RANT: Wild Arms 4 - How the Mighty Have Fallen

Warning, most likely contains massive spoilers.

Last night, I finished Wild Arms 4, and as the tears did stream from the eyes of my childhood, my present self only frowned. The game is terrible. Well, the game itself could only be considered bad; it only goes the extra mile into total crap on the virtue that it is a Wild Arms game, and therefore has a certain quality to uphold. I have the same problem with this game that I did with Final Fantasy XII, in that, if it was called something different, I wouldn’t care. I wouldn’t play it, but I wouldn’t care either. It’s the fact that it bears the name of something close to me that hurts so badly, and for that, it must be punished. I could go on for ages about everything wrong with it … so I will. Here is what I’m sure will be a massive list, in no particular order, of what I believe was done wrong. I’m not expecting everyone to agree, but these are the reasons why I, as a fan, feel this game is a total letdown.

A quick aside before we begin: I don’t think FFXII is a terrible game. It’s beautiful, sounds great, and is well written. The only problem I have is the combat. My spite comes purely from the fact that it’s way too different; why change what’s worked for 20 years? Plus, if you’re going to make an RPG where you roam around during battle, such as Star Ocean or Tales of the Abyss, I need the ability to attack, dodge/block and flee properly. The closest thing FFXII comes to this is choosing an attack, waiting for the ‘loading-move-please-wait-patiently-okay-go!’ bar to fill up, and then, once your turn happens, becoming a sitting duck. You’ve got no way to defend yourself, and running only serves to put distance between you and the enemy, which they will ignore when they attack, hitting you with a “close range” attack from across the map. So yeah, good production value, but swing and a miss in terms of the whole game play thing.

And now, the abysmal experience that is Wild Arms 4. Again, these are in no particular order, except for the first two which I believe are the most glaring errors.

Game…this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.


1. Not Nearly Western Enough. This game takes the established canon and almost completely ignores it. Does anyone remember the futuristic levels in Crash Bandicoot 3, like Future Frenzy? Remember how they were like parodies of a futuristic world? That’s what this game feels like, only with an “old west” backdrop. I mean, it starts off in a floating town with cloaking capabilities, so that the rest of the world can’t see it…why? The only guns you use in the game are made from dust which is apparently virus sized machines that reform themselves into a gun [an ARM] when someone who can use them touches them, and when they are fired, you get this sickening mix of a low powered rifle crack and ‘pew-pew’ sounds from some kind of laser weapon. In WA3, even just the title screen has the greatest old gun sound that you’ve ever heard, just this awesome crash that sounded like a cast iron rifle that’s never been cleaned, and, by right, should never. It’s a disgrace. Yes, I know there was advanced technology in the first 3 games, but it was always alien. There was a distinct difference between the alien or demon technology and the rustic western style of the protagonists, and it made you fall in love with the iron and dirt of the frontier.

Next is the clothing, which seems unimportant but it’s a very noticeable issue. The first three games had a wide variety of clothing for both the playable and non-playable characters, but the theme was unified amongst them. In WA4, the main character has a dress shirt, an oversized jacket, and a friggin’ neckerchief, while his backup male lead is walking around in a jacket, leather pants and a gravity defining scarf that will blow as if facing a wind machine at all times, despite your location. Atmosphere broken, cool points withheld. Even the girls, one of whom wears a hoop-esque dress and the other a large overcoat and a sweater/tie, do nothing to help things. The NPCs are all in modern-day casual clothes, except for the military types who’re in bland fatigues. I did, however, see three people dressed as they should be (i.e. overcoat, cowboy hat, bullet belt) and spent a few minutes with them before begrudgingly going about my business.

The setting is also off. About a third of the environments look in place, and the rest look to be about 100 years passed the mark. Most of the towns are cobblestoned and built up, with streetlights and – OMG, what is this?! Any answer other than “failure” is unacceptable.


2. Gameplay/Design. Yes, this is a rather broad category, but it’s true. The worst of the worst has to be the battle system. The battle field is divided up into 7 hexagons, which then form a large hexagon. When a battle starts, each player is placed in a random hex not occupied by an enemy. You can move to adjacent hexes and occupy the same hex as an ally. When a hex is attacked by a player or enemy, every target in it takes damage, and the same goes for healing. This means that, if you’re unlucky enough to have everyone start in the same hex, you could be dead before your first turn. Outstanding. The system as a whole is difficult to get used to and even harder to enjoy.

Another major problem is that they took out the tool system. Yeah, let that sink in for a bit. No more of everyone having their own set of tools that you have to use intuitively to solve puzzles; now, all we have whenever we come across a puzzle (which isn’t a whole lot, relatively) is all that’s been provided in the current and possibly surrounding rooms. So yeah, thinking has pretty much gone out the window when there is a switch and a glowing sword right next to it. Gee, I wonder if I should smack the switch with the sword? Nah, I think I’ll run into the closed door for 10 minutes and then give up and consult GameFaqs. Before I even encountered the first enemy, I noticed what they’d done to this, and immediately, my heart sunk.

The last major problem is that you can jump. Yes, you can jump, and what does the power to jump inevitably bring in an RPG? Crappy platforming! And this game has it in spades. Coupled with the fact that you can slow down time for a brief period and you have a smoothie of crippling clichés that ruined the game from the word go.

Another problem I have, although much smaller, is the games numbering. By this, I mean that the numbers are way too big. You start off the game at level 1 with something like 2500 health, which doesn’t increase much as the game progresses. What this does for me, at least, is provide no satisfaction in getting stronger. At first, I thought this was absolutely ludicrous, but after seeing how much damage the enemies do, I realized it was necessary to even make it past the prologue (if you can call it that).

That’s another thing, the game doesn’t have prologues! In the first three games, each playable character had their own prologue, which not only served as their tutorial, but interactively told their back story. This allowed us to avoid the huge wall of text that would merely explain who they were, and allowed us to experience it instead. By doing this, we developed a relationship and actually cared about the characters. Not so much in WA4. Not only didn’t I care about the characters, I despised them, because when they were being whiney and obnoxious (and they never weren’t), I didn’t even have the slight emotional connection to fall back on.

I have three more gripes before moving on, and the first are the cut scenes. The cut scenes, as I am ashamed to call them, consist of still images that change (sometimes) as the characters’ emotions change based on the written dialogue. As bad as this is, it only becomes worse when you encounter them pretty much every time you change screens in some levels, realize they’re unskippable, and have no substance.

Secondly, is the functionality of the Black Market. Once you obtain the Black Pass, you can access the Black Market, standard stuff. However, this wouldn’t be WA4 if it didn’t try and ruin things, so what we end up with is a store where you can buy very expensive items, some of which are necessary for fighting Ragu O’Ragla, the series’ ultimate foe. That doesn’t sound too bad, right? Well, what if I told you that you had to buy these things with your hard earned LEVELS. Yes, that’s right; you need to sacrifice the levels of your characters, in order to purchase an item, which allows you to fight an extremely strong boss. It’s too bad that once you buy what you need, you’re TOO WEAK TO USE THEM. My god, game, what did we do to deserve this? Did too many people make it through the 100 level dungeon of WA3 – without saving, I might add – to take on Ragu? Now, I wasn’t about to invest the extra time in this game to get to Ragu, but I’d be willing to bet that they messed him up, too.

Lastly, is the linearity of the entire experience. If you thought FFX was linear, then you clearly haven’t played this. The difference? FFX was awesome, which made up for it. This game is literally a bunch of straight line levels with invisible walls to make it look more expansive, strung together in sequence. And for what purpose you might ask? Why, to progress the story, of course! Pretty much every time you enter a new part of a level, you get another one of those terrible slideshow cut scenes again, which only serves to remind you that you couldn’t care less about what’s going on. This leads us into our next major point…


3. Storyline. They really dropped the ball here. One of the most engaging aspects of this series is its narrative. The first three games all gave me quite an emotional response throughout, culminating in their endings, all wonderful. This game, as I’ve mentioned, did not live up. The story centers on Jude, a boy from the aforementioned floating town thing, who is a gene driver, someone who is able to control the tiny machine things that make the arms. The military comes and breaks their town, capturing all of its residents, except Jude, who is helped out by Arnaud, a mercenary (the guy in all the leather). Eventually, they meet Yulie, who can control ARMs. The military group who busted up the floating town wants to capture her because they have an ARM, too, and they need her to power it up. Then, they meet Raquel, who wears the coat because her body’s messed up, but nobody knows that and she comes with them. Basically through the whole game, the group is on the run from the military group. As you can probably tell, it’s not very engaging and is extremely dialogue-heavy, which only serves to inflate the lack of substance.

A main theme of the story is being an adult. Since the oldest in the group is nineteen, I think, every chance that there is to talk about how awesome it is to be an adult and what responsibility is like is taken with gusto. It gets so awkward that you really can’t understand, unless you experience it for yourself. By the time the game is over, it feels more like a PSA than anything. It goes way over the top, and again only serves to try to hide the fact that there is very little by way of story. There’s so little, in fact, that I really can’t say much else about it, so…moving on.

4. Music. Eh, I really don’t have a whole lot to say about this either. The music isn’t that bad; it just doesn’t have the same spirit as its predecessors. It doesn’t really incorporate the same instruments, ditching the acoustic guitar for an electronics board, and does more to let me down and suck the fun out of the experience. I absolutely loved the music of the first three; it did everything it could to capture and really draw you into the game. The mood created was beyond that of even some of the early Final Fantasy titles (“To Zanarkand” and “Someday the Dream Will End” from FFX will always hold the top spot, though). This game, sadly, just doesn’t deliver.


5. Random Grievances. The following are things that I can’t really categorize, but nonetheless took away from the experience.

Loreless. The series has a wealth of stories and lore that is never accessed in WA4, and thus majorly disconnects from the series. A lot of the fun in the previous titles came from the engrossing story and all the details put into the game’s background. WA4 ignores this, and suffers for it. As a result of there being no focus on the world’s deities, the game has FIVE guardians. One for each of the basic elements: fire, earth, water, wind, and Ordynuk, if you’re on a blank hex when you summon. Now, I know there was a massive drop in the number of useable guardians from the first two games to the third, but come on, FIVE!? Oh, and by the way, Ordynuk (the healer) is no longer a unicorn; he’s some kind of flying snake thing. What about flying snake thing says “healing”? And just as a final kick, none of the available guardians are the Beast Lords. That’s right, no Zephyr, who had a major story role in WA1; no Lucied, who, in one way or another, has been a part of each of the first three; and no Justine or Raftina, who were just handy to have around. (Seriously, how did they cut out Lucied?).

No Baskars! Yes, the Baskars are apparently no longer with us, their village reduced to rubble with quite a bit of sand covering it. Maybe this is why there’s no lore. Tim, Gallows, Baskar chief guy with the big fluffy dog, we miss you, but maybe you’re better off not being a part of this one.

No Ex File Keys. You still get Ex File keys in the game, but they are not items that you collect in your inventory, and you don’t know if you’ve gotten them until you’ve beaten the game. So if you’re going for all them (don’t know why you would, but IF) you have to manually keep track of what ones you’ve earned. Thanks, game, for withholding this simple convenience.

Swords…? Never bring a knife to a gun fight, but Raquel does just that! Mind you, it’s a big sword and does the most damage in the game, but still, once the enemy has upgraded to cannons and bio-weapons that also use cannons, it’s time to upgrade to a six shooter, at least. The other two support characters go even further into uselessness. Arnaud uses throwing knives and Yulie uses – and I’m not making this up – three rings that are linked together. I’m not quite sure how this does any damage, but, at this point, I really don’t expect any less. Yes, I know that both Jack and Rudy used swords in WA1, but I can’t recall any of their enemies having guns, except for the Golems, although I’m not 100% on that. Also, there were an assortment of weapons in WA2, which were strange, but, even then, they still weren’t going up against tanks and ground assault vehicles.

Badges of Failure. This game uses badges to do the things that the items you could equip to your guardian mediums did in WA3. The problem is that at the highest level, you only have room for 3 badges at once on any given player. This limits you from beefing up your characters, which is disappointing (one thing I can say though is, if you manage to get the Sheriff Star, you’re pretty much invincible).

The Ending. Fitting that I should end this with how terrible the ending was. The ending takes the crappy slideshow to a whole new level, resorting to still images with a block of text saying something to the effect of “Jude did this and lived happily ever after”. Show, don’t tell. C’mon, game, this is day one of creative writing class. If you want to, say, show me that two people are now together, show a tiny cut scene of them walking together, slightly aged, with a child running around with them. If you do this, I will be able to piece together that the characters in question have gotten together and started a family. It’s not that complicated. But really, after the crap I endured while playing this game, did I really expect a good ending? The answer is no, but I expected something better than what I got, which was a brief wrap-up of each character’s childhood and a description of their adult life. I guess they’re finally adults. Maybe now they’ll shut up about it.

Phew, feels good to get that off my chest. Shockingly, after this, there was another game thrown together, but it was made in limited quantities, so I haven’t gotten a hold of that one yet. Hopefully soon, I’ll be able to acquire it, but after playing this, I’ve got no expectations about its quality.

On a side note, Grandia 1 just got released on the PlayStation network! I hope to get it ASAP, and once I finish it, I’ll be doing a retro review of it (hopefully it doesn’t end up in the rant section). I’ve been trying to hold back on doing reviews of old games, since, at this stage, it’s kind of moot to be talking about PS2/PSX games, but since it’s been re-released and is now easily attainable, I feel it’s relevant again.

That’s all for now, reviews of new games in May!

-AtomicPineapple

Legendary – The worst thing to happen to mythical creatures since sparkling vampires.

On Friday I went out for a walk with my girlfriend and ended up renting Legendary, as being fresh off of my Disgaea 3 conquest, I needed something with a little more movement and I figured why not get a simple action game. There was a deal on, so I got Bioshock as well and holy crap, am I happy I did, because after playing Legendary for about 8 hours not only had I had enough of the game, but I’d also beaten it. Unfortunately, the game’s length did nothing to keep it from wearing out it’s welcome a touch prematurely.

To my dismay when I got home, Legendary was not an action game, but another FPS, not that you could tell from the back of the box (I suppose the guy on the front with the gun should’ve tipped me off, but lots of action games have them so I just went with it). But anyway, I began, not knowing what to expect and trying to keep an open mind even as the opening cutscene skipped around like a CD cleaned with steel wool. Afterwards, I discovered that the dank aesthetic of the previous cinematic seizure was to be with me for the whole experience, so I settled in for the long haul and here I am, ready to sink my teeth into the jugular of this legendary mess.

Lets start off on what got to me the most, the game’s individuality and creativity, or more accurately, the lack thereof. The overall design is bland and extremely shallow, utilising many shades of brown, grey and browny greyish. Gritty textures blanket the cramped environments, except whenever you’re inside a building, in which the rocks and mud are replaced by a dirty, shiny metallic glint. Lighting effects are poor at the best of times, save for a few moments where the programmers were actually awake, and only flatten the already dull presentation. That being said, there were moments when the game’s atmosphere got so intense that I forgot what I was playing and started to enjoy myself, only to be yanked back into reality seconds later as I turned the corner to find another bleak attempt at a setting. These mere moments (ironically the most enjoyable part of the game) are something that really annoyed me, because it showed what the entire game could’ve been if the effort had been put forth. I feel very conflicted ripping this game apart because I know that there is potential here, but it’s crippled by inconsistency, the mood shifting from wow back to irritated almost instantly.

The levels larger than the sewers or the several underground paths the game makes you traverse are littered with so much debris that it turns what should be some room for you to manoeuvre around into yet another tight corridor. These are usually far worse than the tunnels because at least in the tunnels, you know you’re trapped. Out in the “open”, the crap strewn about is always low to the ground, allowing you to see some free space, but never allowing you to access it because of your insanely short jump height. Also bland and repetitive are the enemies, having little by way of texture and even less in colour. More dull, flat shades of grey and brown to endlessly massacre, only highlighted by splotches of red and blue once the bullets do their thing. And to make matters worse, the selection of uninspired enemies is shorter than the aforementioned bunny hops. There are 12 types of enemies in the game, and that’s if you’re lenient. One is just a sac that spawns a different enemy, 2 are just harder versions of weaker enemies, and one is just a tentacle that occasionally comes out of nowhere and pretty much instantly kills you. So if you want to be picky, there’s actually only 8 different enemies in the entire game, and that still includes the only boss!

Now that I think about it, the non-existent colour palette is the least of Legendary’s problems, because the game could look like a clown college reject and it’d still be an artistic atrocity. Simply put, the graphics are not next gen. Legendary might (barely) make a list of PS2 games with good graphics, but off the top of my head I can think of several last generation games that look much better. The first thing that comes to mind is Black, which I thought about several times as I plodded on through another legendary sewer. Black was absolutely stunning. It was shiny, had great character models, was quite colourful even for a game with a lot of dark areas, and was still able to throw in a few levels full of grit. On top of that, I’ve yet to see a game with better explosions, which it handed out frequently with a smile. Even something like God of War 2, which isn’t supposed to have ultra realistic people, comes off feeling more human than the embarrassing characters of Legendary. Yes, Kratos, god of war, body and mind comparable to that of a brick shithouse, is more human than the guy from Legendary (I can’t even remember his name, and I just turned the game off).The weaponry, while having some nice gun designs, also leaves much to be desired being as bland as the scenery. You can’t imagine my distaste as the game still chugged under the graphics’ minimal weight.

All this and I haven’t even touched the story or gameplay, which are about as appealing as the already trampled over graphical fortitude. The game is about a guy, still can’t recall the name, who is tricked into opening Pandora’s box and receives a mark on his arm for doing so. When the box was opened, mythical creatures were released into the world and begin to wreak havoc. The guy who sent the main character to open it wants to use the box to control the monsters for some unexplained reason, presumably for world domination or another cliché. Once you get to the end the story attempts to wrap up, but stumbles into something that feels nothing like closure. The story is bad as is to be expected in a game that finishes before really getting started, but pacing is not the only issue. It’s boring, predictable, and I’m quite sure half-assed. I had no idea why I was in each level because I just couldn’t be bothered, you never feel drawn into it and the execution is poor throughout. And yes, I know I wrote like 3 paragraphs on how pissed I was that it’s all brown and 3 sentences on the plot but what do you expect given what I’m working with? I’m sure if I was reviewing a book with no pictures than I have significantly less thoughts on the palette and much more in terms of story, but as it stands Legendary is about as deep as my admiration for it.

And now the gameplay, oh dear god the gamepley. Legendary is not a fun game, and the moments that it goes from crap to halfway decent are not worth the uphill battle. The only things legendary does right are the things that can be said about most shooters, such as a few strips where you can either run in guns blazing or hang back and snipe everyone, and the fact that when you kill someone, the animation of them falling over is quite impressive, all feeling very real. This of course can only be said of the human enemies, since the monsters don’t take cover, and more often than not will unsatisfyingly blow up when you kill them. Come to think about it, I would have enjoyed the game much more if all of the monsters had been taken out, because I only ever enjoyed fighting the humans. This is probably due to the fact that the opposing army seems to have a limit to how many soldiers they can afford to waste on you, which leads us into a much more spiteful list of things that the game does wrong.

Yes, probably the worst thing about the game is that unless the goal is to clear out the room of enemies, than all the monster types will endlessly re-spawn, which should be illegal. Even while attempting the jumping “puzzle” in the second stage, you will have the same werewolf chewing on your ass every time you fall down, and then again once you make it back up. Just to make getting around with a room full of enemies that will never stop coming at you even more irritating, anything bigger than the 1 foot tall fairies will inevitably gang up on you and force you into a corner, rendering you unable to move as they rip you apart. And just to make matters worse, when anything with claws attacks you, for example every friggin’ werewolf in the game, you get big red claw marks across your screen, which stack with each attack by each enemy. This will effectively blind you, as you are made mincemeat out of by three or four identical baddies, again. And mincemeat you shall become, because if you aren’t facing the very fragile fairies, the exploding bugs or the squishy soft humans then you will most likely have to empty an entire clip into even a single unit of the endless horde of werewolves before it dies. Seriously, I've never shot at anything so much in my entire life and felt like it’d done absolutely nothing, and as you progress your ammo becomes less and less effectual. The worst instance is when facing a minotaur, which can take about 50 shotgun shells to the face before going down, and that’s if you’ve been hurling molotov cocktails at it during your reloading time. The only thing they did to try and remedy this was to make ammo slightly more obtainable than the inevitable rage that follows having to restart a section for the 8th time after werewolf clone number 458 chews your face off. Throughout the whole game I think I ran out of ammo 3 times, and that’s while mostly using the shotgun. The ground is littered with big glowing crates of ammo that don’t disappear until all the ammo it has to offer is gone, even in the most obscure places. With so much live ammunition lying around the city in museums and the sewer system, it seems the city has bigger problems than a few little monsters running amuck.

The only other gameplay mechanic I have any issue with (given how it is the only other mechanic in the game) is your health and the restoration of. You have a tiny little health meter, which doesn’t stand up well even to the 1-foot fairy attacks, and healing is a pain. It seems that the mark received by opening Pandora’s box has the ability to absorb what I can only assume are the monsters’ souls. You do this slooooowly. You can then use the soul energy to heal yourself a little bit, also done at a speed with just as many o’s. By the time you do get your health bar up to a liveable level, you’ve either lost health equivalent to what you restored, or are more mercifully dead. Because of this system, healing while fighting humans is impossible, as only monsters drop soul energy. As you can probably imagine, this leads to some complications. If there had been health packs laying around instead of this, I feel as if I would have had a much better time with Legendary, as you can quite easily be doing very well, and suddenly be dead before you know what’s gone on.

The verdict? Pass. Don’t rent it and for god sakes don’t buy it. Its playability is minimal, and a second run through is a definite no. I didn’t enjoy Legendary, and unless barely passable games are your forte, I doubt you would either. The only positive thing that came out of the experience is this review, and the knowledge that I can now play Bioshock instead.

-AtomicPineapple, August 24, 2009