Well, Gamestop got me again. I went in to trade in all my crap Wii games that I don't play and came out with two used games that I missed the first time around. This time I got Kirby's Epic Yarn and No More Heroes 2. And I have to say that playing these two games back to back was really jarring.
The above two images pretty much sum it up. Epic Yarn is an adorable kids game with the really interesting idea of the whole world being made of yarn and fabric products. Heroes is a sophomoric blood sport with good jokes and a shameless lightsaber knock off. But after playing them, these two games have a very strange thing in common: their stories do not matter.
Kirby's game is definitely a kids game. The story is cute and simple with a kindly old man doing the narration. But the story is soooo damn simplistic that I am constantly skipping the cut scenes. Just let me jump please. Meanwhile, No More Heroes straight tells the audience that the story doesn't matter, in a nice moment of fourth wall breakage. Then there is just a brief moment of actual character and then BOOM right back to the murdering shit.
But that's whats interesting about these games. Both have a unique sense of style, with solid gameplay mechanics and creativity. Everything for a game is here EXCEPT FOR THE STORY. And games, as an artistic medium, can exist without story. Neither of these games try to overcome their story weakness, they just drop the whole idea of a story and move on. And I can respect that.
I have been loving me shadowrun returns. I would be posting about that and uploading videos if my connection didn't suck at uploading.
So, Marvel Vs. Capcom 2. One of the premier tournament fighters of all time. The Dreamcast port of the arcade game was literally perfect in terms of fighting mechanics and was still played in tournaments, on the Dreamcast, up until the release of Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. I got it for cheap since the release of the sequel drove down the price on ebay. And I unfortunately have to deliver some bad news: MVC2 isn't all that good of a game.
I would like to give you a full written review of this game. But i am a bit busy playing it and making up ideas for the level editor. I DID record a 20 minute video of me playing it and I talk about how the game is. But I am having trouble uploading it. So here is a cute puppy.
This trailer was released a couple of days ago. Shadowrun does not come out until Thursday. I am starting to LOSE MY MIND.
I seriously have been salivating waiting for this game to come out. Its not just the fact that its one of the first successful crowd funded games ever released. Nor is it the awesome blending of XCOM gameplay with an in depth RPG. It's that it is a SHADOWRUN GAME!!!!!
Shadowrun is one of those IP's that is just MADE for video games. A huge, post-apocalyptic world where magic and technology battle for men's souls as giant mega corps battle for men's wallets. Yes, I know it came from a Pen and Paper RPG, so we are essentially basing a game on another game. But look at the other big table top RPG, Dungeons and Dragons. There have been plenty of D&D games, but few have done much to distinguish themselves from all the other fantasy role playing games we have.
I'm not say that the games are good or bad. But there are a lot of fantasy inspired titles in the video game world. And D&D has never tried to establish its own style or special gameplay within its own crowded game market. If Skyrim had been re-labeled as a D&D game, it would not have seemed at all out of place.
OK, it is a little noticeable.
Shadowrun is a very rare blending of two different styles. We have cyber punk dystopia games with human technological enhancements, Dues Ex being one of the prime examples. We have a veritable glut of fantasy magic worlds. I could probably even think of a couple things where magic is present in a futuristic setting. But Shadowrun doesn't just have magic and technology, they are in constant conflict with each other. And on top of that, even with magic and technological advancement, society is still screwed up in the Shadowrun world. Even with all these different things being available to the common man, corporations have still taken over.
But I am still stuck in a quandary. I want to pre-order the game, I want to sooooooo bad. But I am scared. I've never been burned by a pre-order before, and I don't intend for this to be my first. No matter how much I want this game to be great, no matter how much I fell in love with the idea of this game, I am still going to wait for at least some preliminary reviews. Because wanting something to be good is not enough. I wanted the Evil Dead remake to be awesome, it wasn't. And pre-ordering only saves me 2 dollars. I will spend 2 dollars just to make sure that this game is as good as I hope it is. And if its merely OK, I'll still buy it.
Well, know its time to review Asteroids... I mean Armada. Actually, one of my favorite games was Asteroids on the Playstation, so the similarities are actually quite welcome for me. Now I have tried this with a friend, so my rating will be based on its muliplayer as well as its single player.
I recently put a lot of time into "Mark of the Ninja". Its an exceptionally good 2-D Stealth platformer. I'm not gonna gush for too long, but its a great game with a nice balance of stealth and stabbing. But it did have one element to it that I loved to play with and wish was in more games. Terrorizing the guards.
I think its kind of funny that it is so hard to emulate the dreamcast games now. When the Dreamast was new, the CD format and modem connection made the Dreamcast games some of the easiest to pirate. Now, you have to ebay, like I just did.
Armada for the Dreamcast. I have a friend who currently owns a Dreamcast with 3 controllers, so I have been struggling to find a Dreamcast game that supports 4 players so me and my buds can rock it old school. My search led me to ARMADA. Its a spaceship based RPG that is actually a lot of fun. The controls take some getting used to but it allows a lot of exploration and has some nice sound effects. I'll review it as well, and I have decided that my Dreamcast reviews will come out once a week on Mondays.
Of course, now that I spent money on Armada, I find that there is an free alpha of Armada online available through steam greenlight. I don't regret getting the game, but this happens to me a lot. Currently, the Steam Summer sale is draining wallets all over the world. Now I own most of the computer games I could want right now, but I am still managing to get burned.
damn you and your deals
Going into the summer sale, I thought about what games I might want. When I narrowed it down, it was essentially Bioshock Infinite and Mark of the Ninja. Bioshock never went below 30 bucks, more than I was willing to pay, but Ninja has been sitting solidly at $7.49. I bought it last night and what do I see this morning? Its on extra sale for 3 something. I don't think a 3 buck loss is much, but its still annoying. I also bought Dark Souls recently. That was before the sale started, but recently enough that the discount kind of annoyed me.
Speaking of Valve, the Portal series is awesome. GlaDOS is in my opinion one of the best video game villains ever. Someday, I may devote a post to her and the question of her soul. But for now, lets talk about the Companion cube. Everyone fell in love with this thing. Hell, I made one and carried it in a parade. But its probably filled with bodies of test subjects. For a complete discussion of this, watch the Game Theory video by Matthew Patrick.
Did you watch it? Good, because I am going to assume you did.
So, I had heard most of this theory before, but Matt consolidated the info well and I hadn't heard the bit about material emancipation grills. As I was in the shower this morning, it suddenly hit me. There was another piece of the puzzle: Schrodinger's Cat. The cat experiment is a bit of a theme in the game. Rat man draws it on a few walls and in the portal comic GlaDOS requests neuro toxin for "Schrodinger's Cat" experiment. Now obviously she was alluding to her plans to gas the whole facility, with the facility being the cat's box. But it could also refer to the Companion cube. After GlaDOS is finished with a subject, she jams them in a box and we have a very convenient Schrodinger's Cat experiment that has practical use in test chambers. It would give another reason for the hearts, she needed some way of differentiating from regular cubes and the cat experiment cubes.
Honestly, I totally believe valve thought about Portal themes this hard. They are just that kind of company.
Skies of Arcadia is a very excellent RPG. I've said it before, but RPGs usually aren't my thing. This game is very much in the style of Final Fantasy 7, which I haven't played. It has you wander around a 3-D environment, solve some puzzles and have flashy turn based combat out of random encounters. I can't say it did anything all that unique for the genre, but it was an immensely interesting world that I was pleased to explore.
The bioshock franchise is one of the best trilogies of video games this gen. The first was a ground breaking, atmospheric experience and the third has received nothing but high praise. The second..... well, it wasn't bad. It was mostly guilty of being very similar to the original. Now I haven't played the third one, but I did play the first two. And I can honestly say I prefered the second one. And that was mostly due to some personally unique problems I had with the first one.
For a long time, Battletoads was regarded as the most difficult (with about being cheap) game ever made. I have written before on my experiences trying to best that game. But some time ago, Dark Souls was released. And it started kicking gamer's butts immediately. It was made to kick your butt, with real penalties to dying that incentivize learning how not to get killed. I haven't played far into it, but I got a real good idea of how much Dark Souls relishes killing me. So which is harder?
For the first of my Dreamcast reviews, I will review the game that led to me getting a Dreamcast. There was quite a bit of buzz around the internet about how much fun Jet Grind Radio was. I was right in the middle of my "emulate all the games I missed phase" and went straight to my usual sources. Unfortunately, the Dreamcast emulator did not work since it hadn't been updated in over 4 years. So I ventured into ebay and came out with a Dreamcast. This was back in 2011, so I was rather surprised when Jet Grind Radio HD was released on Steam this year. But I don't regret getting a whole system just to play one game. Its been a very fun experience and I have a very strong attachment to the console now. So without further ado, lets review the game that started it all (for me).
This is hands down the best video I have ever seen of the game.
Despite my plans to review all my Dreamcast games, the first of my games that I get a full review done for is Beyond Good and Evil. It was just a distractingly good game. So here I go. I will be reviewing the NOT HD remake version, and will make considerations for the graphics as such.
Yeah, I am going to have to start up another Current Obsessive Game corner or all my posts are gonna be about Animal Crossing. But it is honestly as addictive as ever. One new feature that is great is the ability to take snap shots of the game WHILE YOU ARE IN IT. This makes getting pictures for this blog sooooo much easier.
The Museum has a much cleaner lay out. Each area splits into multiple well organized rooms. And whats even cooler is that residents of the town will be seen IN the museum itself and will talk to you about the state of the exhibits. Seeing and interacting with residents away from their homes and the main area gives the town a much more lived in feel.
Fishing is a bit easier. Fish don't move as randomly and you can more easily reach distant fish. Bug catching also has a new feature. When the net is ready, you can hold down the swing button to ready a swing and move very slowly while you stalk the bug. On the flip side, bugs and fish are far more sensitive to you running near them, making it safer to briskly walk about.
A missing feature is all the little quotes Blathers would give you when you donated something. They were sometimes very funny, but it obviously wouldn't have worked with the new multi-donation system.
Yes, you still have to pay Tom Nook. He no longer runs the general store, but he runs a real estate business now with home additions. BUT, you no longer have to upgrade your home upon paying off your loan. So as long as you are comfortable with a smaller place, you can live debt free. A nice touch that I always wanted.
One minor thing that I thought was cool was the train tracks. You get to town by train now and the shopping area is on the north side of the tracks. I saw that we had gate crossings and wondered if they would ever drop. THEY TOTALLY DO! No one got on or off, a train just passed through. It was a nice touch.
I'm not gonna go into much detail here actually. I'm not an authority on reviewing games. I am simply going to agree with existing reviews. IGN and all the praise's are correct. This is an extremely good Animal Crossing game that adds enough new things to justify playing it. If you aren't a fan of Animal Crossing as a franchise, stay away. But if you are fan of the series, go out and buy it. Get on that right now. I got mine today and its hard to find.
I can't explain the sudden fascination with this character.
