Hacking AND slashing with Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z

I’ve spent the last few weeks playing my way through this game. How did I come to own it? Believe it or not, my thing for the year is to try to finish one game for ever letter of the alphabet. This has resulted in some strange purchases, and some scouting around for games that begin with Q, U, Y and Z. I had a vague memory of watching a TotalBiscuit Youtube video on this one, and bought the game thinking that if it had been awful, I’d have remembered it.

And actually it didn’t turn out too bad in the end. You play as Yaiba Kamikaze, a rogue ninja who is looking for revenge against his rival Ryu Hayabusa who killed him. Yaiba has been brought back to life as a cyborg with a mechanical arm and a ‘cyber-vision’ eye. To get to Hayabusa, he’s got to battle his way through hordes of Zombies of varying types. He’s helped along the way by his navigator, the girl with a massive potential for over-sexualisation Ms Monday, and wound up as he goes along by a smarmy Spaniard called Del Gonzo. It is well presented with a cell-shading style, and while the script is puerile, the voice acting is reasonably well-done. Del Gonzo, in particular, has some fantastic lines and his voice actor delivers them with just the right amount of panache.

The obligatory 'Rage' mode...

The gameplay is solid enough. It’s in the genre commonly known as Spectacle Fighters, which as far as I know means a scrolling beat-em-up with impressive moves. Yaiba can switch between his sword, cyber arm or a flail at any time by pressing the attack button assigned to each one, and can also harvest extra weapons from some of the larger enemies. Each attack has a different function – the sword is quick and best used for glancing blows, the arm does a lot of damage but is slow, and the flail goes around Yaiba and is best used for attacking a group of enemies surrounding you. But combining attacks in a different order can make for some pretty impressive combos. There is a block/counter button, and can be used to great effect but with my usual approach to things I never really got used to using it. There’s a lot of fun to be had in slaughtering your way through a Zombie horde, but some of the fights are actually quite tough and there’s an ‘old-school’ feeling of accomplishment as you get through a fight you’ve been stuck on for a while.

Unfortunately the game is let down by a couple of things that get in the way of you enjoying it. The screen isn’t balanced properly and enemies can be hiding in the sides, attacking from a place that you can’t see them. This isn’t usually a problem because the enemies in the sides of the screen are the least of your problems most of the time, but the fight with Hayabusa is a lot harder than it needs to be because he comes flying at you from where you can’t see him winding up the attack; I won it eventually but more by luck than judgement. According to TotalBiscuit the PC version has a ‘wide-shot’ mode that stops some of this from happening, but rather than have to put a graphical fix in there, why not just get it right in the first place?

Also the game is boss hard. Even on normal difficulty, some of those boss battles are ferocious and the final boss of the game took me nearly three days. I’ll admit to using a wiki to find out what I had to do to beat him, or I’d still be doing it now. Is that cheating? Perhaps, but remember that even though I knew what to do in the final fight, it was a massive effort to make it happen.

All in all though I’ve enjoyed my time with Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z. It’s not the best game I’ve ever played but it is fun in its own way and I’m glad I didn’t overlook it. The game has more content and added difficulty, but for now it’s time to move on.

Backlog Beatdown: Plants vs Zombies: A Zombie Game that I Really Liked...

You guessed it; this was another Xbox Live Arcade download. Quite a recent one, as it happens. Plants vs Zombies is a game that managed to get very popular, spawn a number of sequels, a host of clones and is quite well regarded in the world of videogames. And yet, it managed to slip almost completely under my radar. I started playing it at a time where I was playing through the original Baldur’s Gate and wanted something to break up the pace of computer role-playing games; games that you can just pick up and play are valuable things indeed in the wake of all that!

I’ve really enjoyed my time with the game. The premise is simple: Zombies are crossing your lawn and you have to plant various kinds of flora that will stop them. You generate your resources from sunlight and certain kinds of plants. Some plants to direct damage to the zombies, some have other effects such as freezing them or slowing them down for a few moments. Some plants function entirely defensively, blocking zombie attacks from the front or the top. You also have single use plants that take out a number of zombies at a time. The trick is picking the right plant for the right job!

The Zombies have different types as well. There are the regular run-of-the-mill zombies who don’t put up much of a fight, but things get interesting when the different zombies are introduced. Some wear armour (in the form of a traffic cone or a bucket on their head!) and take a lot longer to kill. Some of them have spears, ladders and pogo sticks that can jump over a number of your plants; usually only the first but you need to make sure the pogo zombie dies before he jumps over all of them! Some have slow-moving vehicles, some tunnel under your defences and attack the other way.

Thankfully, this game doesn't take itself too seriously...

But the genius of the game is about how you plan your planting in relation to what you know is coming. Before each level begins, you get a brief view of the level’s zombies and then choose from 6 of your available plants to make available to plant. Generally, it’s good to have a balance of resource generation, firepower and status effects, and the best ones to take are the ones that have been introduced on that level, but you get to know which work well and which don’t. Also, the plants have different costs; some plants do a lot of damage but will cost a lot of sunlight (the game’s principle resource) so you won’t be able to plant many until you have the infrastructure to support them. And there are new mechanics being introduced on almost every level, so there’s always something different to do.

The game is challenging but not insurmountably difficult. If one of the Zombies eats his way past all your defences then you lose, but in most cases there is a ‘lawnmower’ there acting as a last line of defence that kills all the zombies on that line. There are a couple of times when you’ll lose, because of a new zombie type you didn’t know how to deal with, or a huge wave of zombies you weren’t anticipating, but you can always attempt the level again thinking ‘just one more go.’

You’d think this would all get old after a while, and the game is better enjoyed in short bursts, but you’d be surprised how much variety you can put into a game like this. There are ‘conveyer belt’ levels, where instead of picking your plants you get a selection of plants on a conveyer belt and have to build your garden around that. The game ends in a ‘boss’ level that works in this manner. There’s even a bowling stage!

All in all Plants vs Zombies is a very good and well-designed game, and I’ve had a lot of fun with it. There’s plenty more to do in the game but I really want to get some more games finished so I’ll probably come back to the other game modes at a later date, to bring my achievement points up a little higher!

Warhammer: Age of Sigmar First Impressions

So Warhammer: Age of Sigmar is now in full swing. It’s an interesting game. The substantial departure from the iterative nature of the last four editions of Warhammer means that the game has changed entirely for better or worse. Some people like it, some people hate it, some people and some don’t know one way or the other. That being the case, I thought I’d give you my first impressions:

 

Context

The army I’ve chosen for Age of Sigmar is Stormcast Eternals, and my current pool of models come from the Age of Sigmar Boxed Set. I’m also participating in an 8-week ‘Slow-Grow’ league at my local game store Phoenix Games, where the wound limit for the games are going up in increments of 25 every 2 weeks. Therefore, these remarks refer to the fact that I’ve mainly played 25 wound games so far.

 

What I like

A lot of people complain about the apparent lack of strategy in the game, but as I was always rubbish at Warhammer anyway, I actually like the fact that the amount of strategic manoeuvres and choices you make in the game are reduced. On the balance of having so much strategic choice that you could potentially win the game before it starts just by choosing what models to have in your army and deploying them properly, and so little that the entire game is decided on dice rolls, Age of Sigmar definitely leans towards the latter but there is enough going on to keep a ‘casual’ gamer like me engaged.

My Lord-Relictor. Don't mess.

For example, for a 25 Wound force, I picked the Lord-Relictor, Three Retributors and Five Liberators. The rationale was: because I had eight models in the whole army, I was almost always going to be outnumbered. I therefore stuck the Retributors at the front, the Relictor at the back and the Liberators in-between. Therefore, the enemy force would have to tackle the Retributors first, who are deadly in combat. The Relictor could use his power to heal the Retributors to keep them in the fight a little longer, and the Liberators could mop up whoever was left afterwards. That’s been my strategy for the four games I’ve played so far and it works reasonably well.

I also like the way the combat works. It’s clear what you need to hit and wound – no faffing about with tables – so that bit’s simple. The challenge comes from deciding what order to do the fights in. It’s about second-guessing what order your opponent will do everything in, and what you can afford to lose. Do I use my one remaining Retributor, or my Liberators for my first attack? The Retributor probably won’t do much damage on his own and will leave the others open for an attack, but if he’s attacked, he won’t be able to fight at all. Do I attack the Khorgorath or the Blood Reavers? The Khorgorath is doing a lot of damage, but if I kill enough of the Blood Reavers, they may then fail their bravery check and I’ll take out even more in one turn. It’s these kind of decisions that make up the fun of the game for me so far.

What I don’t like

Currently the only thing I don’t like about the game mechanics are the balancing issues coming from having to integrate every faction into a brand new system. I know moaning about balancing issues in any Games Workshop game is like complaining that grass is green, but in previous editions they tried, at least. In Age of Sigmar, you can take anything, no matter how elite or rare they purport to be, as long as they’re in the same faction. And even then, they’ve lumped a lot of the factions together so their war scrolls can be combined. You don’t even need to take a commander model, since you can nominate any model as a general. My first game of AoS didn’t go too well, as the guy I was playing used an Empire force of an Elector Count, three Demigryffs and a Hellblaster Cannon, and there was not a single modicum of restrictions in the rules to stop him.

Needless to say I enjoy it a lot more when there is some balance in the chosen forces!

Conclusion

Age of Sigmar is a very different experience to Warhammer. There’s less going on than I might expect from a conventional wargame, but as I’m not very good at them, I’m kind of enjoying this ‘lite’ version of it. There will be questions raised about balancing issues; there always are. But when I’ve won, I feel like I deserved it because of my force selection and manoeuvres, and I’ve been having a decent amount of fun with it. I’m looking forward to seeing how it develops!

Finally Finished my Khorne Bezerker Army...

One of the ways I manage to keep myself engaged with hobby games after well over half my lifetime is the variety of models that I get to paint. I rarely stick with one army or faction, preferring to flit between one system, or army, and another. That way, I get a different challenge each time I paint; I get to paint different models, different scales, and different colours. It keeps me interested, but it also means that I rarely have a so-called ‘full-sized’ army.

This is something of an abstract concept, so for those of you who don’t know: Each game has a ‘standard’ size, usually measured in points or the system’s equivalent. With Warhammer 40K, that’s usually 1500 points. With Warhammer, it’s 2000, though that has changed with the advent of Age of Sigmar, not sure what the standard size is here. With Lord of the Rings, it’s something like 700 points, and with Batman Miniatures Game I think it’s 300.

The Red Fury, in its full glory.

So it’s no surprise to anybody who knows my approach to hobby gaming that even though I’m well into my 17^th year of doing it, I’ve only managed to create a full-sized army 3 times.

This is the third: The Red Fury.

An army of Khorne Bezerkers, why not? I came up with the idea for the army around halfway through 2011, when I wanted to build up a force to take to every Games Workshop in the country and play a game with it. I intended to build it up a lot more quickly than I did, and it really was my first army where I’d planned it out from the start; I knew where I was going with it, what models I wanted, and what strategies I wanted the army to achieve. Here’s the army list:

	Components	Points	Total Points	Total Army
HQ	Chaos Lord	65	130	1496
	Aura of Dark Glory	15
	Axe of Blind Fury	35
	Veterans of the Long War	5
	Mark of Khorne	10
Troops	Khorne Bezerkers (8)	162	284
	Chainaxe (4)	12
	Gift of Mutation	10
	Veterans of the Long War	8
	Icon of Wrath	15
	Power Weapon	15
	Plasma Pistol	15
	Chaos Rhino	35
	Havoc Launcher	12
	Khorne Bezerkers (8)	162	284
	Chainaxe (4)	12
	Gift of Mutation	10
	Veterans of the Long War	8
	Icon of Wrath	15
	Power Weapon	15
	Plasma Pistol	15
	Chaos Rhino	35
	Havoc Launcher	12
	Khorne Bezerkers (8)	162	284
	Chainaxe (4)	12
	Gift of Mutation	10
	Veterans of the Long War	8
	Icon of Wrath	15
	Power Weapon	15
	Plasma Pistol	15
	Chaos Rhino	35
	Havoc Launcher	12
Heavy Support	Chaos Defiler	195	200
	Havoc Launcher	5
	Chaos Vindicator	120	157
	Siege Shield	10
	Havoc Launcher	12
	Daemonic Possession	15
	Chaos Vindicator	120	157
	Siege Shield	10
	Havoc Launcher	12
	Daemonic Possession	15

 

The heavy vehicles pound the enemy from a distance...

So the concept was simple: Pound the opponent from a distance with three 5-inch blast templates per turn, and destroy whatever was left in close combat afterwards. The Rhinos add to the firepower with their Havoc Launchers, and the Daemonic Possession on the tanks protected them from being stun-locked out of combat.

Unfortunately, I designed the army while 5^th Edition 40K was still in full swing, and while upgrades to the Bezerkers sorted out the discrepancy in points, I still completed it four years and two editions after the fact. It’s got no way of dealing with Fliers, for example, and since most armies these days have at least some form of flier it can cause problems. With the introduction of Hull Points in 6^th edition, tanks became much easier to destroy. And of course the idea of relying on blast templates and close combat weapons is something of a departure from the fact that the most damage I ever do to anything in 40K is with small-arms fire.

While the Bezerkers wait to eviscerate anything that gets too close.

Nonetheless, the Defilers and Vindicators do their jobs well as destruction machines and are absolute magnets for bullets. Oddly for an army that relies on close combat, I play a defensive game and allow the opponent to take the fight to me. I enjoy hiding my Bezerkers in ruins, out of line of sight. This forces my opponents to approach me if they want to win, because if they don’t, I can use the tanks to blast them from a distance.

This isn’t a strong army, by any stretch of the imagination. A hardcore tournament player would take me to pieces in moments. But it does what it does well enough, and hopefully proves a beyond-beginner level of challenge for most people. If Chaos are getting a new codex for 7^th edition, I’ll be interested to see what changes it will bring and how it will affect the dynamic of an army like this. Until then, I’ll try and get some games in, and see what happens when an unstoppable force whoops an immovable object’s ass.

Lead by this beast of a warrior (Games Day 2009 model)

You may also notice a difference in the painting of some of the models; this is again due to the changing editions of the paints. The Bezerkers started off being painted Mechrite Red, but by the time I got around to painting the last squad, two of the Rhinos and the two Vindicators, that colour had been replaced by Mephiston Red which is a little brighter. I was a bit miffed about that, but I wanted to see this army through to the end so I tried not to worry about it too much.

Backlog Beatdown: Ending the Fable with Fable 3

Fable 3 was one of the first games I bought for the Xbox 360, and for the longest time I didn’t play it. I wanted to beat Fable 2 first, and by the time I did (during No Game New Year!) I was all ‘Fabled’ out. I had heard that it wasn’t as good as Fable 2, but I wanted to play it myself before I passed judgement. Here’s what I found out:

I think this game is to RPGs of the 7^th generation of consoles what Final Fantasy Mystic Quest/Legend[1] was to the 4^th. Enjoyable enough, but sorely lacking in a lot of what makes RPGs so compelling to people who play them. Fortunately for me, that’s things like crafting and customising equipment, picking the correct combination of skills and feats for character customisation, and min-maxing stats. None of that is in Fable 3. Here, you always know what you’re supposed to be doing, even if that never varies from fetch quests and getting from point A to point B without getting killed along the way. There’s no point in building a character to a certain archetype either; the Fighter, Rogue and Mage tropes are all there but in Fable it is invariably more efficient to take a balance of all 3. You just… progress. And that’s fine by me.

The game looks beautiful. It goes from gorgeous rural landscapes to gritty industrial sections and still feels like part of the same world. But graphics are rarely the selling point for me. As long as it’s not hideous, I’ll happily play a game that looks reasonably average as long as it’s fun to play.

Let's not forget whose show this was...

Is Fable 3 fun? Yes – but not necessarily because of the gameplay. The combat has been criticised for being too easy and unbalanced, and while I think some of those issues may have been fixed in updates, the combat encounters sprung upon you are rarely welcome. The fun in Fable 3 comes from the story, which is good, and the voice performances of the lead characters which are excellent. The show goes to Steven Fry, who reprises his role as Reaver with exactly the right balance of menace and panache, but the huge list of big names – almost a who’s who of British actors – do a sterling job of bringing the world to life.

 

And then we get to the end of the game…

Peter Molyneux has been criticised for over-promising and under-delivering, and this is no more apparent than in the last few hours of the game. You overthrow the tyrannical ruler of Albion and become the Queen.[2] At this point, your country is under attack from the Darkness and will be attacked within a year, by which time you need to have raised 6,500,000 – it purports to fund an army, and a citizen will die for every gold piece you don’t raise. You have a number of moral choices to make in the form of petitions given to you by the community, including some of the NPCs – do you choose the good option, which almost always costs you money, or the evil option, which potentially saves you money but reduces the moral standing among your people? I chose the good moral choices thinking I could make up the excess later, but here the game presents its real challenge: People are always asking for money, and it’s not easy to make enough of it to defend your kingdom.

The only way that you can potentially have it both ways is to buy every property in the game, rent it out and spend a lot of time faffing about (the game credits you every 5 minutes or so) to raise the money. That was my strategy, but the game mis-represents the time you have to do this. There’s no warning; there’s something like half the year left between the last time you could affect the treasury and the final battle. By this time I’d raised less than 20,000, and when it was over, most of the people in my kingdom were dead.

Always a lot of money - but never enough.

I guess that’s a learning experience that I’ll take into the game next time, if there’ll be a next time. Not that I’m bitter, or anything – it’s more of a practical issue. I bought the game second-hand, and whoever had it before me didn’t look after the disk very well. It’s tanking the motors on my 360 just to run the game, probably not thanking me for it, so unless I really fancy going through the game again and meta-gaming it right up until the end, I’ll probably put the Fable series to bed, having now completed all 3 games.

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[1] Quest if you’re in the US, Legend in the UK.

[2] As I’ve said before, I almost always play female characters in video RPGs.