Strong Style

I named my character Jumbo, after my favorite pro-wrestler. Live-A-Live's Jumbo didn't live up to his real-world namesake. Jumbo Tsuruta was a big, surly man, while my Jumbo was a pipsqueak. A pretty boy. He wore a headband, a purple tanktop, and poofy yellow pants. Generic shonen fight manga lead circa...circa-I-dunno, I-didn't-grow-up-in-Japan. He started soft, and as far as I'm concerned he ended soft, because even though he defeated all his opponents he still looked like he weighed a buck-fifty soaking wet. You can't draw crowds with a physique like that.

But the freaks in that screenshot? They can draw. They've been around. They have the ultimate techniques. It's Jumbo's job to steal these techniques. When an opponent uses a special move on Jumbo there's a chance he might learn it. He's pretty much a slightly-roided-up Blue Mage from a Final Fantasy game, and this chapter is pretty much modeled after Street Fighter, but with turnbased battles and no real RPG elementz~! aside from the move stealing. Actually the choosing your opponent bit is kinda like Mega Man, since you may be able to beat the wrestlers in any order if you play smart (though I'm not entirely certain about that), but it's far easier if you have moves they're weak against.

I chose the Thai kickboxing ladyboy as my first opponent. I figured the he-she would be an easy mark.

I was wrong.

The Volk Han/Russian MMA dude crushed me as well. I was fucked and humbled. But the fat guy went down. I stole his move. I used it to break the Great Asia's fucking neck.

And from then on it was easy street. I just played sensibly and used moves that would theoretically work on my opponent in a real wrestling match. For example: the Hulk Hogan like-a-look is like five times not-so-Jumbo's size. One axe-bomber clothesline and I'm dead. So what do I do?

I use high-speed moves that injure his limbs, rendering him unable to move, and finish him off from a distance using high-flying moves. Crazy! There's a bit of logic going on there! In an RPG. And I didn't need to cast some analyze spell or check a menu screen to figure out the weak point. How about that.

I guess I'm easily impressed, huh? Overall the pro-wrestling chapter's a disappointment, though. There is nothing to it aside from these battles. There are no towns, no exploration, no adoring fans, no ring rats, no drug-dealing doctors. Skimpy, skimpy, skimpy. The story is incredibly light, with an intro showing the hero training, brief pre-match promos from your opponents, and an out-of-nowhere final boss named "Odie Oldbright". I think his design was based on the villain from "Highlander". He's killed all your prior rivals and now he's come for you. He killed me many times. I felt dumb. I felt like I missed a special move that would off him in one hit. Then I smartened up. I realized he couldn't perform his one-hit kill move if I stood in a different position. I realized that in this game debuffs not only work, but they stack, which makes it unlike just about every Final Fantasy game. My prior genre experience was working against me! I was not experimenting like I should have. Once I figured this out I was able to repeatedly do the suplex-or-whatever that cut the Odie's stats in half, until he couldn't move at all, and then I put on the Crippler Crossface and choked him to death. The End. Jumbo walks off into the sunset with a gymbag on his shoulder, in search of his next great challenge. Or some shit like that. I don't even remember what happened.

I'm sure the other chapters are better than this one. But man, the pro-wrestling one should have been the best. There is so much good stuff to work with, but it was so barebones and generic fight-manga formula that there was no satisfaction. Oh well! I still appreciate the little things it got right. That brains (or knowledge of PURORESU -- same thing!) were more important than levels and stats.

If I get to pick my final party during the finale no way is Jumbo gonna end up in it, though. He's so lame.

Lonesome On The Trail

It's winter! A pretty decent one so far, mainly because my home has had heat more often than not. The past was often chilly! The present is pretty toasty. Not as hot as, say, a whorehouse on nickel night, but warm enough to keep me jolly. But despite all the warmth inside it is still frozen and dead outside. It's a lonely season, and that means it's the perfect time for the loneliest genre: the RPG!

The winter RPG has become a tradition of mine, one I wasn't even aware of until I went through my previous posts. Last year I played through Final Fantasy Legend, which was fabulously retarded, and Star Ocean, which was only made tolerable thanks to all the cheating I did. In '08 my regular Saturday night thing was Blue Dragon, a good game that I would never actually recommend to anyone, so maybe it's actually a bad game. Its battles were both its greatest strength and biggest weakness, as they could be relatively challenging and enjoyable (provided you downloaded the free Hard Mode) yet they dragged on for far too long thanks to all the needless battle animation. The boss fights never dragged, though. The boss fights rocked. I think at 1:25 in you can hear the sound of Ian Gillan's throat collapsing in on itself.

And prior to '08 there was Super Robot Taisen Original Generation. There was Shin Megami Tensei 3. There was Dragon Quest 8. There was Dark Cloud 2. There was Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. There was my 21st century playthrough of Dragon Warrior. There was WoW. There were lots of good times spent under a blanket all by my lonesome, mashing the X button, grinding away. Except WoW was mainly sad times spent in front of a computer, grinding away, feeling sick and wishing I was dead. There are no fond WoW memories.

I auditioned a few games for the role of Ms. RPG 2010, and in the end Dragon Quest V won. I'll probably post about it eventually. But for now I think I'll talk about one of the ones that didn't make it. I'm gonna talk about the two hours I spent with Live-A-Live.

Live-A-Live was almost the one. It has an interesting gimmick -- seven standalone bite-size chapters that can be played in any order, each with their own unique theme. I completed two of them, Western first, Pro-Wrestling second. And the Western bit was pretty tight. About an hour long. I think there were only two or three battles. Most of my time was spent reading text and wandering around town, collecting items and setting booby-traps. But it was enjoyable in a way most modern jRPGs aren't, because it was so simple. You've seen this story before, you know exactly where it's going, but it doesn't matter because it's brisk, the dialogue's amusing (though perhaps the translators deserve the credit for that), and seeing Western tropes competently done in a video game RPG is a novelty.

You play the role of the mysterious outlaw. He plays it all stoic but inside he's a softie, right? He strolls into a troubled town, tries to drink in peace, but the local troublemakers are harassing the women and children, and he just can't help but defend their honor. So he speaks up. Tells the lily livered coward to pick on someone his own size or something to that effect. And this triggers the greatest looping jRPG "YES/NO" sequence I've seen yet. (Which isn't saying much...but still!) The bully laughs at the Outlaw. Calls him a baby. Tells the bartender to serve our hero a baby's drink, and so a glass of milk slides down the bar, stopping in front of the Outlaw. I am given a choice.

"Drink."

"Send back."

I drink it. The bully laughs and orders another. I drink it again. He orders another. I drink it again. He orders another. This went on for awhile. I thought maybe something would happen if I kept it up! Maybe this time it will be different. But no. If I want to progress I have to send the drink back. The bully laughs even harder. What, milk ain't good enough for ya? "Or don't ya drink any milk...that ain't from yer mama's nipples?"

OK, maybe after all this buildup it ain't that funny, but man, I laufed and laufed. Then I shot him in the gut and he died.

I smiled a lot during this hour. I smiled when I learned that the healing items are cigars and tequila. I smiled when I won a battle and the winning message was "RIGHT ON!" I smiled when I discovered my first piece of Dung, which can be used as a trap to whittle down the number of invading banditos during the chapter's climax. Another trap was a frying pan -- the item's flavor text describes it as the weapon of choice for hot-headed women. I smiled. The bulk of the game is spent searching the town for traps, which you then give to the town members, who arm them. There's a time limit. Different town members have different skills, so if you do a poor job of handing out the traps you may not have them all armed in time, making the final battle more difficult. Or so I assume. I had them all up and ready with plenty of time to spare. I can't imagine any player being bad enough to run out of time. Even though it's shallow I appreciate the attempt to do something different, something that ties into the plot and theme of the game, that in another game may feel like padding or busywork but here it worked, and had it been harder I probably wouldn't have been smiling. But I smiled when instruments dropped from the soundtrack each time I sent a band member to arm a trap, until it was just me and the fat, hopeless maracas man alone in the bar, his ceaseless "shake-shake-shake" taking the edge off the awkwardness of our lonely-time together.

Little touches go a long way! I smiled when I healed myself using tequila but got drunk and was unable to control my dude. And died. Or, as the game put it, I "MET A BAD END".

The bandit leader has a gatling gun. I think that may even have been his name. "Gatling Gun". After killing him he turns into a horse. He was the personification of all the anger of the dead white men slaughtered by the godless redskins. Don't worry, that's not the biggest spoiler. There's some neat stuff after that! Stuff that shows just how hardcore the hero is. It was a satisfying ending. Again, you don't see many of those nowadays.

I'll post about the wrestling chapter tomorrow.

I Am So Busy, Here Are More Pokemon!

My Gengar is named The Onions! He was a major part of my game-winning team.

My Tentacool is named Overfiend.

My Seedot is named Baby Juice.

My Snorlax is named JAPAN. I got him in an online trade. His original master was a Japanese kid who is obviously quite patriotic.

My Wooper is named Quad City.

My Psyduck is named Mom.

I Say He Made the Right Choice

It's taken me a year but I finally did it! I ripped the ending to Metal Saga and uploaded it to Youtube! This is the first of the game's multiple endings. Since you can earn it within seconds of starting the game I would say it's the best ending. I haven't seen the others, but even if they're equally amusing they are worse because you have to actually play the game to see them, and the game ain't all that great. I think you can speed up the battles, which is wonderful, but the game still felt pretty slow and barren. Not Japan's finest hour when it comes to open-ended RPGs.

Metal Max Returns, on the other hand, seemed pretty neat from the brief time I spent with it. If you dig the idea of an open-ended, goofball, post-apocalyptic RPG you should give this fine translation a shot! Or you could play Fallout, I guess. But Fallout doesn't have tanks.

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.

Here are the names of some of my Pokemon!

I spent a lot of time playing Pokemon Pearl. Here are the names of some of my lovelies!

My Chansey is named Baby Hips.

My Hippowdon is named Down Low.

My Gyardos is named BruceLeRoy.

In Pokemon Blue I had a Magikarp named Chinatown. That was a long time ago. He was my favorite.

My Raticate is named Chewpendus.

I have five Charmanders in my bank. Their names are Hobofoil, 2 Hottie, FlamingDud, Groper and Nostrils. I am not fond of Charmander, really. They were just trading fodder. Bulbasaur is the best starter of all.

My Geodude is named Siffredi.

GOD HAND is the Best Action Game of All Times.

You have to capitalize it. GOD HAND. It deserves respect. It deserves caps.

I've been thinking about GOD HAND a lot, because I've been playing Bayonetta. I'm going big on it. Going for all those achievements. Getting all those stupid unlockables. Wringing every last bit out of it that I can. It's been very enjoyable and rewarding, and the more I play it the more I appreciate it. Though without all that meta-gaming bullshit I doubt I would have returned to the game after my first playthrough. If this was, say, a PS2 game my final verdict would have been that it was a nearly great game bogged down by overlong cutscenes, overlong boss fights, overlong rail shooting levels, too many quick-time-events, too many non-combat "puzzle" bits -- there are multiple escort sequences! -- and poorly telegraphed fail states.

But it's not PS2! It's HD Era. It's on a console that's jacked into the net, spying on me, and I kinda like it. I like seeing the achievement counter inch closer to 1000/1000. I like clawing my way past all my friends on the scoreboards. And most of all I like how open the game is post-completion, which I don't think was a common thing until the advent of achievements. I can play any stage on any difficulty at any time, all on the same save file, and this is wonderful because it means I can put off playing through those disappointing Yu Suzuki tribute stages in favor of all the good action bits. And on repeat playthroughs it's almost all good action bits, as the sections that irritated me previously aren't such a big deal now that I know how to pass them quickly. And because I skip all the cutscenes now. God, there are a lot of cutscenes, and not enough of them focus on Bayonetta's butt.

So yeah, Bayonetta's pretty excellent once you get over that hump. But it's not GOD HAND. GOD HAND don't have no hump. Why would I want to play one level of GOD HAND over another? Every single stage in it is awesome, because every single stage is essentially the same. It is almost always about punching dudes in the head, kicking them in the nuts, and suplexing them into the ground. And when it isn't about violence against humans, or demons, or gorillas, you are still punching something -- there are no real key hunts or puzzles in GOD HAND, just inanimate objects that need to be punched so you can move on to the next group of thugs, who you will also punch. This is good, because the punching is more entertaining than anything else they could have included in the game. This lack of fat is what really puts Mikami's recent titles -- and man, has anyone released two unrelated games as good as GOD HAND and Resident Evil 4 back to back since Super Mario Bros. and Zelda 20 years earlier? -- far ahead of Kamiya's. Hell, it's what puts him far ahead of most every other developer out there, I say. If only more guys had his focus and confidence.

I'll take those kind words back if his next game doesn't feature tank controls, though.