Here's a review of LostWinds, a nice prize at the bottom of the WiiWare cereal box. It's exactly what I want to see from WiiWare: small, creative games that use the Wii remote like a mouse. In coming years, the Wii remote's ability to simulate a mouse will bring in more independent developers who don't want to make one more Asteroids clone for Xbox Live Arcade. It's less intuitive than a mouse, but it's closer to one than any other controller. Anyway, give the LostWinds website a look, it's a charming game. Even though it's a bit short, it presents several fun ways of using wind to toss this cute little kid around his adowable wittle viwwage. Er, that's "village."
I import all my Japanese games from Play-Asia, because the selection is good, the prices are decent, and the return address looks like porn. (And they do, in fact, also sell porn. And they sell hentai games, which are sort of porny but mostly gamey.) Sadly, not everyone associates the name Play-Asia with porn, so to make absolutely sure that everyone in my apartment complex thinks I've ordered something truly obscene, I have to do some character work. As soon as they ship my game, I start growing a moustache, and if there's time, a mullet. I wait outside the mailbox every day making finger guns. (Do you know about finger guns? You point both index fingers and go clickety-click. It's super repulsive!) When the package from "Play-Asia" arrives, all my neighbors naturally assume that it's porn, but then I rip it open to reveal a completely innocent game! Fooled ya! I immediately shave, cut my hair, and apologize to anyone who might have been wounded by my finger guns. My apartment complex has an incredibly high turnover rate.
My latest import is a game where folks with unusual problems seek assistance from three enthusiastic cheerleaders, so it's easy for folks to get suspicious. But what if I told you that these were male cheerleaders? I just allayed the heck out your suspicions, right? As you've probably guessed, my new game is Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!,or more specifically, the sequel, entitled Moero! Nekketsu Rizumu-Damashii Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan Tsu, which translates to Spellcheck Nightmare Cheer Squad.Everyone knows about it, either from playing the original, or Elite Beat Agents, the Western version, or even the sequel. But they didn't play my specific copy of Ouendan 2, because it came shrink wrapped. Thus, I am uniquely qualified to give an opinion on this exciting game that, in a sense, only I have played. This will be a special moment for us all.
Get ready for the opinion.
I should also mention that this opinion will not be varnished.
Here we go.
It's pretty good! It's not as good as the original, but that's because I loved the original so very much. The tracks aren't as J-pop this time around, more like J-classic-rock. It doesn't have a peppy song as frantic as Ready Steady Go, or a sad song as heartbreaking as Over the Distance, but there are some decent tunes in there, along with some amusing scenarios. It seems less challenging, but maybe my skills have just improved. For example, the beats, as always, don't correspond to the music; instead, they're the lyric beats where a cheerleader would shout or dance. Either the beats are more intuitive this time around or I've finally learned to think like a cheerleader. Took long enough.
So, yes, I'd recommend importing it, and you'll really save on shipping if you bundle it with a big old crate of pornography.
That's Chalk, by Joakim Sandberg, recently declared Best Freeware Arcade Game of 2007 at Indiegames. Cute, right? We're all a little sick of spaceships and bullets in our shmups, so how about a little girl in a beret with a bit of chalk? That's just art design, though. It also needs to play well, and fortunately, it does. The left hand moves the girl around, the right hand draws lines with the chalk, and together it feels a little like you're steering the girl out of trouble while you clear obstacles and fight baddies for her. There's a very similar relationship between player and character in Aquaria, but I'll discuss that one another time. They're both very solid games, especially considering that one is free and the other costs next to nothing.
Having played a bit of Chalk, it's clear that the best feature by far is the little sound effect of the chalk tapping the board. The music is very nice, too, but there's something so satisfying about a chalk's tap. Even the word "chalk" has a little tap at the end. A good sound, a good word, and a good title. I collect bad game titles, as you may know, but I can appreciate a good one every once in a while. My newest atrocious game title is Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom. Think about that. Is the kingdom under fire from the circle? Is it literal fire? How does one arrange doom in a circular pattern, anyway? Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom has some interesting character names as well, including Linehart, Curian, Regnier, and . . . Duane? (Sound of a record being scratched.) I think we know who started this whole mess in the first place. Duane's cooking up some late night noodles with his hot plate of doom, even though he knows that hot plates, fondue pots, and toaster ovens are forbidden. We forbade them for a reason, ass. Now the whole kingdom's under fire. Way to go, Duane.
Passage is more of a concept than a game, but it only takes five minutes to play (in fact, you can't play it for more than five minutes) and it has an interesting payoff at the end. Try it, it's nice. I won't give away any of the details, but you play this guy who walks around while some music plays. You meet a girl and can travel with her, or not, there are some landscape obstacles, and you can search for treasure chests if you want. Every single gaming blog discovered it sometime in December and did a little piece on it. Now that it's 2008, Passage is officially retro and this blog can write about it. Hey, remember Passage? Let's kick it late 2007-style with Passage and recall a simpler time when America was still head over heels for Chris Dodd.
I liked it all right, but wasn't as blown away as everyone else. I think it's the graphics, which are intentionally simplistic and blocky. The entire screen area is only 100 by 16 pixels. Atari-level graphics combined with aimless wandering remind me of playing E.T. back in 1982. I played the hell out of E.T., never suspecting it would become the most notoriously bad game of all time. Hey, it was better than Journey Escape. It was better than Journey Anything Journey's Ever Done.
I think I would have had a stronger emotional reaction to Passage if the characters didn't look like the shameful fruit of Pac-Man and Q*Bert's forbidden passion. Does that make me heartless, or just a graphics whore? I like to think that I'm a high-class graphics prostitute, and deep down, I have an exquisitely rendered heart of gold. After reading the game's mission statement, I understood it much better, but still only on an intellectual level, not emotionally. It's a miracle that I can feel anything on any level after watching E.T. fall into a hole over and over during my formative years. I wish those federal agents had dissected his wrinkly ass.
I love my new DS Lite. I got my original DS Heavy just before they came out with the Lite and I would've felt like a chump buying the same system again for full price. I held off until this Thanksgiving, when I took advantage of a discount and trade-in deal on Black Friday. It was absolutely worth getting up early and standing in line in the cold. My new machine feels like a whole new system, not just improved hardware. It's bright, satisfyingly clicky, and fits in my pocket now. It also plays all my favorite DS games, I checked.
Here's the problem. If you put a GBA cartridge in the slot, it sticks out a bit. Not a whole lot, but it's a little less streamlined. Nintendo's solution was to include this little plastic pretend cartridge that doesn't break the lines but also doesn't play anything. I almost never use the GBA slot anyway, but it was always nice to know that I had that backup game. Now the slot just sits there, empty but full, mocking me. Shut up, slot.
I've considered getting a Rumble Pak for the slot, but that would also protrude, and come on, rumble? Almost no DS games support it. Ouendan and Elite Beat Agents support it, so that your DS can jiggle around while you're trying to hit the beats. What a terrible idea. Also, Hotel Dusk supports it. Now, I played and even liked Hotel Dusk, but at no point did I think, "You know what this sedate, moody adventure game really needs? Rrrrrrummmmble!"
(Super Princess Peach also supports rumble. That's a game in which Princess Peach uses a "Vibe Wand" to control her "emotions." Thanks, Nintendo. Now I'm coming down with a bad case of imagery.)
Have you heard about the Glucoboy? It's a glucose tester which plugs into the GBA slot and comes with some little video games as well. Diabetic kids can win points and unlock games for having good blood sugar levels. Gimmicky, sure. But I love that kind of stuff. It's even better if adult diabetics end up playing it. What they need to do is integrate it with some of the better DS games, for example, unlocking cheat codes in Contra 4. That game is dead hard, and I'd test my blood over and over if it gave me an edge. Of course, I'm not diabetic, and (no offense) I'd rather not get diabetes, so that really would be cheating. Sorry, real diabetics. And now, since I've mentioned blood glucose levels and Contra in the same breath, it's time to let you in on a little secret:
It's the Atari 2600 Label Maker! (First seen on Insert Credit, then Kotaku, and I read about it on a CRT monitor.) Make your own nostalgic Atari labels and then close your eyes and imagine playing them! Don't imagine too hard, though, or the graphics will be unrealistically good. To start you off:
I don't remember if the Mooninite invasion was technically in Southie, but had we not defeated that first wave, all of Boston would be speaking Atari right now. One more:
That's Rose & Camellia, a game where you play a young woman of low birth who marries into a snooty aristocratic family. But your husband dies right after the wedding, so to gain respect, you have to win a slap fight against every woman in the house. Play it here. Be warned, though! This is the Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! of Victorian disagreement simulators, in that the final boss is ridiculously overpowered. It's also like Punch-Out!! in that the evil sea hag at the end actually punches you, in the face, while your open palm daintily whiffs past the place she used to be. You don't bring a fist to a slap fight. It's indecorous.
I can't tell what happens at the end, so I'll make something up. The aristocratic family learns to accept you, and never speak again of how you routed them all that one sporadically loud November day. You lead a retiring life full of domestic hobbies, like fox hunting. When a fox goes to ground, you wriggle into its burrow and slap every member of its family until it returns to the chase. As an equestrian you have no equal. You love horses because they have so much extra face. And in the fullness of time, you remarry and have children, and soon no one can tell the new line of the family from the old, save for the boys' surprisingly flexible wrists and the girls' curious predilection for gloves.
This video is longer than a 21st century attention span, so feel free to stop watching once you get the idea.
The upcoming De Blob (which supposedly has a lower case "d," but it's a video game, not e. e. cummings) combines the OCD-like goal of touching everything in the world with the anarchic method of splattering paint with every step. Of course, when you see a rolling ball and an entire world that needs to be transformed, what's your first game reference? Katamari Damacy, of course, such familiar words by now that I'm surprised my spell check noticed them. I assume that's a good way to get a game made nowadays, compare it to Katamari. If your game is about doing ketamine in a catamaran until you develop a caramel catarrh, that's probably close enough. Just throw in some stealth action and bullet time.
Looks fun, especially jumping from wall to wall, but why does the character need to be a blob? Just because it looks cool? Can't a solid character do all that stuff in video game reality? In Super Mario Sunshine, Mario flew around and wall jumped while spraying water which cleaned off the environment and restored color. The blob barely changes form at all, which strikes me as a sad waste of, you know, gelatinousness. Why can't it stretch out into a rope, or ooze under a door, or break into little pieces and then reform? Even if that's not the point of the game, why isn't there a game like that? You'll never see a critique like this anywhere else -- to summarize, I am complaining that this unreleased game disappoints me because another game that would be cooler does not exist. Welcome to the way I think.
One game that comes close is Gish, a well-liked 2005 indie game. It features an oily black blob who overcomes obstacles and defeats enemies through a realistic 2-D physics system. Gish can make himself heavy, sticky, or extra slippery and easily compressed. He can also hop a tiny bit, or more if he builds momentum. You have to see it in action to see how frustrating but ultimately satisfying it is to solve all kinds of puzzles using the laws of physics and a ball of goo. If it looks confusing, remember that he becomes sticky at will, and when he grits his teeth, he's making himself heavier. This doesn't work in real life.
My ideal blob game (I spent much of last week thinking about this) is a combination of Gish and the 1989 NES game A Boy and His Blob. In that one, you collect jellybeans which transform your pet blob (named Blobert) into different useful objects. Feed him a licorice bean, and he becomes a ladder. Vanilla = umbrella, cinnamon = blowtorch, and so on. It's self-explanatory. Here's a seven minute speed run, which shows that A Boy and His Blob is winnable, a proposition that was not definitively proven until 2003. Damn, that game was hard. While watching this video, the power of nostalgia caused an NES controller to appear in my hand and I immediately broke it.
So what have we learned from this exploration of blob games and embedded video?
Nothing.
Were we supposed to learn something?
Whoops! My bad!
If you've gotten this far, I appreciate it and can only assume that you like blobs, too. We're kindred souls! If you have any questions or corrections about blobs, or if you just want to "blob rap," feel free to join in the conversation. I can also write about non-blob topics on occasion. I know a lot about politics and have many insightful and snarky political opinions and stuff. An example: On this page, you can submit a question to Barney, George W. Bush's dog. Actual White House staffers take time to reply, and some poor schmuck pretending to be Barney has to type "Woof! Bark! Aroo!" Discuss:
As the questions go on, "Barney" becomes less and less coherent and begins laughing hysterically in all caps.
The last question answered was in November 2004. What happened?
Miss Beazley, the female dog, has almost no web presence.
We know a dog can't answer mail. They know we know. Why keep up the pretense?
Is it perhaps a metaphor?
How great would it be if instead of some dumb Scottish Terriers, there were pet blobs oozing around the White House?
A Walk in the Park is a nice, relaxing little Flash game with a tiny dog leading his owner through some light platforming and puzzle solving. The owner is in a wheelchair, playing the game's background music on a guitar. The fact that you actually see him playing the music is a great touch. The best thing, however, is the little flying helmet. I just wanted to show you what that looks like -- it is adowaboo.
The "leash" mechanic reminds me of Ico just a little bit. There aren't a lot of games where you hold hands with another character. I still remember the animation of pulling Yorda along, that moment of resistance before she comes along with you, and how much it adds to the emotional connection and desire to protect her. In both games, your player character is actually smaller than the person you're leading around, but has more agency. Yorda doesn't understand the outside world, and Guitar Playing Guy really, really wants to finish this epic composition he's tentatively calling Duet for Flying Puppy and Me.
What's up with all these Flash games ending up on the DS and PSP? The whole point of a Flash game is that you're supposed to play them when you should be working. That's why they have a boss button. And you have to somehow obscure the screen so you have an extra few seconds to hide the window as someone approaches. You can't just whip out a DS at work, unless you work at Nintendo. And even then, it's obvious that you're slacking. You can't tell Shigeru Miyamoto, "Oh, this? That's my new laptop. Yeah, they do keep getting smaller. Let me just get those figures for you . . . uh, here they are . . . looks like next quarter we'll be earning four gems, which should help us defeat the goblin of . . . inefficiency?"
I just learned about this game from Kotaku. Looks like it's been around since 2005. Maybe I hadn't heard of it because it's called, simply, "N" and I mistook it for a variable. It's like Lode Runner with a little ninja who can wall jump (nice!) but definitely can't stop on a dime (whoa, I died!). He slides to a halt, as if every level were an ice level. If I were an icy footed ninja I would carry around a little bag of sand or kitty litter. I'm sorry if that goes against the code of the ninja. Sometimes you have to decide if the code of the ninja is just holding you back.
I don't want this post to be solely about video games and ninjas (although that pretty much describes my twelfth and thirteenth year of life) so I shall conclude with a story about insects. I just saw a little ant crawling around the floor and he happened to touch part of a spider web. Instantly this spider dropped down out of nowhere and sort of sized up the ant. I could tell he was thinking, "This isn't a fly. I really prefer flies. Should I just eat it anyway? I am conflicted." He decided to hold out for a fly instead. The ant hurried away. I could tell the ant was thinking, "Why did God spare me this day? He must have plans for me. How does my destiny serve God's mysterious plan?" Well, ant, I can answer that for you. You became part of my blog post. Without you, this post would be overrun by slidey ninjas. Go in peace.
Continuing the casual games theme, I still pick up Puzzle Quest when I want a quick gem-based battle against a goblin that cheats. That screen is an April Fool's joke, but they really do cheat, I'm sure of it. If I match four gems in a row, I get a free turn, and that's it. If the enemy matches four gems, he gets a free turn, and then matches another four, and then he matches five skulls and suddenly it's "You hath been defeated" and I have to turn the DS off for a while because all I can think about is how easily I could snap that hinge. That'd show 'em. Shit assers.
I discovered a whole new epithets for the suspiciously lucky bad guys in Puzzle Quest. When I get mad at God of War, I just say, "fuck!" but when Puzzle Quest baddies attack me I cry out, "Shit asser!" I think it started with just "Shit!" when the screen fills with Four in a Row, Four in a Row Again, Five in a Row, You're Really Boned, Guess Who's About to Hath Been Defeated? It's Ye! (And annoyingly, the words fill the DS screen so I can't see the board and I have a nasty surprise when I finally get my turn, if I even get one.) "Shit!" is the immediate recognition that something bad happened, but then I start to take it personally, and want to insult whoever did this to me. I'm already sort of syntactically primed with "shit" so I call them "Asser." Is it a corruption of "bastards"? It's completely unconscious, and when I try to hold it in I still do it in my head.
Google finds a few pages with "shit asser," but mostly in French. Make of that what you will. I like that it doesn't target any gender, race, or even species -- it applies to every single baddie, because they all have asses that shit. (Except maybe the ghosts. Do ghosts shit?) If you would like to include "shit asser" in your life the proper emphasis is "Shit asser!" followed by furiously snapping the DS shut and punching a wall until you find a stud.
Passage
