EDF

Fallout 3

2009-10-30T19:57:00.000-07:00

I had no intention of playing Fallout 3. Gorgeous Hair said he was going to wait till the "game of the year" edition came out, and he kept to his word. Purdy Teeth, GH and I were hanging out playing it shortly after he got it. The next day Purdy Teeth owned a copy. Two days later, I did.

That's excessive, by any measure. It's a damn old game now, but none of us was willing to wait to borrow the game. Do I regret spending that money when I could have waited a month and borrowed it from either of them? Nope.

Fallout 3 is nothing short of fantastic. It makes every RPG I've played in the past decade seem impossibly archaic. The fact that Final Fantasy 13 is going to come out next year with a "you stand there, I'll stand here, I'll hop over and hit you, now you hop over and hit me" battle system is pathetic. This game is everything a RPG should be.

A small example: Megaton is a town with an unexploded nuke in the center of it. The mayor would love it if you'd disarm it. You can either do it for free for good karma, or you can charge for the service. Mister Burke would like you to detonate it, and he will pay you much better than the mayor. You can do either of those things. You can kill Burke, and you can kill the mayor. You can get the mayor to arrest Burke, and have Burke kill the mayor for you. And everything in the game is structured like this. There's no one path. Not even close. Now that all three of us are playing it, we've been amazed at how different each of our games is. We fight with different weapons, run with different people, do different quests.

The game's huge, dense and a joy to exist in. All other RPG's have been put on notice.

4 stars

Tekken 6

2009-10-30T19:43:00.000-07:00

Problems (Obvious): Laggy Online
Problems (Nitpicky but I care more):

- No ability to set vs mode to automatically go back to character select, and as a subset, only p1 can choose whether to rematch or reselect characters.
- Online VS, when it dumps you back to the character select screen forgets the character you were playing as and resets to hovering over Lars.
- Music is so-so
- Backgrounds are limited and lacking much of the whimsy and magic that Tekken 5 had. Some are great (Tomato Stage, Temple) but there's too few and too many duds.
- The glow is aaaawwwwful. Try playing Lili on the tree stage to see what I'm talking about. She's a white blob. I can shut off Motion Blur, why not Glow?

Things I like:

- It's Tekken
- Character models and designs are stellar. No seriously. This game does such a better job than every other fighter out there with their character design it's obscene. There's not much new on the default costume front (everyone's in their Tekken 5 gear, which is admittedly lame), but the customizations are excellent. Between making Nina a flight attendant and Bob a fat Power Ranger, there's lots of amazing looking options.
- Scenario mode may be a mediocre Final Fight clone, but it's a much nicer way to earn custom items and money than playing against the computer for days on end. It would have been even better had they done something like Virtua Fighter 4 Evo's quest mode, or Soul Calibur's for that matter; keeping the core gameplay while sending you on an interesting adventure (where you win lots of clothes).

So yeah, do I think they could have done better? Yup. Will it be my favorite fighting game for the next two or three years? Yup.

3 stars

Tekken 6 on Xbox or Playstation?

2009-08-16T14:35:00.001-07:00

Tekken 6 is coming out multiplatform in October. They're offering what is rumored to be a wireless Hori Real Arcade Pro. Even if it's wired, that's a fantastic joystick.

I've always gotten my Tekken (and other fighters) on the Sony system of the time. This is primarily due to my love of Tekken over all other fighters and the fact that I have acquired some nice arcade sticks to play it on Playstation.

Getting Tekken 6 on PS3 seems like a no-brainer. I've got some PS3 compatable sticks, the game was built on an arcade version of PS3 hardware (I think) and Japanese games tend to be better on Japanese systems.

Except that's not exactly true anymore. Resident Evil 5 was noticeably better looking (to both me and Gorgeous Hair) on Xbox 360 and it had no mandatory install. The head-to-heads of Soul Calibur 4 say the game is nearly indistinguishable across systems but slightly better looking on Xbox.

This is compounded by the fact that Sony hasn't done one thing right since the PS3 came out. Despite having a purportedly much faster processor, there has been no indication of that from any game, cross platform or exclusive. Half the games require installs (and in the impossibly offensive example of Metal Gear 4, require one install per level.) and neither load faster or look better.

Other than the rather slim odds that the game will look better on PS3 (which I doubt based on the Soul Calibur reviews) there's no more reason to get the game on PS3.

So as of this week, I'm getting a Tekken game on a non-Sony system. It reminds me of buying a PS1 to play Final Fantasy 7.

Recession Reviews: Burnout Revenge

2009-07-03T01:24:00.001-07:00

Burnout Revenge, the fourth in the series (i think?) is, on the Xbox 360, effectively an up-resed xbox/ps2 game. Having bought the ps2 version after having played the 360 version but prior to owning a 360, I can tell you the 360 version is way better.

All the little details are better utilized and developed.

It also looks great. As good as Paradise or Gran Turismo? No way, but it looks sharp, has a smooth framerate and it's fast as hell. It's also an order of magnitude better than Burnout Paradise. As much as I respect everything they've done DLC-wise to make Paradise awesome, I still hate the open-world mechanic. I hate open worlds in general because instead of taking the fun part of a game and just giving you that, they let you do all the boring stuff too, like getting from place to place.

Revenge does everyting better than Paradise. To start with, the driving is simple. Gas, Brake and Boost. No handbrake nonsense, and no need to ever ever take your finger off the gas, for any reason. The arcadey feel for speed and control is superb.

Then there's different signature takedowns for each course, different kinds of takedowns (including my favorite: landing on top of your rival), and you can take down at least four opponents at once, which is rare, but I did it and it felt fantastic. This game is actually why I'm so hard on Paradise, which is in and of itself a fantastic racer. But Revenge is better. It's more focused, more compartmentalized and very much more menu driven, which is the only downer. Not that the menus are bad, just that after every race the "you did this good" screen isn't skippable and like most games, I just wanna get back in and play.

That is my only complaint about it though. I bought a "like-new" copy off Amazon the other day for $15 shipped cos I thought I lost my old one. It was over at Purdy Teeth's house. I wish I had known that when I was sitting around doing nothing while the wife was out of town.

4 stars.

Recession Reviews: Crackdown

2009-07-03T01:15:00.000-07:00

Due to the utter slop that calls itself the games of 2009 so far I have bought exactly 1 game: Resident Evil 5. Having milked that one to death (1000 GP to be specific), I decided rather than go out and get Prototype or Infamous and be unhappy with how Crackdown does X or Y better I'd just fire up crackdown and achievement whore.

Turns out I made a good decision. My old old copy of crackdown is still fantastically fun, and doubly so when I got Gorgeous Hair to play online. We decided to call our session quits at 1am last night, but for the next hour neither of us signed off. We just jumped around the city and accomplished nothing, and we had a great time doing it.

My middling complaints about the game still hold up (lack of bosses, touchy controls), but it does so much right that every other game does wrong, and at least until Prototype and Infamous came out was the only sandbox game that understood a game should be a game first and a life simulator second. It's still fantastic fun to climb all the tall buildings, to launch an attack on a boss and to generally raise hell.

You can easily find it for under $20 shipped, and it's still a solid 3 star game.

Resident Evil 5

2009-03-30T23:33:00.000-07:00

I don't feel like writing a ton on it at the moment, but it's a gorgeous game, I've played it through six or seven times and gotten okay at the minigame "mercenaries".

Gorgeous Hair and I have plans to play a bit of co-op, which I'm looking forward to.

3 stars

Street Fighter 4

2009-03-03T17:56:00.000-08:00

I had a dream last night where I'd made an awesome new friend. He only had one problem: he constantly pooped his pants. Being in his company was being in his poopy pants' company, and it was ruining an otherwise awesome time. Eventually I had to man up in my dream and ask him about the issue.

"What, you mean Seth?" was his response.

He'd named his unfortunate affliction "Seth", and so it's fitting that Capcom decided to name their instance of pants crapping amidst otherwise good times "Seth" as well. Seth is the last boss in Street Fighter 4 and he sucks. I didn't quite believe it when everyone cried "cheap!". After spending half an hour fighting Seth with Gen on "Easiest" difficulty I fully understood.

Gorgeous Hair and I unlocked everyone. It was some of the least fun I've ever had with a video game. I have zero desire to play the game anymore.

2 stars

So I've been playing EDF again

2009-02-23T13:30:00.000-08:00

My friend Matt got a new XBL name. The best feature of this is that you lose all your old saves. Awesome.

So he's been going through EDF again, and I've been helping him. The game is just fantastic. We've been farming for weapons on Level 52 "Inferno" on the "Inferno" difficulty. Confusing, yes. Inferno Inferno. We're barely strong enough to do it, but one out of every two or three times we succeed in beating the level. It's much more fun than hunting for the Lysander Z on level 46, which gets rather boring.

What amazes me about the game is how you can have everything under complete control, yet things can still go to hell in second if you're not constantly on top of things.

So in this one case, thank you Xbox, for deleting my friend's saves.

still, as always, 4 stars.

DLC pricing and unlockables

2009-02-23T12:55:00.000-08:00

Street Fighter 4 is (or will be?) selling costume packs for around a buck per character. While I appreciate the option to unlock new costumes, paying for things that a game used to give out for free is utter nonsense.

In Dead or Alive 1 through 3 you have to play through the game again and again on higher and higher difficulties to unlock different costumes for characters. In Tekken 5 you play through the game to earn game-money which you can use to spend on unlockable costumes. In Virtua Fighter items are unlocked in a somewhat similar manner, with some being paid for and others being won via matches.

I like the old system. I don't want to be forced to pay for new content. This is especially true for fighting games where the gameplay is rather thin outside of having friends over. Sure there's online play, but I've never found it terribly satisfying. Unlocking goofy hats is pretty much my only reason to play 1p fighters. I'm good enough at the ones I feel like getting good at, and playing the computer's never been very much help in that regard anyway.

My only problem with this old system is that it gets to be a huge pain. Beating DOA 3 on some super high difficulty is next to impossible for me, and while I can fight all day in Tekken 5, the money you earn is middling at best. I get bored of unlocking stuff. At that point, I become completely okay with paying real, actual cash to have all the costumes and customizations unlocked in my game. My time becomes worth more than my money.

What I'd like to see is a hybrid of the two systems. Allow me, should I so choose, to unlock everything without paying money. Let me slog through as much of the game as I want. When I get bored of that however, let me pay to unlock everything.

This would be a great system for every game. I don't have the patience anymore to unlock everything in most games anymore, but I would like to feel like I'm purchasing a whole game. Adding $5 downloads onto a game shortly after it comes out only serves to give the impression of nickel-and-diming the consumer.

"Here's your 'Street Fighter 4 Basic' game, please pay another Twenty Bucks to get 'Street Fighter 4 Complete'."

I think most people will still end up paying for DLC, but no one would feel taken advantage of. I know if I could pay another $5 or $10 to unlock all the things I haven't in my copy of Tekken 5:DR, I would do that. I wouldn't have done that the day I bought the game, but now I've had it long enough that spending more money on it isn't offensive to me, and I just don't have the desire to fight enough matches to unlock all the hairstyles for the characters I don't play.

Earth Defense Force 2017 is still the best game on the market

2009-02-03T14:28:00.000-08:00

seriously.

find a copy. You should probably find a friend too, cos like Contra, it's playable as a 1p game, but it's magical as a 2p game.

PS3 Home

2009-01-05T18:51:00.000-08:00

A few years back I was at a shooting range. My friend asked if they had the Smith and Wesson .50 caliber.

"That gun's the answer to a question nobody asked." came the reply.

To this day, I love that phrase.

And so we have Playstation's Home.

I didn't get much past creating my "avatar". I tried to create my wife but it became apparent that creating attractive women wasn't in the cards and semi-attractive zombie women's not really my thing, so I switched gears to make myself. I have enough skill and confidence to make good caricatures of myself: harsh but amusing. Nonetheless, I could only manage the bluntest caveman version of myself.

Mostly, Home's character creator is lacking foreheads, or tops of heads specifically. Every hairstyle I tried on both virtual me and virtual wife failed moreso because of the decidedly cro-magnon lack of upper head than because of the wrinkles, dead eyes or awful style choices. We looked too cavman, and this coming from a man who thinks he looks more caveman than the average person.

I effectively gave up on creating me, and went out to explore this amazing new world. I appeared in a highrise apartment on the coast of a digital Saint Tropez. Running out to my porch, excited to jump off the edge and explore I found there was no jump button. My next observation was that my male avatar runs like a beaten child--very compactly.

Run animations are a big thing for me, and I won't get too into it here, but when a person is running they should look two things in videogame land:
1. Healthy
2. Their sex

Women and men run differently and it would behoove many a game maker to notice and master the differences. But anyway, I take my weak running man who can't jump the railing to the front door.

I get a message that to walk out of my apartment I'll have to download an additional 22 megs of whatever.

No thanks.

That's the end of my Home experience.

It's not a game, so doesn't technically merit a rating, but it's terrible enough that I'll give it one.

1 star

edit: I just re-read Gorgeous Hair's review. Haha.

2008-11-24T15:16:00.000-08:00

Gorgeous Hair's review of Playstation's HOME

im in this room
and i have some couches
and there's nothing else in it
so i throw my couches around
but it's not fun
so i go out on my balcony
and i can't jump off it
so i go out the room, and it says loading lobby
so i quit
and will never go back in a gain
i want to say "dear playstation home, do you realize you made crap ?"

Good at Games

2008-11-02T15:29:00.000-08:00

Does it matter, getting good at games?

You can argue that J0h@n@+han "Fatal1ty" W3nd311 profits from being good at games. He makes a decent salary. That makes game playing his job, however. I know a lot of people with better jobs because they decided to get good at things other than video games, so the argument is somewhat moot.

Bionic Commando: Rearmed is the last game I had to make an effort at. It wasn't a significant effort. I spent an extra day scrounging up every last free man and patiently beat the last level. I'm pretty good at BC:R now but I have no interest in playing it on hard mode or anything else at this point. I have no idea what was the last game I worked hard to master. Even with Tekken I get by more on my accrued skill over the six games than any concerted effort to master my wall game or something.

And what's the point really? Most games out there currently require zero skill. This is every RPG, MMORPG and everything else. Sure Omega Weapon was hard, but it's a numbers game, not a skill game.

Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox was the last game I had to get good at, from scratch and properly. I even got most of the way through the Hurricane Pack, but then too, at a certain point I asked myself, what is the point?

An Aside About Post-Campaign Replay

2008-11-02T14:30:00.000-08:00

My decision to stop playing both Disgaea and The World Ends With You came for a similar reason. In both cases there's plenty of game after you've beaten the "final" boss. What killed TWE for me was the "black planet" pins, which are the best weapons/items in the game. The problem is that to get one of them, you have to fight the hardest enemy in the entire game, making the use for them rather moot.

So what do you do with them? Re fight that boss only it's easier now?

The longer you play something post-game, the more you ask yourself "what is the point?"

With Eindhander, my quest to get the Selene led to me getting much better at the game, but in RPG's you the game player never get better; your characters in the game get better at playing it. That's a weird meta-situation right there if you stop and think about it: You're watching people play a game. Your involvement is only to be there to tell the characters to get back to work. It's as though there was some sort of God telling me to keep playing Einhander till I was leveled up enough to beat the game on Hard without continuing.

That's some weird business right there, now that I think about it.

Dead Space

2008-11-02T14:27:00.001-08:00

I haven't played it, but I just talked to Gorgeous Hair on the phone about it. He's been playing it and called it a solid 3 star game but was waiting till it was over to see if it held up. Hopefully he'll get around to writing about it himself, but for now, i'll paraphrase:

Last level sucks, Last boss is cool, ending is a slap in the face

2 stars

Einhander

2008-10-29T19:03:00.000-07:00

Since I mentioned it down below, I might as well cover it.

You're a space ship, you fly to the right and shoot things.

Squaresoft was magical back in these days. They were good at everything they tried to be good at. Who can say why someone there decided to make a shooter, and lord knows why it got greenlit in the Lucasarts of the East, but it did, and it's amazing.

Einhander takes everything that was previously right about shooters (dying a lot, memorization of enemy patterns, insanity) and does it even better. Bosses, mini bosses, it's all so good. While some will say some other horizontal shooter's better, I will say they are wrong. While i love Gradius 5, it's not nearly as epic or as brilliantly laid out as this.

4 stars, and in the "Desert Island" competition

Disgaea 2

2008-10-23T22:53:00.000-07:00

First off, Disgaea 1: 3 stars. Not for everybody, but a great story and a just stupid amount of post-story gameplay.

Disgaea 2's story's not as good, or at least not as whimsical which is really the charm of Disgaea games, outside of the mathgasm anyway.

But about that mathgasm, some things about the Disgaea series:

- Max character level: 9999
- number of 'stored levels' you can accrue (this involves reincarnating back to level 1 but with more powerful base stats based on the number of levels you have 'stored') 19,998. (what this basically means is that to make your character as powerful as possible, you will have to level it to 9,999 three times)
- Every item, from a lowly piece of candy (for healing) to the great sword Yoshitsuna has levels inside of it. You can go inside the item, beat randomly generated maps populated by random enemies and level up the item. Every item. Items have between 30 and 100 levels (Per Item!) depending on rarity.
- To get the best weapons and armor (class 40) you have to:

- Buy or find a class 38 weapon or item and go into it. In this "Item World" you'll need to find steal a very rare version of a class 39 weapon, which may or may not show up randomly, pretty much anyhere if the enemy level is high enough in whatever item you are inside.
- Go into said class 39 weapon and level it all the way down to level 99 of 100.
- Collect the 16 pieces of treasure map from the 16 types of pirate that randomly show up after a few turns on any given level in the item world.
- Go to the new "Land of Chaos" opened up by finding all the map parts, going back into your class 39 weapon on it's 99th level, going to level 100 and stealing the class 40 weapon from the "Item God" that resides on the 100th level.

I currently have 15 of the 16 map pieces.

I understand the formation of religions a little better. Everyone says it's random, but there has to be something. Maybe it looks on the clock? Maybe the Jolly Pirates are much more likely to show up on Thursdays? Maybe only when the sun's up? There has to be something to give me an edge other than trying to roll a seven over and over and over again.

2 stars, at least until I get that last map piece.

Got the map piece. Now I have two "Yoshitsuna" swords. The thing I'm finding now is that while Disgaea has always been far less about "strategy" than say, Fire Emblem, it's also becoming embarassingly apparent how rote everything about the game is.

You could not convince a man from twenty years ago that anyone would have fun doing this, and while I do and may even take all 10-plus hours it takes to "perfect" a Yoshitsuna, it's still a horrid waste of time.

I used to be mad that in Einhander (4 stars if I haven't covered it yet) to get the ultimate ship, the Selene (9999 of any given ammo, dual gunpods) you had to beat the game, on hard, without continuing (which I never did). Now I don't know. Disgaea is the opposite. The game keeps going and while there are super hard enemies to fight, there's basically no reward (other than possibly bragging to the one other dude who's even heard of the game that you know, and truth be told he's not impressed, he's freaked out). The Selene may have been nigh-impossible to get, but I did get super good at Hard Mode because of it.

2 stars. 3 if you're into strat rpg-esque games.

Linger in the Shadows

2008-10-17T17:48:00.000-07:00

They say up front it's not a game but rather an interactive art piece. I don't entirely buy that. It's a very slow and even more poorly explained "Dragon's Lair".

I like the idea of people doing things like this, but I have no love for this specifically. Being able to spin the sprite particles does not interactive art make. If it did more stuff I'd be more onboard, but the game seems to be hit all the buttons, which all do nothing until the right moment when one will do something.

This gets into an idea of technology art. A game, by its very nature, should feel like you are in control of it. Art gets to pick and choose, but because this art is on my PS3 I want to feel like I have more input than I do so I'm upset about it.

Who knows.

Bionic Commando Rearmed

2008-09-05T03:49:00.000-07:00

I wasn't even considering buying the Swedish developed Bionic Commando sequel, what with it's anti hero and his dreadlocks landing square in the middle of every comic book character from 1995.

They tricked me however. For $10, I got to download a revamped version of the original. Stage layout essentially the same, music remixed. Now with actual bosses and a much harder last level. I'm loving playing it. The new definition of how a remake should be done.

But they did something tricky: they got me to realize that these Swedes at Grin have the right idea. They get it. They certainly understand the original game. Then they went in and snuck in a few plot points and pickups for the 3d version coming out.

Now I really want to play it, this new Bionic Commando. Especially since by buying Rearmed, I get Rad Spencers original outfit to wear.

Interest piqued, dreadlock issue resolved, I'm now buying the new game unless consensus is it's horrible.

Also worth noting is the new writing in the game is awesome.

EDIT:
yesterday the game glitched out and I lost my save. Upon playing it through again, i'm promoting it. This game is all i've been playing for weeks now, and I can see firing it up from time to time to play again.

4 stars.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Demotion

2008-07-28T15:42:00.000-07:00

So I played through the game again (on easy) doing a no alert, no kill run to get the always fun infinite headband and stealth camo, two staples of MGS replay value.

I skipped all the cutscenes and it underscored one thing: There's not much gameplay in Metal Gear 4.

One of the most interesting aspects in the promises of MGS 4 was being able to pick sides in a conflict. Snake would be able to ally with one side or the other, or go neutral and sneak on by. Skirmishes between factions only happen in the first two stages in the game, and you are never able to choose a side. You can try and sneak by, or you can make friends with the rebels. That's it. Helping the rebels means they won't flip out when they see you, but there's not a major change to the gameplay.

Skirmishes are boring, shooting the enemies is boring and the game is completely uneventful until level 3 when it merits more criticism.

The failure oflevel 3 is that the only people on the town streets are you, your target and soldiers. You are given a civilian disguise at the start of the level, but there's no need to ever use it. The PMC's already know exactly who you are, even with a mask on (go figure) and there's no one else on the streets. You don't need to even try to blend in: you're better off using your camo and hiding in the shadows, or, do as Gorgeous Hair did and stay in the cardboard box the whole time.

Waste of half a level. But hey, at least it was 'different'.

Level 4 takes us to Shadow Moses island, which can be summed up thusly:

"I didn't realize Metal Gear 1 was so ...small"

It's a short level, full of instances of infinite enemies, except where there aren't. Game balance: how it's done.

The Sniper Wolf battle's pretty cool. Apparently she wasn't initially hard enough, so they added those "frog" ladies to come look for you, which is a bit annoying, but whatever. I liked this battle the most.

The battle I liked next to most was the Metal Gear vs Metal Gear battle. The problem I have with it is it's like GTA. Grand Theft Auto does nothing well. It's a game of other games, all done better in their other games. People love it cos it has all kinds of different games. Metal Gear doesn't do robot on robot battles as well as other games. Still, it's the second best battle in the game, for what it's worth.

After that Liquid controls Snakes nanomachines, hops into a gigantic submarine and (almost) kills Raiden. Mei Ling shows up on the only working battleship in the US Navy.

BREAK.

Here is my biggest problem with the game outside of it's 3 hours of actual gameplay time: The story is stupid. Balistically stupid. Stand in front of this story and it will kill you with it's ineptness. The US has installed nanomachines into all their soldiers and vehicles, as has every other military in the world, all apparently using the same single AI system.

Yeah.

Liquid hacks into it and has complete control over everything that can cause violence. The game says there's no fighting in the world at this point. The only working warship (in the world) is Mei Ling's. Why the un-nanoed rebels from levels 1 and 2 aren't using this time to take over their respective countries I'm not quite sure. All millitaries of the world are broken and you're honestly going to tell me that instead of revolutions happening in half the countries of the world, everyone's having a fucking sunday?

So yeah.

With that kind of lazy writing, you can guess how satisfying the rest of the story will be.

Level 5 is so insultingly short it shouldn't even be called a level except for it's at least 2 hours of cutscenes.

Level 5 is exactly one board. get past some soldiers, shoot a few robots (nobody ever goes "Holyshit, our giant robots got shot!" in Metal Gear) and open a door by hitting the triangle button really fast. That's it. Boss Fight, level over.

The plot at this point centers around a supercomputer at the end of a deadly microwave corridor. No human can get in cos they'll get cooked. Snake says he'll go cos he's dying anyway. One last act of heroism. It's awesome. I'm serious. It's an amazing moment in an otherwise mediocre game. You, playing Snake, get to sacrifice your life for the goal of the game. I wish other games could nail this level of self-sacrifice in their characters.

The great moment is promptly ruined when you get to the supercomputer and Ottacon's little robot comes out and does all the work. ALL the work. You sit there, likely thinking, "sure I was gonna die, but was my final act to escort this stupid plot device?" I don't care if they gave Snake a floppy disk to upload or had him put some plastic explosive on the machine (which would have been both sweet and a nice homage to the old NES game) but to hand off the climax of the game to an RC car is crap.

Snake sits there and watches the little robot break everything. He watches as you the player are watching while the game plays yet another cutscene, all control of the situation taken away from you and Snake at the same time. Part of me wishes this was deliberate; You the player are watching the game hero watch a robot do the job at hand. A robot which is being controlled by someone remotely, as though they were playing a video game. Maybe Kojima knows his game is hardly a game; this scene being his analogy for the whole MGS 4 experience: sit there and watch.

It climaxes with a very pretty and somewhat poignant if completely implausible (they're gonna heal each other up and keep fighting? come on!) fight between Snake and Liquid that plays nothing like the rest of the game and are then insulted for an hour and a half with the resolution of the game in which everyone is still happy and no one dies. When Yang and Cid weren't dead in Final Fantasy, that was kinda weak, but okay, cos Tellah really did die and also it was not a gritty war tale.

BUT

BUT

BUT!~!!!

now I have the Stealth Camo, the Tanegashima (gun that has a 33% chance of making a tornado) and the infinite headband. Time for some fuggin REPLAY VALUE!

Headband is instantly obsolete: you have been able to buy as much ammo as you'd ever need from the menu screen since the first level.

The Tanegashima's tornado is cool, but neither fun nor useful. The reload and randomness of the tornado make it only a novelty. It also manages to work almost nowhere. A weapon to load up and show your friends once and that's it.

The Stealth is crap too: it doesn't' work against machines, which is dumb cos it's a magical cheat device so it might as well. Once enemies are alerted to your presence, they can see you even when the stealth is on. Why? Again, it's a magical chead device, given to you after you have completed the game to add an interesting replay value. The whole fun of getting it is that you can do funny things like appear in front of a guy, have him flip out, then disappear and watch him get confused as hell. Now it's broken and all of the fun I had with it in previous games is no longer have-able.

and my last complaint:

In MGS2 you could collect dog tags from every soldier. in MGS3 you could find and shoot frogs on every map.

There's nothing like that in MGS 4. You can get medals for doing various things, but there's no sub-game that runs through everything. There's nothing that will show you the nuance of the game the way having to stick up every soldier in MGS2 did. There's nothing to force you to explore the areas like the MGS3 frogs did. My cynical side thinks this is deliberate, because frankly, there's way less depth to the game this time around.

2 stars.

Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft's e3 announcements

2008-07-15T16:48:00.001-07:00

Sony:
Movie rentals? On my game system. Awesome.

Microsoft:
Avatars, Really?

Nintendo:
More exact Wii controls. Great, more stuff I can buy and not use.

1 star.

Gorgeous Hair mentioned how they announced things like ZOE3 and the next ICO game last year but haven't shown anything. I posited a theory that after the breakup of last years e-3 thing, this year's return to form isn't being taken as seriously, and in an odd way, Dennis Dyack may have gotten his wish. So game companies are showing whatever's showable, and the Japanese ones are mostly waiting for the Tokyo Game Show to drop info.

We'll see if I'm right whenever that show is.

Metal Gear Solid 4 (bullet point version)

2008-06-16T02:22:00.000-07:00

Bad
- nanomachines
- 2 codec channels, neither as interesting as calling up Para-Medic and asking about eating stuff.
- can only befriend rebels, has little outcome on the game
- length of cutscenes. They're good, but too long.
- Drebin calling you up to tell you why each boss was so crazy
- general depth of the non-Liquid villians (which is to say nonexistent)
- installs for every level, on every playthrough.

Good
- wraps up the whole story, and explains many previously stupid aspects of it well
- lots of guns = lots of funs
- gameplay isn't revolutionary, but it's good
- all four B and B boss battles are awesome and the most varied of any MGS game
- great variations on sneaking in levels 2 and 3
- one amazing on-rails sequence
- the graphics are insanely good
- the sound is insanely good
- the animations are insanely good

so definitely buy it, definitely play it, but it's got some issues.

3 stars

Metal Gear Solid 4 (short version)

2008-06-16T01:37:00.000-07:00

What if I told you that all the loose ends of the Metal Gear story could be wrapped up, but to do it you'd have to watch fifteen twenty-minute powerpoint presentations on "nanomachines"?

3 stars.

Metal Gear Solid 4

2008-06-14T13:30:00.001-07:00

To be perfectly frank, not much is new. The touted ability to get on one side of a battle is just that, one-sided. You can't ever make the Private Military Companyies like you, so it's more a gimmick that's in play for two levels and is promptly forgotten.

My biggest issue is with the story. Metal Gear 2 had a terrible story for a myriad of reasons, but primarily because the story is told through phone conversations and powerpoint presentations. For all the hype about Kojima being a filmmaker, he'd blown it on the editorial front. You play a level, see a cutscene and then Otacon or Snake or someone gets you on the phone to explain why you can't pick up the dead guy's gun. And it takes him 10 minutes to explain it. Metal Gear 2 is more someone reading a book at you than a visual story. Cut just the cutscenes together and you'd have zero idea what that game was about.

Metal Gear 3 made up for it. Kojima must have heard the criticism, cos the cutscenes told the story. They were much better directed and the story itself was considerably tighter. It didn't center around the rather mediocre explanation for why you can't pick up everyone's guns (nanomachines).

And this is where Metal Gear 4's story falls apart. It's focused on a NES gameplay element. Only now there's ton's of PMCs and they (and the full US military) are staffed entirely by nanomachine enhanced humans with nanomachine tagged guns. Even their fucking battleships are nanoed up.

This all serves the story fine, but it sucks.

It sucks because by coming back to the present day, Kojima has gone back to excessively long dialoge sequences and tons of yammering about nanomachines and artificial intelligence.

I'm pissed because Metal Gear 3 was so good, and so on message. It's depictions of the arms race, of the concept of patriotism and the motivations for the villain of the original Metal Gear were all excellently told. MGS4 has some great points about private militaries, but they get lost in Liquid Ocelot's arbitrary goals and his obsession with a fucking server.

One thing the game does phenomenally is Old Snake. He's old, he's given up on life and just wants to get through this last mission. It's great to see and if I focus on it over the nanomachine bull I feel very positively about the game.

Raiden as well, is very interesting this time out. Meryl's okay and the Johnny guy I could do without completely, though it is nice to see how they tie him in to the whole story. The other two guys in Rat Patrol are forgetable, which is pretty sad when you think about how cool Foxhound and Cobra Unit were. Drebin is decent, his monkey's totally awesome. The detail in the character animations for everyone is dead nuts and shames all other games out there. The game does a lot of things well.

But I can't help but imagine what the game could have been if Kojima had decided to focus less on nanomachines and AI and more on actual people (who are not Old Snake).

3 stars.

10 Things That Suck

2008-06-11T22:26:00.000-07:00

Gorgeous Hair told me about the people who were lined up to get Halo at midnight. They had one assessment of everything: "Gears of War sucks", "Halo sucks", "Sony sucks".

In honor of many of the same lads now in line at stores around the country, waiting for the stroke of midnight, here are 10 things that suck in games.

1. Bow levels in Ninja Gaiden 2

2. the last boss in God of War 1. Plays like nothing else in the game. To quote Mitch Hedberg, "OK, you're a cook. Can you farm?"

3. Open world game design

4. Button Mashing. While hitting the X button super fast is a skill, who cares? It' shitty.

5. The boobs in all Team Ninja games. With so much porn so easily available these days, why the complete ignorance of how breasts look and move?

6. Nazis as villians. Also tall lanky aliens with lots of eyes and large teeth. Did everyone go to the same villain design school?

7. Purple and Green color pallete (Too Human, Halo), like the above, it smacks of a certain person, a certain type of people that keep designing this shit. The kind of guys who think reading vampire novels aloud to women is sexy, and the kind of women who agree.

8. The Wii. I'm serious, have you played yours? Mine's a frigging Blazing Lazers emulator, and that's it.

9. The next hour and 20 minutes until I get my hands on Metal Gear Solid 4

10. My hangover.

Metal Gear Solid 3

2008-06-11T21:58:00.000-07:00

Where do you go from a terrorist attack on NYC, gratuitous ball grabbing, incest, neverending radio conversations and not even being able to play as Solid Snake?

Into the past. 1964 to be specific.

Metal Gear 2 was good, but the bosses were a bit forgettable (and there were only like three of them) and it had numerous other issues.

I've always loved Metal Gear, so while I wasn't as excited about MGS3 as I was about part 2, I did get around to buying it, and eventually completing it. You see, as happened with Metal Gear 2, I got supremely frustrated right at the beginning of the game, only unlike MGS2, I stopped playing and went on to other shit. Months passed.

Matt had been playing it and told me it was sweet. I got back on the horse.

They had taken everything I thought I loved about Metal Gear (walking tanks, sci-fi storyline, the radar) and threw it away.

What I was left with ...was what I loved about Metal Gear.

To this day it still amazes me. It's like a Murakami novel. The dude writes about people doing errands for half the book and when you finish you think, "that book was awesome." The story takes place in the past (booring), the bosses are all dudes in camo (boooring) and you spend most of the game in a jungle looking for food (booring).

I've played through the entire game three times. I've gotten all the special camo patterns and shot all the frogs. It's one of my all time favorite games. It's in the running for deserted island scenario. The level of satisfaction I got out of the story and gameplay is comparable to a good book. The last game that blew me away as much was Ninja Gaiden 1. On the NES.

4 stars

NES Ninja Gaiden

2008-06-11T21:10:00.001-07:00

True story:
I had spent months to get to beat this game. I had levels 1-1 through 6-1 mastered. Getting past them was a nonissue. 6-2 was hell on earth, 6-3 wasn't as bad, but got completely nuts on the very last board. Beaten by the Masked Devil on 6-4, I was sent back to 6-1. This time, on 6-3 I got the JumpNSlash powerup (on the first board in the level) and kept it with great effort, so I could completely own the Masked Devil. And I did.

Then the Jaquio showed up. With my JumpNSlash taken from me, I died. Then, cos there was a big thunder storm that day, the power went out. To get back to where I was, I would have to go through the entire game again. Then my friend Adrian called.

He'd just beaten the game.

I saw the ending later that day when I went over to his house and had him beat it again. It was years until I did it myself.

Ninja Gaiden 1 is NES punishment. It's one of the most cheap, abusing games ever made. The problem with that is the controls were drum tight, and the cinema sequences (a first in games) told such a compelling tale that thousands of us 12 year olds would destroy ourselves trying to get to the end of it.

It took so much effort I still have parts of the game in my muscle memory.

4 stars

Ninja Gaiden 2

2008-06-10T01:03:00.000-07:00

A few notes for Team Ninja and Tomonobu Itagaki:

- More rockets = more annoyance. I was skeptical of people complaining of the rockets in this game, but they are really annoying. Fortunately I got past the last of them last night while I was super drunk (the secret was exploding shurikens).

- The bow is not fun. Ever. Since you have to charge your bow shots to have them do damage, using the bow requires standing about, aiming, waiting and getting hit a lot. Boring and annoying. Whereas the first game balanced it nicely (the tank battles come to mind) all bow sequences suck in this game. Extra bonus: the second to last guy is a bow battle.

- The environments are beatutiful.

- What's with the ninja diaries? Did I miss something interesting? Cos I don't think I did, also, reading blows.

- The lightning guy, with the sword, who looks like Kain from Final Fantasy 4, yeah, I beat him already, him and his "wait for him to do a combo or big move, then attack" pattern, back in the first game, at the end of the first level.

- That said, he's most interesting one to fight, everything else falling victim to a shitty camera and other gimmickry to make the fights hard. Boss of chapter 3 - the camera.

- I like wrecking werewolves

- things without human like shape (the snake bug creatures) aren't as fun cos i never know when I lop dem heads off.

- I'm all about loppin dem heads off.

- Arms too.

- Knock it off with the dick moves. The Landmines after the "Hogan's Alley" sequence, the armadillos that blow up and the lava mines after the 2nd fire fiend battle serve little purpose other than forcing you to redo (ahem, "enjoy again") some of the shittier parts of the game.

- a little less "loading"...."saving"....."Hit A to Proceed"...."loading"....etc... Dying takes like 30 seconds to get back in the action. MAJOR buzkill and probably, other than the magic rocketeers, is the most annoying thing about the game. Put me back in coach!

- Knock it off with the giant waggly tits.

so far (i'm on level 8 of 14) it's a 3 star game. It's more of the first, and that's good, and the carnage is good, the weapons are all tons of fun, but there's just little things that are piling up to a non-4star experience.

I'll re-star it when I beat it. (i'm playing it on the Acolyte mode, which is the easiest mode, cos i'm old and I want to beat it before MGS4 comes out cos we all know i'm not picking it up after that.)

Okay so I beat it (on Acolyte a.k.a "easy") and I think it's still 3 stars, but barely.

The combat is bliss, the boss battles are haphazard, with some feeling real good, some real bad but most feeling exactly the same (lightning fiend, fire fiend, blood lady fiend, lightning sword man and the last boss all play similarly), and the bow is complete crap.

Also the ending is short and stupid. Castlevania 1 has a better ending. NES Ninja Gaiden is in another universe.

While the fighting and melee weapons got improved in the game, nothing else did.

3 stars

Ninja Gaiden (xbox)

2008-06-02T22:43:00.000-07:00

There was this magical time a few years ago, when after having Devil May Cry as the only even remotely playable 3d action game, everyone, almost at once, got it.

The result was Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time, which I've only seen people play, God of War, which I already wrote about, and Ninja Gaiden.

PoP got platforming down way better, GoW was a good balance but fell into the Devil May Cry arena of hundreds of easy to kill dudes. Then there was Ninja Gaiden.

It took me two days to beat the first level.

Every new level seemed impossibly harder than the last one (except for the annoying swimming one), every new boss was barely beaten. Heck, even the regular enemies were an accomplishment to pass. Black Ninjas throwing exploding shurikens? Hello death upon death.

Then you get army dudes with rocket launchers, cumulating with you taking out two tanks and an attack helicopter in a row (WITH YOUR BOW!).

It's a game that never lets up, has no interest in helping you to the end. In short, it's the old game.

The NES game. While the two sequels got easier (though the NES NG3 in the US apparently was extra hard, i've only played the SNES 'port' and that one is easier), none ever got easy. If you die on the last boss, you go back to 6-1. Any kid who played that game likely can play though 6-1, 6-2 and 6-3 with their eyes closed.

The tradition of abuse continues, but unlike the old version which relied on glitch spawn points and arbitrary obstacles, the new one beats you down with skilled enemies.

After beating the game, I played through again. The one thing I noticed right away was how much better at it I was. Not even the rocket launching army men were giving me trouble.

Ninja Gaiden is a game that will teach you how to play it and force you to get good at it. In a time where you can fall asleep in front of the controller and accomplish tasks, it's nice to see.

4 stars.

Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 7 and Chrono Cross

2008-05-28T16:27:00.000-07:00

All three of these games are easy definitions of 4 star games, however Final Fantasy 7 ruined Chrono Cross for me and likely many others.

In Chrono Trigger you follow a group of heroes through the game, and after you beat it, you play through again with all your levels and gear. This is brilliant and was huge for the time. You can also fight the last guy at almost any time in the game. This opens up something like 10 endings depending on what you have and haven't accomplished in the game.

So I played through Chrono Trigger many times, and I love it to this day.

Final Fantasy 7 was the first major RPG to use the crutch of prerendered cutscenes. Don't get me wrong, the reason I bought a PS1 at all was because I saw one of these and it was so far beyond what I was accustomed to in games like Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger that I knew I had to own it. But they are a crutch and have done a great disservice to games in general and RPGs specifically.

I had always been fine with the bitmapped characters of the 16 bit era. I was moved by the stories, compelled to keep playing. But not in the 32 bit era. Now I needed a 10 minute plus full CGI ending to be satisfied. And if all the ads for these games are any indication, so did the rest of you.

I could also complain about the complete interchangeability of the characters, and the fact that all the summons with no exceptions were just large "damage all" attacks, but it's really about how the CG cutscenes set a new standard.

So late in the PS1 lifespan, we get Chrono Cross, a brilliant almost non-sequel to Trigger. something like 40 characters (all with different attacks and skills!) and a myriad of different endings.

Problem was, other than the stock CG piece that you got with every ending, it was all in game graphics. Star Ocean 2 had the same issue. Game graphics for the ending. Psssh.

So I have to say it was all a little ruined for me.

A long time ago I told my dad I wanted Friendly's for dinner. I was being driven home from the after school program at the YMCA. I still remember the intersection we were at. He said to me "If I had never taken you there, you wouldn't want to go." He didn't say it angrily or spiteful, just pointing out that fact. My mind was blown. He was right, but shit!

I don't know if Final Fantasy 13 is going to finally fix the issue. It's supposed to be all in game, which I would like, and it's being produced by the guy who directed Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 7, so who knows. Besides, that game's not due till at least 2010.

Chrono Trigger - 4 stars
Final Fantasy 7 - 4 stars
Chrono Cross - 4 stars

Earth Defense Force 2017 (review 2)

2008-05-28T16:10:00.000-07:00

I have a hard time talking about things I enjoy. It seems to be at least somewhat of a societal problem, as most blogs that are fun to read are fun because the writers hate whatever it is they are writing about.

for example, What Would Tyler Durden Do? is funny (most of the time anyway) cos he hates everything he writes about.

in contrast, the exemplary Boing Boing isn't. There may be funny things in the posts, but the writing itself is never terribly so.

Humorously writing about that which you love or enjoy is hard. At least unless you are Andrew W.K. in which case it's easy and brilliant.

So EDF, budget title for the Xbox 360. Best game on the system and the one which to this day I can still pick up and enjoy playing. It's a simple enough game. Giant robots and bugs are attacking and your job is to kill every non human thing on the map. Then you do it again.

The variety of levels is amazing. When Gorgeous Hair, Scummy and I were working through Inferno for the first time we had to heavily strategize, which is impressive because they only strategy is what weapons to carry, where to go, and what to shoot first.

When you're attempts at playing Patton pay off it's huge. A hi-5 scenario.

Even without that, the game is loads of fun. We constantly compare it to Contra, which I think is reasonably apt. Running and gunning. That's it. In a time when GTA is trying to be everything to everyone, EDF wants to be about shooting shit. Shooting the holy hell out of it, over and over and over.

One of the developers of Halo said it was about making a fun 45 seconds and doing it over and over again. EDF nails it in a way Halo 3 can only visualize in dreams.

EDF wants to challenge you to emerge from a shower of green bug blood or inferno of exploding robots. It wants you to be a badass space marine and that's it.

This review isn't funny, and I know pretty well that I'll never be able to explain why I think this, above all things, is gaming perfection, but I felt it was necessary to pop back in and tell you to try it out. Play it w/ a buddy. Beat 10 levels. And then, if you want, stop.

Good luck with that, stopping.

4 stars

GTA 4 - hour 3

2008-05-10T09:53:00.000-07:00

Started playing again. No one called with any missions. Eventually I got my fat cousin to come with me to a titty bar that was super far away. After I got a lap dance, the dancer ran away and I had to beat up two bouncers, probably cos I had no money when I went in.

If this game doesn't start giving me better weapons and actual missions soon, i'm gonna stop playing. I heard about this "friend" making system, but right now all it feels like is a way to replace the errand running to get your armor and weapons back before each mission. I'm bored shitless. My Fiancee's already making fun of how little i've played it.

1 star.

Crash Team Racing

2008-05-09T00:57:00.000-07:00

Go Kart games, specifically Mario Kart, are awesome. Why then, does the team over at Naughty Dog, completely own every Kart game prior and since? This was the last Crash game ND made, and their new series Jak and Uncharted aren't conducive to a kart game, so i think the dream of getting a kart game that's better than this is gone.

And yeah, I said it: this game is better than every Mario Kart. Better powerslide system, rewards for getting sick air, more shortcuts and track variety. Better characters too. While the nintendo pantheon is legendary, none of the characters has ever had a personality and all attempts to give them some are cursory. Crash skirts the "animation w/ 'tude" phenomenon (That begat Sonic, Bubsy, the Cool Spot and too many others) but comes off with enough well placed humor that I don't imagine the creators in goatees and year-round shorts.

So yeah, fun to play, amazing tracks, complete win. And I bought my most recenty copy of it for under $10. Why is this not on the PSN?

4 stars

Crackdown

2008-05-09T00:45:00.001-07:00

From the creator of the GTA series comes this apology for everything Grand Theft Auto has never become. Good battling, well designed, usable levels and an upgrade system that keeps you working at all your skills. Instead of the world getting bigger making getting around more cumbersome, your ability to run, swim and drive through it increases so getting from point A to B is never much of a problem. Also love the weapon collection system.

I'm pissed the sequel never got asked for, but glad they're working on APB, which should be awesome.

The only complaints I have about this game are that the bosses don't offer much variety other than the difficulty getting to them, and once you've got your skills maxed out, the game starts to lose it's carbonation. Dicking around in the world is super fun, but once I got my skills up I played it for about two more hours and haven't played since.

3 stars.

Grand Theft Auto 4 - 1st 2 hours

2008-05-09T00:36:00.000-07:00

While i post this, Gorgeous Hair's likely online having a blast with it. I have not been online. What I can tell you is that everything old is new again. Restarting missions is easier. So good for that. I haven't got a gun yet, so I can't comment.

What sucks so far:
- terrible frame rate. TERRIBLE
- Nico walks comedically slow. It might be realistic, but after playing Crackdown, I'm over it.
- Motion capture and animation straight out of Grand Theft Auto 3, which even back then wasn't anything special.
- While some of the humor's good, most of it's straight out of the 8th grade.

What doesn't:
- Brooklyn or wherever I am is nicely done. Feels both large enough and small enough and has a nice amount of variety.

2 stars

more later

Super Mario Galaxy

2008-02-10T02:09:00.000-08:00

fuck water, fuck springs.

3 stars

Lost Odyssey

2008-02-10T01:55:00.000-08:00

Gears of War ushered in a new era of game advertising. The usage of Gary Jules' cover of "Mad World" was lovely and new. You got your peanut butter in my chocolate.

If it works once...

1 star

this AMV > your national campaign

Final Fantasy 12

2008-02-09T11:00:00.000-08:00

Final Fantasy is bought for the story. Even in the 16 bit days when it wasn't seven of the same character with different looking weapons sharing the same magic and armor, it was still far more about story than it was about any mazing innovations in gameplay, ATB or no.

The story? The story in this game is, well, it's Star Wars. Star Wars, only instead of Luke having everything he knew destroyed and no place to go but into his adventure that he had been unknowingly tied to since birth, Luke just had nothing better to do that day. There's lots of intrigue and assassination, which would be totally sweet were it not for the fact that no one in the story has any reason to hang around. Even Han Solo tried to leave every chance he could till they froze him.

Barring story however, it's the best Final Fantasy since the 16 bit days. The world and specifically the main city feel alive. The art direction--outside of the pig-nosed ladyboy lead character (who fortunately due to the complete interchangeability of the characters you almost never have to use)--is awesome. Against Final Fantasy 7's goth convention, 8's Minnesota teenagers and 10's beach eveningwear, 12's costumes look like they came from an orignal place; a place with culture, art and history all it's own.

The battles are a great improvement. No more "line up across the street and come over one at a time" nonsense, you get an open field full of enemies who'd rather be left alone. If you don't walk into their area of influence enemies will keep to themselves. While you can give commands to all three party members, you can also script different actions, such as "attack the enemy that the leader is attacking" and "if someone's HP go blelow 40% cast cure on them". This takes even more of the bland out of RPG fighting but at the same time is an autopilot. For example, i beat the last guy with the controller on the table in front of me. But that's A-OK with me. RPG battle systems have always been a chore, so the ability to have my team T C of B while I make a sandwich is pretty sweet. I'm still missing the "auto battle" command from Phantasy Star 3.

Small confession: all those collect-a-thon games I talk such shit on? I play the hell out of them. Got all the souls in Aria and Dawn of Sorrow. Have a 200+ hour Disgaea save file. It's like the game doesn't even begin until the last guy is dead (or might as well be in the case of my Final Fantasy 10 save: all my characters can kill it in one hit)

For every guy who's ever thought the worlds most insipid question, this game is the reason girls date assholes. Sitting there killing my hundredth fiery dog, hoping it would drop whatever it's rare item was I could barely remember why it was I was even playing. There was a vague goal of that sword I didn't need, but why wasn't I playing something else? There were other great games out at the time, but here I was in my dark cave doing the same repetitive thing for a goal I knew would not reward my effort.

Worst Story. Best Gameplay.

3 stars

Metroid Fusion

2008-02-08T05:28:00.001-08:00

I love Metroid. I love that you can do all sorts of goofy shit and do things out of order if you know tricks. I also love the lonely space vibe it gives off. The closest thing it has to story is those animals in Super Metroid teaching you how to wall jump.

Then there's Fusion. "Metroid for Dummies" Samus giving you her thoughts on stuff and a computer telling you exactly where to go.

The one redeeming feature cos even most of the boss battles sucked, is the crazy dash charge jump business where you can carry a dash charge through multiple screens to get some special thing. And no one knew about it or cared.

1 star.

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

2008-02-08T05:20:00.000-08:00

Echoes is right. A paler, distorted version of a once clear sound.

Metroid Prime was nothing short of a miracle. Taking that series into 3d was impossible and Retro did it.

4 stars easy

So, um, let's take Metroid Prime, but make it a Light and Dark world, like Zelda. Then we don't have to design as many maps and the game will be longer dude to all the "shoot object in light world, go to dark world, door is open" puzzles. Then let's take the beam weapons, make them suck and have them run out of ammo.

So we go from a supremely executed tribute and sequel to Super Metroid with zero missteps, to a fucking purple and black world full of teenage tribal tattoo monsters and me having to worry about ammo conservation?

1 star

Super Castlevania 4

2008-02-08T04:57:00.001-08:00

Castlevania 4 is a remake of Castlevania 1. You may not know that because like Castlevania 1, there is zero dialog or in-game story. Dude shows up at the gate to Dracula's castle, kills everything inside, castle crumbles. For all we know, Dracula was minding his own business.

But fuck that guy because laying waste to his property is the most fun you can have with a game titled "Castlevania"

4 stars.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night +

2008-02-06T21:14:00.000-08:00

Symphony of the Night was awesome. I've played it through at least ten times, and gotten the Duplicator twice. I had a character with two Runeswords and two Heaven Swords. I beat it with Richter. I played the shit out of this game. And I loved it.

The game also ushered in everything that sucks about 2d Castlevania. It's a collect-a-thon. A MMORPG for the Metroid set. You run around and kill enemies over and over in order to get all the useful gear, then you use it to kill bosses easily.

Sure you can avoid the Crissaegrim, but then you fall victim to the game's larger problem. In order to accommodate for the huge variety of levels and weapons that can be brought into a fight, the bosses have simple patterns and take way too long to kill. The fights feel loose. No longer are battles restricted by what weapons you can pick up in the level and a lifebar. Sky's the limit, so you end up doing the boss patterns over and over and over and over. There's a lot of this. Tedium for tedium's sake. You've got the patterns down, but you have to keep doing them.

Which is why I always rush to the upside-down library as fast as I can and spend as long as it takes to get a Schmoo to drop the Crissegrim so I can run through the rest of the game like it isn't even there. It's not real gameplay, but It's good fun, even if it did ruin Castlevania

3 stars

+

I posited to Gorgeous Hair that the score should be 4 stars divided by the number of times Koji Igarashi has ripped off the game on DS. We decided that Igarashi should release all the sprites he keeps reusing so we can all make our own Castlevanias.

Igarashi recently did us a favor by releasing Rondo of Blood for PSP. He had nothing to do with the game but got himself elected "Mr Castlevania" over at Konami, apparently for his ablity to knock off Symphony of the Night. So here we are playing the most sought after Castlevania. The one that still costs over $100 on ebay. It was great back in the day, but it doesn't hold up all that well (CV4 does) and PSP makes everything harder to play so it double sucks. I'm glad they included the old 2d version, but the inclusion of SotN makes me think Igarashi's trying to convince people he made Symphony.

One game he is responsible for is the PS2's Lament of Innocence. Devil May Cry was originally intended to be Resident Evil 4, but it comes across as a much better attempt at 3d Castlevania. Lament is the biggest insult to the series, as it tries to be an origin story. It's got some neat ideas: the origin of Dracula and the Belmont rivalry with him was cool. The origin of the Belmonts' primary weapon was not. The Vampire Killer is a chain whip with a morning star on the end. Supremely badass and definitively Castlevania. In Lament you get to create it by killing your recently vampire'd girlfriend and turning her into the whip. But instead of turning into that metal pinnacle of destruction, it turns purple. Purple leather whip.

WHAT
THE
FUCK

I know it's a small detail and I should probably beat on the game for the fact that I had to check the map twice per room because of the horrible design, or for the fact that when I go looking for healing potions the game doesn't pause. I should be pissed the most about those things, but it's the purple whip that kills me. All the whips in the game suck (fire, ice, lightning and alchemy) and the Vampire Killer was to be my salvation. When I got it I had to double check that i was in fact equipping it. Purple suckage.

Then King Castlevania got back to his non-roots and got into the serious business of making us forget the potential Circle of the Moon had by making the shittastic Harmony of Dissonance. A return to Ayami Kojima's ladyboy heroes (between Konami and Square, i'd be amazed if there's a straight dude in the entire Japanese industry), and the exact gameplay of SotN, only with less weapons and less fun. I don't know how that game is so bad, but man it is.

(Minus 1 star for every game other than A Link to the Past that uses a "dark world" btw)

Stella got his groove back with Aria of Sorrow. It played much better and had way too many things to collect. Halfway though you get the ability to run through the game stupid fast. It is awesome, but begs the question, what kind of game should you enjoy skipping through at great speed? Dawn of Sorrow and Portal of Ruin have deviated from that formula not an inch. Seriously: level editor.

Rondo of Blood: 3 stars
Rondo PSP: 2 stars
Lament of Innocence 1 star
Circle of the Moon: 3 stars
Harmony of Dissonance: 1 star
Aria of Sorrow: 2 stars
Dawn of Sorrow: 2 stars
Portal of Ruin: 2 stars

Gods of Wars

2008-02-06T19:33:00.000-08:00

While Devil May Cry showed a great example of how 3d Castlevania could look, it wasn't until God of War came out that we saw how amazing it could have played.

This game is the perfect example of limiting things in order to make everything sweet. Only two weapons, both very different and usable in different situations. Sure the Chaos Blades are way better than the sword because they are the coolest action weapon ever given to any character in a 3d game, but the sword was still good times.

There's only three bosses, but each fight is very memorable and fun (except for the last last Ares fight, but whatev. Small potatoes for such a perfect game)

4 stars

Then the sequel came out and gave us what we "wanted": More weapons and more bosses. While my memory is good enough to remember what most of them are, I don't remember the battles themselves. I never used that hammer or spear. Ever.

The "brutality" was also cranked up, which is just gobs of stupid, cos while Kratos is a complete asshole in the first one, it's all grounded in how Ares fucked him over. In the second one, he's just like, mad and smashing random dude's heads for not much reason. He's way less of an interesting character. I'm not saying he's god's gift to writing in the first one, but all the cool things about him are gone in #2 and he's just a whiny mad teenager yelling "ZEUS!" a lot and killing as many mythological characters for arbitrary reasons as possible.

Speaking of smashing heads those "press X now" minigames have to go. Mother of god. I dunno if it was because of wireless PS3 lag or because I suck at Simon, but it took me near 80 tries to beat Zeus at the end. You get to the end of the game and they ask you to play fucking Simon. No. I want a well thought out boss that is challenging via the actual gameplay, not some lame attempt to make the story sequences more interactive. I want a victory to come from my God of War skill, not from my eye's ability to tell my thumb "time to hit the X" correctly. If I wanted that game, I'd have bought it.

This game is solid in the gameplay department, but all the additions to the core gameplay are letdowns. Flying is boring, the hammer sucks, and the magics are all rehashes of the first one. Not a bad game by any means, but much like so many sequels these days, it's more of a version 1.1 than a true sequel. See also: Tomb Raider, Grand Theft Auto, SSX, Tony Hawk, Halo, etc...

2 stars

Earth Defence Force 2017

2008-02-06T02:13:00.000-08:00

If this planet was ever invaded by giant bugs, and the Marines fought them off and saved earth, and years later I ran into a veteran of that great war, you know what I'd say to him?

"Hey,"

Cos I'd know what he'd been through.

Game of the Decade.

4 stars

Magician Lord

2008-02-06T01:59:00.000-08:00

I was obsessed with this game in the arcade. I spent however much money it took and got to like level 6 where there's two moving platforms and like, flying eyeballs knocking me off again and again till I ran out of money. Then I came back and actually beat it.

This is amazing to me. More amazing than the fact that I beat Ghouls N Ghosts on Genesis.

it wasn't at the time, it was just something I had to do, but I got a hacked Xbox a few years ago, and even with savestates I gave up after 3 levels. I was saving after like EVERY enemy and had all the dipswitches on "easy as hell".

Then, for reasons that currently escape me, I bought it on the Virtual Console. I played it this morning and got to level 2, but goddamn if everything about this game isn't shitty. The dude controls horribly, you die in a fucking second and start way far back. It's been making me wish my hacked Xbox still worked, cos for whatever stupid reason, I want to see if I can beat this game again.

I seriously don't know how I beat it back then. It's completely beyond me. I must have been a video game god. Like those 5 year olds who completely own at Guitar Hero, only with shitty Neo Geo games. The only reason I got into it is because I thought the combination of the guys' witch hat and ninja mask was the coolest thing ever.

I wanna stick it with 1 star because it's so damn terrible and so damn difficult and if I had done anything else with what I'm sure now was $100 in quarters by the end, I'd be better for it. But the game and I have history. Like Emenim and Kim, there's always gonna be something there.

2 stars.

Space Megaforce

2008-02-06T01:51:00.000-08:00

HotnessX2.

The pinnacle of Compile shooters. Blazing Lazers with better graphics, double the weapons, different layouts per weapon and awesome usages of mode 7. Also a little easier but that's not a plus, cos I think Blazing Lazers has just about the perfect difficulty.

Could very well be on my top five list of games.

Tons of genius business in this game. Level 5 where you have to not kill the drills till they get you out of the rocks is totally sweet. Almost every weapon can be completely badass (I like numbers 2,6 and 7 the most, but even 3 which is basically the shittastic IV from BL is way more workable this time out. Flattening the screen with a full on 6 blast is something else.)

I love it. Needs to be on VC, and until then is the reason I still have my SNES.

4 stars.

Blazing Lazers

2008-02-06T01:29:00.002-08:00

The Hotness.

I remember when this came out for the TG16. I had a TG16, but it took me like a month to earn enough cash to buy games, and after only getting Legendary Axe, I sold the system so I could buy a SNES. It wasn't till college and ebay that I could revisit this gem of a game.

Basic deal: it's a Compile SHMUP. That means it's amazing. I don't remember why, but I had ZANAC for the NES. I think it was the only game I could afford. I never beat it, but I did love the tons of different weapons and weird crap hidden in the game ( like shooting that little statue on LV3 that made you mega powerful--WTF?). Blazing Lazers is pared down, as there's not as many weapons, and one of them totally sucks (i'm looking at you #4), but the gameplay is tighter and it's on teh TG16 which makes it kind of magical to me.

Mostly though, it's a Compile shooter, and there just aren't enough of them. No one's ever done another one and the current trend of these bullet dodging games coming out of Japan is just boring to me. Choose between the spread weapon and the forward lazer, then dodge pink bullets. Booooriiing.

Ikaruga's tight, but I'm missing that ability specific to the Compile games, the ability to power up your ship to ungodly levels. Screen filling lighting lasers or whatever that V laser is called. (the other two weapons pretty much suck). There's nothing out there like that. Complete dominance over the screen.

Of course, if you die, you're gonna have the shittiest weakest ship (see also Gradius 1-4) in the universe and are gonna have to unload all your bombs in a desperate attempt to get at least a level 2 lightning laser or a shield powerup, and that sucks. But shit. Totally worth it to have those moments of just leveling things onscreen.

Compile needs to make more games like this. I read on wikipedia that some of the crew is still out there but Chaos Field and Karous look more like the new style shooters than old Compile. They may very well be fine games, but not the same. Not since Space Megaforce has the glow of this brilliance been upon us.

3 stars.

Halo 3

2008-01-29T17:50:00.000-08:00

Remember when GTA: San Andreas came out and gaming sites were falling all over themselves to give it 9.999999's?

So do I. Then I got it home, realized it was a giant bag of errands and stopped playing. But even before I bought it, I knew it wasn't 9.999999999 worthy.

But Halo 3? I really thought it was. The first two were tons of fun. I didn't go crazy online or anything, but I had some good times.

So all they really needed to do for me to like Halo 3 was remake Halo 2 but put an ending on it. But they were gonna do so much more. They had some giant brain trust chewing down data on how people moved through levels and modifying them based on the data. All kinds of money to make this game the best thing ever.

I was very stoked, and had I not been working at midnight, I'd have been buying it. Gorgeous Hair did me the favor of picking it up for me, and I got to playing it after work. First thing noticed was how terrible the story was. Then there's that thing from Little Shop of Horrors and the computer lady slowing my game down and making me think something was actually gonna happen with either of them (spoiler alert: it doesn't)

But whatever. Shooting dudes is fun. Man though, terrible story. Whatever. Shooting.

Then I got to the ship/flood level. Did the brain trust that had data on how hundreds of people play a level lose some files? MAN is it un-fun. Evertying can come back to life unless you shoot it double dead, and even then some stuff still can. This level was made to run though. To skip over as fast as possible. Just run and jump, cos the shooting is no fun at all in this part of Halo. But, of course, the thing's a poorly laid out mess, so running through it isn't exactly the easiest. Piles of cumbersome.

Seriously, where'd the money go? All that testing of things, all the innovations, where? It's still Halo 1. Same number and kind of enemies (except for some new flood that are terrifically annoying), same purple and green everything design. Same one earth level then going off to another spacey ringworld. Same same same. Capped w/ a boring ending that GH missed half of cos he hit the button before all of the eighty million credits finished.

He had a great point about the part he did see, which was that why were people writing 117 on the memorial as an afterthought? The three games prove that you are solely responsible for winning this alien war and instead of making a statue the size of Nepal of you, someone had to sneak up and scrawl your ID number on the little memorial.

The last time I remember playing was online as GH was yelling about how terrible the ending is. As much as I wanna like the game, and indeed Halo 1 might possibly be a 4 star game, this one is not.

Halo 3: 2 stars.

Bunrout Paradise

2008-01-28T17:23:00.000-08:00

It's a trip down memory lane.

Remember when you could do cool Signature takedowns?
Remember when Avril Lavigne wasn't on the soundtrack?
Remember when crash mode was an interesting puzzle?
Remember when crash mode was not tacked on?
Remember when the soundtrack wasn't 50 dudes doing their best AFI impression?
Remember when you didn't need to be good w/ the Reverse button to navigate?
Remember when it took 1 second to restart a race?
Remember when SSX had Rahzel in it?

That was awesome. Back then.

Now, we've got an open world. And the only thing more annoying than running through one to get someplace is driving. Sure for most of it it's fast and fun, but then you miss a turn and have to slam on the brakes, bang into a wall, reverse and dick around to get your position correct. What fun.

Then Avril Lavigne comes on and tells you she's hot.

There's a litany of moments like this, little flicks to the nuts, all to accommodate the "open world". They even hired the dude that replaced Rahzel in SSX 3 when that game when "open world" and lost much of the life it had for me.

Yeah, the world's open. It affords a few neat opportunities. I like smashing up cars to win them, I like that I can pick up a challenge and go anywhere. But I miss the style of it all. Taking out five rivals at once (far as I can tell you can only off one guy at a time, even if it looks like you took out two or three). I miss the design of the old game, the novelty of trying to knock a car into the lake or figuring out how to cause 12 million in damages.

The cars feel great, and Burnout's still the only place for non-sim racing. But much of what made the series great has been shoveled out of the way so we can all relive our Midnight Club 2 fantasies.

2 stars.