Xenoblade is currently my Game of the Year 2011, and visions of the Monado seem to imply only Dark Souls might get a shot at giving it a run for its money. That said, the Gem Crafting in the game seems rather complex and could do with an explanation.
So having faffed about with gem crafting for a few hours now, I thought it prudent to share my experiences with the rest. It’s not 100% correct (at least, I assume so), but it’ll get you into the right mindset for Gem Crafting.
Level design is crap until the last world (which is classic Kirby).
You cannot die.
The ‘yarn-gimmicks’ are used sparingly.
Ugly
“Wait… What was that Sony-game again? Little Big-somewhat? With the stitched puppet? Yeah, brilliant voice-over there! Let’s get that guy in our stitched game! Eh, he actually costs money? Crap, just grab a random British chap then…”
“Why don’t we lock players into a first-person view and force them to find and point out a tiny spot we deem to be important, but which is completely non-interesting to everyone else? That’s sure to gain the appreciation of players!”
And then there are two similar campaigns to work through.
Money/items ratio is completely unbalanced.
Ugly
“How about we put in a difficulty spike where you get an insanely difficult boss at around level 25? You’d need to grind an additional 25 levels just to defeat it! And we put that in the second campaign as well! We’re geniuses!”
Presentation can be too basic and ill-fitting at times.
Ugly
“Co-op is too easy, so let’s up the challenge of the game. Then two players can get frustrated over the same impossible sections while we’ll be siphoning off all of their extra lives in mere seconds!”
And so the dance starts anew. It’s the first proper sequence break it seems. While using that particular morph ball tunnel, I thought of this a few times myself, but every attempt failed. This solution is most impressive and hopefully the first of many.
And remember kids: it’s not a true Metroid until somebody breaks it.
Just over 11 hours and another Metroid has been completed 100%. You could say that means I can now start waiting two to three years again to get my next fix, but I think I’ll be replaying this one a few times.
While it’s not a classic by any stretch of the imagination, Metroid: Other M (Wii) simply flows nice enough to be played through again and again. Its flow is reminiscent of Zero Mission in that respect. Another game for which initial reactions were mixed, but in the end turned out to be a kind of apex for the series in a way nobody had realized beforehand.
Xenoblade is currently my Game of the Year 2011, and visions of the Monado seem to imply only Dark Souls might get a shot at giving it a run for its money. That said, the Gem Crafting in the game seems rather complex and could do with an explanation.
