ModNation Racers

Meet the Other M in my recent life. ModNation Racers. I feel like I’ve been putting off giving this peculiar racing game the time it deserves on account of the recently released and comically-named Metroid title. Maybe I underrated Other M and how replayable the game is when you skip those awful cutscenes. This is a shame because 1. ModNation Racers has pretty amusing cutscenes (considering how they’re skewered towards children) and 2. the rest of the game is isn’t half-bad either. It’s also a shame that too many other Ms keep me from playing more ModNation Racers. Other Ms like Metroid: Zero Mission. Mario Bros 2. The movie Machete. Mango ice cream. Maki sushi. A lousy movie (more on that later.) My sense of Malnutrition after craving sushi all of the day after I ate the Maki Sushi.

This specific M relates to a kart racing game with a strong focus on letting players make things up. You can create your own characters, or at least create characters that are about 4 feet tall with an extraterrestrial skull and a body made of solid milk. The character creator can be best compared to the Wii’s Mii editor, but with about ten trillion times the customization options. OR you can create your own cars, with the one limit seemingly that they must have four wheels and can’t be taller than certain dogs. OR you can create your own tracks, again within the limitations of what the game considers a race track. I didn’t try the track editor, but I presume you need things like “roads” and “grass”. So I don’t think you can make a track based on the giant worm level from Gears of War 2, for example.

The reason I spent so little time creating things in ModNation Racers is because I felt I didn’t have to. The user community for ModNation Racers has been so very on top of things that whatever creation your heart desires has already been done. Want to download the Mario Kart cast because you think that series lost its way with the blue shell? You can. Marvel heroes, DC heroes, anime heroes, real life celebrities, Presidents of the United States of America (both the political figures and the band), video game website editors, your pets…you name it, someone probably made it, and you can readily download it. Unlike the massively-moderated LittleBigPlanet, the people running ModNation Racers seem to have no regard for copyright infringement, and boy does this game benefit.

If you felt inclined, you could play the career mode. If you wanted to unlock creation parts for the assorted creator-editors, or indulge in the PG comedy of two grumpy announcers insulting each other. The highlight of career mode for me was that your character of choice appears in the cutscenes, and it was ever apropos for my Machete to stand there, silently annoyed at his crew of mechanics and possibly planning their bloody demise. Career Mode will teach you the basics, but you’ll probably stop caring after awhile if you’re anything like me, or Machete.

Nah, it’s the multiplayer mode that’s the draw. When hasn’t a cart-racing game been made more enjoyable by the presence of friends gullible enough to eat banana peel? You can play split-screen, or online, or both. And in a game where user-created content is the main allure, online play becomes something of an exciting proposition. Getting to admire the various created characters and rides of other players, and subsequently racing on a track that the racers have probably never rode in before. It kind of makes each upcoming race feel different, and exciting.

When it loads, anyways. The biggest issue with this game in general is that starting a race is a lengthy proposition in of itself. Hell, starting the game for the first time was a lengthy proposition. With the in-game install and the downloaded patches, it takes about half an hour to boot up ModNation Racers as of September 18, 2010. I was able to watch a large chunk of MacGruber while waiting to play this game. (Another M! To be fair, ModNation Racers is many, many times more entertaining than MacGruber.) And then it takes what has to be more than a minute at least to start up a race online. Call it the cost of being so download-driven. It seems weird and almost damning to say this, but you should probably watch a TV show, listen to music or play your Nintendo DS while trying to play ModNation Racers online. Yes, you may need another piece of entertainment to enjoy this piece of entertainment!

Once an actual race starts, the cart-on-cart action runs relatively smoothly, with rare bout lag and rare doofuses-dropping-racial-epitaphs-on-headsets. And then you’ll realize that ModNation Racers is a very run-of-the-mill cart racing game. You’ll do power slides, drop missiles, swear in frustration over that blasted lightning bolt, run over speed boost ramps and never see a drop of blood drawn or gore splattered. Okay, there are about five differences between this run-of-the-mill cart game and other run-of-the-mill cart games.

1. Successful power slides, item-using and general chicanery nets you turbo boosts ala Burnout 3.
2. Being hit with missiles, bombs, sonic booms or other weapons will make you lose your power-ups.
3. There are no banana peel-like mine weapon. Really!
4. You have a shield that you can use to deflect missiles, but probably won’t.
5. This game is pretty fast. No, really.

I was rather surprised at how loose the steering can feel, and how quickly these mini carts can drive. The wrong side of the fence from the Blur commercial, this game is not! There’s a slight learning curve in adapting to the very erratic nature of the racing. And you eventually have to kick that inner feeling in your heart that you’d rather be playing Diddy Kong Racing, because that game’s cuteness induces vomiting and green urinal discharges. At best, the races can be fairly enjoyable affairs in insanity. At worst, they’re still a showcase for the assorted bizarre character and track creations.

ModNation Racers is certainly a weird sell. I don’t see myself playing as much online wacky racing action as I would like to on account to the absurd loading times. The cart-racing itself is sufficient, even if I was quickly reminded why people stopped making cart racing games when consoles stopped bragging about their 64 bits of power. But rather, the appeal in the game is in the spectacle its fanbase brings. Seeing the different kinds of imaginative racers, cars and tracks and how the game is begging to be sued a thousand times over. That the last two paragraphs in this review were about the actual gameplay should tell you about what kind of priority gameplay takes in this game over its set of creation tools. And maybe that’s not a bad thing.

3 ½ stars

(Believe or not, the original draft of this review was a good deal more profane.)

Spiderman: Shattered Dimensions

So many comic book characters have been around for so long that they have undergone numerous reboots and reinventions in the name of relevance. (Or in the name of creating an excuse to retell the Green Goblin murdering Peter Parker’s love interest storyline again and again.) Shattered Dimensions purports to combine the characters from various reboots in an unlikely crossover, and why not? I know I would love to see calloused, middle-aged and drunk Batman from The Dark Knight Returns team with Adam West to beat the snot out of George Clooney’s Batman.

Sadly, this game is missing the most important Spiderman of all; the 60s animated series Spiderman, with his peppy theme song and ability to swing from webs hanging off the moon. You also don’t get to knock some sense into emo Tobey Macguire for dancing the Spiderman movie series into franchisicide. What you do get are four different Spidermans: the traditional “Amazing” Spiderman that has been around for 47 years yet doesn’t look a day older than 20. The “Ultimate” Spiderman, a more recent reboot where Peter Parker is a high school kid and who’s sole purpose in this game is to wear that blasted black symbiote suit that won’t go away. Spiderman 2099 is the futuristic version, in a world with flying cars, holograms and other things us 90s folk thought would happen in the year 2000. And finally, there’s the Noir Spiderman, which combines Marvel wackiness with Sin City mood, depression, hyperbole and none of the sex and violence. I don’t think Spiderman Noir has his own comic book line at the moment, but after this game, he damn sure better get one!

All of these alternate universes are tied together because Amazing Spiderman accidentally broke some kind of superfunky tablet of funk. And now Madame Web (who’s career peaked with the 90s cartoon) is asking the four Spidermen to fix this. To be frank, Madame Web may be the worst part of this entire game, with her slow and plodding tutorials, predictable advice and tendency to say “good job” after every minor feat I’ve accomplished. Thanks for telling me the best way to beat a boss is to wait for his attack to miss and then counter-attack, Madame Obvious. Likewise, the best part of Spiderman: Shattered Dimensions is the narration from Stan Lee. The man is 87 years old, for Christ’s sake! And yet he still has more enthusiasm and energy than the combined attendance at Yankee Stadium. I’m pretty sure he could inject a sense of wonder and excitement into sock-knitting with his narration.

Though if I had to pick a second-best part to the game, it would probably be the effective use of the whole alternate dimension business, visually at least. The Amazing and Ultimate levels are bright, colourful and…err…comic booky. The 2099 levels are very neon, metallic, rich in blues and purples. It’s nice to see a video game version of the future that isn’t dystopian or ravaged in the greys and browns of war. The Noir levels rock that old film grain and evoke Dick Tracy and the like…but with more webs and less profanity. And as someone that likes comic book characters on the most casual of levels (there is only one Tony Stark and his name is Downey Jr), it was rather intriguing to see the different spins on famous characters. The Amazing levels were perhaps the least interesting since I’ve already seen their respective versions of Sandman or Kraven the Hunter done repeatedly. Rather, it was novel to see Vulture remade as a demented cannibal, or how plastic surgery advances so much in 100 years that Dr Octopus can get a sex change into a female supermodel in 2099.

And the game follows that new, unwritten-but-undisputed rule that every second or third Marvel video game, movie or other media property must feature some appearance by Deadpool.

However, the game kind of…err…shatters when you have to play it. Despite the advertised four dimensions, three of them play rather identically. Or to be exact, three of them are cheap God of War clones. The bulk of your time in the Amazing, Ultimate or 2099 levels are spent beating waves and waves of generic goons. Many of the enemies seem to have abnormally large chunks of health, leaving you with the non-sensation of button-mashing your way through one bout of repetition after another. Not all the levels are like this (the Deadpool level is 20 shades of awesome, though you wouldn’t expect otherwise) but the game seems to put its generic combat ahead of any other gameplay concepts. Occasionally, you’ll rescue civilians, and then protect them in escort missions, a concept I swore went out of style 12 years ago (before the Ultimate Spiderman existed, in fact.) The levels are linear stages as opposed to the open-ended New York sandbox of past. Thus, the web-swinging, the best part of the last 3 or 4 Spiderman games, is relegated to simply a means to cross the occasional gap.

So you’ll fight many enemies, repeatedly. And that includes bosses. In fact, each level is named after its token Spiderman villain. Pretty much every major Spiderman rogue short of Venom appears in this game (and lets be frank, the big black symbiote dude needs a break from the public eye anyways.) It’s not uncommon to fight a boss once or twice in a level… and then for that boss to realize that superfunky stone grants superpowers, leading to a third, bigger boss fight. Each level has its share of optional objectives, and completing them earns “Web Essence” that can be spent on various upgrades and moves. Most of these objectives fall in the category of “things you were going to do anyways” like beating up enemies and bosses, so you need not bother scroll through the needlessly bulky menu screen depicting your objectives. Each character has different variations of the same unlockable moves. Ultimate Spiderman can use a superpowered “Rage” mode that makes him stronger. 2099 Spiderman can use a superpowered “Accel” mode that makes him faster. Amazing Spiderman gets a raw deal in the special abilities mode. Otherwise, there is little difference in how the three characters handle.

But on the other hand, the Noir Spiderman is something else. His levels are reminiscent of the stealth levels from Batman: Arkham Asylum. A bunch of goons have guns and the hero is best served to pick each one off individually, from the shadows, like a man. There are a few differences between The Batman and The Spiderman; instead of gargoyles, Spiderman escapes to safety by merely finding somewhere dark to hide. You can takedown enemies from a distance, either from higher ground or while hiding on walls. And you’ll feel like a real badass in tights for sneaking up on an enemy and web-trapping them on the wall like a spider can. There are some technical issues that you’ll struggle with, mostly involving trying to figure out a safe distance for which the game allows said takedowns to trigger. You’ll also have to learn to takedown an enemy while no one else is glancing at you, for the takedown animations are canned, long, and involve obnoxiously loud punches to the face. And for whatever reason, you can’t perform a takedown on an aggroed enemy that isn’t walking on his predetermined patrol path. But I would be doing the brooding Noir man an injustice if I didn’t say how satisfying these stealth sequences can be. There’s something to be said about clearing out an entire room of enemies, unseen, while Hammerhead is in the next room scolding his numbskull henchmen. That’s what being a 60s superhero is all about. That and talking robots.

The first Noir Spiderman level is the best level in the entire game, due to how it consists entirely of one stealth sequence after another. The subsequent Noir levels intersperse fun stealth levels with annoying forced combat sequences, dragging them into the same interdimensional mud the other Spidermen have to deal with. And then there are the numerous other technical issues. Expect to have many tizzies with the camera and the various controls for climbing and web-swinging. I’ve had moments where the game froze my progress because one of the goons I needed to beat fell off the game world…and moments where Madame Web congratulated me on a job well-done and the sealed door was opened, despite me never laying a finger on any enemy in the room. The final sequence of the final boss is also rather poorly designed, and will lead to confusion and doubt if you don’t follow the unmarked path the developers want you to follow. And the game crashed on me four times. Excelsior.

The game’s about 7 to 8 hours long. But it’s not a particularly entertaining 7 to 8 hours. I feel like there’s way too much drawn-out filler, repetition and technical issues interfering with my ability to appreciate the game’s novel concept. Plus there’s no 60s Spiderman, which is a gross oversight. At best, Shattered Dimensions is suited for a curiosity rental. I feel like after Arkham Asylum, the bar for a game based on a comic book game has been raised enough that this grossly underpolished title won’t cut it. And besides, Spiderman deserves better than to be trapped in a God of War knockoff.

2 ½ stars

Metroid: Other M

I’d like to take a second to prove something. Remember how great Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox was? Remember the plot to Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox? No? Point proven. I feel like Team Ninja has had this problem for years, where they spend many hundreds of thousands of dollars developing elaborately spectacular cutscenes of strong visual quality, but with poor writing, voice-acting, logic, respect for women and other issues. Then I wonder: Why not just save millions of yen and not bother with those newfangled CG cutscene wastes of time? How about selling the games based on the strength of their eyelid-twitching fast gameplay? Would’ve made Ninja Gaiden a better game. Certainly would’ve made Metroid: Other M an infinitely better game too.

I can tell that a lot of dough was spent on the numerous in-game movies here. Cutscenes that can go on for minutes on end. Cutscenes that cannot be paused mid-way in the event that your bowels need to make a deposit at the porcelain bank. So Team Ninja definitely wants you to experience their CG “art” in its uninterrupted glory. I was simultaneously watching WWE Raw while playing through one late-game cutscene, and that one cutscene carried through several commercial breaks. This frustrated me because the professional wrestling program I was watching had better writing and acting than what I was experiencing on my Wii. Professional wrestling actually outdid someone, anyone in the field of storytelling. I mean, fuck!

Okay…there are SPOILERS ABOUND! You may want to skip the next two paragraphs if you actually care.

The game purports to reveal the origins and developments of Samus Aran. Said origin story comprises of her being a submissive grunt under one general Adam Malkovich. (He might be the titular “Other M”, or it could refer to other characters with names starting with M. Or it could stand for “Monotonous”, in honour of Samus’s voice.) Now imagine an hour’s worth of cutscenes trying to establish this simple character trait of 50s housewife-like compliance and you’ve got the celebration of wasted time that is the Other M story. The script-writing is equally bad. Here’s an early-game gem, when Samus receives a distress signal.

“Code name: Baby’s Cry. A common SOS with the urgency of a baby crying. The nickname comes from the fact that the purpose of the signal is to draw attention.”

Now imagine the drabbest, most depressed voice uttering that triple-explanation with less passion than your Grade 2 teacher. And I could go on about the plot points that drove me mad…so I will. Like Samus’s perchant for creating nicknames like “Baby’s Cry” and “The Deleter”, followed by her desire to explain, in detail, her reasoning for such complex nomenclature. Or her irrational fear of Ridley, a monster she had handily beaten 6 times over, both in normal, Meta-, Mecha- and Omega-Ridley forms. (Remember that this game takes place after the Metroid Prime trilogy.) Or how the Galactic Federation considers Metroids, a close-range-only organic parasite with no exoskeleton (or even bone structure), to be a viable military weapon, a strategic maneuver on par with recruiting the Foot Clan. Or how Samus is so vulnerable to Malkovich’s whims that she disables all of her Super Metroid power-ups out of fear of damaging survivors. Disabling explosive weapons that pass through walls kind of makes sense, but what is the rationale for disabling armour or jumping abilities? Why must Samus spend a good half hour in the volcano area roasting to near-death and five rounds getting outboxed by the fire monster boss before Malkovich authorizes the use of the Varia Suit? Hell, considering the 5 major planet-smashing adventures she’s been on prior to Other M, why does Samus show any sense of fear or dread at all? Why was any time and money spent introducing smaller characters, besides finding another avenue for which to demean Samus for her not-being-born-male? To make reference to that Super Metroid comic from Nintendo Power? And finally, I did manage to guess the game’s big plot twist before even removing the saran wrap from the box, one involving another famous M in Metroid history. But was very disappointed to find the big reveal not leading to the big nostalgic confrontation I’m sure many a Metroid fan were hoping for.

Okay, there are NO MORE SPOILERS ABOUND.

But as a final note, remember when people considered the big end-game reveal of the original Metroid to be some kind of thumbs up for female empowerment? Boy did Team Ninja just stick their dicks in your earhole here.

Unlike Ninja Gaiden, which was a stage-based linear action game, you kind of do need the plot of Other M to loosely remind you of your current goal or destination. So you can’t quite skip those cutscenes the first time you play the game. Worse, there are a few forced segments where you enter first-person view and have to play a hidden-object-scanning game to look at some specific logo or bed stain in order to advance the story. You sometimes don’t even get the hint of what company logo or rotting corpse or whatnot you’re meant to find, and I’ve spent annoying minutes blindly scrolling around the room. It hurts knowing full well that I’d be rewarded for my efforts with, what else, but another grand cutscene. Hence, a disclaimer: your first playthrough of Metroid: Other M will be your least favorite playthrough.

But Other M excels when the game reluctantly gives you full-body control of the female form of Samus Aran. The gameplay sits somewhere between Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox and Metroid… the NES version. It’s a sort-of 3D-ish side scrolling shooter where you move through mostly-constrained corridors gunning down harmless wildlife. You shoot a chargeable laser at enemies, and sidestep attacks by pressing the d-pad in a direction at the last minute. It’s a weirdly intuitive system that works in spite of current-generation preconceptions. Moving in a 3D space with a directional pad, for example, is less accurate than an analog stick. But doing it in this game gives a sense of immediacy, both in everyday sprinting from one area to the next and in quick-dodging enemy attacks. And I can appreciate a stripped-down button layout, as Other M is more or less a 3-button game. Gun button, Jump button, Morphing Ball button. Like every action game, Other M is about dodging enemy attacks and responding with a fistful of courtesy and gunpowder. Other M just outslicks those other games in the process.

If you can wrap your mind around some of the other unlikely nuances, you’ll find the game to grow on you. Like switching the Wiimote from a controller to a…ehh…Wiimote, pointing at the screen to fire missiles. It’s a strange concept, especially once you have to charge the missiles. But if you can rewire the synapses in your brain to comprehend controller-to-remote conversions, you will cope. And you will learn how to deal with the game’s various entertaining boss fights. Even if they’re not the most original enemies (a blob with tentacles and an eyeball for a weak spot,) they’re still pretty fun to slaughter with your ray gun. Assorted favorites from various Metroid games appear here, along with some new forces of evil, with the most memorable being the game’s hidden final boss that you can exchange glances with after the end credits.

The next issue to address, then, would be the game’s adherence to tradition. Just how Metroidvania is Metroid: Other M? The answer is that it is kind of Metroidvania-ish. There is a multi-pathed world that you can explore if you so desired. The game will usually tell you which save-point is your next destination, and highlight the general vicinity of hidden missile tanks, energy tanks and other tanks. Samus has a tank fetish. While both of these aspects may betray what old fogeys claim is the exploration-driven spirit of the old Metroid, they also encouraged me to revist old regions and actually grab those power-ups. Did I mention how much I hate the whole Adam Malkovich “I must give you permission to use your power-ups” business? I mean, besides the general harmlessness of most of those power items (those Morph Ball bombs can barely smash a toilet. And why disable the Space Jump? Is he scared Samus is going to crash into jumping survivors? Is Lebron James on this ship?) It also sucks out the novelty of getting a new ability. I miss the sense of reward that came in thrashing a difficult boss or exploring an ancient, abandoned temple-thingy to get a sweet new power of death or infinite air-jumping. Being given permission to start using the wave beam again is not quite as gratifying.

My gut reaction upon finishing Other M involved a whole lot of cussing. I mean, fuck. That storyline is dreadfully bad, almost a game-killer. But as I was struggling to think of other words to use in the review besides “fuck” and “FUCK!”, I started to replay the game and grab all of the hidden items. And then I found myself reaching the elusive 100% status. (A status I’ve only achieved with three other games this generation.) Then I started playing a new game, skipping all of those trashy plot bits. And that’s when my opinion started to backpedal a bit. Then I started to realize that this really is kind of a fun, twitchy action game of a different kind. And it seems like many a year since we’ve had a really solid action game that wasn’t aping Devil May Cry or God of War. So kudos to Other M. Metroid fans will probably like it. Action fans will probably like it. Just brace yourself for an exposition wet dump.

I mean, fuck.

3 ½ stars