a bonfire library

There is a trend both in creative and in critical circles of using cinematic language to describe what we see. Of course, videogames are a very different medium from film and oftentimes these differences result in a shallow or surface level imitation of the language of film. This extends to our understanding of film techniques as they apply to games as well.

One of the most important attributes of film is that it’s often used to visually represent what’s showing on-screen as literal. That is to say, what you see on-screen is meant to be taken at face value. Locations and sets are all physically representative and anything that is not or that breaks that illusion is removed from the frame. Cinema does employ a variety of illusory techniques but with careful framing, lighting and composition these techniques are obscured and brought into a sense of tangibility. (At least within the mainstream understanding of the medium, which is what is most emulated in games). In many ways, videogames ache to replicate this sense of believability. They use the language of cinema both to direct non-playable scenes and to frame playable ones. They aim to mimic the same sense of “realism”.

Videogames, however, require different kinds of abstraction. In order to accommodate the needs and inputs of the player, game designers choose what and what not to simulate. Videogames largely struggle to reconcile this need for abstraction with their desire for literal representation. This is where the language of cinema becomes limiting. Cinematic language largely works because of the amount of control that is allowed within the medium. It’s no wonder then that the games that most successfully imitate this language are the ones that are the most ludically restricted. (Think of the Uncharted series’ use of limited spaces and particular camera angles, or the aesthetics of basically any game directed by David Cage).

But this method, while impressive, requires a very limited space for both player and creator expression. The struggle between abstraction and representation often highlights games’ artificiality. It creates a split where we are supposed to be observing an event as it happens literally before us, but the events are obscured by systems of abstraction that mean characters pick up items without physically reaching for them, or have their success defined by numbers of a dice roll that are made explicit and visible within the world at the same time. Regardless, in order to achieve a greater understanding and ability for expression, it is necessary to look outside of the limited possibilities within the imitation of film.

It is here that looking towards theater can be helpful. Theater largely exists within the imagination of the audience, and their interaction with performers. Theater does have its own set of visual aids and artistic backdrops, but most of these exist to suggest rather than represent a scene. Sets are generally limited, costumes sparse, and visual effects limited to stage lighting and perhaps tricks like trap doors or wires in higher-budget productions. Theatre trusts the audience to fill in the blanks. This is how a few pieces of painted wood become an apartment. Nobody walks into a stageplay and expects  a cross-section of the house to literally represent the place that the characters live in. The stage frames the interaction and the expectations of the audience. In many other ways theater also presents a better fit for videogames than film. Here, the actors are dynamic. Their performances are influenced by the reactions of the audience, and the audience is affected by the performance of the actors. While the audience generally cannot affect the outcome of the play, their presence and reactions are both a necessary part of the play. Theatre requires both audience and performer.

This abstracted, non-literal, non-“realistic” approach to building worlds and telling stories is something that games can learn a lot from. And there definitely are games that speak to this relationship.

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The best example is the classical Japanese role-playing game. Because of long-standing traditions, even modern day games in the genre often present abstracted senses of space, combat and character interaction. Actors within towns do not represent real, fully-fleshed out people. They exist to populate a space and communicate mood. Worlds are linked by large abstracted maps which oversize characters travel across. Random encounters present a simplified idea of the various dangers present within the landscapes. Battles often take place in detached, turn-based spaces that only nominally represent the area that you fight in.

JRPGs have no pretensions towards realistic or literal representation. Instead, they wholeheartedly embrace the abstractions inherent within videogames and leave it to the audience to fill in the blanks. This approach does and can limit games immensely, and there’s a sense of stagnation within the genre that speaks to the difficulties of reconciling this with a modern approach to the medium. However, when the creator understands both the limits and strengths of this approach they can use it to tell a compelling narrative.

With this I would like to take a look at the opening of Final Fantasy 9. The game begins with a story  about an acting troupe/band of thieves. Here, every physical conflict is framed by the battle system. Battles take place on a separate stage from the one the characters previously inhabit. Due to the needs of scale and tech limitations these stages are meant to generally evoke the previous environment rather than represent it. Each of these conflicts generally plays out the same way from the perspective of player input, but each becomes thematically reframed by the context of the current plot point. Using expected player knowledge of RPGs, the first battle presents a threat by forcing you into the battle system, a framing device generally reserved for dangerous situations. The “enemy” ends up being your troupe leader in costume, the reveal recontextualizing the battle and the reality of the threat. It works to subvert those expectations, retroactively imbuing that battle with a sense of playfulness and humor.

At one point the metaphor of battle-as-stage becomes explicit, with the troupe stage itself becoming the battle area, complete with spell commands that perform stage magic. Here, your characters play parts as actors, while the player “acts” by performing the same ludic actions they did before. The new narrative context changes the meaning of these actions into something more playful.

Another, even more literal example of using theatre within games can be found in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. Thousand Year Door also uses theatre as a visual framing device, reinforcing the metatext of games as performance art.The stage is further reinforced by visible curtains, stage lighting, speakers and fog machines, and the backdrop which sometimes can be rattled loose and fall upon the characters. Your performance draws in or pushes away a visible crowd, and performing flourishes draws cheers that give you energy to perform more spectacular feats. It presents an analog for the relationship between performer and audience, where the reactions of the audience can affect the performer and influence the performance itself.

Thousand Year Door is aware that the separation between the actors and audience is largely mental, emphasized by the offset of the stage, the framing of that performance. The thin physical barrier leaves a performer continually aware of the audience. In some ways this can act as a metacommentary on the relationship between the player and the game, in which the player becomes both actor and audience, the game left in a more directorial position. The events of the story, as well as its overall direction and tone have already been predefined by the game itself. The player’s relationship as actor and audience, however, creates individual wrinkles for them not unlike the variations between repeated performances of a particular theatrical show.

Theatre also presents opportunities to explore different aesthetics than those typically used in games. Black Knight Sword, a sidescroller by Grasshopper Manufacture, does exactly this. It is framed by a stage, with backdrops lifted in and out of the frame. Interludes directly invoke kamishibai (paper play) with static paintings, minimal movement, and contextualization that imitates the form in a virtual setting. Characters are animated in a way that evokes both Asian shadow puppet theatre and Monty Python animations. Aesthetics inform expectations, and here, if nothing else, Black Knight Sword‘s aesthetic confidence makes it believable while frequently dipping into the absurd.

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How do we, however, express the elements of the theatrical outside a mode that directly references it? For that I’d like to present SEGA’s Outrun 2, an arcade racing game. While it initially may appear to bear no resemblance to either film or theatre, how it uses its limited resources provides an interesting analog to the use of sets and props in both film and theatre. There’s an interview on PC game site Rock, Paper, Shotgun with Sumo Digital, the team responsible for porting the game from the arcade. In it, members of the team describe the meticulous framework of the sets that make up the game, and how each prop is set up to be looked at from a specific angle in order to provide the illusion of an actual space. While the team specifically references film in regards to the specificity of the angles required to maintain the illusion, there’s a sense of surreality to these settings that grounds them in theatre. In Outrun 2, these props are not there to provide a literal representation of a setting, but to evoke them. These “cardboard fascias”, as they’re described, carry enough details and landmarks to provide the idea of a familiar setting without attempting to provide a representative or contiguous space. Locations range from west coast America to the Eiffel Tower to the Pyramids of Giza to the site of a space shuttle launch with only small transitional roads to imply the travel between them.

This provides a different approach than one of say, Half-Life 2, which uses some similar construction techniques to the opposite effect. Those who’ve ever accidentally (or intentionally) clipped through a wall will find that many of Half-Life 2’s environments are built only to be viewed from particular angles, and objects and spaces outside those angles are left strictly unrendered. Here, however, its technique skews closer to the cinematic philosophy, creating a series of connected tunnels that provide the illusion of a larger, continuous space. Locations connect to each other in seemingly logical ways, and each set represents a cut-out of an area cordoned off to show you only what it wants you to see. Outrun’s approach may actually be more restrictive here, but it’s concerned not with literally representing its spaces, but evoking the feelings of driving through them.

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SCRAMBLE!

Wolf Fang is an oddball successor. While you could be forgiven for thinking of it as a standalone game, it’s actually the sequel to Data East’s top down aerial shooter, Vapor Trial.Wolf Fang, however, adopts a scrolling side on perspective and mech based combat. The gimmick here is the ability to customize your mech. The customization is extensive for what was originally an arcade game, though lightweight when compared to heavy hitters such as Armored Core or Front Mission. Think something like the Edit Mode from Gradius III and you’ll have a good idea.

Before launching a mission you’ll be given the option to select one of four preset builds or create a new one from a selection of special weapons, close range implements, and lower torso styles. No matter your choice you’ll be subject to gravity and the scrolling of the screen so choosing between the multiple leg styles is more of a tweak than a significant change.

ENEMY ENGAGED

Before each stage you’ll be treated to a short and stylish briefing. Depending on whether you’re playing the regular mode or the original arcade version (selectable in the options) you’ll have some revised dialogue and voice acting, all in Japanese of course. Depending on the section of the game as well, you’ll be able to pick a branching path, with your percentage of survival shown in the upper corner of the map. It’s a stylistic touch that feels not unlike Capcom’s UN Squadron. I ended up switching to the less flashy original arcade version after a few plays however, due to the fact that the voiced dialogue was unskippable.

From there you’ll finally be piloting your mech. For fans of FROM Software’s Armored Core series you’ll find that Wolf Fang’s movement mechanics almost feel like a 2D translation of the faster titles in the series, though with less aerial options. Aside from jumping, you’re also equipped with a boost dash and the ability to ride up and down inclined sufaces in the background. The latter is especially satisfying, providing you with an extra degree of freedom and a few flashy set pieces. Dashing unfortunately feels a bit stilted. Dashing boosts you in the direction of your fire instead of the one you’re moving in. This leads to you dashing into enemy fire while backing up unless you bother to cease fire and face in the other direction first.

The controls also feel frustrating when played on a portable system. All the face buttons have been mapped to jump and shoot, leaving the essential special weapon button relegated to R2. It’s not a problem while playing on a Dualshock 3, but it means that the controls have to be remapped before the game is even playable on the portable systems.

With those headaches out of the way, there is some solid action to be found. While the standard weapons don’t feel quite powerful enough, a few of the special weapons such as the homing missiles and napalm were a cool visual treat. Wolf Fang also sports some other neat stylistic touches, such as the aforementioned rideable inclines, as well as small details such as soldiers who can be picked up and ride on your mech, firing at enemies. You’ll also be ejected out of your mech upon destruction and be given a chance to collect power ups to rebuild it, but you’ll usually have your life abruptly ended before then.

TARGET LOCKED

Wolf Fang’s largest problem is probably that it’s not quite polished enough. It’s a mass of interesting ideas and touches combined with mechanics that feel underutilized and underdeveloped. It lacks the aesthetic panache in both presentation and mechanics that defined the works of Capcom or Taito from that same era. It relies too much on an unfair difficulty that plagued too many arcade games in absence of a fair challenge. It’s a game that you were likely to find in the corner of a laundromat, spend your dryer money on to complete then promptly forget about when it was replaced a few months later. Wolf Fang is an interesting and occasionally stylish distraction, but far from a classic.

C+

Today, the genre has more or less become stagnant. Activision has more or less run the Pro Skaterfranchise into the ground, with it’s last entry a less than satisfactory revisiting of the early games. EA saw some success in the Skate series, which focused less on the punk stylings of Tony Hawk and more on replicating the experience of pulling off tricks using its unique analog control scheme. EnterOlliOlli . A skateboarding game in a time where Canabalt has distilled the essence of the platformer and leaderboards rule the culture, OlliOlli aims to similarly capture the essence of its genre heritage for the new generation. Does it pull of this Impossible move, or is it headed for a serious faceplant?

Skate or Die!

OlliOlli copies a trick or two from the big hitter’s playbooks. From Pro Skater it takes the focus on smoothly chaining tricky combos, and from Skate it borrows the analog control scheme for pulling off tricks. OlliOlli ditches 3D space, moving you constantly forward, allowing you to concentrate only on pulling off tricks. Performing movements on the left analog stick, everything from simple flicks to tricky half circles, performs tricks from the ground or grinds. Pushing directions from the air will execute grinds, while a push of the X button will land tricks. Finally, holding the shoulder buttons will allow you to modify grinds or add spins to your tricks.

In a dastardly twist, you can pull off a perfect grind or combo by waiting to the last moment to land it, giving you the most amount of points and small speed boost. This makes every moment in OlliOlli a calculation between risk and reward. How many tricks can you add during your airtime before you lose the window to land a trick and faceplant? Do you pull off a safe landing and bank your combo, or wait until the perfect moment and risk a sloppy landing, wasting your streak? Failure means faceplants and broken bones, with the penalty of starting the level over. Thankfully, an instant restart means you can get back to failure within seconds.

Waves of Concrete and Steel

Split between five areas, OlliOlli’s campaign contains a total of 50 different stages. Completing stages will unlock the next in the sequence, but in order to unlock the 25 Pro stages you’ll have to pull off a five star run, most likely completing each stage’s challenges along the way. Each stage challenges you to hit a target score for both single combos and your run, but the more devious challenges have you taking the difficult paths and pulling off absurd feats of platforming or require you to pull off certain tricks or restrict your moveset. It all draws you further into the risk/reward structure of the game, and will give completionists a good challenge to surmount.

The stage design is done well enough to feel grounded in reality, while being abstract enough to communicate the feeling of a skater’s perspective of a world of steel and concrete waves. Except for the final area’s Tokyo, anyway. Spikes, really? Is that a requirement for indie platformers? For the most part the stages provide some varied playgrounds to chain tricks together, with some of the later stages open to some big air and absurd chains of combos. While you’ll be seeing a lot of failed runs, a few of the latter levels focus too much on tricky platforming, edging into frustration territory. I probably spent more time on the last level of Area 4 than I did the first two areas combined. That said, completing earlier level’s challenges and unlocking the Pro levels kept me busy enough to distract me when a stage proved too much for the moment.

All of this is presented in a simple, clean art style. While nothing is immediately stand out about it, it boasts a sense of unified design and avoids trap of other 2D games whose style is no more thought out than “pixel art”, while missing the charm that makes it appealing. The trick animations and visual feedback upon pulling off tricks is particularly worth highlighting, and the menus are slick and smart. The audio settings are charming in particular, imitating the sliders of a mixing board.

On the topic of audio, the soundtrack was probably one of the surprising highlights for me. Consisting of a variety of drum n’ bass tracks from artists with a variety of influences, it complemented the urban vibe of the game well. Ranging from more atmospheric, funky tracks, to more upbeat ones the soundtrack definitely had me bobbing my head to it as I continued to break my face across the concrete. If I had one criticism, it would be that the soundtrack simply plays throughout the game as you start it up, making it feel more like a background playlist than a group of songs picked to complement any particular area. After a few hours I found myself hearing the tracks a few times per session and growing a bit fatigued of them. Thankfully, even with the music off OlliOlli boasts terrific sound design. Everything from the rolling of your wheels on the concrete to the grinding of the board across steel sounds stellar, and the feedback upon landing a perfect trick felt like its own reward. For a while I played it without any soundtrack and the effects up to full just to take it in without distraction.

To round off the package, OlliOlli also boasts Spots, additional trick playgrounds for each area designed expressly for combo chaining competition, and the Daily Grind, a once daily challenge that allows you to practice it as many times as you want, but only allowing you to play it for score once. This proves to be the ultimate realization of the risk/reward thread of the game, with the pressure to pull of ever more absurd combos balanced by danger of a single mistake causing you to scrape against the bottom of the leaderboard. A bit too terrifying for me, but a smart way to push players towards a more obsessive mastery of the mechanics and foster competition.

Lord of the Grind

Like early skateboarders, OlliOlli is an outsider. Launching at a time where skateboarding fervor has died down and has dropped its transgressive appeal for marketing team ups with Olympic athletes, and launching on a handheld which failed to capture the attention of the larger public, OlliOlli is a game that risks getting lost in the flood of information and big budget marketing hype machines. It’s a shame because Roll 7 have crafted something beautiful here, a distillation of the genre that takes the best tricks from its predecessors and puts it into a bite sized package easy enough to pick up for a snack, and filling enough to be a meal. Roll 7 has pulled off an impressive show of skill here, and a few stumbles aside, they’ve nailed the trick of bringing back the joy of the ride for these modern times.

A-

Dynasty Warriors: Gundam Reborn acts as a sort of “reboot” for the franchise, tweaking numerous features and elements to refine the formula. An official Story Mode returns, based on the Universal Century and Cosmic Era timelines, that provides a short retelling of some core series, as well as an Ultimate Mode that contains multiple brief crossover scenarios. Combined with a detailed upgrade system, there is a heaping mountain of content for fans of the series. If Dynasty Warriors is a meal of rice, then Koei has stacked several sacks of it in front of you.

Universal Centuries

According to Gundam Reborn‘s Story mode, the Gundam series is about 14 year old boys accidentally stumbling into giant robots, reluctantly piloting them, losing their innocence in the horrors of war, and then finally accepting that they mustn’t run away. Along the way they fight their friend on the other side, have some girl die in battle to inspire them to keep fighting, and win battles with the power of emotions. There’s always political back dealing, sometimes their practical science-based robots have systems powered by emotions, and occasionally there’s racism. There are also scenes so angsty, (see: Zeta Gundam) I was expecting the story to reveal clones made from the protagonist’s mother and overt Christian symbolism to appear. (Spoilers?) Series diehards are probably about to crucify me for my oversimplification, but that’s about the gist of it.

It’s worth noting that, as the progenitor of the real robot genre, Gundam created the archetypes, but damned if it isn’t dedicated to them. Regardless, the story mode provides a decent rundown of the represented series’, though the Universal Century focus excludes Gundam Wing, which received the most exposure for US audiences. Unless you buy the DLC. They’ve got your pretty boy Gundam Seed battles, if you’re into that.

The Ultimate Mode is for those less invested in the canon and more into mixing and matching the million mobile suits of the series. Here players are given several quicker-paced, crossover campaigns that allow you to mix and match pilots across the series, and biff robots across universe lines. This includes Wing and G Gundam. It also means much less scenario-specific dialogue. You get the joy of situations where Domon Kasshu yells “I see it! A single drop of water!” entirely out of context and without concern for its appropriateness for the situation. It lacks the detail of the Story Mode scenarios, but its lack of restrictions give you a bit more of a sandbox to blow up hundreds of Zakus.

Where’s my damned soy sauce?

Despite the obvious care put into satisfying the Gundam fans, it can’t stop Dynasty Warriors: Gundam Reborn from feeling rooted in a PS2 era design document. While it looks reasonably good, considering the sheer amount of enemies on screen, it still lacks a sense of presence and weight. Everything is built in a way that undermines the sense of place and scale. Levels are composed of mazes and empty fields, populated with basic structures and geometry, and any sense of verticality is almost non-existent. This is true even during space battles. The limited thrust capabilities of the machines seems even more absurd as they fall back to the ground, despite the lack of gravity. While it makes sense from a game perspective, it fails to sell the fiction of piloting a massive machine.

Dynasty Warriors: Gundam Reborn is rife with limitations like this. Gundams are equipped with multiple weapons, but they can only be used by performing combos. Even form changes work this way. The fields are populated with hundreds of enemies, but they’re almost entirely brain-dead, often standing around or drifting aimlessly. On occasion you’ll see one of your teammates trade blows with them, but they’re mostly content to spawn out of nowhere or pop in from the fog of the horizon. There are multiple objectives that ostensibly have you performing different tasks, but mostly have you trekking across the map to beat up robots in another area. Take more territory to move up your frontline? Beat up robots. Save an ally in need of help? Beat up robots. Take down a ship that’s attacking your base? Beat up robots. It’s so transparently game-y that it might as well have you moving to an area and hitting the square button until a bar goes down.

The world never feels dynamic or alive, or even truly there. There’s an idea of push and pull to the battles, of drama on the battlefield, but it all takes place in the abstract and never in front of you. Futhermore, the controls feel strangely incompetent at times, with the camera and lock on system being near useless, and battles against anything other than enemy hordes feeling awkward. The tools it gives you are too wide reaching to hone in on specific targets with any degree of satisfaction.

There may also be sack piles of content here, but it remains largely repetitive and interchangeable. If you showed me two random, key scenarios from Dynasty Warriors: Gundam Reborn, I’d be damned if I could tell you which one was which. If this was a meal, it would consist of twenty courses of plain bowls of rice. Sometimes they’d change the design of the bowl.

Now I love rice, and I could eat it for days. (This is where I play to the Asian-American stereotype, folks.) But give me some vegetables with it. Cut me up some onions or sprinkle some seasoning. Give me some gods damned soy sauce! Dynasty Warriors: Gundam Reborn is not that. It’s a bowl of rice. A plain bowl of rice. A rice bowl with nothing on it. See how many times I’ve talked about rice? That’s about how repetitive this game is. It’s a massive, filling meal that will warm you up and send you on your way, and that’s about it.

Even with that said, I somehow can’t stop playing Dynasty Warriors: Gundam Reborn. I’ve put more hours into this game than I have some of my favorite games of all time. Granted, a lot of those are quite short, but it’s not like this one is really showing me something new hour after hour either.Gundam Reborn does just enough to keep the basic, lizard brain functions coming back for more. It taxes me just enough that it becomes endlessly compulsive, if never actually compelling. Likewise, the story content does just enough to satisfy the 14 year old in me, awakening the same part of me that shamelessly consumes mountains of tokusatsu.

Eternal Crusade

Dynasty Warriors will continue to live on eternally, and Gundam will continue to be made. There are Dynasty Warriors games with samurai, Greeks, tank punching martial artists, British and French soldiers killing each other, rubber pirates, and bomb throwing elves in a green hat and skirt. There are also enough Gundam spin offs and series that I fully expect a Mobile Suit Gundam: Dogs of War anime about a 14 year old boy and his dog during the One Year War. Or maybe a game where Gundams play dodgeball with Ultraman and kaiju. Oh wait.

In conclusion: I like rice. I could eat it all day.

C+

Dragon's Crown is a modern game with old school sensibilities. Rooted in mechanics that draw firmly on Capcom's arcade beat-em-up legacy, particularly the Dungeons and Dragons adaptations, which art director George Kamitani worked on, developer Vanillaware has created something that feels both modern and as archaic as the fantasy settings from which it draws inspiration. Set in the fantasy land of Hydeland, Dragon's Crown draws heavily upon traditional Western style fantasy tropes and filters them through a distinctly Japanese lens. Characters rendered in a hyper-exaggerated style that draws upon both the painterly style of Frank Frazetta and the legacy of manga and anime. Male characters are mountains of muscle sporting ridiculously wide torsos and shoulders, many proportioned at seven heads wide (for reference, normal human beings are generally about three heads wide, and American superheroes five)! Female characters are top heavy in their own way, with the Sorceress notably sporting a ridiculously buxom figure and the Amazon showing off thighs that'd put even Chun-Li to shame. Let's get this out of the way right now: while out of context these designs may feel objectifying and even sexist, for the most part they feel appropriate within the context and hyper exaggeration of the world of Dragon's Crown. However, during your travels you'll definitely come across female NPCs splayed out in a variety of absurd and sexualized poses. While I was okay with the character designs themselves, these scenes are inarguably objectifying and troublesome and do put a bit of a damper in the what is an otherwise beautifully rendered game. In fact, the art and animation is likely to be the first thing that you notice (alongside the aforementioned ridiculous character proportions). Rendered entirely in a painterly and detailed art style, and animated in a style combining traditional key frame and Flash style techniques, every still of Dragon's Crown feels as if it was hand painted. This makes boss encounters and set pieces an absolute marvel, and never stops feeling novel and beautiful. The combat itself is controlled by a paired down control scheme that varies according to character and context. Attacks are initiated by a the square button, with circle giving you access to special abilities, circle jumping, and triangle allowing you quick access to various items. Holding down the attack button while stationary will block or charge mana depending on your class, and attacks can be varied by performing them with a direction or from the air. Either right shoulder button will allow you to evade, and holding the attack button while moving performs a dash. While the control scheme initially feels restrictive and unnecessarily paired down, with time to adjust it starts to feel fluid. Unlike more modern combo centric beat-em-ups, Dragon's Crown is more about positioning and reading the enemy tells, and in that way it reveals a combat philosophy that shares elements with Monster Hunter as much as Guardian Heroes. DC also incorporates elements of role-playing into the mix, and even a few adventure game style mechanics. A narrator tells the story of your journey, fleshing out scenes with flavor text that gives insight into the narrative action in a style reminiscent of visual novels. In addition to providing the voice over for these story segments, he also provides narration during combat scenes describing the character's journey and set pieces. It's a fantastic touch that harkens back to the roots of role-playing as a tabletop experience. It can get a bit weary after hearing the same lines a few times (particularly when being given your quest objective multiple times after exiting each location on the hub world), but it's solidly and powerfully acted and allows your imagination to fill in the gaps. Characters will also level up, learn new skills, earn new weapons, and use various items to aid them in battle. While it's a familiar addition, it gives a tangible reason to go back to previous areas, since progress towards new skills can be a bit slow without doing sidequests, and new weapons cannot be bought. You can also direct a cursor around to navigate menus during downtime, or pick up small treasures or direct your AI thief companion to unlock doors and treasure chests (and later cast rune magic). While it works well enough for the latter, picking up treasure can become a bit of a chore, and after a couple hours I did it much less often. It feels more at home on the Vita, due to being able to use the touch screen, but it still feels like an unnecessary hassle which slows down the pacing. DC's biggest problem however, is the amount of repetition necessary to complete the game. There are only a handful of areas to journey into, and while the game does provide branching paths and new set pieces as incentive to return to them, you'll be thrust into the same unchanging encounters and bosses for a good few hours after first exploring them. The game then suddenly forces you to choose between paying up some gold to return to the area you want to go to or jump into one randomly. While this is explained in game, and introduces a new element of risk into adventuring (a bit like you'd find in something like Monster Hunter) it feels entirely bizarre and restrictive. It should also be noted that you won't have access to online multiplayer until you reach this part of the journey (about four to eight hours in depending on how you play, local play is always unlocked). The new segments do introduce new wrinkles and set pieces, and often add an additional level of environmental interaction that feels novel to the genre and helps DC break away from the crowd, as well as showing off more of it's gorgeous art and creature design. It also pushes up the challenge and almost demands that you cooperate with others. If you don't have anyone to play with, and don't want to play with randoms online, you can resurrect AI warriors by retrieving their bones from the game world and bringing them to a priest. It should be noted that Dragon's Crown also allows you transfer saves between the PS3 and PSVita versions of the game. Simply upload it to the server and download it on the other device and you'll be set. It only takes a few minutes total, less depending on your connection. The game however, IS NOT Cross-Buy compatible, meaning you'll have to shell out extra for the other version. Differences between the two are largely minor. The Vita's screen makes the most of the gorgeous artwork, while the PS3 version gives you more screen space and couch play, and a slightly better frame rate when all out chaos ensues. Overall, Dragon's Crown works beautifully as a game and a co-op experience. It's artwork and animation is of the highest caliber, and brings an evocative and unique style to the genre while it's gameplay satisfies the cravings of loot loving brawlers. Aside from complaints from the inherent repetitiveness of the game, and some trouble with the display of certain characters, Vanillaware has crafted something worthy of its ambition, and the legacy of which it draws upon.