Strange Journey Review - 1/1

Maturity is a strange beast. I often struggle with the concept of maturity when I'm writing reviews for video games, editing a podcast about video games, buying video games, and even playing video games. It strikes me as a little juvenile to have so much of my life revolve around a hobby that amounts to jostling plastic to manipulate electronic personae. But at the same time, it's a hobby that's important to me and hey, everyone needs a hobby, and also it's better than most of the shit that's on TV these days. Still, I'm offered a bit of comfort by the extensive community my hobby shares, as well as the video games I like to think of as “mature”, a list of which includes the likes of the Silent Hill series, Kane & Lynch, Gears of War, them Ico games, etc.
The unifying element of those titles, I've begun to notice, is a pervading sense of loss. I felt like, growing up, these games embodied something I thought was going to become more and more a part of my life. But something about Strange Journey, a video game on the Nintendo DS, lead me to conclude that maturity and being mature aren't what I thought they were.
Strange Journey is another one of those games I was so ready to like. I forget where I first heard about it, but I remember seeing the Japanese cover and hearing that the English title would be Strange Journey.

That robot just gave me a boner.

Kingsley's Adventure

    As the cover implies, you are a fox named Kingsley, and you have an adventure to do: namely, saving the fruit kingdom from a very bad cook. Before you go on thinking this game is all sorts of fruity, look at the castle on the right side. It is made of carrots. So this game is fruits and vegetables, exactly what any young aspiring gamer should eat as part of a nutritious diet, even if you are a fox with a very smug set of eyebrows.
    I came across this title on the mud pile that is /v/ under a thread entitled "Games only you played." I saw this and wondered; I'm fairly sure whoever posted this is the only person who played it. Well I intended to change that. I got my hands on this and started it up, soon to realize that this was not a very high inspiring game, it was very clear the developers understood they would not be immortalized in history for the glory that is this game. Yet that is a good thing, as through every moment I could feel that this game was made to be played, not merely to be sold.
    The game itself is very much so like any 3D Legend of Zelda, with it's dungeons, and puzzles, and swords of adventure. At the same time, it is nothing like Zelda in which this game comfortably lives within it's boundaries. It does nothing new, and it very well accepts it's technical limitations without question. It does so with dignity though, which is more than many games can claim.

There are mountains behind that shack.

    As you can see on the left we see a deformed figure in the distant blue horizon by the sea, yet as we approach said denizen of this beach, we soon come to see beyond our initial 20 foot vision (I counted actual footsteps) a pier with a shack was right behind him. Clearly (or not so as it was hard to see at first) this game suffers from a horrendous lack of draw distance. So bad, that during every boss fight, they sit well beyond your sphere of vision firing magic missile at your tail. Even so, it was quickly overlooked for the charms that I could see within my vision sphere.

Is that not the most adorable spider that still wants to kill you?

    Seriously, look at that spider with his crazy Nicholas Cage smile. Don't you just was to kick it's face? Well you do, as that is the default attack when dealing with them: kicking them clear across the room.
    The hub world consists of the Carrot Castle which you happen to live in as an orphan (every game needs a hero with no parents: see FF3, FF8, Dark Cloud 1, near any Zelda game), and take upon yourself to become a true knight and recover the magic cookbook the evil chef stole from the queen. You connect to the various places with "foxholes" found in the basement and around the garden; taking you to the seaside town to save them from an evil scurvy pirate with a cannon for a gun and retrieve the stolen Galleon with sea eels with tridents and orcas with clubs for minions, to a village ransacked by a dragon who built a conveyor belt from the town to his dinner table, then a village who thrives on root beer made by secretive monks unaware their latest batch was poisoned, to a countryside castle run by an evil wizard who stole the spiffy robes of the good wizard. As you save these lands of evil, you attain the pieces to the true knight, from armor to an axe, to a sword crafted from the dragons fork and knife, to gauntlets of power, and boots of steely spring, and finally a magic gem of shielding power. These items each help you access a special area in each of the four worlds to defeat the dark knights that inhabit them. Once each one is saved, you go straight to the evil cook/wizards lair above a floating island inside a volcano (of course right?). When the evil is slain and the book returned, all is well in the fruit kingdom as you are knighted as Sir Kingsley.
    You may ask why this game is so purely stereotypical and old. Well, it is actually, but it goes about it in such a way that no other can, with charm and mild wit. From the fruit shaped keys, to the goofy enemies, and the smug look on Kingsley's face at any given time, you can't help but love the character design.

It's called caffeine addiction Paul the creepy faced dolphin.

        

    Even if the rooms are made of less than 25 polygons and and the enemies make no sound as they shoot at you through your painfully limited vision sphere, you press on shooting back where the arrow came from and smirk as you hear their painful grunt; swinging your sword or axe and holding your shield strong in order to save the cheerful people from their generic fate.
    Even I was skeptical at first, with the odd non-camera motivated controls (pressing back makes him actually walk in a backwards fashion and dedicated shoulder buttons to help strafe), I found it cute with his little back-flips to avoid the spiders; or the very bad vision, yet colorful and well-put together character models. After a few moments I soon forgave it's limitations that only existed from the hardware it came on, and enjoyed this very "family-orientated" action adventure alternative. The developers liked what they made and didn't particularly care if it made big money.

Yes, that switch has my paw print on it, yes that key is a cherry, and yes my shield has my emblem on it. But hey, when did you last slay a dragon and forge his eating equipment into this sword or kill the bat fiend in catacombs beneath a monastery and save a village from being poisoned?

    So if you are tired of the Zelda franchise yet want your swords and adventure and can bare to tear yourself away from the shimmering glittery fanciness of current gen "grafix" with it's incessant need to have gore and maturity for it's mature gamers just to make it worthy of play, go on and play this one, it will only take about 4 hours of your time. Even if you are a fox orphan child in a fruit kingdom full of other crazy animals and their wacky stories, this game is for all ages.
    One out of one.

DooM II and friends.

DooM II - 1/1 - Henry Arrambide

NOW IN GLORIOUS EXTRA COLOR!

    Do you think that your fathers are watching? That they weigh you in their ledgerbook? Against what? There is no book and your fathers are dead in the ground. (McCarthy) All that remains are twelve shells, six shots from the double barrel. You face down a flickering hall which can only lead deeper into hell; roars of cacodaemons echo down from the void, each reverberation bearing a unique taunt. Slap those shells in the barrel and walk forth, the end is inevitable.

    Have you ever played DooM? I mean really played it; episode 1 is freeware and most people just download that for a good romp on the easiest difficulty, shooting and running around splattering shrapnel and enjoying the cartoon gore splash about. Or they pirate key wads and then download skulltag or zdoom and some (admittedly awesome) mods like true 3D total conversions and custom campaigns and enjoy an entirely different beast than what they originally downloaded. I'm not asking if you've done that - everyone downloads DooM out of novelty for temporary enjoyment or "hardcore" gamer credit in some form. I'm asking if you've played DooM.

Breath of Death VII: The Beginning

Breath of Death VII: The Beginning – 1/1 – Henry Arrambide

            Breath of Death VII: The Beginning (BoD) is a little gem I found on the Xbox Live Arcade’s “Indie games” section among such wonderful titles such as ‘Avatar Boogie’, ‘Curling 2010’, ‘Who did I date last night?’ and a multitude of zombie titles (seriously guys the novelty has worn off) (in case you can’t tell those titles in that sequence are NOT wonderful). BoD is what the indie section was made for; I would say you get more than your dollars worth out of it (OH YEAH IT’S ONLY ONE DOLLAR. BUY IT), but saying that you get your dollars worth attaches a certain deflated value to that dollar. You don’t want BoD to be some exception to the rule; you want BoD to be the standard by which the games in the indie section are measured. Seriously, why are there so many zombie games and who is buying this crap?

Amazing Fantastic Audio Program Part 3

Guess who's who.

Back again is the podcast that loves to be ignored and feeds off your apathy, The Good or Blog Amazing Fantastic Audio Program! This episode spurns the previous by not being topical in any possible way! We start out talking about speedruns, getting off topic, then we talk about XBOX Live (which was shut down a full four weeks ago), get off topic, then we move on to Anthony's brutal MGS quiz, get off topic, and wrap everything up with a discussion of the flaws and merits of Western and Japanese RPGs (after probably getting off topic somewhere in there)!

So what's new this time? Aren't we just getting off topic from different topics? Not so listener! This time we have a certain special guest star: Mr. John Stamos!

Not really.

So get downloading, get listening, and as always don't be afraid to leave a comment or send a message. It always helps to hear from the fans we don't think exist.

Segment 1 - Intro and Favorite Speedrun/Let's Play (14min 18sec)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=6EFYTTC0

Segment 2 - XBOX Live Shutdown and Online stuffs (12min 57sec)

(also I forget to mention the intro song, but it's Peril off the Halo 2 OST Vol. 1)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=MLZLI9FK

Segment 3 - Metal Gear quiz and the largest horse in existence (25min 34sec)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=V9T1XJFD

Segment 4 - WRPGs vs. JRPGs, listen to it you retards (20min 41sec)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TWA3ADMT

Final Fantasy 6 (the jRPG Gauntlet continues!)

Final Fantasy 6 - 1/1 - Henry Arrambide

I'm going to say this once - best Final Fantasy, no nostalgia. Let's try to clear this up with something besides the usual points fanpeoples make in defense of the game.

The problem with most Square games, which was born all the way back in oh, FF4 but not really problematic until FF6 and then found economically viable with FF7, is that above all they strive to be cinematic experiences more than actual games. This isn’t a Hurrdurr interactive movie slur; if the games actually pulled off their cinematic dreams well then sure, it’d still be an interactive movie, but damn it would at least be a good interactive movie. This is a root problem because the cinematic look is strived for above everything else, and overrules every other idea within the game. RPG’s were born as a series of placeholders waiting for technology to catch up; nowadays the reason I’m still picking “attack” off of a battle menu in FF13 is because the battle system is still a placeholder which serves the cinematic look of the game. Things must look cool. A problem arises because there is no central theme or idea which the game serves, rather an idea or theme is shoddily tacked onto the game after all the concept art is drawn up, all the cool angles are figured, and the fighting system is hammered out. FF8, as stated in the previous review, is a perfect example of everything done wrong. FF10 is a close runner up though.

Final Fantasy 6 bleeds its cinematic aspirations every turn of the world map and every unfolding of plot progression. It wants so badly to rip the controller from your hands and play the game for you so that it can get you to the next overdramatic scene with hammy dialogue and go “LOOK! LOOK AT THIS BEAUTIFUL PIXEL ART! LOOK AT THIS DETAIL! LISTEN TO HOW THE MUSIC STIRS THE MOST BASE REACTION IN TANDEM WITH THE WAY THE SPRITES ARE DIRECTED!” Yes, the game is overwrought with drama; the limited space of a Super NES cart means characters have to be direct, no meandering allowed. At this point RPG’s were still niche and expensive; I feel that there was a somewhat honest attempt to make a story here. Unlike PS1 era games with their limitless space and multiple discs and pre-rendered scenes requiring you do nothing but sit and watch, the game needed to be lean and direct with the player. Maybe that’s why actual themes and motifs are present. Hamfisted and clumsy, but present nonetheless. Final Fantasy 6 works because it doesn’t work the way Square wanted it to work.