Your Mother Drives Cars In Hell!!

Since Jess has commandeered the Xbox while she furiously feeds Psychonauts the bomb, I’ve finally exorcised the demon known as Knight Rider: The Game. Lucky for me, it’s a pretty short game, but that didn’t stop it from frustrating the crap out of me and making me yell profanities. Still, the unintentional hilarity of the bad dialogue/acting and one actually entertaining level made it more of an evil imp than a full fledged, sphincter throated Mephistopheles. I can honestly say I had a little fun playing the game, though the “ending” left much to be desired.

As I said before, the biggest problem is that the car handles like a boat. Another major annoyance was the way the levels were set-up. You would usually start by driving for 2 minutes down a long desert road to a compound where you needed to scan several buildings. Getting to each building would require some “car platforming” as KITT jumped from rooftop to rooftop and drove on two wheels across narrow pipes suspended from building to building. After all this dubious manuevering, something would usually happen that required a timed escape. The worst case of this was when I set off an alarm that gave me about 20 seconds to drive up a narrow winding ramp and jump off a building. Each time I fell off the ramp, I had to start at the beginning, drive 2 minutes through the desert, scan the buildings again… It was great.

Another thing that nagged me was the simple fact that if Michael would just get out of the car it’d make things a lot easier. For example, take this scenario :

Instead of Michael simply getting out of the car and taking the stairs to apprehend the suspect, KITT had to leap up two ledges and then jump through that window in the upper right corner. There seems to be an unhealthy relationship between man and car going on here…

What kept me trudging through the terrible gameplay was the promise of more bad diologue and cornball acting! I was never disappointed, especially when Michael Knight’s evil twin Garth showed up driving KITT’s evil twin, KARR.

Most of the story is told with text and still photos with the occasional cinematic. When I finally heard Garth speak, I realized his evil was more than just a goatee. Listen for yourself, if you dare.

Another interesting feature of the game were the slow motion camera shots when you jumped over certain obstacles; a precursor to the Bond Moments in Everything or Nothing. What made these so interesting was that they happened regardless of whether you successfully made the jump or not. I was treated to many blooper reels where KITT was romantically skidding across the desert on his hood or plummeting into a ravine.

After the one certifiably entertaining level in the game where you race through tight tunnels to try and escape Garth’s lair, I fought one of the lamest boss fights ever. The goal was to destroy KARR in a one on one demolition derby. This was easily acheived by simply parking KITT on the other side of downed electric wire and watching KARR try to drive through the electricity over and over again until he died.

In a strange way I’m glad I had the opportunity to play this game. Platforming with a car was a unique experience that I would never have sought out myself and the cheesy production and 80’s synth music were genuinely amusing. So let this be an encouragement to all you Secret Satan victims who have yet to exorcise your demons.

Tonight I played 4 solid hours of my favorite dying and walking simulator, World of Warcraft. Ever since Blizzard turned on the updated PVP system, nearly everyone sits around fighting with each other. As a result, I can’t get to most of the quests I want to do because I get killed every 5 minutes. And every time I get killed, I’m treated to a nice long stroll back to my corpse. This weekend I’m going to turn this into a real life adventure by walking to the end of my street and paying someone to push me down. Then I’ll walk back to where I started and repeat. The only fun thing that did happen tonight is Mike killing a field full of cows.

Beef!

I know a night of gaming has sucked when I wish I’d done homework instead.

This is your brain on drugs…

Since Jeff has yet to get his pre-ordered copy of Psychonauts (the PC release was pushed back a week) I’ll try not to spoil anything for him, but this game is too cool not to post about. It’s so cool my wife Jess has even been playing it!

You play Razputin a psychically gifted boy who has snuck into Whispering Rock Summer Camp to become a Psychonaut. You learn such psychic powers such as telekinesis, pyrokinesis, levitation and more. As the plot develops, you find yourself having to enter the minds of insane people and to help them solve their problems from the inside. Each level is unique in theme and design depending on the mental problems of the host. In addition to defeating their personal demons you also collect figments of imagination, sort emotional baggage, suck up mental cobwebs, and open mental vaults. As you level up you gain additional powers and power upgrades.

Fans of Tim Schafer will not be disappointed in this game. It’s as much a classic adventure game in the vein of Grim Fandango and Full Throttle as it is a platformer. You have an inventory, you solve problems and puzzles, but instead of thread after thread of conversation, you get to jump around and shoot things. The enemies are specific to each environment and the game boasts some pretty great boss battles. Beating each one requires problem solving as much as “duck and shoot” platforming.

Technically the graphics and sound are amazing. I was a bit disappointed at first because the Xbox version looks nowhere near as great as the PC demo did, but it’s the best looking Xbox game I’ve played. My advice if you have the hardware and an analog controller for your PC is to get the PC version which is also $20 cheaper. The other reason for this is that my Xbox copy is a bit buggy and has crashed several times whereas you can get patches for the PC copy.

The best part of the game however is it’s sense of humor. The dialog and cutscenes are absolutely hilarious. Rarely does a game make me laugh outloud, but this one cracks me up over and over again. I dare say it’s the funniest Tim Schafer game yet and that’s saying a lot.

I believe everyone here has either a PC, Xbox, or PS2 so there’s no excuse for any of you to not go out and buy this game right now (pre-order for PS2). Jess has already logged over 10 hours on it so that means it must be a ton o’ fun!

More later…

I went and did it, I started a new World of Warcraft Character. I can say this, I wasn’t having fun playing WoW recently and now I am. Basically, I was playing a class that was broken (in bad way). Blizzard’s fixing it but in the meantime they had to scale back the abilities so that they can fix it. I know that doesn’t make any sense to me either but its hard to know you’re walking around and you’re not quite as ‘adequate’ as everyone else. Its one thing to think this, its another to hear the publisher of the game inform you of it. I will probably go back to my old character, but for now this one is ton of fun. Besides, its always fun to beat up the neighborhood bully…

On a related note, and I’ve been meaning to post this for a while. WoW has renewed my interest in PC Gaming. If anyone has any particular titles they consider ‘must play’ then I would definitely be interested. I’m a whore when it comes to graphics so its gotta be made within the last year or two if I am even going to consider playing it.

By the way, did you guys know all this stuff about Vin Diesel?

As many of you know (because you were in on it), Jeff and I got Punk’d last Friday night with a dual surprise birthday party. I can safely say this was more surprising to me than Jeff being that my birthday isn’t until May 18th, but a party’s a party and beer is beer. This party was the fourth surprise party this year starting with Erin’s birthday, then my wife’s birthday, then Will (or Whack)’s going away party. Good times were had by all and many people went home very late and got in trouble.

To relate this to gaming and thus justify it’s postability, some highlights of the evening included this Zelda inspired banner:

and a Katamari Damacy cake that Erin made:

(Click the cake to set it on fire!)

Thanks to everyone who came and conspired against us!

It took me over thirty hours and a few weeks, but I’ve finally fed the bomb to the second episode in the Xenosaga series.

For those new to the Xenosaga franchise, a quick history: In 1998 Square released Xenogears for the original PlayStation. Xenogears featured an adult storyline that revolved around controversial religious elements (that almost nixed its American release). After a dispute, the Xenogears creator left Square and took a few developers with him to Namco. Because of copyright and trademark issues, the franchise was renamed “Xenosaga”. The first Xenosaga episode premiered on the PlayStation 2 in 2001. The game was marketed as the first of six episodes and it is renowned for its long cut-scenes and strong storytelling. The second game is pretty similar to the first, using the same graphics engines, storytelling structure, and so on.

Depending how you involved and detailed you like your gaming universe, you’re either going to love or hate this game. The latest episode’s title is “Xenosaga II: Jenseits von Gut und Böse”, continuing in the tradition of using Nietzsche-inspired titles to reflect the game’s themes. In addition to Nietzsche, the game throws all sorts of background material at players: Jungian psychology, Gnosticism, Buddhism, Catholicism, existentialism, and a touch of Freud. Xenosaga has been the first game that I’ve felt compelled to play with a laptop at my side opened up to Wikipedia so that I could look up all the new unfamiliar references.

In addition to the torrent of ideas and themes, Xenosaga features the most expansive cast of characters that I’ve seen attempted in a video game. Throughout the game, you work with a core group of eight, each with their own backstory and motivations. Throughout the game, you encounter many other key characters that push the story along. There is a ton of backstory told, and the second episode focuses heavily on the last twenty years leading to current events in the game. Each of these characters has an individual arc and it’s clear that their present roles in the game are not at the end of the arcs, but somewhere in the middle.

So far, each game has taken roughly thirty hours to complete. Take that thirty hours and multiply it by six, and there’ll probably be anywhere from 180 to 200 hours worth of gaming and storytelling before it’s all over. With such a large canvas, the plot is as ambitious as the characterization. The Xenosaga universe is set over four thousand years in the future, where humanity has colonized space. After a mysterious catastrophe, alien beings called the Gnosis appear in regular space and start annihilating humans. The Gnosis are attracted to powerful religious artifacts called the Zohar, which humanity is trying to exploit. The main character in the series is a female engineer working for a large corporation building an anti-Gnosis warrior android called KOS-MOS. After the initial skirmishes, the conflict crystallizes as being a struggle between the Federation government, a breakaway U-TIC organization, the Ormus religion, the Vector corporation, and the government of a planet called Second Miltia. On a micro level, the characters interact as expected, and on the macro level, these giant organizations likewise collaborate, fight, and attempt to outmaneuver each other to win the endgame.

As I’ve said before, if you get into this stuff, Xenosaga is great. If you’re a gamer that likes to get down to the actual gameplay, the storytelling probably overwhelms the gameplay experience. It’s not uncommon to experience fifteen-minute cut scenes, interspersed with five or ten minutes of interactive player time.

The actual gameplay mechanics doesn’t stray far from traditional turn-based RPG combat. You can fight as your main characters and in some areas, your characters pilot giant mecha to fight against other giant robots. There is a traditional set of magic spells (called “ether”) that characters learn while advancing levels. Characters earn general experience points that raise strength and hit points, and they also earn skill points that can be selectively used to gain special abilities such as increased strength, spells, and status immunities.

The combat system breaks from traditional systems by using something called the “boost system”. When characters fight, they build up boost points. Players (and enemies) can use their boost points to circumvent the turn system and move to the front of the line. Furthermore, players can inflict greater damage on enemies by discovering “break points”. Break points are combinations of attacks that stun the enemies and leave them vulnerable. For example, if you attack the enemy’s head then their torso, you may stun them and allow your party members to hammer them while stunned. A large part of winning the game is learning this system and breaking enemies, then boosting to chain together attacks to achieve maximum damage. This injects a bit of real-time thinking into turn-based combat that doesn’t become a twitch contest.

Episode two spans two disks, but it’s relatively short for an RPG. Players can spend twenty to thirty hours from the start to the final boss battle and the game provides players with an optional side quest after the completion of the main game. It’s useful to think of this individual game as disks two and three of a larger set since players will be lost if they haven’t gone through the first episode. If you don’t feel like keeping track of a ton of characters and plot points, you will want to pass on this game. Personally, I really enjoy intricate drawn-out epic stories, so Xenosaga has hit a sweet spot for me.

Check out a screen shot from the fun new game I’m playing today:

Paterson interpreted this data to mean that the E(O)-enolate I-XX-E showed no 1,4-induction while the Z(O)-enolate I-XX showed excellent 1,4-induction. The levels of diastereoselectivity could be enhanced to synthetically valuable levels by using the matched enantiomer of an isopinocamphylboron triflate ((Ipc-)2BOTf) derived enolate (Fig. XX, I-XX-Z Æ I-XX).

The game is called “Thesis: The Reason My Hair is Falling Out”. It sucks.

Bucho welcomes our newest editors Jason B (Squee) and Chris K.

Jason and I grew up together in the New Orleans and he still holds the title of Best Friend from kindergarten. You can’t undo those kinds of bonds, you know? Our video gaming addictions started with the Atari 2600, matured slightly with the release of the Atari 800 and solidified with the Atari ST. We’re still pretty sure that’s when the best gaming was happening.

Chris has been brought into the Chicago branch by Steve. And even better, he’s ready to post. Take it away boys!

I took Bucho’s advice last week and fed the bomb to Onimusha: Warlords, the first in Capcom’s three part series. Jeff described the game better than I could, but I thought there were some things you should know.

Since Jeff has already described the positive aspects of the game, I’m going to talk about the bad stuff. Keep in mind the game was good enough to make me buy a sparkling new copy of Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny (for $12), but there are some things that I’d feel bad not telling you. First, the game’s got a steep learning curve and it took me a long time to get a hang of the controls - maybe half the game before I felt like I had things down. The game follows a different aesthetic than I’m used to; namely, when you press the up arrow your character walks in the direction he’s facing regardless of his relationship to the fixed camera. Press the left arrow and he turns to HIS left, not yours, a seemingly small enough difference but one that drove me bonkers. There are no checkpoints in this game either, so when you face a boss and get killed, expect to spend a minute or two working your way back to him and watching the unskippable cut scene again before you get back to swords. Bad camera angles are at their worst when you fight bosses and I found myself getting my ass kicked because I couldn’t see hero Samonosuke and the boss at the same time. The frustratingly bad camera angles detracted heavily from what I felt was a fun game.

The other thing I need to ask after playing this game is, “who the hell translated this game?” Case in point: there’s a terrifying demon surgeon who stitches together abominations to hound you constantly. His name? Guildenstern. The name of his evil master, the king of demons? Fortinbras. (Remember kids, the “s” is silent!) His two “most evil” creations? Marcellus and Reynaldo. I’m sorry, but when he shouted, “Get him Reynaldo!” the only thing I heard was Swedish super-group ABBA singing, “there was something in the air that night / the stars were bright / Reynaldo!*” How am I supposed to be intimidated by a dude named Reynaldo?

Allow me to give this game a meaningless rank: 4.

* yes, I know it’s really Fernando, but that didn’t stop me from humming the song.

Chris, it’s your birthday. So I got you deze.

Have a good one, Nearly Dr. Liu.

The Horror…..

I guess my laptop boasting jinxed me. Our Dell Inspiron has a monitor glitch where too much heat is being produced at the bottom of the panel causing a white glow that gets worse the longer you have the computer on. I’m amazed that I’ve been unable to find any complaints about this online.

Dell’s tech support was classically bad. I was misrouted a few times and had to wait in the wrong queue and when they transfered me to the right department, I got disconnected. After finally reaching Inspiron tech service I had to decypher the psuedo-English ramblings of “Asian Lady with mouth full of marshmallows”. She followed her scripted advise tree without taking into consideration my specific issue. (If the white glow is there before Windows boots up then why are you having me reload the F-ing drivers!!!) She even had me open the hinge cover and reseat the VGA cable. Then she had me connect my desktop monitor to the laptop to see if it had the same problem! Her solution? Send someone over to replace the LCD.

After that didn’t work, Jess called back “Asian Lady with mouth full of marshmallows” and after giving her our case number, she tried to instruct Jess to do exactly the same things she had me do the day before! Having reached the end of her advise tree, she transferred her to a different, male tech who treated Jess like a moron (Ooga Booga woman know nothing of computers) and refused to listen to her. His solution? Send the same guy the next day and REPLACE EVERYTHING! He literally replaced everything except the case and the hard drive to fix our monitor problem. The result?

See for yourself!