by [name redacted]

Week thirty-seven of my ongoing, irreverent news column; originally posted at Next Generation

Game of the Week:

Guild Wars Factions
ArenaNet/NCsoft
PC
Friday

This is sort of an expansion, though it’s being sold as a standalone entity. Think of it as Phantasy Star Online version 2, for the Dreamcast. With Factions installed, you can access either the normal Guild Wars campaign or a new second campaign exclusive to this release. This second bit, which ArenaNet likes to describe as a completely separate game, has your new regions, skills, professions, and whatnot and a whole new feature set for guilds and multiplayer play.

Rest of the Week:

Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War
Namco
PlayStation 2
Tuesday

The Ace Combat games have been around since the earliest days of the PlayStation, back when Namco was Sony’s big main counter-offense against the unstoppable force that was the Sega Saturn. (Yes, I’m kind of serious about that.) Namco being Namco, these aren’t really sims so much as they are arcadey dogfighting games. This most recent one isn’t much different from the predecessors – none of which have been very different from each other. As IGN puts it, “Non-fans can’t tell the difference between Ace Combat 4 and Ace Combat 5… Even fans may have a hard time distinguishing between the two.” Over the past decade, the series has gotten consistent “ih, not bad” ratings; this looks like it’s on its way to the same treatment.

Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny
Gust/NIS America
PlayStation 2
Tuesday

Nippon Ichi’s American branch made the original Atelier Iris one of its first experiments in publishing someone else’s game. I guess it must have worked out for them, as they’ve since gone on to turn into a kind of chibi-Atlus. There’s a sequel now, so here it is. The first game was completely unremarkable, though cute and very nice-looking – so you know in your heart how the niche RPG fans took to it. The sequel is basically unchanged, which probably goes as a recommendation to anyone who went mad over the first game.

These games are harmless enough, really. Even if intrinsically they’re kind of inane, it’s kind of neat we’re at the point where even the tchotchkes get localization. You don’t have to be a big developer or a big publisher anymore; all you need is a faithful audience who will keep buying your stuff. Imagine if someone were to really take advantage of this situation, and start publishing a bunch of weird experimental games by domestic authors. You could have a whole compilation series, sort of like what D3’s doing in Japan; the idea would be to collect them all, to see what wild ideas they’ve come up with next. After a while you’d start to recognize your favorite authors and you’d start to watch for their releases.

Black & White 2 – Battle of the Gods
Lionhead Studios/EA Games
PC
Monday

It’s been a few months; here’s your obligatory expansion pack. This one adds a new evil god to battle (summoned by the Aztecs, apparently), some new lands and miracles and doodads, and your typical system polishing. Of perhaps-note is that Battle of the Gods is being touted as much “darker” and “more sinister” than the basic game it’s expanding.

2006 FIFA World Cup
EA Canada/Electronic Arts
Xbox/360/PS2/PSP/GameCube/DS/GBA/PC
Monday

Gee, you think they’ve missed any platforms? This one’s getting adequate scores, in the upper-seventies to mid-eighties, depending on platform. The catch? All of them are from IGN so far. GameSpot says this game might be a little better than last year’s, though it doesn’t sound too enthusiastic about it.

Guilty Gear Dust Strikers
Arc System Works/Majesco Games
Nintendo DS
Tuesday

Guilty Gear continues its transition from flashy casual fighter to out-and-out party game, with an entry that seems to owe more to Smash Bros. than to Street Fighter. Now the playfield extends vertically instead of horizontally, and players will find themselves hopping around on platforms while they find the perfect opportunity to kick each other. It reminds me slightly of Jump Superstars, except not as… interesting. One thing you’ve got to say about Daisuke Ishiwatari – at least he doesn’t take his series too seriously. Why is Majesco publishing this instead of Sega?

LostMagic
Taito/Ubisoft
Nintendo DS
Tuesday

The relationship between Taito and Studio Ghibli continues (after Magic Pengel and Graffiti Kingdom), with an RPG designed by longtime animator and director Yoshiharu Sato (My Neighbor Totoro, Porco Rosso, The Cat Returns). Superficially, LostMagic looks almost exactly like Tao’s Adventure: a simple RPG based around capturing monsters and casting spells by drawing icons with the stylus. This should be a lot more refined than Tao, which was a good idea clunkily executed. Early word is positive.

Metal Saga
Crea-Tech/Atlus
PlayStation 2
Tuesday

You probably don’t remember the old NES and SNES Metal Max series, published by the dearly defunct Data East. (It would probably help if more than one of them had been published over here.) These were RPGs set in a post-apocalyptic future where people were forced to live inside caves to escape the monsters roaming outside. If it sounds like the title is a reference to Mad Max then, well, get ready for the PS2 version. One of the big elements here is your stable of customizable war vehicles with which you prowl the wastelands, fighting in random RPG battles . You can think of this as the bizarro low-budget Japanese version of Fallout. As you’d expect, reviews are mixed. One magazine gives it 4/10; another gives it 7/10. At least Metal Saga should stand out from the flock a bit.

Paradise
White Birds/Micro Applications
PC
Tuesday

As I keep saying, the graphical adventure genre is perfectly alive; it’s just being carried on in the back alleys by the people who really care about it. Maybe it’s not going anywhere special; then, when has it ever been? Paradise is the latest design of rising star Benoit Sokal, the guy behind the Syberia series. It’s a very pretty game; nice backgrounds. Well-rendered characters. All in 3D. The player takes the part of a student whose plane crashes on the border of a fictitious African country. You’ve got the amnesia thing going on, which seems to be an element of about two-fifths of the adventure games I see these days. GameSpot compares the game to The Longest Journey and Grim Fandango, which certainly sounds promising.

Rampage: Total Destruction
Pipeworks Software/Midway
PlayStation 2/GameCube
Monday

Oh dear. See, Midway – you need to stop doing this. Gauntlet and Spy Hunter, okay. The original games were fun, and had a lot of charm. If the remakes don’t – well. I can at least see why you remade them. Rampage, though? Why do you keep returning to this game? The original was one of the dumbest games of its era. It was kind of entertaining for five minutes, until your quarter wore off. There’s barely any game, though; it’s just premise: you’ve got a King Kong or Godzilla wannabe, and you punch buildings until they fall down while your health constantly drains from “enemy” gunfire. This version celebrates the twentieth anniversary of the original, by giving the player thirty different monsters to choose amongst, each with its own distinct jumping and punching values. The visuals look awfully… Renderwarey. As has been the trend lately, this game seems targeted towards kids – since children don’t know when they’re not having fun!

Winback 2: Project Poseidon
Cavia/Koei
Xbox/PlayStation 2
Tuesday

Winback was a long-in-development and short-on-praise attempt at a “Metal Gear Solid killer” for the N64. After it bombed, it got ported to the PS2 – where it did just about as poorly. Whatever the reason, Koei has decided to give the property one more chance. Since Winback developer Omega Force is up to the teeth with the Dynasty Warriors games, Koei has called on our old friends at Cavia to give the series a working-over in the mold of the earlier Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. This game appears to be less of a success; design problems abound, many of them lingering from the original Winback. Given that nobody really cares about Winback, the only thing that makes this game stand out is its developer – and even then, this is hardly one of Cavia’s best efforts. So, well. I guess for those watching Cavia or Koei, it at least makes a curious footnote.