joe’s viewtiful world

this review’s going to be a bit weird, namely b/c i’m a big dork, i.e. sometimes i can be incredibly dense. so i played through viewtiful joe, a game that seems to be universally praised, particularly for its distinctive visuals, and at the same time universally damned for being old-school hard. i started out fine and really enjoyed the game’s presentation and its great central mechanic of slowing down time (a la the movie the matrix) and speeding up time, despite the fact that the first main boss kicked my *** repeatedly b/c of the game’s significant learning curve. but after that everything was going fairly merrily along, until i got to the later levels, which seemed endless, and the bosses, all of whom just seemed to take forever to beat. and then i got really bored b/c the game just dragged on and on and was taking so long to get through, and then i finally got to the last section and was finding it impossible to beat. so i finally consulted a FAQ online and realized that i’d been a big dork and had been playing the game completely wrong and was making it about 10 times harder on myself than it actually was.

so what was the problem? well if you’ve played the game you’ll prob. laugh when i tell you that my problem was that i’d completely ignored the most powerful move of the game, the slow zoom punch (apparently a.k.a. the slowRHOH, i.e. the slow red hot one hundred), which does twice as much damage as the regular zoom punch. i must’ve learned the move when it was introduced in the game, but after trying it out and not really seeing much difference on the grunts, i had just chalked it up as being a fairly useless move like the “red hot kick” move and the zoom down/up moves and never used it again. so no wonder i’d thought the levels and all the bosses took way too long to beat, b/c if i’d used that move they would’ve taken me 1/2 as long. as it is, once i found out i should’ve been using that move from the beginning i breezed through the last stage of the game, and i’m sure that if i’d used it earlier i would’ve finished the game in a fraction of the time it had actually taken me. i’m not sure how much of this i can blame on the game itself and how much on my own stupidity, although part of the blame may be due to my habit of playing through the first couple of hours of a game and then setting it aside for months before picking it up again, by which time i’ve generally forgotten all the basics of the game. hopefully someone out there will tell me they’ve done the same thing so i feel a little less idiotic. i did feel better when i read about this guy who hadn’t realized that buying the life item actually extended his life meter, which prob. made his playthrough almost as much harder as my playthrough.

b/c of my skewed experience it’s a bit hard to give a fair assessment of the game. there was a lot i enjoyed, and the game would’ve been a pretty good length and not nearly as much of a challenge if i’d played it properly. all in all even if i hadn’t been an idiot i prob. would’ve given the game slightly higher than average marks. it has about as much variety in enemies and gameplay as the average beat ‘em up and could’ve used more, although the ranking system and combo system are unique pluses. i’m not overly fond of beat ‘em ups, but i’ll prob. play through the sequel at some point. and i should def. check out the cartoon as well sometime.

some viewtiful links:
- guide at IGN
- entry at wikipedia
- this rainbow V challenge in adult mode FAQ at IGN also includes some info on advanced techniques (although it’s not a challenge i have much desire to tackle)
- the only video i could find of gameplay as silvia and a tiny bit as sexy silvia

operation C complete

it’s been ages since i’d played a contra game, but since the original NES classic was one of my favorite games of the era i was eager to get back into the series. i happened to start off with operation C, the first game boy contra release, which came out after the NES contra sequel, super C.

the game is a contra game through and through, so there’s not a whole lot to say. it’s made easier than most of the other games in the series thanks to a level select code, and the introduction of the homing gun makes the game a breeze for as long as you can manage to keep it. i didn’t mind the lack of 2 player co-op, but i wasn’t too into the substitution of the pseudo-3D levels of the original with two top-down view levels (a change that was apparently introduced in super C). but other than that this was typical run ‘n gun contra bliss. graphics and music, all heavily indebted to the original NES game, are all great. i’m definitely going to have to tackle super C next, although i played through the demo of the fairly recent release of contra 4 on the DS (thanks to the wii’s nintendo channel) and it looks fantastic. but i got spoiled with op C’s level select, so whatever contra game i play next will be more of a challenge.

two links are all you need to accompish your mission!
- entry at wikipedia
- a nice history of the contra series up to 2002

oh, yu-gi-oh!

another DS game, although quite a bit different than the previous two. i’d never played a card-based game before and frankly hadn’t had much interest in them despite their apparent popularity among the more “hardcore” otaku crowd, but after playing baten kaitos and quite enjoying the card-based battle mechanics i thought i’d try out one i had lying around: yu-gi-oh! world championship 2007.

my previous exposure to the yu-gi-oh! franchise had been limited to catching bits of the cartoon on TV, so it turns out this was a good one to start with b/c apparently this was the first yu-gi-oh! game that included a tutorial. and if you’ve never played the game you’re definitely going to need it. there’s no question that the card game has a steep learning curve (easily seen just by perusing the arcane details discussed in the beginner and advanced gameplay FAQ’s on the official site), but the dense tutorial does a pretty decent job of going over the basics. once that was out of the way i was ready to jump into the game itself. i was surprised that there wasn’t any sort of story, just battling, but the card mechanics are easily deep enough that a story is pretty unnecessary (esp. since it would’ve prob. been pretty flimsy anyway).

so how did i fare? well, perhaps unsurprisingly, the game sucked away huge amounts of time. i spent way too much time obsessing over my deck as i battled my way through the computer opponents, and before too long i was making my way through the game fairly respectably. i was enjoying the card mechanics for the most part, and overall the presentation feels very polished with good use of the DS touch screen and good artwork, including all of the card artwork and 3D models for all of the monsters (although the menus feel very GBA era).

but as i played more and more, the game’s shortcomings became increasingly apparent. the main problem i had was that the game’s built-in progression of difficulty is designed so that you’re always at a significant disadvantage. to explain: your deck of cards in the game is derived from a pool of cards that you get to start with, plus cards you “buy” in the game. the game is designed so that you only have access to more powerful cards after you beat all six opponents in a particular tier five times each. the enemies are ranked as levels 1-6, and the higher tiers are only unlocked one at a time. this would all be fine, and at the first level the difficulty is challenging but manageable, but then at the second level i just got fed up with the fact that the computer opponents always have more powerful cards than you b/c they have cards that aren’t available to you. even the good cards that are available to you to buy are hard to get, b/c the “rare”, “super rare”, and “ultra rare” cards require you to buy tons of useless cards (which come in packs of 6) in the hopes that you’ll get one really good one. of course this baseball cards-like setup is how the game works in the real world and it’s how the company makes so much money (although of course in the real world the “advanced” cards aren’t grouped separately and aren’t off-limits to beginners), but as a video game mechanic the elements of surprise and chance in buying cards just don’t outweigh the frustration of how slow it is to build up a decent deck that will get you through the game.

well, that was quite a rant. after spending so much time playing the game, though, i was disappointed in how it came up short since there was so much in its favor. ah well. i’ll definitely be picking this up again at some point to play through it some more, but all in all my yu-gi-oh! obsession ended up being fairly short-lived. which is just as well, b/c i can just imagine how much dough some people spend buying those cards!

if ya need some yu-gi links:
- gamefaqs has a load of essential FAQ’s, in particular a guide to all the cards with their text and the list of cards available in each series of packs. there’s also this FAQ which covers limited and theme duels, two modes which were mildly entertaining but which i didn’t find myself getting into much.
- game entry at yugioh.wikia.com
- entry at wikipedia and a list of all yu-gi-oh! video games
- list of unlockables at gamespot
- this game piqued my interest in magic: the gathering, although there don’t seem to be that many video games of it. this video on youtube of the finals of the san diego pro tour is kind of entertaining.

wild animal world crossed

although i’d played and quite enjoyed the original animal crossing on the ‘cube, i wasn’t quite prepared for how much i would get sucked into its DS sequel, animal crossing: wild world. most reviews seemed to emphasize all the things that were the same, but i found that all the additions really added to the experience and made the town feel more alive, and thus kept me much more interested. the new townspeople and visitors were all memorable, with the taciturn barista brewster and dr. shrunk with his combination stand up and psychotherapy being among my favorites. the old visitors and the townspeople with their seemingly never-ending supply of dialogue were still entertaining, and the addition of extra dialogue for the town staff was a nice touch. letter writing is much improved as the responses are now nicely varied instead of the constant “i didn’t understand you, you big dolt!” responses from the gamecube version, and helping the villagers with their hobbies was another nice addition. i was also amused to find out that there’s a series of trading sequences in the game, which seems like a nod to the zelda series that the game was inspired by.

all the additions, some of which were only small details, helped ease the disappointment in not getting any emulated NES games in this version, and i kept playing for a longer span of time than i expected. so much so that i actually got the golden watering can (i.e. kept my town perfect for 16 days), which i didn’t even get close to getting with the gamecube version. even aside from all the additions to the gameplay, the single factor that contributed to keeping me playing was the fact that the game was on the DS. i found myself playing the game for at least 20 minutes each day, and it was so easy to pick it up and play for a short burst that i could fit it into my day in a way that i couldn’t really get myself to do before. (uh oh, i sound like one of those DS “lifestyle” commercials, which is particularly embarassing b/c i’m a fairly “hardcore” gamer. but it’s true.) and when i was having a stressful day it was a great way to relax and be brainless for a while (uh oh, there’s more of that advertisement talk). my only real complaint, other than seriously dreading the day i go back to the game since my town will be completely covered in weeds and all my flowers will have died, is that there isn’t nearly as much variety in the town holidays as in the gamecube version. as it is the game still manages to achieve greatness in my mind, although it will definitely be interesting to see how the series progresses. in particular i wonder how many more activities they’ll add to the game, since the simplicity is a lot of what keeps it so addictive (and fun). we’ll just have to wait and see.

some wild animal links!
- animalcrossingcommunity.com has a lot of good info, including an HRA guide.
- images of all the possible villagers at animalxing.com
- official site
- gamefaqs has some great info, including a guide to gulliver and villagers (including how to make them permanent residents), a guide to the special visitors, a guide to getting a perfect town, and a flower breeding guide.
- pretty good list of unlockables at gamespot
- basic guide at IGN along with a pretty good general guide, a slew of FAQs, and craig harris’s review