Ninety-Nine Nights

• Platform: Xbox 360
• Published by: Microsoft Game Studios
• Developed by: Q? Ent. / Phantagram
• Release Date: TBA 2006
• Genre: Action
• Multiplayer: No
• Online: No

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Ninety-Nine Nights Feature Preview

-- April 5, 2006 by: Chris Remo

Tetsuya Mizuguchi isn't exactly a household name, though many gamers are familiar with some of his work. Most of the designer's titles are unique, to say the least, and with the few exceptions of titles such as Sega Rally Championship (SAT, Arcade) they are like almost nothing else out there. After his internal Sega studio known as AM Annex was renamed to United Game Artists and Mizuguchi put in charge, he designed the games that would in many ways design his style: Space Channel 5 (PS2, DC) and Rez (PS2, DC). Both were fresh and original, tying music to gameplay in a natural way; the abstract and trippy rails shooter Rez has become something of a hallowed cult classic. Mizuguchi eventually left Sega to form his own studio, Q? Entertainment, where he designed the acclaimed audio/visual-centric puzzler Lumines (PSP) and produced another falling-blocks title, the insane and multi-layered Meteos (DS). While Mizuguchi's games are routinely praised by critics and gamers who actually play his titles, his eclectic but inventive design sensibilities have arguably led to retail reception that fails to live up to his reputation. With his next game, it appears that Mizuguchi may be attempting to buck that trend. He is designing an anticipated Xbox 360 title, Ninety-Nine Nights, co-developed by Q? and Phantagram, the South Korean developer of Kingdom Under Fire. At a recent Microsoft event, I had the chance to try out Ninety-Nine Nights and chat briefly with Mizuguchi about the game and his thoughts on development.

Before even picking up the controller, it is clear that Ninety-Nine Nights was conceived very differently than Mizuguchi's other titles. Rather than the abstract and colorful visuals that accompany most of his games, Ninety-Nine Nights strives for a realistic depiction of a fantasy world, with large environments and seemingly infinite enemies rendered in impressive detail. The game is a third person beat-em-up putting the player in the role of a powerful hero who must defeat hundreds upon hundreds of enemies in each stage. Phantagram's Kingdom Under Fire action/strategy heritage comes through clearly, but the strategy elements in Ninety-Nine Nights seem considerably downplayed from Phantagram's previous efforts. Rather, the game plays more along the lines of Dynasty Warriors, with the player feeling practically invincible as he or she bulldozes through countless enemy ranks.

From level to level, the player will start out with a small army of soldiers, taking on groups of enemies containing dozens or even hundreds of individual soldiers. At really extreme moments, the framerate chugs a bit, but it never got bothersome. After taking out one group, you'll continue on to the next one marked on your map. Your character can jump, execute light and heavy attacks, or combine the three for various combo moves. Based on my time with the game, you won't really need to memorize compled combo strings or anything of the sort; pressing lots of buttons generally results in pretty impressive stuff happening on its own. There's a combo meter measuring how many successive hits you've gotten in, but it's pretty lenient. Anything that hits an enemy counts towards the combo count, and you've got a few seconds in between hits before the meter resets. I got mine well above 1000 within a single level. There's also a special attack meter that fills up as you fight, and reaching the limit allows you to enter an even more devastating mode for a limited time. Attacks gain significantly greater power, and you'll then start filling another meter that only rises when in super-insane mode. When that one is full, you enter super-duper-insane mode and, suffice to say, your enemies don't last long. You're also able to issue basic commands to your fellow soldiers, such as to flank left or right, but at least in the presumably early level I played, it's pretty unnecessary. Your attacks are so powerful and your character so tough that it almost seems like a waste of time to even pay attention to your relatively ineffective comrades.

Ninety-Nine Nights comes as something of a shock to those familiar with Mizuguchi's previous work. For the most part, his games stress unique gameplay mechanics and quirkiness, with the player experience hinging on a tight connection between absorbing gameplay and the game's visual and--more importantly--auditory presentation. It's almost startling how opposed that aesthetic is to that of N3, as the game is frequently abbreviated. This game features tried and tested gameplay mechanics, with the immersion coming from graphics and the actual events depicted on screen rather than their purely stylistic presentation; in some ways, intricate gameplay takes a backseat since so much of it is automated. Why the change? There are a few reasons. One is simply that the hardware being used for the game, the Xbox 360, is quite powerful and Mizuguchi wanted to take advantage of it. "I'd like to keep the gameplay not so new for this," he explained. "Instead I wanted to use the 360's power. The 360 can generate many, many, many soldiers on the field, so we wanted that." When asked to further elaborate on the relationship between hardware capabilities and gameplay design, Mizuguchi drew examples from his past games. "It's very important to get influence from the hardware. With the PSP, it is an audio/visual interactive Walkman, so we decided to make [Lumines,] a puzzle game featuring music. With Meteos, we used the touch screen [of the DS]. On this, we have many soldiers. Every soldier has AI and physics. I know that it's a mainstream trend, but we said let's use this and make some chemistry with the dramatic elements."

Turn the page for more on the storytelling aspects of Ninety-Nine Nights.

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