So, as you may last remember, I needed a boat for some ill-defined reason, but the DARK DRAGONS have blown it up, so I need to find their secret base with their own boat. Meaning I have to backtrack yet fucking again to find the secret boat of the DARK DRAGONS.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
BREATH OF FIRE IS FUCKING TERRIBLE, PART II (THE STORY SO FAR)
I regret that I didn't take many pictures.
For reasons I don't know, when I started playing, the input for capturing a screen was the same for the fast forward button. I didn't realize this until ten minutes into the game, whereupon I removed the capture button and found one hundred and thirty .pngs in my gba folder. That's really the harshest thing I could say about this game, so if you really want to know more, follow me into a magical, ill-defined world.
For reasons I don't know, when I started playing, the input for capturing a screen was the same for the fast forward button. I didn't realize this until ten minutes into the game, whereupon I removed the capture button and found one hundred and thirty .pngs in my gba folder. That's really the harshest thing I could say about this game, so if you really want to know more, follow me into a magical, ill-defined world.
BREATH OF FIRE IS FUCKING TERRIBLE, PART I
I am doing this review as a public service. I want you to read this, and from that, realize you should never play this game regardless of any misguided retro charm, or bizarre desire to START FROM THE BEGINNING of some mediocre rpg series.
A few days ago, I started playing Breath of Fire for the Game Boy Advance. Originally it was for the Super Nintendo. This was its boxart, and WORRYING SIGN NUMBER ONE:
I decided not to play the snes version, not because of CHUNK MCHUGEPALM and his rapeface, but that doing some research revealed that the GBA version literally doubled the amount of EXP and gold gained per defeated enemy. This was WORRYING SIGN NUMBER 2, as any game that so spectacularly botched its required grinding in the original iteration probably has other issues.
Oh boy.
It's hard to pin down, halfway through this game, the worst part of things. The "story" is probably the worst thing, and as I'm going to post more updates on what a mess this game is, I should probably start with all of the other problems.
I think the most obvious problem is the goddamned pace of this game. I recently bought a new gamepad, and mapped the emulator's "fast forward" button to the right trigger button. This was a response to Golden Sun, which has some really really languid cutscenes (I want to cut the person that thought that good storytelling was having character sprites have emoticon bubbles over their head while repeating a plot point for the umpteenth time). But the worst thing is that, for all of Golden Sun's faults, it is a goddamned rollercoaster Bruckheimer fuckdaze compared to Breath of Fire.
Everything in Breath of Fire just has weird little delays going on. Pushing start to go to a menu has a half-second of empty space. Fights are an eternal back-up at a traffic light, each attack taking an infuriating space to clear. Apparently in a bid to save the sanity of a new generation of gamers, the GBA programmers included a run button. That's right: in the SNES version, you had to walk everywhere. As a surreal anachronism, or warning, holding down B lets you purists walk.
But it's not just technical delays. I'm no great RPG expert, but I've always looked askance when reviewers whine THE ENCOUNTER RATE IS THREE STEPS PER BATTLE about certain games. Usually, the complaint is a fairly large exaggeration, at worst you're actually going to be dealing with a random battle once every screen, or twenty steps or so. But hey, Breath of Fire is ready to show you the truth. While it's not always as bad, I've gone through certain caves where I went two steps before I had to face yet another pack of evil flies as I try to find my way out of my fifth identical hallway. To be fair, there are extremely cheap items that remove encounters, but the insane grinder monkey in me refuses to utilize them unless the XP gain is negligible or I'm completely fucking lost.
Which slickly leads me to my next point: the dungeon design is so goddamned bad. I'm wracking my head to think of worse dungeons in RPGs, but it's so far an utter blank. Generally, I'm used to designers of bad dungeons at least having the common decency of making them short (ala Golden Sun). Even the caves Breath of Fire take over five minutes to get through, thanks both to the aforementioned awesome encounter rate and just the general unending corridors of the same texture without any variation. Even the maps I drew for my imaginary rpg starring my cats when I was eight had more verve.
Here, I am including a FASCINATING DEMONSTRATION (mute the first video, unless you like autistic commenters and/or hate awesome japanese music) of what I am talking about. I'd like to note two things here:
1) This dungeon is the second-most interestingly designed dungeon I have seen.
2) The most interestingly-designed dungeon was literal carbon copy of this dungeon (even the weird placeholder floors), except the water was replaced by LAVA! Holy fucking shit.
A side effect of generally being stuck in endless hallways with absolutely no landmarks is that you will frequently get lost as shit. The constant enemy interruptions also ruin things monumentally. The whole thing is like some awful videogame interpretation of Kafka with floating blue bird pin things replacing the laconic gatekeeper. Oh, and as a special fuck you, some dungeons won't even give you an automatic exit once you get Mission Critical Item #42, forcing you to try to remember everything in reverse, as there is apparently no "warp out of dungeon" spell or item, which is especially confusing as the game does give you a town warp spell when you're in the overworld (one of the very few "convenience" additions to the game).
Graphics are whatever. Not exactly awful, but certainly unimaginative. Towns are actually worse than dungeons as you will run into houses with the exact same layout, including placement of chests and hidden items. Enemies haven't already descended into alternative palette hell, so kudos for that, Capcom, I guess. I've given up listening to RPG music since Fugazi gives me far more inspiration to murder evil fleas and amoebas than whatever lame themes you babies consider to be music.
Of course, I'd be willing to forgive all this shit if the combat was genuinely interesting, or at least treated party members as vaguely different units requiring different commands and tactics to maximize efficiency. As we'll see in the next part, any hope for this is false and what were you thinking, you dirty disgusting little piggy?
A few days ago, I started playing Breath of Fire for the Game Boy Advance. Originally it was for the Super Nintendo. This was its boxart, and WORRYING SIGN NUMBER ONE:
I decided not to play the snes version, not because of CHUNK MCHUGEPALM and his rapeface, but that doing some research revealed that the GBA version literally doubled the amount of EXP and gold gained per defeated enemy. This was WORRYING SIGN NUMBER 2, as any game that so spectacularly botched its required grinding in the original iteration probably has other issues.
Oh boy.
It's hard to pin down, halfway through this game, the worst part of things. The "story" is probably the worst thing, and as I'm going to post more updates on what a mess this game is, I should probably start with all of the other problems.
I think the most obvious problem is the goddamned pace of this game. I recently bought a new gamepad, and mapped the emulator's "fast forward" button to the right trigger button. This was a response to Golden Sun, which has some really really languid cutscenes (I want to cut the person that thought that good storytelling was having character sprites have emoticon bubbles over their head while repeating a plot point for the umpteenth time). But the worst thing is that, for all of Golden Sun's faults, it is a goddamned rollercoaster Bruckheimer fuckdaze compared to Breath of Fire.
Everything in Breath of Fire just has weird little delays going on. Pushing start to go to a menu has a half-second of empty space. Fights are an eternal back-up at a traffic light, each attack taking an infuriating space to clear. Apparently in a bid to save the sanity of a new generation of gamers, the GBA programmers included a run button. That's right: in the SNES version, you had to walk everywhere. As a surreal anachronism, or warning, holding down B lets you purists walk.
But it's not just technical delays. I'm no great RPG expert, but I've always looked askance when reviewers whine THE ENCOUNTER RATE IS THREE STEPS PER BATTLE about certain games. Usually, the complaint is a fairly large exaggeration, at worst you're actually going to be dealing with a random battle once every screen, or twenty steps or so. But hey, Breath of Fire is ready to show you the truth. While it's not always as bad, I've gone through certain caves where I went two steps before I had to face yet another pack of evil flies as I try to find my way out of my fifth identical hallway. To be fair, there are extremely cheap items that remove encounters, but the insane grinder monkey in me refuses to utilize them unless the XP gain is negligible or I'm completely fucking lost.
Which slickly leads me to my next point: the dungeon design is so goddamned bad. I'm wracking my head to think of worse dungeons in RPGs, but it's so far an utter blank. Generally, I'm used to designers of bad dungeons at least having the common decency of making them short (ala Golden Sun). Even the caves Breath of Fire take over five minutes to get through, thanks both to the aforementioned awesome encounter rate and just the general unending corridors of the same texture without any variation. Even the maps I drew for my imaginary rpg starring my cats when I was eight had more verve.
Here, I am including a FASCINATING DEMONSTRATION (mute the first video, unless you like autistic commenters and/or hate awesome japanese music) of what I am talking about. I'd like to note two things here:
1) This dungeon is the second-most interestingly designed dungeon I have seen.
2) The most interestingly-designed dungeon was literal carbon copy of this dungeon (even the weird placeholder floors), except the water was replaced by LAVA! Holy fucking shit.
A side effect of generally being stuck in endless hallways with absolutely no landmarks is that you will frequently get lost as shit. The constant enemy interruptions also ruin things monumentally. The whole thing is like some awful videogame interpretation of Kafka with floating blue bird pin things replacing the laconic gatekeeper. Oh, and as a special fuck you, some dungeons won't even give you an automatic exit once you get Mission Critical Item #42, forcing you to try to remember everything in reverse, as there is apparently no "warp out of dungeon" spell or item, which is especially confusing as the game does give you a town warp spell when you're in the overworld (one of the very few "convenience" additions to the game).
Graphics are whatever. Not exactly awful, but certainly unimaginative. Towns are actually worse than dungeons as you will run into houses with the exact same layout, including placement of chests and hidden items. Enemies haven't already descended into alternative palette hell, so kudos for that, Capcom, I guess. I've given up listening to RPG music since Fugazi gives me far more inspiration to murder evil fleas and amoebas than whatever lame themes you babies consider to be music.
Of course, I'd be willing to forgive all this shit if the combat was genuinely interesting, or at least treated party members as vaguely different units requiring different commands and tactics to maximize efficiency. As we'll see in the next part, any hope for this is false and what were you thinking, you dirty disgusting little piggy?
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
things that keep me warm at night
the likely possibility that icycalm of haha you seriously think I read that knows that Lisa Foiles' amazingly forgettable articles have likely gotten more views and comments than he ever will receive
Monday, October 11, 2010
GOOGLE RON PAUL (and the wario land series)
I was roughly ten years old when I got Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. If you've ever played it, you should know that it has one of the most drastic late-game difficulty spikes ever seen. Unlike most Mario games (when I would get to the end of the third world or so and declare myself the victor because otherwise I would have to come to grips that my motor skills were shit), the majority of the game is seriously piss easy. The structure of the game is that Mario has the freedom to visit six different worlds to get six golden coins so he can open his castle, which has been co-opted by his evil dick double Wario. Almost all of the levels were extremely forgiving, frequently throwing power-ups, extra lives, and coins at you while you dodged simple obstacles. At the end of every world, you faced a boss with the same devistating pattern:
One thing about Mario Land 2 is that the physics are noticeably different from how most other Mario games function. Most notable is the jumping, as Mario tends to sink in his descent, and just seems more bulky in general. Not to paraphrase Tim "youarenotamusician" Rogers, but the nature of Mario's friction is just weird. Of course, this isn't a problem in everything up to Wario's castle, but then suddenly the game reverts to pure fuck you mode and suddenly you're noticing that the movements that you used to beat similar sections in other Mario games are fucking you over because Mario isn't moving the same way. The castle is probably easier in design that most Mario final stages, if just for the fact that there are multiple power-ups, but now you have to rely on Mario's revised jumping to complete sections that aren't baby simple.
Then you get to Wario, and things just get ugly. While it's not really saying much, Wario is easily the most difficult boss in the Mario series. He has three forms, and while the first and third aren't really that difficult compared to his castle, the second is a fucking nightmare. Wario will acquire the bunny ears powerup that Mario had through the game, which are basically the equivalent of the Raccoon Suit from Mario 3, giving him insane jumps and forcing you to carefully hit him on the head during his ground slams. Die, and WHOOPS BACK TO THE START OF THE CASTLE HA HA FUCK YOU.
(note this guy is not a ten-year-old, or at least I hope not)
Mario Land 2 was a good game, but for me, the big benefit from it was the introduction to Wario, which soon led to Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land and the Wario Land series in general. Except for Link's Awakening and Kirby's Dreamland 2, Wario Land was easily my favorite Gameboy title as a kid. And as I say that, I also realize that Wario and his game series is the reason that Democrats are scared about November 2010.
Wario's appeal as a game character, especially coming from Nintendo, is that he is basically a huge prick who is interested only in making bank. There's no other game character as unrepentently awful as him; even when former villains like Bowser are controlled by the player, the character is altered in that we now see that while they're bad guys, they have a soft side too. Wario just wants money, and while he's not some ridiculous anti-hero like every other 360 or PS3 protagonist, that's honestly for the better. Wario's just a guy you love to hate, and his lack of REAL ISSUES means that you don't have to imagine how many people have made terrible internet music videos about him.
It doesn't help that the Wario games are really fucking fun. While internet nerds apparently feel the need to play Mario 3 and Super Mario World an infinite number of times, the Wario series has always been pretty unappreciated. While it's not as polished as those two other games, there's something amazingly fun about controlling a fat, greedy man who, instead of neutrally jumping on enemies, knocks them off the screen with bum rushes. The same weird jumping physics that infuritated me with Mario Land 2 actually work with Wario, and the game's difficulty curve doesn't suddenly throw acid at your face at the end (if anything, the game gets easier at the final section). Taking a cue from Super Mario World, Wario Land and subsequent sequels featured a wide array of diverging stage paths and alterable scenery.
But this is all boring game review stuff. Was Never a Fan is a serious review site, and I'm interested in tackling the big questions. Questions liek, what is the moral theme of the Wario series? That's not actually a big question, though, as I already know the answer. Simply put, Wario is the America we have currently been living with since the Clinton Presidency, and what currently we face as Proud Americans.
Wait, you say as you close your futanari h-doujin, suddenly perplexed, Wario is a japanese thing! The name even comes from some weird play on Japanese words from Mario's name! Don't you think you're reading things a little too forced?
Consider this. Mario Land 2 was released on October 2, 1992 in Japan, and November 2, 1992, a mere week before the election that changed America forever. Mario is already sort of a conservative hero, having instituted several regime changes and refusing to alter what already works. Suddenly, there's a regime change, and the Mushroom Kingdom is being ruled by a fat, lascivious man whose only concern is amassing wealth and providing social services to the lazy underclass (how else do you think Wario commanded all those goombahs and giant ants to try to kill Mario? Follow the signs, people).
Of course, Wario was eventually thwarted (perhaps a foreseeing of the 1994 midterm elections), but not defeated, as he simply came to a compromise with Mario: I'll let you control stuff for awhile, as long as I can just continue getting money for everyone. I'm not sure where the villains of Wario Land fit into this (the female Captain Syrup and the unfortunately named Brown Sugar Pirates), maybe it's Hillary or Milosevic. What matters is that Wario Land is all about acquiring wealth, Clinton/Wario tricking the American Man into believing that, now that he is rich because he just found a chest with a whale figurine in it, it doesn't really matter that you are empathizing with a man who has no real empathy to others.
(note that both Wario commercials feature hypnosis. I don't think there's anyone who would deny that Clinton's speaking ability was the functional equivalent of a weird moustached guy waving a golden coin in front of our face)
Then came Wario Land 2, which diverged further from the Mario formula in that Wario could literally not be killed in the game. In fact, Wario's various powers came at the hands of being hit by certain enemies: getting smashed by a giant weight makes a pancake Wario that can float into small gaps, getting stung by a bee will inflate Wario's cheeks, allowing him to floating around. Wario Land 2 was naturally released in mid-1998, during the full swing of the impeachment hearings. Like Wario's travails against his enemies, Clinton emerged from the proceedings only in a sort of "well everyone knows that I'm horny" form, and is still fully capable of reducing conservatives into a sort of frothing terror
(from a game standpoint, while Wario Land 2 is pretty fun, the fact that you can't die does harm being able to enjoy it for long periods, as the only real challenge is finding secret coin rooms and new plotline paths, of which only the latter has any real point in the game, since you will literally be drowning in coins by the mid-point of the game).
I have no idea about Wario Land 3, as I never played it. Game Boy Color is for babies. MUCH LIKE CLINTON.
google captain syrup
- Do a really obvious and telegraphed attack
- Drop down low for like five seconds so Mario can jump on your head
- Repeat three times.
One thing about Mario Land 2 is that the physics are noticeably different from how most other Mario games function. Most notable is the jumping, as Mario tends to sink in his descent, and just seems more bulky in general. Not to paraphrase Tim "youarenotamusician" Rogers, but the nature of Mario's friction is just weird. Of course, this isn't a problem in everything up to Wario's castle, but then suddenly the game reverts to pure fuck you mode and suddenly you're noticing that the movements that you used to beat similar sections in other Mario games are fucking you over because Mario isn't moving the same way. The castle is probably easier in design that most Mario final stages, if just for the fact that there are multiple power-ups, but now you have to rely on Mario's revised jumping to complete sections that aren't baby simple.
Then you get to Wario, and things just get ugly. While it's not really saying much, Wario is easily the most difficult boss in the Mario series. He has three forms, and while the first and third aren't really that difficult compared to his castle, the second is a fucking nightmare. Wario will acquire the bunny ears powerup that Mario had through the game, which are basically the equivalent of the Raccoon Suit from Mario 3, giving him insane jumps and forcing you to carefully hit him on the head during his ground slams. Die, and WHOOPS BACK TO THE START OF THE CASTLE HA HA FUCK YOU.
(note this guy is not a ten-year-old, or at least I hope not)
Mario Land 2 was a good game, but for me, the big benefit from it was the introduction to Wario, which soon led to Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land and the Wario Land series in general. Except for Link's Awakening and Kirby's Dreamland 2, Wario Land was easily my favorite Gameboy title as a kid. And as I say that, I also realize that Wario and his game series is the reason that Democrats are scared about November 2010.
Wario's appeal as a game character, especially coming from Nintendo, is that he is basically a huge prick who is interested only in making bank. There's no other game character as unrepentently awful as him; even when former villains like Bowser are controlled by the player, the character is altered in that we now see that while they're bad guys, they have a soft side too. Wario just wants money, and while he's not some ridiculous anti-hero like every other 360 or PS3 protagonist, that's honestly for the better. Wario's just a guy you love to hate, and his lack of REAL ISSUES means that you don't have to imagine how many people have made terrible internet music videos about him.
It doesn't help that the Wario games are really fucking fun. While internet nerds apparently feel the need to play Mario 3 and Super Mario World an infinite number of times, the Wario series has always been pretty unappreciated. While it's not as polished as those two other games, there's something amazingly fun about controlling a fat, greedy man who, instead of neutrally jumping on enemies, knocks them off the screen with bum rushes. The same weird jumping physics that infuritated me with Mario Land 2 actually work with Wario, and the game's difficulty curve doesn't suddenly throw acid at your face at the end (if anything, the game gets easier at the final section). Taking a cue from Super Mario World, Wario Land and subsequent sequels featured a wide array of diverging stage paths and alterable scenery.
But this is all boring game review stuff. Was Never a Fan is a serious review site, and I'm interested in tackling the big questions. Questions liek, what is the moral theme of the Wario series? That's not actually a big question, though, as I already know the answer. Simply put, Wario is the America we have currently been living with since the Clinton Presidency, and what currently we face as Proud Americans.
Wait, you say as you close your futanari h-doujin, suddenly perplexed, Wario is a japanese thing! The name even comes from some weird play on Japanese words from Mario's name! Don't you think you're reading things a little too forced?
Consider this. Mario Land 2 was released on October 2, 1992 in Japan, and November 2, 1992, a mere week before the election that changed America forever. Mario is already sort of a conservative hero, having instituted several regime changes and refusing to alter what already works. Suddenly, there's a regime change, and the Mushroom Kingdom is being ruled by a fat, lascivious man whose only concern is amassing wealth and providing social services to the lazy underclass (how else do you think Wario commanded all those goombahs and giant ants to try to kill Mario? Follow the signs, people).
Of course, Wario was eventually thwarted (perhaps a foreseeing of the 1994 midterm elections), but not defeated, as he simply came to a compromise with Mario: I'll let you control stuff for awhile, as long as I can just continue getting money for everyone. I'm not sure where the villains of Wario Land fit into this (the female Captain Syrup and the unfortunately named Brown Sugar Pirates), maybe it's Hillary or Milosevic. What matters is that Wario Land is all about acquiring wealth, Clinton/Wario tricking the American Man into believing that, now that he is rich because he just found a chest with a whale figurine in it, it doesn't really matter that you are empathizing with a man who has no real empathy to others.
(note that both Wario commercials feature hypnosis. I don't think there's anyone who would deny that Clinton's speaking ability was the functional equivalent of a weird moustached guy waving a golden coin in front of our face)
Then came Wario Land 2, which diverged further from the Mario formula in that Wario could literally not be killed in the game. In fact, Wario's various powers came at the hands of being hit by certain enemies: getting smashed by a giant weight makes a pancake Wario that can float into small gaps, getting stung by a bee will inflate Wario's cheeks, allowing him to floating around. Wario Land 2 was naturally released in mid-1998, during the full swing of the impeachment hearings. Like Wario's travails against his enemies, Clinton emerged from the proceedings only in a sort of "well everyone knows that I'm horny" form, and is still fully capable of reducing conservatives into a sort of frothing terror
(from a game standpoint, while Wario Land 2 is pretty fun, the fact that you can't die does harm being able to enjoy it for long periods, as the only real challenge is finding secret coin rooms and new plotline paths, of which only the latter has any real point in the game, since you will literally be drowning in coins by the mid-point of the game).
I have no idea about Wario Land 3, as I never played it. Game Boy Color is for babies. MUCH LIKE CLINTON.
google captain syrup
Friday, October 8, 2010
BLOOD MONKEY
My only defense about watching BLOOD MONKEY was that I had to watch either this or Blood Gnomes (which I am probably going to watch later).
Maybe it was a little unclear in my last review, but while I didn't like Staunton Hill, there's honestly far worse for a hardcore slasher fan to watch. The question before me is whether a hardcore creature feature/Syfy original fan would be able to sit through Blood Monkey. I was able to sit through it, but I was also playing Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 for the Gameboy, so I was able to endure the endless scenes of people walking around in very obvious set jungles.
I'm not going to go through the plotline, as there is a disturbingly detailed synopsis on Wikipedia. I can't say this really surprises me, as there is apparently a cabal of basement dwellers who somehow feel it is essential to go through every fucking scene in shitty horror. Long story short, there is an evil professor who lures some graduate students to an unexplored ravine in Africa that contains SUPER INTELLIGENT BLOOD MONKEYS (also they are totally gorillas, so the title should be "Blood Apes." Or actually, just "Apes" as there is absolutely nothing in the film that explains the "Blood" part except that the apes' POV shots have a really stupid red layer over them, like someone stuck a Fruit Roll-up on the lens).
So, the movie's only really strong positive is that the acting is honestly fairly decent for something film as the opening movement in the "Maneater series," which is apparently a film mill for creature features that all premiered on the Syfy network. F. Murray Abraham (yes, the guy that played Salieri) clearly doesn't give a shit about the movie, and just gorges on scenery while doing the laziest Ahab impression possible. He's still pretty fun to watch, and at least gives an effective villain to root against. The students aren't bad, except for the token "hot chick," which the camera desperately attempts to avoid and the movie kills first because he face is seriously in that British category of the uncanny valley. The movie gives a fair amount of pathos and character development to the characters, so it's a little surprising the the film is, by Syfy original standards, really fucking grim. Indeed, the ending is honestly pretty good, or at least a good imitation of those moments of jarring, claustrophobic panic that you see in something like Cloverfield and Blair Witch, which just makes it even more confusing that the vast majority of the movie is the same robotic directed made-for-TV garbage as usual.
So, the movie's real distinction is how, even for a low rent creature feature, they manage to avoid showing the titular BLOOD MONKEY until the last few frames of the films. I mean, there's still sudden flash cuts and gorilla arms, but it's all really really obscured, and pretty fucking amazing. It's understandable when movies featuring giant snakes and demon scorpions are a little reluctant to parade their Full Sail-level CGI for the entire film, but this is a movie about killer gorillas. Oh, and before you go "well are they different looking killer gorillas," NO THEY ARE NOT. The final shot of the film is basically a scary gorilla poser model with blood-stained teeth, nothing more. I mean, it was really wretched CGI, but I think most people would have preferred you have more shitty shots of the BLOOD MONKEY or a guy in a gorilla suit. Oh, you think that might be a little silly? YOU ARE DIRECTING A MOVIE CALLED MOTHERFUCKING "BLOOD MONKEY." NOBODY IS WATCHING THIS MOVIE TO BE SCARED. HOWEVER, I CAN ASSUME THAT THEY ARE WATCHING IT TO SEE THE BLOOD MONKEY BEFORE THE LAST MINUTE OF THE FILM.
I don't know what else to say about this film. The directing is boring right until the end, with not a single interesting shot. Gore is absolute shit. The only actually funny scene, despite the film's attempt to ascribe hilarious lines to the characters, is when the BLOOD MONKEYS piss all over the characters' tents. No, there is no blood in the urine.
Ultimate verdict is that if you have someone willing to tolerate this bullshit, just skip to the hour mark and be glad that I'm better at Wario Land than I used to be.
Maybe it was a little unclear in my last review, but while I didn't like Staunton Hill, there's honestly far worse for a hardcore slasher fan to watch. The question before me is whether a hardcore creature feature/Syfy original fan would be able to sit through Blood Monkey. I was able to sit through it, but I was also playing Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 for the Gameboy, so I was able to endure the endless scenes of people walking around in very obvious set jungles.
I'm not going to go through the plotline, as there is a disturbingly detailed synopsis on Wikipedia. I can't say this really surprises me, as there is apparently a cabal of basement dwellers who somehow feel it is essential to go through every fucking scene in shitty horror. Long story short, there is an evil professor who lures some graduate students to an unexplored ravine in Africa that contains SUPER INTELLIGENT BLOOD MONKEYS (also they are totally gorillas, so the title should be "Blood Apes." Or actually, just "Apes" as there is absolutely nothing in the film that explains the "Blood" part except that the apes' POV shots have a really stupid red layer over them, like someone stuck a Fruit Roll-up on the lens).
So, the movie's only really strong positive is that the acting is honestly fairly decent for something film as the opening movement in the "Maneater series," which is apparently a film mill for creature features that all premiered on the Syfy network. F. Murray Abraham (yes, the guy that played Salieri) clearly doesn't give a shit about the movie, and just gorges on scenery while doing the laziest Ahab impression possible. He's still pretty fun to watch, and at least gives an effective villain to root against. The students aren't bad, except for the token "hot chick," which the camera desperately attempts to avoid and the movie kills first because he face is seriously in that British category of the uncanny valley. The movie gives a fair amount of pathos and character development to the characters, so it's a little surprising the the film is, by Syfy original standards, really fucking grim. Indeed, the ending is honestly pretty good, or at least a good imitation of those moments of jarring, claustrophobic panic that you see in something like Cloverfield and Blair Witch, which just makes it even more confusing that the vast majority of the movie is the same robotic directed made-for-TV garbage as usual.
So, the movie's real distinction is how, even for a low rent creature feature, they manage to avoid showing the titular BLOOD MONKEY until the last few frames of the films. I mean, there's still sudden flash cuts and gorilla arms, but it's all really really obscured, and pretty fucking amazing. It's understandable when movies featuring giant snakes and demon scorpions are a little reluctant to parade their Full Sail-level CGI for the entire film, but this is a movie about killer gorillas. Oh, and before you go "well are they different looking killer gorillas," NO THEY ARE NOT. The final shot of the film is basically a scary gorilla poser model with blood-stained teeth, nothing more. I mean, it was really wretched CGI, but I think most people would have preferred you have more shitty shots of the BLOOD MONKEY or a guy in a gorilla suit. Oh, you think that might be a little silly? YOU ARE DIRECTING A MOVIE CALLED MOTHERFUCKING "BLOOD MONKEY." NOBODY IS WATCHING THIS MOVIE TO BE SCARED. HOWEVER, I CAN ASSUME THAT THEY ARE WATCHING IT TO SEE THE BLOOD MONKEY BEFORE THE LAST MINUTE OF THE FILM.
I don't know what else to say about this film. The directing is boring right until the end, with not a single interesting shot. Gore is absolute shit. The only actually funny scene, despite the film's attempt to ascribe hilarious lines to the characters, is when the BLOOD MONKEYS piss all over the characters' tents. No, there is no blood in the urine.
Ultimate verdict is that if you have someone willing to tolerate this bullshit, just skip to the hour mark and be glad that I'm better at Wario Land than I used to be.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Staunton Hill
Did you know George Romero's son made a movie? Yeah, I didn't even know he had a son, but good christ there's STAUNTON HILL on the instant view Netflix.
SPOILER: I didn't actually watch the entire movie. There's actually a good reason for that. For FORTY-FIVE MINUTES, nothing happens. The movie doesn't even give the obligatory "opening kill" shot, just some pointless scenes of a girl in an operating room layered with creepy pig noises that I guess is supposed to make me all HMM INTERESTING but just reminded me of the fact that virtually every modern slashers contains these stupid overedited shots. So, after the movie decided what I really needed was a BREAKFAST SCENE that lasted for over ten minutes, I just used netflix's handy multiple thumbnail feature to find the actual kill scenes.
Staunton Hill has been widely described as a basic Texas Chainsaw Massacre ripoff, and while I normally bristle at the term rip-off, it's perfectly apt for this disgrace. Hell, now that I think about it, maybe Romero the Younger wanted to emulate Texas Chainsaw Massacre to the point of not getting any kills until the second half. The difference between the films is that I could stand watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre because of the pervasive sense of unease, whether intentional or not (considering Hooper's general output, probably a combination of the two), within the filming. You know bad things are going to happen to the characters in both films, but in TCM you're actively dreading the moment that Leatherface pops out of the metal door, while in Staunton Hill you can't fucking wait for these horrible people to stop talking.
Both films' plots revolve around counterculture kids getting into bad situations. In Staunton Hill, you have five hippies in rural Virginia planning to go to a rally in Washington. They end up hitching a ride with a dude they meet, but then his truck breaks down and they decide to camp out at a nearby farm that they soon find out is inhabited by a crazy religious grandmother, her generally crazy fat daughter, and a Leatherface. People die, and there's bizarre attempts at themes that exist for a scene and are then ignored (a racist junkyard owner doesn't like the one black hippie who talks about Black Panthers, something about medicine and christianity), and then a really obvious twist that really sealed the deal on the whole TCM problem. SPOILER BELOW (highlight to read):
Everything about the movie is forgetable. Edits are awful, featuring lots of classic "conversations clearly filmed during three time periods." The hippies are unlikeable both in acting and writing, and the only really interesting person is the crazy mother, who played that one fat woman in the trailer in the TCM remake (GODDAMNIT SERIOUSLY), so you naturally have to root for the bad guys. Apparently not realizing that, Son Romero slathers the hippies in bathos, like weird tracking shots of a skinned girl over sad music, or focusing on (spoiler I guess) the black guy crying really badly when seeing his girlfriend getting scalped.
Maybe Son Romero is capable of good films. The best you can hope for modern slashers these days are self-obsessed horror fans blowing their wads at technical quality (and to be fair to Staunton Hill, there is some decent non-cgi gore), so it's not a good place to start. Maybe he could try a zombie movie or hahahahaha
POST DEATH (ehehehehe): So, as mentioned above, the setting is explicitly in Virginia. Always being curious when a film actually tries to set itself in a real place that I might've been to, I tried to figure out exactly where the Lame Squad was. At first I thought it might've been around Staunton, due to the title and that it's basically on the way to DC, but turns out the screenwriter was totally full of shit.
Basically, while the truck is out and everyone is trying to explain what to do, they mention two highways, one being highway 193 and some other that I would have to try to find again, and that these roads would eventually lead to bethesda. For those who don't j/o on google maps, bethesda is in maryland, and north of DC and all of virginia. Put another way, the screenwriter clearly has no idea what he's talking about (or I might be horribly wrong, and welcome a correction).
SPOILER: I didn't actually watch the entire movie. There's actually a good reason for that. For FORTY-FIVE MINUTES, nothing happens. The movie doesn't even give the obligatory "opening kill" shot, just some pointless scenes of a girl in an operating room layered with creepy pig noises that I guess is supposed to make me all HMM INTERESTING but just reminded me of the fact that virtually every modern slashers contains these stupid overedited shots. So, after the movie decided what I really needed was a BREAKFAST SCENE that lasted for over ten minutes, I just used netflix's handy multiple thumbnail feature to find the actual kill scenes.
Staunton Hill has been widely described as a basic Texas Chainsaw Massacre ripoff, and while I normally bristle at the term rip-off, it's perfectly apt for this disgrace. Hell, now that I think about it, maybe Romero the Younger wanted to emulate Texas Chainsaw Massacre to the point of not getting any kills until the second half. The difference between the films is that I could stand watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre because of the pervasive sense of unease, whether intentional or not (considering Hooper's general output, probably a combination of the two), within the filming. You know bad things are going to happen to the characters in both films, but in TCM you're actively dreading the moment that Leatherface pops out of the metal door, while in Staunton Hill you can't fucking wait for these horrible people to stop talking.
Both films' plots revolve around counterculture kids getting into bad situations. In Staunton Hill, you have five hippies in rural Virginia planning to go to a rally in Washington. They end up hitching a ride with a dude they meet, but then his truck breaks down and they decide to camp out at a nearby farm that they soon find out is inhabited by a crazy religious grandmother, her generally crazy fat daughter, and a Leatherface. People die, and there's bizarre attempts at themes that exist for a scene and are then ignored (a racist junkyard owner doesn't like the one black hippie who talks about Black Panthers, something about medicine and christianity), and then a really obvious twist that really sealed the deal on the whole TCM problem. SPOILER BELOW (highlight to read):
Those that watched TCM might remember that the Leatherface clan included an exciteable crazy son, and an apparently normal guy who lived away from the actual clan house. When he meet the racist junkyard guy and the truck man, my horror sense went a tingle-jingle, but I refused to believe it. Seriously, the director couldn't be planning a twist where both of these people are actually related to the crazy farm family. That's just too lazy and obvious, I thought.
Then when everyone reaches the farm, there was a scene where the truck driver talks to someone off-screen, saying "they're looking around the farm now." I wasn't sure what to make of this, and had to rewind it to figure out if it was some sort of editing error, but nope, they're just making it really obvious that NOT ALL IS AS IT SEEMS. This wouldn't be a problem, except the film then somehow expects the audience to forget that this scene existed, as nothing is really alluded to this aspect of the guy's character, and just keeps interacting with the cast until the ending where it's revealed...HE IS THE SON OF THE CRAZY FAMILY. whoaaaa. whoaaaaaa. And also the junkyard guy is also in on it. Aaaaah.
Let me put this another way. Revealing to the audience a secret that isn't known to the characters isn't a bad thing in and of itself. It can add tension, showing scenes where you realize that the characters are in terrible danger and just don't know it. But you can't just go "oh the truck driver clearly has a secret," proceed as if nothing really happened for fifty minutes, then go OH MAN HE'S THE SON GOT YOU GOT YOU. Either acknowledge that the surprise is spoiled, or just don't mention it.
Everything about the movie is forgetable. Edits are awful, featuring lots of classic "conversations clearly filmed during three time periods." The hippies are unlikeable both in acting and writing, and the only really interesting person is the crazy mother, who played that one fat woman in the trailer in the TCM remake (GODDAMNIT SERIOUSLY), so you naturally have to root for the bad guys. Apparently not realizing that, Son Romero slathers the hippies in bathos, like weird tracking shots of a skinned girl over sad music, or focusing on (spoiler I guess) the black guy crying really badly when seeing his girlfriend getting scalped.
Maybe Son Romero is capable of good films. The best you can hope for modern slashers these days are self-obsessed horror fans blowing their wads at technical quality (and to be fair to Staunton Hill, there is some decent non-cgi gore), so it's not a good place to start. Maybe he could try a zombie movie or hahahahaha
POST DEATH (ehehehehe): So, as mentioned above, the setting is explicitly in Virginia. Always being curious when a film actually tries to set itself in a real place that I might've been to, I tried to figure out exactly where the Lame Squad was. At first I thought it might've been around Staunton, due to the title and that it's basically on the way to DC, but turns out the screenwriter was totally full of shit.
Basically, while the truck is out and everyone is trying to explain what to do, they mention two highways, one being highway 193 and some other that I would have to try to find again, and that these roads would eventually lead to bethesda. For those who don't j/o on google maps, bethesda is in maryland, and north of DC and all of virginia. Put another way, the screenwriter clearly has no idea what he's talking about (or I might be horribly wrong, and welcome a correction).
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
DRAGON KWEST NEIN
It'd been a hard sell for my girlfriend.
She refused to believe that it would feel good, that falling back on the traditional games would be good enough. I told her it would be odd at first, but new experiences were healthy, and I was sick of the familiar motions. Besides, I had tried it already, and could state with confidence that despite my initial misgivings, it really was pretty enjoyable.
Eventually I just threatened her with anal rape, and she decided to bite the bullet and play Dragon Quest IX.
Neither of us had really played the Dragon Quest series before. I tried the initial game when I was a child, and after getting wiped out by a wizard I met after exiting a cave, I told my dad to take the game back to the rental place. The girlfriend tried the DS remake of Dragon Quest IV, and dubbed it boring at shit. At the time I decided to shill DQIX, she had finished Final Fantasy Tactics: A2 and was trying to beat Disgaea.
Let me digress for a moment to note that I sort of hate both of these games. Part of this can be traced to the fact that both of the games clearly hate me. After two hours of giving Disgaea a chance and sleeping, I discovered that my flash card apparently refuses to save files from that particular game. Worse was Tactic's treatment of me, which was killing me in the goddamned STARTING TRAINING MISSION as the enemies used attacks that apparently weren't even supposed to occur. It also doesn't help that tactics and disgaea both feature a literal endless parade of frustrating forced grinding and careful stat management to protect yourself from having to repeat teeth-gratingly bad cutscenes.
I'm also going to admit that generally speaking, I'm not really a big RPG player, and an even smaller RPG-finisher. I usually get halfway or three-quarters through a game, and then get distracted/frustrated with the inevitable plot slowdown and just play through the Metal Slug series again. So, it was surprising that I not only beat Dragon Quest IX, but I beat it with a minimum of "god damnit I don't want to fuck with this dungeon wanna blow up tanks because I am a manchild."
One thing that alot of HARDXCORE rpg enthusiasts bitched about was the total lack of plot, or more specifically, the lack of a grand unifying story. They're not really wrong there, as the central plot of Dragon Quest IX is forgotten a dozen hours at a time. The basic gist of the story is that you are a Celestrian, which is basically a race of Christianity-style angels who exist to do good deeds and engage is retarded cutscenes that don't really go anywhere. Aside from the beginning and tailend of the series (the latter of which features the most awkwardly shoehorned in EVIL EMPIRE introduction seen to man), the plot consists of episodic visits to towns, which always have a Problem, which can always been solved by going to a Local Dungeon to beat a Bad. This is literally every town, aside from some tiny variations (such as go to Local Dungeon, then go back to town to beat a Bad). However, where I differ from people that have no problem in spending 200 hours in Disgaea's Item World (when my girlfriend explained that to me, my reaction was akin to shoving a cross in Dracula's face), is that this isn't really a problem for me.
Aside from the town's problems, there really is very little personality about the game. You have no moral choices throughout the game (not even the false refusal BUT THOU MUST trope), and the people you fight with, along with yourself, are customizable both in ability and appearance. As a result, while you are forced to help everyone, I could just pretend that helping the people was simply so I could get along with my ultimate goal of leaving these terrible places are quickly as possible. I really appreciated the game not giving my party members any actual personality, as there was no chance that I would run into that bad RPG conundrum where the best characters gameplay wise are easily the worst character wise (FUCK YOU AYLA WHY IS YOUR STRENGTH SO HIGH). My only regret was naming my nuke mage character "Snooks," as I realized halfway through the game that season 2 of Jersey Shore is really fucking awful.
Probably my favorite aspect of the game is how they implement job skills. At any job, you will gradually level in stats, as well as gain ability points that can be allocated into different sub-skills, which include weapons and job-specific trees. As you allocate points, you unlock various perks, including new abilities and increased stats. Relatively early in the game, you can switch out jobs, but with the penalty that you start the new job at level 1. While annoying, you can always switch to your previous jobs at whatever level you stopped at, and you always retain the perks from your job point allocation. In essence, it prevents easy exploitation that would break the tiny challenge the main game holds, while also encouraging experimentation with character build since you're never heavily punished for putting your points into stupid things (protip: knifes are so fucking awful it's not even funny).
Combat is a really simple throwback to older console rpgs (the only real change from the fight/magic/item scheme are randomly appearing limit breaks that are pretty much useless and will pop up exactly when you could gain no worthwhile use from them), and the challenge is always at a reasonable level. I tend to play RPGs carefully and with a somewhat autistic attention to MAXX STATS, while my girlfriend just basically grinded only when a boss completely stomped her. Both approaches worked well, as it's not really very hard to feel like everything you're fighting is hilariously unprepared for a guy wearing a hood shaped like a slime.
Speaking of slime hoods (OR SLOODS IF YOU WOULD), one reason I would wager the game's massive popularity is in the sheer amount of equipment within the game, and that the equipment directly impacts the character's visual appearance. Thus, part of the game is basically playing dolls, which appeal to all of you SICK FUCKS out there. But really, the amount of customization is almost overwhelming, and thankfully aside from weapons, stats play such a minor role in your character's strength that you can afford to choose a slightly worse outfit if it makes you feel like a boss.
However, I'm going to have to say that while it was fun for a little bit, Dragon Quest 9's post-game content isn't really all that good. Yes, in that quest for extending playability, there is a post-story aspect of the game that easily surpasses the actual story. However, while I did play through it fairly extensively, it just wasn't that fun. Let me break this down.
1) I HOPE YOU LIKE FUCKING GRINDING. Post-game consists entirely of "grottos" which are sort of randomly generated dungeons that consist of several to many floors, culminating in a boss that drops a treasure map to another grotto. The quality of the grotto from that map, which affects the boss, quality of treasure, and enemy types, depends on several things, most most especially on the level on your hero. Put another way, if you want the toughest monsters and best gear available, you're essentially going to have to level your main character all the way to level 99.
Ha ha, just kidding. Actually, to get the best, you're going to have to level your main character to 99, then go to a place where you "revocate," which drops your character back to level 1, then level back up to level 99 then revocate again and then revocate to level 99. To grind to this level, you better have a grotto map that spawns a rare slime type that gives insane amounts of experience, or you're essentially in this shit for the long haul.
After you do this, you can then fight Legacy Bosses, which are essentially final bosses from previous Dragon Quest games, and are all hard as shit, and require you to grind up different jobs so you can allocate skill points to every possible stat-increasing perk. Oh, and to get the best possible gear from the Legacy Bosses (note, said gear has a 2% drop rate unless you have a romfile or employ a really surreal programming trick), you have to kill each Legacy Boss dozens of times, as each time the boss is killed, you can choose to have the boss "level-up," meaning better stats and occasionally new horrible abilities.
Granted, I know the game wasn't forcing me to play through the postgame, but the sudden reliance on massive amounts of dull grinding in order to progress was just a little depressing.
2) NOTHING IS REALLY RANDOM. I would have been able to deal with the grinding if the post-game experience had been more random. By that, I mean the sort of Diablo II random, where once you get to a certain level, a vast amount of really great stuff can come out of any enemy, though the chances of that happening were fairly low. At first glance, the random nature of the grottoes made me hopeful for that sort of experience when I first started plowing through.
However, any aspect of randomness is totally illusory. Every enemy can only drop two treasures, and even the treasure chests can drop a certain level of treasure depending upon their "quality type," which stays the same no matter how many times you enter the same grotto. There apparently certain tradeable grottoes so heavily done that people have plotted out what sorts of items can drop from each chest at any given moment. This is amusing, but it basically removes any sort of interest from the game, transforming the game from an entertaining, rapidly progressing yarn about a jerk angel who just wants people to leave him alone into SQUARE-ENIX'S SPREADSHEET ADVENTURE.
In conclusion, at the very least it's a game worth picking up, and almost as good as anal sex.
haha kidding
She refused to believe that it would feel good, that falling back on the traditional games would be good enough. I told her it would be odd at first, but new experiences were healthy, and I was sick of the familiar motions. Besides, I had tried it already, and could state with confidence that despite my initial misgivings, it really was pretty enjoyable.
Eventually I just threatened her with anal rape, and she decided to bite the bullet and play Dragon Quest IX.
Neither of us had really played the Dragon Quest series before. I tried the initial game when I was a child, and after getting wiped out by a wizard I met after exiting a cave, I told my dad to take the game back to the rental place. The girlfriend tried the DS remake of Dragon Quest IV, and dubbed it boring at shit. At the time I decided to shill DQIX, she had finished Final Fantasy Tactics: A2 and was trying to beat Disgaea.
Let me digress for a moment to note that I sort of hate both of these games. Part of this can be traced to the fact that both of the games clearly hate me. After two hours of giving Disgaea a chance and sleeping, I discovered that my flash card apparently refuses to save files from that particular game. Worse was Tactic's treatment of me, which was killing me in the goddamned STARTING TRAINING MISSION as the enemies used attacks that apparently weren't even supposed to occur. It also doesn't help that tactics and disgaea both feature a literal endless parade of frustrating forced grinding and careful stat management to protect yourself from having to repeat teeth-gratingly bad cutscenes.
I'm also going to admit that generally speaking, I'm not really a big RPG player, and an even smaller RPG-finisher. I usually get halfway or three-quarters through a game, and then get distracted/frustrated with the inevitable plot slowdown and just play through the Metal Slug series again. So, it was surprising that I not only beat Dragon Quest IX, but I beat it with a minimum of "god damnit I don't want to fuck with this dungeon wanna blow up tanks because I am a manchild."
One thing that alot of HARDXCORE rpg enthusiasts bitched about was the total lack of plot, or more specifically, the lack of a grand unifying story. They're not really wrong there, as the central plot of Dragon Quest IX is forgotten a dozen hours at a time. The basic gist of the story is that you are a Celestrian, which is basically a race of Christianity-style angels who exist to do good deeds and engage is retarded cutscenes that don't really go anywhere. Aside from the beginning and tailend of the series (the latter of which features the most awkwardly shoehorned in EVIL EMPIRE introduction seen to man), the plot consists of episodic visits to towns, which always have a Problem, which can always been solved by going to a Local Dungeon to beat a Bad. This is literally every town, aside from some tiny variations (such as go to Local Dungeon, then go back to town to beat a Bad). However, where I differ from people that have no problem in spending 200 hours in Disgaea's Item World (when my girlfriend explained that to me, my reaction was akin to shoving a cross in Dracula's face), is that this isn't really a problem for me.
Aside from the town's problems, there really is very little personality about the game. You have no moral choices throughout the game (not even the false refusal BUT THOU MUST trope), and the people you fight with, along with yourself, are customizable both in ability and appearance. As a result, while you are forced to help everyone, I could just pretend that helping the people was simply so I could get along with my ultimate goal of leaving these terrible places are quickly as possible. I really appreciated the game not giving my party members any actual personality, as there was no chance that I would run into that bad RPG conundrum where the best characters gameplay wise are easily the worst character wise (FUCK YOU AYLA WHY IS YOUR STRENGTH SO HIGH). My only regret was naming my nuke mage character "Snooks," as I realized halfway through the game that season 2 of Jersey Shore is really fucking awful.
Probably my favorite aspect of the game is how they implement job skills. At any job, you will gradually level in stats, as well as gain ability points that can be allocated into different sub-skills, which include weapons and job-specific trees. As you allocate points, you unlock various perks, including new abilities and increased stats. Relatively early in the game, you can switch out jobs, but with the penalty that you start the new job at level 1. While annoying, you can always switch to your previous jobs at whatever level you stopped at, and you always retain the perks from your job point allocation. In essence, it prevents easy exploitation that would break the tiny challenge the main game holds, while also encouraging experimentation with character build since you're never heavily punished for putting your points into stupid things (protip: knifes are so fucking awful it's not even funny).
Combat is a really simple throwback to older console rpgs (the only real change from the fight/magic/item scheme are randomly appearing limit breaks that are pretty much useless and will pop up exactly when you could gain no worthwhile use from them), and the challenge is always at a reasonable level. I tend to play RPGs carefully and with a somewhat autistic attention to MAXX STATS, while my girlfriend just basically grinded only when a boss completely stomped her. Both approaches worked well, as it's not really very hard to feel like everything you're fighting is hilariously unprepared for a guy wearing a hood shaped like a slime.
Speaking of slime hoods (OR SLOODS IF YOU WOULD), one reason I would wager the game's massive popularity is in the sheer amount of equipment within the game, and that the equipment directly impacts the character's visual appearance. Thus, part of the game is basically playing dolls, which appeal to all of you SICK FUCKS out there. But really, the amount of customization is almost overwhelming, and thankfully aside from weapons, stats play such a minor role in your character's strength that you can afford to choose a slightly worse outfit if it makes you feel like a boss.
However, I'm going to have to say that while it was fun for a little bit, Dragon Quest 9's post-game content isn't really all that good. Yes, in that quest for extending playability, there is a post-story aspect of the game that easily surpasses the actual story. However, while I did play through it fairly extensively, it just wasn't that fun. Let me break this down.
1) I HOPE YOU LIKE FUCKING GRINDING. Post-game consists entirely of "grottos" which are sort of randomly generated dungeons that consist of several to many floors, culminating in a boss that drops a treasure map to another grotto. The quality of the grotto from that map, which affects the boss, quality of treasure, and enemy types, depends on several things, most most especially on the level on your hero. Put another way, if you want the toughest monsters and best gear available, you're essentially going to have to level your main character all the way to level 99.
Ha ha, just kidding. Actually, to get the best, you're going to have to level your main character to 99, then go to a place where you "revocate," which drops your character back to level 1, then level back up to level 99 then revocate again and then revocate to level 99. To grind to this level, you better have a grotto map that spawns a rare slime type that gives insane amounts of experience, or you're essentially in this shit for the long haul.
After you do this, you can then fight Legacy Bosses, which are essentially final bosses from previous Dragon Quest games, and are all hard as shit, and require you to grind up different jobs so you can allocate skill points to every possible stat-increasing perk. Oh, and to get the best possible gear from the Legacy Bosses (note, said gear has a 2% drop rate unless you have a romfile or employ a really surreal programming trick), you have to kill each Legacy Boss dozens of times, as each time the boss is killed, you can choose to have the boss "level-up," meaning better stats and occasionally new horrible abilities.
Granted, I know the game wasn't forcing me to play through the postgame, but the sudden reliance on massive amounts of dull grinding in order to progress was just a little depressing.
2) NOTHING IS REALLY RANDOM. I would have been able to deal with the grinding if the post-game experience had been more random. By that, I mean the sort of Diablo II random, where once you get to a certain level, a vast amount of really great stuff can come out of any enemy, though the chances of that happening were fairly low. At first glance, the random nature of the grottoes made me hopeful for that sort of experience when I first started plowing through.
However, any aspect of randomness is totally illusory. Every enemy can only drop two treasures, and even the treasure chests can drop a certain level of treasure depending upon their "quality type," which stays the same no matter how many times you enter the same grotto. There apparently certain tradeable grottoes so heavily done that people have plotted out what sorts of items can drop from each chest at any given moment. This is amusing, but it basically removes any sort of interest from the game, transforming the game from an entertaining, rapidly progressing yarn about a jerk angel who just wants people to leave him alone into SQUARE-ENIX'S SPREADSHEET ADVENTURE.
In conclusion, at the very least it's a game worth picking up, and almost as good as anal sex.
haha kidding
Monday, October 4, 2010
video game humor, the impossible challenge
So, Lisa Foiles' column about Tetris has beaten Tim Roger's literal nightmare screed by over 7k pageviews and about 150 comments. Both columns were pretty perfect representations of their author. Lisa's column, as usual, started with a photo collage of SEXY TETRIS POSES, and ultimately boiled down to "hey tetris is fun sometimes I can get obsessed with competition with my video game pals (omg lisa has a video game group does she have a boyfriend well of course we'll never know as nerd slut mystique DEMANDS as such) and now I will pad the rest of the column with tetris factoids." Tim's column is a fucking mess, starting with a parody of post-apocalyptic literature, or at least I assume it was a parody because the entire passage read like a damage report from those ultra-aspie rpg systems where every body part is accounted for individually. He was also befuddled by Burning Man, and tells everyone how he made friends with a girl on OKCupid.
My girlfriend pointed out that Lisa had a website, and dutifully, we examined it to find banal game reviews, and more interestingly, three episodes of a fledgling web series called "Everyday Achievements." What amazes me about most nerds is that, for the sheer amount of comedic material they ingest, they are generally unfunny as shit. Couple that with the fact that game humor is probably the easiest subject matter to come up with jokes with, and I don't understand how someone who actually had experience with comedic acting could fuck up a webseries so badly. I wasn't expecting some sort of gaming hilarity like Broken Pixels, but JESUS CHRIST FUCK THIS SHIT.
Presently, I'm wonderingly if I can write about the show without having to rewatch any of the episodes. The plot is that Lisa is a wacky GAMER GRRL who has wacky friends but no wacky adventures because that would require some modicum of creativity, so instead you get idealized retellings of game nights. What struck me most about the series is that there really wasn't much actually game humor, the closest we get is the sight gag that her psychologist is named Dr. Wily (faint praise approaches: this was far and away the funniest thing in the series). The first episode has Lisa throwing things around, then goes to a skit about her wacky roommate Kenny who does wacky stuff like baking cupcakes with mayo frosting (AND HE ALSO LIKES IT THAT WAY LOLOLOLOL). The second episode features the worst "psychologist and patients group meeting" skit ever conceived, then notes that when gamers play together, it kind of sounds like they're having sex! WHOA
Perhaps sensing that the series is already starting to decay, Lisa goes for her Limit Break, the third episode opening with her dressed up in various sexy costumes and goddamnit I may as well post the entire monologue because it is the perfect representation of attention-seeking girls realizing the bounties of nerd hormones:
After 5 minutes of awkward dialogue masquerading as humor, we find that the pizza guy was interested, but not really, leaves so the viewer can mentally insert himself as the caring shoulder that might transmorph into the hot lover after lots of sweet talks and sexually charged near-victories on Street Fighter 4. ;) The two highest rated comments on youtube pretty much say it all:
Maybe I'm being a little harsh, as it's only been three episodes, but as it's already started mining for boners, fuck the show. I even considered giving it some leeway since we're only dealing with five minute long snippits, but that actually makes the terribleness of the show even worse, as then all you would have to do is just ignore the need for filler and just pile on the gags. lern2channel101.
Ultimately, I guess this is all just frustration at how drastically unfunny nerds are. By nerds, I mean those people that leapfrog from one stupid nerd website to another, roffelling at penny arcade, kotaku, and maybe zero punctuation if it's still around and hasn't been swallowed up in some of space time singularity of total pointlessness. While most members of every subculture are pretty terrible at humor, nerds are generally the most hellbent subculture at convincing people that they are funny. Your average jock is somewhat aware of his lacking funny bone, and instead just going to refer each other to the humor column in sports illustrated, or just relate humorous anecdotes. Nerds are still convinced mouthmashing memes without any context are totally hilarious.
Maybe it's the source material. People flipped out over Ebert declaring "games are not art," but he's basically right. Movies, music, and other sorts of media offer a chance to connect to other people via the experience of observing the media. There's nothing commonly shared about video game experiences, just a vague blob of "oh man that was awesome you dodged that missile" between players. There are cutscenes that are always the same, but come on, cutscenes? Better to argue that Let's Plays are art, since at least then many people have the same experience watching those, but then you're just watching a movie with a nasally asshole commentary track.
At any rate, the variable nature of video games really makes subtle humor on the subject difficult, as you either have to be really good at humor in general, or fall back on other subjects of humor to pad it. As most nerds are just about as clueless on other forms of media as any other idiot class, the latter option is out. And as to the former, if you're actually funny, why bother being funny on a subject that is only going to be funny to those people that no one actually cares about? Which bring me in a roundabout way to the question, why even bother really being funny with video game humor? Going back to Penny Arcade, the only thing really humorous about the strip is that the disparity between the creators' actual physical appearance and their cartoon selves mirror the same situation of the comic's readers. Actual game humor is reserved to the punchlines of:
"Whoa this sort of thing wouldn't happen in real life."
"Man, what were those video game executives THINKING???"
"Not much happening here WAIT WACKY THING HAPPENS IN LAST PANEL"
The worst thing is that Penny Arcade is -relatively excellent.- I can read a couple of Penny Arcade strips and at least just roll my eyes, or hell, EVEN CHUCKLE (note that my chuckling at a strip usually means that the normal readers of Penny Arcade will quote it for YEARS TO COME). Compare this to VGCats, which usually leads to me feeling too ashamed to play video games for a month. Combine this with a base readership of overwhelming social awkwardness, and we're at a place where even when someone might have an idea of attempting something new humor in game humor, they'd be too afraid and instead just fall back on going "pedobear pedobear pedobear" to be warped into the dimension of screaming gamer lexicon to get love.
WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE ME, YOU ASK.
Well, maybe I should try to be funny?
My girlfriend pointed out that Lisa had a website, and dutifully, we examined it to find banal game reviews, and more interestingly, three episodes of a fledgling web series called "Everyday Achievements." What amazes me about most nerds is that, for the sheer amount of comedic material they ingest, they are generally unfunny as shit. Couple that with the fact that game humor is probably the easiest subject matter to come up with jokes with, and I don't understand how someone who actually had experience with comedic acting could fuck up a webseries so badly. I wasn't expecting some sort of gaming hilarity like Broken Pixels, but JESUS CHRIST FUCK THIS SHIT.
Presently, I'm wonderingly if I can write about the show without having to rewatch any of the episodes. The plot is that Lisa is a wacky GAMER GRRL who has wacky friends but no wacky adventures because that would require some modicum of creativity, so instead you get idealized retellings of game nights. What struck me most about the series is that there really wasn't much actually game humor, the closest we get is the sight gag that her psychologist is named Dr. Wily (faint praise approaches: this was far and away the funniest thing in the series). The first episode has Lisa throwing things around, then goes to a skit about her wacky roommate Kenny who does wacky stuff like baking cupcakes with mayo frosting (AND HE ALSO LIKES IT THAT WAY LOLOLOLOL). The second episode features the worst "psychologist and patients group meeting" skit ever conceived, then notes that when gamers play together, it kind of sounds like they're having sex! WHOA
Perhaps sensing that the series is already starting to decay, Lisa goes for her Limit Break, the third episode opening with her dressed up in various sexy costumes and goddamnit I may as well post the entire monologue because it is the perfect representation of attention-seeking girls realizing the bounties of nerd hormones:
After 5 minutes of awkward dialogue masquerading as humor, we find that the pizza guy was interested, but not really, leaves so the viewer can mentally insert himself as the caring shoulder that might transmorph into the hot lover after lots of sweet talks and sexually charged near-victories on Street Fighter 4. ;) The two highest rated comments on youtube pretty much say it all:
Everything I know about life and the universe tells me that if you meet a girl who is THAT attractive and THAT seductive with THAT much innuendo, you need to run the f**k away. It's a trap. Nobody's karma level is that high. You'd take one step in the door and get struck by lightning, or covered in bees. The universe is not that kind. If you happen to BE that attractive, your punishment is having people run away from you, fearing karmic repercussions. Or the aforementioned bee lightning.
Lisa's so pretty.
Maybe I'm being a little harsh, as it's only been three episodes, but as it's already started mining for boners, fuck the show. I even considered giving it some leeway since we're only dealing with five minute long snippits, but that actually makes the terribleness of the show even worse, as then all you would have to do is just ignore the need for filler and just pile on the gags. lern2channel101.
Ultimately, I guess this is all just frustration at how drastically unfunny nerds are. By nerds, I mean those people that leapfrog from one stupid nerd website to another, roffelling at penny arcade, kotaku, and maybe zero punctuation if it's still around and hasn't been swallowed up in some of space time singularity of total pointlessness. While most members of every subculture are pretty terrible at humor, nerds are generally the most hellbent subculture at convincing people that they are funny. Your average jock is somewhat aware of his lacking funny bone, and instead just going to refer each other to the humor column in sports illustrated, or just relate humorous anecdotes. Nerds are still convinced mouthmashing memes without any context are totally hilarious.
Maybe it's the source material. People flipped out over Ebert declaring "games are not art," but he's basically right. Movies, music, and other sorts of media offer a chance to connect to other people via the experience of observing the media. There's nothing commonly shared about video game experiences, just a vague blob of "oh man that was awesome you dodged that missile" between players. There are cutscenes that are always the same, but come on, cutscenes? Better to argue that Let's Plays are art, since at least then many people have the same experience watching those, but then you're just watching a movie with a nasally asshole commentary track.
At any rate, the variable nature of video games really makes subtle humor on the subject difficult, as you either have to be really good at humor in general, or fall back on other subjects of humor to pad it. As most nerds are just about as clueless on other forms of media as any other idiot class, the latter option is out. And as to the former, if you're actually funny, why bother being funny on a subject that is only going to be funny to those people that no one actually cares about? Which bring me in a roundabout way to the question, why even bother really being funny with video game humor? Going back to Penny Arcade, the only thing really humorous about the strip is that the disparity between the creators' actual physical appearance and their cartoon selves mirror the same situation of the comic's readers. Actual game humor is reserved to the punchlines of:
"Whoa this sort of thing wouldn't happen in real life."
"Man, what were those video game executives THINKING???"
"Not much happening here WAIT WACKY THING HAPPENS IN LAST PANEL"
The worst thing is that Penny Arcade is -relatively excellent.- I can read a couple of Penny Arcade strips and at least just roll my eyes, or hell, EVEN CHUCKLE (note that my chuckling at a strip usually means that the normal readers of Penny Arcade will quote it for YEARS TO COME). Compare this to VGCats, which usually leads to me feeling too ashamed to play video games for a month. Combine this with a base readership of overwhelming social awkwardness, and we're at a place where even when someone might have an idea of attempting something new humor in game humor, they'd be too afraid and instead just fall back on going "pedobear pedobear pedobear" to be warped into the dimension of screaming gamer lexicon to get love.
WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE ME, YOU ASK.
Well, maybe I should try to be funny?
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