Poop

Review: 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand

Ladies and gentlemen of the games industry: stop working on your current project. There is no longer any reason to continue making video games. Gaming perfection has been achieved, and it's name is Fifty Cent: Blood on the Sand. From the elegant and subtle story to the delicate and nuanced gameplay, Fifty has created a masterpiece that will surely be heralded along side the Beatles White Album, Of Mice and Men and Citizen Kane. I think Vince Gilligan has his next TV adaptation.

If you don't have an emotional boner right now, you must be dead.

This magnum opus starts as Fifty concludes a concert in an unnamed Middle Eastern country. The thing most people don't notice here is that during the performance, Fifty has grenades, handgun clips and rifles equipped; all while wearing a hat with his name on it. In my heart of hearts, I believe this to be a hidden message about the violence on the streets. Fifty himself can put an end to such violence through such songs like the games theme track, "Ni**a, my gun go off!!!" But I digress, back to the story...

The concert promoter - who reminds one of Alec Guinness' performance in the 1949 film "Kind Hearts and Coronets" - can't come up with the money to pay Fifty, a hefty sum of $10 million. But I think we'd all agree that price is fair to see the G-Unit do it's thang, am I right? So to appease a now very angry Fifty Cent, the promoter gives him a skull covered in diamonds. This is apparently worth $10 million and Mr. Cent happily goes on his way to his next performance.

If the game stopped there, I would have been satisfied. But we're just getting started!!!11one!

Upon leaving the venue, terrorists gangsters ambush Fifty's car and some "trick bitch" makes off with the skull. Now your goal is to retrieve the skull at all costs...by killing thousands and thousands of "gangsters". Blap blap!

Just sit back and behold the best voice acting and motion capture ever laid to a game disc. Note the subtle hints of emotion in all the characters. It will take your breath away.

The rest of the story plays out from there. It would be a sin to give away any spoiler after this point, but as a little teaser, you can look forward to the pensive refrain "Where my skull?" throughout this golden experience.

The presentation sings like nothing I've ever seen before. The beautiful selection of Fifty Cent B-Sides really transports the player into the harsh but realistic world of murdering thousands of people to get a skull back that wasn't yours to begin with. And they play so well against one of the finest additions to this game: the taunt button. By clicking down on the right thumbstick, Fifty will issue a taunt to his adversaries after dispatching them. With lines like, "Oh, you fucked up now, bitch!" Taunts can be upgraded to be more vulgar as you amass a fortune of stolen jewels and cash. You can also repeatedly hammer the taunt button to make Fifty go on a cursing frenzy, which is an obvious shout out to his homies with Tourettes.

Just look at his realistic muscles

It's hard to describe the gameplay in conventional gaming terms - "artful" is a word that comes to mind. "Uncharted clone" definitely does not come to mind.

Just like Uncharted, this is a third person, cover based shooter. And thankfully shooting people is all you'll be doing - don't expect any boring exploration or puzzle solving here, Fifty "don't got time for that shit." But even though this is a cover based shooter, the fact that you don't even need to use the cover mechanic is what I love most about the experience. You can blissfully run through an environment, guns blazing without any thought whatsover, and I believe this was done intentionally. Fifty doesn't want to bog the player down with "thinking" and "deductive reasoning", he wants you to achieve a level of meditation and zen-like focus through the art of carelessly firing hundreds of rounds of ammunition at terrorists.

There was a moment in my experience with this game where I believe my focus was so deep that I think I saw the face of God. And that was the moment that I killed a sniper from 300 yards away with a handgun. No - excuse me - two handguns. I challenge you to name one single other game that gives the player a reward like that: play Blood on the Sand, and see the face of God.

Then mercilessly hammer the taunt button.

Finished: Paper Mario

Completion Time: About 20 hours

Probably the longest 20 hours of my gaming career. This game took me months - it's just soooo slowwwww. I couldn't wait to get through every moment of the game - not because I was anxious about seeing the ending, or jumping out of my panties to see read what Goombario's parents were doing while he's been gone, or even what the flowers think about me saving them from the freaking rain clouds - I just wanted every single thing I was doing in the game to end 80 minutes faster than it did. I kept catching myself saying, "OK. I...I get it. Yup. Got it. I understand. Got it!"

Paper Mario is a good, lighthearted RPG with a solid battle system. It's just incredibly tedious to finish.

Handheld Distraction: Fire Emblem Awakening and Animal Crossing New Leaf

I got a 3DS two years ago and basically played Mario 3D Land and nothing else. I tried a couple of other games, but nothing really caught my fancy bits. Then I started hearing all the praise about Fire Emblem Awakening and decided to give it a go. This is one of the most finely crafted, mature, well-developed games that Nintendo has ever put out.

The amount of content, the quality of said content and the overall polish and delivery is outstanding. You'll encounter dozens of characters throughout the adventure and most are very well drawn and interesting. They all interact with each other in and out of battle. For example, if you stand next to an ally during an attack or when defending an attack, you'll get a stat boost. And the more you pair the same two characters together, the stronger their relationship will grow which results in higher stat boosts when pairing up. If you get characters really friendly, they will outright take a bullet (or spear) for the other one. This mechanic really forces you to emotionally invest in your characters, which is why it's so hard to lose them. If you make a stupid mistake and leave a unit undefended, they'll die. Forever. It adds another enormous layer to an already complex game, but it all fits together so well! 

I usually resist this type of game because I'm bad at them. Especially with Fire Emblem's well-known mechanic of perma-death - meaning when a character dies during a battle, they're gone forever-ever. The only way to get them back is to hard-reset the 3DS. Or play on baby mode where they don't die forever.

But I flew too close to the sun. I allowed too many characters to die - counting them as casualties of war - and left myself with too few units that were undertrained for a massive battle that is now unwinnable. Hence my propensity to avoid these games.

That's why I'm enjoying the other 3DS game of the summer - Animal Crossing New Leaf.

It's hard to explain Animal Crossing and make it sound interesting. Here's a few ways I've tried to defend myself when telling people I'm playing this masterpiece:

"It's like the Sims, but less stressful."
"You can fish and catch bugs and then sell them to a raccoon for bells OR you can donate them to the musem. Bells are used to pay off your mortgage."
"Collectible hats!"
"Oh! AND it's real time! So if it's Christmas in the real world, your animal friends are celebrating Christmas too!"

Every description sounds like it's the stupidest baby game of all time. Donate bugs to a museum? MORTGAGE?! Why don't you just play a game that throws sand in your face and calls you "Little Debby, Sandy Vagina!"?

But it is so gosh darn addicting. If you have never played an Animal Crossing jam, obviously I am incapable of convincing you as I lack the descriptive ability to sell the game on it's many merits. The best thing I can say about it, is that it's what video games were meant to be: an escape. Playing this game is absolute escapism. There is no stress, there's no losing or winning. Just relaxing. And also paying a mortgage.

Up Next: Paper Mario

Never underestimate Nintendo's ability to milk its triple-A franchises until the teat is bone dry. At this point in history Mario had filled many roles, from hero to tennis star, now he's paper. This warrants a larger discussion about the company's  reluctance to stray from it's well established brands when bringing new game designs to market, but not now.

Paper Mario's design is based on the much heralded Super Mario RPG for the SNES. A turn-based RPG at first blush but during the battles, performing well-timed button presses during attacks will give you offensive or defensive bonuses. It's a little thing that goes a long way - by keeping you active during battles rather than just selection actions, you are more engaged in the overall experience.

BOOM! HAMMER SMASH! 1 Damage.

I think most RPG fans can agree that seeing an outrageously large number pop out of an enemy's gaping wound from a sword that no one could possibly ever hold is one of the biggest thrills of playing a game in this genre. This is where playing Paper Mario feels like tiddly winks. Each enemy has, like, 3 HP, and each attach does 1 HP of damage; 2 if you time your attacks just right. I know it's a completely cosmetic and vein complaint and I could just pretend that the 1s are actually 100s but it just feels like I'm playing with a baby's toy.

Its a charming adventure with well-written dialogue and imaginative worlds. But when you use a devastating item that you spent all your coins on and you see 4 HP damage, it's just a total boner killer.

Catching Up...

Both sticks up? Must be playing Katamari.

It's been a rough few months for blogging time. But I wanted to do a quick catch up post before I continued on my journey. In the past couple of fortnights I've played the following games:


Wind Waker

I recently re-purchased a Gamecube and I felt like I owed it to the little black box to give it the sweet load that is Wind Waker.

I beat this game in college, when I had gob bluths of free time, now the sailing sections seem like enormous wastes of time. I got through the first few temples and then put it away. I was really only playing it to hold me over until...

The Last of Us

The game I've been psyched about for over a year finally saw it's release last month. It took me a solid 20 hours to beat and it's one of the most memorable games of this generation - in both story and gameplay.  The characters are expertly written and the dialogue is fantastic.



Ellie is one of my favorite characters of all time - across any medium, and the late game villain, David is one of the greatest bad guys ever.

Get it, cherish it, cover it in honey and rub your weiner on it. It's that good.



Life Force

My absolute favorite game when I was a kid still holds the softest of spots in my gamer heart. For me, this is as perfect as the shoot-em-up genre gets. Tons of character and color. Wholly unique levels, terrorizing boss battles, and a difficulty curve that's just right. 

I beat this with a buddy a couple weeks ago using the thirty lives code, but I wanted to do it legit. I beat this thing without dying once. Because dying a single time means losing all your precious upgrades, and once that happens you might as well die in real life. Am I right? This guy knows what I'm talkin about.

It took me about two weeks of practice, but it was achieved! And it was awesome.


The Game Adventure is back, baby! But I have no idea what to play next. Give me some suggestions, spam commenter who's been sending me sexy links!