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If I could do it, this title would be in Japanese.

By Video_Game_King 20 Comments


No Caption Provided

Muramasa: The Demon Blade

( Hell, look at the games I have this time around!) Muramasa and Samurai Shodown. Or at least I planned the latter. Unfortunately, I couldn't beat it because the game refused to show Rimururu on screen at all. I assume this was because we were both in agreement on how stupid her name sounds. (How the hell do you pronounce that with an air of intelligence?) Well, I still have 66% Japanese. I was hoping for 100%, but 66% is still quite a bit. Protect your schoolgirls and prepare for cultural confusion in 3, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, 1!
 
Here's the story: long ago, there was these two famous swordsmiths: Muramasa and, just for the hell of it, Sephiroth. One day, they stuck their swords in the water and decided to see which one attracted the most retard fish. Muramasa got the most fish, but somehow, Sephiroth and his hairless chest won. "Wow, that's a shitty story", you say to yourself, wondering where the hell I'm going with this. Well, don't worry about that, since the game has NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY OF THAT. OK, not entirely nothing; it has as much to do with Muramasa as the new Alice in Wonderland movie has to do with the actual source material, soooooo mostly the same. A bit misleading, since the title of the game alludes to exactly what I was talking about, but whatever, I get some stories about Goku the ninja and a young girl being possessed by demons. Oh, and there are fox women and Buddhists, for some reason. It's hard to make fun of the story, mainly because it does the only job it should: give you a reason to move forward through the game. The only complaint I can lodge is that the stories only interact with each other when the two protagonists see each other naked in monkey hot springs (OK, that one's actually totally real); other than that, the story is beautiful in its simplicity. I just wish the rest of the game was this honest about itself.
 
 I thought I said that we would not do Samurai Shodown III. Why is this here?
 I thought I said that we would not do Samurai Shodown III. Why is this here?
Like it or not, Muramasa is, at heart, a beat-em-up. You run from left to right, occasionally running into a group of ninjas who need you to draw a bloody line on their waists to tell them how far their pants should be pulled up. You build up combos that would put Killer Instinct to shame, shoving food down your throat from time to time. If it was just that, I'd give this game about .6 points more, and several paragraphs less, I imagine. But no, this game tries to hide its Double Dragon-esque roots by adding an open world concept a la River City Ransom. Should be cool, right? River City Ransom was, like, the GTA of its time! But that was because it had a large, interesting world with lots to do and decent reasons to revisit areas; Muramasa, on the other hand, has a fairly linear world that limits you to its way of progression, even if the map it draws is clearly the worst one for your given situation. Oh, what's that? I can explore the world? And do what, asshole? This game's Japan makes Omaha look like a very interesting place for your next vacation; the only things you can do are go on scavenger hunts and find giant trees that let you beat people up for new equipment.
 
Oh, I forgot to mention that this game has some RPG elements, too. They're pretty light, though, limiting themselves to level ups, making new weapons, and finding equipment and stuff. Like the story, it doesn't really intrude on the gameplay, so I can't make jokes about turn-based combat or confusing progression. I wish I could, because the sword forging aspect looks more daunting than Perfect Cherry Blossom, even though it's rather easy to figure out which blades make which better blades. (Why you need one blade to make another isn't exactly explained.) That's one thing I almost love about the game: the sword system. You have almost everything you need to bring the combat to pure awesomeness: a variety of abilities wider than that whole political gap you Americans are dealing with, slash time differences to balance the ultra kickass blades against the ones that make plastic spoons look deadly, and a breaking system to make sure you don't just grind enemies into the ground with your special abilities. Oh, wait, that breaking thing, THAT'S why I spread the word "almost" about the entire paragraph: because it doesn't do shit. Oh, sure, you won't be able to use the blade for some time, but don't worry; you have two other blades, ready to kill as soon as they exit the scabbard. Oh, they all broke? Don't worry, they'll regenerate faster than you can say "Ryu Hayabusa."
 
So, as I've spent the last four paragraphs establishing, the game doesn't like to admit that it's a beat-em-up. Which is odd, because it's actually pretty good at what it does. OK, so I've mentioned that you can pound the A button to victory, but there is a fair amount of strategy and quickness to it, switching blades and jumping to key enemies to keep your combos from reaching something less than 958. Really, the only major problem is that it's too easy; enemies prefer to die in groups, and the game seems to have taken its death hints from BioShock, since the only consequence for death is that you've used up a few of your items. I thought it was just that I'm so super awesome that the game stood no chance in the face of my awesomeness, so I decided to up the difficulty to see if it changed anything. A few minutes and one battle later, all that happened was that being hit became slightly easier. I can see this affecting boss battles noticeably, but it does nothing to fend off the A button beatings in the near future.
 
 Karate chop beats ninja sword!
 Karate chop beats ninja sword!
Oh, speaking of bosses, one last thing before I finish this blog: before and after each one, there's a group of random NPCs hanging out in the vicinity. For whatever reason, you have to talk to ALL of them if you want to get through the game at all. It's not like they offer advice or significantly flesh out the story, so it comes off as a cheap way to make the game longer. Not that it's successful at that; each story lasts about 8 acts, which is around 6 hours of going to point A, beating somebody up, and repeating 7 times for an ending. There's nothing wrong with that, and Muramasa would've been much better if it did a better job fleshing things out or (and I've said this before) being honest about its shallow nature. But no, it does neither. It provides something that lacks depth but pretends it has that depth, so I'll give it the Dan B- SHIT!!! SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT!!!! I forgot to mention the graphics! Look, all you need to know is that they're really, really good. They're rich, luscious, radiant, and a bunch of other colorful words to tell you how much this game looks like a Japanese painting, only better because it doesn't look like this. And don't think it's only 2D stuff; it also has some very subtle 3D artwork that makes the game feel more alive. OK, we're good? Good. Dan Brown Award. Done.
 

Review Synopsis

  • Wow, this game looks awesome!
  • But it's kinda shallow. Why won't it admit that?
  • Seriously, you couldn't have cut the open world part for.....I don't know, more ways to mash the A button?
 
 
 
 
All I know is that this is a Saturn game of some type. And that it sucks.
 
 
 

Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee

( Oddysee....Odyseee....hmm...) Odd. I see a pun in that title, and a somewhat insulting one at that. I think that's pretty much the best way to describe this game: Odd. OK, that's pretty obvious to anybody with the ability to read. Just look at the title: two words that begin with Odd. The only way to make this thing odder would be to make Abe's name Odd. Do I have anything else to say about the game, other than its odd nature? Oddly enough, I do. Keep in mind that I'll be milking this odd thing the entire fucking blog. You have been warned. Twice.
 
A third warning: this game stars the Ritalin'd up cousin of that annoying frog biker thing from 8 years ago. It seems the Ritalin has also altered the universe around him, since he's now a poet who works for Soylent Green. However, unlike Charlton Heston, he finds out the big twist rather early, meaning he spends the rest of the game trying to undo it. That's it. That's all the story you'll get. I've told more elaborate stories for why I forgot my homework in elementary school. I'd comment more on how the King of Hobos mugged my computer the night before my book report was due, but that is a tale for another blog. This blog is about Oddworld and its complete lack of story. Aside from Abe's occasional odd ramblings, I'd say that the story's mainly told through the odd/dark atmosphere, but that would be lying, wouldn't it? The levels don't have anything to do with the story at all ever; like every other game ever, they're there for the gameplay. Why I'm mentioning this as if it's noteworthy confuses me immensely.
 
 Obviously trying to get a peak at my naked body after a shower. Gross.
 Obviously trying to get a peak at my naked body after a shower. Gross.
What is noteworthy is that this isn't some random platformer, but rather a Prince of Persia-esque platformer/puzzler thing where the goal isn't "shove your foot into everything's face", but rather to solve the puzzles that lay ahead to get from level to level. Also like Prince of Persia, the controls are oddly locked in place, so much so that you'd think the world is a decently drawn graph paper sketch. What really sucks is that most of the puzzles are very reflex-based, turning the aforementioned D&D platforming system into a giant fuck you. Then again, the puzzles range from very easy to slightly less easy, the only thing bumping them up to normal difficulty being the previously discussed twitch-based gameplay at times. Dodging enemies, climbing ledges, and possessing enemies all lead to satisfying endings. Wait, what's that? Satisfying endings? You fool, I was going for the possession thing. This is sort of where the game takes on its own special twist: you can hum a tune that will lodge itself in the heads of one type of enemy, somehow putting them under your control. It may sound somewhat cheap that all the other enemies will bite your face off for your cacophonous Rick Roll, but keep in mind that there are only three other enemies in the entire game, and two of them are oddly stuck in their own crappy worlds for about an hour each.
 
Anyway, back to the enemy possession: long story short, it's like playing as suicide bomber Abe with a gun. In other words, oddly goddamn awesome. Why are they the same? Do I need to explain? I do? Well, that made me look like an asshole. Great. Anyway, both Abe and the suicide bomber bots must, from time to time, use their odd grunt system to progress. Somebody will give or demand of them a password, and you must recite it back. And end with a fart. Unlike the enemy possession, however, this feels more like random busywork the developers shoved into the game to make it feel much odder. Why they did this when the game already has an asshole society and an oddly non-sexual item called "New 'N Tasty" is beyond me; maybe it wasn't to be odd. Maybe it was to lengthen the game. Understandable, since the game is short, but guess what? It works because it's short, a fact which any Oompa Loompa can affirm for you. But unlike Oompa Loompas, this game actually has the chance to become longer with a Jet Force Gemini-esque rescue thing. Oddly enough, it's about the same as in Jet Force Gemini: either get all of them or you get a crap ending. But guess what? I'm happy with that. The ending treats you like the asshole you are for letting them die. Of course, it may be that your species is naturally fucked, since you'll die so many times that you'd think you were in Rapture, but it's reasonable for the game to assume that you're an odd type of violent poet. In fact, that's the award I'll give this game: Titus Andronicus Award. Look it up.
 

Review Synopsis

  • The only notable thing about the story is Ritalin the Poet.
  • However, the game has quite a bit to it: controlling enemies, jumping about levels to solve puzzles...
  • ...yet you still can't defend yourself against the locked controls. Or anything, really.

20 Comments

Why won't March overwhelm me sooner?

By Video_Game_King 15 Comments


No Caption Provided

 

Drill Dozer

( I'm surprised that my last blog wasn't as huge as it should've been.) Maybe it's the Bush jokes, maybe it's the fact that nobody reads this damn thing, but it seems nobody was interested in George W. Bushwald and his deafening puberty. (Is it just me, or is "George W. Bushwald and the Deafening Puberty" a great band name?) Which really sucks, since this blog consists of an obscure GBA platformer and a game that lasts less time than an episode of House if you suck. Like this game. Sort of.
 
Is this one better than the last few? Or is it still made out of Twix bars?
Is this one better than the last few? Or is it still made out of Twix bars?
As the title clearly suggests, the main feature of this game is the giant, spinning penis extension mounted to the front of your tank. You can spin it two ways, although more often than not, using just the one way works just fine. Of those times when you actually do need to hold down the L button, it feels rather gimmicky and unnecessary, like when you find yourself unscrewing the poorly-constructed enemies. So now we're left with one button you'll use A LOT, which I don't criticize the game for. What I do criticize the game for is knowingly being repetitive. Why knowingly? Oh, several reasons, the first of which is some stupid gear system. You can pretty much drill through anything in the game, provided that you have enough gears for your drill thing. What's that? Why don't they carry over between levels? Fuck you, that's why! Apparently, our protagonist starts each level by shifting directly into the nonexistent fifth gear and nobody tells her that it's a stupid idea.
 
Yes, a SHE. Now the penis extension makes perfect sense, since she's using it to replace the penis she doesn't have. After all, it's gotta suck when you're the only girl there; you have to prove yourself to all 1 of the guys who aren't surprised that you have tits. Seriously, what the hell does it take to get them to focus on her? Uncovering an evil plot? Apparently not, since that leads absolutely nowhere? OK then, what about collecting shiny diamonds? Besides being pretty sexist, that leads nowhere, too, other than something about them being evil or whatever. If you haven't caught on yet, I'm describing the story in a very obvious way, reminiscent of.....f'ing Drill Dozer. Wow, that became cyclical very fast. How can we possibly become cyclical any faster? Actually, that's a bad idea, since the Prince of Persia half of this blog will inevitably become doused in puke and fiery nacho farts.
 
But, tempting fate, I become about as cyclical as Sega and go back to the actual gameplay. As I previously mentioned, you start each level with one gear, meaning you have to plow through the levels looking for the remaining two gears. Obviously, this makes the levels pretty repetitive: continually press the R button through shit to first missing gear, repeat for second, repeat to boss, repeat all that to the end, and, why the hell not, repeat the repeating. Oh, it's not like the developers meant for it to be so monotonous; it's just that they failed at innovating, which would be odd (Nintendo game), but somehow isn't ( Game Freak). Every level or so, a new gimmick is introduced, usually to vanish into infinitely thin air, never to be discussed again. Good thing, too, since they usually fuck up the controls with their physics and...* drum roll*...REPETITION!!! Are you seeing a theme develop? No? You're a moron, so let me REPEAT it to you: REPETITION REPETITION REPETITION. I could go on about how the bosses are easier than your girlfriend on prom night, or how the only use for the B button is to make you advance the story, but that would be repetitive. More repetitive than the Repetitive Repeating Award for Repetition of Repetitive Repeating Repeats. Also, some type of palindrome.
 

Review Synopsis

  • The story's pretty blunt and uninteresting.
  • Imagine operating a giant drill. It's about as easy as you think it is.
  • More repetitive than a shower. (They never tell you how much to repeat.)
 
 
 
 
Man, I've been there before.
 
 

Prince of Persia

( Oh, wow, that box art is awful.) No, seriously, look at it....*waits for music to build up*...NOW! What the hell is going on? I know, jumping over spikes, but that's not what it looks like in actual game. What we have here is somebody in a goofy costume having a seizure on the kitchen floor, and there's spikes, for some reason. But we all know the Mega Man Rule: The worse the box art, the better the game. Hell, just look at The Orange Box and its Photoshop in Five Minutes feel. Or, if you really want to get out there, the SNES box art for Prince of Persia.
 
 And that makes three Disney references!
 And that makes three Disney references!
You know, that unlockable game in Sands of Time? What? You haven't heard of it? Come here. *hits you* That's for not knowing about this game, damn it! Eh, maybe I could excuse you for not knowing it. After all, the story's so generic that you could confuse it for Super Mario Bros if your Alzheimer's progressed far enough. The story is this: an evil vizier dude named Jaffar has this crush on the princess, but she doesn't exactly have a thing for creeps. Already, things are sounding like Aladdin, but keep in mind that this game came out three years before Robin Williams filled movie screens with weird references and absolute insanity. Besides, instead of trapping the princess in an hourglass, this Jaffar makes her watch an hourglass for two hours (apparently, this version lasts through TWO episodes of House)(twohourglass? Who the hell knows?) before she makes a decision. Not two game hours where time only passes if you've spoken with NPC#49428923; no, this is REAL TIME. Of course, we can all see the flaw in this: she has an opportunity to say no, two hours to escape, and, somehow, a random youth in the dungeons of this palace can stab his way to her heart. Only, you know, emotionally, not physically.
 
Actually, that's a bit disingenuous, as there's not much stabbing to be found in this game, and what stabbing is there is, according to Prince of Persia tradition, weak and underdeveloped. Your only options are walk forward, stab, parry, and commit suicide. Provided your enemy doesn't parry you into a series of what seems to be pointing out the various mustard stains on each others' shirts, the only strategy is "walk up to enemy, stab them, repeat until they're dead or they fall into dead." So why have it? How much fun do you think it would be to make a game about running around only, no combat whatsoever? Wrong answer, asshole. *stabs you, is parried, stabs you again, pushes you into spike trap* The right answer was "actually rather decent." Every level feels like one huge puzzle you have to solve, jumping about and searching for the right combination of switch flipping that will let you reach that princess. Throw in some reflex-based gameplay that makes you feel super-awesome for doing things your fat body won't allow, and you have a perfect game, right?
 
Almost. This is where things take a turn for the worse: realism. The one thing gamers wish for in all their games, not knowing the result of it. HERE IS YOUR RESULT!!! GAZE UPON IT IN HORROR!!!! OK, to be perfectly honest, the realism in this game isn't that bad. After all, it gave us some really cool animations and a legitimate excuse for the difficulty level of the game. Most of the time. Some of the time, however, you'll find that the game killed you off because the damn prince wouldn't bother grabbing onto the ledge at any given time. Or that he wouldn't jump at the last minute because there's no animation for that. (Actually, there is, Mr. Mechner. It's called "EVERY ACTION MOVIE EVER".) It's not game destroying, since most levels last a few minutes and the worst punishment is returning to the beginning of the level, but it's still kind of annoying. Other than that, a decent game with a lot of legitimate variety (unlike that OTHER game *coughs, points up*) and the Sands of Time Award for Changing Absolutely Nothing Over 14 Years. Awesome.

Review Synopsis

  • The Jaffar from Aladdin was a more efficient planner than this one.
  • Why did I just press the down button? Do I want him to stab me? I want to stab him! And nothing else.
  • OK, maybe I want to jump about the levels and stuff. Just as soon as they fix that realism thing.
15 Comments

This big badass blog was brought to you by the letter "B".

By Video_Game_King 7 Comments


No Caption Provided

Borderlands

( I'm just glad that I've been getting all the big games out of the way now.) The After Years, No More Heroes 2, and (I hope very soon) BioShock 2 will all give way to time murdering games like Final Fantasy XIII, Fragile Dreams, and Infinite Space. Keep in mind I still have to deal with a bunch of old PS1 games and some very Japanese RPGs on the Wii. I'd have added Borderlands to that list, but there's this blog. Sources tell me that only one can be true. My sources also tell me to stop being such a fucking idiot and write the blog already.
 
 YOU ARE NOT BUSHWALD SEXYFACE!!!
 YOU ARE NOT BUSHWALD SEXYFACE!!!
Alright, Jesus. I came into this game looking at it as a colorful, more refined Fallout 3 with an annoyinger version of R2D2. As such, I decided it was time to summon the sexy wrath of Bushwald Sexyface and watch him sexy up the land yet again. However, as the game opened, I found myself on a bus staring at four characters. It soon became obvious that I had to play as them and only them. Besides preventing the land from seeing the greatness that is and always shall be Bushwald Sexyface, it also limits your play style, since each character plays very differently and stubbornly refuses to try out another skill set. Whatever, I chose the sniper, jumped off the bus like I was in Speed, and was presented with the story: I have landed in Pandora, an Apocalypse-stricken Connecticut (this is what happens when George Bush decides to go to a college reunion/revisit his birthplace). A hotter version of Miranda Lawson tells me of the Vault, a special place that only opens once every 200 years. I assume "Vault" is code for "bunker to protect us from George Bush." It is now my job to find the key to this bunker and get away from the wasteland that the Bush Administration has created.
 
But just because I have to find Bush-free paradise doesn't mean everything I do is towards the goal of escaping...whatever the hell you guys called most of the last decade. In fact, there's a lot of room to dick around in the game, as I was taking every job I could get my hands on, from feeding somebody's pet monstrosity to adding a new layer of paint to their shit-shack. This was probably because I had no idea which missions were and were not directly related to the story. This is something I blame the game for, since unless it directly says, "Go find the Vault, you moron.", you're not going to know whether or not what you're doing directly relates to the story at all. What's that? Tiny little paragraphs for each mission? What are you talking about, voices in my mind? Oh, with each mission, I get an explanation as to what I'm doing and how it contributes to my overall goals and stuff? Fuck that, I just want to shoot the piss out of things!
 
And this game does a decent job of letting me do that. There's.....holy shit, about a jillion guns? Well, it certainly feels like that, given that I was constantly tripping over guns. (See? This is what happens when you cater to right wing gun nuts.) Several problems, though. First, you'll never be able to carry every single gun you find, meaning you'll have to leave them lying around, waiting for some other insane weirdo to come along and be insane with them. "But w-" STOP INTERRUPTING MY BLOGS! Look, I know you could, in theory, just pick up the better guns, upgrading yourself constantly on your adventures while pawning the guns at the nearest shop. Again, several problems: most of the guns you find do less damage than a leaking Super Soaker, and, more often than not, the guns you do find that are better are usually of a higher level requirement than you have. Granted, it's always something manageable, like one level, but I still don't like the developers purposefully taunting me like that. So here's what I did: instead of using any of the jillion guns, I stuck with about 1 or 2 guns at any given time. OK, I didn't do that on purpose, but I may as well have; things like corrosive damage and elemental bonuses didn't really matter when I found myself either shooting people in the head from 5 feet away or just giving them a third eye from an inch away.
 
 Pictured: the brain shattering awesomeness that is everything I have just mentioned in this paragraph. Also, somebody about to insult Death himself.
 Pictured: the brain shattering awesomeness that is everything I have just mentioned in this paragraph. Also, somebody about to insult Death himself.
Now that I've absolutely destroyed the main feature of this game, what else can I desecrate? Oh, how about the skill system? Wait, no, I can't, since it's actually kind of OK. Sure, the freedom's limited, but I touched on that before, didn't I? Really, the only problem I have is that some of the skills are clearly meant for multiplayer. You don't have to get them, but they do take up space that could've been used for single player skills. I'd go into detail about the multiplayer, but being the Howard Hughes type that I am, I'm afraid that's just impossible. Yet from what I've gathered (IE what the loading screens have told me from time to time), it's actually pretty decent, since the difficulty ADAPTS TO THE AMOUNT OF PLAYERS. TAKE HINTS, OTHER SHOOTERS. And not just in the co-op department; try taking notes on the regenerating health aspect, as well. I know what you're thinking, so tell yourself to shut up and listen to me, crazy person. You have two types of health: a nice, regenerating outer layer and a meaty inner layer that won't grow back. Best of both worlds, right? Then wait, where does this next feature come from? Should my meat suddenly run out, I have an opportunity to kill somebody else before "dying." Kill somebody (and it's easy, try it yourself), and you magically grow back all your health, recklessly ready to stab people in the head again. Fail, and you regenerate nearby for a minimal cost, which has to be more of an insult to the Grim Reaper than Devil Survivor ever was.
 
Crap! This cannot end well.....um.....Look! Owls! There, that should have distracted you from this; it certainly distracted me. What the hell was I talking about? Oh, right, vehicles. Or, rather, vehicle, since there's pretty much only one in the entire game. Oh, sure, you get to paint it different colors and outfit it with one of two weapons, but you already have one of them anyway, so what's the point of doubling up? Just in case you don't want things to explode? You're playing a first person shooter, that's what they're for! If you don't want things exploding in explodey explosions of death, stick to adventure games or something! If you want decent vehicle controls where aiming doesn't involve driving in circles and hoping whatever you're shooting dies, this isn't the game. If you're looking for a game where vehicles are largely necessary, again, this isn't the game. Provided you're near a warp post, you can just warp to your objective, objectify the hell out of it, warp back, and repeat. Sure, it can get a bit repetitive, but not having it would artificially lengthen the hell out of the game. As you guys should know (you do know, don't you?), I'm not into that kinda crap.
 
Which is odd, since I've kept this thing going for an unnecessary six paragraphs. Last one, I promise: the graphics are a bit disappointing. Sure, the box art looks decent both inside and out (weird, I know), and I previously said that it's more colorful and stuff, but from a technical level, this game needs some serious refinement. Like what, you say? Well, how about blurry textures? Every time I entered a new area, it looked as though I entered the Land of the Anti Alias. Only after a few minutes of yelling at the TV did the textures load properly. What my rage could not fix was the character looks. I know this is incredibly petty, but they simply don't emote. They all seem to have that Metal Gear Solid quality about them, where their lips don't move at all, but without the bobble-head part that I liked in Metal Gear Solid. Even more petty is the fact that I'm blaming this on George Bush, somehow. So, in conclusion, George Bush is the Apocalypse Award.
 

Review Synopsis

  • Wow, lots and lots of guns!.....That I won't use, because these 3 work just fine!
  • Quite a bit of focus on multiplayer, for good reasons I won't embrace.
  • Vehicles that handle like crap and contain absolutely no variety whatsoever.
 
 
 
 
He forgot the part where they begin with a commercial that addresses some ambiguous fear.
 
 
 

BioShock 2

( .....Well, shit.) Here I was, thinking that this next game was going to be an old school game you guys have never heard of and that I didn't like. But what I didn't realize is that my return trip to Rapture would only take up a weekend at best. What's worse, there was no killing of hippies whatsoever in this new Rapture. "Why the hippies", you ask? Well, the new game takes place in 1968, which is close enough to Woodstock to allow me to shoot hippies.
 
Hello, I am Walt Disney, and I am here to ask you a question...
Hello, I am Walt Disney, and I am here to ask you a question...
But no hippies were present. Instead, we've returned to the underwater city (eh, what the hell *posts Under Da Sea with regards to Ryan's messages*) and we have a new leader. She (yes, she) has changed gears entirely, going from Ryan's state of neglect to more of a state of Nazi. OK, not Nazi, but it's Orwellian, so close enough, right? Personally, I was expecting them maybe to go with Nietzsche, given the whole master/slave thing, or maybe even J.D. Salinger's vision of Holden Caulfield exploring the sunken city in search of the ducks. Wait, what the hell am I talking about? Here we have a story that's actually decent (if a bit derivative), with some sort of symbolism, meaning, message, and all that. As I hinted at earlier, it serves as a decent counterpoint to Ryan's Rapture, showing that unlimited freedom which reveals the natural limits of man is just as bad as an authoritarian state where people forget their humanity, that an inflated ego is the same as blind subservience. Hell, they're pretty much the same thing, aren't they?
 
I'd say the same about the actual gameplay, given how so much feels so exactly the same, but BioShock 2 seems to be following the current sequel fad of taking the same game, repairing the gutters, painting it a slightly different color, and then making sure the buyers don't notice the high count on the odometer. For example, remember that leaking gutter in the original BioShock? You know, how you could only play as a Big Daddy for one level, and it featured none of the pimp techniques you saw defending Little Sisters before? Guess what? 2K seems to have apologized for that, since now the entire game focuses on a revived Big Daddy roaming the halls for his now grown-up bitch. As if the pedo vibe hasn't sunk in just yet, let me add this: there's a new focus on the girls growing up, and apparently, puberty turns the girls into overly protective bitches who will destroy your eardrums if you touch their shit. Doesn't matter if you're rescuing it through your unexplained Jesus touch powers or harvesting their slimy insides; they'll tear you to shreds, regardless.
 
Chris Hansen has entered my castle and warned me that one more pedophile reference will summon the fury of his tree-police force. OK, fine, I'll move onto the Big Daddies. Yep, they're back, but they're not too threatening; you can walk right up to them and give them high fives if you want to. It makes sense, but removes a bit of the tension from the game, since seeing their shadows no longer means you're fucked. Instead, high fiving with your left hand leads you down Buttfuck Boulevard. Or not. They're a bit on the easy side, this time, but it may have been the ammo I was using: just rip them to pieces with the machine gun, raid their corpse, and watch as the game presents you with the new morality system. Given that you're now a Big Daddy, it actually takes on a more personal tone than the last game, since these girls now see you as capable of saving them. That's one of the reasons I decided to rescue each one, others including "I was evil last time" and "being evil now is not worth the hassle." If you actually want to be a total prick, now you have to adopt them, make them suck the life out of nearby corpses, and THEN rip the slug out of their backs. It seems like a lot of effort for what will inevitably be less reward than just rescuing the little bitches, and either way, you summon the wrath of the shrieking monstrosity that is middle school. I know, Big Sister is always watching you, feeling of ever-present monitoring, but it feels somewhat moot if all my actions result in the wrath of deafening anger. Wait, OK, that's actually a good point.
 
Pictured: puberty in an Orwellian dystopia.
Pictured: puberty in an Orwellian dystopia.
Wow, I feel as though I'm giving this game too little credit. It's still BioShock, you're still swapping between shooting spikes into people's jaws (always satisfying) and hitting them with your plasmid wrath....even if it is useless. Wait a minute, this is why I was giving the game less credit than I intended! I still see leaks on that houseboat's gutters! You still have plasmids that are completely useless, like sneaking and drill-only ones! You also didn't bother changing the arrow....mainly because that still works as a good guide. But how do you explain....um.....damn it, this is a really good game. It's hard to find flaws in this game. Hell, even the minor stuff that doesn't serve any practical purpose in the game, like the tiny underwater portions and the Quick-Time-Event-esque hacking bits, still win me over somehow (in these cases, their beauty and the sense of urgency that now comes with hacking).
 
What I can criticize is the end portion of the game. I'm not going to spoil anything, I still find it rather meaningful and complex in its own right, but I can sum it up as "BioShock with tits." Does that count as a spoiler? Yes? Screw you, here's a major spoiler: you never get to enter the Vault. Wait, wrong game. I meant to say, "the game is very, very short." I was able to finish it in a few days, as I mentioned before, and I guess I can blame that on one major leak in this houseboat: dying holds no consequence. I know I should've expected that after the intro, but hell, you have Big Sisters now! Aren't they supposed to suck out ADAM? Take a bit of my ADAM away each time, that'd be fair, right? Not that you'll die much in their presence, given that you can pause the game to heal. Again, lack of tension. Still a decent game, it just suffers from the same problems that most sequels today exhibit: lack of creativity. Remember the likes of Final Fantasy VI and Yoshi's Island, when they were very different from their predecessors? Why couldn't BioShock 2 introduce a major new gameplay feature?...............Fuck, I just remembered: it does, in the form of multiplayer. I haven't played it, but given the Team Fortress 2 comparisons I've heard, I feel as though I have. If that's not enough, I have seen somebody playing it. Oh, shut up, I don't have anything mean to say about the multiplayer. I can't comment on how Plasmids affect it, but I can say that it recreates the chaos and desperation of Rapture. Hold on a minute! Is the multiplayer.....contributing to the story? *backs self into corner, rocks in fetal position*
 

Review Synopsis

  • Hooray for deep stories that sate my intellectual appetite as of late! That alone gets it the That Pimply Nerd Award for the One Thing Which All Games Should Copy Notes from in Class!
  • Boo for semi-minimal upgrades!
  • Hooray for it still being BioShock!
7 Comments

Apparently, there is such a thing as too old school.

By Video_Game_King 26 Comments


No Caption Provided

Final Fantasy IV: The After Years

( If you're wondering why my blog is so damn late, you have this game to blame.) If you're wondering why I'm playing this particular music, me too. Honestly, I don't want to remember anything about this game, which oddly extends into why I chose that music. That is how bad this game is; that is why you don't make sequels to Final Fantasy games. You end up with Dirge of Cerberus or Final Fantasy XII or worse, this game. So why'd I play it? Well, March is going to be a busy month, so to make room for the large cheese pizza that is Final Fantasy XIII, I had to stuff into my face the moldy breadsticks that were The After Years.
 
For those of you unaware as to what the hell I'm even talking about, it's a Wiiware port of an episodic cell-phone release of the sequel to Final Fantasy IV. Nobody was asking for a sequel, so I don't understand why they didn't localize some other games or, and I know they'll never do this, port the original Final Fantasies and Dragon Quests to Virtual Console. But I'm stuck with this game, so I might as well make the most of it. It's 18 years after the original: Cecil had a kid, Kain's still about as hard to manipulate as the Fox News demographic, and the world has started to look more like FF6. (That last one's not a joke, that actually happens in the game, with no explanation whatsoever.) Everything's going well until this random girl with less personality than a GameSpot video review decides she wants the crystals of the world. It is up to you to find out why she wants those crystals and stop her from doing so.
 
 Oh, come on, Square! This is just lazy!
 Oh, come on, Square! This is just lazy!
Kind of. None of that really happens until the final mega-chapter; everything up until that point is a 1-2 hour mini-chapter starring one of the characters from the original game. You'd think this would make for an interesting story that makes use of multiple perspectives nicely, but there's barely enough room for anything in each one; you just hack your way to a cliffhanger ending/unskippable credits sequence, leveling up quite quickly along the way. There are only about two times in the entire game where storylines intersect, whereas the rest happens in odd succession. Speaking of which, it may be helpful to know that I bought the entire package at once, completely oblivious to the point of episodic gaming. That would explain most of the quibbles I have with the story, like how it lacks any sense of unity, or how nothing is explained until the end, but it doesn't help explain why I'm bitching about battles a turbo button could win or how leveling in this game gives you no sense of progression or progress.
 
OK, I guess the episodic thing can explain that; I doubt you could get high levels in the amount of time it takes to watch Avatar. What it can't explain is the repetitive battles. Sure, each character has a special ability and a variety of moves, but you'll never need them for several reasons. First, a lot of the special skills you encounter are stupidly useless, from Ceodore's Awaken (it just makes him glow for an entire turn) to Edward's Salve, which really caught me off-guard. Seriously, it's salve! You'd think that would win every battle ever ever, but no, turns out that belongs to attack. Just mash away at the attack command and watch as everything vanishes into an alternate dimension, fearful of your cunning stratagems. If you're really ballsy, you can spam the Bio spell until the end of battle, but again, all you need is the attack button.
 
What's that? Something about the moon? Fuck the moon, I can just mash the attack button! And fuck that little down arrow next to the attack command, too! It may say that I shouldn't attack because it's now weaker, but I'm not noticing any changes! Do you see the problem here? Repetitive battles and short stories all point to one conclusion: this was an incredibly lazy game! They just took FF4, changed the story, added some useless new features (like the "reveal this unto me, O great GameFAQs" Band thing), and shoved it out the door as an old school Final Fantasy. How exactly can you fuck that up? Well, this game, for one. But I understand what you're saying, so let me elaborate, pretending that the last few paragraphs were mere warm-up.
 
 Pictured: Kain, as easily manipulated as ever.
 Pictured: Kain, as easily manipulated as ever.
Let's see, what else can I t-oh, graphics! As I've already mentioned, the game steals quite a bit from Final Fantasy VI, barely even bothering to cover up its theft. Terra becomes Rydia (F for "really fucking creative"), Terra puts her hair back up and becomes Porom, and Celes dons her opera outfit and changes absolutely nothing whatsoever. What's worse, when converting FF6 into FF4, they screwed up some of the little details that, when not present, make the game completely unlikable. I'm not saying it's completely lacking in those details; the towering castle spires and...tower prove that. Yet when that same tower looks like a cardboard cutout of an actual tower, the word "lazy" starts echoing in my already cluttered mind. 
 
As always, this extends both to the story and the gameplay. Since I can't remember why the hell I said the story, I'll just go with the gameplay. Remember how I mentioned the length of each chapter earlier? You know, how the last one is the only one of decent length? Well, I can't give it any points, because most of it is just an area that puts the word "dungeon" to shame, what with it having more floors than pixels, each one housing a boss from ANOTHER Final Fantasy game!? What? Why is Ultros in my FF4? Why is there a fucking train in the middle of the moon? Why does the game sloppily try to retcon all the Final Fantasy games into one universe, missing the appeal of a Final Fantasy game? But most importantly, why are all these bosses so damn easy? You'd think a dragon with two heads would be strong enough to rule the world two times over (once for each head), but apparently, he's weak to the Mother 3 Boss Strategy: up-stat yourselves, down-stat him, beat his ass until you have enough blood and poo to make everybody vomit into what is, in terms of quality, this game.
 
Yes, I'm calling this game crap, as if that hasn't sunk in yet. I love JRPGs, yet this game's repetitive nature made me realize why so many people smugly hate the genre; I'm an old school guy, yet even this-wait, no, it's not that the game is old school; it's just that Square thought the word "old school" translates to "you don't have to do anything at all." But of course, it didn't. If you're going to go old school, you either provide a clear context (Mega Man 9) or use it as an opportunity clean up some of your past fuck-ups (Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon); you, however, couldn't be bothered to fix obvious shit like the character's pockets, given that they lose half their life savings every time they run from battle. Hell, you couldn't even proofread the crap you introduced in this game, like how there's no "just sleep" option for changing the moons, meaning you either need an inn or an oddly easy to set up cottage to achieve a moon change. So what we have here is an extremely flawed game that nobody wanted and that will no doubt garner controversy in the comments. What could possibly fix this game? Hmmmmm........
 

Review Synopsis

  • I think somebody dropped Final Fantasy IV on the floor, as the story's ridiculously fractured.
  • Christ, even as an old school JRPG gamer, this game forces me to question my love of both.
  • The attention to detail is in such a deficit that I feel I have to point out their fuck ups with the award: Twizzler Punch Award for Not Drawing Individual Punch Sprites for Each Character.
 
 
 
 
I was going to post a kickass video detailing why I love Final Fantasy so much, but that part of my mind simply isn't functioning after this game. So here's a ridiculously old Flash cartoon:  
 
 

Adventure Island

( Wow, that game was awful.) Let's just not talk about it anymore, even though I know that's what will comprise half the posts in this blog. What's that other half gonna consist of? Most of the crap I'm going to say right here, of course. Obviously, many of you are wondering how such an obscure NES game can generate enough random crap for so many posts. First, slightly freaked out that you know that it's an NES game but not much else. Second, remember Cocoron? No? Play it. Now.
 
Wait, no, not now. Now is the time for Adventure Island, a game starring a fat, shirtless guy with a mustache. I assume that he is Ron Jeremy. The storyline kinda supports it, since the goal of the game is to rescue a princess who looks like a blow-up doll. Wait a minute, I just noticed something: this game's more of a Mario rip-off than the Obscure Giana Sisters! Look at the evidence: fat mustache man, princess desperately in need of a good sexing, 32 levels, the ability to shoot (what I hope were) fireballs, decent ph.....oh, wait, that's kinda where the similarities end. For those of you who can't predict basic anythings, I was going to finish that with "decent physics", something I remembered Adventure Island was severely lacking.
 
 Way to go, Ron Jeremy!
 Way to go, Ron Jeremy!
The biggest problem that I can think of is the drift. Everything about this game feels like Disney on Ice, only with Ron Jeremy: stopping requires about 20 feet ahead of you and jumping onto a moving platform will make the physics implode. It feels somewhat cruel, since a lot of the levels have you hopping between areas less than a pixel wide. You'll trip into an enemy/fire/rock/blade of grass, get angry, and blow up your NES. That, of course, leads to game over, since you can't play Adventure Island on an exploded NES. Fortunately, the game's quite easy (until the end levels), so you'll only get game over about a few times. Which was good for me, since it meant less time making a dirty bomb that plays bitching chiptunes and more time actually noticing that this game does some cool things that make it more than Shirtless Mario Bros.
 
I don't know where to begin with it, so I'll try to think in terms of Ron Jeremy.....I know, eggs! Like Ron Jeremy, you'll spend most of your time ruining eggs for your own profit. But unlike Ron Jeremy, ruining these eggs results in things that aren't one of his pornos, like skateboards and fairies. All the fairy does is give you invincibility, so let's move onto the skateboard. What does it do? What the hell do you think, idiot, it makes you move forward! The catch? You can't stop. The closest thing possible is holding back, but even then, you're kinda screwed. It makes the jumps harder and some just comedic material for the sadistic programmers. Besides plunging to your helmet-safety-disproving death, it can also lead you to trip over petty things I listed earlier. And into your death.
 
If this is coming off a bit negative, keep in mind that it's been quite some time since I've played the game, so I may not be in the right mindset. In fact, I'm probably in a horrible mindset, since I actually liked the game. Hell, it has enough quirks and charm to get me to like it. Yes, I love playing as a guy who can be the mascot for egotism, but that's not all I love about the game; I also liked the fruit based gameplay and the fact that I was collecting pots in each level, apparently meaning that I'm playing as Ron Jeremy in his younger years. You know, when he experimented in the gay porn industry. And that's what this game does: it experiments. Not with gay porn, you sick pervert, but with platforming. And it works, so I'll give it the only award I can possibly give it:
 

No Caption Provided

 

Review Synopsis

  • Ron Jeremy at his finest.
  • "Reflex-based" does not even begin to describe this game.
  • Quirky does.
26 Comments

This blog confuses me. ME!

By Video_Game_King 10 Comments


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No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle

WHY IS THIS NOT REALITY YET!?
WHY IS THIS NOT REALITY YET!?
( Finally, it is over.) Without spoiling anything, the final boss of this game is brutal. BRUTAL. He's the type of boss you fight so much that you start memorizing lines of the script. But I finally beat the smug bastard and his cheap, insta-kill moves! So how long did it take me to destroy this man? (Crap! Spoiler!) What? About a day? OK, I guess that makes sense, but what about the game? What did you say, me? Four days? That's it?! I paid $50 for this game! *punches guy who was telling me all this stuff*
 
OK, I'm being a bit hard on the game (and that guy whose jaw I just broke in half), it's quite awesome. Hell, the first boss in the game has you slicing off somebody's head before he yells at you for cutting it off. Confusing, right? Well, that's the No More Heroes experience: you play as diarrhea stricken Travis Touchdown, an assassin whose blatant disregard for stealth and influencing the world with his killings would make Ezio sneak into the city just so he'd have a chance to stab Travis in his angry neck. (Weird that Ubisoft made both this and No More Heroes. Wrap your head around THAT.) For whatever reason that's never explained, Travis has jumped down 50 ranks in the fake assassin's organization. Now, at rank 51, Travis must fight his way back to the top. The twist? There aren't actually 50 battles in the game.
 
Every now and then, No More Heroes 2 pulls a cheap plot device from nowhere and eliminates several of the promised fights. Hell, after two non-tutorial fights, the game rockets you up about 25 ranks just for the hell of it. I realize that a mandatory 50 boss fights would have made the game longer and more repetitive than it should've been, but if you knew that, why'd you bother starting us from rank 51 in the first place? That'd be like me promising a long, in-depth look at this game and then wasting two paragraphs on the story. Yes, I know what you're thinking, and this game does, too. Also like me, Desperate Struggle is willing to make fun of anything it can grab. Anime? Got it, even if it isn't NSFW. Shooters? Bam. Horror movies? Here. Something that isn't Japanese? How about stealth and platforming? See, it gets EVERYTHING. Including itself.
 
For example, remember how everybody's been comparing the beam katana to the lightsaber? Guess what happened? You get to use a lightsaber as an actual weapon. Sure, it's about as easy to swing as a 10 foot log, but....actually, I forget where I was going with that, the lightsaber just plain sucks. Perhaps an insult to the concept in general or something? Also, do any of you recall how the first game had you jacking off your sword to recharge it, because the same people who make those shakeable flashlights are just 10 year olds with a crapload of money? And how that didn't get any controversy whatsoever? How did Suda 51 change that? Did he give Travis a blood-powered sword? Did he make it regular-battery powered? None of those. Instead, he did the exact same thing, only now the icon to represent your battery power is a giant dick that gets larger as you shake your sword. Good thing Jack Thompson's dea-er, disbarred.
 
 Now multiply this by infinity, and you have No More Heroes 2
 Now multiply this by infinity, and you have No More Heroes 2
Notice how I said that he didn't change anything. Also notice how sword recharging is still a major part of the game. The major complaint I'm getting at is that there are times in battle when you have to run away from the chainsaw wielding thugs so you can jack off your sword in the corner, breaking the flow of the game and forcing you to yell "NOT NOW, JUST GIVE ME A MINUTE!" constantly. Sad, too, since this game has a nice flow going for it. And so we've come to the main part of the game: slashing the fuck out of everything, since everything is a blood-filled pinata and Santa Destroy is caught in perpetual Cinco de Mayo. Although that sounds very easy, I've noticed that the combat has more strategy than it seems at first; OK, fine, so you still mash the A button into a fine powder, but you'll find yourself adjusting the Wii-mote to continue combos constantly, stopping at just the right time to dodge your enemy and then shove your sword up their ass. Or wrestle them, if you prefer that. I don't know why you'd prefer that, given that you're often doing the exact same move, but whatever, maybe you're into that.
 
Me, I'm into the boss battles. Like that wasn't obvious before, given that I bought the game. Whatever, so you get to the boss battle and again find out that there's quite a bit of strategy to these fights. OK, so it's mostly "dodge and stab", but you still have to know when to dodge and how long you should stab. Otherwise, prepare to die. A lot. Some of these battles will kill you so many times that you'll start thinking that a lot of the enemies are just your past corpses dressed up in suits and strings. Of course, this leads to quite a bit of repetition, doing the same things in the same boss fights over and over again, hoping that this is the time when you get to kill your foe with a quick time event that you can't fail. Literally, I was unable to fail the QTEs, no matter how much I tried. So why even have them?
 
One of the mini-games is this with a motorcycle. Awesome.
One of the mini-games is this with a motorcycle. Awesome.
Of course, this same question came up after Travis' post-assassination crap, when I found myself playing with my cat to make it lose weight. They're inaccurate (cats don't stretch like that, and actually getting them to play requires a small baggy of catnip and the music of Jefferson Airplane) and are specifically designed to destroy your fingers. The reward is decent, but the lack of realism isn't. If you're going to put a cat in the game, at least go the extra mile and show them for what they are: kinda lazy pets who know that the mouse is made of fucking plastic. Hell, you went the extra mile with all the job mini-games. When thinking about old school design, you didn't go the lazy old school route; you went all the way. These actually feel like lost NES games, simple, somewhat punishing, and fun enough to distract me for a long time. However, one of the things not in there is "necessary." The only practical reason to play them is for the money (missions are now available all the time), but even the most powerful swords (all two of them) cost about as much as a used smoothie, and Travis never carries less than the entire Zimbabwean economy in his wallet. They're a nice touch and a decent distraction from time to time, but they always seem to raise the question, "Why are these here? Why couldn't I get more bosses?"
 
Same goes for the two new characters. Yes, they're game changers, but only for the brief periods of time in which they're playable. So what do all these changes add up to? Well, according to my expert math guys, their calculations yielded...*reads print-off*...absolutely nothing. Hold on, what have we here? An asterisk? It says that this does not mean that the new features don't change or add anything. It's just that they've revealed some underlying flaws in the game or didn't go far enough or whatever, I don't know, I'm not a math expert. The point is that all these equations add up to zero or whatever, meaning this game is of the exact same quality as the original No More Heroes. Decent quality, though; for those of you who thought that Kingdom Hearts needed more tiger transformations and copious amounts of blood, well, here you go. Keep in mind, though, that instead of playing as Haley Joel Osment while Goofy drowns his miseries in your hi-potions, you play as an angry otaku while a random nurse lectures you on some dead guy.
 

Review Synopsis

  • Keep pressing A until the ending. It's that satisfying. (The slashing, not the ending.)
  • Parodies abound, along with random, incomprehensible names.
  • Wow, this is short, but at least it's honest, earning it the Open Personality Award. Now I just wish some other games were that honest. * wink wink*
 
 
 
 
Here's what everybody thinks of Internet memes:
 
 
 

Panorama Cotton

( Calling it right here: this is the most Japanese name I've ever seen for a game.) The only way it could be more Japanese is if it was named "Panorama Cotton X: Hikari ni Hentai no Nazo-ten" or whatever. That's why I give this game the Light and Something Mystery of Porn Award for The Most Japanese Name Ever. Of course, this says absolutely nothing about the actual game outside how Japanese it is. It's so Japanese that it wasn't even released stateside, that's how Japanese it is.
 
Oh, wait, that doesn't make it overly Japanese; in fact, there are a few Ultima games that remain exclusive over there. And now that I think about it, I should probably stop relying on this game's Japanese-ness as some sort of selling point, kind of. What else can I speak of? *actually looks at Panorama Cotton* Holy shit, this looks and sounds fantastic! It doesn't sound like a robot noisily eating a room full of 2nd graders, and the graphics....the fuck? 3D? Wow, this game is in actual 3D! And not the cheapo "let's Mode 7 this piece of paper" 3D; I mean full 3D. Angles change, you explore levels through different perspectives, and there are secret paths through each of the levels that you access based on how high or low you are! Keep in mind that this is a Genesis game., Suck it, Super Nintendo.
 
It has just occurred to me that none of you know that this is a rail shooter a la Panzer Dragoon or Star Fox. It has also occurred to me that the Genesis was shit at 3D, meaning that even a game that does 3D really well is going to have some major problems. For example, aligning yourself with an enemy or item you wish to kill/pick up is kinda difficult, since they won't always travel to you in a straight line. And if you're TURNING.....just be prepared to miss a lot of special items. Sad, too, since they give you some pretty decent, varied special attacks you can use whenever. But don't worry, for you still have the power to mash the fire button like crazy! No surprise, then, that the game is ridiculously easy.
 
 This is Panorama Cotton. It is on the Sega Genesis.
 This is Panorama Cotton. It is on the Sega Genesis.
Sure, you'll get peppered with enough bullets to dwarf every single war ever, and your health refills so little that you'd think the developers were going for a sense of realism, but usually I was able to avoid all that by moving all over the place, like the auto-pilot on my broom went batshit crazy. (Oh, I forgot to mention that you play as a witch.) Add in a measly 5 levels, and you can understand why I was able to beat this game faster than it took me to type the title of this part of the blog. Don't misinterpret that to mean that the game is bad, though; remember that 8.8 I gave this game? I gave it an 8.8 for a reason: fantastic graphics, oddly refined gameplay, and it's actually a pretty fun game to play if you have about an hour to blow and don't care if somebody catches you steering a little girl through something called "tea time." OK, that gave off less of a creep vibe and more of an Alice in Wonderland vibe, but I can fix that. How? This. Of course, I warn that you shouldn't click that if you're currently reading this in a school or office environment, and if you are doing so, GET BACK TO WORK YOU LAZY ASSHOLE!!!
 

Review Synopsis

  • A Genesis game in 3D. Go collect the bits of your brain still stuck to the wall after it had been blown.
  • Wow, this is actually a very easy game that won't last you that long.
  • But still, that's a very fun, refined "not a long time, really."
10 Comments

Diving into things that overwhelm me, I play an RTS. Sort of.

By Video_Game_King 10 Comments


No Caption Provided

Astal

( Anybody else feel like they're in a gaming rut?) No? Just me? What the hell? Oh, you guys are playing those new games, like Mass Effect 2, BioShock 2, Dante's Inferno, and Sexy Librarian! Thanks for making me feel depressed as hell for saying that first sentence. Let me depress you with this next fact: I played through Brütal Legend. Oh, wait, that's the next section. This one's more about Astal, an obscure Saturn platformer that almost managed to crash my computer.
 
Also, it almost managed to crash my brain. Into a wall. Before I could actually play the game, I had to sit through an introduction that makes Magic Knight Rayearth seem uber-manly with a capital dotted U. I suspect that I could've skipped it, but part of my reviewer's code states that I must always give a game a chance, even if it destroys that chance worse than this game destroyed my forehead. But what exactly made me want to paint my walls and apply face paint simultaneously? Here's the story: a goddess created a man and a woman to populate the Earth. That would sound like the story of Adam and Eve if the girl wasn't kidnapped immediately and if the guy didn't want to beat the piss out of everything. On his quest to rescue the "princess", Astal (that's the "Adam", if you haven't caught on yet) learns the importance of friendship and emoti- HUAAAHGUHGUHAHAHHHHHHHGGGGGG!!! Ugh, what the hell? I anticipate more puking in the near future, so let's stay the hell away from that.
 
Instead, let's move onto the graphics. For all you graphics whores out there....I don't know how graphics sex works, but I imagine this game would do something good with that concept or something. It's the game that proves that the Saturn was tailor-made for 2D graphics (Burning Rangers obviously being the game that proved the system used 3D worse than the film industry is right now). The environments are lush and vibrant, showing a high amount of detail that's not only incredibly pretty, but also shows the extreme amount of detail that went into each and every part of what you're seeing on screen. Too bad the actual game couldn't be like this. If this game's graphics matched its gameplay, it'd look a helluva lot like Rakugaki Showtime, only without as much effort. Look at it, and then wrap your minds around that.
 
Fuck you, turtle! That's what you get for being a turtle!
Fuck you, turtle! That's what you get for being a turtle!
Oh, you're confused? Of course you are! I don't know what the hell that game is, either! I guess I should get to explaining the actual game: it's your typical runny-jumpy platformer, wherein you run and jump on platforms. It's an oddly simple formula that makes for predictably bland results, like when you were a kid and decided to mix every food item in the house into one horrible abomination of a sludge you called a drink, or am I alone on that experience. It's not like the developers weren't trying to make this game unique, it just seems like they weren't. The levels are incredibly varied, ranging from simple runny-jumpy parts to stuff like riding a turtle through a swamp and stopping every 3 seconds to blow out your birthday candles. Two things I must address there, though: first, I'm sure most of you noticed that a lot of those levels sounded at least similar to things you've seen in other platformers. Specifically, Donkey Kong Country, for me. It doesn't adversely affect the quality of the game, it's just a bit of an elaboration on why the game feels a bit bland.
 
That second thing: remember me mentioning the blowing of birthday candles? Not like that, you impractical pervert; I was referring to one of Astal's attacks. Again, evidence that they were actually trying to make this game unique, and it's probably the most successful part of their endeavors. Rather than go to his caveman routes and just punch anything different than him, Astal prefers to use a variety of attacks at any given time: he can punch things, but he can also punch the ground to get things to him for punching, blow on things until they're punchable, or, if his fists aren't in the mood, he can sick his bird on his foes. However, whether or not the bird actually does it is up to the damn bird; the little guy only attacks the enemy if he feels like it, and I never discovered what made the bird want to kill things. I'm guessing it was just luck, which is odd, given that all the other attacks are balanced well enough and have a decent amount of strategy to them.
 
What's odder still is that while the difficulty is perfectly balanced, the game is old school to the point that you'd think the game is trying to sabotage itself, like me in making a very poor Gollum reference. "What do you mean by old school," you say to me, somehow having hijacked my very blog, "this is a Saturn game, right? Keep in mind that there's a thing called " too old school", and some of this game's features are just that. Things like no save feature, lack of in-level checkpoints, and health not refilling betwixt levels are things that justify me giving this game the exact same score as about a billion other games. Oh, and for some reason, it also justifies my giving of the Confused Demographic Award. Boys will be pissed that this game is the reason that they now pee sitting down, and girls will be pissed that it's a video game..........Oh, I meant "because all those features mean they probably won't have the patience to make it through this game in the one sitting it demands."
 

Review Synopsis

  • A manly character that will turn you into a girl? And this isn't an anime? The hell?
  • Nice, I get to do more than just beat people up; now I have options!
  • The difficulty is balanced, but somehow, the individual components of it aren't. Somebody get me a better scale!
 
 
 
 
You may not like this video, but your face was asking for it!
 
   
 

Brütal Legend

( I'm starting to hate you, Jack Black.) I know that I essentially said this back in my unread Kung Fu Panda blog, but I gave you some leeway because of how awesome Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny is. Then you walked up to the podium at those Spike awards and told various games to suck your balls. Minus a point. Yet after that, various games actually managed to suck your balls. Plus a point. But you missed the obvious "Wii would like to play" pun. Minus a point. Brütal Legend. Minus a point.
 
 What was that?
 What was that?
"Of course that's minus a point", I hear you yelling into my ears as you watch me type this, "it's Brütal Legend! Everybody should know that BL is crap by now, it came out in, like, October!" I'm one of those everybody, so why did I bother getting it? I've been trying to get into RTSes for a long time. I'd elaborate, but I'll do that in my inevitable Starcraft blog, since that game introduced me to the genre far more efficiently. As for this game, I thought that the diluted combination of sandbox roaming and Zerg-rushing would help me jump at least into the shallow end of the genre. However, I soon found out that the diluted part of the equation is what people don't like about it. I also found out that any notions about the RTS and sandbox elements of the game showing any sort of unity were more misled than my opinion that this would be a decent introduction to RTSes.
 
Instead of being like Assassin's Creed II, where even something like doing gymnastics in a church felt like it connected to other parts of the game, Brütal Legend (I'm going to start calling it Brumlaut Legend because I'm tired of copying and pasting the name) is more like ActRaiser, a game that held no dreams of connecting Castlevania to Civilization. The closest this game comes to joining the two pieces comes in the form of side quests where you lead a group of warriors to victory in ambush. However, there are so many things wrong with that premise that I don't know where to begin. *rolls dice* OK, actual strategy, or more accurately, the lack of any. Just order your troops to attack, let them do so, and then melt people's faces off with a bitchin' solo. The reward for doing this is minimal, so why would you want to do it?
 
Actually, that question came up quite a bit whilst I was doing the side missions. That's why the only ones I actually committed to doing were the racing ones, where I beat the piss out of a racer who was Irish, for some reason; everything else was just story. It's not like there was anything else to do in the world of Brumlaut Legend, or much of a reason to explore the world; there's not much interaction to be had with the random roaming hordes, not a whole lot to buy, and it's somewhat difficult to navigate this world. Between the vehicle with a donut steering wheel and the map that doesn't exist, I didn't wander about for fear of losing track of where the hell I was. It doesn't help that you can't easily get from one end of the world to the other without taking a little road trip. (Get it? Because he's a roadie? Huh? Huh?) The only good thing I have to say about the open world aspect is that there's a variety of locations, making it somewhat easier to tell where you are, but again, it's hard to tell when you can't look at a little circle in the corner that tells you where north is.
 
But whatever, that's not what I came for. The reason I got this game instead of, say, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories was because I wanted to get into RTSes. For that reason, I recommend it minimally, since this game assumes that you already know how to play an RTS. OK, fine, it'll teach you how to secure a fan geyser (RTS currency) and that some units do things different from others, but other than that, you're on your own. Speaking of unit variety, it's definitely present, which shows that they were trying, but the main problem is that it doesn't matter. Outside a few special instances where the game forces you to use a certain unit just for the hell of it, chances are you'll stick to the same 2-3 squads because bassists are useless, like everybody else. 
 
 Coincidence? Probably.
 Coincidence? Probably.
Predictably, the effectively small unit variety means you won't have much strategy. I know that it's probably just me and my lack of experience with the RTS genre, but the only strategies I found were "secure fan geysers, fight enemy, destroy stage." I wasn't taught anything else. Sure, it led to a metric shitload of stalemates, but this strategy seemed to be effective. I never knew how, as it was never exactly clear how I won the match, but somehow my efforts summoned a Brütal Victory message. Maybe it was because I'd often repeat my earlier strategy of getting into the enemy's face before melting it off. Oh, this must be why I found it hard to use this as an introduction to RTSes: rather than use a mouse to select a group of units to beat the piss out of similar-looking units, you continue playing as General Eddie, the only difference being that you fly. Why you can't do this during the rest of the game is never answered. Ever.
 
Hold on, I was suddenly hit with a sense of nostalgia, bear with me on this. RTS with direct character control, little to no strategy, major console RTS, play it for the multiplayer: I think we have a next-gen version of Herzog Zwei. That's why I couldn't get any introductory value from it: because Herzog Zwei was crap at that, too! Also, they both point out some major flaws in console RTSes, at least from their design choice. As I previously stated, it's hard to have any sort of strategy when you can't easily get from one end of the battlefield to the other. It's also hard to resist the impulse to jump down into the battlefield and jam an axe into somebody's spine. It works, it's easy, and at least it's an easy way to tell which units are your own, at least in the early part of the game. 
 
Then again, there's not much reason to avoid hitting your guys (potentially). After all, what connection do have to these thick-headed headbangers? Oh, shit, I forgot to cover that in the first paragraph. I only remember one instance of this ever, and it ended with rape. Let's hope that this does not happen. Anyway, you take the role of Eddie Riggs, a roadie who looks like Nathan Explosion if he gained about 20 pounds, at least 2 of which are in facial hair alone. He finds that his job sucks and comments on how dead metal is. Metal responds by KILLING HIS FAT ASS and sending him to a rock afterlife where nobody knows what rock is. Makes about as much sense as anything else Jack Black has made, and it feels a lot like your typical Jack Black affair (a bit of a *removes glasses* renegade ego, quirky jokes, etc.). However, what you won't find in, say, Year One, is an awesome metal soundtrack. Everybody's here, from Dragonf-*pukes out lungs*...ugh....from Judas Priest to Black Sabbath. But you know what's not between those: Dethklok. The hell, guys? You got Dragonf-*pukes out liver*....but not Dethklok? I know they're making their own game, but without them, this game's soundtrack feels underdeveloped and wanting of more. In fact, that's how you could describe this entire game, which is why I give Brumlaut Legend the Pygmy Manchild Award, and this blog the Most Metalocalypse References Award. Let me top it off with this random video.
 

Review Synopsis

  • The world is barren and not demanding of exploration.
  • The stage battles are lacking and not demanding of actual strategy.
  • The soundtrack is awesome and I demand more Dethklok.
10 Comments

Apparently, Kirby is more of a badass than Batman. I was shocked.

By Video_Game_King 18 Comments


No Caption Provided

Kirby: Nightmare in Dreamland

( Don't think I'm becoming sentimental when I say this, but I have a special relationship with the little pink puff ball.) Hey, I warned you at the beginning of that sentence. Anyway, my first portable game ever was Kirby's Dreamland 2, and not only is it still my favorite Kirby game in the entire canon, but it's also the first game I beat. I didn't get the super cool kickass ending (hey, I wasn't King yet, shut up, STOP JUDGING ME!!!), but still, this was a big milestone for a kid who got stuck in the first room in Pokemon Red. The worst part was that I was considered smart, meaning-
 
Oops, went off on a tangent there. Moving back to this particular Kirby game, I think we all know the premise: a bulimic yet somehow still fat wad of bubble gum must travel a long and arduous road to retrieve a Piece of Eden. Why else would he split to three Kirbys after killing each boss? Anyway, along that long road, he must take down tough foes like a 9 foot tall penguin in a bathrobe, a tree whose very existence as a boss is a joke, and the sun and the moon. Let me repeat that last one just because of how utterly badass that is: YOU MUST DESTROY THE SUN AND THE MOON. This is how dedicated Kirby is: to save his land, he is willing to destroy all weather/ocean patterns, a major source of light/energy, and THE PLACE WHERE I LIVE! The coup de grace, though? He's the good guy! I can't imagine what the bad guy would do t-
 
 Making things worse, they provide free ammo
 Making things worse, they provide free ammo
Hold on, I'm getting word on the major plot twist at the end: Dedede is kind of a pussy. What the hell, the pink orb is more of a badass than the villain? What happened, did somebody replace all the sugar at HAL with diluted coke? There's just so much about this game that brings to mind the image of bored game developers drugging themselves for good ideas. Perfect example: sucking up enemies to gain their powers. How the hell do you even pitch that to a publisher or lead designer? Granted, the execution is great, but still, I want to know how many Jedis are working at HAL. There's a variety of power ups to suck up at any time, the amazing part being that they all work perfectly: each is easy to use, distinct from the others, and has a special purpose for each level. It's so rare to see a game concept work so perfectly. Hell, my only complaint, that they overlap a little, seems extremely nitpicky and petty.
 
However, what I can complain about is that the game is easier than writing an episode of Beavis and Butthead. I could write an entire walkthrough for this game in this paragraph: spend 30 seconds in level, go to overworld, repeat, occasionally pummel the hell out of a boss with your power-up. The only other strategy there is "dodge THEN pummel", but I expect you guys to have common sense (despite numerous proofs otherwise). I'm aware that anybody should be able to pick up a portable game and be able to play it within 2 minutes, but this isn't that: this is....actually, I don't know what the hell it is. Great, now I can't finish this paragraph. I blame it on you. Why? It's easy.
 
And just like that, back to Kirby. Despite complaining about Kirby being easier than a $3 hooker, I can see why they put it in: this game was aimed at kids. Yes, you can post that picture as much as you want, but I wanted my rants to have a bit of meaning behind them. Besides, it serves as a nice ending to this part of the blog, wherein I list off reasons that led me to that conclusion. Reasons like cute graphics/music, a pink character, the lack of major threats, and levels so short that you could beat an entire world in the bathroom all lead me to believe that this game is perfect for today's youth: the kind of youth whose parents shelter the crap out of them yet can't be bothered to fix their ADD or pay attention or actually parent the damn kid. So I give Kirby the Television Award for Being an Adequate Replacement for Real Parents. At least under Kirby, they're gonna learn a proper diet.
 

Review Synopsis

  • Kirby is a puffy badass.
  • He will eat you and steal everything that was ever you.
  • That must be why it's so easy.
 
 
 
 
Wait, one of the related videos is FOX News on that very game. This can't be good. Please understand that this is a joke!
  
   

Batman: Return of the Joker

( I know what I'm about to say is obvious to everybody everywhere ever, but Batman is awesome.) Oh, what's that? You don't agree with me? *breaks your jaw* That's what you get for messing with Batman. He's awesome, and so is everything he touches. If he wants a sequel to his game, he'll get it. Doesn't matter if that first game was a movie game, or if the movie itself didn't really get a sequel, he's getting that game anyway. Nor does it matter if the game's a bit forgettable, because you don't argue with the Batman.
 
I can't remember what exactly this rips off.
I can't remember what exactly this rips off.
He'll do whatever he wants, just like he does in this game. The Joker's returned from somewhere, and Batman decides that The Joker's face could use a bit more red face-paint. He doesn't need a reason why he wants to beat the piss out anarchists, he just does it. And he certainly doesn't need any excuses to do it in that 60s camp feel, either, bec.....look, I have to call you out on this one, Batman. I know you can't beat me up, mainly because I can just transform into you and have the most awesome fight in the history of ever, so let me get it out there: nobody liked the camp version of Batman. You may be badass, Batman, but Adam West certainly isn't. Yes, I know, the Noid thing, but this is also a guy who likes Sugar Smacks. By associating your game with something so unbadass, you've obviously took out the ass part, and I think we all know that it's the ass we love in a badass.
 
 Now I know you've tried to make this game as badass as possible, Batman, but it simply didn't work. I appreciate the shooty gameplay, but your problem is that you didn't focus enough on the shooter part of your shooter. Instead, you had to dilute it with platforming elements, making ti feel less like you're being awesome and more like you're in a slower version of Contra. You're not getting a larger amount of people, you're getting less; the shooter fans will be pissed that enemies hide outside the screen's edges, always getting a free shot, and the platformer fans will be pissed that enemies always seem to occupy platforms, impeding their progress. What's that? You also wanted to get some of that shmup market?
 
Yea, I noticed that, but the problem is that I'm the only one who noticed that. It's so bland and the overall affect it has on the game is so minuscule that I have trouble understanding why you put it in the game in the first place. Let me see if I can find out why. What else do we know.....oh, your HUD changes during boss battles into a sort-of fighting game type thing. It doesn't actually do anything to the game, other than tell you just how much longer you have to hold down turbo B. The only exception is during the final fight with Joker Wily, where it tells you how much longer to dodge some easy-to-dodge attacks AND hold down turbo B. Wait, hold on, I think I have something: Contra-esque gameplay, random shmup levels, fighting game boss battle HUDs, beating people up in elevators: this game is having an identity crisis! Batman couldn't just use a movie as a base for his game, so he didn't know what to do. He combined a bunch of genres into this effort, but they all come across as weak and bland. Therefore, it gets the Platypus Award. Don't ask why.
 

Review Synopsis

  • The Joker has returned, and so has the quality of the music and graphics.
  • The quality of the game hasn't; it's just about 12 other games mashed into a mediocre 1.
  • Piss easy boss fights.
18 Comments

A blog that will confuse you into insanity.

By Video_Game_King 23 Comments


No Caption Provided

Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles

( Do you wish to hear my opinion on those who hate light gun shooters?) You don't? Then why the hell are you reading this blog in the first place? Just pretend like you do, OK? That's better, as my opinion is that they can all do what I refuse to do: shut the hell up. Sure, they all play exactly the same, but isn't that a good thing? It means I can pick up any old light gun game and I will immediately know how to play it. They don't need to change the formula, since they've already refined it into an acceptable form. OK, not so much here.
 
 Bromance: a great new addition to this game.
 Bromance: a great new addition to this game.
After all, this is Resident Evil we're talking about, the series that prefers cheating off the more popular kids to doing some actual work ever. I'd use the story as an example, but given that this is a recollection of everything that wasn't in Umbrella Chronicles (I guess these games weren't Umbrella enough), you should already know what's going on: Umbrella's dicking around with viruses, building things beneath other things, cliche lines delivered through overly stoic faces, all run of the mill Resident Evil stuff. (Consider this a recurring theme throughout the blog.) You'd think the new story they added to this would avoid such pitfalls, but no, it doesn't; not only does it concern Leon and his buddy finding out that Umbrella is now in South America for some reason, but somehow, they meet a girl who bleeds fire through it all. Add "random mad libs nonsense" to the list. 
 
Then again, it's not like the original games weren't without their weird nonsense; RE2 had you fight a Tyrant while an Asian woman pelted you with rockets, and Code: Veronica pitted you against a plant woman who somehow became a bug woman. What do both of them have in common? "They're both major Resident Evil bosses?" *stabs you* Smartass. The correct answer was that they're both frustrating as hell to beat, each serving as a perfect illustration for the major flaws of the game. First, that Tyrant dude: it's not always clear when or even what you're supposed to shoot. This wouldn't be much of a problem if Capcom knew this, but from what I've seen, they thought it always obvious how to beat a boss. No need to explain that you shoot your rockets at Mr. X while he's kneeling down for half a second; the players will figure that out after about 90 rounds of misinterpreting Ada's hints and then losing half their health because that experiment thing couldn't be bothered to wait the 20 millenia for you to reload.
 
Or perhaps he charged you like an Umbrella quarterback (that's the only explanation) because your trailer-sized missile missed him somehow. I know this is going to sound petty as hell, but it's very easy to miss the perfect shot while you're pumping lead into bosses. And so we have come to Alexia Ashford, Bane of Darwin. She goes from human to dead to alive to Kuja to plant to bug to dead again, all the while being hard to shoot. Especially in her bug form, she's constantly darting about, a fact the game rubs in your face by giving you only one shot with which to kill her. But wait, there's more! Most of the bosses love to join you in the shooting game by blasting out projectiles, and the only thing they love more is making sure there's no way you'll dodge such projectiles. Sometimes they're too fast, sometimes they take too many shots to hit, or sometimes Darkside Chronicles just plain hates you.
 
 Do not worry, the ladies get some of the action, too. Cold, awkward action.
 Do not worry, the ladies get some of the action, too. Cold, awkward action.
OK, hate is too strong a word; there is a way to stop them, but it falls under the third paragraph problem of not knowing how to do it. Most of the time, you have to shoot a specific area of the boss before they even get a chance to attack. To be fair, it's a logical choice, given the rest of the game's philosophy, and when it works, it works; but when it doesn't, well, you end up puking blood. But as you've probably surmised by now, this only applies to the bosses; killing enemies is very easy, since they're usually zombies. They shuffle towards you at the speed of 0, and you often see them lying on the ground immediately before you shoot them. But that's not the focus of the game, that belongs to skill. It's not about simply mowing down enemies so they're dead again, it's about plugging a bullet in the precise spot you need to plug it, something that I find lacking in a lot of games in general. It also rewards you for shooting everything in sight, like you forgot where they put the weed. Based on this paragraph alone, you'd think there's no way to improve the game.
 
But based on the other three paragraphs and the one I'm currently writing, there are several ways to improve the game. I'm not saying the game is bad, just a bit rough around the edges. Maybe they should have refined a few things like the QTEs that force you into a claw position whilst using the Zapper (it's a light gun game, people), the weapon selection (a crossbow? REALLY!?), or the fact that you still have to slash at tiny bugs, breaking the fast paced flow of the game. Hell, they bothered to add more checkpoints, so why couldn't they fix all those other flaws I spent half a blog raving about? That's it, Darkside Chronicles: I give you the Shining Force III Award for Keep Reading, It's Not Over Yet.
 

Review Synopsis

  • Quick gameplay that focuses mostly on skill...
  • ...would work if the game sorted out some of its flaws first.
  • Not flaws like the story, since you don't play a light gun game for the story. Do you? No, you don't.
 
 
 
 
Listen to Face Paint Fabio, kids; at least the parts you can decipher.
 
 
 

Shining Force III

( Oh, I definitely feel at home with this game/blog/gameblogthing.) After all, I consider myself an expert on strategy RPGs, given that I've been playing them so much that I refuse promotions just so I can level up a bit more. Complain all you want about THAT GAME, *glares at Treasure Hunter G*, but I've played enough strategy RPGs that I feel comfortable in calling myself an expert in them. Want me to prove it? This blog, how about that?
 
 I can't remember the joke I had for this.
 I can't remember the joke I had for this.
In case you haven't caught on yet, Shining Force III is your typical strategy RPG, concerning a rebel group trying to take down an evil empire/sect with the power of turn based b-what's that? This one's NOT about rebels at all? It's Republicans? Aren't they the same, though? Not in this case, though? *is handed sheet* OK, here's the actual story: there's a Republic and an Empire, and they've just stopped warring with each other long enough to get peace talks going. Things go well until the Emperor's abducted by the King (I guess a king's democratically elected or something), but not the real King. No, it turns out that it was a fake king set up by the Bulzome sect. Now you must embark on a grand quest to stop the Empire and the sect from whatever they're doing, ignoring the massive irony staring you in the face since the first chapter.
 
Sounds like typical Shining Force fare, right? I could use that to describe the entire game and call it a day, but since I get paid by the paragraph, I'm going to stretch this as much as I can. For example, the story actually does some creative things, like focusing a bit more on politics and moral ambiguity than on that big bad sect looming over the horizon. It gets confusing at times, granted, but two things kinda make that bearable: first, you can always tell what's going on, meaning the story's detailed but not too detailed. Second, each chapter ends with a basic recap of all the events. "But I don't want to wait an entire chapter", you say, your impatience doubly implied by the fact that you won't wait for me to finish this blog before you respond. Don't worry, each chapter is so short that you're never too far away from a brief synopsis. OK, so they're not short, but they go by very quickly.
 
I'm guessing this is because of the triple perspective thing. Like another RPG that did some weird battle stuff, this game was split into three perspectives over three games: a Republican mute, an Empire guy, and some random prick who gets thrown into a waterfall halfway through the game. It's unique, or it would be if the other parts were released stateside. Yes, you can buy them from Japan, but they're in Japanese and this is the SATURN! You'll need to take out a mortgage just to afford the Premium Disc! Most people back in 1998 couldn't afford that (and I doubt most people in 2010 could), so you're left with a disappointing cliffhanger ending that sets itself up for a sequel that will never be. 
 
Four paragraphs and not a single mention of gameplay. Wow, I'm slower than the actual game, given that the intro explains the gameplay quite well. Then again, what's there to explain, it's typical Shining Force fare (see what I meant?): you wait for somebody's turn to come up, shove their face into the enemy, and then watch them whack an enemy with their sword in glorious 3D you wouldn't think possible on the Saturn. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it retains the pick-up-and-play feel that has permeated through all the other games. No worrying about job points or the calorie count of a Hustler or which horse person gets along with which dog person; just walk up to somebody and smack them in the face until you get an ending. Oh, wait, you actually do have to worry about relationships this time around, as that's one of the new features this game introduces...poorly. Another running theme.
 
Not like that means anything in battle.
Not like that means anything in battle.
My main problem with the system is that it doesn't seem to do much. You can see which units you "trust" (given that it's the highest level, I'm assuming that your army is built on a system of numerous, petty grudges) and what they do, but not how much they affect you, so it's hard to imagine how they're affecting the battles. I didn't take less damage or do more criticals; all that happened was that a "trusted" unit would look at me before I attacked the enemy, as if to question my strategy. Hey, if you have something to say, Gay Wizard, say it! I don't see you using your head; every opportunity you had to counter a move or block it, you sat there and let the enemy punch you in the gut! For once, just forget that you're in a turn based game and take the easy shot. Hell, I'd be glad if you pulled off one of your flashy specials. Sure, they're essentially more powerful criticals, rarely doing anything more than obliterate half an enemy's health, but that's still better than just letting the enemy have their way with you.
 
Oh, what's the point, you're going to die anyway, given my strategies. My strategy is this: gang up on one enemy, beat them into dust, repeat on all other enemies. Not much strategy, right? Well, not much is required; sure, there were moments when I had to target the boss specifically so all other units would explode, or I had to split up my forces, but overall, my seek and destroy stratagem worked wonders throughout the game. It's not like the game punished me that much; sure, my units died enough to make this the Grim Reaper's best birthday ever, but I could always go straight to a church, throw a nickel at the priest, and my units would be revived just as they were at the moment they died. Now I see why the game felt so short: it's easier than crapping out each of these blogs. Not too easy, like the previously mentioned Treasure Hunter G, but still easier than my liking. If they were going to fix one thing, why not this? Why not make sure enemies don't carry their entire life savings on them at any given time? Why not give me a reason not to promote immediately?
 
Hell, you could've at least improved the item system so I don't have to play an awkward game of juggling Tetris every time I want to upgrade a new weapon. In fact, let me offer some suggestions as to how you could've done that: don't load me down with antidotes to poisons I'll never experience, or mithrils that shall never become weapons. I don't remember any of those problems in the previous games, so why are they here? And why am I being so negative about this game? It's actually pretty decent and a nice way to introduce your friends to strategy RPGs if they don't own a DS (why they don't is your problem, not mine). Had they kept some of the features of the previous games (specifically, Shining Force II) and refined the new features a bit more, I'd probably bump it up at least 1 point. Yet it's obvious by reading this that it didn't do any of that, so I give it the Left 4 Dead 2 Award for Taking a Step Forward Whilst Simultaneously Taking a Step Back.
 

Review Synopsis

  • A more complex story that sets itself up for a sequel you'll never see.
  • Same old Shining Force gameplay, good and bad.
  • The changes really don't do as much as they should.
 

Dominoes' New Pizza

( I can see many of you staring in confusion, wondering many things.) First, let me answer that I have secret invisible cameras in all rooms everywhere. Now try sleeping tonight. Another thought: I'm not only known for being better than you at video games; I'm also well known for my love of pizza. I can down an entire pizza in one shot WITHOUT becoming Kirby or Pac Man first. However, I didn't feel that necessary with Dominoe's new pizza; the general crapness alone limited me to three slices.
 
Of course! It all makes sense now!
Of course! It all makes sense now!
I can't exactly open with a story, since pizzas no longer come with a novella baked into the bread. Too bad, I really missed reading a saucy version of The Lottery after each meal. Instead, I'll post my initial reactions to the pizza after opening the box: "What the hell is this crap on my pizza?" You see, I'm a pizza purist, refusing to mess around with pepperoni or pineapple or hamburger bits, so I was extremely confused to find tomato on my pizza. I don't remember anybody specifically ordering a tomato pizza (I didn't even know this was an option!), so I'm guessing it's now normal for Dominoes to eviscerate a tomato and toss the remains onto my pizza. I like the taste of ritualistic sacrifice as much as the next guy, but it should never mix with my pizza.
 
So, fork in hand, I picked off all the offending tomato bits and set them aside, ready to try this new recipe. A foreword: I'm not your normal pizza eater. Instead of imbibing it all at once, I ingest the pizza one layer at a time, starting with the cheese. What? It allows me to review the pizza more efficiently. Granted, it has limited applications, but....*sigh* Anyway, this cheese must have had some grudge against my mouth, as it did not want to stay in my mouth. Simply put, it tastes awful. I had to avoid tasting it for too long, so I swallowed it before it could wreak its revenge against me. Cheese out of the way, I moved onto the sauce. The sauce is OK, but that's mainly because they didn't change it at all. If they did, I didn't notice; it doesn't taste like ketchup, shut the hell up. 
 
So finally, I stared at my meal, which at this point was essentially a triangle shaped piece of bread. Sounds unappetizing, but I see this all the time and force it down my gullet at Gillette Mach3. But my duty prevented me from doing that, as did the taste. OK, yea, it has new herbs and spices and other plant things in it, that's actually an improvement in some eyes; but for me, it's just too distinctive a taste. I usually feel that the bread should retain the tastes of the other parts of the pizza, making it a little bonus at the end. But this new pizza is some type of renegade; the bread wants all the attention, and will kill anything to have its way. Know your place, bread: know that if you try to rise up, you bring down the rest of the pizza. Know now that I shall give you the Devil May Cry 2 Award for Failing at Being Different.
 

Pizza Synopsis?

  • The cheese couldn't stay in my mouth for more than a single nanosecond.
  • The sauce.....OK, the sauce is still good. Thumbs up there.
  • They actually managed to improve the bread, yet somehow make it worse.
23 Comments

How the hell did I find this "secret" room?

By Video_Game_King 24 Comments


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Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter

( Let me get this out of the way: this is all very serious.) That's right, no joking around. Why would I kid about a game I won for free by posting a picture I didn't think was that good? Exactly. Anyway, Serious Sam HD, a game title that confuses the hell out of me. No, not the HD part (I imagine it stands for "Head Detachment"), but the "serious" part. There's nothing serious about this game, and the developers know that, making it quite ironic. But if they put such irony in, then it would be serious, but the g....is this what a paradox is?
 
Agh, too confusing, now my brain hurts. I can't even remember the story. Something about aliens and time travel, or something, and they're doing things that require large amounts of copious text or whatever and something.....fuck this, what man worth his weight in his own testicles cares about story? All I care about is ripping through enemies with my manly manliness! Does this game let me do that? Yes? Wrong! The correct answer is "why aren't I blowing things up right now?", and the question to that answer is "because you aren't playing Serious Sam HD." That wasn't a typo. This game really does let you kill enough enemies to make even the most elaborate bloodbath look like it was performed with a mere sponge.
 
 Oh, it gets much worse than this.
 Oh, it gets much worse than this.
Serious Sam does everything in its power to make you feel like an absolute badass. It doesn't waste its time with pussy weapons like grenades (killing things with an underhand toss!?) and melee weapons (he's a badass, not an idiot); no, Sam limits himself to shotguns, vibra-miniguns, and every other weapon meant to mow down enemies that isn't a lawnmower (THAT'S NOT SERIOUS!!!). Creative, yes, but how does it utilize such weapons? Didn't I already tell you, to mow down enemies! And not in that old school run & gun sense, where you cleared a room of enemies so you could remember where you left your keys; instead, you fight hordes of enemies only to fight more hordes. That's the only way I could possibly describe the amount of enemies in this game. You can literally be fighting 100 enemies at any given time. Sounds overwhelming, right?
 
Only if you have 12 vaginas in your vagina, you mega pussy, you. Unlike some other games that hatefully throw enemies at you just to see you fail (you know what I'm talking about. *glares at that game*), Serious Sam does it to make you manlier. After each and every encounter with enemies that make Earthbound seem conservative, you will find an entire bushel of chest hair underneath your shirt, man or woman. I said that you have the tools to make yourself manlier, and you also have the techniques; there's an intricate dance of dodging and shooting key enemies in each and every horde. Of course, you'll often brisé when you should've grand jetéd, and as we all know, the punishment for failure in ballet is death.
 
You know what else gets you killed? Stupid stuff like grabbing a random item, auto-saving at the wrong time (save points exist for a reason), or hell, even the controls at times. I could go into the intricacies, like how left trigger is jump or how the d-pad is confusing as shit, but I feel that you can get the general feel for it by playing any other FPS and then switching over to Serious Sam. And while I'm complaining, who designed the final boss? Why do I have to jump through hoops like a jowly version of Shamu? You guys forgot why I was playing the game: so I can shoot the piss out of scorpion centaurs and headless suicide bombers! And do you know why I did that? It was to become a man of such manly proportions that my X chromosome learns some common sense and becomes a manly Y! The majority of this game does that, so I give it the Manliest Game Award for Manly Achievement in Manliness.
 

Review Synopsis

  • Lots and lots of shooting.
  • Lots and lots of easy-to-find secrets.
  • Lots and lots of deathness.
 
 
 
 
As you guys know, I don't take rape lightly. It's simply not funny. That's why the only times I've ever compared games to rape were times when THEY FELT LIKE I WAS BEING RAPED. That's why I don't like these guys: they speak of rape like they personally know what it feels like to have their ass violated by seven rednecks. They don't.
 
   
 

Donkey Kong Country

( This was supposed to be Gex, but upon playing that game, two revelations came upon me.) First, I remembered how much I hated Gex 64 back in the N64 days, when I liked anything placed in front of me. Literally, I found something to enjoy in games like Quest 64, Spunky's Dangerous Day, and Mr. Nutz. Second, CUT OUT THE BULLSHIT!!! In a platformer, all I want to do is jump on baddies and jump from platforms and onto more baddies. Don't make me collect 3 permission slips in each level so I can get to the final level, or worse, so I can progress from level to level. Donkey Kong Country understands this perfectly.
 
Donkey Kong won't have any of that "collect all this crap to progress" crap, like you're sating an invisible hoarder off screen or something. Actually, it's odd that I used such phrasing, as DKC is well known for making you collect a bunch of useless crap. That's sort of why people don't like the game so much: all that collecting of meaningless gold, level after level. To those people who hate this game: up yours. Sure, the game specializes in stupid mini-games that all boil down to "how do I rid the screen of all these golden sprites", but that doesn't detract from the game whatsoever; in fact, it makes the quality of this game more apparent. If you didn't play through some of these ridiculously easy mini-games, you'd probably forget that this game features animals of any kind.
 
 Christ, that's gotta suck for poor little Diddy.
 Christ, that's gotta suck for poor little Diddy.
Weird, I know, but I can explain: you don't see the mountable animals as much as you should. Maybe it's because of the always confusing "animals among animals" problem that has plagued cartoony settings since the days of Disney; maybe it's that their nothing more than an infinite line of free hits for that level; or maybe it's that most of the levels aren't really designed to handle animals. After all, how do you fit a toad into a level centered around keeping a floating tram in the air? Or a rhino in a swinging level? Or an ostrich in one about bouncing from tree to tree (you know, without spoiling the entire endeavor)? Wait a minute, I've just realized something: there's a lot of creative level design in this game. Just about every level is so memorable and creative that each one feels fresh and new each time you play it. I realize that sounds ridiculously corny, but keep this in mind: this isn't the first time I've played this game. Yea.
 
That would explain why I found the central gameplay to be a bit generic. There's really nothing innovative about it, since you're just running and jumping like in any other platformer of the time. No, it's EXACTLY like every other platformer of the time, Bubsy included. That's not an insult towards the overall quality of the game; such an insult would be phrased as "the boss design is lazy" or "the underwater levels have this boring sameness about them." But you don't see me complaining about crap like that, do you? Why would I? It's a fun game that's only become better with its transition to the GBA. Let me reiterate the point I've spent an entire blog setting up: THIS IS A GOOD GAME THAT DOESN'T DESERVE THE CRAP IT HAS GOTTEN. I'd give it the Opposite of Final Fantasy VII, Sort of, Award, but I haven't finished this portion of the blog.
 
Did you really think I could get through an entire five paragraphs on Donkey Kong Country without once mentioning the graphics and music? They're the defining features of this game, and probably why so many people hate it. Actually, I can sympathize with them on this one, stupid as they may be; the original SNES version looked like somebody mated action figures with claymation (NOT ROBOT CHICKEN!!!!), that short-lived cartoon of it looked like crap, and the GBA port looks like they traded all the plastic clarity for vibrant pixelation. Still works, just not that well, like this blog. On that note, let me end this with several really good DKC songs.
 

Review Synopsis

  • The reason it's still good is great production values and a consistent level of creativity.
  • The reason why I haven't beaten up all the people who hate this game is because the core gameplay isn't outstanding.
  • This game gets the Opposite of Final Fantasy VII, Sort of, Award since it's a graphically pretty game that isn't rated properly but is still decent.
24 Comments

I feel I've set the bar too high.

By Video_Game_King 5 Comments


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Left 4 Dead 2

( After all, my last blog was fantastic.) Well written, concise, clear, all things that not only qualify it for best blog of the year (that's right, I'm planning ahead!), but are also traits that I doubt this blog will contain. The odd thing is that the game that won't display all these traits is Left 4 Dead 2, a game I consider similar to Assassin's Creed II on some levels. Besides sequel number confusion (apparently those DS spin-offs don't deserve numbers), these are also games that took a decent formula and refined it quite a bit in their respective sequels. But while Assassins' Creed II is so mind-blowingly awesome that I'm still cleaning up semen whenever I sneeze, Left 4 Dead 2 kinda makes me question how they're handling the concept thus far.
 
 Oh, you're fucked, now.
 Oh, you're fucked, now.
I'm not saying that they're handling it poorly; with the progress they've made this game, that's far from the truth. Sure, you're still playing as four schmucks (trust me, the word is oddly apt, given how banal their life stories are) who got stuck in a zombie apocalypse ripped straight from the pages of Resident Evil. I think. This time around, there's a big government agency who's ignoring all the people caught in the zombie apocalypse. Why? Screw you, that's why! Odd that Valve saw it fit to refrain from explaining why CEDA's full of pricks, especially given that the effort they put into making the story (IE there is one). No, they honestly seem to have made this world more immersive by doing things like at least attempting to explain why there're guns and safe houses everywhere (it's the South) and making the zombies more human.
 
OK, they're still a bit off in terms of being actual humans, but given the wider variety of enemies, I'm willing to forgive that. After all, aside from the usual Tanks and Witches and Boomers, you now have pregnant Spitters (stupidest joke I'll make: What do you get when you breed a Boomer and a Spitter? A Baby Boomer.), masturbating hillbillies, hump...ing.....re.....Jesus, what the hell's going on here!? Just about every way to die in this game involves some form of horrible sexual degradation! I don't know whether this is a good thing or not, mainly because I don't know if Valve put it in to strike a primal fear in their players or if they did it thinking that the face humpers from Aliens weren't human enough. I'm guessing the main reason they put these new enemies in was to make the game more challenging. Decent motive, pulled off well enough if you leave it at that.
 
However, I'm not going to leave it at that; instead, I'm going to leave it at "the AI is shit." Yes, I know that such a problem would be solved with human players with whom you can communicate stratagems and the like, but keep in mind that I've always kinda distanced myself from multiplayer. Since this is a primarily multiplayer game, that meant cooperating with bots, staving off the urge to shove chainsaws into their faces. Sure, a large part of the zombie apocalypse is a frantic feeling that you've lost control of the situation, but this crosses the line into unforgiving territory (also known as Italy). Their favorite trick seems to be shooting floaters while you get a face full of zombie penis, but they've also been known to be so restrictive with health care that a break for tea wouldn't be completely out of place. The only redeeming quality in them is their willingness to share pills and shots, like you're the group junkie or something.
 
Speaking of being fucked...
Speaking of being fucked...
That may feel like nitpicking, but these were honest problems I experienced in the game. I didn't expect my AI partners to be as stupid as real-life partners; instead, I expected the melee weapons to affect almost nothing in the game. How wrong I was. And so we finally come to the big game changer (pun not really intended). Before this, you were just shooting zombies that stood between you and "rescue"; now you're doing that, but also with up close weapons, like katanas, machetes, chainsaws, guitars, croquet bats...huh? What's going on near the end of this? A significant portion of those won't appear in any zombie movie ever, nor are they any better than the other melee weapons. In fact, other than the chainsaw, I didn't notice too many differences between the melee weapons. Odd, since the rest of the weapons are so balanced and varied, like they were in the original Left 4 Dead. There was also an ounce of strategy to when to use which weapon, but not with these melees; here, you can run through entire crowds of the undead with promises of instant weight loss surgery.
 
And that's why I love them. Sure, they often lead to you joining the ranks of the walking corpses, but weren't my actions in line with a typical zombie flick? And does it matter, I was having fun! In fact, I'd probably call that the best moment of the game. Yea, screw the wider variety of scenarios or the unique achievements or even the dickish possibility of throwing a puke jar at your friend and watching the zombies devour him; all I want is the opportunity to hack through zombies! (Oddly enough, didn't like what I tried of Dead Rising.) The only way that could've been better would be if I was hacking through the zombies instead of some NASCAR fan. That's sort of the doubt I expressed earlier: why hasn't this become a role-playing game, of sorts? I'm not saying full-blown RPG, but rather that the concept lends itself really well to character customization. From what I've read of the upcoming DLC, Valve is taking a step in the right direction, but that's not enough steps. (Would an Eight is Enough reference be stupider than my Baby Boomer joke?) Instead, Valve should have a single base Left 4 Dead, allow character customization, give us a variety of maps, keep the AI director thing, and you could have a revolutionary new way to tell a story through video games. If you're smart, Valve, you'll do what Ubisoft did and take notes. In fact, here's the Notes Award. It's not really an award, it's just a blank notepad I dipped in gold paint.
 

Review Synopsis

  • A variety of ways for zombies to defile your corpse, irony isn't one of them.
  • A variety of weapons with which to kill zombies, redundancy isn't one of them.
  • A variety of methods the AI uses to screw you up.....I can't finish that in a funny fashion. Sorry, my bad.
 
 
 
 
Remember my Aladdin blog? No? Well, here it is again:
 
 
 

Micro Machines

( Don't worry, this blog isn't going to be one, huge, indistinguishable word.) For all you young kids too lazy to run that through Wikipedia, I'm referencing a brand of plastic cars that was advertised by some guy who spoke quickly (presumably to hide the fact that they're just tiny plastic cars). Oh, and there were video games based around the toys. Not a completely alien concept to the world of video games, since we've had games based on movies, books, food, diseases, game-based movies, and whatever the hell is between all that (probably an edible Tomb Raider DVD that gives you a stomach virus or something). Like all those games, this one sucks, too.
 
But unlike all those other games, this one isn't a shitty tie-in platformer; it's more like a mediocre tie-in racer. Makes sense, right? At least there's one good thing in this game: the developers knew how they should make it. Through my hidden recording device, I can hear you saying, "But I could think of that, too! Why are you lauding them for something so easy?" Two reasons: first, it goes past cars a little bit, stretching into boats and helicopters, each one presenting different challenges than regular cars. Also, there're tanks, because laws back then required that every game have at least one gun in it somewhere. Second, that's really the only positive thing I have to say about this game.
 
Again, this isn't a bad game entirely. If not for the control problems, it could've been an under-appreciated NES gem. Once again, I hear you proclaim, "How can you screw up the controls in a racing game? A for speed, B for brake, D-pad for steering, right?" Right, Micro Machines does all that...sort of. Speed and brake work well, but the steering is what kills the game. Rather than press left to turn left, you press left to turn counter-clockwise, meaning left becomes right when facing down. It only becomes apparent during long straight paths, but the curvy, twisty tracks serve really well to hide this control oversight. They hide it by bringing to the forefront the drifty nature of many of the vehicles. Time and time, you'll plummet to your death on the kitchen floor, where you presumably roll under the fridge, never to be remembered again.
 
 As close to an ending as you'll get.
 As close to an ending as you'll get.
No, wait, you respawn on the racetrack, usually in dead last. It makes sense, sort of, but it comes off as a bit cheap, since slippery steering plus courses with more twists and turns than a Kafka/Shyamalan collaboration should logically equal stupidly cheap game design. Supporting my theory is the AI, which tends to cheat on later levels. No, this isn't me whining about the game being hard or it using rubber band AI; this is me whining about the enemies being FASTER THAN ME. How exactly am I supposed to compete with an enemy who travels noticeably faster than I? I don't know, but somehow, I managed. I placed first in just about every race I participated in, completely unaware that there were other cars until they crossed the finish line 39 minutes after I. So it's an easy game that's frustrating as hell, something you could've predicted just by seeing that it's a license-based title. So why'd I play it? My bet with Schmidt not counting, I'd say it's because of the freedom to explore the tracks a bit and cut corners. That's it; that's really the only thing that separates this game from other racers. That, and the Don'tplaythisgameit'squitemediocreandnotworththeallthefrustrationandbrokencontrollers Award.
 

Review Synopsis

  • Like Left 4 Dead 2, this game is Italian.
  • A variety of vehicles and tracks that play mostly the same.
  • I'd say "it's so drifty that I wouldn't be surprised if it took place in Tokyo", but given that the game's Italian, I would be surprised.
5 Comments