Super Castlevania IV

Rating: 3 out of 3 Stars (why only 3 possible stars?)
Genre: Side-scrolling beat-'em-up; Sub-genre: Platformer
ESRB: E10+ (For causing various pixelated monsters to explode with whip strikes)
Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 6/2
Developer: Konami
Wiki page

Typical of my retro-reviews, this one requires a story. When I was just a youngun', I saw this game demo'd at Sears (or something) back when the SNES first came out. I thought it was the coolest fucking thing I had ever seen. Then, inexplicably, I never played the damn thing. It wasn't until many years later when I had discovered rips of NES and SNES video game music that I noticed the Castlevania series. The music of 1 and 3 are easily the best of the series, so this got me super nostalgic. Why had I never played this game? Well, I had a bunch of points on my Wii that I wasn't using on anything, so I just up and bought this game for it. Personally I'd recommend just getting a ROM file and an emulator on your computer; Nintendo put zero effort into making the Virtual Console anything special. That way you can skip the password system and use save states. But don't cheat too much; you'll only be cheating yourself!

Conversely, I cheated all the time as a kid. Kids are such immoral assholes.

This game came out only a few months after the SNES itself was released but still was early enough to be a major pioneer. Like many games of this new generation, it started a trend we're still seeing today of putting more content in a game and relying less on impossible difficulty for replay value. There's even effort put into razzle dazzle with levels like one where the background is a 3D spinning cylinder. It makes no logical sense what in the flying fuck is going on with this room but... 3D! Whoa! The platforming and fighting in this section is inconsequential, which may be for the best as the SNES chugs a bit to render the scene while the player gets vertigo. It's like an old timey "watch out for exploding shit" level where you run in a straight line while things blow up around you that are so popular now.

I didn't want to find an animated GIF of this level... hurk!...

The gameplay is pretty standard for the time: you move from left to right, jump over obstacles, and murder the things that get in your way. Simon's attack is different from a normal beat-'em-up in that he uses a whip and no combos. This is actually stronger in that it lends itself more to having to time your attacks rather than being distracted by flashy animations. He also has items he can use that confusingly need hearts for ammo. But the whip can go in all directions in this game and is pretty damn strong and quick, so items are never that dire. The monster variety is pretty flavorful and doesn't rely on having to memorize the placement of everything to get through parts (IE Mega Man), but rather leans more towards your own reaction time and ability to strategize. And Simon doesn't die in one hit. That's always nice.

And there's good ol' fashioned boss battles!

So how does it hold up now? Well, the offered gameplay hours are under par. And my estimates are purely based on how many times you die (hint: dying typically involves a staircase). I can safely bet that this game can be completed comfortably in a single sitting, if you're adept enough. The story is still non-existent, save for anything that might have been in the manual. It doesn't go the route of Chrono Trigger or even Legend of Zelda, Simon Belmont just wants Dracula dead and that's all we really know. But I'd say it does very well. Heh, obviously since I gave it three stars, right? But hear me out: this game manages to be a nostalgic oldie while still managing the solid playability of a modern game. You can't say that about something like, say, Contra. That game had the best music ever but JESUS I never want to play it again. Although Mr. Belmont's inability to deal with stairs is frustratingly hilarious (but mostly frustrating).

"Dracula ain't shit! Wait, no one said there'd be stairs! FML!" - Simon Belmont.

Conclusion: As much as I hate the nostalgia for the "old days" of video games going around, this one well deserves it. Also, the current iteration of the franchise (the Lords of Shadow series) takes this name into the modern era and puts a fresh take on the God of War style games. But again: don't buy it on Virtual Console, just get an emulator, yo.

Just for fun, here's a metal cover of Simon's theme (NOT actually played by Yngwie Malmsteen).

Holiday Season 2012 Guide!

With the release of Borderlands 2 today (9-18-2012) it seems that the holiday season of gaming has already begun! For those who may not have noticed, the "holidays" ... fuck it... the "time around Christmas" is when something like 75% of games are released, and something like 95% of the biggest franchises release their games around this time. It's the best couple of months to be a gamer! So I decided to write up a little guide with some of the best, worst, and biggest things coming out and when. I'll also use my infallible powers of deduction to tell you just how much money you're wasting!

9-18-2012

Borderlands 2

Available for: XBox 360, PS3, Windows

Two of the biggest genres out there are RPG's and shooters. And this game is both! The first game was a surprise hit and this one looks like it's gonna try real hard to fix all the short-comings it had. I mean, I loved the first game but there were some notable problems with it. Well, take all these factors in and the fact that you can get it on every worthwhile piece of equipment and you've got no reasons left not to give Gearbox your money! Do it!

9-25-2012

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria

Available for: Windows

The world's most powerful MMO continues its reign of terror with its latest expansion. A surprise for sure as I don't think there was any announcement that this would be coming out so soon. Considering the timing of the announcement (not too many days ago) and the minimal time until the release itself, I am forced to wonder what in the flying fuck is going on! If they had chosen that time to announce a post-Holiday release like January, I think that would have been fine. I may not be in marketing, but the thing is people's wallets are already giving out pre-orders to games that were announced months ago. And is the game even ready? I don't know, I feel like this is just Activision forcing Blizzard to push the thing out the door. I tend to think the same thing happened with Diablo 3. Either way, everyone will still be playing Borderlands 2 when this thing comes out so.... fuck it.

10-2-2012

Resident Evil 6

Available for: XBox 360, PS3, Windows

After the debacle of RE5 and Raccoon City, the franchise returns and is as clumsy as ever as it looks more like Call of Duty and less like Resident Evil. Apparently we've got regular zombies again, and Jill got another design change. The dialogue will continue to be only marginally more coherent than it was in the first game, and significantly less hilarious. Supposedly a lot people play this game series. I guess they must, right? Maybe this will be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Or maybe it'll just trigger a reboot.

10-9-2012

Dishonored

Available for: XBox 360, PS3, Windows

If you like Steampunk and stealth games that use first person perspective for some reason, this game has you covered. I haven't heard of developer Arkane Studios before, so I can't be sure how well the game will be made. I'm not one to be fooled by the Bethesda label on the front, they're just the publisher. To me the game sounds like a nifty indie game that you might see on Steam or XBLA, so it'll be interesting to see if this game succeeds or awkwardly flops about. I'll add it to my list of things to get during a "buy two get one free" sale at Gamestop.

Fable: The Journey

Available for: XBox 360 (Kinect required)

As I played through Fable 3 I realized, "Why am I still playing this franchise?" And Lionhead Studios has apparently decided to answer that question by making a game that's ten times more boring. You just... ride a carriage around? And then wave your hands around to wipe out helpless goofballs? This game literally sounds like a nightmare. The kind of dream where I feel trapped in a confusing, nonsensical loop where all I want to do is get out. People get paid to make these games, too. Sorta frustrating when you think about it.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Available for: XBox 360, PS3, Windows

Turn style combat?! In a Western RPG/Strategy game? And it's made by Firaxis, the people who made Alpha Centauri? Oh my ughughughgggughgughguhllllllllll! I can't even make words on the screen! How did this game sneak by the people holding the money? Is this game real? Now suddenly the world seems like a better place. For every piece of shit Fable Kinect game, there is this: a revisiting of a dead but still workable genre. I don't care what you people do, I am buying the hell out of this game. Go play your Call of Duties and leave me alone!

10-30-2012

Assassin's Creed 3

Available for: XBox 360, PS3, Windows, Wii U

Ubisoft bravely turns up the "unintentionally funny" knob to eleven in the latest addition to the series. They also finally decided to start numbering these damn things again. I wonder how it feels to be the teams working on the non-numbered games. Do they feel like they're not important? Anywho, this time the main character is an Injun who murders Redcoats and starts the American Revolution or something. Typing these things out makes me feel like I'm losing my mind. Lots of crazy going on with the developers this season, apparently. Here's hoping the next installment has you controlling a guy who's ethnicity is "clown" and trades his hidden blade for a hidden buzzer. Wakka wakka!

11-6-2012

Halo 4

Available for: XBox 360

The more screens I see for this game, the more I find myself thinking "that doesn't really look like Halo." While it is understandable that they'd want to give the series a way to feel fresh to players, I'm worried this might come across as just not feeling like Halo. I've grown more cautious in the past months, so maybe I'll sit out the release date and see what happens before trying it out.

11-13-2012

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

Available for: XBox 360, PS3, Windows, Wii U

Statistically speaking, you most likely have pre-ordered three copies of this game already. But wait... I said wait! Just hear me out! Bah, whatever. You don't care. Just stop complaining about campers, ya noob. Watch the Goddamn kill cam and use flash bangs, for fuck's sake. The game gives you those for a reason, ya know.

11-18-2012

Wii U

Hey,  bless you people who keep giving Nintendo money. If not for you, they'd have to learn how to work with third party developers. Wait... that's a bad thing. Stop giving them money! Let them join the modern age, for crying out loud! I guess this is their attempt to do that. We'll see if it turns out to be enough, or far too little far too late. Spoilers: it's the latter.

 11-20-2012

Hitman: Absolution

Available for: XBox 360, PS3, Windows

Rounding out this season of odd decisions is another installment of Hitman.  I was laughing so hard I cried when I saw a friend playing the last game. This was because he had murdered a birthday clown and stole his costume and then snuck into the birthday as the surliest children's entertainer you've ever seen. IO Interactive apparently heard my laughs and decided "Sexy nuns!" Can I be paid to make video games now? Seems like they'll let anyone do it. Joking aside, this looks like a solid iteration of this stealth assassination franchise.

Just Cause 2

Rating: 3 out of 3 Stars (why only 3 possible stars?)
Genre: Sandbox; Sub-genre: Third person shooter, Physics simulator
ESRB: M (Wanton violence, but not necessarily gory)
Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 70/12
Developer: Avalanche Studios
Wiki page

There's games like Grand Theft Auto that build gritty worlds where you run errands for sociopath criminals. There's games like The Elder Scrolls where you explore a beautiful world. There's also games like Saints Row where you just dick around and laugh. And then there's Just Cause 2, a little bit of each, but still it's own thing. And that picture above is a drawing, but riding on jets mid-flight is just part of Rico Rodriguez's day-to-day life. Equipped with a grappling hook that allows him to kick the laws of physics straight in the balls, he whizzes around wherever he damn well pleases. He can catch any vehicle and take it over: land, sea, and air. He can bolt up to the top of a short building in an instant. He can even open his infinite parachute mid-jump and slingshot himself across the sky. This is just a gadget he has, too. There's like a whole game that goes along with this.

He's like some kind of Batman who hates independent island nations.

The story is either stupidly light-hearted, or is a brilliant mockery of the American mentality (like how Starship Troopers is actually a movie that is about the opposite of what you think it is). The fictional island nation is ruled by a vicious dictator, and Rico is on a mission to turn the country against him and for America. And he does this via random explosions and murder. Also, America only cares about this country because of the oil. Saying it out loud, it sounds like a satire, right? But you can't get into that when you're thrown into a cheesy video game with C level writing, and B level voicing. After you've spent a few hours blowing up everything in sight, you'll likely forget the game even has a plot.

And your best bud is some kind of Yosemite Sam cowboy type person.

The gameplay serves as both the strong point and as a weak point. If all you want is a third person shooter with some driving thrown in, you'll get all that but it's not spectacular. If you want to tie a boulder to the back of a car and do donuts to cause a bunch of random damage before crashing into a gas station and dying, you can do that all day. AND you can do that kind of thing to solve combat situations! Tie two bad guys together while you shoot a third, tie a car to the ground that's driving after you to cause it to flip out, crash helicopters into turrets... it's really up to you to figure out the funniest way to deal with a given situation.

Driving stuff off of high places is one of my favorite things to do!

And the island of Panau is HUGE. It may be the biggest sandbox ever made. You can see mountains that are literally miles in the distance, spend an hour driving to them, and then climb all over them. There's also a busy city section where there's like three downtown areas with skyscrapers. And there's collectibles and shit to destroy (destroying shit gives you points!) in every location, along with dozens of side missions. I estimated a thorough playthrough at 70 hours, but that's just doing all the missions with a small amount of screwing around. I'd wager to find and do literally everything would take maybe 120 hours? It's hard to say because there is a small percentage of things that don't appear on any map, so tracking those down would take a lot of time.

This is just a small corner of the island. Fortunately you can steal a plane and see the rest easily!

Conclusion:
If blowing crap up and screwing around are your thing, this game has it in spades. Conversely, if you want some kind of deep game or memorable story, you may want to look elsewhere. Shit, I used all screens from the actual game this time. That's how funny it is!

In this game, even water is explosive!

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron

Rating: 3 out of 3 Stars (why only 3 possible stars?)
Genre: Third person shooter
ESRB: T (For lasers hitting robots? Dismemberment of Cybertronian limbs? Feels like E10 to me.)
Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 10/8
Developer: High Moon Studios
Wiki page

Yes! A sequel that goes from two stars to three stars! It feels good when things improve, doesn't it? Although I'm still far from calling this game of the year or other kinds of high praise, I do feel this game now goes far enough to warrant a positive recommendation to anyone. And especially to fans of the franchise, since this both offers what is considered "official canon" for backstory AND follows the events immediately prior to the beginning of the "G1" series. Actually, it steps over some things that happen in the first episode of Transformers. I'm not nit-picky enough to throw a fit, but it'd be interesting to see what more dedicated fans think of what they've done.

Don't you dare mess up Beast Wars, though. I will never stop ranting on the internet if you do!

The single player campaign received the most positive changes. The levels have actual color to them and provide better arenas for more story-driven combat. And the approach follows a more modern design than before, where levels were merely waves of enemies trapped in tight boxes. Now there's scripted events galore! Shit explodes and the scenery gets torn apart! You jump in turrets and sometimes control really big robots! The beginning of the game is oddly slow, and the first level feels too much like Call of Duty as the player just gets dragged around and told exactly what to do. But soon enough things pick up and the player has to just rumble with scores of enemies. On minor (but still very important) notes, there are two added things which can prove to be good or bad depending on your view. There is now a store where you can buy upgrades and switch up your load out. I like this, even if it seems a bit out of place. The second thing is that there are now exploding barrels all over Cybertron. I hate exploding barrels! Why are these still in video games!

We all know!

Another thing I dislike is that I don't feel the desire to transform frequently enough in single player. This game addresses that by having certain levels where there are large open spaces where being a vehicle is clearly a good idea. There's also a couple levels where you turn into something that flies, which is stupidly useful. And one last level where it suddenly becomes a super move (like a Musou attack from Dynasty Warriors). The problem might be that I played the game on hard and that requires a bit more tactics to get through than normal. But, you see, I don't want transforming to just be a gimmick to dick around with. It should be viable in all modes. Where it really shines is multiplayer. The added mobility makes you harder to hit, something a human player would actually struggle with but a computer opponent would not.

Unless that human cheats by using an aimbot...

There's two forms of multiplayer in Fall of Cybertron, both returning from the first game. First is Escalation mode, which is your standard Horde mode. While this game is a good vehicle for such a mode, there is no progression to it. This means that you start with nothing each new game and have to re-earn it during the match like some kind of stupid strategy game. What's also strange is that you are required to use actual characters from Transformers and not custom ones. These things combined with the low number of maps and enemy types meant that I got tired of it a little too quickly (especially since, once again, I'd much rather spend time in Mass Effect 3's Horde mode).

Who are we buying guns from anyway?

The second form of multiplayer is your standard competitive game modes: deathmatch, capture the flag, headhunter, and some other objective game type that sucks as much as CTF (Head hunter is fun since the objective still revolves around combat). I've read some complaints that the multiplayer is too watered down from War for Cybertron. I guess I now realize how little of that I played because I'm enjoying Fall of Cybertron much more. They removed perks and kill streaks, but honestly I'm tired of both of those things. After Uncharted 3 and Resistance 3, I got pretty frustrated with not knowing every little perk and advantage a player could have. Especially since those perks weren't balanced at all! And kill streaks can cause there to be too much reliance on momentum in a match. IE the other team calls in ten things in a row and your team can't even fucking move outside for like 5 minutes. That suuuuuucks! And the thing is, kill streaks in Call of Duty work with how that game is designed: around careful camping. It both rewards you for being tactical and gives both sides access to tools to defeat campers (kill cam, flash bangs, etc). This game, however, is all about jumping around and going nuts. There is no kill cam and there is a respawn timer, but that's alright here. I'd still like a kill cam, but it isn't desperately needed and the respawn timer is very low.

Yay, customization! Hm, this head isn't small enough. Try the next one!

Finally I just want to talk about the classes quickly. This is why perks aren't needed: you already have access to customizing your play style. Personally I find the "scientist" to be absurdly useful because he both has teamwork skills AND can turn into a Goddamn jet. And two of his guns are good at long range! He seems like he might get nerfed at some point, but we'll see. The other three I haven't totally figured out. The infiltrator is a little ninja who stealths around and is quick, but his guns are so shitty I can't understand how to do anything with him. I switched his stealth out for an EMP grenade because invisibility is for pussies, but that didn't really help me either. The other two I still need to figure out: destroyer and titan. They both are big guys with big guns, so I'm unsure what role they're supposed to fill. The titan is bigger and has more health, so he's like a tank (he is also quite literally a tank since he can turn into one). But the riot cannon on the destroyer feels like a beefier weapon. I guess the destroyer is supposed to be the jack-of-all-trades... maybe? Whatever. They're all pretty cool. I've actually spent a lot of time on multiplayer, and plan to spend much more!

It's like that one game, except people actually play the console version.

Conclusion:
Whether you're a fan of the franchise or not, robots that shoot lasers and turn into vehicles are fun to play as. And this game gives you as much of that as it possibly can and does so well!

Also, these robots are ironically more human and relate-able than anything in those "realistic" shooters.