This really, really wasn't a movie for me. The target audience is basically your middle-tier Facebook user, the one that doesn't post a million terrible status updates but still joins mawkish "I DUN CARE ABOUT WHAT YOUR BABY DID" groups, laughs at people playing Farmville but coo when they get gifts or receive 50 birthday wishes.* It did seem pretty disinterested in paying attention to old-guard internet lamers like me, what with people referring to blogging when there was only terrible shit like Livejournal, or treating Livejournal like some sort of proto twitter. It's dumb to bitch about stuff like that, and hell, maybe the screenwriter was trying to make some secret point about how technology really doesn't change our social habits no matter how many oh-point-ohs we stumble into. All I know is that it threw me out of the movie. But then, the movie didn't seem to be interested in helping me deal with the incongruity, instead treating those mid-2000s like a slightly lamer present day. The Social Network is the first movie that really stuck into my age. The only real silver lining to that point is that this movie is going to be The Net level dated.
While hearing "Friendster" just irritated me, what ultimately led to my disliking this movie more than Inception (MICRO REVIEW: Like every other Nolan film, fun action sequences supporting d33p plotlines designed to encourage the most ephemeral thinking possible) was Fincher's hellbent desire to have his film both ways, as your stereotypical genre film and some great thinking man's drama.
Most of the movie is in the former mode, though including lots of rapid cuts and narrative barrel rolls so you don't get confused and hesitate about discussing the DEEP ASPECTS of the film. Don't be deceived by those cool camera angles and smooth dialogue, The Social Network doesn't really want you to consider the sides of the drama. All the cinematic tricks are ultimately just long shadows on the 2-D characteristics: ZUCKERBURG TORTURED GENIUS, TWINS ENTITLED JERKS, JEW NAMED EDWARDO MORAL CENTER OF FILM, NSYNC LITERALLY GROWING DEVIL HORNS AND DEVIL BONER. The entire film is just Fincher putting some late 90's AI programs into a chat room, recording the log, then having a rewriting staff render the material presentable to a generation that allows Ke$ha to live because of irony.
Then, after roughly 115 minutes of biopic brouhaha, we get the big reveal from a blandly attractive two-year legal associate, exactly the sort of demographic that Fincher expects will understand the brilliant subtext of things and who eats these important films with relish of the gods: blah blah guess what guys it's all actually really complicated like a creation myth the digital age redemption. It's brilliantly retarded, in a way, like if the final scene from Citizen Kane was replaced with Welles' fat older self telling the audience that he has to return to his home planet. Of course, it's also the ultimate intellectual copout, santa claus winking when the kids realize he's actually real, I thought those archetypes were the extent of the human experience but I guess there's more to this story after all OF COURSE THERE IS YOU STUPID FUCK
*: you might wonder what the upper tier of facebooks users are. the answer is
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance
Imagine you're a small, parasitic organism from outer space. You can spend literally thousands of years floating through space in suspended animation, until eventually you beat the odds and successfully survive the heat of entering a planet's atmosphere. Once you have awakened, you immediately begin to search for the strongest source of psychic energy in a small area, then quickly begin to invade that sources. The source is not extinguished, but you gain control, quickly assimilating the sources' knowledge, memories, and goals. You understand that you are the designer of one type of planetary entertainment called video games. You helped to design one under appreciated game about a monster in a castle beating up other monsters. A sequel was formed by a different part of the same company, but for whatever reason, they have now turned to you to produce the new game, which is to be known as Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance. Despite your parasitic nature, the passive psychic gestalt of your species renders the goals of the host into your own, and you are overjoyed that your lifespan will last exactly as long as the projected development cycle.
You carefully analyze the preliminary meetings. The previous attempt at Monster Killing Castle was not disliked, but apparently some were less than pleased that the audio overshadowed the graphics. Some people in the room nod at this observation, and you sense the time to strike.
"Clearly, we must put everything into graphics. My graphics in my game were good. Use all of those."
A lesser creature, bowing, explains that if you are referring to trying to use sprites from Symphony of the Night, that would force severe cutbacks into the music. Emulating funny American television stars, you shrug, and begin to plot the series of events that will result in the creatures body being impaled on a fence post several days later. Despite wisely not taking responsibility for the action, subordinates begin to avoid you after meetings. And graphics do proceed well. Occasionally, there are fleeting attempts by others to make you care about the fact that the music sounds like recording a tone-deaf kazoo in a paper bag. But you understand the gamers. They will hail you, even if they could not even comprehend you.
You begin to study your game, the so-called symphony. The gamers have begun to find it, to love it. You understand the species well enough that putting in the same few concepts with the smallest improvement is a deeply admired characteristic of video games. You realize the best path is just to take the symphony, and improve.
One problem brought to your attention with the previous game was the difficulty. Gamers could not simply stumble their way through every situation in the first try. Unacceptable, but the symphony provides the way. Simply give weapons that will destroy every problem regardless of situation. But then the overlord informs you that, again, data restricts the game from incorporating all the different weapons from your symphony. You consider slicing his throat, but then an idea takes hold.
"Not a problem. We will simply give a whip, make it unfun to use. The subweapons will be the key. There will be things that you can attach to subweapons to render them literally unstoppable."
The overlord thinks you are going places.
Ideas come faster and faster. The symphony had many bosses, so you will also include many bosses with insultingly simple attack patterns. Create shopkeepers that allow you to buy armor to bypass any problem that might occur. Hidden rooms hurt gameflow, remove all of them and instead just create rooms that go absolutely no where without reward for their exploration. People liked that one boss with all the bodies attached to it, make two of them and make both of them almost as terrible as the bosses that are just bigger versions of regular enemies and almost as easy.
But these are appetizers. The main course is being prepared, as someone with poor grammar would say.
There have been questions about how one can deal with all these bosses. The memory limitations, always, like a monotonous drone, the same drone you hear when you have procreative relations with other members of the species. But you know.
"Two castles."
Uncomfortable shifting. Someone still dares to speak.
"I guess we could do something like an inverted castle. It might be seen as a bit of a ripoff of Symphony, but still..."
"No," you interrupt, "it will be the same castle...but different."
The same man, same insect. "So identical in layout. Okay, so we'll still have the first castle be where the player gets all the movement-based abilities, and the second be sort of a sandbox type area..."
"No. Switch between castles. Constantly."
"So is the second castle going to be harder, or...I feel like I'm missing something here."
"Some places in second castle harder than same area in first. Others easier."
The man takes off his glasses. He seems frustrated. "So, just to make sure I have this right. The character is going to be going between two huge castles that will be entirely identical in layout, with few clues about exactly where he's going and the next destination having absolutely no relation to where you just were. Am I getting this?"
You have begun to gain an appreciation for certain artists that draw "horror comics" in this country, for they seem to preview the sorts of scenes that you create, have unfortunately created just after the man talks, his limbs and blood and still screaming head careening off the walls and your painstakingly crafted castle map. As your body shifts back into a form that the gaping bystanders can comprehend, you add: "I think we should have like three different keys too."
You're so proud of your game.
You carefully analyze the preliminary meetings. The previous attempt at Monster Killing Castle was not disliked, but apparently some were less than pleased that the audio overshadowed the graphics. Some people in the room nod at this observation, and you sense the time to strike.
"Clearly, we must put everything into graphics. My graphics in my game were good. Use all of those."
A lesser creature, bowing, explains that if you are referring to trying to use sprites from Symphony of the Night, that would force severe cutbacks into the music. Emulating funny American television stars, you shrug, and begin to plot the series of events that will result in the creatures body being impaled on a fence post several days later. Despite wisely not taking responsibility for the action, subordinates begin to avoid you after meetings. And graphics do proceed well. Occasionally, there are fleeting attempts by others to make you care about the fact that the music sounds like recording a tone-deaf kazoo in a paper bag. But you understand the gamers. They will hail you, even if they could not even comprehend you.
You begin to study your game, the so-called symphony. The gamers have begun to find it, to love it. You understand the species well enough that putting in the same few concepts with the smallest improvement is a deeply admired characteristic of video games. You realize the best path is just to take the symphony, and improve.
One problem brought to your attention with the previous game was the difficulty. Gamers could not simply stumble their way through every situation in the first try. Unacceptable, but the symphony provides the way. Simply give weapons that will destroy every problem regardless of situation. But then the overlord informs you that, again, data restricts the game from incorporating all the different weapons from your symphony. You consider slicing his throat, but then an idea takes hold.
"Not a problem. We will simply give a whip, make it unfun to use. The subweapons will be the key. There will be things that you can attach to subweapons to render them literally unstoppable."
The overlord thinks you are going places.
Ideas come faster and faster. The symphony had many bosses, so you will also include many bosses with insultingly simple attack patterns. Create shopkeepers that allow you to buy armor to bypass any problem that might occur. Hidden rooms hurt gameflow, remove all of them and instead just create rooms that go absolutely no where without reward for their exploration. People liked that one boss with all the bodies attached to it, make two of them and make both of them almost as terrible as the bosses that are just bigger versions of regular enemies and almost as easy.
But these are appetizers. The main course is being prepared, as someone with poor grammar would say.
There have been questions about how one can deal with all these bosses. The memory limitations, always, like a monotonous drone, the same drone you hear when you have procreative relations with other members of the species. But you know.
"Two castles."
Uncomfortable shifting. Someone still dares to speak.
"I guess we could do something like an inverted castle. It might be seen as a bit of a ripoff of Symphony, but still..."
"No," you interrupt, "it will be the same castle...but different."
The same man, same insect. "So identical in layout. Okay, so we'll still have the first castle be where the player gets all the movement-based abilities, and the second be sort of a sandbox type area..."
"No. Switch between castles. Constantly."
"So is the second castle going to be harder, or...I feel like I'm missing something here."
"Some places in second castle harder than same area in first. Others easier."
The man takes off his glasses. He seems frustrated. "So, just to make sure I have this right. The character is going to be going between two huge castles that will be entirely identical in layout, with few clues about exactly where he's going and the next destination having absolutely no relation to where you just were. Am I getting this?"
You have begun to gain an appreciation for certain artists that draw "horror comics" in this country, for they seem to preview the sorts of scenes that you create, have unfortunately created just after the man talks, his limbs and blood and still screaming head careening off the walls and your painstakingly crafted castle map. As your body shifts back into a form that the gaping bystanders can comprehend, you add: "I think we should have like three different keys too."
You're so proud of your game.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
inspiration from search terms: Where are Kotaku Readers Going?
I haven't rapped too much about Kotaku, because really, what else is there to say? I can't even really think of a clever "MAN COBRAB COMMANDOR MUST BE WORKING AT HAWKER MEDIA" joke because the reality is probably even more ridiculous and depressing. Thousands of pages of pie graphs, consumer driven phases, and capitalist understanding from your Ayn Rand cyberpunk grandpa. If there's been any upshot of this, it's that Kotaku's usually bountful crop of awful basement comments have been culled, presumably both from people leaving the site and the new article design doing everything to imply that it doesn't want to hear what you have to say short of implanting a soundbite of wailing Arab women every time the comment button is clicked.
I'm on the first page to the question of "where are Kotaku readers going?" Honestly, who fucking cares? Well, besides people whose job it is to latch your temporal lobes into a never ending parade of cool screenshots and gritty eyewitness maid cafe reports while assuring you that you're a class above those lame IGN nerds. Of course, I'm sure those people already have Skynet monitoring traffic reports and aren't just helplessly asking google for assistance with their journey. Or maybe they are. Hi guys! You should give Lisa more screentime and then imply that drinking mercury will give you the cutting edge at MvC3!
So, I have to assume that the question was from some guy who is scared that all his buddies on the "daily speakup" (I honestly don't even know what goes on there, I figured the terrible photo-shopped GAMER KULTURE picture on every one of those topics was some sort of reverse IQ test) and now doesn't know what to do. Well, I mean besides going outside. We can't have that, I mean what with Bulletstorm and Portal 2 coming out! What's gonna be the next hilarious joke that you'll repeat approximately 20 times and then declare to be passe and pass judgment upon anyone who dares to use it? THE WORLD IS PASSING YOU BY FUCKER NOW WHAT YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT FEAT. ALL AMERICAN REJECTS
The more I think about that search term, the more confusion grows. I mean, half of the Internet is stupid nerds congregating to communities, and a good number of those cater to that hungry need for social acceptance above other nerds and pretending that they understand that life does not revolve around their stupid bullshit. There is probably some concerted Facebook/general social media campaign to lure people away their betraying idols to join a site that REALLY cares and the worst thing is that so many of you are going to fall for it. Why can't I help you?
(also, way to ruin my happiness at tim finally not having a big name column anymore by imploding at the exact same time, you fucks)
I'm on the first page to the question of "where are Kotaku readers going?" Honestly, who fucking cares? Well, besides people whose job it is to latch your temporal lobes into a never ending parade of cool screenshots and gritty eyewitness maid cafe reports while assuring you that you're a class above those lame IGN nerds. Of course, I'm sure those people already have Skynet monitoring traffic reports and aren't just helplessly asking google for assistance with their journey. Or maybe they are. Hi guys! You should give Lisa more screentime and then imply that drinking mercury will give you the cutting edge at MvC3!
So, I have to assume that the question was from some guy who is scared that all his buddies on the "daily speakup" (I honestly don't even know what goes on there, I figured the terrible photo-shopped GAMER KULTURE picture on every one of those topics was some sort of reverse IQ test) and now doesn't know what to do. Well, I mean besides going outside. We can't have that, I mean what with Bulletstorm and Portal 2 coming out! What's gonna be the next hilarious joke that you'll repeat approximately 20 times and then declare to be passe and pass judgment upon anyone who dares to use it? THE WORLD IS PASSING YOU BY FUCKER NOW WHAT YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT FEAT. ALL AMERICAN REJECTS
The more I think about that search term, the more confusion grows. I mean, half of the Internet is stupid nerds congregating to communities, and a good number of those cater to that hungry need for social acceptance above other nerds and pretending that they understand that life does not revolve around their stupid bullshit. There is probably some concerted Facebook/general social media campaign to lure people away their betraying idols to join a site that REALLY cares and the worst thing is that so many of you are going to fall for it. Why can't I help you?
(also, way to ruin my happiness at tim finally not having a big name column anymore by imploding at the exact same time, you fucks)
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
I swear to god, I'm not going to get the 3DS.
I have been a serf to Nintendo's handheld products. Somewhere in my house is the steady evolution of the Gameboy, from the brick to the lame novelty billfold to the thirty different versions of the color to finally the GBA and I don't even want to talk about the fucking DS.
The GBA is sort of the odd duck of the game boy franchise. While people praise the DS and regular game boy (the latter through nostalgia glasses, admittedly) and decry the Game Boy Color entirely except for Capcom's actually pretty fucking good Zelda titles, the GBA is just sort of a forgotten weird thing. Mostly its known for being the point where Nintendo realized that no one was ever going to take its primary console RPGs seriously, so instead now we're showered with the same fucking three kinds of JRPGs for all eternity. Of course, there were some pretty innovative action games, but most of these have been only remembered by the gross gamers that I referred to in my last post. But there were exceptions.
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon was the first game I got with my GBA, so it has a certain degree of sentimentality on its side. At the time, like most people of my age, I had not actually played Symphony of the Night, though I had sort of heard of it offhand (roughly a year later, I would borrow a friend's utterly wrecked disc of it, which managed to hold together through a single, embarrassingly easy play through of it). Despite Symphony's infamously bad failure commercially, there was already enough bleatings from the beginnings of internet game journalism about how Symphony was a game that the normals would never understand that it was decided that the whole non-linear rpg stat Castlevania thing would be reborn on the GBA as a launch title. But, in a move that I'm sure made sense to sweaty Japanese majordomos hiding copies of Metal Gear Solid in their armpits, they moved the production of the game to a section of Konami that had nothing to do with Symphony of the Night. The producer for the new game, Shigeru Umezaki, had only worked on Castlevania 64 (a game that's probably due in for some nerd revisionism, but it's still shit), and was primarily known for working on the original Contra games.
Of course, I'm not some gaming journalism retard who's going to pretend that video games are like movies and one person can influence the course of a game entirely. I'm sure the production staff played through Symphony carefully, queried programmers about how best to optimize things, and generally borrowed alot of "under the hood" elements for Circle of the Moon. But despite all that, CotM remains the most distinct game in the portable Castlevania franchise, for better and worse.
The most obvious difference is in the graphics. Starting with Harmony, and probably continuing with whatever comes out on the 3DS, all portable Castlevania titles are pretty shameless in borrowing, if not outright using, the graphic art style from Symphony of the Night. It's impossible to say whether CotM's decision to draw and use their own sprites was due to a genuine attempt to separate the game from Symphony, or simple hardware limitations, but playing CotM after any of its sequels is a pretty chilling experience, because let's face it, the graphics are, at best, a weird homage to the original graphics of the NES Castlevanias, and at worst, primitive etchings of what may or not be monsters. What you can paint over with cries of "ITZ RETRO" is the almost comedic amount of monster recolors. No sprite in CotM survives without at least one "update" version later in the game. The worst sufferer of this is the noble "Armor" sprite:
There are literally THIRTEEN RECOLORS of this fucking enemy. While they do have different attack animations, even Dragon Quest isn't this shameless. Other recolors aren't as legion, but you can rest assured that any new enemy you face is going to return in a new, possibly more annoying form later. Combating the forces of programming laziness is your hero Who Fucking Cares About the Storyline in a Castlevania Game. Who Fucking Cares's defining characteristic is being possibly the ugliest sprite in the game, powerwalking through the game and always getting thrashed by bads because, in a possible fuck-you to SotN, he don't have no backdash.
The only positive graphical aspects of the game are the bosses. And while there is alot wrong with how enemies were implemented in CotM, the bosses in the game are easily the most impressive of the original GBA trilogy. The first few are fairly unimpressive shrimps (including an astoundingly blatant recoloring of Shaft G-G-GHOST FORM), but then you get to a giant goat in bondage and some zombie dragons and a hot demon chick riding a skull (which is not just a cover of Rondo's Carmilla, thankyouverymuch). They're great, iconic bosses, especially compared to the parade of terribles that the other two GBA games gave us. They even had fairly interesting, challenging attack patterns that would have forced the player to adopt old-style castlevania tactics in order to succeed, bucking the trend introduced by Symphony of boss battles testing to see whether you had a working pulse.
Astute readers may have noticed my use of the words "would have" in that sentence. You see, for all the difficult patterns that some of CotM's bosses exhibited, all of it was for nothing, thanks to one particular little gameplay flaw: the fucking cross/boomerang. Now granted, the cross has always been one of the better subweapons in the Castlevania universe, capable of getting multiple hits and simple mechanics and whatnot. However, the cross here is not just a handy tool, it is a goddamned nuclear warhead rendering all game challenge null and void, due to it:
1) Doing substantially damage than a normal whip swing
2) Hitting around four times if you hit something at the end of the cross's range, which is never a problem with the usually very stationary bosses of this game
3) Automatically being able to throw multiple boomerangs at the same time.
The nature of the cross simplifies any boss strategy to "throw crosses at bad for 20 seconds, savor your diminished victory." Perhaps sensing at the last moment what a fucked gamebreaker the cross was, the actual placement of the cross is in rare areas and using one takes a good number of hearts, but all this means is that the biggest challenge of the game is paying attention to the screen while jumping across identical hallways whipping candles to refill your heart supply after each boss battle.
Now granted, every RPGish Castlevania has a number of terrible gamebreaking weapons or magic items. But the cross in CotM is really the grand emperor of them all. For example, yeah, the Lightning Doll in Aria of Sorrow is pretty disgusting, but unless you're lucky, you may not have acquired that ability the first time through unless you really enjoy grinding on the baddies, and even then, you might not even think to test it out. You're probably gonna run into the Cross early on in CotM, and unless you're some terrible neophyte Castlevania player, you're probably gonna test it out and the results are going to be like one of those 90s Nintendo commercials. There are other problematic abilities within the poorly designed DUAL CARD SYSTEM (such as the easily gained dual fire shield that does the same damage as your whip, or the nearly impossible to find summon family that renders final bosses into a bloody puddle), but the cross is so fucking powerful that unless you're doing a low level run of the Arena (CotM's most lasting contribution to the series, a series of rooms with ridiculous enemies whooooo), you don't even have to bother with the magic system.
I'm giving CotM a hard time, and I feel bad for that, because I've played the shit out of the game. As long as you can resist cheesing everything with the cross, it's probably the hardest game of the entire portable Castlevania run, and has one of the more creative endgame options, in basically making you replaying the game, but with dramatically different stats. It also knows roughly when it's worn out its welcome, quitting after about nine bosses spaced nicely from each other. The best part about the game is the music, which is a love letter to the nerds who downloaded Dracula Battle Perfect back when it was on that one classicgaming site, featuring almost nothing but beautifully rendered remixes from different games in the series, even relatively forgotten ones like Bloodlines. And again, while I mock its challenge, it's still a harder game than Symphony, which constantly forces you to renounce constant advantages to avoid feeling like a giant gamer baby. Level design isn't completely inspired (the final proper area specifically features the most monotonous enemy placement imagined), but there are interesting ideas thrown around, such as a puzzle area that only forces you to complete the puzzle once before retaining the correct configuration and a Clock Tower area that doesn't subsist on destroying your soul.
Ultimately, if your experience with open-ended Castlevanias went from a downloaded copy of SotN and then jumped directly to the DS titles, you should probably try Circle of the Moon if just to see a vision of WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN and be (mostly) thankful that Konami switched back control of the series to the people that wrote SotN.
I have been a serf to Nintendo's handheld products. Somewhere in my house is the steady evolution of the Gameboy, from the brick to the lame novelty billfold to the thirty different versions of the color to finally the GBA and I don't even want to talk about the fucking DS.
The GBA is sort of the odd duck of the game boy franchise. While people praise the DS and regular game boy (the latter through nostalgia glasses, admittedly) and decry the Game Boy Color entirely except for Capcom's actually pretty fucking good Zelda titles, the GBA is just sort of a forgotten weird thing. Mostly its known for being the point where Nintendo realized that no one was ever going to take its primary console RPGs seriously, so instead now we're showered with the same fucking three kinds of JRPGs for all eternity. Of course, there were some pretty innovative action games, but most of these have been only remembered by the gross gamers that I referred to in my last post. But there were exceptions.
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon was the first game I got with my GBA, so it has a certain degree of sentimentality on its side. At the time, like most people of my age, I had not actually played Symphony of the Night, though I had sort of heard of it offhand (roughly a year later, I would borrow a friend's utterly wrecked disc of it, which managed to hold together through a single, embarrassingly easy play through of it). Despite Symphony's infamously bad failure commercially, there was already enough bleatings from the beginnings of internet game journalism about how Symphony was a game that the normals would never understand that it was decided that the whole non-linear rpg stat Castlevania thing would be reborn on the GBA as a launch title. But, in a move that I'm sure made sense to sweaty Japanese majordomos hiding copies of Metal Gear Solid in their armpits, they moved the production of the game to a section of Konami that had nothing to do with Symphony of the Night. The producer for the new game, Shigeru Umezaki, had only worked on Castlevania 64 (a game that's probably due in for some nerd revisionism, but it's still shit), and was primarily known for working on the original Contra games.
Of course, I'm not some gaming journalism retard who's going to pretend that video games are like movies and one person can influence the course of a game entirely. I'm sure the production staff played through Symphony carefully, queried programmers about how best to optimize things, and generally borrowed alot of "under the hood" elements for Circle of the Moon. But despite all that, CotM remains the most distinct game in the portable Castlevania franchise, for better and worse.
The most obvious difference is in the graphics. Starting with Harmony, and probably continuing with whatever comes out on the 3DS, all portable Castlevania titles are pretty shameless in borrowing, if not outright using, the graphic art style from Symphony of the Night. It's impossible to say whether CotM's decision to draw and use their own sprites was due to a genuine attempt to separate the game from Symphony, or simple hardware limitations, but playing CotM after any of its sequels is a pretty chilling experience, because let's face it, the graphics are, at best, a weird homage to the original graphics of the NES Castlevanias, and at worst, primitive etchings of what may or not be monsters. What you can paint over with cries of "ITZ RETRO" is the almost comedic amount of monster recolors. No sprite in CotM survives without at least one "update" version later in the game. The worst sufferer of this is the noble "Armor" sprite:
There are literally THIRTEEN RECOLORS of this fucking enemy. While they do have different attack animations, even Dragon Quest isn't this shameless. Other recolors aren't as legion, but you can rest assured that any new enemy you face is going to return in a new, possibly more annoying form later. Combating the forces of programming laziness is your hero Who Fucking Cares About the Storyline in a Castlevania Game. Who Fucking Cares's defining characteristic is being possibly the ugliest sprite in the game, powerwalking through the game and always getting thrashed by bads because, in a possible fuck-you to SotN, he don't have no backdash.
The only positive graphical aspects of the game are the bosses. And while there is alot wrong with how enemies were implemented in CotM, the bosses in the game are easily the most impressive of the original GBA trilogy. The first few are fairly unimpressive shrimps (including an astoundingly blatant recoloring of Shaft G-G-GHOST FORM), but then you get to a giant goat in bondage and some zombie dragons and a hot demon chick riding a skull (which is not just a cover of Rondo's Carmilla, thankyouverymuch). They're great, iconic bosses, especially compared to the parade of terribles that the other two GBA games gave us. They even had fairly interesting, challenging attack patterns that would have forced the player to adopt old-style castlevania tactics in order to succeed, bucking the trend introduced by Symphony of boss battles testing to see whether you had a working pulse.
Astute readers may have noticed my use of the words "would have" in that sentence. You see, for all the difficult patterns that some of CotM's bosses exhibited, all of it was for nothing, thanks to one particular little gameplay flaw: the fucking cross/boomerang. Now granted, the cross has always been one of the better subweapons in the Castlevania universe, capable of getting multiple hits and simple mechanics and whatnot. However, the cross here is not just a handy tool, it is a goddamned nuclear warhead rendering all game challenge null and void, due to it:
1) Doing substantially damage than a normal whip swing
2) Hitting around four times if you hit something at the end of the cross's range, which is never a problem with the usually very stationary bosses of this game
3) Automatically being able to throw multiple boomerangs at the same time.
The nature of the cross simplifies any boss strategy to "throw crosses at bad for 20 seconds, savor your diminished victory." Perhaps sensing at the last moment what a fucked gamebreaker the cross was, the actual placement of the cross is in rare areas and using one takes a good number of hearts, but all this means is that the biggest challenge of the game is paying attention to the screen while jumping across identical hallways whipping candles to refill your heart supply after each boss battle.
Now granted, every RPGish Castlevania has a number of terrible gamebreaking weapons or magic items. But the cross in CotM is really the grand emperor of them all. For example, yeah, the Lightning Doll in Aria of Sorrow is pretty disgusting, but unless you're lucky, you may not have acquired that ability the first time through unless you really enjoy grinding on the baddies, and even then, you might not even think to test it out. You're probably gonna run into the Cross early on in CotM, and unless you're some terrible neophyte Castlevania player, you're probably gonna test it out and the results are going to be like one of those 90s Nintendo commercials. There are other problematic abilities within the poorly designed DUAL CARD SYSTEM (such as the easily gained dual fire shield that does the same damage as your whip, or the nearly impossible to find summon family that renders final bosses into a bloody puddle), but the cross is so fucking powerful that unless you're doing a low level run of the Arena (CotM's most lasting contribution to the series, a series of rooms with ridiculous enemies whooooo), you don't even have to bother with the magic system.
I'm giving CotM a hard time, and I feel bad for that, because I've played the shit out of the game. As long as you can resist cheesing everything with the cross, it's probably the hardest game of the entire portable Castlevania run, and has one of the more creative endgame options, in basically making you replaying the game, but with dramatically different stats. It also knows roughly when it's worn out its welcome, quitting after about nine bosses spaced nicely from each other. The best part about the game is the music, which is a love letter to the nerds who downloaded Dracula Battle Perfect back when it was on that one classicgaming site, featuring almost nothing but beautifully rendered remixes from different games in the series, even relatively forgotten ones like Bloodlines. And again, while I mock its challenge, it's still a harder game than Symphony, which constantly forces you to renounce constant advantages to avoid feeling like a giant gamer baby. Level design isn't completely inspired (the final proper area specifically features the most monotonous enemy placement imagined), but there are interesting ideas thrown around, such as a puzzle area that only forces you to complete the puzzle once before retaining the correct configuration and a Clock Tower area that doesn't subsist on destroying your soul.
Ultimately, if your experience with open-ended Castlevanias went from a downloaded copy of SotN and then jumped directly to the DS titles, you should probably try Circle of the Moon if just to see a vision of WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN and be (mostly) thankful that Konami switched back control of the series to the people that wrote SotN.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Splinter
I think it says alot for the backbiting, empty world of criticism that virtually every critic that watched Splinter, an enjoyable little indie creature feature, described the monster as AHHHH KILLER PORCUPINE LOL. Granted, most critics seemed to like the film, and those that didn't, such as this embarrassing review from the slackjawed paradise known as the AV Club completely missed the point.
I really don't get the whole porcupine thing. If anything, Splinter should really be called "what happens when a screenwriter watches that one clip of the parasitic fungus on youtube and thinks 'hey, what if that was really fast and bigger?'" Thankfully, the film that resulted was smart enough to keep the focus entirely on the creature. Sure, there's actual humans, consisting of two couples, one being a mid-20s nerdy indie dreamboat, the other being convicts who carjack the former couple, but the movie is pretty quick about dispensing with the character backgrounds and interactions, shuttling them to an abandoned gas station that will be the rest of the movie. They're quickly assaulted by the monster, which is/are spiky parasites that take over a host's body in search of delicious blood, and the 80 minute runtime just slips by.
Kudos really need to come out for the excellent use of low budget in handling the monsters. You see enough of them, including their unsettling habit of making the bodies move in ways they are not designed to move, but not enough that you're forced to conclude that their prosthetics were bought in a bargain costume shop. The film also wisely invested in top-notch, visceral sound effects that tap on your power of suggestion, a mix between your average outdoors ambiance with something that should not be.
There are problems, of course. The third act, like almost all creature features, has the typical lame "eureka!" moment that you probably figured out already, though (spoilers) to the film's credit, the ensuing solution actually goes terribly wrong.. Still, it's not a big hassle, since the movie also features genuinely rational human behavior in the face of terrifying menace, as opposed to the usual extremes of people either not SHUTTING THE FUCK UP or acting like Deep Blue pondering chess pieces covered with psychic ants. One particular character revelation was fairly groan-worthy. But overall, Splinter is a really likeable little throwback to those kinetic, cheesy 80's horror films like Night of the Creeps or Critters.
I really don't get the whole porcupine thing. If anything, Splinter should really be called "what happens when a screenwriter watches that one clip of the parasitic fungus on youtube and thinks 'hey, what if that was really fast and bigger?'" Thankfully, the film that resulted was smart enough to keep the focus entirely on the creature. Sure, there's actual humans, consisting of two couples, one being a mid-20s nerdy indie dreamboat, the other being convicts who carjack the former couple, but the movie is pretty quick about dispensing with the character backgrounds and interactions, shuttling them to an abandoned gas station that will be the rest of the movie. They're quickly assaulted by the monster, which is/are spiky parasites that take over a host's body in search of delicious blood, and the 80 minute runtime just slips by.
Kudos really need to come out for the excellent use of low budget in handling the monsters. You see enough of them, including their unsettling habit of making the bodies move in ways they are not designed to move, but not enough that you're forced to conclude that their prosthetics were bought in a bargain costume shop. The film also wisely invested in top-notch, visceral sound effects that tap on your power of suggestion, a mix between your average outdoors ambiance with something that should not be.
There are problems, of course. The third act, like almost all creature features, has the typical lame "eureka!" moment that you probably figured out already, though (spoilers) to the film's credit, the ensuing solution actually goes terribly wrong.. Still, it's not a big hassle, since the movie also features genuinely rational human behavior in the face of terrifying menace, as opposed to the usual extremes of people either not SHUTTING THE FUCK UP or acting like Deep Blue pondering chess pieces covered with psychic ants. One particular character revelation was fairly groan-worthy. But overall, Splinter is a really likeable little throwback to those kinetic, cheesy 80's horror films like Night of the Creeps or Critters.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
I don't think I can call myself a nerd anymore.
The internet is really doing its best to alienate me from what should be my people.
I'd like to say the immediate impetus was the whole Penny Arcade bullshit. The worst part has really been the reactions of the Baron Fatterson that draws himself as a black haired stud. It'd still be really awful if he was just some unrepentant /b/tard going "FUCK YOU RAPE CULTURE EVERY SHIRT IN MY STORE IS NOW RAPE SHIRT." He'd still be lower than a piss-submarine, but at least there'd be some sort of missplaced backbone in the whole thing. But instead, he's trying to play both sides of the thing, trying to minimize the hurt feelings while clearly being a total bitchbaby. As the handy debacle timeline has noted, Fatlord Maximus has on one hand clearly inflamed the hordes of his followers who are too scared to venture beyond comics pointing out that HEY SOMETIMES REAL LIFE CONFLICTS WITH HOW VIDEO GAMES PRESENT THINGS (oh that's unfair sometimes they do stuff like showcase their sub-image comics artwork) with his "I am closing this because all these haters oh also here's more rape jokes." Meanwhile, he's carefully trying to control the same stupid people now he's apparently realized that this whole getting them to bombard the primary feminists with death threats may offend Penny Arcade's carefully groomed inclusive image!
Gut Master X, despite being what, forty, is doing that weird gamer thing where, despite operating in a culture that began with your mother giving you cookies whenever your fat mouth bleated and is currently residing in the ultimate hugbox, absolutely flips out when someone dares to call out some wrong-headed bullshit. The weirdest part, of course, is that the comic in question was actually fairly tame compared to how most nerd comics (and nerd attitudes towards real life women) go. I mean, looks at goddamned Shredded Moose. But when they were confronted with angry feminists, instead of going "hm well it just seemed like a dumb gag to us but we'll think about it maybe we can come to a hilarious understanding" like a normal human, the reaction of nerds is clearly "HUMOR IS FREEDOM PRINTING SHIRTS NAO FTW LOFFL."
So yeah. The thing that makes me feel guilty is that my initial reaction to the Kirbyfloffel or whatever was "yeah the comic was pretty gross but this is a little overboard." And then, like avenging angels, tons of horrible children suddenly show me that, no, this is not a little overboard, you are dealing with sheltered babies who think that creating a carbon footprint the size of an Xbox controller (LOL) is rectified by spending ten dollars so a dying kid can finally experience the joys of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 before shuffling off this mortal coil.
Before I move on to the next part, I want to say one more thing. Tim Rogers, I still think you're an awful writer contributing to the delinquent education of gamers, but thanks for at least being smart enough to recognize the whole thing here as pretty creepy and not going the Leigh Alexander route and equivocating "well it wasn't that bad but respect feelings but Penny Arcade STILL PRETTY FUNNY."
(and yeah I know that the last third of the Kotaku triumvirate hasn't responded can't imagine why)
What's really gotten to me is the whole My Little Pony bullshit. I saw the pictures. Read a synopsis. Then saw an episode. And now I'm hooked.
haha got you
No I did not enjoy the show. In fact, the opposite occurred: I can't watch this stupid bullshit anymore. I just tried to watch some clip of Adventure Time, and my system went insane, like when Kurt Russell put the alien blood in a fire. Suddenly I was aware that I was watching stupid nerd bullshit made for obnoxious babymen like me with just enough clever references that I would be placated like a cow as more pictures came. My girlfriend burnt some eggs really badly at the end of summer and still refuses to eat them because of some subconscious physiological reaction, and now I know exactly what she's going through.
This isn't to say that I've somehow transcended stupid nerd hobbies. I watched an episode of Bob's Burgers and was pretty tickled. I always hated most anime, but I still enjoy the same two sub-categories I've always gone for: terrible ultra-violent 90's OAVs and things that would be thought provoking even if not animated (see also: Masaaki Yuasa and Satoshi Kon). So I guess it is to say that I'm kind of over the dumb American bullshit designed to "appeal to child and manchild alike." I've actually been reading and writing again (though writing is just dumb zombie bullshit, what you know, etc.), and working out. I'm still doing dumb video game bullshit, though it's mostly just been limited to Persona 3 because despite Persona 2 and Devil Survivor, I still can't get enough of the whole SUMMON WEIRD MYTHOLOGY angle.
It's all about moderation. I know I'll be playing dumb games for a long time, but I also think I've gotten kind of tired of just passively whittling time away with shit that will have absolutely no effect on myself. I'm not comparing, but holy shit look what's happening in Egypt. That's insane, and meanwhile some nerd on justin.tv is doing a no-equipment run of Breath of Fire, which literally blows me away in its utter uselessness. HAY MAYBE OBAMA SHOULD BE ON JUSTIN.TV TOO high five me here.
We'll see! *takes last drag of cigarette, flicks into shadows, walks slowly down alleyway until gone from view*
next time castlevania: circle of the moon
I'd like to say the immediate impetus was the whole Penny Arcade bullshit. The worst part has really been the reactions of the Baron Fatterson that draws himself as a black haired stud. It'd still be really awful if he was just some unrepentant /b/tard going "FUCK YOU RAPE CULTURE EVERY SHIRT IN MY STORE IS NOW RAPE SHIRT." He'd still be lower than a piss-submarine, but at least there'd be some sort of missplaced backbone in the whole thing. But instead, he's trying to play both sides of the thing, trying to minimize the hurt feelings while clearly being a total bitchbaby. As the handy debacle timeline has noted, Fatlord Maximus has on one hand clearly inflamed the hordes of his followers who are too scared to venture beyond comics pointing out that HEY SOMETIMES REAL LIFE CONFLICTS WITH HOW VIDEO GAMES PRESENT THINGS (oh that's unfair sometimes they do stuff like showcase their sub-image comics artwork) with his "I am closing this because all these haters oh also here's more rape jokes." Meanwhile, he's carefully trying to control the same stupid people now he's apparently realized that this whole getting them to bombard the primary feminists with death threats may offend Penny Arcade's carefully groomed inclusive image!
Gut Master X, despite being what, forty, is doing that weird gamer thing where, despite operating in a culture that began with your mother giving you cookies whenever your fat mouth bleated and is currently residing in the ultimate hugbox, absolutely flips out when someone dares to call out some wrong-headed bullshit. The weirdest part, of course, is that the comic in question was actually fairly tame compared to how most nerd comics (and nerd attitudes towards real life women) go. I mean, looks at goddamned Shredded Moose. But when they were confronted with angry feminists, instead of going "hm well it just seemed like a dumb gag to us but we'll think about it maybe we can come to a hilarious understanding" like a normal human, the reaction of nerds is clearly "HUMOR IS FREEDOM PRINTING SHIRTS NAO FTW LOFFL."
So yeah. The thing that makes me feel guilty is that my initial reaction to the Kirbyfloffel or whatever was "yeah the comic was pretty gross but this is a little overboard." And then, like avenging angels, tons of horrible children suddenly show me that, no, this is not a little overboard, you are dealing with sheltered babies who think that creating a carbon footprint the size of an Xbox controller (LOL) is rectified by spending ten dollars so a dying kid can finally experience the joys of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 before shuffling off this mortal coil.
Before I move on to the next part, I want to say one more thing. Tim Rogers, I still think you're an awful writer contributing to the delinquent education of gamers, but thanks for at least being smart enough to recognize the whole thing here as pretty creepy and not going the Leigh Alexander route and equivocating "well it wasn't that bad but respect feelings but Penny Arcade STILL PRETTY FUNNY."
(and yeah I know that the last third of the Kotaku triumvirate hasn't responded can't imagine why)
What's really gotten to me is the whole My Little Pony bullshit. I saw the pictures. Read a synopsis. Then saw an episode. And now I'm hooked.
haha got you
No I did not enjoy the show. In fact, the opposite occurred: I can't watch this stupid bullshit anymore. I just tried to watch some clip of Adventure Time, and my system went insane, like when Kurt Russell put the alien blood in a fire. Suddenly I was aware that I was watching stupid nerd bullshit made for obnoxious babymen like me with just enough clever references that I would be placated like a cow as more pictures came. My girlfriend burnt some eggs really badly at the end of summer and still refuses to eat them because of some subconscious physiological reaction, and now I know exactly what she's going through.
This isn't to say that I've somehow transcended stupid nerd hobbies. I watched an episode of Bob's Burgers and was pretty tickled. I always hated most anime, but I still enjoy the same two sub-categories I've always gone for: terrible ultra-violent 90's OAVs and things that would be thought provoking even if not animated (see also: Masaaki Yuasa and Satoshi Kon). So I guess it is to say that I'm kind of over the dumb American bullshit designed to "appeal to child and manchild alike." I've actually been reading and writing again (though writing is just dumb zombie bullshit, what you know, etc.), and working out. I'm still doing dumb video game bullshit, though it's mostly just been limited to Persona 3 because despite Persona 2 and Devil Survivor, I still can't get enough of the whole SUMMON WEIRD MYTHOLOGY angle.
It's all about moderation. I know I'll be playing dumb games for a long time, but I also think I've gotten kind of tired of just passively whittling time away with shit that will have absolutely no effect on myself. I'm not comparing, but holy shit look what's happening in Egypt. That's insane, and meanwhile some nerd on justin.tv is doing a no-equipment run of Breath of Fire, which literally blows me away in its utter uselessness. HAY MAYBE OBAMA SHOULD BE ON JUSTIN.TV TOO high five me here.
We'll see! *takes last drag of cigarette, flicks into shadows, walks slowly down alleyway until gone from view*
next time castlevania: circle of the moon
gaming journalism pop quiz
#45: Which piece of media presents a more biting cultural sentiment about the nature of violence:
A) Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch."
B) Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days
#46: Which piece of critical media amplifies and examines previous conceptions of violence:
A) action button's review of Kane & Lynch 2
B) That scene in Chopping Mall, a movie about 2-foot killer robots in a mall, where the characters run across a store named "Peckinpah's Guns"
A) Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch."
B) Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days
#46: Which piece of critical media amplifies and examines previous conceptions of violence:
A) action button's review of Kane & Lynch 2
B) That scene in Chopping Mall, a movie about 2-foot killer robots in a mall, where the characters run across a store named "Peckinpah's Guns"
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