24/February/2011
I got vouchers for Xtravision around Christmas, and thought I'd be worthwhile actually making use of them, preferably to try other games that I'm interested in but unsure of buying, but hey, trying out movies I wouldn't bother buying can't hurt either. ... can it?
We watched Outcast. I didn't even read the blurb in detail, all I saw was a neat lookin' Resident Evil style claw on the box along with a couple of beardy Irish actors on the images on the back, and I thought, "sold!" Having watched it, I can say it isn't really my thing.
A mother and son move from their caravan to the inner city slums. The boy happens to turn into a monster at night. There's two folks from a strange cult out to find the two and kill them. There's a romance between the boy and a local girl. The mother is frighteningly overbearing. Misery ensues.
It's... an intriguing film, I'll give it that. I was intrigued by the visual direction for its very dark and stark look, focusing on grey and brown earthy colours that give everything a few despondent style with heavy emphasis on darkness, shadow and silhouette... but the rest of the film? Ehhh.
My beef is that the whole thing is just so fucking miserable. Everybody is grouchy, moody, needlessly hostile to everyone they converse with, and just no fun to watch. The acting's fitting for such characters, but the whole story just seems to take place in this orb of unhappiness where everyone's either a joyless fuck or a fuck hit by hard luck. I couldn't help but wonder what any of the characters actually do when they're not on-screen - you don't see anyone partaking in pastimes or going to work or actually doing anything besides being miserable. It's like, gee, what do you guys do for fun around here? Oh, you slit your wrists and then paint the walls with blood? Oh. That's cool. I'm not hanging with you anymore. (yes, that happens in the film. Done in the nude, no less. Tasteful.)
As I said, it is an intriguing film with an engaging story should you settle in with its totally cheerless atmosphere, but it's just not for me, to be frank. It doesn't help that the first half of the film is populated by what feels like an endless stream of yobbos - and only one of them is killed off (after threatening to bludgeon a mentally handicapped kid to death with a pipe. Because that's the best way to show the world what a big man you are.). Not giving me a good incentive to hang around, movie.
On the bright side, I also rented Marvel vs. Capcom 3. I've been quite excited about it! I loved the first one not just because it was a total cheese-fest (if you only need to press two buttons to transform into a giant missile-farting robot with humongous laser cannons, that's my kind of fighting game), but also because I'm a sucker for superheroes and Capcom's backlog, so it's a no-duh that this was exciting me.
Mind you, I'm not really a fighting game person. I've no doubt mentioned this before - I totally respect them in many, many ways. The sheer complexity to the gameplay; the development that must go in to keep them balanced as best as possible; the quick thinking to keep opponents on their toes; the metagame; the rapid-fire control inputs to unleash devastating special attacks; the unsurpassable 2D pixel artwork... I absolutely admire fighting games. I prefer admiring them for afar, though. When playing a fighting game, this is my idea of a good tactic.
Also my idea of a metagame is to call the opponent fat. Rage Quitter 87 might pop in and share the other verbal smackdowns I dropped on him, if we're lucky.
So, no, I have no idea how to play a fighting game properly. I think the only way I got all the endings in the PlayStation version of Marvel vs. Capcom was by mashing my hand over the buttons until the opponent died. Totally pro, yo.
So, Marvel vs. Capcom 3! I was meant to be talking about that, wasn't I?
It's pretty good. I'm no professional when it comes to judging fighting games based on actual merit or things like that, but I'd say it's pretty good. I mean, you beat up dudes, the screen goes haywire, and you can pummel the master of magnetism using a small dog.
Yep. Sounds like a decent fighting game to me.
One of the main reasons I love about the Marvel vs. Capcom series is the deluge of tributes paid to the franchises of both companies - I'm not sure how much enjoyment my dad got out of watching a needlessly epileptic fight between Super Skrull and some nobodies from Devil May Cry (excuse me for not paying attention to Capcom's modern franchises!), but he was impressed just seeing these familiar characters come to life with colourful special moves, especially when the arena was Asgard, complete with the flying Viking ship, while seeing levels paying tribute to Ghosts 'n' Goblins and Final Fight kept me happy. Something for everyone!
The character roster seems nicely balanced, both in the range of fighting styles and niches available, but also in its mixture of modern/popular characters and older/obscure dudes. I'm very happy seeing Haggar and Arthur get their time to shine, and padre was particularly impressed seeing Taskmaster and Super Skrull in action (we both can't wait to get Shuma-Gorath). It does feel a bit strange compared to the original instalments, though - the Capcom side was full of eclectic, colourful and downright strange characters, and now half of them feel look very realistic and down-to-earth. Where's the outrageously stylish fashion of Captain Commando and Strider? It's probably more down to the darker colour palette that the cast doesn't look as colourful (though I'm sure if Wesker were chucked out the colour vs. all-in-black ratio would've been more balanced =P ), but it's just one of those very minor complaints, y'know.
I haven't played Marvel vs. Capcom 2, but I know for sure the six-button control scheme of the original has been simplified, into three attack buttons and one "special attack" button. Ironically, this just confuses me more - so, do I need to hit the special attack button after a quarter-circle, or just a regular attack button? Why do neither buttons do anything after I input the right command? WHAT DOES WHAT. The Simple mode is a bit more understandable to my ape-like brain, though as usual, the difficulty in differentiating what special attack you want bugs me. It's almost a pity, because I've been wanting to finally buckle down and try and learn some basic fighting game commands, and I still can't do anything without the game doing it for me. I'll just blame the controller and move on with my life.
For those who are curious, the characters I'm using most are Spencer, Haggar, She-Hulk, Taskmaster and Super Skrull. I've yet to try out everyone yet, but Spencer's a real knockout - he's got the perfect range, speed and power for my liking, and pulling people straight into your fist is a hoot. I'm tempted to keep Felicia on my team just to abuse her assist attack - if I ever fight someone locally I'm probably just going to abuse that as part of my metagame, just for her grating-yet-cute "later!" every time she finishes it. It's like "hi, I'm Daisy!" levels of cute-annoying.
I'm very, very glad I got renting the game (heck, I would've been happy paying for the session - I'm just glad I rented Outcast for free) - it's basically killed my entire afternoon and evening, and it's a joy to watch. But would I want to buy it? Well... I won't deny I'd love to have it around, but I'm not sure if I would get the most out of it. As I said, I'm pretty freakin' terrible at fighting games (I haven't even bothered with the online multi-player, and I'm not keen on trying - I've got dignity to hold onto!), and while I love playing games to slowly master my skills at them (hence why F-Zero GX remains my favourite racing game), I'm not sure if I'd have the right mindset to get into it. I mean, I like fighting games, but I'm not the kinda person to actually play them much, never mind with other people. It's like playing Snap on your own or something - you sure as hell ain't achieving anything.
I've still got another two nights to play the game before it needs returned. As of this writing, I might just wait until it drops to £10 or something. I'd like to have it, but not quite enough to splash out, y'know.
22/February/2011
Today's observation: I now know there is a site called Awkward Boners. Thank you, Google AutoComplete. I really needed to know that.
(let's see how long it takes before I get even more penile-related spam email!)
10/February/2011
"You, go to hell. Here's your ticket!"
Watched Bio Hunter. This was one of the many anime VHS tapes we had years and years ago (the batch of tapes that made my brother and I major fans of Ultimate Teacher and Cyber City Oedo 808, and also exposed us to the incredibly corny English dub of Laughing Target), but I'd never watched it properly until now. I caught the first scene when ripping it from VHS before I got rid of it, and it's hardly something you forget - a chick and a dude are having sex, and then the woman gets the munchies, so her breasts turn into mouths and chew his arm off. It's the very first scene you see, so you know it's gonna leave an impact.
University professors Koshigaya and Komada, in their off-time, are Biohunters - dudes who romp around finding people who are infected with the "demon virus," and then destroy the virus. Since people infected with the demon virus turn into supernatural monstrosities with horns and tentacles and mini-faces growing out of every orifice, this wouldn't be easy... if it weren't for Komada also being infected with it, and he's got the willpower to keep it under control. Komada happen upon a girl who's being harassed by goons, and the three of them stumble into a mystery surrounding the girl's fortune teller grandfather and the mayor-to-be who's infected with the demon virus. I say it's a mystery but I've basically spoiled the entire plot for you by saying that. Sorry about that.
I was kinda worried that the OVA would be a total sleaze-fest bursting with rape-carnage or something, but mercifully it's not too bad. There's plenty of implied rape, I'm afraid, and every female character who isn't the fortune teller's granddaughter end up brutalised to death by demons (which I guess is fortunate when there's only one other female in the story), and even she gets a tentacle shoved down her gob before the good guys save the day. Tasteful, this is not.
It starts as an intriguing little plot, and it has some entertaining interaction between the two professors to keep things going, but it eventually runs a little dry. The mystery over why the grandfather disappeared and why the goons are after the girl fills the first half, and then once they find the grandfather both riddles are solved, leaving the plot to hang around there for a while before the grandfather and granddaughter are kidnapped, kicking off the final action segment. But since it's had so little time to get a set-up, it feels pretty worthless until the monster mayor and Komada face off, and even that isn't exactly riveting action.Yeah, it's only got 55 minutes to fill, and while you're watching it it isn't that bad, but in hindsight you kinda realise that a lot of the running time feels like a waste. Once the professors have less time to interact and are more AW SNAP THE MAYOR'S A DEMON it's actually less interesting. Huh. Mind you, this might just be because the two have good voice actors. Koshigaya's English voice actor has a really familiar voice, and it turns out he's the voice of Tenchi from the Tenchi Muyo! franchise! This was... rather surprising, mostly because I've only seen like three episodes of the original series years and years ago and could barely remember that. Guy's got a good voice, though, so I'm not complaining.
I admit in the end, the OVA is pretty forgettable. The plot is very thin and the concept of the Biohunters is an interesting one, but feels unexplored - Komada only fights two monsters, for chrissakes! And one of them is in flashback! Koshigaya is relatively light-hearted in comparison to his stoic-as-a-seashell partner, but the whole thing is played very straight. Admittedly, yeah, this stuff can be done serious competently, but the mayor's henchman is a tall ginger-haired guy who intimidates people in the stupidest ways - on his first encounter, he crushes a handful of coins into mush. In his second, he takes a bite out of a crystal ball. He sadly makes no attempt to top this on his next encounter, but unless he ate a whole payphone I don't think anything would have surprised me (he does crush a walkie-talkie with his bare hand, but pffft, everyone learns that in villain school).
There's also a hilarious scene where Komada gets a bomb dropped on him, and rather than being a horribly mangled mess, he's perfectly fine, except for his left hand getting blown clean off. Not a fuckin' scratch on it! In fact, it's blown off so literally that it flies off and grabs onto the landing struts of the bad guys' helicopter. Yeah, it's revealed that he can remotely control his hand with demon powers, and it is an important plot element because it frees the girl and then gets inside her (by kind of melting into her flesh - nothing sexual), and later bursts through her chests and into the bad guy's heart, crushing it. But, seriously, the script writers couldn't think of a better way of getting the hand cut off and into the enemy base besides dropping a fucking bomb on it? (I actually thought the opening scene where the guy has his hand munched off by barbaric boobs was the origins of Komada getting infected and foreshadowing to his easy hand removal, but I checked again and it's a completely different guy. Wasted opportunity, fellas!)
What impressed me was how good looking the OVA was. It's animated by Madhouse, the Black Lagoon fellas, and it's really high-quality stuff. The character designs are clean and concise while the monsters are totally alien and barbaric, full of strange, twitching movements. There's some great human-to-monster transformations, and even scenes like a guy reaching for a gun just out of reach are animated beautifully. There's a real sense of style and atmosphere to the scenes, and the music really helps add to that. There's not enough plot, action or even unintentionally hilarious antics to really recommend watching the movie, but if anything, watch it for the animation.
In unrelated news, I was thinking that if I ever get around to covering the Bomberman Jetters anime, rather than just whining the dudes who fan-subbed it into handing over the original unaltered video, I should just buy the ludicrously expensive DVDs. Why? Because I'm just that dedicated.
Then I realised that the second boxset is being sold on Amazon Japan for 85,000¥. Which is approximately EIGHT HUNDRED FUCKING POUNDS.
Um.
No thanks.
Well, I'd best brush up on my nagging skills.
Today's observation: Life would be so much easier if Japan just reissued things once in a while.
08/February/2011
Pictured: The aftermath of having to babysit a ten-year-old whose family doesn't believe in video games.
05/February/2011
Possibly due to his new-found love for OutRun 2, my brother has had arcades on the mind lately, and this morning we decided to head over to Yorkgate and check out its sorely neglected arcade and bingo hall. We weren't expecting much at all; we were well-prepared to just mosey around it for two minutes to gaze over the wares, inevitably see nothing of interest, and then just go home. One game shoved away in the corner gave us good reason to hang around. Why?
Because it was THE LOST WORLD ARCADE GAME
YYYYEEEESSSS
In the off-chance I've never stated it, I have very, very fond memories of playing this game back in Spain about thirteen years ago. The arcade in Porta Ventura back then had this game (and Puzzle Bobble but dude you can buy the PC version for £1 in Toys R Us, it ain't got obscurity value) and my brother and I would go out of our way to play it every day we were there. We sunk so much Spanish currency into that thing. Quite justifiably, because it's a pretty rockin' lightgun game with some great intense sequences and a few elements that just mix things up a little. We watched a few clips of it on YouTube a few weeks ago (because that's precisely the sort of boring things we get up to) and couldn't help but be a little wistful. The game is nearly fifteen years old, has never had a home port and the chances of it receiving one now are very unlikely. Would we ever play the game again?
And then, holy shit, there it is in Yorkgate. That's not far at all! Heck, it's my usual movie-going spot. I would ask myself how on earth I could've missed it for so long, but given how modern arcades never exactly have much to offer, I think that speaks for itself.
It's still a fantastic game. I'm not exactly qualified in judging lightgun games, but it still remains my favourite, not just because it's so easy to pick up and play, but I'm a sucker for the Jurassic Park license. It's pretty tough! We were playing on Easy mode and we were still having a hard time, though that might just be the fact there was no on-screen crosshair, and it's hard to judge where you're aiming when we're both seated at angles. There's a fair few segments I'd forgotten, most notably a part where you drive through a herd of brontosaurus (I'm a bit of a stickler for calling them apatosaurus, but the movie calls them brontosaurus, right?) and have to shoot their necks, tails and... pooping anuses so they don't flatten you. Given my love for all things bodily functions, I'm surprised that wasn't one of the defining moments of the game when I played it long ago.
Mostly because I hadn't much small change, we limited ourselves to three credits each. I was really hoping we could've reached the final stage, but Steve died on the fourth level and I was munched upon by the chameleon dinosaur boss. Yeah, there's a chameleon dinosaur. There's also a huge fuck-off crocodile boss that tries to eat you, and in 2-player it can actually eat one of the players, forcing the other to save them before they get gobbled. It's pretty hilarious, actually.
Right next to it was another SEGA lightgun game (I think the only lightgun game that wasn't a SEGA title was Time Crisis 4, actually), The Ocean Hunter. We only sunk a credit each into it, and holy crap, is it terrifying! You play as a diver with a funky jetski-harpoon-gun thing and basically annihilate all sea life you can find. The humans have an almost cutesy anime-esque look to them, but everything is detailed and realistic (by 1998 arcade standards), which is particularly unsettling when it comes to the bosses, which are humongous, fang-filled monstrosities that eat NPC divers for breakfast.
Have I ever mentioned my irrational fear of water levels?
The first level has you entering a sunken ship, and the characters explain that something big is lurking inside. You naturally have to go through a few waves of killer sharks and barracudas before it shows up, but the suspense was really killing me - quite often I was just closing my eyes and firing aimlessly just in case something shit-your-pants-scary popped up. It turned out to just be a giant octopus, but the second level made up for it with a fucking huge shark. Before each level there's a wanted poster with a crude image of the boss, as if an image on a pirate map, and it showed the boss looking like some dorky cartoon fish. Instead it turns to be a totally humongous shark that's constantly trying to tear your face off and breaking through walls and all manner of freaky crap.
Water levels freak me out is what I'm saying.
It's not bad either, and it's actually very nice looking. Rather than a lightgun it's got the jetski-harpoon-gun mounted on a pivot, so you can rotate and angle it to aim at the screen, which is pretty neat; plus it's got a really nice meaty rumble whenever you rapid-fire, which is always appreciated. If it's still there next time I might need to sink a few more coins into it.
Then we cooled off with some OutRun 2. This is the second time I've played it in arcades, and having played the Xbox 360 version a lot in between, it's kind of disorientating how different the drifting and turning physics are. You got a less restrictive turning arc in the arcade version, which is nice, but I couldn't wrap my head around the drifting - every time I tried (in various ways) it just turned my car totally horizontal and made my speed drop to nearly zilch. If anything, at least I could drift - Steve was stuck with a gammy cabinet that had unresponsive brakes and a gear stick that could only go up, not down. Still, tremendous fun. You don't know how badly I wanted to start singing along to Night Flight.
I also played The Fast And The Furious. Um. Yeah. Let's leave it at that.
I'm very tempted to find the manager of the place and say, if he's ever getting rid of that Lost World cabinet, he can contact me. No idea where on earth I would keep a giant two-seater arcade cabinet in the off-chance I ever paid 2k monies for one, but I would hate to have it slip away, y'know?
02/February/2011
My brother is moving away soonish (I'll miss you!) and thus has burdened me with looking after his SNES and Dreamcast. It seems to be a trait in my family (well, probably just my father's side) that we hate throwing out old rubbish; sometimes it is literally rubbish (why the hell do I still haven the broken-off zips from old coats?), but the SNES is a valuable piece of nostalgia for us. It was our first proper games console (if we pretend that people used the ZX Spectrum for office tools and whatnot), signalling both the start of our love for video games, but also our totally irrational bias towards Nintendo. Yeah, we can play all the games we want on the Wii or the PC, complete with a close-enough imitation of the SNES controller, but my brother still has a fondness for playing stuff on the original hardware. In theory I'm the same, but in practise... hmm.
I recently picked up an AV cable for the SNES, partly so I don't have to muck about with the aerial cable every time I want to use it and partly on request by my brother. It's quite a sight to see the ol' games played off their original cartridge again and without a hilariously bad RF reception. It's, uh, not so fun realising that all my controllers are kind of busted.
Seriously, I've got six SNES controllers, and only two of them have reasonably-responsive Start buttons... and one of those two is a hideously impractical arcade controller. That's terrible! One of them is totally busted and has been for at least fifteen years, while another, an intriguing six-button controller (which I guess is good for fighting games, but man, the original face buttons are repositioned rather strangely) has a busted D-Pad. I loathe it when controllers use soft material for certain buttons - my PlayStation controllers also suffer from unresponsive Start buttons, and the smooth 'n' snug texture the GameCube controllers use for its sticks just so happens to be a total filth magnet. There's one of them I'm a little afraid to even touch because the C-Stick has turned a rather mankey shade of yellow-brown.
MAN LOOK AT ALL THE GAUGES AN' SHIT THIS MUST BE GREAT FOR KRUSTY'S SUPER FUN HOUSE
So, yeah. It's not very fun reclaiming the SNES when I've a mere two controllers with full functionality, the rest of which I kind of need to rotate my thumb on the Start button in hopes of finding its sweet spot. Hopefully once his life quiets down I can dump this thing back on him again. I don't think it'd be too hard selling a SNES, but selling one with four wonky controllers? Hmm. Then again, it did surprise how much support is available for a twenty year old console - there's all manner of replacement leads and parts, including replacement response pads for inside the controller! I'd be happy to just donate controllers to places like that so they could patch them up and sell them, though Steve would probably chastise me for throwing away his favourite QuickShot pad. Yeah, it hasn't worked in fifteen years, but it's got a red D-Pad!
I've been tempted to also gett an AV cable for the Dreamcast, but I'm wondering if I should bother. I set it up last week just to see if it worked, and as always, the stupid thing is playing funny buggers with me, refusing to read discs. I have a strange fondness for the Dreamcast and mild admiration for its efforts, but not even rose-tinted glasses can hide the fact that the actual console is a temperamental little shit. Did I ever tell you the story of us waiting months for the Dreamcast to arrive via mail order, playing it for half an hour, and then it broke on us, forcing us to send it off and wait until a repair or replacement arrived? It's a funny story. Not as funny as RQ87 telling me how he's gone through like six of them because they're so terribly produced. Now that is hilarious.
I really should try and figure out how to emulate the stupid thing. Or better yet, SEGA should just rerelease ChuChu Rocket! on a sensible platform. That'd solve all our problems.
01/February/2011
It's headlines like this that make me pay attention to the world around me. Thank you, Yahoo! News.
I wonder if I should ever bother with those "what have I been up to?" summaries when there's a new entry after some absence, because lately it boils down to "bog all." I've been playing Castlevania HD, Left 4 Dead, Pocket Bomberman, Doritos Crash Course, Panic Bomber and several other games. Yeah, but have I done anything productive? Well, er...
That reminds me, I did start work on two blog entries that didn't go anywhere. I still have that unfinished Zebraman review sitting around (where I compare it to Jingle All The Way. It'll all make sense when it's published!) and I wrote a bit of a ramble on Pokémon Rumble, a strangely intriguing WiiWare game that's probably just the way I want the series to be, if it weren't for a number of letdowns and limitations (which I'll probably write up as a General Writing sometime). I'm mostly spending my time gathering resources and working on the upcoming redesign for the Bomberman Shrine Place, which I hope will really expand the site in terms of gloriously nerdy information. I want it to be so nerdy that you start to feel embarrassed for me. If the redesigned Bomberman site doesn't make you weep for the man who's wasting his life researching obscure elements of the Bomberman mythos, then I'm doing it wrong.
Let me know if my attempt at hyping it up is working or not.
Watched Kung Fu Panda. As yet another Dreamworks "wahey i'm a talking animal doesn't that fuel so many pop culture jokes" movies (I really wish I knew where my Robots review was so I could quote the exact phrase. I'm fussy like that, see.), it's on the same level as their other stuff. As an animated kung-fu movie with all manner of crazy acrobatic ass-kicking (with fuzzy animals), it's pretty rockin'!
Po's a panda who loves kung fu (you don't say!) and works in a lowly noodle stall, but through creative abuse of fireworks is discovered to be the dragon warrior, the local kung fu master believing him to have hidden potential. The other kung fu dudes aren't quite so willing to believe it, but the masters do a bit of soul searching (after hearing one of their old students is now on a murderous rampage for revenge, of course) and Po goes through a few training montages and everything works out all right.
This is why I'll never be a DVD copywriter.
I remember the trailers for this playing up nothing but the comedy angle, featuring every possible shot of Po falling on his head and so on, and it didn't exactly entice me into seeing it. The film doesn't quite blatter you over the head with comedy the way Madagascar does, but there's enough instances of people falling down stairs to keep my dad laughing. The plot doesn't offer many surprises (it does have a villain with an intriguing motivation, at least) and the comedy is what you'd expect from a Dreamworks flick, but where the movie really shines are in its action sequences, and in the beautiful art direction.
You know chop sockey movies? Wire-fu flicks? Bop-a-lot films? Yeah, it's like that. Except with CGI animals.
Hmm.
This is also why I'll never make it as a professional reviewer either.
(Man, I really need to get back into writing short stories and whatnot. What happened to my talent for linguistic descriptions?)
(Actually it's probably the fact that I'm really tired. I should've just left this until tomorrow.)
My failed attempt at elaboration aside (I was looking forward to waxing poetic on all the beautiful scenery!) Kung Fu Panda was a surprisingly good watch, and now I'm interested in watching Wall-E again to see which is the better film. Because comparing a martial arts film to a movie about fat dudes in space is such a balanced comparison.
Also, more for my own reference (I like to keep track of what I've watched!), I watched Solomon Kane a few weeks ago. My brother's a big Robert E. Howard fan and was too incensed by the trailers to consider watching it. I'm not so familiar with the character, but I've read Howard's stuff, and the movie really captures his sense of storytelling very well. The ending was a bit crap and I feel there could've been more exposure to the mystical elements, like the weird mirror monsters, but it wasn't a bad watch.