Punch-out and Super Punch-out. A double-header

Time for a Virtual Console Double-Header.

Tyler Durden once pondered how much a person can really know about himself without having been in a fight. Well, if you’re a gamer, this is a great time for self-discovery by way of getting a fist stuck in your nose. There’s a new UFC game (finally) that accurately recreates all the punching, kicking, grounding, pounding and grappling of the real sport. If the appeal of reaching out and touching your favorite ultimate fighter isn’t for you, then Nintendo’s got a revamp of the old Punch-out games, giving players the opportunity to fist-fight abnormally large men in the only league where the performers can refuse urine samples. Both games are looking to the future challenge of UFC’s natural Pay-Per-View rival and Punch-out’s laws-of-reality rival, the realistic boxing of Fight Night 4. And finally, if punches seem like a too-believable method of combat and you long for a fight league where the top boxer and Muai Thai practitioner must competitively fight with a Japanese schoolgirl, then the Street Fighter 4 community will probably outlast all of the above by several decades.

Now, until I can manage the funds and bravado necessary to make the leap into buying the new Punch-out!!!, lets boot up the Virtual Console and take a look at some big-bodied boxing history.



One can’t call Punch-out!!!-Featuring Mr. Dream a fighting game, unless you define fighting games to be “anything pitting one live creature against another”, but doing so transforms Bubble Bobble into a fighting game. You play as, and only as, Little Mac, and are thus pitted against a succession of boss battles. It’s like the game is a 20 year precursor to Shadow of the Colossus, giving Punch-Out!! instant artistic merit. Your control options are limited to “punch, punch higher, duck that guy’s punch, mash buttons to get up” on your way to the top of three separate fight circuits. Little Mac can best be described as a combination of Rocky Balboa and twigs. Meanwhile, trainer Doc Louis sits somewhere between Bernie Mac and a cheap shill, giving Mac the terrible pre-fight strategy of joining the Nintendo Fun Club.

Meanwhile, his opponents are a variety of massive ethnic stereotypes gone hilariously wrong. There’s the Japanese big-eyebrowed fighter vowing to give you a TKO from Tokyo, the egotistical Spanish dancer and the censored Soda Popinski; originally the evil Russian Vodka Drunkiski, his more family-friendly version as a coca-cola-fiend may be even more high-larious. The promotion, the WVBA, could only exist in Japan for these giant muscle-bound speedo-freaks and obese woolly mammoth characters to be pitted against the 170-lb LITTLE Mac with no fear of drug testing. But the game manages to get so much out of the NES’s feeble, unroided hardware, making each character a memorable personality that would fit in perfectly with any Southern wrestling show.

Reflexes and pattern memorization are the keys to unlocking knockouts from the chins of your adversaries. You have to study the visual cues of your opponents, evade their strikes with the right timing and respond with your little green fist of fury. In addition to knowing when not to be in a left hook’s path of movement, you can experiment to find the precise moments in which smacking the enemy will earn you a star that can be used for a super uppercut; these are harder to land but inflict more damage and have a better chance of concussing your enemy and making the IOC pay closer attention to Japan.

I bear little issue with having to repeat the same battle repeatedly on the precipice that I’ll come closer and closer to victory through studying the enemy. But when a lives system is in place to limit the number of times I can fight, then there becomes a major problem. It seems there is a three-loss limit before the Game Over screen encourages the player to attempt a comeback. The Password system is automatically updated with your progress (and in turn the Wii’s auto-save feature relies on this Password), but the password will also keep track of losses. The first two circuits have only four opponents and presents little issue, but the World League has seven straight battles against nail-bitingly difficult opponents. So if you go into the World League with two losses, then you’ve got little room for error and the reality of getting very well-acquainted with Piston Honda once again.

Therein is the first flaw that keeps Punch-out from true greatness. (The other flaw being the flagrant use of exclamation marks in the title.) I wouldn’t mind having to battle Super Macho Man over and over again to learn his techniques, but that one loss means I have to fight the guy ranked below again to earn the right of a rematch is a bit preposterous, and that I often had to find myself starting at the bottom of this juggernaut gauntlet of fighters because Little Mac retires after only three losses (what a wimp) is very preposterous. The internet eased the pain a bit; I found passwords to start World Circuit with a clean win-loss record, and passwords to go straight to final bosses Super Macho Man and Mr Dream …

….and while we’re on the subject, this isn’t the original NES Punch-out. Originally, Mike Tyson was the game’s final boss, but for any number of reasons you can theorize, later versions replaced him with the more vanilla (as in literally, same sprite with white skin) “Mr. Dream.” Iron Mike hasn’t done anything controversial in a good while, and the man is dirt broke, so I’m sure royalty fees wouldn’t be much to use his likeness once more, instead of this decidedly more Caucasian rendition.

But alas, this be the game that’s thrown at us. Punch-out(!!?) is a more frustrating game than it ought to be; a result of an era where game length was artificially lengthened through repetition of extremely hard challenges. This game is as good an example as any of the argument where gamers should be given the option (stressing the word OPTION before some old school psychos start berating me for suggesting a “classic be tampered with”) to have infinite lives or something more friendly to the gamers of 2009.

But at the same time, it has the charming characters, the catchy NES music, the simple gameplay and the irresistible nostalgic charm. And upon further genuflection, that is worth the approximate $5 this game goes for on the Virtual Console.

4 stars.



Super Punch-out(!!) stars MAC, whom might be, or be related to, Little Mac from the previous game. One can’t be so completely sure, what with this MAC having a muscular frame and a goofy haircut that would have done the New Kids on the Block proud. He also lacks esteemed manager Doc Louis in his corner, due to either a dispute over MAC’s use of growth hormone or Mac’s refusal to join the Nintendo Fun Club. I can also theorize that this more facially effeminate MAC could have since founded a makeup company named after himself.

In any event, the WVBA has elected to continue their booking policy of creating the most disgusting, weight division-mocking matches in Super Punch-out (I give up on the damned explanation marks.) There are four circuits, each with four opponents of varying sizes, styles and discriminatory features. Only three juice monkeys from the previous Punch-out (the cheating Bald Bull, the gassed Super Macho Man and the Ali/Cosby lovechild Mr Sandman) return, and the new characters are a mixed bag of oddities. There’s some memorable characters, like the Jamaican stoner (not) cleverly named “Bob Charlie” and the karate practitioner and presumed Lyoto Machida fan, Dragon Chan, but the character concepts seem to be hit or miss. Shockingly, fighting an evil clown that throws juggling balls at you or a Japanese transvestite with a hair-whipping attack doesn’t pack the zaniness that one would expect.

Though part of that statement may be subliminal, due to the music sucking. The campy tunes of the first game are replaced by the “MIDI track recreating a synthesizer” songs that way too many bad SNES games had back in the day. So the nostalgic value of Super Punch-out lacks the heartwarming…errr…punch, of the NES version.

But the core gameplay of Super Punch-out is stronger at least. A translucent MAC fights at the bottom of the screen, bobbing and weaving out of the path of enemy attacks and picking his spots to counter with punching combinations of righteousness into the evil nostrils of the enemy. Stringing enough hits together will fill a super meter that allows the use of uppercuts (for you see, MAC cannot execute an uppercut unless he builds up the courage to do so), which is a fine system in of itself. But I yearn for the original game’s idea of earning each uppercut through a precisely-timed shot on your enemy’s gut.

Like the not-quite-super-Punch-out on the NES, quick reflexes and pattern recognition is key to victory. You must battle each rival a couple times and get killed a couple of time to figure out their visual cues…for you see, these boxers love to telegraph their strikes and would stand no match in a 12 round bore fest against Floyd Mayweather. But this is the WVBA, so most battles don’t last the first round, each of which will often contain up to 5 knockdowns in of itself. I will say that these boxers are at least more elaborate in their fighting styles, now demanding that MAC pays attention to which direction he dodges, which hand he counter-punches with, and what hard-to-read text instructions the manager is shouting to your oversized adversary.

My biggest issue with the original Punch-out and its trial-and-error approach was that game limited the number of lives Little Mac could afford to lose before giving up on his dreams. MAC is a bit more of a man in that regard; he starts each circuit with 3 lives and the chance to earn more through impressive scoring. On top of each circuit consisting of just four fights, each attempt at a play-through is eased by how your performance against previous opponents improves over time and thus MAC can enter the later, harder fights with more lives and chances of survival. But the strain of a lives system still wears on thee, and I would rather just be given infinite rematches to thwart an adversary rather than run out of lives and start from the beginning of a circuit, for I feel like I have nothing left to prove against Bob Charlie or the Irish guy. Also, to unlock the fourth and final circuit, the player must first complete the previous three circuits without a single loss. Upon watching Youtube videos and realizing that the last four challengers look pretty lame, I opted not to. The final boss looks like a tough fight…but what a boring look. Is he meant to reflect the reality of fighters with unmarketable looks and personality being detrimental to the promotion’s profit margins?

Super Punch-out is, in its own ways, better and worse than Original Punch-out. If you’re a fan of the first game and are feeling the itch for more pugilistic play time, then you’ll get your approximate $10 worth here. But I didn’t walk away from the game with the same sense of frustrated fondness as I did for Mike Ty….Mr. Dream’s boxing game.

3 ½ stars

UFC 2009: Undisputed

If there is but one employer in the entire world that I admire but would never want to work for, it’s Dana White. Here is a real man’s boss. He praises the hard work of people who brutalize each other for a living, yet has the common sense to *try* to retire Chuck Liddell while his head is still superimposed on his shoulders. Likewise, to be an enemy of Dana White is to be verbally dismembered. The man is a vanguard of vulgarity who strikes fear into the hearts of any man that complains about a paltry paycheck.

So I feel kind of bad for WWE Smackdown developers Yukes for being given the massive burden of creating a new UFC game. To be exact, the first UFC game since people started caring about UFC. And they care a lot; I can say without confidence that UFC is the most unanimously loved brand amongst the hot commodity that is the 18-35 male demographic, more than baseball, Batman, drugs and Jason Statham. And those fans have been yearning a long time for a chance to digitally knock out Anderson Silva for his last two performances.

With such a delicate property, I can’t help but imagine Dana White flying to Osaka, kicking in the front door of the Yukes office, and proclaiming that “there would be some ****ing changes.” Joining him would be his sidekick, Georges St Pierre, who would repeatedly tell the designers that he’s not impressed with their character animation. The programmers must have been scared for their lives to face the looming threat of a half-naked, oiled up French Canadian, but I won’t complain. This dictator-like approach to game development has produced one incredibly strong product, so thank you Yukes for your suffering and torment.

The game starts with a cutscene of a digital Dana White asking the player if he would like to be a fighter, followed by a montage of fighters kicking a wide assortment of digital ass. So right away, my blood was pumping and I was amped up to shove my glove down a stranger’s throat. Then the adrenaline quickly wears out as the game pops a message asking if you’d like to play a tutorial, and I realize that this fighting business might be a bit more complicated than “throw fist at teeth”. So you play the tutorial, and boy this thing is as slow as an Anderson Silva fight. There’s a lot to grasp; punching, grabbing, taking down, going from one position to another, submitting, not submitting, flexing muscles, etc. First the computer explains the lesson in text, then plays a video demonstration, then asks you to repeat these actions thrice over. Do three punches, three body punches, three takedowns, three changes in position, three taunts…it takes a good hour to go through everything, and there’s so much to digest that you’ll still be left with questions; how does one transition a grapple into a takedown? How does one do damage from a Muai Thai Clinch? How does the neck of Tito Ortiz support his massive head?

So there’s a good amount to figure out, and only practice will help develop these skills. But once you get the hang of how to move like an Ultimate Fighter, than other Ultimate tidbits of knowledge begin to Ultimately reveal themselves to you. Face buttons punch and kick, shoulder buttons block or modify attacks and the right stick handles all sweaty-body-grabbing grapple maneuvers. The key is that the distance between the fighters and their fighting styles play a major role in which hospital bed you wake up in. Each individual’s fight background is so well recreated that you don’t even need to look at any character’s stats if you’re a UFC follower, for you already know what strategies most fighters should employ. You can safely assume that Chuck Liddell is looking for a knockout, that Matt Hughes should just takedown his opponent repeatedly, and that anyone fighting Georges St Pierre should just walk out the cage door and go home. If anything, the most interesting single player mode in the entire game is Exhibition, just because you can experiment with different matchups and develop strategies of your own.

A note about the roster; it’s pretty big. About 80 fighters big, with Randy Couture being the only glaring omission (I guess there’s some Ultimate Fighter stars missing, which may bother the fifteen people that still watch the show.) The roster is a veritable lineup of superstars, semi-stars and barely-stars. In fact it seems like there are few things that didn’t stop fighters from appearing in the game, including employment from rival promotions (Arlovski, Tim Sylvia), lack of clairvoyance (Mirko Cro Cop, now resigned with the UFC), annoyance (Tito Ortiz) or mortality (Evan Tanner, and Charles Lewis is unlockable with the rest of the Tapout guys).

It’s fortunate too, because the real-life single player modes do little to entice. “Classic Fights” mode is based around reliving past UFC battles. The UFC’s less vulgar, less emotive spokesperson, Playboy covergirl Rachelle Leah introduces each fight with the delivery of a grade school student play. She should just stick to what she does best; the opening shot of a “UFC All Access” special where she’s always in a hurry to get dressed before going out. Each fight is preceeded by a highlight reel of past fighter interviews, and if you match the real fight’s outcome (win by first round knockout for example), then you unlock a fight montage. However, there are several mythical creatures that don’t exist in UFC Undisputed; the gold-scaled dragon, the ghost of Christmas Past, and the Judge’s Decision. Like the Fight Night games, rare is the battle that doesn’t end with a stretcher job. The only time I’ve had a fight last three rounds without knockout or submission is when I pitted Lyoto Machida against Anderson Silva in an attempt to create the most boring matchup in UFC history. Otherwise, flash knockouts or otherwise can occur, even when you don’t want them to. I’m not complaining and I’m sure this is Dana White and every normal fan’s vision of what Mixed Martial Arts should be (in fact I think the only person that would be upset is the nutjobs on the Sherdog forum), but becomes a challenge to recreate the slugfest that is Griffin vs Bonnar and procure a judge’s decision win.

The other single player dud is Career Mode. Since a friend of mine made this his very first comment on the game when he started talking to me about Undisputed, I’ll make the very same remark here; why can’t I use the real fighters? Why do I have to use a created fighter? The idea here is you create a scrub fighter with no actual stats, and must work your way to Championship glory. Between bouts, you are charged with managing your fighter’s fatigue level and determining what weeks are designated to rest or training. But given that you usually have a decent-sized window of virtual time between fights, little thought goes into your regimen. The real problem I have is that it takes an ungodly amount of time to give your fighter the stat boosts needed to compete with the big boys. Leveling up Strength, Speed or Cardio is automated, but to boost any of your individual offensive or defensive characteristics (of which there are many), you must sit through a loading screen, have a two minute sparring session with the exact same tattooed tool of a partner, beat him up, spend the few-earned points, go to another loading screen, and repeat at a later time. Yes, I do know that an impossible amount of time and effort to become an elite fighter in real life, but I’m not playing a game to recreate exercise. The tactical element of training, building workouts and strategies based on your opponent, is lost here. Instead, you get grinding, the equivalent of beating up the same wombat over and over in World of Warcraft to level up. I don’t think anyone will ever mistake anything from World of Warcraft with exercise. A simple Arcade Mode where you merely fight the contenders in order would have sufficed.

And a memo to Yukes because they keep screwing this up in the Smackdown games too; many people are going to use Create-a-Fighter to create dozens of imagined or real-life punks. I doubt too many of these people want to put in the dozens of hours into career mode needed to make each one able to survive a real fight long enough to flirt with the ring girls between rounds.

So odds are, most of the time you spent on UFC Undisputed by your lonesome will be to figure out the game’s nuances. This being a FIGHTING game, you can obviously FIGHT with others. While the game’s complex nature will prevent you from finding just any random stranger off the street and having a fun competitive time playing two-player lay and pray, I’d like to think that the UFC is popular enough that most 18-35 males will know at least someone else buying this game. And then there’s the online play. There’s a really strong online component here. Several online components such as level rankings and medals based on fight performance are present, and every person playing has the UFC’s trademark 3-bullet-point list of fighting style preferences for all to see. So if you have a history of takedowns, knockout attempts or “will to win” (ummmm…) then your opponent will know.

UFC Undisputed is so strong that it’s almost infuriating to a wrestling fan. Why is it that Yukes, after nine Smackdown games, have yet to figure how to make an online mode this strong, or production values this stylized, or commentary that actually sounds almost organic? And this is only their first UFC game. There is room to nitpick (my previously mentioned friend was upset at the lack of a Create-A-Pay-Per-View option, a feature wrestling fans simply stopped caring about) and some of the gameplay modes are as flat as Jon Fitch’s personality. And by nature of the sport’s complexity, the game isn’t quite as accessible as say, a Street Fighter 4, but that comparison feels unfair in some regards. The game is so engrossing that online play becomes an addiction in of itself, and the engine is strong enough that fight fans will have plenty to study, master and complain about (if you’re a Sherdog poster) for a whole year. And I don’t think Mr. White would have it any other way.

4 stars

Except for the Sherdog posters. He’ll just mock them some more.

Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction

In a virtual plane, there exists three dimensions, referred to in a mathematical equation as X, Y and Z. As of late, young gamers have shown an eagerness to shun the letter Z. Platformers that cling to just X and Y have been enjoying something of a renaissance thanks to handhelds, downloadable remakes of old sidescrollers, and whatever the hell LittleBigPlanet is supposed to be. But on the other hand, the 3D platformer has become hard to find on their console natural habitatat. Sony has jacked Jak and locked Sly Cooper in a compost bin somewhere in hell and told their respective developers to create a new breed of mascot. One that boasts crewcuts, tight shirts and aspirations of Hollywood.

Nobody seems to be in a hurry to start remaking Gex games or get Rayman out his strange Wii party game funk, so we’re left with two remaining ring bearers of the 3D platformer. On one hand, Mario is out in space inhaling strange, intergalactic mushrooms and floating around on landmasses no scientist would ever soberly label as a planet. On the more conventional hand we have Ratchet and Clank. Most of their games don’t experiment with questionable substances the way Nintendo’s happy plumber does, and when they do tinker with the formula, it’s always in that boardroom-dictated “this is what the kids will find hip” manner. Just look at Ratchet: Deadlocked.

Fortunately, Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction doesn’t have that feeling of being designed from focus testing kids as previous Sony games have, and opts to play more like a standard Ratchet and Clank game. Even the “Future” in the title doesn’t refer to the dreadful futuristic, post-apocalyptic reimaging that many a children’s franchise has gone through (Looney Tunes?! Why?!) For that, I am ETERNALLY GRATEFUL. Here, Ratchet and Clank find themselves at odds with an out-of-nowhere evil emperor of the month who discriminates against Ratchet’s ethnic background of Lombax. The game purports to explain the origin of Ratchet’s species (didn’t one of the previous games do this already?) as well as hint at the mysterious past of Clank (I’m definitely sure we found that out one of the older game.) It’s a solid story and the cutscenes are filled with some fun, lighthearted, sometimes satirizing humour that sits somewhere between the Jetsons and MadTV. If Ratchet and Clank does one thing that most every other game fails spectacularly at, its find ways to amuse both children and adults with charm and wit, rather than running over pedestrians and excessive swearing to the glee of the whiny 12 year old who begged her mom to buy that childish M-rated game.

Of course referring to Saint’s Row 2.

A typical level in Ratchet and Clank will involve the player going from Point A to Point B in a strictly linear path, skipping to and fro on platforms and fighting numerous enemies. If you’re the type of gamer that believes any form of linearity in gaming is counter-progressive, then this game is not for you. Might I recommend looking for your longed sense of freedom running naked in wheat fields instead of playing games. Prior to this, most 3D platformers were about exploring large spaces of emptiness going on glorified Easter Egg hunts and beating up slow-plodding enemies with your generic “big fist” attack. Ratchet and Clank took all those games and told them to suck the barrel of a gun with focused, death-filled levels and lots of guns.

Guns have always been the selling point of this series. Maybe making a children’s mascot who glorifies gunplay is the way to appeal to America’s youth. Maybe Sony thought that the kids that grew up on Ratchet would be eager to continue their childhood gunplay fantasies with Resistance and Uncharted, who knows. Ratchet wields lots of cartoonish guns designed by Gadgetron, the result of a merger between Acme and Skynet, and he uses his massive ordinance to dispose of his foes. And while I couldn’t escape the feeling that most of these guns are just makeovers of older guns: you have your shotgun, your flamethrower, you beehive-thing, etc. There’s still a fine balance between the available firearms. No one gun solves all problems (though some of the earlier weapons ultimately become obsolete) and each gun can level up with persistent use, encouraging the player to power up a stable of favorite tools.

And there’s a disco ball that, when thrown, makes all enemies in the vicinity dance. The final boss is not immune to this. Isn’t it nice to play a major adventure game and not have major bosses immune to your status debuffs? Even if the debuff in question isn’t “poison” or “sleep” but “funk”?

It’s really the E-10 rated guerilla warfare that drives the game. Some 15-odd enemies can appear on screen and engage Ratchet, leading to battles where your Lombaxside is hopping around, dodging a flurry of yellow-circle fire and blowing up your opposition into a dust cloud of debris and money. “Bolts” is the currency used to purchase new toys and “rareitanium” is used to upgrade weapons (this is a franchise that loves its fictitious substance names). Going back to the earlier point about weapons, Ratchet can hold all 30-plus tools of death on him at once. Not only does this let Ratchet tell Halo and its imitators to suck the barrel of a gun, but it helps keep the action fresh and exciting. Even when you’re battling an array of respawning enemies or having the same battle over and over again in the arena to grind money for a new goo-spewing gun, there’s never a feeling of stagnation in the air as you’re playing through the 10 hour quest.

The ominous chair of directors at Sony seemed to have given developers Insomniac the freedom to let Ratchet and Clank be Ratchet and Clank without any forced revampings, but under the condition that the blasted Sixaxis motion controls be utilized thoroughly. So sprinkled throughout Tools of Destruction are an assortment of mini-games designed to justify the inaccurate controls. There’s one where you move the controller to maneuver Ratchet as he free-falls (and doesn’t splatter on the ground, the superfeline he is) and another where you steer the heroes as they fly along a glider. These at least make contextual sense within the adventure and don’t occur too often. A hacking mini-game where the player leaves the game-world and enters a circuitboard happens too often. The idea being that the player must tilt the board so that a metal ball can connect circuits feels extremely out of place in this explosive, intergalactic space epic, and some levels will have more than one of these. There’s a particularly annoying one right before the final battle that sucked me out of the experience so much that I got frustrated and became clumsy with this puzzle; the game kindly asked if I wanted to use the analog stick instead of motion controls to solve this puzzle, and I couldn’t have been happier.

Since we’re nitpicking…how about that tornado gun? Here’s a potentially powerful waste of sheet metal. The gun unleashes a tornado that the player should be able to aim with the Sixaxis nonsense. But controlling my character, evading fire, keeping the camera in the view of both me and this tornado AND controlling the tornado demands a bit more brainpower than I certainly possess. Back to the mini-games, there are three Star Fox-like sequences where the player pilots a spaceship on a linear path against the enemy. They’re not annoying but they are terrible, and feel more like a delay of my progression than a fun side activity. And I feel as though I can’t complain too much being that they involve robot pirates. Another lame minigame; without giving much away, you’re asked to dance. But dancing merely involves pressing a direction or shaking the controller when told. While the actual dance sequence is comical the first time around, the game repeats this exact mini-game about six or seven more times over, and in turn making what could’ve been a memorable moment into a repetitive task players would rather forget. Kuribo’s Shoe only appeared once in its game for a reason, people.

But all that mini-game nonsense felt to me more like a minor itch on an upper, accessible part of my back than any kind of great, game-breaking nuisance. The main gameplay of Tools of Destruction is a barrel of fun and TNT. The action, the charm, the glorification of the right to bear intergalactic arms, they’re all here. But the gameplay hasn’t deviated far from earlier games. Not only is this the seventh Ratchet and Clank game, but it’s the first of a new storyline arc. Tools of Destruction ends in a bit of a cliffhanger, and while not as cheap as Assassin’s Creed, still leaves the player unsatisfied. There’s no more annoying ending to a game like the one that screams to the player’s face “buy our next game or else you’ll never know what happens next.”

But if you’re not fed up with Ratchet and Clank, then savor this rare 3D platformer. We don’t get too many of these anymore.

4 stars.

Heavenly Sword

There’s a consistently growing insecurity about the length of games. If one high profile website too many labels a game too short, then the hardcore gaming public becomes worrisome of investing $70 into a game they could likely finish that very day. (Knowing full well that the woman in your life wishes you’d spend that money and day giving her attention.) As a result, players who booted up Devil May Cry 4 developed a familiarity with all of the in-game locales as they were forced to backtrack, and Link’s epic quest to save the lands being postponed to grab some treasure chests or fireflies.

So I’m starting to become a bit fond of the short but sweet epics. Besides liking the rare chance to socialize with the outside world, I find that most games will wear out their welcome a lot sooner than they ought to. God of War 2 was considerably longer than God of War 1 and felt more tiresome because of it. And I find myself more likely to revisit the short-but-more confident campaigns of a Call of Duty 4 or Escape from Butcher Bay than any of the drawn out maps of the Halo trilogy. And now we have Heavenly Sword, a 4-5 hour fury of sword slashes and abs.

The game takes place in some kind of feudal Asian land of monks and emperors, located between the Himalayas and the Uncanny Valley. A clan of warriors has been protecting a demon sword and a presumed demon child from a crazed emperor that seems too loony to ever earn his position of power. You play as said demon seed, Nariko, and you can gather all you need to know about Nariko from the cover: she’s an aggressive, vengeful, sulking heroine written like she’s been getting testosterone shots and is completely oblivious to the fact that her only armor is a shower curtain. What you can’t tell by the boxart is that this mystic Asian warrior speaks with a decidedly British accent, as does the rest of the cast.

The thing about the story is that Nariko seems to be the only one that’s taking this whole thing seriously. While she’ll often tell some impassioned monologues between chapters, she also comes across as the one character who fails to recognize that this is an action video game. The rest of the cast seems to be in on the idea that they exist in a hybrid world of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. On the opposite end, the evil emperor Bohan (voiced and acted by Smeagol himself, Andy Serkis) is having a barrel of fun conquering the lands and slaughtering the millions. He’s a guy I’d sip a cold one with.

The story as a whole is far from intelligent, but there exists so many wacky personalities, enhanced by the mo-cap efforts of WETA, that it makes the cutscenes hard not to watch. Besides, they make a great break between the load times. My Gawd does this game take long to load. There’s the obligatory initial installation, and then there’s the follow minute to load the actual game. Each level is another minute of loading, and be careful! For if you have the audacity to die while playing Heavenly Sword, prepare for another minute of loading. It doesn’t help that there’s a strange 50/50 ratio of cutscenes that can be skipped, a problem that is greatly amplified by the boss characters’ love of vocal chord exercise.

And even once the game hands over control to the player, it’ll take plenty of chances to truly grab control back, for quick-time events are scattered throughout the game. Nariko is more interested in having a choreographed quick-time event dance with the enemy boss than she is in letting you deal the finishing blow with than trying to sword-fight them, being that any boss fight can have three of these. There’s no actual “jump” button in Heavenly Sword, and it would’ve been nice for the game to let me manually scale those luscious cliffs on my own rather than watch a movie of Nariko doing it for me.

Now, when you’re actually in control, it’s to do one of two things. Slay things with your sword or throw them. Nariko may not be much of a high jumper but she’d easily excel at the shot put if given the chance to actually put on regulation clothes. This throwing mechanic is so substantial, that it justifies its own paragraph. (In fact it could be more substantial than the sword combat.) Here, Nariko throws her discus/cannonball/arrow/dignity at her enemies and the game allows you to switch into the perspective of the projectile. From there, players use the Sixaxis controller to steer the trajectory of their instrument of death through sheer willpower. The Sixaxis controller’s motion sensors are just inaccurate enough to simulate barely being able to manipulate a fast-travelling object through the air’s friction. You’ll believe that it took 20 cannonballs to hit the one single target on that catapult! In a fun little change in pace, a quarter of the game is spent as Kai, Nariko’s childish jailbait sidekick, whose entire existence is based on her arrow gun and this mechanic. She could very well be the most fun you have playing the whole game.

Finally, perhaps I should talk about the main game itself, the parts where you’re in direct control of Nariko, not her sidekick or the disc she just tossed. These comprise almost entirely of combat, of the most God of Wariented. You have two attack buttons to alternately mash and give the impression that you’re in control, and the ability to modify what attacks come out based on holding different shoulder buttons. Combat boils down to “you press buttons, hope they’re not blocking, roll out of the way when enemy attacks” with the one variation stemming from the quantity of enemies present. The sub-chapters in the game can vary in length from five minutes of beating up a troop of enemies to one minute beating up a single, unassuming fiend. Mind you, Nariko’s animations look great and there’s a greater sense of human brutality in this T-rated game than its M-rated inspiration. Also, in spite of the battling of hundreds (500 in one level…sort of) the pacing is just smooth enough that you feel like you’re battling a veritable army rather than respawning drones. So it becomes difficult to accuse the game of repetition, even if it is seducing you into thinking you’re not just beating up clones.

But the shallowness is a bit of a kick to where the heavens don’t shine. Boss battles consist of the same “attack, dodge, repeat, quick-time event” pattern, except the bosses all have massive health bars. A fifth of the entire game’s length could be attributed to the final boss, a difficult fellow that must be defeated three consecutive times and has the divine power to slow down framerates.

Perhaps you can attribute this to the game’s luscious graphics or other assets, but I almost never found myself despising Heavenly Sword. Well, up to the final confrontation at least. I was very much drawn to finish the game, but I’ve no urge to play again on the unlocked harder difficulty, or try to crack open the hidden bonus features. It makes a good rental or an excuse to show off the 60’ 1080p flatscreen beast of burden you just bought. But unlike any truly great short game, I’ve left with no desire to play it again. If Heavenly Sword were a date, she’d be borderline anorexic, take lengthy restroom breaks to “pretty up”, spend the whole four hours of your time talking about her ex-boyfriend Kratos, leave you a $70 bill and takes a taxi home hoping you’ll do it again next weekend. Except you will be left with no desire to ever call her back again.

3 ½ stars

The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Dark Athena

Vin Diesel is in the midst of the safest comeback attempt I’ve seen in a long time, in that it appears that he’s revisiting every property he’s ever seen any success in. First he reprised his role in the latest Fast and the Furious movie, alongside most of the original cast in a movie that was all too identical to all movies Fast and Furious before it. And now we revisit the Riddick character in his only multimedia release that ever garnered any form of acclaim; the video game The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. All we need now is a sequel to The Pacifier and the comeback will be complete.

The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault from Dark Athena consists of both a visual remastering of Escape from Butcher Bay and a brand new campaign. Here, Vin Diesel contributes his vocal growlings to Riddick, a space-warrior-being-thingy equivalent to the exact same character Vin Diesel plays in all his movies. A no-sleeves, buffed up would-be badass who is only capable of speaking in metaphors, proverbs, personifications, ironic statements, death threats and other lines that you’d expect from a self-absorbed action movie star after killing a henchman. Can you imagine what the dinner table at the Diesel household must be like?

Mrs Diesel: Hey honey, can you pass the salt?
Vin Diesel: Salt. The purifier of the galaxy. Salt judges no soul.
Mrs Diesel: Yeah that’s great honey. So how was work?
Vin Diesel: The darkness worked with me.
His son, Unleaded: Dad, Jacob keeps picking on me in gym class!
Vin Diesel: They say that whoever rules gym class rules over death itself. Fear not the dodgeball. Make the dodgeball fear you.

Escape From Butcher Bay sees Riddick as he is captured by his seemingly best friend Johns. The two share some kind of Tom and Jerry-styled “I love you man but I’m gonna capture you and put you in jail for life” type of bromance. Riddick gets locked in the hybrid of Alcatraz and Mordor that is Butcher Bay and yearns to escape so he can sulk the galaxy a free man. There’s nothing even remotely complex to the story and every character, good or bad, are just believable enough to make interesting goons for a Robocop film. But while what little story is shallow, the game does succeed in placing you in that mindset of an escaped con breaking out of an immense fortress. A con that exudes no emotion or human qualities aside from unbreakable confidence but a con nonetheless.

And during this little jailbreak, Riddick will find himself in a variety of scenarios, whether they entail fistfighting ornery inmates, shooting guards, shooting guards with bigger guns, lurking in the shadows a lot or wondering why so many guards don’t have more lights in such a poorly-lit facility. The game flip-flops between melee combat, gunplay and stealth, sometimes in bunches and sometimes more suddenly than Vin Diesel shaves his head. None of these individual aspects are particular deep in of themselves; gunplay consists of “hide behind things and shoot the head” (in fact you won’t get ideal results for shooting anything but the head thank you inconsistent hit-detection). Stealth is a matter of staying in shadows and avoiding bright lights. Fist fighting is two-button affair and simply ask you time your punches right.

But the game succeeds at making each of these aspects visceral, and never leaves any one of them overexposed. The guns at least feel like the volatile instruments of death they should be. There’s an accurate sense of weight behind every punch and screwdriver stab you place at your enemy’s nose. And some great lighting and filter effects give the stealth aspects an exciting thrill. Early in the game, you develop the overexposu…I mean “eyeshine” ability that allows you to see in the dark through a funky lighting effect. The game consistently manages to find unique but semi-logical scenarios to place the player who sits (reluctantly) in Riddick’s shoes to sulk and make liners about.

The pacing is brisk and the game never feels tiresome. There’s almost always something new and interesting waiting for the player, be it a new portion of the jail or the chance to beat up Xzibit. Of all the voice actor choices in the game, X-to-the-Z may be the most inspiring as head guard Abbott, if just because players will be especially motivated to pimp his face with their scalpel. Adopting the Half-Life “one single level instead of smaller numbered stages” format also helps Escape from Butcher Bay become the rare kind of game that you’ll want to play from beginning to end with as few breaks as physically possible in your real life. You may find yourself neglecting the need to use the restroom during play. Speaking of…

Gentleman: Sir, you look like you need to use the men’s room.
Vin Diesel: I am the one looking at you. My bowels listen to me. My bowels fear me.
Gentleman: Well you look to need it more badly. You can use the next stall.
Vin Diesel: Restrooms are the toilets of the galaxy. The breeding grounds for scum and bacteria. Until I came. Now they breed in hell.

Due to this, the five-hour length of the main will seemingly fly by faster than in other games. But all things considered, it’s hard not to be happy with the experience once you’ve finally escaped from Butcher Bay. And really, were you expecting any other outcome to the game aside from Vin Diesel escaping and unleashing an ironic death on his enemies?

For lack of a more ideal measuring stick, I’d say that Butcher Bay is a stronger FPS than say…Killzone 2. Not quite at that level is the new campaign, Assault on Dark Athena. Here, Riddick and his heterosexual lifemate Johns are kidnapped and must escape (again?) from the space station Dark Athena. Along the way, they’ll run into a terrified child, an annoying enemy merc who gets her jollies from picking on anything human, and her army of Borg soldiers. I might add that her version of the Borg inherit a British accent during the assimilation process. The characters and general plot in Dark Athena goes from tolerable to groan-driven and the great pacing in Butcher Bay was locked up and trapped in a mine, devoured by the strange alien naked bird creatures from that game. Here, certain melee and gun-based segments last for too long, and certain new gimmicks don’t fly well. The latter third of the game lean too heavily around a slow-reloading, clunky physics gun that shoots packets of…air.

And there are certain segments that are about as fun as the xXx movies. For example, you don’t get a hold of your own firearms until late in the game, and in the meantime you’re asked to pick up a borg corpse and use its attached rifle. One sequence is a quintessential gun turret challenge from this scenario, except you’re on a slow-moving elevator with railings that can block your bullets, but not the enemies. A certain boss-type character will reappear frequently near the game’s end, and at one point appears three times over. For a brief sequence near the beginning of Butcher Bay, and a lengthy chunk of the end of Dark Athena, these enemy gun turrets so small that they can barely be seen by the naked eye appear, with the capability of ripping large chunks of health and bald head off of Riddick. I’m sorry Vin Diesel, I’m sorry Tigon, I’m sorry Starbreeze, I’m sorry that myself and many others don’t have the 60’ high definition television sets you clearly designed this game for and are forced to squint are eyes at the screen looking for the stray white pixel that’ll gun us to death faster than the quarter miles Vin lives his life by.

Dark Athena isn’t a terrible game, mind you. The core mechanics behind the experience are still solid by genre standards. But the difference between the game’s two campaigns was that while I was saddened to see Butcher Bay come to a conclusion, I couldn’t wait until I got Dark Athena out of my Xbox.

And finally, there’s a multiplayer deathmatch mode. I would wager they included a multiplayer mode because too many reviewers back in the day considered it a grave insult to not include another multiplayer deathmatch mode in the flooded galaxy of multiplayer deathmatch modes. (Just like how too many reviewers nowadays are getting into the bad habit of penalizing everything that doesn’t have a co-op mode.) The one included feels tacked on, consisting of generic multiplayer maps, generic weapons and generic modes. I couldn’t tell you how the one unique mode, “Pitch Black” (a team of flashlight-wielding soldiers in the dark against a single Riddick) plays like because nobody online was playing it. Perhaps because virtual 8-on-1 hide and seek doesn’t quite have much of a universal appeal. In fact the multiplayer here in general has little in the way of appeal it seems, as very few people are playing this game on Xbox Live.

With the multiplayer being a throwaway, this package is really the tale of two games. Escape from Dark Athena is frustrating, bland and would be lost in the crowded FPS shuffle if it weren’t riding on the coattails of a better game. Escape from Butcher Bay is still great, but all it gets here is a visual makeover. But the original game isn’t even five years old, so why remake it so soon? Butcher Bay, while no longer the chromedomed gold standard for high definition graphics, still packs the same gritty, nasty, vicious punch. And it’s not exactly a rarity either; you can more than likely find it sulking in the shadows of bargain bins at any store. Now, if for some reason you can’t apprehend the original game, or must absolutely play the best looking version of every single game possible, then go ahead and buy Dark Athena. And then get back to work on your 3D update to Half-Life/Zelda/Chrono Trigger waiting for their restraining order.

3 ½ stars.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

The Wind Waker is a game that has been subject to a modicum of controversy. To my recollection, it could very well be the most controversial kid-friendly, cartoon-styled piece of family entertainment to not feature cropped-in naked girls or questionable wording. (Go on Youtube and look up “Disney sex” to skewer your perception of The Lion King). Part of this is the cause of Zelda fans and haters, arguing the merits of cartoonish graphics versus adult Link swim graphics. Tedious sailing across all-too-vast oceans versus tedious horseback riding across all-too-vast fields. The tradition of telling the same “rescue Zelda and Triforce from Gannon” storyline versus the monotony of telling the same “rescue Zelda and Triforce from Gannon” storyline. Only Zelda 2 on the NES gets as many questions of merit as this Gamecube game, except I can close the book on the former title’s argument by simply saying “too freaking hard for normal people.”

As for me, I don’t know if I’m a Zelda fan or a Zelda hater. This is my second attempt at reviewing this game. The first attempt was over 5 years ago, back when I didn’t believe in spelling and grammar checks, but was rife with urine and vinegar for which to spew hatred on the game. I was young then, and bitter that this was the next-generation follow-up to Ocarina of Time. At the same time, I had recently re-bought a copy of The Wind Waker to play on my shiny Wii, so either I secretly enjoy playing this game or enjoy hating myself for playing this game. In any event, join me for a spiritual journey of self-reflection and fetch quests.

You play as a Link-like boy, whom you can name whatever you desire. Pirates invade your island, and with them a giant bird kidnaps your sister, and thus you’re off to an adventure of great peril. Boy goes on epic journey, discovers his destiny, all of the usual players get involved. There’s a Zelda, a Triforce, a Gannondorf, a King, a boomerang, a sect of key items that you must collect to advance your quest, same old song and dance. But the game does at least tinker with the location and history of its universe. Instead of typical old grasslands paired with the Nintendo cliché ice and fire worlds, you get a large ocean tiding several smaller islands…including the ice and fire islands.

Once upon a time, hardcore Zelda fans had panic attacks over the deviant art style of The Wind Waker. It seemed outrageous to follow the mature and realistic Ocarina of Time (well, the mature and realistic PG-worthy Ocarina of Time) with big eyes and bright colours. Back then, fans were insecure about Nintendo’s reputation as a “kiddy” company (you know, in contrast to nowadays when Nintendo doesn’t even cater to the kids with their major titles!) We can look back now and say that Wind Waker benefits exuberantly from the bold change/reversion to a cartoonish style. Almost every character, be it generic enemy or pointless NPC, exudes personality and originality. The animation and explosion effects are vibrant and the world is a shining never-neverland of possibility for you to spend far too much time sailing around in.

Sailing isn’t really a love-it-or-hate-it affair. It’s more like a hate-it-or-begrudgingly-tolerate-it relationship. Link’s mode of transportation between all of these lovely islands is a small red sailboat. The “wind waker” is a baton that commands the pitch of an imaginary choir of passionate singers, and playing certain epic ballads can have assorted magical effects, not the least of which being control over the wind’s direction. The nuisance in this is that a sudden change in direction means you’ll be made to play a certain song once again and break the flow of your adventure with great orchestral might. The other issue with sailing is that there’s so much ocean and so much to explore that if you already have a set destination in mind, you’re just going to have to sit your little green butt on the boat and sail for a good few minutes fighting off the scurvy. One song that Linky boy learns later in the game musically summons a typhoon that can teleport you to key parts of the map will help alleviate this woe…slightly.

But sailing your little boat across a wide land can also put you in the mindset of a hungry explorer. It’s hard not to want to explore every square mile of ocean and get that strange British Columbian-Native-Tribe looking fish to chart every location on the map. Each square mile has some kind of island or landmark containing something of possible value. So there becomes an incentive to get curious and explore each island and seek the reason for their existence.

Which is fortunate, because the game hits you with a rather burdensome fetch quest towards the end of the game. Your talking boat kindly asks if you could obtain eight pieces of the fragmented Triforce in order to advance. Each piece is located at the bottom of the ocean scattered across the Zeldaverse. To make these pieces accessible, you must first collect its respective Triforce map. To be able to use these Triforce maps, first you must complete a small side-quest to rescue Tingle, the Richard Simmons of the Nintendo universe. Then you must pay this fruitful personality 398 rupees, rupees that you cannot even carry unless you’ve discovered at least one of the two hidden fairy fountains that magically upgrade your…wallet. In retrospect, the grinding for rupee cash may actually be the most frustrating part of this otherwise interesting and (in a way) open-ended fetch quest. But a kick in the groin is still a kick in the groin, no matter how delicate the kick is or how stylish the neon-green shoes the kicker is wearing. And this end-game fetch quest is a real genital punt.

Which is a shame because the rest of the game is so strong. While the dungeons and combat have been streamlined (which may have been the source of bile in my original fanboy review), they both come out winners. The dungeons each contain a distinct art style and atmosphere. They are neither too confusing as to stump the player, nor too dull as to bore thee. The boy-wonder Link is smaller and more agile than his grown-up ancestors, and the crux of combat in the Wind Waker is often to find a way to slip behind enemies and deliver key rectal blows. All the while, musical notes celebrate your successful attacks and enemies have distinct responses to assorted scenarios; a dog-knight can panic over dropping his sword, run away, pick up the weapon of another fallen enemy and renew confidence in his ability to not just be a roadblock for you to conquer.

My last note of fault with Wind Waker is the lack of voice-work. I understand that this being a Gamecube disc that storage capabilities were limited at the time. Also, Nintendo may have shied away from the notion due to past attempts at fully voice-acted games falling flat on their asses (Super Mario Sunshine). But the simple argument to that is “you hire GOOD voice actors and writers people!” I felt that many key story moments didn’t reach their true emotional potential due to the limitations of scrolling text, nor did the characters reach their true charismatic potential.

In retrospect, I feel as though my original grievance with Wind Waker was simply that I had compared it too much to its predecessor, The Ocarina of Time. That game was (sort of) harder and (sort of) longer, and I, like many fans, were waiting for that game’s real next-generation sequel. Then we got that sequel; Twilight Princess. That sequel was competent but uninspired, bland, dull and replaced the one grand end-game fetch quest with several smaller, more annoying fetch quests. Wind Waker isn’t a completely smooth, crotch-friendly game, but play it with an open mind and you may develop a thirst for adventure.

4 stars.


Here’s that gloriously bad original review for anyone interested. Boy did I cringe.



Wind Waker is a sign of the times. Nintendo, once able to pump out classic after classic, has yet to develop a truly stellar Gamecube game. Melee was from Hal, Metroid was from Retro, Eternal Darkness was from Silicon Knights (before anyone says that Nintendo helped them, keep in mind that these are talented devs that know what they're doing, and as indicated by Prime's control scheme and Kirby's Air Ride adopting the "simple is better" philosophy the big N now preaches, the Nintendo touch may actually be the touch of death.) Wind Waker feels rushed - either that or the devs were too lazy to create a complete game, as its arguably the worst in the series.

This has nothing to do with graphics. In fact the best part of the game is the cel-shaded look, and I hope that Nintendo actually sticks with it for future Zelda games. Every character has some personality just by appearance, the water effects are terrific, you can see very far ahead of you, and everything animates terrifically.

The game controls very similiarly to that of OoT. Combat is slightly improved thanks to being a smaller, more mobile Link and the addition of Parries. The dungeons are solid here, but they are all too easy, and two of them involve switching between Link and another character. (But to switch, you need to play a song with the Wind Waker, and constantly having to play a song over and over gets repetitive.) And worse is that there's only a few dungeons. Nintendo claims that they took out 2 dungeons to make it easier for kids to play, but I strongly doubt the existence of these dungeons.

Instead we get sailing. See, the whole game takes place on a large ocean with islands, and to go from place to place, you have to sail. It takes a couple of minutes to move from one area on the map to another. Even with the Whirlwind spell (think the flute song from A Link to the Past, but replace the bird with a cyclone)it takes a good while to get anywhere. The one positive is that there's many places to go, treasures to uncover and enemies to fight on sea, it just takes a LONG time to get there.

Now get ready for the real killer. After you finish the dungeons, you are forced to go on this incredibly lame fetch quest. First, you must find maps that will reveal where on the sea a piece of a certain item is. To get some of these maps, you'll have to go through these mini-arenas where you have to kill the same enemies over and over again. But wait, before you can use the map, you must get Tingle to translate the map. He charges a lot to translate. If you only have on Wallet upgrade and thus can only carry 999 rupees, then you can afford a whopping 2 translations. Even if you have the second wallet upgrade, you'll still be very short of having all maps translated. So now you have to go out and collect enough rupees (this takes a long time) and then you can follow the maps and get these pieces. All of this requires a lot of sailing. So not only is the game short, but there's this incredibly large section of filler thrown in to make the game longer. GREAT JOB NINTENDO!

While Wind Waker still has its redeeming qualities (from a story standpoint, its one of the strongest in the series) its hard to forgive such a lazy job of development. I doubt that my review has stopped anyone from getting this game, but for those who haven't but view the Zelda franchise that's invincable and justify buying a system alone, think twice before you view Wind Waker as the GC's diamond.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The original arcade game on Xbox Live

Do you remember the villain from Wayne’s World? The rich businessman that tried to buy the show out? He had a dream idea for a video game where the players would face a blob that they could not beat, but would put quarter after quarter into the machine looking for the key to success against this unstoppable pixilated menace. That more or less sums up arcade gaming in the late 80s/early 90s. Games were massively difficult and required players to inject quarter after quarter after quarter to make any kind of progress.

Amongst these vile ranks was Konami’s 1989 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade beat-em-up. Granted, it had the allure of being a game based a popular intellectual property that at least looked like the developers had respect for the franchise, for a change of pace. But me saying that reflects the standards of 1989. In 2009, I defy you to find a player that enjoys watching half their health wither away over a one-foot-tall robot dinosaur thingy’s mouse-trap bite.

So the story of the game follows this train of thought; April, the human mascot of the Ninja Turtles, gets kidnapped by Shredder. Turtles rescue her, only for Master Splinter to get kidnapped. Turtles rescue him, Turtles go to the Shredder’s lair because they find kidnapping a tired theme in video games. The technical merits of the game were considered radical if you asked a turtle of a California surfer. Back then, arcade machines were the only format allowed to push these kinds of graphics. In 2009, the sparse voice-clips, while fitting of the show (when was the last time someone threatened to make soup out of you?) are muffled. The still images between levels look like some hilariously bad MS Paint art, complete with considerably deformed Turtle heads.

So the gameplay goes like this; you hop in to a stage filled with foot clan soldiers. One button punches, the other jumps. You beat up some soldiers, soldiers beat up you, you run out of health and die a lot. The game is courteous enough to grant you unlimited continues; fortunate since I’ve spent about 5 times this game’s worth in virtual quarters as I did buying this on Xbox Live Arcade. If there’s any depth, it’s in trying to stick and move, pick your shots and then running. But these turtles live up to their ancestry in how slow and sluggish they can be in evading.

So this game is a sufferer of the Bioshock Syndrome; on virtue of having infinite lives, beating the game becomes less a test of skill than a grind. The game keeps tracks of your foot soldier kill-count, and I walked out of the experience having grinded through about 330 enemies. Some bosses have cheap attacks that interrupt your combo and chip your health away, causing you to die, continue again, hear a turtle scream “Cowabunga!” to celebrate their return, and die again. Repeat the voice clip playing again and again.

“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”
“Cowabunga!”


Over and over again the muffled Cowabungancity!

The proverbial turd in the turtle soup came for me at the end. I was applying the strategy of “give a few punches, die, “Cowabunga!”, repeat) against the Shredder whence I found that we had managed to land a double-down punch that defeated the both of us. The game should’ve been finished but the Continue screen appeared, and I was but unable to press start and get back into the action, left to count down as the “Continue?” bar counted down to oblivion. I was hence robbed an ending after the some 45 minutes of effort I had put into this repetitive mess.

It’s four players, it’s a meager 400 points on the Xbox Live Arcade, and it’s a chance for Turtles fans to feel acceptable again. But as a beat-em-up, other alternatives like the recent Watchmen game crack the shell and devour the insides of TMNT 1989. ‘tis another example of a game that has not aged well, a relic of a time when games were less about presenting an experience than about lightening the player’s wallet. Though I guess not too much has changed in that regard, am I right Wii Music?

2 1/2 stars

Mario Party 8

A lesson that all gamers must come to grips with is the idea that not every game is accessible or interesting to non-gamers. While many college boys in dorms filled with Xboxes and Halo players who smoke substances that match the Chief’s green armor, the rest of us have to contend with girlfriends, cousins, younger siblings and jock classmates whom have a hard time grasping that one analog stick moves and the other looks. And I didn’t even have much in the way of console shooters in my heyday; imagine the foibles I had trying to teach someone whom never grasped a controller how to control Mortal Kombat.

So Mario Party played a nice role in my gaming lifespan. Sure it was luck-driven in nature but that only helped to level the playing field with my less-skilled, non-message-board-posting, non social-life-depraved co-gamers. The mini-games were all simple enough to be explained within the time-span of a beer sip, and it had cute, recognizable mascots that lack the inert creepiness of the Peggle games. A Mario Party session had the potential for both a wholesome family get-together and a raucous drinking binge with the right (or wrong?) group of friends. Coupled with Mario Kart, Mario Tennis, Mario Golf and Mario Nudist Exhibitionism*, the Mario Party games made the Nintendo 64 the most woman-friendly system around.

(And with all due respect to any “girl gamer” or “frag doll” that may disagree with that statement, I reserve little sympathy for you. You can pick any sheep in the herd of Halo freaks to have your way with. In fact you may as well have at least five ex-boyfriends on your Xbox Live friend list as you read this.)

After seven installments of games that were largely the same, Mario Party 8 on the Wii adds a renewed sense of relevance to the series on virtue of being a Wii game. I’ve always said that the flimsy, inaccurate nature of the Wiimote motion sensors mean that the controller would be better suited for quickie mini-games over…well, actual games with depth. Mario Party 8 enforces that stereotype better than most women I know enforce the stereotype that Mario Party is a game for women.

The mini-games mostly involve some kind of Wiimote shenanigans. You’ll be moving the remote around, shaking it, steering it, using the laser pointer to shoot things and sometimes holding it vertically to use like a normal-person controller. To further liquor-proof the experience, a Mario hand will illustrate what motion the player is meant to make with the Wiimote before the game begins. Nine times out of ten, the motion sensors are responsive enough to understand what motion you’re trying to do. The tenth time (such as that newfangled rowing game) the Wii has a disagreement with the player on how a game is to be controlled. In most instances, the gameplay experience is impaired from such miscommunication, but if Mario Party is being used as a drinking game, then only fun and shots can ensue from such a situation.

I should explain that Mario Party 8 is a virtual board game. One that is emceed by a talking pair of lips and matching talking hat, both of whom fulfill many stereotypes. Four players take turns rolling a digital die and moving around an unlikely game board concept. Gimmick board concepts such as “Shy-Guy’s Magical Train” and “Pirate Goomba’s beach” tell me that Hudson Soft just puts the names of assorted Mario characters and settings in a hat and determines board ideas by random draw. We may soon have Boo’s Cheerleader Change Room Adventure in the future.

The goal of the game is to collect the most stars. To get these stars, you need to find the star dealer in some dark alley on the board and give him/her/it coins. You collect coins by winning the mini-games at the end of each round, landing on certain spaces, not landing on certain spaces, passing by nice strangers, periodically checking your pulse and so forth. Actual strategy is limited to which paths on the board you choose and how you use the “candy” power-ups that you collect along the way. I’m particularly partial to the “bitsize candy”, which turns your character in an 8-bit sprite capable of generating money from smashing 8-bit bricks that appear from every block. Playing homage to Super Mario Bros; another girlfriend-friendly tactic. Thanks Nintendo for looking out for my best interests.

The thing about Mario Party 8, like any party that invites Waluigi, is that if you’re not playing with anyone, you’re not having fun. Oh you can play against the AI, but there’s no fun in cat-calling the computer when it’s anyone’s turn but yours. The “Star Challenge” mode is the game’s weird idea of a single-player mode. Here, you play on the board against a single challenger, and race to the star. It’s identical to a regular board, except the mini-games are omitted, making this mode the equivalent of eating KFC chicken without the skin. Pointless.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, you can go to the “mini-game tent” and have an all mini-games free-for-all. The fallacy of this mode is that only games you’ve played on previous board game sessions will appear here, making this mode a moot point if you haven’t already weathered a few hangovers. There is also a sect of unlockable mini-games that those petulant tapeworms we call Miis can get involved in, but the mini-games have little else to differentiate themselves from the pack of real mini-games.

Mario Party is a utility more than it is a game. You will probably never play it at all by yourself. You won’t admit to owning it to your guy buddies. But it looms on your shelf, behind your Call of Dutys and Gears of Wars, for those nights when you have the kind of company that isn’t impressed by shooting Nazi Zombies. And unless you’re living the dorm room Halo dream, then these kind of games are your best bet for a good multiplayer time, sober or otherwise.

3 ½ stars.



*I hope someone believed it existed.