Resident Evil Rorschach Tests

It appears that the Resident Evil 5 trailer controversy has returned.   I’d suggest you read the entire Multiplayer Blog interview with N’Gai Croal before commenting, since it provides a lot more context for the discussion and can do a better job summarizing the debate than I’m about to.  I’ve got a few additional points to add this time around.

The crux of the debate, as I see it, is whether or not the RE5 trailer is racist or uses racist imagery in order to promote the game.  The evidence cited by Croal and others:

“[They're] sort of being, in sort of post-modern parlance, they’re sort of ‘othered.’ They’re hidden in shadows, you can barely see their eyes, and the perspective of the trailer is not even someone who’s coming to help the people. It’s like they’re all dangerous; they all need to be killed. It’s not even like one cute African — or Haitian or Caribbean — child could be saved. They’re all dangerous men, women and children. They all have to be killed. And given the history, given the not so distant post-colonial history, you would say to yourself, why would you uncritically put up those images?”

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Might as well face it I’m addicted to Picross

I’m not sure exactly when it was that I first heard of Picross DS.  Sure, it’s been out for awhile, but I don’t think I was really paying close attention to it’s release.  So perhaps it was in one of N’gai Croal and Stephen Totilo’s exchanges.   Or perhaps I was just looking into well-reviewed DS games and saw this strange entry in the higher ranks of IGN.  Whatever it was, I became curious about it, but I just wasn’t convinced of its greatness.  Certainly, the screenshots look pretty bland, and the concept seems just silly and boring.  I figured it was just another “casual” game that would bore me to tears after just a puzzle or two at a time, like Sudoku sometimes does now.

So, while I was curious about it, I never picked it up.  I looked at it on Amazon, and occasionally I would see a new copy floating around Gamestop, but I just never pulled the trigger.  I figured that I could just wait until it’s at $10 on clearance, or on sale used somewhere or whatever and that I could pick it up on the cheap (yes, even cheaper than it’s already low $20 price point).  But, a funny thing happened: I stopped seeing the game altogether.  Amazon stopped selling it direct from their store (it now sells from Target through Amazon), new copies were nowhere to be seen at my Gamestops, and I never saw a single used copy.  That has to be a good sign, right?  If there are no used copies to buy, that means people are keeping their copies of the game, meaning they must like it, right?  Obviously, I could’ve used Ebay, but used copies would often sell for nearly the same price as new ones, and despite my curiosity, my uncertainty in the game made the commitment to buying something on Ebay too much of a hassle.

So, on a random whim while on a trip to a Target in a city I only visit on occasion, I checked their “bargain” titles game rack only to find a single, brand new copy of Picross DS right there in front of me.  Hoping that, because it was on a bargain rack, perhaps I had finally found my deal/steal that I was looking for, I snapped it up.  Of course, it was the standard $20, but that didn’t stop me at that point.  It had been so long since I had seen a copy of the game, I figured it was probably time for me to give it a shot.

And now, I’m hopelessly addicted.  I have no idea why I find the game so damn engaging, but I do.  There are elements to it like Sudoku, which as I mentioned, I like, but find can get frustrating and tiresome.  With Picross I’ve found myself losing hours at a time doing puzzle after puzzle.  It even has some “Brain Training”-esque features that test you in different ways on a daily basis. I haven’t even tried out the Wi-Fi capabilities yet (which, I think, allows me to download new puzzles).  All in all, it’s an extremely solid package.

Unfortunately, like Sudoku, my enjoyment of the game, at least in extended sessions, will probably decrease over time.  But for now, I’m quite content to let my addiction go untreated.

Problems with SSB: Brawl online?

I’ll try to have more impressions up later, but is anyone else having major problems with getting into an online game of Brawl?  I’ve managed to get into a single game with only 1 other person, and that lasted all of 2 matches.  Most of the time, whenever I start up a game I end up spending a few minutes in the “practice area” while all 3 extra players are at “seeking”.  It eventually times out and I’m thrown back into either the main menu or the menu where you pick team or standard battle.

This is the first Wii game that I’ve tried an online component for, but I’ve never had a problem with any other kind of online multiplayer game, whether PS3, 360, PC, or even the DS.  Is the network just so overloaded that it can’t even match me with a single other person?  If this is what I have to look forward to for what should be one of Nintendo’s premiere online titles, you can count me out already.

GOWCOO Impressions

So I picked up Chains of Olympus yesterday, which has been my first chance to really play through the God of War franchise by myself.  COO has been the subject of some handwringing in the industry, with Gamespot’s 8.5 review being called out as a sign of “bias” by Sony fanboys amid a ton of overheated opinions.  Even GameLife’s Chris Kohler didn’t love the game.  So who’s right?

I’m going to split the difference and say both of them.  COO definitely “feels” like a God of War game; the controls are great, and really capture the original game’s combo strength and battle system.  Although a slight grain to the image lets you know that you’re playing this on a portable system,  the graphics are incredibly solid and at times even rival the PS2’s more recent iterations.  It’s true that there aren’t as many amazing set pieces or boss battles as in prior versions; at the same time, though, I never felt like the game was dumbed down for the PSP. 

So why my ambivalence?  I think part of it is the price tag.  COO is MSRP’d as a premium title, and will cost you $40 at most retail outlets.  While production values are indeed high, you’re just not getting enough of an experience in an action title to compensate for the stiff entry price: something like FF Tactics is pretty scalable, and will give you a lot of gameplay for your dollar.  But all signs indicate the COO is just (as Kohler puts it) “really, really short.”  You’ll enjoy every minute of it, but you’ll probably finish the game wishing it was 50% longer.  In the same vein, I’m not willing to penalize COO simply because it doesn’t do something “new,” as not every game needs to innovate to be good.  But innovation in some way might have distracted me somewhat from the length.

In general, I would compare COHO to Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters.  R&C was a scaled-down version of a popular franchise, and it was excellent.  It gave you the R&C feel in a bite-sized package.  So does Chains of Olympus.  But it doesn’t necessarily feel like a great value, because of the pricing and the basic structure of action games, and that’s going to turn people off.

Pata-Pata-Pata-Pon!

While I just complained about the method in which I was forced to download it, the recently released Patapon demo is really fantastic.

A lot of people were hyping up the game quite a bit beforehand, but I had heard very little about it and had no idea why.  Now I understand.

It’s hard to really pin down what kind of game it is.  If I had to give an overall description of it, I’d say it’s a combination of a rhythm game, Simon, the tank battles from Rocket Slime, an RPG, and a bit of a strategy game.  Yeah, that sounds confusing as hell, but I’ll try to explain as best I can.

The goal in the game is typically to move your Patapons from the left side of a level to the right.  You essentially play the game by hitting a specific sequence of buttons in rhythm to create a sort of drum beat.  Each button is associated with a different sound, and the sequence you press will determine what action your army of Patapons will take.   For instance, the title of this post is the sequence for marching your Patapons forward.  In the demo, you get another sequence for attack and another for defend.  I assume in the full game there will be even more.

So the game essentially has you tying together strings of these sequences in order to advance through the stages.  Enemies and obstructions will pop up, so you’ll need to advance carefully and then attack as necessary.  Stringing together several sequences in a row will give you a combo bonus, and if you get more than 10 in a row, you’ll enter “Fever” mode, and all of your actions will be more effective.  If I had a complaint about the game, it’d be that once you get “Fever” mode it becomes a lot harder to focus and keep up with the sequences, but I suppose that’s part of the point.  If that were all the game was, it’d probably be fairly shallow and fun, but it so happens that there are a few extra layers to it (which I assume will only get a bit more complicated in the full game).

In the game, you have the ability to create 3 different subsections of your army.  In the demo, it essentially boils down to the front range melee attackers, the mid-range spears, and the long range archers.  The resources that you acquire during the game will let you build up the different pieces of your army to how you see fit, and for each level you can choose how you want to customize and arrange your army. Not only that, but you also pick up equipment that you can equip your patapons with, similar to an RPG.

It all comes packaged in an incredibly charming package with colorful graphics and adorable sound effects.  After completing the demo (which, I should add wasn’t horribly challenging, but I still died a couple times), I immediately logged onto Amazon.com to order it.  The best part?  It’s only $20. Even if it’s relatively short, this is a no-brainer.

We should only be so lucky to have this kind of creativity available for $60, let alone $20.

Underestimating The Future

To quote Mayor Quimby… very well, if that is the way the winds are blowing, let no one say I don’t also blow.  Endless Ocean got lots of comment praise here for daring to do something different - which as gamers are so sadly aware, is seldom done and even more rarely rewarded.  So a list of games likely to fly under the radar in 2008 is probably of interest to the readership.

My guesses for the best of the bunch are Professor Layton, The World Ends With You, and Time Hollow.  But your mileage may vary.

Rock Band Praise and Suggestions

While I’ve been having a blast with Rock Band for the past few days, there are some things that are rather annoying about it (which don’t include the complaint that it’s “too realistic“). Here’s my list of good and bad, after the jump:

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How Realistic Is Too Realistic?

News has been a bit slow over the Thanksgiving holiday as we all sit down to work through our respective game backlog.  (I’ve just hit star 120 in Super Mario Galaxy and CoD is pretty much over except for the multiplayer, so I guess it’s time to rent AC and pick up Mass Effect.)  I did just have the chance to play a little GH3 and Rock Band the other evening, though, which is why this GameLife post caught my eye.

Basically, the piece is a rant against the common complaint that people playing these games should would be better advised to invest their time in learning a real instrument.  The response isn’t all that concise, but the gist of it is basically correct: the reason these games are fun in the first place is because they’re not attempting to precisely imitate real instruments.  They let the player feel like a musical genius without requiring them to actually be one.

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Mario Brings in a Happy Birthday

What better way to start off my birthday than to spend some quality time with Super Mario Galaxy (don’t answer that Megan)?  The game simply drips in sheer joy and may be one of the happiest, most fun games ever made (perhaps actually giving increased meaning to the “UR MR GAY” ridiculousness).  There have certainly been several amazing games already this year, and even more to come, but there are so few that so confidently revel in the sheer joy of gaming like Mario Galaxy has (perhaps the last game that I can recall is the original Katamari Damacy, a fun and innovative, but still far inferior game).

With the industry trend towards more realism, seriousness, and storytelling that supposedly is bringing “maturity” to the medium, Mario Galaxy simply bucks the trend and reminds us all why we ever started playing games in the first place.  Bioshock may have been an important step forward this year for games as a medium to explore serious themes, but Mario Galaxy, with it’s effortless controls, gorgeous visuals, fantastic music, and outstanding level design, is as much a work of art as Bioshock is.  Bravo, Nintendo.

Bionic Blandness

GSW points to a harsh take on the upcoming Bionic Commando remake, but the “metareview” makes more technical criticisms than I think are really necessary here.  The piece complains about the blandness of the new title and the fact that it’s in 3D rather than 2D.  But are these really the biggest problems facing a next-gen BC?  Jeff and I came up with more substantive criticisms in five minutes of brief debate after the previews started showing up.

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