I dug out my PSP yesterday to play an odd little game called Patchwork Heroes, I haven’t used my PSP for a great deal other than Monster Hunter in the past which I have always thought was a shame so I’m always on the lookout for something interesting.
Patchwork Heroes sees you protecting your hometown from attacking airships by climbing aboard and chopping them up until they lose enough mass to fall out of the sky, this simple idea is expanded upon by the placement of enemies, comrades to be rescued and reinforced sections. Players clamber across the side of the ship as Titori and pressing the circle button saws out a chunk where he is clinging, when a player separates one section from another the smallest section falls away and the airship gets a little closer to stopping
If players can cut off a section that an enemy is clinging too they drop out of the sky and your Mojo meter fills up, this can be unleashed to provide an essential boost in times of need by granting invulnerability, speed and the ability to saw through even the reinforced sections of the ship. This is essential to dismantle some of the more intricate airships and means you need more forethought about when to saw.
Rescuing comrades is an interesting system as they are used as spare lives if you get hit but also can be instructed to detonate a small area of the ship, even a reinforced area can be taken out, providing players a choice between utility or protection. Some levels I have completed easily without using any bombs but sometime it ends up your only option if you have made a few bad cuts and left yourself with no Mojo.
Patchwork Heroes came in quite cheap at around £7 and it fits its niche perfectly as a downloadable game to while away a few minutes on the bus or even a longer trip it still keeps you entertained with new difficulties and challenges opening up. At some point I would like to go back and make sure I rescue everyone as the comrades sacrificed for protection end up in the graveyard mode and mine is looking worryingly full.
I would say if your PSP is starting to look a little undernourished, relegated to the back of the cupboard, then download Patchwork Heroes and give is some hearty gameplay to put some meat back on its bones and have it once again as an amusing travelling companion.
Monday, 10 May 2010
Saturday, 1 May 2010
Why I love hunting Monsters
After my post about Monster Hunter Tri I thought I’d write up a little something about why the Monster Hunter series has such a warm spot in my heart.
I guess it all starts back on the PS2, I bought monster hunter on a whim, it’s title appealing to me with its straight faced seriousness. I could tell it was a game about hunting monsters, in my book that’s all good. I remember running around on my own exploring the Forest and Hills map (I didn’t own a PS2 modem so multiplayer was never on the cards), I mined ores, brewed potions and fought some of the small monsters. The combat felt really unique since back in those days you used the second analogue stick to choose your attack and depending on your place in the combo different moves could be chained together, this made it feel like you were actually swinging a weapon around by having to memorise patterns to pull off the right attacks and someone with more knowledge of a weapon would be able to accomplish more with it.
I’d played for quite a while before I came up against the mighty Yian Kut-Ku, a pink wyvern with a distinctive yellow beak. The Kut-Ku was a massive hurdle for me as I played the way I played most actions games, attacking constantly and hoping it died before I do, which led to a quick demise. It was after fighting him a fair few times with my giant great sword that I tried to fight him with the more nimble sword and shield, this suddenly revealed to me the mistake I had made. Fighting monsters needs skill and precision, there are times when you have to run around for a minute to let a monster calm down after a particularly powerful attack, you need to wait for openings and target weak points. At the time this was a massive change in the way I played but it has also shaped most of my gaming experiences since, I now value speed and agility above anything else and now my characters dart around their game worlds as cold and calculating acrobats of death.
I never got very far on the PS2 but Monster Hunter was eventually ported to the PSP which I picked up along with one of my housemates and the two player co-op was phenomenal, coordinating your efforts to take a monster down is amazing fun. One player might use a bow-gun to fire paralysing bullets so you can remove a monsters tail with a longsword, which in turn reduces its effectiveness in combat as it can’t hit anything with a little stump.
I love that in Monster Hunter there is no levelling up, your hunter is still a normal person by the time you are fighting mountain sized dragons, but the armour and weapons you create keep you safe and make you a deadly warrior. This appeals to me as it ties you into the world, you aren’t a god or a superhuman, you are just a normal person which makes the feeling of accomplishment greater.
To me Monster Hunter is a series that manages to make fighting countless monsters into something other than a grind which in itself is magic beyond that which most of the games industry has yet to understand. By making all the large monsters a challenge regardless of your power level they are never a simple fight meaning that you can’t just run in and slaughter something without a thought. This means that each battle is something planned and considered, each victory is worked for and earned. To me this is what makes Monster Hunter so satisfying, finally figuring out how to down the deadly Rathalos or bizzare Khezu is something that fills you with a feeling of accomplishment.
I guess it all starts back on the PS2, I bought monster hunter on a whim, it’s title appealing to me with its straight faced seriousness. I could tell it was a game about hunting monsters, in my book that’s all good. I remember running around on my own exploring the Forest and Hills map (I didn’t own a PS2 modem so multiplayer was never on the cards), I mined ores, brewed potions and fought some of the small monsters. The combat felt really unique since back in those days you used the second analogue stick to choose your attack and depending on your place in the combo different moves could be chained together, this made it feel like you were actually swinging a weapon around by having to memorise patterns to pull off the right attacks and someone with more knowledge of a weapon would be able to accomplish more with it.
I’d played for quite a while before I came up against the mighty Yian Kut-Ku, a pink wyvern with a distinctive yellow beak. The Kut-Ku was a massive hurdle for me as I played the way I played most actions games, attacking constantly and hoping it died before I do, which led to a quick demise. It was after fighting him a fair few times with my giant great sword that I tried to fight him with the more nimble sword and shield, this suddenly revealed to me the mistake I had made. Fighting monsters needs skill and precision, there are times when you have to run around for a minute to let a monster calm down after a particularly powerful attack, you need to wait for openings and target weak points. At the time this was a massive change in the way I played but it has also shaped most of my gaming experiences since, I now value speed and agility above anything else and now my characters dart around their game worlds as cold and calculating acrobats of death.
I never got very far on the PS2 but Monster Hunter was eventually ported to the PSP which I picked up along with one of my housemates and the two player co-op was phenomenal, coordinating your efforts to take a monster down is amazing fun. One player might use a bow-gun to fire paralysing bullets so you can remove a monsters tail with a longsword, which in turn reduces its effectiveness in combat as it can’t hit anything with a little stump.
I love that in Monster Hunter there is no levelling up, your hunter is still a normal person by the time you are fighting mountain sized dragons, but the armour and weapons you create keep you safe and make you a deadly warrior. This appeals to me as it ties you into the world, you aren’t a god or a superhuman, you are just a normal person which makes the feeling of accomplishment greater.
To me Monster Hunter is a series that manages to make fighting countless monsters into something other than a grind which in itself is magic beyond that which most of the games industry has yet to understand. By making all the large monsters a challenge regardless of your power level they are never a simple fight meaning that you can’t just run in and slaughter something without a thought. This means that each battle is something planned and considered, each victory is worked for and earned. To me this is what makes Monster Hunter so satisfying, finally figuring out how to down the deadly Rathalos or bizzare Khezu is something that fills you with a feeling of accomplishment.
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