Retro Games Beaten

Well, I beat D2. I would say it's Kenji Eno's defining game - the original maverick game designer of the Japanese industry. It's not a masterpiece but it's unique.

It's an odd mixture of b-movie horror - people turning to monsters after an odd airplane crash -, anxiety about the new millenium (the events start around Christmas 1999) and wild narrative ambition. It touches on themes like mental illness, drug addiction, women who hate men because of daddy/abandonment issues, and parents who ruin their children by trying to live vicariously through them. It wants to talk about the history of the human race and even how we're kind of the new dinosaurs. It has stats about the spread of AIDS, world illiteracy rates and bird species facing extinction just before the end credits. It has cutscenes that use real-world news footage, war footage, and clips from what must be some old cinema epic about Egypt (either public domain or used without permission). And CG of dinosaurs (but only in flashbacks - you don't encounter dinos or anything). It has an entire poem being read out for a few minutes over a blank screen. All of this probably makes it sound like an insufferable pretentious indie game, but it's not. It's just a game made by a (troubled) man who had a lot on his mind. The stuff about planet Earth is in the background, reserved for cutscenes where you have visions. The mental illness, loneliness and drugs (which are supposed to be medication for mental illness, but do more harm then good) are more so in the foreground, mostly through the character of Kimberly, your friend/friend? who rescues you at the start of the story, and probably the most troubled character that isn't the antagonist in a console game up to that point. But most of it is a weird horror-ish game set in desolate, snow-covered plains in Canada.

You spend a lot of time trekking through the snow, and some times riding a snowmobile. The rest of the time you're in wooden cabins or empty pharmaceutical labs. Combat is real-time and in first-person, but through random encounters. They don't get too tedious because the rate is usually reasonable and there are no real dungeons except for one sequence in a mine where you're looking for gasoline - you only fight when you're traveling from one spot to another, and when you run into a boss. Bosses have weak points and move around a fair deal, so they're decently exciting. Laura is a mostly mute protagonist, so most of the dialogue is through a few recurring NPCs, often Kimberly, but also this weird little girl who keeps disappearing, and Parker, a caring UFO enthusiast who always triggers Kimberly's man-hating and her subsequent guilt. There's a lot going on with that woman. You can also hunt wild animals with a rifle for food (ie extra healing items), which is difficult but pretty cool, and takes pictures that remain accessible through your VMU, which I didn't do much of. There are also mini adventure sequences similar to how the original D worked where you explore rooms for items and whatnot, but few real puzzles. Oh, actually, there is one terrible puzzle, where you have to play the first five notes from a Mozart piece on the piano by ear. I looked up the order because I couldn't do it. I figure Japanese children must have much better music classes that I got in elementary school. 

I enjoyed the atmosphere and all the snow. It's also flawed in a few ways.

First, the writing needed a good editor. Though of course I don't how much of it is the translation vs the original. It's pretty funny how much the characters tend to ramble at first, but it gets annoying. There are too many "vision" scenes in the late game - not the ones with the live footage, but the "LAURA... LAURA... LAURA! YOU MUST AWAKEN!" scenes, and they go on for too long. We got the damn point, stop repeating yourself. D already had this weird habit of saying your name three times in a row every time, too. It's not as bad as other games I've played lately, but you could improve most scenes by cutting out the weird rambly repetition that kicks in after a while. There are a lot of cutscenes, but the whole thing isn't very long (under 10 hours). I would've taken more exploration, maybe a few more bosses. The interactions between Kimberly and Parker and her incredible bad faith are hilarious though. I don't mind that the plot goes in so many different directions and has all these ideas that aren't fully developed. I don't even mind that it doesn't quite succeed at a lot of what it takes on. It's part of the charm. But for how weird Kenji Eno's writing could be, he also relied a lot on clichés and genre tropes. The vampire stuff in D, the Alien stuff in Enemy Zero, and the horror stuff here, plus some RPG-like elements in the plot, like that sorcerer and all that chosen one-style talk. I would have liked to see a game where it's just the weird stuff. Maybe it wouldn't have been coherent enough.

The voice acting is better than something like Resident Evil. It's only really bad when things get dramatic, and that one boss fight with the fat woman with a violin who keeps repeating the same stupid-ass phrases over and over. "I wanted to play a duet with my son!" I also found the end battle anticlimactic. The final path to the mountain was pretty combat heavy for this game, but then the final boss is the least interesting gameplay-wise. They got a little too creative with the concept there - Eno had a thing about the five senses, and famously made a game for blind people. Let's just say the boss plays with that. Disc 3 seemed to drag on a bit too. I don't think the conclusion was as good as the beginning and development for me. I liked the ending though, mostly.

You definitely need some patience to appreciate this game, but I liked it. You can call it "survival horror", but the whole game feels like Resident Evil never even existed. It's the second weirdest game I've ever played, after Planet Laika. In a way it's an evolution of the FVM adventure genre the original D belonged to, with RPG and SH components added into the mix. When the game is working (which was still most of the time for me), it feels really special - more so than maybe some "better" games. And I've spent a lot of time walking through the snow in my life, after all. I'm going to give Enemy Zero a try eventually, as it's the last of the 3 Laura games I haven't played.

I give this one a ***1/2 (*** means good, extra 1/2 star is for the uniqueness of the experience).

Yes, you'd have to dub the whole thing as it's basically the sound version of a visual novel (so a Sound Novel in the true sense, more than Chunsoft's). Or an interactive radio play.

I didn't realize Kenji Eno was a musician prior to this. He composed the music for this game, it's pretty good stuff. Lots of piano, which may help explain the whole piano part in the story. He even worked as a composer on a few games he didn't make, and apparently has multiple albums.

Xeogred Nice beat. Another bit of trivia is the lead programmer for Twinkle Tale became a pretty well-known competitive Virtua Fighter player a few years later, and then created his own 3D fighter series, Goiken Muyou.

I beat Power Rangers: SPD on the GBA. Also by Natsume, also mostly a single-plane beat-'em-up with very minimal platforming. But it's a step down from the SNES games, though it's longer. The fighting feels too slow and you always fight the same three enemies, for the nearly three hours it lasts, so it's a little dull. But it's still playable. They do try to include some variety - there are fake Mode 7 obstacle course levels (they kind of suck) and stuff like that. I'd say the ones I liked better were the non-linear levels where you have to find 10 of something hidden around. You get assigned characters depending on the level because they each have a special ability, and the Red Ranger is the best because he's a bit faster and he's the only one with a jump kick. The bosses are weird - you have to fight really cheaply as they have almost no opening - and the giant robot battles are really trash in this one, but there's only a few and they're easy. It's also an ugly game. I can't recommend it, but there's worse. I'll give ** (so-so).

Ex : We had some similar thoughts on Twinkle Tale:
"-Enemies can warp right where you stand, or drop right where you stand, with no warning." - On top of the annoying spawning ghosts, this reminded me of the falling spiders that hit you. Was really hard to tell when they were in the foreground or not, like when is this going to hit my sprite and hurt me.
"*The developers could have used A = hold to strafe, B = fire, C = tap to change magic, hold C to activate super magic." - I like this idea haha.

Overall, the grievances didn't bother me as much. But yeah, it could have maybe cooked a smudge longer for a little refinement, or a sequel could have been awesome.

I did beat that PW fighting game recently too. Was easy to tell it's like using the same tech and style as the SNES Gundam fighting games.

toei : From what I've gathered, seems like most post-Mighty Morphin PW games are kind of trashy. I looked up the GBA stuff when you last mentioned them, but yeah they look so ugly I don't know if I want to touch them lol. There's gotta be better GBA stuff I could hit up too, I'd hope so. Still haven't explored that platform much.