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Video_Game_King

So is my status going to update soon, or will it pretend that my Twitter account hasn't existed for about a month?

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A series of very stupid decisions. In blog form!


No Caption Provided

Disney's Epic PMS

( No, I'm not THAT stupid.) Granted, it's probably a real thing, but this is not the very stupid decision. That belongs to...

Snatcher

( What do you mean that this isn't as stupid as Epic PMS?) Let me steer you along the right track: I beat this before. This time, though, it was the Japan-only PS1 version. Has the stupidness yet to sink in? Well, it's often very hard to mix two different strains of stupid, so let me add to the stupid: I first tried to watch the unwatchable cutscenes through a Let's Play starring somebody with a confusing yet identifiably bad accent; then came the good yet still confusing slowbeef LP (I can't link it because there's a download for the game on the page) before I found a video walkthrough without somebody's voice (can't link for same reasons). That's how much of an idiot I am.
 
Anyway, onto the actual game. Or, to be more accurate, several paragraphs of story followed by maybe one of actual game. Two, if I'm luck. You take the role of Gillian Seed, resident amnesiac, whiny bitch, and pervert (I should also mention that the Japanese version requires you to look up her measurements to proceed, so doubly so). He's been given a job as a special type of cop, because that's what you do with unruly perverts with no qualifications (he has amnesia). Granted, this major plot hole is covered by the end of the game, but it's still pretty annoying throughout the rest of the game, when you keep asking yourself this question. Shame, too, because the actual plot is really good. I know I didn't even really describe it, but it's still awesome, and I know the exact reason why: it's Blade Runner. Same premise, same characters, same hover car, same everything. Kind of. OK, so Snatchers have soft spots that make their heads explode instead of eyes that do stuff when you ask them questions about turtles, and those creepy fucking dolls are nowhere to be seen (even if you have Metal Gear, the result of C-3PO fucking R2D2), but trust me, it's Blade Runner. Not that that's a bad thing; Blade Runner was actually pretty cool, and if you're gonna rip something off, it better be good. Also, the game acknowledges that it's a rip-off of Blade Runner and kills off a Deckard-esque character within the first half hour.
 
  Did that bitch just call me an otaku?
 Did that bitch just call me an otaku?
Also within the first half-hour, you find out that the game is much more mature than other games of the time. How? HIS HEAD WAS TWISTED OFF. Wow, that is brutal. And unrepresentative. And a transition that just gets worse and worse as it goes along. Let's stop it right there and say that Snatcher is the mature type of mature game. That sounds weird until you look at a game like Mortal Kombat, which is immature mature; Snatcher has this aloof attitude about all the blood and shit in the game that works really well to show that games actually can be an artistic medium, Roger Ebert. Unless, oddly enough, you're playing the Japanese version; in that case, you'll find yourself wondering why it's censored. Remember that pervert link from before? Turns out that the Sega CD version got the erect nipples I missed in the PS1 version, along with an uncensored corpse. I'd say that games back then did the opposite (Japan gets the uncensored bits), but that was Nintendo, so maybe it works different for Sega. Or Sony. Whatever
 
Wait, it doesn't. Remember Famicom Tantei Club Part II, and how every character seemed to be violently chewing something to death whenever they were talking? Same here, but taken to the absolute extreme. How extreme? When fast forwarding through the numerous cutscenes (what the hell am I gonna do with them? THEY'RE IN JAPANESE.), their mouths were slower than at normal speed. Their mouths move so fast that they break the laws of physics. Also like Famicom Tantei Club Part II, the actual game parts. You're given a list of actions relevant to the situation, and you choose from a list of them until you advance. It's a nice system that helps cut down on clutter until you realize that it applies to locations, too, meaning you can't go to Outer Heaven unless you have a reason. I guess "tits" isn't a good enough reason for the game. How do you know that tits won't help me in my investigation? It's not like you're ever clear about what helps you in your investigation. Sometimes you must perform action X before action Y, even though they're both logically possible at the same time; sometimes, you have to dick around for a while until the plot catches up with you; and sometimes, the game just gives up and throws random bullshit your way, like the Chinese chemistry puzzle. I realize that I played this in Japanese, but remember that I played it in English before, and I wasn't as good at selecting random shit from a menu as I was before.
 
Oh, and I probably wasn't as good at shooting nine squares as I am now. In case you don't know what that implies, lemme say that this game has shooting in it. Suck it, Monkey Island! And then be shot by it! Of course, that's assuming that you pressed select to bring up your gun; otherwise, you'll just end up getting blasted to hell by...spiders? The fuck? Robot spy spiders? Why not actual snatchers? If you're gonna make me shoot these stupid spiders, at least work them into the actual plot; don't just give me a brief explanation and never make use of them. Granted, the shooting's actually really, really good, being more challenging than you'd think, but a lot of the time, it doesn't serve much of a plot purpose. I'm aware of the snatchers you shoot, but a lot of it is still shooting useless spiders. Either explain them more thoroughly or don't include them at all. There's no shame in being an adventure game. Wait, why is Snatcher ashamed, again? It's a pretty awesome game, even if a lot of it isn't much of a game. That's why I give it the Final Fantasy XIII Award for Fuck People Who Like Snatcher but not Final Fantasy XIII. Also, fuck people who don't like Final Fantasy XIII.
 

Review Synopsis

  • Hideo Kojima is what Dan Brown thinks he is. You suck, Dan Brown; at least Kojima can tell a decent story.
  • Excellent voice acting, even if the Chinese snatcher sounds like a villain from T.U.F.F. Puppy.
  • The adventure game parts: they're as adventurey as ever.
 
 
 
 
Wait, naked grandmas count as guns? No wonder so many people support gun control legislation; would you ever want to meet a guy who's been stockpiling naked grandmas "in case it goes down?"
  
  

Battletoads & Double Dragon: The Ultimate Team

( I highly disagree with the title of this game.) The title of Ultimate Team must go to what I can remember of my Pokémon Silver team: Typhlosion, Lugia, Smeargle, Mew, Tyranitar, and some sixth thing (probably Sneasel, although it may have been Misdreavous or Murkrow). I trained this team to beat anything. Not even Ash could stand up to my power. What makes you think that two toads and a couple of dragons can beat my Ultimate Team? Especially when their one team-up wasn't really that good?
 
Exactly: they stand no chance. I don't care if they beat the Dark Queen and some other guy who doesn't show up often; they're still gonna get their asses kicked. Wait, did I just spoil the entire story by saying that my Pokémon Silver team could do their job better? I don't know whether that's awesome or incompetent. Eh, I'll settle for awesome; that way, Battletoads & Double Dragon get incompetent. For example, you can choose between any of the three Battletoads or any of the two Double Dragons. What's the difference between them? From what I remember, not much. It's all Battletoad and no Double Dragon. But to be fair, I did play only as a Battletoad, but in my previous run (hey, remember how I said I'd only beat games I've already beaten on different platforms? No? Is that you, Gillian?), I actually played as both, thinking that there was a significant difference; there wasn't. They have the same moves, the same levels, the same everything. Wait, did I just repeat a joke from the Snatcher part of my blog? Hell, the game can't even form its own identity, so it has to steal from other games.
 
  Hey, you got your Cho Aniki in my Battletoads!
 Hey, you got your Cho Aniki in my Battletoads!
Actually, that's unfair to say about Battletoads & Double Dragon; that's assuming that it's actually trying to do something, which it clearly doesn't. A lot of what you get for gameplay is the basic beat-em-up formula: walk right, beat up dudes, repeat until a boss, beat up boss, repeat process until ending. Yet somehow, it's all lacking something: weapons. There aren't really any weapons in the game. I've only seen one, and it only increases the range of your attacks. Do I really need that when I can ram my opponents into oblivion? Hell, that's my strategy for half the game. Which half? The combat half. Anything can be beaten with ramming. Even the bosses can be juggled to death in the most embarrassing game of racquetball known to man. It gets repetitive as hell fairly fast, and the game's solution to this is to give you a wider variety of enemies to punch past the boundaries of all space and time. Because that's how you fix a weak foundation: paint the hell out of it. Is that how house-building works? I wouldn't know.
 
I also don't know how to keep you focused on one major thing, since you've most likely forgotten by now that there are two halves to this game, sort of. Remember how the first half was nothing but combat? Well the second half is all the Battletoads crap, like riding bikes and...uh....shooting stuff, and.....uh...um.....not much else, really. That's all the creative stuff this game has to offer, and it even manages to fuck one of them up. Remember how the bikes kicked everybody's ass back in the day? No? Here's a bunch of YouTube videos proving my point. Add Double Dragon to the mix, and suddenly, things get piss easy. Hell, there aren't even any checkpoints, simply because the game knows how easy the damn thing is. I'm guessing that's why it added bike combat to the mix, but it forgot that combat is also piss easy. OK, so I've railed on the bad parts of this game for, well, the entire blog, so maybe it's time for the good stuff. *looks at list* Uh, the shooting stage, the music, and...well, that's it. It's not really a good game, especially when you remember how creative and awesome the previous game was. Hell, it's like Battletoads & Double Dragon is Rare's attempt to make Battletoads seem less fun. OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration, since it's not the worst thing to happen to the Battletoads name (that would be the god awful cartoon), but it still feels like the opposite to the original's amount of awesome. That's why I give the original Battletoads the Final Fantasy IV Award, and this game the After Years Award. Yes, I can do that.
 

Review Synopsis

  • Remember all the cool levels from the original Battletoads? Well, Rare didn't.
  • Remember the Double Dragons? Me, neither.
  • It's just a somewhat easy beat-em-up.

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16 Comments

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Video_Game_King

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No Caption Provided

Disney's Epic PMS

( No, I'm not THAT stupid.) Granted, it's probably a real thing, but this is not the very stupid decision. That belongs to...

Snatcher

( What do you mean that this isn't as stupid as Epic PMS?) Let me steer you along the right track: I beat this before. This time, though, it was the Japan-only PS1 version. Has the stupidness yet to sink in? Well, it's often very hard to mix two different strains of stupid, so let me add to the stupid: I first tried to watch the unwatchable cutscenes through a Let's Play starring somebody with a confusing yet identifiably bad accent; then came the good yet still confusing slowbeef LP (I can't link it because there's a download for the game on the page) before I found a video walkthrough without somebody's voice (can't link for same reasons). That's how much of an idiot I am.
 
Anyway, onto the actual game. Or, to be more accurate, several paragraphs of story followed by maybe one of actual game. Two, if I'm luck. You take the role of Gillian Seed, resident amnesiac, whiny bitch, and pervert (I should also mention that the Japanese version requires you to look up her measurements to proceed, so doubly so). He's been given a job as a special type of cop, because that's what you do with unruly perverts with no qualifications (he has amnesia). Granted, this major plot hole is covered by the end of the game, but it's still pretty annoying throughout the rest of the game, when you keep asking yourself this question. Shame, too, because the actual plot is really good. I know I didn't even really describe it, but it's still awesome, and I know the exact reason why: it's Blade Runner. Same premise, same characters, same hover car, same everything. Kind of. OK, so Snatchers have soft spots that make their heads explode instead of eyes that do stuff when you ask them questions about turtles, and those creepy fucking dolls are nowhere to be seen (even if you have Metal Gear, the result of C-3PO fucking R2D2), but trust me, it's Blade Runner. Not that that's a bad thing; Blade Runner was actually pretty cool, and if you're gonna rip something off, it better be good. Also, the game acknowledges that it's a rip-off of Blade Runner and kills off a Deckard-esque character within the first half hour.
 
  Did that bitch just call me an otaku?
 Did that bitch just call me an otaku?
Also within the first half-hour, you find out that the game is much more mature than other games of the time. How? HIS HEAD WAS TWISTED OFF. Wow, that is brutal. And unrepresentative. And a transition that just gets worse and worse as it goes along. Let's stop it right there and say that Snatcher is the mature type of mature game. That sounds weird until you look at a game like Mortal Kombat, which is immature mature; Snatcher has this aloof attitude about all the blood and shit in the game that works really well to show that games actually can be an artistic medium, Roger Ebert. Unless, oddly enough, you're playing the Japanese version; in that case, you'll find yourself wondering why it's censored. Remember that pervert link from before? Turns out that the Sega CD version got the erect nipples I missed in the PS1 version, along with an uncensored corpse. I'd say that games back then did the opposite (Japan gets the uncensored bits), but that was Nintendo, so maybe it works different for Sega. Or Sony. Whatever
 
Wait, it doesn't. Remember Famicom Tantei Club Part II, and how every character seemed to be violently chewing something to death whenever they were talking? Same here, but taken to the absolute extreme. How extreme? When fast forwarding through the numerous cutscenes (what the hell am I gonna do with them? THEY'RE IN JAPANESE.), their mouths were slower than at normal speed. Their mouths move so fast that they break the laws of physics. Also like Famicom Tantei Club Part II, the actual game parts. You're given a list of actions relevant to the situation, and you choose from a list of them until you advance. It's a nice system that helps cut down on clutter until you realize that it applies to locations, too, meaning you can't go to Outer Heaven unless you have a reason. I guess "tits" isn't a good enough reason for the game. How do you know that tits won't help me in my investigation? It's not like you're ever clear about what helps you in your investigation. Sometimes you must perform action X before action Y, even though they're both logically possible at the same time; sometimes, you have to dick around for a while until the plot catches up with you; and sometimes, the game just gives up and throws random bullshit your way, like the Chinese chemistry puzzle. I realize that I played this in Japanese, but remember that I played it in English before, and I wasn't as good at selecting random shit from a menu as I was before.
 
Oh, and I probably wasn't as good at shooting nine squares as I am now. In case you don't know what that implies, lemme say that this game has shooting in it. Suck it, Monkey Island! And then be shot by it! Of course, that's assuming that you pressed select to bring up your gun; otherwise, you'll just end up getting blasted to hell by...spiders? The fuck? Robot spy spiders? Why not actual snatchers? If you're gonna make me shoot these stupid spiders, at least work them into the actual plot; don't just give me a brief explanation and never make use of them. Granted, the shooting's actually really, really good, being more challenging than you'd think, but a lot of the time, it doesn't serve much of a plot purpose. I'm aware of the snatchers you shoot, but a lot of it is still shooting useless spiders. Either explain them more thoroughly or don't include them at all. There's no shame in being an adventure game. Wait, why is Snatcher ashamed, again? It's a pretty awesome game, even if a lot of it isn't much of a game. That's why I give it the Final Fantasy XIII Award for Fuck People Who Like Snatcher but not Final Fantasy XIII. Also, fuck people who don't like Final Fantasy XIII.
 

Review Synopsis

  • Hideo Kojima is what Dan Brown thinks he is. You suck, Dan Brown; at least Kojima can tell a decent story.
  • Excellent voice acting, even if the Chinese snatcher sounds like a villain from T.U.F.F. Puppy.
  • The adventure game parts: they're as adventurey as ever.
 
 
 
 
Wait, naked grandmas count as guns? No wonder so many people support gun control legislation; would you ever want to meet a guy who's been stockpiling naked grandmas "in case it goes down?"
  
  

Battletoads & Double Dragon: The Ultimate Team

( I highly disagree with the title of this game.) The title of Ultimate Team must go to what I can remember of my Pokémon Silver team: Typhlosion, Lugia, Smeargle, Mew, Tyranitar, and some sixth thing (probably Sneasel, although it may have been Misdreavous or Murkrow). I trained this team to beat anything. Not even Ash could stand up to my power. What makes you think that two toads and a couple of dragons can beat my Ultimate Team? Especially when their one team-up wasn't really that good?
 
Exactly: they stand no chance. I don't care if they beat the Dark Queen and some other guy who doesn't show up often; they're still gonna get their asses kicked. Wait, did I just spoil the entire story by saying that my Pokémon Silver team could do their job better? I don't know whether that's awesome or incompetent. Eh, I'll settle for awesome; that way, Battletoads & Double Dragon get incompetent. For example, you can choose between any of the three Battletoads or any of the two Double Dragons. What's the difference between them? From what I remember, not much. It's all Battletoad and no Double Dragon. But to be fair, I did play only as a Battletoad, but in my previous run (hey, remember how I said I'd only beat games I've already beaten on different platforms? No? Is that you, Gillian?), I actually played as both, thinking that there was a significant difference; there wasn't. They have the same moves, the same levels, the same everything. Wait, did I just repeat a joke from the Snatcher part of my blog? Hell, the game can't even form its own identity, so it has to steal from other games.
 
  Hey, you got your Cho Aniki in my Battletoads!
 Hey, you got your Cho Aniki in my Battletoads!
Actually, that's unfair to say about Battletoads & Double Dragon; that's assuming that it's actually trying to do something, which it clearly doesn't. A lot of what you get for gameplay is the basic beat-em-up formula: walk right, beat up dudes, repeat until a boss, beat up boss, repeat process until ending. Yet somehow, it's all lacking something: weapons. There aren't really any weapons in the game. I've only seen one, and it only increases the range of your attacks. Do I really need that when I can ram my opponents into oblivion? Hell, that's my strategy for half the game. Which half? The combat half. Anything can be beaten with ramming. Even the bosses can be juggled to death in the most embarrassing game of racquetball known to man. It gets repetitive as hell fairly fast, and the game's solution to this is to give you a wider variety of enemies to punch past the boundaries of all space and time. Because that's how you fix a weak foundation: paint the hell out of it. Is that how house-building works? I wouldn't know.
 
I also don't know how to keep you focused on one major thing, since you've most likely forgotten by now that there are two halves to this game, sort of. Remember how the first half was nothing but combat? Well the second half is all the Battletoads crap, like riding bikes and...uh....shooting stuff, and.....uh...um.....not much else, really. That's all the creative stuff this game has to offer, and it even manages to fuck one of them up. Remember how the bikes kicked everybody's ass back in the day? No? Here's a bunch of YouTube videos proving my point. Add Double Dragon to the mix, and suddenly, things get piss easy. Hell, there aren't even any checkpoints, simply because the game knows how easy the damn thing is. I'm guessing that's why it added bike combat to the mix, but it forgot that combat is also piss easy. OK, so I've railed on the bad parts of this game for, well, the entire blog, so maybe it's time for the good stuff. *looks at list* Uh, the shooting stage, the music, and...well, that's it. It's not really a good game, especially when you remember how creative and awesome the previous game was. Hell, it's like Battletoads & Double Dragon is Rare's attempt to make Battletoads seem less fun. OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration, since it's not the worst thing to happen to the Battletoads name (that would be the god awful cartoon), but it still feels like the opposite to the original's amount of awesome. That's why I give the original Battletoads the Final Fantasy IV Award, and this game the After Years Award. Yes, I can do that.
 

Review Synopsis

  • Remember all the cool levels from the original Battletoads? Well, Rare didn't.
  • Remember the Double Dragons? Me, neither.
  • It's just a somewhat easy beat-em-up.

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Skald

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Edited By Skald

Snatcher: two parts Bladerunner, one part whack-a-mole. Shake until awesome.

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Video_Game_King

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@extremeradical: 
 
This blog: two parts actual game, one part made up game, three parts nudity, one part video. Shake until Snatcher.
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Karl_Boss

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Used to play Battletoads & Double Dragon with my brother a lot back in the day....good times

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Video_Game_King

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@Unknown_Pleasures: 
 
It would help if you told us if you played this game or the individual games "Battletoads" and "Double Dragon." However, given all that crap I wrote, I'm guessing that the individual thing was probably right.
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Edited By luce

No Caption Provided
Disney's Epic PMS is the shit
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Video_Game_King

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@luce: 
 
Are his eyes made of Pac Man? And isn't Epic PMS the menstruation?
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luce

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Edited By luce
@Video_Game_King:  
 
PMS = PacMan Syndrome  
 
I don't know where you got this "menstruation" bullshit
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ArbitraryWater

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Sooo... Japanese blade runner? Erect nipples? Other than that, I recommend you probably don't play games in Japanese if an english alternative is readily available. And, even if not so, I recommend you don't play games you can't understand.

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Video_Game_King

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@ArbitraryWater: 
 
I know that there's an English version, but I beat that long ago, mind you. Also, I know it's a bad idea to play games in languages I don't understand, but I just can't help it. I've played games entirely in Japanese, even when it was a bad idea (half of Thracia 776, all of Dragon Quest IV on the PS1, the first two levels of this game).
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Edited By ArbitraryWater

Ok, so you played a port of a game you already have played? That's like if I went out of my way to find the leaked prototype of the PS1 version of Baldur's Gate, ran it on the PSX emulator I obtained in order to play Persona 2, and then made a separate blog about it. (which I imagine would go something like this: "The controls are worse, the graphics are worse, and the loading times are horrendous. But hey! It's still Baldur's Gate! And it's illicit as hell!"). Then again, it's your blog boat, and you are the captain of your own destiny. Or something like that.

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TaliciaDragonsong

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You really deserve the 'most misleading thread titles of the year' award!

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Disney Epic PMS? At least Minnie Mouse has work now. Her snatch, however, doesn't.

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@ArbitraryWater: 
 
Keep in mind that I only had that version of the game as an option for advancing the blog toward my ultimate goal. It's not like I have any other games to replay so I can do one of those rare replay blogs where I get pissed at my readers for never recommending any games to replay, despite the fact that the environment clearly doesn't present that as an obvious option. Wow, that was one long sentence.
 
@TaliciaDragonsong:
 
I'd say "don't you mean 'most misleading thread titties of the year'", but I don't want to milk that joke any more than I've already milked it.
 
@Dalai:
 
Wait, Minnie Mouse has a snatcher? Interesting.
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Edited By Claude

Best blog ever. When I clicked and saw Disney's Epic PMS, it was worth it. By the way, it should be Disney Epic PMS... duh, Disney Epic Mickey.