Right on the heels of Dead Space Extraction, the sequel to survival horror limb-slicing fest Dead Space is slated to begin development soon.  Fans of the first game can rejoice, since an EA job listing confirms that this is the real Dead Space 2, rather than a spinoff or a different project.  The same “core team” that worked on the first game will be developing this one as well.

Welcome to a new series of posts I’ll be writing called Controller Breakers.  These posts will be where I describe those special, indescribably hard moments in games.  Boss fight, a particular level, a mini game – sometimes there are moments in a game where you find yourself foaming at the mouth and gnashing your teeth as you feel the controller creaking between your hands in rage.  Fair warning, there are spoilers abound in this first post, and I’ll be giving fair warnings whenever there are spoilers, since some of these will inevitably deal with boss battles.  With that said, let’s take a look at the perfect first post for Controller Breakers, Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume.

If you happened to be an RPG fan in the era of the original PlayStation, chances are you played the first Valkyrie Profile.  Since it arrived in North America in the year 2000 it’s often been considered one of the staple RPGs of the PlayStation, and for good reason.  It’s imaginative, creative, and has a lot of great gameplay elements.  Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume, while not starring the same character, takes place in the same universe.

Now to be fair, Covenant of the Plume is all around punishingly hard game.  It’s still good, but the game’s deck is stacked against you.  You’re restricted to four characters on the battlefield, whereas there doesn’t seem to be a limit for enemies.  You’ll often immediately be in positions where enemies are ready to flank you within one turn or where you’re already surrounded.  You also need at least two characters to have a chance of killing an enemy without your target surviving and subsequently retaliating.

The final boss fight on the Best Ending path takes the cake.  You’re fighting against Garm, a giant demon pet of Hel, mistress of the underworld.  Garm also has the assistance of five living blue flames.  The first phase of the battle involves getting to Garm to trigger a cutscene.  To do this you can either make one of your characters invisible and quietly ignore the flames, or defeat them yourself.  Let’s take my fight with Garm as an example.  I was using Wylfred (main hero, powerful all around), Earnest (tank lancer), Lockswell, and Fauxnel (both mages).  I didn’t have the invisibility move – and many people likely won’t be able to get it – so let’s discuss the first fight with the flames.

It’s literally impossible to not have people die in your fight with the flames.  They all deal extremely heavy level magic damage and can attack together, often killing a target in a single turn.  The best way to counteract this is to continually use Reflect Sorcery (which reflects spells for one round) and continually use union plumes (resurrecting item) to resurrect allies as they die over and over again.  What most people wind up doing is making their way to a flame as their party members get picked off one by one, then using two or three union plumes to resurrect everyone, since they resurrect next to the user rather than where they died.  Then your team can surround it and hopefully kill it, since they have a fair amount of health.  Rinse and repeat for the other flames.

Believe it or not, this is where it gets hard.  When you finally attack Garm, who is at the opposite end of the arena where you start (she can’t move), you’ll get a bonus ally, Ancel, who I swapped in for Fauxnel.  How is Garm so hard even though she can’t move?  Simple – her attacks are area of effect and can easily kill two people at a time even when you’re wearing the best gear in the game.  She also uses status effects that stun, and thus can drain your skill points quickly, which are needed for both spells and item use.

The only way I’ve been able to beat Garm is by using a blatantly cheap trick.  I have Lockswell stay behind, just out of Garm’s range.  Then I send Wylfred, Ancel, and Earnest charging in to hack away at Garm’s obscene health.  Garm will quickly dispatch the three heroes, and then I have Lockswell resurrect them beyond Garm’s attack range, rinse, and repeat.  You also have to be careful not to lower her HP too much without killing her, because if she dips below 30% of her maximum HP Garm fully heals herself.

So finally, I used Vali’s Awakening, a move that doubles Wylfred’s stats and thus boosts his damage immensely, and let loose with everything I have, taking Garm down after many attempts.

There you have it: The controller breaking (or in this case, system breaking) final boss fight for Covenant of the Plume.  As a disclaimer for those who have played the game, I’m fully aware that you can play through the bad ending to get moves that can then be carried over on save files, but this was my first playthrough at the time and I wanted to do the best ending, which I always go for.

Any particular moments in a game that can break a controller for you?  Challenges are always fun.

Mass Effect fans got a treat from this year’s Tokyo Game Show.  A new squad player was confirmed in a fairly hardcore video.  Meet Subject Zero: Shaved head, body full of tattoos, a great liking for guns and biotics, and just a bit sociopathic.

So just to recap, the three new party members are as follows.  Thane is a cool headed and ruthless drell assassin reportedly the deadliest in the galaxy.  Grunt is an irrationally violent krogan who will go wherever there’s stuff to kill.  Now we have Subject Zero.  I think we’re in for a wild ride.

An article on IGN caught my eye a while back – it was a Top 100 Comic Book Villains.  That in itself is nothing unusual, but the descriptions of each villain were around three paragraphs long and looked at the character of the villain itself – complexity, uniqueness, depth, and so forth – rather than analyzing them based on how many people they’ve killed.

I’ve subsequently developed the belief that we need to start analyzing video game villains by this standard.  It would be naive to say that writing should take precedence over all other aspects of game development, but it should be a more integral part.  So I’m going to wind up making a few articles in the near future seeing what video game villains really go above and beyond in terms of character development and uniqueness.  A lot of top villain lists just list who’s the most famous, like Bowser.  Bowser’s great and without him Mario would probably be a more conventional plumber, but is he really that complex?

How about you, GL readers – any villains that stand out as being particularly memorable in your mind?

If you’re like most people who play games regularly, you’ve probably come up with an idea for a game in your head; sequel, remake, original idea, what have you.  You’ve then probably thought “What if [insert publisher here] make this?  It would be perfect!” The Internet has made it easy for people to share their ideas for games that should see the light of day.  Gametrailers recently did a top ten list of sequels they’d like to see, and Petition Online is swimming in petitions for unseen sequels and spinoffs to their favorite games.  So here’s another one!

One of my favorite modern (as far as the fifth and sixth generation of consoles) RPG franchises is Paper Mario.  Both the original on the Nintendo 64 and Thousand Year Door are surprisingly well written, loaded with content, and have that rare ability to provide a decent challenge to older games while having a short learning curve for newbies.  Nintendo has seen substantial success by introducing titles like Super Mario Bros. and Mario Party to the DS, but Nintendo’s focus for Paper Mario seems wholeheartedly on the Wii.

There’s nothing wrong with Super Paper Mario – and to be fair, another handheld Mario RPG was just released on the DS – but that’s what’s so enjoyable about the Paper Mario games.  They feel like they have their own identities, even if the Paper Mario games were billed as spiritual successors to Super Mario RPG.  Moreover, turn-based games seem to be finding a cozy home with the DS as real time games take control of standard consoles.  Just look at the proliferation of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest on it, with Dragon Quest IX being a DS exclusive.

The hardware could certainly handle it, and Sonic Chronicles demonstrated what can be done with timed attacks in turn-based DS RPGs using the stulus.  Paper Mario has always rewarded players for getting timing right, and a battle controlled entirely with the stylus could be intuitive if done right.  What’s most appealing is that Paper Mario has always been a series that you can play if you have half an hour to kill.  Whether you go badge hunting or complete another story segment, Paper Mario has never been one of those games that you have to play all at once with your door shut to get the cinematic experience, as it will.

Character name: Red Mage Gaming (RMG)
Character class: Video game blog

Specialization 1: Snarky commentary
Specialization 2: Top ten lists

Profile background: You were started by a devilishly handsome part-time video game journalist who’s obsessed with Portal and probably talks too much, which inevitably transferred over into an online blog.  He was a senior in college at the time and needed to find a more gaming-specific venue.

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Well, if you’re reading this, that evidently succeeded in getting your attention.  You’re looking at Red Mage Gaming or RMG, a new video game blog started by me, author of Capitol Gaming, my prior blog that I worked on in my spare time.  My writing’s improved drastically since then, which I hope will be on display here, since I’ve really taken a shine to this site.  Check back for updates since I’ll be doing a little bit of everything, and see my FAQ page if you’re curious about additional info.