Cate West: The Vanishing Files (Part 2)

Let's talk about the bible.

Except not really. I kind of want to talk about the trend of pulling from mythology, Christian or otherwise, for other works of fiction. But there's nothing wrong with that, as long as you are a competent writer. And really, most people who completely rely on outside sources for their story... are not competent writers. That's why that they need to rely on existing sources. Now, I'm not going to say ALL people who do that are bad writers because that's simply not true. The amount of bad writers who base their stuff on mythology are probably equal to the percentage of bad writers who use completely original material. But that's not really the point. In fact, I started watching old episodes of Justice League midway through this paragraph, so I kind of forget what the point is.

But anyway, Cate West. Upon further thought, I realize this will probably be shorter than I'd like exactly as long as normal and not longer but... there really isn't much plot in the game to go on. Every little bit of the plot is like a stepping stone to more gameplay. Incredibly dumb stepping stones that make you feel like an idiot whenever you hop on them. And not just an idiot, but a bad person. That is the power of these stepping stones. But anyway, plot.

You're Cate West. You're a novelist in America... like, Rhode Island or something. General New England area. I'd like to point out that, since you are a novelist instead of an attorney, this actually makes you less qualified to investigate crime scenes than Phoenix Wright and that's just funny.


It really is.

I know the police sometimes employ psychics to solve murders, but to my knowledge not dozens of times in the same month or two and god dammit, they look for actual evidence, not just the psychic's word. Do you have any idea what kind of legal system that would be? It would be freaking madness. I'm honestly kind of fuzzy as to why they even brought her in. I think it had something to do with her father being killed years ago or something... and now that I think about it, I don't recall that plot thread ever being resolved. But yeah. Game starts off, you're Cate West and
YOUR PARENTS ARE DEAAAAAAAAAAAD!!

Or at least your dad is. I don't recall any mention of your mom. Your mom being Cate West's mom, but I think this review will go funnier if I just keep pretending that you are Cate West. Indulge me, I'm a funny man. Anyway, you're at your book signing and you meet this guy who kind of looks like Captain America without the costume. Blond hair, blue eyes, all American. Well, he would look like that if the art wasn't kind of meh.


Captain America apparently thinks he's Superman.

Anyway, there's this "fateful moment" kind of deal that has been done a million times before, will be done a million times again, and is nothing special. Your BFF Wesley (more like Star Trek Wesley than "As You Wish" Wesley), who is basically your equivalent of Larry Butz in degrees of lameness and uselessness, but not even close to as funny. He's basically a completely worthless human being, who is also the only thing that drives the plot of this game into full-blown-retarded. But I'll get to that later.

Anyway, there's a photo or some crap and you're like all "MY FATHER DIED HERE" or something and somehow convince Steve Rogers up there (that's Captain America's real name for the non-nerds.) to let you investigate while you dump Wesley and the book tour to find out about your dead parents. Like Phoenix Wright, every case is a murder case. Okay, apparently not. There's robberies and arson too. Which is nice, actually. Except there's no quirky/interesting characters. Or really, any characters. At all. I think there's some Asian girl that you're also BFFs with but I honestly can't recall and like hell am I playing through this again. If you can't tell, I'm using the term BFF as ironically as I can in text. Which isn't very. Also, this game is so obscure that there really isn't anywhere on the internet that I can find to refresh myself on the plot. No one cares about Cate West. With good damn reason. Damn good reason, even.

But apparently, in this world, people should care about Cate West. She can fucking solve a murder in the bay by finding a hackey-sack in the financial district. And somehow THIS IS EVIDENCE. Did the murderer have the hackey-sack? No. Did he ever see the hackey-sack? Again, no. Has the murderer ever been in the same room as the fucking hackey-sack. NO. FAR BE IT FROM ME TO QUESTION YOUR INFINITE PSYCHIC WISDOM, CATE WEST, BUT EVIDENCE SHOULD TIE THE CRIMINAL TO THE CRIME. *FUME FUME*

So you solve a bunch of murders and there's some strained and painful dialogue about how they have nothing to do with each other and the subjects are all talking about voices in their heads. The voices in their heads thing is important, so remember it for later. Apparently there's this mystery guy referred to only as W. He's dark and mysterious and murderous and the villain of the game, appearing perpetually in shadow even when he's in broad daylight. He'd be hilariously contrived if they put even the slightest bit of character into him. Just the slightest bit. But nope. He's just "mwahahaha evil"


Kind of like this, but you see that chocolate? That has more character than W.

So W is somehow responsible for all these murders despite not being the one who actually did them. We already have a psychic, so clearly we can't rule out "Magic," "Death Note" or "Alien Abduction". Hey, I do not throw away my cards until I am absolutely sure they are worthless.

But anyway, eventually you meet this old lady. Who, by virtue of being an old lady and getting more characterization than "Where are my pills?", is the coolest person in this game. She gives you clues or something and then her house burns down. Hooray! Cate is like "OH SHIT, IS SHE OKAY?" and the cops are like "WE CAN'T FIND HER." So they move on and never, ever mention her again.

Anyway, you solve all the murders and put the murderers in jail. Then W kidnaps Wesley and your Asian friend. Oh noes! You and Steve Rogers go to try and confront W and it turns out... W is Wesley! ... ... Yeah. Your best of friend of multiple years is actually a crazy killer guy. I know the W = Wesley thing is obvious when you put it right next to each other, but this seriously has no real build-up and comes completely out of left field, flying at your face and shattering your windshield. Yes, your face has a windshield. You're Cate fucking West, god dammit.

Anyway, he then shoots Steve Rogers. But Steve Rogers is fine, because he's Captain America god dammit.


Shut up, Stark.

And then Wesley explains the plot. Apparently you, Steve Rogers and him are all descendants of the three Magi, Melchior, Balthasar and Caspar. And they each have powers. You (Cate West) have Psychic Powers, Steve Rogers is invulnerable (good thing for a cop to have. You'd think he'd have realized this sooner), and Wesley can control people's minds. Yes, those voices in their head? Wesley. So he mind-controlled them into committing murders. He said he wanted to gather the children of the Magi together. And that's it. They arrest him.

That's fucking it.

They don't say WHY he wanted to gather them all together. What happens then? Does the world end, does Amenhotep rise from the dead, does Jesus come back and they all go out for beers? WHAT?! TELL ME, GAME. TELL ME! Also, they gathered. They were all in the same room. He didn't seem to have a ritual in mind. Although there must be, because they were all within 5 feet of each other in that book store and noting happened then. Unless Jesus bought a copy of Cate's book. Maybe for his Holy Coffee Table. But they don't fucking explain it. Also, you're no closer to solving the mystery of your murdered dad. HOORAY. DEAD PARENTS ARE COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT TO THE STORY!

Oh, and one more thing. Remember all those people who were mind slaves and controlled to do crimes? They never get mentioned again. Which means they're still fucking in jail. Cate West, you have wrongfully imprisoned like 20 people for various crimes. Their lives are ruined because of you. RUINED. OVER. WAY TO GO, YOU GLEAMING EMBLEM OF HEROISM. Shine on, you crazy diamond.

I hate you, Cate West. I hate you so much.

Cate West: The Vanishing Files (Part 1)

There is nothing good about this game. Nothing.And I have bestowed upon myself the loathsome task of making you people laugh about it. Go me.

Now, to begin, there is a PC version, a Wii version and a DS version. I bought this game specifically because that crazy lady who lets me call her my girlfriend saw it in a Gamestop and thought it looked cool. I went with it. I tend to go with my gut on obscure little games like this just because. The reward of a good purchase on gut instinct is satisfying. But the bad purchases, in my experiences, are the worst of the worst. I got the DS version, because I like making my tasks needlessly difficult (the PC version had digital downloads and the Wii version didn't exist yet), but also because it was a gift for my lady and she loves her DS.

It took a week of searching Gamestops for it before I bought it off of Amazon.com. It eventually came something like 2 weeks after her birthday and I held on to it for a month or so. It was a used copy, so it was opened already and had a save file on it. As I recall, there was no total play time listed on the game file, just a score. It was large and meant nothing to me. I later found out that the person couldn't have played past the first case. It was an easy tutorial level that explained the gameplay. If only I had understood the signs.

Now, the gameplay. I should say something first. I greatly enjoy iced tea. Now, I should say something relevant. Judging by the description on the back of the box, both my lady and I were expecting a kind of Ace Attorney style of gameplay, except you were a psychic detective. So, you know, someone actually qualified to investigate crime scenes. What I got was a hidden item game with "spot the differences" levels. This was a casual game.

Now, casual games should are not bad things in theory. Even real gamers can enjoy casual games. Pretty much everything Popcap puts out is digital crack cocaine cut with fun.


"Peggle" or "Oh God, When Did The Sun Come Up?"

But casual games kind of have a stigma - rightfully so, at this point - for being designed for idiots. Most mainstream games have the benefit of its target audience having gamer logic. Gamer logic, to those who have it, seems like common sense. It comes from past experiences that "everyone knows about". Gamer logic is a complex thing, but can range from "touch the spikes, you die" to more complicated things, like button awareness. Things like "Right Analog Stick moves the camera" and "Press X to Confirm". This kind of gamer logic can be genre specific and even game series specific. For example, First Person Shooter logic dictates that the best gun will have the least amount of ammo available and Metal Gear logic dictates that a cardboard box with legs is the least suspicious thing ever.


Did you know a man escaped from a French prison like this? It's true!

But anyway, my point. Casual games must be built completely without gamer logic and assume the person playing it has never, ever played a video game before. This doesn't have to be a bad thing. But the thing is, most casual games seem like they're designed for (or possibly by) complete idiots. They're overly simplified and god help you if it has a plot. God help you. Cate West's deranged, mutant offspring of narrative will be discussed in the second half of this review. I'm mainly focusing on the gameplay right now, because I have a lot to say. I'm fucking verbose, remember?

The gameplay. Like I said, it's a hidden item game with spot-the-differences levels. Nothing else. There's actually four kinds of gameplay. There's spot-the-difference, find this list of items, find chunks of these items, and place objects to make both sides match. There's also a "find the culprit!" thing. It's basic stuff. It's like a digital version of family restaurant menus. Here's the thing. The plot has you finding these items to help with murder investigations... but uh... none of the items you find have ANYTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING! They are all completely pointless. Hell, my favorite example is with the find chunks of these items... each level, you have to find like 12 chunks of an item. But you see, most things can't really be cut into 13 recognizable chunks, so there's 4 chunks you have to find like 2 or 3 times each. Thus creating scenarios where you have to find 3 and a half pockets watches and 2 and a third pairs of shoes. And then, after you find these, they form into the actual clue, which will never have anything to do with any of the items you found. Hand to God, I had to find a trumpet and a crab... and the clue turned out to be a GUN!!. TRUMPET PLUS CRAB DOES NOT EQUAL GUN!


See? Math agrees with me!

The entire process is stupid. And the other problem, as odd as it sounds, is that the art designers for the hidden object games are really good. A lot of the stuff almost looks like it was taken from photographs. It's very detailed. But uh, here's the thing. This is what an average screen looks like in the game.


Wow. Just... Wow.

Jumbled as hell, isn't it? Very busy, lots of stuff. Visually confusing? Yeah. One more thing. This is a screenshot from the PC version. Imagine this, crunched down and compressed for the DS version. It's a pain in the fucking ass. God damn, I hate it. I hate it I hate it I hate it I hope it dies in the fires of Mount Doom, banished from whence it came. It's agonizing and there's something like a 14 cases in this game with like 5 levels of shit like this each. It was painful to go through.

But it's not BAD gameplay, if you... like this sort of thing. I suppose. But the story... oh god, the story.

I will save it until next time.

ObsCure: The Aftermath (Part 1)

This game. My god, this game. My original intent was to talk about Lux-Pain (which I seem to have lost. It shall be spared my derisive comments... this time), but this game... this game. I do not even know what I can say about it. It's bad. It's bad on a level I have never before experienced. I kind of joked about The Bouncer being "So Bad It's Good," but this... this is so bad it's horrible. And the only way I even remotely gained any entertainment value out of this is because of my love of terrible movies. The only kind of person who would enjoy this game is the kind who has Plan 9 From Outer Space on DVD next to their copy of Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter. I am one such person.

Let me start off by telling you what I know about this game. It is a sequel to a game in 2004 that was just called ObsCure. I have not played this game, nor do I care to. This game was released for the PC, PS2 and Wii. I played the Wii version. This game was given to me by a friend. After showing her this blog, she commented that I might enjoy ripping this game apart because it is so bad. I played it with her and that scary lady who lets me call her my girlfriend. The absolute stupidity that was displayed on the screen made this an enjoyable experience. She gave me this game, because she doesn't want it and like hell would I ever PAY for this.

Now, let me tell you about the plot. There isn't one. Don't get me wrong, there are some people, and things happen to them, but the coherence of storytelling that the word "plot" implies is far too generous for this game. But there are some stupid college kids who start making drugs from this random, never before seen plant that just showed up on their campus and take them. It's beyond me how none of the faculty notice these plants, because they are HUGE AND CONSPICUOUS, growing on the walls of Frat Houses and random dorm buildings. I will gladly accept that the first thing frat boys would do with a mysterious plant that starts growing is smoke the fuck out of it and see what happens, but I would think some faculty would show concern for this mysterious organism and, I don't know, call the CDC or the FDA or something. And as it turns out, this plant makes you have nightmarish acid trips that make you think you might actually be in a good game. And then, it turns you into a horrible monster. Some of them look like these big angry dog things with Cthulhu faces, while others are SO INCREDIBLY FAT that they put Left 4 Dead's Boomers to shame. And the only way to stop this transformation is, apparently, energy drinks. If you drink an energy drink in the early stages, you don't transform, which is why most of the cast is still alive.

This makes me wonder how ANY of the monsters come to be in the first place. Because, uh, on my campus, the ones doing the drugs are also the ones chugging down Red Bull and Monster like caffeine was the only thing stopping the spiders from coming back.

I should mention, ObsCure is supposed to be a Survival Horror game, which is not a favored genre of mine, but also not one I am unfamiliar with. Survival horror games are meant to isolate you, make you feel alienated, uncomfortable and crush 99.9% of hope, while preserving that one sliver of light at the end of the tunnel to get you through the game, even when everything seems hopeless. The crucial part of survival horror is not exactly to scare you right out with things jumping out from around corners, but to unsettle you and make you uncomfortable, slowly building up to the fear.

To add to that, enemies in these games tend to be scary because combat in Survival Horror games is not really your first priority. Your first priority is to SURVIVE, which usually means avoiding enemies, if you can. Games have different approaches to this. Resident Evil, probably the most well-known example of the genre, gives players guns but limited ammunition. The fear of running out of bullets when a zombie dog is staring you down is a good way to do this sort of thing. Though, they kind of stopped the limited ammo thing with Resident Evil 4. But anyway, getting off track.


Resident Evil 4 isn't a survival horror game. Because how can you possibly scared when you're playing as Leon Scott Kennedy?

Another important aspect of these games are the characters. Silent Hill games tend to have average, everyday people tossed into the hellhole that is Silent Hill. Resident Evil tends to opt to make the player a member of Elite Special Forces or some such thing. Regardless of what the game picks, you have to like the character because you're stuck with them. Even if there are supporting characters, they can frequently be killed off and leave you by yourself. The short of it is, the major part of Survival Horror games is making the player feel vulnerable and alone.

I have gone into such detail with these aspects because I feel they are necessary to understand why everything about ObsCure: The Aftermath is so goddamn wrong. First off, it's a two player game. Yes, you read that right. You can play by yourself with the computer, but there will ALWAYS be someone with you at ALL TIMES. You are NEVER ALONE in this game. You always have a partner beside you and frequently have to switch to use their unique "skills". For example, one guy is an acrobat and can jump and climb to higher places, while one girl can "hack" just about anything, regardless of how little sense it makes. One girl has "decryption" which is totally different from hacking. Totally. It doesn't exactly sound like it should be, but she can basically just see patterns in things to help solve puzzles and determine where to go. And for many sections of the game, you can go back to an area and switch one member of your two-person party out for another, to use their skills.

Yes. They are using a goddamn RPG Party System. Ugggh, there is SO MUCH WRONG HERE. But I shall press on.

The characters. Oh, the characters. In video games, there's only really a few kinds of protagonists that work well and that pool is even smaller for survival horror game. Survival horror, after all, needs you to feel exposed and vulnerable. So they have to be someone you can either identify with and sympathize with... or they have to be engaging in some way. Silent Hill tends to have the former, while Resident Evil has the special forces. Yes, they're cops and badass ones at that, but for the most part, they're still not mentally equipped to deal with the living dead. Granted, by the time Leon Scott Kennedy is spin-kicking Parasite-Infected Spaniards in the face so hard, their heads explode, this is not exactly the case. But then again, Resident Evil 4 is not survival horror, so moving on.

In ObsCure, your party consists of a bunch of bland and utterly generic college students. They're all stoners, have personalities lifted from an after-school special, and are, frankly, far too dumb to live. I'm surprised their brains even have the ability to process the chemicals needed to experience a high, because I refuse to believe they have more than two functioning brain cells among their collective group. They are all bland, uninteresting, unoriginal and STUPID. They are stupid, stupid, STUPID. They are so incredibly dumb, I find it hard to believe that any self-respecting learning institution would actually accept them. I guess it's a community college... in Stupidville.


I don't feel like I need to add anything to this.

My best guess is that they were going for a slasher movie feel. Like Friday the 13th, where Jason Voorhees comes out and slaughters all the teenagers, because he is secretly a supporter of eugenics and is on a god-given mission to cleanse the gene pool of all the rampant STUPID before any of them have a chance to reproduce. At least, I'd like to think so. But yeah, that's the feel I get. And that brings me to another problem.

Have you ever in your life been watching a horror movie, specifically a slasher flick, and looked at the jock or the cheerleader, about to get a machete through their stupidly pretty faces and thought to yourself "Gee, I'd really like to be in their shoes right about now."?

The answer to this question is no. No, you have NEVER wanted to be the stupid teenager getting murdered by the lakeside. No one does. But that's what ObsCure does. It puts you in the shoes of the idiots who are only good for getting killed and god dammit, it doesn't even kill them enough. As of writing this review, I played through about 2-3 hours of the game. I intend to write more of these as I play through more of the game, but I can only take so much of this at a time and thus they will be fairly sporadic. But anyway, yeah. None of them died. In fact, there was only one thing that got me to keep trudging through this game.

The fact that you can beat the shit out of your partner. Most of the weapons you use are melee weapons. You can pull them out whenever. And you can beat the everloving shit out of Player 2. And the noises they make are HILARIOUS. When I was playing this, my girlfriend was watching me and laughing hysterically whenever I found new ways to brutalize the computer. An observer to this might have made the mistake that the game was actually fun. Now, beating up the other player sounds sadistic, but think about it. You watch a movie like Friday the 13th to see Jason stab some teenagers, so why shouldn't you enjoy something like this? And the best part is, they take no damage! When you get the chainsaw, there are buzzing and revving sounds as you BZZZZZ and whack them with it, but they only fall over and say things like "Ow! You're such a jerk!". There were many more funnier ones, but they escape me at the moment. This, plus the laughably bad dialogue and C-Grade voice acting make it enjoyable for the sheer spectacle of stupidity. It's what I was playing for.

There are so many other problems I could go into that just make this a truly bad game. The graphics are pretty terrible, even by Wii standards. They remind me of early PS2 games during game play and the pre-rendered cutscenes (which are horribly, horribly compressed and make the game look like I'm playing it on an TV/VCR Combo from the 90s, even when it's in 480p on a plasma screen) are more like late PS1 pre-rendered cutscenes. They're ugly and the people are stupid looking and move unnaturally. The enemies look and move stupidly and are just badly designed. The flying harpy things are almost impossible to fight without a gun and they ALWAYS come in packs from 3-5, which will almost always drain all your ammo despite how weak they are. Oh, and by the way. These harpies? They... it's like they have a mouth where their crotch is and it has teeth. And they fly at your face. And their legs also have teeth. My girlfriend called them Vagina Harpies. Yeah. And still, they're not scary because of how STUPID that is. Nothing is scary in this game. It's all just stupid.

Oh, and the controls. I have been waiting this entire review to mention these. This being a Wii game, it makes utterly unnecessary use of the motion controls, which is par for the course. But... and this is what truly made me hate it... the Wiimote controls the camera. Where you point the Wiimote is where the camera aims. It will ALWAYS do this, sometimes even when you're swinging to hit things with a bat. It's ungodly. Also, it puts a little mote of white light where you're pointing, which I like to circle around their little heads while going "Hey! Listen!". It amuses me.

But that's about all for now. The next time I do this, whenever that may be, I will go into more detail on the stupid events of the game and ObsCure's sad attempt at a Pyramid Head.


Yeah, I wasn't getting through this review without mentioning Pyramid Head and we all knew it.

The Bouncer (Part 3)

Okay, so now I'm back in my house. I have my wrecked copy of The Bouncer in my hands, along with the manual. Having read through the manual, I noticed a few things. First, Dominique is 15, not 14. However, the age of consent in Japan is 16. So, she's STILL underaged, leaving the fact that The Bouncer is Sion's quest to rescue Dominique's jailbait ass unchanged. Second, you may have noticed I refereed to the company who made this game as Squaresoft, not Square-Enix. This is because The Bouncer was one of the last games from before the merger, Also, there's an ad in the back of the manual for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. This made me chuckle.


This looks like it will be a fine movie and make a household name out of Squaresoft.

Third, and most annoying to me, is an advertisement in the back for Bouncer action figures, lunchboxes, resin statues and busts made by a company called Palisades. Me, being an insane collector of toys and figures, jumped on this and went to their website, www.palisadesmarketing.com
If you clicked that link, you'll notice it's a filler. The company is defunct. And upon some research, none of these things seem to exist. I don't think they ever got made. And that makes me sad. If anyone knows anything about this company or this Bouncer merchandise, please tell me.

Anyway, I was saying something. Oh right. The floor gives out and they all fall down and get separated. You pick between Sion, Kou or Volt. I already explained the gist of Kou's. Dress as ninja, sign language. Volt's is completely unremarkable. So unremarkable, in fact, I remember nothing of his thing except the beginning and the end. He wakes up in some holding device that looks like that thing Revolver Ocelot used to torture Solid Snake in the first Metal Gear Solid. Many of you may remember this as "the part of the game where I killed Meryl." Volt, not being a pussy like you, simply breaks his bonds and gets out. I really do not remember anything until the end... which I will get to after Sion's!

Sion runs around, fights ninjas and cleaning robots and eventually comes to this one computer room. This is where Bionoid Technology and all the cyborg stuff gets an attempted explanation. Also, one of the files is about some chick named Kaldea who apparently died a while back. Seems Sion was getting action when HE was jailbait. Fancy that. Anyway, as soon as you see this a ninja runs in and punches the monitor. Then you fight ninjas. Woo. Nothing much else of interest happens and eventually you come to a dark room with Dominique unconcious on a bed. Again. Sion walks straight to her and HOLY SHIT IT'S MUGETSU! He has Sion in a headlock. I like this bit the best in Sion's path because what follows comes out of fucking NOWHERE. Suddenly, from offscreen, a ninja mook flies into Mugetsu, knocking Sion free. Volt comes out, since he's the only guy HUGE enough to throw a man like a football. Then the ninja mook gets up and takes off his mask and HOLY CRAP IT'S KOU! Mugetsu goes a bit more insane and boss fight ensues, which ends with Mugetsu getting his neck snapped.

WARNING: Everything after this,I consider spoilers. If only because some of the shit that happens is so fucking CRAZY that it's just ridiculous. The shock value of some of this stuff is amazing. Proceed at your own risk.

Sion wakes up Dominique(who has traded the pantless jacket look for some weird sports bra/underwear combo going. Makes her look less like jailbait, at least.) who is happy to see him! So now, they must escape. And what follows is, by far, one of the worst levels in any video game I have ever played. You must pick one character to play as and escort Dominique up this rocket launch tower. 90% of the enemies here are robots with absurd health that do crazy damage. Also, it's an escort mission. At the end, you come across a HORRIBLE ROBOT!




PD-4! He grabs Dominique with his EXTENDO-ARM and seems to snap her spine which... seems to just knock her out for some reason. Whatever. Anyway, the other two members of your party show up and BOSS FIGHT! PD-4 is not hard, just a pain in the ass and really cheap. You beat him up and then... surprise! SIX MORE PD-4s SHOW UP! OH SHIT! You barely beat the one! Just when all hope seems lost, Pre-Rendered cutscene! Some satellite sends out a message and... Dominique's face clicks up, revealing metal interiors! SHE'S A ROBOT!!!! She then procedes to stand up and assume a fighting pose. Pre-Rendered cutscene ends and... Dominique precedes to have the single best fight scene in this entire game. She absolutely DESTROYS the PD-4s with minimal effort, hurling them across the room, at each other, kicking them so hard their robo-spines crack. And then she vents steam and falls over. Holy. Fucking. Shit.

The party is completely floored and just kind of stare for a few seconds. Then Mugetsu drops down from the ceiling, eliciting a kind of "oh come the FUCK ON! We snapped your goddamn neck and you're still alive?!" response from Stephen Bl... Kou. Mugetsu, of course, kidnaps Dominique... again... and runs off to the Galeos. Oh, did I forget to mention? Dauragon has a giant spaceship that he is launching into space that is supposed to be some kind of solar energy satellite system but is really a giant death beam of death. Sion is confused about why his jailbait is a robot, as most men who have found themselves in this situation tend to be. Volt suddenly becomes an exposition machine! It seems Dominique was Dauragon's sister, who died. And after he got adopted by the previous head of the Mikado Corporation, he used his billions of dollars to make a robot copy of her. This may or may not have involved Bionoid Technology, I honestly forget. But anyway, this apparently changes nothing! They have to save her! So they try to go board the Galeos only to have a (not so) random encounter with Echidna! Queen of the Hobags! There is nothing special about this fight at all. So they move on.


God damn you are such a hobag.

Oh noes! They missed the Galeos launch! But a bunch of jets come out of NOWHERE and stall it. So they decide to take... a hovercraft! I found a picture of what these things look like, by the way.


I honestly cannot fathom a single reason to be sized like that, beyond an easy way to have dramatic midair battles

So they launch this to try and catch up to a SPACE SHIP, mind you and who appears but MUGETSU! He was apparently on the outside of the Galeos waiting to leap 500-something feet to their approaching hovercraft so he could have a final climactic battle. I'd really question his planning here, but it's really hard to put into words how insane Mugetsu is. Anyway, boss fight. When you win, Mugetsu is shoved over the edge of the hovercraft and lives just long enough to fall into the path of the Galeos's thrusters as the afterburners kick in, incinerating him. God, I used to love that scene.

So they SOMEHOW board the Galeos (It's a fucking space ship that's flying in the atmosphere. How the hell do they get on it?) and before fighting Dauragon, you must fight the crazy panther lady! Depending on a few different factors, what happens here varies. First, she may just fall over unconscious going "Si... on". And Sion does not acknowledge who he thinks she is. Second, Sion may recognize her as that girl he loved, Kaldea! But she's way older than Sion! Also, she can turn into a panther now. Pretty sure she couldn't do that before. Or maybe she could and Sion liked that sort of thing. But anyway, she explains that the accident she died in was staged so she could be experimented on. Why it had to be her they experiment on and not one of their random ninjas willing to dress up in bondage gear to fight, I don't know. So, she then says that Dauragon experimented on her using BIONOID TECHNOLOGY, which Volt seems to acknowledge as the worst thing ever. She says she's sad and feels sorry for Dauragon... at which point he shouts "SILENCE!" and a fucking spiked chain shoots out of NOWHERE and rockets through her chest with the velocity of a bullet, killing her instantly. Also, her blood is purple. Bionoid Technology. This, understandably, makes Sion flip a shit. Oh, and if you're wondering how Dauragon shot his chain straight out like a bullet... do you really expect an answer at this point? Really?


Bionoid Technology

So, something I forgot to mention. Dauragon used his death laser to blow up the hospital where Dominique died. I'm pretty sure it was full of doctors and sick people at the time. So yeah, he's evil... and stuff. Also, Dominique for... some reason...seems to be critical to the doom laser firing thing. I have no idea why.

But anyway, FINAL BOSS FIGHT! First round, he fights with his coat and chain. You knock him down. Your guys celebrate. He stands up and taunts your team while being British and tosses off the jacket. He's got black leather overalls on underneath it with no shirt. I didn't even know those existed. So you beat him, some end cinematics happen and the game is won! Honestly, there are like 6 or 7 different endings to this game and I honestly don't feel like mentioning them all. But there is ONE thing left to mention...

The Bouncer has a New Game+ mode, which lets you start over and continue buying fighting moves with XP Points and leveling up, until you eventually get all three characters from G Rank to F Rank and so on, up to A Rank and then S Rank. You can do this as many times as you want. But... on your third playthrough, something... different happens. You beat Dauragon the second time... the day is won... until he starts laughing like a goddamn madman and stands up. He has totally lost his shit. He unbuckles his overalls, revealing his manly chest and a dragon tattoo that magically appears on his back before your eyes. He will then proceed to wreck your shit because it is almost impossible to be a high enough level to be reasonably expected to beat him on only the third playthrough. But, some people (like me) are just that good.

Anyway, that's all I have to say about this... It's a game I hold fond memories. You can find the game for like ... $4 on Amazon, eBay and bargain bins the world over. Give it a shot. I mean, it has ninjas, robots and giant space lasers. What the fuck more do you want?

The Bouncer (Part 2)

So! Now we're into the game. I'm kind of tempted to do this in a "Let's Play!" fashion, but that would take too long. Plus, I have no way of getting screencaps (Seriously guys. PS2 Emulation. Help me out.).

The game starts out in a bar called Fate, which has three Bouncers employed. Why? Shut up. Let's go through them before anyone else, shall we? First up is Sion Barzhad, seen on the left.


Question: What the hell is it called when there is blatant product placement in a game, but the brand is fictional?

Sion is the de facto main character. You could play the game as any of the three, but he gets the box cover and his spikey hair is always poking itself into the plot. First, you may think the art style looks very familiar. This is because the character designer was Tetsuya Nomura, who also did work on the Kingdom Hearts series. Sora always looked like Sion's little brother to me.


Separated at birth?

He's a tough guy who wears ridiculously oversized silver jewlery and delivers his first lines of the game as though he were drunk, which never happens again. In fairness, I'm pretty sure a ninja attack would sober anyone up His story revolves around love, both a of girl who died when he was young and of Dominique Cross. She's the girl in yellow.

Sion totally has the hots for Dominique, who basically serves as the Princess Peach of this game. She gets kidnapped, you must save her. Also, she's jailbait. She's 14. Sion is 19. Yes, the entire point of the game is so that the main character can get his jailbait ass back. Process that. This never has attention called to it, by the way. It just says her age in the manual. Subtle, Squaresoft. Subtle.


I have no witty comment about this.

Next, we have Kou Leifoh (left), voiced by the ever-wonderful Stephen Blum. Kou was always an interesting character because his game path is radically different than Sion's and Volt's. If you play as either of them, he will always crack jokes, seem happy and carefree. If you play as him, he is actually some kind of crazy secret agent (who has like a million tattoos and works at a bar? Sure) and a lot of the events of the game only make even the tiniest bit of sense if you are seeing things from his perspective, like the random fighter jets who pop up to save your ass every now and then.

Then we have Volt (right). He is the stoic. The strong, silent type. Also, he has a cactuar on his jacket, which always made me laugh. His story is honestly pretty damn dull compared to Sion's and Kou's. There's nothing of note here besides a romantic subplot with the ever-slutty Echidna.


No relation. Knuckles is not a total ho.

So, Dominique gets kidnapped by ninjas. Yay. Volt recognizes these ninjas as Special Forces of the Mikado Corporation. There are a number of things wrong with that sentence. First off, if you can recognize who the ninjas work for by their outfits, they're not very good ninjas. Second, if a company has enough money to create their own band of ninjas... I really don't know how to continue that, actually. I really don't know what the effect of a corporation making their own elite ninja squad would be. But anyway, so they run off to the train station because Kou called his secret (and sexy) contact, Leann Cladwell, and she told him there was a train going to Mikado. So they run off to the train station, spot that crazy black panther thing, and then suddenly, ninjas! About a dozen of them! This happens so many times in the game that I'll honestly only mention it when it's particularly interesting, like if the ninjas are on fire.


I honestly could not find any other image for this.

Stuff happens. You may or may not blow up a train filled with rocket fuel. Anyway, you get to Mikado... which looks like some enormous mall tower with hovercraft patrols.
Yes. They have hovercrafts. Just big enough for fights to happen on. Conviiiiiiinient~

Then you crash the hovercraft because fucking hell, none of the bouncers know how to pilot a hovercraft. You crash in the woods, which are filled with cyborg dobermans with glowing red death eyes. Why? Bionoid technology. Also, there's more ninjas. Including this guy.


He has grabby hands. Wonder what he wants to grab.

This is Mugetsu. I love this crazy son of a bitch. He is probably my favorite character in the game because he is just so damn crazy. He's crazy because of Bionoid technology that lets him teleport and set himself on fire. Why? Because Bionoid technology makes you crazy, but crazy is only bundled with ninja, I guess. It's a package deal.

The forest they're fighting in is on top of the mall tower thing, by the way. Then they go to this big glass dome in the middle of the forest where a lady is playing a piano and then she turns into that shiny panther. Besides the shiny panther, there is the main villain of the game, Dauragon C. Mikado.


In retrospect, he reminds me of Liquid Snake. Probably because he's so damn British.

Dauragon (god that's awkard to type) is with Sion's old kung fu master. He then kills him. I'm really not sure why. Sion flips out, gets stopped by the panther and then Dauragon is like "Haha I am going to beat you with one arm chained behind my back." Then you fight him. And the panther. Then Dauragon loses, "It seems I have underestimated you" and then punches Sion so hard he falls over gasping for air. Oh, also. Dominique was unconcious on a bed in this room the whole time. Forgot about that. Then Daurahon snaps his fingers and BOOM! Trap door. The tiles fall out and they all fall what must be hundreds of feet. Then the tiles FLOAT BACK UP and fit back into place. Yeah.

Then, you have to choose who to pick. Sion, Volt or Kou. Flat out, Kou's is EASILY the most entertaining. Because he dresses up as a ninja and pretends to be one. Apparently, all of these ninjas speak in sign language. For the hell of it. They can talk, they just choose not to.

But whatever. Part three coming later.

The Bouncer (Part 1)

Yeah, these posts are going to be all over the place. Basically, I'm going to talk about whatever I can/feel like. It also helps that SOMEONE hasn't gotten me inFamous yet. You know who you are and your retribution for this misdeed will be swift and agonizing. And, since my income doesn't exactly allow me to run out and buy new games whenever I want, I've decided to talk about this little piece of work.

The Bouncer was one of the first games to come out for the Playstation 2 and the third game I owned for it. The first two were Jak and Daxter and some weird Donald Duck thing that I think I threw into the woods out of frustration. If I still had it, that might make an entertaining Let's Play. But that's beside the point. The Bouncer!

At the time, The Bouncer got a fair amount of hype. The screenshots looked damn good and it was the advent of a new console generation. This was back in Early 2001, just after that absolutely insane Christmas of 2000, when the PS2 was the biggest thing since Jesus invented sliced bread in a duet with The Beatles. I'm pretty sure that happened. But yeah, if anyone tried to get a Playstation 2 for Christmas, you had your work cut out for you. For people with poor memories, think of how the Wii was at its release. Now multiply that by 5 and you have how hard it was to snag a PS2. Most people in urban or suburban areas found every shelf lacking. It was madness. People were buying them for as high as US$1000 on eBay. If you had a PS2, you were officially awesome. Well, to anyone who cared about video games, anyway.

My mother, being the saint and miracle worker that she is, managed to get our family a PS2 for Christmas of 2000. And she didn't even pay ridiculously inflated sums. She got it for retail at some Wall Mart deep in the boondocks of Pennsylvania (my dad liked to call it Pennsyltuckey. He wasn't as funny as he thought he was). And, not only that, but she got a Gamecube too! Like I said. Miracle Worker.

But anyway, my point is this. The PS2 was hard to get your hands on, all the way into about April of 2001. So there was not much word of mouth going around about the games, except in publications like Official Playstation Magazine, which I didn't know about until like... August of that year.

I have no idea how I found out about The Bouncer. Maybe I just saw it in a store one day and thought it looked cool. But regardless, this game... ... well, in retrospect, it's a terrible game. It looks nice, yes. I still think it looks nice. But the gameplay is repetitive, the controls are wonky and inaccurate, and the story varies from flawed to laughably contrived and ludicrous. But I love this game. Oh, how I love this game. I'd probably still love it if I just played it for the first time today. And the reason I love it is probably because of how ludicrous it is. Let me elaborate.

I love anime. Alongside video games and that scary lady who lets me call her my girlfriend, it's one of my three great loves in this world. I could have a dozen of these posts elaborating on why, but I won't... yet. Anyone who has watched the average anime is aware that there is frequently a fantastic element that requires some suspension of disbelief. You have to be willing to immerse yourself in the world. You have to convince yourself that ninjas can literally vanish into the shadows, that robots can look and act just like humans, that a single eccentric wealthy guy can build a giant death laser in space (that no one will notice) or that, occasionally, a woman can turn herself into a cat. Done properly, suspension of disbelief can make for a phenomenal series. Death Note, for example. If you can accept that writing a person's name in a certain notebook will kill them, then you can enjoy the fantastic and amazing events that follow. But you see, belief can only be stretched so far and disbelief suspended so much before you have a problem.

Those four examples of things in anime, you'll notice I used the word "or" to separate them. Not "and". The reason for this is, if you throw too many fantastic elements into a story without meshing them properly, you get a big ridiculous mess that just looks stupid and if you're lucky will come out "So Bad It's Good." All of those four examples occur in The Bouncer. Also, a single playthrough of this game will usually only take about 2-4 hours. You see where this is a problem.

In those 2-4 hours, you have a hilariously psychotic ninja who can teleport and light himself on fire, a perfect android replica of a human, a giant death laser in space and a woman who can turn herself into a big shiny panther (I have no idea why it's shiny. Probably because everything in this game is shiny). This does not make for a good story. This makes for the writings of a 13-year-old who forgot his ADHD medication, as adapted from his opus "List of Really Cool Things".

But this is why I love The Bouncer. It takes itself deadly serious. You are expected to engrossed in this EPIC TALE OF EPICNESS. But I just play it because I love how ridiculous this shit is. And I love it.

Beyond the ridiculousness, there are some legitimately cool things here. Numerous, branching story paths that take you through this one-night tale of ridiculousness depending on which of the three bouncers you choose to play as. Each stage gives you the option to choose, letting you test them all out early in the game and not tying you to any particular one (except for the bit where they get separated). There are a number of problems with this, though, which I will go into greater detail with in future posts. The greatest flaw, which I think is also the game's greatest humor value, is that almost none of these ridiculous things are explained in any satisfying way. For example, why can that woman turn into a panther? The answer: Bionoid Technology. What the fuck is that? I don't know! The game uses it as a catch all for a number of things in the game. It uses it like Sci-Fi original movies use Genetic Engineering as an excuse for why there is a sharkman eating those teenagers or why the Nazis had a big purple hulk that could shoot lightning from its hands (Those two movies are Peter Benchley's "Creature" and SS Doomtrooper, respectively, by the way). Or like how Metal Gear Solid 4 used Nanomachines (They let Vamp walk on water... why?).


I could not find a picture of the Doomtrooper and that makes me sad

Everything that happens is just... you're just supposed to roll with it, no matter how crazy it is. And if you roll with it and can stand enjoying something in way it was clearly not meant to be enjoyed, you can have a lot of fun with this. I know I did.

Halo Addendum

So, small addendum to my Halo rant. I need to add this because, honestly, I completely forgot I had this until just now.


I also found some other stuff

The Halo Graphic Novel has four short stories in it and a lot of extra art (the Brute image from the previous entry is from it). For the most part, they're all terrible and actually are REALLY good examples of how the Halo canon is so inconsistent among different media.

The first story, The Last Voyage of the Infinite Succor, is actually a well-written story. My only complaint really here, which is likely the smallest of complaints, lies in the art. This story focuses on Rtas 'Vadumee, an Elite Ultra who players of Halo 2 will remember as "That alien with half his mouth missing". Among other things, it shows how he got this wound at the hands of The Flood. Rtas 'Vadumee, by the way, is a cool alien name. Unlike the Brutes, which all have Latin names. Which makes NO SENSE! Screw you, Tartarus. You were the worst final boss ever.

The Flood, parasitic creatures who take over host bodies and turn them into twisted, zombified abominations of their original form, are actually one of my favorite parts of the Halo Universe. The only issue with this story involving the Flood is... they don't LOOK like the Flood. The Flood have a certain putrid, decayed look to them with a sickening brown and yellow color scheme. That certain tint to the air in an area heavy with flood in any Halo game sends shivers down many a player's spine. These aliens, who are clearly supposed to be the flood, have a sick green and purple color scheme to them. They don't give off the same vibe as the flood. They don't FEEL like the flood. The feel like some other weird parasitic infectious race. This is not a minor quibble. Consistency is important in a large universe because each group has their own feel, their own aesthetic. It's like if Superman suddenly started running around in Orange and Black instead of Red, Blue and Yellow. It changes the feel and messes with the aesthetic.

The second story, Armor Testing, I have the most problems with. It's another Spartan II(besides John-117, The Master Chief) testing a new variant of the MJOLNIR armor they wear. It's well done, up until the end. The Spartan removes her helmet and HOLY SHIT IT'S A WOMAN! Which is fine. There were female Spartans. My favorite Spartan, Linda-058, is a female. As the name Linda would suggest. But my problem here is that she says the following. "I don't regret retiring to start a family."

Wrong. Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong WRONG.

Every last Spartan was hand picked at age 5 for the program. They were trained rigorously, day in, day out. They underwent so many physical augmentations, including a massive list of musclemass enhancements, things with names as long as your arm, metal-bone coating. At age 13 they were physically the size of 18 year olds that had already been in the Marines. These are BIG people that have had their body chemistry fucked around with so much the notion that one of the females still having a period is laughable. That and their sex drive has been massively suppressed to the point of nonexistent due to pituitary gland implants. They have no sex drive. And even if they did, they are fighting a war for the survival of the whole of Humanity as a species. When you are raised from age 5 in a military background, the mere thought of leaving the military is insane. They have no basis for the outside world. Nothing but the UNSC. They have never lived a civilian life. They have no concept of it.

Coupled with their lack of a sex drive, this makes it insane to think any of the Spartans would EVER retire to start a family. And even then, it's crazy to think the female soldiers in a Supersoldier program would be able to have kids. No one wants a soldier with the strength of ten super-strong marines in a suit of powered armor to be PMS-ing on the battlefield. And all the steroids, growth hormones and physical modifications were administered at age 12 or so. The female spartans have likely NEVER had a period ever. Also, consider the following. The musclemass enhancements make them incredibly strong. A single, weak punch from one of them could SHATTER your bones to powder. They have insane strength. Imagine having SEX with one of them. Have you ever read Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex? It'd be a lot like that. Potentially much more horrifying, because the woman in this case would be the super strong one.

Even if she, say, adopted (and married some random guy with whom she could never have sex and probably never even desire sex), hugging her kids would kill them. And that still leaves the big hole of "leaving the military in the middle of the greatest struggle humanity has ever known" coupled with a military childhood. It simply doesn't make any fucking SENSE. It's stupid. They should have used one of the other living Spartans for this comic, like Linda for one. Whoever this Maria-062 chick is clearly fails at logic of this universe. Or hell, they could've used Anton-044. He was still around after the Battle of Reach, right?. He was awesome.

Although I think if they implied that Linda had kids, I might have shot someone.

The third story, Breaking Quarantine, is by Japanese artist Tsutomu Nihei (he gets named because he is clearly the best one of this book) and shows Sgt. Avery Johnson escaping the Flood during the events of the level 343 Guilty Spark in the original Halo. It has no words, besides sound effects in Japanese. I assume he didn't speak English. This one is awesome and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. I wish he did the entire book.

The fourth story, Second Sunrise over New Mombasa, I don't feel I should comment on. It's a civilian aspect of the Halo universe, during the Covenant invasion of Earth, near the beginning of the events of Halo 2. As such, it is radically different from the rest of Halo. The art is... interesting. Bright, colorful, cartoony. I don't feel it's bad, just not my cup of tea. It fills me with much less rage than Armor Testing.

I am also aware of Halo: Uprising, a comic series printed by Marvel and written by Brian Michael Bendis. I saw this in a store on Thursday. I looked at it. It looked at me. I put it down and said "No." We won't be hearing about that again.

Something that occurs to me. Excluding the art pages in the back, there are no Brutes in this book. That makes me smile.

I Hate/Love Halo - Part 2

I will be completely clear on something. I am very fuzzy on the plot of Halo 2. I recall the general gist of things and, if I wanted to, could almost certainly lay out a fairly accurate path of the events of the game. But I don't want to.

Because after I beat Halo 2 the first time, I sat through the credits to watch the final post-credits scene. Then I stared at the title screen for about 3 minutes. I then ejected the game, turned off my Xbox and put the game in the shiny plastic-metal case thing (I got the collector's edition. Go me.) and stared at it for a few seconds. I then pointed my finger and glared. "Never. Again." I then put it away and have not played it since.

This game hurt me on levels I did not know I was capable of being hurt. The plot was terrible, the gameplay was tedious and annoying, all the new weapons were TERRIBLE (which I find hilarious in retrospect, because the Spartans in First Strike briefly commented on the superior design of the new weapons), many of the old ones had been removed and the new enemies... the new enemies...

The Brutes were a sign of the end-times of Halo for me. In the original game, there were four basic Covenant enemies. Grunts, Jackals, Elites and Hunters. Grunts are these things that look like bipedal midget dogs wearing portable iron lungs on their backs. They breathe methane. They're hilarious and like to run around and scream. In the original Halo, they spoke English when yelling at humans. My interpretation is that their respirators also had translation devices in them, which the covenant established as having advanced real-time translation... stuff... in Fall of Reach. The Elites yelled in their alien tongue (which was actually just English, sped up and backwards, but it sounded cool) and the Jackals spoke in this high-pitched, bird squawk thing. The Hunters, to my recollection, made no noise besides semi-audible grunts. Now, this I liked. Because Aliens speaking English always irritates me without proper explanation, no matter how stupid. Dammit, I will accept a freaking babelfish, just TELL ME THERE IS ONE! It's like my one button when it comes to Science Fiction. It's that one thing that always pisses me off, which is why despite it being one of my favorite shows, I can never truly enjoy an episode of Stargate (the new one kind of looks like it will be BattleStargate Galactica, by the way. But that's neither here, nor there.)

Which brings me to Halo 2. Of course, ALL the aliens in Halo 2 speak perfect English, including the ones that clearly have nothing covering their mouth or automatically translating. But whatever. I can let little things slide. But you see, the Brutes are not a little thing. They are a big, hairy, smelly thing and they slowly integrate themselves into the Covenant over the course of the game, usurping the position of the Elites and by the end of the game, taking their place and causing an uprising among the Elites. The Elites then join the humans and fight the Prophets of the Covenant, who are basically big floating Space Popes that look sort of like those worms from that one episode of Futurama.


Kind of? A little?

Now this is all well and good. Except that this means that you don't fight Elites anymore. Now, this is a problem for the following reason: The Elites are GREAT enemies. They are tough, they're the right size, they're visually striking and distinctive in their armor (without their armor, they kind of look like big worm-puppy things)and they move in a cool way. They're such a good enemy that I DON'T WANT TO BE FRIENDS WITH THEM! I want to shoot them and I want to feel cool doing it! In the novels, they're all depicted as being on-par with the Spartan IIs and fight hand to hand on a few occasions. They're awesome and they're good enemies. Good enemies are imposing and you feel good about taking them down. When you bring down a cool ba dguy, you feel even cooler. This first becomes a problem when you play as The Arbiter in Halo 2, who is an Elite. You fight alongside other Elites and for his early levels, you fight Elites wearing stupid-looking armor. It's hard to not shoot your allies in these levels, but it's made easier because the Heretic Elites look so ridiculous you really, really want to shoot them. Although honestly, playing as the Arbiter was lame and you didn't really like him that much in Halo 2. Which makes it incredibly weird, because when you can't play as him in any story-relevant way in Halo 3, he's suddenly awesome and you WANT to play as him. I'd call this "Raiden Syndrome," but I really don't think it happens enough in video games to warrant its own name.


This is awesome.

Now, the Brutes. Oh, the Brutes. The Brutes are giant gorillas. Not like giant gorillas, they ARE giant gorillas.


This is not.

Look at that. It's like Mighty Joe Young had sex with a Wookie and beat the child with a bat made of steroids. They don't feel alien, they feel like if there was a dark and edgy 90s version of Donkey Kong, with guns that shoot bullets instead of coconuts. I hate fighting them. I hate them. They are stupid. The only thing that they bring to the table is the gravity hammer in Halo 3, which is quite possibly one of the coolest weapons in video games. But enough good things, I'm still angry. They're just NOT good enemies. I hate fighting them. I LOATHE fighting them. They're stupid and I'm glad they're not in the original game. This is a problem I have with them though.

In First Strike and Halo 2, it is implied that Brutes have never been seen before in the war against the Covenant. They are new players. Eric Nylund makes a note of this by introducing them near the end of First Strike, the Master Chief implying he has never fought them and Cortana saying there is no prior record of them. This makes sense because in Fall of Reach, they list off and show holograms of all known Covenant species to the Spartans, including the Engineers, which never made it into the final version of any of the games (besides Halo Wars, apparently) because they were non-combatants. Which makes me sad because I like them. They're cute.


Oh, the fun we could've had.

I want to make that clear. There are multiple instances that have made it clear that, before the events of Halo 1, Brutes had never been seen by humans and had not been encountered until shortly before Halo 2. Never. So, in Contact Harvest, which is Humanity's first contact with the Covenant, there are Brutes. Not Elites, Brutes.

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU, BUNGIE? WHAT THE FUCK?!

Why do you have such problems sticking to your own damn canon? It's YOUR CANON! It's a good one! Stop changing it! Oh, I also discovered while searching Halopedia for images that Brutes are ALSO in Halo Wars, which is set before the events of the first Halo.

GOD DAMMIT, BUNGIE! What the hell is wrong with you? This is my BIGGEST PROBLEM with you. Seriously.

You have writers capable of crafting a fine story. This much is clear. You do this with great frequency in the novels you put out. They craft a great world. Why do you insist on fucking that up? Are you incapable of weaving this story into your games? I think you are. Because of this great, layered plot with events across galaxies, organizations, species, what have you, none of this comes across in your games. I don't get this at all.

I'm actually pretty sure at this point, by the time the time the graphics engines of the games are done and its time to start working on the story, all the writers are too busy playing Capture the Flag and Slayer to do anything. I mean, god dammit, Red vs. Blue has a better plot than Halo 2 and 3. And the ONLY Part of Halo 3 I enjoyed was that little Easter Egg with the Red vs. Blue guys on the second level.

That being said, I'm going to buy Halo 3: ODST when it comes out. And pretty soon, I'll probably buy Halo Wars too. Why? Well, besides the fact that I clearly have no sense of pattern recognition, I still have hope. I will always have hope. I will hope and wish that you can tell your story in a half-way competent way. After playing Half-Life 2 and Bioshock, I now have VERY high regard for storytelling in video games. Games are capable of GREAT things and it pisses me off when people squander that. And I hate you for it, Bungie.

I Hate/Love Halo - Part 1

I hate Halo. I also love it.

Let me explain. Actually, let me build up to this first. When I tell stories, dammit, I tell them fully and completely, including every last insignificant detail!

Halo was a special thing for me back on the original Xbox. It still is. In fact, I'm listening to the soundtrack to the first game right now. In FLAC format. But for a time, it was my absolute favorite game. It still has a firm grasp on my heart, as you can tell by the following photo.


Not Pictured: Todd MacFarlane Custom Brute Xbox 360 Controller, because I can't find the damn thing.

My world view was admittedly still pretty small back then. I had never played Half-Life at the time, or even heard of it, to be honest. The only reason I ever even heard about Halo was through my cousin, one of my only friends at the time. Not a very good friend, but I didn't develop any of those until about my sophomore year of high school. Those guys are AWESOME. But anyway, he had an Xbox, I had Gamecube (we both had a PS2). We had pretty much always had different systems. He had a Playstation, I had an Nintendo 64... actually, that's as far back as it went. We both had a Sega Genesis (anyone who calls it the Mega Drive is a Communist). In fact, I'm pretty sure I was born with the controller to one in my hand, as impossible as that would've been time-wise. And the logistics are simply... oh right, Halo. Anyway, it was something to us both. I assume it also had an impact on him, as he recently joined the United States Marine Corps. I can't say with CERTAINTY he developed an interest in shooting things until they died because of Halo, but I can say that regardless. Also, he probably really wishes he could call himself a Space Marine. Maybe someday. I'm getting off topic again. You should get used to that.

When I first played Halo, it was something special to me. Like I said, my world view was small and this was new. I adored the game. I played it with him endlessly. It was a point of pride when we beat The Maw on Legendary together and got the little bonus bit in the ending. I convinced my parents to buy me an Xbox for the sole purpose of playing Halo myself. Yes, I bought a console for the sole purpose of playing this game. It was THAT important to me. But what really got me going for Halo was when I was in a Barnes and Noble one day and I saw a book. Halo: The Fall of Reach. My little 12-year-old brain was intrigued. I read the back description. "A prequel...? ... MORE Spartans? My god." I had to possess it. So, I poked my Mom in the ribs and demanded she buy it for me, because I was a tiny annoying brat when I was twelve. And my Mom, being the saint that she is, bought it for me. I immediately went home and read it. And it blew my mind.

I am not going to try and argue that it was a deep, meaningful book. It's not. It's entertainment, plain and simple. Events happen. They are awesome. You are entertained. It's not deep and symbolic, but it's engaging and you want to know how the story goes. I absolutely loved it and I still enjoy reading it to this day. As soon as I was able to, I bought the second book, The Flood. This book is still my least favorite among the 5 Halo novels I've read (I haven't gotten around to The Cole Protocol yet. Odd, since I bought it on release day), but it was still cool. I wanted more. And then I heard the news.

They were making Halo 2. Holy shit.

It was during the time I had truly discovered the internet and thus, was on top of the hype like crazy. Every time something new was announced about the game. I HAD to have this game. I treasured my copy of Electronic Gaming Monthly that previewed the game like it was made of gold bouillon and the mark was going through hyperinflation. I don't care if no one gets that joke, it's funny to me. Beyond that, I still view my greatest failure on the internet is not finding out about the ilovebees alternate reality game sooner. This game was going to be the greatest thing ever.

Now, anyone even remotely aware of Halo can assure you that Halo 2 was far from the greatest thing ever. It sold like crazy and in fact became the fastest selling anything ever in history, until Halo 3 which broke that record in its first day. But this game... this game traumatized me. This game is what gave me my first taste of true disappointment. You know the kind I mean. Maybe as a kid, you didn't get the toy you wanted on Christmas. Maybe you threw a fit. Maybe you were let down. But odds are, if you still got anything you wanted, it wasn't true disappointment. No, true disappointment is like finding out that Santa isn't real by seeing the fake Santa at the mall remove his beard and take a shot of whiskey. While fucking your mom.

Okay, maybe not that extreme, but you get the picture. And my condolences if that actually happened to anyone. That's the gist of it, though. Something that fundamentally changes you and makes you realize the world isn't the bright, sunny place you thought it was. Something that makes you realize that people aren't perfect and sometimes, people do terrible, terrible things. I imagine The Phantom Menace was like this for many adults, as well. "Gee, the world may suck, but at least there's still Star Wars."

But moving back to Halo 2, it was a massive disappointment in my eyes. Prior to the game, Halo: First Strike had come out, which filled in the time gap between Halo 1 and 2, and also brought back MORE SPARTANS! They weren't all dead after all, including my favorite from The Fall of Reach, Linda. Because I have always found female snipers to be the single most awesome thing alive. Sexiest too, but that doesn't really apply when they're dressed in full combat armor. Also, judging from the descriptions in Fall of Reach, they'd be anything but sexy. That leads to my first real complaint about Halo and will begin the long, long descent from there. The Halo canon is INCREDIBLY inconsistent between mediums.

The first sign of this comes when comparing the end of First Strike with the beginning of Halo 2. First Strike ends with the alien conglomerate of species, The Covenant, finding Earth. Earth, at this point, is the last human-settled world with something like 10 Billion people on it. Earth makes contact with Master Chief and his team of Spartans and tells them that the Covenant have found Earth. And the book ends there. Well, it ends a few pages later after some foreshadowing of Halo 2's plot that makes no sense until you've played the game. But anyway, my point remains. The book ends with the Earth under attack by Covenant, the Master Chief and multiple other Spartan IIs off in space somewhere and they head back toward Earth to fight the Invasion. Remember this. It is important.

So Halo 2 begins on a space station above Earth, with Master Chief arriving back with Sergeant Johnson, the only black man in the entire United Nations Space Command. Also, the closest thing to a badass normal the games get. Anyway, they Chief gets into his new armor (in-game reason for the obviously different armor the graphical enhancements allowed) and they're both about to get all kinds of medals and stuff for the events of the first game. "But wait!" you might exclaim, "Why are they having an award ceremony during the middle of an alien invasion?" A fine question! And the answer is "they're not, because THE INVASION HASN'T HAPPENED YET!". That's right, they retconned the book. The Covenant haven't hit the Earth yet. So already, they have fucked with their own canon. And it's not like the book was outsourced. To some novel-writing factory in Taiwan (do they even have those?). No, Eric Nylund, the author of 3 of the 6 Halo novels is on the Bungie staff and in fact is one of the lead writers for the games. I mean, I can understand if they didn't want to start the game with the Covenant being on Earth, but if that's the case then GOD DAMMIT DON'T PUT IT IN THE BOOK! I mean, the man had to have been in the Bungie office frequently while he was writing the book. And even if he wasn't, 5 minute phone call. Tops. It's fucking worth it for consistency.

The tragedy only begins there and I will continue this in my next post.

[Prototype] Review - Part 2

As cool as suddenly being Guyver was, I was not willing to risk my TV. I already noticed the burn as a random mini-map shaped circle drifted in the corner while I watched NCIS on my DVR. On that note (yes, NCIS is relevant to this. I'm getting to it.), I feel like I should point out something amusing in this game. For those of you who may have played Assassin's Creed, you may remember that there was a button to press if you wished to wade through a crowd more efficiently. You would hold it and Altaïr would push people aside. However, if you stayed in place while holding the button, preferably in a very thin walkway, anyone coming close to Altair would find his hand against their chest, keeping them away. It was mildly amusing and likely a programming oversight. I immediately thought of this early on in Prototype, after discovering something I found hilarious.

Holding the R2 Button (I have the PS3 version), you will run fast. You will leap and bound over obstacles and shove people out of your way with shoulder charges. But if you merely walk down a path, slowly, when people come to close to you, Alex will lift his hand high and deliver a mighty smack to the back of their head. This is not a light tap. This is a hard smack, that knocks them aside. The exact motion instantly brought to mind the kind of smack Agent Gibbs (played by the ever-awesome Mark Harmon) delivers at least once per episode in NCIS, almost like it was modeled specifically after that, which is what makes NCIS relevant to this. And of course, since this is New York, they will curse you off and continue on their way. This was clearly intentional and I cannot fathom why. Alex thus far has been painted as a somewhat sympathetic, if murderous and psychotic, character. So why make him such a massive prick for no reason? Because it's fun. Because these developers like to see humans suffer. That is the only explanation for this game.

I say this because, unlike inFamous, Prototype does not give you a moral choice. There is no Knights of the Old Republic Light Side/Dark Side choice in this game. You are a prick and you are going to have to deal with this. You follow the Path of the Closed Fist and you rip peoples' spines out with it. This is not really a bad thing, but just something I feel I should mention, because it's rather important and further expands on why this game fails at storytelling.

Alex Mercer is, without a doubt, an asshole. My definition of an asshole is a rather specific one when it comes to fictional characters. Almost every person who you would, in real life, call an asshole, I would simply call a jerk. For a fictional character to be an asshole in my eyes, they have to be something really fucking special. The epitome of my definition of an asshole in fiction comes in the form of Wesley Gibson from Mark Millar's opus, Wanted. I mean the comic book specifically, by the way. Wesley in the movie wanted is merely a pussy. But enough of that. For those of you familiar with the comic, you should instantly know what I mean. For those unfamiliar, let me explain. This breed of asshole does not give a shit about anything. He will usually maul, maim, steal, kill and a slew of other horrid things just for shits and giggles. Sometimes, not even that. This kind of person will punctuate the sentence "Fuck you" with a bullet, delivered between the eyes of whoever is unfortunate enough to be an irritant.

My realization of Alex's asshole status came when I accidentally grabbed a pedestrian on the street. Since the military was nearby, and I did not want to attract attention, I tried to put him down and walk away. And something occurred to me.

There was no way for me to get him out of my grip without killing him.

This might sound odd, but hear me out. Circle is the button to grab. Circle is also the button to throw, after you have grabbed. Throwing pedestrians will, 100% of the time in Prototype, result in them being a bloody streak on the pavement. Triangle is "consume" which would have Alex maim and brutalize the poor old man (I had grabbed probably the ONLY old man character model in probably the entire city, by the way) before absorbing him into my being. And none of the other buttons would allow me to release him. This was a strange, elucidating moment for me. As a gamer, I tend to respect the humble NPCs. The bystanders. I try to help them when I can, or at least change direction if I'm going to run over them. In Assassin's Creed, I did not shank and gut the humble pilgrims for fun. I did not dive and tackle the random, crazy women begging me for money. As annoying as they were, they were still human in their world. They were people. This twisted logic usually means that in games with a moral choice, I will invariably choose the path of good. I blame my parents.

But this was something new and different. I realized that no matter what I did, it was out of my hands. This man was going to die. I held his neck in the palm of my hand, but I could do nothing but tighten my grip, like a man's thumb caught in a wire crimper, fated to be crushed harder and harder to the point of oblivion before it could be released. This man was already dead. So I ran up the nearest building, dragging him alongside me and when I reached the top I hurled him as hard as I could. He flew off, flailing in the air until he finally collided with the ground with a satisfying splat. And with that splat, I was free.

Prototype is officially the game that made me stop caring about Civilians. Oh what a horrid thing you have wrought this day, Activision. I hate you for it, but I love you. With this single act of hurling an old man off of Penn Station, so began my merciless reign of terror over New York City. I found myself letting go, shredding civilians to pieces with wild abandon. They no longer mattered to me in missions. Which is good, because when you're driving a tank, it's almost impossible NOT to run the little fuckers over, crushing them into a gooey sanguine frappe. It was liberating and horrifying.

And I have to believe that this is the feeling is what Activision was going for.

Well, if I want to give them credit for something good, anyway. What I mean is, I think they didn't want you to care about the average civilian turning into weird zombie things. Who cares about them? This is about ALEX FUCKING MERCER because the world revolves around his pain. Is he even in pain? I'm not entirely sure. He never really seems to be in pain from his superpowers. I'm not even sure why he really wants revenge. I mean, he's basically cursed with AWESOME, although not being human (he certainly looks human, when he wants to) is sort of a problem. Also, I really must wonder why all the pictures from him in the past have him looking clean cut and happy while he apparently "died" in the shadiest clothes I have ever seen.

At this point in time, I feel like I'm getting off my message. Wait, did I have a message? I think I did. Right, whatever. At the point of Prototype I am at, I am still enjoying the gameplay deeply, but the storytelling is horrific and when it injects itself into the gameplay, the result is frustration and fail. But I can honestly say I enjoy it, despite how its story arouses my ire like an ingrown nail on fire. I will likely write a follow-up to this review when I actually finish the game, which may be more forgiving and less rage-filled. Or maybe I will wish a pox upon all involved in the development of this game. Who can say?

Was Prototype worth the US$60 I spent on it? Probably not. But I did preorder it, so I got a neat little rage-filled Alex Mercer figure. And in the end, isn't that all we can really ask for?

... well, maybe it's all I'll ask for. I'm easily pleased.

...

Oh and also, why the hell are there no street signs? It's New York, god damnit, I want to know where I am.

[Prototype] Review - Part 1

I will introduce myself later, for the words come to me now and I must begin.


Let me start off by saying this: I really like the gameplay of Prototype. It is fun for me. I may go into more detail on that later, but I am filled with so much rage right now that I need to vent my fury lest people be hurt. Probably the staff of Activision.

Prototype is a game that I have been looking forward to for quite a while. It just looked awesome. The running, the destructive parkour, the jumping, that seamless gliding. It looked to me like the ideal open-world game. You have fucking superpowers and you wreck shit. And you can elbow-drop tanks. As you can tell, I was on the Prototype side of the inFamous v. Prototype fan wank debate prior to their release. But that is neither here nor there. Before I really get started, I would like to say, at this point, I am midway through the game. But I cannot wait any longer. I have thoughts and they must come out.

My main gripe with Prototype is the back-asswards clusterfuck it has the audacity to call a story. I say story, and not plot, because the plot in concept is not terrible. It has a lot of elements that have real potential for compelling storytelling. But the storytelling is where it fails. It's kind of like they took a decent plot, put it through the patented Retard-o-Blender. Alex Mercer, the player character, has two sides. During gameplay, he spouts lines now and then that you would expect to here when running about. Not a lot of dialogue. Short, to the point, occasionally clever. Not witty, but clever.

Then we have the Alex Mercer off the cutscenes. This Alex Mercer is not a character. He is an Expositionary Plot Robot that says lines that, while true, have no bearing on anything. For example, one cutscene has him speaking to his sister. She tells him that he must go to Point X to get information on Plot-Significant Mysterious Figure Y McMullen. To which he replies, simply, "McMullen is the key." Yes, we know he's the key. That's why we're looking for him. You don't need to tell us and you especially don't need to tell your sister who told you about him in the first place. It's like he's informing the player of what her statement of "Find this dude, he's important means." If the player didn't get that, they are either too stupid to live and must be purged or are 5. And if they're 5, they shouldn't be playing this game because it's full of violence, gore and tosses the word "Fuck" around like it's a whiffleball at a dull family picnic. I must assume that this is because this is a mature game for mature gamers. Read that sentence again and add a laugh like "hurr hurr hurr" at the end to get the vibe I was trying to give off with it.

It's a mature game by the logic that "swearing is edgey and mature by virtue of swearing". Which is stupid. Yes, fuck is a strong word but it loses its edge if it's every fifth word. It's annoying and just makes me uncomfortable having my brother in the room as I play it. Because violence is a-okay. I don't expect him to suddenly contract a mutagenic virus that gives him giant razor claws and maul people all around New York City (although he totally would, the little jerk), but I'd rather not have my mom get a call about him dropping f-bombs around class. That'd be hard to explain.

Actually, it'd be very easy to explain, but I'd still be in trouble. Moving on.

The cutscenes, yes. They're disjointed and weird. Throw in the "Web of Intrigue" moments when you consume enemies who know things, and it just becomes a huge mess. Actually, I DO like the Web of Intrigue moments. They're stylistic and have real-life photos mixed in with the renders in such a way that it feels like it fits. It's meant to be jarring, like a rush of information all at once. It's cool, but the information you get from them is often repeated two or three times from previous Web of Intrigue moments or from the stupid cutscenes. In short, had potential, is currently pissing all over it. Good job, Prototype. Real classy.

On a side note, "Web of Intrigue" is something of a misnomer. Yes, it's presented in a web form (you select them from this weird viral web things... I didn't know virus colonies built webs, but I don't make video games for a living, do I?), but it's not intriguing. It doesn't do the job of making you curious. It's just... "Hey look! Interesting shit! Oh, now it's gone". There's also the Mother character who showed up once so far. I'd like to see more of her. So far, she has shown up in a few Web of Mild Interest moments with the exact same deadpan expression from slightly different angles. Boo.

None of the characters do enough to be likable. The only bits of dialogue that are even passable are when Alex is out and about and he's not talking to anyone then. Which doesn't make sense, really. I think it would've flowed much better if he had a cell phone or a walkie talkie and you kept in touch with the other characters as you're parkour-ing it up. Then maybe that one competent writer might have made it flow better. I mean, I can maybe understand how Alex wouldn't want to risk his conversations being tapped by the military (The Web of Odd Curiosity implies they do this a lot. Hahaha Patriot Act), but then it should've gotten a mention. All the cutscenes are hurried and rushed. If they took the time to draw them out a bit, it might've done much better. And maybe got decent voice actors for the MAIN characters, instead of the Web of Generic Wile guys and random soldiers. I heard Stephen Blum in there! He should've been that mercenary character that hunted Alex instead of those random soldiers whose heads I crushed.

Speaking of that guy, he is in my eyes the prime sinner of this game. He committed the greatest of travesty. He made the plot go in a direction that fucked with the gameplay. And I would never forgive anyone who did such a horrible thing (unless they were Stephen Blum). After your fight with him, he injects you with some weird cancer thing that strips you of all your cool powers you had acquired up that point and leave you with your most basic of abilities. This is dumb. This is where my rage began. The plot had bloated and overflowed with stupid that it screwed up my gameplay fun. I liked doing the side missions, especially where you infiltrate military bases and consume commanders. This fucks with my fun. You do NOT fuck with my fun. I felt the need to continue with the plot until I got my awesome powers back. This took something like 6 back and forth missions that involved WAY too much fighting for being depowered. Half of this could've been solved in ten minutes if Mercer stopped at a Verizon kiosk, consumed the teller and opened the pre-paid cell cabinet. It also would've given him something to do besides running back and forth between Harlem and Gramercy like an idiot.

Just when I had finally reached my limit, when I was about to put the game down, I finally recovered my powers. And not only did I recover all my old ones, but I got that huge kick-ass blade arm on the box cover and badass armor that made me look like The Guyver. Well played, Prototype. Well played. I continued to play, slowly becoming aware that the never-disappearing HUD was burning into my plasma screen. So I took a break. As I do from this review, right now.