Just a small update.

There is a sequel to Cate West.

God fucking dammit, there is a sequel to Cate West.

I fucking hate the world sometimes. It's probably going to be another 5 years before we have Half Life 2: Episode 3, Shenmue's story remains unfinished and GOD DAMN EVERYTHING TO HELL AND DAMNATION, THERE IS A SEQUEL TO CATE WEST.

That crazy lady who lets me call her my girlfriend has just purchased it and the game has finished installing. This is a terrible mistake that will haunt us both for years to come.

Regardless, I really do enjoy writing these posts and I need to start back up again. A few friends and I plan to spend a full night playing ObsCure II together from start to finish, so I'll be finishing up that review before summer ends. But really, I haven't played any games that I find are really ripe for mockery. I don't give a shit about Lux-Pain anymore, Bioshock 2 was pretty great, inFamous was REALLY fun, Assassin's Creed II was awesome, Uncharted 2 did not deserve game of the year, but it was still great... I could probably tear into WET, with all its glaring flaws, but it's just so balls-to-the-wall ridiculous, I can't bear to.

I'll find something for you guys.

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.