Jehuty in 1080p

[Sno]

Any Zone of the Enders fans here?

I had only ever actually played the first game and felt pretty ambivalent towards it, and i never played the second game despite always wanting to. (That game did not get a very widespread release.)

Seemed like the HD re-release was getting some pretty decent response and i thought it would be a good chance to check the second game out.

Right now though, i'm just burning through the first game's clumsy, awful Gundam-inspired story.

The game itself holds up much better than i thought it would, however. I always remembered the sub-weapons being uselessly underpowered, but this time around it's clicked that you're more supposed to use them to stagger the enemies so you can close in for melee. Everything kind of fell together after that, so i find that i still like this game well enough, but i was definitely never in love with it.

However, I've been told repeatedly that the second game is uniformly superb, so i'm looking forward to checking it out.

I've always dug this style of mech game though, i wish stuff like this got more love in the west.

[miffy495]

This is out? Hell and fucking damn yes. I am going to Amazon right now. Love me some ZoE. Even played the turn-based strategy GBA game. It was pretty good, if incredibly easy.

[I_smell]

Zone of Enders 2 is like my favourite game on PS2. Or one of. The PS2 has a lot of good games.

I FOOLISHLY traded it in after beating it. Looking back now, ZoE 2 looks way too good to have come out in 2003- same as MGS2. It's an example, outside of Metal Gear, of how Kojima Corp is a fucking cutting-edge team.

I love the music, it's my favourite mech design, I love the robot voices, and even the anime voice-acting isn't bad. They only ever showed humans in the game as 2D animation, and only ever showed the mechs as 3D because they couldn't render and animate the characters well enough in 3D back then. The two styles are never standing right next to each other, so it blends together really well.

I love how fast the combat is, I love the circuit-board lines on everything, the explosions and tracer-missiles everywhere look awesome- to me it's a shame that they teamed up with Platinum Games to make this Raiden game when it makes so much more sense to make a Zone of Enders game with those guys. I mean Vanquish was already halfway there.

Anyway, Zone of Enders 3 has been announced in the form of a couple sentences, and lots of concept art. So I'm interested in that.

Never played the first one. I bought the second one based on a screenshot in a magazine, and the Hideo Kojima name on it, and also because it was 2-for-1 and I only wanted to buy The Sim: Bustin' Out on PS2. It's insane that I literally never saw it again since.

I miss being surprised by games, I used to just buy cheap nonsense based on the boxart.

[Sno]

ZoE1 actually uses some really horrendously ugly pre-rendered CG for its cinematics, the animated cutscenes in the sequel look much better and probably indicate that it was a game with a much higher budget.

And the whole high-speed mech action thing isn't as rare as you might think. There are games that are exceedingly similar to ZoE, but they've never been been released outside of Japan. ZoE is an uncommon glimpse at one of those genres that just lands with a dull thud whenever it heads westward.

For something readily available in the west that is admittedly completely different in the details, but at least in the same ballpark, i'd endorse checking out the XBLA version of Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram. A surprisingly complex 1v1 fighting game that you'll notice shares a lot of similar ideas with ZoE, even if the manner of execution is completely different. Seriously fucking great game, a personal favorite of mine, and the XBLA version of Oratorio Tangram is the best available game in that series. All about controlling vectors of movement while mixing like six different control variables to produce from a ton of potential attacks. (It's really a game that needs a guide, but fan documentation in the west is sparse.)

[I_smell]

And the whole high-speed mech action thing isn't as rare as you might think. There are games that are exceedingly similar to ZoE, but they've never been been released outside of Japan. ZoE is an uncommon glimpse at one of those genres that just lands with a dull thud whenever it heads westward.

Yea I recently found out that the Smash Bros. thing of having a tonne of seperate characters come together for a goofy fighting game is actually a full genre in Japan. There's a toy one and more than one manga one that obviously don't exist outside of Japan. So I bet Sony's really bummed about PlayStation All-Stars, because english people have only ever heard of Smash Brothers. So it looks way more sinister of a rip-off.

Anyway, Virtual-On looks like some chunky-ass Jet-Grind-Radio era, NiGHTS lookin Dreamcast shit, which I am not looking for at all.

[Sno]

Well, it is a Dreamcast-era Sega game, so yeah.

The other big one you can easily find in the west is Armored Core, which is more its own thing and more of an actual mech sim, but the two AC4 games in particular are

. (I think ACFA is a really severely underappreciated game.)

ACV is a little more accessible, but was focused around a metagame, and major match-making issues at launch pretty much killed its online community. (It was throwing people into empty matches against hostile territories with no defenders and giving the game an erroneous reputation as a glorified tower defense simulation. Allegedly that's been fixed after months of the community harassing Namco to patch the western versions same as From patched the Japanese version.)

ACV still has a ton of solo content too, to be fair. (Which is effectively all AC4 and ACFA have, because nobody plays those online.)

AC is also the far end of hardcore, no other mech games boast such indepth mech labs, and getting your build tuned right can be an hours-long process. (Which is awesome if you're into that, and i am. Hooray for poorly explained fiddly numbers.)

...

Armored Core is pretty awesome.

Probably.

[Sno]

I just finished ZoE, that game is as short as i remember, though i think i've left off with a better impression of it now than i had when i first played it.

I just started on ZoE2, that game does not look 9 years old, holy shit. That is an incredibly attractive game.

I'm reading now, though, that ZoE 2 apparently has a poorer framerate in this collection than it did on the PS2.

I will say that i have found there to be noticeable slowdown, particularly during certain cutscenes, but during gameplay i am not finding it to be a significant detractor outside of the game ocassionally feeling a little sluggish. I can't say how it compares to the original PS2 version, though. Did the original have any framerate issues as well?

Word is that it's mainly the PS3 version that is boned, with a much worse framerate and also apparently some really unpleasant and unavoidable crash bugs. So get the 360 version, i guess.

[I_smell]

Yeah it's documented that the PS3 version struggles with framerate. I looked it up last week, and the first good result was a NeoGaf thread, and oh my god- SO glad I stay away from those kinds of conversations. Zero people talking about the content of the game, and like 7 pages about how these developers are the worst fuck-up retards on the planet and everyone's deciding not to buy it. Uuuuggghhhhhh :/

I've read that the PS2 game was famous for being a really good 60fps, which makes sense with all the "lightning fast action" stuff. That's crazy with how good it looks. Metal Gear 2 and 3 also hold up insanely well.

This HD Collection has an average of 30-something on the PS3, and 40-something on the Xbox. Which is a bummer, but they're still great games.

Also, side-note: really bugs me that these HD Collections are always boxed products and never available for download. Just sayin.

EDIT-- Releases Novembers 30th in the UK!? aw D:

[Sno]

When i was worried that this collection would turn out like Silent Hill HD, i'm feeling that a moderately inconsistent framerate is something i can live with.

[Sno]

So i am finding ZoE2 to be incredibly fucking rad, i feel extra worse for missing out on it all these years, though i feel like i need to say that the script and the voice acting are still both terrible. I don't know why i was expecting anything more than that, maybe just because of the significantly greater production values.

I have to say again, it simply does not seem possible that this game is nine years old, visuals like these are an unbelievably high target to have hit right in the middle of the PS2's life span. I had to watch some youtube videos to confirm that they aren't applying extra layers of trickery, and they aren't. It's just HD and wide-screen and and actually a little slower.

I'm also finding the lock-on more problematic than it was in the first game, the right stick thing is extremely unreliable. I suspect it might be an inherent problem in the design for the sequel though, the dramatically larger swarms of enemies and the need to find specific targets in those swarms.

Still, even though i left the first game with a greater appreciation for it, ZoE2 is the clear gem in this collection.

Edit: Now i'm going to say that after an impressive first few hours, i'm starting to sour on ZoE2. Bosses that are contingent around tricks the game does not explain, asshole escort missions, and that fucking lock-on.

[darthbator]

I remember the second game being better in just about every way. I liked them both at the time but it's not something I plan on revisiting. I remember the controls simply did not make a huge amount of sense (I remember hitting some shoulder button + triangle to "dash" upwards while locked on). I thought both games did a great job making you feel like you where in an anime. To this day I think ZoE is probably the best "JP Anime Robo "simulator"" I have ever played.

I remember being impressed at ZoE's launch by how many assistive systems where in place. All your interactions with the game feel very abstracted. IMO sort of like working a really advanced computerized tank or etc might actually be. It's one of the rare cases where that sort of "detached" control feeling actually felt extremely satisfying to me.

[miffy495]

It's here! Now to wait until Christmas break to play it!

[twmac]

Anyway, Virtual-On looks like some chunky-ass Jet-Grind-Radio era, NiGHTS lookin Dreamcast shit, which I am not looking for at all.

That is some inflammatory nonsense commenting right there.

1) NiGHTS was released on the Saturn not the Dreamcast

2) Jet Set Radio is one of the cleanest looking games around, the HD remake looks good because what it is based on looked slick at the time, which makes your freaking out about the quality in MGS2 and ZoE particularly gauling. Given that the smeared-in-vaseline-shakey-crappy-anti-aliasing-ridden PS2 looked appalling for pretty much its entire career.

On an aside am looking forward to the ZoE HD remake when it eventually comes out as it was one of the titles that looked pretty sweet but I could never be bothered to track it down. I like that, no matter what else I might think of Hideo Kojima's ouevre, he and his company do have genuine affection for their past titles.

[Sno]

That is some inflammatory nonsense commenting right there.

I had a slight twitch reading those comments too, but didn't feel like having the argument.

On an aside am looking forward to the ZoE HD remake when it eventually comes out...

Hang on, what? This HD remake? The one that is being discussed and played right now?

[twmac]

It is not out in Europe.

[Sno]

Oh, oh, i see now. I missed that.

30th of November. That sucks.

[I_smell]

I know NiGHTS is earlier than Dreamcast, I'm just saying it looks like crap. I think Jet Set Radio also looks dumb.

I'm talking about blocky, foot-sliding low-low-low poly characters whose mouths don't move and their fingers are just one solid block. I could've easily said GTA 3 or like... Time Crisis 1. Y'know I should've give the Dreamcast more credit, cos now I'm just thinking of Virtua Fighter 1, which was also Sega Saturn.

Anyway Virtual-On's effects are giant cuboids that flicker on and off, it's the OPPOSITE of Zone of Enders 2 in that way. Everything's just a garish cyan block aimlessly waving it's arms around and clipping through itself.

If Metal Gear Solid 2 looked like Radikal Bikers, then yea I wouldn't be as impressed.

[Sno]

Anyway Virtual-On's effects are giant cuboids that flicker on and off, it's the OPPOSITE of Zone of Enders 2 in that way. Everything's just a garish cyan block aimlessly waving it's arms around and clipping through itself.

Sure, it's definitely not the same aesthetic as ZoE.

VO is one of those super clean looking polygonal arcade games out of the late 90's. Those detailed mechs are designed around that low polygon count and make it work and are loaded with intricate animations and cool visuals. (Their armor breaks off as an associated defensive gauge decreases.) Or those totally distinctive special effects, those crazy smoothly-animated polygonal explosions that act to give you incredibly precise feedback about damage ranges. Or the fact that it all runs at an incredibly consistent and fast framerate.

I think VO:OT still looks incredibly stylish, and i think a lot of the Sega games from that era hold up amazingly well. (Jet Set Radio was one of the first cell-shaded games i can remember, and it still holds up. I don't even like Jet Set Radio, but it's an incredible looking game.)

You know, but if you're going to be dismissive about it, then it's not an argument worth having. I can live with that, disagreements are allowed. (Definitely not passive agression, heh.)

[twmac]

Oh, oh, i see now. I missed that.

30th of November. That sucks.

At one point they were talking about pushing it back into next year, which might have been better for me as I have been meaning to finish a few games first. I am playing HD remake of Jet Set Radio now and I am still enjoying it but some of the controls are so damn clunky I can hardly imagine going back to the DC version without the upgraded camera controls. The fact that I blitzed through the entire game in two sittings when it first came out baffles me.

@I_Smell, fair enough it does seem that we are arguing more over aesthetics than we are over technical achievements. I think that MGS2 has aged poorly in terms of visuals whereas I think that NiGHTS and Jet Set Radio haven't and I thought that was what you were trying to say. If you just think that the style is dumb, I guess the visuals aren't for everyone.

[I_smell]

Yea we have opposite ideas for what makes a game look outdated. I think Shadow of the Colossus holds up well, even though it's like 15 frames per second and all the textures look like dirt. That's not the part I'm looking at.

I still think JetSet Radio is a guy made of primary colours floating an inch off the ground, waving a triangle about a meter too far out from a wall, and then snaps to a new rotation, clips into his own elbows and shouts a random catchphrase without moving his mouth. That's the part that breaks it for me.

[Sno]

I feel that games striving for realism tend to date much more quickly than games that are significantly stylized.

Wind Waker holds up much, much better than Twilight Princess, i feel.

Or, to bring it back around, i would argue this is part of the reason that ZoE2 is such a dramatically better looking game than the first one.

I have an easier time buying into a stylized world than one that strives for realism, because the former can be designed around the limitations without descending into the uncanny valley. (Or otherwise showing their mistakes and shortcomings, because you know what the real world is supposed to look like.)

You keep bringing up arms clipping through things like that doesn't happen in games that are realistically rendered, but it honestly happens in every game to some extent, and i find it way more jarring when realism is attempting to be maintained..

[I_smell]

I think you're getting the impression I don't like games that look like cartoons... I do, I think Wind Waker and Team Fortress and Castle Crashers all look awesome. Bionic Commando ReArmed has a great style, so does Mario Galaxy.

But depicting spraypaint as a jittery triangle sticks out like a sore thumb, and characters in that game move the same way characters move in a my-first-3D-game tutorial. They hover and slide in the wrong directions and magnet-snap into place. These explosions in Virtual-On are not SUPPOSED TO look like papercraft.

[Sno]

These explosions in Virtual-On are not SUPPOSED TO look like papercraft.

Your assumption is incorrect though, it's definitely the intended effect. When sequels to that game were made on much more powerful hardware, that aesthetic was retained.

The game is deliberately evoking the aesthetic of primitive polygonal VR games, the mechs are even wearing VR goggles! (They're even powered by game consoles on their back!)

[melmer]

Just got the HD pack through the post (rental) shall i bother with the first game? I've got a bit of a backlog from the Christmas sales. Is the first game worth my time. I've heard it's only 4hours long and the story doesn't really go anywhere, can I just skip it?

[Sno]

It's a fine enough game.

I'd say you should play it, if only to have a more gradual introduction into the series, because ZoE2 is fucking hard.