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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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How the hell do robots and parties disappoint?

By Video_Game_King 22 Comments


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Buck Bumble

( This is probably going to be an awkward game to blog about, for several reasons.) I'd mention the first reason, but that would destroy the first half of this thing. The second reason (which I will herein refer to as "the first reason") is that there are no pictures on this game. Oh, box art? Yea, I already used that in the above banner, so unless you guys really love looking at video game ass (the ass of a video game, not human ass within a video game), I'll just use pictures from whatever the hell I feel like. You got that?
 
Does it matter? After all, that's still more effort than the developers put into the story, which is still less effort than I put into that segue. Anyway, the story: it takes place in England, a land known for its rich theater history, turning nearby Ireland and Scotland into its bitches, and massive nuclear runoff. Wait, that last one isn't even a joke, it's totally true. Saves me the trouble of explaining how nearby insects gained super-intelligence, started militarizing, and then decided to fight each other. Why are they waging war? Who gives a shit? You're just here to blow shit up! The story here is practically nonexistent, only there to string together the levels, even if barely so. It's not even in an Elder Scrolls kind of way, where you actually get some type of feel for a story or some type of conflict; it's just a flat line of "hey, mind killing some guys for us?" with no sense of build-up, tension, characterization, or even characters. Not counting you, there's really only one other character in the game, and she only shows up near the end to die.
 
 Eh, close enough.
 Eh, close enough.
Speaking of endings, I was actually surprised that she came at the end, and simply thought that the game decided to end things in the middle. Maybe it's the fact that the game is so short that it can only be considered a vertebrate when it has a boner, or perhaps it's that the missions are so samey that they all blend into a sense of oneness as soon as the mission number hits double digits, but the ending just comes off a bit premature (not like this three-line sentence). Of course, that's assuming you're into the game; if, like me, you couldn't care less about the game, the ending simply means you won't have to play the game ever again. Not that the game is bad or anything, but it's just so nondescript that I can already feel it slowly fading from memory. That's the third reason why I find it hard to blog about this game; the first reason (the other first reason) is because everything about it is so generic and standard that it's hard to talk about it like it's its own game. You fly around, collect a variety of weapons, shoot a variety of enemies, and get a score for it all. I could name a ton of games that do that, but instead, I'll use the next paragraph to talk about the game, for a change.
 
Again, what is there to say? The game's about killing things, something it does almost well. I've already said that you can collect enough guns in this game to be considered World War II, but what I neglected to mention was the balance. On one end, you have the shitty weapons that are less harmful than toilet paper, and on the other, nuclear death bullets that will kill even the strongest enemy with a single shot, bosses included. Even the final boss dies in a few hits with the right weapons! Of course, this is all assuming that you can even hit your enemies. OK, that sounds a bit harsh, considering that the controls work well enough to get around and do what you want; it's just that there are a few quirks to the whole process that turn me off. You naturally float down when stationary, meaning you either hold down the B button while shooting, or slowly fall into "instant death, no way out of this" water. Or you land on the ground, maybe; either option sucks. It's just that instead of dying, you're stuck shooting in a single direction, unable to aim until you get the hell back up. Other than that, nothing to say. Hell, I'm having trouble coming up with an award for this game!........Lufia 1 Award for Excellence in Being Completely Average.
 

Review Synopsis

  • The story's only there to serve the gameplay.
  • The standard, standard gameplay.
  • A few control quirks. That is all.
 
 
 
 
You know what? Fuck Japan and Russia; clearly, South Korea has the weird Asian shit market cornered. This may not seem weird compared to philosophical Winnie the Pooh or anything Japan does, but keep in mind that this is a clip from their version of Sex and the City. (Alternate lead-in: This video combines two things I really love: pizza and hot Asian girls.)
 
 

Monster Party

( Already, this game is starting to confuse me.) We've barely left the introduction, and already I have some questions. How the hell do you reconcile monsters and a party? Don't state the obvious, since this isn't a Halloween game or anything. Monsters imply some type of horror that you must survive, but parties suggest that I'm mostly going to walk around aimlessly, bored as hell while everybody else is in some other room, having an orgy. (Or maybe they aren't; I'm not invited to many parties, for obvious reasons.) More importantly, though, is this: what does any of that have to do with the game itself? Granted, there are monsters, but there are no parties to be found anywhere in this game.
 
 Um, no? Gross.
 Um, no? Gross.
Instead, it has to do with some kids playing baseball. One of them wanders off, when suddenly, a space monster appears in front of the kid and tells him that his world needs rescuing. You may be wondering what help some generic child would be to an advanced civilization of space creatures, and so was the game apparently; it's at this point that the alien just decides to possess the kid, occasionally taking his old form to kick more ass than the kid ever could. While that raises many questions, keep in mind that we haven't gotten into the actual game yet, where things get infinitely weirder. Levels transform into Silent Hill 1-esque versions of themselves (or at least the first one does), the enemies are batshit insane (ever been mauled by a reverse merman? Exactly.), and the bosses themselves are even crazier. Hell, just look at that picture on the left. What am I supposed to mix up? Why does it make me feel dirty? And how is that the least crazy of the bosses?
 
Notice how unlike.....um.....shit, I can't think of any games with weird gameplay, including this game, obviously. Each level consists of finding the key to exit the level, which requires beating the shit out of bosses hidden behind certain doors. Of course, you're not going to know which doors hold anything, so you'll be forced to enter every room you see, like you're desperately searching for the bathroom, and the boss is a toilet. (Knowing this game, that's entirely possible.) Worse yet, they seem to require visiting in the correct order, meaning you sometimes can't get through a level by walking right and busting into bathrooms. When you eventually find a boss, you also find that your strategies are mostly the same, depending on your form (more on that later): either fill him with lead (or whatever space bullets are made of), or hit a home-run right into his face. Both stratagems require a shitload of time, since bullets apparently switch dimensions after two feet, and the bat physics in this game seem to have been designed specifically as a middle finger to physics. I realize that it's all down to position and timing, but I never found any consistency to it, so boss battles usually ended up being longer than your typical RPG. Oh, very clever, people behind this game. You guys still didn't make a good game, though.
 
That doesn't mean that there's no potential for a good game, though; after all, you have that stupid baseball gimmick from before, but there's also monster transformation! From time to time, an enemy will drop a pill; swallow it, and you'll realize why Republicans are so against regulating the pharmaceutical industry: because cool shit like monster transformations would be gone. But remember that weird plot earlier? It comes back to bite you in the ass in the form of gameplay, where you find out that you only get to transform into one guy. That's it. All he does is fly and shoot, and he's not very good at either. I've already mentioned how your shots travel such short distances that you'd be better off throwing the bullets at them, but later in the game, you're upgraded out of nowhere with a double shot that avoids enemies like I avoid people at those orgy-parties. Don't worry, though, because you can fly over to the enemy and shoot them in the face! Only it's not so much flying as it is constantly double jumping, since you have to tap the A button a billion times just to fly an inch off the floor. Not that you'll ever need to use the flying ability outside cheating the level design, since most levels are horizontal. Damn it, this could've been a good game! What happened? Oh, wait, hold on....no, this came out before Little Nemo, so that explains it. And it explains why I'm giving this game the Just Play Little Nemo Award.
 

Review Synopsis

  • Ones of bosses.
  • Two barely playable characters.
  • What the hell is going on with the story?

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