A revolution is in the works

After one long night of gaming, and another long night of… well, I was watching TV last night, but anyway, I wrote up a new mini-review last night. And because you’ll probably think it once you’re done, yes, I did steal the PGC “pros/cons” boxes. Hey, it’s a good idea. Why not implement it here?

In other news, it looks like the group site business is well underway. We’ve got a mock-up and writers and everything. It’s still mostly up to fate to see where this goes, but so far so good.

Oh yeah, and I totally forgot about Band of the Month. Oops. Tomorrow.

Shadow of the Colossus

Hi there kiddies! What did you do with your Friday night? I spent mine playing through Shadow of the Colossus. Doesn’t that sound like fun? Oh, but you’d be surprised to know that it wasn’t as much fun as other people might tell you. Maybe it’s because I played it for 12 hours straight, but after playing through the entire game, I can’t say I’m completely satisfied.

First off I should explain what the game is about. See, this kid travels to some cursed valley in hopes that he might be able to find a way to bring his girlfriend back from the dead. It’s a decent story, but that’s essentially the entire story, and I’ll get to that later. So how is he going to go about this? Well, you see, this disembodied voice tells him that if he can slay the 16 colossi scattered about the land, his girlfriend would be revived. Not too much trouble, I think. So let’s get to business here.

The game revolves around you killing these “Colossus” creatures. And that’s all. Believe you me when I say that that is almost all there is to the game. Fortunately, this is adequately entertaining. Sure, you do have to travel a vast landscape and jump across some platforms to get to them, but the whole game is basically fighting the colossi.

As I said, fighting a colossus is quite fun. While you never have to complete a dungeon or solve any puzzles to get to the fight (you just literally travel to their point on the map), defeating the creature will be just as much trouble as a dungeon would present in any regular game. There are 16 different colossus monsters in the game, and you have to figure out how to both make you way onto and kill the creatures. You see, as you are such a small fellow, and the colossus is a gigantic hairy rock monster, the only way to kill them is to leap onto them, climb up their fur, and stab them like there’s no tomorrow. Fortunately, it’s often a lot more complicated than that. While the first monster is basically a tutorial fight, the rest of them all require you to come up with some cunning strategy to defeat them.

One colossus, for example, is a big turtle-like creature with no visible weak points, except for the top of his head. Unfortunately for our hero, there are no walls to jump from, and his shell does not make for a good climbing point. So you have to consider the environment. It just so happens that there are geysers all about, and tricking him into standing above one will sort of tip him over. But that’s not the end, oh no. See, he’ll regain his balance if you just try to take it from there, so you’ve got to knock him all the way over by shooting out the balls of his feet with your bow and arrow. (BTW, your character is always equipped with a bow and a sword) Then, you can climb up his hairy underbelly and hopefully when he turns back over, you’ll end up on top of his shell, from where you can access his head and drive your blade right into his skull. Of course, he’ll be trying his damnedest to shake you off the whole time, so it won’t be easy.

The thing is, that while all of the monsters have some sort of trick to beating them, you really have to think outside the box for a couple of them. One enemy, for instance, is this lion/boar-thing, and you have to go through this long, drawn-out sequence of having him knock over pillars and stuff so that you can have him collapse a terrace on himself, which breaks his armor and reveals the weak point. colossi like these are what really make the game shine, but some are just way too hard to figure out, and sometimes are very cheap and frustrating, which evens the score.

The rest of the game is minimal, in a substance sense. The world map is huge. And I’m talking Unicron huge here. The nice thing is that you get a horse to ride around on, so traveling from the hub palace to each colossus doesn’t take quite so long. The not-so-nice thing is that where there is no colossus, there is nothing. Oh, there’s plenty of scenery, but nothing else. You may see a stray lizard here and there, but otherwise, this world is empty. Sure, the Wind Waker had a gigantic map that took forever to cross too, but at least the sea was loaded with distractions and things to do. Shadow of the Colossus offers you nothing. You can shoot stray lizards and collect fruit to increase your various meters, but the world is so huge, and they’re so few and far between that if most of them weren’t on the path to a colossus, it would just be a pain to look for them.

Did I mention that there aren’t any regular enemies either? I didn’t? Well I should have. And the thing that really boggles my mind is that there are save points all over the world, yet there is nothing out there aside from a high drop that can hurt you, so why bother saving? Getting to a colossus from the palace doesn’t take nearly as long as beating the monster itself, so what’s the point? Maybe if they would warp you from one point to another a-la new-school Castlevania games, I could see their use, but otherwise, a waste of time.

The last thing I wanna rag on is the slowdown. Now, the graphics are really pretty, and the draw distance is astonishing, but the PS2 was clearly not meant for this game. Whoever ran this project was a very ambitious man. The framerate in this game can get absolutely horrific. Not 4-player Perfect Dark horrific, but horrific all the same. I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t downplay the graphics a little to fix this issue. I can understand slowdown if there’s a lot going on in a game, but there’s never a lot going on in this game. It’s almost despicable.

I guess I lied, cause I have one more thing to complain about: the story. you get a little tidbit at the beginning, setting out the plot of why everything’s going on. And it would be fine if they left it at this and just slapped on a normal ending. But no. There is no story development at all, during the course of the game, and then at the end, they wire together this huge conspiracy with new characters coming out of the woodwork and loose ends every which way. The whole plot makes very little sense, and while the plot of Killer 7 also made little sense, it did to very intelligently with a huge complicated plot that left you to piece most of it together yourself. Shadow of the Colossus gives you a starting point and then dumps a whole bucket of crap on you right at the end. I’m not going to give it away (not that it matters), but if I were to say I found the ending unsatisfying, I would be making a huge understatement.

So what’s good about the game? Well, for one, I already said that the fights with the colossi are pretty spectacular. Even when they’re really hard to figure out and pushing an hour each, it’s still fun. A lot of the fights are really intense and suck you in so that you feel like you’re really there. One fight in particular, against a flying dragon-type colossus, was based pretty heavily around riding the horse and shooting arrows, and it gave me this awesome Zelda vibe, and I can only hope that Twilight Princess will be as sweet as that particular battle. Seriously, if you haven’t played the game, go find someone who has it and ask to play that fight. It’s incredible. The last boss is pretty sweet too. The first half of the fight is like an incredibly hardcore D-Day parody. The second half is kinda weak and hard, but you’ll forgive it for the awesome thrill of just making it up to the boss.

Another facet of gameplay that I really like is that they totally ripped off the new Prince of Persia games as far as platforming elements go. While there isn’t any running across walls or manipulation of time, most of the jumping puzzles feel like they were ripped straight out of one of the PoP games. It’s mostly hanging from walls and climbing up ledges and that kind of shit, but I can’t deny that on more than one occasion I called the main character “Prince” by accident because I could have sworn I was playing PoP.

As I said before, the graphics are spectacular. The landscape, which is pretty much all you’ll be seeing, is easily as beautiful as a real valley, even when most of it is comprised of deserts and mountain ranges. Flowing rivers and waterfalls are everywhere, the grass is lush and green, and you can see incredibly far into the distance (as far as PS2 games go). Even though the world is empty, there is still plenty that you can just look at and enjoy. The colossus monsters are pretty slick-looking as well. For rock monsters that are half-covered in fur, they’re awfully pretty. It’s just a shame that the PS2 isn’t cut out for such high-end graphics, as the whole framerate debacle really takes it down a notch. Also, there are some issues where lighting is concerned, but it’s minimal and can be overlooked.

The music in the game ranges from great to forgettable. Whilst in battle, the music will change depending on the situation, and suits the fights really well. But out of combat there’s rarely any music, and when there is, it’s not so great. Another notch off is that fact that they included a warning beep for not only the life meter, but also the stamina/breath meter. I hate those warning beeps. Yes, even in Zelda.

The controls are pretty spot-on, except for the triangle button is jump, which is totally weird. Otherwise it’s mostly good, with your basic jump, attack, grab ledge/wall, switch weapon kind of stuff. I have to say though, that sometimes controlling the horse and climbing around on a colossus can be quite difficult. I don’t blame the controls for this though, I place blame entirely on the camera. I swear, this is the worst camera ever since Sonic Adventure It does what it wants, when it wants, how it wants. No matter how many times you try to place it so that you can see what’s going on, it will snap right back to a view of the floor. There may be an option to set the camera to stop from having a mind of its own, but I didn’t see one when I skimmed the options menu, and as such I highly doubt it.

There are also a couple things to do after you finish the game. First off, you’ll unlock a time attack mode that you can play if you choose to play again through the same save file. In this mode, your job is to beat each colossus in a given amount of time. For every two times you top, you’ll be given a new item that may either boost your strength or defense, mark fruit or lizards on your map, or give your weapon a special attribute. You also get hard mode for finishing the game, and beating hard mode will let you do the hard time attack, which yields better items.

So in the end, what do I have to say? Was it well worth my evening? I’d say yes. While the game is plagued by many, many flaws, It comes off at best as a half-assed Zelda wannabe. Because most of the time, it does feel a lot like Zelda. While it would most certainly get boring after a day’s playing, if you rent it and fly through, there’s a very good chance that you’ll come away with a good impression. Just for the love of Zeus, don’t buy it. This game is definitely a renter at best. If you can, even try to get someone else to rent it and then just mooch a few fights. If you play the flying dragon fight and only the flying dragon fight, you’ll have seen the very best that Shadow of the Colossus has to offer without having to suffer through too much of the inexplicably empty world or the horrid camera. And one last note, just skip the ending. Make it up yourself if you really need closure. All you’ll gain from the ending sequence is a pounding headache and a burning hatred for the people who wrote that crap and especially for those who gave it the green light.

NB: I changed my mind. Read that here.

The Good Stuff:
  • Some mind-bending “puzzles”
  • Beautiful landscapes and enemies
  • Decent controls
  • Feels like a simplistic Zelda
  • Time attack is frantic and fun
  • Plenty of special items to earn
The Bad Stuff:
  • Some puzzles are too obscure
  • The world is empty
  • Collectables are a pain to get
  • Some heavy slowdown
  • The camera does what it wants, not what you want

Now I’m on the “nice” list

Hey everybody! Guess what I have for you today. That’s right! A plug! Today we give a shout out to my good buddy Mike! Back in the old days Mike’s site would change radically every couple months or so, but lately it’s been very consistent, and with that consistency comes plently of good reading. While Mike’s articles and reviews might not always drone on for as long as mine do, there are tons of them, and he posts pertinent updates far more frequently than I do. Also on your to-visit list should be the ever-popular forums. I recommend signing up (though if my forums are of any indication, people don’t take my recommendations to sign up very often), as there is always something interesting going on there. And while I’m at it, I hate to spread rumours about something before it’s really even in serious discussion, but there’ve been talks about a group site floating around lately… How do you like them apples?

And now for something completely different; Reader-submitted links! And they say I never do anything for the fans.

Death by gaming

Revolution unveiled to MTV peoples!

Robot Chicken clips

Diamond-encrusted iPod nano

Poor want “real” computers

Discoveries abound

By now, everyone on the internet has seen that crazy Christmas light display that I linked to a while back. Well, thanks to the Sneeze, we now have a link to the fine details. Because I know some people were wondering.

Secondly for today, is the latest Penny-Arcade comic. I don’t think I’ll be able to take X-Men 3 seriously either now. I’ll never be able to see Kelsey Grammar as anyone but Fraiser, or at least Sideshow Bob. To tell the truth, I haven’t even seen X2 yet. But oh well. The last thing on my list of X-Men related junk is that during a trip to the IMDb, I discovered that a different actress plays Shadowcat in each film. Kooky.

Spread the Wi-Fi

Picked up my Nintendo Wi-Fi USB adapter yesterday. Been playing Mario Kart too much. I probably should have waited until after exams, but what are you gonna do? Anyhow, it turns out that I’m not the worst player in the world, as I had previously assumed, because I’ve won a bunch more races than I’ve lost. The thing that strikes me the most is the fact that I’ve waited this long to finally get into this online play business. It’s not the greatest thing ever, but it does have some kind of mysterious appeal to it that I can’t possibly hope to explain. Now if only they would implement it in more games I actually want to play. Or more games overall. Whatever. Mario Kart rocks, and I’ll be adding my friend codes to the sidebar as they come along. You know, just in case.

Today, I would like to send a plug out to the always hilariously odd White Ninja Comics. The comics aren’t very run-of-the-mill, but they always manage to have some sort of hilarious gag or punchline thrown in. Sometimes it’s horribly violent, sometimes it’s incredibly stupid. But like I said, always funny. I decided to plug White Ninja because I found today’s comic to be absolutely priceless. And also because my White Ninja t-shirt commands me to.

Holiday Viva Puffs! The Xmas Season Starts Now!

Another year has come and gone. And it went rather quickly at that. I mean, the site is going to be three years old soon, and it seems like just yesterday I was getting excited about making it to two. Of course, this is not the only reason that I’m particularly infatuated with the month of December. Clearly, the thing that’s currently on the minds of the masses at this time of year are the holidays. Be it Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, or whatever the Hell else that goes on at this time of year, people all over are feeling a little more festive, and everything starts to reflect that.

Supermarkets are no exception to the festivization that December brings, much like when Halloween rolls around in October, everything gets new boxes to reflect the season. While PC groups wouldn’t dare admit it, the world – or North America at least – starts colouring everything Christmas. Red and green start to appear everywhere, and products will take on shapes of trees, snowmen, and Santa. Everything comestible is either dyed or wrapped up to match the colours of Christmas, and today, I will take my first step into the holiday madness.

What better place to start than cookies? I love cookies, you love cookies, everyone loves cookies. And if I get wind that someone doesn’t like cookies, let’s just say they’d better watch their back. Nobody’s gonna make my broad statements false.

For the sake of accuracy, I’ve never really thought of Viva Puffs as cookies. They hardly fit the bill, but what else could they really qualify as? I guess if anything they’d fall under the s’more umbrella, though it would seem that s’mores are also sometimes referred to as cookies. I’m going to have to look into the cookie family tree to resolve this issue, but that’s going to have to wait, because I have to type a bunch of words about these cookies right now. Mmmm… Cookie tree…

I like to think that I’ve driven the point home that this article is holiday themed by now, but, you know, just in case you missed it.

It’s kinda funny, that without this little banner the Puffs really wouldn’t officially be holiday themed. Aside from the fact that candy canes are to Christmas like painted eggs are to Easter, there’s nothing on the box that really denotes a holiday theme. People celebrate Christmas and the like in plenty of places that may have never even heard of snow, and there are lots of things with green boxes that aren’t “holiday editions.” Oh well.

If you know Viva Puffs, you know that they’re already pushing the envelope of how many elements you can mix into a single cookie. Not only is it a marshmallow coated in chocolate, but it’s also got a crumbly cookie-esque base and that red goop in the middle. Like I said, it’s already a very complicated snack, but they’ve decided to take it yet another step and add a fifth part to the mix by injecting it with minty goodness. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for stuff tasting like candy cane, but that’s a lot of very different flavours to take in at once. I know I was going somewhere with this, but I’ve forgotten entirely, so let’s take a look at hot skiing girl.

Upon closer inspection, I think my statement was pretty accurate. She’s got no rack at all, but that can be overlooked because for some reason winter wear is inexplicably attractive. You may think to yourself that I’m nuts for saying that piling on more clothes is a good thing, but you know in your heart that it’s true. I know it. You know it. Hef knows it. I’m just wondering about those boots. Sure, it might just be the ski boots, but those are some mighty big clodhoppers. You know, I think I may have seen her Italian cousin the other day.

But I must digress. As much as I like judging cartoon girls, there’s cookie to be investigated. The back of the box boldly claims that Viva Puffs are “THE cookie with attitude.” That’s bogus on so many levels that I don’t even know where to start.

Firstly, the Viva Puff is not nearly good enough to deserve both capitalization and bold. It’s barely even good enough for one or the other, but using both is just ludicrous. Don’t get me wrong here though. I love the Viva Puffs, but there are so many other cookies that I would choose first. Namely the scrumptious offerings of a certain Dad. Secondly, Viva Puffs have no attitude. They’re actually quite tame. Sure, they have more flavours packed into a single cookie than most three-course meals, but none of those flavours really gets you thinking “Wow! I really need to eat more of these! They’re delicious!”

The box continues to make wild claims of the wickedness of the cookies and how they pop when you bite them. Now, I’m fairly certain that the writers don’t actually mean that it pops when you bite it, but let’s assume they do. Viva Puffs do not pop. Maybe if you were to put them in a microwave or something, which would probably just end up making it bubble up and make a huge mess, but the point stands that biting a Puff will not make it pop. That would be cool, and highly dangerous. Chocolate shrapnel is one of the leading causes of death in North America, you know.

Near the bottom of the box, they go on to promote the other offshoots of the Viva Puff line. Let’s face it, the goo in the middle is all that separates one Puff from another, and it’s not the tastiest stuff in the cookie. I’ll go on record as saying that the raspberry and strawberry types probably taste identical, whilst the fieldberry would just add some sort of sickly blue to the mix. The fudge Puffs would no doubt be the best, and I have an irrational hatred of any caramel that isn’t in a chocolate bar.

You may also notice the banner that asks you how you eat your Puffs. It implies that the website might care about this information, but I’ve been there, and it most certainly does not. I did, however, learn that Dare has a nut-free policy. Go Dare! Nuts only serve to make cookies and other baked goods gross and inedible!

Now we get to the real high point of the box. This little area challenges you to eat the Puffs in many different ways. And when text goes in a half-circle like that one there, you know that you just can’t walk away. It would insult your masculinity to walk away, and if you’re a chick, I’m pretty sure the box is calling you fat. Are you gonna take that? I didn’t think so. It’s time to crack out the puffs.

Ah, there she is. Our first victim. It’s sad that the Puff, like any product that consists of a marshmallow coated in chocolate, is consistently cracked. I would have thought the Puff was better than that, but I guess there is no coating that can survive the terribly difficult trial that is sitting in the cookie aisle.

Now, the box has presented me with four challenges. It says that I should be able to peel, smash, bite and twist these Puffs, and while I shall do it all without remorse, there is a chance that there is going to be some prejudice. Possibly of the extreme variety.

The first challenge I accepted was to peel a Puff. No problem, I’ve seen lots of things get skinned thanks to my vast experience with the internet and movies. Little did I know that the Puff’s chocolatey shell was much different than flesh, and it did its best to stick to the marshmallowy mantle. The fissure down the middle of the shell did help in the matter, as it gave me a good place to start picking at.

In the end, while it was a messy and far from complete operation, I think I made my point pretty well. The next Puffs will surely turn tail once they’ve seen what I’ve done to their comrade.

I weighed the rest of my options pretty carefully, and I chose to take the biting challenge next. Not only would it be the easiest of the four, but it would also prove to be the least messy. Indeed, after a mighty chomp, there were very few crumbs to be seen, and I was left with a pretty cross-section of the Puff. Well, maybe it’s not so pretty, but it surely wasn’t as mutilated as the Puffs which I smashed and twisted turned out to be. I also quite like the green dye in the marshmallow of the Puff. It’s kind of soothing, in a green sort of way.

The next Puff in line was destined for a fate worse than… No, wait, this was pretty much death. The Puff didn’t even see it coming. My fist smashed down on the poor little thing like the big boot on the purple grape. Actually, it was a lot harder than that. And only once.

In all fairness, I have to say that I’m surprised at how well the little guy held up under the circumstances. I guess I shouldn’t be, because it’s essentially made of fluff, which is essentially invincible, but I have to say that I did expect bits to go, well, flying. Essentially.

The last Puff was easily the worst off of the quartet. This one had to suffer through the agony of being twisted. Truth be told, I had no idea how to go about doing this at first. Twisting a dome-shaped object is not something that one normally does, so I had to think about it for a bit. I wasn’t sure whether holding the top and bottom and twisting would be for the best, or if I should hold it at opposite sides and give ‘er. It was a tough decision, and I had already eaten like half the box, so I couldn’t afford any more Puffs and went with the lengthwise twist.

I have to say though, that the twisting did end up with the messiest result. The poor Puff was in shambles, bits of chocolate and cookie strewn every which way, and gooey core spilling out everywhere. I would not wish this fate upon even the worst of my enemies. Well, okay, maybe the worst. What can I say? He’s one-upped me too many times for me to show any mercy. But that’s a whole different story. Let’s just say that I wouldn’t wish the twisty fate upon even my second-to-worst enemy.

Technically, I’m not here to review the Viva Puffs. I just wanted to poke fun at the box and mutilate some cookies. But it’s probably a good way to go out. So the holiday Puff is easily the best Viva Puff ever released. The addition of the minty flavour makes it delicious. As I said before, I love when they add “candy cane” flavour to anything. I spend lots of time during the Xmas season plotting ways to thieve candy canes off of our tree. Last year I managed to get a whole bunch of the stripey treats, and my stash lasted me well into February. And uh, Viva Puffs are funny.

Month-end wrap-up

Ah, the end of November is upon us, and it’s both excellent and tragic.

Bad news first, eh? Well, seems I failed to complete two articles per month during October and November, as I expected might happen. The drive just isn’t there. But I did add a lot of little things in October, and I was pretty blog-happy during this last month, so it all kind of evens out.

So then why’s the end of November excellent? Simple: it means the beginning of December, and bar the snow and cold, December is an awesome month. Firstly, it’s holiday time. While the world is now almost entirely non-specific about it, I’m getting psyched about Christmas already, and with the Xmas comes the themed goods. I’ve got an article almost ready to go up (should be done tomorrow), and it’s gonna kick off the TE Christmas season. I don’t know how many seasonal articles I’ll do, but there will be at least this one and the yearly Xmas haul overview. It all depends on how much red and green coloured crap I get my hands on. Chances are also good that we’re going to be seeing some sweet Nintendo Wi-Fi action here pretty soon, so there’s gonna be that to write about too. My brother’s really spearheading that operation, and even though I tried to resist the Mario Kart, he’s had his way with my self-control and well… Tony Hawk’s American Sk8Land is also a must-have, but that can wait for now. I think that’s everything that needed to be said. You might also see some minor changes in the main page’s colour scheme, but that’s just a “possible, not probable” at this point.