Game Reviews by lasttoblame - MobyGames (2024)

BioShock (Xbox 360)

not the review you've been waiting for.. so buy or rent Bioshock, I don't care

Sometimes, some things are just too good for their own good.

While that seems to be a contradictory statement simply on its own, it makes sense (but not too much sense) when you consider there are many things that haven't enjoyed any success when it is fully conceivable that they should. Critical success does not necessarily mean popular success; sometimes art is made that is so advanced that the current generation can not accept it (the term avant-garde comes to mind). The public can only handle so much.

This may seem to be critical of the average layman, who can't be faulted for being who he is, a man--a laying man, at that. In that case, to put it another way (other than saying the public can only accept so much), beauty is the beginning of fear. You know that new sports car? That fancy expensive one, the one you fantasize about? If you buy that, you're going to worry about it all the time; you're going to worry about it being stolen, scratched, towed, and even targeted by malicious flying birds and their gooey excrement. You know that hot, attractive girl? The one you fantasize about all the time? Once she becomes your girlfriend ("oh yes, she will be mine") you may find yourself constantly worried that someone may steal her from you. Again: beauty is the beginning of fear, and some things are just too good for their own good.

While these two points aren't necessarily the same, the same point can be made: the public can only handle so much. So, that's where Bioshock lands, firmly on its capable and talented feet and stooping low to bend to the lowest common denominator so that even the most lay of the layest of layman will "get" this game.

Bioshock is a beautiful game that takes place in the undersea city of Rapture. Based on the philosophies of Ayn Rand, Bioshock is an exploration of Objectivism gone catastrophically wrong. In the game, a charismatic leader named Andrew Ryan founds the city of Rapture as a capitalist haven safe against influence and pressure from outside political and religious powers. Literally shut off from the entire world at the bottom of the ocean, the Objectivist experiment of Rapture fails due to internal problems; this is suggested due in part to Objectivist dogma where the scientist, artist and capitalist aren't constrained by ethics or morality.

This is quite an interesting basis for a story; furthermore, Bioshock would continue down the "interesting path" some more and spin a tale of betrayal, deceit and domination. However, the fantastic research and writing that went into making this video game comes at a price: it's too good for its own good.

When applied to video games many gamers could only shake their heads in disbelief. "How can a game be too good?" they may say. I suppose this can be someone asking how vanilla ice cream can be too vanilla-y, or how someone can have sex too often and have too many org*sms. Well, I can't complain about vanilla ice cream nor about org*sms that are too good to have, but there is something to be said about Bioshock: its story and game play are terribly unbalanced with each other. Bioshock can't make up its mind whether it wants to tell a story or let you blow things up; stuck as a compromise, Bioshock delivers an interesting story in a way only video games can tell at the cost of overpowered game play that is too easy even for the average layman.

The story is too good for video games. I admit this sounds insulting to all video gamers and layman everywhere, lying down, but when the news broke that Bioshock is getting the Hollywood treatment with "name" director Gore Verbinski attached, who made alot of money and fame making movies about a ride at Disneyworld, I suspect the excitement was mostly over the fact that the great story in Bioshock would finally get told properly - in another medium that can tell stories well.

How can a story be too good for a game? Well, the high quality of a story in a video game can be detrimental when the developers emphasize the importance of the story over everything else; what this does effectively is subvert every other aspect including game play, difficulty, and enemy selection. You know (you laymen guys), everything that makes a video game a game.

First, the game is entirely too easy. Of the three difficulty levels, the hardest level is about the same level as most other games' mild medium difficulty level; compared to a hardcore game like Ninja Gaiden, Bioshock's hardest difficulty level is on par with the former game's easiest difficulty level. Other elements add to this ease: the game pauses when selecting weapons or plasmids, basic enemies (splicers) are all the same and so similar strategies can be used against them throughout the game, weapons are upgradeable to over-powered status, after halfway through the game money becomes so easy to make that a 500$ maximum capacity is forced on the player (unlike my wallet in real life), a map and a directional arrow points to the objective so that getting lost in a level is an impossibility, and furthermore no penalty is ever exacted on the player for dying - the player is instantly resurrected at a Vita-chamber to redo a level until ultimately he succeeds.

Secondly, the game play is so unbalanced that not long after beginning you become a unstoppable powered tank. The average enemy soon doesn't have a chance against the player, and in fact by the game's end you are pretty much just as powerful as the end boss. It appears the makers spent a lot of time designing cool ways to blow things up real good that they forgot to give you a suitable opponent; while it may be argued that Big Daddies are tough mini-bosses, the truth is they don't appear often enough and once you learn the technique how to take down a Big Daddy quickly it actually becomes routine quite quickly. In fact, one of the biggest challenges in Bioshock is cycling through your weapons and plasmids regularly to use them all equally, whereas in most cases you'll stick with one familiar weapon and upgrade it to make short work of all splicers and Big Daddies.

The fact of the matter is that the game has been designed to be overly simple and easy for the simplest of laymen to ensure that absolutely anyone and everyone can make it to the end - to ensure that this story gets told, from beginning to end. In four (and a compound) words: great story, bad game play. This is the antithesis of most games that have a bad story but great game play. Video games have traditionally not had great stories because usually they have been about game play, the meat, and back bone of video games.

Consider all the audio diaries scattered through each of the levels. When put together they weave together the complicated social tapestry of Rapture, a blend of unbridled ambition and treachery and despair. An interesting part of the story... that isn't an integral part of the game. In fact, listening to these audio diaries will commonly displace you from the immersion of the game, and in fact distract you from attacking enemies. These side-stories are entirely skippable for those who wish to simply blow things up.

And that's a problem too: as a straight-forward first-person shooter, Bioshock is strangely unsatisfying for not having unbalanced game play. Bioshock looks beautiful, sounds realistic for sound effects and dramatic for voice acting and has period songs of the era, and is a high class offering that should be a great video game - but it isn't as much fun as DOOM to shoot monsters and blow stuff up.

This is where Bioshock deviates from the norm (watch out, lying-down people everywhere!). As a game, it isn't much fun or challenging, but as a story and as a work of original art, it is fascinating and nuanced and fresh. As a top tier well-hyped video game with enormous production values, it's clear that sacrifices were made to this game to make it enjoyable and accessible to everyone; to anyone who has studied art knows, art is something that is for anyone, but not everyone. Bioshock could have been something really special and extraordinary, but instead we have something that allows the basest fan boy to blow stuff up.

This isn't to say Bioshock doesn't understand its medium and the limitations thereof; on the contrary, the single most genius fact of the design of Bioshock is the use of linearity. Long a bane of video game design, Bioshock whole-heartedly embraces linearity as the basis of the shocking twist at the game's mid-section. Without explaining it completely to encourage people to play it for themselves, the linearity of the game and lack of choice is used to turn the entire convention of video game stories on its head. This same type of head-turning convention was last used to great effect in "Shadows of the Colossus" (2005), in which, without the use of speaking script, the player realizes in horrifying dismay that the colossus you are slaying aren't evil - the sad, melancholic music that plays upon killing a colossus is in stark contrast to the happy, heroic music that plays when you finally mount them.

This perspective as a gamer progressing through levels to satisfy an objective only to realize, after the fact, the real ramification of what you have done can only lie within the realm of objective-reaching video games that feature a challenge/reward system that films, TV and books can't compete. However, films - the film adaptation of Bioshock, for example - aren't limited by the conventions and devices of video games and so aren't constrained in storytelling: films don't have power-ups, crates to smash and tutorials telling you how to cycle through your weapons. Unlike a video game, films have a set, finite duration of time and will finish whether or not you can kill the end boss who has cheap-ass attacks. Movies tell stories; video games are stories unto themselves that depend upon your mad video game skillz, layman or otherwise.

It is with this sad fact that the Bioshock movie, if it ever gets made, will be much better than the original video game and become the best video game adaptation ever made. This is not so surprising since Bioshock isn't as much a video game as it is a delightful story set awkwardly as a period piece masquerading as a first-person shooter. While it’s confusing that this story wound up being told first as a video game, it shouldn't be surprising that this video game was made as a first-person shooter - it's these fps games that get bought. Getting bought means money. And money is an end in itself that ensures compromise over integrity.

While we may never know to what end Bioshock was compromised, it's clear that the result is an unbalanced game that has a better story than its gameplay. For being innovative and challenging as a work of art in the field of video games is noteworthy, but laymen should now understand why I enjoy playing Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad more than this game. Chicks in bikinis using samurai swords to slice up zombies - now that makes a fun game; the movie... (Oneechanbara: The Movie (2008)) not so much.

There's hope for you yet, Bioshock.

(If you've made it this far, I'll divulge the fact that I already did a review for Bioshock for PC - after only having played it for a few hours. If you look it up here on Mobygames, you'll see - quite gratifying to me - that I wasn't that far off the mark from the mark. Once again, thank you Mobygames for making my reviews arguably the most read/voted unhelpful!)

By lasttoblame on April 27, 2009

Final Fantasy XII (PlayStation 2)

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; or, the plot Dickens..

The Good
Everybody loves “Rocky” (1976); I mean, what’s not to like about the quintessential American dream of some white guy who able to overcome the odds and defeat the heavyweight champion of the world, a guy who is stronger, more eloquent and blacker than him. Besides this important admission to the modern lexicon of the underdog, “Rocky” is also important for its unforgettable theme by Bill Conti and establishing a cornerstone of the modern film vocabulary--the “montage”: a collection of vignettes accompanied by music to establish the passing of time and the bettering of oneself; in this case, running up the stairs of Philadelphia Museum of Art and wrestling a chicken. “Gonna fly now...”

This is important to the fundamental concept of role playing video games. Besides the idea of pretending to be somebody else for awhile and do things that they would do (a concept quite a few RPG’s in fact ignore), an RPG can offer you the satisfaction of turning a nobody who can’t do anything into a somebody who is strong, smart, and likely has the ability to cast spells. The information shown in a five minute film montage can’t compare with the satisfaction of turning your farm boy on a quest to avenge/save the kingdom/princess into a hulking, spell-casting badass over the span of some fifty hours. From fighting rats in the cellar to dragons in castles, this predicable template is what brings back gamers for more of the same. We want that satisfaction.

The Final Fantasy series has long allowed gamers to indulge in this “satisfaction illusion” with providing hundreds of hours of grinding through dungeons to level up their characters. Final Fantasy XII goes the logical next step in turn based combat and offers a system that is automatic and for the most part, hands free. Final Fantasy XII uses a “Gambit” system which is just like basic programming (ie. Step 1: heal if health under 50%; Step 2: if health over 50%, then attack enemy etc.). All that button mashing “A” to confirm your party to “attack” enemy has been eliminated by this simple and straightforward system that has you wondering why it hasn’t been used before. However, this forward leap in technology is a step backwards in old school methodology: by taking away the monotonous act of making the same combat decisions over and over again, the game also takes away the pleasure of knowing you have something (if at least artificially) to do with your character getting “stronger”.

Indeed, if the “Gambits” are programmed properly then just about no stopping of game combat is required; you just steer your merry band of murderers as they gallivant across the countryside slaughtering the poor monsters they encounter. As the player you simply direct where you want to go and everything is taken care of for you. It’s like the difference between driving a car and walking fifty miles, but more pleasurable, say like driving a car getting a highway hummer at the same time, but without the satisfaction and an overwhelming feeling of impropriety, say like getting said highway hummer from your sister. Who is dead. And had all her teeth filed into fangs.

However, “Gambits” aren’t mandatory, and in fact this “hands off” approach won’t work for the entirety of the game. Boss battles require different strategies compared to normal enemies. Conversely, someone could eschew the “Gambit” system entirely and micromanage every action, constantly pausing the action to simulate the turn-based style of yesteryear. Still, what’s done is done and there’s no going back. The sharp edge of technology has pierced the patchy screen door of RPG complacency, and the automated mosquitoes of “progress” have gotten inside and are here to stay and suck the blood of the soft, rubbery skin of fun. After this watershed, a RPG that still features turn-based combat is denying inevitable change and tacitly accepting an outdated system that shouldn’t have been improved a generation ago.

This aspect of Final Fantasy XII wouldn’t have been that bad except for the fact that in this game, as in most Japanese RPG’s, the main interactive component is combat. The acquisition of experience and money, accomplishing quests and main story goals, venturing into new areas—these all require combat, and lots of it. The Final Fantasy series does offer much besides combat: the series offers amazing visuals, music, elaborate cutscenes, Byzantinely convoluted plotlines, androgynous characters—more than enough to appeal to any sexually confused gamer. But this is a videogame, something you interact with, and having the main interaction with it on “autopilot” takes away part of the reason we’re playing it in the first place. If something is turn-based, then it doesn’t make any sense to artificially remove the “turns”.

These two contrasting modes of combat – turn-based and “automatic” - aren’t inherently flawed. While my criticism of Final Fantasy XII and early Final Fantasies sound like abject dismissal of their combat, in actuality both of them can work out to be quite fun if they were used in the right context. Fallout had an amazing, rich turn-based combat system that featured deep game play strategies. If you were going to take turns in combat, well, make sure every move counted. Likewise, an automatic battle system could be fun in a game if you had other things required of you to do, say solve puzzles. It’s a game; let me play it.

So, I was having my weekly video game think-tank session with JazzOleg where we try to solve the world’s problems by talking about video games we like and don’t like. I mentioned this review for Final Fantasy XII and also my main complaint that it takes the fun and satisfaction when the game basically “plays itself”. Upon hearing this Oleg put down his pipe, got up from the rocking chair and went out to the veranda that overlooks the valley that leads down to the lake and the boat house. He stood there for some time, watching the sun set as the temperature fell. In time he re-entered quietly and poured himself yet another brandy. Swilling it, he said at last, “While I hold your position, Msgr. Lasttoblame, to be one of logic and honor, I will inform you that the great satisfaction I obtain from playing Final Fantasy and other RPG’s is by outfitting my characters with the best armor and weapons and upgrading them as I see fit.” He then stood there silently, biting his lip, until he lifted his glass and downed the brandy in one swill. Oleg then did a line of co*ke the length of my arm and jumped out the window. When I peered through the broken glass I saw that Oleg had picked himself up and was running away, yelling “Video games can make a grown man cry!” and “It’s all about the story!” over and over again.

Wise words, even if I don’t agree with them. Gamers can play a video game whichever style fits them: cautiously, brashly, methodically, carelessly. Whichever style it is it doesn’t matter as the fun they derive from said game. If there are gamers like Oleg who enjoy looking over a menu tab again and again to agonizingly choose a +7 Sword of Vorpal over the BFG, well… there just are. People will have their fun however they want it. However, it should be noted that the automation that happened with the turn-based combat will likely also happen with upgrading your inventory and stats, as can be seen in the “X-Men: Legends” action-RPG’s. Just as there are people who don’t enjoy constantly confirming “yes” to attack, there are also people like me who don’t enjoy looking at a massive spreadsheet in order to marginally improve my characters.

Technology is change. Progress is change. But technology isn’t necessarily progress. The current trend in video games is to make games more and more accessible to more people, and the direct result is that of making games more and more easy. Final Fantasy XII follows this trend by using technology to make choice selection easier and faster. This is in effect “giving something for nothing” and gives the illusion of an action game without actually requiring the reflexes and co-ordination to play an action game. Easier and easier games redefine games as less interactive and demanding when the complexity of technology and the maturing of gamers’ sophistication requires the opposite.

Final Fantasy XII is a victim of its own pride of being dumbed-down technology and bloated, self-important art.

By lasttoblame on March 31, 2009

Burnout: Revenge (PlayStation 2)

I said, “No ice in my co*ke!”

The Good
Everyone likes fun. That’s why it’s called fun, the same way money is called money—if everybody didn’t want it, it’d be called something else (thank you David Mamet!). If you do not like fun and would rather flog yourself with a whip, well, while not technically called fun it still takes place during your spare time for recreation. Video games are fun just the way games should be, which is just the plain and simple reason why people love to play them; once again, if this is not your thing, I do believe there is a self-flagellation nunchuk attachment for the Nintendo WiiFit you ought to give a try.

While everyone likes fun, video gamers have their own ideas about what type of fun is best. It’s personal preference, and is always a topic of heated debate for gamers. Of course, what someone likes is an incontrovertible argument to outside influence: “I know what I like”. After all, something you like is an opinion, and opinions aren’t right or wrong by themselves: it’s a belief.

However, while opinions can’t be right or wrong in and of themselves, they can suck. If you believe in something without knowing why, your opinion sucks. If you cling to an argument stubbornly by only choosing which facts to believe, then your opinion sucks. In fact, facts are irrelevant in the Information Age when they are so plentiful, unconfirmed and can be spun by both sides of an argument to prove a point. Instead opinions matter, opinions that don’t suck that is, because from now onwards there will always be too much information and so thus too many facts. And right or wrong, your opinion better not suck because someone somewhere will always disagree with you.

Having said that, there exists an honest-to-goodness type of fun that is the best in all of videogames. It isn’t a genre, it isn’t a type of platform, and neither is it an era. It’s an attitude to have the most fun possible. It’s hardcore fun in the form of hardcore gaming. It’s gaming with all the dials set to 11. They are video games that are difficult, that are long in length, that are fast in pace. In fact, as video game become more difficult, long and quick the more fun they become.

Some people, like casual gamers, feel satisfactory with an average amount of fun in their video games. If a video game is played and enjoyed and a good time was had by all, then where is the problem? After all, how does one measure fun? How is it possible to objectively quantify such a abstract concept? Why can’t fun be fun?

The problem is that in the world of video games these two types of fun are not mutually compatible. In terms of Darwinism, the gene pool from casual gaming is diluting the gene pool from hardcore gaming. While the hardcore game play of Grand Theft Auto III or Burnout 3: Takedown appealed to a mass audience and to casual gamers, the same can’t be said going the other way. Burnout: Revenge is such a game that perfectly encapsulates this idea.

Burnout: Revenge is a game that is made completely for the casual gamer, and it suffers because of it. The Burnout series has always been about crazy speed and difficult racing; that’s what made it so good. However, this 4th reiteration of the franchise keeps the speed but has lost all the difficulty, something that is made all the worse from having no adjustable difficulty level. Personally, I’ve played the game for over three hours, finished a third of it and am still waiting for it to get hard (the game, I mean).

While this could be attributed to my oversized thumbs and my ability to not blink for five minutes at a time, my modesty informs me that the game is built from the ground up to be exceptionally easier than that ballbreaker deluxe, its predecessor Burnout 3. The tracks are much easier to navigate, especially now there are a multitude of short cuts that are conveniently marked with flashing blue lights that can’t be missed even by a blind man in the dark with no eyes and has been dead two weeks. Even though there are now a number of barriers you can crash into that really weren’t there in the previous game, this all means Jacques if every turn is a big ass ballpark you could drive the Millenium Falcon through. These tracks are all easier so that Joe Blow weekend-racecar-driver can burnout at top speed without much difficulty.

Your opponents in the single player mode race against you using a rubber band AI you can use to bungee jump to the Earth from the moon. Several times I would win a race on the last lap from the last position. Winning these races felt like getting a free blow j*b from a crack whor* street walker because “you have an honest face”. No, I want to win a race because of my superb driving technique, the same way I would want to pay top dollar for the sweetest ‘tang this side of ‘Nam. Likewise, takedowns on other cars is so easy it makes you think if you missed contact they would still crash in the same way a striker is quick to fall down by the opponent’s football goal.

This isn’t the worst sin Burnout: Revenge has to make amends with a thousand “Hail Mary’s”. A new feature for this game is the hilarious ability to check same way traffic with cars the same size as yours. What this means is so long that it isn’t a bus or tractor trailer, if it is moving in the same direction you can run into it, thus negating any driving skill you picked from a video game. In fact, Burnout: Revenge is the perfect game to play while enjoying a tasty snack, while driving a real car in your real life, or if you don’t have any hands. While “checking traffic” mode is cool as a “psycho driving home from a bad day at work simulator”, as a part of races it makes as much sense as playing tennis without a net or watching professional baseball without beer.

Burnout: Revenge does a complete U-turn from the genius of Burnout 3: Takedown, and STILL forgets to bring home milk like it was asked to. This is one cheap experience where every victory is a hollow one. Burnout 3 succeeded because it was so difficult, which made each victory that much more satisfying because it depended upon your mad racing skillz, yo. This is the appeal of old school gaming for hardcore video gamers: despite any kind of reward a game can give you the best reward is your own satisfaction. Nothing satisfies like success.

Burnout: Revenge mollycoddles the player’s ego with surefire success and provides an arcade racer with an enormous sense of speed that is gorgeous at which to look. While it can’t be denied some modicum of fun can be shimmied out of this game, it isn’t FUN. Not the best fun you can have. As more and more game franchises become catered to casual gamers, the more these same game franchises will suffer like the Burnout series did with this unfortunate entry.

What was once a fun game franchise full of satisfaction and fun is now watered down like a Super-Sized cup of Mountain Dew full of ice cubes. Casual gaming in video games is on course for ruining it for everybody: hardcore gaming won’t get the fun they’re jonesing for and casual gamers will never get to know what true hardcore fun is. Of course, Burnout has since moved on to greener pastures of NOX-fumed asphalt with Burnout: Dominator and the recent Paradise City release; let's hope they are still fun in the way that made this game franchise great.

This isn’t to say that casual gaming doesn’t have its place. Games like DDR, Guitar Hero, just about anything Wii that average Joe Blow taxpayer just wants to play for five minutes at a time work well as ambassadors to the public at large; they introduce video games to the uninitiated as a fun, harmless hobby. Or, they can serve as a “gateway” game to lure virgin gamers to explore seedier and seedier electronic crack dens until they wind up lying in their own filth desperately trying to reach 100% completion on some game the same way desperate party-people try to dry a wet packet of co*ke in a microwave at seven in the morning.

Hardcore games with casual gamer appeal that are successful are so because they are good hardcore games and, by nature, are all the things hardcore games are: difficult, long, fast-paced. Hardcore games that try to please everyone and appeal to a wide audience end up being a compromise that negate any integrity it once had and wind up as a disaster. Something that is perfect for anyone is not necessarily perfect for everyone.

Casual gaming: please stick to your plastic guitar peripherals and your grandmothers. Don’t ruin it for everyone. Lets keep casual games casual and the hardcore games hardcore, the same way we all segregate our straight and gay p*rn.

Along with gambling games, it’s racing games like these that have a more damaging influence on kids that watching head shot after head shot. Violence is funny and entertaining. Fifty years ago, the act of dropping a grand piano out of a building onto someone’s head wasn’t only funny, it was funny for everyone, including children. Especially for children.

Of course, these are musings that are off topic and unsubstantiated by the main argument (which summed itself up properly, I think) so I’ll close with -- Game responsibly: don’t blink.

By lasttoblame on June 25, 2008

Shadow of the Colossus (PlayStation 2)

Big is not scary; small is scary

The Good
Video games are a lot of fun. Hot damn, one thing the modern age has brought us is a never-ending supply of entertainment in the form of internet chatting, web surfing for information, compiling information for an online database as well as just playing video games. In fact, video games are at times so fun that they are difficult to put down and compel the player to not stop. This is called addiction, and there are some gamers who believe a good video game should have this addictive quality; at one time the video game magazine GamePro had it as one of its rating requirements. The assessment is a fair one in this context; fun is what people want and expect in a game, so it makes sense for them to have a game that doesn’t stop being fun. If a game is addictive, then it serves its own purpose very well as a leisure activity or “time-killer”, if you will. That’s what a game is: an activity that you partake in and, win or lose, you enjoy yourself during the time you are doing it.

Videogames are also a burgeoning expressive art form. What once was quick, simple fun has evolved to telling complex stories of ambiguous morality that may resonate deeply with the player’s emotions. From its crude beginnings, videogames have become a billion-dollar industry as a pop-culture sensation and a technological marvel. However, this balance of being both a game and as art has never been resolved. Take for example, this issue: “Do video games make people think? Do videogames challenge people such that they are different people at the end of the experience?”

This “thinking” is actively thinking, thinking to come to a conclusion that hasn’t been thought of before and not just thinking mechanically. Sure, there’s a lot of thinking going on in games. This takes a myriad of forms in the plethora of different videogame genres: action games require fast, reflexive thinking; puzzle games require abstract problem-solving; RPG’s may require moralistic decision-making. The differences are vast as are the heated discussions to which is better, but they are all the same in the as they require the player to operate within the set parameters that the game lays out for you. You are following the game; the player is making decisions only based on what the game asks of you. Once again, this is pretty much just using your brain and not thinking on your own and coming to your own conclusions.

The game play aside, what success video games have achieved somewhat in terms of thinking are games that “make you think”. Games have matured in the recent past by tackling social issues and telling compelling stories that people affect people long after the game is over. One quick example is Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King, where despite fighting cute monsters in random battles the main story has themes of child abandonment, sibling rivalry, a death in the family as well as racism (or monsterism, though this is minor). Modern video games are not slow to tackle new and unproven themes that once may have been too edgy for an audience.

However, a video game is still a game, no matter how well a video game tells a story or challenges the player to think outside the box. Besides anything else a game aspires to be, they must be fun to play. The entire experience of having a wonderful story told to you with amazing graphics and wonderful music is compromised by one thing: you are playing a video game with the purpose to win it. Almost every game made has a “game over” screen, and as a gamer you’ll do everything you can not to be staring at it. Whatever thinking you do while playing a video game usually has to do with the video game itself; if it is a smart and good video game then it will shape your thinking to become addicted to the game play. Addiction is not thinking; addiction is doing something without thinking.

And then you have Shadow of the Colossus, a masterpiece of a game that is so good people are usually left sputtering adjectives of praise but not able to describe why it’s so good. The likes of this game, which pits the unknown protagonist against 16 epic boss fights in order to save a dead woman, has never been seen before and likely its kind won’t be seen again. It’s a unique experience that raises the bar as to what a video game can achieve in terms of artistic expression. Lots have been written about the various colossi and the “purity” of boiling a game down to just the boss battles in which a boss is the anthropomorphism of a video game level. Shadow of the Colossus is an unique blend of having action/puzzle game play in an adventure game; it tells a touching story that is very out of place for a video game, and succeeds because of it. It is an extremely immersive game that is emotive without being crass and manipulative. It is the most well-made video game created because you will understand and appreciate exactly what the developers are trying to say and do.

You’ve read it all before in any of the hundreds of reviews that universally praise this game. While the praise is well-deserved, Shadow of the Colossus succeeds as a work of art because it does something that just about no video game ever made does: it lets you think.

That’s right: it lets you think. It doesn’t crowd your brain with superfluous decision making or needless details. You have a set objective, and to achieve that you must best these colossi, whom you can figure out how to beat by just looking at them. This takes place in a set world that is extremely detailed and immersive with no loading times. This is a simple and pure game, and because the set parameters are so few and unexplained—you must kill these colossi in this beautiful world without knowing why—as you play the game it lets you think.

That’s “let you think”, not “make you think”. Shadow of the Colossus isn’t so self-important to take itself so seriously. If it has anything important to say, then it challenges you to figure it out. This game is similar to the brilliance of Bioshock that permits the player to be as immersive in the story if they choose to do so, but in Shadow of the Colossus the details must be filled in by the player themselves because the story is told so sparsely and mysteriously. As in both games, a player can blaze through from beginning to end, enjoy themselves and be witness to a marvelous experience, and not know why.

This concept of “letting you think” is no better exemplified than by the game’s most important characters: the environment and the player’s horse, Agro. It is riding through this “cursed land” on your beloved horse that is the essence of the game, not the novelty of solely fighting epic boss battles where you have to climb on somebody to kill them. Take for instance: it is evident a vast percentage of the resources available for game development where allocated to making the world environment and to making the horse run and operate properly. The gigantic world is beautifully detailed and well designed and runs without any load times whatsoever. Agro is the most realistic depiction of a horse in a video game (compared to Gun, for example), and besides accurate, realistic-type controls Agro features a smooth transition from a walk to a trot to a gallop, no mean feat for an animal with four legs.

If the stars of Shadow of the Colossus are the colossi themselves, then wouldn’t a prudent development decision be to focus just on the colossi themselves? If you devoted the resources making the world environment and the horse (who is only used to as part of the colossi battles for a regretful few) to making the colossi, then we would have a game that could feature twice as many colossi, or ultra-smart colossus A.I. that could quiz you what your favorite color is before you cross a bridge. Wouldn’t more and better colossi make a better Shadow of the Colossus game?

No. If this decision was made and, for example, the game took place in a castle where you walk from room to room (like ICO), all the inspiration and magic would be gone because there isn’t a context for things to happen in. This can be seen in the game itself; after beating it once, the game features a challenge mode where you can walk up to the statue of any one colossus (all located in the same room) to play and replay the boss fights; fun, but not part of the amazing game experience.

Riding through the huge world is the real essence of the game. Just like every other part of the game, the environment is simplified and devoid of any real animals, save some tiny animals—it’s just riding. There are no random battles to encounter to level up your stats, as there are no NPC’s to encounter to take quests and buy weapons. It is a pure element, just like all the elements in this game. After receiving orders as to which colossus to whack next—the fantasy world equivalent of a GTA crime boss you take missions for—the player rides to the next destination with only your magical sword to serve as a compass. For a game that tells its story so subtly and is very stingy with any concrete details, this journey is the best part of the game because even though you are riding to the next colossus the real action takes place in your own damn brain.

That’s right, for this day and age where everyone demands better graphics the best part of Shadow of the Colossus takes place in your own imagination. As the distance grows, so does the anticipation. The mind fills with questions: What will the next colossus look like? If the last one was so tough to beat, how will I beat this one? What is the purpose of these colossi? Who is the mysterious woman I’m trying to save? But most importantly, why? Why am I trying to kill these magnificent creatures? Why do I feel regret even as I inch closer to my objective?

Shadow of the Colossus doesn’t ask you these questions; no, it lets you think for yourself. As you’re riding and thinking about these things your thoughts will drift to other subjects, but since your mind is already in a critical state of mind you are likely to do some more. That’s right, this game fools you into thinking for yourself. Genius, this is nothing short of genius. This game transcends the parameters it sets itself becomes something much more by using the best story teller you know: yourself.

I went and read through a faq that tried to explain EVERYTHING about the story, and I just have to say: man, you nerds, stop trying to figure magic out. The game is great because it’s mysterious. As in the cult film “Donnie Darko” (2001), it’s cool and interesting because you have no pin-wheelin’ idea what’s going on; later on in the Director’s Cut release where everything was explained, the movie just wasn’t cool nor interesting anymore. Man, just because you think you know something doesn’t make it better or your enjoyment of it better.

The tagline to this review comes from David Lynch; he replied thusly when asked why he often has very tiny people in his movies (for example, the end of “Mulholland Dr.” (2001)). Dave’s got a point, you know; it’s tough being a giant colossus.

By lasttoblame on June 22, 2008

Asteroids (Atari 2600)

This is the game I would shovel snow 2 miles uphill to play

The Good
Man, the elderly don’t get any props; maybe that’s why in the west there are so many old age homes—because once you’re tired of putting up with grandpa complaining about this or that, you can ship him off to this stop before he hits the boneyard. I suppose it could be worse; you could burn their bodies for fuel or exploit them as QA monkeys for some Wii marketing strategy.

No, something that is old usually has the connotation that it is outdated and useless, something that only too-well ingrained in the fast-paced world of video games. Probably more so than movie geeks are video gamers always looking towards the newest thing, something proven all too well by the very popular trend of making a game purchase the day it is released. Even if the game had prior reviews of it released, all the information to be had about said game really consists of marketing hype; there’s no word of mouth, there isn’t the chance to rent before you buy, none of that. However, one thing is certain and undeniable—it’s new. And new means good.

This idea of “in with the new” all has to do with technology. Video games are a medium where the expectations keep changing as the technologies becomes more powerful, quicker and cheaper. As new sequels to a franchise are released, people expect each new iteration to be prettier and more fun. If something is numbered “XII”, well then it must be better than something with “XI”, and so on.

Taking a futurist point of view and always believing that better things will come in time also means that the past is disposable and irrelevant. For video gamers it means older games from an era long before are quaint and curious, but a throwback to when games weren’t as good as today.

Let’s put this in context. Video games today are a billion dollar industry made by large companies with vast budgets and superior technology. Back in the eighties, the “Golden Era of Video Games”, it is usually one guy and a tall cup of coffee.

In truth, games made from this era are completely unplayable by today’s standards because of this gigantic leap in technology. Kids today can’t accept that you’re a green square on the screen, or that your hero doesn’t have a face to speak of. One would have to move forward to the mid-eighties arcade platform before someone would even consider downloading the emulator to play it. Furthermore, kids today can’t grasp the idea of old-school gaming. Nowadays you have life bars, adjustable difficulties, cheat codes and faqs on the internet to allow ruining a game for oneself. Gaming back then was dependent of memorizing entire levels and performing completely error-free runs; one mistake sent you back to the beginning of the level, and you usually only had three lives to spare.

And that was it. If you didn’t like it, you could go outside and play catch because there weren’t any other choice; video games were brand new and this is how they were. It seems some gamers are interested to go back and see how the electronic cup and ball game were back then, but you know, it doesn’t make any sense for those who didn’t catch it the first time because playing an ancient video game now is doing so all out of context.

This is such the case with that most classic of video games, Asteroids, originally an arcade game but ported to the Atari 2600. What seems quaint now was completely revolutionary back then, all in no part to the fact that nothing like it ever existed before. Imagine that: making a video game in which you couldn’t steal any ideas because there aren’t any other video games to steal from. If flying around in a space ship blasting rocks doesn’t appeal to you, then imagine what your options were for entertainment back then: either go to the arcade, read a book, or beat each other up. No internet, MTV, body piercings or the “choking” game.

If playing Asteroids for the Atari 2600 is lacking in features for you, then imagine: flying around using thrust with no brakes to simulate inertia in outer space—brand new (well, it may have done earlier in Space Wars but who cares about that? It wasn’t on the 2600). That “Duh-duh duh-duh” music you hear in the background—brand new for a videogame (but ripped off from Jaws). Dogfighting with enemy aircraft, spraying lasers towards them while dodging their projectiles—never seen before like this. Flying off the screen and warping back to the other side—this was a new strategy every gamer would incorporate to try to extend the life of their quarter. Also on the Apple II version (I think it’s Super Asteroids) two players can play simultaneously as co-op to clear the level or against each other—the first deathmatch (in space, Combat did it earlier with tanks, planes and jets). Over 25 years ago, this was freaking fun-tastic and at the time “BEST GAME EVAR”, though we usually spoke in full sentences then that ended with the word “gaylord”.

The Atari 2600 was a complete revolution back then because it offered you a chance to play those awesome arcade games without having to go to a seedy arcade and get your quarters from a sweaty, disgusting man. Other systems existed before it, but this was the standard where you can get all the biggest hits. Asteroids didn’t look like the arcade version (that had vector graphics), but it played like it and brought the arcade version home. That one guy can shoehorn this into the size of an electronic version of a mouse’s fart is another reason to marvel at (though Nolan Bushnell and a cat o’ nine tails yelling, “Quicker! I need more money for cocaine!” probably provided some encouragement).

This is Asteroids: you fly around in a space ship, shooting at space rocks as well as at enemy UFO’s that appear. And it was fun as hell. Once you shoot all the rocks, more appear and you do it all over again until you run out of lives. Pointless, ultimately defeating (I think Missile Command was the ultimate bummer, though) but the most fun you can have at the arcade—now available at home.

And if someone were to complain about the sudden re-materialization of space rocks and just as sudden loss of a turn, well welcome to the school of ye olde tyme gaming: it’s pretty obvious you’re used to having things made easy for you. This is clear in the arcade game that once you clear the stage you better be ready for the next wave and so stick to the center. Because you couldn’t ever stay in one spot from space rocks flying at you from odd angles, Asteroids was always about the strategy of dodging rocks but trying to get back to the middle, where you can see all the rocks and where they will drift to. If you think this game is unfair and uncompromising, well then you should thank god you live in an era where you can cheat using an online game faq and also go talk to your therapist.

Many ports of arcade games didn’t fare to well in the translation to home systems; basically, none of them did. Asteroids wasn’t that faithful, Pac-Man (2600) wasn’t anything at all like the arcade version, Donkey Kong for Colecovision was a real mess. However, how could they when your home console was basically the equivalent of an electronic toaster? Only years upon years later at around the NEO GEO platform did the technology for arcade and home systems start getting balanced. It was very clear from Asteroids to every single game released for the Atari 2600: the home system is just a poor facsimile of the arcade version. If you want the real version with better graphics and controls, then go to your sleazy neighborhood arcade. If you don’t want to wait in line, have any one laugh at your miserable skills, and conserve your quarters then you play at home.

So people, please don’t complain about Atari era games that the game play or the sound or the graphics are bad. Video games are not yet like books or movies where something can yet achieve mastery and a timeless appeal, they just haven’t gotten it right yet (though Shadow of the Colossus is one among a few true timeless classics). If comparisons are made between Asteroids and TIE Fighter, for example, do remember that one came before the other and influenced just about every space shooter ever made.

And hyperspace. Let’s not forget hyperspace.

By lasttoblame on June 18, 2008

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (Atari 2600)

this is why a 9-year old child from 1982 can beat up a 9-year old child from 2008

The Good
In today’s information age, there is an undeniable respect for knowledge. Facts are as plentiful to find as they are unreliable to confirm. When it comes to video games, fact-glorifying manifests itself in most popular kind of stated opinion as how important something is. Armed with all the useless information in the world, gamers have taken it upon themselves to take a stand on an unmovable opinion that would prove to be an indelible mark upon time.

For example, “Top 10” lists are a popular method of spreading game gospel and are as prevalent as they are useless in establishing any kind of sober discussion. A popular “Top 10” is “Top 10 Worst Games” of which E.T. The Extra Terrestrial winds up near the top along with Superman 64.

E.T., don’t phone home. You were just misunderstood, that’s all. The game itself has not withstood the test of time very well by the infamous context in which it will always be remembered for. Just as the State of Florida condemned convicted serial-murderer Aileen Wuornos to death even though she was clearly mentally insane, so to will the majority of video gamers condemn E.T. the game for being the worst game ever made without ever having played it.

Any time this game is mentioned the urban legend of a remote land fill in New Mexico also gets thrown in; even though this is the subject of a documentary I don’t care to see, the fact is neither here nor there when reviewing it. Also getting heavy airplay in even the most casual of game reviews is the fact Mr. Game Designer whats-his-face only had weeks to complete this game before the Christmas buying season. These facts get thrown in with the entire mythos of the videogame market crash that tested the supremacy of the nerdling class. They are facts, perhaps even all true, but spouting them as evidence just means you don’t have your own opinion on a game you never played.

Is it a good game? Is it fun? Why don’t people have their own opinions rather than quote the guy before him? As not many people know how to play “the worst game ever made” I’ll provide a lowdown:

“E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” is an adventure game where you are in control of the titular alien as he tries to collect pieces of a “phone” that he will use to “phone home” to his home planet and call in a rescue as he tries to escape Earth with the aid of his human friend, Elliot.

The game world consists of a “cube”, with each screen forming a side of the cube; as the player reaches one side of the cube, they will warp to another side of the cube. The game play has you running around this cube looking for clues to the pieces of the “phone”; this corresponds with the icon that flashes at the top of the screen whenever the player moves to a new area of the game screen. If the player finds himself standing on a “?” icon and presses the action button, E.T.’s head will raise, some of his life energy will be expended, and then a white dot may or may not flash signifying the presence of a piece of the “phone”. This piece of the phone is scattered deep in a pit, one of which are scattered symmetrically around the screen. Previously an obstacle to avoid, E.T. must now drop into the hole to retrieve this missing phone piece. Once he recovers all the pieces he may use it to contact his home world; at this point the player must race to the bottom of the cube, where in the “forest” screen he will meet the spaceship that will take him home.

However, in his way there stand the forces that will hinder E.T. in his struggle: the FBI agent and the scientist. Both chase after our little guy, and if caught will take away a piece of the “phone” or capture him, depending on the difficulty level. This quest for the phone pieces is hindered by the fact that any action or movement drains E.T. life, which can only be replenished by one Reese’s Pieces candy found on each “pit” screen. If the player runs out of energy he is resurrected by Elliot at his house, but with less energy when first starting. Upon completion of the primary task in which E.T. gets rescued and escapes Earth, the player will find himself as E.T. yet again only to repeat the same objectives all over again, but with fewer resources.

Some things should be cleared up at this point if they could, but it is more or less that vexing and nonsensical to understand; the game play could probably be described better, but you know, it still wouldn’t make much sense.

However, things should be taken into context. This is a children’s game. Children are resilient creatures who can adapt to any harsh environment. If given a game like “E.T.”, they will squeeze all the fun they can out of it like they would if you gave them a pair of socks. Playing a video game, even a bad one, is still better than doing homework. Movie licensed products were a novel concept back then for video games (this may be the first one), just as video games themselves were. It was fun to relive a fabulous children’s movie in an interactive format… for a child.

Something else should be taken into context: this is neither an action game, nor even an adventure game which it masquerades as. Instead, this is a puzzle game in which the first part of the puzzle is to figure out how to play it. While that seems completely crass I honestly mean it; at a time when the rules were still being written, and all the rules were written by Atari, there’s no reason why that statement can’t be true. Video games could be anything at this point.

As I’m writing this from memory about a game almost as old as I am, I still remember playing it way back when. My best friend Goldie Dixit (I can’t believe my best friend was called that) had the game and provided me with a 10 minute tutorial on how to play it. But as the adaptive children we were back then we squeezed all the fun to be had out of it; once the rules of this “puzzle-game” were learned, it became an action game where we tried to collect all the phone pieces as quickly as possible.

Compared to other games of the time, it doesn’t really fare badly. Graphics are not bad: objects look like the things they are meant to resemble. E.T.’s head moves up and down just like the movie. The human characters have faces, arms and legs and the entire body moves as they walk. Once again, this sounds crass but it is 1982; back then Boy George was asking “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?”, and no one did, even if he would “Tumble 4 U”. Furthermore, the game had a title screen that feature the lovable aliens face in detail as well as John Williams’ stirring score from the movie. Ah, good times.

The most frustrating part of the game by far were the controls; even if you knew how to levitate E.T. out of a pit, if you executed the controls improperly he would stall in mid-air until you retried, all the while losing valuable health. This is the second part of the puzzle: to figure out how to do everything as economically as possible before you ran out of health. Sure, this is really frustrating in a game when everything little thing you do, even from taking a step, means you are literally one step closer to death, especially when you are figuring out how to play the game and need to try out new things. This game is as frustrating as Defender or Sinistar after level one.

Ah, old school gaming, come on back. The fun we had with ye was uncompromising, unfair, but completely satisfying upon success. Old school gaming is not just fun, but hardcore fun.

E.T. The Extra Terrestrial is an old game that hasn’t aged well, but neither has many of its contemporaries. You won’t see any Atari 2600 game on Xbox Live, let alone this one (I think River Raid, Pitfall II: Lost Caverns and especially Yar’s Revenge would be exceptional additions, though). When judged alongside its peers, one could make the very appropriate conclusion that E.T. The Extra Terrestrial is not a terrible game nor even a bad game, let alone the “worst game ever made”. The fact that Atari made a terrible business decision with this game shouldn’t be burdened upon the enjoyment one can get from this unique game, if but only it is the enjoyment of a child back in 1982.

The Bad
E.T. can not run across the screen and rape an Indian woman tied to a post. Guns are not CGI-removed from FBI agents’ hands and replaced with walkie-talkies. For a guy who doesn’t wear any pants, video game graphics do not accurately depict E.T.’s massive alien phallus or his Extra-testicl*.

The Bottom Line
Lots of games deserve to be called the worst game of all time, but not this piece of nostalgia. Not everything that is old is bad. Likewise not everything that is new is the best; I am personally suspicious of recent AAA games that have received unanimous perfect scores.

A perfect 10 doesn’t compare with the fun had with an Atari 2600 in a basem*nt with faux wood paneling back in the day before these stupid “rules” were made up; it just seems everything these days is taken for granted.

By lasttoblame on June 17, 2008

God of War (PlayStation 2)

Kratos is quite simply just one big "pee yoo es es why"

The Good
If videogames have had a hard time being accepted by society like other “big city” art forms, it is in no small part of the “small town” attitude proffered it by video gamers themselves. This can be seen in the “small town” reviews that are made by the vast majority that you’ll see everywhere. When a game is either good nor bad depending on whether or not it is enjoyed, it is not a criticism worthy of any art form. While this is something that you’ll see more akin in a small town newspaper about the local play, this is not an attitude that propels the form of videogames forward. Basically speaking, games are fun or not fun; art is good or bad regardless of enjoyment, but interesting to talk and discuss about. If you treat videogames as just a game, then why should society at large respect something you regard just as fun?

The main thing often seen in a review of a videogame is the opinion that something is very good or very bad, and then the reasons why. Like you’ll see on this site, reviewers try to outdo each other but end up talking about the same thing; usually it has to do with the tech side of things: frame rates, texture mapping, pop-ups, collision detecting and all things geek. However, if videogames are indeed art like many say then a successful videogame has to marry the scrawny, technical geek with the beautiful, emotive art. Videogame reviews should reflect this: sure, a game is fun but as a work of art how does it make you feel, make you think? Such thinking is sure to be condemned, and with cardigan sweater and pipe is ripe to be banned to the rural countryside of some pre-industrial nation.

Is free thought on videogames so radical? Are videogames an art form that is suitable for criticism despite fanboyism and casual gamers? Or do people just want things to blow up real good? With that in mind, I offer this opinion on the hero of the PS2’s crowning achievement, 2005’s “God of War”:

Kratos is one big puss*. And because the game operates on such an epic level, I think it’s fair to say Kratos is a puss* on a MASSIVE scale.

First off, to “Donald Rumsfield”: “Is this game fun?” “Is this a good game?” Yes and yes. Like many before me have so eloquently said before, this is a fun and well-done third-person action game that successfully blends excessive violence and sex with action game play, paces it correctly with puzzles and platforming to maintain a balanced overall experience and serves it on a platter that is nothing short of epic and breathtaking. Lots can be said on that alone, which already has had a lot said about it.

However, the fact that Kratos is a terrible protagonist seems to have eluded everyone. While he does have a cool body length tattoo, a bald head, a deep and dark scowl and the mandatory weapons of destruction chained permanently to his wrists, he is not the “bad-ass” the game purports him to be. (next section may contain spoilers)

The beginning of God of War has the game’s hero, Kratos, step off the highest cliff in Greece to his death in the Aegean Sea below. This beginning of the game is also the “end’ of his story. The game play is the middle of the story, and then throughout the game flashbacks occur that show the beginning of the story. If you haven’t played the game, I will save you the trouble of doing so because nothing at all during the game matters. Kratos’ story is such that he could have skipped from the beginning to the end; if he thought about it he could have just committed suicide right where the game begins and saved himself and the legions of dead he will send to Hades the hassle. This, of course, is no fun for the gamer but it does cancel out any kind of a point to the story.

The reason why he commits suicide is thus: he can’t forgive himself. Without trying to give the story away, Kratos did an unpardonable sin and wants redemption. Kratos is not out to eradicate evil; that the object of his vengeance, Ares, is evil is neither here nor there. The character Marv from Frank Miller’s “Sin City” has an awesome pulp fiction line: “I’m killing my way to the truth, one body at a time.” However, this is inversely the opposite for Kratos: every one he kills takes him further from the truth.

Kratos is an asshole, one on an equally epic scale as his being a puss*. He is extremely selfish and arrogant. There is a Chinese saying that suits him, “怨天尤人” (yuan4 tian1 you2 ren2)—to blame god and man. It means to blame everyone except oneself, and that’s what this game is about: to fault someone else for one’s own actions by killing lots of things that are mostly evil but sometimes not. Kratos believes that Ares tricked him into committing that awful act, but who indeed is responsible? In the “God of War” universe you can murder gods (God of War) and also change your fate (God of War II)—is this not the ultimate assertion of the power of the individual? It’s Kratos himself who begged Ares for power to destroy his enemies at any cost, and so Kratos got exactly what he wanted, and it may even be said what he deserved. If any is responsible, it Kratos himself; he, however, finds it easy to blame others.

Therefore, this asshole quality is what propels the game story forward. Furthermore, this redundancy of the “middle story” that the gamer plays through is not in fact redundant to Kratos because it’s exactly what he wants. Kratos is doing it because he can’t give up the power he has amassed and so can’t give up being an asshole. It’s very apparent he likes the Blades of Chaos-end of the deal he has with Ares but not the bad end of the deal that always happens when you make a deal with the devil; this makes Kratos not a man of his word, but he is an asshole after all. If he was a good man he’d walk away from it all and try to start over again, but then we wouldn’t have a “kick-ass” video game. Instead we have a protagonist who isn’t fair, can’t accept defeat and thinks only of himself.

Not the qualities of a hero; a hero wouldn’t fight through a horde of monsters in disillusionment. A hero is someone who does things unselfishly for the greater good. Kratos isn’t much of an anti-hero either due to the epic scale he is thrust upon. Sadly, the story is pointless that even though Kratos battles giant monsters and does things scarcely hinted at in other video games, the real battle is occurring within his heart for the ability to forgive himself. Athena does “promise” to end his visions but then again in this individual empowered world of “God of War” if a mortal has the ability to murder gods and change his fate, why can’t he forgive himself? Why is this only in the providence of the gods? Perhaps those gods that Kratos despises may have a use after all…

And that’s why Kratos is a puss*: even though he has the courage to fight armies of ferocious beasts he does not have the courage to face the demons in himself, something unavoidable as this is what he is trying to conquer in this game. Kratos is a puss* for taking the ultimate coward’s end by not taking responsibility for his life’s actions and committing suicide. Kratos’ death isn’t even a hero’s suicide that will benefit others (like any number of Bruce Willis’ movies, like Sin City or Armageddon); no, Kratos kills himself conceding failure in his life, EPIC FAIL as they say, if you’re going to lose well then you might as well lose BIG.

If it were not set in mythical ancient Greece it would be more apparent how much of a “gangster mentality” God of War has: I want what’s coming to me, and I want it all. The affinity towards Kratos as a role-model is similar to the way people look at “Scarface” (1983), Brian DePalma’s gangster rags-to-riches epic about the Cuban refugee who made it very big before falling very far. “Saying hello to a little friend” and “what capitalism is” as well “two things in the world will not be broken” are bandied about in modern pop culture references as a testament to how revered the movie and it’s hero are, as is the “Scarface” DVD seen in any number of hip-hop artists homes on MTV “Cribs”. However, “Scarface” was great and made sense because it was about a man’s rise and fall. Tony Montana failed, failed massively. (spoiler ending coming up on a 25 year old movie) He killed his best friend out of jealousy, couldn’t protect his sister, had his wife leave him, never got the love and respect of his mother and personally engineered the downfall of his criminal career. While Tony Montana did get everything he deserved as he is personally responsible for each of the movies end result, Kratos is absolved of his responsibilities—if for no other reason than the upcoming cash cow sequels.

It is still never explained why Kratos is so powerful. Sure, “kratos” means power in Greek, but if that connection holds any water it’s a wonder why more parents don’t name their child “Money” or “Twelve-Inch Penis” for that matter. It is a real cliché in games or movies that the hero is able to escape from a impossible situation by sheer chance or luck, but then we accept it because they are heroes: they are good people who do good things, and so naturally good things happen to them. In God of War, you have Kratos: a bad person who does bad things. There’s no reason why good things should happen to him, and none is given. Kratos is just a powerful mortal who overcomes his obstacles for two reasons: he wants to, and he’s powerful. That equation adds up to one cheap story.

All this doesn’t matter to people who won’t delve into the real story and just want a game to play that is fun. That would be okay if gamers didn’t walk around with a chip on their shoulder wanting membership to the exclusive “art club”. But, gamers do, and then there are games like God of War, a fun game but about as anti-art as you can get.

Fun game aside, God of War is about as insincere and convoluted as they come. It has a maturity that keeps the idea of videogames as just toys, and not the idea as a expressive art form to which it will one day be dragged kicking and screaming. This is a great game that proves without any doubt that video games are a poor medium in which to tell a story.

Sadly, if this game had no story if would be better off that the self-important version that takes itself so seriously now. This game is not mindless as others have said, but it requires you to be mindless to enjoy this game even though a lot of thought has been put into this.

I think immoral games are better enjoyed when they don’t explain themselves, like State of Emergency or Grand Theft Auto III. Sometimes we don’t need to understand to like something. Just like Chewbacca from Star Wars.

By lasttoblame on June 14, 2008

BioShock (Windows)

This isn’t a game review; this is a review of game reviewing

The Good
As the world crested over Y2K, nerds everywhere rejoiced in man’s greatest invention to date: the world wide web. This marked the turn of a new age, the Age of Information, where the basis of world currency turned from gold to ones and zeros. The nerd caste, once the universal butt-end of derision and wet towel snappings, found their way to the highest echelons of society and even have one of their own cast as the world’s richest man, Bill Gates. Role-playing, once a dark secret that could derail a presidential candidate, now has gone mainstream and online with a subscription rate that grows exponentially every year. That guy in high school who never spoke or left the computer room is now your boss. The nerd is triumphant.

The popular notion would be to consider the age we live in, what with its information superhighway and Ausperger’s syndrome, to be the most intelligent period of all time. People now have instant access to a wealth of information that would have taken weeks to compile. However, one instead should ask, “Does being truly smart mean you know a great deal of information?”

No. In this day and age people don’t need to know more information, instead they need to be able to process this information. Even though the mother-load of human history and knowledge is available to any and all, people choose to spend their time spouting South Park catch-phrases or quoting whatever the Insane Clown Posse has to say about their imagined enemies. The world wide web is cluttered with completely pointless web sites about ninjas and robots and ninja robots as well as the required slash fiction for said genre. Wikipedia, a brilliant idea in theory in which encyclopedia submissions are edited by its users, offers information that is on the whole unconfirmed and inaccurate. As SomethingAwful.com puts it, and puts it well, “The internet makes you stupid.”

In that case, what is so good about the internet? How can man’s greatest invention be worthy of such praise if all it can do is show you some fat kid pretending to swing a light saber around? Three things: e-mail, p*rn, and finding opinions that support whatever it is that you are thinking.

That’s right: the internet is not for learning. Or at any rate, nobody ever seems learns from it. If you are some dumb racist misogynist with a hate on, but can’t find anyone who sympathizes with you because they are all well-adjusted humans who don’t have an issue with their penis size, well, you’ll find all the small-penised friends you’ll ever need on the internet. If there is some opinion that proves you wrong, well, you don’t want to hear it.

And that brings us to video gamers, who are already an opinionated set of people without even mentioning “fan boys”. One common way of broadcasting one’s opinion is to write reviews; however, all these reviews posted on the internet serve to do is buttress the experience they had with the game and the justification of the game’s cost. These ordinary reviews will tell how someone feels (for example, “This game rocks!” translates better into “This great game gives me the rocking feeling!” rather than “This is a good game,”) but not any original thought beyond “Too bad you couldn’t carjack anything.” Folks, that isn’t a review: that’s an affirmation of your experience (or the opposite of affirmation if it happens to be Big Rig Racing). Video game reviews on the internet have as little to do with discussion and original thought as Britney Spears’ horrific snatch has to do with underwear when entering or leaving a motor vehicle.

The internet is littered with these testimonials that are all virtually the same: you get a synopsis of the game’s story, a run down on the graphics and sound and gameplay with scores out of ten, a consensus of “rocks” or “sucks”, a comparison to GTA San Andreas, and then the words of either “must-buy”, “rent” or “your time would be better spent masturbating”. This would be fine and all if it was a cuisinart or Astroglide or any other product you purchase, but some gamers go further and insultingly call video games “art”. Games are many things: a hobby, entertainment, a great way to tell a story and waste 100 hours of your life. But not art.

That isn’t to say there haven’t been games that have been so good that they have been “artful” or even “masterpieces”. However, gamers appear to have a limited vocabulary in reviewing games; if something is good but inexplicable falls out of the “rock” range, gamers can not comprehend and thus this becomes a critically acclaimed hit that doesn’t somehow sell many copies.

So, I was over at JazzOleg’s place, the one that has the stuffed grizzly bear that he killed himself with his own bare hands ; he had just bought his brand new computer, one that is made out of gold-pressed platinum and is faster than “Old World” immigrants at an open buffet. (it’s amazing: on top there’s an opening to which you can offer your living sacrifices to appease the angry video card god within) Like a proud poppa, he first popped in “The Witcher” and then “Bioshock”. I was so impressed with “Bioshock” that I had to get my own copy, to which I then found out doesn’t work on my YEAR-old computer. Seeing that I’m not going to get an Xbox 360 anytime soon and the ‘Corn is smart enough not to let me in his home without him, it seems I’ll never finish this game.

So this is not a review. Somebody else will gladly spout off about Ann Rand-whatsherface and quote something from wikipedia, cool. However, playing it through a short while made me think of the discussion above when I made a realization about this game.

Games are not art and gamers don’t have the ability to appreciate art in games. This is apparent in “Bioshock”, because this game succeeds in spite of itself. To be an artist in this modern age is to hide that fact that you are an artist at all.

Absolutely, “Bioshock” is a game that “rocks”, but the reason why it “rocks” is crammed far deep inside the game to save it from being a commercial failure. Daddy Systemshock whatshisface knows full well of this: you give the people only what they want; that which they need you must hide it from them or else they cannot accept. Therefore, “Bioshock” “rocks” because it has cool graphics, cool ragdoll physics, cool game play. People like the Big Daddy (well, like killing him, anyways) but may not know why. People know it’s a good story, but they don’t have to sit through verbose and pedantic exposition (the “talky” parts) before they can start killing.

The opposite of this are games that are genius, but are too good for their own good. Planescape: Torment looked like a novel because it was a novel, and disguised so poorly it flopped like a twenty-pancake belly flop. ICO is a transcendently original platform-puzzler that made a believer out of everyone who played it, but gamers instead held fast to Italian plumbers and their goombas. I’m sure the same could be said of Psychonauts, but I haven’t played it and never will because I’m waiting for the sequel, which is going to be an MMO or FPS. Whichever, it’s not that there’s any difference between the two because they both sh*t green money.

Meanwhile, videogames have adjustable difficulty levels.

By lasttoblame on March 31, 2008

Crusty Demons (PlayStation 2)

If you’s goin’ grow up stupid, then grows up as stupid as you’s can. You deserve it

The Good
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again and again: “I don’t want to be smart; I just never ever want to make a bad decision again.” Intelligence is overrated; all those inspirational posters in libraries with kittens have sayings like, “Knowledge is power,” but what will intelligence bring you? Sadness. That’s because the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know.

It’s a modern-day nerd conceit: if you are smart enough, you can learn anything. The best contemporary example of this is the insanely popular CSI television show and its many off-shoots. If you’ve never heard of CSI, this is the premise: a bunch of geek scientist cops solve crime. This translates as a theme to: there is nothing that can not be learned, just the same as the modern-day nerd conceit. CSI throws out half a century’s worth of detective shows all in favor of cold, methodical calculating. “What’s that, Columbo? You gotta hunch? Screw you and your intuition!”

However, as I’ve come out and admitted, we’re not all smart. Now that we’re in the Age of Information and the lowly nerd has come out on top, how can we comply? By playing to our strengths. And how do we play to our strengths? We do so by making our weaknesses into our strengths!

That’s this game. This game is stupid. It knows it. Crusty Demons revels in its own sheer stupidity and comes out on top because of it.

The Crusty Demons game is based on a real-life stunt troupe of the same name who perform extreme stunts on dirt bikes that range from spectacular (mid-air ramp tricks) to stupid (lighting each other on fire). While characters in the game are based on reality, the premise of the game isn’t: the Devil appears before the Crusty Demons and offers them immortality for their souls. Of course the idiots accept only to find that while they cannot die, they still feel pain. Knowing that the customer is always right, the Devil offers to return their souls if they manage to entertain him.

A genius premise. Crusty Demons is a sure-fire boredom-delayer because on any risk taken by the gamer they are rewarded, whether they succeed or lose. Genuis. I’m sure there are other extreme-sports games that play better and have better combos and all that, but I’m sure they won’t reward you when failing a stunt by showing the rider’s graphic death. Ragdoll physics try to illustrate the thoroughly enjoyable sight of how a human body would impact on concrete. The amount of blood loss and trauma of broken bones are accompanied by stats and x-rays.

A succinct way of describing this game is that you are simultaneously thrilled at pulling off a difficult combo as you are thrilled at watching a stunt go horrifically wrong. No mid’s or even low’s here, people.

Perhaps not a flattering way to license your name and image; that Rolando guy for one wouldn’t want his soccer game to have a riot mini-game function. But if you make a living by launching yourself into the air on purpose, recklessly, well you can’t be that smart. It isn’t difficult to see how this game was inspired.

No wishing on my part will excuse all the shortcomings of this game, so just to make it clear, I’ll state emphatically: this is a poor game. Still, you know why triple A games are made? Because everyone buys them. It doesn’t mean they are WORTH playing, however.

I’ve criticized games for falling into the GTA III “boredom-delayer” syndrome, and is one would surely fit the mould. However, Crusty Demons moves past simple time-killing by the strength of its premise as well as its concept of risk-rewarding; this goes to encourage wilder risk-taking and inspire more playing. That’s the kind of inspiration you’d want from a generic extreme sports game where you’re just going to be grinding out combo after rote-memorized combo.

By lasttoblame on March 27, 2008

Jackass: The Game (PlayStation 2)

The crass is always greener on the other side of the fence, you know, the side that is full of money

The Good
The Simpsons is way better than Family Guy for one important reason: the Simpsons is funny because it uses humor in its comedy. The Family Guy has none of that. Comedy requires timing and wit; the Family Guy requires no timing nor wit, and in fact thrives on the absence of it. Superfluous cultural references and stretching a joke so far past its limit into awkward silence to illicit laughter does not make for good humor.

You know, this reminds me of the time… BEGIN FLASHBACK (Peter Griffin is watching TV; the Simpsons are on. ) Peter Griffin: “Hey, I can do that, but better! Only my show will be easier to laugh at because it won’t need to be funny!” (I know that’s a stone’s throw away from the Anna Nicole show tagline, but look where she is now.)

That’s right, things have gotten easier over the years. Popular music has evolved from people who can sing well to people who can’t sing well to people who don’t sing at all. Dancing to popular music has evolved from performing learned moves with a partner to dancing freestyle with a partner to dancing freestyle by yourself to dressing up like a slu*t and not even moving.

Humor is just that way. For something to be funny now, it doesn’t need humor, it just needs to be crass. Being crass is the idea that you perceive some kind of visible line drawn in the moral code of the fabric of society, and cross it. It’s being the rebel that dares to invoke the taboo. In some instances there is a degree of social commentary that provides an artistic purpose and is contextually correct, as South Park does so well from time to time; however, the biggest joke in that case is the fact the people will watch episode after episode of the crappiest and cheapest animation to produce.

This is exactly the case for Jackass. This old MTV show is based on the premise that rich white American boys who have never fought in a war perform cruel stunts upon themselves and each other to prove their bravery. These nihilist young men use their youth and immaturity to inspire and blame their actions which aren’t just stupid, but extremely stupid.

You’ll laugh your ass off. Yes you will. And it’s all because it’s not humor, it’s crass. The geniuses at MTV aren’t sitting on a mountain of cocaine for nothing. They know that makes good TV. You’ll notice on a second viewing that the camera spends as much time on other members of the Jackass crew as they do on the “young, dumb, and full of cum” lame-wad doing the stunt; that’s because their reaction and laughter is even more important than the stunt. They trick you into being part of the gang, so when you laugh at that idiot there’s a bunch of guys to laugh along.

This is buddy humor: one doesn’t laugh because it’s witty or smart, one laughs because it’s cruel. Chicks won’t ever learn. See, when you go out drinking and your friend had too much and is sick, you’re not supposed to comfort them as they yak into the toilet. You’re not supposed to hold their head and hand them a tissue. No, you’re supposed to laugh at them when they barf. Laugh and point. Teabagging isn’t just restricted to FPS’s. State of the art light-weight cameras are installed on your cell phone so that you can take a picture of your testicl*s nestled upon your buddy’s forehead when he’s passed out unconscious..

That’s the worst crime of all: if you can’t be witty, smart, expressive or emotive, well as least be funny. This of course includes being crass. However, this game isn’t even crass. Having been released years after Jackass was even relevant to unimportant demographics like people over 39, the rehashed stunts look quaint and nostalgic. It’s a sure sign of the Pop-calypse when MTV has become your granddad.

It’s not hard to be crass. But what was crass 10 years ago isn’t crass now, and I would venture it is getting harder and harder to meet the crass needs of today’s ravenous young. This sentimental ode to retching and testicl* kicking is worsened by the fact that Jackass: The Game has no soul or character, and has only two redeeming values:

1) Bam Margera, having lent out his likeness to another game, does not appear. If you didn’t know, Mr. Margera is superior to his fellow Jackasses because if you kick him in his vagin* it won’t affect his non-existent testicl*s. Mr. Margera is not worth raping in jail because he’d enjoy it so much he’d convince you to leave your baby’s mother. Hey man, if your way to trick chicks into having sex with you is by crying, who’s to say that’s wrong?

2) An unlockable VO movie that shows Steve-O as an old, old man reminds us gamers of the redeeming value of life. It’s apparent he has partied several life times worth of cocaine and easy women and that now his greatest joy in life is to experience a regular bowel movement and a nice nap. Steve-O deserves a most glorious death, not the tepid mediocrity he seems destined for. Do not go gentle into the good night!

Because I believe in constructive criticism, I will now outline a game treatment I just thought of that will be true to Jackass, hilariously crass, and a perfect party game for white kids in middle America with disposable income (the MTV crowd):

Jackass: The Game by lasttoblame

This is an adventure game of the traditional point and click variety. You play as one of the Jackasses in somebody’s middle-class suburban home. The whole Jackass crew is there, and there are daring you to pull a stunt within the allotted time. The objective is to discover the most outrageous thing you can do with the items you are provided. Remember those crazy inventory puzzles that had to attach mice to brooms to open doors? Well, in this case it’s to create the most disgusting substance for someone to ingest, or to find the most outrageous place to put your penis into. Points are awarded for the biggest laugh, bonus points per square meter of surface area covered with bodily fluid. Needless to say, a lot of R and D would be spent on puke texture mapping and crotch kicking collision detecting.

By lasttoblame on March 27, 2008

The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction (PlayStation 2)

Ang-st Lee got it right the first time in non-button mashing format

The Good
People tend to think of p*rnography as being sexual. It is, as any Google search will let you know. However, there has been a growing trend in popular media of taking an object of desire and focusing so single mindedly upon it until it appears fetishistic. This is p*rn, nouveau p*rn for the masses.

Remember “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” as hosted by Robin Leach? Total money p*rn. If you weren’t brought up in the 1980’s, this was a TV show that showed you lavish and expensive places you would never be able to go to and enjoy on your meager salary, but still lusted for nonetheless. If you want a more recent example, check out “The Thomas Crown Affair”; this is money p*rn for the middle classes.

Star Trek? Technology p*rn. Sex and the City? Fashion, shoe, and lunch p*rn (those broads could not have a conversation unless a bunch of snooty waiters were hovering around them). America’s Wildest Police Chases? Car crash p*rn.

And with games, we now have Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. Destruction p*rn. If you love destruction, if you love to watch buildings collapse, then you should grab that towel, put on those loose fitting pants and stop denying yourself. There’s a story in there somewhere (a really bad one), but one doesn’t watch p*rn for the story, do they? That’s like saying you play hentai games for the plot (SPOILER the schoolgirl gets rapedEND SPOILER). Anyways, that’s the good part about this game.

In this way, there’s a lot of p*rn in games, namely: violence p*rn (snuff is the idea of combining sex and violence, not here), snuff p*rn (yep, here), regular sex p*rn as well as the esoteric collecting p*rn (or, completion-ism or collection-ism; there’s a better word for it but I don’t know it). Some games waddle out of the moral puddle they’ve settled into, but not this game.

p*rn is, of itself, not nor bad but just is. So if you title a game “Ultimate Destruction”, you better give up the goods the same way if you title something “Barely Legal College Co-Eds”. In this way the game doesn’t disappoint.. well, almost.

You can destroy almost everything. Almost. For example, I have listed these achievements that I always hoped to do in a video game and was hoping to do so with this one:

• I want to punch a guy so hard that he flies around the planet. For bonus points, after tracking him via radar I will wait for him to circumnavigate the Earth to reappear in the same spot so that I can punch him again, sending him back the other way in a cosmic game of gravitational tether-ball.

• I want to punch a guy so hard at the top of a tall building that not only does he fall through the roof of the building, but through every single floor, and through the parking garage, the bedrock, the Earth’s crust and mantle and then the molten core, straight through to the other side of the planet to China. You’d have to car-jack a jet and fly around the world where you would then continue your fight.

• I want to punch people so hard that I can write my name on the moon with the impact craters formed by their bodies, visible from Earth.

“It’s boring!”, “Too much psycho-babble”, “Jennifer what’s-her-face doesn’t show her tit*”: all valid comments. But what Ang Lee did was to tell a story with these characters that only these characters could tell. (so, in this instance, no flying or anal sex)

The Incredible Hulk isn’t a character, he’s just a stereotype. In any given situation, the Hulk has one response: “HULK SMASH!!” It doesn’t matter if you are trying to give him an ultimatum, a birthday cake or a blowj*b, the hulk has one predetermined response. What makes this one-dimensional character interesting to the rest of us shloubs is that we would all love to at least once grow green and rip out of our clothes (but not our purple pants) and tell off that nemesis of ours. We all wish we could be so angry and reckless.

On the other hand, Bruce Banner is a character: he’s the guy that has to deal with everything. He talks and thinks and actually does have something to say. Although he isn’t as exciting as the Hulk (of the two, only one would get invited to the Playboy Mansion), he’s the more interesting one. Think of the massive guilt this guy carries around with him knowing that on a whim he can release untold death and destruction. (Catholic?) Still, of the two characters Banner is the guy who can tell a story.

So in the videogame Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, it’s obvious any hope of a story is “SMASHED!”, and with it any semblance of an interesting game. I would be the very first one to pipe up that an action game doesn’t need a story (hello, Zombie Hunters!) but it seems to me if you import a set of pre-fabricated characters with a long back history to star in your licensed game you should at least tell a story inspired of them.

I think the truest definition of the Hulk is someone is overcomes by sheer anger and rage, not by tactics and strategy, and so in that sense is non-controllable. A true Hulk game would put you in the shoes of General Ross as he tries to control the rampaging hulk in Marvel City. Or another true Hulk game would be a sim-type game where you nurture your NPC Hulk by harassing him with tanks and jet planes to try to get him as angry and strong as possible; mission objectives would include persuading the Hulk from destroying the city and coaxing him to do battle with the Abomination. Think Command and Conquer meets Black and White meets tamagotchi. As the Hulk is completely uncontrollable, if you play your cards right you will be treated to a real-time rendered spectacular monster fight as you look on from the sidelines. sigh If only…….

By lasttoblame on March 26, 2008

Rumble Roses (PlayStation 2)

When I think of my youth I think of the bittersweet mammaries of my grandmother (or, tit* in the details)

The Good
Let’s get one thing straight, folks: it is impossible to have a guilty pleasure in video games, because they are all guilty pleasures. There isn’t one video game you can play that has more inherent value as a work of art than another, because none of them are art.

Okay, that’s two things, but it counts as one when all you do is mash on an “X” button.

A video game is a game: it’s something you do for fun. When you do something for fun, it’s to pass the time away in a leisurely fashion. As the ‘corn made me admit, it’s a hobby. When you judge a video game, you’re judging it by whether it is fun or not. A video game can move you to tears, the way you cried when Aeris died (you sissy, you know what game). A video game can sport impressive artwork, like a fantastically detailed mech (didn’t Michelangelo design one?). But this is not art: this is design.

Art is art: besides being hard to describe (man, I’ll get on with talking about juggling boobies in a moment), art doesn’t exist for the sole purpose of entertainment or profiting money. While it may entertain, art exists for its own purpose only. A great work of art has to exist for no other reason than it is great. Great art doesn’t need you to “get” it or be moved by it; no, great art challenges us. Great art is often misunderstood during it’s time such that only generations later can it be understood (for example, Van Gogh sold more or less two painting during his lifetime for grocery money but in the near past a Japanese company bought “Sunflowers” for about 180 million US. If you really want to, insert “System Shock 2” here…for your own argument).

Yes, I’ll concede some things: games are maturing. One day, maybe, games will become art. Many games exist now that inspire “some” discussion (by that I mean the discussions that don’t involve “kewl” or “rox”). Games exist for their own purpose, just like art, but the purpose is different: to make the gamer keep playing. If it tells you a cool story in the meantime, if it moves you like Clive Barker’s bowel movements move him, cool. But that’s all secondary to the primary purpose of entertaining you by playing it.

Games don’t inspire independent thinking: you’ll never throw down a Dualshock in the middle of Final Fantasy X and shout out to the ceiling: “So that’s what my dead father was about!! If only I knew 60 hours ago!!” They inspire you to keep playing. Einstein wouldn’t have gone “E equals M C squared… you mofo!! Eureka! At last!!” after he beat any one of those Zelda games.

Games are business. Big business. And big business is all about making money. You can be sure that any game you buy these days that has a Roman numeral past “V” has got to be good; well, at least better than all the ones that came before it. If you make a lot of money once, you’re lucky. If you make a lot of money often, you’re smart. And if you’re smart on making money, you’ll depend on a formula. Making sequels is that formula in games. Take one good game that people will buy, and franchise it to death. Dynasty Warriors: once a good game, but what does KOEI care? People are buying it, people are playing it… that’s video games, folks.

(SIDE NOTE: that’s why I most interested in Bioshock 2. Of course they’ll make a sequel and make more money, but it’s to an amazing game that never should have existed in the first place. It’s like as if they made a third sequel to the Godfather… wha?)

So: games, while not art, is a business meant to entertain. And that’s why Rumble Roses is a smart game: it knows it’s a game and as a product, how it must serve. The geniuses at Konami have stopped with the Metal Gear (for a little while, “Solid” must turn to “Liquid” and “Gas” is in there somehow) and provided we, the huddled masses, with entertainment that will rock us to the base of our balls. This is what we want, this is what we need, no jumping of barrels or eating of pellets can match the entertain quality of Rumble Roses.

I will now sum up by describing the inherent good entertainment quality of Her Royal Majesty, Rumble Roses: all-girl wrestling with outlandish humiliation moves with unlockable sexy outfits. And, mud wrestling is included.

No, the big fault here is that LIKE a work of art, Rumble Roses caused me to think. Thinking is for multiple choice tests and crapping on the throne. Thinking has no place here in a “no-brainer” button-mash video game. (EDIT: it’s like any other wrestling game and is timing-based, but whatever)

Now, you can’t criticize me for not liking to think (because it would hurt my feelings), but if I wanted to think I’d play a “thinking game” like Final Fantasy (What the hell is a chocobo? Secondly, what does it taste like?) Thinking has no place in a lesbian romp. It’s pure fantasy, the only thing missing are pillows and the boyfriend who comes home from work early.

I had two thoughts: “Where is the code to make these chicks nekkid?” as well as “Even though they are different people, why do all these chicks’ bodies look the same?” Really, in the pervert “Gallery” option where you can gaze at these chicks from any angle (like the below the bleachers angle), it dawned upon me that all these wrestlers have the same body but a different head.

No, not like real life. This isn’t sexy, this is just one narrow view of what sexy is. Where are all the different body types? This is the equivalent of an RPG having a vast game world but only having the same 10 NPC’s in each town. You’re cheating us, Konami.

What’s sexy? Big breasts, small breasts, no breasts. Big ass, small ass, no ass. It’s variety. No one has the monopoly on who or what sexy is, even though people delude themselves into thinking so. The gaming public won’t know what else could be sexy unless you give the option to them. I know by putting in a bunch of unflattering female body types into a video game is just leaving them to be criticized, but at the same time you’d be opening the door to public consciousness about what is sexy and what isn’t sexy.

Secondly, you will enjoy this game.

By lasttoblame on March 25, 2008

Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King (PlayStation 2)

A perfect flawed experience, not unlike eating the best sh*t sandwich you’ll ever have

The Good
The definition of an RPG has varied a lot over the years from number-crunching (like AD and D type “Balder’s Gate”) to mouse-clicking (a la “Diablo”) to introspective self-moralizing (as in the light or dark “Knights of the Old Republic” or the fashion-victim shades of gray “The Witcher”). For me originally playing an RPG was the concept that within a game you would adopt a role and as such do things in the game your character would do but you wouldn’t in reality (like not run away from evil monsters wishing you harm or illicit sex from prostitutes… well, so far…). Yup, I’m talking about the real meaning of the acronym RPG that does not have to do with rocket propelled grenades.

However, today’s RPG can be better described as such: it’s a virtual representation of yourself you nurture with your time. No, not skill or reflexes or intelligence, but time. RPG’s don’t measure how far you are into the story, but how advanced you have progressed with your characters. A video game RPG make you care for it because of the characters you have made strong with time. Games have many conceits to them, and the biggest traditional video game RPG conceit is that if you do anything enough times you will succeed, just the opposite of real life. Therefore, ten thousand random battle victories=success against the final boss, whereas nothing you can do or plan will trick your sexy co-worker into sleeping with you (except the tried and true method of being married and becoming her boss—so I guess it’s a boss battle where to win you must become one!)

Dragon Quest VIII takes everything and does it perfectly. This game knows how to milk all your time from you that would be better served curing cancer or hanging out meditating with the Dalai Lama. In a perfect show of game balance, Dragon Quest VIII frustrates you at just the perfect amount, enough to keep you going, a definition you can apply to old-skool gaming in general. The game itself and its game play isn’t really at all complicated, what frustrates you is the illusion that it is beatable and as such convinces you to keep pouring time into it. It’s that carnie laughing as you try to win that stuffed animal for your pouting girlfriend and keep throwing down money.

If you pour in enough time you will “beat” the game, but there’s a lot to do in the first place. They range from climbing various skill trees, the usual collecting-mania, and a new kind of inventory that is not focused on currency but instead on gathering recipes and experimenting with an alchemy pot. Another cool addition to the traditional RPG is the Monster Arena where you can organize monsters that were once your enemies to fight for you against other monster teams or against other enemies. A lot of new additions, but nothing too complicated that would sway a casual gamer to not play.

You know, it’s not for the story that you would play this game. In fact, I would argue you never play any game for its story, you play it for the way it tells the story. (I’m looking at you, Unicorn B. Jazzin’) For example, Half-Life: a generic story that can be summed up in a haiku concocted by sixth graders on a rainy day when murder ball is out of the question, but a innovative use of FPS and triggered story events to “perform” a story on a video game platform that inspires a boner every time. In this case, Dragon Quest VIII: a generic story of good versus evil （blah blah） that has been done for the eighth time on this franchise and countless times elsewhere, but an terribly effective time-sink that compels you onward to tell you the same story yet again but in an engaging manner.

It doesn’t make any sense, even for a video game. Why do you stand around waiting for someone to hit you before you can hit them back in a battle? Even though it’s a wide open world, why is it the path you take always has progressively tougher monsters and more expensive items? Why is it you have eyes in your head but still can’t see an oncoming random battle before it happens? Why don’t NPC’s mind when you walk into their homes and pillage their personal belongings (like that Sword of Vorpal +10 they have in their dresser) and then ask them for advice? And from the ‘corn, why is it the final boss just waits for you to come to him when you are leveled up instead of coming to find and kill you earlier on when you are substantially weaker?

That said, I don’t think it’s a funny game. Dragon Quest VIII tackles real-world issues (eg. that’s non-game related) so earnestly that it contradicts its easy-going presentation. True, there’s no reason why a cartoon character with eyes past her forehead can’t tell a serious story, but a game that straddles the fence this way ends up being neither. Why should I take the story seriously when I’ve been battling cute baby imps, and by that I mean ones that look like cute babies (I think this game has the record for most drooling tongues)?

This game is more suitable for telling kids what life is going to be like rather than telling adults a compelling tale that they can identify with. All the adult themes are introduced subtly but not thoroughly explored; not a criticism, really, especially for light-hearted fare like this, I suppose it’s rather mature to think highly of your target audience.

However, when I say “think highly”, I also mean cram in as many sexual innuendoes as you can. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing for me, but that can be a bad thing for those burgeoning young minds. Playing games is a guilty pleasure in itself, but if I can play a game where the female hero gets knocked off her feet in battle and gives me an ample viewing of her personality up her skirt without me craning my neck, THAT’S a guilty pleasure. Dragon Quest VIII has the most subtle boob physics you’ll see on cel-shaded graphics to ensure you’ll put the Irish redhead at the front of your party and have her turn around, and around, and around. (no jumping, this isn’t a platformer) And if that wasn’t enough (and where do you draw the line when it comes to sex in Japan?), you can dress up the red-haired Jessica in a variety of costumes, such as a bunny outfit or the overly-protective Magic Bikini.

So sexist: Put this on. Go fight that monster. Then make me a sandwich, bitch.

If I had to name one thing, I think the worst thing about Dragon Quest VIII is the fact that it’s an outdoor running simulator. You’ll get tired watching this one guy running around a park in Canada that is just about as clean as one too. When you finally retire and move to Canada (national health care, hello) you’ll be disappointed at all the dog doo anywhere there’s grass. Nature is so perfect when rendered electronically that no one will ever go outside again.

Another cryptic way to put it is everything wrong is right again.

By lasttoblame on March 25, 2008

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (PlayStation 2)

Perfect for Misogynist

The Good
Budweiser is the “King of Beers”; however, an unscientific poll of anyone who has had the pleasure of the company of said royalty and have imbibed alcohol in a place other than the local sports bar down the street will tell you Budweiser is crap beer. This disparity always confuses me. How can something so popular be so bad? Nothing clears this up; when you ask a Budweiser fan you may be given an answer of, “Because I just like it,” or “Why don’t you shut up!”

Well, liking something will prove to be the end of you. That chick you liked back in high school that let you feel her up on your birthday will eventually be the woman you marry who will destroy your will to live. That friend you trust so much now with the news you felt up a chick on your birthday will be that guy in the future who will pull you back down to his miserable level and not let you go onwards to do all the things you wanted to do. Those gloomy Goths and sour Brits may be on to something: if you don’t like anything you will never be disappointed. (and you may even get into Buddhism)

No, it doesn’t pay to be a fan because if you believe in something, it must be good… it has to be. It’s your belief. If that first bottle of Budweiser tastes good, well that fifth bottle must be good as the first one. Well, this fifth game in the current Grand Theft Auto III series isn’t fit for any kegger because it’s trying to please it’s loyal fanbase. Folks, never give people what they want: you do and you’re Liberace, you’re the Beegees, you’re an Italian guy with a red hat and a big moustache jumping over barrels. Give people what you need to give them. The problem with any GTA game from now on is that it’s a GTA game.

It’s not all bad. This mod is a great opportunity to go back and re-experience the real star of any Grand Theft Auto game: the city. No matter how much you can dress up the protagonist of any GTA game or lines to speak the real reason you love the game is because of the world you are given to explore and conquer. Every Grand Theft Auto game is at its core an adventure game because the city is what captures your imagination. One muses: “I wonder if there are any hidden packages behind this row of houses,” “this would be a cool place to have a race, I hope the game will take me there,” “I want to know if I can get on top of that, there must be a way,” or waxing nostalgic like “I remember this was the place I first carjacked a tank” or “I had so many six star fights with the cops here,” and so on. Adventure games don’t necessarily need puzzles.

One thing that both Vice City games have captured very well is the feel of the time period. I have no qualms in admitting I’ll play this game for the soundtrack alone. Though the first game did it bigger and better, Vice City Stories still has a good soundtrack that will have you do that thing in the shower (I mean sing). However, do you remember that song you slowed danced to with that girl? You know, that song which was all slow and mellow in the beginning and then when the radd-est drum fill ever came in you started drumming on her back? You know, “In the Air Tonight”? That song will lose its coolness.

The Bad
This could have been a very good game; it’s already halfway there, with the city already designed and a legacy of game play that has proven to be so popular. It’s this fact that makes it so frustrating and sad that a company with a reputation for breaking the status quo with games like State of Emergency (“riot sim”) and Manhunt (“murder sim”) should now uphold it so ruthlessly. Every release can’t be a guaranteed euphoric adrenaline rush giggle but with this game and the similarly released Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, Rockstar has jumped the shark to be satisfied with being the rich, fat cat. “IV” doesn’t look so good anymore; maybe yet another delay may do it good.

There have been well made mods released before: Half-Life: Opposing Force and Starcraft: Brood War come to mind. Those mods were very successful because they built upon the success of the original game. They don’t just give you more of the same; they take the familiar you have to come to know about the game and have challenge your expectations. What GTA: Vice City Stories does is just more of the same, just different. There are some differences, granted, like having you start out at the west island on the army base. However, everyone and their accountant has played the first game; why not play the whole game as a black ops army goon? How about being a soccer mom who cracks under the pressure and starts taking illicit jobs? What about a Haitian who has come up from the old country and has something to prove?

Releasing a GTA game that is in fact a GTA-clone just proves that Rockstar has no guts. Both “City Stories” take place before each of its own game storyline, providing unnecessary back story and thus not having any effect upon the game universe whatsoever. Why not provide a game that tells me what happened after I played the last game? I didn’t get 100% completion on that last game to find out events that have little to do with anything. If Rockstar had “real balls” (as this game keeps telling me) they would make a game where the point of the game is to kill the hero of the last game. “Tommy Vercetti took over Vice City… and now you’re going to take him out.”

A strong narrative has been important in Grand Theft Auto games previously, but not this game. The ending for this game’s protagonist, Vic Vance, has already been written: he dies at the beginning of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City; it’s the premise that set that game up. I’ve never wondered who Lance Vance’s brother is like, and it appears his life can’t be that interesting if it ends so mundanely (well, for a video game..). Just as troubling to the story is his position as a reluctant hero; from the beginning Vic Vance is portrayed as an unwilling participant in a life of crime, but all his actions refute that. The game tries to tell us that he hates dealing drugs, yet he has a day job as a drug overlord. Well, it’s a living; I suppose it all makes since once you see the “You don’t have to be crazy to work here… but it helps” sign on his desk next to the mirror and razor blades.

There is one built-in problem with the game design: places have been designed with a purpose already in mind. Alleys are designed to hide the rampages and unique packages of the first game. Your safe houses in the first game have no use here. Roads and buildings were set up for the specific placement of unique jumps. This has been dealt with but in a summary fashion; c’mon, challenge us! You’re bigger game geeks than us… if this is the same city I spent 160 hours in the first time (yep, most of it doing Vigilante in “Brown Thunder”… level 201, thank you kindly), I would like to come back here to rediscover it all over again. Tommy Vercetti’s first safe house on Ocean beach is now a 5 level enemy dungeon. Ken Rosenberg law office is run by his even more neurotic cousin Larry… as a brothel. As an ode to Hard Boiled, the last boss fight is out of a hospital. Your home base is the police station because you are the cop assigned to take down Tommy Vercelli… a bad cop. You know, if I can pull these ideas out of my ass a thousand monkeys down at Rockstar HQ are bound to hit videogame premise paydirt. What this also could mean is that yet another Vice City Story could be released if this was successfully done; that’s right, a second game based on the original. However, this lack of creativity and flogging of the dead horse ensures a) a quick buck and b) no Vice City Stories II: SimCity Gangsta!

Now might be a good time to mention that Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories is completely misogynistic. This game does everything except mention “stupid bitch” somewhere in the dialogue. GTA games have always up to this point done a good job at parody; however this game crosses that line. Good parody will take overrated subjects and knock them down a peg: this is as in the first Vice City game the “me” generation was criticized for its selfishness and self-importance, just as were overzealous swampland entrepreneurs, golden age videogames, Reagan-nomics, tree hugging leftists and nudists. On the other hand in Vice City Stories each amusing bit becomes the same “women are stupid and inferior” theme and really takes the fun out of everything. I have no idea why more folks don’t mention these things in games.

Something must be said about the game play: after seven years and five games of driving from one halo or corona to another, it really gets boring. Save for the sublime “Domo arigato Mister Domestibot” every mission has a tired been there, done that feeling—even the last mission. The new mini-games don’t enhance the game any. “Lifeguard” is no different than “Paramedic” but in a boat. New additions like snapping one’s neck from behind serve no purpose, and even distract you from the story (said my brother of said snapping: “that’s not nice”). The next GTA game has to be different, next gen or otherwise.

Still one more thing: what’s up with this 80’s cameo? On the game radio you keep hearing this one singer pop up and you think: “He wasn’t that popular, was he?” and then you discover he’s in it! NO!! Rockstar, you are now adult contemporary music! How unhip!! I can’t believe this same guy now officially exists in the same world as the Truth and Candy Suxx; a mission and subsequent unlockable has you watch some bad mo-cap of his concert. For shame, Rockstar. I thought a better rock star cameo would be the Police (all three of them, Andy is free these days).

The Bottom Line
Bad story that doesn’t make sense, retread old material, stale game play, unrefreshing take on the series, unhip on the side of comb-overs… man, it sucks to be a fan.

Yah yah, I know it was first a PSP release. Everyone was amazed at what you can stuff on one of those things. Sure, yah yah, science triumphs over art… but that’s all it is. With some creative thinking you could have had a nifty little number that would pump life into this old lady.

By lasttoblame on September 24, 2007

Zombie Hunters (PlayStation 2)

This black is the new PBJ

The Good
The poor Buffalo Bills. You could cheerfully point out that they were AFC champions four times in the 1990’s, or you could point out the painful truth that the best they could ever do is second best. Every American will tell you (first by saying, “I tell you what...”): second best is not as good as the best.

That’s the B-List: the second tier of anything that is defined by its humble position as not being the best. An unpopular position, as everyone naturally wants the best of anything: why waste your time with anything else?

I tell you what: the B-List will always be hipper and more creative than the A-List because the while the A-List is preoccupied with staying number one, the B-List doesn’t have that pressure. The B-List would also like to be number one, but it has the freedom not to do so.

While this doesn’t apply to those Buffalo Bills chumps where being number one is everything, this does apply to other creative fields like movies and videogames. When a top tier game like a Mario or Metal Gear Solid or Halo gets released, expectations are high. A bunch of angry rich nerds line up over night to be the first to buy this game that is the same as their last favorite game but “better”. But when Zombie Hunters (The Oneechanploo) gets released, on the budget line Simple Series 2000 no less, no one is paying attention. With no pressure to satisfy any expectations but their own, Tamsoft has created this gem in the rough that actually hit the top 20 in Japan for awhile.

What hasn’t been mentioned so far is that there is one big pressure: money, the lack of it. The resources that gigantic companies can throw at a game are huge; sometimes, the result is that through the money trail something genuine and inventive comes out at the end (like Sony’s development of ICO, Shadows of the Colossus and God of War). When you are a small company churning out B-List games, you have to be inventive and creative: you have no choice.

However, the most creative game done on a budget won’t pay the bills if it doesn’t sell. This leads to the other connotation that a B-List game will have: it must pander to the lowest common denominator. B-Lists games and movies usually have goads of violence and sex. But rarely before have violence and sex been combined together so well that is titillating and thought provoking.

Zombie Hunters is the new black. It combines sex and violence so well that you’ll be kicking yourself why YOU didn’t make this game first. Zombie Hunters is a ultra-gory hack and slash game where you are a beautiful young woman in a bikini fighting zombies with a large katana sword. That’s it. Even though there are no robots and ninjas (you have Metal Gear Solid for that) this game is not lacking in giving a (male) gamer what he wants.

Yes, it’s the dream you’ve had in your head but could never describe due to its sheer beauty. It’s true that everything is this game is shallow: game play, story, levels (it’s three levels repeated, second time backwards a la Halo), music, AI. But this game never tries to elevate itself to pretentiousness that an A-List game has to feign at to justify being an A-List game.

This game isn’t about any of those things: if it was, it wouldn’t be a B-List game. It might never have been created. No, Zombie Hunters is about style and presentation of the highest caliber that gives it the cool Tarrantino had when he was on top of his game. After playing for hours you still can’t believe the makers had the audacity to combine these elements together. To illustrate, Aya’s or Riho(19)’s near nakedness wasn’t enough for the makers to leave alone. As her rage meter fills (like Devil May Cry and all the beat em’ ups) so does the amount of blood splatter on her body. This juxtaposition is oddly alluring as well as missing from other games that deem themselves cutting edge with attitude; Bloodrayne justified it’s silly existence by having you fight against Nazis. C’mon, everyone hates Nazis (well, except when they’re babies….thanks Sara Silverman)

Maybe you want your bikini babes in DOA Extreme. Maybe you want your zombies in Resident Evil. Maybe you want your hack and slash in Dynasty Warriors. All of those games do those things exceptionally well, but they don’t do anything else. They are a prisoner of their own success, and as such can’t be creative and take a chance on something new like Zombie Warriors.

The Bad
No robots. No ninjas. No outfit customization; videogame developers create awesome babes just to put them in really ugly shoes. It’s no wonder more women aren’t interested in gaming. Really, if this game had those you’d have the ultimate game kids would kill each other in the schoolyard for and give the ammunition Jack Thompson needs (because he’s a killa, yo!).

This game is shallow and poor in many areas as previously stated. So by the time it hits the big time and is Zombie Hunters VII with RPG elements and story branching elements in an open-ended wide environment with online play, it’ll be the Beegees. Everyone will love it but it won’t the fresh-tastic adrenaline shot to the heart that Zelda stopped being a couple of generations ago.

The Bottom Line
Everyone should play this game for five minutes, think about the lack of creativity in the state of gaming and all its many sequels, and realize money and state of the art graphics a good game does not make.

Ideas change the world; this idea of chicks in bikinis fighting zombies with a sword is not necessarily a genius one, but the fact that it took the videogame so long to come out with such a game, one done with such panache, just means that the idea is more genius.

By lasttoblame on September 17, 2007

GoldenEye 007 (Nintendo 64)

By lasttoblame on July 17, 2007

Seaquest (Atari 2600)

Home of the ‘impossible jump’

The Good
Everyone knows about the “impossible jump” but I never heard it described before. The “impossible jump” is what makes videogames so exciting. It’s the magical game moment that as gamers we try to recapture every time we play.

I personally term this the “impossible jump” because I base this on the game that most people would first experience this: Super Mario. Super Mario would be the game that would open up the public’s imagination to the idea that what seems impossible is in fact tenable. In Super Mario players are treated to our titular hero bounding straight across the screen in completely superhuman fashion (it isn’t called Meek Mario for nothing). Just years earlier he was bounding over barrels in Donkey Kong one at a time as laymen do; now he is making spectacular leaps across chasms of lava and up atop high flying flagpoles.

This idea isn’t just restricted to side-scrolling platform games, but every genre. The “impossible jump” could mean slipping through the smallest gap between cars in a racer to win, or pulling off a life-saving combo in the nick of time in a fighter, or just the exhilaration of managing to survive to the next save point on just one hit point. String a couple of these together in a row and these become the great gaming moments we’ve all had playing video games; these become the victory stories we regale others with. It is doing the impossible when there is no other choice.

Modern games understand the “impossible jump” theory and use it to their advantage to create the sensation of an experience that is more exciting that what it actually is. A game will remind you of your game mortality by showing an injured avatar or damage to your vehicle. A game will also present enemies as being overly strong or dangerous when they are in fact easy to defeat. However, a game will always take great pains to show you how powerful you, as by giving power-ups to enhance a characters already powerful skills The idea is to present a wide gap between you and the goal you must achieve, but yet give you the tools to do so. In Super Mario this is achieved by establishing large spans to traverse over and by giving Mario the super ability to jump said spans.

“The impossible jump”. It’s the player’s opportunity to show off the hand-eye co-ordination you’ve learned by neglecting your homework. However, these appear from time to time in modern games; with the frequency of save points, the concept of a health meter as well as health pick-ups players can now avoid the “impossible jump” and the many in-game deaths you will suffer from.

Of course, it was never always this way back in the day of old-school gaming. Back then, it wasn’t called old-school gaming, of course. You run into a log, you die. You get struck by a bullet, you die. You fall off a cliff, you have to start all over again at the beginning of the level. It is for these reasons that old-school games have a bad rap from modern gamers. Complaints are often made towards all the things absent from the Golden Age of video games: no cut scenes, none or little music, bad graphics, no online play, bad repetitive play and so forth. However, I think this unforgivable game play is what turns most off from experiencing what could be very fun and rewarding game play.

As empowering as it was to feel a connection to the on-screen hero as denoted by a green square, successful videogames of the time were fun and had good game play for one simple reason: because they had to be. Videogames at that time had to have good game play because it was too expensive to rely on other factors, like good graphics or music. If your hero didn’t have a face or arms you could overlook such trifling problems if you could play it for hours and enjoy it. Game makers had to deliver the “impossible jump” with less resources than they have today.

That’s why Activision’s Seaquest (1983) is such an important game: it is a prime example of being a fun game that delivered more with less back in the time when the rules were still being written. As per the game description this is a 2D shooter that places the player in control of a submarine trying to rescue divers while avoiding or destroying sharks or enemy subs. All the action takes place on one screen thus localizing the action. Once you rescue six divers you then can return to the surface and be relieved of your passengers only to start yet another wave that is now quicker than before.

This is yet another game that is easy to learn but hard to master. The submarine is equipped with an infinite supply of torpedoes, and so the initial strategy is to destroy all your enemies and then rescue the divers. However, at higher levels the enemies move so fast your weapon actually loses effectiveness. Imagine that: being given the ability to destroy your enemies in a videogame but not having that as your primary (visceral) objective. Remember, this was 1983: people wanted to kill things, especially if the choice is given to them.

This change in strategy is described in the manual as “Silent Running”. The idea is to refrain from using torpedoes and pick up divers, all the while dodging enemies without striking back. If the games concept was such (and there are games like that) if would have done satisfactorily. This inclusion of a weapon is to emasculate the player with the ability to take matters into his own hands, something that is popular in almost every game. However, the torpedoes can take out the first enemy in a line of three, but not all of them. This means your weapon is not what will save you.

In that case, what will? Of course, I mean “the impossible jump”. You are running out of air, the siren is blaring, you still have two divers to pick up, and there are enemy subs and sharks zooming by. In this scenario, you have no choice: you are left to your wits to pull off six impossible things in a row (all before breakfast if you want to go to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe)—all just to get to the next level, where it happens all over again.

This change of tactics and the use of the weapon as a diversion for your senses is ingenuous. A 2D non-scrolling side shooter with depth? People, this was 1983. Ewoks are universally loved, as is the child-friendly Michael Jackson. People had feathered hair and acid wash jeans. At this time there’s no motion capture or CGI, games were very basic, and yet we have a shooter that is not a shooter? What is it?

Playing Seaquest is a Zen experience. I know my ass will get kung fued by any half-pint monk of Shaolin for spreading such lies, but I’ll explain the best I can.

Seaquest is a non-scrolling side shooter where you stay in place; you’re not going anywhere, you don’t want to go anywhere, you can’t go anywhere. This is a shooter where the goal isn’t to shoot everything you can, but to save people. As useful as your weapon is, it can’t help you at the higher levels.

In Seaquest you finish a level only to start it over again, with no discernible difference except for an increase of speed (it maxes out at one point). Then why do this? Why go through all this trouble and hassle and hand cramping when it’s so much easier not to? The video game answer is because it is fun. The Zen answer is simply because you have to do what you have to do. It’s like a chore, like washing the dishes or fixing a hundred motorcycles. It’s meditative, if not meditation. You are a player without want: you don’t want to go any where, you don’t want to kill subs and sharks needlessly. You do want to rack up points and get to the next level, but that is problematic because doing so will make it harder for yourself. So there is no want, no desire… then what to do? Just do what you have to do: save divers, rack up points, keep pulling off “impossible jumps”… all because in this game there’s nothing else for you to do or be.

I can’t properly quote this, but Zen isn’t just found on a misty mountain top but also in front of every computer monitor.

The Bad
How they ever turned this into the series Seaquest: DSV with Roy Scheider I have no idea. I never thought the guy driving the sub is the guy from Blue Thunder and 52 Pick Up. Hey, JAFO!

By lasttoblame on July 17, 2007

A-GA: Gekidō no Wakusei (Windows)

A-Gainst all odds this p*rn should be in a museum (and covered in plastic!)

The Good
Videogames have not come very far as art. The amazing success of this relatively young industry is in such fields as design, technology, marketing, culture… but not in art.

Absolutely there have been exceptions to this rule: Planescape: Torment, System Shock 2 and ICO come to mind. The fact that these games were critically acclaimed for their creativity and daring run concurrently with the fact that this games were unpopular upon their release and did not sell well. These games should have never been made in the first place; if the publisher of these games knew that they would sell poorly, they would have withdrawn their support. That’s because first and foremost making videogames is a business, a big one that has since gone to eclipse the film industry in gross profits.

Game makers are not the biggest ones to blame, however, but instead it is the majority of gamers because they don’t demand a good game from a game maker, just an entertaining one. If the gaming public can play a game that is somewhat fun and can gawk at “state of art” eye candy, then they are satiated. Even though the majority of gamers have long since matured, the games they play have not. Modern games either tend to be saccharine cute children’s games or “mature” gore-and-eyeball frag festivals, and most of these have bad, senseless stories with inane dialogue. The average gamer (and even the hardcore gamer at times) just wants to have fun but expects nothing else from their games.

That’s why when people read a review for a game they basically want to know if they should buy it; people don’t want to know anything else. Rox or pseudo-rox? Is it the best game evar? Or, does it sux? Most reviews of games on the net have the same number of words as on a mutant’s hand and always rated 10 or 1—it either rox or sux. What these corporate branded blind fanboys don’t know is that they are working for free when hawking the wares of a game to each other. Every game review seems to have the words “must-buy” or “go rent” with them as though the reviewers work at an ad agency. Most reviewers just discuss the cool graphics or the fact that you can tear arms out of sockets, but just stop there. Don’t games make you feel anything? What does the game encourage you to think?

The main reason that videogames haven’t matured as an art form is because most videogames don’t encourage people to think and talk. Most videogame forums consist of useless fanboy trash talk or “wasn’t it cool when..”-type reminiscing; debates will run the gamut from “who’s the sexiest heroine?” to “what’s the coolest weapon?” But is that thinking? Contemplating the problems of the world and looking deep within your dark soul? People talk about videogames a lot, but do people actually have a conversation?

This isn’t asking too much. I’m not some superficial Cambridge intellectual with elbow patches on my tweed jacket knocking over the smoking pipe every time I reach for the game pad in my high ivory tower. I’m just looking for a mature game that treats me like the mature adult I ought to be. Other genres of entertainment have long grown up: movies, television, and even books used to level my wobbly computer table. Why can’t games do the same? This is the main obstacle facing the industry today and not how realistic a game engine can render human hair.

Art makes you think. Art challenges your ideas of the world. Art will start a conversation that begins with “I’ve never seen a game character depicted so pitifully” to “well, that means there must be no God” (I hope not). Art is not a 50-foot Gundam with beautifully mapped textures running at 60fps. That’s design.

A-Ga by Illusion is by no means a great piece of art, but it shouldn’t be a surprise that it would be a daring Japanese company that releases smut which challenges your pre-set notions of the world; art and p*rnography have long been awkward, messy bedfellows. Nonetheless, it is a work of art that continues to challenge you the more you think about it.

This game varies substantially from other Illusion releases in tone and presentation, just as with every Illusion release. This time around instead of spending most of your time on game play that eventually unlocks a cut scene, it is completely the other way around; game play has now been limited to short third-person adventure levels, boss fights and, without any hyperbole, simply walking from one room to the next. This “game” is 80% CGI cut scenes; while none of the CGI characters slide on a pair of leather gloves before a fight, you’ll find the visuals are decent.

The set up is like this for a specific reason: the game makers want to tell a specific story, that of the protagonist Eo and her mission of revenge against the evil invading army. There are no multiple endings or moral decisions to make; we are following her particular story. It’s a real shame that the ending can’t be discussed here because this twist makes you re-evaluate everything that you have already seen.

It needs to be stated that in A-Ga there are many scenes of rape, torture and violence. Lots of them. Over and over again. That this is an Illusion release shouldn’t surprise people of its content. What makes this rape special from other rape fantasies in hentai games is the prevailing use of violence as a means to rape. Rapes are committed by enemy soldiers who are pointing guns at naked women’s heads and willing to use them. A-Ga does not delve in the implausible fantasy of a victim falling in love with her rapist. This is brutal and harsh and closer to reality than most people can accept.

To contrast with this evilness, the rapes are all shown as experiences for the viewer to enjoy. Beautiful slow music plays as the women moan their resistance to the soldiers. Multiple close ups of the victims over-sexualized bodies are done for sexual satisfaction. The women’s breasts move in a hyper-realistic way that is engaging as it is detrimental to the focus of the story.

This ambivalence to the presentation of rape as either a horrible evil crime or a deep, dark fantasy to be enjoyed is done for a specific reason: this game is trying to explain and rationalize the ambivalence of woman feels towards the fantasy of rape. Audacious as it is, this game is trying to explain this need of a woman to fantasize about this evil act; a woman, and not a man. Something happens at the end to cause the player to reevaluate all that he has seen thus far.

(if this was a review where you could reveal spoilers I would love to discuss this further, but instead I will say that this rox.)

This theme may be difficult to grasp for a casual gamer or for someone who doesn’t understand Japanese. Still, it remains the ingenuity of the game developers to create something that will either attract or repel you (according to how you view rape and torture) and then after showing you all of that FORCE you to change your opinion. So if rape once excited you it now forces you to sympathize with the tragic victim; conversely, if it once repulsed you rape becomes something erotic and appealing. Genius. A-Ga isn’t asking you to share in its opinion, it’s asking you to change you opinion no matter what it is, and may very well succeed at it.

Not bad for a piece of smut. If all pron were like this, we’d be surfing and philosophizing at the same time.

The Bad
When taken out of context without the entire story, A-Ga is just horrific, violent p*rn. Though the story and setting are completely made up, the scenarios it presents are realistic enough. The atrocities the enemy soldiers are committing in A-Ga are not at all different from the atrocities Japanese soldiers committed in World War II at the Rape of Nanjing. A-Ga can not just appeal to the fantasy of rape but of violence and death.

The shame about this game is that most people won’t know the entire story, whether they are looking for a shock or want confirmation that video games are a degenerate, sick form of entertainment that should be controlled or banned. People are interested in seeing Eo and her friends get raped and tortured but won’t care to know why and what for.

That said, A-Ga as a game has some serious issues. While the use of CGI cut scenes over actual game play serves the purpose to add to the game’s main theme, it can’t help but grow old quickly. Though A-Ga is more of a video game with its game play element than is the pure p*rn of Oppai Slider 2, Sexy Beach 3 or Rapelay, it is ironically far less interactive.

Furthermore, it is obvious that more attention has been given to the design of the female characters than anything else in this world. While it is very gratifying to watch Eo walk around in her lingerie armor (coming soon to Victoria’s Secret), this game environment is an empty one if everything else is put in with only a afterthought.

Speaking of afterthoughts, the actual interactive game play is very poor. A-Ga has bad monster design, too easy boss battles, a bad user interface, bad graphics, bad music and sound effects, bad level design and bad puzzles. These shortcomings threaten but don’t relegate A-Ga to being a mere masturbat*-piece. It’s a good thing you’re only doing this for about half an hour at most and that A-Ga is at heart a movie with a story to tell.

The Bottom Line
The best art that is created on this planet will change people; people are resistant to this because people don’t want to change. People work hard all week long and don’t have the time or patience to re-evaluate their ideas and concepts of the world. A-Ga isn’t by any means great but it may surprise you how you come out the other end after having experienced it.

By lasttoblame on July 15, 2007

RapeLay (Windows)

I don’t want to rape women either, but my fantasy and my reality are as equally important to me

The Good
Rapelay is another blistering piece of smut from the rape think-tank Illusion, and it’s the best p*rno you could ever get your hairy palms on. This is no video game; this is p*rn pretending to be a game. Great p*rn. p*rn so good it makes you pray to God that you aren’t going to go to hell because of your pervert soul. After this you’ll forget all about the gonzo work of Seymour Butts or the misogynistic ramblings of Max Hardcore or even the fine Vaseline-covered lens of Tinto Brass; Illusion knows that you are a pervert, and only they can help you be the best pervert you can be.

Please let me begin by saying I don’t condone rape. Only a genius could make the logically sound argument that rape is good, in which God would strike him down so that he would never have to chance to propagate the species with his foul sperm. If you are a rapist and are reading this, shame on you. Yes, you. Truth hurts, don’t it? If you have raped someone and haven’t gone to jail, well then you should you should go to jail. Society doesn’t need jerks like you hurting people. If you are on trial for rape, please don’t bring up this review. You’re on your own; I know Mobygames.com is the source of all things videogames, but this isn’t an argument for rape. This is an argument for fantasy.

Videogames have historically been the domain of males allowing them to fulfill fantasies they otherwise could not achieve. The predominant one has been of conquest through violence; not often has there been a console game that does not come equipped with at least one “kill” button. This use of violence as means to fulfillment is a common theme for the West. Summer blockbusters consisting of a 90 minute kill-festival with some talking parts in between are heralded as the most celebrated and profitable movies of the year; every night on network television dozens of people die on medical and police dramas all in the name of entertainment.

We all need fantasy. Tsui Hark (you know, the Hong Kong film maker that used to make good movies) described the need of fantasy being universal because “people lead boring lives; they can change that by fantasizing about exciting things they can’t be or do”. And that’s what Rapelay is: a fantasy realizer.

Rapelay is not a rape sim, just the way Grand Theft Auto isn’t a gangster sim or Metal Gear is a spy sim. These games don’t teach you how to do anything; as such, Rapelay doesn’t teach you how to rape someone. (another Illusion series, Biko, may just be the series to do that, though) A simulator is a device that allows one to train and practice for a specific skill without any real life consequences. Astronauts train in a simulator to practice for the real thing with great results; likewise, videogame flight simulators have now become so advanced you can learn the essential basics of how to fly using one.

On the other hand, carjacking isn’t as simple as the Grand Theft Auto series would have you believe. To carjack on PS2 you simply press the triangle button; on the other hand to carjack in real life you have to subvert someone’s will using deadly force and be willing to face the consequences of your actions, which could be jail, the death of other people or even your own. These are not the same thing, Jack Thompson. Similarly, Metal Gear has not churned out a generation of super spies. Kicking and shooting in bullet time against robotic ninjas (historically accurate ones) is only something we can accomplish in a game. If videogames had the ability to teach gamers lethal immoral skills, then millions of pimply faced teens would have the world’s governments by the gonads and never let go.

There is one aspect that is the same in this game as with the real life evil deed (I’m just guessing here): that is the highly aroused state this game will illicit from you. But arousal is just that, just arousal. One can become aroused by anything: the underwear section of the Sears catalogue, women’s professional tennis (put on some rugmunching action with the sound off, turn up the audio feed of the ladies’ Wimbledon finals… the synchronicity is oddly reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz, Dark Side of the Moon and a big bag of weed), watching your grandmother change a light bulb… whatever. But the achievement of the same feeling that a specific event would warrant is not conducive to a game simulator. The high one feels from playing the 80’s most difficult game, William’s Defender, does not amount to a “flying on Mars, saving humans, and fighting aliens” sim.

Getting back to the smut at hand, this is one finely designed product. The women look like women. The voice acting, as with all of Illusion’s sick products, is of the highest caliber. This looks like it was programmed well and runs smoothly on your PC-p*rn computer. The game interface is simply amazing; you have real time interaction with your NPC. You click and drag left, something on the screen goes left in tandem with your move. You speed up, it/they speed(s)up. As this feature isn’t particularly well balanced sometimes the in game actions amount to the same as Daffy Duck running around the kitchen table with his pants on fire at afterburner speed; in other words, very cartoony and unlifelike. Not like a sim at all, in this case.

However, what makes this filth terribly seductive is the illusion of immersion achieved by all of its separate components working together. Illusion has provided us with NPC’s that respond to our every whim; by using the mouse we are tricked into believing that it is our interactivity that is causing the debasem*nt before us, drawing us in on the most intimate level. The advanced physics engine gives the body movement seem lifelike, though breasts move “hyper-realistically”—that is to say they don’t move realistically at all, breasts only move how we’d like them to move in our dirty minds. The voice acting by far is the biggest persuader; you are led to believe someone is actually having sex while playing this, if not you (no, you’re only playing it for “scientific reasons”).

This experience will move you. I haven’t been shocked like this in a while as when I did replaying (“Rapelaying”, if you will) the “Chikan” portion on the train. The game throws you on a subway train with the goal to molest your target. I thought of this section before as being rather boring and pedestrian in previous passes; however, it turned out to be a complete “Did I just do that?” jump-out-of-your-skin experience as when I found out that I could do the most reprehensible things that I never even thought about much on a rainy day. All by accident. If you think that this game won’t let you do something because the dirty old men at Illusion haven’t sunk that low, well then you’ve just been humbled. The kink lords there have made Rapelay and will teach you what a pervert really is. This spells out the best game experience you’ll ever have since you rescued Princess Toadstool.

But as I said, this isn’t a game, it’s a fantasy realizer. While the game has rape scenes and is even called “Rapelay” by name, the main theme is broader than that. The story of the game follows our lusty anti-hero who wants to enact revenge on the girl who put him in prison (briefly) as well as her family (they are three women who you can sort into “no breasts”, “large breasts”, and “feed-a-hospital-ward-full-of-babies breasts”). The story mode has you raping each one at a time, but in extended play mode the story becomes even more fantastic and implausible: after you raped all of the women, the anti-hero decides to keep them and turn them into his sex slaves. The method by which he does this is by having such incredible sex with the lasses that they will change from resistant victims to docile participants to willing partners. Completely implausible. You might find it on the Maury show one day, but is still completely implausible. However unrealistic this story sounds, the more potent it becomes as a fantasy. The point of fantasy is that it isn’t realistic, it’s as far away from realism as we can imagine. That the reason why in games we fly in outer space, slay ferocious monsters, and now rape and train sex slaves.

Rape is a horrific crime from which some victims will be scarred for a lifetime. That’s in reality. In fantasy rape is something that people dream about because it’s not real. People don’t have rape fantasies because they want to rape or be raped; it’s just a fantasy. It’s not meant to be real; it’s a fantasy. Fantasy is a safe place for people because it’s their own personal thoughts that no one else can access (until Nintendo comes out with the Wii-deepthought controller, that is).

“Nothing is either good or bad, only thinking makes it so.” Such it is with rape. Just because someone has rape fantasies doesn’t mean you’re abnormal or should be put in jail. I can’t cite any references but I do believe that this is a common fantasy for women. It isn’t that they want it to happen to them; instead,it’s the exciting thought that by being taken against your will you have to do all the things a good girl is not allowed to do on her own accord. No one wants to be a bad girl because bad girls are slu*ts. To be a good girls means you have to follow the rules; however, if there is something that supercedes the rules, then a girl can blame someone else for not being a good girl. This is similar to why girls always will choose a jerk and asshole over someone who is nice and friendly; if they don’t respect someone then they will never lose that person’s respect, and so the good girl rules can once again be ignored.

(Fellas, I honestly don’t know anything about women except: always give compliments, always listen, and always know that you will lose every fight you have with your girlfriend. Oh, and cl*tor*s cl*tor*s cl*tor*s!)

The funniest thing about Rapelay may be the one thing that might actually make it appealing to women. (This isn’t to say you should introduce this to your non-gaming girlfriend before something more chick-friendly like The Sims, though.) Every bit of the game’s engine is dedicated to making the woman look good, and it shows. The male figure is an afterthought, so much so that he can be toggled off in the options; when returning back to game play you will find your NPC having sex with an invisible man. This works as a tool for fantasy for men because all men want to do is look at her, the gorgeous NPC; your on-screen avatar is just blocking your view. As well, this could conceivably work for women who have rape fantasies because their on-screen avatar now becomes the NPC who works as a conduit for the player to enact fantasies of their own. Once again, just pure conjecture, and for her birthday you should buy your girlfriend Katamari Damacy and not this sensitive Hallmark offering.

People aren’t going to like this statement, but this is the p*rn of the future. No one will be surfing the net for p*rn in a couple of years. Instead, you’ll be logging onto a huge MMORG where your completely realistic rendered avatar (that doesn’t look a thing like you) will have sex with Rapelay-type NPC’s to level up your stats to complete in Player-vs-Player sex competitions to see who can climax last.

World of p*rncraft. E3 2012. No one will ever have sex with other humans again.

The Bad
Every “game” Illusion puts out differs completely from anything they’ve released before. This is a company that never fails to take the bold path and offer something new, something that holds true in spite of the many sequels they have released. They have many old-school games which are in-fact games with actual game play that reward the player with p*rn upon completing an successful objective (Battleraper, DBVR, Des Blood series). As well they have this new type of “game” where p*rn isn’t the reward, it’s the game play, thus becoming both the means and the end (Sexy Beach series, Oppai Slider, and this particular warm gentle co*ckle of a gem)

However, there is a particular reason for this: Illusion knows that the market for sex games is an extremely varied one. This is because people all have a different opinion of what sexy is. Walk into any friendly neighborhood p*rno shop and you’ll find p*rn classified into two dozen sections: race, age, gender, body parts, balloons and what have you. Conceivably there is a particular Illusion game that is suitable for every gamer.

If you’re still worried, the Fallout universe will arrive in real time. That or the Matrix prequel “rise of the machines” storyline..

By lasttoblame on July 14, 2007

Combat (Atari 2600)

The only thing missing are gallons and gallows of pixellated blood. And head shots.

The Good
I can't believe some of the other reviews of this game. No music? Bad graphics? Unrealistic physics? Were you alive when this game came out? Which Star Wars is the real Star Wars trilogy?

Please let grandpa sort you out. This game is twenty years old, and needs to be judged in that context. Everything was state of the art, because nothing like that had ever been done before. "A game system.. in my own home? Right... and in the future I will have my own portable telephone that stores a thousand songs on it... " (Apple, there's your endorsem*nt so give me swag!!)

Combat is the original deathmatch. This is the game that will have you cussing and swearing at your friends, so yes, Counterstrike is the spiritual heir to this game. To commemorate the importance of their humble roots at every Quakecon they should have a 32-player LAN set up for a ladder tourney of Atari 2600 Combat, replete with the tacky faux wood paneling seen in every basem*nt of the early 80's. You got skillz? You got pwned!

It works because it is so simple. Teach granny how to hold the joystick, tell her which way is up and how to kill and you have a frag buddy. And because it was so easy, every one had a chance for success.. or at least believed they did.

As this was this first deathmatch, it also had the first cheap shots, or "campers". Once you shot up your best buddy, if he flew away from you in your direct sights, you can continue to frag him again and again and again. This was 1977: no respawning or health or weapon pick-ups. Kickin it old skool. Ah, to be so cruel to your friends... just thinking of it now I feel like I'm in my "Field of Dreams"...

And if my memory serves me correctly, there were many variations available. Atari went so far as to boldly proclaim there were 27 games on this humble cartridge. There's the tank game, the tank game where you can ricochets bullets off walls (I do believe this was an inspiration for the Wachowski siblings), invisible tank game, jets, biplanes, three jets against a bomber.. it beggars the imagination. Mods! Mods that shipped with the original game!

Please let me put this into perspective. Combat was one of the many Atari 2600 killer apps. You'd see this at Kmart and go, "Look at those astounding graphics! You mean I can control that yellow block and shoot smaller yellow blocks at my mortal enemy! To whom do I give my 599$? I don't want a PS3 anymore!" Okay, maybe not that last part, but people went gaga over this as they would for the later killer app, the terrible 2600 version of Pac-Man.

Truly revolutionary for its time. This has had a lasting effect upon games because folks, you've been playing essentially what is the very same game. Kill the other guy before he kills you. The fact that you do it now in 3D with amazing weapons and pixellated blood doesn't change the fact that this type of game is thirty years old. 30. Yikes. I am your grandfather.

The Bad
You say:

"No team death match. No capture the flag mode. No online play. No online chat. No weapon or health pick ups. No bump mapping or dynamic lighting. No customization of tattoos. No story, no voice acting, no cutscenes. Most importantly, you can't get out of your tank and carjack another tank."

...

Folks, this is old school gaming at its very finest. No, you couldn't do any of those things, and you know what? We liked it. We preferred it. We all hollered and yelled when the jump was made to 16-bit. "More colors? What do with all these colors? We don’t want better graphics, we want better game play! We want our games to be fun!”

Thirty years have passed, and have game developers listened? The game industry crashed once before at a time it was making money hand over fist. A series of bad decisions and a lofty sense of self-importance led to that crash.

There’s no reason why it can’t happen again. Bring back my eight-way one button controller.

The Bottom Line
A must-have for every Quake frag-head and Counter-Strike kill-joy only for you to see how little games have progressed over a long period of time.

By lasttoblame on July 13, 2007

The Typing of the Dead (Windows)

WASD is not most dangerous four letter word in gaming

The Good
Revisionism is a tricky thing. To claim what once happened never happened is a magic trick done in plain sight for everyone to see but with nothing to hide behind; it’s the equivalent of Penn and Teller doing their next magic show behind an x-ray machine. To pull off a trick so blatantly, so obviously, done without any semblance of guile… well, then everyone has no choice but to believe you. If you pull it off.

Staying firmly in the world of geek, George Lucas was an aspiring film maker who wanted to set an opera in outer space using cowboys. The result was Star Wars (1977) and nerds haven’t left their basem*nts since. Lucas’ success was also one of total creative control over the Star Wars franchise; armed with 40% control over the marketing rights of Star Wars and the nuclear-powered Skywalker Ranch (with a Deathstar Deathray-proof bunker five miles below the surface—indeed, the ultimate basem*nt), Lucas could do whatever he wanted.

Not satisfied with the visual look of his original trilogy, Lucas would continually make changes to these films while at the same time denying audiences access to the original work. Legally, Star Wars is his creative property to do with as he wished, much to the chagrin of fans everywhere. Lucas would add special effects that didn’t exist at the time, recut scenes, do anything he could to “preserve the original vision I had for the movie”. However, audiences are savvy, and sometimes unforgiving. While the second trilogy may have done very well in terms of sales, the three words that will follow Lucas to his grave is “Han shot first!”

This type of revisionism is common to games as well. Id released DOOM3 as a modern retelling of the classic tale; id would have us believe that this version of the DOOM story is the proper one and the original can all but be forgotten, as though they are embarrassed by the way the graphics look compared to today’s technology. As well, Team Ninja has released the Ninja Gaiden game several times over in different versions in recent years, touting tweaks and new features added to what is essentially the same game.

So it is with The Typing of the Dead. Released four years after the original and just a year after the sequel, this game is essentially the same game but with some very major differences. The original House of the Dead was a light gun game with which you would blast zombies; conversely, in the Typing of the Dead your lethal instrument of death is a keyboard attached to a Dreamcast with a giant “D” battery on top. At no time in the game is this literary BFG explained, nor is it explained why zombies are susceptible to simple phrases like “my foxy wife”.

This is a brilliant reworking of the “classic tale” for us post-modern cynics. The original House of the Dead was a campy gore fest of bad voice acting and nonsensical story. (Also, it had outright tasteless racism. The villain who is responsible for the zombies and all the deaths is none other than Goldman, the Jew!! It’s always the Jew, isn’t it? Does B‘nai Brith know about this?) The player is thrust into to role of the macho hero by wielding a powerful pink plastic light gun; this visceral experience of using in real life a gun replica to do away with your enemies can only be matched by the confirmation that everyone in the arcade must think you have a big penis to match the giant phallic symbol you hold in your hands.

While the original House of the Dead was a uber-hetero testosterone-filled macho experience, Typing of the Dead re-evaluates that experience for what it is: a campy shallow experience. But this is where Typing of the Dead transcends it’s limited origins to become the game it was meant to be. This game postulates that the game’s problem isn’t that it is campy, it’s not campy enough! The silliness of changing from a moody first person shooter to a typing tutor can be seen in the outlandish getup of the aforementioned Dreamcast backpack. Enemy weapons have been switched from knives and swords to spatulas and toilet plungers. This game never allows you to forget that you’re playing a parody, albeit one that you enjoy immensely.

Everyone loves zombies, because everyone enjoys killing zombies (says the preacher in Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive (1992) right before he opens the whoop-ass can: “I kick ass for the Lord!”). People do so because zombies by all rights have to be killed, as well as the fact they are so easy to be killed. That’s why it’s so natural to keep plugging away at the waves of undead, all the while fooled into thinking that touch typing is fun. This motivation to type is further encouraged by the very novel use of typing as weapon; every time a key is pressed correctly, a satisfying gunshot is thundered, while an incorrect press only enacts a limp high-pitched miss whistle.

The fact that most gamers are bad typists is very ironic. From reading other reviews I keep hearing how this game is tough; it’s not tough—you get “pwned” because you don’t have “teh mad skillz” required for this game. I’m not a great touch typist myself, but this game encourages me to further my skills. Typing of the Dead teaches a valuable life skill in a most amusing and enjoyable way.

Note: it was my house who Unicorn B Lynx came over to and to whom showed DOOM3 and Typing of the Dead. Typing of the Dead is a much better game. (it’s embarrassing to know I was once excited about DOOM3). It has a soul, a funny and frivolous one; DOOM3 has none; it’s that hot superstar blonde tennis player who never won a game and everyone has since forgotten her name: all style, no substance (well, as least for being a tennis player).

The Bad
Sega, if you’re going to go all the way, go all the way. The lumberjack zombie still sports the chainsaw as he did in the original game. Frightening, yes, but not the camp fun the rest of the game provides. What about arming him with a singing fish, or put an embroidered pillow in his mitts? You’re the geniuses, you figure it out (wait, what happened with that console you put out a while back?)

The Typing of the Dead is a highly creative game that has universal praise every time it is mentioned, yet for some reason seems to have disappeared off the game radar (the Planescape: Torment syndrome—the better you are, the worse you will suffer). There aren’t any sequels or successors of any kind. What ever happened to… Ab-Crunches of the Dead: every sit-up explodes a zombies cranium into goo. Deleting Junk Mail of the Dead: using your mouse you fire bullet after bullet as you empty your mail. Or how about a cross-over: DDR of the Dead: using your floor dance pad you cut the rug of the undead, their demented cries wailing over the unrelenting disco beat.

I’m not kidding here: if you want little Johnny to do something, you won’t have to ask twice if there is decapitation and green blood. Brushing the Teeth of the Dead! Homework of the Dead! Taking Out the Trash of the Dead! I’d buy stock in Sega now if this was true. So what’s the hold up? Or are you waiting again for a good thing to slip through your fingers to tell you that you that you have a winning formula in your hands?

The Bottom Line
Destined for obscurity, this game could have been the one to influence other games to be much more than just a way to pass the time. As such, we can only be content with this gem encased in rotten stinking decaying zombie matter.

By lasttoblame on July 13, 2007

Katamari Damacy (PlayStation 2)

By far the most subversive and sinister game to recently take on the status quo

The Good
Not often does a game come out that shocks people with its creativity and ingenuity. Game development has long since become an exercise in excess and predictability, appealing to an audience who just wants more of the same thing but in a prettier package. As stifling as this “more and same” mentality is to the creativity of new video games, sometimes something happens to sneak by the watchful eye of the status quo.

Katamari Damacy does just that because it is a game that really never should been made, let alone be marketed to a western audience. Players who review this game have mostly talked about its fun, simple addictive game play; however, Katamari Damacy succeeds in every part of its design in the most creative way to truly create a memorable game that is much more than the sum of its parts. The reason for this isn’t because of luck, a huge budget or a tyrant like David Jaffe giving the lash (“My coder has just expired. Give me fresh nerds!”): no, it’s because everyone involved with creating this game understood the sinister subtext of Katamari Damacy, compelling them to create the most subversive commercial game available in recent memory.

The game play appeals to players and non-players of all types because it is so easy and so much fun. Basically it involves rolling your “wad” around (okay, a “clump”, or a “katamari”), collecting objects to increase the size of your “wad” so you can advance to the next level. I’ve heard it compared in some review somewhere to “cleaning”, which is indeed an apt comparison. Also noteworthy are the simple controls. While you have other options like first-person perspective, the controls basically consist of moving both analogy sticks akin to the controls of the treads of a tank. This immediate accessibility is refreshing compared to the half hour tutorials and long learning curves that seem mandatory today.

That the story is crazy and nonsensical just adds to the fun. We are treated two separate storylines that don’t crossover, with the Prince and the King of all Cosmos being the one with more sense. The bright graphics and color palate of the game world adds to this as well. It’s very rare that people don’t forgive a game for its bad graphics but instead love it for having so. It would definitely ruin the effect if the game world was rendered with amazing bump mapping and had “rocks that look like rocks!” (some geek uttered those words in a Quake forum and ever since one more wrong cliché is burning against my good taste). The other story is about a family and their astronaut dad; that their heads look like the square watermelons that will being shipping to your supermarket soon add to this good fun.

Katamari Damacy boasts some of the best music to grace consoles in years. True to its arcade flavor, the game has many catchy pops songs to add to its addictive nature. Once again, this is a refreshing approach to music considering most games today only feature a score to play along with the game play. Folks, a song is different. A song has a beginning, middle and end. A song has a melody, something lacking in modern music. “WHUMP WHUMP WHUMP WHUMP” is not a song; netiher are those vocals sung once and duplicated ad nausea via Protools a melody. Since John Cage turned on the vaccum cleaner way back when to ask “What is music?”, we’ve been left to mop up after him. While the legacy he left has us accepting that everything is music, no one now asks the important question “What is good music?” or even “What is a song?”

Japanese audiences, the most prolific consumer of instrumental music in the world, don’t have these issues. J-Pop has been pumping out inventive song after song for decades, and each of the songs on Katamari Damacy is a good example of this, besides being just a good catchy song of its own. Basically, J-Pop differs from Western music in being more tightly arranged. In Western music you may have a verse section and a chorus section (you know, “Sweet Home Alabama!”). In J-Pop most songs have about four. In Katamari Damacy’s hit song “Lonely Rolling Star” (you’ll be speaking “Ronely Lolling Star” in no time flat though) you have an intro, verse, pre-chorus, extended half-time bridge and an outro. (screw you CCR!) Infectious. Puffy Ami Yumi will conquer America in no time flat. I mean, the puss*cat Dolls did, why can’t someone who isn’t a corporate entity who cross-markets crassly (“puss*cat Doll Clothes for your Cat! Now with 33% more cleavage!) do it？

While fun on it’s own, all these disparate elements combine together to create that feeling every single gamer has been trying to recapture ever since he blew up his first asteroid or jumped his first barrel: joy. Nothing can ever match that sense of wonderment as when we first allowed ourselves to live another life in a fantasy world where we could do and be so much more than what we actually are. This is a similar reason that musicians have for playing music, both professional and amateur: even though we continually grow and learn for the rest of our lives, that very first feeling of discovery is profound.

Katamari Damacy reminds you of your first kiss, the first time you held hands, the first time you actually saw a nipple. It gives you a child’s sense of wonderment that other companies like Disney try to ape; however, when your first responsibility is to your shareholders and the profit they seek, your motives cause your results to be contrived. That’s one reason of the universal appeal of Katamari Damacy: the game enables the player this immediate feeling of joy and doesn’t let go.

However, there are two parts to this immediate appeal, and the other part is the universal message that everyone on planet Earth will understand. This story specifically takes place on Earth for a reason. The Prince comes to Earth to make the new stars because Earth has so much stuff. In every single level, from the tiniest ant to the last level when you are rolling up oil tankers, there is stuff everywhere. This clutter isn’t a problem because people are inherent slobs who are messy, it’s because there’s too much stuff.

There are two reasons to all this excess: because now there are too many people in the world buying too many things. That’s right, overpopulation and capitalism. While the former is definitely a problem (but don’t worry: your grandkids will only be allowed to have one gene-scattered kid each) the latter isn’t necessarily seen as one, especially when it’s the dominant way of life throughout the world (Commu-what? Karl who?). But like any great piece of art, Katamari Damacy makes you think: Does the world need all this stuff? Do I need all this stuff? Why do we need stuff? Perhaps your house doesn’t have a row of handcuffs pointing up from the ground littering your driveway, but you do have drawers and shelves filled with junk you don’t use, a strange fact when coupled with the fact that you will continue to buy new stuff that you simply don’t need.

This game is opposite to every game made to the idea of materialism. In an adventure game you pick up every single object you can find to complete your quest; in an RPG you spend half your play time managing your vast inventory, always looking for the best Vorpal sword to equip thyself; in an FPS you control a one man army who is armed like one, usually equipped with 10 giant guns and a vast supply of ammunition. More is better. However, in Katamari Damacy the game play and story is made possible by the materialistic tendencies of others, not you. You don’t want to become rich and wealthy, you just want to clear the stage. As said before, it is like cleaning… cleaning the world of all this junk we don’t need.

To touch upon another theme, I find it inexplicable games like the Grand Theft Auto series and Manhunt are criticized for being violent but not Katamari Damacy. In San Andreas and the latter you wipe out rival gangs in self-defense who are looking to murder you; a flimsy excuse for a criminal defense but a reason nonetheless. In Katamari Damacy you perform genocide: a whole populated island of thousands of people wiped out (including the island itself), and for what reason? Because they’ve seen too many blue lights at Kmart? The light, cartoonish way the game deal with the method of balling up people doesn’t’ detract from the fact that these people are never going to come back to Earth—they’re going to die. There’s no other fate for them.

Further evidence to the barbarism of Katamari Damacy is the game credits, where our cute little Prince uses the Moon to pick up the countries off the face of the Earth, one by one. He’s killing the Earth, man! I’m not saying it, but it appears genocide has never been so much fun. (“Take that, Trinidad and Tobago! Make it into the World Cup, will you?”) And it’s unmistakable: just under the cool pop songs and “blips” and “bloops” you will hear the screaming of people. In fear. In pain. They don’t want to be picked up. They don’t want to be part of the katamari. However, they have no choice: their fate will become sealed when they fly off to become a star in outer space.

Perhaps it’s all in the presentation. If in GTA IV (or just “IV” if you believe their self-importance) that Russian guy was a dancing bear with a red pillbox hat, then he could carjack and beat up as many hookers as he wanted to (well, if the hookers looked like Minnie Mouse). It sounds ridiculous but it seems people only object to video games that “appear” realistic, when in fact this choice of presentation is just a cosmetic one made to determine what demographic to market the game for. If when your opponent doesn’t squirt out blood when you kill him, will that make the player a better person? So poisoning and strangling is the polite way of fragging someone?

A game this subversive never should have seen daylight for the crazy question is poses to the world. However, that’s exactly why this game needed to be made: because no one anywhere is asking these types of questions (except Adbusters… when again is National Buy Nothing Day?). The fact that this game is so successful in conveying this message is made even more sinister by the fact that it hides in the form of a children’s game. No, it isn’t on Nintendo for this reason.

If you don’t agree with me up to this point (and as it’s a long article you must have some reason for reading all the way up to now), then ask yourself: how did they come up with the game’s concept? Did they just stumble upon this or did they specifically ask these questions? Why not have a game set on another planet where you roll up aliens? Or since the game is basically a wad junking up stuff, why not be a brightly colored ball picking up brightly colored squares? Why does it need to be on Earth, set in the modern era?

It would be a completely different game otherwise. The reason why the katamari can grow to infinite size is because materialism can grow to infinite size. There’s no end to greed. That’s also why the Prince is so small; because he is the opposite to greed, he is humble, and in no time flat he will be dwarfed by the katamari. It doesn’t make sense to make him human size, how else could he roll up coins and paper clips?

So the next time you fire up “ NA, NA-NA-NA NA NA NA NA…” just think about how you’re making George Bush cry. Why can’t you be like everyone else and just be happy and go buy something? You should be ashamed of yourself, you Commie.

The Bad
A game with an anti-materialistic message will undo itself with a sequel, which it does with the latter release, We Love Katamari. However, the game creators still manage to be subversive by choosing this title and infer that is isn’t a sequel, it’s a clone. Katamari Damacy II would be a sequel where the game has RPG elements and online team deathmatch with chatting enabled as you roll around a sandbox world taking missions from various NPC’s as you unravel an epic story of love and betrayal. That’s right, just like Tokyo Bus Driver Sim II.

No, We Love Katamari (admittedly, a game I haven’t played) is more of the same, something that also addresses the shortness of the first. It isn’t expanding on the first one. It’s like saying to your wife, “Hey, I don’t want to go bowling with the guys, I want to spend more time with you! Waking up next to you every single day hasn’t gotten boring at all!) That’s what a clone is: something/someone that is the very same.

Katamari Damacy, is short, but it’s designed to be that way. It’s an arcade game. If it leaves you wanting more, then it has succeeded. This game will not be made better by adding on 80 hours of dungeon crawling in an immersive world where NPC’s have jobs in the day and go home at night. If this game was any more complex it would lose its appeal.

Also, some of the story themes aren’t suitable for a kid’s game. One night, the King of All Cosmos went and busted up all the stars in the sky. Why? Because he got hammered and then did something about it. No doubt this will confuse the young tykes; this is something they’ll always remember as something they don’t understand but know has a bad reason. As well, in the tutorial when you’re first learning to ball your wad around, if you use first person view and look up at the ceiling you’ll see the King peeping in through the skylight. What, no privacy? What if I was naked in here balling my wad around? Obviously a pervert.

I should add that genocide and the extermination of the human race aren’t appropriate themes for those under twelve. Until then you should tell them that all native people of North America were wrong to have had the nerve to live here before the “real” people showed up; how can beads and some trinkets ever buy me a PS3?

The Bottom Line
One day, people may wake up and realize what this game is about and even perhaps be affected by it, something that one hundred Tim Robbins/Susan Sarandon movies can’t do. There is no better masquerade in games nowadays, save for “GTA is an action game” or that “id makes good games”.

Everyone can make up your own mind as to how you feel about the games message; if you can’t, then you should ask me and be my wife.

By lasttoblame on July 13, 2007

Quake 4 (Windows)

This game puts the “whor*” in “war-gasm”, because you can't spell “stupid” without “id”

The Good
Quake IV is the prettiest “ugly game” you can allow your retinas to feast on in recent years besides DOOM3. There are lots of amazing lighting and particle effects. Characters and environments are richly detailed. And I don't know how anyone can get excited over this, but rocks look like… rocks. Yah, so go think about that the next time you're not singing in the shower.

Also, Quake IV is true to its roots as a gore-filled meat-bag red corpuscle buffet that infuses every possible moment with gory, horrifying death. Quake IV knows there's a macabre delight from this spectacle and provides it with giddy aplomb. This game is great that way and never ever shies away. This game isn't just violent, it's enjoyably violent. This is not so much exemplified by the game play (people's brains don't explode out of their body—as they should, like in DOOM3) as it does with the wanton cruelty you witness performed by the Strogg. From the first image you see of a disembodied corpse with a hole in its head (hey, how can that be a spoiler?) to all the medical experiments done on captured humans it's all a regular Rob Zombie flick, straight out of Fangoria. Best of all is the one scene you see from a first person POV that you are helpless to do anything otherwise. (it's the Disney theme park ride you can't get off, so hat's off to id for this level of high game immersion which doesn't hold us back at arms length. I hope further games include such ridiculousness… so break a leg!)

The in-game interface is an amazing piece of design, something seen previously in DOOM3. The weapon crosshair becomes the mouse cursor when put upon an in-game computer, which never detracts you from all the killing you need to do. Such an easy and efficient method will surely be copied in future games.

The Bad
The original DOOM was a watershed moment in videogames; that little game from an upstart developer named id would introduce to teenagers worldwide the dominant genre of videogames for years to come in the West (if not the world): the first person shooter. Besides being influential in other notable areas like shareware and use of graphic violence, DOOM would foist upon us the videogame equivalent of the dumb summer blockbuster; from then onwards gamers would forever flock to the loudest and shiniest new piece of emperor's clothing dangling before them.

While most people enjoyed the exciting game play of being Heaven's custodian cleaning up Hell's minions with a double-barreled mop, what is more memorable are the graphics: the way the game allowed the player to enjoy the visceral experience of snuffing out life from a first person view just as though you are really there, sleeves rolled up, mopping away, something that hadn't been widely seen before (oh, stop it with the Wolfenstein howling) This type of POV also added to the thrill ride by properly setting up a dark and suspenseful atmosphere that made it a truly frightening experience, allowing said teenagers to test their manhood whilst squeal with that high annoying pre-pubescent yelp.

Two whole paragraphs written about the amazing ability of DOOM to blend game play and technology to create a product whose sum is more than it's parts, and what does a game developer hear? Graphics!! Screw the game play and story!! People only want to see the latest in geek special effects. After Luke's successful Death Star trench run in Star Wars (1977), the rise of the movie blockbuster encouraged movie makers to focus on this formula: a pretty spectacle that will wow eyeballs and fill seats with bums and make profit.

And that's how it is with Quake IV, a game made by the same company that started this trend. However, id is not the same company of misfits who set out to change the world; id is only interested in maintaining the status quo by giving us yet another empty game of wonderful bump mapping and dynamic lighting effects. A great game great graphics does not make. I don't care if the Strogg I'm fragging has beads of sweat that fall off his Strogg nose using highly developed sweat physics rendered individually in real time as influenced by the randomly generated nose hairs which are generated according to each specific Stroggs gene pool, if the game doesn't tell a good story with good game play then what's the point?

This complete adherence to the dogma of consistently striving for cutting edge graphics is wrong. Completely wrong. Folks, this is the same cup and ball game you've been playing for about twenty years, only now you're playing with a nicer cup (or for you ladies, a nicer ball). The AI in Quake IV really hasn't improved; you play this game as you would Quake II, which again plays a lot like the first DOOM. Enemies don't flank you or work together as a squad or take cover as though it would actually save their life, usually you have the FPS standard kamikaze death run (and see how well that worked back in WWII?). You use the same tactics—like move close to some guy, have him use his melee move on you, back away and use your shotgun, rinse and repeat.

Hey, you multimillion dollar fat-cat game makers: how about giving us gamers an AI enemy who can actually outsmart us? Stop overwhelming us with sheer numbers and program an enemy who actually wants to win. I don't care if the next id game has us battling that blocky tank from Atari 2600's “Combat” just so long as it wants to fight me and will do everything it can to succeed. If the new millennia can't give us cars that can fly well then just give me that, will ya?

This old “one hero against a million” has gotten very old over the years. This premise of a plot damages any credence the story tries to establish if you don't acknowledge it as other good games have managed to do. This untalkative grunt is the one person who will succeed (cause it's the story of Quake IV), but why should we care? Why does he do it? Yes, he's solider following orders, but why does he succeed? Why him and not the other guy not named “Cain” who actually speaks? Why don’t we ever know his side of the story? If your protagonist doesn't talk, then why give him a name and a face? And won't you game designers stop calling bad mofo's “Cain”; if this guy is so bad ass well then you can hire one more voice actor so the character can tell me himself, right?

I remember clearly this story from some id hotshot when Quake came out. Some Guy Lombardo flush with pride from the success of DOOM was being asked what the story of Quake is, to which he scoffed. Guy said something along the lines of, “Story? We don't need a (stinkin') story. Did Pac-Man have a story? No!” Of course, the next Quake would have the Strogg storyline, and then of course the next Quake 3 Arena would not. This return of the Quake series to the Strogg-Earth storyline is not a good move unless you have a story to tell. A new story. Why is there a war? The Strogg leaders may want human body parts to arm their war effort, but what does the common Strogg want? How does planet Earth go about invading the Strogg homeworld when Earth finally runs out of resources? What happened to the guy in Quake II (which, of course, is you again). How is this game Quake IV besides the title and the trademark?

You might say this type of questioning is irrelevant in a FPS, but if you’re going to spend 20 some-odd hours in a campaign it should interest you for the whole of that time. Furthermore, id really does away with the story by completely negating the story from the previous Quake II. Remember how you slogged your way through it, hour after hour and level after level, until your final confrontation with that damned Makron when you put a smackdown on that bitch, his being armed with BFG’s in his armpits notwithstanding? Well, SPOILER ALERT it doesn't mean a cold witch's teat because they just made a new Makron! What kind of story is that? It's like saying you didn't save humanity when you beat Quake II, it was all a dream! That means whatever you hope to accomplish in Quake IV doesn’t amount to a thimble of mouse piss because it will all be negated in time for Quake V, which by then will feature all enemy grunts who all look different from one another with band-aids, gangsta tats, and customized Afros who slowly slid leather gloves onto their seven-fingered hands as they perform a kamikaze death rush at you.

As a lowly grunt you continually receive orders as what to accomplish next. However, the game's inclusion of letting you see your mission objective with a mapped key is a complete sham. It doesn't matter if your next goal is to turn on the coolant rod if you have no map to see where you are going. This game is completely linear; all you have to do is go to a new area and throw some switches. Barring that you should backtrack to a area with monsters, do your trick with your gun and they way will be made clear. This is the game’s trick to masquerade itself as something more complex, like as though you need good navigational skills or if the decisions you make have an outcome on the game. This is DOOM I all over again, hunting down the yellow key or whatnot.

This constant mention of DOOM is well deserved because Quake IV is the exact same game as DOOM3. You heard me. You take the latter and put it outside with vehicles and bad team combat and it's the same. They may have different objectives however (DOOM3 tries to scare you witless and Quake IV tries to shock you with gore, the former being very unsuccessful to us po-mo know-it-alls). You know, it was cute when that has-been Scorsese ripped himself off by making “Casino” (1995) after he did “Goodfellas” (1990), but how can you blame him? At the time he hadn't won an Academy Award yet. Scorsese was desperate for praise and acceptance, and would later get it with that timewaster “The Departed” (2006) (go see the original “Internal Affairs” (2002) with Andy Lau and Tony Leung).

Scorsese had a reason. You, id, are just turning a fast buck, you filthy hawkers you. So, two games, released a year apart, same graphics engine, same premise: silent but named marine/grunt is given orders by higher command to take on the impossible odds of a unquestioning evil horde and win, all the while not knowing what his own motives are, all the while with using amazing graphics and predicable AI.

Just like DOOM3 before it, Quake IV is all the same thing, over and over again. It’s a war-gasm that stretches out as long as your hand can handle it. It that frag high you just wish would keep going on and on and on. The pacing is handled poorly where it’s either intense firefights or drudging through pointless exposition to do something you don't understand. (Nexus wha?) The game play is of the uber-macho type: Quake IV (like DOOM3) punishes the player over and over again. It isn't challenging your wits, it's asking you if you have “dem mad skillz” to withstand this onslaught. The game is directly asking you, “Are you macho enough to endure me?” This questioning of your sexual orientation goes right down to the high system requirements required to handle this resource pig. Well, if you’re going to punish me, what about a reward? (my dom is always sure to reward me or I don’t pay!) The game never acknowledges this; Quake IV says the tough punishing game play is it’s own reward, as though playing it is a good and just deed. I'm going to save the Earth, am I? Well how about a cool rendered cut-scene with the half-naked female Strogg leader, or a funny scene that is somewhat funny? (that Russian character is cool, natch).

Also, what's up with the future being so ugly? Before the humans invaded, wasn't the planet a nice place to live? Don't Strogg families go out a walk pushing the tram along the boulevard? Okay, maybe Strogg aren't born as much they are assembled out a pile of ass and elbows, but what do they do there except build ugly space stations? Strogg architects have all the sensibility of a hack who has only seen movie “Aliens” (1986) over and over again. Game environments shouldn't be just made so that you can have cool battles in them, they should exist on their own with their own reasons for existing. Hey, before you bust up this tea house with your kung fu, what do Strogg do here? What do they think of the war? Who do they think the hottest chick on “Sex and the City” is? The Quake IV game world isn't an immersive one despite how well rendered it is; it isn't a place you'd like to go and hang out and think about what they do in that building, or what did it look like 100 years ago. It's just a construct to do your murdering in.

Quake V will not buck this trend because next year consumers will still be the same. The id company will still be making millions upon millions of dollars. And you will shell out whatever they are asking for in order to play the finest eye candy money can buy.

By the way, Pac-Man does have a story: our intrepid hero is searching for fulfillment. He can only attain this enlightenment by consuming, eating pill after pill, cleansing . At the start of each maze, Mr. Man is as complete and satisfied as he possibly be (symbolized by his being a full round yellow circle that starts out right below the ghost home). However, as he is being chased by a mortal threat he is forced to abandon this higher state and seek the next time he can achieve this state, which is at the beginning of the next stage after he clears the current stage.

Everything has a subtext, everything has a story. So frag you, Guy Lombardo.

By lasttoblame on July 11, 2007

Oppai Slider 2 (Windows)

Buy Kleenex

The Good
Oppai Slider 2 is truly a watershed event for a hentai game, much more so because it isn't a video game; it's the best p*rn you could ever hope to experience in front of your computer. Remember the first time you looked at p*rn? All those funny feelings you had? How you thought you were doing something so evil that god would kill you right then and there? That's this game. This is the best p*rn because you can't believe you're experiencing this before you.

Oppai Slider 2 is made by the Japanese rape think-tank Illusion, creators of such modern perverse smut as A-GA, Battleraper, Rapelay, Artificial Girl and Sexy Beach 3 (with ahem reviews of those to come). Basically it works as a seduction sim where you can play out a story in three scenarios; a nurse in a small hospital room, a girl in a sailor suit in an indoor pool and a "French Maid" in a wooden shack with every scene devoid of any other NPC (except when another opening comes up..). All the stories begin with the object of your affection (or even more to the point, your object) being fully dressed and obstinate to your whims; as it progresses she loses clothing and becomes completely open to whatever you want to do with her.

The game is structured like a flow-chart that is accessible in-game; from the starting point you can see all the various branches of the story and what choices you can make and when. That means you can play it through about a dozen or so times and have a different story. Besides upping the replay value, that means at any given point your game can go 2 or 3 ways; if none of those options is any ending, you just keep going with the game. So that means it's not as Unicorn B Lynx states: "if you annoy the girl the game ends". Certainly at some points if you do annoy her and one of the choices is the end of the game, well then that can happen. However, if her choices don't include saying no to you, then you can do pretty much anything...

The story is told from the dialogue of "the young miss" and your avatar and acted out from your intimate encounters. And here is where this game breaks the mold to be the watershed event that it is: the player never participates in any dialogue choices because the p*rn part of this game is the game play.

Please allow me to bone up on my illustration. p*rn games of the past have followed this old formula (as do older Illusion games like A-GA, DBVR and the recent Battleraper). Games like Strip poker and Strip Qix (the game it was always meant to be) would reward the player with p*rn if they did something right. Beat the house, beat the boss.. and then you can beat the meat.

I would never call the blokes at Illusion "geniuses" but Oppai Slider 2 is a genius game because the p*rn IS the game play. What was once just the end has now become the means and the end. In some dating sim if you didn't know this NPC likes yellow roses then you lose; conversely, in Oppai Slider 2 if you don't figure out she likes it rough and up the pooper then you can't continue with the story. You don't have to mess around with getting other in-game goals accomplished, you just straight the action.

That means this product has no trappings of a game. If you were to imply that it's enjoyment and entertainment you get out of a box (if you paid for it), then yes, it's a game, the same way a cup attached to a ball with a string is a game the same way as World of Warcraft or Quake IV is the same. It's a diversion anyway you look at it.

But this is specifically designed to stimulate you. Nothing else is important to the design of the game except this. That's why stories don't matter in p*rn, the same reason p*rn flicks don't have good acting (besides all the smiling after shooting the money) or win Academy awards; because we want to the uglies in the gyno shot.. p*rn is nothing if it's not arousing.

In Pac-Man when you eat all the pellets in the maze to move on to the next one you get a sense of satisfaction, right? p*rn doesn't give you this satisfaction; that's something you must alleviate using your own joypad. Therefore, when you have this stimulating and arousing p*rn gameplay that never satisfies, you have a "game" with no point but to sustain this feeling of satisfaction that will never come... then that's good p*rn.

The illusion that is the most seductive in Oppai Slider 2 is the illusion of control. That's what makes this piece of smut so dangerous and attractive: because while you do interact with them in virtual sex it's the illusion that you have these girls completely under your control. This is shown not only by the unwavering restraint your sex dolls (no, not a pun, honestly what the game treats these characters as) have at tolerating the sexual abuse you hurl at them, but at the fresh concept that while there is a dialogue, you never participate in it. Instead you decide where the story goes by your actions, like removing a piece of clothing or putting a Y into a X and hokey-pokeying. The NPC's compliance to to forceful blunt actions is intoxicating. Sex isn't the biggest part of fantasy; it's power.

This piece of smut completely objectifies women. Women are passive dolls that completely do the bidding of the player. Unless there is a story choice that allows them to say no (which doesn't happen very often), then you can do anything to her. I'll capitalize that for you: ANYTHING. Fortunately for you, the fellows at Illusion are much more perverted than you and have thought it all up, so in playing this you will be shocked.

However, the filthier the smut, the better the p*rn. I'm not writing this because I have a problem with this; I'm writing this because I realize I should. This game is a breaker of morals. After I realized what it is I paused, admonished at my audacity, and then kept going.

This "game" will make you a better person by rejecting it or corrupt you into a filthy pervert. With today's advancing technology in skin textures, hair, and collision detection (collide! resolve! collide! resolve!), in no time flat we'll be having photo realistic playthings at our disposal (for better or worse).

Again, this is the best p*rn imaginable, even better than any skinema Spielberg and Michael Bay ever could dream up, even if giant battling robots were anatomically correct.

I predict the end of mom-and-pop home gonzo digital video p*rn age that has plagued the last decade; no one is going to rent some high contrast low budget spectacle starring your grocer's submissive pony-play uncle anymore. 5 years from now the whole world will be playing "World of p*rncraft". Just think it: the Wow addiction afflicting the world, add hyper-realistic breast physics, photo realistic people, an MMORG setting free from any physical jurisdiction... I don't want to think about it.

Honestly, I hope it doesn't happen but you know, p*rn is bigger than all of us.

By lasttoblame on July 11, 2007

Jade Empire: Special Edition (Windows)

There are no white people in this game

The Good
There aren't many games like Jade Empire. This fresh entry will startle many people for many positive reasons, the most shocking of all is that a game like this hasn't been made before, especially something that is designed so simply.

Jade Empire borrows the same RPG game mechanics from Bioware's other recent success story, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. This is a verbose linear adventure that avails the player the same moral avenues that were available in that game.

This is a very efficient and clean RPG. Inventory is a snap to use, micromanaging your party is non-existent. The money you make isn't even that important. Items in the game world are impossible to miss by having big floating blurb hovering above them, as are the important NPC's who stand still in a crowd of moving people with a yellow flag over their head and show up on your map. Even simple things like falling off a cliff or precipice are imposable here. This allows/forces the player to concentrate at the RPG task at hand.

I've read other reviews and many people mention many of the same things: excellent story with twists (the twists have become a predictable element of RPG stories), funny and interesting dialogue and voice acting, good graphics and music. However, no one talks about the fact that this is a game where there are exclusively Chinese characters with believable characters telling a rather Chinese story that, while traditional in its source is not bound to it. That's huge. That's what makes this game so refreshing (besides the lack of a tie-in license, or having Roman numerals standing beside its name).

The Chinese are seen around the world as a hairless people who invented kung fu who operate restaurants worldwide, good at math with small penises. Whether you agree or disagree with the statement is moot: despite its 5000 years of culture, Chinese don't have a high media profile. As a result, people around the world don't know much about Chinese. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the television in America shows more aliens from outer space than it does Chinese.

Martial arts has been a window into Chinese culture, but ever since Bruce Li nunchukked his way past our rib cages and into our hearts, the rest of the world hasn't been interested in seeing past the window. Many Chinese-themed games available now aren't really Chinese-themed, they're just kung fu themed. That's why this game is HUGE in its depiction of a Chinese universe existing on it's own (that exclusively speaks English), with believable characters that are surprisingly quite Chinese as a matter of fact.

Okay, there is one white person in the game, a Sir Roderick as voiced hilariously by John Cleese who plays an arrogant Westerner who doesn't believe in Eastern values. The fact that Bioware chose to play him up as a stereotype, a role used typically for minorities, comes especially refreshing as well as helping us immerse ourselves into this (ahem) exotic world.

Still, Jade Empire suffers from much imbalance, just as though Bioware didn't spend enough time waxing the car for Mr. Miyagi. This amazing complex world is simply too big to fit for this game (something your girlfriend said to me last night actually). It's as though Bioware didn't have the time or resources to put all the fabulous ideas they've been dreaming up during "2AM Kung-fu Theatre" for the past ten years into Jade Empire, something that is odd considering Jade Empire : Spec Ed comes 2 years after the Xbox version.

Being much more advanced than a click-fest mouse-hunt like Diablo or even the click-ier Diablo 2, Jade Empire doesn't transcend it's beat 'em-up influences by being restrained firmly in the RPG genre. What ensues is a frustrating exercise of leveling up to be a wicked bad-ass Wu Tang "hater" but not being given the chance to fully use your abilities. Jade Empire gives the player around 20 fighting styles (with 10 available styles mapped to your hotkeys) that are fully customizable through advancing through levels, but because the story is densely packed in this game you won't be using your fighting skills most of the time. For a half an hour of game play you'll be running around for 10 minutes, talking for 10, and fighting for 10. The end result is that you will finish the game never having even upgraded some fighting skills; others you will never even get the chance to see them in action.

There's no reason why there can't be a compromise. Jade Empire is a good RPG that has a above-average story, compelling characters, a deep real-time combat system (for a RPG!).. so why can't there be any dungeon crawling? Once I received a new fighting skill I'd think (out loud of course), "I'd like to try this out and see how it works." However, you're never really given the chance to stretch out this way; battles tend to be really easy or really hard, causing you to stick to the basics (causing yet more frustration).

I realize the idea of boiling a RPG down to it's essence is to make a nice, lean game that never drags anywhere during it's 25 hour game (I personally padded it out with every single side quest I could find). This might appeal to casual gamers as would it's simple interface and inventory management but I wouldn't know... I'm not one. If you throw in a fighting system that appears to have some depth to it then you should allow players the option of exploring it by way of dungeon-crawling. Yes, it wouldn't be very broadening and you'd be doing the same thing again and again, but some people like that in their RPG's; hey, some people like even less.

The illusion of having a rich fighting system but not being able to fully use it is not as annoying as having the illusion of being able to make moral choices that impact upon the game. Jade Empire is extremely linear. Linear games aren't bad games per se but giving the player the illusion that your choices throughout the game affects the game world is just wrong.

Yet another frustrating aspect that is overwhelming is the large size of your party (about 10) that you will never, ever get to familiarize with well. Similar to KOTOR, Jade Empire has two parties: a current one that you use in your travels and one made up of a backup roster that waits for you at a base camp. However, the party you use for exploring and fighting is made up of two: you, and just one other lucky soul. What's the point? Why not just have a party of one?

I suppose if the player and his ten buddies were to head out looking for payback against Death's Hand then there would be tea houses being busted up and falling down throughout the Empire, but that's just it: you don't need that many. These could be NPC's you meet along the way that don't need to join your party. I suppose a traditional fixed party of six would be too difficult to program for an action RPG like this, but then ask yourself: why not have 20 NPC's in your party? That way they can have a baseball game going on at the base camp while you are off saving the empire AND still have someone go out for pizza (yes, god bless you, Marco... POLO!) Just more that will frustrate the player in a well designed but poorly balanced game.

Jade Empire is a verbose game with a lot of dialogue, much of it well written and frequently quite funny, something always important to experience whenever you are tasked with saving the world. The conversation choices you make influence whether you head towards the path of the Open Palm or down the road of the Closed Fist. Jade Empire only rewards the player if you are either one or the other; there's no reward for being middle-of-the-road. In Tien's Landing for example, the two masters refuse to teach you if you are neutral. The end result is that once you have decided which way to swing you'll just stay the course after that (just like when you were a teenager and decided to be straight or gay).

I'm sure it's not as hom*o or hetero like that but I think in playing the game we're always worried about maintaining our Open Palm or Closed Fist points (just like maintaining our sexuality in real life... or hey, you have compromise and self-use Open Palm and Closed Fist and never leave the house again).Still, this dialogue tree leads us nowhere on a linear game that has a definite ending. The choice is that there is no choice. NPC's respond differently if you are nice to them or conversely act like a big jerk, but they always wind up saying the same thing to you in order to push the exposition along. If the NPC will eventually say what they have to say to get you to the next story point and the player always makes choices according to your alignment, then what choice is there? No choice. Linear games shouldn't put this in; basically as you gruel through conversations you are just looking for the dialogue answer that will help you keep all the gems you've been harboring.

This isn't a "must-buy" (what are we, are merchants selling to each other?) in any sense of the word; if you do play this it will be for the novel experience of seeing what is "exotic" become a living world with a story to tell that you care about.

By lasttoblame on July 9, 2007