Red Steel 2, Muramasa: The Demon Blade

Red Steel 2

The medieval Japanese/Old West Tommy gun is my favorite piece of historical weaponry.

This game includes a Wii gimmick in which it promises 1:1 movement, and all you have to do is attach a pricey peripheral device to your Wiimote. If you didn’t think the Wii was gimmicky enough, well, this just takes it to a whole new level. But to be honest, the Wii Motion Plus device does improve the function of the Wiimote quite a bit. The original Red Steel was a train wreck of massive proportions. The biggest problem with it was that the sword fighting sequences were clunky and unresponsive. They made the game frustrating and unnecessarily difficult. This issue is completely gone thanks to the Wii Motion Plus. The sword fighting works quite well, and it is responsive to the angle and velocity of your movements. That translates to the screen, where you can make diagonal, horizontal, or vertical cuts, and the power of your attack corresponds to how hard you swing the Wiimote. All in all, this worked out well. But what about the actual game?

Red Steel 2 is a first person shooter where you take control of a samurai/gunslinger in a fictional setting that is a combination of Future Old West and Feudal Japan. You traipse the desert with your six shooter and rifle, but go in for sword fights when enemies get too close for comfort. The graphics taken on a cartoony, cel-shaded quality, that mostly works given the ludicrous setting. The game is mostly fun. It has numerous objectives for you to complete, many of which are optional. The bad guys offer an appropriate level of difficulty, although a couple of enemy types were a bit too hard. There is a big variety of combat moves you can learn, which add to the fun, and also offers a level of strategy in the sword fights. You don’t have to slash away wildly if you don’t want to, although that’s what I usually ended up doing.  My biggest complaints were these: first, the setting is monotonous (the desert) and gets boring after the first few hours of gameplay, second, apart from the new moves you can learn there isn’t a lot of depth or replay value. Overall, though, Red Steel 2 was a win for the Wii. It won’t be added to the pantheon of greatest games of all time, but it is certainly worth playing at least once.

Verdict: Average

Muramasa: The Demon Blade

Tentacle rape!

Time for another Wii game review, and this one has a few superficial similarities to the one I reviewed above. This also features heavy doses of sword combat and takes place in feudal Japan. Apart from that, these games don’t really have all that much in common. Muramasa is a side-scrolling action/adventure game that is light on strategy and heavy on button mashing. There are two storylines, one belonging to a male and a female character. The characters cross paths a couple of times, but for the most part each story is self-contained. With each character you start out weak, fight through hordes of bad guys, get stronger, level up, and buy new and more powerful swords. You keep three swords on you at all times. There is actually some strategy involved in knowing which swords to carry. You can switch between swords at any point during a battle, but some swords are better for certain things than others. Some are slow but powerful, some weak but quick, and each has a special move associated with it. The swords have “life meters” too, so overuse will lead to them breaking. There is a huge sinking feeling when you are in the midst of a hellacious battle with three broken swords. Muramasa is a hell of a lot of fun. You travel through various regions of ancient Japan, each more beautifully rendered than the last. The graphics are animated, and made to vaguely resemble the artwork of ancient Japan. Enemies come from Japanese folklore, as well. Honestly, though, the story is more of an afterthought. The fun really comes from exploring the different areas, killing bad guys, and crafting new swords. While it is a button-masher, the game’s fighting system is intuitive and fluid. The game never becomes bogged down in repetition. It is blast from beginning to end.

Verdict: Good

Red Dead Redemption Can Go to Hell

Marston takes careful aim at some crows.

Before you jump to the bottom of the page and post a comment about how I’m an ignorant twat, let me preface this entire post with a statement: I enjoyed Red Dead Redemption. But that doesn’t mean it’s immune from my rage for all its failings. And let me tell you, it had a lot of shit that pissed me off.

Video games where you get to play as a cowboy are few and far between. I’m not sure why the western genre for games never really took off, but they can be a lot of fun. I suppose the mouth-breathers feel it’s more important to buy a new version of Madden every year, so developers are constantly tied up copying last year’s football garbage into a new game. That precludes them from making new games with western motifs.

I’ve always enjoyed the western genre of film. The Good The Bad and The Ugly, True Grit, and Tombstone, just to name a few, are movies I can watch over and over again. There’s just something exciting about getting to live vicariously through those gunslingers. Besides, the whole genre boils down to just being a badass. And how could anyone not like a film genre dedicated to badasses?

No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle

I recently finished playing No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle. I reviewed the original game and gave it an Awesome rating. It was a super-amazing game, and if it was legal I would have married it. The goddamn religious-right in this country continues to claim that marriage is only allowable between a man and a woman. Until I die I will fight for a person’s right to marry disc-based media. But I digress…

As I loved the original game, I had very high expectations for the sequel. Fortunately, it did not disappoint. The sequel improves almost every aspect of the first game. There were a couple of changes I didn’t like, but on the whole, they pulled off a superior sequel.

The story is more or less the same. You play as Travis Touchdown, the former number one ranked assassin in the world. After attaining the top status at the end of the first game, he walked away, hoping to never be seen again. However, his friend was murdered, and he was brought back into the fold with an eye for revenge. To get his revenge, he must kill the current number one ranked assassin. Unfortunately, Travis has fallen to rank 51, and has to climb his way back up.

Things I Hate About Assassin’s Creed

Assassin’s Creed boasts a lot of cool things. It has amazing graphics, a fun concept, a unique setting, and a great parkour-like method of moving about. However, it also boasts a lot of bullshit. While it manages to do a lot of stuff right, it also manages to do a lot of other stuff wrong.

1. “Please sir, have any money?” – I am seriously sick of these fucking beggars telling me how they are “poor and sick and hungry.” In real life bums just sprawl across the sidewalk and groan out for some spare change. They don’t chase you down like they do in Assassin’s Creed. Seriously, what the fuck? Have the game designers ever interacted with a beggar in their entire lives? Apparently not. It goes to ridiculous levels when they start blocking your path. Once, after assassinating one of the main targets, I was on the run from about a million guards, and simultaneously I was being chased by two beggars, flanking my right and left sides. Those beggars have some serious cajones to be chasing after you for money when a cadre of bloodthirsty guards are out for your blood.

2. Save the Citizens again… and again… – Assassin’s Creed must have been developed by a bunch of autistic people, because never before have I come across a game so repetitive and tedious. How many times can you save the citizens of each district before it gets old? I think when I returned to Damascus for the first time, I was getting really sick of this crap. And it just goes on and on and on. It was interesting the first few times, but it quickly became idiotic. If you are an elite assassin, you aren’t going to go around picking fights with the city’s guards in broad daylight. It would draw way too much attention to yourself, and make it impossible to assassinate anybody. (By the way, wasn’t “Be Discreet” the second part of the Assassin’s Creed?) This repetition does nothing more than pad the length of the game, which is just lazy on the part of the game designers. Everything seems to be repeated ad nauseam from climbing lookout towers to collecting flags for information. Which brings me to my next point…

No More Heroes > Everything Else

Recharge that baby, Travis, yeah, that's hot.

Holy shit, I love this game!

I seriously have not been addicted to a game in a really long time. That is, not until I played No More Heroes. It’s basically an ultra-violent, playable anime with a sense of humor. The premise is that you are Travis Touchdown (awesome name, by the way), an otaku who wants to be the world’s greatest assassin. So, he decides to take out the world’s top 10 assassins with the lightsaber he won in an online auction (where else would you get one?).

Final Fantasy X Can Suck It

I hate you, Tidus.

Final Fantasy X has to be one of the worst pieces of shit that Square has ever squeezed out. It seems to me that the only people who liked this one had no other Final Fantasy games or other RPG’s to compare it against. I find it to be really disturbing that people are ranking the best RPG’s of all time as #1) Final Fantasy VII and #2) Final Fantasy X. I mean seriously, what the fuck? This game is complete bullshit. Let’s take a quick look at how Square completely fucked up the genre they had once revolutionized.

1.) No world map – Yes, instead of an expansive, detailed world just waiting for you to explore (not to mention wander around and level up), you are given a completely linear path in which you can only walk in one direction if you want to progress in the game. That’s total bullshit. Half the fun of any RPG is exploration, and that aspect of the game is taken right out.

2.) Grid Sphere System – What. The. Fuck. So instead of a traditional leveling system we have this incomprehensible grid where you can pick and choose what skills you want each character to learn. Ok, I’ll admit that it sounds cool on paper. But Jesus, did they even fucking test this shit out? It’s ridiculous. You don’t even get more HP or increased stats such as MP or strength when leveling up. No, you just get more moves on the goddamn sphere grid. You have to choose all your moves carefully and use your spheres appropriately, or you won’t learn the right spells at the right times or get all the necessary HP and strength upgrades. It’s fucking retarded, and overly complicates everything. Plus, I don’t even know where any of the cool spells are, so you never know which direction to move to optimize your characters.

I would much rather play this game.

3.) No Strategies Allowed – As in all previous Final Fantasy games, certain bosses have unique characteristics. For example, in Final Fantasy X, you can choose to either be close to, or far away from the boss, Evrae. Depending on your distance, the attacks you can use and it can use, vary. My first attempt was to stay far away and then move in once its HP had been drained. That didn’t work well, as it pummeled the living shit out of my characters. So the next time I thought I’d do the opposite. Unfortunately, once its HP was low enough, you couldn’t move away from the monster, it kept coming in after you. So basically, you don’t get to use any strategy you want. You have to fight it the way the game wants you to. Why even bother having this “option” in the first place, if they aren’t going to let you use it whenever you want? This is essentially Square’s method of having “fake strategy,” and saying “fuck you” to all the players.

4.) They’ve Been Talking for HOW Long Now? – Jesus. Tapdancing. Christ. They talk, and talk, and talk, and talk, and talk. Forever. In the old games there was tons of dialogue, but if you read fast you could get through it quickly and return to the gameplay. In this piece of shit you have to listen to the horrible voice acting. You can maybe skip half of it if you mash the X button furiously, but that gets old after a while. The dialogue is cheesy, the acting is high school quality, and the story is lame as hell. Plus, the main character, Tidus, is a really annoying asshole. This is the first Final Fantasy game where the main character was my least favorite. The story of the Final Fantasy games is one of the series’ biggest draws. But it’s tough caring about the story when you don’t give a shit about any of the characters.

5.) Graphics – They are blocky and pixellated. The backgrounds look like shit. The only things that really look good are the full-motion videos. Also, lip movements don’t match spoken words, meaning the dubbing was poorly done.

There are probably more complaints that I could add, but I can’t think of anything else at the moment. I can’t believe Square put out this monstrosity. What I can believe, however, is that this is everyone’s second favorite game in the series. People are idiots.

Verdict: Shitty