Adventure Time On DS!

Finally, staying up until 5 AM has paid off!

Browsing through the Internet I came across the twitter of Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward, where I saw this GIF.

Pendleton tweeted that the popular show Adventure Time will be getting its very own video game on the Nintendo DS later this year. He's working with WayForward, the minds behind the likes of Shantae in order to bring us an awesome DS game.

You can find all of his tweets here. Hopefully he'll be updating his twitter with all the latest news about the project. For right now all we can do is wait.

     -Manny

Review of El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron

This review is based on my experience with the PS3 version of El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron

Score: 2/5

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron may be one of the most interesting games of this generation. It’s an action game that loosely follows The Book of Enoch, which is a biblical story. I’m not overly familiar with the story of Enoch, but I say loosely, because the adaptation in the game is nigh incomprehensible. In addition to its impenetrable story El Shaddai boasts an interesting one button combat system and some of the most stunning visuals I’ve seen in a video game to date. It’s an ambitious showing, but it doesn’t come together as well as it could have.

As you may have guessed the story follows Enoch. He’s a human scribe in heaven. God tasks him with going down to the surface in order to fight fallen angels. The angel Lucifel is tasked with helping him on his journey, which is how Enoch is outfitted with his shining white armor and designer jeans. Once he’s decked out Enoch is ready to go head to head with the fallen angels. Apparently they’ve been getting it on with humans in order to create odd looking creatures called nephilim. This is about as much of the story as I understood.

Check out Enoch's designer jeans!

Shortly after Enoch reaches the surface he finds the tower of Babel where all the fallen angels are residing. After that point I stopped understanding everything. The most I got out of it was that the nephilim started to eat each other. Apparently when they do that they get huge, fiery, and destructive. In order to stop them Enoch has to defeat the fallen angels and bring them back to heaven in order to restore order. A ton of other stuff happens as well, but it’s all fairly choppy. It’s all over the place and the art style follows suit, but in a much more enjoyable way.

The visuals in this game are simply stunning. The characters are cell shaded, while the backgrounds and environments look like digital paintings. It’s hard to describe the exact art style being employed, because as Enoch progresses up the tower everything changes drastically. In the beginning everything is white and looks as if it’s made of crystal. Sometimes it looks like tron and other times it looks like a moving water color picture. It’s fun to explore and see what the world is going to look like next. The transitions happen fast and frequently. I loved looking around the environments, so it was a shame when my leisurely strolls through each area were interrupted with a combat scenario.

Expect the visuals to change drastically and often.

The combat in El Shaddai feels great in certain moments and infuriating in others. It’s easiest to compare it to something like Devil May Cry, but it doesn’t reach that level of depth. The game essentially only uses one button to attack. If you mash the button you’re always going to get the same combo, but if you delay your inputs or hold the button then something totally different will happen.  A whole combo system is essentially packed into a single button and it doesn’t always work the way it’s intended to.  The problem is that I could never tell if I was getting any better at the system. There’s really no feedback to let you know if you’re doing the right thing or not.

Enoch can wield one of three divine weapons, the fast slashing arch, the long-ranged gale, and the hard hitting veil. Throughout most of the game I used the arch, because it was the weapon I became most familiar with. The veil worked well for me most of the time, but the gale was utterly useless. The enemies would always block every hit and when they didn’t they would take very little damage. Most of the enemies that you’ll face throughout the game will also wield these weapons, which is how Enoch can change his weapon. He must initially fight unarmed until it is time to steal an arch. Knocking an enemy down allows Enoch to steal the tainted weapon and purify it.

This is an animation you'll be seeing quite a bit.

I tried to like the combat, but in the end I just couldn’t do it. It’s possible that I was missing something crucial about the whole system, but like I mentioned earlier there is absolutely no feedback on whether what you’re doing is working or not. Enoch and the enemies have pieces of armor on their bodies and the more they get hit, the more of their armor breaks off. There is no HUD (initially), so you have to keep a close eye on your armor at all times. What I didn’t like was that I could wail on the enemies for a long time and their armor would take forever to break, however they would hit me a few times and I would be almost dead.

This problem is exacerbated in the boss fights. The fallen angels or “the watchers” will appear almost at random to challenge Enoch to a fight. Sometimes they’re supposed to beat you in a hit, but eventually you’ll have to beat them. It might take forever for you to break a piece of their armor, but they can kill you in an instant. It’s almost as if the developers knew this would happen, because the death mechanic allows you to come back to life a number of times before getting a game over. When Enoch gets hit with no armor on he begins to fade. The screen will begin to blink shut like an eye. Before the eye closes you’re supposed to mash the buttons in order to get back up. Each time you fall it takes longer and longer to work and you will eventually die. Upon death the game reminds you of how to stay alive no matter how far you are in the game as if you’re some kind of moron for dying in the first place. 

These triangle head "watchers" can take you out rather quickly.

For everything El Shaddai did right it seemed to do something else to put me off. The visual style is amazing, but it messed with my depth perception, which often lead to misjudging jumps. It seems as if the game may have suffered a bit for its beautiful art style. There is no HUD when you play initially, but once you beat the game you can turn on a HUD, which displays health, combo count, and score. If I had been able to see these things initially I may have been able to grasp the combat system better. To have it as an unlock after you beat the game seems like a lost cause, because there isn’t a whole lot of replay value to this seven hour game.

El Shaddai tries some interesting things, but they don’t exactly mesh well together. It stops just short of being fun. This game is definitely not for everyone, but I think that it is worth checking out for its ideas. The demo is a great representation of the experience you’ll have with the rest of the game, so you should try that before you commit to anything. While I didn’t exactly have the best time with this game I hope that other game developers try things as wild and crazy as El Shaddai.

     -Manny

Love-Hate: Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3

After an arduous 97 hours and 36 minutes I finally obtained every trophy in Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3. Now that I have achieved basically everything there is to achieve in the game I'll most likely never play it again. This has allowed me to reflect on my time with the game and it turns out I have pretty mixed feelings about it. 

ughhhhhhhhh

I've played a fair amount of Dynasty Warriors in my life, but I never got super into it. I can remember playing Dynasty Warriors 3 on the PS2 with my brother. As far as I was concerned it was a pretty fun game loosely based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Who doesn't like to decimate hundreds and hundreds of enemies with a single Asian general without taking a hit? My brother and I had a lot of fun with the game, so when Dynasty Warriors Gundam came out we picked it up. At that time we didn't have a whole lot of multi-player games for the PS3, so we picked it up and played it for a bit.

We had an average time playing the game together, same as we did with Dynasty Warriors 3. The only difference was that I was controlling a single giant robot, while decimating hundreds of other giant robots. When Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2 came out was when things got bad. It was summer and one of my friends convinced me to rent it from a now defunct video store, which I did. 5 days later it was time to return the game and I had somehow managed to put in 60 hours of gameplay. It was a dark time. At first I loved playing it, but by the end of the 5 days I hated almost everything about it. For a brief moment I thought about renewing the rental, but decided that my life would fall into disarray if I did. 

Luckily I managed to steer clear of the series until shortly before Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 came out this past June. The same friend who made me rent the 2nd game in the first place was getting excited for the 3rd game. Somehow, despite my hatred, we ended up playing the 2nd game even more. The craziest part was that I ended up buying it a week before the 3rd game came out... The third game came out and I ended up getting that too. As you know, I played it a whole bunch. Somehow my sheer hate for the time I spent with the 2nd game morphed into an even deeper hatred of the series, while adding in a little bit of love...

It looks cool at first, but then you play it.

Why I hate it

Dynasty Warriors games are all basically the same. To be overly reductive you push the square button repeatedly in order to achieve victory. If you want to get a little wild you can do some combos by throwing in triangle at certain intervals. It's mind numbing and extremely simple. All of the maps are basically the same thing. You have to kill enough robots in a zone to take it over. After a certain point you can take over the enemy HQ and win. Alternatively, there are specific maps where you will have to defeat certain enemies. There is never anything different to do. You go through the same maps over and over, while mashing the same button repeatedly. 

For the first 10-20 hours of gameplay, this is fine. Ironically this is how long the story goes on for, so any normal person would stop at that point. I like to unlock everything in games, or at least try to, so I couldn't stop. This is where the problem arises. It's almost like there is too much content and most of it's bad. In order to do everything you have to play through a stupid amount of missions. In order to unlock all of those you have to play as horrible characters and make friends with every character in the game (There are a ton of them). Making friends takes so long, because there's a certain amount of luck to it. In the end I had to play through the same missions designed to boost friendships over and over until I wanted to smash the disc.

Banagher Links launching in the Unicorn Gundam! (If only I had a dollar for every time I heard that...)

 

Speaking of wanting to smash the disc, the voice acting in this game is horrendous. Maybe I would have felt better if I changed everything to Japanese, but I didn't. To go along with the repetition of everything else the characters like to repeat their lines constantly. There are at least 4 pilots on every mission and they're all saying things quite often. I'd say a normal mission takes 5-10 minutes, which isn't long at all. Somehow a pilot will end up saying the same line at least four times in that short span. This got to be so annoying that I began to play with the sound off.

Playing with the sound off helped make everything less enraging, but somehow the game managed to piss me off even more. I mentioned that the game was easy, but later on it takes a ridiculous difficulty spike. Challenge missions force you to play on the hardest difficulty. Judging by the rest of the game you wouldn't expect them to be anything crazy, but you'd be horribly wrong. It was common for me to die in two or three hits if I wasn't careful. There were so many times when I was near the end of a mission, but got blindsided and had to start all over. I don't get how a game can go from being so easy to so frustratingly hard in seconds. It's either off or on and there is absolutely no in between.

These games could easily get away with their repetitive nature, because they're fun at first. However, for some reason they're hell bent on making everything overstay its welcome. The repetition becomes maddening and I don't understand how this series sells enough copies to warrant sequels. I can't be the only one who finds everything in this game/series crazy repetitive.

Why I love it

Dynasty Warriors: Gundam may be a spin-off series, but I think there are certain ways that it's superior to the games it's copying. Plain old Dynasty Warriors is beyond unrealistic. As I've mentioned previously you're an Asian general who cuts through hordes and hordes of enemies. That just doesn't happen. I'm not saying that giant robots made of gundanium are realistic, but I am saying that they're much more believable from a gameplay standpoint. If you've ever seen a Gundam anime, then you know that all the gundams are practically invincible. They use their crazy robot beam swords to cut through everything like butter. Gundams annihilate hundreds of other giant robots without a scratch and this series reflects that.

In the anime gundam pilots say a whole lot, but this game takes it to a whole new level. I previously mentioned how I hated the voice acting, but I also loved it. The repetition of their lines is maddening, but it can also be funny. Their lines are so annoying that it's kind of funny. When playing co-op with someone it's commonplace to mock everything that everyone in the game says. Sometimes we'd even bet how many times they were going to say a certain line. Athrun's line "Enough foolishness" has found a great deal of life outside the game for me as well. Seabook's "Color me impressed" is pretty great too.

Six kills before this screenshot was taken someone said something annoying.

A  majority of the time I played with the sound off. I often listened to podcasts while playing, which worked out fairly well. I didn't need to focus very much on the game, so I got in a whole lot of podcast time. I guess this was one way the simple gameplay paid off.

To be honest I have absolutely no idea why I love this game, but I know that I do. At first I thought it was just a guilty pleasure, but now I don't know. It's like I get some perverse pleasure from subjecting myself to this series of gundam games. At first I thought that I was alone in my love for this series, but my recent quest to achieve all the trophies has shown me otherwise. The online mode in this game is lame and it doesn't have a long life span, because you're just doing even lamer missions of the main game's missions. Despite that, there were plenty of people for me to play online with. I had to play 100 missions and somehow I was able to do that almost a year after the game's release with a ton of people. I can only assume that these people are true gundam fans, unlike me. While I may not be the biggest fan of the anime I still love this game for some unidentifiable reason. 

While I could never bring myself to recommend this game to anyone, I will certainly be picking up the 4th game when it inevitably comes out. Somehow these games continue to make enough money to warrant a sequel and I'll continue my love-hate relationship with them as long as they continue to exist.

     -Manny

The Reason Jeff Gerstmann Was Fired From Gamespot

Then

Jeff Gerstmann has been at the center of a controversy in the gaming community since 2007. Jeff is a well respected video game reviewer who used to be employed at Gamespot.com as an editor. In 2007 Jeff was suddenly terminated from Gamespot, but the true reasons were never revealed. He formed a new website of his own called Giantbomb.com, which I frequent daily. 

It's Jeff Gerstmann!

It was clear that Jeff was not legally allowed to talk about the incident, but that didn't stop rumors from flying. Prior to his termination Jeff reviewed the game Kane & Lynch : Dead Men. He rated it a 6 out of 10 and wasn't afraid to say why. After his termination the review disappeared for a bit, so people became skeptical. During that time Gamespot was also outfitted with a Kane & Lynch wallpaper, which made the whole thing even more fishy. To top it off many prominent Gamespot employees left the company, some of which took up employment with Giantbomb. 

The popular belief was that the publisher of Kane & Lynch wanted Gerstmann's termination for the review, while others believed that they threatened to pull add money. However, since Jeff wasn't allowed to talk about it nothing really came out of the whole situation. He tried his best to keep quiet on the whole thing and continued on with Giantbomb. This didn't stop people on Giantbomb and people in general from thinking that Gamespot and/or IO interactive were evil for everything that happened.

Now

Jeff and the crew of Giantbomb have given quality and honest coverage for the past few years since the site launched. It seemed that they had put the Gamespot debacle behind them and that the truth would never see the light of day. That's why I was surprised when I tuned into a live stream this morning where Giantbomb announced that it had been sold to CBS Interactive, which happens to be the same company that owns Gamespot. Jeff announced that later in the day he would be revealing the story behind his termination at the Gamespot studios.

That live stream has now passed and everything has been revealed. Jeff laid everything bare, so that the matter could finally be put to rest. The debacle was almost exactly as the internet had predicted. Jeff was terminated over his Kane & Lynch review, but there was a little more to it than that.

His review of Kane & Lynch didn't paint a very pretty picture of the game and the publisher wasn't exactly pleased. The company threatened to pull advertising money from Gamespot, which is never a good sign. Normally a good company would stand by their man, but that's not exactly what Gamespot did. They were under relatively new management and they didn't know how to deal with that type of situation. According to Jeff they had never worked very closely with an editorial staff before. He was called into many meetings to speak on the subject, but it didn't seem like anything came from them.

He claimed that he continued business as usual, but then one day, seemingly out of the blue, he was terminated. He was made to sign documents claiming that he wouldn't talk shit about Gamespot and they wouldn't talk shit about him. Now that we know what happened the whole matter can be finally be put to rest.

Jeff doesn't really seem upset by the whole thing anymore. In fact, he seems to be quite pleased that he's returned to the Gamespot offices. It's clear that the Gamespot employees and the people who created Kane & Lynch had nothing to do with the whole debacle. It was the upper management of both companies who caused the problem. 

Thoughts

One of the reasons I follow Giantbomb is because of the way they cover video games. They have their own opinions that clearly aren't influenced by advertising money or other outside sources. This is how video game coverage should be. Jeff even said in the live stream that this kind of thing happens in the industry all the time, which is a little disconcerting. According to Jeff there were similar problems with a Ratchet and Clank review before the whole Kane & Lynch thing. 

As people who consume reviews this is something we should be cautious of, but I don't think we should take it overboard. I'd like to think that most game reviewers and journalists love video games too much to base their review scores around advertising money.

The live stream archive can be found here. It's certainly worth watching.

     -Manny

Review of Mass Effect 3

This review is based on my experience with the PS3 version of Mass Effect 3

Score 4.5/5

Mass Effect 3 is the final game in a critically acclaimed sci-fi series, which means that it has impossibly high expectations to live up to. Bioware had the deck stacked against them from the beginning, but they still managed to produce a mostly great product. It’s a little rough in spots, but the issues can’t stop Mass Effect 3 from being a truly memorable game.

The reapers have finally begun their assault on the galaxy and Earth is their central target. It just so happens that Commander Shepard is on earth and he’s one of the few people in the galaxy who knows how to fight a reaper. Due to his knowledge and experience against the reapers he is chosen to try and unite the galaxy against the looming threat. Much like recruiting squad members for the suicide mission in Mass Effect 2 Shepard must now recruit all the races in the galaxy for a war against the reapers. He’ll need to talk, explore, and shoot his way to galactic readiness.

Mass Effect 3 takes after Mass Effect 2 in the ways of combat. It’s heavy on its third person shooter elements, but they’ve been tweaked to maximize performance. It’s hard to see at first, but Mass Effect 3 feels much tighter and controls better than its predecessor. Aiming and shooting feels a lot smoother, along with Shepard’s overall movement. He can now dodge roll, which is a very welcome addition.

Many fans of the series were upset that Mass Effect 2 removed a lot of the RPG elements from the series. Bioware clearly took that to heart, because Mass Effect 3 tries its best to put some of that RPG feel back into the series. Once again Shepard will be gaining experience as he fights. When he levels he gains skill points, which he can spend to get a variety of skills. The skills in this game branch a little more than they do in the previous installment, but they’re largely unchanged. The level cap has been changed back to 60 like it was in the original Mass Effect, which leaves Shepard with more skill points than you know what to do with.

Look at all those skills!

What Mass Effect adds in the way of character customization deals mostly with the guns. Now every gun you acquire will have a level 1-10. Levels 1-5 can only be acquired on your first play through, while 6-10 become available on your second. All guns start at level 1, but as time goes on their upgrades will show up for purchase. On top of that each gun has two slots for mods to be equipped. Throughout your travels in the universe you will find various mods that offer specific stat boosts to certain types of guns. Stability, damage, ammo capacity, and more can all be tweaked to your play style. These mods are also leveled 1-10, but they tend to be found while you’re out on missions. These improvements to character customization and gameplay make the combat of Mass Effect 3 much easier to handle than it’s predecessors’, but shooting isn’t all you’ll be doing in your fight against the reapers. Talking is just as important, if not more so.

Once again Shepard will form a crew that can help him accomplish his mission. New and old faces appear on Shepard’s crew. You’ll see many friendly faces who don’t join your crew as well. The new characters like super marine James Vega are all fairly interesting, but they’re not nearly as fleshed out as the rest of the cast. It’s understandable, because a lot of the older characters have been given much more screen time. The squad is noticeably smaller than it was in Mass Effect 2, but there are still plenty of opportunities to chat it up with everyone.

Character interaction and choice have always been a centerpiece of the Mass Effect series and this entry is no different. In the previous games your crew would reside in their designated spot on the Normandy waiting for you to come talk with them. While that still happens in this game, they also move around the ship and even go to the Citadel, which is much larger this time around. This allows for the people of the Normandy to interact with one another, which can make for some pretty interesting situations. After every mission I found myself talking with every person on the ship, because I never wanted to miss anything.

Dialogue wheels are still a major part of the Mass Effect universe, but they have noticeably less choices. In most conversations there will only be two options. One will give you paragon points, while the other will give you renegade. Sometimes there will be a third option in the middle, which allows for Shepard to inquire about the previous statement. Certain situations have more options to choose from, but they rarely occur. Paragon and renegade interrupts still show up as well. What’s even more noticeable is that during dialogue the wheel pops up a lot less often. Shepard seems to have a lot more to say without the player’s input than he did before. This should be annoying in a game that’s all about choice, but it’s done very well. There were very few times that Shepard said anything I wouldn’t have said. It’s almost as if the game was reaching back into my save in order to see what I would choose.

Two options are standard fare for most Mass Effect 3 conversations.

I felt that my save was influencing things throughout most of the game. A lot of the things I had done in the previous games came back in some way for Mass Effect 3. Some of the references are done very well, while others like the reunions with Mass Effect 2 crew members seem a little random. Some are done better than others, but I couldn’t help but get excited every time I saw someone who used to be on my crew. These references and character interactions are enjoyable. It’s clear that Bioware tried to make all of the previous choices count so that the player would feel like their actions from previous games mattered. The same care and effort did not go into the games many side quests.

The side missions in Mass Effect 2 were generally well conceived, but the same can’t exactly be said for all of the missions in Mass Effect 3. Don’t get me wrong, there are quite a few great side missions, but there are also quite a few that aren’t so great. The worst side missions come from the citadel and in order to get them you don’t even need to talk to anyone. Instead Shepard will overhear someone saying they need something, which will update your quest log. It’s not always clear what they’re looking for, which can be kind of annoying. When you find whatever they were looking for Shepard will hand it over to them for a reward. It all makes Shepard seem like a creepy stalker. Obviously the citizens of the galaxy need all the help they can get, but this seems to be taking it a bit far.

Aside from stalker-like fetch quests Shepard will have to do some shooting in his side missions as well. Some of them are meaningful and deal with character interaction and those can be pretty good. On the other end of the spectrum some missions are repurposed multiplayer maps, which involve you standing in certain areas to deactivate terminals, or defending a certain area. They’re perfectly fine to play, but it would have been nice if they had a little more thought put into them, because they tend to be a bit heavy on combat.

Almost everything you do in Mass Effect 3 goes towards what is known as effective military strength. How ready is the galaxy to take on the reapers? The answer to that question depends on how much you do. Completing certain tasks will net Shepard war assets. Each war asset adds a set number to your total military strength. There is a terminal on the Normandy where you can check this number whenever you like. The screen you access has a handy bar that tells you how ready you are to fight the reapers. When it’s full you’ll know you’ve done enough to get the “good” ending.

Almost everything you do in Mass Effect 3 adds to the fight against the reapers.

This is how the multiplayer feeds into the single player. The game starts off with the galactic readiness at 50%. This means that only half of your total military strength is counting towards the progress bar. In order to get the galactic readiness up you’re going to have to play multiplayer. If you do everything you can in the game you should still fill up the bar quite a while before you reach the final mission.

When it was initially announced that Mass Effect 3 would have multiplayer there was an uproar from the community. Combat isn’t what most people come to Mass Effect for, but that didn’t stop Bioware from putting it in. It’s not essential to the game in any way, but it’s there for those who care to give it a try. It’s just a Gears of War like horde mode with some occasional objectives. Four players get together to fight off eleven waves of enemies.

It’s nowhere near as egregious as everyone (including me) thought it would be. You play as any of the classes available in the main game, however you can also be the various races of the Mass Effect universe. Humans, Drell, Salarians, Turians, Asari, and Krogan are all available for play. Apparently a few Volus have even been spotted as well.

All the races you've always wanted to be are now available in multiplayer.

Just like the single player you’ll be leveling up and allocating points to the skills you want to have. Unlike the single player, the level cap in multiplayer is only level 20, which when reached allows the character to be promoted to the single player as a war asset. Sadly there aren’t enough skill points to fully upgrade everything. To further customize your character it’s necessary to finish multiplayer matches so you can get credits as well as experience. With the credits you can buy packs of cards, which throw out random guns, mods, new characters, and one time boosts. All of the items you’ll acquire in multiplayer come from these random packs, which can be frustrating when you keep getting items you don’t want. If you’re the impatient type you can just spend real money on the packs instead of completing matches for the credits. Overall the multiplayer is fun, but it’s easy to ignore completely if you don’t care for it.

Bioware put in the multiplayer and did a lot of things with the game to try and bring in new fans. They were really trying to say that Mass Effect 3 is the perfect place for new players to jump in, which I think is far from the truth. The moments I enjoyed most in Mass Effect 3 had to do with characters I had come to know over the course of the previous games in the series. If I didn’t have a stake in the universe it would have been much harder to understand what was going on.

I loved a vast majority of Mass Effect 3. There were a ton of well done emotional scenes. Although there were a few that fell flat, I’ve come to expect that from Mass Effect. Mass Effect 3 truly does wrap up many of the big questions left in the Mass Effect universe. You might hear people saying that the ending isn’t any good and I tend to agree with them. However, that’s no reason to condemn the rest of the game. The majority of Mass Effect 3 is great, so if you’re at all invested in the Mass Effect universe I can’t recommend this game highly enough.

Note: This review is also posted on giantbomb.com

     -Manny

'I Wanna Be The Boshy' Is Actually a Thing

There is a lot of reverence for 2D platformers in the gaming community. Back in the NES and SNES days there were a lot more of them than there are now. Some of them were insanely hard. Mega Man games always come to my mind when trying to think of frustratingly hard platformers. Jumps require precise timing and execution. If you miss, you die. There is a subsection of people out there who miss these types of games.

I Wanna Be The Guy was created specifically for the people who wanted to return to the olden days of platforming. The whole game is basically one perfectly timed jump after another with some enemies that need to be shot thrown in. One misstep will leave you dead and on top of that it plays with your expectations. Platforms and enemies will react in unexpected ways so you need to be on your guard at all times. 

Game Over is seen a lot in I Wanna Be The Guy

What's cool about I Wanna Be The Guy is that it has a ton of retro game music, sprites, and references in it. It's obvious that it's an homage to the 2D platformers of old. Even more than that the way the game is played is highly reminiscent of games like Mega Man, Metroid, and Castlevania without any of the retro callbacks.

I Wanna Be The Guy is crazy on its own. So what happens when a game pays homage to I Wanna Be The Guy? I Wanna Be The Boshy is the answer and it might be even crazier.

Look at this crazy title screen!

Bosh is defined as nonsense or absurdity. From that I can only come to the conclusion that Boshy is derived from Bosh. I Wanna Be The Boshy is sure filled with what I'd call nonsense, so the name is entirely appropriate. I Wanna Be The Guy was crazy, but I Wanna Be The Boshy takes everything to a whole new level.

I Wanna Be The Boshy is more than over the top, it's maximum insanity. Like the game it pays homage to, it's filled with absurdly unfair platforming, but it's even more unfair than it should be. This game was solely created to be infuriating and it does just that. At one point I was presented with a mostly empty screen. All that I could see was a platform and a save point. Foolishly walking ahead I was greeted by a Godzilla roar as a huge spider instantly killed me.

Persevering on I figured out how to avoid the spider and his wild battle cry only to be followed relentlessly by a crazy bird. The bird followed me for multiple screens of perilous spike jumping. I got nervous and died. This was the point where I died hundreds of time. In the end I was able to dodge the spider, bird, and all the spikes to make it to the next save point. There I was faced with the games's first terrifying boss...Hello Kitty. 

Hello Kitty has a huge bow, because I'm playing on easy.

After losing a few times I decided to give up. I no longer have a huge desire to play this game, but it's cool that it exists. At first glance it seems like it's just trying to be the game it's paying homage to, but it's much more than that. While it plays almost the same as I Wanna Be The Guy it adds a few things that make it kind of funny and frustrating in a different way. For starters there is a feature called save jumping. You accomplish this by shooting a save point and then resetting your potion. This allows for you to close huge gaps, because it allows for extra jumps.

The deaths in this game are just as frustrating, if not more so than they are in I Wanna Be The Guy. The difference is that everything in this game seems impossible to begin with, so I'm expecting it. The hitboxes are extremely weird and crazy glitches and instant death happen all the time. To ease the pain of dying funny death quotes will appear on the screen before the awesome "you're dead' song plays. 

I Wanna Be The Boshy has more than a bunch of cheap deaths though. There are a ton of unlockables and secrets in the game as well. By doing things you unlock trophies to commemorate the event. Treasure chests are strewn across the world as well to try and collect. Most of the time they contain CDs, which allow you to listen to popular internet songs and other random things.

I Wanna Be The Boshy also features a ton of playable characters. With each update there are more and more available to play. A character editor is available if you want to give making your own character a shot. Some of the characters on the select screen are locked, like Sonic, Ryu, and Mario. The locked characters can all be unlocked by defeating them as bosses in the game. You can even be The Kid from I Wanna Be The Guy if you so desire.

You can even be Nyan Cat in this game!

To add to the depth and diversity of the game there is also an online co-op mode. I don't really see how having two people on the screen would make the game any easier, but it's a cool idea regardless. 

It's clear that the game's developer Solgryn has put a lot of time and effort into making it all it can be. He released version 1.00 in 2010 and is still updating it now in 2012. You can check out all the craziness for yourself by downloading the game for free from his website here. Or if you're interested in I Wanna Be The Guy you can find that for free from it's developer here.

Maybe you're like me and you find this kind of stuff interesting, but think it's too frustrating to do. There are plenty of ways to see I Wanna Be The Boshy played if you want to go that route. There are a few good let's plays of it on Youtube, and EG Floe of the fighting game community often plays it on his Twitch TV account.

This game is insane and I just wanted to let everyone know that it exists. Sadly I was not good enough to become the Boshy. So I leave you with the amazing end credits song, which may inspire you to do what I could not. It's also a good representation of how nuts the game is.

     -Manny