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Let's Play...[Warning: Image Heavy]
Topic Started: May 21 2012, 05:23 AM (308 Views)
Captain
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Everyone has a game series they cherish. Whether it be a shooter, an RPG, a stealth game, an FPS, or a board game, anything, they love it. They have a lot to say on it. I know for a lot of people on this site, that series is the Shin Megami Tensei series, but for me, I happen to like something a bit different. An experiment in game design I enjoyed a great deal. Something I still look back on with fond memories. A game series that was impressive in it's implication, and in a way, could be seen as the founder of Augmented Reality gaming.

That series?

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So for this series that has been buried by time, and is relatively unknown, I'm gonna do my best to give it the respect it deserves, and get it's name out there. So let's play, and hopefully finish this game, the first in it's trilogy.

Let's play Boktai: The Sun Is in Your Hand, for the Game Boy Advance.

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...Sadly, I must admit, it doesn't start off in a fantastic manner. When I got this game, I had to get it used. I happened to luck out and find the cartridge at a Gamestop for 5 bucks. But...only the cartridge. No instruction booklet, no back-of-the-box information, and I had no idea what the story was. I just heard it was good so I bought it with some pocket change I had, and took it home. When I started playing, I was...more than a little confused by this opening.

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So the game opens and your main character walks on screen. During the file creation, you give him a name, defaulting to Django. I've named the file Captain, though, so that'll appear instead. Why? Because I wanna be a kickass vampire hunter, damn it! In the upper left corner you can see a treasure chest, which contains loot, just like in every other game known to man. I would go grab it right now, but it's cutscene time!

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...A...ha.

Again, imagine playing this as a kid with no instruction manual. I'm just starting the game, and after the 4 panel exposition fairy, I walk on screen only to be greeted by a magically appearing sunflower who proclaims we're walking into a CITY OF DEATH, tells me his name is Otenko, and that together, we're going to bring light back to the dark city.

Really, Django here sums up my feelings as Otenko floats ahead without us.

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So yeah. We're off to a confusing start. I have to admit, it's not off to a thrilling start, the opening exposition doesn't really tell me much and I wasn't expecting a talking sunflower to throw exposition at me this early and in such an unhelpful way. It's all so confusing, I wonder why that i-

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...Ohh....Now I get it...

We're dealing with a Hideo Kojima game. The story's not supposed to make sense.

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Regardless, we have control now. I head up to the chest and grab what's in it, a Red Apple. In this game, fruit heals you. Which makes sense, I suppose. The upper left hand corner shows our health bar, and the lower right shows our Gun's Energy and the Solar Gauge. As Otenko said, we wield the Gun Del Sol, a fantastic gun that takes in sunlight, and turns it into energy blasts of PAIN. Each shot drains some of it's energy, but so long as we have sunlight, we can recharge it. How do you get sunlight?

By going outside.

Yes, this game made you go outside.

The cartridge had a solar sensor inside of it, that caused it to bulge out of the GBA slightly. That bit of it had a sensor that detected sunlight. Not just light, but actual sunlight. Very few things could trick it, Blacklights being the most well known, but if you didn't have them? You had to open the door and go outside to recharge your solar gun.

This s what I meant when I said it was sort of the first augmented reality game. The real world had an impact on this game, and without that real world interaction, you can not beat the game. This made emulation of the game tricky. I'm having to use No$GBA, since it's the only one with a solar sensor option. I'd prefer to use my own copy of the game, but that would only work if I could hang a gamecube gameboy player out the window to catch the sunlight, and I'm not doing THAT again.

...Long story don't ask.

But enough of my exposition, it's best to be shown these things, not told. So walking back on the path Otenko appeared on, we head forward...towards...

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Because I'm playing at night, with sunlight on, there isn't much to show. The path up to the castle would normally have enemies, but...well, they kind of die the second I go on screen, due to the sun killing them. There really isn't much to do anyways, it's just go from one side of the screen to the next, until you go inside the Vampire's Mansion.

Once inside we continue going forward, since the tutorial dungeon has no branching paths, until Otenko speaks up again...

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...Please don't wink at me Otenko. Flowers should not wink. Creepiness aside, Otenko will be playing the role of Navi in this game. He'll pop up with hints, of the unhelpful and helpful variety, and overall not be helpful in doing any of the actual fighting. Though to be fair, it makes sense. He's a sunflower. I'm a guy with a badass gun that can shoot solar death. When was the last time you ever saw someone die from a sunflower?

Advancing on, we enter another room, and we find the first of many wonderful goodies, a green treasure chest. Opening it reveals...

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More gameplay exposition! The solar gun isn't just a one trick pony. You can augment it and chance it, depending on the parts. It's seperated into 4 groups: Battery, Lens, Frame, and Grenade. We'll cover Frame for now: This is the part that determines the shots you fire. If you change the Frame, you could end up making it a rapid fire gun, or a short range shotgun, or even some other ridiculous things. We'll equip it for now, since the Fighter Frame, the one we started with, is pitiful. If we even found enemies, we wouldn't be able to kill them with it. All it can do is STUN.

Speaking of enemies, climbing the stairs, we find out first one!

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Haha, finally, we can start things off with a good old fashioned ki-

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...Wait, right, this is a Hideo Kojima game. Stealth is key. So we wait...and sneak past the undead abomination...Loop around and head up some stair until we find a door. Otenko chimes in, with some helpful information.

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...The door leads to sesame street?

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Oh. So a different count. And one who I have a history with.

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...Okay. So. Yeah, history. Apparently my dad is dead. And I'm here to kill his old vampire enemy. Well, that shouldn't be a problem. I have the Gun Del Sol, a magitech weapon capable of taking down the undead, what does this Count have?

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A coffin and a CRAPTON OF BATS.

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A perfect chance to actually show off this awesome solar gun. By holding down the B button, I fire it off, using a Solar Spread. Sunlight beams out from the gun, damaging anything and everything in it's path, naturally doing most of it's damage to the undead. But every living thing can be harmed by it too. I imagine because it's blasts must be hot, but at the same time, you're receiving concentrated blasts of UV rays. That CAN'T be healthy.

Once we strike down the bats, Otenko pipes up again, telling us it was a trap. A pretty sucky trap, but a trap nontheless. He tells us to grab the Count's coffin, and drag it outside. Seems Otenko has a plan. Who are we to refuse? So we grab the coffin...

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And proceed to book it back to the opening of the stage. Dragging this heavy coffin. All the way down several flights of stairs.

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Where were YOU when I was dragging this corpse down from the top floor!?

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Such a demanding sunflower, here I am doing all the work...What good is this for a pile driver, if I wanted to pull off a wrestling move, I could do it without this fancy circle, couldn't I?

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...Nevermind.

And so begins the first bossfight in Boktai, and the first use of the Solar Pile Driver. The basic idea is that vampires hate sunlight, right? So let's take these two massive mirrors and pour the sunlight onto them as heavily as we can. And really, this is quite brilliant. Most games go about stopping vampires with stakes or holy water. Boktai says screw that, we're using the sun. And it's awesome.

Mechanically, it's a sort of Tug of War. The vampire stays in the central coffin, trying to repel the sunlight with his darkness. By using a Solar Spread on a mirror, you strengthen it, allowing it to repel the darkness and push it back in. This is important, because if the darkness hits a mirror...

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It causes it to turn off. You have to wait a few moments before you can turn it back on. If all the mirrors turn off the vampire breaks free from the center and tries to escape the circle. If that happens? You have to drag him back from his room to here. All over again. Once the red gauge in the upper right hand corner is depleted, you win, and the results screen shows up, ranking you from D to S. Hey, you only fail when the vampire escapes!

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Naturally, I get an S rank. That must mean I get some sort of awesome prize, right?!

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...Ow. Did the game just insult me?

Regardless, Otenko congratulates us, and explains why we did this. Vampires in Boktai are made up of Dark Matter, and so long as they have it, they can return from death over and over again. By using the sun, we melt it away. When they have no more dark matter...

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...In theory anyways. We'll wait and see how truthful this is. We're about to leave, when Otenko makes a startling revelation.

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Once again, Django takes the words out of my mouth.

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He somehow knows our father, knows our dad was dead, who his arch enemy is, what out gun does, and how to kill vampires. But he doesn't even know our name.

Just when I think Django's gonna verbally smack Otenko, a mysterious voice boom, and mocks us...it's...the count?!

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...So you're telling me Otenko couldn't even tell it was a fake? He knows all this stuff but can't tell one vampire from another? This is gonna be a long adventure. The count explains that we're from a town called San Miguel, and that when he went there to kill our father, he kidnapped a woman from the town, known as the moon beauty. He dares us to find him and take her back from his evil grasp, which we naturally plan on doing.

Otenko's taken aback by this, muttering to himself.

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Mother.

Look, I called this right away. It's not some big secret. It's a classic trope. I guessed this on my first play-through. With revenge still unfulfilled, and a new goal, we head to the north. Next time on Let's Play Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hands, we head north to track down the villainous vampire, this time checking the coffin to make sure we incinerate the right vampire.
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Kaloo
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Look at his little dance
These games were wonderful... but impossible to play since you couldn't make out the screen if you were in the sunlight.
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Pierrot
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I got sunburn from playing this game obsessively...
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