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A Short Analysis: Phantasy Star Universe

This analysis is by my son, a three-year-old that prefers Super Mario World over Paper Mario and Link to the Past over Twilight Princess.  Just based on that alone, he is probably more qualified to review games than 80% of The Gaming Press.  His favorite game before Super Mario World was Katamari Damacy and its sequel, which should give you some background on his biases.  Also, he calls Katamari Damacy "Na-na Ball".

Me, personally, I don't like Sega games.  Shocking, yes, but true.  They are just a bit too fast and flashy for me to take any of them seriously at all.  However I wanted to see what this Phantasy Star shit was all about, and Phantasy Star Universe for 360 was $30.  My wife was not home and I was playing with the boy, so I decided to try it on him.

Me: "You want to see this new game I got?"
Son: "Nah."
Me: "I want to show it to you before Mommy gets home, she might not like me showing you."
Son: "OK."

I boot up the 360 and, as with every time, he asks "Na-na Ball?"
Me: "No, not Na-na Ball.  That's in the Playstation, the black one."
Son: "Oh, yes."

I put in PSU and start it up.  Cutscenes!  I thought it was some sort of dungeon romp.
Son: "Is you playin' now?"
Me: "Not yet. Lots of movies."

I gain control later.
Son: "Go upstairs."
Me: "They won't let me."
Son: "Why not?"
Me: "No idea."

Eventually I find the elevator and go up to the fourth floor.
Son: "Go on that escalator."
Me: "They don't want me to, that guy won't let me."
Son: "Where you is goin'?"
Me: "I'm not sure."

More movies.
Son: "You is playin' now?"
Me: "No."
Son: "You is playin' now?"
Me: "No."
Repeat a few times.

Eventually I get to a point where someone takes the invisible purse from the annoying girl, and the main guy has to jump on his hoverboard to pursue the train that the thief got away in.  The guy lands at the other station and I start walking around.
Son: "Where is your flying skateboard?"
Me: "Yeah, where is it?  I could use it right now."
I walk around more.
Me: "Where, indeed."

After two more cutscenes, I figure the little guy has had enough, but he has been pretty tolerant.  I skip one and suddenly I am running around a ruined station.
Son: "What are those blue thingies?"
Me: "I don't know.  I bet they told us in that movie I skipped.  You want to play something else?"
Son: "NA-NA BALL!"

Your son brings the LOLZ better than most of the internet. Good Show.

When are they porting this Na-Na ball to a PC based MMPORG?

Thanks, it's just too bad you could not see the Stare of Boredom and hear the sighs.

I like "You is playin' now?" I will have to adopt this phrase when speaking of cutscenes, downtime, MMO raids...

For at least 10 minutes, I thought Yegolev's kid was JarJar Binks.

edit:

I love that exchange.

I am trying to get the Jar Jar out of his speech, but it's hard when his grandpa has the vocal grammar of Gomer Pyle.

EDIT: My favorite part of the whole exchange was "Where is your flying skateboard?" because I was thinking the same thing, that I would make better time and/or have more fun riding it.  I find that comment to be an eloquent summary of the entire PSU intro.

I have no idea how he knows what a skateboard is.

Anyone else find it funny that a 3 year old can determine what's fun faster and more efficiently than a game designer making a 6-figure income?

At the GDC this year, Miyomoto was talking about the 'Wife-ometer' in his speech, and this post reminded me of that.   It amazing what happens when you eliminate all the high-brow arm-chair dev'ing and propeganda, and put a game in front of an audience incapable of being conned with shite.  

You son is the perfect example.  If it isn't fun why play it?  If it doesn't follow basic logic, why do it?

My daughter is two, and she lacks at that age what most people would call logic, but when you put them in front of some of the stupid shit that people try to pass off as quality entertainment, their logic about why it isn't fun is infallible.


Priceless.

Awesome.  I am impressed that your son can say 'escalator'.

My 4 year old says 'eska - tater'.

Reminds me of trying to play Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes. I had played the PS1 game a little bit but never all the way through, and I got the GC remake as a gift. An hour and a half later I had controlled my character for all of 5 minutes and turned it off forever. Cutscene after cutscene and codec conversation after codec conversations don't excite me.

This is something I mentioned in the Red Star thread. One of the great things about that game is that it has zero trappings. It has a start splash screen and a mission screen, everything else is levels. There are no cutscenes, no movies, no nothing.

If you are going to bore me with cutscenes and dialog, and least do it after 20 minutes of gameplay that get me hooked.

This is the cutest thing ever. :-)

I enjoyed that, thanks. That's one game I wondered about to cross off the list.

My sister said eleskater until she was about eight.

I whole-heartedly agree with your son and his thoughts about Phantasy Star Universe

Nice review.

Going to buy Na Na Ball game.

Nice read :)

"Na-Na Ball" = Best part of the review :D I love Na-Na Ball too!

The little ones know what the deal is. My little girl was watching me play WoW and asked me what I had to do to beat the game. I said, "You really don't beat the game, you just keep playing." She screwed up her face in confusion and asked me why I would play a game I couldn't win. I'm still asking myself that question.

You haven't let her ride your mounts around yet?

My daughter is fond of dressing up and getting one of every pet (she just picked up Mr. Wiggles).  She also likes to play my toon and ride the mounts.

Lately she's taken to going to AV.  She doesn't do very well, but not bad for an 8 year old.

(Must remember to leave cheap arrows on the main, since I'm not playing much WoW).

She hasn't had the urge to actually play yet. She just likes to watch and tells me to go look at things that will eat my face. Ghosts are her favorite. And she likes the netherwelp. I can be in the middle of massive battle and she wants to see the baby dragon come out. Kids rock.

Does this make anyone else think of Matthew Broderick playing Tic-Tac-Toe?

Would
You
Like
To
Play
A
Game
?

Heh, I understand.  I guess someone should have warned you.  To me, that's the only real reason to play that game, was for the cutscenes (which were actually pretty well directed/edited and didn't have crappy dialogue/voices).  I actually felt less amused when I was actually playing rather than watching.

Upon seeing how the intro was a big cutscene, I immediately grasped on to the concept and started treating the game like a movie rather than a video game.  That's one unique thing that MGS does that other games try but can't do.  They actually deliver the movie experience first and foremost, and then every once in a while they let you have a little interaction in the form of mini-games.  But I can definately see why that's not everyone's preferrence.  Thankfully, I like playing games which focus more on story, so I rather liked it a lot.

Sweetness.   :wink:

Excellent stuff.  You and your son need to review more games.

I did translate it a bit just so I could type it, but he is pretty well-spoken, but I'm his dad so there is probably some mental translation on my part.  He says it more like a Japanese would: escarator or some such, and slowly.  It's not really possible to put his phonetics into English text.

In related news, last night he started and completed a Star World level in Super Mario Bros. all by himself.  The one where you have to drill down through yellow blocks with a spin jump, and he goes over to the right wall after the first hole, grabbing the key and exiting via the secret route.  OK, I did tell him that he had to hold down Y to grab the key, but otherwise he had no help.  In fact, I had just left it there upon opening the route from the Donut Ghost House to the Star World.

I almost cried.

I started gaming at age of 4  :-)
Was back in the NES days though so the games were a little bit more simple. Even if I'm probably not an old schooler compared to a lot of the people here, I kind of feel sorry for people who missed out on the sort of games that were played back then, a lot of which we probably never will see the likes of again.

Nonsense, get a Wii.  It's covered up with that shit.  My son isn't playing Super Mario World on an actual SNES.  In fact, his favorite Wii games behind SMW* include Kororinpa and that WiiPlay game where you are riding a cow, which is exactly the sort of stuff you are talking about.


* Yeah, yeah.  Whatever.

Out of interest, what does your son call Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz?

I feel lucky in that I am just old enough to have played video games since almost the start. I started with a Colecovision, the Atari thing that would plug into it ( A 2600 that would physically plug into the Coleco - weird), an Atari ST computer and an Apple 2 computer.

It really is pretty amazing looking back how the NES was million billion times better than Atari and Colecovision.

I remember reading an old magazing called "Computer and Video Games" or something like that about the NES after it came out in Japan, and how it probably wasn't going to do well in the US for a variety of reasons. Oops.

Ah C&VG I remember it well......well........just  :-D

My little guy is only 14 months so dont expect any reviews from him soon (that and the fact that, being the hypocrit I am I intend to keep him away from games for a while, not a huge believer in the whole 'electronic nanny' thing I'm afraid - I suspect however that this will probably turn out to be wishful thinking)

We don't have that one.

There are actually a number of free NES emulators out there.  I spent a bit of time at one point going through all the NES games I had missed out on as a child (I didn't get a Nintendo until about seven years after everyone else, and didn't ever get that many games for it) and was sad to discover that most of them are in fact complete crap.  The only one that really holds up IMO is SMB3.

Clearly, you've never played Dr Mario

I'm surrounded by newbs! When I was in grade 10 my Dad bought us a Pong machine as the big family Christmas present that year. :)

Yea, a lot of them only holds up due to nostalgia. However, they were crafted in a way that simply doesn't come by nowdays, and they were very enjoyable back then. I agree with SMB3, it's simply amazing.

How about: Metroid, Original Legend of Zelda, NES Open (By far the -most- fun golf game I've ever played -- Wii Sports Golf is loosely based on the same idea), Final Fantasy, Castlevania?

I thought all of these games were good, and I still play them from time to time.

I thought Metroid, Zelda, and Castlevania were ugly and repetitive.  I can imagine myself enjoying them when I was much younger and had lots of time on my hands, though, since Goonies falls in that same camp and I played a good bit of that when I was a kid.

Super Metroid, on the other hand, is still good in the same way that the post-SotN Castlevanias are good.  I might say, from the NES, that Blaster Master is still good but that is probably some serious nostalgia.

I'd have to say that I can agree.

PSU got so repetitive so quickly. I wrote a review for it the month after it had been released. By that time, playing semi-casually, I had hit the level cap, maxed out my crafting creature, and capped out 2 of the 3 job levels as well.

I'm sure it's better by now, but between the DBZ jokes every 5 seconds, being spammed profusely might I add, and the lack of content... it was one of the weakest MMO's I've ever played.

Yes, Necropost and all that.

(http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:HzjLuj3TfKiU-M:http://www.blacklibrary.com/images/books_large/)


Yeg, your son is overdue for a new game review.
You have a few days off over Easter? Get to it!

If it's the one with both paddle knobs on a single console, I had it too.  :grin:

He's just wrapped up in Mario stuff.  Mario Galaxy, Mario Golf, Luigi's Mansion.  Of those, he can actually play Mario Golf, but he's incredibly shitty.  He likes Luigi's Mansion except that it's somewhat scary.  He doesn't understand why Mario Galaxy gets so hard on the later levels and I end up playing old levels a lot.  We did the one last night where you are inside the fire planet and he mostly wanted me to lure the urchin things into the fire to comically burn to cinders.

I played Metroid Prime 3 for him but he didn't say anything funny.

Mario Kart for the Wii is coming next month.

Ssshhh!

This is a bit of a followup. I might write a full article but for the booze.

What my boy has found fascinating since the last exchange is basically Na-Na Ball, Mario Kart and Lego Star Wars.

The interesting and unexplained bit is his fascination wit h Lego Star Wars. I can only summarize that LSW is a GOOD GAME, partly from the gameplay but mostly from the visuals. It's pretty fucking cute.