A game at which I suck? How can this be possible???
By Video_Game_King 7 Comments
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo
(*rocking in fetal position*) How can I suck at it? How can I suck at ANY video game? I'm the Video Game King! Once t-*gets poked in face by Queen* Huh? Where am I? I think I was supposed to do something.....oh yea! Review some games! Let's see what we h...*sees game on reviewing list* Ooooooohhhhh...*returns to rocking in fetal position, gets poked in face again by Queen* Alright, I'll review the game. Now then, for those of you watching a depressed king on the Internet, you noticed two things: that I'm reviewing Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix IX X4 Alpha Rebirth Limited Collector's Edition, and that I suck balls at that game (there's no way I'm typing that all out again). You know it, I know it, the game knows it: I suck at puzzle games. You know it, I know it, even the game knows it.
However, I was still able to enjoy this game, sort of. Seeing as how I sucked at this game, this will be particularly hard to review. So let's start with something that's easy to judge: the graphics. The main reason this game was made was to parody Capcom fighting game, and it all starts with the graphics. You can select a Street Fighter/Darkstalkers character to play as, but from a gameplay standpoint, it doesn't do anything. The only benefit is that your super-chibi-fighter now does different moves when you score a huge combo and has a different set of insults. That's the only reason you pick characters. Sure, there's a counter combo thing, but I have no idea what the hell that is or how it works.
In theory, the fighting mini-game should work: after all, what better way is there to declare victory than to have a 9 foot tall hadouken follow your super sweet combo? Imagine an extension of the emotive faces from Mean Bean Machine. But remember, all of this is in theory. In reality, it doesn't work out so well, since you'll be looking at your own screen too often to catch a glimpse of what's going on to the right. When you do get a chance to look at the kickass moves, it's an effective way of highlighting your awesomeness, but as I mentioned, more attention will be paid to the actual game part.
I don't blame the game for that, but I do blame it for insulting me after I lose. What the hell!? I understand that this is supposed to be a parody of those insults SF2 characters yelled out at the end of each match, but imagine how I (and many other gamers who suck at puzzle games) feel when Ken flips you off. On a lighter note, I at least like the replay value. There's an extra mode for unlocking several new things, like characters, modes, and other crap I didn't pay attention to. Again, I suck at this game, so it's hard to judge it. I don't hate it, I didn't have whatever the opposite of fun is with this game, it's just that reviewing a game is hard when you're not good at it (and you don't write it all in one stint). So in an attempt to wrap up this shorter than intended review, I give SPF2THDR9X4ARLCE the Most Unreviewable Game Award. Notice that I am the subject. And that it's hard to post the word "I" in all caps.
Keep in mind that the clip I wanted to post was too filled with racism and horrifying things I cannot ever discuss for me to post it here. So I give you a completely safe version with kinda choppy animation.
Super Nova
(Yay, a game that is incredibly easy to review!) No more trying to combine words into something that can be called a review! Finally, I have something that quite clearly sucks! Should've expected this, given the circumstances. Before I review the game, a brief history: long ago, before Giant Bomb, I played (and disliked) many shmups. Eventually, somebody called me out for this practice, saying that the reviews were poor and that I should take a more in-depth look at the games. I have listened to him with all future reviews, but with crap like this, it's getting pretty hard to adhere to such guidelines.On the game itself, Super Nova is actually an entry in the Darius series, which should have been a big red warning light against playing this game. I played it anyway, and kinda regret it. Since it's a Darius game, it has all the Darius features, like robotic fish bosses, multiple paths, one really bad feature I'll mention later, and mediocrity. As I just mentioned, this game lets you choose which levels you go to, and which (of three) ships you play as. While this would logically mean stupidly high amounts of replay value, I get the feeling that this game just put it all in to give us the illusion of replay value. The three ships play exactly the same, and as the game goes on, the levels begin repeating themselves. There were a few sloppy Mode-7-rotaty levels, some of those levels where you have to shoot through stuff to make a path, etc.
However, this pales in comparison to my main complaint: the difficulty. Simply put, this game is too hard for extremely cheap reasons, the first one being how death works. You know how in most shmups, when you die, your ship comes back to life in the exact same place (real time), has that brief moment of invincibility, and then continues with the shooting? Super Nova will have nothing to do with any of that. Instead, should you die (and you will), you go back to the beginning of the stage. Yes, you read right: no matter how far you got (even to the boss, if my memory is correct), you get sent back to the BEGINNING OF THE STAGE!!! And to add insult to massive injury, you lose any power-ups you had with you. At times, I think this game wants me to die. Wait, I'm getting word that the game does wish death upon its players.
The best example was this one boss battle against a whale thing. I had died previously, so I was stuck with the bare-bone weapons. (Speaking of weapons, the power-ups are kinda meager and don't offer much choice. Come on, even the first Darius did that!) That worked up to a point, but there was this one cannon mounted on the whale's ass that I just couldn't reach with my regular weapons. I tried to reach it, but the game grew impatient, and decided that my stupidity must be punished with invincible enemies whose sole purpose is to kill you. Not that the actual enemies aren't built for that purpose, either; at any given time, there are enough bullets on screen to put games like Perfect Cherry Blossom to shame.
So we've established a few things already: mediocre weapon selection, thin illusion of replay value, high difficulty, and I forgot to add one thing: a poor translation. It may not seem like much, but to me, it was. Now that I look back on all this, I feel like Super Nova is a game that doesn't want to be played, and quite frankly, I don't want to play it. So I give it the It's Best for Everybody not to Play This Award.
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