After 65 hours of making friends and beating things with swords, I can finally claim victory over Persona 4; my review, of course, is pending!  I managed to get the “real” ending to the game on the first try, but not through any skill of my own – I was checking a FAQ for something unrelated during the end sequence, and happened to glance down and see the completely random series of actions I had to take to get the best ending.  I’ve talked about arbitrary actions leading to good/bad endings, and this unfortunately falls into the same category – still, a minor quibble overall.   Still powering my way through Hoshigami Remix on the DS, and I curse this game’s lack of a quick-save feature on a daily basis; completely inexcusable in a handheld game.  Finally, on the old-fashioned side of things, I’ve just finished writing the rules and putting together a prototype of a boardgame I’m working on; I’ll be running the first playtest this weekend, and many revisions will be soon to follow, I’m sure.

-Joel Haddock

I, too, am still plugging my way through Persona 4, although my progress hasn’t been nearly as great as Joel’s, due to the game’s constant propensity to screw me over.  A fight will start, the enemy goes first, enrages my main character, who attacks it, the attack is countered, he criticals himself, and dies; and in Persona, when your main character dies, it’s game over.  Poof, there goes an hour or so of work, and my motivation to continue playing for that evening.  I managed to snag myself a PSP used for 30 bucks last week (in a very shady, craigslist based deal), so I’m now looking for anyone’s recommendations of games, so let me know in the comments.  Final note:  I know i’m late getting on the Lumines train, but if you haven’t gotten it yet, don’t…it’ll ruin your life…I started playing, and next thing i knew, it was two and a half hours later.

-Jeff Feeser

We’ve all had it happen before; a tricky level we just can’t seem to get the hang off, a puzzle that doesn’t seem to have any solution, a boss that seems nigh invincible.  Sometimes we hurl controllers across the room, taking out our frustration on our poor walls.  Sometimes we just curse under our breath and turn the power off, refusing to even acknowledge our seething anger.  More often than not, the game in question will end up in a dusty, forgotten pile, never to be looked at again.

sometimes, though, we can’t forget about them.  We feel them calling to us, mocking us; forcing us to never forget our failures and taunting us to try and overcome them.  These games are our nemeses – the games that haunt us.

For me, one title in particular comes to mind instantly: Panzer General 2.

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Took my first stab at (what I think is) the final boss of Persona 4 last night; got wiped out after twenty minutes of fighting, so I think I’m definitely going to have to revise my strategy on this one.  This is one of those games I’ll be a little sad to finish, because I’ve enjoyed playing it so much – that’s the sure sign of a keeper.  Got King’s Bounty for the PC this week after playing the demo – plays very much like Heroes of Might and Magic, but with a real-time world map.  I’ll provide more impressions as I get some more time in with it.  Finally, started over on Hoshigami: Remix on the DS after a 6 month hiatus; that game was designed by people who hate people.

-Joel Haddock

There’s two minutes left on the clock of a thirty-minute meat-grinder of a map; you’ve pushed the flag all the way up, only to be stopped by Red’s last line of defense. The flag, thankfully, isn’t in the pit or on the bridge. It’s back in the best area it can be: the jump zone. The timer ticks down to thirty… something has to be done now. “PUSH!” someone cries; the heavies and soldiers push around the corner to face the defenders. The demo lays pipes on the flag, and as the medic touches the flag and jumps, the pipes explode, sending the medic flying at the red pylons signifying the capture point. A large explosion and a bell signal that your team has just prevailed. Congratulations, you have just won a dustbowl match in Team Fortress Classic.

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Now that we’ve seen the distant past of moral choice in games as well as recent history, let’s take a look at what it all means, and where it all could be going.

Choice is a powerful thing for a gamer; it can be the critical difference between a player simply playing a game and a player really experiencing a game.  Choice draws the player in, makes them feel like they really have a say in what’s going on in a game. Obviously, some choices are more important than others, and players want to know that the decisions they make have an actual effect.  Simply offering them the choice between going down the left hall or the right hall may be a choice, but it’s not one they are likely to remember. Moral choices, though – especially the ones that carry real consequence – those are the ones that players really remember.

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As cold as it seems here in Baltimore at 12 degrees, looking at the weather map shows it down to -40 in Minneapolis, so suddenly things don’t seem so bad.  On the final dungeon of Persona 4 right now, though I feel like I have failed to sufficiently max out several key social links; I chalk this up to poor planning on my part.  The game remains incredibly solid through and through, and is reason enough for anyone to dust off their PS2. On the PC side of things, I’ve loaded up good ol’ Panzer General 2, which continues to challenge me after all these years.  My TF2 map has been on hold for most of the week due to lack of time, so that 4 month timeframe suddenly seems annoyingly plausible.

-Joel

Due to the complete lack of efficient heat in my home, it appears my brain has completely been frozen over, and as such I haven’t been able to devote as much time to Persona as I’d like to.  Given my need to have a gaming experince that doesn’t require much thinking, I’ve turned to the old standby, the first person shooter.  I’ve been spending the better part of the week plugging through F.E.A.R., Far Cry 2, and (the not-actually-first-person-but-close-enough) Gears 2.  While they’ve all been great at passing the time, none of them have been particularly engrossing, with Far Cry being the worst of the bunch.  I’m still working on the original Prince of Persia on XBLA as well, in preparation for a “then and now” piece I’m writing on the series, but I’m stymied by the game’s completely brutal difficulty.  Finally, I dug in the bargin bin this week and nabbed a copy of Skate, and while i think my skater’s broken enough bones to be put in traction several times over, I personally have been having a blast putting him there.

-Jeff

I started out this week by discovering that, for some unknown reason, Castlevania: Order of Ecclasia is the one game I apparently cannot play on the train commute to work.  For whatever strange reason, it makes me incredibly dizzy.  So, with that unavailable, I decided to go back and re-tackle Panzer Tactics, which I was never able to beat (which I guess makes me a historically accurate player…).  On the console front, my march through Persona 4 continues, and I think I’m coming to the end of the game – it remains a fantastic game, and I’ll have a full review as soon as I wrap it up.  I also got down and dirty with starting my text Team Fortress 2 map this week, and I’m aiming to finish this one in a much quicker timeframe than the 5 months it took me for my last one…

-Joel Haddock

Much like Joel, I’m still stomping through Persona 4, although my progression hasn’t been as quick due to the game’s propensity to murder your main character without you so much as taking an action.  Unfortunately, unlike most RPGs outside of the Persona series, as soon as your main character is offed, it’s game over, due to your teammate’s apparent inability to use a healing potion, even though you’ve used it on their own ice-weak dumb asses plenty of times.  Since Joel and Chris got it for Xmas, I’ve also been spurred to get back to Order of Ecclesia, in which I’ve just entered the seriously hard Castle of Dracula.  My only problem with the game so far has been that it falls into the niche that I call “games which require GameFAQs”, as I see no way that i could’ve possibly found the last two villagers without a FAQ or randomly running around the world and hitting every single wall with my mace.  Maybe there’s an X-Ray Specs glyph that you can use that I just haven’t found yet…

-Jeff Feeser

Last time, we looked over some of the games from the days of yore that dealt with issues of morality. This time, we’re going to hit the more recent past and deal with some titles that have come since the turn of the century.

Let us begin in a far-off time known as 2003. War was in the air, the Hubble started deep fielding the universe, and the first-ever (non-pen&paper) Star Wars RPG was released: Knights of the Old Republic.

Now, as any Jedi worth his salt can tell you, the moment you bring the Force into the equation, one must invariably face the issue of the Light Side versus the Dark Side. That said, the previous 15 years of Star Wars titles had managed pretty solidly to avoid ever doing that. Either you didn’t play a Force user, or you played someone locked into the side of “Good” with no questions asked.

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