Saturday, December 17, 2005

Klonoa means "I love you"

Ok, that's a lie. I skipped every second of the miserable story, though, so I can only guess what it really means. If you break the word down Latin style (which I speak fluently) you get lon, which means "of or relating to an Eskimo" combined with koa, which is sort of like a bean or small licorice whip. Etymologically, a game based on Klonoa, using my definitions of its roots, would be about an Eskimo Bean of some sort. I guess that's pretty accurate... explains that filthy final boss at least.

Anyway, I guess I should at least mention what this game is before I lose all of my readers (too late!). It's called Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil and, if I had to give its heart some sort of metallic property, I would say gold. Yes, this lovable Eskimoan Bean has a heart of gold that no mere hooker could match. And while others are scurrying around for Phantoms or X360s or whatever toy is hot this holiday, I have been sitting back and reaping the rewards of being dreadfully late to the party. Yes, Klonoa 2 came out four years ago, yet is unrivaled by any other 2D platformer I have played this generation. I'll leave you to mull over what other games in this genre I have played while I jump to the next paragraph.

I've never played the first Klonoa or the GBA title released earlier this year, so I will have to meditate for a second to remember a game to compare this to. Ah yes. There was a title on the PSX that bragged about being able to combine 3D graphics with traditional 2D gameplay. I remember getting excited about it because, simply put, there weren't many games in this genre that were actually good last generation. But lo and behold, when Pandemonium finally came out, it was chunky (like soup, not peanut butter) and unimaginative. I grew tired of it before the first night of my rental was up, never to bat an eye at its deceitful face again.


Not my drawing but I do wish it was


Why bring up a game that I hardly remember and wasn't that good anyway? Because I have been waiting for a decade to finally play something like this. The best comparison I can think of from this generation is Viewtiful Joe, a game I also loved but in a much different way. Viewtiful Joe had a similar style presentation, but it wasn't nearly as imaginative and the action was rarely of the platforming variety. Klonoa 2 is unlike anything else out there because it gets what makes running and jumping so darn fun. You only have two buttons to work with here: a jump button (duh) and a weapon button. You wield some sort of magnetic yo-yo thing that lassos enemies. Once captured, you can toss them or throw them down to perform a double jump.

Somehow Namco made a 10 hour game that never gets stale using only those moves. Amazing. The challenge comes partly from traditional navigation through levels, but mostly from puzzle solving. There are a ton of little puzzles in this game. I would love to describe how they work but I'm not sure if it would make any sense. For instance, you sometimes have to figure out how to hit five crystals within a second of each other so they are all lit up at once. You do this by planning the fastest way to completion and then make the requisite perfect jumps and throws the puzzle demands. Simple, yes, but no two puzzles are exactly alike and more than one left me scratching my poor little head.

Though the gameplay is top notch, what really got my attention are the graphics. This really looks like a 3D game. The camera swoops and pans, cannons fire you into the background or foreground, paths bend. And yet, you never lose sight of your goal. Even when the camera hovers near your feet or just in front of you looking backwards, it still makes logical sense how to move and interact. It sounds annoying that a camera so free-minded cannot be controlled by the player, but it is never out of place and usually provides a fairly picturesque view.

I know I shouldn't be filling up people's minds with all this talk of games that came out a half decade ago, but Klonoa 2 is just a fantastic experience. It seemed like I was ignoring my PS2 since I got it, amassing only five games in the first three years I owned it. But now that the Gamecube is dead (at least until three certain games come out next year) and my Xbox is in the hands of some unfortunate child, the only console I have is my PS2. Next on my plate is Kingdom Hearts with God of War and Shadow of the Colossus on the way. It's a good time to be a gamer - with new hardware coming out I can get all the classic games I missed the first time for rock bottom prices!

Friday, December 16, 2005

Guest Review - Infected

The premise of Infected is pretty common fare: Zombies infected with an unknown virus have started wreaking havoc all over New York City during the Christmas season. You play officer Stevens, discovered to have a special blood type that is not only resistant to the infection but also deadly to those already infected. The idea is simple - use you gun to shoot the infected until they become weak enough for you to blast with your specialized "blood gun", thereby splattering them. Basically, kill the zombies.

Her's where Planet Moon takes over. For those of you unfamiliar with the developer of Armed and Dangerous or Giants: Citizen Kabuto, put them on your map now. Infected follows suit with its predecessors as a tremendously gratifying third person shooter with simple controls and concepts that can be milked for hours. And it's hysterically funny. Throughout the game Dr. Schaeffer, the scientist working on the infection, and the Commisioner, give you audio updates as to where the infection has spread; the Commissioner's breakdown alone had me rolling. The whole game is infused with this wicked sense of humor, from the twisted and bloody Santa Zombies to the far-too-happy news anchor.

The basic mechanic of the game is the aforementioned combination of standard weapons (pistol, shotgun, machine gun, RPG, and BMFG) and your blood gun. Shoot the Infected until they turn red, then hit them with your blood to splat them. Planet Moon then adds another layer of depth by letting you chain as many bad guys as possible to provide the maximum amount of splat. Get two or more red infected close to each other, splat one, and they all go pop in a spectacularly gory explosion. Any infected that aren't red yet turn that way if another is splattered close to them. Passing a level requires you to obtain a medal by meeting requirements like a certain number of combos, clearing all zones in a specific amount of time, rescuing a certain number of civilians, or a combination of these. Getting the medals allow you to earn money to buy new weapons or upgrades. To keep things balanced you always start out each mission with only the pistol - the more you splat the bigger the gun you get to use, and let me tell you, the BMFG is a blast, pun intended.

This is a great example of what a mobile game should be - most zones can be cleared in a matter of minutes, but to get that elusive gold medal will usually require you to play some sections more than once. The difficulty ramps up nicely from easy to all out mayhem and the action never get old. I found myself on several occasions trying to chain up as many zombies as I could just to create the biggest splat possible. The controls are well laid out with the lock-on feature only occasionally not locking onto the target I wanted. The music, although fitting, took some getting used to. Made up of Slipknot, Fear Factory, and the like, it usually ends up sounding like a lot a screaming, which is oddly perfect when the action heats up.

As for your character, you can customize any of thirteen avatars, or use any of the twelve unlockables (including another famous Majesco heroine) in either the single player or multiplayer. Winning multiplayer matches (either Ad Hoc or Infrastructure) infects the loser's game with the winner's avatar. That avatar will then show up during certain "infected" single player missions. You can then track how far your infection has spread throughout the world. Unfortunately, the one weak link is sadly the coolest idea the game has. The multiplayer usually boils down to who sees who first, which lead to a lot of frustration and a lot of that schoolyard moment of, "No way, I totally shot you first!!!" On top of that I had some difficulty finding infrastructure games.

Having said that the single player is well worth playing though if only to hear the closing song "In the Heart of Every Zombie There's a Man". The pace is fast and furious, the weapons power up properly, and the bloody explosions (especially the really big chains) are tremendously gratifying. Got five minutes? Go back and get the Gold on an older mission. Mobile games need to be like this - quick, rewarding, and replayable. The funny helps a lot, too. And like I said earlier, if you missed Armed and Dangerous on Xbox, you can pick it up at bargain prices theses days and laugh at home as well as on the go.

Written by Greg. Thanks Greg!

Monday, December 12, 2005

It all makes sense

If you're looking at the date line of this column, just know that the extremely late hour listed is slightly deceiving. It says 4am but that is just when these first few sentences are finding their way on to the page. I figure it will be much closer to 5am when I finally wrap this thing up. In other words, it is very late, much later than I am usually up (especially since I only got 5 hours of sleep last night so I could drive 90 minutes to watch the 49ers lose by 38 points), but I do have a good reason: I finally finished reading Bill Simmon's first book. The Great Bill Simmons. Ok, that may be a little much, but he is my favorite writer. "Now I Can Die in Peace" is a collection of his columns through the years, chronicling all the pain he endured as a Red Sox fan before they finally won a championship. It's a moving book because I did watch every inning of the 2003 and 2004 playoffs. I was able to feel the crushing defeat of a Game 7 loss two years ago and the unreal comeback from an 0-3 deficit to beat the evil Yankees and eventually win the World Series the following season. Obviously, this isn't relevant in a video game column. But it made me realize that, while baseball and video games are just stupid diversions to some people, to fans they are much more than that. I spend way too many hours each week playing games, writing about games, reading about games, and arguing about games. I dream about games even. And while my borderline obsession (borderline? Who am I kidding?) may seem sad to people who have never really played a game in their life, to me it is a perfectly acceptable reason to get out of bed in the morning or have something concrete to look forward to one year from now.

The difference between sports and video games is that, when your favorite team comes through in sports you have undeniable visual evidence to back it up. The 49ers of 1994 were the best team in the league. They went 16-3 and won the Super Bowl. This is a fact. It doesn't matter if they win 3 games in the next 76 years, they still won a Super Bowl January 29, 1995, and I watched every second. (For those who care, I actually remembered this date. I'm quite proud of this actually. It's like being married for a decade when your wife quizzes you on what kind of ice cream she ordered on your first date. "Dark Chocolate mixed with Pumpkin," you cooly reply.

But when I say Super Mario Kart is the best game I have ever played or try to rally a group of disgruntled gamers to take over the EA offices, people look at me and shrug. It's just my opinion, right?

Well Perfect Dark Zero is the video game equivalent of a team falling to the bottom of the barrel, being left for dead, and then somehow rising from the depths of purgatory to win a championship. Honestly, after four years of mediocrity, with their best game being a simple 2D platformer named Sabre Wulf that no one played, even I had doubts that Rare would be able to regain their form. Sure, they used to make classic titles, but how much help did they actually receive from Nintendo? And how many people actually left? Why did those people end up leaving? Heck, why was Nintendo so willing to sell them? Would Microsoft force them to make games they didn't want to make? We all saw what happened when Nintendo forced them to port Dinosaur Planet to the Gamecube and slap Star Fox characters in it - would Rare just crap out substandard games until MS finally cut them loose? Would Rare ever make a worthwhile console game again?

I may have been the only guy in the world who honestly though Perfect Dark Zero had a chance to be great, but I certainly wouldn't have bet the lives of 37 German Shepard puppies that they would come through. I was like an overzealous father who showed up at all of my kid's piano recitals but secretly hoped they wouldn't mess up. Nothing would be more crushing to me than have PDZ appear on the scene, completely suck, and have to live through many more months and years of people complaining that Rare had, in fact, lost it and would never take back whatever "It" is. Thank God they came through with Perfect Dark Zero.

This is the part of the column where people see I love PDZ, skip everything else I have to say, and just post a nasty comment. Feel free to do it. I'm sure any negative thing you will say about PDZ will be true and indefensible. For those who haven't yet played this game, allow me to remove any doubt - this game has a ton of problems. Tens of problems, maybe even hundreds. In fact, it has more problems than most bad games on the market. It seems like for every good point I could make, someone could find a negative aspect of the same thing to complain about. So I'm not going to write about that. I don't want to defend this game. There's no point. PDZ is like a band, any band at all. Think about your favorite band. Can you explain why you like them? If you play them for someone and they sneer, can you defend them? Is there any way you could possibly say something to make someone appreciate them? Perfect Dark Zero may be the best example of art in video games simply because, like any piece of art, it has supporters and detractors and the two sides will never meet. In fact, I can't think of any game that has so polarized gamers. Journalists are split, casual gamers are split, and even system loyalists are split. PDZ is like the movie Closer - whether you love it or hate it, you have a strong opinion and will never be swayed.

I could care less if people hate PDZ, though. I've played it. I know it's great. And I am just so happy that Rare is finally back that nothing could bring me down now.

If you're wondering, I am finally posting this at 4:50am. I have no problem with Nick slyly posting his PDZ column five hours before me. No problem at all.

Sunday, December 11, 2005

The interweb, starring Perfect Dark Zero

It's not like I haven't been playing Perfect Dark Zero, it's just a tough issue to bring up. I thought that the rollercoaster of apparent quality would end once the game came out, but my guts still churn with indecision when partaking in it. For every brilliantly cool feature there are three niggling archaic ones. For every hard-fought, skillful kill there are two completely cheap, unexpected deaths. And for every brick surface that looks like you could lean forward and touch it, there's a hallway texture that looks like a family of dead possums were used for wallpaper.

It also leaves a ton of the user's shoulders when playing online. Quickmatching is fine, but you'll likely find yourself playing the same deathmatch on the same map with the same uncommunicative pricks a dozen times over. If you go through the trouble of setting it up yourself, and know what you're doing, it's an entirely different game. Setting up a human vs. bots match with a couple of your buddies is great. Throw some jetpacks in and set it so it adds another bot whenever someone joins the human team, and you can play for hours. Speaking of bots, they're definitely the saving, steadily entertaining grace in an otherwise completely inconsistent experience. I've tried to explain to several people why I don't think Halo would work with bots - the choices are too varied, the combat is too dynamic, and the required movements too subtle - but in a fairly linear setup like PDZ, they work really well.

As I said, it's difficult wrapping your head around why PDZ isn't better than it should be, and at the same time why it remains to be compelling. Another thought I've been toying with is that Rare rely too heavily on their gameplay fundamentals, putting all of the weight of the experience on unstable ground. The controls and combat are far from perfect, so putting the burden on them just isn't fair. There are plenty of cool options like cover that works well in context, but the lazy level design expects you to create thrilling situations on your own. It's not fun whatsoever unless you make it fun, which is so atypical for a shooter such as this.

It's really frustrating talking about it. I do enjoy the game; under the right set of circumstances, it's great. It's just so tough so appreciate something with so many contradictions, something that almost seems to be trying to piss you off at times. I would like to commit a final judgement to myself, I really would, but I can quite easily see myself throwing up my arms and being done with it one day. I do know one thing - it won't last. As much as they don't deserve each other's comparison, this is not Halo. By any stretch. And there is no way in crap that I will be playing PDZ a year from now. I can't tell you specifically why, but as soon as I have a more specific theory I'll be sure to let you know...

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