Co-Founder, Designer, Editor in Chief: Trigames.NET
Gamespot's Freelance Whipping Boy
Chupporitos - My Musings Outside of the Gaming World

Former Editor: Reviewspotting @ Community Contributions Union

Trigames.NET Podcast Ep. 104 - Gumball de Slunk

• 19Mar 12

  Ghost Trix-A-Lot

  Ghost Trick Beateded.

  Well, like, a week and a half ago that is.

  Quick bullets:

  • In love with the visual sty1e. I would just stare at some scenes to watch the animations play out, even when it wasn't necessary to do so.
  • My favorite parts were manipulating the environment to manipulate people, as opposed to manipulating objects to manipulate other objects. In other words, I preferred the metaphorical Rube-Goldberg machines to the literal ones. Examples of each, respectively: Taking down the sniper Tengo versus operating the Pigeon Man's contraption in his basement.
  • While trial and error usually bothers lot of people, I like how Ghost Trick embraces it, being completely self-aware. Hell, even the instruction manual says to not skip the "Time Over" screen as it may give you hints. The game emphasizes keen observation and potentially nutty logic; "just trying things out" is less about random trial and error and more about understanding what everything in the environment does such that you can better arm yourself with a plan.
  • Finding out who you are... I thought that was a little stupid. Scratch that--I thought it was very stupid. I let out an audible, "Oh, come on. REALLY?" when I came across the reveal. However, the rest of the ending and other reveals surrounding that--once I got past the hokey reveal--were nice in that sappy heartwarming way.
  • I got my girlfriend quasi-hooked on this now. Victory.
  • I would certainly play through this a second time to relive the experience, as I did with Phoenix Wright. I don't know that I'd play through it a third. (Hey, sue me. I'm old now and have precious little free time or shelf space.)

  EDIT: Holy crap, I've been gone here so long that I forgot about the "sty1e" bug!

  • Posted Mar 19, 2012 5:44 am GMT
  • Tag
  • Print
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Digg
• 5Mar 12

  Conveniently, the Tricking comes way later.

  Sort of fudged that last blog post title, eh?

  In any case, I do talk about Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective a bit with Al on this weekend's podcast (still in the editing room), but I'll spend a few words here.

  At a high level it deals with classic point-and-click adventure tropes, mainly the "see what this thing does that allows you to do that thing that activates this other thing to get you where you need to go and by the way you might mess up so be ready for some trial and error" aspect. However, the presentation of it all combined with the density and quantity of tasks you need to do in a given area or restricted time frame makes it feel that much more like you're kind of prancing around this Rube Goldberg machine, possessing inanimate objects and manipulating them in a specific way in order to allow you to manipulate more inanimate objects so that you can manipulate those... and on. And on. You get it. (I think...?)

  It's definitely a fascinating experience, and a great deal of it has to do with the fantastic animation, which is so thorough that it's difficult for you to miss what's going on. The animations really do help you figure out how to solve some of the puzzles within the game, because they're made to look so obvious while feeling totally natural within the game's universe that you start to instinctively say, "Wait a second--that branch totally bent in this very particular way when I weighed it down slightly. What if I weighed it down with something even heavier?"

  The points where I worry are where you're actually manipulating an honest-to-god Rube Goldberg machine. This isn't a "bad" thing, mind you--and perhaps the inclusion of such puzzles is the game's tongue-in-cheek way of showing us self-awareness. But it does take me out of the moment a little. What's fascinating to me about this game is solving the Rube-Golderg-ness of the environments it creates, not dealing with an actualRube-Goldberg machine.

  Nevertheless, the game isn't really weaker for it, and I can't wait to keep digging myself deeper and deeper into the story (I think I'm at Chapter 11 or something). If you can find it for cheap on DS, or have access to an iOS device, get on it posthaste.

  • Posted Mar 5, 2012 6:11 pm GMT
  • Tag
  • Print
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Digg
• 29Feb 12

  Rhythming and Tricking

  Two new conquests in progress:

  1) Rhythm Heaven (NDS)

  2) Ghost Trick (NDS)

  I'm way late on both of these, obviously. Since I'm through with a great chunk of Rhythm Heaven, I'll touch quickly on that first.

  It must have been the footage of Rhythm Heaven Fever (Wii) that got me pumped up to try the DS version of this game (and, boy, do I wish I had imported the original GBA cart), but I was lucky enough to find a copy of it for less than $12 on Amazon.

  By now, I've heard all the complaints about the fact that the touch screen controls don't quite offer the precision that a button does. With the key difference between this and Wario Ware Touched being the insistence on good rhythm, I have to agree that the potential variation--however minute--involved when you fling or swipe affects how well you can actually play the game.

  However, it's still incredibly charming and comes with a beaker full of Nintendo bizzaro quirk. Even when you're only scoring "Just OK..." on the mini-games, the sense of "cool" you get when you hit everything on rhythm, syncopated, off-beat, or whatever is still there.

  I got my girlfriend hooked on it. In fact, it's the perfect type of game for her. The days when she could tolerate a brain-wracking game (A Boy And His Blob) are long gone and she prefers quick-hitting, simple action. ("I don't have the capacity to do things that involve a lot of skill," she said when she was navigating through Rayman Origins.) So Rhythm Heaven, with its snippet-based, bizzaro-cutesy style, is the perfect combination to ensure that I don't get to use my DS quite as often.

  We're at the point where we've exhausted all of the minigames and are now playing through their harder versions, which is kind of a bummer because that means that we've seen all there is to see for the most part--but hey. Just another excuse to go buy the Wii version!

  • Posted Feb 29, 2012 9:05 pm GMT
  • Tag
  • Print
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Digg

See Previous Blog Posts »