Wednesday, March 24, 2010

@Play 69: Review of Shiren the Wanderer for the Wii

@Play 69

The Wii entry in the Shiren series is a game I really wanted to like, but ultimately it tries to hedge its bets too much with lame JRPG-isms. There were times when I was actually shouting at the screen for the cutscene to end. And we're not talking about cinematic Final Fantasy cutscenes, we're talking about those in which 3D models move artificially around their little stage and have an obnoxious little drama. In 2D it was possible to get away with this, but in 3D it hasn't aged well.

Some of the awesome gameplay from past entries in the series is back, but most reports say that the game doesn't really pick up until you've finished the main quest. 24 hours of play time into it, and I'm still not there.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

@Play 68: Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup Travel Functions

@Play 68

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup's autoexplore function is a bit shocking, at first glance, to witness, but is really useful for getting through one of Crawl's huge levels fast and making sure you don't miss anything. Well, anything not behind a secret door or in a disconnected part of the level. This article is a little shorter than usual, but still pretty long relative to most of the other things on GameSetWatch.

This is the last Crawlapalooza article, but probably not the last we'll be seeing on Crawl, not by a long shot. The next article will probably be on Shiren Wii, which I'l still playing though. Most people who have played it say that the bonus dungeons in this one are particularly fun, so I feel giving this game a fair shake means getting through all the story dungeons first, which are taking rather some time to complete.