Seeya later

Against my better judgement will to save money, I went out and bought the new Castlevaina game last weekend. To say that my regret over the unnecessary loss of $40 has been absolved would be putting it lightly. It’s been a long time since I’ve gone without slaying a new incarnation of Dracula each year, and honestly, I know I would have broken down over the issue eventually. But it’s good! Better than ever maybe!

Okay, so maybe Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (ek-lee-sha) might not quite measure up to Aria of Sorrow, my personal favourite ‘Vania game, but it’s a lot better than the other DS iterations. And I’ve only played a couple hours! Separate, selectable stages are a refreshing change from one huge castle, and work better than Portrait of Ruin‘s levels-within-a-castle setup. Being able to hop to wherever you want in an instant is just a wee bit more convenient than having to make the trek to and from warp points. It also allows for a much broader range of stage types. Personally, I was getting a little bored with the same old main hall, clock tower, and underground cave thing with different art each year. Portait was a step in the right direction (and I’ll grant that it was a lazy step), and Order of Ecclesia takes it even farther with better results.

Order of Ecclesia‘s Glyph system is really neat too. It’s like an extension of Soma’s soul-sucking powers from Dawn of Sorrow. The heroine Shanoa can absorb glyphs from various sources (statues, defeated enemies, magic-wielding enemies, etc) and use them as weapons. In fact, they’re all she has for weapons. That’s right! You don’t collect a huge amount of swords, but rather are given a sword glyph that gets stronger as you use it. Same goes for other weapon types. You can equip one for each arm too, much like Alucard could in Symphony of the Night. Magic (offensive and defensive) is also equipped in these weapon slots, so you can keep one arm for physical attacks and one for magic, go berserk with spells on both, or whatever! There’s also a back glyph that gives all the oddball powers like magnetism and summoning. The catch is that every glyph eats up MP, so even if you’re just flinging knives all over the place, you’ll have to ease off once in a while to recharge. The good part is that MP regenerates real fast.

I guess after the last six 2D games in the series that it kind of goes without saying that this is a beautiful game. The spritework is just as detailed as ever, and animations are amazingly fluid. It’s not quite as smooth as say, Wario Land: Shake It!, but hey, let’s give credit where credit is due. Once again, the environments are a lot more varied than we’ve seen in a Castlevania game for a long time, and it looks like there are a lot fewer reused enemy sprites than usual. But then again, I haven’t exactly put two games side by side to make more accurate comparisons. So enough talk, look at the pretties!

Okay, so some of the animation is lost on YouTube-quality video, but still! Oh, and you wouldn’t know it from the professionally-done run above, but the bosses are really really hard this time around. Would you believe that this is only the third? I used to think Balore was a real bitch to beat, but these guys make him their bitch. Took me at least a dozen tries and a hour to take down that stupid crab motherbuzzer.

It just takes some time

I checked my E-mail inbox on Monday evening only to find myself shouting with ecstasy over a message I had received (4 days pror, I don’t check my inbox that often). It was a note from Starmen.net that was sent to inform me that after what seems like ages of waiting, they had finally completed their translation patch for the doubtlessly stellar Mother 3.

Now, I’ve mentioned many many times before that I’m an Earthbound junkie, so you’d assume that I’ve already tracked down the ROM, applied the patch, and blazed through the game, right? Actually, I don’t even have the ROM yet. But I’m downloading it as we speak (but seriously kids, ROMs are bad. Don’t pirate video games!), and fully intend to start playing Mother 3 in glorious English… as soon as I finish some other games. Dragon Quest IV would be the obvious one, but I’m still working on Tales of Vesperia. Just goes to show you how little time I have for video games these days. So what the hell am I doing blogging? So long, losers!

Oh, and also I’ve been in a serious relationship for 6 months today. That deserves a cake. go me!

Autumn vacation

The days are getting shorter, the weather colder, and the job annoying…er. What does this mean? Vacation time! Well, not really, but I am heading out to Grand Forks this weekend to enjoy one last moment of happiness before the Christmas season explodes and turns my life into a retail nightmare. For the third time. Why am I still at this stupid job?

Anyway, Secret of Mana is finally on the Virtual Console, which is fantastic. It wasn’t exaclty at the top of my wish list, but it’s a step in the right direction. As far as I can tell, most people consider it to be one of the greatest games on the SNES, though a recent playthrough with the guys has left me asking if it was really that great. Of course, I still love it and will now play it over and over and over ad infinitum, but it just seems like it could benefit from a few tweaks. A less broken battle system would be nice (maybe nerf magic a little bit so cheesing over bosses isn’t as viable a strategy), and some improved hit detection would make a world of difference too. Oh, also a new translation. Square-Enix has gotten so much better at that lately, and Mana is one of those oldies that would most definitely benefit from a rewrite. Still, it’s plenty of fun, and I’m pretty sure that it’s the only game where you get to beat the snot out of Santa Claus.

SNES games be damned though! I haven’t shared my opinion of it yet, but the DSi does deserve a couple words here. All in all, I think it’s cool, but I’m still technically undecided about it. I mean, I know once it launches I’ll be one of the first in line to get one, but for now I’m taking the relaxingly uncommitted “on the fence” stance. I suppose that if the whole DS Ware thing means I can download Game Boy classics, it’s a must-have, but the camera and media player don’t really do much for me. I’m in love with the idea of a built-in internet browser though; as long as it’s more functional than the PSP’s, that is. And if it has the ability to search for a word on a page, I’ll pay double for the damn thing. If there is one thing the Wii internet browser could benefit from, it’s a ctrl+F function.

‘Till the day I die

Well, I have both victories and losses under my belt today, and neither is overly surprising, but I figure I might as well share. And before I start, it was Magma Man, not Volcano Man. Oops.

As I was mentioning in the last post, Mega Man 9 is friggin’ hard. The day after I made my little blog post there, I went back to the game with a stronger resolve and a good feeling. It got me pretty far, through five more bosses in fact, but Tornado Man and Hornet Man had still eluded my iron grip. But yester day I went back and made my play for total dominance. Tornado Man’s level was a bitch, and that’s all that was holding me back from the green-plated robot master. After dying over and over at his stupid revolving lifts (see video below), I decided I’d just cheese my way through with the Rush Jet. It worked wonders, but things only got worse from there on. Somehow I was able to scrape through to the end on my last life, and I slaughtered Tornado Man with little trouble. Hornet Man was much less offensive, as his level wasn’t too bad, but there’s a mini boss that will take you the fuck out many many times before you’re able to stomp it into robo-dust. But this time, I had the Tornado Blow on my side, and it wrecked him pretty bad. Hornet Man never saw it coming after that.

Of course, I got my ass handed to me on the first Wily level, and I felt that that was enough beatings for one day. But then I went and shelled out the necessary Wii Points for the extra DLC, and I’m pretty happy with what I got. The Challenge mode is pretty cool, and I think it’ll quickly evolve into an obsession. ProtoMan more is the star that really shines though. Not only can Blues slide, charge his buster, and block shots, but the Proto Whistle plays at the beginning of each level! It’s amazing! Really, it’s not a lot easier than Mega’s game, but it is the first real Mega Man game that allows you to play as ProtoMan (for $2).

And now for something completely different: would you be surprised if I told you I didn’t own Rock Band 2? Probably pretty shocked, right? But actually it’s a lie. I went out to Wal-Mart to buy candy last night, and meandered casually into the electronics department, and guess what was sitting there, ready to break my will into tiny little bits. Yeah, I think the only reason I hadn’t picked it up is because I hadn’t seen a copy available to be purchsed until then, not because I had a strong sense of not needing it. But I broke, and it’s great. The best part? That you can make standby band memers and assign them to empty spots on your roster so you don’t have the totally lame stock characters messing up your band’s image. Also, paying $60 for 100 tracks is a sweet deal after shelling out $1-$2 each for single tracks over the last 9 months.

So far beyond the sun

A couple weeks ago, Activision or Microsoft or whoever does the Xbox Marketplace stuff released a trio of new Dragonforce tunes for Guitar Hero 3, and I promptly downloaded thems. I was completely destroyed by them even more promtly. Promptlyer. Promptlier. C:\ prompt. Anyway, one of the tunes, called “Heroes of Our Time” was from their newest CD. I assumed it was a “Saints of Los Angeles” kind of thing where they were promoting the new album before its release. Nope. Turns out it was already out. Also, I bought it.

So it’s not so much that I don’t like Ultra Beatdown, it’s not that at all. I love Dragonforce. I love the balls-to-the-wall speed metal. It’s great. I just have one complaint: the lyrics. I know for something like this you can’t expect particularly deep or meaningful lyrics, but Dragonforce has taken it past the pop level of shitty lyrics. I was reading along in the cover booklet, and that’s pretty much exactly when I realized that not one song on this album has lyrics that make any sense.

I’m not sure if it’s an epidemic that plagues all of Dragonforce’s work, but if you take a look at the words to any of the songs on Ultra Beatdown, you’ll notice that they seem very chopped up and sporadic. It’s not uncommon for a line to have absolutely nothing to do with the one that comes after it, and sometimes it seems like a single line is made of two that were chopped in half and then had one piece from each put together. I have no idea how any of the songs could even possibly be pretending to be following the same general theme, nevermind the same train of thought. It’s like whoever wrote them just put words on a page and then changed a few so that it rhymed and followed something of a rhythm pattern.

It’s not really a huge put-off, but I do have a soft spot for thoughtful and/or intelligent songwriting. Ultra Beatdown is great if you’re going to be driving fast or for using as background music while playing a video game or something, but it’s definitely not meant to just be listened to and absorbed. But then again, Dragonforce was never that kind of band to begin with, so really, I guess I’m a little surprised that I expeced more from them in that way.

More, more, more

Today was the “grand re-opening” of my store. Though for the record, we never closed down aside from regular non-work hours. That tidbit aside, it was nucking futs in there for the first couple hours. Amounts of people like I’ve only seen at amusement parks and sporting events. The day had left me completely wrung out; my legs wasted from being on them and running back and forth all day, my arms and back sore from lifting more than usual, and my head a mess from dealing with inexplicably inept customers. It was a long day, and I’m glad it’s over, I just wish I had tomorrow off to recover.

Also, damn my lust for consumer electronics that are impossible to find due to high demand and low production numbers!

I suppose picking up Wii Fit and “playing” it for over an hour was a bad activity choice after a day like today then. To be honest, I wasn’t really planning on buying it in the first place. My fitness is not something I’m overly worried about, and I don’t need a video game to tell me I have almost inhumanly poor balance. But it’s just so popular! Everyone’s always fighting for them, and the fact that I was able to secure one against all odds (it was actually rather easy, there still five left by noon, when the tickets handed out before the store opened became invalid) made the victory all the much sweeter. I guess it’s kind of neat to have – crippling pain aside – but really it’s just an expensive way for me to feel like I’m part of some elite group. After all, based on the lines that form outside the store on days when we’ve advertised that we have Wii Fit in stock, it would seem that there are a lot more people who want the non-game than those who own it.

Shakes all over

It’s been out since Monday, but only yesterday did I finally put aside some time to download and play Megaman 9. Actually, it wasn’t so much that I put aside the time, but rather I let my girlfriend try out Wii Fit and once she was worn out I decided to take the opporunity to not only start to show her what digital distribution was all about, but also try to get her into my favourite video game series.

Turns out it was kind of a bad idea. I had no idea just how hard it was going to be, and all the woman got to see of my supposed “mad platforming skillz” was me being murdered over and over before I could even reach a checkpoint. Seriously. It’s fucking brutal. But the nice thing is that it’s all in good taste, by which I mean once you know it’s coming you can learn to avoid it. There’s no randomization to anything, and should you posess the proper skills, you’ll be able to learn and master each level in no time. I, on the other hand, can’t play it for shit. Nope.

After many feeble attempts and even more gruesome deaths (however that math adds up), I was finally able to overcome Galaxy Man or whatever the UFO-shaped one that dances around like a fruitcake is called. Outside of that, I made it to the fire-based boss (Volcano Man I think?) and got toasted, and haven’t seen any of the other bossed yet. On the upside, Dancing-UFO-Weirdo Man gives up a totally sweet weapon called the Black Hole Bomb. It’s a slow moving ball that turns into a black hole when you trigger it and sucks in anything that gets too close. It didn’t do shit to Volcano Man, so it was kind of a bust in that regard, but really fun to play with otherwise.

So yeah, Megaman 9 rules and I can’t believe it took me two whole days to get it. In my defense, if I’d had the Wii points available on my console it would have happened as soon as I got home from work, but I had to go all the way to Best Buy to find some. The moral of the story is that that I needs me a credit card, I guess.

As for what my girlfriend thought of it? She fell asleep. 🙁

Your face is a mess

So Kellogg’s or whoever it is that makes Fruit Loops has got a neat promotion going on right now. In boxes of certain cereals, they’re giving away little electronic Guitar Hero games. Sounds good, right? Well, my mom thought I would go nuts for the little guys, so she’s started buying lots of Fruit Loops so that I can collect them all. Only I was never overly intrigued by them in the first place.

And now that I actually have a couple of them, I’m no longer apathetic to their existence. Nope. More of a “slightly annoyed” feeling, really.

See, these little things are a neat idea, and for a cereal box freebie they’re not bad, but they mostly just bastardize the Guitar Hero name (not that Activision hasn’t been toeing that line for a while now). The black one is your standard cheap-ass LCD game. It gets the GH formula down pretty well, with notes scrolling down and whatnot. You have to hold the correct button and hit the strum bar when the note hits the target area. Pretty decent, no? No! There’s no sound! I didn’t expect music or anything, but there aren’t even the standard blips and bloops that come with these little games. It ruins the entire point.

Our red friend is perhaps the exact opposite. There is no game to speak of, which sort of gives it the spirit of real guitar playing over toy guitar playing, but it isn’t at all interesting after about 20 seconds. Each fret button plays a different repeating riff that plays for a couple seconds, and the whammy bar plays what I’ll refer to as “effect notes”. Basically a note or small phrase that’s been tweaked a bit. The idea, according to the back of the box, is to radically modify your notes for a killer sound or something to that effect. Nope. There’ll be none of that here. Pressing a fret button and then the whammy bar does not change modify the riff, but rather it just plays an effect note over top of the riff. Whoo.

There are two other toys in the set as well. One is an amp that plays a lead, rhythm and bass riff, and you can turn them on and off to make whatever combination your heart desires. But it’ll always just play the same three-second melody over and over. There’s also a “star power meter” thingy that provides another falling object game akin to that of the black guitar. Really, these are just a waste of plastic and whatever small bits of electronics they need to work, but because of them, my mother has temporarily lifted her Fruit Loops ban, and I can’t totally hate on anything that provides me with a means to a Fruit Loop. It’s just lucky that ol’ mom hasn’t noticed that these come in a wide variety of cereal boxes.

I see my Marianne walking away

So I just got back from Alberta this afternoon. Canmore, Alberta to be specific. I’ve never been any farther out of Manitoba than Kenora, Ontario, so it was one Hell of a road trip. Just the 16-hour drive would have been enough for me, but the added joy of the woman’s siblings fighting in the back seat all the way there and back made it the Most Wonderful Journey Ever™!

Okay, well that’s actually Banff, but you get the point. Mountains! Mountains are entirely new to me, having lived in and visited prairies exclusively. Kenora has a few foothills, but nothing jutting up into the sky all majestic-like. I suppose I’m not as completely in awe of them as my travel companions were, but they’re nice to see no less. I also got my first tastes of whitewater rafting and horseback riding, and they were mostly pleasant experiences (bad weather and leg cramps, respectively, made the activites less than perfect). So it was an awesome journey overall, even with the small hiccups. I think just being able to spend 6 days straight with my girlfriend was more than enough to leave me satisfied.