Other M More Like Any Other Game Please

Other M is kind of notorious for being an amazingly bipolar game.  If you have read any reviews about the game, you already know what I'm talking about.  It's like they developed the gameplay and the story in two completely different areas, and then smashed them together and called it a Metroid game.

If you haven't played a Metroid game yet, let me sum them up as best I can.  The (best) Metroid games are lonely affairs; you play as bounty hunter Samus Aran, and for a large part of the series, you are the only human in the game.  You're on an alien world hunting metroids, parasites that latch onto creatures and suck away their life force.  After the first and second games, they are supposed to be destroyed, but since there are ten games with the name 'Metroid' in them, you have probably guessed that they keep unexpectedly popping up.

You can't kill 'em, they're like Space Herpes!

In five games, there are other characters, and only in three of them are they human.  Interestingly, the ones with humans are the least well-liked games of the series.  Hey, do you know which game had the most humans in it?  Metroid: Other M of course!

(Disclaimer: I actually haven't played Metroid Prime 3: Corruption yet so that one might have more humans but let's just go along with it okay?)

Other M just shoves characters at you and says "Here you go I hope you like them because Samus knows all of them and will be referring to them by name."  I'm not kidding, they even throw in these goofy character intro screens that go by way too fast to see what it is each guy does for the team.  There was one guy that was pretty cool, and that was just because he had more than 30 seconds of screen time, and for the most part I called him Token.  Guess which one he is.

Pictured: three characters I care about.  One of them is dead, just the way I met him.

Any time I was playing as Samus, shooting bad guys and exploring a space station, I was having fun.  Even with a four-directional D-pad in a 3D world, Samus was easy to control.  The shooting was fun, and the dodging-then-quick-charging a shot was really cool.  I did have a problem with the lack of health pickups (even when you could refill your health, you had to do it by standing still, not shooting, and only while you were at about 20% health), but overall it was a fun experience.

THE STORY THOUGH.  THE DAMN STORY.  You know what was great about the other Metroid games?  Even when there were other sentient beings, the action and the adventure carried the story.  The planets and space stations were fun to explore, the tension was ever-present, and even the ridiculous sci-fi power-ups made sense in that world.

You know what doesn't make sense?  An independant bounty hunter turns off her best weapons because an old commander of hers tells her that her weapons might give his men boo-boos.  They do that with Power Bombs, which actually makes sense, because they state in-game that Power Bombs can vaporize a human being. I can get behind that, you are pretty unlikely to want to instantly convert a man into gases via heat.  You know what doesn't vaporize humans?  Her missiles. Even her super-missiles don't do that.  Hell, they don't kill most enemies in one shot.  But let's give Samus the benefit of the doubt and say that yeah, she is respecting the wishes of an old friend and waiting for him to clear the use of her more dangerous weapons.

Why, then, is she keeping her armor at the weakest setting she has?  In the most ridiculous way to get an armor power-up I have ever seen, Samus fights a radioactively-corrupted Space Pirate giant.  She kills it and it falls on her, corrupting her suit and protecting it from radiation.  That happened in Metroid Prime, and I loved it.  Didn't care how ridiculous it is, it was still sweet and the suit looked cool.

More of this, please!

In Other M, you don't fight monsters for stronger armor.  You don't explore ancient Chozo ruins and find things they built for your suit.  Some guy Samus had a crush on a while ago tells her she can go ahead and activate the upgrades.  That's it.  "Oh thanks Adam, for letting me activate my heat-resistant armor after I am THREE-QUARTERS OF THE WAY THROUGH THE FREAKING VOLCANO LEVEL!!!"  I get that they wanted to address the resetting-powers problem that people have with Metroid (and God of War, and Zelda, Saint's Row, Mass Effect, and any series about building power in any way), but this is not the right way to do it.  At best, you make Samus an obedient little girl, and at worst, you make her legendarily stupid.

A lot of people like to cite this game in their arguments for sexism in games, and I don't know if I fully agree with that.  The common targets are Samus's dependence on a man to issue her orders and the fact that the mother overtones are just shoved into your face in this game (don't even get me started on how much they call back that damn baby metroid from Super Metroid). I can understand where those arguments are coming from, and they might have some merit to them.  But to me this isn't sexism, it's just bad writing.  The sexism arguments imply that the game is pointing at Samus's gender and making fun of how weak it is, and how she has to wait for male approval to use her weaponry.  But really, all I see is a poor handling of story progression and an attempt to shove a motherly theme into the game.  Adam could have easily been a respected female CO and the game would have been just as stupid.  If anything, Other M implies that Samus is just antisocial and is better at going by herself than trying to work with others.

The game's story is way too bad to be taken as seriously as to call it sexist.  At one point, Ripley appears (because he's almost as persistent as the damn metroids) and Samus just freezes as if she is scared out of her wits.  She almost dies, and that almost kills Token, the only other likeable character in the game, and possibly the only one with a fully-functional brain.  Note that she has fought Ridley about a half dozen times at this point, and that every other time she sprang into action without a thought that didn't involve shooting Ridley until he dies.

They tried something different with Other M, but they failed to capitalize on what makes a good Metroid game.  Rather than explore what made the series great, they succeeded in creating the worst case of fixing what isn't broken.  They fleshed out the world in ways no one really cared about, and created what actually turned out to be kind of an offensive game.  If you weren't offended by the game's take on Samus as a woman, then you sure were offended by it's take on Samus as a character you wanted to play as.

Kid Icarus: Uprising

More like Kid Icarus: Uprising to My Top 5 Games List!

Look, I know the joke was bad, but throwing things is only going to get your monitor dirty, not mine.

Really, though, Kid Icarus: Uprising is a very, very good game, and I'm surprised I haven't heard a lot about it.  I didn't even get it because I had heard any strong recommendations or anything. I was just looking up a sale Best Buy was having because I heard Paper Mario: Sticker Star was on sale.  I checked the website and noticed that Kid Icarus was only $15, so I picked up both games.

When I booted up the game, my first impression of the game was, "Why am I playing Super Smash Bros Brawl on my 3DS?"

Masahiro Sakurai, director of Super Smash Bros Brawl, was the head of Project Sora, the development team for Uprising.  The menu definitely takes a cue from Super Smash Bros Brawl, but in no way do I mean that in a bad way, because if you copy anything from a Smash Bros game, you're doing it right.

...maybe

So I played the single-player portion of the game first, because if I ever play online multiplayer, I need to have every move and control mastered beforehand, lest I bring shame upon my family.  I was ready for a strange control scheme, because that was what I had read in many of the reviews for the game (and don't get me wrong, flicking the stylus across the touch screen to rotate the camera does feel a bit strange), but everything actually flowed very nicely for an adventure game with only one control stick.

The game has two main modes, a flying mode and a ground mode.  The flying mode actually plays a bit like Starfox 64; the goddess Palutena controls your flight path, since Pit seems to be the only character who is unable to fly on his own in this game, and only for five minutes at a time.  You fly on a preset path through surprisingly diverse environments and fight with a ton of different weapons, each with different abilities as far as close- vs long-range combat.  Visually, it's kind of beautiful, and this is where the gameplay shines the most, but mostly if you're using a long-range weapon.  The close-range ones can reflect incoming fire and do massive melee damage, but have very little ability to hurt any enemies sniping from afar.

On the ground things get more complex.  The gameplay can get muddled here, because there is a lot of exploration to be done in every level.  Pit's base stats are pretty low, so a good amount of your chances for survival depend on the weapon you choose.  Each weapon has unique stats that increase things like your health, speed, and power, and sometimes getting as specific as only aiding certain kinds of attacks or walking speed vs running speed.

What surprised me most about the game was the story, though.  The ads for this game depicted Pit as a generic angelic hero, which is more or less forgivable, but I'll be damned if I wan't bothered by Pit's generic "PREPARE TO MEET THE LIGHT!" line.  You kind of have to remember that this universe had not existed for a couple decades, and those decades happened to be the most crucial ones in forming voice acting and dialogue as we know it today.  With that awful commercial in mind, I was  very surprised to see that when they named one of the first bosses of the game, Hewdraw, they showed a picture of him in 8-bit form from the original Kid Icarus!  Then when the three-headed Hydra shows up, each one of them (with a unique voice and personality) just bickers at one another about who gets to attack Pit first and in what way in goofy voices (one has a British accent!).  I think that's about the moment I had this reaction.

And it just got better and better.  The music is incredible, ranging from your typical Battle-of-the-Gods orchestral fare to the Spanish guitar theme of one of the main characters.  Every level is memorable in its own way, and I don't think I noticed any environments recycled at all.  This is especially noteworthy in regards to the game's length; I was stunned that there was more and more story to play through.  The voice acting is above and beyond what I thought I would encounter, too.  I swear that Thanatos, the god of death, sounded like Choose Goose from Adventure Time.

The online multiplayer is pretty cool, too.  It always takes place on the ground, which is slightly unfortunate, but multiplayer would be difficult with fixed-rail shooter.  There are two main modes: Dark Vs Light and Free-For-All.  You get to use the weapons you unlock in single-player in this mode, but the more powerful they are, the more points the other team or individual gets for beating you.  It's an interesting take on balance; you want to use those weapons you worked so hard for, but you better know how to use them!

Things can get hectic on the small screen, but for the most part it's a nice kind of hectic.

If you're looking for critique on the downsides of this game, you have to understand that this is one of my favorite games.  I wasn't prepared for it in the same way I wasn't prepared for Chrono Trigger.  And I love it in the same way.  Seriously, if you have a 3DS, I will loan it to you. I'm not even kidding.  This is a game that I want everyone to play, because I enjoyed it that much.  The ground portions can be difficult to get used to, and I often took more damage from the environment than the enemies, but I love this game.  It's flawed, but it has so much character that I have no problem looking past them.  Get a 3DS and buy the game, or at least let me loan it to you.  I am honestly very surprised that I don't see this on more "Top Games" lists.

Halo 4 Rocks

Get it? Because it's 4 rocks? Arranged like a Halo? Like the title of the blog?.....I don't blame you if you stop reading here.

I'm pretty sure just about everyone interested in the series knows that Halo 4 came out a couple Tuesdays ago, and if you didn't know, you may want to look into it.  Hell, even if you don't care about the Halo series, I'd still highly recommend picking this one up.

Now for the like, three people out there who don't know what this whole Halo thing is, it's a first-person shooter (in space!), and it's largely the reason Microsoft has a successful hold in the American console market.  The first three games detailed the war raging between humans and the Covenant, an alliance of different alien species.  The Covenant were trying to activate a set of massive, planet-sized rings (in space!) and the games followed Master Chief, aided by his sentient AI partner Cortana, as they fought to save the Earth from the threat faced by the ancient rings.  There were also space zombies, and those levels were the worst.

Not enough shotgun shells in the world.

The combat ran at a pace that was very easy to keep up with without getting overwhelmed, and the multiplayer emphasized that.  In Halo 2 (which introduced online multiplayer to the series) and Halo 3, the multiplayer consistently received high marks from both critics and audiences, even going as far as getting better reception than the single-player campaigns.  Halo ranks up at the top with Call of Duty and Battlefield's multiplayer popularity.

And if you think the series's fanbase is made up of drunken frat bros and twelve-year-olds who enjoy swearing on Xbox live, well, you may have an argument to make.  But you'll have to take it up with an army of extremely devoted and very detail-oriented fans. Read the Halo Wiki, and you will learn more than you ever needed to about Halo, going far beyond the games and into the detailed histories of the different species and events that happened outside the main story.  The sheer amount of devotion present here rivals what you could find in the Star Wars and Star Trek fandoms.

343 Studios had a lot to live up to with this game.  Bungie's last full Halo game was Halo: Reach, which means that they were handing a best-selling franchise to a brand-new company.  And this wasn't just a spin-off story, this was Master Chief, Spartan 117.  That's like giving Samus from Metroid to a third-party studio, and we know how that went. (The joke here is that it went extremely well.)

And really, the comparison to Metroid Prime is apt.  The first few Metroid games had little to do with story, instead focusing on atmosphere and gameplay.  But in Metroid Prime, Retro Studios added an enormous amount of backstory to the world in the forms of data logs from the extinct Chozo and the invading Space Pirates.  This made Samus's adventures on Tallon IV feel like it was necessary to the entire Metroid story as a whole, and not just something they shoveled in between Metroid and Metroid II.  The same is going on here in Halo 4.  The first three games had a good amount of story, but a lot of the emotional weight was lost, as the focus remained on the fight.

There are also a few...similarities...between the HUDs.

I will keep this spoiler-free, as I don't want to ruin any of the story elements for those who are interested.  But I have never connected to Master Chief (called John more in this game than he was in the entire first trilogy) and Cortana like I have here.  The multiplayer is still amazing, too; some of the play modes could benefit from a concise explanation of what each game mode plays like (coughRegicidecough), but once you figure it out, it's golden.  They no longer have a Firefight Mode, but have instead added Spartan Ops, which lets you play a co-op mission with four others (online or local), and 343 Studios plans on releasing new episodes weekly.  Frankly, I like it even more than I did Firefight.

Look, there's not a whole lot else I can get into without starting to just rant about how good the game is.  I recommend getting in on the action especially if you have friends with the game.  Multiplayer is a (running) riot and the campaign takes two of gaming's most beloved characters and truly does them justice.  And if that doesn't do it for you, Conan O' Brien and Andy Richter have a cameo appearance late in the game as two marines.  I don't know what else could compel you to buy this game.  Ignore all the hype and advertising, and you're still left with an incredible experience.

Penny-Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3

I get pumped up about new releases on games, but I often have to pass them up.  I love a game that does something different, and when I see games like El Shaddai: Rise of the Metatron, Catherine, and Bastion, it appeals to me.

But sometimes, I like to see an excellent return to form.  I am a big fan of Zeboyd Games, creators of Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World, two great throwbacks to RPGs of old.  The first is a wonderful parody of games like Final Fantasy (note that Breath of Death I-VI do not exist), and the latter stands as an amazing rendition of a 16-bit SNES-era RPG.  Both games have hilarious stories, memorable characters, and skillful theming.  But most importantly, it avoids a lot of the problems that older RPGs seem to share.  I had to grind through a total of no levels in either game, and I didn't have to worry about healing my party with potions after every battle; you start out with full HP every time.  Your MP will dwindle, but with proper management, it won't be a game-ender.

One of the cool parts about Zeboyd Games, though, is that there is a noticeable jump in quality in between each game.  I played Cthulhu Saves the World first, and when I played Breath of Death VII, I was struck by the difference in graphics and writing.  It's not to say that BoDVII is bad by any stretch of the imagination, but the jump that was made from their first to second RPG is amazing.

This speech is a reference to Mother (Earthbound in 'Merica), and I love this joke.  This is Breath of Death VII.

Cthulhu finds the greatest treasure of all. 

Hey, speaking of RPGs, did you know the guys from Penny Arcade made two of those?  They and developer Hothead Games started the Penny Arcade Adventures series on May 21, 2008, which has one adventure so far, "On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness."  The first two entries were animated in 3D and you played as a regular guy whose house gets crushed by a giant robot.  At the persuasion of the narrator, you follow Tycho and Gabe through New Arcadia until you kill Yog Sethis, the god of mimes and the antagonist of the first game.  The first and second games are well-written, very aware of themselves, and extremely goofy.  It wouldn't be Penny Arcade if it didn't have those qualities.  And when the second game came out in October 2008, it seemed we were set up with a great potential for a nice, quick episodic game release schedule.  Kind of the opposite of the Half-Life Episodes.

In the games we are told that there are four gods fighting for power.  One had possession of the robot that crushed your house, and you kill it at the end of the second game with the help of Tycho's niece.  So we had a perfect set-up for a four game series, but the third game wound up in development hell.  Kind of exactly like Half-Life 2 Episode 3 (does our suffering please you, Valve?).

Then Penny Arcade announced that the third game was coming back with the help of Zeboyd, and I promptly lost any inclination I had at reasonable patience.  Zeboyd had already produced two of the best-written games I had ever played, and they teamed up with Penny Arcade.  So yeah, I was excited for this game.  It's one of maybe three games I've pre-ordered in my life.  

The game plays like a turn-based RPG from the SNES era, but with a bar up top that lets you know who's going to make a the next move.  Based on your speed (and that of your enemies), characters can pass each other on the bar, and judging the order from that bar immerses you in the battle system.  The game uses a Super Mario World-style overworld to get from place to place, and once inside a building, you enter a typical Final Fantasy-style top-down view of the dungeon.  What sells me on the game isn't the gameplay or the graphics (both of which are great, by the way), but the writing.  Even in battle, the enemies' names and descriptions were something to look forward to. The first two games were great, but this one carried a lot more weight as a narrative.  I cared about Tycho and Gabe in this game a lot more than I did in the first two because they were established as better characters.

Gabe in particular.

In fact, the end of the game stands out as one of the best endings I've ever seen.  It carries more emotional weight than any game ending (and for that matter books and movies) I've seen, and it carries that weight because by the end of the game, I cared about the characters and their choices.  I'll keep it spoiler-free, but just know that as someone who values stories, this one is easily one of my favorites.  I can't wait to see what's in store for the fourth game, and exactly unlike  Half-Life 2 Episode 3, I have a lot of faith that we'll get it sooner rather than later.

(Edit: I'm a big dummie; I couldn't pre-order it because I couldn't on Steam.  But dammit I would have if I could have.)

Darksiders

I picked up Darksiders because the department store at which I work is getting rid of their video games section.  We've had a lot of the same games since I started working there, so I keep an eye on whatever goes on clearance in the game rack.  I would have raided the skeletal remains of our video game sections if it weren't for the few hours I am currently working, so I narrowed it to a couple choices: Deus Ex: Human Revolution or Darksiders.  I've never played any of the other Deus Ex games (and I know that some people reading this didn't know there were other games), so I took my chance with the new IP, especially after I heard about how well its sequel is reviewing.

The shiny box didn't hurt, either.

An extremely basic outline of the story: The apocalypse is a party and War, one of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, is getting things started right.  But while demons and angels fight in the streets, War notices that his three best buddies aren't laying waste to the world the way they're supposed to.  In short, someone started the apocalypse early, and War gets framed for it.  The game wastes no time in getting the destruction of Earth underway.  100 years later, War makes a deal with the powers that lie between Heaven and Hell: he'll find out who framed him, or the demons who now walk the Earth will kill him, filling his death sentence anyway.

So I played it, and during the entire first hour, I thought two things:

1. The colors and the presentation here are great, I love that it's not another Brown and Bloom fest.
2. I'm pretty sure I'm playing God of War.

Note that second one, because I don't mean it in a wholly bad way.  Any comparison to God of War is a good one, but I am saying that in combat, Darksiders doesn't really feel terribly different from God of War in any way.  Besides the specific combos and weapons that differ between Kratos and War, combat takes place at a pace almost exactly like God of War's.  War even has finishing moves like Kratos's, but they lack the quicktime events of the latter's game, for better or worse.

So after a flight on an "Angelic Beast" (basically a griffin that functions almost exactly like an Arwing from Starfox, barrel-rolls notwithstanding) I got to the first dungeon, the Twilight Catherdral.

I loved the look of it, and by this point of the game, I was pretty sold on the atmosphere of it.  I'm a sucker for Heaven vs Hell and Revelations-type plots anyways.  So I got in the cathedral and solve a couple puzzles, after which I quickly realized that this is a fire temple.

Someone got lava all up in this church.

Oh, and that sweet throwing blade War has there?  That's basically a Zelda boomerang.  It's badass in every way, don't get me wrong, but if you played Twilight Princess, you already have experience with the targeting system.  Later in the game, you find a hookshot.  Darksiders calls it the "Abyssal Chain," but really,  anyone who's played a Zelda game from the past decade-and-a-half knows it's a hookshot.  It functions exactly like the famous Zelda weapon, and it even has that same satisfying burst sound effect when you launch it.

Towards the end of the game, you find a neat little artifact that lets you open voids in two different areas.  You can jump into one void and come out the other.  The voids come out colored orange and blue.  Yeah, War finds a portal gun.  Aperture Science didn't manufacture it, but except for Valve's physics engine and one difference you need to figure out to solve a puzzle, the "Voidwalker" functions just like the famous gun from Portal.

The game suffers from some typical qualities of new IPs.  War can grab onto ledges and pull himself up, but half the time, it feels like the game is arbitrarily deciding when he can and can't grab onto something.  I made War take many a fall into the abyss because of this.  In a related problem, a lot of the urban environments can get repetitive and easy to get lost in.  This is something that is hardly exclusive to Darksiders, though.

Darksiders is like a patchwork of all the games I've been playing through this console generation.  This would be a bad thing if it didn't all work so well.  They've taken the best qualities from many different games, including the recent jump in voice acting and storytelling we've seen in games like Arkham Asylum and the Assassin's Creed games. It's like listening to a "best of" album from an amazing tribute band.  And as an added bonus, you get to play as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse!  It's a fun ride, and if you find this game in a bargain bin, I can't really give you a good reason to pass this up.

B is for Bastion

Holy crap you guys.  Bastion.

So there was another Steam Sale where both Dustforce and Bastion were offered for about $5 and $7 respectively.  I was interested in both games, but as I believe I have established before, I am broke.

So broke I can't even afford to show this guy's face.

So I asked Facebook about which one I should get, and anybody who was even remotely interested in indie games recommended Bastion.  A couple people even chimed in that they heard the game was amazing from people who played it.  I remembered it getting some hype when it came out, but I had no idea if it was good or not.  So with my friends' recommendations, I bought the game.  I figured that I've spent $7 on worse things, so what was the risk of buying a game that is by all means critically acclaimed?

So the game is a kind of top-down action RPG, but angled so you have a diagonal perspective.  That sentence is a nightmare, so here's a picture:

You control a kid who has survived a disaster we only know as "The Calamity."  The world is in shambles, but something draws up leftover pieces of ground to make a path for you.  It's a very interesting take on linear gameplay, and you really know the limits of what you can explore.  This was nice for me, since I have that little voice that demands I explore every corner of the world for hidden items in every game I play.

But what really sold me on Bastion was the way they created their world.  As you play as The Kid, a voice narrates your every move.  It's not The Kid's voice, but a removed one, telling your story as it happens.  So as you come up to that plaza in the picture above, that voice asks, "That another survivor?"  Then as you enter, you meet that blue ghost and the voice answers its own question, "No ma'am, it's a Gasfella," naming the creature you just met.  The whole game is narrated like that, as if you were listening to an old man telling you a story by a campfire.  The narration goes on, even including tidbits of the war between the two nations of the game, Caelondia and the Ura.  It's really gripping, and I've never seen or heard anything like it.

The action part of the game runs very tightly, too.  The game features many weapons which support different playstyles, and are found throughout the game.  On the first level you play, you gain access to three: a hammer, a repeater, and a bow.  They have unlimited ammo, but you have to worry about reloading and making your shots count (except for the melee weapons, but duh).  So right off the bat, you have this chance to maybe not carry any melee weapons and fight a ranged battle.  Or maybe you like to get up-close and personal, so you bring a hammer and your fancy new machete to a fight.

This game is just polished to a mirror shine.  The music is incredible (you can get a taste of it here), and I bought the download for it just to be able to take it with me.  The art is beautiful, and it really brings this new world you're exploring to life, even in the throes of its death.

I really can't recommend this game enough.  You can buy it on Steam (for Mac and PC), directly through Apple through the App Store, on Xbox Live Arcade, through the Google Chrome web store, and a bunch of other options you can find here.   Take my word for it: this game is worth buying.

Fighting for the Skull Heart and Your $15: Skullgirls

It's rare that I get to hop on a game right after it releases, and I am glad that I chose to do that with Skullgirls this Wednesday.  It's a 2D fighting game, with the 2D part pulling double duty: it's a two-dimensional fighter with a 2D cartoon art style.

I won't dance around this: the game is beautiful.  I love the visuals, the music, the presentation, all of it.  The game's spirit is great, too.  The characters are memorable, and when they fight there is just enough "What the hell is going on?" to keep me interested without overwhelming me.  They also sit wonderfully on a vertex of originality, parody, and homage.  Peacock (my fighter of choice) is a wonderful example of this:

She's the one calling in a bomb flying an airplane.

Click the picture for full-size; the picture here doesn't do it justice.  You can look at her and see exactly what she's supposed to be: an homage to old-school cartoons.  The top hat, dress, gigantic bow, puffy-gloved hands, and blacked-out eyes all point to it without shouting it from the top of a building.  But look at her smile (a character in the game asks if she brushes her teeth with metal polish), combined with those creepy eyes on her arms and you can see a hint of something darker.

And then we see why her name is Peacock.

Same thing, full-size this baby up.

In her story, she is found near-death and given two parasites, the Argus (the eyes and peacock thing) and the Avery (a reference to cartoonist Tex Avery), the thing that gives her those crazy cartoon powers.  Probably.  It's not heavily explained.  I'm pretty okay with that, because it's one less thing to distract from the actual fighting.

And like most reviews for Killer 7 will show you, it takes more than a slick style and amazing art to be a successful game.  Unlike Killer 7, though, Skullgirls is getting pretty good reviews all around, especially for a new IP.  It has a small roster, but so did the first Mortal Kombat.  And Skullgirls comes equipped with two decades of fighting game experience (including knowledge of what works and what doesn't) with it.  I love the option of choosing a team of one to three fighters, something I remember from watching my much more skilled friends playing Capcom vs SNK 2.  Tight controls are absolutely necessary for any fighting game, and Skullgirls nails it; when you lose (like I do, a lot), you don't feel like it's the game's fault.  Unless it's the final boss, because GOD DAMN she lives up to the expectations of ridiculous boss fights set forth by the likes of Onslaught from Marvel vs Capcom and Gill from Street Fighter III.  And it feels very good when you win.  After thirty tries.  Not even playing on Hard difficulty.

Parasoul has elite guards whose specialties include diving in front of...bowling balls.

In short, Skullgirls is a very good fighting game with a style that sets it apart.  The all-female cast (it's called SkullGIRLS for a reason) of unique characters and the hand-drawn art style makes me want to keep coming back for more and more.  I have a couple issues with the online mode, but that has more to do with my internet speed and the fact that no one wants to play with someone with my ping.

Should you buy Skullgirls?  I'd say yes.  At $15, it's hardly a life-changing purchase, and this is quality gaming for a budget price.  If you like fighting games or want to get into them (their training and learning mode is very welcome), I would like to point you in this direction.  It's a much cheaper investment than Super Street Fighter IV Ultra Turbo Director's Cut Arcade Edition and Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, and while I take nothing away from those games, both of which I love, I have no hesitation in naming this as my new fighting game of choice.

Free Fallin'!! (A Skyward Sword Review)

Okay.  I just beat Skyward Sword. Just... let me get myself gathered up in order to write this.


HOLYCRAPTHATWASSOGOOD I CAN'T EVEN BELIEVE ALL THE THINGS THAT HAPPENED...GAAAAHHHHH


Okay now that that's over.  When I brought the game home and played it, I wrote down some of my reactions to some of the moments in the opening part of the game, and I'll be peppering them through this review as the become appropriate.


Before that, though, I'm going to cut right to the chase. A lot of people have been throwing things around along the lines of Skyward Sword being the single greatest Zelda game ever.  Now look, this might change in the coming years as the newness of the emotions presented by this game fades, but I might call this the single best Zelda game ever made.  The ONLY game that makes me question that title is Wind Waker, which up until now, was by far my favorite in the series.  Now the two are very, very much on the same platform with each other, and at the moment, I think Skyward Sword edges it out because of the system it was made for.

Quote from First Day #1: "Okay, I just did the obligatory practice training for the game.  Combat feels great.  I can’t wait to try it on some monsters."

No you cannot wait, past-Freddie, because fighting monsters feels great.The motion controls are spectacular.  Fighting with the Motion-Plus is unbelievably satisfying, because you are doing so much more than just hitting A to swing your sword.  YOU are swinging your sword.  You have full control over the direction that you swing it, and this is important because your enemies know how to block your swings.  Not only that, but they can counter if you don't strike them properly, and that prospect is terrifying for someone just learning how to fight.

Quote from First Day #2: "Oh my God I am way too impressed by looking around.  This is my first Wii Motion-Plus game, but I feel so in control of my every movement that it’s hard not to get ridiculously excited."

Maybe that needs a little explanation...  When the game first starts, you wake up in Link's room at Skyloft's Knight Academy.  As i got out of bed, I acquainted myself with the speed of Link and tested some of the basics out.  I entered the first person looking-around mode that we have seen in many third-person adventure games since Super Mario 64, where you stand and look at your surroundings with a 360-degree camera..  Using the Wiimote to look around the room, I found myself subconsciously wanting to use the Nunchuck to look.  I tried it out, and Link started moving while still in the first-person mode.  I was floored.  So much so, that I wrote this down.


Quote from First Day #3: "WHAT I AM MOVING AND LOOKING AND MOVING AND LOOKING."


Note that I also said that out loud.  I was discovering this incredible game little by little, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that I was learning a completely different playing style than I was accustomed to.  See, many of the Wii games I have played, even the greats like Super Mario Galaxy, could have been Gamecube games.  They had some new features, like Galaxy's way of collecting the star bits, but the core of the game was running and jumping the same way that we have been doing since 1985.  Even Wind Waker, the game I previously held as my favorite Zelda game, played very much like Ocarina of Time before it.  In short, if we took graphics and processing power out of the equation, I could have played those games on any system which came before this generation.  Skyward Sword changed that for me.

And not just because of this BITCHIN controller.

The combat was the core of this game.  Remember in just about every Zelda game ever where you used the item you got in that dungeon to kill the boss of that dungeon?  I think that happened once, maybe twice in Skyward Sword.  You seriously have to brush up on your combat skills, because the focus has shifted away from Link's gadgets and made its way to Link's constant companion: his sword.  You better hope that all the fighting you're doing makes you better, because even the bosses can and will block most of your strikes.  Flailing isn't an option; you need to make precision strikes.


Quote from First Day #4: "Link, I believe you will be friendzoned for eternity. But D’aaaaaawwwww Link and Zelda are adorable.  Seriously, the characters are so full of expression, it’s great."


The entire world of Skyward Sword is one of the most compelling game settings I have played in.  Skyloft, the main hub of the game, is a lovely little community, and each of the characters has a lot of personality.  There is so much detail that it really reminds me of Majora's Mask, a game which was almost 90% side-quests for the people of Termina.  Even the shopkeepers had prominent roles in side-quests, and Skyward Sword continues that in a slightly less overemphasized fashion.

Skyloft is no Clock Town, but they are similar in all the best ways.

Every character is visually unique, too.  I noted in my E3 Blog that Zelda took me aback a little: 

But the art style gives these characters a great array of emotions.  Link carries a lot of expression in his face, which really carries his role as a silent protagonist.  One character that seems like a throw-away bully in the opening keeps a larger role than you would think, and eventually becomes a welcome sight.  Fi, your new companion, carries zero emotion, but is visually striking compared to the dots that normally represent your companions.

She's also like, a robot spirit thing, so the emotionless thing is excusable.

Quote from First Day #5: "Okay I have to stop talking because I want to stand and play this game.

[2 minutes later]… Okay minimize talking.  I love the music."

This should be no surprise for Zelda, a series with such a beloved soundtrack that my special edition came with a 25th Anniversary Symphony CD.  The music still carries the high standard set by Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Wind Waker, and Twilight Princess.  

Quote from First Day #5.5: "…and the phrase 'slickest pompadour in town.'"

Comedy and ridiculousness are in full effect, and there are a couple of moments in the introduction of the game that almost break the fourth wall.

If your first response isn't "OH NO THE OWL'S BACK!" you need to replay Ocarina of Time.

Thank you for reminding us again, Nintendo.

I could keep going about how great an experience this game is for much, much longer, but I'll try to hit all my other points quickly for the sake of article length.  The flying feels very nice, especially when you figure the damn system out (I missed an important line of instruction, but found what i was missing anyways).  Jumping from your bird and going into a free-fall to the world below is exhilarating.  The set-pieces of the game are amazing, too.  When you stand back and reflect what you have just done, it's hard to not be amazed.  The final battle blows away any other final battles I have been a part of, in terms of what I did and in terms of the set-ups leading to them.  The story is incredibly well-paced and moving.  At one point, I welled up about as bad as I did to the opening sequence of Up.  Well maybe not that bad, but pretty damn close.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword might be my favorite entry in the series.  It has so many moments that had me floored that it's hard not to compare it to a game like God of War or Bayonetta in terms of amazing moments.  The difference, I found, was the way that I connected with Link because of the Motion-Plus.  I fought the monsters.  I found the Triforce.  I braved diabolical dungeons.  I saved Zelda.  If Skyward Sword had come out at the beginning of the Wii's cycle to show developers how it's done, I feel like we may be looking at a very different world of gaming for this generation.

Geometry Wars: Galaxies (DS)

So I am admittedly late to the Geometry Wars scene; I unfortunately am a poor college student who can not afford the time and money to own an Xbox 360, thus leaving me with the equivalent status of a third-world country in the gaming world. I haven't played Left 4 Dead, Gears of War (1 or 2), and I have no access to the Xbox Live Arcade. Luckily, like any good Nintendo devotee, I have a Nintendo DS, which seems to be attracting more and more ports of cheap, easy to develop games. So when my birthday came around last week, I dropped a nice $10 on Geometry Wars: Galaxies.

I always get a certain apprehension when I see a subtitle put on a game I knew was a success in another form. When I saw Galaxies instead of Retro Evolved, I was worried that the 360-DS translation was going to go awry somewhere. It could've been in the gameplay, the hardware requirements, or the user interface, but I had this trepidation on whether or not I should have bought it. Well, the $10 price was enough to convince me that even if it wasn't bad, it would at least give me some fodder for my first videogame review.

Let me start off my review with what is likely going to be the conclusion of that same review: Geometry Wars: Galaxies is basically crack. I'm serious. I haven't lost track of time on a videogame like this since the original Super Smash Bros came out in 1999. Galaxies is one of those games that, if you're not careful, will make you forget that it is dinner time and when you put the game down, you will be wondering what that awful feeling in your gut is. It means that you haven't eaten in a week, and that your family is very worried about you.

So the game's addictive. That suggests that the 360-DS translation didn't go so bad for Sierra and Kuju. The game handles extremely well; you steer with the D-pad, which is expected, and you fire with the touch screen. The game is extremely simple; you are a ship, and there are glowing multi-colored shapes heading towards you. That's about all there is to understand. With it, we have the triumphant return of the high-score-only objective. It's very easy to get used to, and it allows the OMG-quick-reaction change of firing direction that these types of games need. I don't know how many times I have failed to notice a blue diamond sneaking up behind me before it is almost too late. I can immediately fire behind me and shy away behind my shield of bullets. The single-player campaign is not really compelling in its own right; there is no story, there is no mission structure, just a bunch of solar systems with a bunch of different levels and bronze, silver, or gold medals. The only thing making me want to gt through these levels is the promise of a new, interesting stage with like a black hole in the middle or a maze or something like that. It all comes together and works, especially if you are the OCD-fueled gamer who needs a gold medal on every stage to feel accomplished.

I really like Geometry Wars: Galaxies. It is what it wants to be and nothing more. There isn't a nonsensical story about an alien invasion that drives brightly-colored ships, and you aren't saving the galaxy from the scourge of a virus or plague of something. Heck, you might even be the bad guy; you're the one going from galaxy to galaxy killing everything on the planet. Either way, the game works extremely well, and I always feel good about games that I have to make a conscious effort to put down.