Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1

As the 26th Sonic game released, Sonic the Hedgehog 4 aims to numerically confuse the world. It also aims to address just about any and every complaint levied at the series since the existence of polygons. There is no beastiality love story. There is no ridonkulous plot. Sonic doesn’t transform into a wolf form and have crappy combat sequences. (Though I’ll confess to being weirdly curious about Sonic Unleashed at the moment. Maybe for the wrong reasons.) There is not an ounce of dialogue. There are no alternative characters with annoying voices. There is no mock-punk soundtrack. In fact the only characters present in the game are Sonic and Dr Robo…Eggman.

This is very much the pure nostalgic throwback that we all thought we wanted. Like a true 16-bit game, the story is pieced together from what visual aspects we can pick up. We can *assume* that Dr Eggman is capturing woodland creatures and Sonic is trying to rescue them. We could potentially assume that Dr Eggman is attempting to shelter the woodland creatures from Sonic’s logging company as they transform the blue hills rainforest into a casino strip. Whatever. I can always appreciate a game where you can jump in and not be bombarded with tutorials and exposition. I don’t need to be told that the mad scientist figure is a jerk or that pressing the right button makes me walk in towards the right.

Sonic 4 wisely assumes that you’ve played one of the real Sonic games in your life and know how the controls work. You jump into things to kill…I mean liberate their woodland prisoner. You run really fast through loops. You listen to funky synth music. You hold down and repeatedly press the jump button to charge up a Sonic Spinning Testicle Dash™. The one and only holdover from recent games (besides the awful naming convention of “Dr Eggman”) is an aerial dash that lets you lock on and catapult into flying targets with the press of that one jump button. In the context of a game that’s about running really fast and letting the world pass you by, it’s a natural fit.

I mentioned earlier that Sonic 4 aims to address every negative complaint fans have had with the series since when Sega started plugging extra hardware devices into the Genesis. (Side note: I would love to have a Genesis with a 32X and Sega CD. Not to play, but as a conversation starter. I mean say what you will about the games or hardware or anything, but the visual of a fully-loaded Genesis is an impressive sight.) And they addressed EVERY complaint that Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons would have, which means they took out anything resembling change. The levels are all variants of Blue Hills, trippy casino, water-filled temple and industrial areas. You will run through the horizontal sidewinder, scramble to find air bubbles, be the human pinball in the casino and watch a crappy ending worthy of the early Sonic games. Even the Chaos Emeralds bonus level is ripped right out of the first game, in all its Lucy-In-The-Sky-With-Diamonds-trippy glory.

A vast majority of the game’s assets and ideas are plagiarized from Sonic 1 and 2. Even the bosses are near-identical, as Dr Eggman shamelessly steals vehicle ideas from mentor Dr Robotnik. There are a small handful of new ideas; one level has you lighting torches to set off dynamite and destroy historical temples. Maybe there is some truth to that logging storyline. One casino level is designed to hand out dozens and dozens of lives as practical freebies for you to lose against the final boss. Otherwise, you will sit there and swear you are playing a shinier version of the original Sonic.

The other issue is that Sonic 4 is terribly short. It took me two hours to finish all of the levels, and then another 90 minutes struggling against an annoying final boss. Perhaps this comes with the territory of being episodic, but an episodic nostalgic throwback platformer feels like a bad idea for all involved. If one really cares about their Sonic experience, then perhaps they could replay this game for the sake of the online leaderboards. Or make a not-very-amusing grab at fetching the Chaos Emeralds. Though devoted Sonic fans can already guess the reward for nabbing them all.

Other retro revivals like New Super Mario Bros and the recent Mega Man games at least make a compelling argument for their existence with some level of new content. Sonic 4 borrows so liberally from its predecessors without offering much in the way of value that it makes me wonder why someone wouldn’t just play the original games instead. They’re readily available on digital distribution services like the Playstation Network, Xbox Live Arcade and the friggin iPhone. They’ll at least last you longer than this episode.

2 ½ stars

Comic Jumper

Gah! I can’t decide whether or not I idolized or merely tolerated Comic Jumper. If you judge a title on the sole merits of its gameplay, then this is the dog’s bollocks. It’s a not-particularly-great shooter that is rife with annoying filler. But yet the overall experience is just so damned strange and amusing that it almost has to be played by anyone that can appreciate a good South Park episode. In trying to write this, I found myself flip-flopping in tone between “this game is a flaming shitturd” and “this game flings flaming shitturds at your mom.” After the realization that I had replayed half the levels and unlocked all of the concept art, I had made up my mind. Seriously, who goes out of their way to unlock concept art? What the hell, eh?

I suspected that Captain Smiley was the kind of dream hero that someone would’ve invented in grade school during moments of not-studying. The kind of character that only that one person and their friends would find amusing and would never become the star of their own marketable franchise. And I was right, according to those unlockable concept art pieces I wasted too much time getting. According to the game story, Captain Smiley’s comic series sucked so much that children chose going to class over reading it. After the first issue fails, Smiley becomes an indentured servant to developers Twisted Pixel (the game treats the Fourth Wall as if it were the Berlin Wall), and must star in other comic series to raise funds for a franchise reboot.

From there, the game gets progressively more insane. Full-motion video of random people that may or may not work for Twisted Pixel are littered all over the place. You deal with the cast of the Captain Smiley series, like the talking star on his chest. Or Brad, the Muscle Beach-bound commando with an army of well-endowed womenbots. Brad has his own theme song, an honour he shares with the game’s stats screen. And how you can visit an arcade and freely purchase The Maw and Splosion Man. Maybe the one off-putting aspect of the game for me was the excess of Twisted Pixel-narcissism. Okay, great, you put yourselves in the game, cute. It does get a tad annoying after awhile.

From there, the game enters cold-blooded parody territory with its different areas. The first sect of levels take place in a loincloth-heavy spoof of Conan the Barbarian, complete with an Arnold soundalike. Then there’s a cel-shaded, very colourful (in many ways) take on Silver Age comics. The very strange values that censors upheld (and didn’t uphold) get a very stern lampooning. Then the game flies off a cliff with two middle fingers held at the sky as Captain Smiley enters the world of manga. Every anime stereotype you can think of (and some that you didn’t want to be reminded of) is brought to the forefront with nil shame. And it is glorious!

As I’ve mentioned before, the issue with Comic Jumper is that you do have to play it. The base game is a dual-joysticks shooter with platforming. You’ll run from one side of the screen to the other, a lot of enemies appear and you’re expected to extol justice on them. It can get a little bullet hellish at times with the amount of flying lasers slowly darting in your way. Worse, the checkpoints can be on the unforgiving side if you haven’t been upgrading Smiley’s health.

And none of the shooting ever feels gratifying. It takes way too many shots to down a single enemy, and this issue worsens if you don’t make a note to purchase attack upgrades. The seconds it takes to down a single Bradbot is a complete flow-killer. The game attempts to mix up the shooting with assorted on-rails sections, ala Panzer Dragoon, Space Harrier or whatever rail shooter you may have mad love for. But it doesn’t alter the fact that the game’s action feels sluggish as all hell.

There are also a very small handful of very typical quick time events. And a handful of supremely clunky melee sections where you have to alternate between the “punch one guy” button and “punch two guys on each side” button. And the game has some decidedly creative boss fights that I would have a much higher opinion of, if I weren’t forced into repeating so many of them.

At the same time, I was able to successfully grin and bear all of the nonsense. Perhaps it was because the back and forth banter between Smiley and Star warmed the lower regions of my heart. Or how the game finds the means to get progressively more and more offensive. Or how even the individual bits of concept art, videos and such include charming and humourous backstory.

But there is something about Comic Jumper that spoke to me. Or at least spoke to me in a manner most vulgar. Because even after finishing the game, I was still revisiting some of those supposedly awful levels. So you’ll have to ask yourself if tolerating a dull video game is worth some pretty great gags. Or how about this; if you liked the ending to Splosion Man, you should probably get this game.

4 stars

200th Review! Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain

I don’t know whether or not I should be proud that I’ve reached 200 reviews, or ashamed that I’ve made not a single dollar for it. Someone offered me free PC strategy games based on Napolean or something one time for reviewing purposes, but that would’ve been a very quick means to aggravate that site’s sponsors. So review number 200, it’s going to be a game near and dear to my heart. One that swooned me long enough to make me forget that I had rented that new Halo game and only played it twice. No regrets…okay maybe some regrets.

Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain is a top-down action-adventure-kind of game-thing. It came out in 1996, that weird period where everyone was dabbling in CG because it was the hip thing to do, not having any regard for how future generations will mock thee. It does feel weird, how we can look back at old NES games like Super Mario Bros and wear shirts and hats with their pixilated sprites. But more recent efforts like the aforementioned Blood Omen with this gem of a cutscene and…well, I imagine some of today’s 3D programmers claiming they can recreate that in a day.

In fact, that may as well be your biggest obstacle in trying to delve into the world of Nosgoth. This game has aged as gracefully as a homeless person’s corpse under the highway. Accessing any menu requires a segment of loading time, accentuated with a “LOADING” pop-up window. Characters don’t so much speak dialogue as they do walk around while an audio clip of a talented voice actor speaking is triggered. Sit in a single area long enough and you can hear the music track fade out and then loop from the beginning. You have to go to the Options screen to access the option of loading a saved game. The HUD takes up a fifth of the right side of the screen. And lest we forget the clumsiness of using Playstation 1 memory cards. Us console gamers take things like “hard drives with 80 gigs on them” for granted.

And you’ll have to be sure to pay close attention to that audio. The game has no subtitles, and a plot more dense than a shelf of Halo novels. The titular Kain has been slain, revived as a vampire, and sets out on a blind revenge quest against his adversaries. What follows is the unveiling of a massive conspiracy across the land of Nosgoth, involving magic, destinies, spirits, demons, time travel and other crazy stuff. It can feel a tad convoluted near the end, and the game has no primers or “Previously on Alan Wake”-like videos to remind you of past events. (And the subsequent Legacy of Kain games go well off the deep end when it comes to being convoluted as all hell.)

At the same time, I always find myself enraptured by the plot, if just because of the incredible voice acting. Simon Templeman (who would go on to not-as-great fame in Dragon Age: Origins as the voice of a guy that looks like Kain,) does a phenomenal job in making life sound awesome. Kain is constantly narrating the events of his journey, whether it’s plot events or his new power-up or even the weather. The most mundane of events become interesting when discussed by the aristocratic vampire Kain. Just imagine his every day living.

“Upon entering the laboratory, I left some vile excrement within the bowl but refused to flush the contents. The petty human whom enters this cesspool will be cursed with the odor of my vampiric digestive decay.”

The positive part of Blood Omen is that it is constantly giving Kain something to yammer on about. The game is great at consistently throwing new upgrades and weapons at your direction. Almost all of them involve some new means of gruesome murder. If you elect to venture off the beaten path and examine some odd caves, you’ll probably be rewarded with a new contraption of death. Blades that flay the flesh off bones. Orbs that shrink the flesh into exploding. Armour that sucks human blood for you. For the people that wondered why I never bothered with Darksiders, it’s because I didn’t need to. I already had my “dark Zelda” many years ago, and this was it.

The game very much plays like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, laced with several Anne Rice novels. You progress from town to town, dungeon to dungeon, cave to cave, clunky swordfight to clunky swordfight. Getting new items and abilities opens up more of the overworld. It’s just that “hook shot” and “piece of heart” are replaced by “transform into a fucking wolf” and “I am stronger because I drank mystical blood from a talking fountain.”

You do have to obey the laws of vampirism. The real laws, not the glittering-skin sissy laws. Sunlight makes you weaker, water stings, and you have to drink the blood of your adversaries to sustain your health meter. However, Kain isn’t the kind to bite someone’s neck so much as he is the kind to vacuum-suck the blood out of a stunned enemy from several feet away. Or perhaps stun multiple enemies and have two-three bloodstreams in a crimson version of getting Iced. Even more gratifying is how the game treats a sleeping person or someone bound in chains as a free meal. There are few sounds more appetizing than hearing someone cry “oh please, help me kind sir!”

Each gameplay element, taken by itself, is average at best. Dungeons usually consist of evading a series of death traps, finding the hidden switch and then suffering through a load time. Combat is usually some variant of “find the angle in which his sword attacks can’t hit you but mine do” followed by a quick red slurpee. But the game wraps all of that around a very atmospheric and interesting universe. The land of Nosgoth is dark, brooding and filled with all kinds of creepy crawlies to jab at you. Like the politicians of the opposing party, Kain is constantly quick to point out how his homeland is in a state of decay and destitution. That music, fade-out and everything, is ideally creepy enough to be played on a stereo as little children go trick-or-treating outside your house. Even with the game’s “Amateur hour Reboot-style” cutscenes, it’s hard not to be drawn into the world of Nosgoth.

It does kind of make me sad to see how the series has gradually strayed from its roots. Subsequent sequels moved away from Blood Omen’s large scope and into the realm of strictly-linear Devil May Cry knockoffs. So if you like your vampires to be badass, arrogant and vicious rather than soft, modest and abstinent, then you should give this a look. Soul Reaver 1 is pretty darn good too.

4 stars

Civilization 5

Part of me felt confused when I caught wind that Civilization 5 would present a more streamlined experience than in the past. I never thought that the original Civilization games were particularly complex (okay, maybe Civ 3). I mean, what’s so hard to understand? Cavemen need to build the Wheel to pump out chariots in order to conquer Moscow. Seems simple enough. I figure that if you can understand what it takes for mankind to go from clay pots to nuclear warheads, you can understand Civilization. Or maybe in Grade 3, I was some kind of Sociology wunderkind and my D in American History class was a typo. Or the playing of Civilization was the reason for the D. I don’t know.

But hey, it’s Civilization 5. The latest from Sid Meier, the creator of such acclaimed releases as “Civilization” and “Civilization 2”. There isn’t any one major new addition made to this game over Civs past, but instead a few logical tweaks and alterations. The most notable being that the menus have been cleaned up and idiot-proofed. Civ 5 introduces what I would like to allude to as “the big blue button” that will consistently point you towards whatever task needs doing. If a unit needs moving, a new technology needs researching or a city needs to waste tax dollars building a new circus, the magic button will take you there. Above that blue button is every critical alert reminding you that your people want spices for some arbitrary reason. This blue button system is a very convenient means of insuring that no civilian escape a century without some forced labour. Likewise, accompanying window messages introduce concepts to the newcomer, giving all a clue as to what it means to discover Writing.

Civilization 5 doesn’t have a story mode per say, rather it gives the player the chance to set up their own campaigns. With assorted menu options to set up how they want their Earth customized, and how many human species are worthy of walking their holy land. You start as a single band of merry settlers creating your first city, and you expand your human race as you progress. Build improvements in your cities, wonders of the world for meaningless pride, or military units to bully around the Iroquois. Interact with other civilizations and either trade with them for profit or kick some ass because you can. Discover technologies over time to build new buildings and gunpowder to further bully the Iroquois. You could win the game by way of adopting enough social policies to build a Utopia in your kingdom, or develop your science to a point where you enter space. But those are the hippie ways to win, and good ol’ world domination is always the most amusing way to go. Especially when you’ve got some

I did shed a tear when I played through Civ 5 and noticed all of the aspects that have gone missing from the series over the years. The sharp-dressed diplomat unit. The introductory cutscene where the Earth develops from a pool of molten rock and chaos into a sprawling ecosystem of living organisms. (A great way to shatter beliefs of Creationism in Grade 3.) Not to knock the intro cutscene in Civ 5, mind you. That cutscene features a wise old leader telling his progeny about the night he had a dream about all of Civilization 5’s gameplay features. Also gone since Civ 1 is the ability to freely rename your nation and world-leader-that-lives-for-5000-years as opposed to being shoehorned in the role of George Washington. I do miss running roughshod over the world as president Hulk Hogan of the prosperous NWO nation. My most yearned for loss was the religion system from Civ 4. I missed the sense of passive-aggressive might that came with conquering nations through converting rival citizens.

The tweaks made to Civilization 5 feel more logical than they do groundbreaking. The map consists of hexagon tiles as opposed to squares, which makes the layout for your battle map look less like your bathroom floor renovation blueprint. There are now City-States, these small one-city nations that can be interacted with like any full-blown country. I haven’t encountered it yet, but I believe the game has a “Canada” City-State in there, as some kind of inside joke. They add a bit of extra life to the game maps to a playthrough, but my surprise is how militaristically powerful they can be! I had no problems wiping out the mighty Greek and Japanese empires in one fell swoop, but spent many decades chipping down the walls of the one single city of Belfast. What does that say about the Irish? The governments system of Civ games past (where you got assorted stat buffs for, say, being a Democrat or Communist…or something) is replaced by a Policy system. Said Policy system is basically a Diablo-like tech tree of upgrades. Only now the upgrades of “ice missiles” and “blazing inferno” are replaced by “freedom of speech” and “freedom of religion.” Sure, why not?

Now, even though the in-game tutorial does a pretty solid job of introducing the many, many concepts that come with ruling an empire, I felt like that may not have been enough. I had my share of lessons that I learned the hard way. I had to learn to expand early and not bunker in my capital for too long, lest I let the rest of humanity surround me like a group of back-alley muggers (in city form.) I had to learn that archers do not have the balls of steel necessary to conquer a city. (Robin Hood? He’s a sissy.) I had to learn that, even in the Twentieth Century, there are barbarian units. These barbarians can range from gunmen (mercenaries?) to boats (Somali pirates?) to archers (delusional old men?) And I had to learn that my computer is decidedly ancient, and takes its sweet time loading the next turn. This is partially alleviated by setting the game speed to “quick”, which speeds up the progression of turns needed to get me some nukes. But I still found myself playing cell phone Solitaire between turns. Civ 5 joins ModNation Racers on the list of new video games that require another video game to be played simultaneously to endure load times.

But in spite of all of that, I still found myself losing several days of my life due to this game. There is still that “one-more-turn” hook in wanting to push on forward, discovering Chivalry because you know having Knights will let you trounce the enemy. (No matter what Solitaire is required to get there.) There is still great satisfaction in leveling a city’s defenses with a sweep of bomber runs. There is still the unofficial history and civics lesson that comes with learning about historic landmarks or the benefits of trading silk. There is still the perverse sense of satisfaction that comes with building the Great Pyramids in New York City. Everything that was crazy-addictive about Civilization is still pretty crazy and addictive in 2010.

So all that remains is the burning question of whether or not to get Civilization 5. Long time fans of the series shouldn’t feel too much of a rush to reconquer Moscow. There is no major game-changing feature that completely alters the experience, nor is the game stripped down for the less intelligent masses. At the same time, buying Civ 5 will cause you to get hopelessly addicted and spend less time with your loved ones. I’ve been late on one major paper because of Civ 5…so far. And for the rest of the world, you should probably buy this game if the concept of building the freaking Pyramids in New York appeals to you. And it should.

4 stars

ModNation Racers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3 ½ stars

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

Spiderman: Shattered Dimensions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2 ½ stars

Metroid: Other M

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay, there are NO MORE SPOILERS ABOUND.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I mean, fuck.

3 ½ stars