Bad Memories

Another Code R is the sequel to the first Trace Memory game on the Nintendo DS. Being a console game, you naturally expect full voice-overs and real-time environment. Not quite but you really got to give CING a ton of props because they always come up with inventive ways of moving in 3D environment (see Hotel Dusk).

Your character Ashley in lodged in the center in the 3D space and you can only turned her in fixed 90 degrees angle around the room. You can only move left and right like a 2D scroller and sometimes the occasion up and down. (it's 3D, remember?). It's so bizarre and weird that I wasn't expecting to see this scheme again when it popped up in Swery's D4. But that's a story for another time.

Another Code R is one of the hardest game to finish, it really have all the fundamental flaws of an adventure game. Solving puzzles tends to make or break an adventure game and here, I find the puzzle solving to be very broken. You explore the environment and pick up clues and items to helped solve puzzles. But you can only pick up items according to how the game is designed. So unless you find the clue or puzzle to trigger it, you can never pick up the item even though you will eventually use it later on. That means a lot of wandering around aimlessly and going back and forth over the same things again.

I was more than relieved to finally see the end credits of this game. I actually went through a lot of trouble to find this game as it was never localized for the US region. At one point I didn't think I will get to play this at all but I never expected to feel this lukewarm after finishing.

The Ninja Dog

Before playing the Ninja Gaiden reboot, my experience with Ninja games were a bare minimum. I never got to play the original Ninja Gaiden NES trilogy and by the 3D era, ninja games have sort of been pigeon-holed to the stealth genre.

Recently I looked at my backlog of games on the PS3 and vowed to finish as many as possible before it becomes unmanageable. Right at the top of the list was Ninja Gaiden Sigma which is easily the oldest game I haven't finished. I have tried to play this game several times before but can never managed to adapt to the poor 3D camera and brutal difficulty.

This game is truly awesome once you get the hang of things and accept the shame of lowering the difficulty. Just imagine playing Metal Gear Solid but instead of Solid Snake, you play as Cyborg Ninja. The action is way too fast at times to the point I feel like I'm button-mashing rather than skillful beating these guys.

The game really shows age when you realised you can't change your weapons without going to the pause menu. The loading time is also freqeuent and sometimes right in the middle of the action with no benefit of installing game data to the HDD. This is probably due to the original coding of the game on the Xbox as it didn't have a HDD.

These issues aside, the game can be very fun and perfectly caprtures the essence of being a bad-ass ninja. I have thought of selling this game since it looks ugly in the red GH case and I wasn't playing it at all. Upon finishing the game, I liked it enough to keep in my collection and even added the third game to my Wii U.