GERARDAMO: Game of the Week 6

Alright, I'm back after my lazy week off. If this seems like a half-assed post, it's because I'm writing it in the hour I have until I go out for the night and I still feel lazy, but you'll be assured that I'm doing it right.

My game this week is once again a music game. This one comes from Sega. It's Space Channel 5 for the Sega Dreamcast. This half DDR, half Simon Says game is actually quite unique, not for it's gameplay, but in the style that it's presented. Set in the near future, Space Channel 5 is filled with plenty of 70's retro-chique throwbacks, from main character Ulala's tank-top and mini skirt outfit, completed with go-go boots, right down to the groovy dialogue. I was going to try to add some of this quirky dialogue to the post, but if you couldn't tell from that first one, it would sound awful.

Space Channel 5 puts you in control of Ulala, news reporter for "Ulala's Swinging Report Show!" The plot of the game is quite silly, and the game really just seems to laugh at itself the whole time. Aliens are invading the earth, forcing everyone on the planet to dance, with hopes of... Well... Maybe annoying them? Or starving them to death or something. It's never really made clear why. Somehow, they'll take over TV and the planet that way. Only you, Ulala, can save them by dancing back! Gameplay is simple, aliens (Called Morolians) will jump out and shoot directions in an attempt to attack you! You need to remember these directions and shout them back, because that apparently will stop them. You don't just remember the directions, though. It's all set to music, and you have to remember the rhythm pattern they followed, because what's a dancer without rhythm? You'll also need to shoot the Morolians and rescue the dance-crazed civilians by shouting "Chu!" (Shoot) or "Hey!" That's really all there is to the gameplay.

As I mentioned, Space Channel 5 is a rhythm game, and it easily has my favorite soundtrack. (I hope I didn't say that last week about IIDX as well, because I like this better.) It's very future-jazz-ish, and totally sets the mood for the game. It's one of the few games I have the soundtrack to and can listen to without playing the game. It's hard to describe without actually listening to it, so make sure you turn up the music when you watch the video at the end!

Easily, the most memorable thing about the game is the greatest cameo apperance of all time. Michael Jackson lends his voice to the game as Space Michael, and you need to rescue him, and he doesn't really say anything except for, "Thanks, Ulala!" However, in Space Channel 5: Part 2, he has his own entire level, and it's fantastic, because everyone dances around in an epic dance battle doing Michael Jackson moves (And yes, they do the Thriller.) and then he takes out a singing robot by... More singing. It's got to be the best level in either game. (There's only a Space Channel 5 and a Space Channel 5: Part Two. Well, there was also Space Channel 5: Ulala's Cosmic Revenge for the GBA, but let's forget that that ever happened.)

Space Channel 5 is still rather easy to find. It was re-released on the PS2 as Space Channel 5: Special Edition and comes with both parts, each on their own seperate disc. It's practically identical to the Dreamcast version as well. No unnecessary changes to be seen here. I bought a new copy of it on eBay for 10 dollars, so it's really cheap if you're interested in playing it, and with a price like that, I highly reccomend that you do, if nothing else just for the humor in the game.

The video below is of the first level of Part 1. If it looks easy, that's why, but it does get plenty trickier. The song playing in it is my favorite song out of any game, and that's why I chose this video.

Video by VirtuaPlayer

GERARDAMO: Game of the Week 5

In a choice that will surprise not only my co-authors who I have been talking with about my choice for this week, but myself as well, I have chosen an arcade game as my game of the week this week. It's suprising not because it's an arcade game, but because it's a series that's not dead yet. It's Beatmania IIDX (Insert any style here) for the arcade/PS2.

Beatmania IIDX (Known from here-on only as IIDX, pronounced TOO-DEE-ECKS) is probably my second favorite game series, only to Dance Dance Revolution because I'm exponentially better at that than I am at IIDX, and I started playing it first. Also, it has better music. (Arguments to start... Never, because I doubt anybody capable of starting such an argument reads this.) So, why not DDR instead of IIDX? Uh... Because if you don't know what DDR is, welcome from your coma. It's the year 2009, and somehow you've stumbled upon this wonderful thing known as teh internets. IIDX is a DJ Simulator of sorts, in the same way that DDR is a dance simulator... It isn't. (Oh, you should know that DDR and IIDX were both created by Bemani, a branch of Konami that solely creates music games that use awesome controllers.) Those parenthesis bring me to my first point. Holy freaking crap the IIDX controller is the coolest damn contoller you will ever lay your pathetic little eyes on.

(That's the Japanese console controller.)

7 keys and a turntable. (It was orginally 5 keys in Beatmania and Beatmania III, which is strange considering III came out after IIDX) Dual-colored, flat rectangle notes fall from the sky, and all you have to do is press the corresponding button and spin a little plastic record.  Each key also makes a sound when you press it, but they all change over the course of the song, so you aren't just limited to one key going "THUMP, THUMP, THUMP" to the bass and the other six just playing synth and the turntable doing the crash cymbal. (Actually, on higher difficulties, that's pretty much all it does). However, unlike our crappy American music games, instead of your guitar just making a foul noise... Er... Instead of not making any sound when you press a key when you aren't supposed to, you can still play the sound that each key is assigned to, so you can, in a sense, remix the song as you go. It tends to sound quite terrible. 

But, it's not just as simple as hitting the right button at the right time and keeping your "Groove Gauge" from emptying. Well, actually, it is, however, just finishing with some points left in your Groove Gauge is not enough. It has to be filled AT LEAST 80% of the way or you fail. You could have full comboed a chart up until the very end and still fail just because you missed a few notes in a row, despite having gotten a new high score. You don't fail when your Groove Gauge reaches 0 either. You could actually just sit and wait through half of a song and then decide to start playing and still pass, despite having ignored most of the song. I can honestly say that I have done both of these (But mostly the first) MANY times. It makes the game quite frustrating.

The music, as you would expect in a DJing game, consists mainly of thumping trance, techno, and house music, but there is definitely a variety in the genres available. Whether you like eurobeat, hip-hop, or cheesy in-house covers of Toxic (Yes, the Britney Spears song), it's safe to say that there will be at least ONE song you find yourself enjoying as you play. Unlike most music games, though, you won't have a clue as to whether or not you'll actually like a song until you actually play it, because there's no song preview. Instead of a little 10-second clip of the song or something, you get to listen to the same loop over and over and over until you finally pick a song, or until the timer runs out, then you're just screwed into playing something considered Library Rock. That's actually another one of the game's charms. Every song is assigned to its own genre. While, as I already mentioned, most songs are assigned to the standard Epic Trance, Hardcore Techno, or Gabba, as the Japanese like to call it (You probably know it as Gabber... Or don't know it at all.), some songs have totally bizarre genres... Like Education, Cuddlecore, Lovely Trans Pop, or Tri Euro Fantasia (Though that is apparently a very good genre, judging by the whole one song I've ever heard of being placed in it.)

So, sounds like a party, doesn't it? No, not really. Don't get me wrong, I've brought my turntable and several Styles (Each new version of the game becomes the xth numbered Style, though every style after 10th ditched the "th Style" at the end each has its own unique subtitle. IIDX RED, Happy Sky, DistorteD, GOLD, DJ Troopers, and Empress, respectively. If you can't count, we are currently at 16 styles) to friend's houses, and we've had a great time with it... Well... I'VE had a great time with it, and they thought the concept was neat, but you'll need to devote more than just a couple of hours to the game just to start passing songs. This learning curve is STEEP like a... Well, I can't think of a comparison, but this game is hard like a- Oh... No. Even on the easiest setting, you'll probably spend your first few attempts struggling to make anything that remotely sounds the way it's supposed to. Plus, there's a distinct lack of familiar songs, so nobody is really going to go too crazy to play a song called Bitter Chocolate Striker. Don't get me wrong, I've yet to met someone who didn't at least slightly enjoy playing this game, but you're not going to have the party of the century with this game unless you happen to be a Bemani nerd and so do all of your friends.

Video by ST0iiC

For someone playing on Normal, he wasn't that bad. I was hoping to find someone who might have messed up more, just so people could see what it looks like, but it was suprisingly hard to find a high quality video of someone who sucked at it. Just for giggles, this next video is the hardest song I've ever passed (I'm still learning how to play and I've been playing for about 2 years now. It's ranked a 9 out of a maximum of 12 for difficulty) It's one of my favorite songs in terms of music as well, and you can see how awesome the music videos are. Well, okay, you can't really see the video too well in this video, but believe me, for a PS2 game, the graphics that accompany songs are awesome!

Video by Xythar

Now, if you promise to be good until the end of the review, I'll show you two more videos of what used to be the hardest difficulty, and the now hardest difficulty. Trust me, they'll make your head spin and your eyes explode.

IIDX is a pretty difficult game to find outside of Japan. If you have the proper connections and practice in sketchy activities that are frowned upon by copyright laws that I will not confirm I involve myself in, then it might actually be pretty easy to find. However, for the good people, you're gonna have to pay a whole bunch o' money and some import charges on top of the cost of a turntable controller, which'll run you from $30-$60 depending on where you look just to be able to play, unless you're one of the really lucky people who have access to an arcade version of IIDX, in which case I hate you. It should be noted that as with all console versions of their arcade counterparts from Bemani, console versions of IIDX have all of the new songs from the Style they are based on, along with a healthy portion of older songs. Each mix contains about 85-95 songs that clock in at about 2 minutes each, so you can practically get the arcade experience in your own home, just like it says on the box!

In 2006, Bemani finally listened to their North American fans and released a US version of IIDX, simply called Beatmania, as it featured both 5-key and 7-key gameplay. This mediocre attempt to throw fans a bone was... Well... Mediocre. There were only 58 songs available in this mix, despite that it was released after 9th style and really just a collection of songs, sort of a Best Hits (More like, "HEY GUYS! Remember DDR? Lookee! DDR songs!" But we'll save that nerdy rant for... Never, really.) It wasn't even a matter of cost since IIDX has never really used many licensed songs ever, though this was the mix that the cover of Toxic premeired in, which actually got a quite enjoyable Another chart in IIDX RED (I feel like I should mention that the three difficulties of IIDX are Normal (Formerly Light7), Hyper (Formerly 7-key), and Another (Which has always been known as Another). There's also a Beginner mode which lets you play on Beginner difficulty, wimps. The one good thing that we got from this half-assed mix was an improved turntable controller. This one actually has spring under the buttons so they don't get stuck, a problem faced by several Japanese players. (Ha ha) It was the first version of IIDX I played, and as a newbie, it was quite fun. If you see it anywhere, definitely pick it up. You can get the bundle for teh cheap now, and it's totally worth it, even if the mix itself sucks. (Be warned: Do NOT expect to get passed anything harder than a difficulty of 5, or maybe Colors Normal. The biggest gripe for this game was that there was no good set of transition songs to help get players from newbies to near decent players. Believe me, a good year and 9 months of my playing of this game was consisted of me struggling to follow anything rated 7 or higher because there were no good transition songs. It wasn't until recently that I started playing Japanese versions, and it wasn't until then that I could start passing 8's and 9's consistently. Yeah, still not very good at this game, and I tend to be pretty damn alright at most music games. It's hard.)

So there you have it. The Beatmania IIDX series by Bemani. It's definitely one of the most fun, creative, original, and frustrating games you'll ever play.

As promised, here is a video of the Another difficulty. (This is one of my favorite songs from IIDX and it's bound to get stuck in your head. Hello, 20cc)

Video by BeRevoPLAYER

And here is the newest difficulty, introduced in IIDX 15 DJ Troopers, some Japanese character that I can't type, or Black Another. (It's also a great example of how someone can have a Groove gauge of 0 percent at one point and still manage to clear a song.)

Video by djkc2dx

GERARDAMO: Game of the Week 3

Alright, this is kind of late. Actually, I'm not even posting this in the right week anymore. (But I actually editted the date I posted this so I could write my next game without looking like I did a double post) I was just going to skip this week entirely, but it's 10:30 in the morning, and society has broken the rule that is "Don't wake the Gerard before noon" by having the asshole next-door start revving up his truck, only to realize that his penis is still the same size anyway. So I write this from bed as I'm still trying to wake up.

I had trouble thinking of a game this week, mostly because instead of playing any old games this week, I clocked in about... 30 hours of IIDX (Google it, YouTube it, whatever. It's FUN, but also too new for me to use as a game of the week.) Do you know what it is now? Good. So I was in a techno-y, trance kind of mood this week, so I've decided to highlight Rez by Tetsuya Mizuguchi. Rez was originally released on the Dreamcast. It's the strange combination between arcade shooter and music game. The entire game is made up of vector graphics (Again, if you don't know what I'm talking about, Wikipedia can also be your friend.) and it looks freaking awesome. Rez doesn't have much of a story, but none of my favorite classic games do, for that matter. Apparently, there's some big computer virus that... I don't know... Threatens to make everyone stop using PC's and ruin the world of computers as we know it or something... It's REALLY not important at all. 5 levels later you find out that the virus just wants to be loved, and I'm pretty sure there's some innuendo for sex in there somewhere.

Anyway, the actual gameplay in this is nothing short of an experience that I truly believe everyone needs to, well, experience. It moves like a typical rail-shooter, you know, move your camera around and shoot, that simple. However, you can lock on to up to 8 viruses and shoot them. Every level starts in an empty, black abyss with a bass drum quietly pulsing in the background. A few viruses fly by, and make for easy combos, and then some tiny box flies by. Shoot that box 8 times. The level will then start to develop. Nothing too much, maybe some cubes will appear in the environment, and a synthesizer will start humming something. You'll start to see more complex patterns of enemies. And you keep going on with this. Enemies fly by, shoot them. Box flies by, shoot it a lot. The level starts to become more detailed until you see vectorized architecture everywhere, and the background music transforms into an absorbing, thumping trance track. This game just sucks you in.

Of course, what would any rail shooter be without things shooting back at you? Most of the viruses do, and since you're not invincible, it will do damage. If you get hit, you level down. You'll go from an almost human looking thing to a less looking human thing to a less looking human thing etc. to a sphere, and then you die. But there is hope! You can level up, too. Viruses drop powerups, and if you collect enough of them, you can level up back to your human form, until your human-type thing reaches a state of enlightenment and becomes a pulsing amoeba of trancely awesome.

That's it really. The game is stupid simple. You don't play Rez for the challenge, you play it for the experience. Interesting note of trivia. When Rez was released for the PS2 in Japan, it came with a USB device called a Trance Vibrator. It was an oval-y shaped piece of plastic that, as the name suggests, vibrated. It had stronger vibrations than the DualShock2 did, and it was designed so it could be held on to, put in your pocket, or my favorite (In terms of where this trivia is going!), sat on. Yes, they advertised that you could sit on it. So, once you had your Trance Vibrator wherever you wanted it, it would pulse along to the music, pulling you into the game even more. However, vibration feels good, and you don't think I would have said Vibrator that many times just because it tickles my lips to say it, do you? Yes, as you would have expected, there were several reports of Trance Vibrators being used as... Well... You know... OTHER vibrators.

Rez is available on the Dreamcast and the PS2. In 2008, it was re-released on XBLA as Rez HD, with super shiny awesome new HD graphics! It still remains my favorite and most played Live Arcade game to this day (That's right SoulCalibur, maybe you should have given your XBLA port a better widescreen, instead of a Windows 3.1 wallpaper border!), and I HIGHLY reccomend, no, DEMAND that you stay on your couch and make the best 10 dollar purchase you can ever make, or at least just get the demo. You have no excuses anymore as to why you can't play this game.

This video is from Rez HD. Video by cktg

GERARDAMO on: Sonic Unleashed

Wait, what? GERARDAMO does reviews on new games? Damn right I do, I just seldom play them. Now, I realize that this game has been out for a small while now, but most of the other reviews I've seen for this game simply write this game off as another Sonic game, and therefore bad. Well, it is a bad game, probably because it is a new Sonic game. But, where all of these other reviews couldn't find anything decent in this game, there were parts of Sonic Unleashed where I couldn't help but turn into a grinning doofus from the plain, simple fun the game offered. Well... For the 1/3 of the game that was fun anyway.

The game is split into 3 different parts: daytime levels, nighttime levels, and looking around for the levels. The daytime levels are reminiscent of the Sega Genesis trilogy, but it also innovates on that classic game play by... well... Being new. There are also 3D sections that play like the Sonic Adventure series, just a lot faster. Sometimes it can be too fast. Your little blue blur will be running along, and suddenly, he'll disappear, and a few seconds later, you'll have realized you fell in a hole, but it will have been too late. Minus 1 life. Speaking of lives, I've noticed that many people are complaining about the life system, calling the game out for using a trail-and-error system. I say, isn't this what games used to do anyway? Have gamers really gotten so bad at games that don't involve shooting down squads of terrorists and dropping the fag-bomb over Xbox LIVE that they resort to throwing hissy fits when a game is too hard and punishes you by making you start over because you just plain fucking suck? That's just sad. Yes, it's frustrating when you die, but learn from that mistake and TRY GETTING PAST THE OBSTACLE SOME OTHER WAY. Anyway, yeah. 2D part is very fun. The transitions between 2D and 3D are fantastic, and there are times when they will be combined, feeling very reminiscent of NiGHTS into dreams... (Which is quite possibly Sega's greatest game ever.) 

Unfortunately, some moron on Sonic Team decided that Sonic needed to take a break from all that running... A loooooooong break. So, they decided that Sonic should turn into a werewolf, a stretchy werewolf, a stretchy werewolf in a bad beat 'em up platformer. Well, it's not that bad. If it weren't in a Sonic game, it probably would have went over very well. It has a rather deep combat system to prevent the monotony that comes from most beat 'em ups with the regular "PRESS A OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND HE DEAD NOW YAY" gameplay. But... It's Sonic. For one thing, he's a hedgehog, not a werewolf. For another, nobody wants to play a slow Sonic game... Nobody. Get it right, Sega. 

So, that's another 1/3 of the game. Wait, Gerard, that's only 2/3, you suck at math. No I don't. The other 1/3 simply consists of trying to find the damn level you want to play. This is not enjoyable at all. I don't want to get rewarded for playing a game simply by getting to actually play it. It can take upwards of half an hour to actually find the level you're supposed to play, and because of that, I could only stomach about 4 hours of this game before I quit. You go around trying to find some towns person to talk to, and they might tell you where the level  is, or they might just try to sell you a hot dog, or ice cream, or mushrooms, which would probably be a good investment and make this part of the game stomachable. 

So, when the majority of gameplay in a game is bad, yes, it's a bad game. It's sad, because the part that Sega got right is fun. Really fun. Really really really really really fucking fun. Sega did take a step in the right direction, and I have high hopes for the next Sonic game they might be releasing (When's the last time that happened?) After all, they did develop an entirely new engine for this game, I doubt they would use it for one game. Hopefully, Sega will learn from these mistakes. They're so close to fixing a problem that they shouldn't have had in the first place, but as an avid Sega fanboy, I'm not going to give up on Sonic. No, Sonic 2006 is still a terrible game that I'll never, EVER play, but it looks like Sega is starting to finally get things right. It's just a shame that if they had just shortened Sonic Unleashed and removed all of the shit that didn't belong in it, it would have been a perfect game.

20cc reviews: Call of Duty: World at War

CoD5 came out a little under the radar. Granted, when I say under the radar, I mean to say that I didn't notice it was coming out until shortly before its release, and I can't claim to be a careful follower of gaming news beyond that which is on Wikipedia. I should probably work on that, but it's not the point I'm trying to make.

Back in '07, I saw ads for CoD4 in theaters and was vaguely interested. That was about the end of it though. I played it at Dan's and mostly enjoyed the fact that the reload animation changes when the magazine is empty—something every game should be able to do now.

About a year later, Caleb brought CoD5 to my attention, and we shared high hopes, because of the cooperative campaign mode, and because the game was going to be set back in World War II which, while horrendously overused, is several leaps more interesting and realistic than the present day formula of “Terrorist steal nukes. America save world. We best nation in world. Yay America.” This is not to say that CoD4 was a bad game. On the other hand, I hoped that such a game could be followed by a truly stellar WWII shooter, something that's rather hard to find. Unfortunately, it was not to be.

When I recently got my hands on a copy of CoD5, I found it plagued with most of the expected problems, and a few others. The game was touted to be a “realistic” shooter, one that would accurately depict the conditions of the Pacific Campaign, and war in general. The game starts off with our beloved protagonist tied in a hut with another American, being interrogated by a Japanese soldier and his commander. We watch as the officer pushes a cigarette into the other prisoner's eye and leaves. The soldier then draws his knife and slits the American's throat, turns on the protagonist and is suddenly stabbed in the back by the typically well timed rescue operation.

And that's about all the horror you get.

I'll admit that I haven't beaten the whole game, but unless the last two levels suddenly turn into a burned-face, screaming-children gore fest, I feel that the supposed point of the game was missed. I have never been shot, but I imagine it would be rather unpleasant, and yet the injured soldiers in this game lie silently on the ground and, irritatingly, aim perfectly with their “last stand” pistol. In the real world, when a person is lit on fire, they scream and writhe and their skin melts off and they dehydrate. In CoD5 they die, very quickly and apparently painlessly.

That's okay, right? It would be pretty interesting to have a game that really made me feel the horror of war, but would it be fun? Maybe not. It certainly would have been a good game, if that was the only problem.

The next warning sign came after the second Japanese ambush. This brought two things to mind. The first was, don't these soldiers know how to fire a gun, or just charge at you with the bayonet? In my experience, it was mostly the latter. My second thought was, why are my allies so thick? Haven't they been fighting the Japanese for months? How many times are they going to walk into a clearing, see apparently uninjured soldiers lying on the ground (in Japanese uniforms) and think, “My, we haven't had any soldiers here. These men must have dropped dead of their own accord. It certainly won't be ANOTHER ambush.”

(Spoiler alert: IT'S ALWAYS ANOTHER AMBUSH.)

There were two things that really ruined the American campaign for me, however. First, the commanding officer is voiced by Kiefer Sutherland, whose reputation in my eyes has been forever ruined by 24. This is more a matter of personal opinion. However, around the third American level, I found myself carrying a heavy, belt-fed machine gun. I was firing it accurately without anyone feeding the belt, without bracing the gun, while standing, and moving.

At this point I could no longer hope for anything redeeming from this campaign. But the Russian campaign, that'll be fun. Alas. The stunning brilliance of the German infantry is showcased in the first level, when you take up a sniping position in the middle of the street, and kill one of two guards standing a short distance away. His partner responds with nothing but mild surprise when he sees his friend's head explode, and of course can't think to take cover before he himself is killed. You do this three times. It's okay though, because planes were flying overhead. It's a very clever technique. The planes cover the sound of the gun firing, and apparently also eliminate the muzzle flash.

I won't drag this out too much longer, but suffice it to say that the rest of the campaign is plagued by clichéd dialogue, two dimensional, poorly written characters, and a magical regenerating tank armed with both a cannon and flamethrower. Apparently the Soviets weren't broke after all.

My final complaint, less of a major issue and more just a demonstration of messing with something that doesn't need to be messed with. When playing in cooperative mode, the game doesn't use the full screen. Each player's screen is letterboxed and moved off into a corner of the screen. Apparently the game wasn't good enough on its own, so the makers had to stylize the screen itself. This wasn't so much an issue with me. My 65 inch screen made even a smaller than average playing area workable, but most people don't have 65 inch screens. This leads me to ask the good people at Treyarch, WHAT IN GOD'S NAME WERE YOU THINKING?

I recently reread a review in a certain unnamed gaming magazine that said the only thing that could be found to criticize about CoD5 is multiplayer that “Isn't quite as good as Four.” I'm inclined to wonder if we played the same game.