June Rant Game of the Month
Huh, just realised it's July.
Way to entirely skip June's game of the month, which I have just decided now is going to be...
Baten Kaitos.
Granted I have had this game for a while now but it has sadly been overshadowed a fair bit. Time to let it shine and I guarantee it is a shiny, shiny game. From the very moment it is started it grabs you by the throat and screams "I SHINE". After wrestling the freaky robot tentacles down it starts to get a little better. Time to break it up CC_Gamers style!
The Look
Shiny, pretty take your pick. We have cloud worlds, sunsets, rainbows and lakes. Sugary worlds, airships, villages and sankes. (Admittedly I'm yet to see a snake I just needed to make it rhyme) But here is the best part, everything in this game is drop-dead gorgeous. Colours everywhere, particle effects to drool over. It is perhaps the damn prettyiest game on Gamecube and probably on a lot of other consoles to. To me gameplay means everything (why I am still partial to the odd game of nethack.)
Conclusion: Views to write home about, a pretty, pretty, pretty game.
The Feel
Nice standard familiar RPG romp. Nifty little card system that combines depth and flex into something pretty and fun. Easily one of the better card-based games out there. And then there is running around. In order to make the game more pretty (I speculate...) they use a fixed camera system, to create a fixed (but animated) environment. This means that sometimes doors are a bit hard to identify, and collision has a few glitches in it, but nothing serious. It's like dancing in a painting in which you get to beat the crap out of things every now and again.
Conclusion: Plays just fine. Slow and tactical battle system is interesting enough not to get boring.
The First Half Hour
Voice acting is really really bad. Not resident evil original bad but poorly acted in a bucket type bad. Everyone sounds strangely nasal. Maybe it's something in the atmosphere, they do all live in the clouds. Fortunately it proves to be a most endearing trait, and the soundtrack is also bang-on with a mixture of orchestral, rock and even a few hip-hop tracks (which aren't so bad, go figure). Standard RPG fare = cutscenes longer than your pants. Lots of button mashing YEAH I THINK I CAN GUESS THE PLOT and when you do gain control and walk out of the hut you of course run INTO ANOTHER BLOODY CUTSCENE! Then you get to the meat of playing, smash a few monsters in the face and then it all comes together... Nice
Conclusion: Plot is mildly of interest, but that's fine because the game is good for playing and looking.
And really that's all there is to the game. Plot has no bearing on just how awesome it is.
Score 10/10
Though all rant games have already achieved this based on principal.
That's why it has earned game of the month for june!
Way to entirely skip June's game of the month, which I have just decided now is going to be...
Baten Kaitos.
Granted I have had this game for a while now but it has sadly been overshadowed a fair bit. Time to let it shine and I guarantee it is a shiny, shiny game. From the very moment it is started it grabs you by the throat and screams "I SHINE". After wrestling the freaky robot tentacles down it starts to get a little better. Time to break it up CC_Gamers style!
The Look
Shiny, pretty take your pick. We have cloud worlds, sunsets, rainbows and lakes. Sugary worlds, airships, villages and sankes. (Admittedly I'm yet to see a snake I just needed to make it rhyme) But here is the best part, everything in this game is drop-dead gorgeous. Colours everywhere, particle effects to drool over. It is perhaps the damn prettyiest game on Gamecube and probably on a lot of other consoles to. To me gameplay means everything (why I am still partial to the odd game of nethack.)
Conclusion: Views to write home about, a pretty, pretty, pretty game.
The Feel
Nice standard familiar RPG romp. Nifty little card system that combines depth and flex into something pretty and fun. Easily one of the better card-based games out there. And then there is running around. In order to make the game more pretty (I speculate...) they use a fixed camera system, to create a fixed (but animated) environment. This means that sometimes doors are a bit hard to identify, and collision has a few glitches in it, but nothing serious. It's like dancing in a painting in which you get to beat the crap out of things every now and again.
Conclusion: Plays just fine. Slow and tactical battle system is interesting enough not to get boring.
The First Half Hour
Voice acting is really really bad. Not resident evil original bad but poorly acted in a bucket type bad. Everyone sounds strangely nasal. Maybe it's something in the atmosphere, they do all live in the clouds. Fortunately it proves to be a most endearing trait, and the soundtrack is also bang-on with a mixture of orchestral, rock and even a few hip-hop tracks (which aren't so bad, go figure). Standard RPG fare = cutscenes longer than your pants. Lots of button mashing YEAH I THINK I CAN GUESS THE PLOT and when you do gain control and walk out of the hut you of course run INTO ANOTHER BLOODY CUTSCENE! Then you get to the meat of playing, smash a few monsters in the face and then it all comes together... Nice
Conclusion: Plot is mildly of interest, but that's fine because the game is good for playing and looking.
And really that's all there is to the game. Plot has no bearing on just how awesome it is.
Score 10/10
Though all rant games have already achieved this based on principal.
That's why it has earned game of the month for june!