Day 10: Game with the best gameplay

Mike

I promised I wouldn't write about Bayonetta again, so I'll go with my other choice

Serious Sam/EDF Series.

  

These games, while almost completely unrelated except in terms of a similar plot and very similar gameplay.

Basically, point your giant weapon at the evil invading alien and fire, while dodging the other 100 aliens that are swarming around you.

 

Lots of havoc and tons of fun. The engines of each game are built specifically for wide-spread one-on-50000 wars with little emphasis on physics or graphical quality. Basically, they cut out the unnecessary junk and get to the core of a mindless slaughter fest.

Each game is cheesy, ridiculous, over-the-top fun that many modern first-person shooters and third-person shooters seem to have abandoned nowadays. And I feel like that's really what is important.

Kam

This was another tough one to write. Because unlike most people, I have two separate standards for “best gameplay” 

1. Fun: something like Earth Defense Force, Metal Storm, Bastion, etc.

2. Tournament fun: Fine tuned competitive games like Starcraft, DOTA, etc. 

I have a feeling Mike's going to go for “fun” so I'll go with “tournament fun.” What is the most tournament fun video game of all time? 

Virtua Fighter 5. 

VF5 is the smartest designed fighting game ever. The only other two that I can give a complement of that magnitude are Guilty Gear XX: Accent Core and Vampire Savior. 

Sega AM2, continuing a trend of excellent games and game design, did two things in particular that might be the best idea for a fighting game ever.

1. One game designer makes one character. Think about that. You know how everyone has a personal preference of what kind of characters they like to play in fighting games? Imagine a fighting game character designed by someone who likes the same kind of characters you like. All their best traits, and things you love about that kind of character put into one awesomely dense, puzzle of a character with no right and wrong ways to play them? That's fighting game heaven right there.

Normally, this would be a case of “too many cooks spoiling a good soup” but the opposite happened, because every VF5 tune up has kept a remarkable, almost non-existent “tier list” just due to how well balanced the cast is. 

And hey, it's fun to watch in high level play. 

2. A loot system that ties into mastering the game. To me, this is the holy matrimony of the compulsive loot system of games like Diablo or Phantasy Star Online, and the learning and improving one's self of fighting games.

Basically, in the single player mode, on a random fight, an “item battle” will happen. If you win that “item battle” you get a cosmetic item for your character, or money to buy more cosmetic items.

I for one, love character design and making characters. Heck, my Eileen (not pictured) looks pretty cool but I only got her that way because I beat a lot of people, thus improving as a player.

It's honestly a win/win, not only do you get the satisfaction of learning how to kick people the right way, you get to develop practical, real strategies. Plus you get this fun little side thing that gives more incentive to keep playing. Best of all? These items aren't stat based, they never get in the way of actual competitive play.

And thus that ends part 7 of 46 of Kameron Monk's Virtua Fighter 5 tribute. Tomorrow, he'll be presenting a lecture at Cambridge University about Eileen's 6K

Day 9: The saddest video game moment.

Mike 

Metal Gear Solid 4

 WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS.

DON'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YOU.

...BECAUSE I JUST DID.

Say what you will about MGS4. It's either the greatest conclusion to one of the most awesome video game sagas in recent memory or the blunder of the century as an interactive movie with minimal gameplay.

I personally love it, but that's not what's important right now.

What's important is that it still manages to deliver an emotional story in spite of yanking control away from the player constantly. One of the defining moments for me was the Microwave Hallway scene near the end of the game.

Throughout the entire game, Snake is constantly dealing with is mortality and eventual early demise. In spite of the fact that everything is against Snake; he's aging rapidly, he's going to die from a terminal disease, and and his past is quickly catching up with him, he fights on anyway: well past the point where any normal human would break. Snake continually fights even though he's slowly killing himself. His body is weak and failing, but Snake's iron will keeps him alive.

In this way, the Microwave Hallway is sort of an allegory of Snake's entire struggle.

In this portion of the game, you are encouraged to mash the triangle button to keep Snake moving through the deadly hallway, Snake being wounded and trudging along at a painfully slow pace. As Snake goes further and further into the hallway, the electronics in his suit malfunction and stun him from time to time, and his health bar continues to decrease. Each time you get to what you think it the end, it opens and reveals an even longer passageway.

Eventually, Snake's health bar completely depletes and Snake collapses on the ground. The player is led to believe that this Game Over, and they'll have to try again...

But then...

Snake keeps moving, and a bar underneath his health bar begins to drain instead. This is his "Psyche" bar. At this point, Snake should be physically dead, but he's so fucking determined that he'll continue forward even if his entire body was reduced to a quivering mess of Jello.

I dunno, that raw passion that fueled Snake to keep going in the face of certain death really spoke to me. He'd give everything to see his mission through, even it killed him.

Kam

Mother 3

 

 There's this part in...(sniff) Mother...(sniffle) 3, where the main character. (sniff) He, uh (choke)

I can't do this, it's just so, (sniff sniff)
I need to be alone.  

Day 8: Your Favorite Soundtrack

Mike

 Bayonetta by:   Hiroshi Yamaguchi, Masami Ueda, Erina Niwa, Takayasu Sodeoka, Naoto Tanaka, Rei Kondoh, Norihiko Hibino, Takahiro Izutani, Yoshitaka Suzuki, Hiroshi Kawaguchi, and Mitsuharu Fukuyama 

Fly me to the Moon: 

It has a fantastic variety of music that really helps keep the mood of the game. Especially some of the Angelic themes for the later levels that take place in Paradiso.

The boss themes are exceptionally fantastic, each one seeming like a grand orchestral choir. It really fits the intensity of the battles with the Angelic theme.

The Greatest Jubilee:

Rider of Light: 

The regular battle theme, however, was a tad bit grating. I can only listen to Mysterious Destiny so many times before it gets annoying. However, it grew on me with time.



Bayonetta also has several remixes of classic Sega game themes imbedded in the soundtrack.

Afterburner Climax

All in all, I really love the effort that went into the soundtrack, and that it feels varied enough to fit a range of events while sticking with a theme so that very few songs seem out of place.

Each song is also fantastic to listen to.

Kam

Battle Garegga- Manabu Namiki 

This one doesn't need an intro, I just want to list all the soundtracks that my choice just barely beat out.

Chrono Cross, the entire Guilty Gear series, Bastion, VVVVVV, Cave Story, Beatmania IIDX: Ad Nausea, Kirby Super Star, The Last Blade 2, Raf World, R-Type Delta, God Hand.. and so, so, many more.

However, this could switch out at anytime depending on my mood, so without further ado, let's talk about

Battle Garegga

Oh, my god I love this soundtrack. It's gritty, heavy, scratchy, loud, and pulse pounding. Personally, I think it's perfect shmup music. So perfect, I tend to get myself killed while I listen to it, because 96% of the time, I shoot, bomb and dodge to the beat.

I get a little too into it.
 

It's a kind of sound that isn't the most common in games, but yet at the same time fits like a glove. Of all the tracks, everyone seems to list “Stab and Stomp” as the best song, but I think Fly to the Leaden Sky and Subversive Awareness are far and away the best.  

Seriously, even if you have no interest in obscure, stupidly difficult/ hard-to-obtain maniac shooters, you own it to someone or maybe yourself to listen to this soundtrack. It's not only (in his words) Manabu Namiki's greatest soundtrack, but probably the best shmup soundtrack ever.

I went there Touhou, you and your trumpets.   

Day 7: Your favorite relationship

Before we get started, we as a committee of writers changed this from “favorite couple” to “favorite relationship” because games don't really have much of a romantic side... yet.

But they do have relationships that aren't really traditional. Which of course, makes them interesting. Alright with that out of the way, here's our picks.

Mike

Bayonetta and Luka 

I like Bayonetta and Luka. It's a fun relationship that doesn't expect to be taken seriously. It's cheesy and full of ridiculous writing and exposition dumps every five minutes, but I liked seeing it develop over the course of the game.

    

They aren't an example of a great romantic couple like Squall and Rinoa is widely considered to be, but whatever.

 

I really enjoyed some of the little back-and-forth between the two. And it was nice to see that Bayonetta does care about Luka as much as she enjoys messing with him.

 Point is, seeing the two characters on screen together was rather charming, and made me smile. And that wasn't something I expected from a game like Bayonetta.

Kam

Terry Bogard and Rock Howard from Garou: Mark of The Wolves

Pictured: Rock Howard (left) Terry Bogard (right)

As much as Terry Bogard is my favorite fighting game character, he's a complete airhead. I mostly like him out of narm charm, and compared to nearly any other (male) fighting game character who is either a:

> Prick with an attitude
> Chaste Monk
> Hotblooded yelling guy.

his head in the clouds easy-goingness/love of life is still unique.

Anyway, that's beside the point, to really explain why I like this relationship, I have to give you some SNK fighting game history. Here's the long and short.

At the start of the Fatal Fury series, Terry's dad was killed by this final boss corporate asshole Geese Howard; (it's okay to laugh) Terry, after witnessing this as a kid, decided to kick a bunch of ass, learn street kung-fu-do and murderize Geese by kicking him off his tower of capitalism.

Eventually Geese came back to life like seven or eight times or some shit, (fighting games are stupid) and Terry killed him off for good.

After doing so, he adopted Geese's son, Rock Howard, (again, totally okay to laugh) I don't know how he did this, because Terry should be wanted for murder, but whatever, video game logic.

Pictured: Dawwwwwwwwwwwwww 

Then in the (unfortunately) last entry in the Fatal Fury series, a time skip happens and Rock and Terry have aged considerably. They enter a new tournament called "Maximum Mayhem" where Rock learns of his true dad, and his uncle shows up, putting...

Anyway, it gets more complicated from there, I should actually get into the real reason why I like this relationship.

1. They actually grew up Terry. Yeah he's still heads in the sky, America Southtown F-Yeah,
blah-de-da. But in a weird way, he matured while maintaining who he was.

This is seen in his new appearance, who went from looking like a hot Dominoes pizza guy, to this modern... grizzled, no that's not right, to this modern, jaded, no that's not right either. Uh, cool middle aged guy who isn't grizzled or jaded? Yeah that works!

2. Then there's Rock, who's in-game movelist consists of half Geese Howard moves and Half Terry Bogard moves. In story terms, that means he's trying to not succumb to his darkside, but at the same time, he can't view Terry as a good guy, because well, he murdered his dad in cold blood, but at the same time Terry is the one who raised him...

...you see where I'm going with this?

Anyway, that's what's interesting to me, the gray and gray morality. Plus it doesn't hurt that Terry and Rock subvert a typical father/son relationship itself.

Rock, despite what the fans say, is not an emo teen, sure he angsts, but in the events of Mark of The Wolves, he's more just in a bad situation that's taking it's toll on him, rather than angsting for drama.

Pictured: SNK being amazing at their craft

And Terry has this existential problem of the fact that he killed Rock's dad, which brings the question, is Terry actually as bad as Geese or did Rock grow up this way because Terry raised him right...

...okay I'm reading way too much into this.

Mark of The Wolves is an awesome fighting game  with a really cool father/son relationship,  that's still something "story based” games haven't pulled off as well.

But to get back to my honestly again, if I saw this relationship in my current state of mind, I would of laughed my ass off. It's plagued with a hilarious amount of SNKgrish, and some truly terrible translation. But, 12 year old me was a little less jaded, and could see it for what it is, and that it's a step forward to the eventual day that a fighting game tells an awesome story.

I can't wait for when that happens.

 

Catch up: Mike Edition

Day 5: A game that I would like to play:

 Metal Wolf Chaos.

 

It's a very oddball third person action game that has you control the President of the United States Michael Wilson Jr. who pilots a star-spangled mecha in order to do battle with the treacherous Vice President RICHAAAAARD! The game, despite having the most awesome plot ever conceived, never made it over to the US. It might be due to the fact that some missions involve destroying some DC landmarks. It's a damn shame, because it's already got an awesomely bad English dub in the style of the original RE, so it wouldn't take much to localize it. The game can be imported and played on a USA Xbox, but it's rather difficult to find now.

Oddly enough, it's probably the most patriotic game ever to come out of Japan, and it's not in a sarcastic fashion. President Wilson constantly yells about 'Justice always prevailing over evil" and has an almost inexhaustible warehouse of beatings and bad one-liners to dish out. I can tell that this game was made for me, if only I could play it..

Day 6: A game character I find annoying:

Mr. X from Lego Stunt Rally

 

Lego Stunt Rally is a game that is all about building fun tracks and racing on them from an isometric perspective. As you can imagine, you'd probably spend a lot of time in the track creator. Considering that the game is made for a younger audience, the game's creators would probably need a guide to remind the player what each track piece does EVERYTIME YOU HOVER YOUR MOUSE OVER IT. And that is Mr. X.

There was an option to toggle him off after you'd basically memorized the function of every track piece and didn't need his directions anymore. It didn't really help, because every fifteen or so minutes, he'd pop in to remind you how to turn his hints on again.

He's kind of the epitome of "Stop Helping Me".

Day 6: Most annoying character

Brandon

Ashley: Resident Evil 4

The kids are disco dancing, theyre tired of Rock n’ Roll. Don’t bother telling them that drum machine aint got no soul.

 

First and foremost, I hate hate HAAAAAATE this chick. Now that that’s out of the way, maybe a little reason why?
Reason 1: She’s the President’s Daughter. This basically means that through the entire game, and probably her entire life, she carries herself around with this all important “Just who do you think you are?” egotistic attitude that wears its welcome out very, very quickly. Coupled with the fact that her sheltered lifestyle has left her to be completely useless in a survival situation, many of my Game Overs came from blowing off steam by blowing off her various body parts.
Reason 2: Damsel in Distress Syndrome. Her hoity toity-ness completely disappears to be replaced by high pitched screaming and cowering in one spot at the drop of a hat. You would think this would be helpful, cowering and running away from the danger lest she get injured or kidnapped. Nope. Her plan to live through this pseudo-zombie nightmare is to cower in one spot, and that one spot only. A crazy Spaniard could be swinging an axe two inches from her face and she wouldn’t so much as twitch. At least not until her head decides to have a messy affair with the axe and leaves her body to twitch about on the ground in sadness/lifelessness.
Reason 3: “The Grateful Princess”. The entire game shes this intolerable whiney bitch who can’t even climb down a god damned ladder on her own. But the second everything is said and done with, she almost immediately turns off the annoying and tries to “subtly” invite you into her bed. Her the whiney college student, and you the depressed single-expression pretty boy FBI agent. Actually that might not have turned out too bad. She certainly displays a talent for screaming out your name at an ear rupturingly high pitch throughout the game. So.

Kam

Tira: Soulcalibur IV version

 

I don't have the brain cells to talk mean about something right now. I'll leave all my work to one youtube video.

If you sat through that you hate yourself.

Day 5: A game you desperately want to play

Brandon


Dragon Age: Origins

Hello again, to all my friends. Together, we can play some rock and roll.




While being someone who does not own a single ‘Next-Gen’ console, there are an awful lot of games I am missing out on. Sure there are plenty that I’ll get to play a few fleeting hours of at a friend’s house on occasion, but for me the majority is experiences only through trailers and hilarious references that I will never understand. My knowledge of Dragon Age Origins is similarly limited. Apparently there’s some chick named Morgan or something and she’s a total bitch who fucks everything up. This is what I know from a few conversations I’ve heard, and is pretty much all I know about the series as a whole. Although with Origins I had the opportunity of watching a friend of mine play through the last few missions of the game and then the final boss fight. He sided with the mages (Though I’m not sure why, seeing how unbearable the main mage sidekick was) and the Templar chick was a bitch. He had been playing as a primarily good guy knight sort of player, but once he finished he started a new game almost immediately, this time as a mage who was probably the biggest douche in the entire game. We got up to meeting the narrator (whose name escapes me) for the first time and that is all I remember. So from what I can tell it’s your basic morality sandbox type of game (Fallout, Mass Effect, Etc.) set in a fantasy world with some very blatant racism and religious overtones. Looks like fun.


Kam


Radiant Silvergun



I'm pretty happy with the games I've played. When you play 600 or so, you tend to notice trends, design choices of certain eras of gaming, all that kind of stuff. That being said, I still really, really, really want to play Radiant Silivergun.

Most of this stems from my unhealthy-fanboy devotion to developer Treasure, but none the less I feel like I need to honor them by playing their “magnum opus.”

Plus, it looks like an awesome take on some of the stuff that kind bugs me about shmups. Having six weapons instead of like, two or three, in a maniac shooter seems to be an awesome way to make a ship have the tools to deal with bullet hell. Plus, one of them is a badass looking sword that absorbs bullets.

So yeah, Silvergun, it's probably not going to be exactly what the hype sells it as, but Treasure's had a good thing going. Now I gotta find an Xbox 360 to kidnap.

(Stares at all friends who have Xbox 360.)