Anyway, Sonic games. Yeah yeah, I know. sonic has been REALLY bad lately. And it hurts me deep… but there are good ones. Lemme show yah what ones.

Starting with a newer game:

Sonic and the Black Knight

No, really. I’m not kidding. The concept for this game was HORRIBLE, but the execution is pretty damn good. Sonic is summoned to the land of King Arthur by a cute loli version of Merlin named (surprise!) Merlina and after some delicious chili dog eating, Sonic gets a magic talking sword named “Caliburn”. The action is fast, and the sword allows you to obliterate most enemies without a care in the world. Now, like Secret Rings, there are a few slowdowns. There are points where you have to give villagers rings and there are large enemies that don’t go down in one hit, but everything else in the game is a pretty damn good time. I don’t really recommend it for someone who doesn’t like Sonic, but it’s worth a try even if  you don’t.

Sonic Rush

This is the game where Blaze the Cat was introduced. The story for this game is something like Blaze comes from the negaverse and there are funky Chaos Emerald style gems there as well and Blaze is looking for them… It doesn’t matter much, it’s really not important. This game also introduced something I think all Sonic games need: A boost meter. You can use it to get to speed with a small burst or use it to destroy everything in your path for a short time. It’s filled by rings, doing mid-air tricks or defeating enemies. It’s awesome and EVERY SINGLE SONIC GAME SHOULD HAVE IT FOREVER.

YOU DON'T MESS WITH THE BEST

Sonic CD

Oh god, this is one of the best Sonic games in my opinion. It brings together some of the best parts of the first three Sonic games, but it adds in cool shit like time travel and some of the most fucking amazing music ever. The level design is amazing, the bosses are challenging and the time travel mechanic gives each level a wonderfully fresh feel. The game has good replayability and looks totally amazing. It’s for the Sega CD, PC and is an unlockable in the Sonic Mega Collection.

And, finally…

Sonic 3 & Knuckles

What happens if you take one of the most critically acclaimed Sonic games, then add the functionality to play as FUCKING KNUCKLES? You get one of the coolest things ever. Ever. This is seriously one of the best things that 16 bits has to offer. Climb shit, swim in the water, get around… You can do it all. You can do it with Sonic 2 as well.

That wraps up this stuff. Sorry about being gone so long, personal shit…

Anyway, I hope that soon I will be able to contribute regularly again!

Till next time!

Jumpluff~

They say that variety is the spice of life, but I believe passion can be equally spicy. It’s what drives people to write fanfiction and to petition developers to turn dreams into reality.

Passion can be a double-edged sword, though. Sometimes, all it takes is a single real or perceived disappointment  to turn your feelings against the object of your emotional attachment.

Take the case of a little discussion I had with a friend of mine last night. Being die-hard fans of the Atlus’ Trauma Center series, my friend and I were understandably elated when we heard that Trauma Team would be coming to the Wii in the near future.

Please note that my friend is a BIG Nozomi Kimishima (aka Naomi Weaver) fan. Being the inquisitive student that she is, she immediately Googled around for more info about the game and her favorite character. What she discovered made her emotions do a complete one hundred and eighty degree turn. You see, she unfortunately came upon this little article.

Remember the comment I made in my other article about how some of the new doctors look like younger versions of verteran Trauma Center surgeons? It turns out I was partly right. The lady with silver-blue hair in the roster of Trauma Team specialists is apparently Dr. Kimishima herself, and she has graduated from being a hotshot doctor to being a forensics expert.

My friend immediately flew into a rage at the revelation. She vehemently argued that Dr. Kimishima is a master surgeon, not a CSI agent. This led to a bit of a discussion wherein I tried to calm her down. Perhaps this is an alternate universe Kimishima, I theorized. After all, didn’t producer Kanada-san mention something about Trauma Team being a whole new game and not a sequel?

Despite my best efforts, my friend would have none of it. Seething with righteous indignation, she seems to be dead set on boycotting this new medical sim completely.

On the other hand, I’m feeling a bit more forgiving. Granted, the good doctor may have made a rather…odd career move, and her new portrait makes her look suspiciously younger than she’s supposed to be (plastic surgery, perhaps?), but it’s still nice to see her alive and well after Second Opinion.

Now all Atlus has to do is to announce the existence of a playable obstetrician slash gynecolotist in Trauma Team and my day will be complete.

It really pays to subscribe to newsletters sometimes. You’ll never know what bit of fantastic news might just leap out at you when you least expect it.

I just opened my e-mail inbox recently when I came across an Atlus announcement: a new medical sim (a genre made popular by the Trauma Center series) will be coming to the Nintendo Wii sometime spring of next year. Dubbed Hospital slash Trauma Team, this new game passes the torch to six new doctors ready to continue the legacy of Drs. Styles, Weaver, Vaughn and Blaylock.

Of course, I’m assuming that those three veterans aren’t in the game to begin with. Three of the doctors look like younger and stylishly redrawn versions of the veteran surgeons. A fourth doctor in the series gives us a glimpse of what Dr. Styles may look like sans glasses, darker hair, vampiric bloodlust and an androgynous charm borrowed from a certain Persona 4 sleuth.

The prospect of having six specialists this time around instead of two miracle doctors who do all the work (with a hot nurse nagging them all throughout the process) sounds like an interesting concept. This way, you can have one doctor stitch up all the wounds  while another glues back broken pieces of bone with mystical antibiotic gel. A third surgeon can focus on removing tumors with impunity while the other two are preoccupied.

Of course, we’ll have to wait and see if all of them will actually be working together during the operation itself, or if they’ll be taking turns during the entire process of testing, diagnosis, surgery and post-op. The latter case may be likely, as one of the doctors is supposed to be a diagnostician.

Also, a quick glance at the initial screenshots will tell you that the classic syringe, forceps, gel et al are still in there. Some gameplay elements may also involve timing bits reminiscent of the defibrillator and “massage” scenarios of past games. There’s appears to be a part where you have to hammer some bones into place as well.

It’s most unfortunate that the official website contains very little info as of this time. I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled on this one, though. Anything that gives me a good excuse to probe a woman’s bare midriff is A-okay in my book.

Nintendo broke away from competition with Sony and, new arrival, Microsoft with what some call the “Blue Ocean” business strategy. The Blue Ocean strategy is the metaphor of leaving a “red ocean” (one dyed by the blood of competition) for unclaimed waters filled with the potential for creating new demand. From a business stand point this brave (or stupid) move has paid off and now Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 are competing for second place.

Nintendo managed to succeed because they did something more than incrementally improve and repurpose old features. Yes, Gentle Reader, I’m talking about the “I” word, innovation. It’s debatable if the Wii controller is a true innovation as some gamers will still belittle it and mock it, but from a business standpoint it’s a successful change that’s brought in tremendous profit. Nintendo is as guilty as everyone else of giving us sequels by the truck load, most games in each series offer something new every one or two games. In truth, sequels are not really a bad thing as long as they are different enough that it stands on its own or adds to the previous experience.

This is the potential folly faced by Microsoft and Sony. If both companies continue to try and outdo the other, this means they have to rely on the other to show them where it is they are going. As mentioned before, it’s a tradition in the game industry to play copy cat with your opponents and then sell what they made for a lower price or with something more appealing attached. The game Sony and Microsoft are playing is the equivalent of trying to race someone you’re following to an unknown finish line.

If the two titans do not exercise some real creative muscle and insight, they run the risk of choking their audiences’ current interest. History has shown that strokes of genius like Katamari Damacy are not that common and while they may be risky or appear too weird, it’s that their quirkiness that aid to its success. The first GTA games offered sandbox gameplay, but GTA 3 took the top down world and made it more accessible by giving the player more dimensions to see everything. This reinvention (or innovation) has made the name Grand Theft Auto globally known.

Rehashed games, or those that don’t provide much of a new gaming experience, can poison a series or genre. If the games they make for the “core” gamer are not more than uninventive sequels the interest will dissolve and the audience will vanish or develop new preferences. The market has become swamped with First Person Shooters and while some may feel that’s not bad, it clearly demonstrates that developers are vying for the attention of a certain niche while alienating possibilities. As mentioned before, even if Nintendo did not stir up this casual boom, the publishers seemed to become more focused on producing games they KNOW will sell then those that can expand the market.

When we consider that the Xbox 360 has introduced its Mii-like “Avatars” and has begun promoting its “family friendly games” and that the Playstation 3 has its “six axis” controller and demonstrated a recent swelling of fresh but casual Playstation Store games their actions foreshadow that the duo are once again trying to outdo the other as they look for the path Nintendo made. Sony and Microsoft could just stick with the audience that has carried them to their current success, but like I proposed in part 1, only a fool (or altruistic gamer) would turn down the easy money casual games bring in.

I’d expect the next Microsoft console to utilize some sort of Wii remote like peripheral and the Playstation 3 to get it’s own version of the Wii remote. If Microsoft wishes to make the most money possible, their Wii remote copy will be a peripheral rather than a brand new system.

You might think “The End is Nigh” if you’re a core gamer that detests those happy, care free casual gamers. In the event that Sony and Microsoft act like a business and chase the money, a core gamer’s won’t be lost in a changing industry if the new audience leans how to discern between crap games and software worth its price tag. If all else fails there’s always indie games.

So as of now, these are the ominous black clouds that loom over the game industry. Nintendo is getting flogged with junk casual games and Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 run the risk of tiring their comparatively small (compared to the number of casuals) core audience with incremental improvements of current software.

During the Great Depression, American movie theaters saw steady business as the consumer hungered for an escape from the troubled economy. In today’s global economic recession, it seems that people still want that escape and video games are the medium that provide it even better than a mere 2 hour movie for 20 some dollars (if you get popcorn and a drink.) The road that lies before the game industry is not likely to disappear, no matter how cluttered it becomes with obstacles. That way ahead may be uncertain, but it is not lost when there are companies that will forge new paths and people that pine for the experience.

What do you do when you’re faced with a major loss? Some people go for the extreme “solution” and commit suicide. Others attempt to drown out their sorrows with alcohol. Me, I fixate on video games.

This was especially true during the first half of 2007. During that year, two people were diagnosed with cancer.  One was the father of a friend of mine. The other one was my mother.

To make a long story short, my friend’s father pulled through. My mother didn’t.

I’d already played a bit of Trauma Center: Second Opinion before she died. After her passing, I went all out. I rented the Nintendo Wii at my friend’s Internet Cafe.  I played almost non-stop everyday from the time it opened till the time it closed its doors before dawn. At the time, it seemed to be one of my main forms of coping with the stages of Kubler-Ross’ model.

For those of you who may not be familiar with Dr. Kubler-Ross model, allow me to explain. There are supposedly five stages that people go through when they’re faced with traumatic loss: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. It’s a highly contested model, as the stages aren’t exactly set in stone.

For some reason, I skipped the denial and bargaining stages entirely and went straight to anger and depression, flitting back and forth between the two as I played Trauma Center with a vengeance.

Was it escapism? Definitely. I needed to forget my problems, if only for a little while. Dr. Derek Stiles, the main character of the game, possessed superhuman healing powers that helped me do just that.

Whenever I extracted a tumor from my virtual patient in the game, I imagined I was extracting the tumors from my mother’s body. Whenever I had Dr. Stiles activate his Healing Touch, I played make-believe and envisioned him operating on my mother and saving her life.

Of course, I only had so much time to do that. When the shop eventually closed, I was right back where I started: grieving, hurting, and absolutely clueless as to what to do next.

I’ve often likened my gaming habits at the time to going deep-sea diving. Sometimes, divers may be tempted not to return to the surface because it’s so beautiful down in the ocean depths. They can stay in their fantasy world and forget about all their problems…until they run out of oxygen.

At some point, I moved on. I don’t remember exactly what triggered it–I just decided to do it, and I did it.

Perhaps I’d gotten tired of grieving. Perhaps I’d told myself that getting on with my life was what my mother would’ve wanted. Perhaps I realized that failing to move on would have been a grave dishonor to her memory. Perhaps it’s because I’d finished Trauma Center’s story mode.

In any case, I picked up Trauma Center: New Blood months later. There was one big difference this time: I didn’t play it to forget; I played it to have fun.

It’s been two years since Mom passed away. I’d like to think that she’s looking down at me from Heaven and smiling. Perhaps I’ll invest in a Nintendo DS and try out Trauma Center 2 as well.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I’ll see you, Grandma Mai, Grandma Zeny and Grandpa Pai again someday.

Co-ordination and or timing – and mini-games.

Now I don’t know about you, but back in my day, we were lazy. Our ‘party’ games so to speak were the likes of Madden, Tecmo Bowl, NBA JAM, Blitz, You Don’t Know Jack, Pong and such. (Shh I’m leaving Track N Field out of this one.)

What I mean by this, is they were relatively sedentary games, learn a few button clicks, maybe a little bit of choice quick finger movements, but that was really it. We had buttons dedicated to juke around an opponent, or to dribble between their legs. Long gone are these games and their lazy ire for the lazy video game playing nerd. Now we have the six-axis to flick our controller in various directions to help angle his shot, a guitar with a gyro in it to detect when we are swishing our instrument into the air to ‘rock out’ harder, or a wii-mote to swish around in a graceful ark to do make a hook at a guy’s jaw.

Interactivity makes the game better I’m told. I thought it was pretty interactive when I pushed left and Little mac dodged to the left to enable me to dodge Mike Tyson’s (or Mr. Dream for those more politically correct or for our younger crowd) deathly uppercut and come back in with a few quick jabs of my own.

So then there are the Wii’s waggle games. Little co-ordination of timing, but lots of flipping your nun-chucks around in a pattern to achieve the goal of various mini events. Great concept, problem is the motions rarely seem to actually give a shit about what you’re doing, more that you’re just moving. I’ve played Mario Party 8 and when it told me to swish the wii-mote around in a circle to paddle a boat, simply just swinging it around in whatever direction I wanted worked just as well. I found that all kind of disappointing, as a system and series of games that tried to be the front man for the whole life-like motion concept – it felt rather half-assed.

I hear there’s an attachment coming out eventually that will actually make the wii-mote’s motion more life-like and less sporadic. I’m on the edge of my seat. (/sarcasm)

But then came Dokapon – It’s Mario Party without the mini-games with the addition of an adorably charming RPG in the mix. Yes! Finally! A game I can play with friends and don’t have to worry about scratching up my touch-screen when we’re spazzing out to flick soccer balls in a goal, or something equally as obnoxious.

What I mean is – You have a Kingdom (coincidentally Dokapon Kingdom on the Wii,) ruled by a silly little king who has a daughter. He wants to marry his daughter off to the bravest adventurer in the land – so here come you and some friends (or AI, up to 4 players/AI max.) There are 8 classes to chose from that all have their own stat-gains and abilities and carrying loads or spells available. At it’s core it actually has a pretty acceptable RPG. There are shops to upgrade your gear, monsters to kill to gain experience and get gold. Minimalistic PVP, quests and boss monsters.

Charmingly cartoony graphics give this game a unique feel compared to the seriousness of most current RPG’s

All the players move around on a giant game board map similar to Mario Party’s, with a ‘rolling’ system to move your spaces each turn. Items that enable you to move a specific amount of spaces, or get additional rolls. Spells can be cast against one another to screw with each other’s progress or hamper your health before a big fight.

Generally whoever is richest at the end of the allotted amount of time (Or all the quests have been finished) is the winner.  There are a few quests along the way to help you earn more money (One quest has you retrieving an elixir to cure a town’s poisoned well, another has you rescuing the King’s daughter who wandered off on her own to go on a shopping spree) and rescuing towns from evil monsters adds to your net worth and earns you tax-revenue.

All in all it plays like a Mario Party, but it’s adorable and doesn’t have aggravating mini-games that newcomers would have no idea how to play – thus making it easy for anyone to jump in and play.

Oh, right I knew I forgot something – 4player Wireless one-card support. One of my favorite features about this game is that nobody else needs to have it to play. You can stream it out to 3 of your friends and then can join you for a dumbed-down version of the game (8 weeks long, starting zone and about 12 towns only.) But its nice to see multi-player games that still support this feature on the DS (and just solid multi player games in general) – one of the main reasons I got one in the first place.

Follow me now on twitter – http://twitter.com/TheReverendLei

Keep up to date with games I’m checking out, import or otherwise and learn about whats new.

Presenting…

…The Top Five Signs That a DLC Should Have Just Been Free

Brought to you by Fedora Man

Well it finally April and you have to love how easy it is to open an article with the lines “so it’s finally whatever month we’re in right now”. It’s time for the next step in my great journey to earn money through a video game blog. Now I know you might be wondering “I thought you had billions! Were you lying to me?” The answer is of course, no. Stupid. Why would I make something like that up? But the difference between that money and the money I’ll earn on this site is I actually had to do work to earn it, unlike my corporation where I really don’t do any work at all. I can show all my friend “yeah this is the ten dollars I earned THROUGH WORK!” and if they say that they also have a job and have made more money, I’ll pull out my emergency one million dollars that I always keep stashed in my pants and laugh at them, probably while rubbing the money all over myself.

Now I’m sure that everyone reading this right now loves to hear all the stories that end with me rubbing money all over myself (and there are a lot of them) but now is neither the time, nor the place for me to describe my achievements to the world. Mainly because I think that might blow my secret identity and also I don’t think anyone would let me post an article called “The Top Five Ways to Rub Money All Over Yourself Like a Pro”. Instead I’m going to write about some game related phenomena, but only because I have to.

That brings me to my greatest problem: what the hell am I going to write about? There aren’t any games coming out these days (according to me) and writing about one specific past game has been done by everyone and their grandma. At first I was thinking “Heroes of Might and Magic 2, everyone will love to hear about that!” before moving to and idea about specific overrated games. Then one night I was staying up late to try to perfect the insertion of a giant blade into my fedora. Some might call that an oddjob rip off, but those same people might find it hard to speak when, say, a razor-bladed hat cuts their entire mouth off. Anyway it was around 6 am that I decided “screw it I’m too tired to think up a new idea” and settled for this one.

Now if you’re like me (and you’re not at all like me) then you too have expressed frustration at some of the worst excuses for DLC (downloadable content if you somehow made it to this point in the article without knowing what that is) ever made. That’s not to say that all DLC is bad and that it should all be free because there are small amounts of DLC that actually seem to have been worked hard on and deserve some sort of monetary reimbursement (the shivering isles for Oblivion is the first thing that comes to mind). Of course for every shivering isles there are hundreds of “screw you, give me all your money” DLCs or as I like to affectionately call them “dog shit”. I’m sure that this isn’t just at 360 problem, it’s probably also a problem with the PS3 but I wouldn’t know now would I? So here are the signs to identify if the dog shit you just bought should have been free.

Number 5: When the DLC is Free Anyway

Example: Call of Duty 4: Variety Map Pack

This is probably the one that isn’t about dog shit (I’m very much hoping the editor doesn’t take offense to that word being used over and over again). This is one of the cases where the DLC might actually be good but in any case it isn’t free even when say, THEY OFFER IT FOR FREE ANYWAY!

Take the above example for instance. The Call of Duty 4 map pack was offered for free via a code in the Game of the Year Edition. The cost of the Game of the Year Edition is exactly the same as the original game so you’d think they’d start offering the map pack for free, right? Wrong (as always)! I’m not exactly sure why they’d do this (other than the obvious “I want more money” approach) yet it seems like around the time they started offering free map packs they’d just go ahead and put it out for free on the marketplace anyway. There’s only one possible explanation: to piss off hat-based crime fighters.

Hell, that reminds me; before I go on I’d like to tell a little story about my experience with these “free” maps. It started like any other day, random death hurricanes mixed with volcanoes and a zombie apocalypse, you know, nothing special. So I decided that I’d go and get Call of Duty 4 because I was in a crime fighting slump (only because I imprisoned all my enemies) and so I decided to blow off some steam by mercilessly killing people on the internet. I picked out my game and brought it to the Gamestop counter where the cashier was like “I’ll give you the game of the year edition, it doesn’t cost anymore and it gives you free maps.” So I was like “sweet free maps, thanks you pimply faced bastard, I’ll be sure not to violently attack you in the future over game prices.” So as I got back home I opened the box… nothing. There was a game and an instruction booklet but that pimply faced sonofabitch lied to me! There wasn’t any map code at all! Now my first reaction was to don my fedora and jacket/trench coat (have to protect my secret identity) and go back to that store to kick all kinds of ass. But I’m a detective too and my detective-like instincts told me that it probably wasn’t that pimply faced bastard’s fault. Using my fedora-shaped super computer I quickly got confirmation that this had happened to many other people as well. In the end, after a brief bout with tech support that should have just began and ended with the word “bastard” I never got my maps. I’m just waiting for the time that they become free, WHICH THEY NEVER WILL!

Number 4: When the Game in Question has a Sequel

Example: Call of Duty 4: Variety Map Pack

Call of Duty again? Really? Well that’s just an example; there are many games like this. Again this isn’t necessarily dog shit but I promise that the next one will be about dog shit, you dog shit enthusiast you. Anyway the reason I claim that the DLC (which may or may not be dog shit to appease all you crazy people) should be free once a sequel comes out because sales probably drop rapidly over time once the sequel hits stores. I’m pretty sure that’s how it works, but don’t take my word on it, it’s not like I know a lot about business (although I do run a multi-billion dollar business in my free time). I don’t think anyone is rushing out to go buy Halo 2, or Mario Party 3 (despite how awesome Mario Party 3 was) so I’ve taken this rule and applied it to damn near any other game. Maybe I can understand not immediately making it free but in the above example Call of Duty 5 (or Call of Duty: whatever the hell they’re calling it these days) has been out for nearly half a year and I doubt that the Call of Duty 4 will have those free maps in another four or five months time. Granted the two were made by different developers but that’s beside the point. Give me the free maps! I demand it!

Number 3: When the DLC Doesn’t Add Anything Special to the Game

Example: Bomberman Live: Bomb-Up Packs

So NOW we’re talking about dog shit. Again I’m hoping the editor doesn’t come to my house and challenge me to a fist fight for using that so often. In any case I could talk about this in depth but the name says it all. The dog shit doesn’t add a whole lot to the game so it should be free on the grounds that I don’t want to pay you to add pretty much nothing to the overall gameplay.

Take my above example… for example (does that even work?) Bomberman’s bomb-up packs should definitely have been free or just included it in the original game. With the pack comes a bunch of gametypes and maps no one online plays anyway (we’re all too busy playing on the good starting maps with the non-stupid game variants to care). It’s like opening a gift on Christmas to get a playstation 2, a gamecube, or an xbox when you already have the better console. But gosh there’s really not more to say about it, maybe I’m complaining too much or maybe… just maybe… you’re not complaining enough.

Number 2: When the DLC is Just a Little Polish to an Otherwise Bland Turd Sandwich

Example: Crackdown (whatever that weapon pack is called)

I wanted to research what the dog shit was called here to retain my journalistic and genius vigilante integrity but I honestly didn’t care. Now let me set one thing straight, whereas Number 3 on the list (the one you just read if you read like a normal human being or super being) was about something that should be free based on the fact that it added little to a good game, this one is about DLC which could be good or bad that adds little to a horrible game. That’s right; I beat the system by having ALMOST identical but still slightly different types of DLC on display. Wooh!

Anyway I’m sure you (yes you, the guy in the red baseball cap) can think of a ton of DLC and games like this, but let’s go with my example because I already took the time to write it down. Now Crackdown wasn’t THAT bad of a game… okay yeah it was. The whole game was GTA or Saints Row with a ton of collection and not a lot of anything else. Shooting civilians was a power-up losing crime too, so there goes all the random slaughtering fun. The goal of the game is to collect orbs and kill a bunch of bad guys. You’re basically like Super Man except with a gun (or a slightly more athletic Fedora Man, with super powers, a gun, and no awesome hat). So after the fun of jumping around rooftops and shooting people wears off about six hours into the game what’s left to do? Well Realtime Worlds (the developers) has the answer in the form of a content pack sure to add a couple more hours of fun to the game. You get a weapon like the harpoon gun which is cool in that you can fire harpoons at people and stick them to cars and buildings and trees and other people. Where was the downside again? Oh right the fact that there’s a fuggin’ price tag associated with it. What the hell?! I paid sixty dollars for your game! There is no way in hell I’m going to spend six to ten dollars more to make your game NOT suck as much. You may think I’m being a little frustrated this time, because if there’s anything Fedora Man is known for its definitely not violent outbursts of vigilante justice. But that’s what happens when you stay up too late and you keep slicing off your fingers with your stupid razor-blade lined hat that STILL DOESN’T WORK!

But hey let’s look on the bright side. I’d like to take this time to get away from all the anger and pessimism and quickly point out Left 4 Dead. It’s a decent game, not too bad, not too good. But it appears that they’re coming out with DLC soon to make the game better. You know what I like the most about it without even having to look up gameplay videos on youtube? The fact that valve decided to not be a bunch of assholes and release the DLC free. So there, at least I tried to make this article slightly happier with a contrast between dog shit and decent DLC, as well as decent business practices in general.

Number 1: When the DLC in Question Sucks

Example: Too many to count

Damn even the example is a little depressing. There’s like a sea of dog shit out there (not literally you creep) and you know a DLC should be free when the DLC itself sucks. Really, this one ties into every other group category. By now you must be wondering “is there some kind of evil video game-themed villain out there causing all the DLC in the world to suck?” Well no, there was once, but he died in 1983 when the video game crash happened. It was weird and sad because the one thing he was trying to destroy was the only thing keeping him alive. Once the games became bad enough the crash happened and he died. It’s tragic, which is why I’m writing a play about it. I’m thinking of starring the lead role to Adam West and maybe get Jackie Chan in there somehow; we’ll have to see how it turns out.

Anyway there’s really not much more to say but hell I have time to kill in between creating my razor-bladed fedora and fighting demons from beyond time and space. So I’ll start with a little known game called Halo 2 (does anyone remember this game?). Halo 2 had four or five map packs, with the last one having two levels “Desolation” and “turd sandwich” or… something like that, I can’t remember (and I refuse to look it up). Anyway both were remakes and both were TERRIBLE. Although I’m not ashamed to own the Halo series, I am deeply ashamed to have put any money down toward this map pack. Turd sandwich was a terrible level and desolation was… also terrible (cut me some slack I’m tired AND I saved the world yesterday, shut up). Look I’ll give you another example: Halo 3. Halo 3 (and I use the halo series because of its general accessibility so people know what I’m talking about) had the “Heroic map pack” which was so bloody awful that I had to think twice before ever purchasing any kind of map pack EVER AGAIN! It was like they had a staff meeting but only three people showed up and they left after five minutes after someone said “but think about the customers” and someone else responded with “screw the customers!”

I’ll give you one more you might not have thought about: gamer pictures. Yeah those things, you actually have to pay for them. I think I’ll leave it at that instead of pointing out the crippling stupidity in paying for tiny pictures rather than picking up a fedora to hide your identity and going out to vigilante the shit out of the gaming industry.

…the top five games not worth full price

Brought to you by Fedora Man

Well it’s finally March; or rather it has been March for half a month now, whatever. It’s hard keeping track of time when you’re on another planet fighting the living embodiment of anger with nothing but hat based weaponry and your wit; not to mention making love to all the alien women who all suspiciously speak English (call me). In fact it’s nearly impossible to keep track of the time when you’re fighting robots and defending humanity twenty-four hours a day seven days a week (or sometimes eight days a week depending on where I am) so cut me some slack on the issue. But in between throwing my Fedora-rangs (not a rip-off of Batman) and solving super crime in my Fedora Cave I did manage to get down to Gamestop to browse the selection. I was thinking “Damn, I need some new games to play in between sleeping and fighting five dimensional creatures that my mind can’t fully comprehend.” Because honestly, what the hell else am I going to do in my spare time but play games on my super computer?

A horrible thing happened as I browsed the new games list: most of them weren’t worth the displayed price and I’ll be damned if I spend a cent of my billions of dollars if it’s on something overpriced and uninteresting. At first I believed some crime was afoot. Perhaps my non-arch-nemesis (but a nemesis nonetheless) The Emo-inator replaced all the great new games with some games that were released last year and already had at least thirty dollars shaved off the price tag in reality. But I quickly found out he was still in jail after his last big scheme (replacing all the pen ink in my mansion with black eyeliner). So I returned to Gamestop and demanded answers! “Why are these games priced at sixty dollars!” I demanded to know. “There is no way in hell they’re worth that much money!” I grabbed that pimply faced bastard by his collar and pulled him close to my face to show him I was serious. The rest after that was a blur, but I’m pretty sure the police came and I think I was trying to explain my innocence to them while being beaten with their night sticks. I couldn’t do anything since I wasn’t in costume (my fedora) so I just had to take the ass kicking. There is some good news though: I did manage to write down a list of games to bring to the public’s attention before I got sent to jail. Now the list was hastily scrawled on a dollar bill and there’s also a lot of blood on it but I’m pretty sure I can read it so I hope you can appreciate what I’ve done for you in the following list.

Number 5: Halo Wars

If ever there was an argument for Starcraft 2 to come out in the year 2009 this game would be it. With what looks like completely unbalanced gameplay and some craptastic AI; Halo Wars makes me yearn for the glory days of the RTS when Starcraft was out and kicking some ass. Or at the very least it makes me yearn for a computer RTS instead of this watered-down console game. Sure the controls worked but everything else was terrible compared to almost every other RTS on the market. Want to build a defense line at a chokepoint? Well you can’t build outside the designated bases. Do you like managing resources and armies to win strategically? Well I hope you do since it’s a Real Time STRATEGY. The only trouble with that is they only put one resource in the game and you can’t really hotkey or select units you aren’t looking at directly so micromanaging is nearly impossible. So do you want to kill the Prophet of Regret’s vastly inferior forces with your army of super death? Well have fun getting killed by his stupid laser. What about the AI? You might as well take out the “I” in that because there’s nothing intelligent about the computer. Even on the hardest difficulty and with the handicap of being a human (the entire human race tends to suck horribly in this game) I still managed to destroy the computer with minimal effort.

Admittedly the above was all part of the demo but a demo is designed to make you want a game and this demo did nothing but make me look at Blizzard’s website to see how far along Starcraft 2 was in production (and now I’m going to stop talking about SC2, I promise). “But there was a harder difficulty in the real game”, or so I’ve been told. But the thing about that is I don’t want to buy a game only to find out it’s not the least bit challenging. If someone else wanted to buy the game for me then sure I’d play it, the point is I just don’t want to pay $60 for it.

Number 4: House of the Dead: Overkill

Call me crazy (and I’ll punch you) but I’ve never been much for rail shooters. There was something about the lack of freedom to choose where I wanted to go (or move) that always got me. I guess they were alright in an arcade where I never had anything better to do and I had a friend handy. Other than that it never appealed to me to want to play a rail shooter at home because I could always do something different. “Let’s see do I want to play a game where zombies attack me and I’m not smart enough to take a few steps back? Or do I want to play Mario Kart?” Mario Kart won every single time. So although I haven’t played House of the Dead: Overkill, I have played rail shooters and previous HotD installments and can say that with one hundred percent certainty that this wouldn’t be worth fifty dollars.

Number 3: Tom Clancey’s HAWX

I don’t think demos are really making me want games anymore. First Legends of Wrestlemania (yeah your favorite superhero Fedora Man likes wrestling, sue me) with its “I don’t want to download because I’m an asshole” attitude. Then Halo Wars was like “I don’t feel like trying”. Then there’s this game, and I honestly can’t decide what this game’s message is. On one hand it could be “I’m not fun!” On the other hand it could be “what the hell is going on?” Both of those would actually work for this title. Maybe I was just stressed out from lack of sleep and from all the clowns I was punching in the face and the game simply appeared to not be enjoyable. Or maybe everyone telling me how great the game would be made me build up false expectations that it would be the next Starfox (minus that stupid Starfox Assault failure). Whatever the case may be it was not really all that great as a game. This could have been because I had no idea how to fly my plane in a way that didn’t cause me to experience vertigo. It could also be attributed to the fact that it felt like I wasn’t really accomplishing anything during the course of the battle. On one hand I could cut it some slack because it’s just a demo. But on the other hand I’m sworn to uphold the law in whatever way I see fit and if that doesn’t give me jurisdiction to be a douche for no reason then I don’t know what will.

Number 2: Halo Wars: Limited/Collectors Edition

Now I know what you’re thinking, and no I don’t have the ability to read minds I’m just that good. You’re thinking “but you already did Halo Wars! You’re so lame!” You’re probably considering destroying your Fedora Man action figures and burning all the T-Shirts with my face on it. You might even go pick up monopoly, dig the hat out, and eat it just to prove a point. Although firstly I’d like to point out that’s not a fedora, it’s a top hat. Secondly don’t lose faith! There is a very good reason I’m putting the special edition on this list.

For a while I debated just putting this down as an honorable mention and putting MLB 2K9 on this list instead. But then I realized that not only was it a sports game but it was one about baseball and no one would even read what I had to say about it because no one cares. I probably just pissed off some baseball fans that are no doubt injecting steroids and getting angry at me at this moment (zing). However I really can’t care because none of them parade around in my merchandise and play Dungeons and Fedora Man in their free time. In truth I shouldn’t make fun of baseball fans just because of our differences in what we like to watch. After all professional wrestling also has steroid use so I can let that slide (note: Fedora Man does not use steroids he is naturally a buff ass kicking machine). I do apologize for those last remarks, but only if you wear a fedora tomorrow to recognize my heroism.

Hey it looks like I’m getting off topic. Let’s get down to Halo Wars: Special Edition. Now I’m not sure when every major release had to have a special edition but I think it was around the time Halo 3 came out. In any case the special edition is priced at a nice eighty dollars. With it you get a disc on how they made the game, you know, in case you ever want to make a Halo Wars game yourself, in your basement. Actually it’s probably because they love Halo SO MUCH they just HAD to get it! Since figuring out how the game was made makes the experience so much better. Aside from that you also get a Spirit of Fire patch so that you can become the coolest kid on the block! (Note to self: get Spirit of Fire patch for costume). You also get some useless crap like trading cards and a book that details the history of the characters in the game. Now I’m no rocket scientist (okay yes I am) but I’m thinking that should have been included as an encyclopedia in the game or in the instruction book. Look I don’t mean to talk about Starcraft again but this just came up and it’s very important. See when you bought Starcraft it came with a huge manual that, aside from telling you how to play, detailed the history of each individual race as well as several heroes. Maybe it’s just me but I’m pretty sure that part could have easily been included in the game.

However the biggest reason this is on the list is attributed to the Halo 3 map code. I’m just wondering if somewhere along the line openly treating the customer like an idiot became the norm. The maps are going to be ten dollars on the xbl marketplace but now you can buy them for the low, low price of twenty dollars! Seriously? Maybe people really want all that other crap (anyone want to give me an ultra hip Spirit of Fire patch?) but I’m quite certain the majority of people bought the special/collectors/limited edition for those maps. So if you want to pay ten dollars more for the maps then go for it, just be sure to give me the Spirit of Fire patch.

Number 1: Resident Evil 5

So I get to play Resident Evil 4 again? Well that’s cool, it was a fun game and I’m sure they’ll change it so it doesn’t get boring while still delivering the great gameplay I expect from the fourth game. Oh but what’s this? You took out the merchant (the best character in the game) and the attaché case? So I can only carry around nine measly items? Well I guess they’re going back to their roots with survival horror in a way right? They’re limiting the items, it’ll totally work! Except they’re giving you mounted mini-guns with unlimited ammo so they can’t be trying to make it survival horror-esque again. But hey now they’re giving you cooperative mode, that’s awesome right? Except it ruins the gameplay for single player entirely which you might think is odd because it’s supposedly a single player game. One could argue Resident Evil 4 had an annoying partner you had to take care of. The difference here being Ashley could hide inside of dumpsters and not die like a jackass. She also decided that trying to run up and hug a man wielding a chainsaw was a bad idea, unlike Sheva whose battle strategy involves running right up to the chainsaw man and trying to shoot him. Oh and that’s another thing, Ashley never wasted my ammo. Hell when I think about it all the complaints I have about the game boil down to “my teammate is a moron”, that and they pretty much downgraded everything from the fourth game. I’m not going to spend a cent of my billion dollar fortune on Resident Evil 5 when I could invest that money in something much cooler… like a space ship shaped like a Fedora.

MadWorld is stylized game, consisting of mainly three colors – if you haven’t guessed already. Taking the look from Sin City, MadWorld does it extremely well. The graphical presentation is nice, smooth and creamy; or rather, nice to look at as the spectrum is actually really fitting for the game. The game does a good job making the world, well Mad, as it seems to a broken down trash heap of no humanity left. The level design sports good variety as no two levels looks the same, giving out nice atmosphere to the bloodshed that is all around you.

The game itself is genuinely fun, very fun in fact. Using the Wii Remote and the Nunchuck to a good extent. Using the A and B buttons to attack and actual movements to finish off people is a splendid combination, like No More Heroes. The game does rely a lot on the motion of the Wii Remote, but to a good extent – as in, not completely revolving around the motion. The game controls well but the only complaint is that at some points in the game, it will not completely register some movements, or it may register any movement. There are some Quick Time Events in the game which does a good job of not disrupting the action and continues the flow, as the action sequence is a very beautiful sight to see every time.

The game play itself can be described as a classic beat-em up, except with more blood. Though simply pounding on enemies is not where all the fun is; it’s exactly how you kill your enemies is the fun part. There are many different ways to kill your enemies, it never loses it touch. Why beat the crap out of someone when you can throw them on a wall spikes? Or into a grinder? How about slamming a pole through their face and then grind them against a saw? There are many possibilities and combinations on how to finish off your enemies, it never gets old. Anyone who has played God Hand for the PS2 will feel at home as you can tell it has the Clover touch to it, even some references here and there.

The enemies seemed varied but at the same time the same. There the weak guys, the strong guys, and then mid-bosses. First their street punks then ninjas then aliens, so on… just reskins, except the zombies which act a bit differently as well. Small minor complaint but it never really bothered me when dismembering them. The great thing is that all the bosses are all different and are very fun. Each stage will have a different boss with a different strategy to take them down.

Though I usually not fond of rap/hip-hop, I thought the soundtrack of the game went really well with the style. I tend to like it old school and the soundtrack takes me back and can’t wait till the soundtrack actually comes out. That’s saying something since all I listen to is metal.

The story itself is nothing too spectacular but it binds it all together. A city has been taken over by terrorist, released a virus, and made a game show called DeathWatch. The protagonist, Jack, enters the games as a bounty hunter and his own personal reasons. The game story gives it a definite dark feeling and a bit sense of mystery throughout. There’s no real character development and all that jazz but they are hilarious. The announcers throughout the game that describe your every action kept me laughing throughout the game. Though at times they will just repeat themselves depending on what you did, I don’t really mind hearing it a couple more times. The announcers really give the game a feeling that you are part of the DeathWatch experience. Nothing else much to say about the story itself, but the dialogue from the announcers makes up for all of it.

Of course for those of you who are in Euroland, some of those countries over there might be saying bad things about all the violence, saying the game isn’t meant for a “family” console. There is indeed a lot of violence, but there was also a lot of violence when I watched Tom & Jerry or Looney Toons when I was a kid. The only difference is the blood as the violence in this game is way too over the top, I doubt kids are going to shove streets signs up another’s asshole. It’s game perfect for the “family” console, after all, the dads, the moms, the teenagers may want something else than colorful rainbows farting lollipops doing the same thing over and over again.

Overall, the game is fantastic and if you’re a fan of beat-em ups and over the top violence, you should definitely get this. I know some of us are having a bit of buyer’s remorse since getting our Wii’s but I can assure you that MadWorld will make it worthwhile, or at least dampen it a bit.

1: DLC: DLC is not bad in and of itself. DLC is a good way to both add features, fix bugs and continue to provide several different kinds of support to your customer. Games like LittleBigPlanet offer things as big as new levels and new creation tools as well as things as small as costumes. Games like Burnout Paradise offer free cars, levels and modes and for free no less. Not every company is out to rip you off and take your money. HOWEVER, when companies abuse this system, that is complete bull and definitely worth complaining about. Case in point: EA’s “Time is Money” DLC. 5 Dollars to unlock all of the accessories in Skate 2. 5 dollars for a cheat code is unacceptable, don’t buy that or I will come and beat the game for you to save you the money. I could also say the same thing about Capcom, who saw fit to charge 20 dollars for extra costumes that are already included on the disk, but I want the beauty pack so I won’t =/

2: BROWN AND BLOOM SHOOTERS: Team Fortress 2, Resistance 2, The Darkness (ironic, isn’t it), Halo 3, the list goes on. Yes, there is a meta-trend towards more gritty and realistic shooters, no that isn’t a bad thing. If any thing, it is a reaction to all of the arcadey shooters we had before hand or all the uber-hero World War 2 games we had before. Face it, we have trends. Trends create anti-trends. Everyone gets a game they want, everyone wins.

3: Exorbitant Waiting/Development Times: The HD era has increased development times. I won’t deny this. However, there are several mitigating facts not the least of which are tons of sweet games on the PSN or XBLA. Then of course you have the Wii which provides you with an ample amount of ROM’s to pay for, as well as the fact that there are many more quality developers and publishers out there cranking out more games than ever before. You may have to wait a long time for Final Fantasy XIII, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of other good games to play.

4: Too Many Sandbox Games: Sandboxes are another meta-trend in the gaming industry. Sandboxes suck right? Wrong. If anything, they have gotten better. Games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Oblivion provided the player colossal worlds with absolutely nothing worth doing in them. Grand Theft Auto IV and Fallout 3 reduced the size of the world (while still keeping it adequately large) and proceeded to actually populate the land with people and things with which you could interact in meaningful ways. An unfortunate bi-product of the sandbox craze is that some games which would probably be better in a linear setting get developed according to a trend rather than its strengths. However, if these developers screw up their games and end up failing? Oh well, move on with life. Yes a good game might be lost in the process, no I don’t give a damn, plenty of other good games out there.

5: THIS GENERATION DOESN’T HAVE GOOD GAMES: Stop being ignorant. If you want to be blind to the fact that there are hundreds of good games out there, be my guest. There may not be the sheer quantity of games, but that also has to do with the fact that this generation has only just started. If this generation sucks that bad, go back to playing SNES, I won’t miss your complaining. Old console games have a lot fewer moving parts in them, which makes a game that capitalizes on them seemingly perfect. Games like Megaman 2 which do everything correctly achieve godlike status, but to compare them to modern day games and say the old ones are fun is simply ridiculous. If anything, modern day games should have more of a penchant for fun. If a game with more moving parts manages to execute them all properly, shouldn’t it be better than old games? Hell, XBLA and the PSN provide us with these sort of games all the time! Good ol’ nostalgia.

I had an Atari. Most of the people playing video games don’t know what that is. I’m not saying my opinion is right because I was there, I’m saying my opinion is right because I don’t have the flaccid penis of nostalgia in my mouth. The last generation gave birth to games that I will never forget. So did the one before that, the one before that and the one before that. This one will be no different. How about instead of all this rage you just go and play the vidya, wouldn’t that be super?