Jul 16, 2012

Rhythm Thief and the Emperor's Treasure: The Kotaku Review

Kotaku

It's midnight in Paris, and the fate of the world hangs in the balance. A fearsome dictator has come back from the grave, secret treasures of untold power have been unearthed, a girl is in trouble. Nothing left to do… but dance, dance, dance!

That's about the sum of Rhythm Thief and the Emperor's Treasure, a new 3DS game from longtime Sonic The Hedgehog designer Shun Nakamura. Sound silly? It is. It's also a hell of a lot of fun.

Rhythm Thief tells the story of Raphael, a young redheaded Parisian who, like many of the characters in the game, distinctly lacks anything resembling a French accent. Raphael has a secret—at night, he dons a blue suit and a cool blue hat and moonlights as "Phantom R," an infamous art thief. (Note: The characters who do sport Frahnch Accahnts have about as much fun pronouncing "Phantom R" as you'd think.)

(Second note: Raphael's friend and trusty companion is his dog, named — what else! — "Fondue." (Sample Fondue dialogue: "Woeuf."))

Rhythm Thief and the Emperor's Treasure: The Kotaku Review

WHY: Rhythm Thief and the Emperor's Treasure's enthusiastic charm, lovely art and fantastic soundtrack make it stand out amid gaming's growing stable of creative music games.

Rhythm Thief An The Emperor's Treasure

Developer: Sega
Platforms: Nintendo 3DS
Release Date: July 10

Type of game: Story-based music game featuring a bunch of different rhythm games, musical puzzles, and hidden collectibles.

What I played:Completed the single player story in about 5 and a half hours, went back to play many of the music games many more times.

My Two Favorite Things

The exceptionally grooving soundtrack, which is more fun than a barrel of chorus-line-dancing monkeys.
A couple of melodramatic and yet truly moving moments fuse gorgeous animation, lovely violin playing and shameless Disney-style direction.

My Two Least-Favorite Things

The collection aspects and minigames are inconsequential at best, tedious at worst.
A couple of big moments in the later part of the story seem rushed, or like they're missing a key moment. Things can be confusing, or unsatisfying.

Made-to-Order Back-of-Box Quotes

"I played it, I beat it, I really want to buy the CD."
-Kirk Hamilton, Kotaku.com
"The only thing more varied than the minigames are the bizarre accents."
-Kirk Hamilton, Kotaku.com
"Finally, a game that proves emo hair makes for a fantastic disguise."
-Kirk Hamilton, Kotaku.com

Are you on board yet? The story of Rhythm Thief is told through charming if occasionally nonsensical animated cutscenes—Raphael is looking for his father, and in the process of doing so uncovers a plot to reanimate Napoleon Bonaparte and use a superpowered ancient artifact to rule the world. Okay! He also meets Marie, a lovely young busker who plays the violin. See, her fate is intertwined with his. And maybe that violin will come in handy…

Rhythm Thief could have been a stealth/action game, or a platformer, but in fact, it's a music game. The game oscillates between two modes—exploration of Paris and 30 different rhythm-based minigames. The rhythm games are the heart of Rhythm Thief and with a few exceptions, they are fun. The games replicate the stealthy tricks Phantom R must use as he infiltrates various famous Parisian buildings. Breaking into the Louvre involves first using the 3DS stylus to match dance poses to statues in order to hide from guards, then fighting off some enemies by tapping the face buttons in time, then bouncing buttons in time to aid a rooftop escape.

There are over 30 rhythm games in all, and while several repeat throughout the 5-6 hour story, they never get old. For the first several hours of the game, I couldn't wait to get to the next challenge. Just when I'd think I knew what's going to happen next, the game would throw a dog-biting game or a stylus-based violin challenge at me to change things up. Some of the purer rhythm games (particularly the combat games) feel more than a touch like Nintendo's incredible Rhythm Heaven Fever, though nowhere near as varied or difficult.

Each of the rhythm games can be played multiple times to achieve a high grade. It's a testament to how fun the games are that I found myself doing this more than once immediately after finishing. That said, there are a few big whiffs—a flying game that uses the 3DS' motion controls is a disaster, and a couple of the stylus-based dancing games towards the end are frustratingly difficult. But the majority of the games are fun, funny, and satisfyingly groovy to play.

The reason for this is primarily the fact that Rhythm Thief has a fantastic soundtrack. The music, a blend of bouncy jazz, funky human beatboxing and uplifting Disney-style pop, was composed by longtime Sega maestros Tomoya Ohtani and Naofumi Hataya. The Rhythm Thief soundtrack is so much fun that it makes the game more fun. Rather than embed a bunch of screenshots or waste any more words, I'll let the music do the talking. Here are some of my favorite tracks:

"Main Theme"

The main theme from the game has everything that makes the music great—it's an overture, really. The main hook, with that sly chromatic motif; the harpsichord, the vibraphone, the horns, the broadway jazz-meets-late-night-TV-theme bounce. Over the course of the game (like the very groovy exploration version), it becomes like an old friend.

"Sound Mechanism"

This is a great example of the funkier, "high-tech break in" music — the soundtrack isn't all jazz, and the puzzle sections feature some welcomely grooving electronic stuff.

"Moon Princess"

One of the main violin melodies from the game, "Moon Princess" combines a lovely melody with some beautiful animation and art to give a pure old-school Disney vibe. You even get to play it using the stylus! Each of the songs are divided into three sections, which gives a great sense of pacing - Introduction | Development | Resolution - to each composition.

"Escape from the Opera House"

This one plays during the timed jumping sections—pure spy goodness. Killer horns.

"One More Time"

Occasionally Raphael will do a dance routine to a straight-up pop tune. These are super, SUPER cheesy, to the point that you kind of can't help but grin and go with it. And again, the tunes don't repeat themselves at any point - they follow a 3-act setup to match with the three-level build of the games, so they never really get stale.

There's a ton more great music in the game, and all of it is good enough that you'll want to sit back and listen to it apart from the game. And you can... well, if you live in Europe. The soundtrack is on iTunes in Europe, and will be on the American iTunes store in mid-August, according to Sega's site.

In addition to the rhythm games, Rhythm Thief has a few other things going on. Unfortunately, none of them are all that interesting or fun. Paris is navigated via a tiny mini-map of sorts that lays across the 3DS' top screen. On the bottom screen is a still image of the area where Raphael is standing. You can tap the screen to try to find hidden notes, sounds and gold coins, but it's all pretty arbitrary, and mostly a hidden-object game. Sometimes you'll have to go gather a sound effect and play it back to someone to proceed (for example, record the sound of roasting meat to make a hungry guard depart her post), but the game tells you exactly what you need to do, so there's no element of challenge.

There are also musical puzzles that you'll have to solve every so often, and they're also far too easy for the most part. I actually liked these though, mainly because they require melodic recall, pitch matching, and other lightly musical skills that reinforce just how musical Rhythm Thief is. That, and they have the most hilarious, goofily jazzy victory music ever.

Rhythm Thief and the Emperor's Treasure is a light and joyful game that breezes along on its easy charm and fantastic soundtrack. I completed the main story in just under five and a half hours - completists who want to gather collectibles to unlock three bonus chapters will get a few more hours out of it, as will those who want to pursue a perfect score on all of the rhythm games.

The game seems expressly intended to become the first in a series, as the story leaves the door open for a sequel. Furthermore, the "Emperor's Treasure" subtitle indicates that Sega is setting up Phantom R to be the Professor Layton of music games. That's just fine by me—I didn't see Rhythm Thief coming, but I'll be at the front of the line to play the next game in the series. I want to spend more time in this world, setting off into the colorful Paris night and embarking on yet another musical adventure. And dancing, dancing, dancing.

Jul 16, 2012

Either the New Devil May Cry is Very Good, or the Whiskey Was Really Strong

Kotaku

This past weekend I got my first chance to try out DMC, the upcoming refresh of Capcom's popular slash-and-shoot series, and I am pretty sure I enjoyed myself immensely. I'm just not certain how much of that enjoyment stemmed from an extremely unfortunate mixed drink snafu.

Evan and I stopped by the Microsoft event on Thursday night of the San Diego Comic-Con with the intention of getting in, playing some games, and then getting back to the hotel in time to write up some fresh impressions. It was midnight back home when the party started, and after walking the floor of the convention center and the streets of San Diego all day long, neither of us was long for consciousness.

The first game I came across was DMC, Ninja Theory's take on a franchise I've always enjoyed for its swarmy style and fast action. I'd not yet had the pleasure of giving the controversial dark-haired Dante a go, so I planted myself down on a bench and stared at the person occupying the demo station until they got uncomfortable and left.

Meanwhile, Evan grabbed me a drink.

Now I am not a big drinker. During my first year or so working for Kotaku I would overindulge at every party, but I've since realized that I don't like the taste of alcohol and would much rather sip a coke naked than ruined with rum. The one exception to this rule is the amaretto sour, a delicious mixture of sweet and tangy that's pretty weak in the grand scheme of things. I have an incredibly low tolerance for a man my size, so it's really the ideal poison for my person.

Unfortunately the bar was out of amaretto, so Evan got me a whiskey sour instead.

Seasoned drinkers are laughing already. For one, as my friends like to remind me, drinking an amaretto sour makes me a lesbian. And second, substituting whiskey for amaretto is like substituting a pinch for a gunshot.

The drink arrived as I was familiarizing myself with Dante's controls. He's got guns, he's got melee weapons. He's got demonic and angelic attacks that work different murderous magic on different enemies. He dodges, he pulls himself into airborne enemies. He gets completely lost on a very small level that involved shooting a trio of evil devices to open up a new path.

That last bit, to be fair to Ninja Theory, didn't get really bad until I had sipped the entire whiskey sour through a tiny straw in under 30 seconds. It did not taste good, so the faster it was gone the better. Or so I thought.

While there were enemies on screen I reveled in battle. It was fast and reactive, at least to my increasingly sluggish reflexes. Moves chained together with sexy style, and despite his strange appearance, Dante was every bit as sly and witty as his white-haired predecessor, who made a special appearance each time I activated the Devil Trigger mode. "He's from the future!" I exclaimed to no one in particular, grinning stupidly at my own comment.

Aside from a general lack of direction, I often found the camera going places the camera should not go, with emo Dante disappearing from view entirely. It didn't happen often, but the plague of the fast-paced third-person action platformer can never be fully escaped.

My platforming skills and hand-eye coordination were then put to the test as I raced through the crumbling cathedral we've already seen in several trailers for the game. I only died four times. Only three of those times were my fault, give or take one.

By the end of the first part of my Dante demo I was feeling no pain. Don't worry, I made up for it during the second half.

Evan warned me that the boss in the demo was tough, and I scoffed at him. This was not due to confidence, but rather the sheer fun of scoffing. Try it. Turn to the person next to you and scoff. Fun, isn't it?

The boss was a massive multi-armed beast suspended from a pit by cables, possibly demonic cables. This bulbous freak spit curses at me, dropping the F-bomb at first sparingly and then cutting loose when he realized the answer to "Who the f*** are you!?" was the Son of Sparda. I bet Dante gets that a lot.

What followed was a blur. There were multiple platforms to swing between, the boss would randomly cover each one with acidic vomit, requiring our hero stay on the move. I was pounded by giant claws, crushed beneath their bulk, and puked on with alarming regularity. Every now and then the boss' fleshing head mass would open to reveal a glowing red weak spot, the bane of bosses everywhere.

Did I take him down? Oh yes, I took him down. Evan walked over, and I told him it was easy. I only used about 15 continues.

What? Pressing continue is easy.

Despite the intoxicated nature of the demo, several aspects of DMC were crystal clear. The action was fast and slick. The characters were attractive and filled with the sort of life I've come to expect from the makers of Heavenly Sword and Enslaved.

And I will never, ever drink and game again, unless DMC comes out and it's not as good as I remember it.

Jul 16, 2012

Disney is Rewriting Your Childhood With Nostalgia For a Game That Didn't Exist

Kotaku

Sega recently announced that their upcoming game Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed will feature the titular hero of Disney's November film Wreck-it Ralph as a playable character. The movie's director, Rich Moore, calls it a "dream come true" that we can see "Wreck-It Ralph in a real video game alongside Sonic and other iconic Sega characters."

In one way, it's just another blurb about self-congratulatory corporate marketing. Get a brand-new video game movie character into a known video game franchise coming out about the same time the movie does, and increase brand awareness about both the game and the film. Great. That's how these things work. Tie-ins are nothing new under the sun.

But the story is more than just the newest Sonic racing game. Disney is reaching far and wide with Wreck-it Ralph, and while it's hard to blame them, the outcome is almost sinister. Disney stories are core to many American kids' childhoods. They're part of our cultural consciousness. And with the way they are pushing Wreck-it Ralph, Disney is now trying retroactively to rewrite the childhoods of those of us who have already grown up.

Wreck-it Ralph is itself a pretty clever idea for an animated feature. The film features a top-notch voice cast, and hearkens back in many ways to the brilliant Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. Instead of bringing the world of cartoons together in the golden age of Hollywood, it brings the worlds of video games together under the beeps and bells of a classic arcade. And much as the latter movie invented Roger Rabbit, and set him among his more well-known Disney and Warner Brothers brethren, Wreck-it Ralph has invented a character in order to set him among his better-known Sega and Nintendo cousins.

Of course, to invent a video game character, Disney has had to invent a game for him to come from, and that game is Fix-it Felix. The "long lost" arcade cabinet for Fix-it Felix showed up at E3, straight from 1982 (nudge nudge, wink wink). The game, of course, is also available on the website and for iOS devices.

By making the game, and setting it loose into the world, Disney has made their new characters as "real" as Bowser or Sonic ever were. And yet, Ralph's presence out in the world with the others still rings hollow. The arcade game is an artificial nostalgia, a creation meant to make us feel fond, distant memories of playing a game that didn't exist. It's supposed to make us laugh referentially, to make us feel that even though Wreck-it Ralph wasn't part of the 1980s we remember, he may as well have been.

Disney knows marketing, and what they're doing with Wreck-it Ralph is brilliant, in a way: they're giving a veneer of plausibility to the patently impossible, making this a universe that not only kids but also their parents can buy in to. And it's not the first time; Tron has its own attendant mythos that formed the foundation for the "Flynn Lives" alternate reality game (ARG) and the Tron: Legacy sequel, complete with "original" arcade games.

It's not uncommon for a game's marketing to work itself around an alternate reality in some way. There are two kinds of ways that an ARG can try to remake reality. One is by adding to the world we thought we knew; the other is by rearranging it. Something like what The Secret World or Watch Dogs have done are the kinds of game that build on the world, taking snippets of history and requiring players to look at and reassemble them in new ways, with a few planted guideposts along the way. Disney, though, is taking the opposite approach: injecting its reality into our own and asking us to build feeling around it.

Fix-it Felix is a real game now, and Wreck-it Ralph its villain. But it's not a product of the 1980s, nor does it stand on its own. It's as thorough a movie tie-in as ever was made. And yet, Ralph is getting the veneer of respectability that will let him sit in a room with Bowser and Dr. Robotnik and somehow not seem fictional as compared to them.

It's a strange blend of realities, with the alternate forcing its way into the real. But the upshot is that Wreck-it Ralph is just as here to stay as any Disney princess ever was. Remember when you first saw him smashing windows in the arcade? Yeah, me neither. But by next year, we probably both will.

Jul 16, 2012

The Best Street Races on the iPhone Only Last 10 Seconds

Kotaku

Making a good-looking racing game for the iPhone isn't that difficult, but winding tracks and multiple laps don't sit well with players looking for a quick fix. You know what does work well? Drag racing.

In a console game, drag racing is generally pretty boring. When you've got stunning 3D environments and all of that screen real estate to play with, why go in a straight line? When you can offer marathon multi-lap affairs in full 1080p, why bother with 10 seconds of acceleration?

On the iPhone and iPad, however, sometimes all you have is 10 seconds, and in those 10 seconds, NaturalMotion's CSR Racing shines. It's all about two cars racing to the finish line as quickly as possible, shifting at just the right moment to out-accelerate the competition. There's no steering. There's no driving around in a circle. It's a pure and simple bite-sized racing experience.

Just because it's quick doesn't mean it's shallow. CSR Racing features a story mode that challenges the player to defeat a series of street gangs, climbing through their ranks until they take out the boss, unlocking the next neighborhood to conquer with oil and nitrous.

To win you'll have to tune your vehicle, using cash earned from exhibitions and daily challenges to purchase better tires, more powerful engines, and other upgrades that aid in balancing power with potential wheel spin. Crafting your ultimate ride out of base models from Audi, BMW, Chevrolet, Ford, GM, Mini and Nissan is a balancing act; thankfully CSR Racing holds your hand throughout the process, helping ensure your engine block doesn't drop out mid-race.

The game is free, which is also a plus, but freedom comes at a cost. You've only got a set amount of fuel points to race with; once you run out you'll have to wait or pay for more. It's almost a Facebook game in iPhone clothing in the regard. You can earn gold to purchase rare new cars, or you can buy it.

I've not spent a single cent on CSR Racing, and so far I'm still having fun. My car has a fancy sticker on the side and parts more valuable than the initial vehicle investment. Sure, I've only got the one ride, but I've come to depend on it. It's my pal.

CSR Racing's races only last seconds, but that's okay. It just means I can race more, and that's no drag.

CSR Racing (Free) [iTunes]

Jul 16, 2012

In Tomb Raider, Hell Is Always Other People

Kotaku

There I was, bow drawn and breath held, ready to kill a beautiful deer I'd been tracking for about five minutes. Lara Croft muttered something like "I can do this," just before I let the arrow fly. The deer ran and more scrabbling through a dense forest followed. Two more arrows felled the deer and I went back to the abandoned campsite Lara had found a few minutes earlier, where the meat would be cooked and Lara would brood alone.

That loneliness reminded something, which is that other humans have always been the worst part of the Tomb Raider games.

I played a very short slice of the upcoming Tomb Raider reboot at Comic-Con last week, which appears to catch up with Lara shortly after she encounters the pirates who threaten her life. The scenes I sampled find Lara looking for signs of other survivors of the shipwreck that stranded her on a mysterious island. After some platforming segments, Lara finds a radio and other gear belonging to people she'd been with on the boat. Lara—who talks herself a lot in the parts of the game I played—then decides that she needs to track down the people who may still be alive.

Then it hit me. I don't want to find these people. I'd rather wander through the game's beautiful environments and see what else I can shoot with Lara's bow. Could I climb that ridge over there? How about just standing in this stream and watching the mist climb upwards and dissipate?

People have always been the worst part of Tomb Raider games. Hell, the bow Lara uses to hunt was plucked off of a dead stranger, presumably done in by other human beings. And, as previously reported, Lara kills her first human right after he tries to do the same to her.

My favorite parts of various Tomb Raider titles have always been the wide expansive vistas the games have taken me to, chock full of deathtraps or treasures and done up in the styles of long-dead civilizations. Swimming down to Atlantean ruins or shimmying an the ledge of an ancient Aztec ruin always felt more electrifying than another jump-roll-shoot gunfight with a bunch of generic thugs. The series' biggest successes have been in transporting players to the faraway and the mythic, and letting them comb through those environments. Whenever the murmurs of human voices floated toward me in the game, I knew that some fight would happen and that it'd take me from what I really loved about controlling Lara Croft. The big villains of the series have always been the worst kinds of scenery-chewers, too, mouthing off about power or destiny or riches and why they deserve it. Whatever. I want my solitude back.

The hunting demo reminded me of the roles animals have played in past Tomb Raider games, too. They've generally been ornery antagonists that players have been prompted to shoot on sight. But in the upcoming game developed by Crystal Dynamics, they'll also serve as food, as part of adynamic landscape you'll be tasked to survive in. At one point in my time with the hunting demo, I followed a pair of rabbits around a hollow for as long as I could. They disappeared and I amused myself by spearing a wild bird with my bow.

I was stalling, see. I didn't want to get to the messy business of rescuing, being rescued or facing off with other humans.

Now, I'm not naïve. I know I'm going to have to fight someone and/or some things in the new Tomb Raider. But the leafy beauty and quiet melancholy of that very short hunting demo left me wanting a game that would let me commune with nature away from the chatter of other two-legged animals. Hopefully, as Lara journeys to becoming a hero, the new Tomb Raider will offer up a few more of those pastoral moments.