MadWorld

I’ve played most of the big “hardcore” releases for the Wii. All the major Nintendo franchises, No More Heroes, and I’ve now finished up MadWorld, a game I was super excited for. Being a whore for all things visually interesting and all things made by Clover Studios, though I’ve yet to try God Hand, made MadWorld seem like a perfect fit.

MadWorld did manage to deliver visually, but throughout most of the game I found it just called to attention the inaccuracies and sometimes over-accuracies of using a Wiimote for precise control. MadWorld is a hack and slash game and like all good ones it tries to add some strategy in, especially for the boss fights. This is fine with a controller because quick accurate movements like dodging can be done with a thumbstick and button press. With motion controls however, a dodge is done by swinging the nunchuck. Dodging in a certain direction is done contextually based on what the enemy is doing with no extra input required from the player. The difference between a vertical slash and a horizontal one isn’t always as clear as it should be depending on the angle you’re holding the Wiimote and sometimes just adjusting where you rest your left arm can have catastrophic results.

All of these gripes seem to be hardware issues. Of the “hardcore” Wii games I’ve played, this is the first to really heavily rely on motion controls and it is quite clear now why other developers, including Nintendo, have avoided them. MadWorld makes up for it by making the game overly easy, but this isn’t exactly a great solution. Damage sustained is generally minimal, health items are fairly abundant and death does not reset the damage inflicted on opponents. These make the lack of controller fidelity manageable, but take away from the satisfaction felt after nailing a boss fight in a game like Devil May Cry 3 or Ninja Gaiden.

Sadly, the game also had its fair share of software problems, mainly the camera. I have yet to see a camera take control and reorient exactly how I would like it too and MadWorld is no exception. Every time the camera tries to do its own thing I had to fight it to get a view of what I actually needed to see. This was especially noticeable while running away from a fight, which is pretty much the worst time to be wrestling for a good view of the escape route. The gameplay also starts to get a little repetitive, but they put such a ridiculous amount of ways to kill in, that its almost your fault if you find yourself doing the same things... almost.

Like I said earlier, they did nail the graphical style of the game. I was continually amazed by how excellent everything looked with only black and white to give them depth and texture. Another unexpected plus was the game is hilarious. There are two announcers narrating the show that are very reminiscent of the two guys on MXC, only actually funny. The violence is also more over the top than I could have ever imagined, the game rewards you with a higher score for being as brutal as possible and you need those points to unlock the boss fights so violence is definitely encouraged. The games sense of humor is hardly for everyone, but if you were at all interested for its other merits than the humor should be to your liking.

MadWorld is a good time for the six or seven hours it will take you to complete, but I found little reason to play once the credits rolled. It’s a decent game that didn’t quite live up to the potential I think many people saw in it. My biggest problem has to be the inaccuracies brought on by the motion controls, which is sad because it seems like every good game I’ve played on the Wii would have been more enjoyable if I could have only used a GameCube contoller, barring Metroid of course. I’d still definitely give it a shot, it was a worthy first attempt for a studio I expect wonderful things from in the future.

Old School Puzzles

I’ve been juggling between newer and older games a lot lately. There is something inherently different about older games, something more than just cosmetic and I think I’ve finally figured out what it is. That difference is in how we are asked to solve puzzles.

Every time I go back and play an old game, something at least as old as the mid 90’s, I end up getting stumped by something stupid. After solving whatever was causing the hindrance I always find myself more frustrated rather than relieved or proud. The puzzles that cause this always have been completely random and illogical solutions. Once I know the answer, I’m usually flabbergasted trying to understand why anyone would logically work this puzzle out in his or her head. My favorite example of this is from Ocarina of Time and I know I’m going to get some flack for this, but even 10/10s have flaws. Especially when you play them for the first time almost ten years after release.

Anyway, the conundrum I’m talking about is how to acquire the fire tunic in order to enter the Fire Temple. To get the tunic you must bomb a small Goron that is rolling around his village. He then stops, talks to you and hands over the tunic. This minor part took me around three hours to figure out. Upon figuring it out I didn’t feel that lovely sensation I got after solving a particularly difficult part in a game like Braid, instead I just wondered why anyone would bother bombing that rolling guy for any reason other than already having exhausted all other options. Even the conversation you have upon acquiring the tunic seems out of the blue. The game teaches you that you can bomb the rolling guy, but doesn’t give you any real reason too, at least not one you would expect to advance the main quest.

Compare this with Twilight Princess, Nintendo’s latest major foray into the world of Hyrule and you’ll find something quite different. All the steps to gain access to each dungeon made perfect sense. For instance, around the middle of the game you are tasked with melting Lake Hylia. You know you must use your partner, Midna, to teleport an object to the lake to accomplish this. You should also remember walking by a giant molten rock an hour or two earlier in the game. The game lets you know early on that the item will be right next to one of your very finite teleport locations, which further helps you jump to a quick conclusion. This puzzle can be solved by thinking rather than trying everything you can until blindly stumble forward.

However, as much as I welcome this new way of puzzle presentation, it is not without its faults. Games these days are traditionally far too easy and Twilight Princess is no exception. I was never stumped for more than a minute or two by the dungeon intermediary puzzles in the main quest line. This seems to hold for plenty of other games as well, especially JRPGs. The most complex puzzle in the last JRPG I played, FF12, consisted of little more than pressing a few switches.

I understand why games have arrived at the way they are now. It’s simply better design to make puzzles that adhere to logic. I also get why they’ve gotten so much easier. Simply put, making difficult and clever puzzles is not easy. I don’t necessarily have a solution other than spending more time trying to add complexity though I definitely think we are heading in the right direction. I’ll take a puzzle I can think my way through over one that requires me to scour the entire game world any day.

Project Natal

I hate to be the cynic, but after seeing the video for Microsoft’s new camera input device I can’t help but think, “yeah right.” I can’t imagine the technology required for that to work even reasonably well isn’t something that exists right now. If it does, it sure as hell isn’t cheap enough to mass produce for a game console. Maybe I’m wrong and Microsoft has some crazy new tech that makes it all work wonderfully, but I’m not holding my breath. Remember when Sony announced something similar this time last year? Funny thing, the virtual pet hasn’t been mentioned since. I’m sure it is still being worked on in some capacity. We’ll see what ends up happening with that I suppose.

Another reason I’m finding it hard not to be cynical is the biggest Project Natal announcement so far is from Lionhead. Don’t get me wrong, I really liked Fable 1 and thought Fable 2 was pretty good too, but you can’t deny Peter Molyneux’s tendency to overhype his games. He seemed like he was getting better with Fable 2, but then he ended up going off about some new experiment of theirs that will blow the collective minds of gamers everywhere. He couldn’t mention anything about it other than how awesome it is. I wouldn’t be surprised if this turned out to be Milo.

My other problem is, if it does work, will the games be as lame as the ones in the video looked? the racing one looked okay, but changing tires as a pit crewman is not exactly my idea of a great time. Hopefully once the technology is readily available, excellent uses of it will start popping up. Then again, I still haven't seen this fully realized with the Wii and that's been out for almost four years.

One thing that gives me hope is Johnny Lee’s recent blog post explaining how excellent the tech is. He kind of comes off as a PR robot in his post, but I’ve seen his videos and several of them show things I wouldn’t have thought possible.

I hope everything they claim comes to be and then a whole lot more, but like I said, I’m not holding my breath.

Super Paper Mario

My RPG stint continues with Super Paper Mario! I guess it’s not really much of a stint seeing as my last three games weren’t RPGs and this hardly qualifies, but whatever. I still have a lot more RPGs on my plate lately than normal, and Fallout 3 is on my horizon.

Super Paper Mario is one of those mystical Wii games aimed at the hardcore that are supposedly so hard to come by. Though I guess when it was released, it was one of like four. Anyway, Paper Mario is one of many games that were planned as a GameCube title, but had motion controls retrofitted into it since it was delayed so long that no one cared about the GameCube by the time it was done. Luckily there are barely any uses of the Wiimote, which is good because most of the few feel tacked on. The most prominent of these is the games hint system that uses the pointer. The only other uses are small mini games to maximize the benefit of certain power ups and flailing the controller when frozen. The rest of the time the Wiimote is turned sideways and is used almost as an NES controller. Only now there is a giant A button near your left thumb.

Unlike previous Paper Mario’s this one plays a lot more like the original platforming sidescrollers. The game is still has plenty of RPG elements, specifically leveling, but gone is the turn based combat and whatever else was different. I never actually played the previous titles. :) Super Paper Mario works wonderfully as a hybrid except for one fairly annoying fault. The game has way too much story. It’s a largely unecessary story too, some evil guy is trying to destroy the world, Mario needs 8 Pure Hearts to stop him. There is also a surprise twist that isn’t really because of the major clues dropped several hours before the big reveal. This kind of thing probably worked better when the combat was turn based. The previous games must have proceeded at a much slower pace overall so the interruption in interactivity wasn’t as noticeable.

Incidentally, I still found the writing to be one of the games strongest attributes. Despite the story being derivative, the game has a very sharp sense of humor. There were several parts that poked fun at gamers and an entire world devoted toward making fun of nerd culture. Another world parodied old martial arts movies. Multiple times, in game characters would refer to the player, breaking the fourth wall with very humorous results. The game managed to be consistently funny, something I wasn’t even expecting it to try to do.

The humor blended nicely with the games art style. As you may have guessed, the game is called Paper Mario because everyone and everything is entirely 2D. When you turn around it appears as though a cut out of Mario is being flipped over. Everything is also all very cute looking. It looks great and fits the humor well. If you’ve played any of the previous games it won’t be anything new in the character department. The backgrounds did get quite the overhaul, however.

Like most Nintendo games, the gameplay and level designs are rock solid. The bulk of progression is done through puzzle solving and as the game progresses new powers are unlocked. By the end of the game you can choose between four characters all with a unique ability and close to a dozen Pixls each adding an ability to your arsenal. It’s done slowly enough to not be overwhelming and leads to some pretty ingenious puzzles reminiscent of Zelda dungeons of old. The coolest power, and the games main selling point is Mario’s ability. Early in the game you obtain the power to flip the world from 2D to 3D. Several things are hidden in the 3D world that aren’t visible from the 2D, including pathways going into and out of the plane of the screen. This makes the puzzles that much more unique and interesting.

The game has a few shortcomings, but almost all of them were rare enough to be overlooked. For instance there are a few fetch quests that require a decent amount of backtracking through a levels. Once you actually backtrack though, you realize you really hadn’t come that far to begin with, it was the explorative diligence that originally took time. There’s no reason to constantly flip to 3D and check every nook and cranny on your way back and the destination is always a memorable spot. Another problem, and many people will probably disagree with this, is puzzles that require nothing more than searching every inch of the area to discover how to move on. I only noticed this once, but I found it incredibly frustrating. These kind of tactics were used a lot more in old games and I am happy to see them fading.

My biggest issue with the game was the camera believe it or not. I didn’t know you could mess up a 2D camera, but they did just enough for me to take notice. The camera stayed vertically in place throughout the whole game. It would always be fixed right below the initial thing Mario was standing on. Therefore if you needed to jump down to a platform or up to one above the screen, it was a blind jump. Once you safely landed the camera would readjust, but then stay there now blinding you of plenty of other obstacles. Simply jumping in place in order to get a peak did nothing. The problem proved annoying, but not terribly hindering throughout the entire game.

Finally, there was a bit of a difficulty spike in the last world of the game that caught me off guard. I think I died three or four times throughout the rest of the game and I easily doubled that throughout the last two levels. Still, this wasn’t too huge of a problem because most of the games time consumption is spent on puzzles. Even if I spent thirty minutes progressing into the level, retracing my steps took only a few minutes. The difficulty spike was unexpected, but not unmanageable if you made it that far.

Super Paper Mario is a fun romp that is worth dusting off your Wii for. It isn’t the best thing Nintendo’s put out, but it’s a nice throwback to the Mario games of the late 80’s and early 90’s that we all love so much. It did get tedious at times with the story, but enough of the writing was clever and silly enough to hold my attention. Shortening the game by a world probably wouldn’t have hurt, assuming you’re part of that camp, but I still recommend it as is. Besides, it’s not like you are using your Wii for anything else.

Graphics aren't not everything.

I was reading Insult Swordfighting the other day and noticed Mitch Krpata mentioned that he tunes graphics out quite early in games. The game becomes about mastering its mechanics and the graphics take the backseat. I agree to an extent, but then I think about some of my favorite games and they wouldn’t have been nearly as impressive without the environments and atmosphere the graphics created.


Shadow of the Colossus for example is a game with interesting gameplay mechanics and a control scheme that is deeper than meets the eye. That said, one of my strongest memories of that game has nothing to do with gameplay. I’m talking simply about the world. It is a wide open barren wasteland that adds immensely to the games overall mood. The player and his horse are the only beings in the entire area aside from the Colossi, and the feeling of isolation comes across wonderfully through this. Without the proper design of this world, with the scattered ruins and howling winds, Shadow of the Colossus would not have had anywhere near the impact it had on me.


Another great game whose graphics were essential to the experience is Bioshock. I don’t think any of its players will dispute that the city of Rapture was one of the most interesting and disturbing places they visited in 2007. 2K Boston succeeded in creating a living breathing underwater city that amazingly still felt like something from the 1950’s. Bioshock is one of those rare games that I remember for its atmosphere, characters and story before its gameplay. Sure, it had solid shooter mechanics, and the crafty player could set up elaborate Rube Goldberg contraptions for the Big Daddies to stumble through, but what really set the game apart was its environment.


One game I never would have even finished if not for its vibrant world and interesting stories is Oblivion. About 2 hours into Oblivion I realized I had made an utterly terrible character that just got weaker and weaker with every level I gained. By level 10 I was basically useless and I hated the combat system. I ended up turning the difficulty slider down and found myself spending hours just wandering around, taking in the world of Tamriel. The game still has a pretty amazing draw distance. Standing on top of certain mountains as the sun sets on the forest below is almost as breathtaking as seeing it in real life. Without the beautiful world to explore, I probably wouldn’t have made it 4 hours into Oblivion. The awesome guild quests didn’t hurt either. :)


The entire horror genre is something I feel intrinsically relies on graphics and the atmosphere it creates. Would Dead Space have been anywhere near as frightening without the humanesque looking monsters occupying a pitch black, huge, and empty, but eerily noisy space ship? Imagine playing Dead Space with stick figures in an environment consisting of white geometric shapes instead of with the highly detailed character models and ship designs. How scary would that be?

Oddly enough, one game that I feel has always greatly benefitted from its gory art style is Gears of War. Multiplayer shooters would never be anything without their solid play mechanics and sound level design, but I’ve always found something very satisfying about landing a kill in Gears. Something about blowing your opponent to pieces with a shotgun when seconds earlier he was charging at you full steam never gets old. This goes against the very basis of the article Mitch was referring too when he made his graphics comment, but I feel at least in this case the gore matters. I don’t think I’m “high on scales of aggression” either, but hey, I’m a gamer, aren’t we all violent psychopaths?

I know graphics are hardly everything. I just recently played Siren: Blood Curse, a game with an incredibly spooky atmosphere and some of the freakiest monsters I’ve ever seen, but absolutely hated it. Why? Because the game played terribly, the entire thing was tedious and frustrating, which was more than enough to ruin the overall experience. I’ve also played plenty of games for hours and hours that offer nothing in the way of interesting visuals. N+ is one such game, every level consists of gray backgrounds that the stick figure you control must navigate. The game is an absolute blast and brutally difficult. It succeeds because it has some of the most precise platforming controls ever. All the game has is its solid controls, interesting jumping mechanics and clever levels, and that is all it needs.

It’s pretty obvious that gameplay is always the most important factor when judging a game. If graphics were everything how would a game like Megaman 9 have garnered so much attention? I just find it odd when I hear people say they don’t care about graphics. So many games wouldn’t have been nearly as immersive and memorable as they are without their graphics. We should keep that in mind before the next time we yell out graphics aren’t important.

Call of Duty:World at War, Multiplayer

I’ve now spent a few hours playing World at War multiplayer. I must admit it’s a good deal of fun, but if you’ve played CoD4, it really adds nothing new to the experience. Aside from the Nazi Zombie mode, which is pretty cool, but fleeting.

World at War immediately reminded me of everything I loved about CoD4’s multiplayer, but at the same time rekindled my hatred of WWII weapons. Using an iron sight is quite hard at long range, and while they do have a red dot scope equivalent, you must sacrifice certain very useful perks in order to use it. I found this very difficult to get used to since the standard sight on just about every gun in CoD4 was a red dot scope. The iron sight is especially cumbersome because I found people much harder to see on certain maps. The game has a much more brownish hue than the already overly brown world of current gen shooters. This coupled with the American uniforms made people blend in far more than I think Treyarch intended.

All in all, I must say Treyarch did a pretty bang up job of capturing what Infinity Ward laid out in 2007. I never played CoD3, but I heard the biggest complaint for it was the multiplayer. Treyarch responded quite well to this problem, but I still can’t help but wonder if they really did anything. Infinity Ward clearly just gave them the code from CoD4. The game literally feels like a reskinning of CoD4. Sure, Treyarch had to design their own maps, balance the different weapons, and a few other things, which they did quite well. But so much of the game looks and feels exactly like CoD4, right down to the menu screen and player interface.

The Nazi Zombie mode is both hilarious and fun. Every time I think about it, I wonder if anyone in 1939 had any idea that 70 years later we would have made a game out of surviving an endless horde of zombified versions of Nazis. It’s absolutely ridiculous considering this is all loosely based on something that happened not all that long ago. I digress, the mode is a good time and requires some serious teamwork if you plan on getting past round ten. It is a lot like Gears of War 2’s Horde mode and suffers from the same problem I had with that. Once I beat all 50 rounds of Horde mode I found replaying it incredibly boring. Even on the higher difficulty settings I didn’t really want to play it anymore. Nazi Zombie mode is the same way only as far as I can tell there is no end. After playing through three or four times I felt like I experienced all it had to offer and wanted to return to deathmatch.

If you’re still addicted to CoD4, but want a change of scenery, World at War should be sufficient to hold you until Modern Warfare 2. Though, seeing as I’m six months late to the party, everyone probably already knows that. I think World at War is still just under Halo 3 for top games played on Live, followed closely still by CoD4. Clearly people are playing it. Honestly though, the biggest thing World at War did for me was that it got me hyped for Modern Warfare 2. I can’t wait to see what the creators of the franchise have been doing these last two years.

Resident Evil: Degeneration

Playing through Resident Evil 5 last week reminded me of the fully CG movie I saw Capcom touting at TGS last year. I knew it would probably be terrible, but I’m kind of a whore for anything 3D animation. I can’t wait for the new high definition Advent Children Complete coming out soon if that’s any indication, another movie that arguably sucked. I like quality 3D films too though, WALL-E was one of my favorite movies of last year, don’t judge me!

Anyway, back to Resident Evil. Does anyone have any idea what is going on in this series? There are at least six games in the story that are considered canon, maybe more, but as far as I can tell none of it makes continuous sense. RE4 attempted to be a self-contained story and it benefitted from it. It was also overly simplistic, president’s daughter went missing in Spain, in comes Leon, he discovers and thwarts zombie cult guys, saves the girl and gets out. That was fine though, it worked. Even 4 got confusing when they brought in old characters like Ada Wong for no reason. Then RE5 used the same storyline in Africa and showed that some new company TriCell has been responsible. Maybe I’m wrong, I haven’t played that many of the older RE’s, but when did TriCell replace Umbrella? None of this seems to follow any sort of coherent storyline. It’s not surprising that they are talking about completely rebooting the series with RE6. Maybe that’ll give them a fresh start that they won’t screw up. I’m skeptical though.

I guess the movie, Resident Evil: Degeneration, is supposed to connect the stories between RE4 and RE5. I never would have guessed that without skimming the Wikipedia article about the movie after I watched it. My neighbor, who has played through every RE excluding the Chronicle ones on the Wii, seemed to think it took place between 1 and 2. Something must have gotten lost in translation or Capcom clearly needs a few lessons in storytelling. Maybe they shouldn’t have closed down Clover. Their plots no matter how obtuse always made sense.

I could probably sum up what happened in Degeneration, it is at least coherent enough for that, but an underlying “why?” never seems to be explained. A zombie outbreak at an airport starts the story off, but what causes it is not particularly well explained. There are people wearing zombie masks protesting something Raccoon City related, but then an actual zombie shows up seemingly out of nowhere. This starts a series of events ending with some random cops’ brother turning into a hideous monster in a huge pharmaceutical research building and squaring off against her, Leon S. Kennedy and some marines. Well known RE character Claire Redfield also plays a prominent role doing something or other. The building then goes into the most convoluted self destruct sequence known to man. The movie ends with the dramatic realization of something. I have know idea what, but the ominous music they played as they revealed TriCell bought out the pharmaceutical company WilPharm was obviously intended to invoke an, “Ah Hah” and an accusatory finger point. I had never heard of WilPharm until this movie and had never heard of TriCell until RE5, but apparently they are related now and I’m supposed to be shocked. Maybe even appalled.

That was a gross oversimplification of the plot with several key points left off, but you are probably better off reading it that way. If not, here you go.

At least it had the CG going for it. Every now and then I’d get a bad dose of uncanny valley, but for the most part I never got the lifeless zombie vibe from any of the people. The zombies on the other hand came off quite successfully as zombies. I couldn’t help but giggle as several of them would attempt to stumble through a small gap only to fall all over each other. Still though, the visuals weren’t good enough to warrant a watching just to see them. Something Advent Children is still capable of getting me to do.

On the rare chance you were planning on seeing this movie, but didn’t watch it back when it was released, I wouldn’t bother. It has a few cool looking moments, but is definitely nowhere near good enough to devote a hundred minutes to. You could be playing a video game!