This Week on Audiosurf Radio – 3/31 – Variety Pack Edition

You know the Sam Adam’s Summer Pack?  Or Woodchuck’s Variety Pack?  This week’s lineup is kind of like one of those.  Are you an indie pop fan?  We’ve got you covered.  A jazz fan?  We’ve still got you covered.  Do you regularly take E and grind against strangers in dimly lit clubs?  We’ve got two songs for you!

This week’s indie pop comes from the Texas duo Julandrew.  Yes, it’s a husband and wife name Julie and Andrew.  Quirky, right?  JP Mounier, a 70-some-year-old Frenchman, provides the jazz with a piano/bass/drum trio.  His blog begins rather existentially: “Je suis pianiste de jazz en fin de carrière” – I am a jazz pianist at the end of my career.  Show the man some love.  And then there’s Pretonika, a Hungarian techno artist who may or may not have a ginormous chin.

Read on to see which of this variety pack’s flavors you’ll be finishing first and which you’ll leave in the fridge ‘til your friends drink them.

Recommendations

I don’t particularly know why I enjoyed this ride so much.  The Steep tag helps, as I’m pretty sure the simple instrumentation would not generate much of a track without it.  There’s a buoyancy to Julandrew’s stuff.  It’s similar to what you might find on a Zack Braff compilation CD.  Warm vocal harmonies sound over a matter-of-fact melody, lending profundity to the sense of detachment.  When she sings “Maybe I’m just crazy,” it’s not a worry or an expression of craziness - it’s an acceptance.  A fact.  This vibe is all over today’s indie-pop scene, and Julandrew’s done a decent job drawing from that well.  As for the ride, the bounce in the lulling strum of the guitar ripples the track like a rug being shaken out.  It doesn’t stray too much from this rhythm, but again: simplicity.  Two weeks ago, Andrew commented that he prefers to use Audiosurf as a means by which to chill out.  “Crazy As” should help you do just that.

If you’re a regular reader, you know I think jazz definitely has its place on Audiosurf. One thing to note for “Blanc Bleu,” I’m not sold on this one musically.  It’s a little too modern, a little too easy-listening.  However, the advent of the Steep tag (and its increasing ubiquity on Radio) has made a famously intimate genre into a ride-worthy one.  Especially in small ensembles like this song’s trio, the musicians are extremely attuned to one another.  With a heavy traffic flow, the effect is something like playing parts of each instrument at all times.  Three notes from the rising bass line, accents from the drum kit, followed by a run of sixteenths from the piano.  If this song isn’t your cup of tea musically, use the ride as a gateway drug to further jazz enjoyment.  I beg of you.  Just look at this song’s banging bass solo opening.  Underneath the fretwork, the drummer keeps a steady quarter-note pulse on the hi-hat, occasionally tossing in an extra hit or flourish to mix it up.  While the opening mainly consists of blue traffic, the flourishes spawn red blocks.  Sometimes it’s the little things Audiosurf does that make me smile.  And pay attention about two-thirds of the way through. I encountered a flurry of red specials – two lightning bolts and a paint – all in a row.  I’m not sure what caused it, but it vanished like a pleasant dream: by the time I realized it was happening it was gone.

This song is over eleven minutes long.  Don’t ignore that going in.  Be prepared to sink over ten minutes into a techno song practically written for Audiosurf.  It’s got slow uphill sections that challenge you to make meaningful chains out of low-point blocks.  It has mild downhill sections.  It’s got downhill sections that’ll break the speedometer.  If you tried “Crazy As” and said, “I don’t want to relax, goddammit. I want to ride,” then you’ve come to the right song.  But don’t expect Mortal Kombat-style techno.  None of that high-testosterone, oily-muscled fight music here.  This is smoother.  Pulsing, of course, but low on the aggression.  Toss in a mid-ride bank in the track that feels like an X-Games event and you’re set.  There’s just no way I can tell you not to play this song.

Other selections
Second songs from both Julandrew and Petronika were included this week.  Both share qualities with my recommendations, but fail to deliver as fully as their counterparts.  In Julandrew’s “Without You,” I hear shades of The Flaming Lips and Sufjan Stevens (complete with a horn section toward the end).  It lacks the Steep tag given to “Crazy As,” so if you’re into this type of music and want a more low-key ride, give it a shot.  Petronika’s “Afterlife” is also a long techno track.  But at 6:35, it’s only just over half the length of “Fly Away.”  It’s a fun ride, and I particularly enjoyed the latter half.  Still, I’m sure you’ll be technoed out after giving “Fly Away” a ride.  I know I was.

Author’s Note
All songs were played on the Pro difficulty using the Eraser and Vegas characters.  I was a little crunched for time this week and didn’t get to do the Expert experimenting I planned on.  I did, however, give “Blanc Bleu” a brief try on Expert Eraser.  But that song is so damn bumpy and busy that I couldn’t go long without constantly overloading my columns or just erasing everything so I could stay alive.  Neither of those are conducive to points…

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team suck v resident evil 5: round 2

Rob started his post with a discussion of Resident Evil 5’s flaws, so I’ll start with what I deem the game’s greatest success – it’s fun. Thanks to Xbox Live, this game is the future of single-player story-based games. Let me play through the game’s story mode with the same scenarios and cutscenes, but let me do it with some company. I’d love a Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger or even a Mario game that let you team up with another player like RE5 does - for the excellent implementation of a second player in a heretofore religiously single-player franchise, Capcom deserves kudos.

Though playing the game at the normal difficulty level has proven to be in almost no way challenging, I’m still having a blast. What I’m not sure of is whether I’m having more fun because of the game or because of the other person playing it with me. Now, to talk about the horrors they unleashed when they decided to let Rob and I play this game together.

Yes, Team Suck is an ensemble with a vaunted history – as Rob stated, it all started during a round of Halo 2 during which we simultaneously realized that no matter how hard we tried, we’d never be better than the other players on our campus, guys with names like Poop, Ace, Ronald Reagan, Goat, Goatisgay, and Goatisgayisgay. I don’t remember who shot first, but it was during a round of team deathmatch that Team Suck coalesced into what it remains to this day – one of the two of us was behind the turret of a Warthog, the other was running to hop in the driver’s seat, and the person manning the turret gunned down the would-be driver. This kicked off a spat of vicious team killing that ended with us roundly ruining the game for our hapless teammates – Rob and I were both most pleased.

At Team Suck’s core is a desire to take games like Halo and Resident Evil much less seriously than their creators intended, to make the game entertaining even though we weren’t the best at it. As such, we’ve spent most of our time in RE5 so far making fun of the game’s presentation and dialogue. If a zombie looks like Biggie Smalls, we point it out. If a zombie is content to stand and do a jig on some stairs until the player moves directly in its line of sight, we stand and watch for a minute before popping him in the head. If a game’s ridiculously insistent dynamic music (let me give you an example: BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM) makes it so easy to tell that an enemy is nearby that it removes any semblance of surprise or horror from the game, we laugh at it. If the player can’t play more than five continuous minutes of game before running into an unnecessary cutscene or load screen, we bitch about it.

I think you get the picture – Resident Evil is a series with many longstanding conventions at this point, and as with any longstanding conventions, they become big fat targets for cynical would-be critics on the Internet such as ourselves.

RE5’s boss battles are perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the game – each monster is impeccably designed and rendered, but our arsenal has increased exponentially while the boss monsters have stayed the same. This also sort of happened in Bioshock with the Big Daddies – taking down your first was ridiculously difficult and exhilarating, mostly because you’re armed only with a crappy pistol and your reflexes. To bring the enemy to its knees, you needed to strategize, to think, and to be quicker than your adversary. This makes it all the more gratifying when you finally win. By the end of the game, though, you’ve got so much ammo at your disposal that taking a Big Daddy down is hardly more difficult than dispatching run-of-the-mill splicers, which takes a lot of the fun out of it if you’re expecting each battle to be as exciting as the first.

I also wonder whether Capcom fired all the people they had designing the zombies in Dead Rising – that game had tons of different zombie models, or at least enough to make things interesting. As Rob noted, though, this game features a round half-dozen or so different designs. While this does allow for convenient shorthand – I can say to Rob “Saddam’s behind you!” instead of “oh no behind you there is a zombie!” – it also makes the game’s big firefights that much less interesting. I somehow doubt that it would have been very hard to design more of these guys. Also, perhaps in response to the whole racism thing, Resident Evil 5 would have you believe that there are more black people living in Chicago than there are in the heart of Africa. I agree with University of Kent Professor of Anthropology Glenn Bowman’s stance on this one – the whole interview is well worth reading, but most pertinently:

“I think the knee jerk reaction that says if you use black people as bad characters you're being racist is actually itself a kind of inverted racism which says that you can't have scary people who are black.”

Still, I guess you’ve got to do what you can to make sure sales don’t get hurt, right Capcom?

Look for more posts from both Rob and I about this game in the next week or two – we’ve got gripes, but to be fair we haven’t actually completed the game. Maybe something will happen at the halfway point that changes both of our minds about a lot of the things we’ve said so far! I’m not holding my breath, but it’s possible. Team Suck: deploy!

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it is still too much

I don’t care what the analysts say about how great the $60 price point is. I still think it’s a big fat scam.

In a slightly more optimistic prediction, said analysts also expect the margins on used games to go down as Gamestop is challenged by its first real competition in a while. You should have been a little quieter about those ridiculous profits, guys.

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Team Suck v Resident Evil 5: Round 1

Resident Evil fans are used to embracing flaws. Inexplicable dialogue, awkward camera angles, a convoluted story; forgiveness and acceptance are required. It almost becomes part of the fun.

Resident Evil 4 required no forgiveness. The writing still sucked, but a bold jump to a fixed third-person perspective gave the series a shocking jolt of credibility. It was fun. It was still scary. And it worked.

Resident Evil 5 was given more hype than most presidential candidates, thanks in no small part to a pointless snake-chasing racism scandal. The screen shots were gorgeous. I practically made love to the demo. Now it’s here, and Team Suck is all over it. This will be the first of several posts about our misadventures through Capcom’s latest, so hit the jump, and let’s get started.


Team Suck consists of two members: myself, and Andrew A. Cunningham. It was founded in Halo 2 (of all places), where its sole directive was to ruin the game for others. This was done mostly through stealing prized vehicles (and wrecking them), and making ourselves all-too-opportune targets for players of even mediocre skill. Also, killing each other. A lot. Our battle cry was “Team Suck: Deploy!”

Now out of college, Capcom’s decision to make co-op play an integral part of RE5 flashed the TS batsignal into the sky and reignited our anarchic, misanthropic, game-breaking instincts. We procured the game and set about our dark business.

Resident Evil 5 is beautiful. The screenshots say as much, and there is nary a frame stutter to be found. I suppose it’s easier to render backgrounds when they’re 80 percent static – like in Resident Evil 4, your interaction with the environment is mediated by gunshots and quicktime events. There is no jump button, only an on-screen prompt to jump over a ledge, or out a window. It gives the impression of shooting your way through a very pretty painting.

We started off confronting a mob of very angry, half-white Africans with shovels and sticks and snarls. We ran from house to rooftop, fleeing them and…oh, did I forget the ten-foot hooded axe-swinging monster? We were fleeing him. Poorly. Overwhelmed and underexperienced, it took us five tries, three explosive barrels and as many grenades to kill him.

A friend told us this was the hardest part of the game; from what I’ve seen since, he’s right. We’ve fought two more bosses. The first we lured into an obvious death trap. The second seemed merely curious, fluttering about and prodding at us with a pincer.


We blew him to hell with proximity mines. He fell off a cliff. I can’t say we used a first aid spray between us.

As Andrew will undoubtedly note, we seem to be facing the same five enemies over and over again. One looks like Ray Romano. One looks like Saddam Hussein. One wears corn rows. Nothing overtly racist, just unimaginative. Capcom had four years since Resident Evil 4. When they weren’t toasting their own brilliance, I wonder, could they have skinned a few more models?

So far, I have yet to see anything too different from Resident Evil 4 – in terms of gameplay, nothing better, nothing worse. They hardly even changed the controls.

I’m beginning to ask myself: should this represent four years of game development? Is this all the have?

While the question resolves itself, I’m plenty content to lure Andrew alongside explosive barrels, which I will then shoot, flinging his lithe, indeterminately-ethnic body through the air like a dishrag.

Team Suck: Deploy.

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Midnight Snack: Pwong

On this week’s podcast (which you can listen to here or find in iTunes), Rob mentioned his fondness for Curveball, the classic browser-based 3D Pong game.  I didn’t set out to find a Pong-related game for tonight’s snack, but the stars aligned and delivered me Gaz’s Pwong.

Pwong is pretty much Pong on crack.  You square off against a computer paddle with the familiar aim of knocking balls past it to score points.  This game’s twist is the sheer onslaught of balls unleashed onto the screen as the game goes on. 

Cannons routinely pop up from your side of the screen, shooting more balls at your opponent, who (like the best of computer opponents) pongs them back at you mercilessly.  The tricky aspect of scoring is that the more balls onscreen, the less points you’ll receive for scoring them.  The onscreen chaos often resembles computer monitors from The Matrix, dense and indecipherable.  At this stage, defeat seems imminent.

Enter power-ups.  Pwong features two pretty standard power-ups (Large Paddle and Slow-mo).  Then there’s the “Ammo” power-up which allows you to shoot copies of your paddle – a useful way to overwhelm the computer.  These help to mix up gameplay and provide the occasional edge over the devious AI paddle.

Pwong isn’t that deep.  And it lasts only a few minutes (and one vaguely familiar techno song).  But there’s nothing wrong with short and sweet.  Plus, I’d never thought a Pong-descendant would be able to stress me out this much.

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Musaic Box, or Classical Music Can Be Puzzling

I was going to talk about Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble today, but then the Independent Games Festival announced the 2009 award recipients.  And despite being the resident indie fanatic here at Charge Shot!!!, I managed to cover only two of this year’s many nominees .  I played Jason Rohrer’s Between (which took home the Innovation Award) with Andrew and reviewed the breath of sweet, fresh air that is Dyson (which unfortunately went home empty-handed). 

Ashamed, I perused the list of winners for something to play and stumbled upon Musaic Box, which was nominated for Excellence in Audio and took home the Excellence in Design award.  Intrigued by the idea of yet another take on the music/puzzle genre, I quickly found the shareware version over at Big Fish and gave it a whirl.

Musaic Box is really two games in one.  One of these games won the award.  The other most certainly did not.  Let’s get the latter out of the way first.

The wart on Musaic Box’s nose is its point-and-click, “Find the Hidden Object” sections – of which there are many.  The basic (and it is basic) plot of the game is that your grandfather left you a mysterious musical puzzle box.  Scattered throughout his cluttered mansion are little puzzle outlines that correspond to various pieces of classical (slash public domain) music.  To find these outlines, you must click around prettily rendered still shots of his house.  Locating them ranges from being incredibly easy - “Hey look, there’s one on the piano bench!” - to causing hair-ripping anger - “Why does this other music machine spit out an outline only after I’ve located three random pieces of machinery and why can’t I find the pieces of machin-ARGH?!”  If you can find the outlines, you won’t notice how frustrating this part of the game can be.  If you have trouble (like I sometimes did), you’ll begin to question your resolve.

After you obtain all the parts of an outline, the good game starts.  Each puzzle is a mix of tangrams, Sudoku, and musical trial and error.  You must fit various Tetris-like pieces into a puzzle with the aim of bringing a particular song to life.  Each piece is made of individual blocks, each with a colored shape that corresponds to a particular instrument’s phrase in the tune.  One block might be a snippet of the drum line, another the bass part of the cadence.  Arranging the pieces correctly results in the music box’s playing of the song.

What makes the puzzle aspect of Musaic Box so engrossing is the multiple avenues by which you can solve each puzzle.  Many of the songs allow you to play the melody in short chunks (each corresponding to a particular red block), which provides a framework for where certain pieces go, much like rooting through a jigsaw puzzle to find all the edge pieces.  From there, you may choose to solve it geometrically, trying to fit the pieces together correctly until the song plays.  You can also playback any individual piece and try to match up how the accompaniment supports the melody.  Or you could try to isolate an instrument and track how its colored symbols evolve and put them in the right order.  Chances are you’ll do all three before the puzzle’s done.  That’s good design, right there.

Above I alluded to a palpable Sudoku influence.  Each arrangement consists of up to four instruments, and each column of the puzzle grid must contain one of each instrument.  This extra level of logic helps in puzzle solving.  “Well, I already have drums in this column, let me try it over here.”  The genius is how the color-coding of instruments simplifies this for the musical layman.

And that brings me to what I like most about the game: how accessible it makes music.  While trained musicians or Guitar Hero fiends may find this game interesting, it won’t be because of their training or fiendishness.  Musaic Box is definitely for musical neophytes.  From what I saw the music is all public domain (which allowed them to tailor their arrangements for gameplay), but they fit that in by making it your grandfather’s collection of classical music.  Nothing wrong with that (even if the collection includes “Good Morning to You,” the melody that inspired “Happy Birthday”).  Its puzzles illuminate how songs are more than just a melody, more than the sum of their parts.  The symbols on each block reflect how composers vary musical gestures to further a song.  A red squiggle may mean one bar of the melody, and when that gesture returns with a slight twist, there may be a squiggle with a dot.  It sounds simplistic, and it is.  But I’m pretty sure that’s the point. 

In my time with the shareware, I encountered a diverse difficulty of puzzles.  Some proved fairly easy, others so maddening they required use of the hint button.  In the middle were a handful that were really satisfying.  There’s something about harnessing your aural and logic skills simultaneously that just clicks.  And when it results in music, even better.  Sure, you’ll be bored with “Yankee Doodle Dandee.”  But feel free to pat yourself on the back after beating “Blue Danube.”

I’ll probably pick up the full version of Musaic Box.  Sure, the plot’s more than a little hokey and the hidden object stuff is aggravating.  But I love puzzles.  And I love music.  I’ll just ignore the other stuff.

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Ten Games That You Should Never, Ever Buy, Part 1

Okay, we all know that anyone who buys games like Superman 64 and Shaq Fu needs to be institutionalized, there are a few games that look awesome but are actually rancid piles of filth. These maritime war crimes are:

10) Braid: Hey, it turns out that Super Mario Brothers didn’t need a pretentious, faux-artistic doppelganger. Actually, SMB needed that about as much as I needed the liver cirrhosis I got from drinking myself into a coma after playing this turd.

9) Fable 2: I was going to do a Your Game Sucks article on this, then I realized that I was simply typing “thisgameiscrapthisgameiscrapthisgameiscrap” over and over. This is one of those games that everyone thinks is awesome because of all the “choices”, then they realize that there are only two viable options in every choice bracket and they’re always polar opposites. Essentially, the game boils down to choosing between “I’m a retard” and “I’m an asshole”. Great.

8) Street Fighter IV: The Uncanny Valley called. It wants you to stay 50 yards away at all times ‘cuz you’re creeping it the hell out.

7) Halo Wars: I’m not even sure where to start here. It’s Halo, so it automatically sucks. But then there’s the Starcraft rip-off aspect, which is honestly so bad that it’s almost poetic, like watching a flock of doves explode in mid-flight. I truly thought that screwing up a derivative product this badly was reserved for Uwe Boll.

6) Grand Theft Auto IV: “Hey Nico, want to see some stoopeed play mechaneeks?”

Well, that’s it for today, but tune in tomorrow when I finish this terrible list!

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OnLive to Challenge ISP Bandwidth Limits

One of the biggest announcements made at this year’s GDC was the introduction of OnLive.  OnLive seeks to deliver games to any TV/computer with high-speed broadband access at a whopping 60 frames per second.  Imagine, you could play Mirror’s Edge without having to buy a machine that comes with the Kung Fu Panda game.

Of course, because OnLive is a server-side, “Cloud Gaming,” platform, playing something like Mirror’s Edge might require a hefty amount of bandwidth.  This is bad news for people whose Internet service providers have already been looking into charging for high usage.  The Associate Press just ran a story about this very issue, with OnLive reps claiming it would take twelve straight days of gaming to reach Comcast’s 250 GB/month limit.  It sounds like OnLive isn’t planning on hosting any MMOs.

But some companies, as AP points out, are testing even lower caps, with tiered payment plans. 

As a gamer, I couldn’t be more excited by OnLive.  I don’t have a high-end PC, and the promise of running current-gen titles on it gets me all a twitter.  However, the perennially unfulfilled promise of server-side computing aside, ISPs treating OnLive like a fast-approaching meteor makes me cautious.  Let’s just hope they don’t hire Bruce Willis.

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pod shot: casual gaming and soccer moms

What can I say about this, our fifth Pod Shot!!!? I can say that it required the most editing of any we’ve done so far – Craig got dropped from our call at one point, and the Diversion Train kept making stops at every station even tangentially related to the topic at hand. Even as is, we give a shout out to Mavis Beacon and gossip about Bristol Palin’s recent breakup. Surely, this is the first step in our journey from gaming blog to gossip rag.

After editing, though, we did a pretty good job, and the whole affair wraps up in about half an hour. Rob, Craig and myself are once again your humble hosts, and we invite you to listen to our scattershot ruminations about browser games, the stellar performance of PopCap Games and the Nintendo Wii, and our distaste for the term “hardcore,” which in my professional estimation is an adjective best applied only to luge and pornography.

Our theme this week is the tried-and-true Fever music from Dr. Mario, a puzzle game almost but not quite as ubiquitous as Tetris. We enjoy it, so will you.

As always, get your Pod Shot!!! from the feed or from iTunes – whatever feels right.

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yoshi’s island ds, uninspired and uninspiring

No one knows how to do a potboiler like Nintendo.

Every few years, Nintendo will really make something special – a Super Smash Bros. Melee, an Ocarina of Time, a Super Mario Galaxy – that will show the world how a game is made. Pitch perfect and endlessly entertaining, these games define their respective genres and, for a time, defined the course of the game industry as a whole. I can’t say enough good things about these games, and that’s no hyperbole. Well, not a lot, anyway.

For every one of these games, though, the Nintendo of recent years has been much more content to rest on its laurels and bask in the reflected glory of successes past. You see these the most often on its portables, which have always been super popular – the Game Boy Advance saw straight remakes of nearly all Mario’s 2D outings, all of which originally sold for $34.99. This was reprehensible. What might be even more disappointing, however, were the new 2D outings that Nintendo has released for the DS in recent years. It’s not that these games are bad, it’s not even that they aren’t fun – it’s only that, by recalling so strongly the games upon which they were based, they show the player how uninspired they really are by comparison.

Yoshi’s Island was a late, great Super Nintendo game. Released in late 1995, it missed the boat stylistically – in an age where people were increasingly concerned with graphical realism, it chose style instead. That’s cool now, even a safe bet, but at the time everyone was all about the pre-rendered shine of Donkey Kong Country and no one cared about this cutesy Mario game and its hand-drawn style. They missed something great, a twist on the tested Mario roots that incorporated some fun new mechanics and fantastic level design. It was a little overlooked at the time, but it became a cult classic.

In 2006, Nintendo released Yoshi’s Island DS, which aimed to offer more of the same. In that respect, it succeeds grandly – there are five worlds of eight levels apiece, you throw some eggs, you carry baby versions of licensed characters around on your back. It’s really more of an expansion pack than a sequel, in that it doesn’t do a ton of original stuff. Its best ideas are almost always those that it lifts wholesale from the first game, and the new ideas it does bring to the table have a minimal impact on gameplay. Music and sound in general are particularly lacking – in a series famous for remixing one theme to death in every one of its games, Yoshi’s Island DS is particularly offensive. Every single world features dull, empty remixes of one dull, uninspired theme, and they fall ludicrously short of the high watermark the first game set. Repeating themes in music is great if you’re, say, Beethoven, but whoever did the music for this one needs to rethink his or her career choice – even though I had the same damn theme playing at me for the entirety of the game, I can’t for the life of me recall how it went.

In Nintendo’s defense, it did outsource this one to Artoon. Letting another studio make a sequel to your game is a great move if you’re bored with it, or if you want to make some money off of something popular. The trouble with it is that the second studio almost never really quite understands what it was that people liked so much about the original, and they rarely take chances or change the core formula of the game – look at developer Treyarch’s cracks at Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty series as a good example. The Infinity Ward games are typically hailed as important first person shooters, perfecting the World War II shooter thing before the World War II shooter thing became the overdone trope it is today. The Treyarch games, by comparison, aren’t terrible, but they do little to shake up the formula or advance the cause. When Infinity War took back over for Call of Duty 4, they brought the CoD gameplay to a new era, you know, of time, which did continue after World War II ended, and performed much better among reviewers than Treyarch’s Call of Duty 3. The new studio makes a sequel that conforms to the letter of the first games but not to the spirit – that doesn’t mean that Treyarch and Artoon don’t do good work, it just explains why the magic of those first games is nowhere to be found in their sequels.

Let’s not leave Nintendo blameless here, though – New Super Mario Bros. was the exact same brand of bland, and this one came from Nintendo itself. Like Yoshi’s Island DS, it’s fun enough while you’re playing it, but one gets the distinct impression that it was made to make money and not to push the envelope. New ideas are in short supply, and the whole game ends up forgettable in retrospect, even if it got rave reviews at the time.

Mario did a lot of fun stuff in two dimensions, but this isn’t one of his finer moments. It’s fine, mostly, but only fine. It’s nothing special – it’s not a game you’ll play fifteen years from now with the same wide-eyed wonder with which you approached it as a child, but it’ll entertain you for a few hours. Few enough games can even manage to do that, so I guess I will begrudgingly chalk this one up as a win.

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Midnight Snack: Music Catch 2

Are you an Audiosurf fan?  Then you might like Music Catch 2.

You can find it over at Reflexive, where it and the original Music Catch currently top the list of browser games.  Music Catch 2 is also tearing up the charts on Kongregate.  Basically, if you haven’t spent at least five minutes with this one, you’re definitely missing out on something.

In Music Catch 2, you, well…you catch music.  It really is that simple.  You collect various floating shapes by moving over them with your mouse, aiming for a high score.  In a manner similar to (and yet wholly different from) Audiosurf, the music generates these colored shapes, reflecting (most noticeably) changes in rhythm and dynamics.  Special yellow shapes increase your point multiplier as well as the size of your cursor, while red shapes cause collected yellows to burst out of you like so many Sonic rings. 

You unlock different game modes as you go along.  These change how the shapes appear, as well as their behavior onscreen.  Three songs, solo piano works by Isaac Shepard, come with the game, and they provide a perfect soundtrack that is, at times, both soothing and stirring.  There’s a reason this game comes from a site whose motto reads: “Click. Play. Relax.”  If you find Audiosurf’s gameplay a bit too intense but enjoy music games, give Music Catch 2 a whirl.

One of the last options you unlock is called “Mp3 from URL.”  It allows you to import an mp3 link into the game, which will then generate shapes for you to collect.  Unfortunately, links from YouTube don’t work, and there’s no option to use music from your computer unless you upload it to a site yourself.  I tried it with Jonathan Coulton’s “I’m Your Moon.”  It was fun, but I think the game is really suited to more introspective, instrumental work.  Shepard’s piano pieces highlight the game’s inherent grace and simplicity, something pop music might dilute.  Have fun experimenting with whatever URLs you can find.  I’m sticking to public domain Chopin recordings.

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nintendo listens to geeks, otaku

Nintendo’s got some big and genuinely interesting things going on at GDC today, the biggest surprise being Wii firmware update 4.0, which will, at long last, address the white box’s hitherto laughable onboard storage.

Joystiq’s coverage is pretty complete, so I will try not to be redundant – previously, any games you wanted to download and play on the Wii had to live in its 512MB of onboard storage – you could insert a 2GB SD memory card into the Wii to store things onto, but you couldn’t actually run anything installed to that card. For comparison’s sake, the Xbox 360 Pro model currently on the market, at 60GB, has 120 times more onboard storage for games and other data. Ouch, Nintendo.

Today’s announcement of the “SD Card Menu” is not only allowing savvy consumers to run games off of those external SD cards, but it is also allowing players to use cards up to 32GB in size instead of the previous 2GB limit. A card that big is a little pricey at present, but a 16GB or 8GB card is much more reasonable, and 4GB cards can be had for a song. Considering that you can buy as many of these things as you want and just swap them out, I’d say that Nintendo’s solution suddenly looks much more appealing than Microsoft’s approach to storage upgrades.

Frankly, this functionality should have been built into the device right from the start, but now that it’s here it means that Wii owners are going to be able to get better downloadable content, more akin to that found on consoles with less limited storage. Developers no longer have to worry about the size of their content, just the quality, and that’s a definite win for gamers. The Wii just got that much more interesting.

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Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica mods.

I don’t think I’m assuming too much when I extend a hankie of sympathy to our readership in the wake of Battlestar Galactica’s finale. The series was a boon to those who liked their sci-fi with more grist and less camp. Ron Moore’s top-shelf writing combined with stellar (hah!) performances and the best special effects on network television set a new benchmark for not only the Sci Fi channel (excuse me, SyFy) but for all mediums of entertainment set among the stars.

As soon as the show finished, I knocked back a g&t and asked my friend Ben:

“How has no one made a credible shooter out of this?”

As a videogame IP, BSG has seen a few forgettable drops in the bucket. A 2003 PS2/XBOX shooter was based on the pre-Moore show circa ninteenseventywhatever, and a 2007 XBLA shooter didn’t even get its rudimentary mechanics squared away. I wanted something to replicate the frantic action and dizzying aerospatial gymnastics of the show’s combat sequences.

Of course, the modders had already made this game.


It’s embarrassing to admit that I discovered Beyond The Red Line through Kotaku. They did a brief wrap on Monday summarizing the (apparently) proliferate efforts of modders to replicate BSG on computer screens. Only two out of the four are serviceable (well, 1.5 – Ben has tried to play the Homeworld 2 mod Fleet Command, and it never seems to work) but if you want to check out Kotaku’s wrap, go ahead. I want to talk about BTRL.

Beyond The Red Line is built on the venerable shoulders of Freespace 2, unwitting apotheosis and swan song of the space-sim genre. When the source code was released to the public, fans of defunct space sims everywhere started cobbling together meshes, re-skins and total conversions of their pet IPs. Wing Commander has an FS2 mod (we’ll talk about that later), as does Babylon 5. With the most sophisticated flight mechanics the genre ever saw, FS2 is a perfect host for aspiring Viper jocks.

Almost any maneuver possible in the show is possible here – you can spin on any axis, slide like a greased pig across a tile floor, and weave in-between the superstructures of colonial ships. The presentation is great, for a mod (I don’t mean this in the pejorative – understand, this is a labor of love pieced together by volunteers. Qualifiers are necessary, and are not meant to be condescending) – colonial radios crackle with the same warbly distortion as the show, and the Viper cannons fire with the same quiet roar, muted by the vacuum. Seeing the exhaust contrails of Vipers mingle with those of Raiders and create a fine lace pattern... fans of BSG have waited for this.

Unfortunately, the BTRL crew only has a demo to offer. A lot has yet to be seen – conspicuously absent from the first three levels is the hulking battleship Galactica. We see plenty of it in BTRL’s promo videos, surrounded by fireballs of flack, all guns blazing, but we can’t experience it yet. This will be the crucible for BTRL, and ultimately, the game’s test of worth. If they can deliver on what these videos promise, their achievement will be monumental.

While they’re presumably working on the final product, check out the first three levels and send them your thoughts. Crack the whip. Make them work weekends. I want this game finished, and if I could have it tomorrow, I’d be most pleased. Okay? Thanks, fellas.

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This Week on Audiosurf Radio – 3/24 – Tickling, no, Crushing the Ivories Edition

Audiosurf’s Steep tag pays us another visit this week.  For the music-surfing neophyte, song tags allow you to alter how the track-building algorithm treats a particular song.  For more information on different types of tags, see here, but we’ll only be dealing with the Steep tag this week.  Steep is useful for giving chiller pieces more dramatic rides or, in this week’s case, giving impressive piano pieces their due.

The piano solos come courtesy of Yunus Kuru, off his debut album Running Against Time.  You can almost hear the keys threaten to buckle under the weight of his rock music background – suffice to say his playing is…energetic.  Balancing out the classical soloist in all of us with the rave-crawling dancer (that is surely) in all of us are three tracks from DJ iPep, whose stuff can be found on Jamendo.  They’re off the album Home Mix 2007, but don’t be fooled by the year.  Somebody gave his music the “90s” tag for a reason.

Recommendations

The opening triplet section introduces you to how well this track works, especially with the Steep tag.  While the song can’t possibly give you a block for every note played (that’d be like navigating the Indy 500 with a tricycle), there’s still a large amount of blocks that match up extremely well.  Often, if the upper notes are doing triplet patterns, you’ll get blocks for the start of each triplet – think of how a guitarist might strum a string and then execute a pull-off to get successive notes with minimal effort.  The result is something closer to actually playing the music than what Audiosurf normally achieves.  The bridge section, in particular, is superb.  As the right hand offers short phrases with notes flowing down the scale in waves, red blocks appear.  Just as the pianist must make the most of these flourishes, so must you capitalize on the pockets of red before you.  It’s a thrilling section of a multi-faceted ride.  I can’t help you if you simply don’t like solo piano.  But if you’re a fan (or, at the very least, indifferent to it), give this one a ride.  The bouncing, shifting meter should be reason enough to play this song.

Even more so than “Against the Storm”, “Tsunami” sounds like a cross between Franz Schubert and Nobuo Uematsu.  There’s a frantic, rolling quality to the piece that makes me think of the Schubert’s Erlkönig, but its more modern sensibilities remind me of Uematsu’s battle themes (see the bass line circa 1:10 on this FFVII track).  This is not a bad thing, mind you.  I think if you’re going to sound like someone, why not sound like these guys.  The ride itself is a trip.  Sections of a fancy piano fingerwork again coincide with spurts of red blocks, often requiring some speedy lane-changing.  Don’t worry about signaling.  You don’t have time.  Late in the ride, while the theme gets repeated, the song’s beat breaks into a groove for a few bars, which is immediately reflected in the track surface.  The  super-slick downhill surface suddenly starts to bump and buck.  I must say, it caught me off guard – in the good way.  Also, I don’t usually play the game with the sound effects on, but it makes all the difference on this ride.  Because some of the blocks match up so nicely, it’s extra satisfying to let the effects clue you in to how well you’re following the music.  

Other selections (including a tie for third)
I couldn’t decide on a third song out of this week’s five.  Well first, let me tell you which DJ iPep song you should skip: “Can You Dance?”  It’s generic.  It sounds like every mediocre DDR track you’ve ever heard.  Pass. 

The other two get a little trickier.  On one hand, you have “Activation,” which also comes with the Steep tag.  Personally, I wonder if this track actually needed the tag.  It’s got enough going on.  Somehow, Mr. iPep has managed to merge a Mr. Oizo bass beat with a drum break worthy of a Sugarhill Gang sample – and it works.  On the other hand, there’s “Tequila.”  It starts out with a pretty predictable hand-clapping backbeat, foreshadowing three minutes of bland dance music.  Instead, the song gets a little more introspective.  A little darker than the opening leads me to believe.  It’s a tad heavy on traffic, but that’s part of the fun.  Just as the main loop starts to wear on you, the song is fading out.  Magnifique.

Author’s Note
All songs were played on the Pro difficult using the Eraser and Vegas characters.  As per Nhex’s comment last week, I gave a few of them a whirl on Expert, just to get my feet wet.  After trying the Yunus tracks on Expert, I’d probably rank “Tsunami” over “Against the Storm.”  For whatever reason, the sixth color and lack of shoulders makes it all the more menacing – and all the more fun.

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Halo 3 Loses in Sales to Glorified Scale

This…this right here? This is gold.

In fact, let’s put this in perspective: Halo 3, a first-person shooter with a massive ad campaign that lasted a full calendar year, lost to a peripheral that is the digital equivalent of a physical exam, even though the latter was released a full six months after the former.

This triumph is not as epic as one would hope; Halo 3 has sold an impressive 5.9 million units to date despite being one of the most aggressively mediocre games of the 21st century. It’s just that…well…at 6 million units, people seem to be having more fun with Wii Fit.

Wii Fit, y’all. Can you imagine being Halo 3 right now? Let’s try: close your eyes (after reading this, of course). Now try to picture the type of person who loves Halo 3. If your brain isn’t lying to you then you probably came up with someone like this:

Now try to picture a Wii Fit enthusiast. Okay, a Wii Fit purchaser. You’ll probably get the image of soccer moms, young kids, and college chicks who do yoga in quads. Now imagine these people giving a massive, campus-wide wedgie to everyone who looks like that guy up there. That’s essentially what Wii Fit did to Halo 3.

Hell yeah.

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playing without others

Multiplayer has been an essential part of games since even before they were digitized – stuff like Solitaire has been around for the bored and lonely, but the vast majority require two or more people to enjoy. They’re social, they inspire competition. Video games continue in this grand tradition, and from the days of Pong in the arcades to the present-day insanity that is Super Smash Bros. Brawl, beating the shit out of your closest friends and then getting all up in their grill about it is a normal part of life.

The advent of the Internet changed that in the same way it changed everything else – it made the world that much smaller for people who want to beat other people at things in their spare time. Rob and Craig partake in this thing called “online multiplayer” – this is cool. No longer do people have to live near each other to hit each other in the face with the butt of a virtual machine gun! I can get behind that. I’ve got a Quake Live account, and it’s fun to jump online sometimes and take advantage of the anonymity that the Internet offers. More often, though, I find myself wanting to stay offline when gaming.

I don’t have a lot of ego wrapped up in this sort of thing – I don’t get my jollies from being number one on an inconsequential online leaderboard. Still, as has been pointed out by my compatriots, one of the problems with online gaming is that everyone is always better than you. I don’t need to be number one, or number anything, but when I’m trying to get in some deathmatch and I only live for seven seconds between being sniped by some camping douchetool, I’m not having fun. People tend not to have fun sucking at things.

This also gets to one of the weaknesses of multiplayer gaming – it is ultimately pointless. In theory, you’re striving to be better than all the other people playing. Some of the point is automatically null and void if you’re not you’re not gunning for #1. And what if you are? Even if the match ends with your name at the top of the list, you’re free to bask in your pretend glory for only a few seconds before the next match starts, and you’re back at the bottom with everybody else.

Out of everything, it’s this circular pattern that most turns me off of online multiplayer – we talk all the time about games that succeed at telling good stories or create involving environments or immerse you in their universes. When does that happen when you’re sticking a guy in Halo? World of Warcraft allots some players a social experience, but once you max out your level and complete all your quests, you’re left repeating yourself until the next expansion pack comes out. My favorite games are the ones that more closely resemble books and movies and other media – stuff with clear-cut beginnings, middles and endings. Some games are beginning to offer online multiplayer with some substance, but most are limited to the headshot, rinse, repeat cycle that Counterstrike helped pioneer all those years ago. Terrorists win, indeed.

This being said, I definitely know why people like these games. Competition is more important to some than others, even to the point of being an end unto itself. Massively multiplayer online RPGs offer a social component, and there is a lot of content there for new players, even without an ending credit sequence. If people have fun, then far be it from me to criticize. I’m just saying, it typically isn’t for me.

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An Open Letter to ReckingBall118; Or, A Study in Stockholm Syndrome

It’s not that I’m a crap gamer. Everyone else is that much better than me, and shame on them. If you can hit me from across the map with a sniper rifle while jumping, you need to reevaluate the way you spend your leisure time. Plant a garden. Pet a dog. Do something that doesn’t involve making a 24-year-old foam at the mouth and pound invectives into the keyboard such as:

“I HOPE THE RECESSION DESTROYS YOUR LIFE AND KILLS YOUR DOG”

It’s not that I’m a bad sport. You, ReckingBall118, just unsportingly good.


I’m pretty sure this started with Counterstrike. You were the reason why every round ended with “TERRORISTS WIN.” My philistine teammates called you a n00b, and your sniper rifle a n00b cannon, but I knew better. My body crumpled before I even heard the gunshot, time after time. You were no n00b. You were an artist.

I tried bargaining. “HEY LET ME SHOW YOU SOMETHING,” I’d say, approaching the bomb site. No laundry. “HEY LET’S JOIN FORCES” I said, increasingly frantic. You responded: “were on different teams, you twat.”

Right you were.

I saw you again in Battlefield 2. The sunlight slipped off your F-15 as it vaulted off the tarmac, despite my frantic cries of “HEY WAIT LEMME GET IN THE BACK.” I stood in the middle of the runway, watching you become a speck. But you turned around. You were coming back for me.

“ANGLE OF DESCENT IS PRETTY STEEP, THERE,” I cautioned. Then I saw the bombs drop from your fuselage. I hoped the thirty-second teamkill penalty was enough time for you to write your apology, but I hoped in vain.

Still, you were like Achilles on the field, and I knew better than to turn against you. I managed to hop in the back of a Humvee you were riding to the front lines. “ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH,” I bellowed. You stopped the car. You got out and walked to where I sat. You shot me in the head. My body tumbled to the dirt when you pulled away.

You left me in the dust. The time for peace had passed.

In Halo 3, I spent exactly 34 rockets trying to slay you. 22 of those connected with shrubbery, 6 with teammates, and 4 landed yards away from your feet – enough to rattle you, but not enough to kill you.

In Left 4 Dead, you wouldn’t let me be Zoey. I couldn’t have expected you to have known, of course, but when I asked politely, you said, “Dude, just be the old guy.” I was a Boomer instead, and from the snarling horde of undead window shoppers, DHL deliver men and bike messengers, you singled me out.

“Just let me spit on you once,” I said, “just once. Then I can sleep tonight.”

“You really need to see someone,” you said.

“Fuck my shit,” I replied.

ReckingBall118, you then left the game.

I’ve since pursued you across multiple games and platforms. Far Cry 2, Gears of War 2 – only smoking corpses, your signature memento. I know I’ll find you in Quake Live, where your pure, unbridled id will reach for the nearest rocket launcher and deal death mechanically, with godlike disinterest.

I’ve given up on killing you. It would seem I exist solely to fall before your munitions. And curse your brilliance, you morning star, you Lucifer.

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Ten Games That You Should Never, Ever Buy, Part 2

And we’re back with the cream of the crop! And by “cream”, I of course mean “turds”.

5) Mega Man 9: When your claim to fame is that you’re so hard that no one will touch you,  it’s time to either stop trying or get checked out for priapism.

4) Pokemon Platinum: Okay, it is really, REALLY time for Nintendo to stop milking this franchise. We already have Pokemon in every precious stone and metal, and we’re approaching the point at which colors will be meaningless. You laugh now, but I guarantee you that in 3 years you’ll be slapping down 30+ bucks to buy Pokemon Ultraviolet and Pokemon Infrared.

3) Little Big Planet: Did I stumble into some dumb child’s nightmare? This game both looks and plays like it wants to punish you for bullying its friends. There’s nothing about this thing that can’t be found better in other places. This game is a work-in-progress that somehow managed to get pressed into a disc.

2) Wanted: Weapons of Fate: Oh, this is great: a game based on a film adaptation of a comic book. Let’s follow this pain train all the way back to the station. Oh wait, we can’t, because that station’s been closed by the FCC for insinuating rape. Okay, let’s back up a little bit more and…oh, there are copyright infringement suits pending? Okay, let’s just go to the station where this game is a bizarrely horrible attempt at a first-person shooter version of a mediocre franchise that’s had all its grit whitewashed by the people who adapted the damn thing in the first place.

1) Watchmen: The End is Nigh: Oh boy. Ohhhh boy. Okay, Watchmen. Let’s have a look. First, the game is based on exploits that are merely recapped in the comic and barely even glossed over in the movie. This is inexcusable, considering that the game is more movie-based than comic-based. So essentially, we have a game that’s a retelling of a retelling of a retelling of a recap. It’s detailing exploits that were barely addressed in the movie, which was basically a compression of a comic in which these exploits were just referenced but never actually depicted. This game is the digital equivalent of a story told in fifth person. Hell, every level should begin with “So I heard from this guy who knew someone who saw…”.

Yeah, I know: this blog just hurt your delicate nerd pride; all I can say is, “let the hate mail commence”. Just remember to address all hate mail to me, rob@charge-shot.com.

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finally, you could buy a wii. if you wanted.

DUDES – big news!

According to some Gamestop marketing rep, if you went into a Gamestop nowadays, you might be able to buy a Wii. That doesn’t sound like a big deal, but consider that since it released in 2006, soccer moms all over the nation have been clawing each others’ eyes out every Christmas to get their hands on one. They have historically been hard to find.

It would appear that the drought is over, meaning that either Nintendo has ramped up its supply to match demand or demand has finally fallen enough to match supply. I find the former cause unlikely, both because the Wii is not particularly difficult to manufacture, and because it is not faring so well in the homeland at this point.

We’ll see how the White Wonder fares in the coming months – I might come close to thinking about considering buying one for $199? Maybe.

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QuakeLive Lizardbrain

Oh Quake Live, Rob may have mixed feelings about you, but I don’t.  And I know you’re just a browser-based version of a decade-old PC classic, but I’m just getting to know you for the first time.

My previous experiences with Quake are extremely limited.  I remember MTV’s “True Life: I’m a Gamer,” on which Fatal1ty won a preposterous amount of money besting some other pale-faced gladiator in virtual combat.  In middle school, while I was busy figuring out which Presidents of the USA CD gave me the best monster in Monster Rancher, my friend dabbled in Quake games, relishing the ability to swap in a music CD during gameplay.  In fact, the only time I’d ever actually played Quake was on a demo rig in my local Comp USA.  Needless to say, the bots kicked my ass.

You may be wondering, then, why I care about Quake Live, which is basically just a Quake fanboy’s Dell-funded wet dream.

Because it appeals to my baser instincts.  My gaming lizard brain, as it were.  Strip away my high-culture facade genuine interest in seeing games grow as an art form, and I’m not much better than some of the tweens mouthing off to you on Xbox Live (but with less swearing and face-humping). 

I enjoy competition.  Even if I don’t win.  The opportunity to face off with other players (albeit anonymously) has always drawn me to online multiplayer.  Tribes, Starcraft, Halo 2…the list goes on.  Obviously, the promise of competition drew me to Quake Live.

In good competition, stories bubble up from the ether, coaxed into existence by a confluence of perspiration,adrenaline, and perhaps Mountain Dew.  Rivals pop up on the battlefield.  Maybe it’s luck, or maybe there’s an algorithm behind this, but I find myself regularly circling the same opponents, even in a larger contest.  After the first few frags, we clash like seasoned veterans, old friends, who’ve learned each other’s tricks and attempt to exploit them in the twenty seconds before one of us takes a rocket to the face.

Team play can be just as satisfying.  Voice chat does not seem to be running yet, or I’ve simply not encountered anyone using it.  This radio silence – combined with frantic gameplay that prohibits wasteful message-typing – creates a strange bond.  You can see your teammates’ avatars.  You can run behind them down a cramped hallway.  But you have no time to establish a connection.  No time to send messages about strategy or bond over Dancing with the Stars.  But this doesn’t matter.  Language won’t raise your frag count. 

There are reasons beside a lack of meaningful communication that make Quake Live no cerebral affair.  Controls fall squarely into the “twitchy” category.  Gunfights are not settled by conventional accuracy, but by a seemingly superhuman ability to jump, bob, and weave like a maniac while maintaining a steady stream of fire on your opponent.

Contrast this knowingly manic gameplay with my other multiplayer love: Starcraft.  Starcraft’s propensity for strategy and planning hides its reliance on speed-clicking and forms of micromanagement only professional players can fathom.  Quake Live harbors no such illusions of strategy.  It’s all about speed.  All about firepower.  Darwin, you would have loved this.

And man, there are statistics.  I love stats.  I don’t even really care about leaderboards because, as Rob said, “everyone is always better than you.”  I don’t know I’d say “everyone,” but there’s certainly always someone better than you playing.  If there you disagree, it’s time to go outside.  But as I said, the leaderboards don’t matter to me.  I just like that after matches there’s a chronicle of my virtual self.  A digital version of the childhood dream of having a baseball card.  Does anyone else care that 6% of all my shots come from the Lightning Gun?  Or that I finished third out of eleven on some match in Demon Keep?  No.  I’m not even sure I do.  But there are kilobytes on a hard drive somewhere devoted to this, and that’s good enough for me.

Plus, there are plenty of simple joys.  The thrill of narrowly escaping death as you pick up a fallen enemy’s BFG and gun down any remaining threats.  The impossible feat of popping someone with a railgun while they soar through the air off a grav lift – it’s like the Clay Mode of Duck Hunt with the added knowledge that the pigeons are controlled by other people.  Or the final two minutes of a close round of Team Deathmatch, where every mistake means failure and every frag victory.  It’s all appealing, and none of it terribly complicated.

Sure, this sounds like a love letter to multiplayer shooters the world over, but Quake Live does have a specific mojo working.  There are no distractions (save the fairly innocuous Dell ads).  Quake Live does not dabble in classes or microtranscations.  It’s just straight-up gaming competition.  Boot up your browser, grab the plug-in, and start fragging.  No, seriously, stop reading and do it.

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Not-So-Classic Classics, Volume 1

Back before video games became a multi-billion dollar franchise it was easy for underrated  games to slip through the cracks. Not even the expert journalists at Nintendo Power could cover every single game released, what with  needing the magazine space to cover the several hundred Mario spinoffs that came out every six months. Therefore, when The Magic of Scheherazade came out back in 1989 no one really took notice, which is truly a shame because the game basically whipped The Legend of Zelda’s ass on every conceivable level.

Okay, here’s the premise: Scheherazade, the famous Saudi Arabian concubine-cum-princess, has been kidnapped by the evil wizard Sabaron. If that weren’t evil enough, Sabaron also summons the demon Goragora for some God-forsaken reason. It’s up to a plucky young hero to rescue her by traversing the overworld of the ancient Middle East while finding items to unlock dungeons wherein he will fight monsters. Oh, don’t mind that smell in the air; it’s just the scent of rip-off.

The thing is, The Magic of Scheherazade took nearly every Zelda convention one step further. For instance, in a stunning act of innovation the game featured both real-time fights and turn-based combat. In the turn-based combat the hero could team up with two other adventurers who could combine their powers to unleash powerful spells. The hero could also buy backup mercenaries that would take damage for him. In real-time battle the hero could fight using either a sword, dagger or rod, the strengths of which were determined by the hero’s class. That’s right; this game was basically a beautiful marriage of Final Fantasy and the aforementioned Legend of Zelda.

Plus, the game introduced an array of systems that were completely original for their time. I mean, Solar Eclipses? That’s cool no matter how you slice it. Essentially, the game can be viewed as a fansub of Zelda, in that the basic skeleton is present but the mechanics have been tweaked to accommodate a far more esoteric crowd. I mean, let’s be honest: Arabian adventures have never ranked very highly on American game lists. Even so, everyone who enjoys a romp through a fantasy world would be hard-pressed to find a game with more on offer. Well, that’s what I would say, if this were 1989.

Look, just check the game out. It’s not out on the virtual console yet, but I’m sure the intrepid can manage to find the game somewhere.

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One Step Back, Three Step Forward

We’ve talked before about Ensemble Studios, the things they’ve done and their recent demise.  The loss of a talented studio (underwhelming swan song or no) is never a good thing, but recent news has pointed toward a number of silver linings.

This week saw the announcement of Windstorm Studios, a new development house founded by ex-Ensemble member Dusty Monk.  The website has a slick Jetsonsesque, pulp science fiction vibe, which hints at their current unnamed project: “an online game unlike anything you’ve ever seen.”  I’m intrigued by a game that offers a crisp, clean future bent complete with flying cars.  Sign me up.

In the past few months we’ve seen two other studios rise up from Ensemble’s ashes.  Ensemble’s founder Tony Goodman is the CEO of Robot Entertainment, who will be handling expansion content for Halo Wars in addition to developing original IPs (according to their press release).  Bonfire Studios also cropped up and is already promising a new game.  But they won’t tell us much about it.

Do I think its odd that three separate studios now get to tout the success of Age of Empires on their website?  Yes.  But I would rather see three studios budding in this barren economic landscape than watch all of the Ensemble talent disappear completely.  I will be watching these three studios closely, and you should, too.  Hopefully what doesn’t kill them makes them stronger.

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Fuel your demise

When Halo 3 came out, contributor-in-absentia Eugene Rutigliano and I purchased the game at a midnight mass release. On the way back, I insisted we stop at a gas station to purchase a bag of pork rinds and a twelve-pack of Gamer Fuel. It was only appropriate. Pork rinds would make physical the psychic anguish I would endure from watching History's Most Overrated Franchise suffer its death throes, and what better to wash them down with but a can of carbonated donkey piss plastered with the idiot visage of MC himself?

Mountian Dew has resurrected its awfulest of awful sodas to commemorate World of Warcraft. If you have quaffed, or are considering quaffing this beverage, kill yourself. Now. Continue...

patapon 2? no thanks!

Patapon 2 hits America's shining shores on May 5th. This PSP title is, logically, the sequel to the original Patapon, a title in the same "$20, super Japanese, unusual" category that Katamari Damacy had created in years prior and in which Loco Roco 2 has since landed. I'm going to start with some positives, but you should know that before the end of the post they're going to give way to negatives.

I thought that Patapon, at its core, had some very admirable qualities: its art style and sound were undeniably interesting. Visually, it was Loco Roco meets Mystery Science Theater 3000 – the protagonists were two-dimensional and distinctive, and framed entirely in silhouette against their environments. Aurally, it managed to be annoying but nevertheless charming – a combination of the incessant “PATA PATA PATA PON,” some dynamic music, and cutesy Patapon noises made this possible. Artistically speaking, A plus.

It also offered an interesting take on the rhythm game genre. Let’s compare it to Guitar Hero, both the most identifiable and the most wildly-aped rhythm game since Parappa the Rapper. In Guitar Hero and its endless sequels and spin-offs, the game throws at you a sequence of button presses which you must emulate as closely as possible – a faithful enough replication of the game’s preset button presses will win you the game. Patapon shakes it up a little bit – you are given a few sequences of button presses that will make your Cyclopean army perform certain actions (attack, guard, flee, etc.) and are trusted to use them effectively. Instead of the rhythm game dictating your actions, you tell it what to do – this is innovative, and commendable.

Based on the prior paragraphs, one could infer that I liked Patapon, and they wouldn’t be wrong – I did, sometimes, but certainly I didn’t like everything about it. The thing I liked the least about it was that it was a good three times longer than it should have been.

The thing about games like Katamari Damacy and Loco Roco is that they’re creative and take a bit of a chance, straying as far as they do from the beaten path. They also know that they’re one-trick ponies, to an extent – one is about rolling shit into a ball, and one is about rolling a ball into some shit. Patapon seems not to have the huevos to be as short as it ought to be, and ultimately, that’s where it fails. The game is composed mostly of giant, strategic boss fights, between which are interim “hunting” stages where you stock up on money and other items for the benefit of your glorious Patapon army. At a certain point in the game, you stop being able to beat the increasingly difficult bosses without making stronger, more resilient Patapon, and to create these Patapon you need lots of money and lots of supplies. The only way to get said materials is to play through the half-dozen hunting stages over. And over. Again. Same goes for the game’s four mini-game distractions, the introductory sequences to which you may not under any circumstances skip. Um.

Look, it’s not that Patapon is a bad game, it’s just that it’s a very repetitive one. There are only four or five bosses, total, each boss having a “hard” version that’s basically the same creature except faster and with more hit points. This is boring. By the time you’ve finally put an end to the game, you’ve played each hunting stage some half-dozen times, just so you can harvest enough cash and resources to make the Patapon you need to beat the game. And guess what! These new, super-strong Patapon play exactly the same as their weaker counterparts, the ones you start the game with. This game would have been fantastic if its creators had cut back on the padding just a little bit – especially when your brand new game’s going price is $20, people aren’t going to be miffed if the thing’s only a few hours long. Sure, give them the chance to play a little longer to get 100% if they’re hooked – Katamari and Loco Roco both do this. It’s fine. It lets players have more of the same if they want it, but doesn’t force it upon them.

My point is, I got more than my fill of this game the first time I played it. Maybe a sequel will mix up the gameplay a little? But I may just stick with my gut reaction on this one – more Patapon? No, thank you, I’ve had quite enough.

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pod shot: game-to-other-stuff adaptations, now featuring 25% BOIVIN

This week’s Pod Shot!!! runs considerably longer than our past endeavors, clocking in at a round 53:22. This is in part because it feels like a more natural length – the extra time lets it breathe, and gives us more room for diversion. It’s also a little long because joining Rob, Craig and myself this time around is one Alexander Weston Boivin, blog contributor and notable Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li enthusiast.

The title is "game-to-film adaptations," which is a little confusing and even more misleading - not content to stop at movies, we also talk Saturday morning cartoons, the TV show Bones, and go on for quite some time about some Doom "novels" that I had never heard of.

Our lead-in (and now -out!) theme is the ubiquitous Chocobo Theme, this particular version being the "Ukulele de Chocobo" from the Final Fantasy IX soundtrack. It's soothing, which is good, nay, necessary after you've heard Boivin's impression of Angelina Jolie.

Remember, you can get your weekly Shot from either the feed or from iTunes. Go ahead and subscribe! We dare you.

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Dying in space, again

Game A was released in 1999. You played a guy fighting through a starship filled with zombies, who covered the walls with their throbbing biomass. You pick up text and audio messages left by the dearly departed. You are betrayed by she who guides you. It’s scary as hell.

Game B was released in 2008. You played a guy fighting through a starship filled with zombies, who covered the walls with their throbbing biomass. You pick up the text and audio messages left by the dearly departed. You are betrayed by she who guides you. It’s scary as hell.

Game A is System Shock 2. Game B is Dead Space.

Sub-thesis: Dead Space is System Shock 2.

Thesis: this is awesome.


These have been busy times for Irrational Games’ fin-de-siècle masterpiece. First, SS2 papa Ken Levine puts out a cunning makeover – you may have heard of it – Bioshock. With Dead Space, EA Redwood invested the formula into a AAA, third-person title, with top-notch production values and an original aesthetic. By original aesthetic, I mean it made SS2 look like a maternity ward, and Bioshock look like an aquarium. The USG Ishimura, a goliath mining vessel, radiates with filth and squalor. The “gritty” aesthetic has worn out its welcome, since everyone felt the need to smear their lenses in grime post-Gears of War. Dead Space is the real thing.

Anyone who’s played Resident Evil 4 will feel at home with Dead Space. Left analog moves you forward, while right rotates around your hazard su-I mean, Rig. Left trigger draws your gun. Guess what – you can move and shoot at the same time (take that, Resident Evil 5). Menu items are projected from your suit, so ammo, health, air and energy are all displayed sans heads-up display. Nothing has felt more like an interactive movie.

All this would be meaningless without gameplay to back it up. Thankfully, Dead Space is as fun to play as it is to look at. Much has been made of the dismemberment system, and with due cause – plugging a zombie in the chest will get you nowhere. You need to blow off their limbs and then stomp in their heads. With the more nefarious enemies, this won’t get you anywhere either. You can only survive them until you’re able to lead them into the path of a jet engine or a freezing chamber.

Zero gravity segments add a twist to the gunplay. You can jump to almost any flat surface in the room, making your enemies fight on your terms, not theirs. Some segments require a dash through decompressed areas, or across the ship’s hull – get bogged down in a fight, and you suffocate.

Despite the flawless production and solid gameplay, the true achievement of Dead Space is sound. It won two BAFTAs this year, one for soundtrack and one for sound design – the only game besides Call of Duty 4 to win more than one award. Washingtonian Jay Ulwick may have said it best – you can sit with your back turned to the game and know exactly what is happening on screen. I would have never guessed there was a sonic poetry to a tin can full of scythe-limbed dead things, but I was wrong. How many ways can you hear metal clank against metal, or flesh sear apart? So many ways. So many wonderful ways.

While Dead Space is an overall well-paced game, it loves to hit you with hordes. You’ll blow through health pack after health pack, drench yourself in zombie blood, and sure enough, more will charge through the door, burst through the floor panels, or snipe at you from corners with projectile stingers. Never pass up a save point.

Some time ago I let loose the breath I’d been holding for System Shock 3. Hell, Ken Levine isn’t even developing Bioshock 2. If SS3 ever arrives, it’s unlikely it’ll be the game it should be. Stop looking out the window, puny hacker (that’s an in-joke). Fire up Dead Space. You’ll feel right at home.

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