Retro Story

Before jumping into Madworld, i decided to get myself familiarised with some of Yasumi Matsuno earlier works. Matsuno who serves as a story consultant in Madworld happens to be one of the most talented game designers working today, having done Square Enix's most critically-acclaimed games, Vagrant Story and FFXII. Both were the only SE games to ever achieve perfect score from Famitsu reviewer team which is no small feat indeed. Vagrant Story as you have may have read has been sitting in my collection gathering dust so the timing was just right to finally get started on it.

The game doesn't play like a standard RPG, leaving you by yourself to make your way out of the dungeon as you progress through the game. I suspected you won't ever leave the dungeon at all as one of the statistics the game records whenever you make a save is how many percentage of the dungeon you have explored. The game like any RPG looks a bit daunting to get into when i initially start but i soon discover it to be pretty easy to get into, with a slight emphasis on weapon design. The cinematics are a thing of beauty probably the best i have seen on the PSOne library which uses in-game engine for storytelling. The only problem i have is the game camera often doesn't give you the best angle and adjusting it is a little cumbersome but the game offers enough flexibility so it doesn't become an issue, even allowing you to adjust the view during the combat.

Does What A Spider Can

There was an article recently that suggested that superheroes are just too powerful to be portrayed accurately in video games. I on the other hand don't seem to think so, in fact just about the only sandbox-styled games that i would play other than SEGA's yakuza series happened to be comic superheroes games.

Back before free-roaming games became possible on console, there was one noteworthy superhuman game on the PSOne simply called spider-man. While it isn't sandbox-styled, it was one of the first that actually lets you do what a spider can. It was a game was made for fans of the comic book, from the rogue gallery of villians included to the hidden comic covers and bonus costumes spidey have wore over the years. It also takes its cues from the animated series with spidey voice-over done by the same lead actor and narration from stan 'the man' lee. You don't have to be a comic book collector to enjoy this game but you will definitely appreciate the little touches thrown in for long-time fans. It also benefit from the timing because the sam raimi's spider-man movies have yet to be released so the developers have the free reign to create an original storyline and pull the characters from the beloved comic book series. The problem i find with most superhero games these days are the developers aren't sure whether to follow the movie franchise or the comic storyline, most of the time meshing the movie plot with some familiar characters from the comic creating one fine mess. With the comic book industry in a state of flux, the movie franchise often take precedence these days so it's nice to pull one a retro game from a time when things are in the right perspective.

32-bit Onimusha

Nowadays i'm pretty sure of my preference in games that i don't normally buy games based on reviews anymore. Sure i will read some reviews but usually it's after buying the game to see if i agree with the reviewer's argument or whether i missed anything in the course of playing it. i wasn't so wise back in the 32-bit era, infact i bought a konami game solely because the back of the box says "from the makers of metal gear solid and silent hill". During that time, you will be hard-pressed to shop for games and not come across a game from a famous developer or publisher that says from the makers of this or that. You don't see this very often anymore but i gotta admit i got a kick of this even if i already know who was developing the game.

Anyways this game was called Ronin Blade and was infact developed by Konami Computer Entertainment Sapporo not KCET so it actually had nothing to do with Metal Gear or Silent Hill. It also plays nothing like those games instead it feels like a game trying to ape capcom game rather than a konami game. Thankfully the game does not suck even ten years upon release but it's not always you suckered into buying something based on brand alone and actually end up with a quality product.