(Shut up, I know you do. We all did.) And guess what I found? A decent episode of Pinky & the Brain. Unfortunately, it's not the Godzilla parody episode, or the Winnie the Pooh parody. Nope, it's an original. Damn. Speaking of the 50s, I'm in a particularly old school mood (probably because of what I'm listening to at the moment). While I'm always in an old school mood, this time is a bit different, for I've beaten an Atari game. Yep, old school even for old school. The game? Air Raid. How did I beat it? Not by giving up (like in that ridiculously idiotic video), but by scoring 10000 points. I know what you're thinking, but that's harder than you think. Aliens/terrorists/alien terrorists are flying down from the sky, and you must keep them from destroying the buildings below you. Why? Because the president is in all of them. At once. How? By shooting them, you idiot. However, that's easier said than done, somehow. Often times, your bullets will go right through an enemy and miss them completely, even if you hit them dead on. Their bullets hit you perfectly, but yours don't always hit them.
There are other problems, like a very unpolished HUD, but most of them are minor. Unfortunately, there are a lot of them, and they add up. For example, as the game goes on, your buildings will inevitably be destroyed. Good enough, but over time, combat also becomes really repetitive. It's good at first, but by the time you're defending that last building, you're gonna hang out around the left side of the screen and only shoot that one enemy. The graphics are also pretty crap, even for an Atari game. The city is covered in a purple haze, and the shapes are kinda basic. Sound also sucks, but what can I say? Oh, it's Atari, so I can't say much. But even for Atari, the game feels underdeveloped. If they polished it a little bit, maybe it would've been better. Then again, they knew the game wasn't that good; just look at how many copies they made! And the year they released it! So this is probably a very good reason not to buy a game just because it's rare. That in mind, I give it the Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts Award for completely obvious reasons.
Also completely obvious: I've been beating a lot of Capcom games lately. (Hell, I plan to play RE2 next.) I don't mean to, I kinda stumble into them. Like Mega Man X4. I didn't know enough about Skullmonkeys, so I settled for Mega Man X4, a game I've already played. And the results were exactly the same as before. However, none of you know the previous results, so I'll have to come up with something new (unlike Capcom). Not new: how I start these damn things. The game is set immediately after X3. The world forms Repliforce, an army dedicated to making sure X4 never sucks as hard as X3 did. However, for reasons unknown to anybody, Repilforce decides to secede, or something. The game doesn't cover that too well, using it as a weak motivation for ass kicking. Paradoxically, the game takes things WAY too seriously, trying to form a fairly dramatic storyline. But that's kinda fucked up by one Capcom trend: bad voice acting. X sounds like a 12 year old girl, Sigma sounds....crap, and why do the Reploids have BRITISH ACCENTS!?
Semantics aside, the game is somewhat enjoyable, even if it does fall victim to Capcom syndrome (see Street Fighter). One of the first things you'll notice is that the difficulty is not ball bustingly hard. Instead, it's average, like the rest of the game. OK, fine, Zero's quest is somewhat harder, but that's due more to crap game design. Rather than being able to select the weapon, you have to enter some inane button combo. OK, maybe that's a bit hyperbolic, but that doesn't change the problems with this system. You can't check how to perform these moves, some are awkward to use, and a few bosses just give you a crap upgrade. However, all of that is limited to the Zero portion of the game, so lemme address the entirety of the game. You still jump around levels, beating up bosses and taking their power in cannibalistic fashion, just like previous games. In fact, not much has changed between now and the other Xs. Some of it seems to be ripped directly from previous games, like your body upgrades and mech-vehicle portions. The original concept is good, but how many times can you play the same game over and over again before things get repetitive?
However, there were a few changes, usually for the worse. The murderous difficulty of X3 was one of those changes, but again, this is for the worse. I feel like things got too easy, especially the bosses. They all break down into easily stratified patterns, and the series hallmark of weapon weaknesses only makes this worse. Some boss battles, like Jet Stingray, Frost Walrus, Split Mushroom, and Otaku Frog are easy enough for me to avoid damage altogether. This problems fixes itself near the end of the game, where enemy weaknesses aren't so easy to spot, but for the majority of the game, you're stuck with bosses as deadly as a spoon. So are there any good points to this game? Well, the graphics are pretty good, especially with the anime cutscenes. Say what you will about the shit voice acting, but the animation itself is detailed and vibrant. And because this is the PlayStation, the video quality is better than that of the Saturn version. Sure, you had to put up with Sony's "3D only" policy for a few years, but....no, no, it wasn't worth it, even with the decentmusic that is very easily recognized as Capcom PS1 era. Logically, this leads it to the Not Worth It Award. Now I know I end these blogs with a funny little dialogue sequence, but I'm not doing that this time. Why? Several reasons, the most important one being a total lack of ideas. If I had any decent ideas, I'd do them, but I don't. Besides, given that this is Giant Bomb and not my account back on GameSpot, you guys probably have no idea what a dialogue sequence is. So until the day I come up with a half-way decent idea, no more dialogue sequences. Just semi-funny game reviews that people complain are too long.
Anybody here like Pinky & the Brain?
(Shut up, I know you do. We all did.) And guess what I found? A decent episode of Pinky & the Brain. Unfortunately, it's not the Godzilla parody episode, or the Winnie the Pooh parody. Nope, it's an original. Damn. Speaking of the 50s, I'm in a particularly old school mood (probably because of what I'm listening to at the moment). While I'm always in an old school mood, this time is a bit different, for I've beaten an Atari game. Yep, old school even for old school. The game? Air Raid. How did I beat it? Not by giving up (like in that ridiculously idiotic video), but by scoring 10000 points. I know what you're thinking, but that's harder than you think. Aliens/terrorists/alien terrorists are flying down from the sky, and you must keep them from destroying the buildings below you. Why? Because the president is in all of them. At once. How? By shooting them, you idiot. However, that's easier said than done, somehow. Often times, your bullets will go right through an enemy and miss them completely, even if you hit them dead on. Their bullets hit you perfectly, but yours don't always hit them.
There are other problems, like a very unpolished HUD, but most of them are minor. Unfortunately, there are a lot of them, and they add up. For example, as the game goes on, your buildings will inevitably be destroyed. Good enough, but over time, combat also becomes really repetitive. It's good at first, but by the time you're defending that last building, you're gonna hang out around the left side of the screen and only shoot that one enemy. The graphics are also pretty crap, even for an Atari game. The city is covered in a purple haze, and the shapes are kinda basic. Sound also sucks, but what can I say? Oh, it's Atari, so I can't say much. But even for Atari, the game feels underdeveloped. If they polished it a little bit, maybe it would've been better. Then again, they knew the game wasn't that good; just look at how many copies they made! And the year they released it! So this is probably a very good reason not to buy a game just because it's rare. That in mind, I give it the Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts Award for completely obvious reasons.
Also completely obvious: I've been beating a lot of Capcom games lately. (Hell, I plan to play RE2 next.) I don't mean to, I kinda stumble into them. Like Mega Man X4. I didn't know enough about Skullmonkeys, so I settled for Mega Man X4, a game I've already played. And the results were exactly the same as before. However, none of you know the previous results, so I'll have to come up with something new (unlike Capcom). Not new: how I start these damn things. The game is set immediately after X3. The world forms Repliforce, an army dedicated to making sure X4 never sucks as hard as X3 did. However, for reasons unknown to anybody, Repilforce decides to secede, or something. The game doesn't cover that too well, using it as a weak motivation for ass kicking. Paradoxically, the game takes things WAY too seriously, trying to form a fairly dramatic storyline. But that's kinda fucked up by one Capcom trend: bad voice acting. X sounds like a 12 year old girl, Sigma sounds....crap, and why do the Reploids have BRITISH ACCENTS!?
Semantics aside, the game is somewhat enjoyable, even if it does fall victim to Capcom syndrome (see Street Fighter). One of the first things you'll notice is that the difficulty is not ball bustingly hard. Instead, it's average, like the rest of the game. OK, fine, Zero's quest is somewhat harder, but that's due more to crap game design. Rather than being able to select the weapon, you have to enter some inane button combo. OK, maybe that's a bit hyperbolic, but that doesn't change the problems with this system. You can't check how to perform these moves, some are awkward to use, and a few bosses just give you a crap upgrade. However, all of that is limited to the Zero portion of the game, so lemme address the entirety of the game. You still jump around levels, beating up bosses and taking their power in cannibalistic fashion, just like previous games. In fact, not much has changed between now and the other Xs. Some of it seems to be ripped directly from previous games, like your body upgrades and mech-vehicle portions. The original concept is good, but how many times can you play the same game over and over again before things get repetitive?
However, there were a few changes, usually for the worse. The murderous difficulty of X3 was one of those changes, but again, this is for the worse. I feel like things got too easy, especially the bosses. They all break down into easily stratified patterns, and the series hallmark of weapon weaknesses only makes this worse. Some boss battles, like Jet Stingray, Frost Walrus, Split Mushroom, and Otaku Frog are easy enough for me to avoid damage altogether. This problems fixes itself near the end of the game, where enemy weaknesses aren't so easy to spot, but for the majority of the game, you're stuck with bosses as deadly as a spoon. So are there any good points to this game? Well, the graphics are pretty good, especially with the anime cutscenes. Say what you will about the shit voice acting, but the animation itself is detailed and vibrant. And because this is the PlayStation, the video quality is better than that of the Saturn version. Sure, you had to put up with Sony's "3D only" policy for a few years, but....no, no, it wasn't worth it, even with the decentmusic that is very easily recognized as Capcom PS1 era. Logically, this leads it to the Not Worth It Award. Now I know I end these blogs with a funny little dialogue sequence, but I'm not doing that this time. Why? Several reasons, the most important one being a total lack of ideas. If I had any decent ideas, I'd do them, but I don't. Besides, given that this is Giant Bomb and not my account back on GameSpot, you guys probably have no idea what a dialogue sequence is. So until the day I come up with a half-way decent idea, no more dialogue sequences. Just semi-funny game reviews that people complain are too long.
What about Putin and the Bush :P?
Yeah, Pinky and the Brain was pretty awesome.
Loved that show. PINKY AND THE BRAAAIN!!!
I loved it...I liked Animaniacs better though.
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