NEWSLETTER

		SHEPPARD’S VIDEO-GAME PIE By Stephen Lea Sheppard Photo by Dan Siney

STAR OCEAN: THE LAST HOPE
Platform: Xbox 360
Publisher: Square Enix

About every hour, Star Ocean: The Last Hope shows me one of two things: either a) something really cool, that impresses me and leads me to decide it’s a good game and I really like it, or b) something incredibly stupid, that depresses and angers me and makes me want to quit playing. The cool things keep getting cooler and the stupid things keep getting stupider, prolonging this process long after I should by all logic have become jaded to it.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope is a JRPG in semi-traditional style—random encounters, healing items—if you’ve played a Final Fantasy game the structure should be familiar to you. It differs in that the combats (though they take place in arenas separate from the map you wander around in) are real-time, and the setting is nominally science fiction. I say nominally because there are Space Elves (“Eldar”) and magic spells (“symbology”) and lizard-men and dragons and things, so it’s more space fantasy than sci-fi. The protagonists travel to various planets in their space ship, and a lot of those planets resemble medieval Europe as envisioned by fantasy anime.

The actual gameplay I like a lot. The combat is strong—with a party of four, you control one character directly using your rhythm-game instincts to pull off combos while the other three are guided by acceptably smart partner AI, switching the character you control with the left and right bumpers. It ends up being an enjoyable brawler; you can cast spells and use special abilities by going into the menus, or by mapping them to the left or right trigger while out of combat. Outside of fights, inventory is handled through an item-synthesis process, where you research new recipes, find ingredients, and use them to make the standard JRPG array of healing items, weapons, armor, accessories, etc. Taking orders from shopkeepers and creating items for their customers nets you gold and XP. It’s a well-integrated sub-system, and I enjoyed fiddling with it.

Here’s the problem with the game: I hate all the characters. Whether it’s intolerable neurosis, personalities like blocks of wood, or just awful voice acting, there’s not a single character I actually want to see succeed. It’s not often that a game shows me one of the most annoyingly voice-acted characters I’ve ever heard (hi, Lymlie!), and then two hours later introduces me to another one who’s even worse (hi, Sarah!).

With a game as story- and character-based as this one, characters one wants to slap is something of an insurmountable problem. As much as it’s full of stuff I do like, it’s just so grating in so many other ways I can’t recommend Star Ocean: The Last Hope at all.




TOM CLANCY’S H.A.W.X.
Platform: Xbox 360
Publisher: Ubisoft

On the one hand, Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. is fun, and it scratches a gaming itches I don’t get the opportunity to scratch that often anymore. On the other hand, it’s short (I beat it in one day) and not deep.

It’s an arcade dogfighting game—arcade in this case meaning the planes carry hundreds of missiles and take a huge beating before crashing, and you never need to bother with keeping track of fuel or landing—where the player takes on the role of David Crenshaw, a US Air Force fighter pilot who finds a job with the Artemis Private Military Company after his *sigh* High Altitude Warfare eXperimental squadron is disbanded by the brass for budgetary reasons in 2012. Despite the “High Altitude” in the name, the game tends to focus on support of ground assets, so you’ll spend most of the game either attacking enemy ground forces, or shooting down enemy planes that are trying to attack allied ground forces or trying to stop you from attacking enemy ground forces. This isn’t a complaint—it’s nice to see a dogfight game that tries to portray air power as it’s used in actual conflict.

This being a Tom Clancy branded game, there’s a lot of emphasis on cool future tech—in this case, the Enhanced Reality System and Assistance OFF. ERS is a context-dependent onboard computer system that will chart attack or defense vectors for you and display them on your HUD as a series of rings you need to fly through. Want to attack a tank obscured by skyscrapers? Hit the X button, and the game will plot a course for you that’ll bring the tank into view. Under attack by missiles yourself? Hit X, and the ERS will plot an evasion course. It’s both an interesting way of integrating the traditional video game “Fly through these rings” flight challenges into normal gameplay and effectively communicates to the player that Captain Crenshaw is at the helm of top-of-the-line military equipment.

Assistance OFF is the opposite—double-tap one of the triggers and you’ll enter a third person mode where the camera is angled to display your plane and the enemy’s. Your plane becomes much more maneuverable, with the justification that Assistance OFF represents turning off the plane’s limiters, but this also means you can stall and crash if you don’t fly well. Since ERS is useless against more skilled enemy aces, I found myself moving to Assistance OFF during most dogfights, and using ERS against many ground targets. It’s a neat experience.

It’s just not one that produces lasting amusement to a jaded gamer such as myself. ERS and Assistance OFF together make the game very easy—it very nearly plays itself. With shallow multiplayer and shallow single-player, this game doesn’t have a lot of appeal. It is a great rental, because the game overall uses its interface to create a novel experience, but I probably won’t ever play it again. it does accomplish its goals well, though, and someone who hasn’t been playing dogfighting games since before they fell out of fashion last decade might find more lasting appeal in it than I did.

STEPHEN LEA SHEPPARD

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Comments

Anonymous, on Jul 11, 2009 wrote: hilarious, that guys to funny
Anonymous, on May 2, 2009 wrote: Hey its the man of the hour! Not only does he give advice on what video games to play, he also give advice on life.
	Stephen Lea Sheppard, on May 2, 2009 wrote: Don’t feed the trolls, people.
Anonymous, on Apr 30, 2009 wrote: Nope, not even close. But you get a lollypop and a pat on the back for the effort! P.S. I love the word fucktard, its one of those timeless words that keeps getting getting better with age. Despite the amount of usage it gets by small-penised men with very few friends and obese trailerpark mothers who blog and have their own youtube page, the word Fucktard never gets old. Keep up the good work *clap clap clap*
Anonymous, on Apr 29, 2009 wrote: What is it with you fucktards insulting Stephen? Are you jealous of the fact that he gets paid to play video games? Oh, I know: It’s because you live with your parents, and they told you that you were too young for M rated games so you have to pirate them... am I close?
Anonymous, on Apr 28, 2009 wrote: get the nintendo dude back again and have shepp ask him some questions. he’d have better ones that the guy’s son.
Anonymous, on Apr 27, 2009 wrote: P.S. Cheer up, fuckface, you look like one of those pouty-faced japanese school-girls crossed with computer hacker who, with kleanex handy, sneaks peeks at his grandmother showering.
Anonymous, on Apr 27, 2009 wrote: Hey Penis-breath Stephen, whats up with your SHEPPARD’S VIDEO CREAM-PIE HAIR????! That can’t be only three years of showerless, dandruff encrusted grease that is making your lovely locks look like Lovely Lovely Ludwig after a spring dip in the river Spree. It must be mouthfuls of old-man cum that is making that mop of yours glisten like a freshly birthed calf.....it must be.
	rabies babies, on Apr 24, 2009 wrote: i have a grand idea. make an anarchist cookbook video game where you are a young hoodlum blowing shit up and reaping destruction everywhere. everyone loves being the bad guy.
Anonymous, on Apr 23, 2009 wrote: Afterburner was great! That and Super Off Road were my favorites.
Anonymous, on Apr 22, 2009 wrote: speaking of graphics, the Tom Clancy one is amazing. best game design I’ve seen. great graphics!
Anonymous, on Apr 22, 2009 wrote: everything is really realistic looking in Star Ocean: The Last Hope... and then you get to the charactors which are these poorly drawn anime things. It totally doesn’t match the rest of the game
	jiminy, on Apr 21, 2009 wrote: is that rio in the hawx screen shot? it looks like the christ statue on the right.
Anonymous, on Apr 21, 2009 wrote: that’s awfully close to getting in the mig’s jetstream and if you aren’t careful you’ll get in a flatspin and your cockpit window might not break away enough for your ejection.
Anonymous, on Apr 20, 2009 wrote: can you use headsets with hawx because that is the best thing about games like this, talking shit. it’s a good excuse to break out the top gun quotes you are ashamed to have memorized and kenny loggins will play in your head but you wont tell anyone that.
Anonymous, on Apr 20, 2009 wrote: remember star fox? i thought they were going to keep making those games forever!
Anonymous, on Apr 20, 2009 wrote: if HAWX is anything like the old arcade game afterburner then count me in.
Anonymous, on Apr 20, 2009 wrote: am i crazy or was this about first person shooters like two days ago?
Anonymous, on Apr 20, 2009 wrote: i like the idea of joing an oldschool fly through hoops style which will reward you at the end. still if you can beat it in a day then it cant be that good, if id just spent hard earned cash on the game and finished it i would be pissed.
Anonymous, on Apr 20, 2009 wrote: its been ages since ive played a dogfight computer game, i used to love afterburner, now there was a game. i also played a helicopter game baby huey or something but that fucker was so complicated that i think i managed to get of the ground once.
Anonymous, on Apr 20, 2009 wrote: star ocean from that screen shot looks a lot like final fantasy
Anonymous, on Apr 18, 2009 wrote: there were like four other pages here and i was all psyched to read them, where’d they go?