Have you actually looked at what Dead Rising represents?
"Daddy, why are you wearing a dress with a football helmet on?"
Looking at this game with shallow eyes you might just see what the game is at the barest level, crazy zombie game with funny ways to kill and murder people. But since finishing Dead Rising 2 I have been thinking what Dead Rising represents to the player, what is its purpose, what is its message? To tell you the truth I do not know. I don't even think Keiji Inafune or Blue Castle knows. It does things that complement game mechanics like the combat and the weapon crafting system but also contradicts its themes, for example, the scene Katey falls unconscious after a dose of Zombrex or the scene in which one of the twins kills herself due to her sister's death. Now in a scene as compelling as that (for Dead Rising 2's standards) wouldn't you feel absolutely nothing if Chuck was wearing a hula girl dress, knight helm and SWAT boots. Would you just be laughing at the sheer madness happening on screen with no one even reacting? Why would you put in something that contradicts something so much that it’s falls completely flat?
When one of the most likeable characters is a mascot that tries to kill you with 2 flamethrowers, something is wrong.
Dead Rising 2 has some pretty amazing moments in it. I felt pity in Slappy's death cut scene when Slappy finally asks the girl of his dreams to a date in Heaven and he'll 'be there soon’ as he dies next to her. But once again Dead Rising 2 shoves its contradicting knee into your spine when Slappy suddenly jumps up and screams at the top of his presumably failing lungs. Again completely ruins one of the most compelling scenes in the game but awkwardly shoving it odd sense of humour in a scene that didn't need it.
My issue is that Dead Rising 2 doesn't need to do that. It already has some pretty crazy events and scenes which play out very well. Most of the psychopath death scene are either filled with extreme irony (mall cop being twice the man Chuck is, literally) or unnecessary awesome gore (Magician assistant get his revenge with a big ass knife). This is just cut scene as the actual gameplay can just be as crazy if not more so.
Boobs and Zombies, my two favorite things.
One theme I didn't think was need at all was the sexualised nature of the female protagonists, particularly Rebecca Chang. It’s seems like every scene she is in she hasabout 3 shots of her showing off her ‘assets’ and it was really off putting. This makes no sense to me in any way, shape or form. Chuck is not romantically involved withanyone in the game or even hints at that so the shots don’t represent Chuck frustrated libido so it seems like the only reason these shots exist is to show of the hot sexybig breasted character model (which don’t even look super impressive). These kinds of shots were in the original Dead Rising but this was in my mind at least to show the player the erotica photo op option in the game but in Dead Rising 2 it makes no sense.
I think it is all of these things and none of these things. It is a game with so much going on you are only going to give focus to. If you like the utter madness of a Frank West as Mega Man shooting at a duel chainsaw fighting clown do you leave the story with little attention as possible or just skip the cut scenes entirely? Do you just wear the default motocross jacket on you Chuck Greene because you want to have a ‘realistic’ experience and avoid the stupid weapons and costumes?
This is why I think Dead Rising 2’s themes are an interesting experiment in entertainment in general. It appeals to certain people with sections of the game completely dedicated to a theme and adds bits and pieces of other themes to keep things interesting. It is the game you wanted it to be, whether it’s the insane Japan crazy zombie beat-em-up or the survival simulator or the big giant escort quest.
You will be hard to find a person who doesn’t like an aspect of Dead Rising.
Since my last blog I have had the fortunate pleasure of finally get myself a job. Ever since my job I have had this fever dream of buying games new and old. Since my dive into the workplace my collection of games have doubled in half a year. I am to a point in which the rack I keep my games are full and what games cannot fit on it just lay on the TV stand. Some of these games I haven't even played. This is the first time in my life in which I haven't finished a game (or really got started) ever. I have multiple games just sitting there, barely opened just to check disc conditions waiting to be played. The prime example of this is Too Human.
Now let me get this off my chest. I bought Too Human for $8. This isn't American dollars either. This is Australian. I bought a game from 2008 for $8. This is a very rare to happen here where games remain at $110 despite the rising dollar or popularity. I played Too Human for about 45 minutes and let me tell you, it did not give me a good first impression.
First of all the controls are just bad. The right stick being used as melee is as about as good as precision shooting on the Wii. It just does not work. Flicking the stick in the direction of your enemies has no skill in it whatsoever. You cannot get any better then what you started off with. That's Too Human's first problem. The story is a mess of hard to understand metaphors and talking for minutes with the characters not really saying anything important. Granted I played it for less then an hour but if the story hasn't gripped me by the throat and dragged me under it is not doing it's job. The menu has this animation that takes up about 1.5 seconds but feels like forever and when you have to go to more then one menu (mostly likely it will because everything is split) it will be maddening. The last straw was after a very bad, very boring, very frustrating boss fight I took one step off the flying platform thing to find that not only had the game crashed but it gave me a Red Ring. I restarted it and hasn't even flashed it. My console wanted to kill itself over the bad structure and controls over one game and since then it has stayed in it's case and I have never looked back.
My past just came back to me so hard and so fast with all this time off. It's kind of scary and awesome at the same time. Going though your past can bring up all these memories whether it's good or bad. In this case (or several cases) this has been very positive. Really, when your reminiscing about this media it is always has a positive result. You don't really remember the bad aspects of your childhood when you focus on gaming. Maybe it's because it's our choice on what we play and how we rate a game's quality when were older compared to when you were young. Is that why we rate games from the past as the greatest games of all time instead of every holiday release because of it's superior presentation and gameplay? Who knows, maybe because we have less to worry about in our youth then now. All it was were you and the games and oh boy, the games I played in my youth came back to me with a heavy load...
I recently bought ' Unreal Tournament 2004' for an awesome price of $20 AU and whether or not it's because of it being a recently installed game or because it's on an external hard drive or the my machine sucks but the load times are extremely long. Like 5 - 10 mins long. So what I have been doing during these down times is playing my recently rediscovered ' Nintendo 64' and with that I have been playing 'The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time'. It has seem to have ended up that I have been playing more Ocarina then I have of UT2004. I don't know if you know this but Ocarina is mathematically and with my opinion the greatest game ever made. It's been about 11 years since it came out way back in 1998 and still to this day is have surpassed every game ever since. It's still an absolute blast to play as the gameplay, story and even the graphics never get old. Going through the Great Deku tree has never gotten old no matter how many times I have went though it. In the only media in which older products can be harder to play and overall less enjoyable it's astounding that Ocarina has stood up for so long during the hard test that is time.
With that my big ball of nostalgia began rolling down the hill...
A friend of mine was selling his Playstation with a bunch of games for about $30 and with those titles came two games which I never really played but is almost as revered as Ocarina and they are ' Final Fantasy VII' and ' Metal Gear Solid'. Now these two franchises have not had a had lot of exposure to me. The Final Fantasy's I have only play were 'IX' which I played and enjoyed but didn't finished and barely remembered it and finally X-2 which I never want to play again. Metal Gear is more positive as I went though ' Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater' which is the closest game that has made me cry, I barely scraped though the ending with a dry face.
Obviously these franchises alone made the Playstation back in the early 90's and is one of the revered series in the media. But back then I was very indifferent to them. I had to go on for about 10 years being told "Final Fantasy VII made me cry" and "Metal Gear Solid's Psycho Mantis is the great boss fight ever" until I got my hands on it. The result of my crusade into the Playstation's greatest hits has been mixed. Final Fantasy VII is a great game today and even though one of my most hated concepts of any game is random encounters VII still manged to make me stay with it's engaging story and deep combat system. Metal Gear on the other had been a bit more negative. Don't get me wrong. the story and cinematography is quite good with good voice acting and a great sense of humor but I can't shake the feeling that I'm just a floating camera watching Solid Snake rather then controlling him. Sure I can run around and move but I still can't do things I would of done in the situation and the main fault of that is the camera. Yes indeed I have been hit by the thought of 'I have played too many modern stealth games that I can't play it in a fixed camera angle'. Metal Gear Solid 3 had roughly the same problem but that was soothed by the first person shooting view which is easier taking out guards. I don't know I just can't see myself playing the rest of MGS (mainly because I'm stuck on that fucking dickhead in the tank). Maybe I should play more fixed camera games like Resident Evil or Silent Hill.
Another non-game related nostalgic crash course was unfortunately Pokemon. No, I'm not talking about the games (which I only played Yellow or Blue or Red, fuck I don't remember) I'm talking about the kids TV show which took over my life for about 3 years. I don't know how it happened, I don't know why it happened but Monday I was reading Pokemon wiki pages, watching about 5 episodes and watched the 2nd movie, Pokemon: The Movie 2000 for a collective of 9 HOURS. Jesus Christ, that almost as bad as reading Persona 4 fan fiction for 6 hours. I just don't know what the hell happened but somehow I ended about with the original theme song on my iTunes, made a midi cover of said theme song in FL Studio and almost bought Season 1 on DVD on eBay. I needed help which was somewhat achieved with a combined effort by Daft Punk, Call of Duty 4 and Pirates of the Caribbean 2.
Hopefully this nostalgia free fall will make me end up buying a Playstation 2 (and playing Persona 4) and me watching The Mask.
I'm really picky when it comes to buying games and with the trend of demos getting rare and short I'd thought I go through all my experiences playing demos and finding out which demos was the worst marketing scheme.
I'd also like to point out this list of the worst demos has nothing to do with the quality of the game but the quality of the demo containing it. Dead Space's 'Dismemberment' Demo.
Don't start the show with the show stopper but this demo was punishingly cruel and unfair. In this demo the main character is in a hallway with only one room being available to "explore". I used quote marks on "explore" because this one room is about the size of a living room with nothing of interest besides the few enemies. When said enemies are killed, the door you came through unlocks and you able to open the door to see a scripted event of your character dying.
Then the demo ends.
When I got the Dead Space demo I'd expected a few weapons, couple of nasty looking monsters and some rooms and hallways to shiver my way through. What I got was a debug room and a stupid ending. If you want me to buy your game don't let your main character be unavoidably killed during the demo. Skate 2
The first Skate demo was well crafted in every aspect, great little sandbox area, 40 mins of playtime and a few challenges which weren't required to complete. Sure it didn't have any customizable skater or board and you had to go through training every time but it was exactly what a free roaming game demo needed to be, plenty of your time at your own freewill.
Skate 2's demo is the opposite to that and one of the killing factors is the Time Limit. The Time Limit is messed beyond belief which all sorts of problems. You start the game with 8 mins. That is all of your training which rounds of at 6 - 7 minutes. Now the challenges around you give you extra time but not alot, 1 - 2 minutes each. Now if you rush through these you'd get around 9 minutes of freeroam time. Adding all the playtime it required to get the extra time and the begining and end results you'd get about 15 mintues of total playtime and half of that is doing objectives around the small skatepark.
What the hell happened? Did EA think that undercutting the first demo for the second would get better sales? What was going through EA's mind when the suggested 'Hey, let's cut the demo time from the first demo in half and make the player do stupid missions?".
But they didn't stop there....Oh no they didn't my friend as the time limit reaches zero an annoying seemingly unskipable cutscene comes on and you now have to watch this awfully put together montage of plot and gameplay. I just do not see how EA went from hit to shit.
Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix's trial.
Fighting game: Awesome. Only 2 Selectable Characters: Understandable. They're Ryu and Ken: Disapointing. Verses Mode Only: Annoying. No Online: Angry. Second Controller Required to Even See The Game: Fuck This Is Shit., Dashboard.
YOU DO NOT RELEASE A DEMO IN WHICH IT ONLY HAS LOCAL MULTIPLAYER CAPCOM.
Ninja Gaiden's Xbox Demo
I have one problem with this demo. It's not the unforgiving difficulty, odd bugs or useless save point which was seemingly lfet in the demo, it's that when you die once you get thrown right back to the demo screen. Not the game start screen, all the way back to the demo disc main menu. I think this is a bit rare seeing how you had to have a copy of OXM but this is an unforgiveable demo sin.
I can think of anything else, but if you have a horrid demo you would like express about put it in the comments section. Cheers!
I don't understand why Australian gamers get constantly abused by the gaming industry. In any other media like movies or music Australians get up to date releases (or within the week) and we rarely if ever get movies or music with no release, more so if that media is release online with such programs as iTunes. But with video games it's different.
'Convict Island'
The video game culture in Australia has not developed to the level of the US or UK (but still is growing). Besides the big chain retailers and the Game Retailer Monopoly known as 'EB Games', game retailers who only sell games and whatever comes with that is a rarity. The closest one of these would be a good 20 minute drive to go to a store that's sandwiched between an EB Games and a electronic goods store. There is not a single hobby store in which I can go play WoW or a video game convention which doesn't completely suck (the last one of these I went to was showing off on the TV ad that they were showing 'Star Wars: Republic Commando' about 2 weeks after it was released).
In this new age of gaming in which the Internet could solve all our problems about game releases and multiplayer being fixed and that all goodness would cause global peace within the world until it crashed before my eyes when I got word of the release of Kodu Game Lab. on the US marketplace a few days ago, also being completely absent from the AU marketplace. The reason this sucks is because...
Look! Kodu likes to play with some aussies.
It's under the 'Community Games' tab which the AU marketplace doesn't even have.
It's published by Microsoft Game Studioson Microsoft's own download service so doesn't have (or shouldn't) any sort of region deals.
The size of the file is less the 200mb
It's 400 MSP
You need to be on an American account to just play the demo (which is TIMED)
So really Microsoft, why is it that a tool that you flaunted off at CES this year as easy using and family friendly cut off from Australia? The price and file size says you didn't really put alot of effort into it's development or wanted it to make money for you. It doesn't require you to ship it half way around the world and it's made by Microsoft, published by Microsoft on Microsoft servers. I cannot see any reason why Microsoft went out of there way to keep this inside the US.
Even when Microsoft tries to spread it's love over the world it fails at that to. No doubt you remember when the South Park episode 'Good Times with Weapons' was released for free sometime last year? Well Microsoft decided to give Australia some well needed love and also release it here for free, but someone must of been asleep at the wheel because the advertisement on the dashboard showing the episode didn't work at all and just a like stumbling fool waking up to see his work not done they decide to fix it the day it was to be taken down. But they keep doing this, like the shoot-em up they released for free never made it over here. Most of the demos get released late and so on.
Australia and the rest of the countries effected by the American Games Industry needs to demand to have closer release dates, same marketplace, same items for download and same rights as the Americans do.
I'm starting to get the hang of it. Giant Bomb's system is now easy to edit and add as you can see with my creation of my first concept, Games Based On Movies Based On Games.. If anyone comes near my work l swear l will kill you in horrific ways.
Finally after weeks of teasing Giant Bomb has blow-up with style as it launched today. I have to say I'm impressed, character pages, blogs, forums, it's all fantastic. I'm just dipping my feet in it all and this post is just to get a taste. More on that later.+
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