Wednesday, November 14, 2012
An 8bit era love/hate relationship
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Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Dat (Quick) Review: XCOM: Enemy Unknown
Real short and sweet today. Let's get to it.
XCOM is a turn based strategy game, something we haven't seen in ages. The 2 main focal points of the game are the actual combat, and then the resource management back at the main base. Will you put your money into armor and weapons or focus on building more laboratories? Will you go to help out Africa or Asia? What kind of group makeup will you have? This is what customizes your gameplay experience.
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Story is pretty simple. Aliens attack and XCOM is the international GTFO-bitch manufacturer. You play the commander of the XCOM force. The story progresses from simply repelling enemy attacks to trying to find out why they're here in the first place as they're not just out to nuke the world. Story doesn't really do anything compelling to the end. A lot of the time you end up going to randomly generated maps and on main missions (I think like 2 or 3 for me?) you go through a long UFO level, without anything remarkable there either. The story has a neat twist near the end though, and a good ending. It's nice to have an ending that's just normal, and not something retardedly overthought and failed like Mass Effect 3.
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Graphically the game does well on it's own. Nothing to write home about, but I won't say anything bad about it since the details stay pretty decent even at home base when you can zoom strangely close to see your soldiers running on the treadmill or knocking back some beers. Only problem I really had with the graphics were that the game was very dark, I feel the fog of war was VERY thick which darkens everything else, which dulls out the color.
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Gameplay is where the game makes it's money. Combat is well thought out and strategic. Take your party of 4 to 6 soldiers and outfit them how you like. I personally loved the Sniper; he was almost unfair. Everything seems well balanced. It is hard to describe the feeling of satisfaction you get from playing a turn based strategy game, it's something you have to do yourself. Personally I felt great after setting up a nice flank and rolling in on the baddies giving them no exit. Fucking dead son.
I have 2 complaints with the gameplay though. The first is that the targeting system feels pretty broken. I had to take a break after I missed 5 shots in a row with the LOWEST chance to hit at 90%. Sometimes it just feels like the game is fucking with you. It seems like an odd choice to add percent chance on your attacks on a game where it's so strategic and the death of your allies is permanent. Soldiers rank up in this game and the closer to Colonel rank they get, the more exponential the difference in combat.
The other problem is that discovering your enemies in the fog of war allows them to move about, which really discourages exploration and scouting in favor of waiting for all of your allies to reload and move up at once, and saving every turn. If they didn't get a free move when you encountered them for the first time, you would be able to set up ambushes, which would rock. Minor gripes though, they're gameplay decisions I don't agree with but don't break the game.
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Sound is good with some minor gripes. The music is pretty well suited to the game, something you'd expect from an epic action movie like Lord of the Rings (except with a lot more violins and no flutes). The voice acting is hit or miss. 2 of the 3 main characters at the home base are done very well, while the engineer just sounds like something from the old days of Sega CD or something. The soldiers voices respond well to the combat, but the variety is lacking. For such an international game it's a shame that there are no dialects or accents between any of the characters no matter what nationality, and for that matter no unique dialogue for any classes either. A small gripe, but it wouldn't went FAR on the polish if ya ask me. Weapons sounds are great, and all sound effects are just spot on.
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Replayability is probably the best part of this game. The combat is pretty addictive on it's own, and if you're an achievement whore you'll be beating this game a minimum of 5 times. There are such ludicrously hard achievements in there I'm not even gonna try. One of them was beat a mission with 1 soldier on the hardest difficulty. Yeah, that'll work. There's a great online component as I'm told, and Firaxis seems focused on making the online scene nice and competitive. Unfortunately I no longer pay Xbox for their online service so I can't test it out. Silly Microsoft.
Otherwise just playing the game different ways will keep people coming back. I honestly want to give a run through with all snipers if I could lol.
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Overall: 9/10
Game's a pretty good time. There are cheap moments in it but it's not a major detraction. The game is decently polished with no noticeable bugs in it, which is a relief after games like Red Dead, AC3, and anything Bethesda looks at. There's a ton to keep you coming back for more if you like it, and that's bang for your buck. Download the demo, if you like it, buy it. It's a shallow game in terms of what you see is what you get, you just get a lot of it.
XCOM is a turn based strategy game, something we haven't seen in ages. The 2 main focal points of the game are the actual combat, and then the resource management back at the main base. Will you put your money into armor and weapons or focus on building more laboratories? Will you go to help out Africa or Asia? What kind of group makeup will you have? This is what customizes your gameplay experience.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Story is pretty simple. Aliens attack and XCOM is the international GTFO-bitch manufacturer. You play the commander of the XCOM force. The story progresses from simply repelling enemy attacks to trying to find out why they're here in the first place as they're not just out to nuke the world. Story doesn't really do anything compelling to the end. A lot of the time you end up going to randomly generated maps and on main missions (I think like 2 or 3 for me?) you go through a long UFO level, without anything remarkable there either. The story has a neat twist near the end though, and a good ending. It's nice to have an ending that's just normal, and not something retardedly overthought and failed like Mass Effect 3.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Graphically the game does well on it's own. Nothing to write home about, but I won't say anything bad about it since the details stay pretty decent even at home base when you can zoom strangely close to see your soldiers running on the treadmill or knocking back some beers. Only problem I really had with the graphics were that the game was very dark, I feel the fog of war was VERY thick which darkens everything else, which dulls out the color.
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| Every soldier is completely customizable. |
Gameplay is where the game makes it's money. Combat is well thought out and strategic. Take your party of 4 to 6 soldiers and outfit them how you like. I personally loved the Sniper; he was almost unfair. Everything seems well balanced. It is hard to describe the feeling of satisfaction you get from playing a turn based strategy game, it's something you have to do yourself. Personally I felt great after setting up a nice flank and rolling in on the baddies giving them no exit. Fucking dead son.
I have 2 complaints with the gameplay though. The first is that the targeting system feels pretty broken. I had to take a break after I missed 5 shots in a row with the LOWEST chance to hit at 90%. Sometimes it just feels like the game is fucking with you. It seems like an odd choice to add percent chance on your attacks on a game where it's so strategic and the death of your allies is permanent. Soldiers rank up in this game and the closer to Colonel rank they get, the more exponential the difference in combat.
The other problem is that discovering your enemies in the fog of war allows them to move about, which really discourages exploration and scouting in favor of waiting for all of your allies to reload and move up at once, and saving every turn. If they didn't get a free move when you encountered them for the first time, you would be able to set up ambushes, which would rock. Minor gripes though, they're gameplay decisions I don't agree with but don't break the game.
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| Cover and height play huge in that game for shot advantages. |
Sound is good with some minor gripes. The music is pretty well suited to the game, something you'd expect from an epic action movie like Lord of the Rings (except with a lot more violins and no flutes). The voice acting is hit or miss. 2 of the 3 main characters at the home base are done very well, while the engineer just sounds like something from the old days of Sega CD or something. The soldiers voices respond well to the combat, but the variety is lacking. For such an international game it's a shame that there are no dialects or accents between any of the characters no matter what nationality, and for that matter no unique dialogue for any classes either. A small gripe, but it wouldn't went FAR on the polish if ya ask me. Weapons sounds are great, and all sound effects are just spot on.
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Replayability is probably the best part of this game. The combat is pretty addictive on it's own, and if you're an achievement whore you'll be beating this game a minimum of 5 times. There are such ludicrously hard achievements in there I'm not even gonna try. One of them was beat a mission with 1 soldier on the hardest difficulty. Yeah, that'll work. There's a great online component as I'm told, and Firaxis seems focused on making the online scene nice and competitive. Unfortunately I no longer pay Xbox for their online service so I can't test it out. Silly Microsoft.
Otherwise just playing the game different ways will keep people coming back. I honestly want to give a run through with all snipers if I could lol.
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| Monthly report cards dictate your funding. Lose 8 countries and it's game over bro. |
Overall: 9/10
Game's a pretty good time. There are cheap moments in it but it's not a major detraction. The game is decently polished with no noticeable bugs in it, which is a relief after games like Red Dead, AC3, and anything Bethesda looks at. There's a ton to keep you coming back for more if you like it, and that's bang for your buck. Download the demo, if you like it, buy it. It's a shallow game in terms of what you see is what you get, you just get a lot of it.
Monday, November 12, 2012
Revelations of Final Fantasy
So if you're a friend of mine you would know that I've taken it upon myself to beat every Final Fantasy mainstream game, which means I thru XIII-2. After months of playing through a ton of chocobo infested games, I've decided to share my thoughts with what I have completed so far. I know there's a lot of people, dare I say the majority, that haven't touched a Final Fantasy before IV, VI, or VII, so maybe this will shed a little insight. Disclaimer; the only 2 games I haven't beaten are IV (I got pretty far in it as a kid, but got frustrated and quit) and V. So to begin I'm gonna go through the games individually from what I've just played and beaten.
While reading, listen to this song from the Double Dragon Neon OST. It's super awesome and super 80's and always puts me in a good mood. The guy who does it, Jake Kaufman, makes super awesome soundtracks and should show support by buying the album! Support good music!
City Streets 2 (Mango Tango - Neon Jungle)
Final Fantasy I:
I hear this was an epic back on the NES days. The first epic journey in video game form. I played through this one on the Origins disc on the PS1 because I don't own the NES version. I fucking hate this game. If I had played it when I was little, I would've thrown it out the damn window. I don't fucking get how anyone could get nostalgic about this game. Broken doesn't begin to describe this garbage ass game. It's a terribly confusing, insanely difficult (I would actually say the hardest game imaginable as there are ungodly amounts of cheap 1 shot fights and no saves in dungeons on the NES), and just a giant pile of non fun all for you!
There is no story. Technically there is, but I prefer to just say fuck it. Your goal is to use the 4 crystals to banish the evil or something like that. Whatever. Imagine someone telling you to go grab them a cup of coffee...from the fucking moon. That's the story. I'm aware of the limitations of such an early game, but it's just bad. If you don't throw your controller at least 4 times while playing this game, you're not human. Never play this game ever.
Final Fantasy II:
Less broken and an actual story. There are scripted scenes now which allow storytelling to take place. I played this one on PSP. The game is MUCH more balanced, but it's still not worth anyone's time. You have a main 3 person party, and always a guest. The guest is almost always garbage and feels like a waste. Instead of leveling in that game you get specific stat boosts according to how you play your characters. Hit a guy, gain strength. Cast a spell, gain mana. I really can't recommend this game to play either. Although it's not bad, it's definitely not fun. If you have to play it, play the Origins version so you can cheat and blow through the game =P
Final Fantasy III:
Played this on DS. Not a bad game actually, still not really great either. This is the game that introduces the job system. You have a ton of jobs you can take for your characters, and it's up to you to pick what. The job system is pretty cool at times, except when there's that ONE boss where you need to use a specific class that's otherwise useless. It would be fine if it didn't impose a standard 10+ battle penalty where you do reduced damage. It really discourages experimenting. There are a couple cheap spots in that game, specifically the final area. In the final area you play through about a 30 minute dungeon, fight 2 bosses, fight through another 40 minute dungeon with 4 more bosses (one in particular is obscenely difficult) and then the final boss. Not a save point to be found. I lost 2 hours of my life when I got to Cerberus. I had been whooping everything's ass but that boss just needs someone to absorb damage. After a week break, I came back, grinded a bit and beat it. Overall, play this game if you're bored and/or find it for cheap. I got mine for 5$ and I see them for 10 at Gamestops and I'd say it's worth it.
Final Fantasy VI:
Great game, but I don't think that'll surprise anyone. I still think this game is bizarrely overrated, but hey, my favorite game ever made is VII, and the same argument can be said. Game is super cool in the ways that they let you play with the formula of Final Fantasy. Every character gets a certain special ability, and they're almost all awesome. Played through this one on the good ol' SNES, and I had a great time except for the floating Fortress. Highly recommend it if not just to see the first really great Final Fantasy.
Final Fantasy IX:
Yeah, I skipped this one back in the day. This game blew me away. I was not expecting it to be this good. Story is cool, characters are interesting, battle system is a ton of fun, and most importantly the whole thing is an homage to the previous games. The part where you fight the bosses at the crystals is the exact same fights as in FF1, and that's pretty damn cool. Do NOT pass this game up, it is Final Fantasy perfected. Only complaint is there is no extra end game dungeon, just a hidden boss in the clouds. Kinda lame.
Final Fantasy XIII-2:
Here's my full review
Play the game for pretty graphics and decent battle system, and just realize it's the worst story, character interaction and dialogue, and conclusion ever thought up by a human being. How about just beat it and turn it off right before the bad part?
Final Fantasy VIII (Mid playthrough):
I've beaten this game before as a kid, but I remember almost nothing about it except for Squall in space lol. Just wanted to throw in that this game is a LOT better than I remember. So far it's a grind = rewards kind of game; if you don't mind taking time to set yourself up, you'll be obscenely strong. Named the main characters Scott and Ramona <3.
So it looks like they really didn't get good until the SNES era. Some people would argue that they were great for their time, and I would laugh at them. While they may have simply made a good formula for making Dungeons and Dragons from a board game into a video game, the first games were awful stand alone video games. Zelda, Crystalis, Star Tropics, all better games that don't suck huge assholes. There are games that take the limitations of the NES and produce a very high degree of difficulty and this is one of them. Unfortunately they didn't have the tuning or Ninja Gaiden or Contra, and they just end up being dumpster fodder. I've said it once and I'll say it again, video games above all else, are supposed to be fun, interactive experiences. Fun. Not terrible, fun. Contra is terribly hard, but fun. There is no satisfaction to be had from the older games, but we'll honor them as the place where the good games came from.
I'll have throw up an edit once I finish them all, but with XCOM, Borderlands, AC3, Dishonored, and RE6 sitting in front of me....it could be quite a while!
While reading, listen to this song from the Double Dragon Neon OST. It's super awesome and super 80's and always puts me in a good mood. The guy who does it, Jake Kaufman, makes super awesome soundtracks and should show support by buying the album! Support good music!
City Streets 2 (Mango Tango - Neon Jungle)
Final Fantasy I:
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| Beat this guy then turn the game off, because it will no longer be fun. |
There is no story. Technically there is, but I prefer to just say fuck it. Your goal is to use the 4 crystals to banish the evil or something like that. Whatever. Imagine someone telling you to go grab them a cup of coffee...from the fucking moon. That's the story. I'm aware of the limitations of such an early game, but it's just bad. If you don't throw your controller at least 4 times while playing this game, you're not human. Never play this game ever.
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| Blood Sword = Win in 4 hits. |
Less broken and an actual story. There are scripted scenes now which allow storytelling to take place. I played this one on PSP. The game is MUCH more balanced, but it's still not worth anyone's time. You have a main 3 person party, and always a guest. The guest is almost always garbage and feels like a waste. Instead of leveling in that game you get specific stat boosts according to how you play your characters. Hit a guy, gain strength. Cast a spell, gain mana. I really can't recommend this game to play either. Although it's not bad, it's definitely not fun. If you have to play it, play the Origins version so you can cheat and blow through the game =P
Final Fantasy III:
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| I wish I had named my main character Danzig. |
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| Hi I'm no motivation antagonist man. Die! |
Great game, but I don't think that'll surprise anyone. I still think this game is bizarrely overrated, but hey, my favorite game ever made is VII, and the same argument can be said. Game is super cool in the ways that they let you play with the formula of Final Fantasy. Every character gets a certain special ability, and they're almost all awesome. Played through this one on the good ol' SNES, and I had a great time except for the floating Fortress. Highly recommend it if not just to see the first really great Final Fantasy.
 |
| Super Sayan 4 Kuja. |
Yeah, I skipped this one back in the day. This game blew me away. I was not expecting it to be this good. Story is cool, characters are interesting, battle system is a ton of fun, and most importantly the whole thing is an homage to the previous games. The part where you fight the bosses at the crystals is the exact same fights as in FF1, and that's pretty damn cool. Do NOT pass this game up, it is Final Fantasy perfected. Only complaint is there is no extra end game dungeon, just a hidden boss in the clouds. Kinda lame.
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| You can beat 3 Bahamuts right? |
Here's my full review
Play the game for pretty graphics and decent battle system, and just realize it's the worst story, character interaction and dialogue, and conclusion ever thought up by a human being. How about just beat it and turn it off right before the bad part?
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| Iconic. |
I've beaten this game before as a kid, but I remember almost nothing about it except for Squall in space lol. Just wanted to throw in that this game is a LOT better than I remember. So far it's a grind = rewards kind of game; if you don't mind taking time to set yourself up, you'll be obscenely strong. Named the main characters Scott and Ramona <3.
So it looks like they really didn't get good until the SNES era. Some people would argue that they were great for their time, and I would laugh at them. While they may have simply made a good formula for making Dungeons and Dragons from a board game into a video game, the first games were awful stand alone video games. Zelda, Crystalis, Star Tropics, all better games that don't suck huge assholes. There are games that take the limitations of the NES and produce a very high degree of difficulty and this is one of them. Unfortunately they didn't have the tuning or Ninja Gaiden or Contra, and they just end up being dumpster fodder. I've said it once and I'll say it again, video games above all else, are supposed to be fun, interactive experiences. Fun. Not terrible, fun. Contra is terribly hard, but fun. There is no satisfaction to be had from the older games, but we'll honor them as the place where the good games came from.
I'll have throw up an edit once I finish them all, but with XCOM, Borderlands, AC3, Dishonored, and RE6 sitting in front of me....it could be quite a while!
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Top (was gonna be 10 but now) 17 Boss Fights
Ah, I remember when this was gonna be 10. Yeah well that was before I took a good look and thought at what I've done in games. 17 is my idea of being conservative o_O. There is just too much greatness. So yeah, if you don't like that, just skip the first 7 or whatever.
The following list is my favorites of what I've played, so don't give me any of that "ZOMG no fuckin Ocarina of Time I'm gonna pee" shit. Make your own damn list and I'll read that after.
My criteria includes things like style, cool factor, precedence, epic factor, difficulty, plot, and creativity.
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#17 Silver Sonic/Death Egg Robot (Sonic the Hedgehog 2)
In the early days of the NES and Sega, this was one of the very first instances of epic. To get to the Death Egg zone, Sonic jumped off of a plane onto Robotnik's space station and was brought into orbit. Once he made his way inside, he battled Silver Sonic (although everyone called him Metal Sonic), who would become iconic in the series as a badass. If that wasn't enough, he then has to fight Robotnik in his very own Megazord. The scale, the setting, the music; made the encounter top notch, bigger and better than almost anything at the time. The ending when he jumps out also kicked some ass. Maybe the best Sonic game, definitely the best Sonic boss.
Sonic 2 Bosses
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#16 Red (Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver)
Pokemon games are generally
pretty kiddy. The remake of HG/SS though added in a
bit of intrigue to the otherwise monotonous tone and formula that had
been Pokemon for over 10 years. Once you beat the basic game, you
gained access to the first game's world. You got to play through
another 8 gyms and another elite four. Once you beat them and you were
the new champion there was only one person left that was stronger than
you, and you had to climb a damn mountain to find him. Once you finally
found your way there, and met him face to face, the music stopped. It's mother fucking Red! The very same guy you used to beat the game before is now your strongest enemy. That is so god damn cool it hurts. He
looked you over, silent as you thought to yourself that some shit was
about to go down. Then he beats your monkey ass with a level 88
Pikachu. Seriously, I don't know anyone who's beaten him the first
time. There's nothing like the humility in realizing that you just got beat by
the strongest trainer in the world, and a surprisingly badass character
in Red (not fucking Ashe Ketchum, Red).
Battle with Red (Japanese)
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#15 Vile (Mega Man X)
Another one of my personal favorites, Vile
was awesome. You start off not being able to touch him and being saved
by Zero, to battling your way up in power, to finding yourself in a
showdown. Zero tells you to stay back, and you're thinking that Zero's
gonna beat some wholesale ass. You bust through the door and find out
that even Zero couldn't take him. Vile beats your ass, and all hope is
seemingly lost, then the unthinkable happens: Zero self destructs
himself to destroy Vile's ride Armor; Goliath. While becoming wrought
with despair and anger (in real life, everyone thought Zero was the
coolest character ever, and to see him go was heartbreaking) you take
your bloody revenge on that son of a bitch. In a VERY cool segway, the
level's actually not over yet, and they make you keep going to finish
the level. The beauty in it is is how the music starts off and puts you
in that pissed off mood, and you wanna rip the walls apart. An amazing
moment in gaming that everyone should experience.
Vile Battle
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#14 Baby Bowser (Super Mario World: Yoshi's Island)
Super cool shit going down. Not a lot to say, it's just a great boss fight and a decent bit out of the norm from Nintendo at the time. Cool, fun, intimidating, and just great fucking design. Everyone gets freaked out when Baby Bowser starts closing in on you, no exceptions.
Bowser Battle
#13 Valus (Shadow of the Colossus)
So. Damn. Cool. The first time you take out a Colossus, you're just filled with that feeling of 'Oh dear god, am I really doing something so awesome right now?'. Shadow of the Colossus must have the world record of fulfilling the customers' purchase satisfaction the fastest. 10 minutes into the game you're sitting there telling yourself, 'Yup this was worth 50 bucks'.
Valus Battle
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#12 Xemnas (Kingdom Hearts 2)
One of my personal favorites that if you're
not into Kingdom Hearts, seems like a waste of a choice. Xemnas has that awesome Byakuya-esque anime style confidence
where he almost doesn't even acknowledge his opponents' existence. The last fight
consists of multiple stages of fights, revealing plot points, and
awesome, lots of awesome. If you're unfamiliar with the KH formula, the
games generally progress with the first trips through the worlds being
boring and Disney associated, then you go back to the worlds with the
real storyline going. It gets continually more interesting and fun the
further along the story goes. So by the time this fight is going,
you're literally slicing through fucking sky scrapers and catching up to
huge aircraft carriers to then do huge cinematic sequences while
fighting the final boss who dual wields light sabers. Yeah, there's
fucking light sabers in this game. Music is right on point to give you
the feeling of epic ridiculous over the top action. It may seem like
it's so over the top that it's silly, but that's the point. Let go and
have some fun and this game will reward you.
Final Battle (lol 58 mins long?!)
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#11 Mike Tyson (Mike Tyson's Punch Out [No shit])
This fucking game is so damn awesome. Unaffected by age, Punch Out is still a blast. The very idea that Nintendo contracted Mike Tyson to star in a cartoonish boxing game is hilarious and awesome. Not a lot of people could even get far enough to fight Tyson (I could never beat fucking Soda Popinsky 2), and next to NO ONE can beat him. He gets on this list for 2 reasons; the awesomeness of Mike Tyson, and the degree of difficulty. Think about it; you want to beat Mike Tyson, the best boxer in the world? You better have the best skill in the world to do it.
Tyson Fight (Ears included)
#10 Magus (Chrono Trigger)
During the course of the game, you're led to believe that Magus is the reason that Lavos has been summoned and destroyed the world. So you undertake an epic quest just to get the damn weapon to get to his castle. You get the sword, move through the insanely awesome castle, beat the 3 henchmen, and finally get to Magus' room. The lead up with the candles intimidates you into thinking you're going to lose against such amazing power, but you push through the awesome fight with legen-wait for it....dary music to realize that he's a fucking GOOD GUY, and you just cock blocked the world. Magus is one of my favorite RPG characters of all time, and his fight is worthy of a ton of praise. The quintessential boss fight twist.
Magus Fight
#9 Egil (Xenoblade Chronicles)
Oh Egil, you dirty motherfucker. So yeah, for this fight you are inside the face/control center of a giant Mechanical god, which serves as the peoples' world. America is the chest, Africa is an arm, Europe is a leg, I think you get the idea. The setting for the fight is breath taking, while fighting the boss he will randomly manipulate the god into slashing the other god, effectively killing thousands of people with each swing. The stakes are about as high as they get, and the fight is just something amazing to behold.
Egil Fight (Major spoilers)
=================================================================================
#8 Psycho Mantis (Metal Gear Solid)
Was initially gonna say The End from MGS3, but my buddy Dino changed my mind after some thought. This was just an amazingly unique and cool boss. Kojima did a kick ass job making this encounter. Not just another boss fight, but a complete mind fuck. At first you have no idea what's going on, just that Meryl has decided to try to get laid. Soon you realize this fucker is sitting back laughing his ass off just toying with you. He also has some fun games he'd like to play with you. Reading your mind was astonishing, and if you didn't understand the mechanics it was pure sorcery. "WTF HOW DID HE KNOW I LIKE CASTLEVANIA?!?" To quote Keith Apicary, 'We're talking classics here.'
Pyscho Mantis
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#7 Sephiroth (Final Fantasy VII and I didn't purposely make it #7)
There's a lot of cool Final Fantasy fights: Kefka, Seymour, Kuja and so on. Mine though is probably a bit biased to my love of FF7. To me, the last boss fight with Sephiroth's 2 are super cool. The first fight you fight with your entire 6-8 person party, taking turns with the groups of 3, which had never been done in the series. Sharing an experience with FF6, you got to break that suspension of disbelief where you only fought with 3 people and really got that feeling that ALL of you guys were in it together, and that did a lot for immersion and pumping you up. The second fight is iconic. The first game possibly to use orchestral music for a boss fight, and it was epic as hell. Safer Sephiroth was incredibly tough, and even had his own full summon to use on you. The One Winged Angel will never be forgotten to those who have seen it.
But the real coup de gras is the last fight with Cloud and Sephiroth. The legendary showdown was finally happening, and the build up was immense (getting goosebumps remembering). The graphics were bumped up for the fight too. A lot of gamers' first time through, you had never seen or even heard of Omnislash, and then BAM. You watch that gauge build up and you feel Cloud's anger, and then he unleashes one of the most badass moves in gaming history. I dare you to watch that and not feel some awe to this day. Best damn game ever.
Best Omnislash Ever (new and improved with Ultima Weapon)
=================================================================================
#6 The Suicide Mission (Mass Effect 2)
So I should probably state that it's not the boss himself that makes the list, but the final mission. Preparation for the final mission is deep. If you don't make the right calls your crew dies, and there are a LOT of calls to make. Once you start, you're immersed head to toe. The sense of panic as your teammates are taking fire, going through vents, holding doors against Collectors, and taking chances dying. It's a great and tense mission that will live with me forever. On a negative note it's almost impossible to conceive that BioWare could do this final mission so amazingly well and then in turn make such a terribly disappointing final mission in ME3.
Suicide Mission
=================================================================================
#5 Giygas (Earthbound)
Giygas is a bitch, and I mean that in a
holy crap this guy is strong kind of way. Giygas is so damn powerful that he is "the Evil Power", physically undefinable by human standards. He has so much evil power that he can no longer think or speak rationally and is not aware of his existence or his own actions. So how the hell are 4 kids going to stop that? By
praying for strength (fucking Spirit Bomb in this bitch) from the
world. This mechanic was mind blowing because Pray was just a random
move that was rarely used and was not obviously thrown out to be used
for this fight, but this time it's use was special. You pray for the
strength to win from everyone fathomable, and you still come up short,
and are going to lose. Who or what can possibly save the world now?
Only you have the power to find out. It's worth playing the game just
for this last little bit, and you should not watch the video to find
out, but you can because you're too damn lazy to experience awesome that
you earned yourself. It's especially creepy if you buy into that theory of how Giygas is a fetus and is brought about by the developers childhood trauma.
Creepycreepycreepycreepy
(link for some reason will always start at around minute 11)
=================================================================================
#4 Mother Brain (Super Metroid)
What can I say that hasn't been said about this game and it's final boss fight? It's too awesome. I seriously can't come up with words, you just have to experience it. The fakeout with Mother Brain, the feeling of desperation, the shock and awe of the Metroid sacrificing itself, the brutal revenge you take back, and the feeling of panic while you're escaping. It's universally recognized as one of the most badass moments in gaming, and I'd be retarded if I didn't put it on here.
2epic
=================================================================================
#3 Edgar Ross (Red Dead Redemption)
****SPOILER MOTHERFUCKING ALERT*****
If you read this and have not played through the game yourself, you are effectively ruining the story of the game. Do yourself a favor and just don't read this just in case if you haven't played it yet, because it's so amazing that you should just keep this game open and unspoiled if you play it sometime 10 years from now.
Rather than
just talk about a boss fight, let me describe my playthrough experience
of the game briefly. As John Marsten you are a former Outlaw who gets
caught. The premise for the game has you finding your old outlaw
buddies and bringing them to the law, as part of a bargain so you can be
free and go back to your family. Once you finally take care of all of
your former comrades, you are reunited with your family back on your
farm. After playing a few missions and building back the bonds with
your wife and son, you are then betrayed by the very sheriffs and
marshalls who you helped, the last loose end. You then pick up much
later in the game as your son Jack, with only one mission; to kill the
son of a bitch who murdered your father.
My experience personally, I played John as a good guy. I thought of him as someone who's trying to right their wrongs and lead a good life. After getting betrayed and turning into his son though, I played as a pissed off madman, killing anyone who got in my way. After finally finding the marshall and killing him, the words RED DEAD REDEMPTION popped up and I got chills. That was fucking amazing. Then it dawned on me....how deeply I was manipulated and controlled throughout the game. This is what the developers wanted, and I played along perfectly without even knowing it. Hands down one of the most powerful experiences gaming has ever had to deal out. This single handedly trumps Bioshock out of the list entirely, because it expands on the "Would you kindly" idea to a point where you can't believe.
******END SPOILERS*****
Stupid Hat (Orgasm @ 6:29)
=================================================================================
#2 Scarecrow (Batman: Arkham Asylum)
Mind destroying. It's an experience. You cannot be told how good it is, you must be a part of it first hand. It comes out of nowhere and you don't even know you're fighting a boss, and then alluva sudden, you get that oh shit feeling. It feels like it drew a lot of inspiration from Pyscho Mantis, and ramped it up ten fold. Everyone needs to experience this at least once.
Mindfuck.
=================================================================================
#1 Jubileus the Creator (Bayonetta)
How could this not be #1? There's absolutely no way. The funny thing is a lot of people have never even played Bayonetta. So you're playing through the game, fighting badass after badass, and after all the twists and turns, you're finally put up against......GOD. YES, YOU FIGHT GOD. She's the size of a god damn sky scraper in 1:1 scale. The sheer scale of the fight is breathtaking; you spend a few minutes on a motorcycle climbing her god damn leg. Once you get into the meat of the fight you are treated to badassery on a level that Devil May Cry and God of War wish they could come near, but can't (since this game is better than DMC in every way, and is funnier thatn GoW, which helps the suspension of disbelief again since GoW acts like it wants you to take it seriously when you're climbing a god). The music, MY GOD THE MUSIC! Beautiful orchestrated music that crescendos at all the right parts. When I first fought the boss, I had to pause the game because I couldn't handle what was happening, and I'm dead fucking serious. What happens when you finally emerge victorious? YOU PUNCH GOD ACROSS THE GALAXY INTO THE GOD DAMN SUN. Punching god into the sun is it's own mini game for christ's sakes. Unbelievable. It is physically impossible to top puching God into the Sun. There is nothing you can come up with that is more epic and awesome. Therefore it's the best of all time.
Best Boss Fight Fucking Ever.
(Awesome music crescendo @ 3:06)
(Galaxy Punch @ 8:10)
===============================================
Phew this took fucking ages to finish. 5 hours I believe?
Special thanks to my friends for suggestions! Chris R (aka MKULtra of World's Ugliest Dog), Chris G, Dino, Josh, Keaton, Bertoooooo, and Devin. Grats you're now celebrities to the 14 people who will read this!! ZOMG!!
The following list is my favorites of what I've played, so don't give me any of that "ZOMG no fuckin Ocarina of Time I'm gonna pee" shit. Make your own damn list and I'll read that after.
My criteria includes things like style, cool factor, precedence, epic factor, difficulty, plot, and creativity.
=================================================================================
#17 Silver Sonic/Death Egg Robot (Sonic the Hedgehog 2)
 |
| 0 rings....awesome. |
Sonic 2 Bosses
=================================================================================
#16 Red (Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver)
 |
| You're not ready. |
Battle with Red (Japanese)
=================================================================================
#15 Vile (Mega Man X)
 |
| Better than Boba. |
Vile Battle
=================================================================================
 |
| Oh SHIIII- |
Super cool shit going down. Not a lot to say, it's just a great boss fight and a decent bit out of the norm from Nintendo at the time. Cool, fun, intimidating, and just great fucking design. Everyone gets freaked out when Baby Bowser starts closing in on you, no exceptions.
Bowser Battle
 |
| GLHF. |
#13 Valus (Shadow of the Colossus)
So. Damn. Cool. The first time you take out a Colossus, you're just filled with that feeling of 'Oh dear god, am I really doing something so awesome right now?'. Shadow of the Colossus must have the world record of fulfilling the customers' purchase satisfaction the fastest. 10 minutes into the game you're sitting there telling yourself, 'Yup this was worth 50 bucks'.
Valus Battle
=================================================================================
#12 Xemnas (Kingdom Hearts 2)
 |
| Xemnas. Occupation: Sky scraper thrower. |
Final Battle (lol 58 mins long?!)
=================================================================================
 |
| 007-373-5963 |
This fucking game is so damn awesome. Unaffected by age, Punch Out is still a blast. The very idea that Nintendo contracted Mike Tyson to star in a cartoonish boxing game is hilarious and awesome. Not a lot of people could even get far enough to fight Tyson (I could never beat fucking Soda Popinsky 2), and next to NO ONE can beat him. He gets on this list for 2 reasons; the awesomeness of Mike Tyson, and the degree of difficulty. Think about it; you want to beat Mike Tyson, the best boxer in the world? You better have the best skill in the world to do it.
Tyson Fight (Ears included)
#10 Magus (Chrono Trigger)
 |
| "Say, can you hear that? It's the sound of the Reaper..." |
During the course of the game, you're led to believe that Magus is the reason that Lavos has been summoned and destroyed the world. So you undertake an epic quest just to get the damn weapon to get to his castle. You get the sword, move through the insanely awesome castle, beat the 3 henchmen, and finally get to Magus' room. The lead up with the candles intimidates you into thinking you're going to lose against such amazing power, but you push through the awesome fight with legen-wait for it....dary music to realize that he's a fucking GOOD GUY, and you just cock blocked the world. Magus is one of my favorite RPG characters of all time, and his fight is worthy of a ton of praise. The quintessential boss fight twist.
Magus Fight
 |
| Senor Douchenstein. |
#9 Egil (Xenoblade Chronicles)
Oh Egil, you dirty motherfucker. So yeah, for this fight you are inside the face/control center of a giant Mechanical god, which serves as the peoples' world. America is the chest, Africa is an arm, Europe is a leg, I think you get the idea. The setting for the fight is breath taking, while fighting the boss he will randomly manipulate the god into slashing the other god, effectively killing thousands of people with each swing. The stakes are about as high as they get, and the fight is just something amazing to behold.
Egil Fight (Major spoilers)
=================================================================================
#8 Psycho Mantis (Metal Gear Solid)
 |
| "Put your controller on the floor..." |
Was initially gonna say The End from MGS3, but my buddy Dino changed my mind after some thought. This was just an amazingly unique and cool boss. Kojima did a kick ass job making this encounter. Not just another boss fight, but a complete mind fuck. At first you have no idea what's going on, just that Meryl has decided to try to get laid. Soon you realize this fucker is sitting back laughing his ass off just toying with you. He also has some fun games he'd like to play with you. Reading your mind was astonishing, and if you didn't understand the mechanics it was pure sorcery. "WTF HOW DID HE KNOW I LIKE CASTLEVANIA?!?" To quote Keith Apicary, 'We're talking classics here.'
Pyscho Mantis
=================================================================================
#7 Sephiroth (Final Fantasy VII and I didn't purposely make it #7)
 |
| Awesome. Wait what, no Ultima Weapon? Scrub. |
There's a lot of cool Final Fantasy fights: Kefka, Seymour, Kuja and so on. Mine though is probably a bit biased to my love of FF7. To me, the last boss fight with Sephiroth's 2 are super cool. The first fight you fight with your entire 6-8 person party, taking turns with the groups of 3, which had never been done in the series. Sharing an experience with FF6, you got to break that suspension of disbelief where you only fought with 3 people and really got that feeling that ALL of you guys were in it together, and that did a lot for immersion and pumping you up. The second fight is iconic. The first game possibly to use orchestral music for a boss fight, and it was epic as hell. Safer Sephiroth was incredibly tough, and even had his own full summon to use on you. The One Winged Angel will never be forgotten to those who have seen it.
But the real coup de gras is the last fight with Cloud and Sephiroth. The legendary showdown was finally happening, and the build up was immense (getting goosebumps remembering). The graphics were bumped up for the fight too. A lot of gamers' first time through, you had never seen or even heard of Omnislash, and then BAM. You watch that gauge build up and you feel Cloud's anger, and then he unleashes one of the most badass moves in gaming history. I dare you to watch that and not feel some awe to this day. Best damn game ever.
Best Omnislash Ever (new and improved with Ultima Weapon)
=================================================================================
 |
| Human Reaper = Terminator. |
So I should probably state that it's not the boss himself that makes the list, but the final mission. Preparation for the final mission is deep. If you don't make the right calls your crew dies, and there are a LOT of calls to make. Once you start, you're immersed head to toe. The sense of panic as your teammates are taking fire, going through vents, holding doors against Collectors, and taking chances dying. It's a great and tense mission that will live with me forever. On a negative note it's almost impossible to conceive that BioWare could do this final mission so amazingly well and then in turn make such a terribly disappointing final mission in ME3.
Suicide Mission
=================================================================================
#5 Giygas (Earthbound)
 |
| Fucking creepy. |
Creepycreepycreepycreepy
(link for some reason will always start at around minute 11)
=================================================================================
 |
| Inb4 Death lasers. |
What can I say that hasn't been said about this game and it's final boss fight? It's too awesome. I seriously can't come up with words, you just have to experience it. The fakeout with Mother Brain, the feeling of desperation, the shock and awe of the Metroid sacrificing itself, the brutal revenge you take back, and the feeling of panic while you're escaping. It's universally recognized as one of the most badass moments in gaming, and I'd be retarded if I didn't put it on here.
2epic
=================================================================================
#3 Edgar Ross (Red Dead Redemption)
****SPOILER MOTHERFUCKING ALERT*****
If you read this and have not played through the game yourself, you are effectively ruining the story of the game. Do yourself a favor and just don't read this just in case if you haven't played it yet, because it's so amazing that you should just keep this game open and unspoiled if you play it sometime 10 years from now.
 |
| Chode. |
My experience personally, I played John as a good guy. I thought of him as someone who's trying to right their wrongs and lead a good life. After getting betrayed and turning into his son though, I played as a pissed off madman, killing anyone who got in my way. After finally finding the marshall and killing him, the words RED DEAD REDEMPTION popped up and I got chills. That was fucking amazing. Then it dawned on me....how deeply I was manipulated and controlled throughout the game. This is what the developers wanted, and I played along perfectly without even knowing it. Hands down one of the most powerful experiences gaming has ever had to deal out. This single handedly trumps Bioshock out of the list entirely, because it expands on the "Would you kindly" idea to a point where you can't believe.
******END SPOILERS*****
Stupid Hat (Orgasm @ 6:29)
=================================================================================
#2 Scarecrow (Batman: Arkham Asylum)
 |
| "And at the end of fear... oblivion" |
Mind destroying. It's an experience. You cannot be told how good it is, you must be a part of it first hand. It comes out of nowhere and you don't even know you're fighting a boss, and then alluva sudden, you get that oh shit feeling. It feels like it drew a lot of inspiration from Pyscho Mantis, and ramped it up ten fold. Everyone needs to experience this at least once.
Mindfuck.
=================================================================================
#1 Jubileus the Creator (Bayonetta)
 |
| "May Jubileus, the Creator, bless you" |
Best Boss Fight Fucking Ever.
(Awesome music crescendo @ 3:06)
(Galaxy Punch @ 8:10)
===============================================
Phew this took fucking ages to finish. 5 hours I believe?
Special thanks to my friends for suggestions! Chris R (aka MKULtra of World's Ugliest Dog), Chris G, Dino, Josh, Keaton, Bertoooooo, and Devin. Grats you're now celebrities to the 14 people who will read this!! ZOMG!!
Friday, September 28, 2012
Great Moments in Gaming: The Plague
Welcome to another segment I have created called Great Moments in Gaming. Obviously enough, it's about moments in games where something phenomenal happens. It can be good, bad, interesting, funny, sad or whatever. It's also not just limited to IN game. If the contents of a game cause a culture shift or change the ideals of a person or thing in real life, all of that, is included. These are times when it's truly awesome to be a gamer, as the experience cannot be copied by anything else in media.
For the first entry, I'll be sharing with you an amazing event that I was able to be a part of, and definitely one of (if not the #1) my favorite moments of gaming. I present to you:
The Plague aka The Corrupted Blood Incident (World of Warcraft)
This event was truly amazing. It's not something that can be recreated, unfortunately. The Plague was definitely not a happy moment, unless you were a troll. I was neither, myself. I was a victim of the event but I was in awe of what was happening around me. How could something so huge go down like this? Ok, I should get to the explanation.
(Skip ahead if you're not a WoW noob)
In World of Warcraft you create your character and explore the world as you level up to the max level (60 in this case). Once you reach level 60, you're considered to be at the point of "end game". The term was created back in the days of old school RPG's like Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger where you have finished 99% of the story, and all there is left to do is explore the optional dungeons and kill the last boss. End game, for World of Warcraft, means being able to participate in 40 person raid dungeons and Player vs Player battlegrounds. Raid dungeons were special because they would cut you off from the rest of the people in the game, so no one could interrupt or bother you. In this case, everything starts because of a new raid dungeon that had just come out called Zul'Gurub (hereby referred to as ZG). ZG was a jungle raid where you fought a ton of trolls, feeding off of witch doctor kind of vibes. Almost everything in there was voodoo something.
ZG was awesome for sure. It was really fun when it was released, with a lot of new ideas and different boss fights. One idea was particularly awesome. The final boss, Hakkar, would hit random raid members with a special move called Corrupted Blood. This move was a bitch, I know. It would deal a ton of damage with a DoT (damage over time) that would apply for a few seconds, and hopefully you would get healed through it, as it wasn't able to be dispelled. If you did get killed from it though, it would jump to a nearby ally, possibly creating a domino effect to kill everyone.
One day, someone came up with a maniacal idea on how to exploit this move. In trolling ingenuity that would go down in gaming history, someone found a way to bring this 3 second debuff outside of the raid dungeon and into the world where everyone else was.
They figured out that a Hunter could allow his pet to get the debuff, and then dismiss him, which would make the pet disappear with the buff on him still, as it was unable to be dispelled no matter what. That Hunter would then exit the dungeon, and summon his pet back to him in the crowded cities. Once the pet died, the debuff, or plague, would spread to EVERYONE.
EVERYONE. If you've played WoW, 90% of the time you logged in or out, you did it in either Ironforge or Orgrimmar (depending on Alliance vs Horde). So if you logged in, there's a very high probability that the plague was running RAMPANT on every poor soul around.
I was playing WoW myself, at the time. If you came into contact with it, you were dead. Luckily I had the one class in the game with an invincibility button, which gave me 10 seconds to gtfo as far as possible. People literally could not play the game, especially if you were lower leveled. Imagine getting killed and not knowing why, taking 5 real life minutes to run back to your body, just to die again 5 seconds after you spawn. If you were not max leveled, you died in 1 tick. Just as you thought that it died down, someone else would bring it back again. People cancelled their damn accounts over this.
For the first entry, I'll be sharing with you an amazing event that I was able to be a part of, and definitely one of (if not the #1) my favorite moments of gaming. I present to you:
The Plague aka The Corrupted Blood Incident (World of Warcraft)
This event was truly amazing. It's not something that can be recreated, unfortunately. The Plague was definitely not a happy moment, unless you were a troll. I was neither, myself. I was a victim of the event but I was in awe of what was happening around me. How could something so huge go down like this? Ok, I should get to the explanation.
(Skip ahead if you're not a WoW noob)
In World of Warcraft you create your character and explore the world as you level up to the max level (60 in this case). Once you reach level 60, you're considered to be at the point of "end game". The term was created back in the days of old school RPG's like Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger where you have finished 99% of the story, and all there is left to do is explore the optional dungeons and kill the last boss. End game, for World of Warcraft, means being able to participate in 40 person raid dungeons and Player vs Player battlegrounds. Raid dungeons were special because they would cut you off from the rest of the people in the game, so no one could interrupt or bother you. In this case, everything starts because of a new raid dungeon that had just come out called Zul'Gurub (hereby referred to as ZG). ZG was a jungle raid where you fought a ton of trolls, feeding off of witch doctor kind of vibes. Almost everything in there was voodoo something.
 | |
| This son of a bitch. |
One day, someone came up with a maniacal idea on how to exploit this move. In trolling ingenuity that would go down in gaming history, someone found a way to bring this 3 second debuff outside of the raid dungeon and into the world where everyone else was.
They figured out that a Hunter could allow his pet to get the debuff, and then dismiss him, which would make the pet disappear with the buff on him still, as it was unable to be dispelled no matter what. That Hunter would then exit the dungeon, and summon his pet back to him in the crowded cities. Once the pet died, the debuff, or plague, would spread to EVERYONE.
 | |
| The skeletons are people who died and logged out. |
EVERYONE. If you've played WoW, 90% of the time you logged in or out, you did it in either Ironforge or Orgrimmar (depending on Alliance vs Horde). So if you logged in, there's a very high probability that the plague was running RAMPANT on every poor soul around.
I was playing WoW myself, at the time. If you came into contact with it, you were dead. Luckily I had the one class in the game with an invincibility button, which gave me 10 seconds to gtfo as far as possible. People literally could not play the game, especially if you were lower leveled. Imagine getting killed and not knowing why, taking 5 real life minutes to run back to your body, just to die again 5 seconds after you spawn. If you were not max leveled, you died in 1 tick. Just as you thought that it died down, someone else would bring it back again. People cancelled their damn accounts over this.
Now was this a good moment in gaming? No. This was a FUCKING AWESOME moment in gaming! Gamers had recreated the god damn bubonic plague! What other game could you figuratively break the game and kill the entire population with a disease? The implications are amazing. Hearing people panic in the chat and watching people come in to try to heal the poor dying people only to catch the disease themselves, it was quite a sight. It was so powerful a glitch, that Blizzard themselves recreated the event on purpose when the Wrath of the Lich King expansion was almost out, but this time everyone turned into zombies instead of dying. Hilarious. Not just Blizzard though, scientists took notice and used it in the real world for epidemic and terrorism research.
A truly great moment in gaming, The Plague did something that no other game has done, and that is accidentally create an epidemic. It'd be much less cool if it was on purpose, but the fact that it was so closely paralleled to a real life scenario and people had to make similar decisions based on that is something to behold. I don't know if we'll ever see anything as cool as that again, but from the amount of trolling and pissed off people that came from it, it might be for the best. Love it or hate it, WoW is truly an incredible game.
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Dat Review: Mark of the Ninja (XBLA)
Today I'll be talking about a new game on the Xbox Live Marketplace called Mark of the Ninja. I somehow managed to evade Borderlands 2 and all the hype around it (I was very surprised to see how many stores it sold out), and caught the glimpse of Mark of the Ninja (hereby referred to as Mark [lovingly titled Mark, the Ninja by my girlfriend]) on the 360 dashboard, I thought hey, let's give this a shot. So I downloaded the trial. 20 minutes later I had purchased the game, and now you'll find out why.
Overview
Mark of the Ninja is made by KLEI entertainment, who also made Shank, a game I was looking forward to but was sorely disappointed with it's tiring pace. It's a 2D platformer in the same artstyle of Shank, and other 2D style art games like Castle Crashers. It has animated cutscenes between the gameplay.
The game is about Mark, the Ninja. Ok that was a joke. The main character is an unnamed silent protagonist. He is part of a ninja clan, and the game starts off with him becoming a typical chosen warrior who receives special tattoos. The tattoos give him heightened abilities but also are told to "drive him to madness" by the end of his mission. This is where the game really begins after the usual tutorial level.
Story
The story of Mark is pretty solid. It's an XBLA action title, so while it doesn't have the time to really build plot, develop characters and get you emotionally hooked, it's good for what it is. I've played Braid, and I know people try to hold games to Braid's standards of storytelling, but in my opinion as an omni-gamer (someone who tries to play every game ever and respects games for being games and not being movies or books) Braid's story is too convoluted, confusing and vague; making the art crowd of gamers pretending that this was genius.
The story is about Ninjas in modern times, no time travel BS, no aliens or demigods, just a normal ass story about vengeance and betrayal. For that, it's well told. It's weird to see a purely animated game that has absolutely no humor in it at all, but it holds up without falling into that chasm of Japanime hell where what they say is absolutely retarded.
Rating: 8/10. Good for an action game, but will not compel the player on it's own.
Gameplay:
The meat of the game. It's a stealth action game, the quality of which is way better than it probably should be. There's a lot of games with really bad stealth mechanics, where you feel like you get cheaped out, or you can likewise just cheat the game out with cheap tactics, but Mark does an amazing job of balancing variety and difficulty. There are times when you'll breeze through most of a level, and then times where you'll die 4 or 5 times in a row trying to sneak past the guards in 1 spot. It never feels cheap when you die, always that you miscalculated. There have been a couple times though throughout the game where it glitched in good and bad ways. I got killed my a control mishap once, which wasn't a big deal, but found a kind of unfair glitch by restarting checkpoints (basically if in the middle of the game recognizing a checkpoint, you get caught, you can hit restart checkpoint instead of dying and whatever event that happened will simply disappear).
So stealth is done great. Kills feel great and somehow they managed to make the feeling of NOT killing great too; just getting past the enemies proves to be more difficult half the time.
The game offers talents and upgrades you can acquire by spending medals that you earned by beating scores, finding hidden items and completing level objectives. The upgrades are awesome and have a great variety depending on the way you want to play. The cornerstone of this are the unlockable costumes. You can grab a costume that makes you silent, but takes away your weapon; a costume that gives you guaranteed stealth kills but takes away items, and etc.
Rating: 10/10. Overall the action is what sells this game, and hell, does it deliver. Fun, challenging, varietal, polished, and just an absolute blast that you can't understand until you start setting up your own kills, traps, and escapes.
Sound:
This stealth game doesn't really use much in the ways of music. Everything is ambient, you listen to the guards, environment, and weather instead of really having a soundtrack. While some of the guards sound really silly, "Hey there, this broken light shouldn't be broken.....oh well.", everything else in the level sounds authentic. A lot of the sound effects are what you'd expect from a ninja game, gongs and ninja flutes galore.
Voice over work is great, minus some of the guards. None of the lines sound forced, and they almost all feel natural. Pronunciation is great, they don't sound like weeaboos when they speak Japanese words, which to a nerd like me, is important.
The collectables you find in the game are scrolls, detailing the events of your clan's first leader, which are all done in Haiku form, which is awesome. Pulls off artistic quite well without even a dash of stupid American sillyness, sounds very authentic.
Raing: 8/10. While there wasn't a huge soundtrack, the sounds and voices were perfect for what this game was and is about; STEALTH.
Graphics:
It's great to see a 2D game, and not a 2.5 or 3D game. I love the way sprites and hand drawn animations look in general, and while in this game it's computer done, it has that hand drawn look to it. I personally think the way they draw their art assets, I kinda think it's lazy to make it look EXACTLY like their last 2 games.
Visuals are crisp, but not very bright. The color pallet LOVES gray and black. The game has this cool way of limiting your field of vision; instead of blacking out rooms that you're not in entirely, it's blurred and darkened just enough to where you can't make out the contents of the room, but you can tell if guards are walking around by the sound of their footsteps, ALMOST LIKE YOU'S A FUCKING NINJA! It does annoy me sometimes though, I start to wonder if I'm going blind on some levels just from all the damn blurry black crap everywhere.
Only other notable thing is that the cutscenes are well done. They should be given credit for actually making cutscnes in their game that isn't based off the game engine, which is what every single XBLA game does nowadays. Although, just like with the art assets, it's 100% a clone of Shank.
Rating: 7/10. Graphics are good and sometimes add to the experience, but don't earn points for ingenuity and color palette.
Replayability:
I believe at this point I'm at the last level, and I've popped in probably around 4 hours. I expect to be done with the game by 5 hours total. As of now that's the standard for most XBLA games. The replayability really comes in if you're an achievement whore.
There is a New Game+ mode where it's basically just a harder game and you can work down the list of 30 achievements (wow) and try beating the game in the different styles (I'm murdering the crap out of every guard I come across, but after I'm planning on stealthing the entire game without killing anyone with one of the special costumes). I estimate any normal caliber gamer can have it full achieved by 8 hours, which is pretty great for a game that doesn't involve that monotonous metroid-vania style item collecting or playing 50 ranked matches online.
The cool thing about this game though is it's "Mirror's Edge" quality where you can pick it up after not playing it for 6 months and you can still have a super fun experience without much commitment; a badass game to pick up for an hour for quick satisfaction.
Rating: 8/10. While NG+ is slightly superficial, the gameplay and achievements are crazy fun which will keep you coming back.
Overall: 9.5/10
Don't average out the scores and try to make sense of it, it won't work. My principals of rating a game are to rate the individual key aspects of the game, and my overall score comes from the experience that happens when you combine all of them. While the graphics don't warrant and 9.5 on their own, they create a 9.5 quality game when mixed with the gameplay, sound and etc.
I could not recommend this game any higher. This currently steals the #2 spot on my favorite XBLA games (because you better believe Castle Crashers is nigh-untouchable) because of the sheer fun I have with it. The game does stealth better than fucking Metal Gear. Don't feel compelled to believe me though, download the demo and I DARE YOU not to buy it. Stealth the way it was meant to be, fun in it's purest form.
Metacritic Score - 90/100
Gametrailers Score - 9/10
Overview
Mark of the Ninja is made by KLEI entertainment, who also made Shank, a game I was looking forward to but was sorely disappointed with it's tiring pace. It's a 2D platformer in the same artstyle of Shank, and other 2D style art games like Castle Crashers. It has animated cutscenes between the gameplay.
The game is about Mark, the Ninja. Ok that was a joke. The main character is an unnamed silent protagonist. He is part of a ninja clan, and the game starts off with him becoming a typical chosen warrior who receives special tattoos. The tattoos give him heightened abilities but also are told to "drive him to madness" by the end of his mission. This is where the game really begins after the usual tutorial level.
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| In game pic. Kill and throw him off the roof. |
Story
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| Badass tattoos you wish you had. |
The story is about Ninjas in modern times, no time travel BS, no aliens or demigods, just a normal ass story about vengeance and betrayal. For that, it's well told. It's weird to see a purely animated game that has absolutely no humor in it at all, but it holds up without falling into that chasm of Japanime hell where what they say is absolutely retarded.
Rating: 8/10. Good for an action game, but will not compel the player on it's own.
Gameplay:
The meat of the game. It's a stealth action game, the quality of which is way better than it probably should be. There's a lot of games with really bad stealth mechanics, where you feel like you get cheaped out, or you can likewise just cheat the game out with cheap tactics, but Mark does an amazing job of balancing variety and difficulty. There are times when you'll breeze through most of a level, and then times where you'll die 4 or 5 times in a row trying to sneak past the guards in 1 spot. It never feels cheap when you die, always that you miscalculated. There have been a couple times though throughout the game where it glitched in good and bad ways. I got killed my a control mishap once, which wasn't a big deal, but found a kind of unfair glitch by restarting checkpoints (basically if in the middle of the game recognizing a checkpoint, you get caught, you can hit restart checkpoint instead of dying and whatever event that happened will simply disappear).
So stealth is done great. Kills feel great and somehow they managed to make the feeling of NOT killing great too; just getting past the enemies proves to be more difficult half the time.
The game offers talents and upgrades you can acquire by spending medals that you earned by beating scores, finding hidden items and completing level objectives. The upgrades are awesome and have a great variety depending on the way you want to play. The cornerstone of this are the unlockable costumes. You can grab a costume that makes you silent, but takes away your weapon; a costume that gives you guaranteed stealth kills but takes away items, and etc.
Rating: 10/10. Overall the action is what sells this game, and hell, does it deliver. Fun, challenging, varietal, polished, and just an absolute blast that you can't understand until you start setting up your own kills, traps, and escapes.
Sound:
This stealth game doesn't really use much in the ways of music. Everything is ambient, you listen to the guards, environment, and weather instead of really having a soundtrack. While some of the guards sound really silly, "Hey there, this broken light shouldn't be broken.....oh well.", everything else in the level sounds authentic. A lot of the sound effects are what you'd expect from a ninja game, gongs and ninja flutes galore.
Voice over work is great, minus some of the guards. None of the lines sound forced, and they almost all feel natural. Pronunciation is great, they don't sound like weeaboos when they speak Japanese words, which to a nerd like me, is important.
The collectables you find in the game are scrolls, detailing the events of your clan's first leader, which are all done in Haiku form, which is awesome. Pulls off artistic quite well without even a dash of stupid American sillyness, sounds very authentic.
Raing: 8/10. While there wasn't a huge soundtrack, the sounds and voices were perfect for what this game was and is about; STEALTH.
Graphics:
It's great to see a 2D game, and not a 2.5 or 3D game. I love the way sprites and hand drawn animations look in general, and while in this game it's computer done, it has that hand drawn look to it. I personally think the way they draw their art assets, I kinda think it's lazy to make it look EXACTLY like their last 2 games.
Visuals are crisp, but not very bright. The color pallet LOVES gray and black. The game has this cool way of limiting your field of vision; instead of blacking out rooms that you're not in entirely, it's blurred and darkened just enough to where you can't make out the contents of the room, but you can tell if guards are walking around by the sound of their footsteps, ALMOST LIKE YOU'S A FUCKING NINJA! It does annoy me sometimes though, I start to wonder if I'm going blind on some levels just from all the damn blurry black crap everywhere.
Only other notable thing is that the cutscenes are well done. They should be given credit for actually making cutscnes in their game that isn't based off the game engine, which is what every single XBLA game does nowadays. Although, just like with the art assets, it's 100% a clone of Shank.
Rating: 7/10. Graphics are good and sometimes add to the experience, but don't earn points for ingenuity and color palette.
Replayability:
I believe at this point I'm at the last level, and I've popped in probably around 4 hours. I expect to be done with the game by 5 hours total. As of now that's the standard for most XBLA games. The replayability really comes in if you're an achievement whore.
There is a New Game+ mode where it's basically just a harder game and you can work down the list of 30 achievements (wow) and try beating the game in the different styles (I'm murdering the crap out of every guard I come across, but after I'm planning on stealthing the entire game without killing anyone with one of the special costumes). I estimate any normal caliber gamer can have it full achieved by 8 hours, which is pretty great for a game that doesn't involve that monotonous metroid-vania style item collecting or playing 50 ranked matches online.
The cool thing about this game though is it's "Mirror's Edge" quality where you can pick it up after not playing it for 6 months and you can still have a super fun experience without much commitment; a badass game to pick up for an hour for quick satisfaction.
Rating: 8/10. While NG+ is slightly superficial, the gameplay and achievements are crazy fun which will keep you coming back.
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| Yeah, that's not badass at all. |
Overall: 9.5/10
Don't average out the scores and try to make sense of it, it won't work. My principals of rating a game are to rate the individual key aspects of the game, and my overall score comes from the experience that happens when you combine all of them. While the graphics don't warrant and 9.5 on their own, they create a 9.5 quality game when mixed with the gameplay, sound and etc.
I could not recommend this game any higher. This currently steals the #2 spot on my favorite XBLA games (because you better believe Castle Crashers is nigh-untouchable) because of the sheer fun I have with it. The game does stealth better than fucking Metal Gear. Don't feel compelled to believe me though, download the demo and I DARE YOU not to buy it. Stealth the way it was meant to be, fun in it's purest form.
Metacritic Score - 90/100
Gametrailers Score - 9/10
Monday, September 17, 2012
Give me the Blue Bomber back! (F@#k you Capcom part 1)
The very first video game I ever recall seeing, and definitely first I ever played, was not the usual Super Mario Bros, but Mega Man 2. Everything about that game set me up to be addicted to video games for the rest of my life. You turn that game on, you're greeted by an opening way cooler than anything else out on video games at the time. That slow rise, then the music and energy pumping up, and then Mega Man without his helmet just staring out onto the city, badass music going. You know he's out to whoop some ass.
That game left it's mark on me, and I've been a huge Mega Man fan ever since. I've got 3 of the NES carts, X-X3 on SNES, X4, 5 and 6 on PS1, and both the Mega Man regular and X collections on PS2. MM9 and 10 are awesome as well (except Sheep Man). To me, those games have always stood for the best parts about games; fluid awesome controls, very challenging gameplay, amazing music, and tons of secrets. I'll never truly understand what drives people nuts about Mario, but I think what they feel for him is how I feel about the Blue Bomber.
Almost as if Rock was growing up with me, as I reached adolescence, the game rebooted with the X series. Just as I wanted something with a little more story and more maturity, they hit me with Zero, Sigma, and Vile. That moment when you first see Zero and he blows off Goliath's arm, it blew me away. It was soooooo damn cool. You bust your ass to get strong like him, and when the time finally comes to fight Vile, Zero sacrifices himself for you. I swear this was the first time someone ever died in a video game (I guess Final Fantasy II for the SNES was up, but I hadn't played it). I was destroyed. I was in love with how cool Zero was, and then he DIES?! ARRRRGHHG;LGJH. You then blow through Vile with extreme prejudice....and then the music. My GAWD. That exact moment is where Mega Man goes from a kids' game to something more.
While the rest of the series on the SNES carried the same amount of quality, it didn't go so well for the PS1 era. I friggin loved X4; it had MOTHERFUCKING CUTSCENES!!! All I thought was that if they kept up this pace, the games would be unstoppable. Unfortunately I was wrong. They were running out of ideas, and you could tell Capcom was pulling money from the projects. Everything was rehashed and reskinned, and no more awesome cutscenes. It might've been cool on the NES, but it's time to be a little more innovative after almost 15 games.
So after all the fan support over the years, tons of time and money invested by people all over the world, Capcom is essentially killing the Blue Bomber. Their own god damn mascot, ridiculous. With all the Street Fighter on disc DLC bullshit, "Ultimate" Marvel 3's, paid demos, and insane cheapness they've been pulling lately, it's like they're daring people to hate them. Maybe I'm just being a pessimistic fanboy....I mean, look what they're doing for Mega Man's 25th anniversary!!
Fuck you Capcom. Fuck you for selling out. Your company now has the image of a company that I hate; only out for money, fuck the consumer. As every company should have it's number one priority in profits, that's about normal, but you guys cross the line. You abandon icons so you can make more money on "guaranteed successes" and sell us incomplete products to nickel and dime your loyal fans for the unlock codes to the rest of their game.
Fire all senior management, get people in their who want to have a respectable company that's not detested by the industry and it's fans, and GIVE ME THE BLUE BOMBER BACK!
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| Bad-fucking-ass. |
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| You's a bitch, and so is your Aunt. |
This shit was so badass back in the day.
Skip forward to today....what do we have? Mega-fucking-nothing. Why? We had two games to look forward to, that were gonna bring new life to the series, and Capcom cancels both of them. If you're unfamiliar, they were Mega Man Universe and Mega Man Legends 3. I remember the online community being pretty excited, especially the people at Capcom Unity (I was visiting a lot at the time for MvC3 news). Then, out of fucking nowhere, 2 cancels and Keiji Inafune "leaves". I quote that because there's no way it wasn't Capcom's fault for dicking him out on his creativity. The guy loves Capcom, loves Mega Man, and wants them to all be successful while keeping quality up (there's a Neogaf interview of him talking about how Japan's industry has turned to reward laziness instead of hard work) and Capcom shuts down Legends 3, for some bullshit reasons. He even said that he was trying to contract with Capcom to make sure the game still sees the light of day, and they decided not to. Inafune wanted to keep Mega Man going!
So after all the fan support over the years, tons of time and money invested by people all over the world, Capcom is essentially killing the Blue Bomber. Their own god damn mascot, ridiculous. With all the Street Fighter on disc DLC bullshit, "Ultimate" Marvel 3's, paid demos, and insane cheapness they've been pulling lately, it's like they're daring people to hate them. Maybe I'm just being a pessimistic fanboy....I mean, look what they're doing for Mega Man's 25th anniversary!!
Fuck you Capcom. Fuck you for selling out. Your company now has the image of a company that I hate; only out for money, fuck the consumer. As every company should have it's number one priority in profits, that's about normal, but you guys cross the line. You abandon icons so you can make more money on "guaranteed successes" and sell us incomplete products to nickel and dime your loyal fans for the unlock codes to the rest of their game.
Fire all senior management, get people in their who want to have a respectable company that's not detested by the industry and it's fans, and GIVE ME THE BLUE BOMBER BACK!
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