Duty Calls

Apparently, the Call of Duty franchise has been around for quite a while.  This latest addition, Black Ops, is a grand testament to the series’ strength and the knowledge gained through years of experience developing First Person Shooters.  I’ve only played one other Call of Duty and that was years ago.  It’s not much to say that this game is a marked improvement over my previous experience.  Although, this is a beast of a game.  There were times when my laptop slowed because it couldn’t take all the action.  This is the only game for which that’s ever happened.  To be fair, I don’t exactly have the highest end, gaming laptop.  I own a Dell.

Anyway, Call of Duty: Black Ops tells the story of “Mason,” a CIA covert agent who gets assigned to kill people – in order to protect America, of course – throughout the world and its various wars.  As you probably have heard, there is a little hiccup over someone famous getting shot during the game.  I don’t care about it and, I think the level headed will agree with me when I say, people need to understand it’s just a game.  There are worse things, more gruesome kills at least, that happen to a number of other individuals.  The gameplay actually occurs when Mason is recalling his past actions to a group of silhouetted men who are torturing him to get answers.  You’ll have to play through the game to find out what exactly those answers are and how they lead Mason to his current situation.  I say the gameplay “occurs” because I couldn’t help but feel as if I was watching a movie during most of the game.  There are in game “cinematics” that involve you in some way, but never more than slowly approach this person and take him out from behind.  Most often, it’s a simple one button press and the game then takes over.  It’s less than a quick-time event, but the game is clearly not trying to make them challenging, rather, I’m sure the purpose is to make it all feel like one is in the middle of a Hollywood Blockbuster.  For my own part, I appreciated the effort to make the game more than a common FPS.  The cinematic feel of the game lasts through its entirety and it’s enough to separate the game from other, dime a dozen shooters.

This f**king guy...

As I implied earlier, the visuals are incredible.  I was impressed every time I looked at the sky, saw countless bullets flying by, or watched as I blew up what looked like an experimental rocket ship.  Any sound other than explosions or gunfire was a little hard to hear and, to be honest, I didn’t even pay attention to it sometimes because all I wanted to do was find cover and kill more Russians.  This game is intense.  I died so many times just while playing it on “regular” difficulty that the option to “lower difficulty” on the menu screen just seemed to taunt me.  I don’t know if that’s a theme with other Call of Duty games or if I just wasn’t used to the way the game plays out, but I was very happy with the game’s take on such arduous tasks.  Mason isn’t a super hero or some cybernetically enhanced marine and you can tell you’ll need to find cover every step of the way if you’re not a hardcore FPS fan.  It makes the game less appealing and harder to approach for the general population of the gamer community, but I’m sure most gamers know what to expect from a game like this long before they ever pick it up.

In the end, for the gamers who don’t feel the need to own a dozen different shooters, Black Ops isn’t too different from previous games of this type.  Mason’s story of a forgetful CIA killer is a nice touch and I’m happy to have this game as an addition to a genre which isn’t known for its cerebral qualities. Also, as expected, the game supports online multiplayer, which I don’t feel the need to discuss because Modern Warfare 2 set the bar pretty high and Black Ops does much in the same way.  There is also a mode simply dubbed, “Zombies,” which has you doing what you can to survive a wave of, you guessed it, Zombies.  This is not a mode that’s needed to make the game better, but it is a lot of fun and a welcome extra.  You won’t get anything too new with this game, but you will have a great time trying to figure out what’s exactly going on and trying to kill a seemingly endless hoard of enemies.

4.5/5 Near Perfect Score! Almost Super Dope!

NEW WEEKLY FEATURE! Free Flash Friday Presents- Fantasy Online!

Yes that's right, Free Flash Friday Presents- ‘Fantasy Online!’ Or as I like to call it- Fantasy Boreline. Boretasy Online. Fanboresey Boneline. It’s boring.

Obscure Title Tuesday….is DEAD!

And replaced with this much more relevant, accessible, and user friendly weekly article which will review free flash games online that you can play RIGHT NOW!  

http://www.kongregate.com/games/PixelatedGames/fantasy-online 

As opposed to when you had to buy a Nintendo Entertainment System that works along with the corresponding obscure title which wouldn’t be worth it anyway just to play the games in the articles I was talking about. Or, alternatively just easily download an emulator to play the NES games for free.

Given the abundance of free time I have here at Law School, I though it would be a good idea to visit the hallowed internet tubes of places like kongregate.com, newgrounds.com, and armorgames.com, whose only purpose is to bring you sweet, sweet, productivity destroying time wasters, most of which suck. But it’s the thought that counts.

This week’s feature from Kongregate is Fantasy Online a ripoff of Diablo except that this game is a lot lot lot lot lot lot lot lot crappier. And suckier!

Where to begin? It’s exactly like Diablo in that you have different classes to start with, you kill endless hoards of bad guys, get gold, use gold to buy better weapons or find unique items that your enemies drop after you kill them, there’s the magic type, the brute-force type, and the archer type, you gain levels by gaining experience through killing bad guys, you get attribute points…..it is literally EXACTLY like Diablo and games of that nature with the only technical difference being that in this game you have to use gold to buy different special abilities for your character to use, whereas in Diablo you got those skills automatically by leveling up.

It just looks so endlessly interesting! Boretasy boreline indeed.

So why does this game suckola? If I had to define the graphics of this game...I would characterize them as being worse than an 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System game that sucks. It’s not charming. I think that’s what they might have been going for, but it didn’t work. You’re a poorly rendered sprite. The earliest version of these types of Diablo-esque games that I know of is Final Fantasy for the NES (The original! As in, the first one. Which I own. Jealous??) and when you’re an online game with 20 years worth of technological advances and a multiplayer mode is easily defeated by one of the FIRST of these types of games, you’ve failed.

There’s no story here. Where’s my story? Cause all I see is random quests to help out endless townspersons here and there; there’s no sweeping narrative where you have to save the world and/or princess and/or your father and/or the future. Sure, you can explore and fight with your friends or strangers, but the sucky aspects of this game far outweigh that. There’s no SOUND! Can I get a freaggin’ theme song in the background please? I would have made one for this game FOR FREE. I STILL WILL! If they ask me, I will make free music and sound for this sucky game. At least something for the damn loading screen... sheesh.

Fighting enemies is underwhelming…you click on them once and the game does the rest unless you use a spell or special ability, but... it just sucks. Sometimes your attacks don't hit or your healing spells don't work because the game is laggy. The leveling-up system is so slow; if more then one enemy attacks you at the same time, then you have to run away or spend quite a few hours leveling up in a lower level area.

There are some attempts at humor thrown in. You start off at ‘Noob Island.’ But for the number of characters and dialogue this game has and given how much the game sucks in general, you’d think they’d have made humor a priority. Most townspeople just explain the quest you have to do. Where’s my context? Where’s my motivation? I’ll be in my trailer. No Blue M&M’s.

Now at first I was going to state, given this game has just under 1.5 million plays, ‘I don’t understand why people play this game’ (because it sucks). But then I realized, I made it all the way to level 12 and that took more hours then I’d like to publicly admit. So I guess there’s just something about games involving leveling up to incrementally improve yourself as the bad guys incrementally improve along with you that just feeds some gamer need in a substantial number of us. Everybody probably already knew that though. Shout out to WoW! And allll my mages! Magi, rather.

See, the fatal flaw with this game is: it’s too in depth and lengthy to be an hour or two time-waster, but not good enough to be something you pour a substantial amount of time into. Not dope, you guys. Not dope.

1.5/5 Paaaaass. 

The Fun of Creation Block by Block

People sometimes ask me how I stay so relevant to the gaming industry and the community itself.  The simple answer is that I do not.  I, as well as all my writers, have so, so much to do.  Some of us have things we cannot avoid -- Julian Horan, for instance, lost his computer to a rampaging virus, most likely from, let's be honest, all the porn.  Others have time consuming activities to do during the day, which I believe are called "jobs."  And still there are some who attend school in hopes to, one day, find one of these unheard of jobs and life comfortably for the rest of the foreseeable future.  Now besides all of these incredibly reasonable excuses, there are also ones like having spent too much time in search of diamond to build a pickax, in order to mine obsidian, in order to build a blast wall that can withstand large explosions.  There is a chance I have used that last one.

For those of you who do not know by now, Minecraft is an amazing time waster that gets more addicting the more you play.  I personally held off on buying the game, despite all the acclaim and the low price of $15, because I am not a creative person.  Suuuure... I can write about videogames and other such things for which I have a wealth of knowledge, but if you put a pen and paper in my hands and tell me to draw someone, it will be a stick figure with not-quite-circular eyes.  If you want me to play you a piece by Mozart, expect to hear something along the lines of several car alarms going off at once.  So you can understand my resistance to play something which relies heavily on your ability to create.  But, from here on out, I will cease to describe Minecraft to you and simply relate my experience.  This is because merely explaining what the game is about does not do it justice: mine things, craft those things to mine new things, build.  There is no story, there is no point.  Just build.

And build, and build, and build.

Before I got into the game, I decided to check out some videos on YouTube, while my girlfriend was beside me falling asleep, of all the amazing things people have done that I could possibly, theoretically, steal.  After understanding my inadequacy better, I looked for what normal people would do.  I mean, really, you build a base to escape monsters during the night, build a better base, build a house, build a better house, then build whatever you want, one block at a time.  Sounds repetitive and complicated.  I don't know how to build a house.   Then something amazing happened:  my girlfriend and I both became enthralled.  We kept wanting to see what people would build, how they would get materials, where in this MASSIVE (trust me, it warrants all caps) world they would explore.  It actually ended up with her buying the game and us having a combined world, in which there is a glass house on the top, one block of a mountain, a black house with a "lava-fall" near the highest point of the sky, and seemingly endless caves which my girlfriend loves to explore.

Goddammit I refuse to lose my sh*t again!

For the first, oh, dozen hours or so, I was clearing away a giant area in order to make a farm.  Soon, I realized animals would actually disappear after a while, even if I ever managed to get them inside the fences.  So, back I went to the caves beneath my base.  I have four large chests, after owning the game for about a week, all filled with rock and dirt; another filled with sand and coal, and one more filled with random things like flint, glass, animal products, etc.  Only within the past day or two have I started to build.  It's disgusting how much time I've spent mining for minerals and smelting them.  Which, to be fair, is still far less than others who have apparently dedicated their lives to the game.  Often have I died and lost everything in my inventory (once, that included diamonds), but have always remade everything and returned to the lava pit or to where those damn skeletons and their arrows killed me.  This is all in single-player mode, mind you.  If you get the IP address of a server, you can go online and see what others have built and/or grief them.  I advise everyone to fork over the money (or get your girlfriend to) and experience this game for yourself.  It can still get boring and you may lose interest, but I'm sure you'll get your money's worth.

4/5 Near Perfect Score! Super Good!

Dragon Age Origins

It’s been a while since a game has been reviewed that wasn’t obscure or… well really any game that Julian Horan didn’t review.  I come now to break that trend.  There are many people who have already spent well over a hundred hours playing this game, but that most likely includes all the Downloadable Content (DLC) and the expansion, Dragon Age Origins Awakening – which are four words that qualify for the most seemingly random title ever.   This game, without all the fancy bells and whistles that came after its initial release, is still a fantastic game to play and will take hours and hours of time from your other responsibilities.

Before the game even starts, you may spend an hour or two deciding what exactly you want yourself to look like.  Personally, I think this is overkill, but that’s a common theme to long RPGs nowadays.  There are several beginnings to this game’s story, depending on the race (human, elf, dwarf), class (mage, rogue, warrior), and area you choose to play.  For instance, if you choose a dwarf commoner, you have to escape from the dwarf king who has just killed his brother, but if you choose the human mage, you are resigned to starting in the mage’s tower, a place where you can be watched and kept under lock and key.  Each unique beginning quickly catches up with the main story: to become a Grey Warden and stop the evil “Darkspawn” from taking over the lands.  Things don’t go as easily as planned, however, and you’re left with forming a new army and recruiting party members along the way.  To create the army, you have to go to three different areas and complete a string of quests. Afterwards, you are promised an army when the time comes.  If you already think the story is obvious or find it lacking, don’t worry, the best part of the game is the combat, of which there is much.

Sugar, spice and everything nice.

If you’re used to Bioware’s games (Mass Effect 2, Knights of the Old Republic, even Jade Empire) then you’ll fit right in with this game.  You can have a party of up to four people, three of which you can change around while the main character is always present.  Each party member has their own special skills, spells, attributes, etc.  which you can tell them to use with the tactics option or take full advantage of by playing as that character yourself.  Don’t like that warrior you created after 20 hours of gameplay?  Would you prefer to play as a Morrigan, the saucy spell caster?  That’s ok.  Just always switch to the next member of your party.  To make the combat more thoughtful, you can pause the game every time combat begins, specify every action and directly manage the team.  It’s a great addition and incredibly useful, but can sometimes feel like it gets in the way of the flow.  In addition to the skills available to you through your class, which are many and various, there are also specializations that you can learn through books, party members or side quests.  They also allow for more skills to be learned, although I didn’t much care for any of them.

I'm pretty sure I killed this elf.

If fantasy isn’t your thing, then stay away from this game. There is a ton of stuff packed into this game: codices, letters, quests, side quests, histories, lore.  If you take the time to read everything and try to figure out the context of the world as a whole, you’re in for some long nights.  On the other hand if, like me, you just want to play the game, level as much as you can and then kill some dragons, you’ll still partake in a great gaming experience.  Everything fits well together, nothing seems like it was added without a point and you can do dozens of quests to keep you coming back for more.  The gameplay is a solid, hardcore experience that you’ll come to thoroughly enjoy the more you play.  Each of the abilities you learn are useful depending on the situation, and you can create your party to suit the kind of game you want to play.  The soundtrack also manages to have that medieval feel to it, present in most fantasy games.  There‘s always some lady, singing eerily.  I don’t know why that’s a staple for things like this, but there you go; I can’t fault a game for fitting into the genre, no matter how odd I think it is (chanting) or how much I hate it (elves).  The one thing I feel I should mention about the soundtrack as something just completely out of place doesn’t even happen during the game.  After about 4 minutes of credits rolling at the very end, all of a sudden, without any warning, a rock song comes on:  “This is War” by 30 Seconds to Mars.  My only thought at this time was, “what the hell?”  It doesn’t make the game worse, but it is funny.  Sorry for the spoiler.

4.5/5 Near Perfect Score! Super Good!

Obscure Title Tuesday: WWE With Authority!

No I did not rip-off this image from another site, I just really wanted to name my manager 'GameSpot.'

Obscure Title Tuesday Presents: WWE With Authority! for your PC! Or, as I like to call it - Pokemon for Wrestling Nerds.

For those of you who are unaware, there are a few television shows that air every week by a company called ‘World Wrestling Entertainment.’ In these shows, grown men with varying colorful names and personalities beat the ever loving crap out of each other! And in my youth, I was such a fan… such a huge fan, you guys.

First of all, the Rock was my homeboy. Second of all, everything that happened was totally bad-ass: people would get hit in the face with steel chairs and thrown in the air and then land on a table, and then the table would break, people would insult each other and THEN hit each other in the face with chairs... it was a way for me to let out all my pent up 7^th grade aggression by yelling at the television. Third, don’t even get me started about wrestling today. Why, back in my day, we didn’t have any of this PG nonsense, we walked uphill both ways in the snow. Damnit.

Global Ranks on the left. Wrestling is very popular in Japan and also Mexico. And now you just learned something.

So while I cheered on my favorite "good guy" wrestlers and booed vehemently against my least favorite "bad guy" wrestlers, I found out about an online turn based Card game that I could play for free! I was all over that like something on a fitting analogy.

This is a card game much like Pokemon or Magic the Gathering, with a few key differences. You first select a wrestler, who all have different health (hit points) and a special ability. You create a deck of cards, including which 5 cards you start every match with. Most cards are simply wrestling moves that do damage to your opponents health, like ‘body slam’, clothesline’, or ‘throw over the top ropes’ Only, each move requires a certain amount of momentum, which is a type of card you can play during the game besides a wrestling move. Momentum comes in a few different types, like Strength, Strike, Technical, Agility, and Knowledge. Wrestlers that are fat and known for being strong have limits placed on how much ‘agility’ momentum they can have, etc. Then there are special cards that do different things like increase damage done with moves, make you draw more cards, make your opponent have to ditch a card, whatever. In the game, after each turn you draw a card, and the object is to play wrestling moves to beat up your opponent enough that you can pin him and win the match.

I like Rob Van Dam more then I like The Big Show because RVD is not looking at me angrily, a disapproving menacing frown emanating from his core.

There is also the ability to counter moves. Every move, besides requiring certain kinds of momentum like strength or knowledge, also has a type, like ‘in close’, ‘arm extended’, or ‘behind’. Some moves counter other move types, so if you play ‘body slam’, which is an 'in close' move, and your opponent has enough momentum, he can counter your body slam, without getting hurt, by a move like ‘punch’ or ‘push’ or ‘vertical suplex’… moves that counter in close moves. Now the other guy has to respond to the move used to counter, and on and on. Also, each wrestler has 2-4 special moves, like finishers or trademarks, that only he can perform.

There is no single player option for this game. Besides a helpful tutorial, once you create a deck, you go into a chat room, find an opponent, and try to beat the ever-loving bajeesus out of each other. Though this game was marketed as ‘free’ you start out with about 60 cards and each playbook needs a minimum of 50, but if you wanted any one of the thousands of other, better, more helpful cards out there, you could pay a paltry fee of 3 dollars and get 10 or so of those better cards. And that was how they made money. I believe, all in all, I blew about 40 dollars on this game. By the way - worth it. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent man-handling other people with my Rikishi playbook. Also, there were chat rooms to talk about wrestling, or trade cards.

The Rocks real first name is Dwayne. Him and Dwayne Wade make bein' named Dwayne cool.

The game itself did a very excellent job of simulating the entire wrestling experience. The game play area looks like a wrestling ring, complete with fans and flashbulbs in the background. To win, you have to ‘pin’ your opponent when their health gets low, but they could kick out and the game would continue. Some moves, like ‘low blow’ and ‘steel chair to the face’ are illegal, and if you connect with them, the referee would give you ‘warnings.’ Receive too many of these and you would likely, tho not always, get disqualified. Furthermore, throughout how ever many years I played this game, they were always coming out with new cards and wrestlers, as new Wrestlers became popular in the WWE, and new wrestling moves were being performed on the show. This was a nice touch to keep it fresh. They also had weekly tournaments where the winner would face the current ‘champion’ and if he won, he would become the World Heavyweight Championship title holder for that week, until he would have to defend it the next week. It was totally sweet; though, I was never good enough to win a title. I was too cheap to buy the really good cards I would have needed to win. And by that I mean my parents were not willing to blow any more money on this game for me.

I loved this game for a few reasons. The competition was an important aspect, because you’re not playing against a stupid computer AI, you’re going full out against another thinking person who probably spent just as much time perfecting his playbooks as you did, and winning felt really satisfying, every time. Also, everyone could see your rank and how many places, among the thousands who played, you were from being number one. But also, there was a huge amount of strategy in this game. For example, before I even played a game, I would count the number of move type cards I had in my playbook and compare that to the total number of cards I had in my playbook in order to calculate what percentage of my cards would counter certain moves my opponent might play, and also what percentage chance I had to draw a momentum card each turn. I would try to balance it so that I had a higher percentage chance to draw moves that countered the most popular and widely used move types. Various in game strategies include letting your opponent hit you with all his weak moves to save your counters for hurtful moves, or just loading your playbook with only one type of uncommon move type, like leg extended.

'Chair Shot' has yet to be recognized as an official wrestling move by the National Collegiate Wrestling Organization

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. Tragically, this game died. Apparently it cost the WWE more money to pay the staff running this game then it did money they made off of online card sales, so they closed down the site hosting this great game. Thus, my totally awesomely ranked Rikishi became a worthless memory, and my 40 dollars worth of online cards were quickly revealed to also be a worthless memory.

However, good things come to those who wait. Don’t get me wrong, the game is still dead, but about four years later I was looking on-line, and for nostalgia, I looked up ‘With Authority.’ Though the game was long gone, a super fan had made it so that he was hosting the game himself, and you could play it online again! Still, there are only about ten people who play nowadays. BUT… I, of course, out of curiosity, went to play a few rounds, and imagine my euphoric surprise when, in order to get the game to work, the guy hosting had to make it so that every new player has access to multiple copies of every single card that had ever been made in the game. So there I was, only five years ago dreaming of obtaining one specific card to improve my one playbook, and now, I had access to every single card they ever made, ever. I made like, 20 playbooks before I even played anyone, instantly remembering my winning formula for playbook by Math and odds calculation. And you know what? That very same day, those ten leftover people, from a time when this game thrived with the pulse of light, hosted a tournament for the WWE With Authority Heavyweight Championship Title. And you know what? I F**king WON that thing, BABY!!! Whooooo!!!! In your FACE, Bitches!!! Don’t you ever tell me I’m not a gamer, I got your strategy right here… in my PANTS!

If you’re just too curious, you can download the game here: http://www.wap2p.com/ Feel free to ask if you’re having trouble figuring stuff out, anyone would happily help you, assuming anyone of the ten people are in the chatroom.

3.75/5 Dope! Strategy Will Make You a Winner, Jabroni! Know Your Role and Play This Game! Smell What This Game is Cookin’! Gaming 3:16!!!

So Far the Only Reason to Buy Motion Plus

Like the typical, hardcore, Wii gamer, I bought the Motion Plus add-on as soon as it came out. It was only $20, and I was sure there would be many more games coming out that will need the 1:1 apparatus of motion control. Or, at the very least I thought, the next Zelda will have Motion Plus. Well, turns out that the very least is exactly what I got. That's not a remark on Red Steel 2, but on the countless companies that failed to utilize the accessory. Ok, countless may be stretching it. It has, after all, only been on the market since June 2009 and any game that was in the works before that couldn't possibly add such a unique feature as an afterthought. Red Steel 2, however, implemented it beforehand with ample time, despite the game's lack of commercial success. In regards to the poor sales figures, the Creative Director, Jason Vandenbergite, of the game told IGN that Red Steel 2 had a very small audience window and explained how gamers didn't want to "exert themselves." Neither of those arguments is unfair, but the latter makes me wonder about the future of the Playstation Move and Microsoft's Kinect.

To begin with Red Steel 2, I must admit I was excited to play this game long before I ever got the chance. Sword fighting, westerns and 1:1 movement will do that to me. But my first copy of the game had to be sent back because it was faulty and it was over a month before I found it again for the same price. So one can understand that the buildup of desire was much like that of a virgin high schooler at his prom. I was also just as hopeful of experiencing something that I thought would change everything. I would never -- could never -- go back to what it was like before direct 1:1 motion. For those of you not familiar with the Motion Plus accessory, it doesn't live up to this hype, which is seen clearly now with the noticeably few games that even offer the option of using it. Only one game, to date, takes advantage of the accessory and offers a complete gaming experience. The review of Red Steel 2, then, must include a review of Motion Plus gaming.

The opening cinematic of Red Steel 2 was very impressive. You begin by being tied by the wrists to the back of a motorcycle going through the desert and nearby city. I instantly thought, "wow, this looks fantastic. Cel-shading and the Wii are a perfect match." Even better was the idea that whoever gets dragged behind a bike like that would surely be dead by the end of the ride. I even winced a couple times when hitting glass bottles. Eventually the sequence ends and I was happily surprised when the in-game graphics stayed in step with the cinematic. We find out our hero is a member of the Kusagari clan, and so we start wandering the city in search of other Kusagari clansmen. At first the only weapon available is a gun, but that changes after a few minutes. The moment of truth for the Motion Plus add on. Can 1:1 movement improve the overall quality of a game? It took some getting used to, that's for sure. At first I was not able to swing the sword without turning the point of view in tandem with my swing. But, yes, there was 1:1 movement and it definitely made a difference in the game. For instance, the game immediately tells you to swing "with your elbow" because frilly wrist waggles won't be enough. The strength of the sword swipe depends on how fast and long your movement is. I can honestly say that my arm felt a little sore after a while, though, and I used to play tennis.

The entire set up works very well together. Motion Plus completely changes the action of the game. Since no one without wrists the size of dictionaries will be able to make little movements effective against the enemies, the gameplay is much more difficult. No sitting and leaning back. You gotta be front and center, ready to have broad slashes against armored foes. It doesn't feel like you're actually swinging a sword, even if the Wii remote is now longer, but it does get your head more into the game. As for the gun, there's nothing special there. It would work exactly the same without Motion Plus. Think Resident Evil 4 but without the stationary shooting. And the zombies.

As I mentioned earlier, the game's story is reminiscent of a spaghetti western. You get to play the wanderer who comes in to clean up the town, which is under siege by a group of bandits. In addition, there is also some classic Japanese story-telling here. The lone samurai, having been disgraced and banished by his clan, returns to help in a clan war and has to deal with other, sword-wielding assassins. The look and sound also blend the East and West. Not only are there paper lanterns, but telephones and vending machines. Not only is there a drunken-ish sheriff, but also a samurai master who reluctantly agrees to train you. If you're a fan of films like "Unforgiven" or "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" you will recognize the classic western sound, but with a Japanese tinge to it.

The combat gameplay largely relies on the sword, but that's the point. There is the option of buying additional guns and upgrades for them, but you can play the whole game without using your gun, while you need the sword for several things from taking off an enemy's armor to using for finishing moves. Also, almost everything you see lying around is breakable and will give you cash to purchase said upgrades; it would just be a waste of bullets to use them on shooting up every barrel and trash bag. The last little detail I would mention is the surprising use of the Wii remote speaker. Personally, mine is always off because the sound is usually awful quality and adds nothing to the experience. But, in Red Steel 2, the speaker is used to hear clicks when trying to unlock safes. You turn the remote as if it was the lock on the safe itself and listen for the clicking to know where to press A. Not a bad idea or implementation -- it was certainly never annoying. High praise for that little speaker.

To sum up this game, I can say it was a unique, enjoyable experience. The Motion Plus attachment was iffy at first, but over time I felt more and more comfortable with it. The point of view rotating with the swing stopped happening and really never happened in combat to begin with. The story was a nice mixture of classic plots, although the voice acting was a little off-putting, but there aren't many games that do that too well. I enjoyed the way to accept missions, along with collecting money, optional side quests, and upgrading your gun and sword. This game has a great deal of positives going for it and the addition of the, sadly under-used, Motion Plus does increase the overall quality. Especially in light of being one of the only games after a year to use it. I rate both Motion Plus and Red Steel 2 as Super Dope.

4.5/5 Near Perfect Score! Super Dope!

Obscure Title Tuesday: MTV's Remote Control!

Remote Control for the Nintendo Entertainment System! Or, as I like to call it…..no, you know what? No. You don’t even get a cutesy little stupid joke here, you piece of crap game! Just No. Gah Remote Control, how do I hate thee…. Let me count the ways:

It’s a quiz/trivia show based on the MTV show ‘Remote Control’ which was a tongue-in-cheek, meant to be stupid humor TV and music trivia show. It could be funny at times, what with the jokingly, overly raucous audience loudly yelling things throughout the show, especially if the three contestants had a good sense of humor. Think of it like Jeopardy, except totally, all-encompassingly laid back with like next to nothing on the line.

We all look like smiling douchebags!

Each game lasts around 15 minutes, and by 15 minutes, it is 15 minutes too long. The theme song is catchy, but it runs through the entire game non-stop and gets tiresome after about 2 minutes and annoying as all hell after 7 minutes (I timed it). Whoever wins gets a nice, short speech from the host ‘I am honored to be your video game’ and their face (you can select from 9 different faces, who smile or frown in different ways when you answer a question right or wrong) appears smiling on the main title screen. That’s it.

It works like a standard trivia game -- you select a category (just a number on a television, you don’t know what category you’re getting), they ask you a question, you buzz in, and select from 1 of 3 answers. If you get it right, points. Some time into the game, the person with the lowest number of points gets eliminated, then at the end you have a rapid fire round which has you complete the song, television show, or movie title from a list of 15 words. Just go down the list spamming the A and B button as fast as you can.

Insert humorous remark on photo here

With no raucous audience, no contestants, and hysterical quips from the 8-bit host like ‘Who do you think you are, Einstein?’ ‘Nice answer. And nice hair.’ And ‘If fish is brain food, I’m guessing you grew up in Nebraska!!” I don’t even F*cking get that one. This video game pretty much has nothing going for it for 3 reasons:

1) There’s no essence of the show in this game and/or a sense of humor. Sure, they tried. I’m sure someone, somewhere, at some point on the game developer staff thought that if, when a contestant got an answer right, the host said ‘Who do you think you are, Einstein????’ kids would bust out laughing so hard they’d pee their pants. And that makes me want to find that person and tell him to his face that he is not funny. And then break a light bulb over his head and say ‘Who do you think you are, Einstein?’ and then if he says ‘Einstein didn’t invent the light bulb, Thomas Edison did.’ Then I would say: ‘Who do you think you are, Einstein!!!!????’

Insert humorous remark on photo of crappy crap game here

2) The trivia is noticeably not for the target audience that would play this Video game. I cannot stress enough what a ridiculously obviously huge flaw that is! If anyone reading this were making a trivia game about television specifically geared for our generation (born around the late 80’s) you would probably put in plenty of references to those late 80’s/early 90’s Sunday morning cartoons and television shows we all watched, like Batman, Spiderman, Reboot, the one with the turtles, the one with the alien, the one with the Dinosaurs, the one with all the transforming, the purple one, the gay one, you know…. Television shows that we could have conceivably watched and known about. Almost every question here is about shows from primarily the 60’s and very early 70’s. You’d have to have been born around that time to get ‘em. I, then and now, often do not recognize all 3 of the actors or televisions shows listed as potential answers. Categories include ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ ‘Odd Couple’ and ‘Hogan’s Heroes.’ Yeah I’ve heard of these shows, but I don’t know enough about them to answer a trivia question based on one specific episode. The only categories I ever even recognized the answers to were the questions under ‘The Cartoon Show,’ ‘Gilligan’s Island’ and ‘The Bat Channel’ And even then it didn’t matter because you just raced to buzz in first and guess any random answer because you’re not gonna know it anyway and there’s no penalty for a wrong answer.

3) It’s boring. Gah, it’s soooo booooooring. It’s so boring, writing this article about it was boring. And that theme song WILL NOT STOP! I’m not even gonna link to it to give you a little taste because why put you through that? And there’s typos in the questions. GAH I hate this game!

I’m considering giving it the lowest score possible: A negative 12 out of 5. No seriously, there’s no replay value, it’s really annoying, and there’s nothing redeeming about it-………..ladies and gentleman, we have a winner. For the first time ever on superdopegaming dot com, I present you with: a straight up goose egg:

0/5 ZERO OUT OF 5!! EPIC VIDEO GAME FAAAIIL!!! GO TO HELL MTV!!!!!

Obscure Title Tuesday: Yoshi!

Fresh from the egg, just hatched. If this is the face of your child when they are literally just born-they will either be a winner or a huge arrogant prick.

Did you know? Did you know that Loveable Yoshi, who has helped you out so many times in the past, with not only your surviving Mario adventures but also your fun level, not only appeared in a game for the Nintendo Entertainment System but even appeared in his VERY OWN GAME EVEN! Did you know that just like the box art indicates, a smug looking Yoshi looks on smugly as screaming ‘Boo’ ghosts and confused goombas fall away in the distance as a newly smugly hatched Yoshi adventures forth, battling all your favorite Mario bad guys without the aid of Mario in a jumping and flying fire-breathing goomba-busting fun adventure?

That’s right you DON’T know about this game, not because this epic sweeping side scrolling Final Fantasy-esque side scroller simply sold poorly, no, you don’t know about this game because rather than being any of the things I just mentioned- It’s a shitty puzzle game.

To start with, you would think that this game is a thing for Yoshi fans to be really excited about. Yoshi is in his very own game, without the aid of Mario in any way. And the game developers at Nintendo were so confident in their product that they didn’t even put their flagship character, Mario, on the box art as decoration or as a reminder of the Yoshi-Mario relation.

Well, unfortunately for your hopes and dreams, Mario IS in this game. In fact, in this game, you control Mario. Wow. I will admit to never playing ‘Luigi’s Mansion’, but if I or any Luigi fan ever picked up a copy of ‘Luigi’s Mansion’ and the whole time the only character I could play as was Mario, I’d flip a shit. Well Yoshi fans- Your shit is thoroughly flipped now, because Nintendo hates your green Dinosaur Love.

You control Mario controlling his enemies. You control everything BUT Yoshi.

“But wait!” You say. “I am a more than average educated gamer, and I know that Yoshi’s debut was in fact for the SUPER Nintendo in the game ‘Super Mario World.’ What the Fu*k?” Yes knowledgeable gamer, while I don’t approve of your cussing, in giving Yoshi his very own special amazing title in which you don’t even control Yoshi at all, Nintendo decided to go DOWN a console from the Super Nintendo to the Nintendo Entertainment System for this Yoshi adventure. Did I say adventure? Cause I meant shitty puzzle.

You control Mario in a Tetris-esque game screen, with 2 blocks of Nintendo bad guy characters falling from the top of the screen. Unlike Tetris, you don’t control the falling blocks, you control the blocks that have already fallen, by moving Mario, with 2 outstretched hands, to switch the fallen stationary blocks to try to get them to match the ones that are falling. When 2 bad guys on top of each other match, they disappear. That’s it. There are only 4 columns total, so the game play isn’t challenging at all, even when the blocks are falling fast.

The only thing to break up the aforementioned monotony is that sometimes an up facing half-egg appears- if you put a down facing half-egg on top of it, you get points and a little baby Yoshi pops out. Awww. Also, you can pile bad guys on top of the up facing egg, so when you put the down facing egg on top of the bad guys the egg will eat all the bad guys before getting to its matching shell and hatching bigger sized Yoshis. If you risk it and go all the way to the very top most part of the screen with bad guys on top of an egg and then land with the down egg, it makes a cool sound effect and a really Fat Yoshi comes out, and it’s kind of awesome. But other than those cute baby and Fat Yoshi’s, that’s it. I imagine anyone reading this column could already master this game without even having played it once, and within 15-30 minutes (honestly depending upon how much you like baby and fat Yoshi’s) anyone would get bored with it. You would need a very young child for this game to be entertaining, for then it would be somewhat challenging to them and perhaps very young children don’t mind endless monotony in place of dashed expectations. So, basically it’s like a mix between Tetris and Dr. Mario, except unlike Tetris and Dr. Mario, this game is much shittier.

See, the background in now Green instead of Red, so that gives the game depth.

Before you start a game you can change the difficulty level and choose from 1 of 3 songs; this screen is similar to the customize-the-start-of-your-game screen from ‘Dr. Mario’, except this one has way less options. Probably because they wanted to stick it to Yoshi fans for not liking Mario more. Oh, and in the 2 player mode, the person holding and switching the blocks on the other side of the screen is Luigi. He left his mansion to be in this shitty game.

Hmmmmmmmm……OK, then again, maybe I’m ragging on this game too much…it’s an all right puzzle game, it doesn’t glitch, moving the blocks instead of the falling pieces is a unique variation of Tetris, Fat Yoshis are fun, you can recognize all the characters clearly and this game definitely sucks. I’m sorry, I can’t- I can’t not compare this to the side scrolling Mario adventure featuring Yoshi that I thought this game was gonna be when I first popped this cartridge into old NESsy. To be fair the box art does say ‘un casse-tete paniquant avec Yoshi et ses amis!’ Wait…OK, It also says ‘Pure Puzzle Panic’ but I mean……not having read that small blurb, or speak French, anyone would expect this to be a side scrolling adventure! Also I was probably too young to read at the age I got this game anyway. But I still wasn’t so young that I thought it was good or anything other then monotonous and boring! Fat Baby Yoshis be damned!! F Minus!!! Crippling Disappointment!!!!

Except for the title music and 3 song choices which are catchy, the graphics are fine, the young’uns might like it and……Fat Yoshi undamned.

1.5/5 Play Tetris or Dr. Mario or Outside or 52 Card Pick-Up Instead

A (Non-Zerg) Alien Swarm

Yet another free game being reviewed here on, newly retitled, Super Dope Gaming. Alien Swarm comes from "a group of talented designers at Valve who were hired from the Mod community," which means this is a game made by Valve gamers, for Valve gamers. Fitting. This downloadable game is a 4 player cooperative, online, top-down action game, and as you can guess, not too many other games fall into that specific set of genres, making Alien Swarm stand out among the few.

You play one of eight characters, from one of four classes: Medic, Engineer, Heavy, or Soldier. Probably not the official names for the classes, but at least people who play Team Fortress 2, one of Valve's other online games, will get the idea. In fact, every gamer will most likely know what those classes are, even if they just guessed. That's the beauty of the class system. Anyway, each character also has three things to hold: two are usually weapons and the third is some tool to aid the mission. Whether that third slot is taken by a health pack, ammo pack, or door welder depends on your class and how you want to arrange your set up. People who have played TF2 will no doubt find familiarity in both the controls and load out screen. But, for those unsure of their shooting prowess, there is a way to practice offline.

There is no story here. While Privates attempted to create a story through dialog during breaks between battles, and Team Fortress 2 has enough of a fan base for Valve to make comics explaining the history behind Red and Blue, Alien Swarm starts with a simple plot. "There are aliens attacking the base. Escape." Which lets the player get right into the action, but denies them any meaningful experience. Of course this game isn't trying to be the next Half Life, just an action-oriented and fast-paced shooter. On this point, the game excels. If you're confident enough to venture to the online play, you'll likely end up in a game of "who can get to the end the fastest." I don't think that was the idea the creators had. The point of playing with a team is using teamwork, isn't it? This isn't the fault of the game or creators, of course, but the online community, where the motto is usually All for one.

That's unfair though, since I routinely play without taking the time to ensure the safety of my teammates. For Alien Swarm, I can imagine the most fun and cohesive gaming experience to come from a group of four friends playing it during a LAN party. Also, the aliens seem to never stop coming, which makes the idea of running past the monsters to the goal much more appealing and, honestly, smarter than staying around to make sure every area is cleared.

This game does not represent Valve's finest work, but it is a lot of fun to play. Once you get to know who your favorite character is and spend more time playing in online bouts, you'll be running through the levels as if you were running through each level. Like anything that's free to play, you might as well give it a try. I was impressed with how much fun it was to play and the game's overall quality. You can tell how much time the people from the "Mod community" put into Alien Swarm and how much they wanted others to enjoy their gaming experience. For that, I can't see any reason to lower the score other than it's lack of story -- seemingly not that important for shooters anyway -- and the simple, Team Fortress-esque gameplay, which can also be seen as a plus. Valve has made another game where the key points are the experience of the audience, the enjoyment while playing, and has given the added bonus of zero cost. Download this game, have fun, thank Valve.

4/5 Near Perfect Score! Super Good!

Obscure Title Tuesday: Monopoly!

Monopoly for the Nintendo Entertainment System! Or, as I like to call it: Insert Joke Here!

Monopoly is, of course, the insanely popular property trading bankruptcy game by Milton Bradley that, by some fluke, is not too complicated for the average American to play. You go around a board buying property, when you own all the property of a certain color you can buy houses and hotels for that property, and when your friends (or enemies!) land on these properties they must pay you major bank, or ‘rent.’ The object is to bankrupt everyone else, leaving them penniless and you Scrooge McDuck.

I should stop walking because this road is about to end

When playing this NES game with others the game functions exactly as a normal game of Monopoly, though there are 3 key ‘differences’ you have to get used to. Many people play Monopoly using house rules, which is pretty much any rule other then the official rules to make the game more fun. A common house rule is if you land on the free parking space then you get 500 dollars (or some other amount of money, like the money you lost from chance cards and landing on that damn ‘Luxury Tax’ space RIGHT in between Boardwalk and Park Place! THAT space should be the free parking! If I come that close to Boardwalk and not land on it I should be consoled with parking that is free, not a 75 dollar diamond ring….heh heh heh, crazy 1933.) Since that’s not an option for this game, landing on free parking gets you nothing but the animation of your game piece chillaxing on free parking.

Curiously, even tho this game was made in the 90's no one has been named 'Gertrude' since the 1800's

There are two other ‘differences’ (which are really just the original rules of Monopoly that some don’t use) that may frustrate some. Whenever you land on a property, if you choose to not buy that property, it MUST be auctioned off, with the property going to the highest bidder. Though auctioning of a property is quick and easy in the game, it makes the rich get even richer as they can abuse people with less money by getting properties cheap whenever anyone lands on a property that they can’t afford. Finally, there are a limited number of houses and hotels that can be bought in this game, whereas most home games will find some pennies and use those when they run out of houses in the box. This doesn’t matter too much, though, as there are 32 houses; more than enough to bust your opponents. Other then that, the board is the same, everything costs the same, you can offer trades to people who can accept, offer counter trades, or just flat our refuse, you got your chance and community chest cards, game play is quick, and, with the addition of video technology, all the game pieces have little movement animations during significant events like moving around the board, going to jail, buying houses or hotels, and each chance and community chest card.

Gertrude buyin' a railroad. Because that was the main mode of transportation in her day.

The music for the intro is catchy, though there’s no music during gameplay; just sound effects and snippets of music during things like the rolling of the dice, trading, going to jail, or whenever you land on Boardwalk and Park Place and no one has purchased them yet. There are enough sound effects to make the absence of a general background song not noticeable. Also, when you win the game it shows you, triumphant on top of a giant dollar bill sign with your name and how much all your money and property is worth combined displayed, along with a totally bitchin’ song in the background that makes you feel like a winner and forget all about the recession.

Donnie would later fall and sue the giant golden dollar bill manufacturer for another $12,125.

The area in which this game shines is the computer AI. You can play with up to 7 computer players and……they don’t suck! The AI in this game plays an effective game of monopoly and is even able to hold up against your many, repeated attempts at trying to trick it into making a stupid trade. Trading with these computer players is like playing Monopoly with a friend of yours who is really tight fisted with his property, but not unreasonable. When you choose to play with a computer player the game brings you to an art gallery showcasing 4 pictures of high society with their names underneath, collectively called the ‘top four.’ You can also click on the ‘bottom four’ to see the crappier, noticeably poorer and more homely computer players. Though they are billed as the ‘top four’ and ‘bottom four’, I find that there’s nothing really that much different about how they actually play or go about trading. Interestingly, I think the bottom four are just less lucky when it comes to dice rolling. Or, more accurately, they land less on unowned property. Specifically, and I don’t mean to accuse Milton Bradley of blatant racism, but, most racistly, the worst and most G-d awful bottom four computer player is ‘Ollie’, who is Hispanic, and I have seen him play multiple games where he rolls so poorly he only buys 2 properties for the entire game before he goes bankrupt…curiously, during these times the property he buys is a green property and a Railroad……other then that, however, I’ve played many games and never noticed a predictable pattern in rolling tendencies. Oh, and at the beginning of each game a person is randomly chosen to go first, and Ollie always goes last. In FACT, you can’t even feel bad for him and just give him free money because if you try to trade him and offer him like, 20 dollars for nothing in return, he won’t simply refuse the trade, he will literally move your cursor to the ‘quit trade’ button. I like to think of it as, he’s too proud to take your pity hand me down charity. To be fair to Milton Bradley and Nintendo, this would be a lot more racist if there wasn’t another Hispanic guy in the top four named ‘Erwin’ who will destroy you. If you let him.

I know from memory that Ollie just landed on Park Place with 4 houses. I love Monopoly.

There are some options to customize your game before you start, like properties being randomly assigned, timed matches, or you can literally just choose who owns what property and how much starting money each player has. I find it’s more fun to either play the classic game of monopoly, or, make yourself start with as much money as you possibly can, then, when you land on that ‘Income Tax- Pay $200 or 10%‘ space, (four spaces from ‘Go’) click ‘B’ to pay 10%, and watch that little cash register guy eat like….$99,999 in taxes…he only eats one bill at a time, so it takes like 5 minutes!

Also, the computers play at a medium pace, but there is an option to make them play quickly so that they don’t watch any of the animations and perform no brainer decisions quickly (like buying properties).

All in all, besides poor prideful Ollie, this is a fine substitute for the board game and as long as you can get past the auctioning of property and the no free money for landing on free parking, this is a great fun game that can be played with friends or alone! Of course, I really enjoy the game ‘Monopoly’. So I guess if you don’t like the board game you would probably think this game sucks. Oh well!

3.75/5 Computer Players That Don’t Suck! No Missing Pieces! Only a Teensy Bit Racist!!

Obscure Title Tuesday: Golgo 13!

Golgo 13 For the Nintendo Entertainment System! Or as I like to call it: The one where I have SEX but in real life I'm only 12!!!

I need to be fair and straight up right off the bat: I did not beat this game. My shame is great, but not overwhelming, for I know that I am a solid casual gamer and NOT of the personality that I feel like I HAVE to beat a level when that level is so difficult and frustrating that I just want to punch the person reading this article. If that happens to me in a game, after a good number of hours it's like: F*ck it. This isn't fun. I'm playing this to have fun and experience entertainment, not feel like an angry failure. Or, alternatively, a pathetic failure. So take everything said here with a grain of salt, as it may be that the later 3/4 of this game are the most amazingly fun challenges in gaming history and we're all missing out by reading this and not playing it right now.

It's hard to rip on a game that went out of its way to be diverse and creative. (4 distinct game genres of play!) There’s a legitimate (complicated) storyline with great music to match. But, alas, the shortcomings, like freaking impossible mazes, make what could have been a NES classic into……an obscure title. (Eh? See what I did there?) (Cause the name of the article is obscu-you get it.)

The 007-esque plot is: You are Duke Togo. A spy! But a CIA helicopter has been shot down and there was a weapon on board, and maybe somebody got it, and the Russian KGB is definitely involved, and you should investigate, but then a….thing happens……lot of people to talk to……there’s a virus……yeah, there is a LOT of talking in this game and I could not follow what was going on- it’s just too complicated and fragmented. But props for trying- I mean, you know, plenty of NES titles don't even have a story: Track and Field, Balloon Fight, Super Off Road, Dr. Mario......Tetris.

As mentioned earlier, there are FOUR distinct game genres of play:

Golgo 13 or......CHUCK NORRIS?!!???

Side Scrolling: You start out the game with this genre. You’re in a town with red buildings in the background, some of which you can enter and talk to people to progress the story or get hints on where to go. You're wearing a fairly pimp blue suit and you can either jump, kick, or shoot the bad guys (who are wearing decidedly NOT pimp green suits). They all die in one shot. Duke can jump 5 people lengths into the air, so, think 25-foot dropkicks. Your helpful contacts who roam the streets are also wearing ugly green suits, but bullets pass right thru them. Sometimes guys on motorcycles will ride into you. Jump out of their way, but don’t bother shooting them as their motorcycles outrun your bullets. Sometimes a huge gun will enter the screen and shoot at Duke, thus changing the gameplay to:

Quick! Shoot that Giant Incoming Missile out of the air before it hits you!

First Person Shooter: You move a crosshair around the town (it looks different) and shoot both bad guys on the ground and huge helicopters in the air. Most die with one shot. One of my favorite moments in the game comes not when you shoot down a helicopter with your pistol in one shot, but, when in a water level, you use your pistol to shoot a SUBMARINE that explodes in THREE shots. Thank goodness they cleared that up because after shooting the helicopters in one shot with my HAND HELD PISTOL I was gonna start questioning this games realism, especially after the whole bullet velocity motorcycle problem mentioned earlier. The feel of this part of the game is meh, as sometimes bad guys are hard to find and keep shooting you while you're scrolling from left to right trying to find them. Fortunately these scenes only last about 30 seconds. Later on:

Quick! Shoot that......the hell?

Moving Helicopter Battles!: It's like those games where you’re flying in a helicopter in a side scrolling game but the screen is always moving to the right and bad guys come at you from the right hand side of the screen and you have to shoot them! You can fly forward, back, up, and down, and the planes that attack you are varied and shoot in different patterns. Also there’s these gigantic floating circle bad guys that have other floating circles circling the central circle…they take a lot of hits. The feel of this Helicopter part of the game is good…if this section of the game had a B button super special attack, some power ups and different background scenery this could have been the whole game, and a fun one. However, someone who played too many freaggin’ jigsaw puzzles when they were a kid just had to throw in:

BOOM! Headshot. Take THAT United States Army or Military.

The First Person Maze Levels: With no overhead view, no map, and a wonky feel, the maze levels sucked hard. They sucked so hard you guys. Floors give way and drop you down to ANOTHER MAZE! which is just as complicated as the maze you were sucking at before you fell, but you have to beat this maze just to get to a ladder that takes you to the ORIGINAL level of the maze! But by then you've already forgotten where you can't go, and you fall down a level again because you stepped in the same place that you fell down before, but it's still so complicated and awkward you can't remember how to solve the lower level maze from a few G-d Damn minutes ago so it's like you’re starting from scratch Gaaaah!!!! Not to mention there’s a fake maze that goes nowhere. A Fake. Maze. That goes nowhere. You only realize this after exploring the fake maze for hours. You have grenades that you can throw when walls randomly close right in front of your face, but sometimes you're supposed to throw them at dead ends, but this doesn't always work and it's unclear when you’re supposed to do that. There are bad guys standing around in certain areas…push A to get a cross hair, then tap left once and it puts the crosshair automatically on them…. Just hit A again to shoot them dead and that refills your grenades back to 3. You know what? Just writing about this pisses me off, that's how bad it was. It pisses me off even more because of the cool things this game had going for it.

The music is good. It sets the tone, starting off with a slow, lonely feel, like, "what's going on, I’m just starting this game but I'm unsure- where am I, who am I, ok, kinda getting a feel for this" and then BAM! It ratchets up for the next scene and it's all like duh nuhhh nuh-nuh-nuhhhhh, and there’s like a bass groove and everything. And it's long enough to only repeat a couple times before the end of a level. Which is no problem because the music’s so badass you FEEL like a spy…..a spy named Duke Togo, I might add. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB4Yl1koV3Q Jump to 2:35, wait 15 seconds…and you’re a spy

Speaking of names, the colorful cast of characters includes names like Dirk Bullit, Cherry Grace (More on her in a second), Maria Lovelette, Fake Enormous (Who, I kid you not, is a midget), Red River Jr., Condor, and Ladies White. Of course, I didn't actually get to MEET most of these people since I couldn't get past the maze levels, but I'm sure they were all very nice.

In the beginning of the game you get your first mission from Cherry Grace, who I refer to as a 10 bit character as opposed to an 8 bit character because she's an F’ing 10! In the dialogue when characters speak you can see everyone’s face close up, and she is one of the more attractive NES characters you will come across in a game. I only mention this because

YOU HAVE STEAMY HEALTH REJUVINATING SEX WITH CHERRY GRACE IN A HOTEL!

'nuff said.

OK It might be a motel but it doesn't even matter because Oh My G-d you guys….You see 2 figures in a hotel window, they come together in an embrace, the lights go out and then your health meter at the top of the screen goes up to full. The first time this happened I immediately tried to re-enter the hotel just to have sex again but some ugly hotel guy (Red River Jr.) told me Cherry had left. Literally I would purposely loose almost all my health right before this point in the game just so that the sex scene would last longer. It was as epic as it sounds, you guys. In fact, this game isn't that bad. I was giving it a hard time earlier cause of the maze stuff, but, you know, maybe this whole game is just like a huge metaphor, with the sex scene being like……sex, and the frustrating maze scenes being like all the times when we're not having sex and we have to deal with frustrating women HAAH am I right guys????????????11111111???

Not to gloss over this but there’s a cool part of the game where you have to snipe somebody from a helicopter and the crosshair is shaking because…you’re in a helicopter. When you shoot the bad guy blood comes out of his head when he dies. In a NES game. Keep in mind this game was released before No More Heroes for the Wii.

Golgo 13 strives to be a cool 007 adventure without the nasty copyright issues. And with a spy story, great music, and diverse gameplay, this title could have been a NES classic preceding Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64. But in a game that is 13 Acts (levels) long, when I can't get past the 3rd act without cheating by going online in order to look up a map of each maze that some other gamer just as frustrated as me painstakingly figured out and drew in order to provide for all the other miserable people playing this game…I'm going to have to pass. And give this the lowest possible score, a 0 out of 5. Except the sex bumps it up to 2.5. OK, also the music and story and diverse play styles, Sheesh.

2.5/5 Frustratingly only being able to get through 1/4 of a game has never been so much fun!

(Also, for some hilarious insight into this game, check out this screen capture play through): http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Golgo13/Update%201/index.html