128Mario Blog

Limbo - My Take

2011-07-22T16:06:00Z

Here is my interpretation of Limbo:

You know what they say when you have a near death experience; They say that your life flashes right through your eyes. That is what this game is about. A brother and a sister were in an accident. Just before the brother dies, he relives his whole life up till the point of the accident in abstract form.

At first he is in a forest, as a child who has no obligation to the world. He could just wander around. The spider I'd say is a metaphor to all the insecurities he had to go through in his childhood. Then as he got older and maybe started school, he was bullied. Hence the other children at this point in the game throwing sticks and rocks. After school, he then started working in some kind of a factory. The way I see it, the girl he sees the first time is not his sister but maybe the love of his life. Or maybe some kind of unrequited love since he never actually gets to her, or so much as even touches her before that worm drags him away.

Water is a dominant theme in the game. From rain to rising water level to the boy's complete and total inability to swim, the water itself can be interpreted as the boy's hydrophobia inhibiting his progression, being presented as multiple trials he must overcome to reach his goal. Face your fears and conquer them.

Now I'm not so sure about what is going on in his life after that point, but I'd say that when you find the switches that spin the world his life was at a turning point. Maybe later on his life went so upside down that he actually contemplated a suicide - as can be derived from the hanged man in an earlier chapter. But the way how they died is clear: It was a car accident. In the main menu if you look at the thing in the upper right corner, you'll notice the thing is actually in the shape of a car. The front wheels are visible. Right before the ending when completing the final puzzle the main character actually flies through a glass: It's the windshield.

He wakes up and finds his sister playing in the sand. Except notice what she's doing with her hands. She's administering CPR. One could assume its to him. He walks slowly behind her and just stares at her, perhaps sadly. She stops what she's doing and looks up abruptly and then scene. Credit roll. Now notice the new Main Menu background; it's the same area the boy reunited with his sister except now it looks run down and there are flies in the areas where the boy and his sister were standing.

The Allure of Halo Multiplayer

2011-05-29T00:28:00Z

I fired up Halo Reach last night out of the blue. It had been a while since I had played through the multiplayer and a little random drunken excursion the previous week with some friends renewed the spark of interest I had previously with the game. What I found was that I had put in six hours into playing the game when I had originally planned on putting in two - it made work the next day more than a little grueling.

First of all, I have to say that initially the ranking system in Halo Reach drew me in. It was a damned neat idea to get credits to buy cooler visual aesthetic upgrades and notoriety in the form of a higher rank than those around you. This kept me going for three to four months after beating the game alone on Legendary (with no exploits, mind you) and succeeded in helping me learn the weapon spawns and general strategies to employ in the different levels. Then came the 'Game Breakers'.

By that term I mean the people who found or heard of the glitches in the game and used them to propel themselves forward in terms of rank, easy credit farming, and just generally trolling the lives of the more legit players in the community. They weren't universal. I could go for five matches and play a decent game against other players before running into what felt like an entire pack of these hyenas - generally playing as a Clan that's been together since the days of Halo 2, most probably. These didn't use to bother me so much. After every encounter where I'd usually end up losing, I'd swallow my pride and just search for another game against other players. It's a big world, I didn't need to play in their sandbox where I'd just end up getting my castle kicked down time and time again.

For a couple of weeks the encounter rate generally stayed true and followed that formula. Things generally took a downturn in February of 2011 and I had what must have been the worst month of my Reach multiplayer experiences ever. Glitch exploitation, cheap tactics and general ownage of my carcass ensued. It didn't help when the teams utilizing these tactics were actually good - it made an unfair advantage transform into a Great Wall of freakin' China. Exploits that gave players ridiculous credit amounts disintegrated honorable rank distinction. I was of lower rank than the majority of those I played against - I still am - and yet I play significantly better than a good majority. Disgruntled and frustrated, I left the community for what I felt was for good. Sure, I'd still play the odd round here or there with friends but for all intent and purposes that was it for me.

That was quite the digression, but I feel it was important for this little anecdote I want to pass along. I had been shown wicked promise playing with my drunken comrades despite the massive alcohol-infused arse-kicking we all suffered and my curiosity had been piqued. There had been a reason I had played this game's multiplayer like sniffing an endless line crack cocaine. What had it been?

My style is that of a Jack of All Trades. It works well within my team because I'm really the only one out of them who is of this mindset. A couple are Defenders, who hang back and issue sniper and battle rifle support fire to the Offense, who run in guns blazing - regardless of what the hell they hold, be it a shotgun, a sword or their own bare fists. Of course there are others as well, the Goalie; the dude usually hanging out at the base and either waiting for a weapon to respawn or generally just picking enemies off while hiding behind cover. My style is to go with my gut. Run and gun with the offense and then fall back to see how the other team mates are doing; calling out enemy positions and formations as I witness them and barking recommendation orders to those who may not be as aware of the situation as I am. It's important to congratulate good teamwork and epic moments in a fight and to keep general team morale high. It’s also just as important to tell your team to Step It Up when concentration seems divided or tempers have flared. Keep it together and keep it cool.

Then somewhere in those five hours of random map variants, Team Slaying, Big Battling, and Assaulting, it dawned down on me in a shining holy light complete with an angelic chorus. I realized why I had been addicted to playing Halo Reach Multiplayer.

I had found my Halo Mojo again. I was enjoying myself. I was the Team Coach. What I found was the most gratifying feeling of the game was in formulating a plan or micromanaging your team and watching stuff get done with a team that was both formidable and capable. It produced just the right amount of endorphins my brain required for me to hit the A Button once that Match Results screen popped up and ignoring my body's urgent request to just turn off the Xbox and finally get some much needed sleep.

So here's my question to you: what role do you play in a Halo team? Are you the strategist who hangs back and calls the shots across your team or do you storm right through the front door and introduce some Spartans to the business end of your military issue rifle? Do you make tactics on the fly, calling out enemy positions after you've died in your failed scouting run or do you carefully prey on the solitary stranded soldier as a pack of merciless wolves?

What's your Halo strategy? How do you play in a multiplayer game? Are you one of those players who have memorized every animation of gun reloads to properly maximize damage? What part of multiplayer is most rewarding for you?

Bizzay as a Bee

2011-02-25T21:46:00Z

It's been quite a while since I decided to hunker down and write a blog. It's stereotypical, redundant and unoriginal but I have to liken this blog-less transition to a WHOLE HELL OF A LOT happening in my life. I've made the transition to another employment (video-game testing! HUZZAH!) while still keeping one day (and sometimes a second and third) at my old job; I've been rejected by two book publishers and at least ten literary agents (yay...they don't even read the *** novella); I've bought a whole hell of a lot more games as per is considered normal these days; and in general I've noticeably been shying away from literature and reading as a whole. If you told me I would have been this way five years ago back when I was still full of ambition, charisma and idealistic ideals (see what I dids thar?) I would have scoffed, broken a glass rhum bottle over your head and probably scoffed some more. Then I would have demanded you buy me another bottle because you're a b*tch and I'm thirsty and I know what you did with all those dead fetuses.

Anyway, out of a peculiar combination of complete and utter boredom masticated with some thin trace of narrowly-veiled hope that somebody actually gives a *** about my wrtiting (dude, my bladder like just exploded) I opened up a Wordpad and just started ranting. HENCE! It's the literal equivalent to some awesome guy calling you up and screaming into your inner ear lobe THAT HE IS COMING OVER and then just never shows up. I'm just awesome like that. More awesome than the toe nails you cut off and forget to throw away - those gnarled sumbitches you collect in your closet. You sick midget-licking exiled recluse. Don't even try to deny it. I have photographs. I look at them whenever I have a looming deadline and all my fatigue evaporates, precipitating into actual full-blown horror and revulsion.

I've slowed down. In everything. In writing and gaming and a number of my hobbies. I simply do not have the time anymore if I value anything even slightly resembling a human social life. Sure, it's nothing to stay up all night on a work night and marathon through a game in order to get bragging rights and achievement points/trophies (time is one of the reasons I've opted out of an Office Trophy Hunt sheet; ideally this sort of scenario would have been right up my ante) but then you're a rotting zombie carcass for the next couple of days until you've made up for your time investment into your passion. Rejections have done a number on my self-confidence as a writer - even though I have been told repeatedly that it's just a b*tch to penetrate the business (ha ha, penetrate.) and while I haven't ceased writing it has slowed down considerably. 2006 and 2007 were my glory years, where I must have written a good 500 pages a year. 2010? A paltry seventy to eighty pages. I'm sure it'll pick up. I just need to pick myself up first. Oh, and keep submitting to those darned publishers, I suppose. My psyche just keeps demanding what the *** is the point? Of submitting? Of writing? Of even trying? Ha. Not trying to be negative; I just find the writing market to be like a crowded bus.

Eh.

My game collection keeps mulitplying... a fact that makes my e-phallic so very HAPPY. Nearly at one thousand games. HUGE milestone for me, and I don't plan on just stopping there. But the gamer in me weeps everything I set foot into my living room. SO MANY AWESOME POTENTIAL GAMES TO PLAY. No time to do it. I'm going to need a bloody warehouse soon. With a vault door. Amazing.

Dishes to wash. Floor to vacuum and mop. Cats to pick up after (*** wire-eaters!). Endless chores. Isn't it a bit odd that while I enjoy to eat, I find the very act of preparing a meal to be an enormous time-waster? Man sometimes I just wanna chill. Sometimes I wanna work out like a beast, but by the time I'm done the daily deviations required of me to keep a semi-clean household, I just sit down, look at that thirty-pound weight and give it quite the enthusiastic middle finger. Man I just keep telling myself my retirement will be so *** AMAZING.

Circle of the Moon

2010-10-16T05:10:00Z

With the emergence of CastleVania Harmony of Despair on the Xbox 360 a couple of weeks ago, I couldn't help but find myself sporting nostalgia goggles as I waded through six different iterations of Drac's castle with five other players. I basically kept replaying the same levels over and over again in an effort to spam rare drops from the bosses (especially in Hard Mode) and despite a slow start, the game does well for itself for the collection obsessed elite who hail from the tribes of online collectathon MMOs, namely the Diablos, World of WarCrafts, and Phantasy Star Onlines of the world. Of course, comparing this downloadable game to WoW might be a daring stretch, but the basic premise is the same if on a much smaller scale: form a band of merry vampire-slaying men (instead of a Guild) and play the same instance over and over again until you get that rare loot you've been secretly raging over from seeing some random dude from Australia swinging around Death's Scythe and wearing super rare boots that increase his walking speed so that when you're only halfway through the map this dude is beating the boss senseless with a newspaper. It's so unfair. Anyway, this isn't to talk about Despair, although I might touch upon the game in later updates, but rather the return to the older games in the series.

I didn't go too far back though, as though I'm a fan of all the CastleVanias, I have absolutely no patience for the PS2 versions and I had already beaten Super CastleVania IV not all that long ago after replaying it on the Nintendo Wii's Virtual Console. Quick side note: that is the definitive CastleVania game, not Symphony of the Night. No argument. There is no way you can't fight Dracula (and beat him) without rocking out to the amazing theme and feeling like a total badass. Sigh... I'm showing my roots here, not a good thing. So no, I'm not skipping two decades, merely one. 2001. The beginning of the Game Boy Advance and consequently, CastleVania: Circle of the Moon. Only the second iteration of the now standard "MetroidVanias" ( this was a concept made popular by Symphony of the Night's blatant direct rip-off of Super Metroid's exploration/power-up formula... just with level ups!) I remember reading the various magazines I subscribed to hail it as the second coming of CastleVania, and the intense Internet message board debates about which was better: Symphony or Circle and the vicious flaming that many should have been sent to jail for committing attempted arson. People's mothers and intelligence were insulted as people went blind playing their dark Game Boy Advances underneath a bright headlamp trying to see just what the hell was going on. You kiddies and your fancy backlit portable systems. When we went camping, if we didn't have a flashlight or a candle or some light source, we were SCREWED dagnabbit.

In complete honesty and retrospect, Symphony was always better. Only Dawn of Sorrow for the Nintendo DS has bested it, in my opinion. Note: Any flamers who come to my apartment and set it on fire will get a fire poker eviscerating their lower intestine. You have been forewarned. Opinions are opinions, and everybody's got them, friends. While we're at it, I'm going to throw out some additional inflammatory incendiary grenades. Of the Game Boy Advance titles, Circle of the Moon was better than Harmony of Dissonance (arguably the weakest of all MetroidVanias) and Aria of Sorrow trumps all of them with graceful ease. But I digress...

The first thing I noticed upon booting up this ancient cartridge on my 'phat' Nintendo DS is that the graphics aren't all that spiffy... in fact that's even a compliment: these graphics are worse than 16-Bit, they're somewhere in-between the generation gap from NES to SNES. There's barely animation to the enemies and to the character model, this Nathan Graves (who in the...?), and the enemies are all stiff and lumbering, except for those who are meant to sprint around the screen. So instead of being lumbering, they're now stiff and ALL OVER YOUR FACE. Backgrounds and level design are more Metroid-esque vertical than more modern iterations of the series, and the first thing you'll notice (or wonder) is if you're even making any progress as you jump upward for three minutes from left to right and back again. That's not to say it's boring, it isn't, but when there aren't any enemies to whip or secret walls to break open you might as well be running across a white floor with a black background.

The sound effects aren’t much of an issue but you will be hearing Nathan’s CLIP-CLOP CLIP-CLOP footsteps quite a bit and the sound of you cracking a whip. FOO-TISH every two to three seconds sounds kinda cool when you start out at the beginning of the game and you’re surprised at just how powerful your weapon is. Two hours in and if it weren’t for the stellar tunes cranking out in the background you’d be curdling your own tongue and attempting to swallow it. Speaking of the tunes, there’s a reason this game has so many remixes, the score is quite memorable.

As far as the story goes, it’s nothing too substantial. There’s a lovely excuse for you to waltz through an environment (it’s not even Dracula’s Castle...) in the sense that Dracula gets resurrected and you’ve got to work your way up to his throne room in order to kick his unholy ass, but aside from that there’s no more incentive. I heard recently that Koji Igarashi (Mr. Portable CastleVania himself) basically confirmed that this game is non-canon, so there goes all notion of any semblance of a coherent timeline.

The game’s claim to fame, not to mention additional condiment, to the battle system is that instead of special weapons (which are still in the game from the previous classic iterations) you can imbue certain special abilities, effects, or buffers based on a combination of two cards that you mix and match on a menu. There are a wide variety of combinations that can affect anything from your walking speed to the elemental of your weapon, sometimes even going so far as bestowing you with a completely different weapon – such as a katana or a heavy hammer. Personally, I enjoy the card combinations that bestow game modifiers, such as the combo that raises your Luck (therefore increasing your rare item drop chances) and faster EXP gain (for less time wasted grinding, because we all know how time is such a fickle and valuable commodity).

For boss battles and the Arena (more on that coming up), there’s an ability where you can actually begin to regenerate one to two percent of your health per second by actually standing still for a set amount of time or if you’d prefer, a card combination that actually increases your Defense by a good two hundred points. It’s a nice little strategic offering, although the rate at which you actually find these cards, coupled by the fact that you don’t exactly know who drops them, makes for a long-going grind and guesswork. It’s best to just play through the game finding the cards at your own pace, unless you’re some fanatic completionist, in which case I recommend using GameFAQs or some such site.

All in all though, the game will last a good five hours for someone looking to just tear through the game and leave nothing in their wake, although you could easily tack on double that time or even triple it with the fact that every time the game is completed, the player will receive a new name to input on the game select screen, which alters the game experience in a manner of subtle ways. To tell you the truth, I never played past a second playthrough but the name I got was ‘Fireball’, which basically gave me a crapload of magic points. I imagine there are a whole manner of other names out there.

Finally, there’s the Arena. A gauntlet of rooms filled to overflowing with monsters that will seriously *** up your *** if you suck at living (er, sorry, games.) or if you’re one of those grinding dudes who doesn’t take one step further in a videogame until you can one hit kill everything with your fart (er, sorry again, weapon). It’s much harder than it sounds, and it lasts so much longer than you think it would. I’m going on pure nostalgia here, since the last time I attempted the Arena it was August of 2002, but I remember I had exhausted most of my healing items (I think I had three Potions left, each of which healed something like 50 HP) and I was so pumped up on adrenaline and excitement of not knowing if I was going to survive another room that I was like AH *** SON – TIME TO BACKTRACK AND LEVEL UP TEN MORE LEVELS. But no need, I had gotten through and I have no recollection of what the reward was, but it was good because I totally made myself a burrito in compensation for braving such a hellascious endeavor. Achievement unlocked.

Too Many *** Pokemon

2010-05-23T15:20:00Z

I make it a habit of collecting games. Perhaps I've already amassed a collection whereas the backlog is technically impossible to catch up with in the lifespan of one working human being. This is where I would inject my aggressive personality into the argument and holler with a vehemence usually reserved for check-out aisles: "I DON'T *** CARE! I'M GETTING THEM AND THERE ISN'T A *** THING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT!" That's about the point where a security guard tasers me to the ground and t-bags me while

putting my electrified comatose state into handcuffs but anyway. (not an actual experience) You might call me... passionate, The summarization would be accurate.

I stopped playing Pokemon with a near-crazed obsession after Red and Blue. Yellow didn't faze me. I was initially excited about Gold and Silver but gave that up after about a week because the entire different Pokemon at different times of the day freaked me out... I wasn't about to wake up at six AM (blasphemy) just to catch some dinky little mushroom with buggy eyes. Indeed, once you've gone and raped everything with a Level 100 Mewtwo it was more than humbling, in fact, it was downright sickening to revert back to some level 5 Chikorita starter Pokemon and repeat the entire process all over again. Then Crystal came out and the entire process repeated with the GBA releases and subsequent rereleases of the original set and repeat ad nauseum until the car has to stop and somebody spews into the gutter.

Despite it all, I still collected each and every single last set of games right down to the current batch of HeartGold and SoulSilver.

I haven't touched a single one of them. Until now.

I fired up Pokemon Sapphire randomly and have made my way through the majority of the game. Six badges later and the only thing on my mind is how the random battle feature of the game hurts my eyes (because the screen keeps flashing black and having to slog through the same battle sequence) and how I wish Pokemon would just get with the times and freaking do away with such an annoying concept. Make Pokemon a free-roaming open world where you can see the critters from a distance and you decide yourself if you want to engage with them. I'm thinking the same mechanics as Final Fantasy XII... just with POKEMON. COME ON PEOPLE. THAT WOULD BE THE MOST EPIC THING EVAR. Okay maybe not. We all know bacon is the most epic thing ever. But still. It'd be pretty damned close.

I fired up Sapphire with a mild curiosity to see what was the difference (if any) according to a hardware upgrade and the results are pretty mixed. The graphics are neglible, they've become more comparable to that of a cartoon and the music (in a disappointing turn from the original set) is largely forgetable. Gameplay still unfolds the same way and from what I see there's not much of a difference in ANYTHING aside from subtle alterations on monster designs. You still go into your first cave and end up catching a freaking Geodude and a Zubat. You still fish Magikarps for the majority of the game. Hunt in high grass. Try to catch extra rare Pokemon in a Safari Zone. We've done all this before. And you know what? This is just the third iteration in the series. How much is anyone willing to bet with me that once I get to Pearl and then SoulSilver that it's going to be the exact same thing AGAIN? Ho hum.

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not ripping into Pokemon. I love the series. I'm just sick and tired of the same crap over and over and over again with no deviation in the iterations, which is something so very unlike Nintendo. I had such high hopes for the series but now it's just a subtle different game each and every time. Like the new set has a pedometer that 'raises your Pokemon'... and I understand that people are hailing that fact as the second coming of the Messiah. Until Pokemon becomes an online exclusive free MMO for the Wii I give up all hope of innovation for this series. But I'll still keep buying them. Because I'm a collectionist.

PS. Dear Game Freaks, the swimming sections of the game suck ass. Too big, too wide and far too many random encounters. Blah.

Katamari Exploitationcy

2010-05-05T02:37:00Z

I requested various subjects from my mates a while ago for blogging ideas and Jimmy suggested the once-unique Katamari Damacy series. I say 'once-unique' because everybody is already sick of this game largely because each iteration has largely been the exact identical formula time-in and time-out and with the exception of perhaps different objects to ensnare with your sticky little ball from outer space, different levels and maybe one or two different game modes the WOW factor of the Damacy's have for the most part outlived their exceptionalness in my eyes. Too much, too soon is the saying that can best be applied here.

It was an original premise. The first game had the King of the Cosmos joyriding throughout the universe when he spins out of control because he was going way too fast and he ended up destroying all the constellations since he spun out and careened into them all like a pinball in its respective machine. At least he wound up getting a high score. Yet instead of owning up to his mistake he basically chickenwings his son, the 'Prince', into rebuilding the solar system for him without any form of compensation. It must be said that the King of the Cosmos has awesome dry humor. In a nutshell, you're sent down to Earth to collect materials that the 'Humans' have supposedly prepared for you to aid you in rebuilding your constellations, and in order to rebuild these Stars you have to roll a super sticky ball othewise known as a Katamari around picking up whatever sticks to it in order to transform the ball into an astrological sign.

It's interesting because you start out small, with only things like thumbtacks and staples and erasers and the like sticking to your Katamari, but the more you collect, the bigger the ball gets and 'bigger' things can get stuck to it, eventually culminating in you running over cats and dogs and eventually humans (who, despite promising to help you, surely weren't expecting to be used as some noble sacrifice for the greater astrological good) and then its on to cars, trucks and even skyscrapers aren't exempt from the maniacal endless rolling. Once I managed to start getting the clouds to stick to the Katamari and even some Calamari chilling out in the ocean I knew things were starting to get just a little ridiculous.

Playing the original a half-decade ago on my PS2 and the wacky story freaked me right out. It didn't help matters that my gang of friends and I were drunk out of our minds when we booted it up, but the fact that the system stayed open until we straight up ruined the game by taking turns going through every level with drunken encouragement from an entourage of six other people five hours was a true testament to the then-freshness of the game. It's truly a tragedy that the developers have failed to come up with any new concept or variety to the game which simply result in the same model day in and day out, it's sort of like how every new Dance Dance Revolution game that comes out is exactly the same as the one prior to it, just with different playlists and not much else. If anything, I suppose that both series have their niche. I'll say it again however, it's a true shame that the strength of the brand has fallen so far from grace through redundant repetition.

Loved that deceptively simple control scheme too. The entire game uses one button and the two analog sticks to play. You have your 'accept' and 'cancel' buttons and while you're playing all you use are the two sticks, piloting the ball around the way you'd pilot, say, a dual-analog helicopter. Hold both sticks upward to move forward, tip one down while continuing to hold the other upward to bank to one way or the other, tilt each stick upward and downward continuosly to build up speed and click down on both sticks to pull a one-eighty (which is something helicopters haven't been able to pull off just yet).

It also helped that the game retailed for thirty bucks, this insured that the game would for the most part find its way into households whether the populace was aware of what they were purchasing or not thanks to the cheap price point, and this is largely where the newer iterations have also failed: selling a game like Katamari Damacy at full price, for what you're basically getting, is not worth a full sixty dollars. The quality of the game is there, as it has near limitless replayability as you return to the same levels over and over in an attempt to beat your time trial score and perhaps make a shot for the leaderboards if you're into that sort of thing, but overall it's a niche game that the publishers foolishly believed would become some sort of hit trend that some gamers would never be able to get enough of.

An adequate comparison would be Tetris. But the problem is, where I can never get enough of a good round of Tetris, Katamari gets old and boring with the same tired formula of always slowly making yourself larger and larger at the pace of a tortoise. I don't know about any other veterans of Katamari Damacy, but apart from listening to that sickeningly cute yet addictive music, there's little to no real incentive to hang out with the King of the Cosmos again. While all over the place and out of this world, his parties are always the same and it's that 'I'm bored' state of mind that's keeping me from coming back.

Halo 3 Achievement Hunting & Xbox Live servers shutting down for original Xbox

2010-04-30T17:17:00Z

As a layman's general bricklaying rule of thumb, the foundation is the fundamental base of anything that is worth maintaining for a long time. I'm talking durable in the sense that the *** we're building is still going to be around for a long time. Considering its generational ancestor managed to stay afloat for eight years after its release, I'm sure Halo 3 will still be just as heavily played as it is now, even after the release of Reach come the end of this year.

I check my blog backlog and see that I've been blogging off and on regularly about Halo 3 since 2007, the time of its release. Though I still feel guarded and slightly reserved when proclaiming my love of the Halo universe (how can I love it if I don't hold it in the same light as Mario and Zelda? I have resolved to merely admit my respect for the series) I can't deny that the game has obvious appeal and though I was once against the concept the story and the depth of the series has captured my attention and interest. But where the game really clicked wasn't when I brought it online to play against other people (while fun, it's more aggravating than anything), it's when I got a clan of four other people and then we took our fight online against the campaign

At first it was just for fun, but then we got a couple of the skulls and tried competitive campaign and I was instantly hooked. Not only does it add extra replayability to run through the campaign once again with up to three other people, but your tactics can completely change - including but not limited to Kamikaze runs by whipping a plasma grenade on your buddy's posterior and yelling at him to run headlong into the 'Hammer dude' effectively annihilating one problematic dilemma. It's fun to have another go through the game to pick up those co-op achievements with the added challenge of the handicaps imposed by the afore-mentioned decaying human heads, like enemies having more of a penchant to whipping grenades at you before they bite the dust, added armour to the Brutes, or half the weapon magazine for weapons you pick up. But there's a freaking awesome skull that must ALWAYS be turned on regardless of whether or not I'm playing for points, and that is the Grunt's Birthday Party. A seemingly useless skull, the real meaning of the skull's allure presents itself the moment you headshot a Grunt. Confetti spurts out of his head as the Grunt dies and dozens of children all scream together in joyous unison. YAYYYYYYYY! So very masochistically satisfying.

I've resolved to attempt to try and get all the achievements off the online multiplayer but the game, despite its advanced streamlined system of finding people to play against, makes it quite difficult to zero in on the specific achievement you would like to get. Add to the fact that the only real way to unlock said achievements is to play ranked matches and not social matches and you've got yourself a bit of a problem. See, I consider myself pretty good at Halo multiplayer, I don't mean to brag but three times out of four I'm usually the MVP of the match, but there are some games even playing social slayer, which is considered to be the place where those who aren't truly hardcore about the game go to have matches, where I can't even get over five kills because some *** can snipe me without even aiming the sniper rifle from across the map. Its games like that are frustrating. Then they have the audacity to teabag you. I'll try my best but some of the demands are ludicrous... such as surviving ten zombies in a game of Zombie Mode. I can barely survive two, let alone a battalion of the imbeciles. If anything, I'm sure my gamerscore for Halo will nestle itself comfortably at 1400 and not get much higher. Even if it doesn't, it's not really the end of the world. I'd probably be saving myself a lot of frustration.

Right?

I've never been much of an Xbox Live guy for the original Xbox. Granted, I got my Xbox in late 2004, early 2005 after trying out Ninja Gaiden BLEW MY MIND OUT OF THE WATER. I'm a masochist when it comes to videogames, and Ryu jumping around the screen hitting enemies with ridiculously agile moves and ninja stars and freaking running on water and (I'll just edit this out because I could go on forever)... of course Ninja Gaiden has an equally ridiculous camera system and the difficulty even had me scraping my teeth against concrete repeatedly but I digress. That is a rant worthy of its own proper blog. As I was saying, I was initially turned off by the barebones functionality of the original service, viewing it primarily as an excuse to force the rabid Halo fan base to pay a subscription fee for the right to play Halo 2 multiplayer online (wait a minute... is Halo 3 any different?!) and the service offered little else of interested to me as a consumer.

These days Xbox Live is a much more open and diverse service when it comes to measurement of quality and the fee can be justified but back then I was a very coeval sceptic of my opinion on just how badly Bill Gates was drilling a jackhammer into your rectal wallet. Nope, never too impressed with the original system and it only added to my frustration when I kept getting raped by the online virgins. Oh, I'm not knocking the Halo community... I have played many enjoyable matches against many respectable adversaries but when I get trounced by a group of little turds who then have the audacity to proclaim unto me "What grade are you in?" WOE BE TO THE NERDS AND GOD SHALL SMITE THEE WITH PLASMA SWORD WRATH.

See my blog about the inaccessibility of online shooters right HERE.

I have only one real fear going into this brand new day of servers shutting down on games because the cost of hosting far outweigh the financial benefit of allowing gamers to play amongst themselves. With the end of the service of Xbox Live for the original Xbox being a tragedy of sorts for the previous generation of gamers who refused to let go of their favourites, what does this signify for games on the Xbox 360's eventual outcome? Games that offer online-exclusive modes should be patched to offer the same content offline, in my opinion. That way the consumer won't feel gyped when content they've been used to having access to all this time suddenly disappears right out from underneath their nose.

Achievements function in much the same way, as well in terms of my amount of level of worry... what will be done about games whose Achievements are only attainable online once their respective servers go down? The answer I'm afraid it will be as of this moment with the apathy of game companies is 'absolutely nothing' and if that's the case then Halo 3's remaining forty or so online achievements will forever remain locked in the hands of new gamers to the series.

He's a Demon!

2010-04-09T20:42:00Z

He’s a Demon!

Just watched the Halo Legends compilation… my favourite has to be 1337. Drop dead funny as all hell. LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU! …Like he’s going to fall for that.

Despite the fact that it came out FOREVER ago, I went ahead and finally opened my copy of Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors. Being an enormous Dragon Quest/Warrior fan, I tended to purchase anything I could of the series (still looking for Monsters, gotta love Dragon Quest ripping off Pokemon!) and seeing as how it came out on the Wii, I was eager to see how the sword would work out. Now that I’ve had a chance to play the first two chapters, my impression is that of ‘tolerable, but there are some problems’. First off, get the notion that this is an RPG out of your head because it isn’t. It’s an on rails hack ‘n slash light(sword?)gun game. Now I don’t have a problem with that, what does scratch the sensitive part of my patience is the fact that the movement controls are so distinctly horrible. You don’t use the Classic Controller for the game, nor do you incorporate the Nunchuck in any way, though that would have been a nice bonus. Nope, this game is Wiimote exclusive. You advance forward drunkenly by holding up on the controller, and because the control pad is so small, you’re bound to hit left and right a couple of times while you do it. And to run, you also must hold the B Trigger on the remote’s underside while you hold up, so as you can imagine this eventually cramps up your hand if you do it continuously.

Battles are a mixture of fun and frustration. You swing the remote to simulate a sword swinging across the screen and damaging any enemies that are in the arc of the blade, but the motions are imprecise. That’s why the creators offered a ‘lock’ where you can hypothetically aim at the press of a button, which puts a reticule on the screen letting you know that’s where you going to hit. So horizontal and vertical slashes work great using the lock-on, however, the sensor bar seems to have a lot of problems with picking up a diagonal slice so my advice is to not even make the attempt. Take out enemies methodically with up and downs, and left to rights. By pushing any direction on the control pad you can tell your normally dormant computer-controlled companion to cast a spell or heal, but it’s largely useless if you know what you’re doing. Also, there’s a Limit Break-esque special attack that you can unleash by offing enough monsters. These are silly in the sense that they’re ridiculously powerful but you have to mimic preparation movements, such as holding your remote vertically in the air and then bringing it down with as much intensity as you can. Nonsense, but still fun.

You have a hub town where you can buy armour, and using materials gained in the different levels can temper your weapon to make it stronger or give it distinct traits and elementals. Your house is used to keep items that are clogging up your inventory that (for some reason) you wouldn’t want to sell. The church saves your game and there’s a hidden cave where you can trade Mini Medals to a talking cat for some sweet loot, but aside from the Castle that’s pretty much it. A barebones town whose true purpose is rather totally transparent. And there’s nothing wrong with that. My only real problem in terms of the different areas are their sheer linearity. You can basically get to the end of every single area by holding forward and your character will twist and turn around the path for you until you walk through a trip line that sets off a pre-set random encounter. Some levels offer branching paths but you’re forced to backtrack if you don’t pick the right one the first time as the one you picked is usually either a dead-end or a dead-end with a treasure. *throws hands up in the air in excitement*

The levels serve their purpose as they are intended to do. They are filler, and once you reach the end and vanquish the boss (with a pretty cool ‘Deal the Final Blow’ Mortal Kombat feel) you get some story and then a ranking based on your actions during the level. That’s where I got hooked into the game, getting the best ranking not only rises your notoriety (in which you gain ranks with certain perks, such as a higher resistance to poison) but also gives you better items to temper your weapons with. I’m a huge fan of videogames that encourage achieving perfection in replayability with reward, and so I run through the levels I’ve already beaten as quickly as possible, blocking as many attacks as I can, and defeating enemies with precise hits as I try not to lose my Hit Combo, all in the name of achieving that elusive S rank. As long as the game continues to challenge my ability to achieve a perfect rank in every level, so too will I continue to slog through the game’s muddy graphics and childish linearity.

While we’re at it, Fleurette is the hottest French Gothic Lolita this side of any Dragon Quest game I’ve ever played. A bientot, Cheri!

Final Fantasy II came out on the Virtual Console just recently and for me, this was a no-brainer instant download even though I couldn’t really afford it. Out came the VISA. “But it’s for emergencies!” *** it. FINAL FANTASY II CAME OUT. THIS IS AN EMERGENCY! A couple of seconds watching Mario run from left to right as the game magically downloaded onto my Wii’s SD Card and BANG! Memories of my eight year old self falling head over heels in love with my very first RPG came flooding back.    Hard to believe that this version is the most inferior at of all the rereleases and remakes… though I have to quickly say that I was not crazy about the DS remake. LOVED the huge spike in difficulty (as this original ‘easy’ version is pathetic) but wasn’t a fan of the 3D landscapes. Anyone worth his beans in Final Fantasy savvy knows that this is also technically the fourth in the series but it was technically the second to be released on a home Nintendo console so there’s your reasoning behind that one.

I was aware of the changes made to the PSX version (the reworked script was nice but the load times were horrid) and then the GBA remake (with slightly touched up graphics, more adjustments to the script, and the ability to choose your final party and bonus dungeons! In my opinion, as an expert on Final Fantasy IV this is the definitive version to get) so it’s safe to say that Final Fantasy II grew up as I did and so going back to the original North American Super NES version after all this time is just… well, it’s eye-opening.

First of all, the game is way too easy. While the Japanese were getting their first taste of the Active-Time Battle system, we weren’t even privy to it. I didn’t even notice until I went to switch the settings that American gamers weren’t even given the choice. The game is permanently on ‘Wait’ mode and all you can change is the speed of battle and the speed at which text cycles through itself during battle. With that being said, even at 1 I was never in any danger of being killed. There’s a noticeable difference in Boss HP, as well. I played all the way to where Cecil becomes a Paladin, and the second time you fight Milon (the rear attack) I literally killed him off with 2 spells of Fire 2 that did 1200 points of damage each. That’s just ridiculous, because I can clearly remember him nearly killing my party the first time I went against him. Cecil was the sole survivor and he was poisoned and had 43 points of HP left and I made him swing one last time and the *** keeled over and died. Intense.

Either I’m getting way better at RPGs or I wasn’t using the right battle strategy back then.

Oh well. One thing I noticed for each new release of Final Fantasy II was that the sound effects for the ‘Virus’ spell were always slightly off… at the very least now I get the authentic sound byte as apparently only the Super NES can produce it! When you see the green viral circles splattered across an enemy… you can look forward to hearing the screeching Doo-loo-doo-DOO! Nails on a chalkboard baby. Just the way I like it. Oh yeah. Also, I miss naming my RPG characters ***. I know that with current technology it’s impossible because of how voice actors constantly refer to the characters by name… but it’s just fun to go through the game with a band of characters that reflect you and your life in some merit. Or you could just name the characters penis.

After all my close friends decided to go out and pick up Halo 3 ODST and ranting and raving to me about the new game mode called Firefight (which is basically a simple rip of Horde from Gears of War 2) I said to hell with waiting for the price to come down and I went and got it myself. It’s basically Halo 3 but with subtle differences. The first thing I noticed was that since you’ve downgraded from being a Spartan you’re no longer Super Mario… you can’t make insanely long and floaty jumps anymore. The second thing to go is the fact that you can no longer dual-wield weapons… something that is noticeably apparent when you’re getting your ass handed to you and you need to reload more often than usual, which is a perfect segueway into my third and last observation and this is the only real negative comment I have to say for the game: health no longer restores itself and we’ve downgraded back into the first person shooters of the ‘90s, people, meaning I was constantly dodging enemy fire and searching like mad for magical health kits that make all the boo-boos instantly disappear so I could continue brining the pain. I hate that.

I’ve been weaned on the modern shooters now where if you take cover and wait patiently enough, the wounds disappear by themselves and you can pop back out for a couple more shots before diving back into cover to heal again. It was an odd change for me when I played the original Halo way back when, but then again that was practically a decade ago. Now we’re in the next console generation and practically every first person shooter worth its weight in salt has forsaken the now redundant ‘health bar’ for ‘health regeneration’ and that was fine. It was seen as the evolution of health in an FPS, and that’s why now that I’m playing a shooter where the health bar makes its unwelcome return I’m left with the sour taste of an expired rotten pickle of five years in my mouth. To be fair, your character does have a ‘Stamina’ bar that depletes first before you begin to lose health, but on anything higher than Normal this miniscule bar is the equivalent of the thinnest hymen, somebody so much as breathes on you and there goes your protection.

I’ve just been playing Firefight with the boys and haven’t done too much of the single player. The single player mode had me listening to some ugly dude yamming it up to some other ugly chick (seriously, the graphics for humans in the Halo series are just horrible) and then a black guy slaps your avatar awake and off you go. I awoke in a ruined New Mombasa and made my way to a building where I found the helmet of one of my mates, and then via a convenient flashback, am currently playing as that person. Hooray, I get to see how some dude gets his head blown off and just how his helmet got wedged into a wall. Delightful. I’m not thinking much of the game so far, if for the health system handicap. I’m bitching, aren’t I? Oh dear.

Firefight consists of your team fighting against a nonstop invasion of enemies to see how long you can hold out before they come and consume your inanimate brains. As an added touch, each ‘round’ is divided into five enemy waves that come with handicaps in the form of skulls that strengthen the enemy in a number of ways, from doubling their shields to halving the amount of ammo you get from a downed enemy’s weapon. It’s a fun and welcome new mode because it encourages a different team tactic then basically just ‘killing the other team’. You’re encouraged to work together to take down the ‘Hammer Guy’, to split apart and try to lure the flying ‘Bees’ into closed corridors to take them out instead of them flying all over an open area, and to call out ‘Sniper Dude’ positions to your bros so they can act quickly before you’re all picked off.    It encourages a strategy of trying to stay alive, and that’s a nice and interesting change of pace. Besides, popping a Grunt in the face and watching confetti spill out and little children screaming “Yay!” never gets old. :)

On a totally different (and somewhat odd note), ‘Hey, Soul Sister’ by Train is officially my Halo 3 Multiplayer killing song if for no other reason than it keeps playing on iTunes whenever I’m fragging some internet fools.

Final Fantasy XIII.

The camera follows the character moving around the screen much too closely. Out of all the things I’m going to write about this game, my thoughts about the linearity and any impressions about the battle system and the ins and outs, likes and dislikes I have about this long-awaited game… I’m going to b*tch about the proximity of the camera because it’s driving me up the wall batshit insane. Sure, Final Fantasy XII employed the same damned free-roaming camera mechanic but IT ALSO LET YOU ZOOM THE HELL OUT.    It’s nice to look around and marvel at your surroundings… not that marvelling at how lifelike the texture creases in Snow’s tuque are is a bad thing, it just gets old after, oh, a minute.

You’ve no doubt heard about the Internet (public) hardcore uproar about the fact that Final Fantasy XIII is extremely linear with hardly any side-quests and next to no roads off the beaten path except for, say, a group of monsters or a treasure chest that houses five potions or some stupid thing. It’s true. You’re practically always holding up with the occasional little puzzle or boss fight to switch things up for you, but they’re never all that taxing. Scratch that, the boss fight could be if you’re just mashing the X Button as that no longer really works anymore. Before I talk about battles, just know that all you have to do is basically get from Point A to Point B, and watch a couple of cut scenes and then rinse, lather and repeat.

Battles have seen yet another overhaul, this time really showcasing a difference between different classes on the battlefield. Magic users have near triple the power over spells as Physical users do, and the brawlers really do showcase the damage they can do on the damage indicators. And yet not all enemies go down simply with mashing and magic. Some enemies have amazingly high defence and in attack in packs, meaning they can decimate you if you aren’t careful in assigning your jobs to your party members. Since you can only control one character during battles, it’s imperative the AI knows exactly what you want it to be doing, whether healing or assigning buffs and debuffs to the other people on the battlefield. In order to break through this defence, you have to string together a chain of hits long enough to cause him to stagger, therefore paving the way for twenty seconds or so of amazingly high damage dealing on your behalf.

They’ve done away with experience points again. They’ve instead replaced it with a kind of Sphere Grid hybrid where you spend a certain amount of points you get from battle (…. Experience points? NO. DENIED. DIE. THROW YOURSELF OFF A CLIFF. They’re crystal points or some ***. God, I’m high.) in the job of your choice, choosing abilities to learn and whether your Strength, HP or Magic goes up. That’s right, they raped and pillaged all the other stats. Gone. Out the door. No more magic defence, defence, or useless crap like luck for you guys anymore. Who even cares! Why are we making a game? Let’s just make a movie and the bastards can watch it! Let’s call it Spirits Within! I NEED A BLOW JOB! … As you can tell, I’m pretty bitter at just how much they streamlined this game.

There’s one part of Final Fantasy XIII I really enjoyed over anything else I’ve played so far, and the segment didn’t have a lick of action in it and had short cut scenes. It’s at the end of chapter four and you’re in a ‘town’, for lack of a better way to pinpoint the location. You’re looking for someone. The ambience is brilliant, the music in the background reflects the tone perfectly and everyone you stop to speak with is encouraging you to just go ahead ‘and get it done.’ Moments like those are the reason I play Final Fantasy. Muse Juice. Gives me material to incorporate into my own writing. It’s why I’ve been hooked from IV onward… each story promises an amazing and original tale. I guess after so many impressive tales (VI and X especially) I’ve just been spoiled into having too high expectations. I don’t really relate to any of these characters. There doesn’t seem to be enough space or time to properly humanize them. I noticed they also grunt a lot when they don’t know what to say. It’s appealing.

Not going the mainstream approach and having corridor levels with nonstop action! If the inevitable FF XV continues this trend… I just may have to defect from the Final Fantasy brand. It’s left a bitter taste in my mouth. In my mind, Final Fantasy X was the last ‘great’ Final Fantasy, with the original creator leaving and Nobuo Uematsu bowing out as well to begin his own company. It seems that ever since, Final Fantasy has been struggling to find itself with each consecutive release. Here’s hoping it remembers its lineage.

Brutal Legend: Grand Theft Auto + WarCraft + Heavy Metal = For the Win

2010-01-18T20:31:00Z

When I first heard of Brutal Legend, I wasn't entirely certain what to think. Heavy Metal Legend of Zelda? Not quite (but close, actually). A medieval Grand Theft Auto? Again, not quite (but close). Then when the game released I read an article discussing something that sort of turned me off from the game... it incorporated real time strategy battles ala WarCraft, StarCraft, or any Craft in general. Now I consider myself quite an avid gamer and will give anything a fair shot but I have to admit RTS games are the ones that are generally the lowest on my spectrum simply because crap happens too fast for me to keep up with while wrestling the controls to try and doll out support of any kind. Especially on consoles. But I'm getting ahead of myself here, I'll discuss those battles in their own section but I WILL say that they aren't as bad as I made them out to be once I got around to trying them out.

I've heard of Tim Schafer. Never had the honour of trying out his creations because at their time of their release I was always either on another console or didn't have the sufficient financial means to afford his games. Grim Fandango and Psychonauts as well as some of his LucasArts stuff fell by the wayside for me, unfortunately. I make it a steady habit to keep up with everything videogames as much as I can however, and Tim Schafer is something of an urban legend in the industry so I knew that when I booted up the game I'd be exposed to something new and different (and let's face it, that's the reason we play videogames).

With that being said, I wasn't expecting this.

The game stars Eddie Riggs, a roadie protagonist who only wears black and who is used to always living in the shadows and letting others have all the fame. He understands that the spotlight isn't his place and has come to accept that his point of being is to make another look undeniably awesome. It is with that monologue at the beginning of the game (which is accompanied with the choice of censoring swearing and gore if that isn't your thing) that he saves a careless and reckless band member and winds up getting crushed by his own set. His blood seeps onto his belt buckle, a metallic beast, and it awakens the mythical God Ormagodden, who kills all the band members (who are more emo than heavy metal, anyway) and transports Eddie back to his world, a world of Heavy Metal. A place where his guitar shoots out fire and electricity and humanity is being oppressed. I won't spoil anymore of the game for you, but I should say that the story, voice acting and facial feature animation are all top-notch. You will care about these characters and they will make you laugh and smile, and sometimes even be generally touched by their contextual circumstance.

It's not all goofy Jack Black jokes and light heartedness, halfway through, the game ditches the comedy and goes Uber-DARK. Times are tough, and dark times means undead Goth Kids trying to rip out your spleen to decorate their walls. I'm not even kidding. The game idolizes the old Heavy Metal, pre-nineties and all the bastardized sub-genres that spawned from the original subject: the game spares no expense at throwing light-hearted jabs at Hair-Metal and Emo Punk Rock especially. On a separate note: never piss off a goth chick. She will make your life a living hell until you rip her heart out and throw it in a river of black tears.

The game generally follows the Grand Theft Auto formula for the most part, where you are thrust into a vast open world dynamic and can venture wherever you want pretty much directly from the get-go, but all sidequests and main missions are illuminated by shining light descending from the heavens that serve as waypoints and a general compass for wherever you would like to drive off toward. The main world houses plenty of secrets for you to drive off and find, such as Bound Dragons that upon being freed will grant you a small health bonus and the like after you've gone and freed ten; thirteen hidden gargoyle statues that tell the tale of the land, and hidden monuments of Rock that must be risen from the ground that allow you to visit Ozzy freakin' Osbourne for powerups and that also unlock various tracks to listen to on your car radio.

The further you progress through the main missions, the more sidequests become available and aread that were previously locked became available to explore so the game never feels monotonous with its locals. My biggest problem with Grand Theft Auto and its brethren was that a lot of the areas felt the same, with reused building textures and straight roads criss-crossing across one another so that you couldn't really memorize the land unless you played way too much while casual gamers would always be hitting the select button every five seconds just to see the map and get their bearings. Brutal Legend escapes that problem because every single area is completely different from the last which helps it stand out as showcasing a world that is truly alive and unique.

There are some areas where you will be required to brandish a weapon and hack your way through legions of enemies in order to obtain your objective. To me, combat felt a bit loose and wonky with little indication that you were doing physical damage to the enemy (they generally get red patches on their body until they fall over). So while the damage indicator is a bit loose everything else works great. You've got an axe combo and a strong attack, an earthquake attack that is great for separating a group of enemies and guitar attacks that serve as projectiles; with your instrument of musical death you'll be throwing lightning and fireballs in no time. Don't rely on the instrument too much however because it will overheat and you will be forced to defend yourself or fall back for a couple of moments while it cools down. Your own health regenerates (ala Master Chief in Halo) and the damage indicator is much like that of Call of Duty... the screen will begin to saturate itself in reddish tone when you're close to dying and when death is imminent, the screen will flash and send you into epileptic seizure. Dying however is simply a return to a previous checkpoint and you don't lost anything so it's not too bad.

The game encourages you to always be in your car, which is your armor and your mate for practically the entirety of the game. At the beginning of the game it doesn't look like much, but by the end of the game you'll have a car that will hurtle lightning bolts, have a huge front to ram enemies off the road, and huge speakers on the sides that will blow away the ears of all standard infantry. You'll be driving a heavy metal death tank of epic proportions guaranteed. You will constantly be initiating your nitro boost just to get from point A to point B, and there's no feeling quite like jumping over a Woolly Mammoth with your car, the aptly named Druid Plow.

Assuming of course, you take the time to find the currency required to pay the funds Mr. Osbourne demands. Which is basically my only complaint with the game. Upon beating it, the game opens up and allows you to free-roam the country side, doing whatever you please and finishing the sidequests and finding the secret items you didn't find the first round through. Except you have no way of knowing where the remaining hidden objects are. There's no one to give you clues or a mechanic that encircles the general area that still has remaining secret items. So either you're extremely patient and drive around the entire world or you go and Youtube that crap. Which is what I'm going to have to do unfortunately, as I've no interest in covering every square inch of Bladehenge.

Not only can your guitar serve you as a weapon, it can be incorporated for many other acts as well. On its own at the start of your adventure it's not worth too much, but as you progress further you'll find monuments that will teach Eddie some pretty awesome songs. Some you will rarely (if ever) utilize, but others you'll be jamming on almost constantly, such as the riff that summons the Druid Plow to your position and various buffers you can play to augment your troops or handicap the other team on the battlefield. My favorite summons a flaming crashing zeppelin to crash at your position and decimate any enemies at that position. FLAMING NUCLEAR BLIMP OF DEATH! God, I'd spam that move over and over if I could. The facemelter (whose function is pretty obvious) is also effective, as well.

Now, onto the part of the game that I'm not too crazy about. At about fifteen to twenty percent in, you'll experience your first 'Stage Battle'. This is the equivalent of a RTS battle, one team against another. This aspect of the game plays out slowly and latches onto my patience strings and plays them particularly abusively, so that on at least two occasions I either shut my system off in frustration or had to restart because things went wrong fairly late in the battle. I LOATHE losing half an hour of my time contributing toward something that may not lead to anything and ultimately culminate in having to restart everything I've gone and done. Maybe I'm just not a strategist. That's probably it. Give me a sword and I'll charge headfirst into battle. HOO-RAH!

You start by building your 'stage' (your fort) and must mine 'fan springs' to get them to come to your show and grant you currency to build your forces, upgrade your stage or promote your troops to a stronger class. Along the way you have to defend your 'fan springs' from the enemy who are vying for fans just as much as you are, and ultimately traversing the battlefield to take down their stage before they do the same to you. You've got your standard RTS shortcut for consoles, the control pad will let you shout out quick orders like 'Attack! Stay! Defend! Follow Me!' and for the most part it works, until things start to get hectic, and in the later stages of the solo campaign and especially multiplayer where you're playing against an adversary who has a decent amount of intelligence you're going to get frustrated because you won't be able to dole out commands as quickly as you'd like. I hope this is an area Double Fine is going to refine for the sequel. At least you can participate in the battle as well, choosing to help out your troops by fighting alongside them or buffing them out.

The sidequests are fairly standard to the free-roaming genre. Ambush a squad of enemies (the most recurring, and the one that gets annoying the quickest), defend your position (basically, mounting your car on a rotating spindle and attacking all incoming forces) as Eddie puts it, "Death From Above. By Car!' Hunting Missions where you have to exterminate a set amount of enemies, and of course racing missions where you must follow waypoints in an effort to defeat a very ugly demon whom Eddie loves to tease. What the hell does Clambake even mean, anyway? After that, you've got random odd and end missions that are underused, such as freeing a cave for a bat who basically admitted to defecating on your head and keeping a band of men away one dude who's trying to hit on a chick so they don't ***-block him. Each mission you accomplish grants you a small Fire Tribute, which you can then accumulate and send over to Ozzy's way.

With all that Eddie does, it's amazing that he never truly gets any recognition for his noble acts and near omniscient power. Brutal Legend is a wonderful mash-up of different genres that are well executed together but not one aspect truly stands out over the others. The game is unfortunately short, but there's definitely enough material here for a more than adequate sequel. I never wanted to leave the wonderful world of Brutal Legend. I wanted to keep fighting for the peace of Bladehenge. So while I wait, I'm definitely going to pick up Psychonauts now. Besides, for the truly masochistic out there, there's always Brutal difficulty.

Super Mario Kart Is My Never-Healing Open Wound

2009-12-06T18:15:00Z

Many of you long-time Nintendo gamers are no doubt salivating over the fact that the original Mario Kart has finally been released on the Virtual Console. If so, then good for you. It feels great to have a beloved game finally made available for download after waiting so long for it, doesn't it? I felt the same way when Super Mario RPG was released on the Virtual Console, and various other role-playing games. I'm still awaiting the original Smash Brothers but that's beside the point. I took the opportunity to download the game even if I have the original cartridge just for the heck of it. Virtual Console’s promise of non-erasing memory batteries of a Super NES cartridge was just too good to pass up on the Time Trials.

What I found was that time has not been kind to the first in a series that pioneered an entirely new racing genre. Particularly, I had a painful hernia about trying to (re)grasp those awfully loose controls. Nostalgia has a funny way of masking the flaws of a great game, especially if that great game also happened to spawn an entire new racing genre. It happened to me just as I was playing through the game’s 50cc mode (which is the equivalent to easy A.I. and non-challenging gameplay).

Want to know what happened to me? Fine. I started the second cup on 50cc (the Flower Cup) and I kept slipping into the cracks and crevices almost constantly. I had lost the honed-to-a-razor-edge Mario Kart skills I had down pat when I was eleven years of age and instead had come to rely on easy controls thanks to modern day races that promised a smooth experience. As a result to my desensitization and exposure to moderately acute and tight controls in modern-day racers, it was all I could do simply to drive straight in the game.

So after an embarrassing amount of plunges and Lakitu fishing me out of the abyss an absurd amount of times (and raping me of coins via his toll) I said ‘perhaps this isn’t the same game I remember through my rose-tinted glasses.’ After placing fifth twice in a row and Ranking Out I shut off the game and was content to never slog through it ever again, maybe only dolling it out for some heated two—player battle royales whenever I had some friends over to chill.

It’s insane because I know plenty of hardcore Mario Karters who swear by the original of the series (...of the species?) and worship its legendary controls and declare the track design to be the best of the series. Obviously, I’m at odds with their claim that the controls are epic (pushing left to go left to clear the turn is fine, pushing left and careening into the sand pit or the water hazard just next to me is not my idea of ‘tight control’) but I must agree that the track design is very strong. These friends of mine still regularly time trial in the game, trying their best to achieve straight lines and shave smaller-than-milliseconds-time off their scores. I don’t see the allure, but maybe that’s just me.

So yes, the levels are well designed. If you can get over the fact that all the levels are completely flat and are basically a bitmap laid flat down across the screen and you’re racing ‘over’ the map via Mode 7. Real quick, Mode 7 was awesome in 1992. Now all it does is hurt my eyes.

It’s actually a bit sad for me, and a wakeup call. As the genre evolves and games become more and more streamlined and sophisticated, it becomes harder and harder to just go back and enjoy the classic except to appreciate them for what they are and the legacies they created and the revolution they caused at their release date in time. Case in point: I also grew up with the Final Fantasies, the Resident Evils, and the Legend of Zeldas. Play each of these series’ most recent outings and then go back and play their first release. It’s downright masochistic.

I grew up with Mario Kart but set it aside when newer games and newer consoles were released. Throughout three console generations memories of racing bliss and whipping red shells at my friends’ back-sides and suffering the subsequent aggravated shoulder punch that would follow will never leave me. The endless nights spent playing Battle Mode with my friends who wanted ‘just one more round to kick your ass’ meant entire weekends were spent glued to our cathode-ray tubes driving around those four battle arenas cruising for a bruising.

Super Mario Kart is fun for what it is, and pissing off your friends with a well-thrown banana or ramming into them full speed with a Star never gets old. But there’s no denying the fact the game is dated, and its age is truly beginning to show.

Top Five Best Tracks (in no particular order)

Battle Course 2

Racing around a beach with water on all sides and barricades offering great protection against homing red-shells meant you had to get right in there in close proximity to your enemy to take them out, and if you couldn’t shake an incoming assailant, you could always use a feather to hop into coloured barricades and track them from inside of there.

Battle Course 4

The classic battle course I’m sure everybody remembers. It doesn’t get much better than this. Mind games aplenty, bananas laid out at every turn and green shells become veritable death threats in this level when fired in those secluded areas.

Mario Circuit 1

A vintage and classical stage that every Mario Kart aficionado holds near and dear to their heart. Who doesn’t love using the Mushroom to boost through that second to last curve straight to the finish line, causing the rest of the group to swear in sweet, sweet unison?

Koopa Beach 1

There’s just something about this level that is calming and entertaining at the same time. Maybe it’s the awesome ditty that plays that never wants to escape my mind afterward. Using a mushroom to skid across the water is also all degrees of awesome.

Choco Island 2

This level was created solely to appease the offroader in all of us. When you get to that big brown lake of intestinal discharge you know you need to drive RIGHT THROUGH IT.

Top Five Worst Tracks

Battle Course 3

What the crap is this? In battle mode you have to be able to effectively slip in and out from offensive to defensive and have an effective terrain to evade your enemy’s attacks. This level offers none of that and has ice blocks that bring you to a dead halt and bounce you backward while you’re trying to escape. It’s more annoying than a noisy neighbour on a Saturday morning. Matches never last long on this course.

Ghost Valley 2

The course that made me stop my retro playback. Just... No.

Donut Plains 2

Pot holes that slowed you down and hell-bent-on-sucking-your-face Monty Moles. No thanks.

Koopa Beach 2

Overgrown fauna and amoeba languishes practically the entire course on land so unless you’ve got some sort of Mushroom boost you can just forget about land driving. As a result, this level has no real discernable landmarks and feels a tad monotonous.

Rainbow Road

Just friggin’ look at it. NO. But... it’s called the Rainbow Road and you will know when you get there! You go there when you DIE.

Guaranteed Time Killers #1 Phantasy Star Online

2009-11-26T20:41:00Z

As anybody who owns this game on their Dreamcast, Gamecube or Xbox can testify, Phantasy Star Online was a glorified Diablo in three dimensions. It was not uncommon for me to be playing with three of my friends each and every single weekend on a mad quest to score some amazing loot, raise some MAGs or just see how far we could get by ratcheting up the difficulty going through the same four levels over and over again. That's right, there were only four levels in this game but don't let that stop you. Hint: it won't. Even if you try to let it.

If you look back on it now, you'd basically see a restrictive game with a minimal amount of enemies who were differentiated in difficulty by a different colour palette. You had a weak, strong and special attack and a couple of elemental spells to cast which could be combined into any three-hit combination. You had classes that are considered the norm these days: a tank class, a long-range class and a mage class. Three weapon types: swords, guns and staffs. Weapons and armour of varying stats were randomly sold at the store each time you came back from the world with a heavy reliance on your level. Quests were given out at a Guild and when you couldn’t advance because of tough enemies you were required of course to grind your way to being able to defeat them and continue ever onward. Yawn, right?

Those were the limitations which a lot of people who played the game surprisingly had little to no complaints about because of the experience that lay underneath all those tired or non-impressive conventions. The game had so many reasons to replay and replay and replay and replay those levels all over again just one more time: there is a small chance that a unique enemy will be in the level when you travel to it (either to continue the story or on a quest run) and an even smaller chance that it will drop an incredibly rare item. Bosses were the same.

Though there were only four of them, who could ever forget their experience with the larger than life level bosses, from an enormous Dragon that raced toward your characters by burying itself underground , a leviathan worm you had to shoot at from a raft, a computer mainframe that has become viral and of course the series' end game boss mainstay Dark Falz itself - which had up to three varying forms? Each boss fight was a battle of desperation that called for ample level grinding and a good memorization of the boss' attack patterns.

Some quests had to be completed in a specific order or some circumstances had to be done just right in order to receive some truly ridiculous loot, such as a frying pan or an awesome scythe that saps your energy. It can be considered truthful that the main reason many people played the game to near-nauseous levels of repetition was because of the promise of better loot and to make their friends ever jealous.

It was one of the first console games were teams could communicate with one another via symbols and keyboard chat. The F keys would enable your character to do various actions such as dancing or rolling on the ground (much like your character can do in World of WarCraft these days with a simple backslash prompt command). Keep in mind that there was no voice chat technology yet.

But there was more. Some played through the levels for the sheer grind of it, to have that ever-inflating number next to their name serve as their girth of intimidation whenever it came to going online and playing with friends or strangers. Sega used to hold special competitions or events where people could win special equipment or download more quests to embark upon online. Others played through the levels simply to find Monogrinders, which would increase the parameters of your weapons a little bit each and every time you would use them. It was not uncommon to see a character with a sword +54 or the like whenever you’d play with them. Levels initially capped at 100 but upon the release of the second episode the cap was raised to 200. I myself have never passed 76 and my time with the game is over a hundred hours, so you can begin to get an idea of the kind of devotion it took to play PSO.

There was also a small pet that followed you around called a MAG, a sort of robot that increases four of your parameters the more you would feed it. Depending on what diet you kept your MAG on, it would increase your strength, defence, accuracy or magic power or any combination of the four by a respectable amount. It would also morph and change shape depending on how much it liked you and what you were feeding it. Upon feeding the little machines a specific item or combination; they could even metamorphisize into vintage SEGA systems, such as the Genesis or Master System! A neat little Easter Egg for sure.

Phantasy Star Online was a truly addictive experience, and I know friends who are still playing the game today offline and whose times have far surpassed the three hundred hour mark. Though there is no new content, it is always an enjoyable experience to create a new character and restart from level 1, going through the adventure again with friends as a class you may never have initially chosen. It was even given a sequel, Phantasy Star Universe, with mixed results. Now the series has made its way to the portables with a DS sequel. And yet, the planet of Ragol is always beckoning to be explored again and again...

Modern Warfare : The Nuclear Bomb

2009-11-19T16:35:00Z

SPOILER WARNING: For any of you who haven't played the original Modern Warfare and have the intention, then read no further as I am going to be discussing and giving my impression of a major revelation in the game.

Yeah yeah, the second Modern Warfare is out so why am I blogging about the first one is probably the question you're currently asking yourself. The answer to that question lies within the fact that Modern Warfare was one of the earliest casualties of my 'pile of shame', being thrown almost instantaneously into the heap the moment I purchased the game back in 2007. HEINOUS BLASPHEMY, you must be screaming into your headsets, but keep in mind at the time I was finishing up entries from my PS2 and GCN pile of shames. I feel like I'm always on the backburner when it comes to playing games, as there never seems to be enough hours in the day to properly enjoy a game without having some other priority (such as a job, university, chores and sustenance) preceeding it. But I digress...

The release of the second Modern Warfare (technically, Call of Duty 6) has pushed up the original's priority in my pile of shame considerably. I'm really big on consuming media in order, you see, and therefore in order to properly enjoy the second Modern Warfare I must play through the first to properly understand the improvements and the nuances and the tinkering incorporated into the sequel. Though since this is an entry into the pile of shame I must therefore skip the multiplayer action in favor of the sequel's, since most players will immigrate to the second game's multiplayer upon its release. So, I'm just a little saddened that I missed the two-year Modern Warfare multiplayer epidemic but something tells me I'll survive once I've gone onto the second game.

I began playing on Hardened, since I find the normal difficulty a tad boring and easy and Veteran far too insane (one-hit kills? No thanks). I made it all the way through the first act and found myself thoroughly enjoying the gameplay experience. I wasn't expecting to actually man an AC130 and let me just say that the first mission in the sinking ship was intense.

But nothing prepared me for the epilogue of the first act.

The Nuclear Bomb.

The epilogue begins with you and your fellow marines attempting to bring your stranded tank 'Warpig' to safety, and waltzing through enemy infested streets. Believe it or not, that's the easy part as you gun down terrorists with rocket launchers and taking out entire squadrons of trigger happy enemies as you hustle your way through broken-down buildings and lobbing grenades back at baddies who've thrown them first. The second part of the mission has you manning a rocket launcher in a helicopter and swooping in a battlefield to soften the resistance against your ground forces.

In that mission you disembark from your chopper twice for search and rescue missions, with the foreshadowing report from higher command that the terrorist in question may have his hands on a live nuclear bomb and that forces may be called back until the threat can be properly assessed.

'Big deal' You tell yourself, 'He's got a bomb. Okay. We'll find him and take him out before he uses it on American soil.'

Then the chopper next to you gets hits by a rocket launcher and goes down and yet despite the rumblings and growing uneasiness, your team goes out one final time to find the survivor and get them to safety. You make your way to the downed chopper, hoist the survivor on your shoulders and cart them back to your own chopper, relieved that you saved a mate. You watch as your chopper lifts off the ground and you're still shooting to provide cover support, even lobbing a grenade as a final farewell to those baddies. It's a great victory, you and four other choppers are clearing out from the city and you're just about to breathe a sigh of relief and finally let down your guard when it happens.

A huge mushroom cloud suddenly appears and a dust wind rushes toward you. You lose your breath as you realize that the psychotic terrorist actually detonated it in his own city. Then your heart sinks as you realize that you're going to be caught in it. It consumes all your fellow helicopters and you think for a fleeting moment that maybe you'll be able to outrun the blast but it's all for naught as your chopper goes down in circles and you're holding on for dear life. The guy next to you flies out. The pilot is screaming. Then it all goes black and you're watching a news report about a nuclear bomb going off.

Then the next part is the most horrific.

You are given control of your character who survived the nuke. Everything is saturated in crimson red. You crawl out of the helicopter and try to get up, now so frail that just standing up nearly kills you and you crumple to the ground once more; with a feeling that your limbs are barely hanging onto the rest of your body. There is static on the radio and no music, not a single sound but death's rapture coming to consume you. You take a final look at the mushroom cloud and stop breathing as the screen fades to gray.

Such a powerful effect and it left me completely speechless. The horrors of the nuclear holocaust explored in a videogame. When I finally got over the scene I told myself: "THIS is why I play videogames." Infinity Ward has created such a great scene that conveys such a powerful emotion of actually making you live through a nuclear bomb that the commentary provided would be impossible to communicate through any other means of media; the lasting emotional effect would not be the same if this scene played out in a movie or in a work of literature,

I have to commend and tip my hat to Infinity Ward for creating such a work of beautiful (if a bit macabre) art in a videogame.

The Video Game Collection + Old GI Magazines Available Online?

2009-11-17T19:35:00Z

NOTE: I will be editing this blog later on with photos of some of my game collection when time allows. Yes, SOME. There is no way I can fit the entire collection together. I literally need a vault, or a room in my household dedicated solely to containing my massive library of videogames. Imagine: rows upon rows, shelf after shelf of videogame nirvana...

As an avid collector of videogames I have been faced with one primary problem my entire life: where the heck to put all of them. Sadly, most of my systems (all twelve or so of them) and games (likewise, around seven hundred) are packed away in boxes in my basement waiting for the ideal storage facility to make itself available to me. I'm a very picky person when it comes to placement... the games need to be placed alphabetically and the box and manual needs to be with the game.

I drive my girlfriend insane with my placement issues but hey, if I'm the one purchasing the games and collecting them you respect the placement rules. Although I will admit that lately I have become more lenient with her sloth-tastic ways when it comes to organizing and putting away games when she's done playing them, so I'm not a total organization psycho.

My collection primarily consists of games that are rated an average of 6.0 and up, and no, I don't use MetaCritic. Some of the games I own are rated lower for a number of reasons, be it nostalgia or just the fact that my girlfriend is a fan of the series (Cooking Mama, I'm looking at you) and I have been primarily utilizing my subscription to various videogame print magazines to maintain a semblance of order and insightfulness via reviews to organize my 'To Get' backlog. Except now, print seems to be going the way of the Dodo and videogame print is starting to hunker down (here's hoping GI survives)....

I am a new reader of GI, having only followed it for about seven issues now. However, I am quite interested in either procurring or coming into possession of 'back issues' and I'd like to know if there is any way that this website could perhaps make old reviews available, or better yet, entire old issues in say, a PDF format? That would be an amazing addition the site and for avid collectors looking to catch up on old issues of this magazine.

And by the way, coming from the new defunct EGM, Game Informer is a great magazine. :)

Kirby's Adventure : Blast from the Past

2009-11-12T23:53:00Z

It's rare, but sometimes my girlfriend watches me play games and eventually pipes up, yammering about how she wants to play with me. The fact that she wants to play a video game with me doesn't bother me, in fact, that's an awesome proposition. Except there's one problem, she's extremely picky and doesn't enjoy challenging games. She's a casual gamer at best and sometimes I grow bored playing with her because I'd rather be playing something else, something she's not interested in unfortunately. I know that sounds awful but there's only so much Rock Band and Little Big Planet a person can stand. A couple of days ago I instead made a proposition of trying Kirby, and she agreed. She then mentioned that she had played it as a child and as we played through the game, she kept saying how 'this part seems familiar' or 'this tells me something.' I mean, who can forget about Whispy Woods, the tree boss you face at the beginning of every single Kirby game?

My experience with Kirby began with his very first videogame, which my father just happened to purchase for me when he bought me the old Game Boy, the one with the yellow screen and contrast control on the side. The original Kirby was short, had about five levels and could be beaten in fifteen minutes. Kirby was white, could not gain special abilities and the entire game was then repackaged as the first minigame in Kirby Super Star. Needless to say, despite the handicaps, I fell in love with the 'pink puff' even back then, and the feeling of empowerment I got from beating Dedede whilst listening to his amazing theme was awe-inspiring, even way back then when the tune was tinny and in an inferior format.

Kirby's Adventure expands and innovates on the first game by first making Kirby pink, granting him the ability to gain enemy abilities and allowing him a Mega-Man 3-esque power slide move. The game was about six times longer in length, with levels having multiple exits and hidden switches that would enable bonus levels or 'Museums', which allow Kirby to enter and gain an ability for free. It should be noted that annoyingly enough, Kirby ALWAYS lost an ability after just one hit - a feature that was removed from later games in the series due to being extremely annoying.

An innovative (for the time) platformer, Kirby's Adventure was linear. You would enter in a numbered 'door' on the hub level and go through it, unlocking the second door and so on until reaching the boss at the end of each hub world. There's some garbled mess of a story about nobody being able to dream and that Meta Knight is a rival/friend throughout the entire game but that just amounts to continously beating his cronies and watching him randomly throw you an invincibility-inducing lollipop at certain points in the game. Each level had an end-level bonus, where Kirby would fall and you'd have to punch A at just the right time to propel him upward to get points or if you're good enough, a life. I always enjoyed platformers that would reward you for completing a level, and Kirby's Adventure did it well.

The bonus levels were fun and were usually one-time only affairs, meaning that you had just one chance to gain lives and if you screwed it up, tough stuff until you unlock another mini-game door. Don't tell anyone, but you can reset the doors by resetting the console. Wink wink, nudge nudge. There are four mini-games. The first is the crane game, in which you try to get Kirby dolls with a crane. Small ones are worth a life, with the bigger Kirby being worth two. Needless to say, the larger one is harder to get and with only two credits, sometimes it's not worth it. The second mini-game has Kirby standing in a wrestling ring with King Dedede throwing eggs and bombs at him. You must have Kirby eat the eggs but obviously not the bombs. A good reflex tester. The third minigame has been brought into Kirby Super Star as well, the 'Draw' minigame, where nobody moves until prompted and must then push A as fast as possible. The final is the Arena, a one-on-one match with a mini-boss that usually grants a certain rare ability

The last time I played this game, I was nine years old. Playing through it with my girlfriend, I can certainly say that time has only made this classic vintage wine better in taste. If you own a NES there's no reason not to Ebay this. If you own a Wii, there's no reason not to shell out five bucks for a classic five-star NES game on your Virtual Console.

Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story = The Legendary Fawful

2009-11-10T15:52:00Z

Say what you want to about video game villains these days, while some are deviously malevolent and others are absurdly sinister while others wouldn't bat an eyelash at killing an elderly woman crossing the street at five MPH, Fawful adds an entirely new dimension of villainy to the books, and he does it with style. What does he add? How about hilariously incorrect syntax and grammatical errors aplenty?

He is one of the only characters in a videogame with dialogue that brightens up the game, not to mention my day. I am not ashamed to say that Fawful was one of the primary reasons I played the newest Mario & Luigi to completion... just to hear what the lunatic would say next. Seriously, Nintendo's localization team are a bunch of geniuses. Or as Fawful would say: Nintendo's Team are using the funny in a way that makes FUNNY more FUNNYING!'

This guy cracks me up so much once I laughed so hard I was crying. Oh man.

Fawful's origins (despite having way too many teeth than is physically healthy) came from the very first Mario & Luigi, the Superstar Saga - arguably the best RPG available for the Game Boy Advance. In that game he was an assistant to the evil Cackletta who had hatched a plan to steal Peach's voice to further her own evil ends. Throughout the game he was constantly throwing wedges and forcing the brothers to take detours which eventually bestowed them with enough abilities to best the evil duo. He was then reprised as a vendor for the sequel with Baby Mario and Luigi before taking the direct villain role in the newest game.

The only step for Fawful now is up. He either ups the ante in another Mario & Luigi sequel or stars as a playable character in the next Smash Brothers game.

Some quotes for you all!

'I HAVE FURY!'

'I am the mustard of your doom!'

'"Your lives that I spit on are now but a caricature of a cartoon drawn by a kid who is stupid!"'

'"I drizzled rage dressing on the country next door. Rage dressing on a salad of evil!"'

'What? The story of Fawful? Your words are not beans. I am not wanting them.'

'Stupid mustaches! Hairs like the dirty tail of a horse in a barn built by a farmer who is crazy!'

'Did I...have evil? I suppress the fury, but sometimes... The fury has me. Red and green puts the fog of rage in my eyes, and my mind goes crazy.'

'It is I who had put the nuts into this statue.'

'Oh, I am feeling the power! It high-fives Fawfuls face!'

'Your plan that I laugh at now makes for more laughing!'

'Beef? I have no beef. I am beefless!'