Bad with titles

Again, I’m a little late. Not because I was enthralled in a sci-fi ARPG though. Went shopping again tonight, and I figured we’d be home by like 11. Yeah, nope. Did’t get out of the damned Wal-Mart until after midnight, so having a nap after dinner instead of blogging turned out to be a bad idea. Oh well.

In the spirit of my tendency to grow bored with personal projects and half-ass them towards the end, here’s another crappy short entry. And it’s the last time I’m going to talk about anything Sons of Butcher for a long time too, so don’t worry about having to put up with any more after this.

Now that I’ve reviewed both of their CDs, I figure I might as well take a shot at telling you something about the show; in this case, the first season DVD.

To be completely honest here, at first, I didn’t like Sons of Butcher at all. I tried watching it a couple times because I thought the commercial made it look entertaining, but it really didn’t hook me right away. It probably didn’t help that I just flipped to it during commercials while I was really watching South Park. A couple months after it debuted, I was playing Maple Story, and had Teletoon on in the background. SOB came on, and I actually ended up getting killed by those stupid low-level pigs because I kept paying more attention to the show than the game. It was at that point I started seeing that watching a whole episode made it far better than just watching small commercial-break-sized bits.

Anyway, the story obviously ends with me becoming a huge fan. Hell, I even recently had a whole conversation about them with an HMV employee when she noticed and complimented my SOB t-shirt. I barely talk to people I know, nevermind complete strangers. It was great. So then the DVD? Again, I’ll have to break the honest truth: I haven’t really gotten around to watching it yet. Oops.

On the other hand, I have seen all the season one episodes on TV about seven hundred times each. So I know the material pretty well. If you’ve never watched the show, it’s pretty out there. A lot of the stories are very, very outrageous and nonsensical, but they’re quite humorous at the same time. It’s all about two of my favourite things ever – meat and rock – so I don’t know how I couldn’t enjoy it. The music is great, and the characters are hilarious. I think the thing I like about it best though, is that Sol totally reminds me of Ricky from Trailer Park Boys with all of his mixed-up sayings and expressions. The “Ricky-isms” compilation on one of the TPB DVD sets is one of the funniest clip compilations I’ve ever watched, and I can only hope there’s a similar feature on the SOB season two set.

Speaking of extras… I’m not sure what comes on the Sons of Butcher season one set, if anything. The back of the case doesn’t mention anything but commentaries, and nobody says anything about any extras in the Amazon.ca reviews, so I’m assuming commentaries are it. A little disappointing, considering that the Metalocalypse DVD set is all about the extras, but that’s just the way she goes. The fuckin’ way she goes.

Oh, and Doug’s “Bitch, are you fo’ real?” is totally worming its way into my regular vocabulary. So don’t be surprised if by six months from now I’m saying it all the time.

I’d rather you be dead

My brain is pretty much fried right now. I just remembered the other reason I hate Christmas, you know, besides working retail: shopping. In any case, I’m not up for much in the way of words today, so here’s an easy one.

Metalocalypse is the brainchild of genius Home Movies creator Brendon Small. It’s similar in the way that it parodies shit really well, but completely different in the way that it’s not disguised as a children’s program. Nope. Metalocalypse is full of swearing, blood, and metal. Oh, and it’s hilarious too.

The season one DVD set is host to 20 episodes. They’re all great, but I’m pretty sure I’ve gone over that somewhere on the blog here before. The real meat of this DVD set is the special features. As wonderful as the actual show is, the special features have to be twice as funny. There are almost a dozen band “interviews” on disc two, which have the band members give their opinions on various topics. The stuff on disc one is more varied, including a guitar “lesson” by Thor Von Clemson (Small), some random clips/compilations, and 20 minutes of Nathan Explosion reading Shakespeare. It’s epic, and really puts most special features on other DVDs to shame. Stuff like this is the reason for DVD extras, not bullshit stuffing like set photos and cast bios.

Yeah, that’s it for today. I could talk about how much I enjoy Metalocalypse forever, but not right now. Right now I need to decompress from a full day of shopping and fast food. Get the DVDs, if even only for the wonderful assortment of extras. Oh, and they’re all hidden too, but not very well.

Delicious and free

I told you back when I reviewed the Sons of Butcher’s first album that there was another one floating around there too. Guess what today’s post is about.

When we look at Meatlantis here, I could pretty much sum it all up right away. See, you can just take the general parts of the review of the first album and past theme here. The materal is very similar, maybe a bit harder. A lot of the songs lack proper context, and it’s even more apparent on this CD (why is Doug singing about needing an arm?), so people who don’t watch the show might be confused. Then again, I can’t imagine anyone who doesn’t watch the show would ever think to listen to the CD. Actually, those are really the only particularly similar things about the two CDs, so I guess I’m going to have to go into more detail.

Meatlantis offers a few “upgrades” over its older brother: most notably, the length. The disc contains 17 tracks this time around, and most of them reach around three minutes as opposed the the ones on the first album which often struggled to reach two. The newest version of Winamp is a dick and won’t tell me how long the entire disc it, but I think it clocks in at around 45 minutes, which is short for a 17-track disc, but a large improvement over the 20-minute debut album.

Sons of Butcher featured a couple bookend tracks, but they didn’t offer much, being mostly screaming and various sond effects over guitars. Meatlantis also offers bookend tracks, only this time they’re completely awesome songs called “Meatlantis” and “Meatlantis (reprise)”. Essentially two versions of the same song, but it’s got some of the most wonderful lyrics I’ve ever heard. And not wonderful as in “smart” or “thoughtful”, but wonderful as in “Meatlantis sounds like the greatest place ever”. They’re transcribed in full on my Facebook page under my favourite quotes, so check that out if you’d like to read them.

To be honest, I’m kind of running low on things I want to say. The songs are mostly just as fun as the ones on the first CD, but of course there are a couple tracks that aren’t as awesome as the rest. Most are great though, and they’re great to sing along to. The lyrics are tought to find on the internet, but not too tough to figure out on your own. “The Ultimate Drinkin’ Song” being at the top of the list of fun ones to sing along to. I really just wish the SOBs would appear in a Guitar Hero game so I could play along (because I still cannot play a real guitar). It’s a pipe dream because nobody outside of Canada has ever heard of the show, but I’d be ecstatic if, say “Party’s On” or “Razors” were to appear on a GH track list some day.

OH! And there’s a hidden track on Meatlantis. It is a hilariously graphic about… well, I’ll let you find and listen to it yourself if you really want to know. And as hilarious as it is, you probably don’t.

That about covers that then. Recommend it? Totally. Again, you’ll probably have to order it online, because regardless of what HMV’s website says, they don’t carry it. Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and similar retail locations are even more of a dead-end. But ordering it online is great because you get the free air freshener! Also, SOB plushies are now for sale on the official website, and they’re shooo cute! The stock is currently sold out though, so my dream of owning a Sol plushie will have to wait until another day…

It’s bringin’ me to my knees

When The Tall One turned 18, he got himself a new cell phone and one of them fancy-pants plans. That left his pay-as-you-go phone out in the cold. Over the next couple months money was passed under the table and blood was spilt, and phones changed hands all over the place. In the end, I ended up with a free cell phone. It’s a third-gen hand-me-down, but hey, it’s not like I ever planned to use the thing. I had no intent of getting a cell phone ever, but I accepted and it’s actually bailed me out of a couple sticky situations.

In any case, as I am wont to do, I quickly started browsing for games to play on the thing. Yeah, I know pretty much all mobile games except Bejeweled suck, but it was something I needed to see with my own eyes. And that’s why I have the mobile version of MegaMan 2.

Ya heard me. I downloaded MegaMan 2 for my cell phone. It was a horrible idea and overexpensive, but I stand by my decision, because really, it’s not as bad as you might assume.

Don’t get me wrong, shit doesn’t even match up to the legendary NES version, even though it’s almost exactly the same. The level layouts mimic the original perfectly, from each enemy to every power-up item. All the bosses are present, and they all follow the exact same patterns they did almost 20 years ago. In this respect, it’s a perfect port. Oh, except for the disappearing blocks. Those are all gone. But personally, I consider that a plus. I fucking hate the disappearing blocks.

However, there’s more than just content to worry about, most importanly being how the game plays. Maybe it works better on more powerful mobiles, but on my phone, MegaMan 2 runs at about half speed. This alone makes the game unabashedly easy. Remember how you could never get past QuickMan’s stage because of those Godforsaken lasers? Yeah, at half speed, they’re totally nerfed. I flew by the entire stage without even thinking about using the Time Stopper. Also, Mega jumps about 1.5 times his regualr jump height, and you can imagine that that makes things a lot easier too. If you put the game speed back to normal, the extra jumping power alone would be enough to see you through some of the most difficult parts of the game.

But there’s gotta be other downsides to the game besides being too easy, right? Oh totally. The original music is all there, and it’s decent quality too. The issue is that all the tracks are about half their original length, and do not loop well at all. For the first time in the history of ever, playing MegaMan 2 with the sound off is actually a good idea. Also, the stage backgrounds are missing, but that’s a problem that I can easily see past. I actually didn’t even notice they were gone until I got to FlashMan’s stage, so yeah.

Do I recommend MegaMan 2 mobile? Honestly, no. It’s playable, but it’s still a complete butchery of the best MegaMan game ever. I can say all the good things I want about it, but you just can’t match up to dusting off your NES and ricking the original. Capcom probably hasn’t made a MegaMan Powered Up! 2 because they know that no matter how much they improve it, MegaMan fans will likely shun it as a bastardization of their holy grail. I’d sure like it though. But don’t get the mobile one. Unless you totally suck at platformers and want to see the end. Even then you’re better off just trying to find a Game Genie.

Mass Affected

Okay, Okay, I know I missed a day. But this post totally counts for yesterday, becuase it’s mostly about why I didn’t manage to make a post in those 24 hours. Other reasons are that I only got off work at 11:10 and had to do some shopping immediately afterward. So I wouldn’t have made it in time anyway. Ha.

So it seems people just won’t shup up about Mass Effect. Before the game came out it was all hype, and now that it’s released it’s mostly nitpicking and disappointment. But me, I never cared about it at all. Until yesterday, when I stayed up playing until 7:00 AM. Yeah. The Tall One really wanted to rent it, despite “not having time for an RPG”. I think he just didn’t want to commit to Eternal Sonata. But anyhow, Mass Effect.

So he played it for a week and whatnot, and I picked it up for an hour on Tuesday, got frustrated with the shitty combat, and didn’t even finish the introductory mission. But damned if I’m going to have a game sitting there with zero achievements! So I picked it up late Thursday night and hunkered down, finally sort of getting the hang of ah, ah, ah, ah, staying alive. And then the game became fun! Once the lame intro mission is over, you’re pretty much handed the world galaxy on a silver platter, and it’s yours to do with as you please. Sure, you’ve gotta tie up some stuff before the space travel starts, but the Citadel is so big and full of things to do that a sequence of events that should only take about half an hour lasted me well into six. It’s so wonderful!

And it only gets better once you can fly about the galaxy on a whim. It’s a little intimidating at first, seeing as you’ve got a ton of destinations to choose from, but once you realize that you can only land on about a third of the planets you’ll see, the overwhelming “where the fuck do I start!?” feeling starts to dissipate. The open-endedness of the game is really nice, and the fact that it’s really just a well-disguised collect-a-thon bodes well for my opinion.

As I stated before though, the combat is pretty terrible. The aiming is clunky, and the game doesn’t tell you half of what you can do. I didn’t even realize there was a melee attack until my brother pointed out that it’s one of the best ways to deal with close-quarters combat. And then there’s the ally characters. Basically all they do is stand in front of you, absorbing all your fire. Yes, they act as nice meat shields for a little while, but if they would just get out of my way, I could spare them the pains of death by actually dealing with our foes! Oh well. Most of the other combat-related issues get better as weapon skills increase, so I’ll just skip those minor inconveniences.

Other thoughts? Not much. Most of the achievements are nice and easy to earn, but require quite a bit of time. Sadly, I picked the game up only a day before it was due back, so we’ll have to rent it again, but I’m almost ready to consider buying it. I don’t know how gung-ho I would be about multiple playthroughs, but considering that I went from not liking it at all to playing it all night long two days in a row, I’d say it’s probably worth splitting with the brother unit. I still really want Eternal Sonata though. I seem to have an affinity for games with charcters named after musical terminology.

Children of the by-products

I’m a huge fan of horror movies. I think most are aware of this fact. The thing is, I missed a lot because my search for classics rarely ever took me any farther back than the late 70’s. As of late though, I’ve been really into the really old stuff, as I mentioned quite recently. Since any moives, nevermind horror, that are that old are hard to come across, I have a tendency to pick up anything I find that looks like it may have come before Jason and Freddy arrived on the scene.

And that beings us to the It’s Alive trilogy. conveniently sold in a three-pack. It was only $12 at Wal-Mart too, so how could I say no? Matt had actually mentioned on his blog that he’d bought the first movie that day, and I thought it was more than coincidence for me to see the entire trilogy sitting there for what amounts to little more than pocket change.

The thing about movies though, is that I buy them by the armfuls, and then never feel like commiting the twoish hours to sit down and watch them. I did watch all three It’s alive movies though, it took about a month, but by gum I did it! Didn’t even sleep thorugh any! The great part is that they’re actually pretty good!

The basic plot of the first movie is that a guy and his wife give birth to this freak baby, who immediately slaughters everyone in the delivery room, and then escapes and goes on a bloody rampage. You wouldn’t know it, but it ends up being social commentary and haing a moral message of sorts. The second and thrid movies take the overall story and themes and expand on them, causing a little less bloodshed each time, but remaining interesting and (to some degree) meaningful.

The nice thing about these movies is that they very rarely give you good glimpses of the creatures. I mean, the first one was made in 1974, and puppetry wasn’t quite up to standards at the time, but I like that way of doing things. It gives you a chance to imagine on your own what the little buggers look like, and in that respect, I’m a little disappointed that with each sequel, the creatures get more and more screentime.

When all’s said and done, I quite enjoiyed the It’s Alive trilogy. Some would likely debate that they go down in quality as they progress, but I think they keep up appearances long enough to make it through all three movies. Had there been a fourth movie, that probably would have been pushing it, but three is the charm here. For the price, this trilogy set is absolutely recommended, if only for the groan-inducing interior decorating in the fisrt and second movies. Oh, the early seventies, how tacky you were!

Mediocrity defined

I mentioned in my most recent article that I’d like to see Secret of Evermore on the Virtual Console sometime in the near future, but the chances of that happening are pretty slim. The main fact of the matter is that it didn’t go over too well. It’s funny, because people both like it and dislike it at the same time. For the amount of venom people lay on it, they’ll just as fast turn around and say it’s not as bad as others say. Kind of a weird situation. The sad thing about it all is that it’s the first step towards the downfall of the Mana series, even though it’s not actually a legitimate entry into the series.

Secret of Mana made the series popular, and gamers everywhere seem to agree that the Japan-only sequel Seiken Densetsu 3 is pretty spectacular too, but after that things got sidetracked into badness. Legend of Mana was full of unnecessary crap, Sword of Mana is a lackluster remake of the first Seiken Densetsu, and Dawn of Mana is just crammed with bad ideas. Even Children of Mana, while fun to a point, was a meh-tastic dungeon crawler. Heroes of Mana, on the other hand, seemed at first like a sort of retribution of the Mana name. Before it was released it had a lot of promise surrounding it, and God knows I was actually excited about it.

Ideally, RTS games should be great on the DS. The screen may be a bit smaller than the computer monitors that RTS players are used to, but the interface sure works a lot better than controllers do. Heroes of Mana isn’t the first RTS game on the DS, but it’s the only one so far that’s grabbed my attention. As great as it should be, it’s merely okay. Though declaring a Mana game “okay” is actually a compliment to the series these days.

Blah blah blah, Heroes is your basic RTS game. You’ve got different units, collecting resources, building structures, and killing armies. The best thing is that you’re commanding the totally lovable Mana series monsters! Isn’t that wonderful? No, not really. After the ideas behind it, the game lacks a lot of other things. The first issue is the main characters. You’ve got six initial leader characters, and they’re all pretty dull. Even the ones that join up later on don’t have much depth to them. While it’s essentially a prequel to Seiken Densetsu 3, the only interesting thing about the story and its characters is that they offer a bit of background on Seiken 3. Otherwise, it’s almost painfully boring and clichéd. Not to say that it’s really bad, but it certainly won’t motivate you to play.

Controlling the leaders in battle is a pain too. Actually, controlling everything in battle is a pain. Units are very slow, and they’re incredibly dumb. If you’re moving more than one unit at a time, they will scatter all over the place, because their paths seemingly cannot cross any of the same panels, and on the off chance that they do, the two units will start weaving back and forth like when you’re walking towards someone and you both juke the same way, and then you move the other way, and it goes on forever until someone just stops so the other person can go around. Only the units in the game don’t figure it out so easily. Combat is exactly the same way, because you’ll have the enemy targeted and the enemy will have you targeted, and the two units will dance in a circle forever, because neither one will be smart enough to stop and wait for an opportunity to attack. Such is the issue with making the game grid-based.

Using magic is almost as bad, because your most useful characters just get weapon enchantment spells, which can only be cast while the character is standing still or walking. Most of the time, when you want to use the spells, your character will be in the midst of a battle, and you’ll have to try to stop him from attacking for a second so you can tap the “enchant” button. The basic idea of the last two paragraphs is that controlling units is a pain in the ass, mostly due to the fact that whoever programmed the AI was feeling like a dick that day.

Gameplay aside, the game isn’t horrible. Using iconic Mana series monsters to destroy your enemies is a joy in itself, and controlling the rest of the game works really well. It’s entirely controlled by the touch screen, with buttons being restricted solely to camera movement and rotation, and it works out quite nicely that way. If you want to select multiple units, you can make whatever shape you need around them, instead of being limited to a square like in most RTS games. There are even shortcut buttons to select unit types or single specific units. All your structures are built within your ship/base, which moves. Hence, if your base is under attack, you can simply fly it to a safer location. This isn’t an issue early on, but it does become a necessary strategy once the enemies start piling it on. There are a wide variety of units to choose from too, but they are unlocked very slowly as the game progresses. I don’t think you even have access to all the different unit classes by the tenth mission, but maybe that’s just because it’s a really long game. I’m not sure, I haven’t gotten very much farther than that yet.

The music in Heroes of Mana is, like in all Mana games, quite good. Not as epically memorable as the soundtrack to Secret of Mana, but lovable no less. It’s all done by Yoko Shimomura, who did the music for Kingdom Hearts, so that’s to be expected. She’s a wonderful composer in every respect, and I’ve loved all of her work that I’ve listened to so far. Graphics are also pretty standard for the Mana series, featuring colorful hand-drawn sprites. The character portraits look pretty nice too, and give the characters far more depth than their personalities do. Even the various interfaces look really nice and sophisticated, which is notable because I usually don’t care much for the appearance of menus and whatnot. Let it be known that Heroes of Mana’s presentation is by far it’s greatest strength.

Heroes also offers some level of multiplayer functionality. There is a basic two-player battle mode, but the interesting thing is the Wi-Fi mode. Ironically enough, I’ve completely ignored this mode. It’s got something to do with joining a clan and getting a high ranking to unlock something or other, but I couldn’t be arsed enough to figure it out back when I was still actively playing the game, and I’m not going to try to understand it now that I’ve left it to the wayside in lieu of better games.

Overall, it’s really not that bad a game. I may have overemphasized the AI’s lack of said “I”, but there are some issues. It’s not the return to glory that we Mana fans were hoping for. I mean, it really wouldn’t have been anyway because it’s an RTS and not an ARPG, but it would have been nice to be able to associate the Mana name with the word “quality” for the first time in over a decade. I’ll say it’s worth a try if you’re really into the Mana series or lighthearted RTS games, but otherwise you should probably just ignore it. Mediocrity is just something we Mana fans have been getting used to for years now, so it’s not a huge surprise for us, but if the last Mana game you played was Secret, well, you’ll just be floored by how far downhill the series has gone. And even with the flawed gameplay and monotonous narrative, Heroes isn’t even close to being the worst chapter.

Holy Jesus I just opened this in my browser and it is way long.

You will burn in Hell

One of the things I’ve always liked about the Guitar Hero franchise is that it’s an easy way to get into new bands. Sure, they only get one track a game, but it’s still a good starting point. The bonus tracks are great for finding your way into the world of non-mainstream music, and I feel proud of myself when a song from a band I listen to shows up in the bonus songs. Makes me feel like I maybe have taste.

Anyhow, one of my favourite songs to play in Guitar Hero 3 is Muse’s “Knights of Cydonia”. The fourth song in the seventh set, it’s not a terribly hard song, but the first half is built for people like me who played the Hell out of “Misirlou” in GH2, and the second half meant to break your strumming wrist. It’s tons of fun though! I only recently got my five stars on it, and I’ve only felt that level of satisfaction when I got my five-star on “Psychobilly Freakout” (on hard). I imagine finishing “Raining Blood” will evoke a similar sentiment, but that’s something I’m just going to have to keep dreaming about.

The point I’m slowly getting to here is that I went out and picked up Muse’s Black Holes and Revelations on a whim one day, because I like “Knights of Cydonia” that much. To tell the truth, it’s one of those things that kind of proves the “know what you’re buying” adage I usually follow.

This isn’t to say that it’s a bad CD though. After listening to it a few times, most of the songs grew on me, but I’m pretty sure that if I’d downloaded it first I never would have shelled out the cash for it. That would be a shame too, because there are a couple other songs I really like on the disc. “Take A Bow”, the opening track, isn’t very musically complex, but it’s got a lot of power to it and I quite enjoy the simple yet decisive direction it takes. “Starlight” is a song I’d heard before somewhere, and I really didn’t like it. Turns out wherever it was I heard it didn’t have a sound system that does the song justice, because listening to it over a decent system revealed that there’s a lot to like about it, the thumping baseline and the surge of guitars in the choruses being the big ones. “Soldier’s Poem” and “Invincible” remind me of Hawksley Workman (that’s a good thing) and “Assassin”‘s metal roots and killer drum highlights make it totally awesome.

In conclusion, while I might have passed it over if I hadn’t been immediately commited to it, I can’t imagine having missed out on Black Holes and Revelations. Featuring a decent array of musical styles and often poignant lyrics, it’s a disc I would love to recommend to everyone. The problem is that the range of styles might turn some off, and they’ll give up on the album before reaching its finale. Oh well, I recommend it anyway. On a last note, I have no idea why, but it seems to me like a CD that smart people would listen to.