Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit

October 12, 2012 by 7 Comments

Hell Yeah! comes to us from Arkedo, the guys who did the Arkedo Series of XBLIGs. As a quick recap of what I thought of those, they’re pretty games that were boring as hell, and vastly overrated by the community at large. All style, no substance. So let it be said to all aspiring developers: style must be all you need. That’s because Arkedo’s latest game just landed on PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade and is being published by none other than Sega. So what does this mean? Well, obviously with a company that puts such a high premium of quality as Sega does, we can expect plenty of substance to go with the style here. Heh. Hehehe. Right. Oh, and being on PSN and XBLA bumps the sticker up on it to $15.  Joy.

Don’t worry. Walking on this fire won’t burn you. Some fires in this game will, but this one won’t. Good luck keeping track of that!

You’re a rabbit that is the brutal ruler of Hell. And then he gets caught corn-holing a rubber ducky in his bathtub, photos of it circulate, and it ruins his reputation, thus forcing him to extract revenge. No, really. That’s the plot. Did I mention this game is Japanese? No? Well, it’s not. It’s French. That somehow makes it worse. You know how everyone has someone in their life that will do an obnoxiously racist impression of a Japanese person? Imagine if that person were French. Go ahead and do it. I’ll wait.

Cringe worthy, huh?

The bizarre story is complemented by some of the most painfully unfunny dialog and gags I’ve encountered in a game. Lots of cussing, lots of call backs to other games, and lots of random weirdness. All of which can be funny if it has a punchline, or some semblance of context. There is none of that in Hell Yeah.

At first glance, Hell Yeah looks like a typical platformer, only with some run-and-spray shooting mechanics thrown in. But there is a hook, and it could have been a neat one. There are several “large” enemies throughout the game that you have to track down and kill. This is done by draining their health bar, which then activates a Wario Ware-like quick-time event. If you complete the event successfully, the enemy is defeated in a spectacularly over-the-top pseudo cut scene. It sounds great, and at first it kept me slogging through the game, even though the amount of fun I was having would have to be measured in nano-fractions. For a while, every character died uniquely. After about three hours (or 30 odd creatures) in, that stopped. In a fire stage, I beat one enemy and a dude shaped like a piece of toast shouted “ROASTIE!” Ohhhhh, I get it. Like that guy in Mortal Kombat. The thing is, that joke is so over-played that it hasn’t been funny since long before I was even playing games. I felt bad for Arkedo, but then the very next guy I killed, the Roastie guy popped up again to do the same exact joke. Suddenly, I didn’t feel bad for them anymore. This is the equivalent of a drunk at a party telling a lame joke and then saying “get it?” You want to tell them with all sincerity and concern, “no really, you should stop.” But they’re still laughing at themselves, nodding their head and saying “no, GET IT?” Sigh. Yes, I get it. It just isn’t funny. And Hell Yeah is not funny at all. Not once. Not even on accident.

Boss fights are multi-staged events that take too long and have no check points. Are we having fun yet?

Meanwhile, the gameplay seems like it should be better than it is. The controls are mostly adequate. Your dude walks around, picking up an absurd amount of weapons, shooting things, wall jumping, double jumping, and cutting through enemies using a saw-blade/jetpack thing that you pick up right off the bat. With all this firepower, you would think it would be really fun to just run around and kill things. But it never is. And sometimes those adequate controls go off their meds and become unreasonable. Aiming is done with the right stick, but all movement is handled by the left stick, with no option for the directional pad. It makes it really awkward when an enemy’s only weak spot can be hit by jumping, aiming downwards and firing. I couldn’t help but take damage every time this was required. A dash attack later on gets mapped to the left trigger, at which point the controls officially cross the line from decent to cumbersome. Plus, you have too many weapons to juggle (and you get more as you go along), so sections of the game where everything is taken from you actually come as a startling relief. Oddly enough, those are the only parts of the game that I almost had a little bit of fun. Almost.

Hell Yeah is just a bad game. A directionless hodgepodge of half-baked ideas that often don’t work the way they should. The QTEs required to beat enemies don’t always offer enough time to set yourself and figure out what you’re supposed to do. If you fail one, you take damage and the enemy gets some of its life back. I would be shocked if a person was capable of doing most of these on their first try. It turns Hell Yeah into a serious of “gotcha” moments. Even worse is the checkpoint system. There’s quite a few checkpoints, but they’re not marked clearly enough. But the real crappy part is if you die and respawn, you come back with the same amount of life you had when you hit the check point. Imagine going into a difficult, bullet-hellish section with only a tiny fraction of health left. It forces you to backtrack to the last health refill station, which you can bet your ass is on the other side of the level, without taking damage. It also doesn’t help that the levels are sprawling and BORING. Even having beautiful graphics isn’t all that helpful. If you got lost wandering the Louvre for hours on end, you’re not going to finally walk out of the place saying “well, at least it was a good sight-seeing tour.”

The “each guy gets a gruesome death” stuff was good, until they started repeating themselves.

Arkedo continues to have the style-over-substance problem. This is the fourth game I’ve played of theirs and the fourth one that I decided to quit before the game was finished. I know people say that’s not very professional conduct. Thankfully, I’ve never claimed to be a professional, so I can stick out my tongue and blow a raspberry at them. I put about five hours into Hell Yeah! and was bored stiff by horrible level design, droning boss fights, and controls that started okay but got progressive worse as the game kept changing directions. It sure is pretty to look at, but that doesn’t take the edge off the tedium. I wouldn’t have liked Hell Yeah if it had been a $1 XBLIG. At $15, I’m pretty sure I’m now going to hell for murdering money. Ironically, once there I’ll probably be stuck playing Hell Yeah.

Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit was developed by Arkedo

$14.99 heard that Judas chose being chewed on by Satan over playing Sententia in the making of this review. 

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Worms Revolution

October 4, 2012 by 7 Comments

Do you know what annoys me? When I go to read a review of a new version of a cherished series and it doesn’t answer the questions I want to know. So I’ll cut the bullshit and get to the questions that I would want to know as a Worms fan. Stuff like..

How does the class system actually work in practice? 

The short one, the fat one, the smart one, and the normal one. It’s not a sitcom character sheet, but the new class based system. So how does it work? Well, the normal ones are the Worms you’re used to, so I’ll ignore them. The fat ones are absolutely worthless. Yes, they hit harder, take more damage, can barely be pushed around by the “water”, and many other benefits. But they’re all negated by the slow movement, inability to jump, and most importantly, limited opportunities to escape. Plus, they look like Jabba the Hutt, and any creature that looks like something taken down by a girl in a fetish costume should not be entered into armed combat. Sorry, they just shouldn’t be.

The little ones are not as bad, because they’re zippy and are great for “fire and run away” tactics. But their firepower is weak, and they can be pushed around by enemy attacks easily. That is, when they’re not getting insta-killed by stuff that most other worms would survive. If you play with a competent opponent and use them, even if you use them well, they’re weak enough that it’s like flogging yourself on a cruise ship, donning a suit made of chum, and then keelhauling yourself in shark-infested waters. Which, by the way, I think Carnival actually offers for an extra fee.

I think I prefer the old graphics style to this “3D” stuff that looks like it was lifted straight from the Sega Saturn.

And then there’s the scientists. I’m not exactly sure that a ton of thought was given to balancing them. Their firepower is a tick smaller than a normal worm, but the bonuses they give you more than make up for it. They produce better equipment, so stuff like Sentry Guns made using them fire more rounds, seem to have a longer range, and are also more durable. Even better is that when you start a turn using one, every worm you have gets five extra health. I decided to exploit this by making a team that had four scientists. Thus, I was getting twenty extra life for each worm every time I ran through the full circuit of them. Over-powered? Yea. To put this in perspective, I won a game of forts against Brian where I had taken a metric fuck-ton of damage on each of my characters and still finished with over 100 health for each of them. Brian dealt out 500 points of damage more than I did, but I still won, because it was too easy to park worms and let them build up health. And while I didn’t win every game where I played with four brains, every game I did win I did so because of them.

Ultimately, the new class-based system does offer a nice twist on the established formula. But it’s easy to abuse and there are serious questions about balance. With some more tweaking, this might work better, but for now, this is not a positive new direction.

What about the water?

Okay, first off, it’s not water. It’s “water.” I’ll remove the sarcastic quotes when the fucking stuff actually behaves like water. This stuff is more like jelly. It’s slow-moving. It often doesn’t have any force behind it. It acts as a shock absorber more than something to be frightened of. And the act of drowning inside of it doesn’t seem very consistent. It’s too easy to have one little microscopic fraction of a worm poking out and not have it register as being submerged, even if everything it could conceivably be breathing from is covered up.

I really didn’t like the “water” stuff.  I felt the physics of it were all wrong. I felt it was too unpredictable. Water should be very easy to predict how it will behave. But sometimes it would just stack on a flat piece of slope. Yes, stack. “Water” in Worms Revolution stacks. Water doesn’t stack!! Well, unless it’s frozen. Maybe the “water” is some kind of unique hybrid of water and Velcro, because it would slowly trickle down a steep slope like it was clinging to it. Ugh. As for the water based weapons, I felt the water balloons might take the cake for the most useless item in Worms history. The water gun is more effective, especially if you’re trying to push two or more guys off a cliff. However, I found more inconsistencies when it came to using it to push around environmental objects, or stuff like landmines. Sometimes the water gun would push the mine very easily. Sometimes it would cling to the floor like it was cemented into the ground. What changed? Nothing, besides the mood the game was in. This was another good idea that almost completely fails in execution. Although my boyfriend would like to note that he didn’t mind it as much.  But he has red hair and thus can’t be trusted. You know how they are.

How do the “environmental objects” factor in? 

Very well, actually. This was my favorite change to the formula. I always thought it was weird how the battlefield in Worms had scattered about it various cars, football helmets, candy canes, and other fun objects that didn’t do anything different from the normal terrain if they were shot. That’s not the case here. Objects will drown you, poison you, or explode you. They also are allegedly capable of crushing you, but it seems fickle how that works and can’t be relied on. The biggest problem is not being able to see how much “life” an object has, and there’s no consistency to it. Sometimes items blow up instantaneously from such things as a single shotty blast, while others can take multiple bazooka rounds without budging. Without a lifebar or any reliable visual cues, the strategic aspects of using these is lacking. Still, this is the only major change that worked the way it was expected to, more or less.

What about all the old standbys of Worms?

I found the physics of the bazookas and grenades have remained pretty much the same. That is, when they’re not crapping out on you due to glitches. Grenades often defied the laws of physics by spinning around like a top instead of bouncing when you throw them. I’ve seen grenades cling to enemies, walls, and floors like they were coated in glue. Or perhaps the “water.”

For you fans of Ninja Ropes, forget everything you know about them. They work completely differently from past installments of the series. There will be no amazing acts of wackiness. The ropes at most can swing back and forth. Using them to defy gravity and fold yourself up and over the top of a cliff is officially impossible now. I guess this was done to make the game more realistic. Right, because I know I kept saying to myself “this game featuring worms blowing each-other up with bazookas needs to be way more realistic.” And the weird part is, every other thing, like the “water”, behaves in a way that is so divorced from realism that it could be the setting for a new season of Jersey Shore.

And there’s a lot of little niggling things too. You can’t scoot across the ground with the jetpack. You have to be moving upwards to be able to move left and right. The Concrete Donkey now bounces around the map when you activate it, as if it bred with Armageddon to create an unholy offspring. I used it twice over the course of two games and the grand total of damage it did: killed two of Brian’s worms, killed five of mine. Even though mine were nowhere near his. It’s as if someone at Team 17 said “you know how this weapon worked fine the way we had it? Well, and this might be crazy, but what if it didn’t work fine?” And then they high-fived each-other and went back to making the “water” even crappier.

So Worms Revolution sucks then?

No, actually. Even after all the bitching and complaining I did above, my friends and I had an absolute blast playing it. For everything that it does wrong (and it does a LOT wrong), it’s still Worms. If you get four people together with it, you’re practically guaranteed huge smiles, belly-laughs, hooting, hollering, high-fives, and an overall damn good time. Worms remains the most unsung party series in gaming. I wish it had been way better, but what’s here is still potently fun. They even improved my personal favorite game mode: Forts. Instead of being static pictures of castles or jungles or pirate ships, they’re actual forts! As in, they have hallways, basements, openings to fire out of, and logic in design. I enjoyed this mode so much it almost negated all the shit I dug up above.

Ah, now THESE are forts.

Worms Revolution has a long ways to go. A lot of patchwork, a lot of fine tuning, and more content. The single-player stuff is somewhat dull, thanks in part to AI that is way overpowered, like they went to the Far Cry school of AI design. But setting up online games is a breeze and customizing multiplayer options is a snap. So why am I so disappointed? I think it’s because I wanted to love Worms Revolution, and instead I merely enjoyed it. Change is good, but only if that change has a net positive effect. Most of the new stuff in Worms Revolution makes the formula worse. For me at least, the new Worms has turned the series from “holy shit, this is fucking awesome!” to “this is good. I guess.”

Worms Revolution was developed by Team 17

1200 Microsoft Points have a boyfriend obsessed with banana bombs in the making of this review. I never really understood the logic behind a banana bomb myself. Why would it bounce the way it does? Bananas don’t bounce!

Worms Revolution is Chick Approved, but only Xbox Live Indie Games are ranked on the Leaderboard. 

Review copies were provided by Team 17 to IndieGamerChick.com. Indie Gamer Chick’s policy is to pay for its own games. Because the game wasn’t released at the time of this review, full copies were purchased on October 9 (on PlayStation 3.  Not the same platform, but money was spent).

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The Sequel Blues

July 30, 2012 by 11 Comments

We have been penalized by the lack of new consoles on the market. I understand the manufacturers don’t want them too often because it’s expensive, but it’s important for the entire industry to have new consoles because it helps creativity.

-Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft

I’m rarely stunned by the stupidity of words that come from the heads of major game studios, so I have to give Mr. Guillemot credit.  That was a remarkably dumb statement.  One that I wholeheartedly reject.  It was a defensive statement, for something that doesn’t need defending.

Gamers can be an irrational breed of people.  When they’re at their worst, gamers can be reactionary, twitchy, slobbering crybabies.  Or we can shorten that and call it “fanboys.”  I get it with kids.  Santa Claus brings Johnny an Xbox 360 for Christmas, while Bobby gets a PlayStation 3.  They’ll end up doing what kids do, arguing that their machine is the best.  But the bad ones, they’re the assholes who drag this argument out into adulthood.  They’re also the ones who bitch about console manufacturers who push non-gaming content, DLC, and especially sequels.

Minecraft 360 has sold over three million copies. Not bad for a dead platform.

I don’t get the argument against sequels.  Of all the truly stupid shit that gamers get angry over, the resentment of sequels is the one that baffles me the most.  I think many people forget that gaming is a business that exists to be profitable.  That might sound condescending, but it’s true.  When you bitch at developer for being too sequel heavy, you’re essentially telling them to not take the path of least resistance towards profitability, placing their company’s future at a greater risk.

Here’s my question: why does this make you, the angry gamer, so damn mad?  How in the blue fuck does Call of Battlewar Modern Reach 17 possibly affect you?  Other than the fact that you’ll be $60 less wealthy once it’s out because you know you’ll buy it.  Yes you will.

If sequels aren’t your thing, don’t get them!  Their existence doesn’t stop the influx of other purchasing options.  Gaming has entered a second Golden Age of creativity.  The advent of independent gaming, plus the roll out of digital distribution on consoles has opened the door to new and original properties that would never be given a green-light seven years ago.  In 2012, the major digital platforms on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 have seen two record-shattering games be released: Journey and Minecraft 360.  Whether these games appeal to you directly or not is irrelevant.  It’s what they represent that is important.  They’re new properties (in Minecraft’s case, new to consoles) that destroys the notion of sequels drowning the industry.  The gaming landscape is full of titles like that.  Rarely does a month go by where there isn’t at least one, maybe two games on those platforms that I just have to try because they look so different.

Are we really ready to let go of the PlayStation 3 when such innovative, never before attempted ideas such as this one are on the verge of fulfillment?

That’s why I think Yves Guillemot’s comment pissed me off so much.  Because it was a pass-the-buck move for something that didn’t require defending or an explanation.  Anybody whinny enough to complain about sequels will never be satisfied with anything because they’re miserable human beings just looking for stuff to moan about.  You can’t please them, and it’s not even worth trying.  Whether they admit it or not, they buy all the mass-marketed stuff anyway.  They just have to try to be “cool” and reject sequels.  That makes them sound non-conformist.  I walked into a Gamestop once (bad decision, I admit.  I think I might have been under the influence of seizure medication) and saw what looked to be a half-man, half-manatee complaining about Crackdown 2 being a soulless cash-in that didn’t really try to be different.  And he said all this with a straight face while wearing a Gears of War 2 tee-shirt.  This is the type of moron you can’t win with.

Why try to justify yourself to these people?  Especially with outright bullshit, as is the case with Mr. Guillemot.  Saying “no no no no, it’s not OUR fault that we’re making sequels.  It’s their fault!  Sony’s and Microsoft’s!  Blame them!  We need new hardware or we simply can’t be original!”  Right.  Because launch-window games are known for their high-risk creative endeavors.  Of course they’re not.  New consoles bring with them 12 to 18 months worth of last-generation gameplay rehashes dressed-up with shiny graphics.  The Wii might have been an exception to that, just because it had that wacky new controller thing, but I don’t think anyone would try to argue the machine sparked a revolution of creativity.  It takes about two years for developers, even first party ones, to get over the learning curve of developing for a new platform.  While that is going on, they stick with what they know.

So Mr. Guillemot is wrong.  New consoles don’t breed creativity.  They might make a game producer’s imagination run wild with possibilities, but that doesn’t necessarily transition to the final product.  That’s why the truly neat stuff doesn’t hit until a console has been around a while.  A new concept, like Katamari Damacy, couldn’t have launched with the PlayStation 2.  Developers stick with what they know works, which is why Touch My Katamari launched with the Vita.

Spec Ops: The Line is technically a sequel, but it’s not really, because the series was never this bad ass.

And that’s why I don’t want this generation of consoles to end just yet.  Look at what the last 18 months have given us.  L.A. Noire.  Journey.  Bastion.  From Dust.  Fez.  Walking Dead.  Catherine.  Dragon’s Dogma.  I just finished Spec Ops: The Line, a game that is a sequel in name only, and I was blown away by its gutsy narrative.  You wouldn’t see anything like that christen a new platform.  You just wouldn’t.  Yea, this console generation has had an unusually long lifespan, but with promising new IPs like Watch Dogs or The Last of Us still on the horizon, why are we already writing a eulogy?  So I reject Mr. Guillemot’s assertion that developers need new consoles to be creative.  An especially hypocritical stance from the guy in charge of the publishing house that is bringing us the next big new IP, Watch Dogs.  According to him, they shouldn’t have even bothered, and instead of focused on the Wii U, which is the new platform his employees need or they just can’t think.  And what is this new platform in essence?  A screen that you have to flail around like you’re trying to swat a fly with it.  What is he doing with that?  ZombiU.  That’s his idea of innovation: holding a screen in front of another screen.  It would be like Firestone deciding the next generation of tires should be square-shaped.  Besides, my faith in that game is nil.  Ubisoft does launch titles about as well as buffaloes do deep-sea diving.  I remember Red Steel.

Sequels are not the problem with gaming.  I’m not even sure there is a problem with gaming right now.  We live in an era that features multiple thriving platforms, and hundreds (if not thousands) of games of all shapes, sizes, and costs that are released annually.  With so many options available to consumers, I simply don’t understand how so many gamers can be singing the Sequel Blues.  If all you can see is sequels, you need to get your eyes examined, because I do believe you’re more near-sighted than Mr. Magoo.

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Kairi on E3 2012: Sony Edition

June 5, 2012 by 1 Comment

Tell me I’m the first one to say “J.K. Rowling cast the Avada Kedavra Killing Curse on Sony’s E3 press conference.”  I’m sure I’m not, but I just thought of it all on my own, and that counts!  Actually, it really is kind of funny how Sony can have such a well done press conference, but you have one little brain fart like a ten minute session of J.K. Rowling sitting oblivious to the fact that we would have rather seen J.K. Simmons and suddenly everything is less than hunky dory.  By time the conference was over, nobody was talking about all the fucking awesome videos of games.  They were making Harry Potter jokes.  Smooth, Sony.

I thought it was a good conference.  Besides WonderBook, they hit all the right notes.  No 3D bullshit (maybe the billion dollar bath they just took on 3D televisions had something to do with that), not a whole lot of Move, minimal talk about non-gaming applications, and a whole lot of major titles with actual game footage.  Not all of them interested me, and I’m sure not all of them interested you.  But there really was something for everybody here. Especially if you’re eight-years-old or stupid, because that’s all WonderBook can appeal to.

Either he’s playing WonderBook or he got into the medicine cabinet.

WonderBook was bad.  Like “why are they showing a tech demo for the PlayStation 2 Eye Toy like it’s 2003?” bad.  Just to point out how off base Sony is, they spend ten minutes pimping the game like it’s a child’s toy, complete with footage of elementary school kids hoping like hell Sony wasn’t lying about giving them free games for taking part in this ad.  And then what other game besides Book of Spells did they talk about, albeit very briefly?  A game called Digg’s Nightcrawler that has a Film Noir theme to it.  Way to nail down that target demographic, Sony!  Why, not a day goes by where a six-year-old doesn’t ask me if I’m a fan of the Maltese Falcon.

Otherwise, the conference was swell.  God of War is targeting other creatures of myth, which I assume means the Last Guardian will be one of the bosses in it.  Sure, it pretty much is the same old shit that we’ve had shoveled at us since 2005, but hey, God of War!  Look, Kratos killed some dudes by dismembering them!  Haven’t seen that before!  Actually, Kratos does have a new gift: he can rewind time to create platforms to hop on.  So you guys are grifting from Lego Star Wars now?  If  you had to do that, you should have just made this Lego God of War.  At least that would have been funny.

The highlight of the show was The Last of Us.  Like everything else shown at E3, the game’s pitch boils down to “It’s Uncharted, but..”  Resident Evil 6 was Uncharted, but with zombies.  Tomb Raider was Uncharted, but with boobies.  In this case, it’s Uncharted, but set in post-apocalyptic America.  It actually looked decent though.  Ironically, it had more stealth stuff in its footage than stealth-series Splinter Cell’s trailer did.  Of course, there were still moments of mind-numbing stupidity of design.  After all, we can’t venture too far away from Uncharted.  The scene that sunk the trailer for me involved a shoot out where people were using couches as cover.  Couches.  Things made of foam, cotton, and tiny little springs.  I kept thinking “shoot the fucking couch!”  Maybe the dude thought he would accidentally shoot the tag off and get arrested.

At least it looked like a game I wanted to play.  I can’t say the same thing about Beyond: Two Souls by Quantic Dream.  I thought their previous effort, Heavy Rain, was a boring piece of shit.  I think most people probably feel the same way as me about it, but won’t admit it because then they become “anti-video games as art” people.  I feel no shame when I say that I want to be a gamer, not an art connoisseur.  I also don’t feel I should have to volunteer to be bored for hours while waiting for the quote “good stuff.”  Yet, that’s what the argument for Heavy Rain is.  It starts slow, but a few hours in it gets better, so just wait for it.  Why should I?  Unless the good stuff will undoubtedly be the greatest thing EVER, wouldn’t that time spent being bored be better spent not being bored?  I know, crazy talk.

“Quick, before you die, where are the fire extinguishers again?”

Hold on though, they got Oscar-nominated actress Ellen Page.  Great!  And then they showed it off by cutting to a cinematic where her character didn’t speak a word for five minutes.  When you actually got to hear her, she wasn’t really any better than 90% of all game voice overs.  Which is to say she totally phones in every line of dialog.  Money well spent, Sony.  Next time, do what Capcom does and just hire Sally from accounting to do the acting.

And no, I have nothing to say about the Vita.  I’m just like Sony!

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Sonic The Hedgehog 4 Episode I

May 20, 2012 by 13 Comments

My intent here had originally been to review both parts of Sonic 4. However, after slogging through Episode I and encountering the single most boring final boss in the history of video games, I don’t think I have the strength in me to even try it. It doesn’t help that most people are telling me that some of the stuff I will be complaining about below got fixed, yet the game is still worse. How is that even possible? It’s like unclogging a toilet by blowing up the building and calling it a job well done.

Long time readers probably expected me to hate Sonic 4 before I even started it. Whether it was my hate-article against Sega, my review of Sonic CD, or the fact that my Twitter picture was typically me figuring out different ways to torture and kill a stuffed Sonic The Hedgehog doll, I think the message is clear: fuck Sonic. By the way, I would have kept up with the Sonic killings, but wood-chippers are shockingly expensive and there’s a bullshit 7-day waiting period on flame-throwers. To me, the franchise represents everything wrong with gaming: generic character with committee-designed personality that’s best viewed through nostalgia goggles. Sonic is the gaming equivalent of Poochie. Every attempt at modernizing Sonic has failed, with fans rightfully bitching that they suck and they just want an old-fashioned 2D Sonic game. The only problem is, those old-fashioned 2D Sonic games weren’t really all that good to begin with. As a child, they were neat for you because they pushed new technology and did stuff games hadn’t done to that point. Today? They don’t hold up, and neither do attempts at recreating the magic. Stuff like Sonic Colors and Sonic 4 continue to get lambasted. And whenever something with Sonic that is borderline not shitty comes along, like Sonic Generations, fanboys treat it like Jesus just emerged from his tomb. You guys are easier to please than my dog, and all I have to do to make her happy is throw her a teeny piece of pizza crust.

I honestly don’t even think the graphics look that good.

I had only played the demo of Sonic 4 Episode 1 (which ought to have been subtitled The Phantom Appeal) when it came out back in 2010 and I honestly thought it was just a remake of one of the earlier Genesis games. Can you blame me? Same stupid opening level, same enemies, same rings, same abilities, same loops, and same power-ups. I imagine anyone with just a passing interest in Sonic would think this was just a graphical upgrade of an existing title. The full game’s other worlds include a casino, an underwater temple, and an industrial zone. I mean come on, Sega! This is like trying to rob your own home.

Everything bad about Sonic games is also here. Same cheap ass enemy placement, same “gotcha!” level design, and every single thing people never liked in Sonic games to begin with. I have never once met a person who said they enjoyed the water stages in Sonic The Hedgehog. I’m sure there might be one or two stragglers out there who insist they’re brilliant, just like I’m sure that there’s one or two people out there who genuinely enjoy squirting wasabi up their nostrils, but it doesn’t mean anyone else would want to do it. The water levels here are particularly painful because of how bad the controls are. Sonic runs like he’s wearing concrete shoes, so building up speed becomes an issue. Once you actually get some momentum going, good luck stopping when you need to. I tried holding back on one of those accelerators just to see how long it would take me to stop and go back to it. I had to press the left directional button nearly 100 times to get there. Granted, nobody is going to play the game like that, but when you design a game around something that is moving fast and then punish people playing it the way it is intended, you’re a colossal asshole.

Of course, things are totally the opposite in the water stages. They give you a game where you’re supposed to run fast, then submerge the character in maple syrup. It becomes so slow and clunky that I honestly wonder if they keep putting these fucking stages in these games hoping that fans will start taking their own lives in protest. I’m telling you, I think I’m on to something here. There are parts in the industrial stages where you have to outrun a giant, um, not sure what it is besides a hunk of metal, and if you die you go back to a check point. From there, you have about two seconds to run up a series of slopes or risk dying. The problem is, you’re not given the ability to build up the required speed to get up them. I had to spin-dash up one, hope to stop, do it again, hope to stop again, and then do it one more time. Once you get past that, you basically just have to hold forward and wait for the game to start playing itself for you like every Sonic game seems to do. Once again, I took a running count. Not sure how accurate it is because I think I might have accidentally counted a couple of sections twice after dying, but regardless, I counted 77 times where I could advance forward in a level without pushing anything. That’s over the course of only twelve stages. Whether it’s bouncing off springs, rolling through tubes, or running past accelerators, Sonic games sure have a hard-on for not letting you play them. As I pointed out in my last review, Sonic was originally designed by Sega to be Mario for idiots, but game design like this strikes me as Sega having outright contempt for its own fan base. Are you getting the message Sega is sending you, Sonic fans? THEY HATE YOU!  What do you think they were trying to tell you with all those 3D Sonics? They weren’t fucking Valentines!

Come on! They didn’t even change the first boss from the first Sonic game! Short of knocking you out with chloroform and shitting in your mouth, what else can they do to show you they don’t like you anymore?

I pressed forward and eventually got to the last boss. Well actually, before you fight it, the game ends with a boss rush. I guess Robotnik felt that all those previous attempts at murdering Sonic with various contraptions that often failed within twenty seconds were worth a second look. Once you dispatch them, you’re placed against one final, giant robot. At first, it didn’t seem like such a big deal. It was slow. It was easy to attack. So I started to bonk it. And then I kept bonking it. It would fly up in the air, crash down, and I would keep bonking it.  After EIGHTEEN coma-inducing bonks, the boss finally entered its second phase. It takes eighteen hits to get there!  Mind you, this thing doesn’t put up anything resembling a real fight. It just sort of lumbers around, waiting for you to smack it. In the second phase, you can’t attack its body directly, so you have to wait for it to fire one of its arms at you. Once you avoid it, it floats downwards, and you have to bonk it back to the robot to stun-lock it. Of course, the game is kind of fickle about when something constitutes “hitting it” versus “getting hit by it.” The arms have spikes on the bottom, so I would wait until I could attack it at a downward angle, hitting the top of the arm and thus avoiding becoming a Sonic Skewer. This worked, oh, about half the time. The other half the time, I would do a lock-on attack directly to the top of the glove and still die. Grrrrrrrrrr.

Once you die, you get to go back to the 18 bonks before reaching the second phase and hoping like hell your lock-on attack doesn’t crap out on you, forcing another restart. Well, on one such attempt, luck was on my side, because I had kept all three rings I got at the checkpoint, I had gotten to phase two, and I was able to successfully attack the boss another dozen or so times. I’m not sure how many shots are actually required to kill it. Possibly it’s some hypothetical number, like a quajillion, but I won’t know because the game had one final dick move supreme to pull off on me. You have exactly ten minutes to beat every stage, including in boss battles. I had eaten up about four minutes getting to the last encounter, and another three minutes getting to phase two of the final boss. Well, as it turns out, the last boss has random attack patterns, only one of which opens itself up to attack. After getting a bunch of hits on it, with about two minutes and change left until time expired, the game flipped me the bird and never again did that one attack I needed it to do. You have got to be fucking kidding me. Time expired, life lost, back to the start of the fight, cuss words screamed, controller thrown, power off, and Sonic 4 and go fuck itself.

“Dear Sega, less water stages in Sonic games please.” “Did you say more water stages?” “No, less. Preferably none. Nobody likes them.” “More water stages it is!”

And that is when it hit me: the guys Sega stuck this project with hated making it as much as I hated playing it. They just didn’t care. That’s the only explanation I can think of for sticking such a tediously boring boss at the end yet another redundant Sonic game. Maybe this was their attempt at killing the franchise once and for all. Maybe this was their attempt at trying to avoid drawing the Sonic assignments any further. Maybe they were outright trying to get fired. Whatever the explanation is, Sonic 4 Episode 1 is one of the worst pieces of shit I have ever played. But the games sell, so they’ll keep making them. I bought this one and I just bought Episode II, so I’m part of the problem. Excuse me, I need to go flog myself now.

Sonic The Hedgehog 4 Part I was developed by Sega

I honestly don’t remember how much I paid for this. I think it was like $1 at Christmas on PlayStation Network or something like that. Quite frankly, I can’t justify spending any amount on this game.  

Filed under PlayStation Reviews, Xbox Live Arcade Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Datura

May 9, 2012 by 11 Comments

Update: I don’t do this kind of review anymore. This is the type of review I’m not proud I did anymore. I could be a bully early on in my IGC existence. I hadn’t even been IGC for a full year by this point. This was one of those “don’t be mean. Review the game, not the developer” moments that I hadn’t learned. I’m ashamed of it, straight-up. I stand by the game being pretentious and awful, but the jokes I made were mean-spirited, lazy, and even cruel. I was 22 when I wrote this review. I’m 33 now. The girl who wrote this had a LOT of growing-up to do. I would not want to be friends with a person who wrote this review. That’s the barometer I think everyone should use.

Datura comes to PlayStation Network courtesy of Plastic Studios. Their only other PSN title was artsy-fartsy crapfest Linger in Shadows, which actually was one of the top-selling titles on the platform. Probably because it was cheap and most people who bought it were unaware that it wasn’t actually a game, but rather an artificially surreal, deplorably pretentious piece of rancid shit. I guess the good news is that someone at Plastic pulled their melon out of their anus long enough to make something that kind or resembles a game. The bad news: it still sucks, they still released it, and they’re actually charging money for it.

The idea is you’re this dude that’s fucking dead and.. oh sorry. Hold on.

SPOILER ALERT: The dude is fucking dead.  Do not continue reading if you don’t want to know that.

The idea is you’re this dude that’s fucking dead and progressing through some sort of afterlife. So basically, it aims to be a spiritually enlightening quest of discovery.  Gee, where have I heard that one before? Ah, but this is totally different from Journey.  Journey had a coherent narrative and felt like it was making an honest attempt to connect to players on a spiritual level. Datura plays out like a series of random acid trips that someone kept notes on. Having played Linger in Shadows, I’m guessing that’s not too far from the truth. Hell, the game opens with a dude on a bad trip (courtesy of Datura, a fruit that causes delirium) being treated in an ambulance. Using the move controller, you pull the heart monitors off your chest, at which point the EMT shocks you with paddles and then stabs you in the chest with a syringe. I’m guessing this could very well have been the final fate of the lead producer of Linger in Shadows..

You unlock this door with the key to imagination. And drugs. Lots of drugs.

Once you’re out of the ambulance, you’re dropped in a forest where you have fumble your way around, looking for white trees to rub up against. Doing so fills out a map. Also, there are four fucking stupid mini-games for you to find. Once you beat those, you have to make your way through a maze so ridiculously easy that Theseus could have navigated his way out using nostril hair, followed by four more minigames. Those are then followed by a bullshit non-ending that should have been expected by this point, just because it completes that “you really pissed your money away with this purchase” feeling.

And what are the minigames? Well, there’s one where you drive on a road, pantomiming driving with your ping-pong-ball-on-a-stick Move controller. Because, you know, I guess nobody had ever thought to make a motion-controlled driving game before. Oh, and you also get to climb up a ladder using gestures that are typically reserved for jerking off a 22-inch-circumference gherkin. There’s a ball throwing minigame, a rifle shooting minigame, a minigame where you watch your best friend get blown away by a drunken farmer, and one where you chase your friend around a swimming pool. What the fuck? Is this really supposed to be an art house indie game or just the Betty Ford Clinic version of Wii Play?

The Lawnmower Meh

I honestly can’t recommend Datura to anyone. Even if you have some kind of crazy Brewster’s Millions bet going, Datura isn’t worth it. As far as Plastic Studios, Sony needs to tell them “make a coherent game or we’re cutting your funding.” Tough love is what they need, because empty platitudes using buzzwords like “bold” and “artistic” isn’t helping them get any better. Honestly, I don’t see anything good ever coming out this studio, so Sony should just cut them loose.

Datura was developed by Plastic Studios

$7.99 ($9.99 for non PS+ members) was retroactively not proud of this review in the making of this review. 

 

Filed under PlayStation Reviews Tagged with , , , , ,

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