Flip-Flops

Last time I posted I was pretty sleep deprived! And the games I posted about? I was sleep deprived while playing them, too. It's now two weeks later, and I am well-rested and well-played. I see things with fresh eyes! I see the beauty in Espgaluda 2: Black Label.

I can't explain its beauty, because to be honest I am still somewhat fuzzy on the game's scoring system. Some runs I will have few points. Some runs I will have far more points. I don't really know what I did differently to earn those extra points! But when I earn them it is beautiful. The entire screen turns purple, then gold, and my score grows very fat very fast. I am still not big on the original version, but Black Label is a very good time. I am glad I gave you a second chance, Espgaluda 2! I am glad I got some sleep.

I somewhat regret calling Mega Man 10 clever. I actually haven't played it in two weeks, but when I did play it I wasn't all there, you know? Maybe it's not as good as I thought! Maybe this is Mega Man 5 all over again, except now I'm blinded by Sheep Man rather than Gravity Man? But I don't think that's the case. It's no Mega Man 9, but Mega Man 9 is up there with Mega Man 2 as far as I'm concerned. 10 is perfectly good. I will get back to it soon enough!

Another game I was playing heavily but thankfully did not make a positive post about is...hold on, I need to go look up the proper title, because it's really damn long...ah, yes, Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing. I'd written the game off, because the 360 demo was a mess, and Sumo Digital really didn't do a very good job with Sonic Virtua Tennis or whatever it was. But man, I saw some videos of Opa-Opa drifting around one of the technicolor Samba de Amigo tracks and I melted. Maybe I was wrong! Maybe the game turned out alright after all?

And yeah, it's alright. It's more than alright. It's very good at times. It's very much Outrun Kart, which is a good thing. Linking drifts together is satisfying! You will be driving sideways for half the race, and I say there is nothing wrong with that. The game is loaded with Sega Blue Skies combined with some cute track design -- often the tracks mimic the level design of the source game, with the Sonic stages having plenty of loops, the Jet Set Radio stages emphasizing jumps and tricks, and the Monkey Ball stages are loaded with narrow pathways and hairpin turns. The single player lifts its structure from the console ports of Outrun 2, and is surprisingly robust and enjoyable despite so much of the content being locked from the start. It has Billy Hatcher. It has no Blue Shell. And the pirate themed stage is covered in Dreamcast logos. I laughed!

So I was in love with the game for a few days. I told all my friends this is the real deal! This is Outrun Kart! Let's all spend money and race each other on the internet! But soon enough the honeymoon was over, and man, I felt like a jerk. Soon enough I had all the tracks unlocked, and for every track with Blue Skies there was one dark as pitch, with hard to spot obstacles, framerate issues, and (seemingly unintentional) misleadingly telegraphed turns. For every Billy Hatcher there was a Shadow the Hedgehog. And for every competently executed single player element there was a similarly botched multiplayer feature. Like how no two racers can choose the same character, something not even Mario Kart does nowadays. And maybe that wouldn't be an issue if the character balance wasn't so completely screwed. Motorcycles have great acceleration and can do wheelies on straightaways for boost! Karts can't. Karts suck. And intelligent item usage is not enough to overcome the lack of character balance, because the items are just as screwy. Many defensive items, many area of effect items, but no Blue Shell. If you're lucky enough to emerge unscathed from the opening salvo -- and doing so requires equal parts luck, character choice, and skill -- more often than not the race is yours, even if you do make the occasional error. The battered racers will most likely spend the remainder of the race getting gangbanged by triple-boxing gloves and airhorns and mines, while the leader cruises ahead, safe as can be. Perhaps someone will break away from the pack, but the best they'll manage is a second place finish, usually 5 to 10 seconds behind the winner, with a similar gap between second and third. Usually the top finishers will come from the same pool of players, but rarely is one racer dominant. Rarely is a multiplayer race tight and exciting. Usually it's a yawnfest that's decided before the first lap is up. And this is a shame, because had they put a bit more thought into the item set beyond "clone Mario Kart's but remove the one everyone bitches about" they would have had a game that tops Mario Kart. As it is it's the worst kind of game; one that could, with some minor tweaks, be so very good, but thanks to these easily fixable balance issues the game has no longevity, and I kinda regret playing it at all. Fan service can only take you so far, y'know?

Unless it's Phantasy Star fan service. I would have overlooked any faults had the game had Alis riding a Land Rover, man.

I apologize to all the friends I mislead! I owe you guys a gift. Free copies of Deadly Premonition for all!

Double Up!

Boy! What a week for Video Games! It is like they are releasing sequels to many of my past loves all at once, and two of them arrived at my house on the very same day! Too much! I stole the images in this post from the internet. Sorry, internet!

Mega Man 10 can be very clever. I've mostly avoided reading other people's impressions but I saw a few quotes taking it to task for being "just another Mega Man sequel" and "by the numbers." Which if true is perfectly fine by me! But from what I've played the game feels pretty fresh, or as fresh as a faithful entry in a 25 year old series can be. I think there was some real effort put into mixing things up, as there's less straight platforming and more stages built around puzzle-y gimmicks. Gimmick platforms. Physics gimmicks. This isn't a bad thing as far as I'm concerned. I am cool with gimmicks. The best stages post-Mega Man 3 tended to be the gimmicky ones. Why, Gravity Man's stage in Mega Man 5 was so fantastic it briefly tricked me into thinking the entire game was one of the best in the series! I get the feeling IntiCreates knew they nailed the Mega Man 2 style with the last game so they decided to make the best possible Mega Man 4-7 compilation they could!

OK, maybe that's a stretch. Now that I think about it Mega Man 9 had plenty of gimmicks too -- Hornet Man had those rolled up platforms, Splash Woman had the bubbles, Jewel Man had the swinging platforms, etc. It feels like they play a larger role in 10, though, and I don't think any of them are recycled from prior games. May be mistaken on that though. Ten games! They all run together after awhile, y'know?

Currently my favorite stages are Sheep Man, because it's Sheep Man, and Strike Man, because it's like Mega Man stumbled into a Famicom baseball title from 1984.

Espgaluda may be my favorite game of all time. Some days I prefer Dodonpachi for its buttrock, spaceships, explosions, and relative simplicity. Other days I prefer Ketsui for its excellent scoring system that encourages high risk play. But I think Espgaluda's on top most days. It's probably the easiest of all Cave shooters, which I appreciate because I am not as good at these games as I wish I was. Its character art is pretty ugly, but the stage design is lovely and its scoring system encourages experimentation and Self-Expression...! while still being relatively easy to understand. Perhaps there's a perfect Espgaluda playthrough video out there, but I never want to see it. It's a game that doesn't make me want to cheat to win. It's a rarity!

So I was pretty excited when Espgaluda 2 was released. I waited years for the PCB to drop to a level where I could afford it, but unfortunately that never really happened. Once the Neo Geo died its collectors had to move on to something else, and they chose Cave games. So now Cave PCBs sell for twice what they used to and newer releases rarely drop below $600. Once upon a time I paid $275 for Ketsui! That was a good time. Now you'll be lucky to find the game for less than $900.

But as good as the past was it is not as good as the present. Now Cave games are getting console releases! And some of them are region free. Some of them are localized! I never thought I'd see the day. Espgaluda 2 is the fourth Cave shooter released for the 360. Ketsui, Guwange, and Death Smiles 2 are all coming sometime this year. Seven Cave games on one console! Don't listen to the old folks: this is the best console generation of all times.

Unfortunately Espgaluda 2 is not the best of all games. I will not say it is bad. I am sure there are folks who love it. But after spending two days with it I am ready to give up. This is very much a game that's Not For Me. It's the hardest Cave game I have ever played, and maybe the most confusing when it comes to mechanics. I have read numerous posts on message boards explaining the scoring system and I am still at a loss. It's like they were all written in a foreign language. Which they kinda were, since half the terms used are Japanese. Maybe if I had a better grasp on the game's systems it wouldn't seem so difficult, though that's unlikely, since I've seen plenty of seasoned players griping about the difficulty. My main issue is the boss fights, which last an eternity. Perhaps there's some trick to clearing them faster? Maybe I should watch some more replays? Maybe I will understand them this time, unlike my previous attempts, where I just sat there with my brow furrowed and my mouth hanging open, wondering what the hell was going on?

The game has many modes, half of which are for novice players, but unfortunately those are too easy. I one-life-cleared one of them. Maybe two! It's all a blur right now. I'm going to wait a few more days, hope someone writes a quality guide to Black Label (which is an all new mode and seems maybe a tiny bit friendlier than the arcade version?), and give the game another shot. I doubt it will ever click, though. I should just go back to focusing on Mushihimesama Futari. Gotta get that one credit clear!

Avoid the Void Before Christ

Jet packs aren't as good as grappling hooks. I'm pretty sure every game I've played with a grappling hook was at least decent, and I think once you make the grappling hook your main mechanic there's a good chance your game will be great. Jet pack games should be just as good, but I'm starting to think the ability to easily float is an unsatisfying mechanic and encourages sloppy design. I think it may be why Dark Void Zero is such a disappointment. Or maybe it's because it's made by white people.

Oh, but I kid! White people can make awesome 2D games -- VVVVVV came out a week ago and it's already GOTY! But Backbone and all their offshoots (one of which developed Dark Void Zero) don't make awesome 2D games. They make disappointments. Which is a shame, because big publishers keep giving them jobs, and because I keep accidentally buying their games because I can't keep track of all their studios, and because I can't trust other people's impressions when it comes to modern 2D games. A lot of fans are just sprite art fetishists, y'know? They'll praise anything as long as it controls halfway decent and the developers make it obvious enough that hey, they really love Nintendo too. This is why I've heard more about Dark Void Zero's intro, where you blow into the DSi's mic to "clean" an NES cartridge's contacts, than I have about the actual game. Easier to judge whether the game hits all the right nostalgia notes than whether it's actually good.

And Dark Void Zero does get most of the surface bits right. It looks and sounds close enough to an NES game -- though the music is mixed far too low, which is a shame because it seems pretty good -- and handles like one, too. But it's a frustrating game. Not due to its challenge -- I beat it in under an hour on one credit on the default difficulty -- but cuz it's pretty inconsistent. The feel is off. It's pretty "30+ year old white folks trying to make an old fashioned Japanese action game". It's a jet pack game where you spend a good chunk of your time traversing tight horizontal corridors on foot. It's a jet pack game that frequently strips you of your jet pack and forces weaker weapons upon you, employing the ever popular and modern "strip the hero of all the powers he's earned" multiple times per stage. Your first glance at the game map may lead to expectations of an open ended, exploration heavy affair, like Metroid, but in reality it's a linear keyhunt that relies on lots of backtracking to create the illusion of an open ended, exploration heavy game, like all those modern games that claim to be inspired by Metroid. It's got an odd pace, feeling simultaneously rushed and padded. It does a poor job of giving audio and visual feedback -- there's very slight flickering when you get hit, making it hard to tell when you're taking damage. And the sound of shots that damage an enemy and shots that don't are identical, which sure made the boss fights tiring until I realized it was actually the worst style of boss fight: the kind where you have to sit around and wait for him to expose his weak point before you can do any damage! And there are collision detection issues, as I'd often be shooting a dude and it sure did look like he should have been hit but he totally wasn't. And the game crashed on me when I tried to read the manual, so I didn't know you could save until after I beat it and saw CONTINUE on the title screen. And the Jimmy Fallon cameos totally blow the "long lost NES game" vibe they were going for.

And everybody hates a critic. Even me! I am being too mean. It is playable. It is close to being worth buying. But there are an awful lotta great NES games for the same price on Virtual Console. Why buy a sham when you can get the real deal? And if you only have a DSi buy Boxlife. Or Trajectile. Or any of those Art Style games. They're pretty neat.

Chris White Was Right

Except it's not our year. It's my year. I'm not gonna share it! I'm gonna hog all the victory, for I have a winning record in SF2 this week! Today I took a few lumps, and the win ratio went down a bit, but it wasn't enough. Nothing can stop me, not even the grave.

Though if Street Fighter 4 is as good as it looks it may tear me away. Look! Cammy! The first thing you see is her butt. You don't even need to win a match for a peek at the cheeks now! That is very wholesome, unlike Sakura. I always liked her but now that she's 22 and still dressed like a school girl the whole thing seems pretty unseemly rather than cute.

(Half this blog is me talking about female Street Fighter characters. That was not the original plan. I'm this close to being one of those guys with a lovepillow and wallscroll collection, aren't I? I can't get into that stuff! If my mom saw them she'd stop cleaning my room! As a precaution I am going to unsubscribe to NCS's RSS Feed.)

I was going to talk about new news! But I am tired now. I must retire.

Battered Family Man

I'm going to play Street Fighter!

It's a challenging game. I am not the player I should be. I made mistakes in my youth. I did not mix it up with the other kids in the arcades. They tended to be older. Surlier. Better. Now that I think of it I'm not sure I've ever played against a stranger in an arcade. Maybe someone came along and put a coin in a machine I was playing by myself, but waiting in line? Just to lose? Whatta waste of money and time!

Instead of bettering myself through practice and competition I played all by my loneseome. I'd lost most of my friends in 1992. Some moved away. Some drifted away. Some had grumpy parents who instructed their children to stop hanging out with me because I was a bad influence, and the little wimps listened. So by the time summer vacation hit I was down to one friend. He was more independent and mobile than I was, so it was his job to find spots with SF2 machines that no one played. Our favorite was the one at the slot car racing store. No one went in that place! And they had lots of cheap candy. So we'd eat candy, and we'd watch each other play SF2 against the computer. All day long.

He played as Ryu. Ryu was too hard for me. I couldn't pull off the fireball. A few years earlier I'd gotten a TurboGrafx CD with a copy of Fighting Street AKA Street Fighter 1. It was a terrible game, and I doubt we would have played it more than once had my little sister not somehow managed to pull off a fireball during her first match. Us kids, we flipped out. Turned the game from shit to awesome, and we'd bust it out often and spend entire matches just trying to do fireballs. They only succeeded a handful of times. Me? Never. My sister could do them no problem, though. She had the touch.

I can pull off a hadouken nowadays. Most of the time.

My main was Guile, I think? Him and Blanka. Charge characters. Easy special moves. The only moves that mattered - Sonic Boom, Flash Kick, and if your opponent got all up in your grill you mash Fierce and Roundhouse, because why bother with the other four attack buttons? They're weaker! Winning strategy. At least against all my opponents, who were little kids or girls. I'd let them win occasionally, because I'm a nice guy. But they all knew I was really the champ. Bow down.

Of course I knew I wasn't that great at fighters, but I didn't realize I was that bad until the first time I played a fighter online. I couldn't even blame the lag. It was just humiliating. Now I have to make up for lost time. I have to learn all the things I should have learned during puberty! Gotta learn....the moves.

Right now I am Cammy. She's my girl. She is Kylie Minogue. She likes to show me her butt. She has a German suplex and Frankensteiner, which are the best moves. I do not want to play as any other character ever. I don't care if she's the worst character in the game. Those shoryuken.com forum posters are wrong. She's #1.

I hate losing to another Cammy player. I lose a lot. More often than I win. But it's OK as long as I win against against every Cammy. I need to be king of the Cammys.

Actually, losing isn't OK anymore. I go through these stages with fighting games:

- I start off, and I am bad, but I am learning. Just winning a round
is thrilling, and putting on a good fight is all that matters.

- I read up on the game and my character. I practice. I improve. I'd have a positive winning ratio now! Had I not lost 50 matches in a row when I started playing.

- I regress. I use nothing but medium kick. I forget all combos but the one suggested by the shoryuken forum poster with the cosplay Cammy avatar. I think I should use my Super the second I earn it. And then I whiff it. Or I pull it off but the guy sees it coming a mile away because I never combo into it. Because I forgot all the combos! Why did I bother learning? Learning is the biggest mistake I ever made, because it hasn't stopped me from making mistakes! I jump into Ken's dragon punch every time. I know it's coming! But I still jump. Because maybe this time my kick will beat it! Maybe this time he'll do a different move! Maybe this time...

Sometimes I get it together, and I play a smart match, and I win, but that isn't even satisfying now. I'm just getting what's owed me. Owed at least one win for the 5 matches I just lost! It's bad thinking. Bad living. Bad when you get angry and slap yourself, or throw things. I know something's watching me. A hidden spy camera. Dead relatives. Beings from another dimension. Or maybe...God? I'm being watched in some way, and I can push the thought out of my head most of the time, but oh, am I aware of it whenever I throw my shameful little game fits. I see me from outside my body, see what an idiot I am, and wonder why I'm even playing something that causes me to behave in such an embarrassing manner

So why am I playing? Cuz fuck, I gotta get my win/loss ratio over 50%. I can do it!

And with Street Fighter 2 I think I can do it. It's amazing how well it holds up. HD Remix may be uglier than the original, but it still feels like SF2 and that's what really counts. It's a simple game, relative to the fighters that have come since. I don't have to memorize dozens of moves, or complicated systems or styles, or master multiple characters cuz it's a tag team game. It's slower paced, maybe? It feels that way. That I have more time to think. I just need to think! Or cheat. Cheating may be easier.