Thoughts on (Books): Ghosts: The Story of a Reunion by Adrian Plass

Here's a thing I shouldn't be doing for quite a few reasons! Mainly because it'll probably wear me down before I can get into my daily dose of "Dead Kiss", and also because I finished this book like five weeks ago and really shouldn't be reviewing after the absurd stretches of time I had to put it down before even getting to that point. Regardless, I'm doing it, just to get it off my mind (pfahahaha, nothing ever leaves there).

Even while reading the book I had issue with the names of the characters, and by now I can't recall any of them whatsoever. I think there was an Agatha, I remember a Jenny. That's about it. Maybe a George? This is a pretty common problem I have with contemporary books--even in real life I have a hard time with names. Particularly oh-so-boring everday common names like George. I mean, how many Georges are there in the world, not even considering fiction (and definitely discounting chimps)? I have space for like, three Georges up there: Washington, Jetson, and Milton. Any other George? Just a shadow.

Thing is, I don't think it's exactly the names that made this happen. I think its the absolute lack of character within these characters. They don't have personality. I mean, Plass tried a couple times to give them some, but then they stopped having any. I distinctly remember the characteristics of two characters in this book: one was an atheist, and so was naturally portrayed as an uncultured manchild, and the other wise a short, nervous little man who reminded me somewhat of a turtle, and I chose to imagine him as such. The other characters all had somewhat memorable experiences or phrases, but they didn't have character. There was the gay guy, the girl with the one-time crush (Jenny), the woman who lived in an old house, and the main character. Also some pissed off guy who storms out after clinging around the narrative for about four pages. Pretty sure he left because the cast was already outrageously large for a personality so small.

Don't let the title, or even the intro, fool you. There is almost no horror in this book. Actually, much like the characters, there isn't a whole lot of anything in this book. There is little charm, little personality, zero wit (which is okay, you don't have to be witty to be engaging every contemporary author out there), nothing. Things happen, you're told they happen in extremely long-winded phrases, and that's about it. There is one genuinely creepy instance which is actually a short story framed by the rest of the novel, and later on a fairly creepy scene which mimics it. So it's like, there's two good emotional parts of this book, but one of them is just a repeat. Like, ten pages later.

The other thing that got me is just how incredibly rude everybody is. I get that they're trying to do some kind of honesty counselling thing, and a bit of rudeness is expected to come from that. This book, though, is like two-hundred pages of an Internet debate. It's like I stepped into any heavily-cliqued message board and read two-hundred pages of conversation, complete with shit-posts. Thing is, they aren't just directly rude during the little "share your feels" meetings, but just casually rude. At the end, for instance, the protagonist is ushered out of the mansion he was invited to stay at after hardly saying "good bye". I mean, the woman who invites him there basically says: "Oh, weekend's over. Get the fuck out of my house." Like, what?

Maybe this is some kind of American-reading-Brit-Lit disconnect, but, no really, what? This casual rudeness pervades the entire novel, and it makes me sick. Part of this is in the interactions between the cast (from now on I refuse to call them "characters") but most of it is within the narrative of the primary individual. It is claimed again and again, by himself and others, that the focal cast member is a good, honest, decent human being who gives everyone a chance, but this is only ever told and when it comes to show, we see nothing but a rude, judgmental, barely-passively aggressive person. I am frightened for any people who must spend time within any proximity of this man, he is a serial killer in the making.

The prose itself is okay. Sometimes enjoyable, I do remember coming across a couple passages which I thought were well-written. For the most part, I thought it was dry, overly wordy, and a bit full of itself.

Really, not an enjoyable read. Maybe it's because I'm agnostic, maybe it's because I'm American, who can say? I didn't like it. I don't think most people will like it. It was kind of a mind-numbing experience. I don't feel advanced as a person, I just feel like I lost some hours of my life and I want them back. Please, give them back to me. Three stars. You can have one more if I can have my hours back.

Video Game Review: Kirby's Adventure (Kirby's Dream Collection: Special Edition) (Nintendo Wii)

Shortly after my first glorious romp with Kirby's Dream Land, I decided to try out Kirby's sole NES outing: Kirby's Adventure. This wasn't really a blind run; when I was a younger soul, maybe twelve or thirteen, a friend purchased Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land for the Game Boy Advance and, being a rabid fan of Kirby 64, I borrowed it. I think I beat the thing by the end of the school day, but I loved every second of it (and I might add, it was the most productive in-school suspension I've ever had). Being a bit of a historian, I was interested in trying out the original. I knew it couldn't possibly be exactly like the remake, so I didn't go into it expecting that.

Actually, it's not too different. Kirby's Adventure doesn't feature the enhanced graphics of its follower, but it isn't ugly or even mediocre. The visuals are superb for the most part, going that extra mile to actually look like something in a time where most things were digital Legos. Kirby's round and got character, and anything he comes up against has a lot of personality.

Unfortunately, the development team went a little overboard attempting to prove that the NES was capable of being pretty. While the environments are lush and character sprites are gorgeous, it's just too ambitious for the NES to handle. Intense flickering drowns out most of the details and is probably a considerable risk for those with epilepsy. I found that it reduced me to a dream-like trance for the majority of the game, making it painful to play and difficult to rationalize. The game also suffers considerable slowdown at a number of parts, and there is at least one ability (Spark) which causes the processing to drag any time it's used. This is a monstrous issue.

Those aren't the only downsides the more-than-adequate graphics create, though. While stage design is damn near brilliant when explored isolated from all its beautifying effects, it really doesn't work out so well in-game. The excessive detailing combined with the NES' limited capacity for colors makes it difficult to tell which objects are foreground and which are background. This issue was present in a number of NES games, so the developers made damn sure the environments were not cluttered with confusing objects. Kirby's Adventure is more cluttered than the average home in Hoarders. Blocks stacked several high, which are drawn exactly like all the usable blocks, litter the backgrounds, some even piled up around foreground objects. This can make predicting jumps a very difficult task, and even with Kirby's unlimited flight ability I still plummeted to my death a couple times.

I can appreciate the attempt at creating a beautiful environment on the NES architecture, and HAL got it right as far as screenshots are concerned. But when everything is moving it just doesn't work, and the results of this one design philosophy have led to an entire game, a game which would have otherwise been phenomenal, being nearly unplayable.

It's not all bad, but I've kind of already hit the subject line: a major, and potentially dangerous, flaw permeates the entire game and absolutely murders the experience.

In the past I've gone on at length about the quality aspects of games, and maybe it's fair for me to go into detail about that here as well. But I really can't find the motivation to. I can't recommend anybody to play this game, despite the great music, great physics, incredible boss battles, and perfect difficulty level (when it plays right). Supposing I should just to be fair, but I don't really have the patience for it, it's an energy suck, and I'm never going to play this game again.

Look, this game was a pretty miserable experience for me. I absolutely loved it from a technical standpoint, because it really is a marvel beside its peers on that scale. As somebody who can appreciate the work that goes into creating something, I can definitely appreciate Kirby's Adventure. But as somebody who's a gamer first, I really have a hard time getting behind this game. It's not fun. It is the perfect argument against the position that games are inherently good based on the tech. specs. alone. Specs. don't make a game, unfortunately.

Kirby let me down with this one. Some people might find it fun, a lot of people find it fun. I don't. I had a few good times, but the overall bad experience really makes any positive aspects negligible. Kirby's Adventure sees itself on the list with five stars. I want to bite it a lot harder, mainly because my head aches for some reason and I've focused only on the negative aspect (and that's seriously coloring my language, wtf), but the good stuff is good enough to push the game into "mediocre" territory. As far as games go, you really could do a lot worse.

--Consider this a note of hesitation. I might revise this review in the future, because it really does not follow my typical review philosophy. Still, everything I've said here is true, and the star rating can only be lowered. Kirby's Adventure will never cross into the "good" or "enjoyable" game spectrum.--

Video Game Review: Kirby's Dream Land (Kirby's Dream Collection: Special Edition) (Nintendo Wii)

Regrettably, I never really played any of the older Kirby video games. They passed under my radar as a kid (I was much more of a Mario and Sonic guy), despite his puffy, pink face being painted all over the floor of the Toys "R" Us game aisle. Oh, good times, when things weren't so homogenized... anyways, I was first brought into the Kirby fold with his appearance in the original Super Smash Bros. To be honest, I owe this franchise for introducing me to the majority of my favorite titles. If it weren't for Super Smash Bros., I'd have never touched Fire Emblem, Kirby, Metroid (beyond the original), or any Legend of Zelda games that weren't on the N64. The legion of one-shot wonders under Nintendo's belt would have completely escaped my notice, and what the hell is a Solid Snake? Aren't all snakes solid?

Well, I was a little embarrassed of Kirby at first. I mean, here I was eight or nine years old, a boy who had to do his darnest to impress the other boys (oh, and my hyper-masculine father!), and there was this fucking happy-ass Jigglypuff waving at me and singing in a baby voice. It was like the sun from Teletubbies descended into the hard-boiled world of video games. What was this nonsense?

Fortunately one of my friends rented Kirby 64, making it fair game for purchase once we all discovered what a beautiful thing it was.

Despite my love for this title, I never really felt motivated to try the rest of the games. I learned that you couldn't merge copy powers in all of them, and that was that. I wanted combined powers, damn it! At some point I got to my senses and picked up Kirby Super Star Ultra for the Nintendo DS, and it was pretty good. Not the phenomenal work of art most enthusiasts laud it to be, but pretty good. I also borrowed Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land, which I loved left, right, up, and down (Hey, Big Guy). That really was the extent of my Kirby exposure. I mean, I watched the abominable anime Kirby: Right Back at Ya! every Saturday morning, and I knew (as I often do) the series' lore in almost all of its entirety, but it never made my "Must Have" list, and by the time I was down to second-tier wants, they were out of manufacture and boosted to re-hee-diculous prices at GameStop. Sorry, I don't pay forty bucks for a used game with no manual and a ratty insert and... pudding on the contacts?

Lately I've been interested in older games, and I'm finding that a lot of the stuff from my youth really isn't as dated as I thought it would be, and lots of games from those same eras (and even the ones prior) are actually quality titles. In particular, I've noticed a profound satisfaction from the original Game Boy era's library of titles, which is exciting to me because they're so dirt cheap and there's lots of ways to play them. Right now I've got my handy-dandy Game Boy Advance SP, but I'd eventually like to get my hands on the Game Boy Player and to reclaim the old Super Game Boy (which has different color palettes, I just learned).

Kirby's Dream Land, however, I won't be playing on any of those things, because I've got this big boy (and most of its brethren) on the Kirby Dream Collection, baby! Right away that limits how I can play it, as I'll never know if it had any colors beyond grayscale, but them's the breaks. I don't mind the grayscale at all, really, and I think it's put to good use in most titles. What I does bother me is the distracting border put around the game to make it fit the proper aspect ratio. I appreciate the aspect ratio, because things are always better when they're experienced with the proper dimensions (or multiples thereof), but the bright border is just distracting.

Fortunately, somebody at Nintendo thought the same thing, because the border can be shut off by holding two buttons (I think it's plus and minus), changing the poky pink to beautiful black. I doubt the pink border will bother most people, however. I just have excessive OCD with things in my line of sight while viewing screens. Seriously, if a human being is at all visible between the screen and myself, I will not have a good time.

The graphics are superb. Despite such a limited color palette, each object has depth and the world comes across as complete and alive. Paths are not merely obstacle course for Kirby to vault through, but real paths which are utilized by the denizens of Dream Land on a regular basis. Sure, you still get the bizarre architectural decision to build floating staircases, but that makes more sense in a world where nearly everybody can jump six feet up and fly (as opposed to the Mushroom Kingdom, where Mario actually has a superhero moniker [Jumpman] and is famous for being a better jumper than everyone else). Unlike a lot of games which feature such extensive detail, Kirby's Dream Land never gets lost in itself. The path and interactive objects are always clearly distinguished from the background, and that's key with game design.

Sounds are cheerful and fitting. They have a certain quality which is very similar to the early Pokémon titles, though I'm positive that has a lot to do with the games being designed with the same hardware limitations. Music is both simple and memorable. Modern gamers are bound to hear a couple of familiar songs, and I can promise that King Dedede's theme is just as solid here as it is in any rendition since. Naturally, the music melts into the scenery instead of opposing it, which helps the game craft a distinct atmosphere.

I didn't notice any issues with the hardware handling the game. No slowdown that comes to mind, no graphical or audio anomalies. Everything seemed to work and handle exactly as it was supposed to, which is a double-good considering this experience is technically an emulated one. Even the best emulators seem to muck something up a bit, but I guess having developed the original system, it's a bit easier for Nintendo to make it work flawlessly. There is one drawback to the handling, though, and it's unfortunately by design. Kirby's classic flutter ability debuted with the puffball in this game, and it's actually more or less the focus of the game's design. Unlike future games, Kirby can fly forever here, with the game being adequately designed to challenge this style of play (although it did make some portions much easier than they should have been). Thing is, Kirby doesn't float by tapping the "A" button while already in the air. Not initially, anyway. Instead you have to tap "Up" on the D-Pad to enter puff-mode. From there you can tap "A" or "Up" to float as needed, but that really makes it more of a hassle than it ought to be, and there were a few challenges where this limitation caused me to slip up and take a hit or miss a platform.

Enemies are varied, with some making me question why they exist as there are other foes which serve the same purpose. I guess it's okay in situations where certain enemy characters exist only in specific environments, because that goes a long way towards world-building. There are a handful of attack types which can prove to be either harmless or extremely annoying, but on the whole everything is fair. I never once felt like an obstacle or enemy was too difficult or unfairly designed, which can be a real problem for some games. Honestly, I feel there is a good pace in terms of difficulty where the enemies and challenges are concerned.

There are four world bosses and several mini-bosses, all of which are brilliantly designed, deceptively challenging, and brimming with character. Modern gamers will find a few familiar faces in the forms of Whispy Woods, Kracko and King Dedede while veterans and historians will be interested in the surprise cameo of Lolo and Lala at the end of world two (and the unanswered implications of their opposing Kirby). World three ends with not so much a distinct character, but an enhanced version of a common obstacle: a Blatzy tied to a large, blimp-like balloon which battles Kirby in an aerial dogfight reminiscent of the scrolling shooter genre, which was popular at the time. The best part is that, unlike most games which incorporate this style of fight contrary to the rest of the game (such as Super Mario Land), the mechanics for this confrontation are the familiar floating mechanics, forcing players to master all modes of locomotion.

Kirby's Dream Land has swiftly become my favorite game in the series (although we'll see how I feel about it after a reintroduction to Crystal Shards), and it certainly deserves a chance by any folks who fancy themselves gamers. Poor decision in controls and an inability to play the game at the size of the original Game Boy screen (which results in objects appearing a little pixelated) are the only things holding it back from a perfect score. That doesn't mean it won't get an "A", though. Mr. Sakurai's younger self was right on the money with this mean eating machine, and I'm letting him walk away holding a nine out of ten with no regrets.

Comic Review: Batman Beyond: Hear No Evil (2002)

Batman Beyond: Hear No Evil masquerades as a standard children's picture book tying into the ever-popular market of Saturday morning cartoons. The flavor of May, 2002 happened to be the outstanding Batman Beyond animated program, which served as a sequel to the award-winning Batman: The Animated Series and would influence not only the DC Animated Universe, but DC's entire franchise as we know it (even seeing a revival as a monthly title in 2011 which ties directly into the main DC universe). As I mentioned, however, this book, much like Batman himself, is merely undercover. Under its cover you won't find the standard morally-infused childhood fare, but a solid 24-page comic story.

The comic is definitely written for a younger audience, but unlike a lot of such material, it doesn't ever treat them like idiots. Most children's media is far up its adult ass that it can't help talking down to the kids, and that's something that put even me off in my younger years (and I like everything!). This book, on the other hand, just wants to tell a good story. And it does. Well.

Each page is split into a few large panels with surprisingly good art which matches up pretty well with the cartoon it's cashing in on. The dialogue is simple and toned down to appease the censors, but none of it feels contrived and it all flows very naturally. The characters all sound like they're supposed to, and you can tell that the writer, Scott Peterson, really got into their heads and went the extra mile to not just tell a story which is "good enough" for children, but to tell a Batman Beyond story.

While there isn't a moral in plain sight, the book does adequately deliver a message of kindness. There's all of one obvious plot hole which can be ironed out with just the tiniest bit of imagination, and contrary to form, significant character development! I mean, there's no surprises for an adult, we'll all know how it's going to end practically before it's even begun. However, that doesn't detract from the effectiveness of the story and the superb pacing. Honestly, if this were published as a one-shot story in the monthly title, I wouldn't be disappointed one bit.

Let me just answer your questions real quick: story, good. Art, good. Characters, good. Book, good. As far as comics go, it's not the grand epic of a more mature tale, but who could expect it to be? Now, as far as children's comics go? Oh yeah. This is good. This is nine out of ten good. The back cover lets me know that it sold for $3.25 US, which is actually less than modern comics. Weird, considering this will last longer when exposed to its target audience.

You know what the best part is? Any age will enjoy it. I enjoyed it enough to read it again, and I'm sure I'll do so a third time in the future. If you're going to slap four bucks on a comic anyway, might as well make it a good one.

Literature Review: Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America by Jeff Ryan (2011)

Being an avid fan of Super Mario, Nintendo itself, and "making of" type notes and documentaries, Jeff Ryan's book Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America was a shoo-in (which, shouldn't that be "shoe-in"? As in, a shoe in the door?) for my small personal library. Immediately upon holding it for the first time, I was filled with the nostalgia and youthful bliss. Memories of Super Mario Bros. 2, Donkey Kong Classics, and of course, the original Super Mario Bros. (the version attached at the hip with Duck Hunt, of course). That unmistakable blue hue of a NES palette sky and the classic Little Mario leaping sprite (which has been raised into 16-bit here, sporting a more modern look for the spaghetti squire) were just as welcoming and enticing as any old-school start screen. All it was missing was a demo reel when you let it sit too long.

Regrettably, it seems video game lit. has only barely evolved beyond the 2600 era. While the book is interesting and features a fairly detailed history of the Nintendo company and its execs., I can't feel confident that any of the new information I acquired is accurate. I'd love for it to be, because there's really some quite interesting stuff that made me pop an eyebrow or two, but the book is riddled with so many simple mistakes that I wonder if Mr. Ryan did much homework at all. Now, I'm not just talking about typos (although such things are both rampant and inconsistent, such as occasionally spelling "Goomba" as "Goombah", messing Konami into "Komani", and not once failing to misspell Kotaku as "Kokatu"), but jarring factual errors that the most basic of gamers would never get wrong. Things like confusing the Panasonic and Philips companies made reading confusing and difficult to keep track of, but are a little more forgivable since they're kind of out of the way of the main topic. However, being totally off the mark about the American version of Super Mario Bros. 2, being so wrong as to confuse the great Wart for Bowser and Subcon for the Mushroom Kingdom, are inexcusable errors. For a book named after, and focusing on, Super Mario, it really screwed up the pasta-pummeler's history.

Now, I did look up a few things that sounded odd to me which turned out to be true (one of which was about a little game called Waku Waku Sonic Patrol Car, which I took as being a misconstrued version of the Japanese exclusive Sonic Drift. Turns out I was wrong), so at least some of Ryan's information is correct. It's just unfortunate that figuring out just how much will require doing enough research to write up your own back, which is sad for a book which is supposed to educational itself.

Honestly, I wouldn't be able to recommend this book for educating yourself or others in video game history. It's too... wrong in too many places. While the title might be easier to bite into than some of the heavier, more dull reports on the topic, it kind of presents the anti-intellectual fallacy bandied about in the American educational system: teach them the easiest understanding possible, then unteach it to them later. You have no idea how challenging it can be to unlearn something, and I know that was one of the wort parts of school for me. "Hey, remember how we told you the Pilgrims were the first people to reach America? We lied to ya, buddy!"

I didn't learn that the word "pilgrim" wasn't exclusive to the group of Mayflower settlers until ninth grade. That's a dangerous thing to do. People tend to hold onto the first bits of knowledge they get, and if it's wrong, that person is going to have a hard time readjusting the fundamental layer of their thinking. Hell, Brontosaurus is still how it's spelled in my book!

But enough beating, because Ryan really isn't a bad or even mediocre writer. His editing team needed to be a little better, and he's gotta work on that research if he wants to write non-fiction, but he seems to have a gift with making it interesting. See, that's half the battle, especially with text like this. You might come out with a book that's really informative and gets it all right, but if your prose is drab I'm going to drop you like a day-old sock. Jeff Ryan has a voice derived from years as a journalist. Sometimes this makes Super Mario read a little too much like an issue of Nintendo Power magazine, but then again, I subscribed to Nintendo Power magazine (a moment of silence, please).

There are bits of sarcasm and bite to his voice which are all-too common among the smug pop-culture journalist crowd, and there were times when it got to be a little much. Skip the parentheticals, and you'll manage to dodge most of that (I seem to have picked a little something up from this book after all. Sorry, Jeff). However, his natural voice and inability not to characterize something lends itself wonderfully to drawing the audience into history as it unfolds before them. Anybody who picks this one up will already know about Shigeru Miyamoto and Satoru Iwata, and they sure as hell better known Gunpei Yokoi, but Ryan's text does more than just let you know what these men did and why you should know them; it turns them into characters, and welcomes you along on their journey as they develop from unknown young men into celebrated pioneers of the digital era.

The book is divided into parts which seem to follow along with the evolution of Nintendo's consoles, despite some overlap. The first part is the arcade era, you get the NES era, SNES, N64, GCN, and finally Wii. Each part is divided into several chapters, all of which are puns on various Mario games, and used in ways which reflect the general tone of the chapter. It's something aficionados will get a chuckle out of, and it's the kind of fun I imagine Nintendo would themselves have with a self-styled history book.

For the most part, Super Mario is an interesting read. The last chapter, however, is kind of a Shyamalan-style tone-twist. We go from praising Mario and the Nintendo company to a diatribe about how Chinese workers slave away in sweatshops (and often commit suicide) to make it all possible. It kind of makes one double-take and wonder if this was all a set-up by some human rights group. The narrative then turns again, now full of provolone optimism about how Mario will once again lead us all into an era of digital enlightenment. Really, it's the kind of poor ending you expect out of fiction (which almost never ends well), but not an over-stuffed IGN article.

In short: this book cannot be read for factual use as there are too many errors. However, as a work of near-fiction and a character story, it is more than adequate and highly entertaining. Unfortunately, that isn't the purpose of a non-fiction piece. For featuring heavy bias (it's evident Mr. Ryan is no fan of Pokémon), distracting diatribes and self-important quips, and, above all, dangerous misleading falsities marched through the streets as facts, I have no choice but to score Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America a mere three out of five stars. I'll see you after class, Mr. Ryan. Maybe next time you'll do your homework.

Video Game Review: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (Nintendo Wii)

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is hailed by many to be the magnum opus of the Zelda franchise. Combining the ground-breaking gameplay of it the original game with the sensibilities and skills of a veteran development team, A Link to the Past certainly has the firepower to live up to its reputation. Unfortunately, the game never figures out how to properly utilize it.

Don't get me wrong, A Link to the Past isn't a bad game. It's almost an average game, but the usual Zelda charm manages to save it. Just barely. Improving on the design pitfalls which hindered its forefather, ALttP manages to remain relatively playable throughout, and its mechanics actually work quite well most of the time. Walls which can be bombed are clearly marked (although there are some red herrings, but that adds to it rather than detract), things which can burn look like they can burn, and basically any object you can interact with is very clear about it. The game does still have a bit of an issue with being cryptic about where to go next, and this time I found it much more annoying than The Legend of Zelda. In the original game, much of the out-of-the-way hidden items were optional, but here they're necessary. Link will need to use almost every available tool at least once to progress the game, and a lot of them exist without any hints until you stumble upon them. This style of play isn't usually an issue, and I can understand the free-roaming explorative aspect of the game, but the enemies and hazards you encounter on the field are far too powerful, far too numerous, and work far too hard to discourage exploration even remotely.

Link does get some useful power ups at later points in the game which even the playing field for the most part, and once you acquire them it can actually be a real blast exploring and interacting with all of the side material. Unfortunately, by the time you actually get enhanced armor, swords, and health, you've already had to use most of the items. Actually, I was overall unimpressed with just how late in the game stat upgrades are presented. With only one or two dungeons remaining (or only a pair of boss fights, in the case of the final bit of armor) they serve almost no purpose. They would have been extremely helpful at earlier points in the game, but by the time you get them it really doesn't matter. Even when you do acquire them, they don't do you very good for very long. The developers thought it would be a swell idea to just make everything hurt you more as well, so it's almost like you never got the upgrades at all. Kind of a waste there, and I feel like the purpose is just to fill up some Key Item slots in the dungeons.

Another issue which has not been ironed out is that of the grid-locked hero and the unlocked adversaries. Link is able to look in only four directions and attack only in four directions. They improved on this a little bit by having his sword sweep from left-to-right instead of jutting straight out in front, but it really doesn't fix anything. The enemies appear to be on a completely separate grid from the player character, and that allows them to get right in on your blind spots while leaving none of their own. This can make most hand-to-hand confrontations a disaster, so it's a relief when you finally grab some ranged weaponry.

Bosses are hit or miss. They're all clever and they're all memorable and intimidating, so in those aspects they've been done well. Most of them are also not too bad in terms of difficulty, and once you figure out the pattern they can be pretty simple. There are one or two, though, that are simply ridiculous and really needed some closer examination. One of these is a worm-like creature that has completely uninhibited movement on a tiny platform which you can fall from and land in an earlier part of the dungeon. This wouldn't be much more than an annoyance, except for the fact that the boss recovers all of its health whenever you leave the room. The other boss, Helmasaur King, isn't so bad most of the time and defeating him is pretty straightforward. What isn't straightforward is his tail attack. It's easy to predict when he's going to use it, but impossible to tell where it'll go and how it'll get there. This, combined with the hefty amount of health it'll eat away, makes him kind of terrible to come up against.

In general, though, the bosses are fun and defeating them creates a sense of self-worth and satisfaction. Even the easier bosses are extremely satisfying to vanquish. Don't let that word fool you, by the way. While most of the bosses aren't terribly difficult, you will die if you don't pay attention, and I think that's really what makes them so engaging and satisfying. Actually, that's true of the whole game. It's overdone in a lot of parts, and the traps are just too numerous and too powerful in the later dungeons, but if you look away you are likely to die. Because of this, it can feel great to make any forward progress in the game, and each time you hear that classic jingle it's just as rewarding as the first. The game, despite its cryptic moments, is lousy with "A-ha!" moments, which will leave the audience pleased, not just with the game, but with themselves. You'll be patting yourself on the back at the end of each challenge and saying: "Look what you did, you rascal. You figured it out. Nothing can stop you now!"

The visuals are fairly bland throughout, although the title screen is simply gorgeous, and I think I'll get a poster of it someday. Having dabbled in pixel art for most of my life (and not really improving at it), I'm simply stunned whenever I boot this game up. Unfortunately, it's a lie! The rest of the game's scenery borders on stock and generic, and there are times where the emphasis is way more on function than form. Which I typically advocate, but when you're trying to create an immersive experience, form is pretty important.

Music (which I forgot to touch on with Twilight Princess, but for the record: I love the music in it) is... well, it wasn't intended as a big part of the experience, and that shows. Most of the tracks are serviceable, but not incredible or memorable. A few of them are NES-era levels of repetitive and annoying, and it can be far better to just tune them out. Particularly when you find yourself getting aggravated with some of the more difficult puzzles or rooms, that constant, monotonous, ear-stabbing drone can get really quite maddening.

Items and abilities are always a huge part of the Zelda games, and A Link to the Past doesn't disappoint. Arrows, bombs, and boomerangs all return from prior adventures, each one improved in a lot of ways. Arrows no longer consume money, but instead have their own slot. Your max number of bombs and arrows can be upgraded, allowing Link to become a living arsenal. This is accompanied by Magic and the spells and weapons associated with it, each of which serve a unique purpose. Icerods, invisibility cloaks (Link did it first!), and magic medallions are just a few of the things you'll find as you raid the tombs of Hyrule's founders. I was surprised to find the hookshot hiding within a treasure chest. This was an item I'd always thought came with the 3D games, where it could be demonstrated more fully what with the greater vertical gameplay elements inherent in 3D titles. However, the hookshot is a brilliant addition here, and it isn't at all hindered by the top-down perspective. It can be a little annoying figuring out when to use it, though, because the developers often put items a pixel or two too far, and that can leave them completely off-screen, even from the ledges you're intended to shoot from.

Plot is basic, but basic can sometimes be good. You've got Link, you've got a number of magical things, you've got a bad guy. Get them, stop him. Pretty simple stuff. It isn't fleshed out as much as I'd like, but it works better than a bad story, and that's what counts.

Ultimately, the game is a real mixed bag. Kind of like Twilight Princess. Regrettably, it hasn't aged with nearly as much grace as some would have you believe. In fact, there are times where it can be as infuriating as the original, not by the nature of difficulty, but by the nature of poor game design. I can't say with complete honesty that this is a game I would be terribly excited to revisit, even if I am experiencing video game Stockholm right now. The game is at least playable, and much of the time enjoyable. It's just not as enjoyable as a lot of other games, and its faults are glaring and distracting enough that I can't even put it with the "Goods", but merely the "Okays". A Link to the Past limps out with a lollipop for being such a good sport, and a six out of ten to show its friends.

Video Game Review: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Nintendo Wii)

Wow, it's been a while since my last post! This game (and its predecessors) are partially to blame for that. The other part is immense dissatisfaction with how my writing has been turning out, so the way I go about all of that is getting an overhaul, but that's another post for another day. Today we'll be taking a look at the Wii edition of 2006's The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, the first in the "Right-Handed Link Saga" of Zelda games.

It wouldn't be fair of me to lead you all to assuming that this is my first attempt at the game--I've started Twilight Princess six or seven times since its release, and not one of those times did I play any further than Link's first trip to the Twilight Realm. When I booted it up this time, I was not at all surprised to find that the game really did disappoint, but I was determined to see it through in the hopes that it would get better. Mainly, though, I just want to try to use as much of the stuff that I spent money on as I can.

The first six hours of this game are awful, and so are the last four or five. Really, truly, awful in every sense of the word. Movement is extremely stiff. Coming right off of Ocarina of Time, I felt very limited in where and how I could move around. Link is very bottom heavy, and every action feels extremely bogged down and slow. While you do adjust to this movement by the second dungeon, it's very clear that the reason it feels so limited is because of how rigidly Link is locked to a movement grid. This becomes apparent with a movement glitch that you don't see very often in AAA titles, but which plague most Flash or fan games: continued movement. Link will sometimes continue running in a straight path when you want him to turn, and this can cause a lot of problems. Normally it's harmless, but more than a few times he took dives into chasms and ran full-force into an enemy's sword. It's a shame this wasn't ironed out, and it seriously hurts the experience.

Other forms of movement have also become more tedious (I know I've tried not to compare sequels and prequels in my past reviews, but I'm finding that to be inadequate. Not to mention that these errors exist wth or without comparison, and I feel it's relevant to mention when I franchise takes a turn in the wrong direction) between games. Link's aquatic movements are now severely limited. He no longer possesses the ability to dive, but merely to swim across the surface. I guess this is more like Zelda entries which predate the Ocarina games, but I can't help but observe that those things were changed for a reason. One of the more obnoxious aspects of the previous 3D games was the slow rate at which Link scaled walls, but here it's absolutely terrible. In an attempt at "realism", Link's ability to climb vines and ropes has been reduced almost to nothing. It takes about fifteen seconds per movement, and that's just not any fun at all.

Twilight Princess is seriously ruined by its attempted realism and darkness. I mean, it was a worthy attempt, and it's something the franchise is definitely capable of pulling off, but some aspects of reality (such as vine-climbing speeds) do not translate into a fun gaming experience. This is true of movements, a lot of which are very awkward-looking in order to achieve that supposed realism. Link tumbles with his legs off to the side instead of the more direct somersaults of past games, and I guess it's too look more real or whatever, but in actuality he'd fall on his ass. It's an extremely painful-looking animation. It seems that for most animations, they had no idea what to do with Link's limbs and simply let them hang or stick out at bizarre angles.

Animations aren't the only aesthetic this game got wrong. Bloom and other light/particle effects are absolutely everywhere, and absolutely over done. The game is astoundingly difficult to look at, and throughout all forty hours of it I found my eyes way over-stimulated to the point of intense headaches. This is not an issue TP is alone in suffering, as I've noticed a trend of having very busy scenery and games for a while now. More is not always merrier, and all of this visual clutter does not do Twilight Princess (or any game) any favors. I also found that this resulted in some very blurry and indistinguishable game objects, and I had a hard time distinguishing things until they were right up in my face. Even up close things seem to be blurry and out of focus, and it's very distracting and quickly becomes tiring.

This is illustrated to an absurd degree in the Twilight Realm, where everything is feathered to give it an ethereal quality. While I understand what the designers were attempting to do, I don't think it was to any benefit of the game. The Twilight Realm sections are hands down the worst portions of the game simply because of how bloody difficult it is to look at, and they alone might be enough to deter me from any future runs.

I know, I'm doing an awful lot of complaining. Well, this game leaves an awful lot to complain about. Regardless, I'm almost done railing on it, and there is some praise on the way. Just hang onto your knickers, 'cause here we go!

Bosses are large in scale and scope, which is exactly what we've come to expect from the franchise. Unfortunately, they're pitifully easy. Most Zelda titles feature bosses which are wildly too difficult, some have found that perfect balance (despite a few exceptions, Morpha). The bosses of Twilight Princess are usually pretty cool, with some neat ideas. A lot of them are even really memorable, which is rare in games these days. Unfortunately, they're just too damn easy. Actually, that's not too unfortunate in some cases, because a few of these battles are really monotonous. That's not the whole, but it is true of more than a couple. Generally, though, you will never come at risk of failure against them, and there isn't anything Zelda about a boss unless you just barely get out of there with your life bleeping in your ears.

A lot of really cool ideas went into the items and gameplay, but most of these abilities have very limited use. Most of the quest items are used only a couple times, which is a huge shame, because they're a lot of fun. One notable addition is the spinner, which is basically a spiked top that allows Link to ride along rails carved into walls. Unfortunately, the rails exist in all of three places, which is a serious disappointment. Sumo wrestling is a skill Link learns early in the game which serves no purpose beyond its intended use. There isn't even any kind of sumo minigame afterwards, which kind of sucks. I hate mechanics which serve their single purpose and are then promptly dropped. Sure, there are a few other instances where unique mechanics are only used once (flying the giant bird), but all of those actions can be repeated. Sumo is just dropped from the game completely.

I do, however, have to take a moment and commend Nintendo's innovating the classic iron boots item. In the past, these have served only one real purpose: allowing Link to walk under water. That's all well and good, and it really does open up a whole lot opportunities in those games, but Twilight Princess really put the items to incredible use. Not only they can be used to make Link heavier as in past titles, but they can now be magnetically charged and allow him to hang from certain types of ceilings and walls as well as pulling him through magnetic currents. I definitely had a good time with the item, and though they became less important as the game went on, the fact that Nintendo went out of their way to try and keep them relevant beyond their initial use and invent entirely new ways to explore their capabilities is a really superb and serves as an example of how developers should go about game design, particularly when handling elements from prior iterations.

In an attempt at appealing to a Western audience, Nintendo decided to make Hyrule absolutely fucking huge. It's really not big when compared with the likes of other sandbox type games, but this Hyrule is much larger than in previous games... and that really takes away from the experience. Unlike the majority of larger games, Zelda is very slow-moving in general, and Twilight Princess goes the extra mile to make that apparent. Many have complained about the tediousness of Hyrule Field in Ocarina of Time, but here it's simply absurd. It took me about forty hours to complete the game, and I'm pretty sure twenty of them were spent racing from point A to point B. Even with Epona (who is just as finicky as always, I might add) it can take close to six minutes to go from one end of the map to another, and you'll be doing this an awful lot. It doesn't help that there isn't much to look at or anything distinct about the field, and I found myself getting lost fairly often. It is also incredibly easy to miss elements which you can interact with, such as bombable walls or rocks, because of how washed-out and fuzzy the games visuals are. Clarity is crippled further when riding your horse, as Nintendo thought it would be a great idea to add some horrendous motion blur in an attempt to simulate speed.

Oh, speaking of visuals (and before I forget again), Nintendo had a serious hard-on for pixels during the early days of the Wii. It made some sense with Super Paper Mario because of how stylized that is as a game (although I thought it was really lazy looking, honestly. I'll have to get back to it soon). Twilight magic is often represented as numerous black and purple pixels, which simply do not have any business in a Zelda game. They seriously break the setting, and there is no reason for them to be that way. I'm sure they didn't want to do the generic fog-like dark magic, but that's exactly the kind of generic thing they were dealing with when they decided to make Twilight Princess be The Legend of Zelda: Kingdom Hearts.

On that note (and again, before I forget), the plot and idea behind the game is ridiculously generic. Even for Nintendo, this stuff is overdone. I actually don't have anything wrong with the majority of these concepts, but the fact that TP (and Super Smash Bros. Brawl) were cashing in on the edgy light-and-shadows fad is just all too apparent. I really feel like Nintendo was trying to make a Kingdom Hearts game, and the consistency of the world is just as convoluted.

Controls are hit and miss (not "or"). As I mentioned earlier, Link has a habit of not turning when you want him to. The sensitivity of the motion controls is also really poor, and I found our hero either doing nothing or performing the wrong move on a number of occasions, and this frequently led to a swift end. This is even more noticeable when attempting to perform a particular move with the nunchuck, as its sensitivity is even worse. I really don't understand why the Wii version comes with forced controls (and the total world reversal, which was unnecessary. I don't think the motion controls would have been any more awkward with a left-handed Link). There's no reason for it, particularly not when GameCube controls were already made for this particular game. It wouldn't have been hard at all for them to allow players to switch between control types to suit their needs.

Also, I have a huge issue with the way equipment is mapped and used. In the previous entries, you could assign an item to any of three directional keys and use that item by pressing the corresponding key. Twilight Princess works in almost the same way, allowing you to assign tools to four buttons instead of three. However, there is one major difference: three of those buttons are hot swap buttons while the other one is the "active item" button, and the only one that does anything. By pressing the arrow keys, that item is switched with the active item. This makes no fucking sense. Why would they not allow you to assign the tools to the keys and then press the keys to use those tools? The series is already known for doing that, and I wouldn't have wasted so much damn lantern oil due to a lame ass control set up. Not to mention that it greatly slows down the actions and can lead to some messy situations when you forget which item is currently "active". There is no need for this, and it hurts the game dramatically.

Minor gripe I couldn't fit in the narrative flow: the navigational maps are huge and really distracting, but also really helpful. This should probably be worked on for future games.

There is a lot that I more than just don't like about Twilight Princess--there's a lot that I hate. I didn't even get into the Ganondorf battle which works back-asswards as far as end game battles are concerned. It starts off awesome, but as the Gerudo Thief gets up round after round it just becomes very tedious, and each round's gimmick is more boring and lame than the last. While at first you're tasked with combating his demonic magic and destructive hell beast transformation, you soon find the momentum dropping to a halt as you're transported into Hyrule Field and must... chase Ganon around on horses...

Don't get me wrong, an endgame horse-battle with Ganondorf sounds amazing on words, but the execution is just boring and lame. Not to mention that Epona is absolute ass to control.

Despite all the rage this game put me through, and the headaches, and the bloom, I couldn't help but go back to it time and time again. Sometimes it was the dutiful drudge of a man on a mission, but usually I was pretty excited to jam the power button and get flying. The design team seems to have gotten a better handle on their particles by the second dungeon, and the middle portion of the game (minus the Twilight Realm parts) generally looks stunning. The world is gigantic, which is usually a hindrance, but sometimes it really does illustrate the epic scope of the quest Link has embarked upon. Areas like Death Mountain and the Gerudo Desert are simply a treat to figure out and navigate, while Lake Hylia is pretty terrible through and through.

Dungeons are massive, and they'll take quite some time to get through if you aren't familiar with them. That's not an issue, though, because they're usually a lot of fun. In general, they're far more linear than in Ocarina and Majora's Mask, and that might turn off some veterans, but I found the lot of them to be cleverly designed with some pretty cool puzzles throughout. Combat is deep, although not as satisfying as the melodic duels of Wind Waker. Each enemy seems to be a puzzle in itself, with a number of them designed solely to test your mastery of advanced techniques.

The early portions of the game see Link visiting areas twice: first in the Twilight Realm and then again in the Light Realm. While I don't like the Twilight Realm, I do like the way it treats each visit to a new overworld location as a dungeon in itself. I thought this was a neat way to introduced players to the new regions, and it's also just a really neat idea. And it isn't just sticking enemies into the overworld, because that's been around the whole time, but directed and specific goals which must be met. I think some people didn't like this, but I really enjoyed it and would not mind seeing the idea approached again in the future.

I do have to say, though, that the first twelve hours are far too linear and claustrophobic. You pretty much can't do anything the game doesn't want you to, and that really takes away from core concepts of The Legend of Zelda. Sure, the rest of the franchises features areas which are closed off until you obtain a certain item (usually bombs, although the hookshot is a common tool as well), but they rarely feature magical barriers which lock you into a tiny area for several hours. Despite this, the game really opens up once you break through this early entrapment. There are dozens of neat side quests to go through, and a lot of little details to the characterization of the world and its people (not visual details, which I complained about an overabundance of). While at first the game's obsession with edginess might put you off, but before long you'll discover some good old Zelda charm. Wacky NPCs in the same vein as Tingle, eccentric shop owners, and even a town full of last cats!

The addition of Link's wolf form presents a lot of cool ideas, but like most things in the game, they're rarely used beyond their introduction. You learn that Wolf Link can speak to animals and see ghosts, but these abilities are used very rarely. More disappointing, Wolf Link never has to encounter Epona. She's stolen shortly after the game begins, and I was really looking forward to actually interacting with her as a character. I mean, you can speak to her after her rescue, but all she ever says is: "Hurry up, Link! Change back and let's go!" And that's just...

YOU COULD HAVE PERSONIFIED EPONA AND IT WOULD HAVE BEEN AWESOME!

In general, Twilight Princess is one of those foods you'll only really grab at a buffet because it's free and you haven't had it in a while and maybe you'll like it better this time, but you wouldn't order it up if you were just looking at a single serving or something purchased specifically. Not only is it polarizing for the fan base, but it's polarizing in itself. I love this game, I love a lot of things about it, part of me wants to jump back in and give it another spin... but at the same time, I think it's awful. Terrible, really.

However, even with it's flaws, the goodness is even to pull it into "okay" and leaning towards "more than just okay". It definitely passes into "good" territory, and at times takes that leap into "great", but it never manages to stay there. As a whole, the game is simply good, and it's getting away with a seven out of ten.

Video Game Review: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition) (Nintendo GameCube)

Ocarina of Time was one of the very first video games I got for the Nintendo 64 back when I was about eight or nine. Of course, I had very few games in those days, so most games from my single-digit decade are among "the very first". Back then I loved it. I mean, I never 100%ed (and to be frank, I still haven't), but I cleared pretty much every challenge. I found every Great Fairy, got every item... then, like now, all I was missing was the last couple of hearts and a few dozen Gold Skulltulas. Despite that, I remember playing the game for hours. Of course, Majora's Mask came around pretty soon, and Ocarina of Time was well on its way to being completely forgotten. It didn't help matters that I somehow lost track of the cartridge (along with the majority of my N64 games of the time... still can't find my Turok games or Golden-Eye, among a handful of others), and despite receiving a free copy of Collector's Edition with my Nintendo Power subscription, I still managed not to play it for more than ten whole years! Occasionally I'd load it up and play through the Great Deku Tree, but after that I'd find myself drawn right back into Majora's Mask, and so Ocarina went relatively untouched since my original play through.

Hot on the heels of the steaming turd that is Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects, I found myself desperately wanting to play a Zelda game. My first thought was Spirit Tracks, which I haven't been able to finish. Unfortunately, the microphone on my 3DS doesn't play well with original DS games, and the top half of my DS Lite recently went out like a fire on a cold night. Fortunately, I have no shortage of Zelda games, and was about to dive into Majora's Mask for the umpteenth time when Ocarina of Time begged and pleaded and cried from the revolving select screen of Collector's Edition. Satisfying the littler critter's cries, I pressed "A" and sat back.

This decision couldn't have made me happier.

Actually, that's a lie, because it definitely could have. There's a lot to find wrong with Ocarina of Time, and I'm going to try doing it without comparing the title to the far superior Majora's Mask. I think the most grating aspect of the game had to be Epona, which is weird, because I love her. But boy, she is one stubborn mule! It doesn't matter how many carrots you feed her, that horse just will not jump if she doesn't want to jump, and she has a weird habit of rearing up whenever you get anywhere near something she doesn't like. I mean, her hit box is huge! Most of the time, navigating around Hyrule Field upon the horse's back is seriously more laborious, and it often doesn't beat the tumbling alternative. I mean, it'll probably get you around more quickly, but the blind fury I felt at times far outweighed that benefit.

Oh, speaking of Hyrule Field, I think I'll also use the review to bitch about some of the common bullshit complaints this game receives.

But first, more negatives! The game can be pretty cryptic at times, and like a lot of older adventure games and RPGs, it has a habit of not actually telling the player what to do next. This happens within dungeons themselves quite frequently (how I loathe thee, Forest Temple), but it also happens pretty often between story events. Now, there isn't anything wrong with not directly spelling it all out for the player, that just adds to the mystique and challenge, but there is something wrong with the game giving you no hints at all. This becomes tedious in later levels when you have a lot of abilities at your disposal, and you realize that there are at least three songs you could play to reveal the key you need. Each song is going to take about a full minute to execute once you've typed it all in and Link finishes up his playing, and this gets really tiring really fast.

Oh, and then it turns out that none of the songs work. Neither do any of your items. It's not even a matter of not having the proper item yet in most cases, and actually, I'm not even going to count those (mostly) because once you get the proper item you're stricken with that "A-ha!" moment, and it feels good, chap. However, there are times where you just flat out don't know what to do, and even after finding the solution in the guide, I couldn't help but squint my eyes and think: "What? How does? Fucking sense that still don't make."

Contrary to this, the Water Temple is easy as piss, not all that infuriating, and probably my favorite temple in the game. To be honest, I loved every second of that, which is weird, because I absolutely hate the Great Bay Temple in Majora's Mask. Go figure. Anyways, I found the Water Temple to be really well designed. It was kind of the perfect balance between difficult and doable, with the exception of the boss and sub-boss, which are utter bullshit on both accounts.

My other major complaint, other than a few minor hiccups here and there, is the items. Not all of the items, and not even how they're executed, but just... some of the items. For instance, you obtain the Silver Gauntlets in the Spirit Temple, the second-to-last dungeon in the game (unless you count bonus dungeons like the Gerudo Training Grounds, which I will get to in a moment), and about an hour after you get them you are replacing them with the Gold Gauntlets. What was even the point of giving us the silver ones? Absolutely no time has passed, certainly not enough for us to care about the upgrade. Not to mention that there is all of one location on the map where you're going to need the Gold Gauntlets to access anything. It's a useless upgrade, made specifically to move its dungeon along.

The dungeon-specific-key-item is a common complaint among those who would decry Ocarina of Time (and much of the Zelda franchise), but it's not really a huge issue. Not nearly as huge as they make it out to be. Yeah, the Gold Gauntlets peeve me, and the Mirror Shield, while awesome, has a similar role, but most of the items are utilized to pretty good effect in basically every dungeon after they're obtained, and also serve to increase the player's abilities to explore Hyrule. Even items which serve their primary purpose exclusively in their dungeon prior to the Gold Gauntlet fiasco serve other purposes for players who are willing to be a little impromptu. For instance, the Megaton Hammer makes short work of pretty much everyone. It's like the Biggoron's Sword, but a hammer. It rocks.

I do have a complaint with the Ice Arrows, though. They're a bonus item, so it's possible to complete the game without them, that are found so late in the game that there isn't any point. You acquire them between the Spirit Temple and Ganon's Tower, and they serve no function at all. This... bites. Ice Arrows are kind of a staple of the franchise, and they can serve a lot of neat purposes, but here they're just a tacked on extra that don't help very much in battle and drain magic which could have been used for something much better (like Din's Fire, a spell you acquire early on). I don't think the Ice Arrows are even required for any sidequests, making them a completely useless item. All I can imagine is that they were already programmed into the game (probably for the removed Ice Temple, parts of which were probably cut into the Ice Cavern mini-dungeon), so Nintendo decided "Well, why not?" and through them in.

Despite its flaws, the game really is superb. Some portions of it do seem to drag on or become tedious, such as traveling around Hyrule Field as a child or without Epona, but it really doesn't take as much time as it seems, I promise. A lot of work went into characterizing the world, and everything is vibrant and full of life. Even minor, generic characters such as shopkeepers and shared-model civilians will be memorable due to some great dialogue and unique personalities. There's the knight who wants a mask for his child, the knight who wants a little more excitement in his life, the knight that takes bribes, they're all different, unique characters, and it really does wonders for the game. In addition to these charming little details (which I adore, and which really suck you into the world), there are simple moments of pure fun, such as watching the hulking Darunia overcome with joy and busting out some funky dance moves, or later in the game with the tiny Saria riding atop his head (okay, I just love Saria and Darunia. Ruto, too).

In addition to having an immense and developed cast, OoT offers an incredible world to explore. Don't be off-put by the game having appeared on the N64, it looks beautiful. To be honest, a lot of modern games are just too busy to really focus on what makes for a great aesthetic. OoT has beautiful visuals in spades. Link has never looked better, Hyrule has never been so pristine, and it really just pulls you right in. It's very welcoming and yet at the same time evoking all the right feelings at all the right times.

And boy, it's got a musical score to match! The Ocarina of Time soundtrack is legendary, and for good reason. The game's primary focus is on music, an instrument is even the title of the game, and it delivers. Every night is brilliant and pleasing, even the sound effects are incredible. There are some weird sounds that really pull together to create a unique Zelda experience, and it simply does not disappoint. With a host of original, beautifully designed tunes as well as gorgeous renditions of franchise classics, this is pretty much the definitive video game soundtrack.

Dungeons, with few exceptions, are cleverly designed and really are a treat. They're fun, intuitive, and they'll get all kinds of gears turning in their audience before it's all through. Typically those gears are good, thoughtful gears and not teeth-grinding ones, but occasionally... In addition to the dungeons, players will find no dearth of sidequests and explorative opportunities. There are a whopping one-hundred Gold Skulltulas to seek out in the land of Hyrule, not to mention all the extra items, health upgrades, spells, and faeries. This game will keep you captive for a good long time, and you'll love pretty much every second of it.

As great as Ocarina of Time is, it isn't perfect. There were enough moments that had my eyes bulging and my temperature rising that I can't give it a straight up A or even a high B. I mean, it's a beautiful game, and to not play it is to do yourself a great disservice, but it really is only worthy of an eight out of ten.

Oh, I should mention: I forgot to talk about the plot in this review because I had already gone into it in pretty great detail earlier this week. You should check it out if you don't mind the spoilers!

Video Game Review: Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects (Nintendo GameCube)

Have you ever played a terrible game? No? Then look no further than Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects! This game has all the staples of an awful experience: game-breaking glitches on every stage, repetitive missions, incoherent plot, shitty graphics, sloppy controls, piss-poor camera, lazy original character design, boring music, crappy sound effects, and the ability to throw players into situations where all of these faults come together to rip open your ass (some insane people have taken a masochistic liking to this type of game, dubbing it "NES Hard"). The only moderately okay thing here is the voice acting, and that's... it's not really that good.

You might think that I'm exaggerating greatly to stir up some sensationalism, but I'm not. I'm only exaggerating a little bit. There are some moments when I was genuinely having fun here. Of particular note is the web-swinging action of the web-swinging characters, a mechanic which is kind of rhythmic and engaging on its own. I could basically swing around with Daredevil all day and have a good time. Some of the boss challenges can also be enjoyable once you get a pattern down, but for the most part they are an unmitigated disaster.

Let me start with the glitches. There are so many of them that you'd think the game was actually built around the concept of being unpredictable. Attacks will do inconsistent amounts of damage, enemies will frequently remain locked in "Rage Mode" for the entirety of a fight, you will fall through plenty of walls, the could-have-been-fun wall-running mechanics (which remind me of Mirror's Edge when they work) are absolutely broken as shit and will simply decide "You die now", enemy characters seem to exhibit speed and reaction timing which are utterly impossible, as well as the ability to cancel out of any frame at any point for the purposes of wiping you all over the floor, and the list just goes on. My favorite is the "Play through the game twice to unlock all of the bonuses only to have your file become corrupted and erased immediately after the rewards screen" glitch. I just love it.

This game doesn't stop being a dick when it decides to work right, either. Hell, even the cutscenes are jerks! The very beginning of the game introduces you to an admittedly tear-jerking moment in which we see Captain America vaporized, Hulk buried, and Punisher's shirt snagged up on some twisted metal poles while a Gatling gun rests where he stood. We later discover via the story mode that characters who are "Killed" by the invading forces (the "Imperfects") are not actually dead, but are simply put under some kind of mind control. Despite this, Captain America, Hulk, and Punisher are not going to be anywhere near your playable roster. I guess Cap is in the PSP version, but Punisher and Hulk are not. Do you know how excited I was to see Punisher in one of these Marvel crossover games? He never gets in on any of this stuff! Marvel vs. Capcom? No Punisher. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance? No Punisher. Marvel Nemesis?

"HOLY SHIT IT'S PUNISHER!"

No Punisher.

That's not to say the roster is bad, because you actually have a pretty solid line up of guys here. It's just... you can't go teasing us like that! Not cool. Who you do have are Iron Man, Spider-Man, Daredevil, Magneto, Thing, Human Torch, Storm, Elektra, Venom, Wolverine, and a handful of original characters: Niles van Roekel, Brigade, Solara, Paragon, Fault Zone, Wink, Hazmat, and Johnny Ohm. Unlike most people, I actually liked these new characters and I'd probably pick up a new game if EA decided to fix this dump and simply release "Imperfects" as a stand alone project or something. Most of their origins don't make a whole lot of sense, but they could be ironed out easily enough.

I do have to complain about Storm, though. Not because she's a bad character, but because they made her fight in a bikini. Now, I'm not some 'kini-hatin' prude or anything--characters that wear swimsuits into battle are just fine in my book. Storm, however, is not such a character. As far as I know, all of Storm's costumes have been pretty covering. My favorite is always going to be the white one from the animated series, but even her modern uniforms are still fitting for the character, despite being a little more revealing. Storm is okay showing off some legs or her belly or whatever, but I'm going to say underwear is a little beneath her.

So this game has all of two modes: Versus and "Story". "Story" is in quotes, because there isn't one. Sure, there are cutscenes and the characters interact and all that, but there isn't any story to be found. The heroes magically learn about this thing called "Paragon" without ever being told, everybody automatically knows where they need to be, and it's just a random bunch of people beating each other up at random places. That's okay in itself, I guess. That's what games are. I just think I would have rather they not tried to pretend there was a coherent narrative here instead of insulting my intelligence.

The only actually enjoyable things in the game are the comics and cards you unlock after completing a mission. In my version I got a Fantastic Four story and a Tomorrow People story. The comics are presented as motion comics with a narrative that doesn't actually read the word balloons. The narration is all unique and kind of distracting for anybody who actually wants to read the text on the screen. Y'see, you can't do both--it fries your brain trying. You either get the narrative or you get the comic, and it's kind of a bummer. Despite this, the Fantastic Four story is actually pretty cool. I can't say anything about The Tomorrow People, because my game flipped out and fucking erased it. I'm just going to buy the comics anyways, I guess.

Look, in short: this game is awful. Simply awful. There are some cool ideas in it and I think it had the potential to be wonderful, but it just fell flat under the weight of all the wrong. The glitches, the game-breaking difficulty, and the dreadful, boring, dark tones all detract from the game. The camera finds much joy in flying away until you're off-screen, and y'know, then you die. I enjoyed a total of about five minutes out of the entire six or seven hours I played this game, and I can't recommend it to anybody. I do, however, want EA to revive the concept and the Imperfect characters and try to fix this, because there's something good waiting to be polished out. Unfortunately, this is not good. It's not utterly dreadful, but it's pretty damn close. Even a four would be too much praise. Three out of ten for you, Nemesis, you piece of shit. Where the hell'd I put Utimate Alliance? I need to wash the taste out before it becomes permanent...

Video Game Review: Ty the Tasmanian Tiger (PlayStation 2)

I was first introduced to Ty the Tasmanian Tiger way back in my first attempt at sixth grade when a kid who'd moved in down the street had it for that newfangled hell spawn called "X-Box". The only level I'd gotten to witness, and only for a very brief moment (my reputation as the school scapegoat had apparently preceded me) was the shark section of "Ship Rex". Thinking back on it, all I can remember is Ty scrambling onto the raft at the end of the segment, Snacker (oops, wrong game) greedily nibbling his heels. Oh, and me asking again and again "Can you kill the shark?" without an answer. Ah, yes, the good old days.

Anyways, that little segment stuck with me for whatever reason, but I had always checked Ty off my list as being "For the cool people," which, in Natespeak, means "Devoid of effort and game design and made specifically to cater to an audience of morons who think attitude alone decides the quality of a game." I was... kind of right. But also way, way wrong. While Ty the Tasmanian Tiger does fall into the "Trying to be too cool" trope, it definitely also falls into the "Actual game" category of entertainment. What it does wrong is mostly aesthetic (with a juvenile opinion of dark and brooding), although there are a few major flaws which prevent it from being a truly awesome gaming experience.

Which is saying something, because this is literally a tiny bit of effort away from being Banjo-Kazooie levels of awesome. (Oh god, Nate. Media is in the present tense, stop fucking that up!)

Ty is actually a very similar game to Banjo-Kazooie, and I'm pretty sure that was by design. Not only does it have similar game play to that franchise, but a lot of the jingles are very familiar sounding. For instance, there are characters known as "Bilbies" which serve the exact same roll as Banjo's "Jinjos": find five of them in each stage. Each time you find one a banjo-sounding riff is played and they do an adorable little dance, and it's a nice touch, but it did have the uncanny ability to make me forget which game I was playing and the unfortunate side-effect of making me wish I was playing Banjo instead.(Maybe I'll do that next...)

The similarities to Banjo don't end there, and I'm about to go off on a bit of a tangent when I get into this. Ty the Tasmanian Tiger is a 3D platforming game with an emphasis on exploration and, in the nature of last-decade platformers, finding all of the items in a stage. Each stage has ten Golden Cogs, eight Thunder Eggs (which are your Power Stars and Jiggies for this game), five Bilbies, three-hundred opals, and an unspecified number of invisible concept art. Also, some stages include additional collection quests, such as finding all the lost children.

A lot of people (recently, anyways. I don't remember this attitude existing very much until the past half-decade or so) seem to bitch about what they dub "Collect-a-Thons", which are games which have a heavy emphasis on the acquisition of in-game items in order to progress. Banjo-Kazooie is often considered an example of this, though the most frequently used example would be Donkey Kong 64, a great game which has been shit upon for no real particular reason. Because it's great and doesn't deserve all the hate. Anyways, people seem to hate so-called "Collect-a-Thons", but that's not an attitude I really understand. I don't view that as a fault in the game, I don't see how it can be considered "distracting" when it is the central focus of the game. Literally these types of games are scavenger hunts, and there's nothing wrong with that. As a fan of real life scavenger hunts, I find these games to be outright awesome. It's not a flaw to have tons of collectible items which need to be sought out, and I've noticed a sharp decline in my interest in the market since this style of game fell out of style.

I mean, I can understand inserting such a hunt into a game which is not centered around it (such as Knuckles' stages in the Sonic Adventure titles, which break the flow), but that's not what any of these games are. These are games built specifically for scavenger hunts, and they're pretty damn fun. I'm going to go ahead and dub "Scavenger Hunt" as a sub-genre, and also go out and say it's my favorite one. Decided and done.

With all that said, Ty does have one major flaw when it comes to implementing its core philosophy: there are no landmarks. In true nearly-budget fashion, all of the surrounding areas in any given stage look pretty much exactly like the rest of that stage. Part of this is because the level designers were extraordinarily lazy (and in a lot of the later levels the stage elements are entirely nonsensical), and part of this is because the textures are more "Detailed" than earlier games of this genre. This is another tangent and another trend which began with the later years of the PS2 and X-Box generations. The tendency to clutter textures with layers and layers of detail. The result, more often than nut, is a very messy looking landscape which hides active objects all too well. Enemies and items will pop up out of nowhere, despite having been there all along. It also makes it difficult for one to keep track of their location, because everything just looks like a big mess. Ty has this issue, and it hurts it than it hurts most games considering the entire game is about scouring every corner of every stage. This is difficult when the corners all look exactly the same. This trend has made a lot of games simply unplayable for me. Fortunately, Ty was not that bad. Actually, most levels have fairly decent textures. It's mainly the rain forest ones that get me.

However, that still doesn't resolve the situation of no distinctive landmarks. In Banjo-Kazooie and other such games, you know exactly where you are at all times simply because of what path you're currently running up. You do not get lost because each area is defined in a unique manner, and it's easy to compartmentalize which unique puzzle or section is in which part of the map. With Ty you start off as trained to remember things as existing at the "Beginning" or "End" of the early stages, but this fails in the later levels which are more open (to a fault, I'd say). Additionally, these later stages are not designed well enough to compensate for their ridiculous size, and players will find themselves spending large amounts of time circling areas they've already completed before realizing: "Oh, I've done this already." I think this issue is primarily from lazy designers, who reused the same gimmick several times per stage. I mean, it's cool to see the same puzzle utilized with some increased difficulties, but laying out the same circle of stone pillars in five locations of the map is not a good idea.

I also had issues with the game controls, which were fairly slippery, the hit detection, which was really weird and would sometimes not register that, yes, Ty should be grabbing that ledge, and the camera, which doesn't work even remotely. It's interesting that Ty, an early 2000's sixth-generation platforming game, could not match up to the camera and character controls of early N64 titles. Not to mention the invisible walls, which are actually used more in this game than in anything on the N64 (that I've played). Typically I don't actually mind invisible walls as map boundaries, but here there are some which serve almost no purpose other than to prevent you from... from what? From climbing onto the wooden platform that was a school house? Why am I not allowed to hop on that one platform and run over it instead of having to make my way the whole way around? It makes no sense, and it's pretty bothersome.

I've done an awful lot of ripping so far, and not much praising, which is weird, because I genuinely enjoy this game. Despite its flaws, I had a lot of fun with Ty, and can't wait to get my teeth into the sequel. I suppose that—even though it has awful beach stages and pretty shitty cinematics, terrible forest textures, an a crap camera—its pros manage to outweigh all of its cons. There's lots to do and explore, of course tons to collect, and I feel like a lot more thought went into designing the challenges than the levels around them. Even defeating the enemies is a puzzle, because you've got all of one attack that will manage to damage each kind of enemy. Some require boomerangs, some need to be bit, and some need both. Not to mention the characters, which are largely very memorable beasties. I actually remember the entirety of the cast, including the minor folks, which is something I can't say for many other games. The music is nice, and actually catchy. Really, even though this game has a host of annoying issues, they're all easily overlooked by how great the rest of the game really is.

Remember at the beginning when I mentioned that the flaws only knock the game away from being great? I wasn't lying. That's all they do. They don't make this a bad game by any measure, and at least one of the "Flaws" is actually a plus in my book. Because of them, I can't give this game a super awesome score... but there's too much good to give it a low score. Ty, I will replay you someday. Until then, you may be satisfied with your "C". seven out of ten for Ty the Tasmanian Tiger for the PS2.