Soul Calibur IV Review

Platform: Xbox 360

A tale of souls and swords, eternally retold . . . with progressively skimpier outfits, heftier amounts of exposition, and cheesier commentary. You all remember Soul Calibur II (or Soul Calibur for you old school folks), right? Now those were some damn fun games. You also remember Soul Calibur III, right? Well, I do, and I have a bone to pick with that turd (though not today). Using these two games for comparison points, it’s safe to say that SC4 is more fun that getting raped with a jackhammer, but less fun than being on the other end of said jackhammer.

I certainly hope that an explanation of what a fighting game is would be unnecessarily to anyone reading this. Why did I just say that? I’m not sure, actually. It’s not like I’d explain it even if it was necessary. Regardless, I’ll at least say how Soul Calibur is different from other fighting games. Unlike in, say, Marvel vs. Capcom, you don’t jump around like a lunatic and press 30-something button combos to whip out a laser cannon the size of Belgium. Instead, you can encircle your opponent strictly on the horizontal plane, and your attacks actually take off portions of your opponent’s health bar in increments larger than nanometers. That said, like in most fighting games, button mashing will get you pretty far in Soul Calibur IV, so odds are that unless you spend weeks memorizing the move list instead of studying for your finals, the little 13 year-old shit spamming Kilik’s long-range attacks will have just as much of a chance of winning as you do.

Who’s Kilik, you ask? Well, answering that question would involve delving into the plot, something that I’d rather not do. Besides, it’s not that important. There are two swords: a good one made of crystal and wielded by a pretty boy knight and a bad one made of flesh with a giant eyeball in the middle that’s wielded by a crazy, demonic suit of living armor. Shit happens, people find excuses to get involved, and they proceed to beat the shit out of each other. There, are you satisfied? I’m not gonna go into detail on the characters because I frankly don’t give a damn about them, and neither should you.

The game throws the usual array of modes at you: story, arcade, online vs, and a special mode, among others. The throwaway special mode for this game is called the Tower of Lost Souls, but more on that later. The only thing special about the arcade mode is an inevitable battle against the Apprentice from that horrible Force Unleashed game. Regardless, he is one cheap motherfucker. Really now, there’s not much you can do when your opponent shoots lightning from his fingertips aside from rolling over and dying. On a different note, it seems as though the creators learned their lesson from Soul Calibur III and decided not to shoehorn in a stupid pseudo-RTS mode. Unfortunately, they took a page from Soul Calibur II’s Weapon Master mode instead, pitting you in combat against ridiculously powerful enemies with equally ridiculous conditions for unlocking shit, so if you want those cat ears, you’re gonna have to fight Nightmare on steroids.

My last paragraph was getting a bit long, so I’m going to make a new one even though there’s no big change in topic. If you’re a stickler about this sort of thing, you can suck my metaphorical balls. Moving on to SC4’s online mode, I can say that, at the very least, it works. To put it bluntly, I fucking hate the interface. It’s a bare-bones set of menus that offers very little in the way of details or options. You can search for a game automatically, which will almost always fail since the system looks around for roughly five seconds before it throws its hands up and claims there aren’t any open games. Well, a peak into manual matchmaking always proves that there are, in fact, many open games. Thus, you shouldn’t trust the computer because it tells filthy lies. Even more annoying is how the game deals with lag. Matches can only go as fast as the slowest player, so if you end up playing some kid in Uzbekistan on an AOL trial, it’s curtains for you. Therefore, I’d recommend playing online only if you plan to fight your friends or you’re one of those million or so bastards that want to show off that “totally original” Ichigo Kurosaki they made in character creation.

Speaking of which, character creation from Soul Calibur III makes a comeback, and there’s a fairly diverse selection of clothing, weapons, hairstyles, etc. Unfortunately, using this mode to create characters for the Tower of Lost Souls mode is an exercise in frustration and monotony. Each item has stats associated with it, including those that alter your damage, health, defense, and whatnot. The problem with trying to maximize your stats is twofold. For one, there’s no way to organize items by their attributes, forcing you to wade through the default list. Secondly, the game lags like hell every time you equip or unequip an item. A different problem stems from the fact that everything is really fucking expensive. Seriously, since when do cat ears cost 10,000 gold? God damn inflation. By the way, if you’re going to make a character, for Christ’s sake, don’t take Zasalamel’s style, slap on a bunch of black armor with skulls on it, and name your dude “Death”. It’s not cool, it’s gay. Really gay. Millions of Linkin Park-listening emo fucktarts had the same idea, and they’re not rockin’ either.

I know it’s been fun folks, but this long-overdue review must come to a close. Before that, however, I’d like to say one last thing: Soul Calibur IV isn’t a bad game by any stretch. At the same time, it is also supremely unrefined, which prevents it from reaching greatness. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to building a team of lizardmen dressed as the Village People.

Rating: 3/5

PS: Next up is Fable II. Hopefully, it’ll still be relevant by the time I finish the review.

Youtube and I: Big Bill Hell's

Mysterious Adventures in Fandom.

It has been a while internet, and it is good to be back. I have been thinking about anime, japan, and the fandom scene as a whole recently. It seems that there are a few types of fans out there that I have observed. The first type is the typical anime fan, the kind that, after one look, you cant tell there is at least a 50% chance they like anime. The kind of people that flaunt their hobby because it is fairly unique. This category also includes the Japanophiles and weaboos, who would gladly trade their white skin for yellow.

Next is the closet fan. We have all seen them, the people who look totally out of place at a con, or the people that see you reading manga and whisper to you that it is a good one once they have made sure no one is looking. Because us fans are weird right? They look like everyone else but feel the need to hide their interests in order to fit in.

Third, the group that I fit into. I like Anime, very few of my friends do, because I don't feel my friends need all the same hobbies as me. At the same time i do not hide that i like japan, and everything about it. I don't dedicate my life to it but i treat it as one of my favorite hobbies and interests. Hoping to one day go to Japan but not set all my goals toward that.

That may seem like a pretty shallow analysis of fans, and I am sure there are hundreds of sub-groups in there, but this is what I see.

What brought me to this train of thought was my recent trips to my high schools Japan Club, or as it really is "people who mainly just like anime" club. I see all of these types of people in there. It is actually kind of cool to see some closet fans talk to some super pumped up mega fans. It turns out that a lot of us knew each other but didn't even know we all liked anime. Anyways........ that is it i guess..

Crackdown Review

Platform: Xbox 360

Once upon a time, the cops screwed up so badly that gangsters managed to take over the world. The government then concentrated all its resources in a single city to prepare for a counterattack. As a part of this, they also began to make super soldiers. The sheer ridiculousness of this plot aside, you essentially play as a superpowered assassin. Don’t think of this as Assassin’s Creed, though, because this game forces you to be about as subtle as a howitzer. Then again, Creed wasn’t very good at that either.

The whole point of Crackdown is to kill all the leaders of the three gangs: Los Muertos (Mexicans), the Volk (Eastern Europeans), and the Shia Gen (Asians). While most of your victims make sense (they provide supplies, manpower, or information), some of them are just bizarre. For instance, one of the Los Muertos leaders supes up cars. Uhh . . . okay. That’s fucking dangerous. Luckily, these guys hide in very discreet places like oil rigs, the only skyscraper with a door, and the gym, so you don’t have to look long.

Control-wise, the commands are assigned to good positions, but the effects of pressing the buttons aren’t so sensible. For instance, pressing the melee attack button will make you kick, but you can’t control said kick for shit. Instead, you’ll probably miss by a mile, look like a ballerina in doing so, and either fall off a ledge to your horrible demise or get blown to smithereens by a grenade or four. Also, as the game progresses, you are able to jump higher and higher. Unfortunately, the controls lack sensitivity to the point that your choices are either to tap the jump button to hop like a morbidly obese ten year old playing basketball or to mash that fucker down and launch into orbit. Further complicating matters is the level design. As buildings get taller and taller, they become progressively more deformed, making them ridiculously difficult to climb. You’ll often find yourself slamming into an extended ledge or being stranded on the side of a building because the architect was on crack and decided to model it after one of Picasso’s faces,

Fortunately, there are ways to play such that you can avoid platforming. It’s called walking, and it’s a great way to get shot in Crackdown. Regardless, what you can’t avoid are gang showdowns. After you spend an hour or two pretending you’re Spiderman, you’ll probably stumble upon a gang hideout. At this point, your options are to either break down the front door and kill everything in sight or sneak in through the back door and kill everything in sight. Early on, this is simple enough since all you’re up against are a bunch of pea shooters and the occasional grenade. Things escalate, however, to the point that every schmuck with two hands touts 800 round machine guns, heat seekers, or cluster grenades. Combined with the fact that whenever you get blown up, you enter ragdoll physics mode and flop about helplessly for an eternity, you’ll often find yourself flying off rooftops while on fire and unable to do a damn thing about it. Hell, if you’re really unlucky, the enemies will chain heat seekers to juggle you in the air. Also, where the fuck is your backup? There’s a damn cop car on every street and the lazy bastards can’t stop by to lend you a hand?

On a quick note, one of the major features of the game is the ability to boost your skills. As the voiceover guy says, “Skills for kills, agent. Skills for kills.” I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that none of those s’s are z’s. For instance, as you kill more people with grenades, your explosives skill goes up, which makes your explosions a tad larger. When maxed out, you can annihilate entire intersections with a single rocket, which is pretty damn cool. On a less cool note, you can become a better driver by running enemies over. Yeah . . . good luck with that.

Let me get this out of the way: Crackdown is a damn fun game to fuck around in. To that end, all you have to do is download the Keys to the City pack to have access to a slew of cheats. When your car is invincible and goes 200+ mph, there’s no way you can’t have fun, unless you’re completely dull, in which case you can go play Too Human and tell yourself everything’s all right. All that aside, this is one frustrating son of a bitch to play seriously. Climbing poorly designed apartments and serving as little more than a volleyball for a bunch of trigger-happy gangsters to spike with rockets isn’t my idea of a fun time. Look elsewhere if you’re one of those obsessive perfectionist types that only live for plot and collectibles.

Rating: 3/5

Too Human Review

Platform: Xbox 360

Too Human is the story of mankind’s struggle to maintain its identity in a world where the cruel, unforgiving, endless winter and the constant threat of death drive many to abandon their humanity in favor of cybernetic enhancements to the point where they become more machine than man. It represents the ever-present dilemma humankind faces as technology becomes progressively more involved in every facet of our existence in the guise of a simple video game, and provides a deep and thoughtful commentary on the crossroads humanity finds itself at.

If you thought I was being serious in the last paragraph, you need a .45 caliber reality check. “The Misadventures of the Cyberpunk Norse Gods in Monotonous Combat Land” would be a far more apt title. You play as the futuristic super soldier version of the Norse god Baldur whom everyone has the hots for despite the fact that he’s one fugly bastard. Seriously, the dude’s bald and has glowing blue scars all over his face. Back to the matter at hand, he’s on a quest to . . . uh, kick ass. There’s supposed to be some backstory about Baldur’s murdered wife, Loki being a total dick, and a plot to destroy the world. I wasn’t really paying attention, and you’d have to pay me to give a rat’s ass about some typical soap opera story with cyberpunk embellishments.

Playing the actual game, I quickly realized that the only thing special about this game is its control scheme. The gameplay itself is the usual run-and-gun (or cut) action that’s been passed down from generation to generation and involves hacking away at “grunts” that all seem to have more life than you. I couldn’t tell because the damn game never showed me how much life the regular baddies have. This process might have been sped up if you either didn’t always knock them down or you could hit enemies while they’re on the ground, but neither of these things happens! Sure, this also means that they can’t cheap shot you while you’re down, but making that a one-way street with you being invincible while in agony after having your stomach slashed open would have easily solved the problem.

Before I get ahead of myself, I should say that your attacks in Too Human are controlled by the analog sticks (mostly the left one) instead of the buttons. At first glance, this would seem to spare your fingers from certain repetitive motions (and perhaps spare them for other repetitive motions unrelated to the game), but in reality, losing the precise movement and camera control functions of the two analog sticks deals a severe blow to the overall combat experience. For instance, you can’t just sit in one place and whack away at the oncoming hordes because the imprecise analog stick controls will easily let the baddies surround you and ravage you with their beastly appendages. Instead the instruction manual encourages “sliding”, which is where you target enemies far away from yourself after every attack in order to dash toward them and prevent a ganking situation. This, combined with the fact that you can’t hit the often downed enemies, makes combat a monotonous nightmare.

“What about the guns?” you might ask. Well, they fare even worse. Targeting is done using the left analog stick, which works just fine against single enemies, but when you’re faced with a cluster of targets, you’re fucked as the game’s targeting system goes berserk and there’s no alternate way to change your target. Oh, and don’t bother telling me to kite them. For those of you who don’t know, kiting is the tactic where you keep running away from an enemy and using ranged attacks to cut them down without fear of retaliation. Unfortunately, Baldur is one slow son of a bitch, so just about everything can hunt you down and kick your ass if you try to run. It’s like watching one of those bear mauling videos (or am I the only one who does that?), ‘cept you’re the one getting mauled. Anyway, the only things slower than you are the trolls and your own allies, and as much as you might want to, you can’t shoot your unwanted help.

Speaking of your allies, these guys are worthless. They can’t even distract the enemy long enough for you to catch a breather. When they are around, they each get the attention of 2-3 enemies tops. This may seem like a lot, but considering that you go up against waves of 20-30 baddies at once, you’ll be doing almost all of the work. To top it off, they have difficulty following you from platform to platform, so you’re usually on your own anyway.

While Too Human definitely won’t be getting any real praise out of me, it isn’t an unredeemable pile of doggie doo doo either. While usually plodding and horrendously dull, there are times when you get into a groove and really start kicking ass. It isn’t Nirvana or anything, but it’s a good sort of mind-numbingness. That aside, Too Human is average in almost every respect. The novelty of its control scheme and setting might appeal to you, but little else will.

Rating: 2/5

Youtube and I: Go For the Gold at the Beijing Olympics!

Warning: Contains spoilers for a certain show and a certain book.

AWESOME leeroy jenkins remix!!

Infernal Images: Ball o' Cats

Youtube and I: Arby 'n' the Chief

Episode 1:

Infernal Images: XXX-Ray

Hot damn, I want one of these.


PS: I just realized I've been spelling "weird" wrong this entire time. Yeah . . . I'll get on that.

Xenosaga Episode 1: Der Wille zur Macht Review

Platform: PS2

I'm aware that this picture's from Xenosaga 3, but what makes you think this series will survive past the first review?

Normally, I would do some research to make sure my facts match up before I do a review. However, that wouldn’t do the sheer absurdity of Xenosaga’s plot any justice. Thus, everything I say is going to be from memory. Sound like fun? No? Too bad, let’s go.

Right off the bat, you’re “treated” to a cutscene of an archeologist finding a huuuuuuuuge stone tablet. “Treated” is in quotes because the movie clocks in at ten minutes, or at least it felt that long. Anyway, once that’s over, it cuts to the distant future where you’re introduced to the heroine of this story, Shion. She’s a sexy scientist, glasses girl, usually clueless, blah, blah, blah. Nothing special aside from the fact that her weapon is a gigantic taser claw. Oh, did I mention that she made a killer android called KOS-MOS that wields weapons completely practical for futuristic combat such as swords and scythes in addition to gatling guns and a gigantic chest laser. Nope, nothing unusual at all. Otherwise, the cast isn’t anything special aside from some kid who thinks he’s Vash the Stampede, who appears later. Regardless, on the same ship Shion’s on is an “emulator” of the big-ass stone tablet from the opening movie. Unfortunately, the emulator attracts space whale salt monsters called Gnosis, who are impervious to just about everything . . . everything except KOS-MOS, of course. Before you can get to killing, however, you have to navigate Shion around the various parts of the ship while avoiding the Gnosis, who are brutally disemboweling your cute, anime-faced fellow soldiers.

Soon enough, you rally a posse including KOS-MOS and a psychotic officer who’s a robo-racist or something in his spare time. You don’t have to deal with him long, though. Just as you reach the escape pods, he picks a fight with a Gnosis and does this by jumping around like a moron while going full-auto with his assault rifle. Unfortunately for him, his tomfoolery interferes with KOS-MOS’ aim and prompts her to shoot through him to hit the Gnosis. Thus, for his newbish behavior, he gets perma-banned from the server of life. This is only the first in a long line of lessons as to why you shouldn’t fuck with androids. I’ll stop relating the plot here because, frankly, I don’t know what the hell happened after that. Words went into my ears, but none of it made sense. Entire cutscenes were dedicated to people talking about stuff like the “Hilbert Effect”, the “Song of Nephilim”, the “Zohar”, and so on and so forth. At this point, I really didn’t give a flying fuck. Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease just let me kill something!

While my wish was granted, combat was a whole ‘nother beast. Sure, it seems like simple turn-based fighting at first, but once you try to attack, you have shit like button combos, combo strings, robots, ether, and items. Hold on, items? Yes, even using items is an arduous ordeal. Xenosaga is the very image of the bureaucratic process. Pressing a button as simple and self-explanatory as “attack” unleashes a torrent of sub-menus, each of which unleashes another deluge of options. Jesus Christ, all I want to do is shank some space whales. Is that too much to ask for? Oh, and don’t even ask about the pause menu, I had an easier time learning multi-variable calculus than I had trying to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do in it.

Xenosaga can be compared to the Hydra of ancient Greek mythology. Once you cut off the head of unbearable cutscenes, two more appear: convoluted menus and slow-ass combat. If you somehow manage to ignore those, you notice the next layer of problems and things keep escalating until you finally throw your controller through a window, rip the disk out of the PS2, and devour it in hopes that the pain of disk shards mutilating your throat will serve as penance for your crimes against all that is holy. Speaking of which, did I mention that KOS-MOS is the vessel for the spirit of Mary Magdalene? That’s right, I just spoiled the shit out of the remaining games. “But wait, One Sin, aren’t you going to review those eventually?”

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha no.

Besides, that doesn’t even make any sense (I’m being perfectly serious, though). It’s like you need a wiki to figure all this out. Which reminds me, did you know that Xenosaga has its own wiki? “Big deal,” I bet you’re thinking. Sure, everything from Code Geass to Devil May Cry to Rosie O’Donnell has its own wiki, but Xenosaga actually needs one. Maybe you could read it to find out why Mary Magdalene is pumping space whales full of lead and has a black hole in her chest . . .

If you have a lot of spare time . . .

And have no life . . .

Or you actually like this shit . . .

Loser.

Rating: 1/5