Sex, Games and Rock n' Roll

Alex Kidd: The manliest videogame hero of all time

2008-03-25T09:42:00.000-07:00

You probably think I'm crazy. What, a little kid, with big ears, the manliest videogame hero of all time? Nah, that title belongs to Kratos, or Master Chief, or Solid Snake. Not to some old 8-bit has-been.
But why shouldn't it be? Alex Kidd is a forgotten hero. His game came out at about one year after Super Mario Bros for the NES. Only Alex belonged on the Master System, Sega's big 8-bit console at the time. And in my dear opinion, his big game kicked the crap out of Mario's game. Let's make the obvious comparisons.

Mario's screenshot doesn't show the whole screen, but I think we can see the obvious advantage here. Let's take a look at a few more facts. Mario's levels, were basically four different levels, built in different ways through the game. Alex Kidd's? Every single one of them was different, and it spanned many areas.
Could Mario do anything with his coins? Except getting that obvious extra life with 100 of them? I don't think so. You know what Alex did with his money bags? He bought stuff at the end of each level. You could choose between going through the game on foot, on a motorcycle, on a helicopter... I mean, how cool is it to blaze through an entire level on a cool bike, squashing enemies on the way? Did Mario ever do it? I don't think so.
As Mario had power ups, Alex also had power ups. Alex had a fire ring, just like Mario had the fire flower. And a few other things, like a cane which allowed him to fly temporarily and gain invencibility, a powerup that allowed alot of tiny clones of him kick the ass of whatever enemy was in front of him, and so forth. Alex's, unlike Mario's, were activated by going to the main menu, and using them. Alex had an inventory screen.
Not only that, Alex also had different, colorful bosses. A story. A hidden continue option. And ALOT MORE. The game had the one-hit kill which made it kind of hard, but it reeked of masculinity. How?

Alex Kidd, didn't need to jump on an enemy, or spin through it. He PUNCHED. And with his punch, the enemy dissapeared in a cloud of smoke. That's one hell of a punch. He also didn't require stupid mushrooms. It was one hit, one kill. And damn the odds, he punches through everything. The fact that he's got a motorcycle to ram enemies with, only adds to the sheer testosterone that the game exales.
In his first game, he not only defeated the evil dudes with his fists, went through land and sea (and didn't even require underwater breathing because he was too awesome), and in the end, he rescued his brother, and BECAME KING. Huh? Huuuuuh? Mario never became king, and he keeps rescuing a princess he's supposedly in love with! How many game characters in the 80's became monarchy leaders, huh? And in the end of each level, he eats a burger. Because burgers are AWESOME.

Now I ask you. After Alex kicked every single ass there was to kick in his world, what did he do? He went to ANOTHER WORLD to kick more ass, obviously! But he couldn't just go to any world.
HE WENT TO SHINOBI WORLD. TO KICK NINJA ASS. Fuck yeah!
I mean, he just can't be more manly, even if he tried. Of course, his game The Lost Stars does put that a bit into question, but it had more kiddy visuals, after all.
His other game, High Tech World, is based on a single thing: "Are you willing to go through a forest filled with ninjas and monsters on your way to the nearest arcade?", and Alex's answer is the obvious. Hell yeah!

Most recently, our beloved character is back on Sega Superstars Tennis. I look forward to getting this game, so I can see him in action once more. I just wish he had a proper new generation game. It would rock.

No More Heroes: An Exercise in Art, and Kickass

2008-03-25T05:37:00.000-07:00

No More Heroes, is what we can truly call, "Ode to Games". I've been expecting this game ever since it was announced, and after playing gems such as Killer 7, I consider myself a Suda 51 fanboy.
Let's be honest. The game has bad graphics. It's repetitive. The gameplay is kinda boring. And the controls are clunky, specially when you're riding the motorcycle. Apart from the boss experiences, winning money by consecutively repeating missions you've already done before gets pretty old, pretty fast. But no matter how many times I did these tasks, they never seemed like chores to me. I mastered the few little gameplay elements the game had. I bought every single item of clothing there was to buy, I bought every single move, discovered all the Lovikov Balls (kinda like the Hidden Packages in GTA) and basically got EVERYTHING there was to get in the game by the fourth boss battle.

I forgot to refer how the game was broken into. Basically, you play Travis, a geek otaku who loves games and anime. He bought a lightsaber on eBay, and now, he's on a quest to kill the world's 10 greatest assassins, in order to become the best. Basically, a videogame that screams to us "I am a videogame. And this is you."
The boss battles are one of the best parts of the game. Each boss is funny, witty, inventive, and provides us with a fine bout. The combat in the game is managed by simply hitting the A button, dodging with the d-pad, pressing the B button to stun enemies for wrestling attacks. But the action itself, although basic, is alluring. And the enemies you slash up go down in the most varied of ways. The wiimote is brought into action in these strikes, which, although seeming repetitive and basic, ends up being alot of fun.

The entire game is spent on the various areas of Santa Destroy, a Californian town where it's always summer morning, and the buildings are made out of stylized cardboard. The town itself doesn't play much of a role, but it fits Travis like a glove. You roll around in your hyper stylish motorcycle, drifting and jumping around, and taking odd jobs, assassination jobs, in order to
make money to pay for the entry fee of the next top-named assassin.
The game is a routine, one I was glad to comply, because it never stopped being fun. The story starts being basic, and ends up being half-complex, half- funny nonsense, and fully awesome. The game just never ceases to have style, because you can never get tired of the characters, or their humor.

The entire game manages to maintain a steady balance between hard enough to be challenging, and easy enough to be fun. Surprising how such a basic gameplay, free of complex combos, can provide such a varied experience. By now, I've finished the game two times, and I'm still taking it to the maximum difficulty level (Called "Bitter", the others being "Sweet and "Mild") in order to rack up some more bodies.

After finishing No More Heroes, we're almost heartbroken with the words that show up on-screen. "Too bad there won't be a sequel." The game got me hooked, more than any other game I've ever played on the console (which, about a four months ago, wouldn't be hard) and although it had the best ending it could have possibly had, it left me asking for more. In a way that I quickly reloaded my saved game, and loaded my "New Game +".

Now let's get one thing straight. As "New Game +"es all over the gaming world always fail to offer anything new to games, I have never played a single one. Repeating a game with little more than a tiny slurp of different juice without bringing anything new, is not something I'm fond of. A few new skins aren't enough for me to want to repeat an experience, no matter how memorable it is.

But when I finished the game, I found myself wanting MORE. Even if it meant I'd have to start all over again. Thankfully, the game has the option to start over with everything you owned intact. Only some new pieces of art, and new clothing. But even if it didn't have anything, this game is a celebration of videogames as a work of art, and as good fun.
It has considerably bad graphics. And this is the reason why it looks like a game. The enemies are generic, and all fall down the same way. It's a videogame. Bosses have different personalities, different weapons, and no backstory apart from "I'm here, and I'm gonna kick your ass". Backstories are used as jokes in this game, and the ending itself is philosophical. It has a very distinct message. That Travis is nothing more than a videogame character. And so, he has to follow the common, usual game plots and consistencies, in order to reach the end. And although he has reached the end... there is no way out. There never was. Game characters don't go to paradise.

It's this kind of game that makes me glad that I play games. It's this kind of art that makes me glad that I'm a gamer. No More Heroes, shows exactly how extremely kickass games can be. And how they SHOULD be.

Halo 3: Hype vs Reality

2007-10-13T19:32:00.000-07:00

I have never played Halo 3 multiplayer, and I have no intention to do so. However, I am a massive fan of the game's single player campaign, and this has led me to create this blog post for this effect. Every single gamer on the planet that wasn't living under a rock knew about this game, and it's the end of the main story, on the biggest sci-fi trilogy of the world of video gaming.
However, many people don't seem to be satisfied with it at all. People who were so hyped about it, they expected it to reinvent the wheel, cure cancer, and rid the world of emo music at the same time. Instead, what we got was a sequel to Halo 2. A truly refined and perfected sequel, but a sequel nonethless.

But is that bad? My answer is NO. I think that Halo 3 is, in many ways, the perfect ending for the trilogy (I never said saga). Why? Because Halo 3 was never supposed to be a reinvention of what made the other games so great. The way so many people are comparing the details of Bioshock to the undetailed huge areas of Halo, is absurd. It's like nobody remembers why Halo was revolutionary in the first place.

1- Halo is basically Halo 1 + Halo 2. It has all the weapons from both games, plus the new weapons such as the Spartan armor and the Spiker, all absolutely awesome to use, no exception. The dual needler option has been taken out, but aside from that, Bungie made a near-perfect game. They created within the Halo storyline, the most epic situations they were able to, with special attention to the use of vehicles, implementation of a few past gimmicks, fan-service, and alot of fantastic story. There were few restrictions, and they went all-out on this one.
2- Halo has a special design style, which would definetly look weird if the developers had taken a more "realistic" approach to it. They had already used a half-cartoony style in Halo 2, to increase graphical prowess with some things such as lighting and colours. If they went and changed it this time, fans would bitch, and it wouldn't have looked as good.
3- While games like Bioshock happen in tight hallways, with 6-7 enemies at most at the same time, Halo 3 happens in huge canyons, valleys, ancient architectural buildings, forests and sci-fi structures, where lots of vehicles can be used at the same time and a massive amount of explosions can be dealt at the many, many enemies that roam the place. OF COURSE the trees aren't gonna look like they're real. OF COURSE that rock won't have tiny amounts of sand particles covering it, and that water won't have floating objects that can break into a million pieces. Halo is about huge-scale battles, tanks crashing into each other, huge explosions and super soldiers that can jump like Michael Jordan. From the moment the game gives you a ship and puts six Banshees flying around you in the air while tanks with missile launchers are blasting at you from the ground, the graphics stop having to be realistic.
4- It Finishes the Fight. While people are arguing whether there will be a Halo 4 or not, I'll answer this. Are Master Chief's Adventures complete? Maybe not. Is the Halo saga, along with its angelic space stations, Convenant wars and Flood invasions over? YES. No matter what way you see it, this game finishes the fight you started in Halo 1. And it does so in a fantastic way.

So now you see, Halo 3 has some pretty tight competition right now, with games such as Bioshock and Gears of War having more detail and more beautiful stuff for the player to look at in tiny details. But it doesn't stop being Halo. And it doesn't stop at being absolutely kickass.

Licensed games: Why the quality change?

2007-08-15T14:21:00.000-07:00

One question I ask myself lately, is how low-quality certain games have been. There's a number of games that are simply destined to fail in nowadays' quality mark, but still sell like hotcakes. This is because of the industry accepting low-quality products as a way to reduce costs, and to increase developing speed. But that's found by simple, common deduction. These games are usually:

1- Games from a series that is appealing to a certain crowd or fanbase, but continue to offer the same experience/quality, decaying it, and ending up badly, no matter in what direction the series goes. This has happened to series like Spyro the Dragon, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Tomb Raider. Although the last two show some signs of wanting to move forward into quality, specially Tomb Raider.

2- Licensed games, made by sister companies which hold the right to make a game based on a certain popular license, such as a movie, cartoon or franchise, which will appeal to those who like that cartoon or movie, but it will be bad either because of low production costs, inexperienced programmers, not enough budget to check the bugs, releasing the game on a certain date thus constricting the time in order to MAKE the damn game, along with a wide number of other reasons.

And it's of licensed games which I would very much like to talk about today. Games which end up dissapointing, and gaining the reputation of "bad games", no matter what the franchise they're based in is. (a big exception could be Star Wars games, which already have their own presence in the gaming industry and generally end up good) They might have the potential, but they end up never serving the purpose that they could offer. Although there are some fine examples of how a licensed game should be done:

- Goldeneye 64 (N64)
- The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (XBox/PC)
- Spider-Man 2 (XBox/PS2/GC)
- The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction (XBox/PS2)
- The Darkness (XBox360/PS3)
- Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (Most consoles)
- Lego Star Wars
- DBZ: Budokai Tenkachi 2

And a few others which slip my mind right now. Thing is, for two generations of consoles that have gone by, and for the current generation we're going through, about 95% of games based on licenses have been of ridicullously low quality, and getting worse as other games get better.

This could have been something that was constant. But if we older gamers remember, the 8-bit and the 16-bit generations of consoles, saw some damn good licensed games. Remember when the cartoon-based games generally had the best graphics, because the sprites were modelled after the cartoon itself, as well as the animations? Let me give you a few examples:

Land of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse. A game for the 8-bit Master System and Game Gear systems, it featured vast, epic levels, and a great setting to follow through, with all the requirements of a good platform game.

Desert Demolition. An incredibly funny concept, which is basically a cartoon game with two very distinct and fun modes of gameplay. Using Road Runner will launch you in a Sonic-style levels, based on speed and how far you can get from Wile E., which will be using all his gadgets to catch you, complete with loops. Using Wile E. (and this I consider to be the true meat of the game) you'll be armed with several inventions, as you get through levels and try to outsmart Road Runner. It's all very faithful to the show, playing just like an episode. Though not every scenery is a desert wasteland, you'll never be bored in this game. The absence of music is quite a letdown, though. But we can't expect much from a show that didn't have any music to begin with.

Aladdin for the Genesis. This was a fantastic game, not just because it used very good sprites, distinct animation and colorful and well-built levels, but because it's an all-around great platform game. The kind you expect from decent companies nowadays.

So what happened? What made licensed games go from Alladin, to Superman 64? Capcom used to hold the license to several Disney games in the 80's/90's, so they were able to keep the quality bar reasoneably high. But I haven't heard of any good Looney Tunes games since "Sheep, Dog and Wolf" for the PS1. As games went into 3D, the cartoony sprite drawings were replaced by ugly, cel-shaded 3D models. And less work went into these, thinking that the franchises alone could hold them. Why the quality change, considering these games were among the best in the 16-bit period? Maybe the costs had to be lowered in order to make more profit. Maybe a more "xtreme" approach was needed to appeal to the younger crowd. I don't know. What I do know is, I want the good quality to return to the new games. For God's sake, sell your licenses to a well-reputed company, or something. Capcom's already making the Harvey Birdman game, which will be a blast. Get Konami, or Ubi Soft to make your games. Just give us back our quality.