Transformers: War for Cybertron

So I vaguely remember that last year, I thinking that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was not half-bad. Before you shut the monitor off in disgust and declare me the world’s biggest nitwit failure of a life form, know that I’m talking about the video game, not the 150 minute disaster of a movie. While the campaign was a waste of data and the controls were more unorthodox than people who pull their pants down to use the urinal, the multiplayer options were rather novel. It was akin to Grand Theft Auto 4’s city-based multiplayer, except YOU were the jacked car, and the jacked car transformed in a hulking mech of destruction.

Thus, I was a bit hesitant about the prospect of War for Cybertron. All of the promotional screenshots going into the experience hinted at a dark, super serious tone that frightened me. I dreaded that, in attempting to rebel against Michael Bay’s grumpy old-man-Jetfire and Devestator swinging wrecking ball testicles, the developers treated the fiction with incredible reverence. And in doing so, they would forget that the original Transformers was an 80s cartoon designed to market and sell action figures. Fortunately, while the visual style of the game displays the theme of “oppressive cyber-planet land in times of death and destitution”, the actual game is more true to 80s form. Each of the characters present in War for Cybertron relishes in their gloriously one-dimensional personas from the past. Every sentence spoken by Starscreen unsubtly hints at his eagerness to betray his superiors. Optimus Prime behaves like a hybrid of Pope Benedict and Captain Price. All of the Autobots converse in optimistic tones, uttering such 80s-isms as “ready to rumble” and “locked and loaded.” Megatron may be the most entertaining of all, as he only knows about conquering and killing the weak, while he struggles to free Cybertron from the shackles of freedom and tranquility.

The plot of the game is intended to be a prequel to whatever version of the Transformers cartoon you believe to be sacred. So you’ll find out how Optimus became Optimus Prime and what happened on this “Cybertron” locale we always hear about. While I can imagine the really, really devoted Cyberfans (the ones with the Autobot logo tattooed on their asscheek) being intrigued by this rarely-touched piece of the Transformers fiction, they will be quickly reminded why it is a rarely touched piece of the Transformers fiction. The whole novelty of Transformers in the first place is that they are robots that transform into automobiles. You know, that whole “robots in disguise, more than meets the eye” rhyming bit. The “War for Cybertron,” if you will, is prior to the time Transformers explored the planet Earth and learned what a Mack Truck is. As a result, all of the Transformers transform into generic futuristic hover-cars and aerial vehicle-things. It’s kind of blasphemous to see Optimus Freaking Prime and Sound Freaking Wave transform into the similar kind of car-based device.

As odd as it is, transforming into hover-things is a notable, if secondary, feature of the gameplay. You’ll transform to drive across long stretches, make clean getaways and frustratingly drop the minigun you just acquired from a tough-to-kill robot to drive across a long stretch. You may also find yourself transforming into vehicle form for the sole purpose of using your vehicle’s guns because you ran out of normal gun ammo. In one of those bizarre-for-video-games-but-not-that-bizarre-in-real-life moves, you can’t just pick up ammo or guns from fallen enemies. Rather, you can only obtain munitions from conveniently placed crates across the land. As a result, you’ll undergo a slight bullet shortage during the first few levels as you make uneducated decisions about which weapons to carry. I can respect the game for not forcing the player to undergo a mandatory half-hour tutorial, but I don’t know what giant robots from space consider a “grenade launcher” or “ammo crate”.

So there’s a bit of an awkward growing period for the new player. The first few levels will feature a lot of cursing as you run out of bullets and get shot by enemies because your arm was sticking out of the wall. There is indeed no cover system, and health that doesn’t regenerate completely if you take too much damage. You can either claim this game is prehistoric for using such dated concepts (and ironically prove yourself to be a caveman with such narrow-minded thinking) or accept the breath of fresh air from the many, many cover-based shooters entering the market these days. After a tough few starting levels, you learn to make smarter decisions over what weapons to carry and how to protect yourself at night in the dark Cybertron alleyways.

Then you have to contend with the campaign’s other flaws. The level design isn’t entirely drab, but the Autobots didn’t know how to transform into great interior designers. So you’ll grow wearisome of the grey metallic scenery of the robot homeworld pretty quickly. And you’ll soon realize that much time is spent fighting generic clones of robots. If you’re a Decepticon, you’ll battle waves of peppy orange robots. If you’re an Autobot, you’ll fight purple versions of the same robots. It’ll fry one’s patience circuits to have to duel with the same generic bots after awhile. Most disappointingly of all is that the real Autobots and real Decepticons rarely engage in fisticuffs. Considering how the cartoons are built around Autobot-on-Decepticon violence, it’s strange that there are only a few boss fights where you’ll battle a real Transformer-celebrity. Optimus and Megatron never have their war to settle the score in this game, for example.

The campaign takes about 10 hours to complete. Truth be told, I probably would have stopped caring were it not for the nostalgia factor of playing with real Transformers. There’s something inspiring about having the actual Megatron order you to jump to your possible death. You can play with two other comrades in online co-op, which I imagine making the experience all the more palpable. There’s also Escalation, a variation on Nazi Zombies/Horde/Firefight/Fight-repeating-waves-of-enemies mode. You’ll get some kicks out of this mode, and perhaps a chuckle or two as giant hulking robots gather around the vending machine for ammo. Does the vending machine transform into a warrior robot? I never found out for myself.

The online multiplayer is, feature for feature, taken from many other multiplayer shooters past. You have your deathmatch options, your node control/capture the flag options, and you’ll have different character classes that you can level up. I feel a bit slighted by the customization options of your created Transformer, as you’re limited to choosing the colour palette of several pre-designed robot characters. If you so desired, you can play online as Optimus Prime’s cousin, Poptimus Chime. Like every newfangled shooter today, your characters level up and new abilities gradually open up, and I continue to wonder how long it’ll take for people to get bored of grinding online multiplayer modes. When the online mode works, it’s as entertaining as any other online shooter. But I’ve had a handful of gimped laggy sessions that made me leery of the mode in general. Be warned.

War for Cybertron is a Transformers game for Transformers fans. Despite the mortal sin of Optimus Prime not transforming into a Mack Truck (complete with cargo load appearing out of nowhere), the game plays to the strengths of the fiction enough to cause massive spurts of geekgasms. For people who grew up on Ninja Turtles and things that didn’t involve transforming robots, it is a playable but kind of dull third person shooter that transforms into a playable but kind of familiar online package.

3 ½ stars

Sin and Punishment: Star Successor

It’s almost an authentic feel-good story. The original Sin and Punishment, never officially released in North America, becoming an underground favorite amongst importers and people making more cash than me. By popular demand (I presume popular demand anyways) the game was finally released via Wii Virtual Console and becomes a big enough smash that the original developers get the thumbs up for an internationally-released sequel. The only reason I don’t shed tears of joy over this inspirational journey is that the “underdog” is Nintendo and their reward is another downpour of cash within their money vaults.

Sin and Punishment: Star Successor follows the predecessor in ways that I’m not too certain about. I only have vague memories of playing the original game some 2-3 years ago and three thoughts stand out from my past time: the plot sucked, the controls sucked, the bosses were the awesomest bosses ever. Sin and Punishment 2 at least maintains the tradition of having a metric ton worth of junk storyline. It’s like an 80s/90s era action movies where some kids or young teens are thrust into an alternate realm and defeat the evil emperor and a freaking army by way of “the power within.” Oh, and the kids have the three ultimate 80s child fantasy items: laser guns, laser swords and hoverboards. There’s a lot of talk of evil beast forms and “trappers” and evil empires but all of it flew over my head. All I drew from the experience was that the evil empire were trying to kidnap two kids, and these two kids are going to outwit and outgun(!) the evil empire’s technoarmy of tanks and monsters. For such a simple premise, the sure amount of dialogue within the game is baffling, also in part because this is a rail shooter and time spent talking is time not spent pulling the trigger on some poor mutant manta ray’s head.

Controls are great though. The ability to aim using the Wiimote makes for a much more logical means to life-ending than the way the original game humiliated itself on the Classic Controller button layout. As a rail shooter, your character runs/hoverboards/rides a monster camel across a predetermined path… a quick, faster-than North Korea getting kicked out of the World Cup fast-moving redetermined path. It’s like the old Back to the Future ride at Universal Studios, except you can fight back against the T-Rex that eats you. On this path, you’ll get the most dramatic camera angles of the evil empire army firing a hundred bullets across the screen, begging to be retaliated on. Meanwhile, you are flying across on your board, dashing about, firing lock-on missiles, single bullets, your melee sword swipe and doing a whole lot of random dashing. The best frame of reference to describe Sin and Punishment’s gameplay style would be the Panzer Dragoon games, except it is YOU that are killing the dragons and dragon-like creatures. Those murderous children.

So you choose between two protagonists; a girl who looks like a boy and a boy who looks like a girl. You’ll travel across such anime cliché locations as haunted forest, the city of the future and Mount F’n Fuji. In fact this game could arguably be called an amalgamation of anime clichés when it comes to its presentation. But I can’t help but forgive the game for making up for the unoriginality by presenting its unoriginal elements in such amusingly high quantity. Dozens of soldiers can occupy the screen, firing dozens more energy bullets while a fleet of flying manta rays swoop through the background in geese V-formation. Your eyes are constantly bombarded by chaos and destruction. So much chaos, in fact, that you really can’t play this game in any long stretch. After an hour, my eyes were fatigued, my brain was spent and my heart was withered down due to overexposure of insane elements popping at the screen. I would have to rest my eyes afterwards by playing something a little more tame or visually dull, like chess or crosswords or Uncharted 2. This game, if released on the 3DS, would cause seizures, aneurysms and spontaneous combustion of the skull. Keep in mind that isn’t a knock against the game, but rather a warning; attempting to power-finish Sin and Punishment in an evening may prove fatal.

And I haven’t even gotten to the boss fights yet. Between this and God of War 3, I feel like the groin-smashing boss fight is undergoing a renaissance in 2010. But while God of War impressed the masses with the size of its enemies, Sin and Punishment will thrash you with quantity. You’ll fight many bosses of varying sizes and varieties, and often in succession of each other. Each of the game’s seven levels can have upwards to five or six boss battles each, think about that. The ratio of boss fights to levels is lopsided like never before. Bosses vary from your typical tanks and battleships to typical dragons, griffons and sea monsters to your less typical fare. For example, one boss is a black ooze that shapeshifts from a giant bipedal spider to a flock of dolphins that nose-juggle their projectiles at you. The final level, while not as memorable as the final battle in Sin and Punishment 1, features a grueling gauntlet against about 6 straight massive boss monsters, in which a golden plaque should be mailed to any gamer whom can complete it without losing a life.

(And if you don’t know, the final battle for Sin and Punishment 1 involves you running across the PLANET EARTH’S OZONE deflecting meteors at a GIANT CLONE of the PLANET EARTH. No game is topping that. Ever)

Checkpoints are scattered throughout the game with slight modesty. Just enough to have your nerve slightly chipped away at certain late-game segments but nothing that some patience and elbow grease can’t overcome. However, your score resets upon dying, and you’ll look like a slight dweeb uploading your paltry scores onto the online leaderboards for a level in which the final boss chipped your life away. So it’s the online scoreboard-obsessed that’ll probably get the most value out of Sin and Punishment 2. The rest of the world will probably finish this game in 7 hours worth of scattered play sessions. (Mind you, 7 hours is something of an eternity by the standards of rail shooters past.) There’s a two player mode that I think lets the second player control a second targeting reticule, but I couldn’t test it out for myself. Asking friends to play my obscure Japanesey anime shooter was admittedly a harder sell than the Aliens light gun game at the theatre arcade. It took us $8 each to beat the Alien Queen. I am still not certain if it was worth it.

For inquiring minds that must know, Sin and Punishment 2 is a very specific game that caters to a specific audience. For the high score-driven people that crave international leaderboard recognition, specifically from a game that kind of resembles Panzer Dragoons of past. My heart still goes out to Panzer Dragoon Orta as the best “this-kind-of-rail-shooter” I’ve ever played, but this would be a plausible second. And finally, the gun fights are flashy and the bosses are bossy, so it could be said that Sin and Punishment is one of the more meaty rail-gun experiences to fly by in recent years.

3 ½ stars

God of War 3

Previously on God of War, things passed away. That’s as apt a summation of the series as I can think of. Greek mythology, when not toned down for Saturday afternoon children’s cartoons or big budget Hollywood crapfests starring Sam Worthington, are more about blood and guts than anything else. (Well, anything short of explaining phenomenon which primitive Greek science could not. Forget ion charges inside clouds, lightning occurs because an angry bearded man throws them out of his hands.) So God of War games, on virtue of mortality, are probably the best use of Greek mythology unrelated to Kevin Sorbo.

And here we have God of War 3, the 8 hour ending sequence to God of War 2, but presented in HD-ready Internal-Organs-O-Vision on the Playstation 3. I firmly believe that no franchise has benefited more from the shift to High Definition than God of War. With upmost respect to the Playstation 2, that system couldn’t properly display Kratos’s sociopathic tendencies; as the God of War ripped and torn apart walking polygonal dolls. Here, heads are decapitated with great detail given to the tearing skin and muscle on the neck and all manner or organs burst out of a centaur like New Year’s confetti. If you have a squeamish girlfriend, keep her away from the living room as you play this game. If you have a son, keep him away from the living room as you play this game, unless you want him to think this stuff is cool.

On that note of senseless violence, I will say that God of War 3’s best attribute is the boss battles. You know how in foreign martial arts movies or 80s/early 90s action movies, a series of jerk villain henchmen are introduced for no reason other than the promise of watching the hero having an inevitable brawl with them? God of War is that kind of movie. Very early on, a series of celebrities from Greek mythology are introduced, with the unspoken vow that they will annoy and frustrate Kratos. That unspoken vow is followed by Kratos’ very spoken vow to rip them to hell. And he will. Each boss battle is multi-tiered, and sometimes very big. You will sometimes either fight someone several hundred times bigger than you are, fight something on top of the back of someone a hundred times bigger than you, or both. But even small fries like Hermes the Messenger Boy of the Gods, or Hercules the Dumb Muscle of the Gods, will both put up memorable challenges and die in violent and ironic ways. The Sony Santa Monica developers have crooked imaginations.

This is all part of Kratos’ plan to mess up Zeus. Why? Well you kind of have to approach God of War 3 with the mentality that Kratos is at best, “irrational”, and at worst “batshit insane.” Your killing of the various gods causing supernatural chaos and destruction. Kratos quite figuratively takes his white cock and thrusts it deep into the world’s ass. (Philadelphia?) And players of God of War 2 will think that Zeus was in the right, anyways. The justification for why it’s okay for Kratos to mess things up doesn’t arrive until near the end, in an explanation that’s equal parts God of War 1, the tackiest of Greek myths and Hideo Kojima-brand madness.

(Sorry, Philly! I kid! I love your cheesesteaks! And your…weather?)

The other strong suit of the plot is that it ends in a manner so decisive that there can, in no way ever, be another God of War game. Of course we all said that about Metal Gear Solid 4 too. Nonetheless, people whom have followed this series from the beginning will probably want to see how it ends. And depending on their lust for violence, they may be satisfied by how lop-sided the ratio of things that die and things that don’t is.

The gameplay bears a strong resemblance to God of War 1 and God of War 2, shockingly I know. You’re still swinging your blade chains of insanity around, slashing out large groups of enemies with relative ease. You still have the ability to spontaneously roll in any direction, the flexible gymnast Kratos is. You still use quick-time event button presses to loosely simulate ripping the optical nerve out of a Cyclops’ skull. Though whomever had the bright idea of placing the button press prompts on the edge of the screen, away from the brutality happening at the centre of the screen, deserves a fate similar to a Kratos victim in a quick time event. These are especially cruel when playing on a Standard Definition TV (yes, they still exist) and the buttons on the side are ever slightly cropped. The end result slightly detracts from the satisfaction of watching Kratos crop other living beings.

God of War 3 is also a strangely-paced, albeit mostly solid 8 hours of gameplay. More often than not, you’ll be swiping around the Mount Olympus National Guard with your fire blades. Actually, no, that’s wrong. I stopped using the blades in favour of the lion gauntlets for their ability to chew down the invisible health bars of my enemies. There are a few small but novel puzzles, and a slightly overdone flight mini-game where you use the Icarus wings to swoop back and forth through the same damned giant Chain of Balance. The parts of the game where there are no checkpoints are also the ones that needed them the most; there is one particular escort mission where you have to protect the giant box you are riding from invading bull-people. And near the end of the game, there are a series of progressively annoying arena battles pitting Kratos against a series of respawning goons. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so drunk when I was playing these levels, but how I wish the game showed some heart (figuratively though, the game literally shows plenty of beating heart) and gave me some dang checkpoints.

And there are a few other odd quirks I’d like to call attention to. Would it have hurt to include a level select? I would very much hope to revisit those great boss fights and not bother with the rest of this quest business. And it is quite clear that “swinging chain blades” are the it-fashion statement in Ancient Greece, for you’ll steal two other knockoffs of the famed Blades of Chaos/Exile, that have different animations but both cower at the might of the ferocious lion gauntlets. Finally, I’m guessing this has become God of War’s annual tradition, like how Metal Gear games need a cardboard box, or Zelda games need a Master Sword/Hookshot/Bow and Arrow/Death Mountain/Zora Domain/Gerudo Desert/Fire Temple/Princess Zelda/well you get the point. But this is the fourth straight game where Kratos finds himself trapped in Hell, and must casually gallivant his way out. If there is an inside joke here, it stopped being funny two or three games ago.

In the pantheon of God of War-like action movies, God of War 3 is a few shades below the top. It’s decidedly better paced than God of War 2, Devil May Cry 4 and Dante’s Inferno, but not as fluid an experience as X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and not the enthralling self-contained epic that is the original God of War. (Someone try charting that out on a graph.) It’s not some must-play experience, but people that love horrific death, their HDTV screen or need to know the end of Kratos’ story would do well to take a look, regardless.

3 ½ stars

(Minor Spoiler. But I love how the only people that don’t die in the game are the ones that Kratos nails in a more figurative manner.)

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

So there’s this young, scrapping lad with modest beginnings. He comes from some kind of small village, possibly located in the woods. If he doesn’t already have an affinity for green garb, he’ll be toting a bright tunic and pointed hat soon. He’s not much a person for words but he’s mighty courageous, on default of people telling him he is “the hero of destiny.” He’s going to rescue a princess that he may or may not have any prior connection to, from the semi-stereotype that is an evil Persian sorcerer with pig-like tendencies. All three of them are bound together by a trinity-figure in their hands, meant to symbolize the fantasy theme of “good must always fight against evil.” (I would argue the merit of a theme in reality, however. What “good” is always in conflict of “evil” in the real world? Terrorism? Does Osama Bin Laden have the Triforce of Power embedded in his hand?)

That right there is the plot of nearly every major console Legend of Zelda game released to date, give or take a few tweaks and touches. And you bet your sweet dollar signs that Twilight Princess follows this outline, along with many other beats and concepts, with upmost devotion.

You will find a bow and arrow, a hookshot and some sack of bombs. You will visit Death Mountain, Lake Hylia, and the assorted fire/water/ice-themed temples. You will look for the Big Key, a map, a compass and the special gimmick item-of-the-moment in each temple. You will ride a horse. You will draw the Master Sword out of the ground. You will defeat skeleton knights by leaving a bomb next to their remains. You will learn that you are the hero of destiny, chosen by the gods to slay Ganondorf and rescue the land of Hyrule.

I feel like Twilight Princess is Nintendo’s passive-aggressive response to people who nagged and complained about Wind Waker having the audacity to change the visual style. “You want your damned Adult Link-sequel? Well, Fine! Here, you whiny punks! Be careful what you wish for!” And thus, here we have the move-for-move clone of Ocarina of Time that hardcore fans probably fantasized about before realizing they could always just, you know, replay Ocarina of Time.

Well, maybe the game isn’t entirely a cheap knock-off. There’s an alternate dimension of evil beings for Link to contend with; this is the part where Twilight Princess stops cribbing Zelda 64 and starts cloning every other Nintendo game. For the duration of these parts, Link assumes a wolf form, though the differences between being a wolf and being a human with the brain of a dog are few. Your animations look different, the wolf can follow scent trails, but otherwise the wolf idea comes off as a gimmick that changes little besides the ass of which the camera stares at during play.

So, what else is new in Twilight Princess? Well, if you buy the Wii version, arthritis is new. The Wiimote registers flailing motions as the cue to swing your sword, but the motion sensors are too imprecise to interpret commands with accuracy. And the end result is Link flailing about, struggling to defeat the wacky-but-appropriately shielded enemies. At least one could make the argument that Wiimote shakes vaguely mimic sword swipes. In wolf-form, you’re merely shaking your remote like an old man shaking his cane at the brat kids on his front lawn to recreate the motion of…wolf spazing attacks? The cartilage in your wrist will hate you for playing this game. Oh, and if you don’t turn down the Wiimote’s volume, every second or third sound effect (be it the gem chime, the treasure chest theme or a character’s grunting) will be played on that muffled Game Boy of a speaker. I ultimately traded my Wii copy for the Gamecube version… to ironically play on my Wii. The only other minute difference between the two versions is that the ENTIRE WORLD IS HORIZONTALLY FLIPPED AROUND. It’s one of those strange differences that only those cursed enough to have played both versions of the game will be distracted by.

Otherwise, not much has changed between this and the not-glorious Nintendo 64 era of games. Nintendo didn’t even have the courtesy to insert voice work into the game. All of the characters still speak in text boxes, accompanied by goofy grunts, sighs and yelps. I heard the “Super Mario Sunshine” argument of why so few Nintendo games have voiceover before but the dialogue here isn’t terrible. It’s just drab; I have a hard time buying into the various dramatic moments when all the spoken word appears in text box format. There was one moment where a brigade of troll-people invaded the town, threatening to trample the children. Being that all I had to do was not press A to advance the next screen of text to delay their progress, I could not believe that the poor children were in true jeopardy of the impending troll molestation.

Before I go into my most vitriol-fueled of rants about Twilight Princess, allow me to hand over a few compliments as to not look like a complete hater. The art style, while not as effective as Wind Waker’s acid trip, is still unique in parts. Granted, the game has some of the creepiest digital children seen to date. (The shortest one, infant-like in appearance, has Satan’s eyebrows and talks like an adult. Possessed!) The characters have distinct visual personalities and the bosses look appropriately menacing. The dungeons, while surpassed in terms of suspense by other Zelda homages like 3D Dot Game Heroes and (especially) Demon’s Souls, are still the most entertaining aspects of the experience. If you’re not shoving your sword down a lizardman’s gullet, you’ll be solving a contraption puzzle that will lead to shoving your sword down a lizardman’s gullet. Even individual mechanics, like horseback riding, swineback-riding and having a midget lady-thing wolfback-ride you, are at least handled appropriately enough. So this game seems to do animals pretty well.

Back to pure negativity mode. You know how in games like New Super Mario Bros and Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, you can boot up your system and complete many objectives between bus stops? I like that trait; the ability to make progress given little spouts of time. Twilight Princess is not that kind of game. If you are a goal-oriented person, you will hate Twilight Princess. This is a game that constantly throws one obstacle after another at the player, not in the name of challenge or evolving the story, but merely to pad out the game’s length in a manner that leaves you feeling like you’ve accomplished nothing.

Here’s an example. You’ve just completed the Fire Temple. You find out that the Water Temple is next. With less than fond memories of Ocarina of Time’s Water Temple in your head, you ride on with a mentality of “lets get this over with.”

-Except you can’t visit the temple yet, because the entire region is still shrouded in darkness, thus imprisoning you in the wolf form. Removing the darkness requires completing a nagging fetch quest where you first speak to some golden god figure, then hunt down and destroy 16 evil beetles. Why these evil insects have the power to enshrine an entire country in darkness, I don’t know.
-But before you can go to Lake Hylia and get that deed done, you must first follow the scent trail of Link’s sort-of-but-not-really love interest to Hyrule Castle Town. It is there that you learn of the tragic-but-not-really-tragic fate of your sort-of-but-not-really love interest. Then you head back to Lake Hylia.
-After jumping off the bridge to Lake Hylia on account of an enemy ambush, you hope to begin the annoying bug hunt. Except you can’t access the golden god because the water level of the lake is too low. So first you’ll engage in some silly flying mini-game to gain access to the Zora’s Domain. You’ll then learn that the whole area is frozen solid on account of the forces of evil.
-Thawing this place out involves a relatively abstract solution; teleporting to the Goron area and transporting a giant burning rock to the Zora lair. This rock raises the water level and finally gives you access to the golden god.
-Which, in turn, gives you access to the nagging fetch quest. Completing this fetch quest involves redoing that flying mini-game, as well as exploring the farthest reaches of the lake, the Zora Domain and even the Castle Town.
-After destroying 15 beetles, you discover the location of number 16…which is really a giant beetle dust mite boss! This dust mite boss doubles as one of the coolest looking and easiest confrontations in the entire game.
-So you’ve finally lifted the veil of darkness on Lake Hylia. But you still can’t go to the temple because you can breathe underwater. Fortunately, the ghost of the Zora Prince’s mother will help with that IF you rescue her dying son.
-To rescue her dying son, you’ll have to do an escort mission (the most evil of mission types in video games), taking the long road from the Castle Town to Kakariko Village. Along the way, you’ll repeat a jousting boss battle from earlier in the game.
-After finishing that escort mission, you can go to the graveyard to pick up magical armour that lets you breathe underwater. “Finally!” you think. “I can go to the blasted water temple.”
-Human Link doesn’t have access to teleportation at this point in the game, so you’ll venture back to Lake Hylia to explore the Water Temple. But wait! Did you buy the waterproof bombs back when you were in Kakariko Village? If you didn’t, you can’t enter the Temple. Time to head back to town!

That was almost as redundant to write out as it was to complete. What I didn’t realize at the time was that the whole process took me about 4 hours to finish. And this is not the game’s only example of artificially finding ways to pad out length in the name of just filling time. There are about 3 or 4 fetch quests to silently mock the people that fussed over the Wind Waker sailing fetch quest. You’ll make numourous back-and-forth trips across the world to talk to people a very forced-means of progressing the plot. Twilight Princess improves upon Ocarina of Time in letting the player skip cutscenes…or at least 60% of the cutscenes can be skipped. (And they’re usually the most interesting bits.) There are still annoying text sequences that I was forced to sit through. This game was made in that time period where developers were scared of a game being labeled as too short and thus a “rental-only” by game reviewers. You know, back when Blockbuster Video wasn’t going out of business. My final play time was 25 hours. I feel like 15-20 of those hours could’ve been cut out and I would’ve enjoyed my experience many times over.

I struggled for a period in trying to decide who to recommend Twilight Princess to. I can’t say “Zelda fans” because at this stage, they’ve already bought it, finished it, wrote the FAQ for it and cried “best game evah!” for it. Rather, I think the best audience for Twilight Princess is children aged 7-12. Children whom haven’t been weened on Halo or Modern Warfare and refuse to play anything less violent than an AK round to the skull. Take away the whole “Legend of Zelda” context and what you’re left is a story of a boy rescuing a princess from a dark lord, a perfect fantasy adventure concept for an innocent youth to indulge in. Preferably, this youth hasn’t played Ocarina of Time or too many other Zelda games, either, and thus they’ll probably find themselves intrigued by the whimsical fantasy universe. For anyone else, especially if you’ve been following this series on a semi-regular basis, you’re missing nothing here.

3 stars

Super Mario Galaxy 2

Previously, I had suggested that the secret to Super Mario Galaxy’s success was attributed to Nintendo programmers undergoing some extra-curricular activities. After all, who but the users of the most hallucinogenic medicine could conjure up such wonderfully bizarre level concepts as the haunted house in space, or the race track in the sky comprised of floating water? It appears that Mario Galaxy’s commercial success was enough for EAD to score another stash of LCD and commit to a second drug orgy in Super Mario Galaxy 2.

Players of Super Mario Galaxy 2 will learn, very quickly, that this sequel was justified. That there are enough (if barely) new ideas to occupy a full DVD disc follow-up. Water blobs that float in space, free of containment, that players must swim through. Platforms that appear and disappear based on the beat of the world music. A factory producing Chomp Chomp spheres, presumably part of some consignment deal with King Koopa Incor. Navigating a sphere through a world of pencils and crafting supplies. Sure, mainstays like the Haunted House and Desert land are back, but even they have bizarre twists. Try riding a floating platform on a haunted river that sequentially folds itself into a square.

The same trippy-arsed power-ups from the last game also make a return. The goofy Bee suit, the goofy spring suit and the goofy ghost outfit all make a return to inspire and challenge cosplayers everywhere. Debuting here (and bound to appear in a Smash Bros game) are the rock suit (transforms Mario into a rolling stone, humming Dylan to himself) and the Cloud suit (creates up to 3 cloud platforms to trip balls on.) Yoshi also returns, in his most worthwhile appearance in a video game since Super Mario World. He/she/it can eat enemies and shit out star rocks…seriously. But this time, his bowel movements are controlled at the whim of the Wiimote pointer thingy. And fruit-triggered powers like the red pepper curry dash and the blue berry bloated gas blow give the game’s Yoshi segments some distinct hooks.

Right now, one can see that the developing a video game while baked enables for wonderfully abstract creativity in concept development. What it seems to stunt, however, is story writing. I can just imagine the writing meetings now.

“Dude, we should just, like, get the Princess and the fat guy should like, totally save her from the ugly green dude.”

“Dude, you just blew my mind!”

It’s the lazy standby that all Mario platformers follow. And yes, I know of the age-old excuse of story not mattering in this kind of game. But what offended me was how bold-faced the game is in not acknowledging the existence of Super Mario Galaxy 1. Mario runs into the white-star-fat-thing that lives in his hair in the introductory cutscene, which is treated like a first-ever encounter. Stars fall from the sky for what is proclaimed to be the first time in centuries. A cast of toad space explorers are assembled for seemingly the first time to once again be useless. Seeing so many reoccurring characters appear for allegedly the first time feels like too much of a stretch. Simply having one of those toads or star people say “hey, Mario! Welcome BACK! Bowser is causing trouble AGAIN and you should stop him AGAIN!” would have made me feel all the less insulted for investing so much time, enthusiasm and admiration for the first Mario Galaxy.

Perhaps pleading ignorance is the development team’s way of eliminating any needed backstory; allow players new to the series to hop in without needing to know what happened prior. The problem with this approach is that Super Mario Galaxy 2 really is not a game designed for those newcomers. Sure, frequent, optional tutorials explain the various moves and techniques in great, slow, methodical detail. But the difficulty of Mario Galaxy 2 has been considerably jazzed up. Sorry kids, but this is the grown-ups’ Mario Galaxy. Or at least the psycho-grown-ups’ Mario Galaxy.

And I can totally dig that. Many of the levels were designed with a varying degrees of malicious intent. Platform jumping calls for proper timing, accuracy and mastery of Mario’s various wacky Cirque du Soleil maneuvers. The Waggle-spin technique is back for more precise jumps, but there were rare moments where I felt the waggle was too imprecise for the specific challenges that were being presented. Just wait for the level where waggle-spinning manipulates the appearance of key platforms. Keep in mind, I would blame about 17.3536% of my jumping failures on the Wiimote’s inaccuracy and the other 82.6464% on the cruel hand of fate. But the game has a just brand of cruel, that kind of fair style of cruel, where you feel ever relieved for finishing a specific challenge.

That many of the early levels fit into this just brand of rewarding makes one feel obligated to go for a 100% completion rate. Super Mario Galaxy 1 had the same deal too, where so many stars appeared so inviting that one opts to complete every presented challenge before plowing the world’s boss and moving on. “Go for 120 stars again? Bring it on!” One may say.

At first.

The biggest reasons I feel that Super Mario Galaxy 2 does not measure up to Super Mario Galaxy 1 are related to the end-game and post-game. One of the last levels being a brick-by-brick revival to a stage from Super Mario 64? A little easy, but cute. I’ll survive. Then there’s the fact that you fight Bowser three times, all in relatively-easy battles. So the real final battle feel decidedly less climatic than the time he dared you to grab him by the tail. Besides, Bowser never puts up much a fight in any video game. His most difficult encounter may as well be landing on his death spot in Mario Party.

Once you do finish the game, the “Special” levels open themselves up. These are the apparent most difficult challenges in the entire game. Part of this hearty challenge entails…bringing back two specific sequences from Mario Galaxy 1 and a giant waste-of-time gauntlet against that’s games’ ever pathetic boss fights.

Okay, I can understand why these “S-world” levels weren’t deemed worthy of taking part in the main game. If you’re going to offer leftovers, best to leave them in the back of the fridge and give the kids the option to eat them or pass them off to the dog. So once you do get all 120 stars, the player is asked to refinish the final level and give Bowser another meteor up the ass.

Then you are kindly asked to go on a most lame fetch quest. Revisit each land, seek out 120 Green Stars, then pat yourself on the back. Only then will the game’s final final world open itself to players. Hell. Freaking. No.

But I digress. The game has so many great moments, levels and challenges leading up to this optional lame duck fetch quest to make this a worthwhile investment. I just feel like I am in a weird position, with most reviewers and fans proclaiming this game to be fantastic, incredible, mind-blowing, a revelation. Meanwhile, I would merely suggest that this game is merely a great follow-up that will satisfy loyal fans. And I know that merely being “great” could be viewed as an insult to some of the biggest Nintendo fans out there. And all I can say is that if you’re the kind of person that thinks 4 out 5 stars is too cruel for Super Mario Galaxy 2, then you either already bought this game or should hurry up and buy it.

4 stars

Super Mario Galaxy 1

For the longest time, it seemed like something was amiss from Mario games. I would argue that it has been at least a decade since this “it factor” vanished. The product of this missing “it factor” was soulless gimmick titles like Luigi’s Mansion and Mario Sunshine. For awhile it seemed like Nintendo acknowledged this too, with shameless reaches at nostalgia like New Super Mario Bros and Yoshi’s Island 2. These were titles struggling to recreate the magic of better games by imitating them, step by step. I’ve spent a long time attempting to figure out what this “it factor” was, but now I have an answer. The “it factor” isn’t innovation, or a gimmick hook, or good game design. It’s not a catchy theme song, or blind nostalgia for younger days. It’s not even the connection of being the major console launch title.

No, the secret to the success of the early Mario games is drugs.

Lots and lots of drugs.

Look at those early Mario games. Walking turtles with giant eyeballs. Polka-dot venus fly traps with carnivorous teeth, spitting fire spheres. A giant freaking shoe with a wind-up-dial that you can climb into. A dinosaur-steed that eats fruit with its tongue and spews fireballs or dust clouds based on devoured shell colour. Bullets with faces and arms. Bigger versions of the bullets with faces and arms. Sober minds did not come up with these ideas, folks.

Perhaps the Nintendo 64 era was one collective stage of rehab for the programmers at Nintendo. Perhaps Super Mario 64 was such a near-death experience that the family members all demanded they stop with their hallucinogens. Maybe the cameras were rolling on the E! True Hollywood Stories of Shigeru Miyamoto. I don’t know. I do know that the period of sobriety between Super Mario 64 to now led to some lame attempts at recapturing the magic of the early Mario games. I can believe that a talking water-spraying backpack was their lame, sober idea of recreating the glory of their drug-addled youth.

With Super Mario Galaxy, however, it looks like the Nintendo staff has caved into their addictions and returned to their vices! All of that wacky, drug-induced creativity that made those early Mario games so inventive have not only returned, but taken to new highs. Programmers, thank you for ruining your lives and families for my personal entertainment!

So the game begins in usual, kind of drab Mario affair. Mario gets invited to the Princess’s castle, presumably to play with Barbies or something. Then Bowser comes to kidnap the Princess, presumably to play Barbies with her or something. And Mario is off. With the big difference being that Bowser has somehow obtained godhood, and is attempting to reshape the galaxy as he sees fit. Presumably to play intergalactic Barbies. So Mario has to, err, go to space and deal with the intergalactic turtle alien menace.

Critiquing a Mario game’s story does often feel like critiquing the story of a Three Stooges episode. I know it shouldn’t matter, that gameplay comes before plot, but the guise of “it’s tradition” really shouldn’t be an excuse for lazy storytelling like “Bowser naps the Princess.” And the game has some text dialogue about some Space Princess that I could not be made to care about, yet am unable to scroll through. And be warned – do not ever enter the library! Ever ever ever! You cannot skip the background story dialogue that follows entering the library! It is quite literally Storybook Exposition Hell!

So you’ve got the overworld spaceship-castle that acts as your hub for your various intergalactic destinations. From there, you have access to the various worlds, or rather…galaxies. And the developers are very much playing loose with the idea of what a “galaxy” can consist of. These include such locales as the “Loopdeloop Galaxy”, the “Toy Time Galaxy” and the “Hurry-Scurry Galaxy.” And these galaxies exist for no other fathomable reason than to be veritable playgrounds for Mario. They can consist of a series of floating platforms, a series of floating platforms containing a single big tree that houses talking bees, a watery race track in the middle of space, a haunted house…also in the middle of space. How such geological formations can be created defies all sense of science and common sense. The 65 million years of erosion and formation taken to create, for example, the galaxy of floating switches, is beyond me. Or what kind of alien/slave effort was required to create the various floating pyramids in the desert. Shiguru Miyamoto has successfully dismembered the Big Bang Theory.

But when you don’t question the nature of things like you’re David Suzuki, you do realize what fun platforming levels you are about to undertake. Gone are the expansive, open (and boring) spaces of Nintendo 64 platformers, in favor of more interesting…structures? The paths to each star (I forgot to mention that you are once again collecting stars) are laid out, but each path can have some strange obstacles. Any given sequence can include; spherical mini-planets with self-sustained gravity and the diameter of your bedroom, a series of switches that appear and disappear, a serpentine path consisting mostly of fast-moving quicksand, a group of apple-planets connected by giant worms, a wall of honeycombs…you can see why developing game concepts on LSD would be so advantageous. There are occasional nods to past Mario games; a familiar tune here, wrench-throwing mole there, but nothing resembling the overbearingly desperate reach at nostalgia that was New Super Mario Bros Wii. Mario Galaxy’s nostalgia is more charm than cheap.

The bigger surprise of Super Mario Galaxy is just how amusing these levels are. Rare is the annoying fetch quest or dud mini-game. (Okay, there is one lame mini-game, involving exploding crates under the façade of “garbage disposal.” Why must there be a time-limit for this game, wherein a failure results in the garbage-robot replacing the crates he’s trying to eliminate?) Many of these star-missions are self-contained stages of platform-action glory, with more than enough diversity to keep the space quest interesting. Even the comet missions, which comprise of replaying a sequence under a handicap (a time limit, a health limit, a patience limit, etc) wind up being more worthwhile than they have every right to be. This is the rare game where striving for 100% completion feels less like a game-lengthening chore than an inviting excuse to keep experiencing more.

I should perhaps discuss the gameplay at some point. Mario handles mostly like he did in Mario 64, complete with all of the various jumps, long jumps, wall jumps and other wacky jumps. I’d favour a Mario 64 veteran will have an easier time completing this game on virtue of knowing these sacred zen techniques off heart. Contributing to the sense of variety are the return of various, temporary suits, such as the ghost outfit (for floating and transparency), the bee outfit (for floating and looking like a rank fool) and the good ol’ fire flower. While they’re all level-specific as opposed to Super Mario 3, which let you beat the game with the frog suit on if you were feeling capable and insane, they do contribute to the sense of diversity and strangeness.

However, the redundant three-punch-combo of Mario 64 is replaced by a universal spin attack executes by waggling the remote. Waggle truly is the most evil of gameplay innovations in the new millennium. While the Mario Galaxy waggle isn’t quite as annoying as waggle in just about every single Wii game in existence period end of story, I still yearned for the accuracy and reliability of a good old-fashioned button press. I theorize Nintendo’s next console will feature true 1:1 input control by introducing the evolutionary “controller” and “control pad” to render the Wii Motion Controls obsolete. How I can’t wait.

Though that Wiimote does get used to unusual effect regardless. You can use the laser pointer to control a star onscreen to catch coloured star bits, and subsequently fire star bits to stun enemies. Being that all of the in-game enemies are about as intelligent as bits of rocks themselves, you will never need to use this as an offensive maneuver. Rather, you can feed these to wand-waving star people that experience such orgasmic joy from eating star bits that they transform into planets! Yes, really. There are creatures in this game that aspire to become planets (giant land formations) or stars (gaseous spheres.) If you have a naïve girlfriend that wants to feel like she is participating, you can grab a second Wiimote and have a second star fly across the screen, collecting star bits and making little to no contribution to the action.

I really do like Mario Galaxy. A lot. There’s something inspiring about the sheer force of imagination that went into the game’s level design, and the game almost never feels drawn out or repetitive…even when it should. I’ve beaten it 100% on several occasions, and it’s the only other game of this generation that I would consider worthy of a perfect rating. And it’s the only one to do it without Batman.

5 stars

3D Dot Game Heroes

I felt so hardcore buying 3D Dot Game Heroes. I walked into two different Gamestops, on three different occasions, asking for this title, and none of the store clerks ever heard of the name. My e-penis became quite erect at the prospect of buying a title so niche, so leet, so underground that even the full-time staff of a games store never heard of it. It was like I was sticking it to the man in supporting 3D Dot Game Heroes, despite being published by a big company (Atlus) on a console controlled by a bigger company (Sony). And sure, striving for the status of “hardcore gamer” is a fool’s goal, not too far removed from striving to shut yourself out from the outside world. But for a few fleeting moments and $45 out of my wallet, I got to tell the mainstream game industry to take their God of Wars and Halos and Legend of Zeldas and stick it up their asses.

Maybe a poor choice of words. 3D Dot Game Heroes is very much a direct clone of the original Zelda. To be precise, the gameplay is 90% the NES Zelda, borrowing 9% of ideas from Zelda 2 and A Link to the Past, and 1% random jokes from many, many games. The plot, for example, mocks Zelda in its simplicity; an evil wizard wants to take over the kingdom and you the hero must deny him by way of fetching 6 magical orbs. The “hero” of course is a voiceless, characterless, personality-less drone who just does the right thing because people tell him to. A generic “hero of destiny”.

The fact that you can, at any given point, change who the “hero” is practically disses the notion of Link to me. The concept of “Link” is little more than a consistently-reoccurring appearance (guy in green garb with a shield and sword) and no notable traits and motivations besides “he is the chosen one.” In 3D Dot Game Heroes, you can choose from such “heroes” as knights, wizards, businessmen, mechs, animals, athletes and the cast of Tenchu. All of which can serve as templates in the hero editor that lets you create your own main character, complete with all six of his or her frames of animation. A few extra options in the editor, like the option to copy and paste specific segments, would’ve been nice. But the editor is versatile enough that you could recreate classic 8-bit characters, unusual pixel-monsters or otherwise. I was quite content saving the kingdom with a mighty 8-bit Hulk Hogan.

If the box art and the many, many, many trailers weren’t enough of an indicator, this game is all about presenting fugly pixilated sprites from the NES in the third dimension. The running joke of the game is that one day, the king decided to make the entire kingdom of Dotnia three-dimensional, and his will be done! It’s one of those strange gags that you can’t help but smile at; the king with mastery over time and space itself but helpless against the forces of evil. There are sly references, as the game makes constant nudges towards other titles: ranging from Metal Gear and Final Fantasy to the odd recent rib on Super Mario Sunshine and From Software’s own Demon’s Souls. But I feel like just making references doesn’t quite cut it. There’s the feeling that I was missing half the jokes due to half of my NES collection consisting of Ninja Turtles games. And besides, merely referring to an event in Zelda doesn’t quite cut it. Running into the “mumble mumble” monster or a guy who charged me money for blowing up his cave wall entrance is on the same level of witless humour as the Ghostbusters Video Game’s “hey, Slimer is in the hotel sliming Venkman again!” And that level of referential humour grows wearisome after awhile. There are even several rooms where you run into programmers making programming jokes; and that was the point where I realized From Software was not making a game for the masses, but rather to amuse themselves. I guess they deserve something to regain sanity after concocting Demon’s Souls from the darkest reaches of their hearts, but still.

For better or for worse, this game is the Legend of Zelda on the NES revived. It’s got about as much differentiation from that game as the New Super Mario Bros games do from the Old Super Mario Bros games. You walk across a wide open landscape, sword swiping enemies that include such archetypes as the goblin, the centaur, the mummy and the…coral reef. Even the bosses include such mainstays as the giant octopus and the giant stone statue. 3D Dot Game Heroes is certainly a unique reminder of how strange so many aspects of 8-bit games can be when taken out of context. You’ll later pick up such trademark Zelda toys as the boomerang, the bow and arrow and the hook-shot, and you may begin to wonder when this game stops pretending to be a rom-hack of Zelda and becomes an original Playstation 3 title (that moment never happens, by the way.) Actually, scratch that. 3D Dot Game Heroes has an accessible world map, old Zelda doesn’t. On that merit alone, this game’s better.

The other discerning trait about 3D Dot Game Heroes is that there are two real difficulty settings, which flop-flop during the game, based on your health meter. In the ultimate diss of Final Fantasy games, RPGs and Japanese fantasy in general (well, fantasy in more ways than one) your character can have an abnormally-large, screen-filling sword. This massive phallic attack decimates everything on the screen, rendering all of your other items impotent in their usefulness. You can go on side quests to get better swords, and receive varying enhancements from the blacksmith. Even mighty bosses easily fail to measure up if you wield a mighty enough tool. But your penis extension attack only exists if you have full health, and to not have such restores you to a standard, limp sword attack, and with it the mercy of the perilous dungeons and enemies. The later levels in particular can be quite challenging to the unprepared.

And preparation does become a necessity. You know how most boss fights in any game from the last 15 years will coincidentally leave endlessly-regenerating crates or pots filled with whatever ammunition you need to defeat your present adversary? 3D Dot Game Heroes is not that kind of game. Today’s age of self-regenerating health and forcing the character to carry whatever item is needed in a specific situation will leave modern day players frustrated and begging for someone to hold their hand. One must purchase candles and lamps, for example, from stores in order to navigate dark rooms in the dungeon without tripping into the conveniently-placed bottomless pit. One specific dungeon requires frequent use of magic abilities…and throws in an enemy capable of draining all but a single half-bar of health in magic in a single blow. Yes, really. A magical, evil, nefarious, evil, dangerous, very evil coral reef enemy.

Come to think of it, 3D Dot Game Heroes has successfully confused me in that I can’t tell if its flaws were bad game design or intentional jokes on other bad games. There’s a mandatory fetch quest that, while petty and short, still exists for no viable reason. But I can’t help but feel guilted into thinking it exists as a rib on fetch quests and not to lengthen the game an extra 5 minutes. The game crashed on me once, and I may or may not remember one of the in-game “programmers” referring to such a specific bug. That same specific dungeon I mentioned earlier (with the Coral Reef of Mortality) must be progressed and backtracked in a specific order to press the right switches and advance further… with no checkpoint until right before the boss battle. I can’t tell if most of these faults were meant to be jokes about bad game design in other 8-bit games or not, but they’re not quite excusable regardless. And like old Zelda, you may find yourself calling the Nintendo Hot Line (well, in 2010, they call it Gamefaqs) to figure out how to solve some of the more obscure puzzles.

On that same token, the game is just challenging enough that finishing it made my e-penis rise once again. For the first time since…well Demon’s Souls but the first time in years (in a world where Demon’s Souls never existed. A world with a slightly lowered suicide rate) I felt a great sense of accomplishment in finishing a game. Part of me feels inclined to celebrate, perhaps through buying a new game. Which involves trading in 3D Dot Game Heroes.

If you really, really want an experience that closely resembles the original Zelda, you will find exactly what you are looking for with 3D Dot Game Heroes…and nothing else. Being that you get all of the strengths and flaws of 8-bit gaming, this indeed becomes a case of be careful what you wish for.

Finally, who really was jonsing for nostalgia over the original Zelda? Between how readily available the NES Zelda is (Virtual Console or otherwise), how every Zelda game released features nostalgic throwbacks to the Zelda game before it, and how countless internet websites have make one meme and remark after another about Zelda games, this is not an appetite that needs satisfying. Being that 3D Dot Game Heroes isn’t attempting to be anything more than the Legend of Zelda Redux, and it achieves appropriately, here is a score that reflects the fact.

3 ½ stars