(Here are the other notable North American game releases from January 2005 to March 2005!)
Nintendo Wave:
Raider Ops
Raider Ops is an FPS title about about a squad of highly trained elite raiders who go after international criminals. It's a fairly generic FPS, both in terms of gameplay and in terms of plot, but the play controls, which feature context-sensitive actions and make it very easy for players to switch between weapons and control schemes, earn the game some decent critical reviews, making it a fairly strong seller for the time of year in which it's released.
Storm Guardians United
The fourth overall title in the
Storm Guardians series of beat-em-up games,
Storm Guardians United serves as a prequel to the original title, centered around the five original heroic characters (Alex, Elite, Zera, Lee, and Fury). It has a more platformer/level-based format than
Ultra Storm Guardians, including more action elements and not focusing exclusively on the game's beat 'em up aspects (though the game does feature the best combat system in the series by far). After brief introductory levels for all five Guardians, the game gradually has them coming together, finally uniting the five as a team toward the end of the game to battle the primary antagonist.
Storm Guardians United is easily the best reviewed game in the series since the original, and many reviewers rate it more highly than the original game. Longtime fans enjoy it for the most part, though the absence of the character Lita (who was introduced in
Ultra Storm Guardians and hasn't been seen in the series since despite being a fan favorite) does trouble a segment of the fanbase. Overall, sales are decent but not great, though they do exceed the sales for
Ultra Storm Guardians at the very least.
The Bouncer 2
Squaresoft's sequel to 2000's
The Bouncer maintains the original's beat 'em up style, but includes more RPG elements and features an entirely different protagonist and plot. The protagonist's name is Ghul Westerly, and he works as a “cosmic bouncer”, given the job of keeping humans possessed by demonic forces out of our realm. In his civilian job, he's an actual bouncer at a bar in the tough industrial section of Dominion City, where our realm and the netherrealm converge. Ghul's job as a bar bouncer actually brings him into contact with these demonic foes quite often, as people who start trouble in his bar are usually possessed by demons. His girlfriend is Cindy Glorian, a sweet and fairly innocent young woman who usually finds herself in trouble more often than not (though when push comes to shove Cindy is capable of defending herself). Ghul works for the Incursion Force, the group who keeps our world safe from the demons. His boss at the Incursion Force is a stern woman named Shaida Halcyon, who may or may not have a connection to one of the demon lords. The game plays like an adventure/beat 'em up title, with some similarities to
Shenmue (though without the simulation/sandbox elements). As Ghul defeats enemies, he gains both experience points and a currency called Glow that can be spent on upgrades. It's a rather straightforward game, though the plot has a few twists and turns here and there. Reviews for
The Bouncer 2 are fairly strong, generally better than the original game, and sales are better too, both in North America and Japan. It's still not one of Squaresoft's flagship series, but it's seen as an interesting tread into an unfamiliar genre.
Aerial Brawler
Aerial Brawler is a futuristic game that combines racing, shooting, and fighting, this game takes place on tracks that are raced on by competitors in special suits that let them hover above the track, throwing various weapons at each other and trying to take each other out. There's a lot going on in this game and the controls are quite complex, so it's not as accessible as developers were hoping it'd be. The characters and game design make it seem like a title that was aiming for all demographics, but it's a bit too difficult and violent for younger kids and a bit too kiddy for older players. It's a critical and commercial disappointment, and though it wouldn't get a sequel, it would be looked back on fondly by its hardcore fans in later years.
Nano Breaker
Konami brings its OTL cult classic hack and slash to the Nintendo Wave ITTL, and the plot and characters are basically the same as OTL's game, with protagonist Jake using his cyborg enhancements to battle powerful mutated enemies. Like OTL's title,
Nano Breaker is exceedingly violent, but is also quite fast paced and fun. It plays much like an even more violent
Devil May Cry, with elements of Konami's recent 3-D
Castlevania game. The biggest change from OTL's game is the addition of a new main villain, relegating OTL's General Raymond to sidekick status: the primary antagonist is Scythian, a powerful, sentient humanoid mutant who sees himself as superior to cyborgs and Orgamechs alike, and seeks to eradicate humanity after he's finished with Jake. Scythian engages Jake in a spectacular one on one fight before transforming into a massive winged insect Orgamech for the final fight. Overall,
Nano Breaker does get slightly more attention than it did OTL, and achieves decent sales (if still quite low compared to
Devil May Cry). Konami wouldn't make it into a franchise, but would take elements of the game for other titles in the future.
Secret Of Happy Valley
(NOTE: The idea for
Secret Of Happy Valley was given to us by reader
HonestAbe1809!)
Secret Of Happy Valley is a survival horror game set in an abandoned theme park populated by the spirits of the undead and by malfunctioning animatronics. Though the game is a violent and scary one and is rated M for Mature, it does have a somewhat tongue in cheek mood to it with a style of graphics that blends cartoonish cel shading with realism. The game was originally intended as a 2003 release, but was delayed somewhat as the developers discovered more of the Wave's graphical capabilities. The protagonist is a scavenger in his early 20s named Ricky (voiced by Dante Basco) who visited the park a lot when he was a young boy and has returned to see if there are any valuables he can take or even some old rides that are still working. The park has turned into a complete nightmare where numerous people have been killed and where no one even attempts to go anymore, Ricky had to cross several cordoned off zones just to get into the park. The game itself plays a bit like OTL's
Bioshock in terms of level progression, with new areas of the park opening up as Ricky clears them, and even an Andrew Ryan-like figure in the old Walt Disney-esque owner of the theme park, Thomas Whitney (voiced by Jonathan Pryce). Whitney is completely delusional, seeing his park as fully functioning and filled with happy tourists despite the horrors that have taken there, and he also gleefully participates in the tortures inflicted by his possessed mascot characters on people who have wandered into the park. Later, however, in a plot twist, Ricky learns that Whitney was fully lucid the entire time and has deliberately engineered his park to kill people in order to gather innocent souls he needs to gain overwhelming power and unleash it upon the world. He primarily communicates with the player through video screens and the game's PA system. As for combat, in true survival horror fashion, Ricky gets very little in the way of weaponry. He does receive a number of bladed and blunt weapons, but there are few guns and ammunition for those guns is very sparse, forcing him to rely primarily on melee and get up close and personal with enemies.
Secret Of Happy Valley is somewhat of a sleeper hit, it's released in February 2005 and is expected to play second fiddle to
Extremis: Ruin Stalker. Instead, it gets excellent reviews, becoming one of the best reviewed games of the month, and though sales are a bit slow early on (though still stronger then expected), later word of mouth and eventually ports to seventh generation systems help the game achieve more than a million units sold worldwide. It also serves as a sort of spiritual predecessor to a creepypasta-based game down the road that takes place in a widely expanded version of the world this game takes place in.
The Beast
The Beast is a platformer in which the protagonists must complete tasks while avoiding the massive furry beast (who, while big and scary, is also kind of cute) that “invades” each level at random intervals, causing mayhem and altering the landscape. It's a fairly difficult platformer but its innovative concept gets it some good reviews. Unfortunately, traditional platformers, especially family-based ones, are starting to wear a bit thin, so sales don't quite meet the hype.
American Rally
American Rally is a racing game featuring realistic cars racing across various American cities. It's seen as a more “blue collar” take on the Need for Speed series and also harkens back somewhat to Cruisin' USA. It's not expected to be a very popular game but manages to be a bit of a surprise hit, certainly one of the most popular original racing titles of 2005.
Arcana: Blood Element
A hybrid WRPG/beat-em-up with elements of OTL games like Darksiders and God Of War, Arcana features a brutal protagonist who has stolen ancient magical secrets and uses them for his personal revenge quest against a king who, while a benevolent ruler on the surface, has a lot of people who hold grudges against him for a series of lethal betrayals. The protagonist, known as the Bloodletter and whose real name isn't revealed until much later on, uses magic as his primary weapon, with spells that cause extremely violent things to happen to enemies (somewhat like Kain's blood spells in the original
Blood Omen). The more blood shed by the Bloodletter, the stronger he gets. This game is known for its cutscenes which feature the Bloodletter taking brutal revenge, and not just on people who entirely deserve it: he slaughters an entire village at one point, and at another point in the game kills a fairly likeable young female mage whose biggest crime was stealing a rune that the Bloodletter needed for his own purposes (and she arguably had more noble reasons to take the rune). In the absence of
God Of War, which is butterflied away in favor of David Jaffe's TTL project
Lash Out (more on that later), the Bloodletter is the closest thing we get to a Kratos, though he's significantly edgier and crueler. Still,
Arcana is a decent game, and fairly popular, though once
Lash Out is released, the buzz around this one fades somewhat.
Goblins 3: The Archmage
The third game in Naughty Dog's
Goblins platformer franchise,
Goblins 3: The Archmage continues the tale of Puckle and Luna, two goblins who live in the Underworld. Billy and Ava, the human friends of the two goblins, also return but are relegated to occasional support appearances rather than full supporting roles. The game plays much like
Goblins 2, with lots of 3-D platforming, though magic is now a big part of the series, with the two goblins required to learn spells as they progress through the story (the magic is part of the barricade between segments of the game's world, as you must learn certain spells to make your way through). The villain of the game is the Archmage, an evil sorceress who has been stealing the Krystals that the goblins use to move through the world and light their way, and she eventually seeks to create a weapon that can destroy all of the goblin underworld so that she will be free to rule with her mindless servants, who walk around in black robes and use powerful magic (though not as powerful as the Archmage's). Puckle and Luna must become sorcerers themselves if they are to confront and defeat the Archmage and her evil magic army.
Goblins 3, being the latest game in a highly popular and lucrative series, is highly anticipated, and though reviews are somewhat off from the second game (it averages around an 8/10 rather than a 9/10), it's still seen as a great platformer and an excellent family title. Its sales are quite good, though it does fall somewhat behind the more adult-oriented games released in March.
Hurricane Hunter
An action title about an elite squad of military scientists who are deployed to eliminate hurricanes by using a variety of high-tech gadgets and their physical skills. It's an extremely cheesy game known mostly for its over the top storyline and decent graphics. The gameplay is really mediocre and sales aren't all that great either, though they do pick up a bit due to the severe hurricane season later that year.
Port To Starboard
A pirate-themed crowd fighting game, this can be somewhat compared to
Dynasty Warriors at sea. It's a well made game and does decently, though in a world where the
Dynasty Warriors series still exists, it's not as successful as its would be rival. Still, the game's interesting characters and fun swashbuckling soundtrack do win it some fans, and reviews are good, averaging a solid 7.5/10.
Apple Katana:
Vertical Drift
Vertical Drift is a futuristic racing game that, like the name implies, features races with elements of vertical driving, where parts of the track go straight up buildings or other landmarks. The graphics look great, with incredible visual effects and scenery, and it might be the best looking racing game on the Katana to that point, but clunky controls sour the experience and the game experiences only moderate success.
Radiata Stories
IOTL,
Radiata Stories was published by Square Enix. ITTL, the game is developed by a new development studio comprised of RPG developers who broke off from Enix and Telenet Japan to form their own studio. Led by Naoki Akiyama, who also directed the game IOTL, TTL's
Radiata Stories is published by Enix (which maintains a good relationship with the developers who separated from it since the studio intends to have Enix publish most of its games). Like OTL's game,
Radiata Stories features a living, breathing world of NPCs who have their own lives separate from the player's adventure. The game features an action role playing system similar to the
Tale series, and like OTL's game, it features a huge amount of NPCs to recruit. OTL's game had over 150, TTL's game has 312 different NPCs that can be recruited into the party, though it's impossible to recruit all of them the first, second, OR third times through the game, only on a fourth New Game Plus playthrough is it possible to get all 312 characters, and even then, significant hoops must be jumped through. The plot of the game is significantly changed from OTL's game, largely to avoid similarities with the 1998 RPG
Fairytale. There are still humans, fairies, and numerous other races in the game, but all the human and non-human races live together in harmony, and are threatened by dangerous mercenaries serving as emissaries for the Dark Lord Shadmodis. Shadmodis is recruiting powerful humans/fairies/dwarves/elves/monsters to serve as its dark agents in order to conquer all possible worlds. Shadmodis has a total of 19 mercenaries over the course of the game and it's possible to recruit 18 of them (though not in the first playthrough). Depending on which mercenaries have been recruited, the final confrontation with Shadmodis takes on a number of forms, ranging from a tragic battle against a would-be friend to an all-out heroic struggle of good vs. evil. All in all, the game has five endings, which players have labeled: Bad, OK, Good, Great, Perfect, and recommend playing through the game five times, doing the endings in order from Bad to Perfect, though this and getting all the characters easily requires over 150 hours of gameplay.
Released in
Skies Of Arcadia II's wake,
Radiata Stories is somewhat ignored by many Katana players, though those who do play it tend to really enjoy it, and it's one of the year's best reviewed RPG titles. It would ultimately sell about as many copies as it did IOTL, maybe a hair more.
Triple Threat
Triple Threat is a shooting title in which the three protagonists must use triangulation to strike their enemies at the perfect time. The mix of fast paced shooting action with strategy is considered fairly innovative, though the game itself is a bit clunky and proves to be a sales disappointment. It does get praise for its three person multiplayer, which is largely how the game is intended to be played, but the online mode is bogged down by some lag.
Witch Hunters
Witch Hunters is an adaptation of the anime series
Witch Hunter Robin, which did come out ITTL in largely the same form as it did IOTL, but was never broadcast on Toonami, meaning that for many North American players, this game is their first exposure to the franchise. It's also a fairly loose adaptation in that the character of Robin is hardly involved or mentioned in the game, instead the player controls a member of another Solomon branch separate from the STN-J, called STN-X and given the task of hunting far more dangerous and powerful witches than those found in the animated series. The game takes the form of an action RPG/shooter title, and does get comparisons upon release to Enix's
Fullmetal Alchemist, though it plays more like OTL's
Dirge Of Cerberus rather than a Quintet-styled action RPG. The plot, told through 2 1/2-D cutscenes done in a sort of cel-shaded but not quite anime style, is actually one of the game's more popular features, as the gameplay is fairly standard and doesn't really innovate very much. Most people view it as “another weird Katana anime game”, and commercial performance in the States is fairly low, despite decent reviews. Once the dub of the anime series becomes more widely known via increased DVD sales and through airing on digital cable networks, this game sees a bit of a spike in interest, though by then the Katana has largely been phased out in favor of Project Pippin.
Lilith 2: Caught My Eye
The sequel to
Lilith: Lethal Seduction continues the story of the sexy superspy Lilith as she busts bad guys and shoots her way through more than a dozen rapid-fire stages. This game ramps up the sex and violence to a level beyond even that of
Blackheart, in an effort to outdo that franchise's upcoming and heavily hyped 2005 installment. As a result, this becomes even more of a niche series, with reviews and sales paling severely in comparison to its much more polished rival. It gets enough sales to turn a profit, but only just barely.
Microsoft Xbox:
Evil Dead
Evil Dead is a brutal hack and slash adaptation of the classic zombie spoof series, with Bruce Campbell voicing his iconic character Ash Williams in this game that loosely adapts the first two movies. It features a lot more demons and zombies, and a plot even more insane than the films, with Ash briefly at times breaking the fourth wall in order to comment on this. The game goes for over-the-top humor more than horror, but is still plenty scary, with hideous boss monsters and brutal deaths for both humans and monsters alike. It's a fairly long game for its genre, with Ash chainsawing his way through 13 levels, each more brutal and outrageous than the last. Review scores aren't so kind, hovering in the 7/10 range, but this game had a lot of hype prior to its release, and that helps to drive sales quite well, especially upon release, making it one of February 2005's most successful games.
Relentless: No Way Out
The long awaited sequel to 2002's FPS
Relentless Lethality,
No Way Out takes place on a massive prison planet, where the galaxy's most dangerous criminals, along with political prisoners and other so-called undesirables, are all put together on the same planet in order to kill each other. The protagonist is a freedom fighter, sent to the planet along with his entire civilization in order to be slaughtered. He has to protect the innocent people of his world while killing as many of the criminals as he can, in order to unravel the evil galactic empire who put his civilization on the path to destruction. While fairly ambitious in its plot, it's a fairly typical sci-fi FPS shooter, and the main lure of the game isn't intended to be its campaign mode: it's the game's multiplayer mode, which has gotten a massive boost from that of the previous game, with tons of new arenas and modes and the ability to play a “civilians vs. soldiers” mode in which 12 “civilian” characters must find enough weapons and armor to battle with a team of four “soldier” characters already heavily armed. The huge variety of multiplayer modes in
No Way Out make it one of the Xbox's most popular new FPS titles of the year, and excellent reviews and a robust online community make the game extremely popular in terms of sales, ultimately becoming the best selling new game of February 2005 and one of the year's biggest early hits.
Buffy: The Last Mystery
Taking place just after the end of the original
Buffy: The Vampire Slayer series and the spinoff series
Angel,
Buffy: The Last Mystery reunites most of the original characters (the ones who survived the series, including Cordelia, who isn't killed off ITTL, though Tara still was) to investigate a series of strange demonic occurrences threatening to endanger everyone on Earth. The game plays like a hybrid action/point and click title, with similarities to OTL's
Alan Wake in terms of gameplay. It features the voice acting of the original cast, and has a lot of callbacks and fanservice. It's a decent game, though fairly inaccessible for non-
Buffy fans, and it doesn't wrap up some of the threads left dangling at the end of both series. Ultimately, it sells quite poorly on the Xbox, though it does better on PC, and once the two-year exclusivity is up, it gets a port for the iPod Play that does considerably better.
Deadman Sam: Wrath Of The Wraith
Tecmo attempts somewhat of a dark reboot of the
Deadman Sam series in this Xbox exclusive title, which features Sam and his bride Nellie forced to battle against a terrifying wraith that has launched a war of revenge on both humanity and the underworld. It's a 3-D platformer, but with some innovative adventure elements that make the game play almost more like a
Zelda title than a
Mario-esque game. As far as the overall reception for the game goes, it's somewhat of a half-success: it does attract some new fans to the series, and it's the best rated
Deadman Sam game since the early fifth-generation efforts. However, overall sales are still somewhat low compared to other efforts in the series, and it would ultimately be considered somewhat of a black sheep title, with Tecmo choosing to focus on multiplatform titles preserving the series' lighthearted tone in the future.
Paradigm Shift
(NOTE: The following idea was given to us by the reader
Goldwind2!)
Paradigm Shift is a third person shooter/action title created by John Romero exclusively for the Microsoft Xbox. It features a team of scientists/action heroes, led by Roman Hackett, who, in addition to having a Ph. D. in quantum physics, is a universe-class adventurer. His team consists of beautiful bespectacled scientist Alice Stanley, who wields a powerful multi-projectile nanogun, a young and somewhat reckless assistant Steven Walters, and a robot/medic named QL95 (an homage to
Quantum Leap and
Sliders, with QL representing
Quantum Leap and 95 representing 1995, the year in which
Sliders debuted). The scientists possess a powerful dimensional transporter and are searching for an artifact called the Ontological Generator, which can either protect a world from fading out of existence or can accelerate its descent into nonexistence through reversing its polarity. The universe that they originally came from has been torn asunder by reckless use of dimensional transportation, and they must risk further exacerbating the problem in order to bring the generator back to their own universe to preserve it. However, they are being hunted by the multi-dimensional Omnithraxis Empire, which seeks to preserve its own universe while using the generator to destroy all others. As the characters search for the generator and evade the Empire's grasp, they make their way through 12 different paralle universes, from both the usual gaming settings (an ice age world brought about by uncontrolled use of anti-global warming technology, a Wild West universe, a fiery civilization that lives on a massive star, an evil empire that represents Earth taken over by the Omnithraxis) to the incredibly bizarre (a world where time runs rapidly backward, a world where everyone is a cartoon with toon physics, a world where everyone is a god). The game's rapid-fire changing of universes leads to some strange battle physics, especially for boss fights, which occasionally involve moving between two or more universes at once. As the game progresses, worlds collide and seem to run together, with some dimensions serving as hybrid dimensions, playing by more than one set of rules. The game rarely drops its light hearted and adventurous tone, though there are some somber moments for the characters and the Omnithraxis Empire becomes extremely evil toward the end of the game, creating some moments of serious emotional pathos.
Ultimately,
Paradigm Shift lives up to the hype it has received as one of the premier Xbox titles of 2005. Though initial sales are a bit slow, word of mouth for the game and its reviews (which average in the high-8s/low 9s) cause sales to pick up as the year progresses, especially during the holiday season, and it would end up being one of the top ten best selling Xbox exclusives of the year.
Shieldmaiden
(NOTE: This summary was mostly written up by our reader
Neoteros! He came up with the plot and gameplay, while we wrote the part about the game's sales performance and critical reviews.)
Shieldmaiden is a third-person action-adventure video game developed by Digital Anvil and published by Microsoft. First released in March 2005 for the Xbox, it would be ported to PC later. Loosely based on Norse mythology, it is set in
Vínland, in and around
Straumfjörð. The player controls the protagonist Hildur, a Norse woman who serves the goddess of death and war, Freyja.
Shieldmaiden is a third-person single player video game viewed from a fixed camera perspective. The player controls the character Hildur in combo-based combat, platforming, and puzzle game elements, and battles foes who primarily stem from Norse mythology. Platforming elements require the player to climb walls and ladders, jump across chasms, swing on ropes, and balance across beams to proceed through sections of the game. Some puzzles are simple, such as moving a box so that the player can use it as a jumping-off point to access a pathway unreachable with normal jumping, but others are more complex, such as finding several items across different areas of the game to unlock one door. Combat is achieved through the player's main weapon, a Dane axe, and a round shield; the left analog stick moves the character around, while the right analog stick allows Hildur to attack with her axe in a manner similar to that found in Jet Li: Rise to Honor. The left and right bumpers and the left and right triggers, on the other hand, parry with the shield in nine different directions (high left, middle left, low left, high center, middle center, low center, high right, middle right, low right). Successfully alternating attacks and parries is essential to survive the waves of enemies that the game relentlessly hurls in the player's general direction, in a manner reminiscent more of a Dynasty Warriors game than a God of War game; notching up combos fills the player's Berserkr Meter, whose replenishment can grant Hildur a brief window of increased speed and strength during which she is immune to damage. The Berserkr Meter is normally never empty - it's filled for 1/5 at the start of the game - but taking damage slowly empties it; when it's fully empty, one hit's all that needed to kill Hildur.
Hildur is the only daughter of Sturla, goði (chieftain and priest) of Straumfjörð. After the death of her father, a man feared and respected throughout the whole of Vínland, Freyja tasks Hildur, a warrior almost as feared and respected as her father, with killing Aghi, a man so clever he imprisoned and tricked Loki into lending him a fraction of his powers. Aghi is warned about this by Loki - being imprisoned and tricked made him admire Aghi, in fact - and so the man decides to kill Hildur, throwing his armies at her. When Hildur handily and single-handedly annihilates his army in a meadow near Straumfjörð, Aghi decides to fight Hildur taking the shape of a giant wolf, that she defeats; he goes back to his human form and escapes. For the next seven levels, Hildur chases Aghi in a variety of locations around Markland and Vínland (what we know as Newfoundland and Labrador), fighting a variety of enemies in the process; here, the game would vaguely resemble Samurai Jack in its juxtaposition of long action scenes without dialogue and mature themes, like women's rights in a harsh, unforgiving, violent world, slavery and the war between the Norse and the skrælingjar. During her travels, Hildur learns that Aghi wants to use Loki's powers to defeat and exterminate the skrælingjar (some of which Hildur befriended) once and for all, abolish the pseudo-democratic Vinlandic Commonwealth, elevate himself to the rank of King and conquer the whole North, eradicating the Christian religion from the lands that once worshipped the æsir. The final level, as big as the eight that preceded it put together and set in Helluland (Baffin Island), culminates in the final fight between Hildur and Aghi, and in the final boss fight, between Hildur and Loki, that is defeated and escapes to Ásgarðr.
While
Shieldmaiden would be Digital Anvil's last game as an independent company (it would be absorbed into Microsoft as it was around this time IOTL), it sent the company out on a high note. With excellent reviews (around 8.5/10 on average) and outstanding sales (just missing the top 5 new releases in a crowded month), it's considered an immediate success for Microsoft, which commissions a sequel almost immediately. The upswing in excellent titles coming around at this time, combined with a series of new Xbox bundles, raises the console's fortunes and sales, giving it its first real upswing in sales since the summer of 2004, with
Shieldmaiden (along with
Paradigm Shift and
Tom Clancy's Rendition: Masterminds) playing a large role in the console's growing success.
Game Boy Nova:
Aeroboy: Balloon Brawl!
Aeroboy: Balloon Brawl! is a Game Boy Nova spinoff of Satoru Iwata's
Aeroboy series. This game features a more simplistic style of gameplay very reminiscent of the classic
Balloon Fight title in the form of a linear adventure game spanning 17 levels. It plays very much like
Balloon Fight, but with storyline cutscenes and a variety of weapons and enemies, and is on the whole a very solid game. It sells decently well for a Nova title, thanks to the fact that Nintendo hypes it up fairly well, and is considered a successful spinoff game.
Skulls
A portable adaptation of the popular 3-D platformer series, the Nova version of
Skulls sees heroine Lupe return in a 2-D platforming adventure which shares much of the storyline elements of the 3-D games but translates them and the gameplay to a sidescroller format. The game's animation is very bright and colorful and overall it is one of the better Nova platformers.
Puka 2: Dragons Rising
The sequel to
Puka: Dragon Days, this game sees the cute but powerful little dragon return for another adventure, featuring numerous new dragon characters as Puka forms a squad of heroes to battle a terrible new villain. This game is generally considered better than the original, both in technical terms and in terms of its gameplay and level length, and sales and review scores exceed those of the original game.
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell
The popular shooter/stealth series makes its debut appearance on the Nova. This is an adaptation of the first game's storyline, shrunk down to a Nova compatible format, with smaller levels and obviously degraded graphics. It's still one of the console's best looking games, comparable to
Metal Gear Vaporized, and ultimately is one of the best selling Nova games of the year.
Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Legends
A port of
Lunar 2: The Eternal Blue, it's done with similar production quality to
Silver Star Legends, with graphics and sound somewhat between the Sega CD and Ultra Nintendo versions of the game, probably hovering around the quality of the OTL PS1 version minus most of the cutscenes. It's a solid port and reviewed well, but sales are still somewhat low.
Mega Man Zero 4
The fourth
Mega Man Zero title is released to the Game Boy Nova, in somewhat of a step down from the Ultra Nintendo in terms of graphical quality, but with a slightly heavier focus on gameplay as Zero teams up with X to solve the mystery of a rogue machine built by a new mad scientist villain. The machine has intelligence and capabilities like X and Zero, and calls itself Vega (though it's nothing like the
Street Fighter Vega). Sclera returns in this game about halfway through, though she is soon targeted by the new evil mad scientist and Zero must protect her. This game is considered by some to be the best of all four games in the series, despite its downgraded graphics, and is considered a hit. Capcom would begin to work on
Mega Man Zero 5 for the Game Boy Supernova, while porting its other portable
Mega Man games to the iPod Play.
iPod Play:
iKatamari
Though this game plays almost identically to the Katana's
Katamari Damacy, it's essentially a brand new game, with all new levels and objects and new dialogue as well. It's an extremely fun and addictive and also portable way to play this cult series, and ends up selling more copies than the original
Katamari Damacy.
Multiplatform:
Burned
A third-person shooter about a CIA agent who gets a burn notice and has to find out who burned him (shares a lot of plot elements with the OTL TV show Burn Notice, though it has a lot less charm and practically none of the humor). He ends up stranded in the city of Los Angeles and has to go strongarm some of his old contacts into helping him while being hunted down by both the government and a hired assassin. This game got a significant amount of hype beforehand, with comparisons to games like
Blackheart and even
Metal Gear Solid, but the gameplay was somewhat disappointing, and the promise of being able to explore pretty much all of Los Angeles didn't really pan out. It still gets decent reviews, and thanks to the hype, it ends up being one of the better selling games of January 2005, especially due to its release on all three major consoles.
Kryptikus
A very violent horror/hack-and-slash game where the protagonist is a bloodthirsty monster (a literal bloodthirsty monster who somewhat resembles Swamp Thing), this game tries to make the player himself scared of his own actions, by giving the player multiple camera angles whenever they score a particularly gruesome kill and also giving the protagonist an internal monologue that implies that they were once human and are now trapped in a monstrous body. It's a very strange concept for a game, but it works:
Kryptikus is one of the better reviewed horror games of the year. It comes out for the Xbox initially before a port to the Katana, but strangely enough it never sees a Wave port. Sales on the Xbox are quite strong.
Magnetika: Opposites Attract
An anime-styled platforming adventure game starring a female protagonist who uses magnetism as a weapon and a tool,
Magnetika (which is also the name of the protagonist) is known more as a cult title than a really popular game. It's released on the Katana and iPod Play simultaneously, and does fairly poorly on both, though it's a neat thing to see on the iPod Play from a graphical perspective, and the game's cult classic status on that console would eventually see Magnetika herself return... as a playable character in
Deva Station 2.
Star Wars: Sith Apprentice
An action video game that sees the player create their own character to become an apprentice to the powerful Sith Lord Darth Ghant,
Sith Apprentice is considered one of the better
Star Wars games of the decade, featuring a rich storyline and combat system. The protagonist is a castoff slave from a desolate planet with incredible talent in the Force, and Darth Ghant discovers them after defeating a large contingent of Jedi in a great battle. The protagonist is trained very harshly by Ghant, and the player must eventually decide whether to continue to serve as Ghant's apprentice or to betray him and take on an apprentice of their own. The game features plenty of opportunities for combat with Jedi and others, and the player can actually turn one of the Jedi met during the game to serve as a potential apprentice later on.
Sith Apprentice is released initially for the Xbox, but comes to the Katana and the iPod Play in 2006, while Nintendo owners would have to wait for
Sith Apprentice 2 to come to the Wave's successor down the road. Sales for
Sith Apprentice are considered quite good, finishing just behind
Alien: Parallax in terms of first month sales (though later on the game's sales would surpass
Parallax).
The Juggler
The Juggler is a platformer for the Wave and Katana about a benevolent clown who is constantly juggling with various powered balls that he can throw at his enemies. While it's fairly standard platformer fare, it does feature some unique play mechanics that make it stand out, with the player able to alter the trajectory and composition of projectiles in mid-air, and transform certain projectiles into objects, giving them a pretty comprehensive repertoire of moves. Sales are solid, though most of the game's sales don't really come until the game gets a price drop later in its life and is marketed as a budget family title rather than a game on the same level as
Sonic or
Mario.
Priest Of Ammut-Ra
An Egyptian-themed adventure game about a former priest who defies his pharaoh and the gods,
Priest Of Ammut-Ra is in a lot of ways similar to OTL's
Prince of Persia: The Sands Of Time (and is better than TTL's Prince of Persia reboot, which isn't considered to be as good as OTL's). Soon after betraying his pharaoh, the priest begins to obtain strange powers, which he uses to evade his pursuers and discover new buried temples. He eventually encounters and revives a young female pharaoh named Sepherine who was overthrown and killed by her own corrupt priests at the behest of a malevolent god called Malforakh. Malforakh connived his way into the Egyptian holy pantheon and has twisted the minds of Osiris and Ra, bringing great pestilence and death unto the land. Only a single defiant god, Anubis, remains, granting the priest his powers over life and death, though at a cost that the priest discovers later in the game. The priest eventually makes his way back to his former city, where he confronts the corrupt pharaoh and Malforakh in an epic battle. Using his powers, the priest defeats Malforakh and liberates the pharaoh from his influence, also freeing the minds of the gods as well. However, Anubis comes to collect on the priest's debt. Just when it seems that the priest will be killed, Sepherine offers to give her own life in the priest's place, returning to the land of the dead from where she came (but with the curse lifted, enabling her to rest in eternal peace). Despite some low initial expectations, the game performs quite well, both in reviews (which average around a 9/10) and in sales, which are fairly strong on all three consoles.
Stranger
The sequel to 2003's FPS title
Downfall, which was a minor hit on the Xbox upon its release, this game features an entirely different setting and protagonist, but similar gameplay, which in and of itself is fairly standard for an FPS. The protagonist of
Stranger is a man on a hunt for an international assassin who kills without leaving a single trace and can take the form of nearly anyone. The game features a heavily-mystery based storyline, in which any of the numerous NPCs introduced in the game could be this assassin, and the protagonist can't trust anybody. The suspense-filled storyline gets high marks from reviewers who would otherwise have dismissed the game based on its rather generic gameplay, and it, like its predecessor, sees good Xbox sales, though it's a bit of a disappointment on the Wave.
Wheels
Wheels is a sort of
Power Rangers inspired action game about four heroes who pilot wheel-shaped mechs that can unite with a giant car frame to turn into a huge combat vehicle. The game combines elements of racing games and action titles with old-school vehicular combat, and despite a very cheesy plot, is somewhat of a hit, especially on the Wave, where it becomes one of February's top selling games.
Burnout Revenge
Burnout Revenge continues the popular
Burnout franchise of racing titles, and plays quite similarly to OTL's
Burnout Revenge, with increased opportunities to wreck other cars and get involved in spectacular crashes of one's own. This game also features a storyline in the main campaign mode, told via motion comics and a bit of voice acting, it's mostly a light hearted story with over the top characters but is received fairly well amongst fans of the series, the comic theme was Acclaim's attempt to possibly expand its
Burnout franchise into the Valiant Comics line. Due to the fact that the game didn't have to be adapted to a next generation console like OTL's game was with the Xbox 360, development time was somewhat shorter and the game was released a few months earlier than IOTL. Like other games in the franchise,
Burnout Revenge is a strong seller, and continues the series' outstanding commercial performance.
Dino Crisis
Dino Crisis is a reboot of Capcom's survival horror series, featuring protagonist Regina caught up in another deadly dinosaur situation. This time, she finds herself trapped in a university science lab which has become overrun with dinosaurs created via an illicit experiment, and must find a way to prevent the dinosaurs from escaping into a nearby city. Though highly anticipated upon its initial announcement, the game encountered numerous production problems and delays, and Capcom began to take focus away from the game to focus on other projects. The result was a game filled with bugs, considered far too short, and featuring a significantly more annoying Regina than the original series. Reviews for the game are terrible, and sales suffered significantly as a result. The game is released for the Wave and Katana, with a planned Xbox release canceled after it became apparent that the game would be a failure. It's considered one of the biggest gaming disappointments of 2005.
Naruto: Make The Grade!
Naruto: Make The Grade! is an adventure/beat em up title for the Katana and Wave, where the player controls Naruto as he participates in the difficult Chunin Exams (which are significantly expanded for the purposes of the game). It's the first
Naruto game to reach North America, and is actually quite fun, featuring competent combat and the voices from the English anime dub. Sales are decent thanks to promotion on Toonami, and many more
Naruto games would be localized for Western players in the future.
Propellerheads: Racing Aces
Propellerheads: Racing Aces is the sequel to the Ultra Nintendo exclusive
Propellerheads, which featured wacky, item-rich racing between WWI-era prop planes. The sequel sees vastly improved graphics, stronger gameplay, more stages, and is pretty much better in every way than the original game, which itself was decently received. It features some of the best flying controls of any flying game, while boasting cartoony graphics and some hilarious animation. Reviews are outstanding, making the title one of the best racing games of the year. It's released on the Katana, Wave, and later on the iPod Play, and while it would see its strongest sales on the Wave, it would also do quite well on the iPod Play, becoming one of the most popular racing titles on the handheld.
Starbase Silicon Valley
The sequel to the cult classic Saturn exclusive
Space Station Silicon Valley, Starbase Silicon Valley expands the gameplay to a strange futuristic world, and features a human protagonist rather than the microchip protagonist of the previous game. The protagonist, a scientist named Lena, can freeze people and objects with her ray gun and move them around to solve puzzles. As Lena explores the world, her gun unlocks other functions. The game features the same wacky humor and characters of the previous title, and it's implied that Lena is the girlfriend of Dan Danger from the original game, because he makes an appearance in the game starting about halfway through. Like the original, this game is regarded as a mostly quirky and strange platform title, but like the original it has its charm and reviews are largely positive. It's not a huge seller, but it does all right on both the Katana and the Wave, and is somewhat popular in Europe.
Tekken 5
Released on the Wave, Katana, and Xbox (like
Tekken 4),
Tekken 5 is the continuation of the series that has carved its name as one of the top fighters on the market. It introduces 5 new characters, but doesn't introduce the fighter creation option that appeared in OTL's title. Instead, it emphasizes complex movesets and combos, and tries to make the game more attractive to skilled tournament fighters. Its reception from critics, while a bit better than that of
Tekken 4, isn't quite as good as the reception to OTL's game, as TTL's
Tekken 5 doesn't introduce the more fast-paced combat system of OTL's
Tekken 5. Still, the game is quite popular with fans, and sells slightly more than the previous game, becoming one of the top selling new Wave games of the month and performing well on the other two consoles also. Namco would note the slightly tepid critical response to the game and would devote itself to making the next-gen
Tekken 6 the best game it could possibly be.
-
Top Selling New Console Games In North America (in terms of sales over the first four weeks of release):
January 2005:
1. Alien: Parallax (Microsoft Xbox)
2. Star Wars: Sith Apprentice (Microsoft Xbox)
3. Burned (Nintendo Wave)
4. The Bouncer 2 (Nintendo Wave)
5. Star Wars: Sith Apprentice (iPod Play)
February 2005:
1. Relentless: No Way Out (Microsoft Xbox)
2. Extremis: Ruin Stalker (Apple Katana)
3. Battle Engine Aquila 2 (Apple Katana)
4. Wheels (Nintendo Wave)
5. Evil Dead (Microsoft Xbox)
March 2005:
1. Tom Clancy's Rendition: Masterminds (Microsoft Xbox)
2. Final Fantasy Online (Nintendo Wave)
3. Burnout Revenge (Nintendo Wave)
4. Goblins 3 (Nintendo Wave)
5. Tekken 5 (Nintendo Wave)
)