Year of N64 – October – Army Men: Sarge’s Heroes

I have two strong memories regarding Army Men: Sarge’s Heroes. The first is having spent a lot of time playing with a very good friend of mine who I’ve barely talked to over the last decade. Thinking about it makes me a little sad about how I lost touch with many of my friends because I’m so self-centered and bad at taking initiative.

The other memory is of having finally beaten the game after a rental or two on Halloween night. I remember battling my way through the final stage while my brothers were out trick-or-treating, and having to take a break to watch the new Treehouse of Horror. Also gorging myself on treats stolen from the bowl meant for trick-or-treaters. Sadly, it is the stronger of the two memories. Probably because of the whole “I’m so self-centered” thing.

Anyway, that’s why I chose this game to play in October. For whatever reason, Sarge’s Heroes and Halloween are inextricably linked in my mind. Go figure.

Playing Sarge’s Heroes again seemed like a bad idea at first. My nostalgia for the game left a very nice impression in my mind, even though I do seem to recall it being pretty janky even at the time. And janky it is. It lacks a lot of handy features and smooth edges that we’ve gotten used to in modern games, but I would wager that back in 1999, it was still passable. Possibly even good.

Controlling Sarge is the biggest problem with the game. He moves at a brisk pace, but the game works on a tank-like control scheme where pressing the control stick to the left or right will turn Sarge in that direction, not move him that way. Unlike Resident Evil and other games that use this control scheme, Sarge doesn’t have to stop to turn; you can swerve him to either side while moving forward. It’s not perfect, but it’s something.

There are also no camera controls, so you’re stuck hoping for the camera to swivel in the direction you want it to. Most of the time this amounts to you running around blind for a moment while you wait for the camera to get behind Sarge. There isn’t even a button to quickly snap it behind him like in 3D Zeldas. You can press the first-person aiming button to get that effect, but you’re stuck going into first-person mode for a second that way.

Strafing is a skill that can help you to deal with these issues, but it’s the kind of strafing where you hold a button and then Sarge walks sideways instead of turning. And it’s on the Right C button for some reason. Sure, it’s the best you can do without a second analog stick, but it’s still not ideal.

The most important thing I want you to take away from this review is this: if Army Men: Sarge’s Heroes had a modern control scheme (including camera control), it would be a considerably better game. Let me play it with a dual-analog controller of some sort and my opinion of it would be very positive. I don’t even care if the graphics are crummy and the gameplay is simple. I like it that way.

That said, it’s still actually pretty fun. The game is made up of fifteen missions, each of which drops you on a reasonably-sized map with a big X marking your destination, and lets you come up with your own way to get there. Some maps are less open than others, but they’re all fairly unique and give you plenty of opportunities to goof off and explore.

Some missions simply require you to get to the X. Sometimes you have to destroy a certain thing, and sometimes you’ve got to escort someone. The escort missions aren’t nearly as bad as you might imagine, as most of the time your ally is smart enough to hide from enemy fire. Occasionally they won’t though, and they do get shot to bits pretty fast if you aren’t keeping tabs on them.

One of the modern conveniences that Sarge’s Heroes lacks is checkpoints. All missions have two or more objectives, and there’s no saving between them. If you get killed, it’s back to square one. It’s a bit of a pain in the behind, but most missions are fairly short, and if you know what you’re doing, they generally won’t take more than five to ten minutes.

Enemies function exactly as you imagine they would in a game from 1999. They’re either sitting in one spot, waiting endlessly for you to get too close, walking a predetermined sentry path, or set to appear when you trip an invisible switch. Their AI is pretty pitiful. Once they spot you, they’ll either charge straight at you or stand perfectly still and fire a shot every few seconds. No cover, no dodging. It’s pretty much a shooting gallery. The only time enemies get any more dangerous is when they’re packing better hardware. For example, shotgun troopers deal heavy damage and flamethrower guys can melt you pretty much instantly.

Tanks and helicopters can be incredibly dangerous foes, but they can also be handily dispatched by figuring out their range of vision and picking away at them from just outside of it. If you know where they show up and how they move, they shouldn’t cause you much trouble at all. If they catch you off guard though, about the best thing you can do is to run away like there’s no tomorrow.

Sarge has a fairly wide array of weapons with which to stop the Tan army. Most of the time your M16 is more than enough to handle the situation, but you also have access to sniper rifles, shotguns, grenades, rocket launchers, flamethrowers, and… a mine sweeper? Each weapon functions pretty much exactly as other video games have taught you. The bazooka you obviously want to save for tanks and choppers, but the sniper rifle and grenades are fantastic ways to clear out enemies without getting your hands dirty. They’re almost too effective…

The one thing that really, really irks me about the gameplay is how enemies show up on the mini-map. Tan blips don’t appear until you’re close, which I can understand. Don’t want to make it too easy, you know? But they also don’t disappear until long after you’ve already killed them, which is annoying, and means that you’ll be waiting around for a few seconds after every encounter to see if you’re dispatched all the nearby foes. It’s really not a huge issue, but it still bugs me way more than it should.

There isn’t a lot to be said about the music in Sarge’s Heroes, as it’s mostly cheesy faux-military sounding stuff. However, there is one track in the game that is so very similar to Van Halen’s version of “You Really Got Me” that I’m sure a few people didn’t notice that it was just a ripoff. There may be more “borrowed” tracks in the game, but I didn’t recognize any during my time with it.

Army Men: Sarge’s Heroes isn’t really a great game, as far as the average video game enthusiast’s standards go. It’s got a lot of rough edges, but there’s a fairly solid product under there. I really like it, and if I were able to maneuver Sarge around a little more gracefully, I think it could be a contender. It even makes me want to seek out and play some of the sequels, but word on the street (Wikipedia) is that Sarge’s Heroes 2 is good and then it’s a steep downhill plummet from there.

In any case, it was a breath of fresh air after Donkey Kong 64.

Creepier than the average uncle

I suppose I probably should clarify a stance or something, but I’ve been trying to avoid any GamerGate-related talk on here because the only thing that’s good for is bringing people down, and I want my blog to be a more positive place. If I’m going to type anything depressing, it’ll be personal woes, not about people being horrible to other people.

For the record, I don’t think that social politics should be part of video games, so I don’t want to get involved. But I do believe that video games should be enjoyable for everyone. Men, women, everyone in-between. They’re not for an exclusive club of socially-challenged nerds. All my life I’ve been waiting for the stigma against gamers to go away, waiting for the day when I could play my 3DS on the bus and not have to feel like I’m being judged. GamerGate is just making it worse. It has nothing to do with journalistic integrity and everything to do with hatemongering. So yeah, I want GamerGate and all their stupid crap to go away.

But that’s just sort of a preamble for what I really want to write about today, because I honestly can’t say much about it: The Uncle Who Works for Nintendo. It’s a text adventure, which might immediately disinterest a few, but keep in mind that it’s short and you can probably reach the final ending within about 20 minutes.

The game starts out all cute and nostalgic, but quickly gets creepy and uncomfortable. It’s probably the most enjoyable Twine game I’ve played, which isn’t playing much, since I’ve only played like three. There are a handful of endings to earn, and the game does a very nice job of hinting towards ones you haven’t yet found. It also provides a very nice option to restart at the point in the game where your decisions start to matter, cutting out all the setup on replays.

I’d like to say more about it, but I don’t really want to spoil anything. The one thing I do want to mention is that if you make certain choices, the game does go down a very GamerGate-relevant path. Yeah, it gets a wee bit preachy, but it doesn’t detract from the overall experience.

I absolutely recommend checking out UWWFN long enough to find your way to the real ending. A good way to kill half an hour, if nothing else. And it’s a browser game, so you’ve got no good excuse not to. Just make sure you do it on a real computer and not your phone or tablet, because the audio component is pretty important.

Oh, and if you’re a big fraidy-cat like me, maybe play in the afternoon. It gets pretty spooky.

Happy Earthbound Appreciation Day!

Oh, wait. No, that’s not right. It’s Thanksgiving. In Canada.

Anyway, this adorable little tribute video has been making headlines around the web over the last couple days, and I figure that it’s my solemn duty as a Massive Earthbound Fanboy to share it as well. So here’s an embed of it. Enjoy. And if you tear up a little, it’s quite alright. Nobody’s going to judge.

Yup. Occasionally the internet is used for good. Overwhelmingly beautiful good. But seriously, everyone should love Earthbound as much as this woman does. The world would be such a wonderful place.

Oh, and happy Thanksgiving. I give thanks for all the wonderful people in my life, without whom I would be absolutely lost. And for video games. And moments of pure beauty like the one embedded above.

Separation of thumb and avatar

The very first thing that the wife and I did after we’d tallied up our wedding presentation was to go out and purchase a massive new television. That was two and a half years ago, and it’s served me well over time.

The TV has one little issue though: it doesn’t play entirely nice with old video game consoles. They will hook up and display and everything, but they suffer for a noticeable input lag. This quirk is common to all HDTVs as far as I’m aware, so why is it worth talking about? Because my TV has a “game” setting that works really well for eliminating that lag, but it has a major flaw when used on an input that’s coming through normal composite cables, the very kind that an N64 or PS1 would use.

Everything seems fine at first when you set the input’s video setting to “game.” It’s displaying properly, the sound is coming out fine, and the input lag is gone. But then, suddenly, a massive wave of rainbow-coloured noise washed over the screen. It only lasts a second, but it happens every 15-20 seconds, so it’s a little annoying. It’s also much more distracting than it sounds.

Up until last month, I lived perfectly fine with the input lag. Oh, sure, it’s a little annoying, but most of the time it’s not a huge deal. It’s not like I play any rhythm or otherwise timing-sensitive games on my N64. But then Donkey Kong 64 happened along. Several of its mini-games and challenges flummoxed me hard. They were seemingly impossible to beat, the most maddeningly frustrating gaming experiences that I’d had in ages.

Yet I didn’t recall the game being so overly difficult. What happened? Input lag. You might call me crazy, but when I started switching the video mode from “normal” to “game” every time a mini-game popped up, DK64 became a much smoother, more bearable experience. Even the stupid Beaver Bother mini-game, a mini-game which I truly believe was forged in the depths of Hell, went from impossibly hard to a mild annoyance. My aggravation subsided, and I was free to finish the game.

If you’d told me a couple months ago that input lag could have such a profound effect on a single-player 3D platformer, I would have called you nuts. The fact of the matter is that it completely changed my Donkey Kong 64 experience. When your controls are slowed by even half a second, it makes so many elements of the game so much more difficult than they actually are. Having to deal with the stupid noise wipe was nothing at all compared to the trouble caused by the lag. Funny thing is, I haven’t come across any other games that it hampers quite so badly. Um Jammer Lammy and Jet Force Gemini are just as difficult with or without any lag, and pretty much every other game has worked just fine.

The moral of today’s story? I guess it’s that I need to pick up an old standard definition TV to play my really old video games on. And then find somewhere to put that TV, since there really isn’t a big enough spot anywhere in my home to accommodate yet another gaming setup.

Oh, or I could just never play Donkey Kong 64 again. That’s probably the right thing to do. Because really, eff that mess.

On Mushroom Men and Checkpoints

I played The Last Of Us last month. I noted in the Monthend Wrap-Up that I wasn’t overly fond of it. That’s really only half the story though. Or maybe about a third of it. Because there’s a lot to like about the game! It’s just that the parts I didn’t like were so aggravating that it soured my opinion of the entire experience, which is completely opposite of how I usually roll.

Normally I’m able to overlook rough patches in games or movies or what-have-you and come out enjoying the product on the whole. I think it’s a good philosophy, as it lets me enjoy more things, and I spent less time sounding like a douchey nerd, complaining about stupid little things in an otherwise likeable product.

Like I said before, there are plenty of things about The Last Of Us that I liked. The story, for instance. At first glance, it’s just another stupid zombie game. But then you notice that the more dangerous zombies have mushrooms growing out of their heads. That’s… unusual? Because they are not affected by some silly man-made chemical or evil space-dust. These zombies are people who have been parasitized by cordyceps fungus. Which is a real Goddamn thing. Only in real life it doesn’t affect humans. Just bugs and possibly plants. I don’t know, I didn’t research it enough. But it’s spooky because it’s real and not totally outside the spectrum of plausibility. This is possibly the finest excuse for zombies that anyone has ever come up with.

The characters are also quite likeable. Joel, maybe not so much. He’s a gruff badass who eventually learns to open his heart, which is the stockingest character there is. Ellie, on the other hand, is his 14-year-old companion, and she is effing great. Yes, she’s an obnoxious teenager, but she’s a lovable kind of obnoxious teenager. Not the most original character either, but she’s written very well, and it’s a shame any time the two get split up. The only reason that I didn’t write off Joel completely is because they play off each other perfectly. A lot of the secondary characters are great too, even though they only stick around for a couple hours each.

The Last Of Us features some very nice stealth-based gameplay. Many encounters can be won by sneaking around all quiet-like and dispatching your enemies (with a good old fashioned choke) one by one. Sometimes you can even sneak your way through an area without killing anyone. And there are plenty of options for when you do want to kill people. You can throw trash around to distract them, or bonk them on the head with a bottle to stun them while you rush up to finish them off. Maybe you just want to lay down a home-made bomb as a trap, or toss a smoke bomb to cover your escape. It’s all quite wonderful, and if the entire game was just these stealth sections, I’d be over the moon.

But it’s not. Every once in a while, the game forces you into a shootout. If you mess up at being sneaky, you’re going to have to reset or finish the encounter with bullets. Sometimes you’ll just be automatically thrust into a firefight with bandits, or the zombies will just inexplicably know that you’re there and rush you all at once. Even worse, is when you meticulously clear out an area with stealth kills, and then trip an invisible event trigger that spawns a dozen enemies in that exact same area that you then have to fight with guns and fists. Those ones are the absolute worst, and they very nearly ruined the entire game for me.

In the early game at least, you have two options when you’re forced to fight zombies. You can try to melee them. This is a waste of time, because while you’re wailing away on one zombie (who will take 4-5 punches to kill), his six or seven friends are tearing you a new one. There are melee weapons laying about here and there, but they’re only a little more effective than your fists, and even then they’re only good for a handful of attacks before they break. Eventually you’ll have home-made bombs, too, but they’re much more useful to lay as traps while you’re in a stealth combat sequence.

Guns are a bit of a wash, too. Not only is it incredibly hard to aim (you can upgrade your aim wiggle, but it costs a small fortune in upgrade pills), but the zombies are brilliant at dodging about as they race towards you. They can’t tell the difference between your flashlight and natural light, but they’re incredibly adept at juking around to dodge your bullets. Yeah, sure. That’s a bit of a stretch there, guys. You don’t get very many bullets either, but that’s a feature that I can live with, and even sort of appreciate, having spent so much of my teen years with Resident Evil games.

There’s apparently a DLC pack for the game that includes the “Grounded” difficulty, which not only makes enemies stronger, but removes the HUD and your ability to sense nearby enemies, and slims the amount of scavengable resources down to the bare minimum. I won’t pay for this mode, but I have to assume that it’s literally impossible. A lack of bullets will be worse than ever since trying to shoot anything in this game is already a major pain, and melee combat is almost completely useless on the normal difficulty. I can imagine that you’ll play up until the first time you come upon a forced zombie fight, and then the game is over because there’s no way to win. It’s a terrible joke from the developers, and you have to pay them to suffer it.

So I guess that what I’m getting at is that I’d like for The Last Of Us to be more like Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. In fact, it’s already an awful lot like Shattered Memories, but I’d love it to pieces if it traded in all the shooty sections for running away and stealth times. It would flip my opinion of the game right around, and I’d start to understand why it’s been almost universally praised. As it is though, it’s just another humdrum third-person shooter with a really great story and occasionally a really fun gameplay sequence.

Grasping at straws

I’m not going to lie, I feel like the Fourteen Stupid Ryan “Facts” post that I ran a couple weeks ago is probably the best and most creative thing that I’ve written in years. And it’s barely even a complete idea.

It’s a clever (funny?) thing on its own; that it was preceded by a list of actual facts really made it shine. And now I have this sinking feeling that I’ll never be able to write anything anywhere near as inspired. I don’t even know where the inspiration for it came from. For once in my life, ideas just rolled out of my head, as opposed to how I usually just take something I like that someone else did and twist it into something I can claim as my own.

Even if they weren’t actually a “smart” or “good” or “funny” pair of posts, the fact remains that it was far more fun to write them than anything else that I’ve written in quite some time.

Anyway, I guess the point is that now I’m depressed that I’m an idiot who can only have an original idea by accident.

I have Super Smash Bros on 3DS now

Posting is probably going to slow down/come to a complete stop for a while.

That’s what I’d usually say, except for I’ve got a bunch of pre-written posts lined up for the next couple weeks. Thank goodness for WordPress!

So yeah, business as usual. Some things you read may be out-of-date though, as I wrote the bulk of October’s posts in September.

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: September 2014

Hey, it’s the best month of the year! And a month where I decided that it was time to focus on a select few games instead of trying to play everything under the sun. These Monthend posts really shouldn’t go over 1,000 words.

Anyway, final vacation week of the year, and I… spent most of if watching TV and sleeping in instead of playing games or doing something productive. Oh well!

Oh, and I guess this marks the first year anniversary of this Monthend feature. I figured I would’ve flaked on it long ago.

~ Now Playing ~

Super Smash Bros for 3DS Demo (3DS) – Okay, so it’s weird to be counting a demo here, but how many demos have you played for over 6 hours? Yeah. Besides, I got the special version without a usage limit (the regular version can only be launched 30 times), so I need to tout that as much as I can.

Gauntlet (PC) – The only PC game that I’ve ever pre-ordered. I played Legends and Dark Legacy so much back in the day that I was thrilled to hear that a new game was on the way. The final product is really good; pure Gauntlet. The only problem is that the mouse/keyboard control scheme feels weird and it doesn’t support either of my usual PC controllers. I’ve cleared the first world so far.

Hyrule Warriors (WiiU) – I have never played a Warriors game before, so while this game is dressing up a stale series in fanservice to many, it’s a completely new experience for me. And it’s soooo much fun. It shouldn’t be, but it is. I’ve finished Legend Mode, but that’s really just scratching the surface of this game’s content.

Fire Emblem: Awakening (3DS) – I have a very hard time playing any tactical RPG that isn’t Final Fantasy Tactics, so I’ve never been too interested in Fire Emblem. Picked this one up because it was on sale, and I’m loving it. Possibly because I’m playing on normal difficulty and casual mode, so I don’t have to deal with Fire Emblem’s traditionally crushing difficulty and perma-death. It’s breezy and fun, but I still have to consider my moves carefully. Hooray! I’m on Chapter 18 or so.

The Last of Us (PS3) – I’m one of the few who didn’t love this game. I don’t often agree with Chris Kohler these days, but he’s absolutely right when he suggested that it would be better without guns. I like the game in general, but I absolutely hate it when it forces you into combat. Because the combat is terrible. It might have the most satisfying stealth gameplay I’ve ever experienced, but it usually forgoes the stealth in favour of gunplay. Boo.

~ Game Over ~

Donkey Kong 64 (N64) – I loved DK64 for many years, but playing it again was sort of an eye-opener, as at the outset, I felt like I was having quite a bit of fun with it. Then things took a horrible turn. Read this for more details.

Hammerwatch (PC) – I got confused and thought that Gauntlet game came out on the 3rd, but actually it was the 23rd. Luckily, Hammerwatch came along in a Humble Bundle and slaked my thirst for a dungeon-crawling hack-em-up. Essentially it’s you (and up to three friends) in a massive series of mazes against millions of squishy monsters. Plenty of secrets to discover and winks at classic PC games made this one really stand out. I look forward to playing it again -and more thoroughly- to get the good ending.

Tappingo 2 (3DS) – Hey it’s the sequel to that puzzle game that wasn’t super but was somehow very engrossing anyway. So I played this. Solved some puzzles. It was pretty much the exact same as the first one, and that’s probably the only trait it shares with picross.

Metal Gear (MSX) – So here’s an odd one. I’ve never played an MSX game before. Turns out that Metal Gear is pretty great. Aside from a lot of totally unintuitive tricks and traps, anyway. But the overall feel I got from the game was good, so I hopped into Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake immediately after finishing it.

Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX) – It’s even better than the first! Who would have thought! Literally the only things I didn’t like about it are the enormous amount of backtracking and the stupid, stupid swamp. If you’ve played the game, you know what I’m talking about.

Saints Row the Third (PC) – Despite almost burning out by ignoring the story and just goofing of and playing with all the random distractions, I powered through to the end. With 100% even, because I loved it. Really wish that I was capable to keeping an aircraft intact for more than about a minute, though. Flying is really fun, but I am not good at it.

Demon King Box (3DS) – Finished it off, and was a bit shocked when I did, because the ending just comes out of nowhere. Possibly because the translation is awful and none of the dialogue makes a lick of sense. There are a bunch of tough post-game stages to play, but I don’t know if I like the game that much.

Life Force (NES) – Bought this VC game on a whim, because I thought I heard that it’s a little easier than most other space shooters. That’s not exactly true. I couldn’t even pass the first stage after playing for fifteen minutes. So I save-stated my way to the end. Good enough.

Super Smash Bros Brawl (Wii) – I spent a ton of time with Brawl in anticipation of Smash on 3DS. Partly to get myself psyched up, and partly to try to complete all of the challenges I left unfinished. I didn’t clear out everything, but I’m pretty close. I’ve just accepted the fact that I’ll never beat Boss Battles on the Very Hard or Insane difficulties.

~ Re-runs ~

Picross e2 (3DS) – Oh look, Ryan was playing Picross. What a surprise.