“Dead or Alive 4 (Xbox 360) Review”

I love Street Fighter II. (Yes, this is a DoA4 review, but indulge me, dammit.) I mean, as far as I’m concerned, fighting game-wise, nothing has topped it. Ever. The Street Fighter II series has some intangible qualities that no fighting has ever been able to reproduce, much less improve upon. The gameplay is simple, yet complex. The characters are now iconic. Hell, even the music is memorable.

But even still, instilled in me is the ever growing need for something newer and shinier, something better than what is already nearly perfect. No sooner had I mastered wake up dragon punches all those years ago that I started looking for the next ‘it’ game to replace it. Early on, it was Mortal Kombat. Killer Instinct made a run for the fighting game title. Then you had the barrage of SNK games. Some were good. Many were horrible. But in the end, even the good ones couldn’t compare to SF2.

Then came the 3D fighting games, and soon, button mashing became a viable fighting game strategy. This sickened me. Never in its admittedly short history, going back to Karate Champ, had the fighting game genre ever been even remotely easy to play. If you were a newb at Street Fighter, and you played someone that even kind of knew what he was doing, you got destroyed. End of story. Too bad. So sad. Suck it up and try again. And again. And again. Just like everyone else before you. All SF2 players had to go through this rite of passage before even being able to consistently throw a fireball, much less use it at the right time, or ultimately combo into it. SF2 took skill.

And these 3D fighting games, man, I mean, button mashing… ugh. And yeah, OK, I admit that button mashing isn’t going to win you any tournaments. But still, it gets you a lot further than it should. As much as I hate to admit it, I’m not blind to the fact that 3D fighting games take skill to master, but it’s just not satisfying. Punch, Punch, Kick, Punch. Should *never* be considered a ‘move.’ And furthermore, it shouldn’t take 1/4 of a life bar away if you connect with it. (This is what sucked about KI, by the way.) Sure you have the timings and counters and shit like that, but honestly… all that stuff just seems… not… cool, I guess. It’s not that it doesn’t take skill to play games like Virtua Fighter or Tekken or Dead or Alive 4, it’s just that the skill needed to play those games just seems sort of gay. It’s kind of like being good at synchronized swimming. It’s hard and shit, no doubt, but wouldn’t you rather be good at real game like football or basketball or even golf?

So you’re probably thinking I hate Dead of Alive 4. The strange thing is, I don’t. As I said, I’m always looking for that one game to supplant SF2 as the best fighting game of all time. So I’m always welcoming the next big fighting game with open arms. Unfortunately, DoA4 isn’t the ultimate in fighting games. But, I begrudgingly admit that it’s still quite a bit of fun.

Perhaps I’m influenced by the fact that DoA4 is my only fighting game option on the Xbox 360. Or perhaps I’m enchanted by the online aspects of the game, or even by the hi-res boobies. In any case, I like this game. I admit it. And that should mean something from a guy that has hated nearly all 3D fighting games.

Graphics – 8.4

A sore point, for me, about the Xbox 360 is the lack of truly jaw dropping graphics in the 1st batch of games. DoA4 is among the games that disappoints graphically. Perhaps, it’s unfair to judge something based on how you think it should be, but you know what, I never said I was going to be fair. The graphics in DoA4 should be much better than they are. Period.

Of course, DoA4 has the obligatory jump in resolution and texture detail, a less than apparent jump in polygons, and a very nice framerate. Ho-hum. Boring. What I wanted to see in this generation was gameplay graphics that matched the graphics in the pre-rendered endings. Instead, what I got from my Xbox 1.5 was DoA 3.5.

Let’s take the characters’ hair. Where do I even start? It’s ass. The long flowing hair on the DoA 4 characters looks simply terrible. Terrible. Terrible. Terrible. Why did they bother with long flowing ‘hair’ if they make it look more like magical ribbons that seem to move of their own volition… independently of any implied game physics… even going as far as going through the characters’ bodies. I mean, the hair polygons clipping into the shoulders of most of the characters is really noticeable. If they couldn’t do the hair right, they should have just left their hair short like in previous games.

The backgrounds are pretty good I guess, but nothing too great either. I really like the waterfall level. But when your character falls into the water, I want to see their clothes get wet. I want to see their hair droop down, soaked with water, and I want to see droplets of water go flying from their hair as their heads are popped back with a nasty kick to the face. But apparently we’ll have none of that.

The graphics are simply adequate with respect to the rest of the Xbox 360 games. People who jizz in their pants when they talk about the graphics would also probably be quite happy playing with an empty egg carton. They are easily amused. The graphics in DoA4 are nothing special people. Let’s be real.

Gameplay – 9.0

This is the real heart of the game. SF2 looks like ass by today’s standards, but the gameplay keeps me coming back again and again. I’m happy to report that the gameplay of DoA4 is decent. It’s got a nice feel to it, and while it’s very spam friendly, there are some definite skills that can be learned that will allow you to dominate less experienced players. Countering is one of those skills.

Let me just say that what I call a ‘counter,’ the game calls a ‘hold.’ Let me also say that whoever named the move where “you stop an opponents attack and retaliate against it with an attack of your own” a ‘hold’ is an idiot. It’s a fucking counter. Using their logic, a ‘throw’ would probably be called a ‘maneuver.’ Most likely this same idiot (probably Itagaki) is also the guy that named the guard/counter button, the ‘free’ button. Why not call it the ‘defense’ button? I chalk it up to the long history Japanese people have of being retarded when they name something in English. “Donkey Kong” anyone?

In any case, countering is a big deal. Apparently, it was a much bigger deal in earlier versions of DoA because it was overpowered. It had a long window where the counter was active, and it did way too much damage. The counter window has been reduced in DoA4, as has the damage performing a counter does. These are good things. That being said, there are 4 different ways you can counter in the game: forward + free (counters mid kicks), back + free (counters mid punches), up-back + free (counters high attacks) and down-back + free (counters low attacks). That means, if you’re really just guess as to what your opponent is going to do next, you only have a 25% chance of countering. Or more importantly, you have a 75% chance of getting pummeled. A word to the wise, don’t guess on what kind of counter to use. If in doubt, simply block.

The good players can pick up the attack strings being used against them and intelligently counter the last or next to the last attack. This is where being spammy gets you your ass handed to you. If you always do the same three fucking punches, a good player is going to start countering you.

Outside of counters, you have a lot of other nice subtleties in gameplay like stun moves that temporarily incapacitate your enemy if they block and multiple part throws. Nothing really new here as these things have been done before, but its still doesn’t change the fact that these moves deepen the gameplay.

Matches tend to be over pretty quickly when played at default settings: 2 rounds with the ‘Normal’ life bars. Almost too quickly. Over time, I preferred to play first to 3 rounds and with the life bars increased to Maximum to allow for longer rounds. This is with regard to Vs. mode of course. For single player games, you want that shit over as fast as possible because you’re going to be wanting to get through the game quickly to unlock bonus characters and costumes.

That brings me to the modes. There are only 2 modes worth a shit in my opinion, Story mode and Versus Mode. Story mode is how you earn the majority of your shit, so you probably want to play through that a few times. It’s not too bad. The rounds default to 1 round. But Versus mode is where I spend most of my time. That and Online Versus mode, which is basically the same shit. Time Attack and Survival? Fuck those. They’re only there to stretch out the game. Having to go through those modes to unlock the last few things really sucks.

Back to the online aspect… DoA4 does a great job of giving you an easy way to experience online Versus. Basically, the layout of online is like a virtual arcade. A group of 2 thru 16 people join a lobby. Register, then they join a game. People play their game. If it’s not your turn, you wait in line and watch the others play. When your turn comes up, if you win, great, you stay on and take another challenger. If you lose, back to the end of the line. Sound familiar? Yeah, it’s awesome, and it works really well.

The only bad part of playing online is that the game can lock up on you from time to time. It generally does that when you mess around with the guide button while the game is loading. It does NOT like that. It’s easy to avoid, but it’s a bug that shouldn’t be there nonetheless. Oh, well.

What else do you wanna hear? About the Spartan? She sucks. Slow and predictable. The online lag? That just depends on your connection to the other guy. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, but almost always playable. About the special DoA4 joystick? Yes, I have it and it rocks. I can’t wait to use it to play SF2 over Xbox Live Arcade. ;)

In summary, if you like how 3D fighting games play, in particular the DoA games, you’ll love the gameplay. There really isn’t a competition with regard to fighting games… soo… there you go.

Sound – 8.0

All I know is that Itagaki seems to have a hard on for Aerosmith. Why do they keep licensing Aerosmith for DoA games? WHY? Blech. Well, besides the Aerosmith, the rest of the songs aren’t bad, but they are easily forgettable. The punches and kicks and groans and grunts sound about right. The voice acting is a bit lame, however, not because it’s bad, but because it’s all in Japanese. I mean, the Americans, the Chinese, the French and German… all speak perfect Japanese. All except the Spartan. The lady who does the voice of the Spartan seemed to be the only non-Japanese name in all the credits. ;) It just doesn’t seem right that Bass speaks perfect Japanese.

Value – 9.1

If you like fighting games, you’ll play DoA4 a shitload. You can find it at some places for $49.99, but mostly it’s $59.99. Either way, if you want a fighting game, you’re gonna have to pay it. The value totally depends on how much Versus fighting you do and whether you play online. Overall, for me, it’s a great value.

Overall – 8.7

One last time: this is the only fighting game for the Xbox 360. If you liked older DoAs or even Tekken or some other bullshit, get it. End of story.

Screenshots:

Penalty on offense. Illegal Block to the back!	That's a hardcore game of pattycake!
You were warned! No counting cards!!	Mmmmmmmm... boobies.

"Call of Duty 2 (Xbox 360) Review"

Let me start by saying that 1) I didn’t play Call of Duty 1 or any of the CoD offshoots for the consoles and 2) I hate FPS controls on consoles – two analog sticks are shit compared to a keyboard and mouse. Couple that with the fact that I normally wouldn’t play a PC game ported over to a console, and it’s a miracle that I even played CoD2 for the Xbox 360 let alone bought it.

Here’s the deal though: the game just looked oh-so-nice at the Xbox 360 demo kiosk at Best Buy. Sooo smooth. Mmmmm. I’m a sucker for a high frame rate. Then I visited another Best Buy and they had the demo Xbox 360 setup up on a big HD TV with surround sound. Some kid had set up camp on one of those comfy gaming chairs. It looked like he’d been there all day. He was playing through the CoD2 demo like he’d done it ten or twenty times before. I stood and watched for a bit, and I suddenly found myself actually considering getting the game at launch. I kept trying to reason myself out of it… thinking that it was stupid to buy CoD2 for the Xbox 360 because if I really wanted to play it, I should play it ‘properly’ on my PC. It’d be cheaper too.

But, alas, I gave in and bought CoD2 on launch day. My final reasoning was that I would never actually play a single player campaign on the PC (I’m strictly multiplayer/deathmatch on the PC) and that even though I had a pretty high end PC, that it just wouldn’t look as nice as it did on the Xbox 360. Also, the rest of the launch titles pretty much sucked (more on that another time.) Oh, and Best Buy was handing out $10 off any game coupons too. So that helped.

Graphics – 8.9

The graphics are pretty good. No doubt. They are not so much ‘next generation’ graphics, as much as nice, solid graphics. The polygon counts aren’t unbelievable, but they’re pretty good. The textures are pretty good. The frame rate is pretty good. It’s just pretty good dammit!

While most of the demo (and the rest of the game in fact) runs at a nice 60fps, there are times where tons of explosions and/or smoke screens slow the framerate down to a reasonable, but less than perfect 30fps or so. But about 90% of the time, the frame rate is silky smooth.

The character models look well done. Their animation is on the nicer side of things, but they do get repetitive after a while. Seeing a guy walk up to a doorway, stand up against the wall and peek his head around the corner about 100 times kind of kills it.

Quite honestly, this game looks like a really nice PC game, which on its own isn’t that impressive when you think about how there we’re supposed to be in the next generation of graphics. However, when you think about how the Xbox 360 costs a mere $300-$400 dollars, it’s quite impressive they can muster up $3000 PC graphics in HD.

Gameplay – 9.0

Before I get into the actual gameplay, I have to bitch about the save game bug I came across…

First thing I noticed is that while I had let friends play CoD2, and they had made it all the way to the British missions (the middle part of the game), I couldn’t select the British missions anymore. It was very strange. I continued playing through the Russian Campaign and finished it. Then all of a sudden I was thrust back into the first Russion mission: a training mission. Since the game doesn’t allow you to move on until you finish the missions in order, I was confused as to why I was sent back to the start. Well, apparently the game had ‘forgotten’ that I had done these early missions somehow. I shrugged it off and re-did the first few missions. I didn’t really mind because my friends had been the ones that had played the early missions.

I moved on to British missions, and about halfway through those, I noticed my Russian missions were again grayed out as if they hadn’t been completed. Sure enough, after I finished my current set of British missions, I was thrust back into Russian Training… again. What the fuck? Something was very wrong. After some searching on internet forums, I found out what I didn’t want to find out: the game had a save game bug. Apparently, it was triggered when your profile loaded after the game loaded. It would keep track of where you last were, but not what you had completed, and if you saved in that state, you fucked yourself. Or rather, the game fucked you because it would save it in a state that let you finish off your current mission while claiming you hadn’t finished the missions before it. Which is a load of crap because you can’t even get to the later missions without finishing them in order.

Anyway, I found the work around: basically, never use the “continue to the next mission” option. Always save after every mission and then select you new mission from the Mission Select menu. Most importantly, upon first booting up the game, make sure your shit got loaded. If it didn’t, reload the game by going into the Multiplayer menu and exiting back into the Single player menu. It’s a load of shit that I had to do that, but it worked. I expect that type of shit from PC games that get patched a lot, but not from a console game.

Anyway, on to the actual gameplay… the controls were quite well suited to the Xbox 360 controller. I was pretty worried about that. It’s usually pretty fucked up trying to squeeze tons of PC controls onto a few buttons on a controller, but this worked well. I think it was because you only could carry two weapons, so weapon selection was easy. I always hate cycling through weapons on console controllers. Same with grenades… one shoulder button for smoke grenades and another for frag grenades. Easy. The sensitivity of the sticks seemed spot on as well. I really liked how when you hit the 'aim/zoom' button, you looked down the sights of the gun. Very cool and easy to use. Overall, it was just pretty nice to control. I didn’t have much problems with it.

During the game, you play as different soldiers. You start out as a Russian Soldier fighting the Germans on the Russian front. The levels are all fought on the snow covered grounds in the middle of a Russian winter. Next you move to a British Campaign where you play mostly as a British grunt with a short break as a Tank Commander. These are African missions and are all desert based. Finally, you get to play as an American soldier. These are fought in Western Europe and are the general village in temperate weather missions. All, with the possible exception of the tank missions, are very fun and quite enjoyable. The tank missions seemed a bit tacked on to me. They weren’t very deep. Still, they weren’t bad and they did offer a nice break from the FPS action.

For the remainder of the missions, the FPS missions, you pretty much follow the Star on the radar to your next objective. Most of the objectives are quite clea, and you don’t have to run around trying to figure out what to do. You do some recon, some holding down the fort, some taking back an area, and a lot of killing of dirty Nazi bastards. If you’ve played any FPS game, you’ll probably feel quite a home.

I like the use of smoke grenades as a battlefield tactic. The computer controller Nazis actually have trouble finding you in the smoke. Which brings me to the AI. A lot of people have been touting the AI of the characters in CoD2 as really fucking awesome. I’m here to tell you that they are pretty awesome indeed. They tend to work as a team and are no where near as dumb as say… they bad guys in Perfect Dark Zero where they’re complete morons. It really adds a sense of realism and urgency to the missions to know that the Nazis aren’t dumb drones easily picked off.

Your teammates aren’t nearly as impressive. Not because they’re idiots, but because it seems like only certain team members are allowed to die. One of my favorite characters was the Scottish gunner in the British Campaign. That guy was funny as shit. And he never died. Which is a good thing, but still it was kind of obvious who the main characters of the Campaign were and which grunts were gonna get offed. Kinda like the Star Trek missions where Spock, Kirk, McCoy and Ensign Smith beam down to the planet surface to investigate hostile activity. Guess who’s not beaming back up?

Overall, the gameplay was rock solid with fun, enjoyable missions.

Sound – 9.5

The game itself is, how should I put it, engaging. No. Enthralling. No. It’s immersive. Yeah, it’s immersive. I saw a documentary on the making of CoD2, and the developers pointed out that some old soldier dude told them that once the first shot was fired, they never stopped talking to each other. This really made a huge difference in my opinion. While in most FPSs, you play a pretty much silent one man wrecking crew, in CoD2 you really do feel like you’re part of a team… a squad… or whatever the fuck you call your group of guys in military speak. All I know is that my fellow soldiers always kept in contact with me, and it was relative speech too. They say stuff like “Jerries on your right, behind the boxes!” That’s a nice touch.

I also played this in 5.1 with a nice subwoofer. Honestly, you have to. This game sounds amazing. If you’re in another room, you’d think CoD2 was a movie. The voice acting is superb and the sound effects are massive. The resonating boom of explosions, the firing of guns in the distance, the battle chatter from your teammates and the radio, they are all simply awesome. The only problem I saw was that you played a silent hero, which doesn’t make sense since your not even playing the whole game as a single guy.


Value – 8.0

At $59.99, no game that you just play through once is gonna be a great value. I got mine for $49.99, and that’s not too bad. If you trade games in, its even a better deal. You can finish the single player missions at the default skill level in about 10-15 hours. Perfect length as far as I’m concerned. If you play on Veteran, you’re looking at a lot of restarts that will lengthen the game.

There aren’t that many Xbox 360 achievements since they basically involve finishing the game at the Veteran (i.e. hardest) difficulty setting. I’m still going through the game again to do those.

As far as multiplayer is concerned. I honestly don’t know. I didn’t try it. I was turned off by the backlash of people online that have complained bitterly about lag whilst playing CoD2 over Xbox Live. If you play on LAN, I guess it could be fun, but you’re talking about rounding up 3-4 more people with Xbox 360s and the game. That’s probably not gonna happen.

Overall – 8.9

This game was solid. I highly recommend it to FPS fans, even the ones that hate console FPSs… like me. The story was engaging and the level of immersion was phenomenal. The only ones I wouldn’t recommend this game to are people that suck at FPSs and people that have played the PC version. Everyone else should go out and get this game for their Xbox 360. And apparently, everyone did as CoD2 was the number one selling title for the Xbox 360 in 2005. 

Screenshots:

"Testing..."

Just testing this gamercard thing. If it works, there should be a flash version of my Xbox Live gamercard below...




Hmm... that didn't work. How about the straight up jpg of it?





OK, that works...

Fuck. I just tried it with IE. The flash gamercard works ONLY with IE. What a crock of shit.

"King Kong (Xbox 360) Review"

I know that the proper title is way longer than that. But "Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie" is too long to type out... nevermind. I was halfway tempted to title this "Rob Nava's Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie Un-official Review" but that's also too lo... umm.. OK...

So, anyway, this is the first Xbox 360 review I've done. In fact, I think it's the first game review I've ever put up on this site. But before I go any further, let me start off by saying that if you don't know that King Kong dies at the end, then I've just ruined it for you because King Kong dies at the end. Seriously, you should have known that. It's not a well guarded secret. I also hope you knew that the Titanic fucking sinks at the end too. I've actually run into people that didn't know that. And I don't care how old you are or what decade you were born in, King Kong falling off the Empire State building to his death is common knowledge people. Peter Jackson's version is at best, the 3rd version of the film.

Anyway, now that your caught up on things, let's get to the review.


Graphics - 7.5

Like most games on the Xbox 360, the graphics of King Kong can impress at times and under whelm at times. My first reaction was quite positive when I saw the detail on the ship's hull in the first scene. Nice textures. Keen lighting. Pretty. Then things sort of fizzled when I turned around and saw that the character models looked like ass. I mean, these things were barely better looking than the Xbox 1 models, and they animated like crap to boot. So the game then sends us towards Skull Island on a small row boat during a tumultuous storm, and I was again impressed. . . this time with the draw distance and weather effects, only to be disappointed by the crumbling rocks falling off the cliffs of the island. They just looked retarded. And that's pretty much how things went graphically: Oh, that dinosaur looks kinda cool. Blech, those plants look terrible. What a shame.

And when are developers going to stop with the shiny plastic look? Seriously, I know that its raining and things are wet, but it's ridiculous how shiny everything is in King Kong. And they must have an equally emphatic guy over in the Bump Mapping department because it looks like every single thing is bump mapped to hell. I'm sure it has its uses, but really, if "Next Gen Graphics" simply means "Bump Mapped with Shinies", count me out. I'd rather have a silky smooth frame rate than shiny bump mapping.

And really, I don't think I'm too far off from the truth. I played King Kong on Xbox 1 and it really looked close to the Xbox 360 version with the exception of the textures and lighting and possibly a higher polygon count that isn't quite as noticeable. And I'm sure that's what happened. They designed the Xbox/PS2/Gamecube versions and then added in some fancy bump mapping, lighting effects and a few more polygons. The game is essentially the same. It's akin to playing a PC game with all the graphics options turned off (Xbox 1) and then again with all the graphics optioned turned on (Xbox 360.) Does King Kong look better on the Xbox 360? Sure it does. But it's not next gen graphics to me if the game is identical in every way but a few graphical features. Next gen graphics should be completely re-done from the ground up. King Kong is Next Gen Rehash.

Gameplay - 6.5

King Kong plays mostly like an FPS for dummies game with a little shallow wresting game thrown in to break things up. Most of the time, you play as Jack, the screenwriter for the film being shot on Skull Island. Your mission, as far as I can tell, is to burn down thorny bushes that block your path and find handles for intricate door opening mechanisms. That's pretty much it. You can chuck spears at dinos and shoot some crappy guns, but that's pretty much it.

The game is designed to be played without a hud. Which means no lifebar or ammo meter. This was done in order to increase the cinematic feel of the game, but for the most part no lifebar just means that you can get hit twice: once turns the screen red and another hit while your screen is red causes you to die. Occasionally, bigger dinos can kill you with one attack, but you can really just think of the game having a 2 section lifebar that regenerates after the first hit. As for the ammo, Jack will tell you how much ammo you have left when he's either running low or you hit the 'How much ammo do I have left?' button. With regards to enhancing the cinematic feeling, hearing "Two magazine on backup" over and over isn't exactly any better than showing how many bullets you have on screen.

As I already mentioned, a lot of the time you are simply searching for ways to burn bushes that block your path. This is clever puzzle the first and maybe second time you have to do it, but it gets really boring after a while. They try to break it up by having spiders block your way instead of you know, the thorny bushes. When that happens you have to spear a random giant insect or fish and throw it on the ground away from the path the spiders are blocking so that the spiders rush to the bait. Wow. Who came up with that fantastic gameplay element? Exciting! The final gameplay element is finding these wooden handles that attach to these long poles that need to be turned in order to open doors. This is the silliest thing ever. Why can I just use the spear I'm holding in my hand to jam into the pole to turn it? Why do I need that exact piece of wood to jam in there before I can turn it? It's not like it's a key. It's a fucking piece of wood. Give me a break.

I addition to the FPS Jack levels, you also play as Kong from time to time. These are pretty fun, but mostly because you're given a break from burning bushes, and you can actually beat the crap out of stuff. But the controls for the Kong missions are simplistic at best. One button swings and grabs onto the sides of cliffs, another one punches and another one grabs. You can also thump your chest to power up, but most of the time you end up getting hit before you can completely power up so that's useless. The Kong levels boil down to a simplistic wrestling game. I mean, even more simple than NES Pro Wrestling. At least you had a variety of moves in that game. In King Kong, all you have to do is shoulder butt over and over. That's pretty much it. Give that beloved Beyond Good & Evil game designer a bonus! I know I couldn't have thought of something like that. I'd have thought of something much better.

Sound - 8.5

The music and sound effects are pretty good. Good job not fucking everything up over there. The voice acting is also pretty good. Jack Black, who plays the director in the movie, is still funny as shit. I love that guy. Jack (the character you play) sounds dull and, well, dull. He doesn't even get two different adjectives. He's just dull. Really, the biggest complaint I have about the sound is that the voices are waay too low in comparison to the music and sound effects. I had to turn the music and sound effects waaaay down and leave the voice level all the way up in order to make it sound right. I guess they realized they had that problem because the did put that option in the game so you can tweak each sound level independently. Then again, I might be giving them too much credit. They might have put that option in because they saw that option in other games. In any case, you'll probably have to fuck with the sound levels a bit.

Value - 5.0

There is almost no replay value in this game. I'm a big fan of short games. I have way too many games to go through to be tied up with 40-50 hour games. Fuck that. So the fact that King Kong is a short game was actually a selling point to me. However, usually short games give you some sort of reason to replay it. King Kong doesn't. All Xbox 360 games offer achievements (which give you Gamer Points) that can be earned by doing specific things in the game. Complete a level on hard mode, get a "Hardcore Gamer" Achievement and a few Gamer Points for your Gamer Card. Maybe finish a level in a certain time or without dying, get more points. Not so with King Kong. If you play through the game, you get all 1000 Gamer Points possible. To give you a comparison, you only get 150 Gamer Points for going through Call of Duty 2. By giving you all the possible gamer points for simply finishing the game (no game can give you more than 1000 Gamer Points), they remove any reason to replay the game. Pretty silly. Basically, once you finish this game, you're done. Trade it in or put it back on the shelf. Did I mention this game is a full $59.99? Luckily, I bought it used for $35, and they're offering me $33 to trade it in so I only lost 2 bucks on the game. :)

Overall - 6.5

I think too many reviewers are biting on King Kong's cock. There is no way this game deserves a 9. It's competent at best and boring at worst. If you love King Kong for some odd reason, you'll be disappointed in the fact that you don't really play much as King Kong. If you love FPSs, you'll surely be disappointed in this game. If you love adventure games, you don't have much to look forward to except hunting down wooden handles. Basically, avoid this game or simply rent it. It's cool for a day or two, but that's about it.

"Xbox 360 Launch Titles"

So I came across a list of the Xbox 360 game titles available on launch day. Not real impressed. Not a single one of them has impressed me to the point where I can't wait to play it. I'm more excited about the hardware than the software. I think that the new Xbox Live is pretty freakin' awesome. And I like that I can stream video and audio from my PC and MP3 player right off the bat... no modding necessary. Going with wireless controllers was good too. But the games... man. I guess they're not bad, they're just not awesome. Not yet anyway. I'm trying to figure out what to pick up on launch day, and I'm not sure this list has helped me.

ORIGINAL XBOX 360 TITLES:

• Sega's Condemned - Visually unimpressive. Core gameplay looked tired. Very current generationy looking. I don't know why I need to preface the title of the game with the publisher. I don't even think it was developed by Sega. Interest: Low
  
  
• Kameo: Elements of Power - Visually unimpressive. Turned off by the fact that it began development on the original Xbox and it still looks it. Also current generationy, but not as much as Condemned. Interest: Low
  

XBOX 360-ONLY SEQUELS:

• Amped 3 - Wasn't a big fan of 1 and 2, so... The new design style is cool though. I dig the artwork. Interest: Medium
  
  
• Perfect Dark Zero - Didn't play Perfect Dark on N64. Looks unimpressive. Could be the closest to Halo though. I think a lot of people will buy this so it *might* be good for multiplayer. Interest: Medium
  
  
• Project Gotham Racing 3 - Just another racing game. Looks 'OK'. Seems tired though. Interest: Medium
  

AVAILABLE ON OTHER PLATFORMS:

• Call of Duty 2 - Looks damn smooth, like it was running on a High End $2500 PC. Which is fine, but I was hoping that the next generation of consoles would blow away anything available today. Including high end PCs. Still, I did like the smoothness in the framerate (with minor exceptions on big explosions.) If this was an XBOX 360 exclusive, I might have higher interest in it. But knowing that it's availabe on PC where you can use a keyboard and mouse definitely takes away some of the interest I could have had in it. Interest: Medium
  
  
• Gun - Another game where if it was an XBOX 360 exclusive I would have higher interest in the game. Games developed on current gen and next gen systems give me the feeling that they design for the current gen (PS2/Xbox) and then tack on some extras for the Xbox 360. This is opposite of how I feel it was last generation where say Madden or Tony Hawk was developed with the PS2 in mind, and then they'd cut it down to fit on PS1. Interest: Medium
  
  
• Peter’s Jackson’s King Kong - It's a movie game and that brings along a stigma with it that is hard for me to look past. I have heard that Jackson is a bigtime game player and that he personally took his King Kong game to the Beyond Good & Evil designer in order to assure a good game was made. But, c'mon, it's King Kong. :( How good could it be? I do hope it's really awesome though. I'm open to have my opinion changed. Interest: Medium
  
  
• Madden NFL 2006 - ... Interest: Low
  
  
• NBA 2K6 - I really like NBA 2K6 for my current Xbox, and now I'm faced with this 'better' version. Honestly, I'd probably buy it, but not for $59.99. Not when I own the Xbox version already. Maybe if the price drops fast. Interest: Medium
  
  
• NBA Live 2006 - ... Interest: Low
  
  
• Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2006 - This game actually looks quite a bit better on Xbox 360 than it does on other platforms. Honestly, so do the other NBA games, but whatever. Anyway, hmmm... but it's a golf game. Not exactly a show stopper. Interest: Medium
  
  
• Need For Speed: Most Wanted - Not a big NFS guy either. Haven't really looked into this a lot. Interest: Low
  
  
• FIFA 2006: Road To The FIFA World - ... Interest: Low, low, loooow.
  
  
• Quake 4 - Have it on PC already. Hey Microsoft, what do you have against the keyboard and mouse? Seriously. With all the FPS games out on console, you'd think either Sony or MS would embrace the keyboard and mouse in the next gereration battle. Can you imagine a first party keyboard and mouse with actual game support. Sony came close with the Linux Kit kb/mouse, but someone needs to officially support a keyboard and mouse in their games. Interest: N/A
  
  
• Tony Hawk: American Wasteland - I bought every single TH game up until this past one. Seriously, this shit is getting old and one thing Neversoft has always sucked at is graphics. And why am I buying a new console if its not to get better graphics? Interest: Low
  

I probably would have picked up Dead of Alive 4 had it made the launch day. I'm hearing that its coming out a week or so later. So I may just wait until then and pick that up. However, I need something on launch day! But what? I don't think I can bring myself to bring home a sports game as my only launch title. I'll probably buckle and get PDZ or Kameo because they're Xbox exclusives. Blech...


Word of the Day: lackadaisical(adj) – Lacking spirit. Unlively. Uninterested. Ex: Many Xbox 360 launch day adopters will no doubt lackadaisically pick up at least one title in order to put their shiny new hardware to some use.

Trivia of the Day: SEGA is derived from SErvice GAmes. It was started by an American, David Rosen, in Japan.

"The Devil's Rejects"

Last Friday I saw Rob Zombie's latest horror film "The Devil's Rejects." And you know, I actually liked it. It wasn't the best movie ever made, but I enjoyed it. Like so many movies, it benefitted from my low expectations. Originally, I was thinking it was gonna be a pretty decent flick. Then while I was looking for showtimes online, I ran into a local review of the movie posted on austin360.com. As much as I tried not to read it, I couldn't resist. Of course, the reviewer hated it.

No matter how many times I tell myself that a single review is worthless, I couldn't help but take the reviewer's negative remarks with me to the theater. Quite honestly, Rob Zombie is a better movie maker than that dipshit reviewer is a movie reviwer.

I mean, this critic even freely admitted that this movie was not intended for someone like him. Then why the fuck did he review it? To represent the 'common man'? Seriously, even if it had received rave reviews, my Dad isn't going to see "The Devil's Rejects." Neither will anyone else that doesn't already like horror movies. So what's the point? Stick to reviewing Miss Congeniality 3 and Legally Blonde 3: Bleached Blonde Bush if you like pussy movies. Or only review documentaires, or sci-fi or whatever the fuck you're into.

Ah, I dunno. I guess I should be sorta thankful to the little twit. After all, by nature of lowering my expectations, he actually made the experience that much more enjoyable. Whateverthefuck.

So about the movie.... it really is what you expect it to be. I seriously think that I've become desensitized to horror movies because everytime I'm told that a movie is over the top gross and gritty and sadistic, it just seems 'normal'... for a horror flick I mean. There's a bit of tension in the film, but not a whole lot. It really just an assualt on the senses. It does what it does well though.

As the movie started to wrap-up, I found myself feeling like I was going to be really disappointed if it ended the way they were going. And it's not like Rob Zombie threw in an M. Night Shyamalan plot twist in there, but the movie ended in a way that satisfied me.

If you like horror movies, by all means go see this film. I don't really think you need to see the first film "House of 1000 Corpses" but it would definitely increase your enjoyment of this one. I only saw the first film once, on opening day, and I didn't remember a lot of it. I really wish I had taken the time to re-watch it recently.

Before I close, I have to say that Rob Zombie's wife, who plays Baby in the film, is a really pretty woman. I don't normally say things like that, but she is. She reminds me of a younger Bo Derek. Her acting is no worse than most actresses who appear in feature films, and I'm a little surprised she hasn't appeared in more movies.

With that said, I give Rob Zombie's "The Devil's Rejects" a 7.5 out of 10. and I'll definitely be in line for the next Zombie film.

Word of the Day: gaffer (noun) – The chief electrician in charge of the lighting on the movie set. Ex: What the fuck is a gaffer?... Oh, yeah, nevermind, I remember. It's the chief electrician in charge of the lighting on the movie set.

Trivia of the Day: Before Groucho Marx developed the fast talking, one-liner insult character for which he became famous, he played a German accented character. Because of tensions with Germany in the early 1900's, he started to get booed by the audience. So, he dropped his German accented persona and became the cigar toting, funny walking, bushy eyebrowed and mustached funnyman.

"Horror Movie Review 2-Pack"

I saw a couple of horror movies this weekend. Nothing new. Just a couple of older films: Session 9 (2001) and Haute Tension (2003). Check it.

Haute Tension(2003)

I saw this movie first. Sean brought it over on Friday for Horror Movie Night. We played poker longer than we'd intended, so it ending up being the only movie we saw that night.

So, OK, I gotta get this out of the way: it's a French film. There, I said it. You can stop reading now, if you want. ;) But honestly, this movie does have some balls. Believe it, or not! In fact, I checked out the IMdB entry, and it turns out that it got edited in every other country when it was theatrically released. We had the privilege of watching the original uncut French version though. So, if you end up watching this movie, make sure you get your hands on the original French release with subtitles.

Speaking of subtitles, for some reason they were all fucked up when we watched it. They started out fine, but they eventually got way out of sync. I mean, at times the subs were up to a minute early! Normally, that would completely fuck up a movie experience, but fortunately, there was very little dialogue in this movie. Most of the talking took place early, when the subs were still synced, and after that, there were like 10-20 minute stretches with absolutely no dialogue. And even when there was dialogue, there wasn't very much of it.

So while there was little being said, there was a lot being done. After the obligatory set-up, the movie jumps right in with the slashing. And that's what this movie is: a straight up slasher flick. There are a few suspenseful scenes, but for the most part, it's all about the blood spurting everywhere. That's what ended up on the cutting room floor with foreign releases. A lot of the reviews I see on this movie say that it's really, really gory and gruesome, but I must be desensitized from all the killing I do in my spare time because it didn't really seem that bad to me. I think Japanese films like Ichi the Killer and Audition are far more brutal. But then again, this is France we're talking about here. Remember, I said this movie had balls, but I didn't say they were big ones.

It's worth mentioning that there is a twist to the thin plot, but it's not a very good one. It's got a cop out ending too. I could be a dick and ruin it, but some people still might want to see this movie.

Ultimately, what we have here is a movie with little plot, a moderate amount of suspense, and quite a bit of bloody slashing. Not too bad, but nothing great either. If you want a throwback to those 1980's slasher flicks, give this a shot. Personally, this gets a 6 out of 10.


Session 9 (2001)

I had rented this movie for Horror Movie Night, but I didn't get around to seeing it until Sunday evening. I pretty much just randomly picked it off the shelf at Blockbuster.

First impression: this movie is slow as shit. Second impression: David Caruso's in this?!? I hadn't seen David Caruso in anything since NYPD Blue. Anyway, David Caruso wasn't that bad in the film, but the slow start was sort of annoying. For the first 15 minutes or so I was like WTF is going on? It wasn't like surrealistic confusion. It was more of like "I came into this conversation late, and I don't know wtf is going on" type of confusion. Eventually, you get the picture, and we move on.

The premise to this movie is actually kinda cool. An old, abandoned insane asylum is going to be renovated. A small team of five people is hired to clean out the asbestos shit before the renovation can begin. They're offered a bonus if they finish the job in one week. Creepy shit happens. Personal secrets are exposed. People die. I have to point out though, that I don't consider this a true horror film. It's definitely more suspense/drama than horror. There is a fair amount of blood and whatnot, but it's not the main draw. This isn't a gruesome movie.

In fact, Session 9, in contrast to Haute Tension, is completely cerebral. I can dig that. It's always scarier to imagine things in your head than seeing monsters on the screen. Manipulating the viewer's imagination is the scariest technique that a horror/suspense filmmaker can use. For the most part, the director succeeds in making the viewer think. The problem is that we don't have to think that much. Being a contemporary suspense/thriller, it has the obligatory plot twist, and although it isn't as contrived as Haute Tension’s, it still not very good.

The best part of this film was how believable and real the characters were. There weren't any silly teenagers running around getting naked and getting themselves in stupid situations. That's not to say that the charcaters didn't do some stupid things sometimes (like hardly ever working on what was supposed to be a 'rush' asbestos removal job), but overall I liked them, and I believed their intentions were true.

Still, I don't know if that's enough to recommend this movie to others. I can see how some people would like it, but I can also see how some would hate it. I didn't know anything about this movie when I saw it, so I didn't have high expectations. That helped. Unfortunately, now you know something about this movie, so that angle is shot for you. ;) In any case, it's a solid 6 or a weak 7 out of 10.

Word of the Day: halcyon (adj) – calm and tranquil like the halcyon bird that was said to calm the seas. It can also mean the good ol’ days or a golden, prosperous age. Ex: Sometimes, I long for the halcyon years of gaming, so I fire up my dusty Atari and go to town on some asteroids.

Trivia of the Day: RDI, the company that created the Dragon’s Lair, Space Ace and Thayer’s Quest laserdisc games, released a home laserdisc game console named Halcyon in 1985. The cost? $2500. Yeah, I don’t have one. :(

"Some Funny Gay Shit"

Aaron just sent this link to me, and I couldn't stop laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. ;)

Make sure to go through them all!: http://www.superdickery.com/seduction/1.html

Either they were really gay back in the 50's/60's, or we're really perverted now in the 2000's. Probably a little of both...

Bonus (thanks to Pete): http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=uscc_part1

Word of the Day: impecunious (adj) - always without money, poor, without the ducats. Ex: Being an impecunious college kid sucks balls, but being an impecunious college drop out sucks bigger balls.

Trivia of the Day: I have a birthmark in the shape of Smurfette on the underside of my... hehe... just kidding. *Ahem* "The sixth sick shiek's sixth sheep's sick." is officially recognized by the Guiness Book of World Records to be the hardest English tongue twister in existence.

"Long and Complex"

Seems like there's been some talk lately about long length and complexity as a negative in game design. CNN recently interviewed Shigeru Miyamoto (legendary creator of Mario and Zelda games amongst others) who bitched about it some. That sparked some more talk on the subject at some gaming site (I'd never heard of) that got linked to by shacknews. Personally, I've held this view for a long time: Long games simply aren't fun for me anymore.

I just do not have the patience to play games for very long. I might have at one time, but now there are just too many games out there that I want to play. Honestly, no matter how good a game is, after a while... I start getting antsy. I'll get 10 hours into some RPG, and then I just have to peek at a FAQ to see how far I'm into the game. Only 20%?! Fuck. I become disheartened. And that's skipping all the bullshit side quests and mini games that just make it longer. Fuck that. I'm not playing this game for 40 more hours. I may like it and all, but now it's become work. There are other good games out there waiting to be played.

And that's part of the problem I guess: I'm spoiled by all the choices out there. I buy a shitload of games, and even still I don't get every single 'good' game out there. You know how many games get 9's every month? Lots. It might sound ludicrous, but yeah, I'm saying there are too many great games being released. Especially too closely together. I might have enjoyed that 40 hour game if there wasn't another game tempting me. Instead, I have to deal with the multitude of unopened 'good' games sitting on my shelf... calling my name. It's gotten to the point that I almost hate the Holiday Game Flood because so many games I want all come out at once.

My favorite games are games that I can pick up, play for a bit, and put down. No story. No item collecting. None of that shit to get in my way of enjoying the game. Presently, that boils down to competitive gaming (fighting games, puzzle games, racing games) and portable gaming.

Competitive games are, by nature, quick gaming fixes. With no story to worry about, the only thing you focus on is the actual gameplay. That's why I love games like Street Fighter II, Bomberman and Quake III deathmatch. Every game doesn't NEED a story to be fun. Because, you know, sometimes I just don't feel like spending the time to hunt down all the fucking armors and gems in the world. And the worst offenders, man... those are the games that don't give you the 'good' ending unless you 100% it (Hello, Metroid Prime, I'm looking at you.) Fuck that. What kind of bullshit is that? 100% should give you something EXTRA, not show you the real ending.

Anyway, the other games that rock, the portable games, are meant to be digested in bite sized morsels. Games like WarioWare and Feel the Magic are great. I can even get into games like Hot Shots Golf on the PSP because it's designed so well. It has short quick golf competitions and is just perfectly suited to the needs of the pick-up-and-play portable gamer. Even RPG/Strategy games like Advance Wars and Mario & Luigi for the GBA were bearable. You can save anywhere (why can't you do that in ALL games?!?) and the missions weren't too long. Console game designers can learn a few things from portable game designers.

Getting back to the complexity issue that Miyamoto brought up… yeah, that's pretty shitty too. But for me, I wouldn't even pick up a complex game. Complexity is never fun... whether it be in a short game or long game. Overly complex games can rot on the fucking shelf. You should re-think your design if you require the gamer to use every fucking key on the keyboard and then use shift or ctrl to access even more functions. And while I'm at it, hey Unreal guys: we don't need 20 fucking guns in an FPS to make it fun OK? We don't use them all anyway. Pick a few and make them balanced and useful instead giving us 10 guns all with alternate fire. I'd much rather see a game that had marketing hype like "You'll actually want to use all 5 guns because they're useful!" instead of "Choose from 15 guns, each with alternate fire!". And to those simulation 'game' makers, your shit needs to be sold in another aisle at the store because learning how to fly a fucking Cessna isn't a game. Unless your Cessna shoots vulcan cannons and can pick up shield powerups, your shit belongs in the software productivity section, next to learning to play the guitar or some shit.

Word of the Day: prolix (adj) - tedious, long, wordy and drawn out. Ex: After reading my rant on prolix games, some assholes out ther will bitch how they're not getting they're $50 worth... to which I reply, "Trade it back it after you finish it, you cheap bastards!"

Trivia of the Day: The PS2 game Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht promises 80 hours of gameplay on the back of the case. 80 hours?! Fuck.

"Well, shit."

I forgot to tack on the WotD and TotD again yesterday. So, here you go. These are for yesterday:

Word of the Day: vitriolic (adj) - Vitriol literally refers to sulfuric acid/metal sulfate. Figuratively, it's something scathing, corrosive or caustic. Ex: The vitriolic criticism Uwe Boll has received for his inept movie directing, hasn't thwarted his plan to ruin every video game-based movie within his reach.

Trivia of the Day: The cop in the game Monopoly is named Officer Edgar Malloy. The guy behind bars? That's Jake the Jailbird. I'm not making that shit up either.

“Overrated Games”

Writing that article about good games that a lot of people never played got me thinking about overrated games over the years that have really bugged me. These games were lavished with undeserved praise when they were first released and have since, somehow, been heralded as classics. So, here’s my feeble attempt to right these wrongs: my list of games that are regarded much too highly when they actually suck.

Some of you might recall that GameSpy made a list of overrated games a while back. It received well deserved criticism. For some reason, GameSpy decided to clump overhyped and disappointing games in with overrated games in their infamous list. Anything that’s overrated, as you would imagine, is rated higher than it should have been. Therefore, a game that got panned by the critics cannot be overrated by definition. So, Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness and Enter the Matrix (No.’s 8 and 3 respectively on GameSpy’s list) cannot be overrated games since everyone pretty much agreed those games sucked.

Anyway, with that being said, let’s get on with it.

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Mortal Kombat [1992]

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Yes, Dave, I stole your precious screenshot.

System: Arcade, SNES, Genesis, Gameboy, Game Gear, Sega CD, PC

Why it’s overrated:

At the time, fighting games were hot. Street Fighter II had blown everyone away with its great graphics and amazing gameplay. And like any good genre-defining game, it was immediately cloned about a zillion times in an attempt to cash in on the fighting game craze. For the most part, the clones sucked. They offered little different from SFII and they quickly faded into obscurity. Then came Mortal Kombat.

Mortal Kombat, I admit, brought a lot of new elements to the fighting game genre, but unfortunately, most of those changes were novel at best. The most glaring example of this is the fatality of course. It added absolutely nothing to the gameplay. The same goes for the digitized graphics. Honestly, I didn’t really care for them. While they appeared more realistic at a glance, the animation was simply terrible. The characters moved like they all had sticks up their asses. And the addition of the block button and ‘tapping’-style special moves made an already stiff game even more cumbersome.

The truth is that MK played terribly, and the only reason anyone ever played it was for the digitized gore. There were no combos to speak of and the strategies involved in playing the game were pretty basic. MK was and still is a terrible game. I will admit that the series improved dramatically with MKII, but that’s another story. MK was a terribly playing game, pure and simple.

The only decent move in the whole game.	Cuz, you know, I didn't get enough Track & Field in the 80's.
Scorpion loses!... umm... wait...	The only reason people played this game.

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Myst [1994]

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Thys game ys shyt.

System: Mac, PC, PlayStation, Saturn, Atari Jaguar CD, 3DO

Why it’s overrated:

If you’ve played this ‘game’ recently, you should already know what I’m going to say here. No fucking story, no coherence, retarded random puzzles, almost no animation and a bajillion games sold. Go figure. Myst always was and always will be garbage.

This is what happened.

Myst was first made for the Mac. Mac users didn’t (and still don’t) have shit for games so any new game that came out was snatched up in a heartbeat. CDROM technology was new. Myst was a CDROM game. Ooooh. High resolution pre-rendered computer graphics were still a novelty. The game was considered ‘oh so pretty’ even though people were just watching a slide show. The Mac users are retarded and are amused by the ‘wondrous’ puzzles and ‘enchanting’ environments. Myst sells a buttload of copies. People smell money and port it to every fucking console with a CDROM. Because it’s so popular on the Mac, people play it, and even though they don’t get it, they pretend to or risk looking silly. The End.

Wow, a pre-rendered pathway.	Wow, a pre-rendered telescope.
Wow, pre-rendered stairs.	Wow, a pre-rendered bedroom.

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Shenmue [2000]

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Must... remain... bland...

System: Dreamcast

Why it’s overrated:

If you want to play a ‘find every character and talk to them multiple times’ game mixed in with a little Dragon’s Lair and very little Virtua Fighter, this is your game. If you’re sane, like me, stay away from this overly ambitious yet underachieving game. Those people that gave it 9’s are out of their skull.

You literally do very little more that what I outlined above. Talk to a whole bunch of people until you unlock a mini-game. Do the mini-game and go talk to a whole bunch more people. Where’s the fun in that?

I think people rated this game so highly because they got caught up in all the voice overs. There haven’t been many games that have this much voice acting in them. I remember playing this game back when my sister lived with me. After a couple of hours of hearing me play this game (she was upstairs in her room while I played in the living room), she finally came down and asked me with a confused look on her face, “What movie are you watching?” That’s pretty much how it feels too: like you’re playing a slightly more interactive version of Dragon’s Lair. It’s really too bad that its main drawing point, the voice acting, was so uneven too. Some characters were pretty good, while others, like the main character, were pretty bad.

Yu Suzuki, the game’s designer, had a grand vision: to create the most enthralling real-world adventure game ever. Instead, he made a laserdisc game for the Dreamcast. People wanted so badly to buy into Suzuki’s grandiose plans for this game, that they forced themselves into thinking it was a masterpiece.

A little side note here: if you want to simulate playing this game, buy Shenmue II for the Xbox for like $10. It comes with a DVD movie of the entire first game. Yep, you can just watch the first game being ‘played’. What more proof do you need that this game was really no game at all?

Talking to some lady.	Talking to another lady.
Wow, that's different. Talking to a man now.	Ok, THIS is funny!

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Valkyrie Profile [2000]

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Only $75, and it's yours to keep!

System: PlayStation

Why it’s overrated:

I honestly don’t’ know why people love this RPG so much. It’s a highly sought after PlayStation collectible as it was released near the end of the PlayStation’s life when games tend to have smaller production runs. Prices on eBay range from $60 to $180 dollars for this game depending on its condition. So I made myself play through this game just to see what all the fuss was about. What I found was that this game’s mechanics were poorly designed and the character development was extremely shallow.

I used a guide to get through this game to assure myself that I would get the best ending and see the most stuff. You see, one unique feature of this game is that you can skip almost everything past the very first dungeon. I didn’t. I did everything I could. But even still, I can’t tell you what the fuck the whole point of the game was. The plot development was terrible. There are so many characters that you don’t get a chance to really get to know them, and therefore you don’t really give a shit about them when they’re sent off to Valhalla.

The actually gameplay is extremely redundant: at the start of the level, hit SELECT to see a new voice/cutscene, go to the area/town where the scene pointed you to, watch the cutscene and get a new character, hit SELECT to see a new cutscene, if it’s a dungeon, go to it and beat the repetitive monsters, if not, go to the town and see the next cutscene and get a new character, hit SELECT to see a new cutscene, if it’s a dungeon, go to it and beat the repetitive monsters, if not, go to the town and see the next cutscene…. Ugh. No wonder they allow you to skip stuff. It’s torturous. Anyway, along the way you send some of your built up characters to Valhalla to fight the good fight alongside the Gods, but it’s all really rather boring.

Somehow this became a collectible and then it got ‘popular’, but if you play this game for an hour or two, you’ll realize just how ‘blah’ this game is. I won’t get into it, but even the music is repetitive and sucky. The bottom line is that there are many better and cheaper RPG’s out for the PlayStation. Don’t bother paying the big bucks for this one unless you’re a collector and can find it cheap.

Horses and stuff.	Field of crap.
Some lame battle.	This game is so boring, you get this shot again.

"Small Update"

Not to take away from the monstrous post below, but I forgot to add the word and trivia of the day to that post, and we can't have that, now can we?

Well, I might as well make a small update too.

Remember that old adage: "Good things come to super kickass people."? Well, it's true. Check it. As you may or may not know, I've been unable to procure tickets to the NBA Finals, The Homestar Runner show at the Drafthouse (with the creators on hand) or Green Day floor/GA tickets. At the last minute I ended up with Game 1 and Game 2 tickets to go see the Spurs at the NBA Finals as well as a ticket to see H*R live and in person! The NBA Finals games were incredible. I'm truly convinced that the Spurs were and are the best team in the league by far. The H*R show rocked. Matt and Mike Chapman and their buddy/helper Ryan showed up at the Drafthouse, got drunk, and guided us through their DVD made exclusively for the Alamo Drafthouse crowd here in Austin. I even got them to autograph my DVD set of Strong Bad's 1st 100 E-mails. Those guys are down-to-earth and just awesome in general.

Now if I could get a couple of Green Day tickets...

Word of the Day: bourgeois (noun/adj) - Someone pertaining to the capitalistic middleclass, or being materialistic, petty and/or and an exploiter of the working class. Ex: Tiffany's bourgeois lifestyle is reflected by her taste in overpriced espresso which she drinks while dropping off her kids at their private school in her new oversized SUV.

Trivia of the Day: Dee Jay, introduced in Super Street Fighter II, is the only Street Fighter character designed by an American. While Capcom of Japan created Cammy, Fei Long and T. Hawk, James Goddard at Capcom U.S.A. came up with the fighting Jamaican. Additionally, the writing on Dee Jay's pants was originally supposed to say "MANTIS", but had to be changed to "MAXIMUM" so that the character sprite could face either side without reversing the letters "N" and "S". Goddard left Capcom U.S.A. to create the fighting game "Weaponlord" for the SNES. That game sucked.

"5 Great Games You've Probably Never Played"


Even with video games having been in the mainstream for a while now, there are still some gems out there that few have had the pleasure of playing. As with the music and movie industry, a lot of great games simply fly under the radar. Sometimes a great game gets made for a dead system that either never got off the ground or was at the end of its life. Really awesome import-only games, mostly from Japan, often times don't get ported to the U.S. because no one thinks they'll sell. And sometimes, you just have to be old enough (30+) to remember some of the long forgotten classics!

Let's take a look at five such games:

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Name: Badlands [1984]

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I reckon this here's the best laserdisc game ever.

System(s): Arcade

Reason you never played it:
Badlands came out right in the middle of the video game crash in 1984. Chances are slim that this laserdisc game made it to your local arcade (if you still had one by 1984.)

Why you should play it:
To be honest, I'm not sure that you can play this game anymore. I don't think this game was ever ported to any system. It was a laserdisc game, but one no where near as popular as Dragon's Lair or Space Ace. So, not a lot of people played it, and since games like Dragon's Lair rely on nostalgia to sell, chances are slim that someone will make the simple port over to DVD or one of the current generation systems. I was lucky enough to have this in my local movie theater arcade, but I was so young that I never was able to finish it.

Badlands is basically the coolest laser disc game ever. It's set in the old west, and the tone of the game seems almost serious. Buck, the protagonist you play as, narrates the opening scene of the game: "We were livin' a quiet life, when one day for no reason my wife and my children were killed in cold blood! And I was wounded, unable to help. Why this? Why US? Why? I won't let them get away with it. I'll get every last one of 'em!" Wow, how much cooler is that than chasing down a dumb old dragon? You're attacked by bad guys who burn down your house and kill your family? Damn. That is cold. The bad guys did make one fatal mistake, though... they left you alive.

You wander around the old west hunting these bad guys down. Collecting bounty on their heads as you progress. There are classic settings such as saloons and showdowns in the middle of town. However, there is a reason why I said it the tone of the game seems almost serious. Everytime you die, you die in hilarious ways: a scorpion jumps up and gives you a mohawk haircut, a rattlesnake wraps up your horses legs and it trips, you get smoked and served up on a giant plate. And I haven't even mentioned the level where you end up in a dinosaur infested jungle. Very strange.

The control is also very unique. Yes, control, as in singular. We're talking a single, huge, red button. No gun or joystick here. All you do is wait for the right time, and press it to shoot. But it's not as easy as it sounds. You have to be careful because if you shoot too early or when there is no visible threat, you end up being hanged. If you shoot too late, you're swiss cheese. And this game really keeps you on your toes. The scenes that play out the story aren't always the same. For example, in one scene you walk into the saloon, mosey on up to the bar, and the bartender reaches under the counter. Sometimes he pulls out a whisky, and sometimes he pulls out a gun and shoots you. So you gotta be quick on the draw!

If you ever see this game in an arcade, I recommend that you spend the $10 or so to finish it because it's unlikely you'll ever see that game again. If you know of a console or emulated version, let me know!

Ouch. That's gotta hurt.	I looove it, Reynaldo. It's simply faaabulous!
It was a dark and stormy night...	Tayshaun Prince at Halloween.

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Name: Earthbound 0 [1990]

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Yes, the 'zero' was added by the ROM dumpers.

System(s): NES

Reason you never played it:
For one, it was never officially released in the US. However, Earthbound 0 is not an import. It's a translated version of "Mother" for the Japanese Famicom (NES) done by Nintendo themselves. Read below for more on this bizarre tale.

Why you should play it:
The short of it is that Earthbound 0 is the unreleased (in the U.S.) prequel to the fantastic Earthbound RPG for the SNES, and therefore it can only be played via an NES emulator. The long of it actually quite interesting.

In Japan, Nintendo released a game called Mother for the Nintendo Famicom (equivalent to the US NES) in 1989. It was an RPG unlike any other. You played as a little boy living in a suburb of modern day city. You carried around your items in your backpack. You called home via telephone to save your game. You used weapons like baseball bats, slingshots and frying pans on enemies like hippies and stray dogs. It was a refreshing change from the dungeons and dragons-like fantastical settings that dominate this genre even today.

That's not to say that the game isn't rooted in the console RPG. You still stay in hotels, eat food to regain health and have a form of magic, known as PSI powers, available to some characters. In fact, a good portion of the enemies are alien type creatures. After all, your adventure revolves around investigating weird, paranormal acitivity that seems to have affected your town.

So this is all well and good, but if this is such a great game, why wasn't it ever released? The story goes that Nintendo of America actually did have the intention of releasing this game in the U.S. They even had it translated, and other than the packaging, the game was pretty much complete by September of 1990. But even with the U.S. prototype cartridge in hand, NoA simply felt that the timing wasn't right to sink money into releasing an RPG since they weren't very popular in U.S. So, due to a marketing decision, Nintendo of America sat on one of the greatest NES games of all time.

In the end, someone, somehow, ended up sneaking the prototype cartridge out. It made its way into a few collector's hands, and the game ROM was eventually dumped onto a PC. There's a lot more to this story, and if you have some time to kill, you should read more about it here

> Something strange... in your neighborhood.	Podunk, USA.
I lied, there is a dragon.	OK, and a robot.

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Name: Gal's Panic (series) [1990-1999]

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Original Title Screen Action!

System(s): Arcade, Sega Saturn

Reason you never played it:
This series was only officially released into Japanese arcades. Although, sometimes you can find local arcades that imported this strange game. Le Fun in Austin, Tx used to have a Gal's Panic machine, and they might still.

Why you should play it:
First, a history lesson, as most of you probably don't remember Qix. Qix was an old (1981) arcade game where you controlled a pointer on the screen that drew lines. The point of the game was to draw solid boxes without the pointer getting touched by bad guys floating around the screen. When you'd complete a box, the boxed in area would turn a different color and you ate up a certain percentage of the screen. After you'd completed a certain percentage, you'd clear the screen and try again on a fresh screen with faster enemies. Now, imagine Strip Qix. That's Gal's Panic.

The premise is the same: guide your drawing pointer thing across the screen without getting caught by the bad guys. The twist is that there is a silhoutte of a young (when aren't they young?) girl in the background. As you enclose areas of the screen with your line maker thingy, the enclosed areas you've created uncover a portion of the fair maiden. If you uncovered a high enough percentage of her silhoutte, the screen would clear and you could see her entire, usually sexually charged, body.

In later versions of the game, you can enclose bonus items like a telephone icon that would give you her phone number (bonus points) or powerups that made your drawing thingy faster. Also, in later versions of the game, you could earn short animation sequences of the girl partially nude if you completed her silhoutte 100%.

Overall, this is a pretty fun game, even without the scantily clad (and occasionally nude) women... I mean, young girls. The reason this game is on this list rather than Qix, is because the later versions of Gal's Panic actually play a lot better than Qix does. In Gal's Panic S2 you aren't limited to 90 degree lines like you were in Qix. I'm serious, it had nothing to do with the girlies. Really.

Ugh. Do I have to?	Gameplay on version S2.
You've degraded me 100%. Congratulation! Go to next area.	Ayaah. Silly me, I fell. ^_^

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Name: Herzog Zwei [1989]

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System(s): Sega Genesis


I prefer hard techno, personally.

Reason you never played it:
You were too busy playing your NES, and they never made a Herzog Zwei cartoon series or breakfast cereal. Plus, it was a real-time strategy game and nobody knew wtf that was back in '89.

Why you should play it:
You don't have to be an RTS fan to appreciate this game. The thing that gets most people about RTS games is that they're too fucking complicated. I mean, I'm not saying every game has to play like Pong, but there is something to be said about simplicity.

Being an RTS, the game is unsuprisingly played from a top-down perspective. But surprisingly, you control a huge transformer general. You can switch from a jet figther looking thing to a giant walking robot and back at will. Kinda like Starscream, but without all the whining. Ulimately, you want to destroy the enemy HQ which has a fighting-game-esque non-regenerating life bar. You proceed to build units to take over and defend the minibases sprawled out across the map. The more bases you control, the more money you make per second. And that means, guess what? You can make more units. Up to 50 per side. If you don't suck, you'll start to move in on the enemy HQ and eventually beat it down.

The units are all ground units, and there aren't very many of them. The basic unit, the infantry unit, is the only type of unit that can take over minibases. It's also the only unit that can climb over mountains and cliffs. Infantry are easy to kill, but absolutely necessary. Then you have your tanks. They're really the only way to damage the enemy HQ. Other than the boats, which act as tanks on the water levels, those are the two units you'll use the most. There are also motorcycles and armored cars, but they're mostly just used as decoys. On the defense/support side, you have a missle launcher, which only attacks the enemy commander. It's more useful than you might think. And then you have the huge turrents, which are expensive, slow to build, and tougher than any other unit on the map. Turrets fire huge guns and missles. You'll be using these quite a bit too. Finally we have refueling truck that keeps all your nearby units stocked with ammo and fuel.

The levels are pretty well thought out and offer wildly different game play experiences. With 8 different planets (maps), you'll have to deal with different terrains like the ice world where your units slip'n'slide all over the place, the volcanic world where there are rivers of lava that damage your units, and a water world where the majority of your forces will be boats and you'll be fighting island warfare. Good stuff.

Overall, it's just a fun game, especially in two player split-screen mode. I've always thought there should have been a sequel on the genesis, but I also think that the time for a sequel has definitely passed. If they made one now, it'd be overly complicated and in full 3D. That would totally kill the very thing that made Herzog Zwei fun.

Muliplayer Action! Oh, Yeah!	Incoming missle!
Okie-Dokie!	If you see this, buy it.

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Name: Parodius (Series) [1989 - 1996]

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Translation: Parodius! - Seriously, It Says That –

System(s): Arcade, Super Famicom, Sega Saturn, Sony Playstation, Gameboy, PC Engine

Reason you never played it:
Parodius games are import-only. It's a very popular series in Japan. But despite all the platforms to which it's been ported, and all the different sequels and versions, there has never been an official U.S. release. See below.

Why you should play it:
Parodius is a Parody of the well known Konami shooter Gradius, hence, the clever name. It plays pretty much like Gradius with a bizarre twist that only the Japanese could concoct.

For starters, you get to choose your ship from a list of oddball choices: would you like to go with the traditional Vic Viper (the Gradius ship), or maybe a stickman riding a paper airplane, or a Playboy Bunny girl riding a torpedo, or how about you get animalistic and go with a Penguin with an umbrella or an angel pig complete with a halo and wings? That's just a sampling, too. There are many more 'ships' to choose from, but you get the idea. And as unique as the ships are, the enemies you encounter are even more strange. How about shooting down some Easter Island heads, teddy bears hanging from hot air ballons, or fish skeletons?
The bosses? Even better!: a giant Las Vegas Showgirl that takes up the entire screen, a Pirate Kitten with 6 legs which act as oars to its pirate ship body, a HUGE mermaid with a nice set of ta-tas, and a Giant Bald Eagle dressed up in Uncle Sam garb.

The powerup system is great too. The powerups are in the form of bells that change color when you shoot them. Certain colors have certain powers. One of my favorite powerups is the White Bell. When you grab a White Bell, your ship gets a megaphone and shouts japanese phrases at your enemies. The phrases are spelled out in a long line of characters spouting from your megaphone. Anything the phrase touches, dies. Simply perfect.

So if this game is so good and had so many sequels and ports, why was it never ported to the US? Well, to put it mildly, the game is very Japanese. It relies heavily on Japanese cultural icons like sumos, public bath houses, crane games, and mythical japanese creatures. A lot of that stuff just wouldn't translate well. And in addition to the general "Americans won't get it." reason, Parodius games have some pretty un-politically correct elements like the aforementioned shooting down of the American Bald Eagle. Throw in a female Easter Island head boss that shoots long phallic torpedos slowly from its mouth, and Playboy Bunny girls riding torpedos and, yeah, that game is never coming to the U.S.

The bottom line is that all these crazy things makes a great game like Gradius even better. Even if you don't get the cultural references, you can still laugh at how fucked up the Japanese are. It's fun to progress to the next area just to see what kind of crazy-ass boss they've got waiting for you there. If you throw in a "spot the overt sexual reference" drinking game, there might not be a better way to spend an evening. So, yeah, if you like shooters, you owe it to yourself to play this game. It's a colorful, demented romp through the pysche of a male japanese gamer on acid.

Yeaaah.	Hot Megaphone Action!
You don't even want to know what's going on here.	Hey, I'm offended!