Filed under: DS
Since I’ve bought Harvest Moon – Back to Nature for the Playstation, I’m a fan of this series. Later when Harvest Moon – Friends of Mineraltown was released, I also bought it, and played it. This is game was pretty awesome. Now a few years later after some games like: Harvest Moon – A Wonderfull Life (GC) and the Special Edition of HM – AWFL… a new one was released. In March 2007 the gates open for a new Harvest Moon. Harvest Moon DS. What a shi**y game.
Someone of you might wonder why the heck I review this game so late. Well this have the reason that I bought other games for the NDS and was fully satisfied with: Harvest Moon – Friends of Mineraltown.
So now here comes the game. You start like always. You choose your name… the name of your farm… the name of your dog and (since HM – AWFL) the name of your cat. Seriously… who needs a cat? Isn’t it better to choose between a dog and a cat like in HM – AWFL? Well… the dog looks like a cat but… anyway. So after you finished with the name thing, you can see how the Goddess and a stupid witch are fighting against each other. Somehow the witch was able to turn the Goddess into stone and let her disappear. In addition to this, she let also the little dwarfs disappear. After her rage was over she realized that she now have made a mistake and choose you to find the dwarfs. Yeah that’s right she did something wrong and like always you have to take the rap for somebody.
Now when the story is clear, maybe the witch tells you how to get those dwarfs back… the answer is no. Just no. You don’t get an advice what to do. Just one sentence: “Grow some vegetables or get a girlfriend or something like that”. Wow… what a nerve! So you can compare the situation with like this. Take a three year old kid, several books about quantum physics, Einsteins theory of relativity and a white room. Just throw the kid in the white room, give him the books and the theory and say to him:” Solve this! You’ll have much time to do this!”. Seriously… when you don’t played HM – AWFL, you’re f*cked. You don’t know the characters , but they know you well, you can’t see in which house you can buy which things (in additon they don’t have opening and closing times on their doors), and you have to do secret things to unlock some features. The characters are from the Forget-me-not Valley and from Mineraltown. But this is only in the US Version. Yes you’ve read right. The possibility to link or combine with HM – FOMT isn’t given in the european version of the game. That means: I have to import this game from America or order it in a shop like Gamestop only to combine both games? Even some minigames are’nt usable for the Europeans e.g. Blackjack. But in both versions it is NOT possible to marry the Godess. Yeah now, without these features, I can’t wait to play this game! The Gameplay is very tricky. On the NDS you have nine, yes nince, buttons to choose from. So why don’t the try to use every button? I mean, seriously in HM – FOMT for the GBA you have: six buttons. That’s three buttons less than the NDS have.And why I write about this? Because you only use like four buttons. Select isn’t in use and with the L button you can whistle for your dog and cat. They tried to use the touch-pad to make it more easy for you to sort objects in your bag or switch through the menu. Start is the Pause button instead of opening the menu like in every other game of the series.Then there’s one more thing which doesn’t make any sense in my eyes. In the menu, which you control with the touch-pad by the way, you can select that you can’t use the stilus. Seriously, was it such a hard decision to let this thing completely away?
Like in every HM game you go from A to B, grow this, harvest that and pour those plants.It’s Harvest Moon. But the time is running much faster than in HM – FOMT. That means: When you finished pouring your plants, the day is like over. To make it more difficult the guy you play is a real p*ssy. After a few time swinging his Tools, he collapse or get sick. Yeah! What a man! The woman will scramble to get you!
My fazit: Okay the game has some cool stuff, like link to my HM – FOTM… which I can’t use because I’m a European. Nice. But Seriously? I hate this game! Really I hate it! If you want to hear a second opinion: If you want to save costs, buy Harvest Moon – Friends of Mineraltown. Ist much more fun and pretty much easier.
I found this game when I was surfing around the web for the Top 50 NDS Games. “A mix between, Real-time Strategy and Role Play Game”. I get this game and started it. You can read the plot of the game and then you can play.
The Story is simple: A long time ago a man called Lord Agony with the original aim to rule the world by controlling a mysterious substance called “Source”, invaded the world with a huge army of Clockworkers. This are robots which can Move, destroy and kill things and humans but only for a short amount of time. A big war between the Royal Army and Lord Agony’s Army flares up. Someday a very good “Archineer”, this are People who can build Fortresses with using “Source”, break the defence to Lord Agony’s castle and Killed him. The world was saved.
Lock live with his sister in a small fisher village. Someday a Clockwork Army invaded the peaceful village. Lock, who’s an Archineer recruit, defend his village with building towers and walls. Normally Clockworkers kill every human which they can find and chase, but, I don’t know why, the Clockworkers kidnapped Locks Sister. Now Lock have to find his sister and have to help the Royal Army to defend the whole Kingdom.
You can surely compare “Lock’s Quest” to a sort of flash games called: “Tower Defence”. This is a popular mode which also founds his way into other games like Warcraft 3. The Gameplay is complicated at the beginning but you get familiar with it in time. The battles in “Lock’s Quest” are slpittet in two phases. Phase one is the building phase. You have a short amount of time to build up some walls and canons. This is not everything what you can build. You can build traps and towers and some other cool things. For every thing you build or repair you have to use “Source”.
But you use up to much source with build traps and stuff like that. (Traps disappear after every wave by the way) The only way to fill up your store of “Source” is to play stupid mini-games or to hope you survive the current level to get more “Source” from the “Source-Stock”, you have to defend mostly, or kill some Clockworkers.
When the time is over, this is mostly like 2-3 minutes, the battle phase begins. Different than in other Tower Defence games, you have the possibility to interfere in the fight. Lock can move around and repair the defence. Which is definitely needed. He also can fight. Lock have some Special Moves which he can use by performing little mini-games with the stilus.
The Clockworker attacks in waves like 3-4 times. After the 2nd wave your motivation is either like: WUHU!!!! or like: *head-desk* or in the worst case: *pick up a gun… . The fight is lacking in varieties. You build up your defence… fight… repair your defence… and fight. The only thing that changes are the Clockworker, which has different units which can spell for example or heal, fly over or dig under your walls and towers.
Fazit:
In my opinion “Lock’s Quest” could have more potential if the developers take more care ’bout the RPG part of the game. Sure at first this is Tower Defence with story, but I think to hold these huge army of Clockworkes which invade every f*cking single place of the world with like 50-60 Clockworkers per wave and you have to survive more than 3 waves, is quietly hard without more strength. If you could upgrade Lock the game would be more interesting.
But in fact this is a good game with a nice ambiente and a good idea.
Facts:
- No facts this time =3
Filed under: Mobile Gaming
Yesterday, a friend brought his PSP to school. I asked him if I could play, and started playing God of War – Chains of Olympus.
I have 5 Words for you.
This. Game. Is. Fucking. Great.
I love hack and slay games, and this one totally make me addicted from the very first second.
The game starts after a short loading period with the main menu. You see Kratos face, and the usual options New Game, Load Game, Settings and Challenges. The first thing I noticed was the bgm . It was simply epic.I couldbt wait to start playing.
After I pressed new game, a short Story-Sequence started, which made me familiar with the basic story of God of War. Then, the game switched smothly from Cinematic to game, where I got to kill some Persians.
And trust me, the Spirit of Sparta, the nickname of Kratos, is not playing Mr. Nice-Guy with his enemies. His two swords were able to cover up the whole screen, and an unhuman amount of blood quickly covered the ground. Eventually, I got tired of using the Chaos Blades, and I used the Circle, button , which is a grab/throw move. Kratos impales the enemy with his sword, or rips them apart. With his bare hands. God of War is not a game for an average pansy. With just a few breaks, you will impale bodies, rip heads off and break necks nonstop.
The controls are easy to get used to. Cross is jump, Circle grabs an enemy. Triangle is a heavy attack, while quare does a normal attack. L and R blocks. If you hold L and R , and push the analog stick in any direction, you will make an evasion move. Holding R and pressing a button will result in using a magic attack. And of course, combos are possible.
After some time, when you get mightier, you will be able to do murderous combos. High combos will give you a lot huge amount of Orbs. Green Orbs recover your life, white ones your magic energy, and red ones are used to upgrade your weapons.
Shortly after the first combat, you will jump down into a building, where a Cyclop jumps in and tries to crush you under a pillow in his hand. In this sequence, you will get used to GoWs unique ATB control. If you grab a strong enemie with Circle, they will not just let you tear them apart, they will struggle and try to counter your attacks. You have to perform an action which is randomly chosen. Press one of the four action buttons, smash L and R very fast, or rotate the control stick clockwise or counterclockwise. Every hand to hand combat gets unique, and it is always a challenge, especially when youre not familiar with the Playstation controller schematic.
So, this Cyclop tries to crush you with his pillow, and to prevent that, you have to press Circle very fast. You prepare for further combat, but a giant Monster (a basilisk) appears and eats the cyclop. Prepare to battle this huge beast. Grab does not work from the start, you have to weaken it first. After you beat 3/4 of his live bar out of his body, the beast gets dizzy, and you can press circle. After another ATB, the beast runs away. However, if you fail, the basilisk will regenerate until 50% life energy and the fight will start again.
When you play this game, prepare yourself to get one thing : infinite action. Sometimes, the gameplay slows down for a puzzle passage.
Every situation is underpinned by a great music. The orchestralic soundtrack really catches you and makes you wanna hear it loud. And I mean, loud.
The sound effects are great to. Every enemy does his own unique sound and battle-cry, and Kratos voice actor did very well, too.
The cutscenes are great. The german translation is very well done. The voice actors do a great job, even though there are a few cutscenes where their acting is just not realistic.
Overall, this game is great. I recommend andy of the Playstation ( Portable ) owners to get GoW. If you dont own a PS2 / PSP, then go and borrow one. Now. Why are you still here?
