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Cover Story: It Came From Outer Space!

Ian Donmoyer


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Michael Pachter Posse Member
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Tremont, PA

What I'm Playing

Metal Gear Solid: The Essential Collection Grand Theft Auto 4

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My Claim To Fame: I'm In GTA IV (So's My Girl)!!!


We went to the website, called the number, did some stupid shit, and sure enough... there we are on Liberty City radio. I mean, we decided to honeymoon in Mexico this week, and this is the first thing I bring up in conversations. I'm jazzed as all hell - check it out right damn now.


If I can change, you can change...

Posted: April 28, 2008

Over the past few weeks, I've indulged in a couple of "buzz games;" new releases that have either been hyped really hard or received attention in not-so-flattering ways. I formed opinions of them pretty early on, but I soon realized that I'd perhaps been too hasty. So, in the spirit of Sylvester Stallone and Mother Russia, I'm here to set the record straight.

There's a reason the XBLA demo is only the first level: it's fucking impossible to finish level two. Look Treasure, I get that all your games are supposed to be old-school in some way or another, and that usually means the difficulty is jacked way up. But this is LEVEL FUCKING TWO. Having to be a quantum physicist in order to figure out, millisecond by millisecond, where I need to be positioned to avoid enemy fire is NOT something that is supposed to happen on level two. It's called a difficulty curve--you should consider implementing it in one of your future games.

Okami Wii
I alluded to the fact that you eventually get used to the Wii controls, and although they'll never replace button mashing on the PS2, they have become natural to the point where they're at least on par... perhaps even a little better? Here are some pointers:

-Sit closer to the TV for brush spells; three, maybe four feet away tops. Let your wrist go naturally and you'll rarely miss. I'm aware of the masturbation reference.

-If you're using the reflector weapon, attack using a light horizontal twisting motion, swinging sharply from side to side, to start combos. God knows why they decided to differentiate the motions for each weapon, but on that note...

-Use beads as your main weapon. Then you can just whack away. I'm aware of the masturbation reference.

Yes, the game is gimped in several other, smaller ways, but once you understand why, it's not that big a deal. It's still the same great game and it looks fantastic in 480p widescreen (though you can tell some graphical elements were left in 4:3). It's a rough start, but newcomers might actually want to go with the Wii version.
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Quick Hits

Posted: April 24, 2008

Okami Wii

Sure, it looks great and you can now skip most of the cutscenes and dialogue, but the controls are broke to shit. I'm not just talking about the twitchy brush controls, either. If you don't swing the remote exactly the right way, Amaterasu will freeze after the first attack. Ironic considering most Wii games only pretend to differentiate one type of movement from another. To be fair, you eventually get used to it, but there's no excuse for 50% accuracy when the PS2 version worked 100% of the time. They even fucked up the box art. Developer Ready At Dawn should issue a patch, but they won't.

No More Heroes

Like playing Kill Bill The Game. Dry gaming satire meets Tarantino-esque violence. Not perfect, but good for a hoot nonetheless. At least try, probably buy.

Iron Man Demo

The gameplay is actually pretty solid. There's an unexpected layer of strategy that comes from being able to take flight and blow stuff up at will. But when you think about it, the Spider-Man movie games did basically the same thing, and the Iron Man demo definitely gives off that certain vibe - brief enemy encounters interconnected by snappy celebrity dialogue. Still pretty fun.
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The Unbearably Long Self-Indulgent Blog

Posted: April 14, 2008

30 Days of Brawl

Happy One Month Of Dominion Over My Entire Life, Brawl! It took some effort to pull myself away from the madness that is Smash to write a thing or two about it, almost as much effort as it took to pull myself away from Team Fortress 2 (there's an addiction) to indulge in said madness on March 8th.

But that's just the thing - what's left to say about it, anyway? For most of the Internet faithful, gathering tidbits about the game became more of a following than actually playing it. And I think I'm more versed on Brawl from reading Smash Bros. Dojo, the hype juggernaut that spoiled everything from the big third-party characters to the subtle curve of Mario's shoes, than from the time I've put in thus far. All that gun-jumping (including you bastards who snuck a peek at the early Japanese release... for ALL of us) didn't leave much for the gaming media, whose reviews unanimously boiled down to, "Well, if you liked the first two, and you love Nintendo, this one's for you!" It was kind of a bummer how the core gameplay experience became overwhelmed by the attention paid to the pure collectivity of it all.

I still had some questions about SSBB (besides "Can I make Samus lose any more of her clothes?" Sadly, no) that the reviewers were content to leave unanswered until I inevitably purchased it - like how it would play, especially in comparison to Melee. Some early import impressions let on that it felt a bit slower and floatier, and I'd be hard-pressed to deny that after getting a feel for it. But I think it's a good direction for the game's pace; the Smash engine has always been touchy (it's still more of a pain in the ass than anything just to turn your fighter in the opposite direction) and the reduced speed allows you to be more strategic in the heat of battle. It's a good balance between the first and second Smash titles, leaning a bit more toward Melee. Other than that, tweaks are minor: the ability to pick up items while in motion is a very much welcome alteration, and water hazards are no longer hazardous, per se. The first time I fell in, I instinctively looked toward the top of the screen, expecting my character to beam back in, when I noticed I was still floating below. Of course, I was dead a split-second later when my lack of attention led to me being pulled under the pirate ship I had just fallen from. I'm also told that "wavedashing," an improvised move used by top-level players, has been worked out of the fighting system, which might explain why I've been winning so much... you glitch-exploiting fucks.

And if anyone from the development team can explain their inexplicable decision to make your character trip and fall when you try to dash forward forty percent of the time, I will gladly pay you in gold doubloons. And by "gold doubloons," I mean a foot up the ass.

Brawl newcomer Ike: way overpowered.

Of course, what would a new Smash Bros. game be without a new roster of characters? Some are awesome (Meta Knight), some are a little less awesome (Pit is more like a lighter version of Link), some are pretty lame (King Dedede), and some are just plain unbalanced (pick Ike if you want to win; I'm sure he'll be unofficially banned once competitive Brawl play goes into full-swing). Fans were bemoaning the return of "cloned" characters (characters with the same basic moveset), but they've done a good job of differentiating them this time around; Wolf, though his moves are similar, is almost a completely unique character from Fox, for example. Then there are the unprecedented third-party all-stars, Snake and Sonic. Snake seems kind of sluggish at first, but there is a layer of strategy that you gradually pick up on the more you use him. Plus, he can fucking fly. Sonic is pulled straight from his recent game appearances, which is to say he goes careening of the edge of the stage every two seconds. It's still probably his best career move in the last few years, though. And then... Listen, Nintendo. We GET it already, R.O.B. is nostalgic as all hell. Please stop putting him in games, it's getting old.

...I mean, SPOILER ALERT! Shit, sorry.

There's probably no need to reiterate how huge the game is, but I will anyway: it's excessively huge. Too huge, in fact, and the main offender is Adventure Mode. Inflated from its barely tolerable Melee version, it's now a grueling eight to ten-hour experience with a surprisingly dark storyline (an army of R.O.B. drones posing as a sect of would-be suicide bombers? Wow). The problem, unlike certain other fighting game side modes, isn't keeping the variety going, but rather, it's what was wrong with it even in Melee: the game engine in no way even remotely lends itself to platforming gameplay. For instance, the camera still operates as if you're playing a regular match, which leads to tons of cheap deaths when it can't keep up with where you are onscreen. The camera is one thing that simply should not be an issue in a 2D platformer. Adventure Mode (or "The Subspace Emissary," as it's now known) is billed as an easier way to obtain characters and collectibles, but it's anything but hassle-free. Ambitious, yes, but extremely bloated.

Many of the other modes, however, are now streamlined and better organized. This is true of Event Mode in particular, which I managed to complete much more quickly than in Melee. Collecting trophies is more engaging this time around, mostly due to their rarity and the new shooter minigame, where the bulk of them can be won. But online, at least for the time being, is a bust. Though it is pretty fun when it works, it almost never works, since Nintendo's servers are apparently ill-equipped. Entering friend codes seems to be the most prevalent gripe about the whole deal, but I've found that actually coming up with friends who pay attention is nearly impossible. Put your codes up in your greeting, 1up-ers!

I'm going to go ahead and coin a term for what Super Smash Bros. Brawl is: an omni-game. It's so big and so celebrated and so fun despite it's flaws that trying to make a definitive statement about it is almost a paradox. It's the kind of game you don't say no to, even when you hate it with a fiery passion. If you're not playing it right now, I'm not even sure you exist.

N'Gai vs. The World

For some, the controversy over Capcom's decision to set the next installment of Resident Evil in Africa (it is Africa now, not Haiti) was a big deal. For others, myself included, it wasn't so big a deal. But earlier this week, journalist N'Gai Croal made it clear that it was still a moderately big deal to him. In a post over at MTV's Multiplayer, he expressed some mixed feelings about the producers' apparent ignorance about the gravity of having a white guy slay legions of black people, and about the fans' willingness to blow it all off. It became a bloodbath over at Kotaku, where the story garnered over 1000 comments, many of which obviously came off as idiotic and racist. The editors responded swiftly the next day by threatening to start banning the shit out of people who crossed the line.

Personally, I don't doubt that there's some truth to what N'Gai said, and he had every right to say it. But I do think he was being a bit naive in thinking that the Japanese developers of RE5 weren't completely oblivious to the weight those images carry or the entire racism dialogue, because they were. Whether it's the tendency of Japanese directors and producers to not even mention the hot-button issues in interviews or that race just doesn't mean what it does to Westerners, you typically shouldn't expect the same kind of consideration we give it over here. And besides, this is the company that gave us characters like T. Hawk and Street Fighter Alpha's painfully black Birdie. I'm pretty sure they missed the boat on taking race issues seriously almost two decades ago.

And yes, there is the whole argument that you were killing Spaniards in RE4, and the counter-argument that the oppression of the Spanish people is somehow lesser in comparison to that of black/African people. But I think that kind of reasoning is actually part of the reason why racism still lingers, especially in the States. While different eras of oppression mean different things to everyone, it's also silly to argue that one kind of struggle is worse than another, because it's sort of like you're trying to prove one was more deserving. Who's to say which one was worse? What's the point? It's a childish debate and nobody should pay it any mind and just agree that a lot of people have been through a lot of shit. Hell, it almost sounds harmonious by comparison.

I think people are most upset by the setting, which is right smack in the middle of a continent that is currently America's trendiest charity case. And while the devs haven't made any direct correlation between the spread of AIDS in Africa and the virus that causes people to become blood-thirsty zombies, it's definitely on the tip of everyone's tongue. If you want my take on it (unpopular as it is sure to be), on all of our country's involvements with foreign nations for that matter, it's this: none of our business. I don't support the war in the Middle East, not because I think the troops are murderers or whatever, but because it was never a good idea to be there in the first place. Militant groups that want to tear their own nations apart because of ignorance, inaction, or bloodlust can do so for all I care. In my eyes, Africa is no different.

There are a few things that piss me off about the movement to provide relief to African countries. Certainly, one such grievance I have is how smarmy celebrities like Bono are making it hip to get involved. They make you believe it's so noble to go over there and swindle materialistic shitheads out of their adopt children when they wouldn't be caught dead adopting a hungry, impoverished child right here in the good ol' U-S-of-A. Also, all soccer-obsessed countries make me angry because hockey is way better, so that's another thing. But I think my main problem with it all is that any way you cut it, it's pointless - they're fucked. There's so much roundabout violence and disease, fueled by raw, unfiltered stupidity, and left unchecked because of public apathy, that it's beyond saving. I've created a detailed and probably completely unjustified flowchart to illustrate my point, and I sincerely hope N'Gai never reads it because he'd probably kick my ass:

As you can see, it starts going nowhere around the time Fiddy comes into play. I really do think the soccer thing is what does it for me, though. Fuck soccer. Oh, and let's give both N'Gai and Resident Evil a break, huh?


No Track For You

A while back, news broke that Konami would not include a Japanese voice track in the North American version of Metal Gear Solid 4. And although they had never done so with any of the previous MGS games, sweaty otaku nerds were quick to voice their extremely misspelled displeasure. I threw my two cents in, commenting something to the effect of "I don't speak Japanese, so I don't care and neither should you." I got the feeling some might have taken the remark as anti-Japan sentiment, which it wasn't, or me just trying to start some shit with the Japanophiles, which it totally was. But allow me to elaborate.

These otaku types piss me off because, despite the fact that it's a backwards country where you can get all manner of yucky things from vending machines, they're constantly touting the merits of anything and everything Japanese. When it comes to voice acting, they'll always insist on the original Japanese track ("subbed, not dubbed") because "their acting is so much more emotional and they're so much more professional!" Alright leeches, let me tell you what I can assume about you just from your opinions:

1) You are American (or European, but I've never heard anything to suggest it)
2) Your standards of what good acting is are pretty low
3) Your knowledge of the Japanese language is limited to choice phrases like, "I challenge you to a battle!" or, "Where is your anime tentacle porn section?"
4) Women have an even lower opinion of you than I do; if you're a woman, you've probably never heard the word "dating"

That last one I threw in there, but the bottom line is, you more than likely don't speak a lick of Japanese. So how the fuck do you know their acting is so much better? MGS4 might have the worst Japanese voice actors in the whole country; that might be Japan's Stephen Baldwin doing Ocelot, or some other Baldwin, and how could you tell? Because I, for one, cannot discern the quality of acting if I can't understand what it is I am hearing.


Yeah, so maybe David Hayter has slipped a little in recent years, but the series hasn't exactly given him much to work with. And I'm not just talking about the nonsensical plotlines, I'm also talking about how the character of Solid Snake has been a bit dumbed-down lately. In the first MGS, Snake was a super soldier who was also practically a rocket scientist and spoke like seven or eight different languages. In MGS2, he comments that Otacon's sister is "Uh... doing something" when she hacks into Arsenal Gear. What gives? Hayter's doing the best he can, so lay off him. He wrote two X-Men movies. Have YOU done that?

But like I said, Konami and every other civilized publisher in the world goes to a lot of trouble to record English voice tracks for our favorite games, and the Metal Gear team does a damn good job of it. Be grateful.

Seriously Last Thing

On a final note, the Xbox Live Arcade hype train has been hit-or-miss for me thus far; I absolutely despised Undertow, but I thoroughly enjoyed Rez HD. I was cautious when some referred to Treasure's Ikaruga as "the greatest shooter ever," but it's actually pretty awesome. And although it carries the trademark Treasure distinction of being crazy hard, it's definitely at least worth a demo download. Off you go, nah!
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