Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara (PS3, 2013)
The first video game I ever remember playing isn't Aladdin for the SNES. It was some golf-type thing where you had to hit a bunch of stuff flying in front of you. You got varying amounts of points for hitting different targets. The reason I mentioned Aladdin prior to this is that both of these took place at my next door neighbour's. Since I was five years old I've no idea how timelines went but the following Christmas I got a SNES with a lot of games and that Aladdin was in there. I never finished it. I never got close, because I was five years old. Or six, probably. My co-ordination and my intelligence at that time weren't really all there. I had no idea what I was doing, essentially. A similar phenomena is responsible for my being a Colorado Avalanche fan, not knowing what I was doing when I got NHL 2001 I started a season mode in command of about half the teams. First one was Colorado and that was that. I've since watched video of Aladdin on youtube and hey, the levels beyond my limit were even harder. No chance! If I thought my SNES would still play it I'd play it next and try and make this review make sense later on. A few years ago I actually managed to finish Super Mario Brothers so it's probably possible.
The thing is, Aladdin is a good game. It was reviewed very well. In terms of platforming as far as I can remember it's pretty well-polished. Great movement around the levels with these things sticking out the wall you can swing around on to move on to different buildings. Very vivid level design too and great music. If you like the film you'd probably enjoy the game. Of all the things comprising this game from 1992 there's none I can reasonably find fault with, thinking about it now. It might be different if I played but like Driver above and the original Gran Turismo if I'm ever to finish playing it as I technically am now, I think I'd be able to find excuses for it. For any technical limitations, well, it's of its time. For any gameplay anachronisms, well, they were different back then. For proof of this see assorted trophy hunting websites bemoaning the quality of remasters like the Jak & Daxter and Sly Cooper series, seeing an easy target and hating something released ten years ago which to me holds up perfectly fine. ****ing kids. Who ever let them play video games and judge what direction they should go in? Oh, hey, Oscar, is that Marvel picture from your own toys? I can imagine playing the game then making the same sets with your kids to be very rewarding.
Chronicles of Mystara is a collection of two games from... oh, I'm not looking it up again, I think 1993 and 1995. They're a bit shinier and they're packaged together in one but, aside from those, it seems everything is as it was back in the day. Therein lies the problem. Usually when I write one of these posts I - in between bouts of procrastination which I have so far been immune to - have a vague idea of an order of things I want to say, put everything down in a different order anyway because I type stuff as it comes to me then when I've hit post I think of what I had really wanted to say the most. With that in mind, I suppose I should describe the game. An assortment of fantasy-based (as an aside, I don't know what Dungeons & Dragons is save for the butt of jokes about nerds) characters go through levels fighting monsters. Tower of Doom and sequel Shadow Over Mystara have what you would expect from such a game. Some malicious individual is threatening the land, only our ragtag bunch of heroes can stop it. Great! Every character is somewhat unique in terms of their attacks. There's a range of weapons each character can equip and those who can use magic are the ones who add some genuine variety in gameplay. Mainly because you don't need to try and hit enemies, just press the button to do a spell and kill them without contact. Easy. And about the only tolerable thing the game has going for it. As an up to 4 player co-op game I think having four different types combining at once could make the game a lot more fun. But then, that's not why I play video games.
Moving around isn't very easy. I'm glad I didn't have to grow up in a world without joysticks. Using buttons for continuous, multi-directional movement is a terrible idea. It just doesn't work. So here is a game where moving around - sort of useful when you have multiple enemies on screen at once from every direction trying to attack you - is furry. That's the best thing to describe it. Vague. Imprecise. Deliberately obstructive. Never mind, surely the combat makes up for it. Well, no. I said there's a range of weapons. Some weapons are better suited for different enemies, the RPG element of the game sees to that. Except it doesn't make a difference. Hitting any enemy with any weapon, with about two exceptions, will damage it. Continuing to do this will continue damaging it. Doing it for long enough will defeat an enemy. That's the game. That's
all the game. But surely playing the game yourself with so many enemies means it's hard to stay alive in battles, to get through a level without being reset to the start as you always did back in the day? If you die you can continue in classic arcade fashion. Straight back into the action. With a bit less HP in all present enemies. So you can play - and beat - the game without attacking anything. Save for one hit to finish bosses off. Struggling to grind down enemies constantly while fighting an obtuse control system is all the game has, yet there is no penalty for failing at it. Anywhere.
The other aspect of a game aging is how it treats its menus and interfaces. A simple port of a game is fine. When you play enough PS2 remasters you eventually remember that it used to be triangle to go back in a menu, not circle. Here though, annoying choices get kept in, and clowns who liked this thing because it was all mummy would buy them when they were a kid lap it up. If you pause the game and go to Controls the four buttons do different things. Jump, Attack, Cycle, Use. The latter two are for your assortment of thrown weapons/magic/other artefacts you can pick up from enemies. Pressing Cycle goes through all of them, but, if you press Cycle to bring up the current options then press the Jump button you get a different selection. You in fact get several. I discovered this by accident. I had no idea how I did it. The game doesn't mention
anywhere that a feature like this is a thing, and it's something that fans lap up. The same with its attempts at stories and lore. There's a trophy in the game for collecting every treasure there is (ie every item/droppable you can pick up) and there's two weapons that you can get in one specific shop. They're on the wall behind the table with the other purchasables on them and you have to move a floating hand over them and press select enough times to make them available for purchase. One gamefaqs thread I found had someone on it saying "I love that the game is filled with secrets like this." Why? Why is this good? Why is something so old, so anachronistic, so wildly irritating praised now? It's bad. The assorted secret sections of levels, walking into walls to find hidden rooms, it's bad. It's obtuse. It's deliberately misleading beyond the point of reasonable curiosity.
Same thing goes for equipment. There's weapons, armour and other collectibles that you can equip to improve various factors like speed, attack, so on. Absolutely no explanation anywhere telling you how to do it. You equip whatever you find. And, much like those attacks I mentioned earlier, none of it makes any difference. Every now and then you find some shoes that make you move quicker, then you get hit twice and they get destroyed. Gone forever. And they're all basically the same as the attacks I mentioned earlier anyway. The difference they make is so miniscule you won't notice anything that happens as the game goes on. Likewise, your characters can level up - somehow - and it makes no discernible effect on gameplay. You don't kill enemies any easier, your health doesn't last any longer. But hey, that doesn't matter since attrition can take everything down anyway. And here's another thing, playing through Shadows Over Mystara (which is longer) the first time, I probably died 30-50 times. How tedious do you think it is playing a game where you can be killed so easily but in which you don't fail by being killed? Those 30-50 restarts take up about an hour and a half of playing. I can't overstate how irritating this gets, and how quickly it does. It's an experience you can only appreciate after going through it yourself, but I wouldn't let you.
I mentioned.... somewhere that usually I finish these and then remember the thing I wanted to say the most once I'd hit post. Since it's past 1AM I doubt I'll be doing that now even if there was something but the only other thing I could add is that with all these horrific aspects of gameplay the game actually tries to take itself seriously, which is probably the worst part. Defeating the final boss, while hard because of how powerful it is, isn't an achievement. I was going to do it anyway, the same way I've done everything throughout the game up to this point. Your story is garbage, the attempts at conveying this through the assorted terrible on screen messages and pictures (hey, I especially love the fact that there's time limits when you're in stores or deciding on a path to take) are not profound, insightful or immersive. There are games which age will and games which do and while the two can contain similar positives and negatives, most of the time something which is good and charming in one game will be rage-inducing in another. Maybe if I'd endlessly watched a Disney film about killing dragons when I was 7 I wouldn't feel so aggrieved at ~13 hours of my life being sunk into this travesty.
