Gas tank is filled with vengeance

Look at the box to the right of this paragraph. “Ninjabread Man”. Does this not look like the greatest game ever conceived? Conceptually, yes it is. Otherwise…

Every once in a while I see a cheap game and based solely on the title or cover art, I will buy it, regardless of whether or not it probably sucks. Usually I do okay in this department. Bad Day LA, for example, is pretty bad, but it’s still playable, and even a little funnny at times. Ninjabread man, on the other hand, is not so spectacular.

I think it’s safe to say that Ninjabread Man’s biggest fault is the Wii. Being a ported PS2 game, developer Data Design clearly just tacked on motion controls to justify the port. But that’s their downfall. This game has awful, awful controls. Game-breaking controls. Firstly, you have to jostle the nunchuk to jump, which is a really bad idea. Then you swing the remote to attack, which wouldn’t be so bad, except for it only registers your swing like 30% of the time. The worst part? They had more than two buttons left over, so why can’t I turn off the motion controls? When they work, like in Zelda, motion controls are a great thing. In Ninjabread Man, they make the game almost unplayable.

Other complaints are far less important. For one, Ninjabread Man runs far too fast, and accelerates from 0 to 100 in about one second, which takes some getting used to. Also, the camera is a little janky, but that’s hardly an issue. On the positive side of things, the entire concept of the game is hilarious and I cannot express how much I would be able to tolerate it with a regular controller. But no. If you’re looking for comical ninja action, I suppose I-Ninja is still the way to go. Or you could just play Ninja Gaiden II on the Virual Console. You won’t laugh, but it’s a kickass game.

We carry on

Imagine, if you will, a play composed and performed by retarded monkeys. That would basically be your localization of Final Fantasy Tactics. The PSP port, The War of the Lions, on the other hand, is more akin to reading Shakespeare. No, really. I expected the story to be comprehensible this time around, but the thickness of the dialect they applied is astounding (in a good way). Let’s just say the improved loacalization alone is more than enough reason to play through the game. There. If you’re not sold on the fact that now you’ll be able to tell what in God’s name is going on, then read on.

 

I guess the only other real addition to the game I’ve seen yet (I’m on mission five, which is about as far as I’ve ever managed to get in FFT) is the revolutionary new “cutscene” feature. It’s this thing where instead of always having the fat little sprites quibble about with their text boxes, once in a while there’s animation and voice. But seriously, the cutscenes are beautiful. The style is so very inspired, and makes me happy to be watching my game instead of playing it. Or at least makes me forget the irritation of having just sat through twenty minutes of tubby sprites gabbing at each other.

Ummm… I dunno. If I have to gripe, it’s that they didn’t add an easy mode for people like me. I can shred through killer solos in Guitar Hero, but for the life of me I cannot manage to successfully get five heavily-armed men to take out three unarmed goblins. It’s a wonderful game though, regardless of how much I suck at it. But hey, on the upside, at least the outcome of the war between Heaven and Hell won’t be resting on my shoulders.

War has been declared

For many, many years, I was quite apathetic towards driving. You might even say I didn’t really like it at all. That might help explain why it took me just over four years to get my full driver’s license. Even after I got my license, I wasn’t totally up on the idea. All that changed when I got my car. The day that I bought that car was the day I learned to enjoy driving. In fact, I’d say that buying a car was the best thing that’s happened to me all year.

And that is exactly why I’m kinda broken up that the little guy is probably going to be leaving me.

A little over a week ago, the back end of my ride was cruelly taken away from me by some dumb hick from Saskatchewan. Well, okay, that’s not entirely true. Only the bumper is really gone. The trunk is busted but good, but the car is still perfectly drivable, patched together tailight and all. Also, it may have been ever so slightly my fault, but we’re going to let the insurance adjuster have the final say on that one. Anyhow, I’ve got an appointment to assess the damages on Wednesday, and the general consensus is that it’s going to be written off.

I’m going to miss my car, and I may get enough scratch to help me buy another old car, but only now do I understand why some guys really love their cars. It did a lot for me, and in the short few months we were together, we’d gone through a lot of stuff. It wasn’t just a vehicle, it was a companion in its own right. No matter how many other cars I buy in my lifetime, none will ever be the same as my Spirit.

Fuck. That’s at least two eulogies this year. I hate 2007.

It’s all yours

Hey hey hey. Band of the Month time. And this month’s band is a little group called Letterkills. I actually wrote a reivew of their CD, The Bridge, almost two years ago now, so maybe check that out for more info on that CD. It’s also got a small paragraph detailing how I started listening to the band, so I guess I don’t need to repeat that story here either…

Ummm… That’s really their only CD, so there isn’t much more to say. They don’t seem to have a real website, and their MySpace just has songs from The Bridge. Wow. Guess I’m done here then. Recommendation is clearly implied by the fact that they’re the Band of the Month.

You’re starting to bore me

Hey! Nintendo’s giving away free Wii Remote jackets! Okay, so it’s not a lot, but free is free, right? So, you know, any Wii owners might wanna mosey on over and get some sweet free goodies. Really, I just like getting things in the mail.

In other news, it seems while September was a wonderful month in which no games I really wanted were released, October was invented solely to bleed my wallet dry. The new Zelda and Chibi-Robo games drop today. Then later on come the first PSP games I actually want in a long time, The War of the Lions and Dracula X Chronicles. Guitar Hero 3 is on the 28th, and then on Halloween comes Dementium: The Ward. I’m sure there are more, but quite frankly, I’d rather not know about them. At least things are going to cool off to near-stagnation again when the month is over though.

I didn’t get to be with you

I was out on a Slurpee/junk food run a couple weeks ago, and I noticed a rather odd little treat in the impulse candy pile on the counter. It was a small basket full of tiny little… powdered donuts? Yep. Well, maybe not so much. They looked like tiny powdered donuts, but the fact of the matter is that they were marshmallows impersonating donuts.

For only a quarter a piece, I suppose it would have been impossible for me to resist buying at least one to sate my curiosity. The three available flavours included blueberry, strawberry, and lemon. I grabbed one randomly, and breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn’t lemon.

You know, now that I’ve finished that last paragraph, I can’t help but feel that maybe I could have done a better job scaling the little thing. I mean, a DS card is a good comparison point (everyone’s got a DS), but only now does it become so obvious that a quarter would have been the best item to use for scale. Because they cost a quarter. It would have made me look clever. The only thing Ouendan 2 does is give me geek cred.

I could have eaten 7-11’s entire supply of these stupid things, and I don’t think I would have ever gotten over the fact that it’s a marshmallow. It’s not actually powdery or anything, but my brain would not switch off the idea that it wasn’t actually going to be a donut. Twice did I bite the thing, and twice was I completely thrown off by the marshmallow.

Psychological trickery aside, it wasn’t bad. I mean, marshmallow is closer to the bottom of the list of my favourite substances to ingest, but the jelly contained within was a joyful treat that made up for the otherwise bland marshmallow exterior. If you absolutely love marshmallows and jelly, I suppose these would rock your world. Otherwise I’d say to spend your quarters on arcade machines, because they’re on the brink of extinction, and you’ve gotta savour playing Metal Slug in an arcade cabinet while you still can.

Murder? Check.

I went out after work today to find some stuff. Stuff to buy. The main object of my quest was Dethklok’s album, The Dethalbum. I did not find it. This is bad. My parents got me the soundtracks for the first two (original) Star Wars movies for Christmas like ten years ago, but never got me the Jedi soundtrack. Today, after years of searching, I found it. This is good. I finally got around to watching Resident Evil: Apocalypse last night. It was a little silly at some points, but overall I liked it, and decided I wanted to purchase the first RE movie. I could not find it though. This is bad. However, I was marginally surprised that Corner Gas Season 4 had snuck into stores without me noticing. This is good.

Um, I guess the moral of this story is that I really want The Dethalbum. I have it downloaded (two copies, actually), but it’s a CD I kind of need to own. Have you heard the album version of “Thunderhorse”? It’s like a billion times more metal than the watered-down version that’s on Guitar Hero 2. But I’ll warn you though, not just anybody should listen to it, because I’m pretty sure that it’s so brutal that it will literally kill anyone who’s not awesome enough. Oh, what the Hell? Fuck copyrights, here, download it. And now that I’ve done you that favour, do me one and go buy The Dethalbum. Maybe if I can convince people to buy it, nobody will sue me for putting that song there.

Oh, and if you’ve never heard of Dethklok… yeah…

The girl in the corner is everyone’s woman

Don’t know if you caught the season premiere of Family Guy this evening. I know the world is firmly split between people who like Family Guy and people who don’t, but I’m sure most everyone can agree that that was without a doubt the best episode to air since the series was revived. Possibly even the best one ever. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I love Star Wars, maybe it’s because they managed an entire hour-long episode without a single cutaway joke (at least I didn’t notice any). In any case, I thought it was wonderful. I kind of want to see them do Empire and Jedi too, but there’s a really thick “don’t ruin a good thing by milking it” aura around the whole thing, so probably best not to hope for that.

I guess that’s probably all I’ve got for today. It’s hard to come up with things to talk about every day. I have no idea how Matt does his countdowns and megaparties. Maybe I just need to buy more crap to spur my typing fingers on. Or maybe I shouldn’t bother writing blog posts when I’ve got nothing to write blog posts about.

Don’t mess with me

I was poking around on the articles page for no reason, and after a quick look-over of some of the mini-reviews, I discovered that I was rather harsh on Shadow of the Colossus when I reviewed it. I don’t remember being that down on it, and in retrospect, I think maybe I could have been a little nicer.

I guess the main reason that I was so cold toward the game back then is because my review was based on a rushed initial playthrough and a go at the easy time trials. Between now and then, I’ve bought the game (at $20, I definitely recommend picking it up) and played through it at least six more times.

I think the key to enjoying the game to its full potential is not to focus on getting to the end, but rather to take as long as you can to accomplish anything. While the environment doesn’t offer a lot of options when it comes to goofing off, there are a couple things to do. For one, speeding toward a cliff on Agro and then leaping from him over the side is always fun. What, you think dying isn’t fun? Oh, but I beg to differ. Half the fun of Shadow of the Colossus is finding new and/or higher places from where you can fling yourself to your death. Watching Wander flail hopelessly through the air only to crumple on the ground with a satisfying thud is perhaps a little sadistic, but holy cow is it ever entertaining to watch. It’s like the episode of Family Guy where they move to the south. You can hear Peter lament “It’s in my raccoon wounds” a million times, and it will always, always be funny.

Where climbing and deadly falls are concerned, let’s not forget the crowning achievement for any Shadow of the Colossus player: climbing the Shrine. It took me many hours of effort and painful deaths, but I did it. I had to resort to a YouTube video to figure out the last step, but even though I had to enlist some help, I still felt an overwhelming sense of satisfaction as I stood atop of the Shrine. And while it may seem tedious to spend like seventy hours crossing a single bridge, it’s still exciting, because of all the effort it took to get to that bridge. And when you get across? Well, let’s say that it’s not easy to find such a good place to leap from. Setting targets helps. Once I almost landed right on Agro. Probably best that I didn’t though, as the universe probably would have imploded from the occurrence of a feat so near-impossible.

Of course, playing the game properly is perfectly good fun too. The thrill of single-handedly taking on a monster that’s eleventy-billion times your size never dulls. Not ever. And while the music provided by the game suits the moment well enough, putting your own soundtrack to the madness can enhance the experience tenfold. I play while listening to different music every time, and the pace of the music kind of changes how I go about the battles. It’s hard to explain, but it makes the experience seem a little different each time.

I guess the only thing I still hold against Shadow of the Colossus is the story. It’s still totally dumb, regardless of the fact that after spending a lot of time researching it on the internet I understand it a little better. However, that tiny gripe aside, I totally have to revise my opinion on the game. It’s not a renter anymore. Now that it’s a Playstation Greatest Hits title, and therefore only costs $20, it’s totally a buyer. I pick this one up every now and then and play through the entire game in one or two sittings. Aside from Guitar Hero, I think that Shadow of the Colossus is more than likely my most played PS2 game, and that’s saying a lot considering that the first time I played it I didn’t walk away with an overly positive opinion.