People who are old enough to remember games from the early 90s all the way back to the 80s will know of these kinds of “brick breaking” games. For those who don’t know, the idea is to use a paddle and a ball to break bricks on the screen until there are none left. It’s a pretty simple concept which is why it was so popular back in the day, however AlphaBounce takes some inspiration from Puzzle Quest by adding an RPG element to the mix.

I wasn’t aware of this until I took some time to write up the Game Spotlight, but it turns out AlphaBounce is a pretty popular web based flash game before it became a DSi title. From the footage I’ve seen of the web version, it looks like it’s not nearly as fun as the DSi version which features crisp visuals and some very crazy gameplay.

I won’t bother to go into the story since it’s inconsequential for the most part, however it does serve to set up the interesting space based gameplay and the many power-ups along the way. You’re encouraged to explore the surrounding space and planets in order to gain more power-ups that allow you to conquer the varying types of bricks and enemies you encounter. The more you explore, the more powerful you will become and the farther you can travel.

The game boasts 25 million+ levels and 100 upgrades/power-ups… of course, if you don’t want to go after everything, you don’t have to. In any case, it’s a very well made game for those who want to waste a little time while travelling on public transport on the way to work or school or on long trips to wherever…. I do wonder if anyone has actually come close to clearing all of those 25 million+ levels… it’d suck to be compulsive completionist and play this game.

“Look. I’m a cleaner. I can feel no remorse from seeing a dead body. To me, it’s merely cold, rotting flesh.”
— Garcian Smith

I have previously mentioned killer7 in my entry for No More Heroes so it seemed only natural to talk more about the game since NMH has gained Suda51 a lot more fans than he used to have. Of course, as I said in that previous entry, killer7 is a different kind of game than killer7 and although it contains Suda51′s unique styles, it is in many ways alien to No More Heroes…

“Shit! There’s more than 14. Those bastards are breeding…”
— Dan Smith

killer7 was developed by Grasshopper Manufacture and is one of Suda51′s most complex works, however to ensure that this game was even made required the backing of Shinji Mikami and Capcom. The game itself takes some getting used to as you enter it not knowing exactly what to expect… at least that’s the way I felt when I first played the game. I didn’t know who Suda51 was at the time and I can’t remember exactly what persuaded me to buy the game, but whatever it was, I’m glad I did.

“I’m not a monster, it’s only a mask.”
— Mask de Smith

Cel-shading seems to have been all the rage with the sixth-generation of home consoles. Jet Set Radio, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Viewtiful Joe, XIII and killer7 are only a handful of games that bear their own forms of cel-shaded visuals from that generation. Developers quickly realised the potential for the style and we’ve enjoyed the benefits of it over the years. Of course, the cel-shading is only one of the elements that make up what is a very strange game.

Let me explain just how strange it is…

The controls of killer7 will seem strange to most, going by the GameCube version, you press A to go forward, B to turn around and R to go into first person view so you can shoot. The whole game is set on rails, however you have the ability of reaching junctions where you use the control stick to determine which path you want to follow. However, despite the inclusion of these intersections, the game is strictly linear with the only true decision left up to the player at the end of the game.

“I’ve changed my makeup, did you notice? Ah, men. They never notice, these kinda things.”
— Kaede Smith

While there is a PlayStation 2 version of the game, it had many limitations compared to its GameCube counterpart including slower load times, lower frame-rates and the lack of a big A button… I know, it seems like a trivial thing to not have a big A button, but if and when you play killer7, you’ll understand exactly why it’s so important. The game was made specifically with the GameCube controller in mind with the PlayStation 2 version being a port.

“Wow, it’s the handsome men! Awesome!”
— Con Smith

Without going into spoilers, the group known as “killer7″ is made up of seven of the worlds most powerful professional assassin’s under the command of a mysterious man named Harman Smith. Garcian Smith leads the group in the field and has the ability to revive his fallen comrades; Dan Smith is the resident badass of the group and an instant favourite of many; Mask de Smith is a former wrestler of the Lucha libre who still uses his powerful wrestling moves to great effect; Kaede Smith is the only female of the group and has the ability to defeat barriers by slitting her wrist and spraying her blood everywhere; Coyote Smith is the South American thief that can get his way past any padlock; Con Smith is the youngest of the group and also happens to be blind; finally, Kevin Smith is an albino who doesn’t speak, uses throwing knives and is able to turn invisible…

All of what I have told you so far is only what the game wants you to know at the beginning. Just as every other game created by Suda51 and Grasshopper Manufacture, there’s a lot more to it… and most of it will just weird you out in different ways.

“Pfff… You’re fucked.”
— Coyote Smith

The story takes place in “the future” in an era where world peace has been declared and there are no nuclear weapons. Despite this era of supposed peace, a terrorist organisation known as the Heaven Smiles wreaks havoc on the world and threatens to destroy this peace. The group known as killer7 are the only ones who have the ability to oppose the Heaven Smiles and their leader Kun Lan. As you discover early on in the game, there is a mysterious connection between Harman Smith and Kun Lan that spans beyond any human concepts… trying to explain any more than that will be pointless since most of it will just fuck your mind up anyway.

“…”
— Kevin Smith

There are a lot of people who passed up the chance to play killer7, but I feel that if it weren’t for the small measure of success that this game had achieved then I don’t think that No More Heroes would have been made such as it is. Also, Suda51 has expressed some interest in returning in some way to killer7… whether it will be a port of the game for Wii or a kind of sequel, who knows… the possibility is unfortunately very slim, but I’d like to see it happen so that more people can experience just what a fuck up game this really is… (laughs)

“Good night, child. It’s past your bedtime.”
— Harman Smith

I’ve been trying to decide how I should be going about the Game Spotlight for these two games. They’ve been created by a developer that has released an odd array of games, led by a man who is brilliant yet ignored by most, released on a console many gamers don’t really take seriously.

My first encounter with Goichi Suda (aka Suda51) was on the GameCube through a game called “killer7″… without going into too much detail (we can save that for another Game Spotlight), there are those who have studied the game in intricate detail, even writing entire essays relating to what the game was really about. No, seriously, you can have a look for yourself if you look around hard enough… basically, the game was a socio-political look at the relationship between the east and west… it’s riveting stuff.

No More Heroes, on the other hand, does not deal with such SERIOUS BUSINESS subject matter. In fact, what it does deal with is very close to our hearts… video games. What the folks over at Grasshopper Manufacture have created with No More Heroes is an observation of video games, the state of video games in the world today, and the types of people who play these games. Just as there have been walls of text written up for killer7, the same has been done for No More Heroes and its sequel… and it’s just a whole lot of outrageously silly fun at the expense… of everything.

Both games also drip with pop culture references, everything from sci-fi to anime, video games, wrestling, music, movies and so on. Some are more subtle than others and I’m sure there are a lot that are just fly right over peoples heads.

No More Heroes

Before anyone even knew of the games existence, the project titled “Heroes” was originally planned for an exclusive release on the Xbox 360. However, early into its development the project jumped ship and became a Wii game. A few days after E3 2006, the first trailer for Heroes was released… and man was it quite the interesting trailer, complete with an interesting art style akin to killer7, what appeared to be a lightsaber, characters with outrageous names and horrendously bad voice acting. Fans of killer7 looked at this trailer and started to interpret it as a statement between the flashy HD consoles (360 and PS3) vs Wii. In the trailer, Travis Touchdown famously utters the line “Your shining armour and fine words won’t get you anywhere!“… awesomely lame.

Who is Travis Touchdown? Well, he’s you, me, and just about every other geek out there in our world. On the surface the story of No More Heroes is a simple one. Geek buys a “beam katana” off of eBay; geek becomes an assassin. After making his first kill he strikes a deal to become the number 1 assassin so he can bone a hawt blonde French chick as his prize… of course, it’s not really that simple.

A common thread that binds a lot of games developed by Grasshopper Manufacture is that they all seem to have a streak of brilliance through what is otherwise an awkward set of gameplay mechanics. Most would look at these games and see them as half baked; missing the mark of what makes a game playable. These complaints are valid in a way, but I find that a lot of what seems restrictive about these games is in themselves a message to the player about what this game really is about.

For example, in No More Heroes, the most engaging and thrilling parts are always the boss battles and the combat itself. This is where No More Heroes shines and it’s the time when players truly feel the joy of gaming. On the other hand, the overworld of Santa Destroy is dull, lifeless and a pain in the ass to make your way through. To get through the streets of Santa Destroy, you use the Schpeltiger, Travis’ “super large scooter” that resembles an X-Wing and is as big as a Y-Wing, is an awesome machine but difficult to control and not the most practical way of getting around Santa Destroy. There are many elements like this that make up the game, but they don’t appear to be lacking because of laziness, but rather on purpose.

As I’ve mentioned before, a lot of people have their own theories and have written up walls of text about their theories all around the interweb. I’ll link you to a few of them that I’ve found at the end of the entry since they’re all pretty interesting reads… if you’ve played the game, of course.

So, you either hate it and don’t get what anyone sees in it, or you like it because it has some fun moments scattered through it, or you love it because you feel there’s something else there that’s more than the sum of its parts.

No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise

Recently in Japan, a version of the game called “No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise” has been ported over to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 with HD visuals and a mode called “Very Sweet” where all of the female characters wear much skimpier outfits than they usually do in the standard game. I don’t really know how I feel about the making of this port mostly because Suda51 and Grasshopper Manufacture had no involvement in its creation. True, the original concept for the game was planned as a 360 release, however it evolved since then and became something entirely different.

The motion controls in No More Heroes is what gives the game its fun factor. Performing wrestling moves and finishers through the commands that appear on screen by any other means seems pointless. In fact, No More Heroes 2 has the option of letting players use the Wii Classic Controller instead of the usual Wii Remote + Nunchuk setup as an alternative… it’s nowhere near as good. When you’re in the heat of a great boss battle, the motion controls give it that extra push that makes you feel great when you knock the boss back and perform a critical hit or a wrestling move on them… but speaking of No More Heroes 2…

No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle

I honestly didn’t expect it when the first trailer for the game was revealed. I mean, I wanted MORE No More Heroes, but felt that it wasn’t a possibility since, at the time, Suda51 had not made a sequel for any of his games. So, I’m very thankful for the existence of No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle. I wanted more and was given exactly what I wanted.

The funny thing about it is that Suda51 himself stated that the first No More Heroes was intended to be a stand alone game and that he had no plans for a sequel at all. Even funnier is the fact that at the end of the first game, in its “true” ending sequence it shows “To be continued” written much like the way it was written at the end of Back to the Future… For those of you who don’t actually know why that’s funny, it’s because the first Back to the Future movie was intended to be a stand alone movie with no plans for any sequels. It wasn’t till the movie was released and became an instant hit that the plans for a sequel were ever thought of… the “To be continued” text at the end of the first movie was just a tease for the audience to make them think something more was coming when, at the time, it wasn’t true… I love it.

In NMH2, the story continues from the first… but what exactly is the story of No More Heroes? While it is fun to have these characters die in absurd ways as their blood splatters everywhere, there’s more to it than that. Is the quest to become number 1 really what this is about in the first? Is the quest for revenge the true plot in the second? I don’t think so, and many others don’t either. If you hadn’t realised that there was more going on than what was literally being shown on screen in the first game, you certainly will in the second.

I enjoyed the combat gameplay in the first game quite a lot and somehow they managed to improve it immensely in the second game. I haven’t really gone back to the first game to compare just exactly how things were changed to see whether these changes were big changes or subtle ones, but whatever they did made the whole experience a hell of a lot more fun. Of course, the biggest addition to the game that added the most to the experience were the 8-bit mini-games.

I’m sure a lot of people are getting sick of mini-game collections in games these days, and in a way, NMH2 is making a statement about just that… but at the same time, the mini-games that are a part of this game are mind-blowingly good. I would go on and on just about these games, however I’ve decided that to try to cut this entry down a little since it’s become so long, I’ll post up a separate entry talking exclusively about the 8-bit games that appear in NMH2.

The only unfortunate part about this game is the fact that it’s much too short. The first game was a little longer since you had to do a little more to earn money so you could progress to the next ranked battle, but in the second game you can just continue on whenever you wanted. I did take my time and earned enough money to buy all of the beam katana’s as well as complete all of the revenge missions, but still… I just breezed through the game in a day and that was that. I absolutely love the game, but I think I may have loved it a little too quickly…

Much like the end of the first game, there doesn’t appear to be anything to suggest that there will be a sequel in the future. Suda51 has suggested that their may be a sequel if enough people want it and that it would appear on Nintendo next home console. If there is a No More Heroes 3, will it be centered on Travis Touchdown or is this really the end of his story?

Whatever happens, these two games have been one hell of a ride.

Some interesting reads…

As mentioned above many times… there are quite a lot of people who like to write walls of text (including me looking at the size of this entry) about No More Heroes. Here are some of those articles that I could find for this entry, but I’m sure there are more out there.

No More Heroes related articles

• No More Heroes is not punk
• What ‘No More Heroes’ Really Means

No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle related articles

• Analyzing No More Heroes 2, part 1: The bosses
• Analyzing No More Heroes 2, part 2: The bosses, part 2
• What NMH 2: Desperate Struggle really means, part 1
• What NMH 2: Desperate Struggle really means, part 2

Damn, long entry is long. I really didn’t intend things to get this long… plus this entry has taken me a few days to write, destroy, rewrite, rinse and repeat… the Game Spotlight entries are more about shedding light on games some people may have missed for whatever reason. Sure, I do end up talking about some games that everyone and their dog have bought at times, but the Game Spotlight is really meant for games such as this… ones that shouldn’t be ignored, but are… unfortunately.

The Wind Waker was a shock to Zelda fans when it was first revealed. Its cartoonish art style didn’t seem to go down very well initially, however after the ranting was silenced and people actually played the game, they realised it was one hell of a game and that the art style itself had a lot to do with why it was so great. I’m personally glad that Nintendo didn’t take what people had to say initially to heart, because the art style of The Wind Waker has lived on and is present in The Minish Cap, Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks.

From the trend, it looks as if the younger Toon Link has become the official Link of handheld Zelda games while the elder, more serious looking Link is seeing his tour of duty only on home consoles. Going even further, it looks as if the two Zelda titles for the Nintendo DS has Nintendo expanding on The Wind Waker timeline, much like Twilight Princess expanded upon the Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask timeline…

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

Unlike the first time Nintendo showed off The Wind Waker to the masses, the masses were pleased when they saw that Toon Link would return for the first Zelda DS game because returning with Toon Link would be The Wind Waker’s charm… or so we hoped… From the very first moment the prologue of the game shows you that this Link is in fact the same Hero of Winds from The Wind Waker, even chronicling his adventures from the Wind Waker in a very nice way… however, Phantom Hourglass doesn’t actually transfer over much of the charm The Wind Waker had… but enough of it.

Link, Zelda (aka Tetra) and her pirate crew are back… which is awesome. However Link is quickly separated from most of the familiar Wind Waker characters early on. The new characters of Phantom Hourglass are pretty standard and nothing much to write about… until you meet him! Linebeck! He is single-handedly the best part of Phantom Hourglass for me… the first time Link meets him, Linebeck ends up picking Link up and shaking him senseless… the man was not afraid of child abuse and not afraid to talk big about himself.

By this point in time, we’re all pretty familiar with what the DS can do and it’s no surprise that Phantom Hourglass has you controlling Link using the touchscreen. Controlling Link feels nice and tight and the gestures you make with the stylus to allow Link to attack with his sword as well as performing rolls are done very well… though at times it can be a bit of a hassle trying to control Link and see where you’re going since your hand ends up being in the way of the screen.

Sailing also returns to Zelda, though this time it’s a more restricted experience than you would’ve hoped for. You plot a course on the map using your stylus and then off you go on-rails following the course you had laid out. It may not give you anywhere near the sense of freedom that The Wind Waker gave, however I think it worked out pretty well for itself with Phantom Hourglass.

Phantom Hourglass is an enjoyable game, but definitely not among my favourite Zelda games. The inclusion of The Wind Waker crew as well as the addition of Linebeck carried the story along for me, and the touchscreen controls and clever little gameplay mechanics were enjoyable. I’m glad we were given the chance to see where the Hero of Winds ended up after The Wind Waker.

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

The first glimpse of Spirit Tracks, for me, weren’t altogether good. In fact, the first thing I thought when seeing the footage of Link riding a train across Hyrule was that someone over at the development team was taking the on-rails concept introduced in Phantom Hourglass’s sailing element a bit too literally… honestly, I didn’t really enjoy Spirit Tracks all that much and feel it’s one of the worst Zelda games to be made so far…

My reasoning is that while Phantom Hourglass was able to use the novelty of the DS to its advantage, the same old tricks won’t work twice and Spirit Tracks is just the same old tricks recycled in a new game. Sure, it expands The Wind Waker timeline into the future and explains how the Hero of Winds, Zelda and her crew founded a new Hyrule… that’s all nice and everything… but this game really didn’t have much else. The new things it did include ended up being more of a nuisance than anything else.

The first nuisance is the whole train concept. The concept itself seems like a very fun idea, and in my mind it also does seem pretty fun… however, in practice the whole train track idea just served to slow down the pace of the game and curse the game every time you saw one of those bomb trains coming towards you. Since you were in a train there really wasn’t much you could do aside from going backward and forward and following the tracks laid out on the map.

The second nuisance is the dreaded Pan Flute… give me an Ocarina any day compared to the hell I had to go through with that Pan Flute. Most of the tunes you have to play throughout the game are pretty simple, but there are certain moments where you have to learn key songs to make new spirit tracks appear… There were times when I ended up not playing the game for a couple of weeks because I kept on trying to play the song and kept failing. This is the most I’ve ever failed at something in a game ever… Blow into the DS microphone and slide the pan flute using the stylus on the touchscreen to play the right notes… sounds simple… in reality it’ll make you want to throw your DS into the wall. Even worse is trying to play this game on any form of public transport. As soon as you get up to a part that requires the pan flute you’ll have to save and wait till you get to a quieter location to continue.

Playing Spirit Tracks is an exhausting and disappointing experience for many reasons. With games you enjoy, you don’t mind that they end up taking longer than expected to finish because you don’t really want it to end. I’ve found that Spirit Tracks is the opposite for me… it just keeps on going when I want it to end so I can get it over with already!

For those of you who remember Stunts (aka 4D Sports Driving), just the mere mention of the name will bring back a lot of great memories of the track editor, racing against those crazy AI opponents, the strange glitches and trying to get yourself to ricochet off an obstacle and fly hundreds of metres into the air… For those of you who don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, prepare to be schooled…

Like many other DOS games of the time, it had killer music… though not much of it, only the intro and start menu from what I can remember. It’s the kind of music that you immediately remember when you hear it and associate it to this classic game… in fact, here’s a YouTube video to highlight exactly what I mean…

The game is a pretty simple concept… you have fast cars, you race them around a track with obstacles, such as jumps and loops, against a timer or a computer controlled opponent. There were a number of preset tracks and a selection of real world cars to choose from including the Lamborghini Countach, Porsche 911 Carrera 4 and Honda NSX… though don’t expect Gran Turismo realism out of them… this was a DOS game after all.

Going up against the timer was pretty fun, but nowhere near as fun or as crazy as challenging the computer controlled opponents. When going head to head against the computer, you’re actually able to choose from a number of profiles to race against… basically just a more fun way of setting the difficulty level of the AI. Although, and it may just be misguided memories from back then, I’m pretty sure the computer player’s personality would change depending on which profile you chose for the opponent. For example, one profile would go absolutely nuts, swerving all over the place if you passed him and took the lead… but another profile would drive more aggressively and end up taking back the lead in what has to be hax driving.

Of course, the best part of Stunts came from its track editor. I remember I used to spend hours making up the wackiest tracks with the most stupid obstacles until I eventually discovered that you could send your car flying into the air if you crashed a certain way… so then I spent hours created tracks that would allow me to fly as high into the air as possible…. I think I remember doing that with San Francisco Rush: Extreme Racing on the N64 too…

It would be truly awesome if this game was remade… it’s the perfect time for a Stunts revival with people swapping track data and seeing crazier and crazier tracks being built and conquered. In fact, this is such an awesome game, I think people should have a copy…

• Download Stunts (For members only)

So how does this revamped HD version stand up to the original? It seems like a stupid question considering the fact that crisp visuals, solid frame-rates and online support are all a very big plus for the game… but as I have been playing through Perfect Dark, I have been noticing some small factors that seem oddly different… or just plain MISSING from the Nintendo 64 version.

It’s funny how the XBLA version of Perfect Dark is a prime example of a game viewed through nostalgia goggles. You remember a really old game that you thought looked completely awesome and superior to anything else out there. In your mind, it’s the same way, you’ve convinced yourself that the said game is still the premium in many ways… of course, if you ever get around to popping that ye olden game back in and taking it for a spin you end up screaming “MY EYES! THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!!”… reality sets in and you see how blurry and horrible everything is since you’ve experienced much better visuals and audio over the years.

4J Studios, the folks who have recreated this N64 classic for XBLA have pretty much taken those figurative nostalgia goggles and made them a reality. Of course it’s not a perfect representation of what we remember, there are still a few flaws…

The biggest flaw at this point in time are the controls. I still have my copy of Perfect Dark for the N64 and FIVE different N64 controllers, all with varying degrees of wear and tear. I have to say honestly that my most used and closest to death N64 controller still handles better than the 360 controls do. My preferred control scheme for Perfect Dark N64 was 1.2 (using the C-buttons to move and the analog stick to look) and I could easily perform head-shots with ease with auto-aim turned off. On the other hand with the 360 controller this is an extremely difficult task to perform and can be a real hindrance in Secret Agent and Perfect Agent difficulties.

Of course, this can and will be easily fixed with a simple update to the game, but I still feel that the controls should’ve been one of the most important points to consider in the making of this game so it’s strange that we have to start off with such loose controls… I mean, if you’re the kind of player that simply relies on auto-aim for everything, it’s no big deal… but at this point in time, anyone and everyone who plays FPS games hates the thought of having auto-aim assist them.

It’s actually amazing how familiar this game feels, yet you still get a feeling that some things just don’t feel quite right. The biggest example I can cite about some of these “inaccuracies” stem from certain effects that occur in the original N64 version but are missing from the XBLA version. For example the ocular holograph display device that Joanna wears in the N64 version is fully animated complete with wiring effects and display refresh are all missing from the XBLA version. There are also a few other smaller effects that seemed to be missing or overlooked, and interestingly some camera zoom effects have been taken out and replaced with simple camera movements.

Oh, and the lighting in the game can blind you very easily. If you thought the lighting in the original version of the game was annoying then you’re in for a horrific time in the XBLA version. There were times when I purposefully shot out the lights in some areas just so I could see where the hell I was going.

I also have to say that some of the updated textures are a little strange… for one thing, I don’t think any of us really wanted to see Elvis’ butt crack and weird wrinkled alien face… though Jo’s updated face is pretty hawt. I also like the way they kept the fist hands and no lip movements to sync with the voice acting (as it should be for a game this old), though I find it strange that they’d add a little curl to Mr. Blondes hair when in the N64 version it seemed more like a grown out buzz cut. Another very noticeable change are the faces of the enemy… I’m assuming the new faces are members of the dev team from 4J Studios.

Finally, the online component, while being a welcome inclusion still seems to need a bit of work. So far I’ve only tried counter-op which was a horrible lag filled experience, though I’m sure the reason for this was because I’m in Australia connecting with someone in the US or Europe. I’ve looked around the net and found that there have been quite a number of people complaining about lag during co-op and counter-op online play. Hopefully this along with the controls will be fixed in the upcoming update… I have a feeling that a lot of people are avoiding the harder difficulty settings and online play because things aren’t as good as they should be for now.

In the end, it is what it is, a very old game with practical nostalgia goggles attached. Fans of the original will be the ones to appreciate the XBLA version the most but I still feel that folks who haven’t played the original will still find something to appreciate… for example, the added objectives and complexity added to the missions the higher the difficulty you select.

800 Microsoft points well spent… though it’s a shame that there’s no version of the game coming to Wii Virtual Console… if there was I’d instantly buy a copy of that version as well since it would be the original version as we knew it but with sharper visuals.

(You know, as horrible as it was the first time I played through it, playing through Perfect Dark XBLA kind of makes me want to get Perfect Dark Zero just to have a “complete” collection for the 360… ugh, I can’t believe I just thought of doing that just now… I must be going mad.)

“Cho Jiku Yosai Macross: Scrambled Valkyrie” (aka “Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Scrambled Valkyrie”) is a sequel game based on the 1984 movie “Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love?”… man I love these absurdly long titles lol. It was released on the Super Famicom in 1993 and is a classic side-scrolling shmup (shoot ‘em up) comparable to games such as Gradius and R-Type. Of course, Scrambled Valkyrie does add its share of unique Macross charm to the mix…

As you begin the game, you’re given the choice between playing one of three characters: Hikaru Ichijo, Maximilian Jenius and Milia Fallyna Jenius. Each character has their own set of weapons which can be upgraded with power-ups as you progress through the game. In addition to that, your Valkyrie can transform between three modes: Fighter, GERWALK and Battroid. Each mode has their own weapon set that can be upgraded and downgraded independently. For example, if you are in Battroid mode and gain a power-up, the Battroid mode weapons will be upgraded to level 2 however the Fighter and GERWALK mode weapons will remain at level 1. Your Valkyrie can take a bit of beating, the health bar in the top left will indicate how much damage you can take before being destroyed. Take enough damage, however and you are in risk of losing a power-up level for your current mode.

The amount of options and power-ups gained in Scrambled Valkyrie makes for some interesting gameplay when trying out the game with all three characters and switching between the three different modes when necessary. Oh, and another interesting factor about the three modes is that you will notice that there is a distinct speed and manoeuvrability difference to go along with the different weapon sets that add another level of tactical gameplay to the mix… in fact, I love how well thought out it really is and how interesting it makes things.

Oh, but there’s also another factor that’s added into the mix that makes this an even more interesting experience than you thought possible. Normally with these kinds of games you hold down the fire button and destroy everything on the screen, however if you let go of the fire button your Valkyrie starts to glow… this glow happens to be “song energy” (Yahk, deculture!) produced by your new type of Valkyrie which you can use to turn your enemies into your allies. Smaller enemies are easy enough to turn over, simply wait till your Valkyrie is glowing and then fly into them to make them switch to your side. Once this is done the enemy craft will have a yellowish glow and will fly around your Valkyrie, shooting at enemy craft if they have that ability. This sounds all good, but certain larger and more dangerous enemies need to be damaged enough before you can make them defect. Of course you can only have one ally at a time and if you get another enemy to defect the one you had previously will fly away. Again, skilled players will be able to use this to their advantage by managing to turn powerful enemy ships over to their side.

Gameplay is awesome, it’s also a very good looking game… though it has some horrendously bad Engrish that will make you go “Wait, what?”… as you can tell by the screenshot. The only way to play Scrambled Valkyrie these days is if you have a SNES emulator on your PC and can find the ROM for it… I do happen to have a ROM of the game in my possession… maybe I’ll let you have a copy…

• Download Super Dimension Fortress: Scrambled Valkyrie (For members only)

…everyone needs more Macross.

There’s nothing much going on under the sea, just a whole lot of salt water and a whole lot of sea life… and then there’s that underwater utopian society of Rapture, a haven for the working man to make his living, the artist to express himself and the Big Daddies to protect their Little Sisters. Too bad things went oh so terribly wrong…

When you think of a first person shooter, most people think of a game based around some kind of war where most of the gameplay is channelled into the multiplayer elements rather than the story. Few first person shooters bother to break away from that mould, but when they do I tend to take notice, which is why I have much praise for games like Half-Life and BioShock.

BioShock

Some people may find this strange, but what really got me into BioShock are the similarities I discovered between the mechanics of the game and the mechanics of Metroid Prime. There’s plenty of good back tracking thanks to its non-linear level design as well as areas only accessible once you get certain items or go through certain events. There are also logs to collect that will explain the background elements of the story in more detail. Hell, you can even “scan” enemies to learn of their weaknesses by taking pictures of them with a camera. It even has the feeling of isolation and a great atmosphere, with you against the rest of Rapture, even though there are plenty of supporting characters interacting with you every step of the way… I felt right at home.

As you progress through Rapture, you get a real sense of history to the place and it really does feel like it’s been lived in… Though to be honest, I kind of wonder if any of the pastries you eat to replenish health are actually safe to eat in the first place.

Unlike Metroid Prime, however, BioShock is a much more brutal game in many ways. A perfect example of this brutality can be expressed with your trust wrench. Large, heavy and covered in blood… perfectly suited to stalking down your prey from behind and… Damn, the sound it makes when it hits… *shudders* The way the Big Daddies operate is pretty similar and it’s a real treat to watch them in action. I remember moments in the game where I would try to get Splicers to accidentally attack a Big Daddy in the area when they were trying to attack me. I’d let Big Daddy lose his temper and watch as the blood splattered across the walls… great fun.

When the game came to its brilliant finish, I thought it would be a one off game of its own with no need for a sequel…

BioShock 2

A sequel may not have been needed, but a hell of a lot of people sure wanted it when it was announced. After playing through the first and then heading into the second, there’s not much that can really surprise you considering you’re familiar with the world you’re plunging into. You’re back and Rapture with the familiar sights and sounds, though some time has passed, the same pastries that were eaten in the first game can be eaten in the second… they surely must have rotted away by now, urk.

I haven’t really bothered to go through the multiplayer side of things with BioShock 2 since I’ve been too busy with other things, but a lot of gameplay improvements were made over the first game, though these were mostly relating to the ability to do more things at once with your plasmid powers and weapons being more accessible. The fact that you play as a Big Daddy also changed a few things but overall it’s still the same old BioShock you knew from the first game.

By the end of the game, which also ends brilliantly, it seemed pretty obvious that 2K Games was using BioShock as a springboard to launch an entire series of games. Expect to see a BioShock 3 and more… Rapture was just the beginning… and I don’t mind more BioShock, just as long as the sequels are as good as these two games are.

This entire entry will be extremely spoilerific because I really HAVE to share with you just how ridiculous this game really is. It’s so bad that the President of Nintendo of America, Reginald “Reggie” Fils-Aimé, stated that this game would NEVER make it to North America… lucky for me, the wacky folks of Nintendo of Europe and Nintendo of Australia decided that “If the American’s don’t want it, we certainly must have it!”… So here it is… read about it, because you’re not going to want to play it.

The game follows Raymond Bryce, an International Rescue worker and apparently a former US Marine (to explain why Ray is such a weapons expert, I guess). During a volcanic eruption, Ray is doing his thing but ends up losing his friend, Steve, who is also a rescue worker. Ray can’t forgive himself for his friends loss since he feels the need to save everyone but ultimately doesn’t have the power to… deep, man… deep.

So anyway, during this part of the game you go through the usual tutorial stuff: Learn how to walk and run and how to jump, how to breathe, because that’s important, and also how to punch boulders and rocks. Yes, folks, punching boulders isn’t just for a steroid abused Chris Redfield. Not only that, I learned that you can also punch and kick barrels and wooden crates as well as mailboxes, trash bins and also cardboard boxes that happen to be laying around too.

Flash forward a year and Ray is a public servant for Blue Ridge City, and for whatever reason he meets an FBI agent who tells him about some military group who has stolen nukes and is threatening the government and all that kinda jazz… sounds pretty familiar doesn’t it. Then for some reason this chick, who happens to be the sister of his friend, Steve, gets kidnapped by this group, and Ray who feels guilty about Steve’s death goes after her and this military group to save her… and that’s pretty much the entire plot right there. Ray feels guilty, chick gets kidnapped, Ray wants to save her but at the same time is told to stop this group from blowing up some random city and do all of this while facing a string of natural disasters…

So anyway, Ray is going to save this chick… AND THEN SUDDENLY AN EARTHQUAKE! Buildings are crumbling, people are FREAKING OUT, and for some reason I start getting into a gunfight with all these military dudes… then after I think I’m close to saving that chick, they escape with her and some other guy and I have to go after them.

Now, I’m in the city which is crumbling around me still, buildings falling over, and there are people who need help. Some of these people happen to call for your help, though only if it’s a plot element, others are people you have to find and save yourself… of course, if there’s no one around and you press the Z button to look for people, Ray will say “There’s no one who needs saving here” in an extremely disappointing tone, as if he wants people to be injured and in need of his help. Great guy, that Ray…

Oh, and also, I did mention the ability to punch and kick open stuff, but I didn’t mention the fact that when you do, you’ll find items! I know, you’re thinking “Well, what’s so different about that? That’s practically in every game.”… Well, yes and no. Here are a couple of examples… You see a mailbox, and you decide to punch it open, it explodes open after a few punches and then you find that it drops a big hunk of meat on the bone, cooked to perfection… Okay, so this seems a bit strange… who put that succulent oversized piece of cooked meat in the mailbox? Ray doesn’t care, because he’ll pick it up from the ground and eat it right then and there to regain his stamina.

Of course, all through this you’re still going after that military group to save that one chick… and for whatever reason that military group has a fuck tonne of guys who happen to be all gunning for you. I don’t know how many guys I’ve killed in this game, but I’ve taken out a small army as well as various kinds of vehicles including a couple of choppers… and something else I’ll get to at the end of this entry… anyway, I’m chasing after these guys and end up going through a pretty awesome car chase scene. Hands down the driving element of this game is its best feature, but is ruined by having to deal with all the disasters along the way… one of the disasters being, no, not a regular tornado, but a FIRE tornado!… yeah, I don’t get it either, but whatever man…

So, first came the earthquake and as a result there’s a tsunami heading towards the city… so naturally Ray and the military dudes decide to have a shoot out on the bridge as the tsunami is heading towards them. This guy has balls man, a tsunami doesn’t even scare him cause he feels he has time to be Rambo…

Anyway, after he kills everyone he decides that now is a good time to leave just as the tsunami is just about to hit. Ray gets in his car and drives away from certain death at full speed. The driving in this part is a bit different though, in previous driving areas you would drive the car in first person mode, but in this instance the camera is on the outside and is facing back at the tsunami with the car on screen. The bridge is falling apart as you escape and you’re struggling to stay ahead of it and onto solid ground. Then he goes into a subway system and ends up having to outrun a rush of water in there… and then ANOTHER TSUNAMI decides to come on down and Ray, as the bad ass he is decides he’ll outrun the tsunami ON FOOT. ON FOOT! *stares at you*… and he fails, lol. Ray gets swept away and the military dudes happen to escape too.

Stuff happens and Ray ends up following the military dudes to some mines near a Volcano, and surprise, surprise, the Volcano decides to erupt. Ray is dodging huge fiery boulders raining down from the sky, tries to save the chick again, fails and the military dudes escape. Ray then has to get the hell out of there and decides to drive out of there while the lava is flowing and the pyroclastic flow that is coming down the mountain is bearing down on him… of course, like before, Ray fails and gets caught in it… and survives. When he wakes up some little girl has saved him and then he decides to get the little girl to safety and they travel through the mountain to safety… oh, and you get to kill a bear.

Ray gets out of there with the little girl, and then he’s off to some other place that just happens to be flooded due to a hurricane that’s bearing down on it. He’s going after that military group cause he has to save that chick and he military group who is too stupid to realise that the only reason all of their guys are dying is because of their hostage… WHICH THEY DON’T EVEN NEED ANY MORE, is still holding her and taunting Ray as he shoots them all down.

Oh yeah, another thing about punching open stuff is that you have to be careful. Sometimes, instead of getting an item from the container, you suddenly get set on fire. There I was punching a trash bin open in a flooded area with some pretty heavy rain coming down, and suddenly I’m on fire, even though I’m knee deep in water and completely drenched. Well whatever, during this flooded level I happen to end up saving that chick, only to have her re-kidnapped again which is another kick in the nuts.

So we’re coming near the end of it, I’m chasing these guys in my car for the last time through a full force hurricane and they get on a ferry to… I have no idea. Anyway, I’m on a ferry now and it’s the last part of the game. I’ve been through an earthquake, a fire tornado, a couple of tsunami as well as two volcanos, then a flood and a hurricane… so now what?

Now we have the final boss fight, of course! For some reason as Ray is talking to the last guy, it reminds me of the final boss fight on the deck of the ship in Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune… but then all of a sudden the bad guy is standing next to something that’s covered…Now I’m thinking this guy is going to come after me on the deck of this ferry with a freaking TANK. But no, that’s not what he had in mind… instead…

METAL GEAR?!!!!!!?!!??!?!!!!?!?!?1//1?#2131342pir5thy34eoftaguhlokdhg!!!!!!!1

I kid you not, this guy was in a poor man’s Metal Gear Rex. It was Rex vs Ray! And it didn’t stop there! After defeating pseudo-Rex, I fought the boss one on one, man to man… in a quick time fight scene that reminded me of a poor man’s version of the knife fight in Resident Evil 4… though most of the fight didn’t feature any knives… oh and then I got to disarm a nuke which was fun and lived happily ever after…. OR DID THEY?

At the end of the game you get to view an alternate ending. All of those Disasters that Ray has faced during that 24 hour period is nothing compared to what’s about to hit the planet…. AN ASTEROID!

AN ASTEROID IS HEADING TOWARDS THE PLANET! ARE YOU A BAD ENOUGH DUDE TO PUNCH AND KICK IT INTO A SAFE TRAJECTORY?

I loled.

Okay so that was a pretty huge entry for a game that doesn’t matter… so if you couldn’t be bothered reading all of that, at least watch this… it pretty much sums it all up.

…Epic, truly epic. I’m so glad I bought this game and played it all the way through, just so I could tell everyone else about it. As I said at the start… it’s so bad that it’s good.

Ubisoft knew that they had something special brewing with Assassin’s Creed, and anyone who has played the game will know first hand that they have set it up to be a trilogy or possibly a long running series. But not even Ubisoft themselves were prepared for the high sales that the first game saw. Their efforts had struck an extremely good nerve with gamers, and their surprise is very understandable too since the first game of a new IP never does anywhere near as well as Assassin’s Creed did.

Even better than that, Assassin’s Creed II blew everyone away, from reviewers to the gamers themselves. I know I was blown away by the improvements they made and… some other things…

I had played a few hours of Assassin’s Creed when it was first released and liked what I played, but I hadn’t actually finished the first game until very recently. In fact, I got to experience both games in a very interesting way. Over the Christmas weekend, I happened to play Assassin’s Creed and Assassin’s Creed II back to back in one big epic marathon run. I finished the first game for the first time and got to start the second then and there… those who have started the second game know how PERFECT that situation is, though the transition from the first game to the second was a pretty big hit in terms of the visuals.

Minor spoilers ahead…

The very first second of Assassin’s Creed II takes place the very second after the credits roll for the first game. It was a bit of a shock to the system when the room you were looking at in the first game and the characters suddenly look so different because of the upgraded visuals and effects… even more so when you have just finished the first game and immediately started the second. It would’ve been nice if Ubisoft had have kept the visual style of the first game exactly the same way how it was for the first game in that one area you were familiar with, then did a cowboy switch when you escape from the building and are in those darker corridors… but that’s just me.

/ End spoilers.

Anyway, let’s have a look at the two games separately…

Assassin’s Creed

When you start Assassin’s Creed, you don’t really know where it will lead you. Despite what many people saw in the promotional material and trailers of a medieval environment, you find yourself in a near present day setting playing as Desmond Miles, a seemingly average guy who has been abducted by members of a global corporation. The events that you see in those trailers are experienced by Desmond using the Animus, a device that essentially allows a user to go back in time and experience moments of their own ancestor’s life through memories recorded in their own genes.

Desmond finds himself in the memories of Altaïr, a member of the Order of Assassins at around 1191AD. The events of his ancestor’s life are slowly revealed to him as well as the realisation of who his abductors are and what they are searching for.

An intriguing concept… it certainly made me want to find out where it was all going to lead…

Once you master it, the gameplay for Assassin’s Creed is a pleasure everyone must experience. When you first play you’ll be unsure of yourself and attempt to over compensate for many of the actions you’re trying to perform. The key is to let yourself go and trust that you’ll be able to do all of the amazing things you’re seeing happening on screen. Once you do, you’ll find that you’ll be running across rooftops at great speed, outwitting guards and climbing towers with great ease.

The environments and general presentation is well done and there’s much to do in the game with plenty of exploration. The game itself is set in a way that allows you to do as much as you want or as little as you want depending on how much you enjoy collection-fests or not. I personally loved climbing up every building I could find and finding the highest places in each area… though, personally I couldn’t care less about collecting all of those various different flags. But don’t worry, collecting stuff isn’t really that important to the main story of the game, it’s just really there for those who like to explore game environments in their own time.

Most players will happily stick with the main story as I did, which is fine, even if the game gets you to do practically the same thing over and over, if you’re clever you can figure out ways of doing things differently. I think that’s really the key to the game, it’s easy just to pull out a sword and start carving up your enemies, but it’s more fun to act as a true assassin, stalk your target and kill them without anyone realising you were even there… those moments are made of pure awesomeness if you’re prepared to go through the work to pull them off.

Ubisoft has put together a nicely polished game, though it does suffer from some very obvious and sometimes frequent AI glitches. I’m sure if you searched through YouTube, you’d be able to find plenty of videos of some of the funnier/stupid AI glitches that occur during the game.

One of my own experiences in the game was when the guards protecting the target I was meant to assassinate suddenly decided that they would try to kill the target themselves for absolutely no reason. Of course, what followed was just a confusing mess. My target would jump from place to place trying to avoid the strikes of the guards and the guards would follow him, jumping around the room… this occurred for awhile until I realised that no one would catch up with each other and it would just keep on going endlessly… so I attacked a guard and they all turned their attention on me… finally.

Despite that, the game is a must play… and if you’ve played the first, you MUST play the second…

Assassin’s Creed II

After their success with the first game, Ubisoft had a lot to prove with Assassin’s Creed II. The first one took people by surprise at the amount of quality this new IP had, the second one had better follow suit or heads would roll. From what I’ve been hearing on the net, people are very pleased with the second game and the review scores seem to favour it above the first.

The second game continues on directly where the first left off and without going into too much detail and spoiling things, Desmond is going to find that he’s going to end up playing a much bigger role in the events to shape the future. To that end, he needs to be trained as a true assassin. To achieve this he will learn from the beginning as his Italian ancestor, Ezio, had learned.

Of course, just like the first game, there’s more to it than just that, and you’ll get to find out just how deep the rabbit hole goes the further along in the story you get.

Gameplay has certainly been improved in this second coming of Assassin’s Creed. I particularly like how streamlined things have gotten and that all of the good aspects are still intact. Free-running and climbing have been greatly improved, even though they were pretty slick in the first game to begin with. I didn’t notice any really stupid AI glitches plaguing this game like I did with the first which is a big plus. One of the best additions I love though is the ability to hide among the regular people as just another face in the crowd… even though you’re wearing flowing robes and some pretty decorative armour lol. Oh, and the chicks are great *winks*…

The different weapons and the ability to buy and upgrade and also to use your enemies weapons is a nice feature, though doesn’t seem to have that big an effect on overall gameplay to make things seem strategic. Either way, I like the effort that has been put into the customisation options for Ezio. Though, when it comes right down to it, once you get that special someone’s armour, there’s no looking back.

I did find that there was a bit of a down side with fetch quests integrated directly into the main story. It gets a little annoying having to carry stuff back and forth and act as a courier… but overall, this isn’t a big deal unless you’re just impatient and want to kill things right away.

Minor spoilers ahead…

I did mention that the first game had some pretty interesting things in it, but Assassin’s Creed II takes the cake when it comes to complete mindfucks… for this series and probably for 99% of other games out there. I mean, going into the series, you know it’s not going to be your average stab and slaughter your enemies type thing. Ubi decided they’d try and screw with your head too… which is always fun.

/ End of spoilers.

I do have one problem with the release of this game though… I hate how they release different versions of the damn thing. What I hate even more is that people who don’t buy those extra special versions end up missing out on some extra stuff, as unimportant as they may be, it’s the principle of the matter.

Either way, I can’t wait for the next instalment of this trilogy or series depending on how far they want to take it. Anyone who has played it knows it’s got the potential to go into some pretty wild and out there places…