General Games Discussion

Firenze wrote:Pandemonium is a classic to me, one of the first games I ever played IIRC. So I didn't get that far as I was a kid. I had it on playstation too.

It was the same to me in a sense. However, on playing it now, it's not half as good as some of the great platformers of the time (including its rivals on the PS1)

Yeah, I don't doubt that. PS1 had a bunch of very, very good platformers. I loved Klonoa.

RG still hasn't started Persona 5, probably never will. I kinda don't blame him as it's like the size of 5 standard side games, but still, what a fraud.

Where did that come from ffs.

Honestly don't think I will start it this year. Pretty much booked.

the anime just started lol, reminded me

There's an anime? Might watch lol.

bruh...

#7

Game: Little King's Stroy
Year: 2009.
Genre: Real Time Strategy.
Publisher: Rising Star Games, Xseed Games, Marvelous Entertainment.
Developer: Cing, Town Factory.



First things first, I am changing my rating system to better rate different genres according to their own rules. It will still be from 50 quality points, but every title will start from 25 and earn/lose points according to criteria important to the titles and genres themselves.

Little King's Story was an unassuming release in the Wii's library that caught the few who played it by surprise. What was a quirky and childish-looking strategy game turned out to be a diabolical masterpiece.

At so many levels, Little King's Story is a perfect example of the best games on the Wii. Something unique and innovative while having unmistakable depth.

There is no two ways about it, this is one of the generation's best games. One which is in no way perfect, but is more iconic due to its imperfections in an otherwise wholly unique package.

"I am more noble than you, he is more noble than me. The rich are more noble than the poor. The hard working are more noble than the lazy. Then who is the most noble of them all?"

From the first notes of music, when you hear Ravel's distinctive Bolero notes, you realize that this game is either making a big show of things, or it truly is going to deliver something interesting and unique.

You control the King of Alpoko, a child who wandered into a mythical kingdom and became its king. As the king, the head honcho, you become responsible for building up your kingdom, by of course, going to war. Supported by a bunch of self-serving advisors, you are pushed to go an conquer the other domains from both nature and other kings, and of course, save some princess (who all become your wives).

It is clear that nothing is what seems in the surface, and that the game tackles a variety of topics with both a satirical and wondrous eye. No two people would agree on the underlining symbolism in the game, and that's what makes it great. Little King's Story is a game rife with symbolism, but at no point does it beat you in the head with a "right" answer.

Instead, you are just living the game, sharing the wonder your child protagonist must feel, and at the very least enjoying the hilarious parts of the story.

From interactions with the supporting cast and the conquered kings, to your conversations with the any citizens that form both your army and government, there is always something either funny or thought provoking to read.

The gibberish language only adding to the style and the childish lens.

Very Good Characters: +4
Great Story: +5
A Lot of Symbolism: +3

"One fine morning in the Kingdom of Alpoko, a tattered flag raised above a ruined castle fluttered the wind"

Regardless of how good the story and wondrous setting of the game is, it wouldn't work without some equally good gameplay. Thankfully, Little King's Story provides something that is both satisfying and challenging.

If I am going to explain the gameply, I would say the closest to it would be Nintendo's Pikmin games. Like with Pikmin, you control a central character that controls an army of sorts. Initially starting with just the ability to control five citizens, the king can then control up to 30 of them.

Like with Pikmin, the crux of the game-play is in maneuvering with your army and then throwing them at obstacles and enemies. The strategy is in organizing an army with different jobs and utilizing them well.

Each job is useful in one-way or another, from typical soldier to carpenters and miners. One job is only useful for efficiently cooking chicken (which is much more useful than its sounds). Generally, battles are an exercise of switching jobs, sending citizens at the enemy, changing formations, and frantically avoiding attacks.

It can be extremely chaotic if you don't understand what you are doing, but is actually well-controlled if you take the time to understand the system. That is something I strongly recommend that you do, because the game can be deceptively challenging .

You find yourself building relationships with your citizens, and when some strong enemy starts massacring them, you will lose your calm, as their cries of death blame their fate on you poor command.

Most of the time, defeat is due to the player's own lack of preparation or competence. However, the game sometimes seems very cheap in introducing insta-kill moves, which if you didn't know about will surely know when you see half your army go to the four bloody winds with one swipe; forever disappearing from your town.

Other times is when the game's control scheme loses focus. I don't know if the fault is in my own Wii set-up r the game's, but there has been frequent instances where the game didn't control accurately enough. Sometimes, one button press would register as two, and instead of changing to my soldiers I would fling some poor kids at a dragon.

Saving often, and avoiding doing much before crucial battles is important to keep your calm. With bosses, dying will give you the ability to restart the entire fight with all of your army intact. This means the problem is still there, but is at least with a lesser impact.

Good Expansive Combat: +4
Some Technical Issues:-4
Some Cheap Difficulty: -2

"Having sought the true king for 35 years, I am getting a bit emotional and teary-eyed"

Outside of the first few hours, the game gives you little direction of how to spend each day, and basically leaves you at your own leisure about how to go and conquer the world. The main gameplay loop is to go explore the world, collect some loot, do some quests, and spend all that money upgrading your kingdom.

Upgrading the kingdom gives you more citizens to control, more equipment to give your army, better health, and more jobs to choose from. You then take those upgraded citizens and do the same thing all over again.

It is an effective system that always gives you a sense of progress, culminating in one of some brilliant boss battles.

And so, with each passing day, you see how the Kingdom of Alpoko expands, and you see how your citizens react to your orders. One Jumping Jacks decree (which raises the max health of each citizen) will see some of the citizens practicing it while you walk around.

That sense of having fun just walking about is all what the game itself is about. As you rescue more princesses, they give you special tasks. One princess asks you to collect the tunes your citizens hum at night. These are badly sung renditions of classical thees such as Beethoven' 9th or the Moonlight Sonata.

In itself, it is a weird sidequest. The fact that once you uncover one person humming the song, you then see others who learned it humming it is what makes it so fun. I had an evening with my mum, getting her to try and guess these badly hummed songs are renditions of which classical music pieces.

Addictive Gameplay Loop: +2.5
Fun World: +2.5

"Princess Apricot is so kind. She let me lick it the other day..."

Being on the Wii, Little King's Story is not exactly a graphical marvel. However, even with the Wii's standards, the game looks worse than counterparts such as the Pikmin series. What it lacks in graphical power, it makes up for with stylistic choices though.

Starting with the "cut-scenes", which are are designed like some moving water color painting with animated brush strokes, to the super deformed chibi-looking king and citizens. This is a game that has a lot of personality in its colorful choice of graphics, and that works more often than note.

Even in the middle of the most chaotic of battles, you can recognize what each of your citizens is doing from the distinctive shapes of their hats and the equipment you game them. If someone is equipped with a pillow weapon, they will be carrying a pillow to battle.

The true star of the art production department is the soundtrack though. With a remix of classical themes from Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms and even more modern classical artists like Dvorak and Gershwin, this is of course going to be an excellent soundtrack.

However, this doesn't mean that the soundtrack rests on the brilliance of its free source material. No, these themes and melodies are expertly remixed into shorter versions, and the sound direction is impeccable in how they are used.

More importantly, the game doesn't lean on the more well-known tracks, and actually gives an effort in exploring a wide repertoire of classical music, showing a love and respect for the source material that carries obviously into the game itself.

Good Style: +3
Excellent Soundtrack: +5

In Conclusion:

It is not easy to review a game like this. If you take all the parts, you will write a review suggesting that each part is really really good. However, it is actually difficult to explain how the final result is even greater than the sum of its parts.

The best I can say is that Little King's Story was a criminally underappreciated game, one which had all the elements of being a classic, buried deep into an unassuming package that many glossed over.

Hope we don't make such a mistake again with another gem like it.

Final: 48/50

"Tips"

1- Always carry a farmer with you to boss battles.
2- For boss battles, Soldiers and Hunters should be the majority of your troops.
3- When simply exploring, get at least one of each non-fighting job.
4- You can produce children by throwing your army int church and getting them married.
5- Children can climb trees.
6- If too much of your citizens die, they won't come back.
7- Dragon enemies (and enemies carrying dragon tails) can one-kill your citizens.
8- Frogs can insta-kill as well.

"Next Game"

That was another great Wii exclusive, one that was completely ignored by the 100 Million Wii owners, many which complained about the console collecting dust while a masterpiece was in front of their eyes. Life can be unfair sometimes.

Next game to be reviewed is another ignored title, the first No More Heroes game. The second No More Heroes game sits at #5 in Gamesradar list, but I am reviewing the first game before it. This is one game that I apparently should not play in the living room of the house.

Stay Tuned

E3 announcement

Among other details I learned while reporting this story: Right next to Hangar 13, a top-secret 2K studio is now working on a top-secret new BioShock game.

— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) April 13, 2018

Won't be the same Bioshock without Ken Levine, so I have zero expectations for it, if true.

I will play it for sure but it won't be the same without Ken Levine.

Only game that really matters in the future is Spyro remastered imo


Literally pre-ordering it

Tomwin Lannister wrote:Only game that really matters in the future is Spyro remastered imo


Literally pre-ordering it

Didn't know you liked Spyro

The supersampling feature on PS4, occasionally makes my console fan go crazy. I turned it off, and the fan's stayed quiet ever since. I don't recommend having it on at all times, Mole.

Playing Wildlands for free weekend. Missions are repetitive as f but its fun with friends.

Thimmy wrote:The supersampling feature on PS4, occasionally makes my console fan go crazy. I turned it off, and the fan's stayed quiet ever since. I don't recommend having it on at all times, Mole.

I'll keep that in mind but so far my ps4 is quite as a mouse.

I literally can't hear it all.

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:

Thimmy wrote:The supersampling feature on PS4, occasionally makes my console fan go crazy. I turned it off, and the fan's stayed quiet ever since. I don't recommend having it on at all times, Mole.

I'll keep that in mind but so far my ps4 is quite as a mouse.

I literally can't hear it all.

It's been turned on for more than a week now, and I didn't hear anything until it suddenly starting acting up periodically while playing Ni No Kuni. I switched over to FIFA, thinking it would go silent again, but it didn't. The noise just went down a little bit. Turned off supersampling, and the noise immediately disappeared. It's been quiet ever since, and I don't think it's a coincidence. I suspect having it turned on is a bit more taxing on the console. Probably works best if you're not going to play long sessions.

In fairness I haven't had long sessions outside of Far Cry, I suspect Yakuza and GOW will test that.

Gonna rant on a couple of games.

Walking simulators are a disgrace. I played Dear Esther and Everybody's Gone To The Rapture and gameplay is non-existent. You literally just walk, don't even press X or anything. Sure, the narrative is good but what is the point of making it a game then. I was not this pissed at Gone Home which is the same because I got it for free on PS+ but these was such a waste, even though I spent a grand total of $5 on them. If anyone is interested in them watch a playthrough on YouTube. Same experience except you're not mindlessly pushing the left analog stick up.

The Vanishing Of Ethan Carter though Not that's how you make a game like that. Engaging plot, varied gameplay, enjoyable puzzles, and man the story and ending is heartbreaking. Recommended highly. This game, What Remains Of Edith Finch and The Stanley Parable is was indie devs should look at for inspiration instead of Dear Esther and Rapture.

Firewatch was decent. I thought the narrative fell flat toward the end. The visuals, story and gameplay are all enjoyable.

Yeah I really dislike walking simulators tbh.

Fan-made prequel to Fallout: New Vegas, named New California, goes into beta after being nine years in development. The mod was originally planned for Fallout 3. It has over 14.000 lines of dialogue performed by 42 actors for some 60 characters. It boasts 12 different endings with multiple, branching storylines. The mod is completely free. That's damn impressive! Sometimes, I wish I had a gaming PC.

Honestly, gaming PCs are not as expensive as you might think. A modest build is going to cost you €800 which blows every PS4 Pro/Xbox One X out of the water and will last you a decade.

Sure you're paying twice as much as you'd pay for a console but there are so many other benefits. Other than the obvious advantage of it not being just a gaming platform, modding is a huge part of PC gaming community. Add the fact that the games on PC are generally cheaper than on consoles, go on sale more often and there are no online fees like PS Plus or Xbox Live, "maintenance costs" aren't as much. I think you'll make your money back in 2-3 years.

I actually own all 3 consoles now (Xbox One gathering dust for a year if not longer, gonna sell it soon) but any game that I can get on PC, I will get on PC. Switch and PS4 are only there for exclusives.

That's all good and dandy, but I don't have as much time to invest into gaming, as I used to. Also, my girlfriend wouldn't be very happy if I'd bought one. I already, impulsively bought an Iphone X, which could've just as well have been a cheap gaming PC. Difference is, I use my phone all the time and my cohabitant has no qualms with it If I was a bachelor, I'd have all sorts of fun gadgets. Ain't no room for excessive fun in my life, these days. Wanting a gaming PC is just me imagining what I'd do if I was still in college, but with my current income

M99 wrote:Gonna rant on a couple of games.

Walking simulators are a disgrace. I played Dear Esther and Everybody's Gone To The Rapture and gameplay is non-existent. You literally just walk, don't even press X or anything. Sure, the narrative is good but what is the point of making it a game then. I was not this pissed at Gone Home which is the same because I got it for free on PS+ but these was such a waste, even though I spent a grand total of $5 on them. If anyone is interested in them watch a playthrough on YouTube. Same experience except you're not mindlessly pushing the left analog stick up.

I played it a while back and I agree. It started off really well. I liked the stories and the sense of unearthing mystery but it was a chore at the end because you just walk around seeing how pretty everything is and the music. Can watch that on youtube and not miss anything. Ending was terrible too.

I imagine Bethesda will have that fan made game cancelled tbh.

It's what usually happens.