Really, is this going to shock anybody?
By Video_Game_King 9 Comments
Sonic Battle
( I knew this game was going to be bad the minute I decided to play it.) Yes, I know how hypocritical it is of me to get this bad game AND post the following comic, but I can justify myself: I didn't go into this game expecting to hate it...that much. It's a Sonic game, so I was allowed to hate it a little bit. Hell, I thought it would be kinda cool, given what little I've heard of it in the past. How wrong I was.First thing that's wrong: no Super Sonic. How can you have a Sonic game without Super Sonic....not including the original? And to make things worse, Sonic actually collects the Chaos Emeralds over the course of the game. But obviously, he doesn't use them; instead, he gives them to Emerl, a robot Eggman found. Why was he looking for it? To use it as an ultimate weapon! Why wasn't it the DeathoKill he wanted it to be? Because he hadn't fed it enough Chaos Emeralds! Keep in mind Sonic and the gang know all of this, yet they still actively go out of their way to shove shiny things into the robot's face. They also trade the Deathokill amongst each other through the ridiculously short episodes, probably to spread the damage as much as possible. My only guess as to why is because they're either massive idiots.
Oddly enough, the story seems to agree with me, given the poor dialogue. Sure, it can be corny and rife with typos (both demonstrated in the pictured picture), and while that's bad enough, what that picture doesn't show you is how condescending it can be at times. It seems Sega assumed that the game wasn't that good and that if you were dumb enough to buy the game, you definitely weren't smart enough to play it. Perfect example: about halfway-ish through the game, Eggman captures Emerl and Cream (who has absolutely no business being there, but more on that later). In their efforts to escape, they soon find out that there's an air duct they can use to escape nearby. Immediately afterward, you're forced to talk to Robotnik just so he can tell you not only that you can use the air duct for escape and that it requires a key, but also where the key is. I don't know who the game thinks the idiot is, Robotnik, me, or the rabbit/robot duo.
After a bit of thought, I came to only one conclusion: the game's being too hard on the rabbit-robot duo. They're not (complete) idiots, they're just horrible fighters. And so we come to the fighting system, something that fulfills none of the potential it promises. The battlefields in Sonic Battle are all in 3D, allowing for a lot more strategy than your usual fighting game. You can chase your enemy in a very extreme form of tag, you can jump behind your enemy and give them a prostate exam, you can strafe to the side to look like an idiot. In theory. What, you thought this was going to fulfill its potential 100%? Hell no, this is Sonic Team! You know they can't make 3D Sonic games! As a result, instead of something truly unique and exciting, you get a button-mash-a-thon. Your main strategy for each fight seems to be "mash attack until it stops working, then mash the special attack button." There's no variation, this is all you do. And it works. I was able to get through an entire fight by cornering the enemy (kind of) and bitch slapping them to death.
The only thing that prevented me from just slapping them with a 100% turbo bitch slap was that they were robots who exploded upon death. At that point in the game, it was the most variety I'd seen in the character roster. For about the first half of the game, a lot of the characters feel almost exactly the same, lending credence to the button mashing thing; the second half of the game features characters so unbalanced, the scale is completely vertical. Keep in mind that this is a multiplayer game, too, meaning what was once a significant annoyance in the campaign(s) is now a crippling flaw in the brawls. The sole exception is the aforementioned DeathoKill, but that's only because you can customize him with other characters' moves, something the game is REALLY insistent about. However, there are a few problems with this: first, unlocking the moves seems to be completely random, meaning you'll have to grind your ass into a fine powder to get a specific move. (It's bad enough that the game makes you fight the same battles twice in a row.) Second, somewhat because of that, Emerl starts off slow, heavy, and not a lot of fun to control. Third, you're picking from a pool of all the characters' moves, leaving a lot of room for potential cheapness. By the end of the game, I could one-hit kill some enemies with an explosive punch I ripped from Knuckles. No, this isn't a one-time move, you can grenade-fist your foes infinitely.
It's a shame that Sonic Battle isn't that good, because there is some evidence that this could have been a good game. There was real potential for unique gameplay with interesting strategies, something you don't see too often in fighting games; instead, we got a boring button masher that treats you like an idiot. To sum things up, it's interesting and you'll never see anything else like it, but the same thing could be said of the blood stains in my underwear. Therefore, this game gets the Billy Mays Award. I'm hoping it's enough to erase this game from history.
Review Synopsis
- The story's hackneyed and condescending.
- You're gonna mash the attack button like you caught it sleeping with your wife.
- This game has serious balancing issues.
Rather than post a video, I'm going to post this Penny Arcade comic. Why? I just love the message it portrays.
The Ren & Stimpy Show: Buckeroo$!
( Disclaimer: I'm aware that this part of the blog is probably going to be very similar to ScrewAttack's VGV of the game.) Another disclaimer: throughout this blog, I will post random links to Ren & Stimpy material on YouTube. Here's an example: I typed this at around 11 at night, but was not sleepy. Those who don't agree with me are welcome to get themselves blown up. Now that we're done with the lawyer shields, let's get into the actual blog part of the blog.I feel like I don't need to explain what the hell Ren & Stimpy is. We've all seen it, and we all know it to be awesome/ guilt-inducing. (That was the safest clip I could post). However, what isn't immediately known is just what the hell the game is about, even though it borrows A LOT from the show (more on that soon). The premise of the game is shaky: Stimpy's invented a video game console that rewards your victory with money. Nevermind the fact that this counts as counterfeit or that it should run out of paper before the first dungeon or that Stimpy's a fucking moron; just accept that he's invented the Nintendo Wii. Ren did, and, forgetting how much of an idiot Stimpy is (or maybe using it as an excuse to beat him later), decides to play through Stimpy's game.
Actually, it's pretty much two games based around three episodes: Robin Hoek, Space Madness, and some cowboy one I pretended was the cowboy episode of Rocko's Modern Life. That one, along with Robin Hoek, is a regular platformer where you walk from left to right, bitch slapping anything that gets in your way. The only major difference I noticed between the two was that the not-Robin-Hoek one allowed you to switch to Stimpy at random intervals. You can switch back to Ren, but why you'd want to isn't very well answered; Stimpy has a default long range spitball/hairball/some spherical death orb attack. Trust me, you'll need it, since everything in the known universe wants you dead. Tumbleweed, stray records, rats, logs, EVERYTHING. Even Ren, one of the playable characters, wants you to die.
However, as happens with many games, I get the feeling that this actually could have been a good game at some point. Maybe it's just my love of Ren psychologically torturing his fatter, Germanyer self that's speaking, but I think that with a bit more direction and focus, the game could have been enjoyable. You know, maybe throw about some beat-em-up arrows or give the player a way to reverse Ren's random ransacking.....rheumatoid....rick roll....Anyway, they could have at least made the shooter mini-game its own thing instead of a boring distraction with poor music. They also could have refined it a bit more, probably by lowering the amount of times Stinky Wizzleteets helps you out, or by making your ship take up less than 80% of the screen. While I'm making unreasonable requests, they also could have given me more POWDERED TOAST MAAAAAANNNNNN, along with installing a counterfeiting printer on every cartridge. But they did none of this, so Buckeroo$ never became the game it could be; it became a muddled game that doesn't like the player. Therefore, I'll give it the Ren/Stimpy Hybrid Award.
Review Synopsis
- It's about as funny as Ren & Stimpy can be in video game form.
- The gameplay is like Ren: confusing and looking for just about any excuse to beat the piss out of you, only to grab the piss and beat you down with that.
- Yet there are some decent gameplay ideas and execution underneath the poor design elements.
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