Sin & Punishment: Star Successor

I’m going to go ahead and confess, this review may be a little biased.

Sin & Punishment: Star Successor is the sequel to Sin & Punishment, a somewhat obscure title released during the Nintendo 64’s dying breath in Japan, then re-released worldwide on the Wii’s Virtual Console, where it saw a restored popularity. Both games are developed by Treasure, the development team responsible for some of my favorite action games like Ikaruga, Gunstar Heroes, and more. They’re also both rail-shooters, a dying game genre that remains one of my favorites. Ever play Rez, the Panzer Dragoon titles, or Star Fox 64? Ever play Ikaruga or any other Treasure title? Then you may have a pretty good idea of what this is about, in which case, stop reading and go buy this game, you fool!

I can sum up the game pretty quickly and easily: you run and fly around blowing up monsters and ships and stuff while dodging barrage after barrage of bullets, projectiles, and other obstacles. It’s a white-knuckle adrenaline rush that doesn’t let up until you’ve beaten the game or given up because holy crap, there’s a lot going on at any given moment and dodging and shooting simultaneously can get rough.

Thankfully, the controls are simple and make gameplay supremely easy to pick up and dive into. You have two characters to pick from, a guy with poor fashion taste named Isa, or a girl named Kachi. The only differences between them are their aiming and their special attacks. You control their movement around the screen with the joystick on the nunchuk, aim your Wii remote at the screen, hold B to shoot, tap it to use a melee attack (trust me, you’ll need it), A button uses your special attack, and Z button dodges (you’ll need that too). Being on rails, your character will always be moving along a linear path, but you can and will be throwing them all over the screen in an effort to avoid wave after wave of enemy attacks. Back to the differences between the two, Isa cannot lock onto enemies unless you tap A to target one, so you need a steady hand for accurate shots. His special attack is a tremendous charged blast that deals a lot of damage in a large area, and you will come to rely on it a lot. Kachi, on the other hand, will lock on automatically to anything you start shooting at. If it’s an enemy that doesn’t go down within a few shots, she’ll stay locked onto it until you let go of B and point your targeting reticule at something else. This can be a little frustrating when you’re confronted with over a dozen smaller, more annoying creatures but you’re stuck locked on to some large structure or tank that’s not even really doing much of anything. Her special attack is to lock onto up to eight targets at once by holding A, or you can target one enemy up to eight times, so it’s a lot like Panzer Dragoon Orta or Rez. The only issue is, if you’re targeting one enemy, it takes longer to target them eight times than it does for Isa to charge one massive explosive blast. Who you pick is up to you, though, maybe you’d handle Kachi better than I could. Their melee attacks pack the same punch, and you’ll be using it a lot to rack up massive points and for deflecting missiles and other projectiles back at other enemies, which is both awesome and completely necessary if you want to see this game through to the end.

Everything else comes secondary to the gameplay. The graphics, when things slow down and during cut scenes, are really not so great. Both Isa and Kachi, despite being separate genders, look like the same character model and their faces are practically identical, and the same goes for most of the human-looking villains in the game either. But that’s kind of understandable, Treasure is not a huge team and with the sheer amount of things thrown on the screen at any given time, they had to sacrifice graphical power in order to make sure the game runs smoothly with no frame-rate hiccups whatsoever. The story is absolute crap, with bad voice acting and very little explanation as to what’s going on. Now the first Sin & Punishment didn’t have a good story or voice-acting either, but it’s somehow superior to whatever they scribbled together here. Do yourself a favor, skip the cut scenes and get straight into the action. Music is typical electronic synthesized craziness one would come to expect from arcade-style action games, with some screaming and wailing guitars for good measure. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but your mileage may vary.

It really is all about shooting things up. The game throws wave after wave of enemies at you as you fly through underwater tunnels, race down a desert highway on a sweet hover bike, and run through a secluded forest in the middle of the night. There are numerous bosses, and they will try their best to kill you. It becomes a bullet-hell game, trying to navigate through a tiny opening between waves of projectiles while also trying to stay locked on. It is an intense, old-school experience through and through.

It’s only eight levels and the game is over between four and eight hours, depending on which difficulty you select and how good you are. However, even four hours is quite a lot for a rail-shooter, especially considering that the first Sin & Punishment was over in around an hour. I could only play it in small bursts anyways, and even then if I shut my eyes I’d start seeing dozens of bullets flying at me at once. Every minute of this game is heart-pounding insanity, and you’ll be spending the majority of that time screaming expletives at the TV, usually out of sheer, dumbfounded awe over what’s happening in the game.

Despite its flawed graphics and poor story, the game is still a joy to play. If you’re into rail-shooters or any of Treasure’s previous games, there is no question about it; you must get this game. If you’re skeptical however, at least give it a rental or play it at a friend’s house. Then maybe you’ll understand.

[Brett]

Prince of Persia 3-in-1 Rev

Right now it looks like I might be making this into a series, this is technically the second one so details can be found in the Mass Effect one when I finish and post it, but this is a review of Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, and the 2008 version titled only Prince of Persia. The third part is a comparison of the two.

I am aware, and want to make sure you are as well, that the two games are set in different mythologies and intentionally use different mechanics, but the comparison will go over the length and gives my opinions on their success (or potential success).

And no there isn't a typo in the title. The games are so short that I felt that they needed only half of the word for review

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands

This game takes place in the same mythology as the Sands of Time Trilogy, it fits in the series in the time between The Sands of Time and The Warrior Within. The game follows the prince as he is visiting his brother Malik in a city on built on the ruins of King Solomon's city, for all I know it is the same city, it does not really go too far into how much rebuilding/expanding has happened since King Solomon was living there. As you are arriving you find the city under siege and in typical Prince of Persia fashion you enter the city by hopping along a few falling buildings in a cutscene. You travel around the walkways fighting off groups of invaders trying to meet up with your brother.

You meet your brother in the vault after fighting past various groups of amazingly resourceful invaders who are ahead of you despite the gates and doors being shut. Your brother unlocks the fabled army of Solomon, the key he used breaks into two pieces which you and your brother each take a half, the sand pouring from the now open vault turns your brothers guards to stone and the room starts to fall apart separating you and your brother. You quickly encounter a Djinn named Razia who explains the true past of the army and tells you that you need to reunite the key to stop it. She also "gives you more time" to help you do it. This being in the Sands of Time mythology you have gained the power to rewind time as you find out from a small cutscene. 

The combat follows the other Sands of Time games where you are fighting large groups of enemies at once while you leap with acrobatics dodging them. Unlike the others you do all your fighting with only one sword instead of a sword and dagger or other second weapon. But you do get powers with which to help you fight the swarms with. The only problems with the combat system I had was the inability to block, you can do a roll to dodge or kick enemies but not block. Also there were a few time where I tried to kick and either the game was too far behind or it missed my hitting the button and did not kick.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the game though it was very short, I managed to play through it twice and get 1000G on it within 1 and a half days of renting it. So good game extremely short. I would say rent it but not buy it. I do not know if they have plans for any DLC to it, but there is no links on the main page for it and I do not know what they would add, since they wrapped up the storyline within the game.

Prince of Persia

This is the new re-imagining that was released in 2008 from Ubisoft to try and start a new series after the Sands of Time Trilogy. They felt that the Prince of Persia series could be restarted like the Zelda or Final Fantasy series where they keep certain aspects and re-imagine the details, which has advantages over trying to continue stories in the same world.

The story in this starts with the Prince wandering through a sandstorm looking for Farrah (the main love interest from the Sands of Time game). He enters a canyon and ends up accidentally rescuing a mysterious woman, You travel with her helping her for a while and eventually you get a cutscene which displays the mechanic that they added to replace the ability to rewind time. Elika (the woman you just saved) has magic and can use it to save you and pull you back to solid ground. You travel with her to the temple at the center of her land and find out that a great dark evil is trying to escape and only she can stop him. You travel around the world "healing" the land at specific focal points or (as the game will tell you again and again) fertile grounds. 

Combat in this version focuses on a one on one battles with you chaining your attacks, you can only ever take two hits then you go to a cutscene where you have to hit a random button or be saved by Elika. Most enemies form in black funnels and can be killed before they even spawn. You have to fight four bosses as you travel healing the land.

The game and the story are enjoyable and fun but the game is also short like the other, the biggest letdown I felt was the way they ended it, I will admit I did not get the DLC Epilogue but the way they ended the game itself was not my favorite. The other slight problem I had was the whole never die thing, without a health bar certain dangers were unable to truly "kill" you or hard to figure when they would actually cause your "death".

Overall I did enjoy the game and thought it was fun. I would recommend renting this game as well. I also managed to get a few of the achievements I had not expected to get easier than I thought I would.

Comparison

Achievements

The games both have a good average of achievements, overall I feel the 2008 game had a better achievement selection than The Forgotten Sands, The forgotten sands has a good selection of achievements that look like they might be a decent challenge, but once you are further along in the game you get abilities or weapons that make them easier. Also the fact that with minimal hassle I was able to get 1000g.

The 2008 game had a few more challenging achievements though some of the achievements were easier than I thought, 1 achievement was to beat the game with Elika saving you less than 100 times. I was not expecting to get that achievement but did.

Response

I feel that the main problem people have with the 2008 game is that it was not Sands of Time, people were expecting something more along the lines of the linear progression and time rewinding of the Sands of Time games and did not get it.

I think The Forgotten Sands will get a boost due to Ubisoft timing it to release right along with the new movie, and since the game follows the games and not the movie, it won't be hurt by being a crappy movie tie-in.

No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle

I admit, I’m biased. Suda51’s games may not be of the highest quality, their gameplay may leave a lot to be desired, and his stories are weird, esoteric things that an entire thesis or two could be written about, but I can’t help but love everything he does. I guess I just love the crazed auteur who takes a look at what’s being done in a specific medium, nods his head, strokes his chin, says, “ah, I see,” and then turns and does something COMPLETELY FREAKING DIFFERENT. Alejandro Jodorowsky and David Lynch did it with film, David Mack and Alan Moore did it with comics, Daniel Z. Danielewski and others have done it with novels, but you don’t see it much in the world of videogames.

This is with good reason, of course. Videogames are an interactive experience, and if you purposefully design your game to frustrate or fight the player, you’re insane and likely not very popular. And yet Suda51 does it with every game he’s released, but No More Heroes 2, the sequel to my favorite Wii game, is by far his most accessible game, like if Jodorowsky directed a commercial film for the masses.

You don’t need to play the first game to get into No More Heroes 2. Here’s all you need to know: Travis Touchdown, loveable loser, got his hands on a beam katana and took up being an assassin as a way to make money. He fought his way through the top ten ranked assassins for thrills and at the promise of getting laid, which never happened. Along the way, he met some wild characters, had some crazy fights, and broke the fourth wall. After reaching the top rank, he turned his back on the world of assassins and, I dunno, just sat on his ass for three years watching his cat gain weight. Which is where this game starts off. Travis is once again climbing the ranks, this time from rank 51 instead of 11, and also with another purpose in mind: revenge for the murder of his best friend Bishop.

No More Heroes 2 is a better game than its predecessor in nearly every way. While the combat remains the same, it’s much more polished. It’s just as visceral and satisfying as ever, and you’ll have no trouble getting into the groove of decapitating people left and right or piledriving them into the ground. You can switch between different beam katanas in the middle of combat this time around, though it’s an agonizingly slow process and once you get your hands on the Rose Nasty you probably won’t look back, but it’s still a nice touch. Blocking is a lot less automatic, making you work harder, but it makes those kills all the more satisfying. A wider variety of enemies also keeps things from getting too repetitive, but there are some later levels where you’ll come close to getting sick of all the hacking and slashing…until you turn into a tiger and start killing people left and right as they piss themselves in fear, that is.



The job minigames are still there, though all of them with the exception of one are now old-school 8-bit games that you may swear you played or possibly even owned on the NES when you were a kid. With a few exceptions, you’ll keep coming back to them, not just for the cash to buy clothes, but also to get a better high score and just because they’re simply fun. Training at the gym has also been given the 8-bit treatment. But if that’s not your thing, there’s also Travis’s cat Jeane, who seriously needs to lose weight, and an overhead space shooter based on Travis’s favorite anime, Bizarre Jelly 5! There’s no shortage of things to do when you’re not too busy hacking people to pieces.

Graphics receive quite the upgrade too, with a much more streamlined presentation, though it still has that lo-fi, somewhat ugly look to it. Some people may hate that, but I love it, and I feel like it’s a part of the game’s overall style. There are no real design “mistakes” in Suda51’s games, they’re almost always deliberate decisions, but that’s another story entirely. The voice acting is just as good as in the first game, and the script is chock full of great, quotable lines, while the music has gotten harder, darker, more guitar-driven to suit Travis’s quest for bloody vengeance.

While it is the most accessible of Suda51’s games, it still has its fair share of weird bits. The bosses don’t seem to have as much personality as the (very talkative) assassins from the first game, but they’ve certainly gotten stranger. You’ll find yourself fighting a football player and his cheerleading squad in a giant robot, a schoolgirl who is your biggest fan and wields a flute/double-beamed lightsaber, a ghost, and more. You can turn into a tiger, as I mentioned before. Takashi Miike, the infamous Japanese director, makes a cameo appearance. A guy whose head you cut off gets back up and has a conversation with you. And there’s still more where that came from.

As much as I’ve been praising it, it’s still flawed. I mentioned the repetitive later levels, and some of the boss battles almost feel like an afterthought. Also, while the game gives you the chance to play as Shinobu, an assassin from the first game who can actually jump unlike Travis, her levels are annoying and you want to just get her levels over with to get back to Travis. The camera still isn’t perfect, but then, I have yet to play a videogame with a perfect camera, y’know?



It seems at once both wilder than the first game, but also tamer, strangely. Both games are the product of putting all of Suda51’s favorite things and influences into a blender, devouring the concoction, and crapping it back out, which he has stated more than once in interviews. You can tell that too, especially because the first game felt like a massive explosion went off in your face, an explosion of awesomeness. No More Heroes 2 feels much more focused and calculated, maybe too calculated. That “everything but the kitchen sink” mentality is still there to be sure, but it lacks a lot of the charm of the first game. Weird quirks and hiccups in the first game, like the barren open world, have been polished away, leaving a much more pristine game, but that feels almost wrong given the punk rock, dirty style that’s on display here.

Nevertheless though, it’s a strong successor to the Wii’s greatest sleeper hit, a dizzying bullet aimed straight at the brain, and a gaming experience that’s truly unforgettable. In this day and age where games are starting to feel all too much alike and blur together, it’s great when something so maverick and gung-ho kicks down the doors and does whatever the hell it wants with little regard for what’s mainstream and popular, and does it in a way that‘s badass.

Also, did I mention you can transform into a MOTHERFUCKING TIGER? Game of the year, right there.

[Brett]

You Should Be Reading DC Comics 'Red Circle' Series (and here's why)

Mave here. How's it going?

NOTE: This is basically a post about these two books put out by DC Comics on a monthly basis now -- The Shield and The Web. I'm no comic guru by any means and I've only recently really gotten into them. DC is pretty much the only stuff I read, but the stuff I read I really REALLY enjoy. The Shield and The Web are a part of a bigger picture in DC -- they are a part of this new team of superheros called "The Red Circle". Slowly but surely, they're getting phased into the DCU. Unfortunately, the books aren't selling very well right now so I thought I'd just do this post to talk about them a little. Anyways --

__ __ __

I have a friend who is a huge Captain America fan. For the past year I've heard him talk about all the great stuff Ed Brubaker has done with the series. Even if you're not a fan of Bucky taking up the mantle of Cap, I think it's hard to deny the quality that Brubaker tries to bring to the series. Killing Steve Rogers wasn't easy on anyone -- I'm not saying that like it hurt me personally, but killing any comic book character is never an easy decision. From what I can tell, Brubaker (and Marvel as a company) handled it very well and really elevated Bucky while paying tribute to the legacy that Steve Rogers had made.

Why am I mentioning this in a post about DC Comics? Because I don't read too much in Marvel. It's nothing against the company, but I grew up with DC and it's been difficult for me to find books on the Marvel side that really appeal to me. J. Michael Straczynski's run on Thor is FANTATSIC and I really love that, but I could never get into Cap. I always envied my friend a little because of the cool stories he was ready about a character that sounded like it had so much depth, yet (technically speaking) wore the banner of America on his shoulders without seeming...well...bad.

Sometime in mid 2009 while strolling through a comic book one day, I was just happened to look up on the shelf and notice this book. The cover caught my eye with how familiar the character looked -



I asked myself "What? What? Huh? What is this?" so then I reached for the issue and took a look. I bought the issue that very day with how good the art was alone. I knew nothing about the series or the character, but my reasoning was that "This is a new series starting up and this is issue #1. The character looks cool and it has a second feature. I'm sold." It was a purchase I have never regretted.

I went back to my dorm room, read the issue, and then found myself on various websites researching the character. I finally came to understand that this character "The Shield" was not in fact some random ripoff of Captain America that DC had just made up, but he was a character that actually PREDATES Captain America. The Shield is a character that dates back to 1940 (which, at least according to the Wiki, beats Captain America's debut by 14 months). I'm not spouting this off to act like "Shield > Captain America" or anything, but it just surprised me.

Apparently, DC had acquired a number of these "Red Circle" characters in a buyout and was going to phase them into the main DCU.

Basically, this was a chance to read about all new characters coming into DC with various new series and read them RIGHT AS THEY STARTED. It just seems like to good of an opportunity to pass up.

Right now, there are only two monthly series among the Red Circle (their group name) characters.



From left to right we have the Hangman, the Inferno, the Shield, and the Web.

Each month we have an issue with a main feature on the Shield with a second feature on the Inferno, plus another issue with the main feature on the Web with a second feature on the Hangman. That's 4 stories about 4 characters in only two books. Each issue is only $3.99, so you're technically getting 4 stories for only 8 dollars a month. I can afford that, and it's a purchase I'm making that I thoroughly enjoy.

Let me give you a quick rundown of each character to try and flesh them out.



The Shield is a human weapon (he doesn't like to be called a superhero). Joseph Higgins is a US soldier in Afghanistan who, along with serving his country, is doing his own detective work on the side to search for his missing father. While on the battlefield, he is seriously wounded and on the verge of death. To save his life, the US Government experiments on him and fuses a power-suit with nanotechnology onto his body. The suit gives him enhanced physical abilities in every department, along with flight (IE your basic superhero stuff). He is a very likable character because the patriotic vibe isn't shoved down your throat. The writers seem to know that this is already a guy wearing a giant USA costume, so the story is more about a guy with a big-picture goal in mind while going on these undercover military missions just for kicks.

Not your cup of tea? Then try -



The Web is a guy named John Raymond. He grows up as a kid with a silver spoon in his mouth. He is born into a rich family in the US with a brother who outclasses him in every way. Not only is his older brother compassionate, succesful, and just an overall good guy, but he loves his younger brother John. John looks up to his brother, but is comparrable to a male 'Paris Hilton' if you will. His brother tragically is killed, and John Raymond steps up and accepts responsibility. He takes the oppurtunity to put his wealth to good use and fight for justice. He cleans up his act and becomes the Web, fighting crime and actually maintaining a website called "www.summontheweb.com" to keep in contact with people who need his help.

The Web is basically this formula: Paris Hilton personality + Tragic death + Money + Guilt + Will to do the right thing = become a superhero called The Web.

Those two are the main "front and center" guys of the Red Circle books, but each of them come with a second feature in the Inferno and the Hangman.



The Hangman is a story about a guy who was around back in some old generic Western setting. He is more or less cursed by something that happens that makes him the Hangman, a guy who is there to deliver the noose to those who deserve it. He is reincarnated in the form of some Doctor in the modern DCU and when the sun sets, the Hangman takes over. He has some spiritual, dark powers and can hide in the shadows and do some cool stuff with fear. You can probably see where I'm going with this, but I promise this guy is much more intersting than he sounds. One of his first stories was going after some Yakuza guys and he fought a water demon thing. It was cool -- just take my word for it. You'll have to forgive me because his alternate identity's name leaves me right now. I'll get back to you on that.

The Inferno is about a guy named Frank Verrano. His past is very muddled -- all we really know about the guy is that he's been experimented on and was going to be used as some human weapon of some form, but he has lost his memories. He can completely engulf himself in flames and physically change shape to this more muscular looking form with a crazy looking mustache, but I swear to you it's awesome. He can't quite control his powers yet, but his story has been my favorite thus far. It's basically been one big mystery of him trying to escape from these people who are hunting him down all while trying to figure out his powers and learn of his past.

And that's basically it.

If they don't sound very appealing -- maybe they're not for you, or maybe I'm not doing them justice. I found the appeal to be in the fact that this is a new super hero team that is on the verge of forming and I can be there right from the start. The stories are great, the art is great, the characters are great, and it's just a quality product IMO.

Unfortunately, the sales of the Shield and the Web haven't been spectacular. Some more Red Circle characters are going to be phased in as second features in the books, giving the Inferno and the Hangman a break for a while.

If nothing else, you should at least try and find the one shots that were done by J. Michael Straczynski in 2009. He did a one shot issue for each of the 4 main Red Circle characters and basically set them on a course that their volumes would follow.

I just wanted to get the word out about these guys because I'm really enjoying it and I think there are some people out there who just haven't given them a chance yet.

Anyways, thanks for reading!

COOL SONG OF THE DAY -

2009! It's over!

2009 has come and gone. To commemorate, here’s my top ten favorite things from last year. I know this post is late, but it's still January, so I think we're okay.

10. Mutemath – Armistice: From their early garage-band days in New Orleans to their debut self-titled album on Teleprompt records, and their eventual current-day signing with Warner Bros. Records, Mute Math has come a long way. Armistice, while not the album that many expected, reflects their evolution as a group of musicians and “band of Christians” who are not a “Christian” band. It's a fun album. Don't think too much about the fact that they were on the Twilight soundtrack, and you'll find little to complain about.


9. Shadow Complex (Xbox Live Arcade): A Metroidvania-style dungeon crawling platforming combat heavy adventure, Shadow Complex is obviously difficult to describe in few words. With an adventure than can easily last eight to ten hours in a straight run, and upwards of fifteen if the player takes the time to explore everything the titular underground installation has to offer, Shadow Complex is well worth its weight in Gold – or Microsoft Points.


8. Star Trek (JJ Abrams): JJ Abrams alternate/parallel universe/reboot/whatever the hell you want to call it was met with both critical acclaim and box office success. Many decried the liberties taken with the story and the apparent overuse of lens flares, but there’s practically no denying that 2009’s Star Trek was a thrill ride unmatched by any other film last year. Sorry, Transformers.


7. David Crowder – Church Music: Crowder is back. The long anticipated follow up to 2007's Remedy is rife with what's made the DGB so well loved by the CCM community, while doing a fair job of avoiding the trappings of stagnant repetition that so often plague it. This is no “Jesus Messiah”, no Amazing Grace rewrite. It may not be the genre defying masterpiece that was A Collision, but it is very much its own animal. With tracks like Phos Hilron (Oh Gladdening Light[an updated version of the first Christian hymn ever known to exist]) a cover of Flyleaf's All Around Me (Lacey of Flyleaf also sings backup in one track) and whole table original pieces give Church Music a many-faceted and addictive quality. The collectors edition also came with an autographed vinyl of the album, which my friend Ryan gave me for Christmas.


6. Halo 3: ODST: By no means the best game of 2009, and not the most innovative (okay, not really innovative at all), ODST may seem rather mediocre when stacked up against other shooters – hell, other games in general – released during 2009, but there’s no denying that it was fun. ODST humanized the Halo universe in a way not done previously within the games in the series. We even reviewed it for you.


5. N9ne: CGI films about sentient toys, animals and automobiles have run a dime a dozen since Toy Story popularized the medium back in the day. N9ne, however, is not your run of the mill talking [insert object here] family film. Set in a post apocalyptic future where Humanity is extinct, N9ne follows a band of sentient robots as they struggle to survive and complete the mission left to them by their now-dead creator. It’s a moving story, with a gloomy art style and atmosphere, and some cool monster designs to boot.


4. Left 4 Dead 2: The best way to make a game just might be to hand the player a gun and say “OMG ZOMBIES.” This year we fought Nazi zombies, Dr. Ned’s zombies, and top-down indie zombies (I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!!!). But Left 4 Dead 2 doesn’t complicate things, by doing what its predecessor did so well and adding new gameplay modes and elements to keep the idea fresh. With three other players, either human or computer controlled, you are placed in a massive level and told, “OMG ZOMBIES.” Then you kill them. That’s about all there is to it, but the formula never seems to get old. The addition of new weapons such as chainsaws, guitars, a variety of new guns and modifiers such as laser sights and incendiary ammo all ensure that players will be surviving this apocalypse for a long time to come.


3.Mini Ninjas: perhaps the sleeper hit of the year, Mini Ninjas is a deep, rich adventure game disguised as a kiddie title. You are placed in control of Hiro, a ninja sent by his master to rescue his ninja buddies and defeat the evil samurai warlord. As you defeat the warlord’s minions, they transform back into cute forest animals. Then you platform for awhile and fight some more minions. Simple as it sounds, there’s much more to it. As you progress you gain access to Hiro’s friends’ unique powers and abilities as they are rescued. You also unlock Kuji magic spells and items to aid you in your quest. The interesting part is that any and all of the items and spells are rarely, if ever necessary, allowing the player to tackle the game’s individual challenges in whatever way best suits their playing style. The ability to switch ninjas on the fly can make for some interesting combat scenarios. Intriguing elements like a hat that deflects arrows AND can be used as a boat, and the ability to create healing potions and other items using “alchemy” mean that Mini Ninjas has a lot to offer anyone who’s not put off by it’s cutsie art style and presentation. And if we’re being honest, the game is just so darn cute.


2. Halo Wars: Halo, the first person shooter than practically made the Xbox was originally intended to be an RTS. While the formula has never really worked on a console before, the late Ensemble Studios proved that it can, providing that players are willing to sacrifice some of the resource management that has so long been a staple of the RTS genre. Ensemble Studios brought us the Age titles (Age of Empires and Age of Mythology), and know what they’re doing when it comes to RTS gaming. The Halo universe translates well into a top-down battlefield, giving players a new look at the weapons, characters and settings that make up the Halo mythology. The Master Chief is nowhere to be seen, but I doubt you'll miss him.


1. Borderlands: In terms of graphical stylishness, solid gameplay mechanics, originality, approach to multiplayer, sheer fun and myriad other concerns that are tried and weighed by reviewers and players alike, Borderlands stood apart from the crowd in 2009. Seamlessly merging RPG leveling and looting with the frantic instant-satisfaction of first person shooters, Borderlands is a title that offers a lot – a LOT – to anyone willing to put the time into its campaign. New-game-plus functions and the most player-friendly co-op I've ever seen, as well as four character classes with unique abilities and playstyles ensure that you'll be returning to the wastes of Pandora for years to come. Also, who doesn't love Claptrap?


HONORABLE MENTIONS (Almost, but not quite): A Day To Remember – Homesick (Yes, If It Means A Lot to you is great, but the rest of the album runs together), Watchmen (So close, yet so far. I want my Brain Monster back.), Resident Evil 5 (RE4 should have just been moved to Africa. You didn't need to change anything, Capcom), Lost Planet 2 Demo (LP2 would probably be on this list if it hadn't been delayed. Twice.)

2009 in Review! Sort of..

I had the perfect end-of-the-year article written, intending to go up BEFORE New Year’s Day, not after, but bad luck and a fried computer put an end to that. So let’s try this again. First off, here’s a list of every review I did this year, in case you missed a few:

The Anubis Gates
Steamboy, Blade II, Dune, Repo! The Genetic Opera soundtrack, Endless Ocean
Repo! The Genetic Opera
Kingdom Hospital
Watchmen
Scott Pilgrim, Crecy, Hellspawn, Sky Doll, the Walking Dead
MadWorld and House of the Dead: Overkill
Tokyo Gore Police
Ultimate Wolverine Vs Hulk
Mother 3
PS3 demos for Dante’s Inferno and Bayonetta
Stalker

…Damn, that’s a lot more than I remember doing.

Anyways! We’re not going to do things the way I did last time. We’ll review things differently.

MOVIES:
District 9- This is my favorite movie of the year, and in my opinion the best. I wanted to do a full review for it so badly, but never got the chance. Tight, fast-paced, realistic, gruesome, smart, there is nothing wrong with this film in my eyes.
Friday the 13th- I almost forgot I saw this. Why did I see this? Have you seen the other Friday the 13th films? Then you know what to expect.
Star Trek- Tied with the next movie for my second/third favorite of the year. Sleek, extremely entertaining, and successful in making Star Trek relevant again.
Zombieland- The funniest movie I’ve seen in a long time, breathing fresh life into the overstuffed and stale zombie genre. Zombie films are getting to be a dime a dozen these days, but this one is so worth watching.
Coraline- A grand stop-motion animated adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s children’s novel. Very pretty stuff.
Avatar- 3D. Very epic. Lots of action and explosions, 8-foot blue cat-like aliens, and a dumb story. Worth seeing once, but that’s it.

This was also the year I decided that I love body horror. How I didn’t realize it before thanks to films like Tetsuo the Iron Man and Slither, I don’t know, but Wikus Van der Merwe’s transformation over the course of District 9, David Cronenburg’s fucked up classic Videodrome, and my review of Tokyo Gore Police confirmed this, along with a novel I’ll mention later.

VIDEOGAMES:
New Super Mario Bros. Wii- Only halfway through it, but so far it’s incredibly fun, and the multiplayer aspect makes things equal parts more fun and frustrating. Teamwork wins, but it can also send friendships crashing and burning. Quite possibly my Game of the Year.
Muramasa: The Demon Blade- Runner-up for GOTY, considering how many hours I put into it. Yeah, this side scrolling hack-n’-slash is a bit repetitive and the environments repeat themselves, but it’s a beautiful game with a unique story, great classical Japanese style, and addicting and simple combat.
Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure- Best DS game of the year, and I bet you didn’t play it. Great little side scrolling platformer with a puzzle twist to it. EA has started making stunningly original games lately, but no one seems to pay much attention.
Retro Game Challenge- Another one nobody really played, but still great. 5 super-retro games in one, including a dazzling vertical spaceship shooter that I love a lot, which brings back a lot of memories of playing videogames as a little kid.
Bit.Trip Beat & Bit.Trip Core- This Wiiware-exclusive series is excellent. Core is much stronger than Beat, but both are quite challenging and unique, while serving as great throwbacks to old Atari games and a personal favorite of mine, Rez.
Scribblenauts- When I first bought it, I thought it was the best thing ever. YOU CAN SUMMON CTHULHU. And make him kill stuff! But after going through the first handful of worlds, it just started getting tedious, annoyingly repetitive, and just dumb, so I never finished it. All that hype and potential, squandered.

MUSIC:
I bought three new albums this year, all with a lot of promise, but faltering nevertheless. Mastodon’s Crack the Skye ditched the band’s usual hardcore metal style and got a lot more prog, with longer songs that rambled too much and lacked the brutality evident in their previous album. The Mars Volta’s album Octahedron is most definitely their softest, tamest album, with very little meandering chaos and madness, and while it has a couple of my new favorite songs by the band, it still feels a bit lackluster, but is nevertheless solid. Gallows came out with a second album, Grey Britain, and it’s miles above their first album, much tighter, more focused and aggressive, less grating on the ears, but it can wear out its welcome pretty quickly. I spent most of this year just getting videogame music and digging through Radiohead’s entire body of work, along with getting into K.M.F.D.M. and Portishead, yes.

COMICS:
This is the year I finally grew sick of superhero comics, or more specifically, the river of crap being spat out by Marvel and DC, with the exception of Wednesday Comics, but I only picked all of that up after it hit the dollar bins. My comic of the year happens to be the second volume of the Umbrella Academy, Dallas. I consider the first volume, Apocalypse Suite, to be one of the best damn comics ever written, and Dallas manages to top it. Great art, brilliant twists, great characters, crazy ideas, and exceptional pacing. This comic blows me away. The fifth volume of Scott Pilgrim was also phenomenal, and really leaves me worried about what is going to happen in the sixth and final volume. Both books really get you invested in their characters in ways few other comics do. Growing weary of superhero stuff, I’ve started wading through more obscure, weirder stuff. Lots of foreign sci fi comics were acquired, several issues of Heavy Metal and Epic Illustrated, stuff like that, none of it as satisfying as I would have hoped, but still better than I imagine Dark Reign is.

NOVELS:
I read two new novels that came out this year. Well, one and a half. First was the Strain, written by one of my favorite directors, Guillermo del Toro, alongside Chuck Hogan. It’s a more realistic look at vampires, and it starts off in a very brilliant, terrifying way, but loses a lot of steam thanks to awkward pacing and characters I just really didn’t care for. I only got halfway through it. Second, we have the Death of Bunny Munro, written by Nick Cave. It’s strange, dark, depressing, perverted, pretty much like Nick Cave’s music, only not quite as engrossing or satisfying. I went through a few older sci fi novels this year, though, my favorite being Antibodies by David J. Skal. It’s sci fi with a few doses of body horror shot in for good measure, fast, bleak, decadent, and relentless. Excellent stuff.

…Aaaaaannnndddd that’s it. I wonder what my first review for 2010 will be?

[Brett]

Stalker (1979)

“There are no such thing as facts. Especially here.”

If you have a short attention span and can only watch films with tits, explosions, rapid editing, and loud music, turn away now and go read my review for Tokyo Gore Police instead. This one’s a much different beast, and yet it’s my second favorite movie of all time. Every aspect of this movie resonates with me in a way I can't explain.

Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, the Russian director responsible for the original Solaris (you may be familiar with the remake that has George Clooney in it), Stalker is a slow, quiet, thought-provoking film released in 1979, based off of a science fiction novel entitled Roadside Picnic.

The story is deliciously simple: Three men, a writer, a professor, and the titular Stalker (who refer to each other by their professions, you never get their real names) head out to a forbidden place called the Zone, in order to find a room where it is said your innermost wish will come true. The theory is that the Zone is a place that was hit with a meteorite, and the town that used to be there was obliterated, so the government roped it off. No one lives there. The only wildlife are birds, which are mostly just heard, rarely seen. Most everyone who was sent in, including the Russian military, never came out. People just disappear.

"My dear, our world is hopelessly boring. Therefore, there can be no telepathy, or apparitions, or flying saucers, nothing like that. The world is ruled by cast-iron laws, and it's insufferably boring. Alas, those laws are never violated. They don't know how to be violated. So don't even hope for a UFO, that would've been too interesting."

It’s also an incredibly beautiful place. The beginning of the movie is filmed in black and white, through a sepia filter, adding to the grit and dirt of the Stalker’s little shack, the rundown bar they meet up in, and the grungy military checkpoints they have to sneak and rush through in order to get into the Zone. 37 minutes in, when they finally reach the Zone, the film goes full color, so you can see it in all it’s splendor. The grass is incredibly tall, with a faint mist in the distance, and rundown old buildings that have been reclaimed by nature over time. The first thing this reminded me of are two of the most beautiful videogames I've ever played: Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Gorgeous, desolate stretches of land with not a single soul in sight. The Stalker comments that it’s the quietest place in the whole world, and one can certainly agree, as all you hear are the twittering of birds and the beautiful, haunting score of the film. It’s all shot very beautifully, lovingly, with long takes and slow camera work that let you drink in the scenery and the characters.



As beautiful as it is, the Zone is also dangerous. It constantly shifts, mutates, like a labyrinth, and you cannot make a direct path to the room. "How far away is the room?" one of the characters asks the Stalker, who knows his way around, and he responds, "straight ahead, it's about 200 meters, but we cannot go straight." At one point he explains to them that the Zone does not allow good people or evil people to pass through it, only wretched men who have lost all hope. The Zone is treated like a creature, a living place. You never get a sense of just how dangerous it is, and that's probably one of the film's only flaws, but it is beautiful beyond what words can describe. The interiors themselves are amazing, old, ruined, and you just sense that there's...something in it. You know the place is alive, you can feel that it is a character just as much as the three men who are exploring it. There are weird bits too, like a telephone that mysteriously works, in a room that inexplicably has electricity, and a scene where the Zone actually supposedly speaks to Writer.

"You’re not even capable of thinking in abstractions."

Much of the dialogue is very poetic, philosophical. It’s rather dense stuff. Writer talks about how he fears he's losing inspiration, how he thinks of his readers, how men only write when they are in doubt. He’s a cynic and a skeptic, a bit of an ass, but still completely, utterly human. There's a beautiful monologue he delivers, sitting at a well in a huge, cavernous room where the floor is covered completely in sand dunes, after he traverses through a long, dark, terrifying tunnel referred to as the “meat mincer.” All three of the characters have incredibly wonderful, private, moving moments where their emotions and ideals are laid out bare for the viewer to see, and it's heart-wrenching. These are not young, plucky guys in their 20's, all three of them are aged, weathered, beaten men, far from ignorant, but not quite intellectuals. Just as Stalker says, wretched. I think it's something that the Zone brings out in them, that makes it so easy to see right into their hearts and know what their souls are like...



Once it was over, I could only just sit, and think, and breathe. It was amazing. I’ve watched it 3 times since then, finally acquiring a DVD copy as a Christmas gift just the other day, and it still never fails to hypnotize me and leave me thinking and musing. It is admittedly a very long, slow movie (around two and a half hours), where things happen more or less in real time, with long, continuous takes, and admittedly not a whole lot happens outside of the characters traversing the landscape while talking, but that doesn’t in any way diminish the experience.

Really, if you watch it, I mean, actually watch it, and it doesn't do anything to you, if it doesn't make you feel something deep inside of you, make you think, or anything...you are not human…

The film is easily found on Google Video in its entirety (this is how I watched it the first three times), and while it’s a little compressed and the timing with the subtitles is a tad off halfway through the film, it’s still worth it. The DVD has greatly improved audio and visuals, but the print they used wasn’t in the best condition, so there are some vertical lines that are pretty clear in certain shots, colors and lighting will fade in and out, but in all honesty, it does not diminish the experience at all. This is a must-see movie, especially if you consider yourself a bit of a film snob or connoisseur. Sit back, relax, and take it in. This is a true work of art.

[Brett]