beasts altered

i finally got a dreamcast (just in time for its 10th birthday). continuing the trend, instead of starting off playing one of the classics i ended up playing something totally random, more specifically, one of the sega genesis games that appear on the sega smash pack compilation, the now-classic altered beast.

i’m pretty much a n00b when it comes to sega and its long and colorful history. the genesis version of altered beast was apparently the original pack-in game for the system in most areas outside of japan and is well known, although nowadays it seems to be among the many games that are universally panned (see poor milon’s secret castle as another example, which i recently reviewed). for a sample of modern-day reviews and people’s comments on altered beast, nintendolife.com has reviews of both the the original arcade version as well as the genesis version. both reviewers give the game the same score (3 out of 10), although the latter review seems to contain more nostalgic affection. for a run-down of the game itself, check out this page at i-mockery.com.

having no such nostalgia factor but having a much higher tolerance for old games and their limitations, i actually quite enjoyed this one. the “homoeroticism” is clearly just that peculiar brand of japanese humor that takes the form of extreme camp, which i found amusing, even more so when i contemplate the nations full of confused kids and their baffled parents that must have resulted. i was also entertained by the complete disregard for actual greek mythology (not unlike the classic kid icarus). the graphics are definitely impressive, keeping in mind this was almost exactly two years before super mario world was released for the SNES, and the character, enemy, and boss designs are all pretty well done. the enemies in particular are entertaining, with some classic japanese wackiness thrown in, e.g. the purple jump-kicking unicorns and yellow goats in the final level. i wasn’t bothered by the slowness of the gameplay, and although there’s not much variety in the main attacks they were still varied enough to make them worthwhile. the “altered beasts” and their attacks were the best part, and although i didn’t find the game to be overly repetitive, at five levels the game is definitely quite short; i would’ve definitely enjoyed another level with each of the beast forms. the ending is anticlimactic and the harder difficulties not much different than the normal mode, but the co-op was fun and the soundbites have added some classic quotes to my repertoire (the apparently much-appreciated “wise from your gwave!” as well as the baddie’s sinister “welcome to your doom!”).

i’ve settled on a few simple rubrics to help me rank games, including “would i want to play this again?” and “did i like this enough to check out some of the sequels?” for me the answer to both of those questions for this game is actually yes. and it turns out that there are a coupla sequels, and they’ve been catalogued by the good folk at hardcore gaming 101. sweeeeet. i mean, roooooaaaaarrrrr!!!

altered links:
– cheats at gamefaqs, including how to continue and select a level and difficulty
– screenshots of the ending at vgmuseum.com
– entry at wikipedia
– random page with sprites
– FAQ at gamefaqs (although no one probably really needs it)

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checking out soul blade‘s caliber

completist that i am, instead of starting in on soul calibur i went back to the very first release of the series, called soul blade for the original playstation. the game was highly praised when it came out, although the series’ first success has since been eclipsed by its hugely popular sequels.

i’ve dipped into some of the soulcalibur games a bit, but for the most part i came into this game without too many preconceptions. i hadn’t played any of the tekken (also by namco) games either, and apparently the two series are similar. both series were part of the time period when fighters ramped up the difficulties of the street fighter games and also when it became customary to include practice modes and command lists in games. i’ve grown to rather enjoy fighters, and so i didn’t have any problems getting into this one. one thing i found annoying is that you have to use separate blocks for low attacks vs high/mid attacks. another thing that was somewhat annoying is that this was the first fighter where i felt that the button combinations require you to either hold the controller in an unnatural way or get an arcade-type controller. i’m sure many people find it absolutely normal to use an arcade-type controller for a console fighting game, but i’m not into them enough to actually go out and get one anytime soon.

anyway, i played through the normal level with all the characters and for the most part found the experience to be enjoyable. the graphics are quite good for the time and have actually aged fairly well, and the character design is also notable. i found that in general the actual movesets ended up not feeling like they had that much variety, although there are some definite exceptions, including voldo and cervantes. i was also surprised there were so many korean characters, which i think is a first for a video game that i’ve played.

the game has a weapon gauge where your weapon can break, leaving you to fight with your bare fists, but that mechanic is underused. and i don’t really see the point in the extra weapons you can accrue which for the most part have only minor differences in stats (strength, durability, etc.). the story mode’s challenges added some nice variety, even though the stories themselves weren’t particularly memorable. the only other main complaint i had about the game is that the game puts too much emphasis on knocking down your opponent and then following through with an attack. not being able to immediately recover when you’re knocked down and knowing your opponent is always going to get another hit in just feels like some sort of pointless combo and it slows the game down and makes the pacing of the matches feel jerky. after i played through this game for awhile i tried out soul calibur again and that game has eliminated this long delay after a character gets knocked down, and as a result feels much more responsive and natural. i’ll definitely be exploring that game more in the future, although i enjoyed this one enough to come back to it as well. oh, and if anyone wants to know, i focused on mitsurugi this time around, although i just chose him randomly. he’s pretty cool, but i’m probably not going to continue with him in soul calibur even though it would be interesting to compare the movesets.

soul blade links for the fighting soul:
– good FAQ on unlockables, endings, etc. at gamefaqs.com
– here’s a very thorough movelist including the type of each attack (high, middle, low) and the amount of damage
– review at videogamecritic.net
– entry at wikipedia

wario’s secret castle

finally played through pretty much all the levels in wario land II for game boy (which was also released a bit later as a colorized version for game boy color). i really wanted to like this game more than i did, because i had quite enjoyed the first two wario land games i had played (as recounted here and here). the first sequel, on the virtual boy, was extremely similar to the original wario land game, but this game offers a new twist. here wario, perhaps due to his brute strength, somehow acquires invincibility, and instead of hats his rasputin-like powers come from his ability to transcend death and other ailments. when he gets struck by a hammer, he becomes a spring; when he gets squished by a heavy weight he becomes as thin as paper; and during the course of his adventure he also survives getting burned and frozen and even eating too much cake. the powers aren’t really anything new and they’re generally underused, but the looney-tunes-cartoon-like aesthetic (carried over into the sound effects and music) is entertaining, and in his third solo outing wario is still a fun, greedy-yet-somehow-also-lovable, character.

so what was the problem? unfortunately, the game suffers from one huge design choice that i just couldn’t accept, which follows directly from the fact that wario is invincible. since nothing can hurt him, instead of losing life when wario gets hit by an enemy, most of the time he loses coins. this works out fairly well because each level includes two simple mini-games that cost coins to play and yield the game’s two types of useless collectibles. so the more money you have the easier it is to collect everything in the game. all that is fine and good, but the problem comes when, instead of losing money when you make a mistake, the game punishes you by forcing you into an area where you have to backtrack to where you just were. this particularly happens during boss fights (where in general you can’t get hit once, because otherwise you have to schlep your way back to the boss room), although it happens in other places as well where in other games there would have been a certain amount of “try and die” gameplay. this backtracking happens all too often and makes the game quite annoying and dully repetitive at times. i’m surprised the game seems to have gotten such a good reception given this huge limitation in the game design.

the other main problem is that many of the stages have “secrets”, such as the previously mentioned useless collectibles and also a handful of alternate exits and also just secret stashes of coins. some of the “secrets” are a simple matter of picking the right power to apply to the situation, but some of them are just trying wario’s various powers at every dead end in hopes of uncovering a hidden room. this reminded me far too much of the complaints people had about milon’s secret castle, and many times finding the secrets in this game felt even more arbitrary (and tedious) than in that one.

all in all this was one of the more-disappointing first-party games i’ve played by my beloved nintendo. apparently WL3 is very similar to this one, and i’m sorely tempted to skip it. i played a bit of WL4 and it also feels pretty similar, so i may have to make an exception to my usual OCD habit of playing games sequentially and instead skip forward to other entries in the series. we’ll see.

wario’s secret links:
– good FAQ at gamefaqs.com
– nice history of wario (and waluigi) at kombo.com: part 1 and part 2.
– recent article at gamespite.net
– entry at wikipedia
– endings at vgmuseum.com
– PDF of manual at replacementdocs.com