Super Street Fighter 4

Super Street Fighter 4 is Street Fighter 4 with more characters and things. Review done, goodnight everybody.

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Truth be told, Super Street Fighter 4 is the kind of game where you can read the taglines and determine your purchase decision appropriately, without my input. There is no hidden swerve or game-breaking flaw here; the online play doesn’t have unbearable lag, the new characters are entertaining and accessible, and Ryu isn’t swapped out a quarter of the way through the game in favour of a Raiden-like character. If you want the better version (or at least the more nostalga-grasping version) of Street Fighter 4, $45 is a reasonable asking price.

While the game doesn’t have flaws, there are a few gripes I’d like to get off of my chest. There still isn’t an elaborate tutorial mode for explaining the finer points of competitive play. I feel like there is a glass ceiling blocking curious bystanders like me from chilling out with people who take this fighting game business seriously. I’d rather not brave the ego-filled lakes of fighting game message boards for the answers I seek. Since the entire future of the fighting game genre rests on Street Fighter 4’s jacked shoulders, giving the common man the chance to learn how to..err…play the game would be very beneficial on the day Capcom decides to make a new Darkstalkers.

And then there’s the new bonus stages; destroying someone’s car and smashing barrels. These exist solely for retro-fantasy purposes; to extract one more element from Street Fighter 2. High scores in fighting games stopped mattering around the time people started liking fighting games. And this is 2010; the whole 3-letter-name high score ranking in 1990s arcade games was pretty irrelevant back when arcade high scores reset when the owner flipped off the power switch at the end of the day. This is a fighting game, not a vandalism game.

Positive tonal shift - Super Street Fighter 4 makes plenty of ideal changes. The lobby system that almost every fighting game has been employing is finally present; with up to eight players entering a room and taking turns challenging the winner. It’s like placing your quarter on an arcade machine to signal you’re next in line to fight the winner, but without the risk of change theft. Match videos are now saved and uploadable, and while more specific search features would have been nice (for the rare event that a Bison player wants to learn how to triumph over El Fuerte….just saying) it’s still a positive feature. It’s nice to be able to watch videos of people better than you, or indulge in narcissism and force other people online to watch your clips.

There’s been some balancing tweaks too, it seems. The Tiger Knee no longer solves all of Sagat’s problems; he can’t use it to thoroughly dominate opponents or change the toilet paper roll like in Street Fighter 4. I don’t know if the game has been tweaked to make El Fuerte not suck, and I lack the motivation to find out. Each character also has a second, selectable Super Ultra Health Bar Destroying Mega Attack, with a lot of them having some rather long punishment animations. Akuma has a very fierce Top Man impersonation, for example.

You no longer have to grind through Arcade Mode repeatedly to unlock all of the game’s characters. Arcade Mode thus only serves two purposes; to unlock the new set of hokey anime cutscenes, and to keep you occupied while waiting for online opponents to challenge you. If you’re actually trying to finish an Arcade Mode session, you’d best turn the online challenge options off, lest you simulate the experience of being in a crowded arcade filled with people shunting your dreams of topping the 3-letter high score ranking for the day. For every 3 round fight I finished with the AI, I had about 20 online ranked fights with real challengers. Finishing a single Arcade Mode session with online challenges turned on can take an estimated 72 hours; a stark contrast to the 7 minutes it would take otherwise.

The major selling point in the entire package is the new challengers. Or rather, the old challengers being redone in the third dimension to swoon long time players. Quite frankly, the uninitiated ought to be offended by the racist undertones of T Hawk and Dee Jay. No matter, they are both in this game for the purpose of extolling as many assets from Street Fighter 2 as possible. The good news is that, like the rest of the 10 new faces, the ethnically questionable Dee Jay and T Hawk are relatively accessible characters. In fact, most of the new roster is relatively easy to figure out, in contrast to Street Fighter 4’s more abstract additions like C. Viper and El Suecke. Nor are there any blatent Ryu-clones. The character-select screen is a very intimidating sight.

Speaking of new people, Juri continues the C. Viper tradition of ripping off The King of Fighters with fancy spin kicks and nonchalant “I’m too cool to walk in a fighting stance” attitude. But unlike 3/4s of a King of Fighters roster, her moves are easier to figure out and understand. Hakan, on the other hand, may be the greatest concept in the history of humanity creating concepts. He is a Turkish oil wrestler, and oil wrestling in Turkey is a very real sport. He is also red-skinned with blue, statuesque hair, and yet there are no supernatural traits to his character, besides how much ass he kicks. He lathers himself up and beats oppenents by squeezing them with his oiled thighs until they shoot out of his behind. The bar for T-rated homoeroticism has been raised.

From the Street Fighter Alpha series, Guy returns to inflate the number of Gi-wearing fighters. Though his fighting style (built around running back and forth like El Fuerte but with, you know, attacks) is more unique than your typical gi-fighter. Guy recognizes that a shoryuken is not a legitimate technique to use in a real fight. Cody is also back in his jailbird person after having been arresting for questioning the Magic Sword/Final Fight bundle. And then there’s Adon, a wily Muay Thai dude with a hyena-like voice.

Finally, there are three characters from Street Fighter 3: Third Strike. Seeing them in the mix with Alpha characters seems to muck up the Street Fighter canon, not that the canon was ever worth respecting anyways. Ibuki is present to fulfill dual male Japanese fantasy roles of as a female ninja and schoolgirl. Makoto and Dudley, the two most popular characters from Third Strike who’s names don’t start with K and end in N also make a pleasant return. Both at first feel odd, what with their fighting styles built around a game where players could parry every attack with the right timing (including a speeding train for all we know.) But alas, they still make entertaining additions.

If you didn’t understand Street Fighter 4 before, you probably will not understand Super Street Fighter 4 now. In fact, the Turkish oil man and Native American brute will probably offer more to confuse fans whom lack the prior context of being alive during the SF2 days. But people who thought Street Fighter 4 was a phenomenal revival would be want to invest in this update. In fact, as an update, there is more new content here than in the numerous incremental Street Fighter 2 updates of the past. If Street Fighter 4 is going to be milked for every dollar possible, at least they’re being sensible about it.

4 stars

Final Fight: Double Impact

Final Fight: Double Impact is an unlikely combination of two arcade releases from the early 90s, bundled together in a nifty little $10 value package. Though it’s hard to not feel like there is a sense of shame in the advertising of this game, like they Capcom marketing team doesn’t want you to know that Magic Sword is included in the bundle. “In this great retro package, you get the legendary FINAL FIGHT and another game, vote Hagger for Mayor!” Odd.

Which is a shame, as I liked Magic Sword. Now, don’t mistake liking for loving Magic Sword. Magic Sword is not an all-time great release. In fact, Magic Sword is forgettable enough to make it exempt from the butterfly effect. If Magic Sword was never released, Tupac and Biggie Smalls would still have died and Sinead O’Connor would’ve still torn a photo of the Pope in two. (Whereas the course of history would have significantly been altered with Final Fight; in particular, the world would’ve been robbed of that great pink Hagger-shark picture.) Platformers and medieval fantasy-based games were more frequent in the early 90s than today. So Magic Sword at least stands out more in 2010, if just for being more far-removed from the days when Conan the Barbarian was a popular entity.

In Magic Sword, you play as Conan’s long lost brother, (for the purposes of this review, lets call him “Phonan”) and you are trying to beat up some demon dude and smash his orb of death. Doing so entails climbing many floors of his overcompensating giant tower, filled with dungeons, fire-themed dungeons, water-themed dungeons and many more dungeons. Phonan will run, jump and pull off slashing attacks, and you can press both buttons simultaneously for an everything-on-the-screen-dies super attack that drains your health and would normally lead to a lighter, quarter-free wallet at the arcades.

Part of my admiration for Magic Sword is that it’s so darned thematically careless; you’ll fight your typical medieval dragons and and orcs, but there are also mummies, samurais and evil Easter Island heads. Magic Sword’s big, unique hook is that you can use keys found during the game to open dungeons and free a partner that’ll launch projectiles behind Phonan’s back. While these include predictable fantasy types like the thief, the knight and the Amazonian woman, there is also less suspecting characters like the ninja and the Disney Gargoyle.

Then you play the game co-operatively with a friend, and you have two Phonans, with their own partner, flinging projectiles at the giant screen filled with mummies and gargoyles. The action gets hectic at times, and you’ll count your lucky stars this version of Magic Sword has unlimited continues. (Because nothing sucks like running to the change machine for more quarters and finding out the blasted device is jammed.) Magic Sword is also the first arcade game I can think of with a moral choice system; at the end of the game, you get to choice a good or bad ending, and while both lead to a predictable outcome, the bad translation of text is still intact in this Double Impact port. I can also argue that Magic Sword, for better or worse, is longer than most arcade games, and finishing this game will take a stretch of an hour or two. But the action is zany, the bosses are fun, and this version of Magic Sword has all the fun options included in Final Fight port as well.

I should probably talk about Final Fight at some point, eh? Final Fight is an ever-popular beat-em-up that may or may not have been in on its own private joke. In this game, the mayor of Metro City, along with his buddies that just happen to be karate experts, take the law in their own hands to beat up hoodlums and rescue his daughter from a crime lord with mighty mutton chops.

Replaying Final Fight brought me both great moments of bliss and sadness. I was overjoyed because Final Fight is still Final Fight. Pounding a single button to repeatedly punch, kick, throw and piledrive enemies is rather cathartic. This game relieves stress. There are still all of the great odd Final Fight-isms. Health-recovering food still comes out of trash bins, thugs still casually walk out of doors into your fist, and you still have all of the wacky “gangster” types. In the 90s, depicting gangsters while avoiding the brand of racism against African-Americans involved such thug archetypes as: the yellow-dressed punk with the radioactive-logo on his jacket, the skinny biker chick with pink hair, a Native American that bleeds knives when hit, and a family of Andre the Giants. There’s a surprising amount of personality in Metro City, whether it’s fighting a Shogun warrior in a wrestling ring or gaining health by eating a boss’s chewed-out gum off of the floor. This is a fun kind of weird.

At the same time, my heart sinks because I know that people who didn’t grow up in the time period, playing games like Final Fight are going to be an enigma. And I know that there is now a large percentage of gamers that fit into this category. I was having a conversation with classmates recently, and almost everyone at the table didn’t know who Kurt Cobain was. I imagine THOSE are the kind of people that will have no appreciation for Final Fight. I imagine them asking questions like “why is there only one punch button? Which is weak attack and which is strong attack? Where is the air combo? Why did I just finish this game? Why are all of the main characters dressed like they belong in the Pride parade?” All of the nostalgic charm and simplicity of Final Fight is going to be lost on today’s audience.

And yes, Final Fight is a short game, an average playthrough could take an hour. This game was designed to devour quarters, and having unlimited continues means that finishing the game is a matter of attrition rather than a matter of how much allowance you brought to the arcade. But there is fun to be had in knocking the snot out of the likes of people with named like “Damnd” and “Sodom”, especially with an ally in tow. Both Final Fight and Magic Sword have pro-co-op options, allowing a friend or random stranger to hop into your game if you so chose to allow it. And both games are immensely more entertaining if you have a fellow muscular man at your side for which to do the Arnold Predator handshake with.

And there are a few other nice little options too. You can elect to play the game with either the original soundtrack of a funky-fly remixed rendition. The visual options are especially delicious for today’s widescreen, HD generation. Such visual options include playing in full widescreen with smoothed-out visuals or, in the ultimate irony, using your High Definition screen to mimic the phosphorous glow and curving of an arcade CRT monitor, complete with surrounding artwork from the arcade machine. The people whom made this game are very pro-nostalgia.

Finally, there are a few in-game achievements, because every game today needs an achievement system separate from the official console achievement. Though Final Fight at least is short enough that you’ll at least feel inclined to take a stab at most of its achievements. Most of the treats are pieces of artwork, but the centerpiece of the package is an episode of the incredibly cheesy Street Fighter cartoon with the Final Fight cast.

Should you buy Final Fight: Double Impact? Well, if you have a fondness for Final Fight (or if you want to surprise me and say you have a fondness for Magic Sword), then sure. If you’re a product of today’s gaming generation, then you may be a bit baffled as to where the appeal lies in these two 90s fossils. But even then, its $10, a relatively minor investment for a package that ensures at least a good 2 or 3 hours of entertainment.

3 ½ stars

Heavy Rain

All that is old is new again. A game comprised entirely of quick-time events (a concept that hasn’t been funky fly since Shenmue) combined with the hunt for a Jigsaw-like killer (imitating a movie that hasn’t been interesting since…well the first one), coupled with Resident Evil-like walking controls (which have never been cool.) Throw in the most daring attempt to climb the uncanny valley to date and you have a game that really, really should not have any claim to relevance in today’s market. And yet there’s something about Heavy Rain that makes it feel so fresh and interesting that you almost have to play it out for yourself.

The game is built around some Origami Killer figure that kidnaps and murders children. This “killer” could be anyone. He could be Ethan Mars, the family man-turned-manic-depressive whose son is the latest victim. He could be Madison, the obligatory female character who exists in the game mostly to have her female body parts violated. It could be Scott Shelby, the unhealthy but cheery private eye figure who exists to break the streak of characters with perfect physiques. Could be Norman Jayden, the cokehead FBI agent wearing freakin’ virtual reality sunglasses, the kind of fictional technology that makes the CSI Vegas show jealous. For all we know, the killer could be you. The game comes with a graphic piece of paper, and the installation screen gives instructions on how to fold it into the Origami Killer’s artwork of choice. Quite bluntly put, this really is the greatest installation screen in the history of gaming. Despite how my origami bird-thingy has since crumpled and creased under the weight of gravity, it was sure worth not renting the game for that sole purpose.

There’s an admittedly slow start to the proceedings. First you have to live an excessively jovial day in the life of the Mars family (no relation to the cancelled CW program) as they live a perfect birthday in the perfect house with the wife, picket fence and 2.5 children. Then the obligatory tragedy occurs and suddenly, you have to live a day in the decidedly unjovial life of the deadbeat Mars family, with his not-perfect house and not perfect…yeah. The game has some admittedly slow pacing issues but at least effectively breaks you into each new pawn in this murderous chess game is introduced.

A combination of factors immerse you into this odd version of reality. There’s the ever ominous music, some of the most weighty and mood-appropriate orchestral pieces to appear in an electronic video game since I played Kum-bay-ya on my recorder in Grade 3. There is the ability to interact with your environment through any given number of quick-time events. You can sit down, use the can, take an exposed-breasts-shower, open the fridge, decide you’re not thirsty, close the fridge, turn on the tele, watch random, looped cartoons you see people on television watch, etc. They’re mostly pointless (even the ones that involve alcohol, sadly) but they at least serve the task of making you feel like part of a world instead of a series of walls pretending to be furniture like in every pre-Half-Life-2-shooter.

In fact, quick-time events are the very soul of Heavy Rain. Heavy Rain is to quick-time events what Republicans is to opposing free health care. The game’s plot conjures up a variety of surprising gameplay scenarios to use these quick-time events. And you’ll be shocked as to how well combining button presses, analog stick swipes and Sixaxis motions, often in clever tandems, recreates in-game activities. It actually puts the 3-year-old Wii to shame in regards to interactivity and that’s embarrassing, Nintendo. There are a variety of interesting scenarios, such as changing a diaper or applying first aid, that are a shocking fit to the game’s unique brand of controls. Of course, there are also fights, chases and various other action sequences, and the game at least grants a reasonable amount of leeway. Instead of being forced to restart a battle over slipping on a single button, your mistake is merely reflected in the form of your own-screen character slipping-but-not-defeated. In turn, Heavy Rain is a massive improvement over every single game to use quick-time-events-ever-period-end-of-story-up-yours-god-of-war.

The catch of this quick-time-action-driven-insanity is that the game does get a little outrageous at points. You’ll be suspicious as to how the main characters can just happen to run into these various unlikely scenarios. These are an awful large quantity of Hollywood fight sequences. The most difficult to swallow is one involving a particularly deranged doctor, better suited for a James Bond film than a game with some semblance of reality. (Though giving ARI a claim to reality seems to be pushing boundaries a bit.) And do not fret, nothing in this game approaches the sheer stupidity of the events of Indigo Prophecy, Quantic Dream’s previous interactive movie folly.

And the voice actors try their hardest to conceal their non-American accents. The child actors, in particular, seem to endure a great struggle in the regard of covering up the truth behind their culture of origin.

And the walking controls, reminiscent of Resident Evil but not really, they suck. But at least you can adapt.

But if you can accept a small modicum of nonsense, the plot does get very interesting as you progress. The action scenes get exciting, the murder mystery gets intriguing, and the game will sink its hooks into your shoulders and drag you through some exciting moments. (And do so with the shoulder buttons in a quick-time event.) Since you have a degree of input in the character’s actions, and determining who lives and dies, the game’s final sequences do feel like the product of your design, and give you an appropriate payoff for your button-pressing.

Admittedly, subsequent playthroughs are a bit less interesting. All of the major moral choices occur the game’s later stages, and you’ll find no pleasure in reliving those lengthy stays at the Mars residence. Rather, you’ll feel more inclined to just revisit individual chapters to see how certain events unfold. It’s almost comical, actually, how there can be little-to-no punishment for failing certain sequences. For at least two fights, I put my controller down and made no attempt to defend myself, and the story progressed all the same. There’s a seemingly dire life-or-death situation in particular seemed strange in how I was allowed to make no attempt at survival and still survive.

But still, Heavy Rain is one of those games that you kind of have to play at some point. It’s highly immersive and intriguing, and so different from everything else on the market that it almost begs for attention. I doubt that it’ll launch a genre of “interactive movies”, but I would not mind the occasional attempt of a new story from Quantic Dream here and there. Plus it has the whole origami paper install factor going for it.

4 stars

Cave Story

I once knew an emotionally unstable young lady that was very much into anime conventions, the dress-up that comes with them, and fan-fiction. She was the kind of person that wrote volumes worth of fan-fiction for any number of Final Fantasys, animes I’ve never heard of, and at least two universes of her own creation. While did manage to secure all of three fans, she had that issue where her love of writing and the creating characters in her mind overwhelmed the need to edit. The end result were streams of words and text explaining parts of the setting that meant nothing and characters that exist for no reason other than because she wanted to draw their gimmick-swords for all to see.

I feel that this best describes Cave Story; the product of someone who was more interested in unleashing the product of their childhood imagination over creating a game for other people to enjoy. Originally designed as a free PC game by a single, lonely man in Japan with a love of anime and Actionscript, Cave Story now enters the WiiWare market with intent to make real money. And I’m sure that it will make a pretty penny…among its handful of fans.

Cave Story pits you in the role of some dude who goes in caves and stops a bad man. That is all. Should be simple and succinct. Certainly as interesting as a typical sidescrollers plot. So why does this game have so much damned dialogue?

There’s this giant backstory about a race of big-eyed rabbits, an evil doctor, the vulnerabilities of these rabbits, the doctor’s plan to use exploit rabbits, and the pointless roles of many ancillary characters. This story has so many words, all of which are often explaining the same plot points I’ve figured out, and all doing little to explain the backstory of the game’s numerous one-dimensional archetype rabbit characters, let alone their purpose. There’s the wise old leader, the jaded samurai that hates your outsider ass, at least two bumbling scientists, a female scientist too young to boast any kind of post-secondary degree, the perky femme fatale, the evil villain and his Team Rocket henchmen. So many characters, spewing so much dialogue explaining the world with a straight face and assuming the uninitiated fan cares. Cave Story is not as smart as it thinks it is.

Fan fiction.

And you can’t skip the dialogue, either, which is so damned annoying when you’ve got to deal with a shoveled snowpile of text right before a difficult boss fight. My constant feeling throughout Cave Story was that you could edit out every character short of the villain and have a game that tells it’s plot just as efficiently, with only a fraction of the time.

The game has been billed as a Metroidvania-style platformer, which feels partially true. There is an overworld that you can skedaddle around in. But the worlds are not-so-seamlessly divided into stages, and the player will almost always be pointed in the right direction via dialogue puke. So it’s less Metroidvania than it is Metroid Fusion…but with even more damned talking. The gameplay comprises of entering an area, running through a path and jumping and gunning down the wildlife. Destroying the local ecosystem…maybe it has more in common with Metroid than I once thought.

Learning from Ratchet and Clank (or maybe it was Insomniac that stole Cave Story’s idea), the gunplay is combination of skill, reflexes and lots of shiny things flying around. With the right firearms, a lot of bullets will be flying around the screen, destroying the many enemies you encounter into pieces of glowing triumph forks. Said triangles can be used to upgrade the various weapons you collect…and then weep because taking damage will also drain said experience. The combination of bullets, triangles and other pizzazz makes gunning down adversaries more entertaining than perhaps it ought to be.

The bosses are also fairly entertaining. They’re primarily pattern-driven (and half of them involve the toaster guy) but can be very challenging. And you’ll indeed pat yourself on the back for your efforts in unplugging Balrog. But they do bring up my biggest complaint about Cave Story; save points can be in very inconvenient places. The wake of a boss fight can leave you with more obstacles to kill your low-health-barred ass before you find a save point. The final sequence (that I know of) consists of four consecutive boss fights, with no checkpoint in between. The game does have a handful of long stretches between save points that seem to just artificially lengthen the experience more than they ought to. Is this being nostalgic of older platformers? It might be. But nostalgia of older platformers has become so overdone that Cave Story comes across as more of a poser than a homage.

As someone who’s failed out of a Flash class in his life, I can appreciate the sheer amount of effort it takes for one to make a ball bounce across the screen, let alone create a lengthy platform shooting epic. So Cave Story can be commended if just for the blood, sweat and tears the man known as Pixel spent creating his strange rabbit fantasy. But as a priced game, competing on the Wii with some of its inspirations on the Virtual Console, it’s a bit out of its element.

Here’s a test to determine whether or not you should buy Cave Story; if you know the original, Japanese title to Cave Story, you should buy Cave Story. Because odds are, you are already that much of a fan that you’d want to give Mister Pixel a bit of a donation.

3 ½ stars

Sonic the Hedgehog 3

Sonic the Hedgehog is a game about a blue, personified rodent that runs from the left side of the screen to the right side of the screen in a relatively hasty manner. Sometimes, he likes to mix things up by skedaddling from the right side of the screen to the left, a feat almost unheard of for NES players. People were so impressed by Sonic’s ability to sprint without fatigue so they all bought his console. And there’s a list of Genesis games that each of these Sega owners on the block had, and you know what I’m talking about: Sonic 2, X-Men, an NHL or NFL game, that iffy Street Fighter 2 port, Columns, possibly a Streets of Rage if your friend was cool. But not Sonic 3, so I never got to truly finish this game until recently.

This game is available on the Sega Genesis, at least three “best of the Sonic/Genesis games we own the rights to” compilations and almost every digital distribution service worth prostituting a hedgehog on.

Best I can tell, the plot for the game reads as follows; Knuckles has self-esteem issues from abusive parents, which turns him into an obnoxious bully. His pent up angst leads him into stealing Sonic’s crystals of godly godliness and Sonic must play Neighbourhood Watch to stop this menace to society. And I think Dr Ro…Eggman is trying to nuke the world. I don’t know. This game uses that grossly underutilized tactic of quickly and effectively telling a story without words, regardless of the player’s level of apathy; every time Sonic beats up something big, Knuckles jumps on an oversized button to do something dastardly. Alas, plot isn’t important here. You’re not playing to explore the heterosexual relationship between Sonic and Tails.

Sonic 3 earns brownie points right off the bat for having a save system to continue from the last world you were playing, as opposed to using that goofy sound test cheat code (you know the one.) Points are lost if you play Sonic’s Ultimate Sega Genesis Collection, as the in-game save system doesn’t seem to, eh, save. You can still record your progress using the compilation’s “Save/Load Game” feature, but leaving the original game’s save feature broken feels rather sloppy on whomever created that port.

Nonetheless, you’ll recognize the Sonic-ish gameplay on display here. You run fast, you speed through all manner of loops, spirals and doodads, and you’ll make tricky jumps across unorthodox-shaped platforms. And you’ll hold your breath underwater. Very often. There sure are a lot of water sequences in Sonic 3. You’ll wonder why part of the casino world is submerged in liquid. Did Knuckles smash up the fountain at the Bellagio? Part of what makes a Sonic game so uniquely Sonic-esque is how the visceral running sequences and platforming parts (you know, the parts you actually do something besides hold right on the d-pad) are interspersed without a sense of disconnection. Sans one or two sections, you rarely feel like the flow of the experience is stopped because a series of slow-moving platforms appear, nor will you often be ambushed by a cheap cameo from spikes during your marathon sprint. It feels like the right combination of being both in and out of control of the madness that is happening, and I dig that.

Really, the nicest compliments I can give to Sonic 3 is that it does what a good Sonic game normally does right. An alternate player can control Tails, whom is more or less indestructible but cannot scroll the screen, as if he is a spectre of some kind. Tails is the perfect option for the girlfriend in your life; the one that wants to participate in your gaming and giggle every time she loses a life while pretending to enjoy herself. Levels have several paths, so falling off a cliff usually means a new area to explore… one often involving water, of course. And, well, it’s a fast game. Replay value is assisted a tad by the newfound ability to play single player with Tails, whom suddenly becomes a lot more vulnerable than his two-player contribution to the team. And then there’s the whole Sonic and Knuckles lock-in cart-functionality that adds…things to the game. I don’t know, Sonic’s Ultimate Sega Genesis Collection didn’t emulate that, grumble grumble grumble.

Which brings me to my issues, negatives, cons, drawbacks, minuses, liabilities, turn-offs, general bad things. They all have to do with the fact that Sonic 3 feels too much like just another Sonic game. Thematically, nothing is new and exciting here. All of the worlds here have either been done before in Sonic 2 (grass land, water land, casino land, second grass land, military base land) or are not really that original to begin with (ice land!) The Mega Mans and Castlevanias of the world at least make a passing effort to shake things up from one cloned sequel to another. The boss fights still largely compose of fighting Dr Robo…Eggman egg spaceship variations, though they still provide the most adequate tests of skill in the experience. There’s still a pain in the hedgearse mini-game for collecting Chaos Emeralds in the name of getting the game’s better ending, and that is just…not…happening. Finally, the Sega Genesis has some kind of a crummy sound chip-thingy. Michael Jackson may or may not have worked on this game’s soundtrack, I haven’t the faintest clue. But I can somewhat see the influence, but I sure as hell have a hard time appreciating whatever grooves the one-gloved-one laid onto the final product.

The verdict on Sonic 3 is that…it is a Sonic game like any other. It does all the right attributes properly, even though they’ve all been done before and done better in underappreciated Game Boy Advance and DS games. For all I know, anally inserting the cartridge into the backside of the Sonic and Knuckles game transforms Sonic 3 into a sidescrolling platformer phenomenon, but I won’t find out for myself anytime soon. Your interest in this cart will largely vary on your fandom of Sonic games in general. At least it beats the snot out of all of the Sonic console games from the last 15 years.

3 ½ stars

Mega Man 10

Mega Man 10 is a rather ironic release. Ironic in the sense that it’s the direct sequel to a game most known for abandoning every gameplay change, new plot direction and franchise reimagining done to the ever-stagnating Mega Man series in the last twenty years. And if Mega Man 9 is not only intended to be a nostalgic homage but the starting point of a new franchise, then it shouldn’t be long before the known world is fed up with the conservative direction of games like Mega Man 10. Soon people will begin to cry for a new revolution away from Mega Man 9’s revolution. A Mega Man X revival, perhaps? Mega Man Soccer 2?

(And if roman numerals are in effect, Wouldn’t Mega Man 10 be Mega Man X anyways?)

Fortunately, that time hasn’t come yet and Mega Man 10 is a solid little poster child in favour of providing “more of the same.” It’s still Mega Man 2-redux. You still choose one of 8 stages themed after a diabolical robot master. You still run, jump, shoot and climb your way from one side of the screen to the other. You still get super weapons of varying usefulness for figuring out a robot master’s attack pattern and toppling them with their own predictability. One of those weapons is the obligatory shield of balls that circle Mega Man that only make sense on a two-dimensional plane. You can still score easier wins over robot bosses by using their “weakness” weapon against them. What those weaknesses are is determined either through good old trial and error or Google. (And while you can probably guess, through bizarre video game element logic, what weapon to use against the fire boss or ice boss, determining which robot master succumbs to a baseball attack is another matter.)

And yes, Mega Man 10 is still nut-crackingly difficult. You will die many, many times over on your first playthrough. The obscene difficulty of Mega Man games has always been off put by the ability to just try another robot master’s stage if one particular level is giving you migraines, or at least until after all the levels gave you migraines. The gameplay is still trial-and-error oriented, and once you grasp how to handle certain obstacles, you’ll laugh in the face of the sandstorm of death.

Okay, there are some welcome new tweaks to Mega Man 10. For example, if Mega Man 9 humbled you, the option of an Easy mode exists, that modifies the levels in the name of making them more pro-life. You now have the option to play as Proto Man from the onset instead of paying some $2 for the privilege. Proto Man has the slidy-chargeshoty-powers of later Mega Man games but with the trade off in that he is more susceptible to damage. Certain levels have branching paths to let players choose how they wish to die. And a new challenge mode contains a series of obstacle courses to test your 8-bit-gaming wits and ability to jump off a platform you’ve tip-toed to the complete end of. And unlike Mega Man 9, none of the upcoming DLC comes across as features that should’ve been in the main game to begin with. Who really cares to play as Bass, anyways?

And Mega Man 10’s best attribute is arguably how self-aware it is of the era it is paying homage to. NES-era games, with their walking turtles and flying Medusa heads, went in the direction of simple, easily identifiable characters of radical distinction in an era where realism was a fool’s goal. And now, in the days of Uncharted and Modern Warfare, Mega Man 10’s love of bizarre characters and scenarios seems shockingly fresh. Mega Man will match wits against giant mouse cursors with eye balls, American Gladiators-style ball racks with eye balls, runaway trucks with eye balls…and then my personal favorite. A giant, projectile-flinging fortress that raises a white flag after being defeated… with three pairs or eyeballs. How long before this series truly indulges itself by pitting you against a giant eyeball with eyeballs?

That oddball ideas carries itself out into the gameplay in more ways than you think. Even if you’ve seen variations before in other games, level ideas like swooping sandstorms and convoys of fireballs (with eyeballs) make for some rather creative scenarios. Considering how there are more Mega Man games than citizens of Vatican City, it’s downright amazing that Inti Creations can keep conceiving so many danged ideas for a run-and-jump platformer.

Even the plot reeks of NES-ticity. All of the robots of the world succumb to a plague called “Roboenza.” Mega Man must help Dr Light and Dr Wily research a cure the Leonardo Da Vinci way by murdering and dissecting the evil robots.

And my what 8 lovely robots we have. It may seem like Inti Creations had hepped a few magic mushrooms during development of Mega Man 10 upon witnessing a certain mammal-based robot. But as someone who’s reviewed the previous nine official Mega Man games made, I see nothing abnormal in a series that brought us Wood Man, Toad Man and Charge Man. Besides, these robots make perfect sense in a futuristic society.

Blade Man: Designed to compete in the Olympic sport of fencing as a gut response to Canada’s sheer domination of the Winter Games. But the IOC deemed mechanical devices to be performance-enhancers. Thus, Blade Man sulks in his private castle, dreaming of what could’ve been.
Chill Man: Master of icy attacks and a chilled, laid back attitude. Presumed stoner, despite the irony of needing fire to light up.
Nitro Man: Designed to cash in on the popularity of street racing after the recent Fast and Furious movie revival. But robot development cycles being as long as they are, the fad has passed some XX number of years and Nitro Man spends his days cruising the streets, obeying speed limits alone.
Pump Man: He has a giant pump on his head. He pumps it and water comes out. Great at parties. May also come in handy for other oral activities.
Commando Man: Besides having a very redundant name, Commando Man is notable for having thick armour and rocket launchers for arms. What was he designed for? What else but a fireworks technician.
Sheep Man: His coat of wool generates electrical attacks. Presumably designed to educate children about static electricity. For all I know, he was probably designed as a rib on Nintendo fans.
Strike Man: I don’t feel like I need to explain why Strike Man was made. What kid wouldn’t want his own life-sized baseball-playing robot? The downfall in his design is that he can potentially kill basemen, and with child safety laws the way they are...
Solar Man: Finally, Solar Man was designed to promote alternative energy sources. For you see, pollution and energy conservation will continue to be a problem in the year 20XX. And solar energy will continue to be openly mocked as a viable energy source in the year 20XX.

After Mega Man cuts open the last robot master, the plot twist happens. If you’ve played these games before, you know what the plot twist is. You then proceed to the final series of levels and defeat a series of bosses, culminating in the one final boss you already know about. Tradition has its place, but even I feel that certain old standbys of this series can be revamped in the name of freshness. Bowser gets creative at the end of each Mario game, you know.

Mega Man 10 is a game that you may or may not already have an opinion on, based on your experience with the franchise. The new difficulty mode at least makes it more humane to the uninitiated. Your opinion ultimately depends on your thoughts of the NES era of games, both in difficulty and perverse spectacle. Eventually, this series will grow stale again if it stays in this direction. Fortunately, that day hasn’t come yet. People that liked Mega Man 9? Buy it.

4 stars

Dante's Inferno

First and foremost, if you are an avid fan of The Divine Comedy, you are going to hate what EA has done to their Dante’s Inferno game. It is as blistered and altered and transformed from the original poem as you feared. I’ve joked before about video gamizing in the past, but Dante’s Inferno really raises the bar to downright sacrilegious levels. But if you avoid taking personal offense to how Dante’s Inferno butchers the legendary work that is The Divine Comedy (and for that matter, the legendary game that is God of War) then you’ll actually find a surprising bit of unintended, not very-divine comedy.

Dante’s Inferno is as much a homage to The Divine Comedy as The Insane Clown Posse is a homage to Muddy Waters, or any music in general. In The Divine Comedy, Dante was a poet whom traversed the circles of hell, purgatory and heaven like a tourist, having friendly conversations with the locals and soaking in the sights under the hope of seeking blessing from some Beatrice angel thingy. In Dante’s Inferno, Dante is a jacked-to-the-gills Emo Crusader that laughs at death…literally. He takes the Grim Reaper’s scythe and slices him in half while the angel of death begs for mercy. He then returns home, only to find a bald-headed naked Satan taking the very naked soul of his wife Beatrice down to hell due to Dante’s (obviously) sordid past. Of course, the only way Dante knows how to make things right is to traverse the nine circles of hell and disrupt Lucifer’s operation of tormenting the damned. Taken on its own, the Dante’s Inferno plot is your typical video game plot of a crazy good guy trying to muck up everyone that the crazy bad guy works for.

And thus begins the merry romp into the underworld. When you think about it, Dante’s Inferno is all about two ideas; cloning God of War and giving concept artists a chance to unleash their darkest fantasies onto a piece of paper. Each circle of hell (well, 8 out of 9) are recreated with lovingly twisted imagery, and each populated with appropriately gory enemies. Babies with claws, prostitutes with AIDS-powered tentacles, fat dudes with mouths for hands… the concept artists for Dante’s Inferno had a real field day creating monsters for their vision of the beyond. Sure, it gets a bit silly to see certain enemies overlap in circles they don’t belong in; the Lust hooker monsters are probably a bit out of place in the swampish Anger circle, but whatever. You do kill Minos, the secretary of Hell, very early on in the game, so it is a bit understandable that the paperwork of hell is a bit mixed up as Dante progresses.

As for the former part, Dante’s Inferno recreates God of War with about as much mercy and understanding as Kratos recreates the pain and suffering on all of those who cross his path. You run and double jump like Kratos. You roll out of harm’s way like Kratos. You swing and shimmy across ropes like Kratos. You quick time event death-defying events like Kratos. You fail quick time events and start the cutscene over again like Kratos. You inject steroids into your buttcheeks like Kratos. I could only think of one original gameplay mechanic in the entire game, and it’s so unholy and yet so comedic that I’ll get to it in a bit. Back to Kratoizing.

The combat is very much GOWian. A bunch of enemies of various kinds swarm in, often in large, repeating waves, using light and heavy attacks from both your scythe and holy cross. There’s something ironically funny about attacking enemies with cross projectiles. I can’t explain why, but for some reason, I never grew sick and tired of the combat. Sure, I knew I was merely fighting the same ten to twelve different enemies en masse. Sure, it reeks of artificial game lengthening when you flip a switch to open a door, only for the door to shut back tight and a swarm of enemies to appear and mock your wasted energy before the switch can be flipped again. Sure, some of those waves of enemies just seem to go on and on like that song that never ends. But to my surprise, I never loathed the action. Maybe it’s the visceral satisfaction of dicing multiple enemies with your mighty cross. Maybe it’s the gradually unlocking of abilities that let you air combo and juggle an entire entourage of demons in the air simultaneously. But this is a game that is very much carried by the strengths of its combat system, and the ability to slay many, many, many of Satan’s homeboys by the dozen.

Speaking of which, that upgrade system is driven by a Holy and Unholy morality system. Though calling it a morality system seems dishonest; a morality system is what Bioware games have, or Infamous, or other games with branching story paths based on a pretense of your character being “good” or “bad”. In this game, you’re always good; there’s but one single linear story, and one single linear ending. Rather, you earn Holy or Unholy points based on whether you choose to Punish (i.e. slaughter) certain enemies or Absolve (i.e. slaughter with religion) them. Likewise, you will run into famous celebrities (well apparently famous for their time. I only recognized Pontius Pilate) and can choose to either send them to heaven or damn them for points. (And damn them to what, I wonder. More hell?) The salvation option is comedic in the sense that you are made to play a Simon-esque mini game where you have to time button presses to catch little orbs called “sins.” Ultimately, all of the cool Holy and Unholy attacks are early-level material, so you’ll probably have a variety of Holy and Unholy points, and the morality system feels like a wasted opportunity. Dante runs into many key figures into his life and I would’ve loved to be given the chance to punish or absolve them, with potential storyline repercussions. Same with bosses too; I would love to absolve Cerberus, see what the Lord thinks of that.

So despite the sheer combat overdose, despite the unabashed ways it rips off God of War, despite the missed opportunities, I really only have one true legitimate complaint with Dante’s Inferno. The second-to-last level, the circle of Fraud, which I think is a big deal in the Divine Comedy. (I think it’s a circle of hell that has its own 10 circles dedicated to it. Hell architects had strange priorities. Though it is funny that politicians get their own circle. Stephen Harper, your fate is sealed.) This level is transformed into ten arena challenges, where Dante stands on the exact same platform and smacks up respawning enemies, and always with a stupid stipulation attached. What do I prove to the Lord above by completing a 100-hit combo, or staying in the air for 8 seconds? Both challenges required either a deceptive manipulation of my equipped items or exploiting certain moves to cheat to advance. Both of which resorted in my Gamefaq-ing the solutions to the problem. This was the part of the game where I felt like I was indeed being damned and punished by Visceral Games for my previously hating Dead Space. Or maybe this was the part of the game where the budget ran dry, or the release date drawn dangerously close, and the developers were in a panic to finish their game and satisfy the dark overlords at EA.

In any event, the biggest surprise about Dante’s Inferno was just how little I hated the game. It’s not terrific, it’s far from perfect, but it’s easier to enjoy if you know what you’re getting yourself into. I can neither absolve nor damn the game, but rather send it to rental purgatory. It’s about 7 hours long, and I am already in the midst of a second playthrough, and that’s more than I can say for, oh I don’t know, God of War 2. X-Men Origins: Wolverine is still the king of the God of War clones, and the actual next God of War is only a few weeks away from release as of this writing. But if the notion of slicing a giant purple Cleopatra’s cleavage off appeals to you, this is about the best and only socially acceptable way to go about it.

3 ½ stars