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.