Heidi Kemps
Articles by Heidi Kemps
Project X Zone review: Xs and Os
Project X Zone is a massive strategy RPG crossover featuring characters from Capcom, Namco-Bandai, and Sega games fighting it out with each other. It's essentially a sequel to 2004's Namco x Capcom, a heavily Super Robot Wars-inspired collaboration that never received a Western release. In the same vein, Project X Zone caters very, very strongly to fans of Japanese games, and its cast of characters is undeniably its biggest selling point. Coupled with an entertaining combat engine, these characters and their interactions prop up what is otherwise a very basic strategy game.%Gallery-176869%
Pandora's Tower review: Chained blades
It's hard to say for certain what a platform's last game will be, but it's pretty easy to guess what a platform's last noteworthy release will be. I'm sure the endless parade of impulse-buy, waggletastic Wii shovelware will continue to trickle out for a while yet, but the last significant Wii release for North America looks to be Pandora's Tower. As the last of the three Operation Rainfall games brought over from Europe (via Japan), it was bound to garner plenty of attention, regardless of its quality. The good news is that Pandora's Tower deserves it.%Gallery-187276%
Everything old is new and weird again in the Deadly Premonition: Director's Cut
Deadly Premonition's release history has been strange: In the United States and Europe, the game launched as an exclusive to the Xbox 360, while Japan received the game as a limited PlayStation 3-only release (albeit under the name "Red Seeds Profile"). Two years after its initial launch, Deadly Premonition's cult status has earned it a 'Director's Cut' release, exclusively planned for release in multiple regions worldwide on the PS3.Aside from bringing the game to Sony loyalists outside of Japan, the Director's Cut also introduces more than a few overhauls to the original, along with stereoscopic 3D and PlayStation Move support, making this visit to Deadly Premonition's 'Greenvale' worthwhile to tourists and citizens alike.%Gallery-178696%
Rainbow Moon review: A real grind
Playing the PSN exclusive Rainbow Moon evokes an unusual sort of frustration: it's a victim of wasted potential. This kind of game does a lot of things right, features some neat ideas and fun play elements, but is crippled by one or two major problems – problems so significant that they drag the rest of the product down. All it would take are a couple of fixes to make a great game instead of a merely passable one but, alas, you're stuck with a product that, for everything it does right, is damaged by very obvious flaws.In Rainbow Moon's case, the novel idea is to blend two distinct types of role-playing game into a unique experience. Exploration is done in the overhead, isometric perspective of classic dungeon-crawlers, and both the overworld and the puzzle-filled labyrinths you'll wind up spelunking are littered with copious amounts of loot and roaming beasties out for your blood. Touch one of the monsters on the map, however, and you'll be spirited off to a new playfield: a miniature version of the grid-based arenas so common in strategy-RPGs like Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics.%Gallery-158468%
Deja Review: Disgaea 3: Absence of Detention
We're of the firm opinion that your time is too precious, too valuable to be spent reading a full review for a game that was already reviewed many, many years ago. What's the point of applying a score to a game that's old enough to be enrolled in the sixth grade? That's why we invented Deja Review: A quick look at the new features and relative agelessness of remade, revived and re-released games. Disgaea is a series that just seems to work better in portable form. The series' approach to character building – in which you can basically raise levels to stratospheric proportions with time, effort, and the best power-leveling locales – is more suited to on-the-go play. It's a lot easier to make your way through the randomly generated Item Worlds to level up your gear in thirty-minute commute blocks, putting your system to sleep as needed, than it is to devote hours to a single grind session squatting in front of a TV.It's for this reason that I tend to invest far more time in the portable versions of Disgaea than their console counterparts. I'll generally put down the console editions once I've cleared the main story, but I'll invest an absurd amount of time in the portable editions to scout out many of their extras, simply because the format makes them more easily digestible. The number of hours played on my Disgaea 2 PSP save have long since passed the triple digits.Now, we've got Disgaea 3: Absence of Detention on the Vita. I've always felt that D3 was the weakest of the series in terms of both gameplay and its story and characters. That doesn't mean it's bad, just not as good as some of the other installments. I had hoped that playing it in my preferred format would change my mind, but, unfortunately, it didn't. It's still my least favorite Disgaea game. However, it's still a very good portable strategy game with several noteworthy new additions.
Xenoblade Chronicles review: A cut above
I'll confess, I wasn't terribly excited for Xenoblade Chronicles at first. My experience with other "Xeno" titles (Xenogears, Xenosaga) could perhaps best be described as contemptuous. To me, those titles paraded the worst elements of Japanese role-playing games in front of a spotlight, gleefully showcasing the genre's biggest flaws to the world for excruciatingly painful stretches. Going into the nitty-gritty of why I find those games awful is another article entirely, but suffice it to say that another Xeno-game wasn't exactly high on my want-to-play list -- until I started hearing nothing but praise for Xenoblade from like-minded JRPG genre fans. Imagine my surprise at popping the disc into my Wii to discover a game nothing like Xenos past -- a game that, instead of stubbornly shoving the worst parts of JRPGs in your face, makes substantial advancements to the genre.%Gallery-152491%
Portabliss: Chaos Rings 2 (iOS)
Did you know that you can download handheld games now? That's amazingly convenient! The only inconvenient part of it is finding the right games to buy -- and that's where we come in, with our Portabliss column. In each installment, we'll tell you about a downloadable game on the iPhone, iPad, Android device, DSi, 3DS, PSP, etc. Today: Chaos Rings 2. During GDC this year, Cave Vice-President Mikio Watanabe implored smartphone and tablet game developers to price their products appropriately: a high-quality game should come with a higher pricetag. Square Enix's Chaos Rings 2 certainly follows Watanabe's advice.At $18 on iPhone and $20 on iPad, it's among the higher-priced big-name iOS releases. But that old adage of "getting what you pay for" applies, too, as Chaos Rings II is a superb RPG that easily justifies its premium pricetag.%Gallery-151691%
Cave's Watanabe on the benefits of premium app pricing
Conventional wisdom says that expensive iOS and Android games don't sell, but in a speech at GDC, Mikio Watanabe, COO of shmup developer Cave, frankly stated the exact opposite. In a presentation entitled "Japanese Retro and Social Games on Smartphones," Watanabe gave advice to developers looking to port their companies' legacy IPs to the rapidly blossoming smartphone and tablet markets.His advice? For starters, keep the games running at a good clip instead of focusing too much on graphical clarity. "When games are running quickly, the human eye misses tiny imperfections in the visuals," he noted, encouraging developers to try to shoot for an average of 50 FPS or better. To increase the profitability, he encouraged developers to include unique and interesting DLC to spur in-app purchases.
Yasuhiro Wada waxes nostalgic about Harvest Moon
Yasuhiro Wada has been engaged in the games industry for over 20 years, but lately he's been more into management than actual game production. With the formation of Toybox Inc, however, he joins the ranks of Japanese developers like Yuji Naka and Keiji Inafune – developers who left top management positions at major companies to pursue more active creative roles at smaller startups. While his name might not be the biggest in the biz, he's responsible for one of the most quietly influential games in the industry: Bokujou Monogatari, known outside of Japan as Harvest Moon.Wada grew up in the countryside, where he dreamed of eventually making his way to the big city. When he finally did get to Tokyo, however, he learned that there are some elements to good ol' country living that deserve appreciation. It was this experience that served as the inspiration for a game idea: A non-combative game that conveyed the simple pleasures of country life. It wasn't an easy pitch, and Wada had to build rapport at his company first with a portfolio of small successes. It took about 2 years to build both the record and the budget necessary to propose Harvest Moon to his higher-ups, but his patience paid off in both development and marketing experience.[Image: GameFAQS]
Ecco the Dolphin: unexpected terror in the deep blue sea
It's Halloween, the day we all turn our attention to all things spoooooooky. In honor of this occasion, Heidi Kemps makes a convincing case for the secret scariness of the seemingly non-horror-oriented Ecco the Dolphin. Later, the Joystiq staff will share their own picks for unintentionally frightening games. We'll just leave you in suspense for now (boo!) Dolphins! Every adolescent girl on the planet loves dolphins, but being a fan of marine life in general, I really liked dolphins. I was certainly among the many, many girls with Lisa Frank school supplies emblazoned with imagery of brightly airbrushed, neon-colored dolphins, but I was far more into porpoises than even that, with plenty of other themed baubles in my possession. So, of course, when Ecco the Dolphin came out for the Genesis, I was excited to check the game out, especially with the rave reviews it had received in magazines at the time. Little did I suspect the horrors Sega and Novotrade had in store for me.