TwiddleGeek

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The His Dark Materials series is a long and interesting set, but boy does it ever start slow. Pretty much the entire first book, The Golden Compass, is just introduction. Although it’s not a bad read, nothing terribly exciting happens until the end of it. On it’s own, it would be a terribly disappointing book with a lot of wasted potential. Imagine if you will the entire first book of Harry Potter introducing Harry and the cast, the concept of magic, and the world of wizards only to end right as he reaches Hogwarts. That’s pretty much how reading The Golden Compass goes.

There are some highlights in the book, including meeting Iorek Byrnison and his kind, John Faa and the Gyptians, and Serafina Pekkala and the witches, but aside from Iorek’s small subplot, little is actually concluded with any of these characters in The Golden Compass. All of these introductions and characters, including others like Lee Scoresby, will be instrumental in later books, but it simply doesn’t make for a terribly good read on it’s own. Concepts like daemons are interesting, but never really explained or explored until late into this book and on into the others.

Essentially His Dark Materials is quite a good series, but if you’re going to read The Golden Compass then you ought to be in for the entire set or not at all. The books are filled with adventure, memorable characters, interesting concepts, and wild fantasy. Personally I’m not seeing the entire religious debate surrounding the books as it deals with a fictional, corrupt church complete with assassins. You’ll have to read the rest on your own, but suffice to say despite whatever subtext you may read into it or the author’s views, I wouldn’t consider these books to be anti-religious.

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Prime 2 Echoes was praised by critics early on, but has been somewhat shunned by fans of the original Metroid Prime. While the game features the same great graphics, first person adventure gameplay, and Metroid universe, it just isn’t much fun to play. The presentation may be stellar, but the dark / light mechanic becomes tedious. Suffice to say, Echoes was more of the same and less of what made Prime good.

Unlike Prime 1 where elemental weapons were a great advantage depending on the enemy you were facing, Prime 2 is basically just “shoot it until it dies” with the default blaster. Shame, really. The limited ammo of the light / dark blasters and the strange way of replenishing their ammo by using the opposite weapon makes them hard to rely on for anything other than specific weaknesses and encounters. Many of the power-ups, such as the echo visor, can’t match the awesome feeling of first turning on the Thermal or X-Ray visor from Prime 1. Only the screw attack feels like a worthy successor to the original title.

Also unlike Prime 1, which told an interesting backstory to the series, Prime 2 has a rather forgettable plot about a near extinct race and their battle with an alternate dimension of sorts. Everything about Prime 2 screams filler content, just something to put a few more hours of ‘gameplay’ into the title and another title into the series. I hope for much more from Metroid Prime 3, otherwise it may be time this series got a rest.

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Brave Story is a fairly standard by the book RPG, but if you’re a fan of that kind of thing then it’s not too bad. Unlike most PSP RPGs it doesn’t just outright suck. There’s a passable, if cliche story that’s at least enough incentive to keep playing. The graphics are gorgeous by PSP standards, and the game even keeps the Japanese battle voices. There’s a nifty battle system technique where the more you fight together, the more “union” dual-techniques you learn. The battles are fast, but you’ll spend a lot of time rewatching the same animations.

Whoever designed the traveler’s swords for Brave Story has officially came up with the most gaudy weapons ever created. If you think things like a gunblade are ridiculous, you haven’t seen a 5 foot dragon sword. Character designs are a mixed bag, with Rei looking fairly mysterious and Tatsuya looking downright ridiculously childish through the whole adventure. Monsters and locations are generally fairly cool throughout, though dungeons tend to be endless generic mazes with random encounters every 5 steps. I’m terribly tired of random encounters these days.

I suppose many of my complaints with Brave Story are with the RPG genre itself, but Brave Story is so by the books and its story so dull that one can’t help but notice the base flaws in the genre. Unlike the Final Fantasy’s and other respectable larger RPGs, it doesn’t have the character strength or story to pull one’s attention away from the basic lather-rinse-repeat level grind. None the less, its respectable 18-20 hour length and great graphics warrant it a play-through by genre fans.

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It’s unfortunate, but Grandia hasn’t aged well over the years. While the game gets off to a smooth start with promise of adventure, military plans, and ancient civilizations, the story soon collapses under it’s own weight. The pacing soon slows to a crawl as every single detail of the adventure is explained in dialog box after dialog box, becoming more corny with every passing scene. Eventually, I stopped caring about the story completely.

What starts as a fun battle system with a unique stat-up method quickly turns into a level grinding chore. Battles take far longer than they need to as you watch the same spell animation for the 1000th time just to grind earth or fire magic, not to do the most damage. While there are thankfully no random encounters, enemies and bosses are recycled many times over. Much of the game is a simply a level grind while you make your way from Point A to Point B.

For it’s time, Grandia probably had a lot going for it. These days it’s merely slow paced and out matched. The horrible voice acting and unbelievably cheesy dialog really pull it down. It’s not so bad that it’s broken, but it’s just not that much fun anymore. Clocking in at a lengthy 50 hours, you’ll want to be sure that you want to see this one through before you set out. As I told SpaceKitty, “If you play this game, I pity you.”