Memorable Melodies: Epilogue ~ The End of the Night

Song: Epilogue ~ The End of the Night

Game: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

Composer: Masakazu Sugimori

Ghost Trick seemed like the kind of game that would be right up my alley. However, for some reason didn't purchase it when it came out. I instead told myself I wouldn't buy it until it was $20. A few summers ago one of my friends called me to let me know that there was a physical copy with the case still intact at the local Gamestop. To this day I am still mad at myself for waiting to buy the game. Without a doubt Ghost Trick is one of my top five favorite games of all time. It has a unique premise, compelling story, and most important of all, an amazing soundtrack.

Masakazu Sugimori is well known for his work on Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, and Phoenix Wright: Justice for all. Both of those are great, and really add to games. The soundtrack he produced for Ghost Trick is no different and I personally think it's the best out of the three. If you asked me to sing/whistle songs from the first two Phoenix Wright games I couldn't do it on cue. Ghost Trick is another story though. 

One thing that makes a video game tune particularly memorable to me is when it ends up being tied to a particular scene in my mind. In the case of this one it's tied to the credits of Ghost Trick, because that's  the point where it plays. Man, the ending of Ghost Trick is insane. At first I didn't even believe it. I had to set my DS down several times in shock as it played out. The ending continues into the credits as scenes detailing what happened to the characters play out. Interspersed between the character vignettes are the credits. 

During the credits I felt gleeful. The game was a wild ride that had some great twists. Epilogue is a combination of the main theme of Ghost Trick and a new melody that makes you feel victorious, It says that the struggle is over and it's something to be happy about.

Thinking about the Ghost Trick ending gets me all warm and fuzzy inside. This song sure is a doozy, What a great game! Capcom needs to put out more stuff like this.

Review of Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

This review is based on my experience with the DS version of Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

Score: 5/5

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is the newest game from Ace Attorney creator Shu Takumi. During the time he was writing Ace Attorney 3 he came up with the idea to create a new mystery game dealing with ghosts. The end result was Ghost Trick, which is an adventure/puzzle game combination. Unlike the Ace Attorney franchise the player has direct control over the main character, which allows for a more immersive experience while retaining the unique characters and charm of those games.

When the game begins you’ll take control of Sissel and much to his surprise he’s dead. Sadly he’s got amnesia, so he doesn’t remember much of anything except what he looked like, because he can see his corpse. He doesn’t have much time to lament though, because as he comes to he notices that a murder is about to take place. A blue skinned assassin is holding a red haired woman at gun point, but because he’s dead Sissel thinks he can’t do anything about it. Just when things seem at their worst a lively desk lamp named Ray lets Sissel in on the fact that he has special powers known as ghost tricks.

As you can imagine these tricks are the foundation for the entire game and the first scenario plays out much like the rest of the game. The red haired woman gets shot, but all is not lost. If Sissel touches her body with his spirit he can go back to four minutes before her death and save her. How can he do this though? Well, that’s where the actual gameplay comes in. Sissel’s main power is that he can possess intimate objects and manipulate them. In order to move about through objects you’ll first need to enter the ghost world.

The blue dots are image cores you can possess. The line is Sissel traveling between them.

Entering the ghost world is as simple as touching a button in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. The world will turn red, objects will turn blue, and people will turn yellow. Anything you can interact with will have a circle in the middle known as a core. Sissel can move from core to core, but he can only reach so far, so making a path is often your goal. When inside an object its details will appear on the upper screen, including whether or not you can manipulate it. In order to manipulate an object you’ll need to return to the normal world and tap the trick button at the bottom right hand side of the bottom screen. The action performed depends on the object Sissel inhabits.

In order to solve each scenario you’ll need to use the objects in a specific order or way. It’s simple enough to achieve your goal. To me Ghost Trick has the perfect difficulty level, because it never gets super frustrating. While most puzzles need to be performed under a timer you can redo them as many times as you want, and each time the game will try to point you in the right direction. On top of that the puzzles are never extremely difficult. They get fairly challenging, but if you think about any situation long enough, then chances are you’ll figure out what to do. While nothing is overtly hard the game still makes you feel smart when you do solve the puzzle. Afterwards you’ll be rewarded with the next story sequence, which makes it all worthwhile.

The trouble with adventure games is that they don’t have a whole lot of replay value and sadly Ghost Trick is no different. The puzzles are entertaining, but unless the story grabs you, you’re not going to keep playing. In this case the story had no trouble drawing me in. It took me eleven or so hours to complete the game and I did it in just two sittings. I couldn’t stop once I had started, because I was so invested. When the game starts you’re thrown right into the action with very little explanation of who Sissel is, or why he has these special powers. It doesn’t help that he has amnesia, which is such a played out trope. I thought that the whole amnesia thing was going to bug me, but I feel like it’s handled quite well in Ghost Trick. Sissel doesn’t spend the whole time lamenting over his lost memories, he just gets down to business so he can figure out what the hell is going on.

I mean, just look at Sissel. He means business.

He figures out pretty early on that it’s a special night and that all of the people he meets are related to him in some way. It’s a classic one night mystery. Sissel is told he’ll cease to exist once dawn breaks, so he needs to find out before then. Finding out about who Sissel is and what he’s all about is the reason to play this game, but he wouldn’t be able to support an entire narrative on his own, so it’s good that he gets some help.

The Ace Attorney series is notable for it’s whacky and unique characters and Ghost Trick is no different. It just goes to show that Takumi knows how to make some compelling and varied case of characters. The hyperactive pooch Missile, the determined detective Lynne, and the smooth operating inspector Cabanela are just a few of the faces you’ll meet in game. Their stories are all compelling and their dialogue is excellently written,however I think that the animation used in Ghost Trick helped to make them larger than life.

In the Ace Attorney series the action is all based around static character portraits on a static background, the same is not true of Ghost Trick.  While they still have character portraits in conversation each character is also cel shaded, 3D, and fully animated on screen. When they move around it looks genuinely good. I want to say that it’s rotoscoped, but I don’t know that for sure. The movement looks genuinely good and it adds a lot to the games personality. Inspector Cabanela is known as the man who dances through life and he sure does do a lot of fantastic dancing. This animation paired with the characters makes them all feel very alive, which is one of the reasons I cared so much about all of them.

This video shows just how great Cabanela's dancing is.

The final ingredient of Ghost Tricks immersive world is the music. It was composed by Masakazu Sugimori the man behind the Ace Attorney and Viewtiful Joe soundtracks. His work on the original Ace Attorney soundtrack is argued to be his best work by his fans. To no surprise his excellent composing skills are back for Ghost Trick and he hasn’t lost his touch, if anything it’s gotten a whole lot better. Every song in the game compliments and adds to whatever is happening. I often found myself getting caught up in the music. For example, whenever Missile’s theme would play I would get a big goofy grin on my face. I’m even listening to the soundtrack as I write this, because it gets me so pumped up. Each song calls a specific moment from Ghost Trick to memory and that means the soundtrack did it’s job well.

Even after completing Ghost Trick I couldn’t stop thinking about it. At first I thought it was because of how the ending came together, which was immensely satisfying, but now I realize it was more than that. The game as a whole just fits together so well. Very rarely do I want to go back to a game immediately after completing it, but Ghost Trick was completely different, which is extra surprising given it’s an adventure game. The characters are memorable, the puzzles are fun and challenging, and the soundtrack is incredible. Very rarely do all the elements of a game come together as well as they do in this game.

I’m going to put it bluntly. Ghost Trick is a great game. If you can pick this game up I highly recommend that you do so. It’s only climbing in cost, so you should do it before it’s too late. Alternative there are versions for android and IOS now. The first few chapters are free and the remaining three chunks of the game you have to pay for individually. I don’t care which version of Ghost Trick you play, but I think that you should play at least one, if not all of them.

     -Manny

Game Time - 5/27/2012

It's ridiculously hot right now. No exaggeration, I can feel the moisture in the air. 

It may surprise you, but I have a hard time thinking of ways to start these. Since it's sweltering hot I don't especially feel like putting in the extra effort for a good intro, so I'm just going to jump right into it.

This past week I bought Viewtiful Joe: Red Hot Rumble (Almost wrote Jumble!), and Ghost Trick. I also played the new Final Fantasy XIII-2 DLC Requiem of the Goddess.

Game Time is here once more!

Final Fantasy XIII-2 - Lightning: Requiem of the Goddess

Man, video game names have been pretty bad lately huh? I realize this is DLC for an already poorly named game, but it's just an awful mouthful. 

I went into this DLC fully expecting it to be a complete piece of garbage, so it was a pleasant surprise when it wasn't. Unlike most or perhaps all of the previous DLC for Final Fantasy XIII-2 it actually adds on to the story. The part that makes me mad is that the information given in this DLC about the story definitely should have been in the game to begin with. It makes the ridiculous stuff that happens at the end of the game make a little bit more sense. This takes place after the game ends and while it's ending. I'm not going to talk about it here, because I already shit all over the story in another post. If you want to spoil everything feel free to take a look at that.

So what's this DLC all about you ask? Well, it's all about Lightning fighting Caius and that's it. This DLC costs 5 dollars and all you do is fight Caius. Typing it out like that makes it sound terrible, but it's actually pretty fun. I'm willing to admit that the battle system is the most fun part of the game and this DLC focuses entirely on that. 

If you want to pay $5 to fight Caius over and over this DLC is for you.

Instead of the tradition roles Lighting has far stronger roles at her disposal. The only role she doesn't have any access to is medic. Instead, she only has access to ten potions and a single elixir to heal herself with. With all of these tools at your disposal you'll fight a super buffed up version of Caius. At the start he will completely wreck you, but you'll still get some crystarium points. Once you lose a few times Lightning will level up, which makes her stronger and gives her access to new roles. This DLC isn't meant to be very long, so Lightning can only get to a max level of ten.

All you need to do in order to complete the DLC is beat Caius super quickly. If you do it fast enough he'll turn into Midnight Bahamut. If you can best Midnight Bahamut then you'll be rewarded with some story for your troubles. Overall I'd say that this is just a challenge for people who like battling in XIII-2. Since battles were my favorite part of the game I had a fun time for about an hour. If you didn't feel like me, then there is absolutely no reason for you try this out.

Oh yeah, Midnight Bahamut is in the DLC too.

Viewtiful Joe : Red Hot Rumble

I still have four Gamecube controllers. Granted not all of them are fully functional, but I still have them. This is one of the reasons I actively look out for fun multiplayer Gamecube games. I guess it also helps that there are three other people around for me to play with most of the time. In case you were wondering where I was going with this, then you'll be happy to know that Red Hot Rumble is one such game.

I've had my eyes peeled for a decent copy of Red Hot Rumble for a while now and this past weekend I finally found one. It's not exactly what I expected, but I think that ended up being a good thing. For some reason I didn't look up any gameplay beforehand, so I was under the impression that it was basically super smash with Viewtiful Joe characters.

After playing the game I still feel that it's kind of similar to Super Smash., but it's actually quite different. Instead of just mindlessly beating the living shit out of everyone on screen there are actually objectives in Red Hot Rumble. No matter what stage you choose there will be a variety of objectives you're supposed to complete. The objectives are all over the place. You might be beating up enemies, collecting gems, staying alive, capturing the flag and a bunch of other things I can't remember right now. 

Defeating bosses is also an objective.

The way you win in Red Hot Rumble is to have the most V coins at the end of a stage. When you complete an objective you'll get about 1,000 V coins, but they'll also show up randomly. This makes staying alive just as important as completing objectives, because if you die you'll lose a whole lot of coins and that's never a good thing. 

One of the things I don't like about Red Hot Rumble is that sometimes it's really hard to tell what's going on in the match, especially if there are four people playing at the same time. The stages are already fairly busy, so when you throw in enemies, four players, and a bunch of objects it can become a little much. Adding to the problem are the famous powers from Viewtiful Joe. When people are using mach speed, slow down, and zoom all over the place it gets way harder to get your bearings.

Red Hot Rumble is a great multiplayer game. It's fast paced, competitive, and ridiculous. It may help that I like the Viewtiful Joe Universe a whole bunch, but I think it's a solid game regardless.

There's a lot going on here and it's super blurry. Welcome to Red Hot Rumble!

Ghost Trick

As you may be aware, I am a big fan of the Phoenix Wright series. So when Ghost Trick came out and I found out it was made by the same team I knew that I had to have it. Unlucky for me the game got kind of rare, so I couldn't find it online for it's normal price and it wasn't available in any stores around me. 

This past weekend when I was out looking for Red Hot Rumble I came across a $20 dollar copy of Ghost Trick at one of my local Gamestop's. There are three around here, which is kind of dumb. Anyways, I found Ghost Trick with it's case and instruction manual for $20, but I didn't get it. For some stupid reason I decided to see if I could find it cheaper. 

The next day I knew I would regret it if I didn't buy it, so I went all the way back to Gamestop and bought it. I was a bit worried I wasn't going to like it very much, but after playing the game for five minutes I knew that wasn't the case. 

The dead man is Sissel and he's pretty cool.

I don't mean to sound crude here, but I fucking love Ghost Trick. In fact I'm upset that I didn't play it when it first came out. It took me eleven hours to beat the game and that was in just two sittings. I literally played the game for five and a half hours twice, because I wanted to see the ending so badly. 

In case you're unaware you play as a ghost named Sissel in Ghost Trick. He has recently died and doesn't remember anything about himself other than his name. He finds out that he has special powers known as ghost tricks. This allows him to move from object to object and manipulate them. He can also use phone lines to travel long distances. These are the tricks that are used to solve puzzles.

Sissel's other trick is that he can bring people back from the dead. If he can get to their body he can go back four minutes before they died and save them. It's unique, and engaging, and I absolutely love it.

The flaming blue dot is the object Sissel is possessing. The others are where he can go.

I'm still coming off of my Ghost Trick high, so as of right now I'm basically only going to be able to say how much I love it. To save you that repetition I won't dwell on it. 

Lately I've been slacking on doing reviews. I've had a lot less free time and I've been trying to use it to play games. This means that I haven't been writing as much, which is just plain wrong. That is why I am going to make the promise that I will review Ghost Trick by next week. It was awesome and I need to write up a review. So if you want to hear more about Ghost Trick check back later this week for a review.

IT'S SO HOT!

After proof reading this I noticed that it wasn't my best work and for that I apologize. However, in my defense my brain is pretty much melting in the heat. I really hope that this summer isn't consistently this hot, or I may just spend the entire summer sweating into the couch.

E3 is almost here and I'm super pumped. In order to stave off my excitement I have acquired the critically acclaimed DS RPG Radiant Historia. Apparently it's amazing, but I haven't started it yet because I've been playing and thinking about Ghost Trick (Which I will be reviewing this week). 

Hopefully I'll find some other stuff to check out, or maybe I'll just melt away in the heat. There's absolutely no way of knowing!

This has been another edition of Game Time. See you next week.

     -Manny