Actraiser: The Virtual Console fears god

Actraiser for the Super Nintendo is most notable in the annals of history in that if you were to rank every SNES game in alphabetical order, it would appear ninth. However, unless you watched AHHH Real Monsters back when Nickelodeon mattered, then it would be the first notable SNES game on the list. Ergo, Actraiser is alphabetically the most significant 16-bit release of all time.

In this game, you play as God. Not the real Christian God of course, the last thing the developers at Enix wanted was for players to be blamed for every unjust war in history by the game’s virtual non-believers. No, you play as a fantasy god in a fantasy realm where demons are slapping around your human worshippers. There are six cities of civilians that need restoring, and like the travelling rock star you are, you go from town to town in your temple-shaped tour bus with your Cupid roadie.

So you’ll get your Mode 7-powered ass to a town, and your first order of business will be to curb stomp some demons. To do the stomping, you are manifested into an animated statue of a knight with questionable fashion sense in a series of sidescrolling levels. Your knight runs and jumps kind of slowly and ungracefully, and your main attack is not so much a sword slash as it is a sword flick. Most of your enemies are equally ill-equipped for combat, aside from some tough bosses ripped out of at least four or five different international mythologies. Actraiser could very well be the 16-bit God of War if it had fast action, a real story, violence, and was entertaining. The platforming levels aren’t terrible, but they’re not particularly thrilling either. And odds are that you’ve seen the same forms of enemies and tactics in several games older than Actraiser and many more that have been released since.

After you trounce the local demon, claimed his soul and wished you were playing Demon’s Souls, the civilians of the area muster enough confidence to rebuild their town. This is where the simulation element of Actraiser kicks in, though what is actually being “simulated” is as good a question as any. Anyone expecting a SimCity-level of depth and strategy will be sorely disappointed. In fact, anyone expecting strategy in general will be sorely disappointed. Generally, you point the direction in which your civilians rebuild their roads (namely, into a demon portal so that flying cupid demons stop respawning), all the while shooting down demon cupids using your angel cupid in what amounts to a very trivial top-down shooter. Any obstacle that gets in the way of your road building is quickly dealt with. Is a forest in the way? Slaughter the wildlife inhabiting it with a thunderstorm. Rocks in the way? Cast an earthquake and slaughter some of your own people along the way. All of these are done through a menu with no actual gameplay mechanic, notable consequence or tactical element.

So the whole simulation element feels more like a formality than a game. Sometimes, the villagers may fork over an item or two as a “sacrifice” (some very PG sacrifices of course. Think more along the lines of crops instead of a human heart.) But otherwise, there’s no connection between the platforming levels and the sim aspect. At least the former provided some semblance of action and excitement. Or at least something of note. I stopped playing the game near the end, when I was made to run through a gauntlet of all the boss fights before engaging the final boss. This marathon annoyed me, being that I was given a set number of lives and power-ups. At least Mega Man games were usually courteous enough to consider the Wily fight a checkpoint..

So I began to ponder. Why is this game so famous? Apparently, Actraiser’s greatest claim to fame is the music. That ever-mechanical MIDI series of beeps and hums gets translated into something resembling an orchestral score in this game. If you like your 16 bit music, and actually listen to it on the ride to work as opposed to Ryan Seacreast’s Top 40 Actual Singers, then you may get a dig out of Actraiser’s odd score. But I will say that Actraiser gave me an appreciation for Diddy Kong Racing and every game released thereafter. I’m referring to games where the music changes to reflect the ambiance of the situation, whether it’s “no one is around and the music is quiet” or “crazy guys attacking you and the music is hectic.” Actraiser, like most games of the era, lets its soundtrack remain static throughout the level, sometimes to odd results. The first level features some kind of frenetic “Holy Crap The World Is Ending ASAP” theme song that moves with more tempo and pace than my knight character is even capable of walking. There’s something to be said for a soundtrack matching the mood.

Who should get Actraiser? People that already liked Actraiser, of course. Nostalgia is about the one good reason to give this game another go. Most players trying to discover it for the first time will be confused as to what the big deal is. Many games featuring similar themes and ideas, whether as a simulation or action title, have done better, and Actraiser only proves that the two genres are better left separate.

3 stars

DJ Hero

There are certain games that, for whatever reason, I don’t foresee myself attempting to play, let alone review. I can’t touch the Madden games because I won’t settle for anything less than the Pittsburgh Steelers winning sever consecutive Super Bowls, then crossing over and winning the Stanley Cup at least twice. I won’t attempt Gran Turismo or Forza Motorsport because I’m about as confident in my ability to handle cars as Indiana Jones is with snakes. And I never envisioned myself attempting DJ Hero because textbooks cost money that I simply did not have to spend on another plastic musical instrument controller taking closet space away from actual clothes. Fortunately, a member of my family has a heart of gold and wallet filled with Benjamins (or is that “Elizabeths” in Canada?) Now I find myself with a new musical game, and one turntable short of possessing two turntables and a microphone.

DJ Hero is the non-creatively named turntable version of Guitar Hero. Included in the graffiti-laden box is a sizable record player-controller that is begging to be used as a weapon in a New Jack match. There’s a record-shaped spinning disc with three coloured buttons abroad, and you can imagine what those three buttons do. There’s also a slider, a twisty knob, a big glowing button, and…look, I don’t know what the official technical terms are for all this turntablature. Grandmaster Flash tried to explain everything in the tutorial but I started having a hard time believing any words that came out of his mouth when he started spouting about the creative freedom you can express in parts of the songs. This “creative freedom” refers to the ability to throw in canned sound effects in red-striped segments, sound effects that will more than likely involve Flava Flav.

Most kidding aside, the DJ Hero experience works because that strange DJ controller really changes the music game experience. Sure, you’re still pressing coloured buttons to match the coloured circles on the screen. But now you’re thinking about scratching the disc at certain parts (musically, not literally), flipping the switch to fade in or out parts of the song, and turning the knob to do crazy audio effects to the song. Remember the first time you played Guitar Hero and you felt like the grungiest of rock stars, playing out all of your on-stage rock ‘n roll fantasies? (and possibly apprehending some substances to play out the post-concert part of those fantasies?) Well DJ Hero evokes that similar feeling all over again. When you’re twisting knobs and scratching the disc thing in tune with the music, you really feel like that egotistical punk on top of the stage tearing the house down, and asking everyone if the roof is indeed on fire.

How close this turntable controller is to simulating actual DJing, I don’t know. My DJ friend was too busy fulfilling zombie apocalypse fantasies in Left Four Dead to let me know. I somehow imagine the reaction of the DJ community reflecting that of actual guitar players with Guitar Hero; that us gamers are all a bunch of poser amateur punks. Oh well.

Now, there are a few differences between DJ Hero and its Grandguitarfather. You don’t play one song at a time, but rather a mix of two songs. And while a handful of songs from actual DJs like Daft Punk and Eric Prydz appear from time to time, most of the songs are popular rock, pop, rap and retro tracks in a blatent, mainstreamed attempt to create the whitest DJ-related product of all time. As part of said target audience, I’m satisfied. There are some unsuspecting mixes of tracks from unlikely artists like Gary Newman, the Jackson 5, 50 Cent and Zakk Wylde, to illustrate the game’s unsuspecting variety. And whoever thought mixing Vanilla Ice with MC Hammer was a great idea was very, very, very correct. The tracklist has close to 100 mixes, though you’ll hear certain songs a bit too frequently. You’ll hear Rihanna’s “Disturbia” so often that you may begin to sympathize for Chris Brown.

Other differences between DJ Hero and music games that aren’t DJ Hero are a little more subtle. It’s no longer “Star Power” but “Euphoria”, with the two differences being that 1. you press the glowing button instead of turning the controller sideways and 2. presumably, the crowd pops acid when you activate it. Getting a good enough note streak gives you a Rewind Attack, where turning the disc counter-clockwise rewinds you back to a previous portion of the song. This feature that comes up too often and thus gets a bit repetitive when you’re kicking too much ass, but now I’m nitpicking. All of the songs are divided into “setlists” and…get this, you have to actually UNLOCK the game’s songs. Oh boy, when was the last time you actually had to do that in a music game?

Most of my problems with DJ Hero aren’t really dealbreakers, especially since the “deal” part for me cost nothing thanks to Santa Claus. But I’ll mention them anyways. This being an Activision music game, you’ve got all of five downloadable songs available for purchase to expand your music library. The turntable controller, being more nuanced than the guitar controller’s “five buttons and a flap” is a bit harder to explain to a newcomer, and thus the game’s party appeal is limited. You can play multiplayer with either a second turntable or, for certain songs, a guitar, but you’re better off just popping in a four player Rock Band or Guitar Hero and getting more than two people involved. And finally, my biggest issue is that of personality. The game has an assortment of characters, venues and equipment filling assorted DJ archetypes, such as the Eastern European weirdo or the slutty Brazilian model type that just happens to know how to play turntables (there might actually be 6 of those in the game), but DJ Hero as a whole lacks the brazen sense of humour of Harmonix’s Guitar Hero games. To be fair, no music game since Guitar Hero 2 has come close to matching the rock lifestyle spoof of such, which may have more to do with the music game genre as a whole selling out to The Man than anything else.

But really, DJ Hero is worth getting because there’s an aura of freshness surrounding the game, and I’m not just saying that because DJ Jazzy Jeff is in it. The experience feels exciting, fun again. It reminds you of the first time you played Guitar Hero and felt like Zakk Wylde without the mysterious odors. It’s worth the exuberant price tag (well, maybe not worth the Renegade Edition’s super exuberant price tag.) It may not rescue the music game genre from its impending stagnation, but it at least slows it down. And does so to the tune of Another One Bites The Dust.

4 stars

Demo double pack: Dante's Inferno and Bayonetta

I've had this typed up for like a month now, so perhaps it's about time I get around to posting it on my site.

Both of these games caught the corner of my eye for two reasons; one is because they don’t have a 2 at the end of their titles, and also because their promotional tactics strike me as odd.



I was just reading the Wikipedia article for the Dante’s Inferno video game. Apparently, video game critics were sent $200 in the mail by Electronic Arts with an accompanying message; either you succumbed to greed for cashing the check in, or were a wasteful individual for not. But either way, you’re sinning. What if I gave the money to charity? Would EA claim I committed a mortal sin if I spent the money on competing games like The God of War Collection? Is the one true path to salvation through making an offering towards the almighty John Madden?

Dante’s Inferno is based on The Divine Comedy, a legendary work of literature that I never read. So for all I know, this video game could be a dead-on accurate recreation of Dante Alighieri’s megapoem. But I doubt that for about three hundred reasons. One is the gratuitous use of the Crusades as a backdrop, trying its damnedest to evoke the same themes of religion-abuse as Assassin’s Creed, to the point where I began suspecting that developer Visceral Games consisted of a multicultural team of various religious beliefs. Then we have Dante himself, swinging an axe vividly and single-handedly chopping down legions of Arabs like grass to a weed-whacker. The mighty warrior just happens to get knifed in the back by a heroic Muslim, and the Grim Reaper comes to claim Dante’s soul. It was around the point where Dante pulls the knife out of his back and says something along the lines of “oh fuck you, you’re dead Death!” and engages in a boss fight with the Reaper that I began to question the game’s faithfulness to the story.

And thus begins Dante’s descent into the warm vacation spot of hell. There are a bunch of story sequences in there; like Dante stitching some logo to his chest because he’s a sadomasochistic sicko, and his wife’s soul getting kidnapped in the most naked fashion possible. Seriously, I swear that every shot of damsel Beatrice in the demo also features shots of her titties. This Beatrice woman puts out a lot more than the Princess Peach has in heir 25 year existence. But all of the story sequences are shown with so many quick flashes and so out of order that they just don’t make any sense. And as for the gameplay itself, well I need not spend too much time talking about the gameplay because it is, quite honestly, a pixel-for-pixel imitation of God of War. The same attacks, controls, dodging, special attacks, magic attacks, quick-time event attacks, even the ever-generous “combo system” that allows even the most primitive monkeys score a 125 hit combo in the opening sequence. If you want to save some bandwidth on downloading the demo, just boot up God of War or the Wolverine movie game and you’ll get as accurate a demo as this.



The second game on the docket is Bayonetta. I was interested in downloading this demo more out of spite than anything else; a website to go unnamed here was giving out free keycodes to allow players early access to this demo as part of a contest. “Who would even attempt to make an effort to sign their name up for such a contest?” I thought. “Why, people whom would gladly add their e-mail address to Sega’s marketing mailing list, of course!” Anyway, I only found that contest funny because the demo came out a week later. Fools.

Where Dante is trying his damnedest to sulk and swim in the deepest pool of self-pity like Kratos, Bayonetta is only mildly trying to impersonate the other video game Dante. The gameplay of this game, from the speed of attacks to the fluidity of the combinations, is very akin to Devil May Cry, but there are some nice little tweaks. Having guns on her arms and legs, you can link any attack into gunfire, one-upping Wet in the field of female characters wielding phallic weaponry. And you can reverse-bullet-time enemies by dodging them at the last minute, slowing them down…for some reason. Oh, and Bayonetta’s attacks are often manifested from her clothes for some reason, meaning that her spandex will fly off at assorted intervals to transform into giant fists, for example. This game is fulfilling all kinds of fantasies.

Not that it’s all bad; the action is as Devil May Cryey as you’d expect. There are two boss battles with a giant troll dude, one of them involve the troll using the very bridge you stand on as his Samba De Amigo rattle controller. And just like the Dante’s Inferno demo, the story sequences are all ripped from random points of what I presume to be the main game and thus make absolutely no sense. One moment you’re applying your craft as a dominatrix towards random trolls and monsters, the next you’re in a heated grudge match with some warrior in a monastery that you apparently have history with. Is it intriguing? I don’t know. Those story sequences all seem so serious and melodramatic, and I so prefer the game when it’s trying to be campy. I like the hokey twists, like how your lock-on target crosshairs look like lips and how rose petals surface when you land on the floor. I’d rather Bayonetta relish in its oversexed cheese factor.

So, are these games good? They could be. Dante’s Inferno has the novelty of turning nine circles of hell into gameplay levels, and on sheer art direction alone, I’m intrigued. Bayonetta could be funny as all hell and turn out to be a fun little Devil May Cry 4-clone, provided they don’t make the players replay all of the stages and bosses twice over again. But if the goal of a demo is to make players halfway interested in an upcoming game, then these downloads at least succeeded. And I think we can all agree that Nintendo very badly needs to get on the demo bandwagon and soon. Unless, of course, they’re ashamed of their Wii games. Are they?

Duke Nukem 3D

Forget the hubbub about next generation graphics and vehicle driving and 20 different kinds of physics engines per game. The reality of the matter is that the first person shooter genre hasn’t really evolved much since the early 90s. It doesn’t matter how much smarter the AI has gotten or how realistic the effects of wood shattering is nowadays, the major games still consist of military figures gunning either demons or Nazis. Perhaps I’m the fool for expecting anything more out of a genre where the only brains necessary are the ones excreting from the skulls of the enemy but alas.

And then there’s Duke Nukem. If space marines versus aliens represents the early stages of the shooter’s human evolution, then Duke is the monkey era. Duke Nukem flings it’s feces at its adversaries while slapping the mother of his offspring with his member. Duke Nukem is the king of the misogynous and masochistic combination, and you know what? There’s something rather refreshing about that. At least de-evolution marks a change of pace of sorts from the current norm. The King’s breakout game, Duke Nukem 3D, has been released on Xbox Live Arcade, and if anything, is oodles lot more interesting shooter than, say, the last Halo or Resistance.

In another nice change of pace from the norm, Duke Nukem 3D doesn’t feature any lengthy tutorials or introductory cutscenes or overblown CG intros to waste your time. (Okay, there’s one CG cutscene, but its visual quality is so bad that you’ll have a good chuckle at the expense of the Nineties.) Rather, Duke explains the backdrop of each of the game’s four storylines with a single sentence. This can include “Those alien bastards are gonna pay for ruining my ride!” or “Nobody steals our chicks, and lives.” Simple, yet powerful. I can relate to a man who’s motivation is exacting revenge for his ride. More games can learn from the Duke when it comes to getting to the point in a hurry.

Duke Nukem 3D is awfully different from today’s first person shooters. When I say that, I am also insinuating that the graphics do look like monkey Duke’s flung feces, for one. Being this was my first major attempt at playing this game, I had to undergo a certain unlearning curve in order to apprehend the game; adjusting to the way most enemies look like pixilated illustrations of a Three Little Pigs pop-up book, with maybe four or five frames (or rather, pictures) of animation between then. But the ever primitive tech also brings with its own brand of charming hokey camp; Duke’s melee attack is a straight mafia kick, one that he can administer to his enemies while running at full speed. Not to mention, all of the Duke-isms that bore high novelty back in the 90s are suddenly cute again; such pointless gimmicks like flushing a toilet or giving a stripper cash to do her pixilated dance. Plus there’s the novelty of thinking to yourself “someone in 1996 was pleasuring themselves to these stripper sprites.”

And many of the gameplay differences are oh so refreshing in their datedness. There’s no self-regenerating health, which in turn makes the sight of a health pack or steroids (proof that all great athletes are on the gear) very welcoming. Seeing a health pack in Duke Nukem 3D is as relieving as those moments in Demon’s Souls where you enter a room and there is only one grunt trying to ambush you. Likewise, Duke Nukem existed in an era where chiropractic was still considered controversial, and thus the Duke will gladly suck up some long-term back pain in the name of carrying more than two weapons at a time. Eat that, Master Chief.

You’ll need to be carrying more than two weapons at any given moment, since the technology in Duke Nukem predates the creation of the Headshot. Each enemy alien requires a finite and exact amount of damage to fall, with the difference between one alien and the other often being “carries a bigger weapon, and needs a bigger weapon to die.” Being smart about your weapons thus becomes a concern, both in regards to ammo conservation and not accidentally blowing yourself up with the rocket launcher. The upside to all of this weapon-thinking is the enormous sense of satisfaction you’ll achieve when you combust an enemy and Duke responds with a simple “Holy ****.” Duke Nukem is a man that speaks for the people.

Biggest problem with Duke Nukem 3D? Being one of those 90s shooters, it has a reliance on keycards and switches as its brightest idea of puzzle solving. (Switches that become shockingly hard to activate when underwater.) There were several occasions where I was stumped because I didn’t know which wall needed to be blown up or where the hidden keycard was lying. At the risk of being ridiculed by elite PC fanatics eager to slam my head against their Modern Warfare 2 dedicated server, I really could have used a hint system of some kind. On the flipside, a nice little rewind system is in place where, upon death, Duke can use the sheer force of his testosterone to rewind time to any previous moment of the player’s choosing.

And finally, there’s a multiplayer online mode. Duke Nukem 3D was released, thankfully, before a LOT of nonsense was introduced to the world. There’s no perks, no leveling up, no killstreak bonuses, no node-capturing, no capture the flag, there aren’t even teams. The only character class you can choose to play as is Duke Friggin Nukem. You can engage in either one on one deathmatches or free for alls with up to 8 players, though the latter takes some time to get a game going. Being a 90s shooter, success in an online Dukematch is 50% skill and reflexes, and 50% having a bigger gun than the guy in front of you. So the Duke Nukem 3D multiplayer is more entertaining as a nostalgia piece than a straight deathmatch experience.

Just like how Duke Nukem 3D as a whole is more entertaining as a straight nostalgia piece than a full blown video game. In a lot of ways, games have evolved gracefully and thus makes certain aspects of Duke feel crude, ugly, dated. But at the same time, some of that crudeness, that grittiness, that complete lack of shame, makes Duke Nukem 3D amusing in its own way. So consider me surprised by how much fun this rusty old shooter can still be. If you need a break from the monotony of space marines versus aliens, the king has the fun time you’re looking for.

3 ½ stars

The Saboteur

Momma always taught me not to speak ill of the dead. Besides being rather disrespectful, trash-talking the deceased could result in a poltergeist occupying your residence. The last thing I need is a ghost haunting my Playstation 3; slowing download speeds for the PSN Store moreso or attacking Solid Snake during the many Metal Gear Solid 4 installation screens. Part of the cruel aftermath of the economic recession, Pandemic Studios has passed away into the great beyond. This studio has produced once-mighty military games like Full Spectrum Warrior, Mercenaries and Star Wars: Battlefront. So I’m a bit worried that criticizing their swan song, The Saboteur, will leave my console haunted with the ghosts of trigger-happy marines that open fire at my team of cartoon warriors every time we’ve apprehended our fat princess.

But quite frankly, The Saboteur is game that should not be bought, either out of homage or otherwise.

You play as Sean Devlin, a rugged Irish mechanic that, coincidentally, is also adept at using firearms and explosives. He gets beat in a race against a Nazi race driver that, coincidentally, is also an evil Nazi sergeant and torture artist. Bad things go down at roughly the same time the Krauts decide to invade Paris, and Sean decides to be the one man army that does something about it.

There’s something about playing The Saboteur that feels painful in principle. (Actually, there are several painful parts.) In particular, I’m referring to how the game apes the art style of Schindler’s List. In theory, Nazi-occupied sections of Paris are black and white, with only certain aspects that the developers want to highlight receiving colour. (Like, you know, the explosions.) Meanwhile, the sort-of liberated parts of France are brim with colour, sunshine, hope, despite how Nazi troops still walk around these sections with that same attitude of owning the place.

This concept, while potentially interesting on paper, aggravates me because the rest of the game lacks the same kind of emotional weight or drama of the movie it’s ripping off. Imagine the version of Schindler’s List recorded by the high school A/V team. Here you’ve got your swashbuckling hero (who’s not particularly charismatic, mind you), speaking in dark-but-off Irish tones, surrounded by a litany of characters communicating with horrible accents. The voice acting as a whole is bad, the script is drab and hard to believe, and thus it becomes impossible to buy into the game’s super serious tone. So the storyline is a flop.

The Saboteur boasts a combination of gameplay mechanics. Being 1940s France, the car lock had presumably not been invented yet and you can just about jack any automobile of your choosing. You can then engage in a runaway, escaping from pursuing Nazis in a Grand Theft Auto 4-like chases to race out of the red circle on the map. Or you can parkour your escape, climbing around buildings to find the very scarce hiding spots, though Sean is no Ezio Auditore and is very hesitant about what ledges he can and can’t shimmy along.

Guns are always a nice option too. The gunplay here is a bit satisfying, if uninspiring. You shoot at things, then you take cover behind other things. Other, Gearier games have done this kind of action better, but at least you’ll crack a smile as your one shotgun blast mows down a row of church-attending Nazis. Though the looming threat of sniper towers and Nazis in weird places you didn’t see can ruin your Rambo approach, thus you may instead consider the stealth approach; this involves ambushing a trooper, stealing his clothes and goose-stepping your way around installations. However, even this approach has its limitations, such as “walking around the sight of the Super Smart Nazis that can spot a traitor from a mile away” and “walking around all the other Nazis anyways because they can detect the smell of Guinness.”

All of your missions, which seem to involve either killing someone, destroying something, or undestroying an ally, are often best approached by a combination of the above. That said, it gets a bit tiresome when you start falling into familiar habits. Sneak into an establishment, wind up getting caught because you got frustrated walking around all the yellow circles on the map, shoot things, drive out of the red circle on the map to escape. The formula gets a bit tiresome, especially when some of the aforementioned weaknesses of the above systems kick in. One mission guided me to the direction of a rope that I thought I could use to slide from one building to the next. But ropes are clearly something that does not exist in Ireland, so Sean had great difficulty trying to figure his way through the shelves and ledges on the building, onto this strange apparatus.

And I began to wonder what it was exactly I had to do to dispose of all this black and white oppression. Not because I cared for the annexed citizens of Paris, but because it’s so damned hard to see anything. I would frequently crash into poles, obstacles and civilians on the road with no sympathy for anything but my car. There are the odd moments where I would try to find the ledge of a building…an experimental process that entailed grinding up along every square foot of wall and hump-jumping the side until Sean found a window ledge of his liking. The stealth parts are a bit awkward in that it can be hard to discern what direction a Nazi troop is facing. Thus my attempt at a stealth kill will transform into an attempt at an awkward conversation about the weather. Gloomy as always, I guess.

Not that I ever knew what these missions were. Remember how in Infamous, you had those sidequests who’s sole purpose was to clean up two percent of that third of the city? As much as an overwhelming chore that felt like, at least you knew how to get the cleaning done. In The Saboteur, it seems like the anti-greyscale missions appear randomly throughout the main story missions. My eagerness to liberate the masses (even if I couldn’t give a damn about the masses) was being put to test through being forced to witness the main plot.

But really, The Saboteur’s greatest fallacy is that it nicks and steals aspects from better sandbox games. Grand Theft Auto 4, Assassin’s Creed 2, Infamous, all of which were probably in development cycles at the same time as The Saboteur, all pull off this sandbox parkour/violence/death/freeing the civilians nonsense a lot better. Maybe you have a strong urge to rescue the French, and that may be your motivation for playing The Saboteur. But that sense of Parisian pride will fade when you hear Luc’s wonderfully Looney Tunes accent.

3 stars

Grand Theft Auto 4: The Ballad of Gay Tony

Bas Rutten is an ever-popular retired mixed martial arts known for his liver kicking, impassioned colour commentary tracks for Pride FC (emphasizing the word “colour”), and his immaculately awesome martial arts instruction videos. A walking onomatopoeia, Bas Rutten has become a Youtube arse-whooping sensation for his love of sound effects to accompany his brand of violence. Fans of El Guapo will be thrilled to know that Bas returns for another fake episode of the fake television show “The Men’s Room” in The Ballad of Gay Tony. More sound effects, more low blows, more of Bas being Bas.

If you have no idea of whom I was talking about, then there are still plenty of other reasons to take a gander at The Ballad of Gay Tony. This is the second downloadable expansion to Grand Theft Auto 4, the second chance for Xbox owners like me to laugh at Playstation 3 owners like my brother.

While the previous expansion, The Lost and Damned, focused on the suppressed homosexual lifestyle that is the biker gang, this game goes full-blown-gay by having the player run with the owner of the sort-of-hippest gay and straight club in Liberty City. Tony Prince has amassing financial and drug-related problems and he’s going to be in big trouble if you, the player, do nothing about it. It’s fortunate, then, that you don’t play as Gay Tony. (I can imagine a sizeable percentage of Grand Theft Auto’s audience vehemently rejecting the notion of controlling a homosexual lead.) No, you play as his ally of sorts, Luis Lopez, the Dominican version of the modern Grand Theft Auto protagonist. That is, someone with a criminal past (to justify his marksmanship) who hates the idea of illegal crimes, despite constantly getting involved in them for missions (and despite the ten civilians I ran over on the way to the mission objective) and who accepts orders with Alfred-like obedience. But the odds are you’ll fall for his black humour anyways so Luis is an effective character in that regard.

The Ballad of Gay Tony works because it portrays the Grand Theft Auto 4 world from the perspective of the wealthy and whacked out of their minds. It would break my friend’s Persian heart to reveal the specifics about the new characters that you’ll deal with, but you will deal with a bevy of rich individuals whom idolized Ted Dibiase at an early age. They’ll get frustrated anytime they find someone that doesn’t have a price. As it is, there is a scary sense of believability; the knowledge that yes, someone would pay money for a gold-plated gun. We already know this from the people who pre-ordered Gears of War 2.

So these psychopaths will have you doing their dirty work. They’ll be sure, however, to give you some sweet hook-ups. New firearms like the sticky bomb and the shotgun with exploding shells give you an excess of firepower to really help enact your dark fantasies. You can expect several missions built around piloting the helicopter, and subsequently…parachuting, the most prominent new mechanic. While these new additions may seem paltry, they help flesh out the game’s duck-and-cover gunplay just enough to justify playing Grand Theft Auto 4 again in the midst of more recent duck-and-cover shooter releases. All of which carry forward into the multiplayer mode, to boot. Besides, Uncharted 2 doesn’t have an Arab prancing around in his skivvies.

And if you need a break from opening fire at whomever refuses to sell your friend the military vehicle of his desire, there are a few nice sidequests. The parachuting mechanic is transformed into a series of amusing missions that entail taking some particularly odd leaps of faith. You can test that exploding shotgun of yours in a series of “Drug War” missions built around doing all the dirty work for your thick-skulled friends and their dreams of being Tony Montana without the dying at the end part. There are underground cage fighting events fit for Bas, overground golfing events that might be fit for Bas, and a very demented anime called Robot Princess Bubblegum that will prompt dress code violations if anyone cosplays the cast at the next comic convention.

Being an expansion, The Ballad of Gay Tony makes little to no change to the game’s existing mechanics. If you think the cover system was dodgy before, or that taxi drivers miss your whistle calls too often, then you may be none too pleased with the lack of change found here.

But The Ballad of Gay Tony is worth getting, regardless. 8-10 hours of non-filler gameplay in a downloadable expansion is a whole lot more than what I’d wager most people are used to. The story is entertaining, the dilapidated sense of humor is ever-present, and there’s an exploding shotgun. I call that a winning formula. The jury is out on whether or not this is a better package than, say, The Lost and Damned, but there’s certainly more entertainment value here than in most full-price games.

4 stars

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

So me and Nintendo have different ideas on what to do with this Zelda license. I tend to think that the franchise needs an overhaul, a desperate tweaking of its stagnant format. I say enough to tired gameplay ideas, like dungeons built around a bow and arrow, or Link saving a Princess with a Triforce. How radical would it be to play a Legend of Zelda game that doesn’t star Link? On the other hand, Nintendo believes that it’s merely the input methods of the game that have gone flat. People are bored and confused with using controller button presses to swing a sword as opposed to the idea of using a sword in general, that’s all. Funny, I’ve been changing channels with a remote for twenty years and I’ve never thought to myself “gosh, I wish I could waggle my way through primetime.”

It started with Twilight Princess on the Wii. Set aside the questionably responsive Wii controls and you have a game so stereotypically-Zelda that it could be the victim of police brutality in California if it’s not careful. On the other hand, Phantom Hourglass on the DS reworked the entire control method through stylus interplay, hinting at the possibility of exciting new gameplay concepts. It wasn’t sterling perfection but at least it gave hope for the future. And now that the future has arrived in Spirit Tracks, I can say that hope was blind and this game needs to find itself in the wrong part of town alone with those California cops.

The game stars a strapping young boy whom just so happens to be the hero of destiny, whom just so happens to be around when Princess Zelda is kidnapped by an evil force, and just so happens to need to visit several dungeons in order to open the path to that evil force. Boy that sounds familiar. The key difference in this game is accessing that evil force involves restoring magical train tracks. You know how most Zelda games have “that gimmick”? That one little tweak that somehow justifies reusing everything else in franchise games prior? Gimmicks like the shrinking hat, the evil-faced moon crashing into the Earth, the sailing, the wolf form, or everybody’s favorite, “the alternate realm”. In Spirit Tracks, the game is all about riding your own private train, for the train tracks are the magical binds that tie down an evil beast…or something.

So you’ll frequently ride your train to access your assorted destinations. All apologies to fans of Railroad Simulator, model trains or maybe even riding real trains, but conducting locomotives in this game just isn’t interesting. Controls are limited to adjusting speed, pulling a string to blow the horn, firing a cannon and turning at forks, and even that latter part is automated through drawing a path on the map. So what we have here is a glorified, sluggish rail shooter. Occasionally, you’ll be asked to carry a passenger to a destination, and these passengers are a finicky bunch, insisting you follow speed limits signs, and blow the horn when a sign tells you to. For some reason, they find enjoyment out of your obeying the strange road laws of Hyrule, like this is Reverse Crazy Taxi or something. I never thought I’d say this, but the barebones travel system of Spirit Tracks is so boring that it almost makes me yearn for the sailing of Phantom Hourglass or Wind Waker. And that is no compliment to their sailing.

On foot, the gameplay mechanics will remind players of that other DS Zelda game. You’ll use the stylus to handle every gameplay aspect short of stretching your back after the long ass train ride. You’ll walk, barrel roll, sword swing, even access menus by way of “touching it” with your pen. For the most part, Link responds well to the finger-pointing you’ll give him via stylus, but Spirit Tracks also highlights some of the weaknesses with the format. Some enemies are considerably too agile for sword swipes, and often the best course of action is to unleash the boomerang and just scribble a path on the screen to unleash some kind of strange stylus Spread Gun. Also, keep in mind that to use special attacks like the boomerang and the bow and arrow (of course they would be appearing in a Zelda game), you have to press a button on the touch screen. Link will then stand perfectly still while you aim your equipped weapon with the pen. Most enemies and especially the bosses do not have the patience to wait around while you wait to aim your attack. So the boss encounters in particular are rather frustrating, curse-word-laden affairs. Maybe I don’t have the penmanship necessary to thrive in this game, but I don’t remember having too many of these problems in the last game, let alone a Zelda game manipulated by good ol’ controller buttons.

You may either remember, or attempt to block out of your mind, parts of Phantom Hourglass where you had to explore this giant spirit dungeon thingy, retreading certain areas over and over again, all under the influence of a time limit. Spirit Tracks has something similar in the Spirit Tower. Mercifully, both the time limit and the peddling of treaded territory are gone. Instead, the hook of these areas is that the ghost of Princess Zelda can possess a giant armour beast, and subsequently obey your commands. Thus, you’ll have the obligatory “both people need to stand on this switch” puzzles that EVERY game of this kind needs. It can be kind of satisfying to work through a puzzle that requires navigating both the hulking armour and the scrawny Link. Though it bears mentioning that Princess Armour Man is controlled by means of drawing a path through the stage, then growling in anger as the princess grinds up against a wall like a senior citizen’s shopping cart at the aisles of Walmart.

And then there is the microphone. For whatever reason, Nintendo thinks people want to talk into the blasted microphone, moreso than they ever did before. You’ll be asked periodically to blow into the microphone, for one of the power-ups, and to play the game’s pan flute instrument. The upside is that the microphone is sensitive enough that light puffs from a distance will be picked up, ideal for coworkers to not notice you blowing into your system like a fool. The downside is that the background noise of a bus, subway or automobile also counts as “blowing”. This is a handheld game, Nintendo! Where do you think people are going to play it, the library? There came a part in Spirit Tracks where my instrument playing demanded a modicum of precision, and thus I needed to wait until I got home to play my portable video game. Home, where I have TVs with bigger video games, computers, family members, friends and things much more entertaining than your stupid handheld game. And forget the blowing, there was a part where my progress was halted unless I spoke specific words into the microphone; another progress halter for anyone that doesn’t want to look like a schizoid in public.

I get the impression that because of all this microphone nonsense, that Spirit Tracks was meant to be played by kids who normally play their handheld Pokemon games at home while simultaneously watching Pokemon cartoons and shuffling their Pokemon card decks. But at the same time, some of the stylus-based gameplay feels too frustrating for players as well. So in my mind, the target audience for Spirit Tracks is “people that don’t value dignity in public places.” As it is, Spirit Tracks marks the jumping of the shark for Zelda on the DS, that we’ve gone as far as we can with the system’s controls in regards to making an entertaining game. It’s time for this franchise to return to the drawing board.

2 ½ stars