Rayman's Raving Rabbids: TV Party

Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party : A mini-game compilation on the Wii. Surprise surpise.

Story : I guess, it consists of a bunch of neurotic rabbits discovering the joy of television and living vicariously through their favorite brain-rotting programs. Most of the parodies are really clever, and everything from the channel logo-flourishes to the Happy Tree Friends-esque cutscenes involving the Rabbids breaking out of jail or whatnot provide plenty of beer-belly laughs. As for Rayman, if the once iconic mascot had any sort of important presence in these games in the past, it’s long since been reduced to making a barely noticeable cameo here. Maybe he can return to making good adventure games.

If I can say one nice thing about Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party, it’s that it’s worlds better than Wii Sports or Wii Play. There’s nothing quite as annoying as going to a party and being subjected to yet another remote-throwing Wii Bowling session hosted by someone who’s trying too hard to justify their Wii Purchase. And being that the Wii lineup has been flooded with rushed out, low budget cash-in mini-game collections that makes one wonder what happened to the Nintendo Seal of Approval (and I totally predicted that the floodgates would open with these mini-game sets being that the Wii remote sensors are too inaccurate to support a fully grown game), a halfway decent party game to change up the flow is always welcome.

Which brings us back to TV Party. Up to four players sit in front of their real life television and watch the Rabbids watch their virtual television. Either the winner of the last round of competition or whomever was able to successfully guess the weather (the game has all kinds of unique quirks) chooses the next channel and thus the next game to play. Along the way, Flash cutscenes will depict the Rabbids in their assorted TV spoofs (including the occasional mid-game commercial sequence!) and, ideally, you and your friends will be taking shots as the action progresses.

Here’s a bullet point listing of some of the mini-games one can expect to get inebriated to.
• A rail gun shooter where players must prevent the set of a zombie movie from being flooded by Rabbids in chicken suits.
• A snowboarding game where a Rabbid rides down the hill on the backside of a yak. The spirit of Ren and Stimpy lives on.
• A tractor hillbilly racing game with tighter controls than Mario Kart Wii.
• A fashion challenge where you must dress your Rabbid in clothes based on certain unspecific criteria. For example, the game may ask that your Rabbid be “sexy” and “cheap” without being “hairy”.
• A bizarre game where each Rabbid is in a bouncy ball and must collect as many points as possible within a scrolling stage
• The asteroid field sequence from Star Wars, where you can destroy asteroids by drawing the Tetris shape that appears on them.
• A version of Rock Band with only two notes, one for each remote to waggle, and with much more inappropriate songs like Born to Be Wild to jam too. The syncing between notes and the song being played may actually be better here than in the past two Guitar Hero games.
• A dancing game where you recreate the motions of a dancer with a Wiimote. Don’t be like us and all be sitting on the same sofa while playing this game.

Perhaps you’re starting to see a recurring theme here in that you will be made to look a fool playing this. If you value dignity, you shouldn’t be playing Raving Rabbids TV Party, or the Wii in general. This is definitely the ideal game to throw in once the liquor starts flowing like…errr…wine? At the end of the game, a Wheel of Fortune spoof appears and a random event will be thrown out, like a player will be made to change their name or clean their room. Such an end-game event is risky to throw in, as the odds are that said player will probably pass out if they’re asked to clean their room.

Fortunately for us and unfortunately for the game, by the time we were politely asked to clean our mess, we were starting to get sick of the whole experience. There’s about 10 or 15 actual different mini-games and you’ll see almost everything the game has to offer in two hour-long sessions. By the time we approached our third play attempt, we were getting restless and moved on to dessert and more booze.

It also bears mention that the tractor and snowboarding games aren’t played simultaneously by all players but one at a time, with the other three players occasionally being prompted to throw snowballs or dirt at the current player’s screen. Certainly it’s amusing the first time around, but it’s still quite the flow breaker to have to sit by and not play. And while each race sessions is about one or two minutes long, that can feel like an eternity to those subjected to this game’s pro-attention deficit disorder mentality.

I’ll still stand that Mario Party 8 (provided you’re not sick of the whole board game concept) and Warioware (provided you’re not sick of…that!) make for the ideal Wii party games of choice. TV Party, on the other hand, definitely makes for a better drinking game than most of the Wii’s lineup, but it lacks longevity. Whether or not you think it’s worth your money will depend on whether or not you think a couple hours worth of wild entertainment is worth $50. That said, if for some reason, you’re still not sick of Wii Sports after two years, here you go.

Pros : Because we’re still in that year-long time frame between when Nintendo releases a new adaptor and thus forces as many developers as possible to shoehorn in uses for it before giving up and moving on to the next device they can profit of off, this game supports the Wii Fit Balance Board.

Cons : There’s that whole calibration process that you have to go through before you can use it.

3 stars

Why does this seem to be the most interesting Wii game of the holiday season?

Prince of Persia 2008

Prince of Persia : …you know how it’s become trendy in Hollywood to “reboot” franchises, throw away all the backstory from the previous (and usually bad) sequels and start fresh? Batman did it, James Bond did it, Star Trek is going to do it, The Incredible Hulk did it after only one bad movie, and now we have a video game in Prince of Persia, which ignores the Sands of Time trilogy or all of the quick death traps of the original game and starts anew. Oh, it’s an action platformer by the way.

Story : The ever mystical “Prince” character gets lost in the desert and winds up in a mystical land with a mystical woman who is trying to stop a mystical god from unleashing his mystical corruption set out by the mystical woman’s mystical dad and along the way stop the mystical god’s four mystical henchmen. The actual details about all this…mystery, gradually unfolds in a methodical manner. The Prince is a charming little jerk and mystical woman Elika plays off his arrogance quite nicely. It’s a change of pace to have a subtly-building chemistry that makes the player want to see them get hitched instead of the two characters in question spontaneously making out like in every Hollywood product. There’s a surprising twist in the end and yes, there will be a sequel. We are talking about a next-generation game after all, so of course there will be two more games.

If a fantasy setting spectrum exists out there, this new Prince of Persia would be leaning more towards Chronicles of Narnia than Aladdin, as opposed to all of this game’s predecessors. Just glancing the opening flourishes of magic energy that embrace the title screen, there’s a bit of a jarring disconnection that went through my mind as I found myself having to reluctantly drop any previous expectations set by the Sands of Time. Even entering a code that transforms Elika and the Prince into Farah and Sands of Time-Prince (I guess that’s his name) wasn’t enough, as even these skins seemed too well-nourished to resemble their previous generation.

Actually, the “unlearning” process does take a good deal of time to put up with. This new Prince is an advocate of good fitness and proper nutrition as opposed to his skinny cousin, as he has a much easier time latching on to ledges and platforms. Rather than struggle to make it across a single wooden pole, the new Prince leaps from cliff to cliff with the greatest of ease, with Elika there to offer an almost always successful double-jump maneuver.

And there’s death, or lack thereof. The sense of peril that came with the previous games, let alone Prince of Persia games in general, is lost when you know that Elika will be able to catch you and pull you to safety. The same thing happens in combat when you’re about to meet your (no doubt-mysterious) Maker when Elika flashes a light and helps you recover. Once again, Ubi Soft Montreal displays their disdain at the notion of their main character dying (like with Assassin’s Creed and Sands of Time.) by coming up with a needlessly flashy system of death. But don’t mistake that to mean you’ll just be able to beat the game through attrition over skill. Elika will only take you to the last safe platform, and some areas will have you navigating large cliffs, slides and so forth before you ever find solid ground. Also, enemies recover health when you die, so the game is at least smart in disguising its punishment for failure. Likewise, being able to jump and plummet anywhere knowing full well that a superpowered-supermodel will save you does at least open up some room for taking chances.

Bear with me as I try to describe the format of this adventure. Instead of a linear path from start to finish, the game throws at you a somewhat-open world with a series of fountains that need to be activated to purify the land of its corruption. Along the way, you’ll jump, climb, shimmy, shuffle and fall down a lot throughout the many elaborate platform sequences that the past games were known for, expect the path doesn’t feel as linear and forced as in those games. The other difference is that there’s a bit of a thrill in traversing large stretches of otherwise seemingly-impassible territory as supposed to the slower, more meticulous struggle of past games. In a fairly intuitive twist, the four face buttons are divided based on these basic utilities; sword, jump, claw, woman. So, for example, you’ll press the jump button to swing from poles, or the woman button to tell Elika to save you.

Once you reach a fountain, you fight one of four bosses that guard the region, followed by you purifying the land and moving on to the next fountain.

Now, in order to open up the number of fountains you can access, you’re going to need revisit the newly “purified” lands, which will have these blue orbs (light seeds, if you will) floating around for you to collect in what’s very much a cheap way to lengthen the gameplay. And you’ll subsequently need to use these orbs to unlock new and flashy but lame “powers”. These powers only trigger when you approach certain pads and consist of two “run real fast and avoid obstacle” mini-games and two powers that are pretty much “you teleporting to other parts of the area in an otherwise forced attempt to make the player gradually unlock the game world.

And the combat is more flash than substance. Enemies appear on an infrequent and sometimes avoidable basis, and the fundamentals of each one-on-one encounter is the same. You time your blocks to avoid taking damage, and likewise time your attacks accordingly. The sword/jump/glove/woman format takes form here in the form of attack combinations and it’s admittedly very satisfying when you can juggle your enemy in the air with sword and Elika attacks and just conveniently have the combo end with a quick-time event…speaking of, there sure are a ton of quick-time events within a single fight and these can sometimes get bothersome when you frequently get too close to a cliff and have to mash a button to stay alive. But being that fights are infrequent, you’ll rarely find yourself frustrated, especially once you’ve picked up on the ebb and flow of battle.

Which is a recurring theme for my play time with Prince of Persia, actually. In any other game, a play time-lengthening fetch quest and the same battles over and over again would be a score killer in my books. But somehow, someway, Prince of Persia not only keeps things interesting but kept me enthralled. Once I stopped mashing buttons and adapted to the pace, I allowed myself to get pulled into the excited tug-of-war like struggle to deplete the enemy’s health bar while avoiding many, many close call quick time events. The light seed collecting suddenly became interesting instead of monotonous, as it involved pulling off more of the game’s dynamic platforming. Most of the light seeds are in plain sight and you’ll often find yourself collecting a bunch, only to see more in the distance and talk yourself into gathering some more and exploring this beautiful new landscape that was only recently bleak and desolate.

Prince of Persia has that certain “it” factor to it. In fact it might actually have several “it” factors. There’s an “it” factor where you keep telling yourself “okay, I’ll just play one more level.” There’s an “it” factor where you find yourself pulled in as the Prince and Elika discuss the backstory of each area, villain, proverb or likewise. There’s an “it” factor where the worlds around you, along with the beautiful music, conspire to immerse you into the experience. And there’s an “it” factor where you walk away from the shocking conclusion, completely blown away at what you’ve just experienced.

The game has flaws but they’re cleverly disguised. This is the rare game that you’ll want to savor rather than plow through for the sake of moving on to the next game. There’s about 10-12 hours of solid gameplay to be had here, and I can guarantee you’ll want to revisit this game later on. This Prince of Persia redux is a keeper, folks. I can’t think of the last game that truly hypnotized me, and it’s one of the few games this year where I didn’t find myself disappointed in any aspect of the game from beginning to end. If you want mindless twitch action, there are a hundred other games waiting for you, but if you want a game that’ll leave an impression on you for years to come, well here you go.

Pros : In the absence of anything else to say, I guess I’ll bring up again the fact that there are unlockable skins based on personas from Sands of Time, as well as Beyond Good and Evil and Assassin’s Creed.

Cons: Unlocking them seems to require some kind of promotional code. I guess some of the Xbox achievements are a bit frivolous in a way. You’ll seem to be rewarded with 5 of them within the opening level.

4 1/2 stars

I’m not Persian.

Mirror's Edge

Mirror’s Edge : A first person RUNNING game from Electronic Arts and Battlefield 1942-developer Dice.

Story : So evil corporations are ruling and oppressing the masses with their…well they’re evil alright, and whatever makes then so evil is enough to warrant a group of “runners” who leap across rooftops to give each other information that this evil corporation doesn’t want you to know about. Plot develops into some kind of not-really-well-explained conspiracy involving protagonist Faith’s sister being framed for murder and you getting to the bottom of this. The motivations for all parties involved isn’t exactly explained other than “the bad guys are evil companies” and “the good guys are sticking it to them” and for all I know, the plot was written by a graphic designer who wears a Che Guevara shirt and listens to Rage Against the Machine without being too certain why it who it is that he’s being told to kill in the name of. The cinematics between missions all employ that Flash-like computer animation style that’s common in several cartoons and Esurance commercials. Oh, and the story sucks. Try not to laugh during the final sequence. Your laughter, however, will be more emotion displayed than throughout the entire game.

Oh, and being a new franchise in this console generation, the game attempts to set up a sequel or five.

Mirror’s Edge leaves a killer first impression. After you go through the tutorial where you chase around an ally-turned-plot-device across the city as a means of explaining the unorthodox control scheme, the game throws you into an exciting first level (also the game’s demo), where the player leaps from building to building, pulling deft-defying maneuvers and watching in awe as Faith reacts to the world around her, all the while bullets are whizzing past. All of this hits a crescendo where you grab onto the side of a helicopter, which swings around dramatically before descending in front of a glass building, as Faith stares into her reflection and looks like she’s having deep thoughts, as if the designers think this game is smarter than it really is.

The pitch to Mirror’s Edge, if you will, is that the game is a platformer akin to the recent Prince of Persia games, but with a first person perspective and in a utopian city. Faith runs, jumps, slides, shimmies, wall-runs, rolls out of falls and generally dies a lot as she makes her way across a linear path. There’s a great emphasis on the “first person” aspect as smart vision effects and camera positioning makes you feel like you are indeed in the head of someone that’s in a hurry. You’ll knock down many doors and it always feels like a jarring experience. To compliment this emphasis on speed, the shoulder buttons have been redesigned for all you’re navigational needs. There’s a button for actions involving going UP, a button for actions that involve going DOWN, a button for turning around, and a button for destroying other things or lives.

The name of the game is momentum and the more you run or wall-run, the faster you go and the more of an adrenaline junkie you feel like. You’ll definitely have a world of this loveable momentum for that first level, but later missions are designed less for running and more for fidgeting around the game world. I guess you could call it someone’s idea of a puzzle element, but you’ll often find yourself jumping and trying to cling on to every object in a room trying to find out what it is the game wants you to latch on to and thus use to advance. It also hurts that a large chunk of the game is not played in those high-altitude building-jumping environments but indoors, in confined spaces like boiler rooms and such, where you have less room to soar and more of a need to find the exact pipe that you need to shimmy across.

And then there are the guards. I was led to believe that one would be able to avoid confrontation in Mirror’s Edge with enough skill, but the alternative to not trying to engage the enemy is to get shot at while you climb the necessary ladder. Your best bet is usually to try to wall-run and then drop kick an enemy, but later levels see the enemies realize that this is a runner’s technique of choice and thus avoid the walls altogether. Faith’s boxing skills are below amateur and thus you won’t get far engaging in fisticuffs, so you’re best alternative is to time a button press with you’re enemy’s melee attack to instantly KO him and swipe his gun (and whatever ammo is in the clip). While gun combat is preferred over fist-fighting armed guards for countless obvious reasons, the shooting mechanics in this game are far from spot-on as well; headshots aren’t anymore damaging than leg shots and its all trial-and-error oriented. Mis-time your counterattack by a split-second and you’re as good as gunned down and starting back at the last checkpoint, ready to bolt at the armed guard head on to try it again.

The later levels seem to get worse and worse in all of the above regards. There’s less of the thrilling outdoor sequences and more of the claustrophobic indoor frustration…and plenty more guards to kill your Faith. There are only nine missions, equally about 6 hours of gameplay, and I guess I should just be thankful that there’s no arbitrary fetch quest or back-tracking, but I couldn’t say that I was having fun playing the actual content. It seems that to properly get a thrill out of Mirror’s Edge, you need to memorize levels (and I mean really memorize them), and then replay them in time trial mode so you can brag about your times online…or post gameplay videos of breezing through a level on Youtube. If this game does one thing right, it’s that if you can finish a level without a single flaw in your approach, then you’re Mirror’s Edge bragging-rights video will look more cinematic and breathtaking than someone’s Super Metroid speed-run video. So I guess this game’s best value is not in playing it yourself but watching other people better than you playing.

But Mirror’s Edge does put me in an awkward position. It’s an original gameplay concept and I tend to feel that these should be awarded, and I tend to think that if the game succeeds, then a sequel could improve and polish this concept into something unique and exhilarating. But if you were to ask me whether or not to buy Mirror’s Edge, the answer would be “no, unless you like to post videos on Youtube of you beating Super Mario Bros in 15 minutes.” The art style of the game is strong but the gameplay is an exercise in frustration and you’ll experience most of the greatest possible thrills within the first level or two.

Pros : …amazingly, I’ve neglected to talk about the game’s visual style, which is mostly breathtaking I guess.

Cons : To post your time trials online, you need to surrender your e-mail address and sign up for an EA Account.

3 1/2 stars

I am fully aware I described myself in the story paragraph.

Call of Duty: World at War

Call of Duty : World At War : A World War 2 first person shooter developed by Treyarch, and using the gameplay engine from Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty 4 : Modern Warfare (as well as their boxart design, I guess.)

Story : The missions generally fall under two separate, largely unrelated storylines, involving the Americans attacking the Japanese and the Russian invasion of Berlin. Between missions, there are these over-stylized cutscenes that attempt to explain the context of each mission, splicing old war footage with fancy flourishes and throwing random big words at you like “60,000 DEAD!” and “FLAME THROWER” in what feels less like a gritty war montage than an MTV commercial. What little story is told during the missions, however, presents an interesting, slow building plot of their own; the Americans show gradually increasing resentment for their involvement while the Russians are led by a borderline-psychotic sergeant who comes off as more genocidal than his Nazi adversaries.

The greatest thing to happen to the Call of Duty series since it began to depict World War 2 was for the series to leave World War 2. Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare took full advantage of the change in time period to produce an incredibly memorable and varied campaign that threw one great moment after another at the player. So from the onset, returning to World War 2 feels like a baffling decision, made less as a tribute to the fighting men of the day and more as easy money for Activision.

The core gameplay in World At War is like past Call of Duty games in that most of the time, it’s you and your fellow countrymen against a troop of enemy soldiers. Going in guns blazing will result in a tragic death (sadly no longer greeted by assorted famous anti-war quotes like in past games, as if to say they’ve acknowledged this game isn’t being made to spread a message), so you’ll have to find cover and pick your shots. And like in past games, the game gives you the sense that you’re a small man in a big army, using old guns from the time, pushing the enemy further back in a giant, chaotic war zone and not playing the proverbial one man army on a rampage.

And like in past games, you’ll have a tank driving sequence, a tank destroying sequence, gun turret sequences, bigger gun turret sequences, gun turret-destroying sequences, sniper rifle sequences, and for forth. The key word here is “like past games” because this game is a whole lot like those past games. Except for a few key events (in a horrifically intriguing moment, your first mission as a Russian troop has you waking up surrounded by the bodies of your comrades after a slaughter), you’ve played all of this before and very little has changed. The ambiance of being in the middle of an epic battle in World War 2 that was once compelling has lost its shock value.

Okay, there are a few new things. The fire technology in video games has advanced enough for historians to conveniently remember that there were flamethrowers and Molotov cocktails in World War 2. They make for a great visual effect, but I can’t help but feel that these features were less inspired by World War 2 than Grand Theft Auto 3. There are also bayonets now…which brings me to a suggestion I’d like to pass on to Treyarch; try to make frequent-occurring animations look as unscripted as possible. The first time a Japanese Banzai tripped me and tried to pierce me with his bayonet, only for my troop to pull away his rifle and stab him in the throat with a knife knocked my socks off. The subsequent twenty times that this happened knocked my patience off.

All things considered, it’s a relatively solid campaign that’ll at least provide a beefy challenge, and it brings us to the game’s third-biggest selling point (behind NAZI ZOMBIES and riding on the coattails of Call of Duty 4), the co-operative options. Up to four players online can band together and play through…whatever mission the game randomly decides you guys to play. Either you can get four buddies together and play at a leisurely pace, or compete for points based on such scoring factors as “kills” and “more kills”. On top of this, you can obtain special “death cards” that either help the team (1 or 2 of them) or hinder you (the other 15) but likewise will help earn additional points towards your rank.

You remember the rank, right? From Call of Duty 4? It’s back in World of War. All of the competitive multiplayer options are once again perk-oriented. You create a character class, complete with your choice of weapons, as well as bonus traits and abilities. Increasing your rank, by way of playing through the game’s assorted multiplayer modes will improve your rank and thus unlock more weapons, perks and modes. I’m a bit ticked that not all of the multiplayer modes are available from the start, and there’s the argument that the hardcore gamers who pull all-nighters to improve their rank are going to have a distinct edge over whoever is just playing the game to kill a few minutes, but alas. The big difference between this and Call of Duty 4 is the change in setting, so which one you prefer will depend on personal taste, but I guess there are people out there that enjoy grinding levels in a shooter and well, here’s another chance to do it all over again.

Finally, there’s NAZI ZOMBIES, the bonus mode that you’ll unlock for beating the campaign. If the game had any intention of treating the war like the more violent conflict in human history, it just went out the window here. (Though I guess the mere presence of online deathmatches set in World War 2 already spat in the fact of dignity.) In a nutshell, you and up to three others are in this one house being attacked by gradually increasing numbers of NAZI ZOMBIES. Killing these NAZI ZOMBIES will earn points that can be used on weapons, ammo, opening up two more sections of the house or repairing whatever boards the NAZI ZOMBIES tore down to get in. It’s a novel distraction at best, but it’s hampered by the fact that there’s only one house. The multiplayer match type of “a group of players against waves of enemies” is starting to become popular. That said, this mode doesn’t quite measure up to, say, Gears of War 2’s “Horde Mode” or Left 4 Dead’s…well the entire game Left 4 Dead is pretty much this mode.

All things considered, Call of Duty: World At War is a solid game. It’s just walking a beaten path, and it’s only attempts to innovate the formula are through following the latest trends from other shooters. If you’re a massive co-operative multiplayer enthusiast then you’ll have some fun with this, and likewise, for people who have nary played a World War 2 shooter before, then you’ll be in for quite the experience. But there’s an overwhelming sense of deja-vu waiting for veterans of this franchise, and most of us will be left thinking this series should stop looking to the past and stick to a more Modern approach.

Pros : No forced tutorial! It’s like the game knew that the majority of players have played Call of Duty 4. The one turret level where you switch between different guns on a single airplane gloriously throws you into the 1940s.

Cons : The last couple of missions sometimes feel like the game is just tossing wave after wave of enemies at you. Sometimes an enemy soldier will just stand there in the open and not do anything. Maybe this is meant to simulate a rookie soldier’s nerves freezing up.

3 ½ stars.

Ugh. That makes 3 Treyarch games in a row. I feel like I passed a stone.

Now I’m sure the people at Treyarch are loving individuals with caring families who donate frequently to charity, but perhaps for reasons outside of their control, it seems all of their games are uninspired, big franchise cash-ins. Now, they’re better than most big franchise cash-ins, but they still have a decided lack of ambition.

Spiderman: Web of Shadows

Spiderman : Web of Shadows : An original Spiderman action-adventure game…essentially what we’re getting in the absence of a Spiderman movie for Activision to try to cash in on. They even managed to shoehorn Wolverine in the game (right on the front box) to squeeze out some extra dollars.

Story : In what could very well be filed under the most typical form of fan-fiction, Venom is unleashing an army of self-produced symbiotes. There’s a really melodramatic sequence at the beginning of the game where Spiderman walks in slow-motion all depressed-like while explosions, chaos and somber piano music play in the background. The story is…far from spectacular, and serves more as a vehicle to justify the numerous weird enemies that litter New York City. At least Spidery has a few clever lines to brighten the mood but boy does this game fail at being serious. And if don’t already have some degree of familiarity with the Spiderman mythos (comics, cartoons…more to go by than just the movie) then you’re going to be lost and confused.

An aside: As a Spiderman fan, it strikes me as perplexing that a game about symbiotes lacks Carnage.

Web of Shadows is some kind of butchering of what is otherwise the most popular aspect of the Spiderman universe, the symbiotes and Venom. Once upon a time, it was considered a unique and exciting event when we thought there was only one symbiote that made people powerful and corrupt, and it was special because we either only saw it on Spiderman or somebody that wanted to kill Spiderman. And here we have an entire army of symbiotes infecting normal people and running roughshod over New York. I guess part of the reason for this symbiomadness, to continue the running theme of fan-fiction gone bad, is to answer to the question of “what would Wolverine (among others) look like with a symbiote?” (The answer is “like crap.”)

Also running with the black living ooze theme of the game, Spiderman has the famous black suit (the straight black one from the comics, not the lame duck black suit from the movie) and the players can switch between traditional red costume and the more emo attire with the press of a button. Each one has their own slightly different moveset (which can be upgraded at your whim using points earned from…doing stuff), and the suit you wear the most may as well be left up to personal preference. Likewise, the different suits are connected to a Fable-like morality system where you can choose to be good or bad…on paper. What actually happens in the game is that after a major battle, the game asks you to choose between “red suit” and “black suit”, often giving you no hint as to what the repercussions of either option will yield. This all supposedly adds “red points” or “black points” to some kind of score that isn’t immediately visible and only affects which of two endings the game gives you, and the moral compass doesn’t quite stretch far enough in the actual game component; more often than not, the only opportunity to do good and earn red points presents itself when a civilian flies out of a car that exploded because you threw it at the bad guys.

So the developers at Treyarch have been making Spiderman games for as long as people have been making Spiderman movies, and it’s finally starting to show here. Unlike superhero games that are usually just generic beat-em-ups where whatever superhero you play as punches and kicks a lot of bad guys regardless of what his or her superpowers actually are, this right here is definitely a Spiderman game; it can only be a Spiderman game, and the main character model could be dressed as a nun and you would still think you were playing a Spiderman game. You’ll fight enemies on the ground, fight enemies while web swinging and even fight enemies while climbing walls. And for the first time, you’ll be left with the impression that every single plane of existence that Spiderman can navigate has been polished and fully realized. You are given more agility and options to beat up on opponents that are also crawling on walls. You can kick enemies while swinging on webs (which is hard for Spidey to nail, but action is his reward), and in an ingenious coup from Devil May Cry 4, Spidey can instantly pull himself towards an enemy and attack, provided the enemy doesn’t counter with an even more awesome attack animation. What otherwise seems like a small new ability becomes a big deal in practice, as you can now leap from enemy to enemy without hitting the ground. When you get down to it, the combat is far from deep (it’s around God of War levels of shallowness) but it’s hard to not find the spectacle of some battles.

Just brace yourself for a lot of battling.

Like most recent web-swinging games, the bulk of the gameplay in Spiderman: Web of Shadows takes place in a virtual New York City. This approach has become popular in that it gives players the freedom to web-swing their little hearts out all over New York. However, the challenge that so-called open world games face is to actually have their open world filled with enough interesting content to keep the player captivated once they grow tired of tinkering with their virtual city. Often, these kinds of games succumb to the pressure and just fill most of the content with missions where you deal with respawning armies of minions, and Web of Shadows not only does this, but it does this without shame.

It feels like an understatement for me to say that the vast majority of missions in the game comprise of you going to an area and clearing out all baddies. I’ll try to give a few examples.

In the opening missions, Spiderman is being taught the web pulling attack that I mentioned above. So the game makes you do this move three times on a still target. The next mission will ask you to use that move on ten criminals on the street. Then the game will ask you to defeat twenty more criminals.

This is not an isolated incident, either, the game will frequently force you repeat the same missions back to back, and they’ll almost always consist of the same idea of defeating lots and lots of enemies. Even more baffling is that the game’s idea of an optional side-quest is the same thing; defeat 20 enemies…50 enemies…200 enemies.

Another example, a later game mission asks me to escort a truck around the city and protect survivors. No one really like escort missions in games but I’ll deal with it, I thought. The truck will make about 3-5 stops in which the civilians who need rescuing will take their sweet, sweet time making their way to the van. After you finally complete this headache of a mission, the game forces you to search the city for 3 more trucks that are looking for survivors.

Every time the game introduces a new enemy type, you’ll probably have to do two or three missions that comprise of killing X number of that enemy. By the time I was nearing the game’s end, I was told I had just unlocked an Achievement stating that I had defeated 1000 enemies. That is not an achievement I wear with pride. This is game-lengthening of the worst kind, a flagrant attempt to stretch out the number of hours it takes to beat a game to avoid being labeled as “short” in game reviews. The reality of the matter is that more people will wind up putting a lot more time into a game a third the length of Web of Shadows, like Call of Duty 4, from said game being more replayable because of the decided lack of filler.

It’s a shame, too, because the game does show the occasional flash of brilliance. Almost every boss battle has a unique hook to it, whether it’s Vulture forcing you to jump from one enemy to another to reach him, or Wolverine stopping mid-fight to…ask you some Spiderman trivia. This game does something monumental in that it presents the first ever instance where I thought Electro wasn’t lame. But these moments of bliss are brief, and lost in the hours and hours of tedium that is the regular story quests.

Web of Shadows is a game that players are going to try really hard to like, but the game will try even harder to make you hate it. The core mechanics are great, and the makings of a potentially great Spiderman game are here, but everything that surrounds Spiderman is dull and repetitive. Perhaps the developers can now focus on creating interesting levels and set-pieces for the next game and provide a more stimulating experience, but for now, you’d best pass.

Pros : Swinging through a war-torn New York is at least a treat on the eyes. Depending on your moral alignment and whether or not the game engine is in the right mood, you can sometimes summon an ally to help battle.

Cons : Camera occasionally buggers out of control. Some missions will start to glitch up should you fail…which at best simply means that the marker indicating where to go will be slightly off-place, and at worst, will prevent you from triggering a necessary quick-time event and force you to restart the console.

3 stars

So far, Treyarch have been responsible for this and the below-reviewed Quantum of Solace game. And they’ve got one more big holiday release in Call of Duty : World at War…which I just may review next!

007: Quantum of Solace

Quantum of Solace : A first person shooter based on the recent James Bond movie and powered by the Call of Duty 4 engine.

Story : Like most video game tie-ins, the story in the Quantum of Solace video game is a random mishmash of plot points from the movie tied together in a way that’s nothing short of incoherent unless you’ve seen the movie(s) that it’s based on. This game in particular goes an extra mile (or should I say cuts off an extra mile) by not even rendering cutscenes acted out by the character models but rather having the story told with phone conversations between the main characters while a computer screen from M16 provides some kind of visual that may as well been done in Flash. This game even doubles the incoherence of the plot; for the first hour or so of gameplay, you’ll play missions based on the Quantum of Solace movie, and right before you reach the final sequence, Bond begins to reminisce about the events that brought him here, and then you play about 3 hours worth of missions based on Casino Royale. Way to break up the flow of the storytelling, eh?

The James Bond that Daniel Craig portrays disposes the cocky swagger, unrealistic gadgets and over-the-top personalities of previous incarnations in favor of an emotionally scarred, cold-blooded killer who operates on his motives over that of his superiors and lost his ability to love. Displaying that kind of development in a video game is a bit tricky, so the Quantum of Solace video game plays less like a character study on the iconic British spy and more like your typical game of “one man army killing hundreds of henchmen.”

Quantum of Solace’s rather shamelessly uses every gameplay convention popularized from the last five or six years; the cover button, the ability to only store 3 weapons, the self-regenerating health bar, the screen changing colours to reflect your character nearing death, the quick-time event cutscenes (actually, melee-attacking an enemy will trigger a quick-time event cutscene that asks you to think fast and press the desired button…but not too fast, as the game gives you a surprising amount of leeway to press that single button), a contrived “hacking” mini-game that simulates breaking into locked doors by pressing the d-pad in the direction the game tells you to, conveniently placed explosive containers that just happen to be placed next to where the enemy guards are hiding, the obligatory gun-turret sequence, several obligatory sniper rifle sequences…

It’s a shooter alright. You could take away the cover button and you could very well be playing an especially uninspired version of Call of Duty 4. In fact the only time the game surprised me with a clever idea was at the final level, when I had to shoot fire extinguishers on the wall to put out fires that were blocking my path. (And I’m sure that’s been done already too and I don’t remember it.)

The exceptions to the above statement are the stealth sequences, where the game decides to break up the pace by using every gameplay convention from the last five or six years prior to the five to six years that popularized regenerating health bars. Enemies that walk the same predetermined patrol routine repeatedly even if it’s just a circle around a scaffolding, security cameras, the silenced gun, the ability to approach from behind and execute a stealth kill…these are the parts where the game remembers that you can’t make a Bond game without trying to make people feel a bit nostalgic for the days of Goldeneye. For better or for worse, there’s little penalty for not being stealthy, as blowing your cover simply means guards with bigger guns appear and you get thrown in the same firefights you’ve been playing throughout the rest of the game. Speaking of which, you may either like or despise this, but if you stay hiding in one spot long enough, the enemy AI will not only chuck grenades at you but will try to flank you and shoot from behind.

The gameplay itself is…mostly solid, but a few odd quirks pull you out of the experience. The training to become a 00 agent must be nothing short of incredible, as Bond seems to have little trouble killing enemies by blind-firing your gun from cover. The game tries very hard to immerse the player, to “experience playing as James Bond” by concocting all kinds of staged events in each level…most of which comprise of things exploding around you and the camera shaking a lot. These events come off as too…scripted, largely in part because, in contrast, Bond will barely flinch if an unscripted grenade just happens to explode on top of him. I’ve got nothing against these kinds of scripted events, and in fact when used properly can really pull you into a game (see the Call of Duty games, in particular Modern Warfare) but the ones here feel too inorganic; they make you feel less like you’re part of a thrilling combat scenario and more like you’re on a stage as gimmicked debris falls down, fireworks go off to simulate an explosion and a trap door opens to reveal the path onward. I guess what I’m trying to say is, the game tries hard to be immersive but fails.

And I haven’t even gotten to the James Bond aspect of Quantum of Solace…which is to say there isn’t much. I understand the lack of gadget weapons from past Bond games, and even the lack of an Aston-Martin driving sequence, but if not for Daniel Craig’s likeness and how the death sequence predictably comprises of blood slowly falling down the screen like in the intros of 007 movies (and Goldeneye…and shockingly, Goldeneye did it better! The “blood” here looks rather plastic), then you may as well be playing a generic first person shooter. I’ll even go on a limb and say the authenticity of the game is severely hurt by the fact that an MI6 operative is still giving you orders like you’re a soldier, despite how this Bond spends most of the movies working in defiance of MI6. The only actual “Bond gadget” is your phone, which acts as another menu screen, displaying assorted facts such as a level map you’re not going to need because the levels are incredibly linear in nature. Linearity isn’t always a bad thing, but this game is plagued with invisible walls in the worst way possible. If you’re not supposed to be somewhere the developers want you to be, you’ll know it.

The Quantum of Solace video game isn’t completely bad. There aren’t any game-breaking glitches or bugs like in most movie tie-ins and the online multiplayer is decent enough that you can find and play about 3 or 4 matches in the same it takes to even try setting up one match in Gears of War 2. But being functional shouldn’t be the nicest thing I have to say about the game. It’s a run of the mill shooter that you’d miss absolutely nothing for if you elect not to play it, and doesn’t even fare well as a James Bond game. If you haven’t played a shooter within the last 7 years, then Quantum of Solace has potential to blow your mind, but if names like “Halo”, “Gears of War” and especially “Call of Duty” mean anything to you, then there’s nothing about Quantum of Solace that’ll shake or stir you up.

Pros : “The Man With The Golden Gun” multiplayer match type is blatantly ripped out of Goldeneye and appears here.

Cons : Otherwise, there’s nothing in multiplayer that hasn’t been ripped out any other game. Activision couldn’t even be bothered to acquire the rights to the actual Quantum of Solace theme song from Alicia Keys…well I guess they didn’t have a problem licensing it for Guitar Hero as a downloadable song people have to pay for.

3 stars

I’d like to apologize for the painfully predictable line about shaking and stirring.

Chrono Trigger DS

Chrono Trigger DS : An altered rendition of the celebrated 1995 Super Nintendo RPG.

Story : An ordinary, silent joe who just happens to be a sword expert named Chrono (or whatever you’d like to name him, as most text-based RPGs of the time let you name the characters after any profanity you choose) gets involved in his best friend’s experiment gone awry, and their mishap evolves into a quest that involves traveling through time, having no regards for altering the course of history and aiming to stop an evil force. It’s simple and occasionally illogical, but at the same time is also interesting, charming and moves at a brisk pace without under-developing characters or shoving mountains of dialogue down your throat. The translation is improved here from previous releases, which simply means that the game feels more…right, this time around.

Normally I get upset whenever a game is altered and released at full price on another console instead of just posted on a digital distribution service in all of its original glory and at a price that reflects the fact that you’re playing a ten-plus year old game. But Chrono Trigger gets an easy pass in my books for being, well, Chrono Trigger, and for not only holding up phenomenally well by modern standards, but providing steep competition for contemporary RPGs.

Seriously, most RPGs of today are either vaguely interactive movies, mountains of character dialogue, or exercises in extreme patience in grinding to level up your party. Here’s a game that manages to find just the right balance.

Chrono Trigger is a game that you have to look very hard at in order to find genuine faults. There are no random battles; instead every encounter is scripted in terms of appearance and enemy placement and the player even has a little freedom to pick his fights. Combat is simple, you either attack, cast magic or use items, but there is some depth in how certain spells will affect multiple enemies based on their location, and how allies can learn an assortment of double-team attacks. Unless you run away from every single enemy fight thrown at you, you’ll never need to grind to level up, yet major battles will still find a way to test you. It’s a much more accessible RPG than the more needlessly convoluted releases of recent history.

So my one thought, coming into this DS re-release wasn’t whether or not Chrono Trigger would be worth the money, but whether or the changes Square Enix made to the game would completely screw up the experience.

The answer to that question is “yes, but the game equips you to handle it.”

The game lets you go to menus and determine how you want all of the options to appear. You can choose to use one screen to display the battle as it happens and the other to display all the menus or use the traditional screen setup (which you’ll probably want to, as to avoid constantly shifting your eyes.) You can control movement and menus with either the stylus or the d-pad…and you’ll probably prefer the latter. You can choose to have the game insert the sleek but out of place anime cutscenes that the Playstation re-release of Chrono Trigger included, or not.

Now, some changes aren’t optional, and for people who played the original to death, there’s going to be a slight learning curve. Many items have been renamed as a result of the translation, as have several smaller enemies. The “Roly Poly” now answers to the less intimidating “Roundzilla.” Shop menus have been restructured to display info on both screens. These aren’t game-crippling flaws, just something to adjust to.

Just like how someone who’s never played Chrono Trigger before might have to adjust the 1995 graphics. No, I’m not going to insult the graphics, as the game still looks great, thanks in part to the art style contributed by…whomever was the guy that did art for Dragonball Z (which will also explain why you keep swearing Chrono looks like Goku and the imps look like some green dude.) But certain sequences, like the Mode 7 racing scene, which looked technologically awesome back in its heyday, are going to look awful to the untrained eye. Those players are just going to have to trust me when I say the game is worth adapting to.

As for what else is new in this re-release…well there’s some kind of bonus sub-game where you train some kind of monster and can pit it against other players, but it only supports local multiplayer against other Chrono Trigger DS owners so it can bugger off. There are also a new end-game side-quest that the game tries to justify by explaining that it takes place “in an alternate dimension”. This side quest gives you a chance to collect second copies of already rare items in the game, but all the artwork for the enemies and locales are reused and the story as a whole is uninteresting.

I wouldn’t say that there’s anything in Chrono Trigger DS that’s worth existing fans of the series to go out of their way to buy this version. I would say, however, that if you don’t already own Chrono Trigger, that this is the must-have RPG of 2008. Even if you have little to no previous experience with the genre, this game is friendly at breaking people into the RPG realm and compelling enough to keep you sucked in. Few other games have aged this gracefully.

Pros : After beating the game, you unlock a bonus mode where you can start over with all of your items and stats from your previous save, as well as the option to challenge the final boss at any time to make available hidden endings.

Cons : Sound effects are a bit crude by modern standards. The end-game sidequests are going to need a strategy guide.

4 ½ stars

I think I’ve settled into a theme for December.

WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2009

Here's the incredible sales pitch that pushed me over the edge and made me purchase...




WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2009 : THQ’s annual loved and hated WWE wrestling game release.

Story : For wrestling fans, 2008 will go down as the year Chris Jericho carried an entire show on his shoulders, Mike Adamle stumbled his way to the top and thus proving that talent is nary rewarded, Edge went to hell and nobody raised any questions, the year everyone but jokesters forgot that a wrestler killed his family and himself the previous year, and the year TNA made absolutely no progress in their struggle to be anything but a second-rate WWE knockoff (a mentality that has carried over into their video game!)

My heart fills with trepidation every time a new Smackdown game is announced, hyped, released and left to disappoint the (approximately) one million wrestling fans who pick up a copy. It seems that for the past couple years, developer Yukes and publisher THQ seem to focus their efforts on developing shoddy gimmick matches, game-breaking mechanics and a half-hearted single player story mode, instead of correcting the game’s numerous existing flaws. The 2009 edition seemed poised to follow in those exact footsteps, with the entire PR being focused on an elaborate new Tag Team gameplay system and the addition of the “Inferno Match”, a gimmick match that comes to us about ten years too late from when an inferno match was last considered relevant. (If we’re looking to the past for our new match ideas, how about War Games? I’m just saying…)

Well, to the surprise of no one, the Inferno match is another lame duck gimmick that you’ll probably never touch again after playing it once, except in the instance that your friends come over and want to see it for themselves and thus annoy you.

However, what will be a surprise to everyone is how well the rest of the game turned out. By and large, almost everything that has been promised in this year’s game delivers, which is certainly a shocking revelation in my mind. They even silenced a few issues that I was thinking about complaining about; like how in previous games, there only seemed to be two different difficulty settings, “Gillberg” and “opponents that instantaneously counter every maneuver you throw at them.” By default, that’ll still be the case…but if you explore the options menu, you’ll discover an elaborate new menu screen comprising of slider bars that enable you to dictate how frequently the AI counters any type of move, how easy it’ll be for you to pull off counters, and several other options. I can’t state enough how grateful I am to see these options present in a wrestling game. Thanks THQ!

And thanks THQ for the new and improved Tag Team mechanics. I know it seems absolutely baffling for a WWE game to put so much emphasis on Tag Team gameplay when the WWE itself shows complete negligence to said wrestling style, but consider me surprised as I can’t think of another wrestling game to do Tag matches so well! It didn’t occur to me until recently that Tag matches in wrestling games are always broken messes where one partner does all the work, the AI is dimwitted and it’s almost impossible to score a victory. Because of such, players would only play tornado tag matches or battle royales when more than two people were involved. Here, the man sitting on the apron has plenty to do, but is limited in that cheating will lower the momentum bar that both partners now share. Double team moves are easier to pull off and now the partner can rally the crowd to get his partner in trouble to pull off the ever-popular “hot tag”, where if executed, he’ll come in with full momentum and knock down all of his opponents. On top of that, the AI is now (mostly) reliable and will either try to break pinfalls or protect your attempts at a victory. Suddenly, tag matches have developed a unique ebb and flow, becoming fun to play and have gone from the least occurring match type to see online to the most popular.

Speaking of online…the online service has made a small leap forward. Before I could almost never start a new online session…now I can! The netcode for Smackdown vs. Raw this year has at least improved that much…but at the same time, it seems that there’s at least a full second’s worth of lag to hamper your experience. Well, I guess it’s an improvement, but a franchise as popular as the Smackdown series should be able to afford the best online support money can buy. Somebody’s college dorm room Counter-Strike server shouldn’t be outperforming one of servers of one of the largest game publishers in the country.

Otherwise, the gameplay mechanics are by and large, the same as they’ve been the last few years. I’ve finally grown to accept the right analog stick as the means to pull off grapple attacks, which feel more intuitive here than in past games, where certain directions would result in a lengthy, canned animation of your wrestler locking up before executing a move. Certain wrestling moves are interactive, where your wrestler will pull off different attacks from say, a headlock, based on what you press with the stick. You don’t need to know much about the game to get by, but at the same time, I found myself being surprised by what new abilities I didn’t know about and stumbled across from experimentation, like chop battles in the corner or a good guy’s ability to fire up after sustaining enough abuse. The game has a considerable amount of depth to study, and most characters feel unique and true to their real life personas. Rey Mysterio can bounce off the ropes with ease while Randy Orton can grab the ropes for a pinfall.

Another new and much appreciated addition is the new campaign mode, Road to Wrestlemania. Gone is the General Manager or 24/7 mode of past games that left you to manage all kinds of stats that were anything but realistic and can best be described as Some Horribly Intentioned Tragedy of gameplay. Here, there’s no micromanagement, instead you pick one of six storylines (John Cena, Triple H, Chris Jericho, CM Punk, Undertaker and a two player-optional mode with Batista and Rey Mysterio) and play through a linear series of cutscenes and matches. While many little girls are going to be upset that Jeff Hardy isn’t in the mix, much less whoever you the reader’s favorite wrestler might be, that shouldn’t matter because most of the campaigns wind up being very entertaining. The stories are creative in their own way, in part because you’ll most likely never see them work on actual television, like a wrestler forming his own country or Tommy Dreamer winning a match. There are several nice little touches too, like the announcers talking about the present storyline to not make you feel like you’re just playing regular exhibition matches, and optional side goals such as “put your opponent through a table” or “make your opponent bleed” (you know, the kind of things that would only make sense to a wrestling fan) which allow you to unlock bonus content, they help make this mode feel a bit special.

And for those that absolutely must have a single player mode that lets them play as Festus, why there’s something for you too. Career mode lets you pick a wrestler, created or otherwise, strips him of all his stats so that he has the strength, speed and charisma of a koala, and lets you fight a series of choice opponents in order to win assorted championship titles. Your performance in each match will affect what stats and special abilities your character develops; use a lot of power moves and your character’s strength rating improves and so forth. The idea is nice in theory but I always hate games where the only way to improve a wrestler’s toughness or health rating is to get beat up. Likewise, the game wants you to use your created wrestler in this mode, because the game gives you no alternative for improving his or her stats to anything beyond jobber. Any wrestler you create will, by default, be a weakling and the only way to fix that is to go through this otherwise lengthy process. This presents quite an issue for fans that like to create twenty or thirty wrestlers, be it their creation or otherwise. THQ has promised a fix for this in January.

At the end of the day, it’s still a Smackdown game, albeit the most improved Smackdown game in several years. If you haven’t gotten sick of the Smackdown engine (we’ve all complained about the clipping issues in the past, but you sit down with 3DStudioMax and try to create 300 move animations, and then find a way to make them match 50 different wrestler body-sizes and then you can talk) and you’re not a Fire Pro Wrestling elitist who harps on everything THQ has thrown out since No Mercy, then you’ll be quite pleased with Smackdown vs. Raw 2009. No, it’s not perfect, but if the perfect wrestling game were to ever come out, we’d never have a need to buy the next yearly installment that promises us the world and gives us Snitsky. What is here is strong enough to make the plunge, and for what its worth, it makes the TNA Impact game look stale in comparison.

Pros : The wrestler creation tools are strong as always. You have a ton of possible clothing and attack choices for your wrestler, and plenty of ways to tweak their entrance. New for 2009 is the Create a Finisher option, which while not being exceptionally versatile (you’re choosing from a list of canned animations), can still be a tad interesting if you tinker with it. The roster doesn’t feel too dated, as while there are a number of wrestlers that have long since been fired, almost all of the current big stars are accounted for. THQ promises downloadable content in the future.

Cons : The Miz looks like an alien child. Commentary as a whole is still terrible in all regards. Some of the voicework sounds like it was done in a log cabin in the French Alps. In-game dynamic advertising…I don’t mind it when it relates to wrestling-related ads like merchandise, but I’m already sick of seeing the HMV logo splattered at various locations. No legends, as there’s going to be an All Legends wrestling game in March.

4 stars

More holiday shopping advice.

Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix

Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix : The latest update to Street Fighter 2. That’s right, it’s 2008 and there’s yet ANOTHER re-release of Street Fighter 2.

Story : Well, I guess Street Fighter 2 set the standard back in its’ heyday, of fighting games having incredibly cheesy storylines. The core of the story is that there’s an evil superpowered dictator and to get to him, you’re going to have to beat up an assortment of colourful characters that are going to come across as completely bizarre to anyone but the people that grew up playing these games. Can’t complain, though, as the actual story only rears its ugly head in each character’s ending. If you don’t believe me on this story issue, try and dig up any of the numerous anime movies based on Street Fighter and tell me this stuff is at all compelling.

So I’ve presented myself a challenge in trying to adequately explain what Street Fighter 2 is, in that the game was such an ingrained part of my childhood that I take it for granted about as much as I take breathing for granted. Street Fighter 2 is the genre-defining “fighting game”, where you choose from a selectable roster of characters and battle either a series of computer challengers or whomever decides to put a quarter in the arcade machine and test their mettle against your own. The crux of the gameplay is that each character has their own unique set of punches, kicks and button combination-triggered special attacks, and victory hinges on your mastery of each character, as well as your ability to outthink and out-twitch your challenger. I’d like to be able to say “this was all the rage in arcades back in the early 90s” but that probably doesn’t mean much to most readers that didn’t grow up in the early 90s and thus have no idea how popular arcades used to be. And I say “yet ANOTHER re-release” because Street Fighter 2 has been re-released many times over in the name of adding characters, fixing glitches, tweaking the character balance and wringing every possible penny from the wallets of fans. This brings us to the latest rendition…

One part a labour of love, designed by assorted smaller parties and tournament players that really love their Street Fighter 2, and one part a game tie-in to help promote the upcoming Street Fighter 4 (much like the Bionic Commando remake from earlier in the year) is Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix.

I can tell that this game was made to satisfy the diehards. I know this because I wandered around the options screen and found a menu called “Dip Switch settings”, which is some kind of fighting game fanatic lingo for “really, really, really hardcore settings”. These options allow you to alter such massive settings as, and I quote, “Can do Sagat’s super using a kick button during a 1 frame window” and “When Bison does a headstomp that hits a rising opponent only a few pixels above ground level, he briefly pauses” and “Percentage chance that the first frame of Blanka’s vertical ball is unblockable” and… well, most of these are changes that are so minute that I can’t be bothered to notice, but a hardcore fan will fight to the death over the rights to dictate the fate of the first frame of Blanka’s spinning ball attack. They will gladly appreciate being given such mighty power over such few pixels.

For the rest of us, here’s what’s new in Street Fighter HD in a nutshell: redrawn graphics, remixed music, assorted minor tweaks, and functional online play.

All of the artwork has been redone and scanned in high resolution, to give the game a clean and crisp look. No more pixilation or beady eyes, folks. The characters all look like the jacked up comic book/anime superheroes they were intended to be, or at least much as they can while retaining every single attack animation and pose from the previous games. The game does look great; not Guilty Gear great, but that could just be me relishing in my Guilty Gear fanboy-hood. The music has also been redone and most of the new compositions are appropriately catchy. But in the event that neither are to your liking (you sick old-school purist you), the option to revert to older tunes and fighter sprites presents itself.

Just as the option is present to alternate between playing the previous series update, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, or as the new “Remixed” edition. Now, if you’re hip, you’ll pick Remixed. Most of the tweaks are the same kind of single frame/pixel deals that the above mentioned Dip Switch Psycho Obsessed Menu brings, but even I noticed a few changes from the Remixed edition, and smiled for noticing them. Some of the special moves are a bit easier to pull off now; Guile’s Super Special Attack will no longer shred a layer of skin off your thumb from trying to execute it on a d-pad. As far as Xbox controls go, the game is a bit easier to control here than the previous Street Fighter Xbox Live Arcade game was, but I still fudged up a bit playing with the d-pad. The game does, however, contain full arcade stick support for people that need THE arcade experience.

The game has only two gameplay modes; Arcade mode to wail on a series of surprisingly ruthless computer opponents, and multiplayer. I’ve got nothing but good things to say about the online play though; never lags, the option to play through quick ranking matches or get a bunch of buddies together and take turns fighting the previous round’s winner, tournament support, and no shortage of aggressive opponents.

Now, if this whole fighting game concept is foreign to you and you’re intrigued by the idea of guys in karate outfits (with the sleeves cut off to emphasize their massive biceps) throwing fireballs out of their hands at each other, then this may as well be the game to get. Otherwise, your buying decision (which for Canadians, is about $20 worth in Xbox Live points) will depend on your enthusiasm for Street Fighter in general. If you didn’t care before about Street Fighter, this game doesn’t throw at you anything to make you care. But if you have even a modest interest in the perennial fighting game, especially in the thought of playing online, then hop on in and feel free to go on Xbox Live and try to discipline me.

Pros : The character designs in Street Fighter 2 still hold up very well. They’re not outrageously hokey like in SNK games but not bland and insipid like other fighters. They’re appealing and easy on the eyes, if a tad racist, such as the Indian who’s mastery of yoga gives him phenomenal muscle tone and stretchy limbs, and the All-American army brat with the most impeccable crew-cut in human history.

Cons : You don’t get the original Street Fighter 2 grainy-but-macho announcer declaring that you won the fight. No, it’s the Super Turbo high pitched pansy announcer.

4 stars

I always prefer to use Zangief when I play, just because there are still people that freak out when you pull off the spinning piledriver, treating the move’s execution as the fighting game equivalent of turning water into wine.

Gears of War 2

Well this review feels like a long time coming.



Gears of War 2: The more heterosexual Gear-named franchise.

Story : Surprise Surprise, it’s humans versus aliens! Or mutants, or some kind of grotesque monster that happens to speak English and have mastery over human guns. This new game’s plot elements include one squadmate’s missing wife, a city that is supposedly humanity’s last refuge, another enemy leader whom ranks above the enemy you killed in the first game that you mistook for the leader of the group of monsters you thought you rendered extinct in the first game, and a plot twist that feels a bit too blatantly ripped out of the Halo games. There are a handful of groan-inducing elements too, such as the cowardly teammate whose voicework would’ve fit in perfectly in an episode of Scooby Doo, and the preachy, bizarre computer AI character that’s trying really hard to be mimic the artificial intelligence characters from Portal and Halo, but the story as a whole suffices without being too offensive. For what its worth, despite being the middle chapter of a planned trilogy, the game doesn’t end on a cheap cliffhanger like oh so many other games seem to be nowadays, and protagonist Marcus Felix and his main squadmates from the first game, once reunited, are appealing enough to give the otherwise dull world some personality. I guess to sum it up, as good as a game about four guys single-handedly gunning down an army of enemies can get.

The storyline is the weakest link of Gears of War 2, or at least the link that’s the least-thickest in a twenty-ton chain strong enough to imprison Godzilla. This game is a beast alright. This is your big-budget game equivalent of a summer blockbuster, with all of the cutting edge graphic technologies, physics engines, sweeping orchestral musical scores and end-of-humanity themes that you normally equate with high profile shooting games. It’s the proverbial pissing contest, where all the major game companies (or at least the ones that made PC games back when making big-budget PC games was a profitable business) compete to make the prettiest shooter of them all. However, Gears of War 2 is also a smart beast, one that knows that there’s more to a game than a press release bragging about how many enemies you can fit on-screen or how this game is the first to feature “meat physics.”

In this regard, it bears mention that single player campaign (which can be played co-operatively with a buddy, online or off), is particularly strong. Unlike the Halo games, or any number of other major shooters, you never feel like you’re merely walking from one corridor to another, fighting one respawning wave of enemies after another. Rather, the game does a surprisingly strong job of throwing one unique scenario after another, all the while finding small and subtle ways to mix up the standard gunfights. Considering how the core gameplay mechanics consist of hiding behind something, poking your head out and shooting back, it’s amazing how this never actually gets old. There’s a potent variety of enemies to hack up with your chainsaw-gun Lancer, and a healthy variety of weapons to use in the event that your Lancer runs out of ammo. Just be sure to never drop that Lancer, ever, or even toy with the idea, or else you are going to either run into a wall that needs to be chainsawed-down or enemies that, after the first game, have learned about the tactical advantage of guns with chainsaw bayonets and intend to use them on you.

Throw in plenty of cinematic moments (usually consisting of something blowing up) and you have a story mode that extends well beyond the typical “showcase of things you can do in multiplayer” campaign that most shooters feature, though the game does introduce its share of new features. Gears of War 2 doesn’t reinvent the formula of the first game, but elaborates on it enough to make going back to the first game an awkward experience. Like in multiplayer, an ally can revive you should you approach near-death, and the enemies can do the same, throwing you in some tense situations where you’ll be crawling, begging for help, and developing a new appreciation for Dom. There are vehicle sequences that don’t feel tacked on, Halo 3’s utility weapons like the giant chaingun, chainsaw duels and a litany of other new features that you’ll barely notice but appreciate once you see them. The game doesn’t rewrite the formula of the first Gears, but being as there has been a surprisingly low number of games trying to rip off Gears of War, there’s nothing about this game that feels stale, other than the concept of muscular men in giant, armoured suits shooting down monster invaders.

Speaking of trends, Gears of War 2 does follow what appears to be an emerging new trend in gaming; the multiplayer mode where people mindlessly battle waves of respawning enemies. Horde mode actually works out to be a pretty fun diversion, to tell the truth. Granted, I could just be saying that because of all the multiplayer modes, this is the one that’s the easiest to start up a session with.

The game borrows its matchmaking concept from Halo 2 and 3, where you choose what style of gameplay type you play through and the game looks for allies and opponents of similar skill level. However, the matchmaking in Gears 2 is surprisingly slow, and I often found myself just sitting there, waiting for minutes on end as a game kept looking for an opponent group, only to stop because a member of my group left in frustration and thus needed to be replaced. Now, once you actually start a game, then the game starts to pick up. While the entire multiplayer game is team-based and you don’t necessarily need good allies to thrive, you will feel it if your opponent’s team is a more well-oiled machine.

The game’s matchmaking seems to prefer committed gamers looking to spend all-nighters bulking their ranking and trying to unlock the game’s obscenely demanding achievements than someone who wants to play a game for a few minutes. You can’t leave a game unless you boot out of Gears of War 2 or turn off the system, and likewise, people can’t hop into a game in progress; if you want to play, you’re going to wait for the matchmaker to find ten other players and you guys are going to play together, whether your team is good or not. I know that people who quit games because they’re losing are hated by all, but I’m not one to play a multiplayer session for hours on end, and there’s this thing called real life that’ll sometimes call me and interrupt my gameplay session. Do the developers at Epic know about this life thing?

But that said, Gears of War 2 is visceral, exciting, enjoyable, a shooter that finds a way to stand out from the crowd. If the multiplayer process was a bit more gentle and B. Carmine wasn’t so much of a tool then I’d feel a bit more inclined to rate the game a little higher, but I doubt either of which will keep the 15-28 year old male demographic away from thinking that this is the greatest game ever made, or at least until Gears 3 or the next big shooter comes out. I’ll attest to being a jaded snob that needs a bit more than bleeding-edge graphics to get excited about a shooting game, but at least Gears of War 2 does just enough for me to not label it as another flash in the pan.

Pros : In the absence of having something less rational to say here, I’ll go so far as to claim that this one game’s campaign is better than the combined Halo trilogy.

Cons : As visually impressive as the final sequence is, it’s far too easy for my tastes. Call me old-school, but I like it when a final boss puts up the toughest fight out of all the obstacles the player has faced in the game, not the easiest.

4 stars

Okay, the game does leave a few loose ends, and there’s a bit of a cliffhanger after the credits, but you can practically guess how it’ll all unfold in the next game.

Castlevania: Judgment

Castlevania : Judgement : A fighting game comprising of assorted Castlevania characters. An odd concept, to be sure, considering that most people can only name about 2 or 3 actual Castlevania characters.

Story : Judgment uses an old cliché of Saturday morning cartoons and comics, bringing in some kind of all-powerful being from another dimension to unite characters from different fictions together for a battle. This figure in question is predictably enigmatic, but he also looks like a cross between an outcast from A Clockwork Orange and a pussy.

The game has a story mode, but it may as well not have one, since “story mode” is the same as arcade mode, except with the occasional cutscene of dialogue between fighters, which generally comprises of fighter A saying “Hey, you! Lets fight!” and fighter B saying “Yeah, okay, lets fight!” That the game has this story mode, along with an arcade mode, seems like a petty attempt to give the game more gameplay modes than it really has for the sake of the game’s press release.

Speaking of, one of the game’s most advertised points of notice, it seems, is the addition of famous manga writer Takeshi Obata as the character designer, a man most famous for the series Death Note. I know this because Wikipedia knows this. A lot of Japanese games seem to do this, bringing in a supposedly famous artist or composer to work on something in the game, just as how American games often bring in a famous celebrity to half-heartedly do voicework for a game.

For the last decade or so, Castlevania games have been slowly progressing towards a more anime-influenced direction in terms of art-style…or at least a more sexually questionable art direction. Male and female characters have become harder to tell apart. Clothing comes and goes with the tide. Style coming light years ahead of substance. The concept art for a new character will take prominence in a magazine feature over, say, actual content about the game. However, Judgment takes the cake here in terms of creating the most sexually-confused posers in all of gaming.

Once apon a time, we thought Simon Belmont looked like this.



That was the box art for the very first Castlevania. Here’s Simon on the Castlevania : Judgement boxart, which I’ve neglected to post until now for a reason you’re about to see.



Way to butcher a part of our memories, Konami. I’d like to think that going from ripping off Conan The Barbarian to ripping off Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children is a pretty jarring shift for people who have been with the series for a long time. I know that the characters in the Castlevania franchise didn’t have much integrity to begin with in order for me to proclaim that the series’ integrity has been compromised, but there’s still value in trying to be nostalgic instead of trying to be Guilty Gear. As a somewhat-longtime fan, I’ll admit that the idea of pitting Simon Belmont against Symphony of the Night’s Alucard or the little girl from Castlevania 3 is rather intriguing, but all of these characters have been redesigned to a point where no one can recognize them anymore. Look at Super Smash Bros; part of the appeal is that the series relishes in the idea that these recognizable characters are together and battling each other; that the player can have Pikachu challenge Mario, and have the two beat the shrooms out of each other. Now imagine some famous artist, say, Spawn-creator Todd McFarlane, was hired to redesign all of the Nintendo characters. As cool as it might look like to see Pikachu transformed into a grotesque, human heart-devouring monster, he just wouldn’t be Pikachu anymore.

Instead, the new art direction just leaves the player the impression that the game is ridden with Soul Calibur rejects. Considering how most of these games are set in the 1800s, it’s amazing how these “heroes” don’t get cast out as witches and burned at the stake. To avoid having to play as some kind of androgynous punk who’s more concerned about their victory pose than their fight training, I connected my DS with Castlevania : Order of Ecclesia to the Wii to unlock that game’s protagonist, [Shanoa]. While she comes off as less obnoxious than the rest of the cast, her previous “sexy but tortured” look has been replaced by some kind of stripper-nun hybrid and…

…okay I guess I should talk about the gameplay.

The game is a 3D fighting game, akin to the old Dreamcast game Power Stone. Players move around a trap-filled arena, jumping around, slashing each other and cursing at the camera. Credit should be due for not trying to clone Soul Calibur more than the game’s art direction was already doing, but too many basic elements feel flawed. There’s no punishment to blocking, and the only unblockable attacks in the game have such a long charge time that they can easily be evaded or countered, so most battles will devolve into either two people taking turns hitting each other or just straight button-mashing. It’s a shame too, being that there’s some potentially interesting ideas here, like the ability to pick up and use vintage powerups from the series, like the cross boomerang and the evil holy water of burning blue death.

Oh, and make sure you play the game with either the Gamecube controller or the Classic controller. I actually appreciate that the game gives you the option to play with traditional controllers, unlike most games that force you into using the Wiimote controls for no good reason than to continue Nintendo’s two plus year quest to justify the existence of the Wii controller as functional for anything but Wii Bowling. Apparently, the concept for Castlevania: Judgment was conceived in an attempt to create a Castlevania game with Wii controls; to let the player use their remote like a whip perhaps…and I just can’t fathom the logic in such a statement. As predicted, the Wii controls are inaccurate and tiresome.

One final point of potential wasted, the game has what looks to be a solid online play mode…or at least one by Wii standards. A lot of that friend code nonsense can be abandoned and you can befriend strangers you’ve fought online as rivals. However, I was never able to apply any of this in practice, as nobody seems to be playing this game online.

Which could be attributed to the game’s bad art style scaring away players, or that most any gamer can look at the game from a distance and think “yeah, this game can’t be good.” Castlevania: Judgment is indeed a lackluster title, one that had the potential to be something special. However, fighting games are finicky titles in nature, where milliseconds can make or break the experience, and Judgment is way off the mark. Castlevania fans have it rough sometimes, it seems.

Pros : I guess if you’re the type of gamer that freaks out over an orchestral score in video games, you’ll pop for the one here.

Cons : Even Death falls victim to the artist’s need to redesign all of the characters. Yes, someone felt the Grim Reaper needed to be envisioned as a He-Man villain.

2 ½ stars

Contrary to the Overture review, I’m actually quite the fan of the Guilty Gear series. In fact, that I actually reviewed Overture should be a testament to this.

Wii Music

Wii Music : Apparantly, the next big thing.

Story : No story applicable. Other than “this game was a freaking joke when it was presented at E3 in all it’s hairy glory.”

But despite all that, Nintendo continued to proclaim that this was their big holiday game of 2008. Wii Music was going to follow in the footsteps of the absurdly popular Wii Sports, Wii Play and Wii Fit, whether we liked it or not. Well, the former two only became such unusual hits because of how they were bundled with hardware and became easy to love when played at short bursts at social events, prompting party-goers to yearn for a Wii of their own (and only to get sick of their new purchase minutes after.) I have no personal experience with Wii Fit, but I’ll give it the benefit of a doubt being that it has somewhat honest intentions (but make no mistake, as a certified personal trainer, I very much look forward to reviewing that fitness fad.) But with no bundled hardware, Wii Music has only the E3 video of doucheman to motivate people into running to their store to check in on the latest craze.

Perhaps I shouldn’t review Wii Music as Nintendo’s straight-faced answer to the likes of Gears of War 2, Resistance 2, LittleBig Planet, Fallout 3 and the like. Though doing so would result in me rating the game an “EPIC FAIL” out of five stars. No, maybe I should look at Wii Music’s potential for just straight up fun, for that’s what all games should aim for.

Except it’s still something of a failure there too.

So when you boot up the game, a very annoying instructor who looks like a hybrid of Bach and a Muppet, explains the game’s basic mechanics in a very long-winded tutorial that feels like he’s less trying to explain the gameplay mechanics as much as he is trying to justify the game’s existence. In a nutshell, you bang the Wiimotes to play piano and percussion instruments, bang one remote while you hold out another to play guitar-like instruments, bang the Wiimote horizontally to play violin, and alternate pressing the one and two buttons while supposedly holding the Wiimote near your mouth to play wind instruments. Imagination is the watchword here, as the game is banking on you closing your eyes and imagining yourself jamming in an orchestra to not notice that the remote only picks up the motion of the Wii moving in general. You’re essentially playing Guitar Hero without the five buttons and just the flipper; that’s what playing Wii Music is like.

The only instrument that grants the player control of what note they’re playing is drums. If you actually thought the E3 demo was impressive in its use of the Wiimote technology, well you’re in for a gross disappointment. You actually control what part of the drum you hit on by what buttons on the controllers you hold, not by some kind of sophisticated Wii controller technology. If you have the Wii Fit balance board, you could use that as a kick pedal, but that feels like such a petty use of a $90 adaptor.

Otherwise, all you’re really doing is moving remotes around and making loud noises. Unlike Rock Band, Guitar Hero, Dance Dance Revolution, Singstar, Amplitude, Frequency or any actual music game, you’re not trying to match notes with the song playing in the background. Rather, the game automatically matches whatever notes you’re playing with the song itself, with the sole variation being how many times you opt to play notes and make the song sound like more of a mess. I think “cluster****” is a good way to describe any composition you can conceive. Jam mode is the game’s main mode, where you and 5 other musicians play a song. The game gives you an unusual-yet-useless amount of variety. Unusual in that you can re-dub any instrument with multiple playthroughs, create an album cover, and record a full-blown music video that can be sent to other Wii Music owners. Useless because no one owns Wii Music and no one should announce that they own Wii Music. Also useless because, despite a large variety of instruments that includes everything from cow bells and “guy in a dog suit barking” to “galactic drums”, the audio quality of each instrument is so poor that when so many instruments are mixed together, they all blend together poorly and leave the song sounding like an old ring tone. Though I guess some people dream of creating their own ring tone version of “Wake me up before I go-go.”

I should talk about the setlist itself; a combination of classic music compositions, children’s bedtime songs, 60s-80s pop songs and Nintendo game theme songs, begging one to ask the question “why do I want to play these songs?” Nintendo did the exact same thing with the Donkey Konga games on the Gamecube, focusing primarily on free-to-use tracks. Other music games feature a hybrid of classic and contemporary hits, as well as often-solid tracks from little-known acts. Nintendo’s choice of music here comes off as the equivalent of Marge Simpson trying to fit in at Lollapalooza.

Wii Music isn’t a game, it’s a toy. One that should be marked as targeted towards people aged 3-5. Little kids might have some fun with Wii Music, but like any flashy toy, it’ll be quick to be discarded for the next big toy. Anyone with a semblance of an attention span will otherwise get bored of the game before the tutorial ends.

Pros : Mildly amusing mini-games. In particular “Mii Maestro”, where the motion of the remote dictates the gusto that the orchestra plays their music.

Cons : Only five songs for Mii Maestro.

1 ½ stars

Shiguru Miyamoto has apologized in the past, for claiming that Super Mario World and Super Mario Sunshine weren't up to par. The former I don't understand, the latter I kind of see why. But he should be busting out a U2-calibur "I'm sorry" parade to gamers for Wii Music.

[Castlevania] Order of Ecclesia

I don’t normally do these big “history of the franchise” deals in my reviews because pretty much every video game site does them already and they always wind up sounding like some kind of major sales pitch, like the review was written not by a person but by a company marketing team. But upon seeing me play the Nintendo DS game I’m about to review, my coworker went on to ask me “what is Castlevania?” which caught me off guard, since this is one of the more older and popular licenses of the video game industry, or at least in my biased mind. So here it is, my brief “history of Castlevania” feature. Feel free to skip on to the actual review if you’ve heard this bit a thousand times before.



The original Castlevania was released in America in 1987 (according to Wikipedia) on the NES. It was a basic platformer starring a dude with a mystical whip going through Dracula’s castle, battling skeletons, zombies, flying heads, the grim reaper and every horror movie archetype ever conceived before battling the Count himself. The art direction was distinctly gothic for the time, the mechanics were sound and the game was challenging (often unfairly so, in regards to the threat of frequently respawning medusa heads) and the game became a staple of 2D platforming. Assorted sequels would follow, the protagonist’s integrity would be compromised in a bad 80s cartoon, but the one constant in the franchise was that there was always a member of that guy with a whip’s bloodline beating up monsters, and there was always a Dracula whose arse needed to be handed to him.



The series hit a monumental turning point in 1997 with Castlevania : Symphony of the Night. The linear series of stages was replaced in favour of a giant overworld, Dracula’s castle, where the player’s progression meant obtaining access to more and more sections of the otherwise free-to-explore area. (Perhaps an easier way to say that would be “ripping off Metroid”.) Also, whip boy was replaced by Dracula’s son, who probably had a bone to pick with his dad for his disapproval of his son’s bisexual attitude. As well, the game obtained RPG elements in that the character could be outfitted with different equipment, learn new abilities and level up from grind… beating up enemies as he went. The game still holds up fantastically well by modern standards and is available for purchase online for PS3 and Xbox 360 owners at a reasonably great price.

Told you these things always end up sounding like sales pitches.

Since then, there have been two kinds of Castlevania games being released. The console Castlevania games that attempt to bring the series to 3D and always seem to wind up being terrible, and the Game Boy Advance/Nintendo DS Castlevania games that try really, really, really hard to capture the same lightning in a bottle that Symphony of the Night had, with varying (but usually respectable) results. Which brings us too…




[Castlevania : Order of Ecclesia] : The latest attempt at a modern day Symphony.

Story : [Castlevania : Order of Ecclesia] is based around a young woman named [Shanoa] who was chosen to bear some kind of almighty power capable of bringing down [Dracula], only for fellow cult-mate [Albus] to steal the power for himself, forcing [Shanoa] to go after him. There’s a good twist or two here and there but the overall story in [Castlevania : Order of Ecclesia] is by and large predictable. You know you’re just going to wind up fighting [Dracula] in the end anyways. It’s like the series is sometimes held down from evolving due to its own tradition, yet even I’ll admit that I’d be disappointed if a [Castlevania] game didn’t end in a bout with [Dracula].

[Castlevania : Order of Ecclesia] isn’t so much distinct for its most heavily advertised features so much as it is for more of its’ subtle changes. The only reason I appreciate [Shanoa] as the game’s protagonist is because she distinctly looks female, which is a change of pace from the usual androgynous main character that stars in these [Castlevania : Symphony of the Night] knockoffs, otherwise she’s not a particularly likable individual. The addition of a [village] with [civilians] that need rescuing isn’t too big of a deal, as they merely provide [fetch quests] for the player to…

Oh, and if you’d like to know why I’m talking with [brackets] around words, it’s because the game likes using them too, with the upmost demand it seems. I’ve seen numerous games do a similar thing, using underlines or colours to highlight names or quest related items. Order of Ecclesia is fond of the bracket, to highlight seemingly every noun in for the player. A villager may ask you to collect 3 [iron ore] (no plural form here) or another character will have a major speech proclaiming that [Dracula] is the embodiment of all evil. I can’t help but find that this sucks out a good deal of impact or immersion out of the storyline. I don’t quite understand why; trust me when I say that the target audience of this game is not stupid enough to need important parts of the sentence to be highlights so abruptly.

I say that because this game is not meant to be played by anyone but the most determined of platform gamers. Bosses are all tough, with large chunks of health to chip off and difficult, random attack patterns to figure out. You’re going to die repeatedly in the process of trying to beat one. Even many casual enemies will tear you apart if given the chance. Save points are infrequent, so you’ll find yourself using the magical escape item to retreat to the village often…or die a lot. The game only keeps track of the hours you’ve spent playing and not dying so while my game save says I’ve put in a mere 5 hours into the game, the real number is embarrassingly much, much higher.

In part, that’s due to how infrequent stat-boosting armour appears in the game, as in order to improve your meager defense rating, you’ll find yourself having to do a fetch quest or two from certain villagers in order to make available armour you can’t afford at the store. There’s another issue of difficulty; money is scarce, and you’ll rarely find yourself equipped with necessary potions, meaning that you’re going to really EARN the right to progress.

Another aspect that only the diehards are going to mind is the game’s slap in the face false-ending. Once you do beat Albus, the game sets you up and basically says “you can’t go to the real last level and fight Dracula unless you rescue EVERY villager.” Well this certainly ticked me off, especially considering the number of lives I needed to beat Albus in the first place. It’s even more frustrating how you’re going to need some kind of internet strategy guide to find some of the villagers, since some of them are hidden behind walls that are supposed to be broken down but otherwise untraceable without either some kind of internet assistance or trying to hit every wall in the game until something breaks, like you’re some kind of game tester. This may be fine for the Gamefaqs.com crowd of gamers, but not the average Joe.

In perhaps a sign that the series is going full-circle, there’s no giant overworld in this game, but rather a series of smaller stages, connected by a basic world map. This cuts on the backtracking, and at the same time, each area is interesting enough to make you want to explore, though there’s perhaps one “straight line filled with enemies” type of level too many in the game.

Another small change that I wound up appreciating is the glyph system, where Shanoa takes advantage of her scantily-clad powers and absorbs certain magical artifacts into her bare back. Absorbed glyphs can then be assigned to certain buttons, and end up manifesting themselves into weapons attacks or certain abilities. For the most part, this comes off as a repackaged version of the weapons and spells equipment system, but there are some unique twists. A select few enemy attacks can be sucked out from right under their noses to unlock new abilities. Magic attacks can lead into changing your character’s super attack, and there’s a great variety of spells once you approach the tail end of the game. It’s a small gameplay tweak that you wind up appreciating after you make yourself stick with it long enough.

And that really is the key to enjoying Order of Ecclesia; gutting it out. Truth be told, this is the most fun I’ve had out of a Castlevania game since Symphony of the Night, and likewise, it’s also the most frustration I’ve gotten since the very early NES games. It’s a great purchase for long-time fans and in particular, the ones that like to search far and wide to collect every power-up and compete for the best time in the obligatory “Boss Rush” mode. But if you’ve never played any of these games before, be warned. Go start with Symphony or even one of the other DS Castlevania games. Build up your tolerance for beating giant monsters with sexually-questionable characters.

Pros : Great-as-always art style, without leaving the impression that the game is trying to be more stylish than it really is (i.e. the other Symphony clones). Will greatly amplify your tolerance for Castlevania : Judgement on the Wii (review coming soon) Plenty of post-game extras.

Cons : A few too many enemies were ripped out of Symphony of the Night.

4 stars

Breaking from the tradition of making bad 3D games and uninspired 2D games, the most recent game in the series, Castlevania : Judgement on the Wii, is a fighting game!