Time to check in again…
- On Friday Katie & I met up with Mooney, but instead of another night at Kenka as usual, we took the booze train over to Mooney’s place. And it’s really nice! From his patio we were able to chill out and soak up the Manhattan skyline. Also had beer with Miller on the label that I actually enjoyed! It was Miller High Life, which I swore up and down would suck… I’m no beer snob, but I only consume brew from Europe and Japan cuz stuff like Miller Lite and PBR just tastes bad to me, sorry… though the “champagne of beer” proved me wrong!
Also got to check out to check out Mooney’s collection of… whereas I’m ga-ga for video games, the dude is all about fashion, and has a ton of decent (and rather pricey) threads. As nice as his $200+ shirts where, I’d much rather put that kind of money towards a PS3, thank you very much. The dude also has a shitload of Japanese television on VHS and DVD, sent from friends back home, though sadly no hardcore, death match wrestling. Otherwise, I would have insisted that the party be moved from the patio to the living room, right in front of the television.
- On Saturday, I went over to Jeremiah’s, where Dave & I got some much-needed Astro City action. Dave is actually in the market fir a Japanese arcade unit (and Egret II to be exact), and even went to visit some dude in Times Square that was selling his, but apparently was in less than stellar shape (I was invited to tag along by check it out, but my phone had ruin out of juice that day and missed the call, damnit). Anyway, we just sat around playing Dai Ou Jou (I think it?s about damn time I bought myself a copy), Ketsui (is the DS port still on the way?), and Espgaluda 2 (which now makes me want to play the original, which I have, but never played!), plus had some Mexican. Then we went over to my place to give Dave’s custom arcade Xbox 360 stick, which I passed along pics of a while ago, a whirl…
… Been dying to get my hands on one for Pac Man Championship Edition for a while there, but that was before I finally learned how to use the analogue stick. Before that, I was relying on the digital pad, till Dave mentioned that it just worked better with the other input method. And I thought he was full of shit (despite the fact that I also heard the creator say the same thing), yet lo and behold, I something finally clicked, and I managed to score 169,960 on my first try in the 5 minute mode (just a hair short of Dave’s record of 177,970), plus even better for the other modes. And that night, I actually impressed the guys with my leet ghost evading and tracking skills! I only mention this because my shitty game playing skills proceeds me in some circles.
Afterwards were a few rounds of Senko No Ronde X, again for the stick, along with various other Live Arcade titles, like Ikaruga, Omega Five, Trigger Heart Exelica, and Aces of the Galaxy. Dave also got the chance to give Everyday Shooter a spin (not sure if I mentioned this already but I finally got XP on my iMac, and the very first thing I did was download Steam and buy the game). He was less than impressed. Far more fun was had watching the Battle Raper 2 trailer that was on my desktop (I had a zip file for the longest time, which I finally unpacked, since I thought it was the demo and here I finally had a chance to install and play it, but only got a movie file instead…. talk about a bummer). And Katie, who was in the bedroom working on her latest installment of Nurse Nurse wondered why in the hell Dave was asking/screaming “Hey, where’s the rape?!” Though as you can see in the trailer, they spend some time establishing how it’s a “legit? fighting game… then the rape simulation begins! And for extra laughs, I popped in the Video Games Music Live Volume 1 CD that had arrived in the mail just the day prior, but I’ll be touching on that later.
Since I had two hardcore shump players in the house, I decided to show them 1942 Joint Strike, and even tried to set up a two-player match for both Dave and I. But for some stupid reason, it wouldn’t allow Dave to join in; you absolutely need two user accounts set-up to make it work. WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF NEXT-GENERATION GAMING, WHERE ALL CONSOLES ARE LIKE PC’S! MEANING ALL THE BULLSHIT THAT COMES WITH IT! JUST HIT THE START BUTTON AND START PLAYING? FUCK YOU!!! The same problem arose when trying to give Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, but Dave just went ahead and created an additional profile… though the effort was hardly worth it. Both him and Jeremiah (as I’ve been for a while now) were appalled by the herky-jerky animation. Once again, I still don’t understand why they just didn’t fill in the frames of animation. The official word was that they didn’t want to do anything to mess up the balance and techniques from the original iteration. So what’s with the new moves then? Either Jeremiah or Dave said it best: the thing totally looks like a doujin game, and a shitty one at that. The remixed art looks extremely cheesy and not in a good way whatsoever.
Next I popped in a bunch of PS2 games for the guys, including Gekisha Boy 2, which is this wacky first-gen Japanese title in which you play a guy who walks around town, with all sorts of wacky shit going on all around him, and the goal of the game is to take pictures of said crazy stuff. Things happen pretty quick, you more or less have to memorize all the stuff that goes down before they happen. At this point, I know that when the runaway train that plows through the city shows up, to have the camera ready for the brief instant the kid whose peeing out the side passes by.
Then it was time for some wordimagesoundplay, which was fun for about two minutes. Jeremiah simply had to take a pic of the nonsense that was before him?
Afterwards TV DJ, which is definitely one of those games that’s more enjoyable to watch than actually play. Lastly was Sengoku Basara X, which turned out to be a huge hit! Dave was especially happy to be able to play a gigantic robot with a huge drill. Enough for him to scream “THIS IS THE BEST GAME EVER!” when he was winning… though when things weren’t so hot, it immediately became “THIS IS THE WORST GAME EVER!” Again, I’ll be talking about it a lot more in just a bit, but yeah, definite Fighting Weapon Battle candidate.
- On Sunday, as part of my effort to get my lazy ass into shape, I went jogging. Oh, so people have been wondering what ever happened to boxing? Well, training was put on hold when Mike went to Ireland, and ever since he returned, I’ve just been hella busy. And during that time, I’ve just become less and less active. To the point that I’m simply a mess, and can’t really handle the rigors. So the plan is to build up my stamina with some cardio, and jogging will be a primary component.
Believe it or not, I’ve always loved running. I believe I have the legs for it, but then again, us Koreans have always been well know for our strong lower limbs (hence why they/we created Taekwondo). And friends have sometimes noticed that I have very well defined leg muscles (okay, mostly Katie), and figured it was finally time to put them to work! Plus, it offered me a chance to finally explore my neighborhood, which I’ve been meaning to for like forever now.
And there really is no better way to explore! The park right under the George Washington Bridge was perhaps my favorite spot. Unfortunately, I’m not what I used to be… I’ve never been a sprinter, instead my forte has always been endurance. But I didn’t last as long as I used to, though I’m older now, and it’s also been a while since I last jogged. And as silly as it sounds, I regret not bringing along my MetroCard since I totally ran out of steam about twenty blocks from home, making the long walk quite excruciating. And the rest of the night, my legs hurt on a level that they had never hurt before.
Yet I still managed to go jogging again yesterday, as painful as it was. Other highlights from the day include Nokia sending me yet another N81, after the last one’s untimely demise (so I could check out the just launched Reset Generation, which I mentioned in my previous post), my first real instance of forum drama over in the Chamber of Secrets(!!!), discovering how much fun it is to make the cat slap its own face while making laser blast noises (its hard to explain, you kinda just have to see it), and a nice long, late night conversation with ShaperMC, whom I haven’t talked to in practically forever. Hence why what was originally supposed to be a weekend wrap-up is now coming in on a Tuesday!
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So as promised, time once again for some reviews! This time I’ll concentrate on some of the stuff that was played this past weekend, along with a few other things…
REVIEW: 1942: Joint Strike (XBLA)
I was a big fan of the original series; I rented the NES version like a billion…. okay, more like a dozen or so times over the course of one summer as a kid, and always popped quarters into the arcade cab that was in the local pizzeria (till Strider replaced it). It, alongside Xevious, was one of my first vertical shumps that I obsessed over, so how does the update fare?
Well… it really shows how far the genre has progressed over the years. Anyone that’s a fan of Cave’s manic “bullet hell” shumps are gonna be bored senseless with this one. Even I had a hard time keeping myself engaged, but that was mostly dude to the not so interesting enemies, and the extremely boring boss encounters. At the end of the first stage, the boss that you just defeated comes after you, and because your systems have failed or whatnot, all you can do is fly away, and dodge enemies that get in the way. Imagine the last part of Life Force for the NES, but in reverse. And that’s about it in terms of excitement; all the other bosses just hit you with a steady and boring hail of fire. Not even their patterns offer that much in the end. Visually the game is decent. Again, nothing thrilling. Given the setting, it can’t get too crazy (I recall one sequel from the arcades having a somewhat of a sci-fi slant, but not here), so its mostly just clouds, countryside, and water of course (which at least looks fabulous). Ship design and enemy designs are serviceable. Again, bosses look boring. Presentation overall is extremely barebones. It?s a low budget title from a major publisher, to be sure. The audio? Absolutely nothing special.
The game’s system works something like this: there’s the standard shot that can be upgraded, bombs, and missiles. To build up your arsenal of missiles you have to build up a meter by shooting down enemies. The closer you are to it before taking it down, the more it’s worth. Now, the main gimmick of the game is the joint strikes; when there’s two players at once, the missiles are replaces by a cooperative attack, making the 2 player experience a fuckton more fun that the 1 player game. But, as previously noted, setting up a local two player game is not as easy as it should be (well, all you need is multiple accounts, which isn’t that hard to set-up, but still indicative of how its no longer the just jump in and play arcade experience 1942 used to be). You can do two players online, but I had a LOT of technical problems, something that’s been well documented all over the place; each time, but at a different spot of the game, the background would just go black, and all the enemies would disappear. The other player would keep going, and seemingly devoid of any issues on his or her end. So all you can do is just sit and watch till the other person either dies or wonders what the fuck and logs out. Real frustrating after you’ve trudged along till near the end.
So in the end, the game is decent enough, but just know what you’re getting into: if you find Cave shmups too much to handle and like very realistic water effects, 1942 is for you.
REVIEW: Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3 (XBLA)
NOTE: Was originally going to review SFII Turbo HD Remix, but since it?s still just a beta, that’s not entirely fair, so…. Wolf of the Battlefield is sorta like Meet Joe Black or whatever the heck the movie was that everyone bought a ticket to years back just to see the trailer for Episode 1 in the beginning, yet didn’t bother to stick around for the actual main attraction. Lots of folks snatched Commando 3 up, but only for the SFII Turbo HD Remix Beta that came with it, and probably never bothered to play the whole game. So should they? Well…
It more or less has the same exact look and feel as Joint Strike, which is hardly a surprise since it shares the same developer: Backbone Entertainment. It?s similar to the previous games in the Commando series; you run around the congo shooting at bad guys and their tanks, occasionally borrowing their weaponry and vehicles as well. Compared to 1942, there’s a lot more action going on, with far more interesting, and just plain MORE stuff to shoot at, making it quite the blast-a-thon. Additionally, the levels are LONG, to the point of annoyance, since there’s no method of continuing. But each level is chock full of things, not just stuff to blow up, but areas off the beaten path to explore. Yet, things still become rather competitive half-way through.
Another difference is the presentation; there’s a “story” here told in a cartoony art-style that everyone hates, but I kinda dig it, if only cuz it’s kinda different (though its no where as near as bad as the abortion that is Rocketmen: Axis of Evil). Plus you have the controls, which is your traditional Robotron set-up. I forget how it was in the arcades, but I believe it was an eight-way rotational single joystick… how I miss those. Anyway, Commando 3 is not a bad game when all is said and done. It’s just nothing spectacular. So I wouldn’t recommend going out and nabbing it, but if you happen to already have it, just give it a shot.
REVIEW: Everyday Shooter (PC)
Man, it’s has been a long time coming; for seemingly forever, I had been aching to get my hands on this game. Here’s a fun fact that I have yet to share, and I think enough time has passed to do so: a while ago, I once got my hands on a copy of the game from a publisher that was interested in distributing the game, before Sony snatched it up. And I was positively heart-broken that it wouldn’t work on the PC I managed to procure (I was clearly missing some essential file that was tied to security), which made my desire to play it even more intense. To the point that I almost seriously bought a $500 super goliath of a next-gen system, the PS3 to play a tiny little $10 shump. Some hope arrived when I discovered that a PSP port was coming (though I have yet to hear anything about it, and it seems like I’m the only person to hear about this from Sony themselves), but most recently I got a new Mac, with an Intel chip, which allowed me to install XP and Steam as mentioned earlier in this point, the chance to finally Jonathan Mak’s super fantastic, indie wunder shoot-em-up. And…
It’s okay. Initially I felt “wow, I guess this is it, huh?” in my mind. Everyday Shooter had been built up so much in my mind over these years that I almost didn’t know what to expect. At the very least, it delivers on its intentions; its basically a video game mix-tape, kinda like WarioWare in the sense, but one that’s completely dedicated to the shump genre. Each level features a different mechanic of playing, and therefore scoring. Half the fun is figuring out what does what, such as what enemy to destroy to trigger whatever action that will release little glowing dots to snatch up for points and free men plus unlockables. And what was initially a “hmmm” experience slowly becomes a “hey, this is actually neat!” one, much like a song that starts out slow but soon becomes rocking.
Speaking of rock, all the sounds, the background music, even the sound effects, were all produced via a guitar, further enhancing the mixtape/indie feel. Visually, it?s minimalistic, and clearly takes its cues from Rez, yet looks and feels very much different. Everything is far more organic here. It’s less Tron and more…. I dunno, looking at cells and amoebas via a microscope? Though that doesn’t mean it looks like flOw. And now that I think about it, Everyday Shooter looks closer to the source material of Rez, that being the works of Kandinsky than Rez itself! Point being, it really doesn’t look like any game you’ve ever seen. As for how it controls…. that’s where things kinda fall about. It’s a shump, but instead of controlling a ship, you’re also a glowing white dot that can move and shot at all directions. Once again, Robotron controls at play. Thing is, your dot controls like a tank, instead of this little agile thing. Yet there’s also little gravity and weight to play with either, making maneuvering through the clutter that the levels can become a real pain in the ass. As noted, a primary component of the game is pulling off combos and releasing other dots for points. Lots of times the level will be filled with tons of dots, and you have to go and grab them all, yet it’s all but impossible. Not holding down the shot button will make you faster, but even that’s not nearly enough. This one problem almost ruins the entire game for me.
Still, I like it, because I love shumps and… I hate to say it, but… games as “art”. At least when it?s done right, such in this case. Well, mostly; it is only somewhat playable. But at least it looks pretty and most importantly is actually a game. I know some folks don’t even want to come near it thanks to all the pretentious fucks that have been jacking onto it, but screw them and give this one a shot, especially if you’re into shooters.
REVIEW: Sengoku Basara X (PS2)
What happens when Capcom, folks who usually know a thing or two about 2D fighters, asks Arc System Works, the people behind Guilty Gears, a somewhat rival fighting game series that every knows is extremely pretty, perhaps prettier than most of Capcom’s offers, though not entire as depth-filled, to make a game for them based upon Devil Kings, which is a 3D melee combat title that’s basically like Koei’s Dynasty Warriors but that’s far more WACKY JAPPY?
You get Sengoku Basara X! A very pretty and extremely confusing fighting game featuring famous Japanese figures from history, but made all kooky. It’s very much all over the place, with not so much new ideas, just interesting takes on battle tested ones. First off, you control one character that either has one or two “strikers” to call on for assistance in the heat of the battle. Some folks even have a literal army of generic foot soldiers! This is after-all based on real military folk. So as you fight, you can bring in assistance, though not right off the back…. when you first call for help, they have to come to you from a remote location, and their distance is illustrated via a horse moving along a line… which is just like in the original game, when you’re in the thick of battle and need troops from another part of the field; they have to get to you first, and till then, you just have to make do. Which adds an interesting element of the game, especially later on when some boss is pounding the shit out of you; that holding the fort can be both fun and a little stressful. Otherwise, its more or less the same combo-aholic game that Guilty Gear series is known for. Everyone fights with weapons, meaning the screen is filled with large sword swipes, to add to the clutter of the 17,000 different meters that one has to also keep any eye out on. Or not. So with that in mind, enjoyment of the game is entirely dependent on one’s willingness (or ability) to play along the game’s rules. If you’re not good with wacky air combos, then this game will be a borefest, plain and simple.
The animation is ultra fluid, and the character designs are most excellent; I was never a fan of the cast in three dimensions, thanks the less than stellar polygon pumping power of the PS2, but in the beauty that is two dimensional hand drawn art, new life is breathed into them. Though I have to say, I’m a little annoyed that some of the more interesting characters from the original series are not playable and simply relegated to the background, unless there’s a way to unlock them (I’ve only finished the game on normal difficulty… plus, unlike most fighters, you sorta need to know Japanese to know what the hell is going on). Audio on the other-hand totally bites; it?s at some extremely low bit rate, like a crappy sounding mp3.
All in all, a confusing, yet still very much fun button masher, and a definite must play for any Guilty Gear fan!
REVIEW: Video Games Live Volume 1
As some might already know, the Video Games Live “initiative” is the brainchild of Tommy Tallarico, the accomplished, as well as somewhat controversial North American video game musician. It’s the first serious attempt thus far at introducing the “art” of video game music to the masses; whereas the notion of audiences packing concert halls to hear music from their favorite games performed live, either from an orchestra or rock band is still a strange concept in this here parts, its been common for years in Japan. And that’s what the Video Games Live concert series has been about, though its also had a pretty checkered past. The first tour was riddled with poor planning from what I can gather; many dates were cancelled, well after tickets went on sale, with many folks unable to get refunds in a timely manner. I also recall hearing that they were banned from NYC’s town hall due to the debacle around here. Later on, shows were finally organized for E3, but the consensus ranged from “excellent!” to “Christ that was cheesy.”
Anyhow, here we have the first collection from this effort, and…. it’s really not my cup of tea. Yet, I suppose one can’t complain too much; given that the overall concept is still kinda out there for the mainstream’s tastes, the selection of songs perhaps need to be rather conservative, safe. It’s also a reflection of how game music in North America generally is, that being orchestral, similar to big budget movies (I’ve always believed that American games try way too hard to be like films). Of the eleven games represented, only three are foreign (two are Japanese, the other is Russian), and of the games that I’m familiar with, the scores are presented in a very straightforward manner. It would have been nice if there was some experimentation with the compositions, but alas, that’s not the case. And the music from the games I weren’t familiar with were not at all compelling, leaving no lingering interest to check out the source material.
I guess the biggest disappointment was the Tron montage. Never before has Wendy Carlos’ groundbreaking and thrilling score felt so flat and limp. It?s far from horrible, don?t get me wrong; everything is competently put together. It?s just that there?s no life, no passion behind the music. Though the inclusion of Tron is especially perplexing given that it?s from a movie instead of a game (granted there were Tron games, but they came after the film), yet perhaps not as much as the inclusion of Advent Rising. No offense to Tallarico, its fine work, but its presence is beyond nepotism. If he was going to include his own work, I’d MUCH rather have something along the lines of Cool Spot or anything else equally interesting. But again, the rule of the game here is playing it safe. As a result, the last track, which is a live rocking medley of Castlevania songs is much needed infusion of life, but its too little, too late.
On a more personal note, I’m kinda annoyed that the original composers weren’t credited, and instead just the game’s publishers are listed. Strange. Anyhow, I guess this release shows that we are indeed many years behind Japan when it comes to packaging, and repackaging, game music. It’s going to be a while before we get something on par of Square’s or Namco’s image albums. So in that sense, perhaps Video Games Live Volume 1 has a place in the grand scheme of things. But for the most part, I’m gonna have to say everyone avoid this and simply go to Overclocked Remix or similar places to hear game music, re-invisioned and celebrated.
