Category: Video Games

One thousand hearts bleeding

Errr, so have you playerd Guitar Hero III yet? It’s like… awesome.

Everything about Guitar Hero III is excellent. The presentation was a little too much for me at first, but it’s grown on me. Playing online is totally awesome, because I can play against someone without actually socializing, and battle mode is twice as fun as anything else. The track list is maybe not as wonderful as that of the impending Rock Band, but it’s still absolutely great. “Cities on Flame With Rock and Roll” (Blue Oyster Cult), “Stricken” (Disturbed) and “Closer” (Lacuna Coil) are my personal favourites. I don’t think I’ll ever finish the game though, because I’ll probably never be able to beat “Raining Blood”.

If I have to lobby any complaints against it, I hate the fact that they dropped my two favourite characters, Pandora and Eddie Knox. I was almost ready to boycott the game for that one, but Casey Lynch has a sweet lookin’ leather getup this time around, so I’m willing to forgive. I’ll never forget though. Also, Bret Michaels isn’t in the Wii version. It makes no difference at all, it’s just one of those WTF things.

In the end, it’s all good. If anyone reads this and has the Wii version, I’m more than willing to take you on. Just send me an e-mail and we’ll set it up for me to destroy you. At “Through the Fire and the Flames”. I haven’t lost at it yet. Nobody’s even come close.

I like to rock

I should start this post by correcting the previous one. I played Ninjabread Man some more the day after I made that post, and really, once you get used to the odd controls, it works okay. It’s not nearly as horrible as I made it out to be, it’s actually kinda playabe once you get the hang of jumping. And as for the sword? Totally unnecessary! Turns out that Ninjabread Man’s throwing stars increase in power each time you kill an enemy with them, so while the first couple will take like seven billion shots to kill, eventually they get really useful. And Wiimote aiming makes it twice as convenient. In closing, I was an ass to Ninjabread Man because I got frustrated and gave up quickly. It’s still not exactly a shining example of what a video game should be, but I’ve milked four hours of play time from it, and based on my salary, that’s made it more than worth the $20 I paid for it. I can even see going back to it to complete some of the harder challenges, so yeah. I’m sorry Ninjabread Man, you don’t deserve quite as much spite as I directed toward you.

Before I get off the topic of half-assed games, I spent a little time trying to get a little farther in Rule of Rose. Being the first time I’ve sat down with the game for more than half an hour (despite the fact that I’ve had it for months now), I guess I can now form an opinion. It’s pretty good, as far as the horror bit goes. It’s every bit as tense as Silent Hill, and a good deal more disturbing, given some of the themes. Gameplay is a mixed bag. Using the dog to hunt for items works way better than in Haunting Ground, but the controls are a bit unwieldy. Not horribly so, but a pre-release tune-up would have made all the difference. In any case, it’s a freaky-ass survival horror game, and despite some badness, that’s pretty much exactly what I was looking for. Hopefully I’ll be able to finish it sooner than later so I can get started on my most recent acquision in the genre, Siren.

In other news: Guitar Hero III launch is tomorrow. This means that basically I won’t be leaving my room for ever. Online play will be more than enough to keep me rocking until I die of exhaustion or dehydration or hunger or some combination of the three.

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.

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.

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.

Gimme an R!

It’s been flying on the edge of the radar since it was announced, so you may or may not have heard about Drawn to Life. If you have heard about it, you know exactly why I bought it.

Drawn to Life is, in essence, a platformer. However, the platforming part of the game is like 34% of why I enjoy it. Quite frankly, the controls are a little sluggish, and it’s been painfully easy so far. But that aside, it’s also a game about drawing! Yes!

As you can tell from the boxart, you get to draw in your own character, and while that’s kinda neat, it also sucks a little. No matter how nice your drawing is, it will always look like shit in play, and it’s animated quite poorly too. I suppose that’s the price you pay for getting to draw your character though. But hey, the rest is pretty awesome! You get to draw a ton of other things, like platforms and weapons and stuff, and it’s wonderful! Unlike your main character, all the other sprites come out looking great, and I could simply sit there for hours filling in the landscape with custom props, and then bouncing around and reveling in their beauty. In fact, that’s basically what I’ve done with the game so far.

While you get to design a lot of objects from scratch, with the ability to do whatever you want inside a set frame, there are a handful of things you’re provided with an outline for and can only really colour in. Of course, this is still pretty fun. It’s not quite as great as drawing in an imitation Air Tikki where you’re supposed to draw a cloud, it still allows for a good amount of creativity.

The music in Drawn to Life is pretty upbeat and spunky, but nothing really special. I mean, it’s decent, but you could just as well turn off the volume and put on your own tunes in the background. The graphics, the ones that don’t depend on the player’s drawing talent, are pretty nice. Think Rocket Slime with a little more detail. The animation is very crisp, too. Not quite as smooth as you’d see in the more recent Kirby games, but the artist’s effort really shows through.

As I touched on briefly, the gameplay is weaker than I’d like, but it’s not unforgivably bad. The best way to describe it is to say that it plays like a good (but not great) Flash platformer. So kinda janky and amateurish, but still playable. The ability to doodle in most of the environmental objects and a ton of other stuff really makes the game worth playing for me. Did I mention there is plenty of secret crap to collect? Oh yeah, there’s boatfuls. In conclusion, I think it was totally worth my $30. It’s no Mario Bros game, but if I wanted a game where everything was already drawn in, I’d just play something else.

As for a score? I’d say six and a half out of ten interchangable rating doodads.

Even to the end of his life

Hello. My name is Ryan. and I’m a Facebookaholic. I haven’t been on Facebook for almost six days now. I think I’m making some real progress.

Seriously, I was having trouble there for a while. I’d poke around Facebook for hours on end, never really accomplishing anything. At least when I spend my Friday nights surfing Wikipedia I’m learning something. My infatuation with just being on the site was becoming a problem, because days would melt away as I poked through random groups and people’s profiles. It made me late for work on one occasion. But times are going to change. I don’t even know why I was on there in the first place. I’m a loner. I don’t want to make friends. Fuck that noise.

In a completely unrealted story, Sam & Max kicks ass. It’s nice to see that people can still make quality adventure games. The fact that I laughed more during the first half of the first episode than I have at anything on TV lately means something too. But I won’t say what, because I think you should be able to draw your own conclusions. In any case, if your PC is up to it, it’s $30 very well spent. If you don’t enjoy it on some level, you’re pretty much a waste of your parents’ reproductive cells.

Right!

I don’t have any idea what it was, but something was mucking up my page, making it hard to see. In any case, it’s fixed now. Maybe. Onto greater things, then!

I’d like to open with this statement: I really like Metroid Prime 3. It’s awesome the controls are effin’ sweet, and it’s very fun. Now more to the point, I think it may be a bit overrated. Everyone’s just shitting themselves slathering the damn thing with far more praise than I think it really deserves. I mean, yeah, it’s a well-crafted game, but it’s no better than the first two once you take away the motion controls. I dunno. I’m always the first one to kiss Nintendo’s ass, but really, I just don’t see it as being quite as deserving of so much praise as some other games. The thing is, we knew the motion controls would rock ass for FPS games, it’s just that Retro is the first developer to get them right. So, um, I don’t really know where I was going with this, but I think the point is that if you take away the Wiimote and nunchuk, people wouldn’t be anywhere near as excited about this game as they are. And I guess if nothing else, that proves how much that little pointer can do for games.

I guess that’s actually all I had to say for today. I’m sure there was something else, but nothing’s coming to me, so I’m off. Laterz.