six feet tall and like Bond, instinctively checked for alternate exits. His eyes were those of a killer.



The man sat down at the bar.
"Vodka," he said.
A fellow Scot, Bond thought approvingly. He also ordered another and the two men drank at the same time. A knife on a chopping board next to the beer tap caught Bond's eye. He turned the dial to prepare his watch magnet, just in case.
"Can I trouble you for a cigarette?" the man said.
"What do you smoke?" Bond asked.
"Dunhill, with a lighter."
"Morlands, with a match," Bond said, removing a crumpled packet from his breast pocket. The man accepted the cigarette and lit it himself with a gunmetal lighter.
"Better still," the man said.
"Until they go wrong."
The bartender observed them, but had little evident understanding of what was being said.
"Sounds like we're from the same stock," Bond said, "My name's Bond."
"MacTavish," the man replied through a breath of smoke. "How long have we got?"
"One minute," Bond said.
"Longer than usual," MacTavish said, "You're older than I'd guessed. From all the stories we get told about you, it makes a kind of sense. What do you carry, Mr. Bond?"
Bond checked that the bartender was occupied, then opened his jacket to reveal a holstered PP7.
"Chicken feed," MacTavish sneered, "Mine's a USP .45. You sure you're still up to this? Hate to say this, Bond, but you might have looked good back in your day, but these are different times."
"You chaps still have plenty to learn," Bond said, "I was running a tank through these streets before you were even born."
The door swung open again and five men came in from the cold. Four of them wore identical black Spetsnaz trenchcoats. The other carried a case and wore the uniform of a Russian general. The general sat down and barked an order at the bartender, who set about finding an unopened bottle of vodka and five shot glasses. His bodyguards glared at MacTavish and Bond.
"More than I was expecting," MacTavish whispered. "My primary's only a Skorpion."
Bond chuckled. "If all you've got is a Klobb, maybe you should sit this one out. The nearest guard is at least five yards away, you might not be able to hit him."



"So what have you got that's so damn good?" MacTavish asked.
"Apart from my PP7?" Bond said, "A DD44 Dostovei, a KF7 Soviet, an Automatic Shotgun, twin RCP-90s, three grenades and a proximity mine."
MacTavish's eyes widened as he stared at Bond's fitted suit jacket.
"In there?" he said.
"A trick from the old days," Bond replied.
One of the bodyguards approached and clamped a hand on MacTavish's shoulder. He said something in angry Russian.
"He's telling us to leave," MacTavish said.
Each of the other bodyguards reached inside their coats and revealed hidden assault rifles.
"This could get messy," MacTavish said.
"Yes," Bond said, "Unfortunately for them."
The guard nearest to them pulled a pistol from his pocket. As MacTavish unsheathed his knife, Bond had already spun on his barstool and knocked the man out with a backwards karate chop to the neck.
The other bodyguards spread out and the general upturned a table for cover. As gunfire shredded the bar counter, MacTavish drew his Skorpion and fired wildly from the hip as he dived for cover. A splash of blood erupted from his shoulder before he reached safety.
"I'm hit!" he shouted, "Give me a minute!"
The noise from the other side of the bar was deafening, but once MacTavish's vision had returned to normal, he leant over the top and aimed down his sights. All he saw was four dead bodies and Bond blowing smoke from the barrels of his two P90s (both customised in a bright orange skin).
"How the hell did you do that?" MacTavish exclaimed.
"Automatic aim," Bond said, "Didn't need to aim down sights in my day. Just point and click, then let instinct do the rest."
"Didn't you take any hits?"
"One or two," Bond said, "But I picked up Body Armour on the way in. I can take at least four more before I'm in any trouble."
Before MacTavish could respond, the barrel of a submachine gun rose up from behind the upturned table and began firing blind towards the bar. Bond vaulted the counter in a hail of fluorescent bullet trails.



"Shit!" MacTavish exclaimed, "I left Deep Impact in my other loadout!"
"No problem," Bond said. He pointed his RCP-90 at the back of the counter and fired a single shot. There was a scream on the other side.
"Lucky you brought it with you," MacTavish smiled.
"No need," Bond said. "In my day, you just picked the right gun."
"Does seem a bit overpowered," MacTavish remarked.
"That's what makes it more fun," Bond replied, "It's not in the Power Weapons set for nothing, you know."
The two men climbed back over the wrecked counter. Bond picked up the general's suitcase from amidst the debris on the ground.
"Objective A completed," he said.
"Objective what?" MacTavish said, looking increasingly bewildered, "How many do you have?"
"On this mission, four," Bond said, "Although I've only two left to complete, since I snuck around the back and disabled the security for Objective B before coming in here."
"Man," MacTavish said, "I just made a straight line for the entrance. No idea it was possible to deviate."
"Like I said," Bond said, "You have plenty to learn."
The bartender, who had taken refuge in one of the cupboards, darted towards the door at the back. MacTavish pulled the pistol from his coat, but Bond pushed his arm away before he could fire.
"Objective C," Bond said, "Avoid civilian casualties."
"But he's gonna give us away!" MacTavish protested.
An explosion detonated from the room behind the bar and the bartender was sent flying back through the door as flames penetrated the walls.
"Luckily for us, I can kill two more before failing the objective," Bond said, "So a little fun with proximity mines never goes amiss. I should tell you about this poor fellow called Dr. Doak I met a while back."
"But you said you had two objectives left," MacTavish said, "What about the other one?"
Bond drew his PP7 and fired a shot at the shelf in front of the mirror, shattering a bottle of whiskey.
"That one was for me," he said, "I can't stand American whiskey."
MacTavish shook his head and wrapped himself back in his raincoat.
"Bond," he said, "I think I owe you an apology. You may not look so good these days, but damn, those are some rare skills you've got."
"That's okay, MacTavish," Bond said. He checked his watch again. "I'm glad I set this to the right time. We finished this mission in under two minutes and fifteen seconds. I'm invincible now."
MacTavish looked at him dumbfounded.
"Don't worry," Bond said with a grin as they left the bar, "You just wait until I tell you about DK Mode."

RECENT ARTICLES ON FLIXIST

Flixist Film School: How To Write An Ending