Aural Fulfillment

My Brain Died...

2011-03-24T16:16:00.000-05:00

Animal Crossing makes me angry. On one hand, it is really, really stupid. On the other hand, I played it for far more hours than I would admit. I'm lumping in the GameCube and DS versions together since they are basically the same game with minor tweaks despite the DS version being called a sequel. Given that I am known the world over for my riveting reviews of Tamagotchi Corner Shop Connection 2 and Kururin Splash, who better qualified than me to review this momumentally idiotic non-game?

Reasons why this game sucks:
1. The graphics:

They are overly cutesy and kinda bad. Given it was ported from a Japanese N64, this is not surprising. Regardless, they are targeting directly toward 10-year-old girls who love talking animals with big heads and short tempers. At least the DS version knew how to compensate for its weaker engine by scrolling the world up or down over the horizon as you walk. Of course being the DS, the textures are even blurrier and crappier. Oh well...
2. Arranging furniture is stupid:

This is seriously one of the primary focal points of the game. You decorate your house, and earn money to make it bigger so you can cram more junk in it. I found myself trying to decorate with the most grim, depressing stuff I could find. For wall and floor covering, I settled on a cold, hard stone motif to give it that dungeon vibe. Going for a while without cleaning causes spiders to build webs in the corners which further enhanced the mood I was going for. The only other way I was able to entertain myself was by amassing these weird-ass cacti things that made bizarre noises when you walked by them.
3. The townspeople are jerks:

Half the bums in this town are outright rude to you at times and stomp around angry for no good reason. Even when they aren't sulking and whining for no reason, they are sending you off on dumb errands because they are apparently either incredibly lazy or shut-ins afraid to leave the immediate vicinity of their house. On rare occasions, you do find them out wandering around in the middle of nowhere for no particular reason. It makes me just want to shake them violently and demand to know why they needed me to deliver their stupid letters. Additionally Tom Nook is a shifty slave driver. As soon as you get off the train to go this town, he greets you, seemingly with no ulterior motive. He goes so far as to find you a house to live in. But guess what? Nothing in life is free, particularly when dealing with a sketchy raccoon out to plunge you into severe debt in order to use you as his personal slave in his general store. Then once you do manage to pay off your mortage, what does he do? Cons you into buying a bigger house, thereby plunging you into even bigger debt, dooming you to plant flowers and pick fruit for him for years to come! Tom Nook is Satan. This is the only conclusion I can draw. I just kept waiting for the proposition where he offers to completely erase my debt, and all he asks for in return in my immortal soul. No dice, Nook!
4. Fruit selection is lame:

Why can't my town have the good fruit? I want coconuts, dang it! How dare you expect me to get a Gameboy Advance and that stupid link cable just to get them! Fools! At least in the DS version, they randomly wash up on shore. although the "Scour The Beach For Coconuts" game gets old real fast.

Reasons why it's actually kinda neat:
1. It plays in real-time: This is actually pretty neat because a)It allows spiders to infiltrate my house if I forget to log in after a couple of days, which I envariably do, b) neat stuff happens on holidays like the major giving you random junk to throw in your house and various celebrations and c) people in the village remember your birthday, and I always get a warm and fuzzy feeling when people remember my birthday.
2. NES games!!:

This is the PRIMARY reason I bought and played this game. You can actually find items that look like NES's, and once you place them in your house, you can actually play the old NES games right there. It has such awesome stuff as Excitebike and Punch Out!! In the DS version, you can't really find NES games, but you can find special items that are Nintendo references like the Master Sword and Triforce, which is kinda neat but much lamer than actual Nintendo games.
3. My brain sucks: My brain compels me to collect things. Ask my wife. Our house is full of CDs, DVDs, games, books and all matter of other nonsense. As a result, I played this game a crap ton more than I had expected to due to all the junk you can collect like bugs, fish, fossils and paintings. The DS version has more junk to collect, so I actually ended up putting more time into it. That owl in the museum is annoying though. I just wanted to mention that.

4. convenience: This is a game that is very easy to pick up and put down. It requires very little time put into in a single game sitting, so it allowed me to just kind of play in my spare time at my leisure. I only feel like playing for 10 minutes? That's ok. I'll just go dig up a couple of fossils and be done.

To summarize, this game is horrible. As a result, I recommend it to hoarders and people who hate themselves. I'm not sure which camp I fall into. Probably a little of both.

Rock Band 3 Review FTW!

2011-03-23T13:14:00.000-05:00

For those who know me, they are aware of how big a fan I am of the Rock Band games. As a result, I was anxiously anticipating Rock Band 3. Not only were they refining and improving the series in small ways to make the whole Rock Band experience work more smoothly, but they were adding the keyboard and Pro Modes for the rest of the instruments. Needless to say, the game lived up to all my expectations. I feel that it is pretty much the best music game on the market and has completely blown away the Guitar Hero series, who have started concentrating more and more on silly features like character mutations and boss battles rather than on the reason people play these games: music.

The thing most people have been looking forward to are the keys and Pro modes. The keyboard is an actual 32-key MIDI-based keyboard that, with an adapter, can actually be used as a real keyboard. The game has both a standard and pro mode for the keyboard. The standard mode uses just 5 keys on the keyboard and works very similarly to the guitar controller where the player just presses one of the five colored keys as the colors scroll down. I found the standard mode to be pretty fun but a little less engaging than most of the other instruments since I only used one hand to play it. The pro key mode uses the full 32 keys and displays ten keys (as well as sharps/flats) on the screen at a time due to lack of screen real estate. It shifts the screen left and right to move up and down the keyboard. To start off, the pro keys mode is really freakin' hard. It is essentially like playing a real keyboard, albeit a small one. I could only manage to play a couple of songs on Easy difficulty without constantly missing notes (the INXS song is your friend). The hardest part of playing on pro keys is finding your place on the board to start out and keeping track of where you are when it shifts the screen. It definitely takes some getting used to, and since I typically play the game with my wife, I doubt she will have the patience to just sit and watch me try playing the same song over and over until I've got it down. I honestly don't see a lot of long term use in the keyboard. Others who are more serious about than myself may find it very beneficial as a jumping off point for learning to play a real keyboard.

The pro drum mode adds cymbals and an extra bass pedal for hi-hats. I actually didn't have an extra pedal that wasn't broken, so I wasn't able to try the hi hat pedal out, but I did get the cymbal expansion and have played with them quite a bit. Overall, I found the pro drum mode to be a fun addition. Since I already played on expert, for most songs they weren't that big a leap to adjust to playing. On the screen, cymbal notes are displayed as round instead of the typical thin rectangle notes, making it very easy to distinguish between regular and cymbal notes, unlike the Guitar series where both the cymbals and regular notes are round. The only real complaint I have about the cymbal expansions is that they don't fit on the drum set very well and have a habit of sliding down the poles as you play them. I basically had to anchor them with duct tape. Once I did that, they seemed to be fine.

Pro guitar mode apparently uses a full 6-string guitar controller by Mad Catz or a real Fender guitar to control with the note chart looking not dissimilar to guitar tab. I personally haven't tried this mode, so I don't really have anything to say about it other than it seems like a really awesome idea. I have a feeling I will have similar feelings to it as I did with the pro keys mode in that it will be very difficult to learn since it is essentially learning to play a real guitar. For vocals, they've carried the vocal harmonies feature over from Beatles Rock Band which brings the grand total number of possible players at the same time to eight. The vocal harmonies work as well here as they do in Beatles Rock Band. If you have the people to play it, they can present a pretty daunting challenge even for those with perfect pitch.

As far as game modes, Harmonix seems to have kept what they felt worked and added some extra, very much needed features. The biggest addition to the game is that it is now driven by Career Goals which work similar to the Xbox achievement system or PS3 trophies in that it is a massive list of objectives for the players to achieve that are spread throughout all the various game modes including even the download content. I found the goals to be pretty cool, extending the life of game well beyond the regular modes are exhausted. As far as regular modes, taking the place of the Tour mode from the previous games are the Road Challenges. They play out in a very similar way with your band basically rising in the ranks, getting cooler stuff like buses and jets while playing through various gigs (gigs are comprised of a setlist of songs). To throw a little variety, sometimes the challenges have different objectives like using as much overdrive as possible or getting long note streaks, not unlike the challenges in the Guitar Hero series.

Speaking of which, with this game Harmonix seems to have studied the recent Guitar Hero games and taken what has worked best. One of the biggest examples, other than the challenges, is the much needed and greatly appreciated (at least by me) revamped menu system for character and instrument selection. In previous games if you had multiple people wanting to play, you had to exit all the way out to the first menu of the game to add or remove a player or even change difficulty. Now it can all be done on the fly: adding or removing players, changing instruments, changing difficulty. It can all be done in mid-song regardless of what mode you are in. Another interesting little feature that some achievement hounds who are less than skilled at the game will appreciate is that you can now get achievements with the No Fail Mode turned on. It works great for when you have that one guy at a party who demands No Fail Mode when everyone else is wanting the multiplayer achievements.

For those of you like myself who have a boatload of download content, the sorting and filtering modes for the song list are vastly improved, giving a lot more flexibility in the way you can scroll through and select songs. Although I found myself still wanting a filter or two (like filtering out songs you've already played), it is definitely leaps and bounds beyond what was previously available. The Battle of the Bands and Custom Setlists from Harmonix in Rock Band 2 are still here with the additional ability for players to create their own Battle of the Bands challenges that they can link to on Facebook. I thought this was a pretty neat addition and had wondered why it wasn't added in RB2.

And even if you didn't care about any of the new features or modes, RB3 also comes with a whole new 83-song setlist. I can definitely tell an effort was made to pick songs that shined on keyboard. As a result, you now have stuff like Elton John's "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting", Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" and Chicago's "25 or 6 to 4" which all feature very prominent keyboard parts. They have also released download content after the game has come out that do not even have guitar like John Lennon's "Imagine". I find the setlist overall to be a good cross-section of music from every decade with some stuff that genuinely surprised me by their inclusion like The Flaming Lips' "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1", which happens to be an awesome song I never expected to show up in Rock Band. Of course, with their still continuous release of new download content every week and with the Rock Band Network, there are a lot of songs I never thought would be in Rock Band that are now readily available.

In the past, real musicians have seemed to turn their nose down at the music genre in general with claims that they'd "rather play a REAL instrument". With the Pro Modes this game adds, their scoffs of derision have much less merit than they once did. In a nutshell, this is a freaking awesome music game. I understand that the music genre is general is starting to die down in popularity, but if you have even the slightest interest in music at all, give this game a try.

Minnesotans Creep Me Out

2011-03-22T17:28:00.000-05:00

Puzzle Agent is an odd bird of a game. Based on the characters created by Graham Annable of Grickle fame(?) and tipping its hat to the Professor Layton series, Puzzle Agent positions itself as a story-driven puzzle game featuring the exploits of Detective Tethers as he solves various puzzles to unravel a bizarre mystery involving secretive cults and sinister lawn gnomes in the frozen wasteland of Scoggins, Minnesota.

The gameplay consists of an interface not unlike many a point-and-click adventure game. Your primary interactions when not solving puzzles involves mainly having conversations with people and collecting chewing gum which acts as the game's hint system. As for the puzzles themselves, they are, as one would expect, a hodge podge of various puzzles of varying degrees of challenge. The biggest positive is that no sliding puzzles are to be found! The puzzles in general are I would say slightly more difficult overall than Professor Layton's but the challenge level seems to be a little more consistent.

The graphics are nothing amazing but get the job done, enhancing the offbeat mood of the game. The sound and voice acting go a long way in making the game seem more off-kilter as well. The denizens of Scoggins are an odd bunch indeed. In fact, the game seems to go out of its way to be as odd as possible. Anyone expecting a loveable and adventurous romp like Professor Layton will be disappointed by the generally bizarre and vaguely creepy mood of the game.

Overall, I enjoyed the game and while it is rather short (I was able to finish it in roughly 3 hours or so), it is inexpensive. I would recommend it to those who have enjoyed the Professor Layton games and don't mind a more strange storyline.

This Game's Title Is Way Too Freakin' Long

2011-03-22T17:12:00.000-05:00

Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game Of The Movie

With such a long unwieldy title, one would assume that the game would focus on the exploits of the titular giant ape gallavanting through the jungle, smashing villagers and invading film crews. In reality, a more appropriate title for the game should be Adrian Brody's Sweaty Death Romp since the majority of this game is spent as Jack, Adrian Brody's character from the film, stumbling around the jungle and running from everything including, but not limited to, all manner of dinosaur, giant millipedes, mutant eels and, of course, Kong himself.

The gameplay as Jack is a standard FPS style, and this is where you will spend the majority of your time in this game. Most levels involve either rescuing/protecting someone, collecting a thing to proceed further into the game, escaping from something trying to kill you or just plain ol' going from point A to point B. As a nice, and far more awesome, diversion, you additionally will get to play as Kong occasionally. This involves chasing after things by running along walls and swinging across branches and beating the living bejeezus out of dinosaurs. The Kong sections use a modified Prince of Persia: Sands of Time engine to facilitate the fluid acrobatic and fighting sections. And this is what befuddles me the most about this game. The developers had to know that the Kong sections were more fun, so why didn't they have more of them? Perhaps they doled the sections out in more bite-sized nuggets so that when you get to them, you are much more appreciative of how awesome they are. My biggest complaint is that there isn't a Kong section closer to the beginning. You probably have to play for at least an hour or so as the ho-hum Jack FPS before getting to the Kong action, which could present a deterrent to those wanting to get immediately engaged in the game. I believe this is the reason they made the achievements so easy.

I'm betting a good 80% to 90% of people who played this game did so to get a full 1000 achievement points with little effort. Basically you just have to play through the game on any difficulty, which takes roughly 5 or 6 hours. Although the game can get very challenging in places, the knowledge that another 100 point achievement is just around the corner will keep driving many a player.

The graphics are actually very good if you are playing the Xbox 360 version, particularly the Kong sections. and while the sound is fairly uninspired, the music cues work very well within the context of the game to give you a sense of ominous foreboding or panic when appropriate.

I dumped on the FPS sections quite a bit but only because they seemed dull in comparison to the Kong sections. They are actually fairly serviceable FPS sections, presenting a pretty high challenge due to the stinginess of the game in trickling out weapons. More often than not, I had to rely on throwing spears and bones at vicious, man-meat craving dinosaurs to fend them off due to constantly running out of ammo. Spears? Against velociraptors? Seriously? you can see how effective the game is in creating a sense of panic. Overall, I'd recommend the game to anyone looking for a pretty good way to kill a Saturday afternoon or to anyone who hordes achievements.

Ninjas + Reptiles = Easy Game

2011-03-22T13:50:00.001-05:00

TMNT, based on the CGI-fueled film of the same name, involves you playing as four different yet almost identical turtles who have been graced with the freak mutant powers of walking upright and speaking and have been trained in the ways of martial arts by a freak mutant rat who was apparently a big fan of Mr. Miyagi from the Karate Kid movies. Given the fact that they look identical, they've been given colored headbands and different weapons to tell them apart. They also each have their own two-dimensional personality trait to further define them. Unless you randomly clicked this review because of your intense love of acronyms, you probably already know the differences, so I will skip the in-depth profiles.

The gameplay is like a hybrid of Crash Bandicoot and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. For the first few levels you alternate through the turtles, giving screen time to each and learning their special moves. Later it gives you the ability to switch between turtles on the fly and perform special combos with two turtles at once. The game has you running, jumping and flipping through one highly linear level after another with intermittent breaks to punch and kick street hoodlums and foot soldiers. Every once in a while you have the requisite boss fight.

The storyline pretty much follows the movie and basically acts to fill in a couple of gaps *as if anyone was wondering how exactly Ralph got from the bottom floor to the top floor of some building. The whole game is also in flashback, narrated by the turtles, so you are fully aware than none of them suffer any undue consequences of recklessly parading through the city with deadly weapons.

Complaint number one: why do we play through 11 levels before we ever actually play as Raphael instead of his stupid Batman ripoff character? Complaint number two: the camera is a fool. It succumbs to the 3rd-person platformer syndrome pretty early. I found it really irritating not being able to see exactly where I needed to go because the forced camera perspective wouldn't let me. Far too many times did I find myself leaping randomly into space, hoping a platform was somewhere ahead that I could grab onto. At least they put a lot of checkpoints everywhere.

Now a few comments that some may find positive and others negative. First off, the game is incredibly easy and can be beaten in less than five hours. I'm sure many out there prefer more of a challenge, but if you just want some really easy achievements, this is the game for you. Also, I mentioned earlier that the game is extremely linear. Did you notice I compared it to Crash Bandicoot earlier? THAT is how linear it is. There is NO deviation from the path the game wants you to follow. Some people may actually like this so they can focus on speed runs (the game does indeed time you and score you based on how fast you get through the levels). Any sandbox fans will find it very restrictive and probably lose interest quickly.

I personally found the game to be a pleasant diversion while recovering from surgery and therefore will hesitantly recommend it to people looking for a break between tougher games or for achievement whores.

Universal Studios Day 1: Afternoon

2010-06-29T06:38:00.000-05:00

JAWS

JAWS… the cheesy, campy ride that everyone immediately thinks of when Universal Studios is mentioned in casual conversation. People have proposed to their loved ones on this thing, for God’s sake. So how is it? Getting on the ride, it actually advertises itself as the Amity Boat Tour. There was no mention of Jaws other than on the warning sign posted at the entrance. We began by boarding a Jungle Cruise-esque boat with our nonchalant tour guide pretending to steer the boat as it glided along a track. The tour was basically structured as a tour of the town of Amity, describing it as the town that suffered the horrible attack of Jaws that the famous movie was based on. Pretty soon, not surprisingly, the tour comes across another tour boat sinking, having just recently been attacked by Jaws. Our boat was called in to help just a little too late. Oh well. Anyway, the animatronic wonder makes his first appearance with a quick splash and an explosion of a gas station before our guide lobs a grenade at him by using a portable launcher.

We then head into a boathouse to take cover. Jaws starts ramming the walls of the boathouse, so we flee only to have him pop out of the water right next to us as the tour guide attempts to lead us to a boat dock. This boat dock happens to be located right next to a power cable, which Jaws stupidly bites into, frying him dead. Everyone cheers and we head back to the beginning. I happened to be sitting on the left side of the boat, which is where you want to be if you want to be splashed or right next to Jaws when he’s at his most “menacing”. Susan and I both had a campy good time on this ride and it should be held as some sort of rite of passage for theme park enthusiasts.

After Jaws, Susan wanted to go see the Animal Actors on Location show since it was closer to starting time. I wanted to ride the Men in Black Alien Attack ride so we decided to split up and meet when I was done.

Men In Black: Alien Attack

A quick note on this one: If you want to get ahead of the line quickly. Getting in the single rider line is definitely the way to go. By this time of day, the lines had started getting a little longer but I was able to get almost straight on anyway.

So MIB: AA as far as I could tell didn’t have much of a storyline to it. Basically it serves as a recruitment training program for the MIB agents. The ride itself is on a track similar to a lot of dark house-style rides with the car spinning quickly back and forth a good bit as you spin around firing at aliens. The firing part is the unique gimmick of this ride as it acts as a sort of shooting gallery with your car being equipped with a gun that you fire at alien targets as the ride progresses. It basically proceeds in this fashion until you come across a giant alien at the end that apparently involves setting explosives in its mouth that are detonated by driving your car in and spinning around a lot. This was a fun ride that was worth taking a little time to try out. For those who get sick on spinning rides like my wife, you might want to stay clear. Since I was able to get through the line so quickly, I decided to head over to Animal Actors on Location to watch it with Susan since it hadn’t started yet.

Animal Actors On Location

This was most likely Susan’s favorite attraction at the park, only trumped by a squirrel that came up to her foot and looked at her outside the E.T. ride. It was basically comprised of some animal trainers showing off some movie animals and how they are trained. It was a pretty interesting show, featuring a bird from Evan Almighty and the lab from Marley and Me, among others. At one point, a volunteer in the audience sitting right next to me had a bird fly up and snatch a dollar out of his hand. It was pretty neat to have something like that as close as it was.

After this I was able to convince Susan to ride the E.T. Adventure as I had mentioned earlier and she seemed to enjoy it, partially because the fake E.T. that sat in a basket in front of the bikes was attached to the bike she was on. After this we attempted to go to the Disaster! Ride but it was having issues, as it had been all day. Instead we decided to go to Shrek 4D.

Shrek 4D

The interesting thing about the fact that we went to Shrek 4D is that neither of us are big Shrek fans. We were mostly doing it to kill time until the next showing of Terminator 3D. The premise of Shrek 4D is that it picks up where the first movie ended. Basically Prince Farquaad has come back as a ghost and kidnapped Fiona. Of course, Shrek & Donkey hop in a carriage to give chase and save the day. So first off, the movie is in 3D, which was very impressive in places. It gives the 3D you would see in a local Cineplex a run for its money. The 4D aspect of it involves the seats they’ve put you in. The seats are positioned in a familiar theater-based setup but each seat has been rigged with some small hydraulics to simulate things like bumpy roads. The show will also spray you with air to simulate bugs crawling around your legs and spritz you with water to simulate donkey sneezing. Overall, it was pretty entertaining and air conditioned but the bumpiness of the seat motion I found a little annoying.

We missed the next showing of Terminator since Shrek took so long, so we went back over to Disaster to see if it was operational yet.

Disaster!

Susan and I both enjoyed this one. The fact that it featured Christopher Walken pretty much made it awesome for me, regardless of the entertainment of the ride portion. So this takes a while to go through. You begin in an initial room where the assistant director of Disaster Studios needs to select a few actors to appear in their next movie. He selects some random volunteers from the audience and everyone goes to the next room. The next room is the director’s office where Christopher Walken makes his grand appearance. The hologram they use to make Christopher Walken appear to be present is so lifelike and seamlessly integrated with the environment that at first I thought it was an actor they hired that just looked and acted exactly like Walken. After the director discusses his next picture, Mutha Nature, and his vision for Disaster Studios, everyone is then lead into the next room which appears to be a movie set with several scenes set up. The actors selected at the beginning are then placed in their appropriate spots and several scenes are then filmed within a brief 6-minute time period. It’s done in a pretty humorous fashion with the scenes coming into play later in the ride. We were then lead into the next room where are herded on board a subway train to aid the director in filming the last section of the movie. For those familiar with the history of Universal Studios, this section of the ride will be familiar as it is essentially the classic Earthquake! Ride that they have re-imagined into a movie shoot. The subway train heads into the next room where an earthquake strikes causing the street above to come crashing down with a semi sliding into the train, water to come pouring into the station and another train to fly off the tracks into the train. The whole time the First Unit Director (or somebody like that) is encouraging everyone to react in terror at the ridiculousness going on around them.

After everything is complete, the subway train backs into the previous room to let everyone out. As the train is backing out, we get to watch a trailer for our newly completed film that includes scenes the actors were in earlier as well as clips of everyone in the subway car. We particularly enjoyed a scene of a grandmother getting struck by lightning and exploding while gardening. Overall, this one is definitely recommended and takes a good 20 minutes total to get through. As a result, you really get your money’s worth regardless of the wait time.

After this we finally decided to make our way over to Terminator 3D since the next showing was coming up.

Terminator 3D

We are shown a pre-show video featuring Cyberdyne technologies and how they are improving the world through their innovations. I found this video delightfully cheesy and outdated, featuring such communications innovations as the ability to tuck a child into bed from hundreds of miles away using bulky robot arms attached to the bedframe. After the video gets interrupted by Sarah & John Connor, era T2, the cheerfully annoying Cyberdyne Director of Human Relations ushers everyone into the theater. At this point, she introduces the latest Cyberdyne technology, a robotic fighting force. Several Terminator robots then are revealed via raised platforms across the sides of the auditorium. At this point, the proceedings are interrupted again by the Connors propelling in from the ceiling. Everything up to this point has been all live action. A three large screens act as the backdrop of the auditorium. While firing their weapons and threatening the human relations lady, John & Sarah are interrupted by a T1000 that first appears on the screen, oozing out in a very cool 3D effect. He then walks through a portal and appears on the stage, giving chase to the revolutionaries and killing the annoying Cyberdyne lady. Arnie then ride a motorcycle from out of the screen, firing a shotgun at the T1000 and spewing cheesy one-liners like there’s no tomorrow. He then grabs John and drives through a time portal into the future. The next section of the show is primarily on screen and Arnie & John are pursued in the future by all manner of evil robot as they seek to destroy the Skynet complex. Through a series of action sequences involving lots more one-liners, they arrive at the center of Skynet where a giant liquid robot mantis thing proceeds to attack them. When John asks Arnie what it is, he replies that it’s the T1000000. Really?

Anyway, at this point the actors are back out on the stage with the bug attacking them via awesome 3D effects across all three screens. This section I felt was very cool and one of the most interesting examples of 3D I had ever seen. Given the age of the ride (mid-90’s), I was very impressed. I can only assume that they’ve probably updated the technology since it first opened. Anyway, they freeze the robot using liquid nitrogen or something and destroy it. Then they blow up Skynet and everybody celebrates. Susan and I both really liked this one, despite the cheesiness of it in places. I definitely recommend it to anyone visiting.

After Terminator 3D we made our way out of the park and ate dinner at Pastamore, a decent Italian place on the Universal Citywalk outside the park.

In summary, I really enjoyed this theme park for several reasons. First of all, the rides were consistently of a high quality and most were pretty lengthy. There’s nothing that aggravates me more than having to wait 40 or more minutes in line for a ride only to have it last a minute and be less than amazing. A second positive point to the park was that it had more shaded areas than many I’ve been to owing to the fact that it was designed like a movie studio with a lot of closely grouped together buildings. A third positive aspect was that many of the rides were indoors, offering a nice break from the heat.

Universal Studios Day 1: Morning

2010-06-21T06:39:00.000-05:00

Having just gotten back from our honeymoon, I thought I would write down our experience at Universal Studios to any curious. I'll be breaking it up into sections, so keep a look out for future blogs on it as well.

We got up first thing in the morning to make sure we arrived at the park before the patrons began flooding the streets with gibbering nonsense and long lines. Deciding to go in a roughly clockwise pattern around the park, primarily to hit some of the more popular rides first, Susan and I began our sojourn into theme park territory with the Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit roller coaster.

Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit

The line for this coaster was mercifully short, owing to our excellent of strategy of getting to the park early. The coaster features a stadium-seating style arrangement with each seat having its own set of speakers and a small touch console in front of you. The console features six different styles of music to select from. I initially selected the Rock & Metal, hoping for something awesome. Unfortunately Universal deems nonsense such as Limp Bizkit roller coaster-ready. So I backed out and went to the Electronica section where I immediately set my eyes on and jammed my finger at the awesomeness of Daft Punk’s “Harder Better Faster Stronger”. So if you’re wondering what the music selection is for, in case you haven’t already guessed (and God help you if you haven’t…), the roller coaster blasts your music selection into your brain and it’s twisting you about and plunging you through several loops and twists. I enjoyed this one quite a bit. Unfortunately, due to a heavy breakfast and a few too many inverted 540 helixes, the Rockit left Susan feeling nauseous and uneasy for most of the morning. In an attempt to help her calm her stomach, we decided to proceed to an attraction that’s more of a show than an actual ride, Twister: Ride It Out.

Twister: Ride It Out

While waiting on the ride to start in a queuing area, we were treated to not one but two extended trailers for the movie Twister. As much as I enjoy watching Bill Paxton discuss how harrowing his movie-making experience in central Oklahoma was (“right in the middle of TORNADO ALLEY!”…that Jean De Bont is so dangerous…), I was anxious to get the thing started. The attraction is basically presented as a tornado simulator. We were led to three rows of platforms under what appeared to be a shed with standing room only. The set where the tornado was to occur looked not unlike Belk, Alabama, with some rusty pickup trucks sitting by an old gas station. Then the sky gets cloudy; tornado weather is at hand. This is actually one of the neater effects of making an indoor area look like a stormy sky through the use of special effects. Then the winds began picking up greatly with the tornado materializing in the middle of the set. A truck began spinning its wheels as it’s pulled backwards toward the funnel and a very cheesy cow on strings is pulled across the set. Somehow on the opposite side of the stage from where we were standing, a fire was started by an power pole falling onto a gas pump igniting the whole thing as the fire got pulled into the tornado. The fire was real. I could feel the heat, and it was a gratifying climax. As far as a recommendation, it was kind of neat and I could see it being a good break from the heat in the afternoon since the whole thing was air conditioned. Susan was still feeling sick after this one, so I decided to go it alone for the next ride, Revenge of the Mummy.

Revenge of the Mummy

Revenge of the Mummy is a sort of mixture of haunted house and indoor roller coaster. The queue for the ride (which I waited on next to no time at all like most of the rides in the park) features Brendan Frasier hamming it up in an interview, as he often does. Once on the ride, it features an animatronic mummy telling you to join him and he’ll reward you with gold… or be punished… You know, that sort of thing. The ride seems to assume you do not want to join him as it then sends you into another room with the mummy’s booming voice proclaiming ominous threats of doom as bugs crawl out of the walls. This effect was done using giant projection screens. The card then flies backward out of the bug-filled room and more crazy stuff happens which culminates in you climbing a big hill that leads straight into the mummy’s mouth. The mummy has apparently eaten a lot of spinning scarabs of varying colors since that is mostly what you see as the ride then whips around lots of tight twists and turns in mostly darkness. After a minute or so, you go into what appears to be the exit area with a theme park operator on a video screen thanking you for riding and hoping you had a great experience. At this point, the operator then bursts into flames as the mummy’s voice comes back in yelling more threats at you. The ceiling then catches on fire, real fire, before the ride shoots you back into the darkness of the roller coaster section once again. After more rotating beetles and coaster fun, you then head to the real exit with Brendan Frasier hamming it up again as you leave. Overall, this was possibly my favorite ride in the Universal Studios part of the park and was a great experience that I highly recommend to visitors. After this, Susan was feeling a little better so we made our way over to her most anticipated ride, The Simpsons Ride.

The Simpsons Ride

The queue for this one was in typical Simpsons form, pretty entertaining. It definitely made the wait more bearable, which didn’t matter too much anyway since we only waited a few minutes. The whole ride has a very carnival-esque feel to it with fake ads for different booths and various supporting characters running booths in the queuing line, for instance Groundskeeper Willie running the booth that involves hitting bottles with a baseball. After being ushering into a second queuing area with just the group that will be in the car with us, we were treated to an original Simpsons short that lays out the premise of the ride, that being that Krusty has opened a new theme park called Krustyland but that Sideshow Bob has connived his way into getting the Simpsons into the first pilot group with a plot to kill them. Meanwhile Maggie is left in charge of Grandpa, who promptly falls asleep allowing Maggie to wander into a nuclear radiation-infested room. We, along with the Simpsons, were then ushered onto the ride where Bob proceeds to change the ride’s setting from Thrilling to Killing, setting off a whole sequence of ridiculously rough-and-tumble events, culminating in a giant, radioactive Maggie saving the day. The ride is motion simulator-based where we were basically seated in an eight-person car that shakes, spins and tilts around using a series of hydraulics while the action is projected on a massive 80-foot high IMAX screen. I thought it was pretty neat but ultimately nausea-inducing. It was pretty much the only ride in the park that made me queasy and it certainly did nothing to make Susan feel any better.

After this we made our way over to the Animal Actors on Location show which unfortunately had not started yet. So while Susan was recovering I decided to wander into the E.T. Adventure ride.

E.T. Adventure

E.T. Adventure is a very tame dark house-style ride in which a group is seated on these bicycle-looking contraptions that hang from a rialto facilitate the illusion of a flying bicycle. It was fairly primitive but got the job done. Before boarding the ride I was issued a passport to E.T.’s home planet, or some such nonsense, where I gave them my first name and they gave me a bar-coded card to give to the ride operator. The reasons for this become apparent later. I was also treated to a video explaining the plot by Spielberg. So I boarded the ride, and the first part involved E.T. fleeing from the nefarious F.B.I. After escaping and doing the whole “flying across the moon” deal, you know what I’m talking about, I then arrived on E.T.’s home planet, where I was treated to a semi-grotesque menagerie of E.T.’s friends celebrating his return. I want to point out that the set design on this portion of the ride was very impressive with lots of vibrant details from E.T.’s home planet that children should really enjoy. At the very end of the ride, I was treated to E.T. then thanking myself and the other guys on the ride by first name (Aha! You see what they did there!). I thought it was ok and a pleasant diversion. I have a sort of soft spot for these old rides like this and the Monster Plantation at Six Flags over Georgia. As a side note, I came back with Susan and rode this one again because I thought she might like it, and I was correct. She thought the little mini-E.T. creatures that I found kind of creepy were cute.

Susan was still feeling kind of crappy, so we decided to watch a show to let her relax a little in some air conditioning. So we made our way over to the Horror Make Up Show.

Horror Make Up Show

This one is basically intended to demonstrate how the make up in horror films were done. The make-up specialist they brought in was way, way too hammy and got on my nerves almost immediately. He did demonstrate a couple of interesting special effects on an elderly Philippine woman with a heart condition that they kept picking on in the audience. It had a fairly cheesy ending involving a guy in a monster suit chasing the effects guy around. If anything, the show didn’t feature enough behind-the-scenes special effects looks. Overall it was an ok distraction, but nothing I’d recommend wholeheartedly unless you wanted to get out of the heat.

We then made our way over to Finnegan’s Bar & Grill for lunch, which featured traditional Irish food. I thought my Bangers and Mash was actually very good but Susan seemed to be disappointed with her veggie burger. After lunch, Susan was feeling better so we headed over to the notorious Jaws.

Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix Review

2010-02-09T14:07:00.000-06:00

The first time I ever laid eyes on Mario Sunshine I thought, “Wow, there’s no way Mario could get more flamboyant than that…” I was so incredibly wrong.

DDR:MM contains many of the same trappings as previous DDR games. If you’ve played one, you’ve played them all, as ‘they’ say. The big and most obvious different with this one is of course the presentation and the story mode. DDR:MM features seven Mario game-based characters to dance as, with or against. It also features a plethora of Mario-based music with some public domain classical music mixed in as well. I never thought I would be playing DDR to a Mario song, and it feels weird to do so. Having Mario prancing about on screen as if he had been impaled by a giant rainbow and stuffed full of cotton candy and buttercups did not help to easy the uncomfortable feeling I had while dancing along.

Poor Waluigi. To date, this is the only Mario game that he has been placed front and center as the primary antagonist. If playing second fiddle to Wario isn’t bad enough, he has to act menacing in a DDR game? Geez. Next thing you know, he’ll be showing up as a villain in the next iteration of Nintendogs. The story mode in general is pretty thin, but really, it’s more than I expected. Anything more than ‘Pick song. Dance.’ Is more than I expected.

One thing I immediately noticed about this game in comparison to other DDR games is how easy it is. It might be a great starting place for people wanting to get into DDR if it weren’t so hard to find. As a result though, the hardcore DDR fans will find little to interest them here unless they just really want to dance to Mario songs.

Overall is it worth a recommendation? If you are into DDR or Mario then perhaps. Or you could always get a bunch of friends over and mock it.

Speedy Gonzales: Los Gatos Banditos Review

2010-02-04T16:15:00.000-06:00

Speedy Gonzales: Los Gatos Banditos for the Super Nintendo is an interesting experiment. They’ve basically taken the fast platforming of Sonic the Hedgehog and threw Speedy Gonzales, not one of the most popular Looney Tunes characters, in the midst of it. The level design isn’t as clean as Sonic so you will find yourself speeding along only to stop dead in your tracks to perform some awkward platforming. The enemies seem to be mostly bland and forgettable but the graphics are brightly colorful and crisp and suit the gameplay nicely.

The difficulty seems a little more gradual than many of the licensed games from this era, possibly still too steep for small children though. And given the tone and style of the game, this seems to be part of the audience they were trying to reach. I will definitely say it is much more suited for the younger age set that the frustratingly difficult Road Runner’s Death Valley Rally. Nevertheless, getting a competent platformer from a licensed title is a rarity in and of itself, so I think the game is worth a play or two.

A Whole Heapin' Helpin' of Video Game Reviews

2010-02-03T16:33:00.003-06:00

Psychonauts (Xbox)

Tim Schaeffer never fails to amaze me. This guy has been responsible for some of the most humorous, innovative and just plain fun adventure games out there. Psychonauts is no different and fits so well within his body of work that it should come as no surprise that this game is highly creative and expertly designed.

The game is very story-driven with some of the most ingenious game mechanics I’ve seen in quite some time. Much of the early part of the game takes place in a camp to train future Psychonauts, people with extrasensory powers who are put through the ringer to render them capable of battling fiendish psychoses and mind-boggling (quite literally) nemeses. You play as Raz, a wannabe Psychonaut, who sneaks into the camp against his parents’ wishes in order to fulfill his destiny of mastering his psychic abilities. You then get pulled into a sinister plot involving a deranged doctor who wants to steal the psychic cadets’ brains to power a crazy super tank. You of course must rescue kids’ brains and stop the mad doctor with a few twists along the way.

The first thing to point out is that this is one of the funniest games I’ve played in a long time. From a level built around an extended Godzilla parody to a boss fight with an Ultraman mockery who shouts out literally what he’s doing before attacking to ridiculous luchadors to all sorts of crazies walled away in an asylum, the humor is highly diverse, ensuring that it could appeal to a wide range of people.

Even if all the game had going for it was the comedy, it would still be a great game. Fortunately though, the game also features some masterful level design with some incredibly epic (and sometimes frustratingly difficult) platforming. From the multi-layered, multi-scaled stages mixed with strategic board game of the Napoleon level to the gnarled, twisted platforming of the upper floors of the asylum to the crazy meat circus as you near the finale, the game never grows stale and always leaves you wondering what crazy imaginative world will come next.

If you haven’t guessed by now, I whole-heartedly recommend this criminally underplayed game unless of course you hate yourself. And if that’s the case, then you should probably go play Cabela’s Big Game Hunter.

Lego Rock Band (Xbox 360)

It seems like every time I’ve brought up Lego Rock Band people get confused. Why would they make a Rock Band game with Legos? Is it just the same Rock Band with Legos?

To answer the first question, they did to reach a more kid/family-friendly audience. Who doesn’t like Legos, right? Along with the cute and wacky Legos characters and storyline they’ve put in the game, the developers have also put together a family-friendly setlist to accompany it (for the most part…I’ll discuss this later).

To address the second question, it’s still basically Rock Band. Have they added any new or interesting features? Yes, in a couple of different ways. Some have been added to make the game a little more kid-friendly (are you seeing a theme yet?) and some have been added to flesh out the story mode a little more to bring out the humor that we’ve come to expect from a Lego game. One key thing they’ve changed to make this more family-oriented is that when you fail in a song, the song doesn’t stop. You just lose some points and keep going from where you failed. They’ve also added a Very Easy difficulty that basically has so few notes that it was thrown in to cater to very small children who just like to hold instruments and do whatever they want on them without worrying about creating havoc for the other players. To flesh out the story mode, they’ve added challenges that feature such ridiculous scenarios as requiring your band to rock so hard they demolish a building that the construction crew was having difficulty with or thawing out a ship that had been frozen over in the arctic, not to mention the whole alien finale. It’s also great to see some of the bands in the setlist represented as Lego characters like Queen, David Bowie, Iggy Pop and the mighty Spinal Tap.

Speaking of the aforementioned bands, and I had alluded to this earlier, is the questionable nature of the setlist for families. Why songs like Iggy Pop’s The Passenger or Spinal Tap’s Short & Sweet were included are beyond me. Do children listen to Iggy Pop? Maybe they associate him with the guy from Snow Day. Who knows? Then there are things like Ride A White Swan by T. Rex and Make Me Smile by Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel that I have to wonder if anyone will recognize. It seems like they are trying to please both the families and the Rock Band die-hards and I’m afraid they may end up losing some of both. I also had an unrelated qualm with the number of songs in this game comparing to previous Rock Band games. The setlist is about half of what it is normally. On the positive side of things, there are some great songs that families will love to play over and over again such as Ghostbusters and Kung Fu Fighting. One other question might be running through your head if you’re a long-term Rock Band fan. Will previous download content work with this game? The answer is sometimes. Harmonix has gone through all the previous download content and flagged it as family friendly if appropriate to Lego Rock Band. Sometimes the decision is questionable (Smash It Up by The Damned is family friendly?), but overall it makes sense why they would do this. Lego Rock Band is for the kids and Rock Band 2 is for the grownups.

You may have noticed I haven’t really discussed the core mechanics of the game much. This is because it plays exactly the same as previous Rock Band/Guitar Hero games and if you don’t know how those work, then you probably don’t have a video game console anyway because you live in a hole two miles below the surface of the earth.

Overall, it’s a little hard to determine whether I can completely recommend this game. But given its family friendly nature and enough songs to appeal to the core Rock Band fan with the ability to export them to your hard drive, I think I could safely suggest trying it out, particularly if the price point drops further.

Guitar Hero: Van Halen (Xbox 360)

Neversoft and co. have never shied away from spin-off games in the Guitar Hero series. With entire games for Aerosmith and Metallica as well as games such as Smash Hits and Band Hero that utilize the same formula, it becomes difficult to keep track of all the Guitar Hero games being churned out on what seems like a bi-monthly basis. So what sets GH:VH apart from other titles in the series other than just having a lot of Van Halen songs? Unfortunately not much. The formula is the same and they’ve even seemed to take a step back from GH: Metallica. Rather than having a fully fleshed out story mode like the previous game, in GH:VH you just get a list of songs to play with the actual Van Halen songs being portrayed in a live concert.

Front and center in this game is the massive ego of Eddie Van Halen. The opening cut scene even features Eddie coming out on stage and playing the song-length guitar solo Eruption as a spotlight focuses exclusively on him. This sets the tone of the game right from the start. As perhaps a peace offering to David Lee Roth, the game features no songs from any other singers. No Hagar. No Cherone (not to say were clamoring for him… sorry Gary but you just suck). Given than Van Hagar had a couple of pretty big hits, especially Right Now, I think a lot of people will call foul on this. An additional thing to note is that the other artists in the game, hand-picked by Van Halen apparently, seem at first to be highly at odds with the actual Van Halen music (Blink 182? Yellowcard?). But then it dawns on you. None of the hand-picked songs are anywhere close to as technically proficient on guitar as Eddie. The songs were basically picked to further feed Eddie’s ego.

So are the songs themselves fun to play? If you are a guitarist, then you will be in heaven on the actual Van Halen songs and be bored with most of the others. If you play bass or drums, you will probably start seeing a lot of the same patterns repeated throughout the songs. It’s telling that some of the hardest drum songs in the game aren’t Van Halen’s except “Hot For Teacher” (which is just as crazy here as it was in GH: World Tour) and a couple of others. The vocals are David Lee Roth. You will know immediately if this is your cup of tea, so I won’t spend any time on it.

Overall, this feels like much more of a slapped together effort than the previous Guitar Hero: Metallica with limited input from the band other than picking the song list. If you are a guitarist and want a fiendish challenge, this might be worth picking up especially if it gets cheaper or if you took advantage of the offer to get it free with the purchase of Guitar Hero 5 when it first came out. Otherwise, you may want to steer clear.

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (GameCube)

Reboots of old series can be a tricky beast. Sometimes they succeed such as in the case of Metroid: Prime and others fail miserably like Golden Axe and Rygar. The best reboots take what made the original unique and fun to place and incorporates those traits into a complete makeover that breaks new ground of its own. Prince of Persia: SOT is such a game. The original PoP implemented a finely crafted, challenging and deliberately paced platform puzzle game which influenced other games such as Out of this World and Blackthorne. There are quite a few cell phone games using the same basic mechanic as well.

So what could a reboot of Prince of Persia bring to the table? Naturally it would be 3D rather than 2D like the original with excellent graphics for this generation. But many 3D games have attempted to capture the spirit of 2D games and fallen flat. What could SoT do to keep the spirit of the original while remaining an engaging and original game in its own right? Fluidity is a key part of this successful re-imagining. The original game was praised for the fluid movement of the prince and how gracefully he leapt through all manner of traps and pits. SoT does it one better. The platforming elements are incredibly fluid and feel almost effortless for how impressive the movements are. But that same fluidity has also been worked into the combat sequences. Using graceful, sweeping attacks that involve flipping, leaping off walls and gallantly slashing, the combat in SoT is a sight to behold as well as play. You will find yourself looking forward to the combat sequences just to see the prince in action.

So ok, the fluid movement looks cool and the controls respond well. What else? Honestly the game could have done this and probably still succeeded in what it set to out to accomplish. But rather than be content with a few really cool ideas, the developers also included a great new feature implemented exceedingly well: the ability to rewind time using the titular Sands of Time. By activating the sand, it allows you to rewind time a few seconds to before you made perhaps a misconceived leap or failed to block a blow from an enemy properly. Does this make the game too easy? I don’t think so. I felt the game had an excellent blend of challenge versus fun. I rarely found myself getting really frustrated with the game, but I also never got bored.

I haven’t really mentioned the storyline much because honestly it isn’t terribly substantial. It involves a bad guy trying to get his hands on the sands of time and an imperiled princess. But the story isn’t really the star here. I think people who like platforming and third person action games will love this game, particularly if they are the sort who likes platform-based action games but finds a lot of the actual platforming to be tedious or frustratingly difficult. I give this game a hearty recommendation to anyone that enjoys the sheer act of playing a video game. As a final word of warning though, I haven’t played the following PoP games, but I’ve read that the difficulty in them increases significantly. So be aware of that.

Mike Tyson’s Punch Out (NES)

You know what’s awesome? Punching people in the face. This is the first video game I recall playing that truly captured the satisfaction of punching someone in the face. Originally an arcade game and expertly ported to the NES, Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, and later Punch Out after Tyson got all bite-y, was packed full of wacky characters with incredibly satisfying and addictive gameplay.

In many respects Punch Out is less a boxing simulator and more an early rhythm game. The actual strategy of boxing mattered very little in Punch Out beyond using uppercuts and gut shots appropriately. Rather, the game focused more on memorizing patterns and reacting quickly and precisely to the enemies’ attacks. Watching someone stabbing buttons on the controller in Punch Out is not unlike watching the furious feet of a hardcore Dance Dance Revolution addict in the midst of some throbbing techno beat.

Another thing to note is that Little Mac was reduced in size from the arcade version due to the technical limitations of the NES, but it ended up working in the favor of the game. Watching Little Mac take on these massive boxers twice his size made the victories all the more satisfying whether it be the flamboyant Don Flamenco, the grossly obese King Hippo or the belligerently burly Bald Bull.

Is there even a question as to whether I would recommend this game? Of course not. It’s one of the most solidly entertaining games for the 8-bit generation, or any other generation for that matter. Play it and enjoy.

SNK vs Capcom: Match of the Millenium (NGPC)

Ever heard of the Neo Geo Pocket Color? Are you a fighting game fan? If the answer to those two questions is No then Yes, then you sir or madam have done a grave disservice to yourself. The NGPC not only had one of the most solid lineups of fighting games for any console, greatly in part due to SNK’s direct involvement in the launch of the handheld, but it also featured quite possibly the best D-pad I have ever used, designed specifically to be used in fighting games. The biggest negative to the system in my eyes was the lack of back-lighting, which given its competition with the GBA and little marketing muscle behind it ensured a quick demise.

So I talked about the handheld a little. How about the games? Well, due to the lack of success for the handheld the library is not huge, but if you were to look at the % of quality games released, this little guy would be near the top. And SNK vs. Capcom: MotM is probably the best fighting game for the system, which is pretty high praise considering the sheer number of good to great fighting games released for it.

Like its home console brethren, SvC:MotM features a solid and diverse lineup of characters from all manner of SNK and Capcom fighting games. Despite having to scale back on the graphics for a handheld, presenting the fighters as sort of chibi figures, the graphics are crisp and clear with a solid frame rate and no slowdown that I ever noticed. And as any fighting game fan knows, these are critical components of a well-balanced fighter, balance being a key word here. This is I feel one of the most balanced fighters I’ve played in a long time with each character having distinct strengths and weaknesses that never seem too exploitive. At no point did I use a fighter that I felt was significantly more powerful than the others.

In closing, I suggest that you immediately hit up your favorite online auction site and snatch up a Neo Geo Pocket Color and as many fighting games as you can, especially this one.

Clash at Demonhead (NES)

Ah, the days of the NES… The days when even a mediocre platformer could stand out amongst the wretched dreck populating the system in its hayday, which brings us to Clash at Demonhead. Point #1 working in its favor is that it begins with an overhead map akin to that of Mario 3 or Bionic Commando with multiple branching paths in places that allow you to choose the direction you wish to play. Once selecting a level, it changes to your typical side-scrolling platformer. The game also features upgrade-able weapons, not too common in this era. Point #2 in its favor is the responsive controls. In an era where many platformers featured imprecise, slippery or unresponsive controls, CaD manages to create controls that feel natural and intuitive.

Point #1 against it is that the graphics are rather bland. The game lacks a lot of the detail of the great platformers of the NES such as the Mario series, Kirby’s Adventure and the like. Point #2 against it is that the actual platform levels tend to be rather repetitive and not particularly inventive in any way. The enemies likewise are somewhat uninspired as well.

So it sounds like it about breaks even, right? Like I alluded to at the beginning, here’s a classic example of a mediocre platformer that does just enough to set it apart from the throngs of terrible games inundating the NES. Whether or not it’s worth playing is entirely up to how much you enjoy platformers. I say, why not? It could be worse.

James Bond Jr. (SNES)

Does anyone remember this cartoon/merchandising blitz from the early 90’s? No? I can’t say I’m surprised. It featured basically the “nephew” of the exotic super agent 007 (I personally suspect him of being a bastard child from one of Bond’s hundreds of conquests… I mean, why the Jr.?) setting out to thwart the evil organization S.C.U.M. in their various nefarious plots.

Of course, this is completely irrelevant to the SNES game of the same name as it gives you even less plot to go off of than the TV series did. The first level consists of mediocre platforming, delivering bland gameplay even for a licensed title on the SNES. Then for some random reason, it switches to a side-scrolling shooter where you pilot a helicopter shooting down planes and bombing tanks. I don’t recall Jr. bombing tanks in the cartoon… This section is somewhat enjoyable at first but quickly becomes tedious as it goes on for far too long.

I don’t want to penalize a game for trying to mix things up and implement different sorts of gameplay, but when all of them are done poorly, that’s when I take umbrage. I think there might be a 3D driving section also, but honestly I got so bored I stopped playing after the helicopter level. I say, just don’t bother.

Ninja Warriors (SNES)

Most little known games for the SNES are rightly left forgotten. Donald Trump could build a tower with the cartridges of terrible games for this system. But sometimes, we come across a hidden gem, an unheralded game with fun gameplay and great graphics that somehow slipped through the cracks and never achieved the success it deserved. Ninja Warriors is such a game. With the actual cartridges now relegated to rare status, fetching pretty high prices on eBay, most will discover this game through the use of emulators. I was lucky enough to snag an original copy in a pawn shop, but regardless of where you get this game, I guarantee you will have a good time with it.

Ninja Warriors is a beat-em-up similar in gameplay to Final Fight and the like but in 2D rather than having a slightly isometric perspective. Where it excels is in its tight controls, richly textured graphics, and fun beat-em-up action. You can choose from three different fighters, each with different abilities to aid you in your fight. One thing this game does right over many other games of its ilk is in variety. You are always coming across new locations and enemies to traverse and fight respectively. No longer do you have to deal with killing the same drably dressed street thug over and over again with a slightly different name.

The plot? One of the most awesome things I’ve ever heard. Here’s a synopsis coutesy of Wikipedia detailing the plot of the arcade original from which this is based:

The game is based in a dystopian future where the Bangler, the President of the United States in 1993, issues martial law on the nation, with the military having total control over the law - but not the ninjas. A group of anarchist scientists decide that it is time to revolt against the government. Knowing full well that approaching the military themselves could be considered an all out suicide mission, the scientists create two prototype cybernetic ninjas that can sustain various forms of damage in order to do the mission for them. These ninjas, code named "Ninja" and "Kunoichi", are sent by the scientists in order to assail Bangler and end his tyranny once and for all.

I have no real negative comments for this game. You need to play it. C’mon, man… Ninjas… I promise it’s better than Wrath of the Black Manta.

Zack & Wiki Review

2010-01-27T16:20:00.002-06:00

It seems like the old school graphic adventure is making a small comeback. With old LucasArts franchises like Monkey Island and Sam & Max being updated for a new generation and games like Phoenix Wright doing well for the DS, things are looking pretty good for adventure game fans. For every Professor Layton that performs well enough to warrant sequels is a Zack & Wiki, a game that was critically acclaimed but that people just did not buy. It’s unfortunate because although it is not without its faults, I feel Zack & Wiki is a solidly entertaining point & click adventure game with some of the most fiendish puzzles I’ve seen in quite some time.

The plot is pretty inconsequential, involving a ghost pirate that requests that you scour various worlds for his body parts so he can reward you with his awesome pirate ship. The visual design of the game is very animé-influenced with a very kiddy-oriented appearance. This is highly deceptive given the very high difficulty of the game as it progresses closer to the end. I would also like to point out that the monkey, Wiki, was highly irritating. But what’s an animé without an annoying creature to torment the main character?

The puzzles in general are very clever and require a lot of lateral thinking skills. Some, particularly toward the end, can get very frustrating due to what I refer to Sierra Adventure Syndrome, the practice of a game forcing you to restart to a much earlier point in the game due to a random object you didn’t collect that you need much later in the game. With Zack & Wiki being divided into different worlds with each puzzle area being self-contained, it isn’t quite as bad as having to restart the game. But some levels are very long and missing a crucial switch or item can lead to replaying through thirty minutes of game over and over again to get it right through trial and error. This sort of situation doesn’t become a real nuisance until fairly late in the game when the time to play through the levels grows to 45 minutes or longer. Also, this game more than many requires a LOT of trial and error to getting some of the puzzles since there are hidden traps and murderous enemies scattered about randomly.

I think a key issue with the game though is the control scheme. Wii Waggle is ok in moderation if it isn’t broken, but when a game such as this one is highly dependent on the motion controls and they just plain don’t work, particularly in timed puzzles, it can be very irritating. And this game does indeed have its fair share of unnecessarily irritating moments due to bad controls. But I don’t feel they are frequent enough to not recommend the game.

Overall, I think Capcom has done a fine job of creating a fun and challenging puzzle adventure albeit one with questionable controls. Adventure game fans take note.

The Good Ol' Days...

2009-12-18T20:27:00.005-06:00

So nearly 5 years ago, I had a movie journal that I kept where I essentially wrote little mini-reviews or impressions about whatever I had just watched. It was a kind of private blog stored in a word doc. I recently uncovered it and thought 'hey, why not throw it on here? People like to pry into private writings on the internet!' So I'll be throwing on sections of it periodically until I either reach the end or lose interest.

So here's about half of September for those with any interest. Feel free to post comments if you have any interest to see more. In particular, I kinda would like to post the section where I essentially took on the challenge of watching a horror movie for every day of October in the spirit of Halloween. If anyone cares enough, I'll post it after September.

9/6/04

Collateral

I’m not incredibly familiar with Michael Mann’s work. I have seen Manhunter, and thought it was decided unsuspenseful for a suspense thriller about a serial killer. Perhaps because it was primarily shot in daylight, it never worked for me. Collateral on the other hand, is almost entirely filmed at night, and it works very well. First of all, I want to mention how surprised I was by Jamie Foxx’s acting. Before this, he usually just played morons or playas. He actually felt like a real person in this one. Even Tom Cruise isn’t as grating as he once was. Perhaps his worst days are behind him. The movie had a strong sense of atmosphere, like a quiet cool with intense violence simmering just beneath the surface. The scene in the jazz club is a great example of this.

Stepford Wives

This was an entertaining way to spend an hour and a half. Frank Oz, the director, has decided to play this one for laughs instead of attempting to drum up any kind of suspense as the book and the first film did. I’m pretty certain this choice was made based on the fact that the ending was hardly a surprise to most people by this point. The very term ‘Stepford wife’ has a very specific meaning for most people and the phrase has literally entered the general lexicon. Basically, I was prepared for a few good laughs and some modest entertainment, and that’s exact what I got. It did throw in a good batch of social commentary to make the film more relevant, but the signals became a little mixed (so is being a high-powered, stressed out female a good or bad thing?). The only other problem I had was the gaping plot hole the film provided. It couldn’t seem to decide whether the Stepford wives were robots or just brainwashed via microchips in their brains.

‘It’

I picked this up in a sale, completely as a blind buy since I knew little to nothing about Clara Bow other than she was a film star in the silent era. After watching ‘It’, it’s very apparent why she was a star. She had a nature charisma that carried the film. The plot of the film was a fairly common one by today’s standards (girl pretends to like one guy so she can get close to his friend), but in its day, ‘It’ was a fairly revelatory film. Clara Bow actively sought and manipulated men with a sex appeal that no one had seen in a film star at that point. The best thing that can be said about a silent film is that when you watch it, you forget that its silent and you know only that you are watching a movie. That’s precisely how I felt with ‘It’. At a brisk 75 minutes, the action and charm flies by at a breakneck pace. By the end, you feel a general happiness for no apparent reason. That’s right; it’s a “feel-good” movie. And I enjoyed it.

9/7/04

Touching the Void

I was pretty certain I never wanted to go mountain climbing. This movie only cements that fact further. It was a very fascinating film about survival. It did seem less suspenseful since the people being represented in the narrative were obviously healthy and safely telling the story themselves. You knew how it was going to end. Nonetheless, it was still a very intriguing journey. I just have to wonder at the sheer determination it took for Joe to keep going on. I also thought it was bizarre toward the end when the film took on a more drug-induced air with jump cuts, odd camera angles and all sorts of other camera trickery. The effect of the song getting stuck in his head was particularly singular in how odd it was.

9/8/04

The Prowler

I found this to be a very workman-like, competent effort into the slasher genre with some very good gore effects courtesy of Tom Savini. Little touches like the opening with the newsreel and letter in black and white struck and giving it a little more appeal than most generic slasher films like The Burning. Another thing I liked about it was the identity of the killer and the way it didn’t really explain to the characters his motivation for doing it. Most of these sorts of films feel an obligation to throw in some aggrandizing speech wherein the villain explains the mental anguish he had gone through and why he must kill. This one doesn’t. I just wonder if this was a conscious decision on the part of the filmmakers or if they were just too lazy to throw in such a scene.

9/9/04

Comic Book Confidential

This was an interesting and entertaining documentary on comic books. I would by no means recommend it as an all-encompassing history of comic books, (mainstream comics are all but abandoned by the 60’s portion) but it is an immensely enjoyable film. It essentially splits the film into two sections. The first half of the movie is involved primarily with an early history of comics, mainstream companies like DC and Marvel, and the eventual creation of the comic code in the wake of William Gaines deliciously demented EC Comics line. The second half of the film is mostly concerned with the evolution of independent comics, giving ample screen time to figures such as R. Crumb and Harvey Pekar. The end tries half heartedly to mention the darkening of mainstream comics with titles like The Dark Knight Returns, but it seems more tacked on than anything. It may be just a result of the fact that the film was released in 1989, so the new dark, gritty movement was just getting going. The best thing I liked about this film was the way in which they semi-animated the comics into sort of slideshows, adding sound effects and having the artists read them. I thought it was a great way to bring the comics into film without full blown animation that may have possibly created an awkward experience.

9/10/04

Bubba Ho-Tep

I saw this when it came to the Galleria 10 theater in Birmingham. I knew it was going to be something special the moment I heard about it. The guy who did Phantasm gets the guy who was Ash to play Elvis, who isn’t really dead but in a nursing home because he switched places with an impersonator back in the day, and the old black guy who always plays old black guys to play JFK, or at least someone believing he is JFK who has been dyed black and has had his brain removed but kept alive in a government compound in Washington and replaced with a bag of sand? Then they proceed to fight against an ancient Egyptian mummy who happened to stumble across some cowboy gear somewhere and who lives off the souls of the elderly by sucking them out their anuses? And it also has a great soundtrack? Sign me up cuz this flick was one of the best of the year.

Hotel Room

Originally conceived as the pilot of a new television series for David Lynch, the networks didn’t like what they saw, so the three episodes filmed were compiled into one movie in an anthology format. The first and last vignettes were both directed by David Lynch and are definitely less mundane than the middle vignette. The first story concerning Harry Dean Stanton, a prostitute, and an old, fat guy named Lou is probably the most entertaining of the bunch. It features just the right amount of Lynchian weirdness that his fans have come to expect without going on too long. The third vignette, with Crispin Glover as a husband and Alicia Witt as a wife making conversation while in a blackout, is at times very bizarre as well due to the wife’s mental illness caused by the death of her son, but it seems to suffer from being too long-winded for its own good. This one goes on for nearly an hour and at times you really start to feel each minute tick by due to the fact that it really is almost entirely just one conversation between two individuals. The second vignette was modestly entertaining and involves a woman discussing with her two friends about how she plans to dump her boyfriend, played by Griffin Dunne, because of his lack of commitment and his philandering ways. But she is caught off guard when he arrives early and dumps her before she can dump him. Naturally it ends in violence. One final odd touch I thought I would mention is the fact that each vignette takes place in a different time period in the same room, 603, but the bellboy and maid are played by the same actor and actress in all three. It really helps to add to the ageless feel of the hotel.

Ikaruga (GCN) Review

2009-09-18T14:46:00.000-05:00

How can something be so beautiful yet so mind-numbingly difficult at the same time? I absolutely love space shooters, particularly of the overhead vertical scrolling variety. Yet I am constantly tormented by the fact that I am just not very good at them. And when it comes to something like Ikaruga with it’s insane challenge yet hypnotically awesome gameplay and graphics, I feel even more hopelessly doomed to play something that I love yet know I will never beat, despite the fact that there are only 5 levels.

I honestly don’t know what the plot is for this. I could look it up, but it really doesn’t matter. What truly matters is the hitch. What is it about this game that sets it apart from the hundreds of other space shooters besides just looking pretty? It’s fairly basic actually. The core mechanic of the game revolves around the juxtaposition of light and dark. Your ship has a polarizing shield around it at all times with either a dark or light polarity. Your weapons are the same. You have the ability to switch between polarities at any time to adapt to the environment around you. Light enemies suffer much more damage from dark gun fire than light and vice versa. Conversely, your shield, if set to light polarity, can block out light enemy fire and vice versa. So depending on the sort of enemy attacking you, you must make lightning fast decisions on switching your shields back and forth. And as the game progresses, I can assure you that you will be doing this pretty much constantly. You also use strategy to determine if you should set it to opposite polarity from enemy and hope to dodge them effectively or set it to the same polarity and do less damage but avoid being wasted by their wall of fire. Like many space shoot ‘em ups, there is little to no margin for error even in the earliest stages. Precision and memorization are key to this game even more than most shooters, and this coupled with its tricky game mechanic is what gives it the distinction of being one of the most difficult in the genre.

The game does include a Trial Mode to practice with, giving you unlimited lives but only allowing you to play through the first two missions. Since this game is made by Treasure, considered by many to be their crowning achievement, the boss fights are incredibly huge and epic. The bosses generally take up the entire screen and are multi-staged, meaning that when you take out the ten gun turrets firing at you from this massive airship, you still aren’t even close to beating this guy.

I mentioned the graphics earlier and how great they were. What impressed me is that with everything being light or dark, the graphics could have easily come out rather bland and unimpressive due to the lack of color palette, but instead the game is given a vibrancy and crispness to it that has few rivals in the realm of shooters.

Overall the game is very impressive. If you are a fan of space shoot ‘em ups and especially vertical scrollers, then you are most likely used to the ridiculous difficulty inherent in these types of games and need to own this game as a result. If you are a more timid folk that prefers the joviality and complete lack of challenge in, say, Animal Crossing, then Ikaruga should be at the absolute bottom of your video game shopping list with the likes of Battletoads and Gradius III. As for me, I shall weep tears of joy and gnash my teeth in frustration as I relish in the crazy yet addictive gameplay offered up by Ikaruga.

Jam Sessions (DS) Review

2009-09-18T14:44:00.000-05:00

Have you ever looked at a DS and thought, “Gee, I wish I could play a guitar using this as my means by which to do so.” If so, then you have strangely grammatically correct thoughts. Beyond that, you also have an odd way of looking at a DS. Most likely to capitalize off the success of Guitar Hero, Ubisoft decided to port over from Japan this guitar simulation tool for the DS long before the crappy beast known as Guitar Hero: On Tour reared its ugly head. Of course, comparing this to Guitar Hero at all is a pretty unfair comparison since GH is essentially a rhythm game disguised as a musical tool, and Jam Sessions is a musical tool disguised as a rhythm game.

Jam Sessions has no real competitive game mode to speak of. It essentially gives you a couple of different modes to allow you to play with the core game mechanic, that being the ability to strum the DS touch pad like a guitar using the stylus as your pick and the DS buttons as a way to play different chords. If that sounds a little on the awkward side, you would be correct. Not as awkward as that attachment with the GH DS game though. That thing is just painful. The game comes pre-loaded with a couple dozen songs that you can play along to. Again though, you don’t really earn anything for performing them particularly well. You can unlock useless stuff like new backgrounds by playing through the songs in the main game mode, or you can hit up the Free Play and record and save compositions that you write yourself. Using the headphone jack of the DS, you can also hook up to an amp and rock out in true fashion. I think I might crap my pants though if I were to go to a concert only to find a dude strumming a DS up on stage.

For what it is, it’s actually pretty neat although it really doesn’t have very high replayability unless you are the sort that actually does want to jam out on a DS professionally. As far as being a cool little toy to pull out and play with for fifteen minutes every now and again, it does the job well.

Jaws (NES) Review

2009-09-18T14:43:00.001-05:00

Back in the day, the NES was a breeding ground for terrible licensed games that were stupidly difficult bordering on unplayable (see my review of Platoon for an example). So it’s doubly surprising when I play a licensed game for a console that is neither completely awful nor impossibly challenging. Not to say that Jaws is an unfairly neglected hidden gem that has not received its proper due up until now. It is most definitely a flawed game in many aspects. It just isn’t horrible on the level that say almost every Simpsons licensed game or Ghostbusters 2 is perhaps.

The plot of the game of Jaws is pretty basic. You sail around in a boat hunting for the titular character of note. That’s pretty much it. The gameplay alternates between an overhead view and a side-static view. The overhead view is comprised of you sailing your boat around in search of Jaws. Periodically you will randomly come upon an area that will switch you into the side-static view. In this mode, you are a scuba diver that moves around the screen harpooning fish for a while until I guess you get bored. The screen does not scroll, hence the static modifier in its description. Occasionally in this view, you will strike upon Jaws, who is significantly bigger than the other fish with more erratic swimming behavior. Also Jaws has a life bar that you must deplete to take him down. I was pretty surprised when I hit upon Jaws within the first 15 minutes of playing the game. I thought they would have saved him as a final boss or something to that affect, but really, he just shows up to make you feel hopeless (much like Jason in the Friday the 13th NES game). You see, when you first meet up with him, you can’t possibly get even close to killing him, not with that puny harpoon gun you start with anyway. So basically when you meet upon with Jaws, you just have to not die for a while until he swims away. You fire harpoons at him until your face turns blue, but it depletes his life meter so little that the futility of it sets in pretty quickly. So how do you kill such a beast? Sail around and upgrade your harpoon, of course! After several iterations of this, you can eventually kill him. The end.

So gripes. Here we go. This game has mind-numbingly repetitive gameplay. Sail in a boat for a minute. Hit upon a cache of fish. Harpoon them to death for a while. Upgrade equipment. Repeat until you can kill Jaws. Also I’ve alluded to the fact that when you stumble upon the fish, there doesn’t seem to be an indicator of either how long or how many fish you kill before the fish hunting portion is over. It seems to be a few minutes, but I really don’t know. Also the graphics are pretty bland and the music and sound is forgettable.

So that sounds like a lot of negative. And as a game, Jaws is highly mediocre. But as a licensed NES game, see, that’s where it stands out as a cut above many of them. It’s playable with a reasonable difficulty curve and gameplay that is at least mildly amusing for a few minutes. The real question remains, is it worth your time? I would say that unless you just really want to play a non-wretched licensed game for the NES, then you are probably better off playing through Mario 3 again.

Wii Play Review

2009-09-18T14:38:00.002-05:00

I’m fairly certain that 98% of the people that bought this game primarily purchased it because it came with a Wii Remote. The other 2% bought it for the cow racing.
Wii Play is basically a group of tech demos, and it shows. Comprised of nine mini-games (which given the games is pretty sparse even considering the free remote) with each one being unlocked by just playing the previous one (which I think is just a devious ploy to make me play the terrible table tennis game included), WP doesn’t really bring much to the ballgame in terms of content or substance.
The nine mini-games can be divided neatly into two categories: mild diversion for ten or fifteen minutes and total garbage. Let’s break them down one by one, shall we?

Table Tennis: Total and absolute garbage. When I first heard table tennis, I thought “Cool! It’s another game like the Wii Sports Tennis but on a smaller scale.” No dice. Instead we get a glorified Pong clone with poor control responsiveness. Bleh.
Fishing: This is less a fishing simulation and more a simulation of one of those fishing carnival games where you dip a fake plastic pole into a cardboard hole and someone attaches a toy prize to it. There is absolutely no skill to this and the only people I’ve heard from that enjoy it are less than seven years old.
Find Mii: Meh. It’s like Where’s Waldo with Miis. If you are the sort of person that enjoys those grocery store picture puzzles in the 99 cent rack of puzzle books, then you might find this mildly entertaining.
Pose Mii: A surprisingly tricky twitch puzzle game where you have to twist your remote around to correspond with the actions the Mii is performing on the screen. It’s a sort of fast-paced Simon-esque game that may provide a mild diversion for puzzle addicts but get too difficult for less patient people.
Tanks!: This reminds of an old Atari game I once played where you and another player drive little tanks around shooting each other with them. This works a little differently in that you and the person you’re playing with are actually competing to destroy more enemy tanks than each other. I think of the few times I played this multiplayer it basically devolved into the other guy and I just shooting each other a lot since it does allow friendly fire. Bottom line: If you have a friend hanging around bored, this isn’t a bad way to waste 15 minutes. So there you go.
Laser Hockey: This is some sort of crazy Tron-esque version of laser hockey decorated with intense neon lighting to give it an edge over other competing laser hockey games (the thousands of them available out there, har har). I found this one to be fairly entertaining and is one of the few games in this pack I’ve actually played more than once. The controls are a little imprecise but aren’t so bad that the game is unplayable.
Charge!: Yea, it’s cow racing. You sit on a yarn-based cow and race it to the finish line in a 3rd person perspective, jumping hurdles and what not on your way to victory. The concept is pretty stupid and cheesy, but some people seem to love this one. I thought it was decent but, like every game in this set, lacking in depth.
Billiards: I felt this to be one of the strongest games in the set, being a fairly straightforward but acceptable rendition of 9-ball. The controls are responsive and the graphics and music understated but fitting. I had no real complaints with this one other than just the lack of features. Given that it’s a tech demo, I feel it does what it seeks to do well. Would’ve been nice to have a Snooker feature or at least other variations on 9-ball though.
Shooting Range: This game feels the most fleshed out despite the fact that it’s still not very long and will most likely keep you entertaining for 15 or 20 minutes max. It is essentially several levels with various targets like soda cans and balloons, culminating in a shootout with some UFOs trying to capture your Miis. As a nice little reference, you can also shoot down ducks a la Duck Hunt. I personally would have preferred just a straight up remake of Duck Hunt though for nostalgia’s sake with one stipulation – that you can actually shoot the dog.

So overall, given the hodge podge quality of Wii Play, I don’t know if I could recommend the game in good conscience unless you need an extra Wii Remote.

Viewtiful Joe

2009-09-18T14:36:00.000-05:00

Playing Viewtiful Joe is like getting punched in the face by a dinosaur wearing sunglasses. It hurts, and it will most likely leaving you wondering what you did to deserve such punishment. But the very idea of it is just so awesome.
The plot, as it were, involves Joe and his date going to see a movie at the theater. All is well until the villain of the film decides to hop out of the picture and snatch up Joe’s girl. Well, Joe apparently has no recourse but to follow him into the flick, turning into a superhero in the process.
Coming from Clover Studios, the guys behind the gorgeous Okami and the totally sweet God Hand, Viewtiful Joe plays like an old school beat ‘em up, Final Fight-style. The only difference is that rather than an isometric 3rd person view it’s a straight up side-scroller. The game has an incredible visual style, as excepted of Clover, with vibrant, fast-paced action set up like you are progressing through a film, similar to what Comix Zone did with making it like an interactive comic book back in the Sega Genesis days. You basically punch, kick and destroy your way through wave after wave of enemies until you reach the boss at the end. The difficulty in general is fairly punishing even on the lighter settings, relegating the game to the persistent and hardcore only. Given its cartoonish, hyperactive visual style and the tie-in cartoon series made after its release, one would think the developers would have made it more kid friendly. Somehow though, I feel it would have taken away from the sense of accomplishment you get after defeating the bosses. As you progress you learn new abilities that become integral in beating back the swarms of enemies, culminating in an old-school-style “beat every boss you’ve already beaten before getting to the big enchilada” finale.
I highly recommend this game for its striking graphical style as well as its humor and sheer fun factor. Although a warning to the timid gamers among you who don’t remember the days when platformers and beat ‘em ups were maddeningly difficult and rewarded perseverance and skill, this game is not for you unless you only like to see the first level of a game. For the serious gamers out there, this is a no-brainer purchase.

Mickey's Adventure In Numberland Review

2009-09-18T14:33:00.000-05:00

I find it depressing that this edutainment tool aimed at grade school children is probably more fun than about 50% of NES games out there. It’s less a testament to the awesomeness of this game and more an example of how terrible a great many NES games were.
Plot? Nah. I’m not going to bother. Mickey has adventures in Numberland. It’s there in the title. That’s it. So basically you select from an overworld map what level to play. It then goes into the primary mode of gameplay which involves Mickey in a side-scrolling environment in which he is in search of a number to solve the math problem given on the screen. The math problems are generally very easy as is the platforming. In fact, one could probably play through this game in 30 minutes if one were so inclined. I’ve never understood why NES games were either impossibly difficult like Ghostbusters 2 or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or impossibly easy like Where’s Waldo or this game.
The graphics are actually pretty decent for the NES and features fairly bright and cheerful animations to enliven the attention of an eight-year-old pretty well. The sound has the typical blips and bloops of any random NES game not made by Capcom but isn’t terrible to the point of distraction.
So is this game worth digging up and playing? Unless you are vaguely curious and have it for an emulator or are a completist that feels inclined to purchased every hard-to-find NES game you come across (like myself), you are probably better off just watching old Mickey Mouse cartoons or playing the excellent Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse game for the SNES.

The Darkness Review

2009-09-18T14:31:00.001-05:00

Apparently I have been misled on the behavior of black holes. I was under the impression that black holes had a gravitational pull so great that even light could not escape. If this game is to be believed, black holes have a pretty small radius in which things will get sucked into them, and after a few seconds the things will come falling back out of them again. Dead perhaps, but certainly not disintegrated, torn apart molecule by molecule, as your grandaddy would have you believe. Regardless, I guess they seem pretty effective at killing gangsters.
The Darkness is based on a comic book about a hitman who apparently inherits some sort of demon that allows him to create black holes, shoot guns (because you need demonic powers for this), whip people with tentacles, summon little demons known as darklings to do his bidding and send out little snake guys to rip people's hearts out. The storyline is actually one of the game's strongest points, involving traveling between the real world, a seedy city full of gangsters and corrupt cops trying to kill you, and the Darkness world, a twisted vintage war zone full of zombies and dead relatives. You travel back and forth between these two worlds on a quest of revenge and to attempt to reign in your Darkness powers which perpetually seek to overpower and control you.
The game does a fairly good job of balancing the cool, crazy, creepy world of The Darkness with the more drab city world. I personally would have liked more Darkness world and less city, especially less of the "hunt this, fetch that"-style missions that became repetitive and dull pretty quickly and did nothing to drive the plot forward. Aside from that, the game does a good job of slowly introducing new Darkness powers and providing a good mix of action and atmosphere. The controls are generally pretty responsive for a console first person shooter and some of the unique mechanics of the game such as the little snake guys you can send out on reconnaissance missions to eat the hearts of more evil men than you controlled as well as could be expected for such an unusual feature. They do occasionally get stuck on random bumps in streets or walls or even seemingly invisible barriers of some kind but those incidents are infrequent enough that it doesn’t create a serious issue.
The graphics and sound I felt were appropriate for the game. As the title would suggest, the game is very dark. In fact, you spend a sizeable portion of the game shooting out lights since your powers thrive in darkness. It's an interesting game mechanic that works pretty well. The game offers no meter to gauge how much darkness energy you have but does a sufficient job showing it through the snake guys and how excited or bummed out they look. I would like to mention from a sound point that I felt the majority of the voice acting in the game ranged from pretty good to amazing. Mike Patton, in particular, as The Darkness was an inspired choice, Patton capable of careening from crazed terror to feeble panic all within the span of seconds. Based on his impressively wide range of musical projects exploring the dark and the bizarre, he seems an ideal fit for the game.
Overall I think Starbreeze has done a very good job with representing the comic in video game form (despite the fact that it veers wildly from the source's storyline). In using the light/dark mechanic of their previous Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, they've created a great game full of atmosphere and intensity that succeeds despite its flaws.

My Brain... Hurts... So Much...

2008-07-14T21:50:00.005-05:00

Everyone must play this game: Randy Balma-Municipal Abortionist

Before you get all up in arms about me endorsing a game about abortion, I assure you this involves abortion about as much as Leave It To Beaver (I just had a wacky thought I think I will suppress...). I think the intro to the game speaks for itself. Download and watch! This game is basically the game equivalent of listening to Wolf Eyes or Merzbow. It's one of the most bizarre, abrasive yet strangely appealing games I've ever played. Basically just follow the arrows (or the eyes in the case of the last level). It might seem to go on forever but just stick with it. The rewards are great... This game was created by the same guys that did the infuriatingly addictive game Punishment.

Ridiculously Commercials Albums I Have No Business Owning But That I Do Anyway

2008-06-29T18:22:00.003-05:00

A Cursory glance at my CD collection (which can be found at this link) would reveal that I listen to a good many things not typically found on the radio, whether it be obscure indie rock bands, Norwegian black metal, or African tribal music, commercial is one thing people don't normally associate with my music tastes. But they would be wrong. I have just as many popular selections as the next guy sprinkled throughout my collection. I just have a whole lot of extra stuff, too. Anyway, here are some more mainstream selections from my collection that have some merit (because honestly there is a great deal of dreck on the radio).

AFI's Sing the Sorrow was a departure for the band, deviating from the more hardcore approach of their early albums into a more "mature" and commercially viable sound while still retaining the core dynamics of the band. Sure there are a few electronic blips, the choruses are a little catchier, and there is a distinct lack of screaming, but in the end, it's really still AFI. Decemberunderground wound continue to drive the commercial direction of the band while re-introducing some of the more hard-edged sounds of their past.

The All-American Rejects are a textbook example of pitch-perfect power pop dynamics. Their albums, and particularly the singles, are very polished and calculating. Either despite it or because of it, the polish on their latest album Move Along results in some of the catchiest songs I've heard in recent memory. The title track especially is approximately four minutes of pop bliss.

Coldplay is one of the ridiculously popular Brit Rock bands that ape Radiohead but lack the real creativity and inventiveness as Radiohead. You may wondering, I thought this was an article about popular bands you like? To be honest, Coldplay has moments that give a glimpse of the potential of Chris Martin and company of truly rising to the heights of Radiohead. X&Y was something of a departure from their previous two albums, drifting into slightly more esoteric territory. It really seems that they were wanting to craft a more complex album. If you listen to some critics, they did. To my ears though, much of the album seems unfocused with a distinct lack of hooks. As I mentioned earlier though, there are moments that rise above the muddy waters to hint at something more. The last third of "Fix You" is a good example, beginning with a dull and somewhat unispired melody but morphing into something more ethereal by the end. I've heard good buzz about the new Coldplay album, so maybe it will turn out to be their Ok Computer, or at least a Pablo Honey.

Norah Jones sells a ridiculous amount of albums and yet you will not find her on MTV. This is because she is HUGE with the middle age crowd. Her soft, folky melodies are rather inoffensive and pleasant to the ears. I don't necesarily feel compelled to listen to Norah Jones at regular intervals, but she certainly makes for ideal background music.

The Killers are a kind of cheat for this article. Like others such as Franz Ferdinand and The Strokes, they are big with both the indie circles as well as the mainstream. It's the sort of thing I could technically have in my collection and not lose my indie cred. But whatever. Sam's Town, their follow-up to the ridiculously popular Hot Fuss, finds The Killers doing a lot less dance punk vamping and a lot more driving rock, Springsteen-style. The arrangements are more complex, the themes in their lyrics aren't quite as shallow, and they seem to have have embraced a general "maturity" to their music.

Crunk Juice=Pure Comedy Gold.

The Black Parade is leaps and bounds beyond My Chemical Romance's previous albums. Constructing an elaborate concept album involving death and parades. Drawing influences from such unlikely places as Pink Floyd's The Wall and vaudeville, The Black Parade sounds both epic and catchy.

Hip Hop Albums That Don't Suck

2008-06-12T20:55:00.003-05:00

So rap and hip hop tend to get a lot of negative attention placed on them by non-rap/hip hop fans. People who normally listen to rock, country or even classical much of the time can't possibly imagine themselves listening to anything in the lyrically heavily, sample-laden genre that sprang forth from the womb of Grandmaster Flash and the Sugar Hill Gang over twenty-five years ago. I say to those people who give a cursory denial when asked of their music taste, "Oh, I like a little of everything... except country and rap" that I myself am not an enormous fan of either genre, but like anything, diamonds can most certainly be found in the rough. I present to you then, a group of hip hop albums that don't suck. All I ask is that you listen to them before judging.

Blackalicious is without question a phenomenal hip hop group. Making of the backbone of the Quannuum collective which also includes gentlemen such as Lateef the Truthspeaker and Lyrics Born, Blackalicious are masters of fusing old school funk and R & B with modern, well-thought-out lyrical content. Blazing Arrow is so far the best of their uniformly excellent albums, any of which would make a good listen.

The real star of this album for me isn't really even Cannibal Ox themselves (although they are no slouches as far as wordsmiths go) but the producer El-P, who's masterful production is definitely the highlight of this recording. In fact, the backing tracks for The Cold Vein are so well-constructed that they have been released as an instrumental album themselves with El-P receiving primary credit on that one.

The Roots I see as the marijuana equivalent of hip hop (and no, not that their music inspires pot-smoking binges). What I mean is that they act as a gateway. Many who wouldn't normally listen to hip hop give The Roots a try because they play all their own live instruments and have a more rock and funk based sound. This certainly gives them a more mainstream appeal, but at the same time, these guys deserve the attention they receive. Although lyrically I think they can be a little weak at times, the delivery and the music more than make up for it. I find Phrenology to be one of their best due to the diversity of music to be found on it. From the soul inspired "The Seed 2.0" to the driving "Rock You" to the just plain weird "Water', there's something for everyone. They can also be really catchy, which can be a skill in and of itself.

Dalek is for those outer fringe indie kids who listen to bizarre and abrasive walls of noise like Wolf Eyes and Merzbow. With dark and foreboding lyrics set to screeching feedback and pulsating atonal fuzz, Dalek is certainly not for everyone. But any individuals looking for a unique experience in the world of hip hop, they are certainly worth a try.

A Tribe Called Quest was a seminal hip hop group that was among the first to latch onto the great idea of fusing rap with jazz, and they did it with style and intelligence. The Low End Theory is considered by many to be one of the greatest hip hop records ever made and with good reason. This album is the antithesis of such modern acts as 50 Cent and The Game and makes for a much more compelling listen.

I can't mention good rap artists without at least a cursory look at the Beastie Boys. My personal favorite of theirs is the album Check Your Head which like The Roots features live instrumentation. This album was made in response to a lot of the Beastie Boys' critics that wrote them off as an idiotic party group with no actual musical talent after the release of their highly successful License To Ill. Highlights include "Gratitude" and the Sly & the Family Stone cover "Something's Got To Give".

There's lots more excellent hip hop out there. I'm just posting a few highlights worth looking into. Here are some others you may want to check out that certainly have a lot going for them: El-P's Fantastic Damage, Sage Francis' A Healthy Distrust, The Pharcyde's Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde and Labcabincalifornia, The Streets' Original Pirate Material, Company Flow's Funcrusher Plus, Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique and Ill Communication, MF Doom's Mm...Food?, the Wu-Tang Clan's Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), Prince Paul's Prince Among Thieves, Ghostface Killa's Fishscale, Dr. Octagon (a.k.a. Kool Keith)'s Dr. Octagonecologyst, Del the Funky Homosapien's Deltron 3030, and last but not least Mos Def's Black on Both Sides and The New Danger, both of which are absolutely fantastic albums.

Ah, boredom...

2008-06-10T21:40:00.003-05:00

Well, it didn't take long for me to get bored with the "music of the day" schtick. Honestly, I'm surprised I was able to write about it for two whole weeks. Anyway, my entries may become less frequent, but I will try to contribute something more interesting.

II Europe!

2008-06-07T23:38:00.002-05:00

Maylene & the Sons of Disaster is basically the band formed by Underoath's ex-lead singer. Their second album does an excellent job of blending metalcore and southern rock in such a way as to make it sound almost natural. The vocals have a very raw almost screaming quality to them but with just enough pitch and tone to be musical. The guitars careen between spastic metal and southern rock grooves in a fairly seamless manner.

I wonder if they gave this album the title Americans In Europe to be as vague as possible. I mean, it could have anything on it. It could be a junkyard blues band recording on a slapdash 4-track in an alley in Stockholm or possibly an aging 80's glam rocker vying for one last opportunity with his five remaining fans in Luxembourg. But rather than those ludicrous situations, it is a compilation of performances from various jazz legends from a concert in Germany. The highlights of the album for me were the Bud Powell Trio's take on Thelonious Monk's "'Round Midnight" and the Bill Smith Quartet doing a Smith original called "Pyramid".

Born To Proudly Present A Guide To Desperation

2008-06-06T22:21:00.003-05:00

I started my day off with a little of "The Boss." Is there anything I could possibly write about Born To Run that hasn't already been written? No, there isn't. The thing with Springsteen is that I really haven't always liked him. I'm not really sure why. I think my tastes have just grown and changed over the years. Essentially, I was kind of eased into Springsteen through Nebraska, which was a fantastic stripped-down album that feature little of the pop gloss of 80's Springsteen or overblown theatrics of 70's Springsteen. From there, I ended up liking Darkness on the Edge of Town, particularly the title track and "Adam Raised Cain." Then I started to listen to more of Born To Run and have now come to appreciate it. I still don't like Born in the USA though. Personal highlights on this one include the seminal title track, "Thunder Road" and "Jungleland."

The Wombats' A Guide To Love, Loss and Desperation is an imminently catchy album. It begins with a wonky acapella track then immediately afterward locks into a sweet dance punk rhythm that rarely lets up through the rest of the album. This one came as a complete surprise for me since I bought it on a whim with no preconceived notion as to what it was. The fact that it's released by Roadrunner here in the states is pretty misleading anyway given the label's metal history. But yea, this is one of those unexpected gems that come along every now and again.

A Ton of Stuff In Brief

2008-06-05T21:19:00.002-05:00

So I listened to a lot of stuff yesterday and today, having driven all over the place recently. Here's a quick rundown.

So Porcupine Tree's Voyage 34 is one of the most drugged out albums I've heard in a while. With only four tracks, none of which are shorter than 12 minutes, this album blurs into a vocal-less trip into bizarre drones not unlike a Pink Floyd pysche-fest full of sound samples of LSD-related dialogue.

This Against Me! EP features primarily songs from their first album performed completely acoustic and stripped down to their bare essentials, basically one sparse guitar and one very raw voice. They generally come off very well and the fifth track not to be found on the first album fares as well as the others.

Casket Salesman features ex-members of the screamo outfit A Static Lullaby and marks a considerable departure for them. As a representative of the new prog trend that seems to be gaining a little momentum in recent years, this release falls sqaurely somewhere between Cave In's Jupiter and Coheed and Cambria's Second Stage Turbine Blade. I felt it had much more creativity to it than anything produced by A Static Lullaby but occasionally felt a little lost in the swirling guitars and spastic drumming.

Considered by many to be the best of Wire's trilogy of very good albums (along with Pink Flag and Chairs Missing), 154 marks a significant change in Wire's sound. No longer the punk upstarts of Pink Flag or even the mid-tempo post-punk twitch of Chairs Missing, 154 slows things down to a menacing crawl, featuring haunted melodies that get underneath your skin and brood.

Six Finger Satellite's Law of Ruins shows considerable growth for the spastic and abrasive band whose first album I spoke of last week. Two albums were released between that one and this, and it shows. Yes, the crazed jitters and screams of Pigeon are still present and accounted for but Six Finger Satellite has also seen fit to include much more of a kraut rock and post-rock influence in their music. "Sea of Tranquility Pts. 1 & 2" is a nearly twelve minute opus that sounds like something that would not have been out of place on Can's Tago Mago.

2008-06-03T20:33:00.003-05:00

This is a dirty rock record, no more, no less. The lyrics are beyond stupid. The riffs are fast and fun. It's the sort of thing you really shouldn't think too hard about. The vocals have a British sneer similar to that of the Sex Pistols, but the guitars are more like a dumbed down Guns 'n' Roses. Overall, it's not too bad as long as I don't take it too seriously.

I picked this up on a lark, but it turned out to be a very solid compilation of classic ska numbers. And this the first wave we're talking about, long before Reggae, long before the second wave with bands like The Specials. Ska in this form isn't far removed from the classic R&B of the 60's popularized by Motown and Atlantic. The early Jimmy Cliff tracks exhibit the same clear vocals and catchy melodies that his later brush with stardom in The Harder They Come brought. Additionally, there are tracks from guys I was previously unaware of but am now interested in looking up such as Lord Creator and The Techniques. This album even has a couple of very early cuts from Bob Marley & the Wailers that features a more upbeat driving rhythm than I am used to from Marley.

We've Come For You Mingus

2008-06-02T20:25:00.002-05:00

Anthrax's We've Come For You All is very similar in style and tone to previous albums they've released in recent years such as Sound of White Noise and Stomp 442. I don't really have much to say about this one other than it is a solid metal album from beginning to end and that I would recommend it to anyone that enjoys the heavier side of life.

Mingus Moves is a Mingus album that never really comes up in conversation much in relation to Mingus (this is of course assuming Mingus comes up in conversation at all) but is no less excellent because of it. There's a surprising amount of diversity that showcases Mingus' skill at composition. The track "Wee" begins with a slow shuffling lament but soon transforms into a post-bop frenzy that borders on free jazz (a little too free for my tastes but still interesting). The light and breezy blues of "Newcomer" features a laid back but deft flute lead that seems to fit the track perfectly. The bonus track "Big Alice" offers a doo wop backing track with another post-bop lead line that makes for an intriguing listen.

A Combination of Pink Graffiti

2008-06-01T19:36:00.006-05:00

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti has got to be one of the stranger albums I've listened to recently, and given that it's released by Paw Tracks (Animal Collective's label), I'm not surprised. It reminds a little of early 4-track era Ween, although the recording quality is even poorer. This album sounds like the sort of thing you would hear drifting from a small slightly broken radio sitting on the windowsill of an apartment complex in the mid-70's, the mellow folk rock of some long forgotten singer drifting through the heat of a mid-summer day.

This is one that would probably lose me all kinds of Indie cred if I actually cared about that sort of thin. Eisley's Combinations though provides an incredible song reminicent of something that wouldn't entirely be out of place on a newer Sleater Kinney album called "A Sight To Behold." It has a very driving beat with great harmonies. Actually, the harmonies on this album are what really grabs me about it. Eisley has two distinct female vocalists that have managed to gel their voices in such a way as to create great harmonies, best displayed on the aforementioned "A Sight To Behold" and the two closers, the title track and "If You Are Wondering." I also enjoyed "Many Funerals" as another driving rocker.

Gary Numan with Six Fingers

2008-05-31T23:05:00.004-05:00

Gary Numan was an early pioneer of dark electronic music, so his later descent into dark wave and industrial is of little surprise to me. The style seems to fit him well though. This two-disc set, called Hybrid, is a mixture of the always interesting idea of re-recording past tunes (as recently described in my post about Gord's Gold Vol. II) and new Numan. These re-recordings fair much better than Gordon Lightfoot's if for no other reason because at the very least they weren't recorded in the 80's. We see new versions of past songs such as Cars (in a very interesting almost ambient rendition) and Down in the Park, here represented twice. This isn't necessarily a bad thing since "Down in the Park" I feel is one of his better early songs.

Six Finger Satellite seems pulls as much from Fugazi and Gang of Four as from early Sonic Youth and Butthole Surfers. They also seem to be constantly walking a thin line between what constitutes music versus noise. They general do a good job of it, being very abrasive and amelodic while at the same time conjuring up truly interesting and listenable grooves. By the last track though, they have completely fallen into the abyss of noise, creating a swirling ocean of feedback and drone. Overall I would say it's a very fascinating listen, but I do prefer their later albums, which are no less compromising but a little easier to swallow than this cryptically titled The Pigeon Is The Most Popular Bird.

Jittery Funk

2008-05-30T21:00:00.004-05:00

I started the day with The Books' Lost and Safe. Is there a such thing as a rustic electronica album? If it were possible, then The Books would fit the bill. Recording live acoustic instrumentation with cellos, violas and the like, they then take what was put to tape and cobble it together with finger snaps, hand claps, odd little stuttery beats and scratches along with samples of dialogue from various far-reaching sources. I had actually heard an earlier album of theirs, Thought For Food, which while exhibiting some of the same traits, did not have near as prominent vocals as this album. The vocals have an almost deadpan quality to them that allows them to blend in with the surrounding warmth of the music.

Lyrics Born is part of the Quannum Projects collective that is also home to such excellent hip-hop artists as Blackalicious (whose Gift of Gab makes an appearance on this album) as well as Lateef the Truthspeaker (also on here). Lyrics Born, while a good if not great lyricist, really shows his skills as a producer on this album. The backing tracks are full of exuberant, funk and soul infused music that matches his relaxed and down to earth vocal style, which has a certain dexterity to it as well. The only thing I can fault this album with is the comparatively large number of skits and jokey tracks thrown in the mix.

A Jammy Neil and an Aging Balladeer

2008-05-29T20:28:00.000-05:00

I began the day listening to Sister Euclid's Run Neil Run. Essentially it sounds as if a very relaxed Robert Randolph wandered into a Tortoise recording session and then began to play Neil Younf songs. It really works more often than not such as on the always amazing "Helpless" and the rocking "Ohio". I think that song may have been made to be played on the lap steel guitar. The fusion of "Southern Man" and "Dixieland" was interesting as well. The rest almost melded into the background and left me with little impression one way or another.

The day ended on a more folky note with the ever-Canadian Gordon Lightfoot and his second volume of dynamite numbers, Gord's Gold Vol. II. The unfortunate part of this compilation is that it holds the dubious honor of being comprised of re-recorded versions of some of Lightfoot's light and airy tunes of whatever random stories Gordon happens to be conjuring up from the depths of his muddled and slightly odd mind. Doubly unfortunate is the fact that these re-recordings occurred in the 80's, a time when the music industry's production values weren't at their best, resulting in a slick, empty sound as if it were recorded in the bathroom of a swanky night club during a coke party. Nevertheless, a few highlights arise out of the dross. 80's production can't destroy the imminently tuneful and catch lament of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" and "The Ghosts of Cape Horn" was one of the the fortunate few to avoid the dread re-recording process and exists on the record in a much more understated production. The song itself is an amusingly bizarre number that careens wildly from nutty yet catchy sea chanty to syrupy and mournful ballad and back again. It's sad that I bought this CD for only two songs, but at iTunes going rate, it was still reasonable since I only paid $2 for it.

First One!

2008-05-28T21:04:00.000-05:00

So I read an article today that stated writing blogs is good for your health in all sorts of ridiculous ways that I was completely unaware of. I had been planning to pick up one of these for a while anyway; the article just gave me a reason to start today. So what is it about? Music. I'm creating this more for myself as a day-to-day chronicle of the music I listen to as a sort of way of retaining first impressions of the things I hear.

So I began the day with Clutch's Jam Room. It's an aptly titled album from a band that has grown and gotten considerably better since it was released. It lacks the propulsive energy of Pure Rock Fury or the tight grooves of Blast Tyrant. What it does have it lots of the weird lyrics Clutch is known for that careens wildly from bizarre insanity to mindless gibberish as well as an even more noodly temperament than usual. Their obnoxiously atonal guitar solos are already in place for this album but at least all the elements of what they became have become established to an extent.

I also listened to the album Sisters of the Red Death by Vendetta Red. I actually enjoyed this album quite a bit. It much improved over their first album with a dose of that "maturity" that the media always brings up in relation to sophmore efforts. Many of the usual loud-quiet-loud dynamics and dual scream/sing vocals are present but are constructed in a very polished and well-concieved manner. An additional observation I made was the lyrical content of this album and how significantly darker it is than most within this genre. They are less like the lyrics of a screamo band and more the lyrics of a grindcore band. Some seriously disturbing stuff revolving around some weird concept involving a medusa comprise the majority of the thematic continuity of the album.

I don't know how frequently I will be updating this, but it could be daily depending on how bored I get.