Fighting Game Characters Suck #2 - Andy and Mai

Last time on Fighting Game Characters Suck (which was like five months ago, Jesus fucking Christ), we discussed how Ryu, the poster boy of fighting games, is actually a mental deficient with the social skills of a drainpipe and is hellbent on ruining his best friend's life and, eventually, the lives of everyone else. This week, we're going to get a bit more personal with our mud-slinging - rather than insulting one guy, we're going to insult two people and explain why their plans are total crap. Step in, Andy Bogard and Shiranui Mai!

Today's FGCS comes with picture captions! You're welcome!

Welcome, welcome, take a seat. Now, I hear that the both of you are engaged to be married at... some point in the future. Whenever your company can make the time to make it a canon thing. And really, I would like to say congratulations. I mean, you two are such a perfect fit for each other! You both practice the same martial art, you both have ridiculous body proportions and you have irresponsibly long ponytails! Andy is a calm, compassionate soul and Mai is a fun-lover looking to settle down! Truly you are the perfect future partnersnrrrrrrrrk

...okay, I'm sorry, I couldn't finish that with a straight face. I would say congratulations, but then my throat would turn itself inside out for telling a dirty lie. Instead, I would suggest you not go through with this idiotic plan and just break up already. And if you, the reader, want to know about this weird marriage counselor turn I've taken, hit the jump and be educated.

WARNING: One or two images here may be NSFW. Please ensure your boss isn't reading over your shoulder before hitting that jump button. And then TATSUMAKI!

Fighting Game Characters Suck #1 - Ryu

So since I got out of uni for the holidays, I managed to find a good balance between work and free time. Enough to allow me to cogitate on some issues that I want to talk about - namely, fighting game characters.

Now, this is not going to be me talking about shitty character design, because there's probably already shitloads of threads and blogs dedicated to that. Nor is expecting any amount of depth from most fighting game characters a fair thing, especially when most are raging stereotypes to begin with. This is me talking about how some fighting lads and lasses are massive idiots who need a slap in the face and maybe some therapy. Because seriously, they do.

And who better to open up this festival of idiocy than the poster boy of fighting games, Ryu from Street Fighter?

Ah, Ryu. Your tales of martial arts mastery inspire us. Your simple design and iconic fighting style have been copied by imitators and competitors the world over. And your gripping, emotional and spiritual quest to master your teachings and become the strongest warrior is what keeps people coming back to your side of the story, again and again. Truly, you are a noble and endearing character.

Except when you think about it, that's all a steaming crock of cow shit. If you want to know why, hit the jump.

Rebooting Primal Rage: A Thesis

Those of you regular Chatzygoers may have had to endure me gushing about the new Killer Instinct, the reboot of the 90's fighting game series that most people don't really remember. Reboots as a thing are becoming increasingly popular nowadays - seems there's a big market for nostalgia, and one could indeed argue that Mighty No. 9 (which broke it's funding target in 24 hours holy shit) could be considered a reboot of Mega Man, since Capcom have no interest in the property anymore. With this in mind, I'm going to conduct a thesis on rebooting an intellectual property, one that hasn't seen much action since the halcyon days of the 1990's and probably deserves, out of all the ones I could think of, to get the modern upgrade treatment.

That property, predictably, is a fighting game. And that fighting game is...

...Primal Rage.

What?!
Primal Rage is an arcade fighting game developed by Atari Games and released in 1994. In it, one controlled not human fighters, but giant dinosaur gods struggling for control of a post-apoaclyptic "Urth" after a meteorite strikes the planet and wipes out modern civilization. With the seven characters divided into the "Virtuous Beasts" and the "Destructive Dinos", each one features it's own selection of unique special moves, as well as three gruesome fatalities to perform on defeated opponents. Another notable feature was the troupe of worshippers that followed your dinosaurs about, and occasionally could be eaten to regain health.

Whilst many point to Mortal Kombat as the sole progenitor of the Violent Games Controversy of the 90's, they forget that Primal Rage also had a large hand in the cause of the outcry and it's results. The gore in the game was frankly ridiculous - characters lost gallons of blood with every hit, the life meter was a heart that exploded when you lost and the fatalities themselves were often borderline tasteless. It was Chaos' Golden Shower finisher, where he dissolved the enemy to bones with his acidic urine, that resulted in many of the console ports becoming heavily censored, as well as the formation of the ESRB. To this day, nobody has been able to perfectly emulate the original arcade experience, due to unusual copy protection that has yet to be cracked.

Why?
The thing about Primal Rage was that despite being a clone of Mortal Kombat, it really took off. Atari had high hopes for making a franchise out of the property and pushed it as hard as they could with hundreds of home console ports, a trading card game and even tie-in action figures, which to this day are highly-regared and extremely saught-after collector's items. And while it didn't exactly gain mainstream popularity, the fact that it managed to carve out such a niche on it's own merits is certainly impressive and a sign that an audience for a remake certainly exists.

However, it simply wasn't to last. In the end, Atari simply gave up on the property, as it was deemed unprofitable due to the controversy surrounding it. This resulted in the cancellation of an update that would have outfitted the game with Necrosan, a skeletal alien dragon and the intended final boss, and the sequel, which featured Killer Instinct-style visuals, a new character called Slashfang and human warriors that could transform into the animal gods from the previous game. While the sequel was adapted into a novel, it was clear that Primal Rage had been abandoned as a future franchise.

Also, Killer Instinct got rebooted. If that game can, so can this one.

How?
Rebooting something like Primal Rage is no small task, so we're going to have to get straight to the bone of the matter and talk about the game mechanics first of all. A lot of the game was created in a mad attempt to distance itself from it's inspirations, Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter, and as such the system is a bit of a mess that requires something of an overhaul. Let's begin, shall we?

• Special Moves: This was the major thing that kept Primal Rage down. The commands for the Special Moves often required more than one button, and instead of traditional SF or MK controls, one had to hold down the attack buttons before performing the joystick motion. While this was remedied in later versions, and also indirectly lead to the creation of Negative Edge (look it up), the fact one needed to press multiple buttons made combos hard to remember and too complicated. In the reboot, Special Moves shoul be performed Street Fighter style, with the properites of the move changing depending on what button is pressed.
• Combos: Combos, while quite fast, tended to suffer due to the wonky nature of the Special Moves affecting the timing of Links. At best, Sauron could only pull off a maximum of 8 hits per combo, and while that's a lot in those days you couldn't get away with it in today's high-octane fighting-game market, unless you're Netherrealm. The introduction of String Combos akin to MK9 or Tekken would solve this issue, as this would allow characters to perform bigger and better combos whilst still feeling similar to the original game. Links would remain in as well, of course.
• Returning Mechanics: Several mechanics from the original Primal Rage would be kept in for prosperity, and also because of their use in the game. The short hop would remain, as it was vital for pulling of combos that required use of jumping attacks, and the Stun Bar, represented by a brain in the original game, would remain as well. The return of the edible worshippers would have to be considered deeply, as that could afford players too many advantages by recovering health.
• Super Bar: Like Killer Instinct and MK9, Primal Rage would benefit from include some sort of super meter into the mechanics. Not only would this encourage a more agressive playstyle in order to build it, but it would add an extra layer to the game's complexity that the original game sorely lacked. What it would be used for, besides the obligatory super attack, I am not sure of. That would be for more talented people to decide.
• Fatalities: It wouldn't be Primal Rage without the Fatalities. And just as MK9 got creative with it's Fatalities, so should Primal Rage. Sauron doesn't just eat you, he tears out your throat, then pins you down and rips out your beating heart. Armadon doesn't just electrocute you, he zaps your arms off and then takes off your head with his tail club as well. Diablo should burn opponents down to the bone, Blizzard should pummel foes to a pulp. Of course, classic Fatalities could make a comeback if there is enough interest.

But the mechanics are nothing if one has boring characters, and Primal Rage's cast of beasts were indeed the main draw of the game. Just like Killer Instinct, a reboot of Primal Rage should consider refining the characters into designated roles and removing the more over-the-top moves to prevent them playing alike. New characters would have to be created to buff up the roster, but here's a brief summary of the how first playable eight should be redesigned and updated.

• Blizzard: Include bracelets and armlets with mystical runes, ice-covered hands and feet akin to Sub-Zero. Very balanced character, has a move for any situation and can implement it easily. Shouldn't excell at one thing.
• Armadon: Cover him in dirt and moss, as if he's been sleeping under the ground for aeons. Make his design smoother and less cluttered, but still recognizably bulky. A grappler who excells at close range, can use electricity as a weak projectile.
• Talon: If we have to give a badass animal like Talon feathers, then make them big and flashy. He should have the feel of a Native American chief about him. A fast, nippy rushdown character with lots of mixups. Possibly a wall jump?
• Sauron: Base him on a stockier dinosaur than Allosaurus, make him somewhat bloated to reflect his role as God of Hunger. A zoning character that uses his sonic scream and weight to keep opponents away from him.
• Diablo: Make him look demonic, all horns and spikes and horrid outgrowths. Glowy eyes are a must. Another zoning character, this time utilizing teleports and different projectiles to confuse enemies.
• Chaos: Dress him in typical voodoo attire - bone necklaces, etc. Another grappler who also uses various status effects to curse others or bless himself. Whilst he should remain filthy and disgusting, this should be toned down massively from the original game.
• Vertigo: A more alien design would suffice, based on HR Geiger's works - more sleek and unnerving. A mixup character who has various tools to keep enemies on their tones. Should bring to mind Quan Chi from MK9.
• Slashfang: A bipedal smilodon who was going to appear in Primal Rage 2, but never did. A bulkier rushdown than Talon, Slashfang should excell at shoving opponents about and basically being a massive bully.

That's all I got for now. This post may be updated with more info in the future, so keep an eye on it. I may also create in-depth documents of how the characters should work and what moves and Fatalities they should have, if people are interested enough. Until then, feel free to discuss this in the comments!

DmC Devil May Cry vs. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

Okay, let me just get this out of the way before I begin - I never was a fan of Raiden from Konami's Metal Gear Solid series.

I was introduced to him via Playstation All-Stars Battle Royal, and his cold, self-assured blandess immediately made me dislike him almost instantly. On top of that, Yahtzee Chroshaw's mostly negative review of-

...Oh, wait, I've done this before, haven't I?

So here's Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, a game that many people have been comparing to DmC Devil May Cry ever since the conception of both, because fanboys will argue over anything given the chance. It doesn't help that both are action-based hack-and-slashers starring borderline-pubescant, unlikable protagonists with a pencheant for over-the-top violence and cringe-worthy dialogue, nor that both games were outsourced to a third party because the original producers couldn't trust themselves to do anything with it. But it does help that the both of them have significantly different feels, when one gets right down to it, and it also helps that when two similar games come out, for some strange reason people are only prepared to buy one or the other, rather than have both (thank you, CeX vouchers!). So because I don't know any better, let's compare the two games and find out which of these is "best"!

Steel Komodo presents:

DmC Devil May Cry vs. Metal Gear Rising



Plot!
DmC loses several million points right out of the gate by being written by Temmem Antoniades, who, as we have established, is a self-righteous prick with all the empathy a glass of water conjures. From then on, it's pretty much downhill - the dialogue often descends into foul-mouthed teenage back-and-forthing which, while funny in a ridiculous kind of way, makes Joss Whedon's constant parade of one-liners look like Shakespeare. The social commentary is about a subtle as a sledgehammer to the face, as the organization which Dante must take down to ensure humanity's freedom might as well have been called Nox Fews, and on top of that not a single character is relatable in any measure, and you know something is wrong when you hate your player character more than you hate the giant, vomit-spewing maggot demon you're supposed to be fighting.

MGR's plot, by comparison, is a lot stronger. By Kojima standards, it's pretty simple - Raiden good, war bad, kill cyborgs - but has enough intruige and curveballs to keep the player interested. There's a host of intruiging and likeable characters, each with quirks beyond "wears a silly hat" and "swears all the time", that I found myself getting oddly attached to - we transition from the somewhat psychopathic yet informative Doktor easing us into tutorials to the reassuring tones of Boris to give us mission directions, with geeky nerd girl Courtney to save game progress and comedic foil Kevin to tell us why we should give a shit. Drama and laughs come from all sides, and one truly feels that there is an appreciable threat that we need to hunt down and eliminate, not some nebulous corporate miasma that we only tangientally grasp. Definitely better than most of Kojima's efforts, which apparently were desperate attempts to stop making Metal Gear games, I've read.

DmC: 0
MGR: 1

Protagonists!
Dante and Raiden - two malnourished teens with giant swords, bland personalities and odd dress sense. The two make an interesting contrast of each other - on the one hand, a cybernetic ninja with traditional honour values who fights PMC's because it's his job, and on the other, a half-demon slacker who fights demons because he's got nothing better to do that day. One dresses in what can only be called a metallic fetish outfit complete with high-heels and ass-hugging bodysuit, whilst the other wears the first wifebeater, coat and jeans he could find that morning. It's like a metaphor for class separation, if you'll forgive the amount of pretentiousness in that sentence.

In all seriousness, though, I think I prefer Dante over Raiden here. Okay, so he spouts off F-Bombs and punches out bodyguards like a sulky teenager who isn't getting his own way, but there was a very clear sense that he's facing something huge that he can only barely comprehend. The demonic foe is huge, omnipresent and pretty much hates him on sight, and there is a real uncertainty at times if Dante can even take on something so big it literally controls most of humanity behind the scenes, like a mouse trying to fight a humpback whale. Raiden, however, is backed by a technologically-advanced PMC with loads of money in their pockets and all the latest gadgets, and can cut entire buildings apart with a single swipe of his sword. It's hard to root for someone who doesn't feel like he can be threatened by anything, and that's why Dante is (relatively) more relatable than Raiden despite his constant abuse of the word fuck.

DmC: 1
MGR: 1

Combat!
Let's talk about the big gimmick of MGR first - Blade Mode. Once you've stuck an enemy, you can hold down Left Trigger and slow down time, allowing you to rattle the Right Analog Stick about and dice the foe into pieces. A blue meter beneath Raiden's health bar slowly decreases as you slice, and once it runs down you exit Blade Mode and can't use the slow-mo feature the next time you activate it. You get more points for the more pieces you cut an enemy into, and if you cut at a specific location you can then press B to follow up with the Zandatsu, which allows you to recover health and energy and nets you even more points. It feels awesome when you get it right, and the game makes a big thing of how you can cut practically anything with it, which must have been a programming nightmare - kudos to the man who managed to get that working!

However, Blade Mode only works when the game isn't asking you to make precise, fine movements. This is the sort of game where you can be surrounded by soldiers and helicopters vomiting missiles and bullets from every direction, and you can't stop to be accurate or else a Gekko might sneak up and stick his foot up Raiden's arse. But then the game asks you to precisely slice a hand off certain soldiers to obtain data, and even the Zandatsu requires that you precisely target a small orange box on the victim's stomach, and Blade Mode itself is inexact and wild by nature. It's entirely possible to waste your entire energy bar trying to strike a specific point on the target which won't hold still long enough for you to do so, and this is extremely aggrivating as well as flow-breaking.

It doesn't help that combat itself is rather awkward and sticky, and lacks the flow one expects from a hack-and-slasher. Every fight consists of the following, ad nauseum: beat an enemy long enough to render him vulnerable, dice him up with Blade Mode, perform Zandatsu, rinse and repeat. I don't know why the ability to perform actual air combos has to be bought as an upgrade, but the designer needs a slap in the face for that, because I only found this out when my attempts at dicing an opponent in midair failed because what I thought was the launcher can't be comboed from. There's nothing akin to DmC's chains or dash strikes to keep up the pace of battle, and so there's always a period where you'll be running around trying to find that one last enemy that keeps shooting you from really far away. And when you have a game mechanic (i.e., the parry system) that can be outwitted by rubbing the controller on your knee, then it might be worth not bothering at all.

DmC has it's combat down right - you have a variety of weapons that can be chained together for mind-buggeringly long combos, you have a mechanic that lets you jump from one enemy to the next to keep the flow going, and it's generally more fast-paced and frantic. It's basically being about the beauty of combat itself, rather than trying to build up to a spectacular end result that gets boring and stale after you've turned an enemy into prawn salad for the umpteenth time. On top of that, whilst Raiden is pretty much stuck with his sword and can only use rocket-launchers for the occasional hard-to-hit enemy, Dante wields things like flaming gloves and a scythe that can be swapped between during combat to adapt for every challenge, making you feel untouchable.

Also, where the fuck is dodge?! This might sound petty, but I won't apologize for having gotten used to being able to leap out of the way of a sneaky chainsaw attack coming from the corner of my eye. In MGR, if an enemy attacks you from behind whilst you're busy with his mate, you might as well have your cyber-trousers around your ankles.

DmC: 2
MGR: 1

Upgrades!
Okay, MGR definitely takes the prize for this one, because the benefits that might be had for having multiple weapons in DmC are compounded by the upgrade system being like an overly-complex DnD sheet. You acquire upgrade points based on how well you do in combat, but they come so sparsely that you have to think very hard about which skills you want to buy, especially early in the game when you have no idea if Trillion Stab is better than Bullet Rain or so on. On top of that, you have to level up your skills as well as buy new ones, but all your attacks are equally effective on the hordes anyway, so any upgrades to attack damage or speed don't seem rather pointless when you can just stunlock the enemy to death and get equally productive results.

MGR's upgrade system is much more refined: you have a currency, which you earn from killing all enemies, and you buy skills and upgrades with that currency like a shop of murder. And more to the point, each skill feels absolutely nessecary - Raiden needs all the edge he can get against things like unmaned helicopters, robot wolves and giant metal dinosaurs. All the skills in DmC are just more stylish ways of inflicting damage, and whilst there's nothing particulary wrong with that you could potentially proceed through the game without even buying all of them, which strikes me as missing the point somewhat. In a hack-and-slasher, the player needs to evolve in order to take out an increasingly dangerous threat, and there's nothing threatening about a giant demon that can be defeated by abusing the basic combos without any hinderance.

DmC: 2
MGR: 2

Exploration!
This one I agonized over a bit, because both titles have considerable flaws in this aspect. On the one hand, MGR's story focus means that exploration is severely limited, each level being mostly linear with little to no deviations in the path between battle arenas as a consequence of trying to show off epic setpieces. On the other hand, DmC's exploration is hampered by the game's obnoxious habit of blocking off areas in a level that require you to return after obtaining items from later levels, forcing people to replay the first few handfuls of missions in order to get 100% completion on them. This meant a lot of umming and hawing on this subject.

But in the long run, DmC gets the prize because at least there's actual exploration in it. Most importantly, there's an actual reason to do it - finding the keys and challenge doors to find the neccesary upgrade points one needs to make Dante stronger. On top of that, finding all the Lost Souls nets you a bonus amount of currency, which one needs to buy items to keep going in the game, and all MGR has to offer you is rocket launchers. Not a bad reward, but when ammo is scarce due to the focus on melee combat, rockets are pretty much a liability.

DmC: 3
MGR: 2

Setpieces!
Of course, what would a hack and slasher be without fancy environments to hack apart your foes in? MGR  does a good job of creating high-octane action by having sequences where Raiden runs along a moving train, down a collapsing clock tower while fighting a Metal Gear RAY and battling enemy cyborgs on top of a stormy tower. But the trouble with these is that they aren't exactly awe-inspiring or original - they feel like sequences ripped from a Borne or Bond movie that we've seen a hundred times before. The environments themselves are nothing to write home about, either, mostly consisting of ruined streets or military bases and little else besides. On top of that, the dull, greyish-brown pallette means that no matter how exciting the cutcenes get, they lack a certain punch that just  a bit more vibrant colour could have added.

DmC, however, takes the proveribal chocolate cake when coming up with environment design. When Dante is propelled into Limbo, the realm of the demons that lies just behind the human world, everything turns red and hazy and gains a clear desire to murder the poor drifter in violent ways. The scenery itself shifts and rips in desperate attempts to kill Dante, glowing letters flashing accross the landscape to try and demoralize us. And from murderous carnivals and a run-down mansion decaying with age, we move to hopping up floating boxes in a demonic drinks factory to swinging through corridors fromed from bombastic news logos. There's even a sequence during the battle with evil newscaster Bob Barbas where Dante is monitored by a news camera as he dices up enemies, complete with scrolling text below filled with blatant lies about how handsome the villain is. They're silly, they're unique and they're fun, which is more than can be said for Street #124 Raiden is running down.

DmC: 4
MGR: 2

And the winner is...

DmC Devil May Cry

 

So there you go. In my own opinion, DmC  is a much more interesting and unique game than Metal Gear Rising. Of course, this is just my opinion - both games have their merits, and one could arge that there's a place for both games on any gamer's shelf, regardless of dumb fanboy wars or negative press. DmC does some things better, and MGR does other things better, and it all boils down to what you as a consumer want from your hack-and-slashers. So if you have the disposable income, get either game you fancy, because they're both great on their own merits and one shouldn't let petty arguments and personal feelings stand in the way of their overall quality. Who knows? Perhaps if they were to combine, they could produce the greatest game in the hack-and-slash genre to ever exist, dethroning God of War from it's throne of skulls and decapitations.

 

Also, to the Metal Gear fanboys who I know will be off to humiliate themselves in the comments by saying MGR should have won this...

 



Majora's Mask - A Retrospective

Well, it's that time of year again. That time where the new releases list dries up like a river in the Sahara desert because all the big titles have been shoved back to Quarter 4 for various asinine reasons (I promised to myself I wouldn't mention Rayman Legends at this point oh bollocks). That time of year when we have to fall back on pre-owned titles to get our jolt of adrenaline that comes from money exchanging hands, or play through games already on our shelves just to stave off the boredom that comes with the long wait. And while I'm easily prepared to do the former, my natural state of "cannot be arsed" usually overrides such commitments, whilst my uni life demands I live on a strict budget in order to keep myself in pocket throughout the year, so a Metal Gear Rising review may not happen just yet.

So, fuck it. I'm going to take Option Number 3 - clamp my hands over my ears and gush about a really old game I really, really like!

See, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is not merely a game I think is good. Majora's Mask is my personal reminder that, for all the samey, linear war shooters on the one side and the condescending, half-arsed puzzle games on the other, gaming as a medium is still worth defending. It's solid proof that games can have both an engaging story and good gameplay without selfishly sacrificing one for another, and it's also a sterling example of taking an established trend down a different route can have unexpected and surprisingly outstanding results. Which is a shame, since every Zelda title (apart from Wind Waker, in my opinion) has mostly been stumbling about, trying to emulate the success of the original without grasping exactly why it worked in the first place.

From a non-gushy, cold and critical standpoint, Majora's Mask has actually aged very poorly. This was the days before the Nintendo gurus had managed to work out proper skeletal animation, so all the characters looked like poorly-made origami blobs held together with Pritt-Stick. On top of that, the graphical updates cobbled onto the Ocarina of Time engine meant that use of the Expansion Pack peripheral was mandatory, otherwise you ended up with flat textures, shitty draw distance and zero lighting effects. Gameplay, meanwhile, is barely evolved from OoT's template, and somehow manages to feature the worst qualities of both old and new Zelda's alike - I forgot how bloody annoying getting every mask in the game was, or how much Tatl grated on my nerves. At least Navi didn't call you a spacker every opportunity she got.

Also fuck this guy. Fuck him sideways.

But where Majora's Mask shines is in the story aspect. Think Bastion meets Looper with a smattering of the Sword of Damocles and that's the game's setup - you have a clock at the bottom of the screen that slowly counts away the three in-game days before the fucking moon crashes down onto the land of Termina and kills everything in it. This adds a sense of urgency to the quest that Ocarina  severely lacked - in that game, there seemed to be no real reason to hurry up and sort out the mess Ganondorf made of everything. Here, we have a clearly defined goal that needs accomplishing, bolstered by the threat of an honest-to-buggernuts apocalypse looming over our heads with that horrible, nightmare-inducing gurn on it's face. Either we save the world one dungeon at a time or we all die in a firey blaze of terror and pain.

The result is a surpsisingly dark and heavy atmosphere and tone that most Zelda games don't seem to have anymore. As the days tick away, you get to learn more and more about the people around you and see how they react to the looming threat bearing down on them. Unlike Ocarina, where the NPC's were mostly there to provide silly dialogue, every character has a name and a personality, and it's fascinating to watch how their attitudes and personalities change as the threat of inescapable death grows ever bigger. Mutoh, the head carpenter, grimly accepts his fate, whilst the postman cracks and becomes a sobbing wreck looking for a way out. You become severely attached to the characters as you do your best to prevent their demise at the hands of this terrible force of nature, which is something most modern Zelda's haven't done to me for a while.

And it's not just watching how the side characters react to the changing of days, either. You get to see snippets of their lives as well, building a vast and richly-detailed world in compasion to the almost empty vastness of Ocarina's Hyrule, which to me always felt somewhat depopulated. You also get to interact with them and influence their lives as well, such as solving Enid Blyton mysteries, infiltrating pirate strongholds or protecting a farm's livelihood from bandits and aliens. And the takes on the different races are surpsingly unique - the Deku are xenophobic dicks, the Gorons hold races, the Zoras love music and an entire ancient empire also gets worked in somehow. It's one of the few games where I give a toss about the side characters, and that's rare.

...No comment.

The time travel mechanic adds another layer of depth to the story as well. Giving the player the ability to rewind time back to the first day seems ripe for abuse at first, but then you kick that ripeness out of the way by removing the player's collectables with every jump. Combine this aspect with the relatable characters and the result is a haunting moral dilemma that forces the player to balance emotional attachment with logic and reasoning. Suppose they fail to save Romani Ranch from the aliens - do they carry on, having to bear the failure for the remainder of the adventure? Or do they rewind time to try again, sacrificing their hard-earned progress to try and redeem themselves? Sometimes, you don't need a binary morality mechanic to force the player to make hard desicions - a magic ocarina is often enough.

I was being facetious earlier - while the gameplay is still built on the classic Zelda formula, enough is done to elevate it above the standards set by Ocarina and make it fresh and original. The masks lend themselves to some creative puzzles and solutions, such as using the silly pig mask to sniff out mushrooms for a healing medicine, the Mask of Truth to pick out the winner for the dog racetrack sidequest or the Zora Mask to navigate underwater passages and kill giant eels to save Zora eggs. It's not gimmicky like Skyward Sword's dowsing mechanic which exists only to showcase the Wiimotion Plus - it's woven neatly into the story and never feels out of place. Also the new Ocarina songs are woven well into the narrative, with creative applications such as calming down a giant, ice-breathing Goron or serenading a Zora lady to make her speak again.

And lead a chicken parade, if you had the time.

...Yes, those do sound odd, taken out of context, don't they? I guess it speaks to the wealth of imagination Nintendo had back in the day, and it just goes to show how something like this wouldn't get made today unless it had a feature to showcase it's console's big gimmick. There are some delightfully oddball moments in the game to juxtapose the heavy atmopshere, such as finding some toilet paper for a disembodied hand, staying up all night listening to an old lady's story, or impressing snooty street artists with interprative dance moves you learned from a ghost. That's the kind of wackyness you'd expect from a Paper Mario game, and yet Majora's Mask pulls it off with such gusto you can't help but applaud it. If only Nintendo would try such things again, rather than the endless fetchquests they seem content to make us do nowadays.

So there you go. A game that I would heartily reccomend to anyone in a heartbeat - not so much on the gameplay, as good as it is, but soley on the story aspect. If Ocarina of Time's story was a King Athur story - an epic romp through a fantastical world, then Majora's Mask is a Harry Potter novel - more focused and with greater intruige and better characters. One could perhaps blame it for the mountains of dialogue and sidequest overload of moden Zelda titles, but that's Nintendo trying to ham-handedly capture the spirit of both this and OoT without understanding the subtleties. And in doing so they've been churning out games that, while great on their own merits, can't simply hold a candle to what somebody managed to squeeze onto a now-obsolete cartridge.

So let me clue you in, Ninty - Majora's Mask worked because it was so off-the-wall compared to pervious titles, and perhaps you should try thinking outside the box the same way you did with this one. Ressurrect that old plot for Link's Crossbow Training, where Link jumps into the future Terminator style. Try a steampunk setting so we can ride in airships and have cars powered by coal, or a spaghetti-western with lasso's and shootouts. Or, if you really want to alienate your hardcore fans, go the DmC route - outsource it to a western developer and tell them to recast Link as a dark-haired emo who punches out bodyguards with one hand, knocks back whiskey with the other and takes a drunken piss on the classic Link outfit in the opening sequence.

...On second thoughts, maybe don't do that.

DmC Devil May Cry - First Impressions

Okay, let me just get this out of the way before I begin.

DISCLAIMER: I am a twenty-year-old, slighty pudgy nerd stuck in a rented apartment in the middle of England with nothing but this internet connection and a slightly unhealthy obsession with Maltesers to keep him going through every day. I have no links to Capcom, Ninja Theory or any big gaming company involved with the development of DmC Devil May Cry you care to name, because I'm not cool enough for that. So there is no possible way I could have been "paid off" to say the things about DmC that I am going to say - I have always been and will continue to be an impartial speaker, with no general bias towards any perticular property, console or company that exists. Anyone who wishes to insinuate otherwise can direct their enquiries to the nearest ravenous, man-eating predator.

Right, that's that. Also, let me get this other thing out of the way - I never was a fan of Dante from Capcom's Devil May Cry series.

I was introduced to him via Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and his cocky, one-liner-shooting smugness immediately made me dislike him almost instantly. On top of that, Yahtzee Chroshaw's mostly negative review of Devil May Cry 4, as well as a mish-mash of conflicting evidence, implanted me the subconcious message to avoid any game in the series the same way I avoided Final Fantasy games back then (until Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time, that is, but shut up). From getting my ass handed to me to fuzzy second-hand comments about which game was the best and how technical you could get with what seemed to be dumb, over-the-top anime games, I just thought to myself for the longest time that the Devil May Cry series just wasn't for me.

So when Ninja Theory got torn apart for changing a lot of things in their reboot of the franchise, I was left kind of lost. Sure, Dante looked different. Sure, the world was different. Yes, creative director Tameem Antoniades was kind of a prick when you get right down to it. And yes, F-Bombs and Sniperbortions were being thrown around like the ball pit balls in Charlie Chalk's Fun Factory and the writing was juvenile as fuck. But I didn't really understand the outrage the fans were spewing onto the internet. Dante was still an unlikeable prick, even if he had been listening to Linkin Park for a bit and cutting his hair, and the game was still an over-the-top hack-and-slasher. What were people getting so mad about?

So today I toddled down to my local games retailer and bought a copy to see what the fuss was about.

So what's the story? Well, in this alternate-universe prequel-reboot... thing, Dante is living in a trailer and just trying to get through life with as little fuss and as much booze and angel stripper shagging as possible. Unfortunately, he just so happens to live in a city controlled by demons, who are keeping the public stupid via soft drinks and a terrible Bill O'Reily impersonator, and something about our hero(?) rubs them the wrong way enough for them to suck him into the alternate world of Limbo and send a giant monster after him to blow up his house. After dealing with that mishap, Dante is taken by a mysterious woman named Kat to meet his brother Vergil, leader of the terrorist organization known as Anonymous The Order, who reveals that there may be more to Dante than he realizes...

So going into the game, I could most definitely see why hardcore fans of the original games might bring out the pitchforks and torches. Not only has Ninja Theory seen fit to change Dante's design (on Capcom's suggestion, ironically enough), they also changed his character from a confident, self-assured badass to a whiny, self-important bellend. Tameem took every opportunity to insult the fans at every turn, claiming he had no respect for the original quadroligy  and that his story would "stand among the greats" despite... well, Sniperbortions. The change from Capcom's MT Framework to the Unreal Engine was seen as a downgrade by the technical fans, who claimed that the drop in framerate would cut out the depth of the combat. And on top of that, the writing is crap even by Capcom standards, and considering Street Fighter X Tekken reduced Kazuya to spouting cliche'd villainous one-liners, that's saying a lot.

So yes, I can perfectly understand why this game should get the flak it-

I AM THE FUCKING GOD OF HELLFIRE

...Woah, I do apologize. It's just that after experiencing the combat of DmC, I've developed the uncontrollable urge to bellow such lines at the top of my voice.

DmC, in my mind, stands next to Max Payne 3 as one of those games where, if you get it right, you feel like an untouchable god among men. It's the sort of game where you can walk into a room full of slavering demons and, a minute of button-pressing later, you can walk out again completely unscathed and feeling like a badass, with only the blood stains to tell the story of how you should not be fucked with ever. It's stylish, fairly simple to grasp, and once you truly get the hang of it it's a satisfying as wrestling open a particularly stubborn bottle top, although my Darksiders playthroughs might have helped pepare me for this game to a degree.

See, the game is obsessed with style. You build up "style" by chaining together successful combos, and the higher your style ranking at the end of a fight, the more points get added onto your score at the end of the level. You also get rewarded with currency and upgrade points to spend on new abilities, and if you get struck, you have to build up the style meter from scratch, and may not get as many rewards as before. So the idea is to basically be an untouchable badass who cuts apart anything that looks at him funny, flitting from mook to mook like an enraged butterfly on a sugar rush and busting out unimaginably crazy attacks. If you seriously don't find something awesome about keeping an enemy afloat with a constant stream of bullets, then it's time to re-assess the way you look at things.

But what DmC brings to the table are the interchangeable fighting modes that grant Dante different weapons and abilities to use in combat. In his standard mode, Dante wields his familiar sword Rebellion and uses his twin pistols Ebony and Ivory for long-ranged attacks. Pulling Left Trigger activates Angel Mode, where Dante uses the Osiris scythe for crowd control and fast, multi-hitting strikes. Pulling Right Trigger, inversely, acivates Demon Mode, where Dante's attacks with the giant hammer Arbiter are slow yet can shatter any defense. Both modes also feature different grappling techniques that allow you to deal with pesky airborne or far-away enemys and extend combos - the key is switching between the two modes to build up the style meter effectively.

And when you get it right, it feels fucking amazing. Here's a combo I'm very fond of at my current stage in the game - rush in with the Trillion Stabs, pull the enemy back with the demon chain, dice them up with the scythe, uppercut them into the air, perform a special move that's basically a rising tornado of bullets, dice them up some more, yank them back again, then smash them into the ground with the axe. The length of that sentence alone should tell you that the number of ways to inflict major pain on the demonic enemies you encounter is enough to keep things Schadenfreude-tastic, and I haven't even progressed that far in the game yet. There should be a law banning this kind of catharticism in the world.

And there is a feature in this game I will happily debase myself in gratitude for in future hack-and-slashers, and that's the "Try" feature in the shop. In games that allow you to spend points or whatever on buying new moves, I tend to get flummoxed by the array of choice I have, unsure wherever to pick the arm blades or the glidy-wings and wherever it's going to bite me in the arse later. Thankfully, DmC's shop grants you the ability to go into the game's Training mode to test out the move before you purchase it, allowing you to figure out if you could naturally work this move into your repitoire. Oh, yeah, and there's a training mode as well, which is also cathartic, but more in the punching-bag sense of whaling one this one unfortunate demon over and over until your thumbs hurt.

That said, practicing flashy combos in a white void against one enemy is one thing. Trying to remember your elaborate sequence of grapples, slashes and bullet bonanzas in the middle of a crowded room full of various types of jerks is another. Due to the huge variety of nasties all closing in to take a bite out of Dante's underfed arse, I tended to panic and mash buttons like Woody Woodpecker, occasionally pulling out the chains or hitting dodge when my Spider-Sense kicked in. I guess all that gushing about the flowing and intuitive nature of the combat is invalidated now, but it's this same button-mashing instinct that tends to get me through most fighters, so it seems to be working out fine here. I still get, like, B's and A's on the style meter.

So yes, DmC Devil May Cry can be called a lot of bad things. You can call it a catastrophic abomination that takes a dump on everything that was good about the previous games. You can call it a childishly-written lump of bad dialogue that reads like a 13-year-old's fan fiction fever dream. You can even call it another in a long line of Capcom's big blunders after the whole Mega Man and Street Fighter X Tekken debacles. But there have been few games I have ever played where I can cry "Giant Hary Bollocks to story and character development" and go smash someone's face apart in a kickass manner. One of those is Saints Row The Third, and the other is DmC.

So if nothing else, I can reccommend this game on the strength of it's combat and maybe the platforming sections, but I haven't played far enough to talk much about those. Maybe my not playing the previous games invalidates my opinion and secures me a spot in that special Hell nerds condemn people to for not agreeing with their views, but I'm having so much fun right now I simply don't care, so suck it, haters. If you're determined enough to overlook the troubled development history, unsubtle social commentary and flimsy writing of DmC, or never really cared about the franchise and just want to hit things with various kinds of metal stick, then I definitely say it's worth a

EAT SWORD YOU DEMONIC FUCKWITS

...That's it. Where's my cider?

Steel Komodo's Top 11 Favourite Pokémon

As I may have expounded on a previous blog post of mine, I still love Pokémon. I love it from it's cheesy chiptune soundtrack to it's ever-growing legion of colourful beasties to tame and build into unstoppable powerhouses. It's one of the few games (apart from Fire Emblem, which I just discovered) where I can tolerate turn-based combat, and with Pokémon X and Pokémon Y looming in an October-ly direction, I thought I would pay tribute to a series that has managed to capture my attention for as long as it has (except for the spin-offs, haven't touched those yet). So here we go - another Top Eleven list, this time comprising of my most favorite 'Mons of all time, from the humble days of Red/Blue to the current generation of Black/White.

A small thing to keep in mind: This list does not in any way factor how the Pokémon are viewed competitively. Because I am diametrically opposed to the notion of tiers, wherever a Pokémon is considered tourney-viable or not has no holding on the progression of this list. This is simply those 'Mons I think look cool or inventive or played a big part in my experience with the games.

So here we go!

11. Smeargle
Unless you're one of those people who don't have an appreciation for the wierd, then Smeargle isn't for you. This is why he makes it so low on the list - he's not really a Pokémon that most would consider "cool" or "inspired" in any way. He's a Normal-type, a typing which is considered mostly useless even in regular casual play. His design is nothing to write home about - a monkey with a paintbrush for a tail and a tongue sticking out like he's tried to eat thistles like Tigger did in The House at Pooh Corner. And he only ever learns one move - Sketch, which randomly turns into one of the many hundreds of moves available, and not all of them useful. So what makes him special compared to the fan favourites like Gardevoir or Lucario?

I guess I like Smeargle exactly for that reason. He's not over-the-top in concept like Lucario or a legendary like Deoxys. Hell, his design is pretty simplistic, even by the standards of most Normal-type Pokémon today. But he's an oddball, one of those Pokémon that even by the wacked-out standards of the world he occupies just doesn't make any logical sense. And sometimes we need the oddballs to balance out the overblown "cool" look of legendaries, or the mundanity of most of the 'mons you find right outside your doorstep. On top of that, Sketch makes him something of an unpredictable foe - no two battles against him are ever the same, and you have to be on your toes all the time. Smeargle is unique because of his oddity, and that's why he makes this list.

10. Escavalier
Who remembers those Pokémon that could only evolve when traded? Well, up until Black/White, the series was kind of hoping you didn't. Generation 1 introduced it with four different creatures - Haunter, Kadabra, Machamp and Graveler, and Generation 2 then refined the concept by adding Pokémon what could only evolve when traded whilst holding a certain item - Slowbro to Slowking, Onix to Steelix and so forth. But from then on the concept kinda stagnated, with no Pokémon that embraced the concept bringing anything new to the table apart from Clampearl and it's two evolutions. But then along came Shelmet and Karrablast, and they said "Hey, remember when this was new and exciting? We sure do! HAIKIBA!"

Focusing soley on Escavalier, it's easy to see why this makes the list. It's based on the concept of European knights, which means it has an awesome crest on it's head and fucking lances for arms. And if that wasn't badass enough, it's a proper Bug/Steel type, none of that wishy-washy in-betweeny approach Burmy and Wormadam were going for. This means it only has one true type weakness - fire. The rest can only watch in despair whilst Escavalier stabs them full of holes like Swiss Cheese, with it's lance arms. If Chuck Norris was a Pokémon, then Escavalier might not be that Pokémon, but he'd be pretty darn close.  Look at him. He's too busy rocking those lance arms to care for your problems. And that's why he's badass.

9. Ninjask
Ninjask is one of those Pokémon where you just know it's going to be cool. I mean, the name alone rolls beautifully off of the tongue - Ninjask. The moment you hear that name, you know good things will come of it. I mean, I could talk about how much better it's counterpart Shedinja is due to the Wonder Guard ability making it practically invincible, or how it's preevolution Nincada is a horrible bore to train because it takes so long to learn anything decent. I could also mention any of the more viable Bug types out there, like Dustox or Drapion with their poision-based movesets designed for crippling the opposition and much higher attack stats. But basically fuck you, it's Ninjask. It's the Die Hard thing - the fact that it exists quashes all arguments.

I mean, look at it. It's sleek, it's compact, and yet it has claws longer than it's own body and a golden mask like something out of a martial arts drama. It's a look that screams "I might be small, but look away for even a split second and I'll fucking end you". And it's Pokédex entry states that apparently it moves so goddamn fast that for a long time people thought it was literally invisible Anything that moves that fast is definitely worth adding to your collection. Ninjask is probably one of my favourite non-legendary Generation 3 Pokémon of all, if not the best, and it stands out because it was a Pokémon that, from looking at it alone, I knew I had to have when I started out. And that's an achievement, as far as being an awesome Pokémon goes.

8. Chatot
Like Smeargle before him, Chatot is one of my favourites because of his completey oddity compared to the rest of the cast. Chatot was one of the first Pokémon to be revealed for the Diamond and Pearl games, alongside Buizel and Mantyke, as a promotion for the upcoming Pokémon Ranger movie starring Manaphy. And we were all hyped as hell for more details on it - we wanted to know if it was a pure Flying type, what moves it could learn, what sort of significance would it play. We were to be dissapointed quite a bit - it stuck to the Normal/Flying mold of most bird Pokémon, it was significantly weaker than most over Flying types and it was only available via trading with some other douche on a random route. It was a novelty, merely existing to flesh out the Pokémon roster than add anything new.

But it's Chatot's unique feature that earns it a spot on my list. Chatter, a move that damages and confuses the opponent, can be customised to play back any sounds you like by speaking into the DS microphone, which also changes it's in-game cry. Now, I want you to imagine facing this thing in a fight and suddenly being confronted with a shout of "HI BILLY MAYS HERE" from this otherwise cute and innocent-looking Pokémon, or even Dante from DmC bragging about his penis size. It's this tiny yet easily-abused feature which puts Chatot at the number 8 spot on this list - sure, it exists only to shoehorn in the DS mic, but who wouldn't want a Pokémon that recites internet memes every time it attacks? I know I would catch it in a heartbeat.

7. Typhlosion
Anyone fortunate enough to choose a Cyndaquil at the start of Gold/Silver, and not stupid enough to pick Chikorita or Totodile, would have their patience rewarded. From a sleepy shrew-thing it evolved into Quilava, which was awesome in it's own right - a flaming badger-weasel with a look of malicious intent and the firepower to back that expression up. But with enough perseverance, levelling up and swearing at enemy Pokémon, both wild and Trainer-owned alike, then an already-cool beastie bulked up into the marvel of creation we call Typhlosion. Evolution doesn't describe the change - it's more akin to a sudden steroid binge that turned it into a hulking mass of awesome - even as a kid, I thought Typhlosion was a baddas mofo.

Look at that majestic yellow and black fur. Look at that collar of flames, so striking and imposing on what would otherwise be a dull and mundane creature. Look at those red eyes, that bellowing mouthful of sharp teeth. This is one of those Pokémon you just don't want to cross, even if you know you have a type advantage against it. If this thing had a voice, it would sound like Christian Bale, storming around the battlefield and yelling at it's comrades that it's going to kick their fucking asses if they don't shut up for a second. On top of that, it was introduced to make Flame Wheel, the cool indie alternative to Fire Blast, a better move by being associated with it. Keep your Feraligatr's, man, this badass badger's where it's at.

6. Genesect
Okay, I swear this is gonna be the last bug type that gets featured on this list - Escavalier and Ninjask were already quite enough. But if you've been on Chatzy recently, you will understand fully why I have found a new appreciation for a Pokémon that, apart from the cassette gimmick, seems rather underrated as Pokémon go. Okay, so it's a bit obvious that a Pseudo-Legendary would make this list - they have to look kinda cool in order to make it worth all the effort to capture them, or else no-one would even bother. But Genesect makes this list for one specific reason, one which Gooper Blooper pointed out to us all on the Chatzy but I think bears repeating here. Genesect is basically the Pokémon equivalent of a Zoofighter.

Think about it. He's a prehistoric, carnivorous insect ressurected by a team of morally-questionable scientists and augmented with various mechanical upgrades in order to be a weapon of mass destruction. He has metal plating instead of a carapace and a massive cannon on his back. And to top it off, he can turn into a jet and fucking fly. I don't care if it's coincidental - the moment I catch a Genesect, I am going to name him Gravitas in honour of the wonderful animal pugilism and forum-based frolics that brought us all together. And then I'm gonna teach him Fly, because he can learn that apparently, and sing snatches of the Transformers theme every time we head to a new town. Not sure about checking out his new movie, though.

5. Anorith
Ah, the Fossil Pokémon. In Generation 1, they were a novelty - pick one of these two uber-rare, extinct Pokémon and that's it. They kinda got abandoned for Gen 2 before Ruby/Sapphire brought them back with a vengeance, reminding us of how awesome they were. And now every Pokémon games since then has done the concept to death and we're all wishing they'd hurry up and jump the shark by throwing in the inevitable T-Rex/Stegosaurus combo already. But Generation 3's fossil Pokémon deserve a close examination, mostly because they didn't have to rely on stock beasts like Generation 4's felt it had to do. And in my playthrough of Ruby, I picked up Anorith, so that's partly why he makes the Number 5 spot.

I think Anorith was the Pokémon that introduced me to Anomalocaris, the creature that inspired it and it's evolution, Armaldo. Anomalocaris, for the unitiated, was a prehistoric sea creature that lived in the Precambrian era, a voracious predator that used it's spiked mouthparts to grab hold of food and hold it in place to be devoured. For Game Freak to base one of their new Pokémon on a prehistoric creature that had only been recently discovered is pretty ballsy, and on top of that it shows the wealth of imagination they used to have before Black/White started rehashing Pidgey and Rattata. So despite his double-weakness to Grass types and goofy looks, Anorith secures a comfortable 5th place on my Top 11 Favourite Pokémon for sheer imagination.

4. Electivire
Let's face it - creating new Pokémon is hard. I have enough trouble conceptualizing an entire roster of starters, let alone 150 of the new bastards. This may explain why Game Freak had to rehash old concepts for Black/White, and also why they often filled the roster of previous games with older Pokémon to save the effort of creating new 'Mons. Now, there is one way to get around this pitfall, and that is to design new evolutions of previous Pokémon to try and give those golden oldies some fresh time in the spotlight. But this is extremely risky, and if you don't do it right (Lickilicky, anyone?) then people are going to hate you for it, wondering why you didn't just use the slots to create new Pokémon instead.

Electivire is a new evolution of a previous Pokémon done right. It's everything one expects an evolved Electabuzz to be - it's muscular, it's bizzare-looking and it has jump-leads for tails - always a bonus in my books. The whole design of the thing screams powerful, brutal and sadistic, not afraid to punch your lights out if you cross it in any way and looking as though it's plotting more pain against your life with every moment. If it were a pro wrestler, it would have this for it's theme and it would employ suplexes and backbreakers at every opportunity. Rhyperior could have taken this spot for similar reasons, but Electivire holds the distinction of looking cooler than it's previous form, which is more than can be said for Magmortar. Or Lickilicky.

3. Bulbasaur
I don't really think I need to explain why Bulbasaur even needs to be on this list. But if I didn't, then that would be cheating, so I shall. See, the reason Bulbasaur makes it in here over any of the other starters was because, for players of Red/Blue, he was the only logical choice. The first two Gym Leaders, Brock and Misty, both used types that Bulbasaur, in all of his Grass type glory, had absolutely no trouble curb-stomping given the right training. With enough patience, one could teach Bulbasaur his two big Grass moves, Leech Seed and Vine Whip, in little-to-no time at all, and then one could simply thrash both Leaders without even needing assistance from any other Pokémon on your team at all.

You picked Charmander? How cute. Good luck getting curbstomped by Brock because you forgot to catch a Mankey outside of Vidiran City, close to where Gary F. Oak was lurking. You picked Squirtle? Fair enough, you'd be alright against Brock, but you'd have to comb the grasses looking for Grass types to take on Misty later on, or else you were fucked. But for those of us who had the brains to put aside the dumb argument of which starter is the coolest (IT'S SNIVY YOU MORONS), then Bulbasaur was the only starting Pokémon that made any sense to pick. Start off with this little dino-frog thing and you'd go far, my friend. You'd go so far that Team Rocket would need the Hubble Telescope just to catch the merest glimpse of you.

2. Vaporeon
Yes, I'm not making it any secret that first and third Generations are my favourite, am I? Point is, they stand out because they were the only Pokémon games I completed all the way through at some point. I never beat Gold, so that's why it's lineup doesn't get much attention as the others do on this list. But back on topic - the only argument dumber than which starter was the coolest was which evolution of Eevee was the coolest. Nobody stuck up for plain old vanilla Eevee  - it merely existed to allow people access to Super Jolteon Arcade Edition or Ultimate Flareon vs. Erika 3, with some training and a stone's purchase being the only hurdles. But my favourite will always be Vaporeon Continuum Shift Extend, and this is where the analogy breaks down.

I literally have no idea what it is that attracts me to Vaporeon so much. Is it it's more defensive playstyle, with attacks like Acid Armour that contrast with Jolteon's speed bias or Flareon's attack-focused growth? Is it it's sleek, mermaid-inspired design that I always found more aesthetically-pleasing than Jolteon's spikes or Flareon's fluffy appearance? Or was it the fact that I was finally sick of Charmeleon losing in fights and got a quick and dirty Water type to compensate, regardless of the fact that Erika was a Grass type user and therefore a pushover? Nevertheless, you can brag about your Leafeons and Sylveons all you like, but Vaporeon will alwasy be my preferred Eeveelution of choice. (Ugh, I hate that term)

And my Number 1 Favourite Pokémon is...

1. Jirachi
Now, I know what you're thinking. "Oh, a Legendary/Psychic-type Pokémon got the top spot! I'm looking forward to reading about how SK thinks it looks cute and how it's got all these fancy moves and how it fixes a game-breaking bug and that he genuinely liked the movie it appeared in!" And while I do like Jirachi for some, if not all, of those reasons (I never say Jirachi: Wish Maker, so I can't pass opinion on that), trust me when I say Jirachi doesn't get the top spot on those reasons alone. No, the Wish Pokémon gets here for an extremely specific and strong reason, one which I hope you'll agree with me on - mostly due to the fact that involves inflicting a lot of mental pain on oneself. Brace yourself, because this is gonna be a shocker.

It's the sole reason I played Pokémon Channel.

Allow me to wait whilst you recover from your heart attacks, replace your exploded heads and empty your mind of all those fucks. And then allow me to elaborate on that previous sentence.

As I'm sure everyone who can call themselves a Pokémon fan knows, Pokémon Channel is a godawful abomination. It's like Asura's Wrath in that I'd be hard pressed to even call it a video game, but this doesn't have the excuse of being, well, Asura's Wrath. For all it's faults, Asura's Wrath at least had over-the-top visuals, an epic soundtrack and that non-sequitur hot springs scene. Pokémon Channel is a painful, snore-worthy grind-fest where you baby-sit the world's most ungrateful Pikachu as he watches the same shitty fucking television shows for the eleventy-billionth SHITTY FUCKING TIME okay I'm calm. The point is, with it's utterly asinine setup and card-collecting mechanic, this seems to be the kind of game that assumes children will play anything as long as that fucking yellow rat is on it, and it's just as condescending as you would imagine. Were it not for the somewhat cool shopping channel featuring a sunglasses-wearing Squirtle, as well as the existance of Billy Bob's Huntin'-n-Fishin', I'd be inclined to call this the worst game I've ever played.

But it is worth it, oh, it is so worth sitting through the torture. Once you've unlocked all those channels and extras, found those CD's in the game's clumsy attempt to add some kind of a plot and sat through that god-awful Pichu Bros. cartoon, then you get the opportunity to download Jirachi to your copy of Ruby or Sapphire, provided you have a space in your party. The opportunity to get my hands on this exclusive, ultra-rare Pokémon was the only reason I brought the game - I knew I was diving into pure shit when I loaded the game up, and my only regret was spending money on the thing. But once it was over and I could get my mitts on Jirachi, then the sense of achievement I felt was greater even than beating the Elite Four itself. "Finally," I thought to myself, "a reason to stop playing this godawful waste of ploygons and programming routines!"

When you have to sit through literall Hell to reach the light at the end of the tunnel, then the reward seems all the sweeter when you consider the pain you had to inflict on yourself. Jirachi isn't just my favourite Pokémon of all time - it's the Pokémon that I forced myself to play a shitty spinoff game for. He's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the gold medal at the end of the marathon, the loving kiss from the princess after the grueling battle against the dragon. His existance alone made purchasing Pokémon Channel completely worth it.

Also, he has a third eye in his stomach.

Fucking creepy.

And now, honourable mentions:

• Omastar: For generally looking badass, but losing out to Anorith on coolness factor.
• Suicine: For being my all-time favourite of any legendary trio. But putting three legendaries on this list would be cheating.
• Marshtomp: For carrying my team through the difficult Flannery period of Ruby. Sadly, was not badass enough to beat out Bulbasaur, currently occupies slot 12 on this list.
• Darkrai: For sparing my parents a grueling drive all the way to Manchester for the sake of an exclusive download event. Thank God for Action Replay. Also for having (imo) the only good movie in the series.
• Krookodile: For basically being Sharptooth in The Land Before Time. Seriously, go check his Pokédex entry.
• The Litwick Family: For being the best fucking concept for Pokémon ever.

Well, that was another Top 11 list! Hope you enjoyed reading it, and stay tuned for hopefully more original content!

Steel Komodo's Top 11 Games That I Stopped Playing

Well, Gooper Blooper did his top 100 list of video games he likes. And seeing as how we people like to follow bandwagons, I figured that I should go ahead do something similar to that. Of course, we all know that I'm not the best at doing very long projects like what Goops did - my constant delaying of Monster Mash fights speaks to that. So there's no way I'll be able to do a daily list of my personal favourite games. Instead, I'm going to do a one-off thing - a top eleven list of games I really like, but stopped playing for one reason or another. Why top eleven? Because I like to rip off the Nostalgia Critic :P

Now, keep in mind that this list is going to be limited to games I actually still own, and not just any old game I picked up and never finished. For instance, I never got around to finishing Mega Man: Powered Up, but I sold my copy recently, and I can't talk about a game I don't own anymore because there's no way I'd be able to play it again if I wanted. Also, this isn't a list of "great" games by any measure - this is just unfinished games rated by my own personal standards. And on top of that, all release dates listed are for the game's European release, not the American one, unless stated otherwise.

So, with that said, let's begin!

 

11. Saints Row The Third
Genre: Third-Person Sandbox Shooter
System: XBox 360, PS3
Developer: Volition, Inc.
Publisher: THQ
Released: November 15, 2011

Saints Row The Third is what I like to call a "shameless" game - one of those games you know you wouldn't get away with playing in polite company, yet that's exactly why you play it. In your quest to help the Third Street Saints get revenge on the enigmatic Syndicate, you'll drive at top speed down the wrong side of the road, pimp your ride with Boudiccea wheel spikes, piledrive people's faces into the pvement, dress up like a Care Bear, attack rival gangs with a VTOL and carry a giant floppy dildo as a melee weapon. It's madcap sandbox madness at its finest, and you'll be giggling like a madman with every second.

However, the fact that it's a sandbox is the main factor of why I stopped playing this. See, put me in a sandbox game and the first thing I do... is play the story. Odd, you might think. That's a great reason to keep playing it, why am I listing that as a negative thing? Except I play the story up until the point where I have at least above-average weapons, upgrades, vehicles etc. and then simply break off to faff around in the sandbox world with my jetpacks and laser guns and whatnot. And then I inevitably get tired of the whole "unstoppable god of destruction thing" and can't be arsed to carry on with the story, so I stop playing the game.

I've had fun with sandbox games while I've had them - Prototype and Just Cause 2 get some honourable mentions here - but they've never been able to keep my interest for long. Just Cause suffers from being shackled to a fairly realistic setting, thus denying us of real sandbox potential, whilst Prototype has a whiny sociopath for a protagonist, which hits a bit closer to home. Saints Row The Third makes it onto the list, however, just because of the scale of madcap antics you can pull off, and if there was a game that combined Prototype's soft science with SR3's colourful mayhem then I'd be all over that like wasps on a picnic.

 

10. Endless Ocean
Genre: Simulation
System: Wii
Developer: Akria
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: November 9, 2007

Developed by the people who brought us the underhwelming Street Fighter EX series, Endless Ocean is basically their way of apologizing for it. This is, at heart, a scuba-diving simulator with a great atmosphere and some wonderful music. You swim through the blue waters of an unspecified, marvelling at the wonderous array of sea-life that surrounds you. You can ride on the back of dolphins, turtles, whales and more, and even interact with smaller creatures that lurk in the coral reefs and the depths of the ocean. Even the sharks are placid and won't attack you. It's calm, it's serene and it's an experience like no other.

At least, that's what the hype promised.

So I buy the game, pop it in and start it up. One totally-not-religious title song later, and we get our premise - our player is a diver in the fictional sea of Manaurai, tasked to chart local sea life and is occasionally hired out by rich companies to find sunken treasure. Assisted by his companion Katherine Sunday, and with a charming penguin companion by his side, the hero will encounter the greatest mysteries of both the natural and ancient world, which eventually leads to a shadowy conspiracy as the greed of mankind once again threatens to disrupt the harmony of the natural world-

Har de har. Very funny. Now get out of the way so I can play Endless Ocean.

...Oh, this is Endless Ocean.

How awkward.

There's developer secrets, Arika, and then there's blatant lying about your product. Not once in any of the trailers I saw or the reviews I read were any mentions of a boring, tacked-on story mode that locks us away from the open-world swimming and scenery we were promised. Granted, it's hard to get away with making your game about nothing in today's bloated, uncreative industry, but you could have at least been honest about what your game was in the first place rather than trying to cover it up with your advertising. "No, really, it's just a diving simulator, there's no story or anything, honest". Mind you, not telling us about the campaign mode - which you have to beat to unlock free mode, by the way - was probably a smart move, because it's about as preachy, stupid and predictable as any Ferngully film you care to name.

Okay, I'm being overly mean - the environments are breathtaking, the music is gorgeous and that deep sea level is fucking terrifying. All of that was promised, and we got it. But if I have to slog through repetetive missions and cringe-inducing dialogue to get to the part of the game I was promised, then something is clearly wrong. So yes, I admire Endless Ocean for what it set out to do, but I'm not prepared to be lied to, or treated like I'm a dog that has to be lead through a plastic tunnel before I get a treat. I had fun with the game at the time, but I can't really reccomend it to anyone unless penguins are your thing.

9. Yoshi Touch & Go
Genre: Side-Scrolling Adventure
System: Nintendo DS
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: May 6, 2005

Yohsi's first proper solo outing since Super Mario Advance 3, this game is a retelling of the classic Yoshi's Island story designed to showcase the features of the DS. You start by bringing Baby Mario down to safety by drawing cloud paths, then use that same technique to guide a constantly-running Yoshi across dangerous pits and through hordes of enemies. The Touch Screen also lets you fire your trademark eggs at enemies, which becomes neccesary when you drop Baby Mario and he lets out that ever-cursed wailing that still haunts veteran players of Yoshi's Island to this day. Thanks for bringing back the night terrors, Nintendo.

Yoshi Touch & Go makes the list for the same reason I put Endless Ocean in here - I feel like I was conned. Not by the company, god no - at least they had the decency to tell us what was in their game in the first place. No, I was in fact decieved by the reviewers Official Nintendo Magazine, back in the days when the first two letters were swtiched around and the reviewers were all loveable yobbos. The review claimed that the game was "fast-paced and frantic" and that I would have to be on my toes in order to survive the marathon of pits, enemies and obstacles and deliver Baby Mario to safety.

Bullshit.

The game is not fast-paced in any way. It doesn't matter what colour of Yoshi you have - they all move like their wading through molasses, so there's no sense of urgency. You don't need to worry about building cloud bridges or anything until you're almost near the pit, he moves that slow. And on top of that, enemies come in predictable patterns, so it's almost trivial to take them out one by one with eggs and tongue - even the ones that appear on the top screen just to fuck you over. The only time it gets difficult is near the end of the last stage, where the Stork is waiting, and that's only because the screens are so full of baddies you can't tell one from the other, like a lion trying to pick out one zebra amongst a hundred.

Don't get me wrong - it's still a Yoshi game, and with the exception of Yoshi Tilt N' Tumble those are guaranteed to give you a good time. But I feel let down when a game isn't what I expect it to be, even from reading the reviews I so cherish and rely on for information. Even when playing, I always felt Touch & Go was made less as a game and more as a marketing tool for the DS, and it shows. So in the end I simply packed the game away and never picked it up again. I might give it another shot, for old time's sake, but I hardly see myself being enthralled with it.

8. Sonic Generations
Genre: Platformer
System: XBox 360, Wii, PS3, Nintendo 3DS
Developer: Sonic Team
Publisher: Sega
Released: November 1, 2011 (Worldwide)

It would be remiss of me to not talk about classic video game heroes without mentioning Sonic the Hedgehog, a character so classic he should be perserved as a culturally-significant landmark. And in order to celebrate his many, many years of hyper-speed heroics, Sega decided to pair him up with... his past self, mixing a blend of classic and modern Sonic gameplay in one big adventure whilst taking the time to remix the fuck out of the best songs on their soundtrack. Seriously, go listen to the Classic remix of Escape from the City. It fucking rules.

So what's not to like about this game? It's got the faced-paced action Sonic games should have - a mix of classic side-scrolling and modern 3D akin to Sonic Colours. It's got all the characters you know and love/tolerate/despise from past Sonic games. It's got recreations of classic levels and modern takes on them to accomodate Modern Sonic's high-octane speed. In short, it's everything a Sonic game ought to be, if Colours already didn't do that first and top it off with better writing. So why is this even on the list?

To tell the truth, I was never a Sonic fan. I was more of a Banjo/Mario kind of guy, where the expansive, imaginative worlds allowed for the kind of exploration and glitch abuse that the linear, high-speed running of Sonic games could never give me. To me, going fast at top speed in one direction can't hold a candle to climbing trees, traversing narrow walkways and uncovering hidden secrets in a 3D environment. On top of that, I'm not a particular fan of the character of Sonic himself. To go back to my previous example - Banjo may have been practically invincible depending on the player's skill, but he was also kind of dopey and often unsure of himself. He had flaws and insecurities that made him seem more relatable. Sonic knows he's a badass, and he takes every opportunity to flaunt it with his "cool" dialogue and cocky smirk until I want to blind the little git with his own quills. I wanted to connect with him, but his attutide (not to mention many of his previous games) made it very hard for me.

So Generations is mechanically sound, but suffers from the fact that it's a Sonic game, and considering the reputation of the franchise as of late I can see why that fact alone would make people pause before buying it. It's fun and adrenaline-inducing, as all Sonic games should be, but the fact that it's about Sonic, a character as likeable as a drawing pin to the bum, is kind of a put-off. Go ahead if you want to give it a try, but I'd reccomend Sonic Advance over it - not only is it tighter and more focused than Generations, but at least Sonic keeps his gob shut.

7. Spectrobes
Genre: Action-RPG
System: Nintendo DS
Developer: Jupiter
Publisher: Disney Interactive Studios
Released: March 16, 2007

The year was 2007. The DS was riding high, Pokemon Diamond and Pearl were looming on the horizon, and Poke-Mania was coursing through us all like a virus. Everyone was clamouring to get their hands on the first ever titles of the series to be released on the DS, from the smallest child to the nerdiest gamer. But with the release date set to July, a long march awaited those faitful many, and thus it was inevitable that someone would try to take advantage of the hype by releasing their own take on the monster-gathering RPG genre. No-one, however, exected Disney to be that someone, or that the end result, Spectrobes, would become so popular.

The reason Spectrobes took off the way it did was because it was so drastically different from the Pokemon forumla. You didn't just catch the creatures - you excavated their fossils and awakened them with your voice. You didn't evolve them through training - you had to raise them in an incubator and feed them minerals. And you didn't simply battle other Spectrobes - you guided Rallen, the game's protagonist, on a quest to save the universe from the Krawl, planet-eating monstrosities of all shapes and sizes. The changes made to the formula, including a cast of colourful characters and real-time battles, made Spectrobes a unique and fresh offering compared to Diamond and Pearl, which introduced only a hundred more of the little buggers.

Sadly, Spectrobes had two major flaws that kept it from being as popular as it's contemporay.

Firstly, the graphics. The game was made by the same team that made Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories on the GBA, and perhaps the jump to 3D polygons from sprites was a bit disorienting for the poor guys. The models are blocky as hell and the textures, whilst colourful and detailed, are in dire need of some anti-aliasing. This normally wouldn't be a problem, except the camera just loves to zoom in on the models so you can see their blocky ugliness taking up the majority of the screen. On top of that, the sprites used for the overworld seem dull and washed-out - which is odd, considering how sharp and bright the sprites for CoM were.

Secondly, the battle system was, for want of a better word, wiggity-whack. You control Rallen and two Spectrobes with the D-Pad at once, and three guys  are hard to manouvre, especially when the floors seem like it's made of margerine. You command Rallen to attack with the face buttons and the Spectrobes to attack with the shoulder buttons - the problem being that all attacks draw from the same pool of energy that needs to be charged to full before you can attack again, leaving you vulnerable half the time. Even worse, the Spectrobes were the only things that could damage the Krawl properly, Rallen's attacks having as much effect as hitting a cliff with a wet towel, but some Spectrobes are downright useless because their attacks have such a long wind-up time. In short, the combat was basically deadly ballet without being anywhere near as fun as those two words together should imply.

Nevertheless, Spectrobes proved to be a sleeper hit of 2007, popular enough to spawn two sequels - Beyond the Portals on DS and Origins for the Wii. But since then, there's been no word on any new games in the series, which is a shame, because I would actually like to see more fossil-hunting, Krawl-bashing goodness. The combat and graphics were big enough issues that meant I had to put the first game down after a while, but I sincerely enjoyed what I'd played of it. I hear Beyond the Portals fixes those issues, but having played a brief snatch of the ROM I will say this - it's better to have played the first game beforehand, so you know what the hell is going on.

6. Darksiders
Genre: Hack-&-Slash/Action-Adventure
System: Xbox 360, PS3
Developer: Vigil Games
Publisher: THQ
Released: 201001January 8, 2010

You may remember way back in the pre-industrial dark age of April 2012 when I did a double-bill review of Kid Icarus: Uprising and Darksiders for the sole gimmicky reason of highlighting the extremes the average fantasy setting tends to keep visiting. In that review, I praised Vigil's magnum opus for it's flowing combat, epic setting and inclusion of Mark Hamil, even if it was somewhat bogged down by the inevitable comparisons to Zelda and the Middle-School Drama Club story. We are now in the futuristic space age of 2013, and I've instead been banging on about the sequel and all the things it does right.

So what happened? Why did I switch out War for Death?

The answer is simple - I fucked myself over. See, I'm actually at the second-to-last dungeon, and the whole thing is themed around redirecting beams of light in order to free Azrael, Angel of Death, from his prison in the Spire. Sadly, after completing two of the puzzles required, I decided to take a break and stopped playing for a bit. "A bit" turned into two months, during which I forgot all about the puzzle and what I was doing. So when I turned the game back on, I was stuck. I had no idea where to go or what to do, the sole guide I could find on the game was incomprehensible and Azreal didn't offer to help in the slightest. "The beams, redirect the beams," he'd drone like a broken record. Shut up, you old fogey, I'm getting lost here.

And now that I've played the sequel, I find it hard to go back and try and finish off. Having gotten used to Death's acrobatics and array of weapons, I'll probably find myself wondering why War's as slow as a narcoleptic tortoise with heavy shopping and where all my awesome gear and weapons went. Trust me when I say I'd love to go back and finish it off so I can fill in the story gaps - I just need to unstick myself from my unfortunate predicament in this bloody dungeon before War hypothetically goes mad or starves to death. Not pleasant thoughts for a gamer to have, let me tell you.

5. Kirby Mass Attack
Genre: Puzzle-Platformer
System: Nintendo DS
Developer: HAL Labratory
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: October 28, 2011

This is one of those games that Harpy loved to bits. She used to be on about it quite a lot in the Skype chats we used to have, talking about how it was played and all the secrets one could unlock just by exploring and collecting those coins. Not only that, she kept pestering me to ROM it and see it's brilliance for myself. Skeptical, I decided to do exactly that. I downloaded a copy, booted it up onto my R4 and gave it a shot to see what the fuss was about. And... well, it was okay. Not great, but not bad, either. But it kind of didn't live up to the hype that was being thrown at me, and in the end I decided to quietly retire it.

See, in the same way I'm not a Sonic fan, I don't consider myself a Kirby fan. The only games of his I've played are Kirby 64, Power Paintbrush and this, whilst Harpy has pretty much got the entire collection because she loves the series so much. I suppose it's because I don't feel the series is aimed at me - I'm a man's man, who loves adventuring and explosions and bashing bad guys over the head with a blunt instrument. And thus I find myself getting turned off by the Kirby series' colourful aesthetic, which I feel is more aimed at kids and girls than jaded 20-somethings like me. Then again, my mother doesn't like Kirby either, so what do I know?

I'd have rated this lower than Darksiders, maybe even Spectrobes, were it not for my traitorous inner Nintendo fanboy whining in protest. And in all honesty, it can at least boast the fact that it's a familiar IP in comparison to the other two, which at least gets it some extra marks. I still have the ROM hanging around on my R4, so I might just force myself to give it another go, but that hardly seems likely considering my free time is now spent up with playing fighting games all the time. Curse you, Street Fighter X Tekken Version 2013 patch!

4. Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
Genre: Action-Adventure/Platformer/Vehicle Construction
System: Xbox 360
Developer: Rare
Publisher: Microsoft
Released: November 14, 2008

Eight years have passed since Banjo and Kazooie bested their nemesis Gruntilda way back in Banjo-Tooie. What's happened since then? Well, the bear and the breegull have put on a lot of weight, and Grunty's decapitated skull is seeking revenge. But to this classic confrontation comes a third party - L.O.G., the Lord of Games, creator of all things pixelled. L.O.G. suggests a competition to determine the rightful owner of Spiral Mountain, in which the dynamic duo must make use of a magical wrench to construct a variety of madcap vehicles to complete a marathon of challenges. Of course, Grunty's not going to make it easy for them...

Yeah, I know this is an easy target, but I'll be honest - I kind of enjoyed Nuts & Bolts far more than I think most fans did. I can definitely call myself a Banjo-Kazooie fan, yet I was open-minded enough to accept the change of direction that Rare pulled with the whole vehicle thing. It did sound like a lot of fun - building custom vehicles to try and take on a variety of challenges, with the sort of vehicle you build determining how tough how the challenges end up being. If your vehicle worked, great - keep it for similar challenges! If it didn't, tweak it and see what can be improved, added or removed! It seemed like a great recipie for fun!

I don't think I was wrong on that assumption - vehicle creation is indeed fun, and it's interesting to see what the community comes up with. But when you give people a customization mechanic that lets them build practically anything from scratch, then it isn't long before the creativity runs dry. Eventually you'll have created vehicles for every concievable obstacle, and then the game poses no challenge anymore and you turn to the vehicle creator. And then once you've made your all-terrain battle fortress that spits fire and oranges for teh lulz, then there isn't a whole lot to do except recreate Pokemon characters or Super Sentai mecha endlessly. Give me everything and I can't think of anything. It's kind of depressing.

Also, it's not a platformer like the previous games. There, complaint addressed. You can stop reading now :P

I still have a ways to go in the game, and I suppose I could start playing again for the sake of getting those Jiggies and unlocking all those parts. And everything about the series I love is still in there - the anarchic humour, the colourful characters, the imaginative worlds and setpieces. It's just that it's such a major departure from the previous games that I can't help but feel disappointed with Rare for not giving out Bajo-Threeie like the fans asked for. Then again, what other game lets you build an all-terrain battle fortress that spits fire and oranges for teh lulz? Maybe a few, but Nuts & Bolts is a Banjo-Kazooie game, and therefore better.

3. Pokemon: Fire Red Version
Genre: RPG
System: Game Boy Advance
Developer: Game Freak
Publisher: Nintendo, The Pokemon Company
Released: October 1, 2004

Okay, I know what you're thinking. "A remake of the first and arguably best Pokemon games in third-gen graphics, with new writing, extras and re-orchestrated music? On this list? What the hell is wrong with you, SK?" And yes, I know, you're right. But it scores so high because it stikes that chord in me, that good feeling you get when you look back on your childhood through the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia. And it's all there - Gary is still a douche, Team Rocket are still incompetent, Snorlax is still a bitch to catch and the gyms are as familiar as ever. Also Professor Oak got to say "Oh, for Pete's sake...", which made me laugh like an idiot.

But like the Darksiders example above, I had to stop playing this game because of my own idiocy. See, back when I was playing this game, I was in the bad habit of keeping my starter in the first slot and letting him do all the fighting, switching out to only a few others from time to time. Plus, I went on a bit of a catching spree in Mt. Moon on the way to Cerluean, snagging a Paras and a Nidoran♂ among others. These two factors combined into one hideously painful result - stuck at Cerulean City with a bunch of low-level Pokemon, unable to train them because the wild Pokemon were too high-level and unable to go back to find weaker ones because of that stupid design desicion to block off Mt. Moon with those idiotic ledges. So in the end, I gave up in despair.

Lord knows I want to create a new save file and start this again - my future experiences in Pearl and Black have taught me better team management, and thus my teams are more equally leveled. Unfortunately, GBA games are a dying breed, succeeded by DS games and their backwards compatability with the 3DS, which refuses to associate with the obsolete riff-raff. So either I'll need to keep hold of my old, limping DS no matter what or ROM the game later. Either way works fine, I suppose, but until then I'm keeping my focus on my ROM of Black. Now come here, Audino - gimme five-hundred squat thrusts! One-two-one-two-one-two...!

2. The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
Genre: Action-Adventure
System: Nintendo DS
Developer: Nintendo EAD Group No. 3
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: October 19, 2007

Everyone talks about Phantom Hourglass, the first Zelda game on the DS, and how that one shitty dungeon made them stop playing it. Well, I'm not here to talk about that - I'm here to talk about the sequel, Spirit Tracks. This game is the sort of sequel that pretty much fixes everything that was wrong with the original - the controls for the forward roll have changed, the travel system is a bit more exciting now, the central dungeon is vastly improved and Zelda is no longer your damsel-in-distress - in fact, she's the assitant character who helps out by possessing objects to aid you out! How's that for improving gender relations in Hyrule, eh?

To be brutally honest, I have no idea why I stopped playing this. Unlike the others, which I can put down to disappointment or boredom or my own incompetence, I can't remember an exact pinpoint reason for suddenly losing interest in Spirit Tracks. And that's odd, because there was nothing particularly offensive about it - the trains are a bit stodgy to control, sure, and there's still an annoying stealth element to the central dungeon, but otherwise this is a major improvement over Phantom Hourglass? So what did make me stop playing? Did I just get burned out and forget all about the game? Whatever, I dunno.

I still have the came card for it, so I could pop it into my 3DS sometime and get going if I wanted. And I do want to play this again - it's everything a DS Zelda game should be and more, with the right amount of polish and flair one expects from the series. And the best thing about it is that, unlike the Spectrobes or Darksiders sequels, you don't need to have played the previous game to understand what's happening. It works just as well as a standalone game as it does as a sequel, and that's got to be worth something.

Honourable Mention: Asura's Wrath
Genre: Action/Beat-'em-Up
System: Xbox 360, PS3
Developer: CyberConnect2
Publisher: Capcom
Released: February 24, 2012

Those who frequent Chatzy will no doubt be aware of my experience of playing this, as well as the "Jaxx Tantra: The Game" jokes that came from how over-the-top and ridiculous it is. I hesitate to call it a "game", per se - it does have moments where you beat up enemies Devil May Cry style, but there's also sections that take on the form of rail shooters, and even a segment where you're in the hot springs taking shots and oogling the female servants. Interactive movie is a better description - quick-time events form the bulk of gameplay, with points awarded for how well you managed to hit them. It's over-the-top, it's full of action and it's worth checking out if you're into whacked-out media like this.

Now, the reason that I stopped playing this game would have earned it the top spot, where it not for what my actual final choice was. See, I beat Chapter Eleven and it ends with Asura running towards a giant cobra-turtle monster with no arms and a sword in his mouth. The little girl who was palling around with him watches with horror as he disappears to confront the beast, and a giagantic explosion fills the screen. "Woah," I think. "What the hell happened? Did Asura win? Did he die? I gotta know, damn it!"

And then the next chapter opens on Yasha, Asura's rival and the man responsible for killing him at least once (death is kinda trivila in this world). I was stunned. This was the complete opposite of what I was promised - I was looking forward to a bombastic battle against unspeakable odds, not playing as this emo prick I didn't care about. Desperate, I took to my old friend Google and began, trying to find an answer to this perplexing mystery. Was the fight to be adressed in a later chapter? What was going on?

And then it turned out that chapter is paid DLC. And so was the actual, proper ending of the game.

Now, you may be wondering why I have a problem with this. I mean, I didn't raise a ruckus when Street Fighter X Tekken's DLC characters were discovered on the disc. Surely this is no different, I hear you cry. But here's the thing - you didn't need the extra characters to enjoy Street Fighter X Tekken. They didn't affect gameplay or story in any way, and most of them (Looking at you, Sakura) didn't add that much to the game as a whole. You could theoretically enjoy the game without downloading them ever, gaining nothing and losing nothing except for the changes to the tier list (but who care about that, right?).

It's when game companies lock away the last goddamn third of the game away and make us pay actual money to get 100% completion that pisses me off. What is even the point of that? Why would you want to keep players from completing the game that they purchased just for the sake of making more money?! When we buy a game, we expect to buy the whole game, with all of the story. We want the whole experience the designers made for us. Why would you think that making us pay physical money in order to earn full completion on a game that, by all rights, should contain the full story package, is a good idea? Because it isn't. It's stupid and asinine and you should hang yourselves for it.

As you can see, my liberal use of italics in that last paragraph indicates that this is one subject I feel extra-strong about. So unless I can scrounge up the money to buy enough points to get the missing episodes, I shan't be touching Asura's Wrath anymore. That's not to say it's bad - quite the opposite, in fact. As a game it's okay, but as interactive media it's something else entirely. If you can tolerate Capcom's stranglehold on your wallet and watching your protagonist crush an old man to death with his six bare hands, then I can highly recommend this game, because you will experience nothing like this ever.

But with such grand titles on the list, what could possibly make it to the Number 1 spot? Which game did I stop playing was so phenomenally good that I could possibly put it higher than Pokemon or Zelda? Well, the answer may surprise you, so buckle your seatbelts and put on your helmets in case your brain explodes from the revelation and the force of it launches you from the chair and into a wall.

The Number 1 Game I Stopped Playing is...

1. Kid Icarus: Uprising
Genre: Shooter
System: Nintendo 3DS
Developer: Project Sora
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: March 23, 2012

Why, why, why did I ever put this down? It has everything that I love in a game - quirky characters, gripping story, deep and varied gameplay, awesome music, neat little extras - the works! It's the first Kid Icarus game in around 25 years, not counting the angel's return in Smash Bros. Brawl It's development was headed by Sakurai, the guy behind Smash Bros. It's the game that inspired me to start writing as Pit in Season 2 of Zoofights RP, which is an achievement in itself. And it's the game I kept playing even after that Anglo-Australian tit Yahtzee decried it as "a shit game for twats". How does one stop playing a game this phenomenally good for so long?

Okay, you're probably going to hate me for the reason I stopped playing this wonderful game. I know I hate myself for it - out of all the reasons to stop playing a game I've listed here, this one has to be the most petty and selfish I've ever mentioned. Hell, at least Asura's Wrath has the valid excuse of Capcom being greedy bastards - this one doesn't even have that problem! But the reason I stopped playing it is a rather big one, and as stupid as it is it's a personal enough issue that I felt I had to put the game down for a while. So here we go.

Also, spoilers and a rant are ahead. Skip past the dotted lines if you don't want to read it all.

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Thanks to my terrible habit of reading ahead for game plots (which I can never seem to grow out of), I've learned that, after the Aurum invasion, Pit gets himself trapped inside a magical ring for two years. When he breaks out, the world has gone to shit - by blowing up Arlon's moonbase, the angel has accidentally unleashed the Chaoskin, who looks like Mothra's inbred cousin she doesn't invite to parties anymore. The Chaoskin, in Pit's absence, has possessed Palutena and wreaked general havoc, with the result that humanity now hates the shit out of her. To make matters worse, Pit's body has been going walkabout on a killing spree, and Magnus has been hired to track it down.

With Magnus' help, Pit gets his body back and flies up to save Palutena. The Chaoskin is defeated, but in the resulting confusion (I'm not even sure what happens myself) Pit ends up overextending his flight limit and his wings burn up. Knowing that the planet is at the mercy of Hades and the Underworld without Pit to stop him, Palutena asks Dirk Dark Pit to take him to the Rewind Spring andvheal his brother before he perishes and things go even further to shit. Also Pandora returns in a new form - and yes, before you ask, there is already porn of it. Rule 34, people.

So what's my problem, you ask? How can I take issue with this piece of story that has integral character development and actual drama going on? Didn't I say earlier that the game's story was gripping? What's the issue here?

Allow me to explain. I grew up on 90's classics such as Banjo-Kazooie, Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time and Buck Bumble, to name a few. In those days, memory on a cart was limited, so there was no way you could get away with a complex story - "A witch kidnapped my sister" was all the motivation I needed. Therefore, there was little room for character development and people were just expected to play the game. This meant that Banjo's proficiency in fighting Gruntilda's minions revolved around how competent the player controlling him was. When Banjo fucked up, it was because the player was being a cack-handed buffoon, and drama didn't come anywhere near it. The character's mistakes were the player's mistakes, and we took the blame for it whenever the hero slipped off the ledge and plummeted into the lava below.

But now we demand more from our games. We demand bigger characters and more complex stories. And with current video game storage mediums being as expansive as they are, companies can experiment with ways of making their characters more complex. And it seems a common way to do this is to wrench control away from the player, show our hero making a giagantic mistake or suffering some misfortune, and then leave us to pick up the pieces. It's supposed to make us feel sorry for the hero, to make us sympathize with him and want to help him fix the thing that got broken or help him recover from the setback. Such situations that come to mind include that non-sequitur bit in Oracle of Ages, where Link gets shipwrecked on a island of talking lizards who steal his stuff, and he has to spend half the level getting it back.

Speaking as a 90's kid and a miseryguts, it doesn't work for me.

When a character fucks up as part of the story, it doesn't make them more relatable or flawed, it makes them look incompetent. We don't think "Oh dear, how unfortunate, guess we better help him out", we think "Wow, is there not some more qualified person we could be playing as right now?" Making a character suffer misfortune isn't a bad way to tell a story, I'll grant you, but there seems to be few games out there that do this right, and Kid Icarus wasn't one of them. Pit's misfortune wasn't my mistake, as I didn't cause it through some natural consequence of gameplay, so I don't empathize. It's like the opening of Monster Hunter Freedom 2, where the player character gets knocked off a cliff by the local dragon and ends up in bed for three days. And he's supposed to be the guy protecting the village from the angry wildlife! With guardians like that, the villagers might as well just slather themselves in barbecue sauce, lie down and let the dragons eat them all.

I told you this gripe was petty as fuck, but having been spoiled by games that didn't rely on your character being an idiot has jaded me to this form of storytelling. And that's why I put down Kid Icarus - because it was throwing in this drama for no apparent benefit to any of the characters or the story as a whole. I can still say the game is excellent and one should get it, but the sudden tonal shift was jarring at best and completely unneccesary at worst. I already plugged through three whole chapters of filler, game! Just let me at Hades and his ugly face already!

But Kid Icarus: Uprising gets the top spot not just because it's a game I want to pick up again. It's a game I want to pick up again and keep playing, regardless of flaws, until I get to the very end and beat it. And hopefully, if I can swallow my story gripes and find the time to do it, I will be able to do just that. Look out, Spy and Goops, because I'm gonna catch up to you someday!

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So there you have it - the top eleven games I stopped playing for some reason, but really out to start playing again. Thanks for reading this, and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! Stay tuned for more writing goodness in the future! And as a special present for reading this pretentious nonsense, have an image I threw together in Photoshop in like ten minutes!