May 11, 2006 2:11 pm - MULTI, news

May D3 Monthly: EDF Tactics, Tamsoft does Infantry, D3 USA debuts for real

I've had the urge to report on D3 Publisher's goings-on lately, but since news from them mostly trickles out at a pretty slow pace, I figured I'd start putting together monthly updates on their games. So, to begin:

New
• Simple 2000 Series Vol. 99: The Caveman, released on April 27, is kind of a cross between Pikmin and Artdink's Tail of the Sun. You lead your little tribe of monkeys around a series of environments, coordinating to achieve goals and overcome enemies, and evolving them bit by bit into humans. There are multiple endings, and it's said to be around 15 hours long. It received a score of 28/40 in Famitsu, giving it the highest score for a Simple 2000 game yet (short of Earth Defense Force 2's 29). The animation is surprisingly smooth, and it looks quite fun. Look for impressions or a review here - or linked from here - sometime soon. This might be developer Vingt-Et-Un's best work yet.

• Vol. 100: The Otokotachi no Kijuu Houza, or roughly, The Guys' Gun Turret, looks like a Star Wars-ish rail shooter with some strangely clean visuals in outer space...and planetside visuals that look (literally) like a PSone game. It features well-known voice actors from anime like Gundam and Yamato/Starblazers, and so I'm sure this means there will be plenty of dramatic chatter during levels. It's supposed to have situations similar to "those" anime, and the character designs look inspired by Gundam Seed. I'm not finding myself too interested...but oldschool anime fans should dig it, and it's an interesting way of trying to reach into "licensed" territory with a Simple 2000 game. Opus are developing, and they haven't done anything interesting in years - not since their PSone music games, anyway.

• Vol. 101: The Oneechanpon is another Oneechamploo-style upgrade, this time using Oneechanbara 2 as a base. The additions include the usual Riho Futaba and her sister Makoto, plus a couple of characters from Tamsoft's beat-em-up The Senko/Nadeshiko. Oh, and there are now, uh, maid costumes. Ahem.

• Vol. 102: The Hohei, or The Infantryman, seems like an EDF-style approach to more conventional military-style action. There are 40 different kinds of weapons, divided between small arms, machine guns, rocket launchers, bladed weapons, and more, and missions set in jungles, forests, urban areas, hills, meadows, and others, and there's an experience system by which the player can improve his accuracy, health, and so on. Tamsoft is developing, so it might go either way...but I'm hoping they learned a few lessons from the EDF games.

• Finally The Earth Defense Force Tactics is on its way this July. That's right: they're making a strategy game out of the series, and turnkey/no-name developer thinkArts are handling development. It'll have 50 stages, 250 weapons, units consisting of ground troops, Pale Wing air units, and many original units, plus a little something extra after every stage has been cleared. ThinkArts have worked on some scattered projects for Koei and Squenix that I know next-to-nothing about, like that Harukanaru no Toki de RPG-for-girls series and that Yankee motorcycle-gang thing. They did help out on one traditional-looking war strategy game set in modern times, so maybe that experience means they'll be able to do the series justice. Maybe.

USA
• D3 Publisher of America have been busy lately, expanding their portfolio to include some more interesting material than the licensed dreck they've published up to now. They're bringing SCEI's ironic PSP mini-crappy-game-fest Beit Hell 2000 here as WTF. Yes, that's right. It stands for Work Time Fun in this case, but I have to say, this is one of the best game (re-)titles ever, and its intentional drudgery looks brilliant. They're also bringing Warashi's Arkanoid-alike Block Kuzushi, part of D3's Simple DS series, here as Break 'Em All. I look forward to both.

Old
• Since videos tend to disappear from Japanese sites at an alarming rate, and since I've found a lot of hidden, unlinked-to promotional videos on D3's site, I've started uploading the ones I've found to YouTube. I've got most of what I have at the moment up there already, but I do have a few left to post.

• I picked up The All*Star Kakutou Matsuri when Play-Asia had it for cheap. It's a semi-cel-shaded 2D fighter with 3D backdrops featuring characters from a bunch of different D3 games. It's...unsurprisingly average. The characters are very pleasing to the eye, and better in it than in most of their own respective games, but every character feels like they don't have enough reach, it's hard to cover the distance between me and my opponent as quickly as I'd like. Nearly all attacks make a particular "thump" when they hit, and it gets annoying before too long. There are no win poses at all, the backgrounds are full of lots of sharp polygon edges, and the voices can be annoying. In general, the game just feels way too stiff, and the fact that it makes you beat all 13 or so characters every time you go through it is annoying (when was the last time that was done in a fighter?). A few of the characters are genuinely likable, though, and much to my dismay, I still feel compelled to go after the second costumes (there's one for each character) for at least a few of them. And, inexplicably, several of the background songs have live instruments mixed in with the MIDI-sounding junk, and the ending theme is almost completely live. These recordings sound slightly imperfect, as far as playing technique and recording quality, so it lends the game a sort of endearing, human quality.

• After several return trips, I can't recommend The Oneechanbara 2 to anybody looking to play it anything other than its survival mode. The contrast between its excellent combo mechanics and its terrible levels is gigantic, and it shows clearly that all D3 games live or die by their level design.

• I'm currently playing a D3 double-pack that includes The Helicopter and The Shooting ~Double Shienryu~. I'll have reviews of both up eventually, but I'll spoil it a bit right now: The Helicopter is surprisingly fun, and similar to Rescue Copter in terms of goals and structure, but with a little RC helicopter instead.