MadWorld, Baby!

Hope everyone had a fun (yet responsible) St. Patrick's Day yesterday. A lot of people think St. Patrick's Day should be an official holiday, but I think we'd be better served by making the day after a holiday don't you? Hangover Day... has a nice ring to it.

As promised, this is the blog post where I chronicle my game-playing for the past month to all who care. Which is basically no one, but blogs are a vehicle for narcissistic tendencies to manifest themselves so cut me some slack! I'm just trying to live up to the stereotype.

Most of my game time has been on the DS, mainly for the convenience. After walking away from Final Fantasy IV (we had disagreements on how difficult the final boss of an RPG should be) I picked up Hotel Dusk Room 215. That was a really good game. Apparently I'm into graphic adventure games like this and Professor Layton (sort of) because they marry several awesome priorities, like an emphasis on storytelling, puzzle solving, and competent writing, into one interesting package. The story in Hotel Dusk is very noir, which is also a plus. The puzzles are pretty logical for the most part, all dealing with manipulating everyday objects that you come across to advance the story. You have to be pretty observant to figure out the solutions, and from time to time you'll hit a wall trying to figure out how to proceed. Also noteworthy are the questioning sequences, where the game requires you to correctly grill a suspect for answers to continue. Fail and the game ends. But above all, what's great about Hotel Dusk is that it respects your intelligence. It tells a sophisticated story and never patronizes you with obvious handholding. All of which is aces in my book.

Next up is Retro Game Challenge, also for the DS. Highly recommended. You kind of have to be nostalgic and appreciative of retro 8-bit style games to really "get" this game. It throws you back in time (literally) to the early 80's, where you are forced to complete challenges in fake classic games alongside the childhood version of the host of Game Center CX, a Japanese show. On the bottom screen, a younger version of you sits with the younger version of the host, Arino, while you physically swap cartridges and play games on a fake Famicom system. Periodically, Arino will buy new games and new issues of a fake in-game magazine with fake coverage of tricks and previews of upcoming game releases. The top screen is where you actually play these games. If it all sounds incredibly meta, it's because it is. That's the point though... it isn't just a game collection, but a concentrated nostalgia injection. The games on offer are all really good too, and run the gamut of genres from action, to shooting, to racing, and even role playing.

Lastly (for DS) is The World Ends With You, a strange action game with role playing tendencies. The setup is that your character, Neku, wakes up in an intersection in Shibuya and finds himself involved in a game between human players and what the game calls "Reapers" (I prefer the Japanese term "shinigami" but whatever). He's forced to team up with another human, Shiki, and together they have to survive seven days of the Reaper's game by completing challenges. This is a weird-ass game, let me tell you. I don't have an issue with the premise or anything like that, but it's quickly evident that the mechanics of playing the game are too damn complicated for their own good. Most of what you do is engage in combat with graffiti spirits come to life. Both you and your partner fight the same enemies at the same time: Shiki on the top screen, and Neku on the bottom. Neku equips magic pins that allow you to draw on the touch screen in different ways to set enemies on fire or shock them with electricity. You have to constantly be tapping and moving him around the arena. At the exact same time you need to be playing a matching game on the top screen to allow Shiki to attack enemies and store up symbols to activate co-operative moves. Oh, and there's this glowing green "puck" that jumps back and forth between them to signify momentum or something. And they share the same life bar. It's bewilderingly complex, though you have access to different levels of AI assistance for your partner. There's also a fashion system in the game where you have to buy clothes and wear appropriate brands dependent on what's trendy in a given area. These brands translate to stat bonuses and impairments. Once you're able to juggle all of these things, the underlying game is pretty simple in structure.

There's much more, so you may want to take a brief break before we continue.

Next, I'd like to talk about Dead Space, which I finally got around to playing. Dead Space is an excellent game, expertly contructed and nearly flawless in execution. It perfects the type of third-person survival horror game I wish Resident Evil 5 could be, if for no other reason than the controls work perfectly. You can move while shooting! Imagine that! But the rest of the game is compellingly consistent, from the art style to the change up in gameplay (zero-G in a vacuum is fantastic), to the choice of making every HUD element an in-game solution so there's no way to pause the action. The story is decent but told extremely well, and the evidence of Event Horizon's influence on the game is obvious and ever-present. I only have a couple of complaints. The first is that many times the solution to a puzzle or course of action is less than clear, which leads to many frustrated deaths (since the game always penalizes failure with death). The second is concerning the sequences where you have to deal with an indestructible enemy. I've had to deal with this type of thing in other games, and I have always ALWAYS hated it. No more of this please.

Which brings us to MadWorld for the Wii. I just beat this yesterday, and in the course of doing so realized something I did not expect: this game is short. Really short. Like, I beat it in 3.5 hours short. So take that into consideration when making a purchase. But despite that it's a good game. The Sin City black-and-white cel-shading look works very well, and the violence on offer is satisfying. MadWorld earns every inch of its M rating. This includes all of the frequent F-bombs dropped by the characters and the glorious comentators (who single-handedly elevate this game to a must buy). It's not a serious game; everything about the violence is over-the-top in a thoroughly comedic way and so many elements, from the Black Baron demonstrations, to the mini-games, to the finishing moves, to the running commentary, are intentionally hilarious. The character designs are excellent as well. Over time the limitations of the combo system become apparent, as you'll be racking up points through the course of the game doing the same exact things (stab a man through the neck with a roadsign, pin his arms with a tire, then throw him into a spiked wall) but there are enough variations available within the timed stages to keep things fresh. The boss fights are spectacular. By far this has been the most fun I've had on my Wii since Super Mario Galaxy.

And now I've just started playing Resident Evil 5. It's too early yet to give a final verdict, but at first glance it seems a lot better off than I thought it would be, which is something. You definitely need to play it with a friend, though.

That's it! If you've made it to the end, massive props whoever you are. Thanks for tolerating this bit of self-indulgence. More to follow! In the meantime I should go do some sketches or something productive. Check this space for another update... eventually.