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Oh great. Two overrated shooters.

By Video_Game_King May 16, 2009 31 Comments

RayStorm

(Although this one is not as overrated as other shooters I've played.) Hell, I'd barely classify it as overrated. But I still classify it as such, even if it is barely. Although the game is incredibly obscure, it somehow managed to get good reviews. I don't blame th-I'm rambling, aren't I? Let me get to the review.

The first thing I noticed about this game was really obvious: it's in 3D, but limited to 2D. Almost every shooter from the era (Einhander, Star Soldier, etc.), it was limited to the second dimension in gameplay, but used the 3D aspect for some cool cinematic effects. And again, like all those other shooters, this was a feature I liked. It gives the game a nice cinematic feel that improves the whole experience. Not that it needs improving, at least in the graphics department; the game generally looks good for a middling PS1 game.

Surprisingly easy.

However, a lot of games back then looked good; the ones people still remember had gameplay to back up the graphical 1024x1024 textured ass. RayStorm, however, doesn't. From the beginning, you get a choice between two ships and two control types, but anybody knows that the obvious choice is Ship 2, Automatic. I tried it the other way, but it just meant having to mash the fire button as opposed to just holding it down for the entire game. I know this because I chose Ship 1/Manual as my second player. Yes, you can have a second ship on screen WITHOUT ANOTHER PLAYER, but selecting him is incredibly finicky, since you have to do it while dodging/shooting. And they both use the same controls.

However, this is not the problem I have with the game. The problem I have is that Raystorm is too fucking easy. The laser weapon that comes with ship 2 has a lock-on feature, and with automatic, you just have to watch all the enemies in front of you die a quick death. You also get power-ups that allow to lock onto more enemies (or more likely, the same enemy more times), but they don't change the difficulty of the game much. Or anything at all, really; that's all they do. Yet when I figured out that you could play with two ships at once, which was around the 4th or so level, something weird happened: the game started getting hard. Enemies were getting more difficult to shoot, bullets were traveling in larger packs, and the game just got much better.

It never reached what I like to call "turbo-pause" difficulty, but there's a good reason for that (aside from the fact that it'd be a stupid decision): it's too short! It seems that the game started ramping up the difficulty on level 4 of 6, giving me very little time to appreciate it. There isn't much replay value to make me come back, either. Besides the aforementioned ship variations, there's also an "extra" mode, which to my knowledge, is RayStorm's version of a hard mode, the only greater reward being a few different cutscenes in the ending. The ending with great credits music. The ending to a game that learns its lesson far too late. Hmm, that gives me an idea. How about I give it the Capcom Award for Learning the Lesson Long After it was Asked of Them. Long award name, I know, but keep in mind that the blog is short....That's something to look forward to....I'm confused.

I'm sure a lot of you have watched TV at one time or another, and given that you spend most of your time on a gaming forum, I also assume that you are filled with incurable amounts of crippling shame. This commercial features both in a hilarious combination.

Super Thunder Blade

(Oh great, here comes the REAL crapfest.) Seems to be happening to me a bit often, even though it isn't. Yea, that's poorly worded, but I think you can relate. Back to the game, Super Thunder Blade was released early in the Genesis life cycle, and it was most likely used in the "Genesis does what Nintendon't" campaign. However, Sega quickly realized that Nintendo also has crap games, and decided to let it die in the annals of obscurity.

You play as a helicopter. That's it. That's all the story you get with this game. However, that's not the reason I hate this game. After all, tons of games back then had barely any story (if at all) but still managed to rock my balls. Super Thunder Blade (which I will now start calling STB (because it's as much fun as having an STD)) leaves my balls unrocked.

There are two parts to each level, but the majority of the game takes place in a behind-the-shoulders view, a la Space Harrier. Yet where Space Harrier was a fun game for a little bit, STB isn't ever. The big thing it tries to do is 3D, and since this is on the Genesis (aka not a SNES), that means a LOT of problems. Firstly, the scaling in this game is screwed up beyond all repair. As objects get closer to you, they also spread out from each other, and the change can be drastic; two objects can look close together at first, but when you get close to them, the gap widens to 900 feet. Aside from making the second level a hellish nigthmare, it isn't even realistic. Trust me, I tried this out in a crowded area, and people far away did not separate by 3 miles when I started approaching them

Of course, this means that the graphics are severely flawed in several ways. The ground is striped for whatever reason (can't see why they couldn't just make it all one color), and objects look flat when you approach them, like they're just cardboard cut-outs of what they're supposed to be. It has this tech demo-y feel, like it shouldn't have been released as an actual game, just like HyperZone (gotta be fair). But unlike HyperZone, this game isn't all crap 3D portions; there are overhead shooter sections which are...boring, to say the least.

The goal of these levels is to shoot enemies (or not, the game's very lenient on this) until whatever is beneath you explodes. The problem here (aside from a lack of urgency) is the controls: simply put, moving backwards is not straightforward. I didn't figure it out until the end of the game, but you can only move backwards with the B button (rather than the simplicity of DOWN), and it only comes up once in the entire game: during the final boss battle. Again, as I said, awkward to use, even with a boss that is this easy.

Well, that's enough rambling, I think you guys get the point by now: this game sucks. Nothing good can come from you playing this game. Yet it isn't the worst game ever (that honor goes to Cyborg Justice) or the second worst (Pac-Man), so I can't even give it the Worst Game Ever Award. I'm going to have to be original with this one. Black Hawk Down Award? No, not original. Makes Superman Cry Award for Dishonoring its Own Superness? Yea, that one sounds good. Let's go with that. Now I'm off to inevitably repeat these mistakes again. I have that kind of feeling, y'know?

31 Comments

Happy birthday, Fire Emblem 4!

By Video_Game_King May 14, 2009 1 Comments

R-Type III

(Yes, this is the 13th birthday of the best game ever.) And yes, I consider Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu to be the best game ever. All other answers are wrong! However, there is one problem with the best game ever that cannot be ignored: every game I play after it will inevitably suck (to some degree). Case in point: R-Type III. OK, not really a definitive (or good) proof, but shut up, I need some sort of transition into the review, and I'm going with that.

I cannot be the only one who sees it!

As some of you may not know, R-Type was a very prominent (and somewhat overrated) shooter series back in the days when arcades still existed. Like every shooter out there, you take the role of a nameless spaceship fighting the Bydo Empire, an empire which has always had some weird obssession with making babies. I am not kidding; go play whatever R-Type game you can get your hands on.

If it's this one, listen up: there were a few changes from the original R-Type formula. Not many, though, but they're there. First, you get a choice of which pod-thing you get to shove on the front of your ship (or back). It still does what it always does, and I doubt that the choice makes much of a difference. Speaking of choice, there's a variety of weapons to choose from, but like the pod-thingy I just mentioned, they haven't changed much, if at all. I can't remember a single weapon that wasn't in a previous R-Type, and the ones that are still there behave exactly the same as they did before.

Not that the game is just a rehash of previous concepts; there are a few new additions to the formula, like how the charge shot behaves. I rarely used it in previous games, but here, it's more useful than ever. You have your standard charge shot, a super-shot that penetrates everything it touches, and most importantly, a shield. Oh god, how I love the shield. It kills enemies on contact and gives you an infinite amont of super-death-mega-shots (for a limited time). Say what you will about it, like it's cheap or that it makes the other beam useless, but this was what made the game fun for me, even if I spammed it for the final boss.

And it was the ONLY thing that made this game fun for me. Everything else was just....meh. Sure, R-Type III tries, but they really don't change any of the core values of the series like other games for other series have (Final Fantasy, Fire Emblem, the usual crap). One of these changes was natural for all SNES games: meaningless use of Mode 7. Several of the levels in this game use it, but it doesn't go beyond the much advertised "scale and rotate", sometimes both at once! Holy crap! But in all honesty, the level design is actually pretty creative. There are some creative ideas in here that were only rivaled by Space MegaForce, like a rocket-powered level that rotates the walls constantly, or the final level, where you have to stay inside a circle that travels through walls and dimensions. Bosses are also creative, but not by much.

Yet in a weird way, the creativity in this game only half-works for reasons I've already stated. Irem, if you're gonna change a game like this, commit to the change, don't half ass it. There was potential here, but it was wasted, just like it is in a billion games I play. I guess that makes it generic, but I'm afraid of saying that due to how many times I've applied it to shooters in the past. Regardless, I'm calling this game slightly generic and giving it half the Half Assed Award......so the Quarter Ass Award.

You guys may not know this (OK, you don't), but I love old school NES chiptunes. So you can imagine how I felt when I stumbled across this custom NES song (that has that weird "belongs on the GBC" feel to it).

Samurai Ghost

(At least I think that's what the title is supposed to be.) Honestly, it's hard to tell what this game is called, given the horribly fractured Engrish that permeates through this game's nooks and crannies. I can't even use my ultra-patented "start with protagonist and story" method of reviewing, since the game rapes the English language hard enough to make Shakespeare weep a single gilded tear. However, I have managed to make up a story of my own: you're a vampire (not an actual vampire; just the guys who dress like they live in 18th century England and wear white make-up) sent on a quest to set Japan on fire. You somehow accomplish this by walking to the right and swatting your sword at whatever happens to get in your way.

And scrap, the brain is thought to bear the pain of hell zone to ensure ...

....Well, I guess I just summed up all you need to know about the gameplay. BUT I MUST GO ON!!! As I just said, you run through each level swatting at things with your sword. There are 3 power-ups you can get, but I never figured out what two of them do. The third one makes your sword ultra-powerful, but the only one that's worth it is the screw-attack ripoff. The other ones require you to swing your sword, thus exposing you to the flaws of combat. See, your character has to be quite specific with both where and when he hits the enemy. If you screw this up somehow, you get hit.

Now there are several reasons why this is a problem, like the slightly (slightly) slow swing time or the high amount of enemies in the game, the latter being the biggest problem. It seems that for every one enemy you kill, another one appears to take his place, and while you're working on that one, two more will come and take HIS place. It just makes the game move slowly and fails to cover up the crap level design. Wait, I shouldn't call it level design, since that implies they actually made levels, and I doubt that was the case for half of them. Half seem to be straight lines, and the other half is just a random assortment of platforms. Both of them are annoying in their own special ways, as the linear levels exacerbate the enemy problem and the platform levels feature PLATFORMS THAT HURT YOU IF YOU JUMP ON THEM THE WRONG WAY.

Oops, forgot about the third level that comes after certain boss battles: the bonus level. In these levels, Vishnu appears from behind the clouds and, elated that you have stomached the game this far, throws down a bunch of orbs (translation: coins). This would certainly mean something if the orbs had some sort of purpose, but I didn't notice any. You'd think that 100 nets you a free life, but it caps eternally at 99. Weird, confusing, moving on: I mentioned boss battles earlier, so I might as well go into detail about them. All of them fall into two categories: "easily explotiable patterns" or "slash the shit out of them." The weird thing is that quite a few of them somehow manage to combine BOTH these aspects into a generally unpleasing package. Hell, the final boss takes this to a previously unseen peak, tripling the pain with three forms that each use these methods.

The only thing I liked about this game was the half-decent sword swingy animation (although that creates one of the problems I mentioned before) and this one short musical piece at the beginning of each level. Other than that, I can hardly recommend it. There's a reason I take recommendations for old school games from my fellow gamers, but because of games like Samurai Ghost and Cyborg Justice, I'm starting to slowly forget that reason. So I give it the Neku Sakuraba Award for Refusing to Trust Anyone Around You. Hell, that's how I ended up pl-*gets pushed aside by bodyguard, blog ends*

1 Comments

Head for your bunkers; it's COD4 time.

By Video_Game_King May 11, 2009 13 Comments

E-SWAT

(But not first, obviously.) Instead, I'll delay the inevitable fanboyism until part two. Right now, I'll follow the exact same model I used for the controversial blog that haunts me to this day. So instead of starting things off on the wrong foot, I'll begin with an obscure Genesis shooter that nobody has ever heard of: E-SWAT: Cyber Police. I know I play a lot of obscure games, but unlike quite a few of them, this one was actually good.

In E-SWAT, it's the future, and the government extended its "Make Firemen More Badass" plan to cover police. (For those who don't understand that joke, read my blogs more often.) However, what funds were left were meager, so the best they could do was strap the cops into robo-suits. That out of the way, the actual goal of the game is to beat the hell out of random criminals with robot empires. Apparently, the future is run by MTV, since nobody does what their job dictates they should do.

No, wait, that is not E-SWAT.

So like Burning Rangers, the story is iffy. But also like Burning Rangers, we're here for the shooting action, which in E-SWAT, is good, but takes a bit of time to build up. The first two levels are without a single robot suit, so you're stuck without many of the things that make the game good, like a varied arsenal or jets. You'd think that the first two levels are there just so you get used to the mechanics of the game, but no, E-SWAT takes it all seriously.

Yet once you actually get the super-suit, the game really picks up. There are a variety of weapons, all of them useful (except for shot, which you only use once you lose all the others) and fun to use. There's the regular super-shot, the penetrating charge shot, the "creep along the floor" rocket launcher, and my favorite: the flamethrower, which drains all your burner energy and makes you spin around like a deadly dreidel. The reason I didn't use it that often was because the burner is also used for your jets.

While the jets were a good idea that was pulled off OK, they bring up one of the most noticable flaws of the game: stiff controls. You can't shoot down, jumping between planes is a bit finicky, your jet can only go in the eight cardinal directions (and your gun aims the same direction your jets do), I could go on and on. But you get the point, right? The other mortal flaw is a high difficulty. By the second level (on the NORMAL setting, mind you), I was having my ass handed to me. It's a bit easy to lose life, and stiff controls don't help.

Despite all that, I like the game for several reasons, the most important of them being that it's fun. I know, it seems to be the one thing reviewers resort to far too often, but that's the only way I can describe the game. Maybe it's the variety of weapons, the fact that it is at least functional, or perhaps the Ren & Stimpy-esque announcer at the end of each level, but something about this game made it better than it should be. Since I can't figure it out, I'll go with the amazingly clear music on a console where the standard was a cyborg digitally sodomizing a goat. I'll honor that by giving the game the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 Award for Excellence in Genesis Music.

Now then, I know for a fact that this next review will incite a lot of responses, and that a lot of them will be about how I hate shooters or something. In the event you are one of those people...just shut up. Here's a review for you, in case you like me enough to view my blogs but not enough to actually read them:

Call of Duty 4

(Oh, I can already hear most of you revving up your crossaws so that you can tear my skull in thirds.) But yield in your hatred, my fellow gamers! I have news that will change the results: unlike Halo 3, I LIKED this game. Yes, I'm comparing it to Halo 3 (for a bit), as these two games are, for some reason, eternally comparable. Speaking of Halo 3, I (obviously) got a lot of crap for what I said about it. Some people said I set my standards too high, which I find just plain weird. But whatever, I followed their advice for this game, placing my expectations in the 7 region. The results?: 8.2.

The first thing that I liked about COD4 was the story. Set in the Middle East (the shooter fad area before Africa), you're charged with taking out a terrorist leader who trying to get nukes for no better reason than to kill America. The Russians are supplying him with the nukes, and as an added bonus, Nazis have been funding the research from 60 years in the past. OK, so it isn't the most original story I've seen (that would probably go to Conker's Bad Fur Day, I think), but it's the presentation that makes it work, which is a theme that runs throughout the entirety of the game.

The story is presented in a realistic way (whatever complaints you may have about characterization (mine being lack of proper motivation for several characters) notwithstanding). The tutorial, for example, unlike many other games, comma, fits incredibly well within the story. Rather than being told that you have to press A to shoot, your superiors actually tell you how to operate your guns, and everything you need to know about each. Also, there's a little mini-game afterward that determines what difficulty you should play on. I got Easy on my first go, but I was under the impression that it was still a tutorial. After one or two more tries of getting used to the game mechanics, I got the normal difficulty I love so much (and you hate so much).

Once I got into the actual game, I found it to be really, really good. There's a variety of weapons, a lot of them very useful and decently balanced, although there were a few that I found to be nothing short of useless. The flash bangs come to mind immediately; whenver I tried using them, the screen turned pure white and enemies started using my dazed body as target practice. The grenades also have this problem, since enemies are smart enough to dodge yours and throw them right at you when you can't do crap about it.

I guess this was supposed to add a bit of strategy to the game, but why would they need to add strategy? It's already there. Do you guys remember those two elements I hated in Halo 3? Yea, the cover system and the limited inventory? And remember how I said that these COULD work under different circumstances? Well, the circumstances are different, and they both work. I tried running into the fray of battle like doing so would guarantee me a medal upon my return, but only found death and explosions each time I did. So I had to hide behind a nearby dumpster, let me allies take care of the baddies, and think of the best way to approach my nearby enemies. Like I was forming a strategy. And remember how in Halo 3, you could arm yourself with a Gravity Hammer and Energy Sword and just plow through enemies with little effort? Doesn't work that way when you run into battle with a rocket launcher and shotgun.

Why? Well, aside from the fact that the rocket launcher magically becomes 900% less accurate when you pick it up, there's also a weight system in this game. You know, like the one I suggested several weeks ago. It works in COD4, but it works weirdly. You'd think that a soldier carrying a rocket launcher and a pistol would run at the same speed regardless of what he had equipped, but no, pistol beats rocket launcher. (In speed, obviously.) Again, this adds strategy to the game; do you pick off most of the enemies to make your journey safer, or do you bolt for the nearest tree you can hide behind?

That thing in the distance NEVER MOVES.

Now I know some of these features were in Halo 3 and that I'll inevitably get called dirty names for all of this, but keep in mind that it's all in the atmosphere. While Halo 3 tried to make you feel like the badass supersavior of the world while SIMULTANEOUSLY placing a bunch of arbitrary limits on you, COD4 places you in the role of an ordinary soldier (two, but that's nitpicking) with human limits; one who is also part of a team and should behave as such. Of course, it tries to achieve a realistic sense of immersion, but like any other game, doesn't always achieve this. Case in point: the famed nuclear explosion. Yes, it's competing with "Aeris dies" for the most memorable game twist ever, but some things killed it for me. First, there's a level transition cutscene thing between the explosion and you crawling around the rubble, almost as if to remind you that it's a video game and not the burning inferno of Hiroshima. And when you get to the wreckage, you soon discover that the mushroom cloud in the distance doesn't animate. For me, it broke the illusion; rather than seeing the impending Apocalypse, I saw what looked like a bad backdrop for a high school play.

While I'm complaining about the story, let me throw two more logs onto the fire. First, the characters: there's a complete bastard with a funny moustache, a black guy who refused to wear armor in one of the early levels (something I still can't get past, for some reason), a guy named Soap, a guy named Gaz, and about nine samey looking/sounding/behaving Russians. Well, that's all the complaining for the first part, so let me move onto the second: the final level. No, not the silo level where I kept hearing fart noises; I'm talking about the airplane. It comes after the end (even after the game tells you that you beat it), and I don't see much of a point to it. The character you rescue has no story importance, and it adds nothing to the game at all. Why is it here? Did the developers run out of time and decide to fit this level in at the end due to an inability to reasonably insert it into the game proper?

OK, that's a bit much over nothing, especially since I ended up liking the game. The only thing I didn't try out was the multiplayer, as I don't have a Gold account, but the game stands out on its own as a single player game (which is more than can be said of several games today). Yea, a lot of what it did was done in previous games, and COD4 could benefit from a few touch-ups, but what this game does, it does well. Yes, I liked this game and give it the Cuban Missile Crisis Award for Avoiding Serious Controversy. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll get back to playing a slightly (SLIGHTLY) better game for the 360: Lost Odyssey.

13 Comments

100% unadulterated old school reviewing!

By Video_Game_King May 7, 2009 8 Comments

Metal Storm

(Even more old school than usual.) And the usual is pretty old school. So what could be more old school than my usual menagerie of PS1, Saturn, and Capcom games? How about an NES game that nobody has ever heard of? If you haven't guessed already, the game in question is Metal Storm. Also, if you happen to be Metroid545, tear yourself away from the ecstasy this game created for you so that you can read of my opinion.

Now I could start things with the plot, but what's the point? It's an NES game that isn't Dragon Warrior IV or Final Fantasy III, so what purpose would reading the manual serve :P? Instead, I'll get to the meat of the review: the gameplay. Like many other NES games, you jump around a space station, shooting (other) robots and jumping on platforms.

Sounds pretty standard so far, right? Well, there's one thing I have yet to mention: gravity switching gameplay. At any given moment, you can flip gravity and stand on the ceiling. There are certain things possible depending on what gravity you choose, like what platforms you can jump through or what barriers are activated. It's a very good idea, and what's more, Metal Storm actually pulls it off fantastically.

A demonstration of the vertical scrolling in Metal Storm. A very poor demonstration.

I found it pretty fun to switch to the ceiling to kill off whatever enemy came my way, and I found it a bit surreal that the levels loop vertically, usually enough that you appear on both the top and bottom of the screen simultaneously. Things only get better as the game goes on, as level design gets more creative. Innovations include platforms you can only jump to via a certain gravity....situation, a small room where enemies fly at you from all directions, and several instances where you have to flip gravity mid-air.

Speaking of which, boss battles also give off the spark of creativity, the last feature I described being an example. Each boss has their own distinct feel to them that makes each memorable and hard to pull off in other games. The only one that truly disappoints is the final boss, if you can call it that. You just shoot a few targets in a race against the clock, the clock giving you a large head start. Not surprisingly, the ending is insulting and mediocre.

Don't take a mediocre ending as the only flaw this game has; nay, there are...well, only two more, honestly. First, the weapons: you only get two of them throughout the game. One's a regular ping-pong-ball-launcher, and the other is a wide shot. Why would you ever choose the former? As soon as you get the wide shot, there's no reason to ever switch back.

Second, the music, while decent, often gets drowned out by the various sound effects. I know the NES was limited to a few sound channels (and apparently a triangle), but most games could play sound effects AND music without much trouble. However, like the other flaws, I don't fault the game much for it. Metal Storm more than makes up for it with an original concept that's done really, really well. So to end this review, I give Metal Storm the Cocoron Award for Outstanding Originality.

Interlude

Now then, this next video has two reasons for being here: I loved it, and it ties nicely into my next review.

Mega Man 2 (the PS1 version I found)

(As if you didn't have enough hints by now.) Before I actually get into the review, let me dispel any notions created by the plodding, frustrated music: I like this game, alright? Check my rating. Here's a hint: it's the highest rated game of this blog. Why? Well, why not? It's f'ing Mega Man 2, what more could you want?

Personally, I could want a bit more, but the game itself is pretty good. Some time after Wily had his ass handed to him, he decided to take up the hobby of world domination. Mega Man, Dr. Light's creepy speedo-wearing-small-child-robot-project, must stop Wily and his Robot Masters (and various other robots) in their conquests of the world.

The only thing more powerful than the Metal Blade.

Of course, this is where the really cool gameplay mechanics come into play. You can select whichever Robot Master you want to start with, and then pretty much continue based on what weaknesses each one has. None are more challenging than the other (except Quick Man), and each one is memorable and well designed. Hell, I'd rank the final level alone in my top 10 levels of all time due to the tense atmosphere it creates.

All the bosses also demonstrate this creativity. Examples include the dragon (utterly kickass), Wood Man, Air Man (ergh), and Metal Man. Each one has some sort of specific pattern that you're supposed to figure out and exploit with your weapon at hand. At least most of them; I didn't notice much with Quick Man and maybe a few other bosses. But for those that did have noticeable patterns, they made up half the fun of the game: finding out when you could strike them in between shots, dodging said shots while doing so.

The other half? Getting weapons from your foes. As is the Mega Man custom, you gain your enemy's weapons in what seems to be some dark Celtic ritual of eating their hearts to gain their powers. Or something. Anyway, you then use whatever weapon you have on another boss in some chain of weakness that ties into the "strategy/pattern" thing I mentioned earlier. Howevecr, what I did seemed to be far from the truth. I just spammed the hell out of Metal Man's weapon for half the bosses and pretty much all the levels.

I know it may be considered cheap, but what other reasons are there? It doesn't take up much energy, you can aim anywhere, and it kills half the Robot Masters, Metal Man included. Yes, you read right: Metal Man is (suprisingly) weak to his own weapon. My guess is that it's part of some suicide plan. (The other bosses were Wood Man, Flash Man, and Bubble Man, all of which are perfectly understandable.)

So the weapon selection is horribly unbalanced. At least each weapon serves some kind of purpose, like the tornados for enemies above you, or Heat Man's weapon to make you feel like you're playing Mega Man 4. Each weapon is fun and easy to use, and you also get some platform boosty things that are also easy to use. Except for the third one, which flops around like a drowning fish.

Moving on, the game also gets high marks from a technical perspective, which is my way of saying, "it has good graphics and music." I don't need to mention the music, do I? It has so many classics, it would be redundant just listing each and every song I loved. So let's move onto the graphics. For its time, Mega Man 2 looked fantastic. The sprites were detailed, stood out, and looked miles ahead of what the system was pushing out at the time. Throw in the distinctive art style that looks...well, weird in some places today (like those floating heads in Air Man's stage), and you have the perfect looking game, right? Almost. The only thing keeping it from reaching perfection in this regard is the sprite flicker. Yes, like many NES games, if there are too many sprites on screen at once, the system goes ape shit and makes everything semi-transparent. The odd thing is that I don't remember this in the NES version, even though the PS1 (the version I was playing, stupid) version should be able to handle more sprites on screen at once.

That flaw aside, Mega Man 2 can still hold its ground as a classic NES game (unlike some other system "classics"). The weapons are fun to use, the levels/bosses are memorable, and most of the faults I mentioned can be discounted by how great the game is. So I give Mega Man 2 the Best Video Game Rap Award. Or should I give it to the video I posted? Whatever, they both get it.

8 Comments

Another Xbox 360 review. Minus the controversy.

By Video_Game_King May 5, 2009 1 Comments

(At least I hope it's minus.) No, wait, I know this will be largely noncontroversial. This is a review of Kung Fu Panda, a game that many gamers decided was crap before they even played it. Even myself, despite how hasty a conclusion that was. But after playing it (because I got it free), I found that it was kind of, maybe an OK game. Just very, very, repetitive and average.

Jack Black: Dragon Warrior.

Now before I get to the review, let me say that I've never seen Kung Fu Panda, so reviewing the game might be a bit hard. However, from what I can guess, the game is at least faithful to the movie. I think. Keep in mind that I haven't seen it. From what I saw, the movie was apparently about Jack Black becoming the Dragon Warrior, which for some reason manifests itself as rescuing baby turtles. The odd thing about this is that although it was advertised as a comedy, I didn't find it funny. All I learned was that Jack Black is a total douche, which I could have learned (and did) by making that picture to the left.

But to be fair, there is potential for a good game in the material. Look at the title: it's Kung Fu Panda. The only thing more appropriate would be a movie called "Shooty Supersoldier." But keep in mind that potential isn't everything. Need I remind you that Sonic R had potential to be a good game? In order to make a good game, you also need to execute that potential, and Kung Fu Panda fails in that regard.

As they should have done, you have a variety of moves with which to beat down baddies. But you don't need every single move, since you can usually button mash your way through battles. I got through almost the entire game by beating the fast attack button until it was a pile of blue dust. I say "almost" because I got through the final boss battle by mashing heavy attack.

So as you can clearly see, the game is quite easy. And repetitive. And easy. Now then, since a lot of you will inevitably tell me to play it on a higher difficulty, let me get this out of the way right now: I played on Normal (called Master in this game, presumably for egotistical reasons). Now back to the game, it's pretty easy, as I said twice before. Most of the optional objectives can be completed on the first try, and nothing demonstrates this better than the enemies. They pose no real threat, and they rarely do much damage. I got through the entire game without ever using the block move, something the game considers an "achievement." Once you get the belly stomp move, they become less of a threat and more scenery.

Other elements of the game don't fare much better. As I mentioned before, the objectives can be completed very easily. Some require bashing cages, some require collecting things, but they're all achieved through normal gameplay. I believe there were only one or two I didn't get, and that took a gravity defying amount of stupidity to achieve.

But it's not like Activision wasn't trying; I could tell they were at least trying to make a decent game. There are various gameplay extras (all of them lackluster) and extra characters you can play as, someimes. Take Master Shifu, for example: a small, agile rodent who's a bit more fun to play as. Why? Well, you can pretend that you're playing Sonic Adventure, only instead of running away from orcas, Sonic is in a long series of drunk bar fights.........*realizes how awesome an idea that would be for a game*

*remembers this game* Oh, right Kung Fu Panda. What else can I go on about? How about the graphics? From a technical standpoint, like the rest of the game, they're OK. There's fur rendering, decent cinematics, and...not much else that's good. Fine, there are some really, really good water effects, but the price you have to pay is that they mostly come in really repetitive (even by this game's standards) water levels. Everything else graphics-related can piss off. The animations come off as a bit choppy, especially on Po. Speaking of which, he's a textbook example the the uncanny valley. He sits too far between realistic panda and cartoony panda, the result being a fucking creepy protagonist. That isn't funny and relies too heavily on celebrity cameos. Like the rest of the cast.

You know what? I think I may be overanalyzing this game a bit much. After all, it's aimed at children, and children have very bad taste in video games. I'd use myself as an example, but I was lucky; most of the games I played were good. The closest I can think of is Rocko's Modern Life, which was decent if you knew what you were doing. So I guess kids will enjoy this game, even if nobody else will, really. All things considered, I give this game the Torneko Taloon Award for Fat Comic Reliefs.

Well, here's a video I made. At least a year ago. Unlike my blog, this is short, sweet, and to the point:

My proposed plan for a badass firefighter.

Well, as much as you guys hate it, back to the reviewing. Next up is a game called Burning Rangers, or as I like to call it, "Number 2 on my To Do List." It's considered one of the classic Saturn games everyone must play, along with NiGHTS and Panzer Dragoon Saga. But honestly, those games were much better (at least NiGHTS; I have yet to play PDS) than this. Nostalgia has tainted people's view of this game. And this is coming from me, A GUY WHO PLAYS NOTHING BUT OLD SCHOOL GAMES!!!

*sigh* Well, I have to review the game at some point, don't I? Might as well get it over with. So, the year is The Future (that is the year, for it is the future), and society has thought of some ways to make firemen more badass. I had some suggestions, but whatever, I'll go along with this. However, I stopped following the plot when I found out that the Burning Rangers always conveniently find some evil biological experiment hiding in the burning building. Am I the only person who found that a bit weird? Why aren't they rescuing people in more convential situations?

Speaking of which, rescuing people is (supposed to be) a big part of the game. Scattered throughout each level are a set amount of, let's say "hostages." Your job is to find them and transport them back to safety. The catch is that you need at least 5 crystals to send them back. You gain these crystals by putting out fires, and they also act as your health in a very Sonic the Hedgehog way. So we have motivation to rescue people and put out fires. Things are looking good, right?

Well, no. You'd think the game would focus on rescuing people, but the real focus is on getting through each level as quickly as possible (at least from what I've experienced). It works well for the final level, when you're stuck in a space abyss with little fire, but the rest of the game doesn't work like that. Instead, it consists of navigating linear corridors and dodging an oddly high amount of explosives. On that note: why does everything explode? I understand it's a fire, but come on!

Back to my main complaint, the halls aren't actually linear; there are plenty of diverging paths and different ways to get anywhere. It's just that your support character won't let you go on any of those paths. For example, I tried veering off the pre-approved path in an attempt to rescue a nearby child, and my support just bitched at me for not following the exact route she wanted me to. Excuse me, but I was under the impression that firemen (OK, I chose the girl, mainly because I'd be staring at her ass the entire game anyway) are supposed to RESCUE PEOPLE FROM FIRES!!!

In fact, I'm not even sure why I listened to her, because she certainly wasn't helpful. Whenever I didn't really need help, she'd spout obvious quips like "go straight" or "you need a key to open the door that doesn't automatically open" or "don't forget to breathe," but when I needed help, she'd do the same. I can imagine this working, but it didn't here. In fact, there were a lot of things about this game that could've worked, but didn't. Things like 3D graphics.

Notice how the draw distance is short, and it's more of an "on/off" effect than a fade.

For anybody studying video game history, you'd know that the Saturn couldn't pull off true 3D graphics/gameplay without straining itself drastically. Oh, and your essays are due tomorrow, just a head's up. Back to the Saturn thing, Burning Rangers is a perfect demonstration of mediocre 3D graphics. The environments themselves are OK, but tend to...well, flicker their polygons on and off. It doesn't even have to be far away; it can happen when the camera is really close to you. And when things are far away, the draw distance rears its ugly head. As I wrote in the blurb, it's short and flickers. Objects can suddenly pop up on you without warning, and if you're chasing something (like a robot) and it's faster than you, prepare to see it flicker and disappear.

Don't think things get better with the characters; they're not as good, but in entirely different ways. They're not heavy polygoned (see Legaia), but they aren't complex. They're...middling. The characters look OK, but you can see their polygons from time to time, especially on the hostages. In addition, the lighting is poor. It works well when the characters are lit, but when they aren't, all shade disappears. It's hard to describe, but they look like they were made in Microsoft Paint.

There are a few other features, but I don't think of them as worth mentioning. But I will :P! First, there's the transparency effects. Apparently, this was one of the few (possibly only) Saturn games to have this effect (as opposed to pixel stippling, which this game also does). I didn't notice it much, but when I did, it looked like somebody used the negation effect from Paint.NET. We done with that? Good, next up is the anime cutscenes. Burning Rangers doesn't strike me as a game that needs them or adds anything to itself by using them, and it certainly isn't the second type of game. I know that last part was a bit confusing, but I'll elaborate: the animation in these cutscenes is choppy and tends to move at this really odd pace. Again, you have to play the game to understand it.

But that's assuming you wish to play the game, something I strongly recommend against. Sure, there were some neat concepts, but the game seemed to have went out of its way to blatantly ignore them in favor of mediocre contorls (if you don't have an analog controller), J-Pop music, and bosses that all die the exact same way. (I didn't mention any of this in the review because of how inconsequential each one of those things are.) The only reason I've seen good reception for this game would be nostalgia, plain and simple. So I'll give it the Resident Evil Award in Honor of Not Aging Well. And I'll give you guys some advice on Saturn games: just play NiGHTS, Panzer Dragoon, or Mega Man. Honestly, those are your best options, from what I've experienced.

1 Comments

Oh Sonic, why must you disappoint me like this?

By Video_Game_King May 2, 2009 5 Comments

(Perhaps I'm the one at fault, though.) No, I can't be at fault, not this time. This was back when Sonic was good. *notices you reading this* For those who can't read my mind (IE all of you), I speak of a game called Sonic Labyrinth. Even mentioning that name gives me awful memories. It was a game for the ill-fated Game Gear (or as I call it (OK, I don't), Battery Brick), and it was more of a dungeon crawler than an actual platformer. Already, I feel things adding up for this game.

Back to the dungeon crawl thing, the goal of this game is to find keys in each level. I don't know how that relates to speed, and I don't see how Sega could've passed this off as a Sonic game (especially since there were already some half decent Sonic games that followed the formula much closer). Whatever, I'll address it on the merits of the actual gameplay, which is...not that good. The level design is awful (but more on that later), and you must have ALL the keys to finish the level. It's not like Sonic 3D Blast, where you could drop off the Flickies one at a time.

The final boss: Kaiser von Eggman.

That wouldn't be so bad if it was a bit easier to kill enemies (or if you didn't lose all your keys with one hit), but no, it's not that easy. You have to roll into your enemies head on at breakneck speeds. You can't directly jump on them, like in other Sonic games, because Eggman, being the genius that he is, decided to pull a Samson on Sonic and steal his super powerful shoes. What does he do then? Replace them with heavy metal boots, thinking Sonic isn't smart enough to buy some new shoes or go barefoot. And he was right!

Back to the combat, the "no jumping" rule seems arbitrary and incredibly limiting. There were two buttons for the Game Gear, so you'd think one of them would be jump. But no, you're left with a spin attack that sends you spinning all over the place, the only way to stop being delayed by a second. I know Sonic's main thing is speed, but what made that work on the Genesis was tight, responsive controls, which Labyrinth doesn't have. Also, an isometric view doesn't help.

However, none of those even compare to the biggest problem: the level design. Oh dear god, the level design. The levels are each a confusing mess, and the navigation-based gameplay only exasperates it. Don't think the problem fixes itself over time; if anything, it gets worse. Doors are introduced, and they feel like random warp points more than doors. Oh, and there are actually random warp points in the game, and many other things that will have you snapping the Battery Brick in half before the power dies.

So is there anything good about this game? Well, the graphics are kinda decent; everything is colofrul and detailed and looks good by Battery Brick standards. And the fourth act "Sonic rolls down a hill like a bumbling moron" levels, while completely unneccessary, are at least more fun than the rest of the game. Yet I could hardly call that one feature enough to warrant playing this game. If you want a decent isometric Sonic, check out Sonic 3D Blast on the Saturn. Trust me, it's much better. Sonic Labyrinth, however, is not, so I am forced to give it the I Had to Listen to Outside Music Award. Because the music in this game is so forgettable.

Another classic video I found:

Complainin' 'bout the length...that's a paddlin'. Tellin' me to review less obscure games...that's a paddlin'. Saying "tldr"....that's a paddlin'. Mentionin' Halo 3....oh, you better believe that's a paddlin'.

Well, we spoke of a merely semi-obscure game that I didn't like. Now you watch as I babble on and on about a completely obscure game that I actually kind of liked. The game, in case you haven't already predicted it, is ShockMan, a Mega Man esque platformer (among other things) released for the underrated but underdeveloped TurboGrafx-16.

What the hell am I playing?

Like any decent Mega Man rip-off (except for Cocoron, a FANTASTIC Mega Man rip-off), the plot seems to be, for the most part, directly ripped from the pages of the Blue Bomber himself. Sometime in the future, a robot boy finds out that his robot girlfriend and creepy professor daddy were both kidnapped by an emperor dude. Why? He was getting lonely, and ShockMan's doppleganger wasn't good enough company. So ShockMan has to rescue his girfriend and his creepy mentor.

Standard fare so far, right? Well, let's continue with that. Like Mega Man, you run through each level, shooting enemies with fluorescent red and blue gumballs. They can be charged to a regular charge shot, or super charged to an incredibly rarely used atom bomb shot. But I guess the rarity of it is for the best, as the only time I used it, the weapon just filled up the screen with beams that helps you even less than a reverse gun. The regular Mega Man charge shot works well, but I rarely used it; instead, I found that most enemies die from a combination of pea shots and a turbo button.

Speaking of shooting things with the turbo button, this game makes heavy use of side scrolling shooter sections. (Those who play shoot em ups would get the joke.) It seems that Hudson thought the best way to make this game would be to combine the two most popular genres on the system: shooters and platformers. The resulting game was not as good as it could've been. Both the platforming and shooting elements are too simple to make the game good; the shooting sections lack power ups or anything else that makes me like shooters, and the platforming sections focus less on the actual platforming and more on beating up enemies.

Well, at least they got one thing right with the shooting sections: reactionary gameplay. By that, I mean memorizing enemy patterns and dodging them at super high speeds. The patterns are predictable enough, but the amount of skill needed to kill these bosses makes up for it. And trust me, you'll need a high amount of skill in this game, eespecially since there are NO EXTRA LIVES!!! Yes, if you die in this game, it's game over. ShockMan doesn't care if it was just a mistake; he's got a zero tolerance policy for pussies who want another chance. Sure, you're given infinite continues, but you have to start the level from the beginning, so what's the point?

If you think things get easier from there, you're sadly mistaken. Enemies will be sapping you of health less than constantly (I don't know the word, but it's still semi-frequent), and there are only a few health packs throughout the game. There's a cheat to let you restore health at will, but that's a cheat. Can't I complete the game without resorting to cheats? No, you can't. And there's not much reason to play the game to begin with, decent concepts considered. As I've said time and time again, this one game has good ideas, but the execution needs some work. So I give it the Other Men are Better Award. Other men like Pulseman.

5 Comments

A change of heart.

By Video_Game_King April 28, 2009 14 Comments

(That has nothing to do with You Know What.) I'm tired of hearing about it, so I won't even refer to it by name. Or at all. So what game have I changed my opinion of? Well, I won't mention it yet, since I often save the more important reviews for the second position. So right now, you're gonna have to deal with a review of a game I liked from the moment I played it: Mickey's Dangerous Chase. As is the perpetual goal of Mickey's gaming life, he has to manage to take Minnie on a date and beat the piss out of

Goofy is a horrible friend, Mickey. I don't see why you hang out with him.

Pete for completely random motives. This time, however, he only has Goofy to help him, and I think Goofy is catching onto Mickey's twisted cruelty, since I usually got either totally obvious or clearly shit hints from the average 50s dog man.

However, Mickey is intent on ripping out Pete's spine, so he continues on his quest, blatantly ignoring Goofy's horrible advice. Unlike last time, he throws blocks at everything that dares stand between him and Pete. Although I have this odd feeling that I've seen it somewhere else (probably Mega Man), I still really love this feature. It's fun, simple, easy to pick up, and is part of what makes you feel like a 6 year old kid when playing this game. What's more, you can aim where you throw the damn thing. You can throw it straight, up, or down, and doing so is easy due to smooth controls.

Yet that doesn't mean the game is without flaws. Often times, the game places blocks on the exact edge of a platform, and the only way to get at the damn thing is to jump into uncertain death. And don't think that they're the inconsequential attack blocks I hinted at earlier; a significant number of them hide power ups, bonuses, or stars, so the game encourages you to jump off to your inevitable death in a misguided/ironic attempt to collect invincibility.

As long as I'm calling the game out for its flaws, let me get out the list. *gets out list* There we are. Remember what I said about Goofy's shitty advice earlier? Well, a lot of that has to do with automatically scrolling levels. Some of them have you jumping in mid-air, some driving something horizontally, both of them frustrating for their own reasons. In the mid-air sections, you'll often find that you jumped on the wrong platform. Go the wrong way, and the game unforgivably leaves Mickey to die. You don't even get the courtesy of a hard to reach platform to save yourself! The side scrolling levels don't get any better. This is the only part of the game that doesn't control so well. If you want to go backward, you don't go backward; you just stop, and watch the screen scroll by you. Combine it with hairpin jumps, and you have a recipe for mediocrity.

Speaking of not being able to go backward, this concept applies to the regular levels, too. Instead of being able to explore the level at your whim with no limits, à la Super Mario World or Sonic 3, you can only explore limited sections at a time. If you move a bit too far, you can't go back to any previous sections. I know that the Game Boy had its limitations, but don't tell me the memory was crap enough that a goldfish could beat it in a memory test! Speaking of Game Boy limitations, the graphics are somewhat simplistic. They're still good, they just haven't aged as well as they could've. Alright, despite my paragraphs on the game's flaws, I still suggest you play the game. Every single flaw I listed so far is outweighed by tight controls, fun gameplay, and decent music, especially given what the standards were. So I give it the Most Accurately Named Video Game Award.

Now then, I've gotten a few complaints that it's hard to tell when one review ends and another begins. OK, ONE complaint. I tried my best, and I thought it was pretty good, but I guess I'll make it clearer with an intermission. This long sentence will not appear in future blogs.

Now then, remember that change of heart I mentioned earlier? Well, what game was it that I suddenly like now? No, not THAT game, but it is a 3. Rather, it was Mega Man X3. Back in the days when I had the writing talent of Homer Simpson, there was one game I really hated: MMX3. It was frustrating, confusing, and even this is enough to bring back awful memories.

I even gave it the position of 9th worst game ever (which, although hasn't held true and is horribly written, I defend, since I hadn't played enough crap games to form a good list) and pretty much gave up hope for Mega Man. However, years later (and after playing an oddly high amount of Capcom games during my time on this site), I played the PS1 version of the game, and although it's just a straight port of the SNES game with a few frills, I liked it much more than I once thought.

One of my primary complaints against the game was the confusing story, and I can see why I said it. Apparently, Sigma came back from the dead AGAIN (the game is oddly honest about this), and X has to kill him. But there are other villains, like Boba Fett and Doppler (don't say anything). Yet unlike other games (X4, Mega Man 7), the game barely sets up the plot. A lot of it comes at the beginning and end, very little in the middle. What's there is adequate, and nothing more.

However, story is beside the point when it comes to Capcom games; their primary focus is the gameplay, which X3 does...again, adequately. You still pick one of eight bosses to take on, gathering weapons to beat their tenuous weaknesses. However, unlike the other Mega Man games, what order you pick them here is REALLY, REALLY important. If you pick the wrong boss, prepare to have all your lives siphoned away by John McCain and his fellow mavericks. I made the incredibly stupid mistake of tackling Blizzard Buffalo first. Not only is the proper weapon required, but for some of these bosses (like Blizzard Buffalo), you need a hidden upgrade (not counting the hidden hearts to increase your paltry health) to beat them! How are regular gamers supposed to know this without clairvoyance or an FAQ!?

Speaking of bosses, they come in two varieties in this game: stupidly frustrating and easily predictable. If you have the right weapon, you can sometimes beat the bosses without taking a single point of damage. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have enemies like Blizzard Buffalo, as I've already mentioned, but also Sigma. Yes, he's the final boss, but there's a limit to how hard you can make a final boss. The first form of him spams

Mega Man X, seen in his Limited Edition Cheeto Armor.

Complaints aside, the game continues the decent tradition of sliding through levels, wall jumping and shooting the hell out of anything that moves. It's pretty successful in that and other traditions (like exploring previous levels à la Metroid), and there are a few gameplay additions that I like. For example, you can now summon ride armors in any level, allowing you to beat the piss out of enemies more efficiently. There are also special chips you can get to upgrade your upgrades, but I just held out for the Engrish Cheeto Chip.

The other big feature is that Zero is finally playable. Yet there are several problems with this, the first being you can't directly choose him from the start. Instead, X has to call Zero on his cell phone and ask him to come over and tell the other robots to stop being mean to him. The problem is that Zero isn't that much better than X; yea, he gets three storable charges and a sword, but the charges aren't more powerful than those X has, and you can't use the sword directly. The sword takes up one of the charges! And to top it off, Zero is too lazy to open a damn door or face a boss, so he summons X to do the dirty work. What the hell? I can see how maybe Zero would be handy in the beginning of the game, but the enemies aren't the problem, the bosses are, and he runs away when you need him most. So Zero is pretty much useless, and he was slightly better in X4.

Speaking of X4, this remake borrows the anime cutscenes for its own use. Before you face each boss, you see them hanging out, doing whatever, the cutscene wrapping up with their name and the classic boss fanfare. The cutscenes I can accept, even if the don't add much to the actual game. They're a bit grainy, but I can easily blame that on the Sega Saturn, since it came out for that, too. What I find odd is that certain cutscenes that were once animated in-game are now handled in FMVs. Not anime, just much dirtier versions of the originals. Why? Why the hell did they do this? Was the PlayStation incapable of handling in game animations? It actually ends up making the game look worse!

Another improvement I can't get is the save system. You have the option of saving either to your memory card or through a password system. Why the hell is there even the password system at this point? That's like being given the choice between going to work by car or motorized unicycle.........actually, that last one would be fucking awesome. Gotta remember to force the royal engineers on that.

Back to the game, a lot of what I said undermines how I actually feel about the game. It isn't an absolutely frustrating piece of crap, as I previously thought. Instead, it's more or less an average continuation of what Capcom was doing for years. Yea, it borders between hard and frustrating, but the basic foundation is solid. Overall, a much better game than I once gave it credit for, which leads me to the Don't Expect this with Anything Else Award. (Oh, and don't expect another X3 review. I like to keep all my reviews, so I can see how I've evolved as a reviewer.)

14 Comments

OK, not gonna be as bad as the last one, I promise.

By Video_Game_King April 24, 2009 9 Comments

(Mainly because I actually like these games.) Now I realize that I got a lot of crap for my last blog, some of it intelligent criticism, but a lot of it baseless fanboy assumptions that led to pointless, immature bickering. So now I'm going to show you my reviewing process. I am not kidding. In fact, let me demonstrate step 3 with Skullmonkeys. And step 5 with Breath of Fire III. But step 3 with Skullmonkeys. (OK, I promise to cut down on the hyperlinks after this.)

Skullmonkeys is one of those rare games that uses claymation effectively, unlike Clayfighters, Claymates, or any other game with the word "Clay" in the title. It starts off with the villain, Kloggmonkey, falling from the sky and dominating the titular skullmonkies. Apparently, this wasn't his first attempt, as he's also the villain of the "I haven't played it" game, The Neverhood. However, this didn't prevent me from enjoying the game. THIS IS WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT, EVERYONE!!! But back to Skullmonkeys, there isn't much of story, but what's there is told through some f'ing hilarious cutscenes. I could type up countless paragraphs on them, but I've got video!

In terms of gameplay, Skullmonkeys is decent. It's a regular platformer with very little frills. Aside from just jumping and collecting currency units, you also get bullets to collect and numerous power-ups/other weapons. The game doesn't urge you to use them often, but they're there for anybody who wants them. Each level seems to have a certain theme, and I'm not talking purely in aesthetic terms; there's usually some random platform with a twist (floats on water, makes other platforms, etc.) or item that they copy and paste through this and other levels. It seems lazy, but it's pretty effective; it makes the levels more memorable, but they never really feel same-y.

What the fuck am I playing?

However, this is one major flaw I want to address: really tiny platforms. It seems like there's a lot of them strewn throughout the game, and like any other game, these things are a pain to jump on. The controls are fine, it's not that.....OK, it is that, kinda. You know that feeling when you jump on that REALLY small platform, only to slip off half a second later? Happens a lot in this game. The game tries to balance this by giving you an abundance of lives through an overload of currency units, but let's be honest here: that's just trying to compensate for one flaw with another. I didn't have much of a problem with this, but I can see how somebody might.

Prepare to see a lot of this.

But there were several other things I had problems with. The boss battles are all stupidly easy, including what amounts to the final boss battle. No matter how creative some of them can be, they're all incredibly easy to beat. I don't see why you should even call them bosses. Another problem? Passwords. Can somebody tell me why? We have memory cards, data storage is no longer a problem! And I understand how pre-rendered clay figures and FMVs can take up a lot of space, but you have a disc! That can hold a lot more than a puny cartridge, so why do I have to memorize all these f'ing passwords!?

And back to the space issue, that didn't seem to work, did it? There are a lot of load times in this game. They're not long, but frequent. Like the tiny platforms (I could end the sentence here, couldn't I?), they weren't a problem for me, but they could be for somebody else. I guess that could sum up the whole game, couldn't it? "I didn't have a problem with it, but other people might" rings true for all of the game (not counting the frustrating final levels (for reasons already mentioned)). So instead of giving an award for the hell of it, I'll try to make this one more relevant: the Crusader of Centy Award for Imagining the Feelings of the Other Side, For Once.

For those who don't understand that last joke, go play Crusader of Centy. Right now. For those who did get the joke, enjoy my review of Resident Evil 2. I should add that I played the DualShock Edition (I couldn't find the regular version), but that doesn't matter. I also played on Original mode, Normal difficulty (as much as it pisses off a lot of you in the crowd, for some reason), and the only changes I could spot were a few dialogue clean ups. Other than that, same game. Quite literally.

On the actual review, this is going to be hard for reasons I'll mention later. Right now, I'll mention what has changed since the last game: not a whole lot. You still walk through prerendered environments, collecting esoteric items, solving puzzles, and shooting zombies and....bio....thingies. So the enemy design isn't remarkable; what stands out about these guys is how much ammo it takes to kill them. Most of these guys take a really high amount of lead to go down, and when combined with the relatively low amount of ammo you get in the game, it's a really effective way to get you to avoid the enemies. Combine it with the frustratingly tight hallways, and I can see how people might get a cheap scare out of this game. I didn't, but the point is others might.

Such incredibly washed out graphics must be noted.

Speaking of tight hallways, the graphics. Again, all the environments are pre-rendered, which, again, makes control a pain in the ass. However, the pre-rendered environments, for all their flaws (like the one pictured here), still look better than those from its predecessor. While the original Resident Evil's environments were static and quite clearly looked like they were ripped from a PC point-and-click adventure, let's say The 7th Guest. RE2's environments, on the other hand, feel more vibrant and alive (ironically), and sometimes have some sort of animation, like a flame flickering or a light...flickering.

Yet on the point-and-click thing I mentioned earlier, what hasn't changed is the crappy point-and-click puzzles. They rarely form any sort of logical pattern, most of them following the model of "insert jewel, receive bacon." The only difference from the previous game is that you do them twice this time, only from a different perspective and a few things switched around. Resident Evil 2's main distinction from the rest of the series is the A/B playthrough thing. You play as one character the first time, then the other time you play as the other character. Who you play as first has an effect on what the game for the second character is like, but we all know that you'll just go for Leon first and then Claire, you unoriginal hack. And I know that this is nothing more than a cheap ploy to get me to play through the same game twice.

Say hello to Mr X. You'll see a lot of him.

Oh, sure, there are bosses and items in one scenario that can't be found in the second, but this is fooling noone. Now then, since I've discussed just about everything else, I might as well move onto the two things left (lucky that they're intertwined): story and voice acting, the two things the series is ironically famous for. After the events of Resident Evil, Umbrella Corp. got a lot of crap for their biohazard experiments, so they decided to do the exact same thing under a mansion-y police station. Yea, why not? However, slightly less badass Leon Kennedy and Claire "Veronica" Redfield somehow come across this experiment in the cliche, and take it down. They meet several characters (again, unique to the situation), like escort-mission-Sherry, clearly-evil-Ada, more-clearly-evil-police-chief, and the completely useless Mr. X. He only appears in Claire's scenarios, but I don't really see the point of him being there. He only shows up a few times in the game, and all he does is menacingly promenade through the mansion, only to be blown up by rocket fire.

Character choice aside, RE2's story and voice work are definitely better than RE1's. There are still horrible cliches and incredibly stupid lines (Leon's yell to "ADA!!!" comes to mind), but they're few and far between. So I guess Resident Evil 2 is a weird game to review. It fixes key problems in certain places, like story and graphics, yet others, like bad controls and length, seem to be blatantly ignored. Ooh, quite the conundrum. Where would I rank it, and what score would I give it?.....Well, it certainly isn't Silent Hill, but the game is good in its own regard. (If you want a score, try scrolling through my beaten games list. That is, if you're masochistic enough.) So I give it the Torneko Taloon Award for Character Superfluity. And the exact same score as Skullmonkeys.

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Anyone else think game critics are playing a big prank on gamers?

By Video_Game_King April 21, 2009 289 Comments

               (Or are they really deluded enough to think these two games are decent?) The games I speak of, of course, are Halo 3 and The Ooze. Yes, both these games are hideously overrated. Now I know what many of you are thinking: of me dying a horrible death for insulting your messiah. Just remember that I didn't start the Flame War. And in an attempt to keep the hatred to a minimum, I'll start with The Ooze and end with Halo 3. So as I alluded to in the last sentence, The Ooze. It was a Genesis game released when the system was pretty much dead, so don't expect major quality. Anyway, there was a story here, but I decided to make up my own: you play as Fred Fredburger (oozified, of course (at 1:39)), who....eh, the story they provided was better than the one I'm trying to come up with. As I said before, you play as a pile of ooze, and you have several ways to attack your enemies. You can shoot ooze balls at your enemies, strike them with your oozy appendages, or collect an instant death poison power up. Speaking of power ups, there are only a few I found: aside from the poison thing, there's super speed, DNA for the "good" ending (more on that later), and extra ooze. Ooze acts as your health and form of attack, and it's really fun to roam around levels as a huge nuclear mess.
               Wait, "roam around levels"....isn't that where the big flaw comes in? Exactly. What could've been a good game was ruined by awful level design. Most of your time will be spent looking for switches to activate or random holes in the architecture that lead somewhere. Some of these switches and holes are hidden out of vision with no hints as to their existence! Who designed these levels, sadists with an unusually random train of thought? Naturally, this means the game is hard. You'll spend a lot of time on this game, just figuring out where the hell you're supposed to go. So you'd think that this would make for a decent ending, right? Well, The Ooze suffers from Ghosts 'n Goblins Syndrome, throwing a crap ending at you for 100%ing it.
               While I'm bashing the game, I might as well bring up exploding enemies. Aside from collecting goo orbs, you also collect extra ooze by beating enemeis. However, kinda late in the game, you encounter exploding enemies. "No problem, right? I'll just collect a large amount of ooze, stay at a distance, and attack them with my oozy appendages." Not gonna work, Mr. Optimistic. Some of these enemies are actually dragged into you as soon as you beat them. And they explode within an inch of your life (literally). The only way to avoid this is to shoot your goo at them, which again, uses up health. Either way, you're gonna lose health.
               It's a shame that The Ooze sucks so hard, because there were some good ideas behind it. After all, who doesn't want to control a poisonous puddle of muck, destroying everything in that dares cross their path? And the idea itself is well executed, as I mentioned earlier. Graphics are decent, and the music pushes the limits of the system, so you'd think the game would be great, right? Too bad crap level design ruined the whole thing. So I give it the Chakan Award for Bad Genesis Level Design.

               *sigh* Well, it had to come to this eventually, didn't it? Gonna review Halo 3. I know a lot of you are going to bash my head in like a furious Sonic, but I'm going to state my opinion anyway! But first, a bit of useless backstory. On my experiences, obviously. Through a series of tough negotiations, I was allowed to borrow one Xbox 360 game from somebody. I chose Halo 3 just to see what the fuck everybody loved about it. Before I played the game, I found a poster in the box unclaimed. Why do I say this? Well, I already had a Halo 3 poster. Being the massive idiot I am, I now have two Halo 3 posters adorning my walls.
               However, none of this answered my original question: what's so great about Halo 3? After playing it for a few days (ooh, short game, not getting off to a good start), I can safely say that I still don't know what people love about it so much. I must admit that I didn't play the two previous Halo games, but why should I?; a truly great game doesn't have to use other games as a crutch. Given the previous, I had no idea what was going on storywise. Apparently, some purple chick was stolen, and bad aliens are trying to do something with their god that involves proposal rings of death. So some good aliens (who rebelled against the bad aliens) team up with you to win back th-I CAN'T TAKE ANYMORE OF THIS!!! I seriously had no idea what was going on throughout the entire game, and although stories don't always hold back a game, it really helps to know what the hell you're doing.
               Whatever, I didn't understand the story, let's move onto something else. How about the mandatory gameplay explanation? Well, this is a first person shooter, and you get a variety of weapons, ranging from swords and hammers to rifles and grenade launchers. Too bad you can only carry two at a time. Why is there this asinine weapon limit on the player? To make it feel more realistic? First off.....no. Real soldiers are trained to carry pounds upon pounds of heavy equipment daily; I think Master Chief can live with another weapon. Second, why realism? Realism isn't always good. And this wouldn't be so bad if all your weapons could pick up and restock on ammo, but no, only a select few can. So you're forced to scavenge weapons on the fly, a strategy which usually gives you a shit weapon. I fail to see the appeal in this, one of the series' hallmark concepts.
               The other hallmark of the series? The cover system. Rather than a simple HP system that would encourage conservation, strategy, and not running in like Rambo, you get regenerating health. If you're low on health, don't worry; just find something to hide behind, and you'll get it back. It doesn't even have to be decent cover, since enemies suddenly forget of your existence if you happen to hide behind a nearby pebble. It removes all strategy from battle, all of them devolving into one common tactic: pump the aliens full of lead until they're completely magnetic, hiding behind anything if you lose enough health. However, unlike the limited inventory, I can see how this might have worked. If Bungie decided to make a Vietnam based shooter, where the atmosphere and scenarios would have encouraged active cover and plodding combat, then I (and gamers worldwide) would most likely enjoy it more. After all, how many Vietnam based shooters have you played? Exactly. But instead, Bungie wanted to have their cake and eat it, too (original meaning heauh), by making it a crappy action-oriented FPS.
               Wait, I can hear it now. "Vincent, you can't call Halo 3 crap!" Yes, I can. Shut up. "But there have to be some good things about it, like the graphics." No, and I told you to shut up. The graphics are OK. At times, it looks a bit like Ninja Gaiden II, and I thought that game had decent graphics...most of the time. Howevecr, Halo 3 has some sort of lighting problem; the game constantly osscilates between "surface of the sun" and "dear God, I'm blind." I tried turning up the

Where I would rank this game.

brightn ess both on my television and the game itself, yet neither fixed the problem. Maybe there should've been a feature to bring down the contrast, maybe? Aw, who the hell am I kidding, nothing could make this game better. I tried listening to music from good games while playing it, thinking that would make the game better, but like Duke Nukem 64, it fixed nothing. The deployable cover system remained useless; the final boss was still piss easy; the combat was still mindless and patronizing; and the story was still more confusing than the damn Voynich manuscript.
Seriously, what has happened to gaming that this is considered good? This game is not good at all. I'd say this is what happens when you apply film philosophies to the video game medium, but that would sound pretentious. Besides, Final Fantasy XII displays that with far more gusto than Halo 3 ever could. No, wait, I will say that is what happens when you do what I just said. The story is up its own ass far enough, and the music is the passive ambiance crap you see (OK, hear) in big name movies. Why do you think I listened to all that music? I came into this game expecting a fantastic adventure, but I wouldn't rank this in my top 10 games of all time. I wouldn't even put it in my top 20. I don't know where I'd put it, but it definitely goes below my crap threshold (the point where games stop being good and start sucking). So I give this game the Kefka was Onto Something Award for Destruction of Humanity, and await your inevitable complaints, whether they're directed at my actual opinion, or towards the length of this blog. And of course, there are alternatives...

(Oh, that reminds me of a few things I forgot, like how the vehicles control like crap, or how your allies can't be trusted with 4th grade safety scissors. Just had to put that in here.)

289 Comments

Rejoice, for you have probably heard of one of these games!

By Video_Game_King April 19, 2009 10 Comments

                (But don't rejoice, because I don't like it.) What game do I speak of? Lego Indy, of course. But because I don't like it, I'm going to talk about other things for a few paragraphs, like Kefka's awesomeness, or a game I actually liked. I'll do the latter, mainly because I planned to do that with Bonk III: Bonk's Big Adventure. A sequel to the "eh" Bonk's Revenge (on what, exactly?), Bonk must once again do....something. The game doesn't explain, but does it need to? Stories are for RPGs. What we really want here is fun. OK, what I really want is to have a blog that people actually read, but I'll settle for fun. And that's what Bonk III is: fun. Like any platformer, you kill enemies by jumping on them, but in a different kind of way. Instead of simply planting a foot in their skull, you have to bash your skull into their face. It's a really fun way of killing your enemies, and a good way to build up combos. You can bounce off an enemy mid-jump, or hover above them and continue to bash their skulls in with yours.
                That last technique only works in boss battles, but don't worry, for most of them are pretty fun, like the rest of the game. You know what else is fun? The bonus games. At the end of each level, you pay the game to play in a bonus level of your choice. You can get them for free in the actual levels, but you don't get to choose. Each one makes creative use of what it has, like a tube maze, bashing your head to victory, or destroying a building a la Rampage. There were a few I didn't like, but the fact that I could choose which ones to play negates their suck factor. Other than those mini-games, there wasn't much about the game that I didn't like.
                I'd say the game is short, but keep in mind the username; I can only call a game short if other people do. Or if I have proof from the game itself. I can't fault the graphics or the music, which are the best I've seen on the TG-16, so what keeps me from humping this game to perfection? Nothing I can point out, really. It's a good example of a game that has no exterior flaws, but isn't exactly perfect. I guess the common flaw in these games is depth, but when has simplicity been a problem? Simple games can be fun, and Bonk 3 is a good example of that. So I give it the Fun Award.

                But you know what isn't fun? Bashing everything in sight AND trying to achieve a goal/solve a puzzle. By which I mean Lego Indy. Yes, I found the game to be overrated, and not even in the good Final Fantasy VII kind of way. More like the bad Halo 3 kind of way. Seems like I made this controversial by the second line, but I can go further! You know how I start EVERY SINGLE ONE of my reviews by briefing you on the protagonist and the overall story? Yea, not gonna work this time, is it? Whatever I could say is already in the damn title. However, there's still a lot worth mentioning about the story, like the lack of words. I heavily respect games that tell a story with no words, and Lego Indy does a great job, pantomiming each scene with humorous grunts, whines, gestures and similar tactics. The only problem? The game runs on charm (that's not the problem; I want more of this in the industry), but a lot of it comes from the movies and having watched them. If you haven't watched the original movies (and if you're part of the Lego Indy target audience, chances are you haven't), your experience will suffer for it. And this carries over into the gameplay, unfortunately, since many boss and level strategies derive from the movies. For example, near the end of the Last Crusade is the Holy Grail scene where you have to pick the right grail to beat the game. If you watched the movie, you'll know which one to pick; if you didn't (like me), you'll grab everyone and drink from each grail, trying to get the right one until you reach the point where they regenerate, at which point you either beat your TV into plastic ashes or look up which one it is in an FAQ.
                A lot of the game seems to have confused me on multiple occasions. Certain bosses have the weirdest ways of beating them, like beating up the henchemn, stealing their hats, and asking the gods to beat the boss into a bloody mess. And do you know how many times I've had to jump around a certain level, trying to find out the one random thing I missed in order to progress? That's bad level design, and I had nothing to do with it. For another example, let's head back to the near end of the game. Before you can get the Grail, you have to build some sort of ram by finding 3 boxes and assembling the Legos. I found two of them easy, but the last one was absolute hell. Do you know how to get it? Beat up a car until the box pops out. How the hell are you supposed to figure that out!? The car (and those nearby) was broken down, so I though you had to repair it with a wrench (that I couldn't find). It wasn't until I looked it up in an FAQ that I found out you had to beat the car up.
                Speaking of beating things up, the combat. Put simply, it is mindless and repetitive. You can punch the shit out of Nazis, whip them, or use nearby weapons. The last one is a bit haphazard, especially if you don't have auto targetting. Random weapons like chairs or bottles have it, but guns don't, meaning you have to spin Indy in circles until he hits something or gets dizzy. Still better than fists, where you mash the X button until everything in front of you is dead. After that's all done, you proceed to doing the same thing, only with nearby Lego products. This is the game's biggest flaw: the assloads of destruction. There are a billion destroyable objects in each level, and it gets really repetitive breaking every single one to get the True Adventurer rank. Not that that's a problem, given how easily you get it. However, the problem is that you're destroying shit while simultaneously trying to achieve a completely separate goal. Game developers, listen up: if you're going to make wanton destruction a big part of your game, make it the ONLY part of your game. In fact, make it the only GOAL of your game, like Rampage in the 2D realm, and Blast Corps in 3D. If you introduce something else, you end up spoiling both destruction and what you introduced.
                Normally, this is the part where I name the flaws of the game in order to keep you guys from thinking it's perfect, but given the circumstances, I'll have to reverse my strategy. I'll give the game credit for the graphics, which are pretty decent. The only thing I found odd about them is that not everything is rendered in Lego. That's probably for the better, though, since it'd make the 360 CPU explode into a million pieces. And for all the crap I throw at it, the game is still technically sound; there are no major glitches or control issues. But there are plenty of gameplay issues that I previously listed, and all of them kept me from enjoying the game. There's also the protagonistal problem, which earns the Harshest College Professor Award. Why? This guy carries around a fucking whip. Say what you will of Dean Vernon from Animal House, but at least the guy never carried around a whip. Can you imagine what it would've been like to take a college class with INDIANA JONES as your professor? Unfortunately, I can:

Indy said:

*I enter* Oh, Vincent. Hey, wanted a word with you.

Yea, what's this about, exactly? Is it about my dissertation? *points up*

Indy said:

No, it's about your tuition. You haven't payed it in 3 semesters.

Oh....that....Yea, I just don't have the money.

Indy said:

I'm not buying it. *pulls out his whip*

Wh.....what's that whip for?

Indy said:

I whip Nazis 4 years ago in Egypt. You think I can't whip your ass, boy?

Look, I s-*gets whipped* Hey, quit it!

Indy said:

I plan to get my money! *whips me to tears* Now, are you going to get me the money?

*sobbing*

Indy said:

Well, are ya?

Y......yes......

Writey Guy said:

Forgot about your crown, didn't you? Idiot.

Indy said:

You're next, Mr. Fancy Blogs. *chases Writey Guy out of office, whipping any student he stumbles across*

Oh, and for those who don't like my blogs for some reason, here's an embed of Yahtzee's take on the game I bashed.

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