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!

Absolutely Cannot Finish Beyond Good & Evil

So I reached the point where my memory card failed last time. I played another hour or so, and absolutely could NOT get through it. I don't know if the story just aged badly or the gameplay wasn't there, but I just couldn't muster the power to push through to the end.

I decided to break a big personal rule and just watch the ending on Youtube. It was a ten minute clip, and I bailed out at minute 3. I just did not care at all what happened to these characters. And it's a shame - Beyond Good & Evil is a unique game in an interesting world with non-traditional characters - My bias for non-traditional, mold-breaking games should force me to love this game above all others, but no, sadly, that's not the case.

Off to the trade-in shop you go, little one.

Up Next: Beyond Good and Evil. Again.

My third rate memory card took a dump all over my plans to finish this game the last time I tried. Well, thanks to a few trade ins, and a sweet local indie game shop, I got myself a Gamecube and for the first time in my life - a first party memory card. Hallelujah.

It's been almost three years since I tried to finish this game.

Let's do it!

Finished: Bioshock Infinite

This is one of the most finely crafted stories in all of video games. The symbolism, the twist, the way each new revelation changes everything you just experienced - it is an amazing achievement in the progression of video games as a story telling device.

Being terrible at shooters, I didn't particularly enjoy the gameplay - and really this game is just Bioshock 1 in a different setting - but it's been four days since I beat this thing and I'm still unraveling the details in my head.

You know how you felt after watching Momento or Inception? This is on par with those, except I would argue that Bioshock Infinite is an even richer, fully fleshed out experience.

Please buy this game. Vote with your wallet for more content like this - this is the direction the industry should be heading.

Thank you.

Love,
Brandon

Finished: Link to the Past

Completion Time: About 20 Hours
Completion Percentage: About 80%

Wow what a game. This is just about as perfect an experience you can get in a video game. Not a moment is wasted, there's like eleven temples - none of which are a stupid water temple - music is amazing, graphics are charming - it's literally one of the best games ever. This, Super Metroid and Cruis'n Wii are the best three games of all time.

It's an undisputed fact.

Still Playing: Link to the Past

Yes this is one of the highest rated games ever, but I'm interested in why it's so highly regarded. On a psychological level, the game constantly gives out little victories, giving you a perpetual sense of accomplishment. Every fifteen or twenty minutes, you find a hidden item, or finish a temple or upgrade your equipment.

One larger theme I picked up on this time was the fact that there are essentially two full quests in this game. In fact, there are three if you think about it.

F*** YEAH, SON!

The first thing you're asked to do, the very first thing, is rescue Zelda from the castle. Let me reiterate -  you save the princess within the first twenty minutes of the game. Welp, my job's done. I'm outta here, right? 

NO BITCH! YOU GOTTA GET DAT MASTER SWORD, SON!

Oh, right. Thanks Uneducated Poser White Guy. So you then go on a much larger quest to collect three medallions, from three separate temples to earn the Master Sword. That takes five to eight hours to accomplish, and this would have been enough to consider Link to the Past a finished game - it certainly feels like a huge accomplishment.

But then you're introduced to the idea that there is an ENTIRE OTHER PARALLEL WORLD essentially doubling the size of the game. This leads you to a quest to rescue eight maidens spread across eight different temples in the dark world, which will give you the power to ultimately overcome Ganon.

Light World - Dark World

So not only are you achieving two or three small victories every hour, you also have these larger major victories throughout the experience. 

Forget the legendary gameplay and air-tight mechanics, this psychological thrill ride of constant victories is what makes this one of the most fondly remembered games of all time.

Up Next: A Link to the Past

I never had this game as a kid. My entire community of friends all had Genesis, but that didn't stop my rampant jealousy when reading about games like this in the latest video game publication. I remember as a kid being dragged to a lot of parties with my parents. I was always very reluctant to go, unless host's kid had a Super Nintendo. Then I would have a countdown clock in my room, anxiously awaiting my chance to get my hands on the games I didn't have access to.

When I finally did get a Super Nintendo as an adult, I got Link to the Past, and loved it, obviously, but I never beat it. Why? Welp...

I had gotten through the entire game and was fighting the final boss. I'm talkin minutes away from seeing the credits. I died and my wife, who was reading a book, said she'd like to give it a try.

"I played Zelda on Nintendo" she said defensively when I gave her my best are-you-kidding look.

I reluctantly handed over the controller, but she was sitting too far away. When she grabbed it, she pulled the system with it, pulling out the wires from the back of the system.

No worries, I saved right before hand.

Power off.

Power on.

Title screen.

Press start. 

Save file is gone.

Start over.

Needless to say, I didn't feel like replaying the ENTIRE game all over, so I let it sit until now. That was five years ago.

Time to take down Ganon for good!

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Let's do it.

Review: The Walking Dead

**This review will be done in the voice of a new character I'm workshopping - Uneducated, Poser White Guy. Enjoy.**

Let me say this right off the bat. DO NOT BUY THIS GAME! If you are used to COD or Halo you will be disappointed!

I just finished this piece of shit they trying to pass off as "The Walking Dead". Escuse me? I thought this was a show about shooting zombies in the fuckin face, not fuckin talking about farming or babysitting some lil BITCH! Dats all you do in this game, fuckin chase after some little girl. Yo for real, I think Lee is a pedofile, man.

I don't even know where they got these characters from! None of these bitches is on the TV show! Where's dat bitch wit the sword at? 

Yo for real tho, this is how the game goes:

You find this little girl who lost her family and decide to take care of her.
Then you meet some other redneck bitch-ass family and take care of them.
Then you just move from place to place fuckin TALKING to each other.

Erbody keep talking about "Oh the story so good, son. Yo dat story!"

Bitch, I don't give a shit about story. Only reason I see movies that say they got a story to it is cuz usually U get to see some TITTIES, son! Ain't one god damn titty in dis whole game!

Dats it! Don't buy dis game. It's BULLSHIT! I want da last ten hours of my life back!

I sold dis shit at Gamestop and picked up a real man's game - Battlefield 3, bitch!
Look for me online, x69Cowboyz4Life69x I'll be the one snipin' yo ass!

Finished: The Walking Dead

Completion Time: About 9 hours

This was awesome.  There's no real challenge here in terms of gameplay, but some of the choices I made stuck with me long after I shut off the PS3. This is one I'll want to play again and again, can't wait for Season 2.


Review coming shortly.

Up Next: The Walking Dead

Since everyone in America loves The Walking Dead, I figured now would be a good time to give this one the old playthrough.

This game won Spike TV's Game of the Year award at their annual video game awards show. Which means absolutely nothing because the VGA's lost credibility as soon as they began. How? By giving their very first Game of the Year award to Madden 2004. That's like giving an Emmy to Tom Brady for best supporting actor.

Game of the Year

Since then, Spike has picked predictable winners: Grand Theft Auto, Uncharted, etc. But this year, in a surprise to everyone, they handed the prize to The Walking Dead. I think a lot of college frat house brahs were shocked after running out to get this 'game of the year' to find out it's a story/relationship driven, point and click adventure game.

Dialogue trees? Nah thanks, brah.

Fortunately for me, I'm into that kind of stuff, and I'm really enjoying it so far. The game is broken into five two-hour episodes, and I'm currently halfway through episode four. Admittedly, there are long stretches where you're simply exploring the relationships with your fellow survivors, and a couple sections where you won't see a single zombie for almost an entire episode. But just like a good book or movie, everything builds to those outstanding moments of intense fear and panic.

Like this.

It's awesome. I'm almost done. Review by the end of the week, probably.

Review: Secret of Mana

This is one of those legendary games. Mention Secret of Mana in the right circles and you'll get the same reaction as dropping a 'really underrated indie band' in a circle of hipster musicians. It's one of those games where people put their hands to their heart because they can't possibly contain the love they have for what it offers to them. Well, I finally played the entire game. And I don't get it.


Before I get all negative, let's discuss the game itself.

"We HATE swords."

You start the game by finding a sword in a river and are then banished from your sword-and-river-hating home town. As you explore the different towns and dungeons, you come across and girl and a young male sprite who remain your companions for the rest of the game.

The battle system is actually really interesting. Imagine Zelda's battle system with a recharge timer - so every time you swing your sword, you have to wait a few seconds to recharge your energy. When you start out as only one character, it's incredibly boring as you're just pressing the B button every few seconds with no defensive strategy or magic to cast. But once you incorporate the other two characters, who can wield magic, and can have their behaviors set on the back end to how often they attack, it becomes very engaging. 

The graphics and the music are incredible for their time. Even though there are no overlaps in music or art direction staff, I was consistently reminded of Chrono Trigger through the audio visual presentation. That is about the highest compliment a SNES game can get - and this game out two years before Chrono Trigger.

So, the battle system is not the issue. The presentation is not the issue. The story is where it falls apart for me.

There is simply no motivation to keep going. Or even start going! There's a bad guy that shows up two or three times throughout the 25 hour experience, and he's kinda bad, I guess. But I saw no big worldwide tragedy or personal vendetta that would instill in me a desire to go on this huge quest with forty bosses.

Oh what's that? Forty bosses? Yup. I counted:

Forty goddamn bosses.

"But people love bosses! They're exciting!"

True, but after ten or so the panic and adrenaline rush of confronting a big baddie kinda wears off.

Think about another game of this genre; heck any good game of any genre. Within the first act, you know what you're fighting to save or protect or prevent.

Zelda II. Zelda is in an eternal slumber on the VERY FIRST SCREEN. There's your motivation.

Chrono Trigger. The future is bleak and awful for everyone. There's your motivation.

Midgar's a shithole, Andrew Ryan is a psycho and must be stopped, and the princess is in another castle! Motivation!

He must be stopped!

 Secret of Mana banishes you from your village. Go kill the local wildlife, I guess? No foreshadow of doom and destruction? No dark ceremony that creeps out the player and sparks a natural curiosity? Not even a kidnapped princess? Well then why the hell am I even going to the trouble?

In the end, I killed a big dragon with a bunch of hit points and felt nothing. There was no vengeance. No sense of justice. No sense of achievement even. It felt like the entire point of the game was to get strong enough to fight the final boss, who has no bearing on the story until the last 20 minutes.

I see why people like it. It's a charming, well built RPG that came out in the golden age of the RPG. But for me, I need something to keep me going that long. And whatever it is...it's still a secret to me...

Final Grade: C

Finished: Secret of Mana

This one took forever.

Completion Time: 25:16

All I've heard for years is how great this game is and how I'm an idiot for never playing it. It was about as glaring a hole in my games played list as Pulp Fiction is on my movie list. And guess what.

I found it incredibly boring and tiresome to sit through.

Sorry, nerds. This one did not age well, or something. Full review shortly.

Handheld Distraction: Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward

For whatever reason I made a conscious decision to not include my handheld games in my backlog, but this one...this one deserves special mention. I haven't seen a ton of coverage on this game on major websites, so I figured I'd give it the old plugeroo.

Virtue's Last Reward is the second game in the Zero Escape series. While there are a good number of escape-the-room type puzzles, you'll be spending the majority of your 35+ hours reading, making this more of a digital novel than a game per se. That's not to say that you'll be disconnected from the experience. Branching paths and crucial decisions must still be made by the player and these decisions have huge implications on which of the many many endings you'll see. But let's not discount the quality and weight of the story either.

VLR's plot is very sci-fi and requires a lot of attention to detail from the player, but the payoff is oh-so-worth-it. You and eight other people wake up in a facility and are forced to play through something called the "AB Game". A mysterious AI taunts you throughout the experience and the danger of the life-or-death situations presented to you feels very real. The ultimate goal is to escape the facility, but the lingering question is "why?" The ending you're shown at the conclusion of each branching story path will give you a small clue to that overarching question until you finally see the true ending, which will consequently blow your motherfucking mind.

Virtue's Last Reward is on Vita and 3DS. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Making Progress: Secret of Mana

I had gotten so used to games holding my hand and providing me with the exact number of enemies I needed to kill so I would be at the proper level for every boss fight, that I forgot that these old games basically just give you the finger and throw you nude and flailing into disaster. So out to the internet I went to figure out what level I needed to be at, which items I needed to have, and how to set my characters battle stats - none of which is explained in-game.

Now that I have a handle on where things are and what the game kinda expects of me, I'm in the zone. I'm only a few hours in, but I just beat this super hard thing:

Anyway. I'm psyched for the rest of this game now. Anyone else played this thing and love it, let me in on your fond memories. I'm sure I'll have my own to share in a month or so.