The Grail

There are rarer video games. There are more expensive video games. But THIS one is THE one I've wanted most for a long, LONG time. And it has always been more than I could financially justify despite my raving lust for Technosoft shooters. But I landed a good price for one sans a spine card... and had my fingers crossed it was in good shape.

As it turns out, it looks mint.

Now like Wayne Campbell's Fender, it rests at last in my hot little clutches. I don't know if this was actually Technosoft's last game (released 1996 five years before they folded), but it is certainly amongst the last. And a game for that pinnacle of 2d shooting goodness the Sega Saturn, no less.

Can't wait to fire this sumbitch up!

Confession Time

The Devil's Own Box of Colors

Several weeks ago I was on an online gaming forum and confessed a secret shame.

I play Bejeweled 2. On my Xbox 360. And not just a little bit.

If you are not in the video game know, this is shameful because I will now have to go before the Grand Vidyageam Tribyoonal and tender my Hardcore Card.

Normally, I don’t put much stock in labels in general… casual/newb versus hardcore/true doesn’t mean much to me in ANY of the fangeek shit I’m involved in. This includes video games. BUT. In gaming at least most of my tastes tend to fall naturally into the various hardcore-centric genres, with the occasional foray into mainstream games and then, once in a blue moon, a so-called casual game. It is just how my tastes run, being as old as I am, and given the fact that oldschool game genres have acquired the patina of hardcoreness over time… as in, you’d HAVE to be hardcore to still be playing that old/simplistic/difficult shit.

But Bejeweled 2, as a game, dips into a rarely experienced level of casual-ness for me. Let’s put it this way; It is always on those bargain spin racks of jewel-cased PC software that are omnipresent at every electronics store or electronics departments in catch-alls like Target or Walmart. This game is displayed there like gum or mints would be racked up in the checkout aisle at the grocery store. So this thing is an ‘ooh puzzle game, pretty colors’ impulse buy for any grannie or schlub that might have a PC.

I bought it from the Xbox Live Arcade service because I just wanted something to fall back on that wasn’t too difficult, had simple controls, and wouldn’t mean much to me. Sort of video game meditation, in a way. For those times I wanted brightly-colored entertainment that didn’t require any sort of exertion or investment on my part.

The simple and meditative part was (somewhat) correct. Otherwise, my assumptions about the game were a huge error in judgment. Because you see, the other part of the Bejeweled problem is:

I totally suck at it.

There it is. An uber-casual game (but that shouldn’t matter I tell myself) kicking my ass. As an added affront to all things that make me ME, this game is subverting my indifference to the achievements that are part of the current game generation.

Normally I think achievements (or trophies on the PS3) are okay, not something I’d go out of my way to obtain unless they were adjacent to my own personal goals in a game, ie in Bayonetta I really want to explore the game world, so the achievement for finding all the Alfheim Portals lines up with that. I’ll make the effort to backtrack and do what is necessary to get that achievement. It isn’t much extra effort. Many achievements are tied to finishing the game or beating a boss or whatever. That’s all good, but really no big deal since that stuff is usually part of successfully playing most games.

Bejeweled is giving me such a hard time that the basic achievements for each game mode (but particularly the standard Classic mode) are now looking like badges of honor that I really need to claim to justify the time I’ve spent. And I have been blown away by how utterly I fail to even get close.

This has made me re-assess a few things about myself, puzzles, and puzzle games in general. Trying to discover what made this game so difficult for me is leading, inexorably it seems, to the conclusion:

I may be shitty at all sorts of strategic/thinking person’s pursuits.

Now this particular revelation may not seem like much of a big deal. So what, yeah?

The big deal is that I always kind of assumed… for all of my not-inconsiderable years… that I was smart enough or clever enough to just be ‘naturally good’ at puzzle games or strategic thinking stuff all around. The full assumption is like this; puzzles and strategic pursuits (chess, RTS video games, etc) are in the ‘realm of the intelligent’ and that one’s ability to ‘solve’ these sorts of things is directly proportionate to one’s intelligence. The smarter you are, the easier puzzles and brainy pursuits as a whole should be.

Now objectively that may not actually be true. I’m sure there are plenty of intelligent people who are shite at puzzles or certain strategy/cerebral pastimes. But for me, and the type of intelligence I’ve prided myself on having, this correlation has always been assumed… even if mostly subconsciously.

While I don’t think I lord it over people and I do TRY to be well-rounded and well-grounded enough not to come off as some elite intellectual tit, I still take a certain pride in my education, my desire to continue to learn, my ability rapidly assimilate and retain information and my logical approach to problem solving. It is what has allowed me to do well most any place I’ve been employed of course, and it is what allows me to traverse a lot of different fanboy arenas, material from which frequently surfaces here on this ‘blog.

So it might not be accurate, but it has always SEEMED, that with that sort of brain thinky type games should be (generally) a snap, or at least a modicum of ability would be natural. Now that I’ve discovered I may be crap at this sort of pursuit, it is making me call into question just how smart I am REALLY.

Have I overestimated myself? Am I guilty of pride and arrogance over my own smarts? For years and years?

There wouldn’t be quite this deep a personal examination over just the one casual puzzle game, Bejeweled 2. But in asking myself the question ‘why is this so hard?’ after a particularly grueling session of having my ass handed to me, I was trying to think up similar instances where I DID perform to expectations, I started to realize there may not be any. Or very few.

Through my kid and teen years I tried my hand at go, shogi, chess, on-paper puzzle games (crosswords, word searches, etc). Remembering back, I think I’m realizing I was never good at any of it. I have always played, losing or failing to finish most of the time, but always moving on with the dismissive thought ‘well, I could win if I really put my mind to it’. I have since that time just assumed I didn’t make time to practice that stuff because there were so many things to be interested, but that if I HAD practiced, it would’ve been almost record time that I would’ve gotten proficient or competitive. Shit, I LEARN everything else in short order, why would this brainy game stuff be any different?

I don’t think I believe this anymore. I think that on some level, I realized that it was going to be a lot of work to get good at ANY of it, and I justified not putting the effort in by labeling it ‘easily do-able for my big brain’ and moving on. It may not be important in a real sense, but it is rather disturbing to find something you’ve taken for granted about yourself to be fundamentally untrue. Cripes, its taken this long to figure this out? Or rather be honest about it?

In my early adult years, I had a friend who really liked chess. I thought I did too. But looking back on all the times I played and lost (usually badly), and all the many more times I put off having a game with him, I think I liked the IDEA of chess… what it is, a strategy game about a stylized battle with medieval trappings… but I was not keen on how I sucked at it (understandable) but was in denial about how much work I’d have to do to overcome the suckage because obviously if you’re smart there shouldn’t be that much work.

Maybe I’m being silly. Maybe I’m sort of stuck recalling only the incidents in which I failed or ducked, and not remembering times when I did fine. Maybe even performed as expected. I CAN come up with a few successes.

For every success however, it appears there are two or more failures. I got through World of Goo in record time. Portal, no problem either. No hints, no guides, no walkthroughs. But let me boot up Braid, and I’m totally lost. I can’t believe how incredibly obscure this game is to me. And looking about on the internet it seems I’m just about the only one! I’m also working on a color matching puzzle mode on the DS game Magnetica. I’m appalling at it. This game should’ve clued me in that I’d suck at Bejeweled, but I just didn’t ‘get it’ back when I started it. I’ve tried a few Sudoku puzzles. I can do the easy ones no problem, but once I start getting into middle difficulty (of course what constitutes what difficulty is probably widely variable) I get stuck like a dingleberry on a sheepdog.

And I can literally remember thinking ‘enh, I don’t have time for this kid stuff, but I could totally dominate if’n I wanted to.’.

I’ve always wanted to learn shogi. I’ve owned a set for years. But it is so much like chess that deep down I’ve probably avoided it like I have chess. When an XBLA version came up, here was a chance to play this game and learn it without embarrassing myself with real players. Not that there is a surfeit of shogi players where I live. There’s even awesome, detailed tutorials, and CPU players to practice with.

I can’t even get close to beating the level one rube CPU guy.

This discovery about myself isn’t life-changing. Really, it isn’t even as big an event as the existence of this ‘blog entry is making it out to be. Mostly it’s humorous to me. But there is still a mild level of shock, bewilderment, and disappointment at this. There shouldn’t be a lot of stock put in ‘puzzle skills’… but to find out you’ve got nothing where you always assumed there was something… man. Especially if, like me, you were so sure… you had so totally assumed. Its like finding out a bank account doesn’t really have any money in it, and what’s more the firm you assumed was paying a dividend into it really wasn’t!

I think it fair in the cosmic sense that I have to work to be good at these things. There isn’t truly some law or logic to thinking that because one is reasonably intelligent, or educated, or intuitive that you should just naturally be good at anything. I’m certainly not entitled to a natural skill. If asked directly I wouldn’t have said a smart person ‘HAS to’ be good at puzzles. At most I’d say ‘it wouldn’t surprise me’ if a smart person tended to be good at puzzles. But at heart, I’d say I believed the first quote. It isn’t so easy to shake that conviction, if you’ve held it all your life, no matter how untrue.

Failure to stop believing it also leads me to believe maybe I ain’t so damn smart. I don’t think I ever was. Huh.

Postscript:

After my forum confession I was pointed to a site dedicated to acquiring achievements. The site tells you how to win by any means necessary including various forms of cheating or subverting the designers’ intentions.

Now some achievements and the methods expected to get them are stupid. Stupider than stupid. So some fiddling with fairness might be justified. But for someone like me… who cares? I don’t care about right and wrong in getting achievements because I’m not in it to collect the damn things anyway! I think my online buddy’s point was to just let me acquire the damned thing and put Bejeweled 2 behind me, but doing that just isn’t my way. Using underhanded means would just rankle and eat at me. Like I hadn't really gotten the better of the game, and that is the whole point of frustration in the first place. I’d be far more likely to get satisfaction out of taking a game disc outside, breaking it, then setting it on fire. I may not be smarter than the game, but I can still kill it. Who has the power now you little plastic fuck?

I looked at the site anyway. I’m not averse to getting strategy tips and advice on how to be a better player and I knew that for some achievements you just need to be good. Lo and behold, the achievements I wanted were exactly like that. You can’t really fake your way to them.

There was a perversely comforting aspect to the site's comments about the game. They rated the game 9 out of 10 for difficulty in acquiring the achievements in Bejeweled 2. Not only can you not cheat, but the goals set by the designers require a ton of practice, time, and luck to get! Quote: ‘If you are looking for a quick set of points to boost your Gamerscore, look elsewhere.’.

Now I don’t feel quite so much like the grannies and schlubs can do it but I can’t.

THIS

From an article on Yahoo! News this morning:

"In some respects, GenMe seems to want to have their cake and eat it too. That is they want high pay and status but aren't as interested in burning the midnight oil. "Given that GenMe values extrinsic rewards more than Boomers did, the combination of not wanting to work hard but still wanting more money and status verifies the sense of entitlement many have identified among GenMe," researchers write in an article published online this month by the Journal of Management.

The fact that GenMe individuals tend to dislike working overtime while also expecting higher status and compensation at work shows a disconnect between their expectations and reality, one that indicates a sense of overconfidence and even narcissism, said Twenge, who is also an author of "The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement" (Free Press, 2009) and "Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled - and More Miserable Than Ever Before" (Free Press, 2007)."


So now there's hard data being collected on young peoples' laziness. Awesome. Whole article here:http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100310/sc_livescience/biggenerationgapsinworkattitudesrevealed

Calling kids these days GenMe is lame though. I'm not sure I like 'millenials' very much, but its better than GenMe. Blech. But the topic is relevant given this 'blogs previous mentions (okay, rants) about entitlement.

Alone In The Dark

Watched almost all of a DVD set of Kolchak: The Night Stalker. I have one episode left, the last one… one of my favorites. Or I recall that it was.

I remember being a kid staying up late all alone (Mom and bro already off to bed), lights out watching this program before the CBS Late Movie came on. Kolchak’s whistle and the rest of the ominous theme song usually heralded some pretty good scares for the school age kid I was back then.

I wasn’t expecting the shows to be particularly scary watching them as an adult. As a child in the mid-70s I bought into the production values, the appearance of the characters and monsters, and the various traditions and tropes in television at that time. Buying the set recently, I knew this was going to be more of a nostalgia trip and not so much to actually re-experience those old thrills.

I also had the side mission of hopefully providing more fright show fodder for my own kids. If you’re a sadist like me who wants to put their kids through the horror grist mill, you probably know that scary shows that are kid appropriate can be pretty thin on the ground. I’d been letting them watch the occasional Hammer horror film but I needed more material.

As expected, Kolchak didn’t turn out to be very scary. There were moments where I definitely could see what was scary about them… what would definitely have been frightening to a kid but were more on the level of 'creepy' now. Spoiler: Kolchak sewing up the mouth of the sleeping zombie, or the old crone demon leering out of the dark… yep, those would have a kid lying awake in bed. But some of the monsters are dumb or crippled by bad makeup and effects. I might not have rolled my eyes at the time (there wasn’t much that was a lot better) but MY own kids brought up on Lord of The Rings and Harry Potter sure might. They’ll still be scared by some of it, but for them the monsters will alternate episode-to-episode between comedy and terror I think. The budgets for each episode seemed to get smaller as they went along. In early episodes there’s dudes fighting armies of cops, and invisible entities powering through concrete walls in slow motion. Later, the adversaries are all various types of ‘human’...that is, no-makeup-involved villains with various mind powers that take no money to convey on screen.

Couple the okay scares with the limits television programs had in terms of what they could show and this probably is a good go-to series to show my kids. I really only found some prostitution and massage parlor references in one or two episodes that might be objectionable.

What DID surprise me was how good all the rest of the show was. McGavin’s work as Carl Kolchak and all the other regulars on the show are excellent. I mean REALLY good. It is kind of a given that when you watch an older show, you are going to have to accept certain conventions of the time if you want to get any enjoyment out of it. This includes character types and a lot of the humor that goes with them. Watch an old Jerry Lewis show and you probably will find that a lot of what was funny then isn’t so funny now. I didn’t find that to be the case with Kolchak at all. The shit still plays. It still comes across as well acted and genuinely funny. This show is a really good case for a certain something… charm maybe… that is all but lost in modern film and television. Carl Kolchak is an everyman schlub, but a reporter with balls of steel, too. He brazens his way into everyone’s business, makes enemies all around… yet you can’t help but like him. And McGavin pulls this all off almost effortlessly.

Although aspects of the show make it a good window into the period, it is amazing how much has stayed the same in contemporary life between then and now. Even the clothes and hair in some episodes doesn’t give too much away, like the producers almost shot them with timelessness in mind. In those installments, if you just gave everyone cell phones it could have happened today. Chicago, setting for the series, doesn’t look much different in the present. There are quite a few references to, and use of computers (or workstations). Kolchak comes off as something of a luddite even at that time, so his use of a typewriter and old cameras doesn’t really date the show all that much to me. Sometimes the automobiles are the biggest visual clue to the show’s airdates.

I’m going to have to round up the two movies to go along with this set. I saw them as a child and remember them being more frightening (and being made for TV movies, slightly more ambitious) than the series. I’ve read some buyer reviews for this set saying the picture is dark and nigh unwatchable. I didn’t find that to be the case at all. Thank goodness I didn't listen to them. It obviously hasn’t been meticulously restored… it looks like ‘old show film stock’… but the color was pretty vibrant, and I didn’t lose any action in the shadows. I didn’t fart around with the settings on my TV either, a 48inch Panasonic plasma screen. Customers at Amazon need to upgrade their damn televisions or something.

There are only twenty-two episodes. And the two movies. The last episode that I haven’t watched here yet goes back to being more ambitious with the effects and such, if I remember correctly. Like they blew a final wad on the final installment. Can’t wait to watch it, but it’ll be sad when I’m done.

Until I re-watch it when I force it on the children.

"I Should Have Been A Pole Dancer"-- Bayonetta

I was thinking Bayonetta should be my new girlfriend, but now I’ve changed my mind.

I know I know. Back when I still felt we could have something, one could have said ‘get in line’. There must be an army of gamers, nerds, bi-curious goth girls and whole lot of other people who want to be Bayonetta’s special someone.

But she’s just too devoted to her work. She’s got the looks, the confidence and a caboose full of talent (her caboose in fact took weeks of design work to get just perfect)… but when would she ever find time for me? I think I’m a pretty cool guy, but I’m not acrobatically-blasting-angels-all-the-time cool.

In all seriousness though, for all the praise her game gets… and the verdict from those who’ve played the game is overwhelmingly positive… Bayonetta as a character seems to polarize opinions.

Whether her visual design is appealing, it’s going to come down to individual taste, of course. I just find it really interesting how many people are willing to come out with their opinion ‘heatedly’ on this topic. Male characters? Oh, there might be an occasional ‘I think he looks cool’ bandied about, but it is pretty rare that I’ve ever seen fans wax prolific on the aesthetic appeal of Master Chief, Ryu, or Mario. JRPG players don’t count of course.

I haven’t seen this much love her/hate her stuff since early Lara Croft appearances, and she was FAR less realistic. Back in the Saturn/PSX days when Tomb Raider first came out, artwork for Lara Croft showed a very stylized, but confident heroine. And that was sexy. But looking back at those days of crude polygons, a lot of that sexiness was projected. In the promo art, Lara was drawn with tools orders of magnitude more powerful than the graphics engines in the Tomb Raider games themselves. So though she looked video game-y in the art, she was still recognizably a woman and she had some power to emote her toughness and confidence. In-game, like most characters of the day, she was more of a mess. Polygonal graphics were new and exciting so we all got kind of hyper and romantic about it, but those visuals have dated badly. If you look back at Tomb Raider now, you might think its cool from a nostalgic view but you could hardly call Lara (or Sarah from Virtua Fighter or any of the first wave characters) attractive. Sprite art, as old-fashioned as it is technologically, has aged a lot better. There’s a really humorous page on IGN (normally a place I’d stay the hell away from) somewhere that goes over a lot of the old ‘sexy’ polygon characters and serves up a big dish of ‘what were we thinking?’. The Dead or Alive girls are probably the first place an inkling of ACTUAL attractive starts to show. A little.

That’s really not the case now. Remember when you played a game, and when the rendered cutscene came up how cool you thought it’d be to play the game if the graphics were like that? I know a lot of players thought that very thing watching the intros to Tekken.Well, that day has come already. For some time now, not only have in-game graphics surpassed the cutscenes of the nascent polygon games, they typically don’t bother pre-rendering the cutscenes at all. I actually kind of like this. Even in the days when graphics were cruder, I always preferred narrative stuff to be delivered in the same graphic style and at the same graphic level as the parts I actually played. Cutscenes pull you out of the game as it is, I’d rather the visual transition not be so obvious.

So now that the bar has been raised very high on character design and the power to deliver is in the hands of developers, we’re getting games where a character can literally have a power to appeal in a real sense. The characters are frequently stylized, as Bayonetta is, but the weight, textures and movement scoot them close enough to reality for more than just the otaku to love. Hell, when I worked at GW I saw dudes get uncomfortably sweaty over inch-tall female elves… Bayonetta is practically a porn star next to that!

So Bayonetta at least looks, moves and talks something akin to a real-world woman, and like any person in the media (even though she isn’t real) she has gotten public scrutiny. For better or worse, like Lady Gaga if she were on your Xbox 360. Bayonetta’s design derives from a mix of runway fashion, goth/fetish style, and the Japanese pop culture aesthetic known as visual-kei. If it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, that’s fine. Personally I like her looks. But couple that with her in-your-face sexuality and she’s got some people freaking out. She doesn’t actually perform any sex acts in the game, but she has a slightly foul mouth, a suggestive manner, and her clothes (made of her hair) mostly come off during her finishing moves… though no ‘bits’ are shown.

I find it annoying (and even slightly disturbing) that people have a problem with this. Annoying because it is the same Puritan braying one can always expect from certain corners, but coming now from corners I wouldn’t expect. Slightly disturbing because this is an obviously adult woman displaying confidence in her abilities and sexuality… a SIGNIFICANT occurance in video games, let alone one hailing from Japan. Remember? The country with a rep for demure schoolgirl and lolita fetishes? Bayonetta is like the complete opposite from so many of the women and girls populating games and anime from Japan that… I dunno… Is culture shock of some form causing people HERE in the USA to react so strongly? Like OUR video game players are so condition to lolis now?

In Japan Bayonetta has been pretty well embraced. Developer Platinum Games kinda skipped around the loli & fuku thing by casting Bayonetta as British/European. Japanese boys and men often find western women exotic and their storied forwardness (compared to Japanese women) is part of the appeal. So Bayonetta is probably not a direct reaction against the pedo grain, but she’s something. She’s a better character, male or female than most western games manage too. I think that Ruby from Wet, and Faith from Mirror’s Edge are great. And they are sexy in their way. But they don’t flaunt it like Bayonetta does. And that seems to be a large part of the problem for people, even some reviewers who should know better. A lot of people are acting like this is a stereotyped portrayal of a woman in games, ‘when are we going to see a character that isn’t all about skin and sex?’ they say. I don’t know the answer to that, but this is one of the very few times when I’ve seen a female protagonist that KNEW she was about skin and sex and not just being vampy to achieve an end. It may be fan service but because with Bayonetta it doesn’t seem accidental or voyeurish it doesn’t FEEL so much like fan service. It’s just out there. How is that a stereotype in video games?

Don’t think there are women that act like that? You need to get out more. Most women don’t act like Bayonetta outside of partying on a Saturday night (and at the goth club you get the looks too) but for Bayonetta it’s a party all the time. She’s always ‘on’ cuz it’s a fantasy world, duh. Nothing about her world is supposed to be truly realistic. Everything’s exaggerated. They don’t have guns strapped to their heels but given the right context there are plenty of women who will give Bayonetta a run for her money in attitude and confidence in their sexuality.

If you don’t like the character, you don’t like the character. Maybe it shows just how far video games have to go when a character like Bayonetta is such a standout. While I can’t recall a film character that’s a lot like her, there are all sorts of female leads available… and portrayals get more diverse all the time, even if only by inches. Kate Beckinsale’s character in the Underworld films probably pulls a lot of the same strings in fans.

As to the game: I’m not the biggest 3D action gamer on the planet. I gave the Devil May Cry games a miss and most players seem to think that is the game’s closest relative play-wise. I’m not completely at sea… I know God of War, Shadow of the Colossus and some others. I found Bayonetta’s game world to be hugely interesting, and the foes really cool and different. Having one foot in goth-dom as I do, that artistic sense probably a lot of the appeal. The game’s hugely violent and gory. Probably another plus.

The combat engine is smooth and has a really cool dodge mechanism that activates Bayonetta’s version of ‘bullet time’… a thing so many action games seem to think they need these days… but here its pretty damn awesome. Blah blah blah you can find this stuff on any review site… they mostly think the same thing I do.

There’s a ton of hidden shit, and I didn’t find the game to be too short. I thought it was a good distilled action experience. So many gamers want these humongously long games and that’s just crap. Some of the best films and novels aren’t padded out just to make sure you got your money’s worth, but the game market is what it is. Perceived value is such a pain in the dick. Bayonetta was the right duration to get through the basic game if you include a bit of exploration in each level instead of just bashing right through it. Doing it that way you’d get 14 to 18 hours out of it. Then you have additional hours of going back and playing to find all the hidden Alfheim portals or perfecting your level medals.

About the only complaints I would have are that getting really good score medals is almost too hard and takes more practice and replays than I care to do… enh, not really a complaint, I guess. I just have too many other games to get to. And kids. I have those also. Some of the QTEs (quick time events) come up on you quicker than you can react and are lethal. You can have spent a whole level in near perfect combat, fuck up a QTE, and then get a shit medal because you had to use a continue. That’s probably a complaint a lot of games would get for their QTE events, wouldn’t they? There are a few more (and longer) cutscenes than I would prefer, but at least they were entertaining and I was interested enough in the narrative as it went along. It is never good when you feel like you are watching more than playing and Bayonetta ALMOST crossed a line there.

I bought the Japanese version of this game in November of last year (2009) but didn’t start playing it until the western release at the beginning of 2010. Bayonetta sold pretty well in Japan. I don’t know what the numbers here in the west were, but when I went into a Gamestop on release week I was pretty dismayed to find Darksiders released at the same time. What marketing strategy fucknut at Sega came up with that? Darksiders is also a you-versus-the-angels-and-demons semi-apocalyptic 3rd-person action game… only it stars a huge Games Workshop-looking MALE badass with a sword bigger than he is. Who do you think Johnny 14 year old is going to buy that week? He might like Bayonetta’s boobies, but he might also be intimidated by them given the whole package from which they jut forth. The protagonist of Darksiders is just much more (homo)cozier and familiar. Don’t get me wrong. I bought Darksiders and will probably like it. But Bayonetta did NOT need that kind of competition. And what was being advertised in the shop at the time (besides Darksiders and not Bayonetta)? Dante’s Inferno! ANOTHER dude fighting quasi-religious entities in a 3rd person action game. So now Johnny 14 year old has to think about maybe saving his ducats for THAT game. Or maybe getting Bayonetta AFTER he’s got his second helping of heretical gore. By that time he’ll be all heretical-gored out and won’t want our heroine’s game. Unless he REALLY likes her boobies.

I’m actually being a little sarcastic above. All the mentioned games are rated M, and we know no video game stores would ever sell a 14 year old a forbidden game, yeah?

In the case of Dante’s Inferno, all the glorious nudity and perversion that people think is inherent in Bayonetta is right out there in the game. Dante’s Inferno is so closely based on the old epic poem that they actually have his girlfriend Beatrice nude the whole game. What? You missed the part where Dante wrote Beatrice was naked and had great tits when he saw her after the Inferno? Me too. Wait’ll you see the region of Lust in the game.

I would kind of like to get the guidebook for Bayonetta. I don’t normally go in for guides, but a) I wouldn’t mind some combat tips and help finding the Alfheim portals… I just don’t have time to invest in it the old fashioned way, and b) the limited edition is really super spiffy. Black hardcovers and red ribbon. Not released in the USA, though. In fact, our fucking guide got canceled. Could that be because it didn’t look like it would sell well enough amongst all the Dantes and Darksiders? And because Prima still holds the rights, this cool European one can’t be sold by American dealers. So I gotta try to find some UK or continental seller that’ll ship it to me.

Anyway, its early going, so leading contender for my Game of the Year though Bayonetta is, there’ll be a lot more going before 2010 is over. Bayonetta, I love you, but it just wouldn’t have worked out.

D-A-D Spells Evil

Today, a story of cruelty and loss:

Some month or so before the end of 2009, while I was walking down a hallway, my daughter jumped out from a doorway and startled me. Both my kids do this occasionally, as kids are wont to do, but usually it doesn't have the desired effect. It might be cute (or annoying) but it usually isn't scary. This time was different. I don't remember if I my mind, and therefore my awareness, was wandering... but she got me good. She knew it, seeing my reaction, and was totally pleased with herself.

I told her I'd get her back someday. Someday was last Sunday.

For weeks after she 'got' me, she'd remind me in a singsong voice that I still owed her for the scare. I don't know if it was just the fun of the game or whether she thought she'd be immune or what. My kids are not exactly nervy. I (and their mother) have maintained a pretty strict policy of what my kids get to watch (or play) and when. My love of transgressive entertainment has given me a pretty good idea of what's what out there, and I expose my kids to newer, ever more mature forms of entertainment just as I think they can handle it. This has probably helped the children hang on to some aspect of their innocence a bit longer than the average kid today who isn't actually Amish. It also means they aren't inured to things that are creepy, disturbing, or downright scary.

When I was their age I was up really late on Friday and Saturday nights, huddled in my living room with all the lights off watching Kolchak: The Night Stalker followed by The CBS Late Movie, which on weekends was frequently horror or science fiction. I deliberately, with my mom's approval (!) put myself in a position to have the bejeezus scared out of me on a regular basis. I loved it. But of course scary movies in those days were much less graphic... at least the ones that could be shown on television were.

Not only have my kids shown zero interest in scary movies (or games) they don't react particularly positively when I try to get them interested. We have a tradition about watching scary movies for Halloween, but my choices for them have been extremely limited... partly by the dearth of kid-appropriate fare but also because they are just effin' chicken. My goal is to get them up to being able to watch Robert Wise's The Haunting, a black and white film that doesn't rely on any real special effects or gore, but is an absolutely harrowing experience for kids and even adults.

In any case my kids may not be jaded over all the violence in movies, but they could stand a LITTLE toughening up on the emotional front.

So I discovered this little gem of a game called Soul on the Xbox Live Arcade's Indie channel. You control a little glowing ball of essence for some poor person who has just flatlined. Your goal is to guide the glowing ball up heaven. No buttons used, just the little analog stick on the controller. You have to move the soul through several screens representing the underworld, pictured largely like a rundown mental hospital a la Jacob's Ladder. As you guide the soul you can't touch the floors or walls and you have to avoid various hazards and beasties. It has the same nerve-wracking one-false-move feeling that the board game Operation! does. It also has an audio track (and a type of cheap shock scare) that make it a very creepy experience.

So bad Daddy that I am, I made the kids play it. I didn't tell them what it was exactly. I just described it as a sort of 'puzzler'. Like those guide-the-ball-through-the-labyrinth wooden toy games. My son was up first while his sister was over at a friends house. He was my guinea pig to see how scary this thing was to kids, and I was already considering this might be the very revenge I'd been promising my daughter. The short answer is that it made my son cry. About four minutes into the game, he had to quit and I had to console him. I was kind of laughing when I did it which he was none too happy about... but mission accomplished. Swearing him to secrecy, I waited for his sister to get home.

After she'd returned and gotten settled in I waxed enthusiastic about this new game I'd found. My son almost gave it away with an evil grin that she definitely saw. But she sat down to give it a try. At the exact same place my son came apart, she also was freaked out. But as the more disciplined of the two, she hung in there... a bit longer. Her nerves jangled she went on to try the next screen, and as she was trying to inch through a particularly touchy spot, I snuck up behind her and grabbed her, making a loud noise much like one of the scares in the game.

She jumped out of her skin. Then calmly put the controller down, went to her bed and laid down with the blanket over her head. It took me a few minutes of hugs to get her back out of there. And of course when she was calmed down and no longer upset with me, I told her I'd gotten her back at last.

According to her, revenge on my revenge is going to be really horrible.

I'd wholeheartedly recommend Soul by the way. Simple game. Really controller-smashingly difficult in places. Short, but cheap. Seems to have some of the same design sensibilities as Braid, but not so obtuse.

Some You Win, Some You Lose

XII Stag

Amongst my various video game purchases recently, I had a package arrive with two STGs (Japan-derived acronym for 2d shooters: ShooTing Game) in it. Despite being in the same genre, they are incredibly different in most ways… including quality. Good examples of how much variety there can be even in what is perceived (by the mainstream) as a very limited, niche gaming style.

As a baseline for comparison, both games are arcade ports, vertical scrolling, and both are running on a Playstation 2 with a Hori EX Pro joystick used to control.

First the bad:
XII Stag for the PS2. I’m kind of a sucker for buying 2d shooting games (not arena shooters like Smash TV or Geometry Wars), though I’m not so blinkered about being a completist that I will overlook anything. Since you have to do quite a bit of research to track down niche video games, finding opinions just goes with the territory. For me STGs are not one of those game genres where the shitty ones are collectible BECAUSE they are shitty or weird. A shitty shooter is usually unplayable. So you aren’t going to get to enjoy whatever weirdness might be on tap without putting in way too much effort.

XII Stag is an exercise in mediocrity. I read reviews and mostly they said something along the lines of ‘doesn’t do anything new, but does it fine’. This is not what I found to be the case at all. XII Stag has ONE new thing to it, but pulls it off tepidly. Everything about the game is tepid.

I watched snatches of online videos and thought it looked pretty cool. The graphics weren’t groundbreaking, but they seemed detailed, speedy, and interesting enough. Now in real life? Bleagh. Wrong. The objects in the game are all pre-rendered sprites, and they have a kind of shiny aspect that looks pretty good on some of the bosses, but mostly they have this really blocky outline around all of them that just looks budget. Like the blue matte lines in old movies. The backgrounds and scrolling look cool at first, but as you play you realize each level’s background have very little variation and is not going to change. Whatever moonscape, swamp, or mountain range you are flying over… that’s what you are going to see for the rest of the level. Cave games do this to a degree too, but at least Cave usually knocks it out of the park with the enemy designs… along with so many bullets you almost can’t see the backgrounds. Background variation or transitioning started to become a staple of STGs back in the early days of the Genesis, but no one told the staff behind XII Stag apparently.

You get only one type of ship. That’s fine. Really, REALLY old school, but fine. There is only one type of power up. It makes your basic forward shot a little bigger with each powerup gained, up to four levels. The difference between your level one shot and your level four shot is, again, tepid. FAIL! Nothing else. No options, no additional or different firepower. Nada. The bombs it gives you operate in a somewhat interesting fashion… a huge shield from which you can shoot out, but the enemy cannot shoot in. But that’s all there is. Not fantastically spectacular or destructive.

The unique mechanic of XII Stag, ‘the gimmick’ since a lot of developers seem to think a shooting gimmick of some sort is needed, is the side and back shots from your ship. They are very short range but powerful, and raise up the multiplier for whatever enemies you kill. So the risk/reward system of the game is that you need to get close alongside a lot of the enemies in order to use your best weapon. The designers decided that wiggling the joystick back and forth was the way to trigger the side shots, but of course the shots are so limited in range that when you get that close to the enemy or its guns, jerking your ship left and right is the last thing you want to do. You CAN assign the side shots to a button, but your ship still goes all spastic when it fires these off. If you try to just NOT use the side shots you will find your front shots too weak, even fully powered up, to destroy a lot of the enemies in a reasonable amount of time… and your score will really suffer too.

I was so bored I credit fed through the game just to see what the ending was like. I need to research online to see if credit-feeding netted me the shittiest ending because just like the rest of the game it was a big fat nothing much. I finally beat Last Resort for the Neo Geo recently, a game notorious for giving you a crappy ending after such a difficult game… but at least Last Resort is pretty fucking spectacular on the way to the end. And Last Resort is OLD. It isn’t from this century. There is no excuse for XII Stag not giving you ‘something’. The whole game feels like they did the absolute minimum that they could and still have a game. Especially graphically.

XII Stag came out in the arcades in 2002, ported to PS2 in 2003. The developer of the game, Triangle Service, may not have had the budget of the established shooter companies, but it should’ve at least tried to match or beat the competition on some level. I also know Triangle Service HAS done better games. Cave’s first shooter Donpachi, was graphically kind of bleah next to some of the other stuff of the day (like Batsugun), but they made up for it with the unique play ideas that would become their bread and butter in modern times. In similar circumstances another small developer, G Rev, came out with their debut shooter Border Down for the Dreamcast a year after XII Stag, and it was wwaaaaayyyyy better than this game.

The ship controls just fine (when you aren’t side-shooting), and is pretty small with no crazy hitbox problems. The level of enemy fire is sort of manic-lite. A bit heavier and slower than a typical Psikyo game. I have Shooting Love 200X on the way too, a compilation of later Triangle Service releases, but Shooting Love has actually garnered a lot of enthusiasm, particularly for the ‘shooting task’ game included. XII Stag hasn’t dampened my anticipation for it because every company has its blech moments, frequently their first game. My kid is just getting into STGs and he wants to hang on to XII Stag for awhile to see if it gels for him.

Strikers 1945

Now the good:
Strikers 1945 I & II for the Playstation 2. The games in this two-pack are arcade ports as well. My play time, and therefore these comments, are geared toward the first of the two games, though all evidence indicates the second is very similar. A good thing if you enjoyed the first, which I did.

Strikers 1945 came out in 1995 originally, some seven years before XII Stag. As stated in a previous entry the mid-90s was the tail-end of the shooter golden years. So there was plenty of history and competition to look at in designing an STG. Released by Psikyo, a developer known for cultivating a certain ‘style’ in shooting games the same way Raizing, Toaplan, and Cave all have. Psikyo was known for their very clean and colorful art style (frequently risqué) and bullet patterns that have come to be characterized as ‘few but fast’ in opposition to Cave’s manic style of ‘many but slow’. Psikyo game mechanics and techniques are the older style that hearken back to ‘twitchier’ games where memorization was important but not necessarily critical, and fast reflexes helped the player more than being able to thread your hitbox through labyrinthine bullet patterns.

Firing the game up, I was instantly reminded how lo-res the old arcade games were, but how much joy there was in the presentation. The game is set in an alternate 1945 where a new technologically superior threat masses against the former Axis and Ally nations. Psikyo’s art in the game is very precise and shiny, but also very detailed (considering the resolution) with really sharp animation. Particularly for the bosses who all transform from a ‘typical’ vehicle, like a ship or a train, into a mechs that have a sort of post-WWII style to them.

You get a number of planes to choose from, each with their own firepower spreads, options configuration, movement speed and bomb types. The powerups come frequently during the game and you can get your weapons up to pretty massive proportions. Your plane controls really well. The hit box matches the outline of your plane which will vary depending on how big the plane you selected is. There are a few primitive screen options, including ‘tate’ if you are able to flip your monitor or TV on its side.

The early levels are deceptively short and easy. When I was first playing, I knew Strikers did not have a rep as a particularly easy game, but I was blown away by how quickly I was ploughing through it. But there are more than the usual five levels that today’s shooters all seem to sport… and they get a lot more difficult, particularly the ‘boss rush’ that makes up the last quarter of the game. The final section that contains the end boss is worth the price of admission, ranking high on the ‘just when you thought it was over’ scale.

There is nothing super-fancy about this game, just like XII Stag. But this is an example of a game doing everything right. Everything about it is just polished to perfection. A new generation gamer might fire this up and be put off by the pixel-obvious visuals, but once you start playing it all becomes so right. This game is greater than the sum of its parts. I am something of a latecomer to the Psikyo party, as I was with Cave. So as much as I love shooters and have collected scads of them, I’m still getting to discover these extensive pockets of goodness. Psikyo is one of those companies who developed a reputation. Some players may not like the ‘style’ of shooter (few but fast bullets), but there is little doubt that they were good at what they did. There’s a reason why software houses develop followings, and this game is a really good example. It doesn’t even really have a ‘gimmick’ in its mechanics, like XII Stag, it is just a straight-forward blasting good time. When you play the much-more-recent Raiden Fighters games (collected on Xbox 360), which have been described by many as ‘good old-school games that gets back to basics’ this is the game the newer game is referencing. Raiden Fighters has an elaborate medal-chaining system, for modern players who need a deeper scoring mechanic, but at root it can be enjoyed in much the same way as Strikers 1945. They even look really, really similar.

So there you go. I’ve discovered it really is possible to find an absolutely dismissable example of my favorite game genre. One that doesn’t even have the benefit of being ancient. So mediocre it doesn’t even have any camp or ‘so bad its good’ factor. And then in the same mailing, the first of what I hope will be a lot of old Psikyo shooters flowing into my collection. Not EVERY Psikyo game is a winner (I’m still not over the mental scars of Sol Divide, probably why I haven’t bought Psikyo since then), but there’s a lot to look forward to.