Insert Coin Reviews: Contra 4 (DS)
Posted on: February 16, 2012 by joelcouture.
All right, a blurb at the end of a review just doesn't do Contra 4 any justice. As the spiritual successor to the greatest run-and-gun games on the NES, Contra 4 manages to be a perfect homage to that series, doing everything right that many developers have been doing wrong for years. If you like the series, this is the game you've been waiting for since Contra III: The Alien Wars and if you're new to it, welcome to NES difficulty.
This game does not ever screw around. Never. On the first time you play this game, you are going to lose one continue, if not all of them, on the first stage. I don't care how good you are at video games, it's just going to happen. Come to terms with it before you turn the game on. Accept that death is an integral part of the Contra series. Every death tells you something about the environment and enemy placement, warning you of where you should take every single step the next time you play. Before you can play through a stage, you will have to be able to know every single thing that is going to happen in it.
You need to do this because enemies have been placed in all sorts of awkward positions, many of them more than armed enough to deal with you. The small shots that they often fire all blink while on the screen, but the fact that you're playing this on the DS means that there are twice as many screens for that shot to be coming from. You might be doing just fine on the bottom screen, blasting guys left and right, all while a single guy up top takes a potshot at you, dropping your character to the ground. The emphasis on both screens having danger in them means you always have to be aware of what's going on in your environment, always looking for the one thing that isn't an obvious danger.
Knowing where each enemy is goes a long way to making it through these levels alive, and it's something that will come naturally, if you work at it. This game manages to be relentless, while at the same time never feeling unfair. If you take your time while moving, you'll often see the dangers coming your way well in advance. Tough installations and enemies rarely move around all that much, and are always in the same place, so you can usually scroll a bit of them on screen and shoot while you still have a distance advantage. The stuff that moves around rarely takes more than a hit or two, so peppering sections of the screen with gunfire can work wonders to lengthening your life. Take your time and keep calm, making a mental note of every death and how to avoid it next time. You'll make progress in a hurry once you start playing like that.
To help you, the classic weapons are all back. You'll be firing spread shots in no time, laughing as you mow down your enemies. While doing so, you might come upon another spread gun lying around, picking it up since it was on your path. Once your spread shot starts firing five shots instead of three, you'll have found out the coolest thing that was added to this game: super weapons. For every weapon in the game, there is an upgrade that can be acquired if you pick the same weapon up again, giving you something with an absurd damage output. The machine gun fires twice as many shots at a ridiculous rate, the crush missile can kill some bosses before they're even started their attack routines, and the fire shot becomes something you can almost use. Finding these weapons can really help keep you alive, especially with the ability to keep two fully upgraded super weapons.
Beyond practice, the super weapons are the other part of managing to one day see the credits roll. There isn't a single point in the game that super weapons don't make a lot easier. Keeping a super spreader and super crush missiles will leave you prepared for weak or strong enemies, and can help you wipe out many things before they even get on the screen. In the end stages, these weapons are must-haves, giving you a lot of necessary breathing room in the huge waves of enemies that are coming at you. This game throws everything it can at you by the end, and the bosses take absurd amounts of damage if you don't have any decent weapons to fight them with.
You die in one hit, though, losing whatever weapon you were holding. Barring months of practice, more often than not, you're going to screw up. Somewhere along the line, someone is going to get in a lucky shot, costing you one of your weapons. It's going to put a large dent in your momentum, as now weaker enemies begin posing a threat again. Super weapons go a long way to making your life easier, but it is what you do when you lose them that will decide whether you finish this game or not.
Like I said, this game is a return to NES difficulty, mainly in that you have to finish it in one sitting. There is a limited save feature that will let you return to where you had played before shutting the game off, but you don't get to keep the weapons you had. If you're doing well, this makes this little feature useless. If you've got no weapons on you, by all means use it, but starting off some of the end stages unarmed is not something you want to be doing on purpose. So, for most people, this means having to start at level one, working your way from the Jungle all the way to the Harvest Yard in level 9. It's a fight that is going to take you a few hours, even when you know what you're doing.
You might not mind having to replay the game repeatedly, though, if you get any kind of a kick out of the music at all. You might be expecting a lot of remixed tracks from the previous games, but to be honest, they didn't go down that route. Instead, the developers have shown the same innovation they did with the rest of the game, really making the music their own. It has a strong, guitar-backed soundtrack, one that isn't as concentrated on heavy metal as Contra: Shattered Soldier was on the PS2. It doesn't feel as electronic-driven, either. Instead of focusing on angry-sounding music all the time, they've instead created many different moods depending on the area. The lab has an eerie vibe to its music, as does the journey to the alien's heart. The city feels desolate and empty, with a rising sense of menace throughout it.
It all sounds tough, somehow. There is just this amazing undertone to each song that is good enough to make you want to keep playing, keeping you feeling pumped up. It's like the finale track to every good game you've ever played, but you hear something like that in every level. It's upbeat and motivating in each stage, helping provide some of that necessary drive to keep on continuing, even when you've been badly beaten.
For a DS game, it looks great. There is a lot of lushness to the environments, from the trees in the Jungle to the piles of bodies in the Harvest Yard, each screen is just packed with things going on. Enemies will pour into the screen, four or five at a time while the backgrounds pulse with life, the organs beating on the walls as you climb through Black Viper's innards on the way to fighting the last boss. Those bosses are all pretty cool too, running the gamut of robot and organic. The machines are pretty neat, but the organic creatures steal the show. From hearts, alien eggs, and giant mouths, you see a lot of gross details as these enemies are killed, falling apart in showers of fluid. They pulse and writhe, giving this sense of dread at the disgusting things inside them. It makes the game feel really creepy and dangerous, something it probably didn't need any help in doing.
If you want to know the one thing I don't like about the game, it's that bar between the two screens. Given that many of the shots that travels between screens are only small, glowing dots, it's already easy enough to lose track of them in all of the carnage going on in the screen. Adding onto that fact is that that space between screens actually exists in the game. It's treated as if the screens continue on in that space, which means that unless you're keeping an eye on a bullet's trajectory, you can easily lose track of where it is. In some levels, you play very close to the top or bottom of the screens, leaving you with almost no time to dodge around one of these shots. A lot of cheap, unnecessary deaths will come from this until you learn where you need to watch out for it.
That's about the only thing that frustrates me about this game, though. Despite the fact that it seems to be going out of its way to annoy you, Contra 4 will grow on you. It's difficult, but only in a way that encourages you to try harder. Every time you make it a little farther, you realize how much you've accomplished. Even when you screw up and die, you'll still see things to watch out for next time, and you'll be that much closer to memorizing the game. This is a game you can be truly proud of beating, and something there is no shame in admitting defeat to. The last stage alone is utterly grueling, being as long as three or four earlier stages, but there is a feeling you'll get upon beating this game that just can't be matched.
Joel's Fast & Dirty Recommendations
Super C (NES) – Both of the NES games are excellent, but I just like this one a lot more. With more attention to detail on the graphics and a stronger soundtrack, I can't get enough of this game. It's one of the few games you'll ever play where putting in a code for more lives is considered the accepted way to play it. You know your game is hard when people consider cheating to be the only proper way to play.
Contra: Shattered Soldier (PS2) – One of the few games since the SNES to get the vibe down right, but it takes the series in an odd direction. Instead of having weapon pickups, you have an array of weapons that are always at your disposal. This changes the game to one where you need to know what you should be using instead of scrounging to keep a few favorites lying around.
Insert Coin Reviews: Mike Tyson's Punch Out!!
Posted on: February 9, 2012 by joelcouture.
Punch Out? He's reviewing Punch Out? Isn't that like trying to review Super Mario Bros or Mega Man 2? Everyone already knows that game is a classic. Well, I agree with you. I don't think there's much of anyone out there who's owned an NES who hasn't already fallen in love with this bizarre sports title. I don't think I have to work very hard to convince people that this is a great game. Regardless, there is some stuff I have to address about it. One is the fact that, until a few days ago, I'd never beaten it, and the other is that it's the only sports game I've ever felt any inclination to beat.
From the position of hindsight, everyone knows that Mike Tyson's Punch Out!! is a fun and frantic way to spend an afternoon. What is really amazing about this game is how many gamers, ones who detest sports games, are happy to play it. It's pretty unique, and I doubt any other sports game to come before or after has ever managed to break down those barriers as well as Mike Tyson's Punch Out!!. It's something I don't think this game is given enough credit for, either, given how polarizing sports and non-sport games tend to be for the gaming world. Before Call of Duty managed to focus all of the internet's rage toward it, sports game players were considered the bane of gaming. All of the games were classed as shallow repeats, and their players were stupid. Sports games dragged down the hobby for the rest of gaming, dumbing it down and showing developers that making the same thing, over and over again, was what raked in the cash.
Except Mike Tyson's Punch Out!!. That game's just fun. What with the silly characters and puzzle-like strategies, it's not really a sports game, right? Well, I don't know how to break this to you guys, but while taking the presentation and making it less than serious, they still managed to create a complex game that mimics a lot of the strategy and movements of the sport itself. It may feel at times like a puzzle game wrapped up as combat, but if you've ever competed in any combative sport, you know that your opponent is always a puzzle to be figured out. People have patterns and certain attacks they like, and if you can find ways to work around them, you will find ways to win. As such, as goofy as it may look, Mike Tyson's Punch Out!! is still an extremely good simulation of the sport.
If you don't agree, then you probably haven't played the game to the depth with which it can be played. For me, I always fought defensively. I could never get down when I should have gone on the offensive, as even Glass Joe seemed capable of blocking any attack I ever made. I had always felt like the game wanted me to play things defensively, waiting for the computer to attack, dodging out of the way, and then moving in to counter it. It works pretty well for most of the game, to be honest, so I'd never felt like I'd taken the wrong tactic. Once you hit Bald Bull for the second time, though, you'll probably see that there has to be a better way of playing. Most counters work extremely poorly, and if you keep waiting on him to do something, he'll soon settle on repeatedly doing Bull Charges until he flattens you.
What you won't see without a lot of practice and experimentation is the complex system of blocks, dodges, and attacks in the game, and how they also factor into what your opponent is doing. Dodging to the side works great in a pinch, but did you ever push back in the opposite direction and find that you came back to a ready stance twice as fast, with your punches flying at an absurd rate? How about bringing your defenses up by pushing up, only to notice it got Von Kaiser to protect his head? You might feel like your opponent is going through some set motions through a match regardless of what you're doing, but he isn't. You can set up opponents to be countered in certain ways, or trick them into specific movesets by throwing punches. The only reason I got past Mr. Sandman at all was because throwing a left hook almost always got him to throw a cross, allowing me to weave out of the way and land a headshot followed by some body blows.
That might not sound very revelatory to you Mike Tyson's Punch Out!! fanatics out there, but it was the one thing that completely turned my game around. I always thought it was nothing more than a reactive game, where you just had to counter what the computer was doing. Can you blame me, though? How many games had a feature where they reacted to what you were doing during the NES era? Bosses might work their way toward where you stood, but that was about it. If you used the laser in Contra, it didn't change how the aliens came at you. This game made your input matter on a level I still rarely see in gaming, and made it so that all of those fights I loved so much as a kid grew a whole other level of depth.
Learning to push my opponents to see what they would do was new to me, and at first, it was very punishing. Simple guys like Piston Honda and Don Flamenco mopped the floor with me, reminding me why I never bothered to fight offensively to begin with. As I progressed, though, I soon reached opponents that were all but impossible if you didn't know how to get them acting a certain way, like Super Macho Man. It was hard to teach myself to take little risks during these matches, but it's something that the game encourages, hinting at it during your match against King Hippo. You can't beat him without learning aggressive counters, and if you haven't been learning them yet, he'll give you a hint of how useful they can be.
The depth of this game astounds me. Its cartoonish graphics and stereotypical characters belie the intricate engine that is running underneath the game and making it tick. By adding super moves and one-hit knockdowns, they've created a system that rewards people for always trying something new in a match. By countering smart, knowing which hand to punch with and when, and having a good feel for when to go after your opponent and when to hang back, they managed to create one of the most amazing sports games I've ever played.
They've also created a sports game that managed to get me to play it, period. I don't like sports games, beyond playing a few minutes of hockey with someone. That's it. Somehow, despite how technical and difficult this game can get, it only managed to interest me more. The opposite should have been the case, but instead they've made something that I always have fun playing, and even better, always learn something new while playing. Given that this game is just shy of a quarter century old, it's pretty impressive for me to still be picking up new things from playing it.
That silliness about it is one of its main draws. I really like the ridiculous vibe of all of the boxers. I never have, and never will, follow the boxing world in any way. If they'd put this engine into a game that used real-world boxers, I wouldn't have any interest in it. I just wouldn't be able to get into it, since I have no real interest in the subject matter. When you throw in horrible stereotypes like Soda Popinski (Vodka Drunkenski if you're playing the arcade version) and Great Tiger, you're starting to pique my interest. The addition of super moves, like Great Tiger's magic punch that has him flying around the ring, you take boxing in a direction that makes it more like a game than a sports simulation.
I guess my problem is that sports games tend to have no fantastic element to them. I'm sure for many people, the fantasy of being a skilled sports star is a lure in itself, but it just doesn't do anything for me. It takes that special spark of creativity with the sport to draw me in. The developers of Mike Tyson's Punch Out!! took boxing and gave it a life and personality all their own. They made the sport into something a bit more interesting than an attempt to realistically portray boxing. For lack of a better way of putting it, there was a special spark about the game, in its presentation and quality, that made it something that any gamer could love.
And many do. This game is still as fun to play today as it was in 1987, and that is probably the best compliment I could give any NES game. As a boxing game, you will be blown away by how complex and interesting it is, constantly being surprised at how much is going on during any given match. For presentation, it may be simple, but it manages to create a vibe that is pure fun, and will always leave a smile on your face. Pushing yourself to put these guys on the mat as fast as you can is the most fun you could ever have playing video game boxing, no matter how many other attempts come out after.
Joel's Fast & Dirty Recommendations
Base Wars (NES) – Take baseball, which is boring, and add in robots with arm canons, as well as the ability to get in fights with the other players, and you get this bizarre game. While not as technically impressive as Mike Tyson's Punch Out!!, it still has the distinction of being one of the two sports games to ever be in my house. I just wish I was good at it.
Warioware Inc: Mega Microgame$! (GBA) – Look, this is probably as close as I'm gonna get to liking another sports game. It's quirky and weird beyond belief, and some of the super short micro games do have sport-like elements to them, so I guess this counts. Maybe?
Insert Coin Reviews: Unbound Saga (360)
Posted on: February 2, 2012 by joelcouture.
Unbound Saga is something I would probably have never touched if it hadn't gone on sale for $2 a while ago. It looked like a PS1 game from the screenshots, basically hoping that the fact that it was two player and that the second character's thong was hanging out would be enough to give it some sales. I picked it up because I can squeeze $2 worth of fun out of just about any game, especially one where I can make a second person miserable as well. After playing it all the way through with a buddy, I can definitively say that I got what I paid for.
Unbound Saga has a decent brawler crawling underneath its ugly exterior. If you want to punch faces around, this game will definitely let you do that. Unfortunately, I would say that it somehow has less enemy types than Final Fight. There isn't a lot of variety in what each enemy can do to you. There doesn't seem to be any fast or slow ones, but rather just a few different variants on a basic enemy. You might fight a reptile or a hobo, but all of them pretty much act and fight the same. Some of them might have weapons or more health, but there are few that are more dangerous than the other.
Even more shamefully, the bosses have almost no personality or ability to them. In a brawler, the boss of each area is a chance to come up with some cruel abilities and give them a look that makes them stand out. In a game style that doesn't exactly pride itself on its variety, the boss fight is the one time when you can cut loose and do something cool. Unbound Saga can't seem to be bothered, drawing up extremely boring people who look slightly different than regular enemies, but that's it. The game feels the need to announce when you're at a boss fight in each level, and I'm thankful for that, since I would never have guessed that these pathetic creatures were supposed to be the toughest and most unique things in their respective areas.
I didn't expect much in the way of enemy creativity, though, given how dull and bland each area looks. I really meant it when I said that the game looked like it came from the PS1. All of the enemies and characters look like they're made up from jagged polygons, and while they look nice for extremely early 3D, they look terrible for something made in 2010. It's jazzed up a bit in that the game is designed as if you are characters moving through a comic book, leaping across the binding and over staples onto the next panel, but this was done before. In Comix Zone. In 1995. It's shamelessly ripped from that game, and while it adds a little life to the visuals, it still looks very dull.
It looks like most of the work went into the cutscenes between the levels, which actually look pretty good. The story in the game is moved along by comic-book styled images, all of them looking like they were drawn in the heyday of books like Spawn and Gen-13. It creates a nice effect for the rest of the game, and they are pretty cool to look at, running through a bunch of different comic book genres. The shame of that is that they failed to really do anything interesting as they crossed genres. I would have liked to see a change in artwork follow every shift, instead of the same tired art style that I never really liked back when it was popular. That may be more of a personal preference than anything, but the Todd McFarlane art style was never something I really enjoyed, so seeing it in the game didn't do much for me, either.
It's not sounding all that interesting, is it? Well, the fighting in the game did have a little bit of depth that kept it fresh, actually. There is an experience system in it, one that hands out an upgrade at random points throughout the game. They are literally random, as far as I can tell, as there was never any counter or hint as to when the game would drop an upgrade. I could get one from one guy in one level, then get three in rapid succession (And I'm not talking about bosses. Those were the only reliable sources of upgrades), and then not see one for almost an hour. It was really strange, but each time one of those medals dropped, it was cause for excitement.
You've got two available characters to upgrade throughout the game, enough to keep you busy for a couple of runs through it. Each of them learns a different moveset, with an array of combos you can do with certain presses of the button. Rick focuses on straight punching combat, giving you more strength or resistance to damage, but if you really want to do anything interesting, Lori is where it's at. She has her own magic system in place, giving her a choice of different ways to make combat simpler. She can summon clones, poison the enemy, go invisible, and heal herself, all almost at will. Sure, you have a stamina bar that drains as you use each of these powers, but it drains in the same way the Metal Blade drains Mega Man. The draw is so negligible that there is no reason you shouldn't be using all of your powers whenever you feel like it.
When you start to get control of all of her powers, you start to notice that the game gets to be pretty fun. The array of things you can do to the enemies, however plain your opposition may be, makes for a pretty enjoyable way to spend an afternoon. It left me laughing as I watched the enemies crumble before the constant barrage of things I was throwing at them, all while hiding in shadows and being able to refill my own health.
The shame is in playing as Rick. Without anything all that meaningful to do, all he's left with is a few combos that no one will probably use, since smashing the X button works just fine, and a few special abilities that move too slow or take forever to get working. The guy gets a power that lets him quadruple his strength, but it requires you holding two buttons for about six or seven seconds straight. It takes forever to get it going, and on top of that, there is no indication that it's working. I tried about a dozen times to get it to work, each time giving up and wondering what I was doing wrong. Since it takes so much time to start up, and your character doesn't do anything to show that he's charging or anything like that, the average person's conclusion is probably going to be the same as mine. Barring persistence, it will literally seem like half of Rick's attacks just don't work.
And beyond its semi-interesting combat, there just isn't much of anything to draw you in or keep you playing Unbound Saga. The weird plot about comic books and video games, done in a self-referential way, was all right, but won't be enough to keep you from skipping the scenes altogether. The art is pretty bland in those same cutscenes, but is nowhere near as bad and uninspired as it is during the game itself. The enemies may all have different looks, but all act and fight the same. The sad part is, though, is that every one of these problems showed promise. Every little gripe I had about this game boiled down to not enough work being put into it. If most of these things had been shown a bit more care, they could have had a really good brawler on their hands. As it stands, if you can find it for cheap, it's a fun way to pass a single afternoon. If you're looking for the next beat 'em up to have your friends come play, you're gonna have to keep trying.
Joel's Fast & Dirty Recommendations
King of Dragons (SNES/ARC) – My favorite brawler of all time, conveniently also one with an experience system. You gain more health as you get more points, and are also awarded weapons and armor as you beat the cool-looking bosses in the game. It's a ball to play all the way through, but its arcade roots do show in the SNES port's difficulty level. You'll actually have to practice this one to see it through.
Castle Crashers (360) – At almost double Unbound Saga's normal asking price, you might think I'm being ridiculous. This game is worth every penny, though. It has a plethora of playable characters, over forty different equipable weapons, a dozen animal companions, huge and varied areas, and an art style that has personality and humor. It's everything a modern brawler should be, and playing it with four players is pure joy.
Insert Coin Reviews: Flintstones The Rescue of Dino & Hoppy (NES)
Posted on: January 26, 2012 by joelcouture.
I had no intention of picking up The Flintstones: The Rescue of Dino & Hoppy to play for this week's review, but then I stumbled over it while looking through old games. As a kid, it had seemed vibrant, colorful, and fun, and watching my cousins play it made me desperately want to give it a shot too. When I did, I was terrible at it, but still thought it seemed pretty cool. I thought so again when I played it a few years later and beat it. I thought it would be a fun diversion to talk to you guys about, one of those hidden gems that I never hear much about. Turns out that I used to have a much higher patience for dull graphics, bad hit detection, painful music, and lame design.
If you've seen screenshots of the game, you might be having your doubts about what I'm saying. It does look really bright and colorful, with big, vibrant sprites shown throughout. Those screens, however, showcase the small handful of things that were drawn well in this game. There are some nice screens in this game, but there are an equal amount of shoddy, lifeless ones to balance them out. The swimming level is probably the worst, given that there is no background at all. The only reason you might know that you're swimming is the fact that every enemy kind of looks fish-like, and that a white circle that could be a bubble comes out of your mouth every once in a while. The entire background is just a wash of baby blue, covering ground and water alike. It is lazy, lazy, lazy.
Sure, some dinosaurs and enemies look good. The only ones that do are a few gigantic dinosaurs from the early levels, though, as you almost never see any kind of large creature ever again. Those that are normal size, like Fred's sprite, are usually done up in one color with almost no detail. You might get some stray dots for scales, but that's the most that any one enemy is going to stand out. Bosses aren't much better, as beyond the first boss, they're all decked out in few colors, all of which kind of blend together. Everything looks like it was colored in as fast as possible, with many of the designs just being ugly. Sure, many of them are in keeping with The Flintstones' visual vibe, but a little bit of work could have gone into making them look better.
The music will take your mind off the tolerable graphics pretty fast, though. There is only one word that describes the music in this game perfectly, and that is 'shrill.' Almost every single effect and tune in this game is high-pitched in some way. Every effect just grates on the ear, with almost every sound recreated with some shrieking effect. Instead of having some sort of dull thump when things get hit, they decided to focus on the enemy's cry, which is just as piercing and loud as Fred when he gets hit. The music goes down the same route, with every song being only a few seconds long, but repeated to death through the levels. They sound just as awful as the screams, too, given that each song sounds like a series of beeps whose pitch has been altered. Many of these musical loops are the definition of short, too, meaning every sound you hate is going to be back, and probably in a few seconds. The boss loop alone lasts somewhere under ten seconds, leaving you constantly leaping straight at the boss, praying that your death will at least make the music stop.
Good luck on attacking the bosses too, given how large your hit box is. More often than not, when you try to move up on something and hit it, you're going to take some damage. Against some of the most basic creatures you'll see, you'll still find that you're walking into hits that shouldn't be counting. You might think you're just playing lazily, as I did, but if you really watch yourself during a fight, you'll start to pick up on it.
The place I noticed it the most was against the last boss' second form, where he turns into some useless jumping machine. Now, I knew that it was jumping higher than my head, so I planned to duck under the thing and attack it from behind. It wasn't strategy gold, especially given how terrible crouching is (Fred's head disappears into his shirt. That's ducking, apparently.), but it should have been more than enough to avoid damage. Well, it would have had it not been for my giant hit window. Well, I'm not sure if it was me or the boss, but I got hit many, many times when there wasn't a single part of my character making contact with him. I literally should have walked right under the body unharmed, but it didn't matter. I took damage just by virtue of the boss standing nearby, and that was it.
It is very hard to tell when you're going to take a hit in this game, so it encourages you to hang back and pick your shots when you know they'll work. Time your attacks right, though, as it takes a second for your club to swing from your shoulders to the ground. I'm not sure if they wanted to be realistic or what, but it takes a split-second for your club to meet its target, something that manages to be far more annoying than any whip delay from Castlevania. It might have been something that worked better with a smaller hit detection box, but as it stands now, it's practically impossible to use. Unless you're fighting something that has no idea what it is doing and just stands there, then you're going to take damage well before you finish your swing.
Good luck with that chargeable swing you can do, too. You can hold the button down to build up a more powerful swing, but almost nothing in the game beyond bosses takes more than one hit. The few enemies that do need a few hits are all more likely to hit you with while you're slowed down by charging the attack, making it a waste anyway. Like his club, Fred's jump seems to need a split-second to pull off too, something that constantly ruined my ability to dodge. Tied together, these result in endless fun as you charge a swing, get hit while trying to use it, and then get hit again while trying to get the timing down for jumping away. Weaving around boss projectiles, as well as the bosses themselves, is all but impossible.
Don't expect to run the other way, either. Fred builds up momentum as he runs, which means you can't come to a dead stop when you need to, something that is just fantastic when you can't jump with any kind of reliable timing. Even more annoying is the fact that building up speed from a dead stop takes a few steps, which makes it really hard when you need to move out of a new enemy's way, or just want to change directions to avoid something. Even more awful is the ice level, where your momentum never actually runs out, leaving you hopping into positions for the entire level, as any unchecked step will leave you sliding until you fall off something.
Platforming had a neat little idea in the form of clinging to the sides of things. If something seems out of reach, send Fred toward it and hold the jump button. He'll then hold onto the ledge...and just stay hanging there. I have beaten the game, and I'm not sure what combination of buttons makes him climb the ledge. No matter what I hit, he always just sort of hangs there for a second before he decides he's been there long enough and pulls himself up. I've tried up, B, and A, and tried tapping, mashing, and holding them in. Nothing affects how fast he climbs, so I hope you're never in a hurry to get up.
Which seems fine until you hit the vampire's castle level. It's the only spot in the whole game that has a timed vertical area, and if you aren't pixel perfect with your jumps and climbing, you won't be seeing anything past this area. It took me the better part of an hour to get through, each attempt leaving me feeling that I couldn't have been doing it right. Even so, if Fred would have just reliably climbed up, I could have gotten through the area without a hitch.
As it turned out, there was a way out that was easier. When you pause the game almost anywhere throughout, Gazoo shows up and asks what you'd like him to do. Given that you are only ever given the option to unpause the game before that, I don't think many people considered checking the pause screen for new options once they got to this spot. Given that most people are trying to speed on through, I'm not sure pausing the game was something many people thought to do. I know when I'm in a hurry, I just can't pause. It breaks the flow of what I'm doing, and usually results in restarting.
But if you'd played the lousy basketball minigame, and knew to check out your pause menu, you'd have found out that you had the option to fly through the area. Now, given that the basketball game is completely optional, that it cryptically tells you you've won 'something' by beating it, and that you can skip the game and therefore not have the necessary power to get through it, it's quite likely that this would make people just give up on the game. If I hadn't been positive that I'd done it before, I never would have passed it. It's infuriating to find out that I had to play a terrible minigame just to progress, but the fact that the game just let me move on without it was almost point-and-click adventure level cruelty.
The Flintstones: The Rescue of Dino & Hoppy is a clunky, ugly, unappealing mess of a game that a handful of power-ups and neat ideas were powerless to save. Fred's inability to do just about anything in a hurry means that you're constantly just a little bit too late on dodging and moving, making every single level a chore to play through. Coupling that with a hit window that extends well beyond Fred and you have a perfect concoction to make people despise this game. I've gotten mad at games before, but getting hit by something that hasn't even touched me brings out a special kind of rage normally reserved for people who've murdered everyone I know and love.
Joel's Unflushables
Contra Force (NES) – Take everything you know and love about a great franchise, throw it out the window, add in useless garbage, and you have this game. It's not as bad as some of the later Contras in that this game is playable, but it's still a complete bore to play. Why is flipping the best ability in the game? Why is jumping around an attack at all?
The Simpsons: Bartman Meets Radioactive Man (NES) – Managing to be the worst NES Simpsons game is quite a feat, given the games you are going up against. Arguably, a complete masochist could at least play the other games for some period of time, which puts them head and shoulders above this game. I thought the only way a Simpsons game could get worse was if it gave you AIDS when you booted it up, but apparently I was wrong.
Insert Coin Reviews: Gears of War 3
Posted on: January 19, 2012 by joelcouture.
Gears of War is the game that sold me on the Xbox 360, a system that I never once in my life expected to buy. With fun co-op and a terrifying need to avoid being shot, it was something that grabbed me harder than I thought was possible. After playing it for a weekend with a friend, I had to have it for my own. The second one was also great, adding lots of new creatures and weapons, doing all of the stuff I expected from a decent sequel. Gears of War 3 is a satisfying end to the series, but seems to lack some of the strengths of the previous games.
Right off, one of those things is the difficulty. I might have been terrible at the game before, but I really don't think I've improved so much at the games that I should be barely dying on hardcore difficulty. My controller is probably quite thankful that the game never got me furiously angry at it, but there is something to be said about a hard mode that isn't hard at all. I could understand this level of ease on the lower difficulties, but I expected there to be some kind of challenge on hardcore mode.
I'm seriously doubting its because of skill, that's for sure. My main reason for believing that is due to how much time I spend outside of cover. In the first game, even on lower difficulties, taking a few hits meant you were in pretty big trouble, and you wouldn't dream of aimlessly sticking your head out if a mounted gun was shooting at you. Taking the time to snipe its user would get you killed each and every time. In this game, I can poke around and take my time aiming as much as I want, given the absurd amount of health I have. You can take a huge amount of punishment, even on hardcore, and still bounce back. It gets to the point that most of the time, I don't bother with cover unless I'm about to die.
Compounding that trouble is the three AI characters that follow you around for the whole game. They change characters constantly, but that still never takes away from the fact that you have three computers backing you up at all times. If you go down, there is almost always someone within arm's reach who will pick you back up again. If you get sidetracked and go in the wrong direction away from the enemies, they will start killing them for you. There were a few times in the game when I got turned around trying to figure out where to go, only to find that the computers had beaten all of the enemies in the area. Now, this never happened during an interesting fight, but it still annoyed me that the computer had essentially played itself for a few minutes.
I'm sure they're trying to steer the game away from its heavy emphasis on cover to keep it more interesting for complainers, but this game pretty much invented sticking to cover. It's basis is in terrifying gun combat, with each shot you take being an actual threat. You might have regenerating health, but it didn't take long to drain it all away. By trying to give people more of an ability to run and gun, it's taking away a bit of the spirit of the game. It loses a lot of its careful tactics and clever cover movement to try to appease people who didn't like the series to begin with, and in doing so sacrifices challenge. I might like to be able to run around a bit more, but to be fair, the series used wretches and tickers to accomplish this stuff before. The run-and-gun points were already in place. The shooting parts didn't need to be dumbed down to appeal to people who wanted more running around and less strategy.
Despite that, the game is still a lot of fun to play, and being at the end of the trilogy, it is going for broke. One thing I always wanted to see was an actual fight with many of those huge, dangerous creatures I saw throughout the first couple of games. I wanted actual one-on-one combat with Berserkers, Corpsers, and Brumaks. These were all things I'd seen in the previous games, but hadn't really been allowed to fight. Sure, you could kill them with the Hammer of Dawn, but that never gave me any sense of satisfaction. I wanted to actually mix it up with these creatures, something Epic Games must have realized, because every single big monster from the series is a boss. Nothing is spared, and I was extremely happy to get to finally fight these beasts. The low difficulty put a damper on each battle, but I was still glad to fight them all the same.
Well, not every battle. If you take the time to play this with multiple people, you will find that the difficulty does rise quite a bit in places, especially against the aforementioned giant bosses. While the single player campaign skews toward being a little too easy no matter what the difficulty is, having more than one person to worry about increases the dangers. When you play with another person, you get to see more of the game the way its developers intended it to be. Playing with four people in the campaign is a real treat to do, often leaving you literally gasping once you've gotten through some of the tough spots. If you're worried about losing some of the experience of playing it, bring a few buddies along to get the real deal. It doesn't make me happy to have to play multiplayer for the game to challenge me properly, but at least it's co-operative. Playing with a friend makes any game sweeter. Well, maybe not the last boss on hardcore, though.
The music is as amazing as its always been, considering it is still quite rare that I notice the music in today's big budget games at all. Gears of War 3 has many of its own themes and approaches to the music, making it a real treat for the ears. I highly recommend going through the options and turning the sound up, especially during the final chapters of the game. The music really clicks with the game's content, and does wonders for sweeping you up along with what's going on in-game. The sound quality is great as well, with each shot making a sound that is bone-crushing. All of the effects lend power and weight to what you're doing, each crunching blow and explosive shot seeming to ripple through your ears. You can feel the power from every gunshot, making pulling the trigger a real event.
The environments are all quite nice, as well. There is still a lot of brown, as the game takes you through worn-down cities and through cliffs into the desert, but there are some really colorful spots near the end of the game. Fighting in a mostly-intact, vibrant city during daytime is a pretty nice change of pace for most realistic shooters, and the attention to detail really makes it come alive. Seeing statues, fountains, and carved stone on almost every surface takes away some of the attention you might be paying to the lack of color. It's brighter and more colorful than past games, but still not all that much more.
The series has always looked and sounded good, though. Is it still fun? Well, of course it is. If you enjoyed one of these games in the past, you'll still get a big kick out of it now. There aren't a lot more new guns to give you more ways to beat back the locust, but you probably won't care. It still has an extremely robust amount of weapons in the game, and if you like frantic shootouts, this game will have you covered. There is a lot of creativity in environmental design, almost always giving you and the enemy many different hiding spots and approaches to use. If you ever find yourself at a bottleneck thinking things will be easy, more dangerous enemies will often be coming through with weapons to counter it. Each fight was carefully put together to keep it interesting throughout, with clever and strong monsters always keeping you on your toes. Even if this game does fall into a spot where you're trapped behind cover for a long time, it will throw something your way to keep you moving.
As for the plot, it's not as impressive as some reviewers were making it out to be. I was a little disappointed in it, given how much hype had been going into how good the story was supposed to be, but it does tie up a lot of loose ends. I was surprised at a lot of the plot twists, but to be honest, that was only because I thought they would go for something extremely interesting, but didn't. I really thought that what went on in those tubes the locust placed humans into would be dealt with and explained, as I couldn't see why a certain character would kill himself after getting stuck in one in the second game. As it turned out, I would never know. I also thought that some of the connections between the humans and the locust would turn out to mean something different than what they did, but I was also disappointed there. They did manage to finish the story and I commend them for it, but I really did feel like they always just about to touch on something really interesting, but never did.
All the same, I enjoyed this game. The lack of difficulty in single player took a lot away from what it could have been, but that will probably broaden its appeal to some people. Even so, I got to fight all of the monsters that I wanted to, basically fulfilling my wish for the last game in the series. Its story may not have been what I expected, but it was still interesting and brought the whole cast back together. It could have been a little bit better with a few tweaks, but it is an otherwise solid game and a good ending to one of my favorite series'.
Until the prequels start, which they already have.
Joel's Fast & Dirty Recommendations
Contra 4 (DS) – Vicious and heartless like its younger siblings, the men without shirts are back. This is multiplayer shooting at its 2D finest, giving you a gunplay experience that is extremely difficult while still giving a huge sense of accomplishment with every inch gained. Watching someone lose all of their continues in the first level after you've beaten the game will show you just how far you've come.
Gears of War (360/PC) – In what I can only call shooter/horror, this game will have you genuinely afraid to get hit. There is an extreme emphasis on placement and cover, something I'd never seen before in a game. Also, the enemies take a lot of hits instead of weaving around all the time and only needing a few to be killed, so you actually get to hit things most of the time. Every checkpoint is satisfying, if only to get away from certain unskippable sections of dialogue.
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