Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward

Just over two years ago, I purchased and played through Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and absolutely loved it. I devoured that game, several-hour chunks at a time, right in the middle of the holiday season. (I want to say I began the game on 12/22 and finished it on 12/26.) Anyway, I gushed and gushed over it for one obscenely long paragraph here on the blog, and yet when I went back and reread that post just now, I realized just how much more I could have gushed.

I'll spare everyone that endless specific praise this time around and just say, holy shit guys, play these games. (Oh yeah - this game is that game's sequel, which I guess isn't clear based on their titles alone.) Once again, I played through the entire game in four or five days. This time though, I did it during a work week, racking up something obscene like six hours a night. I went to bed at midnight, playing this, with every intention of stopping in an hour or so, and I'd stay awake and alert right through four in the morning. It wasn't my wisest recurring decision. Honestly though, you should be prepared to do something similar when you play these games. And again, you really need to play these games. I recommend a lot of things here on the blog, but this Zero Escape series has the distinction of being something that no one else has experienced that I just absolutely loved. The last series of posts like that, for me, were 2012's A Song of Ice and Fire offerings. At the time of this writing, Nine Hours is available on Amazon for $17. Not bad, for a game that went out of print a year ago!

At this point, this post is nothing but a hard sales pitch with very little description of what the game is - actually, to this point, none whatsoever. So I'll do my best to give a brief five-sentence description. Ready?

It's a visual novel - a "choose your own adventure" type of story on a video game platform - interspersed with "escape the room" point-and-click puzzles that stay thematically relevant to the overall story at hand. It's got a fully fleshed out ensemble of easily distinguishable characters, each with slightly different circumstantial motivations. The whole thing plays out over multiple parallel timelines that you can jump between, seeing which decisions and outcomes affect things for better and worse in which ways. The central mystery is supported by a bevy of smaller bits of intrigue that you tend to forget about until they surface, and the game seems to find the right balance of obvious twists, red herrings, and subverting expectations. The story itself is full of pseudo-science, urban legends, philosophy, and science fiction, allowing almost every puzzle in it to be poignant beyond the context of the game itself.

Does that work for you?

Mad Men: Season 6

There weren't a ton of "big moments" in the sixth season of Mad Men, and the show spent what felt like a lot of time revisiting old grounds. There's a surprise company merge reminiscent of Season 3's finale's twist, Don's having a fairly standard affair with another married woman, and the characters continue to react to tragic news in the form of dead soldiers, violent riots, and the murders of public figures (though we only have history to blame for the tragic 1963/1968 parallel Kennedy assassinations, I guess). I'm sure there was an intention behind all of this - that the show wanted to show how even though the times may change, individuals don't. That's a great and powerful stance to take, but it just didn't make for as memorable a season of television as the previous two (and possibly three; I need to rewatch Seasons 2 and 3 to get a feel for those again, someday).

Of course, none of this means Mad Men was bad or boring TV in Season 6. It remained one of my favorite shows ever, full of sharp writing, stunning visuals, and impeccable acting. It just didn't feel as monumental this time around. Season 7 has been confirmed to be the show's last, albeit split into two parts, and maybe this sixth season will wind up being an essential bridge season between where we were in 4 and 5 and where we're going in 7. Time will tell.

Here are a few quick parting thoughts.

• Mad Men gets plenty of recognition for its era-appropriate costuming, but after reading a few of these posts I appreciate the importance of costuming on a whole new level. It's something I've never paid much attention to, but I find myself fascinated by the wardrobe theorizing going on out there on the Internet. Seriously, check it out. An excerpt: "Also worth noting is that in the Chevy scenes, Bob is wearing Pete's old power color blue suit. It's a nice visual cue that Bob is going to take Pete's spot on the account." Another excerpt: "We predicted right from the beginning of this season that not only would Peggy and Abe break up, but that they would break up over philosophical differences. And we did that solely by looking at the clothes they were wearing in their scenes together." Great stuff.
• Couple of F-bombs this season! I can't remember if they bleeped those out in the AMC broadcasts, but I feel like I'd have remembered them either way.
• I don't know how many of you guys have seen Freaks and Geeks, but I have, and it never once occurred to me that the elegant, stuffy housewife Don has an affair with this season was played by the same actress as the spunky high school girl who befriends a bunch of burnouts, but, well, wow:

Resident Evil: Extinction

Sorry for the lag in all these posts. Yes, I have watched all the movies in this franchise -- in fact, I finished them just before the holidays -- but I'm being lazy posting them. (And, according to Stan, I have an unfinished post on JFK? Eh, doesn't surprise me. I'll get to them all. Just get off my back! ) So... the third film in the Resident Evil franchise. Let's get to it!

Last we left off, Alice was rescued from another secret Umbrella research facility with her cronies that escaped Raccoon City along side her. Well that's kind of unnecessary information at this point. As the film starts off (just like every film in this franchise) Alice begins narrating the setup of this story that's occurring some undisclosed time after the last film -- let's say six months to a year. First thing she discusses is how the T-virus outbreak escaped from the confines of Raccoon City (even though it was nuked) and have spread across the entire world essentially creating the apocalypse. Wait... Stop...

In the previous film we focused on zombies confined to a city. Then this movie we flash-forward to see Alice, doing her best Mad Max impersonation, trekking through the desert wastelands of a post-apocalyptic world. The story to fight against the end of the world is completely overlooked. What the fuck? I WANT THAT STORY! Where's the tale of losing the planet to the T-virus? Humanity standing together to save the world but ultimately loses. Again, what the fuck?! Did the producers and writers hear that concept and just yawned? "Oh, you know what would be even better than making moving where we show the mankind fight a losing war with this horrifying zombie outbreak? A movie where we summarize this information in the intro with a mere 10-second CGI clip. Yeah, that's some captivating filmmaking. Let's do it." It's not as though I place this franchise high on a mantle or anything, but their decision to overlook that biggest battle of all times is perhaps the biggest letdown I've ever experienced in my cinephile life. 

In fact, I'm done with this post. There's really not much else to say. In terms of the big plot points, Umbrella has been trying to make clones of Alice as she is -- somehow -- the only human to successfully bind with the T-virus in a non-destructive way. Well, it essentially makes her into a superhuman. However, Umbrella has been unsuccessful duplicating Alice. Oh, but did I mention they actually have Alice programed as their solider (some computer chip in her eyeball will flicker when she's activated). So at a flip of a switch, Umbrella can activate her as their own personal slave/solider. Yet, the whole movie is spent with them trying to "find" her as if they never had this capability to begin with. Argh!!! The logic gaps in this story make me so angry! 

This is the most disappointing film the series... so far. However, much like the Fast & Furious franchise, it does get better as the films progress. Let's hope that the upcoming sixth film keeps that trend alive. 

A Storm of Swords

I love it when a plan comes together... early on when starting into the A Song of Ice and Fire series of books, I planned on spacing the first three out somewhat evenly between seasons 3 and 4 of Game of Thrones. I figured three books was the optimal amount to read as it would likely give me knowledge of the first half of the fourth season; I could get the best of both worlds by being a reader who knows when some big plots twists are coming, and then I could go back to being completely unaware how the season would end. And here I am near the end of January with book 3, A Storm of Swords, completed. And it was awesome. Most of the Back-Blog members are already aware of the huge events of Game of Thrones' third season- Jamie's redemption arc, Daenerys' attempts to free the slaves in Essos, and of course the brutal red wedding. But this only takes up about 60% of the book, and there are a ton of huge twists to come; if anything, there's far more action in the rest of the book than what we've seen already on tv. My only complaint is that for several spoiler-y reasons, the red wedding didn't feel nearly as bad this time around (and not just because I knew it was coming this time). Still though, I had heard that A Storm of Swords was the best book in the series so far, and it lived up to the hype. Now I wait a few months for season 4, then at some point this summer I'll return for the widely-derided fourth book, A Feast for Crows. Seriously though, read the books. It's not that they're better than the show, but the two forms of media just complement eachother perfectly.

Ecco the Dolphin

Here's the first game thus far into the Genesis project that...

• I had heard of before this month.
• felt like a true full video game in its own right, and not just a port of an arcade game.
• took me more than one sitting to beat.
• felt like it mattered in some way.

So, yeah. Ecco the Dolphin is the cream of the shitty, shitty crop so far. It looked and played like something I'd have enjoyed when I was a child. You're a dolphin. Aliens have abducted your friends and it's up to you to save the day. And then the world. You can swim and attack things and send out sonar waves. That's really all there is to the game, but the levels were varied enough, and the game itself long enough - and the music and visuals pleasing enough - for me to see why this one is remembered so fondly by some people. Here's an abridged storyline summary from Wikipedia, because this game - like every Sega Genesis game - plays out like an Adult Swim cartoon.

Upon leaving the bay to search for his pod, he contacts several dolphins from other pods, who tell him the entire sea is in chaos, and that all marine creatures had felt the storm. An orca tells Ecco to travel to the Arctic to find a blue whale named the "Big Blue," who is revered among marine mammals for its age and wisdom. Once Ecco finds him, the Big Blue tells him such storms had been occurring every 500 years and directs him to the Asterite, the oldest creature on Earth. He leaves the Arctic and travels to a deep cavern where he finds the Asterite. Although it has the power to aid him, one of its globes is missing, and needs it returned. However, this can only be achieved by traveling back in time using a machine built by the ancient Atlanteans. Ecco travels to the sunken city of Atlantis, where he discovers the time machine and an ancient library. He learns the cause of the storm; it was a harvest of Earth's waters that was conducted every 500 years by an alien species known as the Vortex. Learning this, he activates the time machine and travels 55 million years into Earth's past. Ecco locates the Asterite in the past but is immediately attacked by it. Forced into battle, Ecco manages to dislodge a globe from it. This opens a time portal and he is sent back into the present. After receiving the globe, the Asterite grants him the power to turn his sonar into a deadly weapon against the Vortex. The Asterite instructs Ecco to use the time machine to travel back in time to the hour of the harvest. This time Ecco manages to be sucked into the waterspout along with his pod. Once inside the waterspout, Ecco makes his way towards the Vortex Queen, the leader of the Vortex race, and destroys her, rescuing his pod.

I can only imagine what happens in the two sequels!

Ecco the Dolphin
Arrow Flash
Alien Storm
DecapAttack
Comix Zone
Chakan: The Forever Man
Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle
Columns III
Columns
Crack Down
Altered Beast
Bonanza Brothers

Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon

The Nintendo GameCube was one of my favorite game consoles of all time. Not just because of its hardiness or its excellent controller, but also because Nintendo just had some big old balls during that entire development cycle. A Mario Kart game with two people in each cart. A Star Fox game in the third-person adventure genre. A first-person Metroid game. A Zelda game rendered in cel-shaded cartoonish graphics, set on the open sea. A Super Mario game based almost entirely on spraying water. A Kirby racing game. A Donkey Kong rhythm game. These were all radical ideas, and they led to a wide array of results. Some of them fell flat, some were met with acclaim, some are mocked and ridiculed to this day, and some of them drastically altered the course of their respective franchises for the better. It was a hell of an era, and Nintendo wasted no time jumping into this high-risk mindset when they decided to launch their new console without a Super Mario game, banking instead on gamers' interest in Luigi. Luigi's Mansion was one of fourteen launch titles for the system and in the absence of a Super Mario game became the marquee title for the GameCube. I played it and liked it a lot. I wasn't alone. It was met with critical acclaim and wound up being the GameCube's fifth-best selling title of all time when all was said and done. (The top four? Super Smash Bros. Melee and three games I referenced above, in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, Super Mario Sunshine, and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.)

Anyway, the game was soon forgotten about, and left without a sequel or any plans for one. In the ultimate indignity, it soon became little more than a punchline for those who thought the GameCube was a failure due to Nintendo's poor decision-making. So it gave me great pleasure when Dark Moon was announced, and even greater pleasure when it was released to all sorts of acclaim. It bothers me a little bit that a lot of people seem to cite it as an all-around improvement to Luigi's Mansion, finally "getting it right" where that franchise had somehow screwed things up ten years ago, but maybe I'm in the minority who just remember the first game fondly.

For the uninitiated, both Luigi's Mansion games revolve around Luigi using a vacuum cleaner to suck up a punch of pesky ghosts that have invaded an old, run down building. In the first game, that was one sprawling mansion. Here, it's five smaller distinct buildings. That about sums up the difference between the two, and honestly, I prefer the sort of open-ended feel the first game had to the level-based system from this one. But I'm not complaining, because both games are great. Blog readers know I'm not the type of guy to take my time with a game unless I'm really enjoying it, and this was a perfect example of such an instance; I collected every Boo (one in every level) and gem (thirteen in each... "world," for lack of a better term) in the game, often looping back through previously-played levels just to get that 100% completion.

This was one of the best games I've played in a while. Like, easily a top ten or fifteen game from the past year or two, and narrowly able to edge out Super Mario 3D Land as my favorite 3DS title to date. Check it out. And check out the first Luigi's Mansion too.

DecapAttack

Somewhat shockingly, I'm already one third finished with the Genesis project. And while I definitely have some fatigue - hell, I started the project fatigued - I'm cautiously optimistic about what lies ahead. Even without the eight Sonic games included in this collection - games I'm starting to realize truly were, far and away, the cream of the Genesis crop - I've still got titles left like Ecco, Shinobi, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, and Virtua Fighter. It's not that I'm banking on those games being good; it's just that I've at least heard of them, which is more than I can say for literally any game beaten in the Genesis project so far.

But in addition to setting myself up for disappointment, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's talk about DecapAttack. It's one of the better platformers I've played so far, in which you are a headless monster. You can find heads here and there, and you use them as projectile weapons, and I'm starting to realize just now as I'm typing this that that's where the game's name comes from. You decapitate yourself and attack enemies with your own head. How cool is that?

Arrow Flash
Alien Storm
DecapAttack
Comix Zone
Chakan: The Forever Man
Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle
Columns III
Columns
Crack Down
Altered Beast
Bonanza Brothers

Crack Down

Last summer I played through the Xbox 360 game Crackdown, a satisfying blend of elements from Infamous and Grand Theft Auto. This game was nothing like that game. It's a top-down stealth shooter of sorts where you move at molasses-like speeds to plant bombs and not get shot.

It was dreck. I'm sure it would have been both easier and more fun with two players, like so many other Sega Genesis games that are essentially arcade ports, but I wouldn't wish the experience of playing through even two or three Sega Genesis games on anyone I care about.

No, this is my quest, my penance for something or other I must have done at some point, and I'm not about to force my wife or friends to help me bear this burden.

#SegaMartyr

#SlowlyLosingMySanity

Arrow Flash
Alien Storm
Comix Zone
Chakan: The Forever Man
Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle
Columns III
Columns
Crack Down
Altered Beast
Bonanza Brothers

Comix Zone

After a relatively lengthy hiatus from the Genesis project, Comix Zone is the ninth game to fall. It was hard, but it was short. And I have to admit, I kind of enjoyed it. Part of this has to be because the game was released in 1995, and is thus among the most modern - or just least ancient - games in the Genesis catalog. You're a comic book artist (seen above, looking every bit like a cross between Meat Loaf and Steven Seagal) - no, you know what? Let's allow Wikipedia to describe this one.

"One night, while Sketch is working on Comix Zone during a thunderstorm, a lightning bolt strikes a panel of his comic. In this instant, the main villain of Comix Zone - a powerful mutant named Mortus - manages to escape the comic book's pages, desiring to kill Sketch so he can become flesh and blood and take over the real world. Because he does not possess any power in reality, Mortus sends Sketch into the world of his own comic, freely drawing in enemies to try and kill him."

So, yeah. You're the comic book artist, trapped in your own comic book, and now your own creation is drawing enemies in to try to kill you. Why not just remodel the game entirely so that you're a comic book drawing trying to avoid the creations of an evil comic book artist? Like, why subvert what is already implausible on too many levels and also completely unheard of?

In the end this was another dumb beat-em-up, but it looked prettier than so many others from the Genesis era and the combat was satisfyingly bulky and clunky. Every encounter felt like a Street Fighter match, for better or worse.

Arrow Flash
Alien Storm
Comix Zone
Chakan: The Forever Man
Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle
Columns III
Columns
Altered Beast
Bonanza Brothers

Super Smash Bros. Brawl

So if I'm being honest, I do not technically own a copy of this game. I finally the game to run from a flash drive. Moreover, I finally got it to run Project M, the version that we will be playing in our tournament on February 1st. It tooks me hours to get Project M to work on a pirated copy of the game. Anyway, first I'll take on Project M. From what I can tell, it's a version of Brawl that tweaks gameplay to more closely resemble Melee. AWESOME. I loved Melee. Not as much as some of you other people, but enough. But you guys love it so much that I think I've watched more Melee than I've played any other game in my life. Seriously. Anyway, back to Project M. They've added back Marth and Mewtwo as well as added additional stages and skins for all the characters. My skin of choice is Dry Bones Bowser. Bowser is back to his Melee self and he just brings the fucking pain. This guy is a KO machine. He also dies a lot because he is such a big target. Anyway, after playing a few matches against computer opponents, I jumped into story "Classic" mode in which you just fight some people and then fight the giant hand. That giant hand is a bitch when you are a big target like Bowser, but I just took the punishment and dealt out more of my own. Bottom line, Project M brings new life into this game while we wait for the new Smash Brothers. It does not, however, alter single player in any way other than gameplay and therefore I consider Brawl beaten.