Something about Marvel and insane babies. I think.
By Video_Game_King 6 Comments
Bio Miracle: Bokutte Upa
( Can somebody tell me what a Bio Miracle is?) Yes, that's the part of the title that I can't understand, not the part that's in a language I don't fully know. That part's just somebody saying that they are Upa. I'm not sure how that's related to a Bio Miracle, because I don't know what the hell a Bio Miracle is. Is that what you Earthlings call child birth? If that's the case, then why isn't this game called "Vaginal Monstrosity: Bokutte Upa"? That would be far more accurate.Oh, and that's not just because "vaginal monstrosity" is the best way to describe a parasite crawling out of your crotch. It's also because this game is ridiculously insane to the point that I'm not even sure what's going on. All I know is that I'm playing as a baby. Why am I playing as a baby? What am I supposed to do as this baby? I don't know. The ending doesn't really help. In fact, it opens up a new question altogether: why is that bear trying to suck itself off? It took me a while to make sense of it all, but I think I've finally figured it out: Upa isn't some special super-baby or something. He's a normal baby living in a particularly crappy home. One day, his mother left a bunch of cleaning supplies out in the open. Upa did what most babies do when they see something completely new: he shoved that shit in his mouth. I think you know where I'm going with this: Upa's on his first and biggest Drano binge of his young life. Trust me when I say that he's not gonna survive this at all. Just look at the crap he encounters in this game: a candy land, a goat demon, computers fucking up gravity, non-slippery ice, and a bunch of other shit with absolutely no thematic consistency. The level designers either flipped through the dictionary for ideas or just recorded every stoner idea that came into their heads. Possibly both.
So instead, I'll just complain about how easy the game is. Man, it feels weird doing this immediately after I did the exact opposite in my last blog, but this game is incredibly easy. Remember that boss I mentioned before? Turns out that he doesn't exactly pose much of a threat. He just fires enemies at you, walks around, and waits for you to fire those bastards into his face. Same goes for the non-pig bosses, only they tend to pose a threat. Somewhat. It seems that everybody though that killing a drug-fueled baby was the easiest thing in the world, and they decided to leave all their deadly weapons at home. How wrong they were. You do not fuck with a baby who's been digging around under the sink. You'll die, and he'll continue to the other level...which is, again, usually easy. I think I described why before, but let me add something to that: not all the levels are regular platformy ones. There are also swimming levels and eating levels (does it even need to make sense?), and they're both really easy. Again, nothing poses a threat, and you're not really limited in where you can go. Combine all this with the fact that there are only seven worlds in the game, and it's easy to see why Upa is a baby: Konami wanted people to relate to the protagonist. I'm assuming that if you're interested in this game, you must be a baby, so let me explain that joke to you: Konami thinks that you're a baby, probably because you are a baby. However, let me warn you about this game: around the fifth world, the game reaches a respectable difficulty level, which for you, is probably overwhelming. So if the fifth world turns babies away, and the ease turns everybody else away, then who is this game for? *points to self*
Review Synopsis
- The level of insanity is so high that I'm surprised it's not called "Earthbound: The Early Years." (It's not "Earthbound: Vaginal Monstrosity" because that was already taken.)
- Of course, this leads to pretty cool and inventive platforming mechanics.
- I probably should have expected an easy game when I saw that the protagonist is a baby.
Might as well post this and pretend that it's still relevant.
The Punisher
( What an oddly smooth transition.) I kinda wish I thought about this when I was deciding what games to play. Had I known, I probably would have played some shitty Spiderman game or whatever. Still, I guess there's some good contrast between these games. One's a Japan only game for a Japan only system, and the other is so American that its calendar only has two days: the Fourth of July and the Fourth of July Again. One's so out there that it is more deserving of the name LSD than the actual game LSD, and one is so realistically gritty that strapping it to a dildo is enough to call the thing a sander. One's pretty cool, and the other's pretty cool. Wait...No, there's nothing wrong with calling this game cool. Yes, it's a licensed game, but it's hard to fuck up The Punisher. The gameplay's built into the story and he reads like Marvel's answer to Batman. Kinda. Instead of watching his parents die in an alley, superhero Frank Castle decided to take his family on a picnic. It was then that mobsters came out of nowhere and decided to store their excess bullets with the trustworthy Castle family. The Castle family dies, because shootings have a tendency to do that, and Frank Castle, now The Punisher, decides to take his revenge. He figures out that the mobsters who killed his family were part of a crime syndicate led by-OK, just let me interrupt this for the remainder of the blog. Why is he planning this out? The parts of The Punisher that aren't sheer muscle are guns; if anything, I was expecting him to be like this. Rational thought doesn't go hand in with bullets in your family, even if the amount of rational thought isn't a lot. There's definitely something wrong with this, something you can immediately see when you look at the game. Technically, it looks OK, but that cold-hearted take-no-shit killer with the skull on his chest looks a bit too bright. Is there a Saturday morning cartoon based on The Punisher? Wow, this is unbelievably offensive. I didn't expect that.
Actually, I know exactly why they did this: Capcom thought this was an arcade game. You get points for using as many items as possible, which explains the quickly corroding swords in the game. This would be pretty cool if extra points translated into extra lives, but it doesn't. All you get are two lives and a couple of continues. When I say that that's all you get, it's all you get. No fucking around in the options screen for you. Speaking of option screens, here's an actual problem: the difficulty. The game's fairly challenging, as my flame-dodging antics probably get across, but this is only on Normal. Why's this an issue? Apparently, you have to play on super ball busting Expert difficulty to see an ending of any type. Why the hell do games do this (Rare in particular loved the hell out of this in their N64 games)? If I'm supposed to play on that difficulty to begin with, why wasn't this made clear? You didn't motivate me to play the game on a harder difficulty; all you did was make me look it up online, which is totally possible. Wait, I forgot to ask all that time ago whether this was ever an arcade game. *actually checks* OK, never mind. This game rules.
Review Synopsis
- I think I described this game's scenario best when I said "punishment straight to the nuts."
- It's pretty much Final Fight 3 with guns...
- ...and some arbitrary arcade bullshit to top it off.
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