Bidnes

Recently, I agreed to write reviews and some features over at Twin Galaxies' website, the first of which is a review for recent WiiWare addition, Final Fantasy IV: The After Years. It seems that my thoughts on the game are mostly in line with other reviews that I have read (if I were to boil it down for you, I'd probably give it a B+), but some are pretty wildly different. While I know that no two people can totally agree on anything, I'm finding a morbid fascination in how some (*cough*cough*Gamespot*cough*) rag on the game and my reaction to those reviews, especially now that I'm not so far removed from game magazine websites like IGN or Gamespot. This, in no way, is me knocking anybody's website or the reviewers that write for them, but I really expected Lark Anderson to like it a little more than a 5.5. But again, that's just me.

Though this does seem like a good point to mention that Gamespot has seemed a little more harsh in their reviews over the past year or so than I seem to remember. I'm too lazy to actually do the research to see if this is fact or not, but some games look like they get slightly lower total scores from CBS-er Gamespot than many of the other major sites. Then again, being a little more citical never really hurt anybody, I guess. So carry on, Lark Anderson, and go ahead and save CNet's Wii Points for something else.

Phun Phriday Phantasy Phunk

Yesterday, I decided to return to one of my other great white whales of gaming: Phantasy Star II. See, as a young'n that bought a Sega Genesis fairly shortly after it was released, I had a real need to try anything and everything that I could, so my brothers and I would rent games at least once a week. This was also right about the time that I had played Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy for the first time with my friends, so now that the threshold had been crossed, I was much more willing to give some games that I wouldn't have normally touched the time of day. Now that I had some context to what a traditional RPG was like, playing Phantasy Star II was like going from Metropolis to The Jazz Singer. Over the years I would rent it numerous times, not really getting too far into it (late fees are scary). When I eventually got heavily interested in collecting sometime in the late 90s, I wound up with a boxed copy and began to really give it the time it deserved. One day it all came crashing down; after about 2/3rds of the way through, the battery back up in the cartridge took a shit (which I actually thought of doing on said cartridge at the time) and erased my game and I haven't gone back to it since. A few days ago, I was speaking to a friend of mine on how a few years ago I had the Summer of Shining Force where I plowed through as many SF games as I could to get a perspective on the franchise. This summer will thusly be the Summer of Phantasy Star, so I started, essentially, where I stopped.

Graphically (which was what might have been one of the more important things to an 11 year-old), the extra visual touches like overlays in the dungeons and colors to the expansive over world were a sight to see, but the smooth animation of the enemies and characters during combat was striking. Really, the FF and DW, what animation there was ended up being minimal at best. In PS2, not only would enemies wind up before spitting shit at you, but you actually saw your purple anime coiffed female lead gear up and slash through that same enemy with a pair of claws. The sound, while not even that much to write home about then, was still above its predecessors in that Genesis synth beeping was very neat for the time, but not dynamic or particularly amazing. What gave the game its charm was its overall presentation. Characters have character portraits when and hold conversations with each other at certain places, and actual (albeit primitive) cut scenes where at important story beats making it, basically, the most immersive game since Ninja Gaiden where cut scenes where made common.

Somewhat also like Ninja Gaiden, then, is the fact that the game is hard as shit. Seriously, it's a kick you in the face and drive you to the nuthouse difficult. Enemies gang up on you pretty quickly after leaving the starting area of the game, forcing you to level constantly. This leveling also gets you used to saving your pennies because, like a gay bar in Detroit (don't ask), everything is expensive. When you want to upgrade your entire party's weapons and armor, get yourself a sixer and make some pizza rolls because you're not going anywhere for hours. The dungeons are particularly insidious: multileveled back tracking, pit traps, mostly useless treasure inside of them, mobs of difficult monsters out to get you, and little or no direction from NPCs as a guide mean that you need the drive of a marathon runner and Apollo Creed as your corner man to complete the game with any of your sanity left. At the time of release, the game came packaged with a walkthrough booklet that had maps of the entire game inside, but that didn't necessarily make life easier. The dungeons were so complex that without carefully planning where you were going ahead of time you were left to wander within them aimlessly for hours and, sure as shit, you were going to run out of valuable medical supplies if that was the initiative you were going to take.

But all of that stuff above doesn't hold a candle to the freakish slow pace of everything. Because the game was so well animated (at least, that's where I lay blame), the combat absolutely drags out. With a frame skipper or other form of emulation that spikes the speed of combat, PS2 can take a measly 10 hours instead of probably three times that. It crawls.

The biggest plus, though, is the setting and story. Really, Phantasy Star II is a bleak game. Ok, it's really fucking bleak. Follow me here, because here's the whole plot: The game takes place in the Algol star system (as all Phantasy Star games do) which consists of three planets, Palma, Dezolis, and Motavia. Your character, Rolf, is an young agent of the Motavian government that is haunted by recurring nightmares which happen to be the ending of Phantasy Star 1, which takes place an entire millennium beforehand. Anyway, it turns out that Motavia used to be a desert planet that was terraformed to lush pleasantness with the help of a massive computer called Mother Brain in the time between the two games. Bio monsters are starting to overrun this utopia, so Rolf is assigned by the government to find out what's what. He takes his adorable little half human, half bio monster companion, Nei, with him and it turns out, through a series of wacky, slapstick adventures (alright, that's bullshit, nothing is wacky or slapsticky in this game or, really, life) you find that the cause of the bio monster outbreak is a failed biological experiment called Neifirst that happens to be the evil half of your buddy Nei. Neifirst was so pissed off at humanity that she constructed all of the baddies in a bio systems lab and unleashed them throughout the world. Neifirst then proceeds to kill Nei for the rest of the game (which sucks). After the lab blows up, the monsters of the world are gone (which is good!), but are replaced by an army of robots bent on killing you specifically (which sucks) because Mother Brain branded you as a terrorist. Eventually, the robots catch you and throw you in an outer space penal colony so someone -or something- can use you as a patsy because the penal colony smashes into Palma (the setting of the first PS game, I might add) and blows up the planet. It gets better. After a space pirate saves your ass from jail, you decide to see what's poppin' on Dezolis only to find out that one of the original PS characters has been in some cryo-sleep for however long so he could wake up and tell you that Mother Brain was made for people to be lazy slobs for the rest of eternity and now that it's getting mucked with, it's only a matter of time before the star system sinks into its own despair-fueled destruction. So, being the swell guy that you are, you find your way into the cosmic work station called Noah (where Mother Brain is busy being bad) only to find that a cosmic evil had control of things there which you don't find to be much of a surprise, but it's the same cosmic evil that had control of things in the first game (always back to that) and that it had been biding its time for a thousand years. The big twist is after you do away with that thing, you fight it out with Mother Brain only to ultimately find that an army of Earthlings -yes, the last survivors of our planet- are living on that space station and have constructed Mother Brain because they were slowly taking over the planet anyway. The game ends on kind of a cliffhanger when the whole cast decides to fight all of these guys to the death. The last bit of text in the entire game? "I wonder what the people will see in the final days." Dude. BLEAK.

When you're a kid, stuff like that stays with you. Sure, I didn't finish the game when I was young, but the oppressive murk that hovered over you during your entire journey was obvious to me even then. More so now that I've finally overcome the game, the ending is just plain dark. Still, I have to appreciate that because, especially for the time, video games didn't tell stories like that. They were fun filled treks through mushroom kingdoms and green hilled zones. Somehow, and I'm even more amazed at this accomplishment almost 20 years later, Ps2 found a way to masterfully add gravity to most of its scenarios and situations. This is especially punctuated by the fact that there are only 3 (well, technically 4, but you're supposed to lose one) boss fights in the entire game. When you duke it out with Neifirst, you know that big shit is happening that's going to change the direction of this game, and you're right.

Before recently, Phantasy Star 2 was regarded as something of a real collectible. As one of the real standouts of the early Genesis catalogue, people would search far and wide for it, especially boxed and complete with the afore mentioned strategy guide. I know that when I obtained the game a little over 10 years ago it was going for a hefty amount on the secondary market (though, not as much as, say, M.U.S.H.A.). These days, it's pretty readily available through the Wii's Virtual Console (along with Phantasy Star IV, a superlative game), as well as Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection (along with the rest of the series) for Playstation 3/ XBox 360. It was also released as part of the Phantasy Star Collection for the Japanese Saturn and the GBA in the US, as well as a Dreamcast compilation. With all of these other versions easily obtainable, an original cartridge copy can be obtained pretty cheaply, even though prices on eBay fluctuate wildly. The legacy of the PS2 is really something, though, as it was a seminal step forward in early console RPGs.

To be totally fair, I went back and finished this game because of sentimental value. Someone curious about entries into the genre of yesteryear are going to be put off by its somewhat arcane menu navigating, lousy English translation, and the sheer force of will that necessary in completing it, so it's tough to recommend it to the average person. Still, I sleep a little easier now that I finally put it to rest. Curiously, Sega of Japan had released a remake of the game (along with a remake of PS1) for the Playstation 2 that never materialized in North America under the Sega Ages collection. A shame it didn't end up here, but them's the berries.

Next up on the Summer of Phantasy Star will be PSIV, the most direct sequel. I find that I'll finally force myself to play through III after that knowing that it has little bearing in the overall scheme of the Algol star system. Afterward, I'll blast through the original PS as fast as I can. While I did play PS1 and PS3 before, it was only in passing and didn't have as profound an effect on me since I played them nearly a decade after they were released and I was bit too old to remember them fondly from my youth. Stay tuned, suckas.

Ahoy

Cats and kittens, I'm now doing some writing for Twin Galaxies. They called me and said, "Kidgorilla, we could use your brand of pure rock fury. How 'bout it?" I responded that my fury is pure rock, so I had to accept. Read my reviews at www.twingalaxies.com. My first is for Final Fantasy IV: The After Years.

Cross Up Shenanigans

I love fighting games. Love them. I loved them when I was a kid, and I love them even more now. But, as anybody whom has ever really loved a competitive video game can tell you, there's a breaking point; the part where you start getting pretty good. Sometimes, you start getting a little too good, even. By this, I mean good enough that your friends just don't want to play you any more. After all, you're the guy that sits around and plays it all the time, you're the guy with the opportunity to train, and you're the guy that's more immersed in the experience. Unless you know other people just as devoted to it as you are, you're just going to widen that new found gap.

This turns out to be a downward slide. Sure, there are tons of characters in, say Capcom Vs. SNK 2 to choose from, or maybe you haven't completed all of the sub modes in Soul Calibur 2 through 4, or maybe you find great practice in the survival modes in Tekken Tag, but you're just delaying the inevitable truth; and that truth is the cold realization that no matter how hard it can be sometimes, and how cheap you think Gill is to fight, the computer just not a very good opponent. Ok, now by "good opponent" I can mean a lot of things, but honestly, how fun is it to play a competitive fighting game when you're only really competing against yourself?

Then the zeitgeist started. You know what I'm talking about: the current rebirth of the 2D fighting game scene. It started with Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix and is continuing to supernova with Street Fighter 4. But when you take a clear look at the playing field, you cannot honestly say that the 2D fighting game left. The Guilty Gear series has been going fairly strong since the Playstation One, the Dreamcast, PS2, and Xbox all had ports of Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, and Arcana Heart and Battle Fantasia are both modern day competitive fighters that pre-date SF4. There are tons of great 2D fighters that have been steadily released over the last 10 years to keep the hard core satiated. So what happened? Is it because Capcom finally released a proper Street Fighter sequel that the scene is back in the mainstream? Others have called SF4 more accessible than a lot of the other games out there right now, and it's true; SF4 is a lot more forgiving with its combos and super moves than even HD Remix. But my fiancée can't pull off a Shoryuken, and I bet your kid brother can't either, at least at the onset. You can't tell me that a game with these kinds of complex movement and button mechanics is completely accessible. So what's the straight dope here?

The answer is online fighting. But not just online fighting. Be with me for a second: the Xbox had online fights with SVC Chaos and Street Fighter 3: Third Strike, and the original Street Fighter 2 Turbo showed up on Xbox Live. All of these were massive mistakes. It's not that the games weren't great (except maybe kinda sorta SVC Chaos...), the online play simply wasn't stable. Getting dropped from fights or crippling internet lag makes competitive fighting games require precise movements for higher-tiered play nearly unplayable. Fast forward to today, however, and things are a bit different. Fights are more stable with SF4; you can not only choose your opponents based on their internet settings, but also their perceived skill. Now that games are global and you could logically play against me if you live in the UK and I'm here in North America, a more stable online experience is really turning it around for either the lapsed fighting game Catholic or, at least in my case, their noob loved ones. For me, it was even a weird form of salvation, at least in the beginning. Finally! More than just the computer!

But it still isn't perfect. One cannot do anything about physical distance between players that causes internet hiccups. Capcom still has problems with fights "not counting" in their Championship Mode that takes GP away from you. Even players that are mediocre can tell you that loosing piles of points to someone you know is beneath you due to slow button reaction caused by a lousy internet connection makes you want to throw a cat out of a window.

So there I sat last night with perfect strangers in a beautiful home about 40 minutes from mine. To you, this may sound absurd. To me, it seemed to be the only answer. After playing countless hours of Street Fighter 4, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix, Soul Calibur 4 and whatever else I can find online (and a few more emulated on a PC from time to time), a level playing field was now a necessity, and a long drive was the only option left. After reading this article over at Gamasutra.com, I was given a new hope and a lot of renewed interest. The article, basically detailing the regional match-making that is becoming more common around the country for guys to get together and play, led me back to the forums at fighting game super source Shoryuken.com which has forums ranging from specific character match strategies (for a variety of games) to how to best modify your custom-built joy pad/ stick. I set myself up with my regional crowd -guys that have been playing together for a couple of years, at least- and the host was very welcoming for new people to pop in. Last night was that first pop.

I expected... well, shit, I had no idea what to expect. One part of me thought it was going to be a bunch of highly elitist dicks: the kinds of guys that I couldn't tell that I've been primarily using a game pad over the last however many years, or that I really don't care for Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 all that much. The other part was worried that we were going to be sitting in some kid's parents' basement ("Mom! MEATLOAF!") and having conversations about anime chicks. Both of those possibilities are weirdly intimidating. The reality, strangely enough, was a mixture of both. The host, let's call him Paul, was a very welcoming and cheerful guy in his early- mid 20's. He shook my hand, greeted me with a smile, and then introduced me to his mother as we walked inside the palace that he called a house and moseyed down the basement. The others, a heavier set African American guy with slammin' hair and fellow of Latino descent, were much quieter, and after we started turning machines on, I found out why. I was fresh meat.

As the host began setting up another TV for HD Remix, the other two guys and I began a winner-stays-looser-walks rotation of SF4. Everyone, not counting me, brought their own sticks with them -some personally customized. Billy, the African American guy, was proficient with just about everyone he used. Probably more so with Balrog and the Shotos, he firmly established himself as king of the hill early on, and he barely spoke a fucking word. Mike, the Latino, brought a newer stick with him and mainly used Sagat, whom would pull of cancelling/ ultra move combos that made my head spin. He played very much like me in that when he lost, he didn't just place blanket blame on the game or the other player as being cheap, he knew it was his own fault if he blew it. It was clear from the second I walked down to that cold, messy (though large enough to fit my entire apartment, maybe twice over) basement that these two guys were going to drop me like a bad habit. I picked up a spare stick to play with, and a little unaccustomed to the controls, I did what I could until I started to learn their play styles so I could adjust mine to compete. These two, though, were all business. I tried to ask questions to get a dialogue going that met with blank stares. I tried to converse about the ins-and-outs of the SF4 game system only to get quick responses. It's not that these guys were off putting, or even just assholes, though. These guys were there to play, not chit chat, and they wanted to see what I was made of.

Things lightened up a bit when Drew, a younger, almost freakishly cheerful guy of Asian lineage arrived with a Hori Real Arcade Pro fight stick (if this is the Cadillac of sticks, the HRAP is probably the Lexus). Now that I was fairly sure that the United Nations was all accounted for and ready to throw down on some Street Fighter, the night went on a little less silently. That is, at least, on the HD Remix side of the room where Drew and Paul were having a great time beating the snot out each other with Dee Jay and Sagat. Things were still a little quiet and tenuous for me until I started to step up my game when I would hear a "nice" thrown out ever now and then. I was beginning to break Mike's Sagat game with my Ken and as my ego was starting to boost his blood pressure was starting to rise, but not maliciously. All of us began to throw out help with tactics for each other, but not enough to tip our hand to the next guy up (you don't want to tell that guy that uses Balrog that you let yourself sit in a corner and bait him, do you? No, you sure as shit don't.).

A few hours, a lot of SF4, and a little Third Strike later, I was out the door with a handshake from Paul and an invitation to come back every Monday night. It's funny, the older I get, the less likely I am to just meet people like this and expand my list of people that play. I can't help but be grateful for the opportunity, but daddy's got some practicing to do. I see your Balrog coming, Billy, and I'm not falling for that Head Butt/ Ultra combo again. At least, not next Monday, I won't.

CCAG 09

Just a shout for the Cleveland Classic Console and Arcade Game show going down on May 23rd from noon until 8. Want to find some wacky old stuff that only your dad's weird uncle remembers (like the Vectrex)? Yeah, there's tons of that shit there. Come on out and support Escape From Rungistan... meaning old games that are still awesome. When you get there, you can go ahead and buy Escape From Rungistan. When you get home and finish Escape From Rungistan, you can go ahead and thank me for putting you in the know. I'll be shimmying around the show myself, so say howdy if you can figure out which one is me...

I can't link to their flyer, so check out their website for details.

It's Charles Bronson Time

Ladies and germs, I'm good and sick of waiting around for Mad Catz to pump out more Street Fighter Tournament Edition sticks. I have no doubt in my mind that having one of these sticks, or an equivalent, will make these two magical hands into those of a master surgeon, and now, steps must be made. The law will have to be taken into these two magical hands. It's time for some lateral thinking.

Thus, this summer, my brother(s) and I will be custom building my own fight stick. Will it look as nuts as the above Akuma stick? Fucks no. That thing's nuts. What it will look like, however, is a double dose of awesome with a whisky chaser (and a 4x4 button design so I can play SF4 and SNK games).

I'll try to document this odyssey as best I can as the weeks and (hopefully not) months roll by. Stay tuned.

Nerdmas? Hmm, Too Dumb A Term To Coin

So last week, Best Buy had an absurd sale on PS3, Wii, 360, and DS games- many of them for about $10. That's right, only ten clams. I, as all three of you that read this might suspect, jumped on this like this chick on Rob Halford. It was little less of a haul than I thought it would be, but you can't deny the power of Only Ten Bucks. Think about it. Would you go see performance art? Punch George Lucas for The Prequels? Go to a Tommy Seebach reunion show? Of course you would if it was Only Ten Bucks.

So there I was, with a couple of Only Ten Bucks on me. Since they didn't have a copy of Devil May Cry 4 for PS3 for OTB, I settled with Lost Planet and Soul Calibur 4. Evidently, they also had copies of Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword for DS on sale, too, but the masterminds at the Best Buy I ended up at hid them from me. Savages.

So Lost Planet. Had I actually lost Lost Planet on my way home, it would have been no loss (see what I did there?). Ok, ok; it's not a terrible game by any stretch, but certainly no gem. Standard run and gun game mechanics apply to what is basically your time on Hoth, just no Han Solo to stuff you into a tauntaun if you really get in the shit. The weapon choices are fairly standard and the plot is downright abusive to my good taste and sensibilities. Still, for Only Ten Bucks? Yeah, worth every penny. Let's break it down:

- I get to blow stuff up. I love making things s'plode, even on Hoth.
- I get to use a grappling hook. Sure, it isn't the most well implemented mechanic in the game (or any game with a grappling hook), but it kinda makes me feel like a ninja. I love ninjas. On Hoth. Believe it.
- I'm more than half way through the game, and that tickles me. See, I usually play long games, and to have one that I have no beef getting rid of as soon as it's finished makes me happy that it's almost over.
- I'm not inclined to play online with it, but it's nice to know that it's there if want it. Options in this regard, are quite swell.

There you have it. I'll never look back on it as a misunderstood classic, but for OTB, it was the bee's knees.

Soul Calibur 4, though? Let's see. I like fighting games. In fact, I like them a lot. So much so, that I won a Tekken 3 tournament in college and got a couch out of the deal (don't get too impressed, it was a nasty couch). So let's make that a mathematical equation:

Enjoyment x (Street Fighter/ Tekken/ King of Fighters)/ Price = Worth It

Notice that Soul Calibur 4 does not factor into the above Euclidean methodology. It very well could be said that the Soul Calibur series is a weapons-based extension of Tekken, but it could also be said that one-armed golfing mosquitoes are invading Poland (read: it just ain't true). Therefore, it was hard to justify my purchase of SC4 prior to last week. After spending a fairly extensive amount of time with it, I find it enormously complicated, even for a weapons-based fighting game. Going through the story mode so I could unlock stuff was fun, but there didn't seem to be any weight to it. Its presentation is insanely pompous, too, which is pretty funny, now that I think about it, but gets old quick. OTB, though? Hurm...

- Lots of a characters, and they's all kindsa wacky. Seriously. Wacky.
- Solid online play. I've been playing more than my share of online fighting games over the last few months, and this is probably the most stable game so far. Then again, I super suck at this game, so it's a little hard to get into it when I know I'm calling a butt kicking down on myself.
- It's pretty. Really, it's a game that's been working out and is now entering a modeling competition. The flip side to that is that certain, how shall we say, design decisions were made as far as females in this game go, and it's just too absurd for me. Just because I'm a dude doesn't mean that I think it's way rad that women strap bowling balls to their chest. Stupid Namco...
- Darth Vader. He was on Hoth once. It all comes together...

Still on the fence about Soul Calibur 4, then. The best part? Say it with me: Only Ten Bucks. While I foresee a trip to my local trade in joint when I get finished unlocking things in SC4 and finally crush Lost Planet, I'll say that this was twenty bones well spent.