Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies (DS) - Part 2

This week on Super Adventures, I'm still taking a look at Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies! It's a JRPG, so it takes a while to get started. If you want to jump back to PART ONE instead, just click that text.

This was the second mainline Dragon Quest game to be released in Europe and the first to get a number. Dragon Quest VIII was just called Dragon Quest here, so if you're going off the titles it seems like we skipped 8 games. The series had made it over to the US though, where it was known as Dragon Warrior for a long while, and I tend to use the titles interchangeably when talking about earlier entries just to be unnecessarily confusing.

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies (DS) - Part 1

Developer:

Level-5

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Release Date:

EU/NA 2010 (2009 JP)

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Systems:

DS

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm taking a look at Dragon Quest IX (not to be confused with the latest game in the series, Dragon Quest XI).

This year I've been playing games that have made it onto someone's top 10 list and this one did one better than that, making it onto Gamesutra's "Best Of 2010: Top 5 Handheld Games" list. In fact it got first place, beating Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, Persona 3 Portable, and Warioware D.I.Y.

There's no remakes, ports or mobile versions for me to mention for this Dragon Quest as the game only ever came out on one system: the Nintendo DS. They actually went and did it, they made a handheld exclusive sequel to a console exclusive series! Those monsters! I know it made total sense at the time for them to move to the DS because of the much lower costs, but I wasn't keen when Metal Gear Solid pulled this and I'm not keen on it here either. Handheld gaming isn't really the same experience and it doesn't necessarily appeal to the same people, so people who own one system aren't necessarily going to have the other. I suppose it could've been worse though: Dragon Quest X is an MMO!

I've actually beaten this one before, in the distant past, but I've no idea what to expect because I can't remember anything. Except maybe it has a side view battle system for a change? I do know that it's a bloody long game though, so I'm going to have to stick with it for a few hours longer than usual to give it a fair test. Long enough to get a party together and go complete a quest together at least. What I'm saying is... this is going to be another two-parter.

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (PSP)

Developer:

Kojima Productions

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Release Date:

2010

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Systems:

PSP, PS3, Xbox 360

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing the fifth of the main Metal Gear Solid games, Peace Walker on the PlayStation Portable! Or maybe sixth, depending on whether you count Portable Ops (creator Hideo Kojima doesn't). In fact it was originally going to be Metal Gear Solid 5 and it pretty much still is in everything but title, as it continues the story of the fall of Big Boss.

I've never been keen on handheld exclusive sequels to console exclusive games (or the opposite) as unless you're playing on a Switch it's going to really change the experience. Plus it means you have to get extra hardware to continue the story, which kind of sucks if you've spent all your money getting a PS3 to play Metal Gear Solid 4 and don't feel the need to take games outside with you. (Personally I had a PSP in the house before I had a PS3, but that's just the same problem backwards!) Ideally I'd want developers to port everything to everything, but if that's not possible and they really want to make a portable game, then they should make it a spin-off like Metal Gear AC!D that doesn't continue the storyline. In my opinion.

Part of the reason they went portable with this one is because Monster Hunter Freedom did really well on PSP, hitting a broader demographic, and they wanted some of that for MGS. Peace Walker was aimed towards a younger school-age audience and in Japan they found it, making the game a big hit. Outside of Japan, not so much. In fact the game sold so poorly in the West that they took one of its characters off the cover of the international versions of Ground Zeroes because no one knew who he was. The game did pretty well in reviews though, as it's one of the highest rated PSP games on Metacritic (sharing third place with Lumines and Persona 3). In fact it's actually way higher than Monster Hunter Freedom. It's also a pretty late PSP game as it came out a year before the release of the PS Vita. And a year before Peace Walker HD Edition was released on consoles.

Okay, I'm going to play this for an hour or two and hope that gets me past the first cutscene at least. Either way there's going to be a lot of SPOILERS here for both this game and earlier Metal Gears, so please don't accidentally ruin a game for yourself by reading something here you didn't want to know.

Mass Effect 2 (PC) - Part 1

Developer:

BioWare

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Release Date:

2010

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Systems:

Windows, Xbox 360, PS3

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Today on Super Adventures, I'll be going through the entirety of Mass Effect 2 in an epic 70 part Let's Play! Actually no I've got a better idea, I'll show off the start of it, skip through to the bits I have something to say about, then wrap it up in let's say... 2 parts. That'll mean much less writing for me, much less reading for you, and everyone's happy! Plus the last thing I want to do is spoil the whole game for people who haven't played it.

That said, this will have SPOILERS ALL OVER THE PLACE, including the identity of all recruitable characters, the outcome of Mass Effect 1, the events leading up to the ending of Mass Effect 2 and what's waiting for players at the end. But I'll put another warning before the really massive spoilers at the end so you can safely skip right past them.

If you find my spoiler warnings to be inadequate in any way, then please scream at me in the comments later so I can be depressed and guilty about ruining the game for you fix them.

(Click screenshots to open up a higher resolution version.)

Mass Effect 2 (PC) - Part 2

This is the second and final part of my Mass Effect 2 article. You can go to part one by clicking the text that says 'part one' here: Part one.

WARNING: CONTAINS HUGE ENDING SPOILERS AT THE END.

James Bond 007: Blood Stone (PC)

Developer:

Bizarre Creations

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Release Date:

2010

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Systems:

Xbox 360, PS3, PC

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Today on Super Adventures, I'll be playing some Blood Stone 007, or perhaps James Bond 007: Blood Stone if you want to believe the manual.

This came out in 2010, so chronologically it slots right in the middle of the four year gap between the movies 'Quantum of Solace' and 'Skyfall' caused by MGM's bankruptcy issues. In fact Skyfall spent so long in production that this may have actually started out as a movie tie-in, so lucky escape there perhaps. Sure GoldenEye 007 is the exception that proves that movie licences don't have to be terrible, but it's also exceptional in that it stayed in development until two years after the film came out. It wasn't as rushed as they usually are.

It's been years since did my 'Every Old James Bond Game' marathon, but I remember that when I got past Goldeneye and moved onto the EA era, I started seeing the same few developer logos show up over and over: EA Redwood Shores (AKA Visceral), Black Ops Entertainment and Eurocom. But EA passed the licence to Activision in 2006, Black Ops vanished that same year, and Eurocom were busy making three other games (and got shut down two years later), so this has a whole new logo at the start. Blood Stone is the first Bond game created by Wiz 'n' Liz, Project Gotham Racing and Blur developer Bizarre Creations, and also the last as they went and closed down four months later as well! I guess that's why there hasn't been any Bond games since 2012, as every developer the franchise touches ends up dying.

Activision only put out one more Bond game before getting bored with the licence, which incidentally is probably why we haven't been able to find Blood Stone on Steam since 2013. Fortunately I was able to find it on eBay, so I won't have to draw sketches of the game from memory. Oh right, should probably mention that I played this before a few years back, so I'll be slightly less ignorant than usual and will be able to mention stuff from later in the game. Like how it plays the Bond theme about 700 times in a row on the end credits.

(Click images to view them in a slightly higher resolution.)

Medal of Honor (PC)

The final 'M' game I'm playing this year is Medal of Honor, not to be confused with Medal of Honor, despite the fact that it's by the same people and has the exact same damn name. Actually you should get the games confused, teach EA a lesson.

Medal of Honor 2010 seems to have acquired a bit of a bad reputation, possibly because it dropped the franchise's World War 2 setting after 11 years of gunning down Nazis to follow the Call of Duty series and become yet another charmless grey Modern Warfare clone. Or maybe it's just crap. Either way it probably isn't an ideal candidate for my site, but I've seen it get so much hate over the last few years that I'm curious to see what exactly it's done to piss so many people off.

I'll only be playing the single player campaign I'm afraid, though I'm sure multiplayer also features gruff soldiers pulling off headshots with scoped M4A1 Carbines.

(Click the pics for double the resolution.)

Fallout: New Vegas (PC)

New Vegas is the sixth game in the Fallout franchise, released between Fallout 3 and a theoretical Fallout 4 that may or may not definitely be in development right now.

Though Bethesda are the current custodians of the series after buying it from Interplay, this game was passed on to Obsidian to make instead... which is a company founded by ex-Interplay employees. Annoyingly they haven't used their years of PC RPG developing experience to fix the issue where I have to disable my Xbox 360 controller to use the mouse in the menu though.

This is awesome theme music though, it's like a slightly wild west-tinged version of the Fallout 3 theme (youtube links, don't hate me if there's ads). I know people liked that the first two games began with classic songs by The Ink Spots, but I think its cool that the series has an original theme of its own now. One of their tunes will show up in the intro though, they always do.

(Click the images to see them at the original resolution.)

Frogatto & Friends (PC) - Guest Post

And now for someone completely different. Veteran guest poster Ocean returns from his 18 month exile with an in-depth report on an indie platformer that he played for a bit recently.

Now for Frogatto and Friends!


This one I would have never found or checked out on my own but Ray happened to mention that I should get it and I liked the art so I figured I'd give it a try! You can find it here: http://www.frogatto.com/ though it's not free. I got my own copy as part of a bundle.

(No pixel art was harmed during the making of this post. Click the pictures to view them at the correct, non-blurry, resolution.)

Alpha Protocol (PC)

The game shows the SEGA logo as it's starting up and shouts "Say-gah!" like an old Sonic the Hedgehog game. If it's trying to play on my nostalgia to win me over, then it's working.

This post has an unreasonable amount of pictures, and I apologise for that. Click the pics to see them at a more visible resolution.

Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale (Demo) (PC) - Guest Post

Frequent contributor Ocean reports on another indie game.

As the title suggests, you'll be playing as a girl who is in charge of an item shop!
You can download the demo here.

Options: Making the text display quickly. This is a great option. Anyway, onto the game!

Super Meat Boy (PC)

SUPER... MEAT BOY!

Click the pictures to view them full size.