The regular speed levels are basically a combination of Sonic and the Secret Rings with fixed controls and a rather stripped down version of Sonic Rush. To be honest, I’m pretty satisified with how they turned out, barring a few minor issues that are holdovers from Secret Rings (the game doesn’t like it when you try to backtrack, and manual camera control is basically nonexistent). Even early levels like Apotos have a few alternate routes you can check out (and the key to accessing them is timing-based puzzles, much like in Sonic Adventure 2).

Here are a few things I wanted to note about the speed areas:

• The boost move (done by pressing X on the classic controller) works significantly differently from the similarly-named move from the Sonic Rush series. Here, each button press results in a fixed-length boost, during which you can’t change your direction or stop, meaning it needs to be used judiciously. No more holding X throughout the entire level like in Sonic Rush.
• Unlike just about every other Sonic game made to date (except Secret Rings, getting 100 rings doesn’t net you an extra life. The way lives work in this game is actually kind of similar to Sonic 2006, in that you can’t farm extra lives by replaying levels over and over again. You have 3 tries, and every time you lose one you get dropped at an autosave checkpoint while the timer continues to run (basically meaning that dying during a level run hurts your chance of getting an S-rank). You can get more extra lives from item boxes you find in platforming puzzles located in the hub areas.
• Speaking of hub areas, the Wii version doesn’t have hub levels you can run around in, instead opting for an Ace Attorney-ish point and click interface for exploring the various towns you’ll visit. I like this, if only because it lessens the amount of time you need to spend there. The retarded town missions you had to do in Sonic 2006 are still fresh in my memory.
• There are indeed side-scrolling areas to be found in the speed levels, but they play nothing like any of the sidescrolling levels in the older Sonic games or even in the Sonic Rush games. Just about all loops are scripted, meaning momentum plays basically no role in these sections. I’m not sure what the point of including these sidescrolling sections was if they weren’t going to at least try to apply some elements of 2D design to them.

That said, let’s move on to the Werehog levels.

The actual platforming in these levels is fairly nondescript and unremarkable – I don’t have much to complain about, but I can’t really say I enjoyed these sections either. On the other hand, the combat is just terrible. There really isn’t much strategy involved at all beyond ‘jump to hit enemies in the air’ and ‘make sure to use the roll-dodge if you’re fighting those big guys with the clubs’. Sonic’s main combo move basically consists of pressing X and Y alternately, and his level 2 combo (which you’ll earn by the second or third level that you play) covers a ridiculous amount of area on the ground, making it a very good crowd control move. You can press A at certain points in the combo to get more interesting finishing moves, like an aerial launcher (which is kind of pointless without any sort of aerial followups besides jumping and mashing more buttons) or a ground pound move that’s also great at crowd control.

On top of that, the camera is zoomed out way too far, making it difficult to figure out if my attacks are going to hit anything or not. More often than not I jump to try and tag one of the game’s annoying flying enemies only to whiff entirely. On top of that, I have a sneaking suspicion that the actual attack hitboxes and the effects on the player model don’t actually line up a lot of the time.

Add these facts to the additional fact that there are three times as many Werehog levels as regular Sonic levels (each town has a set of three Werehog levels and a single speed level, along with a bunch of side missions, some of which the game requires you to clear before you can go on to the next area) and we have a rather frustrating package overall. On the one hand the actual speed levels are the most fun I’ve had with a Sonic game in quite a while, but on the other hand the Werehog is mostly bland and uninteresting.

Unfortunately for my wallet, though, I think the game is good enough for me to take a risk on buying the PS3 version when it hits in December. Fingers crossed.

To start on a positive note, the writing is pretty good. The writing in Sonic games tends to range from average to abysmal, so a decently written one which actually imbues the characters with personalities instead of making them out to be caricatures is a refreshing change. Much like just about every other Bioware game ever made, the game features branching dialogue trees, as well as an option to make Sonic say something snarky or dickish, which often has hilarious results.

As for the rest of the game…well, it feels rather uneven.

The music and sound production, for one, is absolutely atrocious. The music mostly consists of bad remixes of excellent tracks from other Sonic games, mostly butchered by awful arrangements and terrible samples. I normally leave my DS speakers turned down since I have other stuff playing in the background, but this is the first DS game I’ve ever played where I turned down the sound because I couldn’t stand listening to it. There were rumours that Richard Jacques, the composer on games like Sonic R and the Saturn version of Sonic 3D Blast, was working on the game’s soundtrack, but I find that incredibly hard to believe given the state of the product I played.

The actual game mechanics are better, but still rather flawed. The maps are all hand-drawn 2D, upon which your 3D cel-shaded characters are free to run around, controlled by the stylus. You can switch to any of the characters in your party at any time by tapping their icon, although Sonic remains your ‘point’ character for conversations and the like. You can explore the environments to find side quests, most of which are fairly uninvolved and straightforward. In addition, access to certain parts of each area is restricted depending on who you have in your party. For instance, if you don’t have Knuckles with you, you can’t climb certain walls to reach high areas, and if you don’t have Tails, you can’t fly from one high point to another. The way in which this is done, however, feels rather forced – the game explicitly tells you which character you need to use at a particular location with a handy icon, ruining the sense of exploration and discovery you might have otherwise felt.

In terms of battle mechanics, the game feels like a throwback to Sega JRPGs of old, particularly the Phantasy Star series, with some elements taken from other JRPGs like Final Fantasy. Each of your characters falls into one of three archetypes, Power, Support and Shifter. They also have some stats, and it’s fairly ambiguous as to what each stat affects – the game does not explain this to you. In any case, there’s an ‘Auto-Level’ option much like in Mass Effect that can take care of this for you if you feel so inclined.

The main source of differentiation in the characters is the abilities they bring to the table. These fill the same role as special abilities in other games like Chrono Trigger, in that they have special properties, such as being associated with a particular element, or inflicting a status effect. The latter in particular is crucial to doing well in the game, since status effects can be stacked (even the same ones!).

In addition, you can pair each character with a Chao of your choice. The Chao function much in the same way that Espers do in Final Fantasy VI – they bestow some special property on the character that they wouldn’t have otherwise. The effects range from fairly simple things like endowing the paired character with a particular element in his/her attacks to more useful effects like regenerating HP or PP between rounds. I haven’t played long enough to make sure, but it also looks like the effects of a paired Chao get more powerful the longer it’s paired.

So we have the makings of a fairly decent, if unoriginal combat system. However, Bioware managed to muck this up by tossing (of all things) quick timer events into the fray. When you decide to use your special moves, you need to input a series of Ouendan-style beats and sliders. If you mess up, your special move fails and you just wasted your PP. Presumably the game keeps some internal statistics that determine your attacks’ effectiveness – why does it need to present you with this pointless reflex test? It makes sense in a game like Ouendan precisely BECAUSE the game is Ouendan – the beats are set to music, which aids you in mastering the timing for tapping the beats. In Sonic Chronicles, there is no such aid, and the sequences end up feeling tacked on as a result.

The most annoying part is that the DS, being what it is, often isn’t able to keep up with the action on screen, and as a result the dropped framerate affects the speed at which these sequences are shown to you, messing up any sense of timing you might have gotten through muscle memory and turning what should be a fairly straightforward part of the battle system into pointless tedium. On top of this, you need to go through the same process to block enemy special moves, and it’s subject to the same problems.

And don’t get me started on the ridiculous minigame you need to play in order to escape from battle (or if your opponents decide to escape from battle).

I’m still trying to figure out where I stand on this game. The few things Bioware got wrong are almost enough to push me over the edge, but I’ll put forth a hesitant recommendation to at least those Sonic fans who have been waiting forever for a game that isn’t terrible. This game is better than most other recent Sonic efforts, but I’d strongly recommend preparing for some frustrating battles…and turning the sound off.

In spite of its title, Team Fortress 2 is in fact the third iteration in the Team Fortress series, which is known for being the first class-based multiplayer first-person shooter. When it was announced way back in 1999, Team Fortress 2 was supposed to have a highly realistic art direction, but along the way that decision was dropped in favour of a highly stylized art direction. The result is that TF2 looks like no other first person shooter on the market today. Valve has used some clever shading techniques to make both the characters and environments look like cartoon characters, with exaggerated anatomy, bright colours and incredible facial animation.

The audio is similarly inspired. While weapon and impact noises are as good as you would expect them to be, what really shines is the speech and music. The game has a consistent musical theme, and jingles that wouldn’t sound out of place in a ’60s spy thriller play at the start and end of each round. The characters themselves emote with gusto. Each character has three different unique taunts, and several context-sensitive voice clips that can be triggered at the push of a key. While they fulfil the obvious need for a way of communicating with your teammates, they also help to create what is perhaps the first multiplayer shooter in a long time with actual personality. Whether it’s the Demoman’s angry Scottish rants, the Medic’s odd battle cry of “OKTOBERFEST!” or the Pyro’s incoherent muffled yelling, the characters’ oddball personalities really grow on you.

Aesthetics aren’t everything, so it’s a good thing that Valve is on the ball when it comes to gameplay as well. As noted earlier in this review, Team Fortress 2 is primarily a multiplayer game, much like Unreal Tournament and its ilk. Unlike those games, though, the focus here is on teams of players competing against each other to complete specific objectives on a variety of maps. These objectives can include stealing intelligence from the enemy team’s base (this game’s version of Capture The Flag) or capturing all the control points on a given map. There are several variations on the latter game type, each of which has its own subtleties. The most interesting game type is territorial control, which plays out as a series of smaller battles in a larger battle to control all the areas on a map. There’s a lot of variety to be had here; the only possible complaint is that the game ships with only six multiplayer maps from the get-go (with two more available as free downloadable content), but this being a first-person shooter on the PC, there are already numerous high-quality user-made maps making the rounds, thanks to the free Source SDK and Hammer map editor released by Valve.

TF2 wouldn’t be much of a Team Fortress game without its classes, and while each of the classes from TFC has made a return, they’ve all been changed quite drastically. Where TFC had more homogeneity with its classes (particularly with regard to weapon and grenade use) TF2 goes in the opposite direction, offering nine distinct classes with decidedly unique abilities. For instance, the Scout has low hit points, but is the fastest of all the classes, making him the ideal intelligence carrier or point capturer. On the other hand, the Heavy is slow, but can take significant punishment and deal out massive damage with his minigun, and is thus suited for major offensive pushes. The Medic is primarily a support class with poor offensive abilities, but he can also impart a ten-second invulnerability charge at intervals that can really serve to turn the tide of the match in his team’s favour. And then there’s the calculating, cerebral experience that is the Spy class. No two classes can really be played alike, assuring that even if you manage to master one class, the others are waiting to offer you a completely different gameplay experience every time you log on.

TF2 also implements some interesting features that may be a first for a first-person shooter. In an attempt to get people to keep playing, the game keeps track of your statistics for each round. If a certain player kills you several times, that player is marked out as your nemesis, and you get bonus points for getting revenge on him. Similarly you can dominate players on the other team by killing them repeatedly. In addition, the game uses these stats to reinforce the sense that you’re getting better as you play, pointing out little achievements from the previous round, like new records for maximum kills in a single spawn, time spent alive and so on. It’s a nice trick to keep players interested in their own progress and keep them playing. However, the most curious of the new features is the critical hit system – critical hits are randomly awarded to players on each team, and the chance of getting a critical hit depends on various factors, such as how well you’re playing or what weapon you’re using. It’s an interesting twist, one not usually seen in FPSes, and it’s rare enough not to be gamebreaking.

As far as the multiplayer experience goes, TF2 is the first game to benefit from the enhancements to Valve’s Steam content delivery service. This means the inclusion of things like achievements, a unified friends list that lets you join your friends’ games with a single click, stat tracking and a robust server browser. The multiplayer experience is of a very high standard, and the game is eminently playable even when your ping starts to scrape the low 200s. Full in-game voice chat support is also included, and is crucial if you want to work effectively with your team to win games. The robustness of the online service ensures that more often than not, your TF2 experience will be unhindered by network hiccups.

All in all, Team Fortress 2 is a great multiplayer first-person shooter that will be fondly remembered by many for years to come. It’s rare that a game with such a long development cycle turns out to be such a well-polished and high quality affair, so players would do well to savour what this game has to offer. Personality, gameplay, balance – TF2 has it all, and is a must-play for any fan of the genre (and maybe even for those who aren’t).

Note: I’ve reviewed the PC version here. As a personal note, I strongly recommend that anyone with an interest in this title pick up the PC version, either through Steam, by purchasing the Orange Box, or the new standalone retail version that was released recently. The console versions simply do not match up, in that they don’t have most of the new content that has arrived on the PC version, and lack the ability to take advantage of the excellent community-generated content.

The term is usually used to refer to a series with no real continuity or ongoing plot, where each episode is a series of vignettes from the characters' everyday lives, usually with some elements of humour sprinkled in. Many people I know can't stand this genre, and sometimes put this question to me: “How can you stand to watch a 24-episode show where nothing happens?” And truth be told, I don't have a good answer. The root of this fandom probably lies in the great Azumanga Daioh, which I watched way back in my first year at college. Since then, I've made it a point to check out new slice-of-life series as they've shown up on TV, and have thus managed to enjoy series like Sketchbook, Lucky Star, Honey and Clover…and most recently, Aria, of which the final episode aired this week.

Aria is an interesting thing. While most series tend to get worse as new seasons are announced (y halo thar You're Under Arrest), it has gotten better over its 65-episode run, and this final season in particular has proven to be absolutely wonderful. Its only real fault is somewhat inconsistent animation quality. And yet, it features no conflict, no action, no violence, nothing that would attract your average anime fan to watch it.

Perhaps it's just that I find myself able to appreciate the subtleties of the world of Aqua that Aria manages to express, both through its great atmosphere as well as its characters. It's a quiet, laid-back world, yet in spite of this its nuances are always enjoyable when they're revealed. The show is definitely character- rather than story-driven, and I can appreciate this too, since the characters are all very distinct and have their own loveable personality quirks (with a lot of hidden depth).

Anyhow, I guess my point is that if you're one of those people who doesn't mind watching a show without giant robots, epic battles or intense human drama, I heartily recommend Aria. There's a lot of it (65 episodes spread over three series) but if you're anything like me, you'll enjoy every moment of it.

…still can't believe it's over ;_;