Episode 134 finally went up on Sunday. Let me know if the RSS feeds aren't working. Hopefully I can get episode 135 up tonight, thus ending the month-long frustrations and delays thanks to technical difficulties.
A few weeks ago, Kevin Van Ord asked me if I'd be interested in reviewing "Dokapon Journey" for the Nintendo DS, and something called, "Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do To Deserve This?" DJ had been left relatively un-reviewed and had been languishing on the shelf for a month, so I took care of that (the review should be up sometime soon--I submitted it just as E3 was underway). HIPB isn't due out for another few weeks, but with a name like that, how could I not anticipate starting the review process?
Don't ask why the hell this game's called, "Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do to Deserve This?" I'm tempted to e-mail publisher Sony Computer Entertainment to ask who thought of that. As far as Wikipedia can tell me, the original Japanese name for this game translates to, "For a Hero, You're Quite Cheeky!" Um, sure?
Anyway, I've been working on this for the past couple of days, and I can tell you that the first two hours or so of trying to figure this thing out was incredibly maddening. Without an instruction manual (thanks SCE...), one particular tutorial mission had me replaying it ten times.
Let me rewind a little bit. Just what is "Holy Invasion..."? As far as I can see, it's best described as a Tower Defense game with no towers. The general conceit is the same: Stop something coming out of point A from getting to point B, using a potpourri of obstacles. However, this time you're playing the role of an evil jerk: You've got to keep "heroes" from kidnapping your demon lord by "growing" a whole mess of monsters. That's right--you grow your stuff; you don't "buy" it like you normally would.
It's the "growing" part that aggravated me the first time. The whole idea is that you have to chisel away blocks to form a dungeon of tunnels, which serves two purposes: (a) provide somewhere to stash your demon lord such that the heroes have a hard time navigating the tunnels and locating him; (2) provide the ideal environment for your monsters to grow. It starts out simply enough. Some of the blocks in the playfield have little green vines and moss on them, representing "nutrients." Break one of those blocks, and you'll unleash a little slime that oozes back and forth. Whenever a slime oozes past a block, it will either take or distribute nutrients. Taking nutrients strengthens the slime; distributing it adds to the nutrient level of the block. So you can imagine that if you break open five nutrient-filled blocks, you've just given yourself the opportunity to fortify many other blocks on the playing field with nutrients, as the five disgusting slimes you've just liberated will spread their--ahem--essence around. If a block soaks up enough nutrients, it'll drastically change in appearance, and breaking such a block open will yield a little maggot that actually eats the slimes and eventually spins a cocoon before maturing into a hero-stinging fly of some sort. So, you kind of get a little sense of ecology in this game, and that's fun.
The problem arose when the tutorial asked me to grow a stupid lizard warrior. This guy's supposed to be the key soldier in your little army, at least at first. The way to unleash him is to chisel blocks away in such a pattern so as to have slimes run over a certain block or group of blocks with enough frequency that it turns totally white. Chiseling that block yields Stupid Lizard Warrior (that's not the official name, by the way), which will eventually lay eggs. The tutorial even tells you, "Chisel tunnels in an 'O', 'T' or 'H' pattern" so that the slimes will always be rubbing up against the corner blocks. (Slimes are pretty dumb and only change direction when bumping into walls; chiseling the patterns as the tutorial tells you is supposed to keep slimes bumping into the same blocks.)
Well, I did that. I chiseled O's, T's and H's. I waited. And waited. And waited. Successful completion of the Stupid Lizard Warrior tutorial requires you to spawn eight of these little jerkfaces within five minutes. I failed ten times. On attempt 2, I spawned six of them after failing to spawn a single one. Six! I thought I was making progress, but not once in my eight remaining attempts did I ever reach six again. It's like things were totally random, and the blocks just did not want to soak up nutrients. Hell, the Stupid Lizard Warriors weren't even laying more than one or two eggs every time I attempted the tutorial. Finally, on the eleventh try, I somehow spawned eight lizards in two minutes. Did I do anything differently? Uh, nope. Today, it remains a complete mystery as to how I finished that tutorial.
I've been getting used to the game, but to me, the biggest complaint remains its reliability--or lack thereof. There were some playthroughs where I had plenty of Stupid Lizard Warriors, and others where I didn't. There were a few playthroughs were I was able to amass a small cadre of Vampires, but more where I was lucky to have two at the same time. I didn't change my tactics--perhaps where I dug, but not how I dug. In any event, when things are clicking, the game is definitely interesting. There's a fine balancing act that goes on here, as with any tower defense or strategy game. You want to dig narrow, winding tunnels so that the demon lord's assailants have a tough time finding their way to their goal, but at the same time you have to constantly chip away at blocks in order to spawn more critters with which to evolve your ecology.
Here's another balancing act. You can also spawn defense-enhancing demons, which strengthen your units simply by existing, by using the same blocks that create the Stupid Lizard Warriors--only difference is, you chip away all of its surrounding blocks so that it stands alone, then you chip the block itself to reveal a "rune," then you can chip on the rune itself and the demon will pop out. You can further increase the strength of the demon before you summon it by letting mana wisps--the magical equivalent of the slimes--get absorbed into the rune. Do you bolster your defense, though, not only at the expense of sacrificing the opportunity to spawn a Stupid Lizard Warrior, but also creating a wide open space (since you have to chip away more blocks just to create the rune)? Do you sacrifice your mana wisps to make a stronger demon, or do you spawn a weaker demon right away and save those mana wisps for creating Vampires and Liliths?
This balancing act is what I enjoy most about the game. Trying to get to that point, though, can be a little irritating. I just wish there were more reliable ways to create the monsters you want to create; in fact, I'd better describe it as a desire for more direct control. We'll see how far I can get with this strange title before I want to pull out my hair.
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