The Gaming Grid

I don’t have much experience with drugs, regardless of what others may claim. They are all liars, and I’m a good boy. Subsequently, I think there is something I’ve been addicted to that can be seen as a debilitating addiction.

In 2005, a little game known as We Heart Katamari came out. My sister told me the premise: Roll shit up in a ball. Sounds easy, and guess what, it is. You start with a ball and you roll things that are smaller than you into it. Anything smaller, nailed down or not. Then you get bigger and can roll more things into yourself. If you can manage to get within the time limit, you can roll up clouds, islands, anything.

But that isn’t the best part. If you just plopped that game in front of me, I’d be confused as to why anyone would want to get in on it, but this is a game that was made for the Japanese. Go do a google image search for weird things in Japan and you’ll have your answer as to why this it the greatest game ever.

You star as the prince of the Cosmos. All the planets, stars and other heavenly bodies disappeared in the last game for some reason, and now you have to make new ones. Your father, the king of the cosmos, stands over you absentmindedly speaking about things that make little sense until he remembers that you need to make a katamari. He lords his giant package and toned muscles over your dimunitive form, orders you to earth and then you roll.

Then the music starts up. I have the entire soundtrack on my iPod, and it is for good reason. It’s catchy, never the same J-pop which will delight, then annoy, then begrudgingly become good again until the subliminal messages start to bore into your brain.

The first few levels are small, and you aren’t just doing whatever the King tells you, it’s people wandering around a meadow that make the requests of you. Either they are too lazy to make their child clean their own room, or they see a Katamari as a ball of tinfoil for them to grasp at while repeating the phrase “want the shiny!” Some want to see big ones, some want fast ones, and some are just assholes that don’t want to do work.

As you roll, you hear plopping sounds as you pick things up. Some things have their own sounds, such as animals and humans as you take them in, which can be entertaining if you like the pathetic sounds of cats as they are forced into your Katamari. Remember, all of this will be shot into space, so if you really aren’t a fan of cops, clarinets, sumo wrestlers or any other kind random object, you can take pride in knowing that all of these things will be turned into a ball of superheated gas that will be flung into space, or have the gravity of their own mass crush them into a planet in the open vacuum.

Once you finish, and there are many different ways to finish, depending on the level, you take the Katamari back to dear old Dad and listen to him wander aimlessly with his words for a few moments until he realizes he is holding a compressed ball of humans, animals and all kinds of other things. I have yet to get him to say that I did a good job. Apparently I could always be doing better, thus completing the transition of this man being just like my father. Except the spandex, though just because I’ve never seen my father wear it, doesn’t mean it hasn’t ever happened.

If you fail at your mission, voices displeasure and gets all shadowy as he shoots lasers out of his eye at you. I never really understood this part, but it is fun to try to dodge as he takes child abuse to a whole new level

Again, just like dad, but that isn’t important right now.

What is important is that this game is nine kinds of awesome for the ADD sufferers and the really, really stoned. There are cut scenes in between some of the levels that tell the story about how the King and Queen got together and started making weird headed babies, and there are other things to pick up, such as presents and cousins. You can play as the different cousins after you snag them, but it doesn’t do anything for you, and the presents are little more than strange accessories that show the people of earth really have no idea how to treat a deity that can shoot lasers out of his eyes.

I’m a fan of first person shooters.  I’m not to sure what draws me to some and pushes me from others, perhaps quality of the game, maybe an engaging story line or two.

When the original Halo game came out for the Xbox, I was left out due to my owning of the far superior PS2.  Some may disagree with this sentiment, but those are obviously people that play Halo on a regular basis and continue to tell themselves that it’s a good game to be taken serious.  I played over at a friend’s house on occasion while I was either stoned or drunk enough to imagine I was having a good time killing annoying little dudes with annoying little voices and annoying little catch phrases.

That last paragraph means it should come as no surprise to you that I don’t like Halo 3.  I played for about an hour or so and realized I owned Fallout 3, which, when it comes to the third part of a game series, far out strips the Halo franchise.  There are a few reasons for this:

Fallout 3 had good games in the past.  The first two, while not in my preferred style of gaming, were brilliant and immersive.  There were choices to be made, people to befriend and enemies to destroy.  The third installment went a step further, turning it into an FPS and injecting a high dose of awesome into it.

The Halo franchise does nothing like this.  There is no interaction you have with others beyond putting bullets into them.  There aren’t any side quests and it takes absolutely no creative abilities necessary to make the plot line.  Go here, shoot some shit because of a thing, repeat.  You would think that the biggest gaming franchise Microsoft has among the 18-35 year old male douchebags of the would merit some sort of upgrade as the games went along, but there aren’t any.  You still shoot with the same guns and act in the same way.  Master Chief continues to be the same guy fighting the same war over and over without an end in sight, mostly because if there were and end, Microsoft would collapse in on it’s self and their design department of drunk frat boys would reabsorb into the collective douche.

The only thing Halo has ever had going for it was an extensive online player database, but wading into those waters will get you called all manner of horrific things if you’re bad at it, and eve worse if you are good.  Online multiplayer games have always suffered from this problem, and the way of solving it, playing with friends only, is hampered by the fact that I don’t have any friends that are retarded enough to play this crapfest.

Perhaps I was a little too judgmental on this game, but it had it coming. The release of this game was heralded on G4 as if it were the second coming of Christ as they held tournaments, countdowns and all manner of parties for a second rate game that wouldn’t have been given the time of day if it wasn’t championed by the idiot gamers of the world. It’s a travesty that these guys have been giving Halo 3 all of the laurels, yet Psychonauts hardly registers on their radar. If I hadn’t borrowed this game, I would have traded it in and then firebombed the store by now.

Your 360 can do better. You can do better. Pick up something with a bit of depth to it, a bit of story and a bit of fun. Pick up Fallout 3 or Mass Effect and play a real game that has replay value, and if you really feel a need to get yelled at online, you can always play End War.

I’ll just say it now, this is going to be a complete want fest.  This is my single most favorite game ever created, and I will do nothing short of taking the CD-ROM, melting it into a condom and wearing it while I sexually take you so that you may know what true pleasure is.

X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter was released by LucasArts in 1997 as the follow up to X-Wing and TIE Fighter, released in 1993 and 1994 respectively.  Critics said that XvT was lacking because it didn’t have a story mode like its predecessors.  Instead, there was a series of missions you could fly in that weren’t connected to each other.  You got to choose which side you played on, the squadron you were in (Attacking, defending, escort, those sorts of things) and the armaments of your chosen fighter.  The game required a joystick and allowed complete freedom of movement along the X-Y-Z axis, something that I always hated not having in any other flight simulator.

This was also one of the first multiplayer space fighting games on the PC, which was a bit of a bitch considering I was rocking a 56K modem and everyone else seemed to be on T1 lines.  This is when I truly understood the pain of lag.

There isn’t much to say about the game.  The graphics are good for the time, the expansion pack Balance of Power gave players a chance to have a linear sotry mode as a rebel or imperial, as well as brought in the B-Wing as a flyable ship and the Super Star Destroyer to fight against or along side.  In lieu of having anything else to talk about, I will give you some tips on the game.

Y-Wing.  Don’t fly them ever.  They are slow, horrible at turning and since they are also bombers, you become a prime target of the enemy.  Their upsides include heavy shields and hulls, as well as dual fire mode that keeps the lasers concentrated in one beam.

X-Wing.  The all around of the rebellion.  Nothing stands out, but nothing really wrong with them.  Good for the beginners

B-Wing.  Better than the Y-wing, but only available in Balance of Power.

A-Wing.  Best fighter in the arsenal of the rebellion.  Quick and deadly.  Requires finesse to pilot, but with enough practice, you can become the deadliest ship in the battle

Z95 Headhunter.  The retarded cousin of the X-Wing.  I don’t know who shat this thing out, or why they thought something with the stability, shielding and speed of a brain dead sloth would be a good edition.  Still better than the TIE fighter

TIE Fighter.  Aluminum bow ties that fall apart in a stiff breeze.  Avoid at all costs, though they are fun in Melees.

TIE Interceptor.  Faster, shielded and two more laser cannons.  One of the more versatile ships that allowed players to be nimble fighters or powerhouse bombers.

TIE Bomber.  The Y-wing of the imperials.  It sucks hard and makes me think that this is exactly what Yossarian was talking about (Yeah, I’m a literary fag.  Deal with it.)

TIE Advanced.  Best ship in the fleet, rebel or imperial.  Fast, heavily shielded, and will blow your crap up without an afterthought.  If it was good enough for Vader, who the hell are you to say any different.

Assault Gun Boat.  There isn’t much to say about this thing.  Much like the X-Wing.  Nothing all that great about.

That’s all I have on this game.  There are still people and leagues that play on a regular basis, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I outright suck at the game, I’d try to play more often.  As it is though, I’ll just keep killing the rebel scum one at a time.

PS: If you want to do something like the Trench Run from A New Hope, fly down the side of a Star Destroyer on the left or right side.  You can see it if you are looking directly at the front of the ship.  There’s no obvious port hole that will blow everything up, but it’s still a trench and you are still getting shot at.  That is, of course, if you can make it that close without getting a turbo laser up the ass

I remember a glorious time in the mid 90s of point and click adventure games.  There were many released, the best by LucasArts.  Games like Full Throttle, Grim Fandango and the Monkey Island franchise.

The Curse of Monkey Island is the third installment of four games.  Released in 1997, it utilized a gaming engine known as SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) that used a point and click methodology.  This harkens back to the old text based adventure games, but with a graphical interface that allows you to see what is in your inventory rather than always having to type “I” and checking out if you have a lubricated balloon to give to the kangaroo.

In the first two installments of Monkey Island, the bottom portion of your screen was given to a set of commands that allowed any number of actions, though the usual were things like “look,” “use” “talk to” ect.

The reason I mention this is because at the time, this was one of the best engines for Adventure games on the PC and consoles.  It was a game that forced you to use your head instead of blindly running around and shooting things.  Curse took it one step further and rather than take up precious screen time, a right mouse click would bring up everything you needed.  I have yet to play an adventure game that allowed excellent flow like the SCUMM engine.

About the game, it was designed in cartoon animation, which is nice considering this was about the same time game makers were experimenting and failing with live acting inside of games, especially cut scenes (I’m looking at you, Jedi Knight)  Curse didn’t insult you with that, they just kept the entire thing animated, taking away the need for a 3D accelerator for those of us that had really crappy computers.

Almost every line in this game is cleverly written, many of which I will drop in the middle of conversations to this day.  The characters are all well rounded, even more so if you’ve played the first two, and I always got that little feeling of self satisfaction every time I did something that didn’t require me to get a walk through.

You are Guybrush Threepwood, a mighty pirate, or at least a reasonable facsimile.  The last two games were spend trying to become a pirate as well, and it doesn’t seem to be working any better this time.  Perhaps he needs a good definition on what it is to be a pirate.  Scurvy and raping seem to be normal par for the course according to the history books I’ve pretended to read.

You are getting engaged to Elaine Marley, the governor, and you do this with a ring you find on the ship of your most hated enemy, Captain LeChuck, once again bringing about American hatred of the French, but it’s not like they don’t deserve it.  The ring you put on her finger is cursed and it turns her into a solid gold statue.  Guybrush, again proving that he is not pirate material, works to break the curse rather than hitting the nearest pawn shop on the way to the brothel.

The plot is normal fair for an adventure game, the beauty is the execution of the game.  Being stuck in a snake’s stomach and adding an ipecac flower to maple syrup to create Syrup of Ipecac is genius.  Stopping the singing pirate crew you recruit from rhyming every pleading line you say with the comment “We’ll surly avoid scurvy if we all eat an orange” shows the mastery of comedy the developers had.  I’ve bought, owned and beaten all four Monkey Island game and will always hold a special place in my heart for this game and LucasArts.

Unfortunately, LucasArts dissolved their adventure game developers in 2000 after the final game in the franchise, Escape from Monkey Island and let all their licenses expire.  I see this as the beginning of the George Lucas downfall.  Not the Star Wars prequels, the loss of making smart and intuitive games that had nothing to do with Star Wars.  Most of their library in the last eight years has been heavy on that cash cow, and the simple players like myself find an ever increasing void in the world of gaming.  Something that makes me think, makes me laugh and makes me want to keep playing.  There have been attempts, and very good ones at that, but they are no Monkey Island, and for that, I weep.

Pick it up, play it and laugh with me.  Duel a man with banjos instead of a gun, win a caber toss with a rubber tree, and trick a fried chicken franchise owning pirate into losing his gold tooth.  You have to prove you can find treasure somehow.

Keep coming back for more LucasArts reviews all during the month of January.

Anyone who has ever truly enjoyed playing video games has picked up a controller and shot at least one head off a hooker in the Grand Theft Auto series. If not, then it’s probably one of those strange guys that thinks Donkey Kong was the best games have ever been, you don’t want something that violent in your house, or you aren’t reading this because you just can’t stop playing Bejeweled.

GTA was created by Rockstar Games back in the mid 90s, and was mostly forgotten about until GTA III hit shelves in ‘01. Then came Vice City and San Andreas and then nothing. For three and a half years, there were no GTA games. No cheats to get helicopters, no tanks, no stars, nothing. An empty void.

I myself was not a huge fan of GTA, especially any of the newer ones, but I’m not a designer. Having a girlfriend in the real world is annoying enough without having to waste time with my pixel bitches. Maintaining an in game relationship with women takes me far away from what I want to do, which is to throw live hand grenades at ambulances coming to pick up the hobos I just mowed down with a minigun. In GTA:SA, there was the same thing, and I don’t remember getting past the first few missions before I hit the Internet and found a bunch of cheats that would allow me to fly or something like that.

But there was a small little game Rockstar put out known as Bully. This was a sandbox game, much like their previous installments, but a smaller sandbox. Almost as if you went from a built in swimming pool to your older sister pinning you down when you were five and spitting on you.

Yeah, I don’t want to talk about it.

Let’s get the story out of the way first. You are Jimmy Hopkins, a kid getting dropped off at a prestigious new school called Bullworth Academy. Mom and new Step dad are going on a year long honeymoon, and from the opening sequence, you don’t like either of them much. It’s evident you have a criminal record and have been expelled from a few different schools in your time. Nothing like stepping into the shoes of a future therapist’s wet dream.

During the game, you befriend some people and make enemies of others, run around acting up and doing all kinds of missions for the different cliques at school, because obviously everyone can be categorized easily. There are the Jocks, Nerds, Preps and Greasers, which I guess got thrown in because the Italians and the 1950’s just weren’t insulted enough. There is also a group of town kids known as, wait for it, the Townies, thus rounding off every annoying stereotype ever conceived by the twelve year olds that wrote movies like National Lampoon: Van Wilder. I blame John Hughes.

You start off doing menial work for some guy named Gary that any normal person can immediately see is an ass, but apparently Jimmy can’t get that one through his head, so he hangs out until Gary stabs him in the back over something or another. You befriend the geeky kid that Gary usually uses has his footstool.

During the game, you still have to go to class, and this is made up of mini games, two per day. Yeah, you have a schedule to keep, along with a dress code and a time to sleep. It’s annoying to say the least, because when school is in session, you have to keep out of sight of the Prefects, glorified hall monitors that roam the campus grounds. It’s not made any better by the in game break of an hour or so, meaning there was no time between class to really explore or pick up new missions. Thankfully, once you’ve completed all of the classes, you are not asked to go back, but it would be nice to be able to blow through them quickly and get to the real story mode. Flow breaking in this magnitude should be punishable. It’s isn’t helped by the fact that you have to sleep every night. Tip to game designers: When I want realisim, I go outside. When I don’t, I play your games

Another word on the classes. I’m a bit of a nerd and masquerade as a writer at times, so the English class that asked you to find as many words in a jumble of letters was enjoyable to me. However, the “turn left stick, hit button, WRONG BUTTON ASSFACE!” parts were painful and annoying. I assume after two decades of at home gaming consoles (I’m not looking up how long it’s really been) we still can’t get past the mundane practices of watching the screen and remembering where the buttons on the controller are.

Anyway, as you progress, the seasons change. There is a Halloween mission which is fun, but nothing we haven’t seen before. You befriend the nerds, the preps, the greasers, the jocks, even the headmaster to become the coolest and most respected kid in school. This is probably just another way for gamers to thrown themselves into a fantasy land, except I doubt most of them did anything other than look at animal porn and drink Code Red Mountain Dew while under the age of eighteen.

Eventually you find yourself running around the town doing other jobs for other random people. You get your hands on a variety of weapons from stink bombs to itching powder to the stronger bottle rocket launcher and spud cannon.

The biggest issue I had with Bully was that is was just like the GTA series, but watered down. Not to say I didn’t enjoy it, it’s one of the few games I’ve actually stayed interested in log enough to finish, but that’s probably because it’s such a quick and easy game. There is little in the way of a difficulty level and most of the missions are repetitive, but there is an air of gratification when you manage to beat down the asshat that has been making your life a living hell. Maybe the smaller size makes it better because there is less crap to keep track of. No missions that have an immediacy to them.

Also, Jimmy has a sense of nobility to his acting out, which makes the game title more about the bullies he’s dealing with, not himself. There was quite a bit of controversy from the usual suspects that see a video game trailer and get all up in arms about it, though to be fair, some of the ads had the main character beating people up and giving swirlies. I guess that endears him to most people, and pisses others off. You have to be good in this game. There are no missions to choose good or bad endings, you end up with people liking you regardless.

The moral of the story is that just because you are a bad apple, it doesn’t mean you have to be a complete cock, though most of Jimmy’s conversations are him threatening or yelling at people, especially the weak and easily frightened.

Pick it up, it’s entertaining for a bit. Then go beat up a nerd and feel better about yourself. That’s what makes Monday’s so survivable for me.