Spontaneous Monotony

The Clone Wars has been greeted by a massive outporing of dislike from critics and Star Wars fans alike. Not since Star Wars: The One With Jar Jar Binks In It (aka Episode I) has there been such a negative reaction to a Star Wars movie.

The one thing you’re probably already aware of is the fact that it is not a live action movie but an animated one. The style is something between a conventional cartoon and the more realistic CGI of Pixar et al. From the stills that I saw online prior to getting this DVD, I thought that it would really annoy me. The characters looked weird indeed. However when you actually see it in motion the CGI isn’t nearly as disconcerting as that. In fact, it’s actually growing on me.

The plot, it has to be said, is fairly weak. It is essentially just a by-the-numbers attempt at fitting all the desired elements (opening space battle, ground battle, air assault, lightsaber duel, end of film) into the hour and forty minute running time. This only strengthens the hand of those who claim that TCW is really just an extended opening episode for the new TV series. In a TV episode, a plot which only serves as a means of connecting different action sequences is largely acceptable, because the more involved plot is handed out in small helpings throughout the series to come to a climax in the final few episodes. TCW, being a one off film, doesn’t have that advantage and is left looking a bit weak in the story department.

The only significant new character, Ahsoka Tano, is done quite well. Aside from the times when she calls Skywalker “sky guy” (which is wooden and forced to a greater degree than any of the scenes fans love to hate in the Prequel Trilogy). You may at this point be thinking that my mention of Jar Jar Binks was just the typical Star Wars fan’s swipe in The Phantom Menace’s direction, but there was a point to it. As unlikely as it may seem, TCW has actually managed to come up with a character even more irritating than Jar Jar. Ziro the Hutt is Jabba’s ‘uncle’ – at least that’s what the characters say. Evidently nobody told the production team, as the Ziro actually put into the film is female. Why nobody at Lucasfilm noticed this slight (!) discrepancy before the release is quite beyond me. Let me make it quite clear, however, that as an irritant Jar Jar is pollen to Ziro’s sulphuric acid. I cannot begin to explain just how utterly infuriating it is to have Ziro on the screen. Jar Jar at least managed to be funny from time to time – Ziro is more grating and less funny.

Now on to the central issue: the action. This is, on the whole, excellent. My one concern is that some of the lightsaber action (mostly the first duel) is animated in a very jerky, stunted way. This is obviously supposed to give the impression of a frantic, desperate duel but doesn’t really work. When the animators stick to emulating the lightsaber fights of the Prequel Trilogy, all is well. The conventional battle sequences are very well done indeed. Furthermore, because all of the participants (clones, droids, and starships) were done as CGI in the live action prequel trilogy, they look more or less identical in TCW.

Overall then, TCW doesn’t have the plot strength to compete with the live action films. It isn’t as good as it could have been. Nor, however, is it the cinematic carbuncle that the critics and hardcore fans will have you believe.

Rating:

Crackdown has overcome initial skepticism to become a Grand Theft Auto clone that has everything a comic book lover could want – cel-shaded graphics, superpowers, and very little ‘fluff’ to get in the way of the core gameplay (no ridiculous ambulance minigame required to get 100% completion here).

When Crackdown was released, very little attention was paid to it as a game. Aside from the fact that it was another GTA clone on a console which already had Saints Row and Just Cause, it was the delivery vehicle for the far more anticipated Halo 3 beta. Thousands of fanboys dutifully went out and paid £40 for a game they had no intention of playing just for the ‘privilege’ of acting as unpaid beta testers for Microsoft.

This in mind, prior to release many people were expecting Crackdown to be a real lemon. The logic being that the fanboys would buy any game that the Halo 3 beta was bundle with, and that Microsoft would exploit this in order to shift copies of an underwhelming game. Read more…

A couple of people mentioned to me yesterday that the scores (and associated oh-so-snazzy graphics, which btw I made myself and are Creative Commonsed like the blog) had disappeared from the blog. It turns out that, in the process of removing the ‘e acute’ character from every mention of Pokemon (RSS programs didn’t like it), I copy-pasted the final draft of the review before I put it on the site and added the graphics. Mystery solved

To go with my review of Pokémon Pearl, here’s a quick explanation of how the ‘overall score’ for a game is calculated.

Each game is assesed on five areas – Gameplay, Graphics, Sound, Lifespan, and ‘Opinion’ (how fun I think the game is, independent of the other four comparators). The game gets a mark out of 10 (with half-point mark intervals – 7, 7.5, 8 etc.) Obviously some are more important than others. The weightings are as follows:

• Gameplay: 50%
• Graphics: 20%
• Sound, Lifespan, Opinion: 10% each

Pokemon Pearl has a lot to live up to. I don’t mean the massive merchandise pester power exploitation sales that rely on the Pokemon brand. I mean game-wise. When you look past the reputation as a ‘kids game’- which, if you look at the game rather than the cartoon and such, was never really true in the first place – Pokemon is one of the finest RPG series on any platform. There are very few games which can match up to the quality of the first nine Final Fantasies (though X was fantastic, I’m not entirely sold on it or XII), and Pokemon is one of them.

The new duo are already the best-selling games in the series – although given that there are more DS owners now than there were GBA owners (RSE/FRLG) or Gameboy owners (RBY/GSC) in the past, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Hour of Victory (recently the recipient of one of Gamespot’s lowest ever scores) will probably sell more than F-19 Stealth Fighter, but if you say the former is therefore a better game you will quite justifiably be sectioned.

Don’t let the mention of that abomination get you all upset – Pokemon Pearl is a very good game indeed. ‘Best in series’ it probably isn’t, but being second-best to Pokemon Crystal is a better game than many good developers ever achieve.

The story is a near carbon-copy of Ruby and Sapphire’s. Go out into the long grass to help the local Professor (who lives in some inbred backwater as opposed to a city), get attacked by some puny wild Pokemon. Instead of just skelping the thing with whatever limb is to hand, you pick one of three Pokemon – a Grass type, a Water type, or a Fire type, and fight it off that way. Incidentally, even with this concession I’m surprised that the ‘animal rights’ nutters haven’t started a terrorism campaign against a game that revolves around enslaving animals in very small cages and making them fight to the death point of passing out OK, back to the story. You then go on a journey with your Pokemon, catching others along the way as you fight against Gym Leaders, and try to stop a criminal gang from destroying the world with a legendary Pokemon. Replace Dialga and Palkia with Groudon and Kyogre, and the plot hasn’t changed at all. Unlike most RPGs though, the plot has never really been a big part of Pokemon games. The Gameboy/GBC-era games didn’t really have any plot to speak of, and yet Crystal is arguably one of the greatest games ever made.

The battle mechanic is familiar – your Pokemon faces off against another person’s Pokemon. Each Pokemon has four moves, and a set ot stats. Special Attacks like Fire, Electric and Water, are matched against the foe’s Special Defense (sic), while Physical Attacks like Fighting and Normal are matched against the foe’s Defense (sic). This continues, with each Pokemon attacking in turn, until all of one trainer’s Pokemon are dead. The trainer whose creatures are not pushing up daisies wins (hint: if this isn’t you then game over). Fights with wild Pokemon (which seem to be remarkably tame in staying within their allocated long grass, and not coming on to roads and paths) are identical except that there is only one opponent, and you have the option of capturing the beast (with some form of PokeBall) or running away from the battle (if for some reason your team of up to six superbeasts is unable to beat that solitary wild Machop.

The graphics vary between impressive and disappointing. The quasi-3D exploration is great – especially for the DS, which is generally seen as being equivalent in horsepower to a Super NES (remember the flat-3d strangeness of FFVI’s Chocobo riding?). Unfortunately the battle graphics aren’t up to the same standard. Sure, a Pokemon Stadium-style full 3d battle isn’t within the capabilities of the DS, but it would be nice if the battles were at least animated. Instead of ‘Tackle’ attack (the game’s most basic move) involving a hit animation appearing over the target (with a corresponding sound), why can’t the attacking Pokemon at least move? They already have (poor, and barely-noticeable) animation when a Pokemon enters a battle, so why not have at least basic animations for a Pokemon attacking? Also grating is the re-use of most of the graphics from Ruby and Sapphire. Sure, a Golbat is always going to look like a Golbat, but in many cases the exact same image is reused. Would Nintendo’s budget not stretch to redrawing a couple of hundred pictures?

The sound is similarly inconsistent. Some of the music is top-class, and some of it is dire. In this case it would have been better for them to reuse old stuff – I’ll take the music from Yellow or Crystal (suitably DS-remastered of course) over just about anything in Pearl.

In any Pokemon game, the most central aspect is the Pokemon themselves. Unlike previous ‘new generation’ games (e.g. Ruby), Pearl does not have a complete new set of Pokemon. Instead you get a set of 150 Pokemon, maybe a third or half of which are new. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing – the sheer number of Pokemon was destined to become absurd if they didn’t cut back on new additions. But the selection leaves a lot to be desired. Some essential types are in very short supply. The only Fire Pokemon (needed for killing Grass types and similar) you can get during the main game (other than the starter, which is no help to 2/3 of players) is the thoroughly useless Ponyta/Rapidash. Remember what I said earlier about Fire attacks being powered by a Pokemon’s Special Attack? Ponyta/Rapidash doesn’t really have much Special Attack to speak of. Electric types (necessary for killing Water, Flying etc.) aren’t in quite the same dire straits, but you still only have a choice of 3 species – of which only Pikachu/Raichu is of any use. Actually bothering to test the game might have shown Game Freak that it would be an idea to have fewer new, and generally useless (at least in comparison to existing ones), Grass Pokemon and put in a couple of decent Pokemon like Vulpix and Magnemite. In a game that revolves around rock-paper-scissors matching of Pokemon types, having two critical ones in such short supply is an oversight that would be confusing in an amateur game, let alone one with the budget and development time of Pokemon.

All of these faults do detract from the fun, but make no mistake. The core Pokemon gameplay is as fun as it ever was (assuming you can cope without Electric and Fire Pokemon until you beat the game for the ‘National’ Pokedex), and you will get a solid 40+ hours out of this without any great deal of grind. It doesn’t match up to its predecessors, but this is still a great game.

Scores
Gameplay:

Graphics:

Sound:

Lifespan:

Opinion:

Final Score: 8.0/10