Now that's more like it. For those of you confused as to just what the hell I'm talking about, refer to last week's blog wherein I lamented all the crap I seem to have been stumbling into recently. Well, this week seems to break that trend with a game I unabashedly like. (I would have preferred a game I unabashedly love, but I'll take what I can get.) What did it take to break me out of my rut? A pure button-mashy combat system combined with off the walls insanity. As expected.

It also helps that the game looks amazing. I know that's a strange thing to start with, considering how I usually start with the story, but given how crazy that aspect of the game is, I think I should start with something I can actually understand. Now if there are two things that Killer is Dead loves, they'd be unicorns and mescaline; moving down the list, we eventually come to cel-shading and lighting, both of which you're going to be seeing a lot of. Half the time, you feel like Suda 51's pen exploded on all the cutscenes and he had to tell everybody that he meant to do that. (Not that I'd put it past the guy.) Surprisingly, this works in the game's favor. It all creates this very sleazy, slimy atmosphere that meshes really well with the suave, sophisticated ambiance you see in so many other areas. I don't know how these two polar opposites mesh, but rest assured, they mesh. Not vague enough for you? Well what if I told you that this art style is also very striking and simply will not let go of your attention? It's almost like you're playing a comic book. An incredibly scummy comic book.

That just so happens to make no goddamn sense whatsoever. Have I mentioned that already? I can't even divulge too many concrete details regarding the plot, not for fear of spoiling it, but because I don't have a good idea of what was going on. All I know is that there's this suave, robot-armed assassin for hire named Mondo, and he's usually tasked with killing the most insane shit possible, like a baby MODOK thing or samurai tiger Ansem. He also has a super genki schoolgirl sidekick who only seems to exist to be as annoying as hell, but I think it best we completely ignore her.

I mean, everything else in the game seems to have some kind of purpose. It may not like it at first, though, what with.....I'm not sure I can pick out an example that does this game any real justice. Anyway, as crazy as the game looks, there's still a perceptible logic underneath all the symbolism, so the game's not just being random for the sake of being random. It manages to strike a really nice balance (well, at least when it isn't taking itself too seriously for what it is), giving you one of two options: either you sit back and just soak in whatever happens to be assaulting your eyes at this very moment, or you try to figure it all out (and most likely fail).

This is very similar to what the combat's like, except for the part where they're complete opposites. In fact, allow me to describe pretty much every combat scenario in the game: bash the shit out of the enemy with the X button, throw a couple of dodges in there from time to time, and, if you're feeling particularly randy, press the Y button to make stuff happen. Not terribly complex, but then again, it doesn't have to be. It's fun as it is. The fighting is fast paced, but somehow, it's very easy to feel the weight of each behind each swing of the sword, so you end up feeling stylish and powerful at the same time. Most of the time, at least. It could just be me, but there were times where I felt like Mondo lingered around too much after a certain move and got an unfair smack to the face because of it. Now normally, this would be the part where I try to mitigate that flaw by saying it doesn't show up terribly often, but in this case, it does. Not enough to completely sour me on the combat, but definitely enough to make me at least a little more wary of it.

Same goes for all the other stuff that the developers layered on top of the combat, for some reason. Like the shooting! Not the Devil May Cry "just press a button to maintain your combo" style, but the Resident Evil 4 "manually aim and dick around" style. You know, the kind that's hard to implement without noticeably breaking the flow of combat? Especially when the aiming controls are kind of sluggish? There's also a minor experience point system that upgrades your health and blood levels periodically, but given how small these upgrades tend to be, it's hard to say just what impact any of it has on the game. Though strangely enough, that's the exact reason why all these extra bits aren't that big a problem for the game. So what if, say, the shooting isn't good? It's not like it's integral to the combat or anything. While there are times when I have to use it, they aren't exactly frequent, so it's easy to focus more on the stuff the game gets right.

Like anything not listed in this paragraph. For instance, there's a series of quickly repetitive side missions where you stare at a woman's tits when she isn't looking. The only reason I ever really bothered with them was for the side weapons which I never used, so I'm ultimately confused as to how this feature made it in here. My best guess is that the developers saw that this game was only seven hours long and decided that they were gonna need a lot more padding if they were going to justify a retail release, like they weren't that confident in what was already on display. Given what I've spent far too long saying, I can see where they're coming from. The combat could be a little bit more refined and the game is batshit fucking crazy, but neither of those things completely overshadow what the game gets right. After all, you're still playing an oddly stylish and fast-paced action game, and things are still completely batshit crazy. What's not to like about that? Especially given how many times I've seen it before.

Review Synopsis

• Somebody forgot to tell Suda 51 that symbolism is supposed to work within a story that makes sense. We all thank you, Mysterious Forgetful Person.
• The fighting mechanics aren't perfect, but it's hard to complain when it still allows you to slash things up like crazy. (Killer is Dead crazy.)
• Oh, and something about sneaking a peak at some tits.

You know, I'm pretty sure you could replace Maria with Shrek and change absolutely nothing about Sonic the Hedgehog canon.

Wait a minute, this isn't that Hideo Kojima penguin game! (That's not something I made up for the sake of an introduction; Kojima's first game was actually about penguins.) Now this blog isn't gonna make any sense. Actually.....yea, this could still work. After all, you guys probably know Killer is Dead exclusively as a batshit crazy game, and if anybody knew batshit crazy, it was 90s Konami. This game is no exception, although it is considerably more terrifying than anything I've linked so far.

And that's largely because of the romance angle that dominates the game. Our story deals with three penguins in particular: a girl penguin I think is named Penta, a pimp penguin who I refuse to identify by anything other than Pimp Penguin, and the main character, who might as well be called Gunther. Pimp Penguin's an asshole and decides to date Penta behind Gunther's back, by which I mean his front. Clearly angry, our chubby little hero decides he's gonna win Penta's love and....never does, honestly. That's pretty much the entire story: Gunther tries to win Penta's love (usually by complying with unreasonable demands she makes (like flying)), only to find out she's still dating that Pimp Asshole Penguin. Depressing, isn't it?

Maybe all that horrific relationship nonsense simply disappears once you jump into the actual gameplay. Oh, if only video games were that idyllic. Sadly, it only gets worse, and from the most unexpected of sources: fat. For whatever reason, Konami decided to make fat a gameplay mechanic by making your penguin gain and lose weight over the course of the level, and strangely enough, that's not the depressing part. At least not yet, it isn't. Each weight rank changes how Gunther controls and what he can do, ranging from plodding belly fat Gunther to Parodius-esque ポイ-firing (at least I think it was ポイ) slim Gunther. It's pretty fun to switch between each one over the course of a level.

You know what's not fun? Imposed body dysmoprhia. See, before each level, Penta rings up Gunther and tells him specifically how much weight he needs to lose before she'll even consider getting near him. This could be a friendly reminder to eat healthy and get plenty of exercise, but then she just asks that he lose more and more weight with each level. That may sound like an extremely dangerous thing to ask of your potential lover (and, in fact, it is), but I think the bigger problem is that Gunther just keeps putting the weight back on time and time again. Presumably, Penta knows this (since she keeps asking him to lose the weight he just put on), so wouldn't it make more sense for her to convince Gunther to seek medical treatment for his problems?

And then, when you see healthy foods like apples causing weight gain that can only be mitigated with mystery bottles...only then do you discover what's truly going on. Those bottles? Pure ipecac. Don't you see what's going on? She doesn't care about him. She's only doing this because she gets some sort of sick thrill out of watching him puke his guts out for her affection. To her, it's just another source of entertainment in her dull life, especially since she can start the cycle anew simply by rejecting him entirely and then waiting for him to shovel enough Häagen-Dazs into his face until his obesity is morbid enough to lose even more weight than before. And she can't even hold herself to these same impossibly high standards. Fucking bitch.

Oh, right. The actual game. Fatty fat fatness aside, two things come to mind when I think about Akumu Penguin Monogatari: jumping and shooting. Those aren't so much gameplay mechanics as they are the two types of levels you'll encounter. They're two polar opposites, but amazingly, there's a very consistent level of quality between the two. The platforming is delightful and fun, the shooting is relaxed and leisurely, and neither one definitively wins over the other. I think part of that is because of the length of the game. You only get six levels of gameplay, meaning any inconsistency in the game's quality is gonna stick out like a sore thumb. This also means that the mechanics will tend to be simple, forcing the developers to focus on making the very few elements present in the game work. And guess what? They did. Except for the bulimic story, of course. I'd say that I'm surprised somebody would think that bulimia would be a strong foundation for an enjoyable game, but, well, I've definitely seen weirder.

Review Synopsis

• The monogatari in a nutshell.
• At least I'll always have my Konami action gaming.
• Right alongside the penguin vomit, obviously.