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The Return of the King

By Video_Game_King May 14, 2010 14 Comments

The Story

( As many of you know, I have not been blogging for the past two and a half weeks.) But of course, I returned, and with an absolutely metric shitton of things to say! First, why I wasn't blogging. For the longest time, my laptop has seen it fit to communicate to me through monstrous whirring sounds. Eventually, I decided to figure out why it was groaning like this, and upon opening the damn thing up (well, opening it as far as you can go without removing the hard drive), I discovered why: enough dust to adorn whatever current-gen console you like.

Pictured: a JRPG goldfish.

Seriously, this thing was loaded with dust. I think I even found a pubic hair lodged in there. I didn't end it with the word "somehow" because I knew about the things it was doing with my dryer. However, when I told it to stop blowing my dryer, I'm guessing it stopped listening at "blowing", leading it overheating and passing out. So I sent the damn thing in for repairs and waited, biding my time with the Wii. Oh, look at that, it has an Internet browser! That's how I was able to participate in all those quests...sort of. See, Giant Bomb doesn't really work on the Wii, only allowing me to post updates and look at the site. I couldn't even update my lists (you'll see why I wanted to do so soon enough), but even if I could, I still wouldn't be able to see them. Why? Well, whereas my laptop had some weird selective deafness, my Wii had as good a memory as a JRPG goldfish. Any stress whatsoever will cause it to crap itself, asking you to reload the page before giving up and going to Google. None of this even qualifies as the weirdest part of the Wii browser. No, that goes to the words. Specifically, what you WON'T find in the auto-fill dictionary, swears obviously excluded:

punctuation: Apparently, Nintendo doesn't want me watching anything Yahtzee related. And they're right, I should stop watching the bastard child of Mr. Game & Watch, Boomhauer from King of the Hill, and an Australian guy.
yakuza: Pay attention, as this will be a recurring theme.
blog: Maybe I was wrong on the Yahtzee thing, since when I tried typing this word, the Wii suggested "bloke", like I bought my Wii through chimney sweep money.
anus: Hey, it's a medical term! One you won't find here.
barnacle: I think we all know how this came up: Spongebob.
Hiroshima: The only reason I bring this up is because as soon as I typed the letter N, my Wii was very eager to recommend Nagasaki as a word. Apparently, nuclear bombings are like fighting games: nobody ever remembers the first one.
mime: Again, I applaud Nintendo. Let's ignore their creepy existence.
bunnies: OK, this one confuses me, mainly because this is supposed to be a kid's system. Way to be anal, Nintendo. Wait.....no, anal isn't there, either.
Scientologist: See mime.
vendetta: Remember, remember, the fuck was that thing about?
misanthropy: I wish there was a straight-faced Kefka sprite. I seriously wish there was, just for this occasion.

So what will you find in this weird dictionary? Well...

semen: Another theme has been established! Why does Nintendo think everybody who buys a Wii is interested at all in semen?
erotic: Damn it, Nintendo!
Xanadu: I'll let this one slide, since nobody knows that this was a Mongolian fuck palace.
Mewtwo: I like to brag about my Melee awesomeness, even if it just gets a lot of "why don't you just play Brawl" responses. I just like Mewtwo better.
bloke: Again, I'm not a friend of Dickens nor Poppins. It's not like I spend my time in Xanadu.
Diddy: It doesn't even come with Kong attached, so I'm forced to assume that about 40% of Wii owners are P Diddy.
asl: Nice way to cater to your pedophile demographic, Nintendo. It does a lot to explain why I get a McDonald's coupon with every Wii game purchase.
Wong: OK, this one makes perfect sense. If you're ever caught using the above word, a racist...thing appears on your screen, saying, " So, who's gonna get their dick ripped off tonight?"
seiko: I had no idea what the crap this was. I had to look it up on Google to find out that it's not something from Tim & Eric, but a watch company. Wait, people still have watches? W....what? (Oh, while I'm on the subject, let me say that I've finally started learning Japanese. My thoughts regarding the process have been confirmed: learning the character system is the hardest part. Excuse me a second. *punches Pepsiman in the face for laughing at me*)

Damn you, Britain! You could've dragged it on for a few weeks so this next video would be relevant, but you selfish sods just haaaaad to resolve your election controversy.

But wait, there's more!

( Yes, because I haven't blogged about games in two and a half weeks!) That averages out to about five blogs missing from my roster. By my new calculations, I've given you about enough material to sate about 1.5 googolplex blogs. "Huh?", you ask me, confused as to what the hell a googolplex is. It's a really big number, dumbass. And because it's so big, I could only (re)play each game briefly before deciding on a score and haiku. Shut up, it's not like you guys were suggesting games I should replay. Besides, why should I have trusted you? You're an idiot; you don't even know what a googolplex is.

Gallery

14 Comments

Something about this blog deeply confuses me.

By Video_Game_King April 22, 2010 7 Comments

Cave Story

( I feel conflicted about this game.) Why? Well, first, look at it: it's an old school Metroidvania game that allows you to feed bunny creatures a steady diet of bullets. The only way this could appeal to me more would be if there was an unlockable "automatic blog writer" feature at the end of it all! But of course, there was no such feature, as the game was lacking in that department. Along with about 9 other departments. In short, don't visit this mall, especially in this economy.

In long, this entire blog. First off, that Metroidvania thing? It's an outright lie. It's not the first time the game community has misled me, but damn it, it doesn't hurt any less! I was expecting the ability to explore large environments, brimming with power-ups and opportunities to sequence-break; what I got was a series of tiny environments where exploration was limited to "explore your way to this part of the level." Causing this problem is the teleporter system, which means the game dictates when you get to explore (or are even exposed to) brand new areas. Exacerbating said problem is the weapon system. (Note: I am only insulting the system from an exploration perspective.) You get about 5-6 weapons throughout the course of the game, but only 1-2 actually allow you to explore places. The first just lets you shoot blocks, and the second, when fully leveled up, allows you to fly through the levels on the wings of the Angel of Death. It's almost as awesome as it sounds.

Oh crap, how do I kill th-oh, never mind, he's already dead.

Notice how I mentioned something about levels. Weapons level up a la the Fable II system: enemies crap out a bunch of triangle turds after death. Depending on the size of said turd, your weapon levels up. I'd say that monkeys must have designed this, but given the story, I'm leaning towards bunnies. (More on that later.) Nothing wrong with that system, it works well and gives the weapons a decent amount of variety. Unfortunately, it's not enough variety, since there are only 3 levels for each weapon. "But it takes forever to reach that third level, right?", you say to me, having never played Cave Story. I have, however, and can tell you that each weapon maxes out in less time than it takes to beat the game, a joke that would've made sense if I told you how short the game is. (It's a few days long.) Artificially lengthening this is that it still follows the Fable II experience system; get hit, and you lose experience, eventually going back to level 1. I'd complain about it, but again, you level up exactly like this.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, this game is kinda easy. Levels don't present much challenge, weapons level up quickly, bosses are very submissive when you're Swiss cheesifying their face, the usual problems. What strikes me as odd, though, is that it's supposed to be an old school game. Not the usual NES old school, but the slightly better MSX old school. This means the graphics and music have made vast improvements, but not much else. OK, the story is actually pretty decent, if we're going by the old school motif. There's an island floating in the sky (not THAT island), and this doctor guy wants to make the bunnies there more badass. You are a robot who must kill the doctor for daring to do something so awesome. If you would like to know more, play the game. No, seriously, play it, as Cave Story is kinda insistent about the story. The cutscenes aren't too long, but they are frequent, to the point where they drive the entire game forward. Kind of explains why the game is so stringent with the exploration.

Wait, wait wait wait wait wait wait wait, I just realized something: who said this game was a Metroidvania game? Was it that guy who made the game? No? Then why was I expecting this to be said game? I'm blaming it on you guys, but that's not the point: the point is that this is a perfect example of why forming expectations of a game is a stupid idea. Strip away said expectations, and you see that Cave Story has some passable tits. Then again, you'll also see the outie belly button (water physics), the c-section scar (crap save system), and that she's part bunny. Christ, what the hell happened to this maiden? The sexual side of me is completely confused about this whole thing! I give this game the Funny Feeling Award, and am currently debating whether or not I should take out a restraining order on it.

Review Synopsis

Who the hell was calling this a Metroidvania game, and why haven't they been turned into a boot by whoever kicked their ass?
Other than that, it's functional, if in need of refinement.
This game can't decide whether old-school is a good thing or bad.

Just pretend that this is me, OK?

Gradius Galaxies

( Alright, I'm tired of saying this again and again and again.) We all know that I'm generally not a fan of the shooter genre. (DAMN IT, THAT IS NOT WHAT I MEAN!!!) I find most of the games to be OK, but lacking in variety. I've said this so many times that I only say it here to stretch out the opening paragraph. If I had to say anything about Gradius Galaxies on its own merits, well, I'd be rightly fucked. Wait, I have to write an entire blog about this? D-......F-........Damn it.

AHH!! Quick, shoot it!

Let's see, where to begin...how about the beginning of this game? Eh, it'll work. Like Mega Man 10 and the Winter Olympics before it (that last one has no video, so please enjoy The Ass Master), Gradius Galaxies wants you to know the entire Gradius history before you begin. It's a rich history, beginning with a game called Salamander, eventually culminating in this game's release. Then you go about your business, shooting Easter Island heads to death until a brain explodes. But not before you choose your power-ups! Yes, like Gradius III before it, you can customize how exactly your little spaceship powers up; unlike Gradius III (if I remember correctly), you can only choose from pre-decided packages of power-ups, rather than assemble them yourself into a metal death container. Not too much of a problem, though, since there's enough variety between each one to serve whatever needs you may have.

Wait, what am I saying, "needs?" You only have one need: shoot the crap out of anything that moves. Shoot specific things, and you get...an opportunity to power-up. You see, Gradius is not the straightforward shooter affair, where you collect a blue power-up and you get a blue screen filler; collect a blue power-up here, and the screen blows up. OK, I fucked up. I should've said that should you collect a red power-up, your little power-up bar moves forward a bit, allowing you the opportunity either to select that power-up, or wait for another to come by. It's a well-crafted system that forces you to think strategically about what you want powered up first....or it would be if the pacing wasn't screwed up. You collect power-ups about every 3 frames of animation, meaning you can just spam one power-up before moving onto the next one. The only strategy to be found is "should I use Double or Laser?" (Hint: USE DOUBLE. Bosses see that laser as a massage.)

Of course, I can see why they decided to fill the screen with more power-ups than enemies: because the death system is just plain unfair. Die once, and that Droid voice tells you to restart, taking away all your hard-earned power-ups. You then go back to a given checkpoint (why couldn't I just start right there?) to collect a billion power-ups. Flaws to cover flaws! Quite the scandal! Are they trying to stay true to their roots, or were they just too lazy to fix any of the problems with this concept? Or did they think that Gradius had enough awesome to cover up the flaws? Na, that couldn't be it, as it would be very stupid to think that awesome things like weapon systems and level design could cover up crap like weapon systems and level design. Confusing, isn't it? That's why I give this game the Powerfully Misapplied Award. Try figuring that out.

Review Synopsis

Collect 900 power-ups in 4 seconds, lose them all in 1.
Why won't you end? Just....just stop being.
This game knows that old-school is a bad thing. At least for it.

7 Comments

Well, that took forever.

By Video_Game_King April 19, 2010 20 Comments

Mortal Kombat II

( Wondering why this blog took so long to make?) Well, look at it! Two huge-ass games, and a pizza thing! OK, the main reason is that I spent all my time trying to shelve Phantom Brave, given I've had it for so damn long. Also, I played Mortal Kombat II. That sentence is more for my sake, since if I had it my way, this would just be one long paragraph dedicated to my quest to beat Phantom Brave. Anyway, Mortal Kombat II: a game that forced Midway to admit that the first game was just plain awful. Also, it's actually pretty good.

Step 1 in making the game good: distancing itself from the original Mortal Kombat. Kano & Obligatory Female are locked in chains, Goro's dead (but, unfortunately, his knock-off frog brother remains), and Shang Tsung is about 39 centuries younger, somehow. There's this insane Chinese guy in another dimension; he wears nothing but armor, made even creepier by the fact that he moans a lot and likes watching people fight while in the spread eagle position. (The things I've seen, man....) This is when the world gathered together and collectively decided that this person must die. They then chose the best warriors they could find and sent them off to Cree-Pei Un-Kul's land. Oddly enough, it seems that they couldn't find enough warriors to do the job, so they painted a few of them nine different colors and pretended that they were different people. They even gave these guys their own unique backstories and motives and stuff, making me think that Scorpion is suffering from multiple personality/ species disorder.

This multiple personality disorder extends so far that he has different movesets for each personality. Oh, it might appear that they're distinct people with different uses and moves, but trust me, they're the same guy. Have you ever seen Kitana and Mileena in the same place at the same time? You have? Shit, that destroys my joke. Well, I might as well bash the original Mortal Kombat. Hey, remember how the game was so wooden that you found yourself wondering why there wasn't an Atari 2600 port? Well, they've fixed that in this game. Not only can you defend yourself in the air, but now you can build up combos with your moves! I guess that's supposed to make up for the small amount of moves per character, but why am I saying "to make up for?" It makes the system much more manageable and fun to use! What I should be complaining about is enemy AI stupid enough to think that the original Mortal Kombat was a really good game. The best strategy to use against them is this: get far away, launch a projectile, watch them jump into it, and repeat until their knees are dead.

Oh God....WHAT HAVE I DONE!?!?

Do it for another round, and then you can perform a Fatality. You know, the one thing that makes Mortal Kombat what it is? (Although, as this video shows, clearly not the best at what it does.) Midway knew this, and improved the Fatalities to the death degree. First, there's blood in this version; enough to make No More Heroes look conservative. Second, you can do much more than rip your foe in half: you can eat them, toast 'em up, uppercut their head off again and again and again, and even give them a nifty lil present! I think, at least for that last one; I was never able to pull off a single Friendship or Babality in the entire game. Not even the incredibly easy ones, like "press B for Baby" or "press something." Maybe it's something about the SNES, or maybe I'm crap at this, but I could never get them to work. Fatalities worked just fine, but my relationship with Friendships/Babalities could best be summed up by this video. (Get used to it, you'll see a lot of that soon.) I know I could love them; the game has a lot of personality and humor about it that leads me to believe that these elusive super moves are quite awesome. It's just that I never got to see them in play, forcing me to give the game the Mew Award for Hidden Awesomeness I Know to Be There. However, unlike Friendship, I've actually captured Mew. Your inner child is weeping right now. * evil laugh*

Review Synopsis

Why is there no mention of an underground cloning ring? How else would you explain Scorpion becoming Sub-Zero, Reptile, AND Noob Saibot? Huh? Explain that.
Oh, wait, they all have different moves. That explains it.
Unfortunately, none of those moves seem to be what I want them to be.

This is why I hate the new Domino's: they will invade your entire town and brainwash your reality into making you eat that shit. Speaking of shit, from the looks of it, that's the entirety of their sauce.

Domino's Old Pizza

( Oh, what the hell: another pizza review!) I can hear many of you scratching your heads, it's that loud. You must obviously be thinking, "What black magic is allowing you to get the Domino's of old? LET US BURN THE WITCH!!! Why didn't he just buy the new stuff in that vi-" Screw you. I've said it before: the new Domino's tastes like tomato genocide mixed with escaping convict cheese. I yearned for the days when Domino's actually tasted good. So I fired up the time machine and went back to a time when the bread wasn't so damn egotistical. Unfortunately, like Family Guy, the old Domino's isn't as good as you think it is.

I WAS VERY CLEAR ABOUT THIS!!! NO TOPPINGS ON MY PIZZA!!!

That's not to say that the old pizza is crap; to say that is akin to saying that they changed absolutely nothing. Believe me, they changed a lot when they made the new Big Brother pizza. Every ingredient wanted to be the ingredient, constantly snatching the spotlight until it wasn't even pointing at the pizza. (It would probably help to mention that I like to eat my pizza in complete darkness.) Before that, each part of the pizza knew what it was: a part of the pizza, a role they played far too earnestly, probably thinking that being humble would make them awesome. As the next part of my blog shows, it doesn't. For example, the cheese: I could barely taste it. After ripping it from its lover, the bread, (off on a tangent: cheese sticking to the bread is always a plus, since it shows the unity of the product), I found that the heat of the pizza was kinda preventing me from actually enjoying it. Hank Hill's words rang in my head throughout the meal. Granted, I could kinda taste the cheese underneath the fires, and it was good, but the problem was that it didn't want to come out and embrace my tongue in hot, hot action.

OK, that was probably the worst choice of words for the given scenario. How can I fuck things up further? Oh, I know: abrupt transition into the sauce! Alright, it's not entirely abrupt, since I eat my pizza in layers (cheese, sauce, bread (no toppings for the pizza purist)). Anyway, the sauce suffers from the same problem: I couldn't get a feel for it. It wasn't because of the heat this time, though, it was just that I couldn't taste it that well. Not calling the sauce watery or anything, as it had the proper consistency I look for in a sauce; it just had no taste. I've hammered that point into your minds enough, so let me move onto something else: the sauce likes to hide in the crevices of the bread, like it thinks I won't reach it there. YOU ARE MISTAKEN, SAUCE!!! USE YOUR LAST MOMENTS OF LIFE TO RENOUNCE WHATEVER GODS YOU BELIEVED IN, FOR THEY HAVE BETRAYED YOU!!!

Bread, however....I cannot stay mad at you. True, you follow the same stratagem that your brethren have employed, but I forgive you because it helps you find the perfect place for you: a plate upon which all ingredients can come together as one. What has happened to this humble attitude, bread? Your new form displeases many; you have stuffed yourself with enough herbs to make Cheech & Chong look like William Randolph Hearst (trust me, this joke actually makes sense), giving yourself a bold new taste that overwhelms and annoys me greatly. That was not the part of you that needed improvement; what needed the enhancement was the crust. I'm guessing the guys at Domino's use a special dough for the crust, made primarily of cement mix, because that crap is hard enough to be considered a lethal weapon. I'm going to count it as a flaw, even though I could see how others would love the crunchy zest it brings to the bread. I'm just not that type of guy, I love softer (yet still firm) crust on my pizza. I give this pizza the China Award for Walling in Cheesy Goodness. That's what China is, right? Just a huge section of the Earth made of nothing but cheese? Wait, it isn't? Excuse me, but somebody needs a few death penalties right now. *writes rest of blog, leaves*

Pizza Synopsis

The cheese is so hot that it cannot be tasted but by the most sensitive taste buds.
The sauce isn't hot, but somehow evades tasting.
The bread: an impenetrable wall holding in the one thing that makes pizza pizza.

Phantom Brave: We Meet Again

( Are you wondering why this blog took so long to make?) Well, this is why. I spent all of last week just trying to beat this game. That, and I had no other games to beat *ignores Mortal Kombat II*, but my point is that this game sucked up all my time, along with my penis. Notice how I didn't say that it "sucked my penis" but rather said that it "sucked up my penis." You know what that means, right? Actually, I don't think you do, for once, so let me explain: this game makes you grow a vagina.

Also, everybody uses stupidly-named attacks that make no sense.

It all starts when the sort-of-protagonist Ash dies while fighting the main bad guy you don't see until the end of the game. He then gets sentenced to an eternity in Hell. Granted, this isn't what the game tells you, but trust me, it's Hell. He's caught between the worlds of life and death, stuck babysitting a 13 year old girl who just hit puberty. That's not the bad part, it gets worse. She spends the entire game trying to save nature, befriending a handicapped girl (it's the girl thing I don't like), helping people for no pay, and doing all the stuff that makes me puke enough rainbows to bathe 12 leprechauns. For this reason (and only this reason, from what I can surmise), everybody in the world hates Marona. I can hear you asking me what the point of all this is, what you're supposed to do in the game. For the first chapter, it's just to buy the island you're living on, but the game continues for three chapters after this, so it can't be that. My best guess is that you're supposed to kill Sulfur, the baddy who killed you in the beginning, but it takes about 3 chapters of vagina growing to get to this. To be fair, there is an extra story mode that solves this problem with an alternate story (complete with the best intro ever ( summary for the lazy)) that gets to the point rather quickly, but trades in the OK cast of characters and competent dialogue to achieve this.

Also, it mostly trades in the reasonable difficulty for a difficulty that's hard but as close to reasonable as you can get without being reasonable. To make up for how lame that sentence was, I decided to carry over my data from the previous game to this new game mode, essentially setting to "Everybody is Dead" difficulty. It's like how Caesar won his war against Pompey by summoning Godzilla. I'd just send Marona across the islands alone, beating up every single enemy before they could even got a turn. Oh, wait, I just realized that you guys have no idea what I'm talking about. Allow me some time to explain the basic gameplay: every battle begins with Marona finding the nearest item and summoning a character through it. Once you've summoned your unholy army, you walk around the map like it's Final Fantasy Tactics (only with a better camera), beating the crap out of weak enemies and banishing strong enemies to the nether-regions that lie beyond the map (by which I mean "you toss them off the map"). You may be tempted to bash every enemy off the map, and while you definitely will do that, Phantom Brave does a good job of balancing that by makign sure you have to beat up at least one (sometimes two!) monster(s) to clear the map.

Unfortunately, the one strategy you'll always use to get that one enemy is "send Ash over to shove a sword up their rectum." That's pretty much the only strategy you'll ever need for any map; any other strategy you use will be a minor variation on that. And no, don't blame this on me, the game was literally asking for it; he comes with an ability that lets him act first on every map, and he's always going to be more powerful than any other character you will ever create ever. No amount of fusing or grinding in dungeons will create a better character. Oh, right, fusing: it's how you give characters new abilities. Rather than level up or buy new abilities, you give weapons abilities and then combine them into characters. It's a wonderful system with lots of room for customization and replay value, the only complaint I have being that you're never told how many abilities a given character can have, meaning you eventually reach a development wall and have to start jamming your character's weapons with kickass abilities. (I assume this is the same thing that happened to 3D Realms while making Duke Nukem Forever.)

That's a lot of characters just to say "Talk to the hand."

Of course, you don't want to end up doing that, since it's usually a helluva lot more fun (and much smarter, strategically speaking) to spawn a bunch of weaponless demons to skate around the levels, throwing the enemy into the void. Notice how I said "skate around the levels" instead of "move from square to square around the levels." That's because this game completely does away with the traditional grid system in favor of a giant circle of all the places you can move to. It helps to make the world feel like a genuine place instead of a series of overly elaborate Stratego boards. You know what else helps to do that? The fact that there are now physics at play. Not just "press down to move down" crap; I'm talking about sliding and bouncing and tediously jumping up hills, wasting movement points as you go along. Some of the boards become Japanese curling contests as a result of this. However, while this hints at a deep strategy, the sad truth is that the game doesn't use much strategy at all. You just.....shit. I've already said everything about that.

Let's see, what else can I discuss? Oh, right, the weird quirks about this game. I'm not speaking of intentional game design or anything, just weird anomalies I found in this game. For example, you can skip cutscenes, but not while you're watching the cutscene (or "demo", as Phantom Brave calls them). OK, this is actually just bad, since you can accidentally find yourself growing a second vagina for rewatching a cutscene. Also, the game manages to drag you back into it, even after you've beaten it, with things like Disgaea characters and a bonus disc. Oh, right, I forgot to mention that I got Collector's Edition. (OK, I didn't forget, but I did in this blog, is what I'm saying.) It's not like other Collector's Editions that I'm too lazy to name but I'm sure exist, where you're paying more money for a crappy cardboard sleeve; no, this game actually has a reason to give you an edition that warrants collecting. It comes with (besides better box art) a little art disc that serves as a godsend to spriters everywhere. *points to myself* Hell, it even opened in Firefox, for some reason! Huzzah!

OK, this thing is getting too big, even for my tastes (read: patience) ( MY TASTES (READ: PATIENCE)!!!), let's wrap this up. You'd think I'd give this the Most Parenthetical Statements in a Single Blog Award, but I'm not that desperate. Instead, I'll opt for the Ultros Award for Funniest yet Least Necessary Plot Point. I'm referring to a moment in Another Marona (the extra story mode) where everybody starts calling Ash a pedophile. I am not exaggerating, I'm not making this all up, everybody just starts looking at Ash as Marona's creepy uncle (even, ironically, the one character who looks like an old Sgt. Hatred). They have nothing to base this on and it doesn't really move the story forward, so I'm assuming they put it in just for the laughs. And it works. Because I can't find any videos of it anywhere, just watch this through anime goggles. It's the same thing.

Review Synopsis

When the game asks you to "Skip Demo?", DO IT!!!
Then you can slide around the map, throwing enemies into nothingness and amassing enough abilities to make Fallout 3 blush.
But you won't, because Ash will walk around the map and slice up anybody who looks at him funny.

20 Comments

Can somebody please explain this to me?

By Video_Game_King April 10, 2010 1 Comments

Pop'n Twinbee

( I can't understand what the hell is going on!) Nothing about this makes sense! Hell, the music does not even come close to conveying something that resembles confusion! And now I not only have to blog about a game like this, but must also end this sentence in something that isn't an exclamation mark!? *sigh* There's no use in rambling about the confusing everything that is this blog. Might as well bloat it up a couple of paragraphs so it at least looks like I know what I'm talking about.

Just what is happening in this picture?

It wouldn't hurt to know what I'm talking about, either. That's why I actually bothered playing the game. Not that it actually helped; the game left me equally confused on both sides, like a hermaphrodite some kind of sick fetish. Hell, I couldn't even tell what was going on in the cutscenes (what little there were). Something about a mad scientist and a high school girl and some type of cutesy ship thing. What any of this has to do with the game I played is yet to be seen. Speaking of being seen, let's go to the one part of this that's actually relevant to something: the cutesy word above "something." Just looking at this game shows how vibrant and saccharine everything looks, giving off the impression that each cartridge was dipped in cotton candy before shipping. You'd think that this would be the one thing about the game that wouldn't be confusing, since it quite clearly means that the game is aimed at children, but I find myself questioning that, as well.

Granted, the game is shorter and easier than Smurfette (as Bushwald Sexyface has never stopped telling me), but there are still some challenging moments in the game, like the later everything in general. Also, the main poIwer-up system requires an attention span that you know no child has. Here's how it works: you shoot a cloud, and for whatever reason, a bell pops out. Shoot the bell enough times, and it changes color, indicating that it'll give you a certain power-up. Tell me how any of this makes sense. A little kid is already stressed enough by the large amount of projectiles on screen; add power-ups that require shooting into the mix, and you have a much cuter version of Columbine on your hands. Also, how the hell are little kids supposed to remember which color gives which power-up? I only recognized one to two of them, and I still remember the weakness order of several Mega Man games.

Hold on, somebody's explaining it to me: there aren't that many power ups. Just two shot ones, two speed ones, a shield, and the typical Gradius option one. Trust me, it's not a lot! In fact, it makes the game come across as a bit simplistic, almost bare-bones. The only things that manage to set it apart are the Xevious-esque bombs and the health system. I'd call the latter one an improvement, but unfortunately, it never seems to be an improvement. I like the feature, granted, but it always manages to make the game easier, since you can just soak up enough bullets to build 9 Transformers. The bomb feature, however, does not have this problem, mainly because it has no effect on the gameplay whatsoever. Every bomb locks onto specific targets within 3 miles of their intended area, there are no power-ups for the bomb whatsoever, and whatever you do shoot can just as easily be killed with a very powerful sneeze. You can get through the entire game without this f-I think I should just end things right here. *nervously walks out of room*

Review Synopsis

This game earns the Smurfette Award for Easy Shortness.
So....many...bells.....So.....gey!.....(Yes, gey is a word...now.)
Underneath it all, it's a normal shooter.

Is it odd that this video gives me an erection?

Cock Shot! The Fast, Easy Way to Deliver Ball Punishment -- powered by Cracked.com

Mighty Final Fight

( OK, this one I actually understand.) It still kinda weirds me out that somebody thought Mayor Haggar wasn't cute enough, but at least I can see the logic behind that decision. Somebody wanted more money (even though this is an arcade game already ported to the SNES, Sega CD, and everything else you could buy anywhere), so they decided to remake Final Fight for the NES. However, what didn't occur to them is that people buy a game to play it, not just because it looks really, really cute.

By this, I mean that it's very hard to say that you "play the game" so much as you "tape down the turbo button and occasionally hold down right." That is all you do in this game: punch and walk right. I'm aware that the original Final Fight did this, but while I also insult it for that, at least the other versions threw in a few things to mix things up, like weapons. Oddly enough, they're almost not in this game, presumably because Haggar's already confident in the killing power of his mustache. Even when Haggar discovers that not all men fear the mustache, all he has is a single weapon that only he can equip (which is not an issue, since it's a single player game that only gives you one weapon over the course of five levels). Please tell me why punching is not the favorable option.

TELL ME WHAT SHE IS WEARING! IT TURNS ME ON!

What's that? Butt-nothing? That would be an excellent reason not to use fists alone. That is, if they didn't have their own stupid level system. Punch enough guys, and you gain a level, allowing you to take more hits and nothing else. I'd say that I know why they put it in if it even changed anything. Strength doesn't really factor into beating enemies so much as patience does. This is a beat-em-up, not an RPG! Oh, wait, I'm noticing something: special weapons, experience system, elaborate story. Anybody see a pattern h-fuck, I forgot to explain the story. Let me get on that first: the "princess" has been captured again, nothing special, right? Hold on, I'm going somewhere with this: the guy who captures her so he can marry her. I'm assuming it's less about money and more about his fear of having to meet her parents. Haggar, however, wants to show this kind gentleman that he's not such a bad guy, so he beats the shit out of the most talkative thugs in the city on his way to get to know the man.

But back to that thing I said before. Anybody see a pattern here? They were trying to make a Final Fight RPG that was so ahead of its time, it decided to borrow things from future RPGs! You know essential things like a chibi art style, jackhammer combat, and decent music. That's the only unquestionably good thing about Mighty Final Fight: its music. It's a Capcom game for the NES, and we all know the story behind that: it started the Baroque Movement in Europe (you know, that thing with Beethoven and Mozart and all those other guys). That's how good the music in this game was: it pretty much created all other music. But you know what was happening at the same time? French Revolution. Turns out this game is so bad that it makes a game of Cranial Soccer sounds preferable. Now you see why I don't like this game, the one that earns the Most Appropriate Title for its Time Award.

Review Synopsis

Just hold down the B button.
Why are there RPG features? If I wanted what this game was offering, I'd just play Earthbound Zero.
Just play the SNES version.

1 Comments

says something in faux-Russian

By Video_Game_King April 5, 2010 5 Comments

Panzer Dragoon Orta

( Or, as you probably know it, Panzer Dragoon Orta.) For those of you who do not get that joke, it's because you haven't played a Panzer Dragon game, where they speak a language that sounds like Latin, Russian, and Japanese got some freaky three-way action. And for those of you who have not played a single Panzer Dragoon game, stop reading this blog, go into the garage, grab a tool, and hit yourself in the face with it until your punishment has been served. Panzer Dragoon is an awesome series of games, and not playing them deserves some type of physical mutilation. Oh, they're rare? Um, I found Orta on GameStop.com without any problems, played it, and beat it; what does that say about your argument?

And what does any of that say about Panzer Dragoon Orta? Nothing, really, just like how saying the game has an excellent story tells you nothing about the game. I'm not going to say anything about it, because we all know that the series is known for having kickass stories. Also, the only thing I can say about it is that the Empire's no longer a shallow evil due to some sub-scenarios. More on that later, though. Right now, we cover the basic gameplay, as we always do. As dictated by rail shooter standards, you either shoot everything in an ironic plan to end gun violence by depleting the bullet supply or realize how stupid that is and just zap everything with lock-on lasers. Works well on its own, feeling a helluva lot like the Panzer Dragoon games of old. In fact, that's how I could sum up the game: Panzer Dragoon of old. It feels exactly like the Saturn games of yesteryear, improvements be damned.

Not that that's a bad thing; again, if you find fault in being flanked on all sides, shooting down bullets and enemies simultaneously because your dragon burps lasers, then you haven't hit yourself in the face with that screwdriver enough times. Get back to that. However, if you were to point out to me that the game can be kinda cheap about this, given the camera issues and your dragon's fat ass, then congrats! You can now graduate to carrot whacks, as I agree with you on that. I can't tell you how many times an enemy has hit me because they were in the one corner of the screen that my shoeless shooter couldn't point at, or the other corner that was covered with dragon wings. The worst part is that there's only one way to heal, and that requires going to glide form and shooting out a bunch of phantom dragons to suck the life force from living enemies. Or, as I like to call it, "Reverse Pac Man."

Oh, this picture has nothing to do with the game; I just wanted you to know how awesome such an idea would be.

Hold on, I see my mention of a glide form has confused you, so let me explain: remember how in Zwei, your dragon morphed over the course of the game? In the six years between Zwei and Orta, Sega realized that the system doesn't mean much if you don't have much control over how your dragon evolves. Oddly, they ignored that logic when working on the multiple routes, but moving on, you get three forms you can switch between at any time: base if you're a pussy, power if you want bosses to die quickly, and glide if you like yielding to enemy traffic while taping down the A button to kill things. All of the forms level up over the course of the game, and this time, you're in control of how your dragon levels up. However, more often than not, you'll just stuff all the experience into your power form, hoping it eventually gets enough roid rage to scare bosses away. That doesn't mean the boss battles are just "spam power"; no, the boss battles in this game are awesome. You now have to jump around to different sides of the boss for maximum damage a la Saga, switching forms on the fly (no pun intended, I swear, I'm not THAT desperate) to destroy the threat at hand. As in "that strategy/reflex thing I feel I've been pumping for some time now."

Speaking of pumping, let's inflate the size of this blog past the number of paragraphs it logically should be. How, you ask? How do you ask, Ye Who Must Carrot Whack Their Face? Get back to that! The good readers get to read about the unlockables, of which there are a shitload. You get the typical stuff like cutscene viewers and a glossary of terms, but then there's the stuff like an unlockable Panzer Dragoon (which I've (hopefully) blogged about below) and another, shorter, crapper storyline. OK, the story itself isn't crap; through screens of text that set a trend for years to come, you learn that the Empire isn't entirely evil, and that you don't make many friends by stuffing their face full of Boston baked bullets. (People don't like feeling gassy, especially when those gases are explosive.) No, it's the gameplay that sucks. You obviously can't ride a dragon, so you're stuck on that scooter thing Saga knew should be limited to one level. Orta (or in this case, Iva) doesn't know that; for seven levels, you're stuck with a slow-moving scooter that demands much more from you than you can provide. You can't speed up, slow down, look down, look up, or have any fun while using the scooter. So why would you play it? I don't know, I couldn't find much reason to play these scenarios other than "to write a richer blog", which makes about as much sense as hitting your face with a power drill to appease a bored King.

Review Synopsis

How can I find fault in the story? It's Panzer Dragoon.
Having improved a lot on the old PD gameplay, I give this game the Zwei to the Zwei Award. Look it up.
Having enough unlockables to rival Brawl, I'm surprised that I posted this blog so quickly.

OK, damn it. I know that this has some clever use in forums; I just can't think of it.

Panzer Dragoon

( I'm surprised that I was actually able to get this game running.) I wasn't emulating this on my (barely)-able-to-do-the-job laptop, but rather through Orta on my Xbox 360 because I'm incredibly lazy. I've read stories about how the game won't work, which makes sense, since it's a 360 trying to emulate the Xbox trying to emulate the PC trying to emulate the Saturn. The only way to make things harder would be if the game was originally designed for a Jaguar emulator that's native to toasters. But I managed to pull through and beat the game, as should be obvious by my typing this.

However, for the first few levels, that's not exactly saying much; up until level 5 (originally titled "The Bane of my Existence"), Panzer Dragoon is pretty damn easy, consisting mostly of making things explode every 20 feet. "Can't they shoot back?", I pretend you yell at me whilst I write this blog. Sure, they can shoot back; it's just that you'll either dodge their super soakings, or they won't even get the chance to fire off a few peas. The only exception to this is everything after level 4, where the enemies take more than one hit to die and the shots are more effective than spitballs, changing the game from relatively easy to decently challenging. Of course, that's by 95 standards; by modern standards, it's exactly the same, but with some incredibly cheap sprinkles. For example, there's no healing mid-level, no checkpoints, and you only get credits if you make sure nothing is left living in the end (keep in mind that I never said shooting them down is the only option).

Is...is that my gun?

What's odd is that both I and the game used the word "credits", even though this isn't an arcade game. Just goes to show you how old this game is that it feels like an arcade game before even being told what platform it's for. (Hint: it's the one furthest from arcades.) What also shows that plesiosaurs were probably this game's target market is the intro, which, through CGI which gives new meaning to the word "animated", tells us the tale of Panzer Dragoon: a big bad empire has found a large tower that houses a dark dragon ( TOTALLY ORIGINAL). You're hunting womprats one day when you stumble across ruins. At the end of it is a guy who dies, leaving you his magical dragon, free with magical GPS. Unfortunately, it's permanently set on Big Ass Tower, so you might as well take down the empire and its dragon thingy. Not exactly memorable, but it serves its purposes well: give you a reason to play. Also, it does something I've managed to avoid for three paragraphs: show you how the game works.

Might as well get to that: you can either shoot things down with your gun, or lock onto a billion targets and watch as your dragon pukes on everything in sight, like a super-model. However, unlike a super model, the dragon isn't sexy, but the vomit is, in reality, deadly lasers. (On that thought, the proposition of laser vomit certainly would make America's Next Top Model infinitely more interesing.) It works well (sticky lock-on be damned), but it doesn't go any further than merely adequate. There's nothing that pops out as unique or interesting, at least from a gameplay standpoint. The only thing that even comes close is the ability to aim entirely around your dragon, but it's mostly limited to one side at a time, the only achievement being a visual transformation from rail shooter to FPS in the sky. Oh, look at that, I said "at least from a gameplay standpoint" in that other sentence. That's gotta lead up to something, right?

Well, attentive reader who probably isn't real, you should know by now that I'm a writer who's more predictable than a Mega Man game, so I'll use this final paragraph to mention the graphics. Simply put, they've aged horribly. I've already mentioned the crap CGI, but the actual in-game graphics have this oddly pixelated look and definitely give off the vibe that this is a 3D game for the Saturn. Don't believe me? Go play the tunnel levels, and you'll soon notice that the walls move whenever you get close to them, for some reason. Don't want me to live? I'm surprised it took you this long to want me to die, but I'll stall it further by saying that, artistically, this game is fantastic. It makes intelligent use of colors and provides enough detail to make the polygons surrounding you feel like an actual world, as opposed to an environment where the NRA somehow managed to take over the entire government everywhere ever. That's the only reason this series managed to get as far as it did: because without the vibrant world and rich mythos, you're pretty much left with a forgettable shooter only notable for winning the Penis Exploding Awesomeness Award for Featuring a Laser Puking Dragon.

Review Synopsis

How many times have you heard the evil empire spiel?
How many times have you played Star Fox with dragons in it?
How many shoop-da-whoop jokes did I make?

5 Comments

Gonna have to step things up after last time.

By Video_Game_King April 1, 2010 7 Comments

Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow & the Flame

( But not right now.) No, I save the thing that will get me a huge amount of replies for later; now is the portion of the blog you have to read through if you want admission to the next part. Instead of talking about a game you may care about (because I know that it's a post deterrent, oddly enough), I'll ramble on and on about some obscure game that I really don't like (that way, you can complain about the irrelevance AND my opinion). Only this obscure game has a famous name attached to it, making for the perfect strategy!....Or the worst. My brain hurts.

Also, this.

It feels exactly like I'm playing this game again! Going in, I expected it to be the sequel to the original Prince of Persia, where our good Prince buys a copy of Shadow the Hedgehog and, angry that Sega would make such a crap game, burned it at the stake. But then I remembered that there was about a 14 year gap between the release of the games, meaning the plot couldn't be that convenient. Instead, it goes like this: the Prince is about to marry the Princess, but what the shit is this? Why is the Prince behind her AND in front of h-oh, wait, it's the Vizier. I guess stab wounds and falling 12 stories won't kill you if you know what card I'm holding. Anyway, the Prince has to run away from his kingdom and....wait, what does he have to do after that? It's kinda hard to tell, since the game never comes out and says it. I'm guessing it's "rescue the Princess from an ambiguous threat", but that fails to explain why I'm fighting creatures from Ugly Americans, or coming full circle by riding a magic carpet straight into Aladdin territory.

What's especially weird is that this doesn't really fit into...anything, really. Prince of Persia didn't push the realistic envelope beyond "3.5 by 6 inches." By which I mean "skeletons." Here, realism is pushed off a huge clip as soon as you find yourself stabbing flying heads so you can jump onto a magical horse. Why? Well, actually, it's supposed to add variety to the game, which is kinda the only thing this game has going for it. More levels than "dungeons, dungeons in lava, and more dungeons", (slightly) more to do when fighting characters, and a bit more to the levels than spikes, switches, and switches that summon spikes. It's not much, it's not necessary, and it's not exactly noticeable unless you're told about it (like right here), but damn it, it improves the core gameplay! Speaking of which, I don't think I've mentioned how exactly you play the game, and there's a very good reason for that: it's exactly the same as last time. You run, climb, jump, and (even more) awkwardly fight off foes. How can you fuck that up?

Here's a good hint: never ask that question, since somebody will inevitably fuck up after you ask them if they can. Case in point: this game is fast. Really fast. This game came out about a week after Sonic the Hedgehog, so I'm guessing the Prince thought he could prevent this crap from happening again if he used some blast processing. ( He couldn't.) Unfortunately, it did the exact opposite, since you now have less time to react, leading to a bunch of deaths in what is ultimately a shorter game because of said speed. I should end the blog here, but no, I'll tempt fate and push onward with something that several GB users were familiar with as of late: glitches. Oh, you'll find a bunch of them in this game. Even in the beginning, it's possible to jump onto an invisible ledge, quite literally tea-bagging physics in the process. As if that wasn't enough, later in the game, during the horse level, I somehow convinced the Prince to walk through walls and over gaps. It completely destroyed the game, since there are portions where gravity can be your friend. Had to reset, deal with an odd password system, and hoped that the Prince realized that Newton may have been onto something.

Review Synopsis

Here's all the story you need: The Prince now looks like Thighbrush Deepwood. So I'll give this the Best Way to Lose a Woman Award.
How can you fuck up running and jumping? Glitches out the ass you use to tea-bag the physics you glitched yourself away from, duh!
Rather short, mainly because the game moves at Sonic level speeds.

Hmmmm....where have I seen this before.... hmmm.....

Classic NES Series: Super Mario Bros.

( There's no stopping it, now!) That's right, I'm gonna blog about Super Mario Bros! I can already hear some of you not giving a shit, and to that I say, "You give me shit all the time, so why stop now?"......OK, I'm blowing this thing entirely out of proportion, but can you blame me? It's not like you'd do any better, right? You would? That's it. *fireballs you* Anyway, Super Mario Bros: still an OK game. OK, now I can hear you giving me shit, and to that I ask you what your problem is. It's not like I'm insulting the plot or anything.

All hail the Mushroom Kingdom, O mighty land of strippers!

After all, this game is one of the beloved Lunar legends. (Not that one.)(Yes, the Mushroom Kingdom is on the Moon. Deal with it.) Shortly after civil war in the Mushroom Kingdom, the tyrant-king Bowser captures the Princess and militarizes the country for conquest. In comes Mario, a humble plumber, to rescue the princess from said tyranny. His journey will take him across the war-torn Kingdom, a barren land where great fissures litter the land, money is so worthless that paupers lose nothing by throwing it in wells and upon the ground, a perpetual rain of cannon fire kills those who made the quest before Mario, and the lords and ladies have been ousted from their former-castles/now-labyrinth/death-traps. It's a moving tale full of vivid imagery and characters to whom you can relate. Except for Toad, he's a dick. Look, I'm trying to rescue your princess, Diaper Man; be grateful about it. Hell, I can't even name the capital of the Mushroom Kingdom, and I'm 2 minutes away from the damn thing! So don't blame me when I have to explore all 8 castles to find out where the Tyrant-King has hidden her.

Yes, that's right, I explored all the castles this time. It's not like in high school, where I just warped to world 8 and then wrote my thesis on "The Evolution of the Hadouken as a Storytelling Device." I did this so I could write a more thorough blog, making sure you guys couldn't insult me when I say that this epic classic has aged as well as my computer, for those who read my earlier diatribe. First, the levels. I've been to the Mushroom Kingdom, and it is nowhere near this generic. The lands I have explored contain much personality and will stay in my mind for many years, something I can't say for a lot of the levels in this game. Then again, if there is one thing they get right (it's more than one, by the way), it's variety, one thing I never see in people's opinions of this game. You explore the verdant fields of the Mushroom Kingdom, along with its darkest caves, deepest oceans, and, of course, the castles that the Tyrant-King has turned into his perverse playthings, deathtraps to its very inhabitants.

And to those who dare explore their darkest depths. Those like Mario, since he apparently bought his shoes at the Shadow Temple. He slips when you stop, and refuses to budge when you so much as apply 3000 tons of force to the d-pad. You'd think this would lead to the death of our hero time and time again, and while it does, I can't really complain about it, for several reasons. First, it's an excellent way of reiterating the theme of life's frailty. Second, the game's difficulty is so perfectly balanced that I can't even make a joke about it. The levels progress in such a way that you never find yourself overwhelmed or calling "cheap" before launching the controller into the TV with a crossbow. Yes, I complained about Mario wearing banana peel socks, but that's the only complaint I have against the controls. Other than that, they're Fire Emblem 4. How can you fuck up "move with the d-pad, jump with A, fireballs with B?" Well, unlike The Shadow & The Flame, you don't; the closest it comes to doing so is how the flaming stamen behaves, but that has nothing to do with the controls, does it? No, it doesn't. It still detracts from the game, granted, but that doesn't change the fact that flaming stamen sounds cool. Therefore, I give this game the Inspiring Band Names Award, a tradition carried on by the likes of Street Fighter and Final Fantasy.

Review Synopsis

One of the most memorable tales in all of gaming.
Rough around the edges (in the case of the graphics, literally.)
Still, it's easy to see why people loved this game in 85: Flaming Stamen.

7 Comments

Is this....relevant!? Wait, no, it's the longest blog ever.

By Video_Game_King March 28, 2010 9 Comments

Final Fantasy XIII

( Final Fantasy and I h....damn it!) That Greek dude is back. Look, I know, kinda odd that he's singing that folk song or something, but I can't get him to leave. Anyway, where was I? Oh, right: Final Fantasy and I have this odd relationship with each other. It's not as straightforward as the Fire Emblem Fuck or the Cyborg Justice Cockslap; no, some games are so awesome that I immediately kill those who doubt their awesomeness (4, 6), while others are pieces of crap that drive men to insanity (2, 8, 12). Where does Final Fantasy XIII land? I could say it, but then you wouldn't read the rest of this, would you? That's right.

Shown in early beta shots, white mages were cut out of the final game, along with Moogles and other things I love about this game.

And just to keep you reading, I'll do something original: not start with the story. Sort of. This was one of the few games I pre-ordered, and since it was from GameStop, the forces of evil must have united to screw me out of a decent pre-order deal, like the one for AC2 or GoW3 or Brutal Legend. (Instead of, you know, ruling the world or designing a sequel to Devil Survivor or something like that.) Instead, I was left with a crappy mini-guide that covers half the first disc, and a few avatar items that I couldn't get on the first day. Also, a game, set in something very German, judging by the opening cutscene. What the opening cutscenes also tell me is that you play as a cold bitch named Lightning, trying to rescue her sister from a robotic Burning Man. For some reason, a character from Lethal Weapon is with her. However, upon entering the Burning Man, she meets up with two kids and a douche whose only purpose is to demonstrate next-gen beard technology before failing so hard that people hate her and fate turns her into a hideous monster. "Good!", I remember saying. The clearly Japanese-yet-not-Japanese characters were about as likable as a high school full of emo Hitlers, the story was confusing for no reason, and the copious amount of cutscenes demonstrated everything that was wrong with writing in games: being like movies.

Hold on, this reminds me of something: Final Fantasy VII! Yes, remember how the beginning of that game was horrible? No, because you're one of those FF7 fans? Great, now you're going to hate me if I don't vindicate myself with the following: eventually, the game gets pretty good. Specifically, around the part where you're offing guys on a motorcycle in a stream of ultimate badass. Same thing applies to XIII, only replace the motorcycle with a giant robot, and slashing with moving. Yes, awesome. It's at this point (actually a bit before, but I'm going with this because it has robots) where the characters become more human, where the conflict actually appears, and the story evolves into....damn it. Same problem as the first disc on FF7: the quality wavers up and down constantly, like they kept switching out the great storytellers for random hacks they found on their way to work. However, unlike FF7, this happens throughout ALL the discs, even up to the (in context) apt ending. Some moments will come across as full of great depth and meaning on equally deep subjects like fate and religion, others will feel so anime that you'd swear that you just saw a tentacle around the corner (they got that all out of their system in the beginning, with the Burning Man part), but the weirdest part is that some of them are the exact same moment. Woah, confusing.

Just like this game's storyline. (I promise, last thing on the story.) Like Final Fantasy XII, the game has a certain level of egotism and confusion that will leave you scratching your head until you forget what a plus sign is. However, unlike FF12, 13 realizes that you may be confused, and does some things to address the issue, like recapping the story from time to time or giving you a glossary you won't read through ever. Also, it's a game, not a $50 disc that jerks itself off. A very linear game with little to no diverging paths whatsoever, but still a game you can actually play. The reason I don't criticize it for being so damn linear is because the best game ever is also a straight line of "gameplay, cutscene, gameplay, cutscene", and this is where I end the comparison. If I even mention the gameplay, Sigurd will walk into the room and show her how to use a sword. (Step one probably being "don't strap the thing to the back of your legs, you moron.") That's not to say the gameplay is bad, because that would be just as stupid as strapping a sword to my thighs. Again, Final Fantasy XIII is an actual game, meaning you fight enemies.

Wait, these guys can get tattoos? Where the hell are these things and why doesn't anybody tell me about this stuff?

It all starts in the world, where there are no more random encounters! Yay! Now I can sneak upon my enemies (granted that my teammates don't run ahead and ruin it all), stealthing them to death with a level of satisfaction equaled by my sense of disappointment in the battlefield choice. You see, instead of fighting them right there, or even going to a battle screen that is that, you go to some generic filler place EVERY SINGLE TIME. It's 3D, people! Use it! You know how else you could use that? In the battle system. It takes place in real time, which would imply you can dodge and target multiple enemies simultaneously, right? Apparently not, since we're still tethered to the ATB of old. The closest thing to dodging an attack is doing one that puts you far away from whatever is trying to kill you. If it's one monster, and he's beating you senseless, well, you're fucked, since having massive balls in combat somewhat prevents you from running away. Just ask Bushwald Sexyface. If you want to get away from an enemy, the only way is death. Speaking of which, all you need for a game over is the that character you're controlling dies. Look, I know FF12 was crap, but at least it knew how to handle death. Here, I can't even switch to another character when Lightning gets hit in the face with her namesake. There are two big shoulder buttons Square. Use them!

I just realized that I haven't explained the battle system at all, so here goes: in battle, you're limited to a select few abilities from one character. This may sound like a bunch of crap, but that's only until you realize that there's a paradigm system, where you assign characters certain jobs they employ in battle. Examples include Perpetual Energy, What the Hell, and my personal favorite, Know Your Place. I can already sense some of you pointing out the hypocrisy of hating FF12 for what this is doing again, so I've cut off your fingers. Happy now? I was, since I was playing this game. You actually have to pay attention in battle, deciding what paradigm will work and switching at just the right moment, hoping the game doesn't show them shifting individually into death. There's a sense of satisfaction to be had in it, too, given that you're given a meaningless score at the end of each and every battle. It would help to know what time you're aiming for BEFORE you battle these guys, but it's not like the game is withholding anything from me because of a crap score. After all, I still get items (in the beginning; closer to the end of the game, they disappear into a nexus point between dimensions for some reason) and experience.

Wait, did I say experience? Good, I can transition into the ability system and finally wrap this behemoth up. The shortest way I can describe it is "Final Fantasy X": you gain points in battle you can put towards an ability/attribute in a certain class. It took me a bit of a while to realize that there were actual numbers involved in this, mainly because early on, the game goes through a cycle of "fill it all, gain a billion points, get new level, rinse and repeat." Not only until the second disc or so does it finally become harder to fill an entire class before the next level-up. It's at this point when the crystarium system (that's what it's called, shut up) becomes exactly like the paradigm system: in need of refinement, but still full of lots of strategy and reward, even if there's a noticeable bit of overlap between many of the jobs. For example, every job has the Renew ability, a healing thing that you'd think would only go to medics. But no, everybody can use it, but only as a technique that's limited to TP (MP, but with a T). Not that you'd know that when you get it in the crystarium thing. OK, that's it. That's all I'm saying.

Damn it, Square!

You'd think after this extremely large blog (and you'll see exactly why it was so large in just a minute), I'd give the game the Me Award for Being Like a Shitload of Games, but I have a better idea. Instead, I give this game the Most Notes I Have Ever Given Award. I see you are confused, so let me explain: as you (hopefully) know, I take notes on the games I play, (hopefully) ensuring quality in these blogs. Before this game, the most notes I had ever taken on a game was Assassin's Creed II, I think, which peaked at about 60ish. So how many have I given this game? Hold on. * turns on music* Ready? 124 GODDAMN NOTES. Now you see why I thought this blog would be really, really long. Obviously, those notes are not spoiler free at all. Or able to be viewed on a computer without it spontaneously combusting, judging by my computer's reaction just making it.

Review Synopsis

The story seems to waddle between meaningful and an ass-bruising.
Same with the gameplay, sort of. It's fun and interactive, but in need of quite a bit of refinement.
I'll use this final bullet to say everything I couldn't before: weapon system needs much improvement, good graphics, it's Final Fantasy, summons are enormously cheap vehicle things, Cie'th stones are MMORPG self serving, a bit of uncanny valleying, battles quickly inconsistent, battles match cutscenes well, very long at 50 hours, like a more focused Romancing SaGa, Sazh starts off in a way that makes you think Square is somewhat racist but eventually evolves into a fantastic character, Pulse is Australia ( Land of Trolls), and the ending perfectly sums up how this game behaves. Nyaaaagh!

Here's why I love Final Fantasy: an androgynous Japanese guy wailing his heart out to an Amano drawing. Also, this video taught me a bit of Japanese. (Warning! Nerd boner cannot get any harder!)

Dragon Quest Monsters: Caravan Heart

( You know, this is the third blog where I've had two RPGs (one pretty big) on display at once.) And looking back, some pretty big things have happened in those blogs: the first saw the birth of Bushwald Sexyface, the second contained a rape analogy for a game that convinces me how right Kefka was, and the third will most like have absolutely nothing of note. Why? Keep in mind that while the first game was huge and rather recent, this one is the exact opposite: an obscure, forgettable RPG from 7 years ago in Japan only. Also, the scores are literally opposite, go check.

What?

Keeping true to the original Dragon Quest Monsters, this one follows the adventures of a major character from a previous Dragon Quest (this time, lucky number 7); keeping true to my original playing of Dragon Quest Monsters, I have not played Dragon Quest VII. Not that it comes up or anything; 2 minutes into DQ7 Land, and our protagonist jumps into a Narnia dimension (AKA DQ2 Land) where a magical dream pedophile demands that the children of the world come to him with magical orbs. If you're hoping for more story than that, then you should play Final Fantasy XIII, a game with some actual type of story. All this game contains is, "go to demon guy, grab orb (somehow), repeat three more times, see a plot twist before it actually happens, watch a cliffhanger ending that fails to do anything about that cliffhanger", all of it in a length of time about as long lasting as a thunderbolt.

Then again, you don't play a Dragon Quest game for the story, right? *feels the swift kick of justice to nuts* OK, point taken, but you could kinda see where I was taking tihs: how you play the damn game. Simply put: you don't, because it's not that good. Case in point: the ration system. Remember how you could walk freely around the world in every RPG ever made ever? Caravan Heart felt compelled to innovate in that by putting a stupid limit on how much you could travel, since moving costs you a certain amount of rations with each step. It doesn't bother me much later in the game, but very early on, when monsters carry no more than $50 at a time and hide in unexplored corners of the Earth, it becomes a needless drain on your resources; you have to spend money on rations to move on, but you only get money from monsters, who only come out while you move around, wasting rations and forcing you to buy more rations in a blatant attempt to make the game longer than it actually is. The only reason you shouldn't just warp from place to place (besides the lack of a warp spell or item) is because of the random events that happen on the overworld, like deciding to diet (not for practical reasons, just to fit into your bikini in time for summer) or getting attacked by monsters (this is not a joke, it is an actual thing, however weird it seems).

So how do you fight back against these "random encounters", if you will? There's a very simple process by which you beat them: get a drinky bird with severe daddy issues, place an infinitely refilling shot glass of tequila in front of the bastard (also helps to call him a bastard during the process), and watch him drink until you win the battle. Or, if you don't know any drinky birds, then you could just set the little programmable AI options to "just attack, you morons." What I'm saying is that all you need to beat the game is to mash the A button, the sole exception being the bosses: they fall to a combination of A mashing and stat adjusting. The only thing that sets this game apart from crap like.....other crap is that each monster also has their own entourage attending them in battle, doing things like healing and extra attacks and stuff like that. Sounds cool, right? Well, it would be if you could control who goes when, or if they didn't limit themselves to their one monster (jealousy, I presume), or even if the system was just honest and let you fill all the slots with nothing but healers. But, of course, none of that is real; you're stuck with a billion useless units who would rather that this is a game of Tetris than an RPG.

After this game, no, not really.

Let's see...I've destroyed the story, the battle system, moving around...what else needs to die? Oh! The breeding! Or not. Rather than breed monsters to create new monsters throughout the game, you gather the hearts of monsters you fight throughout the game, presumably NOT like this. After you've collected enough hearts (two), you go back to base camp and ask Doctor Moreau to mash hearts into a monster, hoping that something kickass comes out of it. Nothing wrong with that, but still, the other two/three games before it did the same thing, and slightly better. Hooray! I have destroyed any notion that this game can be considered good! How exactly should I celebrate this?.......Ooh! I know! How about giving this game The Little Mermaid Award for Pointless Sexual Undertones? No? Let me explain: besides the dream-pedo Chris Hansen wishes he could hunt down, keep in mind that this entire game takes place in a closet, and your goal is to get back home. As in "the main goal is to reveal how gay you are." As in "playing this game will turn you into a character from The Sarah Silverman Program."

Review Synopsis

Apparently, going back to DQ2 Land also drags the story down to DQ2 level story.
Press A, move forward, buy food, repeat in random order.
Making monsters.....OK, that one's actually OK, I guess.

9 Comments

An experiment in reviewing that will leave your brain destroyed.

By Video_Game_King March 23, 2010 17 Comments

Assassin's Creed III

( I find this part of the blog oddly appropriate.) After all, my last two Assassin's Creed blogs featured at least one Venture Bros. reference, so isn't it fitting that this one will essentially become one huge Venture Bros. reference? What? You don't remember Assassin's Creed III ever being released? I can understand, since Adult Swim Games isn't a big company yet. Wait, you don't know about THEM, either!? But they made Dethklok Band, Grand Theft Truck-Boat-Truck, and Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Zombie Ninja Pro-Am. Assassin's Creed III, like those games, is complete and utter crap.

"Brock, why does THIS moment feel particularly scarring?"

Before I say mean things about how the combat is clunky or how climbing is now useless, let me iterate that the story is incredibly well told. I know that I've said this time and time again, but the dialogue here is absolutely impeccable, striking a perfect balance between Assassin's Creed angry drama and The Venture Bros sense of failure. Unfortunately, those last three words are a decent way to describe the entire story, as well. After loading his mind into a historical Virtual Boy, Desmond finds himself in the shoes of #21, the Monarch yelling at his fat ass. Apparently, The Monarch did something that pissed off The Guild big time. You're never told what it is, probably because the developers couldn't decide; it may have been 21 freaking out, Dr. Mrs. The Monarch Esquire III Jr of the Long Name letting some nip slip on a mission, or maybe it was just hiring those two f'ing creepy midgets dressed in turd costumes. In order to get back to the top of The Guild's list of baddies, you have to assassinate just about everybody. No, not just Guild guys, I mean EVERYBODY: to name a few, Captain Sunshine, Phantom Limb, Molotov Cocktease, David Bowie, Doctor Orpheus, EVERYBODY WHO HAS EVER EXISTED EVER. You'd think this would make for an experience that would cause explosive orgasms of pure joy, right? WRONG!!!

For several reasons, the first of which being that all those bosses make the game longer than War and Peace: The Morse Code Book on Tape. I wouldn't be against that if not for the format they chose: first, you have to listen to The Monarch moan about how The Triad pissed in his pool or how David Bowie's latest album was crap or whatever. Then, you have to drive all the way from your floating turd HQ to the (never directly revealed) victim's lair. When you finally get there, you have to gather information from some poorly-paid henchmen, and only after you've spoken with all the fish-themed guards on their breaks can you sneak into the base and assassinate your target. Do you realize how repetitive that gets? Probably, but there's one thing I don't see a lot of people pointing out: this is almost EXACTLY like the original Assassin's Creed. Why, Ubisoft? Why that one game to rip off? Everybody loved AC2 because it improved upon all the things that people hated about AC1. What the hell were you trying to accomplish here? Did some troll give you advice on being popular? Or did you get said advice from a lonely middle schooler who doesn't realize just how much his life sucks?

OK, to be fair, the boss fight against Bowie is fantastic. Even if he does rip off my incredibly awesome super powers.

What makes me say that? My brain does, you might want to try buying one. It comes up with ideas like, "Hey, this game has more of an identity crisis than Cloud Strife." Case in point: the open-world gameplay. Remember how you spent a lot of time stealing from random people, stabbing minstrels in their smug faces, and scaling/running across rooftops to kickass techno? (OK, that last one was just me.) All of that survives, except for the scaling of the buildings. What could be so awesome as to replace the sheer fun of jumping off buildings and into specially magnetic hay? Answer: butterfly wings. I feel like the developers are just making up for how Da Vinci's hang glider made only one appearance in the last game, since you get the butterfly wings as soon as The Monarch shoves you out the cocoon. Sure, it's cool to fly around and shoot foes, but if I wanted either of those things, I'd buy Dark Void, or inject NiGHTS with steroids using a steroid gun. And then hand him the gun so he can shoot his foes full of manliness and then beat them with his own manliness. What's that? I don't have to fly? Oh, right, I can hijack any number of cars, run over random citizens, and pretend that I'm playing a weird version of GTA4 where my mom is watching, telling me how I'm a disappointment with each and every person I maim. Why she's watching me slam into random people and shoot down annoying comic book nerds is beyond me, but I just can't get her to leave the room.

Hold on, something just occurred to me: shooting foes isn't entirely bad. In case you haven't caught on yet, you no longer stab enemies with swords 39 at a time. (If you have caught on, then why the hell are you reading this message?) Instead, you kill your enemies with one of three things: your fists, those stabby gauntlets, and enough guns to fuel a Latin American civil war. Oh, and random followers, a la the groups of AC2. Each one has their own specific use (and a stupid morality point system tied to them), also like AC2. However, unlike AC2, you'll only ever use one group: the Order of the Triad. I don't know how they scrounged the money for all these henchmen, but apparently they were able to get the best wizards this side of Hogwarts, since they can, with 100% accuracy, zap the opposition into the 5th dimension. Sure, they cost a lot to use, but you get so much of the stuff that you could use it as ammo for your weapons and still have enough to buy the Latin American country you just sent into civil war. The only problem with them (and all special groups, really) is that they refuse to enter anything that looks like a building. I don't know, I guess teleporting everywhere removes your ability to operate a doorknob.

So you're left with one option: sneak your way through using assassin skills passed down through many generations. OR you could just summon the wrath of a billion guys in bright yellow suits, ready to shoot down anything that even looks like stealthy. Doesn't matter if said stealth is really good on its own; nope, it has to DIE. I could have sneaked through, using Ty-the-Tasmanian-Tiger-(or-Arkham-Asylum-for-those-who-don't-know-what-a-Ty-is)-esque boomerangs, night vision/"ladies' locker room revealer" goggles, and subtle distractions in a strategic manner to walk through Baron Ünderbheit's run down hovel with a sense of satisfaction. I could have if not for the knowledge that butterflies beat everything. Except, oddly enough, guards in hallways, since they have this odd disability where they all view a confined space as an opportunity to play the world's tightest game of Red Rover. Fitting, then, that every assassination target has a 9-mile long hallway standing in front of them. Not fitting: I can't stealth kill them like I did in Assassin's Creed II. I can't sword-fight them, either, since chubby fists can't exactly defend against manatees.

Wait, what the fuck is going on here?

Then how the hell do you defend yourself against aging pedophiles with a shitload of cash? (Not gonna do a Michael Jackson joke, since death does a lot to take the years off you.) Simple: you pull out a light saber and start slashing the crap out of them! You know, just like No More Heroes, only without any of the context, humor, or fun. And don't worry about any lawsuits in the future; Ubisoft made both these games, yet somehow managed to fuck up only Assassin's Creed III. Why? How the hell should I know? My best guess is that the crowded March calendar forced Ubisoft execs to make the Assassin's Creed series seem more like ultra popular games, presumably to sell more games. But instead of the super awesome mega game that exists only in the minds of the (hopefully detained) developers, we have a confused mess of a game that only manages to redeem itself with a kickass ending. I think you can see where I'm going with this: Cloud Strife Award. You are dismissed.

Review Synopsis

Satisfying stealth...if not for the fact that any threat will die under the pressure of 80 henchmen.
The gun-based combat is...OK, that's oddly satisfying. Decent job of bringing the series into a more modern setting.
Everything else, however, makes you want to buy your own Animus so you can go back in time and kill the people behind this flaming turd.

The bears.....they've......they've learned to....use....tools! *rips off all clothes* THE COLD WAR IS REVIVED!!! THE END IS NIGH!!! *runs around, screaming of the Apocalypse*

Aladdin

( You know what?) I'm just going to come out and say it: I'm getting a bit tired of this routine I've shoved myself into. Let me give you a minute to adjust to that. No. OK. It's not the games, since I've got a shitload of great games to blast through (and several mediocre ones, but whatever), and it's not the blogs, since I've recently found myself with awesome material like Prince of Persia and BioShock 2; it's me. I hope. You see, I'm going to let Bushwald Sexyface have a go at this blog, since he's wanted to teach the world of sexiness in video games for quite some time and the Queen got her chance back when Beat Takeshi drove me to insanity. I gave him this game as an opportunity and this is the result. Before I leave, let me remind you that people don't type in accents. If they did, Irish literature would be inherently fucked. With that, I present you with " The Bushwald Blog." * changes music, leaves*

Seen here is a classic game of Arabian Grab Ass. One of my favorites.

Oy, what's this? I get to write a blog? Nice. Too bad it has to be on this Aladdin thingy. You know, I remember seeing this movie in the theaters, mainly because it's a great way to find those sexy single mums. Make em ditch the kid and....well, let's just say they've never had a friend like me. Anyway, that's all I remember from the movie. Lucky, then, that I shoved this game into Sega's foray into the ass enlarging market. Things start with our Genie friend sperming his way into our lives, showing us the story. First, Agrabah is a land where the horribly unsexy are swallowed alive by the desert. I'd call this ancient land my home, but unfortunately, they also have strict anti-sexy laws that have Princess Jasmine in fear of being arrested for having such a sexy ass. Aladdin, also having a sexy ass, wants to become prince so he can abolish such horrifying anti-sexiness laws. Or at least I would. That's about all I remember from the game; if I wanted to watch a shirtless guy hook up with some sexy ass...well, I'd watch myself as I left the theater to give a sexy single mum a mustache ride in the nearby bathroom.

And you would have, too, you greasy nerdling, you. That's more than I can say about this Aladdin fellow. Had he seen that little kid, he'd give the little bloke some monkey bread before running away. That's all he does in this game, you know, is run away, usually from the Anti-Sexy Police Force of Agrabah. All you do is make him jump occasionally, making sure he does not impale his crotch on nearby rocks. Or smash his super sexy face into those same rocks. Good thing, too, since I disapprove of running from your problems. That's right, ladies: the only running I approve of is running straight into a woman. Which is why I find the sneaky jumpy parts of this here game oh so sexy. They remind me of Prince of Persia, and we all know how sexy that game was. Oh, look at this here thing. It's got this weird voice coming out of it, denying just how sexy that game is. Well, weird electro-voice, why don't YOU point out something unsexy about shirtless guys infiltrating castles with metal sexy so they can rescue a princess trapped in her room? Eh? What now, weird electro-voice?

Eh, it won't talk to me anymore. Whatever, I ain't no fan of that stuff. And I certainly ain't no fan of making this Aladdin man jump. The poor guy just refuses to do what I demand of him; he's harder to control than that brat I had to abandon so I could get alone with that mum of his. But, like his sexy mum, this Aladdin game is incredibly easy. Just run from mustaches with swords, sneak around mustaches with swords, and throw rocks at mustaches with swords, and before you know it, you'll be giving that Princess mustache rides of your own. Wait, the weird electro-voice is back, and it is telling me that this Aladdin fellow doesn't have a mustache. Thank you, weird electro-voice. See, that's why I don't care for this game: a severe lack of mustaches. They couldn't even have a mustache level in it, like those other games with the same name. Weird. Well, I should probably wrap this whole thing up for that king bloke. I think he hands out awards in his pantless blog feature, but why should I do that for this here game? It doesn't deserve no award. It can't give tongue like that mum I met back during that Aladdin film. Boy, did she deserve an award. In fact, I'm giving her the Bushwald Sexyface Seal of Approval. Wear it proudly.

Review Synopsis

Now you, too, can return sexiness to a time when people were at their least sexy.
But your main guy, Aladdin, loves running away from the forces of the unsexy. This does not make him sexy. Not at all.
What happened to the mustaches?

A third thing

( Well, this is the 100th blog, so I thought I'd do something special.) Oh, replay old games for your sake? I gave you that opportunity and you fucked it up royal. Also, I didn't have time to review another pizza, so none of that. No, this is going to be a bit more weird: I have a few gift cards I know I'll never get the opportunity to use. However, they do have one thing in common: I can use them as sacrifices in a dark voodoo ritual known as online shopping. So, suggest unto me what to buy, since I'm a massive attention whore:

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days: I actually planned on buying this a little while ago, but I was playing Phantom Brave at the time, which turned me into a 10 foot tall vagina. In the time it took me to unvagina myself, it went out of stock. So, do I wait for it to come back, or...
God of War 2 & Watchmen: This is weird. Seeing God of War III commercials is reminding me how cool the original was, so I'm thinking of the sequel. What about Watchmen? What about it, that comic book rocks. Or....
Anything on GameStop for $4: Oh, or anything on Target.com that goes for $60 (shipping included). I'll let you disappoint me. It gives me an excuse to punch you in the baby-makers.

So make your move, people! Which one shall I get? I'll tally up your votes at the end of this blog and will most likely ignore them for quite some time. Also, a pointless contest: I have an extra code for some avatar crap for Final Fantasy XIII. It's girls only (no, I'm serious on that), so I'll gear this towards girls, sort of: show me your favorite game with a massive pair of boobs. Interpret that how you will, I'll judge when this blog dies.

17 Comments

This is what happens when you've beaten as many games as me.

By Video_Game_King March 18, 2010 34 Comments

Trip World

( First, you run out of games to beat.) I've been detailing this for quite some time, but do you know how hard it is to find a good game that doesn't have some huge title attached to it? No, you don't, since you've never had to play through shit like Trip World, hoping it'd be something decent. More often than not, it isn't, leading to the half-assed blog you see before you.

Eh, close enough.

OK, maybe not totally half-assed; after all, there are some instances where the game just doesn't want me to review it. The story of this one, for example. All I have is " the intro sort of looks like Ninja Gaiden and Pokemon decided to get together." There's nothing else I can say on it other than that one dumb joke. I'd use it as a transition into the gameplay, but unfortunately, there's no mention of Kirby in there. "What does th-" *punches you in the gut* I'm surprised you didn't see either of those things coming. "See wh-" *punches you in the mouth* Shut up! I'm trying to say that this game is pretty much a rip-off of Kirby. Think abou-no, wait, that won't work, for several reasons. Anyway, it's a portable platformer where you fly through levels as a cute yet ambiguous animal thing with the odd ability to gain powers through eating random things. Only, you know, none of that is as good as Kirby. In fact, it's not even that good.

First, the flying part of this game. Remember how easy it was to fly in Kirby? Just inhale a bunch of air and that somehow makes you float. Not so in the world of Trip World. It took me a while to figure this out: fiddle around with the D-pad and the B-button a bit, and suddenly your character will be unable to move, quite literally making you a sitting duck. Only you're not a duck, you're a rabbit thing. But to avoid sitting, you have to press the A button to float about half a meter above the ground. So it's a shittier version jumping with an arbitrary limit on how far you can fly. I guess they didn't want it being too useful. Or useful at all. Wait, why am I complaining about this? It's not like there're any moments in the game where I'm required to use this poorly executed move.

If anything, I should be complaining about the power-up system! Remember how in any Kirby game ever (except for the first one, oddly enough), you could suck up enemies and gain their powers through dark Mayan rituals? Again, not present here. Instead, you eat random fruit and stuff that gives you a funny looking form that kills people through the power of your own shame. "-" No, just keep your mouth shut, OK? There's nothing wrong with any of that on its own. No, it needs help from the game, in that the power-ups kinda suck. Sure, they get the job done, but in a PC " every 80s cartoon ever" way, removing any sense of satisfaction to be had in killing things. Oh, and there's an arbitrary, invisible limit on how much you can use a given power-up, because apparently the game was too fun without it.

So I've spent the last four paragraphs barely ranting about this game, so is there anything good about it? In a weird way that will no doubt confuse your heads into a violent explosion, the game. I'm just going to assume your head has already exploded, so there's no way for you to talk, and even if it didn't, I HAVE THIS HUGE FIST WAITING FOR YOU. Anyway, I stand by everything I said, but none of what I said makes the game unplayable, like all the features in The Game Whose Name I Shall Never Mention. Everything still works, and it's quite easy to pick up and play; so much so that you can probably finish it in a single bus ride. That's about an hour; an hour of five levels, bosses easier than all the high school classes you took (idiot), and really good graphics/music. Other than that, nothing notable to say about this game. What, you want to say something, oblivious to how stale this joke has become? No, shut the hell up. I'm giving this game the Not on Giant Bomb Award. Why? Oh, you're asking for it now. * turns on fight music*

Review Synopsis

Everything about this game is designed to make you want to kill your Game Boy.
But you can't, because it's so easy.
And it looks good! In short, this game is Sasha from Titan Maximum.

Man, I love a culture that gives you an excuse to punch somebody.

Disney's Magical Quest Starring Mickey and Minnie Mouse

( Second, you have to go back and essentially rebeat games you've already played.) Before I go any further, let me say that I played the one version I didn't do last time. Not that it matters; you'll be doing the same jokes you did last time, questioning why the hell you even wrote the blog. Hopefully, the people reading this blog will have as horrible a memory as you do, or, at the very least, they don't know how (or have the patience) to search through all the bl.....wait, what the hell was I talking about? Oh, right, Long F'ing Title Right Above Me.

Show me one thing in this picture that doesn't have a prominent lisp.

*actually looks at title* Huh? What's that about Minnie? She doesn't do anything in this game; hell, you could probably play as Mickey the entire time if he wasn't such a massive prick. He's gone back to his favorite hobby: beating up Pete for no reason. He hates Pete so much, he dreams about it every night! I'm surprised Disney could create such a psyc-wait, no, I'm not. Actually, to be fair, Mickey doesn't get the golden asshole medal this time; no, that is an honor I bestow upon Goofy. (For the curious, the medal is a butt plug I spray painted gold. Make of that what you will.) You see, at the beginning of the game, Goofy finds fun in throwing a baseball right into Mickey's dumb face, somehow causing Pluto to leave. Maybe he thinks that he's next; maybe that was the signal to tell the other dogs that the war against man has commenced; maybe I'm just writing down whatever random ideas pop into my clearly insane mind. The point is that Goofy, instead of taking responsibility for his actions, just moonwalks away, only to come back later with the gayest thing anybody has ever seen ever (picture right).

Oh, that reminds me: the major gameplay twist. As if green tights and Dorothy's ruby slippers aren't already gay enough, Mickey gets his powers from what he's wearing at the time. For example, a leotard turns him into Nathan Spencer with all the badass sucked out; a turban gives him magical powers, somehow; the firefighter's outfit puts out fires (but again, is probably something you'd see in a Chippendales ( oh God...)); and going shirtless allows you to throw things, sort of. It's less of a throw and more like a half-assed chuck with a spin (no, I'm not gonna do a Chuck Norris joke), since everything Mickey throws has this odd tendency to go down. Yes, I know about gravity, you incredibly rude reader, but in most games, I've usually seen thrown objects traveling in either arks or straight lines; here, you pretty much need to be close enough to the enemy to give them a man-hug if you want to do any real damage. Either that, or use one of the other, much better suits. OK, so they run on ammo; so what? You find enough water to fuel spring break, and trip over more than enough lamps to maintain the constant line of shitty Aladdin sequels.

Other than that, I've pretty much nothing to say. It's an average game with oddly 8 bit music (even more odd is that I typed this while listening to 8 bit music) and not much to it. I'm not going to hold that against....you know what, I'll just call it Mickey and the Moonwalker for short....anyway, I won't hold the above against Mickey and the Moonwalker, since it's a portable game and that stuff should be shorter than the titular non-Moonwalker. What I will hypocritically hold against the game are some old school quirks that make progress through the game a messy nightmare. (Odd choice of words, given that the game is literally just that.) Tell me how this makes sense: die once, and you go back to the beginning of whatever world you were in; die enough times to get game over, and you start over later on in the level. I can't even come up with a joke for that! What I can come up with is an award for this game: Perez Hilton Award for Being So Very Gay.

Review Synopsis

Goofy is the type of turd who will kick you in the nuts, make your wife divorce you, and then moonwalk into his next plot.
There's a reason firefighters don't strip in public: because they obviously can't rock the shirtless look like our friend Mickey.
A rather forgettable game that you can blow through in about two Trip World sessions.

34 Comments

This blog was brought to you by the letter M. And Capcom, mostly.

By Video_Game_King March 11, 2010 10 Comments

Mega Man 10

( No, no, I'm not gonna make that joke.) It's too obvious, even for me, and Penny Arcade's done it before. And Capcom, right at the beginning of the game. That's how stupid this joke is, so no number jokes. We all know Roman numerals, OK? Good, let's get this thing started. Actually, I don't have any idea how to start this damn blog, which is odd, because that's probably what happened with Capcom whilst they were making this game. That would certainly explain a lot of things, like the plot of this game.

It's the year 20XX, the porn industry has completed their takeover of all world governments, and Mega Man's about to kick more ass. Why? Well, after Mega Man 9, a robot virus started spreading around the world of Mega Man Land. This isn't a computer virus that enslaves you to nudists through porn or anything like that (even though that'd be INCREDIBLY appropriate, given the circumstances), but more like a human virus which just gives every robot on Earth the flu. "It must be Wily!", you think to yourself, quite proud of making such an obvious observation. You're right, but you're not supposed to know that yet, since Dr. Wily decides to help you find the cure. Of course, in addition to the obvious plot twist, he brings with him several plot twists. For example, the cure: he has it, knows how to make it, and (SPOILER) leaves a fuckton of the damn things behind at the end of the game. Where the hell were these before, and why didn't Light at least use the first one to make that many? And while we're on the subject, why am I fighting Robot Masters? It's not like they have the cure or anything, and it's not like Mega Man needs a cure (he's half human; he became a robot during the Commybot Uprising of the same year), so we're left so many plot holes that you'd think Dan Brown shot the script with a minigun.

Notice the mustache Light is rocking. It would make Bushwald Sexyface proud.

While not a plot hole, one weird plot point is that Proto Man is now playable from the beginning. I went Mega Man all the way, but I still know what it's like to play as ol' Whistling Red: it's like Mega Man, only you can charge, slide, and block with a shield. So it's like Mega Man 7 in 8 bit form. So it's essentially this. But with a 9, instead. Yes, as we all know, Mega Man 9 did the old school thing first, so it doesn't exactly come across as unique in this game. If anything, it just feels like Capcom offering us more of the same, and I know that that's one of the most obvious things I could've said, but the game really does feel like it ran out of ideas before they even released it. I could cite things like how the gameplay's EXACTLY the same in every aspect, or how Sheep Man's weakness isn't Scotsman's S. Hump, or even the very existence of something so stupid as Sheep Man. But no, I won't go with any of that. Instead, I'm going straight for the level designs, which, time and time again, seem to rip off other Mega Man games without any sense of shame, thinking that the only people playing this are new to the series and happen to be masochists. Or idiots. Star Man becomes Solar Man, Nitro Man's stage is nothing more than Train Man without the trains, and what the hell is this? Blade Man? Fuck you, Capcom, I know that you just stuck a pointy hat on Slash Man. You can't slip this crap past me.

Especially when the guy's easier than your date immediately after the high school prom. Not even with his weakness (that actually makes things worse, in this case); turns out that as soon as you flash your Mega Buster, he's ready to take it all off. Just like how all the other bosses, when given the right weapons, see the fight as an opportunity to practice their yoga positions, starting with Downward Facing Ass Handing. Isn't that the one thing I've been complaining about for the past 38 Mega Man games or something? Why, Capcom? Why didn't you use this as an opportunity to fix some of the flaws with the games before this? All I see in that regard is that you can switch weapons without pausing, but you'll usually pause anyway, unless you're a fan of getting things shot in your face. If that's the case, then you know yourself better than I do, apparently, since this game will kill you so often that you'd think that you were in a Freaky Friday remake starring Brad Shoemaker. However, I wouldn't call the game hard, since it implies several things that this game isn't. For example, hard implies that there's some satisfaction to be had at the end of it, and....OK, it sometimes does have that "look at how awesome I am" feel to it. But you know what else it lacks? A sense of legiti.....shit, it has that, too, but only through the old school part. Without it, memorization and reflexes become nothing more than words that echo silently in your mind as you yell at the screen for being "so fucking cheap." It isn't cheap? But you know what it is? Easy. You get infinite continues, giving you infinite tries at bosses which you either kill on your first go or after your 94th continue. Going in a somewhat different direction than you'd think, I give this game the Appropriate Length Award, since the blog has as many paragraphs as the game does hours of gameplay.

Review Synopsis

Old school is fine and all, but keep in mind that this is the 21st century. Do 21st century things to it.
Roboenza? Come over here so I can punch the stupid out of you.
Still, pretty satisfying, what with the challenging part and everything.

Sticking with the theme I've established, this one's pretty obvious: My god, what the hell has happened to your world?

Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter

( What the hell could be nerdier than this game?) Other than the music. Just look at this game: superheroes in tights shooting webs at anime fighters shooting fireballs with the snap of each finger. The only thing needed to complete this trifecta (it's a trifecta now, I made it one) would be if Gollum put on the One Ring and, as a special move or whatever, shot about 9001 fan fictions at his enemies. That's it. Nothing gets nerdier than "crossover fighting game" unless it involves half naked midgets in jewelry. I wish I had a link for that, but I don't want to be banned from everything.

Ryu fucking hates the PS1 version.

But I do want to piss people off, so I'll point out some major flaws in this concept. For example, Captain America was created during World War II as a strong symbol of patriotism to shut up all the World War II critics who apparently existed. He's fighting a bunch of Japanese characters from Street Fighter. Anybody see anything wrong with this? Things can get really ugly when you place Captain America in front of a Japanese demon shooting fireballs. And what about Zangief? Who the hell wins that, or how do they even fight? Why do all the Marvel guys get weapons, what's always pissing off the Hulk, how does some random asshole fit into this, AND HOW DOES CAPCOM RECONCILE THESE THINGS!? Simply put: they don't. Fuck you if you were expecting any story; all you'll get is some generic filler and an ending with no relevance to anything anywhere ever. OK, I shouldn't be too pissed, as I can understand why they did it and know that I wouldn't be any better, but that still doesn't excuse the game design that's lazier than I.

For example: the entire game. It's just your typical Capcom fighter with a slight paint job of Marvel characters slapped on. Of course, this means that it's quick, accessible, and fun to play, but the same can be said of every other Street Fighter, can't it? The only thing I noticed being different was that the cast was slightly less balanced. It's still nicely balanced, especially with what I'm going to say later, but some characters, like M Bison and Zangief , are so awkward to use that you might as well call them Adobe Flash. Notice how neither of those guys were Marvel characters. I did that for a reason: all the Marvel characters rock. I found this out during the Hero Battle mode, something I played to fool myself into thinking that the arcade version wouldn't matter. Didn't last, though, since it's the same game, but instead of the usual rank of fights, you pick two characters and try to kill everybody on the opposing team. Sounds unique, right?

WRONG! There's one major problem I found with this (and, by extension, the game in general): you can't switch characters on the fly. What the hell, Capcom? You offer us a fighting game where you can carry two characters to battle, and you won't even allow us to switch characters mid-battle? Now all they do is jump into the fight, punch your opponent, and then disappear back to their own universe, dickishly leaving you to fight a 20 foot tall Darwinian. So they're essentially extra moves you can forget about, especially since I never found that summoning these characters used the same moves. I think. I don't know, I suck at fighting games. Which is odd, since I was able to build up super high crazy combos. That's the only thing I can think of that separates this game from Street Fighter Alpha or.....umm.....Darksiders, or whatever the hell it was called. Oh, Darkstalkers! Anyway, the only thing separating that from this is the combos. They're satisfying in their 30s, but you can also get that from Killer Instinct, which also has a stoked announcer. But the one in Marvel Super Heroes is far more stoked, so I have to give it the Shaun White Award for Epic Stokage. That's what he says, right?

Review Synopsis

It's pretty much any Capcom fighter anywhere.
Multiple characters in battle sounds cool; only one character actually fighting does not.
The fact that the Saturn version fulfills my wishes only makes me angrier.

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Video_Game_King

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