Many years ago, when I was but a young naive boy in a world of moral black and white, I swore a lifelong allegiance to Sega. I would never touch a Nintendo controller or go within fifty yards of anyone who owned a Sony console. Here in the present day I own more Nintendo machines than Sega by four to six, and I’m fine with that, because I’m fending off the evil power of Sony with their lowbrow games and inept marketing (apart from the PS2 sat by my telly).

Well, until the other day.

My Weakness

Now, my willpower isn’t the best. Years ago I tried to quit games for Lent, and got caught playing Breakout at half-twelve on Ash Wednesday. With that in mind, I stood absolutely no chance when I saw the words “Phantasy Star Portable” in this month’s GamesTM.

I’ve wanted a new handheld Phantasy Star game ever since the Gamecube version let you link to a GameBoy Advance. “Aha,” I thought, “now I can train my FOmar on the go!” but sadly the best I could do was play a NiGHTS minigame and raise an army of Tails Chao. With no signs of Sega taking up my idea for Shining Soul III or PSO DS, there’s only one platform to buy to take Phantasy Star with me wherever I go.

And Sony Makes Four

For all its critics, the PSP is a very impressive machine. Yes it’s huge and slightly ergonomically flawed, but it’s extremely versatile as a media machine, although I suppose today most mobile phones offer similar options, though without the huge screen.

It doesn’t have a huge number of games I’d love to play, but I’ve already borrowed OutRun 2006: Coast to Coast, Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max, Tomb Raider Legend and Sonic Rivals 2. The first two have to go back as they don’t support my 4GB card (darn!) but Sonic Rivals 2 is absolutely awesome. Its main flaw is having way too many character stories, but the action is phenomenal, a fast and exhilarating mix of reactions and racing. The levels are huge and fluid, with almost no stopping from one end to the other, and very few of the big drops that plague the Sonic Rush games. The second Act of every level is even a side-on beat ’em up against your rival, and although it’s hardly Smash Bros. it’s still a refreshing change for a Sonic game and much better than Sonic Battle.

Taking up most of my time so far has been Monster Hunter Freedom, which like Shining Soul before it is an online RPG without the online bits. Yes you can meet up locally for quests, but I’m the only person I know who owns a PSP, despite the fact I work in a games shop. It’s a little like PSO in its combat, with combo attacks and some similar items, and exactly the same “wow!” reaction when you see the rare items in the intro. I hope it’ll tide me over until Phantasy Star Portable (can’t really shorten that to PSP!).

A Long Wait

Some people have pointed out it’s a slightly unusual move to buy a console in order to play one game that won’t be released until much later in the year, and they’re absolutely right. I don’t even know much about the game in question, other than it’s based on Phantasy Star Universe, which I played briefly and very much enjoyed. I don’t even know if it’s got online play, but if it does that’s one more reason to get back online properly (that and Smash Bros. Brawl). The simple, pure allure of being able to play Phantasy Star wherever I go is enough.

I don’t know if the PSP will become my number one portable console, although as I only play Animal Crossing on DS these days it stands a pretty good chance. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to collect seven Special Mushrooms and then finally beat Shadow. Games are great.

Oh yes, and I almost forgot. The wonderful Carnival of Video Game Bloggers is coming back home to the Collected Writings of James Newton on February the 19th, and I am currently welcoming all submissions concerned with games in all shapes and sizes! All you have to do is go to the submission page and leave your entry. I look forward to reading it!

I had to agree to a “no squeal” rule in order to play this morning, such is NiGHTS’ power over me. I think I’d broken that rule within about five seconds of hearing the distinctive musical cue on the Wii menu, and again on the “Sonic Team” ident. This post is pretty much just squeals put into proper words.

I was actually reluctant to start NiGHTS, partially paralysed by the threat of disappointment, but there’s only so many times you can read the manual – I even read the warranty, for goodness’ sakes. I guess I just wanted to savour the whole of it like I did with the original eleven years ago. I could even go into an in-depth review of every single part of it – like how the disc itself is artistically disappointing compared to the original’s sky of blue and silver stars – but I think only I would be interested in reading it!

Gateway to your Dreams

My first impression is something akin to meeting an old friend and seeing they’ve grown up to become something they were meant for. The FMV intro is wonderful, a fluid NiGHTS sweeping over mountains and water just like old times, and the scenes in what is presumably Twin Seeds are every bit as evocative and familiar, cute bubble cars and twilit bedrooms from the first game becoming more real but just as charming. Each character’s movie even follows the same format, with their fears transforming from people into mocking ghosts who drive them towards a welcoming light.

Into the game proper, then. The “Mindsight” system that uses the Wii Remote’s pointer to lure NiGHTS towards it simply isn’t accurate enough for the tight turns and Paraloops needed to succeed. If you ask me, it seems like a secondary method that wasn’t really intended to provide the same experience as the other stick-based controls. Using a Nunchuk is a strangely disconnected feeling, without the expected heightened sensation of flight due to its lightness. Using a Gamecube controller, despite its notched stick, just feels right, particularly with tricks accessed with the triggers.

The levels themselves are classic NiGHTS – if that’s not a huge overstatement after two original games in a dozen years – with names like Pure Valley, Aqua Garden and Delight City. The most significant difference is the introduction of “missions” to widen the structure of the levels, with only the first mission usually following anything like the traditional Chips-rings-Links format, and others asking you to save or slaughter Nightopians (apparently Paralooping them sends them to “a place of relaxation”…), achieve a certain Link or defeat the level’s Nightmaren boss.

Of the four bosses I’ve encountered so far, two play like NiGHTS originals Puffy and Gillwing, asking you to Touch Dash a rotund enemy through obstacles or Paraloop a scaly creature to damage it. Not that I mind of course – these are classic enemies reworked on a larger scale – particularly when they’re more engaging than the two truly new enemies I’ve encountered, Cerberus and Chamelon. The latter is particularly frustrating – you have to Paraloop the background to reveal his hiding place, then again to damage him, but it seems so far removed from an enjoyable boss encounter it just becomes an exercise in patience. Cerberus is better, asking you to dash a connecting cable to bash the dogs’ heads together, but it’s less than gold standard.

My Dream? Not Entirely…

Nightopians are much cuter now than before, but so far seem less developed. You can hatch their eggs in the Nightopia stages, but the real interaction happens in “My Dream“, a sort of Chao Garden where Nightopians and Nightmarens co-exist, though there seems so little to do there at the moment I’m left wondering what the point is. Supposedly it uses the Wii’s Weather Channel to adapt the climate, and it changes appearance depending on the ratio of good-to-evil, but I guess these are long-term revelations. I did hatch a family of Nightopians wearing balaclavas, which is possibly the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.

This is all coming out much more sensibly than it seems in my head. I’m trying to be rational about it rather than simply daubing “IT’S NEW NiGHTS!” everywhere, which is what I’ll be telling everyone at work tomorrow. The simple fact of the matter is I really, really like it. My major gripe with it is that there isn’t enough NiGHTS in the levels: the missions seem to detract from the core joy of flight, but they’re not flawed in themselves, perhaps just a little unsuited. Counteracting that is the sense that it’s a truly updated NiGHTS that uses technology to achieve things they couldn’t on the Saturn. Graphically it shows its lack of development time rather than the Wii’s relatively low power, but the art and design shine through, and there are still some beautiful moments – Lost Park switches from verdant greenery to broken desert at the flick of a switch, and the fishy Gillwing-like boss explodes into a cloud of brightly coloured balloons.

Dreams Dreams

The very fact I can now play a second original NiGHTS is enough to send my heart churning, but I remarked to Hannah it gives me exactly the same feelings as the original did – wonder, warmth, hope; that sense you’re experiencing something special. It’s been a long twelve years, but NiGHTS has returned, and with all the excitement around it I can’t help but feel the journey has only just begun.

I’m listening to Dreams Dreams (NiGHTS) by Sonic Team, from Sonic Team Unplugged Live 2004.

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With those “end of year” things now far enough away for this not to be a bandwagon post, and today my 24th birthday, I thought it apt to look back on what I played whilst I was 23 and anticipate what I’m excited about in the next 365 days of my life.

No. 5 – Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games

I was just as shocked as anyone when this was announced – after speculating what Sega’s DS surprise might be, to say I was taken aback by these two competing would be a gross understatement. I did change the work PC’s wallpaper to the announcement image, though!

I think, out of the 16 characters on offer, I’ve only ever played as Sonic, no matter what the event is. Swimming? Sonic‘s my man! Table Tennis? We all know Sonic‘s got a killer chop! The great thing about Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games is that it gets right what Wii Sports got wrong, and gets the right bits even better. With a proper range of tournaments, medals and events, it’s got the longevity that Wii Sports missed out on, but in pick-up-and-play terms it’s got instant appeal. The Dream Events are hit-and-miss, but when one of them is essentially Mario Kart on foot, you’re onto a winner.

Its success has surprised even me – we get asked for it a dozen times a day, and for it to top the all-formats chart two weeks before Christmas is an amazing achievement for Sega who, I’d like to point out, were the developers and publishers; Nintendo just lent them bits. It’s Sega’s biggest success in many, many years, and a wonderful thing to celebrate.

Best moment: Warming up on the long-jump track, Sonic waves to the crowd and shouts “it’s-a me!”, then as you push your Remote and Nunchuck together he leads the audience in cheering for him! Absolute genius.

No. 4 – NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams unveiled

How could this not feature as a top moment of my 23-dom? I’ve seen enough speculation over the years to know to take such hope-mongering at face value, but this was the first time I felt compelled, as a world-renowned expert on NiGHTS (just joking!), to answer some of the questions and put them in their place. And guess what? I was wonderfully, fantastically and joyfully wrong.

That whole period of scanning news pages, searching every games-related page and my good friends over at www.scoreattack.net for any new information was quite fun, actually. When the first screenshots emerged, I pretty much made myself want to cry because that’s what I’d always thought my reaction would be (in retrospect that’s quite weird!). In reality, I was filled with disbelief – there’s nothing quite like getting what you want to take the wind out of your sails.

In less than eight days I will have played NiGHTS 2 and no doubt bored everybody I know to tears about it (I think I’ll buy Hannah some headphones!) I can only hope it will prove to be the watershed moment in my life I’ve waited for since I was just thirteen years old. Not that I’m working myself up or anything.

Best moment: That fantastic realisation that it wasn’t all a cruel hoax played on me by the entire Internet, but a sequel to the best game ever on my favourite current console.

No. 3 – Sonic and the Secret Rings

I ran to Gamestation as fast as Sonic himself when this came in, and played it for eight straight hours on my next day off. It replaces the frustration and hesitation of previous 3D Sonics with exhilaration and precision. Some people complained that you simply steered left and right, which ignores the fact that in the best Sonics you only ever run forward, never backwards.

The skill and experience element keeps you playing to get closer to those elusive gold medals, and some of the unlockable artwork and videos are stunning. The less said about the party mode the better – hopefully we’ll see fewer tacked-on multiplayer ideas in future Wii games – but the main quest is so good as to completely restore my faith in Sega and their main man.

Best moment: Using Speed Break to burst through the torrential rain of Pirate Storm, only to run out of jetty and rush over the roaring waves on a surfboard, performing tricks as you’re tossed into the air.

Runner-up: Racing along slender beams of light on Levitated Ruin, Speed Breaking around corkscrews, dodging missiles and going faster than any game ever.

No 2. – Super Mario Galaxy

The controversy! Yes, even a hardened Sonic fan like me can admit that Mario‘s game is better than Sonic‘s. In terms of design, flair and execution, there’s nothing close to it on Wii, and probably on most other formats too.

Although some people feel it doesn’t take advantage of the Wii’s motion-sensitivity as well as it might, its controls are precise and do what many Wii games fail to do – become an interface for the game, not an obstacle to it. Even the two-player mode is quite enjoyable when used to kill Chain Chomps, shoot Goombas or, most enjoyably, make Mario spin in the middle of an important jump and send him plummeting into a black hole. It may not be particularly co-operative, but it is fun!

The game excels graphically, particularly with its texture work, which stands as probably the best ever in a Nintendo game. King Kaliente’s oil; the fur on the Queen Bee and Major Burrows; the subtle sheen on the apples in Gusty Garden. From start to finish the game is decorated with precision and a well-chosen palette, and proves HDTV isn’t the be-all and end-all some might suggest.

Aurally the game is every bit as good, with some of the strongest Mario musical moments for many years. The observatory theme grows as new galaxies are unlocked, adding new instruments and melodies to the arrangement. Your first visit to Good Egg couldn’t say “you’re going to enjoy this!” any more clearly with a voice over, and the theme from Gusty Garden alone stands out as probably the best piece of game music I’ve heard all year. It’s a shame about the frankly pathetic sub-MIDI instruments that play the fanfare upon completing the game, but I guess even the Super Mario Galaxy Orchestra need a day off.

Best moment: The first time you run and long jump off a walkway, you hover in mid-air, the camera flips and you keep flying to land on the underside of the same planet. One of many “wow” moments.

Runner-up: The beams of gravity from the game’s last level, which finally answer the question “why can’t we see forces?” – if we could, everyone would try to make impossible leaps and die all the time.

No. 1 – Endless Ocean

My WORD, that’s a turn-up for the books! A relatively unknown game about diving beating three triumphant appearances by the best characters in gaming for the coveted “Best Bit in a Game I Saw Whilst 23” Award? Read on, friends.

As you’ll know if you’ve read anything else on this blog, I believe games are so much more than entertainment – they’re talking points, exploratory vessels, launchpads for the imagination and still more. As with other media, there needs to be a spectrum of styles, and for every customer who buys War is Fun: Soldier Massacre, someone else favours We All Wear Leather Armour XI. But there’s still a bias towards confrontational, violent media, and that’s where Endless Ocean excels – there’s nothing else like it (with the exception of an old Konami PSOne game whose name escapes me.)

Endless Ocean is an atmospheric game, although not to the exclusion of “proper” game elements. There’s plenty of different areas, from the warm shallow water of Knives Reef to the mysterious Ancient Temple, and the chilling Graveyard at the bottom of Deep Abyss. The ocean is suitably huge, and after my ten hours there’s still plenty of grey areas I’ve yet to explore.

Although the overarching aim is to find out as much about fish as possible, you also have to lead clients on guided tours, pointing out interesting fish and sea features to them, and there are photographic missions that challenge you to capture a certain creature and pitch it to an editor for use in a magazine article. Remember how much I love the photography in Beyond Good and Evil? Well, the actual aiming and help system here isn’t as developed (ho ho), but it’s every bit as enjoyable when you take a rewarding picture, such as my beautiful Goblin Shark portrait the idiot editor turned down.

Best moment: Swimming down towards the foreboding Deep Abyss, the music cuts out, leaving just the sound of oxygen bubbling away from you. In the dark, you think you see something moving… something large… Suddenly, a triumphant choir rises in your ears, as though announcing the arrival of an angel, and before your eyes an enormous whale emerges from the abyss and swims inches away from your face.

It’s been many years since a game has literally taken my breath away and made me feel such a strong emotion, but I could genuinely have wept at this moment. The force of the music and the graphics combined to create a realisation that I was in the presence of something intensely beautiful, a gentle and inspiring creature to be admired and respected.

When I’m 24

There you go – those were my five best moments in gaming whilst I was 23. Pleasingly, I really could only have expected two of them, and number one was as big a surprise as you get. All I’ll say is that my number one moment in a year’s time isn’t finally playing a sequel to NiGHTS, I probably won’t bother playing games any more!

I’m listening to Words by Doves, from The Last Broadcast

January 18th, 2008. That’s the day when nearly twelve long years of waiting come to an end, and NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams is released on Nintendo Wii.

I’m sure it goes without saying I’m incredibly excited about getting my hands on it, despite some of the things I’ve heard from people who’ve played it illegally (you know who you are!). To say that a year ago, the mere prospect of a new NiGHTS game was impossible, it’s incredible to think we stand less than two weeks away from a genuine, bona fide NiGHTS 2.

I will, of course, be posting my impressions as soon as I get my hands on the game, probably in pictorial form: expect either the anguished, contorted features of a man crushed after a dozen years of optimism or, for the first time ever, the purest essence of joy distilled in photographic form.

In the meantime, look out for my “Top Gaming Moments of 2007” post which I just decided to write now!

  I’m listening to Tijuana Lady by Gomez, from The Album.