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Friday, February 10th, 2012
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9:54 am
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| Sunday, September 25th, 2011
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11:29 pm - Dear Drive,
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| Thursday, September 8th, 2011
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12:58 am - Thank you, Deus Ex: Human Revolution
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| Sunday, July 31st, 2011
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4:20 pm
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I know I don't use this very much anymore (like just about everyone), but I just want you all to know, in case you didn't already, that I'm doing a thing.
I'm trying to take pictures every day, and I'm going to post a new one from that day and an old one from the past every single day.
That's my plan, and if I tell everyone, then I'm beholden to everyone and I won't quit. That's sound logic, right?
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Thursday, June 30th, 2011
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9:14 am - Transfomers 3
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I loved the first two Transformers movies for where I was when I saw them and for what they did. I have never gone back to either film, nor do I think I ever will. Sitting in a full theater with a friend and watching robots fight for two hours was very fun for me, and in the summer of 2008, the action blockbuster was everything I wanted from cinema. Coming back from two and a half years abroad, a place where theaters didn't actually work, where I had to cross a boarder to see a movie in English, sitting in a theater, watching anything, made me incredibly happy. That's a feeling I still get every time I sit in a theater, and it's part of what made me enjoy that summer's films far more than I probably should have.
And I don't care. The theater is my church, and I love being in the service.
That said, Transformers 3 is the only one of the three that I will actually one day revisit. Perhaps one day soon. It's Bay's best film since Bad Boys II, and it's his most subdued since The Rock. Apparently, 3D takes an additional two to three seconds for the brain to register, so Bay's traditional quick cuts are not present here, as he listened to science (good job Bay!).
Transformers 3 does everything right that the first two did wrong. The silly shit is dialed down to a minimum, and is actually (mostly) welcome. Sam's parents are here, for about ten minutes total, and their two or three scenes made me laugh most of the time. And when they were tired, they left. There's nothing embarassing like twenty minutes of his mom too high for life. There's five minutes where she talks about the importance of the female orgasm, and then the movie continues.
Malkotraz is in here too, as probably the best goofy, side character. He's relishing the role, having more fun than I've ever seen him have in a throw away. John Tuturro is back as well, but he's mostly plot related here, and not so much crazy person related.
Now that that's out of the way, the biggest downside. The girl has a freaky alien forehead.
The action is the most insane-o action I've seen since, well, probably Bad Boys II. It's exceptionally well choreographed, and it's always clear what is happening and where it's happening. The camera generally stays steady and its movement is fluid.
Most importantly, the threat in this one felt real. For the first time in the trilogy, I felt like there were no rules, that the film could actually end badly. About halfway through, the movie establishes that there are no rules. Characters die, clearly die, not just shot and fall down, but heads explode and lights fade from the eyes. And not side characters, but major characters that have been part of the narrative from the first film.
From that point forward, the film is brutal. I was actually kind of surprised at how much they got away with. There's a moment where the tone of the film shifts completely, where the funny interludes stop and where the serious film begins, and the destruction feels real and intense.
The last hour of the film is a single, amazing action sequence. There are shots of humans running from Decepticons, getting turned into dust and rolling skulls. A very real sense of dread hangs over the entire final act, and it completely sucked me in.
What helped was how ridiculous the action was. The focus in the final act is human vs. Decepticon, and it was really, really well done. The military plan that was formed was great, and seeing a handful of humans overtake a robot was incredibly cathartic.
There is one sequence in particular that will join the list of incredible action sequences. When you think about the great action sequences in films, things like the bike/truck chase in T2, the crane/plane rescue from True Lies, the shootout/fistfight in the department store in Marked for Death, the baby rescue in Hard Boiled. This thing in the building goes on that list. It's the standout moment in an epic, hour long action sequence.
The entire film runs two and a half hours, and it's cognitively exhausting. It never really stops, and once it gets going it no longer slows down. It is so long, however, that I found myself reminiscing about the first half hour as the credits rolled, which is a weird feeling.
It is also clearly the end of this story. This is a complete trilogy with a very definite end, one that surprised me. It did things I didn't expect it to and was harder and more brutal than I expected.
Do see it in 3D, as it was shot in 3D and for 3D. The film was brightened up in my screening, to avoid the darkness that usually accompanies 3D films. It's great to see filmmakers adapting existing technology to help the new technology work better.
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(comment on this)
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| Tuesday, June 28th, 2011
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12:26 pm - Enslaved
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The reboot of Prince of Persia was a poor game that didn't quite deserve the power of its endgame and conclusion. But what made it work, for me, was how much character work there was. I stopped at every opportunity to talk with the characters, and that gave me the drive to see the game through and made me impressed by the conclusion.
Enslaved is very, very similar, but the core mechanics are stronger than in PoP. But not by much. I'm not entirely convinced that Ninja Theory understands how to make a game. I mean, they know all the parts and pieces, but they don't really know how to tighten those pieces up to make something worthy of 2010. The running and climbing work well enough, in that you can't fall to your death, but they lack fluidity. Frequently Monkey will run to an edge and stumble instead of jump. Or the next climbing point won't be immediately visible, so you jam on the A button while rotating the stick, which is fine in the beginning, but in later chapters, where you have to jump between fire bursts and rotating gears, you take a lot of unnecessary damage. There are moments of amazing fluidity, beautiful set pieces that are designed within the limitations of the game, like Ninja Theory understood what they were unable to do, so they focused on how to make that scene work. I wish they did it more.
Fighting is kind of in the same boat. This game would have either benefited from a targeting system like the 3D Zeldas or from a wider lens on the camera. You start the game with four attacks, a light, a heavy, a stun and a wide, push everyone away, swing. As the game progresses, you can unlock more, but they are rarely useful. You can get a counterattack that's a serious pain in the ass to use, you can get a dodge attack, which only works if the game rolls you away in a specific direction, and you get a powered up attack which is very useful in later levels.
But the fighting in general is very simplistic. If an enemy is blocking or has a shield, stun them then beat on them. Hopefully while you're doing this, another enemy won't be sneaking up on you from behind. If an enemy is attacking, block with your shield and hope it holds out until they stop, or roll away and hope you don't roll into another enemy's attack.
That's it. That's all the fighting in Enslaved. There are shooting scenes, which fare better, and there are some sneaking scenes early on that are fun and creative. These scenes rely on the most exciting mechanic in the game, which is the partnership between Monkey and Trip. They pretend early on that there is some very real risk to Trip, and that if she dies, Monkey dies, but she is rarely in danger and even when she is, it's easy to get to her and save her. I only encountered this danger when it was scripted, which honestly was refreshing. Build that tension in the narrative, not in the gameplay.
Trip has a few things she can do, like provide a decoy that will run for a short time and will then recharge. Early segments of the game involve using her decoy while you run around trying to figure out how to get to the turret. These scenes are fun and unique, and were probably the most engaged I ever was in the gameplay itself. Tragically, these moments only occur in the first third of the game. Once you get out of the city, the gameplay and its tone shifts to a darker, more distressed color and emotional pallet. Narratively I liked this shift, but it hurt the gameplay and actually started to overwhelm me a bit.
In an attempt to amp up the tension, Ninja Theory created levels that were more vague and featured more frustrating fighting. They don't really throw anything too hard at you, but they create situations that you know you can't handle (like having to fight enemies while something bigger and more important is happening in the background, or making you defend fucking power cores), but then they turn down the difficulty so you can handle it. But that wasn't fun for me, because I knew that a loss would kick me back to the beginning of the whole, irritating fucking things, so the tension was no longer narrative, it was now based entirely in my time management. A ten minute sequence I fail in minute nine means I have to waste those nine minutes again, unless I fail again, etc. etc. Enslaved seems to know it's being unfair and secretly eases up on you, which still doesn't feel very good.
And that's where Enslaved seems to be stuck. Or, maybe more fairly, where Ninja Theory seems to be stuck. In 1999. This is one thing that kept me from PSX and PS2 era brawlers: this sense of inequality between me and the machine that was supposed to be providing my entertainment. A game that worked so hard to be cutting edge but didn't yet understand what made a 3D game fun was more forgivable ten years ago because it was still new. But now everything is 3D, and the core of Enslaved toes that line so frequently.
And don't even get me started on the final boss fight... The conclusion to a level that felt like a transition but instead was the end of the entire game was irritating in ways I haven't experienced in years, with a final boss that just wouldn't stop happening, for no good reason whatsoever.
But. And this is a huge but. Everything that I initially loved about Enslaved is what kept me playing, what kept me interested in playing. I never got so frustrated I put the game down. In fact, I had to force myself to stop playing every morning. I frequently overshot my self-imposed time limits just to play "one more level". The game is gorgeous, the design is endlessly creative. The areas you run around in are beautiful and full of things to look at. And, most importantly, the story is quite good. It never quite gets to be great, but it is really, really good. The things that I found great were the nods to Journey to the West, which I know and love, and that certainly helped suck me in, even as the two stories completely parted ways about two thirds of the way through.
And, for maybe the first time in his career, Alex Garland stuck an ending. He faltered in the third act, which did admittedly worry me when I got there, but the story righted itself and created a very interesting and quite powerful final scene. It was here that, despite my frustrations towards the end, I wanted more. I wanted more game, more story, more exploration of this world.
I want a prequel, maybe one that follows Monkey from a birth or some sort and through the Uproar in Heaven. I want a sequel, perhaps now that Trip and Monkey have a scripture of sorts they can return it to the east. I want more of these characters and this story and these visuals, and maybe I want Ninja Theory to learn how to make a great game so we can have the game that they truly wanted to make but just didn't seem to quite know how.
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, June 17th, 2011
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11:56 am
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Super 8 was magical, and the more I read, the more I feel I'm the only one it was magical for.
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, April 19th, 2011
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11:53 am - Luke! LUUUUKE!
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| Friday, April 15th, 2011
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9:06 am - Day 25: Favorite Castlevania Game
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This one is easy. Symphony of the Night. It's fun, it's gorgeous, the score is incredible and the gameplay is slick. It also kicked off a new subgenre of Castlevania games, none of which were as good, but sometimes they came close!
Man, this is getting harder to do...
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(comment on this)
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| Tuesday, April 12th, 2011
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2:12 pm - BONUS DAY: Best Video Game Movie
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I know I've missed a day or two now, but I was watching other people finish up their lists and wanted to do a bonus day too. Also, I just got Beyond Good and Evil HD. So, you know. Also, I just saw Sucker Punch, and it's the best Video Game Movie ever made.
( Sucker Punch )
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Saturday, April 9th, 2011
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4:12 pm - Day 23: Favorite Metroid Game
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Here's another hard one. Metroid has, not really intentionally, been a major part of my life. Almost accidentally, really.
I got the first Metroid when I was a kid. My mom had a really bad migraine, so my dad and I went out, probably to get me out of her hair. Wherever we were, whatever we were doing, my dad suggested that we get me a new game. I actually have no memory of the event, so I don't remember what it was about that silver box with the yellow and orange spaceman on it that made me choose it, but I did.
While playing, my dad came in and watched for a time. I was getting frustrated because the numbers that represented health felt arbitrary. I had yet to see the pattern and, honestly, were it not for his intervention, I probably never would have, or at least I wouldn't have seen it the way I see it now.
Purple balls are worth 5, a hit is worth -8. Metroid math lesson.
Anyway, I loved it, was pissed off with it, we had no idea what was happening, ever, at all, but we were mystified, in a good way, with the world. We fell in the columns of oranges and died a lot, before learning how to get out, we figured out bomb jumping, etc.
I think it was the last game where I had to actually figure out the system on my own, 100%. That and Zelda were the two games that told us nothing at all, but that we figured out on our own. That said, I can never actually go back to the original Metroid, at least not in its original state.
I missed out on Metroid 2 and Super Metroid until high school, didn't finish the former, loved the shit out of the latter (except for that fucking bug boss, which is now where I usually put the game down and walk away).
Many years later, the Gamecube pack in deal with Metroid Prime is what made me finally get the system. I also, not long after, got the Game Boy Player (one of the greatest things Nintendo EVER did) and got Metroid Fusion.
Then, on my birthday, Nintendo released Metroid: Zero Mission. And I fucking love it. To this day. I love the changes made to the game, I love the mapping system, the slow reveal of the mythology, the atmosphere and, especially, the final third, where you get to sneak around and then MURDER EVERYONE as a reward for being so unfairly punished. Yes, it can get a little too hold-your-handy, but that's a small price to pay for the streamlining.
Now. This is a series made up of great games. I haven't played Other M, but the biggest stumble I think is Prime 3, which I never finished, but I appreciated what they were trying to do. Retro seemed to realize that there's only so much you can do with a system before it gets repetitive (like the Castlevania Metroid clones have), so I did appreciate the secondary characters, the mission based stuff, the planets, the overall idea.
It's really easy to make Super Metroid a favorite in the series, and it does rightfully belong there, but for me... the one-two punch of Metroid Fusion and Metroid Prime are, for me, the pinnacle of this series.
Metroid Prime successfully did what nobody thought was possible: They took a 2D game and made it 3D, with no problems. The exploration was perfectly paced and incredibly well integrated, precision jumping was almost perfect, fighting was harrowing but never unfair, and boss fights were incredibly creative, using new tools well and meting out new skills at a good pace.
Prime is a game I have revisited frequently, and when I'm not playing it, I do frequently think about playing it. The music, the atmosphere, the little things. It's a game that is made amazing by its little things. Like Samus' face reflected in the face mask... Fucking hell, what a nice, inspired touch. I have started it a half a dozen times at least, finished it twice. Like most games of that nature, I have more fun playing the beginning than the end.
Prime and Fusion came out at about the same time, and they did connect, if you had a GBA at the cable. I never did, so I never connected them, but this was going to be Metroid's Renaissance. Prime made things 3D, Fusion kept the 2D and ran in a completely different direction.
Metroid has always been about isolation and a little tension, about exploration and revelation. Fusion changed things up, telling a very good little horror story. Instead of dropping you into a foreign environment, you begin at the top of the food chain. Your weapon's growth has always been about improving your chances in a world where very little actually shoots back at you.
The opening of the game did something I really appreciated. By removing the Metroid from the planet, a bacteria, which was kept in check by the Metroid, now flourishes. The Metroid and Samus have essentially melded, and the bacteria has created a copy of Samus.
You, once at the top of the food chain, are now pursued by your copy, at full strength, which has a grudge against half of your genetic code. That's such an awesome twist on a comfortable formula.
And whenever Samus-X shows up, I get tense. Your only option is to run and hide. You can, later, freeze it for two seconds, but it's really no help at all. Any time the music stopped, I shit a little bit. The atmosphere of sheer terror that is built into this game is incredible, and the way the game teaches you to be scared is equally so. You have to run, and if you don't, you die.
Lay that plot down on top of a tighter Metroid game, with direction through the space station, with great exploration and creature stuff, even with a little character development, and you have my favorite game in the franchise.
I love Metroid, but I love Metroid Fusion the most, I think.
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| Friday, April 8th, 2011
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8:42 am - Day 23: Favorite Resident Evil Game
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This one's easy, as I only ever really played one. I played the first one way back when, but got irritated really quickly as the deck was unfairly stacked against me and the controls blew. Two encounters in, out of bullets, can only kick, but each kick also hurt me? Yeah, that's not fun.
I played twenty minutes of RE 2 then died at the first real encounter and had to start over. Yeah, that's not my scene.
I also played one playthrough of one that was an on-rails shooter, and that was fun, but I had forgotten all about it until just now, so that shows you how powerful an experience it was in the end.
But RE 4? That was a good one. In fact, I'd even call it a great one. Great atmosphere, great setpieces, terrible writing and acting, with a ridiculous story and a dumb ass boat race at the end?
It did have a great camera set up, a good variety of tools and weapons, a neat inventory system and some very intense moments. RE 4 is not without its problems, but I had a great week with it and would play it again one day.
But none of them are scary.
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, April 7th, 2011
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8:54 am - Day 22: Best Story
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Fucking hell. How do you qualify something like this? After all these years, and all of the advancements we've made, how do you choose one thing that's better than all the others? And in this medium there are great stories, stories that engage you and keep you going through the game to get to more story. The story as a driving force.
RPGs usually fall into this category. I've mentioned them all before, but the Final Fantasy series (or, at least the six that we got before the PS2 came around) all had incredible stories in that the stories, in the individual moments, were fantastic, but were also connected solidly enough to the rest of the story that ten hours of separation didn't make you forget the important details that came before. That wasn't always good storytelling, but it was great story design.
Yes, there were some really stupid things that went on in those stories, but the narrative in the medium was still being explored. I was tolerable of silly things simply because the stories we'd been given before were simply "rescue this princess" or "get all your bananas back".
But in recent years we've been given stories that aren't so much stories as they are moments within a personal narrative. The one that's been on my mind recently for some reason is Modern Warfare. There is a story in that game, certainly, but I couldn't tell you what it is. I played it over a year ago. But the story isn't really important. You are two characters in two different places in the world, fighting two different members of the same Bad Guys. The Bad Guys wanted to do Bad Things. That's the actual storyline.
But the narrative is far more than that. The narrative that is provided for you isn't about a story, it's about moments that affect you. The story in Modern Warfare is about the part where you do something awesome, and then you do another thing that's awesome. But it's not about doing something awesome on your own, it's about doing the same awesome things everyone else who experienced the game did.
It's about you shooting a cannon from a plane to defend your team. It's about rappelling down the side of a building in the USSR after assassinating a dude. It's about hiding in the tall grass as soldiers try to find you. It's about raiding a TV station, it's about saving the Vice President on Air Force One, it's about a nuke, it's about a finale on a broken bridge.
That's the story, and it's an awesome one.
But then, then there's Mother 3.
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| Wednesday, April 6th, 2011
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9:39 am - Day 21: Favorite Game World
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I love worlds that feel real yet have an air of mystery about them. I love worlds that feel open enough to be explored, yet closed off enough that you always know what you need to do and where you need to go. It's a very delicate balance, but because I prefer a strong narrative over a world, I will take the more linear over the less linear.
The introduction to the world also makes an important impact, crafting the lens that I will continue to view the world through. Final Fantasy III (I know, I keep coming back to this one) begins in an icy mountain village, dark and cold, with eerie music and an inexplicable tension. The opening setpiece introduces two major characters, a conspiracy, an ancient mythology, corruption and the major conflict of magic vs. technology.
The game that follows manages to maintain that misty, haunting theme, and that world just might be my all time favorite one to explore.
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, April 5th, 2011
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7:50 pm - Day 20: Favorite Game Soundtrack
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For some reason, I have a hard time playing fast with rules and regulations. So, as has happened a few times in the past twenty days, I have no real idea what constitutes my favorite soundtrack. Are we talking something composed for a game? How about something composed using the limitation of the hardware? Or is a compilation okay?
Because games have had some stellar soundtracks. They've also had some stellar scores composed for them. The NES and SNES have done some amazing things, musically, but moving into the PSX and PS2 era, with more space, we've seen some incredible compilations of pop tunes that perfectly fit games.
I'm not sure when I first really took notice of game music. There were all the standards, like Mario and Zelda, that stuck in our heads, as they were powerful pieces of music, pushing the hardware to the limits, and creating the perfect atmosphere for the games that were laid out in front of us. They were also unique, in a way, as they had music. More than one song, even.
It might have been Mega Man 2 or 3 that first wormed its music into my head. What I know for sure is that the first three Final Fantasy games had the first scores to make a very distinct impression on me. Then came Chrono Trigger and Earthbound. These five games had complete, effective scores. There were other things of that era that stuck out in my mind, but they were never so comprehensive in their quality. Secret of Mana, for example, has some incredible tracks, the ice world track in particular perfectly captures the mystery of a snow covered forest. But other tracks are lifeless filler.
So, when it comes to original game scores, Square's output from 1990-1999 is my favorite game soundtrack(s).
But...
GTA Vice City has the best compilation of music within a game and, dare I say one of the best 80's music compilations period. But it's more than just a compilation of great period music, it has cleverly scripted DJs that round out each station's set perfectly. The ads are hit and miss, but the DJs and the music together make the soundtrack among my favorites.
Along those same lines, I'm going to throw Jet Set Radio up there too. As far as I know, little to none of that music was written for the game itself, but it all sets the mood perfectly. I still pull the soundtrack every once in awhile and enjoy just walking around to it.
Of course, Katamari and, to a lesser extent, Everyone Loves Katamari almost fall into the same category. DK's assessment is perfect, as it's just about the perfect soundtrack to an almost perfect game. Whimsical, pretty, calming, cute, endearing, hilarious, charming. The Katamari soundtrack is a perfect paring of music and game and I'm hard pressed to think of a more perfect one.
Finally, Rez. That's all I need to say.
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7:15 pm - Day 19: Best Voice Acting
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I'm not sure what I can call the best voice acting of all time, but I do remember the first time voice acting really made me sit up and listen: Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen. Soul Reaver also had excellent voice acting, but it was Blood Omen that initially struck me as changing things. It also helped that Blood Omen had a dark story, darker than most anything I can remember that came before it.
As a game, it's passable. It's a Zelda clone with a strong narrative about betrayal and the forbidden. The mechanics are kind of cool, especially later on in the game, when you learn to possess and use villagers to solve puzzles and enter dangerous areas, and sucking blood is always fun.
But there are these triangles on the ground throughout the game, and stepping on them activates the voice over, as Kain talks about the land, the history and his life. The dual narrative of Kain and the world he resides in is incredible, and the voice acting work here is among the best I've ever heard. Can you describe a monologue as "delicious"?
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5:01 pm - Day 18: Favorite Multiplayer Game
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I'm back!
I was born in 1980, got an NES in 1988, and am one of a very small number of my peers that actually kept playing video games through high school. Multiplayer games as we know and talk about them today didn't really exist in that five year period. We had games that were played by multiple people, certainly, and we even played against each other, but we never had the Four Play (is that the name? I seriously think that's the name, and I'm going to stick with it) nor did we have any of the games that you could play with it.
Oh, we played Gauntlet 2 and a top down racing game, where you could see the entire track at once, and those were four player games, but mostly our multiplayer experiences were Battletoads and all the sports games I listed earlier.
In the last two generations, the multiplayer games I've spent any time with are few and far between. We played a lot of GTA III and Vice City, collectively, so those single player affairs did become multiplayer. One friend and I spent hours drinking beers and playing pool in Monkey Ball 2. I never played games online and still don't. I have some games that have the option, but I've never actually tried to make it work.
I'm not sure how to even call one or the other of these a "favorite". If I had to pick one we played the most, it would probably be North and South. I loved that game as a kid, and we played that for hours on end. I rarely played by myself, as that's simply not fun, my calvery slaughtered a lot of little men, and when the Indian threw a tomahawk or the sleeping Mexican shot a man, we hooted and hollered like apes.
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| Friday, April 1st, 2011
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10:31 am - Day 17: Favorite Action Game
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What exactly constitutes an action game? Like a shooter that isn't in first person? Or a shooter without a spaceship? Or a shooter without an open world?
What about Space Harrier? Is that an action game or a SHMUP?
Let's go with that one. Why not. Space Harrier won me over at a very early age, before I even knew what happened. An arcade I went to at some point in my childhood (probably at Great America or Marine World, Africa, USA) had a Space Harrier machine with the moving chair. The chair was terrifying then, to my four foot tall self, and I couldn't entirely concentrate on the game being played because of all the moving.
I'm not sure I got how special that game was, not then.
A few years later, a friend of mine got World Runner 3D on his NES. The 3D gave us headaches, but the world running was pretty fun, even with the frustratingly unfair jumps. At the time, I had yet to put two and two together, but I knew that I loved the checkerboard grid racing below my feet.
In high school, I went to the movies a lot. Junior year, we saw a movie every single Friday. Didn't miss a one. Movies cost three bucks back then, and I always kept a quarter or two in my pocket to play Space Harrier, the only machine in the lobby. It was tucked away in a corner, hidden from the world, and playing it with only the throttle made me feel awesome. Pretty much as awesome as any and all of these make me feel (especially Spacebeam, Yo!)
That theme, that flying, that shooting, that dodging, I can play Space Harrier all day.
A few years ago, we stayed in a cabin in New Hampshire with friends of our roommate. We had recently had a household viewing of The King of Kong, and on the drive up, we passed Funspot. I was excited because it's Funspot. Everyone else was excited because it was in the King of Kong.
We went. We played. They had a Space Harrier sit down machine. And it was good.
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, March 31st, 2011
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9:11 am - Day 16: Favorite FPS
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Well, like most of the other entries here, this one is going to be a history.
You can blame me and people like me for the consolization of the FPS. Yes, that was my fault. Deus Ex 2? That was me!
My first FPS was, I think, THE first FPS. I had Wolfenstein on my old Macintosh, and it was... well, it was something. I loved it at the time because I thought I was supposed to. I was twelve or thirteen and you shot Nazis. How could you NOT like that?
Well, I didn't not like it, but honestly, I didn't really like it either. It was fucking hard, unfairly so. The game did a lot to help you, but it wasn't always enough, at least not to me, a person who primarily played slow paced, turn based games. Once I discovered the cheats, however, I had a great time.
A few years later, I got Dark Forces, which took Wolfenstein and improved upon it (I guess it took Doom and improved upon that, but I didn't play Doom until last year), but it was still infuriating in parts.
I didn't play another FPS for at least ten years. Or, at least, I didn't play one seriously. In high school I was part of the computer tech group that helped teachers get new computers set up. We didn't actually do a lot, and instead played Quake on a map of our school (this was two years before Columbine, so it was still okay to do things like this).
But FPSs didn't work on consoles yet, and my computer was too old and too Macintosh to run them. So I missed out on a lot. It wasn't until college and my PS2 that I actually started to play a few.
I had Deus Ex on the PS2, but the controls were still too complicated for the controller, and it was incredibly frustrating for me. I never got past the second area.
When I moved to China, I got a new laptop, one that ran faster than anything I'd owned before. It was then that I played through System Shock 2, which remains one of the great overall gaming experiences, even though I never finished it. The story was exceptionally delivered, the gameplay tight, the scares genuine (once I turned off the stupid zombie regeneration thing). The character growth felt substantial as well, which was nice.
I also played through Half Life 2, which showed me what a game could and, maybe, should be. A cinematic adventure with a fine story, location and plot progression that felt genuine and realistic, all set in a beautiful, destroyed world. On the PC the only moments that frustrated me were the driving and boating segments. They simply didn't work for me on a keyboard/mouse setup.
But the core game itself was incredibly powerful, and I enjoyed my time with the game immensely. So much so that I still go back and replay it on the Sexbox (FPSs on that system play better for me than on the PC) every year or so.
Since then, I've played a lot of these, every fun looking one that I come across. It's hard to pick a favorite, simply because there are so many exceptional ones with so many exceptional pieces. Even if the game itself isn't perfect, there can be a single part that succeeds in doing something I've never seen done before.
Take The Darkness, for example. The Darkness is a really neat game with a really neat core mechanic. You have a demon inside you and you need to be in the dark to murder everyone with tentacles and wormholes and weirdo guns. It all plays really well.
But it's humanity is where the game really shines. It is, ultimately, about mobsters killing each other, and it goes places where games rarely go. But, early on in the game, you go to your girlfriend's new apartment. You sit on the couch with her, and she says a few things before falling asleep. If you decide to wait that long, that is. If you really want, you can sit and watch the entirety of To Kill A Mockingbird on her TV, with her.
That moment alone is easily one of the most realistic emotional moments I've ever seen in a game.
Or take another old favorite of mine, Project Eden. As an FPS, it's really not very good. But as a puzzle game, it's fantastic. You have four characters, each with a specialty. You need all four specialties to get through an area (think Lost Vikings, in first person mode). What makes the game amazing is that every area feels like a real place. When you're in a hospital, it feels like a hospital. A construction site is designed to be a construction site. The levels came first, the puzzles second and, unfortunately, the gameplay third.
Man, I could go on all day. Both Bioshock games, but the second one more so. A tighter, more fluid experience, with a better flow of arenas and sections. The plot was, overall, a little weaker, the wonder a little less, but the overall game was, I think, superior. It's also one of the few that I want to replay soon, and I only finished it a month or so ago.
But as far as a favorite... That's just about impossible. Deus Ex? Because there is no happy ending? It's hard, it's flexible, it's just about anything you want it to be and, in the end, you can't win. The story is solid, the gameplay is fun, the tools at your disposal are fun to play with. But not all of the skills are useful, and the voice acting is embarrassing at times.
So lets call this one a draw. My favorite FPSs are Half Life 2, Deus Ex and System Shock 2. There's a second tier that's easily three times as long, and I'm sure there are others that affected me in the moment that I've forgotten right now.
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| Wednesday, March 30th, 2011
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9:36 am - Day 15: Favorite Downloadable Game
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We're halfway through! It's been fun so far!
The easy choice in this category would be Braid. It's innovative, creative, challenging and beautiful. It has meaning, purpose. It has weight. It is a wonder and a joy. And yet? It's not my favorite.
I haven't really downloaded many things. One reason I bought a 360 before a Wii was Braid. I brought the system home with a few cheap games, set it up, downloaded Braid and Sexy Bionic Commando. And I was not disappointed with either.
Since then I've grabbed a few things here and there. When DK was up in Boston we got Gunstar Heroes, which is fun. Rez is Rez. P.T. Winterbottom is infuriating in the best (and worst) possible way. Limbo was a neat way to spend two hours and Shadow Complex was a fun diversion.
But, of all these things, 'Splosion Man is my favorite downloadable game, as well as one of my favorite games of '09. It's one of the best platformers I have ever played (shit, why didn't I think of this on the Favorite Platform day?). At the very least, it's the best platformer in twenty years (Super Meat Boy coming in a close second).
'Splosion Man is ridiculously simple. All the buttons do the same thing: 'Splode. You 'splode to jump, bounce off walls and attack. You run down long corridors, bounce up walls, jump from platform to platform, blow up robots, reflect exploding ninja stars and, best of all, kill scientists that bleed steaks.
Meat is an important part of 'Splosion Man, but its presence creeps up on you. Between levels, he shouts the names of meat and meat based sandwiches. Scientists turn into meat. When you kill enough of them, you get a trademarked achievement named after a brand of steaks. The final boss is made of meat and the closing song sings about meat.
As a character, he's simply fun to watch. When 'Splosion Man runs, he sticks his arms out and makes an airplane noise. When he stands still, he punches the air or does jumping jacks. When you defeat the first boss, dropping his arms down an elevator shaft, he shouts "See you at the party, Richter!"
But that's just the aesthetics of the thing. The character, the charm. Thankfully, the gameplay is so finely polished. The game visually speaks the language of video games. Cutscenes explain how to deal with an impending obstacle, but do so visually, with no dialog. Arrows point the way (of course), but one color directs you one way, another color the opposite. Conveyor belts are a perfect example. It's impossible to tell the direction a belt will take you simply by looking at the belt. But it teaches you that blue sends you one way and yellow sends you another.
But it doesn't pause the action to tell you this, you play the game and the you just KNOW it to be true, now and forever.
And this is how almost everything in 'Splosion Man works. You do something once or twice, and then you just KNOW how to handle it every other time. It builds on itself exceptionally, starting slowly, introducing skills one at a time, but spends no time at all reviewing. The learning curve is fair, but strict.
I played the demo, had fun, bought it and enjoyed it. But about halfway through the first section of the game, my roommate sat down and started watching me. This was nothing new, she would sit and watch me play from time to time. But never like this. She enjoyed how the game looked, how it sounded, the things 'Splosion Man shouted.
But then she wanted to play. And watching her learn to play was fascinating. She never really played video games before, and it was incredible watching her learn to play games, the way I did, 21 years before, on the NES I brought home in 1988.
We know now that, when playing a platformer, you run to the right, without pausing. You don't inch forward, nervous about what was around every corner. At least, you don't NOW. But what about when you started? I remember us all playing Super Mario Bros., getting nervous when one person realized that holding the B button made you run. I remember thinking "STOP RUNNING YOU'RE GOING TO DIE". I also remember another kid moving the controller to make Mario jump.
These were things I saw my roommate do, and she was 25 or 26 at the time. It was fascinating. But the best part was watching her learn everything. Watching her react to colors, to arrows, to moving parts. Figuring things out, learning the process and then mastering it.
'Splosion Man speaks Video Game more fluently than anything I've seen in years, and for that alone it makes it one of my all time favorites.
PS: Two Novembers ago, a lot of people from the internet came over to my house in Boston. While there, we discovered that 'Splosion Man had a 2 player mode. We discovered this after playing a ton of 4 player Mario Wii. We also discovered that 2-4 player 'Splosion Man was everything we wanted Mario Wii to be.
Those bastards at Twisted Pixel created 'Splosion Man, a 48 level platforming masterpiece. But then they created 48 OTHER LEVELS specifically designed for 2-4 players. 2 player for 'Splosion Man doesn't mean you get two 'Splosion Mans in the same level. You have a level made for two people.
It's fucking incredible, and if you have a 360, you must have Splosion Man. Trust me on this one. Also, Ms. 'Splosion Man comes out later this year. Hooray!
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