Brian Plays Old (Sometimes Bad) Games, Entry 4

Thursday, March 11, 2010 - 7:20 PM
[Update by Brian]
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Game: Maximo: Ghosts to Glory
Platform: PlayStation 2
Year: 2002
Game Ranking: 84.72% (B)

Upon realizing that there is no way I can beat games at a quick enough clip to do reviews literally every week, I'm expanding my rule of only reviewing games I've played recently to include all games in the last year. And if that's not enough, I may do some sort of special for every fifth entry or something like that that is not necessarily a review, but something video game-related. Thank you for your understanding, and now, on with the review.

Maximo is king of all the land. After fighting in a war, he returns home to find his queen kidnapped and his kingdom overrun by his former friend, Achille. Achille kills Maximo, but Maximo makes a deal with the reaper--Maximo will collect lost souls and give them to Death in exchange for an opportunity to return to life to slay Achille, rescue the queen, and restore order to his kingdom. Sounds exciting, right? I thought so, too.

Most reviews I've read for Maximo: Ghosts to Glory rate this game just slightly less than great. A couple of flaws here and there are all that keeps it from being placed in the upper echelon of most incredible games ever made. I'd heard good things, and when my friend Jon Reno was willing to part with it for five bucks some years ago, I scooped it up. Of course, it sat on my shelf for four years before I actually played it, but I was still excited the first time I delicately placed the disc in my PS2. Come on, this was the spiritual successor to the Capcom classic, Ghosts 'n' Goblins! You fight armies of undead! (One of my favorite pastimes, to the uninitiated.) It's classic action platforming! I was going to have so much fun! Right?!

Well, it was all right...I guess. But honestly, by the time I was done with Maximo, I was ready the drop the disc into the nearest deep-fryer. The game is hard, and not in the good way that Ghosts 'n' Goblins is hard. Maximo has the very bad combination of a clunky camera, overpowered enemies, and enough inconveniently placed cliffs and rivers of poisonous goo that make you feel cheated with each and every death. Killing monsters and grabbing coins were fun, but overall, I felt very underwhelmed by what was supposed to be one of the PlayStation 2's great early platformers.

There is one thing I should immediately make clear before progressing deeper into this troubling review: I'm really bad at 3D platforming, which is discouraging because I really like and am really good at 2D platformers. My lack of skill doesn't really matter too much in 3D games that take place in realistic environments, such as city streets. But in 3D games full of floating platforms, bottomless pits, lakes of fire, and other supernatural environmental hazards, my lack of depth perception and coordination in a 3D environment are a sure trip to the "Game Over" screen at least three or four times a night. I do believe there are some games that execute 3D platforming better than others, but as far as Maximo is concerned, I suffered a lot of cheap deaths from overly complex jumping scenarios. There was more than one instance in which you must jump from moving log to moving log to cross a stream, or must jump onto a ledge from a platform that not only floats up and down, but also rotates on an axis. Keep in mind, this ain't Frogger--you don't get a pleasant bird's eye view to execute these treacherous jumps. There was also a jump toward the end of the game from a very high platform, across a chasm, and onto another platform far below. I had to position myself just right on the high platform and aim for a specific spot on the low platorm, or Maximo wouldn't make it. In most of these cases, it was incredibly difficult for me to judge the distance to the next platform and took much irritating trial and error to finally get it right. To finally succeed was not at all satisfying because it didn't require any skill to get through the challenge. Instead, it was all overcoming lousy game mechanics and lack of camera control. I assure you, it is possible to design interesting and challenging levels without inserting nigh-impossible jumping sequences.

Secondly, let's talk combat. Typically, once I can figure out a game's combat and get marginally good at it, the experience gets so much better. It was easy enough to figure out Maximo's combat, but it doesn't matter because the bad guys are a little too overpowering. One skeleton or zombie is normally pretty easy to handle, but if you have to deal with a whole room of the walking dead, there are going to be problems. Enemies are also usually waiting to whack you upside the head on the other side of a chasm you have to jump over, which is always pretty irritating because you have no chance to recover from the jump before they're on top of you. The enemies have strong attacks and many have a shield with which to block your attacks. Maximo can find power-ups that will make combat significantly easier, such as an ability that allows Maximo to throw his shield Captain America-style and an upgrade that will increase the length of Maximo's sword. (Insert immature jokes here--I dare you.) However, you will of course accidentally jump off a cliff within a matter of minutes after obtaining said power-ups and lose everything in the process, having to start from the last checkpoint with minimal equipment. The game is very reminiscient of Gradius in that regard--your power-ups become very essential to your success, but if you lose them, you might as well start over from the last save, because you probably won't stand a chance without them. The bad guys are tough, and there are a lot of them. Even the stage select areas have monsters in them, for crying out loud! I haven't played too many games in which I could say I died while choosing the next level I would play, but Maximo is one of them.

Lastly, an already very difficult game becomes even more difficult in that saving your progress costs 100 coins. Not collecting enough coins or spending your coins on power-ups leaves you at risk of not having enough money to save your game if you need to stop playing to go to the grocery store or because a thunderstorm is raging outside. Not only that, but using continues requires that you pay the grim reaper a "death token," which you earn by retrieving souls for the reaper. Of course, if you can't afford to continue, you can always load from the previous saved game, assuming you had enough coins to save in the first place. If you didn't, and have no means of resuming your progress, you will probably remove the disc from your console and frisbee it into the nearest body of water rather than play through ground you've already covered. It really feels awful to navigate around so many bottomless pits only to find yourself having to navigate around them again because you weren't frugal.

Now let me tell you a little about Ghosts 'n' Goblins, a game in which death doesn't come from bad game mechanics, but from unforgiving monsters tearing unprepared players into tiny, squishy bits. When we were seniors in high school, my friend Lucas Walker and I spent an epic day at his house trying to beat Ghosts 'n' Goblins. We learned quickly that playing the game was going to require utmost skill, memorization, and perseverance. The game made us angry, upset, and very hungry for pizza rolls. We learned from our mistakes, memorized the patterns of monsters, and made extensive use of the game's unlimited supply of continues. I wouldn't say we ever actually got good at the game, but we were tenacious enough that we finally got to the last level and beat the game....

...only to find that the whole game had been a "trap devised by Satan," and that you have to play through the game twice to actually beat it. At that point, we were so geared up and enraged that we probably would have played through it the second time, but there was a snowstorm coming and I needed to get home. The game was admittedly very frustrating, and is widely considered to be almost impossible--few have the patience to play through the whole thing. I know Lucas and I didn't technically beat the game, but to make it through the whole game once was unimaginably satisfying because it took genuine skill and determination to do so. There were no cheap jumping sequences on tiny platforms specifically designed to kill us, and we never felt cheated when a monster did us in because we knew we could figure out the pattern and either get around it or defeat it with enough effort.

Maximo didn't have that quality. I realize that the developers were attempting to mimic the difficulty of the old classics like Ghosts 'n' Goblins, but it didn't turn out quite the same. Whereas Ghosts 'n' Goblins's style of difficulty encouraged Lucas and me to press on and overcome, Maximo's was just discouraging in that I felt like no knowledge had been gained from mistakes. It was all about judging jumps correctly, and if I succeeded, there was another tricky jump waiting for me afterwards.

A good effort, but the only reason I finished this game was because I didn't want to feel like I'd wasted my time with it. It was too frustrating. There are two kinds of difficulties in video games: genuine difficulty and cheap difficulty, and this game is definitely an example of the latter.

Brian's Rating: 4/10

[Images courtesy of GameFAQs.]

Dollar Menu or Nothin'

Monday, March 8, 2010 - 10:35 PM
[Update by Brian]
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On the rare occasion that I do eat fast food (maybe once a month these days), it literally is Dollar Menu or nothin,' which is great because every fast food joint has a dollar menu or value menu or other variety of cheap food they have branded with a generic, yet appetizing monicker. I don't know if it's psychological or not, but it just feels like you get so much more food buying off the dollar menu than you do buying a combo meal. I feel a lot better buying two cheeseburgers, a chicken sandwich, and two small orders of fries off the dollar menu for five buckazoids than I do buying one burger (no matter how big it is), one thing of fries and a drink off the combo menu for the same price. Soda is such a waste of money at restaurants--that's how they get you! Get the water. It's (usually) free and it gives you an additional dollar you can spend on one more burrito. In the long run, this dollar menu exploitation is probably shortening my trek to the grave, but I figure I eat healthy enough and exercise enough to counterbalance the effects of the occasional double cheeseburger. And those aren't just platitudes, either--I actually do.

My birthday is Tuesday. It's not on a weekend or a day that borders a weekend (which would give me an excuse to ask off work), so it's somewhat less thrilling than most birthdays. However, it is still a birthday, and it will still be awesome, as such. Amanda and I are planning to go out to eat with my sister and brother-in-law, and after that, it will probably be an evening of Star Trek on Netflix with the fiancee. The ol' birthday snuck up on my big-time this year--an upcoming wedding, lots of focus on comics and an otherwise busy life will do that to you, I suppose.

I've gotta go work on some stuff for an hour before playing some video games for an hour before bed. I probably won't have either game I'm currently working on beaten by Thursday, so I may have to review an arcade game or otherwise discuss video games in some fashion. I'll think of something. Until then, thanks for reading, and I'll be typing at you again soon!

Brian Plays Old (Sometimes Bad) Games, Entry 3

Thursday, March 4, 2010 - 9:31 PM
[Update by Brian]
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Game: Kid Icarus
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Year: 1987
Game Ranking: N/A

GameRankings apparently does not rate NES games. It does rate NES games re-released on Virtual Console or other platforms, but I played Kid Icarus on the original Nintendo, so that's the review I'm doing.

To me, Kid Icarus seems to be something of a lost classic. Some people laud this game as one of the greatest in the NES library and are flabbergasted that it only got one sequel, Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters, on Game Boy. Other people, like me, managed to miss the game entirely--I knew it existed, but I knew pretty much nothing about it until I used the internet to learn about it much later in my life. The only thing I knew about Kid Icarus is that he was a character on Captain N: The Game Master. I don't remember his role in the show at all at this point, so he mustn't have been that memorable of a character. (He was certainly no Simon Belmont...although, he was a much different character in the show than what I was accustomed to from the Castlevania games.

I came into possession of Kid Icarus when a friend of mine was giving away a bunch of old Nintendo games, and I got around to playing it a few months ago. I only intend to review games that I've played recently and have actually beaten. Even though I played this a few months ago, the memory of the game is still strong, so I'm still considering my experience with Kid Icarus recent enough to be eligible for review.

At first play, Kid Icarus feels much like a hybrid of Metroid and The Legend of Zelda--you have the run-and-gun style of play and the black background of Metroid, with the fantasy elements of Zelda. You play as Pit, an angel stuck in the underworld, whose job is to defeat Medusa, the Goddess of Darkness, in order to release Palutena, the Goddess of Light, who has been imprisoned by Medusa. Pit must collect the three Sacred Treasures that are capable of destroying Medusa in order to free Palutena and restore order to the land.

I gotta say, for being an angel, Pit is a pretty lousy adventurer. You would expect an angel to not die within the first three minutes of his sacred mission, but you must realize that this is a Nintendo game from 1987, which means it is...wait for it...way too hard! Pit is supposed to have the powers of Heaven at his disposal, but the arrows loosed from his magical bow only travel about three feet before they disappear. You're telling me Pit is sent to rescue the Goddess of Light with arrows that fizzle out before they can even get halfway across the screen?! You can get an upgrade later in the game that will increase the distance your arrows travel, but for at least the first quarter of the game, enemies are constantly within reach of smashing you like the creampuff you are because YOUR ARROWS VAPORIZE THREE FEET IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE! I think the game explanation is supposed to be that the intense evil of the underworld is smothering your arrows, but that's clearly just some bullcrap the creative team came up with to pacify angry gamers.

The first three levels are beyond frustrating. You travel up vertical corridors on your way out of the underworld. In the meantime, snakes drop from the top of the screen, flying things divebomb from the top of the screen, octopi leap up from under the screen, and seaweed monsters burrow up from under the ground with little warning at the exact moment you step over them. The screen only scrolls up, so if you get knocked off a platform and fall beyond the bottom of the screen, you're dead, and the game is over. You get one life, so don't screw it up! There is a password system that will let you resume your progress if you die, have to stop and eat supper, or have to go to band practice, but it's long and complicated, so only use it if you absolutely must.

Once you make it past the first three levels (if you haven't run the cartridge through a table saw at this point), you get to the first of three fortresses. The fortresses are maze-like structures somewhat reminiscient of the labyrinths in Zelda. Each fortress is full of traps and monsters, and there's a boss fight if you can reach the end. Fortresses also nullify any upgrades you may have collected, so if you manage to collect the arrow-distance power-up, you'll lose it for the duration of the fortress. Again, I think it's supposed to be the powers of darkness smothering your abilities. I say it's the fault of a bunch of jerk programmers being unnecessarily cruel to unassuming gamers.

There are two really crappy things about the fortresses. You are given a map, but it doesn't work unless you find a shop in the fortress and buy a pencil. This will allow you to chart your progress on the map, but you can't see where you are! You have to buy another item--a torch--to see your current position on the map. This is all easily avoided by just drawing your own map in real life, and it also saves you money to buy health power-ups, which you'll probably need. The other crappy thing about the fortresses are these bad guys called Eggplant Wizards. They shamble around and chuck eggplants at you. If you get hit by one, you turn into an eggplant with legs. You can't shoot or do anything useful in this condition. The only way to fix yourself is to find the hospital inside the fortress (usually all the way on the other side of the fortress, at that), where they will remove the eggplant curse. What a hospital is doing in the middle of a fortress in which everything else is trying to kill you is beyond me, but what do I know?

I've been blathering on about how hard this game is for the last four paragraphs, but I'm past the negatives. If you can survive the first three levels and put up with the challenge of the fortresses, this is a really fun game. You'll also collect some upgrades later on, like fire arrows and the thing that makes your arrows travel farther, that make things so much easier. As I recall, I don't think I died on any level between the first and third fortress, which is pretty remarkable considering the dozens of times I died in the first three levels. At heart, this game is a pure, fun, platforming action game with a few RPG elements thrown in, such as leveling up and using money to purchase upgrades and items. On top of that, the final level plays like a Gradius-style shooter (complete with a big ugly final boss), and I loves me some shooters, so that's another big plus. There are a few memorable tunes, but the graphics and presentation are early-NES in quality and leave quite a bit to be desired. But that's okay because the game is still fun, and that's what's important.

Lastly, and most importantly--you know how I was complaining about how at the beginning of the game, you have to wait until the bad guys are right in your face before you can shoot them? You'll never have so much fun ripping through enemies as you will later in the game, when you can vanquish those same foes that gave you so much trouble in the early game. From all the way across the screen. With your long distance fire arrows.

Kid Icarus ain't perfect, and it's exceedingly difficult at times, but it's fun, challenging (even though I am frequently annoyed by the difficulty of games, it's also a quality I embrace), and still all right in my book.

Brian's Rating: 7/10

[Images courtesy of Wikipedia and GameFAQs.]

Beetween You and Me

Monday, March 1, 2010 - 11:05 PM
[Update by Brian]
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These bee-related puns are gettin' out of hand.

I have to share with you how my morning routine fell into complete disarray. I don't know if other human beings have the same problem or not, but from time to time, some facet of my life needs to be reset. For instance, I'll fall out of the exercise habit, stop eating good food and ingest nothing but Spaghetti-Os and Kraft singles for months at a time, or never get to bed before 2 in the morning. Eventually the situation will get bad enough that I will impose a "reset" in which I realize how bad things have gotten and immediately go back to my old ways.

Such a reset had to be applied to my morning routine, which had gradually degenerated from a quick and efficient process to a dragging, miresome slog through the morning goop.

Part 1: Waking Up - The alarm goes off. I can turn the alarm off or chuck the thing across the room in mere seconds. This proved to be the most efficient part of the morning, as the pace of my morning routine beyond this point would only be exciting to slugs, and they would probably have to be pretty drunk, too. Once the alarm was silenced, I would sit in bed for at least five or ten minutes--more if I was up late the previous night--just trying to collect myself, thinking about dreams I had or worrying about the upcoming day without having to face the cold morning air. This was, of course, a complete waste of time, but I was too tired to notice.

Part 2: Exercise - I exercise in the morning so I can get it out of the way. The only problem is that usually it was taking me 40-50 minutes to grind through an exercise program that should really only take a half an hour, tops. I was taking breaks of at least a minute or two between sets, moping about how I hate doing abs or worrying about whether or not I might accidentally wake up the downstairs neighbor by clanging around on the Total Gym too much or bouncing around playing EA Active on the Wii.

Part 3: Shower and Other Bathroom Stuff - I don't take long showers as it is, but it can still be a time sink if I start thinking about something and then forget to rinse the shampoo out of my hair. Shaving is also time-consuming, and I even have a beard, so there's not a whole lot of shaving to do! (I maintain humans should have an on/off switch for hair and nails.) I also have really bad skin and have to apply five or six scrubs, creams, and moisturizers every morning to keep my face from falling off. This whole process was also taking 40-50 minutes sometimes.

Part 4: Eating Breakfast, Getting Dressed, and Whatever Else - I'm not really sure how this could possibly take that long, but it did.

It became clear that things weren't going very quickly or smoothly. It was taking me upwards of two hours to get all of this stuff done. I know lots of people who can do everything I just listed in two minutes. I hadn't been to work on time in weeks. I'm talking 10-15 minutes late every day. I'm a good worker otherwise, and there was no excuse for this. My fiancee also noticed my sluggish morning behavior, and she's not the kind of person who puts up with that kind of crap.

The reset occurred last Tuesday. When the alarm went off, I forced myself out of bed, no matter how cold it was or how badly I wanted more sleep. I did my weightlifting in 25 minutes and did away with much of my resting, which allowed me to fit more exercise into the routine, and I was actually worn out by the end. I sped up my shower and shave and application of various face-maintaining chemicals. I dressed like I was late for my mom's birthday party, ate as quickly as a teenager on a commercial for pizza rolls, and combed my hair like a...hm...well, I actually didn't comb my hair.

I was ready for work with 40 minutes to spare. I promptly used that time for drawing, and realized just how much time I am capable of wasting in a day. I'm always concerned with not having enough time to do all of the things I want to do, but if I can keep up my new speedy routine, I've got an extra 40 minutes to do with as I please.

Now if I can just find some more areas in which I can save a few minutes here and there, I'll really be in business.

Thanks for reading, and I'll see you on Thursday!

Brian Plays Old (Sometimes Bad) Games, Entry 2

Thursday, February 25, 2010 - 10:03 PM
[Update by Brian]
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Game: Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia
Platform: Nintendo DS
Year: 2008
Game Ranking: 85.54% (B)

Hey, this game isn't old! Well, not to me, but it is to people already playing games from 2010! Holy crap!

I assure you I play more than just handheld games. It just so happens that I managed to beat two handheld games in rapid succession, so I figured they would be good candidates for thorough reviews.

I should probably let you know that the Castlevania series is somewhere in my top three or four video game series of all time. I've been fascinated with the Belmont Clan's eternal struggle against Count Dracula since I was introduced to Castlevania II: Simon's Quest somewhere around age six or seven. Combining action, horror, and fantasy elements created an engrossing environment that just seemed right. There was just enough swords and sorcery (or whips and sorcery, to be precise), just enough fear and apprehension, and just enough action-packed fun to create a unique adventure in video games, and I've never gotten enough of it. Throw in the fact that the evil head honcho at the end of the game is Count Dracula himself, and that his right-hand man is none other than the Grim Reaper, and the series becomes iconic.

But anyway, on with the game.

Seasoned Castlevania fans know that the series' gameplay has shifted from straightforward level-to-level action to more exploration-based combat since the release of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night in 1997. Instead of plowing through linear levels, players must explore vast dungeons and wildernesses to find items and abilities that open up more and more of the game world, like in the Metroid series. Order of Ecclesia follows this same formula. The game is a lot of fun, and features an absurd difficulty level not seen since some of the earlier installments in the series, as far as I'm concerned. It's a great addition to the series, although there are some aesthetic drawbacks that may disappoint some longtime fans (or ME, if nobody else).

The game takes place during a period of time in which the legendary Belmont clan of vampire hunters has vanished. This is a shame because it means no whip, the iconic vampire-killing weapon wielded by the Belmonts. I always thought the whip was such a cool touch in a world where swords are the typical melee weapon of choice for video game adventurers. The thing I don't like about a lot of the more recent Castlevania games is that instead of playing as a Belmont, or at the very least somebody trained by a Belmont, you play as some kid in the right place at the wrong time who must use new magic powers that have manifested themselves within to combat the risen evil of Dracula. I guess it might help some players better relate to the protagonist, but give me Simon Belmont any day.

Order of Ecclesia has a similar lack of interesting protagonist. You play as...um...well, crap; I can't even remember her name. Give me a second....

...You play as Shanoa, a member of a clan called Ecclesia that has risen in the absence of the Belmonts to combat Count Dracula. Shanoa is your typical impossibly hot girl born and raised to fight the forces of evil, an archetype that has sort of worn itself out. If that wasn't bad enough, events in the early game lead Shanoa to develop amnesia and have no emotion. You essentially tear through legions of bad guys with an empty vessel of human being--a killing machine. Not to say that's at all different from the Belmonts of the early games in the series, in which there isn't exactly much story involved. But the problem is that this game does have story--there's dialogue and development. Unfortunately, thanks to her condition, Shanoa's interaction with other characters leaves a lot to be desired--people try to invoke an emotional response from her, and she just doesn't get it. She's boring.

Despite the lackluster protagonist and departure from the Belmont family, this game is long, deep, fun, and hard. I only play handheld games on the road or while at my parents' house, and I was working on this one for about four months or so. I died a lot. In most of these portable Castlevania games, there's usually one or two bosses in each game that is a pain in the butt and may take five or six tries to beat, but otherwise the game is a breeze. Order of Ecclesia is the first Castlevania in a long time in which the regular bad guys proved to be extremely dangerous. Instead of zipping through corridors crushing any adversary in my path, I had to take my time and use a lot of strategy and changes in weaponry just to beat the common foot soldiers. If that wasn't bad enough, the bosses were frustrating enough to be reminiscient of the NES Castlevania installments. I remember terrible boss fights with a giant crab, a creature made out of shadows, a giant centaur knight, a guy with a gun, and the Grim Reaper, of course, who is difficult in every game. Each one of these bosses took at least five tries before I got it right, and involved a lot of experimenting with different weapon combinations. When I got to Dracula, he was so hard I actually had to go level up for a couple of hours before facing him with any chance of beating him. I haven't had to do that in a game in ages! It was very frustrating at times, but I appreciate games that don't skimp on difficulty--I get such a great sense of accomplishment when I beat them, even though I had to stop myself from ripping my DS in half in this case.

The weapon system is okay. You find weapons by absorbing the abilities of bad guys you kill. There aren't a huge number of weapons available, unlike some recent Castlevania games in which there are more weapons that you'll ever know what to do with. Most of those are pretty worthless compared to the game's best weapons, but just knowing you have access to such a variety is a pretty cool thing. You'll get good use out of most of your arsenal in Order of Ecclesia, but there are still a few duds you'll never touch again after trying once. The cool thing is that you can equip two weapons at once. The second weapon doesn't have to be a "subweapon" like a throwing dagger, either--if you want a big sword in one hand and a giant war hammer in the other, you can equip both and swing them one after the other. It usually does pay to be strategic with your weapon selections, though, or you'll end up getting smeared by a giant skeleton because you're trying to stab it with a rapier. Oops!

There are also a number of sidequests in addition to the main objective of killing the nefarious Dracula. Villagers you rescue along the way will ask you to go find their lost cat or kill 30 of a certain bad guy or bring a certain item back, and they'll repay you in some fashion if you complete the quest. The prizes you get usually aren't that great, but you get a sense of accomplishment from clearing the sidequests. However, I didn't finish them all because some of the later quests ask you to go to extremely dangerous areas to retrieve incredibly rare items that may or may not actually appear, depending on how lucky you are. Facing rooms full of spikes ands flames and killer demons over and over again trying to get that one item the town blacksmith wants and have it not be there at the end got pretty irritating after awhile, and I decided to move on. You can spend the time trying to collect every weapon and item in the game if you want, but that is a chore that should probably be left to the criminally insane, or for people who want to spend two years playing the same game.

The music is only okay, which is disappointing for a Castlevania game, which usually has great music that gets stuck in my head...well, forever. There were only two tracks in the game that I really liked and that are remotely memorable.

Overall, this game is a winner. A few issues keep it from being really good, but I still think it is among the best of the exploration-based Castlevania games.

Brian's Rating: 8/10

[Images courtesy of GameFAQs.]

Misinterpretation

Monday, February 22, 2010 - 10:00 PM
[Update by Brian]
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I tried to put some shading and texture into this comic with my inking instead of solely with Photoshop, and I kind of liked how it turned out. It gives the comic so much more depth than a bunch of grayscales can. I believe I may have mentioned before that I'd really like to continue to develop my inking to the point where I do most shading and textures with the inks and only use minimal grayscales, but I am still a long ways off from that. However, I think this is another one of those things like hand-lettering where I need to just start doing it, or it will never develop.

Speaking of hand-lettering, I think this strip's word bubbles are the best I've done so far. I took my time with them, tried to make them more circular and less horizontal, and I made sure to put a little more space between the words and the edges of the word bubbles, and they look much better than last week's bubbles. I'm also working on strategic placement of the bubbles so that they guide the reader through the panel. I was aware of this technique, but never really followed it, only making sure to place the word bubbles out of the way of the action and in such a way that they were at the very least read in the right order.

Not much else to say at the moment. The debut edition of "Brian Plays Old (Sometimes Bad) Games" received positive feedback, so I will be doing another installment on Thursday night of this week. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you then!

Brian Plays Old (Sometimes Bad) Games, Entry 1

Thursday, February 18, 2010 - 9:07 PM
[Update by Brian]
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I'd like to try a regular feature on this website on Thursdays called "Brian Plays Old (Sometimes Bad) Games." As you probably know by now, I am absolutely notorious for having a massive backlog of unfinished video games to play through. While my friends are plugging their way through Mass Effect 2 or Bayonetta, here I am stumbling through something like Zelda: Ocarina of Time, a 13-year old game. However, know that this is by choice--my goal is to beat every beatable game I own in the limited amount of time I have to play games. Or, if the game is not beatable, unlock everything in the game and/or set an unbeatable high score that will make my friends puke with envy and frustration. While this goal usually sets me back when it comes to not playing the newest, hippest releases, it also saves me a ton of money because I just wait for those games to get tossed in the clearance bin and pick them up at a big discount. (Except for good Wii games, which never get discounted because they still sell like bacon at an egg festival.) I have a running list of every new game that comes out that I want so I won't forget to buy it later.

These days, video games are like books, movies, comics, and every other form of media--there are so many out there that you'll never know or play all of them, and they're not all good, either. I intend for this column to be my account of what I've been playing recently for the benefit of those of you who may have missed out on these particular titles, and for those of you who are big nerds like me and just like reading about video games.

Game: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan
Platform: Nintendo Game Boy
Year: 1990
Game Ranking: 82.50%

Good gravy. This game is twenty years old?! I've got a lot of work to do if I still have to beat games this ancient.

My friend Blake gave me this game either when I bought a bunch of stuff from him, or when he was just getting rid of some old riff-raff. I picked it out of my Game Boy stash the last time I was at my parents' house, so I popped it into my Game Boy Advance SP and got to work.

I got nervous as the title screen appeared. My last and only experience with this game was at age 6 or 7, when my (then soon to be) cousin (by marriage) Shannon had it for his Game Boy and let me play it. I remember the game being difficult and unforgiving. Foot soldiers attacking from all sides, crap falling from the ceilings...this was definitely no Super Mario Bros., where goombas and koopa troopas were only coming at me from one side, and stuff only fell from the sky in the two or three levels Lakitu was in.

Age, however, appears to have some effect on a person's video game-playing ability. I was shocked to find that not 20 minutes after that first jolt of anxiety upon remembering that I had played Fall of the Foot Clan before, I had bested the Foot Clan in what has to be one of the quickest outings in my many years of video game-playing. I'd never played an easy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game before, and this one seemed...a little too easy. I was expecting Shredder to come back to life and make a fine paste out of me after the credits rolled, but it didn't happen. I lost two turtles along the way (I assume it's Game Over if you lose all four), but technically one of those was while I was still getting the hang of the controls and feel for the game.

Fall of the Foot Clan is a standard side-scroller in which you guide one of the turtles through five stages as you try to save April O'Neil, whose penchant for being kidnapped rivals even that of Princess Toadstool (or Peach or whatever she's called now). Meanwhile, foot soldiers, mousers, and other assorted TMNT bad guy mainstays attack you relentlessly from both sides. It's too easy and too short, but a lot of fun despite somewhat stiff controls. Good graphics of characters iconic of the TMNT franchise, detailed backgrounds, memorable and atmospheric music, and you get to swat endless legions of enemies with ninja weapons.

Brian's Rating: 7/10

[Images courtesy of GameFAQs.]