The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - First Impressions

I've had a couple of days to get acquainted with Elder Scrolls IV, and I must say I'm very very impressed. Until I saw Oblivion listed as a release title for the XBOX 360 I never gave Elder Scrolls much thought. I usually go in for more mainstream fair like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest and .hack. When the promise of having an RPG at the 360 launch evaporated, I got impatient and picked up a "Greatest Hits" version of Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. After wandering around cluelessly for about 45 minutes and getting pwnd by a Mud Crab, I put it down and didn't touch it again for two weeks. But the hype over ESIV forced me to give ESIII a second chance and I was glad that I did. After overcoming a steep learning curve, a cryptic menu system, and awkward battle controls, I was hooked. I had been playing ESIII for around 50 hours by the time that ESIV came out. I've been playing ESIV for about 25 hours now and I feel like I've only scratched the surface. There is simply so much to do here it's mind-blowing. For example, I just spent about 3 hours clearing out a dungeon that I had absolutely no business even going into just because it was on the way to my next destination. I didn't really get anything valuable out of the experience, and died a couple of times because the monsters were way too strong for me, but I had a total blast doing it. The game world is easily as immense as those in MMO's like Final Fantasy IX and World of Warcraft. The graphics are top-notch. Honestly it's the best use of the XBOX 360's power that I've seen so far. The Dolby Digital Surround adds a creepy degree of atmosphere. Unlike a lot of other games, the music isn't just there to give you something neat to listen to, it is used to add ambiance to the game to great effect.

I have a couple of very minor complaints - the 3rd person view still looks unnatural and clunky, the horseback riding is a bit glitchy, the menus, while arranged very logically, aren't as easy to navigate as they were in ESIII and I managed to somehow get myself and my horse lodged inside of a rock and had to restart the game to get out of it. These minor gripes disappear in comparison to the improvements that have been made. The Journal system now logically sorts your objectives so you know what you have done and what you need to do. It also correlates with your map and compass to tell you exactly where you need to go, making navigation a breeze. And if that wasn't good enough, moving around the map no longer requires Travel Guides, Silt Striders, or the Recall spell. If you've visited a location before, just open your map and point to it, and the game will take you there. You still lose time off of your clock for the time you would have spent walking the distance but it makes the game a lot less tedious.

I purchased the uber-expensive special edition of the game (because I'm a complete sucker for stuff like that) that came with a bonus DVD (which I have yet to watch) a pocket guide to Tamriel (It's pretty cool - writtent to look like an official guide from the Tamriel government to newcommers) and a reproduction of a Septim coin from the game. It also came with a map of Tamriel that was ripped because whoever packaged it at the factory crammed it down into the sleeve. The case itself was a cardboard and plastic fold-out similar to what the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings movies came in, complete with a lot of nice hand-drawn artwork. I also opted to pick up the phone-book sized official strategy guide. It's over 300 pages long and has already come in handy a couple of times. It was printed on relatively thick paper, presumably to make it appear to have more pages than it does, but it's still a good value all-in-all.

If you like RPGs at all this is definitely worth checking out. If you liked Morrowind, you will absolutely love this game.

Totoro redo!

My Neighbor Totoro (original release shown left):
This has been a favorite of mine for a few years now. It was released twice on DVD. The first time was before Disney contracted with Studio Ghibli (the home of the celebrated anime director, Hayao Miyazaki). As with a lot of anime directed at younger children, the original release was hacked to pieces and recolored, because evidently North American children are far too stupid to like a cartoon if it is letterboxed and doesn't look like a bowl of fruit loops. To put it another way, when 20th Century Fox brought the film stateside, the left and right edges of the picture were hacked off to produce a "Full Screen" version of the film, the color intensity was dramatically increased, destroying or obscuring much of the subtle detail, and "edge enhancement" was applied to the picture resulting in permanant NTSC dot crawl. About the best thing I can say for the original release was that I loved the English voice track. (The original release featured only English language).






I very nearly bought a copy of the Japanese release of the film so I could watch it as Miyazaki intended (ie. widescreen, sane color levels, Japanese language track) but I was saved from the need by a re-release from Disney (shown left.) This version had everything I could have wanted and then some. The film transfer is faithful to the original, with no added colors. It is presented in anamorphic 16:9 widescreen preserving the original aspect ratio. The original Japanese language track is included as well as a brand new English language track recorded just for this release staring some big names like Dakota Fanning and Tim Daly. I'd just like to say to Disney: Thank you for not thinking I'm a half blind moron with no appreciation for subtlety!

For anyone who isn't familiar with Miyazaki's work, here's a quick rundown: Hayao Miyazaki is a Japanese anime director with a rare gift for storytelling. For the most part his stories seem to come from the imagination of a child but are all told with the grace and subtlety of a master storyteller. Couple this with a unique artistic style and he has some of the best movies ever made to his credit. Some of my other Miyazaki favorites are Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Nausicaa and the Valey of the Wind, and Grave of the Fireflies.

If you've seen Totoro before, you'll probably want to give this re-release a spin to see what you missed the first time.

Movies!

To kick off my vacation, I saw a couple of movies tonight, and here's what I thought.

V for Vendetta
Rated R

The story was that of an imaginative revolutionary, determined to wake up the sheepish masses that had allowed the UK to become a totalitiarian regime. Laced with patriotic sentiment, classical references to Shakespere and the like, a strong dose of philosophy, a healthy dash of intrigue, and some interesting action sequences, the movie delivers a well-rounded experience. Although the enigmatic main character V wears a mask, that becomes more of a smokescreen, or a symbolic reference rather than the object of mystery it first seems to be, very reminiscent of M. Night Shyamalan's work.

Although it involved an Australian (Hugo Weaving) and an American (Natalie Portman) playing the roles of British citizens it was very believable. (I suspect that if I were actually British I might feel differently about that:) Hugo was particularly impressive in his flawless delivery of very complex and lengthy lines, some of which were on par with the Architecht's elaborate oration to Neo in The Matrix: Reloaded.

I expect there will be a lot of comparisons made between President Bush and the evil "Vice Chancellor" who rules Brittian with an iron fist and intolerance. I don't hazard to guess if this is intentional or isn't, but comparisons are inevitable. The evil "Vice Chancellor" came to power through corrupt financial ties, clandestine malevolent scheming, and exploitation of Christian-like religious beliefs. (I say Christian-like because it is a gross misrepresntation of Christianity, and is obviously written from the position of someone will no personal understanding of the subject.) His minions frequently engage in what we (citizens of free countries) would regard as flagrant privacy violations, unauthorized and unwarranted search and seizure, and sinister propaganda campaigns. These are all things that President Bush has been accused of very recently by extremist liberals.

Another thing that I thought was in particularly poor taste was the unfortunate emphasis on homosexuality as an intended object of sympathy. Evidently the Wachowski Brothers could not come up with a better "class" to be targeted for oppression and racisism-like discrimination. The intention was clearly to describe the evils that go hand in hand with totalitarianism - the freedoms that are denied people, and the fear that people live in. And having homosexuality on that list makes sense, but comprising the list entirely of homosexuality seems like blatant activism. Further it is displayed in a way that attempts to tell the audience what to think rather than showing the facts and allowing the audience to come to a conclusion. And to top it all off, it gives them a great excuse to show lesbians kissing numerous times (evidently flashbacks of this kiss were necessary to drive the point home). If homosexuality is normal and wholesome, then it just is, and they don't need me or anyone else to think so to make it true. The fact that I have to be beaten over the head with this every time I turn around steals any verisimilitude that argument had any hope of having.

In conclusion, this movie would have been great if only the writers' personal politics hadn't destroyed the integrity of the underlying story of patriotism and sacrifice. It's one thing to have strong political and philosophical views, quite another to tell someone else they should share them.


Ultraviolet
Rated PG-13

This movie was entertaining, but it has a fatal flaw: there is no appropriate target audience. The plot, the script and the acting were overly simplistic for anyone over the age of about 8, but the partial nudity, language, and violence keeps it from being appropriate for anyone not in their teens. Adults will find it too cartoon-like to get much out of, and children shouldn't be allowed to watch it.

Milla Jovovich (Violet) was evidently trying to avoid too closely matching her performances in the Resident Evil movies, but lacks the flexibility of a more seasoned actress. Many of her lines seemed forced, and a lot of her physical actions were Power-Ranger-ishly cheesy. It was largely hit and miss, though, as she also delivered some lines with pristine conviction.

The cinematography appeared to make no attempt to hide the CG being used, probably as a device to achieve the surreal look and feel of a comic (which the story is evidenlty based on). This, coupled with extreme perspective shifts, and blurring effects created an atmosphere that was remarkably similar to Tron. I found it a little distracting at first, but became accustomed to it about half way through the movie.

The plot seemed to be little more than a device for stringing together a dozen or so fun action sequences, replete with clever special effects and 80's style one-liners. The story could easily be summed up in a couple of sentences, and although there are surprises, they aren't really all that surprising.

To sum up, this is definitely a renter, but even then isn't really all that great unless you're a fan of the comic, or of Milla.

Tales of Phantasia : Nintendo is the culprit

I make no bones about the fact that I'm a Nintendo fanboy. They've made some boneheaded moves before, but by and large they seem to know what they're doing, and they really are the only ones pioneering anything in the industry. Sony's most innovative contribution so far has been the eye-toy, but that was what, 8 or 10 years after Nintendo releaced the Game Boy Camera?

In my quest for who to place the blame on for the horrific desecration of Tales of Phantasia I contacted my favorite import game store, National Console Support to ask if the Japanese GBA release of ToP was this horrible. Here's the response I received:

Hi Samson, yes we were also disappointed by the changes in the USA version but we confirm that the Japanese Tales of Phantasia includes the opening score from the Super Famicom version.

Regards,

NCS, Inc

That coupled with this response that I received from Namco:

Thank you for contacting Namco Bandai's Customer Support Department.

Please contact Nintendo as they are the publishers of Tales of Phantasia.

Please feel free to contact us again in the future as the need arises.

And here's what I received from Nintendo:

Message(#6851-000490-2968\4902968)

Hello and thank you for contacting Nintendo,

I was sorry to hear that you don't like Tales of Fantasia. Your
feedback is important to us and I will be sure to forward your comments to
the appropriate departments here at Nintendo for review.

And while e-mail is a great resource for contacting companies about
most consumer service related issues, it is not the best method for
providing assistance in matters similar to what you described. In order to
be of further assistance to you, we would like to speak with you
directly. At your earliest convenience, please contact our Consumer Service
Department by calling 1-800-255-3700. Our representatives are available
between 6:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. Pacific Time, seven days a week.

When calling our Consumer Service number, you can bypass the recorded
information by pressing "0" on your touch-tone phone. This will connect
you to the next available representative.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Nintendo of America Inc.

Sharon Matheny

So as recommended, I called the Nintendo Customer Service line and requested my refund. The young man who answered was very pleasant and understand but explained that Nintendo would not be refunding my money and that a recall was not at all likely. He recommended that I voice my frustration on Nintendo's forums.

Well, there you have it folks. My ToP story. I'm sure you're sick of it if you've been reading it, but it really ticks me off and I just can't let it go.

Tales of Phantasia: These tales aren't the Phantasia I know...

After my tainted start in ToP for the GBA, I persevered and tried to give it a fair shot.

Every other SNES/SFC game translated for the GBA (at least all that I have played) have been superior to the original to some degree. Although purists may debate whether they like graphical updates, such as those in the Super Mario Advance series, the fact is that the GBA is much more powerful than the SNES/SFC, memory chips are dirt cheap compared to the roughly fifteen years ago that ToP was originally released, and the fact the game was already finished - the features were already there for crying out loud- make any downgrade completely inexcusable.

After I got past the atrocity of replacing the opening song with some uninspiring tune, I began to notice other things, like the fact that your character's image is no longer reflected in the water when he stands over it. This effect was used extensively in the original game, and added to the polish that really made it special.

And the fact that on the equipment screens the item names are all truncated. This happens because the Japanese language version could say the entire item name using nine or fewer spaces. (Nine seems to be the width allowed by the menu) Try to say the same thing in English and you use up those spaces pretty quickly. The artful and pretty much industry standard solution to this is to create a separate sprite pallet with narrower-width characters. If you've ever played Secret of Mana for the Super NES you may have noticed what I'm talking about - the text appeared very narrow on the menus to accomodate for the fact that English needs quite a few more letters than Japanese does to say the same thing. The fact that the translators of ToP neglected to do this is just one more example of a shoddy localization job.

The voice acting was a good effort, but I think the localization team should have taken a queue from the group who did the North American version of Tales of Destiny and left the Japanese voice intact for the most part. Most of the voices are banal and uninspiring compared to the original Japanese, which may have been silly, but was at least done with conviction. At one point one of the "cinema"-type sequences that was supposed to have voice actually just died in the middle of the clip. The subtitles said something like "Please do not harm the tree" and the sound came out as "Please do no..--bzzzert........". Come on, people, your testers saw this and thought it was ok?

Best Buy won't allow me to return the game for my money because it has been opened, so I have demanded my money back from Nintendo or Namco, whoever it is that is responsible. I probably won't get it, but I can try.

Usually the reviewers in EGM give warning about stuff like this when they review a game, but they sure dropped the ball on this one.

Tales of Phantasia:GBA Not off to a good start...

I've always loved the "Tales" games, ever since I played Tales of Destiny for the first time. I always found the odd mix of turn-based and action role-playing. The graphics were always inspiring and pleasant to behold, and the music was just top-notch.

It didn't take me long to discover that Tales of Destiny was not the first game in the series, just the first one to make it to North America. The first game, Tales of Phantasia for the Super Famicom, was nothing short of a technical marvel. It was a Super Nintendo game with voice. But what really wowed me was the first time I fired the game up and was treated to the unbelievable opening song, it was upbeat, inspiring, catchy and it had voice. For those of you who joined the gaming scene in the Playstation days, you may not see this as anything special, but back in the 16-bit cartridge days, it was just unheard of.

I have had that enchanting and beautiful opening song in my head ever since the first time I played that game, and I jumped for joy when I heard that it was finally making its way to the United States on the Game Boy Advance.

Not five minutes ago, I just popped the game into my DS and called my wife over to witness the amazing opening song. She blinked and nodded politely instead of smiling in blissful agreement that it was a wonderful song. And well she should...

To Namco: WHAT THE HELL IS THIS!!!?

They replaced the awesome opening song - one of the game's crowning moments in my estimation, with this sad uninspiring NES-quality beep-boo-beep tune. I could have cried. I couldn't even play it. All these months waiting for greatness, and I get a steaming little plastic turd.

The game was published by Namco in Japan and Nintendo in the US. Shame on whoever ruined it. The GBA is technically superior in every conceivable way to the SNES and this is actually a downgraded version of the game. What gives? Shame on whoever did this. Whoever it is, you just gave me a reason to go out and get the ROM of the original game and play that instead.

You may think I'm blowing things out of proportion, but the original song is really THAT good, and the one they replaced it with is really THAT bad. As far as first impressions go, this one was plain awful....