The Star Wars Video Game (Not The Fun Ones)

As people might recall, growing up my primary source of video game entertainment was on the original Nintendo Game Boy.  I have a lot of fun memories of that system, and there's a reason why it still has a permanent place on my shelf.  There are still games that are fun to dust off and play, as I've said before.

However, digging down through some of the video game history I have in my cartridge bag, I discovered one I haven't played in a very long time.  Which is surprising, since I've talked about before how much I love the source material.

So what's the problem with Star Wars for the Nintendo Game Boy?

It's absolutely insane, is the problem.

Review: Saints Row 2

People might remember that I've already reviewed the last game in the Saints Row series, which might make it kind of weird that I'm going back and reviewing the second game in the series.  Well, I was going to go back and replay the first one, but to be honest, I don't really remember liking it that much.  It wasn't until I played the second one that the series really "clicked" with me.

Copying the infinitely more profitable (and, in my eyes, lesser of the two series) Grand Theft Auto, the Saints Row series took what made the GTA games fun, figured out what dragged the entertainment down, and promptly threw out everything that didn't work and just let you, the player, go nuts.

If GTA is the Martin Scorsese of sandbox crime games (just not to that level of quality), then Saints Row 2 is the Quentin Tarantino version.  Saints Row 4 was the Michael Bay version (except infinitely better).

Galerians (or: The Video Game I Gave Up On The Fastest)

I like to think I give anything I try a fair chance to impress me.  In fact, I've gone above and beyond in at least one instance.  However, there is a game that I never really got into despite it ticking off many check boxes on my list of things I like:

Weird psychic powers.
Science fiction-y sterile hallways.
Survivor Horror
Heavy Japanese influence

And yet, I never got more than two rooms into the game play.

Mario's Picross

I'm not sure how I haven't yet talked about my love of the Picross series of games from Nintendo.  The concept is surprisingly simple, yet amazingly difficult to master.  There's a simple grid, anywhere from 5x5 to 15x15, and there are numbers indicating how many squares in each row or column need to be filled in.  A "15" would indicate the whole row is filled in, while a "0" means nothing gets filled in.  However, a "3 4" indicates there's a group of three and a group of four that need filling, but when you have fifteen squares to choose from, it can be difficult to figure out which ones are right and which ones aren't.

The later games in the series increased the size of the puzzles and even took them into the third dimension (because adding a z-axis to everything makes it harder), but having just wrapped up a recent play through of the original game, I figured I'd talk about it.

Bullet Witch

I shouldn't love this game as much as I do.  The controls are twitchy and not very responsive, the story line is laughable, the voice acting is cheesy (and in some cases almost unbearable), and save for the lead character all the other people you interact with are absolute garbage, including the other good guys.

So why do I love this game so much?

I dunno, man.  I just can't explain it.

Erik's Favorite Things: Koudelka

Okay, I've mentioned Koudelka before.  In fact, I think I spoke pretty highly of it.  If I was to keep talking about it, I might mention how, if I sat down and thought about it, it'd wind up on whatever my "favorite games of all time" list would wind up being.

But...just why do I love this bizarre little RPG so much?

Let's dig a bit deeper.

Danganronpa 2

Yesterday I discussed a video game that I think might have had one of the most profound emotional impacts on me since the time I tried to foolishly save everybody in a video game about the zombie apocalypse.  Today I discuss its sequel, which handles being a sequel better than most games I've played, and still manages to be one of the most amazing game experiences I've had in a long time.

We're talking Danganronpa 2.

Danganronpa

There have been a lot of attempts at capturing the surprise success of the series Battle Royale from Japan, a story set in a (somewhat) dystopian future where students are selected to battle each other to the death for the "entertainment" of the masses.  It's actually a cautionary tale about overpopulation, and the lengths a government might need to go to in order to keep the population from growing too quickly.

There have been a lot of similar stories that have emerged in the last few years, not the least of which is The Hunger Games.  Now, I can't say for sure whether or not the person who wrote this series ever heard of Battle Royale (and Steven King seems convinced it's actually a The Running Man knock off), but I can say that The Hunger Games has inspired his own massive flood of knock-offs and imitations.  Everything from The Maze Runner, the Divergent series, Slashers, and- wait, hold on, I think my timeline got messed up in there somehow.

But while you can shift the world setting and mix up some of the characters and genders, in the end it always feels like you have a bunch of young people being killed off for the amusement of older people, and I still maintain that The Cabin In The Woods messed around with that idea the best.

At least when it comes to movies.

Enter Dangan Ronpa (also known as Trigger Happy Havoc), a game so amazingly good that several months later I finished the sequel and I'm still thinking about the original.

Batman: Arkham Origins

A funny thing happened while I was playing Batman: Arkham Origins.  Set five years before the original Batman: Arkham Asylum game, we see a young, fresh-faced massively bitter Bruce Wayne still enjoying the "Batman is a myth" aspect of being a costumed do-gooder who only goes out at night, while the cops are determined to stop the rise in crime committed by people in colorful outfits as well as take in this crazed mercenary dressed like Dracula but understanding the whole "transforms into a bat, not dresses like one" thing.

You have the same game play as in previous games, with a few little touches here and there.  Batman's more of a rookie, so he doesn't have quite the same massive skill set, though he's still busting out double take downs when he couldn't do it in the original game.

But here's the funny thing.

Halfway through the game, I stopped having fun.

And I think I could pretty much just leave the review there and call it a night, but I think I need to explain why I stopped having fun.

Nine Persons, Nine Hours, Nine Doors

You know what kinds of video games just don't really do well?

Okay, besides those, wise guy.

Mystery games.  For a very brief time in the 90's, I remember when there was a small surge in interactive storytelling involving murder mysteries or large crimes.  You'd start to play, and the game would randomly assign who the perpetrator was to a character, and reorganize the clues and dialogue accordingly.  You'd have to investigate, but since most games trying this were on CDs and cheap attempts at video capture were all the rage, you wound up with games like Ripper where you had Christopher Walken screaming at you and Karen Allen acting nowhere near as awesome as she does in Indiana Jones movies.

Plus, once you pick up on what changed in the story, it's usually pretty easy to figure out who the bad guy is.

More modern games have tried to do larger stories with a mystery reaching through, but once you play those games once, there's little replay value in doing it all over again.  Examples of this are Heavy Rain and L.A. Noire.

So when I found a Nintendo DS game called Nine Persons, Nine Hours, Nine Doors (or 999 for short), I was intrigued.  A mystery with multiple endings based off the choices you make, and while I was hesitant about the game just randomly changing who the bad guy was based off of stuff I picked (looking at you, Ripper), I figured that it was an obscure Japanese game, there must be some hook to it.

Twenty minutes in, I was hooked.

Bioshock Infinite - Burial At Sea

If you've been keeping track of this blog for a while, you might recall that I absolutely loved the game Bioshock Infinite,  I spent weeks after I finished it debating the ending with people I knew.  I spent hours thinking about how it affected me both on an intellectual level and an emotional level.  It wasn't my favorite thing of 2013, but I'm rather surprised I didn't put it higher than The Last Of Us, if only because I still sometimes think back to Bioshock Infinite and what everything meant, but The Last Of Us has been out of my mind for quite some time.

However, there was something I wasn't proud of.  As of this last weekend I was yet to play the downloadable content "Burial At Sea," a two-part add-on to the game that, from my understanding, took place back in Rapture, the city from the first Bioshock.

So I decided to fix that.

And now I love the game even more.

Review: Two Worlds 2

Last night I played three hours of Two Worlds 2, which I think is enough time to come up with a fully formed opinion about a game.  Well, okay, usually I say you can't just a book by its cover or the first chapter or two, but in some instances I think you say.  Say the book is riddled with typos, or the chapters are listed out of order.  Perhaps the first fifty pages are stuck together by spilled ketchup, or it has the words Fifty Shades Of Grey on the title.

Speaking of, how is it there hasn't been a huge outcry about the fact that Fifty Shades Of Grey is clearly a rip-off of Secretary?  Except, of course, the latter was nominated for awards, and I'm pretty sure the former is still sporting a 25% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Where was I?

Oh, right.  Two Worlds 2.

Man.  You guys.  This game.

Partial Review: Grand Theft Auto V

I've always had a heavy bias against the Grand Theft Auto games.  I'll admit that going in to this review because if anybody were to comment on this, I'm sure I'd be told the following things:

1)  "You didn't spend enough time playing it to really get into it."

2) "You went into the game expecting to hate it, so of course you hate it."

3) "Meh."

With that in mind, let me describe my experience playing the latest from Rockstar Games and you can tell me if you'd reach any different conclusions with how it all went down.

7 Days To Die: A Video Game Diary

In the apocalypse, there are three groups of people.  There are those who are natural survivors, fully prepared to face the harsh new reality head-on and not only stay alive but thrive.  There are those who succumb to the ruination of mankind, either becoming savages, the living dead, or simply dying.  Then there are those who fumble their way around and frequently have to start over because they keep screwing up.

This is my story.  You can figure out which group I belong in.

Review: Kirby's Return To Dreamland

If there's one thing I think Sony and Microsoft forgot about in the last (and probably current) console generation, it's that people still like to get together with friends, hang out together, and play games.  Nintendo, however, did not forget this, and regularly put out games for people looking to have fun with their friends and loved ones while planted in front of a television waggling sticks around.

To this, I say "kudos" to Nintendo.

One of the games I think I've had the most fun in this "wild and crazy co-op" world is Kirby's Return To Dreamland.

One hint: don't let someone who dies often play the 1st player.  That character tends to control everybody's fate.

Review: Dead Island: Riptide

I recently did my review of the first Dead Island game where I pretty much described it as "fun, but completely broken."

I was yet to try the sequel, Dead Island: Riptide, because I didn't really know a whole lot about what was new to it.  It had the same cast of characters, you could import your previous character, but it did promise some new locations, new enemies, and new challenges.

Hopefully there were no missions involving "recovering necklaces" or "finding someone's husband so they could say they were having more fun in their "end of the world orgy" and wanted us to break his wife's heart by saying he died."

So a few of my friends grabbed some baseball bats and shovels and headed out for another island filled with zombies to kill.

But there was one thing going through my (and, I believe, my friends as well) mind: was this really a sequel, or just an expansion?

Top Eleven: Japanese RPGs

Lately I've been playing a lot of Eternal Sonata (review to come once I can find someone to help me discuss the absolutely insane outfits these characters wear), and I managed to get two other people I know interested in playing it.  The question then came up, "What are you favorite Japanese RPG (jrpg) games?"

Now, I could've done this as an Ask Erik, but then I was afraid it'd get lost in the shuffle.  Titling it a "top eleven" makes more sense, in my eyes, because it is, at its core, a list.

I'm also amazed I haven't done this list before, because I've played a lot of these games over the years.

Now, one has to ask "what makes a role-playing style video game a "Japanese RPG?""  Well, there are a few qualifiers.

The first of which is "at least one person needs to have an absolutely ludicrous costume and/or weapon.
The more characters that look like they gathered everything they own from the blown up ruins of Party City, the better."

Review: Dead Island

There are certain phrases I don't think I could ever use to describe the video game Dead Island.

Such phrases include "long stretches of nothing," "too full of itself," and "not broken."

Yeah, that last one would be a major red flag on any other game I play, but strangely enough, in a game about an island completely filled with zombies, having it occasionally shudder to a halt, glitch out completely, and cast your character into what appears to be a demonic-spawned hell where all you can do is die over and over again...doesn't feel too far off.

But let's get into the actual game.

The X-Men Arcade Game

Pop Quiz.

People who ever wandered into a video arcade in the early 90's undoubtedly saw this behemoth lurking near the front:

So, who was the second best character to play as?  I mean, we all know the best character was Nightcrawler.  He was short enough that several attacks would simply whiff over his head, his special attack had the most reach of any character across the screen, and his "hit them when they're down" animation was to actively jump up and down on the enemy.

But the second best?

That'd be this one.

No, that's not Wolverine.  It's Dazzler.

Trust me.  Dazzler was the second best character, if for no other reason her "hit them when they're down" move was to kick robots in the crotch.

Fails Of The Weak

When you sit down and look at a video game as a project and not just as some flashy pictures on a screen with some "beeps" and "boops" of varying qualities, you realize there's a LOT of work that goes into even the most mundane ones.  Somebody invested a non-insignificant chunk of their life programming that game, whether it's something as innovative as Doom, something as advanced as Skyrim, or something as terrible as Ninja Blade.


However, even with multiple people cranking out game code all day trying to predict just how a bullet would pass between trees, how a face should move, or how a jeep should drive up a hill, you can't anticipate everything.  You might have a group of people who test the game, but if they find an issue, it might take months to figure out exactly what part of the code isn't working correctly.  That's why occasionally you find something like this: