Ah, Treasure. such good games. All their games, they make you learn a unique gameplay mechanic, something entirely unique. It's usually a little hard to get the hang of at first (which is why i think their games never do that well-(and for other reasons (of which more later))), but it always, always pays off. Pretty soon you're doing cool stuff with it, coming up with your own strategies, and discovering those strategies were already thought of by the creators. Sometimes there's even levels built around them.
Which is why i think Treasure makes 'gourmet' games, 'connoisseur' games, or to put it another way, games for gamers. Also, Treasure games are always incredibly weird. Even for Japanese games, they're wierd. I think they're great. But not a lot of people like that. A lot of people are turned off by unfamiliar stuff. But they're some of the most creative and original games around.
The other thing about Treasure games is that they never tell you anything. They make you figure it all out for yourself. It's logical, it can be figured out, but you gotta do it yourself. Kind of the Zen Master approach to gaming. An example of that in Stretch Panic, the game i'm gonna examine here, would be this: There are three types of damage you can do in Stretch Panic. Actually four. they correspond to the different attacks you can do. They fill up a star-shaped pie chart that represents the damage done. Not the health, the damage. Like the opposite of a life bar. anyways, you can defeat a boss with any type of damage, but red damage gets you points, and green damage you get by using your super special attack. It's the only way to free your sisters in the boss battles. Which is the point of the game.
I had to figure all that out for myself. The manual wasn't much help. See what i mean about hard to get the hang of? There's a certain threshold you have to get over, beyond which it gets really cool. Probably not a lot of people will. But hardcore gamers will.
Stretch Panic (called Freak Out in Europe and Hippa Linda(Stretching Linda)in Japan) is a game about stretching. In the same sense that Super Mario 64 was about running and jumping. In the most basic and simple sense, 'running and jumping is fun'. All the gameplay comes out of that simple mechanic. For Stretch Panic it's stretching. Stretching is fun.
The story actually integrates with the game well. It's a gothic fairy tale about nonconformity, a sort of Ugly Duckling story. You were laughed at and mocked by your sisters for being different, but now it's your unique skill that gives you the power to save them. The skill of scarfery. You've got a familiar, a sort of magic pet that takes the shape of a scarf so you can carry it everywhere. The scarf has a hand on the end of it which can be used to reach out and grab and stretch anything in the world. So you set out to free them, one by one. Accumulate. A video game thing. Because of the numbers.
The game is basically all boss battles. The bosses are your sisters. It's really incredibly simple, because the point is the gameplay. Using the stretching. Stretching is cool, once you get the hang of it. You couldn't do it without the analog stick. It feels very stretchy and non-mechanical. You can do damage to bosses by plucking and releasing a lot of times quickly, or you can hold on for a longer time, stretch them farther out, and then release for more damage. It's really unique.
There's a trick to it. That's the short review of the game. Each boss has a trick to defeating them, where you have to use your stretch power in a new way. And you can figure it out. It's not something cheap, like you have to have a certain weapon to defeat a certain boss. just a certain skill.
Now for the bad stuff. It's not like the game is all good, and its flaws are what prevented it from becoming a success. To start at the most superficial level, the cover art was really poor. Covers are really important, i think people don't understand how important. And the cover for Stretch Panic really hurts it. It was Published in America by Conspiracy entertainment, a smaller publisher, with presumably a smaller budget for cover art.
As for the game itself, bad decisions were made. For instance, there's an aiming mode, where you the camera snaps into place directly behind you. You can lock on to a target and move around it, complete with a very cool 'tunnel vision' lens effec, but... your character's head is so large, that it very often obscures your view of your target. So annoying. They really should have gone for a first-person view (this makes the most sense if you're aiming). Or a camera position that was just a little higher. Or make the player character transparent, like in Super Punch-out.
but you know, there's pleasure to be had. if you master some skills.
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
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