M:B #12 X-Men Legends

As a kid, I always loved superheroes but never got in to comic books because pretty much all the money I ever had went into saving up for a video game or buying action figures. I would watch pretty much any superhero cartoon that they would air and saw just about every superhero movie that I could talk my parents in to taking me to. And yet the thought of paying two bucks for a comic on a regular basis was just too much for someone with no steady income outside of the random ten bucks my parents would throw at me when they figured I hadn't been given an allowance for awhile. The interest kept with me throughout high school, but in the same limited degree despite the fact I was working. It took until my study abroad semester in Rome for me to really start getting in to the detailed backgrounds of superheroes, as I was faced with an odd hour two days a week where I was between classes and didn't really have enough time to walk anywhere. As a result, I spent the time in the computer lab looking up random superheroes on Wikipedia, which informed me as to what I should read when I got back home. Thanks to the beauty of the Interlibrary Loan System, I could exploit a research system in order to score comic book anthologies that finally filled in a gap in my nerd hobbies that had remained open for way too long.

One of the series I loved as a child was the X-Men, almost completely due to the T.V. show (I was actually pretty pissed when I bought an SNES game where the costumes didn't all match up to the show). However, the series was always a bit too daunting for me to actually read through, as I could never decide what was really important in X-Men lore since there seem to always be at least 3 ongoing X-Men series. The show provided glimpses at the best storylines, and yet I couldn't really determine what was worth reading as even these storylines seemed to be picked up and dropped off randomly throughout X-Men's publication history. Instead, I stayed content with Wikipedia's summaries of their story arcs, as I could read about their entire history instead of 1/1000th of their actually comics.

When I heard that Raven Software was going to release an X-Men RPG, I was incredibly excited as they had developed some of my favorite games (including Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast). But when X-Men Legends was actually released, I passed for one reason or another despite the overwhelmingly positive reviews. Instead, I waited for a few years before picking it up at Gamestop for about 12 bucks in hopes of having it as a party game at college. I ended up playing it up to the third to last level before I hit a section in which Xavier battles the Shadow King in a battle that involved controlling a character I hadn't used before and didn't particularly like. After losing the battle twice, I got frustrated and walked away from the game, assuming I would go back and finish it. However, I went to start up a new round of the game with my friend Dave and accidentally erased my game, which wouldn't have been as big of a problem if I had ever played the game with Dave past that night. And so X-Men Legends was shelved and not touched until this summer.

Honestly, I was a little more disappointed in the story now that I know about the different arcs that the comic book has had. I guess I was hoping for a somewhat original storyline, but the game offers a mish-mash of several different storylines/ story ideas that even fans of the show will find familiar. There's a mutant everyone is after, Magneto is trying to destroy all humans, and the government is trying to eliminate mutants with Sentinels. The game took me just over ten hours to finish, so it seems a little short for an RPG.

Thankfully the story isn't the focus of the game, but rather the mutants are. X-Men Legends offers most of the mutants that players will want to use, although certain fan favorites are oddly underpowered. Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, Iceman, Gambit, and many others make an appearance, although anyone who likes Gambit is going to be severely disappointed at how useless he is in the game (he's about as powerful as Jubilee, which says alot). Each character has two attack buttons that can be strung together for different combos, but chances are you'll rely heavily on just hitting A repeatedly. The game also features two mutant attacks per character, plus a power up move and a super move that can only be activated after collecting certain powerups. The mutant powers are what you would expect for each mutant, although its a bit disappointing that some of the powers are clearly cloned versions of another mutant's power with a color change.

The difficulty in the game is off, but not necessarily in a bad way. You'll find that your team will become exponentially more powerful as the game progresses, which will leave you way overpowered compared to your enemies. While many would consider the fact that the game gets easier as a negative, it makes you feel like your mutants are incredibly powerful, which lends itself to the franchise. Don't be surprised if you find yourself easily clearing out rooms of people with one move from one mutant by the end of the game.

X-Men Legends was clearly meant to be a four player game, as almost the entire game allows you to take four mutants on a mission. If you have less than four people, then the game allows any player to change to any mutant that isn't be used with the D-Pad. The inherent four player nature of the missions reveals an odd oversight in certain sections of the game, however. The first mission, for example, starts as a single player mission  as the only available mutant is Wolverine. Halfway through, players find Cyclops, and yet that's still only two mutants. The rest of the missions (other than one half mission) feature four players from the beginning, which makes this first mission stand out even more. Additionally, there are interludes between missions where Player One explores the X-Mansion with Magma. There really isn't anything for other players to do during this period other than set the controller down and watch, which seems odd.

One area that X-Men Legends succeeds in is its fan service. Other than the odd underpowering of a fan favorite (I understand Gambit isn't that powerful of a mutant overall, but they could have at least made him decent), the game dotes on fans with obscure facts recounted casually (like a battle between Cyclops and Havok where neither's powers can injure the other because they are brothers) to flashback missions that feature the 70s X-Men team battling Sentinels and a mission feature the four original X-Men versus the Juggernaut. The game also features a trivia game where fans can test their knowledge more directly.

X-Men Legends is a good RPG that captures the feeling of being on the X-Men well, which is what any comic book game should do. While it has its shortcomings, its succeeds in its principle aim, which explains why it became the template for every Marvel superhero game released afterwards.

Overall Score: 8.3
Recommended Price: $6.00

M:B #11 Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds

I have to say that male Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans have it rougher than fans of almost any other show. We defend a show that we know has great writing, interesting themes, and an amiable cast while just about everyone who hasn't seen it is skeptical it could even be watchable. I've heard just about every insult concerning the show, from the fact its a girl's program to "I just don't like shows like Charmed." Even people who enjoyed other Joss Whedon projects, such as Firefly, seem hesitant to give the show a shot, even though Buffy is where he cut his teeth and is the most developed of all of his shows (seeing as it was the only one that received a proper ending, this isn't surprising (and I don't count Serenity as a proper ending to Firefly because it was clear that the show needed more time to explore the characters before it hit its big finale)).

When the Buffy games were first released for the last generation of consoles, I still had not seen the show and I was surprised that they received such high marks (the first game has a Metacritic overall score of 79 and the second a 75). The sites I was reading the reviews from (Gamespot and IGN) loved them even more, giving them scores in the 8s. And so when I began to watch the show, I immediately remembered that there were these two decent games floating around with a property I liked and so I set off to find the second one, as it seemed to receive better scores. When I purchased the game at Gamestop, I once again received the familiar scoff that is inherent to liking anything Buffy related, and found myself offering similar defenses about the solid reviews that it has and how people should give it a shot.

The game takes place late in the fifth season, although this is derived more from which characters are alive/dead and the state of the characters relationships than story beats fans might recognize. Frequent villain Ethan Rayne has made a bet with the First, the primordial source of evil that Buffy faces briefly in Season 4 and then again in Season 7 as the big bad. The bet involves Ethan gathering a team of warriors to do battle against the First in an alternate dimension, and since the bet places the fate of the world on the line, Buffy and friends reluctantly take up arms for Ethan. They must find the severed pieces of an ancient warrior in order to resurrect her, as she is the only one that has stood against the First so directly. And so each level involves battling a bunch of undead creatures in order to battle a boss that guards a piece of the warrior.

The story is serviceable, although my one complaint concerns what I liked most about the show. Due to the fetch quest nature of main story, the game comes off a little too episodic, while the show suceeded with its serial storytelling. Even the length of the levels (roughly 45 minutes each) makes the levels feel a bit too much like filler episodes instead of a full fleshed out story. They could have made the game into a lost season arc, but instead opted to make a lost episode arc last 13 hours.

The game features eix playable characters, and you'll end up only playing as Buffy for about a quarter of the game. You also play as Willow, Xander, Spike, Faith, and Sid the dummy. You'll inevitably grow tired of certain characters, but thankfully each one has at most two levels. Each character controls in a slightly different way (except for Faith, who controls just like Buffy), but not all are interesting enough to warrant an entire level. In a weird non-reference to the show, Xander is just too plain of a character to be interesting to play as, and Sid comes across as novelty.Willow offers a change of pace by focusing on magic over fighting, and Spike has a slightly more interesting moveset than Xander, which makes him bearable. The characters you'll end up having the most fun with are the Slayers, however, whose movesets look remarkably like the show. This is a backhanded compliment, however, as the fighting in the show is fairly stiff, with a couple moves strung together in a not always elegant fashion. For fans of the show, its a kick to perform the familiar moves, but almost anyone else will think that the game's controls are just too rigid. Outside of fighting, the controls stay this rigid, which is a decidedly bad thing as it makes everything from climbing ladders to grabbing on to ledges too awkward.

The level design in the game is overall pretty poor, featuring standard "find this item to open this door" gameplay that will have you scouring every area you've been through for the one item you need. At least the locales themselves are interesting, featuring many familiar areas from the show such as Sunnydale High, downtown Sunnydale, the Magic Box, the Initiative Base, and several others. Not a lot of background is given to these locations, so its pretty evident that people that have watched the show will get the most out of playing in these surroundings.

Of special note is the voice acting, which features a surprising number of actors from the show reprising their roles. Anthony Stewart Head, Eliza Dushku, Amber Benson, and Nicholas Brendan all voice their characters, and the only two major exceptions seem to be Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alyson Hannigan. They aren't given a whole lot to work with, as a lot of sound bytes are repeated ad infinitum whenever familiar situations come up (I don't need a voice clip about a door being locked when 75% of the doors in the game are locked), but its still nice to see the effort that went in to the sound here.

There are also a lot of unlockables that will appeal to Buffy fans but no one else, including interviews with the cast members that helped with voice acting (as well as Joss Whedon) and recordings of the voice over sessions. They're a nice extra that offer a little bit more fan service, but once again these probably won't appeal to anyone outside of Buffy fans.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds is a flawed third person action game that gets by on its loving adherence to the show, making it a game that will please Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans but will most likely disappoint just about anyone else.

Overall Score for Buffy fans: 7.5
Overall Score for non-Buffy fans: 6.2

Recommended price for Buffy fans: 4.99
Recommended price for non-Buffy fans: 2.99

No Excuse Games #1: Bionic Commando (X360)

Reason for playing: Nonsensical plot twists

Every once and a while, I play a game that I really don't have any good excuse for playing. As mentioned in the Geist review, I inevitably will feel drawn to games that at best could be mediocre, and yet I'm impelled to play anyways. I find it important to draw a distinction between having an excuse to play a game, and having a reason to. For instance, I had an excuse for playing Geist in that the possession mechanic was supposed to be pretty unique. The rest of the game could play like shit, but that unique feature intrigued me and gave a reasonable incentive to play the game. Now, the phrase "reasonable incentive" is incredibly subjective, as what is reasonable to me could make no fucking sense to the next person, and yet I feel that I have a decent enough self knowledge to know when I have a fundamentally flawed curiosity towards something vs. a curiosity spurred by a real reason. Enter Bionic Commando, a remake of a classic NES game.

His arm is his wife. That is pretty much my only reason for playing the game. Gamesradar.com has referenced this plot twist non stop for the past year, including photoshopping this photo for their 2009 Anti-Awards. Granted, you don't discover this until the very last level of the game, but to me that just made the game all the better. I was playing through the game with a friend, and every time that Nathan Rad Spencer, the main character, brought up his missing wife, both of us couldn't stop laughing, knowing that the big dramatic payoff at the end of the game was going to involve his wife turning into his arm. It really makes you wonder what Grin, the developer of the game, was thinking, in that their is literally no way to make this twist carry any emotional weight. They tried to explain it as bionic limbs requiring a strong emotional bond to the wearer, and hence his wife sacrificed herself for her husband's benefit. However, at the end of the day his wife turned into his limb. And really, was the sacrifice even necessary? If she was sacrificing herself to save his life, the situation would have gained a little gravity. However, she did it so he'd have an arm. If Michael Ironside could make due without a bionic arm and could just use a plain old cybernetic arm, I really don't see how Nathan Spencer needed one. Additionally, this is the same guy from the original Bionic Commando. I'm pretty sure back then he had a bionic arm that didn't require an emotional connection to a close relative and he rescued Super Joe just fine.

The swinging mechanic that the game employs works fine for the most part, although there aren't enough open sections that let you really a) gain momentum or b) do anything without running into a wall awkwardly. You end up relying on a weird strategy of locking on to walls and beams and zipping yourself to them constantly, which looks pretty awkward but works. When the game does open itself up a little, it can be alot of fun to dispatch your enemies in interesting ways, like jumpkicking them and then firing your pistol at them as you do a backflip off of their chest. However, these sections are tempered by enemies that require cheaper tactics of running away and throwing objects at a distance, which is decidedly less flashy. Your limited to your pistol, grenades, and one additional firearm at all times, but the relatively small arsenal you can carry is forgivable given that the focus of the game is your wife. Arm.

The three main reasons that you will die, other than trying to take on certain enemies head on instead of using the aforementioned cheap tactics, are water, radiation, and the camera. Apparently bionic wives weigh a lot and prevent the user from being able to swim, which means that the second you find yourself in waist deep water, you're fucked. You'll be frantically turning the camera around trying to find something to grapple on to as you drown in 3 feet of water. There's also radiation outside of the path the developers want you to go on. You'll only find out the path the developers want you to use by seeing the flashing radiation symbol, however, as there isn't always a clear indication where you're supposed to go. Finally, the camera will often get stuck on objects or just be incredibly uncooperative, which will lead to unnecessary drownings and missed grapples as you struggle to get the camera to show a competent angle.

The game is about average length for a third person shooter, lasting just about 7-8 hours when we played through on Hard. The level design doesn't vary too much at the beginning, consisting mostly of a destroyed city that is partially underwater and covered with selective radiation. Later on you will visit a city park and a military base, but two thirds of the game consist of going through a barren cityscape.

Bionic Commando is just about what I expected it to be: an average third person shooter with a flawed central mechanic and ridiculous plot twist. Because of my low expectations, its hard to be too disappointed in the game and so I'd say it wasn't a complete waste of time, and yet you're time could be much better spent.


Overall: 6.5
Recommended Price: Borrow it

M:B #10 Space Channel 5 Special Edition

The Dreamcast was the ultimate system for the hardcore gamer. It took more risks than any system before it in the interest of pushing the technology forward and providing something truly unique. Between being the first major console to feature online support, the VMU, a modified Windows operating system, and a myriad of other features, the Dreamcast was the system for the person who wanted something untested yet truly unique. Sadly, the gamble did not pay off for Sega and the Dreamcast's lifespan was cut drastically short, with most games coming out within a two year time span due to the overwhelming popularity of the Playstation 2.

But in designing a system for the hardcore set, Sega found itself in an interesting position: they had a demographic that would eat up almost any new property, as the people who bought the system were already the types interested in taking a gamble with games. As a result, Sega showed an unprecedented amount of creativity, even compared to its Sega Genesis days. They relied very little on existing properties (one Virtua Fighter, an Ecco game, and 3 Sonic games come to mind, but little else) and instead chose to develop new ideas. Many of these were greeted with open arms and found audiences almost immediately. Jet Grind Radio offered a completely different take on "extreme sports" games to the point it was almost a mistake to classify it as one, seeing as the tricks played second fiddle to spray painting. Chu Chu Rocket was an addictive puzzle game that offered frantic (though flawed in terms of online connectivity) online action. Shenmue was a labor of love by one of Sega's top developers and an attempt to bring the medium to the next level in terms of storytelling.

As a result of all these new properties, Sega had a group of new mascots that it could readily exploit for marketing and (later) future game releases. However, the one that Sega seemed most behind, at least to me, was Ulala. Ulala is the protagonist to Space Channel 5  and Space Channel 5 2, a set of games that seemed almost completely based on charm and style. The games feature Ulala saving the universe from two different threats that are attempting to make the entire universe dance under their control. Ulala battles the threat by dancing back and, well, forcing people to dance for her instead. While I suppose one could argue that the hostages that Ulala saves are so grateful to her that they want to help her against the alien threat in any way they can, I find it hard to believe that out of every person that she saves, not a single one wants to take a break from dancing or just doesn't want to dance at all. But I digress. The player has Ulala perform the dance moves by copying commands that the computer gives in a modified version of Simon Says.While the gameplay is simple, it is the style that players come for. There are a few games that I can think of that I hesitate to classify in the particular genre that they technically represent because the point of the game is not to excel in that genre, but rather create a game within that genre that relies on style and charm. For instance, Locoroco is technically a platformer, and yet the reliance on a cute main character and charming visuals is the main draw of the game. And so it is with Space Channel 5, a competent rhythm game that prides itself on its visuals and style. The game succeeds in its aim without coming across as too corny, and rightfully takes its place in what I like to call the "feel good" genre.

The differences between the two games are slight, as the second game adds elongated button presses and instrument sections, but not much else to change the gameplay. While this could get tiring after a while, both games are short. I finished the first game in just under an hour and the second one in about two hours. While people may balk at such a short play length, Sega wisely packaged the two together when it re-released the games as Space Channel 5 Special Edition on the PS2. On top of that, the game was released at a budget price of $15, making it a steal at the time, particularly since the second game never received an American release, giving all those heartbroken Dreamcast supporters a chance to relive the glory days for next to nothing.

The length is the major complaint concerning both games, even with the additional modes that have been added. These mostly just change around the costumes in the levels a bit and don't really alter the gameplay. The other major concern is only with the first game, which features video as the background to the entire game. The video does not always sync up properly to what is happening on screen, and as a result you may think that you have perfectly timed a button press and the game will register it as a miss. To be fair, however, anyone that has played the Dreamcast original will notice that they did try to match up the background a bit, as the problem was much worse on the original.

And so Space Channel 5 Special Edition acts as a relic of sorts that sums up lifespan of the Dreamcast rather well. It's stylish and charming and yet ultimately much too short. The game at this point would make a perfect download on either Xbox Live or PSN, but will probably disappoint many that don't quite have an attachment to the Dreamcast era as the gameplay is incredibly simple and the main story is very short. But Space Channel 5 is the perfect game for anyone who is willing to place style over substance.

Overall Score: 7.6
Recommended Price: $5

M:B #9 Geist

I've always had a bit of a soft spot for shooters that sport a unique gameplay feature but are average otherwise. Dark Sector had a glaive that you could throw for slow motion decapitations, but the levels themselves were fairly boring even if they looked nice. Army of Two featured great cooperative play with its aggro feature, but the enemies weren't particularly challenging and, once again, the level design wasn't interesting (I'm beginning to think a lot of games that fall into this sub-sub-genre could benefit a lot from a better level designer). I also know that in the future I'm doomed to play certain games once I can find them for under five dollars (Haze, Fracture, Psi Ops, Dark Void, and that's without looking in a bargain bin to remind myself of others). All I had heard about Geist was that it featured a body possession mechanic in which you weren't forced to play through the game as any one character, but rather had to change bodies as the situation dictated. I also knew that it had ended up with reviews in the low 7s, but as previously mentioned that has never kept me from wanting to play a game as long as it had a twist. And yet when I purchased Geist, I almost immediately put it on the shelf. I purchased it after my Gamecube had already been unplugged, and the slight effort of hooking the thing up seemed too Herculean a task to play a game I knew I would end up thinking was alright.

Well, between deciding to do Mission: Backlog and having a Wii that I only use to play Gamecube games anymore, I was suddenly excited to play the game again. It ended up being a stranger experience than I had thought, in that the game is at the same time antiquated and yet has incorporated ideas that (at the time) were innovative. Namely, the game ends up feeling alot like an N64 shooter (namely in the Goldeneye vein). You're seldom tasked with taking out more than two or three enemies at a time, and the levels are pretty barren overall, consisting of hallways and the occasional crate with few exceptions. You'll also rely on auto targeting to a degree, as the game doesn't let you zoom or aim more accurately with any gun save one, and I only saw that one in the first hour of gameplay. However, Geist did learn something from its contemporary competition, as it controls in a similar manner to Halo by using the left joystick to move and the C-Stick to look around. So it doesn't feel quite as stiff as Goldeneye because of its updated control scheme, but almost everything else in the shooting parts of the game will give you deja vu.

Thankfully, the game offers more than just a mediocre shooter through bland hallways. You play as Raimi, who is tasked (along with an elite military unit)  with taking down an evil organization who is doing some kind of occult experiments. You are captured early on and forced into an experiment that separates your soul from your body. You spend the rest of the game attempting to get back your body and stop the evil corporation from implementing its master plan, which, of course, involves world domination. The story overall will feel incredibly familiar to anyone that has played the original Half-Life, as the story focuses around an evil corporation in an underground facility using a portal linked to another dimension. Thankfully, this is just a backdrop to the redeeming part of the game, which is the possession mechanic. At its most basic, it involves inhabiting the correct body to advance through the game. However, in order to inhabit a body in the first place, you must first scare them. It sounds pretty unexciting, but you do so by setting up certain situations, which makes scaring a person into a puzzle of sorts. For instance, at one point you must knock over a ladder that causes a man to take a backstep. Once he has backed up, you can then increase the pressure in a nearby pipe to the point of exploding, which leaves him scared enough for possession. Each level consists of two to four of this type of situation, along with possessing different animals (like a dog and mice) to advance to an area where certain important humans are. The game is over if you ever kill a person that is needed to advance, but this really only ever happened to me during boss battles.

The possession mechanic overall feels well implemented in these puzzle sections, but half-baked when combined with the shooting sections. There are nice touches every once and a while, such as possessing different turrets to take down enemies or the ability to possess explosive crates near enemies, but overall there are just too many sections where you are charging down hallways blasting enemies with no real change of pace. If the developers could have thought of a better way of handling these sections, or just taken them out completely and replaced them with something that better utilized possessing, the game would have benefited greatly and probably could have been something more memorable.

However, as it stands Geist is pretty much what I expected it was going to be: mediocre with an interesting twist. While I wasn't expecting it to feel so familiar to an N64 game, it was only in detrimental ways, as the game's shooting sections felt barren and oversimplified. Additionally, the story felt too similar to Half-Life, although it did set up a decent excuse for the body possession mechanic, which is really the only thing this game will ever be remembered for, if anyone remembers it at all. Overall, I really can't recommend Geist, namely because it feels so mediocre that even its most unique feature, which really hasn't been used that much since, can't save it.

Overall: 6.7
Recommended Price: 2.99

Mission: Backlog Further Update

Sometimes I get a little too optimistic, and then get smacked right back down and realize I was more of a compulsive shopper than I realized. Looked through my PS1 and 2 games today and figured I should probably update my list, as there were no fewer than 15 that I missed. So just about all progress I've made so far with dwindling down my games has just effectively been erased.

PS3

Demon's Souls

XBox 360

Grand Theft Auto IV
Viva Pinata

Wii

Metroid Prime Trilogy (Most of the way through 1, haven't touched 2 or 3)
Madworld
Deadly Creatures

PS2

Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 2
Rogue Galaxy
Xenosaga 2 and 3
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds
Clocktower 3
Breath of Fire V
Resident Evil Outbreak
Mister Mosquito
Contra Shattered Soldier
Zone of Enders: The Second Runner
.hack//Infection
Growlanser Generations
Dynasty Warriors 3 Xtreme Legends
Space Channel 5 Special Edition
Gungrave
Gungrave Overdose

PS1

Final Fantasy V, VII, VIII
Chrono Trigger
Oddworld: Abe's Odyssey
Breath of Fire III

PSP

Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops
Killzone: Liberation

DS

Age of Empires

Game Boy Advance

Boktai

Gamecube

F-Zero GX
Resident Evil 0 and 1
Paper Mario and the Thousand Year Door
X-Men Legends


I gotta stop buying PS2 games...

M:B #8: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4

Atlus's Persona series of games have been known (at least in their most recent entries) for balancing a high school simulator with a dungeon crawling RPG with a remarkable amount of success. About a year ago, I decided that no matter what, I would push my way through Persona 3. I didn't think that the game was bad by any means. Rather, at the time I had already invested a good thirty hours into the game, yet the minutia of day to day life in a Japanese high school was beginning to get to me, and so I took a hiatus from the game. When I started to play the game again, I realized that I had begun to take it a little too seriously, trying to map out my schedule in order to maximize what I could get done in a given week and hence better "beat" the game. I started playing again with a much more lax approach where I would play through the social aspects of the game casually and then play the dungeon crawling all in bursts, and the new take on the game seemed to pay off as I made it to the end boss. However, after an hour and a half fight, the boss took control of one of my party members. The game does not allow you to have direct control over any of your teammates, and as a result none of my party "uncharmed" that party member, resulting in said charmed member healing the boss's health entirely. This effectively erased the hour and a half of progress I had just made, and it was at this point that I dropped the controller in disbelief, silently walked over to the system, and turned it off.

It's one of the worst recent memories I've had with a game, right up there with not being able to beat the first level of The Rocketeer on SNES as a kid. When I looked at an FAQ afterwards, I found out that I had been using a less than ideal team for the last battle, even though the same team had gotten me through the rest of the game with little to no problem. The prospect of leveling up these other characters to a satisfactory level and trying that marathon boss battle again was too much, and I just put the game away. At the time, Persona 4 had just been released and I had gotten a good deal on it online, so I thought maybe I could redeem myself through playing it. I got a total of 10 minutes in before I realized I just couldn't do it. It was the equivalent of having a dog you loved bite you, forcing your parents to put it down, but then getting another dog that looks almost identical the next day. And so Persona 4 sat in a pile of PS2 RPGs that I had bought but barely touched, and I really wasn't sure whether or not I could ever play it again.

However, Mission: Backlog stepped in and gave me the little resolve I needed to start it up, and I have to say that I wasn't surprised by the fact that I thought it was a great game, but rather was relieved it was. It addressed all of my major complaints about Persona 3, including the two that kept me from finishing the game, were addressed. The story is fairly different from Persona 3, and while both focus on a group of teenager trying to uncover a mystery, Persona 4 more took the vibe of a whodunit movie. Mysterious deaths have started to occur in a small town in Japan's countryside (which is kind of a laughable notion, as the "country" in this game looks more busy than a suburb in America) whenever fog sets in. Soon, the protagonist  hears a rumor about a channel that appears at midnight on nights when it's raining and shows your true love. It's established pretty quickly that the deaths and the channel are connected and the protagonist discovers he can enter into a world inside of the T.V. Someone has been throwing people into the T.V. which somehow leads to their death, and hence the protagonist attempts to enter the T.V. and save the victims before the world kills them. All the while, the protagonist comes closer to solving the mystery of who is throwing people into the T.V. world and what the T.V. world is in the first place.

As he rescues people, they join his party (with only a few exceptions) and help him rescue other victims. It's inside the T.V. that the game takes a dungeon crawler format, and this time, instead of having to go through 236 floors of a tower, you enter different worlds based on the character's hidden feelings. These hidden feelings seem to take on the form of sexual repression a lot, but what can you expect from a country with panty vending machines. Inside of each of these worlds, there are about 10 floors you need to battle through, with a miniboss around the halfway mark and a final boss at the end. The fighting itself is typical for a JRPG, with you selecting commands from a menu with no time limit. Each enemy has a set of strengths and weaknesses, and you're rewarded for exploiting these weaknesses with an extra turn. Hence the game becomes an experiment of discovering what the enemy's weakness is and then using this information to get through battles more efficiently. Each character in your party can call forth a persona, which is basically a battle avatar. These personas all have their own strengths and weaknesses as well as specific abilities (usually tied to their strengths), so to a degree you can rely on your teammates when trying to exploit an enemy's weakness. Since you now have direct control over them, it's much less frustrating than it was in Persona 3. However, for the most part you'll rely on the protagonist, who has the ability to switch between different personas. You gain new personas either by collecting cards at the end of battle or through a fusion mechanic where you merge two personas to create a new one. You can switch personas once per turn in battle, which allows you to adapt to almost any enemy situation. These personas all belong to a specific category which is linked to a Tarot sign, which in turn is linked to a relationship that you have with another character in the real world.

It is here that the other half of the game plays out, with the protagonist attempting to develop relationships with people by spending time with them in order to strengthen the personas he uses in battle. If you manage to finish the storyline connected to a specific person, then you gain access to the ultimate persona for that Tarot sign. Additionally, developing certain relationships opens up relationships with other people, so the game feels very interconnected and much more like a small town where almost everyone is connected to one another.

However, the world inside of the T.V. and the world outside are not quite balanced perfectly. The game requires you to save a person in the T.V. before the next time that fog appears in the real world. However, it is incredibly easy to just beat the entire dungeon in one in-game afternoon after the person has been trapped in the T.V., which results in you playing through a dungeon for 3 hours and then just doing social activities for 5. While it's not a major issue, the pacing here is definitely slightly off and the two world don't seem as well integrated as they could be.

Persona 4 represents a definite improvement over Persona 3 as it fixes several problems that made the previous entry needlessly difficult. This isn't to say that Persona 4 is an easy game, but I didn't feel as cheated as I did with Persona 3 (in particular, the last boss battle was much more fair and could be beaten with any character combination, so long as the characters were properly leveled). The only complaint I had with the ending of Persona 4 was that you pretty much needed a strategy guide to get the actual ending. I originally triggered the "Bad Ending" because I didn't choose the correct series of answers in the middle of a lengthy cutscene, even though the answers I chose didn't appear that different from the "correct" answers. Further, the hoops you had to jump through to get the "True Ending" instead of the "Normal Ending" after this was even more ridiculous, involving talking to every person you maxed out a Social Link with, followed by going to specific places and talking to specific people with specific lines of dialogue. It's forgivable in the age of online FAQs, but I really don't think I should need one to see the ending that explains all the events in the game.

Persona 4 is a solid JRPG that improves on a game that already had a pretty unique premise that hasn't been seen much stateside yet thankfully doesn't use this unique premise as a crutch. The game plays well and doesn't get repetitive in the 50-60 hours it'll take you to finish the game. Just remember to look at a strategy guide once the culprit is in the hospital.

Overall Score: 9.2
Recommended price: $30

M:B #7 Viewtiful Joe

For those that owned a Gamecube while games were being developed for the platform, it was painstakingly obvious that the system had very little third party support. Sure, the system saw the release of multi-platform games from other developers, but the system had very few games that were both exclusive and from a developer other than Nintendo. In response to this, Capcom decided to launch a 4 game plan for the platform designed to instill confidence in other 3rd party developers. They announced that the fourth Resident Evil game, along with three original properties, would be brought to the system and remain exclusive to the Gamecube. These three original games were P.N.03, Killer 7, and Viewtiful Joe. Killer 7 was the closest thing to a cult game had been released in awhile, as it received lukewarm reviews but a fervent fanbase defending its unique art style and bizarre story. P.N.03 didn't fair as well, as it was derided for its terrible controls and shallow gameplay.  

Viewtiful Joe was the closest that Capcom came to realizing its vision of a new franchise, as it offered a fresh take on a mostly dead genre. Viewtiful Joe attempted to make a modern 2D platformer that took advantage of a console's increased processing power, as new 2D platformers were being released constantly for the Game Boy Advance, but for the most part just looked like SNES era games. To this end, Viewtiful Joe sports a cel-shaded style that complements the superhero theme of the game well. At the same time, it was clearly a game that couldn't be played on a handheld (at least on the handhelds available when the game was first released). Viewtiful Joe featured an original protagonist in Joe, a guy obsessed with old superhero movies. In particular, he idolizes Captain Blue, and the game starts with Joe taking his girlfriend Sylvia to one of his movies. Sylvia gets pulled into the movie and Joe follows in an attempt to save her.

That's really about as deep as the storyline gets in the game, but story is almost always ancillary in platformers. Instead, the focus is placed on the gameplay, which brings a (relatively) old mechanic to platformers in a way that was pretty unique at the time. Joe gains control over time, with the ability to slow the action down or speed it up at will with the press of one of the shoulder buttons. The amount that he can control time is limited by a gauge at the top of the screen, but this refills quickly and the maximum size of the gauge can be increased throughout a level. There is also a "zoom in" power that increases the power of your attacks while also opening up a few new jump-based moves. The attacks in the game consist of punches and kicks, along with a boomerang and bombs that can be bought at the end of any level. The game also offers a few new attacks that can be purchased, such as a jump kick, but these really aren't ever required (I didn't end up using any of them).

The game itself is not that big quantitatively, with only six levels total. For the most part, the levels consist of beating up a bunch of generic robots while using the time powers to solve environmental puzzles. Minibosses are interspersed throughout the level, with one large boss at the end. The only exception to this is the fifth level, which is just a repeat of four of the previous bosses with one new boss at the end. There is also a light shoot-em-up at the beginning of the second level before it becomes platform based again, but this is meant to be a small break up in the action and the level style is never repeated. While the formula of the levels is common, the developers did a good job of offering up different environmental challenges within each level that keeps the game from feeling repetitive.

That doesn't mean that you won't be repeating sections, however. Viewtiful Joe is a fairly difficult game, and despite its low level count, it gains alot of its length from its difficulty. While the earlier stages are fairly easy one you become accustomed to the game mechanics, the later levels will need to be repeated many times before even reaching the end boss. Like most platformers, the bosses rely on pattern memorization and punish you heavily for missing a sequence. This makes fifth level especially difficult, as there are very few health powerups and if you run out of lives (of which you only have three), you have to start from the first boss. This would not seem nearly as frustrating were it not for the fact that the fifth boss in the level is an original boss and requires you to use your time powers in a way that was never required before and, to be honest, is fairly obtuse. You'll need your extra lives for him just to experiment how to beat him, and I felt Capcom dropped the ball here (I know Capcom loves "boss repeat" levels, but when one of the bosses requires you to use a certain visual cue as a guide that was purely aesthetic throughout the rest of the game, you have a problem).

Other than a few gripes with specific sections of the games, Viewtiful Joe is a solid 2D platformer that encourages repeating a level over and over until it is mastered, which may drive some people away. While the difficulty may be offputting, I rarely felt it was cheap, which always left the feeling that it was doable if I just tried it again. Viewtiful Joe become the largest franchise out of the three that were released "exclusively" for the Gamecube, spawning a sequel and a fighting game along with several guest appearances in other Capcom games. The premise was unique then, and even now is pretty unusual, and it wouldn't be surprising if Capcom revisited the franchise again.

Overall Score: 8.4
Recommended Price: $5.99

M:B #6 Dissidia Final Fantasy

Dissidia Final Fantasy is a unique game in that a person should be able to judge whether or not they will enjoy the game simply by viewing the opening cinematic (the video is embedded below for anyone who thinks they may be on the fence). The video features all of the characters from the game in a massive battle royale without giving any background to the characters or any context to the fight. I had originally started to play Dissidia in late March, at which point I realized that sum total, I had only played 5 out of the 10 games that were receiving fan service in the game. I started to play through with a couple of the characters before I figured that the game would probably be a lot more enjoyable if I finished up some of the other Final Fantasies first. And so, over a month later, I went back to Dissidia after finishing the first three Final Fantasies. I have to say, this is definitely the type of game that you're appreciation of it is directly tied to your love of the source material, as that opening cinematic was way more interesting if you had already spent at least 15 hours with each of the characters involved in the fight.

While I've had my problems with Final Fantasy games (unforgiving save/load systems, cheap enemies, often incoherent endings), it still remains one of my overall favorite series of video games. I really started to play the series at Final Fantasy X, but have gone back and played through most of them since then. Even the ones I didn't play I owned, yet they were always a safe "rainy day" backup option that I never took advantage of. I always appreciated that the series had some common threads (chocobos, Cid, certain items) yet each told a standalone story that did not require one to play any of the previous entries to enjoy. It is the equivalent of having a favorite author who told more than one series of stories, as I can play the games that I hear are the best yet still always know that the ones I have not are at least competent because I have such faith in the series developers.

Well, Square Enix decided to through out a non-canonical bone to Final Fantasy fans with Dissidia that basically throws this standalone approach out the window in favor of an all-star mash-up, and surprisingly it holds. However, this should be taken with an extreme grain of salt. When the game first came out, it got near universally positive reviews from game websites and magazines, and yet I would be hesitant to recommend it to anyone who isn't at least somewhat of a Final Fantasy fan. The gameplay is fine and no aspect of the game is broken, yet Square Enix definitely intended to sell this game to Final Fantasy fans, not to bring in new fans. The story is filled with vague references to other games in the series, and it just seems that something would be lost in the translation if someone not familiar with the series tried to play the game. Namely, who can be expected to care about a character with almost no development in the game? Square Enix didn't really have to ask this question, as the player already had a bond to the character they were choosing.

Dissidia is about the forces of Cosmos (the light god) battling against the forces of Chaos (the dark god). These forces conveniently consist of a hero and a villain from every Final Fantasy I-X (along with a couple unlockable characters). You take control of one of the heroes and play through a storyline that ends with a confrontation with that hero's corresponding villain. Afterwards, you are given the choice of continuing on and seeing the story through to its conclusion or playing through another character's initial story. The stories consist of general ideas from each game that are condensed to pure ideology, so the cutscenes are even more philosophically dense than normal. However, fans who are used to these kind of cutscenes will find them bearable, and those that have played the games that contain these ideas will definitely get more out of the cliffnotes version due to nostalgia.

The actual gameplay consists of moving the character around a storyboard that features enemies, treasures, and a few powerups until the character reaches a "Stigma of Chaos" that will either just advance the character to the next board or throw an enemy at you and then move you to the next board. When battling enemies, the game takes a 3rd person "behind the shoulder" view and you must drain your opponent's health. However, the system is a bit more complicated than that because only "HP Attacks" drain health. In order to do more damage, you must build up your characters bravery by hitting your opponent with "Bravery Attacks." The amount of bravery that your character has represents the amount of health they will knock off after connecting an HP Attack. After hitting the opponent with an HP Attack, however, your character's bravery drains to zero, and thus the game becomes a careful game of attacking with Bravery Attacks while waiting for the perfect moment for an HP attack.

Each character features a fighting style that is faithful to their game, so no one will play in a way that would shock a fan (other than the fact that, well, they're in a fighting game instead of an RPG now). Cloud has his Braver attack and Tidus has a Sphere Shot, so the game definitely pays out a bit more to people that have played the corresponding game as most people that hadn't wouldn't really care. Additionally, the items and summons featured are from the various games, further showing just how much effort Square Enix put into the game as fan service.

The game also features an Arcade Mode, Duel Colosseum, Quick Battle, and Communications Mode. Arcade Mode and Duel Colosseum is just a run through several AI opponents, Quick Battle is a match against one AI opponent, and Communications mode allows for battling against a friend. Additionally, the game has a Museum mode to collect all the unlockables, such as concept art and sample music, in one place

The graphics take an art style that is best thought of as a compromise between Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy X, and overall each character is recognizable from their respective game (except, to me, the Onion Knight, but then again that was a secret class in the U.S. re-release). The characters' special moves are all fairly accurate as well, so fans will get a kick out of seeing their favorite moves in a fighting game with a different engine. The game animates well with no real slowdown, although the load times are fairly common and long, even with the optional data install.

Dissidia Final Fantasy contains too much fan service for me to readily recommend to just anyone, as I sincerely doubt it'll share anywhere near the same level of appeal to non-fans. Granted, it's a solid enough game, I'm just not sure that there isn't a game those same people would rather play that features a more fleshed out story (like Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep... on second thought, recommend KH:BbS, but don't tell them the full name). For the longtime Final Fantasy fan, however, Dissidia is about as much fan service as you can shove into a game.


Overall Score: For Fans: 8.0
                       For Non-Fans: 7.0