Game Review: Driver: San Francisco

Lately, the video game taking up the most of my time has been Driver: San Francisco.  This is pretty surprising, for three reasons:

1) I typically don't play driving games.  I've never owned a copy of any of the Burnout, Gran Turismo, Need For Speed, or Forza games.  In fact, I can count the racing games I've owned on one hand, and two of them are Mrio Kart games, and another is Wipeout, which had boats.  I had a brief fling with F-Zero for the GameCube back in the day, but multiple broken controllers and an extreme case of "rage quit" brings me to my second point.

2) Driving and racing games piss me off like no other.  This is mostly because I feel that if I lose, I can really only blame myself.  Video game controls are so crisp and tight these days, that you can control your car's movement to a ridiculous level.  So, when I catch a corner too wide and plow through a fruit cart, or I mis-aim a jump, clip the bumper of another car, and spin into the path of a semi...all I have to blame is myself.  Unless it's a really bizarre racing game, the course itself isn't the enemy, and the other competitors aren't doing anything to me at this point.  This might be why I don't mind the Mario Kart games, because there are traps and the enemy can impede your progress.  It's not my adult I lost, Luigi hit me with a turtle shell.

3) I'm not a car person.  I never have been, never will be.  When car mechanics ask me car questions, I can do "make and model" but beyond that I'm lost.  Sometimes I have to guess on the year my car was made.  I have no interest in accumulating a wide variety of cars to drive around in, and really have no idea which would handle better.  And since you never fill up the tank in these games, fuel efficiency isn't reflected, either.  Sure, some cars look great, but I bought a Suzuki X-90 at one point just because it looked cool.  I'm not the best judge of car character.

So, why did I pick up Driver?  Well, it takes place in San Francisco, a city I've visited many times, and it was cheap.  I thought "this might give me a few hours entertainment" ... And I was wrong.  It's been much longer than a few hours.

Starting at the beginning, this is a sequel to Driv3r, but that's completely irrelevant.  Here's the story breakdown:  A bad guy named Jericho that you, Tanner (honestly, I've been playing the game for days now and I don't know if you're a detective or an FBI agent or just a really concerned member of the Citizen's Watch group), put away is broken loose from his prison convoy, and you gotta stop him!

The only problem?  You're plowed into by a semi (not my fault, it's the plot) and the rest of the game may or may not be taking place in your own mind while you're in a coma.  That's not really a spoiler, as the game lays it out pretty clear early on.  However, post-accident you've developed the ability to leap your consciousness into any other person driving a car in the city!

This leads to a lot of fun when it comes to game play.  Multiple plot points involve leaping into various people to help them out, whether it's two brothers who get caught up in street racing to afford college, street cops trying to chase down drug couriers, or trying to dodge vehicles trying to knock an armored car off the road.  Some of them are straight-up racing, point A to point B in X time.  However, when the game gives you the option to shift to another driver, that's where the fun begins.

Yes, you could complete this race in the shortest time to win.  Or...why not just leap into the drivers of oncoming cars and swerve into the paths of the other racers?  Some cars want to get to a damaged bank truck?  Leap into oncoming traffic and plow into them in a full-on collision.  You're trying to nail a bail jumper?  Whoops, oncoming bus!

Now, before you panic that this is a Grand Theft Auto game where you'll leave teeth and various amounts of blood at each collision, I'll say that the game makers thought of that ahead of time.  I have never seen such agile pedestrians in the sidewalks able to dodge my poor driving, and everybody's seat belts are so well built that even in the worst collisions, people just frown meaningfully at the fact that half of their engine block is now fifty feet down the road.

There are more side missions you can play that allow you to do things like upgrade your supernatural abilities (boosting, having small ramming bursts to take cars out, and others) or buy more cars, but I don't really see much difference between plowing into an oncoming car with an Anston Martin or a Honda.  If I want speed, I just look around on the road for whatever has the biggest car spoiler.  It's kind of funny how there's no Toyotas in San Francisco, though, but maybe that's because it's all in your character's head.  Or not. Maybe.

Now, I will say I'm upset that they didn't get the cast from the last game to reprise their roles for this game (James Marsden, Ving Rhames, Michelle Rodriguez, Mickey Rourke, and Iggy Pop), but the writing is some of the best I've listened to in a video game.  When you leap into a random car, there's a pretty good chance there's a passenger whose conversation you've just interrupted, and having Tanner try to improvise his way through conversations (or straight up hit on attractive women in the car) is hilarious, and I've lost more than one race because I leaped into the wrong car and didn't leap out because I wanted to hear the whole conversation.

Even if you don't like driving games, I cannot recommend this game enough.  Yeah, I got pissed off a few times while playing (not my fault, that tow truck came out of nowhere), but I never wanted to just throw my controller away in disgust.  And in a racing and driving game, that's the highest praise I could ever give it.

Cirque Du Soleil: Worlds Away

One of my writing heroes, growing up, was (and still is) Roger Ebert.  How a man is able to, every week, provide intelligent and thought-provoking analysis of movies, many of which are drab, dreary, or just completely redundant in Hollywood never failed to amaze me.  His ability to break a film down and find in all but the worst of the worst some small measure of interest, be it how a camera is held for one scene, always reminded me to try to find something to like in everything I encounter.

Cirque Du Soleil: Worlds Away is a film.  Beyond that, I have no idea how to summarize what I just saw for an hour and a half today.

Now, to be fair, this was by no means a bad movie.  In fact, normally I'd encourage anybody to see a movie that spotlights luchadore superheroes jumping around on trampolines to songs by Elvis Presley.  However, in this instance, I think you really have to be a Cirque Du Soleil fan to even get the slightest hint of what's happening, and I'll lay this down at the start: James Cameron was the wrong person to have involved.

Now, I'll admit I didn't see it in 3D.  Maybe it's an entirely different experience that way.  But really, I figured this would be the perfect concept for Baz Luhrmann, who did Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge, and seems to specialize in movies that feature large performances mixed with pop culture from various ages. The movie is pure spectacle, with a plot as thin as a gymnast's leotard holding it all together.

I took notes, let's see what I scribbled down.

"Return To Oz meets Labyrinth."

And that was my initial reaction.  It only gets more insane from there.

The movie, once you break it down, is a spotlight on some of the Cirque Du Soleil performances happening around the world.  There's O, Ka, Mystere, Viva Elvis, and others, and each has a sampling shown to our protagonist, a young, unnamed woman who wanders into a small time circus.  She spots a handsome young man who winds up being only known as "The Aerialist," who makes eye contact with her in the middle of a performance, plummets to the sandy ground below, and is, in the only way I can think of describing it, "consumed by a sarlaac from Star Wars."

The girl, having rushed forward to try to help him as the ground sucked him down, is also swept away by the dirt whirlpool, and awakens near multiple large tents, each symbolizing a different show.  She only has a flier showing the young man, since she only talks once in the movie, and needs a means of telling the cast of characters she encounters who she's looking for.

The first person she meets?  The love child of Doc Brown and Beetlejuice.

I also have a note here about the young woman, describing her as "Winona Ryder, only not annoying."  But, as I said, she only talks once during the film, so take that to mean what you will.

As for the performances?  Well, as I said above, it helps if you've seen Cirque Du Soleil before you realize that there's no CG helping the performers out.  When you see one person on a trapeze catch another person in mid-air by the feet with their own feet, it's because they really are that good.  A group of women who contort themselves into a tower and some performers running and flipping around poles attached to a wall seem too remarkable to believe unless you keep the "no CG" bit in mind.

Some of the performances, however, seem to take the plot and twist it around so far I was left wondering what was happening.  At one point, we see that the "Aerialist" is taken prisoner by someone I can only describe as "Fiendish Dr. Wu in a yellow rain slicker and platform shoes commanding the demonic twin of Chairman Kaga to kill some warriors with his magic paella pan that shoots explosions and lightning.". And it really is both that crazy, especially when you factor in the fight is done with rope harnesses so they can kung-fu each other up a large wall.  I don't think it really affected the plot much, but it was insane great to watch.

Each segment was filmed in the actual place the shows perform (not, as I initially thought, at a giant sound stage that they kept rebuilding every time the scene changed).  The set designs are fantastic, naturally, since they're the same ones used every performance, and I'll admit that I had no idea Cirque du Soleil even had a water show, so it was fun to find that out.

My notes run out here, since I gave up trying to record my thoughts of everything that happened partway through and just sat back to watch the show.  I do remember a really weird moment where people in deadly desert creature costumes harassed some people, but no other real descriptions that come to mind can compare to what the show actually is.  A large portion towards the end of the movie is devoted to the Beatles-themed show, and there were moments I wouldn't even dare describe, they were so full of imagination.

But, is it good?  That's the hard question.  It loses a little from the performances when the camera shifts in the middle of an act, and a few moments of slow motion pull you out of the natural grace the performers exhibit.  The storyline is a mess, there's no explanation for anything that's happening, and the ending just wraps up everything so they can show the sets and performers ending the whole thing like a stage show, and it's pretty abrupt.

That said, if you're a diehard Cirque du Soleil fan, and you don't expect you're going to get to be in Las Vegas to see some of these shows, I say go for it.  If you just like extremely remarkable physical feats of gymnasticary (or whatever the tradesman term is), go see it.  If you're expecting anything like a standard movie, maybe save it for a Red Box rental.

Part 2 of...wait, are they still just in season 3?!

When I left my last post about My Little Pony, reclusive nerd Twilight Sparkle was forced to endure every socially anxious person's worst fear (insane parties with no chance for escape and forced interaction), Princess Celestia was missing, and Nightmare Moon had managed to keep the sun from rising, dooming all in Equestria to death since crops won't grow and fireplaces are nice, but you still need solar heat to keep from freezing to death.

Pretty grim stuff.

I have to admit, though, that if I suddenly found myself the center of attention of a group of people I just met, I might make like Twilight Sparkle there and pour myself a large glass of something.  Just saying.

First of all, an amendment:  that whole "lightning bolts to the face" deal?  That's how this episode starts, not how the last one ended.  My bad, I own that.

The episode begins with- you know what?  Wait.  I have to do one more prelude.

My Little Pony had a lot of ground to cover to become what it is before it even started.  The previous iteration was...well, it was terrible.  It was awful.  It was shameless shilling to stereotypical "girly" stuff featuring the "Newborn Cuties" with an animation budget somewhere between "jack" and "squat," voices by undoubtedly talented people given nothing to say, and the cheapest (read: early flash animation on computers) designs I've seen.  There were no lessons, no real character development, and I'm pretty sure even the cast knew it was going to suck before they did it, and it shows.

I tried watching some for this article.  This next sentence is not an exaggeration, it is not embellished, and it is not at all a lie:

I felt real, physical pain watching it.  It hurt more than the time I had the wind knocked out of me from a wayward dodge ball back in high school.

Now, to be fair, I caught a clip of the first generation MLP specials....and it wasn't bad.  It had some pretty awesome villains and had some powerful conflicts.  More villains died than I ever saw on Care Bears or Jem and the Holograms.  Everything after that, from the looks of it, just went steadily further downhill.  I even remember watching some of the early specials when I was young because, well, it was something to watch.

Enter Lauren Faust.  Her highlights, in my eyes, were working as an animator for The Iron Giant, Her two Emmy nominations for her work on Powerpuff Girls, and her two Emmy nominations (and one win!) for Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends.

Convinced by Hasbro (seriously, she was pitching her own series at the time), she assembled a team and an animation studio that had everything going for it.  A history of beloved and imaginative animation worlds?  Check.  Some of the most endearing female characters to grace TV screens in ages?  Check.  An animation studio that could take a method that had once produced this:

...and use better tools to make this:

(I kid you not, this gif is better than -any- of the animation in that other series.  Look it up on Youtube and cry.)

Check.

And yet, people were still blown away when this show appeared on the air.  Go figure.

So back to the story.  Nightmare Moon makes a grand exit, and Twilight Sparkle makes a mad dash back to the library she's living out of to try to find more on the "Elements of Harmony" (but she first puts Spike to bed, so we don't have to worry about him for the rest of the episode).  However, she's confronted by her new friends since it appears she's the only pony who knows what's going on.

One small quibble:  In the first episode, even Spike has heard of the Mare in the Moon legend, and states it's an "old pony's tale."  How is it this group of ponies has never heard of it?  Granted, Spike does live with the biggest bookworm who ever lived, but still.

After consulting a reference guide detailing the history of the Elements, the ponies head out to find them, looking for the original castle the two ruling sister ponies lived in over a thousand years ago.  This involves heading out to the Everfree Forest, and I'll freely admit it, I love the Everfree Woods.  These woods are the polar opposite of the rest of Equestria.  Plants grow wild, monsters lurk in caves and bushes, and clouds move without ponies to guide them!  It's madness, I tell you, madness!

And this is also where the insanity gets cranked up as the ponies are assaulted multiple times by Nightmare Moon, in the guise of an evil cloud that sets up challenges for the ponies to overcome.  The first challenge?  She rips the ground out from under them so they'll fall into a ravine and die.  As I said before, ponies don't shiv.

This plan fails (mostly because two of the ponies can fly, and Applejack is able to hold on to Twilight long enough for the other non-fliers to be saved), but one thing that I loved is how three of the ponies had to be saved by fliers, but Applejack?  She jumps down the side of the cliff like it's nothing.  Applejack is awesome.

So, having failed to kill them once, Nightmare Moon tries her next plan...sic a manticore on them, which will not only kill them, but probably eat the remains.  

Despite the best efforts of the other ponies (including a respectable rodeo act by Applejack trying to ride the beast into submission and Rainbow Dash creating a tornado around the beast), Fluttershy manages to tame the beast because, seriously, who could harm this?

D'awww.  ...I mean, um, right.  To adventure!

...to be honest, I think Nightmare Moon ran out of ideas at this point, because her next plan to make some scary trees glow in the dark to try to scare the ponies away (defeated by Pinkie Pie laughing in the face of fear with a musical number, but I'll discuss the music in this show another time), and after that is...well...after that is this guy.  

And I'm not going to lie, they make no attempt to not make this the most flamboyant character you'll ever see.  See, he's making it impossible to cross the river because a dark cloud ripped out half of his mustache, thus ruining his entire ensemble.  This isn't an exaggeration either, as the dragon and Rarity spend time discussing how he set up an entire look, but this one missing ingredient is a "crime against fabulosity."  Rarity's term, not mine.

So, Rarity chops off her own tail to make the dragon a new mustache, and the ponies move on to the final challenge...Rainbow Dash gets offered her heart's desire, and all she has to do is give up and leave her new friends behind.  But because you can't get multiple episodes out of the team failing to save the world in the second episode, the ponies get to the castle and find the Elements of Harmony!

...well, five out of the six.  And the silly things don't even work.  So, here's where the meaning of the title comes into play.  Turns out each pony, as demonstrated in how they got the team past each challenge, embodies one of the elements themselves, and that friendship allows the last element (here's a hint: My Little Pony: Friendship is _______) to appear.  And then the ponies unleash a huge rainbow that simply makes a Care Bare Stare look like shooting a BB gun next to a rocket launcher.  I'm not kidding either.  Check this out:

The only way this could get any more epic would be if this was the last element of "harmony":

...but I digress.

When everybody gets up after the magical Pony Bomb goes off (P-Bomb?), Princess Celestia shows up and reveals that Nightmare Moon is actually...her SISTER!  ...yeah, Ms. Celestia's also 1000 years old.  The two sisters make up after a tear-felt apology from the pony who almost doomed all of ponykind twice, a-

...y'know, if the elements of harmony could blast all of the evil out of Nightmare Moon and return her to her former self, why didn't Celestia do that in the first place?  Maybe she didn't have as much control over the elements as six ponies who don't, on their own, have control over the sun?  I mean, surely you don't imprison your little sister in the moon for a thousand years on purpose, right?

...what's that?  Celestia knew Nightmare Moon was going to break free, and the real reason she sent Twilight Sparkle out to make friends was because she knew the "magic" necessary was in the little pony the whole time, it just had to be unlocked?  ...man.  There's a dark turn.  Someone suggest something to get this back to being happy.  Pinkie Pie, what do you suggest?

Right!  So, everybody in Ponyville celebrates not dying a horrible death, and Celestia tells Twilight Sparkle that it's time to head on home.  ...and I'd be lying if I said this last bit wasn't done really well, when Twilight points out how sad it is that she's finally, for the first time in her life, learned to appreciate having friends, but now has to leave them...so Celestia gives her prize student a new assignment:  Live in Ponyville with her friends, and report back every week with a lesson learned about being a friend.  And yeah, I know, "oh look, a reason for a moral at the end of every episode.  Yup, this sure is a show for girls."

Hush, you.  I'll tell you now, the morals stem naturally out of the episodes in such a way that I haven't seen since...well, ever, really, and sometimes a story will twist around enough times that you almost forget what the moral "set-up" was until everything wraps up at the end.  It's extremely well crafted and laid out, but really, what do you expect from Lauren Faust?

So, I guess I gotta sum this up.

The Good:
  
The story holds up, even under the weight of setting up something that the title spells out before the series even begins. The character interactions are very well done, managing to show a respect for the characters, laying out some simple things for the children watching, but it never talks down to its audience.  Also, Pinkie Pie's song was really catchy, but that's not going to be unusual, as I'll point out later.

The Bad:

Princess Celestia's design when she first shows up.  This is, for all intents and purposes, one of the mightiest beings in the world, a thousand year-old princess (seriously, you rule the ponies, you're a queen.  Queen it up) who controls how celestial objects work.  It's common for the noses of the ponies to be extremely downplayed when they're facing towards the camera, but since the first time we really see Princess Celestia is this:

It's...not flattering.  

Another thing was the hinting towards the elements of harmony being in the ponies themselves.  The slow draw across each one of the girls as Twilight lists the elements is necessary, I suppose, but could have been done more smoothly.  

Also, while Nightmare Moon's plots to stop the ponies starts strong, it descends into silliness towards the end, especially with the sea serpent and Rarity.  Then again, I'm not a young girl, so, what do I know.

Overall:

The first episode intrigued me, but this episode locked my interest in this series.  In the space of 22 minutes I was presented a monumental quest, two types of "monsters" to be overcome, an affirmation of who the characters are, and a satisfying ending.  There are very few hour long dramas that manage that so well, and I look forward to doing more of these.

Next episode we'll see one of the two (that I've seen so far) Benny Hill references in the show!  Because that's what girls like, right?  Benny Hill's chase scenes?

Dug from the archives...

So one more draft post I dug up:

"You know, no matter how many times I look back, I think one of the moments I experienced my first real bout of fanboy glee will be when Tom Beland himself became the first person ever to post a comment on my blog. There are simply no words for how awesome that is.

The closest thing I can think of is if someone wanted to be a puppeteer for their entire life, and they finally work up the nerve to set up a tiny little street corner performance. They do a couple shows, nobody seems too interested, and then suddenly Frank Oz stops by and says "you...are awesome."

Or for those of you who aren't quite that nerdy, just imagine a hobby you took up at one point and someone you consider a master tells you you're doing just fine out of the blue. Horseback riding and 1992 gold medalist Matt Ryan, for example. Whatever. It was great. Shut up."

Even then, I knew horses and ponies were the opposite extreme to my regular interests.  Now we just have to wait for me to discover a love for Jersey Shore, the Deen family, and binge drinking.

11 Games I Feel Don't Get Remembered Enough

Hey, look what I dug out of one of my "proposed posts" archives!  Enjoy!

In a blatant ripoff of the Nostalgia Critic, here's a Not-The-Top 11 list. These are by no means the greatest games I've ever played, or even games I might necessarily play again unless I was consumed by total nostalgia, but they are games that completely shaped my outlook on video games.

#11: SiN: Episode 1: Emergence


Easily the game with the most colons (punctuation-wise, though possibly also organic in the number of people you shoot), this game is a campy, over-the-top FPS that came out back in 2006 that fully embraced the idea of games being played to be fun. The accuracy was just close enough that if you missed you could blame it on the fact you were running away from giant mutants, it had the old-school feel of hiding behind walls, saving ammo, and praying there was a health kit nearby to keep you from dying, but what I loved were the characters.


...besides the obvious reasons. The NPCs in this game had the most personality I had ever seen in an FPS (I was sadly behind in my playing of games by Valve), and managed to play up the relationships so that when something bad happens to a character close to you, the lead, I actually got upset at the person responsible and wanted eagerly a chance to destroy them. The banter, the conversations, and the fact that if you crouch behind your partner and fixate too long on a certain part of their anatomy, they tell you to "take a picture, it lasts longer" all added up to an extremely fun experience.

#10: Disaster Report


Very few people know about this game, which is more the shame. A lot of people describe survival horror as games where monsters stalk you or jump out of closets going "boogie boogie boogie" before you can smack them down with a chair leg or shoot them with enough ammo to wipe out a Roman legion. Disaster Report is different in the sense that there's almost no combat until late in the game, your primary enemy is the artificial island you're on that's just suffered an earthquake so massive the whole thing is starting to crumble and sink. Walks across unstable debris are made worse by sudden aftershocks, and in the distance you can see skyscrapers crumble. Every aftershock is made worse when you realize that you have to make instant decisions: do you stay in once place and hope the structure you're in is secure, or do you run because you're in a place that's either about to have the floor fall out from under you or have a new building land on it?

It does involve a lot of reloading and memorizing where debris falls, but since most of the game play surrounds pathfinding, helping other survivors, and trying to uncover the island's hidden secret before it all gets swallowed up by the ocean, I really didn't mind it that much. It was the first game that really showed me that a game environment can be more than just pretty pictures, it can be an active character (and enemy) in itself.

#9.  Board Game Top Shop

Board Game Top Shop is Monopoly, pure and simple, but taken to such insane levels that it becomes a brand new game in of itself.  You start the game as a giant cat who wants to become one of the richest beings in the land, and to do so you have to compete against other characters in buying up every store in major shopping malls, constantly worrying about the actions of a kid of indeterminate gender in a frog suit, an escapee from a 70s TV series, and Santa Claus.  That's right, you're trying to bankrupt Santa Claus.

But in all seriousness, I used to play this with a group of friends (it supports up to 6 people!) and the fun was nonstop.  Escalators give you options to aim towards or avoid certain stores, you can expand your store into more floor space, bringing up the value of the items you sell, but be careful!  Once your stock is emptied, someone else can buy your store right out from under you!  Quite simply one of the best party games I've ever played, inclusion of random events (random stores close, money gets redistributed, and other insane events) keep the playing field level.  Great fun, highly recommended.

#8. Koudelka

Koudelka is an extremely obscure RPG for the Sony Playstation, and a game that I have a particular soft spot for.  It's the (easily) forgotten prequel to the more-than-stellar Shadow Hearts series for the PS2, featuring a young gypsy woman with mysterious powers who teams up with an adventurer and a priest, three strangers who "happen" to all be at the same mysterious monastery on the same evening. 

The combat is rather clunky, the graphics are now seriously outdated, but the storyline is still one of my favorites, and if anybody out there played Shadow Hearts, you should find a copy of the prequel.

#7.  Final Fantasy Adventure

One of the first "RPGs" I ever played, this game is actually based off of the "Mana" series in Japan. For some reason, they changed the name to tie in to the popular Final Fantasy series, despite the fact that one of the major goals of the game is to get to the "Mana Tree."  It allowed you, the protagonist, to team up with a different NPC during each chapter, from a young woman who healed you any time you were injured (very handy) to a dwarf who fixated on finding silver (not as handy).  Plus, you got to ride a giant bird around a desert in one section, and you can't tell me that isn't fun.

It also had what I believe is still the MOST requested explanation for a clue in the pages of Nintendo Power magazine:

Seriously, game designers.  What the hell.  Even now, looking at that clue, and remembering that this was in the days before the internet when all you had to rely on was people mailing questions to magazines in the hopes it would get answered...well, even now I see red.  God, that was a terrible puzzle.  Still a fun game, though, and the first time I wanted to cry at a game's ending.

#6.  Beach Spikers

 

This game is a  purely guilty pleasure, but a fun one.  As I said before, I enjoy beach volleyball video games, as it allows me to be good at a sport I have no business playing (beach or otherwise).  The controls were intuitive, the play was smooth, the graphics were great for the time, and the fact I could customize my team to look like Barbara Gordon and Dinah Lance from DC Comics (complete with police outfits that looked like they fell out of Gotham) made it all the better.

Plus, no characters were re-aged to "?" to make you feel like you weren't being a pedophile.

#5.  Beyond Good & Evil

There really isn't much I can say to add to all the acclaim this game received when it first came out, except to say that if you've heard of it and haven't thought of playing it, you have no right to call yourself a true video game fan, and that you're probably a terrible person.

The story involves a young woman named Jade (and her uncle, a talking pig who wears clothes, because shut up, that's why) who gets caught up in a mystery involving a continuously-occurring alien invasion, the military police force who protect the people, and mysterious disappearances of citizens.  And the way she solves this mystery is with the most fearsome weapon to be in video games during these days...first person cameras!

...not the game perspective, I mean an actual camera.  One you take pictures with.  From a first person point of view.

Because, after all, what better way to save the world than with the key tool from Pokemon Snap?

Anyway, the game play and combat are very tight, and the open world design means you can go off on side missions rather easily, be it entering your hovercraft in river races, taking pictures of wildlife for a nature magazine publisher, or just exploring every nook and cranny makes the world one I really wish we'd get to see again in the continuously postponed sequel.

#4.  Block Out

 

This is a game whose time, I feel, has come back around.   Picture, if you will, a grid, anywhere from 3x3 to 5x5.  Now, imagine that grid is actually the bottom of a long chamber that you have to drop complex Tetris-like blocks down...except the blocks are also 3D, so they can go left, right, up, and down.  Fill in a complete layer across the grid, and the blocks vanish and shrink back down a level.  Let the levels fill up, and it's game over.  And remember, you're dropping these from -above-, so it's sometimes hard to determine whether that peg sticking out the bottom is actually going to fit in that one tiny hole you left in the layer below it.

Excellent game, and one I still relish playing sometimes.

#3. Parasite Eve

I showed this game at the beginning, so hopefully nobody's really surprised, but this game scared the hell out of me when I played it.  A survival horror RPG, with a really unique idea (remember those mitochondria you learned about in biology?  The things that aren't really part of humans but we can't live without?  Yeah, what if someone could control them into reshaping and destroying their host bodies, or turning the bodies into monsters?), this game combined dazzling graphics with superb game play to make every moment not playing it time spent wishing I had a controller in my hand.

Plus, you fight a T-Rex in a museum, and the final boss fight is "lure the unstoppable monster deep inside a naval vessel, rig the boilers to blow the whole ship up, and then haul ass."  It's easily one of the best RPGs I've ever played, and is only slightly marred by the "so-so" sequel and don't even get me started on the recent release that turns it into an action game.  Ugh.

#2.  Streets of Rage 3

 

This game is just a classic, in the style of Final Fight and Double Dragon, that involved you battling Mr. X's gang in an attempt to save the city from crime, bombs, robot duplicates, and other plot points that are poorly explained because seriously, who cares about the plot?  Bonus points, though, when your plan involves a "robot duplicate" of the police chief...that's planning big.

You could play as Axel, the guy with the flaming uppercut, Blaze, the woman in the microskirt who loved to kick really high in 16-bit graphics, Dr. Zan, who was an old asian man with a Go-Go-Gadget extendo arm that delivered electric shocks, or Skate (not shown on the cover cause he was lame), a young urban black teen who wears roller skates and break dances.

Or, if you're like me, you play the game for one reason and one reason only...

...to play as a boxing kangaroo against guys on motorcycles, dominatrix-women with whips, and getting into a punching match against a slowly-advancing bulldozer.  And that's for real.

#1.  Sigma Star Saga

I'll admit it, I still play the hell out of this game just for fun.  Take a traditional RPG, except that instead of random encounters, a starship teleports you into it so that you can scroll to the right and shoot everything that moves, getting XP for every creature killed.

The plot line is wonderfully bizarre, you're an Earth ship pilot who was captured by the "evil" aliens (that freaky purple girl is one of them) and you become a double agent, working for the aliens while still reporting back to Earth what the invasion plans are.  However, the plot gets wonderfully complex, the character interactions are both hilarious and poignant, and the shooting...well, those style of shooting games are one of my true guilty pleasures.  I don't think this game sold well, but it's definitely worth picking up anywhere you can find it, be it emulator or perhaps on the Nintendo Store on a Wii.

There are certainly better games I've forgotten than these, but these are the games I remember having a great time playing and never really hear anybody mention much anymore (the exception being Beyond Good & Evil, but it's special because it really is that good).

And the one game I'm glad it seems people have forgotten?

F-Zero for the Gamecube.  I broke four controllers in fits of rage playing that game.

Reviewing is Magic: Episode 1

Blogs have transformed journalism.  What used to require travel, editing, and a lengthy printing process now reaches the masses in the blink of an eye.  Updates from major news moments occur in real time, and having a blog becomes a privilege for those willing to put themselves out there, but also a responsibility to make sure it is used in a manner that serves not just the writer, but also the reader.

So, on that note: My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.  

This series first crossed my radar when I listened to an episode of Talkin' Toons, a podcast done by voice actor (and overall great human being) Rob Paulsen.  His guest that week was the incredibly talented (and ridiculously good looking) Tara Strong.  From that interview I learned of the Bronys, a term I had previously heard as something akin to a derogatory word.  Time passed, and the idea of men watching the show passed as nothing more than a cultural curiosity, albeit it one I could never judge too harshly on, having grown up sitting through episodes of Jem and the Holograms and She-Ra: Princess of Power in order to get to other programs.  The less said about my brief stint watching Totally Spies while unemployed is a topic for another day (It's Clueless meets James Bond, and one is voiced by Commander Shepard!  What's not to like?)

The series crossed my radar again with several articles written by blogger, humorist, and Batmanologist Chris Sims of the Comics Alliance.  His description of some of the themes and challenges intrigued me, and phrases such as "a bear made out of outer space" only whet an appetite I was, up to now, unaware I had.  Flashbacks to when I first attempted to eat a fried banana at an Indonesian restaurant or when a friend showed me a television show devoted entirely to myths and debunking them with high explosives flooded back to me.

And so, in the spirit of "I <insert verb here> so you don't have to (but in some cases you totally should)," I present my new series reviewing episodes of a television show that first came out in 2010.  Because everybody deserves to know about a show this absolutely insane interesting.

So, because the first two episodes are a two-parter, I'm breaking this post into two parts.  Normally I'd just summarize a bit more, but this encourages me to post more show deserves an insightful look.  I'll do my best to stick to initial opinions, but some hints/spoilers from future episodes will surface.

So, episode one, "Mare In The Moon" begins with a history of the kingdom of Equestria.  And I'm going to say this right now, I love when a show plays with a theme, and MLP milks the "pony" theme for all it's worth.  "Anybody" becomes "anypony."  "Everybody" is "everypony."  Their kingdom is named Equestria because of course it is.  What else would they call it?

So the nation used to be ruled by two sisters, one who used her magical control over the sun (!) to force it to rise every morning, and the other wou'd control the night and make the moon rise.  The younger sister feels jealous because nights aren't as appreciated as days, she goes bitter, and her attempts to plunge the world into darkness causes her to be banished inside the moon.  For a thousand years.  Ponys don't shank.

This also means that the other royal pony has to be on charge of the sun and the moon from that day forward.  This is important, but doesn't really affect the plot in any significant way except to point out that damn, there are some potent magical abilities going on in this show.

I'll be honest, though, it took me until later to realize that the evil sister's new name, "Nightmare Moon" has the word "mare" built right in.  Well played, ponys.

The first real character we meet is Twilight Sparkle.  That's a real name, and not the description of what vampires are now famous for. She's a student to the ruler of Equestria, a total bookworm, and has a pet baby dragon named Spike because I don't know how pets really work in this world.

I'll be honest, in this episode the only thing, animation-wise, that really bothers me is Spike.  I always just get the feeling his eyes are floating an inch in front of his face, and his movements aren't as clean.  But that's nitpicking, because I'll be absolutely honest here...the animation on this show is superb.  The characters are expressive, the mouths move with the voices, the backgrounds have ridiculous detail to them, and there are little throwaway moments during scenes that are clean and easy to pick out.

Twilight's the only pony who seems to realize that a prophecy claiming the "Mare of the Moon" will be freed is about to come true during a major celebration, and the only thing that can stop her from banishing the sun forever are the "elements of harmony."  But her attempts to warn others are thwarted by a royal edict declaring "get your nose out of those books, go check in on the preparations for the ceremony, and make some friends you recluse."  That's not the exact wording, but the spirit's there.

Twilight Sparkle is sent to Ponyville (because of course) where she meets the five other major members of the cast.  First is Applejack, and if I'm being completely honest, I'll admit that she is one of my favorite characters on this show, and in the short running for "favorite new character of 2012."  I'll do more extensive character reviews later, but it's just awesome that, in this world, the most effective way to harvest apples is to kick the crap out of trees until they give up their bounty.
And if that doesn't work, she'll just lasso them straight off the branch. And she wears an awesome hat.  Hats always get bonus points.

 The next pony met is Rainbow Dash, a winged pony whose job is to control the weather by kicking and punching clouds so hard they explode.  I promise you, I'm not making any of this up.  Such precise weather control allows for pushing clouds across the sky, causing miniature rainstorms, and even generating lightning with a swift hoof to the cumulus solar plexus.  She's also extremely proud of the fact that she's one of the most accomplished fliers in the land, reaching rather ridiculous speeds for a winged equine.

No, I don't know how weather works in Equestria, either.  But a later episodes shows us the factories where weather's "built."  Go figure.

We next meet Rarity (no last name), another unicorn like Twilight Sparkle, and thus also able to use magic.  I'll admit, I've always hated characters like Rarity.  Prissy, afraid of getting "dirty" and completely into fashion and little else, it took me a loooooong time to warm up to this character.  She was squarely in the same camp I put Baby Piggy in Muppet Babies, Daphne in Scooby-Doo, and Michelle in the comic strip "Curtis." 

The next pony is another pegasus, Fluttershy, and this is where I get stripped of my "Man Card."  I am totally Fluttershy.  I'm not just saying that because of the "What Pony Are You?" quiz I took during a recent bout of insomnia, but because I see so much of myself in that character when I was growing up.  Fluttershy is kind and caring, but has a small problem with being social with strangers.  Her attempts to say her name to Twilight Sparkle come out as a mumble and only get worse with repeated attempts.  She freezes up and gets uncomfortable in large social groups,   Granted, I'm not quite to this extreme (I don't squeak when trying to talk, for instance), but man.  If Applejack is my character find of 2012, this is my "they must be reading my diary thoughts when they write for this character" moment.

The last new pony we meet is Pinkie Pie, and I'll admit, I've never been fond of the zany, crazy, talkssofastyouhavetolistenthreetimestounderstandwhattheysay characters, but again...in this show, it works.  It takes a few episodes for me to accept it works, but since the character holds to the same "type" of crazy with only a few moments of going more extreme, it at least shows a consistant character, and one whose craziness never overrides the basic ideas of the show, namely "friends come first."  Plus, the other ponies do enough talking about how insane Pinkie is to let me feel confident that it's not just me.  Again, we'll get deeper in the character later, but for now trust me that Pinkie Pie is to MLP what Deadpool is to comic books.

Anyway, after meeting all the ponies and having each of them, in their own way, claim her as their newest best friend (and Twilight Sparkle essentially sigh with disgust at the idea of meeting new people), we come to the big celebration where Princess Celestia (again, what else do you call a pony who forces the sun and moon to do what she wants out of sheer willpower?) is supposed to show up and make the sun rise...but instead, she disappears, and the Mare of the Moon appears, lording it over all the ponies with her magical power and bragging how the sun will never rise again.  But first she has to take out the pony "royal guard" with lightning bolts to the face.  Nice to know that being stuck in the moon for a thousand years hasn't softened her up any.

At this point, it jumps to a "To Be Continued!"  So let's break it down:

The Good:

I've said it before, but the animation for the most part is top-notch.  The story does a superb job of introducing the characters and giving us everything we need to know about their personalities, and nothing really feels like filler.  The plot itself would fit in pretty much any setting trying to tell an epic story, and if you can get over the fact that these are talking ponys, it becomes pretty fun.

Again, another shout out for Applejack, who I did not expect to find in a series like this.  She reminds me a lot of Rogue from the 90s X-Men cartoon, except I don't hate her so intensely that it puts me off southern accents for several years.  Also, another nod to Fluttershy for being the pony who makes me sigh and go "man, I've so been there" when I watch her try to interact with her peers.

The voice work is superb, and the voice staff have enough experience to be able to fully flesh out the previously mentioned personalities without going completely over the top.

The Bad:

Well, nothing's perfect.  Spike's animations bug me somewhat, but just because it isn't as clean or as deep as the rest of the animation (even background characters do a better job of looking complete).  Rarity is given the least personality outside of "I decorate, like to do makeovers, and totally want to get out of this dump and both hob and nob with the elites." Plus, the scene where Twilight Sparkle was delivered to Ponyville in a chariot drawn by two winged horses just felt somewhat uncomfortable, since the only response they give her thanks is a mix between a grunt and a whinny.

Overall:

As I said before, this show really didn't have to be this good.  Al I really remember of the original cartoon was it was essentally "Care Bears, but with horses, and nobody shoots rainbows out of their stomach to make bad guys explode."  Overall you can look past any gender issues in the show (Rarity excluded, of course) and simply enjoy a well-built story that happens to have an almost entirely female cast.  It's easy to understand how the "Brony" culture came around, and in today's world it really nice to have a show to bring up that goes "Hey, wouldn't it be great if people could just be nice to each other to solve their problems?"

For its purpose, I give the episode a solid B+, docked from A status only for a few minor quibbles.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to watch the Expendables to see if I can get my "Man Card" back.