Alas, For my assignment 1. I Made one of the toys that most people nowadays love to play. The NDSL, Nintendo DS(Dual Screen) Lite.
Above is the rendered 3D NDSL. It also rotates too!
Monday, December 10, 2007
Monday, October 15, 2007
First Game Review
Title of the Game: Tales Of The Abyss
Platform of Game: Playstation 2
Genre of Game: RPG aka Role Playing Game
Developer: Namco Tales Studio
Product Model Year: 2005
Description of the game: The game takes place on the world of Auldrant, a planet composed of Fonons: a material energy found in all things. Long ago, a new kind of Fonon was discovered, but great chaos was brought with the finding. By using this newest Seventh Fonons, one could read the future. One such Seventh Fonist, Yulia Jue, put in place a future for the world for thousands of years to come. This prophecy of the future's set path became known as the "Score" and is documented on stone tablets which were scattered throughout the world. The nations of Kimlasca-Lanvaldear and Malkuth have fought over the fragments of these tablets for generations, each uncovering them and hoping to discover the future before the other.
As the game commences, the year is ND 2017. Luke fon Fabre, the son of Duke Fabre of the Kimlasca Kingdom, is 17 years old. He is the Light of the Sacred Flame who is destined to bring prosperity to Kimlasca. But since being kidnapped seven years ago by the Malkuth empire, he has been kept confined to the Fabre family mansion. The shock of the kidnapping erased all of Luke's memories prior to the event. But one fateful day, a mysterious woman breaks into the mansion and sets off a chain of events that will change the world forever...
Game Play: Basically, the game allows the player to take on the role of the main character, together with a party of other characters, the player plays through the game as the story unfolds. Together with a battle system thats unique to the TALES series.
This is a screenshot of how the game looks like while in battle. Where the player gets to move around in a virtual plain where players partake in combat.
Platform of Game: Playstation 2
Genre of Game: RPG aka Role Playing Game
Developer: Namco Tales Studio
Product Model Year: 2005
Description of the game: The game takes place on the world of Auldrant, a planet composed of Fonons: a material energy found in all things. Long ago, a new kind of Fonon was discovered, but great chaos was brought with the finding. By using this newest Seventh Fonons, one could read the future. One such Seventh Fonist, Yulia Jue, put in place a future for the world for thousands of years to come. This prophecy of the future's set path became known as the "Score" and is documented on stone tablets which were scattered throughout the world. The nations of Kimlasca-Lanvaldear and Malkuth have fought over the fragments of these tablets for generations, each uncovering them and hoping to discover the future before the other.
As the game commences, the year is ND 2017. Luke fon Fabre, the son of Duke Fabre of the Kimlasca Kingdom, is 17 years old. He is the Light of the Sacred Flame who is destined to bring prosperity to Kimlasca. But since being kidnapped seven years ago by the Malkuth empire, he has been kept confined to the Fabre family mansion. The shock of the kidnapping erased all of Luke's memories prior to the event. But one fateful day, a mysterious woman breaks into the mansion and sets off a chain of events that will change the world forever...
Game Play: Basically, the game allows the player to take on the role of the main character, together with a party of other characters, the player plays through the game as the story unfolds. Together with a battle system thats unique to the TALES series.
This is a screenshot of how the game looks like while in battle. Where the player gets to move around in a virtual plain where players partake in combat.
The game play in ToA is addicting and fun. You control one character on screen as you guide them through towns, dungeons, the overworld, and all those parts in between. And like a lot of other RPGs, there are puzzles that you need to solve in order to continue. However, thankfully the number of puzzles aren't that overwhelming that you will have gone bald by stressing yourself out by the time you finish your game.
Graphics:
Okay, I think I've covered the game play enough; now to talk about how pretty the game is. Tales of The Abyss tries to make an anime-esque atmosphere, and it succeeds pretty well at it. While there are a ton of noticeable "jagged edges" over the course of the game, the game still looks nice. The character models look pretty realistic, and the backgrounds and the environments all look great.
In battle, when a character does a special move, all the moves look well done and animated. The special attacks look great and the magic (particularly the more advanced spells) look absolutely incredible.
Throughout the game you also see a few anime cutscenes and FMV (Full Motion Videos), and those look equally impressive.
The character models may be a bit awkward and there are way too many jagged edges on the characters and things in the backgrounds, but the graphics are still very good for a game on the Playstation 2 at that time. The graphics to this game really make you feel like you could be watching an anime cartoon or something like that.
Another problem in this game is that, due to the large amount of polygons in the overworld map where the playstation 2 was not able to fully support, it causes a reduction in frame rate for the game thus creating some problems for players by slowing down their game pace.
Although there might be alot of complaints about the graphics, all in all, it still looks pretty much decent compared to the other games released at that time.
Tales of the Abyss boasts an amazing soundtrack which was mostly composed by Motoi Sakuraba and Shinji Tamura, though a few songs were also composed by Motoo Fujiwara, the lead vocalist of the Japanese band Bump of Chicken.
The songs composed by him are on the album "Songs for Tales of the Abyss". Bump of Chicken also performed the game's opening song, Karma (from their Supernova / karma single). Different versions of the song are used throughout the game. Tear's Fonic Hymns that she frequently sings, Fuka, are sung by Yukana.
Similar to localizations of previous games, the opening song for the English version is changed to one where the song is instrumental compared to the Japanese ones with vocals.
Conclusion: All in all, this game is one of the more memorable RPGs on the Playstation 2 Console. Boasting an appealing story, decent graphics coupled with exciting gameplay. It's no wonder Famitsu gave the title a 9 / 9 / 9 / 9 - (36/40) and ranked it at #44 in the Famitsu's 100 all-time favorite games list.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)