Summer 2012 (Part 2) - Argonaut's Passion Projects
Quintessence
Quintessence is a rail shooter developed by Argonaut and published by Nintendo for the Connect handheld. Though it has a few gameplay similarities with Star Fox, it has a much-more arcadey feel to it, with a running score counter and much faster paced action. The game itself takes some cues from bullet hell titles, and is significantly more difficult than the classic Star Fox games, but isn't quite as difficult as the typical bullet hell shooter would be, and has an "easy to learn, hard to master" style that sucks players in and makes them want to get better at the game. It's also much lighter on plot than the Star Fox series, with only a sort of basic storyline surrounding its gameplay. The storyline casts the player as space fighter pilot Raid Conlan, an elite starfighter who is tasked with flying the experimental Five-Ship, a ship with the power to channel four different elemental energy beams and the capability to create a fifth beam of pure aether, which is charged up in battle and can be used to deal devastating damage to foes. Raid doesn't have any wingmen, per se, though he sometimes flies alongside pilots in the same armada who can help him out a bit (though most of the time, he ends up helping them out). With the ability to fire four different types of elemental bursts, it adds a significant degree of strategy, as there are ten different possible combinations, and three different types of projectiles, making for up to 42 different basic weapons, not including the Aether Beam, which adds more combo possibilities. Enemies have their own different elemental weaknesses and strengths, and the player is tasked with using their elemental beams that have the best effect on enemies. It's possible to get by with the basic fire/wind/water/earth beams, using Aether here and there when one's charge is built up, but getting the best scores in battle requires the use of several different combinations of attacks depending on the kinds of enemies being faced. Combinations can include wind/fire/cutter, which fires a devastating and quick pulse of blazing energy, or water/earth/scatter, which can be used to slow large groups of enemies. Water/fire/scatter can create a powerful cloud of acidic steam, while earth/wind/cutter can send spikes of hard light into enemies directly. Experimentation and finding what works best is the name of the game, with the Aether weapon able to be used against large groups of enemies or against bosses to deal huge damage and really rack up combo points. In addition to firing at enemies, the game also has destructible environments, such as enemy ships, asteroids, and forcefields that can be blasted through or turned against enemies. Practically everything the player does can score points, and triggering combos of cascading damage against tough enemies can score lots of points, with players challenged to improve their score every time they go through a level. The game has 18 levels in all, divided into three groups of six, though, like Starfox, it's possible to go from an easy track to a hard one depending on what the player accomplishes during a certain level. The player can choose between three levels to start from (unlike in Starfox, which usually has a default level, with one level being the hardest and one being the easiest, but it's not recommended for beginning players to start right on the hard level even though it makes it easier to remain on the hard track. Each level has a boss enemy, with some levels having multiple boss enemies, and it's possible for players to encounter "secret" boss enemies that only show up if certain conditions are met. Levels are somewhat short, a bit short than typical Starfox levels, though they're also dense with hazards and things to do, so they do seem a bit longer than they really are. The average player can usually finish up a six level Quintessence session in 15-20 minutes depending on skill level, so it is possible to see the entire game in an hour (provided one doesn't die in their first playthrough, which is a difficult thing to accomplish). The game features absolutely stunning graphics for a Connect game, with incredibly detailed enemies and environments, and plenty happening on screen, with an incredible amount of detail in the worlds and the space vessels seen by the player. There's voice acting, including from Raid himself as well as his friends and foes, though the dialogue is much more serious than in the typical Starfox game. As mentioned before, the game's plot is fairly simple, with Raid Conlon as a mostly lone starfighter going up against a powerful invading army. The villain is more serious and three-dimensional than Andross from the Starfox series, and serves as a sort of foil to raid: a highly decorated pilot turned emperor who seeks peace through overwhelming force, and wants to gain the power of aether to force everyone to bend to his will. To this end, he commands a massive army and seeks to take Raid's Five-Ship in order to drain its mysterious power. In the end, the villain engages Raid in a one-on-one ship fight, followed by deploying a space station/robot in an attempt to destroy him with overwhelming firepower. In the end, Raid defeats the villain, restoring peace to the galaxy, though he can't help but wonder how things might have turned out if the villain hadn't become a conqueror.
Quintessence is released in August 2012 as one of the year's biggest Connect exclusives. It's praised for its gameplay and graphics, but criticized for its relatively short length, especially as a fully priced Connect title. Even with its incredible replay value, some fans and critics feel cheated at the idea of such a short game. For the most part however, reviews are excellent, and sales are quite good as well thanks to hype beforehand and word of mouth after. It feels like the Starfox gameplay formula perfected, and those who loved Starfox but hated the storyline/characters feel quite vindicated by Quintessence. It's considered a major success for Argonaut, who, while not creating games at the pace they used to, is still considered one of Nintendo's most important second parties.
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Fans waiting for a new title in the Zeppelin Age series, however, might have to wait. According to Argonaut's lead developer Dylan Cuthbert, the studio is putting 100 percent of its efforts into the next Squad Four game, expected to be a title for Nintendo's next generation console.
"I can't confirm anything about the platform, only that it'll be coming to Nintendo," Cuthbert told us. "Every single person at Argonaut is working on the game, which we expect to be our biggest ever and something that will take the series in an entirely new direction."
We pressed Cuthbert for more information, but he responded to most of our queries with 'no comment', and we could only get a few tantalizingly short answers from him. Most notably, we learned that the new Squad Four game will feature significantly improved fighting animation from previous games in the series, both in gameplay and in cutscenes.
"We've got an entirely new team working on fight animations, and they've been working on the game already for about three years. The new Squad Four will feature unprecedented visuals, and the most realistically animated characters ever put on a console."
We've been teased for the past few months that Squad Four's sixth console game will feature incredible fight animation, and we're taking that to mean that the series might continue the hack and slash direction that Protectors took the series in. However, we asked Cuthbert about Protectors, and his answer gave us a bit of doubt about our hypothesis.
"You know, Protectors wasn't for everyone. It was a very good game, and it did quite well, but when we asked fans what their favorite game in the series is, Protectors didn't come up too often."
Instead, Rebellion was said to be the most popular installment of the series amongst fans, and it's not even close. Second place was Eclipse, and third, close behind Eclipse, was Upheaval, the fourth installment of the series that launched on the Nintendo Wave and had a good reception, but was said to not have been enough of a progression from Rebellion. Cuthbert mentioned that while he's not dwelling too much on fan criticisms and that the game's direction will be driven primarily by the developers, he did mention that he's listened to fan criticisms of the series for the past two decades and that he takes their input into account for each new Squad Four the team makes.
"We are listening," said Cuthbert. "We might not take all the fans' advice, or even most of it, but we do try to learn from our mistakes."
The sixth Squad Four game has year to be formally announced, but with Nintendo set to announce the Sapphire's successor likely before the end of the year, a Squad Four-related announcement could be forthcoming.
-from an article on NintendoLifeUK, posted on August 23, 2012
Quintessence is a rail shooter developed by Argonaut and published by Nintendo for the Connect handheld. Though it has a few gameplay similarities with Star Fox, it has a much-more arcadey feel to it, with a running score counter and much faster paced action. The game itself takes some cues from bullet hell titles, and is significantly more difficult than the classic Star Fox games, but isn't quite as difficult as the typical bullet hell shooter would be, and has an "easy to learn, hard to master" style that sucks players in and makes them want to get better at the game. It's also much lighter on plot than the Star Fox series, with only a sort of basic storyline surrounding its gameplay. The storyline casts the player as space fighter pilot Raid Conlan, an elite starfighter who is tasked with flying the experimental Five-Ship, a ship with the power to channel four different elemental energy beams and the capability to create a fifth beam of pure aether, which is charged up in battle and can be used to deal devastating damage to foes. Raid doesn't have any wingmen, per se, though he sometimes flies alongside pilots in the same armada who can help him out a bit (though most of the time, he ends up helping them out). With the ability to fire four different types of elemental bursts, it adds a significant degree of strategy, as there are ten different possible combinations, and three different types of projectiles, making for up to 42 different basic weapons, not including the Aether Beam, which adds more combo possibilities. Enemies have their own different elemental weaknesses and strengths, and the player is tasked with using their elemental beams that have the best effect on enemies. It's possible to get by with the basic fire/wind/water/earth beams, using Aether here and there when one's charge is built up, but getting the best scores in battle requires the use of several different combinations of attacks depending on the kinds of enemies being faced. Combinations can include wind/fire/cutter, which fires a devastating and quick pulse of blazing energy, or water/earth/scatter, which can be used to slow large groups of enemies. Water/fire/scatter can create a powerful cloud of acidic steam, while earth/wind/cutter can send spikes of hard light into enemies directly. Experimentation and finding what works best is the name of the game, with the Aether weapon able to be used against large groups of enemies or against bosses to deal huge damage and really rack up combo points. In addition to firing at enemies, the game also has destructible environments, such as enemy ships, asteroids, and forcefields that can be blasted through or turned against enemies. Practically everything the player does can score points, and triggering combos of cascading damage against tough enemies can score lots of points, with players challenged to improve their score every time they go through a level. The game has 18 levels in all, divided into three groups of six, though, like Starfox, it's possible to go from an easy track to a hard one depending on what the player accomplishes during a certain level. The player can choose between three levels to start from (unlike in Starfox, which usually has a default level, with one level being the hardest and one being the easiest, but it's not recommended for beginning players to start right on the hard level even though it makes it easier to remain on the hard track. Each level has a boss enemy, with some levels having multiple boss enemies, and it's possible for players to encounter "secret" boss enemies that only show up if certain conditions are met. Levels are somewhat short, a bit short than typical Starfox levels, though they're also dense with hazards and things to do, so they do seem a bit longer than they really are. The average player can usually finish up a six level Quintessence session in 15-20 minutes depending on skill level, so it is possible to see the entire game in an hour (provided one doesn't die in their first playthrough, which is a difficult thing to accomplish). The game features absolutely stunning graphics for a Connect game, with incredibly detailed enemies and environments, and plenty happening on screen, with an incredible amount of detail in the worlds and the space vessels seen by the player. There's voice acting, including from Raid himself as well as his friends and foes, though the dialogue is much more serious than in the typical Starfox game. As mentioned before, the game's plot is fairly simple, with Raid Conlon as a mostly lone starfighter going up against a powerful invading army. The villain is more serious and three-dimensional than Andross from the Starfox series, and serves as a sort of foil to raid: a highly decorated pilot turned emperor who seeks peace through overwhelming force, and wants to gain the power of aether to force everyone to bend to his will. To this end, he commands a massive army and seeks to take Raid's Five-Ship in order to drain its mysterious power. In the end, the villain engages Raid in a one-on-one ship fight, followed by deploying a space station/robot in an attempt to destroy him with overwhelming firepower. In the end, Raid defeats the villain, restoring peace to the galaxy, though he can't help but wonder how things might have turned out if the villain hadn't become a conqueror.
Quintessence is released in August 2012 as one of the year's biggest Connect exclusives. It's praised for its gameplay and graphics, but criticized for its relatively short length, especially as a fully priced Connect title. Even with its incredible replay value, some fans and critics feel cheated at the idea of such a short game. For the most part however, reviews are excellent, and sales are quite good as well thanks to hype beforehand and word of mouth after. It feels like the Starfox gameplay formula perfected, and those who loved Starfox but hated the storyline/characters feel quite vindicated by Quintessence. It's considered a major success for Argonaut, who, while not creating games at the pace they used to, is still considered one of Nintendo's most important second parties.
-
Fans waiting for a new title in the Zeppelin Age series, however, might have to wait. According to Argonaut's lead developer Dylan Cuthbert, the studio is putting 100 percent of its efforts into the next Squad Four game, expected to be a title for Nintendo's next generation console.
"I can't confirm anything about the platform, only that it'll be coming to Nintendo," Cuthbert told us. "Every single person at Argonaut is working on the game, which we expect to be our biggest ever and something that will take the series in an entirely new direction."
We pressed Cuthbert for more information, but he responded to most of our queries with 'no comment', and we could only get a few tantalizingly short answers from him. Most notably, we learned that the new Squad Four game will feature significantly improved fighting animation from previous games in the series, both in gameplay and in cutscenes.
"We've got an entirely new team working on fight animations, and they've been working on the game already for about three years. The new Squad Four will feature unprecedented visuals, and the most realistically animated characters ever put on a console."
We've been teased for the past few months that Squad Four's sixth console game will feature incredible fight animation, and we're taking that to mean that the series might continue the hack and slash direction that Protectors took the series in. However, we asked Cuthbert about Protectors, and his answer gave us a bit of doubt about our hypothesis.
"You know, Protectors wasn't for everyone. It was a very good game, and it did quite well, but when we asked fans what their favorite game in the series is, Protectors didn't come up too often."
Instead, Rebellion was said to be the most popular installment of the series amongst fans, and it's not even close. Second place was Eclipse, and third, close behind Eclipse, was Upheaval, the fourth installment of the series that launched on the Nintendo Wave and had a good reception, but was said to not have been enough of a progression from Rebellion. Cuthbert mentioned that while he's not dwelling too much on fan criticisms and that the game's direction will be driven primarily by the developers, he did mention that he's listened to fan criticisms of the series for the past two decades and that he takes their input into account for each new Squad Four the team makes.
"We are listening," said Cuthbert. "We might not take all the fans' advice, or even most of it, but we do try to learn from our mistakes."
The sixth Squad Four game has year to be formally announced, but with Nintendo set to announce the Sapphire's successor likely before the end of the year, a Squad Four-related announcement could be forthcoming.
-from an article on NintendoLifeUK, posted on August 23, 2012
