Monday, September 28, 2009

Scribblenauts



Nauts-based video games have made something of an impact on our gaming culture. Tim Shafer’s Psychonauts is a universally praised platformer and work of genius the likes of which will always feel like a perennially-underrated underdog, regardless of how much adoration it may receive. Hideo Kojima released a game called Policenauts about…well I don’t know what exactly Policenauts is, but the Metal Gear Solid games keep referencing it in brief appearances so it has to have some kind of underappreciated importance. Joining this oddball group of games with no relation aside from their suffix is 5th Cell’s Scribblenauts, a diminutive, childish, pint-sized Nintendo DS title that is arguably the most ambitious release of 2009.

You play as Maxwell; a headphone wearing dweeb with an infectious smile, whose spirit seems to be unbreakable even as Cthulu is clawing away at his flesh. The brief story, in a letdown compared to previous ‘nauts games but inconsequential otherwise, is that you’re using your power of imagination to collect stars. Considering how this game boasts about using imagination as a driving point of existence, I’d like to think that the developer could conjure a more original idea than collecting stars, but now I’m just being petty.

So Maxwell strolls and hobbles around the gameworld with great clumsiness. It seems as if the developers read the reviews for Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, in which numerous critics (or at least me) despised how the game forced the player to cope with playing the game using both the DS buttons and precise stylus-touch screen interactiveness in a manner that cramped fingers worldwide. So, 5th Cell was made to choose a control layout: DS buttons or the touch screen? And they made the wrong choice. You move Maxwell around the screen by pointing at a direction, but Maxwell is very imprecise when it comes to skipping to and fro the levels, often walking past your intended destination into a fiery pit of doom. Or attempting a jump his little quarter-inch-long legs can’t handle and thus falling in a fiery pit of doom. But expect plenty of fiery doom and frustration when it comes to navigating dear Maxwell. And lest I forget trying to manipulate items; if say, the flower pot you want to pick up is behind an NPC that you can’t interact with, or even behind…say…you, and a nearby fiery pit of doom prevents you from wanting to even attempt to inch forward a tad. Well then you’re SOL my friend, as the touch screen has a habit of interacting with the item you wished least to interact with first.

And now I should begin to touch on what exactly makes Scribblenauts such a big deal in the first place. At any given point during your time as the prozac-fueled Maxwell, you can summon a keyboard. From there, you can type a noun, and the game will incarnate that word onto the screen, Green Lantern-style. As long as it doesn’t infringe a copyright or the game’s E rating, then there is a high probability that the game will create something resembling what you intended. Foods, appliances, people (well, occupational archetypes of people. Typing in “mixed martial artist”, “master” and “sensei” all yield the same menacing old man), animals, weapons, vehicles, mythological creatures and keyboard cat all exist within the Scribbleverse.

With this kind of creative potential, I was quick to realize that Scribblenauts really is the ultimate sandbox game. Prototype’s mass fleshy murdering antics and Infamous’s PG electrical strikes cannot hold a candle to the true potential of Scribblenauts. Even Grand Theft Auto’s pedestrian-flattening feels passé in comparison. If video games were equivalent to the fashion industry, Scribblenauts would be strolling down Milan runways in tight clothes and 0.5 percent body fat.

Want to create a Battle Royale with cops, robbers, superheroes, black knights and Bigfoot? Go for it. Wonder what’ll happen to a lake filled with wildlife when you throw a toaster in the water? Give it a shot. Drive a UFO around the area and abduct cows, or just drop a nuclear bomb and kill everything on the screen. There are moments in this game where I was having doubts about the whole E-rating. Those were around the time I started dropping tumors on the world. You have free reign to do all of this within the Title Screen too, rendering Scribblenauts the possessor of the greatest title screen in all of gaming.

It just makes it all the more disappointing when you start conjuring items, and they don’t do anything. For example, I ordered the creation of handcuffs to give the local constable something for which to imprison criminals (or fulfill sexual fantasies) but no, the handcuffs turned out to be useless. Most living beings can only walk, eat, fight, run away and die. You can’t quite create a doctor that’ll heal the sick or a vampire to swoon high school girls. You’ll quickly come to realize that while you may have the creative freedom to make anything materialize out of thin air, that there’s so little items of value that you can create.

Which ties into the game’s main story mode. In each level, you are tasked with solving a puzzle in order to make a star materialize. Sometimes there’s an obstacle course of sorts to form, sometimes there’s a riddle involved like “give the doctor something he needs.” Some of the puzzles are quirky and fun, and give the freedom to dance around the obvious solution. Take the above doctor puzzle; you COULD hand the doctor a stethoscope or a needle, but the game also accepts a human heart as a plausible solution. Now that’s when I was enjoying Scribblenauts the most; when I was given the free reign to create answers to problems that served more to amuse myself than satisfy the desires of logic.

However, the game’s later puzzles and obstacle course-based levels don’t quite hold up. With later challenges, you’ll quickly realize that the developers started running out of great ideas for this great concept of a game and fall into a trap of obstacle courses and obtuse puzzles with unknown objectives. Expect to fail a mission a lot and be not quite sure why. And also be ready to have a list of standby words like “death ray”, “jetpack” and “God” to use to solve an assortment of similar problems.

Ultimately, whether or not you elect to buy Scribblenauts depends on what you value in a game. If you value the…errr…game part of a game, then you’ll be let down by the broken and lackluster campaign. However, as a toy, Scribblenauts can be a wealth of fun to simply tinker around with, and this toy mentality is better compatible on a handheld system. Between bus stops, you can create an in-game bus and imagine yourself running over cartoon civilians and running away from the big ugly dragon. In that sense, this game would be a winner with today’s Grand Theft Auto generation of kids.

3 ½ stars

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Shadow Complex


Previously in my Super Metroid review, I had made numerous petty swipes at the critically acclaimed Shadow Complex for imitating the master but missing the point. When I wrote that petty cheapshot disguised as a review for an all-time classic, I was but two-thirds of the way finished playing Chair’s downloadable Xbox Live Arcade release. And now that I’ve finished the game, I’m proud to report that I was wrong. Shadow Complex isn’t a cheap Metroid clone. Shadow Complex is a big-budget but misguided Metroid clone.

Shadow Complex takes the subtle atmosphere and unique sense of identity that I loved about Super Metroid, and completely disregards them in favor of the art direction of every other military shooter before it. You play as Nathan Drake’s genetic twin, a generic every-upper-middle-class male model who just happens to have a sordid military past (for no reason other than to explain how an ordinary man can stealth kill armoured terrorists) who’s woman gets kidnapped by a military group hellbent on doing…bad things. This sounds like a hybrid of every other generic video game plot combined with the other half of generic video game plots, which makes it all the more surprising that it’s based on an Orson Scott Card novel. “Empire” serves as the inspiration for Shadow Complex, and my understanding is that the novel is based around Democrats and Republicans starting a civil war. If the book has any kind of political or social meaning or message, then its completely lost here, and Chair would’ve been better served not to reference the author and have one less royalty cheque to write. Does anyone else out there remember the Xbox video game Advent Rising? No? Then you just proved why Orson Scott Card should be banned from any involvement from the video game industry.

I had previously praised Super Metroid for letting the gameworld tell its story, and criticized the game’s one unskippable introduction cutscene. Shadow Complex, on the other hand, tells its inconsequential storyline through many unskippable cutscenes. All the while throwing in an inconclusive ending that teases at a sequel…though I’m not sure if “sequel” means a new game or Mr. Card’s next novel. This game would be a lot better served without the author’s involvement on numerous levels.

You start the game as just a man carrying nothing but his hiking equipment and an Affliction t-shirt, going up against guards with machine guns and giant robotic mechs. You explore the giant facility that is the Shadow Complex (I presume that is the building’s name) and as you go from checkpoint to checkpoint, you pick up new weapons and powerups. You start out with but a petty flashlight and a small handgun, but upgrade into automatic weapons, rockets, fancy armour with double jumps and so forth. There’s a nice progression of power and gradual sense of development into the superpowered military super-soldier of the future, and by the end of the game, you’ll be bawking at the sight of walking spider-tanks trying to halt your progress.

Though you’ll have to deal with a lot of nonsense in regards to the actual combat first. The game is essentially attempting to bring the mentalities of a third person shooter within the confines of a 2-dimensional side scroller. You aim and aim for head-shots with the right stick, and fire your gun and secondary attacks with the right shoulder buttons. What Shadow Complex doesn’t account for is how your view of the screen is a bit more limited in a 2-dimensional scroller, as it is very common for enemies that are out of your sight to open fire. I’m sorry, I’m wrong, this isn’t a 2-dimensional scroller but rather a “2 and a half D” scroller. The half part comes in the form of enemies that can travel to and fro from the background and open fire. Besides how you can’t instant melee-kill enemies that exist on this separate plane (and the difference between what enemies do and don’t exist on your plane can be hard to tell at times), but the game will often fail to shift your character’s aim towards other planes to fire back. The whole 2 ½-D business turns out to be a wash in this game anyways, as the only other use of that background plane is for annoying gun turret sequences.

And while it can be viscerally satisfying to rain bullets on a large group of red-and-white troopers like the American you are, you quickly come to realize that you’ll be doing a lot of that. There often seems to be only two kinds of enemies; soldiers and little robot-thingies that you can punt. There are bosses that include such generic archetypes as the robot spider and the walking robot, but nothing that’ll leave a lasting impression. And it’s all the more annoying that they won’t leave a lasting impression as you’ll have to fight several of the bosses many times over in your quest. The repeating boss fight continues to be one of gaming’s most annoying trend. And for the most part, they’re all destroyed in the Wolfenstein-robot-Hitler fashion of “stand there and pelt them with anything in your arsenal til they fall.”

Speaking of annoying trends, your character levels up with experience. Why? You don’t even get to assign your newly acquired stats to attributes of your choosing. Your character just automatically receives “improved accuracy” and other bonuses you’ll shan’t notice. Why, in a linear action game, does Shadow Complex need an experience system? To make subsequent playthroughs easier? Because every other game has one?

Despite being a hybrid of setting stereotypes seen in modern games (the warehouse, the factory, the military bunker, etc) the Shadow Complex itself may be the most interesting facet of the entire game. It’s hard to not take a look at the map and not want to explore previously inaccessible areas with your newfound abilities. Your Flashlight, purchased at Home Hardware, has the ability to colour in doors and corridors that can potentially be destroyed with various weapons. These weapons include gunfire, grenades, a freezing foam, a rocket launcher and the running charge attack ripped shamelessly from Super Metroid.

For a time, the completionist in you will feel obligated to search every nook and cranny for every hidden upgrade and item. However, one quickly learns that these levels aren’t quite friendly for the backtracker in you. I can’t help but ponder why a thin crate that can be cleared with a grenade can’t be cleared with a rocket. I know the video game logic reason; to prevent backtracking by placing a door in a suspended area where grenades can’t be planted. It’s just that this is VERY annoying when I’m trying to backtrack for powerups. Another example; certain areas have a puzzle that require you to trick an elevator into moving away so you can climb the shaft and access hidden areas. However, the headache in trying to backtrack through one of these less-than-straightforward areas can be rather frustrating. This is a game that desperately needed to look at the “vania” part of “Metroidvania” and adopt the Castlevania warp system.

For those moments when you do decide to play the actual story of the game, well there’s the blue line. This blue line on the map will give you a succinct guide on where you need to go next. This blue line becomes your religion, your salvation, your everything. You can choose to turn the line off if you feel a need to go “old school” but really, why would you? Especially in a game where the path to your next powerup or objective is often very less than obvious (as “where to go next” is often on the opposite end of the map.) But even the blue line will sometimes forsake you in the name of testing your faith. For a spell, the game told me that I was to meet up with my girlfriend but gave me no indication of how to find her. I scoured back and forth all across the map, trying to find either her or the part of the map I needed to be at in order to trigger the magical blue line. After perusing a strategy guide, I found out that there was a well-hidden door that I needed to discover and walk through in order to…trigger the blue line so it could point me back to the opposite end of the map and the rendezvous point. In another instance, I had just picked up a new item, and a door in front of me just opened up. Common video game logic has one assume that the path forward would be through this new passageway. So I walk through, see a series of very difficult, near-instant death blue electrical traps that I attempt to carefully navigate. After losing a lot of health and clearing this brazen challenge, the blue line surfaces to tell me that I had went the wrong way! I was apparently supposed to return on the path I had just walked in order to reach my next objective. Why blue line, why has thou forsaken me?

The best thing I can say about Shadow Complex is that it effectively kills five hours of time. The game gets a decent amount of mileage out of its attempts to mimic the Metroids and Castlevanias of past, and it’s hard to not play the game, take a gander at the map and feel a psychological need to explore. However, the game feels rather imperfect in spots, failing to take in the most important lessons from its digital mentors. It’s certainly one of the visually better-looking downloadable titles available on account of its Unreal Engine fuel, which feels akin to Johnny Knoxville in The Ringer competing at the Special Olympics.

And do you want to know what other games are downloadable titles? Super Metroid on the Wii and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on the other systems. Two games that Shadow Complex imitates in format but neglects to imitate in spirit.

3 ½ stars

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune


For almost two years now, I’ve been refusing to buy Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune on account of the game’s $70 asking price on the free market. While some of the praise lent to the game by friends of mine tantalized me into making the plunge, I could never bring myself to invest money in the archetypical “next-generation game.” By that term, I mean that Uncharted has cutting-edge technology, “Hollywood-esque” story and production values…and not an original idea to be found in the whole damn jungle island. So I waited, and waited, and finally, Sony has added Drake’s little scallywag to the $30 Playstation 3 Greatest Hits Collection. This allowed me to buy the game used for five bucks less and keep all profits from reaching Sony HQ.

Nathan Drake is the star of this action movie game thingy. He works at Jean Machine, enjoys high protein diets, shopping for belt buckles at the local dwarven blacksmith, and gelling his hair with grease and cement powder. He pays for his high-expense lifestyle by moonlighting as a treasure hunter, following in the footsteps of his flop of a great-grandfather in searching for a mysterious trinket thingy. There’s an obligatory smarmy female love interest and a salty old man, both existing primarily to be kidnapped by the obligatory foreign terrorist enemies with no non-jerk-related qualities and…well it’s an American action movie plot. National Treasure and Indiana Jones are the two obvious franchises that one can point at as possible inspirations, but this game is practically imitating the many, many, many major action films designed over the years. I can’t help but view that as lazy or safe storytelling; I can’t buy this “Hollywood” approach as being a homage because we’ve already gotten too many similar video games and even more actual “Hollywood-style” Hollywood movies still being made with multi-million dollar budgets. It’s as frivolous as Infamous or Prototype trying to pass themselves off as “comic book-inspired” like that somehow justifies their own cliché storytelling.

Really, my biggest problem with Uncharted is that it ironically explores no uncharted territory at all. Every idea, mechanic, concept, level and so forth has been taken from other, often better games. I was trying to think of what could be considered “uncharted territory” in Uncharted (pun poorly intended) and the best that I could come up with was a technical aspect; your $150 designer white t-shirt will get wet when drenched, but only in the spots where water has come in contact with the cloth. Impressive technological feat, but one I wouldn’t have noticed had video game website previews not pointed it out to me years ahead of time. It also bears mentioning that Drake and friends have spent an extended vacation tanning on top of the uncanny valley, and are entering this video game with a Barbie doll skin complexion.

About thirty percent of this treasure-hunting adventure game is spent engaging in the actual adventuring process. Drake runs, jumps, climbs, shimmies, swings and falls to his death with the same bravado and passion as any good tomb-raiding personality. The controls are fluid and lean on the forgiving side. Drake animates with the same animated level of struggle and panic that you’d expect out of someone barely latching on to smooth stone with their fingertips. Plus the architecture of the tombs, jungles and cliff sides are visually stunning enough to be postcard worthy and are strong enough to immerse the player into this exotic island adventure. On the opposite end, there is almost always a singular, linear path that you can explore, and you’ll often make blind jumps to your pretty-boy death from mistaking part of the environment for a platform that you can climb.

But that’s only thirty percent of the action-packed thrill ride. The other seventy consists of drawn out enemy gunfights ripped page-for-page, tab-for-tab, cover-for-cover from Gears of War. You take cover, you pick off enemies with conventional weapons (of which you can only hold two at a time) and Drake’s high intake of asparagus not only prevents prostate cancer but allows self-regenerating health. I could copy and paste most of that paragraph into so many, many other video game reviews and you’d be hard pressed to tell it originated in an Uncharted review, prostate cancer line and everything.

But the gunfights in Uncharted can either be fairly exciting or very annoying, and they often lean on the latter. Several gunfights take place in wide-open areas, with very large numbers of troops picking you off with surprising accuracy from long distances. That so many enemies can fire at you from so far away is made all the more annoying when you consider how sniper rifles have limited ammo and only appear sporadically and towards the game’s final act. Hence, you’ll have to rely on standard weapons and heavy squinting to pick off these sharpshooters (and I was playing on an HD set most of the time.) And these guards, whose protection can vary from “torn, old wifebeater” to “exposed beer gut” can take a surprising number of bullets to their vital organs. Hence, I’ve found myself clinging to the handgun as the most reliable means of securing those succulent headshots. Enemies respawn in an unnatural fashion, as if they were coming out of a respawning machine from Gauntlet instead of coming across as “reinforcements”, leaving you to spend more time stuck in a set-piece section of the game than you’d want to be. And these enemies can sometimes appear right behind you, scoring an easy kill and Game Overing your ass back to the start of an already-lengthy battle. Someone will tell me that this is an example of great AI in that they’re trying to flank me, but being flanked sure takes some of the thrill out of what is supposed to be a straightforward action movie game thingy. Not every game needs to be a damned tactical military shooter.

Oh, and don’t even try the three-punch melee attack to save ammo by knocking out an enemy with your enzigiri. Reliable as you’d think it is, you’re still vulnerable to enemy fire. I’d say “save it for the last goon on the field”, but you can never be sure with the random rate that enemies respawn. Though…I guess it’s more realistic that enemies can open fire while you’re in the midst of beating up a single goon. You’d just be left to think that Drake would concoct a more efficient way to disarm a foe than a six hit flurry.

All that said, I will state that I did enjoy Nathan Drake as a character. About a quarter of the way through the game, a major setback causes Nathan to lose his smile and adopt a John McClane-psyche of viewing every crisis and situation with complete panic. No matter how many grenades he dodges or how many hundreds and hundreds of pirates he snipes off in the head, he will always embrace the smallest crawling spider with fear and profanity. This is more relatable than the Marcus Fenix rage-induced machismo of Gears past.

And what little else there is to discuss about Uncharted are features that seem to be mandatory for action games of today. There are two jet ski vehicle sequences, a jeep gun turret sequence, and very infrequent quicktime events. None of which make any kind of memorable contribution to the game experience and serve simply to break the monotony of frequent foreigner gunfighting and cliffhanging. In the aforementioned tombs, there are the odd puzzle sequences where Nate can look at his ancestor’s diary for guidance (or rather, to outright spell out each puzzle’s solution.) Aaaaaand….that’s about it.

You may or may not have been able to tell from this review, but I actually kind of enjoyed the Uncharted experience. A few annoying setpiece battles notwithstanding, the game is very playable and straightforward as a whole. And ten-odd hours of killed time are worth the reduced thirty-odd dollars that’ll either be donating to Sony or Gamestop. It’s just that I feel like I’m walking away from Uncharted no better a human being than I was before. Everything that I experienced here, I’ve found before, and done better in other games. To be exact, Gears of War 2 and the Prince of Persia reboot execute the exact same gameplay ideas, but also manage to find a unique angle of which to make their own. Not every game needs to be an abstract and unique snowflake, but when you cling so hard to existing conventions while attempting so little to contribute anything new or bold to the gaming fold, then you’ll be ensnared in the 3-star scoring range within my reviews for a long time.

3 ½ stars

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

The King of Fighters 12


Call the King of Fighters a precursor to emo culture if you will. A bunch of pale, teenage, sometimes-effeminate male fighters (and masculine-female fighters that are at least a bit more gender-obvious, if just because of their big boobs) flinging fire, ice, crystal or blood-attacks with either the greatest of ease or angst. In a way, the King of Fighters series is like the many “underground” emo bands my friend frequently indulges me in, whom use their “underground-ness” (aka, their lack of success) as a credibility shield against my remarks that these guys sound a lot like the mainstream acts. With that analogy in mind, does that make Street Fighter the Good Charlotte of video games?

Let me try to reel back in every SNK fan I’ve just alienated. Condescending remarks aside, King of Fighters games are often either really good or really damned great in regards to their status in the 2D fighting arena. So it does put a smile on my face to see that SNK (or whatever company calls themselves “SNK” in 2009) has kicked the Neo Geo to the curb and designed a fighting game for today’s consoles and today’s Tweeting generation.

King of Fighters 12 is vintage sprite-based, semi-androgynous fighting game action, but with all of the artwork redrawn for the high definition era. Those old character sprites that have been used, abused, stripped apart and posted as animated GIFs on fan pages have been replaced by newer, more organic morsels of art that will dance and dazzle your television screen. There are 22 characters, small by SNK standards but more than enough compared to other games on the market. Odds are, at least one of your personal favorite characters wound up not making the leap into this game (it’s probably the one with the heftiest cleavage. You know her.) You’ll also feel that several characters simply don’t have as many offensive attacks at their disposal as before. So despite the artistic revamping, the game does feel a bit lightweight in comparison to its predecessors, let alone newer games like Blazblue.

In fact, a recurring sensation you’ll encounter throughout King of Fighters 12 is that the game as a whole feels barren. There are only five background stages, so you’ll get plenty acquainted with the jumping fat ladies or the giant stadium. There’s also the game’s Arcade Mode, which rather shocked me.

Longtime players of this series will know how far-fetched the storylines of these games tend to be. It seems that each year, a mysterious sponsor sends questionable invitations to the world’s best fighters to enter a KOF tournament. And each year, the “sponsor” turns out to be an evil supervillain bent on using the tournament for world domination or some other twisted measure. It boggles my mind how these fighters keep falling for this exact same trap year after year. Stay at home, enter actual fighting tournaments, use your fireball attack in the UFC Octagon, do SOMETHING more productive than play cannon fodder for the tyrant of the month.

But oh no, King of Fighters 12 is different! This tourney has gone legit! The arcade mode of this game consists of an actual tournament, with reporters, office workers, secretaries, the works! This could very well be the first legitimate athletic competition in SNK history. Now, the downfall to this healthy competition is a throwaway Arcade Mode; your team of three fighters fights 5 other teams, your combined time is tabulated, and therein decides a winner. Yes, the Single Player mode in King of Fighters 12 is a Time Trial! Jesus! It’s enough of a crock to make me use the Lord’s name in vain.

So to really appreciate this game, you’re going to need to play it with other people. Those people…are just going to have to come from your immediate social group. The online play can best be described as “inconsistent” and, at worst, “as smooth as Iori’s hair is considered fashionable.” Some games will run smoothly, most will have crippling lag. And with the game having been available for about two months as of this writing, the odds seem to be in favor of the developers ceasing to care about the user experience.

Which is a shame, because a good online mode would give this game some legs. The character roster, so far as I can tell, feels balanced. Slight tweaks like the Critical Counter (a super-counter that, if timed right, stuns your opponent and opens up the hurt) tweak the game enough to not feel like a complete clone of its predecessors. And I feel as though if you had a network of fellow KOFfers, that you waste away many a long weekend with Terry, Kyo and all your old, unageable friends.

But if you don’t have that network of Neo Geonites, then there is little of value waiting for you within this game, let alone to justify the $70 price tag. But if anything else, the King of Fighters 12 represents a building block of which future games in the franchise could stack themselves on, laying brick upon brick upon cleavage-laced brick until the foundation of a great fighting game can stand firm against the winds of destitution and suffering. The less pretentious version of that statement; wait for sequels.

3 stars

Friday, September 18, 2009

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2


A little while back, a pre-Mickey Mouse Marvel Comics made a bit of noise with the Civil War storyline that pitted heroes against heroes over government legislation. It was intriguing in its parlaying of real-life events and made for an eventful time to be a comic book fan…or at least eventful enough to mark the one time in history I consistently read a comic book series as it happened. So now we have a video game, put together by what I assume was also a pre-Mickey Mouse Marvel Comics, based on the Civil War and some other War that happened afterwards, I think. My love for reading comics died with Captain America.

Ultimate Alliance 2 is the sequel to a heartfelt favorite game of mine. That first game shamelessly plucked out characters from all facets of comic book-dom and merged them into the NBA East vs West All Star Game battle of Superhumans. On the other hand, Ultimate Alliance 2 tries to be coherent with the comics and focus on bit-players in the War. But in doing so, the dream team aspect of the game has faded. I appreciate seeing Songbird and Iron Fist being added to the roster, but doing so has taken away Elektra, Ghost Rider, Blade, Black Panther, Spider Woman, Moon Knight, Colossus, Doctor Strange, Moon Knight, real Nick Fury, Silver Surfer, Magneto (going into the realm of downloaded characters), Sabretooth, Dr Doom, Hawkeye, Cyclops and Nightcrawler…okay there’s no way for me to complete with rant without coming off as a snorting nerd, but I must do what my heart tells me to do. In addition, Thor and Hulk have to be unlocked through a difficult fetch quest that I couldn’t complete on my first playthrough, and you don’t get the game’s most novel characters, Venom and the Green Goblin, until the final level.

Not to mention, that whole Civil War thingy. There will come a point where you must choose to either sign the Superhero Registration Act and side with Iron Man, or do the patriotic thing with Captain America and rebel against your own government. Cap, Luke Cage and Iron Fist can only stick it to the man while Iron Man, Mr Fantastic and Songbird can only play the side of upstanding civlians. Those aforementioned characters will sometimes be rendered unplayable for storyline purposes. Ergo, high probability is that you’ll have a team consisting of scattered X-Men and Fantastic Four members and not quite the all-encompassing dream team roster you may have hoped. And I hate hearing that the answer to this is downloadable content; I shouldn’t have to pay money to fix this game’s inherent deficiency. Further torturing my inner true believer, heroes only have one alternate costume instead of three, and they’re not all winners. But alas, I’ve had my petty dweeb rant, people that just want to cut fools with Wolverine will be just satisfied with what’s given to them.

On the bright side, the Civil War story does make for a semi-intriguing backdrop for violence. A series of tragic events leads to the government looking to regulate heroism and…well the game presents this concept in a much more intriguing manner than I ever could. The political and ethical themes played in those comics that I loved so much are somewhat prevalent here, and it’s kind of intriguing to view the storyline from both perspectives. However, an evil power of decided insipidness surfaces to upset the battle, and all sides will have to unite to challenge this lame duck force. As thrilled as I was to have the whole character roster open up to me once again, it still came at the expense of a faltered plot twist and my least favorite trend in gaming today: repeating boss fights. The first time the game dramatically introduces a Marvel villain (or hero!) for me to duel, I geeked out in joy. The second or third time, I was annoyed. And that’s keeping in mind that most bosses consist of your party surrounding and throwing fists at the one target like they were the school football team beating up a comic book geek. Like me.

The core gameplay is left unchanged from before. You and three other costumed fetishists go from one point of a stage to the other, beating up the many anti-American foes that get in your way. You’ve got your punches, your…stronger punches, and your super powers to keep the action interesting. New to this game is the Fusion attacks, where two characters will heterosexually unite to unleash a tandem, screen-blasting attack. And while you’ll quickly realize that there isn’t a wealth of variety to these team attacks (Storm will almost always summon a tornado that an ally will fill with their gimmick projectile of choice,) they’re still an always-welcome means of brushing aside some 10-15 goons with relative ease, and causing plenty of physics-based environmental damage in the process. So thumbs up to Fusions.

Your senseless violence will level up your character, though the RPG aspects of this action-RPG are a bit more streamlined. Here, you only have four power-ups to level up, a small amount of stat-areas, and stat-altering “medals” to assign your team in place of individual equipment drops. While it simplifies the whole customization process, I feel as though a sense of individual customization is lost. I miss having a choice of powers to assign my hero, instead of having to settle with The Thing’s bland set of radial attacks. I just ended up letting the game automate the whole process and save me the trouble.

Which isn’t too big of a deal. After all, if you’re causing a pause in the action during a multiplayer game to individually assign stat points to your Iceman, you’re a tool. Four players, online or off, can join in the violence seamlessly and with next-to-no lag, making this a more people-friendly Marvel game. Even the trivia game is multiplayer-friendly. This is all assuming, though, that you can cope with the technical deficiencies. Songs and voice clips get cut off at random intervals, and I’ve twice found myself having to reload my last game save because of some kind of glitch that halted progression. And while you can change superheroes at any time from the pause menu, a nagging load time presents itself as your mighty hero webswings his way onto your television screen.

As a multiplayer co-operative beat-em-up, Marvel 2 gets the job done. You and your friends will still enjoy yourselves, especially if you can not compare it to the first Marvel. It’s just that the game is a bit unpolished and bare in spots. And on top of all that, Ultimate Alliance 2 is stuck in the shadow of its superior predecessor…and caught in the eclipse of the much better Batman game.

3 ½ stars

Sunday, September 13, 2009

The Beatles: Rock Band


The Beatles: Rock Band is a mighty collaboration between numerous video game and music companies of which I cannot possibly be made to list. If anything, I can imagine a behind-the-scenes war between Apple Corps and Harmonix over the order of titling with one side refusing the title of “Rock Band: The Beatles” or “Rock Band Beatles Track Pack.” But in any event, money will be paid, royalties will be traded left and right, and a portion of the proceeds will go to the estate of Michael Jackson.

…Michael Jackson?

I only know that little factoid about the late King of Pop claiming royalty rights to the Beatles library from a VH1 special. Which brings me to my biggest issue with the Beatles game in that it’s less a historical document than a fluff piece. A sugar-encrusted fluff piece. The career mode consists of players playing songs from famous venues, all intertwined by flashy musical cutscene flourishes that combine old photos with flashing effects. While fitting to the band’s style, they don’t give any information of value. It’s similar to Call of Duty: World of War’s glamorizing of the horrific events of WW2 through MTV-esque flashes of pictures and big words like “People dying!” and “Flame thrower!” This won’t bother people in the know, but I consider myself only partially in the know and can imagine many new music fans fitting in that same category. After a successful performance, the game gave me an Achievement called “The Final Tour” and I was baffled. “Why did they stop touring?” I wondered. I understand not wanting to focus on the band’s darker days, but the game left me with the following impression on the life story of the Beatles:

First they played at a small club in England. Then played a bigger club called “The Ed Sullivan Show”. Then they played at Shea Stadium. Then they played Budokan Hall. Then they became hermits and holed themselves in a studio at Abbey Road for a few years where they only recorded music and hopped shrooms. Finally, they wanted to greet the outside world by going on the rooftop of their house to…play a show on a rooftop and annoy the neighbours whom have no idea whom these “Beatles” are. Finally, a giant walking walrus strolls across the city, flooding the streets with flowers fitting of a Poison Ivy scheme.

The game features 45 songs. Many favorites are here, some…aren’t. I feel a bit unsatisfied when someone tells me that the downloadable content will rectify that issue; you know, having to PAY more money for content that should’ve been there in the first place. None of the downloadable content, let alone the songs on the disc, are compatible with other Rock Band games.

But my dry retort to my own complaint is that each song features its own custom-made performance video. Instead of a canned band (made with canned bandmate parts) doing canned animations on a canned stage with canned filters, you get the Beatles being the Beatles at Beatles venues with conservative Beatles groupies screaming at them. Then for the Abbey Road songs, the Beatles enter some kind of “dreamscape” with assorted trippy visualizations of the song lyrics. (aka they’re on drugs! They’re indeed with Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.) Even though players may be too busy focusing on, you know, playing the notes to their song, it at least gives spectators a pleasant view of the action, and something else to stare at besides you making an ass of yourself singing.

Speaking of, to get the most of your Beatles experience, you’re going to have to develop some intestinal fortitude and step to the microphone. Guitar, bass, drums, they’re all present, but a few exceptions notwithstanding, most Beatles songs on the game have simple chords and beats. No, you’re going to have to sing the ever sing-a-long-friendly Beatles songs. But your friends can harmoniously join in too! Now you can plug in (or, you know, buy) additional microphones and have your friends sing the back-up vocals. Or you can really impress/embarrass friends by using a mic stand to sing and play an instrument at the same time. Practice enough and soon you’ll be able to perform other tasks, like multiple simultaneous homework assignments or wipe counters while sweeping or figure out The World Ends With You.

There are other nice bonuses too, like challenge modes that try, but can only try so hard to alter the gameplay mechanic of “press this coloured button when we tell you to.” You can unlock photos with factoids and bonus videos, which at the least contribute to the feeling that a lot of care, attention and royalties went into this game project. I didn’t even notice, but it’s Ringo and his soothingly British voice guiding you through the tutorial.

…and, and, and….oh it’s no longer “Star Power” or “Overdrive”, it’s “Beatlemania!” Makes me wonder what term will be used in the Van Halen game.

I feel like much can’t be written about a music game in 2009. You play some instruments, they make noise. It’s ultimately up to the player to decide if 45 songs is worth $60. I equate The Beatles: Rock Band to another heartfelt favorite game in The House of the Dead: Overkill. It’s short, a bit easy, but the experience will rest fondly in your heart for a good while. It’s the Beatles for Christ’s sake, it’s hard to not want to sing along.

4 stars

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Shadow Com...I mean Super Metroid



Have you ever eaten a dish so extraordinary, one that provided such an overwhelming sensation on your taste buds, that “ordinary” suddenly tastes like arse? Like go to Italy, have an exquisite chicken capellini with the rarest spices, designed by a passionate singing chef with more than five syllables in his last name…then go home and eat a frozen dinner. That sums up my predicament at the moment. I’ve been so completely blown away by the recent Batman game that I can’t bring myself to derive pleasure from lesser games like Shadow Complex. So I’ve decided to cleanse my pallet with an older, familiar game from the Wii Virtual Console.

The Metroid series is famous for exploration, atmosphere, shooting action and people starting paragraphs for reviews on Metroid games discussing their fame in exploration and atmosphere. Super Metroid, if anything else, reflects a change in philosophy for the series. Metroid 1’s storyline was “kill all the evil wild animals” and Metroid 2’s storyline was “nuke them all to hell.” With this game, Nintendo sides with the World Wildlife Fund, and Samus is sent to rescue the last surviving Metroid from the evil, resurrected aliens.

The biggest problem with Super Metroid is that it features this long, annoying, unskippable introductory cutscene. You can’t skip it, but you can’t do your laundry during it either because the game requires you to be there to press A to advance the story. Call me impatient for complaining about only losing two minutes of my life, but I tend to lean towards games that thrust me right into the action. Please, do not force the player to watch cutscenes. Ocarina of Time has the exact same problem, multiplied many times over.

That said, the game starts to pick up once the game finally surrenders control of Samus to the player. Super Metroid is exceptional at storytelling in the regard that there are no spoken words, no dialogue and no cutscenes from that point onward. The game uses its visuals, in the form of hints in the environment, to reveal what little story needs advancing. Don’t expect any kind of intriguing character beats or social commentary; this game sticks to the storyline it tells best. That story being “you are Samus, you are very alone, and you’re on a planet with a lot of things that don’t want you to be there.” It also helps that, many years before Half-Life popularized the idea, that Super Metroid never yanks control away from the player in the name of presenting a cut-scene from a dramatic angle. So you could be in the corner, using your oversized laser beam to pick off ants on the floor while a giant, 40-foot monster makes its theatrical, ominous entrance and vicious roars of terror.

The “Metroidvania” formula (what a weird term) is built around playing a character whom starts with nothing but the punitive weapon they carry on them, roaming within a giant overworld. It continues to baffle me how Samus Aran will drop all of the power-ups, missiles and other armaments every time she engages a new mission. But alas, you must search the planet Zebes far and wide to collect assorted upgrades in order to open up more segments of the planet. For your first playthrough of Super Metroid, exploration is something of a watchword. While later games like Shadow Complex and even Metroid Prime will GPS-ly point you to the next area that needs exploring, Super Metroid isn’t even that thoughtful. If you’ve been paying attention to your surroundings like a good spelunker, then your memory will give you a good idea of where you should take your new super-jump upgrade, but even that will only serve you so well. Parts of the wall can be destroyed with certain weapons, but you have no high-tech Mastercraft flashlight to tell you which areas in particular. So finding the semi-suspicious parts of land that you can destroy, means curling up into your morphing ball and throwing mini-bombs around to reveal the destructible parts of land. On my original playthrough as a child, it took me many months of being stuck on at least two major turning points in the game before I saw through this adventure to the end. Today’s gamers may not have that problem with the internet and all, providing detailed maps and solutions to any given problem (and in turn making myself and the gamers of the world SOFT.) But if you’re insisting on finishing the game under your own volition, prepare wander the walls, firing at every bit of architecture to look for hidden paths.

On the upside, the progression of upgrades feel unique to Super Metroid. Abilities like the Screw Attack and the Super Running Death Attack feel distinctly Metroidish, and leave you feeling like you’re playing something more unique than a typical scrolling shooter- something Shadow Complex misses the boat on. The quantity of hidden missile upgrades, energy bar upgrades and so forth help encourage exploring the worlds. The bosses get progressively challenging, and having all the upgrades you can store in that slim futuristic suit can come in handy.

OR, you can go for a speed run. Your performance is ultimately timed, and its hard to not feel bold enough to try for the fastest playtime possible. Of course, a speed run means missing out on many of those upgrades, and suddenly that battle with the underwater sea-snake suddenly gets a lot more challenging. So Super Metroid is definitely a game that gets more enjoyable when you revisit it, and with no cutscenes, this was a game designed to be played many times over.

Super Metroid is a timeless game; one that has aged more pleasantly than most of its 16-bit bunkmates. Despite an average running time of two hours if you know what to do, Super Metroid begs to be beaten over and over again, and its hard to not feel compelled to do so. And while Shadow Complex may try its damnedest to imitate its inspiration, it winds up lacking its own sense of identity, and can’t compare to the Super Sensation. Well, this review failed at salvaging Shadow Complex. Crap.

5 stars

Friday, September 4, 2009

Wii Sports Resort


“The MotionPlus is here! The MotionPlus is here! The Wii is saved! We now have full one-to-one controls! The MotionPlus is the future of gaming! All rejoice! Run, don’t walk, to your nearest Walmart and buy four MotionPluses with matching jackets and gather around the sensation of the summer, Wii Sports Resort, as the Wii once again revolutionizes gaming!”

…is what I may have said if Wii Sports Resort was my first exposure to the MotionPlus, the little adaptor that transforms the Wiimote into something more than a primitive device capable only of discerning “not moving” from “violently moving.” But I’ve already had the life-altering experience, and it wasn’t with Nintendo or any big-headed Miis, but with the smooth-shaven friendly face in Tiger Woods. Tiger’s recent Wii video game not only captured that initial wow-factor as I watched Tiger’s club move in near-perfect harmony with my amateurish swinging arms, but did it within the context of an accessible-yet-feature rich golf experience. So with the novelty having been worn out two months ahead of time, I’m left to assess Wii Sports Resort’s merits as a video game and not the tie-in for the latest cash flow turbine powering Nintendo’s bank account.

I’d like to think that the most important attribute a video game can have is the ability to be played. Sounds like a trivial statement, but it’s that is as believable as stating that inhaling is a vital part of not dying. Wii Sports Resort forced me to watch a 3 minute, unskippable tutorial on how to…

-install the MotionPlus (with jacket) into the Wiimote
-uninstall the MotionPlus from the Wiimote (be sure to hold on to your original Wiimote jacket for this very purpose, the game explains)
-install a nunchuck in a MotionPlus-enhanced Wiimote

You cannot avoid this cutscene. Nintendo has completely neglected the many gamers whom have already bought the damn MotionPlus that has been on the damn market for the last damn month. My feelings turned from agitation to awkwardness, as the game then leaps into a sequence where you use the MotionPlus to manipulate a skydiver. This was where the complete lack of Mii-driven games and subsequent forgetting all about those little creatures came to haunt me, as I found my beach-resort relaxation interrupted by playing as my ex-girlfriend. “Crap, this is weird”, I thought. So after finally gaining access to the main menu, quitting the game and entering the Mii Channel to empty my emotional baggage, I finally got to play the game part of Wii Sports Resort. If you’re fatigued having read this far without hearing a single sentence about the actual gameplay, well, imagine being in my shoes.

I consider myself a homo sapien, and like every homo sapien, I once had delusions of grandeur over using the Wiimote as a lightsaber in a Star Wars game. So the first game I leaped at the chance of playing was Swordplay; here, your Miis will beat each other to death in PG-rated foam-sword battles. My one thought playing Swordplay and watching as my decidedly sharper-goateed Mii slapped around inferior-goateed Miis while mirroring my every hand motion and sword-swipe was “well the next Red Steel or Star Wars game could be pretty cool.” But those games are quite far away from release and on the other hand, this swordy game in front of me has but a paltry set of modes. They include “Slash another person”, “Slash fruit” and “massacre a lot of mindless drones in preparation for your real life school-slaying.” And as it is, there isn’t a wealth of depth or this mode, or any incentive to motivate yourself into simulating 12 different school-slaying on different parts of the island.

And that, to me, is the general story of Wii Sports Resort; 12 quirky mini-games, but nothing with enough meat to keep you amused for the duration of this vacation. Archery has you holding the remote and nunchuck in a weird manner to simulate using a bow and arrow…and that’s it. Frisbee has you swinging your Wiimote like a Frisbee at allocated targets without literally throwing it at your television (real men don’t use the wriststrap…) and that’s it. Basketball as you flinging the remote in the air to simulate a lay-up…and that’s it. Wakeboarding has you turning the remote around and occasionally springing up (Waggle lives!) to jump…and that’s it. The airplane flying game, more than any other game, showcases the accuracy that the MotionPlus can bring to a game, but you’re restricted to flying around an island, looking for floating I’s and learning about tourist attractions in a resort catered to Bob the Builder. A lot of these games have alternate difficulties, courses and even mock-Achievements, but they feel too shallow in contrast to the physical effort you’ll have to exert to play them. It’s a step up from Wii Sports and its ability to register only your most radical of movements for all of the non-bowling games, but not enough to fly through every game in two-minute intervals.

It got to a point where I felt that the game’s constant messages of “take a break!” or “don’t forget to calibrate the remote” were more vain attempts to prolong the game’s play-life; to delay the player from burning through every attraction in this resort and trade the game in. After all, a game about Summer events is bound to seasonally die a horrible death within the resale market during the winter holidays.

Wii Golf and Wii Bowling return, and Wii Tennis is reincarnated as Table Tennis. The latter can be potentially fun with a friend, but you lack control over every aspect but the hand in which your Mii wields a paddle, and thus this game grows tiresome too. Wii Bowling has a few unlockable new challenges but really, we’ve all played (or been forced to play) Wii Bowling to death, we’re all sick of hucking the ball behind us and watching the little Miis jump in panic over the damage done to the alley’s hardwood floor. Golf has some new courses but…well, Tiger Woods PGA Tour ’11! Buy that!

Finally, there are the racing games, the weakest of all. Canoeing asks you to imagine your Wiimote is a paddle and splash, splash, splash your way to the finish line! This was obviously meant to be some form of drinking game at your next party, the one that weeds out the weak by inducing vomit through the combination of shots and physical exercise. Or you can put your Miis on Jet-skis and race through checkpoints in a jet-skiing game that may shockingly be more tacky than WaveRace 64. The problem with this game is that, in steering with both the Wiimote and nunchuck, the response time between your motions and the game’s are stalled and your driving is anything but smooth. Call it the Mario Kart Wii Disease. Finally, combining the worst of both worlds is bicycling, featuring both clunky steering and the redundancy of peddling with the remote and nunchuck. If you loved Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, than this is the mini-game for you. I just tend to think that most people…didn’t like Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games. For many reasons.

Like its predecessor, Wii Sports Resort is meant to be showed off at parties to your friends. Of course, this means buying more MotionPlus adapters, but that’s all part of Nintendo’s master plan anyways. While Resort has more content and is generally more functional than the clunky mess of Wii Sports, it also has the same tendency to lean solely on the novelty of new controls. I got the impression playing this game that the MotionPlus could lend itself to other, more focused games that flesh out any individual gameplay mechanic the way Tiger Woods did. It’s just that this very game is little more than a series of mini-game collections that left me wondering when this vacation would end already. Did I mention you should buy Tiger Woods on the Wii?

2 ½ stars