Last night I stayed up way too late playing Tricky Towers online multiplayer with a few of my friends. It's a cool Tetris-like game where you use Tetris blocks, but need to think about physics in order to build a tower. There are very few musical tracks in the game, so eventually I started to whistle along, or so I thought. Much to my surprise the song from Tricky Towers never came out, and instead I ended up whistling the main theme of Luigi's Mansion.
I first played Luigi's Mansion right around when it came out. One of my best friend's at the time was given a Gamecube by his parents to celebrate some major life event I can't recall. Sadly he ended up with no games, so we had to go and rent some. We ended up getting Luigi's Mansion and we tried to complete it in a single night. As an added challenge bonus he didn't have a memory card either, so we had to leave the game running the whole time. When it was time for me to go we hadn't completed it, so I still have never seen the end of Luigi's Mansion.
Having only really played the game once I don't know why I remember the music from it so vividly. Perhaps it's because I always liked how Luigi would hum along to the music as he went around the mansion trying to nab ghosts.
Note: I feel like I've put songs up called Main Theme a lot on this feature. I don't know why these songs don't get real names. It's kind of lame.
Note: I looked all over to see if this song had an actual name. I could find no conclusive evidence, other than the name Animal Crossing theme listed on an OST of the original game. That's what I'm going with here.
Today it was super hot out. It finally feels like Summer. For most people Summer comes with fond memories of playing outside with friends. Sure I have those memories, but I was a weird kid and spent a lot of time inside playing Animal Crossing. The game initially released in the U.S. on the Gamecube in April of 2,001. Even though the content of the original game is quite thin I found myself playing it well into the summer months.
I can't properly articulate why I fell in love with Animal Crossing. On a family vacation my parents were nice enough to pick me up an issue of Nintendo Power to read on the long car ride. Within the magazines pages I read all about Animal Crossing and was fascinated. I am a huge fan of video games that try to emulate real life, and real life activities. The fact that the game ran in real time blew my 11 year old mind open. I mean come on, the Animals would continue to do stuff even when the game wasn't on. That's so cool!
Before the games release I had spent a great deal of time thinking about how I would get my animal friends to like me and plan out exactly how I would decorate my dope house. See, because that's all Animal Crossing really is. You walk around, water flowers, pick fruit, do basic fetch quests, collect things, and decorate a house. If there's a new Animal Crossing release you can bet that I'm going to get in on it. With each new iteration Nintendo adds many new features that add to the depth and keep players coming back for more.
When I think back to the original Animal Crossing I can't fathom how I put hundreds of hours into it. I did though. I ran around all summer catching bugs and fishing in my towns lake! That's why I'll never forget this song. In fact, I think I'm going to boot this up and see how all the denizens of my town are doing...
It's ridiculously hot right now. No exaggeration, I can feel the moisture in the air.
It may surprise you, but I have a hard time thinking of ways to start these. Since it's sweltering hot I don't especially feel like putting in the extra effort for a good intro, so I'm just going to jump right into it.
This past week I bought Viewtiful Joe: Red Hot Rumble (Almost wrote Jumble!), and Ghost Trick. I also played the new Final Fantasy XIII-2 DLC Requiem of the Goddess.
Game Time is here once more!
Final Fantasy XIII-2 - Lightning: Requiem of the Goddess
Man, video game names have been pretty bad lately huh? I realize this is DLC for an already poorly named game, but it's just an awful mouthful.
I went into this DLC fully expecting it to be a complete piece of garbage, so it was a pleasant surprise when it wasn't. Unlike most or perhaps all of the previous DLC for Final Fantasy XIII-2 it actually adds on to the story. The part that makes me mad is that the information given in this DLC about the story definitely should have been in the game to begin with. It makes the ridiculous stuff that happens at the end of the game make a little bit more sense. This takes place after the game ends and while it's ending. I'm not going to talk about it here, because I already shit all over the story in another post. If you want to spoil everything feel free to take a look at that.
So what's this DLC all about you ask? Well, it's all about Lightning fighting Caius and that's it. This DLC costs 5 dollars and all you do is fight Caius. Typing it out like that makes it sound terrible, but it's actually pretty fun. I'm willing to admit that the battle system is the most fun part of the game and this DLC focuses entirely on that.
If you want to pay $5 to fight Caius over and over this DLC is for you.
Instead of the tradition roles Lighting has far stronger roles at her disposal. The only role she doesn't have any access to is medic. Instead, she only has access to ten potions and a single elixir to heal herself with. With all of these tools at your disposal you'll fight a super buffed up version of Caius. At the start he will completely wreck you, but you'll still get some crystarium points. Once you lose a few times Lightning will level up, which makes her stronger and gives her access to new roles. This DLC isn't meant to be very long, so Lightning can only get to a max level of ten.
All you need to do in order to complete the DLC is beat Caius super quickly. If you do it fast enough he'll turn into Midnight Bahamut. If you can best Midnight Bahamut then you'll be rewarded with some story for your troubles. Overall I'd say that this is just a challenge for people who like battling in XIII-2. Since battles were my favorite part of the game I had a fun time for about an hour. If you didn't feel like me, then there is absolutely no reason for you try this out.
Oh yeah, Midnight Bahamut is in the DLC too.
Viewtiful Joe : Red Hot Rumble
I still have four Gamecube controllers. Granted not all of them are fully functional, but I still have them. This is one of the reasons I actively look out for fun multiplayer Gamecube games. I guess it also helps that there are three other people around for me to play with most of the time. In case you were wondering where I was going with this, then you'll be happy to know that Red Hot Rumble is one such game.
I've had my eyes peeled for a decent copy of Red Hot Rumble for a while now and this past weekend I finally found one. It's not exactly what I expected, but I think that ended up being a good thing. For some reason I didn't look up any gameplay beforehand, so I was under the impression that it was basically super smash with Viewtiful Joe characters.
After playing the game I still feel that it's kind of similar to Super Smash., but it's actually quite different. Instead of just mindlessly beating the living shit out of everyone on screen there are actually objectives in Red Hot Rumble. No matter what stage you choose there will be a variety of objectives you're supposed to complete. The objectives are all over the place. You might be beating up enemies, collecting gems, staying alive, capturing the flag and a bunch of other things I can't remember right now.
Defeating bosses is also an objective.
The way you win in Red Hot Rumble is to have the most V coins at the end of a stage. When you complete an objective you'll get about 1,000 V coins, but they'll also show up randomly. This makes staying alive just as important as completing objectives, because if you die you'll lose a whole lot of coins and that's never a good thing.
One of the things I don't like about Red Hot Rumble is that sometimes it's really hard to tell what's going on in the match, especially if there are four people playing at the same time. The stages are already fairly busy, so when you throw in enemies, four players, and a bunch of objects it can become a little much. Adding to the problem are the famous powers from Viewtiful Joe. When people are using mach speed, slow down, and zoom all over the place it gets way harder to get your bearings.
Red Hot Rumble is a great multiplayer game. It's fast paced, competitive, and ridiculous. It may help that I like the Viewtiful Joe Universe a whole bunch, but I think it's a solid game regardless.
There's a lot going on here and it's super blurry. Welcome to Red Hot Rumble!
Ghost Trick
As you may be aware, I am a big fan of the Phoenix Wright series. So when Ghost Trick came out and I found out it was made by the same team I knew that I had to have it. Unlucky for me the game got kind of rare, so I couldn't find it online for it's normal price and it wasn't available in any stores around me.
This past weekend when I was out looking for Red Hot Rumble I came across a $20 dollar copy of Ghost Trick at one of my local Gamestop's. There are three around here, which is kind of dumb. Anyways, I found Ghost Trick with it's case and instruction manual for $20, but I didn't get it. For some stupid reason I decided to see if I could find it cheaper.
The next day I knew I would regret it if I didn't buy it, so I went all the way back to Gamestop and bought it. I was a bit worried I wasn't going to like it very much, but after playing the game for five minutes I knew that wasn't the case.
The dead man is Sissel and he's pretty cool.
I don't mean to sound crude here, but I fucking love Ghost Trick. In fact I'm upset that I didn't play it when it first came out. It took me eleven hours to beat the game and that was in just two sittings. I literally played the game for five and a half hours twice, because I wanted to see the ending so badly.
In case you're unaware you play as a ghost named Sissel in Ghost Trick. He has recently died and doesn't remember anything about himself other than his name. He finds out that he has special powers known as ghost tricks. This allows him to move from object to object and manipulate them. He can also use phone lines to travel long distances. These are the tricks that are used to solve puzzles.
Sissel's other trick is that he can bring people back from the dead. If he can get to their body he can go back four minutes before they died and save them. It's unique, and engaging, and I absolutely love it.
The flaming blue dot is the object Sissel is possessing. The others are where he can go.
I'm still coming off of my Ghost Trick high, so as of right now I'm basically only going to be able to say how much I love it. To save you that repetition I won't dwell on it.
Lately I've been slacking on doing reviews. I've had a lot less free time and I've been trying to use it to play games. This means that I haven't been writing as much, which is just plain wrong. That is why I am going to make the promise that I will review Ghost Trick by next week. It was awesome and I need to write up a review. So if you want to hear more about Ghost Trick check back later this week for a review.
IT'S SO HOT!
After proof reading this I noticed that it wasn't my best work and for that I apologize. However, in my defense my brain is pretty much melting in the heat. I really hope that this summer isn't consistently this hot, or I may just spend the entire summer sweating into the couch.
E3 is almost here and I'm super pumped. In order to stave off my excitement I have acquired the critically acclaimed DS RPG Radiant Historia. Apparently it's amazing, but I haven't started it yet because I've been playing and thinking about Ghost Trick (Which I will be reviewing this week).
Hopefully I'll find some other stuff to check out, or maybe I'll just melt away in the heat. There's absolutely no way of knowing!
This has been another edition of Game Time. See you next week.
I've played a few odd video games in my day, but this week I may have topped everything.
To start the week I got a ridiculous craving for some story based rhythm games. My personal favorite game of that type is Parappa. In an attempt to satiate that craving I picked up the PSP re-release of the PlayStation classic. It didn't exactly turn out the way I expected.
Since Parappa didn't end up being what I wanted I needed another game. I ended up getting the PSP re-release of the PS2 game Gitaroo Man. Somehow I never ended up buying the PS2 version. It's a shame, because I thought the game was freaking awesome, but the PS2 version is super expensive now. It might be a bit weird, but it was just what I needed.
As if Gitaroo Man wasn't ridiculous enough I picked up the super obscure PS2 game Chulip. If you want to get a little crazy there should be a heart between the u and the l, but I'm not that intense so there will be no hearts here. I was trying to get rid of my unneeded bookmarks, when I came across the Amazon product page for the game. I bookmarked it my freshman year of college. After looking up a few videos I decided to take the plunge down into weird town and ordered it online. I don't want to talk it up, but I'm confident in saying it's the weirdest game I've ever played.
I don't know how this week ended up getting so weird, but it really did. So get ready for an all weird edition of Game Time.
Parappa The Rapper (PSP)
I love Parappa. What's more lovable than a rapping dog who's in love with a sunflower? The answer is nothing.
All joking aside, I really like Parappa. It's super weird, but more than that it's creative. Like most rhythm games it would be absolutely nothing without good music. Each rap is about a different situation that Parappa needs to overcome and they're all fairly entertaining. In fact, I'm listening to Prince Fleaswallow's Rap now, and I recommend you do the same.
For Some reason Parappa is attracted to a sunflower.
The gameplay of Parappa is very similar to Simon Says. The Master will do their verse first to demonstrate and as Parappa you must copy the button presses with the correct rhythm. It's exceedingly simple, so it may not be engaging for some people. This may be the reason why games of this type don't get released very often anymore. I think the reason Parappa got away with it was because of its sense of style. All of the character's are made to look like paper. When you pair that with the fact that it's based around animals rapping it's just an interesting experience.
Despite my love for Parappa I don't own a copy of the PS1 game. I did play it when I was younger though. I do however have Parappa 2, and the series spin-off Um Jammer Lammy. Since the PS1 version of Parappa is so expensive I thought I'd try to round out my collection with the PSP version. Much to my dismay I didn't have as much fun as I wanted to.
The PSP version of Parappa certainly doesn't have the funky flow.
The sense of style and the awesome music remained, but the gameplay just wasn't working for me at all. I passed the first level with flying colors, but the further into the game I got the worse I was. When I hit the 4th stage I hit a brick wall and couldn't pass it for hours. I thought that I was hitting every button at the exact time I was supposed to. The timing in Parappa is odd, but I could hear Parappa saying what he should have, when he needed to. I got so mad I thought about smashing my PSP, but instead I went to the internet to see what I was doing wrong.
It turns out that the PSP version of Parappa isn't a good port. In fact, it's downright bad. I found numerous forum topics and even a news story on Destructoid about how the timing wasn't right in most of the songs. I also found people saying that the delay was due to the PSP having low battery. Much to my amazement that was actually the problem. When I plugged in my PSP the game worked totally fine. I wasn't doing anything different, but I was passing all of the songs. This is simply inexcusable for a handheld game. You should definitely be able to play the game without having the battery charged fully.
Gitaroo Man Lives!
After my poor experience with the PSP version of Parappa I didn't have high hopes for the PSP version of Gitaroo Man, but I was pleasantly surprised.
I had never played Gitaroo man before this and now I'm upset that I didn't. As you'd imagine it's a rhythm game based around the guitar. It wouldn't be a proper rhythm game unless its story was utterly ridiculous bordering on nonsensical though. Gitaroo man has that going for it too.
This is Gitaroo Man. The game is just as ridiculous as he looks!
The story follows U-1 (A play on U-2) and he's basically a loser. He's trying to impress a girl, but he just can't seem to do it. While he's sulking in his room a weird little demon attacks him and his dog Puma gives him a guitar. The guitar is known as a Gitaroo and U-1 can wield it to become the mighty Gitaroo Man. When in his super form he can shred jammin' hot riffs in order to take down his enemies.
The story ends up taking him to planet Gitaroo, which is under the control of the evil Zowie ( A play on David Bowie). Since he's in possession of the last Gitaroo, U-1 must rise to the occasion and save the planet. In doing so he gains the courage to get with the girl he wanted. Typing the plot out like I just did makes it sound a lot less crazy than it actually is. You really have to play it, or see it to understand what I'm talking about.
The gameplay of Gitaroo Man isn't like your average rhythm game. While you still need to push the buttons at the right time there's a bit more to it than that. Each song in Gitaroo Man is a battle. You'll start by charging up your health with the sweet sound of your guitar. A blue line will move towards the middle of the screen. Your job is to follow that line with the analog stick in order to activate it. Red circles will appear along the line and when they reach the middle you'll need to push circle in order to have U-1 play a note. If the circle extends you'll have to hold circle for that amount of time. This same method is used to do damage to your opponent.
Things become more like a normal rhythm game when you're defending against enemy attacks. Buttons will fly towards the middle of the screen and if you time the presses right U-1 won't take any damage. The whole battle concept is interesting and it's executed fairly well. It makes you feel like you're doing more than just making the music keep going.
Chulip
As I wrote up the previous two sections I realized that they don't sound super weird. While they are actually weird, you have to see them to understand. That's how I know Chulip is on a whole new level of craziness, because it still sounds weird even when it's typed out. It's a game based completely around kissing.
Yeah, that's right. It's a game about kissing. There is no combat, only exploration and kissing. You take the role of a boy who has just moved to a new town. He's recently had a dream about kissing his dream girl and it turns out she lives in town! Sadly she doesn't want to kiss him, because he's poor and has a bad reputation. Don't worry, it's just as shallow and ridiculous as it sounds.
In order to kiss the dream girl under the tree of love (It's a normal tree with the face of an old man peeking out) the hero must first kiss other denizens of Long Life Town in order to get his reputation up. In order to keep the premise as weird and creepy as possible you have to name both the boy and the dream girl. If there's anyone you want to kiss really bad Chulip offers you the chance to creepily base your entire experience around them.
You're going to be kissing everyone in town with those sweet sweet lips.
Again. there is no combat in this game, only exploration, item collection, train riding, saving on the toilet, sleeping on the floor, and kissing. At the beginning of the game the hero has a weak heart. When people say mean things to him, you pick up poop out of a trash can, get rejected when trying to kiss someone, or get hit by something your heart will be broken. It starts at 5/5, but the more people you kiss the more you'll be able to take. Right now I'm up to 60/60 and I can take quite a bit of rejection and poop.
So how do you kiss people? The easiest people to kiss are the citizens who live underground. At certain times or under certain conditions they'll dig up out of the ground. Fumes will circle their head and if you move too fast they'll beat the hell out of you and your heart will break. The key is to sneak up on them and wait until they're no longer angry. Eventually music notes will appear around their head and that means it's time to plant one on em'. Each time you successfully kiss someone you'll be rewarded with an exquisite scene. You and the character you kissed will spin around in space while the word CLEAR appears in all rainbow as fireworks go off. Oh yeah, also weirdly sensual saxophone music plays.
Why yes, that is a man in a trash can he's kissing.
The other option is to kiss normal non-angry citizens. However, they're a lot tougher to handle. Instead of waiting for them to calm down you're going to have to do a quest for them. Most of them are super obscure and they're borderline impossible to figure out. The developers knew this, because the instruction manual doubles as a strategy guide, which is bananas. It's not a lame list of hints either. It literally tells you how to kiss everyone and complete everything. I wanted to try and play without using it, but after a certain point it was impossible. The game just doesn't give you enough information. I'm pretty close to the end and I've had to use the manual quite a bit.
For some reason I like this game in an un-ironic way. There's something relaxing about it. All you do is try to figure out how to kiss people. A lot of the game involves waiting and traveling. There are four areas and none of them are super large, but they're all interesting enough to explore. Since the game is so insane I still don't have a full grasp on it yet. If you want to see some of it for yourself I suggest looking up a lets play of it on Youtube. There are a few of them and they're quite funny.
SO WEIRD
I used to think Parappa was weird, but it pales in comparison to Chulip. I just don't understand how such a thing was created and I especially don't understand how or why it was every translated into English. I can almost guarantee it didn't sell well. At least they can say that the idea was original?
I still don't quite understand how I got sucked into this past week of weird gaming, but I kind of liked it. I can only hope that the trend continues on into the coming weeks.
This has been another edition of Game Time. Have a nice week and maybe try to kiss everyone in your town.
This year, more than most other years I have been noticing that a lot of Iconic game franchises are celebrating their 10 and 20 year anniversaries. The first two that pop into my mind are Sonic, and the Jak and Daxter franchise. These anniversaries have been notable because major game journalism outlets and the game companies themselves have been making a big deal out of it. This prompted me to start thinking about other franchises or games that are having their ten year anniversaries. After a bit of searching I came across the fact that one of my favorite games ever is having its tenth anniversary today!
That's right! Today Friday December 2nd, 2011 is the tenth anniversary of Super Smash Brothers Melee. It's crazy to think that I've been playing this game for close to half of my life. Sadly I do not have my Gamecube memory card with me at the moment, but I am confident in saying that I've put more hours into Melee that any other video game. I played Melee so much that my controllers would break from too much use. I'm not normally a huge fan of multiplayer video games, but there is something about Melee and the Super Smash Brothers franchise in general that's grabbed hold of me and refused to let go.
The original Super Smash Brothers came out in 1999. When I first heard about it I was nine years old and my mind almost exploded. The fact that all of my favorite Nintendo characters could fight each other was a ridiculous concept. I didn't have a Nintendo 64 in 99', but I made sure to play Super Smash whenever I could. Two of my friends had the game and we would get together and play all the time. Characters and items would fly all over the screen creating a blissfully chaotic experience, which we loved. My go to character in the original was Kirby and I was ridiculously good with him. I haven't played the original much since 99', but it's my understanding that Kirby was pretty overpowered. For some reason I don't personally own an original Super Smash Brothers cartridge. They're fairly cheap now, so might have to pick one up.
When Melee was released in 2001 I didn't have a Gamecube. Only one of my friends did and I would be at his house almost every single weekend to get in as much Melee as I could. Melee improved upon the original Super Smash Brothers in almost every way (Some may disagree with me on this). There were exponentially more characters, stages, and items. They even added a story mode, and trophy collecting. Melee was the ultimate Nintendo fan-service experience.
The Summer of 2001 I received a Gamecube for my birthday. I didn't get Melee immediately, but when I did I played it all the time. At first I would play with my younger brother. I was a lot better than him so we'd mess around a whole lot. I didn't use Kirby as my main anymore, because I didn't like him as much. Melee was a much faster game than the original and Kirby didn't pack as much of a punch. During my first few years of Melee I mainly played as Ganondorf and Fox. One day when I was messing with my brother I bet him that I could beat him with Princess Peach, who I had only been a handful of times. I ended up crushing him and finding out that I wanted to use Peach all the time.
From that point on I got a lot more serious with Melee. I practiced with Peach all the time. Lucky for me a few of my friends got deep into Melee at the same time. We'd often turn off all the items so we could fight with our pure gaming skill. I move from game to game quickly, so I don't really linger on one long enough to get super good at it. Melee was a different story. I practiced for years and never seemed to get bored. I even entered a tournament at my local mall when the sequel Super Smash Brothers Brawl was released for the Wii.
I liked Brawl well enough, but it'll never be as good as Melee to me. Brawl was much more floaty and not as fast as Melee. I'm not necessarily saying that Melee is one of the best games ever made, but it's certainly one of my favorites. When I play Melee I genuinely have fun and I'll always remember it fondly for that. There's something special about the extreme chaos that the game has to offer.
