An Open Letter to Mission 3 in Injustice's S.T.A.R Labs

Fuck you.

Just fuck you and everything you stand for.

You clearly don't belong in this game. Everything else about it is brilliant - the visuals are slick and gritty, the gameplay is solid and extremely different from Mortal Kombat and the Story Mode is engaging and challenging without being bullshit hard. When Bane kicks the Joker into an elevator, then runs inside to smash his head against the walls hard enough to leave dents, I pump my fist into the air with joy. The game as a whole could have been a beautiful rose in the colourful flowerbed of video games, but it isn't. And that's because you exist on it as a hideous, parasitic fungus eating away at it's insides and ruining everything that's good about it with your rank stench of dog turd.

Allow me to elaborate. I had cleared the Story Mode and earned a load of Armoury Keys to unlock alternate costumes for the characters. However, the Keys are only awarded with every alternate level you reach, so I wasn't able to unlock all of them. It was then that all my common sense leapt out of my brain and scurried away, leaving to me to make a really stupid decision. "Okay," I say to myself, "perhaps I'll try the S.T.A.R Labs missions. Mortal Kombat's missions were cool and I beat loads of those, so maybe this'll be a ticket to free XP and Armoury Keys." Little did I know of the bullshit that was lurking over the hill, waiting for the chance to pounce and sink his filth-encrusted fangs into my patience.

So I start up the missions, and all goes well. Lex Luthor has kidnapped Louis Lane, as he is wont to do, and Superman has to save her, as he is also wont to do. Mission 1 has me beating up The Flash for some off reason - all I do is follow the on-screen prompts and I complete it, earning three big silver stars. "Huh," I say to myself. "This isn't so hard. I was expecting a bit more, but okay." Mission 2 is more fun - Superman is low on health and has to stay in these patches of sunlight to recover it whilst fighting Bane. It's tense and frantic, and I complete it with little fuss. I earn only two stars this time, but then I try again and it turns out I had to punt Bane through a building as well, which is fair enough.

But then you come along, Mission 3, and put a fucking brick wall between me and progress.

Lex is mind-controlling Batman and has given him a supply of Kryptonite-laced Batarangs (no they don't specify how, put your hand down). And it's not like the challenge is difficult in concept - beat Batman, use a stage prop, don't get hit by the killer green projectiles. No problem, one might say. And indeed, for the first few minutes, it seems pretty simple. Batman barely puts up a fight as I wail on him with Superman's arsenal of kickass moves, punching him through a glass cabinet and throwing a plane on his head. I've whittled him down to half health and so far, things are fine.

And then I get hit with a Batarang.

I ignore this and complete the mission. But because I was hit, I'm deducted a star. And the only way to get all three stars is never to get hit. So I try again. And again, and again, and again, and gradually the veil of normalcy is torn away to reveal the hideous beast underneath, the sight of which makes me swear in disgust and throw my controller down so hard it bounces off the floor, hits the TV and knocks my copy of Metal Gear Rising off my shelf. Because the tongue-slapping otherkin dickheads behind the creation of this mission have rigged it to the point where earning that precious third star is fucking impossible.

See, there is literally no way to predict when Batman is going to throw a Batarang, because the A.I. doesn't have the same patterns one would find in a Capcom game. And it seems Lex's mind-control device also made Bruce Wayne fucking precognitive as well, because everything I do can somehow be perfectly countered with a telepathically-thrown Batarang from the fucking future. Heat Vision blasts are interrupted without a fuss, attempts to dive in are blocked and any attempts at actual combos or closing the distance are met with a giant Batarang-shaped middle finger. And even when I'm close up to him he will find some way to throw one in my face, because Ryu is apparently a pussy for not throwing projectile attacks at a such a close range as to render them pointless over regular punches or kicks.

My problems with this are twofold. Firstly, one shouldn't set such a fucking narrow goal in the first place. Not everyone is going to be capable of dodging a Batarang every time, so there's no reason to penalize us for not being picture perfect. Three will do at the most, because even then the Kryptonite Batarangs (note how fucking dumb that sounds, by the way) don't even do that much damage. Secondly, even if you are going to set such a goal, you have to make sure the enemy A.I. for that mission isn't an input-reading arsehole that delights in ruining people's dreams. Because Heaven forbid that the players actually succeed in completing the shitty challenges we personally designed to have a fucking reward at the end for completing! Only pansy casuals design their games to let their players have any chance of winning at all! No, kicking the player's arse for having the gall to try and do anything besides take it like a bitch is where it's at, because Dark Souls did it so we might as well too! Haw haw haw, tongue-slap tongue-slap!

In the end, I gave up. I turned off the Xbox and played some Mario Tennis instead. There came a point where I asked myself "Why am I even bothering to press any buttons?" because clearly I wasn't meant to succeed, so what was the point? I refuse to put up with bullshit A.I., idiotic goals designed by Hitler and fucking capital punishment for the slightest of errors, because challenge is one thing, but setting up a concrete wall and expecting us to bash it down with naught but a toffee hammer is an exercise in frustration and anger. I'm not proud of my lack of patience when it comes to these things, but from now on I'm only playing games that at least give me a chance to actually fucking complete them. And if that makes me some kind of casual scrub, then call me Scrub McNewbpants, but better to reign in Casual-Land than continuously have my face shoved into dog shit and broken glass in New Hardcoria.

In short, fuck you, Mission 3. I hope Killer Croc rips you open and eats your insides. I'll just grind Story Mode from now on if I want my XP.

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.