Title: Ninety-nine Nights
System: Xbox360
Players: 1
ESRB: 12+
Summary:
In Over G Fighters, a terrorist organization threatens the world’s peace and security as players take to the skies in a united world air force. Players command more than 30 of the most powerful jet fighters ever conceived and battle for air superiority in massive dogfights in the skies above Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. Players combat enemies in the air and on the ground with challenging and dangerous strike missions against well defended targets deep in the heart of hostile territory.
Review:
Ninety-nine Nights…
If you have played Dynasty Warriors, you have played this game. It is the typical hack and slash title. While it has some things over dynasty warriors, such as the field of view is a lot larger. It still has the same feel, the same stories, the same characters, the same combos, the same million baddies on the screen. So really, why bother?
Well, if you can get past the Dynasty Warriors copy, there is a lot to the game, such as leveling up your character, and that the game doesn’t freeze when there are more than 3 people on the screen. The story is about a war between humans and goblins, and it is told between the 7 characters. But don’t get your hopes up, it seems to be a LOTR clone and like the story was placed as an after thought. Not to mention, depending on what your character does during the game determins the outcome, completely smashing an story you have put together.
During the loading screens, you are shown some combos that the character you chose is capable of, however, this is a button masher, you will be pushing X and Y, there is a block button, but I beat 2 characters stories before I figured that out, mostly you will use it to center your character, or swing the camera around. One thing that is interesting, is the orbs, each enemy that you kill gives you one red orb, and when that fills up, you can do a pretty amazing attack, during that charged attack, your enemy will drop a blue orb, and that will charge a different meter. That is even better depending on your character. The only drawback that I have, is that it doesn’t evolve as your character levels up.
The beginning you can only choose one character. Inphyy, once you beat her story, you unlock her brother and a mercenary, these 3 are commanders. They lead squadrons into battle, but don’t get your hopes up, they are useless, most of the time you order them to stand in one spot while you do all the slaying. All you can tell them to do is to follow you or to stand still. The best to choose is the Archers, they stand a distance back and don’t get themselves killed. The remaining characters that you unlock, aren’t cursed like this. They are solitary. You can concentrate on yourself, which is mostly what you will be doing the entire game anyway.
Most of the guards become a hinderance, they don’t do any damage to the enemy, but can cause them not to be hurt by your attack. Protect your guards while eliminating the baddies. While that does sound fun, it is more of a headache.
The only items that you can store are those that can be equipped. If you’ve got a full health bar and find a HP restore potion, it will be wasted since they disappear a short while after being exposed. This, combined with the fact that you can’t save midway through a mission, means you’ll often wind up coming to the final boss without much in the HP gauge. The only solution is to go off in search of chests you may not have broken open yet in hopes of finding something to restore your health. It’s slow and tedious, but you’ll wind up doing it so that you don’t die and lose all of the experience you’ve gained.
The characters can get to level 7 pretty fast, though they cap out at level 9, if you get all the characters maxed, that is an achievement, while there are only 10 achievements in the game, they can be pretty challenging to get. But it does add fun to the game for those of you that HAVE to have the achievements.
Ninety-Nine Nights has struggled to find an identity since it was first revealed in trailer form. Unfortunately, it appears that it never decided on one. The first half of the game plays like the team was looking at adding some strategic elements, but the second half is pure action. Through it all, you have an attempt to cover up some of the shallowest gameplay around with slick animations and a weak story. The final product isn’t terrible, but it’s hardly memorable. I give it a 7/10
